India

Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘India’

13
The Raven and the Snake Clay Lane

A harassed mother Raven vows bloody revenge on a venomous Snake, but the wily old Jackal has a better idea.

The Fables of Bidpai are morality tales similar to the animal fables of Aesop, with a touch of the Arabian Nights. They were first published in England in 1570, but originated in India, and spread to the West from an Arabic translation made by Ibn al-Muqaffaʻ (724-?759) of Basra. In the tale below, retold for the sake of brevity, a distraught mother learns that justice doesn’t have to involve confrontation.

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14
Diamond Pitt An Indian Mahomedan

Thomas Pitt’s tenure as Governor of Madras was regarded as a golden age, but what he is remembered for is his diamond.

The East India Company was founded late in the reign of Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) to explore the possibilities of overseas trade. By the 1670s, the Company had secured a legal monopoly on English trade in India, but some free spirits chose to go into business for themselves. In 1926, a historian modestly calling himself ‘an Indian Mahomedan’ told us about one of them: Thomas Pitt.

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15
The Goat and the Lion P. V. Ramaswami Raju

A herd of goats is threatened by a pride of lions, and it falls to one brave billy to face the danger alone.

PV Ramaswami Raju published a collection of Indian Fables in 1887, shortly after he was called to the Bar and while he was teaching Indian languages at Oxford University and later at London. His fables are a creative blend of tradition and imagination: this one tells how one wily old goat saved the whole herd with an audacious bluff.

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16
The Glow Worm and the Jackdaw P. V. Ramaswami Raju

In this fable from India, a sly little insect teaches a jackdaw that all that glisters is not necessarily edible.

William Cowper’s ‘The Nightingale and the Glow-Worm’ told how a glow-worm persuaded a hungry bird to spare his life because light and song complement each other so beautifully. In the following Indian fable by Ramaswami Raju (playwright, London barrister and Oxford professor of Telugu), the hard-pressed glow-worm does not have such dainty material to work with.

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17
A Dereliction of Duty Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke tore into the directors of the East India Company, accusing them of doing less for the country than India’s mediaeval conquerors.

In 1783, Edmund Burke urged the House of Commons to strip the East India Company of its administration of India, arguing that the Mughal Emperors and other foreign conquerors had done more for the people than the Company seemed likely to do. His blistering attack on the Company’s record repays reading, as it applies just as well to modern aid programmes, interventions and regime changes.

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18
Justice and Equity Harsukh Rai

After the East India Company quieted the Maratha Confederacy in 1805, Harsukh Rai looked forward to a new era of good government.

After the Second Maratha War (1803-1805), the East India Company had complete control over the Maratha Confederacy, an alliance of kingdoms in modern-day Maharashtra. Much has since been written in criticism of the English in India, but little of it cuts to the heart, or (as he might put it) mantles the English cheek with the blush of shame, quite like Harsukh Rai’s guileless optimism.

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