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…
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)…
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…
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.
"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…
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.
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…
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…
‘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…
Cultural motifs of the Sikhs' ‘conquest’ of Delhi animate the art and music of the farmers’ movement. Memories of defiance and triumph, juxtaposed with images of the protests, inspire the…
