American Minute with Bill Federer
India - "Oh, East is East, and West is West, And never the twain shall meet ... "
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"Oh,
East is East,
and
West is West,
And never the twain shall meet,
Till earth and sky stand presently,
At
God's great judgment seat"
wrote
Rudyard Kipling
in
Ballad of East and West.
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India
was called the
"Jewel in the Crown"
of the
British Empire.
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Since ancient times,
India
had approximately
20 percent of the world's population,
speaking over
1,000 different languages and dialects.
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India
drew its name from the
Indus River,
which came from the old Persian name
"Hindus."
This was derived from the old Sanskrit word
"Sindhu,"
meaning "large body of trembling water," as
the river cascaded from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean.
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Evidence of habitation dates back to c.3300 BC, with a notable
Harappan civilization
from 2600 to 1900 BC.
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The population of
India
historically followed the
Vedic Brahman
culture and religion, which transitioned into
Hinduism.
Famous
Iron Age Vedic kingdoms
were the
Magadha
(1200-321 BC), and
Lord Mahavira
(599-527 BC), during the time of
Gautama Buddha.
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Alexander the Great
crossed the
Indus River
in 326 BC to conquer
India,
but after the
Battle of the Hydaspes
his army mutinied, refusing to fight further east across the
Hyphasis River.
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In the years 322-298 BC,
Chandragupta Maurya
founded
India's great
Maurya Empire.
His Machiavellian royal advisor,
Chanakya,
strategically fanned hostilities between various Indian kingdoms allowing
Chandragupta
to divide and conquer them.
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The
Golden Age of India
was during the
Gupta Empire
320-550 AD.
Beginning in 1221,
Genghis Khan
and the Mongolian army under his sons
Ögedei Khan
and
Chagatai Khan,
and grandsons
Hulagu Khan
and
Möngke Khan,
attacked the
Dehli Sultanate
in
northern India.
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Marco Polo
traveled from Europe across
India
on his way to
China
in 1271, where he worked for
Yuan Emperor Kublai Khan,
grandson of
Genghis Khan.
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In 1398, an heir of
Genghis Khan
was
Timur,
or
Tamerlane,
called the
"Sword of Islam."
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His
Timurid Empire
attacked the vast
Dehli Sultanate
of
India,
killing an estimated 17 million.
India
has been described as having 330 million gods, with each family or tribe having their own particular "deities."
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Tamerlane's
autobiographical memoir,
Malfuzat-i-Timuri,
composed in the
Chaghatai Mongol language
and translated into
Persian
by Abu Talib Husaini, stated:
"About this time there arose in my heart the desire to lead an expedition against the infidels, and to become a
ghazi,
for it had reached my ears that
the slayer of infidels is a ghazi,
and if he is slain he becomes a martyr.
It was on this account that I formed this resolution, but I was undetermined in my mind whether I should direct my expedition against the
infidels of China
or against the
infidels and polytheists of India ..."
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Tamerlane
continued:
"In this matter I sought an omen from the Qur'an, and the verse I opened upon was this, 'O Prophet,
make war upon infidels and unbelievers,
and treat them with severity' (Sura 66:9).
My great officers told me that
the inhabitants of Hindustan were infidels and unbelievers.
In obedience to the order of Almighty Allah I ordered an expedition against them."
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Tamerlane
slaughtered over 100,000 in
Delhi, India,
instructing soldiers to return with a head in each hand, and piling them into pyramids of severed heads.
The
Malfuza-i-Timuri
recorded that at Hardwar, Tamerlane's Muslim troops:
"Displayed great courage and daring; they made their swords their banners, and exerted themselves in slaying the foe (during a bathing festival on the bank of the Ganges).
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...
They slaughtered many of the infidels,
and pursued those who fled to the mountains. So many of them were killed that their blood ran down the mountains and plain, and thus (nearly) all were sent to hell.
The few who escaped, wounded, weary, and half dead, sought refuge in the defiles of the hills. Their property and goods, which exceeded all computation, and their countless cows and buffaloes, fell as spoil into the hands of my victorious soldiers."
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French historian and member of the French Academy,
Rene' Grousset
(1885-1952) published in his original edition of
L'Empire Des Steppes:
"Mongols
were mere barbarians who
killed simply because for centuries this had been the instinctive behavior of nomad herdsmen
...
To this ferocity
Tamerlane
added a taste for
religious murder.
