Showing posts with label Colonialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Colonialism. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 27

Three Mysore Princesses

I recently saw this painting last Friday at the Tate Britain at the artist and empire exhibition, son. And I kept looking at it. It's an extraordinary painting not least because the painter has captured the Royal imperial state of all the three girls but also the hugely expensive and rich golden ornaments. I was quite taken by the girls. 

But then I read the background to the painting and it was even more interesting. Smallpox is a terrible terrible disease son. It used to kill indiscriminately across vast swathes of the world and those it soared, it would disfigured them horrendously. Look up the wiki entry for smallpox and you'll see why it's such a terrible disease. 

So it was good to read that the Brits actually tried to do something about smallpox. And these girls were obviously brave to sit for the painting as well as take the vaccination. Bravo! 

Hope you're enjoying yourself son. 

Love

Baba




Thomas Hickey
1741-1824 | lot | Sotheby's
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2007/important-british-paintings-l07122/lot.45.html
(via Instapaper)

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THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

Thomas Hickey
1741-1824
PORTRAIT OF THREE PRINCESSES FROM MYSORE
Estimate
400,000 — 600,000
Image Zoom

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

Thomas Hickey
1741-1824
PORTRAIT OF THREE PRINCESSES FROM MYSORE
Estimate
400,000 — 600,000

Details & Cataloguing

Now
Important British Paintings

|
London

Thomas Hickey
1741-1824
1741-1824
PORTRAIT OF THREE PRINCESSES FROM MYSORE
oil on canvas
124 by 100 cm., 48¾ by 39¼ in.

Provenance

Alfred Davey, Bedford, his sale in these rooms, 29th January 1930, lot 58 (as by Zoffany) bt. by the father of the present owner

Exhibited

Victorian and Albert Museum, India Observed, India as viewed by British Artists1760-1860, 1982, no. 22;
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, In the Public Eye, 1991, no. 95, fig.1

Literature

Mildred Archer, India and British Portraiture, 1770-1825, 1979, p. 204, plate 126;
Nigel Chancellor, 'A Picture of Health: The Dilemma of Gender and Status in the Iconography of Empire', Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 35, 2001, pp. 769-782

Catalogue Note

This important portrait showing three Royal women from the Court of Mysore in Southern India was painted by Thomas Hickey in circa. 1805. Not only is it one of the finest portraits of an Indian subject by a Western artist during the period of British rule, but it also shows a remarkable understanding of the sitters and of classical Indian symbolism.

Hickey was unusual amongst the British artists who went to India to find work in that he can almost be said to have adopted India as his own country. His initial attempt to reach Calcutta failed as his vessel was captured in August 1780 by the French and Spanish fleets. Hickey made the best of his predicament by settling for a few years in Lisbon, where he found plenty of demand for his work as a portrait painter. His namesake, William Hickey noted that he 'had painted most of the English ladies and gentlemen and was then engaged upon the portraits of several Portuguese of rank'. Notable amongst his sitters was the Bengal Court Servant, John George Livius, who was painted in 1782 on his way back from India. Hickey finally reached Calcutta in 1784.

His neatly painted, small scale portraits of British officers soon proved popular, but particularly notable was Hickey's extraordinary ability to paint native sitters with particular sympathy and understanding. In Laurence Sullivan and his ayah of c. 1785 (Henderson Collection), the beautiful young Ayah is painted with particular subtlety, and the Indian Lady of 1787 (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) probably depicts Jemdanee, the bibi of his friend, William Hickey, who is shown to be a woman of rare beauty. Most of Hickey's final years in India were spent in Madras and the first important work which he did there was to paint a series of portraits of Indian princes and courtiers, including Krishnaraja Wadiyar III, the young Raja of Mysore and the wiley Purniya, his Brahmin chief minister. In 1804 Hickey submitted a memorandum suggesting that he should be made 'historical portrait painter to the Hon. East India Company', apparently in response to a wish by the company that information he provided by the various Presidencies to assist with 'a general History of the British affairs in the East Indies'.

