From my diary
I love to read, read about people, places, interesting facts, interesting events etc etc and through this blog I wish to share the same with you. These are are stories about Kings and Queens, Freedom fighters and political leaders, celebrities and criminals, places and palaces, temples and shrines, important events and inventions etc etc Most of my stories have been borrowed from books, magazines, social media etc and it is difficult to acknowledge them individually. However I wish to thank all of them and declare that this blog is not for any commercial pleasure. It is only for the sheer love of reading and enjoying life.
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25-4-2024
When Einstein gave lectures at U.S. universities, the question students asked him most was: Do you believe in God? And he always answered: I believe in the God of Spinoza.
Baruch de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher considered one of the great rationalists of 17th century philosophy, along with Descartes.
According to Spinoza, God would say: “Stop praying. I want you to go out into the world and enjoy your life. I want you to sing, have fun and enjoy everything I've made for you.
“Stop going into those dark, cold temples that you built yourself and saying they are my house. My house is in the mountains, in the woods, rivers, lakes, beaches. That's where I live and there I express my love for you.
“Stop blaming me for your miserable life; I never told you there was anything wrong with you or that you were a sinner, or that your sexuality was a bad thing. Sex is a gift I have given you and with which you can express your love, your ecstasy, your joy. So don't blame me for everything that others made you believe.
“Stop reading alleged sacred scriptures that have nothing to do with me. If you can't read me in a sunrise, in a landscape, in the look of your friends, in your son's eyes—you will find me in no book!
“Stop asking me, ‘Will you tell me how to do my job?’ Stop being so scared of me. I do not judge you or criticize you, nor get angry or bothered. I am pure love.
“Stop asking for forgiveness, there's nothing to forgive. If I made you, I filled you with passions, limitations, pleasures, feelings, needs, inconsistencies, and best of all, free will. Why would I blame you if you respond to something I put in you? How could I punish you for being the way you are, if I'm the one who made you? Do you think I could create a place to burn all my children who behave badly for the rest of eternity? What kind of god would do that?
“Respect your peers, and don't give what you don't want for yourself. All I ask is that you pay attention in your life—alertness is your guide.
“My beloved, this life is not a test, not a step on the way, not a rehearsal, not a prelude to paradise. This life is the only thing here and now—and it is all you need.
“I have set you absolutely free, no prizes or punishments, no sins or virtues, no one carries a marker, no one keeps a record.
You are absolutely free to create in your life. It’s you who creates heaven or hell.
“Live as if there is nothing beyond this life, as if this is your only chance to enjoy, to love, to exist. Then you will have enjoyed the opportunity I gave you. And if there is an afterlife, rest assured that I won't ask if you behaved right or wrong, I'll ask, ‘Did you like it? Did you have fun? What did you enjoy the most? What did you learn?’
“Stop believing in me; believing is assuming, guessing, imagining. I don't want you to believe in me, I want you to believe in you. I want you to feel me in you when you kiss your beloved, when you tuck in your little girl, when you caress your dog, when you bathe in the sea.
“Stop praising me. What kind of egomaniac God do you think I am? I'm bored with being praised. I'm tired of being thanked. Feeling grateful? Prove it by taking care of yourself, your health, your relationships, the world. Express your joy! That's the way to praise me.
“Stop complicating things and repeating as a parrot what you've been taught about me. Why do you need more miracles? So many explanations?
“The only thing for sure is that you are here, that you are alive, that this world is full of wonders.”
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A mighty HERO from Modi's team:
This is a story TV of 1 Bureaucrat who has achieved big milestones on his Merit.
This is Story of Narendramodi,
Naveen Patnayak & Ashwini Vaishnaw.
Rail Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw to get elected to Rajya Sabha for 2nd time on BJP Ticket from Odisha, with support from State’s ruling BJD. On top of it, Ashwini Vaishnaw is from Rajasthan!
CM Naveen Patnayak has long association & personal relationship with Vaishnaw and holds him in high esteem. Ties are 30 yrs old.
Ashwini Vaishnaw joined IAS in 1994 & was allotted Odisha cadre.
1999: Super-cyclone in Odisha!
Ashwini was DM of Cuttack & Balasore. He personally accessed US Navy website to track
super-cyclone’s path.
It was only due to Ashwini Vaishnaw, that all coastal districts of Odisha were able to take timely measures. Atleast 10000 lives were saved. He facilitated quick evacuation of & relief measures for 10000+ people from coastal areas of Balasore.
Equally imp was Rehabilitation of cyclone victims and quick restoration of essential services in the two districts, which was successfully managed by Ashwini Vaishnaw.
He was only 29 yrs old then, but his work earned big applaud from
Naveen.
But Ashwini Vaishnaw was being noticed by Centre too. PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee requested CM Naveen to send Vaishnaw to Delhi on deputation, who accepted request with heavy heart. And so in 2003, Vaishnaw joined PMO as Deputy Secretary.
In 2008, Ashwini Vaishnaw quit IAS & joined University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School to pursue management degree. Later worked in Top positions in Top MNCs until 2012, when he set up his own automotive component manufacturing companies.
Then came turning point.
Time when he caught watchful eyes of Narendramodi!
2 units to manufacture components for Maruti Suzuki & Honda, were being set up in Gujarat when Modi was CM Ashwini Vaishnaw had formed his own company “Three Tee Auto Logistics Pvt Ltd" & was part of project. To finish work in record 9 months,
Ashwini Vaishnaw stayed in a container at site of two under-construction units.
When CM Narendramodi heard about Record Time Finish & the man behind it, he invited
Ashwini Vaishnaw for a meet & developed a bond Instantly.
They both remained in touch even after Modi became PM in 2014.
To free PiyushGoyal from IMP Responsibility of Railways (having mammoth task of focusing on numerous Imp FTAs), Narendra Modi was looking for a Hard Task-master & Techno Savvy man. That time he requested Ashwini Vaishnaw to join politics to serve Bharat, to which he agreed.
Now, TASK of getting him elected on RS!
Task because sparing 1 seat also while managing Political Equations from own Party Politician, is not simple. Then Narendra Modi remembered his good friend & seasoned politician CM Naveen Patnayak.
Through one BJD Lok Sabha MP, proposal was sent by Modi-Shah to CM Patnaik, who IMMEDIATELY agreed to it as he's still fond of Ashwini Vaishnaw & knew his potential.
PM Narendramodi called CM Naveen & formally requested him to get Ashwini Vaishnaw elected to RS from Odisha. Patnaik said he would be happy to do so. Thus, Vaishnaw was elected to RS in 2019.
Same Adjustment being repeated even now for 2nd Term.
BJD is not in NDA. BJP is main Opposition Party to BJD in Odisha.
And Still, two Political leaders keep aside Politics to get an Able Person elected in Interest of Nation!
Wow! Just Wow!!
Jai Hind
**
An inside view of an IAS officer's life. Though long but worth reading:-
"CHAPTER 5
HARDSHIPS OF AN IAS OFFICER
One day a senior friend forwarded a post written by a very senior army officer, wherein he spewed unadulterated venom against the IAS. He cited the case of the Chinese debacle of 1962 stating that Nehru died as a result of the shock, Defence Minister lost his job, army generals were removed, but no one questioned the role of the Defence Secretary, an IAS officer, and he went scot free. There were other such stories to buttress his thesis that it is the IAS, and IAS alone, which never gets punished for their failures and the IAS 'clan' gang up to perpetuate this immunity. I have heard and read such vicious comments earlier making out a case as if IAS officers just enjoy themselves, doing nothing themselves, and as a result, never take the blame for any lapse, cleverly passing it onto others. This misconception needs to be removed from everyone's mind. I will narrate my experience in the IAS as a case study, which would be similar to most IAS officers. I make this effort especially because it comes from an army officer, as I hold the Indian army in the highest esteem. I wouldn't have cared if such remark was passed by some of our 'paid' journalists or politicians or businesspersons with vested interests, as the IAS hits them at their weakest point, corruption.
I qualified in the 1976 batch of the IAS and was allotted Bihar cadre. In 1977, while still on training and absolutely raw, had to open firing on a 5000 strong fierce mob of naxalite supporters to save my men and weapons. Broke my head in the process. The whole encounter lasted from midnight to six in the morning. During my training period, a rogue Block Development Officer, who was caught by me stealing government money and suspended pending enquiry, tried to honey-trap me. My alertness and God's grace saved me. This was just the training period.
As SDM, Barh, district Patna, a completely fabricated case was filed against me alleging that I raided a house, molested their women, stole gold ornaments. Why ? Because the subdivision was burning with the anti-reservation riots in 1978 and one of the crooks, who was burning a bus, was hiding in one house from where we arrested him. He belonged to a privileged caste. No one dare touch them. The Sub-judicial Judicial Magistrate, who pretended to be my friend, took cognisance of this stupid complaint and I became an accused. Why did he do so ? Because he was kow-towing to the powerful caste, a member of which had filed the case against me. The case dragged on for two years and went to the High Court. Being thoroughly baseless, it was finally quashed. As an SDM, I had to face and control innumerable riot situations, resorting to lathi charge and even firing to control riotous mobs on the rampage. I had to arrest a powerful politician as he was creating a riot situation on the highway, brandishing a gun. This resulted in my instant transfer to Patna secretariat just after a year as SDM, whereas the normal tenure of an SDM is 2 years. All along this period, the sub-division faced one of the worst floods in its history. Spent days and nights on water distributing relief. Thrice was almost killed navigating turbulent waters in a tiny relief boat.
From Barh I was posted as OSD to the Chief Secretary. Caught swindling of government money to the tune of Rs 28 lakhs (which meant lot of money in 1979) by a contractor and reported the matter to government. It was suppressed by vested interests. Over time he became a big man and even got national awards and recognition, employing some of my seniors in his company, after their retirement. But years later, in 2005-06, I caught him again at swindling government funds. This time I was the boss. Got his firm blacklisted. I made a life long enemy of him and all those colleagues of mine who thought highly of him. Even as OSD, I was mobbed twice by some goons, with the police watching, for not sharing confidential papers with the goons.
Next, I was posted as District Magistrate, Monghyr in June 1982. There was a very powerful politician who was used to being treated with lot of deference by my predecessors. When I joined, as was his practice, he invited me to his constituency for a welcome ceremony, which basically meant giving a message to the people of the district that the DM is in his pocket. I did not go. He was livid as it was a big insult. He became antagonistic from that very day. Then things became worse when I started an enquiry on his assets. Then I ruthlessly stopped mass cheating in the school/college exam centres in his constituency, for which I had to even resort to firing on an unruly mob of cheaters and their helpers. Now things were at boiling point. To get me demoralised he invited His Excellency the Governor to his constituency. I advised government not to let the Governor accompany such a criminal politician. Government didn't listen. I directly met the Governor and told him. He said the rogue was his friend and he cannot cancel the program. He came. There was lot of embarrassment for the Governor as this guy brought along a known criminal (we had raided his so called motel, which was actually a brothel for senior officers and politicians, in an earlier post) in the same car he travelled with the Governor. I refused to have lunch with the Governor as he was with these crooks and saw the embarrassing sight of the Governor so pally with these rogues. The Chief Minister sent messengers thrice that I somehow 'manage' this politician. Finally, when water was upto his nose, he asked me to see him in his office. He almost pleaded with me to 'manage' this fellow as he needed his support politically. When I did not, I was transferred just after 10 months to the Secretariat as Joint Secretary, Department of Education. 'Basu has been duly muzzled " commented a batchmate.
Trouble started in Education department from day one. One racket the minister was running was in grant of constituent status to affiliated colleges. This is big money. It operates as follows. Open a college. Get it 'somehow' affiliated to the university. Recruit people as teachers based on money. They are ready to pay as the promise is that once the college becomes a constituent college, s(he) becomes a regularised permanent university teacher, without due process, with deficient qualification. And in both processes, the minister gets a dakshina. I brought this to a standstill by proposing a transparent policy and sending it to the minister for his approval. The minister couldn't approve it as his business would have come to a halt. And I stopped seeing all these files because no policy was in place. Stalemate ! The minister played his move. He proposed that I be posted as DM, Darbhanga, in which his constituency lay, claiming that Darbhanga needs a 'tough' DM as things had deroriatted. Despite my protest with the CM, I was sent there. I joined on 1st November, 1983. Was sent back to Patna secretariat on 1st May, 1984. Six months. The minister had cleverly got me out of his hair.
The Darbhanga experience is interesting. All netas got annoyed as I did not allow any unruly mob in the name of demonstrations near my office. Then, yuva neta of those days, and heir apparent to the Delhi durbar, Rajiv Gandhi, came visiting. Some congress wallahs defiled my Collectorate wall with the slogan " RAJIV GANDHI ZINDABAD ". Got that white-washed in full public view, rounded up all miscreants by the day. When the famous minister of education protested at my 'atrocious' behaviour disrespecting the yuva neta, I threatened more arrests, again in full public view. Minister had to swallow the public insult, but seethed with rage. In a few months, during the annual school exams (Darbhanga was famous for cheating), rounded up a principal, teachers, students, parents. Cheating came down to zero. Netas again got annoyed. Then mantriji wanted to stop Jagannath Mishra, who was in the opposite camp of the congress party, from holding a meeting in the mantriji's constituency. I did not agree to curtail anyone's political freedom of free speech, which is his democratic right under the Constitution, and does not depend on the whims of any CM or minister. Home Secretary, Chief Secretary, Minister, CM all yelled at me and threatened me. I stuck to my point. Meeting went off peacefully. Last straw on the mantriji's and CMs back was when I threw out on the street, the most prominent politician and his luggage, from a rest house which he had illegally occupied. I was summoned by the CM, told "You go to extremes Mr Basu" and transferred back to Patna. I replied "Sir, I was only implementing your law, passed by your assembly, in your state " and left. Two dislocations with wife, kids and luggage within the year, from Patna to Monghyr to Patna to Darbhanga to Patna. While all this was going on, the sideshow of riots, Dalit atrocity cases, rape, communal tension etc. was being controlled by me as DM.
All this strain, harassment, expenditure, humiliation, threats, on a salary of Rs 900 per month and zero perks and, except for the 33 months as SDM and DM, allotted a flat in a chawl-type accommodation, aptly nick-named Kabutar khana by us. The place had zero hygiene (my little son was perpetually ill and contracted TB), muck, sewerage water overflowing, stinking. And I was staying in a 6th floor 500 sq ft accommodation in a building with no lift, ensuring that no elder parent can visit you. Doctors also refused to climb 6 floors when my wife had some complications in her first pregnancy. It was life below the poverty line. By now I had about 8 years of service behind me.
After I was transferred out of Darbhanga, the establishment wanted to punish me by posting me as Director, Treasuries. The office of the Directorate of Treasuries was in a shed outside the Secretariat building, and required a one hour job. Unfortunately for them, I learnt a lot about finance in those 3 years which helped me throughout my career. And the best part was, apart from my close friends, nobody bothered to contact me there. So, I read the most wonderful books during that period. Learnt economics, history, political thought, apart from great novels in literature, using the secretariat library.
In 1987, I was posted in the Industries department. Got into serious trouble with the minister when I objected to doles to 'favourite' industries. Within the year sent as Director, Consolidation, another post where lot should happen but nothing happens. Within a week got sent to Land Development Bank as the Administrator, government having superseded the Board because of rampant corruption and the LDB lending functions stopped by NABARD because of that. The erstwhile Chairman was a famous Don, with all India influence. And one of the notorious members was that same very neta I met in Monghyr. Battle raged with me filing criminal cases against the humungous fraud, dismissing more than 150 people who were illegally appointed, many without requisite qualifications. Needless to say I was threatened, warned, repeatedly gheraod, attempted to be assaulted ( only my acute cunning and my guru saved me ! ), false criminal case filed against me, Non-bailable warrants and Bailable warrants were issued against me during this period, etc etc etc. There was also an attack on me gone amiss with my driver getting shot in the chest. Somehow his life could be saved that time. It was a miracle. The surgeon told me that the bullet had gone through and through the chest, without touching the heart, lungs, spine. The poor fellow, however, died of kalazar two years later. In one false case, I had to rush to Supreme court to get the criminal case stayed. I got a close view how matters are disposed off in the courts. But I shall say no more on that.
Within 2 years I landed up in Finance department, and later as Registrar, Cooperatives for 9 months. As Registrar had to fight corruption by the minister, who had made transfers of officers a money-making scheme. Luckily my Delhi posting came through and I went as Director, Ministry of Power, GoI in May, 1992. But the Annual Confidential Report was spoiled by my bosses.
Even MoP was not safe. Minster wanted direct supply of power by NTPC to some favourite industries at Re 1/kwh. It was an absurd proposal because NTPC was not legally permitted to sell power directly to industrial units. They have to go through the Electricity Boards. Secondly, power @ Re 1/kwh was ridiculously low and would have meant heavy losses to NTPC. But no one would bell the cat. I did. Got reprimanded but the proposal fell through. Lost my promotion as Joint Secretary for more than a year thanks to that spoilt ACR. I was Joint Secretary after promotion for only nine months in the ministry. In another development, since I did not let a wrong loan proposal being approved by a CPSU, my work allocation got changed. Again, due to opposing an absurd and wrong proposal of a very big industrial house, my charge got changed a second time in 9 months. But I am lucky to the extent that, my Secretary helped me continue there and did not revert me back to the cadre i.e. Bihar.
