Indian History

Ashtadhyayi is a treatise on grammar composed in the 4th century B.C. by Panini. The work is the most detailed and scientific grammar composed before the 19th century in any part of the world.  Consisting of over 4000 grammatical rules, Panini’s grammar is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of any ancient civilization.  Later Indian grammars such as Mahabhasya of Patanjali and Kasika Vrtti of Jayaditya and Vamana are commentaries on Panini. Panini was associated the ancient university of Taxila or Takshashila.   Reference: The Wonder that was India by A. L. Basham 

                                        Aihole inscription of Ravi Kirti/Wikimedia Commons Aihole Prasasti (Inscription) is a panegyric of Pulakesin II, the greatest king of Chalukya Dynasty, which ruled from Vatapi (now called Badami) in Karnataka. Pulakesin II reigned from 610 to 642 CE.  Dated A.D. 634, Aihole Inscription was composed by his Jain court poet, Ravikirti, who claimed equal sta tus with poets  Kalidasa and  Bharavi as a result of his composition . Engraved on the walls of Meguti temple at  Aihole, the inscription gives a detailed account of his victories.  Jain Maguti Temple Jain Meguti Temple is the  only dated architectural monument in Aihole. 

Written by Diwan Ali Muhammad Khan in 1750s, Mirat-i-Ahmadi is a rare piece of history writing in Persian. It gives statistical information on the history of Gujarat from the beginning of the Muslim rule.  Mirat-i-Ahmadi was translated into English by James Bird. It was translated into Gujarati by Nizamuddin Faruqi in 1913. 

Mirat-i-Sikandari is a Persian work describing the political history of Gujarat from the inception of the Muzaffarid dynasty by Muzaffar Shah (Jafar Khan). The work was composed by Sikander bin Muhammad Manzu and completed in 1611. Sikander bin Muhammad Manzu served in the army of Aziz Koka, a leading noble and Mughal Subahdar of Gujarat. Mirat-i-Sikandari also describes the cultural and social life of Gujarat.

Born in 1540, Mulla Abdul Qadir Badauni, also spelt Badayuni, was a contemporary historian of Akbar in the Mughal empire. He had entered his court in 1574.  Badauni had studied together with Abdul Fazi and both had been trained by Abul Fazal’s father, Shaykh Mubarak. He had joined Man Singh’s army against Maharana Pratap in the Battle of Haldighati in 1576. A Sunni Muslim, he was an inveterate enemy of Akbar.  He had charged Akbar of working against Islam. His most important work was Tarikh-e Badauni (“Badauni’s History”), also called the Muntakhab al-Tawarikh (“Selection from History”). It is a general history of India from the time of the the Ghaznavids to the 40th year of Akbar’s reign (1595-96). He also wrote Kitāb al-Ḥadīth (“Book of Ḥadīth”), the tradition of the Prophet Muhammad. .  Tarikh-i-Alfi (“History of Thousand Years”) is another famous work by Badauni who is also credited with the translation of Singhasan Battisi , Ramayana and Mahabharata into Persian.

                                                  Hoshang Shah's Tomb|Wikimedia Commons Hoshang Shah or Hushang Shah was the second ruler (first independent ruler) of the Sultanate of Malwa. (Importance of Malwa’s geographical situation in Medieval times can be ascertained from the fact that it commanded the trunk routes from Gujarat and South India to North India).  Hoshang Shah was known as Alp Khan before his accession to the throne in 1406. He was the son of Husain Ghuri on whom Tughlaq Sultan, Firuz Shah Tughlaq , had bestowed the title of Dilawar Khan and appointed him a noble.  Hoshang Shah ruled for thirty years. After his accession, he had to face invasion from Sultan Muzaffar Shah (reigned 1407-1411) of Muzaffarid dynasty of Gujarat. In medieval times, Malwa was the bitterest rival of the Gujarat Sultanate. The invasion resulted in the defeat of Hoshang Shah and he was taken prisoner by Muzaffar Shah who, however, restored the kingdom to him. Back in his kingdom, Hoshang

