Lord Curzon Research Articles

Emergence of Communalism in Modern India: A Critical Analysis (1905-1992)

Throughout its history, India has been the target of a multitude of external aggressions, which have frequently resulted in initial confrontations between domestic forces and foreign aggressors. In India, the coexistence principle has played a significant role in the development of a multicultural and multiethnic society. However, the memory avenue remains scarred by the enduring effects of the violent conflict. Local communities, places of worship, and valuables were destroyed during the incessant conflict between regional regimes that opposed the expanding Mughal Empire prior to British colonization. Throughout this period, devout Hindus who harbored this resentment held in high regard monarchs who vehemently opposed the Islamic invaders. Following the British removal of Muslim authorities, the Muslim population, in conjunction with non-Muslim segments, extended a helping hand to the indigent and swore to defend India's independence. The sociological study of group dynamics exerted a significant impact on the political terrain of the Indian independence movement by fostering solidarity among individuals of various religious and racial affiliations who opposed the colonialists. Nevertheless, the British possessed knowledge of the religious and linguistic dichotomies that existed among the various communities in India, in addition to their extensive chronicle of internal turmoil and discord. Consequently, they devised the "divide and rule" strategy by specifically exploiting communal elements. At the behest of the authorities, the communal infection extensively permeated the Indian political system during the British colonial period. The Indian National Congress was established in 1885 in opposition to the British approach of fostering animosity between the Muslim and Hindu communities. In an effort to operate as a nationalist entity, the recently established organization solicited contributions from all sectors of Indian society and exerted diplomatic pressure on the government. Notwithstanding the Congress comprising leaders from both communities, a considerable number of Muslim leaders retained apprehensions concerning the impact of Hindu leaders. They held the view that the Congress, which was under the control of a westernized Hindu oligarchy, would be incapable of effectively representing Muslim interests and could potentially be detrimental to them. Measures were taken to enhance Muslim support on a national level in order to protect the interests and well-being of the Muslim community. Many interpreted the Viceroy of Bengal, Lord Curzon,'s 1905 decision to partition the province into communal territories as an effort to further segregate the Hindu and Muslim communities.

Nepal-Britain treaty 1923: Nepal's achievements and legacies

Nepal’s independent status has largely been shaped by historical events, personalities, treaties, and agreements. Domestic and external events that happened in the first two decades of the twentieth century had and continued to have a direct impact on Nepal’s external behavior and independence. During that period, Nepal was deeply engaged in war with British-India and Tibet as well as in World War-I. Nepal’s deep involvement in regional and global affairs resulted in the conclusion of the treaty between the United Kingdom and Nepal in 1923 A.D. which helped consolidate Nepal’s independent status thereafter. Against this backdrop, a descriptive analysis of the historic events such as Chandra Shamsher's rule in Nepali politics, Lord Curzon’s arrival in India as British-India’s Viceroy, the Lhasa Mission 1903-04, Nepal’s involvement in World War-I and the Hunting Diplomacy of Nepal are described in this article mainly to explain their contributions to the 1923 Treaty. The provisions of the treaty have also been examined with a view to assessing its contributions to the independence of Nepal. In short, it is an effort to argue on Chandra Shamsher's diplomatic success to consolidate Nepal’s independence through a treaty between the United Kingdom and Nepal in 1923. In the short run, that treaty contributed to Nepal’s international recognition as an independent sovereign country setting it aside from other Indian princely states. In the long run, it contributed to building a distinct international identity of Nepal.

Lord Curzon's Tribal Policy: An Appraisal of its Aims of Securing Pacification and Contentment of Frontier Tribesmen

The British Empire, which encapsulated one-fourth of humanity, had few difficult frontiers, and the Northwest Frontier figured prominently among these. The Indian subcontinent was the most prized jewel of its coveted crown, and its preservation was considered vital given the influence and power of other European rivals, i.e., French and Russians in the region. Initially, the Inactive or Stationary Policy was pursued, and later in the 1870s, aggressive and penetrative Policy was adopted in the Tribal Belt. The aggressive Forward Policy alienated the tribespeople, which eventually resulted in the uprising of 1897. The British finally realized that only the Policy of contentment and pacification would ensure long-lasting peace and gain the loyalty of the tribe members. Lord Curzon, the expert on frontier affairs, was the main exponent of this Policy of conciliation to win the confidence of the inhabitants of the most sensitive Frontier of the empire.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS The Paris Meetings of the Allies on the Armistice of Mudanya, 6-7 October 1922

