scorecardresearch
Sunday, July 27, 2025
TopicBritish India

Topic: British India

How do postal stamps show adivasis? The same way the British did

Birsa Munda is on many stamp covers – 1988 to 2023. There are none of Jaipal Singh Munda, member of India’s Constituent Assembly, Olympic gold medalist, and writer.

Railways weren’t Britain’s ‘gift’ to India—we paid with blood, sweat & humiliation

Lancashire cotton mill owners were eager to get access to the inland cotton-producing regions of India. Railway tracks penetrating into rural India would ensure this.

‘Tirunelveli riots’ was a high point of the Swadeshi movement. A shipping rivalry caused it

In ‘Swadeshi Steam’, AR Venkatachalapathy traces the journey of India’s first indigenous shipping company Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company and its founder VO Chidambaram Pillai.

British Indian sepoys weren’t silent spectators to colonial brutality. They led quiet rebellions

Indian sepoys who left their homes and crossed oceans to witness a world being conquered and exploited by the British, sought to understand, interpret, and even profit from it all.

In Manipur govts have manufactured dystopia for decades, not peace. It’s showing now

Learning all the wrong lessons from the British empire, independent India chose to rule the northeast through cash and coercion.

Was India’s 1st Olympic medallist Indian? Story of Norman Pritchard, athlete & Hollywood star

Pritchard was first Asia-born athlete to earn an Olympic medal, the first Olympian to act in Hollywood, and the first to score a hat-trick in football match on Indian soil in 1897.  

‘Rothschild of Calcutta’, Mutty Lall Seal spent his wealth on education, health, uplifting women

Seal set up Motilal Seal Free College in 1842, donated land for the Calcutta Medical College, and established a guesthouse in Belgharia to feed 500-1,000 poor every day.

Tailor Kinthup, disguised as monk was sent by British govt to Tibet in 1880 to map Tsangpo

In 'Bells of Shangri-La, Parimal Bhattacharya explores the stories of British espionage into Tibet to trace the Brahmaputra.

How a photograph of a decked-up Parsi woman found its way to the Pope’s palace

Dosebai Cowasjee Jessawalla was one of the first women in India to receive a British education. She recounts her travels and adventures in ‘Story of My Life’

Bahadur Shah Zafar resented Raja Ram Mohan Roy. So he complained to East India Company

In 'The Broken Script: Delhi Under the East India Company and the Fall of the Mughal Dynasty' Swapna Liddle details the complex tussle between the last two Mughal emperors and the East India company. 

On Camera

A year after Bangladesh’s Monsoon Revolution, a parched summer looms ahead

Mob violence, Islamist rise, and political collapse haunt Bangladesh after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster. Can April 2026 elections restore order?

India-US set to ink mini trade deal soon, reach understanding on agricultural & dairy products

Mini deal will likely see no cut in 10% baseline tariff on Indian exports announced by Trump on 2 April, it is learnt, but additional 26% tariffs are set to be reduced.

DRDO successfully tests latest version of UAV-launched precision missile, ULPGM-V3

Capable of being fired in plain and high-altitude areas, it has day-and-night capability and two-way data link to support post-launch target, aim-point update.

Modi’s Bharat vs Indira’s India: 11-yr report card of politics, diplomacy, economy, nationalism

As Narendra Modi becomes India’s second-longest consecutively serving Prime Minister, we look at how he compares with Indira Gandhi across four key dimensions.