Anuradha Kumar

Anuradha Kumar
Anuradha Kumar

Anuradha Kumar writes for Scroll, Economic and Political Weekly, and other publications. Her most recent novel is The Kidnapping of Mark Twain (Speaking Tiger Books, 2023).

A 1910 Harlem Mystery: The Hindu Butler and the Housekeeper

A double murder in New York in 1910, including that of a “Hindu” butler, was never definitively solved. The police investigation, driven by prejudice and desperation, wrongly accused an innocent man…
▶18-Nov-2024
Anuradha Kumar

Har Dayal: Three Years That Made a Difference

Har Dayal, a founding member of the Ghadar party, was an anarchist who moved between advocacy of revolution to pacificism, later advocating a utopian “world state”. An account of his years (1911-14)…
▶03-May-2023
Anuradha Kumar

The ‘Hindus’ and Anti-miscegenation Laws in the United States

From the early 20th century onwards, US Immigrants of South Asian origin—referred to as 'Hindus'—had to confront laws in many states against 'interracial' marriage. It wasn't…
▶09-Feb-2022
Anuradha Kumar

Guru, Spy, or Lost Archduke?

Was John Orth a self-proclaimed ‘guru’ in the US in the early 20th century, or a one-time rug-dealer suspected of being a Russian spy, or perhaps the Austro-Hungarian archduke Johann Salvator himself…
▶16-Nov-2021
Anuradha Kumar

The Strange ‘Hindu Murders’ of the US West Coast in the Early 20th Century

In the 1930s, a spate of murders claimed the lives of several Punjabi men in California’s Central Valley region. US police and press were quick to ascribe these killings to mysterious old ‘Oriental’…
▶09-Jun-2021
Anuradha Kumar