This Day In History

[Guest]

Post items pertaining to <b>today</b> going back in Indian history. Hopefully we'll come up with a Indian History calendar soon.

[Guest]

April 13th: Remembering Jalianwala Bagh.
Rajeev's blog and article here: Jallianwallah Bagh day, Apr 13th, 1919

[Bodhi]

March 29, 1857: Mangal Pandey takes shots at 3 British officers at Barrackpore, Bengal - symbolically starting the revolt.
April 8, 1857: Mangal Pandey executed.

[Hauma Hamiddha]

brAhmaNa-dviT BR Ambedkar was born of 14th April -- he was the architect of the "caste/tribe" reservation policy and an author of the constitution of the independent republic of India.

[Guest]

Earlier this week on April 14th, 400th birth anniversary of Samarth Ramdas was celebrated in Maharashtra. Samarth Ramdas was spritual guru of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj.

[Guest]

April 22 1857.
Jemadar Ishwari Prasad was sentenced to death and hanged.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->General John Hearsey came out to see him on the parade ground, and claimed later that Mangal Pandey was in some kind of "religious frenzy". <b>He ordered a Jemadar Ishwari Prasad to arrest Mangal Pandey, but the Jemadar refused.</b> The whole regiment, with the single exception of a soldier called Shaikh Paltu, drew back from restraining or arresting Mangal Pandey. Shaikh Paltu restrained Pandey from continuing his attack.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Bodhi]

<b>Savarkar’s 125th birth anniversary falls on May 28, 2008</b>

Some dates of his life:

28 May 1883: Born in Bhagur village at Nasik Maharashtra

01 Jan 1900 - Founded Mitra Mela, a secret revolutionary society

01 July 1909 - Madanlal Dhingra shot dead Curzon Wyllie in London

13 March 1910: arrested in London

08 Jul 1910 - escapes through the port hole of SS Morea while being taken to India. captured by French police and handed to British. Subsequently sentenced twice (24 Dec 1910; 31 Jan 1911) to Transportation for Life, to the Andaman Islands. The sentences of Transportation were to be served in succession—a total sentence of 50 years, unparalleled in the history of the British Empire

2 May 1921: released from the Cellular Jail, but successively kept in Alipore, Ratnagiri and Yerawada Jails.

6 January 1924: released from jail, but in 5 years of forced internment to confine himself to Ratnagiri District of coastal Maharashtra, and to keep away from all public affairs. internment extended to 2 years in succession to a total of 13 years.

(unknown date in) March 1925: Dr. Hedgewar meets Savarkar in his confinement, RSS founded that year

01 Mar 1927: Gandhi meets Savarkar at Ratnagiri

17 June 1937: finally released unconditionally from internment in Ratnagiri

10 Dec 1937: Elected as President of Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha at its 19th Session at Karnavati (Ahmedabad) and continued to be re-elected President for the next seven years

17 February 1939: gives a call to eradicate untouchability, at the Bengal Provincial Hindu Conference, Khulna.

27 March 1939: attends the ‘Untouchable Conference’ at Mungher (Bihar), and participated in inter-caste dining with ex-untouchables.

01 Feb 1939: Started resistance against the Nizam Hyderabad

22 Jun 1941: Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose meets Savarkar, INA later founded.

25 Dec 1941: Started Bhagalpur struggle in Bihar

05 Feb 1948: Arrested under the Preventive Detention Act after Gandhi's murder

10 Feb 1949: Acquitted in Gandhi Murder Trial

(Miscellaneous activities)

01 Feb 1966: starts fast unto death

26 Feb 1966: dies at the age of 83

http://www.savarkar.org/en/lifesketch-0

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.p...pid=236&page=13

[Bodhi]

9 May 2008 or 10 May 2008 : Birth anniversary of AchArya shankara
10 May 2008 : Birth anniversary of rAmAnuja AchArya

[Guest]

April 2 - 1755 - Commodore William James captures the pirate fortress of Suvarnadurg on west coast of India.

April 5 - 1930 - In an act of civil disobedience, Mohandas Gandhi breaks British law after marching to the sea and making salt.

4th May 1799 - Fourth Anglo-Mysore War: The Battle of Seringapatam: The siege of Seringapatam ends when the city is assaulted and the Tipu Sultan killed by the besieging British army, under the command of General George Harris.