The Mudanya Armistice has without doubt a prominent place in the history of the Turkish National Struggle. Thus, there have been many studies and publications to this date which have dealt with all aspects of the armistice. It is for this reason that the current study will not deal with the armistice itself. Rather, as stated in the title, the study will look at Allies’ meetings in Paris on the Armistice of Mudanya on 6-7 October. More specifically, it will investigate how the British, French, and Italian statesmen (such as Lord Curzon, Poincaré, and Kont Sforza) evaluated the armistice. The conference between the Allies generals and Ismet Pasha commenced at Mudanya on 3 October. The conference had for its main object to obtain the cessation of hostilities between Nationalist Turkey and Greece and fix a line in Eastern Thrace behind which the Greek army was to be invited to retire. However, on the third day a deadlock was reached owing mainly to the demand of the Turks that Eastern Thrace should be restored to Turkey in full sovereignty previous to the entry into force of the Peace Treaty. Ismet Pasha had demanded that the whole of Eastern Thrace should be handed over to the Turks at once, and that all Allied officers, missions, and contingents should be immediately withdrawn. He had threatened to set his troops in motion if these demands were not at once conceded. Here the French general, who up till then had acted in accord with his Allies, had suddenly announced that he had instructions from the French Government to agree to the Turkish demands. The meeting had accordingly broken up, and the generals had returned to İstanbul in order to obtain instruction from their governments. The British Government had instructed General Harington not to return or resume negotiations until the matter was cleared up. On 6 October, Lord Curzon immediately went to Paris to discuss the matter with the French Prime Minister, Poincaré. If the Turks’ claim were upheld, and if the French Government supported General Charpy, Curzon argued, it would render all co-operations between the Allied Governments. Poincaré replied that General Charpy had no orders but only latitude to avoid war. He also added that France would in no event go to war with Turkey. Lord Curzon insisted upon respect for the neutral zones. For this reason, a clause in regard to them had been inserted in the convention and was a matter of concern to all three governments. The convention in its final form was signed in the early morning of the 11 October, after a session which lasted almost without interruption for about twelve hours.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: The Paris Meetings of the Allies on the Turco-Greek War (20-23 September 1922)

The Mudanya Armistice and the Lausanne Peace Treaty have without doubt a prominent place in the history of the Turkish National Struggle. Thus, there have been many studies and publications to this date which have dealt with all aspects of the Armistice and the Lausanne. It is for this reason that the current study will not deal with the armistice and the Lausanne itself. Rather, as stated in the title, the study will look at Allies’ meetings in Paris on the Turco-Greek War on 20-23 September 1922. More specifically, it will investigate how the British, French, and Italian statesmen (such as Lord Curzon, Poincaré, and Kont Sforza) evaluated the Turco-Greek War, the armistice and the peace conference. On 20 September, Lord Curzon went to Paris to discuss the matters with the French Prime Minister, Poincaré and Italian counterpart.

Diplomacy Before the Turkish Great Offensive: The London Mission of Ali Fethi Bey, the Interior Minister

Büyük Millet Meclisi hükümetinin Dâhiliye Vekili Ali Fethi (Okyar) Bey, 3 Temmuz 1922’de Avrupa’da tedavi görmek meclisten için iki aylık izne ayrılmış, bu süre zarfında İngiltere ve Fransa’nın Türkiye ve Yunanistan’a sunduğu Mart 1922 tarihli barış şartları üzerine İtalya, Fransa ve İngiltere’de müzakerelerde bulunmuştur. Roma ve Paris’in ardından 30 Temmuz 1922’de Londra’ya giden Fethi Bey, diğer ülkelerin aksine burada üst düzey görüşmelerde bulunamamıştır. Ağustos ayı boyunca Fethi Bey’in İngiltere Dışişleri Bakanı Lord Curzon’la müzakere talepleri çeşitli bahanelerle reddedilmiş, Fethi Bey ancak dış politikayı etkileme imkanı olmayan ikinci düzey yetkililerle görüşebilmiştir. Mevcut literatüre Fethi Bey’in Londra misyonunun başarısızlıkla sonuçlandığı ve bunun ardından Büyük Taarruz kararının alındığı kanısı hâkimdir. Oysaki Büyük Taarruz öncesi Mustafa Kemal Paşa’yla Fethi Bey arasında gerçekleşen görüşme ve yazışmalar farklı bir yoruma olanak sağlamaktadır. Fethi Bey’in anılarında belirttiği bu görüşmelere göre; azami gizlilik içerisinde yürütülen taarruz hazırlıklarında, İngiltere’nin durumun farkına varmasının geciktirilmesi büyük bir önem taşımaktadır ve Fethi Bey’in Londra misyonunun asıl hedefi budur. Fethi Bey’in Avrupa ziyareti, İtalya, Fansa ve İngiltere nezdinde barış görüşmeleri yapmaktan ziyade, bu kanıyı uyandırarak taarruz gerçekleşene kadar İngiltere’nin fiili bir müdahalesini önlemek ve milli mücadele lehine ve İngiltere hükümeti aleyhine kamuoyu oluşturmayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu çalışmada, Fethi Bey’in Büyük Taarruzdan hemen önce gerçekleşen Londra ziyareti taarruzun gizliliğini korumak için alınan tedbirlerden biri, bir diplomasi manevrası olarak ele alınmış ve Fethi Bey’in bu süre zarfında İngiliz hükümeti nezdindeki girişimleri ve Londra’da yürüttüğü kamuoyu oluşturma faaliyetleri incelenmiştir. Çalışmanın temel kaynağını Fethi Bey’in anıları ve İngiliz arşiv evrakı oluşturmaktadır.

