scorecardresearch
Add as a preferred source on Google
Saturday, March 14, 2026
TopicThinking Medieval

Topic: Thinking Medieval

India has lost the language for Iran

When the British replaced Persian with English as the administrative language in 1837, they uprooted a seven-century tradition that had become, in every sense, Indian.

The story of India’s forgotten Afghans — horse-traders, mercenaries, kings

The relationship between Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent was built over five centuries by people who were entrepreneurial, mobile, literate, and commercially connected.

Corruption was widely documented in medieval India. Spies kept an eye on kings, bureaucracy

From the inception of Indian statecraft, political theorists were aware of the dangers of corruption. Arthashastra recommends that all senior officials be tested by secret agents.

India lived in ancient Europe as a positive ‘Other’. Ties are way older than colonialism

Stories of Indian spices, beasts, saints, and kings fired the European imagination for a thousand years. India anchored Europe’s sense of the world.

Some OBCs were ‘dominant’ in medieval India. How history can decode the UGC controversy

Temples, military labour markets, and land-grant regimes structured medieval caste hierarchies. Today, access to education, employment, bureaucratic categories, and media platforms do.

From Bronze Age migrations to British Raj—how ideas stopped flowing between India and Iran

As early states developed in the Iranian plateau and northern India, ideas continued to circulate between the steppe and the settlements of the Iranian plateau and the Punjab plains.

Why Bihar migrates has a 500-year old answer — from Mughal taxpayers to peasant warriors

Migration in North India isn’t just due to lack of development today. It was shaped by the evolution of labour markets under Sher Shah, Mughals, and the East India Company.

Not just Nehru, even Hindutva stems from Macaulay legacy

The Indian Right and Liberals all accepted the British conception of Hindu, Muslim and British India and the country's eventual decline. What they disagreed on was its cause.

Zohran Mamdani’s New York win revives a forgotten history — of Gujarati Muslim cosmopolitanism

From Mughal ports to Dutch wars to Bombay’s merchant dynasties, Gujarati Muslims once shaped the Indian Ocean world — long before one of their descendants took New York.

Nur Jahan to Chand Bibi—Indian women in sports have been erased from history

Dice have been found dating to the Bronze Age in various Harappan sites in present-day northwest India and throughout Pakistan. And it’s very possible that some had female owners.

On Camera

Period pain is real. Blanket menstrual leave policy isn’t a fix

The Supreme Court is right to point out the 'mindset of employers', who, because of this policy, may deduce that 'women are inferior.'

Red carpet for industry honchos as AAP kicks off Punjab investors summit. Rs 10,000 cr pledged on Day 1

At 2nd such summit in Punjab for top investors organised by AAP since it came to power in Punjab, Lakshmi Mittal announced his Bathinda refinery has increased production of LPG by 3,000 tonnes/day.

Supreme Leader Mojtaba, the man Iran must keep alive & the secret force ‘tasked with it’—all about NOPO

The Nirouyeh Vijeh Pasdaran Velayat, or NOPO, was the only force Ali Khamenei trusted.It was founded in 1991 and is more feared than the Revolutionary Guards.

Peaceful power transfers followed uprisings in India’s neighbourhood. It’s a sign of mature democracies

Rating democracies is a tricky business. I am only using the simple metric of who in the Indian subcontinent has had the most peaceful, stable, normal political transitions and continuity.