Painting found in attic in 1997 is finally recognised as Caravaggio's

By Peter Popham in Rome
Published: 20 October 2006
Nine years after it was found mouldering in a church attic, the latest masterpiece by Caravaggio to come to light was ceremonially unveiled yesterday in Italy.

Its title is The Crowning with Thorns, and it is the third painting of that name attributed to the notoriously hard-living, volcanic painter whose reputation went into an eclipse after his death, recovering spectacularly in the past 80 years.

But is it really a Caravaggio? Cecilia Frosinini, vice-director of Opificio delle Pietre Dure, the eminent restorers in Florence which worked on the painting, said: "With Caravaggio it's impossible to know whether he painted a particular picture or not. There are so many different versions of many of his works."

But for Piero Donati, director of historical art heritage of the region of Liguria, who has been closely involved with the work, it is much more likely to be the work of the master than it was once thought to be.

"When it was discovered in 1997," he said yesterday, "people were in no doubt that it was a copy of another one with the same title that is owned by a bank in Rome. But... as the restoration proceeded it became clear that two hands were responsible for the painting. And the two principle figures, Christ and the torturer in green, were found to be of very high quality. If they were not by Caravaggio himself, they were done by very accomplished artists working to his orders." The other two figures were inferior and probably painted 30 or 40 years later.

Caravaggio worked with close collaborators who became masters of his style. "He was inundated with commissions and he never said no to anyone, but he was physically unable to complete all the works himself," said Mr Donati.

In a note signed by the artist on 23 June 1605, he promised to paint a Crowning with Thorns for the Roman prince Massimo Massimi, which also supports the painting's claim to being a Caravaggio.

Nine years after it was found mouldering in a church attic, the latest masterpiece by Caravaggio to come to light was ceremonially unveiled yesterday in Italy.

Its title is The Crowning with Thorns, and it is the third painting of that name attributed to the notoriously hard-living, volcanic painter whose reputation went into an eclipse after his death, recovering spectacularly in the past 80 years.

But is it really a Caravaggio? Cecilia Frosinini, vice-director of Opificio delle Pietre Dure, the eminent restorers in Florence which worked on the painting, said: "With Caravaggio it's impossible to know whether he painted a particular picture or not. There are so many different versions of many of his works."

But for Piero Donati, director of historical art heritage of the region of Liguria, who has been closely involved with the work, it is much more likely to be the work of the master than it was once thought to be.
"When it was discovered in 1997," he said yesterday, "people were in no doubt that it was a copy of another one with the same title that is owned by a bank in Rome. But... as the restoration proceeded it became clear that two hands were responsible for the painting. And the two principle figures, Christ and the torturer in green, were found to be of very high quality. If they were not by Caravaggio himself, they were done by very accomplished artists working to his orders." The other two figures were inferior and probably painted 30 or 40 years later.

Caravaggio worked with close collaborators who became masters of his style. "He was inundated with commissions and he never said no to anyone, but he was physically unable to complete all the works himself," said Mr Donati.

In a note signed by the artist on 23 June 1605, he promised to paint a Crowning with Thorns for the Roman prince Massimo Massimi, which also supports the painting's claim to being a Caravaggio.

MONTI FEST ORIGINATED AT FARANGIPET - 240 YEARS AGO!
by John B. Monteiro
Mangalore: September 7, 2005

Catholics in Tulu Nadu, set to celebrate 'Monti Fest' on September 8, know it is the day of the Nativity feast - the birth of Mary, Mother of Jesus. But, hardly anyone stops to think why it is called 'Monti Fest'. Some research and inquiries with people who should know leads to the conclusion that Monti Fest originated at Farangipet about 240 years ago. Farangipet is home to an ancient Catholic outpost which, at various times, has been, and still is, a church, friary, monastery and seminary. Located on top of a hillock, on the north bank of Netravati River, the official name of the place is Monte Mariano - Mount of Mary. The 'Monti Fest' derives its name, with a little corruption, from 'Monte'. It was here that a Goan secular priest, Fr Joachim Miranda, started this annual new corn feast to coincide with the feast of Nativity. But, Catholics generally are unfamiliar with the Monte Mariano name and call the place 'Covent' (convent). They cannot be faulted because even the RTC, based on ancient land records, notes the owner of the plot as 'Montu Mary Cuvent Devaru.' In 1510, the Portuguese conquered Goa and founded their empire in India. In 1526, some Franciscan priests entered Canara and founded three churches around Mangalore - Lady of Rosary at Bolar, Lady of Mercy at Ullal and St. Francis of Assisi at Farangipet. The last name means foreigner's town ('farangi' + 'pet') because it was a Portuguese trade outpost.Hyder Ali conquered the Bednore Kingdom in 1763 when Fr. Miranda was the parish priest at Farangipet. Hyder Ali sought his favour and asked for his prayers for the success of his military campaigns and also made votive offerings in Monte Mariano Church. However, for his son, Tippu Sultan, Fr Miranda was a problem.He was aware that the priest and Hyder Ali were good friends. Tippu began showing respect for the priest but was determined to capture Catholics and hold them captive in Srirangapatnam. Tippu sought from Fr Miranda information about the British General, Mathew. On his refusal to oblige, Fr Miranda was banished to Tellichery. Incidentally, while Tippu destroyed all churches in Canara, he spared Monte Mariano in deference to his father's friendship with Fr Miranda.That is the Fr Miranda who started the 'Monti Fest.' It is one of the three designated major feasts of Mangalore Diocese - the others being the feasts of St. Lawrence at Karkala and Lady of Pompei at Urva. Until a few decades ago, 'Monti Fest' was celebrated on a grand scale at Monte Mariano, with surrounding parishes too participating. A large number of devotees from Mangalore, including tile manufacturers and coffee planters, footed it out to Farangipet for the feast. All this is faded memory now and so is the origin of 'Monti Fest' - till you read this!

Babi Yar

I. Babiy Yar
Nad Babim Yarom pamyatnikov nyet.
Krutoi obryv, kak groboye nadgrobye.
Mne strashno,mne sevodnya stolko let,
kak samomu yevreiskomu narodu.
Mne kazhetsa seichas — ya yudei.
Vot ya bryedupa dryevnemu Egiptu.
A vot ya, na kryeste raspyaty, gibnu,
i da sikh por na mne — sledi gvazdey.
Mne kazhetsa, shto Dreifus — eta ya.
Meshchanstvo — moi danoschik i sudya!
Ya za reshotkoy, ya papal v koltso,
zatravlennyi, oplyovannyi, obolgannyi,
damachki s bryusselshmi oborkami,
viszha, zontami tichut mne v litso.
Mne kazhetsa, ya — malchik v Bielostoke.
Krov lyotsya, rastekayas pa palam.
Beschinstvuyut vozhdi traktirnoy stoiki.
I pakhaut vodkoy s lukom popolam.
Ya, sapagom otbroshennyi, bessilny,
naprasna ya pogromshchikov molyu.
Pad gogot: “Bey zhidov! Spasai Rossiyu!”
Labaznik izbivaet mat moyu.
O russhy moi narod, ya znayu,
ty pa sushchnosti internatsionalen,
no chasta te, chi ruki nechisti,
tvoim chisteishim imyenem bryatsali.
Ya znayu dobrotu moyei zyemli.
Kak podla, shto i zhilachkoi ne drognuv,
antisemity narekli sibya:“Soyuzom russkova naroda.”
Mne kazhetsa, ya — eta Anna Frank,
prozrachnaya, kak vyetochka v aprele,
i ya lyublyu, i mne nye nado fraz,
no nado, shtob drug v druga my smotreli.
Kak malo mozhno videt, obonyat!
Nelzya nam listev i nelzya nan neba,
no mozhno ochen mnoga
—eta nezhno drug drugavtyomnoy komnate obnyat!—
“Syuda idut!”— “Nye boysa. Eta guly samoi vesny,
ona idyot syuda.Idi ko mne,dai mne skoreye guby!”
— “Lomayut dver!”— “Nyet!
Eta ledokhod!”
Nad Babim Yarom shelest dihkh trav,
dyerevya smotryat grozno, po-sudeiski.
Zdes molcha vsyo krichit,
i, shapku snyav,ya chuvstvuyu, kak myediemo sedeyu.
I sam ya, kak sploshnoy bezzvuchny krik,
nad tysyachami tysyach pogrebyonnykh,
Ya — kazhdy zdes rasstrelyanny starik,
Ya — kazhdy zdes rasstrelyanny rebyonok.
Nishto vo mne pro eta nye zabudet.
“Internatsional” pust progremit,
kogda naveh pokhoronen budetpasledni na zyemle antisemit.
Yevreiskoy krovi nyet v krovi moyei,
no nenavisten zloboy zaskaruzloyya vsem antisemitam kak yevrei,
ipatomu ya nastoyashchiy russkiy!

