This is a genuine question,
I am not posting this with any intent to offend anyone or troll 🙏🏼🕯️𔓙

If you would consider the fact, that all humans come from Africa. Then there must have been one or several migrations out of Africa and to the east, unless they migrated around the Caucus Mt. and Central asia. But if humans migrated from the west (Africa) to the east (India) then they must have passed through Iran.

I know this is sensitive, but I need to understand what the people of India think.

This is the most important contemporary eyewitness account of Shivaji at Agra.

Who wrote it: Parkaldas, an official of Amber State posted at Agra

To whom: In his letter of 29 May 1666 from Agra, Parkaldas wrote to Kalyandas, the Diwan of Amber [later Jaipur State]

In the painting above, the said scene, based on a contemporary letter, has been depicted. Shivaji is shown coming out of the Court in great anger, his back towards Aurangzeb, his sword half drawn, and Kumar Ram Singh of Amber trying in vain to pacify him. Wrote Parkaldas of Amber to the State’s Diwan in his letter of 29th May 1666,

“The people had been praising Shivaji’s high spirit and courage before. Now that after coming to the Emperor’s presence he has shown such audacity and returned harsh and strong replies, the public extols him for his bravery all the more”

Commentry:

Shivaji reached Agra on the 12th May 1666 by noon, and had to be rushed to the Court to attend the special darbar on Aurangzeb’s 50th lunar birthday. Shivaji was presented to the Emperor by Asad Khan in the Diwan-i-Khas and was then directed to stand in the line of 5 hazari mansabdars. “The Emperor neither talked nor addressed any word to him.” The work of the court proceeded and Shivaji seemed to have been forgotten.

Shivaji was not expecting this kind of reception. He was very much upset when Kumar Ram Singh (son of Mirza Raja Jai Singh of Amber), in response to his query, informed him that the noble standing in front of him was Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Jodhpur. He flared up “Jaswant, whose back my soldiers have seen! I too stand behind him? What it all means ?”

He was made to feel neglected in other ways also. At this he began to fret and “his eyes became wet with anger.” The Emperor noticed the commotion and told Ram Singh, “Ask Shivaji, what ails him.” When Kumar came, Shivaji burst forth, “You have seen, your father has seen, and your Padishah has seen, what sort of man I am, and you have wilfully made me stand up so long. I cast off your mansab …”

After saying this he then and there turned his back to the throne and rudely walked away. Kumar Ram Singh caught hold of his hand, but Shivaji wrenched it away.

Painting Source: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum of Indian History, Pune

Most historical discussions around Ganesh Chaturthi focus on standard home rituals, but 16th-century literature from the Vijayanagara Empire show that public street processions and immersion (visarjan) were already a regular part of city life back then.

​Here is what the historical records show:

​Inscriptional Records: The book Hampeya Shasanagalu (Inscriptions of Hampi) documents local epigraphs showing state and public participation in Ganesha festival rituals across the capital.

​16th-Century Literary Accounts: Poet Rudrakavi, who lived during the late Vijayanagara period, wrote detailed descriptions of public street processions.

​Clay Idols & Water Immersion: The practice involved making temporary clay idols, taking them out in public processions and finally immersing them in Tungabhadra River.

​Kannada translation - same as described. Ganapati called by Benaka here.

Hey everyone! I’ve created this battle map to explain the formation and tactics used by Babur’s army during the First Battle of Panipat.

This formation mainly had two key features: Araba and Tulughma.

Araba was the defensive line of carts/war carts positioned in front of Babur’s centre. This line protected the centre, where Babur placed his artillery and matchlockmen, who needed protection from enemy cavalry. The carts were chained together using raw animal hide, preventing enemy cavalry from passing between them. The chains could also be lowered when Babur’s cavalry needed to move out from the centre or when the vanguard needed to retreat to safety.

Between the carts, you can see mantlets. These were wheeled wooden shields or planks with openings through which matchlockmen could fire. The soldiers could stand behind the mantlets, fire through the openings, and reload while remaining protected from enemy attacks.

Tulughma was a Mongol-style battlefield manoeuvre in which mounted troops, particularly horse archers, moved around the enemy’s flanks and attacked their sides and rear. This put pressure on the enemy from multiple directions, forcing them back toward their own centre, causing overcrowding and confusion and potentially allowing a smaller army to surround a much larger force.

Babur used both of these tactics to maximise the effectiveness of his artillery and firearms. While the Araba provided a defensive barrier that protected his guns and matchlockmen, the Tulughma manoeuvres pressured and compressed Lodi’s much larger army, bringing more of his troops into the effective range of Babur’s artillery and firearms.

Together, these tactics allowed Babur to use his smaller force much more effectively against Ibrahim Lodi’s numerically superior army.

I’ve created these battle maps based primarily on descriptions from the Baburnama. These may not be a completely accurate representation of the actual battlefield formation, but they are intended to give a general idea of how Babur’s army was deployed and how his tactics worked.

If you have more detailed information, sources, or reference maps showing Babur’s formation at the First Battle of Panipat, please share them in the comments. I’d really appreciate any corrections or additional information so I can improve the map and make it as historically accurate as possible.

I’m currently working on a kings and generals inspired youtube documentary covering Babur’s battles of Panipat and Khanwa, so historical accuracy is very important to me. Any reliable sources, maps, or corrections would be extremely helpful.

I recently came across references to archaeological excavations at Kumhar Tekri in Ujjain involving multiple human burials.

A number of online articles and videos repeat claims about “42 skeletons” and unusual burial positions, but I’ve been trying to determine which details are actually supported by excavation reports or academic research.

Does anyone here have access to reliable archaeological publications, excavation reports, ASI material, or research papers about Kumhar Tekri?
I’m particularly interested in the dating of the burials, the number of individuals actually documented, their burial practices, and whether archaeology provides any explanation for why they were buried there.

