The Unsung Heroes of the Bomb Case

We had touched upon the 1942 Keezhariyur Bomb Case in an earlier post (click here). Many readers responded that they were not aware of this incident in the history of Calicut's fight for Indian independence. But, far away from Calicut, a young writer from Bihar had written a Hindi play on the incident and a theatre group in California had staged it in 1998! Sujit Saraf, the young writer and author of bestsellers like The Peacock Throne and Confessions of Sultana Daku  (www.sujitsaraf.com) had commemorated the Keezhariyur Bomb Case in his Hindi play entitled Vande Mataram. Today...

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Did the British Really Conquer Us?

Jahangir The title is intended to provoke. We hear the refrain that those who came to trade conquered us and colonised us. How far is it true? Was it a one-sided conquest or did our rulers aid and abet the conquest by their actions? For instance, the 19th century historian Philip Anderson observes that the British empire in India ‘began without a strip of territory. A warehouse was expanded into a province; a province into an Empire’. How did this happen? A good way to understand this is by following a couple of early English expeditions and how they were treated by the Indian...

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