General History Thread - India : News , Updates & Discussions .

theprint.in

It was a Tamil merchant guild that helped Rajendra Chola become a global conqueror

As much as kings, Tamil merchants are the unsung heroes of medieval India’s global footprint. Sometimes, cultural diasporas can achieve as much, if not more, than an armed force.
theprint.in theprint.in

It was a Tamil merchant guild that helped Rajendra Chola become a global conqueror​


Interesting read and it is free of the Author's usual commie/librandu slant.

@GaudaNaresh you were indeed right about the Dhandhos being the cause of wars everywhere
"Saar, pls invade Malaysia saar, glory and honor for u, and good margins for us saar!"
 
shade2 said:
theprint.in

It was a Tamil merchant guild that helped Rajendra Chola become a global conqueror

As much as kings, Tamil merchants are the unsung heroes of medieval India’s global footprint. Sometimes, cultural diasporas can achieve as much, if not more, than an armed force.
theprint.in theprint.in

It was a Tamil merchant guild that helped Rajendra Chola become a global conqueror​


Interesting read and it is free of the Author's usual commie/librandu slant.

@GaudaNaresh you were indeed right about the Dhandhos being the cause of wars everywhere
"Saar, pls invade Malaysia saar, glory and honor for u, and good margins for us saar!"
Click to expand...
Kani - the squint eyed pop historian is in a class of his own. In the tradition of his spiritual ancestors still practising their craft in this field where everything good & progressive is either of foreign or non Sanatan origin & everything bad & regressive is from the latter , he did a program on the Mahakumbh Mela for The Print recently & all but declared the Kumbh was first staged during Mughal times & got into the 12 year cycle during British times.

A dog's tail can yet be straightened but not this scum. They require the Mao Cultural Revolution & street justice treatment.
 
Azaad said:
Kani - the squint eyed pop historian is in a class of his own. In the tradition of his spiritual ancestors still practising their craft in this field where everything good & progressive is either of foreign or non Sanatan origin & everything bad & regressive is from the latter , he did a program on the Mahakumbh Mela for The Print recently & all but declared the Kumbh was first staged during Mughal times & got into the 12 year cycle during British times.

A dog's tail can yet be straightened but not this scum. They require the Mao Cultural Revolution & street justice treatment.
Click to expand...

Most of his articles on ThePrint are ((( gems ))) of the type shat out decades ago by the likes of Romila Thapar, Irrfan Habib, but with a tinge of Devdutt Khalnaik thrown in.
 
shade2 said:
theprint.in

It was a Tamil merchant guild that helped Rajendra Chola become a global conqueror

As much as kings, Tamil merchants are the unsung heroes of medieval India’s global footprint. Sometimes, cultural diasporas can achieve as much, if not more, than an armed force.
theprint.in theprint.in

It was a Tamil merchant guild that helped Rajendra Chola become a global conqueror​


Interesting read and it is free of the Author's usual commie/librandu slant.

@GaudaNaresh you were indeed right about the Dhandhos being the cause of wars everywhere
"Saar, pls invade Malaysia saar, glory and honor for u, and good margins for us saar!"
Click to expand...

I dont think the war was for Dhandomaxx exclusively, but more like dhandomaxx facilitated the war by allowing their ships to be part of the armada. I think there is more than meets the eye, because Rajendra Chola was allied with Suryavarman the 1st of Khmer empire vs the coalition of Srivijaya and Tamralinga - a coastal kingdom of malaysian mainland.
Its interesting to note that Chola empire at this point was hindu, Khmer empire was even more archaic hindu, with devarajas ruling over them, while Srivijaya was Buddhist and Tambralinga was a hindu majority entity who'd just recently become buddhist at monarchy level.

So i am sure there is some alliance-politics at play with dhandomaxx being the facilitators and finding a good opportunity to make a quick buck.
 
Cheepek said:
A poignant love story of Ullaskar Dutt

Click to expand...
Swarajya Logo
HERITAGE

Love In The Time Of Revolution: The Incredible Life of Ullaskar Dutt​

SANJEEV SANYAL
Jan 24, 2025, 11:37 PM | Updated 11:37 PM IST
(Ullaskar Dutt)

(Ullaskar Dutt)
As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the Indian Republic, it is worth remembering one of our lesser-known freedom-fighters – Ullaskar Dutt. His remarkable story highlights the extra-ordinary personal sacrifices that made it possible to establish an independent republic.

