Back in the early l990's I purchased this antique "parsi table".  Gail Wiggins, an antique dealer in Old Town Spring, Texas  made a trip to Bombay, India and brought back a container of British Colonial pieces.

Do come for tea but no cobras please!   

The beautiful tiles on this table were carried from England to India. The table was made of mixed woods in India .  THE ENGLISH TEA AND COFFEE SERVICE  has a raised grape motif.

Dorje-ling or Darjeeling, the queen of the Himalayan ranges has her charm all over the world. Hindu legend claims that Kanchenjunga is the abode of Lord Shiva, who sits among its windswept peaks in eternal meditation upon the universe he created. Fifty miles south of Kanchenjunga, on a massive curve of mountain ridge, lies Darjeeling. It gets this epithet from the electrical storms that beset the Himalayas and from the dorje or thunderbolt, of tantric worship. For the Hindus and Buddhists, whose temples and monasteries are found in abundance around Darjeeling is a witness to the spiritual power of the Himalayas where Lepchas, Tibetans, Bhutias, Nepalese and Bengalis live in the vast shadow of a range of mountains that has encouraged religious thought and art for a thousand years. It is the vacation spot whose appeal has been its brisk air and grand scenery ever since the British Raj, more than a century ago, headed for the northern tip of West Bengal by palanquin, boat and pony to escape the hot flat sprawl of teeming Calcutta. It is a dream to the people of the plains to have a glance of those snow-capped mountains ranges. I am no exception to that. From New Jalpaiguri I shared a land rover with others. While climbing upward, I felt a little dizzy, mist gathering around, made me feel as if I was floating up and up! The toy train off and on passed our way. It is romantic no doubt but time consuming also. How exciting is to observe the expertise of the drivers on the sharp bends. Fern, moss covered hill with profuse trees on left, vast expanse of void on the right mingled with mist cloud and light, often sunbeams streaking through cloud and mist created a mirage. I remember the saying “abode of lightning”.

Observatory Hill and a mall where local people and visitors congregate in the evening dominate the top level of town. In this commercial area there’s a wide choice of Western and Indian hotels, their number and variety a measure of Darjeeling’s long importance as a hill station. Shops laden with hill crafts are different. Painted and colourful wooden masks, charming hill jewellery create a spell of magic. Bhutia and Nepali craftsmen make their craft vibrant. This is a glorious place blessed with the inner joy of the people of the land. Handicraft is not only a profession but also the expression of beauty inside an artist.

For another look at this and other great mountains you must rise early – 4.30 or 5 - and take a land-rover a few miles out of town to Tiger Hill. The high observatory there offers a wide-angle view of four countries. To the west lie Nepal and Mount Everest, to the south the Bengali part of the range, to the north Sikkim and Kanchenjunga, and to the east Bhutan. During the minute it takes for the sun to rise and transform the ghostly form of Kanchenjunga into golden flame, onlookers gasp. They did when I was there, and a local man with me claimed they always do.

After the sunrise you come down through a stately grove of cryptomeria Japonica, now visible along the road. A short detour leads to the Buddhist monastery in the village of Ghoom. Founded by a Tibetan lama in 1850, it is a working monastery, set apart from the village, with a breathtaking view of a valley thousands of feet below. The monastery has a vast collection of old manuscripts kept in boxes in a slotted bookcase. Statues of fierce tantric deities stand in rows behind glass, and bowls of holy water sit in front of the main image, one of Maitreya, Buddha of the Future. A prayer wheel, suspended above a candle and turned by the rising hot air, spins Om Mani Padme Hum, the great mantra, continually through the incense-filled hall. Unless you go to Tibet, this is a good chance to see Yellow Hat Tibetan Buddhism in practice. It is the new sect, more ascetic and philosophical than the older sect, the Red Hats. In the cold hall of this temple it is possible to feel for a few moments the long labor of meditation, the lonely devotion, the stern commitment of these monks.

On the way back I reached Batasia loop, which has a fascinating contrast with the topography. There are other spots to visit - Himalayan Mountaineer Institute, Zoological Garden, Lebong Race Course, Ropeway, Tenzing Rock and Lalkothi. For trekkers the return to Darjeeling may be only the start of a long adventure, but most visitors come for the scenery, the shopping, and an excursion, say, to Kalimpong. What I took away from Darjeeling that has stayed with me is the colour of it, the blue that is the dominant colour of the Himalayas: blue sky, blue shadow thrown upon the mountains by sunlight and cloud. Blue hovers everywhere, tinges the other colours with its presence.

Gomdhen Dhim, Upper Dumaram, Kurseong

Issue- Slavery of Tea Garden Workers since the British Raj…

Dogmatic Communists have ruled West Bengal for over a quarter of century now, nonetheless, they have in no way grasped the structure on which the Tea Gardens of Darjeeling and Doars is operationally managed.

Generations of same families living in Tea Gardens have been encouraged to enslave themselves and survive on penury. Even after the establishment of Darjeeling Hill Council, there were no initiations to free over 80,000 people of slavery and give them higher status of farmers who could own land on which their families have toiled for generations. Continually since the British Era, dependents of Tea Garden workers numbering close to 700,000 people living in 100 odd tea gardens in Darjeeling Hills and Dooars have no ownership right to their ancestral residential homes despite their private investment on extension, repair and maintenance. The status of their properties are limited to that of a “labour quarter” subject to lease contract of the management company and state as the land owners and not secured by individual legal documents in favour of the workers.

This has resulted in workers not being able to capitalize on their assets, thereby, forcing them to be continually be “bonded as a labour” of the company presently managing the Garden and it amounts to their ancestral land and residence being a form of collateral  submitted to the tea company in exchange of work and right to reside.

This current structure of ownership/management of Tea Garden is a continuation of British Raj structure and the status of tea estate workers has remained same ever since and the government of West Bengal never bothered to apply the famous communist dogma of “land to the tiller” here unlike the rest of Bengal. The feudalistic structure remained with White Bada Sahebs being replaced by Calcutta based Brown Sahebs continuing with the privilege of absolute rule but with no accountability on regulation, welfare and local development.

The Calcutta based Tea Companies govern over these local communities with absolute impunity and is only driven by top line sales and annual bottom line returns while West Bengal establishment continues to hand these companies semi administrative rights like distribution of utility services like electricity and telecom, maintenance of roads, primary health care etc while frame conditions for government outreach and sustainable development was further eroded during the Subash Ghisingh era in the Tea Gardens.

Very clearly, with dynamic market forces is driving the economic output of the Darjeeling and Doars Tea Garden settlements and West Bengal’s being a perennial under performer in market based economy isn’t West Bengal too  big a state to be managed properly and Darjeeling Hills and Doars too complex for Calcutta policy makers to comprehend ?

Furthermore, wouldn’t it be better for the people to Darjeeling Hills and Doars be given the right to form a superior administrative set up for local governance in any form or structure?

Issue-Despair in Dooars…

The state of Adivasi people in Doars area is in complete despair with every indicator about these communities being below state and national average. Indigenous people of Dooars like the Koch and Totos are completely lagging behind in all parameters of human development such as such as literacy percentage, per capita income, school enrollment percentage, access to higher education, access to medical services or unemployment percentage.

We often hear about cases of suicides and hunger related deaths especially amongst the Adivasi community and further their indigenous language and culture is in process of being eroded owing to their strength of population numbers being diluted due to the arrival of mainstream ethnic Bengalis in traditional Adivasi land.

Evidently, the cause of the Adivasi community in Dooars and North Bengal has never being prominently featured in West Bengal’s governments’ priority list despite the Marxist government being one of the world’s longest ruling government.

Would you not agree that there will be a better focus on the development of these communities should Dooars be handled by a smaller and local administrative and legislative set up?

Issue-West Bengal not gaining the required Momentum for Growth…

India as a nation has one of the fastest growing economies and is being lauded for the continuous growth that it has managed since last one decade, however, many independent studies continues to place West Bengal in the bottom rung of investment attractiveness and lags behind in all the parameters in creating investment friendly environment.

Years of cadre driven philosophy of Marxist Government has infiltrated all institution of government, including the law and order machinery hence the West Bengal has not been able to attract neither domestic nor foreign investment thereby not being able to create employment and opportunities for it’s people to partake.

Darjeeling and Dooars possesses unique potential in the areas of specialized agriculture, floriculture, hydropower, handicrafts for exports, non timber forest products such as medicinal and aromatic plants and furthermore on service sectors such as Tourism and Information Technology Enabled sectors ( ITES).

