Category: History

Chhatrapati Shivaji: Simply Extraordinary

Marathas are a very sturdy and brave people. Once they inhabited the region of India called “Deccan” which is modern day Maharashtra and Northern Karnataka and some parts of Madhya Pradesh and Andhra.

But extent of their valor is reflected in the fact that once they ruled even Delhi and many parts of South India. The foundations were laid down by the Great Shivaji.

Shiva Ji

It fills one with awe to know that Marathas under Shivaji occupied many areas in the Tamil Nadu which so far away from Deccan. What strength and grit these people must have possessed. Shivaji captured the famous fort of Gingee which is located in the Viluppuram district of Tamil Nadu. Shivaji described the Gingee fort as the toughest he had won in the battles.

Gingee is more of a temples cluster inside a fort on a hill. From this hill, the whole plain below are clearly visible and thus it is best suited for guarding the place below as well as taking shelter in the circumstances of emergency.

Gingee Fort

The history of their forays into deep south begun with Shivaji father Shahaji Bhosale capturing Gandikota in the present day Cuddapah district of Andhra Pradesh. At that time he was a commander in the Army of Bijapur Sultan. Sultan bestowed a large Jagir upon him in the North Karnataka which included the present day areas Bangalore, Kolar and Tumkur. This was the beginning of the strong presence of Marathas in the South India although many maratha families were employed in many Muslim kingdoms of South and Vijaynagar empire.

Shahaji Bhosale was almost an independent ruler of the Jagirs. He died suddenly in 1664 and his son Venkoji took over the administration of the Jagirs. Venkoji was the son of Tuka Bai Mohite whereas Shivaji was the son of Jija Bai, the first wife of Shahaji. This way he was the brother of Shivaji. Venkoji lost no time in shaking off the allegiance to Bijapur Sultan and took campaign to Thanjavur in 1675 marking the beginning of Maratha people’s absorption into the alien culture of Tamil Nadu. These people are called “Raoji”. For centuries they are living there and have almost lost all the links to their relatives in Maharashtra. They speak fluent Tamil and their Marathi has taken different connotations. Original Marathi has undergone a sea change. The feminine gender has almost been replaced by neuter gender (“Gaadi aala”). The pronunciation veers towards Tamil, Telugu or Kannada.

Although Venkoji and his successors were no match to the military genius of Shivaji, they were great patrons of arts and literature. Venkoji himself was a writer of sorts but his sons were versatile writers who wrote in Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu. Tukoji in fact was a great linguist with mastery over these languages. During their regime, the place became a great centre of Carnatic Music. The great saint Thyagayya lived in their time

The marathi influence is attested by the use of gottuvadya and jal taranga. They introduced Kirtan in the Tamil culture. Before this the Tamil had Bhavataras giving religious discourses without the accompaniment of music. During the reign of Marathi kings, Buvas and kirtankars introduced the kirtaan there.

Blarney Stone

What is Blarney? Dictionary defines it as “a talk which aims to charm, flatter, or persuade (often considered typical of Irish people)”. For example
“it took all my Irish blarney to keep us out of court“.

Blarney is a village in Cork Ireland. There is a castle by the same name Blarney Castle. In this castle, on one battlement is a stone made of limestone. The stone is said to have magical powers and anyone kissing it is supposed to get powers of eloquence.

Blarney Castle

Every year thousands of people visit the place from all over the world to kiss the stone and get those powers. Powers to charm others by sweet charismatic talk.

Kissing the stone is in itself a very hard task. Since the stone is set in the battlement wall separated from the main land by a deep chasm or moat.

Kissing the stone

During earlier times, when safety was not considered paramount, it is said that the person was hand head down from heels by a rope and lowered to the stone.

Nowadays it is not so. Since the stone is still at the same place, a railing has been placed on both sides of the stone. Person sits on the edge with his back towards the wall and two people hold his legs while he bends his torso backwards and reaches the stone.

History of the stone:

Although the castle was constructed in 1446, the story of the stone is about 200 years older than that. As with the ancient legends, its origin is also shrouded in the mystery and hypothesis. One legend is that this is the stone which Moses hit with his staff and water came gushing from it. Another legend is that it was Jacob’s pillow which Jeremiah brought to Ireland and since was used as the royal stone by Irish kings. In 1446, King Dermot McCarthy then installed the stone in an enlarged castle he constructed.

How the stone gained magical powers, a local legend claims that an old women, saved from drowning by a king of Munster, rewarded him with a spell, that if he would kiss a stone on the castle’s top, he would gain a speech that would win all to him.

There is even a poem singing the praises of the powers of the stone:

There is a stone there, that whoever kisses,

Oh! He never misses to grow eloquent:

'Tis he may clamber to a lady's chamber,

Or become a member of Parliament.

Doyen of Assamese Films

Assam and its sister states namely Meghalya, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh & Nagaland jointly called 7 sisters once upon a time constituted only one state and were known as Assam only. Like every other state and great diversity of cultures in India, Assam and its sister states have preserved their unique culture. One reason for this is lesser contact with rest of the country due to nature of terrain and Central government’s apathy for years. Despite being very rich in resources, the area has not seen the prosperity due to it. The most important ingredients for an area to progress economically are transportation facilities, communications and raw resources. First two have been neglected for over 57  years.

