Nile Green's Islam and the Army in Colonial India is one of those rare works that inspires both admiration and envy. It is a study that cannot fail to impress its readers with its erudition and innovation, especially when reconciling seemingly incompatible official accounts preserved in the colonial archive with subaltern memories preserved in oral traditions. This book is a study of the cultural world of the Muslim soldiers of colonial India, set in Hyderabad in the mid-nineteenth and early twe...
Apr 03, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 38
In this episode of Guftagu, we've with us Dr Jessica Namakkal, author of the book, "Unsettling Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of French India" In this episode of Guftagu, we've with us Dr Jessica Namakkal, author of the book, "Unsettling Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of French India" Dr Jessica Namakkal is an assistant professor of the practice in international comparative studies; gender, sexuality, and feminist studies; and history at Duke University. Jessica Namakkal's Unsettling Utopia gi...
Dec 19, 2021•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 37
In this episode of Guftagu, we've with us Dr Sana Haroon, author of the book, "The Mosques of Colonial South Asia: A Social and Legal History of Muslim Worship" Dr Sana Haroon is Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is a social historian with a particular interest in Muslim religious organizations in colonial north India. Her research, including her monograph Frontier of Faith, engages with theory on borderlands, religious reformism, urb...
Dec 12, 2021•1 hr 26 min
In this episode of Guftagu, we've with us Dr Arvind Sharma, author of the book, "The Ruler's Gaze: A Study of British Rule Over India from a Saidian Perspective" Dr Arvind Sharma, longstanding professor of comparative religion at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, now takes up the Palestinian academic's groundbreaking ideas - originally put forth predominantly in a Middle Eastern context - and tests them against Indian material. He explores in an Indian context Said's contention that the rel...
Dec 05, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 35
In this episode of Guftagu, we've with us Dr Himanshu Jha, author of the book, "Capturing Institutional Change: the Case of the Right to Information Act in India". Dr Himanshu Jha is a faculty in the Department of Political Science at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany. His major interests could be located in the areas of politics, policy and history and thus his empirical findings and theoretical underpinnings can be located at the intersection of all three. In his new boo...
Nov 28, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 34
In this episode of Guftagu, we've with us Dr Ghee Bowman, author of the book, "The Indian Contingent: The Forgotten Muslim Soldiers of Dunkirk". Dr Ghee Bowman is a historian, teacher and storyteller based in Exeter, England. He has also worked in the theatre, for NGOs and in education in the UK and around the world. This book, his very first, sprang from research he undertook to explore Exeter’s multi-cultural history which landed him onto three photos of Indian soldiers wearing pagris in Devon...
Oct 31, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 33
Riaz Dean is an Engineer by profession and an independent scholar. He is also a member of the NZ Society of Authors and the NZ Cartographical Society. As the title suggests, the book is about the extraordinary explorers, spies and mapmakers who explored the vast region’s of Asia against the backdrop of imperial ambitions of powerful players like Russia and Great Britain. This expedition was at the surface to fill in large portions of the map while spying out the country for military reasons duri...
Oct 17, 2021•49 min•Ep. 32
Dr Raghav Kishore is a historian of Modern South Asia and his research has primarily focused on the transformation of urban governance under colonial rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The (Un)governable City: Productive Failure in the Making of Colonial Delhi, 1857-1911, examines the production of urban space and its relation to colonial governance in Delhi in the aftermath of the Great Rebellion of 1857 until the transfer of the colonial capital to the city in 1911. Contesting the...
Oct 03, 2021•1 hr 15 min
With his initial plans for an independent India in tatters, the desperate viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, turned to his senior-most Indian civil servant, Vappala Pangunni Menon—or VP—giving him a single night to devise an alternative, coherent and workable plan for independence. Menon met his stringent deadline, presenting the Menon Plan, which would change the map of the world forever. Menon was unarguably the architect of the modern Indian state. Yet startlingly little is known about this bureaucra...
Sep 12, 2021•1 hr 34 min
Hello and Welcome everyone to India Colonised A Podcast dedicated to Sout Asia’s Colonial history. I am your host Omer Haq and today on our next episode of guftagu we have with us Dr Kate Imy. Kate Imy is a historian of culture and war in British colonial Asia. Her first book, Faithful Fighters: Identity and Power in the British Indian Army , examines culture and anti-colonialism in the 20th century British Indian army. It won the NACBS Stansky prize and the Pacific Coast Branch Book Award of th...
