Indian Interests_2

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ramana
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by ramana »

#Lootyens are the modern version of Chalisa Dal started by Qutubuddin Aibek.
Aibek created a corps of forty (Chalisia Dal) from Arab rulers to help him manage the Sultanate.
The Sultan got 1/3 of the province revenue.
The Corps of Forty got 1/3 of province revenue.
The rest of it was distributed to the regional subedars and a mere fraction went to the farmer who made the produce.

Now map that to the Congress-created Lootyens.
Only 15 paise out of 1 Rupee went to the farmer.
Vips
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by Vips »

In 7 charts: India's fertility rate drops below replacement level.

Posting just the Iink as i am not able to save the charts and post it here.
Varoon Shekhar
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by Varoon Shekhar »

Very interesting and topical movie out today called "The Conversion" about a Hindu woman lured into a relationship with a Moslem man disguising himself as a Hindu. Hope it does well and gets good reviews. It should release in North America as well. We know who is going to denounce the film
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by ramana »

Link: https://theprint.in/defence/in-a-first- ... se/954090/

The National Defence College has started admitting private sector executives.
The first is from L&T.
Of 47 weeks duration, the NDC course for senior officials is conducted between January and November every year, and comprises six main sections — Understanding India & Introduction to Strategy, Study on Economic Security, Science and Technology, Global Issues, International Security Environment, India’s Strategic Neighbourhood and Strategies and Structures for National Security.

The NDC course also acts as a forum to facilitate interaction between senior officers and scholars and officials from other countries, who take part in the course.
Looks like BRF Strat Forum!!!
Vips
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by Vips »

India plans dam project as China seeks to divert water.

India plans to construct the country’s second-largest dam at Yingkiong in Arunachal Pradesh to counter China’s ambitious water diversion scheme of the river that feeds downstream into the Brahmaputra.

The proposed dam in the upper reaches of Arunachal will be able to store around 10 billion cu. m (BCM) of water, Jal Shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat said in an interview. By storage, the Indira Sagar dam is the largest in India at 12.2 BCM.

The proposed dam is expected to involve an investment of around ₹50,000 crore and is part of the proposed Upper Siang multi-purpose storage project that will also generate hydropower.

China’s 14th five-year plan has proposed building a massive dam over the Brahmaputra river, known in China as the Yarlung Tsangpo, a development that has raised concerns in India because of the strategic ramifications. India and China relations have deteriorated after troops clashed along the Himalayan border, killing 20 Indian soldiers in June 2020.

Water in the lean season in the Brahmaputra comes from melting snow in the mountains on the Tibetan plateau. India’s plan involves releasing water from the dam to maintain water security in case China builds structures to divert water. Also, in the case of China releasing water from its upper reaches, such a dam will also help in storing water to prevent floods.

In response to a query about China’s plans to build hydroelectricity projects on the Great Bend, right above Indian territory, where the Brahmaputra takes a U-turn, Shekhawat said, “We have planned a project for its mitigation in Yingkiong for constructing a dam in the upper reaches of Arunachal Pradesh. And probably that is going to be one of India’s largest dams. We will hold water in that and will release it in the lean season when there is no rainfall to provide us (water) security."

While run-of-the-river (RoR) projects harness the river’s seasonal flows to generate electricity, reservoir projects involve storing water, which addresses the risks associated with seasonal changes in the natural flow and availability of river water. Of the eight river basins in Arunachal Pradesh, Subansiri, Lohit, and Siang are of strategic importance as they are closer to the border with China.

“Dams don’t only serve the irrigation purpose or to generate electricity; they also act as a mitigation cushion to prevent floods. Say, if ever from the upper reaches, there is water release, even then we will have a cushion to control release that water," Shekhawat added.

According to Indian planners, precipitation in China contributes only 7% to the flow of three tributaries of the Brahmaputra—Subansiri, Siang and Lohit—that originate in China.

“Brahmaputra river has a huge quantum of 500 BCM (billion cubic metres) of water flowing into it. Of this, more than 75% comes from our catchment area. That’s the reason why we are not affected by it a lot. But in the non-monsoon season, when the river gets water from snowmelt, we don’t have water in our catchment area. So if they construct a dam and divert water in the non-monsoon seasons, then it will have an impact from Arunachal Pradesh to Bangladesh. Earlier they (China) had said they were not doing anything. Later they said that they are constructing run-of-the-river hydroelectric projects. And now there is evidence that perhaps they can also work on water transfer," Shekhawat said.

Of the 2,880km length of the river Brahmaputra, 1,625km is in Tibet, 918km in India, and 337km in Bangladesh. Of the total catchment area of 580,000 sq. km, 50% lies in Tibet, 34% in India, and the balance in Bangladesh and Bhutan.

“We have got clarity on other things. There is some small resistance at the local level, which the Arunachal government is working on. The total cost must be around ₹50,000 crore. Cost is immaterial. It should be constructed," Shekhawat said.

The total hydropower generation potential of India’s North-Eastern states, and Bhutan, is about 58 gigawatt (GW). Of this, Arunachal alone accounts for 50.328GW, the highest in India.

Experts said China’s plans may not have a major impact on the Indian side.

“Whatever flow of Brahmaputra river happens in India, a majority of it comes from the rainfall that happens in the Indian region. So the water that China intends to use will not have a major impact on the river on the Indian side," said Anjal Prakash, research director, Bharti Institute of Public Policy at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.
Cyrano
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by Cyrano »

An excellent speech and Q&A by EAM Dr S Jaishankar at IIT Guwahati:
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by ramana »

From a former member on the recent West Asia outrage on Nupur Sharma quoting hadiths to expose the reality of Profet's life
Someone in Kuwait is very smart & knows his Islam very well. They quickly figured out the average Kuwaiti knows well that Nupur Sharma just recited an Ahadith and the Fahaheel protests are the real blasphemy (for being ashamed of the Prophet’s life).

Kuwait is only the first domino. There will be many more unless the Islamic nations quickly remove all the outrage networks they are funding against Bharat.

The Islamic world must quickly learn from the duplicity of Leftist-Whites (US and UK) when it comes to teaching pure Islam to Islamic nations as they did in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya to name a few. All these countries have seen terrorists exploding themselves in religious places to be purer than the pure.

Most importantly, in his infinite wisdom, Allah didn’t give any food security to the Islamic world. Even when an Islamic nation such as Pakistan is well endowed with arable land; food security went into the air in less than a few decades. OIC may be able to set fuel prices for others but their food price will mirror it.

Another thing for the OIC rulers to worry about is the fact that all their wealth, some may say an unIslamic value, to begin with, is mostly stashed in the West that is prone/subject to blocking and seizing the funds as it pleases. Gaddafi, despite his best intentions, learned this lesson very hard. Now Iran is looking at losing more than $150B of its national wealth go missing into the black budgets of the West.

In the fast-changing world; there is only one truth. That Hinduism is the only Dharma that would protect real innocents and needy; and the majority of Muslims are Dharmic by nature living their swadharma. Is it an Islamic value to hurt so many innocent West Asian Muslims to protect the legacy of genocidal and barbaric invading Turkic Muslims who ransacked Bharat many centuries ago?

Hope the Qataris and Iranis get the wise counsel that Kuwait got.
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by ramana »

Death of Queen Elizabeth II has revived a lot of writings about the Empire and its inglorious past.
Here is a review of Parth Chatterjee's BlackHole of Empire and a response from the author!

https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/13 ... r-response


Popular references to Calcutta (now Kolkata) – once the gleaming capital of British India – in Anglo-American contexts often conjure images of poverty, crowded city streets, unbearable traffic, smog, and residents that require a savior. Patrick Swayze and Lisa Niemi’s 2009 memoir (1) includes a description of his performance in Roland Joffe’ s 1992 City of Joy, the film adaptation of Dominique Lapierre’s 1985 novel of the same name. Swayze portrays Max, a jaded Texas doctor who searches for spiritual enlightenment in Calcutta to work as serving the poorest of the poor. Not only did the film project the image of Calcutta as a place beyond saving, but Swayze himself remarks about how he was assigned by the director to travel himself to Calcutta to prepare for his work. He diligently prepared for his role at home and then ‘went to the black hole of Calcutta’ (p. 181). After discussing the smog, the dirt, the eerie lighting at night, he ends his description with a casual reference to ‘the black hole’, which, for English readers, must link Calcutta with the characteristics of backwardness and poverty. In the 2012 film Avengers, the savior Bruce Banner tries to keep his inner Hulk in control as he attempts to save leprosy victims in Calcutta, invoking familiar images of poverty, over-crowdedness, congested streets, and people in need of a savior. As critics of Avengers have opined, the vision of Calcutta in the film was ‘a complete throwback to an older idea of India, where the lights are dim and the televisions flicker feebly, where wide eyed children tug at the sleeves of the good phoren doctor’.(2) Though the ‘Calcutta’ portions were shot in New Mexico, critics also stated that the city looked quite similar to the area depicted in City of Joy, twenty years earlier – ‘cramped, squalid, leprous’.(3)

A discursive coherence to the representations of Calcutta as cramped and squalid emanates not only from popular-cultural American Orientalism, but from a longer history of imperial practices in colonial India, as discussed by Partha Chatterjee in The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power. The story of the Black Hole of Calcutta, well known to historians of India, and well known to travelers to India from the 18th century through the late 19th century, finds an odd place in the history of India and the history of modern empires. Though probably cited in popular ways by many amateur Indian history buffs, professional historians seem to have forgotten about it. The Black Hole refers to the site where allegedly many Europeans (the precise number has never been settled in the historiography, though the fact that some people died is beyond dispute) died by suffocation as prisoners of Nawab Siraj-ud-daulah, Bengal’s ruling nawab, in 1756. This signature event led to a chain of conflicts and encounters that ultimately resulted in the English East India Company’s conquest of Bengal in the late 18th century, coinciding with their political rise in Southern Asia and the loss of the American colonies.

By the mid 19th century, most of what is now the nation-state of India, was conquered by the British Empire. The colonial encounters between Europeans and India at discursive and material levels generated landmark debates and historical changes about issues central to the modern world, such as the nature of capitalism, the spread and role of the modern state, the extent and desirability of imperialism, and the nature of nationalism and decolonization in Asia. These modern encounters, at some level, derive their potency from the starting point of conquest, during and immediately after the literal Black Hole incident in the 1750s. The ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’, therefore, comprises a story that not only commands lasting rhetorical power in popular Anglo-American culture, but also refers to one of the most important events in the history of the modern world.

Partha Chatterjee, the pioneering political theorist, historian, and one of the pioneers of subaltern studies, argues that the ‘forgetting’ of the story by professional historians and the maintenance of a certain image of Calcutta in the popular imagination, actually tells a larger story about the nature of empire in the modern world. In this book, he tells the story of how the narrative itself changed and impacted different writers – European and Indian – but also claims that the history of Empire is best understood through a coherent faithfulness to a certain type of mythos. Chatterjee tracks such a history of mythos through the history of the story.

In ten chapters, Chatterjee provides a narrative of the Black Hole story and its physical manifestations, as they slip in and out of the historical record. Interspersed with the narrative are a series of critiques of political thought and imperial historiography. His first chapter, ‘Outrage in Calcutta,’ includes a preface to his narrative of ‘the mythical history of the British Empire in the East’ (p. 1) with a brief disquisition on the nature of black holes, which establishes the claim upon which the entire book is built. Chatterjee offers an analogy of the history of modern empires through a comparison with black holes in space: just like scientists infer the existence of black holes without direct observation, historians and present-day critics and political analysts often detect the presence of imperial practices, without a grasp of empire’s discursive history. In order to address the discursive history of empires in the modern age, he pursues ‘many layers of narrative and doctrine that lay buried under our currently fashionable postimperial edifice of the global community of nations’ (p. 1).

Chatterjee begins with an analysis of a monument that represents how the mythos of empire has impacted Indians, through a tour through the famous monument in Calcutta’s St. John’s Churchyard. Completed in 1902, under the direction of then Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, this monument was erected in memory of the victims of the ‘Black Hole’ incident in 1756. The monument leads him to reflect on how various place names and relationships to space, empire, and nation are literally inscribed in the built environment of India. From this point, he starts his story, as he claims that ‘to trace the movement of the Black Hole Memorial is to unravel the mythical history of empire’ (p. 6).

In this first chapter, the author provides a detailed history of the conflicts between the English East India Company (and in particular, Clive) and Siraj-ud-daulah, as the newly ascendant nawab of Bengal. His chapter two, ‘A secret veil’, begins with an analysis of political theory regarding sovereignty in the early modern period, by providing a schematic listing of the different positions on conquest and sovereignty in discussions amongst European powers. He also begins a critical literary history of how the Black Hole story and its representatives in literal structures (the memorials) changed over time.

Introducing Orme, the first author of English language histories of the Black Hole in 1763, Chatterjee establishes how Orme sets the standard for how discussions about conquest would proceed, based on both the idea that Indians were naturally servile to those in power and that Europeans had the right to retaliate and reclaim territory if serving a higher purpose of conquest. But at this stage, in the late 18th century, the discursive meaning of empire still demonstrated ambivalence about its origins, as writers such as Burke and others aimed for a ‘a secret veil’ to be shrouded over the signs of duplicity and treachery that accompanied the conquest of Bengal by Europeans. It is in this context that the original memorial for the survivors of the Black Hole incident was taken down in 1821, as Chatterjee mentions at the end of chapter two.

