Plague in Bombay and Pune; national famine until 1897. 

E. B. Havell, one of the figureheads of the Bengal School of Painting, is appointed Superintendent of the Government School of Art, Calcutta. 

Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s Vande Mataram (Hail to the Mother), one of India’s national anthems later appropriated by Hindu chauvinists, is recited for the very first time at the Indian National Congress. 

Bal Gangadhar Tilak inaugurates a festival around the figure of the 17th C. Maratha emperor Shivaji to generate nationalist sentiment. 

B. R. Rajam Aiyer publishes the social reform novel, Kamalampal Charitram, in Tamil. 

The singer Vishnu Digambar Paluskar leaves the Miraj court to popularise classical music.

First film screening at Watson’s Hotel, Bombay, on 7 July, by the Lumière cameraman Marius Sestier. The Madras Photographic Stores advertises imported ‘animated photographs’, reviewed in the Journal of the Amateur Photographic Society of Madras.
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