오늘은 우리나라의 광복절입니다 (그리고 인도의 독립기념일이기도 합니다!). 1945년 8월 15일 - 평소에는 우리나라에게 이런 역사가 있다는것을 모를정도로 반복적이고 안정적인 삶을 살지만 사실 잘 생각해보면 1945년도 직전까지도 제 할머니 할아버지들의 부모님께서 청춘을 바쳐 살아온 세상이며 직시해야하는 현실였고, 제 할머니 할아버지들은 대한민국이 일본제국에서부터 해방되는것을 직접적으로 느끼며 자라왔을겁니다. 지금의 자유와 권리를 자연스럽게 누릴수 있게 된것은 개개인의 시민들과 수많은 독립운동가들의 노고가 있었기에 가능하다고 생각해요.
Today is a special day for not just one but two countries that are close to my heart - 8.15.1945 National Liberation Day of Korea , 8.15.1947 Independence Day of India If you think really hard about it, 1945 isn’t a long time ago - my great grandparents lived through Japanese colonialism and the war and my grandparents lived through the aftermath of the war and the Korean independence. The fast advanced Korea, the comfort of daily life, and the rights I have as a citizen in this country is a direct result of all the individual citizens’ and Independence Activists’ efforts of enduring, withstanding, and fighting for their rights.
“Noor Inayat Khan was not what one would expect of a British spy. She was a princess, having been born into royalty in India; a Muslim, whose father was a Sufi preacher; a writer, mainly of short stories; and a musician, who played the harp and the piano.
But she was exactly what Britain’s military intelligence needed in 1943. Khan, whose name was in the news in Britain recently as a proposed new face of the £50 note, was 25 when war was declared in 1939. She and her family went to England to volunteer for the war effort, and in 1940 she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and trained to become a radio operator.
Able to speak French, she was quickly chosen to go to Paris to join the Special Operations Executive, a secret British organization set up to support resistance to the Germans from behind enemy lines through espionage and sabotage. Khan was the first female radio operator to be sent by Britain into occupied France, according to her biographer, Shrabani Basu.
Noor Inayat Khan was born on January 1st,1914 to an American mother and an Indian father descending from the 18th century Sultan of Mysore. Her family moved from Moscow to London and later to Paris.
Noor played music and wrote children’s stories. The Second World War put an end to those peaceful occupations. She fled to London after the capitulation of France in 1940. Noor first joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in November 1940 and trained to be a radio operator. She then became part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) at the end of 1942 and was dropped in France in June 1943. Doubts regarding her suitability were raised, but she was chosen because she spoke French fluently.
Noor’s codename was “Madeleine”. She began to work as a radio operator for the “Prosper” resistance network, providing contact with the SOE in London. Several members of the network were arrested, but Noor kept doing her job. She moved from place to place, avoiding capture until she was betrayed in October. Noor fought the French officer who had come to arrest her. She put such a resistance, biting, drawing blood, that he was unable to subdue her physically and had to draw his gun.
Noor was thus made prisoner by the Gestapo. She made an escape attempt through the bathroom window, but was caught. Noor endured and didn’t reveal anything to her captors. She was later transferred to the Dachau Concentration Camp where she was tortured and executed. Her was last word was “Liberté” or “Freedom” in French.
Noor was posthumously awarded the George Cross for her bravery.
Japanese General Kenji Doihara inspects soldiers of the Indian National Army. The INA, made up of Indian nationalists, aimed to deliver Indian independence from the United Kingdom with the assistance of Japan and possessed around 40,000 fighters at its peak. Singapore, Malay Peninsula. 1944.
Does somebody know any books which write in great detail about the Cholas? Since school books mention barely a paragraph or just a page about them and I am tired of reading how great the mughals were, I want to know more about the Cholas.
Also are there more books talking about Indian kings before the Islamic invasions? I want to know about the culture, their policies, their lifestyle.
And it’s such a shame that all my life I read about Akbar and Aurangzeb but never about odia kings and queens. There were queens who controlled the state of odisha back then single handedly. They don’t have a single mention anywhere.
