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India Today
2 days ago
- General
- India Today
‘Traitor' tag for Mir Jafar, Tipu Sultan missing: Controversy erupts over NCERT changes
In the section on the Battle of Plassey of 1757, Mir Jafar, the army general of the Nawab of Bengal, was labelled 'a traitor' in the newly released Class 8 social science textbook, Exploring Society: India and Beyond – Part Battle of Plassey was fought between the Nawab of Bengal and the East India company officials led by Robert Clive, a British official enumerates how the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-Ud-Daulah, lost to the Company because of Mir Jafar's betrayal. In the section, 'Enter the British' the text reads: 'Clive hatched a conspiracy with Mir Jafar, the Nawab's Military commander, promising to install him as the new Nawab in exchange for his betrayal. The battle took place at Palashi (Plassey as the British Spelt it) some 150 kilometres north of present say Kolkatta. Some French forces assisted the Nawab, but Mir Jafar's forces — constituting the majority of the Nawab's army — stood aside, ensuring a British victory despite their smaller number. Even today, 'Mir Jafar' in India remains a synonym for 'traitor.'!'advertisementThe narrative was vastly different in the earlier version of the book titled 'Our Pasts- III'. In the earlier version the text only mentions under the Battle of Plassey: 'One of the main reasons for the defeat of the Nawab was that the forces led by Mir Jafar, one of Sirajuddaulah's commanders, never fought the battle. Clive had managed to secure his support by promising to make him nawab after crushing Sirajuddaulah.' In the same section under 'The strategy of divide and rule' mentions that 'under the divide and rule policy, the British were equally skilled at exploiting existing divisions within the Indian society, they identified and often encouraged tensions between religious communities.'Although both textbooks continue to teach about the Battle of Plassey, the old textbook explains how trade led to battles through conflicts between the East India Company and the Nawabs after the death of Aurangazeb. The role of nawabs and their resistance has also been reduced as teachings in the new OF RULERS OF MYSORE - TIPU SULTAN AND HAIDER ALIAfter the changes in the history of Mughal rule in India, there is the complete omission of Tipu Sultan, son of Haider Ali, rulers of Mysore and the four Anglo–Mysore Wars—sections that were prominently featured in the previous earlier NCERT social science textbook 'Our Pasts- III , a section explained how the expansion of the East India Company's rule from 1757 to 1857 faced tough resistance from the rulers of Mysore — under Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan, 'the Tiger of Mysore'. Tipu Sultan was portrayed as a significant figure of resistance against British colonial expansion in South India. His administrative reforms, and strategic alliances with the French were all integral parts of the narrative on colonial these elements are now conspicuously absent in the new edition, raising concerns about regional representation. While the new textbook retains coverage of other anti-colonial movements such as the Santhal and Kol rebellions and the Anglo–Maratha EXCERPT FROM THE OLD SOCIAL SCIENCE TEXTBOOKThe "Tiger of Mysore"The Company resorted to direct military confrontation when it saw a threat to its political or economic interests. This can be illustrated with the case of the southern Indian state of Mysore. Mysore had grown in strength under the leadership of powerful rulers like Haidar Ali (ruled from 1761 to 1782) and his famous son Tipu Sultan (ruled from 1782 to 1799). Mysore controlled the profitable trade of the Malabar coast where the Company purchased pepper and cardamom. advertisementIn 1785 Tipu Sultan stopped the export of sandalwood, pepper and cardamom through the ports of his kingdom, and disallowed local merchants from trading with the Company. He also established a close relationship with the French in India, and modernised his army with their help. The British were furious. They saw Haidar and Tipu as ambitious, arrogant and dangerous - rulers who had to be controlled and crushed. Four wars were fought with Mysore (1767-69, 1780-84, 1790-92 and 1799).Only in the last - the Battle of Seringapatam - did the Company ultimately win a victory. Tipu Sultan was killed defending his capital Seringapatam, Mysore was placed under the