Indian History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Indian History’
In 1932, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his accession, the Jam Sahib brought vanished days back to Nawanagar with a lavish hand.
In 1932, Colonel His Highness Shri Sir Ranjitsinhji, Jam Sahib of Nawanagar (Jamnagar), celebrated his Silver Jubilee. Lord Irwin, the outgoing Viceroy, had pushed hard for democracy and efficiency, and the Jam Sahib had overseen the development of a modern and prosperous State. But the man remembered by English cricket fans as the swashbuckling ‘Ranji’ showed he was an Indian prince too.
Sir William Hunter looks back over a Government committee’s plan to introduce tea cultivation to India in 1834.
The British drink almost 36 billion cups of tea each year, a trend set by King Charles II’s Portuguese wife, Queen Catherine. The tea itself came exclusively from China, which by the early Nineteenth Century had become a cause for concern. What if China were to close her ports to Europe, as neighbouring Japan had done? So the Government set up a Tea Committee.
In 1877, John Bright told a meeting of the Manchester India Association that he had wanted to put India on the path to independence nearly twenty years before.
In 1858, government of India’s various Presidencies in Madras, Bombay, Bengal and other centres was taken out of the hands of the East India Company and vested in the Crown — or as John Bright put it, ‘a Governor-General and half-a-dozen eminent civilians in the city of Calcutta.’ Nineteen years later, he told a meeting in Manchester that he had wanted it done very differently.
Charles II was thinking about handing Bombay back to the Portuguese, when an Indian rebel stepped in.
The great cities of Madras and Calcutta sprang up from the energy and enterprise of British merchants, but Bombay’s history was different. It was a gift from the Portuguese, and for some years it looked as if the beneficiary, Charles II, would be only too pleased to give it back.
Lakshmi and her sister Parvati enlisted the help of the British Resident, Colonel Munro, to steady the Kingdom of Travancore.
At the very moment Napoleon Bonaparte was trying to bring Continental bureaucracy to Britain, Queen Lakshmi brought British commonsense to Travancore (now the State of Kerala). She and her sister Parvati weeded out corruption, promoted education and healthcare, and gave stability to a realm troubled by invasion and bad government.
The Maharaja of Jodhpur called on his subjects to do their bit and stop the Nazis.
On May 15th, 1942, Maharaja Sir Umaid Singh of Jodhpur spoke at the inauguration of the National War Front in Jodhpur. Already many thousands of Indians had volunteered to help stop Nazi Germany from taking Britain’s place as India’s Presiding Power, and now His Highness addressed himself to those left behind.