Under Wikipedia’s current “Selected Anniversaries”, a special date with regard to this blog– May 10, 1857, i.e. the Sepoy Mutiny:

…The Pattern 1853 Enfield (P/53) rifle was introduced into India. Its cartridge was covered by a greased membrane which was supposed to be cut by the teeth before the cartridges were loaded into the rifles. There was a rumour that the membrane was greased by cow or pig fat…The British claimed that they had replaced the cartridges with new ones not made from cow and pig fat and tried to get sepoys to make their own grease from beeswax and vegetable oils but the rumour persisted. The Commander in Chief in India, General George Anson reacted to this crisis by saying, “I’ll never give in to their beastly prejudices”, and despite the pleas of his junior officers he did not compromise.

…On 9 May, 85 troopers of the 3rd Light Cavalry at Meerut refused to use their cartridges. They were imprisoned, sentenced to ten years of hard labour, and stripped of their uniforms in public. It has been said that the town prostitutes made fun of the manhood of the sepoys during the night and this is what goaded them.

When the 11th and 20th native cavalry of the Bengal Army assembled in Meerut on 10 May, they broke rank and turned on their commanding officers.

…and a Mutiny was born. Read more here. Continue reading →

The ever excellent Wikipedia has a fascinating, quite detailed entry about the structure of Indian English –

Indian English is a catch-all phrase for the dialects or varieties of English spoken widely in India (by about 11% of the population, according to the 1991 census) and the Indian subcontinent in general. The dialect is also known as South Asian English. Due to British colonialism that saw an English-speaking presence in India for over two hundred years, a distinctly South Asian brand of English was born. …Spoken Indian English is often the butt of jokes by “educated” British, American and Indian English-speakers alike as is evidenced by such characters as Peter Sellers’ Indian party-goer in the movie The Party and the Simpsons’ convenience-store owner Apu Nahasapeemapetilon; there is also no dearth of jokes among Indians ‘riffing’ the pronunciation and idiomatic inconsistencies of Indian English.

Despite the almost de rigeuer and somewhat derogatory Apu reference, the article is a pretty serious language analysis and covers a lot of ground including regional differences within Indian English. Bihari’s for ex. apparently substitute “j” and “z” while we all know that “subcontinentals” just can’t wait to swap a few “v’s” and “w’s”.

In the end, however, here’s the real test of authenticity — just try to not to shake your head as you read a few entries aloud from their list of common Hinglish quirks –

…anomalies in the grammar of Indian English:

• The progressive tense in stative verbs: I am understanding it. She is knowing the answer.

Continue reading →

I am a nerd. Due to this immutable fact, I love checking the Wikipedia main page on a near-daily basis.

Today, under the “Did you know…”/newest articles section, the following blurb immediately owned my attention:

…Skeleton Lake in India is named after the remains of approximately 600 people who died there in a sudden hailstorm…

Skeleton Lake?

Skeleton Lake is a lake in Roopkund in Uttaranchal (itself formerly part of Uttar Pradesh, India), the location of about three to six hundred skeletons in the Himalayas. The location is uninhabited and is located at an altitude of about 5,029 metres. The skeletons were discovered in 1942 when stumbled upon by a park ranger. At that time it was believed that the people died from an epidemic, landslides or a blizzard. The carbon dating from samples collected at that time in the 1960s vaguely indicated that the people were from the 12th century to the 15th century

Continue reading →

My friend Santhosh Daniel emails:

So, I was tooling around, looking for designs, and I dropped in or “on” [Tamil Nation].  As you can guess or tell from the address, it’s a site devoted to the Tamil diaspora, which got me thinking about the concept of diaspora not in terms of nation, but state…

My father is a Malaysian Tamil, my mother an Indian Tamil and I, an American Tamil and, my sense of ‘place resides in all three regions and often supersedes my sense of being Indian and/or “desi…”

In the States there is incessant discussion about the Indian diaspora, and I feel wholly disconnected from it… I am part of the Tamil diaspora as defined by Tamil Nadu-Sri Lanka-Malaysia-U.S. just as a Punjabi is part of his diaspora as defined by Punjab-Pakistan-Canada-U.S. and a Gujarati via Gujarat-Africa-U.S. There is a cultural history to each of those things that is both separate and part of the “Indian diaspora”… Each group has its own values, transgressions, literature, heroes, migrations…

My life tends to be guided by the Tamil diaspora, I notice, as I get older.  Doesn’t mean I don’t see myself as part of the Indian gaggle, it’s just that I notice more and more how much I am also part of something else. (posted with permission)

Great observation. To the Punjabi diaspora, I’d add the U.K. To Gujaratis, add Antwerp. To Tamils, Singapore. And you see micro-diasporas in the U.S. with clusters of different ethnicities in different cities.

And it’s simultaneously more and less profound than Santhosh describes: every person is a morass of fault lines and microcommunities on axes like sexual preferences, hobbies and musical taste.

Interesting little article about a topic that always generates some heat –

I live in India and I am a proud firearm owner—but I am the exception not the norm, an odd situation in a country with a proud martial heritage and a long history of firearm innovation. This is not because the people of India are averse to gun ownership, but instead due to Draconian anti-gun legislation going back to colonial times. To trace the roots of India’s anti-gun legislation we need to step back to the latter half of the 19th century. The British had recently fought off a major Indian rebellion (the mutiny of 1857) and were busy putting in place measures to ensure that the events of 1857 were never repeated. These measures included a major restructuring of administration and the colonial British Indian Army along with improvements in communications and transportation. Meanwhile the Indian masses were systematically being disarmed and the means of local firearm production destroyed, to ensure that they (the Indian masses) would never again have the means to rise in rebellion against their colonial masters. Towards this end the colonial government, under Lord Lytton as Viceroy (1874-1880), brought into existence the Indian Arms Act, 1878, an act which exempted Europeans and ensured that no Indian could possess a weapon of any description unless the British masters considered him a “loyal” subject of the British Empire.

Discuss amongst yourselves. Continue reading →