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Wednesday, 1 May 2013

SIKH EMPIRE

Sikh Empire

History

Sikh Armour and weapons
Ranjit Singh was crowned on 12 April 1801 (to coincide with Baisakhi). Sahib Singh Bedi, a descendant of Guru Nanak Dev, conducted the coronation. Gujranwala served as his capital from 1799. In 1802 he shifted his capital to Lahore & Amritsar. Ranjit Singh rose to power in a very short period, from a leader of a single Sikh misl to finally becoming the Maharaja (Emperor) of Punjab.
There was strong collaboration in defense against foreign incursions such as those initiated by Ahmed Shah Abdali and Nadir Shah. The city of Amritsar was attacked numerous times. Yet the time is remembered by Sikh historians as the "Heroic Century". This is mainly to describe the rise of Sikhs to political power against large odds. The circumstances were hostile religious environment against Sikhs, a tiny Sikh population compared to other religious and political powers, which were much larger in the region than the Sikhs.

Before the Empire

Exterior of Panja Sahib Gurdwara in Hasan Abdal.
The period from 1716 to 1799 was a highly turbulent time politically and militarily in the Punjab. This was caused by the overall decline of the Mughal Empire. This left a power vacuum that was eventually filled by the Sikhs in the late 18th century, after fighting off local Mughal remnants and allied Rajput leaders, Afghans, and occasionally hostile Punjabi Muslims who sided with other Muslim forces. Sikh warlords eventually formed their own independent Sikh administrative regions (Misls), which were united in large part by Ranjit Singh.

Formation

Portrait of Maharaja Ranjit Singh
The Battle of Multan, 1818
The Sikh Empire (from 1801–1849) was formed on the foundations of the Punjabi Army by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The Empire extended from Khyber Pass in the west, to Kashmir in the north, to Sindh in the south, and Tibet in the east. The main geographical footprint of the empire was the Punjab. The religious demography of the Sikh Empire was Muslim (80%), Sikh (10%), Hindu (10%),.[14]
The foundations of the Sikh Empire, during the Punjab Army, could be defined as early as 1707, starting from the death of Aurangzeb and the downfall of the Mughal Empire. The fall of the Mughal Empire provided opportunities for the army, known as the Dal Khalsa, to lead expeditions against the Mughals and Afghans. This led to a growth of the army, which was split into different Punjabi Armies and then semi-independent misls. Each of these component armies were known as a misl, each controlling different areas and cities. However, in the period from 1762-1799 Sikh rulers of their misls appeared to be coming into their own. The formal start of the Sikh Empire began with the disbandment of the Punjab Army by the time of Coronation of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1801, creating the one unified political Empire. All the misldars who were affiliated with the Army were nobility with usually long and prestigious family histories in Punjab's history.

End of Empire

Map showing expansion of Sikh empire from 1765 to 1805
After Maharaja Ranjit Singh's death in 1839, the empire was severely weakened by internal divisions and political mismanagement. This opportunity was used by the British Empire to launch the First Anglo-Sikh War. The Battle of Ferozeshah in 1845 marked many turning points, the British encountered the Punjabi Army, opening with a gun-duel in which the Sikhs "had the better of the British artillery". But as the British made advancements, Europeans in their army were especially targeted, as the Sikhs believed if the army "became demoralised, the backbone of the enemy's position would be broken". The fighting continued throughout the night earning the nickname "night of terrors". The British position "grew graver as the night wore on", and "suffered terrible casualties with every single member of the Governor General's staff either killed or wounded".
British General Sire James Hope Grant recorded: "Truly the night was one of gloom and forbidding and perhaps never in the annals of warfare has a British Army on such a large scale been nearer to a defeat which would have involved annihilation" The Punjabi ended up recovering their camp, and the British were exhausted. Lord Hardinge sent his son to Mudki with a sword from his Napoleonic campaigns. A note in Robert Needham Cust's diary revealed that the "British generals decided to lay down arms: News came from the Governor General that our attack of yesterday had failed, that affairs were disparate, all state papers were to be destroyed, and that if the morning attack failed all would be over, this was kept secret by Mr.Currie and we were considering measures to make an unconditional surrender to save the wounded...".
However, a series of events of the Sikhs being betrayed by some prominent leaders in the army led to its downfall. Maharaja Gulab Singh and Dhian Singh, were Hindu Dogras from Jammu, and top Generals of the army. Tej Singh and Lal Singh were secretly allied to the British. They supplied important war plans of the Army, and provided the British with updated vital intelligence on the Army dealings, which ended up changing the scope of the war and benefiting the British positions.
The Punjab Empire was finally dissolved after a series of wars with the British at the end of the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1849 into separate princely states, and the British province of Punjab that where granted a statehood, and eventually a lieutenant governorship stationed in Lahore as a direct representative of the Royal Crown in London

