tuput: an independent magazine on Indian history, travel, AI, robotics and the environment
Indian history, travel, AI, robotics and the environment: researched, cited, and written to actually be worth your time.
Thirteen Lawyers Defended Three Indian National Army Officers in a Red Fort Barrack Room in 1945, and the Sentence of Transportation for Life Was Remitted on 3 January 1946
The Hindu printed the accused officers' statements at length, and a police chief in Lahore pulled his men back rather than disperse the crowd that met their train. The British government's own papers show how its policy had shifted before the verdict.
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Diwali Runs Five Days From Dhanteras to Bhai Dooj, and UNESCO Put Deepavali on Its Heritage List on 10 December 2025
One festival, five days, and at least six accounts of why the lamps are lit. Here is what each day is for, who keeps it, and what the Government of India and UNESCO have on record.
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Himalayan Glaciers Have Been Losing Ice About Twice as Fast Since 2000, and India Has Measured Them Since 1974, Mapped 28,043 Glacial Lakes From Orbit and Now Watches Two Sikkim Lakes in Real Time
Fifty years of field stakes, satellite height maps and lake surveys agree on the direction. This is where they still differ, from the Karakoram to the 2100 projections, and what India has installed at its glacial lakes since Sikkim's flood of October 2023.
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The White Rann of Kutch Floods Every Monsoon and Dries to Salt by Summer, and Its Rann Utsav Tent City Is Listed for 1 November 2026 to 7 March 2027
Two official pages give different festival dates. Behind them sit a fault scarp raised in 1819, a flamingo colony that nests only when the water is right, 7,672 wild asses and salt raked by hand in the Little Rann.
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The Pallava Port of Mahabalipuram Has Five Temples Cut From Single Boulders, a Rock Relief About 30 Metres Long and a Shore Temple, All on UNESCO's List Since 1984
Five temples each carved from one boulder, a cliff relief that scholars read two ways, and a seabed the ASI is still surveying: the seventh century Pallava port on the Tamil Nadu coast, set out from the records.
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Meta Trained Llama 3 405B on 15.6 Trillion Tokens and 30.84 Million GPU Hours, and OpenAI's Human Raters Preferred a 1.3 Billion Parameter Tuned Model to the 175 Billion Parameter GPT-3
Five papers and one model card lay out each stage of building a chatbot's underlying model. Here are the stages in order, with the parameters, tokens, GPU hours and test results the labs themselves published.
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Ashoka's Brick Stupa at Sanchi Grew Into a Stone Dome 36.6 Metres Across, Four Carved Gateways Were Added Around It, and the Archaeological Survey Rebuilt Its Failing Side From 1912
Marshall, the Survey's director-general, took apart one quarter of the dome because an 1881 repair had sunk. The gateways beside it show Ashoka visiting a stupa, a war over relics and the Buddha as an empty throne.
India's NavIC Already Tracks More Than 10,400 Locomotives and Serves Over 40,000 Fishing Boats, and NVS-03, the Satellite Meant to Restore Its Standalone Positioning, Is Ready for Launch
ISRO launched the first seven satellites between 2013 and 2016, and the system now tracks fishing boats and locomotives and broadcasts cyclone warnings. This is the orbit design, the clock problem behind the current gap, and the satellite waiting to close it.
The EU AI Act Has Applied in Stages Since 2 February 2025, and Its Rules for High-Risk Systems Now Wait Until 2 December 2027 and 2 August 2028
Which parts of the EU's AI law already bind companies, which have been pushed back, and what each tier asks for, read from the Commission's own text and pages.
Mistral Just Previewed a 1.05 Trillion Parameter AI Model It Nicknamed 'Le Chonk'
Mistral previewed a 1.05 trillion parameter open model nicknamed Le Chonk, Anthropic widened access to the AI that found a 27 year old OpenBSD bug, and Google signed a multibillion dollar deal to keep Constellation's nuclear reactors running longer for its data centers.
Shubman Gill's 117-Ball Double Century Powered India's Biggest Ever ODI Run Chase
Shubman Gill's record 223 powered India's biggest ever ODI run chase, Indian scientists demonstrated the country's first free space quantum key distribution link, and electric car sales hit an all time high with Tesla outselling Mercedes-Benz in India for the first time.
The BrahMos Missile Was First Fired on 12 June 2001, Cruises at About Mach 2.8 Over a Stated 290 km, Is Built for Ships, Land Launchers, Aircraft and Submarines, and Now Has Export Contracts in Three Countries
A missile named for two rivers, made by a joint venture in which India holds 50.5 percent. What its makers and the Defence Ministry have published about how it works, where it is fired from and who has bought it.
Rakhigarhi, the Largest Known Harappan Site, Gave the Civilisation Its First Ancient Genome in 2019, From the One Skeleton Among 61 Sampled Whose DNA Survived
Vagheesh Narasimhan and David Reich read the result one way, archaeologist Vasant Shinde another, and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer warns that a cemetery speaks for only part of a city. Meanwhile a second set of Rakhigarhi burials has been handed over for ancient DNA work.
India's Defence Exports Reached a Record ₹38,424 Crore in 2025-26, 56 Times the ₹686 Crore of 2013-14, With Private Firms Supplying 45 Per Cent
Ten years of Ministry of Defence export totals, what the ministry says India sells and to whom, the licence changes of August 2026, and the limits of what the published numbers can tell a reader.
A Snake Boat Won the 2026 Nehru Trophy by 0.12 Second on Alappuzha's Punnamada Lake, in Backwaters Where Rice Grows Below Sea Level
One race result, one lake and one kind of boat explain why Alappuzha draws visitors: a trophy begun in 1952, rice farmed below sea level, and houseboats tied together with coconut rope. What the race society, Kerala Tourism and the FAO say.
The Kailasa Temple at Ellora Was Cut Downward Out of One Basalt Slope, and Its Builders Removed an Estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Tons of Rock
Masons dug trenches into a hillside in Maharashtra and left a temple standing in the middle. Who ordered it, and how much one reign could finish, is still argued from a copper plate issued around 812.
India's Civil Courts Run on a 1908 Code of Civil Procedure, and a Suit for Compensation for a Broken Contract Has Three Years From the Breach
A plain walk from a signed agreement to a decree. Which Act governs what, which clocks run against a claimant, and where arbitration and mediation offer a way around a full trial.
AI & Technology
India Has Licensed Three Satellite Broadband Operators, Starlink Among Them, on Security Terms That Keep Indian Traffic and Data Inside the Country
Three operators hold licences, Starlink says it has built 20 gateway sites, and a 5 per cent revenue-based spectrum charge has cleared its first approval. The steps between a licence and a working dish, in order, with dates.
Since 1 April 2026 India Has Allowed Only Security-Certified Non-Analog CCTV Cameras to Be Sold, and 507 Models Were Certified by 25 March
The rule is written as a technical standard that applies to every brand. Its documents list what a camera must prove, from locked debug ports to signed firmware updates and traceable chips, and the dates show how a 2024 notification became a 2026 sales cut-off.
CBSE Launched an AI and Computational Thinking Curriculum for Classes 3 to 8 on 1 April 2026, and 5.17 Lakh Learners Had Enrolled in the Government's SOAR AI Courses by 6 August 2026
Schools with computer access rose to 69.9 per cent in 2025-26 as the new curriculum began. A class-by-class account of what is taught, who teaches it, the teacher training on record and the state plans announced since July.
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