I went back to Bihar in 1987 after 5 years and was posted as Commissioner, Commercial Taxes. The CMs henchman, and 'collector' was in my department. War broke out but I had to leave for Delhi to finish a job for Ministry of Power. I came back after six months, again as CCT. Battle resumed. Despite his relationship with the CM, we managed to get him suspended and prosecuted in a criminal case long suppressed in the department. Battle ultimately got fierce and I was quietly shifted to the post of Secretary, Energy Department. This was a disaster as the minister was a rogue and wanted to do all the wrong things. Before being a minister he was a local hoodlum. Again war broke out and I was transferred out from there at the end of four months, the immediate cause being difference of opinion on the promotion case of an officer. This time I was put in a safe place as Secretary to the Anomaly Revision Committee, with a high court judge as its Chairman, Finished the job well in time. In the meantime, the rogue, whom I had denied promotion being ineligible, and who was close to the minister and was of a very powerful caste, filed a concocted criminal case against me. I was accused of having beaten him up and getting his purse snatched. Case continued.
After a year, in November 2000, I was posted as Joint Secretary, Ministry of Disinvestment and left for Delhi with the case still pending against me. My lawyer, a relative of the judge, with whom I had worked in the Anomaly Revision Committee, kept assuring me that the case was being postponed with dates after dates. After about two years, something in his demeanour in our phone conversations between Delhi and Patna, got me suspicious. I checked and found that my lawyer had been bluffing me all along. The court had issued summons, BW, NBW, attachment of my property order, as I was shown as absconding !. I got a new lawyer. With lot of effort I could get justice and a dismissal order from the court. Tension, anxiety, money spent, energy spent in just trying to prove that I am innocent and that the whole complaint is a pack of lies. Absolutely Kafkaesque.
Non-gazetted employees strike is like an annual festival in Bihar. All employees go on strike barring IAS officers and some Bihar Administrative Service officers. Departments are manned by these officers. I was the nodal officer during two such strikes assisting the government to negotiate with the employee associations on their demands. The political bosses act the good guys promising the employees the moon. It is our job, as IAS officers, to hold the reigns and stay within the State resources (this also happens during freebie announcements by over zealous netas). So, all the angst is directed against the nodal officer. I got gheraoed many times during these strikes. Once my staff car driver was assaulted. On another occasion, a mob of secretariat employees blocked my car, a Maruti van, surrounding it, and started rocking it from side to side to topple it, perhaps with plans to set it on fire. Luckily, a police team reached just in time and rescued us.
I moved to Ministry of Disinvestment in November, 2000. Here one is not dealing with petty criminals and politicians but the real big players of Indian industry, banking, audit firms, law firms, heavy weight politicians and the works. The stakes are very very high of buying big CPSUs. That means pulls, pressures, cheating, bluffing, misleading, corruption at its best, by the best. Reliance, Tata, Suzuki, Vedanta, top hoteliers, Arthur Anderson, KPMG, PWH, Amarchand Mangaldas, Dua and Dua, Pathak brothers, JP Morgan, Duestche Bank, Merrill Lynch, UBS Warburg, the who is who of the corporate world. Luckily for us the minister, Shri Arun Shourie, was an honest and competent man. As a result we could ward off every attack successfully but it was like playing twenty games of chess simultaneously and winning them all ! I saw the ugly side of our corporate world in those five years. All they think of is their profit. Ethics, integrity, morality, fair play, patriotism, all are sacrificed for the bottom line. All the skills that I had learnt till date in my service came in handy to outwit these people and get the fair price for government.
Went back to Bihar in January, 2006 and got posted as Principal Secretary, Urban Development. In March 2006 had an encounter with that famous man, whom I had encountered at the beginning of my service as stated above, and who had swindled Rs 28 lakhs of government. This time he had to be blacklisted for five years for substandard work. First enemy made. Then one day I caught two private hospitals for dumping medical waste on a public street. They were fined Rs 50,000 each. I was told by a friendly high court judge that he had been requested by someone even above him to convey to me to withdraw the penalty orders or else even he (the friendly judge) won't be able to protect me. The guy was from a very powerful caste, who were in political power then, with roots in the bureaucracy, political circle, and the higher judiciary. Somehow, I won the day. But the minister was getting restless. He got wild when I drafted an amendment Bill of the Municipal Law, which reduced his powers drastically. I could see that top bosses were getting annoyed day by day. A Bollywood celebrity, close to the establishment, wanted a change in law on FARs to build a multiplex. I put normal restrictions and precautionary clauses in the amended law. He wanted more concessions, which was not possible for safety reasons. I refused. Showdown. Too many netas angry. Then again, someone in the establishment had a bright idea to allot prime land to local hoteliers at dirt cheap rates on nomination basis. I said we should go for an all India tender. War broke out at the meeting. The proposal couldn't go through with Urban Development objecting. Then God helped me again. I was posted as Additional Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, where I joined in April, 2007.
Agriculture was no different. I was promoted as Secretary, Agriculture in February, 2010. A MNC violated the law of the land. We proposed action. The same battle of wits with vested interests and the bureaucracy continued. Denying characters from Mumbai who wanted clearance for Pesticide manufacture without following procedures; refusing two investors who wanted a prime land belonging to the ministry to be leased out for commercial activity; blacklisting another big MNC for bribing our officials; action against corrupt netas in one other organisation of the ministry; initiating action against two IAS officers, one being my batchmate. All actions were taken against heavy odds, pressures, threats, the whole works. But despite all that one could contribute certain good things in the service of the country.
There is nothing unique in my experience and hence neither do I deserve any commendation. I can give examples of similar, if not identical, experience of my contemporaries. Shankar Prasad, Sri Prakash Keshav, Vijayaraghavan, Anup Mukherjee, Rahul Sarin, late Birendra Kishore Sinha, Anil Kumar Upadhya, Suraj Prakash Seth, Raj Kumar Singh, Naveen Kumar, Neelam Nath, Kirti Chandra Saha, late Shubhokirti Mazumdar, Debashish Gupta, late Kamlesh Kumar Pandey and many others faced the same harassments, same attacks, same frequent transfers as me for speaking up. Anup and Birendra were dumped in corporations which had no money, and hence no pay. Anup for objecting to Chairman, RJD (L P Yadav) attending official meetings taken by CM, Ms Rabri Devi. Birendra for writing a critique of flawed policies. Suraj Prakash Seth was denied Secretaryship in GOI, despite being empanelled, by the Cabinet Secretary and Principal Secretary to PM, for giving a written complaint against his minister for record tampering and later for objecting to diktats of the minister in coal linkages, as Special Secretary, Ministry of Coal. Had government listened to him, there would not have been any coal scam. Naveen was removed as Secretary, Urban Dev within months for opposing a foul proposal of his minister. Same happened to Anil Upadhya when he objected to foul proposals of Civil Aviation minister. And we all know the scam that followed after that in civil aviation. These are just few examples. And, of course, we had heard of the troubles faced by late Abhash Kumar Chatterjee, Ashit Ranjan Bandopadhya, TCA Ramanujam, N. K. Sinha, K. K. Pathak in my cadre for being upright, and the harassment faced by outstanding and honest officers of other cadres, like Shyamal Ghosh, Pradip Baijal, Parekh, Bhave and many more.
My conviction is that, but for the IAS, IPS, and IFoS, and our constant battle with the corrupt, the criminals, and the anti-nationals, the likes of politicians we have had, and are still having, India would not have progressed the way it did. We were the inoculation Sardar Patel gave the nation against multiple diseases like corruption, criminalisation of politics, anti-national activities which attacked the nation from time to time. Luckily, now the doctor has also arrived in 2014 !
Here is the summary of my postings during my service in Bihar:
You would have got the drift by now. The IAS officer's life is like running on sand, tied hand and foot. The result is diseases. The stress, the threats, the poor living conditions, low salary, bad roads, bad environment gets you. I got spondylitis, UTI, asthma, chronic back pain, filaria within six years into the service. After nine years, developed a nasty immune disorder which was life threatening. Later, developed blood pressure. And finally my tryst with depression. There are colleagues who got it worse - cancer, kidney failure, liver disease, psychological disorder, heart attacks, killed by a mob, killed by a bomb, shot dead by terrorists, drowned during flood relief work, and much more. And we all face multiple false criminal cases, privilege motions, contempt cases. If an IAS officer is still alive and standing, it is a miracle.
And it is a myth that IAS officers do not get punished. In Bihar, several IAS officers have been criminally prosecuted, faced long jail terms. Same is the story in other states. I have myself been Enquiry Officer in departmental proceedings against very senior officers. No one is spared if he is guilty of misconduct. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes innocent and honest IAS officers suffer. Pradip Baijal, Parekh, Shyamal Ghosh, are some examples. So, to say that IAS officers have it easy is misleading.
Then why does this senior army officer have this strange grouse against the IAS ? The reason is simple. Any CM or PM needs just 10 % of 'committed' IAS officers to run the show. The CM has to have these compromisers, yes-men, and nodders in the key positions of Chief Secretary, Finance, Industry, Irrigation, Education, Health, Tax department, Home, Personnel, Principal Secretary to CM etc. plus 10/12 posts of DM in key districts. Rest of the 90% IAS officers can be posted anywhere, it does not matter. Now the public, the press, the army officer, the judiciary, see and interact with the 10% chosen ones (we call them 'sada suhagan') alone and form their opinion about the IAS. The bright, honest, sincere officers, who do not kow-tow to the CM, are off the radar screen. The same ratio applies in the case of the PM. It is for the first time, I find a PM, Shri Modi, who has been keeping all men and women of integrity in key positions such as Dr. P. K. Mishra, Amarjeet Sinha, Bhaskar Khulbe, in the PMO; Rajiv Guaba as Cabinet Secretary, Shri Shakti Kant Das as Governor, RBI, J. B. Mahapatra as CBDT, B. P. Sharma in Personnel and now head of Banking recruitments, brilliant officers in Finance, Rural Development, Energy, to name just a few. But this is not normal in my experience. In the states the old formula is still in vogue.
If you are in the IAS, then not only are you under inhuman stress, but your whole family suffers. The salary allowed only a very middle-middle class financial position. So, baring the bare minimum food, clothes, school fees, there was no money for anything else. We got our first TV only in 1986, ten years after joining the service, that too because I went for a two month training course to Australia and saved some money. In Patna, my wife and kids all went around in shared rickshaws. Staff car is permissible only for government work. I walked to office for many years till I was entitled to an office car. We could not afford to go on any holidays, or eating out, or buying expensive toys for the kids. Going to movies was a rarity. By the time I came to Delhi in 1992, our salary had gone up a little thanks to the pay revision, as a result of which we could occasionally go out to eat. Despite all the hardships, my sons did very well in their respective academic fields. Full credit goes to these young lads. My wife was the worst sufferer. Apart from the taunts and nasty jibes from friends and relatives for the poor standard of living, which she coped with very well, and ever since her marriage required to lead a very hard life, she struggled hard to pursue her academic interests. She came from a family were she had not seen hardships and was the only loving child of her parents. They were well to do. And after marriage she was thrust into this life of hardship, inconvenience due to the frequent transfers of her husband, a life she was not used to at all. At one point she had to stay back in Delhi because of the boy's education and I rented a very small house in a far off area in Rohini - that's what we could afford - with the whole load of the household on her shoulders with no help whatsoever. Cooking, looking after the children's needs, dropping off the kids at the school bus stop at 6 am in the morning, driving to college, taking classes, rushing back to pick up the kids from the bus stop, studying for the next days class, running to the car mechanic for repairs in the car - by that time an old Maruti OMNI - every other day. That is the time she developed high blood pressure which got neglected. Over the years her health deteriorated and finally she fell victim to CKD. All because of her husband in the IAS. Her career also was ruined. She was an extraordinarily bright student. She was rank 1 in the Calcutta Board Higher Secondary examination, rank 2 in BA (History hons), from Presidency college, Calcutta university, rank 1 gold medallist in MA (History), Calcutta university, PhD, which thesis was so scholarly that Oxford University Press published it as a book, then brought it out in an omnibus form, and her book became included as standard text in Delhi university. We stayed in Bihar till 1992. She could not get a job there despite her excellent qualification because in Bihar, at least in those days, one had to have the backing of a politician to get a job in the university or colleges. One college, let her take classes, but that only in Hindi, and on a princely sum of Rs 250 per month. She had to learn Hindi. Valuable years of her life was wasted. When we moved to Delhi, she worked below her level as Assistant Research Officer in Teen Murti House. She simultaneously tried to get an Assistant Professor's job in some Delhi university college. She must have appeared for such interviews in two dozen colleges over the next four years without success. Delhi university offered Assistant Professor's job in those days only to those who satisfied the three conditions of (a) being a student of Delhi university, (b) those with leftist leanings, and (c) those who are sponsored by some senior professor of the History department of the university. My wife did not meet any of the criteria. But God and guru helps them who have no one to help them. When she appeared for the interview in Hansraj college, two factions amongst the selectors had a difference of opinion. Both factions ranked my wife as No. 2 but their favourite candidates, two different individuals, as No. 1. Neither side would budge. Ultimately, it was decided that no side wins and let No.2 be selected ! That is how she joined Hansraj college as Assistant Professor. After a few years she was promoted as Associate Professor. At that time, there were no posts of Professors for college teachers. In the meantime, University of Chicago invited her as a guest speaker in the World Conference of Religion held at Chicago. She had been invited to be a guest speaker before that in New Orleans. In both places she had read a paper. Thereafter, she was invited as a guest speaker by Vishwa Bharati University, ICHR, written articles for many organisations. But 'leftist' DU would not offer her an Associate Professor's post despite her brilliant academic career. Last year, Delhi university created the post of Professor in every college. But the selection criteria was absolutely flawed. No value was added to academic record, published books, publications, reputation as a famed teacher, length of service. All the DU was interested in was the number of papers published, irrespective of the standard of the journal or the paper. It was a policy which valued quantity over quality. She was deemed 'ineligible' ! Why did she suffer ? Earlier because she was not a 'leftist', and then because she was not a 'rightist'. Ironically, people ask why is higher education languishing in India and bright boys and girls leave for the US and European universities. This is why. Though this considerably affected me emotionally, it did not trigger any depressive symptoms. But it did affect her health very badly."
An amazing true story 👇
A British Collector named Rous Peter was appointed as Collector of Madurai from 1812 to 1828.
Though a Christian by faith, he respected all faiths including Hinduism and also honored local practices.
Collector Peter was the temple administrator of the Meenakshi Amman Temple and conducted all his duties with sincerity and honesty and respected the religious sentiments of all people and treated people of all faiths equally.
This noble trait earned him the popular nickname ‘Peter Pandian'
Goddess Meenakshi Amman Temple was situated between Collector Peter's residence and office.
Everyday he used to go to the office by his horse and while crossing the temple, he got down from his horse, removed the hat and his shoes and crossed the whole path on his foot.
Through this small gesture he expressed his reverence to the Goddess!
One day there was a heavy downpour in Madurai city and River Vaigai was in spate.
Collector was sleeping in his residence and was suddenly disturbed and woken up by the sound of anklets and he left his bed to find out from where the sound had came.
He saw a small girl wearing pattuvastrams (silk garments) and precious ornaments and addressing him as 'Peter come this way'.
And he came out to follow her and was running behind the little girl to find out who she was!
As he came out of the house and was running, he was shocked as he turned to see behind him, his residence (whole bungalow) being washed away by the flood waters of River Vaigai!
He turned to follow the girl but she disappeared into thin air!
He saw that the girl ran without any shoes and was wearing anklets.
He beleived that his devotion for Mother Goddess Meenakshi had saved his life.
Later, he wished to give a gift to Lord Meenakshi Amman & consulted the priest of temple and ordered for a pair of golden shoes ( padukas ) for Goddess Meenakshi Amman since he had seen the little girl bare feet.
It is thus that the pair of Paadhukams consisting of
412 rubies,
72 emeralds,
and 80 diamonds
were made and donated to the temple.
His name Peter was sculpted on the padukas.
Till this day the pair of Paadhukams are known as 'Peter Paadhukam' 👇
When Rous Peter retired from service , he refused to go back to England and settled in Madurai .
He also wished that when he died , he should be buried in a position such that his eyes face the temple .
It is interesting to note that in that graveyard , Rous Peter’s grave is positioned the way he wished whereas all the other graves face the other way .
To this day , every year at the time of ' Chitrai (Chaitra ) Festival', utsava moorthy of Goddess Meenakshi Amman is decorated with these Peter Padukams.
This is the incidence that had happened more than 200 years back in 1818.
Till this day , once every year one of the descendants of Rous Peter visits the temple 🙏
An amazing true story
A British Collector named Rous Peter was appointed as Collector of Madurai from 1812 to 1828.
Though a Christian by faith, he respected all faiths including Hinduism and also honored local practices.
Collector Peter was the temple administrator of the Meenakshi Amman Temple and conducted all his duties with sincerity and honesty and respected the religious sentiments of all people and treated people of all faiths equally.
This noble trait earned him the popular nickname ‘Peter Pandian'
Goddess Meenakshi Amman Temple was situated between Collector Peter's residence and office.
Everyday he used to go to the office by his horse and while crossing the temple, he got down from his horse, removed the hat and his shoes and crossed the whole path on his foot.
