British India gets partitioned into India and Pakistan in 1947 when the British grant independence to the sub-continent. The partition leads to a colossal human tragedy - 2 million dead and 15 million rendered homeless. Who was responsible? https://traffic.libsyn.com/yinhistory/Episode_1_-_1947_INDIA_Partition_chaos.mp3
"This paper studies the constitutive role of cartography apropos law, territory, and social order, in a specific historical context, by examining the crucial political role played by the British East India Company's cartographic practices and maps in aspiring and imagining the transplantation and establishment of English sovereignty in the Indian subcontinent."
Today in Writing History May 7, 1861: Indian poet and playwright Rabindranath Tagore was born. Also known as the Bard of Bengal, Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was also an anti-imperialist and supported Indian nationalism. In 1916, Indian expatriates tried to assassinate him in San Francisco.
"Incense spheres discovered in Tang hoards, which are the earliest artefacts found to date, reveal multicultural origins upon close examination. Persian and Sogdian silversmith elements, Buddhist ideas and Syriac Christian liturgical practices, may all have left their traces on the making of the object."
Fang, F. X. (2024). Scent, Art and Astronomy: New Light on Tang Incense Spheres and Their Global Connections. The Medieval History Journal, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/09719458231226000
I was thinking about the present conditions of #India when I suddenly thought of revisiting this #movie by #SatyajitRay. "Hirak Rajar Deshe" (In the Land of the Diamond-King). Its portrayal of moving to dictatorial rule is dangerously accurate.
I really wanted to share this#song from the #film. It is in #bengali so I shall provide a translation.
I see such funny things in the world.
Everywhere I look, I am confused beyond words.
I can't make sense of this world.
Oh brother!
Look at the good fellows stuck in their dilapidated homes.
The evil one ascends the throne.
The wheat farmer can't manage two square meals.
The diamond mine's labours are living in poverty.
Oh Brother, how funny is our world!
Have recently got every into researching administrative records of past students. This was a fun post to do, where a member of the family of the student filled in some of the gaps that the administrative record masks
Excerpt:
"There was even a moment, not too long ago, when things might have changed.
In 2019, the newspaper The Hindu BusinessLine reported on an unusually high number of hysterectomies among female sugar-cane cutters in Maharashtra. In response, a state lawmaker, along with a team of researchers, launched an investigation. They surveyed thousands of women.
Their report that year described horrible working conditions and directly linked the high hysterectomy rate to the sugar industry. Unable to take time off during pregnancy or for doctor visits, women have no choice but to seek the surgery, the report concluded.
By happenstance, Coca-Cola issued its own report that year. After unrelated accusations out of Brazil and Cambodia about land-grabbing, Coca-Cola had hired a firm to audit its supply chain in several countries.
The auditors, from a group called Arche Advisors, visited 123 farms in Maharashtra and a neighboring state with a small sugar industry.
They found children at about half of them. Many had simply migrated with their families, but Arche’s report found children cutting, carrying and bundling sugar cane at 12 farms.
Nearly every laborer interviewed by reporters said children commonly worked in the sugar fields. The youngest ones do chores. Older ones perform all the work of cane cutters. A Times photographer saw children working in the fields.
The 2019 report includes an interview with a 10-year-old girl who “loves to go to school,” but instead works alongside her parents.
“She picks the cut cane and stacks it into a bundle, which her parents then load onto the truck,” the report says.
Arche noted that Coca-Cola suppliers did not provide toilets or shelter. And it cited “flags in the area of forced labor.” Only a few of the mills it surveyed had policies on bonded or child labor, and those applied only to the mills, not the farms.
The government report called on factories to provide water, toilets, basic sanitation and the minimum wage.
Few if any changes have been carried out.
Major buyers like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola say they hold their suppliers to exacting standards for labor rights. But that promise is only as good as their willingness to monitor thousands of farms at the base of their supply chains.
