Although I grew up in north India, the newspaper that came into our home was headquartered in a great city then called Calcutta. This was The Statesman, whose main edition was published in the first capital of British India, but which had a small subsidiary edition printed in the second and last capital of the Raj. [...]
When, in 1995, Bombay was renamed Mumbai, it led to a spurt of such renamings of buildings, streets, parks, and railway stations in the city. However, a few dead foreigners were spared the fate of being consigned to the dustbin of history. Among them were Annie Besant, after whom a major thoroughfare in central Mumbai is [...]
In 1824, the Government of Bengal (which was then in the hands of the East India Company) issued an Ordinance placing strict curbs on the freedom of the press. This gave the government the powers to cancel a newspaper’s license without any explanation. The Ordinance provoked outrage among the intelligentsia of Kolkata, active in editing and [...]
As we mark the 40th anniversary of the promulgation of the Emergency, we shall hear many politicians speak about their sufferings and sacrifices. L. K. Advani has already spoken, and no doubt other BJP leaders will follow. Perhaps we should remind them that Sanjay Gandhi’s wife Maneka is one of their Cabinet Ministers, while his henchman [...]
Back in the 1850s, Karl Marx wrote a series of essays on the results of British rule in India. These essays were marked by an ambivalence that was uncharacteristic as well as profound. On the one hand, Marx saw that the British had come to the sub-continent to dominate and exploit, objectives that were deeply repugnant [...]