II. Yumor
Tsari, koroli, imperatori,
vlastiteli vsei zyemli,
komandovali paradami,no yumorom nye mogli.
V dvortsy rmenitykh osob,
vse dni vozlezhashchikh vykholenna,
Yavlyalsa brodyaga Ezop,
i nishchimi oni vyglyadeli.
yavlyalsa brodyaga Ezop,
i nishchimi oni vyglyadeli.
V domakh, gde khanzha nasledilsvoimi nogami shchuplymi,
Vsyu poshlost Khodzha Nasreddinshibal, kak shakhmaty, shutkami!
vsyu poshlost Khodzha Nasreddinshibal, kak shakhmaty, shutkami!
Khotyeli yumor kupit,
da tolko yevo nye kupish!
Khotyeli yumor ubit,
a yumor pokazyval kukish!
Borotsa s nim delo trudnoye.
Kaznili yevo bez kontsa.
Yevo galova otrublennayatorchala na pike stryeltsa.
No lish skamoroshi dudochkisvoy nachinali skaz,
on zvonko krichal:“Ya tutochki!”
I likho puskalsa v plyas.
V potryopannom kutsem paltishke,
ponuryas i slovno kayas,
pryestupnikom politicheskimon, poimanniy, shol na kazn.
Vsem vidom pakornost vykazival,
gotov k nezemnomu zhityu,
kak vdrug iz paltishka vyskalzival,rukoi makhali — tyu-tyu!
Yumor pryatali v kamery,
da chyorta s dva udalos.
Reshotki i steny kamennyeon prokhodil naskvoz.
Otkashlivayas prostuzhenno,
kak ryadovoy boyets,
shagal on chastushkoy-prastushkoys vintovkoi na Zimnyi dvorets.
Privyk on ko vzglyadam sumrachnym,
no eta yemu nye vryedit,
i sam na sibya s yumoromyumor paroy glyadit.
On vyechen.Vyechen!
On lovok.Lovok!
I yurok,I yurok!
proidyot cherez vsyo, cherez vsyokh.
Itak, da slantsa yumor!On muzhestvenniy chelovek!

III. V MagazinyeKto v platke, a kto v platochke,
kak na podvig, kak na trud,
v magazin po-odinochkemolcha zhenshchiny idut.
, bidonov ikh bryatsanye,zvon butilok i kastryul!
Pakhnet lukom, ogurtsami,
pakhnet sousom “Kabul.”
Zyabnu, dolgo v kassu stoya,
no pakuda dvizhus k nyei,
ot dykhanya zhenshchin stolkikhv magazinye vsyo teplei.
Oni tikho podzhidayut,bogi dobriye semyi,
i v rukakh oni szhimayutdengi trudniye svoyi.
Oni tikho podzhidaynt,bogi dobriye semyi,
i v rukakh oni szhimayutdengi trudniye svoyi.
Eta zhenshchiny Rossii.
Eta nasha chest i sud.
I byeton oni mesili,i pakhali,
i kosili …Vsyo oni perenosili,
vsyo oni perenesut.
Vsyo oni perenosili,
vsyo oni perenesut.
Vsyo na svete im pasilno,
—skolka sily im dano!
Ikh obschitivatpostidno!
Ikh obveshivat greshno!
I v karman pelmeni sunuv,
ya smotryu, surov i tikh,
na ustaliye ot sumokruki pravyedniye ikh.

IV. StrakhiUmirayut v Rossii strakhi,
slovno prizraki prezhnikh lyet,
lish na paperti, kak starukhi,koye-gde yeshcho prosyat na khleb.
Ya ikh pomnyu vo vlasti i silepri dvore torzhestvuyushchei lzhi.
Strakhi vsyudu, kak tyeni, skolzili,pronikali vo vsye etazhi.
Potikhonku lyudei priruchalii na vsye nalgali pyechat:gde molchat by — krichat priuchali,i molchat — gde by nada krichat.
Eta stala sevodnya dalyokim.
Dazhe stranna i vspomnit teper.
Tayinyi strakh pered chim-to donosom,
tayinyi strakh pered stukom v dver.
Nu, a strakh gavorit s inastrantsem?
S inastrantsem — ta shto, a s zhenoy?
Nu, a strakh bezotchotnyi ostatsaposle marshei vdvoyom s tishinoy?
Nye boyalis my stroit v meteli,ukhodit pad snaryadami v boy,
no boyalis paroyu smyertelnorazgovarnat sam s soboy.
Nas nye sbili i nye rastlili,
i nedarom seichas vo vragakhpobedivshaya strakti Rossiyayeshcho bolshiy rozhdaet strakh.
Strakhi noviye vizhu, svetleya:strakh neiskrennim byt so stranoy,
strakh nepravdoy unizit idei,
shto yavlyayutsa pravdoy samoy;
strakh fanfarit do odurenya,
strakh chuzhiye slova povtoryat,
strakh unizit drugikh nedaveryemi chrezmerno sibye daveryat.
Umirayut v Rossii strakbi.
I kogda ya pishu eti strokii paroyu nevolno speshu,
to pishu ikh v yedinstvennom strakhe,
shto ne v polnoyu silu pishu.

V. Karyera
Tvyerdili pastyri, shto vredeni nyerazumen Galilei.
(Shto nyerazumen Galilei …)
No, kak pakazivayet vremya,
kto nyerazumnei — tot umnei!
(Kto nyerazumnei— tot umnei …)
Uchonyi, svyerstnik Galileya,byl Galileya nye glupeye.
(Byl Galileya nye glupeye …)
On znal, shto vyertitsa zyemlya,
no u nyevo byla semya.
(No u nyevo byla semya …)
I on, sadyas s zhenoy v karety,
svershiv predatelstvo svoyo,
schital, shto dyelayet karyeru,
a mezhdu tem gubil yeyo.
(A mezhdu tem gubil yeyo …)
Za asaznaniye planetyshol Galilei odin na risk,
i stal velikim on.
(I stal velikim on …)
Vot eta — ya ponimayu — karyerist.
Itak, da zdravstvuyet karyera,
kagda karyera takova,
kak u Shekspira i Pastera,
Nyutona i Tolstovo,
i Tolstovo … Lva? Lva!
Zachem ikh gryazyu pakryvali?
Talant — talant, kak ni kleimi.
Zabyty te, kto proklinali,
no pomnyat tekh, kovo klyali,
(no pomnyat tekh, kovo klyali …)
Vse te, kto rvalis v stratosferu,
vrachi, shto gibli ot kholyer,
vot eti dyelali karyeru!
Ya s ikh karyer beru primer!
Ya veryu v ikh svyatuyu vyera.
Ikh vyera — muzhestvo mayo.
Ya dyelayu sibye karyeru tem,
shto nye dyelayu yeyo!


I. Babiy Yar
There is no memorial above Babi Yar.
The steep ravine is like a coarse tombstone.
I'm frightened,
I feel as old todayas the Jewish race itself.
I feel now that I am a Jew.
Here I wander through ancient Egypt.
And here I hang on the cross and die,
and I still bear the mark of the nails.
I feel that I am Dreyfus.
The bourgeois rabble denounce and judge me.
I am behind bars, I am encircled,
persecuted, spat on, slandered
,and fine ladies with lace frills
squeal and poke their parasols into my face.
I feel that I am a little boy in Bielostok.
Blood is spattered over the floor.
The ringleaders in the tavern are getting brutal.
They smell of vodka and onions.
I'm kicked to the ground, I'm powerless,
in vain I beg the persecutors.
They guffaw: “Kill the Yids! Save Russia!”
A grain merchant beats up my mother.
Oh my Russian people, I know
that at heart you are internationalists,
but there have been those with soiled hands
who abused your good name.
I know that my land is good.
How filthy that without the slightest shame
the anti-Semites proclaimed themselves:
“The Union of the Russian People.”
I feel that I am Anne Frank,
as tender as a shoot in April,
I am in love and have no need of words,
but we need to look at each other.
How little we can see or smell!
The leaves and the sky are shut off from us,
but there is a lot we can do —we can tenderly embrace each other
in the darkened room!— “Someone's coming!”—
“Don't be frightened. These are the sounds of spring,
spring is coming.
Come to me, give me your lips quickly!”—
“They're breaking down the door!”—
“No! It's the ice breaking!”
Above Babi Yar the wild grass rustles,
the trees look threatening, as though in judgment.
Here everything silently screams,and, baring my head,
I feel as though I am slowly turning grey.
And I become a long, soundless scream
above the thousands and thousands buried here,
I am each old man who was shot here,
I am each child who was shot here.
No part of me can ever forget this.
Let the “International” thunder out
when the last anti-Semite on the earth
has finally been buried.
There is no Jewish blood in my blood,
but I feel the loathsome hatred
of all anti-Semites as though I were a Jew
—and that is why I am a true Russian!

II. Humor
Tsars, kings, emperors,
rulers of all the world,
have commanded parades
but couldn't command humor.
In the palaces of the great,
spending their days sleekly reclining,
Aesop the vagrant turned up
and they would all seem like beggars.
Aesop the vagrant turned up
and they would all seem like beggars.
In houses where a hypocrite had left
his wretched little footprints,
Mullah Nasredin's jokes would demolish
trivialities like pieces on a chessboard!
Mullah Nasredin's jokes would demolish
trivialities like pieces on a chessboard!
They've wanted to buy humor,but he just wouldn't be bought!
They've wanted to kill humor,
but humor gave them the finger.
Fighting him's a tough job.
They've never stopped executing him.
His chopped-off headwas stuck onto a soldier's pike.
But as soon as the clown's pipes
struck up their tune,
he screeched out:“I'm here!”
and broke into a jaunty dance.
Wearing a threadbare little overcoat,
downcast and seemingly repentant,
caught as a political prisoner,
he went to his execution.
Everything about him displayed submission,
resignation to the life hereafter,
when he suddenly wriggled out of his coat,
waved his hand
and — bye-bye!
They've hidden humor away in dungeons,
but they hadn't a hope in hell.
He passed straight through
bars and stone walls.
Clearing his throat from a cold,
like a rank-and-file soldier,
he was a popular tune marching along
with a rifle to the Winter Palace.
He's quite used to dark looks,
they don't worry him at all,
and from time to time humor
looks at himself humorously.
He's eternal.
Eternal!
He's artful.
Artful!
And quick,
And quick!
he gets through everyone and everything.
So then, three cheers for humor!
He's a brave fellow!

