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Showing posts from December, 2020

The Economic History of the Marathas Part III - The Revenue Differences of EIC and the Marathas

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Maratha Empire in 1759 (wikimedia commons) This is an overdue part perhaps for years on a stretch. However, it is time to write this part, precisely because it is important to understand why the Marathas eventually lost out to the British in maintaining their grip on their empire as a single federal entity and instead broke down into individual states under the East India Company (EIC) dominion that maintained tenuous relationship with the Maratha empire vestiges at best. The key to understanding precisely why the East India Company had the surplus revenue and not the Marathas, something that turned out to be a major influencing factor at the time in changing the power equation of the time. The story shall not necessarily be chronological, and I do not intend to tell dates, but I will tell the story as it emerges, and would request the three readers bold enough to read this blog post to bear with the story and figure out the dates and understand the chronology and convergence that toge

Indic Nationalism, and the Role of Vedanta in India’s Freedom Struggle

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The Flag of India as Adopted in 1906 Congress Session Being the proponent of the theory that gave direction to the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, it is often forgotten that nationalism remains a key pillar to the theory of integral humanism. However, the problem with the usage of the term nationalism emanates in modern academia from the manner in which the word itself gets defined. Having its roots in the European nation-state creative processes, the concept of a religion, a language or an ethnicity is the key driver for the understanding of nationalism in the Euro-centric theorization. This is a rather parochial understanding from the Eastern perspectives of the conceptualization of a nation state. Unlike the Western model of nationalism, there is a rootedness in the approaches of the eastern civilizations in general that make the idea distinct. Cultural identity is the actual marker of this civilizational approach, and the individual as part of society rather than an individual or a society