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When I was an urchin at my university in Vizagh, a friend, who was a staunch supporter of our Hindu Rashtra, told me that Tagore wrote his 'Jana Gana Mana' in obeisance to King George V during his Delhi Durbar in 1911. And that it was this King George V who was extolled as our 'Baharata Bhagya Vidhata'. As proof, he also mentioned that the Sovereign bestowed a Knighthood on Tagore.
I didn't know; and there was no Google then, and I left it at that.
Now I see that this morbid imputation was due to a chance coincidence: Tagore composed his song in 1911...
Here is more on it from Wiki:
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Yesterday morning Ishani was chatting with me while her parents were snoring their weekend off. And she promised me that when she grows up she would have a blog of her own with the title:
The Restless Universe
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From The London Fog
...There will be an Imperial Sacrificial Assembly of Kings in London in the coming month of Ashwin. The Grand Satrap himself will preside over the ceremonies as representative of the India Government. Priests, ascetics, mullahs and maulanas will flock here from India. The feeding and fanfare will continue for two months. The cost, as ever, will be borne by the impoverished Europeans...
Turncoat: At least promise you won't go to the Sacrificial Assembly either.
Prince: Gott in Himmel! You must be mad. I've been preparing these last six months to go there...I have arranged to spend ten million or so...you think I'm going to call it off at your whim? Oh, that reminds me...Baron, have you checked all the battle-drums? Are there seventeen?
Bibler: Yes, Your Highness! I put them out in the sun, they are nice and tight.
Prince: All seventeen?
Bibler: All seventeen.
Lang Pang: What will you do with battle-drums?
Prince: We'll play on them. When I set out for the Assembly, seventeen battle-drums will begin to beat. Prince Drunkendorff has only thirteen; I have seventeen.
Lang Pang: Why stop at seventeen? You can play on seven hundred battle-drums, kettledrums, bagpipes, flutes, horns, or whatever you like, if it takes your fancy.
Prince: Heh, heh, it's not as simple as that. I have to play just the number that the government has allotted me. If there's even a single one extra, they'll cut it out....
...Parashuram in Ulat-Puran
...Parashuram in Ulat-Puran
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India (as we knew her) has been conquered, looted, raped, and enslaved many times during the past millennium. And she endured it patiently.
But it was left to the canny British to do all of it and yet appear they were doing it to our own betterment. The proof that we liked it, somewhat, is clear...I am blogging not in my mother tongue but in English, of a sort. The very many things we now take pride in, somewhat, like our Parliament, Cabinet, Judiciary, Bureaucracy and Press are all legacies left behind by our British masters...except perhaps our khap panchayats which our Common Man takes pride in.
The British Conquest of our minds was typified by many educated Indians craving for honors and titles doled out by the British. The pinnacle of this humiliation was the craving for robes and gun-salutes that the British allowed our native princes to use in their official ceremonies.
And it was left to none other than our Parashuram to satirize it in his Ulat-Puran way back in 1928.
DB told me that when he went to a summer school in Particle Physics at Ooty in the late 1960s, he made friends with two young South Indian participants. And, over a cup of coffee, the two were talking about Thurber. And, DB asked them, typically:
"Who is this Thurber? Does he do Field Theory or Group Theory?"
DB told me that the two young men were petrified and told him:
"If you haven't read Thurber, your education is not complete!"
Likewise I suggest strongly that you read Ulat-Puran of Parashuram if you haven't done it already. If you can't read Bengali fluently (like me), there is a very good English translation of it by Sukanta Chaudhuri.
And don't ask me now:
"Who is this Sukanta Chaudhuri?"
Anyway, the British, during their long reign, celebrated all of 3 Delhi Durbars. The first two were no great shakes but the third was, as Ishani is fond of saying, 'phenomenal'. Because the new Emperor of the British Empire, King George V, with his Queen Mary, chose to attend it. It was held in 1911. Bombay, where they first landed, had promised to give them a warm welcome by erecting a monumental Gateway of India which is now a famous landmark. It is a different matter that the structure couldn't be completed in time and His and Her Majesties had to be content with a cardboard model.