Gears in Motion Towards the Iranian Revolution

Modern Iran, once an important issue of rivalry between the Great Powers for influences, resources and trade routes, was formed through a sequence of small and larger revolutions. Its geopolitical position had raised the “Persian Question”, as Lord Curzon put it, with the Qājār Dynasty granting commercial and business privileges to England and Russia, as well as concessions of archeological excavations. The aim of the article is to follow the steps taken by the Iranian people against the colonial powers' exploitation, towards the Revolution; merchants and clerics at first, who gradually transformed the bustling markets into a political arena at the turn of the nineteenth century that Persia's entry into the world economy made social inequalities more apparent. We will see facts that surround the era, such as the Constitutional Revolution, a parliamentary victory in the Middle East, as well as the coup d'état by Pahlavi and the establishment of his dynasty. As nationalism was an integral part of this dynasty, reflecting the political-military context in which it originated, Pahlavi Dynasty set the interpretations of antiquity at the heart of their paternalistic ideology, banks were erected in the place of amphitheaters where the holy martyrdom of Karbalā used to revive and the ritual Shiite world was silenced. Iran not only was becoming secular but violent as well, while the continuation of concessions and the opulence of state officials and western businessmen gave the people the sense that there is a perpetuation of colonialism. The last uprising will lead to the Iranian Revolution, which will call into question the role of the West.

Peace, Poverty and Betrayal, A New History of British India by Roderick Matthews

Reviewed by: Peace, Poverty and Betrayal, A New History of British India by Roderick Matthews Adam Prime Peace, Poverty and Betrayal, A New History of British India By Roderick Matthews. London: Hurst & Co, 2021. In his new book, Peace, Poverty and Betrayal, A New History of British India, Roderick Matthews writes, “… events were more often shaped by opportunism, misjudgements, and mistaken assumptions, especially on the British side.” This idea that British rule in India was inconsistent, haphazard, and often more luck than judgement, is the central tenet of Matthews’ tome. Yet, to term this a “new” history of British India is misleading. The uneven nature of the development of British rule on the subcontinent has of course been previously considered by historians. Most notably, Jon Wilson has written of the chaotic nature of British rule in India in his 2016 tome, India Conquered.i In his work, Wilson took aim at nostalgia, pointing to the fact that what Britons tell themselves today about empire is coloured by their removal from the period and by notions of nationalism and superiority. Matthews, on the other hand, seeks to exonerate himself from the right wing, nostalgic view of empire or the left wing, revisionist view, aiming for a more critical study of empire. In his opening gambit he states: “the point is not to ask whether British rule in India was a good or bad thing; like all governments it can be seen as both.” Yet, by seeking to take a middle ground, Matthews, on occasion, puts forth arguments from both sides of the political fence. Matthews’ strongest work can be found in the opening chapter, where he unpacks a host of key terms related to British India, and empire more generally. For instance, Matthews unpicks the complex term “imperialism,” showing that in the context of British India, it is not a neat term that easily fits with how the British expanded and controlled India. Similarly, the author tackles the concept of “Divide and Rule,” pointing to the fact that it is impossible to properly pin down the policy and that in looking for evidence of a policy almost anything can be brought into the argument. Here, as is his central argument, Matthews asserts British rule was not that neat. After similar unpacking of concepts such as “modernity” and “liberalism,” “masses and elites,” this opening chapter closes with a brief discussion of the 1857 Rebellion. What started as a military mutiny at the military cantonment of Meerut soon spread throughout Bengal. The rebels and mutineers, Matthews claims, had a host of reasons for their actions and variable objectives, and they cannot therefore be taken as one singular group. The point being that the opposition to British rule was as inconsistent and haphazard as British rule itself. What follows is a series of chapters forming a chronological journey through Britain’s initial involvement in India as traders, with the granting of a royal charter to the East India Company in 1600, to their expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, halted by the 1857 Rebellion, which ultimately saw the British Raj and Empress Victoria replace the East India Company. After 1857, Matthews charts the rise of the Indian National Congress, the First and Second World War, non-cooperation and ultimately, partition. As is necessary given the breadth of the book, Matthews’ writing is succinct, yet informative too. He is able to distil complex issues concisely but also keep the book informative while not losing flow or pace. Events such as the 1919 Amritsar Massacre are restricted to just three pages, yet the importance of the massacre is not lost on the reader. As well as key events, key individuals are also discussed. Lord Curzon’s time as Viceroy of India (1899–1905) for example, is considered in terms of his reforms and reviews, events in which he was involved, but Matthews also explores his character, such as his efficiency and energy which drove him forward but also lead him to clash with those he worked with, including Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, Lord Kitchener, a conflict which eventually cost Curzon his role in India. It is to this reviewer’s dismay that...