Through this small gesture he expressed his reverence to the Goddess!
One day there was a heavy downpour in Madurai city and River Vaigai was in spate.
Collector was sleeping in his residence and was suddenly disturbed and woken up by the sound of anklets and he left his bed to find out from where the sound had came.
He saw a small girl wearing pattuvastrams (silk garments) and precious ornaments and addressing him as 'Peter come this way'.
And he came out to follow her and was running behind the little girl to find out who she was!
As he came out of the house and was running, he was shocked as he turned to see behind him, his residence (whole bungalow) being washed away by the flood waters of River Vaigai!
He turned to follow the girl but she disappeared into thin air!
He saw that the girl ran without any shoes and was wearing anklets.
He beleived that his devotion for Mother Goddess Meenakshi had saved his life.
Later, he wished to give a gift to Lord Meenakshi Amman & consulted the priest of temple and ordered for a pair of golden shoes ( padukas ) for Goddess Meenakshi Amman since he had seen the little girl bare feet.
It is thus that the pair of Paadhukams consisting of
412 rubies,
72 emeralds,
and 80 diamonds
were made and donated to the temple.
His name Peter was sculpted on the padukas.
Till this day the pair of Paadhukams are known as 'Peter Paadhukam' 👇
When Rous Peter retired from service , he refused to go back to England and settled in Madurai .
He also wished that when he died , he should be buried in a position such that his eyes face the temple .
It is interesting to note that in that graveyard , Rous Peter’s grave is positioned the way he wished whereas all the other graves face the other way .
To this day , every year at the time of ' Chitrai (Chaitra ) Festival', utsava moorthy of Goddess Meenakshi Amman is decorated with these Peter Padukams.
This is the incidence that had happened more than 200 years back in 1818.
Till this day , once every year one of the descendants of Rous Peter visits the temple 🙏
Today's story
" Oh Calcutta, The Fallen Star "
- Written by Aditi Jain
**
Tragic Fall of West Bengal :---
A road journey from Kumardhubi, a small company-owned township where I was brought up, in the western fringes of Bengal, to Calcutta, took you through what was then an undeterred colossal industrial estate. Kumardhubi itself hosted some leading engineering companies, including McNally Bharat, which my father built from its formative years, a foundry which was then India’s largest and most specialised, and a fire-brick plant that was a frontrunner in its field. The ancient national highway that connected India’s capital, Delhi, to its industrial power house, Calcutta, meandered through the towns of Kulti and Asansol with large manufacturing firms such as Indian Iron, British Oxygen, Carew’s Gin, Chittaranjan Locomotives, Bengal Coal, Pilkington Glass, Martin Burn, Sen Raleigh Cycles, amongst hundreds of smaller ancillary units employing millions of people.
As you drove eastwards, you crossed the towns of Raniganj with its huge collieries, previously privately owned and managed by erstwhile giants such as Bird & Company, Thapars and the Tatas. The highway cut through Durgapur, which had a massive steel plant, a fertiliser factory and dozens of smaller engineering and chemical plants.
The journey continued through Burdwan, the then district headquarters, and you ultimately reached Uttarpara on the outskirts of Calcutta. This was a giant industrial hub with hundreds of factories, including Hindustan Motors.
Calcutta, historically, an imperial city with deep water ports like Kidderpore Docks and a navigable river, was the industrial and business capital of the Asia Pacific region, several times the size of Hong Kong and Singapore.
Asia’s largest companies and banks were headquartered here. For instance, the Chartered Bank Building existed even before the merger of Standard and Chartered banks. Lyons Range hosted the stock exchange and the offices of leading insurance companies. In fact, the entire area of Dalhousie and Fairley Place contained the stalwarts of Indian business with names like Martin Burn, Andrew Yule, Bird & Company, Garden Reach, Jessops, Murphy Radio and several businesses across the spectrum from ship building to mining.
Calcutta was a truly global city with a highly diversified demography that included Iraqi Jews, Armenians, Persians, Chinese and others who chose to make it their home. Commercial opportunities were considerable and so was the need for expertise. In Calcutta there was serious money to be made.
Industries in Bengal extended north-eastwards into the tea gardens of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri. These produced the finest tea in the world with auction prices that exceeded those of other produce from across the world.
The tragedy is not that all of this was subsequently destroyed; the tragedy is that it can never be rebuilt.
And that is what happened to Calcutta and the entire industrial manufacturing of Bengal since the 1970s. Left Front governments, particularly under the leadership of Jyoti Basu, Bengal’s erstwhile Chief Minister, cracked down on industry and empowered unions to such an extent that factory after factory began to shut permanently.
The red flags of the Communist Party unions fluttered across the state, creating a condition that made it literally impossible for business to function. Most shut shop, some were nationalised and the wiser ones quickly relocated their offices and plants to other locations. The only significant company that retains its head office in Calcutta today, at Virginia House, and continues to flourish, is ITC. Most of its operations, however, are now spread across other parts of India. None of the other giants exist anymore and if they do, are a tiny fraction of their original size.
Mr Basu, a graduate of University College, London, was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple. He was an activist in his student days and remained one for his entire political career which was propped by labour unions. He depended on them, as they did on him. Consequently, strikes and unrest became the order of the day and companies began to suffer. Many businessmen tried to hang on but, in the end, simply gave up. Bengal had become intolerable to function in. Law and order were replaced by anarchy and goons of the communist party routinely harassed business managers and owners. Millions of workers were laid off as business enterprise either shut or fled the tyranny of the communists. Bengal had not just lost its edge; it had simply lost everything.
Leading brands like Dunlops, Guest Keen Williams, Braithwaite, Burn & Company (after whom the town of Burnpur carries its name) and Metal Box were either nationalised or ceased to exist. Indian business families like the Birlas and Singhanias shifted to Bombay and other parts of India, closing factories and leading to economic ruin. This created massive unemployment.
The Communist government added fuel to the fire when it prevented the police from interfering in labour disputes even when business managers were manhandled and beaten up by union goons.
In 1984, as a young project engineer responsible for a project site in Durgapur, where my employer was contracted to build a material handling plant for Hindustan Fertiliser, I was made to stand on an oil barrel for four hours in the mid-afternoon sun, with the labour unions shouting threatening slogans. The odd part was, I had no clue as to what I had done wrong or indeed what their demands were. Strikes and violence in those years were as common as reporting to work.
Tragically, Bengal, a leader in industry and technology, reduced itself to a laggard state which no sensible businessmen would want to be associated with. Its unions had sent investors scampering away, never to return. The Communist Party and its leadership had ensured this fate. The great companies of Calcutta had closed shop forever.
Subsequently, a reverse migration began to happen and educated Bengalis left their homes for better opportunities elsewhere. Ironically, six decades ago – all roads led to Calcutta; now they all lead away from it. The great industrial hub from Kumardhubi, across Asansol, Raniganj and Durgapur is now a rust belt. In Calcutta, factories that once produced products that were best in class have been replaced by retail showrooms.
Dum Dum airport, once India’s busiest, with direct links to most European and Asian cities, is now a shadow if its former self. Most global airlines have pulled out. From a world class metropolis that boasted the finest Christmas decorations along Chowringhee and Park Street, Calcutta stands reduced to a status of an over-crowded and wretched city.
The communists did realise their folly when Buddhadeb Bhattacharya became Chief Minister, but by then it was too late. Mr Bhattacharya’s plans to revive Bengal, beginning with a chemical manufacturing hub in Nandigram, fell into political controversy. Thereafter, the failed Tata Motors plant in Singur, sealed the fate on any meaningful revival of investment in the state.
Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress, whose anti-capitalist antics were responsible for the cultivated collapse of these projects, subsequently replaced Mr. Bhattacharya. Last election, she assumed her second consecutive term in office, a telling reflection of the sort of interest groups from which she derives her political legitimacy.
Calcutta, upon which an empire had once been built, now lies reduced to just another fallen star. It has no credible prospect of returning to its former glory, at least in my life time. For me and an entire generation of Indians who remember that city for what it once was, that is a dreadful tragedy. Its demise, and indeed that of Bengal, is a clear example of the consequences of disrespect for wealth and those who create it.
It is an important lesson for politicians. When governments create hurdles for business, it undermines their growth and productivity. When they ill-treat them, it leads to a flight of capital and cessation of economic activity; unemployment and unrest inevitably follows.
That, in a nutshell, is Bengal’s history of the last 40 years. Oddly, many policy planners still don’t get it.
" Oh Calcutta, The Fallen Star "
- Written by Aditi Jain
(Copied from a Whatsaap message)
**
Komagata Maru Memorial
Budge Budge, 24 Parganas (South)
Just next to the docks of Budge Budge, about 30 km south of Calcutta (Kolkata), lies a strange memorial. Popularly known as the “Punjabi Monument” it is modelled as the Sikh kirpan (dagger), the white and green cement structure rises in a magnificent arch to touch the sky.
The memorial is dedicated to victims of the notorious Komagata Maru Incident that happened almost a century ago.
“The visions of men are widened by travel and contacts with citizens of a free country will infuse a spirit of independence and foster yearnings for freedom in the minds of the emasculated subjects of alien rule.” ~ Gurdit Singh
In 1914, a wealthy Indian fisherman settled in Singapore, Gurdit Singh Sandhu, did quite the unthinkable. He chartered a Japanese steamship of 3,000-odd gross register tonnage to transport a large number of his Punjabi brethren from India to Canada in a bid to outsmart the tough immigration laws the northern American country had imposed to keep Asians out.
The steam liner, SS Komagata Maru, set sail from Hong Kong in April 1914 and after touching Shanghai and Yokohama, reached Canada’s Burrard Inlet, near Vancouver, on May 23. It had 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims and 12 Hindus on board, all British subjects. But the ship was not allowed to dock in Canada, leading to impassioned protests among Indians living in that country and in the US.
Various shore comities where formed and long discussion with the Canadian Government let to no result. At one such meeting, the protesters resolved that if the passengers were not allowed in, Indo-Canadians would follow them back to India and start a rebellion, Ghadar.
In July, the Canadian government ordered a tugboat to push Komagata Maru out to the sea and mobilised naval forces to make its stand clear. On July 23, after only 24 passengers were allowed to get off, Komagata Maru was forced to turn around and start its voyage back to Asia.
The vessel reached India on September 27 but a fate far worse awaited the passengers here. Komagata Maru was stopped by a British gunboat and those on board were placed under guard. The British government saw the passengers as “dangerous political agitators”. When the ship docked, the British tried to arrest Baba Gurdit Singh and 20 other “leaders” of the “political agitators”. On September 29, shots rang the air as passengers tried to flee the ship. 19 ( a board in fort of the memorial says 50) were killed. Those who escaped were later imprisoned or traced to their villages and kept under house confinement till World War I ended, but Baba Gurdit Singh went into hiding till 1922 but gave himself up after Mahatma Gandhi urged him to and served a five-year jail term.
In 1952 the Indian Government erected a memorial in memory of the martyrs of Komagata Maru. It was designed by architect Habib Rahaman and was inaugurated by the first Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru.
The Kirpan shaped memorial is today enclosed in a small courtyard, which represents more of a religious shrine than a martyrs memorial and one has to remove his shoes before entering it.
Recent efforts have been made to restore the memorial and the courtyard and glow sign has been put blocking the view of the memorial. The golden coloured plaques at the base of the memorial, showing different incidence of the Komagata Maru incident, have been give a multi coloured face-lift.
The courtyard also marks a spot where a tree was said be planted by Gurdit Singh, but sadly the tree have long vanished. It also contains a list of the martyrs, which far exceeds the official count of 19.
Every year on 29 Sept. Sikhs from all over West Bengal converge the “Punjabi Monument” to pay homage to their forefathers. For the remains 364 days its remain forgotten.
23.Esther Victoria Abraham (1916-2006),
Esther Victoria Abraham (1916-2006), known in Hindi-Urdu films as Pramila
Esther Victoria Abraham Khan Stage Name Pramila, the first Miss India 1947 from Kerala. The Pramila Theatre Artist, Film Actress, Producer, Stunt Artist, Land lady and Strong and Stout in her thoughts and Work. A born rebel, she walked out of her conservative Baghdadi Jewish home in Kolkata at 17 to join a theatre company.
She went on to realise her real dream and blazed across the Indian screen as a vamp and a fearless stunt star in 30 films, including Ulti Ganga, Bijli, Basant and Jungle King. She became the first major woman film producer, with 16 films under her Silver Productions banner.
In those four decades, she shunned the limelight, brought up her four sons and a daughter and waged a colossal battle to get back her property in Mumbai's Shiva ji Park area from the clutches of creditors and authorities.
With a whirlwind life like that, even the most stout-hearted scriptwriter would hesitate to pen her biopic. Her youngest son actor Hyder Ali of television series Nukkad-fame pays a very personal tribute here: My ma may be known for dash and feisty spirit but it did not come up only when she was cornered. It was her trait. It appeared in everything she did.
I asked her what it was about her that AmolPalekar wanted her to act in his Marathi film, Thang, at 90. How do you manage to be the centre of attraction even now, I asked her. She said, 'Haidoo, you have to command what you want. If you do not get it, demand it. If you still don't get it, grab it. If you still do not get it you to kill to get it. If you worry about what the world thinks, you will waver from your goal.'
She was like that. She never cared too hoots if the world was shocked, embarrassed... right from the day she walked out of her house.
She hurt people in the process but she was able to compensate because she succeeded financially. She never took from people, she only gave. Throughout, she remained economically independent and died as a landlady.
Charting your own independent path was easier said than done. When she wanted to emulate the success of her cousin in Bollywood as a Kolkata teenager, she joined a Parsi travelling theatre company.
Her job was to keep the audiences quiet with her charms during the 15 minutes it took to change reels in the single-projector silent film. You can imagine the courage and conviction it took for someone, who had been a kindergarden headmistress and had pre-university art certificates from London.
Her orthodox father clobbered her for that but she did not care.
Her spirit showed again when our father left for Pakistan, leaving us in debt. Our family building had been mortgaged for Rs 1 lakh (easily equivalent to crores of rupees today). Some of its flats had been requisitioned by the government.
Unlike other film people, she gave up all trappings of stardom, travelled in public buses to fight court battles. She juggled her film finances to ward off auctions on two occasions and a civic injuction on another.
She wanted all of us to join cinema. Only I stand devoted to it. My siblings said it is too irregular a profession. My mom said, all life is irregular. That was her message to us. Never give up. You have keep trying and trying all the time till your last breath and the opportunity will create itself.
22.
Does anyone in India know this piece of history?
Answer must be a firm "No" from most of us! Now please read on.
Remembered in Japan, forgotten in India.
The day was 12 November, 1948. Tokyo Trials are going on in a huge garden house on the outskirts of Tokyo, the trial of fifty-five Japanese war criminals including Japan's then Prime Minister Tojo, after losing WWII.
Of these, twenty-eight people have been identified as Class-A (crimes against peace) war criminals. If proved, the only punishment is the "death penalty".
Eleven international judges from all over the world are announcing......
"Guilty"....
"Guilty"......
"Guilty"......
Suddenly one thundered, "Not Guilty!"
A silence came down in the hallway. Who was this lone dissenter?
His name was Radha Binod Pal a Judge from India.
Born in 1886 in the Kumbh of East Bengal, his mother made a living by taking care of a household and their cow. For feeding the cow, Radha used to take the cow to the land near a local primary school.
When the teacher taught in school, Radha used to listen from outside. One day the school inspector came to visit the school from the city. He asked some questions of the students after entering the class.
Everyone was silent.
Radha said from outside the classroom window.... "I know the answer to all your questions."
And he answered all the questions one by one. Inspector said. "Wonderful!.. Which class do you read?"
The answer came, "I do not read. I graze a cow."
Everyone was shocked to hear that. Calling the head teacher, the school inspector instructed the boy to take admission in school as well as provide some stipend.
This is how education of Radha Binod Pal started. Then after passing the school final with the highest number in the district, he was admitted to Presidency College. After taking M Sc. from the University of Calcutta, he studied law again and got the Doctorate title. In the context of choosing the opposite of two things he once said, "law and mathematics are not so different after all.”
Coming back again to the International Court of Tokyo.
In his convincing argument to the rest of the jurists he signified that the Allies, (winners of WWII), also violated the principles of restraint and neutrality of international law. In addition to ignoring Japan's surrender hints, they killed two hundred thousand innocent people using nuclear bombardment.
The judges were forced to drop many of the accused from Class-A to B, after seeing the logic written on twelve hundred thirty-two pages by Radha Binod Pal. These Class-B war criminals were saved by him from a sure death penalty. His verdict in the international court gave him and India a world-famous reputation.
Radha Binod Pal is described as the modern father of International Humanitarian Law. He was the Head of the Department of Law Calcutta University. He was persuaded not to write this judgement and waa offered the first President of International Court of Justice. But he refused and wrote the Judgement. A great legal luminary.
Japan respects this great man. In 1966 Emperor Hirohito awarded him the highest civilian honor of the country, 'Kokko Kunsao'.
Two busy roads in Tokyo and Kyoto have been named after him. His verdict has been included in the syllabus of law studies there. In front of the Supreme Court of Tokyo, his statue has been placed. In 2007, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed his desire to meet his family members in Delhi and met his son.
