Indian History

Today is 125th birth anniversary of  Udham Singh, an Indian freedom fighter with association with Ghadar Party, a political movement founded by expatriate Indians to overthrow British rule in India.  Born on 26th December in Sunam Village in Sangrur district of the north-western Indian state of Punjab, Udham Singh is known for avenging the infamous Jalianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar by murdering Michael O’Dwyer after 21 years. Michael O’Dwyer , who was the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab in 1919 when Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, the military commander of Amritsar, had ordered the firing on the innocent people who have gathered here to protest the arrest of Congress leaders Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr. Satya Pal under Rowlatt Act. 1919 soldiers of the British Army in India had opened fire on the crowd in a walled public garden and killed over 1,000 of them. This became known variously as the Amritsar Massacre or the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The bloodbath was endorsed by...

Pietro della Valle was an Italian traveler to India who reached Surat in 1623 and extensively travelled through the coastal regions of India.  He has given a detailed description of Sati, the traditional Hindu practice of self-immolation by a widow on her husband's funeral pyre. 

December 16 is celebrated to commemorate the defeat of the Pakistani troops in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 and the emergence of an independent Bangladesh. On this day Pakistani army surrendered to Lt. General Jagjit Singh Aurora , the chief Commander of the Joint military command of India and Bangladesh. The day is celebrated as Victory Day or Bijoy Dibosh . Recently the iconic statue at the 1971 Shaheed Memorial Complex in Bangladesh, depicting the Pakistan Army's surrender, was vandalised amid the attacks on the Hindu population in the country.  The emergence of Bangladesh as a sovereign country in 1971 is an important event in the world history. At the time of Indian independence in 1947 Bangladesh was a part of newly created nation of Pakistan. Since then, (it is still the case) Pakistan had been carrying their hate India campaign since its creation. It was nor ready (is still not ready) to understand that the future of India and Pakistan depends on peace and coopera...

Anjalai Amma  Described by Mahatma Gandhi as the Jhansi Rani of South India, Anjalai Amma was a freedom fighter who fought for the independence of India from the British. She was born in Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu in 1890.  She became a part of the Non-Cooperation Movement started by Gandhi in 1921. She was 31 and spent many years in prison for her participation in the freedom struggle .   Anjalai Amma took part in the Neil Statue Satyagraha, Salt Satyagraha, and Quit India Movement.  In  1931 Anjalai Ammal was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment for participating in Salt Satyagraha and was imprisoned in Vellore prison even when she was pregnant. She was released on bail for delivery for only two weeks.  Leelavathy was her daughter who was named by Gandhi himself. Anjalai Ammal  was elected from Cuddalore constituency as a member of Chennai Provincial Legislative Assembly in 1937, 1946 and 1952. Anjalai Amma died in 1961.

Credit: Twitter/UNESCO Santiniketan in the Indian state of West Bengal  has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.  UNESCO is an acronym for  United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization . It is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that works for world peace through global cooperation in the fields of education, culture and the sciences.  India has been striving for long to get a UNESCO tag for this cultural site located in the Birbhum district of West Bengal.  It was at Santiniketan where poet Rabindranath Tagore built Visva-Bharati over a century ago.  About Visva-Bharati University Visva-Bharati is an university located in Shantiniketan in  West Bengal, India. It was founded by Rabindranath Tagore who called it Visva-Bharati, which means the communion of the world with India.  Until independence it was a college. Soon after independence, the institution was given the status of a central university in 19...

                                                                                     Behramji Malabari. Image Source An associate of Dadabhai Naoroji , M. G. Ranade, Dinshaw Wacha and other contemporary political leaders and social reformers, Behramji Merwanji Malabari was a Parsi social reformer who vigorously championed the cause of women. He was against casteism and child marriage, advocated widow remarriage. He was in favour of equality of sexes and uplift of the status of the women, particularly the widows.  Born in Vadodara in 1853, Behramji Malabari had participated in the first session of the Indian National Congress held in Mumbai in 1885. In 1908 he founded a social service organization Seva Sadan Society for the educatio...

