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Ahmedabad - Gujarat - India
Ahmedabad is the largest city and former capital of Gujarat. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ahmedabad district and the seat of the Gujarat High Court. With a population of more than 6.3 million and an extended population of 7.2 million, it is the sixth largest city and seventh largest metropolitan area of India. Ahmedabad is located on the banks of the Sabarmati River, 30 km from the state capital Gandhinagar.
Ahmedabad has emerged as an important economic and industrial hub in India. It is the second largest producer of cotton in India, and its stock exchange is the country's second oldest. The effects of liberalisation of the Indian economy have energized the city's economy towards tertiary sector activities like commerce, communication and construction.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmedabad
We bezoeken Calico house of Textiles and Sarabhai Foundation collection.
Met de tuktuk rijden we naar de Shree Swami Narayan tempel en de Sidi Saiyyad moskee in het ochtendlicht. Een vriendelijk gezin liet zich fotograferen. We eindigen de dag aan de vrijdag moskee Jami Masjid met een heel grote binnenplaats en rondom een galerij, verder wandelen we naar het inmiddels verlichte Sidi Saiyyad moskee.
Les Backwaters sont une série de lagunes et de lacs d'eau saumâtre parallèle à la mer d'Oman, paysage typique de l'État du Kerala au sud de l'Inde.
Le réseau, constitué de quelque 1 500 kilomètres de canaux, tant naturels qu'artificiels, inclut plusieurs grands lacs dont l'Ashtamudi et le Vembanad. S'étendant sur pratiquement toute la longueur de la côte du Kerala, il est alimenté par une quarantaine de fleuves côtiers descendant des Ghâts occidentaux. Les lagunes ont été constituées par l'action des vagues et des courants côtiers créant une barrière d'îles basses aux embouchures des fleuves côtiers.
Le lac Vembanad, le plus grand intégré dans le réseau et couvrant une superficie de 200 kilomètres carrés, est encadré par les districts d'Alappuzha, de Kottayam et d'Ernakulam. Le port de Kochi - l'ancienne Cochin - est situé au débouché du Vembanad avec la mer d'Oman. Le lac Ashtamudi appartient au district de Kollam et la ville de Kollam - l'ancienne Quilon - se trouve à son débouché.
Reliées par les canaux creusés par la main de l'homme, les lagunes forment un réseau de transport de marchandises largement utilisé par l'économie locale. Les Backwaters sont aussi une importante attraction touristique du Kerala.
La traversée de ce canal en pirogue à la tombée de la nuit est un grand souvenir! Au moindre mouvement on avait l'impression que c'était le plongeon assuré. Attention à l'appareil photo!
The Kerala backwaters are a chain of brackish lagoons and lakes lying parallel to the Arabian Sea coast (known as the Malabar Coast) of Kerala state in southern India. The network includes five large lakes linked by canals, both manmade and natural, fed by 38 rivers, and extending virtually half the length of Kerala state. The backwaters were formed by the action of waves and shore currents creating low barrier islands across the mouths of the many rivers flowing down from the Western Ghats range.
The Kerala Backwaters are a network of interconnected canals, rivers, lakes and inlets, a labyrinthine system formed by more than 900 km of waterways, and sometimes compared to the American Bayou. In the midst of this landscape there are a number of towns and cities, which serve as the starting and end points of backwater cruises. National Waterway No. 3 from Kollam to Kottapuram, covers a distance of 205 km and runs almost parallel to the coast line of southern Kerala facilitating both cargo movement and backwater tourism.
The backwaters have a unique ecosystem - freshwater from the rivers meets the seawater from the Arabian Sea. In certain areas, such as the Vembanad Kayal, where a barrage has been built near Kumarakom, salt water from the sea is prevented from entering the deep inside, keeping the fresh water intact. Such fresh water is extensively used for irrigation purposes.
Many unique species of aquatic life including crabs, frogs and mudskippers, water birds such as terns, kingfishers, darters and cormorants, and animals such as otters and turtles live in and alongside the backwaters. Palm trees, pandanus shrubs, various leafy plants and bushes grow alongside the backwaters, providing a green hue to the surrounding landscape.
Vembanad Kayal is the largest of the lakes, covering an area of 200 km², and bordered by Alappuzha (Alleppey), Kottayam, and Ernakulam districts. The port of Kochi (Cochin) is located at the lake's outlet to the Arabian Sea. Alleppey, "Venice of the East", has a large network of canals that meander through the town. Vembanad is India’s longest lake.
The people of Padmanavpur village on the way from Berhampur to Taptapani. A lot of the people are textile workers.
Vadodara - Gujarat - India
Everyday life and the market in Vadodara
Vadodara which used to be known as Baroda, is the third largest city in the Western Indian State of Gujarat, after Ahmedabad and Surat. It is the administrative headquarters of Vadodara District and is located on the banks of the Vishwamitri river, southeast of Ahmedabad, 139 kilometres from the state capital Gandhinagar.
The city is the site of the Lakshmi Vilas Palace, the residence of the Maharaja of Baroda and the royal family; and his erstwhile Darbar. It is also the home of the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (Vadodara), the largest university in Gujarat. An important industrial, cultural and educational hub of western India, the city houses several institutions of national and regional importance while its major industries include petrochemicals, engineering, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastics, IT and foreign exchange services amongst others.
Vadodara has been selected as one of the hundred Indian cities to be developed as a smart city under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's flagship Smart Cities Mission.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadodara
We bezoeken de markt in Kwant/Kavant waar we de mannen zien met rode tulband (Rathwa) geel/witte tulband (Nayak) Lohar (ijzerwerk verkopers) Saddhu en tempelpriesters.
Agra Fort.
Agra fort is a historical fort in the city of Agra in India. It was the main residence of the emperors of the Mughal Dynasty in 1638, when the capital was shifted from Agra to Delhi.The Agra fort is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The fort can be accurately described as a walled city.
the Mysore Palace in Southern India. Want to know how I got kicked out? www.essenceinphotography.com/the-mysore-palace-lightroom-...
A Hindu ascetic woman smiles as she adjusts her hair after taking a dip in the Ganges river in Kolkata January 4, 2011. Hindu ascetics and pilgrims are making the annual trip to Sagar island for a holy dip, at the confluence of the Ganges river and the Bay of Bengal, during the one-day festival of "Makar Sankranti" on January 14. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri (INDIA - Tags: RELIGION SOCIETY)
Image Courtesy: Rajarshi MITRA (www.flickr.com/photos/tataimitra/11146655355), Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic | Flickr
China and India
english
Renuka or Yellamma (Marathi: श्री रेणुका/ येल्लुआई , Kannada: ಶ್ರೀ ಎಲ್ಲಮ್ಮ ರೇಣುಕಾ, Telugu: శ్రీ రేణుక/ యెల్లమ్మ) is worshiped as the Goddess (devi) of the fallen, in the Hindu pantheon. Yellamma is a patron goddess of rural folk of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Her devotees have revered her as the "Mother of the Universe" or Jagadamba. Legends say that Yellamma is the incarnation of Kali, who on one hand symbolizes the death of ego, and on the other hand is the mother who is compassionate about her children.
Yellamma is worshipped mostly in South India, including Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh and Maharastra, where the deity is known by many names: Mahankali, Jogamma, Somalamma, Gundamma, Pochamma, Mysamma, Jagadambika, Holiyamma, Renukamata, Yellu aai, and Renuka Devi.
In ancient ages, the Yellamma temples were cared for by women known as "devadasis" (which means the servants of gods), who dwelt in the temples and were educated as courtesans or artists. To this day, girls are being dedicated as devadasis to Yellamma, even though the practice is now illegal—the women lead a life as sex workers.
Origin story
The legends of Renuka are contained in the Mahabharata, the Harivamsa and in the Bhagavata Purana.
Early life
Renuka raja (father of Renuka) performed an yajna — a ritual performed to maintain peace and good health. He was blessed with a daughter, who originated from the fire of this yajna. Renuka was a bright and active child and became the most beloved child of her parents.
When she was eight, Agastya, who was the guru of the Renuka Raja, advised him to have his daughter married to Jamadagni when she reached maturity. Jamadagni was the son of Ruchik Muni and Satyavathi and had obtained the blessings of the gods by performing severe penance. Renuka and Jamdagni Muni lived in the Ramshrung mountains, near the present day Savadatti area of Belgaum district. Renuka helped the Jamdagni Muni in all of his tasks of performing various rituals and puja. Gradually she became close and dear to Jamdagni.