SIKHISM HISTORY

The history of Sikhism is closely associated with the history of Punjab and the socio-political situation in medieval India. Sikh distinction was further enhanced by the establishment of the Khalsa(ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ), by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699. Sikhism was created byGuru Nanak Dev, a religious leader and a social reformer during the fifteenth century in the Punjab region. The religious practice was formalized by Guru Gobind Singh on 30 March 1699. The latter baptised five persons from different social backgrounds to formKhalsa. The first five, Pure Ones, then baptized Gobind Singh into the Khalsa fold. This gives the Khalsa, as an organized grouping, a religious history of around 400 years.
Generally Sikhism has had amicable relations with other religions. However, during the Mughal rule of India (1556–1707), the emerging religion had strained relation with the ruling Mughals. Prominent Sikh Gurus were martyred by Mughals for opposing some Mughal emperors' persecution of Sikhs and Hindus. Subsequently, Sikhismmilitarized to oppose Mughal hegemony. The emergence of the Sikh Confederacy under the misls and Sikh Empire under reign of the Maharajah Ranjit Singh was characterized by religious tolerance andpluralism with Christians, Muslims and Hindus in positions of power. The establishment of the Sikh Empire is commonly considered the zenith of Sikhism at political level, during this time the Sikh Empirecame to include KashmirLadakh, and PeshawarHari Singh Nalwa, the Commander-in-chief of the Sikh army along the North West Frontier, took the boundary of the Sikh Empire to the very mouth of the Khyber Pass. The Empire's secular administration integrated innovative military, economic and governmental reforms.
The months leading up to the partition of India in 1947, saw heavy conflict in the Punjab between Sikh and Muslims, which saw the effective religious migration of Punjabi Sikhs and Hindus from West Punjab which mirrored a similar religious migration of Punjabi Muslims in East Punjab.

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HISTORY OF INDIA

The history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from c. 3300 to 1300 BCE in present-day Pakistan and northwest India, was the first major civilization in South Asia. A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture developed in the Mature Harappan period, from 2600 to 1900 BCE. This Bronze Age civilization collapsed before the end of the second millennium BCE and was followed by the Iron Age Vedic Civilization, which extended over much of the Indo-Gangetic plain and which witnessed the rise of major polities known as the Mahajanapadas. In one of these kingdoms, Magadha, Mahavira and Gautama Buddha were born in the 6th or 5th century BCE and propagated their śramanic philosophies.

Most of the subcontinent was conquered by the Maurya Empire during the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE. It became fragmented, with various parts ruled by numerous Middle kingdoms for the next 1,500 years. This is known as the classical period of Indian history, during which time India has sometimes been estimated to have had the largest economy of the ancient and medieval world, with its huge population generating between one fourth and one third of the world's income up to the 18th century. Much of northern and central India was united in the 4th century CE, and remained so for two centuries, under the Gupta Empire. This period, witnessing a Hindu religious and intellectual resurgence, is known as the "Golden Age of India". From this time, and for several centuries afterwards, southern India, under the rule of the Chalukyas, Cholas, Pallavas, and Pandyas, experienced its own golden age. During this period, aspects of Indian civilization, administration, culture, and religion (Hinduism and Buddhism) spread to much of Asia.