Would not it better for an empowered local government to harness these potential as Planners sitting in Calcutta has failed categorically to start any initiation to facilitate Darjeeling Hills and Dooars join and contribute to the growth momentum of larger Indian economy?

Issue-Weak Governance and failure of service delivery…

Governance either federal, state or local is the key issue and will continue to be a key issue and governments world wide including some  state governments within India are embarking on steep learning curve to improve government services such essential utilities, tighter regulations on environment, justice delivery, human rights, law and order, education, health, employment and broad based local economic development and other continuously evolving infrastructural requirement such as telecom, transport and digital communication.

Innovative programs have been designed at macro, meso and micro levels of governance to enhance the delivery of these services by many governments, nevertheless, one never hears of West Bengal government being creative and committed for any such programs.

In actual fact, for example, West Bengal Government’s Health care system is considered to be one of the poorest in the world and for years’ variety of independent media has highlighted the deplorable conditions of state run hospitals across West Bengal. Similarly, the state run educational facilities are poorly funded and the majority of public prefer privately run educational services despite the Marxist promises of competitive educational quality.

Would it not be better for Darjeeling and Dooars to create a small functional administrative, legislative and juidicial set up so that there is a complete accountability of the elected representative and allow powers of democracy to function?

Gandhi's particular genius was to see how to weave together the two opposing strands in a manner that would appeal to Anglicized upper-class Indians and illiterate villagers alike. By 1927 he had managed to bring together in his Congress party Hindu nationalists, Bengali nationalists, Sikh separatists, old-line loyalists, and cutting-edge socialists. He also had the good fortune to launch his movement at a moment when, thanks to the devastation of World War I, Europeans were losing faith in their own civilization. The environment in London, Paris, and Berlin was ripe for new ideologies and styles of life, and was fascinated by non-Western cultures.

Gandhi was introduced to a wide reading public through the Nobel laureate Romain Rolland, who produced an adoring biography of him in 1924. Even more important, he was the first third-world politician to understand how to exploit and manipulate the credulity of Western media. As early as 1912, when he left South Africa for good, he ceased to wear British clothes, and was often photographed with his spinning wheel. For most of his life his diet consisted of fruits, nuts, and goat's milk, a token of the saintly image he sought to convey. His famous "march to the sea" to protest the Raj's salt tax was staged mainly for the benefit of newsreel cameras, which conveyed the images around the world.

To be sure, not everybody was impressed. Churchill, for one, regarded Gandhi as "a fanatic and an ascetic of the fakir type well known in the East"-a judgment not altogether true, but not altogether false, either.

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The British didn't merely war and take over this land physically, colonial rule is never that way, they took over psychologically as well and not many Indians understand the effects of that today. When in truth its right before them. The ideologies of hating Brahmin people were all with roots in their actions. I will explain this here. The hate ideology against Brahmin descendants is called Anti-Brahminism and is most popular in the South of India. The key aspects of the ideology include that the Brahmins suppressed all other castes and were "Aryan" invaders. They came as foreigners and made everyone suffere 'under them' etc etc. People, especially Marxist thinkers would love to believe that there existed some form of major class suppression in all nations which would make it "right" for them to wave their red flag there. Ideas of Marx aside, though I am yet to read of the man's ideas completely, but to what I have read they fail to impress me. However, concerning Brahmins of the past: I am yet to find in the past a single Brahmin family that owned great wealth or as having people 'under them'. Firstly, the Brahmin concept became extremely corrupted in the course of the first Islamic Mughal Empire and then the Victorian British Empire. Brahmins are originally preists or people learned in the texts and it was a position one earned. In the past, they rightly speaking lived poor lives as wanderers and only begged for food from house to house (as they were supposed to). Mostly, though some get quickly appointed as ministers or advisors to kings. Chankya the advisor of Chandragupta Maurya of the Mauryan Empire was a Brahmin.

Then what was the beginning of Anti-Brahminism? 

Anti-Brahminism is not with a "nothing" in history or a movement that popped out of nowhere. It has its roots in the colonial era. The early schools of pre-colonial India, were in the time of the Mughals. The Mughals were the dominant force in the Indian Sub-continent (ISC). The schools that existed taught in Sanskrit and Arabic, along with the regional dialects. When the British came, the Mughals eventually faced defeat. Aurangzeb's hatred towards his most formidable Hindu allies the Rajputs eventually weakened his forces. The ISC was called "British India" and it was the greatest source of wealth for the British Empire, with their "East India Company" established in Bengal. The last real resistance to the British in the ISC was the Sikh State in the North, the Marathas and Tipu Sultan of Mysore in the South. They, despite fierece attempts fell. The British obviously couldn't master all the 1600+ languages in India, they knew Hindi and some regional languages depending on the regions they administered. Apart from India they had colonies in Africa and many other places of the Earth too, how many languages could they learn ?! For a sense of uniformity across the vast Empire and convinience, they had to teach their tongue to the colonized people. Soon a Briton of Scottish descent named Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay set the Western System of Education in which the primary language was English. This is where the whole change takes place. The books were written by the British, soon Indian's of the next generations knew less of their own origins and almost bought everything being fed to them in the new language. Slowly a new 'India' came which consited of Indians reciting Sheakspear and Byron as well as well as Englishmen did ! With this the "educated" Indians soon forgot the great texts their forefathers had been reading, those got sidelined and people wanted to "be like the English" to come to their good books. And then of course they got knighted etc etc. eventually. But of what worth is it? Is it their identity? But even as I say this most Indians will continue to ignore their own texts because they have unknowingly been "trained" to look at only English literature as "Classic Literature". I have seen many arts students who are studying a lot of literature out of interest but haven't even bothered to peek into Indian literature; and I don't mean Rabindranath Tagore's English works !! In the system established by Maucaulay, the Brahmins in India learnt English effectively and slowly the British couldn't ignore them as "different from the British". First the British came in saying "You all are savages", now their ideology was "Brahmins are not" well not exactly, but something of that sort. Note again that when I say Brahmin I speak of the descent not Brahmins themselves, in the sense as defined by our texts. Soon the British didn't alienate them, but they did alienate the other Indians. Many other groups also did keep up with the changing India, however those who didn't became poor and of a "lower class". And these groups got alienated by their own brothers. They were looked as "lower" by those who were their own brothers.This was extremely wrong on the part of the others, but all these events in the colonial era don't happen over one night. The change of culture was gradual. Soon with British ridiculousness, the Brahmins got their own forms of public places that showed clear bias, like restaurants and temples saying "Only Brahmins". This made the other people retaliate and this was what is actually the true origin of Anti-Brahminism. Periyar's ideology is forged out of emotion, not historical facts. It was due to the fact that he was denied entrance in a temple in Kashi. Today, in the South of India Tamil Brahmins are accused of matters of the past too, even those with no relevance or proof. What change had happened in the colonia era is assumed by Non-Brahmins as being done throughout history. All the discrimination of a short period is what is actually made the Non-Brahmin descendants retaliate. And the Brahmin families have been tortured too, but ignorant people fail to hear two sides of a conflict. But acussations against Brahmins as a "high class" that suppressed people throughout history is baseless ! The structure of society of Ancient India was different from anything in Europe. Marxist thinkers would like to believe that all societies hitherto were inhumanly suppressing a bunch of people. The truth is there is no land quiet like India, not only I say that - the whole Hellenistic world sounds of praises of the Indians, now thats recorded history. The Ancient Indians surprisingly didn't write much, but the Greeks and the Romans did write of them. But the thinking and behaviour of the "Brahmins" in the colonial era was the product of the stink of the Victorian ideas of society. Today in South India, Tamil Brahmins are accused of "Sanskritizing" Tamil, but the most "pure" Tamil will only be found in texts written by Tamil Brahmins like Naccinarkkiniyar and other contemproary Brahmin writers of his time. In India we delight in point to Brahmins like Drona ill treating people of other clans. But who wrote that fact, using which people point to the Brahmins? Vyasa - A Brahmin himself ! Rather he wrote it as a tale, and we should rather thank him that he didn't censor it. All these ideas of Brahmins being a suppressing class comes from the behaviour of the Church in Europe and the Jewish Synagogues that made profits from people. I can understand how Karl Marx came to his ideology, its simple - he was a Jew and saw how religious Jews swindled other people of their money! But, nothing of that sort happened largely in India !! People relate them both as "Religious authorities", but they are yet to understand history in more delicate detail. Firstly, the idea of Brahmins being a race of people is wrong, castes were truely changeable. There are actually numerous examples of high to lower caste and vice versa changes. For one Chandragupta, the great king of the Mauryans was a "maurya" (peacock breeder). A caste as low as "famer" or "peasant" again, they were warriors too. So, that even shows that not all castes were 'labelled' under one category. What about Thiruvalluvar, the man who wrote the Tamil texts of Tirukural? He belonged to the "Paraiyar" people who were traditionally drummers. Again, there was no "low" caste, its not the same as "poor" as it was in other societies. The Khatik clan is a subset of the Dhangar people. What does "Dhangar" mean? It means literally in "Who is wealthy". But why are they a "low caste"? The fact was that the learned people were considered "high" in India, unlike other societies were the rich occupied that position. The kings usually pertain to the Kshatriya (warrior) clans, but even though they would be the richest in the land, they come only "second".  The (Vaishyas) who were the traders, the merchants also earned good wealth through trade. Where do they come, "third" just before the manual labourers! I hope some people are being educated here. The fact is anyone was free to take up an occuptaion they sought, personal bias of induviduals did exist but was heavily discouraged. There is much more for people to understand, but it too much to type and I don't want to make this article too lengthy. The way the ancient Indians see society and how we see society today are very different, we look down on most occupations which the society needs. The British made us believe the nonsense and we are as ridiculously stuck on ideas or races as they were ! We weren't then, we are more now !

