List of things named after Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Transcription

The fort at Chunar near Varanasi stands over a bend in the river Ganga. It therefore commands the immensely fertile lower gangetic plains. These plains have held the key to stability and prosperity through history. It's no wonder therefore that through history, all those who wanted to rule over India also consolidated their hold over Chunar fort. As the British spread their commercial and imperial hold over India, they too sought legitimacy, adding their names to the list of those who'd earlier ruled from Chunar. One of the early British Governors General, Warren Hastings, lived in this house in the chunar fort. Almost hidden in the clutter of signboards in this bustling bazaar in Tiruchirapalli is a plaque. It notes the fact that lord Clive, who preceded Warren Hastings once lived in this building. The colonizers were acutely aware of the need to leave their marks on various parts of India, the ancient civilization which they sought to dominate. The British were different from all the others who ruled over India. While all the previous rulers were rooted in India, the British remained foreign, ruling India as a colony. The British built many grand buildings too, among them some outstanding churches. They even built monuments to the reverses that they had suffered. This tower was erected in Calcutta in the wake of the disastrous Afghan expeditions during which the British got badly mauled. Even this reminder of defeat was made to look grand. Paradoxically, even the most distinguished British rulers like Lord William Bentinck took a grimly utilitarian view of the grandest of Indian edifices. Of the many British Governors General, Lord William Bentinck is quite well known. It is well known that he banned Sati, tried to put a stop to Thagi, and carried out various social reforms. What is not so well-known is that he was an English utilitarian and he carried out utilitarianism to such an extent that he wanted to demolish the Taj Mahal and sell it for the marble. It's not surprising that in the age of colonialism, commerce overtook culture. In due course, the past became a mere playground for the present. In the age of modernity, not only the sense of time, but its very speed changed. India was pushed from the cyclical rhythm of the crop calendar to the movements of the machine age. Indians innovated as they struggled to keep pace with the fast-changing world. The British Raj marked changes in other respects too. Famine had been a regular feature of India and different rulers had tried to meet them in different ways. The Avadh nawabs had built structures as famine relief measures. The Imaambaara, at Lucknow, is an example of such a construction. As is evident, even such buildings commissioned by the nawabs were both ostentatious and aesthetic. The British were different. This strange structure in Patna is one such monument of their Raj. The ruthless taxation that the British imposed on the countryside intensified the effects of famines. It was in order to cope with one such major famine that the British built this Gol-Ghar as a storehouse for food. The architecture of the Gol-Ghar built by the British was typical of the new rulers. It was conceived from a severely utilitarian perspective with little regard for aesthetics. It was also badly engineered. The idea was to pour grain into it from the top so as to fill it completely. But the doors had been designed to open inwards. This made it impossible for this silo to be ever filled fully. The gol-ghar became a fitting symbol of the British in India - inelegant and with a half-fulfilled promise. Famine remained a recurring theme during the British Raj. Meanwhile, the British proclaimed through monumental sculpture and otherwise that famine-relief was one of their contributions to the people of India. The British have often claimed that they conquered India in a fit of absent-mindedness. This is obviously not true. Not only did they have an acute sense of imperial destiny, but they also built many edifices to make the point across to the Indians. And in this respect, George Nathaniel Viscount Curzon was indeed a very superior person. He got the Victoria memorial built in Calcutta. Like its Mughal counterpart, the Taj Mahal, this also commemorates a dead Queen. But then, this was meant to establish the power of the Empire over the subjects. This obscure memorial in Calcutta commemorates what's known as the Black Hole. Some Britishers imprisoned here by the Nawab Sirajuddowlah, died of suffocation one sultry night. Not such a big event in the struggle between nations. But the British mythologized it greatly to justify their colonization of India. In essence, the colonization of India was a process of extraction of surplus for the benefit of Britain. Starting off as traders, the British soon moved on to conquering the country. It's apt that the crucial district level functionary of the British Raj was called the Collector. The commercial and bureaucratic nature of that Raj is clear from the fact that its headquarters were located in what was called Writer's Building. This was not the abode of literary figures but housed the East India Company's clerks who were called Writers. It continues to be the Secretariat of the West Bengal government until today. The very architecture of the British Imperial buildings reveals another facet of the Raj. Unlike other imperial systems which arose in India, the British never tried to integrate with the people of this country. First of all, they were a very small number, governing a huge population with huge diversities. So they made a virtue of their remoteness. They used to shift the capital from Calcutta to Shimla in the hills where they created Little Britain. They built buildings which looked like British buildings. They had theaters which looked like British theaters. And they lived lives which were British lives. And from this remote British abode, they governed