Articles and reviews

history today magazine (01/09/2023)

Now split between India and Bangladesh, the eastern part of the subcontinent is home to the Bay of Bengal, the Sundarbans and the Ganges delta. Once, its empires ruled parts of India, but its modern history is just as complex. Chosen by Diya Gupta

Venu Chitale, photographed in the 1940s. She began her career as secretary to George Orwell, and later became a prominent broadcaster. Photograph from Wiki Commons.

history today magazine (10/10/2022)

Diya Gupta comments on the BBC, the Second World War, Allied and Axis propaganda, and India.

Pearson’s real historians series (23/05/2022)

In this case study Dr Diya Gupta shares with us how she got into history and why history matters in today's world, and encourages the young generations to study history at school.

Women from the British Empire serving in the world wars © Anastasia Grujic

history workshop ONline blog - engaging with the ‘un-commemorated past’ (22/04/2022)

Anna Maguire and Diya Gupta write about the challenges of recovering and analysing colonial experiences of the two world wars, and of teaching about this.

Image from the Royal Historical Society’s ‘Writing Race’ blog series

royal historical society - ‘POSITIVE ACTION’ WORKSHOP FOR EARLY-CAREER HISTORIANS OF COLOUR (04/10/2021)

In August, the Royal Historical Society organised its first ‘positive action’ workshop for early-career historians of colour. In this post, Dr Diya Gupta and Dr Jonathan Saha, explain the motivation for the workshop and reflect on the outcomes of what’s hoped will be the first in a programme of focused training events.

Private Mobed Shaffi of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps (RIASC) listens to the broadcast with some of his fellow soldiers around a table in the Hall of India, 1942. Copyright: © IWM D10369

lse review of books - book review of Daniel Morse’s ‘Radio empire’ (21/05/2021)

Pushing against the siloed ways in which literary modernism is often studied, this fresh and ambitious book reveals the profound impact of the BBC’s Eastern Service on the printed and broadcast word, finds Diya Gupta.

‘Ranjit Singh, Maharaja of the Punjab, with his wife and child accompanied by his secondary wives. Gouache painting. Page 140.’ © Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

lse review of books - book review of priya atwal’s ‘royals and rebels’ (07/01/2021)

The book is a tour-de-force, finds Diya Gupta, with the clarity and authority of Atwal’s writing and her careful reading of historical material succeeding in revealing the contingencies of the past in all its complexity.

Edward Bawden, A Hindoo Kitchen, RIASC 8TH, 10th and 12th Indian Mule Companies, Zghorta, Syria, during the Second World War. © IWM (Art.IWM ART LD 2220)

Royal historical society - HALF-MEETINGS: INDIAN EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO WORLD WAR TWO (18/11/2020)

In this post, Royal Historical Society’s Past & Present Fellow Dr Diya Gupta, introduces her research.

Indian troops in France during the Second World War. © Culture Club/Getty Images

tribune magazine - who else was on the little ships? a book review by Diya Gupta (06/11/2020)

On the 80th anniversary of the evacuation from Dunkirk, Ghee Bowman's history of the Muslim soldiers who took part in the operation challenges the parochial memories of Britain in the Second World War.

The 75th anniversary of VJ Day in the UK

DCMS WEBSITE - Encounters with the Japanese: Indian experiences in the Pacific theatre of war (14/08/2020)

In July 1943, Indian soldier John Baptist Crasta discovered that he had caught malaria. Malnourished, drenched by torrential rain and bitten by mosquitoes in the island of New Britain, he felt physically ravaged…

Women queue for rice during the Bengal famine, 1943. © Sunil Janah

TRibune magazine - Art and Emergency: A BOOK REVIEW BY Diya Gupta (02/06/2020)

A new study explores how artists and photographers in India responded to the country's disasters of the last century – and asks what creative responses might be offered to emergencies closer to home…

Aerial view of contingents setting off on the Victory Parade in Delhi. © IWM IND 5045

THE WIRE.IN - SEEING KASHMIR IN SICILY: HOW INDIAN SOLDIERS FELT DURING THE Second World War (8/5/2020)

When VE Day was declared on May 8, 1945, Major R.G. Salvi, 2nd Lieutenant in the Maratha Light Infantry, British Indian Army, did not realise that the war in Europe was over. Sheltering in the mountains…

Troops of the British Indian Army in Myanmar in 1944. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

LIVEMINT - Hunger, starvation and indian soldiers in World War II (11/11/2019)

An Indian havildar, or junior officer, who was part of a Sappers and Miners unit stationed in Egypt during the height of World War II, wrote back home in June 1943…

The cover page of BBC World Histories magazine - Issue 19

BBC WOrld histories - The untold story of India's prisoners-of-war from the Second World War (07/11/2019)

Some 75,000 Indian soldiers were captured by Axis powers during the Second World War. How did their experiences change their view of the Raj, and why have their stories been overlooked?

Trumpeters on the streets of Guča. Photo: Alamy.

LIvemint.com - On the trail of trumpets in a tiny Serbian village (6/10/2019)

Cannon shots rent the quiet morning air of a small village in southern Serbia. It was early August. The sound marked the annual transformation of Guča village from placid countryside to a site of revelry, with the music of brass bands and competing orchestras…

An Indian in the First World War, unable to write, puts his thumb impression on the pay-book. © IWM (Q 12500)

the wire.in - 'Challenge the Colour of War Memory': Recovering India's First World War Culture (11/11/2018)

Santanu Das speaks to Diya Gupta about going beyond the history of medals and memorials to 'worlds of feeling and experience' in his new book.