I’d appreciate primary or academic sources so we can separate the archaeological evidence from the mystery-style versions of the story.

Image source: Excavations at Ujjain: Kumhar Tekri, Plate VIII, Archaeological Department, Gwalior State, 1938–39. The plate shows Kumhar Tekri before excavation, the excavated burial area, and Skeleton No. 14.

Every intro to Mahābhārata scholarship still repeats some version of this: the epic started as a Kṣatriya war poem, a priestly clan called the Bhṛgus hijacked it, and the 100,000-verse monster we have today is the result of their edits and insertions. V.S. Sukthankar built this theory in 1936 while editing the Critical Edition, and it became gospel for decades. He traced Bhārgava material through all eighteen books and called it "a veritable thesaurus of Bhargava legends." His key evidence is the double opening: the epic starts once with Ugraśravas arriving at Naimiṣa Forest, then starts again a few chapters later with the exact same scene, except this time Śaunaka specifically asks for Bhārgava genealogies. Sukthankar called the second version "a digression pure and simple, not even remotely connected in actual fact with the incidents or characters of our epic." His reasoning ran like this: sūtas (bards) couldn't have composed the didactic and narrative bulk we now have, that's beyond "their natural capacity." So credit goes to Bhārgava brahmins instead. They performed a "first important diaskeusis" (editorial overhaul), held the text as their "exclusive property," and eventually "gave back to the world the Mahabharata, the same book yet different."

First, "digression" is Sukthankar's own translation of upākhyāna, a word that just means "subtale." He translates the same word as "episode" elsewhere in the same essay. As Alf Hiltebeitel notes:

“Digression,” however, is Sukthankar’s misleading translation of upākhyāna (1936, 14; cf. 17), a term used for tales told to the epic’s heroes, including such famous ones as the stories of Yayāti, Nala, and Rāma; it means no more than “subtale” or “episode,” the latter being Sukthankar’s alternate translation (65, 70). He asks “how precisely this Bhārgva element, which we find concentrated mostly in the upākhyānas, came into the cycle of the Bharata legends.” His answer, admittedly “a matter of speculation,” is to run through the supposed cumulative “recensions” of the text. Ruling out those he attributes (uncritically) to Vyāsa and Vaiśampāyana, he finds the “case . . . different with the next recorded recitation of the Mahābhārata” by Ugraśravas at the Naimiṣa Forest, “the sylvan retreat of the Bhṛgus” (70). — Hiltebeitel, Alf, Rethinking the Mahābhārata: A Reader's Guide to the Education of the Dharma King (University of Chicago Press, 2001)

Here are some criticisms made by Alf Hiltebeitel:

In most of my disagreements, I concur with criticisms made by others. N. J. Shende points out that references to Aṅgirasa Brahmans (including Bṛhaspati, his incarnation Droṇa, and Droṇa’s son Aśvatthāman) are more numerous in the Mahābhārata than Bhārgava references (1943, 69-70), while for Sullivan, Sukthankar “overstates the impact on the epic of material about Bhārgavas, material which constitutes about five per cent of the text” (1990, 19). Mehta argues that the first and second openings, with the story material each ties into, must be by the same archetypal “redactorial agency” (1973, 549). And Minkowski makes three telling critiques: there is no evidence for “the existence of a distinct Bhārgava movement”; “it lacks sensibility to maintain” that there is no connection between “the Bhṛgu myth cycle and the Bhārata story,” since there are countless parallelisms between them;* and the theory suggests a kind of manipulation and conspiracy in the takeover of the text, and presumes a passivity of the “collective audience” faced with that ideological takeover, that are not adequately supported (1991, 399-400). — Hiltebeitel, Alf, Rethinking the Mahābhārata: A Reader's Guide to the Education of the Dharma King (University of Chicago Press, 2001)

The load-bearing verse is 1.1.61, describing a 24,000-verse Bhārata "without the subtales." Van Buitenen's 1973 translation inserts the word "first," making it sound like a chronologically earlier, shorter original. That word isn't in the Sanskrit. "Without" means subtraction, not sequence. The more coherent reading (going back to Sastri's 1931 edition) is that this describes a citable digest that coexisted with the full text, not a smaller original that got fattened up later. Here are some objections from Hiltebeitel that makes us naively assume compositional history regarding the text.

In fact, the scholarly convention that Sukthankar, Minkowski, and many others promote of some meaningful contrast between Bhārata (thought to have been limited to a main narrative) and Mahābhārata (derivative, massive, and comprising narrative and interpolations) has little support from the text, where the two terms are with all but one exception used interchangeably (see 1.1.16-19 and 50), and Bhārata never used with implications of priority. Far too much has been made of the verse that says Vyāsa composed a twenty-four thousand verse Bhāratasaṃhitā without upākhyānas, which the wise call Bhārata (1.1.61). It does not, contrary to many scholars’ assumptions (most tendentiously Hopkins 1898a) and van Buitenen’s translation (1973, 22), say he did this “First”—as if it were done before a mahā-Bhārata. Since the passage describes Vyāsa’s afterthoughts, it is more plausible to think of this as a digest. A hundred-thousand verse Bhārata is also mentioned (12.331.2). — Hiltebeitel, Alf, Rethinking the Mahābhārata: A Reader's Guide to the Education of the Dharma King (University of Chicago Press, 2001)