In chapter three, ‘Tipu’s Tiger,’ Chatterjee continues to analyze the discursive history of conquest and sovereignty (how these important aspects of empire’s ‘Black Hole’-ness were understood by historical actors) through the late 18th-century history of European conquest in other regions of India, notably southern India, and the fall of Tipu Sultan, the ruler of the Sultanate of Mysore from 1782–99. An active diplomat and ally of the rising Napoleonic force in Europe and Africa, Tipu Sultan represents what Chatterjee delineates as one aspect of ‘early modernity’ in South Asian history. He introduces the idea of the ‘absolutist early modern’ and the ‘anti-absolutist early modern’ and concludes that an ‘absolutist early modern’ formation appeared in various parts of India in the 17th and 18th centuries. For Chatterjee, this ‘absolutist early modern’ form included various elements such as the need to establish state sovereignty, the comparability of power, creating new disciplines via the military, and focusing on effective leadership and skills, not lineage or status. This ‘absolutist early modern’ formation was most effectively harnessed by Tipu Sultan, in his modernization of his military, fiscal revenue collection, trading practice, irrigation, cultivation, and his gun and saltpeter factories developed in his domain.

Chapter four, ‘The liberty of subjects,’ and chapter five, ‘The equality of subjects’ establish the other part of Chatterjee’s characterization of early modern India, that of the ‘anti-absolutist early modern’. As the ‘absolutist early modern’ form was taking shape in Tipu Sultan’s realm in south India, in Calcutta of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Chatterjee shows how a multi-racial intelligentsia of Bengali Hindus, Europeans, and mixed-race subjects of the British Empire started to press for radical and proto-democratic representative institutions and privileges. In chapter four, he discusses the first movements to establish, promote, and push for ‘rights’ – here in the 1780s, by James August Hickey, who started Hickey’s Bengal Gazette. In this publication, the editor and contributors aggressively pursued the right to critique corruption in the Company as well as the liberty to publish and circulate journal copies outside of the Company’s interference. This, for Chatterjee, ‘enunciated perhaps for the first time in a British colony in the East, a classic anti-absolutist statement of the innate and inalienable liberty of the freeborn British subject’ (p. 111). Though a growing racialized order was visibly appearing in urban transformations of public space, as he details in these two chapters, he also discusses how Indians, such as Rammahon Roy, the pioneering intellectual and social critic of the age, asserted the equality of subjects.

In chapter six, ‘The happiness of mankind’, Chatterjee returns to a critical textual analysis of how the Black Hole figures in English-language writings from the late 18th century onward. Here, he dissects Macaulay (infamous for his 1834 minute on education in which he professed his belief in the innate superiority of Western literatures to Oriental literatures) and his writings about Clive and the Black Hole incident in the 1840s. Macaulay’s essay on Clive, read by schoolchildren in the metropole, turned the Black Hole story into a founding myth of empire. This founding myth was sustained because for Macaulay, Clive’s moral improprieties (ambivalently hidden in the ‘secret veil’ phase earlier) were condoned because he initiated what would later be good government in India.{Orme's formulation that atrocity is being done for the good of the Indians!} As Chatterjee states, Macaulay made

"empire safe from its own infamous origins. The secret veil could now be lifted. Clive’s history could be taught to British schoolchildren as a fable of moral instruction, to instill pride in their hearts not merely for the valor of their compatriots but also for the selfless service they were rendering to the people of the empire (p. 167)."

Chapters seven ‘A pedagogy of violence’ and eight, ‘A pedagogy of culture’ return to political theory and the nature of imperial practice, after the periods of ‘absolutist early modern’ and ‘anti-absolutist early modern’ politics had faded. Chatterjee argues that by the 1840s empire functioned on pedagogic grounds, and by one of two models only: violence, exemplified by rapacious territorial conquest in the mid to late 19th century, and culture, in which education, language and literature, the arts would all develop in tandem with Europeans, but on segregated lines, refracted through the lens of colonial difference. In chapter eight, Chatterjee discusses the arena of Bengali popular theater, where cultural appropriations of various acts of interpretation of the Black Hole incident appeared from the 1870s through the 1900s. In these plays, by writers such as Nabin Chandra Sen and Akshaykumar Maitreya, produced by the famed regisseur-director Girishchandra Ghosh, Chatterjee traces a glimmer of resistance to the various discursive practices of empire examined in earlier chapters. Sen’s 1875 Palashir Juddhya (The War of Palashi)

"gestured, if only rhetorically, to the possibility that Bengal under Siraj, although badly
governed, was at least sovereign, and therefore free, and had a state where even though the ruler was a Muslim, Hindus nonetheless enjoyed positions in the highest echelons of government (p. 242)."

In chapters nine ‘Bombs, sovereignty, and football’ and ‘The death and everlasting life of empires’, Chatterjee shifts the focus to the popular sport of football in late colonial Bengal as well as rising nationalist sentiment against the Holwell monument marking a new memorialization of the Black Hole victims. This last monument, built by Curzon, in 1902, appeared in the midst of rising nationalist agitation and four decades later, as Chatterjee shows, immense public mobilization on behalf of Indian football teams competing against European teams. By the early 1940s, Chatterjee argues, the public culture of Bengal’s sporting world and nationalist activists had merged, such that the nationalist opposition to the Holwell monument, which began in earnest in 1940, included the large world of football fans. As he states in chapter ten, ‘it is quite certain that there was considerable overlap between the public that celebrated the victories of Mohun Bagan or Mohammadan Sporting Clubs on the Maidan, the public that agitated for the removal of the Holwell monument, and the murderous public that went on a rampage on the streets and in the slums of Calcutta’ (p. 335).

The chapter, and the entire book, ends with an 11-page analysis of empire’s discursive and practical career in the present day, along with a concise statement of the book’s anchoring claim, which is demonstrated through his history of the conquest of India: ‘the most reliable definition of an imperial practice remains that of the privilege to declare the exception to the norm’ (p. 337). He lists examples of this privilege of declaring the exception to a norm constructed by those in pre-eminent nation-state power (previously, by those in imperial power), such as the decision of who gets to sit on the UN Permanent Security Council, the decision of who acceptably may house nuclear weapons, the decision to allow for differential treatment of victims of tragedies. In this final example, he compares the way that American victims of the recent BP gas spill have been treated compared to the victims of the Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal, India, in 1984. Furthermore, as a way to demonstrate how the career of empire’s technologies live in the present day, he mentions how imperial ventures today by powerful states like the United States proceed both by pedagogical discourses of violence (justified in Iraq by the United States) and through non-violent means (Saudi Arabia and Burma, as examples).

Chatterjee has produced a virtuoso performance that integrates a powerful combination of narrative history and political thought. He has mastered a diverse set of archives rare for historians, such as the treasures of dramatic literature, fiction, historical writing, urban history, and histories of space. His extensively researched narrative history is fruitfully interrupted with exciting discussions related to present-day politics and historiography.

Chatterjee conducts a cultural history by employing various strategies of reading texts, aimed not at empirical certitude or sociological clarity, but aimed at the resolution of the genealogy of enduring discursive questions. The need for precise empirical research, then, does not accord the same meaning as it would for a social history (as an example of another methodological approach to history). But might questions of social history complicate the way that Chatterjee interprets the history that is required to make sense of his critique of political thought? There are two ways that questions of social history may complicate his own presentation: one, through an exploration of alternative textual readings of the very same sources he offers and two, an assessment of the global reach of the ‘Black Hole’ narrative. Chatterjee opens his book with the claim that ‘the global phenomenon of modern empire’ (p. xi) is represented by the history of this story. Pursuing these avenues into his work opens a window into a larger question about the way hegemony is conceptualized in Chatterjee’s book and the implications of this conceptualization for the writing of history.

Though the texts Chatterjee interprets are certainly multi-faceted and deserving of close readings, do any alternative reading strategies uncover underlying discursive elements that went into the making of those texts? In his section ‘One the poetic and historical imagination’, he offers a wonderfully detailed analysis of representations of Siraj-ud-daulah in the writings of Bengali Hindus, like Nabin Chandra Sen, and his play Palasir yuddha, first published in 1875, produced in the 1870s and also in the 1890s. In this play, Siraj appears as a cutthroat tyrant, probably due to the English and English-inflected sources about him that Sen received. This depiction received a critique about 20 years later by Akshaykumar Maitreya, who countered Nabin Chandra Sen’s depictions of Siraj by using varieties of new evidence from the period. Maitreya showed him as a ‘absolutist ruler fighting to defend the sovereignty of the state, which he believed was the precondition for peace and prosperity in the kingdom’ (p. 245). This move not only showed sympathy and humanity for Siraj, countering Orientalist and stereotypical constructions of Muslim rulers, but created the ‘foundations of nationalist anticolonial historiography’ (p. 243). Chatterjee then discusses the ‘dramatic national popular,’ worked out by playwrights and theater artists in the wake of these debates, as led by Girishchandra Ghosh in the first two decades of the 20th century.

Chatterjee’s exposure of these debates and tracing of the origins of nationalist thought are detailed and nuanced. But there are two areas in his presentation that cry out for more expansion. One, though he mentions without any notes or references that ‘Muslim critics had often complained about the unfair portrayal of Siraj in Nabinchandra’s Palasir yuddha’ (p. 242), he devotes not a single line to any Muslim Bengali writers, critics, or political figures who had a stake in this entire debate. It is not incumbent upon Chatterjee to offer an analysis of each and every text and/or community that produced responses to these sorts of discourses, but a history of discourse without any grappling with the social markers on the ground leaves readers wondering about the historicity of these moments. When discussing how such a nationalist and idealized form of India’s past came to occupy these writers through the figure of Siraj, Chatterjee does not discuss how this very form potentially excluded Muslims from taking an active role in the nationalist imagination in this particular way. As Chatterjee states, Nabin Chandra Sen provided

"the key elements of the rhetoric of Hindu-Muslim fraternity that would ring out so loudly in the days of the Swadeshi movement…This was not the fraternity premised on the abstract citizen-subject, grounded in homogenous and equal citizenship, and then handed down as the liberal ideal of civic nationalism, most exemplarily since the French Revolution. Rather it was based on Hindus and Muslims constituting distinct communities that were nonetheless bound by the solidarity of naturalized kinship (p. 249)."

Such a textual reading may provide quite insightful for understanding Nabin Chandra Sen as well as nationalists who also reproduced this rhetoric, but does it apply to Muslim intellectuals of the same time period? Or, for that matter, to intellectuals grappling with these ideas in other regions of India? Since Muslims were the majority of Bengali speaking people at this time, readers have no way of assessing the manner in which these constructions actually represented anything beyond the Hindu intelligentsia. Or if there were discursive and intellectual encounters that transcended the boundaries that Nabin Chandra Sen, Akshaykumar Maitreya, and Girishchandra Ghosh represented.

During the age of this nationalist thought-world, from the 1870s to the 1910s, many Muslim writers wrote in Bengali; like Mir Musharraf Hussein, who wrote novels, plays, and verse, in particular, the three-part Bishad-Sindhu (Ocean of Sorrows) about the Battle of Karbala, and Ismail Hossain Shiraji, who traveled to Turkey during the Balkan Wars, wrote travelogues about Turkey in Bengali as well as seditious anti-colonial literature. These writers were certainly also affected by the newly ascendant discourses of nation and community. Though not a particularly visible or remarkable part of the vernacular-educated Bengali middle-class literati, these writers also grappled with issues of sovereignty, in particular through idealized connections with the Islamic world as well as Islamic literary and ethical themes in Bengali that had been present in the language since at least the 17th century CE. Given that the Muslim portion of Siraj’s identity was crucial for the stereotype of him as a tyrant, why not include any assessment of Muslim Bengali writing during the age of nationalist thought? Chatterjee mentions how by 1940, ‘the Muslim public in Calcutta was being mobilized for entirely new political futures’ (p. 323), but without any sense of the exclusions that were discursively operating in the thought-worlds of Bengali letters at the time. Inputting an awareness of the exclusions operating at discursive levels would allow readers a sense of the texture of how hegemonic ideas generate force and power. These questions reflect on the larger issue of how hegemony is understood in this work, for the broader audience of scholars of modern politics and political thought. Is hegemony always already given and does it not have a history? What happens to the contingent moments of the construction of the hegemonic ideas in the making of ‘imperial practices’?

Near the end of the book, Chatterjee mentions a way of disaggregating the Indian nation by presenting a potential critique of its post-1947 career: ‘there is no reason to believe that a postcolonial democracy such as India would not harbor ambitions of playing such an imperial role, just as democracies of the nineteenth century had done’ (p. 344). Such a statement exposes the assumption that the making of Indian national ideas itself was free from such ambitions and only the post-1947 set of state practices requires such a disaggregation. Could one pursue the making of exclusions in India’s own past – for example, the Bengali Hindu writers that he discusses, and the particularly upper-caste Hindu nationalist community that is created by them – through directly addressing areas of the Bengali and broader Indian landscape they systematically ignored?

Besides an assessment of the social realm in the making of discourse and an appreciation of discursive power, what also remains unaddressed is how a narrative like the Black Hole story of Calcutta is so powerful that it, and its career, should assume the burden of representing the ‘the global phenomenon of modern empire from the eighteenth to the twentieth century’ (p. xi). In order to demonstrate the power of the Black Hole story, Chatterjee uses the example of one third of 115 senior college students knowing about it and most (how many of the one third of 115 constituted the ‘most’ was not mentioned) believing it to be true. Does this exercise represent the extent of the power of this sort of ideology of empire that the Black Hole represents? Did the story resonate with colonized peoples and colonial officials elsewhere, as opposed to New York college students in 1947? As Chatterjee mentions other types of imperial-modern forms, such as the settler colonial and the plantation types, do those types not require a discursive unpacking and examination, or are readers to assume that the ideological bases for their imperial practices are easily understood? In his laudable pulling of the curtain back from European political thought’s hypocritical self-representations and false universalisms, Chatterjee potentially inserts a comparable blindness in his generalization of ‘African and Asiatic’ peoples as represented by the particular place of Calcutta and the various ways that Hindu elites in the modern age understood political power.

