Stream - Sarmaya

Jewel In The Crown - The Most Exquisite Jewellery Owned by Indian Royalty - Costume, Costumes, Dancers & Costumes, History of Style, Indian Royalty, Jewellery, Jewels, Kings & Countrymen, Maharaja, Nizam

From the Nizam’s jewels to the Maharaja of Kapurthala’s Cartier headdress, we dive for gems among Sarmaya’s treasure trove of rare 19th-century photographs

Shape Shifting: Tracing Classic Indian Style Silhouettes Through The Ages

From the bandhgala to the churidaar and from the dupatta to the lungi, we admire the definitive silhouettes of India and see how they’ve functioned as signposts of the eras that birthed them

History of Style

Class, caste, gender, faith, community, identity. We give away so much of who we through what we wear. Looking at 19th-century photographs and watercolour portraits from the Indian subcontinent, it might seem like our ancestors dressed more conservatively, seeking to hide everything but their social status which they wore like an armour. But we can… Read more »

The Sari Story – How A Simple Garment Travelled Around India & Across the Ages

The sari is draped in more than 100 ways across the country, evolving with time and influenced heavily by geography, culture and even popular entertainment

‘Costume of Hindostan’ – A Rare Glimpse of the Common Indian from 18th-Century Bengal

An exquisite object from our rare books collection that shows how the British once sought to understand a whole subcontinent by paying attention to what its citizens wore

‘Divinity Code: Reading Hindu Mythology’ by Devdutt Pattanaik

Battles & Battlefields

Come with us as we visit the bloodiest battlefields in our archives and find stories both inspiring and hair-raising. There are heroes here and villains too. But there’s a little bit of truth in both their accounts. While the British may have over-stretched their imagination while documenting the Uprising of 1857, they were grudging in… Read more »

A rare book takes us behind the scenes of the Anglo-Mysore wars

Listen in as Paul Abraham brings to vivid life the political events that went on behind the scenes of the Anglo-Mysore wars with the help of a rare book from the Sarmaya archive

War and Paisa: Mughal numismatics as battle history

Mughal coinage tells an engrossing tale of the rise and fall of its rulers, reflecting their wins and losses on the battlefield

Works of Fiction: The Uprising of 1857 from the British point of view

We review rare books from our collection that document the Uprising of 1857 from a decidedly British point of view

Martial Art: The True Story Behind This Engraving From the Anglo-Sikh War

The Battle of Ramnagar had one clear victor—and it wasn’t the side that created this artwork. Visit a thrilling episode from the Second Anglo-Sikh War and meet a true war hero

The Wonderfully Weird World of Waswo X. Waswo

Art Jargon and What It Really Means

Using works from our modern and contemporary art collection, we decipher terms used very often by critics and art insiders

The Time-Lapse Art of Gopa Trivedi

A series of five paintings by the artist explores how apathy spreads like a stain on the consciousness of people and nations

‘Golden Age: What Mughal Coins Tell Us About the Great Empire’ by Paul Abraham

‘Those Magnificent Mughals: 400 Years of Design Inspiration’ by Pavitra Rajaram

The Many Shades of Manisha Gera Baswani

Where does one Indian contemporary art’s most versatile practitioners find her inspiration? The short answer is, everywhere

This Just In

Before you try to find it, let us clarify right away that there isn’t a common thread connecting the five artists in our Spotlight this month. The art of Bhupen Khakhar, Shakuntala Kulkarni, Manisha Gera Baswani, Dibin Thilakan and Gopa Trivedi are covered by the umbrella term ‘modern and contemporary art’ but this slightly worn… Read more »

Bhupen Khakhar and the Queering of Modern Art in India

At the time when the declaration could cost an Indian man dearly, a young gay chartered accountant from Mumbai found a safe space in art

Shakuntala Kulkarni Fights Battles Through Art

The artist who recently represented India at the Venice Biennale 2019 tells us all about her concerns with women in intimate and public spaces