Implications of Marathas’ Protracted Resistance to the British Onslaught...A Tale of Two Cities- Mumbai and Kolkata

१९व्या शतकाच्या सुरवातीस पेशव्यांनी आणि त्यांच्या अनेक सरदारांनी इंग्रजांशी लढा चालू ठेवल्याचे किती चांगले परिणाम भविष्यात झाले, त्याबद्दल अमिताव घोष काय म्हणतातते पहा:

"...But even though Calcutta and Bombay were both hubs of the opium trade, the ways in which business was conducted in the two cities were completely different. Calcutta was the capital of British India throughout the nineteenth century, and it had the largest number of white residents of any city in the country. Being the seat of British power its economy was largely controlled by the white business community, which was closely networked with colonial officials in India, many of whom invested their savings with them. There were further circles of exclusion even within the white business community, with a group of interconnected merchants of Scottish origin playing a dominant role. Race and community were thus central features of Calcutta’s economic life, with a few Scottish firms exercising oligopolistic control over some parts of the business world. The Marwaris were their only significant competitors.

In Bombay, on the other hand, businessmen from many different backgrounds were able to operate on more equal terms. This was not a chance outcome: it was, rather, yet another legacy of the Marathas’ protracted resistance to the British onslaught because of which ‘Western India was conquered by the British at a later stage than Eastern India, thus escaping the period of unabashed exploitation which cost so dearly to indigenous merchants in Bengal’. As a result,

[T]he ethnic and communal diversity of Bombay’s business world was striking: it included merchants belonging to many communities of Gujarat, including the Parsis, the Hindu Vanias and Bhatias, the Muslim Bohras, Khojas and Memons as well as businessmen from other provinces of India (Sind, Marwar), Baghdadi Jews (the different branches of the famous Sassoon family), non-British Europeans (the Swiss firm of Volkarts), Japanese (Toyo Menka Kaisha) and Britishers of various origins. The contrast was clear with the increasingly polarized and oligopolistic world of Calcutta where only two communities mattered: the Scots and the Marwaris.

The fact that the indigenous merchants of Bombay participated directly in the export trade, spending long spells in China, also meant that they had much more exposure to the outside world, so when the explosive growth of the drug trade slowed down towards the end of the nineteenth century, they were able to transition into other industries, like textiles, yarn manufacturing, steel, cement, hotels and so on. ‘British Bombay, unlike Calcutta, was never essentially a colonial city,’ writes Gillian Tindall. ‘The real life of Bombay was always lived in … a more cosmopolitan and egalitarian setting; in warehouses … in counting houses, in places where samples of raw cotton or opium or silk or ivory or inlay-work were passed from hand to hand.’

 (Chapter 10, 'East and West', 'Smoke and Ashes: A Writer's Journey Through Opium's Hidden Histories', 2023, Amitav Ghosh)

So while Bombay prospered, Calcutta’s economy remained quintessentially colonial, structured around racial and communal hierarchies, and dependent on agricultural products like opium, jute and tea, all wrung out of the soil by underpaid and ill-used workers.

These legacies have lived on...."

त्यात ते मराठी व्यापाऱ्यांचा उल्लेख करत नाहीत पण जगन्नाथ शंकरशेठ (१८०३-१८६५)  यांच्या सारखे यशस्वी व्यापारी तर होतेच. 

R K Narayan's The Guide and G A Kulkarni's Swami...आर के नारायण यांच्या गाईड आणि जी ए कुलकर्णी यांच्या स्वामी मधील फरक

मला अलीकडे आर के नारायण यांच्या गाईड मध्ये आणि जी ए कुलकर्णी यांच्या स्वामी मध्ये साम्य वाटू लागले आहे... 

गाईड, १९६५ या सिनेमातील शैलेंद्र यांनी लिहलेले आणि एस डी बर्मन यांनी गायलेले अप्रतिम गीत पहा... 

"वहाँ कौन है तेरा/  मुसाफिर जाएगा कहाँ /दम ले ले घड़ी भर /ये छइयाँ पाएगा कहाँ/ वहाँ कौन है तेरा / मुसाफिर जाएगा कहाँ/ वहाँ कौन है तेरा... 