He killed from Qur'anic piety. ("Il tuait par piete coranique")
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... He represents a synthesis, probably unprecedented in history, of
Mongol barbarity
and
Muslim fanaticism,
and symbolizes that advanced form of primitive slaughter which is
murder committed for the sake of an abstract ideology,
as
a duty
and
a sacred mission."
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Will Durant
wrote in
The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage
(1935, p. 459):
"The Mohammedan conquest of India
is probably the bloodiest story in history.
The Islamic historians and scholars have recorded with great glee and pride
the slaughters of Hindus,
forced conversions, abduction of Hindu women and children to slave markets and the destruction of temples carried out by the warriors of Islam during 800 AD to 1700 AD.
Millions of Hindus
were
converted to Islam by sword
during this period."
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Innovations from India went EAST to Mongolia and China, and WEST to Persia and Europe.
These included numerical characters, such as z
ero, decimals, textiles, cloth, dyes, incense clock,
and the
game of chess.
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Along the trade routes, an estimated 2 million were killed by
Muslim raiders,
called
"thugs,"
together with
Hindu followers of Kali.
They would join unsuspecting caravans and travel with them for a while, pretending to be friends.
After gaining their trust, thugs would distract their victims, sneak up from behind and strangle them to death with a noose or handkerchief. Thugs were careful to make sure every traveler in the group was buried so that their deeds would not be exposed.
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When Muslims finally cut off all
land trade routes
from Europe to India and China,
Europeans looked for a
sea route,
beginning
The Age of Discovery.
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Columbus
thought he had sailed to India in 1492, so he named the inhabitants
"Indians,"
and the Caribbean Sea, the
"West Indies."
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In 1497,
King Manuel I of Portugal
sent explorer
Vasco de Gama
to find an eastern route to the
Far East
by
sailing around South Africa.
He arrived in
Calicut, India,
in 1498, and began a Portuguese colony in area of
Goa, India.
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He encountered Christian churches in
southern India
which traced their origins back to the
Apostle Thomas.
These churches continued early Christian traditions until the
Portuguese
aggressively forced them to adopt a
"latinized" liturgy
with European religious traditions.
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In 1526,
a descendant of Tamerlane
named
Babur, conquered northern India
and founded the
Muslim Mughal (Mogul) Empire.
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In 1541,
St. Francis Xavier
led a small group from
Libson, Portugal,
to be missionaries, traveling to
Mozambique, India, Malacca, Maluku Islands, Amboina, Ternate, Japan,
and
China.
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In 1577,
Sir Francis Drake
began a 3 year journey to circumnavigate the globe. His travels took him to the
Spice Islands of Indonesia,
where he almost sank on a reef, then crossed the
Indian Ocean,
around
Cape Horn
and up the
coast of Africa
back to
England
in 1580.
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In 1579, Oxford educated priest
Thomas Stephens
became
one of the first European missionaries,
and probably the
first Englishman,
to sail to
India.
He helped convert many of the upper Indian society, writing
Kristpurana - the Story of Christ.
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In 1598,
Portuguese Jesuit missionary
Bento de Góis,
dressed as an Armenian merchant, was the first European to travel overland from
India,
across
Afghanistan,
the
Pamirs,
to
China,
in 1598.
Saracen Muslims raided the caravan he was with, destroying his meticulously kept travel journal.
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In 1599,
John Mildenhall and Richard Newman
set off to become some of the
first Englishmen
to reach
India
by traveling
over land.
The
British East India Company
was founded in 1600, and
John Mildenhall
acted as its
representative.
He died there in 1614, being considered
the first Englishman to be buried in India.
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The Dutch East India Company
(Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) was founded in 1602. It became the most financially successful joint-stock company for several centuries.
The Dutch
captured
Goa, India,
from the
Portuguese
and opened trade with
Jakarta, Mauritius,
the
Indonesian Spice Island of Maluku,
and holding a monopoly on trade with Japan for centuries.
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In 1653, the
Muslim Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan,
a descendant of both
Tamerlane
and
Babur,
built the
Taj Mahal
as a tomb for
his third wife Mumtaz Mahal.
Legends persist that to prevent another building from being built which could rival its beauty,
Shah Jahan
had all the workers' hands cut off.
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In the
Punjab area of India,
modern-day Pakistan,
Sikhism
began during the time of
Guru Nanak
(1469-1539).
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Between 1630 and 1668, the
French merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier
made six expeditions to
India
and
Persia.
In 1675,
King Louis XIV
requested that he publish his accounts, which included some of the first western descriptions of the exercise
"yoga."