Ullaskar Dutt was born in 1885 into an educated family in the village of Kaliakachha, Brahmanbaria, in the Tipperah district of undivided Bengal (now in Bangladesh). His father was an agricultural expert and would later become a Professor in Civil Engineering College in Shibpur.

Dutt first became interested in the freedom struggle as a result of a fiery speech delivered in Star Theatre Hall by nationalist leader Bipin Chandra Pal (of the famous Lal-Bal-Pal trio). The speech mocked the meek loyalists who then dominated the Indian National Congress. In his book “Twelve Years of Prison Life”, Dutt recounts how it had a profound impact on him. He was then finishing high school at City College, Calcutta (now Kolkata).

A few months later, he took the entrance examination and joined Presidency College – then considered the most prestigious academic institution in the country – to study chemistry. It was here that he would meet Leela, the vivacious daughter of Bipin Chandra Pal, and they would fall in love. It was also around this time that the British colonial government announced its plan to partition Bengal (1905). This led to widespread protests and the launching of the Swadeshi movement. Ullaskar Dutt was an enthusiastic participant. Given that Bipin Pal was one of the main leaders of the protests, one can presume that his daughter Leela too was a participant.

Dutt recounts how he went to listen to Rabindra Nath Tagore, then a young nationalist poet, speak at a Swadeshi Samaj gathering at Minerva Theatre Hall. The event attracted large crowds, scuffles broke out and it ended in a lathi-charge by the mounted police. Dutt was arrested but later released on bail.

Political temperatures remained high. A few months later, a Presidency College professor called Russel stirred a controversy by making derogatory public statements against Indians. Not surprisingly, the students protested. Dutt personally confronted Russel, possibly pushed him around, and ended up being rusticated. It is worth mentioning that Subhas Bose would also go through a similar experience at the same institution fifteen years later.

Give his growing reputation as a troublesome political activist in Calcutta, Dutt was forced to move to Bombay (now Mumbai) where he joined the Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute. Alone in the city, Ullaskar Dutt began to read revolutionary writers like Mazzini and Bankim Chandra. He also read nationalist periodicals like Bande Mataram and Jugantar being published by Aurobindo Ghosh (now remembered as Sri Aurobindo) and his brother Barin Ghosh. This allowed him to hone his personal philosophy about the freedom movement. Thus, during a vacation back in Bengal, he joined the emerging revolutionary network of the Anushilan Samiti. Back in Bombay, given the easy access to his college laboratory, Ullaskar began to teach himself the art of making explosives.

Meanwhile, his relationship with Leela continued to grow and they decided that they would get married. We do not know if Bipin Pal knew of this development but there is no reason to believe that he would have disapproved; Ullaskar was after all one of his most ardent followers.

In 1907, Barin created a “headquarters” for the Anushilan Samiti at a garden-house in the suburb of Maniktola. A group of young men began to gather here to plan some form of armed resistance to the British occupation. It appears that Aurobindo was not directly involved as he considered it premature, but the group was certainly inspired by his fiery writings. Given his knowledge of chemistry, Ullaskar Dutt became the group’s bomb-maker. This was followed by a couple of attacks on British officials. Unfortunately for the group, the police quickly traced the source to 36 Muraripukur Road, Maniktola, and many Anushilan Samiti members including the Ghosh brothers and Ullaskar Dutt was arrested.

The arrested young men would be lodged in Alipore Central Jail and tried at the Alipore Sessions Court. Thus, the case came to be known as the Alipore Bomb Case 1908. The twists-and-turns of the case, including a plot to escape, the smuggling-in of revolvers, and a gun-fight inside the jail, caused quite a sensation. Those interested in the details of these incidents can read about them in my book Revolutionaries (Harper Collins 2023).

