history
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‘This book has been living in my mind for 25 years’: Ramachandra Guha
In the first half of the 20th century, British-born Indian anthropologist Verrier Elwin became the voice for the tribals of India. In those years — the 1940s — his life underwent multiple changes in succession. He denounced the clergy to work with Mahatma Gandhi, then parted ways to champion tribal communities, and became the first…
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‘Everything I’m saying is hiding in plain sight’: William Dalrymple
One, two buckle my shoe, three, four shut the door…We all know how it goes. But what are these one and two and three and four? As students, we learned that they are Arabic numerals. But we had learned wrong. If you rewind the chronicler’s tape a couple of centuries before the Islamic Golden Age…
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Assassins of discourse
Remember, remember the fifth of September’ might have been the opening line to that iconic Guy Fawkes rhyme (it starts as ‘Remember, remember the fifth of November’) if it was based on events that unfolded in Bengaluru in the new millennium. Unlike the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, a failed assassination attempt of British King James…
