Historychatter Podcast

How do description of heritage monuments influence our sense of what is good or bad, or likable or avoidable, about various religious communities? This episode of HistoryChatter pays tribute to the scholarship of Sunil Kumar, who wrote at length about the many ways in which our present concerns influence our understanding of heritage monuments. Typically, as we shall see, all heritage monuments be...

The second episode of HistoryChatter Quick takes is about the lighter sides of the Second World War in India. It also highlights the ways in which plenty of public money would be wasted in paying for politician's whims and addictions. Sometimes, men would receive fully paid government jobs to make sure that major figures thousand of miles away were supplied with their favourite poison. Hosted by D...

What were the concerns before the founding fathers of the Indian constitution with regard to the question of the national language? Why does the language question in India open up a deeply felt divide between north and south India? What are the ways in which language and religion get mixed up in India?   The Hindi Diwas special edition of HistoryChatter asks these and several other questions...

Did you know how Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy and Governor-General of India between 1936 and 1943, contribute to the development of animal husbandry in India? The first episode of HistoryChatter Quicktakes tells you that amusing story.   Hosted by Dr. Anirban Bandyopadhyay  Don't miss out on the latest time travel stories! Subscribe now to Historychatter to receive updates about the late...

This special episode of HistoryChatter features a conversation with Prof. Dipesh Chakrabarty, who works at the University of Chicago. He speaks about his life and career, from his early exposure to philosophy and literature to reading science and management in university to finally moving to doing history quite late in life and eventually making a series of breakthrough contributions to the discip...

Now that the Taliban has taken over Afghanistan, it is time to ask questions to why and how the American intervention proved such a total disaster. HistoryChatter addresses that question by revisiting a little-known aspect of the American military intervention in Afghanistan. In 2007, Pentagon introduced a new programme called the Human Terrain System. It involved professional anthropologists trav...

Independence Day turns 75 on 15 August 2021. It has been so long that most Indians take the freedom, independence of Swaraj for granted. But how did those revolutionaries who knew they would perhaps never see Swaraj live out their lives longing for it? This Independence Day special episode of HistoryChatter presents a detailed history of the early lives of these revolutionaries. Did you know, for...

The quit India movement was the last great mass nationalist upsurge in India before partition and independence. As such, it offers an opportunity to take stock of what the nation looked like before the separation at the birth of the Indian nation. It offers a clear idea about some of the successes and challenges that both strengthened and hobbled independent India later and continues to do it toda...

Will e-books or audiobooks soon overtake hardbound or paperback books in terms of sales and popularity? The first episode of season 2 of HistoryChatter answers this question. It offers a history of paperback books. Paperback books created a new readership and left another enduring cultural impact. It gave birth to the popular common sense that academic scholars know better about matters of public...

Past is often as diverse and flows in as many directions as the present. Yet, careful attention to the past also throws up new insights on the present and possibilities for the future. ⏳ Time to explore the large questions as well as the smaller ones. We are excited to introduce Historychatter Season2! Tune in as we talk about major popular movements as much as about delicate changes in popu...

Changing names sometimes causes major controversies, and sometimes it does not. HistoryChatter in this episode investigates the curious case of villages with embarrassing names. In rural India, mockery and ridicule are commonplace and residents from villagers with embarrassing names are often anxious that neighbors, relatives, and even the government might insult or isolate them. Yet, the process...

Roman emperor Nero’s name is often equated with ruthlessness and cruelty in popular memory. Most often, this image revolves around the assumption that he had been happily playing a stringed instrument while the city of Rome burned in a major fire accident. Some even claim that Nero himself had arranged for the fire so that he could build a new capital in its place. However, it is a matter of...

HistoryChatter walks up to a review of the history of major Hill stations in India. Following the research of Prof. Queeni Pradhan as published in her 2017 book Empire in the Hills, the second part of a multi-part series on Hill Stations recalls how the Europeans imagined the hill stations when their eyes fell upon them for the first time. Generally, they believed that these reminded them of home...

HistoryChatter walks up to a review of the history of major Hill stations in India. Following the research of Prof. Queeni Pradhan as published in her 2017 book Empire in the Hills, the first part of a multi-part series on Hill Stations recalls how the Europeans imagined the hill stations when their eyes fell upon them for the first time. Generally, they believed that these reminded them of home i...

HistoryChatter resumes the discussion on the early History of football based on the pioneering research of E G Dunning. As discussed in an earlier episode, traditional football began as a bloody and unruly contest among the poorer classes in England. By the eighteenth century, however, it underwent a major change in its career. The seven earlier public schools saw their students take it up. Incide...

In the first part of the Durga puja special, we were talking about the history of the puja as a public festival. We were also looking at how the festival gave rise in recent years to a new kind of art and artists and how politics has always characterized the organization of public Durga Puja now more than ever. In part two of the Durga Puja special of HistoryChatter, we look more specifically...

HistoryChatter in this special episode recalls a history of the Durga Puja festival. It has seen a number of shifts in its public career since the 16th century. This episode looks at these shifts. Initially, the puja would be organized by private households of wealthy landlords. More recently the puja is now organized by neighbourhood voluntary associations. Meanwhile, there have been changes in t...

Football is probably the most popular sport in the world. Yet, serious academic research on football did not begin until the 1960s. That was a full hundred years after standard rules were introduced for the game. This episode of HistoryChatter recalls the pioneering research of E G Dunning on the history of football. It is the first part of a two-part series. In this part, football in England is r...

Several verses of Sufi saint Baba Farid are found in the holy book of the Sikhs. These are called Farid Bani. This episode of HistoryChatter deals with some questions around this surprising convergence of Islam and Sikhism. Who was Baba Farid? Did he himself write the verses attributed to him? Who admitted those verses into the Granth Sahib and why? Is their language more important than which reli...

Gandhi would be 151 years old today. This episode focuses on his writings and speeches during the last few months of his life. Partition and violence had filled his mind with a sense of failure. He understood that the people of India did not take to non-violence and human kindness as an article of faith. They used it only as a convenient tactical choice when it suited them. He was not yet ready to...

This episode of history chatter looks at the early history of film censorship in India. It shows that the Indian state did not know much about the cinema industry until the 1920s. The first attempt to coordinate censorship at the all India level did not begin until 1927. Interestingly enough, the primary objective of film censorship in India was not aesthetic but commercial. The primary objective...

This episode of HistoryChatter takes the audience to India and South East Asia during the Second World War. It explores the production of a series of films through which British soldiers were found sending warm private messages to their families at home, called Old Blighty films, they were commissioned by the British government agencies, as a means to boost the sagging morale of the isolated Briti...

This episode of HistoryChatter takes the audience to India and South East Asia during the Second World War. It explores the production of a series of films through which British soldiers were found sending warm private messages to their families at home, called Old Blighty films, they were commissioned by the British government agencies, as a means to boost the sagging morale of the isolated Briti...

History often appears as a resource to manufacture pride or embarrassment for people. That is the most common use to which ordinary individuals or groups put their pasts. The past either appears as a matter of glory or shame. It is either highlighted or hidden, emphasized, or underplayed, remembered, or ignored. This episode wonders why history is so often used by people either as an ingredient fo...

Seventy years ago, ethnic Muslims in China suddenly lost their homeland. They had set up an independent republic since 1944. Communists in 1949 practically forced the leaders of that independent republic to flee. One of them came to Kashmir with about a thousand followers. This episode of HistoryChatter recalls that perilous journey. It tracks their fortunes in India, up to the present day. Many o...