The Man Who Almost Made It

Mountaineer Eric Shipton, the man who almost made it, was born on this day in 1907 in Ceylon.

Eric Shipton was one of the world's most respected climbers in the two decades before Mt. Everest was finally conquered by Hillary and Tenzing in 1953, and was scheduled to lead the 1953 expedition himself. Shipton, however, was more interested in climbing than in summiting, and was perhaps a victim of British ambitions regarding Everest.

The son of a colonial tea planter who died when Shipton was 3, Shipton grew up with dyslexia and without any discernible prospects. After ambling around the Alps during his 20s, he went to work on a coffee plantation in Kenya, where he made his mark as an amateur mountaineer on some previously unclimbed mountains in East Africa.

A scant 7 years after the disappearance of George Mallory on Everest, Shipton was in the Himalayas. In 1931 he summited Kamet (25,263 ft.), and participated in or led small mapping and reconnaissance expeditions (the kind of climbing he enjoyed most) on the Tibetan side of Everest in 1933, 1935, 1936 and 1938 - bagging 26 20,000-ft. peaks during the 1935 expedition alone, and establishing a camp at 27,200 ft. on Everest in 1938. In 1938 he received the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, but he was still dirt-poor, and with World War II beginning, Everest seemed out of the question for awhile; so highly-placed friends saw to it that Shipton would be appointed as consul-general in some of the greater Indian territories where he could continue map-climbing in uncharted areas. Chinese border hostilities limited his efforts, however, and in 1951 he was expelled from Yunnan.

Later that year, however, he led another reconnaissance mission on Everest, this time from the Nepal side. The British offered Shipton the chance to lead the 1953 group which eventually got to the top of Everest, but they made it clear to Shipton that his casual style of exploration was not at all what was expected, and basically forced him to resign from the job, leaving John Hunt in charge.

Afterwards, Shipton's reputation was never quite the same. He never made it to the top of Everest, although during the 1960s he made important reconnaissance missions in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, and armed with his knowledge of the terrain was an adviser to Chile in their border dispute with Argentina. Shipton died on March 28, 1977 in Anstey, Wiltshsire.

Muslim Princess

Noor Inayat Khan was born on this day in 1914 in Moscow, Russia.

A direct descendant of India's last Muslim ruler, Tipu Sultan, her father was a Muslim mystic invited to Nicholas II's court by Grigori Rasputin. She moved to Paris as a youth, and after receiving her education there joined Paris Radio as a resident writer of children's stories, publishing Twenty Jataka Tales in 1940.

When the arrival of the Nazis, however, Noor moved to London and joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, and secretly infiltrated France under the code name "Madeleine" in June 1943 as a resistance radio operator, the British War Office's first woman spy in Nazi-occupied France. The War Office ordered her to return after growing concerned about her safety, but she refused on the grounds that she was the last radio operator in the resistance.

Later that fall, she was finally captured by the Nazis, refusing to give them information or to sign a declaration that she would cease her activities -- although they did manage to break her coded messages and send false messages back to London, culminating in the arrest of 3 more British spies. She was imprisoned in solitary confinement in Karlsruhe, and eventually taken to Dachau concentration camp, where she was executed on September 13, 1944 for her refusal to cooperate. She was posthumously awarded the George Cross, the Croix de Guerre and an MBE.

Doubting Thomas

The feast of St. Thomas, one of Jesus' twelve disciples, whose feast is celebrated by some Christians on this day.

Although he is barely mentioned in the first three Gospels, Thomas is featured prominently in John's Gospel. Like the sons of thunder, John and his brother James, Thomas is a loyal fire-breather, suggesting that all of Jesus' followers accompany him to Bethany in Judea to visit Lazarus when it seemed likely that Jesus would be in danger there -- "Let us all go," he says, "that we may die with him."

