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Chronicles

From An Historian’s Notebook: How to Write a Folk Song

This would have made no difference to Paul Robeson, when he chose to sing the song. He was comfortable with the work of Dvořák; he sang a song from the 1848 Revolution in Czech by Smetana; and he said of himself that he could sing in twenty-five languages. As an internationalist and a communist, the purpose of his work was to emphasise what was common to the human condition.

Benjamin Zachariah July 24, 2023

Chronicles

From An Historian’s Notebook: Will the Woke People Please Get Out of My Hair?

‘Dreadlocks’ were not, in fact, from North America, nor were they from the ‘original’ African cultures that former slaves were forced to forget in American captivity, and then painfully remembered in the 1960s and ‘70s: jata were brought to the West Indies by indentured labourers from India who replaced the slaves when ‘free’ labour was deemed to be more efficient than unfree slaves.

Benjamin Zachariah May 23, 2023

Saju George classical dancer Jesuit Priest

Feature

Saju George: A Confluence of Cultures, Religions and Spiritualities

Born and raised in Kerala, and educated in different parts of India, Dr George is a professional Indian classical dancer, choreographer and teacher who has performed different Indian classical dance forms and lectured on them in more than 30 countries in the last two and a half decades.

Sacaria Joseph April 26, 2023

Chronicles

From an Historian’s Notebook: Joys of Parochial Self-effacement

I can read ‘Hindi’; I can speak bad Hindi if I am allowed to disregard all rules of gender; and I can write it if I must (my spelling is better than my grammar). But I somehow can’t do it without feeling that I am participating in some weird imperialist project. This has seriously hampered my engagement with much of North India, somewhat dismissively known now as the ‘cow belt’.

Benjamin Zachariah March 16, 2023

Feature

Christmas is not all About Jesus

Sir James George Frazer notes that in time, the Churches in Egypt and Asia Minor began to celebrate the birth of Jesus on 6 January. The practice went on until somewhere towards the end of the 3rd century or the beginning of the 4th century, when the Western Church fixed 25 December as the official day to celebrate the birthday of Jesus.

Sacaria Joseph January 6, 2023

Chronicles

Cinema, Sensibilities and Censorship in India

Since every act of the so-called ‘free speech’ has certain political underpinnings, either endorsement or admonishment for free speech on any given issue depends not on the merit of the speech in itself, but on other practical or political concerns.

Sacaria Joseph August 4, 2022

Chronicles

Music for the Soul

Like with most Anglo-Indians I grew up on a steady dose of Ronnie Milsap, Neil Diamond, Kenny Rogers, Patsy Cline and Tanya Tucker, but later in my teens found myself gravitating towards Indian popular music and Kishore Kumar and Pankaj Udhas became my favourite singers.

Lesley D Biswas August 2, 2022

Essays

From an Historian’s Notebook: Scratches on the Record

I was listening to a CD of an old Joni Mitchell album, and it soon turned out I was playing an awkward historian’s joke on myself. I had got to the song about ‘playing that scratchy rock and roll’, and had then noticed I was listening for the scratch. On that track, though not in the exact place of that lyric, on my father’s copy of the record, there had indeed been a scratch.

Benjamin Zachariah July 26, 2022

culture

From An Historian’s Notebook: How to Write a Folk Song

From An Historian’s Notebook: Will the Woke People Please Get Out of My Hair?

Saju George: A Confluence of Cultures, Religions and Spiritualities

From an Historian’s Notebook: Joys of Parochial Self-effacement

Christmas is not all About Jesus

Cinema, Sensibilities and Censorship in India

Music for the Soul

From an Historian’s Notebook: Scratches on the Record

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