Dr. Radha Binod Pal (27 January 1886 - 10 January 1967) name is remembered in the history of Japan. In Tokyo, Japan, he has a museum and a statue in Yasukuni shrine.
Japan University has a research center in his name. Because of his judgment on Japanese war criminals, Chinese people hate him.
He is the author of many books related to law. In India, almost nobody knows him and perhaps not even his neighbors know him! A Hindi movie was made on him, Tokyo Trials, starring Irfan Khan but that movie never made headlines.
....just one of the many many underrated & unknown Indians.
21.
This is the original, or the first of the two Fort Williams built in 1696 by the British East India Company. It was constructed under the supervision of John Goldsborough. Sir Charles Eyre started construction near the bank of the River Hooghly with the South-East Bastion and the adjacent walls. It was named after King William III in 1700. The original building had two stories and projecting wings. An internal guard room turned out to be the Black Hole of Calcutta. In 1756, the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj Ud Daulah, attacked the Fort, temporarily conquered the city, and changed its name to Alinagar. This led the British to build a new fort in the Maidan. The Old Fort was repaired and used as a customs house from 1766 onwards.
Coloured engraving of Fort William in Calcutta by Jan Van Ryne (1712-60 published by Robert Sayer in London in 1754.
Seige of Calcutta
A trading post had been established in the area of Calcutta at the end of the seventeenth century by the East India Company, who purchased the three small villages that would later form the base of the city, and began construction of Fort William to house a garrison. In 1717 they had been granted immunity from taxation throughout Bengal by the Mughal emperor Farrukhsiyar. The city flourished, with a large volume of trade travelling down the Ganges River.
The attitude of the Nawabs of Bengal, the regional governors of the territory, had been one of limited toleration towards the European traders (the French and Dutch as well as the British); they were permitted to trade, but taxed heavily.
When the elderly Alivardi Khan died in 1756, he was succeeded as Nawab of Bengal by his grandson, Siraj ud-Daulah. The policy of the government changed abruptly; instead of the practical and sober approach of Alivardi, Siraj was mistrustful and impetuous. He was particularly distrustful of the British, and aimed to seize Calcutta and the large treasure he believed would be held there. From the moment he became Nawab he began searching for a pretext to drive the British from his lands; he found two.
First pretext
The first pretext centered around Kissendass, the son of a high-ranking Bengali official, Raj Ballabh, who had incurred Siraj-ud-Daula's displeasure. When he was released after a brief imprisonment, Ballabh had arranged for the British to allow Kissendass to enter Calcutta along with the son's pregnant wife and family fortune, while Ballabh joined forces with those who opposed Siraj-ud-Daula's succession. The fact that the Calcutta officials continued to harbor Kissendass after Siraj-ud-Daula had become nawab--and had spurned his demand that they surrender the young man and his fortune to him--nurtured the young ruler's conviction that the British were actively plotting with his enemies at court.
Second pretext
The second incident concerned the construction of new fortifications by both the British and French at their Bengali strongholds. Both nations had long been battling for dominance along the southeast coast of India, known as the Carnatic. So far, they had kept the peace in Bengal, their rivalries confined to the marketplace. But with war, though as yet undeclared, being waged between the two nations in Europe, officials at Calcutta and Chandernagore decided that their long-neglected defenses needed to be strengthened in case hostilities erupted in Bengal.
When the newly enthroned nawab learned of the new fortifications, he immediately ordered them to halt their work and to raze any new construction, promising to protect both foreign enclaves from attack as his grandfather had before him. The French, realizing just how tenuous their position in Bengal really was, meekly replied that they were not building foreign fortifications, merely repairing their existing structures.
The British reacted differently. Roger Drake, the 35-year-old acting governor general of Calcutta, stated that they were only preparing for their own protection-strongly implying that the nawab would be powerless to provide it.
First Battles
Rumours quickly spread that the British gathered forces from Madras (now Chennai) and planned to invade Bengal.
By the end of May, a huge army of 50,000 strong, had been assembled under the command of Raj Durlabh. The nawab sent a letter to Governor Drake. It was no less than a declaration of war.
The first disaster to befall the British came quickly. On 3 June the nawab's forces surrounded the ill-prepared East India Company fort at Cossimbazar, whose numbered only 50 men. Two days later, the garrison surrendered; the only shot fired was by the garrison commander, who committed suicide rather than submit. The nawab's army confiscated all British guns and ammunition, then marched on to Calcutta.
Fort William
When the news of disaster finally reached Fort William, the fog of complacency there was replaced by panic and indecision.
Acting Governor Drake combined a disastrous incapacity for planning and decision making with a degree of personal arrogance that had already alienated most of his fellow countrymen. The few men there who were capable and levelheaded were too low in the company’s hierarchy, and their advice was ignored.
After the small garrison at Cossimbazar was lost, Drake and the council sent desperate pleas for help to the French and Dutch settlements. Neither wanted to join the British in their predicament.
The British then implored the authorities in Madras to send reinforcements — but the issue had been decided before the letters could be answered. Drake then attempted to appease the nawab’s anger by promising to submit to all of his demands, but it was too late.
Only then did the council members begin to examine the state of Fort William — and found that the fort had been neglected for so long that it was falling apart. The walls of the fort (18 feet tall, 4 feet thick) were crumbling in many places. Along the east wall large openings had been excavated during the long years of peace to admit air and light. The wooden platforms of the bastions were so rotten that they could support far fewer cannons than intended, and most of the cannons proved unusable in any case. All the south wall warehouses, or godowns, had been erected outside the fort, which precluded any flanking fire from the two south bastions.
The East India Company's chief engineer, John O'Hara, advised the council to demolish the buildings surrounding the fort so the defenders could have a clear shot at an enemy attacking from any direction. The council members' and chief military officers' houses would have to be leveled, so the council ignored O'Hara's suggestion. They decided instead to draw up a defensive line that encompassed the British Enclave that huddled about Fort William, leaving the sprawling expanse of native dwellings and marketplaces known as "Black Town"--home to well over 100,000 Indians--to the mercy of the attacking army.
Batteries were placed across the three main thoroughfares leading to the fort from the North, South, and East. The smaller streets were blocked by palisades.
The plan that was drawn up would require the defensive line to be adequately manned. Yet when the garrison was mustered, everyone, including Captain-Commandant Minchin, was surprised to find only 180 men fit for duty, and only 45 were British. The rest were European half-castes, whose fighting capabilities were deemed questionable.
A militia was hastily formed from the young Company apprentices (who were known as 'writers'), the crews of many vessels that still crowded the harbor, and the European population. Manningham, and Frankland whom Drake had made Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel were appointed to command the militia. The militia added another 300 men to the defense of Calcutta, for a total of 515 troops.
Defensive preparations were hampered by the disappearance of native manpower, as their lascars fled along with most of Black Town's population as the news of Siraj ud Daula's approach spread.
Omichand was the only Hindu wealthy enough to own a house in the European "White Town". Omichand recently had lost the prestigious position of chief investing and purchasing agent for the East India Company in its transaction with the Bengalis.
Suspicion grew that, to gain revenge for this considerable slight, Omichand had secretly urged Siraj ud Daula to attack the British and that suspicion was confirmed when two letters from the nawab's camp (Siraj ud Daula's camp) were found addressed to Omichand.
Kissendass, who was a house guest at the time of Omichand's plight, was also arrested when found with Omichand. They were then incarcerated in a small jail near Fort William's southeast bastion, in a room that was used to house drunken and disorderly sailors. The cell was ill-lit by two small, barred slits for windows that provided little light. Foul smelling and ovenlike, the small room earned the appropriate nickname, "The Black Hole."
On 13 June the advance guard of the nawab's army was within 15 miles of Calcutta, a day's march away. All English women and children were ordered to take refuge in the fort, and the outer batteries and palisades were rushed to completion. He then surrounded Fort William, and then assaulted the south wall. The gunners had no time to bring their guns up, and the Indians swarmed in. They then attacked the rest of the fort, and in little time, the fort was captured.
Aftermath
The captured prisoners were held in a prison called the Black Hole. A narrative by one John Zephaniah Holwell, plus the testimony of another survivor to a select committee of the House of Commons, placed 146 British prisoners into a room measuring 18 by 15 feet, with only 23 surviving the night. The story was amplified in colonial literature, becoming a notorious incident, but the facts are now widely disputed.
The city - renamed "Alinagar" - was only lightly garrisoned by the Indians, and was recaptured in January 1757 by a force led by Robert Clive; the Nawab led a counter-attack, but this was itself attacked outside the city on 2 February and defeated. The result was a recognition of the status quo in the Treaty of Alinagar, signed on the 9th, which permitted the East India Company to remain in possession of the city and to fortify it, as well as granting them an exemption from duties.
However, the situation was fragile. Siraj was forced to send much of his army westwards to protect his territory from Ahmad Shah Durrani, leaving him militarily weak; this, coupled with personal unpopularity at home and extensive political machinations at court, gave the East India Company an opportunity to try to replace him with a new Nawab. Meanwhile, Siraj's growing involvement with the French East India Company would provide the pretext to go to war.
The result was the Battle of Plassey, on 23 June 1757, which was a decisive defeat for Siraj - betrayed by Mir Jafar, a military commander who had agreed to change sides. The battle firmly established East India Company control over Bengal, with Mir Jafar the new Nawab; it is generally seen as the start of Company rule in India, and the first major step in the development of the British Empire in India.
20.
George VI (Albert Frederick Arthur George; 14 December 1895 – 6 February 1952) was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death in 1952. He was concurrently the last Emperor of India until August 1947, when the British Raj was dissolved.
Known as "Bertie" among his family and close friends, George VI was born in the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria and was named after his great-grandfather Albert, Prince Consort. As the second son of King George V, he was not expected to inherit the throne and spent his early life in the shadow of his elder brother, Edward. He attended naval college as a teenager and served in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force during the First World War. In 1920, he was made Duke of York. He married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in 1923, and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret. In the mid-1920s, he had speech therapy for a stammer, which he learned to manage to some degree. George's elder brother ascended the throne as Edward VIII after their father died in 1936. Later that year, Edward abdicated to marry the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson, and George became the third monarch of the House of Windsor.
In September 1939, the British Empire and Commonwealth—but not Ireland—declared war on Nazi Germany. War with the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Japan followed in 1940 and 1941, respectively. George was seen as sharing the hardships of the common people and his popularity soared. Buckingham Palace was bombed during the Blitz while the King and Queen were there, and his younger brother, the Duke of Kent, was killed on active service. George became known as a symbol of British determination to win the war. Britain and its allies were victorious in 1945, but the British Empire declined. Ireland had largely broken away, followed by the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. George relinquished the title of Emperor of India in June 1948 and instead adopted the new title of Head of the Commonwealth. He was beset by smoking-related health problems in the later years of his reign and died of a coronary thrombosis in 1952. He was succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth II.
19.
Edward VIII (Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David; 23 June 1894 – 28 May 1972) was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire, and Emperor of India from 20 January 1936 until his abdication in December of the same year.
Edward was born during the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria as the eldest child of the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George V and Queen Mary. He was created Prince of Wales on his 16th birthday, seven weeks after his father succeeded as king. As a young man, Edward served in the British Army during the First World War and undertook several overseas tours on behalf of his father. While Prince of Wales, he engaged in a series of sexual affairs that worried both his father and then-British prime minister Stanley Baldwin.
Upon his father's death in 1936, Edward became the second monarch of the House of Windsor. The new king showed impatience with court protocol, and caused concern among politicians by his apparent disregard for established constitutional conventions. Only months into his reign, a constitutional crisis was caused by his proposal to marry Wallis Simpson, an American who had divorced her first husband and was seeking a divorce from her second. The prime ministers of the United Kingdom and the Dominions opposed the marriage, arguing a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands was politically and socially unacceptable as a prospective queen consort. Additionally, such a marriage would have conflicted with Edward's status as titular head of the Church of England, which, at the time, disapproved of remarriage after divorce if a former spouse was still alive. Edward knew the Baldwin government would resign if the marriage went ahead, which could have forced a general election and would have ruined his status as a politically neutral constitutional monarch. When it became apparent he could not marry Wallis and remain on the throne, he abdicated. He was succeeded by his younger brother, George VI. With a reign of 326 days, Edward is the shortest-reigning monarch of the United Kingdom.
After his abdication, Edward was created Duke of Windsor. He married Wallis in France on 3 June 1937, after her second divorce became final. Later that year, the couple toured Nazi Germany. During the Second World War, Edward was at first stationed with the British Military Mission to France, but after private accusations that he was a Nazi sympathiser, he was appointed Governor of the Bahamas. After the war, Edward spent the rest of his life in France. He and Wallis remained married until his death in 1972. Wallis died 14 years later.
18.
George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.
Born during the reign of his grandmother Queen Victoria, George was third in the line of succession behind his father, Prince Albert Edward, and his own elder brother, Prince Albert Victor. From 1877 to 1892, George served in the Royal Navy, until the unexpected death of his elder brother in early 1892 put him directly in line for the throne. On Victoria's death in 1901, George's father ascended the throne as Edward VII, and George was created Prince of Wales. He became king-emperor on his father's death in 1910.
George's reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism, Irish republicanism, and the Indian independence movement; all of which radically changed the political landscape of the British Empire. The Parliament Act 1911 established the supremacy of the elected British House of Commons over the unelected House of Lords. As a result of the First World War (1914–1918), the empires of his first cousins Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany fell, while the British Empire expanded to its greatest effective extent. In 1917, he became the first monarch of the House of Windsor, which he renamed from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as a result of anti-German public sentiment. In 1924, George appointed the first Labour ministry and the 1931 Statute of Westminster recognised the Empire's dominions as separate, independent states within the British Commonwealth of Nations.
He suffered from smoking-related health problems throughout much of his later reign, and at his death was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII.
17.
Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910.
The eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and nicknamed "Bertie", Edward was related to royalty throughout Europe. He was Prince of Wales and heir apparent to the British throne for almost 60 years. During the long reign of his mother, he was largely excluded from political influence and came to personify the fashionable, leisured elite. He travelled throughout Britain performing ceremonial public duties, and represented Britain on visits abroad. His tours of North America in 1860 and of the Indian subcontinent in 1875 proved popular successes, but despite public approval, his reputation as a playboy prince soured his relationship with his mother.
As king, Edward played a role in the modernisation of the British Home Fleet and the reorganisation of the British Army after the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. He re-instituted traditional ceremonies as public displays and broadened the range of people with whom royalty socialised. He fostered good relations between Britain and other European countries, especially France, for which he was popularly called "Peacemaker", but his relationship with his nephew, the German Emperor Wilhelm II, was poor. The Edwardian era, which covered Edward's reign and was named after him, coincided with the start of a new century and heralded significant changes in technology and society, including steam turbine propulsion and the rise of socialism. He died in 1910 in the midst of a constitutional crisis that was resolved the following year by the Parliament Act 1911, which restricted the power of the unelected House of Lords.
16.
Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Known as the Victorian era, her reign of 63 years and seven months was longer than any previous British monarch. It was a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. In 1876, the British Parliament voted to grant her the additional title of Empress of India.
Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (the fourth son of King George III), and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. After the deaths of her father and grandfather in 1820, she was raised under close supervision by her mother and her comptroller, John Conroy. She inherited the throne aged 18 after her father's three elder brothers died without surviving legitimate issue. Though a constitutional monarch, privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon who was identified with strict standards of personal morality.
Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840. Their children married into royal and noble families across the continent, earning Victoria the sobriquet "the grandmother of Europe" and spreading haemophilia in European royalty. After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, British republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration. She died on the Isle of Wight in 1901. The last British monarch of the House of Hanover, she was succeeded by her son Edward VII of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
15.
Early life
Haji Mastan was born in 1926 in a Tamil Muslim family in Panaikulam, an area mostly inhabited by Tamil Muslims in the Madras Presidency (modern-day Tamil Nadu) of British India. He lived in the coastal town of Cuddalore before migrating to Bombay (now Mumbai) with his father at the age of 8.
Mastan started doing odd jobs as a small boy in the famous Crawford Market and soon joined the docks and started working long hours there. During his early twenties, due to the high import duty on gold, people started smuggling gold from overseas. Working in the docks made it easy for him to participate in smuggling and soon Mastan started his own business. Mastan began making a decent sum of money by diverting his sectors into this business. At an early age he also went on Hajj.
Adult life and death
Mastan joined hands with Sukkur Narayan Bakhia, a smuggler from Daman to control the illegal items smuggled into Mumbai and Daman from the countries in the Persian Gulf. Mastan purchased properties at various locations in South Bombay including the sea-facing bungalow at Peddar Road. He lived in a small room built on the terrace of his bungalow.
Mastan ventured into film financing later in his life, providing producers in Mumbai with some much-needed funds. He eventually turned into a film producer himself. He also had business interests in real estate, electronic goods and hotels. He owned several electronic shops in Musafir Khana near Crawford Market.