Renuka would wake up early in the morning to bathe in the Malaprabha River with complete concentration and devotion. Her devotion was so powerful that she was able to create a pot to hold water made only of sand, one fresh pot every day. She would fill this pot, on the bank of the river and would use a snake which was nearby, turning it into a rope-like convolution and placing it on her head, so that it supported the pot. Thus, she brought the water to Jamdagni for his rituals of oblation. ("Renuka" is derived from the Sanskrit for "fine grain of sand".) The Renuka temple is situated at near Zamania, Ghazipur
Later life
Renuka gave birth to five sons: Vasu, Viswa Vasu, Brihudyanu, Brutwakanwa and Rambhadra. Rambhadra was the youngest and most beloved, gaining the favour of Lord Shiva and Parvati and hence called Parashurama (the sixth incarnation of Vishnu).
One day when Renuka went to the river, she saw Gandharva spirits playing. These were young couples carelessly frolicking in the water with abandon. For a moment, she lost her concentration and devotion and fantasized about playing in the river with her husband. She wished she and her husband had such fun sometimes too, living so close to such a beautiful place. After some time, Renuka came to her senses and cursed herself for her indiscretion. She hurriedly bathed, as she had lost precious time, and tried to create the pot, but was unable to as she had lost her concentration. She even tried to catch the snake but it disappeared. Disappointed by this, she returned to the ashram in shame. Seeing Renuka returning empty-handed, Jamadagni became furious and angrily ordered her to go away.
After being cursed by her husband, Renuka went east and sat in the forest to meditate. In her penance, she met with the saints Eknath[citation needed] and Joginath; she prayed to them and asked to gain the mercy of her husband. They first consoled her, then instructed her to follow their advice exactly as told. They told her to purify herself, first bathing in a nearby lake, and then to worship a Shivalinga, which they had given to her. Next, she should go to the nearby town and beg for rice from the houses (this ritual, called "Joga Bedodu", is still carried out by women during a particular month in Karnataka). After collecting the rice, she was to give half to the saints and cook the remaining half, adding jaggery, partaking of the cooked rice with full devotion. They said that if she performed this ritual for three days, she would be able to visit her husband on the fourth day.
Knowing the anger of Jamadagni, they warned her that she may not be fully pardoned by him, and that she would have to experience the most difficult time of her life for a few minutes. "After that," they said, “you will be eternally revered and will be blessed with your husband. You will be worshiped by all the people henceforth." After blessing her this way, they disappeared. Renuka followed their instructions with devotion and worshipped the Shivalinga with full care and reverence. On the fourth day, she went to see her husband.
Punishment and resurrection
Jamadagni was still furiously angry with Renuka and ordered his sons to punish their mother. One by one, four of them refused flatly. Jamadagni, who possessed the power to burn anyone to ashes with his one look, was so angry that he went berserk and turned four of his sons into four piles of ashes. Parashurama, who was not there when this happened, found his mother weeping by the piles of ashes when he arrived and his father was still raging mad. Jamadagni told him what happened and ordered him to behead his mother for her infidelity. Parushurama had to think quickly. Knowing his father's powers and the extent of his anger, Parashurama immediately obeyed his father, using his axe.
His father then offered a boon to Parushurama, who asked for his mother and brothers to be brought back to life. To everybody's astonishment, Renuka's spirit multiplied and moved to different regions. Renuka was back as a whole too. This miracle inspired her sons and others to become her followers, and worship her.
Renuka vs. Yellamma
In many traditions, Renuka and Yellamma are taken to be two names for the same goddess. However there is also an oral tradition that distinguishes between the two. According to these tales, Renuka fled to a low-caste community when her son Parushurama was coming to kill her. He found and beheaded her, along with a low-caste woman who had tried to protect her. When he later brought them back to life, he mistakenly attached the woman's head to Renuka's body, and vice versa. Jamadagni accepted the former as his wife Renuka, while the latter remained to be worshipped by the lower castes as Yellamma, the mother of all. Matangi, Renuka, and Yellamma are all names of the Goddess of the lower castes.
Temples and related places
Every year, there is a gathering of as many as 200,000 of her devotees at the Yellamma Gudi temple (Yallamma Temple in Google Earth) in Saundatti. Another temple Renukambe [Yellamma] is atop a hill in Chandragutti, Soraba Taluk in Shimoga. This temple is an example of ancient architecture and dates back to the Kadamba period. Another temple is in Mahur, Maharashtra, the supposed birth place of the goddess, which finds mention in Devi Gita, the final chapter of Devi Bhagawatam as, "Matripura in the Sahyadri mountain; here the Devi Renuka dwells...".[4] Another temple becoming famous is Nalgonda,AndhraPradesh where Tuesday is main auspicious day.
Renuka Lake in the Renuka Sanctuary in Himachal Pradesh is named after the goddess. According to one legend, King Sahasrarjuna (Kartavirya Arjuna) wanted the Kamdhenu cow from Jamadagni and Renuka. So for this he killed Jamadagni, and Renuka became sati along with Jamadagni at Mahurgadh, Maharashtra. In Tamil Nadu, Renugambal Amman Temple is situated in Padavedu, Thiruvannamalai District and it is one of the most important Sakthi Sthalas.
In Sri Lanka
In ancient Sri Lanka, "Renuka" was the name of a minor goddess of wanton death and destruction, although at certain times was also a symbol of creativity and vibrancy.
Graveyard of the Garasia people.
Garasia, an interesting ethnic group inhabiting the Aravali foothills of remote Sabarkatha district in Gujarat has a curious history. Though a depressed class and classified as a de-notified tribe, the Garasias resembles closely with the advanced Rajput clans in many ways. Due to these, the British administration had even categorized the Garasias as a branch of Rajputs who were petty land holders. Even today amidst poverty and deep isolation I was surprised to see Garasias not only as prime agriculturalists but also holders of large chunk of lands in the remote slopes of Aravali Mountains. Their houses are widely dispersed each surround by a large farmstead.
Yet the Garasias are poor and deprived of basic services like, health, education
and safe drinking water. Farming is mostly rain fed. According to historical records, in colonial India as land became scarce both through colonial expansion and slash-and-burn agriculture Garasias became further marginalized and associated themselves with Bhils, a more primitive tribal group. The nationalist movement created further division between groups as the Rajput identity was grounded in traditional customs and their heritage as rulers.
Garasias of Sabarkatha form two distinct groups – the Garasia Rajputs and the
Garasia Bhils.
The Garasia Rajputs: In the medieval time the Rajputs from Rajasthan and surrounding plains of Gujarat had appropriated Bhil territories and in part to strengthen their rule and maintain peace, some of them married to Bhil women.
Their offspring formed a distinct caste – the Garasia Rajputs. They served as delegates between the ruling Rajputs and Bhils. The Garasia Rajputs are a lower
status caste than the Rajputs but consider themselves higher to Bhils with whom
they do not inter marry. Garasia Rajputs see themselves as tribalized Rajputs and they believe that that their Rajput ancestors moved to remote forest to avoid subjugation by a conquering group.
The Garasia Bhils: The Garasia Bhils are those who married to Bhil women and were not accepted into Garasia society because of the lower status of the Bhils. The Bhil Garasias are also called Dungri Garasias.
The Garasias live mostly in huts consisting of two/three rooms with mud wall partitions. The roofs are built of flat tiled roofs. There is a smaller hut attached to the main one meant for cattle. However, for the other animals like goats and hens there
are open air facilities. The Garasia women are known for their colourful attires and silver jewellery. Dhols (drums) and bow-arrows are also part of the material culture of the Garasias.
The huts belonging to various families are widely dispersed and there is no central place where people can meet together. I visited a few houses in the village and while interacting with the inhabitants I discovered the gender divisions - women’s responsibility include cooking, tending to cattle, milking the animals and looking after the children. The men do the physical labour such as ploughing, harvesting and building the houses. There is a strong prevalence of joint family system though there is very little unity or cooperation between the village clans.
India - Kalbeliya Dance Rajasthan.
Kalbeliya is one of the most sensuous dance forms of Rajasthan, performed by a tribe of the same name. They are famous for their dance which is an integral part of their culture.
One of the dances is the Baewei dance.
The musicians belong to the Rangi Rang Sindhi Sufi group; they are muslims.
