History

Articles on history, largely focussed on India, published on The India Forum.

Book
Book Review

The Revival of Buddhism

Reports of the death of Buddhism in precolonial India were greatly exaggerated. The many Buddhisms promoted by ideologies across the spectrum in modern times came to distinctively shape South Asia.
▶18-Jul-2024
Chandrabhan P. Yadav

Encountering the Bhakt: Transformation in Religious Thought

Two examples from mediaeval Odisha’s bhakti tradition show how debates and differences about the sacred were part of devotional practice, and not forced onto us after the institutionalisation of…
▶15-Jul-2024
Abinash Dash Choudhury

The Voice of Freedom: Congress Radio’s Challenge to British Rule

The underground Congress Radio was a story of plucky young nationalists challenging foreign rule during the Quit India Movement and contesting colonial control of the airwaves.
▶11-Jul-2024
Isabel Huacuja Alonso

A Forgotten Pioneer of Climate Change Research

Eunice Newton Foote, scientist and women’s rights activist, was the first to posit a connection between atmospheric gases and rising temperatures.
▶26-Jun-2024
G.V. Pavan Kumar

Nagaland’s Night Marcher: Why Reading Kaka Iralu Matters

At a time when it was practically unimaginable, Kaka Iralu critically examined Nagaland’s relationship with India. His anarchist spirit of inquiry serves well to illuminate pressing questions of the…
▶05-Jun-2024
Varun Sharma
Book
Book Review

At Sea Against the Empire

Swadeshi Steam, the iconic shipping line, was a symbol of doughty economic nationalism in the early 20th century. Its failure tells us much about the contradictions of the anti-colonial movement.
▶09-Mar-2024
Raman Mahadevan
Essay

Allahabad that is Prayagraj: The Politics of Erasure

Driven by a yearning to shed the legacy of past humiliation, defeat, and cultural dispossession, we attempt to obliterate traces of that history. Yet, that very past lingers embodied within us. The…
▶19-Feb-2024
Alok Rai
Book
Book Review

The Richness of India’s ‘Epics’

‘A spectrum of political and ideological positions, apparent in the arguments made and critiques offered’, are contained in the essays in this volume on the epics.
▶14-Feb-2024
Arshia Sattar
Book
Book Review

The Uneven Journey of a Civilisation

The complex pasts of the subcontinent come together usefully in a volume for the lay reader.
▶01-Feb-2024
Kumkum Roy

Emergent India and its Sikh Diaspora

Sikh activism is on the rise in the diaspora but it would be wrong to read it as all 'Khalistani'. India’s outreach policies need to acknowledge Sikh pluralism and respect the democratic…
▶22-Nov-2023
Shinder S. Thandi