It is in this context that Hickey painted this masterpiece. When it was first acquired in 1930 the sitters were described as 'India Princesses' and the picture was said to have been painted by Zoffany, undoubtedly the most celebrated of the Western artists who settled in India to ply their trade. In her important book on India and British Portraiture published in 1979, Dr Mildred Archer correctly reattributed the portrait to Hickey and suggested that the rich jewellery and the composition of this intimate portrait meant that they were 'either temple dancing-girls or experienced courtesans'.

In 1999 the portrait was lent to a loan exhibition at the FitzWilliam Museum in Cambridge where it was seen by Dr Nigel Chancellor who published in 2001 some interesting and thought-provoking theories about the portrait which makes it clear that it has considerably greater significance than had first appeared.

Dr Chancellor pointed out that the assumption that three such ladies with such sumptuous jewellery and such apparent self confidence had to be courtesans was a common, conventional European assessment. Portraits of well born ladies were understandably rare as most would be married and thus confined to purdah, and there would certainly have been a resistance to showing such women as wives from a polygamous society. However the lack of a temple and the failure of the artist to depict the sitter's lower limbs and feet made the idea that they were 'temple dancing girls' highly unlikely – Tilly Kettle's well known picture of An Indian Dancing Girl with a Hookah was an altogether different subject. The opulent jewellery on closer inspection led away from the idea that the ladies were courtesans. The heavy gold sleeve bangles were, as Dr Chancellor points out, one of the defining emblems for women of the Arasu royal clan, and the splendid head-dresses with their distinctive triangular patta on the foreheads established the women as pattaranis or queens who have been crowned as wives of a Raja. The woman on the right of the group is shown with prominent crescent moons on one side of the central band of her head-dress, a reference to the mythical origins of the Mysore Wadiyars (the ancient Hindu dynasty recently restored to power by the British). Dr Chancellor concludes that the portrait probably includes two Mysorean queens, the lady on the left being Rani Devajammani, the Raja's senior wife, and the lady on the right Devajammani of Lakshmivilas Sannidhana, the junior queen who was close in age to the young Raja. The more relaxed lady in the centre resembles Hickey's portrait of the young Raja mentioned earlier and is probably one of the Raja's royal sisters.

The existence of such a rare portrait is explained by the arrival in India at the beginning of the century of the first vaccines against smallpox. Lord William Bentinck, governor of Madras, was anxious to promote its benefits and Mark Wilkes, Resident at the Court of Mysore, was instructed to do all he could to persuade people of its benefits. He was supported by the Raja's minister, Purnaiya (whom Hickey had painted) and most importantly, by Rami Lakshmi Ammani, queen of the old Wadiyar ruler of Mysore and grandmother of the Raja's senior queen. As her husband had died of smallpox she was particularly keen to support vaccination. All this coincided with the betrothal of the young Devajammani, a girl without the dreaded disease, to the young Raja. Her willingness to have the new vaccine was announced in Madras in July 1806. In Hickey's portrait not only is she shown in a white sari with a beautiful unblemished complexion, but she is holding her sari to present her left arm and the sleeve of her bodice indication where the vaccine would be performed, something which a European doctor could do without compromising the modesty of an Indian woman.

Suggested Lots

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Important British Paintings

|
London

Condition Report

45

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

Thomas Hickey
1741-1824
PORTRAIT OF THREE PRINCESSES FROM MYSORE
PORTRAIT OF THREE PRINCESSES FROM MYSORE
oil on canvas
124 by 100 cm., 48¾ by 39¼ in.
Estimate 400,000 — 600,000

This painting would appear to be in generally very good condition. The canvas has been lined. However, there are no apparent tears or damages, and the work would appear to be in good structural condition. There is some craquelure to the paint surface, but this is characteristic for a painting of this age. There is some good remaining impasto on the sitters' jewellery. Examination under ultraviolet light reveals a thick varnish which obscures a clear reading. However, there would appear to be some evidence of a couple of minor areas of retouching in the lower right hand corner of the composition, as well as some retouchings to the edges of the canvas. There is evidence of some older retouchings in the sitters' costumes, but the varnish layer is uneven and hard to penetrate. Held in a plaster gilt and wood frame.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

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Friday, April 10

The British and their pen

Some maps which show the very long term implications of the British and their blasted pens.