Mai Bhago, also known as Mata Bhag Kaur, was a Sikh woman who fought against the Mughal Empire in the early 18th century.
Mai Bhago was born in the village of Jhabal Kalan in the Punjab region of northern India, were in addition to being taught Sikh traditions she was trained by her father in horse riding and martial arts. She was a young woman during the period when oppression of Sikhs by the Mughal Empire was at its height. During 1704-05, the expansionist Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb, invaded Sikh territory with an army of 16,000 troops and laid siege to the Sikh capital of Anandpur Sahib.
During the siege the Sikh leader, Guru Gobind Singh Ji, was abandoned by 40 of his elite warriors. Many of these men came from the region that Mai Bhago lived in and according to some accounts one of the deserters was her own husband. Outraged by this betrayal, Mai Bhago took her own horse, armour, and weapons and left home to track down the deserters. She went to their homes and persuaded their wives not to give their husbands shelter. Some of the women even armed themselves and joined Mai Bhago, pledging to fight for the Guru if their husbands would not. Shamed by this, the 40 deserters agreed to return to service with Mai Bhago.
During this time the Guru had escaped from the siege of Anandpur and was in retreat with his army. On 29th December 1705, Mai Bhago’s small force helped to cover the Guru’s retreat at the Battle of Muktsar. Knowing that the pursuing Mughals would need water she set up camp at the Khidrana reservoir, erecting numerous empty tents and clothes lines to make it appear as if a larger army was encamped there. When the Mughal army attacked the empty tents Mai Bhago’s force ambushed them and in spite of being heavily outnumbered managed to push the Mughals back after intense fighting. Although victorious, Mai Bhago was the only Sikh survivor of the battle.
After the battle Mai Bhago joined up with the Guru’s army and became his bodyguard. After the Guru’s death in 1708 she retired to Jinvara, where she lived to an old age. Today she is remembered as a Sikh heroine whose actions served to ensure the survival of her faith.
Rudrama Devi (1245-1289) was a Warrior Queen of the Kakatiya dynasty in the Deccan Plateau of Southern India.
Rudrama Devi rose to power in 1259 during her early teens when she was appointed co-regent to jointly rule alongside her father, King Ganapati. While Ganapati had no sons, he gave her the male name of Rudra Deva and formally declared her to be his male heir, an image which she did nothing to deter as she dressed in male clothes. She married Veerabadra, a prince of Nidadavolu, with whom she had two female children, but he suffered an early death.
The first few years of Rudrama’s conjoined rule with her father were marred by a Pandya invasion led by Jatavarman Sundara Pandyan I. While the invasion was eventually repelled, the Kakatiyas suffered a number of significant defeats and the kingdom was left in a weakened state. As a result of these failings her father withdrew from public life while passing control to Rudrama, and on his death in 1269 she was officially crowned as Rani (Queen). A number of noblemen, possibly including her own step-brothers, refused to submit to a woman’s authority and rose up in rebellion against her. However Rudrama rallied an army with those nobles and chiefs still loyal to her and successfully crushed the rebellion.
Having secured her kingdom Rudrama spent the rest of her rule defending it from external threats. The Kakatiya were one of four major powers in Southern India who were frequently at war with each other. The Yadava king Maha Deva launched a sustained invasion on the Kakatiya from 1268 to 1270, culminating in a siege of the Kakatiya capital of Orugallu (now Warangal). After 15 days of fighting, an attack led by Rudrama routed the Yadavas and she pursued them in a long retreat back to their own territory during which many Yadavas were captured. Soundly defeated, Maha Deva was forced to pay an enormous ransom for the release of his soldiers. A later invasion by the Odias was also defeated by Rudrama’s generals.
While adept at warfare, Rudrama was also known to have been an effective administrator and when Orugallu was visited by Marco Polo he described her as a lady of discretion who ruled with justice and equity. She also completed work on the Orugallu Fort, adding a second wall and a moat to the structure, which protected the city against numerous future sieges.
