We are planning to visit the Shakti Peethas in #HimachalPradesh and then a short, relaxing, laid back stay somewhere in the mountains!
While exploring, I came across this beautiful place McLeod Ganj.
As always, I got distracted and started researching history of this name -
It is named after Sir Donald Freill McLeod who fell in love with this place. Ganj means neighborhood in Farsi.
More about McLeod: He was such a great Christian that a native gentleman gave him a “compliment” that “If all Christians were like Sir Donald McLeod, there would be no
Hindus or Mahommedans.”
He devoted his life to civilize the heathens of India, who were in idolatrous darkness!
He understood the importance of India to the English with her great wealth, and created awareness of the need of increasing missionary activities in India so that it is possible for a handful ppl to rule India, whose ppl can do little by themselves.
He ensured that the Government does not depart from its secular character.
Grants of money in aid of “secular education” carried in schools established and conducted by Christian missionaries, might be made by Govt without any risks of giving rise to “evils”.
While he encouraged mingling with the natives and educating them in the robust mental habits, and imbued with enlightened views of the West, which inevitably they will imbibe, he alluded to allowing but little, if any, real share in management of their own social and municipal
affairs, which they feel is a great indignity and injustice. But this was a blessing to them as they could do very little by themselves.
Point is - I still haven’t decided where to vacation in Himachal because I read this horrible person’s biography after whom we still have… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Another name we should change in Himachal is Dalhousie!
In this book, the author Rajnikant Puranik lists Nehru’s blunders.
Following are some of them.
Read the whole 🧵
1/ 1947–49: Nehru made Kashmir a disputed international issue instead of closing it firmly as an internal sovereign matter.
He accepted delay, ambiguity, UN involvement, and then ceasefire before full recovery.
Point: accession should have meant final integration.
Consequence: PoK, prolonged dispute, global interference. 🇮🇳
2/ 1949–50: Nehru accepted a special constitutional arrangement for J&K.
This later became Article 370/35A type exceptionalism instead of full national integration.
Point: instead of one constitutional framework for Bharat, Kashmir was treated differently.
1000 years ago, India ruled the seas, mastered water management, and built an empire that thrived on trade, agriculture & irrigation.
Today, we fall for North-South, language, and political divides, while our ancestors built systems that still function today.
A forgotten history of greatness! 🧵
1️⃣ Ancient Indians predicted rainfall with precision!
The Brihat Samhita (6th CE) by Varahamihira had 10 detailed chapters on meteorology, covering:
-Garbhalakshanam – The formation of clouds & their link to rainfall.
-The nature of rainwater – Was it fresh, acidic, or astringent?
-Seasonal monsoon patterns – Predicting floods & droughts.
This wasn’t mere observation—it was a structured scientific approach to meteorology, at that time before modern climate science!
While the world struggled with unpredictable weather, India had a system to forecast rains & protect agriculture.
2️⃣ Chanakya recorded El Niño 2300 years ago!
In Arthashastra (300 BCE), he observed:
-Venus appears in the eastern sky for 8 months, disappears briefly, then reappears in the western sky for another 8 months.
-This 19-month cycle aligns with El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a phenomenon linked to global monsoons!
The West ‘discovered’ El Niño in the 20th century. Chanakya had already linked Venus’s position to monsoons 2300 years ago!
This wasn’t a guess, Arthashastra documented cycles of drought & monsoon failures based on planetary positions.
1. 364 Against Justice - The Day Democracy Wept
364 votes. Against investigating child rape scandals. Not against funding. Not against policy. Against looking. When a parliament votes to keep its eyes shut over violated children, it has not just failed its citizens, it has become the instrument of their harm. Write that number down. Remember it. Democracy was buried in that chamber.
2. The Mother Who Cannot Sleep
She checks on her daughter at 2am. Then again at 4am. Not because her daughter is sick, because she has read what happened to girls just like her, in towns just like hers. The scandal didn't just break those families. It broke the idea of safety for every parent in that country. Fear is now their permanent address.
3. The Child Who Learned to Disappear
She stopped laughing first. Then stopped talking. Then stopped going outside. Survivors of institutional betrayal carry a wound that isn't just about what happened, it's about who looked away. The police who dismissed them. The officials who filed nothing. The parliament that voted to forget. The system itself became part of the trauma.
What our History Books taught us: 1857 ‘mutiny’ happened because of some upset sepoys whose religion was defiled due to use of cartridges greased with Cow blood and pig fat. Then just randomly some others joined in.
What History Books
should have Taught us: The seeds of discontent were already sown in the hearts of Bharatiyas (read Dalhousie and Salt Tax tweets). However, it was important that it was planned properly such that a simultaneous uprising took place from all sides for the
War of Independence to be concluded successfully. It started in London where Azimullah Khan (representative of Nana Sahib, to contest refusal of claim to the Peshwa gadi by the British due to sudden unacceptability of the Hindu Law of
I picked up Termites by @abhijitjoag thinking, "I already know the Left is destroying the world." But, @ShefVaidya ma'am insisted that I read this. My father had got a copy for me. After reading it, I realized: even if you think you know this subject, you must read this book.
It's the historical mapping, intellectual genealogy, and precise tracking of how ideological revolutions elsewhere mirror patterns unfolding in India today.