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India is a country of many diversities.We speak different languages, have various types of food, celebrate different festivals, practise different religions. But actually, if you think about it, we do many things that are similar except that we do them in different ways. How do we explain Diversity? A little more than two hundred years ago or long before the train,aeroplane, bus or car became a part of our lives, people travelled from one part of the world to another, in ships,on horses, on camels or on foot.Often, they went in search of new lands, or new places to settle in, or for people to trade with. And because it took so long to travel, once they got to a place, people stayed there, often for a long time. Many others left their homes because there were famines and drought and they could not get enough to eat. Some went in search of work while others left because there was a war.Sometimes, as they began to make their homes in new places, people began to change a little and at othe...

On the morning of 14 July 1789, the city of Paris was in a state of alarm. The king had commanded troops to move into the city. Rumours spread that he would soon order the army to open fire upon the citizens. Some 7,000 men and women gathered in front of the town hall and decided to form a peoples. militia. They broke into a number of government buildings in search of arms. Finally, a group of several hundred people marched towards the eastern part of the city and stormed the fortress-prison, the Bastille, where they hoped to find hoarded ammunition. In the armed fight that followed, the commander of the Bastille was killed and the prisoners released . though there were only seven of them. Yet the Bastille was hated by all, because it stood for the despotic power of the king. The fortress was demolished and its stone fragments were sold in the markets to all those who wished to keep a souvenir of its destruction. The days that followed saw more rioting both in Paris and the countryside...

The Age of Social Change The powerful ideas of freedom and equality that circulated in Europe after the French Revolution. The French Revolution opened up the possibility of creating a dramatic change in the way in which society was structured. The eighteenth century society was broadly divided into estates and orders and it was the aristocracy and church which controlled economic and social power. Suddenly, after the revolution, it seemed possible to change this. In many parts of the world including Europe and Asia, new ideas about individual rights and who controlled social power began to be discussed. In India, Raja Rammohan Roy and Derozio talked of the significance of the French Revolution, and many others debated the ideas of post-revolutionary Europe. The developments in the colonies, in turn, reshaped these ideas of societal change. Not everyone in Europe, however, wanted a complete transformation of society. Responses varied from those who accepted that some change was necessa...

The Coming of Modern Agriculture in England On 1 June 1830, a farmer in the north-west of England found his barn and haystack reduced to ashes by a fire that started at night. In the months that followed, cases of such fire were reported from numerous districts. At times only the rick was burnt, at other times the entire farmhouse.Then on the night of 28 August 1830, a threshing machine of a farmer was destroyed by labourers in East Kent in England. In the subsequent two years, riots spread over southern England and about 387 threshing machines were broken. Through this period, farmers received threatening letters urging them to stop using machines that deprived workmen of their livelihood. Most of these letters were signed in the name of Captain Swing. Alarmed landlords feared attacks by armed bands at night, and many destroyed their own machines. Government action was severe. Those suspected of rioting were rounded up 1, 976 prisoners were tried, nine men were hanged, 505 transported...

Nomads pastoralists are people who do not live in one place but move from one area to another to earn their living. In many parts of India we can see nomadic pastoralists on the move with their herds of goats and sheep, or camels and cattle. Pastoral Nomads and their Movements In the Mountains Even today the Gujjar Bakarwals of Jammu and Kashmir are great herders of goat and sheep. Many of them migrated to this region in the nineteenth century in search of pastures for their animals. Gradually, over the decades, they established themselves in the area, and moved annually between their summer and winter grazing grounds. In winter, when the high mountains were covered with snow, they lived with their herds in the low hills of the Siwalik range. The dry scrub forests here provided pasture for their herds. By the end of April they began their northern march for their summer grazing grounds. Several households came together for this journey, forming what is known as a kafila . They crossed ...

In   the spring of 1945, a little eleven-year-old German boy called Helmuth was lying in bed when he overheard his parents discussing something in serious tones. His father, a prominent physician, deliberated with his wife whether the time had come to kill the entire family, or if he should commit suicide alone. His father spoke about his fear of revenge, saying. Now the Allies will do to us what we did to the crippled and Jews.. The next day, he took Helmuth to the woods, where they spent their last happy time together, singing old children.s songs. Later, Helmuth.s father shot himself in his office. Helmuth remembers that he saw his father.s bloody uniform being burnt in the family fireplace. So traumatised was he by what he had overheard and what had happened, that he reacted by refusing to eat at home for the following nine years! He was afraid that his mother might poison him. Although Helmuth may not have realised all that it meant, his father had been a Nazi and a supporter of A...