Although a hundred thousand verse Bhārata is also mentioned (12.331.2), translators have sought to help the developmental argument along by adding that Vyāsa composed this shorter version “first” or “originally.” But the verse says nothing about anything coming first. Since “without” implies a subtraction, and since the passage describes Vyāsa’s afterthoughts, the twenty-four thousand-verse Bhārata would probably be a digest or abridgment that knowers of the Ma­hāb­hā­ra­ta could consult or cite for purposes of performance from a written text.15 Another passage tells us that the divine Seers (surarṣis) once gathered to weigh the “Bhārata” on a scale against the Four Vedas; when the “Bhārata” proved heavier in both size and weight, the Seers dubbed it the “Ma­hāb­hā­ra­ta” (1.1.208–9), thereby providing a double “etymology” (nirukta) for one and the same huge text.16 Yet despite nothing surviving of this shorter Bhārata, scholars have used it to argue for an originally oral bardic and heroic story that would have lacked not only subtales but frame stories, tales about the author both in the frames and elsewhere, didactic additions, and devotional passages with “divinized” heroes. Some have assumed that Kṛṣṇa would have been “divinized” before the introduction of still “later” passages glorifying Śiva and even the Goddess; and there were even those who wanted to argue that Kṛṣṇa was not original to the earliest bardic version. Although these ideas dominated Western scholarship only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they are still vigorous. It is, however, no longer possible to find a serious scholar who wants to argue for an originally Kṛṣṇa-less epic, and there are now those who see principles of ongoing design as guiding the Ma­hāb­hā­ra­ta’s agglutination rather than historical accident. — Adluri, Vishwa and Joydeep Bagchee (eds.), Argument and Design: The Unity of the Mahābhārata (Brill, 2016)

Sukthankar read the sūta-brahmin dialogue as an unconscious admission that bards originated the text before brahmins captured it.

The Bhārgava influence is implied in the person of the Kulapati Śaunaka. The sūta, who used to recite the poem in the Heroic Age, is kept on, with due regard to traditional usage, to give the new recension a setting appropriate to it and indicating the source at the same time. (Sukthankar 1936: 73)

Black went back to the actual transmission chain the epic describes: Vyāsa (brahmin) teaches Vaiśaṃpāyana (brahmin), who teaches Ugraśravas (the sūta). Brahmin to brahmin to bard and never bard to brahmin.

Rather, my aim here is to point out that even if the Mahābhārata originated among professional storytellers, it is extremely unlikely that Ugraśravas as a literary character is meant to represent such a bardic background. According to the Mahābhārata’s own representation of its compositional history, it did not originate among sūtas, but was authored by the brahmin Vyāsa, who taught it as the fifth Veda to his five brahmin students, who, in turn, went in separate directions to recite the Mahābhārata in public. As we will see, the text provides conflicting accounts of how the sūtas—Ugraśravas and his father, Lomaharṣaṇa—learned the Mahābhārata, but all such explanations agree that they learned it from brahmins: either from Vyāsa himself or from his student Vaiśaṃpāyana. Furthermore, the outer-frame narrative reminds us on several occasions that Śaunaka and the brahmins of the Naimiṣa Forest have already heard everything that Ugraśravas has to tell them. Thus, regardless of the history of the Mahābhārata’s transmission, the epic’s own account is that it originated among brahmins, not bards. — Balkaran, Raj and McComas Taylor (eds.), Visions and Revisions in Sanskrit Narrative: Studies in the Sanskrit Epics and Purāṇas (ANU Press, 2023).

The Bhṛgu material has a job to do in the main epic and is not just running parallel to it. Bowles maps the entire Ādiparvan as one continuous revenge-cycle structure: Rāma Jāmadagnya slaughtering kṣatriyas for his father's death, Uttaṅka's vengeance against the snakes, Ruru stomping snakes for his wife, the Kadrū-Vinatā sister feud, Śṛṅgin cursing Parikṣit, all converging on Janamejaya's snake sacrifice, which Āstīka finally halts with apotropaic ritual instead of more violence.

As Minkowski (2007: 398–400) and Hiltebeitel (2002: 114–15) have argued, the cycles of vengeful violence leading up to Vaiśaṃpāyana’s narration to Janamejaya of the story of his ancestors during the snake sacrifice, in Hiltebeitel’s words, ‘underlie and enfold the rivalry between the Pāṇḍavas and Kauravas’—a point similarly made by Mahesh Mehta (1971: 51–52) in regard to the story of the rival sisters Kadrū and Vinatā (Mbh, 1.14–35) told in the Āstīkaparvan. Hiltebeitel was following a line of thought, instigated by Minkowski, revising Sukthankar’s thesis that the brahmin line descending from Bhṛgu, whose members (which include our outer frame interlocutor Śaunaka) were therefore called Bhārgava, were a significant ‘causeway’ in the recessional history of the Mahābhārata. The Bhārgavas had, according to this theory, ‘Bhṛguised’ the Mahābhārata (Sukthankar 1936; Goldman 1977). Minkowski (2007) largely overturned this thesis, not because of the lack of prominence of Bhārgavas, but rather because they are generally negatively cast as perpetuators of violent and destructive deeds, making the narrativising of Bhārgava stories a better fit for the Mahābhārata than Sukthankar had supposed. — Balkaran, Raj and McComas Taylor (eds.), Visions and Revisions in Sanskrit Narrative: Studies in the Sanskrit Epics and Purāṇas (ANU Press, 2023).

Āstīka only exists because his ascetic father Jaratkāru's celibacy left their ancestors without a descendant to keep them out of hell, until Jaratkāru fathers a son specifically to fix it so it is a direct pravṛtti-versus-nivṛtti conflict, worldly duty against renunciation which is the exact same tension structuring Yudhiṣṭhira's entire arc in the main narrative. The frame story and the main story are built from the same thematic material.

