In West Bengal, some villages celebrate Independence Day after August 15; here’s why

The village of Ratua in the district of Malda and the village of Balurghat in Dakshin Dinajpur district are two other towns that celebrate independence day after August 15.

As the whole of India celebrates Independence Day on August 15 every year, for some villages in West Bengal it is their time for an annual wait: they celebrate their day of independence a few days later, when they officially became a part of India in 1947.

On August 12, 1947, Viceroy Louis Mountbatten announced that the country would be given its freedom on August 15, 1947. Bengal, however, remained a contentious subject because according to the recommendations of Cyril Radcliffe, the British official in charge of drawing up the demarcations for maps for the partition of India, several districts like Malda and Nadia with large Hindu populations were given to East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

According to some residents of villages near the Indo-Bangladesh border interviewed by indianexpress.com, Mountbatten’s announcement was followed by widespread protests in the region and August 15, for them, was not a cause for celebration of independence. The villagers say that according to stories passed down in their families, political leaders like Syama Prasad Mukherjee and members of the Nadia royal family took their protests to the British administration in Kolkata and the matter was brought to the attention of Mountbatten. In the following days, Mountbatten hastily ordered a redrawing of the partition of Bengal to include the protesting Hindu-majority districts into Indian territory and gave Muslim-majority districts to East Pakistan, a process that was concluded on the night of August 17.

This lesser-known part of Indian history continues to be commemorated in some villages near the Indo-Bangladesh border in West Bengal even to this day. Instead of August 15, every year these villages mark August 18 as their day of independence, not only from the British but also from East Pakistan, and recognise it as the day they officially joined India.

PM Independence Day top quotes | ‘We neither nurse problems nor keep them pending’

At Shibnibash, a small village in the Nadia district, approximately five hours away from Kolkata, 49-year-old Anjan Sukul has been organising Independence Day celebrations on August 18 since 1991. “My grandfather was a freedom fighter and I heard the story from him, but there are no written records of this,” says Sukul in an interview with indianexpress.com.

According to Sukul, the story of how the village came to commemorate its independence on August 18 was common knowledge passed down over generations, but nothing had been done to mark the day till Sukul took the initiative. “Prior to this we didn’t have the courage to fly the flag after August 15,” says Sukul, explaining the hesitation felt by the villagers in doing something that would be considered unusual by other people.

Eleven years ago, in the town of Bongaon in North 24 Parganas district in West Bengal, the Bongaon Bar Association decided to mark the day they became a part of India by hoisting a flag on August 18 on the Bongaon court premises. “The Bongaon subdivision got independence on August 18, 1947 and at 10:30 am we became a part of India. We didn’t get independence on August 15,” says Samir Das, Bongaon public prosecutor in-charge and secretary of the Bongaon Bar Association.

According to Das, there are some records of this date in the Bongaon sub-divisional office and residents had been aware of the town’s history. “Many weren’t sure of how this would be perceived, so we didn’t (celebrate) it before,” says Das. The first location where Bongaon residents hoisted the national flag of India was the local Treasury Office after which the location was moved to the local courthouse. “East Pakistan flags were flown on the days after August 15, 1947 till they were taken down and replaced by the Tricolour that was hoisted on August 18,” says Das.

Other than Shibnibash, in the Nadia district, the towns of Shantipur, Kalyani, Bongaon, Ranaghat, Krishnagar, Shikarpur and Karimpur were all part of East Pakistan and also celebrate Independence Day after August 15. “Ranaghat became a part of India on the night of August 17 and so they celebrate it on that day,” says Sukul.

The village of Ratua in the district of Malda and the village of Balurghat in Dakshin Dinajpur district are two other towns that celebrate independence day after August 15. The varying dates on which these villages celebrate Independence Day is due to the fact that not all villages were included as part of India on the same day. Hence, the villages mark their day of independence on the date on which they were officially removed from East Pakistan. “We also hoist the flag on August 15, but we officially celebrate Independence Day on August 18,” says Sukul.