Village Maheshpur, Balrampur Block, Dist, Surguja, Chhattisgarh, INDIA. .Mothers helps their children to eat mid-day meal at Fulwari (Day care Centre for children and pregnant women). To address malnutrition among adivasi population in Sarguja district in Chhattisgarh, the district administration partnered with the gram panchayat (local self-government) and State Health Systems Resource Centre (an autonomous body of the Department of Health and Family Welfare) to start community-managed crèches in the district for children aged 6-36 months to provide two hot cooked meals daily to the children as well as pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers of infants aged 0-6 months. Locally called fulwaris, the formation and functioning of community crèches rest on community participation. The community also decides the place for setting up the fulwari, which is usually part of a house of a resident, voluntarily given for this purpose. Fulwaris are manned and managed by a group of mothers whose children attend the crèche, supported by the mitanin, who plays a crucial role in bringing the group of mothers together. UNICEF India/2014/Dhiraj Singh...
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As we celebrate 62 years of our Independence, I visited the Bangalore chapter of one of the illustrious landmarks of our nation. Having been to ICH at Delhi, Shimla and Dharamshala - Coffee here tasted just the same. Filtered & Strong. They say, many an idea & revolutions for the new India were conceptualized here. India coffee house is not just another cafe joint, it's an institution. Started 50 years back as a worker’s co-operative,these coffee houses have seen Nehru & Gandhi in better days. More importantly, they were once the hang-outs of city intelligentsia who would meet and discuss the state of affairs of our beloved nation, over a cup of coffee.
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This photo is licensed. All Rights Reserved. If you wish to use/publish it.
Contact - Vijay Pandey / vijaypandey@gmail.com.
India
pride
of its
youth
healing
touch
to sooth
following
the footsteps
gandhi
sardar valabh bhai
patel..abdul kalam
azad..freedom
justice liberty
truth ,, humility
hospitality
a tree of hope
laden with
fruits ..
power of
the people
by the people
for the people
its source
the election
booth ..
#firozeshakir
#beggarpoet
Title: Part of Malabar Hill, Bombay
Creator: Johnson, William; Henderson, William
Date: ca. 1855-1862
Series: Photographs of Western India. Volume II. Scenery, Public Buildings, &c.
Part of: Photographs of Western India
Place: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Physical Description: 1 photographic print: part of 1 volume (100 albumen prints); 20 x 26 cm on 35 x 42 cm mount
File: vault_ag2002_1407x_2_119_part_opt.jpg
Rights: Please cite DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University when using this file. A high-resolution version of this file may be obtained for a fee. For details see the sites.smu.edu/cul/degolyer/research/permissions/ web page. For other information, contact degolyer@smu.edu.
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View the Europe, Asia, and Australia: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints Collection
Mani Shankar Aiyar, an MP of Indian Rajya Sabha and former Consul-General of India had delivered a lecture to Karachi Council of Foreign Relations on ‘India and Pakistan: Retrospect and prospect’ a few days ago.
Following is the text of his address in which he has described his personal experience while living in Pakistan as an Indian official and also highlighted relations between India and Pakistan:
“Mr Chairman, distinguished members of the Karachi Council of Foreign Relations, ladies and gentlemen, and dear friends of the last three decades: This is a very personal narrative of an Indian who lived three of his best years in Karachi, albeit 33 years ago, and has since seized every opportunity that has come his way to visit Pakistan, meet his old friends and make new ones. In this last year itself, this is my fifth visit to Pakistan. I hope I can maintain the momentum as Pakistan is my magnificent obsession.
I suppose I have read very much less about Pakistan than any scholar of Pakistan studies. And although I came here initially as an officer of the Indian Foreign Service and have visited Pakistan several times in an official capacity, as a member of our delegations, or accompanying Indian ministers, even thrice in the entourage of the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and also as Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas to push forward the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline and later as Minister of Panchayati Raj to intensify interaction between our respective local self-government representatives, I have had strangely little to do with the political dialogue between our two countries. Almost all of my interaction with Pakistan and Pakistanis has been at the personal level. Hence I can do no more than bring a very personal perspective to bear on matters of great pith and moment.
Perhaps for that very reason the perspective has its value - although one of my closest Indian friends, former High Commissioner to Pakistan, later Foreign Secretary and later still National Security Adviser, JN (Mani) Dixit, said he could not abide my Pollyanna view of our neighbour. Perhaps not. But there are so many Indians who have their grave reservations about Pakistan and its intentions towards us that there might be some value in listening to a more sympathetic Indian view of Pakistan.
I came to Karachi as India’s first-ever Consul General on 14 December 1978, 13 years after Pakistan’s capital moved to Islamabad, around the time of the 1965 war, leading, first, to a downgrading of the High Commission followed by the Assistant High Commission being closed down at the start of the 1971 war. Thus Karachi, refuge of the Mohajir community, those who had left or fled India at the time of partition or soon after, leaving behind in India, however, vast numbers of memories, friends and relatives, was thirsting for the resumption of an Indian visa office to facilitate their all too human desire to go back to the land of their forefathers - and at that time, for many, the land too of their birth. I used to be astonished at their evocation of the filthy gullies of Bans Bareilly and Sambal as if they were talking of Paris in the Spring! But perhaps their sentiment was best summed up by Rais Amrohvi’s ‘O! Hind Jane Wale Mera Salaam Leja:
Jab se bichhad gaye hain us khuld-e-rangabu se
Mehroom ho gaye hain, dil shauk-o-aarzu se
Baaz aayenge musafir kya zauk-e-justaju se
Ab tak wahi hai rishte, Dilli se Lucknow se
Ajdaad ke watan tak itna payam le ja
O! Hind jane wale mera salaam le ja.’
My very first afternoon was a revelation. The phone rang. It was the Deputy Commissioner of Sukkur on the line. He said he had a major problem on his hands: a Hindu sant had been given permission to revisit Sukkur for the first time after the 1965 war and his Muslim mureeds wanted to pay their respects to him. ‘Would I grant them permission to do so?’ ‘Of course’, I replied, rather grandly giving my instant assent - but rose from my desk completely confused. Like all Indians I had been brought up to believe that Pakistanis were ardent, even fanatical, Muslims for, after all, had they not broken my country on the ground that Hindus and Muslims did not constitute two communities but two nations, incompatible and, therefore, incapable of living together under one democratic roof? That, in fact, it was democracy that was the problem because democracy rests on majority rule and would not that majority in an independent India be decided on communal rather than political grounds? Yet, here I was being asked - and by no less a dignitary than the head of one of Sindh’s most important districts - whether Muslim spiritual aspirants might seek the blessings of a Hindu holy man?”
Later, after Makhdoom Amin Fahim became a close personal friend, I asked him whether it was true, as I had heard, that the Hindu followers of his father, the Pir of Hala, who had fled to India at partition, still sought the Pir’s blessings when there was a birth in the family or a wedding or some such auspicious occasion? Makhdoom sahib confirmed that this was indeed so. But, said I, ‘was it not a fact that the Pir’s blessings could not be validated without a nazrana?’ ‘Of course’, came the reply. ‘But how do they send it,’ I asked? By the same route, he disingenuously replied, that they send their requests for a blessing - through the smugglers! God is clearly no respecter of political boundaries.
That introspective introduction to Pakistan on Day One was reinforced the following evening at my first social occasion when I found myself seated next to an unknown Pakistani with whom I began the conversation by asking, in an utterly banal manner, whether he had been to India. ‘Yes,’ he replied somewhat taciturnly. To encourage further conversation, I asked where he had been. ‘Meerut,’ came the curt reply. ‘Oh, really,’ I said, ‘and how long were you there?’ ‘Two and a half years,’ he slowly responded - and it dawned on me with growing horror that I was talking to one of our 1971 Prisoners of War! Seeing the highly embarrassed expression on my face, my interlocutor smiled - indeed, beamed - and enquired if my wife and I would care to dine with them at the Sindh Club the following evening? It turned out to be a most convivial evening and walking back to Hindustan Court after dinner my wife shook her bewildered head and asked whether we had come to an enemy country or what? I shared her bewilderment.
That initial hospitality flowered over the next three years of our stay in Karachi into a bouquet of friendships stretching across the entire political spectrum from the PPP at one end to the Islam-pasand parties on the other; on the geographical spectrum from Clifton to North Nazimabad; on the socio-cultural spectrum from affluent Defence Housing Society homes to the rehriwalas of Sadar; on the business front from petty shop-keepers to industrial and commercial barons; on the intellectual level from academics like Sharif-ul-Mujahid and Hafeez Pasha to the poets and poetasters of the Pak-Hind Prem Sabha; to journalists of every hue from sophisticates like MB Naqvi and Sultan Ahmed and Brig AR Siddiqui to the editor of Jasarat, the mouthpiece of the Jamaat-e-Islami, and even Nawai Waqt. My attitude was, I am a foreigner, why take sides in Pakistan’s internecine quarrels?