Mastan maintained good relations with the other gang leaders. When inter-gang rivalry in Mumbai began to increase, he called all the top gang leaders together and split Mumbai between the gangs so that they could operate without coming into conflict. In this the mafia queen, Jenabai Daruwali helped him.[6] Earlier Jenabai was known as Chavalvali, as she was doing business of selling ration in black market. But as she was ambitious, she developed contacts with the then liquor producer and seller, Varadarajan Mudliar alias Varda Bhai. After this she came to be known as Jenabai Daruwali. Jenabai had good relations with Mastan and the Dawood Ibrahim family and Karim Lala Pathan. So with the consent of Mastan she arranged a meeting of all rivals under one roof of Mastan's pedder road bungalow called Batul Suroor.
Later in life, Mastan did not take a direct role in running his gang, but instead, he depended on right-hand men like Lala and Mudaliar to carry out his smuggling operations and intimidate rivals and debtors. Mastan was especially close to Mudaliar as they were both from Tamil Nadu. When Mudaliar died, Mastan hired a private chartered plane to bring his body to Mumbai for the final rites.
During the Indian Emergency, he was imprisoned. Whilst in prison, he was influenced by the ideals of politician Jaiprakash Narayan and also began learning Hindi.
After his release from prison, Mastan entered politics and formed a political party in 1980-81 and named it as Dalit Muslim Surakhsha Maha Sangh in 1985 which was later renamed as Bharatiya Minorities Suraksha Mahasangh currently lead by Sundar Shaekhar[citation needed]
Mastan died of cardiac arrest on 25 June 1994.[8]
In popular culture
Several Indian movies have been based upon Haji's life:
The 1975 Bollywood film Deewaar was loosely based on Haji Mastan's life, with Amitabh Bachchan portraying a fictionalized version of him. Deewaar was later remade into a 1981 Tamil film, Thee, starring Rajinikanth in the same role.
The 2010 film Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai was heavily based on Haji Mastan's life, although it was also partially fictionalized. Ajay Devgn portrayed the character of Haji Mastan (as Sultan Mirza) in the film, while Emraan Hashmi portrays underworld don Dawood Ibrahim (as Shoaib Khan).
On 25 May 2017, it was announced Rajnikanth's forthcoming film will be Kala Karikalan (released 2018) which is believed to be based on Mastan. His foster son Sundar Shekar Mishra sent a notice to Rajnikanth when he learned of this. In response, Wunderbar Films issued a statement clarifying that the film is not based on Mastan's life.
The 2013 film Shootout at Wadala in which Akbar Khan played the role of Haji Mastan as Haji Maqsood.
14.
Born and raised in the United Kingdom, her parents were
Francis, Duke of Teck, a German nobleman, and Princess Mary Adelaide of
Cambridge, who was a granddaughter of King George III and a minor member of the
British royal family. She was informally known as "May", after the
month of her birth.
At the age of 24, she was betrothed to her second cousin once
removed Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, the eldest son of
the Prince of Wales, but six weeks after the announcement of the engagement, he
died unexpectedly during an influenza pandemic. The following year, she became
engaged to Albert Victor's only surviving brother, George, who subsequently became
king. Before her husband's accession, she was successively Duchess of York,
Duchess of Cornwall, and Princess of Wales.
As queen consort from 1910, she supported her husband
through the First World War, his ill health, and major political changes arising
from the aftermath of the war. After George's death in 1936, she became queen
mother when her eldest son, Edward VIII, ascended the throne; but to her
dismay, he abdicated later the same year in order to marry twice-divorced
American socialite Wallis Simpson. She supported her second son, George VI,
until his death in 1952. She died the following year, during the reign of her
granddaughter Elizabeth II, who had not yet been crowned. Among much else, an
ocean liner, a battlecruiser, and a university were named in her honour.
13.
The Mystery of Charles Sobhraj
Early years
Sobhraj was born in Saigon to an Indian father and Vietnamese mother. His parents were never married and his father denied paternity. Stateless at first, Sobhraj was taken in by his mother's new husband, a French Army lieutenant stationed in French Indochina. There he felt neglected in favour of the couple's later children. Sobhraj continued to move back and forth between Southeast Asia and France with the family.
As a teenager, he began to commit petty crimes; he received his first jail sentence for burglary in 1963, serving time at Poissy prison near Paris. While imprisoned, Sobhraj manipulated prison officials into granting him special favours, such as being allowed to keep books in his cell. Around the same time, he met and endeared himself to Felix d'Escogne, a wealthy young man and prison volunteer.
After being paroled, Sobhraj moved in with d'Escogne and spent his time moving between the high society of Paris and the criminal underworld. He began accumulating riches through a series of burglaries and scams. During this time, Sobhraj met and began a romantic relationship with Chantal Compagnon, a young Parisian woman from a conservative family. Sobhraj proposed marriage to Compagnon, but was arrested later the same day for attempting to evade police while driving a stolen vehicle. He was sentenced to eight months in prison, yet Chantal remained supportive throughout the entirety of his sentence. Sobhraj and Compagnon were wed upon his release.
Sobhraj, along with a pregnant Compagnon, left France in 1970 for Asia to escape arrest. After travelling through Eastern Europe with fake documents, robbing tourists whom they befriended along the way, Sobhraj arrived in Mumbai later the same year. Here, Chantal gave birth to a baby girl, Usha. In the meantime, Sobhraj resumed his criminal lifestyle, running a car theft and smuggling operation. Sobhraj's growing profits went towards his budding gambling addiction.
In 1973, Sobhraj was arrested and imprisoned after an unsuccessful armed robbery attempt on a jewelry store at Hotel Ashoka. Sobhraj was able to escape, with Compagnon's help, by faking illness, but was recaptured shortly thereafter. Sobhraj borrowed money for bail from his father, and soon afterwards fled to Kabul. There, the couple began to rob tourists on the hippie trail and were arrested again. Sobhraj escaped in the same way he had in India, feigning illness and drugging the hospital guard. Sobhraj fled to Iran, leaving his family behind. Compagnon, though still loyal to Sobhraj, wished to leave their criminal past behind and returned to France, vowing never to see him again.
Sobhraj spent the next two years on the run, using as many as ten stolen passports. He passed through various countries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Sobhraj was joined by his younger half-brother, André, in Istanbul. Sobhraj and André became partners in crime, participating in various criminal activities in both Turkey and Greece. The duo were eventually arrested in Athens. After an identity-switch hoax went awry, Sobhraj managed to escape, but his half-brother was left behind. André was turned over to the Turkish police by Greek authorities and served an 18-year sentence.
Murders
On the run, Sobhraj financed his lifestyle by posing as either a gem salesman or drug dealer to impress and befriend tourists, whom he defrauded. In India, Sobhraj met Marie-Andrée Leclerc from Lévis, Quebec, a tourist looking for adventure. Dominated by Sobhraj, Leclerc became his most devoted follower, turning a blind eye to his crimes and his philandering with local women.
Sobhraj gathered followers by gaining their loyalty; a typical scam was to help his target out of difficult situations. In one case, he helped two former French policemen, Yannick and Jacques, recover missing passports that Sobhraj himself had actually stolen. In another scheme, Sobhraj provided shelter to a Frenchman, Dominique Renelleau, who appeared to be suffering from dysentery; Sobhraj had actually poisoned him. He was joined by a young Indian man, Ajay Chowdhury, a fellow criminal who became Sobhraj's second-in-command.
Sobhraj and Chowdhury committed their first known murders in 1975. Most of the victims had spent some time with the pair before their deaths and were, according to investigators, recruited by Sobhraj and Chowdhury to join them in their crimes. Sobhraj claimed that most of his murders were really accidental drug overdoses, but investigators state that the victims had threatened to expose Sobhraj, which was his motive for murder. The first victim was a young woman from Seattle, Teresa Knowlton (named Jennie Bollivar in the book Serpentine), who was found drowned in a tidal pool in the Gulf of Thailand, wearing a flowered bikini. It was months later that Knowlton's autopsy, as well as forensic evidence, proved that her drowning, originally believed to be a swimming accident,was murder.
The next victim was a young nomadic Turkish Sephardic Jew, Vitali Hakim, whose burnt body was found on the road to the Pattaya resort, where Sobhraj and his growing clan were staying. Dutch students Henk Bintanja, 29, and his fiancée Cocky Hemker, 25, were invited to Thailand after meeting Sobhraj in Hong Kong. They, like many others, were poisoned by Sobhraj, who nursed them back to health in order to gain their obedience. As they recovered, Sobhraj was visited by his previous victim Hakim's French girlfriend, Charmayne Carrou, who had come to investigate her boyfriend's disappearance. Fearing exposure, Sobhraj and Chowdhury quickly hustled Bintanja and Hemker out. Their bodies were found strangled and burned on 16 December 1975. Soon after, Carrou was found drowned and wearing a similar-styled swimsuit to that of Sobhraj's earlier victim, Teresa Knowlton. Although the murders of the two women were not connected by investigators at the time, they would later earn Sobhraj the nickname "The Bikini Killer."
On 18 December, the day the bodies of Bintanja and Hemker were identified, Sobhraj and Leclerc entered Nepal using the deceased couple's passports. They met in Nepal and, between 21 and 22 December, murdered Canadian Laurent Carrière, 26, and American Connie Jo Bronzich, 29; the two victims were incorrectly identified by some sources as Laddie DuParr and Annabella Tremont. Sobhraj and Leclerc returned to Thailand, using their latest victims' passports before their bodies could be identified. Upon his return to Thailand, Sobhraj discovered that his three French companions had started to suspect him of serial murder, having found documents belonging to the murder victims. Sobhraj's former companions then fled to Paris after notifying local authorities.
Sobhraj's next destination was either Varanasi or Calcutta, where he murdered Israeli scholar Avoni Jacob to obtain Jacob's passport. Sobhraj used the passport to travel with Leclerc and Chowdhury – first to Singapore, then to India, and, in March 1976, returning to Bangkok, despite knowing that the authorities there sought him. The clan were interrogated by Thai police in connection with the murders, but were released because authorities feared that the negative publicity accompanying a murder trial would harm the country's tourist industry.
Meanwhile, Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg and his then-wife Angela Kane were investigating the murders of Bintanja and Hemker. Knippenberg had some knowledge of, and had possibly even met, Sobhraj, although the latter's true identity was still unknown to the diplomat, who continued gathering evidence. With the help of Nadine and Remi Gires (Sobhraj's neighbours). Knippenberg built a case against him. He was eventually given police permission to search Sobhraj's apartment, a full month after the suspect had left the country. Knippenberg found evidence, including victims' documents and passports, as well as poisons and syringes.
The criminal trio's next stop was Malaysia, where Chowdhury was sent to steal gems. Chowdhury was observed delivering the gems to Sobhraj. This was the last time he was ever seen; neither Chowdhury nor his remains were ever found. It is believed Sobhraj murdered his former accomplice before leaving Malaysia to continue his and Leclerc's roles as gem dealers in Geneva. A source later claimed to have sighted Chowdhury in West Germany, but the claim appeared unsubstantiated, so the search for Chowdhury continued.
Back in Asia, Sobhraj started forming a new criminal group, starting with two Western women, Barbara Smith and Mary Ellen Eather, in Bombay. Sobhraj's next victim was a Frenchman, Jean-Luc Solomon who was poisoned during a robbery. The act was committed with intention of incapacitating Solomon, but it left him dead.
In July 1976 in New Delhi, Sobhraj, joined by his three-woman criminal clan, tricked a tour group of French post-graduate students into accepting them as tour guides. Sobhraj drugged them by giving them poisoned pills, which he told them were anti-dysentery medicine. When the drugs took effect more quickly than Sobhraj had anticipated, the students began to fall unconscious. Three of the students, realising what Sobhraj had done, overpowered him and contacted the police, leading to his capture. During interrogation, Sobhraj's accomplices, Smith and Eather, buckled and confessed. Sobhraj was charged with the murder of Solomon and all four were sent to Tihar Jail in New Delhi while awaiting formal trial.
Prison time
Smith and Eather attempted suicide in prison during the two years before their trial. Sobhraj, who had entered with precious gems concealed in his body and was experienced in bribing captors, was living comfortably in jail. He turned his trial into a spectacle, hiring and firing lawyers at will, bringing in his recently paroled brother André to assist, and eventually going on a hunger strike. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Leclerc was found guilty of drugging the French students, but was later paroled and returned to Canada when she developed ovarian cancer. She was still claiming her innocence and was reportedly still loyal to Sobhraj when she died at her home in April 1984. She was 38.
Sobhraj's systematic bribery of prison guards at Tihar reached outrageous levels. He led a life of luxury inside the jail, with television and gourmet food, having befriended both guards and prisoners. He gave interviews to Western authors and journalists, such as Oz magazine's Richard Neville in 1977 and Alan Dawson in 1984. Neville was accompanied by his future wife, Julie Clarke, who has frequently written about the subject. Clarke has said that Sobhraj sold the rights to his life story to a Bangkok businessman, who sold them on to Random House. Because of Neville's hippie trail connections, Random House offered him a contract to go to Delhi to research the case, even though he and Clarke, both journalists in New York City, had no experience in crime reporting. They were out of their depth, having to deal with Sobhraj's 'creepy emissaries' who kept them under surveillance, and arranged for them to visit him in prison, where he described the murders in detail. Clarke was very relieved when they left Delhi.
Although Sobhraj had freely talked to Neville and Clarke about his murders, he later denied everything he had told them, and pretended his actions were in retaliation against "Western imperialism" in Asia.
Sobhraj's prison sentence in India was due to end before the 20-year Thai statute of limitations expired, ensuring his extradition and almost certain execution for murder in Thailand. So in March 1986, in his tenth year in prison, Sobhraj threw a big party for his guards and fellow inmates, drugged them with sleeping pills and walked out of the jail. Inspector Madhukar Zende of the Mumbai police apprehended Sobhraj in O'Coqueiro Restaurant in Goa; his prison term was extended by ten years, just as he had hoped. On 17 February 1997, 52-year-old Sobhraj was released with most warrants, evidence, and even witnesses against him long lost. Without any country to extradite him to, Indian authorities let him return to France.
Celebrity and re-capture
Sobhraj retired to a comfortable life in suburban Paris. He hired a publicity agent and charged large sums of money for interviews and photographs. He is said to have charged over US$15 million for the rights to a movie based on his life.
In 2003, Sobhraj returned to Nepal, one of the few countries where he could still be arrested and where he was still eagerly sought by authorities. According to The Himalayan Times, Sobhraj had returned to Kathmandu to set up a mineral water business. His return is thought to have been the result of his yearning for attention and overconfidence in his own intellect.
On 1 September 2003, Sobhraj was spotted by a journalist for The Himalayan Times in a casino in Kathmandu. The journalist followed him for two weeks and wrote a news report in The Himalayan Times with photographs. The Nepalese police saw the report, raided the casino and arrested an unaware Sobhraj, who was still gambling there. The police reopened the double murder case from 1975. Sobhraj was later sentenced to life imprisonment by the Kathmandu district court on 20 August 2004 for the murders of Bronzich and Carrière.
Most of the photocopy evidence used against him in this case had been gathered by Knippenberg, the Dutch diplomat, his then wife Angela Kane and Interpol. Sobhraj appealed against the conviction, claiming he had been sentenced without trial. His lawyer announced that Chantal Compagnon, Sobhraj's wife in France, was filing a case before the European Court of Human Rights against the French government for refusing to provide him with any assistance. Sobhraj's conviction was confirmed by the Patan Court of Appeals in 2005.
Post-2007
In late 2007, news media reported that Sobhraj's lawyer had appealed to then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy for intervention with Nepal. In 2008, Sobhraj announced his engagement to a Nepali woman, Nihita Biswas, who later participated in the reality show Bigg Boss. The authenticity of the couple's relationship was confirmed in an open letter from American conductor David Woodard to The Himalayan Times. On 7 July 2008, issuing a press release through his fiancée Biswas, Sobhraj claimed he was never convicted of murder by any court, and asked the media not to refer to him as a serial killer.
It was claimed that Sobhraj married his fiancée on 9 October 2008 in jail during Bada Dashami, a Nepalese festival. The following day, Nepalese jail authorities dismissed the claim of his marriage. They said that Biswas and her family had been allowed to conduct a tika ceremony, along with the relatives of hundreds of other prisoners. They further claimed that it was not a wedding but part of the ongoing Dashain festival, when elders put the vermilion mark on the foreheads of those younger than them to signify their blessings.
In July 2010, the Supreme Court of Nepal postponed the verdict on an appeal filed by Sobhraj against a district court's verdict sentencing him to life imprisonment for the murder of American backpacker Connie Jo Bronzich in 1975. Sobhraj had appealed against the Kathmandu district court's verdict in 2006, calling it unfair and accusing the judges of racism while handing out the sentence.
On 30 July 2010, the Supreme Court upheld the life sentence issued by the district court for the murder of Connie Jo Bronzich, plus another year and a Rs2,000 fine for entering Nepal illegally. The seizure of all Sobhraj's properties was also ordered by the court. Sobhraj's supposed wife Biswas and mother-in-law Shakuntala Thapa, a lawyer, expressed dissatisfaction with the verdict, with Thapa claiming that Sobhraj had been denied justice and that the "judiciary is corrupt." They were charged and sent to judicial custody for contempt of court because of these remarks.
On 18 September 2014, Sobhraj was convicted in the Bhaktapur district court of the 1975 murder of Canadian tourist Laurent Carrière. In 2018, Sobhraj was in critical condition, and had been operated on multiple times. He had received several open heart surgeries, and was scheduled for more. As of April 2021, he remained in a Nepalese jail, aged 77 and in poor health.