Later, at the Last Supper, Thomas shows his interest in logistics when he questions Jesus about his impending departure and Jesus' promise to prepare places for his faithful followers: "Lord," he says, "we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?" Jesus takes the opportunity to draw Thomas' attention beyond physical reality, telling him "I am the way, and the truth and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you would without doubt have known my Father also: and henceforth you shall know him, and you have seen him."

After Jesus' crucifixion, Thomas' Aristotelian drive to pull it all apart and put it all back together arises again when, being absent from the Upper Room when the resurrected Christ first appeared, he says that he won't believe Jesus had returned until he can see, with his own eyes, the holes in Jesus' hands where the nails had been, and to touch, with his own fingers, Jesus' wounds. Eight days later, when Jesus arrives and invites Thomas to "put in thy finger," Thomas is humbled, exclaiming breathlessly, "My Lord, and my God," stating more simply and directly than any of the other disciples the conclusion of his faithful questioning. Jesus, however, gently rebukes him for his habit of mind, stating that while Thomas had to see Jesus in the flesh to believe, "blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed." For this episode, Thomas is forever to be known as "Doubting Thomas," and held out as an example of imperfect faith. His namesake, Aquinas, would later provide the world with the model of the Aristotelian Christian, the faithful scientist whose faith is perfected through the exercise of logic.

Thomas is said to have led a mission to India, where he is supposed to have promised to build King Guduphara a palace which would last forever; according to legend, Guduphara gave Thomas the money to build the palace, but Thomas gave the money to the poor. When Guduphara confronted Thomas, Thomas explained (perhaps learning Jesus' lessons on metaphysics after all) that the palace he was building was in heaven, not on Earth. A Christian community on the Malabar coast of India claims its lineage to Thomas' mission, which ended when he was apparently slain with a spear while praying on a hill in Mylapur near Madras. His remains were said to have been buried there, and afterwards transported to Edessa, from which they were retrieved 800 years later and conveyed to Ortona, Italy.

The Roman Catholics name Thomas as the patron of a number of constituencies, including architects, construction workers, the blind, geometricians and theologians, as well as of India and Portugal.

Categories: Christian-History

Mahatma

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (whose full name was translated by G.V. Desani as "Action-Slave Fascination-Moon Grocer") is often credited with securing independence for India from the British. While it is true that no other individual could claim more credit for turning the infant crusade for Indian independence into a national movement, representing all classes of Indian society, critics have since pointed out that Gandhi achieved neither a unified independent India nor peace. Nevertheless, revolutionaries around the world have galvanized around the memory of the Mahatma, seeing him almost as a miraculous living confluence of human kindness and political change, of faith-based theory and effective practice.

Born on this day in 1869 in Probandar, India, the son of a prime minister of the tiny principality of Porbandar, Gandhi was married at 13. Three years later he suffered self-loathing disgrace which would never leave him and which would predispose his philosophy and public persona: he was making love to his wife when a servant brought him the news that his father had died. "The shame to which I have referred . . . was this shame of my carnal desire even at the critical hour of my father's death, which demanded wakeful service." This incident, along with his mother's teaching of devotion to rituals of self-suffering, led him inch-by-inch to live as an ascetic, forsaking sexual relations (after fathering 4 children) and scaling down to a simple agrarian life.

When he was 19, however, his family expected him to be a professional, and he was sent to England to qualify as a barrister, where in addition he studied the New Testament, Buddha's sutras and the Bhagavad Gita while avoiding Western temptations. When he returned to India in 1891, he was not considered to be the brightest of lights, seeming too shy for litigation, and after 2 years he moved to South Africa, then also a possession of the British Empire. To his surprise, he discovered that as an Indian he had no rights in South Africa, and soon he found his voice and vocation as an activist.

Drawing from his religious studies and from works by Tolstoy and Ruskin, among others, Gandhi developed the three principles by which he would conduct his life and causes: satyagraha ("truth-force," denoting "the method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms," bringing injustice to an end by changing the hearts of the oppressors though love and self-suffering), ahimsa (non-violence) and brachmacharya (sexual abstinence).

