Tag Archive for 'History'

Code unknown: the fierce argument over ancient Indian symbols

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on January 12, 2010
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In India – where 4,000 year-old stories still inspire death threats – historians, mathematicians and nationalists are going to battle over an ancient civilisation’s script. S Subramanian reports. in The National:

In 1856, searching for stone to anchor the railway tracks they were building between Karachi and Lahore, William and John Brunton, engineers working for the East India Railway Company, followed the directions of local residents to the site of an old, ruined town. There, they found 93 miles of perfect, kiln-fired bricks – and discovered the remains of Harappa, one of the two chief cities of the Bronze Age civilisation in the Indus valley.

The Harappan ruins had been known previously, discovered by various explorers rambling around present-day Pakistan. But in the course of meticulously picking apart the bricks, the Bruntons unearthed enough artefacts to attract the attention of archeologists; their continued excavations revealed a record of an ancient civilisation whose urban ruins were scattered all across the vast Indus river basin.

The discovery of Harappa revised, in one stroke, existing theories of ancient Indian history. Until then, the earliest known Indians were believed to be the literate Hindus who lived by the Rig Veda in the Second millennium BC. Modern Hindus trace their origins to this “Vedic civilisation”, whose language and religion were considered wholly indigenous to the subcontinent. The existence of a separate pattern of settlement, an advanced civilisation predating the Vedic era by a few hundred years, raised confusing – and politically charged – questions. If the Indus Valley peoples were not Hindus, who were they? And where, then, did the Hindus come from? More:

War correspondence

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on December 19, 2009
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In the Indian Express, Mahmood Farooqui reviews Rajmohan Gandhi’s A Tale of Two Revolts (Viking):

A tale of two revoltsFar too often histories of India remain too narrowly focused on the subcontinent. Medieval histories could certainly benefit from comparisons with Turko-Persian kingdoms in other parts of the world. 1857 too has been reduced to an Indian story, presented either as an account of Indian valour or of Indian failure whereas it was at once neither of these things as well as much more than them. As such, Rajmohan Gandhi’s attempt to compare the uprising of 1857 with the American Civil War (1861-65) is highly laudable.

Britain, of course, was a common link between the two events, as were invocations to religion, race and notions of governance. While the Indian uprising aroused significant interest in America where both sides read it as a confirmation of Indian perfidy, the “leading Indians” (Gandhi’s phrase) of the time unequivocally supported Abraham Lincoln’s Unionists and the abolition of slavery. More:

India’s Scottish heritage remembered

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on November 8, 2009
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Victoria Memorial, Calcutta

Victoria Memorial, Calcutta

From the Telegraph, London:

Now, keen to underline its independence from London in foreign affairs, Scotland’s new nationalist government plans to reclaim that forgotten heritage in Calcutta, the capital of British India.

Its first target will be helping to restore the rubble-covered grand staircases and peeling walls of once-magnificent buildings like Duff College, named after Alexander Duff, a Scots missionary and pioneering educationalist who arrived in Calcutta in 1830 after being shipwrecked twice en route. But Holyrood also hopes to remind Indians of the role that Scots played in educating and inspiring some of the sub-continent’s leading independence campaigners.

Many of Calcutta’s most illustrious sons, including Subhas Chandra Bose, the controversial independence movement leader, were educated in Scottish colleges in Calcutta. A Scottish official in the Bengal Civil Service, Allan Octavian Hume, later founded the Indian National Congress which led the country to independence in 1947. More:

End of an affair: Nehru-Edwina movie scrapped

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on October 22, 2009
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From the Telegraph, Calcutta:

indian_summerIndian Summer, a Hollywood film based on Jawaharlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten, has been shelved, leaving behind a mystery on what the film-makers found too hot to handle: money or Indian prudes.

The film was supposed to focus on one of the most sensitive chapters of the final days of the Raj – the relationship between India’s first Prime Minister and the wife of Britain’s last Viceroy.

