Ravi the blogger

Among War tales from Madras, few appear as fascinating as that of Bantwal Surendranath Baliga, the Curator of the Madras Record Office. Born in a nondescript moffusil town, a taluk place located in in the South Canara district - that prized litle appendage which projected almost vertically nothwards to form a junction with Bombay making up Madras' only land border with the western presidency on the 11th of November 1908, Baliga had his early education in South Canara and Madras, before obtaining a masters' degree from the University of London and a doctorate from the same university. Baliga was appointed Probationary Assistant Curator in August 1934 with P. Macqueen,ICS, as his boss and after brief training in London, replaced him in 1935 to become the first Indian curator of the Record Office. Baliga's years were by far the best for Record Office. When the Madras government decided to shift the Record Office to Chittoor fearing Japanese bombardment during the Second Worl...

In May 2015, when India and Bangladesh exchanged their enclaves on both sides of the border, newspapers took the cue and flashed the happenings all over. The idea of small bits of territory of a particular country existing within the frontiers of another country was something novel to many of us. But few among us know that prior to India's independence, many of our princely states were but assortments of enclaves surrounded by British Indian territory. The largest and most famous of these "enclave federations" was Baroda. Baroda was sub-divided into four districts each of which comprised a bunch of enclaves. Likewise many of the princely states thought to be contiguous pieces of land, either comprised a bunch of enclaves or held a few enclave villages within British India far removed from the seat of government. A particularly interesting case was that of Cochin. Though still named after the port-town, the Raja of Cochin  had ceded it in perpetuity to the British. Or to...