Courtesy: Shashi Prabhu
Mumbai’s iconic Wankhede Stadium was inaugurated in October 1974, making this year its golden anniversary. The first test match was played on its grounds from 23-27 January 1975. It was the last in the India vs. West Indies test series and was memorable for the 242 not-out scored by West Indian batsman Clive Lloyd. It led to such jubilation in the stands that a fan excitedly ran onto the pitch to congratulate him. He was arrested by the Bombay police.
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India’s story reads like a Bollywood script – unbelievable and insane to those who fail to decode its success. The most discernable change is internal, as ‘India’ and ‘Bharat’ coexist. India has stopped feeling and thinking poor; it’s right up there with the biggies. Maybe not invited to the high table yet, but has set up its own and invited the rest to the lavish banquet.
Courtesy: Rasool Abassi/Wikimedia Commons
The 18th century wave of Armenian immigrants to India were at the forefront of reinforcing a national identity for the Armenian people who lived dispersed across the world and without an independent country. The English colonial city of Madras was an important Armenian trading hub soon became home to an Armenian liberation movement
Courtesy: Instagram
The old world order and the manners and values that went with it, have come to an end. Many of its aspects and aesthetics are outdated, but some remain – like the word ‘pukka’ which implies a certain sensibility, now with a new interpretation. Will its meaning hold in the new world order that has yet to emerge?
Courtesy: Hardik Joshi
City-level climate action is gaining pace in India. This is crucial, given the country’s climate vulnerabilities and growing carbon footprint. Its success depends on mobilisation of climate finance, targeted devolution of central resources, inter-agency data-sharing and of course, public participation.
Courtesy: Twitter : Narendra Modi
Indians are the largest expatriate community in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Their contribution to building that nation is being celebrated this year, which is also the UAE’s golden jubilee year. Cultural fluency built on centuries-old trade and migration makes it easier for Indians and Gulf Arabs to collaborate.
Courtesy: National Army Museum
In the seventeenth century, the British established a monopoly on the opium trade to China. Bombay, a deep-sea port, emerged as a significant opium export hub for Indian and European traders alike. In this podcast, Sifra Lentin traces the events that led to the Opium Wars.
Courtesy: Diu Vanza Darji Samaj UK
Five hundred years before the ‘string of pearls’ or strategic naval bases surfaced as part of China’s global dominance plan, Imperial Portugal was a naval power which tried to impose its hegemony over vast swathes of the Indian Ocean. What informed this grand vision of a 16th-century Portuguese seaborne empire?
Courtesy: Marg Publications (Mumbai)
From the window of the earliest paper currencies issued by private banks in Calcutta, to the evolution of contemporary banknotes, The Conjuror’s Trick: An Interpretive History of Paper Money in India, deftly tackles political imperatives, monetary policy, global disruptions, schools of currency thought and even the science and art of printed paper money in India.
Courtesy: Wikipedia
The 20th century’s worst pandemic – Spanish Flu – erupted in March 1918 in Camp Funston (Kansas, U.S.) during the Great War. Much like Covid-19 it spread globally at an astonishing pace. Its Second Autumnal Wave took about 30 million lives in four months, half of those in India. It’s sheer virulence and high mortality makes this virus the correct analogy for Covid-19