Tag Archives: india

A hidden gem

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SOMETIMES, IT PAYS TO BE “ECONOMICAL WITH THE TRUTH”, to rephrase the words used by Edmund Burke in his book “Letters on a Regicide Peace”, published in 1796, in which he wrote:

“Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an œconomy of truth.”

HYD 4 real

The Residency in Hyderabad was built for the British Resident (for the Princely State of Hyderabad) James Achilles Kirkpatrick (1764-1805) in the style of a Palladian villa in about 1798. As described in an excellent book, the “White Mughals” by William Dalrymple, Kirkpatrick, like many other pre-Victorian Europeans in India, adopted local Indian ways of life. This Resident went so far as to marry (not too publicly) a local aristocratic woman from Hyderabad, Khair-un-Nissa (1786-1813). She remained in purdah and lived in a zenana, a ladies’ quarter, in the garden of the Residency but quite separate from it.  

The Residency was used for its original purpose by British Residents of Hyderabad until India became independent in 1947. In 1949, it became a building within the confines of the Osmania University College for Women (founded 1924).

Having read Dalrymple’s book back in 2011 just before visiting Hyderabad, I was keen to see the Palladian style Residency. With great difficulty our driver (from Bangalore) managed to discover the whereabouts of the Osmania university. We drove up to the gate and were stopped by a security guard, who would not admit us until we revealed (somewhat deviously) that the Director was expecting us. We entered the grounds and found the Director’s office. We suggested to her that I might be a relative of Dalrymple’s and that I was keen to see the building he had written about.

 

The Director assigned a member of her office team to take us to the old building, adding that it was not wise to enter it as it was in a perilous condition. What we saw, although in a very poor state of repair, was a magnificent, elegant neo-classical building. If it had been in the UK and restored considerably, it would have outshined many of the great houses built in the same era, which are open to the public. Ignoring the advice of the Director, we entered the crumbling structure and viewed its wonderful twin curving staircases and glamorous rooms. Although the place was in a parlous condition, its former glory was still very evident.

We left the former Residency without any of it collapsing on to our heads and feeling very pleased that we had ‘blagged’ our way into seeing this gem hidden from the public.

Gandhi and the plague

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GANDHI BLOG

IN THE CURRENT CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK, infection is spread from person to person in close contact with one another. Isolation and quarantine are likely to be effective in eventually reducing the rate of infection.

At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, another deadly pandemic, the bubonic plague, spread around the world. It was then believed that separating people from each other was likely to help arrest the plague. It was not because bubonic plague is rarely contagious, but usually transmitted by a vector.

While researching the life of my great grandfather, Franz Ginsberg, sometime Mayor of King Williams Town and later a South African Senator, I needed to explore the history of bubonic plague in South Africa. While doing so, I discovered that the young Indian lawyer, Mahatma Gandhi, also entered the story. The following is extracted from my article that was published in a South African medical journal back in 2008:

INVISIBLE INVADERS

When the Boer forces, provoked by the British, started invading the Cape Colony in 1899, another invasion, covert in nature, was also beginning to threaten the area. The hidden enemy, a bacterium, lives in the blood of fleas and the rats (and other rodents) whose blood they ingest. These fleas are also partial to feeding off the blood of humans. When an infected flea feeds off the blood of a susceptible human, that person runs the risk of developing an often fatal illness known as ‘bubonic plague’. When my great-grandfather Councillor Franz Ginsberg (1862-1933) was serving on the Borough Council of King William’s Town in 1899, little was known about the transmission of the plague, even in the scientific world, except that its causativeagent was the bacterium Yersinia pestis (Y.pestis). This ‘bug’ is named after one of its discoverers Alexandre Yersin (1863-1943).