Following a widely reported trail, Aurobindo Ghosh was reluctantly released for lack of direct evidence and he would soon escape to French-controlled Pondicherry. However, several Anushilan Samiti members would receive the death sentence including Barin and Ullaskar. Some of them like Kanilal Dutta and Satyendra Bose would be subsequently hanged, but the mercy petitions by Barin and Ullaskar were accepted and their punishment was converted to a life sentence at the newly built Cellular Jail in Port Blair, Andamans. As we shall see, this was not quite an act of clemency because the Cellular Jail had been deliberately designed to be a fate worse than death.

Ullaskar Dutt was taken to Port Blair by the ship SS Maharaja. The Cellular Jail had been designed so that each prisoner was kept isolated in a tiny, bare cell. They were then subject to all manner of torture and humiliation. For example, the prisoners would be made to turn an oil mill by hand to extract coconut oil – something that is normally done by oxen. They had to do this all day in the blazing tropical sun, with little food or water. Those who slowed down were beaten with a heavy bludgeon. Not surprisingly, some convicts collapsed from exhaustion. They would then be shackled to the mill while others would be made to turn it. Ullaskar describes in his book how the bleeding body would be dragged round-and-round the mill. Meanwhile, the outside world had no idea about their plight as the authorities allowed almost no contact with relatives or friends in the mainland (even letters were rarely allowed).

After suffering two-and-a-half years inside the Cellular Jail, Ullaskar’s luck turned and he was assigned to a work-gang breaking stones and building a road on another island. This was much better as he had human company and provided adequate food. At this time, he also received a letter from Leela although it contained the sad news that his sister and her niece had passed away recently. Still, it was a rare moment of contact with the rest of the world. Unfortunately, it did not last and a few months later he was sent to work in another site where he had to carry bricks and mud at a building site. At some point, he was assigned the job of supplying water to the British overseer’s bungalow. The bungalow was on a hill and Ullaskar had to carry up water, two tin cannisters at a time, from a pond in the bottom. Ullaskar did this lonely and exhausting job for some time till he reached a mental and physical breaking point. One day he simply refused to do it any more. No amount of threats would work, and Ullaskar was sent back to Cellular Jail to be punished for his conduct.

Back in the Cellular Jail, Ullaskar was subjected to inhuman treatment that is best described in his own voice: “There were several pair of handcuffs, suspended from as many hooks on the wall, as high as a man’s head and we had to stand a whole day, facing the wall, with our hands locked in one of those beautiful looking iron bangles, given to us by our benevolent master entirely free of cost”. The shackles were taken off only for the mid-day meal.

By the second day, Dutt began to run a fever but the jail authorities did not initially take it seriously and kept him shackled to the wall. It was only when the fever hit 107 degree F that a delirious and semi-conscious Ullaskar was finally taken down. By this time he was suffering spasms and lockjaw. The jail doctors removed him to the hospital within the facility. However, they had no intention of treating him.

At that time, the Andamans did not yet have power supply but the government had sent a set of batteries to Port Blair to familiarize people with electric lights. The jail authorities decided it would be fun to see what happened if they subjected a human to repeated electric shocks. They decided to try this on a barely conscious Ullaskar: “The currents of electricity , that passed through my body, seemed to cut asunder all nerves and sinews, most mercilessly”.

These electric shocks were administered to Ullaskar Dutt for three-four days. His screams could be heard across the jail by other inmates while he would drift in-and-out of consciousness. Sometimes it was like an out-of-body experience. At other times he saw floating visions of Leela drifting in front of him. In a sense, this somehow kept up his wavering will to live.

After several days, Ullaskar was sent back to his cell. He still continued to suffer bouts of high fever and spasms His body and spirit finally crushed, he contemplated suicide. He began pulling out fiber from the jute mat in his cell to make a rope to hang himself. However, this was discovered and the rope and mat were taken away. The reason for the sudden concern for his survival was driven by another turn of events.

A 22-year old revolutionary called Indubhushan Roy had recently committed suicide in his cell by hanging. The Cellular Jail authorities had so far managed to control the flow of information but the news of this suicide somehow leaked out. It caused a quite political storm on the mainland. Thus, the authorities did not want yet another suicide on their hands. Instead, they decided to ship Ullaskar Dutt to a mental institution on the mainland.