Durand_line_crop[1]

The Durand Line

sykes_picot_by_FT[1]

The Sykes Picot Treaty line.

asianbordmap1[1]

The McMahon Line in East India. There are debates about loads of little pockets between India and Bangladesh.

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Monday, March 2

India and the great divergence: An Anglo-Indian comparison of GDP per capita, 1600–1871

quite an interesting paper.

Estimates of Indian GDP are constructed from the output side for 1600–1871, and combined with population data. Indian per capita GDP declined steadily during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before stabilising during the nineteenth century. As British growth increased from the mid-seventeenth century, India fell increasingly behind. Whereas in 1600, Indian per capita GDP was over 60% of the British level, by 1871 it had fallen to less than 15%. These estimates place the origins of the Great Divergence firmly in the early modern period, but also suggest a relatively prosperous India at the height of the Mughal Empire. They also suggest a period of “strong” deindustrialisation during the first three decades of the nineteenth century, with a small decline of industrial output rather than just a declining share of industry in economic activity.

Some of the interesting findings of this paper show that India was already much further behind the west even around the 17th century. So the idea that India was very rich and powerful before the Brits came in is not really held up based upon this rather comprehensive survey.

1-s2.0-S0014498314000187-gr1[1]

Its very difficult to compare properly, look at how 2 studies differ.

1-s2.0-S0014498314000187-gr2[1]

Let me quote the final paragraph, which is worthy of attention, because elements of this still exist..

This paper has set out to document what happened, and explaining these developments is clearly the subject of another paper. Nevertheless, it is worth making some final concluding comments in this area. First, India shared the pattern of declining GDP per capita during this period with China, although the decline started from a higher level and occurred at a faster rate in China (Broadberry et al., 2014a and Broadberry et al., 2014b). Second, in India, as in China, the decline was driven mainly by what happened in agriculture, with the growth of population outstripping the growth of the cultivated area, and crop yields rising insufficiently to offset the decline in cultivated acreage per head. Third, in common with most of the world at this time, and in strong contrast to Britain and Holland, Indian workers remained on the land, with negative consequences for agricultural labour productivity and the relative size of the industrial and service sectors. Fourth, again in common with much of the rest of the world at this time, India lacked the state institutions needed to underpin the investment and innovation which allowed Britain and Holland to break out of the Malthusian trap, allowing both population and per capita incomes to increase (Parthasarathi, 2011 and Broadberry, 2013). Fifth, although India's decline continued during the colonial period, it had already started during the Mughal Empire, and so cannot be attributed solely to colonialism. This conclusion is reinforced by the more rapid decline of China.

State Institutions! key, key, key! one of the major reasons why India has managed to be fairly successful going forward post independence compared to other countries who came out of colonial stage in the post WW2 era. The institutions were strong, although they are creaking a bit.

Secondly, I hope the United Kingdom understands the sheer weight of its history. So yes, the Mughals and others were crap at ruling India. But what’s the UK’s excuse? it had institutions, democracy, liberalism. At a time Queen Victoria was presiding over the greatest empire, it was hugely damaging India. It experienced an absolute decline of industrial output during the first 2 decades of the last century.

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Thursday, January 8

Book review Socrates in an Indian village

This is a bit of an old book. Dating back to 1928. Written by F C Brayne, MC, ICS. He was the deputy commissioner of Gurgaon district in Punjab. It has a foreword by Lord Irwin who was the then Viceroy and Governor General of India.

It's a collection of so called verbatim transcripts of what the author (who calls himself as Socrates - an old man whose very blunt in pointing out problems and issues) has in terms of conversations with villagers in Gurgaon district in the post World War 1 era.

By about the middle of the book, it becomes repetitive. But each conversation goes something like this. Socrates leads the villagers through a series of questions and leads them to understand that they have to stop shitting everywhere. They have to build toilets. They have to have better irrigation. Use better seeds. Use farm finance. Form cooperatives. Educate women. Educate girls. Have better health. Live in clean houses and surroundings. Wash often. Stop stupid spending on jewellery and weddings.

