In 1406 one of the many battles between the Vijayanagar kingdom and the Bahmani sultanate took place. If the medieval Persian historian Ferishta is to believed, the casus belli of the fight was a fascination of Vijayanagar ruler Deva Raya I for a goldsmith’s beautiful daughter living in Mudgal in the Raichur Doab , the region between the Tungabhadra and Krishna rivers. Thanks to its being a fertile land, Raichur Doab was a bone of contention between the rulers of the Vijayanagar and the Bahmanis as none of them wanted to forsake their claim on the region.
Since the girl in question was averse to the idea of marrying Deva Raya I, this infuriated the latter who laid waste some villages in the neighbourhood of Mudgal. This antagonized the Bahmani Sultan Firuz Shah who considered the aggression as an encroachment on the Bahmani territory. In retaliation, he attacked Vijayanagar. Though the war initially went well for Vijayanagar, in the end Deva Raya I was forced to make peace with the Bahmani Sultan who forced the Viajaynagar ruler to give out the hands of his daughter in marriage to him. Besides, Deva Raya I had to surrender the strategic fort of Bankapur as her dowry.
Firuz Shah Bahmani secured his son Hasan Khan the goldsmith’s daughter whose beauty was responsible for the battle. Apart from pearls, 50 elephants, 2000 boys and girls skilled in song and dance, he extracted a heavy cash indemnity from Deva Raya I.
The marriage of Firuz Shah Bahmani with the daughter of Deva Raya I was celebrated with great pomp and show.
The Tarikh-i-Alfi (History of a Thousand Years) is a historical work chronicling the first thousand years of Islamic world history. Commissioned by Mughal emperor Akbar, the chronicle was written by a board of compilers headed by a Shia theologian Mulla Ahmad of Thatta. Mulla Ahmad had written a large part of the text.
Due to the animosity between Shias and Sunnis, Mulla Ahmad was murdered in 1588 in the street of Lahore by a Sunni nobleman, Mirza Fawlad, who lured him out of his house on the pretext that the emperor had asked for his presence in the court.
Mirza Fawlad was condemned to death causing resentment among the Sunnis who exhumed Mulla Ahmad's body and burnt it. After the death of Mulla Ahmad, Asaf Khan Jafar Beg completed the rest of the work around 1592.
Badauni was selected by Akbar to revise the manuscript and compare it with other histories.
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.
Close on the heels of Telangana's 13th-century Ramappa Temple receiving the title of World Heritage Site during the ongoing 44th session of the UNESCO's World Heritage Committee in Fuzhou in China, now the Harappan city of Dholavira in the Bhachau taluka of Kutch district in Gujarat has been inscribed on the list.
Dholavira is the first Indus Valley Civilisation site in India to be bestowed the coveted title by UNESCO.
The archeological site of Dholavira is one of the two largest Harappan settlements in India. Rakhigarhi in Haryana is the other larger Indus Valley Civilization (also known as Harappan civilisation) site.
Locally known as Kotada timba, meaning a large fort, Dholavira was first explored by ASI’s J P Joshi in 1968. However, it was excavated extensively by RS Bisht in the 1990s.
Dholavira is one of the most well-preserved urban settlements from ca. 3000-1500 BCE. The site comprises a cemetery and a fortified city. This Indus site had a sophisticated water management system and multi-layered defensive mechanisms. Water reservoirs furnished with inlet channels for carrying the rain water have been founded here. Rain water is so important in the semi-arid environment in which Dholavira is situated.
Bead processing workshops and artifacts of various kinds such as copper, shell, stone, jewellery of semi-precious stones, terracotta, gold, ivory have been found during archaeological excavations of Dholavira.
With the addition of Dholavira, India now boasts 40 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Gujarat is now home to four World Heritage Sites. Rani ki Vav in Patan, Champaner near Pavagadh, and Ahmedabad are the other three.
Telangana's 13th-century Rudreswara temple, more famously known as Ramappa Temple, has been bestowed the much-coveted title of World Heritage Site by UNESCO's World Heritage Committee.
Ramappa Temple is a glowing specimen of the exquisite architecture patronized by Kakatiya kings who ruled over an area corresponding to the modern day Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, eastern Karnataka and parts of southern Odisha from the late 12th to early 14th centuries AD.
Built in 1213 AD during the reign of the greatest Kakatiya ruler Ganapati Deva (ruled 1199–1262) by his general Recharla Rudra, the Ramappa Temple is located in a valley at the village of Palampet, approximately 77 km away from Warangal and 200km north-east of Hyderabad.
Venetian traveller Marco Polo, who visited this Kakatiya temple during the reign of his successor Rudrama Devi, had described the temple as the "brightest star in the galaxy of medieval temples of the Deccan".
Named after its architect Ramappa who worked on the project for 40 years, Ramappa Temple is situated in an environment of serenity close to the shores of the Ramappa Cheruvu, a Kakatiya era water reservoir.
Bracket figures of Ramappa temple /Copyright: © ASI
India now boasts 39 UNESCO World Heritage Sites
Today India is celebrating the 165th birth anniversary of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a leading light of Indian freedom struggle.
Of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Edwin Samuel Montagu, British Secretary of State for India between 1917 and 1922, said, "Tilak is at the moment probably the most powerful man in India".
One of the famous triumvirate called “Lal-Bal-Pal”, Bal Gangadhar Tilak was born on July 23, 1856 in Ratnagiri district in the Konkan region of Maharashtra.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak was educated in Poona where had co-founded Fergusson College, a landmark educational institution in Maharashtra. A scholar in mathematics, law and Sanskrit, Tilak was one of the founders of the Deccan Education Society in 1884, with Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Madhavrao Namjoshi and Vishnushastri Chipalunkar being the other members.
During Home Rule movement which he started in 1914 Bal Gangadhar was given the epithet of Lokamanya (Universally Respected). Tilak was called "father of Indian unrest" by Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol, a British journalist.
Tilak was imprisoned several times by the British authorities on charges of sedition. In July 1908, he was imprisoned for six years on charges of sedition and sent to Mandalay Jail in present-day Myanmar where he wrote Gita Rahasya or Bhagavad Gita . The Arctic Home in the Vedas was also written by Tilak.
The nationalist poet Subramania Bharati translated Tilak’s Tenets of the New Party into Tamil.
Tilak had launched two newspapers, Kesari (in Marathi) and Mahratta (in English). His trenchant criticism of colonial rule through these newspapers earned him the ire of the British administration.
Tilak initiated two important festivals, Ganesh in 1893 and Shivaji in 1895.
In 1916 Tilak signed the historic Lucknow Pact also known as the Congress–League Pact.
Tilak breathed his last in Bombay on August 1, 1920. Gandhi wrote of him in Young India on August 4, 1920:
“A giant among men has fallen. The voice of the lion is hushed… He knew no religion but love of his country. He was a born democrat. He believed in the rule of majority with an intensity that fairly frightened me…No man preached the gospel of swaraj with the consistency and the insistence of Lokamanya.”
Famous Quotes from Bal Gangadhar Tilak
"Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it!"
'If God were to tolerate untouchability, I would not recognise Him as God at all.''
World map by Cosmas Indicopleustes / Image Credit: upload.wikimedia.org Cosmas Indicopleustes (literally: "who sailed to India") ...
