The Kochhar clan

Excerpted from Rose, HA (1911) A glossary of the tribes and castes of the Punjab and North-West frontier province ( Lahore: Government Printing Press) Vol. 2, p. 522   “The Kochhar…

New Bengal social class under colonial auspices

Rajesh Kochhar   (For details and referencing please see Kochhar, Rajesh (2008)   Seductive orientalism: English education and modern science in colonial India, Social Scientist,   26, pp. 45-63. Kochhar, Rajesh (2008) …

Jayalalithaa 1948-2016

The following word picture  of Jayalalithaa (to use the spellings she adopted in later years for better luck) is based on pieces of information , including  from her distant relatives,…

Praising technical jugaad: Celebrating illiteracy

  Harvinder Khetal (In love with jugaad,  26-Nov-2016; http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/sunday-special/people/in-love-with-jugaad/328851.html) has done well to draw attention to the interesting phenomenon known as jugaad. One however cannot but notice that she has…

The making of colonial Simla, 1815-1830: A Re-look

Simla finds first mention in passing in colonial records in 1816. At the time the  area conjointly belonged to two princely states. The first permanent European structure, a residential building, was…