He frequently refers to old retired ex-servicemen who were part of the British army during world war 1 and saw action and life in Europe and Mesopotamia and other places. And why they lose all that discipline and cleanliness when they get home while they're wearing their ribbons and medals. Peacocks on dung heaps.

This is why I get thoroughly pissed with people who claim greatness in Indian history with mathematics and science and and and. All this whilst the current prime minister has to launch a frikking national campaign to clean India and construct and use toilets? This is why people look at such boasts of ancient knowledge sitting on top of dirty, unsanitary places as peacocks sitting on top of dung heaps.

This was written by a Britisher in 1928. And we Indians haven't yet learnt to keep things clean. And do basic hygiene factors. Or educate women. Or have toilets.

Here's a sample chapter from here. Full text available here.

Read. If you're a true Indian patriot, you will weep and resolve to do something. If you are a peacock on a dung heap, you will ignore this or get angry at me or this Britisher. 

A HOLY WAR 

SOCRATES went to the chaupal, as usual, and found it full of 
ex-officers and ex-soldiers, all smartly got up with uniform and 
medals, and looking very proud and gay. 

SOCRATES : Good morning, gentlemen, how smart you all are 
to-day. Do you know what you remind me of most ? 

EX-OFFICERS : What, Socrates ? 

SOCRATES : Peacocks sitting on a muck heap. 

EX-OFFICERS: You are pretty rude this morning, Socrates; 
why are you pleased to make such an insulting comparison, old 
man? 

SOCRATES : Well, you are beautifully dressed and covered with 
medals, but your village is filthy. 

EX-OFFICERS: That is unfortunately true, but anyway you 
will admit that even your own comparison shows that what you 
describe is natural. 

SOCRATES : Oh, is it ? Did the peacocks make the muck heap ? 

EX-OFFICERS: No. 

SOCRATES : And aren't you all responsible for the dirty state 
of your village ? 

EX-OFFICERS : We suppose we are, to some extent. 

SOCRATES : Anyway,' what is happening is it a wedding or a 
garden party, or what ? 

SUBEDAR-MAJOR : x Hardly a garden party here, Socrates! 
We don't keep gardens in villages. 

SOCRATES : Then where do your wives take their little babies 
for air and exercise in the afternoon ? 

SUBEDAR-MAJOR : Nowhere, of course. What an idea ! 

SOCRATES : But surely a Subedar-Major's wife is as smart and 
dean and enlightened as a Subedar-Major ? Surely she doesn't 
live in darkness and squalor, the same as the rest of the village ? 

SUBEDAR-MAJOR : She lives in just the same way as all the 
rest of the village women. 

1 The senior Indian commissioned officer of an infantry battalion. 



46 Socrates in an Indian Village 

SOCRATES : Then all the training and uplift of army life was 
wasted on you, Subedar-Major Sahib, if you are content to drop 
back into the old ways, shed your enlightenment with your 
uniform, and forget all you ever learnt ? 

SUBBDAR-MAJOR : What would you have us do, Socrates? 
You've always got some strange new fashions for us. 

SOCRATES : Why, I should expect you ex-officers to bring 
back with you a little light and culture into the villages, to make 
your houses models of comfort and hygiene, and make gardens for 
your wives and children to enjoy. 

SUBEDAR-MAJOR : That sounds attractive, Socrates, and we 
have the means, but we seem unable to combine and no one will 
take the lead. 

SOCRATES : The old story, I fear. We can always combine 
for evil, and there are always leaders to come forward to lead us 
to mischief, but we can never combine for good, and no leaders 
will ever come forward to set an example in good things. 

SUBEDAR-MAJOR : That is so, Socrates, and always has been. 

SOCRATES : Then we must try and alter it. Let's make a 
start by starting a sort of ex-officers' club in our village, put 
together a little money, and make a small garden for the women 
and children to sit in ; and let us find out and practise all the 
various ways there are of improving village life. We are not 
poor, and many of the new things will bring in money 
too, such as good seed, iron ploughs, Persian wheels, and so on. 
The other things that reduce dirt and disease will cost nothing, and, 
by saving the time now wasted in bed with fever, we may save 
money too. Anyway, let's have a try. 