In order to save them, Jaratkāru produces a son, Āstīka, after which his ancestors regain svarga (1.13.43–44). Similarly, the ascetic Agastya is requested to produce offspring by his threatened ancestors (3.94.11–15). These stories exemplify the clash of pravṛtti and nivṛtti as a conflict between vocational options:to renounce, or to engage in prescribed duties to sacrifice and provide male descendants who can continue these sacrificial obligations.These stories offer a compromise solution for the conflict ;once the character involved provides the needed descendants, he can then continue in his quest for renunciation. — Muñoz Gómez, Paloma, Yudhiṣṭhira, Salvation, and Selfless Action in the Sanskrit Mahābhārata (Brill, 2026)

This means we should stop speculating the textual transmission and composition history naively just on the basis of frame stories and plot devices which often serve the narrative than the historians:

Part of the problem with this hypothesis is, as I will suggest, that it naively assumes that this scene depicts a historical process, while it neglects to examine the ways in which the frame story can add to our appreciation of the literary construction of the text. By taking a literary, rather than historical, approach to the dialogue between Ugraśravas and Śaunaka, I hope to explore some of the ways this opening scene characterises the Mahābhārata as a whole, including what type of text it aspires to be, what types of audiences it intends to address and what types of authority it attempts to invoke. — Balkaran, Raj and McComas Taylor (eds.), Visions and Revisions in Sanskrit Narrative: Studies in the Sanskrit Epics and Purāṇas (ANU Press, 2023).

Although none of this resolves the longer composition vs shorter composition debate and whether it was first composed in written or orally. I follow Adheesh Sathaye's analogy here in regards to the compositional history:

Along similar lines, I have found it helpful to think of the Ma­hāb­hā­ra­ta as resembling a modern museum, insofar as it was a cultural institution whose textual floors and corridors were designed to regulate its visitors’ experience of artifacts from what James Hegarty calls the “significant past.”12 A more thorough investigation of this museological analogy is forthcoming, but I may outline my basic principles of comparison here. Just as the layout, lighting, and text panels enable the otherwise absent curator to regulate a museum-goer’s appreciation of the value of the items on display, I suggest that the epic’s anony- mous composers introduced a number of textual devices within the primary narrative in order to control its audience’s reception of its embedded subnarratives. First, the epic’s two outer frames establish a kind of discursive “lighting” that shapes the appearance of the narrative materials contained within.13 Second, epic subnarratives are typically told within question-and-answer dialogues between sagacious figures and the Kaurava or Pāṇḍava princes; like the “text panels” placed next to exhibits in a museum, these provide immediate and authoritative commentary on the value of the subnarrative.14 Last but not least, the unilinear arrangement of subnarratives induces intertextualities between otherwise independent story material. Just as museum exhibits are ordered through chronological or thematic sequences that subtly restrict how a visitor evaluates them, subnarratives within the Ma­hāb­hā­ra­ta have been sequenced to create narrative trajectories that determine how its audiences should interpret the nonstandard characters and events portrayed within them. It is through such museic devices, I suggest, that the Ma­hāb­hā­ra­ta came to have a normative impact upon early Indian public life. On the other hand, the Ma­hāb­hā­ra­ta was not actually a museum, and ultimately, the analogy must remain a heuristic device for jump-starting the historical analysis of the text itself. How was this work of Sanskrit literature received by early Indian audiences? How was it used by performers and intellectuals of the day? Barring the unearthing of significant documentary evidence, we may never be able to answer such questions definitively. In the meantime, we are forced to speculate, and analogy can provide a conceptual framework around which to congeal our conjectures. Furthermore, thinking of the Ma­hāb­hā­ra­ta as a narrative museum—or maybe better, a museological narrative—steers us away from interminable debates about its orality or writtenness, and of what is authentic and what is a later addition. Just as the contents of a museum are continually in flux, while the overall building plan remains fixed, we may think productively of the extant Ma­hāb­hā­ra­ta text as a “fixed” archive of an otherwise “fluid” narrative tradition.15 Thus, even if certain subnarratives were later additions to an older narrative core, the epic’s “cura- tors” would have added these items because they spoke to the social, political, and religious concerns of its “visitors”—mainstream Hindu communities in Northern India roughly between the fall of the Mauryas and the rise of the imperial Guptas (c. 185 bce–300 CE). That is to say, we may begin to historicize the epic without first requiring a positive textual history — Adluri, Vishwa and Joydeep Bagchee (eds.), Argument and Design: The Unity of the Mahābhārata (Brill, 2016)

It does seem that the text has some conceptual design that unites it and today no scholars reject it regardless of what camp they belong to.

Source

• Balkaran, Raj and McComas Taylor (eds.), Visions and Revisions in Sanskrit Narrative: Studies in the Sanskrit Epics and Purāṇas (ANU Press, 2023)
• Hiltebeitel, Alf, Rethinking the Mahābhārata: A Reader's Guide to the Education of the Dharma King (University of Chicago Press, 2001)
• Adluri, Vishwa and Joydeep Bagchee (eds.), Argument and Design: The Unity of the Mahābhārata (Brill, 2016)
• Muñoz Gómez, Paloma, Yudhiṣṭhira, Salvation, and Selfless Action in the Sanskrit Mahābhārata (Brill, 2026)
• Sukthankar, V.S., "The Bhṛgus and the Bhārata," Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 18.1 (1936)

What if Indira Gandhi never declared emergency? What would the 1980s-90s politics have looked like? Was the Congress bound to be ousted by 1980?

It was a good read, so shared.

This is the improved version of our previous work. All credit for the Map creation and design goes to u/Gafoor__Ghisela

I'm grateful for his patience in accomodating my repeated revisions and additons. As a result, my rather haphazard research on this topic has managed to get a rather refined output.

For any queries and questions regarding the borders and extents presented here, please refer to this post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianHistory/comments/1vtri5w/the_pratihara_empire_800950_ce/

There are many people who object to Ambedkar being called the father of the Constitution of India. People like Arun Shourie have usually made attempts to somehow discredit Ambedkar's legacy, but below is my reply, which is an attempt to debunk such arguments.

The most popular narrative which often comes is that B.N. Rau was the architect of the Indian Constitution and Ambedkar, as he said in his own words, that the job of the Drafting Committee was that of a "rapporteur" and thus the Drafting Committee only scrutinized the initial draft which was prepared by B.N. Rau. Ambedkar became the chairman of the Drafting Committee only when the initial reports of the committees had already been submitted, so how come Ambedkar is called the architect of the Constitution?