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Shah Jahan
waged war on
Sikh
and
Hindu cities,
killing thousands.
A contemporary record,
Badshah Nama, Qazinivi & Badshah Nama, Lahori
stated:
"When Shuja was appointed (by Shah Jahan) as governor of Kabul he carried on a ruthless war in the Hindu territory beyond Indus ...
The sword of Islam yielded a rich crop of converts ... Most of the women (to save their honor) burnt themselves to death. Those captured were distributed among Muslim Mansabdars (Noblemen)."
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The French physician and explorer
François Bernier
traveled to
Egypt, Arabia,
and northern India from 1656 to 1669, spending eight years in the court of
India's Muslim Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.
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Resistance against
India's Muslim rulers
was led by
Hindu
leader
Shivaji Maharaj
(1627-1680), the
Sikh Guru Gobind Singh
(1666-1708), and the
Sikh
order of
Khalsa
in 1699.
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In 1713,
Farrukhsiyar
became the
Mughal Emperor of India.
He was the great-great-grandson of
Shah Jahan,
and continued his practice of massacring
Sikhs.
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In 1717,
Farrukhsiyar
became deathly ill.
An English physician,
William Hamilton,
happened to be part of a delegation visiting
Delhi, India.
Hamilton treated the
Emperor Farrukhsiyar
and he recovered.
In gratitude, the
Emperor
gave
Hamilton
an elephant, a horse, five thousand rupees in money, two diamond rings, a jeweled aigrette (feather head ornament), a set of gold buttons, and models of all his instruments in gold.
More importantly, the
Emperor
granted
Hamilton's request for free trade rights
in
Bengal
for the
British East India Company.
This led to a
British trading post in Bengal,
which turned into
a colony.
From there, the
British
took control of
all of
Bengal,
and eventually
all of India.
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William Hamilton
died in India and was buried in the yard of
St. John's Church
in
Calcutta.
His gravestone is inscribed:
"Under this Stone lies interred the Body of
William Hamilton,
Surgeon,
Who departed this life 4 December 1717.
His memory ought to be dear to his
Nation for the credit he gained the English
in curing Ferrukseer, the present
King of Indostan, of a
Malignant Distemper,
by which he
made his own Name famous
at the
Court of that Great Monarch;
and without doubt
will perpetuate
his memory,
as well
in Great Britain
as all other Nations of Europe."
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The
Mughal Empire
ended in Northern India in 1739, when it was conquered by
Persia,
whose Shi'a Muslim Shah,
Kouli-Kan,
sacked
Delhi.
Yale President Ezra Stiles
wrote May 8, 1783:
"The widespread dominion of the imposter of Mecca, with his successors, the
Caliphs
and
Mamelukes,
down to
Kouli-Kan,
who dethroned his prince, and
plundered India of two hundred million sterling
-- these were all founded in unrighteousness and tyrannical usurpation ...
Indifferent to the great cause of right and liberty ... belligerent powers prevailed--
a (Seljuk Turk) Tangrolopix or a Mahomet
... tyranny being the sure portion."
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Beginning in 1739,
Zakaria Khan
was the
Muslim Governor of Lahore, Punjab.
He offered rewards for
Sikh
scalps. Hundreds of
Sikhs
were brought to the horse market in Lahore and executed, resulting in the market being named "Shahidganj" -- "the place of the martyred."
Frustrated at
Sikh
resilience,
Governor Zakaria Khan
asked his men:
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"From where do the
Sikhs
obtain their nourishment? I have debarred them from all occupations ...
They do not farm, nor are they allowed to do business or join public employment. I have stopped all offerings to their Gurdwaras. No provisions or supplies are accessible to them. Why do they not die of sheer starvation?"
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Zakaria Khan
killed an additional 7,000
Sikhs
in 1746 as they were attempting to escape to the
Himalayas.
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The next
Muslim Governor of Lahore, Punjab,
was
Mu'in ul-Mulk.
He had a special military unit of 900 soldiers whose job it was to hunt down
Sikhs.
An eye witness reported:
"Mu'in appointed most of the gunmen to the task of chastising the
Sikhs.
They ran after these wretches up to 67 kilometers (42 mi) a day and slew them wherever they stood up to oppose them.
Anybody who brought a
Sikh
head received a reward of ten rupees per head ...
Sikhs
who were captured alive were sent to hell by being beaten with wooden mallets. At times,
Adina Beg Khan
sent 40-50 Sikh captives from the Doab. They were as a rule killed with the strokes of wooden hammers."