Aug 22, 2021•1 hr 33 min
In His groundbreaking study, SherAli Tareen presents the most comprehensive and theoretically engaged work to date on what is arguably the most long-running, complex, and contentious dispute in modern Islam: the Barelvī-Deobandī polemic. The Barelvī and Deobandī groups are two normative orientations/reform movements with beginnings in colonial South Asia. Almost two hundred years separate the beginnings of this polemic from the present. Its spectre, however, continues to haunt the religious sens...
Jul 25, 2021•1 hr 26 min
Playssey by Sudeep Chakravarti is an absolutely engaging and entertaining book, written with details of the intrigues vanity and unriddling the playing of economics and politics of the time, He has wonderfully delineated the cast of characters from the prejudiced and perceived conceptions. and dusted the layered narratives over centuries that have passed since. Here is my conversation with Mr Suddep Chakravarti on his book Playssey. SUDEEP CHAKRAVARTI is an award-winning author of bestselling wo...
Jul 18, 2021•1 hr 10 min
Today in our second Guftagu we have with us Dr Rohit De Discussing with us his book the People's Constituion- Law and Everyday Life in the Indian Republic (Princeton University Press) Rohit De is a lawyer and historian of modern South Asia and focuses on the legal history of the Indian subcontinent and the common law world. As a legal historian he moves beyond asking what the law was; to what actors thought law was and how this knowledge shaped their quotidian tactics, thoughts and actions. In r...
Jul 11, 2021•1 hr 35 min
Our special and first guest to our series of interviews- Guftagu Dr Diniyar Patel, is an Assistant Professor of History at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai. Previously, he taught in the Department of History at the University of South Carolina. He teaches courses on modern South Asia, the Indian nationalist movement, and the British Empire. Most of his research has focused on the life and career of Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-17), who, according to Dr Patel, is arguably th...
Jul 04, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Imperialist ideology seems to threaten the world more than ever today. Particularly the nations of Asia, Africa, Latin America and especially the middle east. Even India in its colonial past has been severely affected by British imperialism --- whose aftermaths are visible to date. One of the revolutionary leaders who represented the fight against the idea of imperialism was Bhagat Singh. His brief life is marked by his radicalised resistance to Imperialism and the ideas of capitalism, communali...
Apr 26, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Anglo-Muhammadan Law is a mixture of English and Islamic laws, concepts, institutions, and jurisprudence that developed in British colonial India between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries. Although not an official designation, “Anglo-Muhammadan law” came to be used as a term of convenience to distinguish this legal system from both the English and Islamic law. This law was an early effort to enforce Islamic law and is of importance to scholars and practitioners who are interested in con...
Apr 18, 2021•17 min•Ep. 23
The extreme face of communalism started taking a definite shape after 1937. While there were instances from the past that paved the way for communalism to take such a fascist form, regardless of nationalist leaders trying their best to unite Hindus and Muslims of the country. In this episode, we attempt to bring out the explanations of what drove communalism to keep transitioning into a more violent form and how even nationalist leaders undesirably gave into it. We shall also look into the major...
Mar 08, 2021•37 min•Ep. 22
This episode continues to dive into the history of communalism in India and how it shaped the nation's social character. In the struggle of bringing Hindus and Muslims together, nationalist leaders gave way to communalism to spread its roots. Thus failing to bring the communal political ideology in accommodation with the secular political ideology. This episode also traces how the communal question was being attempted to tackle by the existing Nationalist forces. Listen to our other episodes: Ep...
Mar 01, 2021•21 min•Ep. 21
India was not always a land of such constant communal clashes; the polarised hatred present in our world today finds its origins in our time under our British rulers. British’s communal policies, demands of minorities, and the reaction of the majority all give rise to communalism in India. Join us as we try to explore the origins of communal uprisings and the increase of differences in the country’s social fabric. Listen to our 18th Episode, The Khilafat Movement. Follow us on Facebook, Instagra...
Feb 16, 2021•24 min
The partition of 1947, to this day, stands as the major point of conflict for both India and Pakistan. Today we are going to take you to the colonial roots of India where the idea of the reorganisation of the Indian subcontinent was first seeded. Allama Muhammad Iqbal is referred to as the spiritual father of Pakistan whose basis of philosophy and poetic expression stood out to not only ignite many but also acted as the source of promulgating pan-Islamic stance in his later life. This episode sh...