बीत गये दिन, प्यार के पलछिन/ सपना बनी वो रातें / भूल गये वो, तू भी भुला दे/ प्यार की वो मुलाक़ातें - २

सब दूर अन्धेरा, मुसाफ़िर जायेगा कहाँ ...

 कोइ भी तेरी, राह न देखे/ नैन बिछाये ना कोई/ दर्द से तेरे, कोई न तड़पा/ आँख किसी की ना रोयी - २

कहे किसको तू मेरा, मुसाफ़िर जायेगा कहाँ ..."

 हे आपल्याला तुरुंगात अचानक अडकलेल्या स्वामीच्या मनात आलेल्या विचारांची आठवण करून देतात...  

 "...Raju asked, “Now you have heard me fully?” like a lawyer who has a misgiving that the judge has been woolgathering.

“Yes, Swami.”

Raju was taken aback at still being addressed as “Swami.” “What do you think of it?”

Velan looked quite pained at having to answer such a question. “I don’t know why you tell me all this, Swami. It’s very kind of you to address at such length your humble servant.”

Every respectful word that this man employed pierced Raju like a shaft. “He will not leave me alone,” Raju thought with resignation. “This man will finish me before I know where I am.”..."  

वरच्या परिच्छेदात पहा, तो मठातील तळघरात नसेल, पण राजू स्वामी बनत चालला आहे, राजुला त्याचा काय शेवट होणार आहे याची कल्पना नाही, पण आपल्याला आहे आणि आपल्याला त्याचे 'स्वामीकरण' स्पष्ट दिसत आहे... 

त्यापुढील काळात राजूची मनस्थिती काहीकाळ स्वामी सारखीच आहे पण पोटभर जेवण मिळत असलेल्या स्वामी ची तडफड शेवटच्या क्षणापर्यंत आहे पण राजू मात्र काही काळात वेगळ्या प्रकारचा स्वामी झाला आहे,  त्याला उपोषणामुळे येऊ घातलेल्या मृत्यूसाठी अफूची गरज नाहीये, त्याला मनःशांती कदाचित मिळाली आहे,... 

"... 

“How long have you been without food now?”

“Ten days.”

“Do you feel weak?”

“Yes.”

“When will you break your fast?”

“Twelfth day.”

“Do you expect to have the rains by then?”

“Why not?”

“Can fasting abolish all wars and bring world peace?”

“Yes.”

“Do you champion fasting for everyone?”

“Yes.”..."

 विजय आनंद दिग्दर्शित गाईड चित्रपटात देव आनंद आणि वहिदा रेहमान

Our Brave, Brave Ancestors in Ice Age

 Cody Cassidy's "How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History's Deadliest Catastrophes", 2023 is an exciting book, a thriller.

I refer to chapter on "How to Survive the Ice Age".

I did not understand everything in it such as stuff on carbon dioxide but stuff on mammoth is telling. 

Our ancestors had to hunt mammoth for survival. And they were some brave people.

"...The evidence is by now unequivocal: Stone Age steppe cultures not only hunted mammoths, they did so to near exclusion. In modern times, the great woolly mammoth’s close and similarly sized relative, the six-ton African elephant, occasionally kills poachers armed with guns. You’ll have stick and stone. Nevertheless, as you grow hungry on the cold steppe, you may have only one option: launch a small stick with a sharpened rock point at a minibus-sized animal armed with twin eight-foot-long ivory spears.

And yet even before you earn the privilege of placing yourself near the business end of the pissed-off six-ton creature, you’ll have to survive in a climate that is far different, and in many ways far more punishing, than anything you could possibly experience in the modern world...."

"...To hunt mammoths, you need to first craft a spear with a shaft made of wood or bone and a spearhead of chipped flint. You might think you should throw this spear. Don’t. Your target is a six-ton animal with an inch-thick hide. The spear will merely anger it, and you will die. Instead, you need to build a spear-thrower.  A spear-thrower—also called an atlatl—is a short, flat stick with a spear-holding hook on one end and a handle on the other. Its simple design belies a deadly effect: By adding another lever to your throwing motion, the spear-thrower turns your mammoth-tickler into a formidable weapon. An experienced thrower can use an atlatl to launch a spear at over 100 miles per hour..."