We - me, my wife, my children, my officers, my staff of over one hundred - to go by their present nostalgic remembrances, all had a ball. But on my very last night in Karachi - we were sailing to Bombay next afternoon - I suddenly had a very disturbing thought. What if my euphoric high was only the consequence of my being flattered out of my mind by heading a huge establishment at the age of under forty, the welcome I had received not being to an Indian but to a Consul General who could pull a visa out of his pocket like a magician pulling out a pigeon?
I sent for one of my assistants, a man who had reached Karachi the same day as I had and whose personal experience of the city was co-terminus with mine. I asked whether he had experienced any discrimination, any abuse, any invective, even any discourtesy, during his three years in the city. He thought for a while, then shook his head to say No, he hadn’t. But, I persisted, no one could tell merely by looking at him whether he was an Indian or a Pakistani, what about his wife and her give-away bindi? He said no one had ever been rude or nasty to her although she always sported a bindi, neither in the bus she took from the Indian Consulate ghetto of Panchsheel Court, a dead give-away of national origin, nor in the shopping marts of Sadar. That led me to ask him to confirm a rumour I had heard as Consul General - that shopkeepers in Sadar invariably offered discounts to Indian, and especially Indian Consulate customers. Reluctantly but unambiguously, he confirmed that this was indeed so. Thus, his three years had been remarkably like mine. I, therefore, enquired whether he thought we should improve relations with Pakistan. Astonished, he replied, ‘but how could we, were they not all Mussalmans?’
That is the central problem: the communalisation of the mind, looking at our neighbours not as one of us, but as the Other, indeed, the Enemy Other.
The communalisation of mindsets was the root cause of the division of the country as the price to be paid for independence. Now that there are two countries, independent since six decades, is there no way the communalisation of the mind can be eased in the direction of also recognising the complementarities in our respective national destinies?
For we live in the same South Asian geographical space. Although many Pakistanis would deny it, we also occupy much the same civilisational space, diversity of every kind - racial, linguistic, ethnic, cultural, religious and even sectarian - being woven into the warp and the woof of our nationhood. History may have divided us, but geography binds us, and a shared inheritance holds as much the potential to keep us apart as to bring us together. The choice is for us to make.
For most of the last six decades, the best and the brightest of our countries - sants and Ulema; ideologues and propagandists; terrorists and cerebral communalists; politicians and statesmen; scholars and the media; diplomats and the military - have done all they can to render us asunder. They have not entirely succeeded. For we remain hyphenated in the eyes of the world because we remain hyphenated in the minds of our people. And we remain hyphenated because we are hyphenated; we share too much to just turn our backs on each other and hope the other will go away. Siamese twins are not free to roam except with each other, even if they keep pulling away from each other.
There are four sets of factors that stand in the way of reconciliation. I would classify these as: generic; institutional; endemic; and episodic.
Generic: Some in India and many in Pakistan would argue that the very reason for partition having been the religious incompatibility between Hindus and Muslims, it is inevitable that the two nations would also find it incompatible to live together as good neighbours. The argument goes that the underlying hostility is generic, built into our genes as it were, and if it were not partition would not have happened.
That, perhaps, is a somewhat fundamentalist way of putting it and, therefore, the point is generally made with greater sophistication and nuancing as not so much a fundamental civilisational incompatibility but a lack of convergence in national interest or even a belief that hostility being the underlying reality, it is not so much a question of promoting friendship as protecting oneself from hostile intent.”
The News Pakistan (13/01/2011)
Mani Shankar Aiyar, an MP of Indian Rajya Sabha and former Consul-General of India had delivered a lecture to Karachi Council of Foreign Relations on ‘India and Pakistan: Retrospect and prospect’ a few days ago.
Following is second part of the text of his address - Part-I was published on Thursday - in which he has described his personal experience while living in Pakistan as an Indian official and also highlighted relations between India and Pakistan:
“Yet, there are several levels at which this argument breaks down. First, the Indian Muslim community: are they not living in harmony with their Hindu brethren? If there were no compatibility, how is it that almost every icon of India’s 85% Hindu youth is unabashedly Muslim: the four Khans - superstars Shah Rukh, Aamir, Salman, and Saif; leading ladies like Katrina Kaif following Madhubala, Meena Kumari and Nargis of yore and Waheeda Rahman and Shabana Azmi more recently; the golden voice of Mohd Rafi and Talat Mehmood; the lyrics of Sahir Ludhianvi and Javed Akhtar; music director AR Rahman (who was born Dilip Kumar and converted to Islam, where his renowned predecessor in the run-up to partition, Dilip Kumar, the actor, was born Yusuf Khan in Peshawar and converted to Bollywood under an assumed Hindu name); the makers of Peepli Live, Mehmood Farooqui and Anusha Rizvi, India’s sure-fire entry for this year’s Oscars; ustads such as Bismillah Khan, Vilayat Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Amjad Ali Khan and tabla maestros, Allah Rakha and Zakir Hussain; cricketers like Tiger Pataudi and Azharuddin, and tennis star, Sania Mirza, whom we share, besides a whole galaxy of highly influential opinion-makers of whom I need mention only three - the Group Editor of the India Today stable, MJ Akbar; columnist Saeed Naqvi; and historian Mushirul Hassan, Director of the National Archives - and business barons, Aziz Premji and Anu Agha. The point needs no labouring.”
Except that the Justice Rajinder Sachar report will immediately be thrown at those who suggest that the lived experience of secular India shows no incompatibility between the two alleged ‘nations’ of Hindu and Muslim. Yes, indeed, in many, many respects the denizens of the Muslim community are worse off than their non-Muslim counterparts in northern India. Equally undeniable is that while the North Indian Muslim elite largely took off for Pakistan at partition, the vast majority of the ordinary Muslims voted with their feet to remain where they were. Deprived of a middle-class and a political leadership, the community has striven to raise itself by its boot-straps and while there are success stories there is much leeway to be made up. This points to the need for more affirmative action; it emphatically does not mean that Hindu and Muslim cannot live under one national roof.
Moreover, it needs to be recognised - in Pakistan, of course, but much more in India - that where population transfer did not take place, as in South India, the Muslim community is doing quite exceptionally well - and is not resented by the majority community for doing so.
I do not want to make a polemical point. I simply want to assert here on Pakistani soil that whatever might have been the argument for a Muslim-majority State on this South Asian sub-continent at the time of independence and partition, now that Pakistan has been in existence for sixty years and more, the generic argument for Hindu-Muslim incompatibility has lost its sheen and transmuted more into national hostility than communal animosity.”
“In this context, I’d like to share a story with you about what happened when I addressed a Jang Forum meeting in Karachi a few years ago. I was asked from the audience how I could claim to be a friend of Pakistan when I rejected the Two-Nation theory. I replied that whatever the merits of the theory in the period leading up to independence and partition, it was time now to recognise that the Two-Nation Theory had given way to the Three-State Reality, and that if we continued to advocate the Two Nation Theory, it would have to mean that the 15 crore Muslims in India are traitors to their country. At this, the questioner, delighted with my answer, bounded on to the stage, embraced me, and handing over a visiting card describing him as the Vice Chairman of the Karachi Marriage Hall Owners Association, whispered in my ear that when I got married again, he promised me a marriage hall for free! That, I regard, as the highest compliment I have ever received. My wife, however, disapproves - I wonder why?
Reciprocally, it is little known in India, and little bruited about in Pakistan, how many members of Pakistan’s non-Muslim minorities hold positions of distinction and responsibility in Pakistan, not only in the higher echelons but in the grassroots institutions of local government, in the civil services, in the judiciary, in agriculture, in business and the arts. Partition over, as the Quaid-i-Azam said before Pakistan was suddenly and unexpectedly emptied of its minorities in the fortnight after its creation: ‘You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of the State. Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.’
It could have been Nehru speaking!
Moreover, in numerous countries across the world, where Indian and Pakistani immigrants live and work together, while some do indeed carry their communal baggage with them overseas, by and large there is tolerance, even cordiality, between the two communities. Nothing in either Islam or Hinduism makes for incompatibility. Our syncretic history, our symbiotic past of over a thousand years, beginning with Muhammad bin Qasim arriving on our shores in 711 AD, points rather to a composite heritage than to one that is irretrievably divided.
I would, therefore, emphatically repeat that it is not communal animosity but national hostility that keeps India and Pakistan apart: a matter to be addressed by political and diplomatic action, not theology. Indeed, if religious differences were the root cause, how does one explain Pakistan’s excellent relations with the only avowedly Hindu nation in the world, Nepal, or India’s excellent relations with virtually every Muslim country - except Pakistan?
