Evolution of Uttarakhand

Ancient History

The king of mountains Himalaya is said to consist of five segments i.e., Nepal Kurmanchal, Kedar, Kangda and Ruchir Kashmir. This Mid Himalayan region of Garhwal and Kumaon, which is commonly known as Uttarakhand today was called by the name KEDARKHAND and MANASKHAND in the Purans. According to the famous Historian Mr. Shiv Prasasd Dabral taking the word Uttarapad and khand from Kedarkhand formed the term Uttaranchal. This mountain region however is the same, which was once renowned in its snow-covered form during the Vedic era and sang the saga of glorious deeds of the kings, Saints and Ascetics of the time. It was referred to as Uttarpanchal by the compilers of the Upnishads, Uttarkaushal by Valmiki and Uttarkuru by Ved Vyasa who wrote the epic Mahabharata. It is the same place that was Uattarapatti for Panini and Kautilya; Kiratmandal for Kirats, Khashadesh for the Khas, Kartipur for Katayurs. It was Parvatkaran and Giryavali for the early historian and Uttaranchal or Uttarakhand of the present day politicians. The different parts of Uttarakhand have been referred to as asIlawarat, Brahmpur, Rudrahimalaya, Sapaldaksh, Shivalik, Kurmanchat Karajat Kamaugarh, Kamadesh, Kumaon, SarkarI and Garhwal over the past 3000 years. The western part of this region that comprises of 52 fortresses has been referred to as Garhwal over the past 500 years. Samprat, Chamoli, Pauri, Uttarkashi and Dehradun add to the pristine beauty of the Garhwal region. The eastern region comprising of Almora, Nainital and Pithoragarh districts together is known as the Kumaon region

The history of Uttaranchal State can be better understood through the history of Garhwal and Kumaon separately, because they maintained independent identity before the Gurkha invasion.

Garhwal

The Garhwal Himalayas have nurtured civilization from the wee hours of history. It appears to have been a favorite locale for the voluminous mythology of the Puranic period. The traditionai name of Garhwal was Uttarakhand and excavations have revealed that it formed part of the Mauryan Empire. It is also mentioned in the 7th-century travelogue of Huen Tsang. However, it is with Adi Shankaracharya that the name of Garhwal will always be hiked, for the great 8th-century spiritual reformer visited the remote, snow-laden heights of Garhwal, established a math Joshimath and resorted some of the most sacred shrines, including Badrinath and Kedarnath.

The history of Garhwal as one unified whole began in the 15th century, when king Ajai Pal merged the-52 separate principalities, each with its own garh or fortress. For 300 years, Garhwal remained one kingdom, with its capital at Srinagar (on the left bank of Alaknanda river). Then Pauri and Dehradun were perforce ceded to the Crown as payment for British help, rendered to the Garhwalis during the Gurkha invasion, in the early 19th century.

Kumaon

Humankind has been around in Kumaon for a very long time. Evidences of Stone Age settlements have been found in Kumaon, particularly the rock shelter at Lakhu Udyar. The paintings here date back to the Mesolithic period. The early medieval history of Kumaon is the history of the Katyuri dynasty. The Katyuri kings ruled from the seventh to the 11 th century, holding sway at the peak of their powers over large areas of Kumaon, Garhwal, and western Nepal.

The town of Baijnath near Almora was the capital of this dynasty and a center of the arts. Temple building flourished under the Katyuris and the main architectural innovation introduced by them was the replacement of bricks with stone. On a hilltop facing east (opposite Almora), is the temple of Katarmal. This 900-year-old sun temple was built during the declining years of the Katyuri dynasty. The intricately carved doors and panels have been removed to the National Museum in Delhi as a protective measure after the 10th-century idol of the presiding deity was stolen. After an interregnum of a couple of centuries, the Chands of Pithoragarh became the dominant dynasty. The Chand rulers built the magnificent temple complex at Jageshwar, with its cluster of a hundred and sixty-four temples, over a span of two centuries. Dedicated to Lord Shiva, the evocative carvings are complemented by the beautiful deodar forest around it.