The partition of Bengal in 1947 and The Role of the Hindu MahaSabha

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the English word “De-colonization” means liberation of colonies from their foreign overlords. After the 2nd world war, the De-colonization of the Asia African continent began due to different economic-political-strategic factors. However, in many instances, this process brings partition of an undivided country into 2\3 smaller successor States with forceful mass migration, refugee crisis, loss of monetary and human resources due to violent civil wars between different ethno-religious groups. After the battle of Plessey (1757) granting of Dewani to the English East India Company (1765), Bengal became the center of the British power in East India. The British city of Calcutta became the most prominent city in Asia as the capital of British India. Through the efforts of some European and native academicians, a mixture of Anglo-British culture happened. The Bengali thinkers taught the nation the first lessons of patriotism during the colonial period. At the beginning of the 20th century, the then Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, divided Bengal into two parts in 1905. The Bengali masses protested publicly against the partition. R.Tagore and other Bengali thinkers guided the agitation. This protest movement was known as the Swadeshi movement. In 1911, the division was cancelled, but the capital of British India had been shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. After the establishment of the Muslim League. (1906), The Hindu MohaSabha (1915) and enactment of the Morle-Minto (1909), Montegu-Chamesford (1919), the communal harmony between the Bengali Hindu and Muslim community decreased. After the 2nd world war, it became clear that the British Empire in the Indian sub-continent would collapse soon. During the power transfer process, the division of the sub-continent into two different countries became inventible. My aim in this study is to point out the role of the Hindu MahaSabha in the partition of Bengal in 1947. I will try to point out whether the division of Bengal was necessary or the rise of Bengali communalism forced it. I will try both analytical and descriptive research methods to answer my questions.

Role of women in Swadeshi and boycott movement

In 1905, Lord Curzon decided to divide Bengal, the biggest center of nationalism, on 16 October to destroy Indian unity. The anti-dissolution leaders made a public announcement of celebrating "National Day of Mourning" on that day. The idea of running a Swadeshi and boycott movement at the time of the partition movement was first raised in the mind of Gopal Rao Deshmukh of Poona. Who was known as Lokhitwadi. He started the promotion of Swadeshi for the protection of Indian rural industries only in the decade of 1840-50. In the beginning of the decade of 1870-80, Mahadev Ranade propagated Swadeshi through his lectures and articles. The work of spreading it in the society was done by his wife Ramabai Ranade and her associates.

Comrades on Elephants: Economic Anti-Imperialism, Orientalism, and Soviet Diplomacy in Afghanistan, 1921–23

Comrades on ElephantsEconomic Anti-Imperialism, Orientalism, and Soviet Diplomacy in Afghanistan, 1921–23 Samuel J. Hirst (bio) A 1923 cover of the magazine Ogonek displays two Afghans and a third man in Soviet military clothing assisting a Russian couple in broad-brimmed hats onto an elephant (fig. 1). The headline proclaims the scene anti-British and anti-imperialist, but the image could easily adorn a Victorian celebration of empire. The photograph is emblematic of the time Fedor Raskoĺnikov and Larisa Reisner spent in Kabul: they urged Moscow to provide diplomatic and economic aid to the Afghan state while they themselves collected antique coins to take home with them when they left. Raskoĺnikov and Reisner demonstrated a pronounced sense of cultural superiority during their stay in Kabul, and they seem almost to embody the paradox that has led scholars to refer to the Soviet Union as an “anti-imperialist ‘empire.’”1 Yet Raskoĺnikov, Reisner, and the editors of Ogonek evidently saw little incongruity in their performance. The magazine confidently drew readers’ attention to the Soviet presence in a 19th-century site of imperial rivalry, to a landscape that evoked the Great Game. Sightseeing on elephants was an exotic but irrelevant sideshow; the radicalism of the Soviet Union’s approach to independent states in what was to become the Third World lay elsewhere. The Bolsheviks cared most about economics, and they were convinced that the imperative to consolidate political independence from and against a global capitalist system defined anti-imperialism. Raskoĺnikov and Reisner were part of the Bolshevik elite, and they promulgated its economic analysis even as many of their gestures evoked another [End Page 13] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. On 10 June 1923, Ogonek featured this photograph of Larisa Reisner and Fedor Raskoĺnikov in Afghanistan and described the couple as “A Thorn in Lord Curzon’s Side.” Just a couple of months earlier, British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon had demanded Raskoĺnikov’s recall from Kabul on the grounds that the latter was engaged in anti-British activities. Source: Rossiiskaia natsionaĺnaia biblioteka, St. Petersburg. Reproduced with permission. [End Page 14] world and time. The moment of transition to a new order offers a revealing view of the often uneasy fit of revolutionary ideology and cultural bias. Early engagements with Afghanistan were part of a broader process in which the Soviet Union and its diplomats generated principles and practices that were to play out in Soviet relations with formerly colonial or semicolonial states for much of the 20th century. Between the summer of 1921 and the fall of 1923, Raskoĺnikov and Reisner learned to practice anti-imperialist diplomacy on the ground and on the fly. Their Kabul sojourn began not long after they had led Soviet troops into northern Iran in support of the short-lived republic in Gilan, and they had little prior knowledge of this new posting.2 In Afghanistan, they had to reconfigure their revolutionary dreams. Raskoĺnikov and Reisner brought struggle from the battlegrounds of world revolution to negotiating tables with capitalist states and with states that, like Afghanistan, were nonsocialist but oppressed. Afghanistan had just fought the British Empire for its independence, and the couple drew on a Bolshevik ideology in which Lenin had identified imperialism as a phase of capitalism characterized by competition among industrialized, imperialist states.3 But Lenin’s key work on imperialism addressed the intra-European conflict of World War I, not the struggle within empires of colonies and metropoles. Lenin’s retrospective diagnosis of imperialism endured long beyond the Great War and came to shape economic policies that defended Soviet Russia’s predominantly agricultural society against a predatory system. As a result, whether it was the protectionism manifested in the monopoly on foreign trade or the anxiety about sovereignty reflected in strict control of concessions to foreign companies, Soviet economic interactions with the West bore resemblance to those of contemporary nationalists in countries with little industry.4 Under Lenin’s tutelage, safeguarding economic independence rather than defeating reactionary armies became the battleground between socialism and capitalism.5 [End Page 15] Events on the ground in Kabul reinforced Lenin’s...