The truth in simple words is when people speak foolishly about our past its clear they haven't understood our ancestors or the real way things were. While the Greeks like Arrian and all of the Hellenistic world sounds of praises of the Indians. We would like believeing that our ancestors were biased induviduals, like the racist Europeans of the past. Doing that we can all easily agree with the Europeans and say "All our ancestors were evil". But the truth is mainly Europe was like that. The History of India is quiet unique, and in my opinion there have been many noble kings in India. But some Indians have a trouble believing these things ! The reason people could believe other nonsensical ideas like Aryan "superior" race is because their mindset changed. In this way European ideology mentally enslaved all of India !!! But if you knew our original texts and what they mean, the Aryan Invasion Theory and ideas of "Aryans" being a race itself will sound like a joke to you. Refer to my other article for this.  

So I would advice Indians who have learnt all of English literature to read Indian texts atleast in a good English translation for starters. Today, from school, children are fed the nonsense that "good literature" are just Enlgish Classics. But, great Indian works of the past have been written down in forms of great epic poems only waiting to be read. We shouldn't lose our identity and knowledge of our own texts, in doing so you completely Maucaulay's wishes - which I doubt anyone would delight doing !

 "We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population"

- Thomas Babington Macaulay.

The above quote clearly shows what a low opinion a common British of the Victorian Era had on Indians. Its pathetic if we continue with their ideas. He wanted that because he wanted the British to rule India as long as possible. What do we want to become? And I pray that Indians dont degrade their thnking to those of the British who hitherto only thought of deceit and war to win a people or succeed as a civilization. Over this Rowan Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury justifies the British onslught on the Indians as something that "normalized" things. He spoke of this while ridiculing the US invasion of Iraq. Both are propagated with a colonial mentality and hence have really no justification. Many of India's national teasure and artifacts that were forcefully taken still remain in the United Kingdom. I have not come across one word of the British Royals that seems to show any kind of respect to the Indians. But yet even in the colonial era, Indians had the British as friend. How? The answer is because they were English men themselves. They didn't know much about the greatness of their forefathers. But they soon believed they became "top class induviduals" with a costly coat, a pipe and speaking in English. The mentality is seen in Indian movies too, where the "big shot" makes a line or two in English in a stylish manner. The only reason the English have had Indians as their friends is because the Indians have changed themselves, but the Englishman has no true appreciation of Indian culture. Of what worth is friendship like that? The British in all truth like only themselves !! They like us, if we become like them. I am yet to come across one person of the royal houses or in the administrative system of the British Empire who had a respect for the Indian culture or for the Indians. And a liking for Chicken Tikka Masala is not respect for Indian culture ! Its pathetic, it needs to change. We Indians need to find our identity.   

Published in 1987, twenty years ago, the question of the position of women in Islam remains pertinent.

Shakir comments that ‘the practice of seclusion or veil existed in the pre-Islamic times. In the same way a number of customs which are now treated as Islamic have nothing to do with Islam. These customs and practices have been the features f the social and cultural life of the people who did not abandon them after embracing Islam. The example of the Indian Muslim social structure may be instanced here. This may be described the folk aspect of religion which may go or may not go against the letter and spirit of normative aspect of religion. In other words religion, normative or popular, is not and should not be viewed as an autonomous and independent phenomenon.’

Status of Women in Islam, edited by Asghar Ali Engineer was first published in 1987 by Ajanta Publications.

Published by Pelican, the book ‘traces the evolution of India before contact with modern Europe as established in the sixteenth century. Professor Thapar’s account of the development of India’s social and economic structure is arranged within a framework of the principal political and dynastic events. Her narrative covers some 2,500 years of India’s history, from the establishment of Aryan culture in about 1000 B.C. to the coming of the Mughuls in A.D. 1520 and the first appearance of European trading companies. In particular she deal’s interestingly with the many manifestation of Indian culture, as seen in religion, art, and literature, in ideas and institutions.

Thapar states that ‘the history of India in the first volume begins with the culture of the Indo-Aryans and not with the prehistoric cultures of India.’ She further says that ‘1526 marks the arrivals of the Mughuls in northern India and they were (amongst other things) actively involved in the future of Europe in India.’

In her chapter ‘The Antecedents’, Thapar says ‘wealth in India, as in every other ancient culture, was limited to the few. Mystical activities were also the preoccupation of but a handful of people. It is true, however, that acceptance of such activities was characteristic of the majority… whereas in some other cultures the rope-trick would have been ascribed to the promptings of the devil and reference to it suppressed, in India it was regarded with amused benevolence. The fundamental sanity of Indian civilization has been due to an absence of Satan.’

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CONSCIOUS SUBMISSION

When men are subdued by force they do not submit in their minds, but only because their strength is inadequate. When men are subdued by power in personality they are pleased to their very heart's core and do really submit.

Mencius (Meng Tzu}

COMMENT:

The power of personality or charisma or ideas can be more powerful than the might of the sword, or the cannon or the bomb. The use of force can capture and suppress but it usually cannot maintain allegiance when the force is removed. True power is invisible and accepted consciously through acceptance of the ruler and his methods of governance - conscious submission.

Great leaders have the ability to enthuse others and to garner support with their words and actions and their leadership qualities. People follow and obey their wishes and such leaders thrive in the power vested and bequeathed to them by their people. They have little fear that the people will rise up against them.

The same concepts ccould be applied to the conquering armies of the old civilizations of the Greeks and the Romans. Later, the great European colonial powers of the Industrial Age showed their longevity in controlling millions of subjects with minimum physical force. In some cases they may have conquered initially by force, but they were only able to retain their power through mutually beneficial policies like trade and power brokering with the local factions in their colonies e.g. The Indian Raj of Britiin's colonialism of India.

Even in the historical writings of little Demerara, now Guyana, that the Dutch ruled from 1581-1781 it is said that the Dutch settlers did not subjugate the native indigenous Amerindian tribes. The Dutch settler policy was to actively befriend local tribes with gifts and trade so that they became allies and protectors of the Dutch interests there. This policy also ensured that their slaves, imported from Africa, did not successfully escape as they were quickly tracked down and returned by the Amerindians.

It can therefore be said that the likeable personality, like the pen, is mightier than the sword. That endearing personality can be embodied in an individual or in a whole nation or people, as they are perceived by others. Their rule is accepted by their subjects who consciously submit as they are pleased with their method of governance.

Cyril Bryan

It helps that I've already read it*, so I can whole-heartedly recommend this vivid history of end of the British Raj and the founding the modern states of Pakistan and India. It's a panoramic portrait of the tricky politics of religion, caste, anti-colonialism, and British attitudes toward imperialism.

Juiciest -- and what sold my picky fellow readers -- is the sex. Namely, the romantic triangle featuring the last Viceroy of India, Dickie Mountbattan, who presided over the partition and the British exit, his glamorous wife, Edwina, and her passionate love affair with the handsome, lonely, and brilliant Nehru, India's first prime minister.

Gandhi and Jinnah, the fiery Muslim who insisted on a separate state, the conflicts and violence among Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, and the British incompetence and indifference that led to horrific violence as the British left are described with cinematic flair.