former ruling dynasty of the Wodeyars and a subsidiary alliance was imposed on the excerpt on Tipu Sultan reads:Kings are often surrounded by legend and their powers glorified through is a legend about Tipu Sultan who became the ruler of Mysore in 1782. It is said that once he went hunting in the forest with a French friend. There he came face to face with a tiger. His gun did not work and his dagger fell to the ground. He battled with the tiger unarmed until he managed to reach down and pick up the he was able to kill the tiger in the battle. After this he came to be known as the "Tiger of Mysore" had the image of the tiger on his educationists and students await Part 2, the debate over representation, regional history, and historical accuracy continues to intensify. NCERT officials have clarified that Part 2 of the textbook, which is yet to be released, may include some of the omitted material. However, no official confirmation or release date has been provided.- EndsMust Watch
Indian Express
13-07-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Inside Track: Maratha latecomers
Sitting in the safety of Delhi, away from Raj Thackeray's slap-happy goons, I admit ashamedly that although my formative years were spent largely in Mumbai, my Marathi remains rudimentary. I am not alone — just 36 per cent of people in the city consider Marathi their mother tongue. Yet, once again, there is a move to exhibit Marathi chauvinism by compelling residents of this cosmopolitan, multi-cultural metropolis to speak the same language as the rest of the state. The champions of 'speak only in Marathi', forget that Mumbai's history and heritage is distinct and different from the rest of Maharashtra. The Marathi manoos are actually relatively late migrants to Mumbai and the city precedes the state. The original inhabitants of the islands were Koli fisherfolk and Aagri farmers from the Konkan. Portuguese missionaries converted some locals to Catholicism who were latter dubbed 'East Indians', since they worked for the East India company. The Portuguese seized the seven islands of Mumbai from the Gujarat ruler Bahadur Shah in 1534 AD, but shortsightedly handed it over to the British in 1668 as part of the dowry of their princess, Catherine de Braganza. The Parsis arrived in Mumbai from Gujarat and dominated during the city's early history. In 1750, they built Asia's first dry port. Many of the landmark heritage buildings, statues and seminal institutions in the city have Parsi origins. For over a decade after Independence, Gujarat and Maharashtra were part of Bombay state, as Prime Minister Nehru was reluctant to split the state along linguistic lines. But pressure mounted from both Maharashtra and Gujarat. The real dispute was over who would retain Mumbai. The Gujaratis believed they had an equal claim since the population of Gujaratis and Maharashtrians in the city was approximately equal. But after the bifurcation of Bombay state in 1960, the city became part of Maharashtra. Marathi speakers, however, never succeeded in dominating the city's ethos, which reflects India's plurality. Mumbai attracts people from all over, not just for job opportunities but because of its vibrancy, urbane outlook and Bollywood. Today the number of north Indians from UP, Bihar and MP probably equals the native Marathi speakers. There are a sizable numbers of Gujaratis, Goans Punjabis, South Indians and Sindhis as well. If I never learnt to speak Marathi fluently in my childhood, it was because then there was no impetus to do so. In those days, Gujarati was the lingua franca in the courts, Dalal Street and the business world; even household helps came from Goa or Gujarat. In school, I was exempted from studying Marathi because my father was in a transferable government job. In later years, the pressure to learn Marathi increased. My sister, a lecturer in a Mumbai government college, had per force to learn Marathi in her middle age as her salary increments were blocked until she passed the language exam. In the rest of Maharashtra, where people speak only in Marathi, knowing the language is essential. My parents, grandparents and even anglicised cousins from Pune spoke fluent Marathi. So do traders and shopkeepers from Gujarat and Rajasthan who have settled in the state for generations. Language is a matter of convenience and choice, not to be exploited for grandstanding and political gain. The Thackeray cousins have raised the 'speak only in Marathi issue' to woo the sizable