Rabindranath Tagore’s Home and the World [Ghare Bhaire] : A Gripping Portrayal of Swadeshi Movement

Tagore’s novel Ghare Bhaire has historical significance when we look at it from nationalistic perspective. The Swadeshi movement predominantly began with the partition of Bengal by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon in 1905 and continued up to 1911. This was precisely the most successful of the Pre- Gandhian movements. MK Gandhi strategically focused on Swadeshi who described it as the Soul of Swaraj (Self-rule). The movement was officially announced on 7 August, 1905 at the famous Calcutta Town Hall, in Bengal. Later, this was used to boycott all the British goods in the country. The spirit of the movement was to use goods produced in India and burning of British–made goods. Swadeshi movement paved the way to the successive movements such as Satyagraha movement and Non-Cooperation movement. Written against the backdrop of the partition of Bengal by the British in 1905, Home and the World (Ghare Bhaire) by Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Laureate, is a telling portrayal of the chasms inherent in the nationalist movement. Any movement by people is particularly interesting and a movement such as Swadeshi movement holds special significance in the history of Indian Freedom Struggle. Swadeshi was a clarion call to rebel against the imported goods. In the words of Anita Desai, the noted Indo-English novelist, “Home and the World” has the complexity and tragic dimensions of Tagore’s own time and ours”. Readers are reminded that Tagore protested the Jallianwallah Bagh massacres and rejected the knighthood honour. He set himself an example by leading the country against the oppressions. His patriotism finds literary expression in the novel “Ghare Bhaire” Where Swadeshi Movement dominates the collection.

Taj of the Raj: appropriating the colonial legacy of Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial Hall

Who knows if, in centuries hence, people may not otherwise dispute about its genesis and features just as they still do about those of the Taj Mahal? – Lord Curzon (1925)When Queen Victoria passed ...

Was Madras Benighted? : The British Beauracratic Control Over the Swadeshi Press and Political Literature in the Madras Presidency, 1908-1912

