History

India's Place in the History of Democracy

The idea of Athens as mother of democracy was pushed by modern scholars of ancient Greece and Rome. Ancient Greek and Roman writers on India themselves found several similarities with political…
▶14-Jun-2023
Thomas R. Trautmann

The Other Side of Paradise

A war-ravaged country torn apart by militancy and poverty; Afghanistan is now a textbook example of a failed state. But the region was once home to a civilisation that was muse to the great Persian…
▶08-May-2023
Arundhuti Dasgupta

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

How to Trap a Cheetah (And Why You Shouldn’t Have)

Cheetahs were highly prized in medieval and colonial India. They were trapped to meet the demand from royalty, a practice that continued well into the 19th century, leading to their ultimate…
▶09-Feb-2023
Raza Kazmi

Don't Judge the Past through the Eyes of the Present

It would be wrong to use present-day norms to label certain historical events as crimes. If we must judge the past, it should be in relation to its time, rather than our present.
▶19-Jan-2023
Alok Sheel

Play. Stop. Rewind. Record.

"We were, in many ways, coached into listening—casually, closely, intimately, itinerantly—by the cassette tape. It made sound available to us beyond broadcast radio, and allowed us to curate our…
▶02-Oct-2022
Usha Raman

Experiments in Education: The early years of Visva Bharati and Dacca University

In 1921, Bengal witnessed the foundation of two universities: Visva Bharati and Dacca. The early years of the institutions give us a portrait of two unique models of education, learning, and pedagogy.
▶24-Mar-2022
Kaustubh Mani Sengupta

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

India’s Princes, the Ingenious Rebels against the Crown

India’s maharajahs during colonial rule were much more than the stereotypes we have of profligate spenders and incompetent rulers. They were complicated personalities who could subtly resist imperial…
▶20-Oct-2021
Manu S. Pillai
Review

A History of Ordinary People in France

‘How a family lived in their ordinariness for three centuries, and the mode of telling this story throws light on the "big events" in France from the pre-revolutionary era to the French…
▶07-Sep-2021
Rudrangshu Mukherjee