The Bibighar Massacre: The Darkest Days of the Indian Rebellion of 1857
mimimatthews.com
mimimatthews.com
How's about we get more stories about the Bengal famine of 1943? 3M indians died b/c Churchill took their rice.
Or the 5k-10k indians that die each day b/c westerners don't let us have access to viable uranium powered energy?
Where are those stories?
Slightly off topic but there seems to be a historical love for past events and catastrophes,But the present is hidden from the limelight
http://www.dianuke.org/whats-killing-the-children-in-jadugod...
This nuclear issue is like a trickling bomb for the past 40 years.
It is always called the First War of Indian Independence. It would take us another hundred years and Gandhi and the nonviolent freedom struggle to be finally rid of the British.
But the greatest irony comes from this : that was undivided India (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). We went from that to the most dangerous nuclear flashpoint in the world today.
Edit: For what it's worth, the contrast with China is probably flawed. I know very little about Chinese history, but I stand by the rest.
It's larger in total area under one power (at circa 5 million sq. km vs. 3 million sq km. today), but it doesn't cover some of the southern-most and eastern-most parts.
There were several - indeed, the British had it easier because the Mughals had dissipated within living memory, and all their bureaucracies and systems were still functioning.
The Mughals never had the south because their culture was alien to most of the uninvaded south of india.
But before them the whole of India, Pakisthan, Bangladesh, Srilanka, Burma, Indonesia, Tibet, China were all culturally the same. I would even go further to say considerably most of the regions are still culturally the same.
there is nothing uniquely western about this definition of 'control'. it's the historical norm everywhere.
That is a pretty radical claim, and I hope you have some good evidence to back it up.
Due to the powerful Vijaynagar empire, South India remained free for some time. At this time, you actually had Queens ruling Kerala (Attingal Queens). When the Vijaynagar empire weakened, the Deccan and Delhi sultanates united and thanks to the betrayal of two Muslim generals was thoroughly defeated in the Battle of Talikota. The massacre and rapine that occurred after defeat is still known to the local historians of the area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Talikota
Modern day Kerala was invaded by Haider Ali (Sultan of Mysore) though he faced very stiff resistance. He then decided to slaughter entire civilian populations. Believe it or not, it is thanks to the East India Company who supplied weapons to the Malabar Hindus who made constant guerrilla style attacks from the forests that Haider Ali backed off!
The princely states that comprised Modern Kerala never truly had a problem with the British. Travancore and Kochi were extremely rich and sovereign monarchies who gave their alliance to the Queen, retaining their rule and benefiting from the British in trade.
The British did enormous harm to the subcontinent, but it's egregious to say that the Mughals were benevolent rulers. They after all built beautiful self aggrandizing monuments by basically looting and massacring the populace. The same thing holds true for Marathas as well, who were known to patronize looting and raids via the pindaris.
As for Haider Ali, his son, who was similarly disposed, paid the ultimate price thanks to the machinations of the Maharaja's minister whom Hyder Ali had earlier dethroned. So what went around, came around, eventually.
PS. I do know about the Turk and Mughal works in India. Also the Portuguese British and French occupations.
Today it wouldn't make sense to say "there really was no 'Greece'". Same for India.
The original point was "there really was no 'India' before the British cobbled one together". If so, then where was Columbus trying to go? Of course there was 'an India', it just wasn't structured like a modern nation state, which is true for every other modern country as well.
Western Europe, through the British conquest of the subcontinent, was woefully unaware of the internal differences. That Columbus ill-advisedly thought of India as a monolithic entity is no marker of anything.
The language thing sure does. But the only time in ancient history Western Mediterranean Europe has been part of a single state was during the Roman period. the rest of the time they evolved separately and uniquely. In contrast each part of modern India has been politically linked to the other parts multiple times through history resulting in a common culture but with some obvious diversity. E.g. Indian festivals are largely common throughout the country, a marker of commonality stretching back through history.
>> That Columbus ill-advisedly thought of India as a monolithic entity is no marker of anything.
He said nothing about it being monolithic, just that there was a place called India, and it was worth a visit.
Your original comment was "there was no 'India' ...".
There has been an India through most of history. But of course the borders of the modern state were drawn relatively recently. These are two different things.
It chronicles the crumbling Mughal Empire in Delhi, the slow shift in the Indian-British relationship from one of equals to a colonizer-colonized relationship, how perilously close the British came to losing India in 1857, and lots of painstakingly well-researched interesting anecdotes about life in that era.
Here's what he writes about the last of the Mughals: “As the political sky darkened, the court was lost in a last idyll of pleasure gardens, courtesans and mushairas, or poetic symposia, Sufi devotions and visits to pirs, as literary and religious ambition replaced the political variety.”
And about the East India Company in the 1850s: “So removed had the British now become from their Indian subjects, and so dismissive were they of Indian opinion, that they had lost all ability to read the omens around them or to analyse their own position with any degree of accuracy. Arrogance and imperial self-confidence had diminished the desire to seek accurate information or gain any real knowledge of the state of the country.”
Yet how did it operate, monopolized trade, grow and maintain it's sepoy armies ? It took them more than a hundred years to establish control and another century passed till we had 1857 and almost another to gain independence. It's been 70 years since that, where are we on the continuum. Can we recognize another EIC (internal/external) or are we condemned to repeat it.
If one understands this and can draw parallels with the way modern corporates function, people hopefully will be able to see past their doublethink.
India gained independence from the British, but the structures that held the populace in thrall weren't torn down. They still exist. The government and the corporates are it's inheritors.
While it was unfortunate for India, it's a shame that 160 years later we still have corporations and they are no better now than they were then.
(For the record this is what is taught in most Anglophone nations; also true shamefully within India itself.)
My grandmother had gone through the pain of seeing my grandfather all bruised up from non-violent protests against the British. When my father studied ethnomusicology in the US, he used to have many of his musician friends, some of whom were his students, over at home during his visits. Initially, to my grandmother, they were "white people" and she'd give them the cold treatment. Over time, she warmed up to them and even made good friends of many of them, despite hardly knowing any English. She would make yummies for them to express her affection.
That someone who's seen her husband come back home bruised can rise to forgiveness and move to love and friendship is something that will stay with me forever.
That is the only force that can heal the world. Not retaliation. Not counter hatred. Not "proper historical perspective". Not any analysis of which violence is worse, or who started it.