During the British rule, it was their sole aim to plunder the wealth of state namely petroleum, tea and precious wood. This trend continued almost unabated even after the independence. The area was taken for granted by the governments at center. The result was disillusionment and rise of unrest and many militant groups which also took their toll of progress.

So one can imagine what must had been the scene way back in 1900. At such a time Jyoti Prasad Agarwala was born into a Marwari family which had migrated some generations back to Assam. Marwaris are a business community from Rajasthan. They have the business acumen in their blood.They don’t need any degrees to be successful businessmen. They are highly adventurous as far as the reaching such remote places where no one will thought of going for establishing their shops.

Most of them are non-vegetarians and are known for eating simple food, abstain from drinking, the ingredients which make them ideal businessmen. They spread to the remotest corners of Assam whose people were content to be where they were and eat and wear whatever was available locally. They would not venture outside in search of better opportunities. They are pleasure and self content people. Despite being endowed with most beautiful landscape, Assam could not develop its tourism industry. In this respect Goa and Kerala have been the most enterprising in selling the beauty of nature to foreign tourists. One reason may be their proximity to sea which adds to the natural beauty of the place. One positive aspect of non development of tourism have been that the pristine beauty and unpolluted environment is still intact.

We have digressed much from the subject. It should have been along the straight-line but we have made the journey sinuous. Coming to point, it is enough to say that there are abreactions sometimes. Agarwala who was affluent in wealth and was educated in Calcutta and Britain opted for a altogether different carrier. He became the founding father of Assamese cinema. He was a script writer, song writer, musician and what not. He is fondly called the Roop Kanwar by Assamese people and his death anniversary is celebrated as Shilpi day. He made the first Assamese movie called Joymati which depicted the extreme sacrifice of a princess for his husband who was imprisoned by the  King. She was successful in scheming to free his husband and went into exile. She was captured and tortured.

Agarwala was also a freedom fighter and participated in the freedom movement against the British. He died in 1951 suffering from cancer.

Professor Yasmin Saikia

One day a program on Ahoms-the kings who ruled the state of Assam for almost 700 years-was telecast on Doordarshan TV.

It talked about how Tai Ahoms came to Assam from Yunnan province and settled here bewitched by the natural beauty of the land. I have been to the place and stayed there for 3 years and I can vouch for the fact.

Although they ruled the state for such a long period, adopted the language of the region, married into the local inhabitants, the truth about the history is not all that clear.

I searched on Google and the name of a book “Fragmented Memories” by Yasmin Saikia popped up. I followed the links and was awed by the ladies achievement specially against the background of the backwardness and partial isolation of the Region of North East India.

Prof Yasmin Saikia

Professor Yasmin Saikia is the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict and a Professor of History in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies.

Her research and teaching interests invoke a dynamic transnational and interdisciplinary dialogue situated at the intersection of history, culture and religion.

Fragmented Memories

With a specific focus on contestations and accommodations in South Asia between local, national and religious identities, she examines the Muslim experience in India, Pakistan, and Bangaldesh, and the discourse of nonviolence alongside the practice of violence against women and vulnerable groups.

Assamese herself, Saikia lived in several different Tai-Ahom villages between 1994 and 1996. She spoke with political activists, intellectuals, militant leaders, shamans, and students and observed and participated in Tai-Ahom religious, social, and political events. She read Tai-Ahom sacred texts and did archival research—looking at colonial documents and government reports—in Calcutta, New Delhi, and London. In Fragmented Memories, Saikia reveals the different narratives relating to the Tai-Ahom as told by the postcolonial Indian government, British colonists, and various texts reaching back to the thirteenth century. She shows how Tai-Ahom identity is practiced in Assam and also in Thailand. Revealing how the “dead” history of Tai-Ahom has been transformed into living memory to demand rights of citizenship, Fragmented Memories is a landmark history told from the periphery of the Indian nation.

Marathi literary festival in Ghuman Punjab

88th Marathi Literary Festival was celebrated in 2015 thousand mile away from Maharashtra in a non descript village called Ghuman in Gurdaspur district of Punjab. Looks surprising why? The reason is that this village has an important link with Maharashtra. Great saint Namdeo came here during his wanderings and remained here for 18 years.

He is said to have born in Naras-Vamani village of Satara district in Maharashtra, Bhagat Namdeo. It was during 12 to 13 century but there are doubts. Anyway it was before the founder of Sikh religion Guru Nanak was born. Imagine about 800 years ago how the saint must have travelled nearly 2000 kilometers when the means of transportation were few and far between. And also why he chose this place only. During these years saint preached here about the one god and leave the bad customs like casteism plaguing the society here. 

Saint Namdev

In one of his compositions , he tells the God, how he was thrown out from the temple as he belonged to lower caste. He himself beseeches the God why He had ordained him to be born in the family of cloth dyers which is considered low caste. He tells God that he has returned out from your temple and sitting at the backside of the temple. Full poem in Gurumukhi with English meaning is reproduced below.