Feb 02, 2021•32 min•Ep. 19
The Khilafat Movement - a campaign that rose out of the provocation of Indian Muslims to pressure the Raj into protecting the authority of the Caliphate in its true form. In the eighteenth episode, we delve into the making of this movement, the pioneers behind it, and the events that unfolded and shaped the history of politics for Muslims in the subcontinent and how it led to the beginning of the formation of the state of Pakistan. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter: @Indiacolonised or...
Jan 10, 2021•28 min•Ep. 18
The Legal system that we inherit today from our colonial masters, roots from the perceptions they brought while trying hard to understand the complexities of the Indian Society. This is a story about one such man, his life and his work that make him a central figure to India’s judiciary. William Jones was not only a man of law, ut of letters as well. We’re turning a year old this January 2021, and we’d like to celebrate this milestone with our subscribers and listeners. So here is a little surpr...
Dec 28, 2020•16 min•Ep. 17
Hello and welcome to the sixteenth episode of India Colonised, a podcast where we unravel our colonial roots through stories and legends. Our podcast explores untraversed fields of our past that constantly shape our world. I am your host Omer Haq and today we will be continuing to talk about the railways during the Raj and how it affected the local populace, trade, and agriculture. The construction of the railway not only helped the colonizers to expand the territory and have effective control o...
Dec 20, 2020•10 min•Ep. 16
Hello and welcome to the fifteenth episode of India Colonised, a podcast where we unravel our colonial roots through stories and legends. Our podcast explores untraversed fields of our past that constantly shape our world. I am your host Omer Haq and today we will be talking about the railways, one of the most embodied facets of English colonialism in India. The railways aptly called ‘India's nervous system’, was aimed to serve a different purpose than it does today. This topic has been broken i...
Dec 13, 2020•13 min•Ep. 15
Hello and Welcome to the Fourteenth Episode of our podcast, India Colonised, a podcast where we explore the stories and legends of our Colonial past. In this episode, we will be narrating to you a story from the account of an eyewitness of the Vellore Mutiny of 1806, a mutiny of British Indian sepoys that lesser-known than its successor the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Join us as we explore the private accounts of Lady Fancourt written after the mutiny in Vellore and the horrors she faced. If you liked...
Dec 07, 2020•15 min•Ep. 14
Welcome to the 13th Episode of our weekly podcast India Colonised. Where we discuss the stories and legends of our colonial past. I am your host Omer Haq and today we are talking about the revival of public spirit post rebellion of 1857 through what has now become a colourful and vibrant festival of Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav (Public Celebrations of Ganesh Chaturthi) We’re gonna talk about the renaissance of Hindu national sprit in terms of the extravagant and elaborate public celebration of what ha...
Aug 24, 2020•12 min
Today we are talking about the forgotten pioneer of Indian cinemas, Harila Sen. A man who fought for his passions and pure love for filmography, only to meet his tragic end. Unfortunately, nothing from his work survives today, so we explore him with whatever we have left of him Listen more to find out about his life and works.
Aug 17, 2020•14 min•Ep. 12
Today we are going to talk about the Pauper's Pilgrimage, the scenes of hajj ( a scared annual Pilgrimage of Muslims to the city of Mecca in Arabia), during the British Raj in India, and talk about the insecurities of Government of India had when it came to any regulation with regards to the religious obligations of Indians. To read the article please visit www.indiacolonised.com Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook on our handle @indiacolonised
Aug 10, 2020•22 min•Ep. 11
Hello and welcome everyone to the Tenth episode of our weekly podcast, India Colonised. Where we bring you stories and legends from the colonial past of our nation. In today’s episode, we are talking about the mysterious enigma of chapatis that had the Britishers puzzled and the Indians perplexed. What significance can chapatis traveling the subcontinent faster than the fastest of British mail could possibly mean? All in our seventh episode: Firangi Santh We're new around here and we'd love to h...
Jul 27, 2020•14 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Hello and welcome everyone to the 9th episode of our weekly podcast, India Colonised, where we bring you stories and legends from the colonial past of our nation.I am your host, Omer Haq .Today will be talking about Reginald Heber, the Anglican Bishop of Calcutta, who visited the Mughal capital of Delhi during his tour of Northern India where he was presented to the aging emperor, Akbar Shah II at the magnificent residence of the imperial family, the fort which was originally known as the "Bless...
Jul 19, 2020•15 min