That rarely happens. An executive at NSL Sugars, a Coca-Cola and PepsiCo franchisee supplier that has mills around the country, said that soda-company representatives could be scrupulous in asking about sugar quality, production efficiency and environmental issues. Labor issues in the fields, he said, would almost never come up.
Soda-company inspectors seldom if ever visit the farms from which NSL sources its sugar cane, the executive said. The PepsiCo franchisee, Varun Beverages, did not respond to calls for comment.
Mill owners, too, rarely visit the fields. Executives at Dalmia and NSL Sugars say they keep virtually no records on their laborers.
“No one from the Dalmia factory has ever visited us in the tents or the fields,” said Anita Bhaisahab Waghmare, a laborer in her 40s who has worked at farms supplying Dalmia all her life and said she had a hysterectomy that she now regretted.
Ed Potter, the former head of global workplace rights at Coca-Cola, said the company had conducted many human rights audits during his tenure. But with so many suppliers, oversight can seem random.
“Imagine your hands going through some sand,” he said. “What you deal with is what sticks to your fingers. Most sand doesn’t stick to your fingers. But sometimes you get lucky.”
Sanjay Khatal, the managing director of a major lobbying group for sugar mills, said that mill owners could not provide any worker benefits without being seen as direct employers. That would raise costs and jeopardize the whole system.
“It is the very existence of the industry which can come into question,” he said."
Excerpt:
"There was even a moment, not too long ago, when things might have changed.
In 2019, the newspaper The Hindu BusinessLine reported on an unusually high number of hysterectomies among female sugar-cane cutters in Maharashtra. In response, a state lawmaker, along with a team of researchers, launched an investigation. They surveyed thousands of women.
Their report that year described horrible working conditions and directly linked the high hysterectomy rate to the sugar industry. Unable to take time off during pregnancy or for doctor visits, women have no choice but to seek the surgery, the report concluded.
By happenstance, Coca-Cola issued its own report that year. After unrelated accusations out of Brazil and Cambodia about land-grabbing, Coca-Cola had hired a firm to audit its supply chain in several countries.
The auditors, from a group called Arche Advisors, visited 123 farms in Maharashtra and a neighboring state with a small sugar industry.
They found children at about half of them. Many had simply migrated with their families, but Arche’s report found children cutting, carrying and bundling sugar cane at 12 farms.
Nearly every laborer interviewed by reporters said children commonly worked in the sugar fields. The youngest ones do chores. Older ones perform all the work of cane cutters. A Times photographer saw children working in the fields.
The 2019 report includes an interview with a 10-year-old girl who “loves to go to school,” but instead works alongside her parents.
“She picks the cut cane and stacks it into a bundle, which her parents then load onto the truck,” the report says.
Arche noted that Coca-Cola suppliers did not provide toilets or shelter. And it cited “flags in the area of forced labor.” Only a few of the mills it surveyed had policies on bonded or child labor, and those applied only to the mills, not the farms.
The government report called on factories to provide water, toilets, basic sanitation and the minimum wage.
Few if any changes have been carried out.
Major buyers like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola say they hold their suppliers to exacting standards for labor rights. But that promise is only as good as their willingness to monitor thousands of farms at the base of their supply chains.
That rarely happens. An executive at NSL Sugars, a Coca-Cola and PepsiCo franchisee supplier that has mills around the country, said that soda-company representatives could be scrupulous in asking about sugar quality, production efficiency and environmental issues. Labor issues in the fields, he said, would almost never come up.
Soda-company inspectors seldom if ever visit the farms from which NSL sources its sugar cane, the executive said. The PepsiCo franchisee, Varun Beverages, did not respond to calls for comment.
Mill owners, too, rarely visit the fields. Executives at Dalmia and NSL Sugars say they keep virtually no records on their laborers.
“No one from the Dalmia factory has ever visited us in the tents or the fields,” said Anita Bhaisahab Waghmare, a laborer in her 40s who has worked at farms supplying Dalmia all her life and said she had a hysterectomy that she now regretted.
