William Hodges and the Art of Empire
How a traveling landscape painter helped create a homogeneous vision of the British Empire.
Caste and Culture in Kolkata’s Chinese Leather Trade
In eastern Kolkata, a Hakka Chinese community carved out an economic niche in leather production amid stigma surrounding purity and caste hierarchy.
Caught in Partition’s Violent Fray
Published seventy-five year ago, Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar explores the devastation suffered by the women of India and Pakistan after political rupture.
Waste Pickers Unite!
As one family’s story reveals, labor organizing and the development of a co-op for waste collection has improved conditions for precariously employed workers in India.
Coffee for the Resistance
During Indira Gandhi’s autocratic Emergency in 1975, one New Delhi coffeehouse became a key gathering place for opponents of her politics.
Creating a Bengali Cuisine
A rising middle class built up the notion of a distinct Bengali way of eating that claimed ancient origins while also incorporating European cooking styles.
Being Trans in India
Trans women are organizing to fight discrimination and oppression. Trans men face different problems because they’re often not recognized at all.
Recruiting Warrior Queens for the Rani of Jhansi Regiment
Why did so many plantation workers in Burma, Malaya, and Singapore rush to join the all-woman Rani of Jhansi regiment of the Indian National Army?
The Sociopolitical Impact of A Passage to India
E. M. Forster’s novel captured not only the tensions between colonizers and colonized but also the fraught internal politics that shaped India’s fight for independence.
The Hybrid Heroines of “Bollywood Chick Lit”
Material consumption and marriage have different meanings for South Asian American women, and those meanings should shape the way we read Desi “chick lit.”