In 1826, a seventeen-year-old Anglo-Portuguese aspiring poet, Henry Derozio, was appointed lecturer in the senior school of the Hindu College, established just about a decade before in 1817 at the insistence of Indian‘gentlemen of distinction’, who had emphatically asserted to Chief Justice Edward Hyde East (as he wrote in his correspondence) that they wanted their […]
Excerpt from Rosinka Chaudhuri’s INDIA’S FIRST RADICALS Read More »
Tamil Dalit Feminist Poetics: Resistance, Power and Solidarity (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024). ISBN 978-1-66692-132-8 193 pp Fundamental to our understanding of Dalit feminist poetics in Tamil Nadu is our recognition of the influence of Periyar, Iyothee Thass, and Ambedkar on Dalit writing. Periyar’s strident voice decrying untouchability and espousing a radical feminism and atheist philosophy
Tamil Dalit Feminist Poetics Read More »
2200 words approx. EXCERPTED FROM DIGESTING INDIA—(published in the UK/US as “The Great Indian Food Trip”) by Zac O’Yeah ‘Welcome to Bihar,’ says the student who wants to shake my hand as soon as the train rolls into Patna Junction, the modern incarnation of Pataliputra, the once-upon-a-time headquarters of Mauryan civilisation. ‘I hope you’ll come
Zac O’Yeah’s DIGESTING INDIA—Welcome to Bihar Read More »
I was at the centre of a Venn diagram. One circle held friends from school and college, all from different communities..The other circle I belonged to was a Goan Catholic community, which shaped who I am. — Michelle Mendonça Bambawale By Selma Carvalho Michelle Mendonça Bambawale is an environmental activist, educator, photographer and
Becoming Goan: Beyond Ancestral Pasts Read More »
In 2011, on the 25th anniversary of the publication of Black British Literature: An Annotated Bibliography, I was invited by Newcastle University to give a lecture. Just imagine – in 200 years, no one had compiled even the most basic tool of research, a bibliography. That was why, despite all my limitations, I worked away
The Struggle for Black British Literature Read More »
Like most youngsters of my generation, I collected stamps, and found them hugely interesting as well as instructive in terms of geography and currencies. However, stamp-collecting did not lead me to any great appreciation of history. That was probably due to the fact that, as the family fortunes were then rather low, I could not
From a letter There’s a letter from Dad to our mother dated the 21st of September, 1938. He’s twenty-one, she’s eighteen. He’s impatient, impetuous and very much in love. Impatient: – “Those damned mails are late by 72 hours. It means that I won’t have any news from you till tomorrow evening.” Wondering: – “What do
Since the first translation of the Bhagavad Gita in 1789 by Charles Wilkins, there have been hundreds of translations into English. Some have translated the poetry of the Gita into prose, and some others have attempted metrical poetry. Whereas prose translations do not convey the delights of the original, good metrical translations have no choice
Michelle Mendonca Bambawale’s just-published book ‘Becoming Goan’ (Ebury-Penguin, 2023) is a story told at three levels. First, it is the story of a return to Goa by a daughter of the soil whose family has been out for generations. Secondly, it tells you about the rapid (sometimes destructive) changes Goa has been going through, as
Michelle’s Goa, a story told bluntly – a review by Frederick Noronha Read More »
