India

The legend of Mahatma Gandhi places his non-violent Non-Cooperation, Civil Disobedience, and Quit India movements at the heart of India’s independence. There's more to the story.

The intriguing death of an Indian holy man in 1985 suggested that he was none other than Subhas Chandra Bose, the revolutionary and nationalist who, it is officially claimed, died in an air crash in 1945. The truth, however, is harder to find, as Hugh Purcell discovers.

A cremation ghat built in Brighton for Indian soldiers who fought in the First World War has recently been inscribed with their names, writes Rosie Llewellyn-Jones.

Rosie Llewellyn-Jones recalls the Victorian economist who helped resolve the financial crisis in India after the Mutiny of 1857.

Mihir Bose tells the little-known story of the Indian secret agent codenamed ‘Silver’ who served both the Axis and the Allied forces during the Second World War.

Jad Adams goes in search of the sometimes elusive legacy of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the 'Father of the Nation'.

For centuries, Africans were shipped to the Indian subcontinent and sold as slaves to regional rulers. Rosie Llewellyn-Jones tells the story of those who went to Lucknow to serve the Nawab of Oudh and who joined the Indian Mutiny when he was deposed by the British. For this allegiance their descendants, whom she has traced, still pay a price.

A century ago, the British authorities in India passed a series of reforms that they hoped would appease the subcontinent’s increasingly confident political movements. But, writes Denis Judd, it was too little, too late.

The West Indies is home to a large and vibrant South Asian population descended from indentured labourers who worked the plantations after the abolition of slavery. The arrival of the first, from Bengal in 1838, is recorded in the journal of a young doctor who accompanied them, as Brigid Wells describes.

India’s rulers demonstrated what power they had by adopting the crafts of their conquerors – first the Mughals, then the British. Corinne Julius looks at the background to a new exhibition of dazzling artefacts