Arbeit macht frei: Auschwitz and Birkenau

What disturbs me about this place seems an obvious answer on the face of it. A million human lives were destroyed here in a time which I can only read about and imagine. I live in its continuity. But I haven’t had the misfortune of being in the time when it happened, to have witnessed …

Death of a library

Two registers lay open on the front desk with a blunt tipped pencil tucked in one of them. Visitors are required to enter their names in it. Many walk by without a second look. Two women manned the baggage counter, deciding in a seemingly random fashion, bags that must be tagged with a number and …

Brahmagiri: An account

  This is a guest post by my friend Srikara. He explores history of places with a particular interest in Vijayanagara Empire. In this post, he speaks of his visit to Brahmagiri Hills near Bellary, Karnataka.  From this visit he writes, "The sheer scale of devotion, prescience and benevolence that seemed to have gone into …

Social History and the City: A guided tour of Avenue Road

Heterodox is flavour of the season. This encourages me to make transgression into history, a discipline where I can only be described as a consumer of texts and accounts of places and events. Hobsbawm's collection of essays Uncommon People and his endearing essay on jazz music remains a favourite reading in history. I have enjoyed …

Road to Hampi

Time is slipping by way too fast lately. Between school, university and work travel has suffered. While I am still processing my earlier experience, another ride is being considered. Sitting on a bench at a tea stall in the bazaar area of Hampi I tried making sense of the cluster of shacks, huts and small …

Knowledge of the past before us – History & Methodology

(For Isha) This morning, Romila Thapar, Professor Emeritus at Jawaharlal Nehru University delivered a talk on Knowledge of the past before us, at IISc. Having bought her recently published book The Past as Present: Forging Contemporary Identities Through History I was interested in her views on the methodological aspects of knowledge production. Also, that she …

Education in pre-colonial India: Dharampal’s The Beautiful Tree

In the school where I teach, the teachers hold a very diverse range of views about the role of a school in a child's life. What must school stand for and what areas of the child' s life must the school be concerned with. Those who run the school - the management folks, stand at …

Why Interpret Art?

A short course in Categories in Art (posted earlier here, here & here) early this year has left me with a slightly accentuated sense of “works” of art, “artists” and “forms”. It also made me think about what art is and examine why some claim an exclusive “understanding” of art whereas each one of us …

‘This got women reading and thinking’ – MFC Discussion [4]

The report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India was published in 1974 and many in India consider it a landmark in the women's rights movement as well as a first comprehensive document on Indian women in all aspects of productive and social life. The sweep as I read the contents is …