It's a great read, and should produce lively discussion.

*I prepared the index

Kollu taata used to play the violin. He always referred to it as the fiddle though.

The fiddle would accompany him in its aged wooden case, further bundled in an old faded dhoti, whenever he would come over and stay at his daughter's i.e. my grandmother's house.

Needless to  say, a neat postcard would announce his arrival.

A taxi would bring him home with his luggage  - an iron trunk, a basket of fruits or some snacks, his fiddle bundle and his puja paraphernalia in a small case. And he would count and ensure that everything had made its way safely from the taxi, through the flight of stairs into the room upstairs where he would spend the next week.

His fiddle used to excite us all, including our generation of great grand kids and our aunts, one generation above us, all in their twenties (in the 1960s and the 70s).

Adi Narayana Iyer was a self taught man. I do not know how or where he learned to play the fiddle.

In his opinion there were only two good fiddle players in India. One was Chowdaiya and the other was Adi Narayana Iyer of course. All others sounded like buffalos according to him.

He used to enjoy playing a duet with my grandmother, who would accompany him on the veena. Together, they would reach his ideal of the duet between Chowdaiya and Mysore Doresvami Iyengar, as they played Raghuvamsa sutambudi in all its detail with a multitude of sangatis, especially with a flourish in the cittasvara section.

Ah! How we used to stare in awe, sitting on the redoxide floored hall, marveling the octogenarian as he sat erect on his chair playing, with his doting daughter (my grandmother), seated on the floor playing an old Tiruvanantapuram veena.

Clearly, a source of inspiration for the entire audience in the hall that included myself, a younger brother, a younger baby brother, 2 younger cousins, my parents, three chittis, my mama and mami, domestic servants and friends from the neighborhoood.

Adi Narayana Iyer, my great grandfather was a very serious old gentleman.

A stickler for discipline, there was an order to everything he did in life. His clothes, his daily routine, his puja, his diet, his daily walk, the route he took etc.

Having invested wisely in his middle age, he was reasonably well provided for  until he died in 1975.

My memories of him from the 60s are still clear. I vividly remember the maragata lingam, the spatika lingams and the salagramams in his puja, his old typewriter from the days of the British Raj.

Kollu taata (great grandfather) was a conservationist. He never wasted anything. I remember the torn bits of re-used paper that he used to type on. Nothing was ever wasted. There was so much respect for everything in his world.

Kollu taata lived in a vast old house in Mambalam. Situated next to a Sivan koyil, the house had a sprawling backyard, that was largely unattended to.

There were shady trees as well as weeds all over the place. Snakes perhaps. Mosquitoes a plenty. And there was no ceiling fan in the house. One had to get used to the drone of the mosquitoes at night.

Koluu thatha lived with his wife Thanga (whom he had married after the demise of his first wife, my great grandmother), and the two of them lived in a paradigm of abundance despite their limited means. There was always an abundance of food and snacks at their place.

And the space was spic and span, and there was a sense of the legendary British punctuality around the running of the house.

And, he was a great communicator. Each week would see my grandmother receiving a postcard from him, written in English in his neat handwriting. And he would expect a reply back without fail!

The film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was banned in India. This film is probably the best in the Indiana Jones Trilogy. Laced with an underlying current of a great sense of humor, the movie adventures through what it calls 'India'.

Indiana Jones always gets caught in adventures in the most exotic of places. And there are always the slimy, creepy crawly creatures.

There are enough references to the thuggee cult and the movie's version of it, where an institutionalized operation offers unwitting capturees as an offering to Mother Kali, in the most bizzare of ways imaginable.

Villain Om Puri has the ability to pluck out the victim's heart from his rib cage - a skill that any surgeon would envy. How on earth did they come up with this idea? It is hilarious.

The most famous of the scenes in this film is the banquet scene, where INdiana jOnes, his girl friend partner throughout the adventure - a whiny blonde, and a boy from the Far East sit down with the Royal Entourage for a feast.

Guess what is served in the feast? Snakes, eyeball soup and the like. And here is the cake. The dessert is chilled monkey brains, scooped out fresh from the cracked skull of tiny monkeys.

The whole banquet scene is only incidental in the film; yet it causes a riot of laughter. Everytime I see it, it never ceases to amuse me.

So, how does it insult India as many have made it out? Everyone knows that it is very highly far fetched. And if anyone thinks that people eat monkey brains in India, it is their problem.

(Image of Emperor Tughlak, taken by John Sache in the mid-19th century)

Great video presentation of historical images of India juxtaposed with current photos: LINK.

Bonus: An old favorite of mine is Kamat's Potpourri, which has all sorts of awesomeness around the theme "India's history, mystery, and diversity" -- particularly enriching is the site's photoblog.

Super-bonus: There's some interesting British Raj photography on Harappa, and the site also offers cool vintage postcards, engravings, and lithographs.

                                                   -Jawaharlal Nehru 

During Maharaja Ranjit Singh reign, three brothers, Gulab Singh, Suchet Singh and Dhian Singh acquired powerful influence at his court and Dhian Singh became his principal advisor and Sikh Durbar in Lahore rewarded them for their services to the empire. Jammu was given to Gulab Singh in 1920 as a fief (jagir); Dhian Singh was awarded with Poonch and small surrounding hilly states of Bhimber and Mirpur, as Alastair Lamb notes that the areas which fell in the Poonch state, “Coincides very closely with what in late 1947 was to become Azad Kashmir.”  

During the First Anglo-Sikh war of 1845, Gulab Singh remained neutral and later by the Treaty of Amritsar March 16, 1846; British sold Kashmir (areas to the eastward of the river Indus and westward of the river Ravi⁾ to the Maharaja Gulab Singh for around Rs 7.5 million. 

The state at that time was stretched over an area of 84,471 square miles and Gulab Singh bought it at the rate of Rs 155 per square mile while he paid seven and half rupees for every inhabitant of the state. (SHAHB NAMA) 

Gulab Singh was succeeded by his son Ranbir Singh in 1858 and Partap Singh followed him but he had no direct heir to the throne and during his last days his brother Amar Singh was serving as the chief minister while the state was under direct British supervision. 

Maharaja Partap Singh considered Jagatdev Singh, son of his great granduncle Dhian Singh, the Poonch Raja, as ‘Spiritual Heir to Kashmir,’ but his brother Amar Singh, who was his chief minister at that time with the connivance of British nominated his son Hari Singh in 1925 as the new ruler of the state. The British had once rescued Hari Singh from blackmailing when he was in Landon and according to Alastair Lamb, “Partap Singh despite the approval of Chamber of Princes was overruled by the Political Department, which thought that Hari Singh, whose disreputable background might make him easier to manipulate, would prove a more amenable Maharaja.” 

Thus began the most decisive period in the history of Indo-Pak and on October 26, 1947 Hari Singh singed the Instrument of Accession with Indian Union and on October 27, Indian troops entered Kashmir and a war broke out in 1948. The countries also fought two more wars in 1965 and 71 and a constant war posture as in 1990s the Kashmiris launched a guerilla movement to win their independence from India with Pakistan’s active backing and around 100,000 died during the resistance movement.  

The situation radically changed after the 9/11 and Pakistan started to distance her from the Jihadi groups. The Kashmir almost disappeared from the government’s agenda as Jihadis and government lost their good terms under the intense US pressure. 

Pakistan honeymoon with the Kashmiri resistance groups has ended and so the rhetoric of political and moral support for their right to self-determination. President Musharraf’s eagerness to resolve the dispute also played an important role in boosting Indian position while his defensive attitude and internal problems made the Kashmir’s issue a forgotten tragedy.

My first sojourn into the mountains was a trip to our family cottage, “Alice Villa”, in Darjeeling half a century ago. A Buddhist monastery and a pig farm are all I remember. The rest is shrouded in foggy lore that I overheard around fireplaces or tucked under a quilt with my toes curled against a hot water bottle. The malodorous piggery as farms here are known) housed mountains of pink oinkers that account for my gastronomic partiality to gammon steaks, smoked ham and streaky bacon.

School children after a respectful glance at Ghoom monastery, and a quick halt at the Pines hotel to scoff scones with tea from Arthur Emmet’s Selebong Tea Estate, would regularly visit those sties.

My father’s propensity to fall in line, he was after all a major in the erstwhile King’s army, made it necessary for him to introduce me early, if allegorically, to the changing states of the state. I was taken sightseeing to the piggery.

