Kingship in early India has been a much discussed issue both within the early shastric literature and within modern scholarship. It has often got intertwined with the concept of the origin of the state, and numerous theories including brahmanical and…
Policy for the mitigation of climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions often tends to target production and producers. An alternative approach may be to look at consumption, and gear policy towards changing what consumers wish to purchase…
‘Our time has come’ is the slogan raised by Syriza to draw in the electorate to support its radical Left programme. ‘Syriza’ is the acronym in Greek for ‘Coalition of the Radical Left’ which brings together World and European Social…
Latin America is rising from a long slumber. The great awakening of the continent has roused expectations the world over regarding possibility of alternatives, especially in similarly situated regions of the southern hemisphere. Not surprisingly, the developments in Latin America…
The tragic and untimely departure of Sam Moyo from amidst us creates a void that can be filled only through an uncompromising commitment towards the poor and an unflinching solidarity with struggles of historically oppressed people. Passionate as he was…
With the passing of Professor Trilok Singh Papola on 23 November, the country lost one of its front-ranking economists. His life and times coincided with a very crucial phase of India’s economic history – covering the nation’s enthusiastic experiment with…
Biswamoy Pati, ed., Invoking Ambedkar: Contributions, Receptions, Legacies, Primus Books, Delhi, 2014, 172 pages, Rs 795. Saurabh Dube and Anupama Rao, eds., Crime through Time, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2014, lxiii+309 pages, Rs 895 Sabyasachi Dasgupta, In Defence of…
The lead article of the current issue of Social Scientist is the Presidential address by Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya to the Indian History Congress at its Platinum Jubilee session held at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in December 2014. In this remarkable…
The problem – which, if I am allowed to call it a ‘historian’s puzzle’ (as it appears as a contradiction in terms) – has come to me in the form of the expression ‘Unity in Diversity’; it is an expression…
Prologue In the early 1800s, a mother goose rhyme went: ‘To market, to market to buy a penny bun / Home again, home again, market is done.’ Later nineteenth-century versions become sumptuous – include a plum bun, a fat hog…