HeritageTimes.in

Munshi Nawal Kishore & Deoband Movement

The report presented at the 1st convocation at Darul Uloom, Deoband, in 1872 specifically mentioned the role of Munshi Nawal Kishore in establishing the Deoband movement. The report read:

“The counsellors of Madrasa are very grateful to Munshi Nawal Kishore, proprietor of Matba-e-Azam, Lucknow, who, as before, showed extreme liberality & magnanimously helped the madrasa with some useful books, the list of which is given herewith.”
At another place the report read, “Munshi Nawal Kishore, proprietor of Chapakhana Azam, Lucknow, deserves to be thanked more in this respect, for, in spite of the distance of travelling, he helped us with many useful books.”
A report presented at Darul Uloom after a decade read, “Our special thanks are due to Janab Munshi Nawal Kishore, proprietor of Oudh Akhbar, & Janab Rao Amar Singh, proprietor of the newspaper, Safeer-e-Badhana, that despite the fact that both these gentlemen are Hindus they send their precious newspapers free of charge to this madrasa. All the counsellors of this madrasa thank them from the bottom of their hearts & pray for the good of all of them that Allah Most High bestows progress constantly upon their newspapers & presses & maintain their power & independence.”

Iraq armed anti-Pakistan insurgency in Balochistan after India humiliated Pakistani Army in Bangladesh

In the morning of 10 February 1973, Pakistani security forces raided the Iraqi Embassy in Islamabad to recover “large quantities of Russian-made guns, ammunition & military equipment, ideally suited for guerrilla warfare.” At least 30 machine guns, 600,000 rounds of ammunition, hand grenades & radio transmitters were seized. Pakistan claimed that the arms were meant for Baloch revolutionaries fighting against Pakistan & Iran for independence. They called their Ambassador from Iraq & sent back Iraqi diplomats.
This discovery came at a time, when Pakistan was trying to get its 93,000 PoWs back from India after the liberation of Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, a CIA note raised questions over the narrative being presented by Pakistan. Though, it said that this would help public opinion in favour of the USA but wasn't ready to believe the Pakistani version at face value. The CIA said, “The real significance of the incident appears to lie in the impact it will have on Pakistan's domestic and international politics; indeed, for Bhutto, the nature and timing of the incident made it nothing short of a windfall…… Presumably the arms found by the GOP were intended for Baluchi tribes in Iran or, conceivably, in Pakistan. However, the suitability of Islamabad as a transfer point for hot cargo to any point in distant Baluchistan is highly questionable as the recent discovery demonstrated….. Although both Tehran and Islamabad have alleged that Moscow is supporting separatist movements in Iran and Pakistan, there is no evidence to support these charges….. What is clear, however, is that the Government of Pakistan carefully stage-managed the incident for maximum effect. Obviously having had detailed advance information on the Iraqi arms shipments, Islamabad allowed them to clear customs at Karachi and accumulate in Islamabad until it was ready to stage the sensational discovery in which newsmen and TV crews participated. The government immediately released a detailed statement, apparently prepared in advance, which reached its embassies abroad the same day. The statement implicated no Pakistani by name, and Bhutto himself did not then make any public comment on the incident. However, government officials and government-guided media have unanimously and vociferously interpreted it as prima facie evidence of a Soviet plot to promote rebellion by the National Awami Party (NAP), and thus destroy the unity of Pakistan….. Now, his hand strengthened by the Iraqi arms seizure, Bhutto has begun a clamp-down on the NAP: On February 13, NAP leaders in Punjab were placed under house arrest, and on February 15 Bhutto dismissed the NAP Governors of of Baluchistan and NWFP and proclaimed President's rule in Baluchistan….. Whatever the facts of the incident, it has been a political windfall for Bhutto, affording him ammunition against domestic opposition and supporting his key foreign policy objective. So well does the Iraqi arms incident serve Bhutto's purposes that the possibility of Pakistan's provocation in the affair cannot be excluded. As Afghan Prime Minister Shafiq observed, the incident appears "too pat to fit.”

Photo shows, Saddam Hussein with Zia ul Haq in 1984. Saddm was at the helm of the affairs in Iraq in 1973.

25 April, 1915- the date which ensured a Hero status for Mustafa Kemal Pasha ultimately shaping the modern Republic of Turkey & the India Gate connection.