III. In the Store
Some with shawls, some with scarves,
as though to some heroic enterprise or to work,
into the store one by one
the women silently come.
Oh, the rattling of their cans,
the clanking of bottles and pans!
There's a smell of onions, cucumbers,
a smell of “Kabul” sauce.
I'm shivering as I queue up for the cash desk,
but as I inch forward towards it,
from the breath of so many women
a warmth spreads round the store.
They wait quietly,their families' guardian angels,
and they grasp in their hands
their hard-earned money.
They wait quietlytheir families' guardian angels,
and they grasp in their hands
their hard-earned money.
These are the women of Russia.
They honor us and they judge us.
They have mixed concrete,
and ploughed, and harvested …
They have endured everything,
they will continue to endure everything.
They have endured everything,
they will continue to endure everything.
Nothing in the world is beyond them
—they have been granted such strength!
It is shameful to short-change them!
It is sinful to short-weight them!
As I shove dumplings into my pocket,
I sternly and quietly observe
their pious hands
weary from carrying their shopping bags.

IV. Fears
Fears are dying out in Russia,
like the wraiths of bygone years;
only in church porches, like old women,
here and there they still beg for bread.
I remember when they were powerful and mighty at the court of the lie triumphant.
Fears slithered everywhere, like shadows,
penetrating every floor.
They stealthily subdued people
and branded their mark on everyone:
when we should have kept silent, they taught us to scream,
and to keep silent when we should have screamed.
All this seems remote today.
It is even strange to remember now.
The secret fear of an anonymous denunciation,
the secret fear of a knock at the door.
Yes, and the fear of speaking to foreigners?
Foreigners? … even to your own wife!
Yes, and that unaccountable fear of being left,
after a march, alone with the silence?
We weren't afraid of construction work in blizzards,
or of going into battle under shell-fire,
but at times we were mortally afraid
of talking to ourselves.
We weren't destroyed or corrupted,
and it is not for nothing that now
Russia, victorious over her own fears,
inspires greater fear in her enemies.
I see new fears dawning:
the fear of being untrue to one's country,
the fear of dishonestly debasing ideas,
which are self-evident truths;
the fear of boasting oneself into a stupor,
the fear of parroting someone else's words,
the fear of humiliating others with distrust
and of trusting oneself overmuch.
Fears are dying out in Russia.
And while I am writing these lines,
at times unintentionally hurrying,
I write haunted by the single fear
of not writing with all my strength.

V. A Career
The priests kept on saying that Galileo
was dangerous and foolish.
(That Galileo was foolish ...)
But, as time has shown,
the fool was much wiser!
(The fool was much wiser! …)
A certain scientist, Galileo's contemporary,
was no more stupid than Galileo.
(Was no more stupid than Galileo …)
He knew that the earth revolved,
but he had a family.
(But he had a family …)
And as he got into a carriage with his wife
after accomplishing his betrayal,
he reckoned he was advancing his career,
but in fact he'd wrecked it.
(But in fact he'd wrecked it …)
For his discovery about our planet
Galileo faced the risk alone,
and he was a great man.
(And he was a great man …)
Now that is what I understand by a careerist.
So then, three cheers for a career
when it's a career like that of
Shakespeare or Pasteur,
Newton or Tolstoy,
or Tolstoy … Lev?
Lev!
Why did they have mud slung at them?
Talent is talent, whatever name you give it.
They're forgotten, those who hurled curses,
but we remember the ones who were cursed,
(but we remember the ones who were cursed …)
All those who strove towards the stratosphere,
the doctors who died of cholera,
they were following careers!
I'll take their careers as an example!
I believe in their sacred belief,
and their belief gives me courage.
I'll follow my career in such a waythat I'm not following it!

When a World War-II fighter landed at the KTC bus stand

PANJIM: While the world was being pounded by missiles and bombs during the chaos that was World War II, Panjimites in the then neutral, Portuguese-ruled Goa busied themselves with their own private little sussegado lives and remained unaffected, until one fine day in 1944... Out of nowhere, a two seater, british Army plane landed in Panjim, on a bare stretch of land, where the KTC bus stand is situated today. Vishnu Vernekar, who was a local mechanic and electronic engineer, at the time, running a shop named Vernecar e Filhos in Panjim, approached the police and boughy the plane, as scrap metal, for just Rs.2000. (Ayesha Barretto, GT)

The fat lady sings only in Mumbai!

Its rich history and intricate architecture, make the Royal Opera House in Mumbai a major tourist attraction. K D L Khan on the only opera house in India.

These days opera houses are an important tourist attraction in major cities. We have the example of the fabulous Sydney Opera House. Dubai and Singapore are fast building state-of-the-art opera houses that can accommodate upto 2000 people. In India, we have the Royal Opera House in Mumbai, which was built in 1909. Efforts are now being made to keep it as memorial of the days it served performing arts.

It is the only opera house built in India although there were a number of theatres in other Presidency capitals of Madras and Calcutta fashioned after their London counterparts. From the days of the East India Company upto the 1920s, Kolkata (Calcutta) had been the capital of the British, but the local culture czars did not think it profitable to invest in an opera house. For some time, a theatre known as Victoria Opera House provided the venue for visiting vocalists.

Historian Sharada Dwivedi has penned a detailed paper on the history of the first and only opera house in India in Mumbai. Constructed in the Baroque style, the opera house, she says, was the brainchild of Maurice E Bandmann, a renowned entertainer from Calcutta and Jehangir Framji Karaka, who headed a coal brokers firm. An advantageous corner site was leased at the northern end of Queen’s Road in the vicinity of the Sandhurst and Kennedy bridges, and in 1908, Karaka and Bandmann drew up the designs for the theatre. Bandmann’s manager was responsible for the design of the auditorium while a Goan, Collaco, took charge of the construction. The Baroque-style design incorporated a blend of European and Indian detailing. A long frontage was a must so that the carriages could drive right up to the entrance. Exhaust fans were needed to counter the hot and sultry climate. A cloakroom each for the ladies and the gentlemen was designed and 26 rows of boxes behind the stalls were put up for the best view of the stage.


And what would an opera be without good acoustics? The ceiling was constructed to enable even those in the gallery to hear every word said on stage. Carera marble was obtained from Italy for the statuary at the entrance. Frescoes decorated the interiors of the domes.

Work was completed in 1912, but several modifications were carried out until 1915: the figure atop the pediment was replaced by three cherubs, the entrance got rich statuary installed and frescoes decorating the interior of the entrance domes and exquisite dados below the boxes were executed. A pair of crystal chandeliers gifted by the Sassoon family hung in the main lobby. The opera house got its royal prefix in honour of King George V’s visit to Bombay (Mumbai) in 1911.

By the 1920s, cinema was gaining popularity and like other theatres of the time, the opera house, in part, became a cinema hall. Pathe rented it in 1925 for screening films. Between 1929 and 1932, Madan’s Theatre occupied the theatre and it was later leased to other Indian theatrical concerns. In 1936, it was completely renovated by its new owner A C Patel and continued to enjoy pride of place during the heyday of Indian films. In the 1980s, with the advent of videos and television, the opera house, like many cinema halls in the state, fell by the side. Today, it is owned by the former Maharaja of Gondal.

In 1995, the building was declared a Grade 2A heritage building, which meant the exteriors and interiors of the structure were to be maintained. According to Sandhya Savant, architect who prepared area guidelines for the opera house precincts, the lobby with its gilded ceiling and the frescos needs to be restored. She says one option for the revival of the opera house can be to change the classification to Grade 2B.

This would enable the owner to develop the vacant land in accordance with the guidelines so that part of the funds can be used for its renovation. If that goes through, the growing clientele for opera can then look forward to enjoying a performance in the place nearly a century old.

(Maharaja Features)

http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/feb192006/finearts1132172006216.asp

Protect Goa’s pangolins

by Nandkumar Kamat


WHEN the ‘Goa News’ cable TV channel on Monday beamed the image of a Pangolin (manis crassicaudata) rescued at Colva by an animal activist Julio Quadros, I was instantly alerted. The forest department should reward him suitably for rescuing the animal which otherwise could have been chased, hunted, killed or sold as a pet by the trappers. These animals cannot be paraded as circus animals or be kept in captivity because they are included in IUCN red list of threatened species.

The IUCN Red List is set upon precise criteria to evaluate the extinction risk of thousands of species and subspecies. These criteria are relevant to all species and all regions of the world. The aim of the Red List is to convey the urgency of conservation issues to the public and policy makers, as well as help the international community to try to reduce species extinction.

India is a member of IUCN and it is the duty of every member country to protect all the threatened species in the red list. Violations are viewed very seriously by experts, non-governmental organisations and countries failing to protect and conserve their threatened species can get blacklisted and may invite international sanctions. Immediately, I contacted the state chief wildlife warden Achalendra Reddy. He informed me that the pangolin has been taken into custody and would be then released in the wild where it can feed on its normal diet of ants and termites. I urged him to create awareness among the people and the media about this important and rare mammalian species of Goa.

Pangolins are cute toothless mammals. Taxonomically they belong to phylum chordata, class mammalia, order pholidata, family manidae, genus manis which comprises eight species (Indian, Chinese, Malayan, Pangwan, Giant, Cape, Tree and long tailed) found in South east Asia and Africa. The physical appearance of pangolins is marked by large, hardened, plate-like scales, which are actually mats of hair. The hair is clumped together in such a way that makes them look like scales. The animal walks with difficulty due to its long front claws. Its large tail is advantageous in balancing. Although terrestrial the pangolins can climb the trees in search of ant nests. The pangolins have huge salivary glands which lubricate their large tongues. After breaking the ant nests or the termite hills with its powerful front claws the pangolin removes the ants or termites with its very large, sticky tongue. Ants and termites are totally defenseless before such a predator.

