Venus Upadhayaya
Family Migration Stories in the Indus Basin, Kashmir’s Customary Laws and a Mysterious Murder
As a teen I once took a lifetime journey, trekking down from my picturesque village, through thick jungles to a river and then uphill to another village to meet children...
- Author Venus Upadhayaya
- Date October 15, 2023
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Family Memoirs, Civilisational Heritage, and Great Game Competition for Sanskrit Manuscripts
This essay in the series from Kashmir to Haridwar is about Sanskrit and cross-civilisation routes in the Northern Frontiers of the Indian sub-continent or Sanskrit in the Indus river basin....
- Author Venus Upadhayaya
- Date June 6, 2023
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19th Century Great Games and Indomitable Dogra Warriors
Great Games were a series of geo-political activities between the Russian Empire and the British Empire from 1838 to 1907. They still continue today, albeit with different players. In the...
- Author Venus Upadhayaya
- Date April 7, 2023
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Dogras, The Most Competent Militaries of the Great Games and The Policy Imperatives of Their Legacy
Lithograph of the palace of Maharaja Gulab Singh, on the banks of Tawi River, Jammu in the mid-19th century. Photo courtesy: Hardinge, Charles Stewart/Wikimedia Commons. The history of India’s...
- Author Venus Upadhayaya
- Date April 7, 2023
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The billions of dollars worth of my grandfather’s one rupee
My maternal grandfather’s pockets were always full of coins and everyday one of them was mine. It was invested into me everyday with a smile and a tap on my...
- Author Venus Upadhayaya
- Date January 11, 2023
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Can the ancient ‘Kashmir to Haridwar’ route be revitalised into a National Educational Route?
I hired a cab to the village of 95-year-old Beli Singh, a former bodyguard of Maharaja Hari Singh and also a former presidential guard during the time of India’s first...
- Author Venus Upadhayaya
- Date December 5, 2022
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Ancient Battles at India’s Gateway and and its Constant Reflections in Contemporary Geopolitics
Neglecting a region’s history is akin to waging a covert war against it. Recorded history has often been a mixture of fiction and fantasy, its angle is often defined by...
- Author Venus Upadhayaya
- Date November 9, 2022
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Hydro-geology, bowlis and the people we call Dogras
I’m a Dogra – put simply I’m from a land geologically sandwiched between the fertile plains of Indus and the mighty ranges of the North western Himalayas. For thousands of...
- Author Venus Upadhayaya
- Date October 23, 2022
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My Discovery of a ‘Victorian Sword’ in a Sleepy Hamlet of Jammu and its Connection to Gilgit’s History
Its monsoons and my ancestral mountains are overflowing with water. Green forests stare glaringly at the cloudy sky as I make my way riding pillion with my father to Rampur-Rasool,...
- Author Venus Upadhayaya
- Date September 19, 2022
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