These questions aside, Chatterjee’s work proves relevant to post-colonial scholars, political theorists and early modern historians, regardless of the region of specialization. His history is a discursive history of the modern world, a post-colonial counterpart to synthetic world histories that have appeared in recent years, such as C.A. Bayly’s The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 and Eric Hobsbawm’s many ‘Age of …’ books, particularly his The Age of Empire, 1875-1914.(4)


In a manner that departs from these authors, he grapples with how imperial practices are imbricated in knowledge reproduction, much likes Nicholas Dirks’ The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain.(5) He achieves this particularly successfully in his reading of how the Black Hole story changed in the 19th century from requiring a ‘secret veil’ to creating a justification for conquest. The consequent manners of appropriation of ideas of conquest in the Bengali Hindu intelligentsia are also, similarly, parsed out in excellent detail. Doubtlessly, specialists of other regions of the world which experienced discursive shifts in ideas of conquest will benefit from Chatterjee’s approach. His work would be profitably read against Bayly, Marks, as well as contemporary theorists of global history, such as Bruce Mazlish and recent debates about the ‘new global history’ (6) in order to situate the role of empire in the history of modernity.

This work figures as a significant moment in Chatterjee’s career as a distinguished scholar of politics, culture, and history. Author of groundbreaking contributions to political thought and history, such as the 1998 Nation and its Fragments (7), required reading for South Asian specialists of all stripes as well as post-colonial theorists, Chatterjee has managed to develop new positions outside of his earlier works through The Black Hole. For example, in his section on ‘anti-absolutist early modern’ politics, exemplified by Rammahon Roy, he offers a tour through many newly unearthed primary sources that have yet to be studied together and uncovers modes of learning and thought that were not shaped directly by colonial education. His spotlight on how pre-colonial debates about monotheism and religion emanated not from the encounter with the ‘West,’ but from internal Indian debates that included Muslim, Hindu, and Zoroastrian thinkers, warrants particular attention. This angle is a departure from his previous work, such as Nationalist Thought and the Postcolonial World (8) and A Nation and its Fragments, in which the late 19th-century figurations of nationalism in the latter and key archetypal modern Indian nationalist figures in the former were the objects of study. Here, Chatterjee transcends the focus only on the colonial encounter and manages to include a detailed analysis of intellectual debate in the Indian realm of letters before the rise of modern colonialism. This work, for South Asian specialists, may be read as a profitable successor to many of his earlier works about hegemony, culture, and colonial and post-colonial politics.

Chatterjee offers a wonderfully provocative ending to his book, about yet another mythos, that of the national, as opposed to the imperial, through the interpretation of how Curzon’s plaque about the Black Hole had ended up in the Philatelic Museum. At least according to one of the museum’s staff members, Subhas Chandra Bose, the great late colonial Bengali nationalist, wanted it removed and so hammered it loose from the wall. As Chatterjee states, ‘the ground remains fertile for nationalist mythology’ well after the formal careers of empires have come to a close. One wonders, though, whether such fertility is restricted to Indian nationalists, like Bose, and those with the privilege of identifying with and therefore debating the contours of an empire or nation. Or does it touch a wider swath of humanity across the spectrum of life touched by the rhetorical power of empire?

Notes
Swayze, Patrick and Lisa Niemi. The Time of My Life (New York, NY, 2010).Back to (1)
Sandip Roy, ‘An Incredible Hulking shame: The Avengers go to Calcutta’ <http://newamericamedia.org/2012/05/if-t ... -right.php> [accessed 17 July 2012].Back to (2)
Ibid.Back to (3)
C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Oxford, 2004); Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 1875–1914 (London, 1989); The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 (London, 1962); The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (London, 1975).Back to (4)
Nicholas Dirks, The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain (Cambridge, MA, 2006).Back to (5)
Bruce Mazlish, The New Global History (New York, NY, 2006).Back to (6)
Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ, 1993).Back to (7)
Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World (London, 1986).Back to (8)
August 2012
Author's Response
Partha Chatterjee
Posted: Thu, 23/08/2012 - 12:00
I thank Neilesh Bose for his appreciative review and have no quarrel with his evaluation. However, he raises three points at the end of his review to which I would like to respond.

First, the important question of the exclusion of Muslims from the nationalist imagination of Hindu upper-caste Bengali intellectuals has been frequently discussed in the existing literature and it was not my intention to survey that field.(1) As for the response from Muslim critics to Nabinchandra Sen’s treatment of Siraj in his poem, this too has been recently discussed by Rosinka Chaudhuri in her essay, cited in my book (p. 240, fn. 47).(2)What is remarkable about the Siraj story is not exclusion at all but rather the enthusiastic embrace by Bengali Muslim intellectuals of the history of the British conquest of Bengal as written by Hindu nationalist historians such as Akshaykumar Maitreya. This was shown in particular by the demand raised by Muslim intellectuals in the 1930s for the correction of derogatory references to Siraj in school textbooks and the removal of the Black Hole monument from the central square of Calcutta, as well as by the revival of the Siraj theme in the Calcutta theatre in 1939. In every such speech, resolution or play, the authentic historical source cited was Maitreya. I have mentioned this in the context of my account of the movement among Muslim intellectuals and students in 1937–1940, trying to put pressure on the Fazlul Huq government to act despite its dependence on the European members of the Bengal legislature. Thus, while the larger story of the exclusion of Muslims from the nationalist imagination of Hindu intellectuals and, in particular, the glaring exclusion of Muslims from the Calcutta professional theatre (though not from its audience) is familiar, the Siraj and Black Hole story is a rare case of congruence of Muslim and Hindu popular views on a historical episode. This is one more reason why I was concerned to take the story of myth-making outside the sphere of high intellectual history into the popular cultural fields of theatre and football.

Second, the question of possible imperial ambitions held by the nationalist political leadership of the new Indian state needs more careful analysis than was possible within the space of my book. I would suggest that the key lies in my distinction between empire as technique and empire as ideology. In ideological terms, the Indian political leadership was, for obvious historical reasons, overtly, loudly and, one need not doubt, sincerely anti-imperial. In terms of its technical uses of power, however, as I have suggested on p. 196, it used many of the same imperial techniques used by the British, such as, for instance, in the integration of the princely states into India, including the use of armed force in Hyderabad and Kashmir. There are many instances where one will find undisturbed continuities in the technologies of power employed by the erstwhile imperial rulers and the present state leadership in India.

Third, the narrative strategy of using the Black Hole story as a fulcrum for depicting the various stages and discontinuities in the history of empire as a global practice was not meant to place upon it the entire burden of representing the phenomenon of empire. One of my central arguments is that there is no monocausal explanation of modern empire (such as claims of racial superiority or profits or export of finance capital or what have you). The narrative advantage of employing a story such as that of the Black Hole is the facility it affords with each retelling of moving from one stage of empire to another and from one level of determination to another. There are several causal explanations of time-bound and context-bound phenomena that I offer in different chapters of my book. But the Black Hole story is not the sole dependent variable in this history. On the contrary, what is remarkable is the capacity of this story about a foundational event to be metamorphosed every time into a new narrative that carries an entirely new moral, political and emotional charge, including the currently prevailing consensus among professional historians that the story is not worth remembering. I mentioned the report on New York undergraduates because when I first came across it ten years ago, I was startled to discover that so many young Americans of the mid 20th century knew about the Black Hole story. If I asked the same question in my class today, whether in New York or Calcutta, I doubt whether a single undergraduate would know anything about it. I am reluctant to accept that this represents the triumph of scientific history writing or of post-imperial politics. On the contrary, I strongly suspect the amnesia is the effect of a new practice of imperial power.

Notes
In the field of intellectual history, see, for instance, Rafiuddin Ahmed, Bengal Muslims 1871–1906: A Quest for Identity (Delhi, 1996) and my own treatment in Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ, 1993), chapters four and five. Discussions of the political implications of this ideological exclusion include Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition (Cambridge, 1994) and Pradip Kumar Datta, Carving Blocs: Communal Ideology in Early Twentieth-century Bengal (Delhi, 1999).Back to (1)
Rosinka Chaudhuri, ‘The politics of poetry: an investigation into Hindu-Muslim representation in Nabinchandra Sen’s Palashir Yuddha’, Studies in History, 24, 1 (2008), 1–25.Back to (2)
It is important to be familiar with critical discourse theory and history.

For instance, Tucke Carlson berating the Indians happy on Twitter with the demise of QEII was using Orme's formulation that Indians deserved the Empire for it uplifted them!!!
Orme sets the standard for how discussions about conquest would proceed, based on both the idea that Indians were naturally servile to those in power and that Europeans had the right to retaliate and reclaim territory if serving a higher purpose of conquest.
!

And as India moves ahead in the world ranking, it's important to critic the British Empire and even the Muslim Empires to regain our future.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

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Hope this piques your interest in reading!!!
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Re: Indian Interests_2

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Re: Indian Interests_2

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Thank you for posting the above Ramana garu, already the review and response are a joy to read. Added to the my future reading list...
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Re: Indian Interests_2

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Dismantling bureaucratic system is key to Modi's Paanch Pran's a success]

Shishir Gupta in Hindustan Times.
He is a senior journalist and his father was in MEA.
Dismantling bureaucratic system is key to make Modi’s 'Paanch Prans' a success
India News

Updated on Sep 17, 2022 03:16 PM IST
The All-India Civil Services, a successor to the Imperial Civil Service and Imperial Police, currently thrive on the five Ps—Perks, Preservation, Process, Protocol and Procrastination. They are the true inheritors of Raj with sprawling British-era bungalows in prime locations along with chauffeur-driven staff cars and a retinue of servants.



The Indian bureaucracy is the true inheritor of the British imperial legacy and still thrives on the five Ps—Perks, Preservation, Process, Protocol and Procrastination.

{Add Precedent. No decision is taken unless there is a precedent already established. The BBC series "Yes Minister" fits Indian civil services perfectly.}

From the ramparts of Red Fort, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 15 this year talked about “Paanch Prans" (five pledges) to fulfill all the aspirations of the freedom fighters by the year 2047—when India celebrates its 100th year of independence. The second pledge was that “no part of our existence, not even in the deepest corners of our mind or habits should there be any ounce of slavery. It should be nipped in the bud.” The PM said that these hundreds of years of slavery have bound us and that Indian people should liberate themselves from this slavery mindset.

Post speech, the statue of freedom fighter Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was installed at the site where the statue of British Emperor George V existed once upon a time at India Gate. The Rajpath or Kingsway was renamed as Kartavya (responsibility) Path with all the modern facilities. The decolonization of the Indian mindset is being hotly pursued by the Modi government with British India’s Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) and Indian Penal Code (IPC) soon to be replaced by new laws where murder and rape will be a much more heinous charges than sedition or unlawful assembly of people. The new laws will be more in tune with times and not be relics of the occupying British Raj.

However, the second pledge will be truly completed if PM Modi is able to dismantle the decaying bureaucratic architecture put in place by the British Raj. The All-India Civil Services, a successor to the Imperial Civil Service and Imperial Police, currently thrive on the five Ps—Perks, Preservation, Process, Protocol and Procrastination. They are the true inheritors of Raj with sprawling British-era bungalows in prime locations along with chauffeur-driven staff cars and a retinue of servants. The fact is that PM Modi had to suffer the arrogance of some of these bureaucrats when he took over the reins of power in 2014 with one nearly castigating him for cancelling a foreign trip to a close ally country in the east due to a lack of substance in the visit and another telling him that a certain policy of his was not politically suitable. To the latter, the PM tersely asked the officer to leave politics to him and concentrate on public policy objectives.

{From 1984 with the death of Mrs. Indira Gandhi till 2014, the Civil services had unbroken tenure without political control. They were the System or Permanent government. You can see the edifice of their success in Chankaypuri in the All India Civil Services Institute which is really a club for them.}

A true legatee of the British past, the Indian bureaucracy along with an equally moribund military bureaucracy is more driven by process and less by result-oriented objectives. Despite all the effort made, the bureaucratic red tape is thriving within the system because of which the Indian industrialist rather do trading than setting up a manufacturing unit and face the wrath of the common constable to the commissioner.

A serious fall-out of this is the growing trade deficit with China and increasing dependence on the same Beijing, which does not think twice before changing the ground situation on the border with India. The self-preservation instinct of the Indian bureaucracy is such that they rather not act than to be punished for taking an initiative that may go wrong. After all, the Indian bureaucrat is there in power for at least 30 years while the Indian politician is tested every five years at the Centre and faces the electorate virtually every month in elections from Panchayat to State Assembly.

Like his British forefathers, the Indian mandarin is so conscious of his position and protocol that a senior officer will send his junior to a meeting hosted by another senior officer howsoever serious the matter unless the meeting is chaired by the Minister. The same is reflected in the military bureaucracy where the Army Chief will send his deputy to attend the meeting of the most important China Study Group unless the meeting is chaired by the Defence Minister or the External Affairs Minister. Even the protocol of answering phones must comply with the seniority of the officer on the other end and the junior officer coming on telephone line first. Senior service followed by senior batch rule the day of bureaucracy.