Dutt had assumed that he would be sent back to Calcutta but was surprised to find himself in the Government Lunatic Asylum in Madras (now Chennai). This was 1912 and he would spend the next eight years in the institution. The authorities, meanwhile, would not bother to inform his family about his whereabouts for many years. So, neither his parents nor Leela knew what had happened to him.

In his book, Ullaskar tells us that he spent many years at an isolated building in the facility drifting in-and-out of hallucinations. Some of the visions are genuinely strange and involved the king and queen of England! At other times he would have visions of Leela. He would even have conversations with her apparition. Interestingly, Dutt never mentions her by name in his book but merely as “she”. This was probably done to hide her identity for reasons that the reader will soon realize.

The environment was hardly conducive to recovery. He was not allowed any contact with the outside world, and the people around him were either nursing staff or people with serious mental issues. For example, Dutt tells us about a Scotsman called Adam Richardson who refused to wear clothes and would urinate everywhere. It often needed four people to control him.

Nevertheless, Ullaskar slowly recovered over the years. He was eventually able to spend his time working in the weaving shed and leaning Tamil from another inmate. During these years, the world witnessed the Great War and the Jalianwalla massacre. As a peace gesture after the massacre, the British released several revolutionaries from Cellular Jail including Barin Ghosh and Sachindra Nath Sanyal in 1920. A few months later, they also decided to release Ullaskar Dutt.

He was sent back to Calcutta and lodged in the Alipore jail before his release. The night before his release he was given a good meal, his first since 1908! The next day his parents came to pick him up. In the typical Bengali way, he touched their feet and then embraced them. It would not be long before he enquired about Leela. The answer was devastating – she had married someone else and moved to Bombay! In his moment of liberation, his illusion was also broken.

It is said that some months later, Ullaskar would make his way to Bombay and confront Leela. She was genuinely surprised to meet him. She told him that she had waited for years for him and written letters to him (the jailors had only ever passed on one letter to him). However, when she did not receive a single reply, she came to believe that he was dead. Besides, released convicts from Cellular Jail had confirmed that he was no longer there (no one knew he was in Madras). Eventually, with a heavy heart, Leela had decided to carry on with her life and married someone else. The meeting between the two must have been quite an emotional roller-coaster for both.

With a heavy heart, Ullaskar retuned to Bengal. He would write Twelve Years of Prison Life but, given that Leela was some else’s wife, she is never mentioned by name. Despite all that he had suffered, he would then go back to the revolutionary movement and again be sent back to jail for eighteen months in 1931. When he came out, he drifted back to his ancestral village of Kaliakaccha. He was living there when India was partitioned in August 1947. The man who had dedicated his life to India’s struggle for independence became a foreigner in his home at the moment that the country became independent.

Some time later, as life became untenable for Hindus in East Pakistan, Ullaskar moved to Calcutta where he heard that Leela was now a widow and an invalid paralyzed from her waist down. So, he again went to Bombay and traced her. This time he brought her back with him to Calcutta. He then married her! So yes, Ullaskar Dutt did eventually marry his college sweetheart!

Life in Calcutta was difficult, however, as Ullaskar could not find a suitable job and Leela needed a lot of care. So, the couple moved to Silchar in Assam where many Bengali Hindus from east Bengal had settled. Ullaskar found a job as a teacher in a school for refugee children. He would look after Leela till she passed away a few years later. After her death, Ullaskar would move back to spend time at his old Anushilan Samiti akhada where he died, almost forgotten, in May 1965.

This is an incredible story of bravery, patriotism, determination, suffering and love. It would not have been believable but for the fact that it is true!
(The author is an economist and bestselling writer. All opinions are personal).
 
But Mahavira ji predates Gautam Buddha ji. And it could be latter followers in order to out their respective new faiths ahead of each other.