Bengal: One state, two partitions

The Partition of Bengal which was first announced in 1905 by Viceroy George Curzon, to split provinces along religious lines between Hindus and Muslims, led to the official start of the Swadeshi movement against the British on a pan-India scale. The widespread protests against this decision went on for six years and ultimately forced the British to reverse their plans for the Partition. In 1911, the reigning King George V announced the reversal and ordered the assimilation of affected provinces into the Bengal Presidency.

The chaos over this decision was the trigger for the start of separatist Muslim politics, with the British having succeeded in creating the framework for the division of the nation on religious lines. In 1947, Bengal was subjected to partition once again on the basis of religion that led to the formation of the independent nations of India, Pakistan and East Pakistan, that later became Bangladesh in 1971.

Prior to the appointment of Louis Mountbatten in February 1947, Archibald Wavell served as Viceroy of India and during his tenure drew up a crude map of borders dividing the nation. Soon after Mountbatten arrived in India, he appointed Cyril Radcliffe to chair two Boundary Commissions for Punjab and Bengal, to divide the nation along religious lines between Muslims and Hindus.

Radcliffe, a lawyer by profession, who had never been to India and was neither familiar with its geography, diversity and complexity, arrived in India for the first time in July 1947. He was tasked with the division of this land that had more geo-political, socio-cultural, socio-economic and socio-religious consequences than he could have imagined and it was an undertaking that he adjudicated upon with no prior experience. Mountbatten, who was impatient to return to England and had accepted the appointment of Viceroy on the conditions of a fast division of India, put pressure upon Radcliffe to conclude the matter at an accelerated pace. The British did not engage in any land surveys or inspection for information that a procedure of territorial division of this kind would require and deliberately kept the United Nations out of partition mediations to maintain control and to finish the process at the speed that Mountbatten wanted.

In an interview with veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar in the 1960s, Cyril Radcliffe gave his side of the story of the Partition of India and blamed the “quality of district maps” available to him for the violence and chaos that had followed. “I was so rushed that I had not time to go into the details. Even accurate district maps were not there and what material there was also inadequate. What could I do in one and a half months?” said Radcliffe, as quoted in Nayar’s book ‘Distant Neighbours: A Tale of the Subcontinent ‘.

However, Willem van Schendel, a professor at the University of Amsterdam, who has researched the subject of the history of Bengal’s borders extensively, disagreed with Radcliffe’s justifications. In his book ‘The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia’, Schendel writes that “although there were…errors in the district maps, what is much more striking is how accurate they turned out to be over most of the length of the border. From Radcliffe’s comment it is also clear that the Boundary Commission restricted itself to the use of district maps and ignored the much more detailed mouza (revenue village) maps on which these were based.”

In many ways, the Partition of India is actually the story of the Partition of Punjab and the Partition of Bengal.

The Bengal Commission was made up of five people including Radcliffe, where he made all final decisions. Two members of the Indian National Congress and two members of the Muslim League formed the rest of the commission. According to the border divisions Radcliffe made with regard to Bengal, the Muslim majority district of Murshidabad was given to India in order to ensure that Calcutta received water from the Ganges river. Khulna, a district in Bengal with a large Hindu population was included in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

In her book ‘The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947-1967 ‘, Joya Chatterji, professor of history at Trinity College, writes that one of the ironies of the Partition of India was in how similar Radicliffe’s borderlines were with those drawn by Curzon in his plans for the Partition of Bengal in 1905.

Source: Indian Express, 16/08/2019

This solar panel could generate electricity even at night

Researchers from University of California explain how a new kind of thermoradiative cell could design an anti-solar panel to generate power at nigh

With Climate Change knocking at our door, countries around the world are trying to reduce their dependence on fossil fuel and embrace renewable energy. Some parts of the world have taken the solar panel technology quite seriously but as beneficial as these panels are, solar power plants cannot generate electricity at night.

But what if these solar panels could operate around the clock? According to a study published in the ACS Photonics, it is possible to design solar panels that can produce energy during the night.

How do the anti-solar cells work?

A regular solar cell generates power when it absorbs photons of light from the sun to generate a voltage across the device for the current to flow. However, in these specially designed photovoltaic cells, light is instead emitted to generate current and voltage, which go in the opposite direction but still produce energy.