the country with its dirt, its dust, its misery and its various types of abuses. This form of "rule by remote control" made it necessary for the British to seek powerful native allies. They sought to extract the surplus from the peasants through intermediaries. Among the allies, the most important were the native Princes. One of the early Governors General, Lord Wellesley, set up a system of subsidiary alliances. Under that, the British enjoyed powers of paramountcy over the native rulers. The Raj tried to strengthen itself also through the support of non-Princely landlords. Take the role of Lord Cornwallis. Before coming to India as Governor General, he had lost the american colonies for the British. In India however, he made a 'Permanent Settlement'. Under that Revenue system, the Zamindars were made into loyal intermediaries between the Raj and the peasants. This is the Darbhanga house in Patna. It was donated to the Patna University by one of the most powerful Zamindars. Zamindars like Maharaja Dhiraaj of Darbhanga tightened their strangle-hold over the land even as they contributed to worthy causes like the furthering of education. That was the human face, as it were, of the Zamindari system. Such acts of charity, however, did not clear the webs of exploitation that characterized Zamindari. It was in the field of education that the British made their most signal contribution. Thomas Babbington McCauley, an ideologue of British Imperialism, had argued that India could best be governed by creating a class of 'W.O.Gs" - Westernized Oriental Gentlemen. Such people would be Indian only in name but moulded through their education to subserve the British. The major institutions of education, like the Presidency college at Madras, even mimicked the architecture of British educational institutions. And if Allahabad University, which produced generations of loyal civil servants, has acquired a pink tint today, it can be attributed to post-colonial philistinism. The Alfred Memorial School in Rajkot however, remains largely unchanged. Ironically, one of the products of such English education went on to demolish the British Raj itself. Education also contributed to creating a class of Indians like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who stood for the reform of their society and for general enlightenment. The modern Indian awakening found voice in what is called the Bengal Renaissance, an element in the pre-history of Indian nationalism. Technology also changed India significantly. The railways, in particular, tied the country to the rest of the world. The very sense of time was revolutionized as commuters learned to pace themselves according to the rhythm of the railways. The political-economic impact of the railways was also tremendous. They enabled the British to exploit India all the more thoroughly from 1854, when the first train made its journey from Mumbai to Thane. The exploitative and oppressive nature of the East India Company inevitably led to resistance. India revolted against the British in 1857. While the first war of Independence was fought at many locations, the one that evokes the most vivid images is the fort at Jhansi. It was from here that rani LakshmiBai took on the might of the British. Her brave death in battle further opened up the gates of India for the British. The revolt of 1857 was suppressed. India passed from the shadow of East India Company to that of British Crown. Queen Victoria was proclaimed the empress of India and she was, for once, amused. However, this meant no relief for the ordinary Indian. The various levels of intermediaries that the British rulers set up between themselves and the peasants in fact meant intensification of exploitation. The peasant's surplus passed from him to different layers of the State like the local Rajas and then on to the Collectors of the Raj. This process had serious consequences for both the economy and the environment. When Deodhar (which was the most in demand during the British period) is exploited, it creates a mono-culture i.e. large number of forests of Deodhar deliberately cultivated by the British that begins to change the nature of forests in himachal. And today you find that a large number of forests that are there are mono-culture ones deliberately developed for the purposes of exploitation as against the earlier mixed forests which were more convenient for the traditional agricultural-based kind of economy. Commerce brought in far-reaching changes in everyday lives too. This happened even though the essential flavor of Indian existence remained the same. The only difference was that items which were earlier produced within households, started becoming commodities. The bazaar rather than the village became the focus of life. The case of textiles illustrates the growth of commerce under the Raj. As the market grew, the Indian economy also got more and more globalized. When the cotton supplies from America to the Lancashire mills were disrupted by the American Civil war, the British tried to make up for the short-fall by encouraging cotton cultivation in India. Railways were expanded to help transport cotton to the ports. The Indian economy now became subject to the ups and downs of the International market. When the demand fell, it led to great distress. The economic disorder caused by such policies led to waves of rebellion by tribal and non-tribal peasants in different parts of the country. One of the earliest revolts was led by Birsa Munda in the tribal Jharkhand area. The middle classes too had their own grievances which were expressed through various organizations. In December 1885, the Indian National Congress was founded in this building. It later became the principal body asserting Indian nationalism. Nationalism had a significant economic content highlighted by DadaBhai Nauroji and others. The British had prevented the growth of large-scale Indian industry despite sustained efforts put in by pioneers like Jamshedji Tata. But by the end of the 