He put satyagraha to the test in civil protests over racial discrimination in South Africa, leading thousands of ethnic Indians in publicly refusing to submit to the ignominy of registration and fingerprinting in 1907, resulting in Gandhi's arrest and conviction the following year; and leading a massive general strike to oppose a court ruling that non-Christian marriages were not considered legal in South Africa. He was again arrested, along with thousands of others, and released after reaching a watered-down compromise with South African general Jan Christian Smuts over the future treatment of ethnic Indians. During this period, he also experimented with communal living, setting up the Phoenix Community near Durban and the Tolstoy Farm near Johannesburg; but after the compromise with Smuts, he returned to India in 1915.

Within 5 years, he became the leader of the Indian nationalist movement, spearheading nonviolent protests in Champara to improve the conditions of indigo farmers (1917) and in Ahmedabad on behalf of textile workers (1918), building support for his views among the working class; and, as leader of a reformed Indian National Congress, a noncooperation movement against British rule in response to the slaughter of hundreds of Indians demonstrating for independence at Amritsar (1919-22) which attracted the support of the Muslim community. Gandhi suspended the latter program, however, when a violent protest broke out in Chauri Chauri, resulting in the death of 22 policemen inside a building burned down by independence protesters.

Suspending the movement did not endear him to militants who sought independence at any cost, and there was no outpouring of rage when Gandhi was sentenced to 6 years in prison for inciting the movement. Gandhi was freed after serving only 2 years, and emerged to find Hindu and Muslim factions of the Indian National Congress arguing over methods and strategies. His reaction was to undertake a much-publicized fast in protest of the in-fighting, a satyagraha technique which became his hallmark in the years which followed. By this time, Gandhi had shed the Western suit and tie he wore as a barrister in favor of dhotis (white traditionally-Indian wrap-around garments), shaved his head and immersed himself in collective farming -- consciously adopting a luddite persona and luddite practices as a way of separating himself (and ultimately his followers) from England, its European fashions, and what he viewed as its soul-killing and politically oppressive industry and technology.

In 1930, when he reemerged as the architect of Indian protests against the Salt Act (which required Indians to buy salt from the British government) by leading thousands of Indians in a 200-mile nonviolent march to the sea to make salt by hand from ocean water, Gandhi was internationally recognized as the personification of colonial peoples desiring self-determination. The march sparked another round of mass noncooperation, and fostered international sympathy for the Indian cause for which the British government was entirely unprepared. (Evidence of his impact can be seen in his being named Time's "Man of the Year" in 1930).

Both sides called a truce as Gandhi was invited to England to negotiate a compromise. Reveling in the consciousness-raising publicity, he took tea with George V wearing nothing but a "loincloth" ("the King was wearing enough for both of us"); and while the talks resulted in no great progress, British rule was becoming less tenable as Gandhi renewed the civil disobedience movement upon his return to India. He was arrested again, but his presence was felt nonetheless when he undertook 2 lengthy fasts in response to proposed constitutional provisions for a separate, marginalizing electorate for the harijans (the "untouchables," the lowest caste of Hindus), exerting moral pressure on the British to propose an alternative structure.

In 1934, Gandhi resigned from the Indian National Congress, by this time headed by his friend Jawaharlal Nehru, but continued to be a mentor to Nehru. As World War II began in Europe in 1939, the Indian National Congress proposed to press the cause for independence in exchange for India's support of the British war effort, while Gandhi was concerned about England's ability to use the independence issue to issue to drive a wedge between Hindus and Muslims to delay the inevitable.

While the Muslim League, led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, curried favor with the British by pledging support for the war, Gandhi went public with a more radical stance, calling for the immediate withdrawal of the British from India during a crucial moment in the war during the summer of 1942 (the "Quit India" declaration) and declaring that all Indians should engage in one final struggle to achieve independence or die trying. He was quickly imprisoned by the British for what amounted to treason. A violent uprising followed throughout India, much of it directed at railway stations, telegraph offices and other British-built communications and transportation posts. To Gandhi's great grief, 1.5 million Indians died in the resulting chaos and famine, and he mourned by fasting for 21 days while under house arrest at the Aga Khan's palace in Poona.

