Excited to reveal the cover of my forthcoming book, Muslim Capitalism: A Political and Legal History of Colonial Bombay. Coming soon from Cambridge University Press. Looking forward to sharing more about the project soon!
@CambridgeUP
Anand Patwardhan: The taming of the Mumbai Press Club
The expulsion of the institution’s former president and two other veteran journalists is a sign of how spaces for democratic discussion are shrinking in India.
https://t.co/FtcWUdz1Ud
‘Parsiana’, an Iconic Parsi Magazine, Falls Silent
Tributes have been pouring in since Parsiana announced its closure. | @chirptwit✍️
https://t.co/5DXQ5faAxo
There's so much in this marvelous profile of Romila Thapar by @rkarnad. It felt like reading about independent India itself. Just beautiful. https://t.co/ontD8yMALD
Said was beautifully dressed, although I think there's only a tenuous connection between intellectualism and an interest in aesthetics. Nonetheless, an interesting thing about Said is that he used tailors — real tailors — who are among the last to treat customers as real individuals in an age of mass production. My friend Eugene Rabkin, who's coming out with a book this fall titled Torn: Fashion and Post-Modernism, recently sent me this quote by Walter Benjamin:
“On the theory of dandyism. The tailor’s the last line of business in which the customer is still catered to on an individual basis. More and more, the person commissioning work plays a heroic role.”
If we're to take Marx's theory of alienation seriously, then having a relationship with a tailor — depending on how the shop is set up — can be a way to mitigate some of the alienation inherent in capitalist production.
Sad to read that the bust of Lutyens (my great grandfather) is to be removed from the presidential palace he designed in Delhi. Here I am with it last year. I wondered at the time why his name had been removed from the plinth.
So Naseeruddin Shah is ‘disinvited’ by Mumbai university. Scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde’s talk is cancelled at the Kalaghoda festival under Mumbai police orders. Will the ‘mob’ and their state patrons now decide who can speak and who cannot in public fora? Is this not DEMOCRACY IN RECESSION? SHAME!😡
Even as the closure of Merwan has been mourned, the shuttering of the decades-old Cafe Delight on Hill Road in Bandra on Dec 31 has gone unremarked. 1/n
Merry Xmas everyone! 🌟It’s a season of good cheer, of reflection and hope. Here is to peace, harmony, good health and happiness. (Video below: a chapel in Mumbai opens Christmas carols with the national anthem🇮🇳). Joy to the world!⭐️🎄
'A wide-eyed girl not long out of Oxford, arriving to interview aged widows in run-down but solid houses that were about to be swept away.'
https://t.co/mp7w6KIe3W
Mary Roy was a big part of all of her students lives, including mine. I still haven't managed to read the book, but my sister @Indulekha_A has read it and written her thoughts here. I must read it now!