Over the years, the owner (not “Keventers”, who piously owned a farm next door specializing in ice creams we pigged upon a cheese which some times smelled suspiciously of pigs) has given special members of his herd names that he knew would appeal to the parents of youngsters being groomed for a lifetime’s adulation of celluloid heroes.

The enormous stud in the farm, who had to be prodded out of a stupor to oblige, was called Wally, for Wallace Berry. He was penned a close snort away from two voluptuous sows; widely-bottomed-curly-tailed Norma shearer and the thick-lipped-lash-batting Joan Crawford.

Their progeny of pink piglets found their way to the elegant tables of the Governor Sir John Herbert whose wife, Lady Herbert, would stick them on a spit to roast while she coasted for a spin down the Mall in flowing purple silks and a freen scarf clamped around her hat and firmly twisted around several chins that were gnawing into a brownie from the Swiss confectioner “Vado & Pliva” (later to become Glenary’s), to scream her ineloquent lungs out, around a gambling table of over-and-under 7s at the market-place. Fun days of hazardless betting and merrymaking.

That was around the same time the famous cricketers, Lala Amarnath and Shute Banerjee, representing The Aryans of Calcutta, came to play the boys of Victoria School. They were fed mounds of pork, had more stuffed into their kit bags and were served mounds of chocolate cake from Lobo’s on the Mall during drinks and tea breaks. Thereafter, with a rumble in their tummies and unaccustomed to the cold moist waves of mist that obscured the bowler or ball, they shivered at the crease and lost hopelessly.

There were some who murmured they had been bought over, or that the matches were fixed by the Jesuits: but life and sports, you have to believe, were a lot cleaner then. In fact, years later when innocence had taken a knock, the principal of St. Joseph’s North Point, Maurice Banerjee, a stern mathematician who had married the confectioner’s daughter Kathy Lobo, after he had guessed the weight in grams (when the metric system went over everyone else’s head) of her father’s chocolate cake, at the fete held at St. Michael’s Diocesan School (which housed the prettiest girls – before Loreto Convent produced the likes of a gorgeous Maya Bhate and a riotous Meena Lall) died while watching a cricket match on television. The old math teacher, and gentleman, had no inkling of the modern equations of moneymaking that had begun to determine results.

At the other end of the rainbow was the colourful and awfully attractive Mrs. Celia Randhawa who, with a Czech-now-Slovak admirer in tow, decided to climb to Tiger Hills to show the children of Mt. Hermon School the first flight of an aeroplane over Kanchenjunga, in 1933. In the evening, hundred feet below the summit, in the woods beside Senchal Bungalow, as the little boys gathered around the campfire to sing, Celia’s gallant boyfriend made his move. That is when Aramis Johannes, who was just beginning to sprout fluff on his upper lip, sneezed and split all the soup (which was all they were getting to eat) into the fire. Meanwhile, little Samuel Sadka was hiding behind a rock, slyly tucking into the alu makala that he had taught guru, who sold macaroons and patties out of a steel trunk that he carried to schools all over the Kalimpong hills to cook.

The guilt-ridden Aramis approached Sammy for a morsel. Together they munched and watched flames lash around Mrs. Celia Randhawa and her consort – they too would get nothing to eat afterwards. But at least for the moment, the escorts seemed to be getting their fill of maneuvers that Sammy had been warned some unotherodox gentiles practiced. It left him a bachelor for life. As for the impressionable Aramis, he died of hypothesized melancholia several years later.

Darjeeling teemed with characters out of Dickens and Wodehouse. They could be seen breakfasting at the exclusive Planters Club on a gorganzolian selection of cheeses and open sandwiches or hogging an unlimited number of cakes and pastries with tea, for just one rupee four annas, at the plebeians Gymkhana under the disapproving gaze of Mr. Duplock, the secretary, who kept an eye out for pigs and free-loaders.

Then there was Koko Mackertich, of Armenian descent, who out of nowhere in particular, would appear astride a fawn filly, riding upright and spectrally down the Mall. He was always immaculately dressed in Scottish tweed, his silver grey hair back with Brylcreem. He sported a starched handlebar moustache on which, they said, butter flies perched in the autumn.

He would halt briefly at the flower shop run by Mrogenstern, the shot-put champion of the district, who would tenderly hold aloft a red carnation for Koko to pluck with thumb and forefinger and stick into his label, beside his yellow silk cravat, before kicking into a soft canter to Lebong and the indisputably rigged but excitingly unpredictable horse races. This was where the roar of drunken punters was drowned by the shouts of Lady Herbert whose chins, released from the confines of her scarf, were wagging and screaming over the hat-waving sophist Charlie Dunn (who always had inside information on winners) until the horses entered a blind corner in one order and emerged in a sequence that stunned spectators and baffled everybody, including a petulant Sir John, who had been disturbed while furtively staring at the rise and fall of Mrs. Cheuy’s slit shirt while she jumped up and down and shouted “Let Fly”. At the end, Koko would ride off whistling “Roses of Picardy” and reminded everyone of his encores, after several cherry brandies, at the annual Red Cross Show with Austin Plant of “The Park Restaurant” accompanying him on an upright piano from Braganza’s. Koko vanished: but his Aluminum Car No. 3 which he rode to dances at the Gymkhana, appears like a ghost from the past, every year, at the Vintage car Rally in Calcutta.

On an evening after the races, on a day when Lady Herbert had won, she instead her husband dine at Mrs. Chuey’s Chinese restaurant, the “Park”. She quite fancied the drummer in the band and Sir John (even after he retired to Norfolk, perhaps) would always have a place in his Caucasian heart for Mrs. Chuey’s oriental thighs.

It was on such a night when everyone was ogling Mrs. Chuey as she manipulated the noodle sin her work and lifted handfuls into the air and bent low over the dishes at the tables of her exclusive diners that the band struck up “Hernando’s Hid away.”

It was an irresistible tango that sent shivers down Lady Herbert’s spine. She whisked her ineffiable husband on to the floor while peering over his shoulder at the blue-eyed Anglo-Indian boy.

Meanwhile, a young Englander, Gilbert James, who was the British Raj’s local income tax officer and had been invited to dine at the restaurant by Mrs. Chuey because her accounts were in a noodle and she needed a hand out of the soup, was smitten by the latter’s obvious assets.

And, unaccustomed to Szechwan food and the effects of wild mushrooms and tofu on pituitary glands he stood up and asked Mrs. Chuey to tango with him. No one else had ever dared. Because of the reputation of a dragon that her husband (who carried squeaking pigs on his shoulders from the farm in Ghoom) had for sticking it to those he caught even looking at his wife. Briefly, after mingling of sweat glands, Mrs. Cheuy squeezed out of a quivering Gilbert the rebate she wanted. Young James was given a ticket to Liverpool by a Governor who frowned on uncivilized overtures by expatriates on a native population he was prohibited to touch.

Over the years I have traveled to hill stations from those in the Nilgiris to Kashmir and Ladakh, from the western Ghats to the Northeast. I have seen the same faces, met the same characters and been charmed by the same fascinating quirks of human nature and aberrant behaviour as those I saw, and heard about, in Darjeeling.

For those of you who wonder why I have laboured to recall so much about Darjeeling, let me simply explain that, in my opinion, it is the most neglected and forgotten of all summer paradises.

As early as 1952, I saw the hills come closer as my father’s little Standard 8 effortless took on the climb into the land in the clouds (Meghalaya) and eventually my home for the next 10 years.

St. Edmund’s hidden behind forests of pine on top of a hill. The smell of resin and rain hung thick in the air and large blue butterflies with long tails glistening in the sun, flapped hard and slow through the trees and landed on dandelions that bent over backwards to receive their kiss of life.

Every hill around the school for as far as the eye could see into the clouds over east Pakistan, or the storm brewing over China, was covered in lush forests that I would explore on several picnics over the next decade.

Pinewood Hotel, Room No. 2, is where we stayed. It was owned by Mr. Chaudhury who had a beautiful Burmese wife and two gorgeous black Labrador retrievers. (Years after, I even took a pup home and trained it to become one of the best retrievers of duck and jungle murgis that it had been my privilege and joy to behold).

An extra bed was placed in the dressing room, for me. A log fire burned at twilight as my mother sat brooding in an armchair about boarding schools, with me on her lap watching the flames lick the inside edge of the brick fireplace.

The Chaudhurys were no different from the snobbish Tenduflas of the Windamere in Darjeeling, who sized up a customer as they got down from their car and refused them accommodation if they weren’t the sort who could sip a sherry, or some port, with them, by the fireplace, in the evenings. The Jauhars of the savoy in Musoorie, which had housed the Prince of Wales and every illustrious Indian imaginable were no different.

