History Archive

As a staggering administrator, intense warrior, a magnanimous philanthropist, and a lover of beautiful art and architecture, Raja Raja Cholan is an inevitable character in Tamil and world history.

In 2014, a huge brouhaha followed a surprise announcement by Prince William of the UK: he suggested that as a symbolic warning to ivory poachers in Africa and elsewhere, all historic ivory objects in the Royal Collections Trust should be burned and destroyed. While wildlife conservationists applauded this decision, museum professionals were aghast, saying that such a move would take historical objects and make them into “artworks of shame.”

Remember, remember not the Fifth of November but our own gunpowder, treason and plot. We see of no reason why this censored out season should ever be forgot.

‘Jagdamba ki Jai Ho! Those were the words spoken during the 1971 Bharat-Pakistan war by a wounded yet determined and courageous 2nd Lt Arun Khetrapal when he went on to destroy Pakistani battle tanks, undeterred by the injuries he had sustained.

“Though the Muhammadans’ cow killing is made the pretext for the agitation, it is in fact directed against us, who kill far more cows for our army, etc., than the Muhammadans.”
— Queen Victoria to her Viceroy, Lansdowne, December 8, 1893¹

Settled in the mountains of the Himalayan range, the state of Sikkim has a very interesting history hardly known by anyone. The state of Sikkim formally became a part of India on April 14, 1975, after the Sikkimese people unitedly demanded the end of the monarchy.

The aftermath of violence that spread after Mohandas Gandhi’s assassination is finally making gradual waves to the mainstream national discourse. However, the flames haven’t been distinguished and the pains have been preserved. The silencing of voices that followed one of the first large-scale massacres in Independent India accounts for one of the biggest coverups in modern history. It is need of the hour, that we talk about the crimes against Brahmins of Maharashtra that erupted after MK Gandhi’s assassination in 1948.

On the 19th of May, 1910, a boy was born who would go to definitively alter the course of not only the politics of the country but the very history of the Hindu Civilisation and, by extension, the world at large. In the life of every man, there comes a moment when the entirety of his legacy depends on the one single choice he makes at that one precise moment. And sometimes, that one choice, that one moment, that one man continues to echo across the tides of time; sometimes as a hero and in others a villain. The man I am speaking of today has been demonized beyond recognition for a monumental choice he made on the 30th of January, 1948. Only scorn and condemnation are showered upon him. He is, of course, Nathuram Godse.

The 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre is seared in India's memory. But were there other similar events we are yet to hear of? Evidence suggests that barely three years after the Amritsar killings, a similar carnage took place in a remote Bhil village in north Gujarat. The British, however, appear to have successfully suppressed the incident and it does not find mention in official or mainstream historical records.

While India celebrates its Navy Day today, let’s do a remembrance of The Royal Indian Navy (RIN) Mutiny of 1946 which left colonial masters Britain with no choice but to leave India.