Any Dharmic Tall Figure of history are very careful not to characterize people on faith color, varna or anything but they always categorize on bases on Guna and Karma. That holds true for even Later Sikh Gurujis, Sai Babaji, Mahavatar Babaji, Gurumataji Chaitanya Mahaprabhu ji , Ma AnandMayi ji, Rishi Aurobindoji, Maharishi Ramana, Ramkrishna Paramhansa ji, Sharda Mataji, Devarya Babaji, Neem Karoli Babaji, Siddhi mataji, Srila Prabhu pad ji and in current era Swami Premanand Govind Sharan Maharaj Ji have a very respectful attitude towards all seers/saints irrespective of beliefs. Because thats the essence of our religion - everything and everyone is due to play of Supreme
 
SKC said:
Did they even live in same timeline?
There is still no concrete estimation of when exactly Buddha was alive and Jain believe Mahavira was born around 599BC​
Click to expand...
The common jain and buddhist story is that Mahavira and Buddha lived at around the same time,with Mahavira basically being either father or dadu generation compared to Buddha, they allegedly met once and talked once and thats it.

Dating Buddha is hard, because his dating is all tied to various rulers in history ( as Buddhist sources record it in style of 'exactly 200 years after parinirvana of buddha, samrat ashoka was crowned, after xyz years of buddha's death, this sri lankan king was crowned' etc. and therefore the dating is always 'calulate date of ruler then apply year modifier of buddha to this king to figure out date of buddha)

however, given the chronologies of magadh empire presented in the purana,jain and buddhist sources, its more or less certain that Buddha died around 470-480 BCE and he lived for about 80 years prior to that. Though western historians are continuously revising the dates down south to deny the magadh empire any basis, as they dont want the idea of India being a developed nation during Achaemenid times to fuckup their aryan invasion theory nonsense.
 
SKC said:
Did they even live in same timeline?
There is still no concrete estimation of when exactly Buddha was alive and Jain believe Mahavira was born around 599BC​
Click to expand...
Apologies for not responding earlier but for me to answer your question I'd have to assemble a huge body of evidence not easily accessible since I'm not that active on Twitter like I was during the Wuhan virus pandemic for obvious reasons which'd have meant a good half an hour to hunt the evidence & the same amount of time to compile an answer.

I tend to avoid issues which require such laborious work restricting myself to cases where I can assemble the evidence needed quickly .

I once read an anecdote on Twitter about the Buddha meditating near Vulture's Peak in Rajgir one of the holiest of the holies in Buddhism . It so happened that during his daily trek to this peak twice a day to & from the site he used to pass by a Jain ashram which reportedly was either established or inhabited by Mahavira & who still came visiting there occasionally.

Anyway , during his treks to & from the peak , the Buddha used to observe almost all the inhabitants of the ashram engaged in Ghor Tapas or severe austerities with one either standing days on end on one leg or one carrying out all such activities with one hand raised or one seated on a bed of burning embers etc.

When the Buddha enquired of them the reason for such severe austerities , he was told this is prayashchit or atonement for the grave sins of previous lives & every time he passed by this ashram the number of inhabitants only increased accompanied by even more severe austerities practised by the occupants leading the Buddha to remark to them - O Nirganthas ( Jains) , is there anyone among you ( Jains) who was not a grave sinner in your previous life which is to say all sinners in the previous lives seem to become Jains in the present one , much to amusement of his disciples onlookers & the irritation of the Jains.

The popular version we've received courtesy our history compiled by you know who is that these Shramana sects - Buddhism & Jainism were " reformist religions " when in fact they were what are now described as counter religions & along with Ajivikas , Lokayata & innumerable other doctrines which emerged around the same time were as much at odds with each other as they were with the Vedic Dharma with the former looking desperately or in any case seriously for royal patronage for with it came mich needed support to proselytise with the masses & increase the size of their sect .


View: https://www.youtube.com/live/2hgh-CI6nas?si=3xIhU4MLTo0G0x9c
 

View: https://twitter.com/yajnadevam/status/1888016609689657533?s=19

Top 20 Challenges to my IVS decipherment paper and their outcome:

1. Grammar is incorrect, spurious words are used.
A: This is an artifact of the reading, not the decipherment.. Dropping spurious words remarkably improved the reading.

2. Why would the Harappans write things like this?
A: Turns out the long statements are sutra/concise forms of various vedic invocations.