The Hotzs of the Swiss Hotels in Kasauli and Almora were a close second – only because in the days before the invention of the Electrolux kerosene refrigerator, Almora was where all the anti-rabbis vaccine in India was stored.

Hence, every mad Englishman of indifferent breeding and Indian of questionable background, who had ventured into the noonday sun to be bitten by a rational pariah, had nowhere else to go (if they made it up there on time) to survive.

On a lighter vein, the Hotzs’ daughter, Sandra was swept of her teenage feet and surreptitiously encouraged to flee her coop, upon a trance summer-night, with an elderly Quaker who later was knighted for his misadventures and directed “A Passage to India”. In which I starred: none other than Sir David Lean. And it was as Dr. Aziz that I was refused entry into Ooty Club, dressed as an Indian (until the penny dropped) where Dame Peggy Ashcroft and I went for a frame of snooker at the very place and on the very table the game had been invented.

I could regale you with stories about the strange tall Englishman with deep-set green eyes who, in the 1980s, after he graduated from Bishop Cotton School, became head priest of the monkey temple, dedicated to Lord Hanuman, at the highest point in Simla, Jakhu Hill.

It is alleged he was driven to oriental faiths by the fanaticism of a bully called Dyer, a schoolmate and a son of the owners of Dyer Meakin breweries in Solan. It was this little brat who became brigadier and then general, and was rewarded for the massacre of innocents in Jalianwala Bagh.

Or how about the Bengali Babu, Nirmal Chandra Haldar, from Coopers College in England, who became the first Indian secretary on the Railway Board and set up the Kalka-Simla, Lahore-Peshawar and Darjeeling toy train tracks! After he finished his final job on the Simla tracks, he rode off like a debonair in a new open convertible Ford from Simla to Lahore to celebrate. He died of Pneumonia on arrival, from exposure. He was only 39.

I could tell you about “A.N. John’s”, the first known hairdresses from Calcutta to Doon to Simla dn Delhi who would give children an “Eton” crop before they left public school education or a cold viewing of “Bathing Beauty” starring Ester Williams at the Capital cinema near the Rink on the Mall in Darjeeling, or before you watched players from the Royal Shakespeare Company or other traveling English repertories perform at the “Gaiety Theatre: in Simla – where little Ruskin Bond (the author of children’s books) lost the button on his shorts and bard his pink derriere in a hilarious farce called “Tons of Money” long before he minted it writing. There is the true story of mr.s Roberts, whose German husband once managed Hackmans Hotel in Mussoorie.

After his death she lived on a pension that came to the local post office from Germany and retired to a lonely cottage on the northern slopes of Landour and never steeped out in the day for 40 years. She lived with 47 dogs in one room.

She left a cheques outside her front door for the milkman to deliver to Prakash Stores and collect his due. When she died, those who saw her body say she looked like an emaciated Afghan hound.

Her dogs, unused to any humans but her for generations (for they bred, lived and died in the same room) ran wild over the hills ( I saw them myself) until some were captured and others died or were eaten by leopards.

And last but by no means forgotten is the swank Princess of Gujarat who would skate down the Mall and drop her pants for any Englishman who doffed his hat unit her homosexual brother shot himself because someone trampled on his pansies.

The little Princess settled down to rear a family of alcoholics who frequented Mackinnon’s brewery in Barlowgunj whose phenomenal sale of beer was attributed to a distinct flavour acquired after they discovered the decomposed body of a Nepali worker at the bottom of one of their giant vats. It is rumoured that the secret recipe to fine beers and other fine drinks, guarded jealously by the heirs of distilling families, is still a lump of human or animal flesh, dropped in secretly to putrefy slowly in the mix.

But before I end I must tell you that, much as I might admire Captains Kennedy and Young, the two adventurous and enterprising Irishmen who formed Simla and Mussoorie, the natives of India had “hill-stations” too, centuries before even the Moghuls got here; much lovelier, “heaven wardheading, sheer and vast, in a million summits bedding on the last world’s past” – but immensely difficult to reach.

Exactly 40 years ago, I walked to Badrinath. It lay hundreds of miles from civilization almost a 1,000 years ago. It was my first experience of the real Himalayas. At the end of the trail was a small village called Hanuman Chatti.

A 3 mile, 2000 foot climb from there took us to a point called Dev Darshan. As we climbed over the last shoulder there slowly appeared a vast green valley, and about a mile and a half away glistened the golden steeple of the temple of Badrinath. It was a breathtaking sight that I remember almost every day of my life.

Beside the temple was just one small tea stall built with stones that served rotis, dal and if you were lucky, alu ka sabji. The had a counter that sold pahari tulsi and wild flowers and Prasad of dried coconut kernel missed with sugar-coated elaichi seeds for offering at the temple.

On the other side of the raging Alaknanda was a small PWD hut, the only other construction for miles around.

Today, Badrinath looks like a junkyard after a demolition derby and has the sanctity and serenity of Burma Bizarre, Janpath Chandni, or Blackpool which ever you fewest identify with or most loathe. So does every pilgrim point and every hill station created by the British.

In every case, from the denuding of Cherrapunjee to the quarrying of Garhwal, throughout India it is the government and government alone that is directly or indirectly responsible for ruining the hills and the Himalayas so our children are left with naught but the dregs of a degenerate society.

When Rajiv Gandhi said Calcutta was “dying” we almost lynched him. When a senior civil servant Surjit Das (who later became commissioner of Garhwal) worte the “Queen is Dying”, people dismissed his book as sentimental pap: the puerile ravings of a lunatic in love with Mussoorie.

The systemless and mindless decimation of our beautiful hill stations by nouveau riche social climbing self seekers and hoteliers has for all time disfigured the Himalaya from Kulu to Shillong. Nostalgia is a meaningless journey for people like me whose every dream and hope for a livelier tomorrow is stalked by property developers, money-making politicos and NGOs.

NGOs, in general, like politicians in general, rationally devastate societies, cultures and the environment and make pots of money doing it. They pick all the right casues to champion and regularly enumerate their achievements in glossy reports tot eh amazement of the people they represent, who stare starry-eyed at all the promises NGOs hold out and obtusely deliver.

All our hill belts have seen an influx of highly motivated and deeply concerned people in floppy hats Saratoga safari shorts and Nike boots driving around in air-conditioned Sumos with laptos on thighs bouncing with ideas to smoothen a rugged world, at elast in the yes of their donor agencies abroad. But,

“The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes;
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that road.”

I have lived for two decades in Musoorie and watched it all go steadily down hill. I sti alone in my tiny cottage in the woods and listen to it rain. I hear the blackbird singh and watch the whistling thrush drive through the deodars to chase blue magpies that come to their nests, and wonder if Kipling was right when he said:

“Too late, alas!
The song to remedy the wrong.
The rooms are taken from us, swept and garnished for their fate,
But these tear –besprinkled pages
Shall attest to future ages
That we cried against the crime of it too late, alas! Too late!”
As for me, who has chosen to dwell and perhaps one day die in the Himalayas, my heart will always stay with the hills, if only for old sake’s sake!

“They [the socialist bloc] undertook to consult together on all international questions involving their common interests, and to set up a unified military command, with its headquarters in Moscow. Two formal alliances – Nato and the Warsaw Pact – now confronted one another in Europe” (Bell, 122).

With the creation of the USSR and the subsequent rise of communist parties within the world at large and in Central and Eastern Europe in particular the world entered a new era in the early 20th century. With the creation of the Nato alliance in 1949 it became necessary to take steps by the socialist republics to consolidate their power. For this reason the Warsaw Pact was drafted and implemented in 1955. The member countries that later comprised part of the larger Socialist Bloc were:

1) The Soviet Union,
2) Albania,
3) Bulgaria,
4) Czechoslovakia,
5) East Germany,
6) Hungary,
7) Poland, and
8) Romania.

These countries were later reinforced with the inclusion of other important nations such as China, Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc. It is an unfortunate fact, however, that due to many reasons the USSR started to decline. The author shall attempt to outline these reasons since they are of direct relevance to the subsequent world order.

