Category: History

George Uglow Pope’s legacy at Sawyerpuram

A video on George Uglow Pope who lived at Sawyerpuram in Tamil Nadu for eight years, did missionary work and translated Tamil classics

Sawyerpuram was created on 150 acres purchased by Samuel Sawyer, a merchant of the Portuguese East India Company.

When missionary and Tamil scholar George Uglow Pope arrived here 180 years ago, the area was nothing but acres of sand dunes. Before his arrival, he had learnt Tamil literary works from Suryanarayana Sastry, Ariyangavu Pillai and Ramanuja Kavirayar in Madras.

It was Pope who created Sawyerpuram and another missionary, Robert Caldwell, in his writings referred to him as its founder. Pope decided to set up a seminary at Sawerpuram as there were only two of them in Tamil Nadu.

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** Massachusetts hosts America’s first-ever Dalit art exhibition

Boston, Massachusetts :

Massachusetts’s Somerville city hosted the first-ever art exhibition in the United States, exclusively featuring Dalit and Bahujan artists on April 30. Titled ‘Where Art Belongs’, over 40 artists’ work was displayed, including visual art, poetry, and music.

Organized by Adavi Myah, an art collective led by Dalit and Bahujan women, the exhibition will run for four weeks until May 30, 2022.

Adavi Myah was founded in 2018 and is an amalgamation of words from Telugu and Chhattisgarhi, translated as “Love of the Forest.” It was formed to reflect the oppressed caste community struggles and stories of resilience through art.  

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** Learn about India’s biodiversity from this card game created by Chennai students

A new game developed by Chennai students spreads awareness about different ecosystems, species and what we can do to help them

Can a game of cards increase environmental awareness? A group of educators and students seem to think so. Having worked for five months on a project by city-based Palluyir Trust, they now present The Wilderness game.

The game is essentially a pack of cards — think cricket or wrestling cards — but with sea creatures instead of The Undertaker, and a flood of real-world information thrown in. Environmentalist M Yuvan and Chennai students Nanditha Ramsatagopan, Charlotte Jeffries and Rohit Srinivasan, designed it for people above the age of 10. The gameplay format keeps in mind millennial and Gen-Z mindsets.

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** Nilima Jogalekar goes down memory lane

The former India player, who is a match referee now, recalls the country’s first women’s National tournament in 1973

A smile flashes across Nilima Jogalekar’s face as she recalls that cricket match from half-a-century ago. “I received my first prize for cricket in that game, you know,” she says. “A Glucose biscuit from the umpire; I got it for scoring a boundary, from the only shot I had at that time: the swing to the leg-side.”

She was just 12 then. She was so small, she was nearly dwarfed by her pads. It was no ordinary match, that one. It was the first match in India’s first National tournament. It was held at the Nehru Stadium here in the summer of 1973.

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** Glimpses of tribal freedom struggle at Ranipur police museum

With a history dating back to colonial years, the heritage building that once housed the police station is now a treasure trove of information on tribal revolutionaries.

Most visitors will mistake it for any other nondescript structure. But the Ranipur police museum is special. With a history dating back to colonial years, the heritage building that once housed the police station is now a treasure trove of information on tribal revolutionaries.

Betul district police chief Simala Prasad said the Ranipur police station functioned from the building from 1913 to 2016 before it was shifted to a new address. The building, meanwhile, was lying abandoned for the last six years.

“Local residents wanted us to preserve the erstwhile police station as a heritage building as it holds an integral place in the history of freedom struggle involving tribals. We consulted local historians and decided to turn the historic police station into a museum. The museum has a special section dedicated to the tribal revolutionaries from Betul which includes the likes of Vishnu Singh Uike and Ganjan Singh Korku,” the Betul SP informed.

The region has a rich history when it comes to the freedom struggle of indigenous communities. In 1942, freedom movement hero Vishnu Singh Uike led fellow revolutionaries to attack the Ranipur police station. They had even tried to set the police station ablaze. 

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** ‘India-Japan are natural partners’: PM Narendra Modi meets Indian diaspora  in Tokyo

Addressing the Indian community here on the first day of his two-day visit to Tokyo, Modi also said that India’s relationship with Japan is of spirituality, of cooperation and of belonging. “India and Japan are natural partners. Japan has played an important role in India’s development journey,” said Modi, who is visiting Tokyo at the invitation of his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida.