The Allied Forces, which included Indian soldiers of Sikh & Gorkha regiments, landed on Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey on 15 April 1915. It was a grave mistake for the allied forces, as under the military commander Mustafa Kemal the Turkish army dug the trenches and halted them. The campaign became the defining crucible for Ottoman commander Mustafa Kemal Pasha. His order to his troops-"I do not order you to attack, I order you to die", halted the Allied advance, cementing his status as an undisputed national hero.
After 8 months of intense fighting, Allied forces called of the operation which costed them more than 50,000 lives, with an almost equal number of fatalities on the Turkish side.
1,358 Indian soldiers also died in action and several of their names are mentioned on the Indian Gate, New Delhi. The inscription at the top of the Gate reads, "To the dead of the Indian Armies who fell and are honoured in France and Flanders, Mesopotamia and Persia, East Africa, Gallipoli and elsewhere in the Near and Far East and in Sacred Memory also of those whose names are here recorded and who fell in India on the North West Frontier and during the Third Afghan War."
The victory at Gallipoli forged a powerful sense of national pride, laying the ideological foundation for the Turkish War of Independence and ultimately shaping the secular, modern Republic of Turkey under its Gallipoli hero, Mustafa Kemal.

The photo shows Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at a Trench in Gallipoli.

“Ranjit was a man of marvellous variety and range of mental power, and the secret of his success lay in his sympathy with the most diverse forms of life, He was equally at home in the camp, the Council Chamber, and the tournament. The delicate and rare pleasure-seekers knew in him the merry monarch who jousted with the boldest among generals, He passed for a consummate tactician who had led the Khalsa arms to victory, while the pious extolled him as a great King of the Khalsa whose humility and piety had won for him the favour even of the Akalis It may be said without exaggeration that he was the epitome of the most distinguished qualities of his race, and the rugged vigour of the Khalsa found in him its fullest incarnation. To organise the scattered fragments of his dominion into a compact bloc, to impart the sentiments of unity and solidarity to elements that had been constantly at war for nearly a century, was the task of a Hercules."

- Sir Shafaat Ahmad Khan in his address to the Indian History Congress in 1939 as its General Secretary.

Mirza Ghalib & the Revolt of 1857

People often overlook the fact that Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib lived in Delhi during the first war of national independence in 1857. No wonder, he was not unaffected.
Mirza Ghalib was living in the house of Hakim Mahmood Khan in Ballimaran when the British captured Delhi from the Indian freedom fighters. For two days, after the fall of Delhi, his wife and Ghalib remained locked in the house without food or water. They were saved on the third day by the soldiers sent by Maharaja of Patiala but all the valuables and jewellery saved by his wife was robbed off by the British soldiers. Most of the friends or relatives were either killed or imprisoned by the British.
In one of the letters written to a friend Ghalib noted, “Here in this city with my wife, I drown in a sea of blood. I haven’t stepped over my threshold. Neither have I been caught, thrown out, imprisoned, nor killed.”
Prevailing situations in Delhi did not allow him to support the Indian cause publicly and he showed ‘loyalty’ in the face of the British. But, in private letters he lamented the ‘defeat’ of Indian forces. Ghalib wrote to Hakim Ghulam Najaf Khan on 26 December, 1857, “Think of my situation. I am writing, but what can I write? Can I really write anything, and is it proper to write? This much is true: you and I are still alive. Neither of us should say anything more than that.”
Still we find a poem written by Ghalib lamenting the defeat of Indians at the hands of the British in a letter written to his brother-in-law Alauddin Ahmad Khan. The poem reads;

Bas ke fa’aal-maa-yuriid hai aaj
Har silah-shor inglistaa.n ka
(Today, every English soldier is behaving like the almighty)
Ghar se bazaar me nikalte hue
Zehra hota hai aab-e-insaa.n ka
(While going to market from the house, the courage is tested of a man)
Chowk jisko kahe.n wo maqtal hai
Ghar bana hai namuna zindaa.n ka
(Chowk [Chandni chowk] has become a slaughter house and house is an example of prison)
Shehr-e-dehli ka zarra zarra khaak
Tishnaa khoon hai har musalmaa.n ka
(Each dust particle of Delhi is thirsty of Muslim blood)

In another letter to Alauddin Khan he writes, “O my dear, it is not the same Delhi where you were born, it is not the same where you used to get tuitions from me at Shaban Begh’s house. It is not the Delhi which I have witnessed from the age of seven. It is an army camp. The male members of the royal family who were not killed are getting Rs. 5 as monthly pension. Among women, the older ones have become maids and young are all prostitutes now.”