Many critics have ostensibly alleged that the USSR broke down as a result of a breakdown in communist ideology. I shall use this opportunity to refute this argument. The USSR, by any stretch of the imagination, was not a communist country – it was a socialist country where the communist party was in power. There is a difference. Indeed there has never been any country on the face of the earth that has experienced communism. Socialism, therefore, defines a transitional stage from capitalism to communism. While it must be admitted that the communist party was in power in the USSR at the time of its disintegration, it must also be explained that the quality of the leadership in power at the time was extremely different (utterly opposite) to that at the time of the great success of the Soviet Union. Events after the 20th congress and the revisionist policies of Brezhnev, Khrushchev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin explain sufficiently. An account of how these individuals wanted to be called communists during their reign in spite of their revisionist policies is testament to their hypocrisy.

“Gorbachev cranked out a slew of slogans, including glasnost, perestroika and ‘new thinking’ in an effort to rescues socialism in the Soviet Union. Despite these shocking similarities of his policies to Khrushchev’s revisionism (Gorbachev was actually more revisionist than Khrushchev), Gorbachev was adamant in declaring himself to be a true Communist” (Shih & Shi, 89).

Comparing this to the later interview given by Gorbachev after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in which in his own words he admits that it was his “ambition was to liquidate Communism”, clearly shows that Gorbachev (and by implication all revisionists before him) was working within the USSR to deter it from its original Marxist-Leninist path. How can one then, in all honesty, deny their role in the disintegration of this superpower?

The world, as it existed in the Cold War era, had attained a begrudging stability due to the existence of two opposing monoliths, i.e. the US and the USSR (and therefore Nato and Warsaw Pact countries). It is thus not without basis to say that both sides had to consider a far greater set of implications for pursuing their interests than is the case now. Let us consider two cases that occurred during the Cold War era and hold special significance: 1) the Cuban Missile crisis, and 2) the Afghan crisis.

In the Cuban Missile crisis the US did not send its forces directly into Cuba to initiate violent retaliation to the Soviet Union’s missile installations. This was due to the fact that the US was fully aware of the military might it would unleash upon itself and its allies should it pursue a foreign policy based on the disregard for Cuba’s sovereignty. In the Afghan crisis the US chose to wage an indirect war against the Soviet Union by training and arming local militias against the Soviet forces, rather than risk open conflict. This too can be attributed to the above mentioned rationale.

The transformation of the third world into the neo-colonial appendage of the US could only be intensified if the strongest anti-neo-liberal force was dismembered. Let us look at the case of the World Bank and the IMF’s structural adjustment programmes as they have been propagated after the Cold War. One would find that there is a great increase in the sheer number of cases of structural adjustment within the third world and as a consequence there has been a drastic rise in inequality within the same.

Let us now compare this to the recent foreign policy of the US which, openly and without consideration to the UN’s own resolutions, targets all sovereign states that constitute a potential threat to itself or its allies (especially Israel). One can clearly see that if the USSR was still present then at least the absurd ‘David and Goliath’ situation, as it exists within Iraq at this time, would not be so. Needless to say, the world as a whole and its constituting countries (particularly the third world) has lost a great equalising force with the dismembering of the USSR.

(to be continued...)

Yes, the independent Pakistan and all the sacrifices our ancestors gave and went through all the brutalities by British Raj. How can we stop thinking of those mortal immortal of 1857 who suffered on our behalf. Don’t you think we have spoiled it all and in no time? Look back at our 60 years, martial law, martial law, martial law and again martial law? I don’t know when this cascade will stop [read more]

Until I read the article, I used to believe that Satyagraha as a tactic was effective to at least some extent in the fight for freedom. Now I am beginning to have some doubts. I would be very interested to hear from other readers on this topic.

But before that, excerpts from "Satyagraha and India"s freedom Movement" in which Dr Base analyses Gandhi-ji's three major Satyagraha movements and their impact on the struggle for independence.

Although Gandhi-ji's involvement with the freedom movement began with his visit to India in 1896, it was not until six years later that he began to get seriously involved.

*** EXCERPTS BEGIN ***

"...In his second visit for a year in 1901-2 he attended the Congress session in Calcutta and spent more than a month with G.K. Gokhale, who was very loyal to the British and was opposed to the ideas of freedom movement of Tilak, Lajpat Rai, Chittaranjan Das, Surendranath Banerjee and Bipin Pal. Thus, Gandhi has joined the Empire-loyalist camp within the Congress, disinterested in the Swaraj movement of Tilak.

Gandhi’s first Satyagraha:

Returning to South Africa, Gandhi began to defy the Transvaal Asiatic Ordinance, where the government wanted all Asiatic, Arabs and Turks to carry a pass all the time to prove their eligibility to stay in South Africa. It was not a big issue, as in most countries even today foreigners must carry such documents anyway.

Throughout the Satyagraha, Gandhi emphasized that it was not so much for the rights of the Indians in South Africa as for the honour of the motherland, but which "motherland’ Gandhi was talking about was not clear.

One of the most dramatic events of the Satyagraha was the burning of the passes. The question is did that help the Indians in South Africa. The answer is definitely negative. Indians were rounded up and deported in many cases. The campaign lasted for over seven years, and in 1913 hundreds of people went to jail - and thousands of striking Indian miners faced imprisonment and injury.

Even when General Smut decided to meet Gandhi, it was made clear that there would be no further immigration of the Indians to South Africa. Passes were withdrawn temporarily but soon after laws were passed to restrict the non-Europeans into designated areas in every cities; that was the beginning of the legal racial segregations in South Africa.

By all means Gandhi’s Satyagraha was not a success, but that had not stopped certain people and the English language media in India at that time to propagate Gandhi as victorious against a racist government of British origin for whom Gandhi had worked as medical orderly in the war against the Dutch settlers in South Africa and became a recruitment agent during the First World War..."

Dr Basu also notes that "...(during this time)..Gandhi had practically no contact with the African and their liberation movement".

Gandhi’s second Satyagraha :

"...Through extraordinary good fortune, due to the deaths of Tilak by September 1920 Gandhi in an extraordinary political coup was elected himself as the president of the All-India Home Rule League and steered a resolution in favour of Non-Cooperation to preserve the Khilafat but got rid of the freedom movement in the Congress session in Calcutta.

Later all the important leaders of the Congress, Bipin Pal, Surendranath Banerjee, Ajit Singh were either expelled or neutralized by Gandhi. Tilak had gathered about Rs.10 lakhs, a huge sum these days to finance his freedom movement. Gandhi used that up to please the followers of Turkish Khalifa, who was defied by the Muslims in the Turkish occupied Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and in Turkey itself by the reforming leader Kamal Attaturk. Gandhi and the Muslim leaders of India were ignorant about these political developments in the Middle East.

The agitation to save the Turkish Sultan by the "Non-Cooperation’ of the Congress party was initiated by the Khilafat leadership, not by the Congress.

Gandhi without consulting other leaders of the Congress made these two issues his own by presiding over the All India Khilafat Conference in Delhi in November 1919, and started his programme of peaceful non co-operation with the British included boycotts of British goods and institutions to protect the Turkish Sultan, leading to arrests of thousands of the people for defying British laws.

Thus, the second Satyagraha has nothing to do with the freedom movement of India and was a regressive movement to preserve the violent crude feudal Sultanate of Turkey who had colonized a vast part of the world, from Iraq to Greece with its inhuman rule..."

Gandhi’s third Satyagraha:

Gandhis political influence was minimal for some years, until the Calcutta Congress in December 1928, where he demanded dominion status for India, and threatened a nation-wide campaign but he had also expelled Srinivas Iyenger from the Congress for demanding complete independence of India.

Subhas Chandra Bose was expelled along with more than 200 of his followers from the Congress party for similar reason in 1939.

On March 12, 1930 Gandhi started a March in Dandi, Gujarat to break the law, which had deprived the people of his right to make his own salt, although for most of the people of India it was only symbolic as they never did used to make their own salt in any way. On April 6, 1930 Gandhi broke the Salt law at the sea beach at Dandi. This simple act was immediately followed by a nation-wide defiance of the law.

This movement came to be known as Civil Disobedience Movement. Within a few weeks about a hundred thousand men and women, thinking mistakenly that it was the beginning of the freedom movement, were in jail, throwing mighty machinery of the British Government out of gear. Gandhi was arrested on May 5, 1930.

After his arrest, a more aggressive non-violent rebellion took place in which 2500 volunteers raided salt depots at Dharsana. In April 1930 there were violent police-crowd clashes in Calcutta. Approximately over 100,000 people were imprisoned in the course of the Civil disobedience movement (1930-31), while in Peshawar unarmed demonstrators were fired upon by the British. Gandhi withdrew himself from the movement. Sacrifice of the people was in vain. The British government had never withdrawn the tax on salt.