[Bodhi]

On Rabindra Nath Tagore's Birth Anniversary

7 May 1861 Born at Calcutta, India

14 February 1873 began deshATan, an all-India tour with his father

22 Dec 1901 Founded Shanti Niketan, which in 1924 became Vishva Bharati University

1911 Wrote Jana Gana Mana which later became National Anthem of India

1913 Awarded Nobel prize in literature, First Asian and non-white to be awarded

1919 Renounced his knighthood following Jallianwala massacre

14 July 1930 met Einstein at his residence at Kaputh in the suburbs of Berlin

1939 Appealed to Gandhi to not shun Subhas Chandra Bose from congress

7 Aug 1941 died at Calcutta, India at the age of 80

[Guest]

Rana Pratap's (born: May 9, 1540) Birth Anniversary:
<img src='http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/RajaRaviVarma_MaharanaPratap.jpg/180px-RajaRaviVarma_MaharanaPratap.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

[Guest]

First War of Independence
The Hindu as well as the Muslim soldiers, who refused to use such cartridges, were arrested which resulted in a revolt by their fellow soldiers on May 9, 1857.

<b>Hardinge Bomb case </b>
Master Amir Chand, Bhai Balmukand and Master Awadh Behari were executed on May 8, 1915 in Delhi Jail
Basant Kumar Biswas was executed the next day on May 9, 1915 in Ambala Central Jail.

[Bodhi]

<!--QuoteBegin-Viren+May 9 2008, 07:01 PM-->QUOTE(Viren @ May 9 2008, 07:01 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Rana Pratap's (born: May 9, 1540)  Birth Anniversary:
[right][snapback]81421[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Per Jagran:
birth date of Pratap is May 10, 1540.
18 June 1576 : Battle of Haldighati began on the banks of Banas river 50 KMs from Udaipur.
died January 19, 1597

[Bodhi]

11 May 1998: India declares itself a Nuclear Weapon state by test-detonating 3 nuclear devices at Pokharan in Rajasthan, under Operation Shakthi.

13 May 1998: two more detonations conducted by India at the Pokhran test range, even as USA and many western counries mount economic sanctions on India a day before.

18 May 1974: The first nuclear test conducted by India at Pokharan.

11 May 1998 and 18 May 1974 - both happened to be buddha pUrNimA

[Bodhi]

16 May 1975 : Sikkim becomes part of Indian Union following a referendum a week before, in which 97.5% Sikkimese voted for joining India. Until then, Sikkim was an indipendant kingdom like Bhutan or Nepal. Chinese did not recognize Sikkim's accession to India until 2003.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->चोज्ञाल की अलोकप्रियता के चलते सिक्किम में अशांति तथा अस्थिरता धीरे-धीरे बढ़ती गई और 1973 में हालात यहां तक पहुंच गए कि राजमहल के बाहर जमकर दंगे हुए। दंगों से फैली अस्थिरता के चलते सिक्किम ने भारत से मदद का औपचारिक आग्रह किया।

वर्ष 1975 में सिक्किम के काजी लेंदुप दोरजी खांगसरपा ने भारतीय संसद से राज्य के विशेष दर्जे को बदलकर इसे भारत का हिस्सा बनाने की मांग की। उनके इस अनुरोध पर भारत सरकार ने सेना को सिक्किम कूच का आदेश दे दिया। अप्रैल 1975 में भारतीय सेना ने गंगटोक को अपने कब्जे में लेकर राजमहल के सुरक्षाकर्मियों को नि:शस्त्र कर दिया। इसके बाद भारत सरकार ने सिक्किम के लोगों की इच्छा जानने के लिए वहां पर जनमत संग्रह कराया। जनमत संग्रह से यह बात सामने आई कि सिक्किम के लोग भारत का हिस्सा बनने में अपना हित देखते हैं और इसके चलते वहां के 97.5 प्रतिशत लोगों ने भारत संघ में शामिल होने के पक्ष में अपना मत दिया। जनमत संग्रह के कुछ सप्ताह बाद 16 मई 1975 को सिक्किम को भारत का राज्य बनाए जाने की घोषणा की गई। <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

May 20, 1932 Bipin Chandra Pal died


<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Bipin Chandra was famous as one of the triumvirate of three militant patriots of the Congresses - the "Pal" of "Lal Bal Pal". The trio were responsible for initiating the first popular upsurge against British colonial policy in the 1905 partition of Bengal, much before the advent of Gandhi into Indian politics. Pal was also the founder of the nationalistic journal <i>Bande Mataram</i>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

May 25, 1886 Rash Behari Bose born

[Guest]

May 28, 1883 Vinayak 'Veer' Damodar Savarkar born in the village of Bhagur, near the city of Nasik, Maharashtra.

