History

Sixty years ago, the Communist Party of India split into two. Ideological differences have kept the successor parties apart – and will probably continue to do so – even as domestic politics keeps…

In their struggle against authoritarian rule, Bangladesh’s students rely on their history’s many artefacts.

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.

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…

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.

Eunice Newton Foote, scientist and women’s rights activist, was the first to posit a connection between atmospheric gases and rising temperatures.

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…

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.

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…

‘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.