Indian History

His tenure of office was marked by the First Sikh War (1845). The English army occupied Lahore and dictated peace terms to the Sikhs (Treaty of Lahore, 1846). Hardinge introduced the principle of giving preference to English educated Indians in public employment- a policy which gave great fillip to English education but changed its character. He is also credited to have suppressed human sacrifice by the Khonds .

Women occupied a very honourable position in the Viajayanagr society. Some of them were very learned and were eminent litterateurs. Monogamy was the general practice, but kings and nobility followed polygamous practices. Early marriages were common among the Brahmins. The plight of the widows was pitiable, but they could remarry.  The state encouraged widow remarriage by not levying any marriage tax on their marriage. Women of the nobility and higher castes were carefully educated. Music and dancing formed an important part of their curriculum. Women were also wrestlers, astrologers, accountants, writers, musicians and even went to the battlefield.  Another group of women were the courtesans who played a very important role in society. They were two classes: (a) those who were attached to the temples, and (b) those who lived independently. Their case was not homogeneous and it was open to women of any community to join their sisterhood. Courtesans were highly educated and cultured and

Lord Dalhousie (1848-56) is regarded as one of the greatest governor generals of India and his contribution to the building up of the British India is enormous.  No other single governor general of India added even the half the extent of territories, which were incorporated into the British dominions during the administration of Lord Dalhousie.  These were nearly twice the area of England and Wales. Dalhousie made these annexations by freely applying the ‘Doctrine of Lapse’ which he termed as “Annexation of Peace’.   Rulers of the Indian states believed that their states were annexed not because of the doctrine of lapse but on account of the lapse of the morals o the par of the East Indian Company. The states annexed by the application of this doctrine of lapse were Satara , Jaitpur and Sambalpur , Baghat , Udaipur , Jhansi and Nagpur .

Popularly known as Veer Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar , was a great revolutionary and later on a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha. In 1899 he established the first revolutionary society the Mitra Mela (Friends Association), which was named as the Abhinav Bharat Society (New India Society) in 1904. In 1906 he went to England and became a member of the revolutionary group led by Shyamji Krishna Varma. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Revolt of 1857, he wrote a famous book in which he called the Revolt the First war of Indian Independence. In London he was a close associate of Madan Lal Dhingra who murdered Curzon Wyllie with a bomb. In 1910 he was arrested in London, brought to India and tried in the Nashik Conspiracy case. He was sentenced to two consecutive life transportations, which meant fifty years. He spent ten years in the Andaman jail -from 1911 to 1921 and three years in other prisons. After his early release from prosin in 1924 he organised a movement of so

                                                            UNESCO World Heritage - Hampi The splendor and affluence of the Vijayanagara city and empire has been described in the accounts of travellers who visited this South Indian  Hindu Kingdom at regular intervals. Prominent among them are the Italian Nicolo dei Conti and Abdur Razzaq (15th century AD) and the Portuguese travelers Paes and Nuniz who visited India in the 16th century.  Nicolo Conti, First European Visitor To Vijayanagar   Born at the coastal town of Chioggia in Italy, Nicolo Conti was an Italian and the earliest European visitor to the mighty Hindu Kingdom of Vijayanagar. The ruins of the great city of Vijayanagar are found at Hampi in the state of Karnataka. Nicolo Conti reached the city in 1420 -21 in the reign of Devaraya I. His original travel account in Latin is lost. Conti gives a vivid account of the city of Vijayanagar, its court, customs, currency, festivals and other matters.  Abdur Razzaq  Abdur Razzaq wa

An astonishingly beautiful place, the Swat valley in Pakistan, the ancient seat of Gandhara civilization, is no longer the popular tourist destination as it used to be before the Taliban seized the valley in 2006 and effective power in 2006. Since then, area has become synonymous with violence. It all started with the defacing of a 23-foot high statue of the Buddha by Fazlullah’s militants on October 8, 2007 on the pretext that Islam permits no graven images. This 7th century seated Buddha is carved in a rock in the lap of a mountain in Jehandabad village in the region. During the rule of great Mauryan Emperor Ashoka , Buddhism became a force to reckon with in the Swat valley. The region is full of Budhist stupas, monasteries, pottery and coins. The world famed Gandhara art flourished under the Buddhist Kushan dynasty. Today Batkara Stupa in the Swat Valley is in a state of disarray due to the neglect of the authorities concerned. Beautifully situated in the serene ambience of

The Sepoy munity of 1857, also known as First War of Indian Independence, was not the first movement of various classes of people to overthrow the British rule. Anti-British sentiments emerged shortly after the annexation of the province of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa by Warren Hastings in 1772. One such revolt that was of a great significance was the Faqir Uprising of Bengal that took place in 1776-77 and had the potential of shaking the very foundation of the nascent British rule in India. Soon after the annexation of Bengal, in 1776-77 a group of wandering Muslim religious mendicants known as faqirs, started against the British authority an agitation which came to be known as Faqir Uprising of Bengal. Manjum Shah was the pioneer of this revolt, these faqirs under his leader began to levy tax on the zamindars and peasants. This was in defiance of the British authority. After Manjum Shah’s death, Chirag Ali Shah became the leader of the group and under his leadership the uprising spread