<i>Originally posted by Bodhiji in Hindutva thread:</i>
<span style='color:red'>125th Birth Anniversary of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, today</span>

The man who saw tomorrow
Ashok Malik
The Pioneer

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar would have been 125 today. In life,
he was a demonised, marginalised 'political Hindu'. Yet, in contemporary
India, Savarkar stands vindicated and Savarkarism is more accepted than
ever before

In 2004, when the historian Ron Chernow wrote his eponymous
biography of Alexander Hamilton, he was partly impelled by the sense
that his subject had not been given his due. Hamilton was an American
nationalist, a votary of federal institutions, a Republican, an advocate
of limited Government and a patron of the industrial society before
these terms were coined or at least entirely understood. He was also the
first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States and a widely
influential figure in the early years of the new republic.

Yet, over the decades, memories of Hamilton's contemporaries
overwhelmed his legacy. He was America's forgotten Founding Father, lost
in the crevices between George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.
Hamilton had opposed slavery even while his great rival Thomas Jefferson
had kept slaves; yet, it wasn't Hamilton who was remembered by human
rights chroniclers.

What Hamilton lost in life, Hamiltonism won in history. By the
20th century, Hamilton's ideas had triumphed. His initial postulates
continue to define American strategic thinking, foreign policy and
economic philosophy. Every White House resident in the past 20 years has
paid homage to Ronald Reagan; Reagan himself often evoked Hamilton.

It is tempting to see Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who would have
been 125 this morning, as an Indian Alexander Hamilton. By the time he
died in 1966, he had shrunk to a limited presence. Surrounded only by a
few devoted adherents and members of the Hindu Mahasabha, his writings
read mainly by his fellow Maharastrians, his heroic role in the freedom
movement had been effaced by official historians.

Savarkar was the intellectual equal of Jawaharlal Nehru. Revisit
the writings of the stalwarts of the pre-1947 period and you will
encounter few besides these two with a grasp and informed assessment of
contemporary world affairs. Yet, in the hard, harsh world of politics
and political ideas, Savarkar, by the 1960s, had lost to Nehru's cult
and charisma.

There were many reasons why the Left-liberal intelligentsia, most
of whom are, in some form or the other, pensioners of the Nehruvian
state structure, despised Savarkar. For a start, he was flesh-and-blood
refutation of the charge that Hindu nationalism lacked an intellectual
tradition. Second, he represented a cogent and coherent position that
believed the political choices India and the Congress had made in 1947
(or 1950 or 1952, after the first election) were not necessarily
correct.

These were inconvenient truths for Nehruvian fellow travellers,
Savarkar the inconvenient man. There was astonishing virulence towards
Savarkar. Some, like the perverse and bigoted Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar,
even mocked the 10 years that Savarkar spent in Cellular Jail, Port
Blair, in horrific conditions, alone in a tiny cell.

The antipathy to Savarkar has to be seen in a larger context.
Post-independence, the Congress establishment sought to rewrite history
in its own image. It determinedly underplayed the role of the early
Indian elites -- the Poona Brahmins, Bombay's Parsi constitutionalists,
Calcutta's Bengali and Brahmo activists -- who had dominated public life
prior to the Mahatma's mass politics.

As the Congress set out to establish that there was no history and
no freedom struggle before Gandhi, and no politics and no consciousness
of modern India before Nehru, these pioneer groups became expendable.
The Marxist historians who actually wrote the textbooks had their own
theories. For instance, not just was Savarkar demonised, even the
venerable Bal Gangadhar Tilak was painted in sectarian colours.

Even so, history has a strange way of getting back. Savarkar's
idea of the political Hindu, of a polity and of political parties that
would be sensitive to the Hindu cultural mainstay of Indian nationhood,
that would, while eschewing ritualism and dogma, incorporate robust
nationalism into policy-making, is more relevant than it has ever been.
Nehruvianism is in retreat and, even though Savarkar has been dead 42
years, Savarkarism has never been more alive.

Written in 1923, Savarkar's slim tract, Hindutva, remains a
remarkably contemporary articulation of organic nationalism. Indeed, it
anticipates some of the ideas expanded upon by Samuel Huntington in Who
Are We? (2004).