Umar Sobhani started magazines which Mahatma Gandhi edited

“He (Mahatma Gandhi) said that while he did not think that Umar Sobhani was a revolutionary, he was frank and open by nature and he (Gandhi) thought that if Umar felt convinced that a revolution was the best way to secure the well-being of India, he would not hesitate to adopt such methods. He thought that in such a case Umar Sobhani would plainly tell him (Gandhi) of his intentions…” This is what Mahatma Gandhi was reported to have told to C.I.D on 8 May 1919 during a police interrogation.

Sobhani was a rich businessman from Mumbai who traded in cotton and joined the freedom struggle early in his life. Those who take interest in Mahatma Gandhi consider Young India, an English journal edited by Gandhi, and Navajivan, a Gujarati journal, as his own voice. These journals were started by Sobhani who later cajoled Gandhi to take charge as the editor.
Rajmohan Gandhi, one of the grandsons of Mahatma Gandhi, notes, “Three of the Sabarmati 'covenanters', Umar Sobhani, Shankerlal Banker and Indulal Yagnik, were between them bringing out two journals, Young India, a weekly in English from Bombay, and Navajivan, a monthly in Gujarati from Ahmedabad, and were also associated with the nationalist daily, the Bombay Chronicle. At the end of April, in one of the Raj's drastic measures, Horniman, the British editor of the Chronicle, was deported, and the paper's publication had to be suspended.
“In response, Sobhani, Banker and Yagnik requested Gandhi to take over the editorship of Young India and Navajivan and with their help bring out Young India twice a week and Navajivan every week. Gandhi agreed, and on 7 May 1919 the first number of Young India, New Series, came out. When, soon, the Chronicle resumed publication, Young India reverted to being a weekly but now published, for Gandhi's convenience, in Ahmedabad, along with Navajivan, which first appeared as a weekly on 7 September.
“Gandhi now possessed what he had hoped for from the moment of his return to India: vehicles to communicate his message.”
Charkha (spinning wheel) is a synonym for Mahatma Gandhi and his movement and Sobhani played an instrumental role in making it a success. Rajmohan writes, “Indian spinning mills wanted to turn all their yarn into mill- made cloth, not sell it to hand-weavers. Gandhi therefore asked associates to search for spinning wheels that could make yarn. At the Godhra conference of November. 1917, a woman called Gangaben Majmudar, who had 'already got rid of the curse of untouchability and fearlessly moved among and served the suppressed classes' (A 442), promised him that she would locate a wheel.
“She found not one but hundreds in Vijapur in the princely state of Baroda, all lying in attics as 'useless lumber' (A 443). Women who in the past plied the charkhas told Gangaben that they would spin again if someone supplied slivers of cotton and bought their yarn.
Gandhi said he would meet the conditions, his friend Umar Sobhani supplied slivers from his Bombay mill, and the ashram received more hand-spun yarn than it could cope with.”
Sobhani was one of the original twenty signatories of the pledge to oppose Rowlatt Act. The pledge was prepared by Gandhi at his Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad. Along with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Sobhani was one of the associates of Gandhi who backed him against the old guards in Congress on the question of non-cooperation movement in 1918.
K. R. Malkani, a former R.S.S stalwart and BJP leader, writes, “Gandhiji's right-hand man in Bombay in the 1921 movement was Umar Sobhani. The first bonfire of foreign cloth-consisting of some one and a half lakh pieces of choicest silk-was ignited by Gandhi in Umar's mill compound in Parel.
“When Gandhiji decided to collect Rs. 1 crore for Tilak Swaraj Fund, Umar offered to contribute the entire amount, but Gandhiji wanted it collected from a large number of people. But even so, Umar contributed Rs. 3 lacs.
“Umar was a big cotton merchant. When the British came to know of his role in the Freedom Movement, they ran special trainloads of cotton to Bombay by Viceregal order. As a result cotton prices collapsed in Bombay and Umar suffered a loss of Rs. 3.64 crores. Daan-Vir Sobhani committed su***de.
“Earlier the British tried to divide the family. At their instance, Umar's father, Haji Yusuf Sobhani contested the office of Sheriff of Bombay. But Umar worked. against his own father and had him defeated. Later the British tried to tempt Yusuf Sobhani with a knighthood, but Umar told his father that he could accept the title only "over my dead body." Today probably not even people living on Sobhani Road, Cuffe parade, Bombay, know who the great Sobhani was!”
Sobhani used to lead the marches in Mumbai, arranged the meetings of Gandhi and raised funds for the political agitations against the English. Gandhi, according to the police reports, used to call him one of the prop of the satyagraha in Mumbai.

