Key Events

• 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.

For an article on the history of classical music ​click here

• First film screening at Watson’s Hotel, Bombay, on 7 July, by the Lumière cameraman Marius Sestier.

Watson's hotel as it currently stands

• The Madras Photographic Stores advertises imported ‘animated photographs’, reviewed in the Journal of the Amateur Photographic Society of Madras.