{Rajni Kothari in his paper Congress System written in 1964 says the Congress had hands off policy with the military with no civilian control. IMHO this has led to the bureaucratization of the Military as we have seen over the life of this forum.}

The slow decision-making in government has been refined by bureaucrats into an art with the green note sheet on the file recording comments from all and sundry with each trying to protect his or her own turf. Despite all his 100 percent commitment and hard work, PM Modi often finds himself wringing his hands in frustration due to bureaucratic delays and the exercise of Babu of taking a long way home. Seventy-five years after independence, there are still projects that are facing huge cost overruns due to slow decision-making of the bureaucracy particularly in states. This is actually a standard operating procedure in military hardware acquisition where decision hangs fire for decades.

As PM Modi enters the 72nd year of his illustrious life, he needs to revamp the entire bureaucracy and trash the archaic examination system and training syllabuses which are totally out of sync with the times and growing India. There should be one civil service rather than a plethora with officers working towards one growth objective than be divided into silos of IAS, IFS or IPS or any allied service. The marks scored in one exam at the entry point should not define the entire career path of the bureaucrat but be subject to constant periodic evaluation so that only the cream in integrity and honesty reaches the top for the best jobs. Reform in bureaucracy is a must otherwise PM’s vision of “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” will remain only on the green note sheets of government files. The yoke of imperial bureaucratic slavery must be thrown away or else the Raj has won.

Shishir Gupta
Author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (2011, Hachette) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (2014, Hachette). Awarded K Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 by Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA) and the 2011 Ben Gurion Prize by Israel.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

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In less than an hour, most Cabinet decisions are leaked to favorite media and Youtube Channels.
Even before the GO Is signed.
A peculiar thing is the Youtube channels on defence matters that leak Cabinet deliberations
and the so-called Civil service preparation channels.
Most are run by the progeny of civil servants.
The gap is not updating the Official Secrets Act.
It addresses only those documents specifically stamped with the marks.
It has no lesser categories like For Official Use Only.
This leads to a plethora of Xerox copying with impunity.
Delhi is a Xerox mad capital.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

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Place holder on the 2nd KS Memorial Lecture

https://idsa.in/event/k-subrahmanyam-me ... cture-2022

Executive Summary
Reminiscing about the memory of Late K. Subrahmanyam, Dr. Luttwak said that he foresaw the economic rise of China in the late 1970s. He anticipated that China would economically outmatch the US and argued for the India-US partnership. Dr. Luttwak opined that in the changed circumstances, the US needed allies. He maintained that Chinese belligerent behaviour had compelled the regional states to come together and form an organic coalition which was supplemented by the overlapping bilateral arrangements between the constituent states.

Dr. Luttwak suggested that China was comparatively focusing less on its land borders. Thus, it was an opportunity for the alliance to make its presence felt on the Chinese borders. Comparing China’s current political environment with Mussolini’s Italy, Dr. Luttwak contended that China under President Xi Jinping was in the Mussolini phase. He argued for an agile and downsized Indian army ready to take on future challenges. Concluding his address, Dr. Luttwak strongly proclaimed that blockade in the oceanic space remained the best way to deal with China during adverse times.



Dr. Luttwak began his address by reminiscing about his interactions with Late K. Subrahmanyam, and described his voice as a “voice of inexorable logic”. He recalled how Late Subrahmanyam tried to explain the logic of nuclear India with a strict no-first-use policy. With nuclearisation, the aim was to create a nuclear threshold. His logic was irrefutable and his prediction about the future came out correct.

Late K. Subrahmanyam also foresaw the economic rise of China in the late 1970s. He anticipated that China would economically outmatch the US and argued a closer Indo-US relationship. Thus, he had recognised the necessity of an alliance not in a realm of strategy or war but in the realm of geoeconomics. Talking about China, Dr. Luttwak stated that today the world was dealing with the “New China”. Since the 2008 financial crisis, there was a feeling in China that “the East was up and the West was down”. The financial crisis was interpreted in China as the beginning of the general crisis of capitalism. During the same time, the US also weakened greatly. The social and cultural changes in the US and the accidental presidency of Mr. Trump contributed to this phenomenon. Dr. Luttwak argued that the US needed allies in the current circumstances as it was no more a unipolar moment of the 1990s.
{Luttwak sees strategy through the military lens. KS Garu saw geoeconomics as another tool of strategy.}


Commenting on the regional scenario, the speaker observed that although neutrality between the US and China was the flavour of the season for regional states, the “logic of strategy” forced them to come together to contain China due to Chinese actions. Dr. Luttwak maintained that Chinese belligerent behaviour compelled the regional states to come together and form an organic coalition, unlike NATO. The organic coalition was supplemented by the overlapping bilateral arrangements between the constituent states. The Indo-Pacific command of the US was also the manifestation of the present-day reality. Although the Southeast Asian states did not take sides, their actions conveyed that the “logic of strategy” was working itself out, resulting in organic alliances.
:eek: {Its an organic alliance of mice against a cat! IOW it won't work}

Speaking further about the borders of China, Dr. Luttwak contended that China was acting like an island power. It was putting more efforts into building maritime, air and strategic forces and had an army of less than a million. He suggested that China was comparatively focusing less on its land borders. :rotfl: Thus, it was an opportunity for the alliance to make their presence felt on the borders. He asserted that when maritime powers are confronted by land powers, the former act on borders of the latter to remind them that they are a land power. India, being a maritime power, could take a leaf out of this strategy. :rotfl:

{China is a land power surrounded on two sides by the Pacific Ocean and the Indo-China Sea. BTW it was US scholars who pandered to China and renamed it the South China Sea! China has land borders with India and Central Asia.}


Reflecting on the internal dynamics of China, Dr. Luttwak argued that the world was dealing with only one person – President Xi Jinping – and not with China as a whole. Comparing China’s current political environment with Mussolini’s Italy, Dr. Luttwak contended that China under President Xi was in the Mussolini phase. Advising India about how it should deal with the challenge, he claimed that when a country faces a challenge, it is an opportunity to make drastic reforms. India needed an agile and downsized army ready to take on future challenges. He advocated against India having an aircraft carrier. Concluding his address, Dr. Luttwak strongly proclaimed that blockade in the oceanic space remained the best way to deal with China during adverse times.

{Luttwak wants India to weaken its strength in its Army and build a Navy without aircraft carriers! OTH India needs a strong Army to ensure PLA is defeated and a strong Navy to ensure PALN is not operating in the Indian Ocean And this will need aircraft carriers!}

Ambassador Chinoy steered the discussion through a question-and-answer session with a comment that Dr. Luttwak’s address brought together Mahan and Mackinder in suggesting response levels.{tTypical babu showing familiarity with Western experts! How relevant are they to India and its neighborhood?} While answering questions by the audience, Dr. Luttwak maintained that although President Biden changed his predecessor’s many policies, he continued with President Trump’s China policy. The Ukraine crisis had not diverted the US’s attention away from China. He maintained that US resources were mainly focused on the Indo-Pacific, although the Ukraine crisis was getting much more media traction. Commenting on the Russia-China relationship, the speaker drew the attention of the audience to the fact that despite close partnership, Russia was supplying arms to countries that were not friendly with China including Vietnam and India. Answering a question about the US-Pakistan equation, Dr. Luttwak said that the relationship had gone through many evolutions but there was a strong view that Pakistan was hostile to the US. So, he believed that the US-Pakistan relations should be conducted in the context of the de-facto Indo-US alliance.{Biden proved this wrong with his withdrawal from Afghanistan and the rearming of Pakistan with ~$450M sustainment aid to F-16s!} About Myanmar, he argued that allies should work closely and defer to the country within the alliance that had vantage position vis-à-vis Myanmar. On the Ukraine and Taiwan issue, Dr. Luttwak claimed that Russia cannot contribute anything out of Vladivostok to support Chinese action over Taiwan. Neither would China do anything in the Baltic. So, there won’t be a scenario where Russians and Chinese will cooperate. Russia and China were tactical allies as against strategic allies. {By his own admission KS garu moved the cheese from geo-political to geo-economic and yet Luttwak is talking in geo-political terms!}


Joining the interaction, India’s Minister of External Affairs Dr. S Jaishankar gave insights about his father. Dr. Jaishankar said that Late K. Subrahmanyam’s thinking was profoundly shaped by the conflicts of 1962, 1965, 1971 and 1999. His advocacy of policies was a product of a tough strategic environment where the US, China and Pakistan had come together. So, in the 1970s he championed India’s close relations with the Soviet Union. And then a decade later, in view of the US-China contradictions, he became a strong advocate of Indo-US partnership. The logic of both relationships was the same. Dr. S. Jaishankar believed that his father was an “insider-outsider”. He served in the government as well as in a think tank like IDSA. At times he held contrary views vis-à-vis the government positions. But he expressed his views very responsibly without making grand sweeping submissions. Late K. Subrahmanyam considered himself a grand strategist. His writings had geoeconomic underpinning. He focussed on non-traditional security issues such as connectivity, technology, and financing among others and explained as to how these could be leveraged to shape international relations. Thus, he was far ahead of his time.

{What are now called cross-domain responses which were first shown in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Even India, after Galwan, had implemented a cross-domain response on China which is running its course. Or put differently military way is only one of the options.}


Shri Dhruva Jaishankar delivered a vote of thanks. He remembered Late K. Subrahmanyam’s role in building IDSA, right from the 1960s as a note-taker in the defence ministry until the establishment of the institute. He also thanked Dr. Luttwak for his address on the occasion and described how Dr. Luttwak’s worldviews were shaped by his personal journey.
Sorry to say but Dr. Luttwak is good at writing books and not implementing policy. I have commented where I saw fit.

Some of his ideas about India is a natural aircraft carrier were said by Vice Admiral Mihir Roy in U S Navy Institute Proccedings.
Yes land airbase are cheaper than IAC but India needs both.
As for dominating Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal that's what was there in the Naval plan.
India has basing agreement in Oman, Mauritius etc.

Sad that whoever invited him forced Jaishankar to sit through this.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

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Please listen to entire one hour ten minutes and there are nuances which can be missed in the above summary.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

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Interesting comments on hypersonic weapons quest by US.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

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/Harpreet What alternate moves could save Skardu and Mirpur?

Looks like not enough troops./

You said it, Ramana Ji. I have studied this particular campaign in reasonable depth. It was sheer military genius that brought us where we reached by the time ceasefire came about. Lack of troops was a major issue, as was the conservative employment of Air Force. As early as the summer of 1948, Pakistan Army had become overtly involved in Kashmir. The only way out was to have opened up another front in Punjab.
But the biggest reason was British Commanders in Chief on both sides of the border who had already fixed the game. The Pakistani C-in-C was assured by the Indian one that there would be no offensive in Punjab!
A 'MUST-READ' book on this aspect of the 1947-48 War is 'War and Diplomacy in Kashmir 1947-48' by C Dasgupta. He chronicles the shenanigans of the Brits in New Delhi, Karachi, London as well as the UN.


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Re: Indian Interests_2

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Anirban Ganguly writes in First post


https://www.firstpost.com/opinion-news- ... 11201.html
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Re: Indian Interests_2

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Re: Indian Interests_2

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Ancient India in South East Asia:

https://jnu-matrix.tripod.com/seas.html
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by bala »

Francois Gautier via Rajiv Malhotra talks about the need to fight the Western perspective of Demonization of India via ThinkTanks, EDU (Harvard etc) and having the Indian Kshatriya fighting spirit to take them on. Many Indians are completely clueless or care little about such things, they want validation by western systems, they want edu, they want jobs, etc. Meanwhile the Billionaires of India keep funding Oxford, Harvard and other schools who take the money (thank you very much) and increase the vitriol against India.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

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In the Bharatiya Vidhya Bhavan series on Indian History in Volume 4, "Struggle for Empire" KM Munshi in his forward writes of the historical transition that Bharat went through with the Mahmud Ghazni raids and Ghori invasion.
The most crucial Age in Indian history began in A.D. 998, when the Turkish conqueror, Mahmud, captured Ghazni; it ended in A.D. 1292, when the Khalji Chief, Jalal-ud-din, proclaimed himself the Sultan of Delhi. It can, however, be conveniently divided into two periods, the first ending in A.D. 1193, when Mu‘izz-ud-din Ghuri defeated Prithviraj Chahamana of Ajmer in the Battle of Tarain or Taraori and opened the gates of Madhya Pradesh to the foreign invader; the second ending in 1299.
This period, in my opinion, has not yet been studied from India’s point of view; from the point of view of file trials she passed through; of the sufferings she underwent when foreign elements forced their way into her life-blood; of the manner in which she reacted to the situation; of the means which she found to meet, or to mitigate, the dangers that confronted her; of the ways in which she reconstructed, achieved and fulfilled herself.
Such a study is difficult for two reasons. First, the chronicles written by the proteges of the invaders or their successors throw a dubious but concentrated light on the narrow sector of life that their patrons dominated. This generally leads to the unconfessed impression that the vastly broad sector, which lies in obscurity for want of historical material, either did not exist or does not matter as much.

Secondly, the magnificence of Akbar’s achievements in the sixteenth century, by an illusory retrospectively casts a reflected glamour on the period of the Sultanate. Because the Mughal Empire was an experiment in a national monarchy presided over by a Muslim monarch, one comes to assume, by an easy transition, that the Muslim-dominated Sultanate was the chrysalis from which it sprang.
Unless, therefore, the period is viewed from the right perspective, its true picture cannot possibly emerge; nor would it be possible to assess the factors which, coming into existence during this period, affected the life of the people through the intervening centuries, and which still confront it with unsolved problems.

