In order to understand how the Indian society and economy fared during the World War I (WWI from now on), an abnormal period, it is necessary to grasp the ‘normal’ functioning of the economy and society and the normal style…
The highest level of development of theory, Georg Lukacs had argued, is when theory breaks into practice. Lenin’s theory of imperialism represented in this sense the highest level of development of theory: starting from the ‘immanent tendencies’ of capitalism analysed…
We intend to investigate briefly two aspects of the colony the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) – now Indonesia – before, during and immediately after World War I from 1910–1920. First, we look at profits to Dutch and non-Dutch countries from…
Faced with early setbacks in World War I battles on the Western Front, alongside a massive attrition of manpower, France began to look to its empire as sources of labour alongside soldiers. Eventually Indochina would supply some 30 per cent…
The aforesaid described the first salvo of what subsequently became the 1915 Singapore Mutiny. For almost a week commencing from the afternoon of 15 February 1915 British colonial Singapore was gripped by an armed mutiny of Indian soldiers set on…
On 24 May 2014 one of the outstanding Indologists of our times breathed her last. The journey of Sukumari Bhattacharji ended in Kolkata’s SSKM Hospital at the age of nighty-three. Bengal lost one of the brightest stars from its sky.…
Rattan Lal Hangloo (ed.), Indian Diaspora in the Caribbean, History, Culture and Identity, Primus Book, New Delhi, India, 2012, 174 pages, Rs 795. Davesh Soneji, Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory, and Modernity in South India, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2012,…
Since our last issue there has been a major change in the politics of the country with the BJP-led NDA obtaining a comfortable majority of seats in the Lok Sabha and forming a new government, and the BJP alone crossing…
I was invited to a seminar in Toronto a few years back. I was supposed to read a paper, but I danced as well – a kind of ‘food for thought’ presentation, if you like. A lecture–demonstration, except I was…
The proponents of British rule, in their bid to demonstrate their loyalty to the colonial regime, popularised the view that south India from the earliest historical times was divided into a number of small kingdoms that were continually at war…