Locally pangolins are known as “tiryo’’ or “khavlae majar”. The origin of the word pangolin is traced from the Malayan ‘pengguling’ which means ‘curling”. Pangolins curl themselves like the “armadillos’ into tight balls and look funny when they do so. This may entertain people but it is stressful for this animal if it is forced to perform the feat repeatedly for purely human entertainment. Pangolins have powerful legs which they use for digging. Pangolins or scaly anteaters were once found in coastal areas of Goa. But people began to kill them for no reason. I am not sure whether pangolin meat was used in Goa but the Chinese slaughter pangolins for medicinal purpose. The Chinese believe scales of pangolin purportedly reduce swelling, promote blood circulation and help breast-feeding women produce milk. These beliefs have no basis in modern medicine.

I had received a report a few years ago that a private party had kept a pangolin in captivity at Calangute and then it died. There are many reports of pangolin sightings from coastal belt of Goa. This points to a certain habitat preference. Perhaps the pangolins prefer the coastal sand dune habitat. They are burrowing mammals. The pangolin found at Colva indicates that there may be a small breeding population in that place. In that case the forest department needs to explore the location in detail with the help of the local village panchayat and verify this fact.

Pangolin females are smaller than the males. They produce at least one but maximum three offsprings. It is difficult to predict the number of surviving pangolins in Goa. But the Colva specimen shows that this species is not yet extinct. Rampant violations of coastal regulation zone, illegal sand mining, destruction of the sand dunes and fragmentation of fragile coastal habitats has already made survival difficult for wild plants and animals.

Pangolins are important members of the ecosystem. They keep the population of ants and termites in check. Certain species of nest building arboreal ants are dangerous for the trees and the humans. The pangolins spot the nests, climb the trees and destroy these nests. Termites are known as ferocious and persistent pests which attack the timber and damage the houses. Pangolins keep a check on their population by reducing their numbers. Nature has provided a system of checks and balances. Very little is known about the specific diet preference or feeding behaviour of local pangolins.

Perhaps the Colva pangolin may not survive in Bondla wilderness unless it can use the termites found in abundance in the mounds. Pangolins are shy and harmless animals. They have a right to exist and survive.

The future of wildlife in Goa outside the forests and the wildlife sanctuaries appears bleak. The capture of a panther which strayed at Miramar has already shown the pressure which the wildlife is facing. There are also shocking reports that another protected species of mammals, the marine dolphins are caught, cut and sold in the Vasco fish market. The forest department needs to warn owners of mechanised fishing vessels about the implications of capturing dolphins. People should also refuse to buy the meat of dolphins. The forest department has to issue a set of guidelines or ethics for all those animal lovers or activists who capture/rescue wild animals. There are stringent and elaborate rules in the western countries on such aspects. Wild animals do not exist for human entertainment. It was ethically wrong to parade the hungry, stressed and scared pangolin in front of crowds. Better sense is likely to prevail as Goans get more educated and enlightened and aim to build a truly compassionate society.

Prom 1: 14 July

If the First Night of the Proms is anything to go by, this Proms season promises to be a very satisfying one indeed.
The Marriage of Figaro overture was crisp, & I felt had the right balance of humour and precision.
Barbara Frittoli had fluidity and lyricism in her rendition of the Mozart arias. Jiri Belohlavek rose to the fore with his interpretation of Smetana's Ma Vlast-Vltava. The BBC Symphony Orchestra has a new spring in their step, as Charles Hazlewood aptly put it, under his baton.
I was not familiar with Dvorak's Te Deum. The BBC Interactive service filled me in, and I learnt a lot about this piece through the service.
The piece de resistance for me was the Shostakovich 5. I love this piece, & I think both conductor & orchestra gave an insightful performance of the work.
All in all, a ground-thumping start to the Proms. Well done!

Konkani Christians


The Catholic community in Canara region is a sterling example of brave defense of Catholic faith and agile acculturation of Christianity in Indian soil.

Often called the Konkani Christians because of the language they use, the original community migrated from Goa during 1500-1763. Varied political, economic and cultural reasons led to the migration.

The Portuguese colonizers in Goa imposed excessive taxes on the native Christians. The taxes were so huge that in 1642 some native Goans sent a memorandum to Lisbon.

The Portuguese, in their efforts to keep Christian purity, insisted the converts should avoid anything that is Hindu. The Portuguese rulers also insisted the natives should adopt foreign food habits and dress. They also gave European names to the natives. But Konkani Christians wanted to preserve their language, culture and manners.

The "Edict of Goa Inquisition" could have also led to the migration. The edict wanted to remove all traces of paganism in the native Christians' birth, death, festivals and dress. It instilled fear and insecurity among the native Christians.

Some historians say better prospects for the agrarian community and greater political stability in the Canara region contributed to the migration.

As they settled happily, Konkani Catholics learnt Kannada and Tulu, the local dialects in Canara region. However, they fostered their love for their mother tongue Konkani. By 1763, they were organized into several communities of parishes and built up their own business.

The captivity

A historical event of great significance happened when South Canara came under the rule of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan between 1761-1799.

Soon after the treaty of Mangalore in 1784, Tipu Sultan issued orders to all stations in Kerala to seize the Christians, confiscate their estates and deport them to Seringapatnam.

The Konkani Christians of South Canara were caught in the crossfire of Anglo-Mysore relations and many of them suffered what the Konkani Christians call "the historical experience of Captivity" under Tipu Sultan.

Tipu committed several excess on the Christians and subjected them to inhuman misery, including death and torture.

The fourth Anglo-Mysore war led to the liberation of Christians from captivity after 15 years. The British took over South Canara after the fall of Tipu Sultan in 1799.

Some 15,000 of the exiled Konkani Christians survived. British General Wellesley helped some 10,000 of them return to Canara and allowed them to resettle on their land. He also restored their land holdings.

The present Konkani Catholics in Canara are the descendents of those survivors.

Einstein's theory of infidelity
By Arifa Akbar
Published: 11 July 2006
Albert Einstein has been revealed as a charismatic flirt and philanderer who liked to describe his extramarital affairs to his second wife and stepdaughter.

A series of 1,300 letters written by the physicist were published for the first time yesterday. They are part of a batch of 3,500 bequeathed to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The letters, translated from German, portray Einstein as a heartbreaker who in one letter tells his long-suffering wife, Elsa, how some women shower him with "unwanted" affection. In another he asks his stepdaughter, Margot, to discreetly deliver a love note to his Russian lover.

He was reputed to have been a charmer who bewitched Marilyn Monroe, and had 10 lovers outside of two marriages. These letters, kept by Margot, and released two decades after her death on 8 July 1986 on her instruction, illuminate how Einstein spent little time at home, instead lecturing in Europe and the US, but wrote about his amorous adventures to his family.

Previously released letters have revealed how miserable he was in his first marriage to Mileva Maric, whom he divorced in 1919, to marry his cousin, Elsa.

In the letters, the professor describes six women whom he romanced and spent time sailing, reading, and attending concerts with, while being married to Elsa. Some of the women identified by Einstein include Estella, Ethel, Toni, and his famous "Russian spy lover", Margarita, while others are referred to simply by their initials, such as M and L.

In one letter to Margot, Einstein asks his stepdaughter to pass on "a little letter" to Margarita "to avoid providing curious eyes with tidbits".

In another from Oxford, dated 1931, he writes about the ardent nature of some of his lovers who pursued him relentlessly, showering him with gifts, including Ethel Michanowski, a 30-year-old Berlin socialite who was involved with Einstein in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and chased him to England.

Michanowski is mentioned in three of the newly unsealed letters including one in which he writes: "It is true that M followed me [to England] and her chasing after me is getting out of control. But firstly I could hardly avoid it, and secondly, when I see her again, I will tell her that she should vanish immediately. Out of all the dames, I am in fact attached only to Mrs L, who is absolutely harmless and decent."

In one correspondence to Elsa, he insensitively writes about Mrs M, who accompanied him on his trip abroad. "Mrs M definitely acted according to the best Christian-Jewish ethics: 1) one should do what one enjoys and what won't harm anyone else; and 2) one should refrain from doing things one does not take delight in and which annoy another person. Because of 1) she came with me, and because of 2) she didn't tell you a word. Isn't that irreproachable?" he writes.

Hanoch Gutfreund, chairman of the Albert Einstein Worldwide Exhibition, said while Einstein's marriage to Elsa was best described as a "marriage of convenience," he nevertheless wrote to her almost every day with descriptions of lecturing in Europe and his efforts to give up smoking, as well as detail of his mistresses. In 1921, he wrote a postcard to her about the nature of scientific discovery, saying: "Soon I'll be fed up with the [theory of] relativity Elsa. Even such a thing fades away when one is too involved with it."

Einstein's harsh treatment of his first wife, Mileva, has been documented in biographies since his death, and he has been portrayed as an indifferent father.

But Professor Gutfreund said the latest collection showed Einstein to have been warmer to his first family than previously thought, and letters written by his two sons from his first marriage showed "they understood he loved them".

The letters dated from 1912 until 1955, when Einstein died at the age of 76 - nearly two decades after Elsa's death - also reveal how he lost much of his Nobel Prize money from 1921 in the Great Depression. Under the terms of his divorce from Mileva, the entire sum was supposed to have been deposited into a Swiss bank account, from which Mileva was to draw for her and the couple's two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard, but the new correspondence shows he invested most of it in America, where much of it was lost after the Wall Street crash of 1929.

Albert Einstein has been revealed as a charismatic flirt and philanderer who liked to describe his extramarital affairs to his second wife and stepdaughter.

