South Asian History
The Weeping Widow
The world’s first female prime minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike of what was then Ceylon, is the archetypical example of what political scientists sometimes refer to as the “widow’s walk to power,” in which a woman steps into a position of political power after the often-violent death of her husband.The assumption is such women will carry on…
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“A Ramayana of One’s Own”
I’ve written about the Ramayana before here on the Margins. It’s a big enough topic to consider again whenever I stumble across a way for a new audience to come to it. As I’ve said in a previous post, the Ramayana is a heroic epic, an important Hindu scripture, and a cultural touchstone for the…
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Jawaharlal Nehru: Architect of Independent India
In March, 1919, India’s Imperial Legislative Council passed the repressive legislation known as the Rowlatt Acts. The new laws continued the special wartime powers of the Defense of India Act, which had been intended to protect India against wartime agitators, and aimed them at India’s nationalist movement. At the time the Rowlatt Acts were put…
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