Personal life
In 2010, he married his interpreter (French-Nepali) in prison, the daughter of his lawyer, who was 20 years old and 44 years younger than him. One of his jailers told Paris Match in 2021: "It's a legend; there is no proof of their union". She told the media that his gaze and his eyes were mesmerizing, and that his French charm has done everything; in 2017, she gave him blood to save him during an open heart operation.
Portrayal
Sobhraj has been the subject of three non-fiction books, Serpentine (1979) by Thomas Thompson, The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj (1980) by Richard Neville and Julie Clarke, and the section titled "The Bikini Murders" by Noel Barber in the Reader's Digest collection, Great Cases of Interpol (1982). Neville and Clarke's book was the basis for a 1989 made-for-TV film, Shadow of the Cobra.
The 2015 Hindi film Main Aur Charles, directed by Prawaal Raman and Cyznoure Network, is reportedly based on Charles Sobhraj's escape from Tihar Jail in New Delhi. The film was initially produced by Pooja Bhatt, but due to disagreements during the shoot, Pooja left the film.
An eight-part BBC commissioned miniseries called The Serpent was broadcast in the UK in January 2021, starring Tahar Rahim as Sobhraj, before being streamed on Netflix in April 2021.
12.
THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN'S PLUNDER OF INDIA
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There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India - as horrible as it may have been - was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So the fact that the empire was sustained for so long - the story goes - was a gesture of Britain's benevolence.
New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik - just published by Columbia University Press - deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938.
It's a staggering sum. For perspective, $45 trillion is 17 times more than the total annual gross domestic product of the United Kingdom today.
How did this come about?
It happened through the trade system. Prior to the colonial period, Britain bought goods like textiles and rice from Indian producers and paid for them in the normal way - mostly with silver - as they did with any other country. But something changed in 1765, shortly after the East India Company took control of the subcontinent and established a monopoly over Indian trade.
Here's how it worked. The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third) to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words, instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British traders acquired them for free, "buying" from peasants and weavers using money that had just been taken from them.
It was a scam - theft on a grand scale. Yet most Indians were unaware of what was going on because the agent who collected the taxes was not the same as the one who showed up to buy their goods. Had it been the same person, they surely would have smelled a rat.
Some of the stolen goods were consumed in Britain, and the rest were re-exported elsewhere. The re-export system allowed Britain to finance a flow of imports from Europe, including strategic materials like iron, tar and timber, which were essential to Britain's industrialisation. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution depended in large part on this systematic theft from India.
On top of this, the British were able to sell the stolen goods to other countries for much more than they "bought" them for in the first place, pocketing not only 100 percent of the original value of the goods but also the markup.
After the British Raj took over in 1858, colonisers added a special new twist to the tax-and-buy system. As the East India Company's monopoly broke down, Indian producers were allowed to export their goods directly to other countries. But Britain made sure that the payments for those goods nonetheless ended up in London.
How did this work? Basically, anyone who wanted to buy goods from India would do so using special Council Bills - a unique paper currency issued only by the British Crown. And the only way to get those bills was to buy them from London with gold or silver. So traders would pay London in gold to get the bills, and then use the bills to pay Indian producers. When Indians cashed the bills in at the local colonial office, they were "paid" in rupees out of tax revenues - money that had just been collected from them. So, once again, they were not in fact paid at all; they were defrauded.
Meanwhile, London ended up with all of the gold and silver that should have gone directly to the Indians in exchange for their exports.
This corrupt system meant that even while India was running an impressive trade surplus with the rest of the world - a surplus that lasted for three decades in the early 20th century - it showed up as a deficit in the national accounts because the real income from India's exports was appropriated in its entirety by Britain.
Some point to this fictional "deficit" as evidence that India was a liability to Britain. But exactly the opposite is true. Britain intercepted enormous quantities of income that rightly belonged to Indian producers. India was the goose that laid the golden egg. Meanwhile, the "deficit" meant that India had no option but to borrow from Britain to finance its imports. So the entire Indian population was forced into completely unnecessary debt to their colonial overlords, further cementing British control.
Britain used the windfall from this fraudulent system to fuel the engines of imperial violence - funding the invasion of China in the 1840s and the suppression of the Indian Rebellion in 1857. And this was on top of what the Crown took directly from Indian taxpayers to pay for its wars. As Patnaik points out, "the cost of all Britain's wars of conquest outside Indian borders were charged always wholly or mainly to Indian revenues."
And that's not all. Britain used this flow of tribute from India to finance the expansion of capitalism in Europe and regions of European settlement, like Canada and Australia. So not only the industrialisation of Britain but also the industrialisation of much of the Western world was facilitated by extraction from the colonies.
Patnaik identifies four distinct economic periods in colonial India from 1765 to 1938, calculates the extraction for each, and then compounds at a modest rate of interest from the middle of each period to the present. Adding it all up, she finds that the total drain amounts to $44.6 trillion. This figure is conservative, she says, and does not include the debts that Britain imposed on India during the Raj.
These are eye-watering sums. But the true costs of this drain cannot be calculated. If India had been able to invest its own tax revenues and foreign exchange earnings in development - as Japan did - there's no telling how history might have turned out differently. India could very well have become an economic powerhouse. Centuries of poverty and suffering could have been prevented.
All of this is a sobering antidote to the rosy narrative promoted by certain powerful voices in Britain. The conservative historian Niall Ferguson has claimed that British rule helped "develop" India. While he was prime minister, David Cameron asserted that British rule was a net help to India.
This narrative has found considerable traction in the popular imagination: according to a 2014 YouGov poll, 50 percent of people in Britain believe that colonialism was beneficial to the colonies.
Yet during the entire 200-year history of British rule in India, there was almost no increase in per capita income. In fact, during the last half of the 19th century - the heyday of British intervention - income in India collapsed by half. The average life expectancy of Indians dropped by a fifth from 1870 to 1920. Tens of millions died needlessly of policy-induced famine.
Britain didn't develop India. Quite the contrary - as Patnaik's work makes clear - India developed Britain.
What does this require of Britain today? An apology? Absolutely. Reparations? Perhaps - although there is not enough money in all of Britain to cover the sums that Patnaik identifies. In the meantime, we can start by setting the story straight. We need to recognise that Britain retained control of India not out of benevolence but for the sake of plunder and that Britain's industrial rise didn't emerge sui generis from the steam engine and strong institutions, as our schoolbooks would have it, but depended on violent theft from other lands and other peoples.
11.
HERITAGE MONDAY, APRIL 30, 2018 - 17:07
Haritha John
The urus of Kerala’s Beypore: These traditional boats find a home with wealthy Qataris
Uru making in Beypore is a centuries old tradition that was established since India began its maritime trade with Mesopotamia.
In the popular Malayalam movie Nadodikattu, Mamukkoya deceives Sreenivasan and Mohanlal by offering them a lift in a ‘uru’ from Kerala to Dubai, but drops them on the Chennai shore. But now if somebody needs a ride from Kerala to Qatar in a uru, they can approach the craftsmen of Beypore in Kozhikode. An uru is a wooden dhow, mainly made of Malabar teak, probably the biggest handicraft in the world.
The Beypore craftsmen send at least one fully handcrafted luxury uru a year to Qatar. Located in the outskirts of Kozhikode, Beypore is a sleepy town until one reaches the banks of the Chaliyar river. Here one can spot partially built structures of these small ships and a number of carpenters busy working on wooden logs.
A little ahead, in Karuvanthuruthy, another uru, Al Rahi, is almost ready to leave for Qatar by the end of April. The luxury passenger dhow was shifted to the water a few weeks ago, with some of the polishing work still to be completed.
Al Rahi was ordered by an industrialist from Qatar for Rs 10 crore. The order was placed in 2015 and 40 craftsmen worked for more than 2 years to build it. The multi-level luxury dhow weighs 275 tonnes, can carry 40 persons, and is 140 ft long and 30 ft wide. It has 20 sleeping berths, a big kitchen, several bathrooms, store rooms and leisure areas with fully furnished interiors. Around Rs 25 lakh will be spent on taking the uru from Kozhikode to Qatar.
“Some polishing works are in progress and it will leave for Qatar within a few days. These dhows are used by the members of the Qatari royal family or by businessmen for their leisure and other private trips. We send at least one uru a year to Qatar,” says Abdul Gafoor, managing director of Binafa Enterprises, one of the two uru manufacturers in Beypore.
History
Uru making in Beypore is a centuries old tradition that was established since India began its maritime trade with Mesopotamia. There are stories that some traders from Yemen, who had settled in Kerala centuries ago, had practised uru making and passed on the craft to the local carpenters.
“All the earlier generations in my family did the same job. The uru we made before were not so luxurious, now they are very different. Earlier we made cargo dhows also, but these days almost all orders are for passenger ships,” says Puzhakkara Sreedharan, one of the two main maistrys (chief carpenters) in the area.
“The industry flourished from the 12th century. Zamorins, the kings that ruled north Kerala, encouraged this craft a lot and used these dhows to strengthen their navy,” he adds.
Later, during the 1970s, business went down and boatbuilding on the shores of Beypore stopped.
“It was shifted to Mangaluru and Kannur, but was not able to survive,” Sreedharan recalls.
It was in 2011 when the Qatari royal family started commissioning boats that the business picked up once again in this village. Apart from that, the state government sponsored Rs 50 lakh in 2010 to make an uru in Beypore for study purposes.
Since the first order from Qatar, every year at least one uru leaves Beypore port for Qatar.
“In the beginning of 2011, a person named Sathyan Edathodi and even Binafa Enterprises got orders from the Qatari royal family. Sathyan was a craftsman who had been working in the Gulf for years,” says Sreedharan.
These ships are made without any work plan, blueprints or prior sketches. The maistry gives instructions to his workers on a daily basis on how to go about the construction.
Puzhakkara Rameshan, the chief carpenter of Al Rahi says, “The master plan of the ship will be in the mind of the maistry. We use indigenous carpentry tools for this craft, we don’t use heavy tools or machines.”
Observing that Beypore has now returned to its earlier era of prosperity, Gafoor says, “Now many of the craftsmen are back to building uru. Since 2011 our company has worked on 2 or 3 urus simultaneously. In connection with the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar, we have already received a few orders from the country.”
Speciality of Beypore urus
Beypore urus are purely made of wood, without using any modern techniques, and traditional methods are used to launch this ship into the water. The carpenters manually join each piece of wood to build the large boat.
“Even in Mangaluru they make dhows, but they use metal sheets. Those yachts will last only for 25 years and the cost of making them is also less. But the urus we make here will last for three or four generations, so the cost is high as well,” Gafoor explains.
“We use only the best teak wood. Jackfruit tree and rosewood are used in designing the interiors. For Al Rahi we have used more than 15,000 cubic feet of wood,” he added.
Mopla Khalasis are an inevitable part of uru making in Beypore. They are a set of traditional dockyard workers who can even ‘lift mountains’ using their traditional pulley-iron rope.
“Yes, that is what people say about them – that they can lift mountains. They use some materials called thovar (a winch that is operated manually), uruls (round wooden logs), hard wooden logs, pulley and iron rope. They cannot be beaten by any modern machines. They easily lift anything from anywhere using these materials,” says Sreedharan.
“They are the ones who launch these urus into the water, setting them ready for travel. They also help in lifting heavy wooden logs for building the dhows. All the Khalasis here are aged above 60. They are traditional workers,” he adds.
The younger generations of Khalasis are hesitant to take up their traditional occupation, which is a concern for the whole business.
“Without them the industry will be in big trouble,” Gafoor says.
Hundreds of people would assemble on the shores of the Chaliyar at the time of a uru launch, just to witness how easily the Khalasis launch the dhow.
10.
The Mystery of the Damascus Sword and India's Materials Heritage
BY GOPI KATRAGADDA
In this blog, I would like to tell you the story of carbon steel and the India connection. Carbon steel is the most used engineering material today and accounts for 85-90% of steel produced worldwide.
To tell this story one must start at Salaudin and Richard the Great facing-off during the crusades. It is said that Richard the Great cut through a tree trunk with one swipe of his sword to show his might and the capability of his sword. In response, Salaudin is purported to have just tossed a silk scarf into the air and let it slide off his blade’s edge, cleanly cutting it into two. Richard recognized that it was indeed a great sword that could cleave free falling soft material without the use of any force. Salaudin’s sword was known to be a Damascine sword.
There is now a general agreement that the Damascus steel which made its way into the western world through the crusades was produced in India rather than in Damascus. This steel was known as Wootz steel, potentially derived from the word ‘ukku’ which means steel in Telugu and Kannada. Damascus swords were known to be extremely hard and flexible to the hilt and able to cleave a free-falling silk scarf or a block of wood with the same ease.
A good person to talk to on this subject is Sharada Srinivasan. I first met her when her father, Dr. Srinivasan, retired director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, gave a talk at my invitation to the GE Global Research team at Bangalore. I was surprised to know that a field such as archaeometallurgy existed outside of Indiana Jones movies. Sharada has a Ph.D. in this area, and has worked on topics such as the pancha-loha(five metal alloys – traditionally described as alloys of gold, silver, copper, brass, and iron used in South Indian metal sculptures), and Wootz steel. In her paper on the topic, she concludes that high-grade ultra-high carbon steel was indeed produced by crucible processes in South India.
Verhoeven et al. have researched the topic of Wootz steel indepth including the question as to why the art was lost. Verhoeven et al. conclude that in order to produce Wootz quality steel, a smith had to fulfill three conditions:
The ore which Wootz is made from needed to have trace elements of impurities such as vanadium which was crucial for the textured pattern of the Wootz steels
High phosphor levels characterize the Wootz steel blades. This indicates that the material would not have enough tensile strength to resist stresses from cooling of traditional forging processes of the west. Hence, the forging techniques must have been different than those used for other types of steel known in the western world. Heat treatment techniques would require decarburizing the surface and producing a low-carbon ductile surface rim that protected the interior regions during the cooling process.
The surface decarburized regions are ground off to produce the characteristic surface patterns of Wootz steel. The grinding process itself might not have been simple.
It is speculated that Wootz was made in India from 500 B.C. to about 1600 A.D. Verhoeven et al. also speculate that the art of making steel was probably a trade secret passed on to select apprentices by master smiths. The master smith would have taught the apprentice the heat treatment process and the grinding process described above. Potentially, the ore being used naturally had the trace impurities required in the process of making Wootz. Once the source of the ore was exhausted, the techniques did not work as the smiths never figured out the science of composition of the ores which made their craft possible. So Verhoeven et al. state,
“…with time, the smiths who knew about the technique died out without passing it on to their apprentices (since it no longer worked), so even if a similar source was later found, the knowledge was no longer around to exploit it.”
In addition to carbon steel, there are several examples of India’s leadership in material technologies including cast steel used for Tippu’s rockets and nano-silver used to cover Indian food items.
Roddam Narasimha is a walking encyclopedia on India and Indian technology. The Caltech Aerospace Ph.D., career academician with the Indian Institute of Science, who is the past director of leading Indian research organizations such National Aeronautical Laboratories and National Institute for Advanced Sciences, has a balanced approach to looking into the past Indian technical accomplishments. As he says , “Indian scholars have tended to take extreme positions of either saying all that is of technical value came from the West or, at the other end, that all that is accepted as science today came from India.” He himself has spent good amount of research effort on answering what he calls ‘Needham’s question’:
With the appearance on the scene of intensive studies of mathematics, science, technology and medicine in great non-European civilization, debate is likely to sharpen, for the failure of China and India to give rise to distinctively modern science while being ahead of Europe for fourteen previous centuries.
Roddam has studied in great detail what could be the single indigenous development in India during the early days of the Industrial Revolution in Britain – Rockets. Tippu Sultan and his father Hyder Ali - rulers of the Mysore state for a period in the 18th century - were known for their ability to lead armies to victory. A key element in their victorious escapades was the use of rockets. There were three elements of innovation to their use of rockets. First was the use of high quality Indian steel, which allowed one to pack in a lot more gunpowder than would be possible with lower quality steels (more a testimonial to Indian Iron ore than to the processing); second was the use of swords as stabilizers which as the rocket flared into sky and descended on the enemy tended to come down sword first causing severe injuries; and third was the use of several rockets in unison with launch angles computed to cover the enemy ranks with massive concentrated rocket attack. This rocket attack caused the enemy ranks to wither away in the face of a humiliating defeat. Roddam describes an incident from the fourth Anglo-Mysore war of 1799, where Col. Wellesley (later the Lord Wellington) and his troops were badly beaten back at Sultanpet. Roddam quotes a young English officer’s journal thus:
The rockets and musketry from 20,000 of the enemy were incessant. No hail could be thicker. Every illumination of blue light was accompanied by a shower of rockets, some of which entered the head of the column, passing through the rear, causing death, wounds, and dreadful lacerations from the long bamboos of twenty or thirty feet, which are invariably attached to them.
It is also known that William Congreve exported the Indian rocket technology and further developed it into what are now known as Congreve Rockets, which were successfully used in later wars by the British. Roddam also concludes that the success of Congreve’s improvements was due to the understanding and application of Newton’s laws of motion and systematic approach to research.