A series of 1,300 letters written by the physicist were published for the first time yesterday. They are part of a batch of 3,500 bequeathed to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The letters, translated from German, portray Einstein as a heartbreaker who in one letter tells his long-suffering wife, Elsa, how some women shower him with "unwanted" affection. In another he asks his stepdaughter, Margot, to discreetly deliver a love note to his Russian lover.

He was reputed to have been a charmer who bewitched Marilyn Monroe, and had 10 lovers outside of two marriages. These letters, kept by Margot, and released two decades after her death on 8 July 1986 on her instruction, illuminate how Einstein spent little time at home, instead lecturing in Europe and the US, but wrote about his amorous adventures to his family.

Previously released letters have revealed how miserable he was in his first marriage to Mileva Maric, whom he divorced in 1919, to marry his cousin, Elsa.

In the letters, the professor describes six women whom he romanced and spent time sailing, reading, and attending concerts with, while being married to Elsa. Some of the women identified by Einstein include Estella, Ethel, Toni, and his famous "Russian spy lover", Margarita, while others are referred to simply by their initials, such as M and L.

In one letter to Margot, Einstein asks his stepdaughter to pass on "a little letter" to Margarita "to avoid providing curious eyes with tidbits".

In another from Oxford, dated 1931, he writes about the ardent nature of some of his lovers who pursued him relentlessly, showering him with gifts, including Ethel Michanowski, a 30-year-old Berlin socialite who was involved with Einstein in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and chased him to England.

Michanowski is mentioned in three of the newly unsealed letters including one in which he writes: "It is true that M followed me [to England] and her chasing after me is getting out of control. But firstly I could hardly avoid it, and secondly, when I see her again, I will tell her that she should vanish immediately. Out of all the dames, I am in fact attached only to Mrs L, who is absolutely harmless and decent."
In one correspondence to Elsa, he insensitively writes about Mrs M, who accompanied him on his trip abroad. "Mrs M definitely acted according to the best Christian-Jewish ethics: 1) one should do what one enjoys and what won't harm anyone else; and 2) one should refrain from doing things one does not take delight in and which annoy another person. Because of 1) she came with me, and because of 2) she didn't tell you a word. Isn't that irreproachable?" he writes.

Hanoch Gutfreund, chairman of the Albert Einstein Worldwide Exhibition, said while Einstein's marriage to Elsa was best described as a "marriage of convenience," he nevertheless wrote to her almost every day with descriptions of lecturing in Europe and his efforts to give up smoking, as well as detail of his mistresses. In 1921, he wrote a postcard to her about the nature of scientific discovery, saying: "Soon I'll be fed up with the [theory of] relativity Elsa. Even such a thing fades away when one is too involved with it."

Einstein's harsh treatment of his first wife, Mileva, has been documented in biographies since his death, and he has been portrayed as an indifferent father.

But Professor Gutfreund said the latest collection showed Einstein to have been warmer to his first family than previously thought, and letters written by his two sons from his first marriage showed "they understood he loved them".

The letters dated from 1912 until 1955, when Einstein died at the age of 76 - nearly two decades after Elsa's death - also reveal how he lost much of his Nobel Prize money from 1921 in the Great Depression. Under the terms of his divorce from Mileva, the entire sum was supposed to have been deposited into a Swiss bank account, from which Mileva was to draw for her and the couple's two sons, Hans Albert and Eduard, but the new correspondence shows he invested most of it in America, where much of it was lost after the Wall Street crash of 1929.

Massacre in Mumbai: Ten minutes, eight bombs, 163 rail passengers killed
By Justin Huggler in Delhi
Published: 12 July 2006
At least 163 people were killed yesterday in a series of co-ordinated bomb blasts on Mumbai's suburban train network. Six of the eight bombs went off inside packed commuter trains in the middle of rush hour, injuring more than 300 people, many of them severely.

Witnesses spoke of seeing severed limbs and body parts littering the tracks. Other passengers rushed to help the wounded, wrapping them in whatever scraps of cloth they could find, fashioning makeshift stretchers, and carrying them out of the wreckage. At one hospital where the wounded were treated, a witness said the floors were covered in blood.

"I saw more than 35 bodies, some without legs," one survivor, Dhiraj Bajpee, said. "I even saw severed halves of bodies." A shopkeeper who was near by when one bomb went off said the blast was so powerful he thought the train had been hit by lightning.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but immediate suspicions were turned on Islamic militant groups operating in Kashmir, particularly Lashkar-e Toiba. Suspicions also pointed towards " D Company", a highly politicised criminal mafia that used to be based in Mumbai.

The attacks brought Mumbai to a standstill. Yesterday evening, in an extremely rare move, the police closed the entire rail network down. They had, in effect, shut down the city.

Mumbai's phone network was completely jammed as people tried to call their loved ones to make sure they were safe. Survivors asked the Indian television news channels to broadcast their names to let their families know they were alive. Heavy monsoon downpours were slowing the rescue efforts last night.

The first explosion came just before 6.30pm local time (2pm BST) at the peak of the rush hour, in a train near the busy Khar Road station. Seven more bombs went off in the 10 minutes that followed at locations all over Mumbai, from downtown to the furthest suburbs, including two at Borivili, said a senior Indian government official.

"I urge the people to remain calm, not to believe rumours and carry on their activity normally," the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, said, describing the attacks as a "shocking and cowardly attempt to spread a feeling of hatred".

Police said they had received intelligence that an attack was imminent but that they had no information as to where or when.

There will be immediate fears of heightened tensions between India and Pakistan over the attacks, especially with many initial suspicions pointing towards militant Islamic groups that operate in Kashmir but are based in Pakistan.

Islamabad was quick to condemn the bombs, saying: "Pakistan strongly condemns the series of bomb blasts on commuter trains. This despicable act of terrorism has resulted in the loss of a large number of precious lives."

The bombings are the latest in a recent series of attacks in India. In October last year, 61 people were killed in three co-ordinated bombings at shopping markets in Delhi, on the last shopping day before the biggest Hindu festival of the year. And in March, 20 people were killed when a bomb went off at a temple in Hinduism's holiest city, Varanasi. Police say they believe both attacks were the work of Lashkar-e Toiba.

An attack on Mumbai has considerable symbolic value, since it is India's financial capital, and the powerhouse of the country's transformation into the world's second-fastest growing economy.

But most of yesterday's bombings did not target the wealthy city centre but trains carrying commuters home to the vast suburbs where most of the city's 17 million or so people live.

It is not the first time Mumbai has been targeted: in 1993, in what many analysts believe was the prototype for al-Qa'ida's tactic of co-ordinated attacks across a city, 13 bombs went off in different locations in Mumbai, including the stock exchange, killing at least 250 people. In 2003, 52 people were killed in twin bombings, one at the Gateway to India, Mumbai's main tourist attraction.

There are many groups which could have been responsible for yesterday's atrocity. India is the target for one of the widest range of militant groups in the world, from Maoist guerrillas to tribal separatists. But most do not have the capability to mount such an attack.

There were unconfirmed reports that Indian intelligence was focusing on Lashkar-e Toiba as the prime suspect for the attacks. Lashkar's main cause is to "liberate" Kashmir from Indian rule.It used to have close links to Pakistan's ISI intelligence but Islamabad says links have been severed.

There were also reports that Indian intelligence was investigating the possible involvement of the "D Company" mafia group, which is believed to have been behind the bombings in 1993. Run by the multimillionaire Dawood Ibrahim, the group was entirely non-political until 1993. But in the wake of the religious violence that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque in 1992, Mr Ibrahim, a Muslim, is believed to have decided to get involved.

At least 163 people were killed yesterday in a series of co-ordinated bomb blasts on Mumbai's suburban train network. Six of the eight bombs went off inside packed commuter trains in the middle of rush hour, injuring more than 300 people, many of them severely.

Witnesses spoke of seeing severed limbs and body parts littering the tracks. Other passengers rushed to help the wounded, wrapping them in whatever scraps of cloth they could find, fashioning makeshift stretchers, and carrying them out of the wreckage. At one hospital where the wounded were treated, a witness said the floors were covered in blood.

"I saw more than 35 bodies, some without legs," one survivor, Dhiraj Bajpee, said. "I even saw severed halves of bodies." A shopkeeper who was near by when one bomb went off said the blast was so powerful he thought the train had been hit by lightning.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but immediate suspicions were turned on Islamic militant groups operating in Kashmir, particularly Lashkar-e Toiba. Suspicions also pointed towards " D Company", a highly politicised criminal mafia that used to be based in Mumbai.

The attacks brought Mumbai to a standstill. Yesterday evening, in an extremely rare move, the police closed the entire rail network down. They had, in effect, shut down the city.

Mumbai's phone network was completely jammed as people tried to call their loved ones to make sure they were safe. Survivors asked the Indian television news channels to broadcast their names to let their families know they were alive. Heavy monsoon downpours were slowing the rescue efforts last night.

The first explosion came just before 6.30pm local time (2pm BST) at the peak of the rush hour, in a train near the busy Khar Road station. Seven more bombs went off in the 10 minutes that followed at locations all over Mumbai, from downtown to the furthest suburbs, including two at Borivili, said a senior Indian government official.

"I urge the people to remain calm, not to believe rumours and carry on their activity normally," the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, said, describing the attacks as a "shocking and cowardly attempt to spread a feeling of hatred".

Police said they had received intelligence that an attack was imminent but that they had no information as to where or when.

There will be immediate fears of heightened tensions between India and Pakistan over the attacks, especially with many initial suspicions pointing towards militant Islamic groups that operate in Kashmir but are based in Pakistan.
Islamabad was quick to condemn the bombs, saying: "Pakistan strongly condemns the series of bomb blasts on commuter trains. This despicable act of terrorism has resulted in the loss of a large number of precious lives."

