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Author: Rosie Llewellyn-Jones
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849044082
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
Story of Wajid 'Ali Shah, King of the Indian state of Oudh, who was characterized by the British as a debauched ruler who focused on his pleasures rather than ruling, but is seen by Indians as a gifted poet who was robbed of his throne by the East India Company in 1856.
Author: Rosie Llewellyn-Jones
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849045356
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
The Last King in India is the story of an extraordinary man whose memory still divides opinion sharply today. Was he, as the British described him, a debauched ruler who spent his time with "fiddlers, eunuchs and women' instead of running the kingdom? Or, as most Indians believe, a gifted poet whose works are still quoted today, and who was robbed of his throne by the East India Company? Somewhere in between the two extremes lies a complex character: a man who married over 350 women, directed theatrical events lasting a month, and built a fairytale palace in Lucknow. Wajid Ali Shah was written out of the history books after his kingdom was annexed in 1856. Some even thought he had been killed during the mutiny the following year. But he lived on in Calcutta where he spent the last thirty years of his life trying to recreate his lost paradise. He remained a constant problem for the government of India, with his extravagance, his menagerie and his wives-in that order. For the first time his story is told here using original documents from Indian and British archives and meetings with his descendants.
Author: Lucy Moore
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101174838
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407
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Book Description
Until the 1920s, to be a Maharani, wife to the Maharajah, was to be tantalizingly close to the power and glamour of the Raj, but locked away in purdah as near chattel. Even the educated, progressive Maharani of Baroda, Chimnabai—born into the aftermath of the 1857 Indian Mutiny—began her marriage this way, but her ravishing daughter, Indira, had other ideas. She became the Regent of Cooch Behar, one of the wealthiest regions of India while her daughter, Ayesha, was elected to the Indian Parliament. The lives of these influential women embodied the delicate interplay between rulers and ruled, race and culture, subservience and independence, Eastern and Western ideas, and ancient and modern ways of life in the bejeweled exuberance of Indian aristocratic life in the final days both of the Raj, and the British Empire. Tracing these larger than life characters as they bust every known stereotype, Lucy Moore creates a vivid picture of an emerging modern, democratic society in India and the tumultous period of Imperialism from which it arose. Through the sumptuous, adventurous lives of three generations of Indian queens—from the period following the Indian Mutiny of 1857 to the present, Lucy Moore traces the cultural and political changes that transformed their world.
Author: Rosie Llewellyn-Jones
Publisher: Random House India
ISBN: 8184006306
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 397
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Book Description
The thousands of mourners who lined Wajid Ali Shah’s funeral route on 21 September, 1887, with their loud wailing and shouted prayers, were not only marking the passing of the last king but also the passing of an intangible connection to old India, before the Europeans came. This is the story of a man whose memory continues to divide opinion today. Was Wajid Ali Shah, as the British believed, a debauched ruler who spent his time with fiddlers, eunuchs and fairies, when he should have been running his kingdom? Or, as a few Indians remember him, a talented poet whose songs are still sung today, and who was robbed of his throne by the English East India Company? Somewhere between these two extremes lies a gifted, but difficult, character; a man who married more women than there are days in the year; who directed theatrical extravaganzas that took over a month to perform, and who built a fairytale palace in Lucknow, which was inhabited for less than a decade. He remained a constant thorn in the side of the ruling British government with his extravagance, his menagerie and his wives. Even so, there was something rather heroic about a man who refused to bow to changing times, and who single-handedly endeavoured to preserve the etiquette and customs of the great Mughals well into the period of the British Raj. India’s last king Wajid Ali Shah was written out of the history books when Awadh was annexed by the Company in February 1856. After long years of painstaking research, noted historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones revives his memory and returns him his rightful place as one of India’s last great rulers.
Author: Cynthia Talbot
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107118565
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 327
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Book Description
This book traces the genealogy and historical memory of the twelfth-century ruler Prithviraj Chauhan, remembered as the 'last Hindu Emperor of India'.
Author: Thomas R. Trautmann
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022626453X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 389
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Book Description
Because of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizations—such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, and China—kings used elephants for royal sacrifice, spectacular hunts, public display of live captives, or the conspicuous consumption of ivory—all of them tending toward the elephant’s extinction. The kings of India, however, as Thomas R. Trautmann shows in this study, found a use for elephants that actually helped preserve their habitat and numbers in the wild: war. Trautmann traces the history of the war elephant in India and the spread of the institution to the west—where elephants took part in some of the greatest wars of antiquity—and Southeast Asia (but not China, significantly), a history that spans 3,000 years and a considerable part of the globe, from Spain to Java. He shows that because elephants eat such massive quantities of food, it was uneconomic to raise them from birth. Rather, in a unique form of domestication, Indian kings captured wild adults and trained them, one by one, through millennia. Kings were thus compelled to protect wild elephants from hunters and elephant forests from being cut down. By taking a wide-angle view of human-elephant relations, Trautmann throws into relief the structure of India’s environmental history and the reasons for the persistence of wild elephants in its forests.
