The Northeast participation in India’s freedom struggle is a tale of valour and courage which started in the 19th century itself with a mass peasant uprising against the British and resistance by the hill people. The political events in the rest of the country culminating in Independence in 1947, found a strong support and response in this region. Prof. Chandan Kumar Sharma describes the Northeast struggle and the leaders who spearheaded them. The Northeast region of India went into the hands of the British starting with the occupation of Assam in 1826, after a decade of Burmese control of the…
Author: oiop
A requiem for a cartoonist (1921-2015) One of India’s most acclaimed cartoonists Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Laxman, famous all over the country as R. K. Laxman, passed away on 26 January 2015 in Pune. For over five decades Laxman enthralled readers from all walks of life through his pocket cartoons simply titled ‘You Said It’, that appeared every single day in The Times of India, the daily where he spent a large part of his working life. The central character in the cartoon was the ubiquitous ‘Common Man’ with his frayed coat, rubber slippers and spectacles, a few strands of graying hair…
The local media in the Northeast is typically caught between the government and the insurgents. Advocacy and fact-finding is often left to activists. But there are sporadic flashes of journalistic brilliance which need to be encouraged, says Dr.Ningthoujam Koiremba Singh. Does the mainstream media – both print and broadcasting channels – still ignore the Northeast region of India as they used to before? Not really! And this is mainly thanks to the array of panel discussions and edit pages that have appeared in the prime channels and dailies in the last couple of years. But most of these issues discussed…
Bahinabai was born in 1628 in a town named Deogaon near Ellora in Maharashtra. Her father was a village scribe and he married her off at the age of five to a man who was much older than her. They faced difficult times when Bahinabai’s father ran into debt and the family moved to Kolhapur. Jayaram Swami, a well-known kirtankar who had closely observed her, told her husband that she was no ordinary mortal but a saintly woman. That was an eye-opener for her husband who had till then ill-treated her. The couple then moved to Dehu near Pune and…
An angel of mercy (1935-2015) My mother, Pravinaben Natubai Patel was a highly gifted and courageous lady with a tremendous sense of humour and great will power. Her life guided me to see a spark in every ‘ordinary’ human being that I met. Her wish for personal growth remained unfulfilled due to early marriage and motherhood, but she helped so many people who aspired to achieve their dreams. She always stood by young couples ostracised by the community for their inter-caste and inter-religious ‘love marriage’, and came forward in providing moral and material support exhibiting great personal courage. My father…
With the Narendra Modi government keen on transforming the Northeast, V. Gangadhar hopes the message doesn’t get lost in translation! People say that our Northeast is one of the most picturesque regions in the country. At the same time it is also one of the most undeveloped, uncared for, unreported regions. There is always the feeling that the region has escaped or missed out on the main attention of the region. “North-East?” wonders the average citizen. “Isn’t it a dangerous, uncivilised border area inhabitated by uncivilised savages who carry spears, call themselves ‘Nagas,’ and are way behind in beauty contests…
There was a young student-archer who became so good that he could shoot an arrow into a tree and then cut that arrow into two with the next shot. He began to boast that he was a greater archer than his teacher. One day his teacher, an old man, asked the youth to go with him on a journey. They walked in silence till they came to a deep gorge. A single log spanned the gorge. The teacher went down to the centre of the log, and taking an arrow shot it into a tree on the other side. His…
Age is no factor when it comes to enjoying a Tintin comic. The boy-reporter with a tuft of ginger hair first appeared in a comic strip in the children’s supplement of a Belgian newspaper in 1929. The stories were later published as comic albums, 23 in all. The original stories were in French, but today we can read the adventures of Tintin in 50 languages. Captain Haddock with his colourful vocabulary, the bumbling detectives, Thomson and Thompson, and the deaf genius, Professor Calculus are part of many adventures along with Tintin and his pet white terrier Snowy. The stories happen…
Oliver Goldsmith, while studying medicine before embarking on his writing career was once called to attend to a poor patient in Southwark, England. Goldsmith after examining the patient, a labourer, realised that the man required food more than medicine. He gave him a bottle of medicine and told him to take a little of it three times a day. Then he took all the money he had with him, put it in an envelope and gave it to him. “And from this,” he said to the man, “take as often as required.” The patient soon recovered.
India’s Northeast region is all of a sudden in the limelight with the increasing realisation in Delhi of its strategic importance. But a developed Northeast region and a strong Indian presence in East Asia may not go down well with China. Lt.Gen. D.B. Shekatkar (retd.) deconstructs the Chinese psyche. It is an undisputed fact of human history that if we make the mistake of ignoring geography and history to evolve philosophy of governance, successive generations will continue to suffer. History and geography have combined to make the Northeast (NE) region, homeland to Mongoloid India, a remote frontier. Partition aggravated its…