The generic argument does not hold, but are the scars of history impossible to raze? Those who became Pakistani on 14 August 1947 had been Indians till the previous day. Therefore, there were many in India who argued, Prof Sisir Gupta perhaps most persuasively, that since nothing in language or literature, culture or cuisine, history or even religion distinguished a Pakistani from an Indian, the only way a Pakistani could distinguish himself from an Indian was by asserting that he was emphatically not an Indian, by building the national identity of Pakistan not with positive building blocks but negatively by stressing that, above all, Pakistan was not India and Pakistanis were Pakistanis precisely because Pakistanis were not Indians.
I do not know whether this argument was always a parody, but today, more than sixty years after Pakistan became a reality, those who began life as Indians are a rapidly diminishing breed. I would imagine that some 90% of Pakistanis today have never known any nationality other than their Pakistani nationality, even as 90% of Indians have never known Pakistan as an integral part of India. Thus, history itself is taking care of history. There is no reason why the nationhood of contemporary Pakistan needs to be built with the cement of anti-Indian or anti-Hindu sentiment. And that, indeed, is the reason for the affection with which most Indians are received in Pakistan - and, to a large if not reciprocal extent, Pakistanis are received in India. The political reality of 21st century India and Pakistan has substantially replaced the grievances that separated sections of the Hindu and Muslim community in pre-partition India, especially after the outbreak of communal riots in the Turbulent ‘20s of the last century.
Therefore, I see no reason in principle why generic or historical factors need necessarily stand in the way of reconciliation between the two countries. If nevertheless progress in the direction of reconciliation has been slow, then does the problem lie in institutional hurdles on the road to reconciliation?
Institutional: From the Indian perspective - and perhaps also the perspective of a majority of Pakistanis - the overwhelming role of the military in Pakistan’s approach to India is often held to be the principal institutional block to reconciliation. The argument goes that so long as the army, abetted by a complaisant civil service, is the effective political power in Pakistan, and so long as the raison d’etre of the huge Pakistani military establishment and what Ayesha Siddique calls Pakistan’s Military Inc is founded on the assiduous propagation of the threat from India - so the argument goes - the Pakistani military will never permit hostility between the two countries to be undermined for that would be to cut off the branch on which the Pakistani defence forces are perched.
On the other hand, here in Pakistan it is often claimed that revanchist sentiment in the entire Indian establishment, including the Indian military, is so strong and persistent that the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 was only the prelude to the destruction of the rest of Pakistan, whenever this might prove possible; hence the need for eternal vigilance as the price to be paid for Pakistan’s liberty. Both these views appear to me to be a case of the wish fathering the thought. I don’t believe that the actual course of India-Pakistan relations validates the view that India cannot deal with the Pakistani military; or that India is still hankering after a restoration of Akhand Bharat.
Let us take first the Indian view of the Pakistan military. It is rooted, I think, in Gen Ayub Khan’s coup of 1958. Please remember that in 1958, half a century ago, almost all top officers of the Indian military were either General Ayub Khan’s contemporaries or his seniors in the predecessor British Indian army. India, understandably, did not want Bonapartism to spread from the Pakistan army to their Indian counterparts. Gen Thimayya’s resignation at about the same time as the Ayub coup was considered - perhaps erroneously - as an ominous and dangerous straw in a wind that blew no one any good.
But it was the Ayub regime that in its earliest days suggested a ‘Trieste’ solution to Kashmir - that is, let the status quo lie and postpone resolution to a future generation - if I am to credit the story recounted to me here in Karachi by India’s high commissioner to the Ayub government, Rajeshwar Dayal. And it was indubitably during the Ayub regime that the Indus Waters Treaty was signed, a treaty that has weathered three wars and continues to offer a forum for the resolution of water disputes, as witness the recent spats over Baglihar and now Kishangana. Moreover, it was during that regime that Sheikh Abdullah, Jayaprakash Narayan and others were, by all accounts, on a successful or, at any rate, promising peace mission to Pakistan when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru suddenly died. Yes, the battle in the Rann of Kutch in April 1965, and Operation Gibraltar in August that year, followed by the September war, took place in the Ayub dispensation, but much of that seems to have been stoked as much by civilian political forces as by the armed forces. In any case, it was President Ayub Khan who signed the Tashkent Agreement, disagreement having been registered principally by his civilian colleagues.
Later, it was during the period of Ziaul Haq that, whatever might be one’s reservations about his domestic policies, there was a new impetus given to people-to-people relations, the most important having been the opening of the Indian Consulate General in Karachi. And when in the winter of 1986-87 the temperature started building up over Operation Brasstacks, it was in Ziaul Haq that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi found a most effective partner in defusing the threat of war.
And although Gen Pervez Musharraf’s coup was almost universally looked at with deep disapproval and suspicion in India, coming as it did in the wake of Kargil 1999, eventually it was under his aegis that the Composite Dialogue made more progress on the Tariq-Lambah back-channel than at perhaps any other stage of India-Pakistan relations.
Equally, of course, the Nehru-Liaquat Pact of 1950, the Simla Agreement of 1972 and the Lahore Declaration were the handiwork of civilian governments.
Hence, I do not think the objective record makes for any insuperable difficulty in India dealing directly with the Pakistan military or in dealing with a civilian government that has the military breathing down its neck. In any case, if Pakistan cannot get itself out of the military shadow, what can India do about it? We have to deal with whoever is in power in this country and while we certainly sympathise with the widespread Pakistani desire to become a full-fledged democracy, we have to make do with whatever is on offer - and I do not think we in India should postpone any amelioration in our relations with Pakistan till that nebulous day when we will have in Pakistan a democratically elected political authority that keeps its military in check. Peace is an imperative now, not a consummation to be postponed indefinitely.
Part III
Mani Shankar Aiyar, an MP of Indian Rajya Sabha and former Consul-General of India had delivered a lecture to Karachi Council of Foreign Relations on “India and Pakistan: Retrospect and prospect” a few days ago.
Following is third part of the text of his address - Part-II was published on Friday - in which he has described his personal experience while living in Pakistan as an Indian official and also highlighted relations between India and Pakistan:
“On the other hand, the regrettably widespread view in Indian circles that Pakistan is a ‘failed’ State or a ‘failing’ one also needs to be countered. I do not think any nation, let alone Pakistan, which is so firmly anchored in history, civilization, ideology and spiritual belief as is Pakistan, with one of the largest populations in the world (even if relative to India somewhat small), with the high degree of political and philosophical sophistication, which one encounters in this country at every turn, a resilient economy and a burgeoning globalised elite, a strong bureaucracy and a stronger military, and an extremely lively and informed media, can ever be a pushover. When the Taliban was said to have arrived at Buner, a hundred kilometres from Islamabad, there were those in India who feared (or even wished) for the collapse. The fear was always unrealistic, the wish beggared. And was shown to be so when the security forces moved into action and pushed back the insurgents, as they had when in July 2007 firm action was taken at the Lal Masjid in the heart of Islamabad. Pakistan, six decades after its foundation, is no war-time Afghanistan swirling in chaos at the time of the Soviet and American withdrawal and the political vacuum that followed the end of its socialist phase, and, thus, sucked inexorably into the vortex of religious extremism assiduously egged-on from outside. Yes, you have your difficulties. But so do we. So any strategy built on the assumption that Pakistan cannot hold is misconceived, misplaced and dangerously misleading. And, therefore, bound to be disproved. Equally unrealistic are doomsday prophecies of Pakistan falling into the maw of fanatical terrorists or disintegrating irretrievably into a congeries of nations. Pakistan is here to stay and it would best to deal with it on those terms. While it is the duty of the intelligence community to conjure up far-fetched scenarios and prepare for them, statesmen are required to handle the here and now. And that calls for an engagement with a Pakistan that will last, not a Pakistan on its last legs.
That accounts too, in my view, for no one in India harbouring any illusions any more about a return to Akhand Bharat. That was a slogan in the immediate post-partition period, a cry from the heart of those who had been deprived of their hearths and their homes. That generation has gone, the refugee in India is well integrated into Indian society, and there is no homesickness for return except perhaps in the fading memories of some eighty-to-ninety year olds. Moreover, what on earth are we going to do with 15 crore seriously angered malcontents if ever anything so stupid happened as the end of Pakistan? No, there is nothing, nothing at all, to be gained by promoting any disintegration of neighbouring Pakistan, and I would advise any Pakistani who doubts us on this score to consider how steadfast a series of Indian governments, of every hue and colour, were in standing up for the unity and integrity of Sri Lanka through thirty years of a vicious civil war caused by gross discrimination against the Tamil minority despite the strong ethnic links that bind the Sri Lankan Tamil to the Indian Tamil.
