Abro

  The Tradition of Jauhar   The year is 1535 CE. The forces of Bahadur Shah, the Sultan of Gujarat, surround the fort of Chittorgarh. Inside, Rani Karnavati, regent for her minor son, is engaged in final talks with around 8000 Rajput warriors. An eight-month-long siege by the Sultan has cut all essential supplies to the fort. The Rajputs are outnumbered. Defeat is imminent. For Rajput men, death is certain. For women, death is an option. Other options? Be raped or enslaved. They choose death, but death of their own choice. The Rani summons all women inside the fort and announces that the men have decided on saka – the last suicidal march to fight till death. A large pyre is prepared in the zenana compound. Donned in bridal dresses and gold jewelry, and singing hymns to Durga and Shiva, all young and adult women jump on the burning pyre. Watching large flames and black smoke, Rajput men wear saffron clothes and move to fight till the last drop of blood. With all their w...

    Host: Hello, everyone! We in South Asia are intimately familiar with the brutal story of European colonialism—the trading companies, the extraction, the long-term imposition of political and racial control. But today, we turn our gaze eastward to examine a different, arguably more ferocious, model of imperialism that emerged in Asia itself: the Japanese expansion. Joining us is Dr. Sharma (a fictional character), a distinguished historian of 20th-century warfare. Dr. Sharma, thank you for being here. Dr. Sharma: Thank you. It is crucial for us to understand this history because it illuminates the full spectrum of colonial violence.   Host: Let’s dive straight into the heart of darkness: The Nanking Massacre. For those unfamiliar, what happened in Nanking (or Nanjing) in December 1937? Dr. Sharma: The Nanking Massacre, often referred to as the Rape of Nanking, is the darkest embodiment of this contrasting imperial model. In late 1937, after capturing the ...

      Hello, everyone. I want to begin by asking you to think about something truly profound and unsettling. Imagine a war, a conflict that brought unimaginable destruction and suffering across continents. Now, imagine a specific crime committed during that war – a crime so horrific, so widespread, that it affected hundreds of thousands of lives. Yet, for decades after the war ended, this crime was largely unspoken, unacknowledged, almost erased from public memory. Today, we're going to tackle a subject that is, without doubt, one of the most sensitive and contentious issues in modern history: the Japanese military's "comfort women" system during the Asia-Pacific War. To begin, what comes to mind when you hear the term "comfort women?" Between 1931 and 1945, an estimated 50,000 to 200,000 women were mobilised, deceived, coerced, or forced into providing sexual services for the Imperial Japanese Army across East and Southeast Asia. These numbers, ...