History Archive

September 25th marks the 105th birth anniversary of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. The erstwhile president of Bharatiya Jana Sangh was found dead on February 11, 1968. This body was discovered on the tracks near the Mughalsarai Junction. It has been 53-years since. Still, to this date, there are no answers to who killed the man who was fondly addressed as Panditji. The mysterious death of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay still intrigues the nation.

As we celebrate the fact that the Republic of India is an independent sovereign State today, we’d like to, as predicted, take a trip down history’s memory lane, and revisit the conference that declared August 15, 1947 as India’s day of Independence. Just a few months before this date, June 3, an iconic conference gave us this day to celebrate. It also gave us a dotted line running through the map of the former state of India, creating a whole new country called Pakistan in the process. And spilling a whole lot of blood in its wake.

A lot has been written about the expulsion of Hindus from Bangladesh, from the Kashmir valley, Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan, and so forth, but very little has been written about the expulsion and killing – termed missing here – of the Hindus, and Sikhs from regions of Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

“The Queen’s Daughters in India” written by Elizabeth W. Andrew & Katharine C. Bushnell in 1898 uncovers a tragic truth of the British rule in India. The book exposes British’s exploitation of Indian women who were used as sex slaves for the soldiers of the British Military.

Mahatma Gandhi, also known in India as the ‘Father of the Nation was born into a Gujarati Hindu Modh Bania family in the coastal town of Porbandar. Gandhi completed his education from England and from there went to South Africa to practice law.

The world history recorded March 25, 1971 black night as a rare case when the military of a country launched a sudden brutal assault on sleeping civilian population of the same country the way Pakistani army did under the infamous Operation Searchlight, as they called it.

There are certain moments in the cultural and political life of a nation when the national flag comes into prominence. Every Indian is aware that the Prime Minister unfurls the national tricolor from the ramparts of the Red Fort every Independence Day on August 15, and indeed the observance of January 26th as Republic Day goes back to 31 December 1929, when Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the flag of the Indian National Congress, gave a call for purna swaraj, and asked people to observe January 26 as independence day.

History, they say, is written by the victor. In India’s case, history has been largely written by leftists who have often twisted facts and events to either demonize figures who don’t fit into their blinkered narrative or to put the undeserving on lofty pedestals. One fine example of the latter is Mohammad ‘Allama’ Iqbal.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was a versatile personality who has been a source of inspiration for generations of Indians. He was a committed revolutionary, renowned freedom fighter, eminent political thinker, devoted social and religious reformer, prolific writer and poet, and a rationalist philosopher. He was, as the epithet aptly describes, a brave and die-hard patriot. His love for the Motherland runs through all facets of his personality - from a valiant freedom fighter, to enthusiastic social reformer, to prolific writer, to fiery orator.