There being no insuperable institutional obstacle to a sustained Indo-Pak effort to resolve simmering differences, let us now turn our attention to those differences, which, for convenience, I have divided into the ‘endemic’ and the ‘episodic’.
Endemic: The endemic issues between Pakistan and India are, from a Pakistani perspective, Kashmir and water; from an Indian perspective, doubtless it is cross-border terrorism based on Pakistani soil.
I have no readymade answers. I doubt that anyone has. But is that cause enough to despair of any solution ever being found?
The historical record would appear to disprove any military solution to the argument over Jammu and Kashmir. The attempt to annex the Maharajah’s state when he and Sheikh Abdullah were readying to through their lot in with India failed; so did Operation Gibraltar; so did the attack on Akhnur that followed; as did the hostilities on the Western Front in 1971; as did the Kargil misadventure; as did the proxy war of the nineties. And while there are those in India who maintain that the war of 1948 should have been pressed forward to a conclusion, I think Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was sensible in listening to wiser counsel. There is no military solution, and subversion will not work.
On the other hand, is jaw-jaw impossible? The United Nations, once the forum for grand forensic battles between Krishna Menon and Feroze Khan Noon and, later, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Swaran Singh, has in effect washed its hands of the issue; the question of Jammu and Kashmir remains on the UN agenda but lies dormant ever since India and Pakistan agreed at Shimla in July 1972 to discuss bilaterally all issues related to J&K. Notwithstanding the Naysayers, and there is no dearth of them in either country, progress has indeed been made. These issues are an integral part of the Composite Dialogue initiated in 1997. And, to go by available records, a framework for resolution had reached an advanced stage under the aegis of President Musharraf and Dr Manmohan Singh through the Lambah-Tariq back channel. Even if that progress is not being acknowledged now, it does seem feasible to hope that the resumption of back channel contacts (made public by the Pakistan minister of Kashmir Affairs, according to reports appearing in the Indian media) might yet move matters further forward. But whether or not the back channel has, indeed, been reactivated, the two countries have demonstrated that, when the waters are not muddied, they can talk to each other even on Jammu and Kashmir and inch towards an agreed settlement. Neither military action nor encouragement to cross-border terrorism can do that.
As for waters, when I was in Pakistan in March last year, the drying rivers of the Indus basin were on everyone’s lips; when I was last here in October, devastating floods were on everyone’s mind. Water is a most serious issue and upper and lower riparian, whether within our respective countries, such as Punjab and Sindh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, for example, or between our respective countries, will have to find answers in 21st century technology, not in the polemics of the 20th century. The total availability of water has run so low that where India and Pakistan started in the 1950s with a per capita availability per annum of about 5,000 cubic metres, water availability in both countries has since declined to under 2,000, in Pakistan rather more sharply than in India, down to about 1,200 as against India’s 1,800.
The problem of water shortage is, however, common to both of us and is, indeed, a global problem common to virtually every country in the world. Some would call it the most important universal challenge of our times. Israel has shown the way to the conservation of water through drip and sprinkler irrigation and I imagine that it is in such technology rather than in the 19th century technology of large dams and command area channels that the answer lies.
But while technology may hold the secret, there is no denying the fact of water deprivation or the politics that flow from it. That is where the Indus Waters Treaty has proved its immense worth. The numerous mechanisms it has for finding acceptable ways of resolving agonized issues, as was demonstrated over Baglihar recently and as is being demonstrated over Kishangana now, are solid examples of India and Pakistan being able to discover forums of settlement in preference to the vapid aggravation of real problems and real issues.
I now turn, with some trepidation, to the Indian priority issue - terrorism. Till 9/11, cross-border terrorism was one of several subjects under discussion in our bilateral composite dialogue notwithstanding the proxy war in Kashmir nor the jihadi strategy of bleeding India with a thousand cuts. The attack on our Parliament on December 13, 2001 led to the armed confrontation of Operation Parikrama but did not stall either the Agra summit or the Islamabad Declaration of January 2004 or the dramatic progress made between May 2004 and March 2007 when the going was never better.
Meanwhile, the al-Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers brought the American retaliation to the borders of Pakistan. Ever since, terrorism has become a global issue, perhaps the most important issue before the international community. In that war against terrorism, Pakistan, willy-nilly, has become a front-line state, with horrific consequences for itself. No state has suffered as much from terrorism as Pakistan itself. I think there needs to be much wider appreciation in India than there is at present of how terrible is the daily threat of terrorism striking any day and anywhere in Pakistan and, therefore, how steely is the will of the Pakistani people to not let their country be taken over by suicide bombers and pathological killers. I do believe that while the Pakistan establishment might at one time have been complaisant regarding terrorism directed at the West or terrorism directed against India, while being extremely vigilant against terrorism directed at Pakistan, there is now an increasing realization that all the networks are inter-connected and, therefore, the counter attack on terrorism has to be holistic, taking on all three components without distinction.
Indeed, that is the message that came through in President Zardari’s initial reaction to 26/11. That brief flicker of hope of a joint India-Pakistan front against those undertaking, sponsoring or abetting terrorism was snuffed out over the offer, first made and then withdrawn, to send the ISI chief to India to initiate a cooperative approach to the joint threat of terror. However, subsequent developments over the next two years have been far from encouraging. Bluntly speaking, the Indian establishment and almost all Indians remain unconvinced that India-directed terrorism is, indeed, seen in Pakistan as an unmitigated evil that must be stamped out. But while that hurdle looms large on the road to the resumption of normalcy in our mutual dialogue, I do believe only a joint strategy to counter terrorism will enable both India and Pakistan to overcome what is, in effect, a joint threat to both our peoples. We either hang together or hang separately. The challenge is to set the stage to being together on this issue instead of languishing in confrontation, thus giving the edge to the terrorist. There is little sign of this happening, but I remain persuaded that the threat to both of us is so great from what is in practice a single undifferentiated source of extreme danger to both countries that sooner than later a joint process will have to be set in motion.
Episodic: In a relationship as turbulent and accident-prone as that between India and Pakistan, it is only to be expected that there would be diurnal disturbances to any equilibrium we might establish or strive to establish. There are any number of issues on which troubles arise. If not tackled, they persist, and when they are resolved leave one wondering what all the fuss was about.
Take, for example, for it is the example closest to home, the opening of the Indian Consulate-General when I arrived here 33 years ago. It was expected that a Pakistani Consul General would soon land in Bombay. That was delayed. A year later, elections in India led to a change of government. Jinnah House was no longer on offer. Three decades on, there is still no Pakistan CG in Mumbai. And the Indian CG in Karachi was closed down 17 years ago. I sneaked into 63, Clifton some years ago with my daughter born in Karachi. It was heartbreaking. Who has gained? I do not know. But I do know who have lost. Ordinary, very ordinary Pakistanis and Indians.
If an Indian Consulate could run in Karachi for 15 years without a counterpart Pakistan facility in Mumbai, why not now? And as for a Pakistani visa office in Mumbai, I am told by successive Pakistan high commissioners that they have searched and searched but are unable to find a single Mumbai landlord willing to lease his premises to the Pakistan government; while the Indian side tells me that all efforts they have made to make space available to Pakistan have been rebuffed. You and I will never know the full story till WikiLeaks makes it available to us. But amazing is it not that neither of us seems to have the wit to find a mutually satisfactory answer? Or is it just that our authorities do not want to?”
Ranakpur is widely known for its marble Jain temple, said to the most spectacular of the Jain temples.
Chammukha temple is built in the 15 th century.
Few pictures from my recent trip to India. You can find more (witch captions!) at www.expedice.org/luke/silkroad
Few pictures from my recent trip to India. You can find more (witch captions!) at www.expedice.org/luke/silkroad
Also, one third of prostitutes in India are (usually enslaved) children, [17] many of whom come from Nepal [18].
(Full gallery: www.m1key.me/photography/slums/)
The Little Flower school in Chennai has a partnership with a school in Sussex, England, which is supported by the UK's Global School Partnerships scheme, run by DFID and the British Council. The scheme helps students share ideas across continents and raises awareness of global issues.
Image: Pippa Ranger/Department for International Development
Kota (/ˈkoʊtə/ (listen)), previously known as Kotah, is a city located in the southeast of northern Indian state of Rajasthan. It is located about 240 kilometres south of the state capital, Jaipur, situated on the banks of Chambal River. With a population of over 1.2 million, it is the third most populous city of Rajasthan after Jaipur and Jodhpur, 46th most populous city of India and 53rd most populous urban agglomeration of India. It serves as the administrative headquarters for Kota district and Kota division. Kota is a major coaching hub of the country for competitive examination preparations and has a number of engineering and medical coaching institutes.