PESTILENT FLEAS

Today, much is known about the mechanism of transmission of Y. pestis. Bubonic plague is an example of a zoonosis: a disease that normally exists in other animals, but also infects humans. The danger to humans is that the bacterium is carried in the blood of certain kinds of rat, and that these rats often live in close proximity to humans. The rats serve as a mobile reservoir for this pest, but they are susceptible to its ill-effects. When a flea bites an infected rat, it ingests the blood of the rat and some of the bacteria living in it and the bacteria multiply within the flea’s digestive tract, causing considerable harm to the flea itself. If this same flea should bite a human, the human victim will receive some of the bacteria from the flea because the flea, while feeding, regurgitates some of its Yersinia-infected stomach contents into its human victim, who may then begin to exhibit the symptoms of bubonic plague. The plague can produce numbers of victims in epidemic or pandemic proportions. The Black Death, also known as ‘The Second Pandemic’, killed between one third and one half of the population of Europe and Asia between 1347 and 1351. It is thought by some to have been a pandemic of (bacterial) bubonic plague but others feel that it was a viral infection. The ‘Third Pandemic’ began in China’s Yunnan Province in 1855, and is known to have been caused by Y.pestis. Its dissemination around the world in the decades that followed was facilitated by global shipping. Rats and their fleas were frequent stowaways on ships, and as infected rats moved from port to port so did the bubonic plague.

AN UNWELCOME IMPORT

In September 1896, the bubonic plague reached India (most probably from Hong Kong) and had claimed its first of many victims in the port of Bombay. News of the plague spread faster that the plague itself. In 1896, the Natal Medical Council discussed the bubonic plague – by then well-established in India – and its relevance to Natal. The Council decided that the whole of India should be regarded as an infected area, and that all ships entering the ports on the coast of Natal should be quarantined.

In January 1897, an anti-Indian demonstration was held in Durban to protest against the landing of ‘asiatics’ on board two Indian-owned ships which arrived there in mid-December 1896. The ships had been held in quarantine for 25 days. A group of Indians in Durban, including Mohanlal K Gandhi (later to be known as ‘Mahatma Gandhi’) who had just arrived in Durban on one of these two ships, the ‘Courland’, sent a long ‘memorial’ protesting against this to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London. Its authors shrewdly noted:

‘…that the quarantine was more a political move against the Indians than a safeguard against the introduction of the bubonic plague into the Colony’,

and they provided evidence that the measures taken to effect quarantine were done ineffectively and too late to have been of any practical use. Despite measures such as these, bubonic plague reached South Africa sometime between 1899 and 1901.

The Natal medical community had some grounds for its fears that the plague might arrive from India. At a meeting of the Borough Council of King William’s Town in February 1899,13 it was announced that the bubonic plague had arrived in Port Louis on the island of Mauritius (a place that ships sailing from India to South Africa may have visited occasionally), and the Council had received a letter from the Town Office of Port Elizabeth, asking for the support of King William’s Town in their request for the government to enforce quarantine regulations (the Transvaal and Orange Free State prohibited entry to Indians in early 1899).

My great-grandfather, Franz Ginsberg, moved that the Council of his town should cooperate with that of Port Elizabeth. Although fear of importing the dreaded plague was the cause of an anti-Indian demonstration in this port as early as about 1897, the disease only began to occur in the town in April 1901 –soon after its arrival in grand style in Cape Town in March 1900 (having possibly arrived on board a ship from plague infested Rosario in Argentina). As early as November 1900, a doctor in King William’s Town reported eight cases of bubonic plague amongst Africans, three of these leading to death. By early 1901, the inhabitants of King William’s Town had good reason to worry about the plague.

 

Dress code and literature

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Many of the smarter social clubs in India have rules about how one should be attired when visiting them. The same is true for ‘elite’ clubs in London.

DRESS CODE

For example, at the Ootacamund (‘Ooty’) Club in southern India men cannot think oof having a drink at the bar if they are not wearing a formal suit and tie. And, at the Bangalore Club, men can where sandals in the Club House providing the sandals have a back strap. Even worse, at the same club the wearing of smart Indian national outfits is frowned upon if not forbidden. This is surely a hangover from the days when the club only admitted ‘white’ Europeans and a few high-ranking Indian military personel.

Once, I was staying at the Kodaikanal Club in Tamil Nadu state. Dress rules were extremely casual there. Many guests wore shorts and sandals even in the bar and dining room. One day, I entered the club’s small library, and the librarian promptly asked me to leave. I was wearing sandals (with backstraps). Apparently, in the library gentlemen are required to wear formal lace-up shoes.  I cannot say why this was required unless the Kodaikanal holds literature in high esteem, and wants it to be respected by library users who have taken the trouble not to be dressed casually.

Renaissance

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COVER SMALL

 

Last year, I published a book about an almost forgotten but important aspect of Indian history that began to interest me after visiting an almost completely unknown memorial in western India (Kutch, to be more precise). 