Universal Pictures, among Hollywood’s oldest studios, has postponed plans for shooting, apparently because of the scale of the budget, thought to have been between $30 million (Rs 138 crore) and $40 million (Rs 184 crore).

Sources said director Joe Wright considered making the film, Indian Summer, starring Cate Blanchett and Hugh Grant, for less than $30 million, before deciding to wait for more favourable market conditions. More:

Previously on AW: Nehru and Edwina: the movie

And in Foreign Policy: What the censorship of a film about India’s founding father shows about New Delhi’s cautious relationship toward its own history:

The film’s international cast of superstars — Academy Award-winner Cate Blanchett playing Edwina, and Hugh Grant tipped to portray her husband, Louis — did nothing to deter New Delhi from issuing a series of silly cuts. Among them: no kissing, no scenes of physical intimacy between Nehru and Edwina, and no use of the word “love.” The director, Joe Wright, whose previous films include the hugely successful Atonement and Pride and Prejudice, has no choice but to comply if he wants to shoot the film in India. And that’s not all: Should Wright go ahead, the completed film will have to be shown to a government “expert” who will judge whether it depicts “a correct and balanced perspective on the topic covered.”

Don’t fix history, look at the future

Published
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on August 30, 2009
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Chetan Bhagat, author of the bestseller, One Night @ the Call Centre, in the Times of India:

The BJP is screaming that Mr Jinnah was not indeed as secular as claimed by Jaswant Singh. Experts on TV are citing events in 1932 which prove that Jinnah was a good person; countered by an equal number of experts citing historical events which prove that Jinnah did terrible things.

To answer the Jinnah question from the point of view of the young generation – Who cares?

Really, whether Mr Jinnah did wonderful things or he did horrible things and whatever point of view your party likes to take – who gives a damn? How is this relevant to the India we have to build today? Are we electing leaders for the future or selecting a history teacher?

The strange thing is the media buys into this pointless debate – about Mr Jinnah being good or bad and spends hours discussing it. By doing so, it gives legitimacy to the whole exercise.

Meanwhile, the young generation fails to understand why do our politicians become so passionate defending these relics of the past? Why don’t they have a fanatical debate about how fast we will make roads, colleges, bridges and power plants? Why don’t people get expelled over current non-performance rather than historical opinions? Why don’t we ban useless government paperwork rather than banning books about dead people? More:

Nehru, Jinnah responsible for partition of India: Jaswant Singh

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on August 21, 2009
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Karan Thapar interviews Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jaswant Singh on his book ‘Jinnah -- India, Partition, Independence‘ on CNN-IBN. Jaswant Singh has been expelled from the Hindu nationalist BJP for praising Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah, considered in India the architect of the partition. Authorities in the BJP-ruled western Indian state of Gujarat have banned the book for its “defamatory references” to Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first home minister.

Karan Thapar: Mr Jaswant Singh, let’s start by establishing how you as the author view Mohammed Ali Jinnah? After reading your book, I get the feeling that you don’t subscribe to the popular demonisation of the man.

Jaswant Singh: Of course, I don’t. To that I don’t subscribe. I was attracted by the personality which has resulted in a book. If I wasn’t drawn to the personality, I wouldn’t have written the book. It’s an intricate, complex personality of great character, determination.

Karan Thapar: And it’s a personality that you found quite attractive?

Jaswant Singh: Naturally, otherwise, I wouldn’t have ventured down the book. I found the personality sufficiently attractive to go and research it for five years. And I was drawn to it, yes. More:

[The other parts of the interview are on YouTube.]

And below, Jawed Naqvi in Dawn:

But Jaswant Singh is not quitting politics, much less the country. In fact an endorsement of his quest will be palpable as early as this weekend when Ramazan, the month of fasting for Muslims, begins. In Lutyens’ Delhi, the hub of India’s power dynamic, the circus of feasts will see robed clerics from diverse Islamic clusters getting invited to the prime minister’s house to break bread. Government ministers, party leaders, MPs, power peddlers, middlemen, in a nutshell everyone who lives by the 13 per cent Muslim vote in India or those who need to flaunt their secularism will take turns to rustle up an appetising Ramazan menu. Of course, only a minority of India’s 150 million Muslims are mullahs and so a few of the less pious variety would also be given a slot in the meandering queue to rub shoulders with the high and mighty.