Forest Society and Colonialism   The paper in the book you are reading, desks and tables, doors and windows, the dyes that colour your clothes, spices in your food, the cellophane wrapper of your toffee, tendu  leaf in bidis , gum, honey, coffee, tea and rubber. Do not miss out the oil in chocolates, which comes from sal seeds, the tannin used to convert skins and hides into leather, or the herbs and roots used for medicinal purposes. Forests also provide bamboo, wood for fuel, grass, charcoal, packaging, fruits, flowers, animals, birds and many other things. In the Amazon forests or in the Western Ghats, it is possible to find as many as 500 different plant species in one forest patch. A lot of this diversity is fast disappearing. Between 1700 and 1995, the period of industrialisation, 13.9 million sq km of forest or 9.3 per cent of the world.s total area was cleared for industrial uses, cultivation, pastures and fuelwood. Deforestation The disappearance of forests is referred to as d...

History is not just about the dramatic events in the world. It is equally about the small things in our lives. Everything around us has a history . the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the music we hear, the medicines we use, the literature we read, the games we play. All these have evolved over time. Since we relate to them in our daily lives, their history escapes us. We never pause to think what things were like a century ago; or how people in different societies see these everyday things . food and clothing for instance . differently. In India has captured the imagination of the nation for some decades. News of cricket today hits the headline of newspapers. Cricket matches are organised to establish friendship between nations and cricketers are seen as ambassadors of the country. The game has, in fact, come to represent the unity of India. At one time, a century and half ago, cricket was an English game. It had been invented in England and became intimately linked to the culture o...

It is easy to forget that there is a history to the clothes we wear. All societies observe certain rules, some of them quite strict, about the way in which men, women and children should dress, or how different social classes and groups should present themselves. These norms come to define the identity of people, the way they see themselves, the way they want others to see them. They shape our notions of grace and beauty, ideas of modesty and shame. As times change and societies are transformed, these notions also alter. Modifications in clothing come to reflect these changes. The emergence of the modern world is marked by dramatic changes in clothing. The histories of clothing in the modern period, that is in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Before the age of democratic revolutions and the development of capitalist markets in eighteenth-century Europe, most people dressed according to their regional codes, and were limited by the types of clothes and the cost of materials that w...

The earth has two types of motions,namely rotation and revolution. Rotation is the movement of the earth on its axis. The movement of the earth around the sun in a fixed path or orbit is called Revolution. The axis of the earth which is an imaginary line,makes an angle of 66_° with its orbital plane . The plane formed by the orbit is known as the orbital plane . The earth receives light from the sun. Due to the spherical shape of the earth, only half of it gets light from the sun at a time . The portion facing the sun experiences day while the other half away from the sun experiences night. The circle that divides the day from night on the globe is called the circle of illumination . This circle does not coincide with the axis. The earth takes about 24 hours to complete one rotation around its axis.The period of rotation is known as the earth day . This is the daily motion of the earth. What would happen if the earth did not rotate ? The portion of the earth facing the sun would always...

A Government Order On August 13, 1990, the Government of India issued an Order. It was called an Office  emorandum .Like all government orders, it had a number and is known by that: O. M. No. 36012/31/90-Est (SCT), dated 13.8.1990. The Joint Secretary, an officer in the Department of Personnel and Training in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, signed the Order. It was quite short, barely one page. It looked like any ordinary circular or notice that you may have seen in school. The government issues hundreds of orders every day on different matters. But this one was very important and became a source of controversy for several years. Let us see how the decision was taken and what happened later. This Order announced a major policy decision. It said that 27 per cent of the vacancies in civil posts and services under the Government of India are reserved for the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC). SEBC is another name for all those people who belong ...

Why define democracy? The other day you quoted Abraham Lincoln to us: “Democracy is government of the people, by the people and for the people”. We in Meghalaya always ruled ourselves. That is accepted by everyone.I too find this definition very beautiful. But we don’t know if this is the best way of defining unless we think about it ourselves. We must not accept something just because it is famous, just because everyone accepts it. The word democracy comes from a Greek word ‘Demokratia’. In Greek ‘demos’ means people and ‘kratia’ means rule. So democracy is rule by the people. This is the correct meaning. I would just say that this does not always work. A word does not remain tied to its origin. Just think of computers. Originally they were used for computing, that is to say calculating, very difficult mathematical sums. These were very powerful calculators. But nowadays very few people use computers for computing sums. They use it for writing, for designing, for listening to music an...