Q. 1. Who planted the 'Tree of Liberty' at Srirangapatnam? (a) Tipu Sultan (b) Hyder Ali (c) Chikka Krishnaraja (d) Devraj Q. 2. Which battle put an end to the French challenge to British supremacy in India?  (a) The Battle of Plassey (b) The Battle of Buxar (c) The Battle of Wandiwash (d) The Battle of Seringapatam Q. 3. Who among the following had introduced the revenue collection method Ryotwari System in India?  (a) Thomas Munro  (b) Lord Cornwallis (c) Holt Mackenzie (d) None of these Q. 4. Where did Moplah Uprising break out in 1921?   (a) Andhra Pradesh (b) Kerala (c) Karnataka (d) Tamil Nadu Q. 5. Who among the following was/were associated with the organization “Servants of India Society”? (a) Gopal Krishna Gokhle (b) Amritlal Vithaldas Thakkar (c) Both a and b  (d) None of these Q. 6. Who has authored the book 'The Light of Asia' ? (a) Charles Wilkins (b) Sir Edwin Arnold  (c) Edwin Lester Arnold (d) None of these   Q. 7. Who among t...

Starting as a religious (communal) movement,  Faraizi Movement in course of time became a struggle against the landlords (who were mostly Hindus) who oppressed the common people and farmers and  British colonists . Founded by  Haji Shariatullah, the movement began with a call to the Muslims to perform their obligatory duties (Fard) enjoined by Allah with a view to purging the religion of the un-Islamic rites which he considered were contrary to the teachings of the Qu’ran.  Haji Shariatullah was born in Faridpur (now in Bangladesh) in 1781.  After Haji Shariatullah’s death in 1840, the mantle of leadership was passed on to his son Muhsinuddin Ahmed, more popularly known as Dudu Miyan. Under Dudu Miyan, the movement became agrarian in character. After his death in 1862, the movement began to lose steam and ultimately died down. 

Pagal Panthi was a socio-religious sect whose members were mainly drawn from the Garo and Hajong tribes living in the Mymensingh and Sherpur districts of Bangladesh. The sect started as a resistance against local zamindars and with the passage of time established itself as bulwark against the British colonial rule.  Pagal Panthi was founded by Karim Shah, a darvesh or mendicant. After his death in 1813 the reins of the movement passed on to his son Tipu Shah or Tipu Pagal who in 1825 led a band of armed followers in plundering the houses of the zamindars of Sherpur. He organized peasant rebellions. After Tipu Shah's death in 1852, though the movement lingered on, it began to lose momentum and was finally put down by the British.

Founded in 1867 by Atmaram Pandurang, a physician and social reformer, Prarthana Samaj (Prayer Society) is a socio religious reform movement that took inspiration from the Brahmo Samaj movement spearheaded by Keshab Chandra Sen in West Bengal. Other important leaders of Prarthana Samaj were famous Indologist and Sanskritist R G Bhandarkar and Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842-1901) who also comes lauded as the prophet of cultural renaissance in western India. N. G. Chandavarkar was another leader of Prarthana Samaj. Theistic worship and social reform were the two main planks on which the Prarthana Samaj movement was built. The movement fostered a firm belief in the existence of one god. The society opposed the prevailing caste system, untouchability, dowry system, polygamy and advocated widow remarriage, female education, intermarriage among different castes, and abolition of child marriage. Prarthana Samaj used to publish a magazine called Subodh Patrika. 

