Columns

English, Colonialism, and Indian identity: A Complicated History
The many strands of the moustache
Waging war through whispers and gossip
Footwear, power and colonial politics in India
Thrones are not glorified chairs. They tell remarkable stories
The men and women who inspired Ravi Varma
‘Correcting’ historical wrongs is a slippery slope
‘Sati’ was real. But it was also great propaganda.
The inconvenient ‘public woman’ of history
When makers of history die
When the British chose pragmatism as strategy
How empires are built on the backs of animals
When gifts weren’t an innocent show of affection
Royal Matrimony: Public-Private Partnerships
In Games of Power, Death by Milk and Honey
The Insult as an Instrument of Politics
A statesman’s word of caution (29 December 2019)
A Muslim royal’s Christian faith (21 December 2019)
An African slave who defied the Mughals (14 December 2019)
Muslim sons of a Brahmin Peshwa (07 December 2019)
The poison sultan of Gujarat (30 November 2019)
A queen exiled from history (23 November 2019)
A mosque celebrating a Hindu king (16 November 2019)
The shrewd dowager of Gwalior (09 November 2019)
The young widow of Cooch Behar (02 November 2019)
The many beginnings of Diwali (26 October 2019)
Gold cannons and a poison plot (19 October 2019)
The judge who sentenced a Peshwa (12 October 2019)
Black magic and a bureaucrat (05 October 2019)
A merchant-prince betrayed in Bidar (28 September 2019)
The many loves of the Mountbattens (21 September 2019)
Pathans and priests in Travancore (14 September 2019)
Maratha blood and Persian veins (07 September 2019)
The blinding of a Mughal emperor (31 August 2019)
An abduction on Malabar Hill (24 August 2019)
Shifting loyalties in the peninsula (17 August 2019)
The good doctor of Travancore (10 August 2019)
Vijayanagar’s age of confidence (03 August 2019)
Tipu Sultan’s monument to victory (27 July 2019)
The kitchen maid as Bhakti poet (20 July 2019)
The thwarted promise of 1857 (13 July 2019)
Keeping order with violence (06 July 2019)
Why women hold the key to a New History of India (29 June 2019)
The prince and the golden cow (29 June 2019)
Congress and its tryst with power (22 June 2019)
The language debate: Speaking in many tongues (15 June 2019)
A Bijapur sultan and Tantric goddesses (08 June 2019)
A Burmese king in an Indian exile (01 June 2019)
Shivaji and Aurangzeb, a mighty clash of Titans (25 May 2019)
A warrior king and a goat’s eyes (18 May 2019)
A tale of tragic princely splendour (11 May 2019)
The grocer who became a saint (04 May 2019)
A Maratha game of thrones (27 April 2019)
Marriages not made in heaven (20 April 2019)
The villain of Amritsar (13 April 2019)
The warrior queen of the Deccan (06 April 2019)
A Brahmin woman of scandal (30 March 2019)
From pauper to iconic prince (23 March 2019)
Much ado about a royal throne (16 March 2019)
Lord Curzon’s monumental plan (09 March 2019)
The making of a Bhakti saint (2nd March 2019)
The Peshwas and their capital (23 February 2019)
Of Hindu sultans and padshahs (16 February 2019)
The princes in a socialist republic (09 February 2019)
The poet who built bridges (02 February 2019)
The courtesan who became begum
Manubai: the rani before the battle (19 January 2019)
The photographer-prince of Jaipur (12 January 2019)
What if Vijayanagar had survived? (05 January 2019)
Caught between two worlds (22 December 2018)
Shock and splendour on wheels (15 December 2018)
A Savarkar in the Qutb Shahi court (08 December 2018)
An unapologetic woman of power (01 December 2018)
The empress and her dominion (24 November 2018)
A Hyderabadi conundrum (16 November 2018)
The colonial state and India’s gods (10 November 2018)
Khunza Humayun: A woman ahead of her time (03 November 2018)
Jahangir: the endearing eccentric (27 October 2018)
A leap of faith at Sabarimala (20 October 2018)
The original accidental prime minister (13 October 2018)
The ordinary people of the Raj (06 October 2018)
The boy who lived to paint (29 September 2018)
The Renaissance Man of Travancore (22 September 2018)
An unsentimental man of action (15 September 2018)
The Mapilla rebellion of Malabar (08 September 2018)
Kamala Markandaya: A novelist lost in literary oblivion (1 September 2018)
Dara Shukoh, poet among warriors (25 August 2018)
India’s forgotten magical history (18 August 2018)
English, an original idea for India (11 August 2018)
Mrs Gandhi and the ‘gau rakshaks’ (4 August 2018)
When Savarkar jumped ship (28 July 2018)
The bloody monsoon of Vellore (20 July 2018)
The most unkind cut of all (14 July 2018)
Raja Deen Dayal, India’s ‘bold warrior of photography’ (07 July 2018)
The crown without a royal head (30 June 2018)
Rowdy ‘Bob’ who won at Plassey (23 June 2018)
A Maratha prince’s morality play (16 June 2018)
How football kicked off in India (9 June 2018)
A portrait that got Jawaharlal Nehru wrong (2 June 2018)
Savarkar’s thwarted ‘racial dream’ (26 May 2018)

Share this: