Talk:Rajasthan

Quote to review
Perhaps for the article History of Rajasthan:


 * "as the cloud pours water over the land, so did Aurangzeb pour his barbarians over the land...Jodhpur fell and was Pillaged, all the great towns in the plains of Mairta, Didwana and Rohit shared a similar fate. The emblems of religion were trampled under foot, the temples thrown down and mosques erected on their sites".
 * This is well summarized in the words of a Rajasthani poet, ‚As the cloud pours water upon the earth, so did Aurangzeb pour his barbarions (asur) over the land … Jodhpur fell and was pillaged and all the great towns in the planes of Merta, Didwana and Rohit, shared a similar fate. The emblems of religion were trampled under feet, the temples thrown down and mosques erected on their sites.‛
 * James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Vol.I, pp.442, Vol.II, pp.994-96; Vir Vinod, Vol.II, p.463. in Bhatnagar, V. S. (2020). Emperor Aurangzeb and Destruction of Temples, Conversions and Jizya : (a study largely based on his court bulletins or akhbārāt darbār muʻalla)
 * Book: Sarkar, Jadunath. History of Aurangzib: Mainly Based on Persian Sources. 1928 . Orient Longman. 221–222.

Surplus

 * It is strange but true that the type and style of bangles that women wear in Rajasthan today, or the vermilion that they apply on the parting of the hair on the head, the practice of Yoga, the binary system of weights and measures, the basic architecture of the houses etc. can all be traced back to the Indus Civilisation. The cultural and religious traditions of the Harappans provide the substratum for the latter-day Indian Civilisation.
 * Agrawal, D.P., ‘An Indocentric Corrective to History of Science’, 2002, p. 5, online: www.infinityfoundation.com/indic_colloq/papers/paper_agrawal.pdf (accessed 15 September 2009). in    Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.


 * And curiously, an astonishing number of names of towns and villages in western Rajasthan (the heart of the Thar Desert) have names ending in the word ‘sar’, such as Lunkaransar, with ‘sar’ meaning ‘lake’ (from the Sanskrit word saras). I counted over fifty of them on an ordinary map, and there must be many more. Why should all those places be named after non-existent lakes? An unwary tourist reading a map of western Rajasthan might as well assume that the region is some kind of a Lake District!
 * Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.


 * The watershed transition from the feudal princely states of Rajputana to the unified, democratic polity of Rajasthan in the late 1940s–early 1950s triggered a process of intense competition between, on the one hand, the challenger Brahmin, Mahajan, and Jat elites who sought to occupy the new ranks of political authority and, on the other hand, the Rajput elites who fought to maintain their traditional dominance. The challenger elites were now all members of the newly founded Congress party but unlike in other parts of India, especially those that were ruled by the British such as UP, the Congress had been established only a few years prior and did not have a strong popular base in the region. In the very first elections in the state in 1951, the challenger elites were caught by surprise by a powerful challenge from the Rajput aristocracy. In an attempt to gain an upper hand in this competition for political power, the Brahmin, Mahajan, and Jat elites found it useful to evoke a superordinate subnational identity. Coming together as “Rajasthani” allowed the challenger elite to present themselves as the legitimate 'modern' leaders of a united, democratic Rajasthan, as opposed to the Rajputs, who were portrayed as embodying narrow, segmented princely state identities and regressive, traditional feudal values.


 * If we compare the antiquity and illustrious descent of the dynasties which have ruled, and some which continue to rule, the small sovereignties of Rajasthan, with many of celebrity in Europe, superiority will often attach to the Rajput.
 * James Tod, Annals and antiquities of Rajast'han