In this age of electoral nationalism, a reminder of how a different ideology exists at the periphery of the public imaginary. Memento Park, Budapest.
This picture was taken by me during one of the most memorable tuk tuk rides in Peshawar in 2017, when I was exploring the city and trying to find a gurdwara in the narrows lanes of the congested city. Along came this sardar ji who jumped on the tuk tuk and navigated us to Gurdwara Bhai Joga Singh. As the sounds and sights gather momentum around the opening of the Kartarpur corridor, I share this moment that speaks silently for the hopes of many.
What Made the East India Company So Successful? Analysis Goes Missing in Dalrymple by Rudrangshu Mukherjee, The India Forum, 11 Oct 2019
William Dalrymple’s book on the East India Company is written very well and has a great deal of detail. But the writing of good History needs more. It calls for a consideration of all relevant facts and a comprehensive analysis. This is unfortunately missing.
The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, And The Pillage Of An Empire By William Dalrymple, Bloomsbury, Rs 699.
LSE Blog:Â Long Read Book Review: Masala Shakespeare: How a Firangi Writer Became Indian by Jonathan Gil Harris
In Masala Shakespeare: How a Firangi Writer Became Indian by Jonathan Gill Harris, Harish Trivedi (Former Professor of English, Delhi) finds a book that examines the similarities between India and Shakespeare. Taking the author’s understanding of the word masala (in this case meaning something hybrid, mixed or more-than-one), Trivedi explains the problems of such a comparison and literary interpretation of Indian society and culture.
Masala Shakespeare: How a Firangi Writer Became Indian. Jonathan Gil Harris. New Delhi: Aleph, 2018. 282 pp.
Sharing my piece from a commemorative edition on Gandhi in the National Herald. It revisits my doctoral research on the former Muslim princely state of Malerkotla and recalls attempts at communal harmony by that state, sandwiched between its famous Sikh princely brethren & British Indian apparatus, but on this occasion, more sensible than both.
3. That a life of labour, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman, is the life worth living.
Richard Southwell Bourke (1822-72), 6th Earl of Mayo, 4th Viceroy of India (1869-72)
Born and educated in Dublin; MP (Conservative Party) for Kildare (1847-52), Coleraine (1852-57) and Cockermouth (1857-68); Chief Secretary for Ireland (1852, 1858, 1866); Assassinated in Andaman Islands by Sher Ali Afridi (1872); Memorial Statue in Cockermouth (1875)
Termed Disraeli’s Viceroy by George Pottinger (1990) and a ‘reckless partisan of Irish landlordism’ by Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune (1859) (https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/lord-mayo-in-a-pickle-1.3777905)
For biography:
Library Ireland: https://www.libraryireland.com/biography/RichardBourkeSouthwell.php
WW Hunter, The Earl of Mayo (Oxford, 1891)  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35809/35809-h/35809-h.htm
On assassination:
Norman Freeman, “Death of a viceroy – An Irishman’s Diary on the assassination of Lord Mayo”, The Irish Times, 28 Jan 2019.  https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/death-of-a-viceroy-an-irishman-s-diary-on-the-assassination-of-lord-mayo-1.3773683
Clare Anderson, “The murder of Mayo: why Britain kept quiet about a Viceroy’s assassination” 7 Sep 2011. https://www2.le.ac.uk/news/blog/2011-archive/september/the-murder-of-mayo-why-britain-kept-quiet-about-a-viceroys-assassination
With wider political-cultural context:
Julia Stephens, ‘The Phantom Wahhabi: Liberalism and the Muslim fanatic in mid-Victorian India’, Modern Asian Studies 47: 1 (2013) 22-52
Of legacy:
Mayo College Ajmer (India) (1875): https://mayocollege.com/
Mayo School of Industrial Art Lahore (Pakistan) (1875): http://lahore.city-history.com/places/mayo-school-of-industrial-art-later-national-colle/
It was of course his legacy that is most associated with the city of Lahore, where the Mayo School of Industrial Art was set up in 1875, following his assassination in 1872. The Mayo School later became the National Collage of Arts (NCA) in 1958 and this still remains the premier institution for the Arts in Pakistan.
Lockwood Kipling was appointed the first Principal of Mayo School, alongside his other role of Curator of the Lahore Museum, which was the Ajaib Ghar in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim.
“Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.” Frida Kahlo
Below are some books in chronological order during the decades following from August 1947 when India and Pakistan were created. The are from different historical and political vantages and show the enduring struggle in Kashmir and how it has been represented. Above are pictures from a protest organised on 15 August 2019 outside the Indian High Commission in London following the Government of India’s decision to revoke Article 370.
Michael Brecher, The Struggle for Kashmir, Ryerson Press, 1953.
Prem Nath Bazaz, The History of Struggle for Freedom in Kashmir: Cultural and Political, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, Kashmir Publishing Company, 1954.
Josef Korbel, Danger in Kashmir, Princeton University Press, 1954.
Christopher Birdwood, Two Nations and Kashmir, Robert Hale, 1956.
Aziz Beg, Captive Kashmir, Allied Business, 1957.
Sisir Gupta, Kashmir: Study in India-Pakistan Relations, ICWA, 1966.
Alastair Lamb, The Crisis in Kashmir 1947–1966, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966.
Muhammad Yusuf Saraf, Kashmiris’ fight for freedom, Vol. 1 (1819–1946) and Vol. II (1947–1978), Feroze Sons (1977, 1979).
Prem Nath Bazaz, Democracy through intimidation and terror, Delhi: Heritage, 1978.
Sheikh Abdullah and M.Y. Taing, Atish-e-Chinar, Srinagar Shaukat, 1985.
S.T. Hussain, Sheikh Abdullah-a biography (based on Atish-e-Chinar) Wordclay, 2009.
B.C. Taseer, The Kashmir of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, Lahore: Feroze Sons, 1986.
U.K. Zutshi, Emergence of political awakening in Kashmir, Manohar Publications, 1986.
Alastair Lamb, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy 1846-1990, Roxford, 1991.
Robert G. Wirsing. India, Pakistan, and the Kashmir Dispute: On Regional Conflict and Its Resolution, New York: St. Martin’s. 1994.
Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in the Crossfire, Bloomsbury, 1996.
Iffat Malik, Kashmir: Ethnic Conflict International Dispute, OUP 2002.
Mridu Rai, Hindu Rulers: Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights and the History of Kashmir, Princeton University Press, 2004.
Chitralekha Zutshi, Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir, Hurst, 2004.
Praveen Swami, India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad: The Covert War in Kashmir, 1947-2004, Routledge, 2006.
Andrew Whitehead, A Mission in Kashmir, Penguin, 2007.
Sanjay Kak, ed. Until my Freedom has Come, Penguin, 2011.
A.G. Noorani, Article 370: A Constitutional History of Jammu and Kashmir, The Kashmir dispute: 1947–2012, OUP, 2011.
Christopher Snedden, The Untold Story of the People of Azad Kashmir. Hurst, 2012.
Shonaleeka Kaul, The Making of Early Kashmir, OUP, 2018.
Duschinski, Bhan, Zia and Mahmood, eds. Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.
BAGICHA 