Adrija Roychowdhury

AI experts, computer scientists, even a 17-year-old in Washington DC — a new generation of enthusiasts is in the race with veteran epigraphers to unlock a secret code: what does the Indus script tell us about one of the oldest civilisations and its people? Adrija Roychowdhury on the signs and symbols that are fuelling the quest. The promise of a $1 million prize helps, too

The princely states, both pampered and exploited by the British, had maintained a position of semi-autonomy and were the toughest challenge facing free India.

From religious diagrams of the universe to a children's classic, cultural historian Jacob Schmidt-Madsen traces the journey of Gyan Chaupar and the making of modern Snakes and Ladders.

What can the Rajghat artefacts reveal about Varanasi, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world? And why are the boxes being examined now?

British forest policies transformed the Himalayas, bringing commercial timber extraction, restricting local forest rights and leaving an ecological legacy still visible today.

Bengal's Hindu traditions have been shaped by goddess worship, the influence of Tantra and the later spread of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Together, they created a distinctive religious culture where fierce goddesses could also be loving mothers, while local deities became part of the wider Hindu tradition. Ahead of Durga Puja, we look at the history behind Bengal's particular forms of goddess worship and the practices that continue to shape Hinduism in Bengal today.

The association of Shaivism with Tamil and Dravidian identity is a relatively modern political construction, argues historian V Ravi Vaithees. He traces how 19th-century Neo-Shaivite revivalists recast religious history, challenging Sanskritic traditions and laying the ideological groundwork for Dravidian politics.

BJP leaders now call the shots in Kolkata's major Durga Puja committees. They claim this is an attempt to free the festival from the clutches of the Trinamool Congress and return it to the people.

The photographs tucked away in a family album, the papers dismissed as “rubbish”, and the voices of women whose stories were never written down, are some of the fragments of India's post Independence history being preserved at the Archives of Contemporary India in Ashoka University.

In an interview, author Debasish Das discusses the history of India's clock towers, how they transformed timekeeping, and why these architectural landmarks became symbols of civic pride, personal grief and collective memory beyond their original purpose of telling time.