The bombings are the latest in a recent series of attacks in India. In October last year, 61 people were killed in three co-ordinated bombings at shopping markets in Delhi, on the last shopping day before the biggest Hindu festival of the year. And in March, 20 people were killed when a bomb went off at a temple in Hinduism's holiest city, Varanasi. Police say they believe both attacks were the work of Lashkar-e Toiba.

An attack on Mumbai has considerable symbolic value, since it is India's financial capital, and the powerhouse of the country's transformation into the world's second-fastest growing economy.

But most of yesterday's bombings did not target the wealthy city centre but trains carrying commuters home to the vast suburbs where most of the city's 17 million or so people live.

It is not the first time Mumbai has been targeted: in 1993, in what many analysts believe was the prototype for al-Qa'ida's tactic of co-ordinated attacks across a city, 13 bombs went off in different locations in Mumbai, including the stock exchange, killing at least 250 people. In 2003, 52 people were killed in twin bombings, one at the Gateway to India, Mumbai's main tourist attraction.

There are many groups which could have been responsible for yesterday's atrocity. India is the target for one of the widest range of militant groups in the world, from Maoist guerrillas to tribal separatists. But most do not have the capability to mount such an attack.

There were unconfirmed reports that Indian intelligence was focusing on Lashkar-e Toiba as the prime suspect for the attacks. Lashkar's main cause is to "liberate" Kashmir from Indian rule.It used to have close links to Pakistan's ISI intelligence but Islamabad says links have been severed.

There were also reports that Indian intelligence was investigating the possible involvement of the "D Company" mafia group, which is believed to have been behind the bombings in 1993. Run by the multimillionaire Dawood Ibrahim, the group was entirely non-political until 1993. But in the wake of the religious violence that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque in 1992, Mr Ibrahim, a Muslim, is believed to have decided to get involved.

Mumbai bombings 'We saw people with severed limbs'
By Justin Huggler
Published: 12 July 2006
Survivors of the Mumbai train bombings yesterday spoke of watching helplessly as passengers hurled themselves from the still fast-moving train in blind panic after the first explosion, only to dash their brains out on the track below, so great was the horror of what had happened on board.

When the first bomb went off at about 6.30pm local time, the carriage would have been packed. It was rush hour on the busiest urban rail network in the world, and the city was being lashed by monsoon rains. At busy times, people don't just squeeze into a Mumbai train. They hang out of doors, clinging on with one hand.

They would have been the first casualties, blown off the train by the force of the blast. But it would have been worse inside, where the passengers cram in so tight that you sometimes have to stand with one foot on top of the other. Inside that crush a bomb went off ­ a bomb powerful enough to tear the roof off the train. When the television cameras got to the site of the explosion, the train windows were covered in blood.

In the 10 minutes that followed, seven more bombs went off, from downtown Mumbai to the furthest suburbs. One went off in a passenger underpass at one of the busiest stations. "We heard a loud blast in one of the train compartments. When we rushed there and looked, we saw people with severed limbs and grievous injuries," a witness said. "There were no police or railway people to help."

Television pictures showed bodies lying by the tracks in the rain, while survivors lay nearby, groping for their mobile phones. Police emerged from the wreckage carrying gruesome bundles wrapped in bloodstained rags that can only have been severed body parts.

People rushed from all over Mumbai to help the injured. "There were so many, I couldn't really count," Sunny Jain told the BBC. "There are not enough ambulances and many people are making their own way to the station. They are coming in taxis and by foot."

As so many times before in a crisis, in the bombings of 1993 and 2003, it was the ordinary citizens of Mumbai who rushed to help. It was they who carried the wounded to ambulances.

But then this was an attack on the heart and soul of Mumbai. The trains are the lifeline of the city, carrying six million passengers a day. So gridlocked is the traffic that a journey which takes two hours by road takes 15 minutes by train, and everybody, from the richest Bollywood producer to the poorest slum-dwellers, takes the train at some time.

Survivors of the Mumbai train bombings yesterday spoke of watching helplessly as passengers hurled themselves from the still fast-moving train in blind panic after the first explosion, only to dash their brains out on the track below, so great was the horror of what had happened on board.

When the first bomb went off at about 6.30pm local time, the carriage would have been packed. It was rush hour on the busiest urban rail network in the world, and the city was being lashed by monsoon rains. At busy times, people don't just squeeze into a Mumbai train. They hang out of doors, clinging on with one hand.

They would have been the first casualties, blown off the train by the force of the blast. But it would have been worse inside, where the passengers cram in so tight that you sometimes have to stand with one foot on top of the other. Inside that crush a bomb went off ­ a bomb powerful enough to tear the roof off the train. When the television cameras got to the site of the explosion, the train windows were covered in blood.

In the 10 minutes that followed, seven more bombs went off, from downtown Mumbai to the furthest suburbs. One went off in a passenger underpass at one of the busiest stations. "We heard a loud blast in one of the train compartments. When we rushed there and looked, we saw people with severed limbs and grievous injuries," a witness said. "There were no police or railway people to help."
Television pictures showed bodies lying by the tracks in the rain, while survivors lay nearby, groping for their mobile phones. Police emerged from the wreckage carrying gruesome bundles wrapped in bloodstained rags that can only have been severed body parts.

People rushed from all over Mumbai to help the injured. "There were so many, I couldn't really count," Sunny Jain told the BBC. "There are not enough ambulances and many people are making their own way to the station. They are coming in taxis and by foot."

As so many times before in a crisis, in the bombings of 1993 and 2003, it was the ordinary citizens of Mumbai who rushed to help. It was they who carried the wounded to ambulances.

But then this was an attack on the heart and soul of Mumbai. The trains are the lifeline of the city, carrying six million passengers a day. So gridlocked is the traffic that a journey which takes two hours by road takes 15 minutes by train, and everybody, from the richest Bollywood producer to the poorest slum-dwellers, takes the train at some time.

Wuthering Heights--Kate Bush

Out on the wiley, windy moors
We'd roll and fall in green
You had a temper, like my jealousy
Too hot, too greedy
How could you leave me?
When I needed to possess you
I hated you, I loved you too

Bad dreams in the night
They told me I was going to lose the fight
Leave behind my wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights.

(Chorus):
Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy come home
I'm so cold, let me in-a-your window

Oh it gets dark, it gets lonely
On the other side from you
I pine a lot, I find the lot
Falls through without you
I'm coming back love, cruel Heathcliff
My only one dream, my only master

Too long I roam in the night
I'm coming back to his side to put it right
I'm coming home to wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights

(Chorus)

Oh let me have it, let me grab your soul away
Oh let me have it, let me grab your soul away
You know it's me, Cathy

(Chorus)

Photo of Mozart's Widow Discovered in Germany
By Matthew Westphal07 Jul 2006
An old daguerreotype image of Constanze Weber Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's widow, has been found in the municipal archives of the Bavarian town of Altötting.
The websites of BBC News, the German magazine Der Spiegel and the television network France 2 (among other outlets) report the discovery today. The surviving print is not the original daguerreotype but a copy dating from the second half of the 19th century.
The photo was taken in Altötting in 1840 when the 78-year-old Constanze was visiting her friend, the composer Max Keller. She can be seen in front at the far left, sitting next to Keller. It is evidently the only photo ever taken of her.
The image is one of the oldest surviving examples of photography in Germany. The daguerrotype was perfected and patented in France in 1839.
Mozart died in 1791 at the age of 36; Constanze was 29 at the time. She later married a Danish diplomat and lived until 1842.

An 1840 daguerreotype showing Mozart's widow Constanze at front left.
http://www.playbillarts.com/news/article/4874.html