Marathi vote bank as the long-delayed BMC poll is finally likely to be held. The opposition Sena eagerly seized the opportunity when CM Devendra Fadnavis misguidedly sought to introduce Hindi at the junior level in schools as part of the three-language formula. (Fadnavis has since withdrawn the order.) The various Shiv Senas should remember that founder Bal Thackeray never made speaking Marathi in Mumbai part of his agenda. Whenever I interviewed him, he was happy to speak to me in English. Thackeray's original platform was that Marathi speakers get a fair deal in employment in the city since South Indians, because of their superior English language skills, were appropriating a disproportionate share of jobs. Only later did North Indians and Muslims become Sena targets. Just as it is ill-advised to force Mumbaikars to speak Marathi, it is equally short-sighted to push Hindi on a reluctant southern populace. Less than 43 per cent of India speak Hindi as their mother tongue. While it is politically in vogue today for the ruling party leaders to denounce speaking in English as a colonial hangover, for most Indians, particularly in cities, English remains the language of aspiration and ambition. Nearly all my domestic helps have informed me proudly that they work for the extra income so that that they can send their children to private English-medium schools and pay tuition fees. For our politicians, the overwhelming majority of whom send their own offspring to English-speaking institutions, to rail against English is hypocritical.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
India's colonial past revealed through 200 masterful paintings
Founded in 1600 as a trading enterprise, the English East India company gradually transformed into a colonial power. By the late 18th Century, as it tightened its grip on India, company officials began commissioning Indian artists - many formerly employed by the Mughals - to create striking visual records of the land they were now ruling. A Treasury of Life: Indian Company Paintings, c. 1790 to 1835, an ongoing show in the Indian capital put together by Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), features over 200 works that once lay on the margins of mainstream art history. It is India's largest exhibition of company paintings, highlighting their rich diversity and the skill of Indian artists. Painted by largely unnamed artists, these paintings covered a wide range of subjects, but mainly fall into three categories: natural history, like botanical studies; architecture, including monuments and scenic views of towns and landscapes; and Indian manners and customs. "The focus on these three subject areas reflects European engagements with their Indian environment in an attempt to come to terms with all that was unfamiliar to Western eyes," says Giles Tillotson of DAG, who curated the show. "Europeans living in India were delighted to encounter flora and fauna that were new to them, and ancient buildings in exotic styles. They met – or at least observed – multitudes of people whose dress and habits were strange but – as they began to discern – were linked to stream of religious belief and social practice." Beyond natural history, India's architectural heritage captivated European visitors. Before photography, paintings were the best way to document travels, and iconic Mughal monuments became prime subjects. Patrons soon turned to skilled local artists. Beyond the Taj Mahal, popular subjects included Agra Fort, Jama Masjid, Buland Darwaza, Sheikh Salim Chishti's tomb at Fatehpur Sikri (above), and Delhi's Qutub Minar and Humayun's Tomb. The once-obscure and long-anonymous Indian artist Sita Ram, who painted the tomb, was one of them. From June 1814 to early October 1815, Sita Ram travelled extensively with Francis Rawdon, also known as the Marquess of Hastings, who had been appointed as the governor general in India in 1813 and held the position for a decade. (He is not to be confused with Warren Hastings, who served as India's first governor general much earlier.) The largest group in this collection is a set of botanical watercolours, likely from Murshidabad or Maidapur (in present-day West Bengal). While Murshidabad was the Nawab of Bengal's capital, the East India Company operated there. In the late 18th century, nearby Maidapur briefly served as a British base before Calcutta's (now Kolkata) rise eclipsed it. Originally part of the Louisa Parlby Album - named after the British woman