History Compendium-3
The 1896 Summer Olympics are known as the Games of the I Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in Athens, Greece, from April 6 to April 15, 1896. It was the first Olympic Games held in the Modern era. Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games, consequently Athens was perceived to be an appropriate choice to stage the inaugural modern Games. It was unanimously chosen as the host city during a congress organized by Pierre de Coubertin, a French pedagogue and historian, in Paris, on June 23, 1894. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was also established during this congress. After the Games, Coubertin and the IOC were petitioned by several prominent figures including Greece’s King George and some of the American competitors in Athens, to hold all the following Games in Athens. However, the 1900 Summer Olympics were already planned for Paris and, except for the Intercalated Games of 1906, the Olympics did not return to Greece until the 2004 Summer Olympics, some 108 years later.
Battle of Buxar
The Battle of Buxar was fought in October 1764 between the forces under the command of the British East India Company, and the combined armies of Mir Kasim, the Nawab of Bengal; Shuja-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Awadh; and Shah Alam II, the Mughal Emperor. The battle fought at Buxar , now in Bihar, was a decisive battle won by the forces of the British East India Company.
Treaty of Allahabad:
The Treaty of Allahabad was signed on August 16, 1765 between Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II, Suja-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Awadh and Lord Clive of the British East India Company after the Battle of Buxar (1764). Based on the terms of the agreement, Shah Alam II granted Diwani rights to the East India Company. These rights allowed the Company to collect revenue from the people of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. In return, the Company gave an annual tribute of 2.6 million rupees (260,000 British pounds) while securing for Shah Alam II the districts of Kora and Allahabad. The tribute money paid to the emperor was for the maintenance of the court of Allahabad. The accord also dictated that Shah Alam II restore to Balwant Singh the province of Varanasi as long as Balwant Singh continued to pay revenue to the Company.Awadh was returned to Shuja-Ud-Daulah but Allahabad and Kora was taken from him.The Nawab of Awadh also had to pay 5 Lakhs rupees of war indeminity to the British.
Battle of Wandiwash
The Battle of Wandiwash was a decisive battle in India during the Seven Years’ War. The Count de Lally’s army, burdened by a lack of naval support and funds, attempted to regain the fort at Vandavasi near Pondicherry. He was attacked by Sir Eyre Coote’s forces and decisively defeated. The French general Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau and the French were then restricted to Pondicherry, where they surrendered on January 16, 1761. This battle established supremacy of British over French in the Indian History
Magna Carta, also called Magna Carta Libertatum (the Great Charter of Freedoms), is an English legal charter, originally issued in the year 1215. It was written in Latin; its name is usually translated into English as Great Charter. Magna Carta required King John of England to proclaim certain rights (pertaining to nobles and barons), respect certain legal procedures, and accept that his will could be bound by the law. It explicitly protected certain rights of the King’s subjects, whether free or fettered — and implicitly supported what became the writ of habeas corpus, allowing appeal against unlawful imprisonment. Magna Carta was the first document forced onto an English King by a group of his subjects (the barons) in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their privileges. It was preceded by the 1100 Charter of Liberties in which King Henry I voluntarily stated what his own powers were under the law.
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty was presented to the United States of America by the people of France in 1886. Standing on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, it welcomes visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans traveling by ship. The copper-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence and was given to the United States by France to represent the friendship between the two countries established during the American Revolution. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue and obtained a U.S. patent for its structure.Maurice Koechlin—chief engineer of Gustave Eiffel’s engineering company and designer of the Eiffel Tower—engineered the internal structure.
The statue is 151 ft (46 m) tall, but with the pedestal and foundation, it is 305 ft (93 m) tall. Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States .
After India gained independence from the British in 1947, Portugal refused to negotiate with India on the transfer of sovereignty of their Indian enclaves. On 12 December 1961, the Indian army commenced with Operation Vijay resulting in the annexation of Goa, Damman and Diu into the Indian union. Goa, along with Daman and Diu was made into a centrally administered Union Territory of India. On 30 May 1987, the Union Territory was split, and Goa was elevated as India’s twenty-fifth state, with Daman and Diu remaining Union Territories
Battle of Panipat:
The first battle of Panipat took place in Northern India, and marked the beginning of the Mughal Empire. This was one of the earliest battles involving gunpowder firearms and field artillery. In 1526, the forces of Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur, the ruler of Kabul and of Timurid descent, defeated the much larger army of Ibrahim Lodhi, the ruler of the large North Indian Delhi Sultanate. In this Battle , Babur’s forces numbered about 15,000 men and he had between 15 to 20 pieces of field artillery, however Lodhi had around 100,000 men, though that number included camp followers, while the fighting force was around 30,000 to 40,000 men in total, along with at least 100 war elephants. Babur’s guns proved decisive in battle, firstly because Ibrahim Lodhi lacked any field artillery but also because elephants are scared of guns. Babur could use the guns to scare the elephants away, causing them to trample Lodhi’s own men.