 "...It may seem dangerous to fire at the business end of a six-ton creature—and it is—but unfortunately you don’t have a choice. Mammoth rears—like elephants’—were virtually impenetrable. There’s no use, and in fact it would be extremely ill-advised to fire at a mammoth when its back is turned. It’s the mammoth-hunting equivalent of blindsiding a bully with a spitball. You need to do more damage. You need to face the mammoth, and if you want the spear to carry enough velocity on impact, you need to be uncomfortably close. In other words, the best plan is to launch a weapon that by itself stands very little chance of disabling the animal, and a very high chance of angering it, from a very close range..."

Artist: KES

India at Yalta, 1945, Tehran, 1943 and WWII!

I read Diana Preston's "Eight Days at Yalta: How Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin Shaped the Post-War World" sometime ago.

Reading it I realized, FDR cared for India's independence although he was so unwell at Yalta.

Some examples from the book:

"...Roosevelt deliberately set out to woo Stalin, whom he saw as the leader of an emerging superpower. One means by which he hoped to win Stalin’s trust was by distancing himself from Churchill, the leader of an empire in decline, much to the latter’s dismay. Pleased with the opportunity it gave him to engineer separate meetings with Stalin, Roosevelt acquiesced in Stalin’s proposal that he should stay in the Soviet Legation in Teheran so he would be safer from Nazi agents. At their private meetings he emphasized disagreements with Churchill on issues such as India, the role of France and the date of the cross-Channel invasion...."

"...Churchill’s fellow anti-appeaser but reluctant wartime Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, could never convince Churchill to conciliate the Indian Congress Party leader Jawaharlal Nehru with offers of post-war concessions. Nehru had since the mid-1930s often condemned Hitler and vigorously criticized Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement and if treated differently might well have been prepared to give some support to British war aims. Amery complained that Churchill had a ‘Hitler-like attitude towards India’ and was ‘shouting’ about India and claiming its then 500 million inhabitants were ‘breeding like rabbits’. On one occasion Amery questioned whether ‘on this subject of India he [Churchill] is really quite sane – there is no relation between his manner, physical and intellectual, on this theme and the equability and dominant good sense he displays on issues directly affecting the conduct of the war.’..."

"... Perhaps partly because of his generally hostile attitude, Churchill had been slow to realize the seriousness of the 1940s Bengal famine in which more than 1 million people died. The press in America as well as in Britain and India castigated the feeble relief attempts by the British government and also by local Indian authorities. Nevertheless, it took considerable pressure, including a threat to resign by the British viceroy in India Lord Wavell, as well as from Leo Amery and Parliament to overturn the government’s ‘scandalous’ inaction. Finally convinced, in April 1944 Churchill wrote to Roosevelt asking to borrow American merchant ships to import wheat to India from Australia. A million tons would be required ‘to hold the situation, and so meet the needs of the United States and British and Indian troops and of the civil population’. Roosevelt would not assist for fear of damaging the transport of supplies to American forces in the Pacific. However, the increased efforts of the authorities began to ameliorate the worst effects of the famine and by the time of Yalta the topic had dropped from public attention. Despite both the independence struggle and the Bengal famine, the British authorities in India had by 1945 raised from the subcontinent the largest all-volunteer army in history, increasing its size from 189,000 in 1939 to some 2.5 million...."

"...Churchill’s almost hysterical opposition to any suggestion of Indian independence was well known to both Roosevelt and Stalin. Roosevelt himself at Teheran discussed Churchill’s stance privately with Stalin, who agreed that the empire was a sore spot for Churchill. In Washington over the New Year of 1941/2, Roosevelt suggested that Churchill promise India independence and propose a timescale for achieving it as the US had for the Philippines. Churchill responded that he would resign before he would ‘yield an inch of the territory that was under the British flag’. On the fringes of the Casablanca Conference, after jocularly offering to hand Gandhi over to the United States – ‘He’s awfully cheap to keep, now that’s he’s on hunger strike’ – Churchill continued:

There are always earnest spinsters in Pennsylvania, Utah, Edinburgh or Dublin persistently writing letters and signing petitions and ardently giving their advice . . . urging that India be given back to the Indians and South Africa back to the Zulus or Boers, but as long as I am called by His Majesty the King to be his First Minister, I shall not assist at the dismemberment of the British Empire...."

 

 

Churchill’s daughter Sarah, Roosevelt’s daughter Anna and Harriman’s daughter Kathleen at Yalta where they were known as ‘The Little Three’.