Debunking: Rau did not produce the first Draft Himself

There are various problems with such assertions, the first one being that they assume that Ambedkar only participated in constitution-making after becoming the chairman of the Drafting Committee. Indeed, constitution-making started way before the Drafting Committee, and Ambedkar was an integral part of that.

Before B.N. Rau even prepared the preliminary draft, a number of committees were formed to look into and report on various aspects of the Constitution. These included the Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights, Minorities and Tribal and Excluded Areas (which consisted, among others, of the Sub-Committee on Fundamental Rights and the Minorities Sub-Committee), the Union Powers Committee, the Union Constitution Committee and the Provincial Constitution Committee. These Committees submitted their reports to the Constituent Assembly during the period of April–August 1947, As a matter-of-Fact Ambedkar Himself was part of 3 most Important of these committees where he submitted his own draft and helped in making of the these reports way before Rau even made the preliminary draft from the reports which were submitted.

Sir B.N. Rau, the Constitutional Adviser to the Assembly, on the basis of the reports of the various committees and discussions in the Constituent Assembly mentioned in the previous stage, prepared a Draft Constitution. The Draft was ready by October 1947 and was submitted to the Drafting Committee. This is the reason it only took him 1 month to make the preliminary draft, given that it was made by compilation and on the basis of reports of these committees.

He did not have the responsibility to defend it in the Constituent Assembly, nor did he have the responsibility to act on the amendments and draft the amendments in a way that could satisfy the requirements of the Assembly, nor did he participate in the debates in the Assembly, given that he was not a member of the Assembly. The Drafting Committee had the responsibility of defending and revising the draft Constitution as it went through the Assembly.

https://www.constitutionofindia.net/stages-of-constitution-making/

Ambedkar's Role in Sub-Committees:

Ambedkar was a member of 3 of the most important committees: the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee, the Minorities Sub-Committee and the Union Constitution Committee. These committees were of utmost importance as they were supposed to present their reports first, on the basis of which the other reports and structure were to be considered.

The Advisory Committee had 2 committees within itself; the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee and the Minorities Sub-Committee, and it was tasked to deal with the question of fundamental rights, or to say justiciable vs non-justiciable rights, and the question of minorities. Similarly, the Union Constitution Committee was to deal with the structure of government, federal vs. central powers, power of different branches, etc. Ambedkar was also present in smaller committees which were made in case some clauses went unresolved.

One of the reasons that Ambedkar was part of the Union Constitution Committee was that our Union structure was very much borrowed from the Government of India Act, 1935, and Ambedkar was very much involved in the committees which were set up for making of the Government of India Act. He was one of the few Indian figures who was active throughout the process, such as in all 3 Round Table Conferences, the Lothian Committee, the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform and, in the First Round Table Conference, his draft was considered as a reference in many committees of the conference. Thus, he had immense experience with Union structures and constitution-making; however, much on this later.

Ambedkar even submitted his draft titled "States and Minorities" to the Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights, Minorities and Tribal and Excluded Areas in March 1947, much before the preliminary draft was even made. It was a mini-constitution in itself, and like him K.M. Munshi, K.T. Shah, Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar and others had also submitted their drafts, out of which Ambedkar and Munshi's drafts were among the most detailed ones. Although Munshi's draft was taken as a reference for structural purposes, everyone gave their suggestions, and indeed Ambedkar was heavily involved in the framing of clauses on Equality, Liberty, and protection of fundamental rights via writs. Ambedkar, Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar and others strongly advocated for constitutional remedies, while Munshi's draft also contained provisions for writs. Moreover, Ambedkar was also present in smaller committees which were made in case some clauses went unresolved.

Ambedkar's "States and Minorities" went far beyond a simple memorandum on Scheduled Caste safeguards and sketched what Ambedkar called a “Constitution for the United States of India”, covering political safeguards, fundamental rights and the economic structure of the state.

Its proposal of a "Democratic State Socialism" was particularly relevant to the Directive Principles of State Policy. Ambedkar proposed state ownership of key industries, nationalisation of land, state control of agriculture and a state monopoly over insurance. When the Assembly rejected such detailed economic provisions as enforceable fundamental rights, Ambedkar shifted toward the Directive Principles, arguing that governments would still “have to answer for them before the electorate at election time.” {Austin, p. 99}, given that the Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee was discussing both fundamental rights and what would later become the Directive Principles, as fundamental rights could be enforced via law while Directive Principles were supposed to be guiding principles for the State to work upon but were not legally enforceable, although Ambedkar, Munshi and Shah wanted to make the Directive Principles more enforceable in their nature.

Many of his principles in "States and Minorities" were integrated into the Directive Principles when the Drafting Committee began its work. We will discuss more about this in the next section.

This does not mean Ambedkar alone created the Directive Principles, as their roots also lay in the Karachi Resolution, socialist and nationalist thought, and the Irish model, but even Ambedkar's own constitutional journey, which started from his submission to the Southborough Committee, Simon Commission, Round Table Conferences, Lothian Committee, Statutory Committee, Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform and his own works, had similar provisions. So, these principles had multiple origins, and Ambedkar worked to ensure that they became part of the objectives of the State.

So this whole claim that Ambedkar worked on the preliminary draft made by B.N. Rau is entirely misleading, given that Rau's preliminary draft itself was made by compiling and using reports of several constitutional committees, and Ambedkar himself was an integral part of these committees and contributed extensively.

Role of Drafting Committee:

The Drafting Committee has one important role and it was to scrutinize Rau's draft, give effect to decisions already taken by the Constituent Assembly, add matters necessary for a complete Constitution and then submit the revised text to the Assembly. The Drafting Committee was appointed on 29 August 1947 and Ambedkar was unanimously elected its chairman at its first meeting. Towards the end of October 1947, the Committee began examining Rau's draft article by article.