Chauri Chaura & Swaraj Party
The Swaraj Party was formed by Indian politicians and members of the Indian National Congress who had opposed Mahatma Gandhi’s suspension of all civil resistance in 1922 in response to the Chauri Chaura tragedy, where policemen were killed by a mob of protestors. Gandhi felt responsible for the killings, reproached himself for not emphasizing non-violence more firmly, and feared that the entire Non-Cooperation Movement would degenerate into an orgy of violence between the British-controlled army and police and mobs of freedom-fighters, alienating and hurting millions of common Indians. He went on a fast-unto-death to convince all Indians to stop civil resistance. The Congress and other nationalist groups disavowed all activities of disobedience.
Salt Satyagraha
The Salt Satyagraha was a campaign of non-violent protest against the British salt tax in colonial India which began with the Salt March to Dandi on March 12, 1930. It was the first act of organized opposition to British rule after Purna Swaraj, the declaration of independence by the Indian National Congress. Mahatma Gandhi led the Dandi march from his Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, Gujarat to produce salt without paying the tax, with growing numbers of Indians joining him along the way. When Gandhi broke the salt laws in Dandi at the conclusion of the march on April 6, 1930, it sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the British Raj salt laws by millions of Indians.
Poona Pact
The Poona Pact refers to an agreement between the lower caste Untouchables (then called Depressed Classes, now referred to as Dalits) of India led by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and the upper caste Hindus of India that took place on 24 September 1932 at Yerawada Jail in Pune, India . To draft a new Constitution involving self rule for the native Indians, the British invited various leaders for Round Table Conferences in 1930-32. Mahatma Gandhi did not attend the first Round Table Conference but attended the later Conferences. The concept of separate electorates for the Untouchables was raised by Dr. Ambedkar. Similar provisions were already available for other minorities, including Muslims and Sikhs. The British government agreed with Ambedkar’s contention, and British Prime Minister J. Ramsay MacDonald’s Communal Award to the “depressed classes” was to be incorporated into the constitution for governance of British India. Gandhi strongly opposed it on the grounds that it would disintegrate Hindu society. He began an indefinite hunger strike at Yerawada Jail from September 20, 1932 to protest this Award. As Gandhi’s health worsened, Dr. Ambedkar was under tremendous pressure to save the life of Mahatma Gandhi. A compromise, the Poona Pact, was made between the leaders of caste Hindus and Dr. Ambedkar was reached on September 24, 1932
Communal Award:
The Communal Award was announced by the British Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald in August 1932 to grant separate electorates to minority communities, including Muslims, Sikhs, and Dalit (then known as the Depressed Classes) in India. The Award was highly controversial and opposed by Mahatma Gandhi, who fasted in protest against it. It was supported by many among the minority communities, most notably the dalit leader, B. R. Ambedkar.
The States Reorganisation of 1956
On November 1, 1956, India was divided into the 14 states and 7 union territories:
1. Andhra Pradesh: Andhra was renamed Andhra Pradesh, and enlarged by the addition of the Telangana region of erstwhile Hyderabad State.
2. Assam
3. Bihar
4. Bombay State: the state was enlarged by the addition of Saurashtra and Kutch, the Marathi-speaking districts of Nagpur Division of Madhya Pradesh, and the Marathwada region of Hyderabad. The southernmost districts of Bombay were transferred to Mysore State. (In 1960, the state was split into the modern states of Maharashtra and Gujarat.)
5. Jammu and Kashmir
6. Kerala: formed by the merger of Travancore-Cochin state with the Malabar District of Madras State.
7. Madhya Pradesh: Madhya Bharat, Vindhya Pradesh, and Bhopal were merged into Madhya Pradesh, and the Marathi-speaking districts of Nagpur Division were transferred to Bombay State.
8. Madras State: the state was reduced to its present boundaries by the transfer of Malabar District to the new state of Kerala. (The state was renamed Tamil Nadu in 1969.)
9. Mysore State: enlarged by the addition of Coorg state and the Kannada speaking districts from southern Bombay state and western Hyderabad state. (The state was renamed Karnataka in 1973.)
10. Orissa: enlarged by the addition of 28 princely states including two princely states of Saraikela and Kharsawan, but later these two states merged with Bihar.
11. Punjab: the Patiala and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU) was merged into Punjab.
12. Rajasthan: Rajputana was renamed Rajasthan, and enlarged by the addition of Ajmer-Merwara state.
13. Uttar Pradesh
14. West Bengal
Union territories
1. Andaman and Nicobar Islands
2. Delhi
3. Himachal Pradesh
4. Lakshadweep
5. Pondicherry
6. Tripura
7. Manipur
Arrest of Bal gangadhar Tilak:
On 30 April 1908 Prafulla Chaki and Kudiram Bose, threw a bomb on a carriage at Muzzafurpur in order to kill a District Judge Douglass Kenford but erroneously killed some women travelling in it. While Chaki committed suicide when caught, Bose was tried and hanged. Tilak in his paper Kesari defended the revolutionaries and called for immediate Swaraj or Self-rule. The Government swiftly arrested him for sedition. He asked a young Muhammad Ali Jinnah to represent him. But the British judge convicted him and he was imprisoned from 1908 to 1914 in Mandalay, Burma.
Some Books on Gandhi
D. G. Tendulkar : Mahatma. Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in eight volumes
Pyarelal and Sushila Nayar : Mahatma Gandhi (in 10 volumes. )
Colonel G. B. Singh : Gandhi: Behind the Mask of Divinity
source: wikipedia
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