From Declaration to Dawn_ The Road to India's Independence, February–August 1947. A Scholarly Historical Study : By Dr. Rahul Sadshiv Kharat Abstract This article traces, in scholarly detail, the six-and-a-half-month passage of British India from imperial subjecthood to the sovereign dominion status attained at midnight on 15 August 1947. Beginning with Prime Minister Clement Attlee's declaration of 20 February 1947 fixing a terminal date for the transfer of power, the study follows Lord Louis Mountbatten's viceroyalty, the 3rd June 1947 Partition Plan, the passage of the Indian Independence Act through the British Parliament, the working of the Radcliffe Boundary Commission, and the intricate diplomatic and administrative labour that culminated in the birth of two dominions, India and Pakistan. Drawing on the recorded statements of Attlee, Mountbatten, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Mahatma Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel and others, the article situates the well-known...
The Rise and Fall of the Sena Dynasty of Bengal: A Study in Medieval Indian Statecraft, Religion, and Culture
The Rise and Fall of the Sena Dynasty of Bengal: A Study in Medieval Indian Statecraft, Religion, and Culture – By Dr. Rahul S. Kharat Introduction Among the regional dynasties that shaped the political and cultural contours of early medieval eastern India, the Sena dynasty of Bengal occupies a place of singular importance. Rising in the last quarter of the eleventh century from the status of a minor feudatory house in the Radha region of western Bengal, the Senas grew within three generations into the paramount power of the lower Gangetic delta, supplanting the venerable Pala empire that had dominated Bengal and Bihar for nearly four centuries. For roughly a hundred and thirty years — from the closing decades of the eleventh century to the early decades of the thirteenth — the Senas presided over a Bengal that was politically unified, administratively reorganised, and culturally resplendent, before collapsing with startling suddenness before the cavalry of Turkish invaders f...