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A young Indian student from Cambridge was selected for England’s cricket team after public pressure.
… In 1934, India inaugurated the Ranji Trophy … Ranjitsinhji had a vision of India as a commonwealth of self-governing princely states under the British Crown …
In 1934, India inaugurated the Ranji Trophy, a first-class cricket tournament in honour of K.S. Ranjitsinhji (1872-1933), an Indian prince of the British Raj who played cricket for several years at the very highest level for England, a country he loved dearly and which loved him in return.
Posted January 22 2017
38
During the Indian Mutiny, over a thousand men, women and children were trapped in the Commissioner’s residence at Lucknow.
… The Indian Mutiny in 1857 saw many of the East India Company’s sepoys (Indian soldiers) join with angry princes to protest at the Company’s disrespectful and corrupt administration … In 1857, sepoys in the service of the East India Company joined with ruling princes in the Indian Mutiny …
The Indian Mutiny in 1857 saw many of the East India Company’s sepoys (Indian soldiers) join with angry princes to protest at the Company’s disrespectful and corrupt administration. The revolt turned nasty, and in June that year things looked bleak for the Company’s staff at Lucknow, in the former Kingdom of Oudh.
Posted December 15 2017
39
The Rivers Son and Narmada rise together in the hills of Amarkantak, but because of Johilla they never meet again.
… It is a love story of three rivers, the Narmada (Nerbudda), the Son and the Johila, and explains why the Narmada and the Son rise in the same place in central India … but her majesty, after this indignity, declared that she would not go a single pace in the same direction with such wretches, and would flow west, though all the other rivers in India might flow east …
William Sleeman, after whom the little village of Sleemanabad in Madhya Pradesh is named, retold a classic Indian fable in an open letter to his sister. It is a love story of three rivers, the Narmada (Nerbudda), the Son and the Johila, and explains why the Narmada and the Son rise in the same place in central India, but flow in opposite directions.
Posted July 23 2018
40
Sir Henry Craik had heard such glowing reports of Agra’s Taj Mahal, that he was afraid it might prove to be an anticlimax.
… In 1907, Sir Henry Craik Mp went on a tour of India … By this alone, one is tempted to think, the voyage to India would be repaid …
In 1907, Sir Henry Craik MP went on a tour of India. That December, he made his way south from New Delhi to Agra, where he marvelled at the sixteenth-century fort and the Pearl Mosque of Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58) before following the River Yamuna for a mile or so towards Shah Jahan’s legendary monument to his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Would it be all that report had made it?
Posted February 3 2021
41
Before Siraj ud-Daulah became Nawab of Bengal in 1756, his grandfather begged him to keep the English sweet, and put no trust in Jafar Ali Khan. If he had only listened...
… Robert Clive’s victory on June 23rd, 1757, over the Nawab of Bengal at Plassey near Murshidabad was vital to Britain’s successful defence of her colonies in the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) against Louis Xv of France, and fixed the British East India Company as the Mughal Emperors’ chief European trade partner …
Robert Clive’s victory on June 23rd, 1757, over the Nawab of Bengal at Plassey near Murshidabad was vital to Britain’s successful defence of her colonies in the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) against Louis XV of France, and fixed the British East India Company as the Mughal Emperors’ chief European trade partner. For Hari Charan Das, it was also a judgment on the Nawab’s refusal to listen to his grandfather.
Posted June 26 2021
42
In 1327, Mohammad bin Tughluq gave every man, woman and child in Delhi just three days’ notice to quit.
The Delhi Sultanate ruled wide realms in India between 1206 and 1555, but the aspiration of Sultan Mohammad bin Tughluq (r. 1325-1351, a contemporary of England’s Edward III) to be Alexander and Solomon rolled into one brought only bankruptcy and revolt. Especially disastrous was his snap decision in 1327 to walk the entire population of Delhi to a new capital over six hundred miles away.
Posted June 23 2021