Tag Archives: History

In retrospect, la Sabliere appears as a twentieth century socialite, who is a patron of writers and intellectuals, academics and statesmen. But the salon presided over by aristocratic women became the shining example of French intellectual life in the seventeenth century. Neither historians in general, nor historians of social trends and ideas, seem to focus on this aspect.

The fact that Bose, in his death and after the defeat of the honourable INA, united Indians across the political spectrum is noted in glowing terms by Craig. The second section has interesting narrations about individuals and various Allied armies who rallied ‘round the flag’, meaning the Union Jack. The story of the immense sacrifices made by men, officers and civilians in the theatres of war and war crimes, including the horrors of Belsen in the West and Borneo in the East, is told in a prose which makes the book unputdownable.

It was here that wealthy traders and aristocrats lived. Later, they served as indispensable intermediaries between the colonial state and the broader population in Patna. However, the colonial state eventually developed the Danapur and Bankipur regions, away from the old town, also known as Patna city. Present-day Patna developed around Bankipur.

And the collapse came in the 20th century. The depression of the 1930s was the first serious blow. While the larger business houses were able to stay afloat, the medium and small firms suffered a near collapse. Next came World War II and the Japanese invasion.

The text contains an extensive account of the manner in which the Kalsia zail (retinue) was organized as a raiding and soldiering band with sections on its allies (hamrahan, tab’in) and relatives. Disputes over succession arising out of a range of superior and inferior conjugal unions (karewa, chadar dalna, shadi, byah) form an important part of this study. Women in the roles of wives,

Chapters focus on early Indian traditions, followed by a region-specific treatment of South and Southeast Asia, East Asia, inner Asia, the West, and Women’s ordination across cultures, ending with a chapter self-explanatorily titled ‘Grassroots Revolution: Buddhist Women and Social Activism’, which is an account of women in what is called ‘engaged Buddhism’. Blurbs by eminent Buddhist scholars such as Jay Garfield, Jose Cabezon, and Paula Orai situate it within academic discourse as a valuable resource.

Should he have mentioned his name Ashoka more often? Again, if this was a name specifically connected with his Buddhist affiliation, he may have preferred not to use it in inscriptions meant for a wider, diverse readership/audience, choosing other epithets instead. And, given that we now have the label inscription from Kanaganahalli, mentioning Rāyo Asoko, it is possible that people were familiar with the name. Further, although perhaps anachronistic,

limited in their study to lives and worldviews of individuals. However, with the waning of the teleological, unilineal view of history, historians are now beginning to realize the need to place human experiences, emotions and everyday events within the larger historical context. With this has come the realization that personal accounts are not just records of individual experiences but rather reflect an incessant interaction of the individual self with the wider socio-cultural discourse in diverse spatial and temporal contexts. The current work by Simon Digby, a renowned British scholar of pre-Mughal India,

This question of the role of Brahmans in the kali yuga is a central one around which Brahman scholarship and judicial power pivot themselves over the centuries. One discursive context can be found in the history of critical responses of Maratha Brahmans like Krishna Sesa (16th c.) and Kamalakarabhatta (17th c.) to Gopinatha’s Jativiveka (circa 14th/15th c.). The Jativiveka, a key scholarly reference point until the 19th century and consulted in various disputes across centuries into the colonial period, defended the varnashrama dharma, was hostile to varnasamskara and Bhakti, and traced Kayasthas to a degraded pratiloma intermarriage. While both Krishna Sesa and Kamalakarabhatta widened the range of communities to which the ‘good’ Sudra status applied, Kamalakarabhatta also defended the survival of Kshatriyas and Vaishyas in the kali yuga,

The Subaltern Studies collective after four decades of its academic rise and dominance has now started being questioned in terms of what it has really achieved. The recent book by Meera Nanda has already been cited and follows another book-length study over a decade earlier by Vivek Chibber, Post-Colonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, which was equally damning in terms of its assessment.

Like Jaffe, Robb also emphasizes dialogue between imperial ideals and local realities. However, he goes further and excavates the moral self-understanding of administrators themselves. Moreover, Robb’s approach adds a significant layer to intellectual histories of the empire, such as those explored in the works on liberal imperialism. Unlike ideological accounts that locate justification in theory, the present study turns our gaze to administrative interiors, showing how moral and legal discourses shaped bureaucratic decision-making in substantial ways.

Datta serves up this delicious nugget that one of the more well-known residents of the area was Florence Ezekiel, more popularly known as Nadira, the actress!
The history of Mumbai’s Irani restaurants, cafés and bakeries has been documented in films and books. Sadly, many have shut down, the latest being another favourite, B. Merwan opposite Grant Road station.

The Delhi Sultanate, ruling over large parts of the subcontinent till the early sixteenth century, became the home of immigrants from the Central Islamic lands. Pant’s treatment of Delhi’s cuisine under the Sultans is disappointingly brief as it mainly relies on information from the writings of Amir Khusrau, the famous poet and Ibn Battuta, the fourteenth century Moroccan traveller.

The primary and secondary sources identified at the important archives listed in the book have been scrutinized, analysed and synthesized to arrive at these conclusions. They have been diligently recorded, and we provide a flavour here by illustratively mentioning a few authors:

The second section titled ‘Miracles and Devotees’ draws our attention to the shifting identities of Goddesses over the long centuries in the ramifications caused by potentates and political blocks.

Meanwhile, the fate of the secular perspective on women’s rights was sealed with Muslim leaders opposing a uniform code due to concerns about the survival of the Muslim community after a violent Partition. The reform of personal law for women thus, could not escape religious identity with the Muslims

Sinha marks this episode as the beginning of Sahi’s long-running guerrilla resistance, a struggle which sustained for over two decades, made possible in part by the enduring strength of a hereditary local magnate. The author traces Sahi’s lineage from Mayyur Bhutt, who is said to have lived either during the time of the Buddha or under the reign of Harshvardhana, down to ancestors (with a thousand-year gap) who were granted the titles of Raja, Maharaja Bahadur,

The book traces the personal histories of the Chattopadhyays in Calcutta, their home city and in Hyderabad, the city of their education and profession; Chatto’s turning towards revolutionary activities under the influence of radical Indian nationalists at the India House, London3; his initiative to create the Berlin Indian Committee with the help of Indian pan-Islamists and to obtain the support of the Ameer of Afghanistan.

Gopal Gandhi’s account of all these changes is embedded throughout in a larger story of India and, to some extent, India’s interface with the world. His candour and even-handed descriptions remain but one misses in these somewhat dense with politics and geopolitics chapters, the eye for the quirks and curiosities of history which had made the earlier parts of this book such a compelling read.

The legacy of Nehru in the economic sphere is being reversed and the poor are no longer on the radar. The rapid privatization of national assets, withdrawal of the state from education and health to benefit the rapacious private sector, the rapid informalization of labour with no trade union rights are pointers to the backslide. In the Global Hunger Index, India is ranked 111 out of 125 countries.