3. But why would they write concise forms?
A: Turns out this tradition carried into the Gupta era seals

4. You have too many symbols per phoneme.
A: All scripts invented from scratch have this characteristic.

5. You are associating ś ṣ s h and k kh to the same signs!
A: Expected in Bronze age scripts and scripts that are used by Prakrit speakers

5. Shannon's unicity distance works only for single ciphertext
A: All texts of a single key is a single ciphertext. Other decipherments have been successful cracking ciphertexts composed of multiple messages.

6. But it cant be sanskrit! Horse! Chariot! Aryan Invasion!
A: Horses existed in India since 4500 BCE and chariots existed in India since the chalcolithic

7. Well, I can use your method to read IVC as Arabic/Chinese/Tamil
A: OK, Im waiting for 2 years now.

8. How did they suddenly get a fully made script?
A: The script was developed over 1000 years.

9. But no rosetta stone!
A: Only needed for logographic/logosyllabic.

10. Why do you have only 76 signs? There are 400+ symbols
A: Earliest layer of Harappa has only 71. Many are variants, mathematically determined.

11. But paper X/person Y says its logographic.
A: The frequency, signary, usage, entropy all clearly show that its a non-logosyllabic script. A logosyllabic should have rare repetitions like Chinese subway station names.

12. I heard the script is a measurement/data carrier/other non-writing system
A: See above.

13. Your method is unproven
A: Its an 100s of year old method and its correctness proof is 80 years old from the most citied mathematical paper in history.

14. What about Tamil
A: The Indus language is not any Dravidian or agglutinative language, as apparent from the text itself.

15. But why assume its Sanskrit
A: There is no assumption. The multi-stem compounding, the double and triple repetitions of signs, etc are evidence of Indo-Aryan.

16. I can read inscription X as Y
A: Lower fidelity is a characteristic of bronze age scripts.

17. If you are so sure, why don't you publish the paper?
A: All in good time, darling

18. KL divergence shows your text is not Sanskrit
A: KLD is not a language detector. Actually by its own standards, it showed that Indus Sanskrit is more Sanskrit than Sri Rudram

19. "Everyone knows" IVC was Dravidian/language X/non-Sanskrit
A: "Everyone knows" = "I believe"

20. Add your question here.
Click to expand...

To those interested point no 18 viz the KL Divergence created a huge furore on Indian History Twitter invested in this topic, a week to a fortnight ago.

Long short story, a handle by the name of Rohan Pandey demonstrated thru the KLD, the falsification of Sanskrit as the language coded in the SSV script.

The usual to & fro followed with those handles not entirely convinced of Yajnadevam's method or Sanskrit being the language in usage on those seals mostly from the AIT / AMT school plumbing in opposition to Yajnadevam .

The entire episode lasted for a week & is there on his T/L in case anyone's interested .
 

View: https://twitter.com/gargivach/status/1891204079080141154?s=19

The Forgotten Martyrs of Ajnala: The Battle for Last Rites and Justice


The year was 1857, and Bharat was ablaze. The great uprising—what the British tried to dismiss as a mere "mutiny"—was, in truth, a war for independence. From Delhi to Kanpur, from Lucknow to Jhansi, the sons of Bharat rose as one, determined to reclaim their land from foreign rule.


Among these warriors were the 282 soldiers of the 26th Native Bengal Infantry, stationed at Mian Meer (now in Pakistan). They had taken an oath to fight for Bharat, to stand against the tyranny of the British. And so, when the moment came, they killed their British officers and began their march toward Delhi.


But fate had other plans.


As they followed the Ravi River, moving through Punjab, the locals aided them, feeding them, hiding them, guiding them on their way. But treachery lurked in the shadows. A British informer betrayed their location to Frederic Cooper, the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar.


And so began the dark chapter of the Ajnala Massacre.


Betrayal, Slaughter, and the Well of Death


Cooper, an Englishman desperate to make a name for himself, assembled a regiment of British forces and marched toward Ajnala. There, in the dead of night, they ambushed the unsuspecting soldiers.


Some warriors were killed on the spot, their blood staining the soil they had fought for. But 282 were captured alive.


They were crammed into a small, suffocating room. There was no air, no water, no escape.