The drawback of these “anti-solar cells” or thermoradiative cells, at the moment, is that the electricity producedAccording to the authors of the paper — Jeremy Munday, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of California, Davis and graduate student Tristan Deppe — photovoltaic cell could generate up to 50 watts of power per square meter under ideal conditions at night, which is about a quarter of what a conventional solar panel can generate in daytime.

Munday says that an object that is hot compared to its surroundings will radiate heat as infrared light. Since space is cold, if you have a warm object and point it at the sky, it will radiate heat toward it. He says that people have been using this phenomenon for nighttime cooling for hundreds of years and researchers have been exploring the use of thermoradiative cell that generates power by radiating heat to its surroundings. is way lower than the power generated by the conventional solar cells.

Munday says that the thermoradiative cell pointed at the night sky would emit infrared light because it is warmer than outer space. According to the study, the device would work during the day as well, if steps were taken to either block direct sunlight or point it away from the sun.

This would allow this new type of solar cell to operate around the clock and provide an intriguing option to balance the power grid over the day-night cycle.

Source: Indian Express, 5/02/2020

JEE Main April 2020 exam: How to improve score in second attempt

National Testing Agency (NTA) is conducting JEE Main April 2020 exam on April 5, 7, 8, 9 and 11. Candidates interested in pursuing BE/BTech, BArch and BPlanning can appear for the JEE Main Examination.

JEE Main Exam is conducted twice a year for admission to various National Institute of Technologies and other reputed engineering colleges across India. JEE Main exam is also a gateway to appear for JEE Advanced Exam, the entrance tests for the Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs).

National Testing Agency (NTA) is conducting JEE Main April 2020 exam on April 5, 7, 8, 9 and 11. Candidates interested in pursuing BE/BTech, BArch and BPlanning can appear for the JEE Main Examination.

The first JEE Main exam of the year was conducted in January. Candidates are allowed to appear for both the exams in a year. The rank of aspirants who write the test twice will be decided on the basis of the better of the two scores.

The online registration for JEE Main April 2020 exam has already begun and those willing to appear for the test can visit the official website of the exam - jeemain.nta.nic.in. The registration process will close on March 7.

Students, who could not manage to score good in JEE Main January 2020 exam, have another chance to improve their marks and get into the college of their choice. As JEE Main April Exam is just a few months away, here are some of the tips that might prove helpful during preparation.

Analyse past mistakes: Those who appeared for JEE Main exam in January must analyse where things went wrong. Work on your weak areas.

Cover all topics: Read the topics which could not be covered last time. It will help you attempt more questions in the examination, thus increasing the chances of improving your score.

Previous years’ questions: Solve previous year’s question papers as you will get to know which questions have been frequently asked repeatedly.Do not ignore the questions which you find difficult during preparation.

Speed and accuracy: Candidates should also work on their speed and accuracy to score good marks in JEE Main examination. While practising previous years’ questions, you should set a timer.

Source: Hindustan Times, 10/2/2020

Scholarships to study abroad: How to find and avail them

A scholarship can be either partial - covering part of the tuition fees - or complete, i.e covering the entire tuition fee. There are others, like the Eiffel Excellence Scholarship, which cover travel and living costs too.

When planning to study abroad, the first concern is “How to finance it?”

The tuition fee alone is a big sum. Compounded with travel, boarding and lodging logistics, the daily living costs are unaffordable for most of the students vying for a spot.

A scholarship, if you can get it, can resolve this concern for most lucky students. Of course, luck alone doesn’t have that much to do with it. You just need to research, a lot!

There’s a veritable jungle out there that can confuse you the moment you venture in. Suffice it to say there are a myriad different kinds of scholarships. They can be divided into many different categories:

A scholarship can be either partial - covering part of the tuition fees - or complete, i.e covering the entire tuition fee. There are others, like the Eiffel Excellence Scholarship, which cover travel and living costs too.

Many great universities offer need-blind scholarships to all its students. Places like MIT, for instance can finance up to 100% of your tuition and in fact over 90% of students do receive some kind of financial aid. Other good universities also allow you to reduce your expenses to the tune of 40-50% through various aid mechanisms and need-based scholarships. Often the successful recipients of financial aid are persistent individuals who are able to convincingly demonstrate their financial need through the first semester/ year of their education. All of this holds true for tier-1 universities and does not apply in entirety for lower rung universities. So, the bottom-line is simple enough - getting into a top-rung university is difficult. Once inside, usually you are able to find your way through.

