Abro

  Hello, everyone. I want you to close your eyes for a moment and imagine a landscape. We are in the plains of the Punjab or perhaps the dusty stretches of Sindh, three centuries ago. You see a grand festival approaching. There are lights, music, and a sea of people. Now, let me ask you: Who do you think is celebrating? If you looked at the modern map, you might expect a clear answer—a Muslim festival, a Hindu rite, or a Sikh gathering. But if we stepped into that pre-colonial world, that question wouldn't just be hard to answer; it would almost be meaningless. You would see a Muslim merchant lighting lamps for Diwali, a Hindu peasant beating his breast in a Muharram procession, and a Sikh devotee seeking a blessing at the tomb of a Sufi saint. Today, we are going to explore a lost world—an "entire civilization of co-existence," as the historian Mushirul Hasan called it. We will trace how the fluid, porous boundaries of the past were systematically hardened into the...

 Mrs. Company Imagine that you are a powerful nobleman in 19th-century India. You are wealthy, sophisticated, and you’ve seen it all. One day, a high-ranking British official arrives at your court. You want to show him the ultimate respect, so how do you introduce him? Well, if you were the Nawab of Awadh in 1803, you would announce him to the room as: "The Lord Saheb’s nephew and Mrs. Company’s grandson". Yes, you heard me correctly. "Mrs. Company." Today, we’re diving into one of the most bizarre, hilarious, and deeply revealing "lost-in-translation" moments in history. We are going to talk about how a massive, cold-blooded, profit-driven corporate machine—the East India Company—was transformed, in the minds of millions, into a wealthy, elderly matriarch living in a posh house in London.   The Corporate Ghost Now, before we get to the "old lady," we have to understand what the East India Company actually was. Founded in 1600, it sta...