Since then, I have shown the book to various knowledgeable readers and also revisited the memorial. 

Those who have read the book have made valuable suggestions on how to improve it, including changing the title so that its subject matter is far more obvious to a potential reader, adding a preface and a time-line, and re-ordering the subject matter.

When I re-visited the memorial in Kutch, I met people, who showed me things I had not seen or even been aware of on my first visit. They also gave me new information. In addition, I have done further reading of source material, some of which I had not known about earlier. In addition, I have obtained photographic images that I did not possess before.

I felt that since I published my original text, a new expanded and, I hope, much improved version was necessary. My ideas needed a renaissance, so to speak.

I am now awaiting a proof of my new book, and will keep you informed of developments.

 

Tooth powder

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tooth powder

 

When I was a child, I brushed my teeth with toothpaste. My parents did not use paste. Instead they used Calox Tooth Powder. A small amount of this was sprinkled into the palm of one hand and then mixed into a paste using the wettened bristles of a toothbrush. The resulting gritty paste was then used to brush the teeth. I have no idea why my parents used the powder, but made us use toothpaste.

Many decades later, this year, I visited the Indian city of Pondicherry, which was a colony of France until 1954. We stopped at a tea stall that in addition to providing tea also sold small packets of paan and chewing tobacco (not very good for oral health) and packets of ‘Gopal Toothpowder’. Seeing the latter reminded my of my parents and their use of Calox. I asked the vendor how the tooth powder is used. He opened his mouth and rubbed his finger along his teeth. In his opinion, no brush is required. I bought a couple of packets, but have not yet been adventurous enough to try to use their contents.

One, two, or three heads?

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THE HARRAPAN (or Indus Valley) civilisation existed from about 3300 to 1300 BC. Its existence overlapped with that of the ancient civilisation in Mesopotamia (existed approximately 3100 to 539 BC – the fall of Babylon).

Both civilisations used clay to seal closed vessels containing goods. They made identification marks on the clay before it set solid. To do this, they used seals that embossed identifying patterns or marks on the clay. The marks varied greatly.

It is on the ancient Mesopotamian seals that some of the earliest known examples of double-headed birds can be found. Some other Mesopotamian seals depict double-headed horses and other creatures. Whether or not the double-headed eagle of Abania is a descendant of these middle eastern double-headed creatures on sealing rings, I cannot say.

Recently, I visited the Harrapan archaeological site at Dholavira in a remote part of Gujarat close to India’s border with Pakistan. The small museum attached to the site contains several examples of the carved seals used to emboss the wet clay employed to seal close vessels. Knowing about the double-headed birds on the Mesopotamian seals, I was on the look out for similar on the seals excavated at Dholavira.

I was very excited to discove one seal that at first sight looked like a double-headed creature. It was not a bird but a four legged animal. Two heads, each on their own striped necks, faced in opposite directions just as seen in the Albanian double-headed eagle.

I showed the picture of this seal to a friend, who pointed out a third striped neck with its own head. The neck was curved downwards. If the other two heads had not been present, the creature would have resembled, say, a horse or cattle grazing.

Did the craftsman who carved this three headed animal intend it to be three headed or did he/she want to depict movement, just as can be seen on the multi limbed depictions of Hindu gods and goddesses? I cannot say, but it raises the question whether the symbolic Albanian eagle has two heads or one that moves from side to side vigilantly surveying its territory.

An afterthought.
Did Cerberus, the three or more headed dog guarding the underworld, have so many heads, or do the many heads seen in depictions of him really represent one head in frenetic motion?

The lawyer and the cobblers

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DR BR AMBEDKAR (1891-1956) was a lawyer, who drafted the Constitution of India after the country became independent. He was also a champion of the rights of dalits (‘untouchables’ or ‘harijans’ as Mahatma Gandhi called them). The dalits were excluded from the four caste Varna system of Hinduism, and considered by many Hindus as the lowest of the low, fit only for menial tasks that members of other castes would not deign to consider doing. Ambedkar campaigned actively for the ending of social discrimination against this class of people.