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One account stated that
Sikh women
were:
"Put to grind grain in the prison ... given merciless lashing ... As their children, hungry and thirsty, wailed and writhed on the ground for a morsel, the helpless prisoners in the clutches of the tyrants could do little except solace them with their affection. Wearied from crying, the hungry children would at last go to sleep."
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In 1757,
Muslim ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali,
considered the founder of the modern state of
Afghanistan,
conquered all the way to
the Hindu city of Mathura, the birthplace of Krishna.
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The chronicle Tarikh-I-Alamgiri recorded:
"Abdali's
soldiers would be paid 5 Rupees (a sizeable amount at the time) for every enemy head brought in. Every horseman had loaded up all his horses with the plundered property, and atop of it rode the girl-captives and the slaves.
The severed heads were tied up in rugs like bundles of grain and placed on the heads of the captives ...
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... Then the heads were stuck upon lances and taken to the gate of the chief minister for payment. It was an extraordinary display! Daily did this manner of slaughter and plundering proceed. And at night the shrieks of the women captives who were being raped, deafened the ears of the people ...
All those heads that had been cut off were built into pillars, and the captive men upon whose heads those bloody bundles had been brought in, were made to grind corn, and then their heads too were cut off. These things went on all the way to the city of Agra, nor was any part of the country spared."
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Abdali
massacred an additional 30,000 Sikhs on February 5, 1762, as they tried to escape east to the Hariyana desert.
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Francois Gautier
wrote in
Rewriting Indian History
(1996):
"The massacres perpetuated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history."
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European countries established colonies in
India,
notably
Dutch, French
and
Danish.
Beginning with English physician
William Hamilton's trade rights
granted by
Emperor Farrukhsiyar
in 1717
,
the
British
eventually drove the
other European colonies
out of
India.
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The
British East India Company
traded in valuable commodities such as
tea, cotton, silk, indigo (blue) dye, salt, saltpetre
(needed for gunpowder) and
opium,
which they forcibly imported into
China,
causing the
Opium Wars.
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It was tea from the
British East India Company
that American colonists threw into
Boston's Harbor
during the
Boston Tea Party,
December 16, 1773.
The
British
introduced the planting of
tea
from
China
into
India.
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The
British East India Company
strategically took advantage of hostilities between various Indian kingdoms, supplying them with arms and ammunition.
After the kingdoms devastated each other, the
British East India Company
conquered both sides. This tactic was repeated till they controlled most of India by 1757.
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The British East India Company
was
hostile
to Christian missionaries, such as
Baptist minister William Carey,
who arrived in India in 1793.
Carey,
considered the
Father of Modern Missions,
founded
Serampore College
in India's West Bengal area in 1818. It is the oldest college in the country.
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Carey
wrote
An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens,
which led to the founding of the
Baptist Missionary Society.
Carey
helped end
"sati,"
the practice of burning widows to death on the ashes of their husbands, and in 1825, he completed the
Dictionary of Bengali and English
.
Carey
wrote: "Expect great things from God, Attempt great things for God."
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In 1857, there was a mutiny of Indian foot soldiers, called sepoys, in the ranks of the
British East India Company
in
northern and central India.
New
enfield rifles
had to have
cartridges greased
in order to fire properly. Soldiers had to
bite off the paper wrapping
before inserting the cartridges into the rifles.
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A rumor spread that the
grease was from pigs,
which angered
Muslims,
or that the
grease was from cows,
which angered
Hindus.
The mutiny grew into a rebellion.
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This led to the
British Crown
taking
direct control of India
in 1858 and dissolving the East India Company.
Queen Victoria
began using the title
Empress of India
in 1876.
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Winston Churchill
was assigned to the
Malakand Field Force,
1896-1897, fighting in
India’s North-West Frontier.
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Churchill
wrote in
The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War
(Dover Publications, 1898):
"
The tribesmen of the Afghan border ... kill one another without loss of temper ...
All are held in the grip of miserable superstition ... Their superstition exposes them to the rapacity and tyranny of a numerous ... Mullahs ... live free at the expense of the people ... no man’s wife or daughter is safe from them.
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... The Mullah drones the evening prayer ... Then the Mullah will raise his voice and remind them of other days when the sons of the prophet drove the infidel from the plains of India, and ruled at Delhi."
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One of the long-lasting advantages the
British
gave
India
was the introduction of the
English language,
pioneered by
missionary William Carey's
translation of all or parts of the
Bible
into 44 languages and dialects, including
Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Assamese,
and
Sanskrit.