The year A.D. 1000 was a fateful year for India. In that year, Mahmud of Ghazni first invaded it. That event, in my opinion, divides Ancient from Medieval India.
For over 2000 years before this event, that is, from before the days of king Janamejaya Parikshita, referred to in the Brahmanas, the culture of the dominant classes, developing in almost unbroken continuity, had brought large sections of the people within its fold. It was, however, disturbed on occasions, for instance, by the raids of Alexander; by the influx of the Bactrian Greeks, the Kushanas, and the Sakas; by the invasion of the Hunas; by the Arab incursions in Sindh. But these inroads were only temporary episodes; the vita¬ lity of the culture and social organization found it easy to absorb most of the alien elements which were left behind in the country after they were closed.
This continuous vitality is a phenomenon, and without appreciating which it is difficult to study the epochs of Indian history in continuous time. Several factors have maintained it. Of them, perhaps the most important was the ‘Aryavarta-consciousness’ which threw up values and institutions of great vigour and tenacity.
It was based on the faith that Bharatavarsha, in its ideal aspect often referred to as Aryavarta, was the sacred land of Dharma, ‘the high road to Heaven and to Salvation'; where ‘men were nobler than the Gods themselves;1 where all knowledge, thought and wor¬ ship were rooted in the Vedas, revealed by the Gods themselves; where the Dharmasastras prescribed the fundamental canons of personal life and social relations; where Chaturvarnya, the divinely ordained fOur-fold order of society, embraced all social groups; where, whatever the dialect of the people, Sanskrit, the language of the Gods, was the supreme medium of high expression.’
The Dharmasastras—and by that is meant not only the Smritis beginning with the Manu-smriti, but the Mahabharata2—have play¬ ed a very big role in the life of the country. Particularly Manu- smriti, as the Dharmasdstra of divine origin, has had an all-pervading influence from the time historical memory could reach back to moulding the mind and the life of men, not only in India but in the India beyond the Seas, in Burma, Siam, Annam, Cambodia, Java and Bali.

With the Mahabharata and the R&mayana, it has provided a background of continuity to the social and moral life; modified customary laws of tribes and communities in different stages of civilization; and built up the Collective Unconscious of our people, that subconscious source of integrative vitality which keeps a people together, leads them to feel and react as one in the face of certain circumstances, and provides the urge to the collective action of a recurring character.

Century after century, the system, first formulated by the Manu- smriti, was accepted throughout the country, never by force of arms, less by royal fiats than the sanction implied in the belief that ‘God gave it and the ancestors obeyed it'. It was found so acceptable because it had a revealing basis of reality: of a frank recognition of the temperamental inequalities of man; of the predominance of hereditary influences over environments; of the need for a synthetic framework for widely differing social groups in a vast country where culture had been staggered from not only region to region, but often from one group of villages to another. Its fundamental aim was to produce a synthetic urge towards human betterment, which treated economic, social, material, and ethical, and spiritual well-being as indivisible; an aim which has yet to be improved upon by any other system.
These values gave continuity to the way of life of even those sections who did not accept the divine origin of the Vedas or Chatur- varna. They also provided homogeneity to widely differing communities and religious cults and forms. The universal urge which they provided to go on a pilgrimage, generation after generation, to the mountains, rivers, towns of ancient fame, and holy spots and shrines which were conceived as the physical manifestations of the Land of Dharma, also kept alive an emotional awareness of unity and sanctity.
The ‘Aryavarta-consciousness’ was mainly religio-cultural in content. Its political significance which, though often belied in prac¬ tice, exercised considerable influence with the kings of an earlier age in North India when they faced foreign invasion; it is sum¬ med up by Medhatithi thus: “Aryavarta was so called because the Aryas sprang up in it again and again. Even if it was overrun by the mlechchhas, they could never abide there for long”.3 The tradition also had it that whenever a crisis arose, a chakravartin, a world- emperor, would rise in the land and re-establish Dharma. South India, however, which accepted the religio-cultural aspects of ‘Aryavarta-consciousness’ and Manu’s system, knew no such significance, for it had never to face the problem of the mlechchhas till the fourteenth century.
The consciousness in its political aspect had all but disappeared during the few decades which preceded A.D. 1000 on account of the recurring upheavals in North India. The empire of Kanauj, which had stabilised North India for well-nigh 150 years and supported the Shahi kings of the North-West,4 has disintegrated. Now Raghu- kulabhuchakravarti, ‘the World-Emperor of Raghu’s race’, was merely a symbol of a vanished greatness, ruling over a small territory around Kanauj on the sufferance of his erstwhile feudatories. Some of them, however, like the Chandellas of Jejakabhukti, the Kalachuris of Dahala and the Paramaras of Malava were engaged in struggling to found an empire on the ruins of old one, but with little success.

In Eastern India, the Palas, the Chandras, the Varmans and the Gangas fought each other with fluctuating success, struggling to retain whatever they had or to filch what they had not.

The Rashtrakutas, the rivals of the Pratlhara-Gurjaresvaras, had faded away; their empire, which for well-nigh two centuries had dominated most of South India, had also been dissolved. The Paramaras of Malava and the Western Chahikyas, both feudatories of the Rashtrakutas, at one time or the other, were locked in a life and death struggle, while Rajaraja Chola (A-D. 985-1014), who ruled over the extreme South, was just emerging as a powerful and wise monarch.
At the turn Of the tenth century, therefore, there was no generally accepted national focus in the country, as Kanauj had once been, and no military power in North India strong enough to keep the warring kings in check, or to coordinate their activities against any foreign invader. Thus, when Mahmud began his raids, India was ill-equipped for successful resistance.

After the Hunas had been repulsed in the sixth century, the country had been free from any serious foreign visitation for about two centuries. The Arab conquest of Sindh in the eighth century had only been a frontier episode and the Pratiharas in the ninth century appear to have reclaimed some parts which had been overrun by the Arabs- The Indian mind, thus lulled into self-complacency, was indifferent to, if not unaware of, the vast shifts of power which were taking place across the frontier.

When the Samanid Princes, Turks recently converted to Islam, had grown weak, Alptigin, a slave of one of them, established himself at Ghazni on the borders of India as a quasi-independent chieftain. His successor, Sabuktigin (A.D- 977-997), when he was safely entrenched in power, began nibbling at the possessions of the Shahi kings, which included parts of Afghanistan, North-West Frontier Province, and the Punjab.
On Sabuktigln’s death, his son Mahmud, with swift audacity, captured Ghazni, which his father had left to another son. He was a military leader of the highest order, gifted with a rare personality. Developing a marvellous striking power, by A.D- 1000, he extended his sway over considerable parts of Central Asia, Iran and Seistan, Then he turned to India, giving her people a foretaste of total war with which they had not been familiar since the days of the Hunas.

The Indian kings, all of whom accepted, at any rate in theory, the law of the Dharmasastras as inalienable, waged wars according to certain humane rules. Whatever the provocation, the shrine, the Brahmana, and the cow were sacrosanct to them. War being a special privilege of the martial classes, harassment of the civilian population during military operations was considered a serious lapse from the code of honour. The high regard which all the Kshatriyas had for the chastity of women, also ruled out abduction as an incident of war.

The wars in Central Asia, on the other hand, were grim struggles for survival, for the destruction of the enemies and for appropriating their womenfolk. No code circumscribed the destructive zeal of the conqueror; no canon restrained the ruthlessness of their hordes- When, therefore, Mahmud’s armies swept over North India it saw torrents of barbarians sweeping across its rich plains, burning, looting, indulging in the indiscriminate massacre; raping women, destroying fair cities, burning down magnificent shrines enriched by centuries of faith; enforcing an alien religion at the point of the sword; abducting thousands, forcing them into unwilling marriage or concubinage; capturing hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, to be sold as slaves in the markets of Ghazni and other Central Asian markets.
Delhi, Kanaaj, and Jejakabhukti sent men and money to help the Shahi kings to defend their frontiers. But the invader swept everything before him- All that the three generations of the Shahis, ‘men of noble sentiments and noble bearings’, who, according to Al- Blrunl, ‘in their grandeur never slackened in the ardent desire of doing that which is good and rich’, could do was, like heroes of frustrated destiny that they were, fight and die bravely.

Mahmud annexed the Punjab, thereby opening the way to the hungry men from the steppes of Central Asia to descend upon this rich and fertile land in search of plunder. Nothing would withstand the Central Asian raiders eager to plunder and destroy. In a few years, Thaneswar, Mathura, Kanauj and Prabhasa Pattana were smoking ruins. The ruler of Kanauj accepted submission on abject terms. The raids of the Turk were, however, halted in the east by Vidyadhara Chandella at Kalanjara and in the south-west, where after destroying the temple of Somanatha, Mahmud had to beat a hasty retreat through the desert of Sindh for fear of the federated armies of ‘Paramadeva’, whom I would identify with Bhoja Para- mara of Dhara (A.D. 1000-1055).

In spite of the havoc worked by the raids of Mahmud, life re¬ turned to normal as soon as their pressure disappeared- For instance, within five years of the invasion, in the course of which Mahmud destroyed the temple of Somanatha, Gujarat, richer and more powerful than before, had not only rebuilt the temple on a more magnificent scale, but created the artistic wonders of the Dilwara temple. About the same time, the neighbouring kingdom, which included Malwa and parts of Gujarat, was enjoying great prosperity associated with enthusiastic pursuit of learning, literature and art.

However, the destruction and the humiliation inflicted by Mahmud’s raids shocked India’s sense of ancient superiority, bringing into play several political, social and psychological factors. With the Yamlnls, the successors of Mahmud, firmly established in the Punjab, the ‘Aryavarta-consciousness’ lost whatever significance it had. The belief that Chaturvarnya was a divinely appointed universal order, characteristic of the land, was shaken; for now a ruling race in the country not only stood outside it, but held it in contempt and sought its destruction.
Nationalism, familiar to the modern mind, is a non-religious group sentiment. It is associated with a fierce possessiveness over one’s own land however vast it may be, entertained by a people who have willed themselves into a quasi-organic solidarity. Naturally, the Indian kings could not develop it, because the country was too vast and the times unfavourable to the development of a non-religious group sentiment of this nature- Five more centuries had to elapse before nationalism became a force in Europe and two hundred more years had to pass before it was to become a human value in Asia-


The storm that blew in the wake of Mahmud’s armies was sudden and overwhelming. It came before any of the feudatories of Imperial Kanauj could win the race for an unchallenged hegemony; when it blew over none was left strong enough to win it. The kings of South India, where the political aspect of the ‘Aryavarta-consciousness’ had been so much as penetrated, also presented too persistent a menace to enable them to combine against a foreign enemy from the North-West. In the result, loyalties came to be confined to one’s own region, accelerating the trend to social and political particularism.

During this Age, the dvijas had long ceased to be a compact, social group created by anuloma marriages and a common education received from Brahmana preceptors. The Brahmanas, the Kshatriyas and the Vaisyas were now separate castes to which was denied the dynamic fluidity throughout the country which it had under the earlier social order. To this was added another factor. The dynastic pride, always a great factor in stiffening the morale of royal houses, had deteriorated into vaingloriousness which grew in proportion as the kingdoms shrunk in extent- A king, instead of being the only source of power, was no more than the first among the equals, the head of inter-related overlordships, never in a position to overrule the wishes of his feudal lords.

In consequence, the loyalties of the Kshatriyas became rooted in the region over which they and their king held feudal sway. This rendered annexation, the only possible source of establishing the core of an empire, extremely difficult. Even after a smashing victory, a conqueror sometimes seems to have found it expedient to restore the vanquished enemy or a member of his family to the throne in order not to alienate the local chieftains; but no sooner was his back turned, than they, more often than not, declared independence.
Under these conditions, scarcely any king could leave his realm for any length of time exposing it to the greed of his neighbours. He was always hard put to save his own kingdom and, on accession, had to make peace even with a foreign invader and divert his attention to his neighbour. In this way, social stagnancy and regional consciousness led to what has been called “small-state-mindedness’, the sure forerunner of political disintegration.


About the middle of the twelfth century, the Turks, then in occupation of parts of Central Asia, were forced first westwards and then eastwards by the pressure of their enemies. In A.D. 1175, the Turkish chief, Mu‘izz-ud-dln Muhammad, the nephew of the ferocious ‘World-Burner’ of Ghur, invaded India. The impact of the invasion was borne by three powerful princes: Prithvlraja Chahamana of Ajmer, Jayachandra Gahadavala of Kanauj, and Mularaja II, Chaulukya of Gujarat. Each one of them was powerful enough to defeat the invader singly; Mularaja drove him back in 1178; Prithvlraja, in A.D. 1191; but no two of them would combine. When the brave Prithviraja lost the second Battle of Tarain in 1192, the turning point of history, came. When Jayachandra Gahadavala, next to be vanquished, died fighting, the Turkish cavalry swept over the plains of the Ganga.

In A.D. 1206, Qutb-ud-din Tibak, who succeeded Mu‘izz-din Muhammad, established the Turkish Sultanate of India at Lahore. It was transferred later to Delhi. The Sultanate was foreign in personnel and outlook, for “The Forty” as the leading Turkish chiefs, originally the slaves of Mu‘izz-ud-dln, were called, owned it in fee. Its principal concern was loot and conquest; and the slogan of jehad, supported by the ‘Ulama, came in useful to maintain the fanatic zeal of the army. To these invaders nothing was sacred. The description given by Padmanabha in Kahnadade Prabandha (c. A. D. 1456) of what the armies of ‘Ala-ud-din Khalji did, would equally apply to the campaigns of the Turks:
“The conquering army burnt villages; devastated the land, plundered people’s wealth, took Brahmans, children and women of all castes captive, and flogged them with thongs and raw hide, carried a moving prison with it, and converted the prisoners into obsequious Turks.”

