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6. Travelling to India: a handy list for the whole family
By Mobeen Hussain (@amhuss27) As a colonial officer in India, it was paramount that one knew what to expect and how to prepare for the sweltering climate. The mid to late nineteenth century saw a surge of advice books and manuals, mainly written by men, for families voyaging to the Subcontinent. One such book was…
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24. The Contested Sari
By Mobeen Hussain (@amhuss27) The sari as national dress was contested across the early twentieth century as people imagined visions of postcolonial national futurity. Amongst Indian Muslims, many scholars have identified an Islamisation in dress reform from the late nineteenth century. National, religious, regional and transnational modalities ceded into dress debates within various Urdu periodicals…
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Indian Independence 8,290 miles away: U.C. Berkeley and the Fight for Self-Rule
By Madhumitha Krishnan (@MadhumithaKris)[1] ‘…[India’s] teeming millions are dying of abject starvation, ever increasing famines and devastating epidemics. The present-day India needs readjustment and reconstruction socially, morally, and economically.’[2] So proclaimed Dr K. D. Shastri in his inaugural address at the 1915 International Hindustanee Student Convention in Chicago. Dr Shastri, a religious and social reformer, levied…
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When Saturn met Jagan
By David Martin (Bluesky: @davidmartin8293.bsky.social) “They form the great Juggernaut saturnalia, so widely celebrated. Tens of thousands of persons, of all classes and ages flock to attend them… In former times many were in the habit of increasing the general happiness by throwing themselves under the wheels of the Juggernaut car.” So wrote an unnamed…
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He Stoops to Globalise, or How a Church came to House World History
David Martin (daim3@cam.ac.uk / Bluesky: @davidmartin8293.bsky.social) Nestled in the heart of the seventeenth-century Fort St. George, and barely visible through its verdure and petrous neighbours, St. Mary’s Church is an icon of the city of Chennai in Southern India. With a subtitle as glamorous as ‘the oldest Anglican establishment East of Suez’, one would expect…
doinghistoryinpublic.org 