Had Jinnah had his way, there would be no need for the pathetic lottery of Ramazan invitations. There would be no need for the Justice Sachchar Committee, set up to investigate why Indian Muslims continue to be economically and socially backward six decades after independence from colonialism. More:

How did Mahatma Gandhi spend August 15, 1947?

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on August 16, 2009
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Historian Ramachandra Guha in The Telegraph as India celebrates 62nd Independence Day:

It is well known that when India became free on the August 15, 1947, Mahatma Gandhi declined to join the festivities in New Delhi. While his follower, Jawaharlal Nehru, spoke in the Council Hall about India’s tryst with destiny, and the crowds danced on the streets outside, Gandhi was in Calcutta, seeking to restore peace between Hindus and Muslims. His refusal to join his colleagues in New Delhi has been interpreted by some commentators as a sign that he was in mourning. This interpretation is not entirely tenable. While Gandhi was distressed by the religious rioting that accompanied Independence and Partition, he did not gainsay the value and achievement of political freedom. But he remained concerned with what his fellow Indians would make of their hard-won, and somewhat belated, swaraj.

The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi has seven entries dated August 15, 1947. The first is a letter written to his Quaker friend, Agatha Harrison, in London. Gandhi says here that “my way of celebrating great events, such as today’s, is to thank God for it and, therefore, to pray”. Agatha Harrison had apparently asked whether he followed the debates in the British parliament on the Indian Independence bill. Gandhi said he did not get time to read newspapers; in any case, he commented, “What does it matter, who talks in my favour or against me, if I myself am sound at bottom?”

Item four describes a visit to Gandhi’s temporary home in Beliaghata of the new governor of West Bengal, C. Rajagopalachari. When the governor congratulated him on the “miracle he had wrought” (namely, the cessation of violence in the city), Gandhi answered “that he could not be satisfied until Hindus and Muslims felt safe in one another’s company and returned to their own homes to live as before. Without that change of heart, there was likelihood of future deterioration in spite of the present enthusiasm”. More:

Gay but not quite happy

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on July 9, 2009
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Jawed Naqvi in Dawn:

AN apocryphal story told by the late Prof A.M. Khusro when he was vice chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University goes thus: in 1603 James VI of Scotland became England’s first Stuart monarch.

Within 10 days of arriving in London, he demanded that Shakespeare’s troupe come under his own patronage. So they were granted a royal patent and changed their names to the King’s Men, in honour of King James.

One day, waiting for The Merchant of Venice to begin, the king asked his senior aide to inquire into the inordinate delay in the show. ‘Sire,’ said the official after a visit to the green room. ‘Portia is being shaved.’ Good-looking boys played female roles in Shakespeare’s England. In India, upper-crust women in Maharashtra would, as recently as the early 20th century, choose their exotic nav-waari saris according to the fashion of the day.

The legendary Bal Gandharva, who depicted many famous female characters from Marathi stage plays, set the standards. Bal Gandharva is still deified as an essential cultural grooming in upper-crust homes. He was of course a handsome man who sang beautifully in the Natya Sangeet format of old Maharashtrian theatre. More:

Marco Polo’s India

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on January 6, 2009
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From 3quarksdaily:

Returning home from China in 1292 CE, Marco Polo arrives on the Coromandel Coast of India in a typical merchant ship with over sixty cabins and up to 300 crewmen. He enters the kingdom of the Tamil Pandyas near modern day Tanjore, where, according to custom, ‘the king and his barons and everyone else all sit on the earth.’ He asks the king why they ‘do not seat themselves more honorably.’ The king replies, ‘To sit on the earth is honorable enough, because we were made from the earth and to the earth we must return.’ Marco Polo documented this episode in his famous book, The Travels, along with a rich social portrait of India that still resonates with us today:

Map copyright Encyclopedia Britannica.

