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Saturday, January 3, 2026
TopicColonial India

Topic: Colonial India

Why Dalits love Mahatma Macaulay

Robert Clive defeated India and didn’t question caste. Mahatma Macaulay envisioned India as a free nation and critiqued caste. That explains why Indians hate one more than the other.

Gujarati Muslims who built Bombay’s commerce—and carried it across the world

‘Gujarati Muslim Communities in Colonial Mumbai’ event explored the contribution of prominent families in the early 20th century, and their business interests from glassware, opium to silk to shipping.

How Kulwant Roy captured India’s transition to freedom

The photojournalist’s legacy was obscured for nearly thirty years between his death and the recovery of his negatives.

‘Honest history, not ideology’—NCERT social science panel chief on changes in Class 8 textbook

Michel Danino headed the committee behind the drafting of the NCERT social science textbook, which has sparked a controversy over the representations of Maratha & Mughal rulers.

Punkahs, punkahwallahs, and White sahibs in Colonial India

Punkah' is a colonial-era anglicisation of the Hindustani term pankha, which referred to handheld fans. Punkah-pullers were made to work in deliberately uncomfortable conditions.

A white woman wants to see real India in Forster’s ‘Passage’. Britain is yet to find it

If the latest cohort of writers is anything to go by, it seems like colonisation continues to have an existential hold, particularly over British-Indian authors.

New book explores the travels of ordinary Indian migrants in Colonial India

Published by HarperCollins India, ‘The Other Mohan in Britain's India Ocean Empire’ will be released on 15 November on SoftCover, ThePrint’s online platform for launching non-fiction books.

British photographers showed sites of 1857 violence, without people. They erased Indians

A DAG exhibit, on display until 12 October in Delhi, reminds people how photographing is often ‘an act of staging reality’.

Like the Prophet in Pakistan, holy cow has killed many in India. Modi isn’t the problem

Cow-vigilante killings, often linked to Hindu nationalism, highlight an ongoing fracture in Indian society shown by riots of 1893 and others that followed.

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.

On Camera

India’s most consequential decade & chronicling it as part of the dream team of journalism

You’d think the decade of 1985-95 is long over. Not really. The issues that erupted in that decade are still shaping Indian conversations.

India’s urban co-op banks are turning the page—crisis to cautious revival, one metric at a time

With bad loans shrinking & capital buffers stronger, urban co-op banks’ new umbrella body NUCFDC is now prioritising rollout of digital transformation.

Greece looking at TATA’s WhAP infantry combat vehicle for army procurement

If deal goes through, Greece will be 2nd foreign country to procure vehicle. Morocco was first; TATA Group has set up manufacturing unit there with minimum 30 percent indigenous content.

A year-end Mea Culpa in National Interest—The Army-Islam combo doesn’t kill democracy

Many of you might think I got something so wrong in National Interest pieces written this year. I might disagree! But some deserve a Mea Culpa. I’d deal with the most recent this week.