The Delhi High Court Thursday issued notices to producers of 'Mangal Pandey - The Rising', sought a permanent injunction on the screening of 'The Rising'. 

The ‘most expensive’ Indian movie opened recently in London and New York, and in India itself  "The Rising" was also timed with a book about the 1857 incident. Come out! Get ready! It's for our religion! From biting these cartridges we shall become infidels!' On a sleepy Sunday afternoon in March 1857, an agitated sepoy in the English East India Company's 34th Native Infantry marched on to the parade ground in Barrackpore, exhorting his comrades to join him in protecting their religion from the Europeans. Although part folklore, there are many ''Alhas'' (folk-songs) telling the story about Pandey's life , how he joined the British Army and his participation in the annexation of Awadh which changed his attitude towards the ''goras''. Thus it is not surprising that the issue has raised controversy not only in the UK, but also in India. Fact is, the British Sepoys (derived from the Persian sipah, meaning "soldier") at the time, were obtained from the nawab of Avadh. (see P. Barua, The State at War in S.Asia, 2005, p.56.) 

The Partition of S.Asia/ Shameful Flight by Stanley Wolpert, 2005

August 9, 2005: Stanley Wolpert uses as a starting point for his new book the exclamation by Winston Churchill that it was a "shameful flight". Next Wolpert places much of the blame on Lord Louis Mountbatten, the cousin of the king, for the drawing of border lines through the middle of Punjab and Bengal. Although it is true that as Wolpert shows, civil unrest among Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs escalated as Independence Day approached, he fails to detail much of the reason for the partition. So let us start with the most important one, language.

22 July, 2005: On Thursday July 21, 2005, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a day after his meeting with President G. Bush at the White House warned that rising violence in Kashmir could jeopardise peace talks with Pakistan.

For first reactions in India click:

Similar to Europe where ‘signioral castles’ became increasingly vulnerability of to the field artillery maintained by king and queens, from the middle of the fifteenth century onwards. This became a crucial factor in the rise of centralized monarchical states all over the world. Thus were early 2005, I pointed out that a gendered/racial categorization of the Indian populace by the British gave rise to several stereotypes like the manly Sikh, the devious Maratha, and the loyal Gurkha. And although recent criticism by the BBC stating 'soldiers did not burn villages when the inhabitants refused to grow opium', seems valid. Viewing "The Rising," one can ad that it was partly as a reaction to the warfare 'with France in Europe', that 'The British Company' proceeded to involve itself more actively with 'local politics.' This becomes particularly apparent when one doesn't only consult British, but also French sources as I am doing in this case. 

On the right uncovered by the December tsunami in Mahabalipuram, 70km south of Madras, are the remnants of a stone house and a half-completed rock elephant from the Pallava dynasty. There are also two giant granite lions, one seated and another poised to charge, recognized as the site of some of the greatest architectural and sculptural achievements in India. The Pallava dynasty dominated much of South India from as early as the first century BC to eighth century AD and Mahabalipuram is now recognised as the site of some of the greatest sculptural achievements in India. European mariners and travelers, who visited Mahabalipuram in the 18th century, wrote about the existence of “seven pagodas”. On February 11, a team of divers Archaeologists dived to re-discover the ancient port city, submerged off the coast of Tamil Nadu, India, picture on the left.

Although local archeologists have fully explained it, the fact that the ruins of the coast here in Mahabalipuram are of the same temple complex as the remaining shore temple has raised renewed speculations about the lost continent of the Tamils elsewhere called, Lemuria . Though some conceded that it might be far-fetched to insist that mankind first emerged on Lemuria, given that geologists claimed that it had submerged before the appearance of humans on Earth, the Government of Tamilnadu in 1975 insisted that Dravidians (and hence Tamil speakers) are the most ancient peoples of the subcontinent (Government of Tamilnadu, Tamilnâttu Varalâru: Tolpalarikalam, History of Tamilnadu: Prehistoric times, Madras,1975, 124). In addition to naming, claiming, and commemorating, place-making is a also way of constructing history itself, of inventing it, of fashioning novel versions of `what happened here. Click to enter the Tamil lost world plus an overview of Atlantis and Lemuria:

A reason cited for A.V.Advanis attempt to excape the BJP he leads, is a lawsuit he has not been able to block any longer. I start with a first hand look at one of its sub-groups that co-defender in this case is the 'World Hindu Council':

Bengal: Making a New Hinduism:

Following is a critical assessment also of the Advani Government with research that I started one year ago (September 2004) when they were still in power, and completed by June 2005, when Advani first announced his resignation

Politics or Culture?: The Making of Religion in India Today, P.1:

Politics or Culture?: The Making of Religion in India Today, P.2

Politics or Culture?: Hindu and Muslim Fundamentalism Today

Reformed Aryans, in East and West: Seek Mason, Will Travel

By the mid-19th century Freemasonry was permeating Bombay's intellectual atmosphere with its ideas of a "religion" underlying all religions, and individual and societal perfectibility.

Reformed Aryans, in East and West: Polynesian Aryans

British India was the site of imperial innovation and intellectual endeavour, standing at the centre of numerous imperial circuits of exchange, including the expansive and dense personal, publishing, governmental and cultural networks that transmitted Aryanism from British India into South-East Asia, the Pacific and beyond.

Reformed Aryans, in East and West: Aryan Christianity

Voltaire hoped to prove how all the principles of Christian theology that had been lost with the Veda, could still be found in the “Ezour Vedam”, thanks to its retrieval and circulation by a French ‘philosophe’.

Reformed Aryans, in East and West: The Anti Aryan Myth

The message of The Arctic Home of the Vedas was tailor-made to appeal to the chauvinism of the orthodox community. While its pseudoscientific thesis in no way revolutionized the way historians view the Vedic period, Tilak's theory did have significant implications: The Vedic texts need not be deciphered.

Reformed Aryans, in East and West: Are you a Sikh?

In the spring of 1878, Madame Blavatsky wrote to a follower of Swami Dayananda Sarasvati leader of the reform group the Arya Samaj: “Is our friend a Sikh? If so, the fact he should be, as you say, 'very much pleased to learn the object of our Society' is not at all strange.

Reformed Aryans, in East and West: The Orion Myth

R.C. Majumdar's view that Indians knew little of their history in the early nineteenth century, prior to the impact of Western scholarship, may seem brusque.