World War I (1914–1918) was a defining moment in world history. The Great War came just at the end of the golden age of picture postcards, the Instagram of its time, when humans first shared pictures with each other at a volume and breadth never realized before. This article examines postcards of the war of Indian soldiers and prisoners by French, German, British, and Indian soldiers and associated Europeans to reveal how prejudices and identities were affected by warfare. Postcards also reflected the rise of the Independence struggle as one of its consequences toward the end of the war. As visual media and social extensions of print capitalism, they are a rich source of how complex and contradictory this formative phase of nationalism was for all involved, and the way these humble new media objects were able to play an important role in the psychological conflicts that ensued.

This article revisits a series of articles published in the early 1980s on Punjab politics in the pre-partition decade that grew out of my thesis ‘The Growth of the Muslim League in the Punjab’ which was supervised by Francis Robinson. It initially locates the publications in the existing literature, before assessing the extent to which subsequent research has enriched academic understanding. The article concludes with some brief reflections on the conceptualisation of the Unionist Party's power-sharing as a form of consociationalism.

This article analyses the construction of religious origin myths for Islam within ‘universal religion’ and esoteric frameworks in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century South Asia and beyond, and sheds light on the role of ‘Western’ and Anglo-Indian converts in this process. At its core is a case study of the elusive Hamid Snow, founder of the so-called ‘Church of Islam’ in 1891 in Sikanderabad, Deccan. On the following pages, I reconstruct Snow's biography from little-known Urdu and English sources, analyse his writings, and place him within a context of religious modernist, esoteric, and convert networks encompassing South Asia, Europe, the United States, the Philippines, and other parts of the world. By focusing on the nature of the scholarship of religion at the time, and the reconstruction of religious pasts under the influence of esotericism and religious modernism, the article traces the influence of Orientalist and Eurocentric views on perceptions of the Islamic tradition and contributes to larger debates about the role of laypeople, especially those with an interracial background, in interpreting religious history and acting as cultural mediators between different communities during a time of ‘hybrid transnational occultism’.1

This article rethinks how we understand religious reform under colonial rule by examining Maharaja Duleep Singh, the deposed ruler of the Sikh empire, and how the Singh Sabha, a Sikh reform movement, debated, deployed, and organized around him in the late nineteenth century. I demonstrate how religious reform was a site of intense conflict that reveals the processes of argumentation within the contours of a tradition, even as the colonial state sought to continually mediate the terms. Embedded within a frame of inquiry provided by the Sikh tradition, the contestations that constituted reform within the tradition remained intimately tied in with the question of sovereignty. Ranjit Singh's empire in Panjab had only been annexed 30 years earlier in 1849 and remained a central reference point for thinking about the political at the turn of the century. These debates surrounding Duleep Singh, therefore, disclose the contentious engagements within a tradition that cannot be reduced to binary designations such as colonial construct/indigenous inheritance or religious/political.

Beetal is one of the largest Indian breeds of goats bred mainly for milk but equally important for meat as well. This breed is found in Punjab along the Indo-Pakistani border. The status of the Beetal breed in its native tract was studied through a detailed survey in the Gurdaspur and Amritsar districts of Punjab. In this part of the country goats are mainly reared by ‘Sansi’ tribals who are landless. Goat flocks are mainly stationery and browsing is the main source of feed and fodder for these goats. Long drooping ears and roman nose are the typical characteristics of this breed. The total population of this breed in its native tract in 1997 was found to be 20 772 and the average flock size was 5.27. Average test day milk yield and lactation length were 1.8±0.79 kg and 161 days, respectively. Average ages at first kidding and kidding interval were 17.2 and 11.14 months, respectively. Prolificacy was fairly high with an average of 1.76 kids per kidding.

Beetal goats are the mainstay for the landless poor families of this region and the breed needs to be conserved in its breeding tract. There is a need to popularize this breed through demonstration units to convince the farmers that this breed is sustainable under low input conditions. This will help in in-situ conservation of the Beetal breed.

Munjal is a mutton-type sheep found in some districts of the Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan states. A sample survey was conducted in two districts of Rajasthan and one district of Punjab to record characteristics of Munjal sheep. Information was recorded on morphological characteristics, body measurements and body weight. Munjal sheep are quite big in size, tall, rectangular and massive with a dark brown face. Measurements were recorded of body length, height, heart girth, paunch girth, ear length and tail length. Adult body weights were also recorded. Wool samples were collected and analysed for their quality attributes. Wool from this breed is very coarse and hairy.

This study presents an interpretation of the way the Punjabi farmers in a village of the arid Sind perceive the pest hazard and the methods of management that they employ to deal with this situation. It is found that farmers do recognize the seriousness of the problem which consequently leads them to employ traditional as well as pesticide treatment of their crops. But because of financial handicap and other factors, they do not use pesticide regularly or in adequate quantity. As a result the control of pests remains ineffective.