Chipko Movement

The Chipko movement or Chipko Andolan is a socio-ecological movement that practised the Gandhian methods of satyagraha and non-violent resistance, through the act of hugging trees to protect them from being felled. The modern Chipko movement started in the early 1970s in the Garhwal Himalayas of Uttarakhand, with growing awareness towards rapid deforestation. The landmark event in this struggle took place on March 26, 1974, when a group of female peasants in Reni village, Hemwalghati, in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, India, acted to prevent the cutting of trees and reclaim their traditional forest rights that were threatened by the contractor system of the state Forest Department, and transpired hundreds of such grassroot level actions, throughout the region. By the 80s, the movement spread throughout India, and led to formulation of people sensitive forest policies and stopping of open felling of trees in regions as far reaching as Vindhyas and the Western Ghats.

Best Of Mir

In my previous two posts I have mentioned about the legendary "Shayar" Mir Taqi Mir sahab. Mir was a distinguished shayar and had a peculiar and immaculate style in his poetry. His poetry is so authentic that it reaches the core of your heart.

Here are two of his stupendous Ghazals.

Patta patta, boota boota, haal hamaaraa jaane hai,
Jaane na jaane gul hi na jaane, baagh to saaraa jaane hai.

Aage us mutkabbar ke ham Khuda Khuda kiya karte hain,
Kab maujud Khuda ko woh maghrur khud-aara jaane hai.

Aashiq saa to saada koi aur na hoga duniya mein,
Ji ke zian ko ishq mein uske apna waara jaane hai.

Chaaraa gari beemari-e-dil ki rasm-e-shahr-e-husn nahin,
Warna dilbar-e-naadaan bhi is dard kaa chaara jaane hai.

Mehr-o-wafa-o-lutaf-o-inait, ek se waqif in mein nahin,
Aur to sab kuchh tanz-o-kanaya, ramz-o-ishara jaane hai.

Aashiq to murdah hai hamesha ji uthta hai dekhe use,
Yaar ke aa jaane ko yakaayak umr do baara jaane hai.

Tashna-e-khun hai apna kitna, Mir bhi naadaan, talkhi-kash,
Damdaar aab-e-tegh ko uske aab-e-gawara jaane hai.

This Ghazal was used in the hindi feature film Ek Nazar featuring Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan with some modification in the words.
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Ibtadaae ishq hai rota hai kya,
Aage aage dekhiye hota hai kya.

Qafile mein subah ke ek shor hai,
Yaani ghaafil ham chale sota hai kya.

Sabz hoti hi nahin yeh sar zamin,
Tukhm-e-khwahish dil mein tu bota hai kya.

Yeh nishaan-e-ishq hain jaate nahin,
Daagh chhaati ke abas dhota hai kya.

Ghairat-e-Yousaf hai yeh waqt-e-aziz,
Mir isko raigaan khota hai kya.

Mir vs Mirza Ghalib

Mir Taqi Mir was often compared with the later day Urdu poet, Mirza Ghalib (Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan , pen-name Ghalib and Asad also known as Dabeer-ul-Mulk and Najm-ud-daulah) who was a great classical Urdu and Persian language poet of India.

Lovers of Urdu poetry often debate Meer's supremacy over Ghalib or vice versa. It may be noted that Ghalib himself acknowledged, through some of his couplets, that Meer was indeed a genius that deserved respect.

Here are two couplets by Mirza Ghalib on this matter.

Reekhta kay tumhi ustaad nahi ho Ghalib
Kehtay hain aglay zamanay may koi Meer bhi thaa.
(You are not the only master of Urdu,
GhalibThey say there used to be a Meer in the past)

Ghalib apna yeh aqeeda hai baqaul e Nasikh
Aap bey bahrah hai jo muataqid e Meer nahi.
(Ghalib! Its my belief in the words of Nasikh*,
"He that vows not on Meer, is himself unlearned!")

