Dilip Simeon's blog

British photographer Samuel Bourne came to India in 1863 as a young man of 29 who had already received some plaudits for his landscape images. By the time he left seven years later, he had produced over 25,000 photographs and co-founded a photo studio company that still survives.  Bourne’s images are considered some of the finest examples of 19th-century travel photography. Assisted by Indian bearers, the former bank clerk travelled across the subcontinent to create a collection for Kolkata’s Bourne and Shepherd studio. Ooty (formerly Ootacamund), the lake and the new church from  near Audrey House c. 1869/Samuel Bourne. Courtesy: MAP/Tasveer The studio was set up by Bourne and an associate called William Howard and later joined by Charles Shepherd. When Howard left for Britain in 1866, the studio got its present name. An exhibition of its vintage photos, curated by Tasveer Foundation, is going on display at Delhi’s Exhibit 320 art gallery.  In Bourne’s India, yo...

NB:   The 'Sangh  Parivar' insists that the RSS is not political and should be allowed to recruit members in the bureaucracy. Now it is  hounding an IAS officer   for praising Nehru! Read more about the   The Non-politics of the RSS   In the year 2000 the Gujarat government of Keshubhai Patel, with the support of the Vajpayee government, lifted the ban on RSS recruitment among civil servants. In the ensuing controversy Keshubhai said the RSS was not political (the usual story).  This was stoutly resisted and the BJP was forced to withdraw. http://www.frontline.in/ static/html/fl1706/17060310. htm http://www.hindu.com/fline/ fl1704/17040350.htm  -  DS Bhopal, May 29:  The transfer of a collector who had praised Jawaharlal Nehru in a Facebook post has set off a debate in the Madhya Pradesh bureaucracy whether civil servants have the right to express political views in public.  Some officials appear willing to support Ajay Gang...

NB: The Modi government and its ministers are solely concerned about their 'image' (incidentally, image means 'front', 'facade', 'mask', 'representation', or 'guise', in brief, something other than reality). For the MoS External Affairs to dismiss the murder of a human being as 'a minor scuffle', and then to attack the media for reporting a tragedy and a crime, is shameful. He and his cabinet colleagues seem to be less bothered about racism in our country, and more about their government's 'image'. The incidents of racism are disgraceful and inhuman, and the statement of this minister are obnoxious and uncalled for. Not just African visitors to India, but all self-respecting citizens are owed an apology from the MEA. But I wont be surprised if the minister concerned will now damn us all for being anti-national. DS Last Friday, Congolese national Masunda Kitada Oliver was beaten to death by a group of Indian men a...

Ah Nepal. Proud, sovereign, never conquered. Landlocked yet a feisty yam despite two massive grinding boulders, China to the north, India in all other directions. A good Nepali looks around him with distrust. He knows that since British times – even Mughal times – others have coveted his territory and his natural resources. Hell, he is even taught that his forebears fought the British East Company and won in the early nineteenth century. He – and it is almost always a “he” – is ready to fight and fulminate at the merest questioning of Nepali sovereignty and independence. Britain’s successors, who run today’s Indian state, are – he believes – even more rapacious. Why, I was once told by a Nepali writer who should have known better, India has even developed ways to drain Himalayan rivers, some nefarious downstream technology that magically sucks up water as it approaches the border. I encountered this anti-India mindset very early in my time as BBC Nepal ...

Never complain about your commute again. Recent footage of Chinese schoolchildren scaling a treacherous, 2,600-foot cliff to get to school is shocking social media users worldwide. The dangers facing the dozen or so schoolchildren — all of whom are between the ages of 6 and 15, and hail from a remote, impoverished village in Sichuan — first gained widespread attention after  Beijing News , a state-owned local newspaper, featured the photos earlier this week. Children can be seen climbing a rickety ladder with no harness up an almost vertical mountain. Most of them are bare-handed, and none of them appear to be wearing any safety gear. The journey takes about 90 minutes uphill and an hour downhill, Beijing News noted. “ Every single climb  felt like rubbing shoulders with death,” said photographer Chen Jie, who accompanied the children on the commute and captured the harrowing images for Beijing News. About seven or eight people have died as a result of this journey, the...

If I don’t beat my own drum, who will? George Bernard Shaw For 67 long years, we made a tryst with darkness, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the sunset hour on May 26, 2014, India awoke to life and freedom Subtext of the message   on Modi Sarkar at two (with apologies to J.L. Nehru) New Delhi, May 28: A weekend evening picked to perfection. Between the final knockout game of the IPL and the final itself, in a convenient trough between one television blockbuster and another. It meant the celebratory gala for two years of Modi Sarkar mounted the box two days after the anniversary, but it also meant it aired insulated from any threat from eyeball-grabbers. It grabbed at eyeballs so exclusively and so long this evening, it left them a little sore. Ek Nayi Subah, Doordarshan's five-hour live effort - obligingly streamed by a...

This message was circulated by Maitree, a women's rights network in Kolkata. It contains an e-mail from a woman student of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), Kolkata (personal details deleted).  All concerned individuals may please write to  the Chair of SRFTI < chairman@srfti.ac.in> and the Director < director@srfti.ac.in >  +91-33-2432-0070 (phone) asking for :  safety of the complainants  copy of ICC report to be given to the complainants  action to be taken on the basis of ICC report  Thanks for your support Letter from complainant  The ICC (Internal Complaints Committee) for Sexual Harassment found two professors guilty of sexual harassment and recommended the harshest of punishments for them. This report was submitted more than two weeks ago and the student complainants were not informed of this. We got to know of it from a newspaper report. Moreover the ICC report was shared...