Tag: history

UncategorizedLeave a comment

Untouchables and search for Democracy

rrn69

Although Bollywood keeps churning out pseudohistorical melodramas depicting colonial India, many Indians understandably hate the Brits for imposing the yoke of foreign rule and their policy of divide and rule.  But there are some who looked favourably on the British Empire like the Untouchables whose story is the backdrop to The Incarcerations. Alpa Shah, professor of anthropology at LSE, beings her account with the Battle of Bhima Koregaon of 1818, when the Untouchables fought alongside the East India Company to defeat their high-caste Peshwa oppressors. To them, British victory held the possibility of social mobility. Alpa Shah pulls back the curtain … Continue reading Untouchables and search for Democracy

Books1 Comment

Revival of old dreams: unfinished love story  with America

rrn69

Doris Kearns, one of America’s most beloved historians, a genuine public intellectual whose writings were inspected by fellow scholars but also weigh on public policy and popular culture. Her history of Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet, Team of Rivals, won academic prizes, and even influenced Barack Obama, who cited it after including a former primary opponent ( Hillary Clinton) and a member of the outgoing Republican administration (Robert Gates) in his national security team.  In an Unfinished Love Story, she artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history and takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband Richard (Dick) Goodwin … Continue reading Revival of old dreams: unfinished love story  with America

Uncategorized1 Comment

Look East to understand first world war

rrn69

 Nick Lloyd professor of modern warfare at King’s College, London, tells the story for the first time of what Winston Churchill once called the “unknown war”: the vast conflict in Eastern Europe and the Balkans that brought about the collapse of three empires. Although much has been written about the fighting in France and Belgium, The Eastern Front was no less bloody. Between 1914 and 1917, huge numbers of people- perhaps as many as 16 million soldiers and two million civilians were killed, wounded or maimed in enormous battles that sometimes range across a front of 100km in length.  Lloyd … Continue reading Look East to understand first world war

Uncategorized1 Comment

You can destroy by cynicism and disillusion better than by bombs

rrn69

Indian born Fareed Zakaria, who claim to be America’s best-known tutor on world events, quotes from Civilisation, the classic 1960s BBC series narrated by Kenneth Clark, an art historian.“It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.” Kenneth Clark said. Age of Revolutions chronicles ceaseless action and reaction , progress and backlash, that has been endemic to the modern age. Zakaria  dates the birth of the liberal nation state to the 16th-century Netherlands, which is where  his book begins. He ends after … Continue reading You can destroy by cynicism and disillusion better than by bombs

UncategorizedLeave a comment

Death in Victorian Britain

rrn69

Acclaimed Historian Judith Flanders  an expert on everyday life in Victorian Britain deconstructs the intricate fascinating reveals the bizarre customs that grew up around death and mourning in Victorian Britain. Stories from sickbed to the deathbed, from the correct way to grieve and to give comfort to those grieving to funeral and burials and the reaction of those left behind, Flanders illuminates how living in nineteenth-century Britain was, in so many ways, dictated by dying. Deeply researched chilling social history of a period plagued by infant death, poverty, disease and unprecedented change. In elegant, often witty prose. Flanders  brings the … Continue reading Death in Victorian Britain

UncategorizedLeave a comment

How British Empire was propped up for financial survival

rrn69

Sir John Henry Rivett-Carnac wrote about his company house in his memoirs “ a quite magnificent house on the Ganges at Ghazipur, surrounded by a good garden and fine grounds”. The incentives of this job was the Benares Opium Agency that Sir John headed from 1876. When the poppy  growing season got under way in November, Sir John would embark on a grand regional tour, interspersing inspections of opium farms with shooting expeditions and visits to colourful bazars, despite the poor Indian farmers under his watch, who fed Gizarpur’s opium processing factory who were coerced into cultivating the crop to … Continue reading How British Empire was propped up for financial survival

UncategorizedLeave a comment

Ayodhya Ram Mandir inaugurated

rrn69

Thousands of invited guests including top film stars, and cricketers including Amitabh Bachchan and cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar attended  the inauguration of a grand temple to Hindu god Ram, his birth spot in Ayodhya, the tranquil pilgrim town on the banks of river Sari, a tributary of the Ganges, by Indian PM Narendra Modi. The temple has been constructed at a cost of £ 170m ($217m), funded from private donations. Mr Modi performed religious rituals Pray Partishtha, “establishment of life force” inside the temple’s sanctum along with priests and Mohan Bhagwat head of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) an extremist Hindu … Continue reading Ayodhya Ram Mandir inaugurated

UncategorizedLeave a comment

City of London: Built for Business

rrn69

London’s Zenith was the era of Georgian town squares, during 1700-1800, an imperial city which finds itself at the centre of world’s trade, empire, finance and manufacture. Andrew Saint, an architectural historian, conveys the excitement, diversity and richness of London at a time when the city was at the height of its power, uniqueness and attraction. Balancing the social, topographical and the visible aspects of the great city, Andrew Saint uses buildings, architecture, literature and arty as a way into understanding social and historical phenomena. He also focuses volumes on poverty of Victorian London, he provides a broader picture of … Continue reading City of London: Built for Business

UncategorizedLeave a comment

Chitle’s 111th birthday

rrn69

Influential Indian BBC radio broadcaster in the UK during World War II public servant, Venu Dattatreye Chitle, also known as Leela Ganesh Share from Kohapur, Maharastra, India, celebrates her 111th Birthday. She was also secretary to George Orwell during the early years of the second world war. She remained an avid activist for Indian independence. She read news and gave recipes in her Marathi her native language, while teaching British listeners vegetarian cooking skills at a time when meat was rationed during the war. Although she maintainer her support for Britain in the second World War in tis fight against … Continue reading Chitle’s 111th birthday