Scholarships can be divided into many categories:

External scholarships

While you can find many university specific scholarships, and they are always available to you, the focus before coming to the school should be to find external scholarships (many of them from your own country of origin, for instance The J N Tata Scholarship, and many more like:

* Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation Scholarship

* Fulbright Nehru Research Scholarship

* Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Programme

* Stanford Reliance Dhirubhai Fellowships for Indian Students

* Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship

* American University Emerging Global Leader Scholarship

* Tata Scholarships for Cornell University

Scholarships are awarded on the basis of many different factors. Some of them are:

A need-based scholarship is exactly what it sounds like. It is awarded to students who establish a financial need. Students qualify for need-based scholarships based on their family’s income. It is of course conditional to the admission of the student, so grades and test scores need to be taken seriously. These scholarships need to be applied for separately along with supporting documents.

Merit based scholarships are financial awards that students receive based on their academic success in high school. Merit based scholarships are not only limited to a student’s grades but also consider other factors such as leadership roles, ACT and/or SAT scores, extracurricular activities, and school or community involvement. These are usually awarded by the school or college and do not require an extra application.

University specific scholarships are awarded by the university itself, and the application information and details are all available on the college website. These are financial awards made towards complete or part of the tuition fees.

Ethnicity specific scholarships are targeted towards increasing the diversity of a class. These also help build up communities that are at the weaker section of society even in their countries of origin. You can find these easily on the college website. Application to the scholarship is done at the same time as admission application.

There are also some scholarships based on race, ethnicity, for students who come from a background of extreme hardship, women, women of a certain race.

Another thing to remember is that the US however has limited options for scholarships. in general scholarships are more ‘available’ for universities on the East Coast of the US and not so much for the ‘West Coast.’ Only need blind college will offer a complete scholarship or one of the top eight HYPSM. What you can do is try to reduce the cost of your education by taking up a TAship (Teaching Assistant) and RAship (Research Assistant), but this is only relevant for Master’s courses.

How to find the right scholarship:

Finding the right scholarship takes a lot of research, and it is not always entirely successful. This however should not stop a student from making an effort. Two of the best places to start are the college website, and Indian scholarships. It does get easier with time as you learn the ropes and understand the process of applying for and writing essays for a scholarship selection.

(Author Abhishek Singhal is Co-Founder, UnivAdmitHelp. 

Source: Hindustan Times, 10/02/2020

VP Menon: An unsung hero of modern India

He left a rich legacy — expanding suffrage, pushing federalism, and, of course, integrating princely states

On a sunny spring day in 1914, a young Malayali walked into the Government of India’s summer offices in Gorton Castle (in the then Simla). Nobody knew who Vappala Pangunni Menon was then. He was all of 19-years-old, and he came with nothing but a letter recommending him for a typist’s job in the home department. Over the course of the next four decades, VP — as he would come to be known — would be at the frontline of India’s progress towards Independence. He was the principal typist of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. In 1924, he would join the Reforms Office, a branch of the government of India, which would shepherd India along the path to self-governance. He would remain with the Reforms Office until 1947.

Today, VP Menon is remembered for being Sardar Vallabhbahi Patel’s right-hand man, for assisting in the integration of the princely states into the Indian Union. But, between 1914-1951, VP’s contributions to modern India were both immense and immensely understated.

In 1930, a trip (his first overseas) as part of the secretariat to London for the First Round Table Conference brought home to VP the importance of the ongoing

suffragette movement. Five years later, when he was working on the electoral rolls for the upcoming provincial elections of 1937, VP would give women — including those whose marriages had been dissolved — the right to vote. He would also provide a space for the multitudes of India’s uneducated on the voters’ list, by providing symbols and coloured boxes on ballot papers and insisting that provincial governments lower their educational standards for the average voter.