People here still revere him. His teachings were so pious that 61 of his Shabads were included in Adi Granth , the holy book of Sikhs by Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth guru of Sikhs.

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier: Father of Modern Chemistry

Antoine Lavoisier, son of a wealthy lawyer,  was a social climber, tax collector and widely held to be the founder of modern chemistry. He was born in 1743 and was put to guillotine in 1794 on the charges of selling the adulterated tobacco which was a luxury and was very costly. It came from colonies in South America established by Europeans and employed black people as captives.

He discovered oxygen gas and named it so. Joseph Priestly, English scientist had also discovered this gas but named it “dephlogisticated air“. Both knew that the gas was closely associated with combustion in or around 1774. Priestly even demonstrated the synthesis of the gas by heating the mercury oxide with focused sun rays before Lavoisier when the former was a guest of the latter’s family on a tour to France. After some time of this event, Lavoisier also synthesized oxygen by an entirely different method.

He also demonstrated that water which was considered an element to be made of two elements oxygen and hydrogen. He devised a very brilliant method to split the water into its forming elements. The water was boiled and steam was passed through a coiled pipe made of iron. The box containing the coil was joined to another pipe which was dipped into the water at other end. The steam reacted with iron forming oxide thus subtracting the oxygen from water. Another component, namely Hydrogen, went out and bubbled through water and was collected by displacement above water.

Similarly he showed that air which again was considered an element was in fact a mixture of gases. He is also credited with starting the nomenclature of the elements known during his time. He even put the heat also among the elements list. He is thus responsible for initiating the process of documentation of chemistry.

His another great achievement was what is now known as Stoichiometry in chemistry. It is in a way is conservation of mass. He decomposed the salts of known weight and weighed the products and found that total amount remains the same. This audit of the mass has been responsible for the discovery of new compounds and elements and research chemists regularly make use of the this technique to pinpoint the missing mass.

Such a great scientist met with a very sad end. He was hanged when he was barely 50 years old.

Bitter Side of Einstein’s Life

The family life of one of the greatest scientists was far from being happy. He married Mileva Maric in 1903 and divorced her in 1919. In the intial phase of married life, Einstein was happy but after sometimes quarrels began and they splitted though the couple has three children.

Albert Einstein

In a letter to her, found recently, Einstein accuses her of not passing his letters to his children. He arrived at this conclusion from the fact that children did not return him any greetings as they were unaware of his letters.

Mileva Maric

There were also quarrels over the money he sent for the maintenance. He wrote that every quarter he sent 5600 marks which drained his income.

This letter is written in his own handwriting on 12th December 1914 and is going under hammer soon

Harappa Culture

In the early part of 3rd millennium, three great civilizations developed nearly simultaneously on Nile, Euphrates & Indus rivers. We know a great deal about the first two because they have left us written records in the form of papyrus scrolls or long engravings on stones.

People of Indus valley, on the other hand, hardly left any written records except few inscriptions on the seals. So knowledge about Indus valley civilization is incomplete and subject to continuous updation.

Archaeologists call this civilization Harappa culture after the modern name of the place in Punjab located on the left bank of river Ravi. Meohenjo Daro, the second city, is located in Sind on the right bank of Indus river.

The culture was spread over 950 miles from North to South and includes large and small cities like Kalibanga in the valley of old Sarasvati river and many villages near Ropar on upper Sutlej up to Lothal in Gujarat. That this culture was same is proved from the use of bricks of same shape and size.

Excavations

This was an truly Indian people civilization with no influence or migration from the Middle East. It was the continuation of early village culture. Each city had a well-fortified citadel. The uniformity in planning of streets, bricks and layout of the cities indicate a single centralized state rather than a number of free communities.

Viramamunivar alias Father Costanzio Beschi: Great Tamil Poet

Perhaps the greatest literary figure in Later Tamil poetry was Viramamunivar (1680-1747). Actually it was the pen name of Father Costanzio Beschi, an Italian Jesuits who taught for 36 years in Tamil country.

Like many early Christian missionaries, he lived in wholly Indian fashion and attained a complete mastery over the Tamil language and literary conventions.

It is doubtful if any European before or since has gained so profound a knowledge of an Indian language. Beschi’s long poem “Tembavani” tells the stories from the Old and New Testaments in ornately beautiful Tamil.

His style and the treatment of his themes were altogether in keeping with tradition, but influence of Tasso, an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata, has been traced in his work.

Koh-I-Noor: A diamond with troubled history

Koh-I-Noor
Size: 105.602 carats (21.1204 g)
Colour: Finest white
Cut: Cushion
Discovered: Date unknown in India

Kohinoor

The name means” Mountain of light” in Persian language. Once known as the largest diamond in the world. It is believed to have originated in Andhra together with its double called”Darya-ye-Noor” meaning “Sea of light”.

It was originally owned by Kakatiya Dynasty which installed it in a temple as the EYE of the goddess. It has had a troubled history having been stolen, confiscated or taken over as war loot by various invaders.

Presently it is a part of the Crown of Queen Elizabeth having been confiscated from its owners in 1850 by imperial powers.

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