Welcome to the Official History Department Podcast of St. Stephen’s College! In this episode of Rewind, Professor Audrey Truschke joins Minerva Digra and Srijan Srivastava for an engaging conversation on the cultural, imperial, and intellectual histories that have shaped the subcontinent. Drawing from her extensive work on medieval South Asian history, she discusses the world of the Mughals, inter-community relations, and the vibrant exchanges between Sanskrit and Persian traditions at the imperial court.

A conversation with renowned numismatist and art historian Osmund Bopearachchi on how coins, sculptures, and archaeological evidence reveal the northwest of ancient India as a crossroads of empires, religions, and artistic traditions.

We discuss interpreting portraiture and propaganda on coins, the impact of dispersed collections on Indo-Iranian studies, the balance between Greek and Indian influence in Gandhāran art, and how hybrid imagery shaped early Buddhist and Hindu visual culture.

In this episode of Rewind, Prof. Tanika Sarkar talks about her vast experience as a teacher and historian, matters concerning women and religion in contemporary India and changes in the study of history.

In this episode of Rewind, Prof. Patrick Olivelle joins us for a wide-ranging conversation on Ashoka, one of India’s most fascinating historical figures. He speaks about the complexities of writing ancient history, Ashoka’s idea of dharma, and why his inscriptions are unlike anything else in the ancient world. Olivelle also explores Ashoka’s political strategy, Buddhist connections and his radical reimagining of kingship and public leadership.

In this episode of Rewind, Aali Kumar talks about Zaikanama, her innovative pop-up venture that curates riveting food events on different historical themes. She also discusses Indian culinary history in the colonial times, covering themes including food production patterns, colonial cookbooks, culinary habits and traditions, issues of gender in food history and use of food items as symbols of protest.

In this episode of Rewind, Mukul Mangalik remembers and reflects upon his years of teaching history at Ramjas College.

In this episode of Rewind, Urvashi Butalia discusses power structures in knowledge dissemination through gendered narratives, oral histories and historiographical traditions. This episode is recorded in collaboration with Where Are The Women, a student-led initiative which aims to map the space of Delhi through the stories of its gender minorities.

In this episode of Rewind, Professor Irfan Habib discusses the historian's craft and the state of history-writing in India today.

In this episode, Dr. Deepra Dandekar discusses her work on Sufism in postcolonial India using grey literature emphasising the nuances of the space of the dargah and the rewriting of tradition to accomodate social histories.

In this episode of Rewind, Dr. Rochona Majumdar discusses the use of cinema as a mode of doing history in postcolonial Bengal, the 'indianness' of Indian New Wave Cinema, the apparent divide between 'art cinema' and 'commercial cinema' and more in relation to her third book - Art Cinema and India's Forgotten Futures: Film and History in the Postcolony.