The city of Kota was once the part of the erstwhile Rajput kingdom of Bundi. It became a separate princely state in the 16th century. Apart from the several monuments that reflect the glory of the town, Kota is also known for its palaces and gardens. Mahesh Vijay of Bhartiya Janta Party was the last mayor of Kota. The city was also included among 98 Indian cities for Smart Cities Mission initiated by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015 and was listed at 67th place after results of first round were released following which top 20 cities were further selected for funding in the immediate financial year. It is popular among the youth of India for its coaching institutes for engineering and medical entrance examinations. Many students come to Kota to prepare for the IIT JEE, NEET and many other competitive exams.
HISTORY
The history of the city dates back to the 12th century CE when Rao Deva, a Chauhan Rajput chieftain belonging to the Hada clan conquered the territory and founded Bundi and Hadoti. Later, in the early 17th century, during the reign of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir, the ruler of Bundi – Rao Ratan Singh, gave the smaller principality of Kota to his son, Madho Singh. Since then Kota became a hallmark of the Rajput gallantry and culture.
Kota became an independent state in 1631 when Rao Madho Singh, the second son of Rao Ratan of [Bundi] was made the ruler, by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir. Soon Kota outgrew its parent state to become bigger in area, richer in revenue and more powerful. Maharao Bhim Singh played a pivotal role in Kota's history, having held a 'Mansab' of five thousand and being the first in his dynasty to have the title of Maharao. Zalim Singh, a diplomat, and statesman, emerged as another prominent figure of the state in the 18th century. Although initially being a general of Kota's army, he rose to the regent of the kingdom after the king died leaving a minor on the throne. He remained a direct administrator of the state. In 1817, a treaty of friendship was signed between him and the British on his condition of carving out part from the existing state for his descendants resulting in Jhalawar coming into existence in 1838. Kota was not involved in the earlier events of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. However, when in October 1857 rebels murdered the local British resident and his two sons, British forces responded by storming the city and, after some resistance, capturing it in March 1858.
In the 1940s, social activist Guru Radha Kishan organised trade union activities and campaigned against the colonial government. He left Kota after the local administration learned of the arrest warrant issued against him for his participation in Indian Independence activities.
PRINCELY CITY OF KOTA
Kota became independent in 1579, after Bundi state in Hadoti region had become weak. Then, Kota ruled the territory which now is Kota district and Baran district.
GEOGRAPHY
Kota is located along the banks of the Chambal River in the southern part of Rajasthan. It is the 3rd largest city of Rajasthan after Jaipur and Jodhpur. The cartographic coordinates are 25.18°N 75.83°E. It covers an area of 221.36 km2). It has an average elevation of 271 metres. The district is bound on the north and north west by Sawai Madhopur, Tonk and Bundi districts. The Chambal River separates these districts from Kota district, forming the natural boundary.
The city of Kota is situated at the centre of the southeastern region of Rajasthan a region very widely known as Hadoti, the land of the Hadas. Kota lies along the banks of the Chambal river on a high sloping tableland forming a part of the Malwa Plateau. The general slope of the city is towards the north. The comparatively rocky, barren, and elevated land in the southern part of the city descends towards a plain agricultural land in the north. The Mukundara hills run from southeast to northwest axis of the town.
Kota has fertile land and greenery with irrigation facilities through canals. The two main canals; called as left main canal (towards Bundi) and right main canal (towards Baran) originate from the reservoir created by Kota Barrage. The tributaries of these canals make up a network in the city and surrounding areas of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and supplements the irrigation of these areas.
CLIMATE
Kota has a semi-arid climate (Köppen climate classification BSh) with high temperatures throughout the year. Summers are long, hot, and dry, starting in late March and lasting till the end of June. The temperatures average above 40 °C in May and June, frequently exceed 45 °C with temperatures as high as 48.4 °C also been recorded. The monsoon season follows with comparatively lower temperatures, but higher humidity and frequent, torrential downpours. The monsoons subside in October and temperatures rise again. The brief, mild winter starts in late November and lasts until the last week of February. Temperatures hover between 26.7 °C (max) to 12.0 °C (min). This can be considered the best time to visit Kota because of intense heat in the summer.The average annual rainfall in the Kota district is 660.6 mm. Most of the rainfall can be attributed to the southwest monsoon which has its beginning around the last week of June and may last till mid-September. Pre-monsoon showers begin towards the middle of June with post-monsoon rains occasionally occurring in October. The winter is largely dry, although some rainfall does occur as a result of the Western Disturbance passing over the region.
DEMOGRAPHICS
According to 2011 Census of India, Kota City had a population of 1,001,694 of which male and female are 528,601 and 473,093 respectively. The provisional results of census 2011 reported city's population as 1,001,365. The urban agglomeration of Kota consists of city only. The sex ratio was 895 and 12.14% were under six years of age. The effective literacy rate was 82.80%, with male literacy at 89.49% and female literacy at 75.33%.
Harauti, a dialect of Rajasthani is widely spoken in Kota with Hindi, Marwari and English being the other languages spoken.
According to 2011 census, Hinduism is the majority religion in the city practised by about 80.5% of the population. Muslims form large minorities (15.9%) followed by Jains (2.2%), Sikhs (0.9%) and Christians (0.4%).
Government institutions and courts
Governmental institutions in Kota include:
Municipal Corporation
Collectorate
Office of the Divisional Commissioner
Rajasthan Housing Board
Command Area Development (CAD)
Urban Improvement Trust (UIT)
Office of the Superintendent of Police, Inspector General of Police, and the Income Tax commissioner of Kota range.
Office of the Divisional Railway Manager, Kota Division, West Central Railway
Office of Deputy Commissioner of central excise and service tax
Instrumentation Ltd is a Public Sector company based in Kota. Its clientele includes public sector entities such as the Indian Railways, BSNL and VSNL. Presently, it has been shut down.
The District court provides court and notary services.
ECONOMY
The city is the trade centre for an area in which cotton, millet, wheat, coriander and oilseeds are grown; industries include cotton and oilseed milling, textile weaving, distilling, dairying, and the manufacture of metal handcrafts. Kota also has an extensive industry of stone-polishing (tiles) of a stone called Kota Stone, used for the floor and walls of residential and business buildings. Since last 15 years Kota has emerged as an Education hub of the country as producing excellent results in IIT-JEE and medical entrance exams.
KOTA EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRY
A major part of Kota's economy depends on its student population. Every year more than 150,000 students visit and study in Kota to study and prepare for JEE and NEET.
The entrance coaching industry in Kota generates business of about ₹40,000 million from them which further contributes towards the economy of the region. Over time, the economical growth and money generated through education in Kota seems to have overtaken other popular economical activities of the region by contributing more and more with time.
KOTA DORIA OR DORIYA AND SAREES
Weaving in Kota was started by Maharana Bhimdev in the 18th century.
The Kota saris like most traditional piece of work had started becoming lost before designer Vidhi Singhania moved to Kota and started working with the workers to revive its market.[38] Many textile shops in the city sell different varieties of Kota doriya. These saris have become one of the trademarks of the city.
KOTA STONE
The fine-grained variety of limestone quarried from Kota district is known as Kota stone, with rich greenish-blue and brown colours. Kota stone is tough, non-water-absorbent, non-slip, and non-porous. The varieties include Kota Blue Natural, Kota Blue Honed, Kota Blue Polished, Kota Blue Cobbles, Kota Brown Natural and Kota Brown Polished.
INDUSTRIES
Kota is one of the industrial hubs in northern India, with chemical, cement, engineering and power plants based there. The total number of industrial units in the district in 2010–11 stood at 12908 with 705 registered units. The district power plants show annual growth of 15–20% due to their strategic locations.
POWER PLANTS
Kota is surrounded by five power stations within its 50 km radius.
Kota Super Thermal Power Plant – thermal
Rajasthan Atomic Power Station in Rawatbhata Chittorgarh district (65 kilometres from Kota) – nuclear
NTPC Anta Gas Power Plant in Antah Baran district (50 kilometers from Kota) – gas
Jawahar Sagar Power Plant – hydro
Kalisindh Thermal Power Station (in Jhalrapatan, Jhalawar) – thermal
Surya Chambal Power Plant in Rangpur Kota district - biomass
EDUCATION
The city is specially known in India as a center for the preparation of various national level competitive examinations through which the students seek admissions in various engineering and medical colleges of the country. Often termed as the "Kota Factory", the town contains more than 40 large coaching institutes for aspiring students trying to pass entrance exams for Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), through the IIT JEE, other engineering colleges and prominent medical colleges of India.