When he was released in 1944, he attempted to engage Jinnah in a dialogue about unified independence, but his vision of a decentralized multi-creed agrarian state was viewed as an anachronism by Jinnah and (with all due respect) by Nehru, and Gandhi was effectively shut out of the negotiations which resulted in the Mountbatten Plan and the declaration of independence of India and Pakistan as separate dominions in August 1947. As Gandhi had predicted, however, violent Hindu-Muslim riots broke out all over India and once again, in an attempt to bring peace, the 78-year old Gandhi fasted. He stopped only when community leaders agreed to do everything they could to stop the violence. Lord Mountbatten later observed that as Gandhi walked from village to village, nursing and consoling the victims of the strife, he came to be "a one-man boundary force" between the Muslims and the Hindus. Radical Hindus, however, became increasingly angry with what they perceived to be Gandhi's constant appeasements; and on January 30, 1948, as Gandhi was on his way to an evening prayer meeting, he was shot at point blank and killed by Nathuram Godse, the editor of an extremist Hindu newspaper.

India, then as now, is nothing like Gandhi hoped it would be, and it is fair to question the extent of his lasting impact there as anything other than a semi-mythical "father of the nation," as Nehru called him. As a philosopher of nonviolence and an endlessly adaptable, abstract global symbol, however, he had an enduring effect on the history that followed, inspiring leaders from distant corners of the world, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Desmond Tutu to Natan Scharansky to Greenpeace to factions of the Northern Irish, to name but a few.

Phoolan Devi

Her poverty and her iron will, seemingly able to withstand violence and dire humiliation, conspired to make Phoolan Devi a country folk hero in northern India -- a diminutive woman with a bandana around her head and a poisonous look in her eyes who struck such fear in the hearts of some that they would swear that she was 6 feet tall with hair the color of dried blood.

Bandit, parliamentarian and poverty activist Phoolan Devi, known as the "Bandit Queen," was born on this day around 1963 in Shekhpur Gudda, Uttar Pradesh, India. Her father was a member of the Mallah caste, a sub-caste of the lower caste Sudras (farmers and laborers), who had been duped out of his share of some ancestral land by his manipulative brother Biharilal and nephew Maiyadin. In protest, the defiant 10-year old Phoolan convinced her 13-year old sister to sit with her in the fields of what used to be her grandfather's land, eating sweet chic peas raised by Biharilal. Maiyadin had the girls kicked off of the property by the village authorities, and had their parents thrashed for failing to curb the children.

Following the incident, Phoolan's impoverished parents endeavored to find suitable husbands for the girls to keep them out of trouble. At 11, Phoolan was sold to a 30-year old man for a cow and a bicycle, and, barely comprehending of sexuality, was raped by her husband. She became a mere household slave when her husband took a second, older wife, and was ultimately abandoned by her husband for her insubordination.

Back home, Phoolan was harassed by higher caste men who considered divorced teenagers to be loose women, but her unwillingness to be anybody's fool frequently landed her in hot water with local authorities -- until, in 1979, she was kidnapped by daciots, roving gang members who terrorized the countryside, and raped by the gang-leader Babu Singh Gujar. The gang's second-in-command, Vikram Mallah, protested Babu's treatment of Phoolan, and during the ensuing fight, Vikram killed Babu. Phoolan pledged herself to her protector, and together Vikram and Phoolan lived off the land and outwitted bumbling local police as they terrorized the rich and committed reprisal attacks against local corrupt officials who targeted the lowest classes.

After Vikram was murdered by a pair of higher-caste Thakurs who wanted to take over the gang, Phoolan was briefly held hostage (again being subjected to multiple beatings and rapes), but escaped to become the leader of her own gang of daciots which was later implicated in the cold-blooded execution of 20 Thakur men during a raid on a wedding at Behmai.

