Marthanda varma biography of mahatma gandhi
Time to write the violent history of Indian freedom movement, says author
BHUBANESWAR: A lot has been written on the non-violent history of India’s freedom struggle. The time has come to write about a definitive violent history on the freedom movement, said historian and award-winning author Hindol Sengupta on the concluding day of the Odisha Literary Festival, on Sunday.
Speaking on ‘The Art of Biography: Knowing the Limits’, he said there are many heroes in the freedom movement who have been left out. Sri Aurobindo was a strange combination of both violent and non-violent freedom struggle.
The author of ‘The Man Who Saved India’ and ‘Being Hindu’ said, it is rubbish that the British left India due to the salt movement by Mahatma Gandhi.
“These are lies we have been told in the name of history. The British were fatally weakened after the Second World War and realised that they cannot even keep their ships along Bombay coast. They in fact, preponed their exit and ran away,” he said.
Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma: The Maharajah of Travancore
The man still called “king” in Travancore, south India, found himself the centre of world attention in his nineties in June 2011 when the temple hoard of which he was guardian came to light.
The rubies, diamonds, 18ft gold chains, golden bows and arrows, gold umbrellas, coins, and diadems piled in six vaults under the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Trivandrum, Travancore’s capital, were estimated as being worth £26 billion.
Tussling lawyers suddenly surrounded the thin, stooped, simple-living Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma, a coir mat and car upholstery-business owner and sometime dweller in a modest house in Bangalore, whose family remember his “sparkling eyes” and happy doling-out of sweets.
The matter arose from a case brought in 2007 by a local lawyer on behalf of two devotees at the temple, who said that items including a jewelled ring and a Hindu deity’s flute carved from an elephant tusk had been pilfered. At the time security consisted of men armed with wooden sticks. The vaults, however, were said to be watched over by cobras, and a curse, it was believed, would hang over any who tried to get in. Tension rose when the uncle of the lawyer took ill and died.
Marthanda Varma distanced himself from the controversy: the dead man, he told a newspaper, “had a small tiff with somebody in the temple, and not with me.” His own ties to the temple had been established when he was 56 days old and had been placed on the temple floor as an offering to its incumbent god, the creator Vishnu. He was obliged thereafter to pray there every day, and for the rest of his life he adhered to this strict duty.
When the high court of the then communist-controlled Kerala state, which includes the once-princely state of Travancore, ruled that management of the hoard should transfer to the Kerala authorities, Marthanda Varma appealed to the Indian supreme court in Delhi, which commissioned an independent report, 1891 historical novel by C. V. Raman Pillai This article is about the historical novel in Malayalam. For other uses, see Marthanda Varma (disambiguation). Marthandavarma (Malayalam: മാർത്താണ്ഡവർമ്മ, Māṟttāṇḍavaṟmma[mɑːṟt̪t̪ɑːɳɖaʋaṟmma]) is a historical romancenovel by C. V. Raman Pillai published in 1891. Taking place between 1727 and 1732 (Kollavarsham 901–906), the story follows three protagonists (Ananthapadmanabhan, Subhadra, and Mangoikkal Kuruppu) as they try to protect Marthanda Varma's position as the heir to the throne of Venad from Padmanabhan Thambi (the son of Rajah Rama Varma) and the Ettu Veetil Pillamar, both of whom want to oust him from the throne. The novel includes allusions to the Indian subcontinent and Western, historical, cultural and literary traditions. The historical plot runs alongside the love story of Ananthapadmanabhan and Parukutty, Ananthapadmanabhan's chivalric actions, Parukutty's longing for her lover, and Zulaikha's unrequited love. The politics of Venad is shown through the council of Ettuveettil Pillas, the subsequent claim of the throne by Padmanabhan Thambi, the coup attempt, the patriotic conduct of Subhadra, and finally to her tragedy following the suppression of the revolt. The intertwined representation of history and romance is attained through classic style of narration, which includes vernacular languages for various characters, rhetorical embellishments, and a blend of dramatic and archaic style of language suitable to the historical setting of the novel. This novel is the first historical novel published in Malayalam language and in south India. The first edition, self published by the author in 1891, received positive to mixed reviews, but book sales did not produce significant revenue. The revised edition, published in 1911, was an enormous success and became a bestseller. The story of Travancore is continued in the later novels, Dharmaraja (1913) and Ramarajabahadur (191 Marthanda Varma could have been Kerala's Henry Ford but for family compulsions
A keen observer of business, he invested in well-known companies and also promoted some of his own. Travancore was the second wealthiest princely state after Nizam’s Hyderabad when it joined the Indian union. Marthanda Varma was very active in Kerala’s social and cultural circles. As the family head, he was also the hereditary custodian of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple, the famous Thiruvananthapuram shrine that caught world’s attention in 2011 after it was revealed that its underground vaults contained huge treasure. Controversies over the temple were probably the biggest worries in his life.
After studying Sanskrit and History in Kerala, Marthanda Varma left for the UK in the early 1950s to pursue his main interest, automobile engineering. He then joined Plymouth Company in the UK as an apprentice. According to historian MG Sashibhushan, it was his stint at Plymouth that groomed Marthanda Varma into an entrepreneur. “Uthradom Thirunal had a good trainer in Plymouth who told him upfront that he should not expect a VIP treatment in front of his coworkers”, Sashibhushan said.
He used to call Marthanda Varma as “Mr Varma” publicly. Though Marthanda Varma was slightly upset about this irreverence, his interest in automobile engineering made him to continue with the apprenticeship without any complaints. “His plan was to come back to Kerala and start an automobile manufacturing company,” Sashibhushan said. But he had to change his plans as the family inste Marthandavarma (novel)