In January 1931, the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, ordered the release of Gandhi and together they signed the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, which called for an end of Congresss civil disobedience. In August, Gandhi went to London to represent the Indian National Congress at the Second Round Table Conference; the first one was held without Congress participation in November 1930. That Conference in 1931has failed mainly because of the change of government in Britain.

Gandhi returned to India and decided to resume the civil disobedience movement in January 1932. India was then under the repressive policies of the new Viceroy, Lord Willingdon. The Indian National Congress had been outlawed. Gandhi had restricted the civil disobedience movement to him and suspended it completely in 1934.Gandhi then had started his campaign against untouchability.

Thus, Gandhi’s second Satyagraha also could not achieve anything much because Gandhi as usual refused to continue it. That was Gandhi’s last and the only Satyagraha as a mass political movement for the freedom movement.

...

In August 1942, Gandhi gave forth the slogan Quit India for the British but he had no plan how to execute the programme. The Congress passed a resolution on 8 August 1942, which stated that, the immediate ending of the British rule in India, was an urgent necessity both for the sake of India and the success of United Nations. The congress resolved to launch a mass Civil Disobedience struggle on the widest possible scale for the vindication of India’s unalienable right to freedom and independence if the British rule did not end immediately. The day after the resolution was passed, the Congress was banned and all the important leaders were arrested including Gandhi. That provoked spontaneous demonstrations at many places and people resorted to the use of violence, not Satyagraha, to dislodge the foreign rule.

Unarmed crowds faced police and military firing on many occasions and they were also machine gunned by low- flying aircraft. Repression also took the form of taking hostages from the villages, imposing collective fines, whipping of suspects and burning of villages. By the end of 1942, over 60,000 persons had been arrested. Martial law had not been proclaimed but the army did whatever it wanted. The brutal and all-out repression succeeded within a period of 6 or 7 weeks in bringing about a cessation of the struggle. As usual Gandhi already withdrew himself from that movement within a few days after it has started.

Since 1942, Gandhi was busy making plans to partition India to create Pakistan, the idea of which Gandhi has accepted even in 1940, according to both B.R.Ambedkar and Sri Aurobindo. Nehru and Patel as representative of Gandhi were in regular consultations with the Vice-Roy of India on how best to help the British war efforts against Japan and the Azad Hind Fauz. Freedom movement was not in their mind.

Gandhi had initiated a number of his personal Satyagraha on a number of issues unrelated to the freedom movement; most of these were not successful.

Sri Aurobindo made this comment about Satyagraha:

“Gandhi fasted in the Ahmedabad mill-hands strike to settle the question between mill- owners and workers. The mill-owners did not want to be responsible for his death and so they gave way, without of course, being convinced of his position. But as soon as they found the situation normal they reverted to their old ideas. The same thing happened in South Africa. He got some concessions there by passive resistance and when he came back to India it became worse than before.”

Analysis:

It is a common belief in India and in the Western world that Gandhi through his non-violence Satyagraha has gave India independence from the British rule. The truth is somehow very different.

According to the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee...the creation of the INA( Indian National Army) and mutiny the RIN ( Royal Indian Navy) of February 18–23 1946 made the British realise that their time was up in India.

An extract from a letter written by P.V. Chuckraborty, former Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court, on March 30 1976, reads thus:

“When I was acting as Governor of West Bengal in 1956, Lord Clement Attlee, who as the British Prime Minister in post war years was responsible for India’s freedom, visited India and stayed in Raj Bhavan Calcutta for two days. I put it straight to him like this: "The Quit India Movement of Gandhi practically died out long before 1947 and there was nothing in the Indian situation at that time which made it necessary for the British to leave India in a hurry. Why then did they do so?’ In reply Attlee cited several reasons, the most important of which were the INA activities of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, which weakened the very foundation of the British Empire in India, and the RIN Mutiny which made the British realise that the Indian armed forces could no longer be trusted to prop up the British. When asked about the extent to which the British decision to quit India was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s 1942 movement, Attlee’s lips widened in smile of disdain and he uttered, slowly, "Minimal’.”*

(Reference: Anuj Dhar’s website: www.hindustantime.com/news/specials/Netaji/; Dhanjaya Bhat, The Tribune, February 12, 2006; Majumdar, R. C., Jibanera Smritideepe, Calcutta, General Printers and Publishers, 1978, pp. 229-230; R.Borra, "Subhas Chandra Bose, The Indian National Army, and The War of Indias Liberation’, The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1982 (Vol. 3, No. 4), pages 407-439; http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v03/v03p407_Borra.html)

Famous historian Ramesh Chadra Majumdar dismissed the contribution of Satyagraha to the eventual independence of India.

He said, “ The campaigns of Gandhi… came to an ignoble end about fourteen years before India achieved independence… In particular, the revelations made by the INA trial, and the reaction it produced in India, made it quite plain to the British, already exhausted by the war, that they could no longer depend upon the loyalty of the sepoys for maintaining their authority in India. This had probably the greatest influence upon their final decision to quit India. (Majumdar, R.C., Three Phases of Indias Struggle for Freedom, Bombay, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan).

Thus, one should not just believe in the official version of the recent Indian history, which has propagated that only Gandhi and Nehru through the Satyagraha has brought freedom to India.

The reality is quite different, but was hidden so far due the massive state power to advertise Satyagraha, which as a mass movement has failed everywhere whether in India or in South Africa.

*** EXCERPTS END ***

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Lies and half-truths in the name of national integration 

When Clive of India came to Bengal, he described it — in a way all visitors of the time did — as "extensive, populous and as rich as the city of London." It was a place of such "richness and abundance" that "neither war, pestilence nor oppression could destroy" it.

But within a century of British occupation, the population of its largest city, Calcutta, fell from 150,000 to 30,000 as its industries were wrecked in the interests of the mother country. By the time the British left, Calcutta was one of the poorest places in the world. 

Reminded me of Loot and another post I had written many months ago on Economic Exploitation and the Drain of Wealth during British “Raj”

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India in the 1820s… 

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At a recent conference held on India's Energy security, Brahma Chellaney took a break and went for a walk with a friend of mine. He was questioning why we Indians revere everything done by the British, and how, in his view, we should level Rashtrapati Bhavan and all of the New Delhi Area. On hearing this 'radical' opinion, my friend was reminded of me, and she told Professor Chellaney - "I have a friend who feels exactly the same way" to which Prof. Chellaney is said to have responded: "Your friend is a smart guy."

*pats self on back*

Of course.... this is all hearsay, and completely unconfirmable, so don't sue anybody over it....

His disillusionment with the mainstream parties resulted in Bhagat’s study of other – more potent – alternatives to fight the British Raj. It was this study that led him to Marxism-Leninism and, subsequently, to founding the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) – an organisation that continues to inspire the leftist youth in the Subcontinent even today. The HSRA was known for its militant opposition to the British Raj and staunch opposition to Mahatma Gandhi’s theory of non-violence. Bhagat Singh strongly argued that the tyranny of the mighty cannot be destroyed without resorting to violent means. However, he took great pains to avoid inflicting any harm on civilians. Lala Lajpat Rai, a Hindu nationalist and freedom fighter, was severely injured by a baton-charge ordered by Superintendent J. A. Scott against peaceful protestors in Lahore. Lala Lajpat Rai died a week later from his wounds and this further angered the members of the HSRA, especially Bhagat Singh, who were present at the protest. It was due to this incident that the HRSA planned to kill Scott but, unintentionally, killed Assistant Superintendent J. P. Saunders instead. The most audacious venture, taken on by HRSA, was one in which Bhagat Singh and his comrade Batukeshwar Dutt threw bombs into an unoccupied section of the Punjab Assembly. Bhagat Singh’s famous quote associated with this act was: “It takes a loud noise to get the deaf to hear.”

Bhagat Singh lived in a time in which the Congress, along with many other political parties, was bending to colonial pressure. Even the Communist Party of India presented itself as little more than the left-wing of the Congress. It was in this age of compliance that an intense need for people like Bhagat Singh was felt. Regardless of whether one agrees with his methods or not, it must be acknowledged that Bhagat Singh was a force to be reckoned with – a force that affected many lives, stood up for the weak and defenceless and, in doing so, shaped many events that led to undivided India’s freedom. Although Bhagat Singh’s practice was mired in its over-dependence on small-group militancy and its reluctance to rely on mass support, it can nevertheless teach us many lessons, the most important of which is that Bhagat Singh’s path is still the road to take.