“Today’s world needs to follow the path shown by Lord Buddha. This is the way to save humanity from the challenges facing the world today, be it violence, anarchy, terrorism and climate change,” Modi said.

Noting that India has always found a solution no matter how big the problem is, Modi said that during coronavirus pandemic, there was an atmosphere of uncertainty, but even in that situation, India supplied ‘Made in India’ vaccines to crores of its citizens and also sent it to more than 100 countries.

“Whenever I visit Japan, I witness your affection. Many of you have settled in Japan for years and assimilated the Japanese culture. Still, the dedication toward Indian culture and language is ever-growing,” Modi told the Indian diaspora amid chats of slogans ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’.

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** Andhra Pradesh: 250 years of institution of collector celebrated in Palnadu

Palnadu Collector holds photo exhibition to mark the occasion

The national emblem, a sculpture of four lions standing on a base which has other animals, called as Lion Capital of Ashoka, is the symbol of authority, power and responsibility. The emblem stands on the wall at the Office of the Collector and District Magistrate, which is the authority in which the will of the State and authority meet. 

One of the lasting relics of colonial legacy, the institution of collector was established 250 years back on this day — May 14 , 1772 — by the East India Company. Along with the changing times, the institution of collector and district magistrate too has evolved combining multi-dimensional aspects of administration, such as revenue, magisterial, judicial and administrative.

The collector was informally known as ‘Huzur’, a person vested with supreme authority whose aura enveloped the region. He is the central authority around which the massive revenue and administrative foundation was built and later Lord Thomas Munro initiated reforms separating the revenue, magisterial and judicial powers.

In the colonial era, the collectors were vested with the power to determine the demand from land revenue, survey and assessment of all kinds of land, sea and land customs, liquor and drug excise taxes, personal and professional taxes and managing all state property.

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** Faithful to celebrate canonisation of Devasahayam

Devasahayam Pillai had converted to Christianity in the 18th century

The Catholic Christian community in the district is set to celebrate the canonisation of Blessed Lazarus, popularly known as Devasahayam Pillai, by Pope Francis in the Vatican on Sunday.

Devasahayam Pillai, a Hindu who converted to Christianity in the 18 th century, will become the first Indian layperson to be conferred sainthood.

According to church records, Devasahayam was born as Neelakanda Pillai in 1712 in the village of Nattalam in Kanyakumari that formed part of the erstwhile Travancore kingdom. He assumed the name ‘Lazarus’ or Devasahayam that translates to ‘God is my help’ after embracing Christianity in 1745.

Devasahayam was declared Blessed in Kottar in Nagercoil in 2012. The Vatican had cleared him for sainthood last year.

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** 1946 Last War of Independence Royal Indian Navy Mutiny review: The 1946 naval uprising

Pramod Kapoor transforms a footnote in history into a remarkable account of a rebellion that convinced the British it was time to leave India

As rightly remarked by Shyam Benegal, a footnote in the history of the freedom movement has been turned into an exciting and important account in Pramod Kapoor’s  1946 Last War of Independence: Royal Indian Navy Mutiny. Pramod himself stumbled onto this forgotten story while researching for his book on Gandhi: “After the draft of the Gandhi book was done, I re-read the Royal Indian Navy mutiny episodes and realised the magnitude of the event.”

Reports of the revolt

When Pramod began his research, he discovered hundreds of reports by British admirals, commanding officers of ships and shore establishments, cables and letters exchanged between London and Delhi, proceedings in the British parliament and debates in the Legislative Council in India. They were “honest,” but were told from the British point of view. For another view, Pramod waded through hundreds of newspaper reports and documents at libraries, met people with knowledge of the revolt and toured HMIS Talwar, the signal school of the Navy at Colaba, where “inflammatory slogans” had been written on the walls and “seditious pamphlets” were circulated. A tour of the dockyard and areas of Navy Nagar in Mumbai helped him understand the “history and geography of the area where the uprising took place.”

In February 1946, ratings, or the lowest rung of sailors in the Royal Indian Navy hierarchy, staged a revolt. The young sailors were protesting against the fact that things they were promised at the time of recruitment had not been honoured: living conditions were horrible; the food worse and there was rampant racial discrimination. Also, says Pramod, inspired by the Indian National Army (INA), they were politically charged and keen to play a part in India’s freedom movement. Within 48 hours, the strength of the mutineers grew to 20,000, and they took over ships afloat and on-shore establishments. Servicemen in the army and air force, and civilians joined the protests.

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