Kingdoms in southern India had maritime business links with the Roman Empire from around 77 CE. Muslim rule in the subcontinent began in 8th century CE when the Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh and Multan in southern Punjab in modern day Pakistan, setting the stage for several successive invasions from Central Asia between the 10th and 15th centuries CE, leading to the formation of Muslim empires in the Indian subcontinent such as the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire. Mughal rule came from Central Asia to cover most of the northern parts of the subcontinent. Mughal rulers introduced Central Asian art and architecture to India. In addition to the Mughals and various Rajput kingdoms, several independent Hindu states, such as the Vijayanagara Empire, the Maratha Empire, Eastern Ganga Empire and the Ahom Kingdom, flourished contemporaneously in southern, western, eastern and northeastern India respectively. The Mughal Empire suffered a gradual decline in the early 18th century, which provided opportunities for the Afghans, Balochis, Sikhs, and Marathas to exercise control over large areas in the northwest of the subcontinent until the British East India Company gained ascendancy over South Asia.

Beginning in the mid-18th century and over the next century, large areas of India were annexed by the British East India Company. Dissatisfaction with Company rule led to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, after which the British provinces of India were directly administered by the British Crown and witnessed a period of both rapid development of infrastructure and economic decline. During the first half of the 20th century, a nationwide struggle for independence was launched by the Indian National Congress and later joined by the Muslim League. The subcontinent gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1947, after the British provinces were partitioned into the dominions of India and Pakistan and the princely states all acceded to one of the new states.

Tuesday, 30 April 2013

SUNSET

Time in India when I take this picture is 6:27pm.

HEAD OF GOOGLE IN INDIA

Rajan Anandan

Rajan Anandan is a Sri Lankan who is currently the Head of Google India. He was earlier the Managing Director of Microsoft's Sales Marketing and Services business in India. He took this up role in August 2008. Before this role, he used to be the Managing Director of Dell India. He led Dell India from 2006 to 2008. Prior to Dell and Microsoft, Rajan worked for McKinsey & Company in USA, where he was a partner. Rajan is of Sri Lankan Tamil descent[citation needed], and is the son of former Guinness World Records holder V.S. Kumar Anandan. Rajan is also one of the investors and advisers at Capillary Technologies. He is also on the Advisory Board of InnovizeTech and 24/7 Techies.

INDIAN ARMY DURING "WORLD WAR"

1.3 million Indian soldiers served in World War I (1914–1918) for the Allies, after the United Kingdom made vague promises of self-governance to the Indian National Congress in return for its support. Britain reneged on its promises after the war, following which the Indian Independence movement gained strength. 74,187 Indian troops were killed or missing in action in the war.

The "Indianisation" of the British Indian Army began with the formation of the Prince of Wales Royal Indian Military College at Dehradun in March 1912 with the purpose of providing education to the scions of aristocratic and well to do Indian families and to prepare selected Indian boys for admission into the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Indian officers given a King's commission after passing out were posted to one of the eight units selected for Indianisation. Political pressure due to the slow pace of Indianisation, just 69 officers being commissioned between 1918 and 1932, led to the formation of the Indian Military Academy in 1932 and greater numbers of officers of Indian origin being commissioned.

In World War II Indian soldiers fought for the Allies. In 1939, British officials had no plan for expansion and training of Indian forces, which comprised about 130,000 men (in addition there were 44,000 men in British units in India in 1939.) Their mission was internal security and defence against a possible Russian threat through Afghanistan. As the war progressed, the size and role of the Indian Army expanded dramatically, and troops were sent to battle fronts as soon as possible. The most serious problem was lack of equipment.

In the African and Middle-Eastern Campaigns, captured Indian troops were given a choice to join the German Army to eventually "liberate" India from Great Britain instead of being sent to POW camps. Those along with Indian students who were in Germany when the war broke out made what was called the Free India Legion. They were originally intended as pathfinders for German forces in Asia but they soon were sent to help guard the Atlantic Wall. Few who were part of the Free India Legion ever saw any combat and very few were ever stationed outside of Europe. At its height the Free India Legion had over 3,000 troops in its ranks.      Indian units served in Burma, where in 1944–45 five Indian divisions were engaged along with one British and three African divisions. Even larger numbers operated in the Middle East. Some 87,000 Indian soldiers died in the war.