In the days of Mahmud of Ghazni, in the words of ‘Utbi, “the blood of the infidels flowed copiously and apostasy was often the only way of survival.” On the testimony of so liberal a Muslim of this age as Amir Khusrav, “the land had been saturated with the water of the sword and the vapours of infidelity (i.e. Hindus) had been dispersed.” Will Durant, in his Story of Civilization, aptly says: “The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within”. And neither the ferocity nor the persistence of the invader could lead the Indians to develop the military organisation or the ruthlessness needed to match the opposing savagery.

The conquests so exultantly referred to by the court chroniclers of the Sultanate had an Indian side of the picture. It was one of ceaseless resistance offered with relentless heroism; of men, from boys in teens to men with one foot in the grave, flinging away their lives for freedom; of warriors defying the invaders from fortresses for months, sometimes for years, in one case, with intermission, for a century; of women in thousands courting fire to save their honour; of children whose bodies were flung into the wells by their parents so that they might escape slavery; of fresh heroes springing up to take the place of the dead and to break the volume and momentum of the onrushing tide of invasion.

About the middle of the thirteenth century, the Mongols had already established themselves in Afghanistan. In A.D. 1254, they had taken Lahore; in A.D. 1255 they had entered Sindh. With his retreat to the original homeland thus cut off, the Turk, compelled to look to India as his permanent home, clung to the precariously held kingdom of Delhi with tenacity. However, in spite of military operations conducted for a century, the core of the Sultanate only comprised the central military base of Delhi and the surrounding districts within a radius of about 250 miles of it. The frontier districts were no better than garrison outposts from which the Turkish satraps carried on raids against the Indian chiefs, who held the rural areas- But even when the resistance was overcome, the satraps had to administer the conquered areas with the aid of hereditary Indian chiefs and officers, who were always on the lookout for an opportunity to revolt. Some of the Indian chiefs carried their expeditions to the walls of Delhi and even across the Yamuna into the Doab. From the Indian point of view, therefore, the territory of the Sultanate in the thirteenth century was only an arena of resistance which neither wavered nor tired.

This resistance was nowhere more characteristically symbolised than in the epic heroism associated with the Chahamanas of Ranthambhor- From A.D. 1192, when Prithvlraja Chahamana lost the battle of Tarain, till A.D. 1301 when his descendant, the heroic Hammlradeva, fell fighting in the battlefield and the fortress fell to ‘Ala-ud-din Khalji, they defied the Sultanate year after year and generation after generation. And so did the Katehrs who were no less unyielding in their resistance.

The Indian kings, steeped in their tradition of tolerance, could scarcely envisage the danger to which their policies towards Islam exposed them. In spite of what was happening in North India, Indian kings permitted foreigners to settle freely in their kingdoms and granted them free exercise of their religious practices. Even before the Turkish invasion, some sects of Islam had drifted into the country and their religious and proselytising activities had not been interfered with. Jayasimha Siddharaja of Gujarat (A.D. 1094-1143) punished some of his subjects for interfering with the worship of Muslims. Proselytising activities were freely carried out in the days of the Yadavas by a Sufi teacher, Mumin ‘Arif, who settled near Devagiri in the South, and by Jalal-ud-dln Ganjrawan (died in A.D. 1254) another Sufi from Iran. Sarangadeva (A.D. 1294-1297) of Gujarat gave a grant for a masjid to the local Muslim community of Prabhasa Pattana with the blessings of the high-priest of Somanatha when, for decades, the Turks had been destroying thousands of temples in Varanasi and other sacred places.

Once the Turkish Sultanate was installed at Delhi and Islam came to be enthroned in political power, wherever the writ of the Sultans ran, the proselytising activities of Islam became active; the Hindus were denied the right to public worship and were subjected to civil disabilities and other indignities; and many communities, particularly in the lower strata of society, took to the new faith in order to escape these hardships- This led to the emergence of a distinct element in the population of the country, termed ‘Mussalmans’. This community comprised the Turkish conquerors and their retainers; the foreign mercenaries pressed into their service from time to time; the divines, scholars and adventurers who migrated to India from foreign lands; the men taken prisoners in war or for¬ ced into slavery; the converts who sought the new faith to secure royal favour or protection; the Hindu women captured in war or ab¬ ducted and their progeny.
This element in the population, which had behind it the politi¬ cal and military support of the Sultanate and its governors, slowly acquired the conquistador spirit of the Turks- Ever on the increase, it began to look down upon the people from whom most of its mem¬ bers had come, as infidels to foe despised and converted or killed, and in any event to be fought and overcome.
It was this element that in opposition to the ruling Turkish ‘Forty", supported the Khaljis, who were not considered pure Turks, to capture the Sultanate in A.D. 1290.

The aggressive attitude of this new element in the population led to the religious, cultural and psychological resistance on the part of the people of the country, who, in contra-distinction to it, came to be referred to as ‘Hindus’- The Hindus fought the conquistador spirit of the Muslims by developing a challenging superiority complex. They made compromises with the rulers when compelled to do so; they served them when they could not help doing so. But they would not let them defile the sanctity of their homes or castes, social and religious observances by encouraging indiscriminate con¬ tact with the Muslims.

The people while countering the invader by armed resistance to the best of their ability succeeded in confining his authority wherever he had acquired it, within the narrowest limits. They also tried to protect religion, culture and social order, rebuilding on the old foundations wherever they could. The Dharmasastras were given a higher sanctity; the edge of social ostracism was sharpened- Women were segregated in their homes; infant marriages became almost universal. Self-immolation by heroic women on the funeral pyre, when their husbands lost their lives in battle, became the supreme form of martyrdom, which kept a sense of religious and cultural superiority at white heat. Caste divided and sub-divided, but remained unmixed. Even the process of social betterment through which lower castes were progressively raised to a higher status was slowed down or halted.
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At the same time, the conflicts and tensions, bitter and persistent though they were, provided areas of contact, and therefore of adjustment. The slaves captured in war and women acquired as wives or mistresses, were Muslims only in name. The new converts and their children wore Islam more as an official badge, rarely giving up all the inhibitions and practices of the Hindus- Even the Sultan or his satrap, however intolerant, had to adjust himself to his Hindu feudal chiefs and officials, and, in spite of frequent protests from the ‘Ulamti, framed his policies so as not to create strong disaffection among them.{Zawabit by Ziauddin Barani}

Rebels from either camps sought refuge with the other. There was intercourse between the two communities in courts, fairs and festivals. Hindu artists, musicians and dancers thronged the courts and the camps of the Sultans and their governors and reaped a rich harvest. Hindu and Muslim saints, not unoften, had a common appeal to both the communities, and the sects of both the religions, by way of action and re-action, and sometimes by challenge, influenced each other. The Mahanubhava sect, a non-idolatrous Krishna cult, founded by Chakradharasvami (died in A.D- 1272) about the time the first Sufi saints settled in Aurangabad, is an instance in point.

The Hindus remained in the spheres of trade, commerce, and banking. The Muslims, however intolerant, therefore, had to treat the Hindu mercantile community with consideration, though it was inspired by seif-interest and often grudging. The foreign trade, on which the Sultanate depended, was mostly in the hands of Hindus of the west coast, who traded with Persia and Arabia. The extravagant young Muslims also found it impossible to indulge in a life of gaiety without the money, which the Hindu banker was not unwilling to provide in order to secure freedom from harassment or indignity.

These areas of contact would have hastened far-reaching adjustments had not the perennial streams of Muslim adventurers and divines continued to flow through the North-Western passes- To feed their rapacity or fanaticism these immigrants kept alive virulent antagonism for the people whom they had come to exploit. {We can thank the Safavids for taking Kandhar and cutting off the supply in 1584. About 150 years later Mughals were history!}

Except for a few buildings like the Qutb-minar, there is nothing to relieve the dreary military character of the thirteenth-century Sultanate. It made no contribution to the sphere of culture, except a little in the field of historiography and Persian literature- Some of the Sultans, it appears, encouraged some new ideas and modes in architecture, paving the way for the Indo-Saracenic style of the future. They also made some crude experiments in administrative policies as well as the fiscal revenue and currency systems^ In self-interest they also began to build a line of defence against th£ Mongols in the North-West, halting their irresistible march. But the harvest of whatever little they sowed was to be gathered in the next age in the reigns of ‘Ala-ud-din Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughluq.

Even within the areas in which Turkish armies operated, the India of the age belonged to the heroes of resistance; outside this area lay considerable parts of the North and the whole of the South—in fact, three-fourths of the country, where India followed its unbroken way of life, where the Dharmasastras were honoured and obeyed and where Hinduism flourished unobstructed.
Where the Indian kings ruled, their regional pride, exaggerated though it was, had its compensatory feature. They vied with each other in making their courts brilliant centres of art, learning and literature. They gave generous grants to the poor and the learned, built beautiful temples and lavished patronage on poets. People lived within the regulated order which, though circumscribed by ancient customs, was in no way oppressive.


In North India, girdling the area of military resistance, were the old kingdoms of Dahala, ruled by the Kalachuris (11th century to 1212); Jejakabhukti, ruled by the Chandellas (9th century to 1315); Malwa, ruled by the Paramaras (10th century to AD. 1305); and Gujarat, ruled by the Chaulukyas and Vaghelas (A.D. 940-1299), the most opulent and powerful of them all.

In the South, the Western Chalukyas (A.D. 973-1189), the Yadavas (A.D. 1185-1317), the Kakatiyas (c. A.D. 1050-1322), the Eastern Chalukyas (A.D. 999-1271) and later, Pandyas (A-D. 11th to 14th centuries) and Hoysalas (c. A.D. 1106-1343) ruled over flourishing kingdoms and in the middle of the thirteenth century, the Pandyan conqueror Jatavarman Sundara Pandya established hegemony over several of them. Some of these kingdoms, at one time or the other, were more powerful than the Sultanate except perhaps during the reign of Iltutmish and Balban. If the prosperity and welfare of the people, the patronage of art and literature provide any test, most of them were decidedly great.
But the most important of them in extent and power—not excluding the Sultanate at its best—and the most brilliant in cultural achievements, was the empire of the Cholas of Tanjore (A.D- 985-1250), When North India was being raided by Mahmud, Rajaraja Chola (A.D. 985-1014), one of the greatest rulers in Indian history, was laying the foundations of an empire- A pious man, he conquer¬ ed far and wide, set up an efficient administration and ruled his people wisely and well. A great patron of art and literature, he built the Brihadisvara (or Rajarajesvara) temple at Tanjore, the most beautiful of Tamil edifices in the country. His empire at his death included the whole of South India up to the Tungabhadra, the Maldives, and a part of Ceylon, with Andhradesa in a feudatory alliance.

Under his son, Rajendra Chola Gangaikonda (AD- 1012-1044), the empire reached its zenith, comprising, besides the territories that had been acquired by Rajaraja, parts of what is at present Madhya Pradesh, the whole of Andhra, Ceylon, and parts of Orissa, Bengal, and Bihar. The Chola Emperors were the first to recognise the value of naval power. Their navy controlled the Bay of Bengal, which became a ‘Chola-Lake’, and won a colonial empire which embraced Ceylon, the Nicobar Islands, the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra. Their administrative organisation had a strong centralised machinery and an efficient system of audit. They constructed the famous anicuts across the Kaveri in the Tanjore District; had land surveys made of their territories; built magnificent temples; established schools of Vedic and Sanskritic learning. Under them literature blossomed and art flourished and the south contributed valuable works in the field of philosophy, Dharmasastras, Shaivism. dramaturgy, music and dancing.

During this period, the Hindu kingdoms of Suvarnadvipa, which comprised the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, Bali, Borneo, kingdom of the &ailendras, Pagan and Kambuja in South-East Asia, formed part of Dvlpantara-Bharata, 'India beyond the Seas’. They had close contacts with India, and South India and Bengal influenced them considerably.

Within fifty years of the conquest of the great Sailendra empire of Malaya by the Chola conquerors, the royal dynasty re-established its power to some extent, which came to an end only about A.D. 1264. The empire of Kambuja (Cambodia) reached its zenith in the twelfth century, when Suryavarman II built the great temple of Angkor Vat, reckoned as one of the wonders of the world. At the end of the twelfth century, the Hindu kingdom of Champa (Indo-China) under Jayavarman VIII, extended from the Bay of Bengal on one side to the Sea of China on the other; it continued to flourish till A.D. 1312 when the Emperor of Annam reduced it to vassalage. Java also continued to be a powerful Hindu kingdom till the fifteenth century.


When overpowered by the Muslims, the Hindu rulers, rather than renounce Hinduism, migrated with a large number of people to the small island of Bali, which had already been colonised by the Hindus. Hinduism flourishes in Bali even now. Several massive monuments like Angkor Thom in Kambuja and Barabudur in Java attest to the grandiose art of this glorious period of Dvipantara-Bharata.

In A.D. 1044, the Hindu king, Aniruddha, ruling from Pagan or Arimardanapura in Burma, brought the whole country, excluding Tenasserim, under his rule. One of his successors, Nrasimhapati, in A.D. 1271, defied Kublai Khan for many years, till about the end of the thirteenth century, a grandson of Kublai Khan marched to Pagan which ‘perished amidst the blood and flame of the Tartar's terror’.