Mir Taqi Mir

Mir Taqi Mir was born at Agra in 1723. He spent his early childhood under the care and companionship of his father, whose constant emphasis on the importance of love and the value of continence and compassion in life went a long way in moulding the character of the poet, and this became the chief thematic strand of his poetry.

Mir is one of the immortals among Urdu poets. He is a perfect artist of Ghazal, which makes its peculiar appeal through compression, suggestion, imagery and musicality. He used to build his poetry on the foundations of his personal experience. His favourite theme is love - love unfulfilled - and his favourite manner is conversational. Mir lived at a time when Urdu poetry was yet at a formative stage - its language was getting reformed and purged of native crudities, and its texture was being enriched with borrowings from Persian imagery and idiom. Aided by his aesthetic instincts, Mir struck a fine balance between the old and the new, the indigenous and the imported elements. Knowing that Urdu is essentially an Indian language, he retained the best in native Hindi speech and leavened it with a sprinkling of Persian diction and phraseology, so as to create a poetic language at once simple, natural and elegant, acceptable alike to the elite and the common folk. Consequently he has developed a style which has been the envy of all succeeding poets...

It is a commonplace of criticism that Mir is a poet of pathos and melancholy moods. His pathos, it should be remembered, is compounded of personal and public causes. His life was a long struggle against unfavourable circumstances...

Mir was a prolific writier. His complete works, Kulliaat, consist of 6 dewans, containing 13,585 couplets comprising all kinds of poetic forms: ghazal, masnavi, qasida, rubai, mustezaad, satire, etc.

... He died in Lucknow on 20 September 1810.

Dhobi Ka Kutta, Na Ghar Ka Na Ghaat Ka

We all have heard this proverb "Dhobi ka kutta, na ghar ka na ghaat ka". There is a very interesting story behind the origination of this proverb.

This proverb was used by Mirza Saud who was a renowned Urdu poet, for Mirza Mazhar Jaan-e-Janaan's poetry as a scorn. Mirza Mazhar was a renowned poet of Persian. He later on did some stupendous and chromatic poetry in Urdu as well, however, initially he was not very comfortable in Urdu poetry.

His instructor advised him to start poetry in Urdu instead of Persian as the days of Persian poetry in India were numbered in his view. Mirza Mazhar's initial experiment in Urdu poetry was a disaster. The Urdu poets of his time did not take his arrival in their domain with joy. He was barraged by insult and one such poetic insult became proverbial:

"Mirza ka sher Faarasi aur Reekhta ke beech,
Sauda yakin jaaniye ke rora hai baat ka.
Al Garz iska haal yahi hai jo sach kahoon,
Kutta hai dhobi ka, ke na ghar ka hai na ghaat ka"

Reekhta=Urdu, Rora=Pebal, Stone.
Baat=Piece of iron used in weighing, Al Garz=In Short, It means.

Two frogs

A group of frogs was travelling through the woods, when two of them fell into a deep pit. When the other frogs saw how deep the pit was, they told the two frogs that they were as good as dead. The two frogs ignored the comments and tried to jump up out of the pit with all their might. The other frogs kept telling them to stop, and stay there as it was not going to help them in anyway. Finally, one of the frogs took heed to what the other frogs were saying and gave up. He fell down and died.The other frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Once again, the crowd of frogs yelled at him to stop taking the pain and just die. He jumped even harder and finally made it out. When he got out, the other frogs said, "Did you not hear us?" The frog explained to them that he was deaf. He thought they were encouraging him the entire time.

This story teaches two lessons:

1. There is power of life and death in the tongue. An encouraging word to someone who is down can lift them up and help them make it through the day.

2. A destructive word to someone who is down can be what it takes to kill them.Be careful of what you say. Speak life to those who cross your path. The power of words... it is sometimes hard to understand that an encouraging word can go such a long way. Anyone can speak words that tend to rob another of the spirit to continue in difficult times. Special is the individual who will take the time to encourage another.