Although Phoolan claimed she was not present at the raid, her notoriety led Indira Gandhi's government to direct the police to make a deal for her surrender. After believing that she had secured an agreement that she would receive only 8 years in prison, on February 12, 1983 she surrendered to authorities before a cheering crowd of several thousand in a concert theater in Bhind, placing a wreath on a picture of Mahatma Gandhi before handing over her rifle and 25 bullets and being led away by police. Phoolan was charged with 48 crimes, including the massacre of the 20 men at Behmai, and due to delayed trials she ended up serving 11 years in prison, before emerging in 1994 as a lower-caste heroine.

In 1995 she formed a social welfare organization, Eaklavya Sena, and in 1996, following the publication of her autobiography I, Phoolan Devi, she was elected to the lower-caste house of the Indian Parliament. Although she was a formidable voice for the plight of poor Indian women, the cloud of unprosecuted criminal charges continued to hang over her, and northern Indian Thakurs were particularly bitter in their denunciation of the Bandit Queen as a murderer.

She was assassinated on July 25, 2001 in New Delhi. Several Thakurs were arrested and charged with conspiracy in her death.

Anandibai Joshi

Anandibai Joshi, the first Hindu woman to obtain a medical degree in the Western hemisphere, was born Yamuna Joshi on this day in 1865 in Poona, India.

Although she only lived to be nearly 22, the example of Anandibai Joshi's life provided inspiration to generations of Indian women seeking education and, in particular, those who aspired to become physicians. Born to a wealthy Brahmin family, Anandi's parents indulged her love of learning and permitted a local Sanskrit scholar, Gopal, to teach her. At age 9, Anandi married Gopal (a widower 20 years her senior) and at 14, she gave birth to their first and only child. The infant survived only 10 days, but in her grief Anandi turned her thoughts to what could have been done to save her child: she became convinced that if there had been a female doctor available, the child might have lived. At 14, she became determined to become a doctor.

Despite the fact that Hindu culture discouraged the education of women and could not even contemplate a woman as a professional, let alone a doctor, Gopal was broad-minded and supportive of his wife's dream. In 1880, he sent a letter to Royal Wilder, a well-known American missionary in India and publisher of Princeton's Missionary Review, expressing his wife's interest in attending medical school in the U.S. and inquiring about a suitable post there for himself. Wilder superciliously responded with a plea for their conversion to Christianity, and added insult to injury by publishing the correspondence in the Review.

Shortly thereafter, however, a Mrs. Carpenter of Roselle, New Jersey picked up that edition of the Review while waiting to see her dentist, read Gopal's letter, and was moved by the man's earnest hopes for his wife. She immediately wrote to Gopal offering to host Anandi if she would come to the U.S. to study. Anandi and Mrs. Carpenter began an enthusiastic correspondence about Hindu culture and religion, through which Mrs. Carpenter noted that Anandi possessed a rich command of English and an active mind. Although Mrs. Carpenter's attentions were encouraging, Gopal knew he would not be able to leave his responsibilities in India. It was considered unsuitable for a married Hindu woman to travel alone, but Anandi was determined to go, and Gopal relented.

When Anandi's decision became known within her Bengali community, however, the two of them found themselves at odds with their neighbors -- some even resorted to spitting at Anandi and throwing stones at her when she walked through the streets carrying her books. The Christians in the community, on the other hand, did not oppose her plans -- they only wanted her to submit to Christian baptism before she left. To set everyone straight, Anandi decided to explain her decision to go to the U.S. alone to obtain a medical degree in an address at Serampore College Hall in Calcutta; according to some, it would be the first time an Indian woman would deliver a public address. She cited the need for Hindu female physicians in India, explained her goal to open a medical college for women in India, described the persecution that had been dealt to her and her husband, and made a startling pledge: "I will go as a Hindu and come back to live as a Hindu."