As a result of the resilience of the social order as had been developed under the influence of the Dharmasastras, most of the social activities were in the hands of autonomous groups outside the sphere of royal authority. The king waged wars. He lost battles or died fighting. His army was massacred. But the villages, more or less self-sufficient economic and social units, continued to lead their own life; the local panchayats continued to dispense justice; the Brahmanas, to impart education and direct religious rites and duties; the Kshatriyas, to give protection; and the autonomous castes, to provide social security and to safeguard human relations.During this age, therefore, in spite of the ravages of the Turks, India was still the land of great achievements.

By the end of the tenth century, Hinduism, with its vigorous cults inculcating the worship of Siva, Sakti and Vishnu, had absorbed Buddhism; asserted its universal supremacy; re-interpreted its popular doctrines, charging them with high philosophy, and thrown up vast movements of the spirit. The Brahmanas continued to exercise tremendous influence in the mind and faith of the people. In the main devoted to learning, rituals, worship, they led the renaissance, which can appropriately be called Puranic. Sanskrit, which remained their passport to a semi-divine status and their instrument of unifying the country, continued to be the language of religion, philosophy and sciences; of the courts where learning was lavishly patronised; of the Universities where the &astras were studied and re-interpreted. The Indian kings of the period, whatever their other faults, never failed to promote or to honour learning.

But by the end of the thirteenth century, intellectual expansion of North India halted abruptly. This can only be traced to the vast destructions of the Universities and centres of learning in North India by the Turks. In spite of the destruction of some great shrines and Universities in North India, literature in Sanskrit flourished in most parts of India. Whatever of it has come down to us includes mahdkdvyas and kavyas, lyrical, didactic, satirical and historical poems; dramas of different varieties; prose romances and charnpus; tales, romantic and didactic; treatises on metrics, poetics and dramaturgy, on poli¬ tics, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, architecture and philosophy.

It was the age of polymaths: of Kshemendra, Bhoja and Hemachandra. Though Kalidasa's Raghuvmhsa and Meghaduta and Bapa's Kddambari provided the model for many of the creative works, they tended to be learned, rather than living. The fashion of the time required that even epics should be so composed that every word had a double or treble entendre. For instance, every verse of the Dvydsraya-mahakavya of Hemachandra illustrates rules of grammar as also the history of the Chaulukyas.

Though most of the kavyas were second-rate, Nawhadhtya can stand comparison with the best of them. Kalhapa's Rdjatarangini is the best work on history in Sanskrit. The greatest creative work of the period—-Jayadeva’s Gita-Govinda—in which sound, sense and emotion have been mingled in exquisite harmony, and the beauty of words is invested with the intensity of erotic emotions, is a unique poem in the literature of the world, rare and exquisite, though oppressively scintillating.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by ramana »

Contd...
In the tenth century the castes were comparatively fluid and reconversion to Hinduism was not impossible. But in this age the fundamental values of Dharmasastras were readjusted not only to restore continuity and stability to the social order, but to provide defensive ramparts in order to present a solid front to an aggressive alien culture and religion. The dynamic outlook of Medhatithi and Devala-smriti therefore gave place to a conservative outlook.

During this period, the great Dharmasastra texts—Mitdkshara, Ddyabhdga, Smriti-Chandrika, and Apardrka tika—reinterpreted the regulatory canons of life laid down by the earlier texts. Their authority, as judicial decisions show, held good till yesterday when in parts it was superseded by the amendments of the Hindu Code. Chaturvarnya, as envisaged by these texts, was the ideal pattern for the society to conform. Lapses might be many and varied, but provision was made to condone or remedy them by appropriate rituals. These law-texts, universally accepted as authoritative, more than any single factor, helped to conserve the social structure and the pattern of conduct in all human relations, which were held traditionally sacrosanct from the days of Manu.


Sanskrit had been placed on a pedestal of scholarship and sanctity, assuming a more learned character. Prakrit and Apabhrarhia had receded in the background. Some of the dialects of the regions— desa bhashas—thereupon had become the vehicles of the living thought and emotions of the people. This Age saw the literary activities in these dialects which laid the foundation of the modern Indian languages and their literature, including Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, and Telugu, as also Old Gujarati, sometimes called the Western Rajasthani, of which modern Gujarati, Jaipuri, Mar- wari and Malvi are the descendants.

With miraculous adaptability, Brahmanas and non-Brahmanas also carried to the masses the vision and the hope of the Epics and the Puranas, through the media of these languages. This brought about the later phase of the Puranic Renaissance, which kept ancient ideals and traditions through the desabhashas. This movement spread over many parts of the country. To the poets it gave fresh inspiration; to the Puramkas, the readers of the Puranas, a new vocation; to the philosophers, a new outlook; to the village sects, something to live for. It made the glamour of the past, of which the people were already proud, live again.It displaced cumbrous ritual and abstruse doctrine, to make way for the bhakti—-devotion—- associated with joy, dance and prayer.

Before the rise of Sankaracharya, the Vaishgava mystics and saints, known as Alvars in the South, had invested bhakti with the attributes of earthly love. When the Bhagavata Parana, one of the literary masterpieces of the world, recreated Sri Krishna as the supremely lovable child, youth, lover—God Himself—Kftshnastu Bhagavan svayam, out of the statesman, World Teacher and avatara of the Epic and the earlier Puranas, it was accepted as the gospel of bhakti throughout the country.

During this period, an aspect of bhakti also received a new emphasis. After A.D. 1000, Yajnunacharya began his apostolic career under the Chola kings. He propagated prapatti “Surrender to God”. Ramanujacharya, who succeeded him, not only developed the doctrine by providing it with a philosophic background, but raised it to the level of a monotheistic religion. In this bhakti school of thought, which challenged the supremacy of the Vedanta of Sankara, living dedication to God became the master idea giving the powerful emotional content to the bhakti.

When Radha came to be associated with Sri Krishna in the popular imagination, the bhakti movement received a still more powerful impetus. About A.D. 1150, Nimbarka founded a new school in Andhradesa, stressing the bhakti both of Sri Krishna and Radha, “We worship”, he says, “Radha, the daughter of Vrishabhanu, the goddess who joyfully adorns the left lap of the great deity Sri Krishna, as beautiful as Sri Krishna Himself, surrounded by thousands of damsels. She is the one who fulfils all desires”. Madhva in Karnatak laid the foundation of a yet more vigorous Vaishnava cult.

These Acharyas were not merely philosopher saints. They were ardent evangelists, with an inspired sense of their mission. They and their followers travelled from one place of pilgrimage to ano¬ ther; worshipped at holy places or well-known shrines, particularly those associated with Sri Krishna; established contacts, composed philosophic treatises, held discourses and made disciples who wan¬ dered from countryside to countryside, singing the praises of the Lord.

The concept of bhakti, to which shape had been given by Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, and by the early founders of the Pancharatra doctrines, had already contributed a vital element in the Puranic renaissance. Later romantic and emotional elements were added to it by the devotional songs of the Alvars, the human appeal of the Bhagavata, and the glamour of the Radha-Krishaja sports of Gita-Govinda setting the imagination of the people aglow. Slowly, it penetrated, though often unperceived, into the dark undergrowth of frustration which had been taking possession of the Collective Unconscious of the people. Ever a vibrant force, in a hundred and fifty years, it was to blaze forth as the Bhakti Renaissance to give India the raptures of a fresh joy, which enabled her to save her soul.

We have a fairly reliable picture of the economic condition of Gujarat in the ample materials which are available. Similar conditions are likely to have prevailed in some other parts of the country where the Turkish armies did not operate. The evidence shows that the soil of Gujarat was fertile; its people were adventurous, hard-working, and well-behaved. Agriculture yielded bountiful harvests; industries flourished; internal trade and maritime commerce was brisk and profitable. In general, the masses in the country lived simply but well, drawing sustenance from a rich soil. Here middle classes lived in comfort; the upper classes in wealth, plenty and pomp. Important shrines and Universities were richly endowed.

By the end of the thirteenth century, the textile industry of Gujarat had reached its high-water mark; Baroji and Kambayati, manufactured in Broach and Cambay respectively, are referred by Marco Polo and Al-Newayri as the outstanding varieties of textile. It was also famous for its tanning and leather industries, “What more shall I tell you”, writes the astonished Marco Polo, “you must know in every truth that in this kingdom are made the best and finest leather goods in the world and the most costly,”

No less important were its industries of manufacturing gur and sugar, and the building industry. Hie flourishing condition of the latter is evidenced by the large residential quarters in the cities like Anahlllapataka. Dholka, Cambay and Broach; by the magnificent temples of Somanatha, Abu, and Moflhera; by the forts, the remnant of one of which can still be seen at Dabhoi; by the elaborate step-wells of the period which still survive. The use of iron implements of extreme fineness is also indicated by the exquisite stone carvings.

Trades were organised into guilds with a department of the State to look after them. Broach and Cambay, the two ports of Gujarat, carried on a large international trade. Idrisi speaks of the residents of Broach as being rich and engaged in trade. “They freely enter upon speculations and distant expeditions. It is a port for vessels coming from China and is also for those of Sind.” Spices, dyes, leather goods, and textiles formed the principal items of ex¬ port; and so were locally made perfumes, which had a worldwide demand. Imports comprised gold, silver, and other commodities, particularly horses, of which 10,000 are recorded as passing annual¬ ly through the port of Cambay alone. Prabhasa was also an entrepot and its religious importance invested it with great prominence.

Large part of the overseas trade of Gujarat was controlled by Indians, though merchants of Arabia settled in different parts of the land had also a share in it. Jagadu, a merchant of international renown, is stated to have traded regularly with Persia and transported goods to and fro in his ships. A brisk trade was carried on with Sumatra and Java. The wealth brought from the latter country has passed into a proverb: “He who goes to Java never re¬ turns; but if he does, he brings so much wealth that his grand-chil¬ dren’s grand-children will not be able to exhaust if.” Al-Idrisi testi¬ fies that Indian merchants were known for justice, good faith, honesty and fidelity to their engagements. Merchants of Lata (South Gujarat) received special encomium from Marco Polo, who says: “I assure you that these Brahmanas are among the best and most trust¬ worthy merchants in the world; for nothing on earth would they tell a lie and all that they say is true.”
There is also evidence, though not so complete, of the condi¬ tions in other parts of the country. Date and cocoanut trees grew at Sandan and the latter were found in abundance at Saymur. Magadha was rich in rice, and Kalihga produced its best varieties suitable for the royal kitchens. Ginger and cinnamon came from the Paotfya kingdom; camphor, from the mountain slopes between Quilon and Madura; cardamom and pepper, from Malabar. Bengal produced spikenard and other spices, ginger, sugar and cotton. The Malaya hills supplied sandal-wood, while from Kashmir came yellow sandal, saffron and grapes. Indigo of a fine quality was pro¬ duced in Quilon. The Chola-mafidala abounded in ivory.
The textile industry also flourished in Vahga, Kalihga, the Chola-mantfala and Multan. Malwa provided large quantities of cotton cloth; Malabar manufactured “very beautiful and delicate buckrams;” Warangal, fine cotton fabrics and carpets; cotton stuffs with coloured silk threads formed part of the products of Chola- mantfala. The temples at Bhuvanesvara, Purl and Konarak testify to the skill of the ironsmiths in manufacturing iron-beams of un¬ wrought iron. The iron pillar at Dhara is reputed to have been the highest pillar of its kind in the world. Palnad in South India specialised in iron manufactures including arms.
Malabar had important centres of pearl fisheries. Warangal pro¬ duced diamonds of large size in abundance. At many centres in the country, articles of gold and silver of high artistic value were manu¬ factured, and the art of jewellers had reached a high degree of specialised skill.
Malabar also had international centres of trade, visited by ships from the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea as also from South China.
xxvi
FOREWORD
Its imports included metals, textiles, fabrics, frankincense, etc. Spices, precious stones, pearls, cloths of silk and gold, and ivory figured among the exports. Horses constituted by far the largest item among the imports. Chau Ju-Kua refers to the Arabs taking their horses to Quilon for trade. The merchants of Quilon and the officials of the Chola government employed in the port have been praised for their integrity by the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela.

The pall of the purdah had not yet descended upon the1 land. Men and women, simply dressed but richly ornamented, moved about freely. Fairs and feasts were held in plenty. Flowers were in general use as personal ornaments. Dance, drama and music, vocal and instrumental, were very popular. So was wrestling and duel. Fights between birds and quails were often staged to popu¬ lar delight. Large temples, built by kings or the pious rich were community centres where the humbler folk gathered, received instructions, held their fairs and festivals; where dramatic performances were held. Apart from the Sanskrit dramas, there were also entertainments of a popular variety. Hemachandra tells us that sometimes during such entertainments “even the sophisticated townsmen were impelled to laugh like villagers, at fat men, men with projecting teeth, lame men, hunchbacks, fiat-nosed men, men with dishevelled hair; by ash coloured men, by men with buttock- bells, by the musicians of the armpit and the nose, by dancers of the ear and brow, by imitators of the speech of other people.”
After the Classical Age, this age was the most glorious epoch of Indian art, particularly in the spheres of architecture and sculpture, though their traditions had grown up in the earlier period. This was India's great age of temple-building. In several parts of North India, remnants of some of the magnificent temples of the period survive; many of the important ones in the South are still intact. More than anything else, they bear eloquent testimony to the faith and opulence of the times; to the high degree which artis¬ tic execution had attained in the country; above all, to the inspiring and conditioning factors in the social and emotional life of the people which nourished such a great art.
At the close of the age, or perhaps a decade or two later, when the armies of the Turkish and Khalji Sultans overran the country, the creative vitality in terms of plastic art came to an end.
These remains also indicate the vigour of the religious movements which sustained the life of the people. Though the worship of Vishnu was popular among the well-to-do and the intellectual classes, the worship of Siva and Shakti more than any other cult, exercised the most active influence and claimed the devotion of the bulk of the people. Most of the great temples of this age, which survive today, are dedicated to Siva. Perhaps the shrines of the twelve jyotirlingas, to the deity, as the guardian deity of the universe, situated in different parts of the country, began to com¬ mand the veneration of the whole country during this period. Anyway two of them—the one of Somanatha at Prabhasa, and the other of Mahakala at Ujjain—were shrines held in such veneration before Mahmud of Ghazni invaded the country. Temples dedicated to Siva also abounded on the banks of most of the rivers and in villages; for, he was the god whom the poor universally loved.