Currently nano silver is being used in microcidal applications from washing machines to wound healing. For the longest time silver beaten into thin sheets has been used on our sweet meats and on pan (betel leaf with various admixture inside). I picked-up a few sheets of these silver foils to verify their nanostructure and the results from transmission electron microscope analysis verify the purity of silver (very few precipitates high in carbon) and the existence of a nano microstructure with severe deformation. Current research points to the anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, re-epitheliazation, and anti-hemorrhagic properties of silver in its nano form. It is really interesting that the way silver gets its nano structure in this case is by taking normal metallic silver and pounding it (traditionally between animal intestine layers) to its nano form! This age-old knowledge from India is luckily not a lost art, and is being rediscovered by the scientists of the new millennium.
Applying new sciences or new materials for the health and comfort of humankind is the story of engineering progress. Harnessing materials directly by humans predates the emergence of science, as we know it today. One of the markers of progress of a society has been its ability to work metals and its alloys. Today, we have come a long way in materials advances. Recently a friend’s son had an accident and ended up with a decent size cut on his head. Not too long ago, this wound would have been treated with 4-5 sutures. Not anymore. Doctors used a liquid adhesive to close the wound! The liquid adhesive forms a microbial shield while the wound heals without the use of a needle. Materials research does take a long time, but research from the last several decades is now bearing fruit and becoming useful applications:
Composites have been used for several centuries in many different forms. A composite material is an engineered structure made up of two or more materials with different material properties and the differences in properties produce a synergistically stronger and lighter structure for the purposes of structural use. Recent advances in composite technology have made it possible to mold large structural parts with high strengths and resistance to impact. Also, Ceramic Matrix Composites are increasingly being deployed to take advantage of the high-temperature properties of ceramics and at the same time overcome the brittleness of monolithic ceramics. Furthermore, the interest in green products has driven the use of natural fiber in composites. In the distant horizon, the possibility exists to build automotive, rail, and airframe structures using high strength composites that are biodegradable under certain specially designed trigger conditions.
Superconductor research has not yet hit the critical point due to the fact that the temperature at which superconductivity is achieved is not practical for most applications. However, with the theories behind superconductivity and the various compounds with superconductivity being intensively researched, the probability of hitting a critical point in superconductivity exists which would throw open several electro-mechanical and medical applications.
Rare earth magnets have been around for past few decades, however the cost points were not at a place to meet large scale needs. Rare earth magnets are 10-20 times stronger than other permanent magnets. With most of the technology around rare-earth magnets coming out of patents in the 2003, the costs have dropped setting into motion wider use of rare-earth magnets in several applications replacing wound copper coil magnet configurations. Additionally, with the confluence of nanotechnology and rare-earth materials, the possibility now exists to dramatically improve the power and efficiency of electric machines and other power systems including the possibility of wireless power transfer, and efficient automotives.
Another area of materials’ research that will create a huge impact is that of meta-materials – man made materials that exhibit properties based on structure rather than composition. As an example, it is feasible to build negative refractive index meta-materials (something not observed in nature) - this will enable much better optical instrumentation for entertainment, medicine, and microscopy, and eventually extend its reach to higher efficiency machines and power-systems.
As we move forward, India has every opportunity to develop leadership in materials and use this to solve tough problems in healthcare, energy and transportation for India and the world. A particular focus, in my opinion, should be composite materials. Driven by the use of composites in the Indian aerospace industry (rockets, satellites, missiles, light combat aircraft, advanced light helicopter), we have fairly mature capabilities in the area of composite structures. Technical assistance and soft loans from the Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), a unit of the Department of Science and Technology as well other government initiatives are in the right direction to enhance India’s capabilities. Joint ventures and global collaborations are now required to ensure India works at the leading edge of the technology and gets better at raw material development while further strengthening the applications end of capabilities. It will be great to aim for a century of Indian materials. Remember the Damascus Sword!
9.
How ice shipped all the way from America became a luxury item in colonial India
In the 19th century, Boston businessman Frederic Tudor started shipping ice from the lakes of New England to the subcontinent.
A white round building, around 16 feet high, complete with domed roof once stood on Apollo Road, now part of Shahid Bhagat Singh Road in south Mumbai. This was the Bombay Ice House, built in 1843, which stood opposite what was then the government dockyard, between the Scottish Church and Hornby House – the latter was once the governor’s house, then become a law court and then the Great Western Hotel. The Ice House was a double-shelled structure and could hold around 150 tonnes of ice.
For almost four decades, 1830 to the 1870, ice in the presidency towns of British India was a luxury item, imported from New England in the US North East. An essay by David Dickason, The 19th century Indo-American Ice Trade, which appeared in the Modern Asian Studies journal in 1991 offers much insight into the subject.
As early as 400 BC, Persian engineers had worked out a technique: ice brought down from mountains was stored in large, thick-walled containers that were placed underground and naturally cooled, according to the essay. The Mughals used Himalayan ice but the British found it an expensive proposition, maintaining ice fields that needed land and was labour intensive, Dickason tells us. There was for long the Hooghly ice, made by freezing water in shallow pits, but this came out quite gritty and slushy and was never really potable.
The ice king
In the 1830s, when Frederic Tudor built his fortunes on the ice trade, he came quite rightly to be called the “ice king”. We learn from a website on ice harvesting that he was born into a well-regarded Bostonian family but that his fortunes thus far had been poor; even his early investments in ice trade, namely shipping it to states in southern US and the Caribbean, had been only marginal successes. It was his desperation to avoid jail as a debtor when his investments in the coffee trade came to bust that made Tudor enter the risky venture of shipping ice to British India in Calcutta. His collaborators were Samuel Austin and William Rogers, the latter agreeing to become the ice agent for the trade partners in Calcutta.
American merchants had begun trading in India in 1778 when Lord Cornwallis extended the opportunities to them, but transporting and trading in ice was a different matter altogether. It was 1833 and voyage time across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans normally took four months. But in the last decade of the 19th century, innovations in the ice-harvesting business made such voyages a possibility.
Some of these were largely made by Nathaniel Jervis Wyeth, an associate of Tudor’s, but they would soon fall out. Wyeth invented a twin-bladed, horse-drawn ice-cutter, which meant that ice sheets could be cut up into big squares and then pried out with iron bars. This saved time and increased the productivity of men and horses. These giant cubes could also be packed tightly to quell melting. Wyeth experimented in methods of insulating the ice on board ships, developing for instance, double-walled storehouses insulated with saw dust or tan, a product of tanneries, and accessible from the roof, to reduce the melting inevitable during a long voyage.
On May 12, 1833, the ship Tuscany, sailed from Boston for Calcutta, carrying 180 tonnes of ice. When it docked at Calcutta on September 6, the ship still had 100 tonnes of ice in its hold. People who gathered were amazed at the giant, icy cubes as they were unloaded and were described by a contemporary historian in his book, available online, on the development of the Massachusetts ice trade as “crystal blocks of Yankee coldness”. A local who reached forward to touch the ice, believed he had been “burnt”, considerably alarming the other onlookers. Another asked the captain of the ship whether ice grew on trees in America.
Thriving trade
The export of American ice to India soon flourished. Compared with the varieties at that time, this kind of ice was seen as pristine. Massachusetts, located in the high latitudes and on the eastern shores of the Atlantic, produced substantial ice in its freshwater lakes. The purity of the ice cut from Wenham Lake, for instance, which was shipped to London, impressed contemporary scientists such as Michael Faraday, who concluded that this ice melted slowly because it did not contain salt and air bubbles.
Over the next three decades, Calcutta and other presidency towns would become Tudor's most lucrative destinations, bringing him immense profits and making him a millionaire many times over.
Henry David Thoreau, who witnessed ice harvesting in Walden Pond, around which he lived for some years, wrote in 1854 that “the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta drink at my well.”
But of course, the ice from Walden served the elite Anglian society in the cities, and Tudor secured numerous favours and exemptions from the British. For instance, in the very first trip, William Rogers, the ice agent, secured a few exemptions: the ice was transported directly to warehouses without waiting for customs house formalities. Unloading the ice at night was permitted. In Bombay, ice ships received a favoured docking place and were made duty-free.
In the next few years, ice houses were built by raising funds within the community and then leased out to Tudor at a nominal rent. Tudor’s second voyage, which he financed on his own, could well have been a disaster, considering that 350 barrels of apples had all turned rotten, but the American Ice Committee in Calcutta and Governor General Lord Bentinck took a surprisingly lenient view. Tudor secured a monopoly on the trade in ice, and New England apples, as well as Spanish grapes and American butter, transported along with the ice also soon became expensive, coveted items of trade. Moreover, the ice house was expanded at public expense.
In Bombay, the firm of Jahangir Nuseervanji Wadia distributed the ice and Jamshetji Jeejeebhoy was the first to dispense ice creams at a dinner party. When several among the guests contracted a cold, the Gujarati Bombay Samachar opined that this was a worthy price to pay. In Calcutta, Dwarkanath Tagore expressed an interest to involve himself in ice shipping, but Tudor’s monopoly stayed for some decades more.
Between the years 1856 and 1882, 353,450 tonnes of ice had been shipped out all across South and East Asia and also Australia. Some of the ice was reserved for medical hospitals in the presidency towns, and in years of low supply, ice was rationed.
Decline and fall
Modern methods of ice-making soon made their advent around the 1870s. Tudor himself died in 1864 and the business passed onto other hands. With industrialisation and the construction of railway lines, there was also more pollution around Boston, which probably affected the quality of the ice. Thoreau noted that timber was cut down from around Walden Pond for the railway lines. Ice companies were formed in India too: the Bengal Ice Company was the first, set up in 1878. Ship-building became increasingly expensive. Ice plants increased in India following the spread of the railway line: 25 in 1904, 66 in 1925.
The Calcutta Ice house was razed to the ground in 1882, the Bombay one served as a warehouse till it was demolished in 1920s. The one in Chennai alone stands today; it was remodelled with circular verandahs and multiple windows to make a residence. Despite its poor ventilation, it did work for some time as a shelter for poor students. It is believed that Vivekananda during his travels through India stayed here for some time.
Photograph of the South Beach at Madras (Chennai), Tamil Nadu, taken by Nicholas & Company in ca.1880. Madras, the capital of the Madras Presidency of British India, was the first significant settlement of the British East India Company, founded in 1639 on land granted by the Raja of Chandragiri between the Cooum and Adyar rivers on the south-eastern coast. Madras grew rapidly around the fortified trading post of St. George, but its importance declined with the pre-eminence of Calcutta by the late-18th century. The view looks northwards along the road next to Marina Beach, with an Indian group posed in the foreground. In the left foreground beside the road is the ice house, a handsome circular building with Ionic pilasters and a pineapple finial. The ice house was erected in 1842 to store large blocks of ice which were imported from America by the Tudor Ice Company, formed in 1840. Following the construction of local ice factories it was converted into a home for Brahmin widows and is now known as Vivekanand House.
Besides Thoreau’s mention of ice cutters, this trade, strangely, finds little mention in the literature of the times. An exception is Rudyard Kipling. In his story, ‘The Undertakers’ in the Second Jungle Book, he mentions it in a conversation that takes place between a bird, a crocodile and a jackal in which the bird describes his feelings after having swallowed a seven-pound lump of Wenham Lake ice:
"When I was in my third season, a young and a bold bird, I went down to the river where the big boats come in. The boats of the English are thrice as big as this village.
"From the insides of this boat they were taking out great pieces of white stuff, which, in a little while, turned to water. Much split off, and fell about on the shore, and the rest they swiftly put into a house with thick walls. But a boatman, who laughed, took a piece no larger than a small dog, and threw it to me. I – all my people – swallow without reflection, and that piece I swallowed as is our custom. Immediately I was afflicted with an excessive cold which, beginning in my crop, ran down to the extreme end of my toes, and deprived me even of speech, while the boatmen laughed at me. Never have I felt such cold. I danced in my grief and amazement till I could recover my breath and then I danced and cried out against the falseness of this world; and the boatmen derided me till they fell down. The chief wonder of the matter, setting aside that marvellous coldness, was that there was nothing at all in my crop when I had finished my lamentings.
8.
Forgotten ‘Queen of Tamil Theatre’ Took The Art Of The Devadasis To The World
We remember the life and legacy of Kumbakonam Balamani, a Tamil theatre actor who took the artistic prowess of devadasis to a much larger audience, and dedicated all her wealth to the upliftment and empowerment of women disenfranchised by caste hierarchies.
In his book Drama Queens: Women Who Created History on Stage (2017), author Veejay Sai encapsulates the allure of a woman who was once deemed the ‘Queen of Tamil Theatre’. He says her legacy was such that one might find her memory lingering in “the jingle of anklets, in the many silent gestures registered in the reflections of green room mirrors and in the side-wings and curtains on stage” even today.
But this ‘memory’ might be a faint one, for while the woman ruled the stage in all of Southern India at one time, today her life and struggles are practically unknown in not just the history of India, but also in the region where she once thrived.
Her performances had fans across the globe, and word of her charity and giving heart had spread far and wide. So how did she fade into such obscurity?
A safe haven for disenfranchised women
This woman was Balamani Ammal, also known as Kumbakonam Balamani. Born in the kavarai caste in Tamil Nadu’s Kumbakonam, she was soon ‘dedicated’ as a devadasi, and learned to sing and act in Sanskrit.
“Balamani was a woman of ambition and resolve, determined to transport the art she had inherited as a devadasi to wider audiences in imaginative forms,” wrote Manu Pillai in a short section on her in his book, The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin: Tales from Indian History (2019). “Breaking out of the temple, she became among the earliest to establish a formal enterprise, the Balamani Drama Company.”
This was a unique theatre company in many ways. For one, it was one of the first companies to be entirely run by women. While other theatre groups soon followed suit, Balamani’s company stood out because these women were exclusively “disenfranchised by anti-devadasi legislation”. While it could not eradicate the staunch beliefs held by the upper-castes, it gave destitute women a safe haven. Balamani was a patron of the arts and a smart businesswoman, who took her company to great heights.
Theatre as a form of dissent has evolved over the years. While theatre earlier focussed on depictions of mythological stories, in Tamil Nadu it soon evolved into political commentary and allegories against bigotry.
Balamani’s theatre, too, was a form of such dissent. She “strode in from the wings to play male roles — with leather boots, velvet cloak and fencing sword”. She took up social themes through her plays — a detective play she once performed was later adapted for film. Poets and musicians who found themselves besotted with her wrote and composed detailed pieces of her beauty — one of which was even later sung by M S Subbulakshmi. She was known for being “bold”, and would subtly enact nude scenes that were more than taboo at the time.
It wasn’t just the “controversial” nature of her theatre that invited such a large audience. As Balamani’s theatre troupe grew, so did her wealth. But she used this for the benefit of women like her who faced inherent disadvantages in society.
She spent her best years living in palatial bungalows, complete with marble fountains, massive swimming pools, gardens that were home to peacocks and deer and had a staff of over 50 women who were at her service at all times. When she stepped out, she did so in a silver chariot with four horses. In the early 1900s, her popularity had soared to the point that the state began arranging special trains to ferry her fans to and from her plays. Two special trains called the Balamani Special Express would begin picking up audience members from areas such as Trichy and Mayavaram in the evening and then bring them to the theatre at night.
Fans would return home early in the morning after watching her performances all night long. Her attire became sought after among the women who came to watch her, and so far, no other woman had attained such popularity.
Manu Pillai details how Balamani was the first to introduce Petromax lighting onstage, and was one of the first to allot women-only spaces during her performances.
French novelist Julien Viaud, under his pen name Pierre Loti, wrote of his brief meeting with Balamoni in his book The Land of the Great Palms, calling her “the good Bayadere” (an Anglo phrase for women known as devadasis). “The bayadere comported herself with so much reserve and dignity, indeed, that I saluted her, just as I would have done any lady of position. She answered my greeting in the Indian manner, touching her forehead with two ruby-covered hands; then, accompanied by her maids, took her seat in the carriage ‘For ladies only’. I follow the good Balamoni with my eyes as I leave the horrible neighbourhood of the station and make my way to the temple of the goddess. During the course of the day, some of her kindly deeds were related to me. This one amongst others: last month some European ladies who were collecting money for a Hindoo orphanage came to her, upon which Balamoni, with her beautiful smile, handed them a note for a thousand rupees (about eighty pounds). She is charitable to all, and the poor know the road to her house well enough.”
However, Balamani’s outwardness did not seem to sit well with everyone. As Sai details in his book, the views of the elites and puritans remained mostly disdainful towards her despite her fame. One of her plays, Tara Shashankam, created much controversy. The play detailed the story of Tara, a “celestial nymph who was cursed to take birth as a princess in the world of humans”, in which Balamani appeared nude before her lover and applied oil over his body. She enacted these scenes by keeping a semi-transparent curtain before her and stood behind her bare-topped, and in some scenes, she would wear a cloth that made her upper body appear bare. This triggered many debates about morality and censorship among the upper castes.
Moreover, years of charity eventually bled her dry. She spent exorbitant amounts of money on getting the girls under her care married, and as she aged, she was left virtually penniless. By 1935, the year she passed, she had moved from her palace to a small home in Madurai, and it is said that her loyal associates had to go around collecting enough funds to even arrange her funeral. Meanwhile, her grand house was later demolished to set up a commercial complex.
