Several stalwarts of the progressive movement of the country have passed away in the last few weeks. Two outstanding women, Kitty Menon and Captain Lakshmi Sehgal, both from affluent backgrounds who declassed themselves and joined the struggle of the toiling…
This narrative goes back to almost sixty-five years in the past. I had just crossed into my twenties and prided myself as a student activist at the University of Dacca. Dacca, which is now Dhaka, was the administrative headquarters of…
Kitty Menon’s maiden name was Ketayun Boomla. She was named after a princess called Ketayun (abbreviated to ‘Kitty’). And the prosperous, highlyAnglicised, Parsi family in which she was brought up, together with her stunning good looks, made this naming after…
I knew Kitty Menon for a much shorter time than most of you assembled here. I had seen her from a distance in the 1980s when I visited the CPI(M) office at 14 Ashoka Road as part of my work…
Comrade Kitty Menon is no more. A remarkable life of commitment, dedication and fortitude has ended in its Ninetieth year. It was sometime in early 1970s, before Indira Gandhi imposed emergency, that I met Kitty for the first time at…
Comrade Kitty is no more with us. To state this or to acknowledge this as reality is not very difficult. But to fully grasp, to internalise the reality of her not being around may take really long. Not that she…
I was wondering what I should speak on when addressing an audience of budding journalists and media persons. So I thought I might speak on why some of us historians, feel bothered by the way the media, both print and…
Speaking initially in the third person, moderate Muslims might correctly say, ‘In the face of colonial history and in the face of recent frustrations and defeat, Islam has an appeal for us; it is grounded in a doctrine we embrace…
Your kind invitation to deliver this Michael Sprinker Memorial Lecture is a great honour for me. Michael was one of my three closest friends outside the subcontinent. So, I do this not with pleasure but in sorrow, and yet with…
Satyabrata Rai Chowdhury, Leftism in India: 1917-1947, Macmillan, New Delhi, 2007, pp.254; Rs. 375. Priyam Goswami, The History of Assam : From Yandabo to Partition, 1826-1947, Orient Blackswan, New Delhi, 2012, pp. 300; Rs. 195.