Sanjeev Sabhlok's Blog, page 114

What planners think. A review of a talk by Nicole Gurran

I’m trying to understand the minds of urban planners. I came across this talk by an Australian academic in the field of urban planning, who has a book, “Australian urban land use planning: Principles, systems and practice“. She’s also got an article here: Affordable housing policy failure still being fuelled by flawed analysis. Also had a […]

Rajneesh (Osho) created a myth that Abraham Lincoln’s father was a shoe maker

I met someone today who thought that Abe Lincoln’s father was a cobbler. I had never heard about this so I’ve spent a few minutes to check. ALWAYS CHECK!! I examined the following books: GREAT AMERICAN PRESIDENTS: ABRAHAM LINCOLN by Louise Chipley Slavicek, 2004 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: The Man Behind the Myths by STEPHEN B. OATES […]

The lying Hindutvas are at it again. This time a fake Rajaji “oath” to the Queen of England.

Apparently this video is circulating on Whatsapp these days: At 3 minutes above not only is a voiceover put into Rajaji’s video, absurd words were put into it. TOTAL FAKE HINDUTVA NONSENSE. THE ACTUAL SWEARING IN SPEECH BELOW: Source: Speeches Of C. Rajagopalachari (Jan 1948- Jan 1950) SWEARING-IN CEREMONY. His Excellency the Governor-General made the following […]

A history of the Indian Liberal Party by B. D. Shukla, 1960

I chanced upon this book today and I’ve spent some time to OCR and convert it into RTF. The book discusses the history of the Indian Liberal Party that existed from 1918 to 1948. Download here. It is intriguing that this subdomain on archive.org (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet....) has the word ERNET in it. Further, this book was originally […]

CONCLUSIVE evidence that the British DID NOT cut off any Indian weaver’s thumbs. Myth busted.

I decided to conduct original research on this topic given the following FB comment in response to my blog post on Gurcharan Das’s views (see this) – screenshot below. This particular view, below, is quite a radical new invention (that the Queen was involved – which one?!!), but the more common one is that Dhaka weavers […]

Letter dated 26 May 1762 from Mahomed Ali, Collector of Dacca to the English Governor at Calcutta

I’m extracting this from Vol 1 of Romesh Dutt’s 1902 The Economic History of India Under Early British Rule .  This book is also available here. This letter precedes Dutt’s discussion of weavers, and is pertinent evidence, to set the scene regarding unathourised oppressions by some British merchants and officers. THE LETTER In the first place, a […]

William Bolts’s 1772 book, Considerations on India Affairs

Continuing my research on the weaver’s thumb issue, this two-volume book is available here on Archives.com. I’ve used the google books version, here. (the second edition). Here is the relevant section in relation to the thumbs of any weaving related person. ===QUOTE=== In the time of the Mogul Government and even in that of the […]

Cotton weaving industry of Nadia 1773 to 1977 – a case study of Santipur and Phulia by Debashre Mukherjee

I’m investigating the authenticity of the thumb cutting story of Dacca weavers. This 2011 dissertation is a relatively recent academically rigorous source on this matter, so I’ve compiled it into one document and uploaded on my server, here (PDF). The key paragraph from this dissertation reads as follows: “The torture were incredibly cruel. The poor weavers […]

Gurcharan Das concluded that Britain’s colonial prosperity was NOT founded on the exploitation of India

I’ve been sporadically writing on this issue and have never had time to sort out all relevant facts. [see my posts here and here. And, of course, Naoroji’s book makes a strong case. And Shashi Tharoor has been jumping up and down about this issue.] But this extract from India Unbound by Gurcharan Das is […]

Finally, a SELF RESPECT MOVEMENT – by the Devendra Kula Vellalar group in Tamil Nadu

Came across this today. This is really a positive step, that the “Dalits” (I disagree with this word) are waking up to demand SELF-RESPECT. I encourage these people to abandon all religion itself. Religion is a truly anti-humanity, harmful creation. See: Dalit group from Tamil Nadu stuns the nation, demand the withdrawal of their SC / […]