Author: James W. Laine
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199726434
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 138
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Book Description
Shivaji is a well-known hero in western India. He defied Mughal power in the seventeenth century, established an independent kingdom, and had himself crowned in an orthodox Hindu ceremony. The legends of his life have become an epic story that everyone in western India knows, and an important part of the Hindu nationalists' ideology. To read Shivaji's legend today is to find expression of deeply held convictions about what Hinduism means and how it is opposed to Islam. James Laine traces the origin and development if the Shivaji legend from the earliest sources to the contemporary accounts of the tale. His primary concern is to discover the meaning of Shivaji's life for those who have composed-and those who have read-the legendary accounts of his military victories, his daring escapes, his relationships with saints. In the process, he paints a new and more complex picture of Hindu-Muslim relations from the seventeenth century to the present. He argues that this relationship involved a variety of compromises and strategies, from conflict to accommodation to nuanced collaboration. Neither Muslims nor Hindus formed clearly defined communities, says Laine, and they did not relate to each other as opposed monolithic groups. Different sub-groups, representing a range of religious persuasions, found it in their advantage to accentuate or diminish the importance of Hindu and Muslim identity and the ideologies that supported the construction of such identities. By studying the evolution of the Shivaji legend, Laine demonstrates, we can trace the development of such constructions in both pre-British and post-colonial periods.
Author: Subhash Chandra Gahlawat
Publisher: MyARSu
ISBN: 1649514298
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
From the time of 19th century, British employed people passing out from Oxford and Cambridge University to study the thousands of year old Sanskrit texts of India and interpret them in a way that the Indian people never become one. Inspired by the new set of values and might of British Empire these people, also considered as Orientalist, started the work of reading Sanskrit texts and present them in a way which makes people feel that British ways are better than those scriptures. While the prime aim of these interpretations was to hide the robbery of Indian resources, some considered it as reality and helped the British. This help became so vital for the British that a nation which was considered as the golden bird (सोने की चिड़िया) on earth and even after centuries of invasions and loot still contributing 20-24% of world GDP became one of the poorest nations of the world contributing 1-2% of world GDP with frequent incidents of riots, famine etc. Somewhere one orientalist identified it and in his old age realized that he wasted all his life and knowledge in just showing that the 3,000 year-old Indian Scriptures (as per his idea on the date though they are even older) are inferior to present British knowledge system. The name of this orientalist was Max Muller and he tried to reverse the damage by sharing the need of Indian Knowledge system in those texts to make our inner life perfect, more comprehensive and universal. But the damage was already done and in the last 150 years, many Muller’s of a young age are produced by our education system instead of Muller’s who turned wise. Therefore, to throw better light on Indian Society which was missed by Orientalist and present-day young Muller’s, this book is developed by using the philosophy of Jagadguru Adi Shankracharya, i.e. philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, which forces us to look for knowledge which is inside human rather than what knowledge a man possesses. It is considered as the true form of Vidya and under present circumstances, it is the most vital need of Indian Society, especially our Administrators who are supposed to serve the people of India as an Iron Pillar. It is vital that they know about the past, present and future of Indian Society and serves it with excellence, as Krishna said, “योगः कर्मसु कौशलम्”, i.e. Unity (or Yoga) is excellence in Action. Based on it, the book contains relevant information on the topics under Society portion of GS Paper-I such as- Salient features of Indian Society, Diversity of India; Role of women and women’s organization, population and associated issues, poverty and developmental issues, urbanization, their problems and their remedies; Effects of globalization on Indian society; Social empowerment, communalism, regionalism & secularism along with approach and solutions on previous year Questions.
Author: Alan Gledhill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
Author: Dinesh Prasad Saklani
Publisher: Indus Publishing
ISBN: 9788173870903
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
15 pictures. The work presents a comprehensive study of the ancient communities touching their history in all dimensions including socio-economic, politico-cultural and religious traits and aspects of the ancient people of the area. One of the objectives of the work has been to trace out the roots of the present Himalayan culture and find out the cultural components of ancient inhabitants in the present society.
Author: Chandra Mauli Mani
Publisher: Northern Book Centre
ISBN: 9788172112561
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
The format of the book covers the vast gamut of Great Hindu Kings of the south after Harshvardhana and in the process outlines the political history of the concerned dynasties as well.