                Kakatiya’s well at Warangal|Wikimedia Commons/Aravind Pakide A famous kingdom of eastern Deccan in South India, Kakatiya dynasty rose in prominence in the 12th and 13th centuries. Ruling over an area corresponding to the modern day Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and parts of southern Odisha and eastern Karnataka, the Kakatiya dynasty produced rulers who created some exquisite pieces of temple architecture in India like the  Ramappa temple and  Thousand Pillar temple (Sri Rudreshwara Swamy Temple) . The Kakatiyas were at first the subordinates of the Rastrakutas and then Western Chalukyas of Kalyani. It was in or around 1163 that they threw their allegiance to them.  Ganapati Deva (ruled 1199–1262) was the greatest ruler of the Kakatiya Dynasty. Earlier, he was imprisoned by Yadava ruler Jaitugi who had killed his father Mahadeva. Later on, Ganapati was set free by Jaitugi and ascended the Kakatiya throne in 1199. He ruled for over 60 years and proved to be a good adminis

Born in 1869, Amir Chand was a revolutionary arrested in connection with the Delhi Conspiracy case, also known as the Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy. The case refers to an alleged plot to kill the then Viceroy of India, Lord Hardinge, in 1912. Amir Chand along with Bhai Bal Mukand, Awadh Behari  and Basant Kumar Biswas was sentenced to death and hanged at Delhi Jail on May 8, 1915.

Born in 1848 in Calcutta, Surendranath Banerjee was an educationist, journalist and political leader. In 1868 he successfully competed for the Indian Civil Service but on technical grounds he was disqualified. After a court judgment that went in his favour, he was inducted into the Civil Services but not long after, was dismissed over a procedural error. After dismissal, he became more politically active. In 1876, together with Anand Mohan Bose they formed the Indian Association of Calcutta.  In 1879, he became editor of The Bengalee, an English language newspaper in Kolkata.  He was a vocal critic of the partition of Bengal in 1905.  One of the founders of the Indian National Congress, Surendranath Banerjee became its president on two occasions in 1895 at Poona and in 1902 at Ahmedabad.  He left Congress following the emergence of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian political scene. After accepting a knighthood from the British in 1921 he was appointed as minister of local self-government an

  Born in Chandan Nagar in West Bengal, Kanailal Dutta was a great revolutionary who was arrested in connection with the Muzaffarpur Conspiracy Case in 1908. He was sentenced to death for the murder of a revolutionary-turned-approver in the Alipur Conspiracy Case.   Kanailal Dutta was hanged on November 10, 1908 inside the Alipore Jail in Kolkata.

Famous by the pen-name of ‘Lokahitawadi’, Gopal Hari Deshmukh was a social reformer from western India. Born in 1893 in Pune,  Gopal Hari Deshmukh was a rational thinker who worked as a member of the Governor General's Council.  He advocated widow remarriage and opposed child marriage, caste system and slavery in any form through a Marathi monthly magazine Lokahitawadi of which he was the editor.  Gopal Hari Deshmukh started the Punarvivah Mandal (Widow Remarriage Institute) at Ahmedabad and helped to launch Marathi newspapers, Induprakash and Jnanprakash, in Bombay and Poona. A champion of national self-reliance,  Gopal Hari Deshmukh  made it a point to wear  handspun khadi cloth while  attending the Delhi Durbar in 1877.  Gopal Hari Deshmukh died in 1892. 

Born on 13th January in 1907 at Varanasi, Manindra Nath Banerji was a revolutionary who had shot his maternal uncle J.N. Banerji, the Deputy Superintend of Police investigating the Kakori Conspiracy case. J.N. Banerji had played a dubious role in getting Rajendra Lahiri hanged.  Rajendra Lahiri was  convicted in the famous Kakori conspiracy case and hanged in the Gonda District Jail. Manindra Nath Banerjee was arrested and sentenced to ten years of rigorous imprisonment. While demanding better treatment for the political prisoners he breathed his last on June 20  in 1934 in the Fatehgarh Central Jail in Farrukhabad district in the Uttar Pradesh after 66 days of hunger strike.

George Yule was a Scottish entrepreneur who was the first British to serve as president of the Indian National Congress.  He was elected to that position in the fourth session of the Congress in 1888 at Allahabad.  He served as Sheriff of Calcutta and President of the Indian Chamber of Commerce.

Born in Mecca (now in Saudi Arabia) in 1888, Abul Kalam Azad was an Islamic theologian and a great scholar of Arabic, Persian and Urdu. He adopted the pen-name of Azad at the age of 16. He published a number of papers such as Al-Nadwah, the Vakil, Al-Hilal (“The Crescent”) and Al-Balagh.  He was 35 when he was elected President of the INC in its Delhi session in 1923, becoming the youngest to hold that office. He was again elected to the presidentship of Congress in 1940 and continued to hold that position until 1946. After Indian independence in 1947, he became the Education Minister in Jawahar Lal Nehru’s cabinet. He had written autobiographical narrative, 'India Wins Freedom' which holds more than religion politics was responsible for the partition of the country.  Azad died in 1958.  In 1992, he was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award.

