Tag Archives: History

Ruby Lal, immersed in the themes of oblivion and erasure to understand the past, and particularly to investigate why certain persons, including women, could not take centre stage in Mughal history, dwells on the practice of erasure of the extraordinary literary prose work of Gulbadan, the only woman Mughal memoirist.

However, one feature that is common in both diaries is that both Ananda Ranga Pillai and Viranaicker considered themselves loyal subjects of the French. In spite of articulating his criticism of the French so clearly, Pillai did not ever exhibit any nationalist consciousness or preference for being under indigenous rule.

Those lured (or even blackmailed or kidnapped) to join, faced a tough journey which was under inhumane conditions, and often led to death, which of course was not expected. However, the author points out that for the westerners, the offer of indenture was considered as a relief, offering a better life for the famine-stricken poor in the country.

The zamindars mercilessly squeezed the peasants leaving them no incentive to produce more. The development of infrastructure, including railways and irrigation facilities led to the commercialization of agriculture and monetization of the rural economy with uneven effects on different areas and sections of the people.

Though the book makes an important contribution, there are a few areas which the author could have fleshed out more. There is an over-emphasis on Hindu women and mothers and very little mention of Muslim women. Likewise, during the colonial period

The book is indeed a detailed micro-history of the city, looking at the lives of individuals, communities and localities and their interactions with each other and their transformations from the 1930s to the mid-1950s, and the impact of the transition from a colony to a state to a nation on the city.

Anindyo Roy’s account of Lear’s visit to India stands out as the kind of travel book that Lear hoped to write from his journal jottings: ‘A travel book that that was akin to a kind of music: it was not a trophy, not a mirror held up to nature. Like a kaleidoscope

The book expands on existing research that examines the historical sociology of middle-class Indians, focusing on how they defined themselves and their role as agents of modernity during the 1920s and 1930s. It primarily explores western India, specifically Bombay and Pune, and deliberates on various Indian groups such as Marathi Brahmins, Gujarati upper castes

Before long, Chidambaram Pillai became drawn into the scheme initiated by a few Tuticorin traders to charter a steamer from a Bombay-based firm called Shah Line Company. He successfully exerted himself on behalf of this syndicate. By April 1906, the first chartered steamers arrived in Tuticorin; two months later there commenced a regular ‘Swadeshi’ service to Colombo. Soon, though, there was discord between the Swadeshi syndicate and the Shah Line Company. In an audacious move, Chidambaram Pillai now set about to create an indigenous shipping company with its own steamers. The first prospectus appeared in August 1906, and by October SSNCo was registered as a limited liability joint-stock firm. We learn, too,

The author seems to be too obsessed with Iran and Shias, he looks suspiciously at anything which is associated with Saudi Arabia and Wahhabi Sunnis and this he seems to be doing without caring for facts. His assertion that ‘a message had gone across to global Sunni and Arab communities that the US had snatched Iraq from the hands of true Islam and delivered it to the heretic Shias’

The writing moves you. It leaves you seething at the indignity and injustice inflicted on the last heroes and countless others by a system seeped in colonial bureaucratic rigmaroles/bureaucracy. Sainath highlights the irony of how independent India chose to recognize its freedom fighters and framed the eligibility criterion for pensions such as the Swatantra Sainik Samman.

The author cautions against using the words ‘natives’ or ‘whites’ or ‘Anglo-Indians’ among others, as these are politically contested terms in themselves. While they are loaded terms, the colonial archives’ understanding them became a way to address non-European locals, thus staying away from their identity or parentage.

Raghavan’s reflections, as a seasoned diplomat, on the problems that Asaf Ali had to face as India’s Ambassador to the United States (appointed by the Interim Government a few months before Independence), allow us to appreciate the adverse conditions under which the first set of envoys had to function. They were ridiculed if they were ostentatious

The present volume, going ahead, narrates Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay’s friendship and interactions with a host of political leaders across ideologies. Gandhiji, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan were some of such leaders.

This research monograph based on fresh, unknown and by that token unutilized sources of the political history of Varanasi offers insights and presents incisive analysis of many known and unknown events. The historians’ gaze has largely remained oblivious to the sources, scattered as they are, not only in many regional repositories, various State Archives

The numbers that Feldhaus has used to illustrate her argument are fascinating. There are the 12 jyotirlingas, the twelve major sites of pilgrimage of Siva worshippers, and while most do not explain the multiplicity of such sites

Early Indian texts, especially those that are part of the vast corpus in Sanskrit, have acquired a sadly paradoxical status in recent years. On the one hand, many serious scholars tend to view them with suspicion, if not contempt.

Minority Pasts investigates local history and politics of Rampur, the last Muslim-ruled Princely State in colonial United Provinces, and studies with remarkable ease and competence aspects of political, economic, socio-cultural and affective history of Rampur and the Rampuris in the South Asian subcontinent across borders in the post-1857 period.

It is usually overlooked while talking about India of the latter half of the eighteenth century that the Mughal court continued to have some political relevance till at least the turn of the century.

This is precisely what Ghosh has done. Eight years after the publication of Flood of Fire we have a book in which he has written about the key concerns that shaped the novels comprising the trilogy. As the narrative progressed from the first novel Sea of Poppies (2008)