who compiled it while her husband, Colonel James Parlby, served in Bengal - the works likely date to the late 18th Century, before Louisa's return to Britain in 1801. "The plants represented in the paintings are likely quite illustrative of what could be found growing in both the well-appointed gardens as well as the more marginal spaces of common greens, waysides and fields in the Murshidabad area during the late eighteenth century," writes Nicolas Roth of Harvard University. "These are familiar plants, domestic and domesticated, which helped constitute local life worlds and systems of meaning, even as European patrons may have seen them mainly as exotica to be collected." Another painting from the collection is of a temple procession showing a Shiva statue on an ornate platform carried by men, flanked by Brahmins and trumpeters. At the front, dancers with sticks perform under a temporary gateway, while holy water is poured on them from above. Labeled Ouricaty Tirounal, it depicts a ritual from Thirunallar temple in Karaikal in southern India, capturing a rare moment from a 200-year-old tradition. By the late 18th Century, company paintings had become true collaborations between European patrons and Indian artists. Art historian Mildred Archer called them a "fascinating record of Indian social life," blending the fine detail of Mughal miniatures with European realism and perspective. Regional styles added richness - Tanjore artists, for example, depicted people of various castes, shown with tools of their trade. These albums captured a range of professions - nautch girls, judges, sepoys, toddy tappers, and snake charmers. "They catered to British curiosity while satisfying European audience's fascination with the 'exoticism' of Indian life," says Kanupriya Sharma of DAG. Most studies of company painting focus on British patronage, but in south India, the French were commissioning Indian artists as early as 1727. A striking example is a set of 48 paintings from Pondicherry - uniform in size and style - showing the kind of work French collectors sought by 1800. One painting (above) shows 10 men in hats and loincloths rowing through surf. A French caption calls them nageurs (swimmers) and the boat a chilingue. Among the standout images are two vivid scenes by an artist known as B, depicting boatmen navigating the rough Coromandel coast in stitched-plank rowboats. With no safe harbours near Madras or Pondicherry, these skilled oarsmen were vital to European trade, ferrying goods and people through dangerous surf between anchored ships and the shore. Company paintings often featured natural history studies, portraying birds, animals, and plants - especially from private menageries. As seen in the DAG show, these subjects are typically shown life-size against plain white backgrounds, with minimal surroundings - just the occasional patch of grass. The focus remains firmly on the species itself. Ashish Anand, CEO of DAG says the the latest show proposes company paintings as the "starting point of Indian modernism". Anand says this "was the moment when Indian artists who had trained in courtly ateliers first moved outside the court (and the temple) to work for new patrons". "The agendas of those patrons were not tied up with courtly or religious concerns; they were founded on scientific enquiry and observation," he says. "Never mind that the patrons were foreigners. What should strike us now is how Indian artists responded to their demands, creating entirely new templates of Indian art."
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Business Standard
28-04-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
AGMs: Where are the shareholders despite a surge in investor base?
While the number of shareholders continues to rise, investor participation in annual general meetings has been steadily declining Premium Amit Tandon Listen to This Article Writing about the East India Company in the 1700s, Nick Robins in his book The Corporation That Changed the World wrote that 'the (East India) Company operated as a limited property-based democracy that was run for and by its shareholders……(The) Company's shareholders had to have £500 of nominal stock before they could vote either in the quarterly meetings of the Court of Proprietors held in March, June, September, and December, or at the annual meeting in April. This was the high point in the Company's calendar, when over a thousand shareholders would gather to elect a slate of 24 directors.'
