IT is another world — quite literally. Nasa has been releasing footage taken by rovers on the surface of Mars. Among the most striking clips is one which provides a panoramic view of the Red Pla­net. Its eerie and hypnotic quality is only enh­an­ced by the fact that the video also includes so­­und — the rush of Martian winds as they swe­ep across the bare landscape. In the distance and above the red landscape of rocks and craters is a murky grey horizon. They sky over Mars is not blue.

The images and sounds captured by the rovers are a miracle of technology — a planet always at a distance is now very visible, and audible, on our phones and computers. It is incomprehensible that only a few hundred years ago, humans lived and died having only explored Earth. And then, the Space Age was upon them.

Today, explorations of the moon and Mars, and indeed of other reaches of the universe, are very much endeavours to lay claim to remote worlds that have only recently become real to us. It reminds one of colonialism. These otherworldly realms of which we are only now obtaining closer glimpses echo the idea of how conquering faraway lands may have seemed to colonising powers.

Take our part of the world. Without the easy availability of camera and given the initially small number of people that travelled from the British Isles to the subcontinent, there were few images or items to lend some reality to the existence of a world known as India whose residents were very different from the........

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