This Delhi Durbar was also notorious for the cringing servitude to the Crown showed by our native princes. And it was here that the British suddenly announced that the capital of the Indian Empire would be shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. This broke Curzon's heart...he loved his Calcutta though he tried to split Bengal.
Here is more masala from Wiki:
But it was left to the canny British to do all of it and yet appear they were doing it to our own betterment. The proof that we liked it, somewhat, is clear...I am blogging not in my mother tongue but in English, of a sort. The very many things we now take pride in, somewhat, like our Parliament, Cabinet, Judiciary, Bureaucracy and Press are all legacies left behind by our British masters...except perhaps our khap panchayats which our Common Man takes pride in.
The British Conquest of our minds was typified by many educated Indians craving for honors and titles doled out by the British. The pinnacle of this humiliation was the craving for robes and gun-salutes that the British allowed our native princes to use in their official ceremonies.
And it was left to none other than our Parashuram to satirize it in his Ulat-Puran way back in 1928.
DB told me that when he went to a summer school in Particle Physics at Ooty in the late 1960s, he made friends with two young South Indian participants. And, over a cup of coffee, the two were talking about Thurber. And, DB asked them, typically:
"Who is this Thurber? Does he do Field Theory or Group Theory?"
DB told me that the two young men were petrified and told him:
"If you haven't read Thurber, your education is not complete!"
Likewise I suggest strongly that you read Ulat-Puran of Parashuram if you haven't done it already. If you can't read Bengali fluently (like me), there is a very good English translation of it by Sukanta Chaudhuri.
And don't ask me now:
"Who is this Sukanta Chaudhuri?"
Anyway, the British, during their long reign, celebrated all of 3 Delhi Durbars. The first two were no great shakes but the third was, as Ishani is fond of saying, 'phenomenal'. Because the new Emperor of the British Empire, King George V, with his Queen Mary, chose to attend it. It was held in 1911. Bombay, where they first landed, had promised to give them a warm welcome by erecting a monumental Gateway of India which is now a famous landmark. It is a different matter that the structure couldn't be completed in time and His and Her Majesties had to be content with a cardboard model.
This Delhi Durbar was also notorious for the cringing servitude to the Crown showed by our native princes. And it was here that the British suddenly announced that the capital of the Indian Empire would be shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. This broke Curzon's heart...he loved his Calcutta though he tried to split Bengal.
Here is more masala from Wiki:
Without public forewarning, the announcement of the move of India's
capital from Calcutta to Delhi was also made at the Durbar. Practically
every ruling prince and nobleman in India, plus thousands of landed gentry and other persons of note, attended to pay obeisance to their sovereigns.
The official ceremonies lasted from December 7 to December 16, with the Durbar itself occurring on Tuesday, December 12.[9] The Sovereigns appeared in their Coronation robes, the King-Emperor wearing the Imperial Crown of India with eight arches, containing 6170 exquisitely cut diamonds, and covered with sapphires, emeralds and rubies, with a velvet and miniver cap all weighing 34.05 ounces (965 g). They then appeared at a darshan (a sight) at the jharoka (balcony window) of Red Fort, to receive half a million or more of the common people who had come to greet them.[10] A feature film of the coronation titled With Our King and Queen Through India (1912) – also known as The Durbar in Delhi – was filmed in the early color process Kinemacolor and released on 2 February 1912.[11]
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When I was an urchin at my university in Vizagh, a friend, who was a staunch supporter of our Hindu Rashtra, told me that Tagore wrote his 'Jana Gana Mana' in obeisance to King George V during his Delhi Durbar in 1911. And that it was this King George V who was extolled as our 'Baharata Bhagya Vidhata'. As proof, he also mentioned that the Sovereign bestowed a Knighthood on Tagore.
I didn't know; and there was no Google then, and I left it at that.