By morning, 35 of them were dead, their breath stolen by the crushing weight of their comrades. They had suffocated in the darkness, fighting till their last moment for a breath of air.


But Cooper was not done.


He dragged the remaining 247 out, their hands tied behind their backs. He lined them up in groups of ten, and without hesitation, ordered their execution.


The British officers stood at point-blank range and fired into their skulls. But even in their death, the warriors did not break. Some clutched tightly to their murtis of Bhagwan Shiva and Hanuman, their faith giving them strength even in the face of death.


For the British, bullets were too precious. So, in an act of pure cruelty, some soldiers were shot with stone bullets. These were not meant to kill instantly—they were meant to shatter bones, rupture flesh, prolong agony.
And then, the final horror—the well.


The lifeless and dying bodies were dragged across the bloodied ground and thrown into a deep well—a pit of darkness that would become their unmarked grave. Some were still gasping for breath, their bodies broken but their spirits unyielding.
The British, not satisfied, poured lime and charcoal into the well, ensuring that the bodies would decay faster, erasing all evidence.
Then, silence.
The massacre was complete. The British erased their names, wiped them from history, and ensured no one would remember.
But history, like truth, cannot remain buried forever.


Alam Beg, a soldier from Kanpur, escaped Ajnala’s massacre but was later captured. The British reserved a fate worse than death for him—execution by cannon.
His severed head was taken as a trophy to England, where it was later found in a British pub, forgotten, with a chilling note on his eyeball socket:
"I am Alam Beg. I revolted against the British government. I am a traitor."
His family, traced to New Delhi, still waits to perform his last rites. But the British refuse to return his remains.


The Man Who Refused to Forget: Surinder Kochhar’s Obsession
For 150 years, the Ajnala Massacre remained hidden. No history books spoke of it. No memorial stood for the martyrs.
Then, in 2003, fate intervened.
Surinder Kochhar, a journalist from Ajnala, was wandering the streets of London when he stumbled upon an old book in a second-hand shop. He flipped through the pages, and then—his heart stopped.


Ajnala.


The book was written by Frederic Cooper himself, the very man who had ordered the massacre. And in its pages, he boasted of his crime.
Kochhar could not believe what he had found. He bought the book, returned to Bharat, and began searching for the well.
But history had been buried too well.
There were no records. No official acknowledgment. No map marking the location of the well.
Yet, history is never truly forgotten—it lingers in whispers, in the memories of the old. Kochhar spoke to elders, and some remembered.
"Our ancestors spoke of a well… a well of bones… the British killed them and dumped them inside."
And so, the search intensified.


By 2013, after years of relentless pursuit, Kochhar found the well. But there was one problem—a Gurudwara had been built over it.
Removing a religious structure was no easy task. Kochhar met with the Gurudwara committee, pleading with them to move the structure, explaining the truth.


Finally, after much struggle, they agreed to shift it 100 meters away.
But even then, no one listened.
Kochhar wrote to the Indian government, the Archaeological Survey of India, the Prime Minister's Office—no one responded.
So, he took matters into his own hands.


The Digging: A Moment of Truth
On February 28, 2014, Kochhar and his volunteers began digging.
But after six feet, there was nothing. The volunteers wanted to stop.
And then, Kochhar made his legendary statement:
"If the remains do not come out, bury me and my family right here."
The digging continued.
And then—the bones began to emerge.
1. 90 skulls
2. 170 jawbones
3. Over 5,000 teeth
4. Coins, medals, murtis of Bhagwan Shiva and Hanuman


The truth had been found.


But this was not done scientifically. So there was a lot of damage. Additionally, if the ASI and Government had acted, the well could've been turned into a live museum.


Science vs. Lies: The Fight for Truth
The British had tried to erase them. And now, so-called historians with an agenda tried to distort the truth.
They said:
“These were victims of 1947 Partition.”
“These were British soldiers killed by Indians.”
“These were random villagers.”
But science crushed these lies.
DNA testing by Dr. Gyaneshwer Chaubey, Dr. J.S. Sehrawat, Dr Niraj Rai and Dr. K. Thangaraj proved:
1. The remains belonged to South Asians from the Gangetic Plains.
2. They matched the soldiers of the 26th Native Bengal Infantry.
3. Forensic evidence showed they were executed at point-blank range.