SUBEDAR-MAJOR : Very well, Socrates ; we will make a start 
and see if we cannot lead the village in peace as we led our braves 
in war. 
and this is why I spit on these people who go about proclaiming the glories of ancient civilisation while being stupid to their women. 
HONOUR YOUR WOMEN 

SOCRATES came into the chaupal 1 in a very cheerful mood, 
chuckling to himself, and the village elders were so surprised to 
see him in such an unusual vein that they hardly knew how to 
address him. 

VILLAGERS : Good morning, Socrates, What has happened, 
old worthy ? Have you found a clean village or a child without 
dirt and ornaments, or an educated village woman, or what ? 

SOCRATES : No, brothers, far from it ; I have got into awful 
trouble' this morning (and he chuckled again). 

VILLAGERS : Do let us share y - ar mirth, old man. We suffer 
from your wrath so often, it is but fair wr should share your very 
occasional laughter. 

SOCRATES : Very well (laughing out loud). I will tell you all 
about it, but promise you won't be angry when you hear. 

VILLAGERS : No, Socrates ; we will not spoil your pleasure by 
getting angry, whatever you may say this time. 

SOCRATES : Well, it was like this : I met a political gentle- 
man and we fell to discussing things, and all went well till he 
said, with rising indignation and repeated expressions of wrath 
and bitterness, that ' our India, with its ancient civilization and 
culture, is not respected as she should be in the world.' I 
foolishly burst out laughing, and this made memberji 2 still more 
angry, and he turned on me and abused me too, as well as the rest 
of the world. 

1 Sorry/ I said, * memberji, but I can't help laughing at such 
an astounding statement/ 

'Why? 'he said. ,, 

1 Why, how can you expect the rest of the world to respect 
you when you don't respect yourselves ? ' and I laughed again. 
' Oh, you refer to the untouchables/ he said with sarcasm ; * that's 
an old story and not half as important as you make out' * No, 

1 Common meeting place in village. 

2 Mi, 1 used alone or as an enclitic, signifying respect. 



34 Socrates in an Indian Village 

I don't refer to the untouchables/ I said, 'though they are 
bad enough and quite sufficient to make us all hang our heads 
in shame/ ' Then what do you refer to ? ' he said. ' Well/ I said, 
4 half the population is female, isn't it ? ' ' Yes/ he said, ' of course 
it is/ ' And all the men are born of women ? ' ' Yes/ he said, 
' why ask such foolish questions ? ' ' Well, then/ I said, ' until you 
treat women with respect, and while you pay more respect to 
cattle than to women, how can you be said to be respecting your- 
selves, and how can you expect other people to respect you ? ' 
Memberji got so angry and abusive then, and started talking 
so loudly about ancient civilizations and so on, that I hurried 
away. 

' We don't find it as easy to laugh as you seem to, Socrates/ 
said a young villager rather stiffly. ' Perhaps you'll explain a 
bit more ? ' 

So*-* \ then, if a man kills a cow there will be a riot ? 

very likely. 

.^an treats his wife so badly that she commits 
*# or runs away, will there be a riot ? 

. ^LAGERS : Certainly not ; we shall sympathize with him 
and attend his wedding when he gets another wife. 

SOCRATES : When your cow is going to calve whom do you 
call? 

VILLAGERS : A sensible zamindar, of course. 

SOCRATES : When your wife is going to have a baby whom 
do you send for ? 

VILLAGERS : The sweeper's wife, or the Chumar's. 

SOCRATES: The lowest and dirtiest class of woman in the 
village? 

Vv ^AGERS : Yes, that is so. 

* : - * "" And you reserve the darkest room and the 
/ent ? 

with all your boast of purdah and so on, you 
make no ^ Agements for women and compel them to suffer 

agonies of discon^rt waiting for night to come, so that they may 
prowl about outside the village, or else seek with shame some 
hiding place by day. They are liable to be disturbed both by day 
and by night, and have to shiA about like frightened dogs. 



ffonour Your Women 35 

VILLAGERS : That is correct, Socrates. You have discovered 
and shown up a very bad custom of ours. 