Lord Curzon, the then Viceroy of India partitioned Bengal on 16th October 1905 and this move created a strom of protest all over India. The people were aroused by the spirit of nationalism and were determined to fight the British to the end. The nationalists launched the Swadeshi Movement in 1906 and the Indian National Congress declared that year as the “Swadeshi Year”. ‘Swadeshi’, ‘Boycott’. ‘Swaraj’ and ‘National Education’ were the main objects of the Congress. The Swadeshi Movement which originated in Bengal gradually spread to other parts of the nation. In the Madras Presidency, the Swadeshi nationalists like V.O.Chidambaram Pillai, C.Subramania Bharathi, Dr.Nanjunda Rao, K.Venkatramana Iyengar, Surendranath Arya, Subramania Siva, Neelakanda Bramahchari and others organized meetings to protest against the partition of the Bengal. Finding the Swadeshi Movement gaining momentum, the Government of Madras issued several circulars and ordinances to abrogate the freedom of expression and free criticism. To begin with, the Swadeshi leaders of Madras Presidency were mild in their approach which prompted the British to regard South India as the “benighted Presidency or a slept hollow”. This trend however changed when Bipin Chandra Pal visited Madras on 1st May 1907. He delivered a series of lectures from 2nd May 1907 at the Marina Beech, Madras. He spoke on concepts like ‘Swaraj’, ‘Swadeshi’ and ‘Boycott’. He made an indelible impression on his listeners. In addition to public meetings B.C.Pal, held private get-togethers wherein only a few trustworthy persons were invited. On receipt of the information regarding the deportation of Lala Lajipat Rai, B.C.Pal cancelled his other engagements in Madras and returned to Calcutta. Thus his lecture tour came to an end abruptly. However, the visit of B.C.Pal infused new vigour into the activities of the nationalists of Madras and whipped up the Swadeshi Movement. The Swadeshi nationalists inspired by the speeches of B.C.Pal, undertook extensive tours of the districts of Madras Presidency and explained to the public the efficacy of the Swadeshi Movement, such sustained propaganda work, the message of Swadeshi began to reach the grass-roots. The nationalist press of the period responded enthusiastically to the call given by the Swadeshi leaders and published articles infavour of the movement. The impact of the movement was such that the student community of the Madras Presidency involved themselves actively in the programmes launched by the Swadeshi leaders. The impact of the Surat split of 1907 was felt in the Madras Presidency. The split gave fillip to the extremist movement. During this period, G.Harshavartom Rao and V.O.Chidambaram Pillai spearheaded the ‘extremist thinking’ respectively in Telugu and Tamil speaking areas of this Presidency. The spirit of nationalism was very vigorous in places like Rajamundry, Masulipatnam and Coconada in Andhra region; and Tinnavelly and Tuticorin in Tamil country. Swadeshi meetings were organized in different parts of Southern districts of the Madras Presidency addressed by leaders like V.O.Chidambaram Pillai, Subramania Siva, Ethiraj Surendranath Arya, Padmanabha Iyyengar etc. During this period, the vernacular press played a consistent role in supporting the cause of the nationalists. It wrote editorials in support of the nationalists. Tamil papers like the Swadesamitran and the India carried articles which referred to the inhuman activities of the British against the Indians. S.Srinivasa Iyengar, editor of the India was convicted for publishing certain articles in the issues of the January and June 1908 which were regarded as seditious by the government. To escape official harassment, the India paper office shifted its abode to Pondicherry from where it resumed its publications more vigorously with C.Subramania Bharathi and S.Srinivachari. G.Subramania Iyer, the editor of the Swedesamitran was arrested on 21st August 1908, for publishing certain articles which were regarded as objectionable by the government. Taking into consideration his health condition, the government released G.Subramania Iyer on getting a bond for good behaviour for a period of one year under section 108 of Cr.P.C. for a sum of Rs.5,000/ - with two sureties of Rs.2,000/ - each. The government which entertained the firm view that newspaper and other literature created conditions conducive to revolution in India, Lord Minto II, the then Viceroy passed the Press Act of 1910 on 8th March, 1910 to curb seditious writings. Thus the year 1910 witnessed the enactment of the most vigorous and repressive legislation hitherto unknown to the Indian press. This Act authorised all local governments to declare forfeiture of any printed material which contained anti-Government matter. As a result, the provisions of the Press Act 1910 were invoked against many papers which were critical of the British Government. However, this repressive press measure did not hamper the spirit of the Indian nationalist press in anyway.

Impact of British Raj on the Education System in India: The Process of Modernization in the Princely States of India – The case of Mohindra College, Patiala

British rule is said to have been responsible for the modernization witnessed in the Indian civilization. The impact of this process was quiet evident from the changes adopted by the Indians in their life style, thinking processes, attires, food and education. Besides the advancements made in the spheres of roads, transports, postal services etc, their rule acted as a significant period of transition from the indigenous style of education to western education. The foundations were laid by the East India Company and the Christian Missionaries to employ Indians for administrative tasks as well as to serve their political, economical and colonial interests. Originally the access to education was limited to the royal families, as the British were of the opinion that Indians could become aware of their rights and positions and protest against their Raj posing a threat to the British establishment in India. Lord Curzon’s efforts in the 20th century gave way to spread of higher education within the masses and channelized Indian education system. However the rulers of the Princely States in of India who were granted autonomy by the British to manage their own kingdoms acted as major agents to undertake the social and educational reforms within their territories. With the spread of education from elementary to higher levels, many new schools, universities and other institutions were developed during this period which are symbols of educational advancement as well as hold high architectural merit. Patiala, aprime princely state is a well known academic centre also important for its rich culture since the British Raj. Education in Patiala originated under the Maharajas with the opening of the school of languages in 1860A.D. With the introduction of Mahindra College (the first Degree College in a city) in 1870, became came an important educational centre. It was the only college between Delhi and Lahore for a long time that promoted contemporary higher learning in Northern India. The historic college building represents an aesthetic mix of regional interpretation of Indo-Saracenic style of architecture. Later on many educational institutes catering to medical facilities, sports education etc. was set up in this princely state. This paper is thus an attempt to explore the education reforms during the British Raj, the changes that happened and their triggers. It also brings out reforms initiated in Princely States specifically Patiala as a seat of learning and a detailed study of the Mohindra College, Patiala, that represents an excellent example of educational institutions developed during the 19th century. The present study was done as a part of an academic project undertaken during Masters of Architecture under the able guidance of Prof Kiran Joshi..

1922

At the F.O. all the morning and afternoon going over the Agenda for the forthcoming Session of the League of Nations at Geneva. At 6 o'clock to 1 Carlton House Terrace to see Lord Curzon and to discuss with him any points of policy arising out of the Agenda. Lord C. is off to Cannes tomorrow to attend the Inter-Allied Conference that is to discuss the question of German reparations, trade with Russia, etc.