Map copyright Encyclopedia Britannica.

The climate is so hot that all men and women wear nothing but a loincloth, including the king-except his is studded with rubies, sapphires, emeralds and other gems. Merchants and traders abound, the king takes pride in not holding himself above the law of the land, and people travel the highways safely with their valuables in the cool of the night. Marco Polo calls this ‘the richest and most splendid province in the world,’ one that, together with Ceylon, produces ‘most of the pearls and gems that are to be found in the world.’

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A tryst with Nehru

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on November 16, 2008
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Walter Crocker’s Nehru: A Contemporary’s Estimate, first published in 1966, has been reissued by Random House recently with a foreword by historian Ramachandra Guha. A review in Mint-Lounge:

nehru1In August 1964, three months after the death of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Australian scholar and diplomat Walter Crocker, who had spent several years of the Nehru era in India, sat down to distil his memories into a book that he called “a contemporary’s estimate” of the late prime minister. An assessment of the life and career of a man so recently departed, a man whose policies were still current and about whom history had not yet made up its mind, required an unusual degree of confidence on the part of the writer. But Crocker had seen Nehru from up close, both politically and in a personal capacity, and he was confident of the authority he claimed. “The historians of the future will know more of the documents,” he acknowledged, “but not Nehru himself nor the men who figure in the documents.”

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And in Hindustan Times,TV commentator Karan Thapar asked Minister of Panchayati Raj Mani Sha kar Aiyar, columnist Swapan Dasgupta, historian Ramachandra Guha and Business Standard editor TN Ninan how much India owes its first Prime Minister.

jawaharlal_nehruKT: Ram Guha, there is something that Crocker couldn’t have foreseen but which Indians are only too aware of today – the fact that for many Indians, the most enduring legacy that Nehru left behind is the Gandhi family. Would he have been proud of the fact that his daughter, his grandson, his grand-daughter-in-law and perhaps even his great-grandson have achieved the pinnacle of power? Or would he have been embarrassed and even disapproving?

Ramachandra Guha: I think he would have been deeply embarrassed. As the journalist Frank Moraes said in 1960, “The creation of a dynasty is wholly inconsistent with Nehru’s career and character. The dynasty was created by Indira Gandhi through an accident – the six Congress bosses who chose her as Prime Minister thought they could manipulate her. They were proved horrendously wrong. So it’s important in assessing Nehru to separate him from what followed later. One major difference between Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and so on, is that in Nehru’s time, and with Nehru’s encouragement, the Congress Party was a properly democratic organisation. Nehru could not impose Chief Ministers on states; Nehru could not impose presidents on the Congress. It was a thriving, decentralised, democratic organisation. So the answer to your question is clear: Nehru would have been deeply embarrassed by the fact that his party has become captive to the interests of a single family.

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Authors@Google: Salman Rushdie

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on September 19, 2008
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The pursuit of the Southasian past

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on July 3, 2008
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Moving beyond the colonial-era understanding of the history of the Subcontinent gives us a whole new way of looking at the Subcontinent’s past. This now includes not just the usual explorations of politics and economy, but also of social, cultural and religious issues – as well as the writing of history in the first place. Historian Romila Thapar in Himal Southasian:

Sixty years ago, at the time of Indian Independence, we in the region inherited a history of the Subcontinent shaped by two substantial views of the past: the colonial and the nationalist. Both were primarily concerned with chronology and with sequential narratives. The focus was on those in power, a focus that has been basic to much of the writing of history. There was information on the action of kings and dynasties, on governors-general and viceroys, and on various national leaders. On these, there was broad agreement. What was contested, although only partially, was the colonial representation of early Indian society. The colonial view was a departure from earlier Indian historical traditions, and drew on European preconceptions of Indian history. The use of history to legitimise power had changed from the rule of dynasties to colonial and nationalist definitions of power.