Leftist historians often divide Savarkar's life into two -- the
supposedly "acceptable" first part, till the mid-1920s; and, his
espousal of Hindutva after that. Actually, this division is bogus.

Admittedly, Savarkar's early life was one of a romantic
revolutionary. As a student in London, he was in touch with Irish,
Turkish and Chinese dissidents and rebels. In 1907, he wrote The War of
Independence of 1857. The book was deeply researched and provided an
interpretation of documents and events from the Indian perspective.

Admittedly, it is not the last word on the Indian Uprising. In
hindsight, Savarkar could be accused of glossing over the differing
motivations of the participants of the 1857 war and of being simplistic
in believing that there was overwhelming consensus in re-establishing
the Delhi throne as a Maratha protectorate -- as had been the case till
1803.

Nevertheless, this was a passionate young man of 24 writing the
first non-imperial account of a dramatic struggle. It was passionate and
pulsating, being smuggled to India wrapped in dust jackets saying Don
Quixote and Pickwick Papers. The British Government arrested Savarkar
and sought to send him to India to stand trial. At Marseilles, in a
dramatic move, he squeezed out of the porthole and swam to the shore,
claiming asylum from the French Government.

It was refused and he was re-arrested on French soil and handed
over to the British. This was in breach of international law and among
those who protested at Savarkar being denied asylum was Jean Longuet,
French lawyer-editor and grandson of Karl Marx.

Savarkar was heavily influenced by Italian thinkers such as
Mazzini. He saw Hindutva as an Indian Risorgimeto, conceptualising it as
a reawakening of the national spirit and of a pride in, and
understanding of, the territorial frontiers of India. He was not a
religious sort and did not interpret 'Hindu' solely in terms of worship.
He was an early opponent of Dalit exclusion, seeing a Hindu
harmonisation process as essential to national unity.

<b>Savarkar was often impatient with the RSS and it is piquant to
compare him with MS Golwalkar, 'Guruji' as he is called and the man who
made the Sangh the all-India institution that it is today. Savarkar was
a thinker, Golwalkar a do-er; Savarkar was the rare Hindu mind who
understood statecraft and the importance of state power, Golwalkar
sought to change society by working bottom-up from grassroots
communities. For Golwalkar (as for Gandhi), the Hindu was
ascetic-exemplar; for Savarkar, he was warrior-ideal.

The two streams were not antithetical but clearly complementary.
When they finally merged, consciously or otherwise, in the late-1980s,
it changed Indian politics and moved the polity irrevocably to the
Right. At its best, the BJP is a confluence of Savarkar and Golwalkar.</b>

Savarkar had known it all along. Just before his death, in an
emotional piece called "This, My Legacy", he had written: "<span style='color:red'>If we are to
live with honour and dignity as a Hindu nation -- and we have the right
to do so -- that nation must emerge under the Hindu flag. This, my
dream, shall come true -- if not in this generation at least in the
next. If it remains an empty dream, I shall prove a fool. If it comes
true, I shall prove a prophet. This, my legacy, I bequeath to you.</span>"

Savarkar is gone. Let us cherish his legacy, salute the prophet.

[Bodhi]

<img src='http://inlinethumb50.webshots.com/42545/2581653920103561716S500x500Q85.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

Savarkar with SP Mookerjee.

[Bodhi]

<b>1-June-2001:</b> Nepal's entire royal family massacred at the Narayanahiti Palace in Kathmandu during the night.

The mysterious event which left dead a very popular King Birendra Vikram Shah and Queen Aiswarya, set in motion the events that finally culminated in the collapse of the only surviving Hindu kingdom within 7 years.

The whole affaire remains a deep mystery and Crowne Prince Dipendra Vikram Shah is alleged to have shot dead his own family including father, mother, brother and sister - in all 10 members, before shooting himself. He later died in hospital, after being crowned the King for less than three days, while still in coma. Even more mysteriousely, King's brother Gyanendra who later was crowned as King, survived along with his wife and son. Gyanendra was away from the palace at the time, while his wife and son escaped with minor injuries.

Nepalese beleive this event to be an unresolved conspiracy. They allege that not Dipendra but some spies carried out the massacre and killed Dipendra. Dipendra himself could not testify as he died in coma itself. After the removal of Birendra, maoists had a cakewalk to power. Looking back how the events have unfolded, the popular belief about conspiracy can not be ruled out.