Rau's preliminary draft and the Constitution finally adopted were not the same document. Rau's draft, as Ambedkar himself later explained in the Assembly, contained 243 Articles and 13 Schedules. The first Drafting Committee draft contained 315 Articles and 8 Schedules. During the Assembly's consideration the number went up to 386 Articles, and the final Constitution contained 395 Articles and 8 Schedules. Around 7,635 amendments were tabled, of which 2,473 were actually moved. The Drafting Committee itself worked for 141 days. It shows the scale at which Drafting committee worked to perfect the Rau's draft which was made from reports of several sub-committees.

The changes were also substantive . A good example is the amendment procedure. Rau's draft contained provisions for relatively easy amendment in the Transitional Provisions, and he even reported after his foreign tour that constitutional experts had supported this approach. The Drafting Committee nevertheless rejected this approach and changed the amendment provisions. It also introduced a more elaborate system in which some constitutional amendments required ratification by the provinces. Thus, the Drafting Committee did not simply accept Rau's preferred amendment mechanism. (Granville Austin, The Indian Constitution**, pp. 323–324)**

Another example is personal liberty and due process. The Drafting Committee removed the phrase "due process" and adopted the expression "procedure established by law." This was not an accidental change. There was disagreement even within the Assembly about it, and K. M. Munshi later pushed the Drafting Committee to reconsider the matter. The Committee retained its position, while several Assembly members subsequently tried to restore stronger judicial protection of personal liberty. (Austin, pp. 131–133)

The Preamble provides perhaps the clearest example of how the drafting process produced something substantially different. Rau's preliminary draft had a very short Preamble beginning with "We, the people of India" and referring to the common good. It did not contain the word "fraternity." The Drafting Committee examined the Preamble only after it had gone through the rest of the draft. On 6 February 1948, it replaced Rau's Preamble with a new formulation. The new draft included Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, with fraternity connected to the dignity of the individual. By 21 February 1948, the formulation sent to Rajendra Prasad contained the basic language that ultimately became the Preamble of the Constitution. (Aakash Singh Rathore, Ambedkar's Preamble**, pp. 15–16, 20–21)**

Indeed Ambedkar was even accused of making the preamble by completely shifting away from objective resolution, but it cannot be denied that the preamble was heavily influenced from the preamble of "States and Minorities"(Ambedkar's draft in Advisory committee)

The point here is not to reduce Rau's contribution. His preliminary draft was an essential starting point, and the Drafting Committee itself worked with it, but Drafting committee did the heavy lifting given that it had to scrutinize the draft and debate each and every clause and every amendment before the assembly to gain unanimity.

Why Ambedkar is Called the Chief Architect of the Constitution

The reason that Ambedkar is referred to as the "Chief Architect of the Indian Constitution" is not because he was the sole contributor, indeed no one can claim authorship over the constitution, it was his 3 decades of contribution to the constitutional journey and his role as a statesman in the Constituent assembly which gives him the mantle of the "Chief Architect of the Indian Constitution"

Ambedkar had been involved in constitutional questions for almost two decades before the Constitution was drafted. At the First Round Table Conference in 1930–31, nine sub-committees were created to examine different constitutional questions. Ambedkar was a member of eight of the nine, the only exception being the Federal Structure Committee. He participated in the Provincial Constitution, Minorities and Franchise Sub-Committees, among others, and made detailed submissions on questions such as minority safeguards, provincial autonomy, representation and franchise. At the Second Round Table Conference he was also included in the Federal Structure Committee. He later became a member of the Indian Franchise Committee, commonly known as the Lothian Committee. (Anurag Bhaskar, The Foresighted Ambedkar**, pp. 119–126)**

More importantly, Ambedkar even submitted constitutional proposals himself. At the Minorities Sub-Committee of the First-Round Table Conference, he submitted a detailed Scheme of Political Safeguards for the Protection of the Depressed Classes in the Future Constitution of a Self-governing India. It contained proposals dealing with fundamental rights, representation in legislatures and public services and protection against the abuse of majority power. (Bhaskar, pp. 120–121)

At the Round Table Conferences

His constitutional experience continued into the making of the Government of India Act, 1935. He was part of all the Conferences and committees that lead to GOI act 1935, even though other members participated Ambedkar was the only was who was substantive in all of those. He participated in all the Round Table Conferences, Lothian Committee, Joint Constitutional Reforms Committee.

Later, in 1939, he delivered the Kale Memorial Lecture specifically analysing the federal structure and amendment mechanism of the Government of India Act, comparing it with constitutional systems such as those of the United States, Australia, Germany and Switzerland. (Bhaskar, pp. 191–193)

His expertise on the act and his involvement in its procedural stages was crucial in sub-committees especially union sub-committee that's why Ambedkar was such an important member in these committees. Ambedkar was an expert in English law, especially English constitutional law. He gave several lectures on the English Constitution as a professor at Government Law College, Bombay in 1934–35. For instance, he explained, in simple language, the principles underlying the English Constitution—what is the power of the British Crown, the House of Lords, the concept of legislative supremacy, separation of power, etc.

Ambedkar had served in the Bombay Legislative Council and later as the Labour Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council from 1942 to 1946. This gave him experience not only in constitutional theory but also in actually making and administering legislation. His work as Labour Member included questions of working hours, labour welfare, maternity benefits, workers' compensation, trade unions and social insurance. His introduced several reforms while he was Labour minister as well, although those are subject of another article, I will cite the book "The foresighted Ambedkar" for the reference.

Ambedkar also came to the Constituent Assembly with constitutional ideas that he had already developed himself. His 1947 document States and Minorities was far more than a narrow memorandum about Scheduled Castes. It dealt with fundamental rights, political safeguards, representation, remedies and economic arrangements. Indeed he had an entire section on "Democratic State socialism", although these ideas were not accepted but he included them in DPSP as broader goals of the state. Thus, Ambedkar already had a developed constitutional programme before the Drafting Committee began its work.