The Guardian
21-04-2025
- The Guardian
Rex Cowan obituary
In 1967, Rex Cowan, who has died aged 97, visited the Isles of Scilly. There he saw divers exploring HMS Association, a warship that had sunk in 1707. He had already left his unsatisfying practice as a criminal law solicitor, and this experience set him on course to become a shipwreck explorer. Doing so would be a bold move, as he and his wife Zélide (nee Teague), whom he had married in 1960, had three daughters. But it was Zélide who challenged him to go through with the idea when, in an antiquarian bookshop, she chanced upon the story of Hollandia, a Dutch East Indiaman that had disappeared near Scilly in 1743 on its maiden voyage to Indonesia, carrying an enormous cargo of silver. While Zélide combed archives for clues about the lost ship, Cowan hired a team of divers and, not a diver himself, directed searches in the sea. He also struck a deal with the Dutch finance ministry to share the proceeds should he find the vessel. By 1971 he was almost broke, but using a proton magnetometer, a device that could detect hidden metals, enabled him to uncover the Hollandia. The resulting archaeological project lasted for more than a decade, at the start of which Cowan had to contend with rogue divers who were also looking for the ship's booty. Secrecy was vital. Silver coins brought up from the seabed – ultimately 60,000 – were hidden in bins in the Cowans' bedroom. His boat was set on fire and the brake cables of his car were cut. When news of Hollandia's discovery finally became public, he found himself at the centre of a media storm. Cowan was not motivated merely by money. To him a shipwreck was a time capsule trapped on the seabed, much as Pompeii had been trapped in ash. So he recruited reputable archaeologists, Peter Marsden and Howard Pell, to make exhaustive records of every object brought up from Hollandia – personal possessions and ship's fittings as well as coins. He loved the detective work that revealed human stories: a tale of disappointed love in a medallion, or a sealed jar of Dutch anchovies destined for homesick colonials across the world. Many of Cowan's coins were sold, prompting criticism from some archaeologists at this commodification of the past. But money was needed to finance expeditions. With each new discovery – the Prinses Maria in Scilly in 1973, the Svecia off Orkney in 1975, the Vliegend Hart near the Netherlands in 1981 – his reputation grew. His discoveries offered remarkable insights into the ships, crews and cargoes of the Dutch East India company, the greatest seaborne empire of its day. An exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, home to the paintings of the Dutch golden age in Amsterdam, was followed by a permanent gallery. In 1992 he was made a knight of the Orange order. In the UK, Cowan served on the Advisory Committee on Historic Wrecks for more than 20 years. But his relationship with British institutions was complicated. He struggled to find museum homes for his finds, and opposed Unesco's 2001 Convention on Underwater Cultural Heritage, which he believed marked the death knell for underwater archaeology. His colourful style went out of fashion, although he successfully sued one newspaper for calling him a 'treasure hunter'. Born in Golders Green, north London, Rex was the son of Fay (nee Rosenbloom) and Sam Cowan, who ran a toy import company. Their own parents were Jewish émigrés from Poland. His education at University College school was interrupted in 1940, when he and his sister, Anita, were evacuated to the US. Having crossed the Atlantic in a convoy, they lived in New York and then Hollywood with mother and daughter cousins – one a Broadway violinist, the other a writer of pulp fiction. Life was precarious, but those American years opened horizons. After service in the RAF, Cowan studied law at King's College London, and in 1957 won a Fulbright fellowship to study juvenile delinquency at the University of Southern California. A strong sense of social justice marked his legal career. As a solicitor he became known for offering pro bono advice to vulnerable people. In the 60s he co-founded the Brent (later London) Youth Advisory Centre, a drop-in clinic where young people could get free counselling and sexual health support, and he was a committed magistrate, and later chairperson, in a London juvenile court. He and Zélide even turned their home in Hampstead into a refuge for single pregnant women at a time when society's judgment was damning. He wrote several books. A Century of Images: Photographs by the Gibson Family (1997) provides a commentary on remarkable old photos of Scilly and Cornish wrecks. The Pirate King: The Strange Adventures of Henry Avery and the Birth of the Golden Age of Piracy (2024), written with Sean Kingsley, puts forward a theory about an audacious pirate who disappeared. He also produced TV documentaries. Chaos (1988), in Channel 4's Equinox series, explored how seemingly chaotic events in, for instance, the weather are governed by simple principles. For the BBC, The Young Ambassadors (1989) told the story of British schoolchildren evacuated across the Atlantic during the second world war, with narration by Cowan's fellow evacuee Claire Bloom. Zélide died in 2018. Cowan is survived by his long-term partner, the former Channel 4 and BBC radio executive Liz Forgan, his children, Alexandra, Juliet and Annie, and his sister. Rex Braham Cowan, shipwreck explorer, born 16 June 1927; died 9 March 2025