Maharaja's son is disowned after coming out as gay

By Justin Huggler in Delhi
Published: 07 July 2006
The crown prince of one of India's grandest royal families has been stripped of his inheritance and disowned by his parents - for coming out as gay.
Manvendra Sinh Gohil, the only son of the Maharaja of Rajpipla, found that he had been disinherited when he read it in Indian newspapers, where his parents had taken out advertisements to make the announcement.
"Manvendra is not in the control of his mother and involved in activities unacceptable to society," says one of the adverts, written by his mother. "Hence he ceases to have any rights as a son over the family property ... henceforth, no one must refer to my name as mother of Mavendra."
The treatment of Mr Gohil by his family has brought into stark relief attitudes towards homosexuality in modern India, where any form of sex between two people of the same gender is still illegal.
"I knew they would never accept me for who I truly am," Mr Gohil told reporters, "but I also knew I could no longer live a lie. I wanted to come out because I had gotten involved with activism and I felt it was no longer right to live in the closet. I came out as gay because I wanted people to openly discuss homsexuality since it's a hidden affair with a lot of stigma attached."
As heir to the 800-year-old throne of Rajpipla, Mr Gohil stood to inherit considerable family estates, as well as the prestige the title of maharaja still carries in republican India. But he has said he will not fight his disinheritance in the courts.
"They were afraid to even use the word gay," he told the Indian Express. "But I accept whatever my family has decided. I will abide by their decision in this matter and will not stake a claim to the property."
The reaction of Mr Gohil's family is not an isolated case. Last year, two women in their twenties who tried to live together as lovers were arrested and forcibly handed over to their parents. In January, four men were arrested in Lucknow on charges of running a "gay racket", because they frequented a gay internet chatroom.
Mr Gohil says he first began to realise he was homosexual when he was 10 years old but, for years, kept it secret and led a quiet life. In 1991, he was forced into an unhappy arranged marriage with a princess from another of India's royal families but they divorced when he admitted to her he was gay.
"Four years ago I had a nervous breakdown and through that I spoke to my psychotherapist who helped me," Mr Gohil said. "I told my parents I was gay but initially it was difficult for them to accept it. They tried to convert me to heterosexuality. The doctors told them that was not possible. And I guess they could not deal with the stigma."
The crown prince of one of India's grandest royal families has been stripped of his inheritance and disowned by his parents - for coming out as gay.
Manvendra Sinh Gohil, the only son of the Maharaja of Rajpipla, found that he had been disinherited when he read it in Indian newspapers, where his parents had taken out advertisements to make the announcement.
"Manvendra is not in the control of his mother and involved in activities unacceptable to society," says one of the adverts, written by his mother. "Hence he ceases to have any rights as a son over the family property ... henceforth, no one must refer to my name as mother of Mavendra."
The treatment of Mr Gohil by his family has brought into stark relief attitudes towards homosexuality in modern India, where any form of sex between two people of the same gender is still illegal.
"I knew they would never accept me for who I truly am," Mr Gohil told reporters, "but I also knew I could no longer live a lie. I wanted to come out because I had gotten involved with activism and I felt it was no longer right to live in the closet. I came out as gay because I wanted people to openly discuss homsexuality since it's a hidden affair with a lot of stigma attached."
As heir to the 800-year-old throne of Rajpipla, Mr Gohil stood to inherit considerable family estates, as well as the prestige the title of maharaja still carries in republican India. But he has said he will not fight his disinheritance in the courts.
"They were afraid to even use the word gay," he told the Indian Express. "But I accept whatever my family has decided. I will abide by their decision in this matter and will not stake a claim to the property."
The reaction of Mr Gohil's family is not an isolated case. Last year, two women in their twenties who tried to live together as lovers were arrested and forcibly handed over to their parents. In January, four men were arrested in Lucknow on charges of running a "gay racket", because they frequented a gay internet chatroom.
Mr Gohil says he first began to realise he was homosexual when he was 10 years old but, for years, kept it secret and led a quiet life. In 1991, he was forced into an unhappy arranged marriage with a princess from another of India's royal families but they divorced when he admitted to her he was gay.
"Four years ago I had a nervous breakdown and through that I spoke to my psychotherapist who helped me," Mr Gohil said. "I told my parents I was gay but initially it was difficult for them to accept it. They tried to convert me to heterosexuality. The doctors told them that was not possible. And I guess they could not deal with the stigma."

Slave trader's descendant begs forgiveness in Africa


By Terry Kirby, Chief Reporter
Published: 22 June 2006
Sir John Hawkins was a buccaneering Elizabethan seaman and adventurer, who helped his cousin Sir Francis Drake beat the Spanish Armada. And he was also one of the pioneers of the slave trade, becoming the first person to buy slaves in west Africa and sell them to Spanish landowners in the Caribbean.
Now his descendent, Andrew Hawkins, a youth worker from Cornwall, has delivered an extraordinary personal but public apology for his ancestors' involvement in the trade, kneeling in chains in front of 25,000 Africans in a stadium in Banjul, the capital of the Gambia.
Mr Hawkins's apology took place during a trip this month to west Africa organised by the Lifeline Expedition, a charity project aimed at achieving reconciliation over the slave trade.
Mr Hawkins, 37, from Liskeard, said yesterday: "I apologised on behalf of my family. I apologised for the adults and children taken. I recognise that it's a small, simple act to say sorry - but it was a handful of people who started the slave trade and the ripples of their actions caused evil throughout the continent of Africa.
"It was one of the most memorable things I've ever done. It was a learning experience. You see just how deep the wounds left by the slave trade are. As someone with family links to the slave traders, it was a very difficult thing to see the consequences of their actions. Hopefully a handful of people can now be the beginning of something good."
After he had spoken, the Vice-President of Gambia, Isatou Njie Saidy, came forward to accept the apology and symbolically remove the chains.
The event was part of the Roots Festival, linked to the Alex Haley bestseller, Roots, which tells the story of the origins of black Americans in the slave trade. The Lifeline Expedition group also wore chains and shackles during a "reconciliation walk" in the village of Juffureh, from which Kunta Kinte, the slave whose story is the basis for Roots, is believed to have come from.
Mr Hawkins was among 20 Europeans on the Gambia trip, which is part of a seven-year reconciliation project which started in 2000. It aims to bring people from Africa, the Americas and Europe together to promote fair trade and foster education about issues of slavery, racism and reconciliation.
David Potts, the founder of the Lifeline Expedition said: "We do not think there has been a really sincere apology from Europeans to Africa and we want to do our part in trying to redress that.'' Next year, the group plans a walk between London, Liverpool, Bristol and Plymouth to mark the 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade in 1807.
Sir John Hawkins was a buccaneering Elizabethan seaman and adventurer, who helped his cousin Sir Francis Drake beat the Spanish Armada. And he was also one of the pioneers of the slave trade, becoming the first person to buy slaves in west Africa and sell them to Spanish landowners in the Caribbean.
Now his descendent, Andrew Hawkins, a youth worker from Cornwall, has delivered an extraordinary personal but public apology for his ancestors' involvement in the trade, kneeling in chains in front of 25,000 Africans in a stadium in Banjul, the capital of the Gambia.
Mr Hawkins's apology took place during a trip this month to west Africa organised by the Lifeline Expedition, a charity project aimed at achieving reconciliation over the slave trade.
Mr Hawkins, 37, from Liskeard, said yesterday: "I apologised on behalf of my family. I apologised for the adults and children taken. I recognise that it's a small, simple act to say sorry - but it was a handful of people who started the slave trade and the ripples of their actions caused evil throughout the continent of Africa.
"It was one of the most memorable things I've ever done. It was a learning experience. You see just how deep the wounds left by the slave trade are. As someone with family links to the slave traders, it was a very difficult thing to see the consequences of their actions. Hopefully a handful of people can now be the beginning of something good."
After he had spoken, the Vice-President of Gambia, Isatou Njie Saidy, came forward to accept the apology and symbolically remove the chains.
The event was part of the Roots Festival, linked to the Alex Haley bestseller, Roots, which tells the story of the origins of black Americans in the slave trade. The Lifeline Expedition group also wore chains and shackles during a "reconciliation walk" in the village of Juffureh, from which Kunta Kinte, the slave whose story is the basis for Roots, is believed to have come from.
Mr Hawkins was among 20 Europeans on the Gambia trip, which is part of a seven-year reconciliation project which started in 2000. It aims to bring people from Africa, the Americas and Europe together to promote fair trade and foster education about issues of slavery, racism and reconciliation.
David Potts, the founder of the Lifeline Expedition said: "We do not think there has been a really sincere apology from Europeans to Africa and we want to do our part in trying to redress that.'' Next year, the group plans a walk between London, Liverpool, Bristol and Plymouth to mark the 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade in 1807.