1.Who among the following was elected permanent president of Muslim League in 1908? (a) Muhammad Ali Jinnah (b) Nawab Moshin-ul-Mulk (c) Nawab Salimullah (d) Aga Khan 2.Who among the following had accompanied Gandhi to the Second Round Table Conference in 1931? (a) Jawaharlal Nehru (b) Sarojini Naidu (c) Madan Mohan Malviya (d) Sarojini Naidu and Madan Mohan Malviya 3.Who among the following was responsible for killing Curzon Wyllie in London? (a) V. D. Savarkar (b) Bhagat Singh (c) Shyamaji Krishnavarma (d) Madan Lal Dhingra   4.Who among the following as not associated with Swaraj Party?  (a) Motilal Nehru (b) Chakravarti Rajagopalachari  (c) Chittaranjan Das (d) N C Kelkar 5.Who among the following had founded the Asiatic Society? (a) David Hare  (b) William Jones (c) William Carey (d) Ram Mohan Roy  6.Who was the founder of Naujawan Bharat Sabha? (a) Bhagat Singh  (b) Jayaprakash Narayan  (c) Gopal Krishna Gokhale (d) Rukmani Lakshmipth. 7.Whi...

One of the famous triumvirate called “Lal-Bal-Pal”, Bipin Chandra Pal is known as "Father of Revolutionary Thoughts" in India. He was born in 1858 in Sylhet (now in Bangladesh).    Bipin Chandra Pal joined Indian National Congress in 1886. He started newspapers with a view to educating public opinion. He was the founder editor of Paridarshak, a weekly, and later worked as assistant editor of the Bengal Public Opinion and the Tribune. Nationalist to the core, Bipin Chandra Pal was an exponent of concept of Indian Swaraj and Swadeshi. He vehemently opposed the partition of Bengal announced in 1905. He was a noted writer and a powerful speaker. His most famous work was Memories and My Life and Times (in two volumes). He also launched English newspaper Bande Mataram of which the revolutionary and later a mystic Aurobindo Ghose became an editor. I n 1907, h e was convicted for six months following publication of seditious views in the paper. Bipin Chandra Pal worked for Associatio...

  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.

Romesh Chunder Dutt (1848-1909) was a famous historian, economic thinker and political leader. In 1899, he presided over the annual conference of the Indian National Congress held in Lucknow.   According to revolutionary and mystic Aurobindo Ghose, Romesh Chunder Dutt “prepared the public mind for the boycott movement” and “not only wrote history but created it.”    His famous work is the Economic History of India (1902). Apart from translating the Ramayana and Mahabharata in English, he also translated the Rig Veda in Bengali. 

Lord Wellesley was appointed Governor General of Bengal in 1798 at the age of 37.   One of the top British rulers in India, he devised strategies to establish British paramountcy in India. He ranks among the highs of Lord Clive, Lord Dalhousie and Warren Hastings. When it comes to achievements, he is a cut above the rest of the British rulers in India. During his tenure of seven years, Lord Wellesley became successful in defeating the adversaries of the English Company. Jettisoning the non-intervention policy, he applied the system of Subsidiary Alliance with a missionary zeal. Under the Subsidiary Alliance system, the Indian ruler, who entered into this alliance, was to surrender a part of his territories or give money for the maintenance of a subsidiary force of the British needed for the defence of the state. The subsidiary state had also to surrender its external relations to the Company and accept a British resident at the capital. The Indian states and rulers who ente...

The ‘Black Hole’ was a tragic incident that happened in the run-up to the Battle of Plassey that took place in 1757. The incident served as casus belli for the invasion by the British on Murshidabad. Siraj ud Daulah, the then Nawab of Bengal, resented to the interference by the East India Company in his province. He was also livid with the company’s abuse of the commercial privileges which was granted by the Mughal emperor Farrukhsiyar under the firman of 1717. Though inexperienced and devoid of taking decisions, Siraj ud Daula set out to begin a military campaign against the English. During his military campaigns he captured Calcutta on 20 th June, 1756. Consequently, John Zephaniah Holwell, a narrator of the ‘Black Hole’ tragedy and a number of Europeans were taken prisoners who were confined in a chamber 18 feet by 14 inches, with only on window, throughout the hot and humid night of June in Calcutta. According to Holwell, they numbered about 165 or 170, and the nex...