Courtesy: Shashi Prabhu
Mumbai’s iconic Wankhede Stadium was inaugurated in October 1974, making this year its golden anniversary. The first test match was played on its grounds from 23-27 January 1975. It was the last in the India vs. West Indies test series and was memorable for the 242 not-out scored by West Indian batsman Clive Lloyd. It led to such jubilation in the stands that a fan excitedly ran onto the pitch to congratulate him. He was arrested by the Bombay police.
Courtesy: Rasool Abassi/Wikimedia Commons
The 18th century wave of Armenian immigrants to India were at the forefront of reinforcing a national identity for the Armenian people who lived dispersed across the world and without an independent country. The English colonial city of Madras was an important Armenian trading hub soon became home to an Armenian liberation movement
Courtesy: Instagram
The old world order and the manners and values that went with it, have come to an end. Many of its aspects and aesthetics are outdated, but some remain – like the word ‘pukka’ which implies a certain sensibility, now with a new interpretation. Will its meaning hold in the new world order that has yet to emerge?
Courtesy: Hardik Joshi
City-level climate action is gaining pace in India. This is crucial, given the country’s climate vulnerabilities and growing carbon footprint. Its success depends on mobilisation of climate finance, targeted devolution of central resources, inter-agency data-sharing and of course, public participation.
Courtesy: Twitter : Narendra Modi
Indians are the largest expatriate community in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Their contribution to building that nation is being celebrated this year, which is also the UAE’s golden jubilee year. Cultural fluency built on centuries-old trade and migration makes it easier for Indians and Gulf Arabs to collaborate.
Courtesy: Diu Vanza Darji Samaj UK
Five hundred years before the ‘string of pearls’ or strategic naval bases surfaced as part of China’s global dominance plan, Imperial Portugal was a naval power which tried to impose its hegemony over vast swathes of the Indian Ocean. What informed this grand vision of a 16th-century Portuguese seaborne empire?
Courtesy: Wikipedia
The 20th century’s worst pandemic – Spanish Flu – erupted in March 1918 in Camp Funston (Kansas, U.S.) during the Great War. Much like Covid-19 it spread globally at an astonishing pace. Its Second Autumnal Wave took about 30 million lives in four months, half of those in India. It’s sheer virulence and high mortality makes this virus the correct analogy for Covid-19
Courtesy: Gateway House
The sister cities of Mumbai and Shanghai have a shared history, population size, and economic significance. On 29 May, a roundtable between the Shanghai Institute of International Studies and Gateway House encouraged discussion on strategies to battle COVID-19, and kick-start city economies after a lockdown. Here are some workable solutions.
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: 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