Mochis (cobblers/shoe repairers), who handle leather, are often dalits. The best place to find a mochi is on the pavement beside a road. Sometimes, they sit on the ground surrounded by their tools and footwear awaiting repair. In other cases, they work from little stalls that can be locked up when they are not at work. These stalls often bear images of Ambedkar in honour of the man who did much to improve the social status of the dalits.

(Image shows Ambedkar depicted on a mochi’s closed stall.)

Stitched

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PONDICHERRY IS RICH in wonderful attractions, many of them souvenirs of its French colonial past. One of the most delightful of these is the Cluny Embroidery Centre on Rue Romain Rolland, a street named after a French writer and Nobel Prize winner who met Gandhi and was sympathetic to India and its philosophies.The Embroidery Centre is housed in an 18th century French Colonial building (a former residence, which was built by 1774) that forms part of a religious centre under the aegis of the Order of Cluny. It is believed that one of the former owners of the house donated it to help poor women in need. This must have been before 1829, when the Embroidery Centre was established. Every day except Monday and Sunday, at least twenty women of various ages arrive at the centre and take their places at tables in a large room with tall windows that open out into a verandah supported by neoclassical pillars and decorated with elaborate stucco bas-reliefs. The verandah looks out onto a courtyard surrounded on three sides by other buildings, parts of the convent, and the outer wall with a decorative entrance gate.This ensemble of buildings forms only part of a much larger complex of buildings, some of which surround another courtyard filled with a garden.After singing what sounds like a hymn, the women begin working on their elaborate embroideries. They stitch according to patterns designed by artists who work at the centre. While they work away silently with needle and thread, a simple sound system provides background music at a low volume.Dressed in white habit, Sister Agatha, who runs the convent, watches over the ladies at work and organises the sales of their labours to visitors who step into this peaceful sanctuary a few feet away from the noisy outside world.The resulting products are exquisitely beautiful. They embroider everything from coasters to handkerchiefs to napkins to pillowcases to table cloths and bedcovers. Visitors to the centre can purchase these treasures of fine needlework. Or, customers can place orders for specific items they need. The women who embroider at the centre get paid on a piecework basis. Some of them have had a history of mistreatment before joining the centre. Visiting the Cluny Embroidery Centre is a moving experience. It provides a very good example of how a religious order can work for the benefit of the ‘common’ folk.

In a while crocodile

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THE CROCODILE LYING LAZILY in the hot sunshine with its teeth lined jaws wide open lay motionless as we and many other visitors gaped at it with amazement.

We reached the Crocodile Bank at Semencheri (near Mahabalipuram) after a two hour drive northwards from Pondicherry along the East Coast Road (ECR), which as its name suggests runs close to the east coast of India. We drove through flat terrain with luxuriant vegetation. The road passes many picturesque backwaters and other water bodies, some covered with flowering waterlilies. We also passed a small collection of saltpans, alongside which there were small piles of white salt. This salt gathering area was on a much smaller scale than can be seen at the south eastern edge of Kutch. The road is dotted with numerous hatcheries for edible crustaceans such as shrimps and scampi.

The Crocodile Bank was established in 1976 by Romulus Whitaker and is now being run by his ex-wife, our friend Zai. It was started to breed cricodiles and other reptiles in captivity in order to counter the reduction of their populations in the wild. It is now an important centre for herpetology, education , wildlife conservation, and breeding reptiles. It is open to the public, who gain great enjoyment from seeing and learning about the reptiles.

We first visited the Crocodile Bank about five years ago. When we entered, my first impression was of looking at a sea of grey logs. On closer examination, these ‘logs ‘ were motionless crocodiles. We learnt that crocodiles and aligators are very somnolent unless they are hungry. Therefore, they tend to lie about motionless, basking in the sun or keeping cool in shallow water.

During our first visit, we saw a pair of beautifully coloured iguanas, which Zai and her colleagues were hoping would mate. She told us that they did produce a clutch of eggs eventually, and that some of the baby iguanas were enjoying life at the Crocodile Bank.

We were pressed for time on our visit in February 2020. So, we did not have a chance to have a good look around. On our first visit, Zai arranged for one of her team to give us what turned out to be a very informative tour.

I can strongly recommend a visit to Crocodile Bank. It is not far from the superb archaeological remains at Mahabalipuram and provides an interesting contrast to them. Instead of stones of historic interest, you can enjoy seeing creatures that have survived the passage of time even longer than the ruins.