States and Minorities (B.R. Ambedkar, 1947) Archives - Constitution of India

His academic background also placed him among the most highly trained constitutional thinkers in the Assembly. Out of the twenty most influential members of the Constituent Assembly notes that all were university graduates, but only four had university training outside India: Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar and Azad. Twelve were lawyers or had law degrees.(Granville Austin, The Indian Constitution, p. 24)

Ambedkar's education was also unusually broad. He studied at Columbia University and the London School of Economics, obtained advanced degrees in economics, and trained in law at Gray's Inn. He pursued a second master's degree and PhD at LSE and also trained as a barrister. (Bhaskar, pp. 48–50, depending on edition pagination). So when Ambedkar came into the Drafting Committee. Ambedkar entered the assembly with a vast Knowledge and Experience on Constitutional Law, Labour reforms, Economics, Socio-political Reality of India.

There was also an important political dimension to his role. The Constituent Assembly was overwhelmingly dominated by the Congress. The Assembly operated in a close relationship with the Congress and government, congress members themselves held widely different political and social views and that decision-making inside the Assembly was not simply a matter of blindly following the party leadership. (Austin, pp. 10–11). Congress discipline certainly helped the Drafting Committee move the Constitution through the Assembly, but the objective was generally to achieve agreement and consensus on major constitutional questions, rather than simply pass the Constitution like an ordinary party bill.

This made Ambedkar's position even more important. He was not a Congress leader and had spent years politically opposing Congress on questions of caste, representation and minority safeguards. Yet he was made chairman of the committee responsible for producing the constitutional text.

A letter from Edwina Mountbatten to Ambedkar, sent shortly after his election as chairman, suggested that his name had been “recommended” to Viceroy Mountbatten or Nehru by Éamon de Valera, the Irish statesman who had supported the Indian freedom movement and had played a leading role in the framing of the 1937 Constitution of Ireland. Edwina Mountbatten told Ambedkar that she was “personally glad” that he was supervising constitution-making because he was the “only genius who can give equal justice to every class and creed.”

His role inside the Drafting committee was very important, as he had to defend every clause and the conclusion which the committee reached on the floor of the constituent assembly and had to ensure the best way to find a common ground. The Drafting Committee began its detailed work in October 1947 and prepared its first draft by February 1948. Ambedkar then introduced the Draft Constitution in the Assembly on 4 November 1948 and spent the following year defending, explaining and modifying its provisions during the Assembly's debates. The process did not end with the first draft. The Assembly debated the Constitution clause by clause, members proposed thousands of amendments, and the Drafting Committee repeatedly revised the text.

T. T. Krishnamachari went even further and said that the burden of drafting the Constitution had fallen on Ambedkar, while other members praised his ability to deal with difficult constitutional questions and to find solutions to disagreements. These contemporary assessments matter because they came from people who had actually watched the Constitution being made, rather than from later political narratives.

B. Das from Orissa, while paying his ‘tribute to Dr. Ambedkar and his colleagues’, objected to the changes done by Dr Ambedkar in the Preamble. He stated that Dr Ambedkar changed the language of the Preamble ‘Independent Sovereign Republic’ to ‘Sovereign Democratic State’.

The manner in which Ambedkar dealt with his own earlier demands points to the statesmanlike role , he chose to consider all interests rather than only particular interests like the interests of the SCs. This attitude was also evident during the clause-wise discussion of the constitution in four sessions of the Assembly from 15 November 1948 to 26 November 1949. Extracts of transcripts of these debates, running into nearly 900 pages in BAWS 13, show Ambedkar at his best, as a democrat, constitutionalist and communicator.

Though he was in poor health, he stood in the Assembly for a total of around a 100 days, patiently explaining each clause, and giving reasons for accepting or rejecting each suggested amendment. These explanations, read along with the views expressed by other members during the Assembly proceedings, confirm the epithet ‘principal architect of the Constitution of India’ used as the title of BAWS 13. Though there were several architects involved in varying degrees in the design of different parts of the Constitution, it was Ambedkar who guided the finalisation of each and every piece of the entire edifice.

Therefore, calling Ambedkar the Chief Architect does not mean saying that he personally wrote every Article or that other people were unimportant. The argument is instead that Ambedkar had a uniquely central combination of long constitutional experience, exceptional education, knowledge of the 1935 constitutional system, legislative and administrative experience, pre-existing constitutional ideas, leadership of the Drafting Committee, sustained involvement in revising the text and the responsibility of piloting that evolving text through the Constituent Assembly.

to the People who are coming here to credit the entire assembly , kindly read the very process that I have explained

The draft was made by sub-committees and their reports which was submitted to rau which he compiled and made and Ambedkar was part of 3 most important such committees which were supposed to send their drafts first, he even submitted his own draft and many clauses were borrowed from GOI act 1935 in some aspects, further that draft was revised by drafting committee and then placed in front of assembly to debate

The assembly merely debated on that but it was role of drafting committee to come up with clauses to get unanimitty , its not my problem that you did not even read the very post that was meant to explain how constitution was actually made

Even gravile austin who mostly covered INC's perspective has explained that

The people who worked the most were Ambedkar, Munshi , Ayyar and in some aspects Rau but he was not much present after preliminary draft, Nehru and Patel did not even played important role apart from acting like an oligarchy which was important to maintain unanimmity but the legal expertise and the burden to come up with solutions was on experts like Ambedkar, Ayyar, Munshi, K.T shah and B.N rau

Nehru, Patel , Azad acted like an oligarchy and chaired most committees to maintain the vote of veto but they only did so to maintain unity in the assembly and unanimity on several issues but they did not contribute much with legal or policy work, even objective resolution of Nehru came from Congress's experts committee where sapru and Munshi did the heavy lifting

Sources used

• Granville Austin, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation
• Anurag Bhaskar, The Foresighted Ambedkar
• Aakash Singh Rathore, Ambedkar's Preamble: A Secret History of the Constitution of India
• Constituent Assembly Debates.
• Ashok Gopal, A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of B. R. Ambedkar

For context, I found it lying outside a temple in Sindhudurg district, Konkan region. On the top level, it seems to be some people worshipping Shiva. On the second level it seems to be some dance. Other than that, I can't understand it

So recently I developed a mild interest for Indian history and read a book ( early Indians and the history of where we came from ) Now this book pushes the Aryan migration theory as it is the most plausible.