Ibrahim Lodi was good for nothing

“Ibrahim (Lodi) could neither content his braves, nor share out his treasure. How should he content his braves when he was ruled by avarice and had a craving insatiable to pile coin on coin? He was an unproved brave; he provided nothing for his military operations, he perfected nothing, nor stand, nor move, nor fight.”
Babur in Baburnama

Women behind Babur: The female builders of the Mughal Empire in India

"In 1494 A.D., when Umar Shaikh Mirza died, Babur was hardly about eleven years of age and was confronted with two powerful armies within the borders of Farghana. At this critical stage he was ably assisted by his grandmother, Ehsan Daulat Begam, 'whose prudent advice was responsible for much of his success. She acted as the real head of affairs, looked after the immediate administrative problems and managed the situation so tactfully that even in such a critical situation Babur did not suffer much. Not only that, five or six months later when Hasan, one of his officers, organized a conspiracy to dethrone Babur, it was Ehsan Daulat Begam again who accepted the challenge, organized the loyal officers and with their cooperation succeeded in arresting the conspirators and thus solving the situation. She was a wise and far-sighted lady and rendered valuable help to Babur in running the administration of his State.
The active role played by Ehsan Daulat Begam in contemporary politics was not an exception in the Mughal family. Babur's mother and his wives also contributed, according to their own personal capacities, to the solution of various complicated political problems. His mother, Qutluq Nigar Khanum, always accompanied him in his wars and wanderings. But a more active role was played by his Shia wife Mahim Begam, who was related to Sultan Husain Baiqara and was married to Babur in 1506 A.D. She accompanied her husband to Badakhshan and Transoxiana and stood by him through thick and thin. She enjoyed exalted position in the time of Babur and was the only queen who was allowed to sit by the side of the king on the throne at Delhi. For two and a half years after the death of her husband she continued taking an active interest in the contemporary politics.
Babur's another wife who helped him in solving some of his political problems was Bibi Mubarika whom he married in Afghanistan in 1519 A.D. Bibi Mubarika, the daughter of Malik Sulaiman Shah belonged to the Yusufzai tribe of the Afghans, who were the most troublesome of all the tribes. She helped Babur considerably in lessening the tension between the Afghans and him, by conciliating the Yusufzais and their chief, Malik Shah Mansur, in particular, and the Afghans in general. She strengthened Babur's hold in Afghanistan."

- Rekha Misra in 'Women in Mughal India"

Babur: The Qalandar (mendicant) King
“When Humayun brought his father the glorious diamond, one of the famous historical jewels, valued at " half the daily expenses of the world," which is perhaps, to be identified with the renowned Koh-i-nur, and which the family of the late Raja Vikramajit had given him in gratitude for his chivalrous protection, Babar returned it to the young prince. He had no love for wealth or precious stones, except to give away, and his prodigal generosity in distributing the immense spoil of the Delhi kings gained him the nickname of " the Kalandari "- the mendicant friar. He was content with fame.”
Stanley Lane-Poole in History of India- Vol. III

Photo: grave of Babur

Babur: The poet & writer

“Soldier of fortune as he was, Babar was nonetheless a man of fine literary taste and fastidious critical perception. In Persian, the language of culture, the Latin of Central Asia, as it is of India, he was an accomplished poet, and in his native Turkish he was master of a pure and unaffected style alike in prose and verse. The Turkish princes of his time prided themselves upon their literary polish, and to turn an elegant ghazal, or even to write a beautiful manuscript, was their peculiar ambition, no less worthy or stimulating than to be master of sword or mace. Wit and learning, the art of improvising a quatrain on the spot, quoting the Persian classics, writing a good hand, or singing a good song, were highly appreciated in Babar's world, as much perhaps as valour, and infinitely more than virtue. Babar himself often breaks off in the midst of a tragic story to quote a verse, and he found leisure in the thick of his difficulties and dangers to compose an ode on his misfortunes. His battles as well as his or**es were humanized by a breath of poetry.”

Stanley Lane-Poole in History of India- Vol. III

Painting from 1505 shows Babur

Panipat where Babur won India

“The decisive battle was fought on April 21, 1526, on the plain of Panipat-the historic site where the throne of India has thrice been won. For several days Babar was busy with his preparations. Following the Osmanli order of battle, as he himself says,he collected seven hundred gun-carts, and formed a laager by linking them together with twisted bull-hides, to break a cavalry charge, and by arranging hurdles or shields between each pair to protect the matchlock men. Two more marches brought the army to Panipat. Here he had the town on his right, his left was defended by ditches and abatis of trees, while he placed his cannon and matchlocks in the centre. He was careful to leave gaps in his line a bowshot apart, through which one hundred or 150 men could charge abreast.”
Stanley Lane-Poole in History of India- Vol. III