19th century, the British monopoly was being challenged by other emerging economies. Among the challengers were the U.S.A, Japan, Germany and other European nations. This led the British to change their approach. To prevent cheap Belgium and Japanese steel from finding a market in India, the British allowed the Tatas to set up a steel plant. The plant came up in the tribal village of Sagchi. Today, it's known as Jamshedpur. Indian industry added fuel to the fire of Nationalism. The National sentiment was expressed by many leaders in different ways. The moderate Gopal Krishna Gokhale founded the Servants of India Society at this spot in Pune. [You see, it is not a movement.] [It is an institution to train public workers.] [In those days we were political missionaries who will devote their life like missionary for public work, and Nation building.] [You see, we don't believe in fighting all the time.] [We believe in hindu-muslim unity, abolition of untouchability and working for them, building literacy-] [all these kind of things.] [And we believe only through these things good government will come and India will be happy.] Other contemporaries, of the moderates like Gokhale, were called extremists. Among them was Bal-Gangadhar tilak. He published nationalist newspapers like 'The Maratha', and 'Kesari' from his house, also in Pune. They always felt that through Kesari and through that media, they can bring before the people, all the agonies of the foreign rule. And Tilak wrote several articles on that. For instance, when the Bengal partition was planned by Lord Curzon, Tilak wrote articles on that. And when many of them were hanged on the gallows, he wrote "राज्य करणे म्हणजे `सूड उगवणे नव्हे" (Governance is not as simple as growing crops). Such articles were written by Lokmanya and they were read by most of the masses and the people in the country. He was the first leader who brought masses into the Independence movement. But Nationalism found its strongest voice only later. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi added the aspirations of the peasants to the urges of the other classes. Under the leadership of Gandhi, Indian nationalism took the shape of a mass movement which had an elite as well as sub-altern content. A Nation cannot come into being until the elite nationalists reach out and mobilize this peasantry, which really constitutes the bulk of the Indian population. And it is in this tension between trying to simplify the message of Nationalism for the peasant to understand and the peasant understanding this simplified message in his or her own terms, that you really have the main elements of Indian Nationalism. That is, to say that, Gandhi becomes popular not because he is understood as the greatest politician that India has produced in the age of colonialism but as a Mahatma; not just the Mahatma of Gurudev RabindraNath Tagore, but of the peasants. And the Mahatma of the peasants is not the Mahatma who is projected but the Mahatma that the peasants make themselves. The British themselves also drove in more and more nails into the coffin of the Raj. This narrow alley was the only passage to the park where nationalist protesters had gathered in Amritsar on Basant Panchami day in 1919. British troops led by General Dyer demonstrated unspeakable brutality in shooting at these unarmed and peaceful protesters. The strong Nationalist outrage against British brutality in Jallianwala Bagh and elsewhere was focused by Mahatma Gandhi into a whole series of non-violent campaigns. Many of these campaigns were launched from Gandhi's ashram at Sabarmati. The famous Dandi March which started from here still remains fresh in the memory of a participant in that movement. [Many people had gathered.] [Even the road was jammed.] [At 6 'O' clock, our sisters at the ashram applied tilak to our foreheads.] [Singing "Vashnav Jan" we set off.] Mahatma Gandhi used evocative symbols to assert the will of the Nation. The salt Satyagraha began from this spot in Dandi in Gujarat. It became a mass movement unlike any other in the world. The reason why this symbolic act had such a powerful impact had many factors. One factor was the personality of Gandhi himself. He could appeal to the whole of the nation through symbolic acts. The second was the importance of salt for the common indian people. And therefore, the appeal carried it to ordinary Indians. Finally, it should not also be forgotten that the British empire was based on commercial considerations. And an act of commercial resistance of not paying tax on a common item like salt shook the very foundations of the British empire. Meanwhile, other leaders too were expressing different facets of the Indian nation. Jawaharlal Nehru was born in the lap of luxury in this house in Allahabad. But setting out from these surroundings, Jawaharlal Nehru made his own discovery of India. There were also the nationalist revolutionaries. Among the so-called extremists who did not rule out violent means were ChandraShekhar Azad. His colleague Bhagat Singh added the element of revolutionary socialism to Indian Nationalism. Later, Subhash Chandra Bose, who too endorsed socialism, formed the Indian National Army and gave a "Delhi Chalo" call. In 1942, the British were asked to quit India. A major anti-colonial upsurge took place at that time. Meanwhile, there was also an increasing communalization of the Indian polity. The Muslim League under leaders like Mohammed Ali Jinnah demanded the partition of India. Some of the negotiations between the leaders of the congress and the leaders of the Muslim League took place in this building in shimla. These were carried out under the watchful gaze of the British. This encouraged the colonialists to further the policy of Divide and Rule, even as the bell was beginning to toll for the British Raj. On the midnight of the 14th August, 1947, India awoke to light and freedom. However, it was a divided sub-continent that saw freedom and the scars of that partition still exist.