SOCRATES : And that is why a bastard is called a ' get gatwar 
kabacha?' 1 

VILLAGERS : That is probably so. 

SOCRATES : And you make no attempt to bring up the girls 
properly or educate them ? 

VILLAGERS : Hardly any. 

SOCRATES: When a girl is born you sympathize with the 
father ? 

VILLAGERS: Yes. 

SOCRATES : In fact, the girls have such a hard life in their 
infancy and childhood that more girls die than boys, though the 
doctors all say that girls are easier to keep alive than boys. 

VILLAGERS : Yes, I am afraid we do neglect our girls. 

SOCRATES : And you marry them in childhood, before they 
know anything about housekeeping, or domestic science, or how 
to bring up children or look after their husbands, and you force 
them to bear children while they should be still at school and 
developing their minds and bodies by learning and by playing. 

VILLAGERS : All this is true, Socrates, of many of us, and some 
of it is true of all of us. 

SOCRATES : And many of you lock your women up all their 
lives ? 

VILLAGERS : Yes, some of us observe purdah. 

SOCRATES : And many who do not observe purdah lock up 
their womenfolk as soon as they get a little money or a little 
education ? 

VILLAGERS : Yes, that is the custom, too. * 

SOCRATES: And the women do all the drudgery as well as 
bringing up the children, and the men sit by and smoke ? 

VILLAGERS : Yes, that is largely true, too. 

SOCRATES : And if your wife only bears you daughters you 
blame her and are unkind to her, and finally replace her by another 
woman ? 

VILLAGERS : That is often true, too. 

SOCRATES : And it is the women who have to nurse the sick 

1 A child of the farmyard. 



36 Socrates in an Indian Village 

and ailing children and see them die, all because of the filth and 
squalor you live in and the ignorance of the women as to how to 
bring up children and how to avoid simple diseases like smallpox, 
etc.? 

VILLAGERS : Yes, Socrates, we plead guilty. 

SOCRATES : And if you roused yourselves and improved your 
conditions of life, half the disease would disappear ? 

VILLAGERS : Yes, we believe it would. 

SOCRATES : And if you educated your girls, and did not marry 
them till they were educated and fully grown up, they would 
know how to bring up children and would avoid all the usual 
ailments that kill your children, and would be saved all the 
sorrow and trouble of tending sick children and seeing them die 
one after the other. 

VILLAGERS : Your charges are only too true, old man. 

SOCRATES : Would a woman who knew the value of vaccina- 
tion hide her baby when the vaccinator came ? 

VILLAGERS : Never ; the mother loves her baby far more than 
the father, and would never allow it to have smallpox if she 
really understood the value of vaccination. 

SOCRATES : Then when I said you do not respect your women 
and you reverence them less than you do your cattle, I am not 
far from the truth ? 

VILLAGERS : We fear you are absolutely true, Socrates. 

SOCRATES : And mark my words, O zamindars. As soon as 
you treat your women as the equals of men, honour and reverence 
them, bring them up properly and regard them as the equal part- 
ners of your homes and hearths, and not as God-given drudges to 
be knocked about, bullied and treated as slaves, so soon will you 
have bright, healthy homes, and so soon will you receive the respect 
of the whole world.
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Thursday, March 13

Wavell and the Dying Days of the Raj: Britain's Penultimate Viceroy in India

Kannu

We walked about in sunny old Delhi. The city where one set of imperialists and colonisers, the Mughals, were overthrown by the next lot, The British. 

And after the divide and rule policy, the British desperately tried to keep India together. And then whilst Gandhi spoke for all Indians, Jinnah and Ambedkar, ironically all liberal lawyers blessed with some of the greatest minds known to India in the recent years, along with Nehru, managed to bollox it all up. There's nothing that irritates people who claim to speak for narrow groups than to be faced with people who speak for all. So for example, if somebody bangs on about nationalism, if you wanted to wind them up, speak to them about children's rights. If somebody talks about religion, cut them off by talking women's rights. At end of the day, see the universal declaration of human rights. That's a good one to memorise and use as principles son. 

