Culture

Family Migration Stories in the Indus Basin, Kashmir’s Customary Laws - 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...

Culture
Competition for Sanskrit Manuscripts front cover

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....

Culture
Dogras and Great Games

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...

Culture

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...

Culture
A definitive case against the Aryan Invasion Theory

Let the “Aryan” debate become a debate again

The last thirty years, there have been plenty of lectures, papers and now online videos promising to “debunk the Aryan Invasion Theory” (AIT). Their impact has been very poor, essentially...

CultureIndia-Europe
Jammu

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...

Culture
Poshina - a remote village in Gujarat

Poshina, where time stands still

Poshina may not be on India’s tourism map, yet it commands a visit from the discerning world traveler. It is a remote village in the state of Gujarat and is...

Culture
Shivalik National Educational Route

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...

Culture
The Gurkhas - Soldiers from Nepal

Tea with Gurkhas

Darjeeling – that quaint Indian hill station invented by the British east India company way back in the early 19th century is evocative of lush green tea estates, mighty Kanchendzonga...

CultureEconomy

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."

– Mahatma Gandhi