Now I see that this morbid imputation was due to a chance coincidence: Tagore composed his song in 1911...
Here is more on it from Wiki:
..Controversy shadowed Jana Gana Mana from the day of its first rendition in 1911 at the Congress session in Calcutta. King George V was scheduled to arrive in the city on 30 December and a section of the Anglo-Indian English press in Calcutta thought – and duly reported – that Tagore's anthem was a homage to the emperor.[13]
The poet claims in a letter written in 1939: "I should only insult
myself if I cared to answer those who consider me capable of such
unbounded stupidity."[13]
In another letter to Pulin Behari Sen, Tagore later wrote, "A certain
high official in His Majesty's service, who was also my friend, had
requested that I write a song of felicitation towards the Emperor. The
request simply amazed me. It caused a great stir in my heart. In
response to that great mental turmoil, I pronounced the victory in Jana
Gana Mana of that Bhagya Vidhata
[ed. God of Destiny] of India who has from age after age held steadfast
the reins of India's chariot through rise and fall, through the
straight path and the curved. That Lord of Destiny, that Reader of the
Collective Mind of India, that Perennial Guide, could never be George V,
George VI, or any other George. Even my official friend understood this
about the song. After all, even if his admiration for the crown was
excessive, he was not lacking in simple common sense."[14]
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Ishani-Speak
ishani.blogspot.in
She also promised me that, when I am reborn in their household as a kid (boy, not girl), she would name me Kavi (and not my choice, Ravi). And that she would bring out many booklets with titles like:
Between You & Me
And Little Kavi
All this rather gladdened my heart...till last evening. An additional DA of a whopping 10% had been promised by the outgoing Cabinet for pensioners like me and I was in a celebratory mood. And I offered Sailaja an eat-out. She was glad, and she and her hubby argued where to go for a decent veg grub. And Sonoo suggested that we try the Rotis in the Hi-Tec City. Sailaja thought that it would be yet another oily Punjabi Dhaba, but it turned out to be a swell place for its ambiance as well as its price list. And the heavy tip expected by the daunting uniformed lady who served us aloo-methi paranthas and curry. Highly recommended. Just Rs 1500 for 3 adults and a kid. And you get a small glass of pudina juice as a free digestive at the end of it all...
While returning home in Sonoo's sedan, there was this perennial argument as to who is the more hard-worked in the household between the two home-makers. And Ishani was asked to adjudicate and she cleverly took both sides to quell the wordy duel. And then she was asked by Sonoo:
"What about your gps granpa?"
She had then no hesitation:
"Oh, he eats and sleeps all the time"
Poor Ishani doesn't know that I am the hardest working citizen in the whole of Hyderabad. Every other chap has his weekends off, and also all sorts of Pujas, Ids, National Holidays and summer and winter breaks. But I have to work without a single day off. If I decide to take rest for just a couple of days, Shamik from Paris (who never met me) would Skype Aniket at Cal to find out what happened to gps, and Aniket would call me up and ask what the hell...
A couple of decades ago when I was duly resting in my IV Year Lab class at IIT KGP, there was a ring and Tarapado-da took it and announced that it was for me and the caller was the Secretary to the Director. I was taken aback since such a thing had never happened to me before. And the Secretary said:
"Please come to the Director's Office at once. Sir is waiting for you"
I ran upstairs and found the Diro sitting alone. And he offered me a chair opposite his and ordered tea and biscuits for two. And we had a nice enough chat for half an hour.The sum and substance of which was that I was 'eating and sleeping' and not 'earning' my keep. And that I should write a 'popular' book on physics. And at the end of it all, the Diro lent me, as an inspiration shot, his personal copy of a century-old book titled:
He little knew that I am The Restless Universe
When I read what you write about you and Ishani, I am struck with the resemblance between Atticus Finch and Scout ! Only Jem and Boo Radley are missing.
ReplyDeleteI am sure you read "To kill a mocking bird" ! Some day, show her the movie. Gregory Peck was outstanding !