Truth had won.


The Struggle to Perform the Last Rites
Even after 150 years, the fight is not for revenge but for dharma.
My professor, Dr. Gyaneshwer Chaubey, and his team of scientists are still working tirelessly to trace the families of these martyrs. Their goal? To give them their last rites according to Sanatana Dharma (for Hindus) and Islam (for Muslims).
But the British government continues to deny our requests for their names. They meticulously keep all records, yet refuse to release this one.
This is a continuation of their colonial grip on our minds. They wiped out the names so that we would forget. They still refuse to acknowledge the 1857 war as a national uprising.


The Fight for Justice Is Not Over


As Veer Savarkar wrote in The Indian War of Independence 1857:
"The war begun on the 10th of May 1857 is not over… nor can it ever cease till our Motherland stands free!".
It is time for all Bharatiyas (Hindus and Muslims) whose forefathers fought together in the 1857 war, to come together.


We must demand that the Indian government put pressure on Britain.
The British meticulously document everything—then why are they not releasing the names?
This is not just a fight for history.
This is a fight for dharma, for justice, for Bharat.
The war is not over until we do not stand free of the colonial burdens.
It will be on until the last rites are done.
Click to expand...
Btw - the sepoys were almost exclusively from the Indo Gangetic plains whereas the British forces were likely comprised of mostly Sikhs, Punjabi Musalmaans & Pashtuns apart from British soldiers & officers.

This article doesn't mention these details.
 
Sardar Patel prevented Pakistani-Moslem siege of Delhi in 1947

openthemagazine.com

How Sardar Patel Averted an Attempted Siege of Delhi - Open The Magazine

A CHAPTER OF BRITISH COLONIALISM IS RAISED TO AN ART FORM. Colonial England made some sections of its colonies feel grateful for being colonised. It was subterfuge, also a delusion of confounding guilt with gratitude. The greatest success of this exercise of self-absolution was—is—seen in the...
openthemagazine.com openthemagazine.com
 
Suryavanshi said:

The horse larp of AIT peddlers is losing ground day by day.
I wish we could find evidence of South Indian hunter gatherer using horses and that will be the final nail in the coffin.
Bhibetka caves is the closest we have to that theory.
Click to expand...
This is very old news. Check out the date. The author Michel Danino also came out with a book with exhaustive evidence on this & various other issues called : The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvatī . You should read it.

Meanwhile how did the Western Indologists & their water careers here & abroad react? By shifting goal posts to archaeo genetics & by deploying linguistics to re construct the parent language of Indo European - PIE aka Proto Indo European , a language which has never been attested, reconstructed from ancient Greek & the older Vedic Sanskrit essentially .

It's essentially the same old game being played where the original argument of Aryans invading India was first postulated by linguists basing their theories on essentially German Indologists like Max Mueller etc in the late 19th & 20 th century. And the British more than played their part in this charade.

You've no clue how strong this lobby is in academia both desi & international. You could muster all the evidence you can which can be very compelling but they wouldn't even notice you. They'd question everything from your expertise to your qualifications to your motives etc.

In short they'd do everything except address the evidence at hand .
 
Varoon4 said:
Sardar Patel prevented Pakistani-Moslem siege of Delhi in 1947

openthemagazine.com

How Sardar Patel Averted an Attempted Siege of Delhi - Open The Magazine

A CHAPTER OF BRITISH COLONIALISM IS RAISED TO AN ART FORM. Colonial England made some sections of its colonies feel grateful for being colonised. It was subterfuge, also a delusion of confounding guilt with gratitude. The greatest success of this exercise of self-absolution was—is—seen in the...
openthemagazine.com openthemagazine.com
Click to expand...
A movie need t9 be made on this. Had it been Hollywood and sardar patel jew - you would have engrossing international film out by now completely spreading two faced and deceitful character of muslim league and brits.

But given we have belchwood in Mumbai fim industry- even a film gets remotely made shall be about song and dance and stolen glances.
 
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