Since 2000, the city has emerged as a popular coaching destination for competitive exams preparation and for profit educational services. The education sector of Kota has become one of the major contributors to the city's economy. Kota is popularly referred to as "the coaching capital of India". Over 150,000 students from all over the country flock every year towards the city for preparation of various exams such as IIT-JEE and NEET-UG etc. Many hostels and PGs are located in Kota near the vicinity of coaching centres for students. Students live here for 2–3 years and prepare for the exams. The annual turnover of the Kota coaching industry is about ₹1500 crore. The majority of the students here are enrolled in schools, providing the facility of "dummy schooling", which gives students admissions without the need to attend it regularly. However, it is an illegal practice. In 2019, The Viral Fever launched a Web Series called Kota Factory to shed light on the life of students who study at Kota.
Kota's emergence as a coaching hub began in 1985 when Vinod Kumar Bansal, an engineer set up Bansal Classes that eventually became Bansal Classes Private Limited.
STUDENT SUICIDES
In the past few years, reports of students dying by suicide in the city have increased. As per reports, students feel stressed and get pressurized in order to crack their target competitive exam. As per National Crime Records Bureau report of 2014, 45 suicide cases of students were reported in the city. In year 2015, 17 such cases were found. For the same cause, many coaching centers have also appointed counsellors and are organising recreational activities to help students.
MEDICAL AND ENGINERING COLLEGES
Government Medical College, Kota
University Engineering College, Kota
UNIVERSITIES
Agriculture University, Kota
Rajasthan Technical University
Vardhaman Mahaveer Open University
University of Kota
Indian Institute of Information Technology, Kota
Jai Minesh National University, Kota
PLACES OF INTEREST
Some of the popular visitor attractions in and nearby the city include Chambal Garden, Chambal River Front, Seven Wonders Park, Kishore Sagar Lake, Jag Mandir, Kota Garh Palace, Chatra Vilas Garden, Ganesh Udyan, Traffic Garden, Godavari Dham Temple, Geparnath Temple, Garadia Mahadev Temple, Chattaneshwar Mandir, Kota Zoological Park, Abheda Biological Park, City Park(IL Oxizone), Chatrapati Shivaji Park, Maharao Madho Singh Museum, Kota Government Museum, Brijraj Bhawan Palace, Abheda Mahal, Royal Cenotaphs at Kshar Bagh, Kota Barrage, Khade Ganesh Ji Mandir, Shiv Puri Dham, Maa Trikuta Mandir, Kansua Shiv Mandir, Darrah National Park and Jawahar Sagar Dam.
TRANSPORT
Kota is well connected with road and rail to all major cities within Rajasthan as well as those located outside the state.
ROADWAYS
Kota have two major interstate bus terminals, namely, Nayapura Bus Stand at Nayapura and Roadways New Bus Stand at Ramchandrapura.[citation needed] National Highway No.27 (via Udaipur, Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Guwahati) and National highway No.52 (via Hisar, Churu, Sikar, Jaipur, Indore, Aurangabad, Solapur and Hubli) pass through the Kota City. National Highway No.27 is a part of East-West Corridor(Porbandar - Silchar) and National Highway No.52 connects Punjab to Karnataka (Sangrur, Punjab—Ankola, Karnataka). The total road length in Kota district is 2,052 km as of March 2011. There are also three upcoming expressway projects in the form of Delhi–Mumbai Expressway (Via Kota, Rajasthan and Vadodara), Kota–Hyderabad Expressway (Via Indore) and Chambal Expressway.
RAILWAYS
Kota is well connected to all the major cities of India with rail. Kota Junction is one of the divisions in West Central Railway. It is a station on the New Delhi–Mumbai main line. There are four railway stations within Kota and in its vicinity. One Substation of East Kota City is Sogariya(Kota Bypass) Railway Station and Another suburban station of South Kota city is Dakaniya Talav railway station which has a stoppage of Avadh Express, Dehradun Express and Ranthambore Express.
The city is a halt for over 182 trains, including Mumbai Rajdhani Express, August Kranti Rajdhani Express, Thiruvananthapuram Rajdhani Express, Madgaon Rajdhani Express, Mumbai New Delhi Duronto Express, Golden Temple Mail, Paschim Express, Bandra Terminus-Hazrat Nizamuddin Garib Rath Express, Kevadiya–Hazrat Nizamuddin Gujarat Sampark Kranti Express, Gujarat Sampark Kranti Express, Maharashtra Sampark Kranti Express, Goa Sampark Kranti Express, Kerala Sampark Kranti Express, Indore–Jaipur Express, Gangaur SuperFast Express, Mewar Express, Dayodaya Express, Jodhpur – Indore Intercity, Hazrat Nizamuddin - Indore Express, Garbha Express, Marusagar Express (Ajmer – Ernakulam Express / Ernakulam Express), Jaipur–Mysore Superfast Express, Swaraj Express, Chennai Central–Jaipur Superfast Express, Coimbatore–Jaipur Superfast Express, Jodhpur – Puri Express, Bandra Terminus–Gorakhpur Avadh Express, Bandra Terminus–Muzaffarpur Avadh Express, Jodhpur – Bhopal Express.
The Delhi—Mumbai railway line passes through the Kota Junction. The district has 148.83 km of railway line in the Kota – Ruthia section, 98.72 km on Nagda—Mathura (Mumbai-Delhi) section and 24.26 km on Kota —Chittorgarh section.
A broad-gauge railway facility between Kota and Jodhpur via Jaipur exists.
AIRWAYS
Kota Airport, (IATA: KTU, ICAO: VIKO) is a civil airport serving Kota, Rajasthan, India. Spread over 447 acres, Kota Airport was originally built by the Royal family of the princely state of Kota and was taken over by the government in 1951. This Airport Also Known As Rajputana Airport. Originally serviced by Indian Airlines Dakota aircraft and later by Vayudoot and Jagson Airlines, shutdown of major industries and Kota becoming a major railway junction effected decreased demand for air transport and the withdrawal of the airlines. Kota Airport has had no scheduled services operating since 1999. The nearest international airport is Jaipur International Airport situated around 240 km away from Kota. Development of Greenfield airport at Kota: The representative of Rajasthan Government intimated that runway length of Existing Kota Airport is only 4000 ft., which restricts flight operations under RCS. A new Greenfield Airport is to be constructed in Kota. State Government has earmarked required land for this purpose. State Government has provided Meteorological Information of past 10 years and AAI has carried out pre- feasibility survey & provided its report to the State Government. Further, AAI has been requested twice to carry out Site and OLS Survey and to provide further course of action to be taken by the State Government, which is approved. Directions need to be issued to AAI for early completion of the same. For development of Greenfield airport at Kota, 1250 Acres of land acquired by the State Government and handed over to AAI for development of New Greenfield Airport.
SPORTS
The city is home to Jay Kaylon Cricket Stadium located in Nayapura area. Among several matches, six Ranji Trophy matches have been played in the stadium. The stadium also hosted RCL T20 2016, an inter state cricket league with six participating teams.
MEDIA
TELEVISION
There are five major regional TV Channels in Kota.
DD Rajasthan
Media House Rajasthan(MHR News)
ETV Rajasthan
India news Rajasthan
Jan TV
A wide range of other Hindi, English, and other language channels are accessible via cable subscription and direct-broadcast satellite services. Dish TV, Tata Sky, Radiant Digitek, Airtel digital TV are entertainment services in Kota.
NEWSPAPERS
Major daily newspapers in Kota include:
Rajasthan Patrika (Hindi)
Dainik Bhaskar (Hindi)
Dainik Navajyoti (Hindi)
Chambal Sandesh (Hindi)
RADIO
There are five radio stations in Kota, with four broadcasting on the FM band, and one All India Radio station broadcasting on the AM band.
All India Radio (102.0 MHz)
Big FM (92.7 MHz)
My FM (94.3 MHz)
FM Tadka (95.0 MHz)
Radio City (91.1 MHz)
NOTABLE PEOPLE
Umed Singh II
Om Birla
Ijyaraj Singh
Onkarlal Berwa
Shanti Kumar Dhariwal
Vinod Kumar Bansal
Bhim Singh II
Lalit Kishore Chaturvedi
Bhuvnesh Chaturvedi
Krishana Kumar Goyal
Shail Hada
Taj Haider
Hari Kumar Audichya
Raghuveer Singh Koshal
Shiv Kumari of Kotah
Bhuvaneshwari Kumari
Nikita Lalwani
Pramod Maheshwari
Aniruddh Singh
WIKIPEDIA