Elements of British Indian army played important part in Indian freedom movement.In 1915 Singapore Mutiny and in WW2,thousands of British Indian army soldiers join and fought against British,most important was Indian National Army,led by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Rash Bihari Bose.With the fall of Singapore in 1942, about 40,000 Indian soldiers were captured. They were given a choice and over 30,000 joined the Indian National Army. Those who refused became POWs and were mostly shipped to New Guinea. It became Indian National Army,after initial success it was defeated with Japanese but it had huge impact on Indian freedom movement.Similar organisations were also made in Germany and Japan. In 1946 Indian sailors revolted against British resulted in 1946 British Indian Navy mutiny.

Post independence
Upon independence and the subsequent Partition of India in 1947, four of the ten Gurkha regiments were transferred to the British Army. The rest of the British Indian Army was divided between the newly created nations of Republic of India and Republic of Pakistan. The Punjab Boundary Force, which had been formed to help police the Punjab during the partition period, was disbanded, and Headquarters Delhi and East Punjab Command was formed to administer the area.

A Sikh soldier with the flag of Nazi Germany after German surrender during World War II
In the 20th century, the Indian Army was a crucial adjunct to the British forces in both the World Wars.

INDIAN ARMY

The Indian Army (IA, Hindi:भारतीय थलसेना, Bhāratīya Thalasēnā) is the land based branch and the largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Commander-in-Chief of the Army. The Chief of Army Staff (COAS), a General, is a four star commander and commands the army. There is typically never more than one serving general at any given time in the Army. Two officers have been conferred the rank of field marshal, a 5-star rank and the officer serves as the ceremonial chief.

Its primary mission is to ensure the national security and defence of the Republic of India from external aggression and threats, and maintaining peace and security within its borders. It also conducts humanitarian rescue operations during natural calamities and other disturbances. As a major component of national power, alongside the Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force, the roles of the Indian Army are as follows; Primary, preserve national interests and safeguard sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity of India against any external threats by deterrence or by waging war. Secondary, assist Government agencies to cope with 'proxy war' and other internal threats and provide aid to civil authority when requisitioned for the purpose." The army has been involved in four wars with neighbouring Pakistan and one with China. Other major operations undertaken by the army include Operation Vijay, Operation Meghdoot and Operation Cactus. Apart from conflicts, the army has also been an active participant in numerous United Nations peacekeeping missions.

HISTORY OF GOOGLE

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California.

While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships between websites. They called this new technology PageRank; it determined a website's relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site.

A small search engine called "RankDex" from IDD Information Services designed by Robin Li was, since 1996, already exploring a similar strategy for site-scoring and page ranking. The technology in RankDex would be patented and used later when Li founded Baidu in China.

Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word "googol", the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information. Originally, Google ran under Stanford University's website, with the domains google.stanford.edu and z.stanford.edu.

The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. It was based in a friend's (Susan Wojcicki) garage in Menlo Park, California. Craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee.

In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to Google surpassed one billion for the first time, an 8.4 percent increase from May 2010 (931 million). In January 2013, Google announced it had earned $50 billion in annual revenue for the year of 2012. This marked the first time the company had reached this feat, topping their 2011 total of $38 billion.

Nikesh Arora is Google's highest-paid employee

 

(Google’s chief…)
Google's chief business officer Nikesh Arora received $46.7 million in total compensation in 2012, more than double from a year earlier, becoming the company's highest-paid executive, a regulatory filing shows.
Chief financial officer Patrick Pichette was next highest, receiving $38.7 million in 2012, also more than doubling from a year earlier, according to the filing. The company awarded David Drummond, chief legal officer, $31.3 million during the year, a 71% boost from 2011.
Google's net income gained 10% to $10.7 billion as sales increased 32% to $50.2 billion last year. The compensation increase was especially high in 2012 after the company last year started to hand out equity awards only in even-numbered years, according to the filing.
"Granting less frequently allows us to incorporate performance over a longer time period into our equity decisions," Californiabased Google said in the filing . "We expect that future equity awards will also have higher at-grant target values than awards made under our pre-2012 annual granting practices."
Chairman Eric Schmidt received total compensation of $7.6 million last year, down from $101 million in 2011, when his pay was boosted by stock and options valued at $93.8 million . Chief executive Larry Page and co-founder Sergey Brin each received a $1 salary last year, unchanged from 2011. Page and Brin rank 25th and 26th, respectively , on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.