In the meantime, read about great men with feet of clay who ended up killing hundreds of thousands of people in the partition of India. You walked in those grounds son, yesterday, where millions were uprooted and in many cases killed for being in the wrong religion. Bah. 

Love

Baba

H-Net Reviews
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=37909

Mohammad Iqbal Chawla. Wavell and the Dying Days of the Raj: Britain's Penultimate Viceroy in India. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011. xi + 293 pp. $25.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-906275-1.

Reviewed by Anirudh Deshpande (Department of History, University of Delhi)
Published on H-Asia (January, 2014)
Commissioned by Sumit Guha

Wavell and the Ironies of India’s Partition in 1947

Lord Wavell was destined to be the second-to-last viceroy of British India. A seasoned British imperialist soldier and an Old India hand, he was appointed to the post in 1943 and remained in office until March 1947 when his flamboyant successor Lord Mountbatten took over. Mountbatten succeeded Wavell in order to supervise the liquidation of the Raj. For various reasons, including his dashing personality and an interesting wife, Mountbatten has managed to attract more than his share of attention from scholars. In contrast, Wavell, who tried in vain to keep India united between 1943 and 1947, is almost a forgotten figure of history.

No doubt, history students know much more about the Mountbatten Plan than the Wavell Plan. The public, in general, has forgotten Wavell and the plans that he devised for India in the twilight of the Raj. In this book, Mohammad Iqbal Chawla highlights Wavell’s plans, which became increasingly impossible to execute in communally charged postwar India. By the time Wavell became the viceroy of Britain’s most important colony, the sun had set on the British Empire. The two world wars exhausted Britain and made it financially and politically subservient to the United States. In 1943, Britain did not have the political, military, and financial means to ensure a smooth and peaceful transfer of power to the Indians in the troubled and anxiety-ridden 1940s. The appointment of a veteran soldier as the viceroy of India, after the Quit India rebellion was quelled by the Raj in 1942, failed to produce a negotiated political settlement between the British and various Indian parties.

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Monday, February 3

Language, literature, education and community: The Bengali Muslim woman in the early twentieth century

This was a fascinating article even if it left me a bit befuddled. What was the hypothesis and how did they manage to come to their conclusions? I quote the synopsis.

 The issue of women's empowerment has a long history. This article intends to trace the issue of women's empowerment in the area that now forms contemporary Bangladesh. In this regard, we have delved into the early part of the twentieth century to look into women's writing in numerous journals that were beginning to be published in that era. Looking into Muslim-edited journals, we look into how issues of women's education, writing and the place of women in society were being debated. In this process, we have laid special emphasis on women's writing, using the examples that we have cited as part of a new form of women's voices. What we discover about women's empowerment in this process is that it is a fraught issue, and there is no clear-cut or direct path that can be easily delineated. Early twentieth-century anti-colonial nation-making processes were indeed complex, and in the Bengal region, veered between emphasizing a Bengali as well as a Muslim identity. It is interesting to see how issues of language and the position of women coalesce to form a very exciting arena for researchers.Concentrating on literary writings by women in the early part of the twentieth century, this research is an effort to look into the construction of the modern Bengali Muslim woman, and the connections that can be drawn between the formation of this identity and the emergence of a notion of a Bengali nation. In broad outline, we will be debating the main contours of this nation — based as it is on religious, community and linguistic affiliations. Identity — both at the individual, or community/national level, remained, and remains fluid, as its various dimensions are foregrounded at different times. The nation is also being envisaged as an appendage to modernity, hence the lines that defined modernity at this point are also shifting, and the grounds that the envisaged modern nation occupies are continuously reformed and reconstituted.

foregrounded? eh?

But very interesting to learn about Bengali women writers at the beginning of the last century. Fascinating flowering of their own identity. The authors also navigate and bring out fascinating differences between the urban and rural, muslim and hindu, urdu and bengali speaking and the mixtures thereof.

An interesting paper but curiously left me unsatisfied. I would have liked the authors to have delved deeper into the mix and seen how the Bengali woman emerged, comparing the Hindu and Muslim woman, rather than taking a uni-dimensional perspective because I do believe that there would be a firmer and broader identity with the Bengali bit rather than the religious bit. Still some good references…

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