A ten-armed Durga stands triumphant as she grabs the hair of the buffalo demon’s true form, one foot on his neck, about to plunge spear into his heart. Interestingly, demon wears European buckled shoes; this painting was made in the British enclave then known as Calcutta.

1/n Made by artists who sold their works in a goddess temple bazaar, this painting was made with rapid brush strokes and thin paint layers on inexpensive paper. Exuberant in their devotional vitality and visceral color sensibilities,

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Durga is the name of the Goddess who personifies the sum total of the powers of all the male gods combined. When she vanquishes the fierce buffalo demon named Mahisha, she is described as having many arms, each holding a different weapon: bow and arrow, trident, discus,

1/n shield, sword, mace, and the conch shell that sounds the start of battle. The horizontal lines on her arms are sectarian markings. At the moment depicted in this painting, she has succeeded in beheading the buffalo demon and

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Raja Prithvinarayan Shah inscribed a stone slab, marking the building of his new palace in which he praises Devi Tuljabhavani as Mahishasurmardini, and marks himself as her humble servant.' writes Charudatta, where he tries to establish unity of Rashtra through Tuljabhavani.

1/n “"On the Panchami tithi of Shukla Paksha of the Vaishakh month, in the Shaka year of 1691 (10th May 1769), Saturday, the king Prithvinarayan completed the building of his palace and arranged a great utsava to mark it. This Prithvinarayan is a mere bee drinking the nectar,

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One of the special things about the Goddess worshipping in Hinduism is about the worship of the goddess collective in different forms. The collective can take forms from Goddess pair like Chamumda-Chotila of Gujarat,

1/n to Tri-Ambika like in Vaishnodevi to Saptamatrikas in South Indian temples to Nava Durga of the Deccan region and 64 Yoginis like that in Morena District of Madhya Pradesh. There is one more collective known as –Dasham Mahavidyas of the Goddess. Kali is the first maha vidya.

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The Goddess worship in India is eons old, sometimes pre-dating to the oldest Vedic hymns. In Indian scriptures, we find a division of the world into 2 parts – Prakriti – that which is material, can be perceived via senses,

1/n and Purush – the which is immaterial, non-perishable and cannot be perceived through senses but has to be connected with via different means such as Ashtanga-yoga.

The Goddess is Prakriti or Nature. Nature in its primal form is wild, unapologetic about its manifestations.

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"Of the three masterpieces (Of Pallava School) in the Mahabalipuram, which reach the highest watermark of plasticity and vividness, the first is Mahishasura Mardini relief. The Goddess Durga is out to destroy Mahishasura.

1/n The crafty, powerful buffalo-demon, is on the defensive. He is fighting with determination, though he has grown feeble, for he supports the mace with both hands, waiting eagerly for the moment when he can strike down the Goddess.

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Meghnad Saha a well-known Indian Physicist had made stellar contributions to the theory of thermal ionization and its application to stellar spectra, an astrophysicist Svein Rosseland writes,

1/n "The impetus given to astrophysics by Saha’s work can scarcely be overestimated, as nearly all later progress in this field has been influenced by it." Along with being a Physicist, Saha was a staunch nationalist impressed with the revolutionary ideas and hence,

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"I believe Gandhi does not know what actually happens to
the man's nature when he takes to Satyagraha or non-violence. He thinks that men get purified by it. But when men suffer, or subject themselves to voluntary suffering,

1/n what happens is that their vital being gets strengthened. These movements affect the vital being only and not any other part. Now, when you cannot oppose the force that oppresses, you say that you will suffer.

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On March 23, 1931, Bhagat Singh, a Punjabi Sikh avowedly atheist in nature and an inheritor of ideas of the Ghadar movement was hanged by the colonial state along with his colleagues Rajguru and Sukhdev for the assassination of a British officer in Lahore.

1/n Soon after these images especially from the parts of Punjab, and Bengal emerged which espoused terms like ‘Balidan’, ‘Bhent’ (gift) and ‘Shaheed’ (primitively translated as a martyr) that figuratively echoed Guru Nanak’s injunction of ‘self-sacrifice’ to his Sikh followers.

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#SatishDhawanCentenary

When Dr. Kalam was the Project Director of the SLV mission and Prof.Satish Dhawan was Chairman of ISRO, the first experimental launch of SLV-3 took place on August 10, 1979. However, despite efforts of the SLV team, the mission was a failure...

1/n and worried about it Dr. Kalam was frightened to face the media. Prof.Satish Dhawan then took Dr.Kalam to the press meet and made him sit aside and he took the blame for the team's failure and said, "We failed!

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Peshwas and the Ganesh Festival!

The Shaniwarwada was one of the beautiful mansions whose foundation was laid by Peshwa Bajirao I (1720-1740) on 22nd January 1732, by arranging an opening ceremony according to Hindu religious customs,...

#GaneshChaturthi

1/n after this Rs.15 were paid in charity to Brahmans on the occasion.

Originally, the Wada was simple with the main Diwankhana or main hall with some ornamental carvings.

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Bharat Mata and her revolutionaries

The 'Ghadar' Party-I

The visual persona of Bharat Mata which originated in the Bengal spread from Kashmir to Kanyakumari to the western part of India however, the Bharat Mata as the Mother Goddess

1/n received attention outside the nation through the long-distance patriots and the fierce revolutionaries.

One of such Punjabi and Sikh dominated revolutionary party named ‘Ghadar’ that flourished in North America from around 1913 into the 1940s,

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(1/11)Commemorating Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose on his birth anniversary. Netaji, the bravest of men, was a ardent freedom fighter in the history of India. He lead the Indian National Army and captured Andaman and Nicobar in 1943, the first territory to gain Independence. (2/11)His contribution to the freedom struggle was immense and will always be remembered. The Awakened Indian team pays tribute on his JanamDivas.