Sai writes, “A decade after Balamani’s death, at a conference held in Erode in 1944, a resolution was passed under the aegis of one Parthasarathy Iyengar, banning the play [Tara Shashankam] and condemning it as a nudist and immoral one. The resolution also endeavoured to ‘clean’ the art of theatre, ‘salvage’ it from the hands of devadasis and entrust it into the ‘safe sanitized hands’ of other upper-caste communities.”
However, even as Balamani died sans the fame and fortune that once surrounded her, she left behind a rich legacy of women who now have the courage to step forward.
Theatre became a form of protest for many women artists against the British in the 30s and 40s. Many were arrested for their songs and plays, and Tamil Nadu saw its first woman director, first super-star heroine, and the like.
As for Balamani, it is for us to wonder what might have been of her life had she not been a victim of archaic perceptions of purity and morality — perceptions we still struggle with even at the height of the 21st century.
7.
The Tragic Love Story of Rani Roopmati and Sultan Baz Bahadur
Sultan Baz Bahadur was the last independent ruler of Mandu. Once when he was on a hunting trip, he chanced upon a shepherdess frolicking and singing with her friends. Baz Bahadur who loved music was immediately smitten by the singer's beauty and her melodious voice. He begged Roopmati to accompany him to his capital. Roopmati agreed to go to Mandu on the condition that she would live in a palace within sight of her beloved river Narmada. Thus was built the RewaKund at Mandu.
Tragically, the romance between the sultan and the shepherdess was doomed. The great Mughal Akbar decided to invade Mandu and sent Adham Khan to capture Mandu. Baz Bahadur who challenged him with his small army was no match for the great Mughal army. Mandu fell easily. Adham Khan cast his eye on the beautiful Rani Roopmati. Sensing her fate, Roopmati poisoned herself and avoided capture, thus ending this magical love story that inspired poetry and folklore.
Fact or fiction, the legend lives on!
6.Dev Anand and Suraiya.
"Aankhon Hi Aankhon me Ishara hogya, Baithe Baithe Jeene Ka Sahara Hogya!"
These beautiful lines perfectly match the romantic story of the legendary actor Dev Anand and Suraiya. It was the era of romance, where couples used to be madly in love with each other, making promises to live and die with one another. In the industry where nothing is permanent, Dev Sahib and Suraiya's passionate love story was an inspiration for all the lovers, yet it met a tragic ending.
Dev Anand- Suraiya love story is no less than a film script. It has love, compassion, trust, promises, heartbreak and family members coming between the lovers. In the 40s, when Dev Anand started charming the world with his looks and acting skills, he had a huge female fan base. He met Suraiya, the young, compassionate, beautiful and successful actress on the sets of 'Vidya' and got attracted to her simplicity.
Dev Sahib never shied away from accepting his love for Suraiya. While talking about the same, he once said, "Suraiya and I fell in love when we started working together. She was a very nice girl who radiated warmth and friendliness. She was an established star but had no airs about her. I was passionately in love with her. I was young, It was my first love and very intense."
Even Suraiya couldn't stop herself from getting attracted to the legendary actor. Revealing the exact moment she fell in love with Dev Anand, she said, "Soon after, we were shooting in a boat and it capsized but Dev saved me from drowning. I told him, 'if you hadn't saved my life today, it would have ended.' He just said quietly, 'if your life had ended so would have mine.' I think that's when we fell deeply in love."
Dev and Suraiya were madly in love with each other and since their families were against their union, they decided to elope and get married. But fate has something else in mind.
Suraiya was 'dragged' and 'locked' by her grandmother
The lovebirds Dev Anand and Suraiya became the victims of religious bigotry. Dev and Suraiya decided to get married by eloping during the shooting of Jeet in 1949, but their plan failed as Suraiya's conservative maternal grandmother, Badshah Begum, came to know about their plan and dragged the actress home.
Talking about the painful incident, Suraiya said, "Eventually, my grandmother succeeded in separating us. Dev was deeply hurt and offended by my lack of courage. But I was afraid for him. In retrospect, I don't think anything would have happened if I'd been bold enough. But I was terrified of my grandmother. And was heartbroken."
Suraiya's grandmother was so strict that she would interrupt in the shoot and wouldn't let her meet Dev Sahib. Dev Anand once confessed that "It was so frustrating to communicate with Suraiya those days with her grandmother being around her all the time. Of course, I remember passing on the letter in the book. I always told Suraiya that the only religion is Love. Don't let social barriers or family influence your heart. I loved her dearly."
Due to grandmother's strict vigilance, Suraiya and Dev Sahib used to meet secretly on the terrace. "Dev was a Hindu. She had at one point banned me from meeting him so we had to meet secretly on the terrace of my building. Dev would come with the late Dwarka Divecha by the backstairs. We would sit behind the water tanks and chat while downstairs, Dwarka would keep my grandmother engaged in conversation. But I was always tensed."
The couple fought for their love but religious barriers were so strong, that Suraiya was compelled to leave Dev Anand. He last met his lady love in her balcony where they cried, hugged and parted their ways. After that, Dev Anand was completely shattered. His brother Chetan Anand supported him and asked him to focus on his career. "I wanted to marry her, but could not. Cried on my brother's shoulder and then I forgot the chapter to proceed further," said Dev Anand.
Although Dev Anand got married to actress Kalpana Karthik, Suraiya never got hitched with anyone. Dev Anand and Suraiya were head over heels for each other and had they been united, their love story would have been an inspiration for young couples, with different religious backgrounds
5.Mughal Emperor Akbar
Do You know Indians were richer than Americans during Akbar’s Regime
Mughal Emperor Akbar ruled India between the 1556-1605. The English established its East India Company in India in 1600 AD. According to the report of the Groningen University, Netherlands, when India was ruled by Akbar, the Indians were richer than people of France, Germany, America, China and Japan because the Per Capita GDP of Indians was more than the current developed countries of the world.
Mughal Emperor Akbar is considered as the greatest emperor of India. During his regime; there was transparency in the tax rates, tax collection was easy, gold and silver coins were in circulation, customs duty was lower which encouraged the international trade.
Around 1600 AD, the Europeans were masters of the technology but Indians products also had the good quality. India's products such as art and handicrafts were very popular in foreign markets including India.
Akbar’s government was collecting income of what today would be $10.6 billion annually by the end of his reign. By comparison, Elizabeth I of England, who had an almost identical period of reign (1558-1603), was bringing in today's equivalent of $163 million on average in each of her final years.
According to Money.com report; Akbar is ranked at number 4 in the list of 10 richest people of all time in the world. At that time; the Akbar owned around 25% economic output of the world.
When the Indians were ruled by the Mughal Akbar; their Per Capita GDP was almost double to today’s super Power like USA, Germany, Japan, Italy and China. But after the 418 years the economic scenario has totally changed. After 418 years of Akbar’s rule; the Per Capita GDP of India could be increased to just $5961 per annum from $ 1305 per annum. While on the other hand the Per Capita GDP of other developed has increased manifold.
In 1600 AD; USA had Per Capita GDP of $1137 per annum but in 2016 its GDP was around $53,015 per annum and Germany’s Per Capita GDP increased from $ 784 to $ 46,841. In the conclusion it can be said that almost all the countries which were far behind the Indians in 1600 AD have superseded India in terms of Per Capita GDP in 2016.
Now this is the crucial time for every Indian along with the policy makers of the country to think that what went wrong in these 418 years in India that we are far behind other countries of the world in terms of almost every aspect of development.
4.JRD Tata
When JRD Tata was just 25 years old, an interesting news item in the London Times newspaper caught his attention. A unique air race had just been announced, by His Highness The Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, to popularize aviation and flying in India. The announcement read :
“The Aga Khan has offered through the Royal Aero Club, a prize of UK Pounds 500, for the first flight from England to India, or vice-versa, by a person of Indian nationality. It must be a solo flight, completed within six weeks, from the date of starting. The prize will remain open for one year from 1st January 1930.”
JRD Tata was already an avid flyer, and he had just obtained his flying license earlier that year. Since he was the first person to have qualified in India, his license, issued by the Aero Club of India and Burma, proudly bore the number “1”. He was now excited by the Aga Khan Prize, and decided to take up this flying challenge. India to England, or vice-versa, was an arduous route, with several days of solitary flying over the sultry deserts, swamps and marshes of Iraq, Egypt and Basra. Given the small bi-planes of those years, the race to reach first would also involve several stop-overs along the way.
Two other flyers also decided to take up the challenge, seized by the same excitement as JRD. One of them was Manmohan Singh, an enthusiastic civil engineer with aeronautical training, from Rawalpindi. The second was Aspy Merwan Engineer, a dashing young man who had obtained his flying license at Karachi. So here was a race involving three people. The big question – who would win ?
Manmohan Singh and Aspy Engineer decided to fly from England to India, whereas JRD went the other way around – he began at Karachi, and aimed to reach Croydon airport, in England. Manmohan Singh’s attempts were unfortunately not successful. Once, he got lost in a thick fog in a mountain road in Southern Italy, and his aircraft, which he had interestingly named “Miss India”, was badly damaged. He bravely persevered, but on another attempt, he had to make a forced landing in a swamp near Marseilles, and, while he did eventually reach India, he could not make it in the stipulated time.
In the meanwhile, the second competitor, Aspy Engineer, started out from England, in his second-hand DeHavilland, Gypsy Moth bi-plane, on 25th April 1930. He was only 17 years old. A superb aviator, he flew very well, but encountered some engine trouble over Libya, at Benghazi, due to faulty spark plugs. Aspy was well known for his mechanical and engineering skills, and so, despite these problems, he was able to reach the Aboukir airstrip, near Alexandria in Egypt.
Here, Aspy parked his plane, and immediately began his hunt for spark plugs in good condition, which would enable him to fly further. This was not an easy search in this far-flung location, and it could take several days for these spark plugs to reach him. Valuable time would surely be lost.
We now turn our eyes to the third competitor in the flying race, JRD Tata. Where was he? JRD had taken off from Karachi on 3rd May 1930, in a Gyspy Moth G-AAGI plane. He faced significant headwinds as he flew towards Jask, a small, hot and dusty town on the coast of Iran. There, he stayed overnight, and then took off towards Basra in Iraq. He drifted a little, and had to double back from the salt marshes, north of Lingoh, to reach Basra. From Basra, he flew towards Baghdad, and then onwards towards Cairo.
En route, his faulty compass led him to drift out again, and land in an old, disused First World War airstrip covered in anthills, at Haifa. But he recovered quickly from this error, and reached Cairo, where he was re-directed to land at the Aboukir airstrip. In other words, he had reached the same airport near Alexandria where Aspy Engineer had parked his plane for some time now, searching for the elusive spark plugs which would enable him to resume his race.
What happened at Aboukir that day is beautifully chronicled by JRD Tata’s biographer, RM Lala. Here is what JRD told Lala.
“At Alexandria, at 7am., I saw another Moth parked there and realized it must be Aspy Engineer (my competitor)…When he heard that I had landed, he came out to the aerodrome to meet me. I asked him what he was doing there. He told me he was waiting for some spare plugs, since he had not taken an extra set of them. This was not very good planning ! Since mine was a four-cyclinder aeroplane, and I had eight spare plugs, I gave him four of them. He was so pleased and grateful that he insisted I take something from him, and he have me his Mae West life jacket. He had a Mae West, but no spark plugs!”
So the stranded Aspy Engineer got his spark plugs from his competitor JRD, set his aircraft right, and took off towards India. JRD too got moving quickly, but lost further time in Naples, where he landed late evening at a military airfield. Here, because of strict army rules, he had to wait for the military commandant to permit him to take off, and lost four valuable hours. Thereafter, he flew uneventfully towards Rome and Paris, and then the final leg from Paris to Croydon in England.
However, by the time JRD landed in Paris, Aspy Engineer had already reached Karachi in India, and had won the Aga Khan Prize. JRD Tata had lost the flying competition by just 2 hours and 30 minutes. The race was over.
But wait a moment...that is not the end of this story (as we say in India - Kahaani ab baki hai, mere dost). 27 years later, in 1957, both men had grown significantly in their careers and lives. JRD Tata had become Chairman of the Tata Group, and Aspy Engineer had joined the Indian Air Force, where he had risen to become Air-Vice Marshal. A few years later, Aspy would go on to become the second Indian to head the Indian Air Force.
Aspy Engineer now wrote to JRD Tata, to greet him on the 25th anniversary of India’s first airline, which JRD had founded way back in 1932. JRD was greatly moved by his letter, and here is an extract from his reply to Aspy, dated 19th October 1957 :
“Of all the letters and messages I have received…none pleased me more or brought back more pleasant memories than yours…Those days were fun, weren’t they ? We were both so much younger, particularly yourself...Although you were only seventeen or eighteen at the time, I atleast did not underestimate you in the Aga Khan competition…I took you so seriously as a competitor that I spent atleast a day more in checking everything on the plane and everything else connected with the trip.”
JRD goes on to say :
“Our friendship ever since has been much more worthwhile than winning the competition would have been. I must say I enjoyed every moment of that adventure as I am sure you did too.”
And then JRD adds a concluding part of the story, in his letter to Aspy :
“Incidentally, one of the highlights that remains imprinted on my memory was my arrival at Karachi by Imperial Airways, on my return to India (from England, after the race). When, to my embarrassment, you met me with a platoon of scouts and presented me with a medal. That was terribly nice of you, and so undeserved.”
So, Aspy Engineer had actually met his competitor JRD on his return, at Karachi airport, and had given him a ceremonial welcome with a platoon, and a special medal too, for helping him win the race. What a graceful gesture, and one that must have surely brought a smile to JRD’s face. And perhaps some tears to his eyes too.
We all run and fly so many races in our lives. Winning some of these races is important to us, but is this all that matters? And is it worthwhile to win them at any cost? Or is it far more important and meaningful, to help someone, to bring a smile to someone’s face, whenever we can, along the way? And to nurture friendships that stand the test of time, which make our lives all the more fulfilling? As we search for our own answers, perhaps we can reflect on this beautiful old story, of JRD Tata and Aspy Engineer, both great men of our nation.
3. Har Dayal.
Before Bose, much before Nehru and even before Mahatma Gandhi...there was Har Dayal.
On the morning of December 23rd, 1912, a powerful bomb targeted at the Viceroy Lord Hardinge exploded as he entered the new capital city of Delhi. Though the assassination bid failed it brought back the spectre of the Ghadr of 1857 and challenged the might of the British Empire. The British Secret Service connected the bomb outrage to the brain of Har Dayal (1884-1939) a former Stanford University lecturer based in San Francisco.
The history of the Indian freedom struggle has produced no greater enigma than this heroic leader. Har Dayal was the architect of the largest international anti-colonial resistance movement - the Ghadr Party, with its nerve center in California. His mission was to destroy the British Empire by an armed revolt and his weapon of choice was the colossal power of his intellect. Cerebrally light-years ahead, Har Dayal a super brilliant scholar at Oxford and St. Stephen's College was eloquent in seventeen languages and an author par excellence. Exiled from India for life Har Dayal became Ghadr personified.
This gentleman revolutionary was the first Indian to teach at American and Swedish universities and an extraordinary mix of an Anarchist and a Pacifist, a Sanskritist and a Rationalist, a Marxist and a Buddhist, a Feminist and a Humanist as also an ultranationalist and an internationalist. For millions who sought to emulate the quintessential Dilliwallah, he was The Great Indian Genius.
2.US standard railroad gauge
A history lesson for people who think that history doesn't matter:
What's the big deal about railroad tracks?
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?
they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads.
'Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used'.
'So, why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England . You see, that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since'.
And what about the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)
Now, the twist to the story:
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but they had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature, of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? So, Ancient horse's asses control almost everything and....
1.Mowgli
Mowgli is a character & protagonist of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. He is a feral boy from Pench in Seoni,MP who originally appeared in Kipling's short story "In The Rukh" in 1893 & became most prominent & memorable character in The Jungle Book . The Rukh" describes how Gisborne, an English forest ranger in Pench in Seoni at the time of British Raj, discovers a young man named Mowgli, who has extraordinary skills in hunting, tracking & driving wild animals with the help of his wolf brothers. He asks him to join forestry service. Mueller, head of Dept. of Woods & Forests as well as Gisborne's boss, meets Mowgli, checks his elbows & knees, noting the callouses & scars & figures Mowgli is not using magic or demons. Muller offers Mowgli to join the service, to which Mowgli agrees. Later, Gisborne learns the reason for Mowgli's almost superhuman talents; he was raised by a pack of wolves in jungle. Nobel Prize in Literature 1907 was awarded to Rudyard Kipling who was born in India.
Some interesting exchange of information on Rudyard Kipling on another group.
Pachmarhi is also said to be the place which inspired Kipling.
I was not aware of the historical precedents to the Mowgli phenomenon. Thx.
The leader of the wolfpack was Akela. The malicious tiger was, of course, Sharekhan. The black panther was Bagheera. The bear, Bhaloo. Kaa, the python.
My most recent reading of The Jungle Book was about ten years back.
I wonder if you’ve seen the house in Mumbai where Rudyard Kipling was born. The house still intact sits in a wooded area in the heart of the large campus of Sir JJ College of Art & Architecture where his father served as its Principal. It stands empty and locked up and I don’t why they haven’t made a museum of it.
Further to add Kipling worked with Pioneer press at Lucknow as well as Allahabad.
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