Following the publication of her speech, contributions came in from throughout India -- including 200 rupees from the Viceroy. She sold her gold wedding bangles and booked passage on the City of Calcutta for New York in the company of some European women, where she was met in June 1883 by Mrs. Carpenter. Soon afterward, she wrote to the Women's College of Pennsylvania asking to be admitted to the medical program (the first women's medical program in the world) and, moved by her passion, the dean of the medical school asked her to enroll.

Thus, Anandi began her American medical education at the the age of 19, and she was a model student, submitting a thesis on "Obstetrics among the Aryan Hindoos" and graduating with her M.D. on March 11, 1886. Queen Victoria sent a congratulatory message, and with the news of her achievement, Anandi was offered a job as physician-in-charge of the female ward at Albert Edward Hospital in Kolhapur, India.

In the meantime, however, Anandi had contracted tuberculosis -- perhaps worsened by a combination of cold weather and an unfamiliar diet -- and her health was steadily declining. Her friends sent her to Colorado Springs for her health, but she returned without improvement. Nevertheless, she returned to India, receiving a hero's welcome, while the newspapers closely monitored her physical condition. She died on February 26, 1887, in her mother's arms at her birthplace, and was mourned throughout India, celebrated for her courage and perseverance. Her ashes were sent to Mrs. Carpenter, who placed them in her family cemetery in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Lakshmi Bai, Maharani of Jhansi

Much of India had fallen under British rule by 1853, beginning with Robert Clive's assaults in the 1750s. As a consequence of the decline of the Mughal rulers, the British continued their conquest of the Indian subcontinent on a piecemeal basis until 1858, picking off principalities at their weakest moments.

Manu Bai (born on this day in 1835 in Kashi, Jhansi) was a well-educated 7-year old girl from a high-caste family in the independent principality of Jhansi who loved riding horses and playing at martial arts, when she married into the conflict with the British as the second wife of Gangadhar Rao, the maharajah of Jhansi in 1842. The maharajah's first wife had passed away without providing an heir to the throne, but when Manu (or Lakshmi, as she came to be known) was 16, she gave birth to a boy. The joy was short-lived, however, as the child died 3 months later; and in an attempt to provide an heir, the maharajah and Lakshmi adopted his cousin Anand in November 1853. The day after the adoption, the maharajah died.

James Ramsay, the Marquess of Dalhousie, who was serving as the British Governor-General in India, saw his opportunity and asserted that the adoption was not valid (despite its unquestioned validity under Hindu traditions), and that since there was no rightful heir to the throne, that the British would annex Jhansi. Lakshmi petitioned Dalhousie to no avail; her special envoy, whom she sent to London, received a similarly cold shoulder.

Lakshmi retreated, but during the next 3 years, as the de facto underground sovereign of Jhansi, she quietly managed to recruit an army of 14,000 to face the British threat. In May 1857, the British faced a full-scale rebellion of Indian soldiers who had been serving in the British Army; they shot British officers at Meerut, marched to Delhi and re-installed the ex-emperor, Bahadur Shah, to the Mughal throne. The British recaptured Delhi 4 months later, and thereafter all but 3 independent states surrendered to the British. The state of Jhansi was among the defiant.

Lakshmi was already under suspicion by the British for having given aid to some mutineers, so the British laid siege to Jhansi in March 1858, but during the battle, Lakshmi escaped and rode to Kalpi. Received there as a great warrior, she was given armor and an army, and 3 months later, as Kalpi was falling, Lakshmi led her forces on a successful attack on the British fortress at Gwailor. When the British sent reinforcements, Lakshmi was the defiant leader of the defense, but a British Army soldier threw his sword at her, killing her on June 18, 1858 at the age of 22.

Hugh Rose, the leader of the British forces there, said that Lakshmi "was remarkable for her bravery, cleverness and perseverance; her generosity to her subordinates was unbounded. These qualities, combined with her rank, rendered her the most dangerous of rebel leaders." Gwailor fell shortly thereafter, and India would not achieve independence for almost 100 years, but Lakshmi remained an influential symbol of Indian rebellion against the British.