Courtesy: Burrough's Wellcome archive
To tackle Covid19 the Indian government has invoked the colonial-era Epidemics Act of 1897, originally enacted to tackle the Bombay Plague of 1896. The plague wreaked havoc across Bombay and presented some of the same challenges the government faces today, including a migrant labour exodus. History teaches by examples - here is a glance in to the past
Courtesy: Lovneet Bhatt
The 25 March 2020 attack on a Sikh gurudwara in Kabul focused world attention on the plight of Afghanistan’s indigenous Sikh and Hindu minorities, the target of both local lawless elements and religious fundamentalists. They once were a significant part of Afghanistan’s principally Muslim population and a mark of its cultural syncretism and religious pluralism
Courtesy: Welcome Collection/Capt.C. Moss
A pandemic tests governments' performance against four policy dilemmas; from preventing panic and economic collapse to calibrating the severity of response and controlling the narrative. The writer harks back to the agonies of the Bombay plague of 1896 and the dilemmas left unresolved
Courtesy: Sifra Lentin
Bombay’s Hindi film industry has welcomed Pathan talent – venerated actor Dilip Kumar, scriptwriter Salim Khan and musician Adnan Sami Khan are some prominent examples. Many of them originally came from undivided India’s Pathan homelands in what is today’s Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, entering the industry at an opportune time. Today, their descendants wear the Khan name with pride
Courtesy: Gateway House
Bombay’s Pathan community was most visible from the 19th century until India’s partition in 1947. Taking to hard labour with a natural ease, they worked mostly in mills and as security staff. Others went into business. Their numbers have thinned now, but they have retained their cultural identity, holding fast to feudal codes of conduct
Courtesy: Ruhi Nooreyezdan
India has the largest number of Baha’is in the world today, followers of the world’s newest religion, which was founded in 19th-century Persia. Persecuted in their own country, they came to Bombay, which was already home to many Iranians, to purvey the message of their faith
Courtesy: LBB
Bombay’s trade with the Persian Empire grew rapidly in the 19th century because of regular steamship services between the city and prominent Iranian ports such as Bushire. The wealthy and public-spirited Persian merchants, who settled in Bombay, endowed their community with a religious and social infrastructure, in use even today
Courtesy: Shutterstock
The Irani cafés of Mumbai are a unique part of the city’s history. Founded about 120 years ago by Zoroastrian and Shia immigrants from Iran, they catered principally to workers in mills and factories. The few that remain are a reminder of a well- assimilated cultural, particularly culinary, link between India and Iran
Courtesy: Free Press Journal
Japanese Emperor Naruhito’s coronation on May 1, marking the dawn of the Reiwa Era, is a milestone also for the Indian merchant diaspora, which began arriving during the reign of the Meiji Emperor in the 1870s. The strength of the India-Japan bilateral relationship lies in the 150-year-old narratives of these family-run firms and the success of many Indo-Japanese collaborations
Courtesy: Gateway House
At the turn of the 20th century, British India was home to about 3,000 Japanese expatriates, and Bombay and its presidency had well-established trade ties with Imperial Japan – until the Second World War brought it all to an end. The city never regained its substantial Japanese resident population, but the few monuments that remain point to rich political and religious linkages