Three arguments were foundational to the colonial view of Indian history. The first was a ‘periodisation’ (the dividing of history into periods) that was to have not just consequences for the writing of history, but also major political impact during the 20th century. Indian history was divided into three sections – the Hindu, the subsequent Muslim civilisation, and then the British period – as formulated by James Mill in The History of British India, published in 1818. In the first two cases, these labels were taken from the religions of the ruling dynasties. The divisions were endorsed by the assumption that the units of Indian society were monolithic religious communities, primarily the Hindu and the Muslim, and were mutually hostile. Religion was believed to have superseded all other identities. This periodisation also projected an obsession with the idea that Indian society never changed throughout its history, that it was static.

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On this day April 1, 1959

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on April 1, 2008
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The Times, UK, reports on Peking’s drive to cut off the Dalai Lama’s escape routes:

There is growing concern here at the continuing absence of news about the progress of the Dalai Lama and his party. It is claimed that even on muleback he should by now have had time to reach Bhutan or the Indian border, but there is still no indication of his whereabouts.

Reports from Lhasa speak of energetic and increasing efforts by the Chinese to intercept the fugitives.

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This day in history: historic March 7 in Bangladesh

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on March 7, 2008
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From The Bangladesh Today:

march7.jpg

On this day in 1971, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founder of Bangladesh, addressed a mammoth gathering of hundreds of thousands of people at the then Race Course Maidan, now Suhrawardy Udyan, urging them to join a non-cooperation movement and continue the progrmmes until the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent country from the colonial rule of the then Pakistan.

Bangabandhu asked the nation to prepare for the war of independence from oppressive Pakistani regime. “The struggle this time is for freedom, the struggle this time is for independence, Joy Bangla,” Bangabandhu declared from the grand rally.

The Awami League and its front organisations have drawn up an elaborate programme to observe the historic day in limited scale due to the on going state of emergency.

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Power of imagination

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on February 23, 2008
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In The Times of India, Sharmistha Gooptu, who is doing a PhD thesis on Indian film at the University of Chicago, on the Jodhaa Akbar cntroversy

Jodhaa Akbar, the love story of emperor Akbar and his Rajput queen Jodhabai, has been decreed non-historical by historians. That’s no great surprise: the love story of Jodha and Akbar as a Bollywood film would necessarily need to be ‘created’ by the director. No history book in the world provides much insight into, whether Akbar had, or had not, ever married a Rajput princess named Jodhabai.

One does not need to be an expert of Mughal history to spot discrepancies in the film’s period reconstruction. For instance, would a Mughal queen step into the shahi (royal) kitchen and cook a meal for her husband, or would she actually make an appearance before his courtiers to serve him lunch, with the queen mother looking on? Possibly not. The film is most clearly a work of fiction built on a skeleton of history, with some characters who are ‘real’, others imaginary.

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Who was Jodhaa?

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on February 17, 2008
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Bijoy Bharathan in The Asian Age:

Jodhaa Akbar, Ashutosh Gowariker’s big-screen adaptation of the love story that blossomed from the relationship between one of India’s greatest Mughal emperors -Akbar and his beloved wife Jodhaa — has now sparked a renewed interest in the history of the Mughal period. But really, who was Jodhaa? And how instrumental was she in shaping the destiny of this nation? Did she even exist in the first place or was she just the figment of a collective imagination spawned through centuries-old folklore?

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What lies beneath

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on February 16, 2008
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In Hindustan Times, Nayanjot Lahiri, author of Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization was discovered, profiles K.M. Panikkar, scholar, administrator, historian, ambassador, and his contribution to archaeology in India.

Archaeology is as much about the thrill of discoveries as it is about the exploits of discoverers. Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey who made our ancestors older by several million years, the geologist, Arun Sonakia, who uncovered a hominid skull cap in the Narmada valley, the archaeologist John Marshall who unearthed the splendour of Taxila – these names evoke the harvest of riches to be had in pursuing a study of the past. Such explorers and excavators certainly deserve the credit that is accorded to them. But their claim to fame is frequently anchored by people who remain unknown to most of us. One such story revolves around India’s successful recovery of her Indus past in the first five years of independence.

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