All posts filed under: Reformers Politics and the World

Children Of War and A Look Into the Parallel Universe

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Once in many years comes a project that brings your life’s reality to a halt. Probably bringing a comma or a complete stop for sometime. Even though it isn’t a big deal to be trained in the visual medium today as everyone’s eyes roll over social media like clouds moving above us, most of the times everything passes as our heads are always elsewhere but that one moment when the thunder strikes, we come back to life. Our World is at war. Still not at its peak as the real WAR is still around a few years away, but as we read this article in 2024, the world is already on a boil and soon rather anytime it is expected to burn. Only if things, governments, war companies do not mend their ways but even for that the time has already gone. Ever since the US moved out of Afghanistan; West Asia and the Middle East has become ever so vulnerable. The ever going war in Africa, Syria, Yemen, ever since in Afghanistan, Russia-Ukraine. And …

A Special Valentine’s Day Story of One Beloved Diamond more Precious than the Kohinoor of India

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There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India – as horrible as it may have been – was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So the fact that the empire was sustained for so long – the story goes – was a gesture of Britain’s benevolence. New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik –just published by Columbia University Press – deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938. It’s a staggering sum. For perspective, $45 trillion is approximately 17 times more than the total annual gross domestic product of the United Kingdom today. Yet Interestingly, When the Britishers were plundering India, they took away not only the Money, the artefacts, archaeological marvels, and not only the Costliest Diamond of the world “The Koh-i-Noor” but also the Timur Ruby. …

The STORY OF INDIA in 75 Independent Years

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Today is 15th August. It is a date with destiny. A total of 6 countries got Independence on this date in different years. You can say they were destined too. BahrainCongoThe Two KoreasLiechtenstein and my country, India. The largest and the most vibrant democracy in the world. A country that is diverse in every single sense. Geographically, Socially, Culturally, Linguistically. Since Colonial Rule, a nation of 1.3 Billion people will celebrate the fact that they have proven wrong every Western Commentator who predicted doom upon a young country in the late 1940s, all the way up to even 1970s. 75 Years ago at midnight India made tryst with destiny. An independent India was born. Drained and Divided but desperate to make on its own. How would one describe this journey of seven and a half decades? Its been a staggering, astonishing, colossal and a monumental journey this past 75 years. And no what foundations, morals a man or a country shows; it all boils down to ECONOMY The British crown looted 45 Trillion dollars from …

Leaves from a Jungle: The Life of Verrier Elwin living with the Gonds in Central India – I/II

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My co-travellers here on the Road to Nara, must already know and have experienced by now how much there is to absorb in India that is Bharat. Every state works like an organ. Each region in contrast to the other in food, language yet somehow bonded by sense and tradition. In my brief career as a traveller, I have desired not just to travel as much, but also to learn, research and document life of other travellers who once walked and measured this nation in a different light, time and dimension. The ones who somehow recorded the flow that once was; those happenings which can only be dreamt of today but can never again be touched. Also Read: How Jyoti Bhatt inspired the new age Travellers and Documentarians with his life? I was an NCC(National Cadet Corps, youth wing of Indian Armed Forces) Cadet during my university years and had a brief opportunity to rigorously walk throughout the Central Indian State of India, Madhya Pradesh for over a month. During one such walk on a …

Knowing Gandhi and Learning from Mahatma

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Today is Lal Bahadur Shastri’s birthday. The second Prime Minister of India, who was rather killed/poisoned on his visit to Tashkent in 1966. He had gone to sign a peace deal organised by the US and the USSR seminaries, UN security members with Pakistan’s Military Leader Ayub Khan after the war of 1965. The deal was signed in the evening as the Peace Pact failed. The next morning, he was found dead in his room. For days, months and years that commenced and kept passing by; it was less strange, rather maddening that no one ever asked for an inquiry, no one protested, no body looked for proofs or questioned the circumstances of his death. Death of the head of a nation state was accepted as mere fate. He was a sincere and a firm leader. He did not shy away from going into war with Pakistan in 1965, that was pushed on him merely a year later he took office; and only three years later, after Nehru’s historical blunder when China opened fire and …