A leading member of the Theosophical Society, Annie Besant was an Irish English woman who came to India in 1893 to spread the beliefs of the society which she had joined in 1889.    In India, Annie Besant settled in Varanasi where she founded the Central Hindu College in 1898. In 1907, she was elected president of the Theosophical Society. In 1914 she started the publication of the Commonweal and New India. These journals soon became her chief vehicle for propagating the beliefs of India’s freedom. In 1916 Besant established the Indian Home Rule League. She was a leading member of the Indian National Congress of which she was elected president in the Calcutta session in 1917.  She was also the founder of Indian Boy Scouts Association and Indian Woman’s Association.   Credited with the foundations of several schools and colleges, she had also established the National University at Adyar in 1918. Besant died in 1933.

Badruddin Tyabji was the third President of the Indian National Congress (INC) after Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee (1885) and Dadabhai Naoroji (1886). He was the first Muslim president of INC.  Together with Pherozeshah Mehta and K. T. Telang, he formed the Bombay Presidency Association in 1885. Bombay Presidency Association came into being as a result of the reactionary policies of Lytton, governor-general of India, and dissatisfaction with the Ilbert Bill.  He died of heart attack in London in 1906.

Born of priestly Parsi family in 1825 in Bombay, Dadabhai Naoroji took a leading part in founding the Indian National Congress of which he was the president for three times (in 1886, 1893 and 1906). Affectionately called the 'Grand Old Man of India', he was the first Indian to be elected to the British Parliament. He entered the British House of Commons as a member of the Liberal Party in 1892.  In 1852, Naoroji established Bombay Association, India’s first political association.  In 1867 he helped establish the East India Association which aimed to put across Indian viewpoints across to the British public  A critic of British economic policy in India, Naoroji is known for his enunciations of the Drain Theory in his long paper, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. Dadabhai Naoroji died in 1917 in Mumbai.

A successful lawyer, W C Bonnerjee was born in 1844 in Calcutta and comes lauded as the first president of the Indian National Congress. He was the first Indian to contest election to the British House of Commons.  He was again elected president of the INC in the Allahabad session in 1892. He was a moderate in politics. He had defended nationalist leader Surendranath Banerjee in a contempt of court case in the High Court of Calcutta. W C Bondnerjee died in England in 1906.

                                                                       Fort Asirgarh Situated in the Tapti valley, Khandesh was a province in the empire of Muhammad bin Tughluq, the second ruler of the Tughlaq dynasty. After the death of his successor Firoz Shah Tughluq (1309 –1388), Malik Raja Faruqi, then governor of Khandesh, declared his independence from Delhi Sultanate and founded the Faruqi (also spelt Farooqui) dynasty of Khandesh Sultanate.  Malik Raja Faruqi strengthened his position by a matrimonial alliance under which he married his daughter to Hushang Shah, the Malwa ruler. He was succeeded by his son Nasir Khan (reigned 1399-1437) who succeeded in capturing the impregnable fort of Asirgarh from a Hindu chieftain by subterfuge.    He built a new town which was named Burhanpur after Chishti Sufi saint Burhanuddin Gharib. In 1417, his invasion was repulsed by the Gujarat sultan Ahmad Shah whose suzerainty was acknowledged by him. The Gujarat Sultan, in turn, recognised Nasi

                                           Nagarjunakonda|Wikimedia Commons If you travel 170km southeast of Hyderabad and then take a 45-boat ride over the Nagarjuna Sagar reservoir on the Krishna river, you will discover the island of Nagarjunakonda, littered with the remnants of wonderful Buddhist structures. Located in the state of Andhra Pradesh, Nagarjunakonda was visited by seventh century AD Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang in 640 AD.  Before the construction of Nagarjuna Sagar Dam in 1960, Nagarjunakonda, which is spread over an area of 144-acre, was the top of a hill. In order to save several Buddhist structures such as stupa , chaitya , viharas that ran the risk of being submerged due to creation of Nagarjuna Sagar dam, they were reassembled on this hill. One of the Buddhism’s most visited sites, Nagarjunakonda is named after famous Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, who is credited to have introduced Buddhism to Andhra Pradesh in the 2nd century AD. Tradition has it that it was at