In 1280 Rudrama passed the mantle of leadership on to her grandson, Prataprudra, as she was growing old and had no male children of her own. However in 1285 a new threat arose in the form of the Kayastha Chief, Amba Deva, who had allied with the Pandyas and Yadavas to destroy the Kakatiya empire. Though elderly, Rudrama led an army to meet this three-pronged attack head-on, but was killed in the ensuing battle. The Katakiya empire would crumble over the following years, however Rudrama Devi’s legacy is still well remembered in Southern India.
the court dancer Anarkali’s defiant love song in front of the Emperor himself from the 1960 Indian epic Mughal-e-Azam. The performances, the song, the dance, the costumes and the set here are pure film made art in it’s highest form (and everyone should see it)
The reason I’ve hated Pride and Prejudice (2005) since it came out and have a personal prejudice against it (ha!) is that they cast rail thin actresses in the roles.
I had absolutely no idea about fat liberation when it came out, but I have always been a history nerd, and the changing beauty standards of history is so much a part of my love of historical romance. It’s one of the reasons I adore the mini-series with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. She’s exactly the kind of beauty that fits modern standards enough to not fit in with the Regency era’s, and fits Regency era enough to just escape being cookie cutter Hollywood. In Sense and Sensibility, Kate was full-figured and tremulously lovely in a way that was absolutely perfect for Marianne Dashwood, and Emma Thompson’s slender figure fit the fact that Eleanor wasn’t considered very attractive by Regency standards.
It’s the same when it comes to Bollywood biopics. Kangana Renaut looks fierce as hell as Manikarnika but the Jhansi queen was full-figured and probably well-muscled because she was a queen and a warrior, and there are portraits of her. Only an ill-fed peasant would have been as slight as Kangana. Even Bollywood beauty standards skewed to wide-hipped, full-throated and large-breasted bodies until around the 1970s.
(Rekha could still eat the role of Manikarnika, but that has nothing to do with her figure. I have no idea whether she’s ever been fat or thin, because my god her eyes. Deepika gets the same reprieve, more or less, because her face fills the screen, but Priyanka Chopra was the one who looked like a believable Rajput queen. Not historically accurate one of course, because royal beauties of the time were a lot more well-fed, but also not someone who’d be laughed out of court.)
Now as a disabled person whose very life hinges on fat liberation, I have even less patience with the entertainment industry’s casting choices. I don’t even need most of them to be actually fat. Just at least find women with natural curves, like Jennifer Ehle, Kate Winslet in her younger years, or literally any brown actress. Or, you know, make the thin ones eat enough for their roles.
for the ones who identify with the oceans and whose roots have known many lands -
stretched beside those of sweet cane, cut by laborers’ hands.
i draw brown girls all the time, but am overdue for a piece on my own history ().
during the 19th & early 20th century, over 1 million indians were brought from their homelands to various european (primarily british) colonies as replacement laborers for recently emancipated african enslaved peoples.
these included various nations in south america, the caribbean, africa & asia, such as guyana , trinidad & tobago , suriname , jamaica , grenada , st. lucia , st. kitts , st. vincent, fiji , mauritius , sri lanka , malaysia , kenya & south africa . here, indentures worked on plantations for the colonizing countries who owned them for a certain length of time.
in some instances, the indentureship system was wholly consensual, but far too often it involved coercion, misinformation & kidnapping. many entered into contracts unaware of the terms they were agreeing to & the freedoms they were signing away.
i’ve linked a playlist of podcast episodes for anyone interested in learning more. some topics touched on include:
- the pieces of south asian tradition that persisted, what was lost, & the amazing hybrid cultures that came to be - the origins of the word “coolie” & why most believe those outside the culture shouldn’t use it - how colonizers pit indian & black communities against each other & resulting anti-blackness in the indo-caribbean community - other lasting effects of colonization (alcoholism, weakened economies, gender-based violence, etc.) - the (sometimes tense) relations between descendants of indian indenture & individuals more directly from south asia
of course these tiny lists are not exhaustive, nor do they cover the entirety of this corner of the south asian diaspora. maybe, though, it’s enough to encourage a deeper look into our often overlooked history.
thank you to @mjenai.art for the title & inspiration, and to @haani_beee, who identifies with the oceans <3