Siva and Parvati, with their colourful family, entered into the life of the people as devoted lovers, as affectionate parents, as dread destroyers, as the defenders of the righteous. As the destroyers of the demons Tripura and Mahishasura, they were not only the powers who supported the righteous in their crusade against the wicked, but were the presiding deities of conflict, whether of attack or defence.
Siva, as the wielder of the mighty trident, therefore, had an unchallenged place in the Indian heart not only in these three centuries but in the preceding and the succeeding centuries as well.
His name was a challenging refrain in all heroic appeals. From before the medieval period, the warriors generally went to battle , with his name on their lips. And they were to do so not only throughout the Era of Resistance, which began with this Age, but even till 1857, when Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi and her heroic followers, in their fight against the British, courted martyrdom with ‘Hara Hara Mahadev’ on their lips.
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by ramana »

What can I say? So many parallels and ills still exist.

All I can say is NaMo is a millenial purush if not yugapurush!!!
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by ramana »

Kantara anyone?
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by Najunamar »

Ramanagaru, one peeve is the tendency of even those with independent views to fall for the deliberately foisted lie that Adhi Shankara belongs in eighth century CE, whereas it is clearly eatablished with enough details in "The Age of Sankara" cited by Kanchi Mahaperiyava that he was in the 5th century BCE.
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by ramana »

We shouldn't get bogged down by little errors.
Look at the grand narrative. Was history taught like this?
A few years ago a high interlocutor was waxing eloquent about hos marauders from the mountains came on horse back and established sultanates all over India.
He was brought back to ground by pointing out civilization and society has multi-dimensions(military, administrative, judiciary, business, dance, literature and music, and except for military which by time of the Marathas was on the ascendant, Hindus had all the components. Urdu did not have prose till the early 20th century!!!
And the lesson of 1965 and 1971 was that even the military was with India that is Bharat.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by Prem »

We are bing lazy keeping millennium long old problem alive and not solving it even after knowing the nature of threat.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by sanjaykumar »

You are correct essentially Ramana. However monumental architecture did have an efflorescence under the Mughals. Perhaps it was only a refined copy of a copy. Mir Taqi Mir is generally considered the first serious Urdu poet. I certainly find him sincere, not as intellectualised as Ghalib. The latter was, in the words of my American Urdu professor, Bramninised. Date is 18th century to early nineteenth.

Hindu contributions are simply non pareil for their time.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by sanjaykumar »

As for prose, Umrao Jan Ada was the first novel in Urdu.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by Cyrano »

However monumental architecture did have an efflorescence under the Mughals.
Perhaps because instead of building vainglorious monumental edifices for the dead, Hindu kings and wealthy built temples for the living? There is a not a lot of focus on what else was built in India while the Mughals were building their forts and tombs. I'm sure across the length and breadth of the country, significant non-Mughal buildings were accomplished between 16th and 19th century.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by bala »

Rajiv Malhotra and Vijaya outline the "Snakes in Ganga" and various nefarious activities conducted by Deep State Actors in the US and other nations. Today the Indian Univ (Ashoka Univ) and others are collecting data about India and feeding them to Harvard, Oxford, etc and using big data processing and AI the data is sifted for profiling people, finding weak links, influence peddling and many other bizarre/macabre/sinister concepts. Global entities like WEF are fed with some conclusions. China is also monitoring this data, they have their cheap cameras with embedded software links into their servers back in China. A helicopter view of what is going in India is at their beck and call. Back in the US, Woke concepts are involved with the outcome of all the processing - euphemistically called social engineering. Omidyar the dude who created eBay has deep pockets and links to France. Funding of small targeted startups in India is at a frenetic pace. {India needs to keep a close eye on this}

Fascinating discussion with Telecom experts. All the cheap China maal in telecom needs thorough review by Internal security.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by sanjayc »

Cyrano wrote:
However monumental architecture did have an efflorescence under the Mughals.
Perhaps because instead of building vainglorious monumental edifices for the dead, Hindu kings and wealthy built temples for the living? There is a not a lot of focus on what else was built in India while the Mughals were building their forts and tombs. I'm sure across the length and breadth of the country, significant non-Mughal buildings were accomplished between 16th and 19th century.
It is against Hindu ancient tradition to build grand buildings commemorating the dead. Hindus burn the body, with ashes scattered to the winds ... no trace of the person remains. This is considered end of the story for that particular birth cycle -- body and death are considered of no consequence.

One ancient Hindu king was quizzed by his advisors about building something in his memory so that people remember him after he is no more. He retorted: "People will sing songs in gratitude to the glory of my noble deeds after my death -- that would be enough remembrance for me."

This is a totally different world view from that of the desert religions born in a harsh, barren land where survival was a daily struggle and the only way one could become rich was to grab wealth from others.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by ramana »

Teddy Roosevelt gave a speech at Sorbonne uty where he said
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Link: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documen ... %20citizen.
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by bala »

A scene from Navratri capturing the essence of Indian culture.

Image
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by ramana »

A more than 20 year old email from a Forum Member

Ramana:



Your one e-mail has set off so many inter-related streams of thought. Where to begin?



Mrs.G’s success was based on a (Faustian?) bargain with the Communists, both CPI and CPM. She gave them Bank Nationalization, Abolition of Privy Purses, Garibi Hatao/ Class Warfare, removal of all barriers to pan-Bangla Nationalism, Insertion of “Socialist & Secular” into the Preamble of the Constitution etc., you get the drift. In return, she received timely support from the Marxist “Intelligentsia” that had by then ensconced itself securely in the media, academia, and most importantly in the IAS. Internationally this resulted in the 1971 Treaty with the USSR and the slow and deliberate removal of Western anti-Communist “Levers and Linkages” from the security agencies that de facto changed the state’s posture towards Tibet & Naxalbari.



Given this background, it is reasonable to wonder why the ‘Left’ supported a strong State then while it seeks to undermine the same State now. The reason is that the ‘Left’s’ then patrons dictated its policy then, and its current patrons dictate its policy now. After Naxalbari fizzled out (and was seen as having fizzling out) Beijing was able to see clearly the superior “value” of the CPI model (participatory subversion) compared to the CPI-ML model (open rebellion). This led to the de facto nullification of the old CPI schism and the formation of the current “Left Front” as we know it. This arrangement suited Moscow just fine as it gave them an Indian thorn on the West’s side that was big enough to be a nuisance to the West but not big enough or strong enough to be a real alternative power centre. This also explains the Soviet arm-twisting of Mrs G. through PN Haksar that made sure that India didn’t press her advantage in the West in 1971


So, as far as just India alone was concerned, the Sino-Soviet split didn’t matter. The corollary to this fact is that the Sino-Soviet split mattered to TSP in spades. Hence the Yahya-Bhutto Travel agency services to Henry Kissinger, Winston Lord et al.

So who are the Indian ‘Left’s’ current patrons and what is their agenda?

To understand this issue, it is instructive to go back all the way to the Stalin-Trotsky split. A majority of the Western fellow travelers were Trotskyite “International Socialists” who viewed Stalin as having betrayed them by focusing on “Socialism in One Country”, the Soviet Union. Khruschev and his successors tried to reverse this “Nationalist” trend of Stalin’s but could never succeed.

In Britain, people like H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, the Haldanes(Father and Son), Harold Laski, Bernard Shaw, and pretty much the entire Fabian Socialist movement were Trotskyists. Panditji was their Indian legatee and it was not an accident that Clement Attlee insisted on Panditji. The nature of the State Britain bequeathed us was “International Socialist”. It fetishized the Commonwealth, the “International Community”, the United Nations, Secularism, Socialism and pretty much anything not rooted in India or elsewhere for that matter. It specifically demonized military and nationalist aspirations as jingoist and “narrow”.

If the Constitution reinforces these tendencies, it is in spite of Dr. Ambedkar’s efforts not because of them. He was a true Nationalist and a visionary but his powers were never as broad as one might think.



The end of the Cold War certainly did kill the Soviet Union , but it put nary a scratch on the Trotskyite “International Socialists. These Western Trotskyite “International Socialists” never went away, they reincarnated as the NGO left: the Intellectual Left, the Environmental Left, the Human Rights Left, the Feminist Left and so on.

I West now emerged as Wokes!}


Of course, in the intervening decades the Trotskyites, proved to be wonderful anti-Stalinist partners for the Western security services. This partnership, forged in the crucible of the Cold War is now the primary channel of external support for the Indian Left. The Church represents a third leg in this partnership. This aspect really started to matter in Korea and Vietnam and went on to spectacular success in Poland.


So we have an India that has two kinds of “external” support to players on the National Stage: “Institutional or NGO Support” linked to the anti-State forces and then “Individual or NRI Support” to the Nationalists. FOIL and IDRF represent two ends of this spectrum.

The main difference between a Post Modern Coup and a regular old Coup is that the Post Modern Coup substitutes the use of subverted Armed Forces with subverted Media. This aspect alone gives one shiver about the Indian scene. But then between Serbia and Georgia (and now Ukraine ) came Venezuela. Maybe the technique is not perfect, yet.

Needless to say, all this only leaves Israel and pro-Israel international groups as potential external allies for Indian Nationalism.

Now to the way out of the box. If the French can do it, so can we.

Allied plans for France after WWII varied from a restoration of a Bonapartist figure from the Armed Forces to military occupation a la Germany . But the overwhelming preference was for a 3rd republic redux, with an indirectly elected Head of State that appoints a parliamentary leader as PM. In this, they succeeded. De Gaulle viewed this as a recipe for disaster and when he couldn’t have his way, took a “sabbatical from public life”. His stature and leadership abilities allowed him to leverage the Algerian Crisis to ram through the Fifth Republic constitution that provides for a strong, directly elected President who provides continuity of stewardship and direction in National Security Affairs.

One of the most articulate proponents for the adoption of a variation of this system in India was the late G.G. Swell, a North-easterner, a Naga, and a Christian. However, our establishment has drowned out voices like his by damning the Presidential system as something that would ensure “Majoritarian”(Hindu/ Dehati) dominance. The real reason they don’t like it is the same reason GGS why liked it the most: Direct elections to the Rashtrapati would give every citizen a direct and clear say in who rules them, something anathema to people who would prefer perpetual instability and weakness.


Now back to reality: We can’t get there overnight, we need an incrementalist approach. As Tavleen Singh says, use the IAS to fix the Police and Judiciary, then fix the IAS (maybe she is reading Rahul Mehta? J). The previous dispensation allowed the Venkataswami Commission to degenerate the way it did and that should give all of us lots of pause.


Yours,



xx

Now see how all these Trotskyists are emerging from the woodwork and joining the RaGa Bharat Todo Yatra.
Basically, #CongressMukhtBharat is #TrotskyMukth Bharat
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by ramana »

Note how all Indian elite are UK trained!!!
Cyrano
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by Cyrano »

With respect to the quoted forum member who could be older than me by a decade or two, this is at best partially true. The paucity/suppression of India-genous intellectuals and the continued colonial hangover gave us a rule by elite who enjoyed all the privileges but detested everything about the country they ruled. They were loyal to no ideology, came in all flavours and lived to preserve their own privileges and loot.

Trotskyists biggest set back was dissolution of USSR and the economic takeover of the world by western free market forces. They never recovered from that despite moulting into various movements and NGOs. They could check JanSangh earlier, but by the time the BJP emerged, they were no longer strong enough to prevent its rise. India got its inevitable dose of free market economics with the 90s liberalisation, which made leftists lose all connect with the younger generations, since then and they have become a marginal political force. The emergence of regional political parties all over India is another proof of leftys losing ground. They could no longer be the swing factor for Congress (the epicentre of elitist kleptocracy) at the center or most states and could no longer extract any quid pro quo and both are together in a spiral of death now.

Today's young India vastly outnumbers the elitist generation that grew up under Cong+Lefty influence and still occupies majority of senior positons in media, academia, IAS even the armed forces. Most of them will retire over the next decade, and Cong+Left will co-terminate with them. As their grip on institutions and systems weakens they will get reformed/replaced by tech driven governance platforms. We are seeing this happen already.

Young India has a totally different frame of reference which is a lot more indegenous and dharmic, but also open and global. They will be ably supported by the affluent NRI/PIO/R2I class. No amount of woke NGOs or China stooges can overpower this tidal wave. The tipping point has been crossed in 2019.

We are living through an Amrit Kaal indeed.

(A lot of Modi's catchy quips are actually quite profound and we will look back and marvel at them in our old age)
JMT...
vijayk
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Re: Indian Interests_2

Post by vijayk »

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1612 ... 18144.html
Good thread to discuss here

America began its rise as a great power in the 1880s

India's ascent to great power status will play out in the 2020s

3 revolutions allowed US to transform into a global pwr

Are those revolutions playing out in India?

on parallel trends & the one thing holding India back
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