Ed Potter, the former head of global workplace rights at Coca-Cola, said the company had conducted many human rights audits during his tenure. But with so many suppliers, oversight can seem random.
“Imagine your hands going through some sand,” he said. “What you deal with is what sticks to your fingers. Most sand doesn’t stick to your fingers. But sometimes you get lucky.”
Sanjay Khatal, the managing director of a major lobbying group for sugar mills, said that mill owners could not provide any worker benefits without being seen as direct employers. That would raise costs and jeopardize the whole system.
“It is the very existence of the industry which can come into question,” he said."
Unless you expect to be pulled over by the cops for crimes or leftism and don't have to worry about UK rubber hose laws, use biometrics. Your main threat is someone shoulder surfs your pin in a bar, steals your phone, locks you out of your digital life and goes wild with your bank account.
If you do expect to be pulled over by cops, consider not having anything on your phone that would be a problem.
Because #biometrics are so trivial to steal , claiming they are secure is basically gaslightingneveryone that knows this 20 year old "How to copy a #Fingerprint?" video from @CCC !
You can change change your #PIN, hide it during entry or randomize the number button locations on the lockscreen, but you can't practically change your fingerprints.
I mean, #India got it's national #ID register havked and basically a billion ID card holders got doxxed including their fingerprints...
In the Name of the Nation: India and Its Northeast by Sanjib Baruah
In India, the eight states that border Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and the Tibetan areas of China are often referred to as just "the Northeast." In the Name of the Nation offers a critical and historical account of the country's troubled relations with this borderland region.
I'm finally digging into Kipling's "Kim" via the audiobook narrated by Simon Vance. It's a delight, as long as you keep firmly in mind that it's a product of its cultural time.
It's billed in Everand as a "coming of age tale," but given that teenaged Kim has a scarily accurate understanding of the way the "adult" world works from the outset of the story, I don't think it's a bildungsroman at all. It's more like a hyperrealistic pilgrimage novel.
Yesterday I learned that infamous double agent "Kim" Philby apparently got his nickname from the novel, which made me think immediately of another novel that contains a bildungsroman AND like "Kim" is a #Spy story: Le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
The Theft of India: The European Conquests of India, 1498-1765 by Roy Moxham
The Theft of India documents the intense rivalry for spoils that played out between the British, the French, the Dutch and the Portuguese, and the impact this had on the Indians.
🇮🇳India: COVID left more Indians with lingering lung damage than others.
"A study by Christian Medical College, Vellore, revealed that Indians who recovered from COVID had lung function impairment and lingering symptoms. Some may have to live with lung damage for life."
🇮🇳India: 4 hospitalised after fainting at home, diagnosed with COVID.
"4 patients have been hospitalised with unusual symptoms in a span of 10 days and have been diagnosed with COVID, leaving doctors stumped and wondering if this is a new symptom of the viral infection."
Dumbarton Oaks public lecture tomorrow (Thursday): "India on the Red Sea: The Early Byzantine Awareness of East Africa and South Arabia," by Ben Garstad
Free. 6-7 PM ET on Zoom
Ben is an erudite scholar and an animated speaker -this is sure to be an interesting (and timely) lecture!
#Israel has said it has informed the families of 31 people held in the territory since 7 October that their relatives are dead. The news came as the Qatari prime minister said #Hamas had given a “generally positive” response to proposals for a deal trading a break in the fighting and release of #Palestinian prisoners for the return of more #hostages.
The Indian Navy warship #INSKolkata successfully rescued 21 crew members, including one Indian national, from the Barbados-flagged bulk carrier #MVTrueConfidence after a maritime incident in the #GulfOfAden. The vessel was reportedly hit by a missile from #Yemen's #Houthi militants, resulting in three deaths and several people injured. #TrueConfidence#India#Israel#Gaza