Category History

In early March 2020, Egypt reopened the Pyramid of Djoser to the public after extensive restoration costing close to USD 6.6 million. A part of the larger UNESCO World Heritage Site of Memphis and its Necropolis, the Pyramid Fields from Giza to Dahshur, the Pyramid of Djoser is the oldest pyramid in the world.

Situated in Saqqara, Egypt, the pyramid was built over 4,700 years ago. It takes its name after Pharaoh Djoser and serves as his burial place.

Djoser and his grand wish

Djoser, also known as Zoser, was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the third dynasty of the Old Kingdom who ruled for 19 years between 2630 and 2611 BC.

During his rule, Djoser tasked his vizier Imhotep with the construction of his burial chamber. A man of many talents, Imhotep is widely considered to have been the architect of the pyramid.

He initially designed the structure as a traditional, flat-roofed tomb with sloping sides called a mastaba. However, Djoser wanted something grander. And this grand wish culminated in the construction of a six-step pyramid, which was the largest of its time and inspired those that were built later.

The majestic pyramid

The Pyramid of Djoser was assembled during the 19 years of Djoser’s rule. The mighty six-step pyramid contains close to 11.6 million cubic feet of stone and clay. Part of a larger 40-acre complex, the pyramid stands at a height of 197 feet.

The burial chamber of Djoser and his 11 daughters is located deep within the pyramid. It is part of the pyramid’s maze-like series of tunnels which are roughly 5.5 km in length. Researchers believe the tunnels were designed to prevent theft. However, it is felt that these tunnels might have been a reason for the pyramid’s deterioration.

Deterioration and conservation

By the beginning of the 21st Century, experts believed that the pyramid was on the verge of collapse. It had suffered severe damage due to winds and natural disasters, including a massive earthquake in 1992.

Without conservation, the tunnels could collapse, bringing down the pyramid with it.

In 2006, restoration of the pyramid began. However, work had to be halted for two years from 2011 to 2013 due to the uprising that saw the expulsion of the then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Conservation work within the structure proved to be difficult. To prevent the stone walls from crumbling inwards, engineers inflated airbags to prop up the roofs of the pyramid’s six-stacked terraces.

Conservation was also plagued by controversy, with experts claiming that it was only worsening the condition of the pyramid.

All’s well that ends well

Though not completely restored to its former glory, the pyramid was opened to the public in March 2020.

The structure is now fitted with a new lighting system and an accessible entry for people with disabilities.

 

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Home Rule League, either of two short-lived organizations of the same name in India established in April and September 1916, respectively, by Indian nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak and British social reformer and Indian independence leader Annie Besant. The term, borrowed from a similar movement in Ireland, referred to the efforts of Indian nationalists to achieve self-rule from the British Indian government.

Indian home rule movement began in India in the background of World War I. The Government of India Act (1909) failed to satisfy the demands of the national leaders. However, the split in the congress and the absence of leaders like Tilak, who was imprisoned in Mandalay meant that nationalistic response was tepid.

By 1915, many factors set the stage for a new phase of nationalist movement. The rise in stature of Annie Besant (who was of part Irish origin and a firm supporter of Irish Home Rule Movement), the return of Tilak from exile and the growing calls for solving the split in congress began to stir the political scene in India. The Ghadar Mutiny and its suppression led to an atmosphere of resentment against British rule.

 

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The first Partition of Bengal was a territorial reorganization of the Bengal Presidency implemented by the authorities of the British Raj in 1905. The partition separated the largely Muslim eastern areas from the largely Hindu western areas on 16 October 1905 after being announced on 20 July 1905 by Lord Curzon, the then Viceroy of India.

The middle class of Bengal saw this as the rupture of their dear motherland as well as a tactic to diminish their authority. In the six-month period before the partition was to be effected the Congress arranged meetings where petitions against the partition were collected and given to impassive authorities. Surendranath Banerjee admitted that the petitions were ineffective and as the date for the partition drew closer began advocating tougher approaches such as boycotting British goods. He preferred to label this move as “swadeshi” instead of boycott. The boycott was led by the moderates but minor rebel groups also sprouted under its cause.

The uproar that had greeted Curzon’s contentious move of splitting Bengal, as well as the emergence of the ‘Extremist’ faction in the Congress, became the final motive for separatist Muslim politics. In 1909, separate elections were established for Muslims and Hindus. Before this, many members of both communities had advocated national solidarity of all Bengalis. With separate electorates, distinctive political communities developed, with their own political agendas. Muslims, too, dominated the Legislature, due to their overall numerical strength of roughly twenty two to twenty eight million. Nationally, Hindus and Muslims began to demand the creation of two independent states, one to be formed in majority Hindu and one in majority Muslim areas.

In 1947, Bengal was partitioned for the second time, solely on religious grounds, as part of the Partition of India following the formation of the nations India and Pakistan. In 1955, East Bengal became East Pakistan, and in 1971 became the independent state of Bangladesh.

 

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The Cripps Mission had failed, and on 8 August 1942, Gandhi made a call to Do or Die in his Quit India speech delivered in Bombay at the Gowalia Tank Maidan.  The All-India Congress Committee launched a mass protest demanding what Gandhi called “An Orderly British Withdrawal” from India. 

The speech decreed that the British must leave India immediately or else mass agitations would take place.

The call mobilised the citizens to be involved in a widespread Civil Disobedience movement since the British refused to grant independence to India till the War was over.

The ‘Quit India’ movement then escalated into large-scale violence directed at railway stations, telegraph offices, government buildings, and other emblems and institutions of colonial rule.

There were widespread acts of sabotage, and the government held Gandhi responsible for these acts of violence, suggesting that they were a deliberate act of Congress policy. This led to the incarceration of the Congress leadership.

 

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The Battle of Plassey was fought in north-eastern India on 23 June 1757. Troops of the British East India Company, led by Robert Clive, came up against the forces of Siraj-ud-Daulah, the last Nawab of Bengal, and his French allies. Clive’s victory eventually led to the British becoming the greatest economic and military power in India.

The East India Company was one of these competing powers. While battling the French for trading supremacy, it simultaneously began to involve itself in local politics, especially in Bengal, India’s richest province.

The Bengali ruler Siraj-ud-Daulah had been in dispute with the Company for some time. A year before the Battle of Plassey, when the Company refused to halt military preparations against the French following the outbreak of the Seven Years War (1756-63), he had attacked and captured its stronghold of Fort William in Calcutta (Kolkata).

For a later generation of Britons, the victory at Plassey marked the birth of their Indian Empire. Until Indian independence in 1947 almost every schoolchild would have heard of the battle and known of ‘Clive of India’.

 

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Mangal Pandey, (born July 19, 1827, Akbarpur, India—died April 8, 1857, Barrackpore), Indian soldier whose attack on British officers on March 29, 1857, was the first major incident of what came to be known as the Indian, or Sepoy, Mutiny (in India the uprising is often called the First War of Independence or other similar names).

Pandey was born in a town near Faizabad in what is now eastern Uttar Pradesh state in northern India, although some give his birth place as a small village near Lalitpur (in present-day southwestern Uttar Pradesh). He was from a high-caste Brahman landowning family that professed strong Hindu beliefs. 

In India, Pandey has been remembered as a freedom fighter against British rule. A commemorative postage stamp with his image on it was issued by the Indian government in 1984. In addition, a movie and stage play that depicted his life both appeared in 2005.

 

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