Introduction to Symposium on the Many Lives and Legacies of Sykes-Picot

Although their motivations varied, many senior British officials who were expert in imperial and Middle-Eastern matters condemned the Sykes-Picot treaty as a mistake almost as soon as it was signed. T.E. Lawrence wanted the British government to repudiate it and was assured by Gilbert Clayton, the head of the Arab Bureau in Cairo, in a letter he wrote to Lawrence in 1917, that “‘It is in fact dead and, if we wait quietly, this fact will soon be realized’.” Lord Curzon denounced the treaty as “not only obsolete ‘but absolutely impracticable,’” and further declared that only “gross ignorance” could account for the boundary lines in the treaty. Sir Mark Sykes was said to be ashamed of his involvement in the Treaty that was to bear his name. Despite these efforts, so soon after its birth, to announce the demise and irrelevance of Sykes-Picot, its complex, variegated, and evolving legacy has survived and is still very much with us.

Review of The Quickening: Unknown Poetry of Táhirih by John S. Hatcher and Amrollah Hemmat

Review of The Quickening: Unknown Poetry of Tahirih, by John S. Hatcher and Amrollah Hemmat. 261 pages. Wilmette, IL: Baha'i Publishing Trust, 2011.We can never be too humble as artists to copy fever and craft of artist in alien tongue but, at best, any rendition of Persian into English is only luminescent and can never trap incandescent glow of original work, just a bright mirror of an ancient glory. The other artist in this case is Jinab-i-Tahirih (Her Excellence, Pure One), a legend and sworn poetess of every dauntless dawnbreaker.1 This first woman suffrage martyr (Shoghi Effendi 75), the beautiful and enthusiastic Kurratu'l-'Ayn (Browne 287-88)2 was a gifted, impetuous founder of a new cadence and embodiment of religious resurgence in mid-nineteenth-century Iran.In her writings and poems, Tahirih may well be faithful representation of a Baha'i Weltanschauung (world view), one of most affecting episodes in history (Lord Curzon, qtd. in Maneck 7) and herself a worthy symbol of the greatest religious movement of century (Browne 424). She was a Persian Joan of Arc,3 a charismatic, undeterred, and unruffled woman leader, almost prophetess (Browne 240) whom none can mention without a certain involuntary awe and admiration, and to whom these tardy words still ring true: Then courage . . . revoltress! / For till all ceases neither must you cease (Whitman 288).By all this is meant that Tahirih's corpus of is no ordinary work to read, let alone for translators to pause and prescribe treatment. It is not enough to plough to discover what verses proclaim through semantics and syntax; through our habitual knowledge of language; through grammars, dictionaries, and all literature that is source of dictionaries; through use of classical tools of time-honored traditions, such as devices esteqbal and tazmin, for example, used liberally by Tahirih and methodically explained by Hatcher and Hemmat in their footnotes to poems-through all that makes a language and a culture.Translating Tahirih's concentrated, imaginative awareness of experience in a distant culture undergoing profound religious upheaval in derived not from past but from future, of texts of a distinct genre in which content exceeds phrase is a truly formidable task. To convey rapture of these poems to an English-speaking audience, translator must not only capture Tahirih's spectacularly autonomous, daring, and creative imagination, but also preserve her poetic energy and guarantee her poetic authenticity in form she wished. For me, that form focuses on helping revolutionary modernity to know itself, to arrive at itself, to make and to manifest itself: ...For you there should be detachment / that you might discern (one) hidden Countenance now dawned in world (Hatcher and Hemmat 54).Doing away with veil of past and ushering in garb of future, Tahirih seeks to produce arrival of a modern revolution through an act of self-foundation and self-creation: we, standing here and now, must act!It is particularly apt that in subtitle chosen by authors, unknown poetry is precisely referring to that part of our poetic faculty yet to be born as a mode of access to this collective consciousness that poet laureate Tahirih typifies but that we have yet to experience on a global scale; namely, to carry into vernacular that an ever-advancing civilization depends on seeking new and discarding old. This process inevitably and forcibly entails willingness to sacrifice (the hallmark of revolutionary rather than reformer) and should be an integral part of any outlook on progress: He should know that my Cause is greater than all causes and / will appear in creation only through great tests and trials (43).Sorrow or lamentation never prevails in Tahirih's work. …

Globalization, Nationalism and the Text of Kichaka-Vadha: The First English Translation of the Marathi Anticolonial Classic, with a Historical Analysis of Theatre in British India . Rakesh Solomon (review)