Men of the 4th Indian Division with a captured German flag at Sidi Omar, North Africa, 1941. © IWM (E 6940)

BRITISH LIBRARY’s ‘UNTOLD LIVES’ BLOG - ‘Pierce your heart’: Letters from Europe and North Africa by Indian prisoners in the Second World War (18/09/2018)

Indian prisoner-of-war (PoW) experiences during the Second World War varied sharply, depending on where soldiers were taken captive and who their captor was. Letters archived at the British Library…

An Indian soldier guarding an Anglo-Iranian Oil Company refinery in Persia, 4 September 1941. © IWM (E 7180)

THE CONVERSATION - Why remembrance of Indian soldiers who fought for the British in World War II is so political (10/11/2017)

During the Allied invasion of Italy in early September 1943, an Indian lieutenant wrote a letter to his beloved.

Here I am penning this to you in the middle of one of the biggest nights in the history of this war. Love, I am sure by the time you receive this letter you will guess correctly as to where I am…

CNN NEWS18 - Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk and the Cultural Memory of a Global War (21/08/2017)

Christopher Nolan’s recent war film Dunkirk has elicited a spectrum of responses. Reviewers hailed it as “spare, stunning, extraordinarily ambitious”, showcasingthe quiet heroism of pilots, sailors, soldiers and civilians”; others found it “bloodless, boring and empty.”

Many commented on its mythmaking…

Wounded soldiers from 8th Indian Division being transported in the back of a lorry in Italy, 28 November 1943. © IWM (NA 9418)

British library’s ‘untold lives’ blog - The ‘Kashmir of Europe’ and other exoticisms: Indian soldiers’ tales of travel in the Second World War (23/02/2017)

“Sicily is a very fertile country. It is the Kashmir of Europe.”
- Letter in Malayalam by an Indian sepoy, August 1943, Central Mediterranean Forces.

Through letters exchanged between the home front and international battlefronts, Indian soldiers in the Second World War reveal themselves to be part of …

Representation of a family struck by the Bengal Famine of 1942 by Bangladeshi artist Zoinul Abedin. © British Museum 2012,3027.1

British library’s ‘untold lives’ blog - ‘We become crazy as lunatics’: Responding to the Bengal famine in Indian letters from the Second World War (24/01/2017)

Extracts from letters archived at the British Library, exchanged between the Indian home front and international battlefronts during the Second World War, become textual connectors linking the farthest corners of the Empire and imperial strongholds requiring defence against the Axis alliance. Such letters map…

An Indian soldier guarding an Anglo-Iranian Oil Company refinery in Persia, 4 September 1941. © IWM (E 5330)

british library’s ‘untold lives’ blog - Exploring emotional worlds: Indian soldiers’ letters from the Second World War (20/12/2016)

“I have written to you many times but God alone knows why I don’t get your letters. You say you write regularly. Letters mean half meetings and they are a great consolation to us.”
- Written in Urdu by an Indian sepoy from Tunisia on 16 May 1943…

KIng’s english blog - LOVING, LIVING AND RESISTING: A POSTCOLONIAL CONVERSATION (26/07/2016)

“Choti yeh hai teri saanp ki hi lehar Dogana

Khati hun tere vaste main zahar Dogana

(This plait of yours is the wave of a serpent, Dogana

I take poison because of you, Dogana)”

– Lines from nineteenth-century Urdu Rekhti poet Insha Allah Khan…

Seventeen-year-old Ajit Kumar Mitra outside his home in Dhaka, just before he ran away and signed up to fight in World War II . © Aniket Mitra

the telegraph (india) - Bengal boys of 'the good war'(05/04/2015)

Our volunteers in World War II are mostly forgotten, says Diya Gupta

Children from Spiti at Munsel-ling School. © Ted Wu

The telegraph (india) - Mountains of the mind (26/10/2014)

Munsel-ling School, Rangrik, Spiti. I never dreamt that this would be my address. Yet here I am, a volunteer and teacher for six months, tucked away 3,600 metres high, up in the remote Himalayas…

Children in Spiti Valley with volunteers and guests. © Diya Gupta

OPen magazine - Of Mountains, Monks and Munsel-ling (22/09/2014)

At one point in her life, Tenzin Angmo must have felt that her options were shrinking rapidly. She was 18 years old, in Class 12, studying science and hoping to eventually become a doctor. But her father died unexpectedly…

the guardian - Job offer: try-before-you-buy (29/07/2011)

Is a week's work experience of real use to graduates, and what do employers think?

A screenshot from the article. © The Statesman (India)

the statesman - Dissent itself is memorable (19/07/2011)

Controversial in their struggle with the authorities and yet a fundamental democratic right in both the UK and India, the world of student protests looks set to stay, writes Diya Gupta…

A screenshot of the article. © the Guardian

the guardian - Living in the shadow of prosperity: why children in rural India don't go to school (29/06/2011)

Madhumita Banerjee is the new head-teacher of a government-run school in Banipur, West Bengal, close to India's border with Bangladesh. Being a teacher and educator for 30 years has not been enough to prepare her for this schooling experience in rural Bengal. "I have never witnessed poverty at such close quarters,"…

The cover page of CAM magazine, Issue 61

cam magazine - secret cambridge: roman remains (michaelmas 2010)

Roman Cambridge is well-documented, but surprisingly well-hidden, as Diya Gupta discovers…

The cover page of CAM magazine, Issue 60

cam magazine - SECret cambridge: a subterranean mystery (easter 2010)

An underground shelter lies beneath Jesus College gardens. Diya Gupta explores its history…