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This positioned
India
to become
an emerging global super power,
having
the second largest English-speaking population in the world.
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Over a million Indians served with the British during World War I, fighting in East Africa, on the Western Front, Egypt, and against the Ottoman Empire in Mesopotamia.
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In the 1930s,
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
campaigned for reforms, then began a
non-violent movement for independence,
earning him the unofficial title as
Father of the Nation.
Gandhi
criticized the
British
for
disarming the common people of India,
as he wrote in
An Autobiography of the Story of My Experiments with the Truth
(trans. M. Desai, 1927):
"Among the many misdeeds of the
British rule
in
India,
history will look upon
the Act depriving a whole nation of arms
as the blackest."
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During
World War II,
over
2.5 million Indians
served
under British command
during in
Europe, North Africa and South Asia.
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In 1947,
Britain
granted
independence,
partitioning the land into
two states:
India
-- majority
Hindu;
and
Pakistan
-- majority
Muslim.
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During the era of British rule,
Rudyard Kipling
was born in India on DECEMBER 30, 1865, in the city of
Mumbai,
which the British called
Bombay.
His grandparents on both sides were
Methodist ministers.
At the age of 5,
Rudyard Kipling
was sent back to England for schooling.
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Poor eyesight ended young
Kipling's
hopes of a
British military career
and in 1882, at the age of 16,
Kipling
returned to
India
as a
journalist.
He wrote for
The Civil and Military Gazette
in
Lahore,
and in 1886, published his first collection
Departmental Ditties.
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At the age of 22,
Kipling
published numerous collections of stories:
Plain Tales from the Hills;
Soldiers Three;
The Story of the Gadsbys;
In Black and White;
Under the Deodars;
The Phantom Rickshaw;
Wee Willie Winkie.
In 1889,
Kipling
left India and traveled to
Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong,
and
Japan,
finally landing in
San Francisco.
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Kipling
traveled across the United States to New York, where he met
Mark Twain.
Kipling
fell in love with his friend's sister,
Caroline Balestier.
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Rudyard
and
Caroline
married in 1892 and settled in
Vermont,
where two of their children were born.
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Rudyard Kipling
wrote captivating stories, such as:
The Jungle Book
(1894);
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The Man Who Would Be King
(1888);
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Gunga Din
(1890);
Mandalay
(1890);
Baa Baa Black Sheep, Georgie Porgie,
and
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Captains Courageous
(1897).
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In 1896,
Kipling
moved his family back to
England.
In 1898, they began what would become a yearly winter holiday in
South Africa.
There
Kipling
gained first hand knowledge of the
Boer War,
in which Sir Baden-Powell fought.
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Kipling
declined
King George V's
offer of knighthood, Poet Laureate and Order of Merit, though he accepted the
Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1907.
Kipling's
daughter
Josephine
died of pneumonia at age six.
Kipling's
son John
was killed in
World War I
at the
Battle of Loos
in 1915. He was 18 years old.
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In
"Recessional"
(1897),
Kipling
wrote:
"Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet.
Lest we forget--lest we forget!"
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In
"The Conundrum of the Workshops,"
Rudyard Kipling
wrote:
"Now, if we could win to the Eden Tree where the Four Great Rivers flow,
And the Wreath of Eve is red on the turf as she left it long ago,
And if we could come when the sentry slept and softly scurry through,
By the favour of God we might know as much--as our father Adam knew!"
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In
"The Last Chantey," Rudyard Kipling
wrote:
"Then cried the soul of the stout Apostle Paul to God:
'Once we frapped a ship, and she laboured woundily.
There were fourteen score of these,
And they blessed Thee on their knees,
When they learned Thy Grace and Glory under Malta by the sea!'"
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Ronald Reagan,
upon ending his term as President of the United States, gave a speech, December 13, 1988, in which he quoted
Rudyard Kipling:
"As I prepare to lay down the mantle of office ... I cannot help believe that what
Rudyard Kipling
said of another time and place is true today for America:
'We are at the opening verse of the opening page of the chapter of endless possibilities.'
Thank you, and God bless you."
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Having been born in
India, Kipling
wrote in his
Ballad of East and West:
"Oh,
East is East
, and
West is West,
and never the two shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently
at
God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West,
Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,
tho' they come from the ends of the earth."
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A poem titled "IF" was written by
Rudyard Kipling
in 1895, and first published in
Rewards and Fairies,
1910:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master;
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run--
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man my son!
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American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
wjfederer@gmail.com
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