Reviewed by: Globalization, Nationalism and the Text of Kichaka-Vadha: The First English Translation of the Marathi Anticolonial Classic, with a Historical Analysis of Theatre in British India. Rakesh Solomon Kedar A. Kulkarni GLOBALIZATION, NATIONALISM AND THE TEXT OF KICHAKA-VADHA: THE FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE MARATHI ANTICOLONIAL CLASSIC, WITH A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THEATRE IN BRITISH INDIA. Translated and introduced by Rakesh Solomon. London: Anthem Press, 2014. xi + 166 pp., 20 photographs. Hardcover, $99.00 (£60.00). The “golden age” of drama in Marathi lasted for a period of approximately forty years, from 1880 to 1920, when playwrights, intellectuals, and often nationalist politicians worked closely to produce a flowering of Marathi drama. Some collaborated to assert themselves against a brutally oppressive British colonial regime. One such playwright, Krishna Prabhakar Khadilkar (1872–1948), had a parallel career as a journalist and newspaper editor, and closely liaised with Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920), India’s firebrand nationalist politician who had articulated the need for independence from Britain. During Khadilkar’s theatrical career, he penned fifteen plays, out of which six were prose-plays and nine were music-dramas. Nearly all are steeped in a deep social or political awareness. Solomon’s translation of Kichaka-Vadha (1907; The Slaying of Kichaka) is the first translation of any Marathi-language play from this period, and is a great resource for pedagogical purposes. His introduction also adds to the growing body of English-language scholarship on Marathi and Indian drama more broadly from the late colonial and modern periods, but is only a qualified success. According to Solomon, Kichaka-Vadha is based on an episode from the epic Mahabharata, when five brothers, the Pandavas, and their wife, Draupadi, are in exile incognito at the court of King Virata. During this time, a powerful general at Virata’s court, Kichaka, begins to harass Draupadi, known as Sairandhri in the play. In the hands of Khadilkar, this episode is transformed into a larger political allegory for the early twentieth century. As Solomon explains in the introduction to his volume and in a previous essay (Solomon 1994), the disagreement between Kankabhatta (Yudhisthira) and [End Page 698] Ballabha (Bhima) over how to deal with Kichaka is designed to remind audiences of the conflicts between the liberal and extremist wings of the Indian National Congress Party (est. 1885), the primary organization opposing British rule. In Khadilkar’s allegory, Kankabhatta, with his concerns over justice and placating Kichaka, most closely resembles the liberal wing of the Congress party, headed by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who “advocated working within British colonial law, i.e., using exclusively constitutional and peaceful means” (p. 31). By contrast, Kankabhatta’s immediately younger brother, Ballabha, is quicker to anger and voices the need for action; he resembles the Extremists, led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Aurobindo Ghosh, who “insisted on using all available means, including unconstitutional and direct or violent action” (p. 31). Meanwhile, Kichaka represents the hated viceroy of India, Lord Curzon (in office 1899–1905). Thus, The Slaying of Kichaka becomes a complex allegory about the indecisiveness of and infighting within the Congress Party, the abuse of India at the hands of Lord Curzon, and the need for violent rebellion. As a result of the layered epic and allegorical tropes, this play, like many others, was more or less “illegible” to the British censors at first and therefore difficult to proscribe. First performed in 1907, Kichaka-Vadha was not proscribed until 1910, during which time audiences were well aware of its political message as colonial administrators clamored to find a satisfying resolution to the tumult it had caused. In Solomon’s volume, the translation closely approximates the Marathi original, and it is faithful to the Marathi Text. The introduction, however, misses many opportunities. Despite the vibrant theatrical scene that produced the “golden age” of Marathi theatre, this period remains inaccessible to non-Marathi speakers. Solomon’s translation provides an entry into that world; it includes photographs that enable us to visualize the performances and begin to understand the radical power of epic, religion, myth, and allegory during the “golden age.” For these reasons, the translation, on its own, is a valuable and welcome one...

How India became territorial: foreign policy, diaspora, geopolitics. By Itty Abraham

Itty Abraham's represents a departure from the hackneyed approach towards foreign policy, it is an absolute must-read not just for academics, but for anyone with an interest in Indian foreign policy, history and politics. As the author makes clear in the preface, while his thrust is on Indian foreign policy, he has not relied excessively on conventional approaches adopted towards the study of foreign policy; in fact, he has sought to question them. ‘This is not a conventional study of Indian foreign policy. This study does not try to establish realist, idealist or constructivist frames with which to understand international relations and the state … Nevertheless this book is centrally concerned with questions basic to the study of foreign policy, while at the same time questioning the conventional parameters of the field’ (p. 14). Some of the significant departures from the traditional approach to foreign policy are: first, the author has not looked at foreign policy only post-1947, but delved deep into the key features and rationale behind British strategic thought in the late nineteenth century. This had the clear imprint of the then Viceroy in India, Lord Curzon, and was dubbed as ‘Curzonian foreign policy’. One major benefit of this time-frame is that it gives Abraham an opportunity to make a serious comparison between colonial and post-colonial foreign policy. Abraham argues that ‘imperial thinking is central to understanding the form and practice of postcolonial Indian strategic planning and action’ (p. 114). One of the key characteristics of Curzonian foreign policy, according to Abraham, was that ‘Curzon's geopolitics was the most formal and explicit vision of a land defined territory of India that saw its primary points of strategic vulnerability lying beyond its northern mountainous frontiers’ (p. 114). In a later chapter on geopolitics, Abraham also discusses some important debates within various strands of Indian politics. He focuses on the differing world-views of Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru. For example, the author brings to the fore an important point, which is that Patel's views of China were largely influenced by his anti-communist leanings while one of the major criticisms of Nehruvian foreign policy was the Prime Minister's idealism and absolute neglect of ‘geopolitics’ (p. 119).