His was the voice that ensured the inclusion of such diverse clauses as the enfranchisement of the residents of India’s numerous railway settlements, and the estimation of the representatives from urban and rural areas. He was in his mid-forties then, and alone, for the first time, at the helm of constitutional change in the country. It is a contribution that has got lost in the dryness of the technicalities of constitutional semantics, but it deserves to be richly highlighted.

This was just the beginning.

The exposure to debates around a prospective federal future for the country gave VP the idea that India would do well as a federation. He would, in fact, put forward three plans for the transfer of power from the Raj to an independent India — in 1936, in 1941, and in 1946. Each plan hinged on one concept: A unified, federal India could well be achieved if the Centre took defence, foreign affairs and communications from the princely states, and left all the other powers with the royal houses. It would mean no extreme humiliation for the princes, but it would allow the overall authority to be held by the Government of India. Two different Viceroys heard his plan — and each time, the plan was shelved. It would be June 1947 before the Menon Plan for Indian Independence would finally see the light of day.

The constant thwarting of his ideas never prevented VP from trying to save India from the Partition. He strongly believed in trying to get all the political stakeholders at the same table in order to stitch together a coalition. The last desperate stab at this came in 1945, when VP pushed the then viceroy, Lord Wavell, into calling, what would become known as the Simla Conference. The failure of the conference is generally attributed to the clash of the personalities and egos that sat around the table in the Viceregal Lodge in Simla. But it is not well-known that VP Menon was the man who not only laid out the blueprint of the conference but insisted that it was Wavell’s duty to try to gain a political consensus about the future of India.

In the summer of 1947, India’s last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, would give his Reforms Commissioner and Constitutional Advisor six hours to hammer out a plan that would mollify both the Congress and the Muslim League, and potentially change the map of South Asia. By nightfall, VP had chain-smoked his way through endless cartons of cigarettes, and did exactly that. He would remember thinking that it read “passably well”, but his main concern was his grammar.

Patel would turn to VP in 1947, insisting that only VP would do as his secretary in the newly-established Ministry of States. To Patel has gone the credit for the integration of India, yet it is VP Menon’s signature on every Instrument of Accession. He was an invaluable asset to the Sardar. His knowledge of India’s constitutional lore was both intimate and unparalleled. He deployed a unique mix of charm and ruthlessness when it came to the princes. The Raja of Sarila, watching VP at an assembly in Nowgong in 1948, was amazed at the power that this short, stocky man in his open-toed slippers and safari suit was capable of exuding.

In 1951, following the death of the Sardar, Vappala Pangunni Menon slipped into political and professional obscurity, where he remained until the end of his days in 1966. Today, it is only right that we rectify this.

Narayani Basu is the author of VP Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India. She is also Menon’s great-granddaughter

Source: Hindustan Times, 10/02/2020

Thinking of M K Gandhi

The assassination failed to kill Mohandas Gandhi. Here’s why: as a course instructor teaching Business Ethics to management students for over two decades, I have found Gandhi fitting in the curriculum even without explicit mention of the name in the syllabus. There was a time when Gandhian thought was a part of the course curriculum for the civil services. The Ahimsa Centre at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, US, has been actively pursuing Gandhian ideals ever since it was established in 2004. It is often said that Gandhi’s views are too idealistic to be practised. Nothing can be further from the truth. Gandhi was a practical idealist. And even if Gandhi’s ideas were too ideal and, hence, unrealisable, the point is that there is little sense in setting a wrong benchmark in the name of practicality. Gandhi was a votary of valuesbased leadership, and a practitioner too. Practicality and morality, then, can harmoniously go together. Be it politics, governance or business. Machiavellianism and Gandhism are two different approaches and both are possible. One has to believe. Realism may not necessarily be nonidealism. Gandhi epitomised the most desirable managerial quality that is widely talked about these days in management jargon as ethical leadership. It is not about idealism versus realism but idealism as realism, and it can provide answers to most problems that the world is facing today. Gandhi accomplished what he could by sheer dint of his moral courage. That is what we need today

Economic Times, 12/02/2020

Quote of the Day

February 11, 2020

“Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.”

‐ Margaret Mitchell

“मृत्यु और टैक्स और संतान! इन में से किसी के लिए भी कभी उचित वक़्त नहीं होता।”

‐ माग्रेट मिशेल