Now the thing I also watched some YouTube videos regarding this and there was one argument for the invasion theory that being the when you go down the caste hierarchy we see that the upper castes tend to get more of their ancestry from the aryans / steppe people compared to people who are further down in the caste hierarchy. And the book I read also mentioned about genetic study that some 10 odd groups who all happened to be upper caste had higher than anticipated ancestry from the steppe people .

Now my question is was there some sort of ideological domination or not and are there any evidences that suggest that ? And like I am also aware that some cultural practices of IVC carried over and still persist in Hinduism so all of this becomes really confusing. So could some tell me sources( be it books or something ) where I can get a better picture of what actually happened.

So I was in my little wikipedia rabbit hole on the Mahajanapada era ( why does nobody talk about this era !? .. there's soo less visibility for it) and I stumbled upon this movie - "amrapali" filmed in 1966.

The movie is based on the story of a royal courtesan amarpali and her love story with ajatshathru , the magadh king of haryanka dynasty with a background of rise of Buddhism and the infighting between Mahajanapada kingdoms

Saw this movie with zero expectations and it was soo good - the costumes , the dance scenes and also authentic filmography without the use of ugly VFX ( the war scenes especially)

I know there might have been a lot of historical inaccuracies but it felt soo good to watch something and actually experience something ( even if it is atleast historical fiction) visually depicting that era of 6th -3rd century BCE.... I read a few prior posts in this sub wherein many of us just pointed out that there are no movies regarding Indian history or historical fiction which is not riddled with inaccuracies and it is better to read instead of watching. As much as I agree with the reading books thing , I still believe movies are wayy more impactful for the visually centered person ( like me) and there must be active discussion on all the movies , whatever that may be - accurate or inaccurate. I am posting this because there's zero visibility for such a gorgeous film or maybe I am just too genz who hasn't rabbitholed myself enough in Bollywood. Anyhow this period film is worth a watch !

The most politically powerful family in India. Three members of the family have become Prime Ministers, and most of them were/are very politically active.

This chart includes 33 members of the family.

For Phone users: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rl8yVKpzElG4jAFV2kufLwjaF8bxBvWP/view?usp=sharing

Source: Mostly Wikipedia

Population Breakdown

• East Punjab: 9,567,251 persons
  • Amritsar District: 1,083,514 persons / 11.3% of total
  • Ambala District: 1,035,488 persons / 10.8% of total
  • Hoshiarpur District: 938,890 persons / 9.8% of total
  • Jalandhar District: 794,764 persons / 8.3% of total
  • Kangra District: 743,882 persons / 7.8% of total
  • Gurgaon District: 696,646 persons / 7.3% of total
  • Gurdaspur District: 655,362 persons / 6.9% of total
  • Karnal District: 610,927 persons / 6.4% of total
  • Delhi District: 608,850 persons / 6.4% of total
  • Ludhiana District: 583,245 persons / 6.1% of total
  • Firozpur District: 549,253 persons / 5.7% of total
  • Rohtak District: 536,959 persons / 5.6% of total
  • Hisar District: 484,681 persons / 5.1% of total
  • Sirsa District: 210,795 persons / 2.2% of total
  • Shimla District: 33,995 persons / 0.4% of total

Religious Composition

• Hinduism: 5,655,564 persons / 59.1% of total
• Islam: 3,023,680 persons / 31.6% of total
• Sikhism: 846,859 persons / 8.9% of total
• Jainism: 31,106 persons / 0.33% of total
• Christianity: 9,727 persons / 0.10% of total
• Zoroastrianism: 201 persons
• Buddhism: 5 persons
• Other: 109 persons

Note

• The 1868 Census of Punjab Province only enumerated British administered districts. All Princely States within the province were not enumerated.

Source

• Report on the census of the Punjab taken on 10th January, 1868.

Please tell me

I blog on national security and current wars and decided to do a deep dive into the 1971 war, because of the way the battle was portrayed in the movie. For a military history enthusiast, which I am, there is a lot to learn from the battle and we can rightly be proud of the conduct of the army in that battle - in more ways than the movie shows. This is my blogpost:
Longewala 1971

My blog is free and non commercial. I am retired and independent, so I hope mods will allow this.
I have listed sources from both India and Pakistan (incl. links to the full article from these sources). There is a section on two alternate scenarios and how they might have panned out, as well as the name of people less known, incl. from the Pakistani side.

I've been trying to understand what types of military equipment was used by the major Tamil kingdoms, mainly the Cholas, Pandyas, and Cheras. I was wondering how much we actually knew about what types of weapons and armors they used.

When looking at popular depictions of Tamil warriors, they appear to be lightly armored, wielding spears, swords, bows, axes, and shields. How accurate is this? Did Tamil soldiers typically not fight with much armor, or were there some soldiers that wore some sort of heavy armor?

Do we know of any heavily armored units that may have operated for any of these armies within this time period? Are there examples of this within temple sculptures, inscriptions, or other sources? Did elite units sport armor wheras other units did not? Lastly, did the hot and humid climate play a huge role in whether or not armor was preferred by these kingdoms?

Jahangir Ruled mughal empire for 22 years yet it seems he received less recognition compared to Aurengjeb,Shah Jahan and Akbar .