Crossing the Himalayas: China reopens a passage to India


At 15,000ft above sea level, the Silk Road pass is the world's highest - and loneliest - customs post. Now it is back in business in a bid to revive an ancient trade route
By Justin Huggler and Clifford Coonan
Published: 20 June 2006
High in the Himalayas, a barbed wire fence snakes its way across a desolate landscape. On most days, a thick, white, freezing cloud descends across the peaks, and it is hard to see anything. But now and then a figure looms out of the mist, dressed in combat fatigues. It is like a scene from some old war film. This is where the Chinese and Indian armies have faced off against each other across a border that has been closed for 44 years.
But now there is frenetic activity on both sides of the border. Bulldozers are clearing land. Prefabricated warehouses have been put up. At 14,400ft above sea level, the world's highest custom house is back in business: the border is about to reopen. This is the return of the Silk Road.
The narrow road that threads its way through the hills, up to the Nathu La is barely motorable, better suited to mules than trucks. But, though it may not look it today, for 58 years this road was the main artery of trade between India and China. And now Delhi and Beijing are hoping that here the Silk Road, which once accounted for a staggering proportion of the world's productivity, can be reborn.
Talks are underway between India and China in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, for the reopening the border crossing at the Nathu La pass. If all goes according to plan, it could be open as soon as 30 June. And the Sikkim state government on the Indian side is predicting that by 2010, the total trade across Nathu La could be worth as much as $1bn (£540m).
Even if most observers think that figure is a little ambitious, there is no mistaking the significance of what is going on up at Nathu La. At this lonely mountain border post, the two fastest growing economies in the world meet. And after decades of hostility, suddenly they are hungry to invest in each others' markets.
In the 1750s, China and India between them produced a remarkable 57 per cent of the world's manufacturing output. For centuries, the Silk Road was one of the most flourishing trade arteries in the world connecting China to India, the Middle East and Europe. But in 1962, after a border war between India and China, the Silk Road was closed. The border was sealed off, and trade between the two Asian giants slowed to a trickle.
Not any more. Glimpsing the huge economic potential in co-operation, China and India have shrugged their decades-old rivalry aside. Even as the US President George Bush is courting India as a strategic ally against China, Delhi is cosying up to Beijing economically. They have marked this year as Sino-Indian friendship year, a tribute to a booming trade relationship worth £10bn last year - and that was without a direct land crossing between the two countries. It represented a rise of nearly 38 per cent from the previous year, and is certainly expected to rise this year, according to data from China's Ministry of Commerce.
In India today, the talk is of "Chindia" an economic region with vast domestic markets, where China's manufacturing complements India's IT sector.
The border between China and India lies along some of the most impenetrable mountain terrain in the world, and although there are other border crossings, they are seriously remote, and more the stuff of adventure than trade.
Which is where Nathu La comes in. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the Silk Road ran from China, across Nepal to India. But in 1904, the route across Nathu La was opened up - not for trade but for a westward expansion of the Great Game. Lord Curzon, the British Viceroy of India, became increasingly concerned that Russia could exploit Chinese weakness at the time to invade Tibet and threaten colonial India's borders. A decades-old report by a Deputy Commission in Darjeeling had spoken of the route into Tibet via the remote Himalayan land of Sikkim.
And so Lord Curzon sent for Colonel Francis Younghusband, an explorer, adventurer and mystic who could have walked out of the pages of a Victorian novel. Younghusband was dispatched to negotiate with the Tibetans - with a heavily-armed expeditionary force to back him up.
The journey across the mountains was famously so cold that ink froze. Younghusband failed in his mission, but managed to machine-gun down 900 Tibetans along the way. He did succeed in opening up the one practicable direct land route between Tibet and India - a route that was quickly taken over by trade. Traffic across the Nathu La Pass accounted for 80 per cent of the total border trade volume between the two countries in the early years of the 20th century.
That was until 1962, when it was closed. For decades, it became a symbol of Chinese and Indian hostility to each other. The once flourishing road fell silent. Troops glowered at each other. The area became deserted as inhabitants fled to more peaceful areas.
Once a week, postmen exchanged letters from mountain herders on either side of the border at the fence.
Today the atmosphere at Nathu La tells a different story. Tourists trek up to the border, and Indian and Chinese troops pose near each other for photographs. A giant sign on the Indian side provides basic Chinese greetings to call across to the Chinese soldiers on the other side.
India is predicting a tourist boom for the reopened border as well as trade. It will provide a direct route between the former Himalayan kingdoms of Tibet and Sikkim - lesser known, but every bit as exotic. It will also allow tourists to travel directly from Buddhist Tibet to the great Buddhist shrines in Bihar, in India.
Already, the newly completed trade zone has been outfitted with tourist infrastructure, including the world's highest cash point, a cyber-café and long distance telephone lines.
"The reopening of border trade will help end economic isolation in this area and play a key role in boosting market economy there," Hao Peng, the vice chairman of Tibet, said.
The Indian government is equally pleased. "The resumption of border trade is a great historic event, not only for enlarging trade, but also for greater relations between the two great countries," said Christy Fernandez, additional secretary of the Indian Department of Commerce.
But the route is not without its political implications. Tibet and Sikkim may both be exotic, but both were also formerly independent kingdoms. The reopening of the border has raised fears that Tibet's current desire for more autonomy might be crushed by the loftier ambitions of two of Asia's superpowers.
In Sikkim, too, there are concerns. Sikkim was an independent princely state with treaty agreements with British colonial India, and, unlike with most other princely states, that arrangement continued after Indian independence, until 1975, after a widespread rural revolt against the landowning monasteries and a referendum in favour, when India took control of Sikkim.
But there is growing discontent among the native Sikkimese Bhutia-Lepcha community, who, like the Tibetans, are concerned at the influx of "mainlanders" into their lands. Today they account for just 21 per cent of the population of Sikkim.
"Our main concern is being outnumbered in our own homeland," a local politician, Tseten Tashi Bhutia, toldThe Indian Express. "How long can we tolerate this? How long before AK-47s are taken up."
China has long castigated India for the claim that the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim was an independent country "annexed" by India in 1975. That message will probably change now, as will India's tough line on Tibet, no doubt, even though Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has lived in exile in Dharamsala in India since 1959.
Geographically, it certainly makes sense for Tibet to have use of the pass. Tibet currently has to import and export goods via the port of Tianjin, which is in the north-east of the country.
Chinese Communist troops entered Tibet in 1950. In matters Tibetan, Beijing sees itself as a liberating force which freed the locals of the backward yoke of a theocracy, bringing prosperity and doing much to open up the famously secretive region to modern ways. Beijing points to marvels of engineering, such as the Qinghai-Tibet railway, the world's highest, which was completed in October and is due to start operation on 1 July. While some critics say it will help swamp Lhasa with the dominant Han Chinese ethnic group, the government in Beijing sees it as a major opportunity for Tibet.
Tibet, which last year had a foreign trade volume of £109m, will benefit from resumed border trade, Hao Peng said.
"If only 10 per cent of Sino-Indian trade goes through the pass it means at least more than one billion US dollars a year," he said.
Qiangba Puncog , the chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Government, pointed to economic growth of more than 12 per cent last year in Tibet, above the Chinese average, as a sign of how well the region was doing.
For India, the reopening of the road is first and foremost an opening into China's lucrative market. But the geography also neatly presents a way to improve the economy in eastern India, much of which has been left behind as the economic powerhouses of Bombay to the west and Bangalore to the south forge ahead.
Calcutta is at last beginning to show signs of emerging from its poverty, but the reopened border could present it with an opportunity for regeneration as a commercial port. And outside Calcutta, eastern India remains desperately underdeveloped. While gleaming new office buildings go up in Bangalore, in rural West Bengal people still starve to death. It is in the east that the India's Maoists have seized control of huge areas of land, riding on discontent and poverty.
But, as ever in India, the entire project may yet be held up by slow infrastructure. With the proposed reopening just weeks away, The Indian Express reported this week that the Indian authorities had only just brought the road to the same level as on the Chinese side, and the Border Roads Organisation had admitted that it could not widen the single-lane road to two lanes until 2010.

Of Aldona, Siolim, Anjuna and Morjim... circa 1877

By Frederick Noronhahttp://uk.f356.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=fred@bytesforall.org

Would you believe that in 1877, there were as many as 8988 people living in Aldona? Or that Siolim had 9604 residents,and Anjuna, 8508? Even Morjim had a rather significantpopulation of 3853 at that time.On the other hand, villages like Ambeacho-Goval in Sattaritaluka had barely 12 persons living there. But that was 1877,at a time when the estimated number of Goans living abroadwas just 34,557.Trivia? These loose and seemingly unconnected facts pop outat us from the dusty pages of history stored an interestingyet little-visited library at Alto-Porvorim. If you chanceupon the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, you stand thechance of unravelling a lot of secrets of yesterday's life inGoa.For instance, details about how migration affected this smallstate. Of how the comunidades were run. Or, how valuedgoldsmiths from Goa were even in the early sixteenth centuryPortugal.On one of the well-maintained shelves, one can page throughoriginal copies of the first newspaper to be published fromGoa. Gazeta de Goa was brought out in 1821, and listspolitical and other "news" across its now-fragile pages. Onebrief item reports on the war between Russia and Turkey,giving a hint of what readers in Goa got to read in thosedays.One also comes across facts which everyone seems to haveforgotten about the Goa of the yesterdays."Indian goldsmithery was considered to be of a very highorder. The Portuguese were fascinated by it," points outlibrarian Ms. D'Souza. She points to a book called TheHeritage of Rauluchatim. Raulu Chatim was a goldsmithwho went to Lisbon to display his art in the early'sixteenth century, and this book was written only in1996 by the son of Goa's last Portuguese Governor-General.On other shelves of this library, one can learn a whole vastamoung of interesting tid-bits about Goa. For instance, youcould check out the number of persons -- single, married orwidowed -- in the villages of Assolna, Benaulim or Betalbatimin the year 1881.There's a very useful tide-table, using which one candetermine the high and low-tides simply by looking at thephases of the moons. Similarly, in those days when natureruled, there is a full year's of information about thesunrise and sunset timings.Goan and Portuguese authors also took some pains in trying tounderstand the significance of Hindu festivals, both regionaland national. Maybe one might find the spellings used todescribe these festivals rather quaint today --Makarsakranti, Mahashivratri, Shimga, Vorshpratipad, RamNavam....Looking through some other books, one could get aninteresting collection of information. It might seem like tit-bits of trivia, but surely meant a lot in those days.Even today, this information could give an insight into thelives and times that our grandparents went through.Take for instance, the details about the functioning of theBombay Tramway Co. Ltd. Its speed was restricted to six miles per hour, and five miles per hour in the Abdul RehmanStreet. Ticket rates are published, from Sassoon Dock toParel via the Portuguese Church and Grant Road.There are long lists of rules governing the functioning ofthe comunidades. One can find out statistics about what was then called the West of India Portuguese Railway (now part ofthe South Central Railway). Even the teachers who taught atvillage schools were listed -- obviously there were only a handful, in those days when literacy was something only a fewcould attain.It is interesting to see the manner in which migration out ofthis state was slowly taking root. For instance, in the latenineteenth century itself, there were a number of "clubs" setup by people from Goa across the country.Some examples from Bombay: the Club Lusitano da AssociacaoDramatica on Picket Road, Goa National Dramatic Company onGirgaum Road, the Indo-Portuguese Cricket Club of Bombay, theInstituto Luso-Indiano at Agyari Street and the Instituto deSto. Antonio (the old Anglo-Portuguese School).In Calcutta, one comes across the St. Anthony's Girls School,and there's the Goa Portuguese Association at Karachialongwith the Goa Portuguese Association Cricket Club. Thereare many other clubs and institutions in Pune and even aninstitution called the Goan Death Benefit Association!Goa-linked commercial firms are also listed in destinationsas remote as Ahmedabad, Amravati, Baroda, Bellary, Bhusawal,Bombay, Calcutta, "Cawnpur" (Kanpur), and Karachi. In thatearly age itself, Goans seem to have got involved in a numberof various commercial firms -- ranging from printing works to tailoring, philately, Catholic religious books, wines,pharmacies and handling passenger baggage.Quadrille Band Suppliers of Calcutta had the distinction of being listed along with a hint of its patrons in high places.It goes down as an "estabelecimento musical fundado em 1865,sob o distincto patrocinio de sua excia. o vicerei da India e de sua alteza of governador da Bengala".XCHR's book collection has been steadily growing. From 1993to 1995, for instance, it grew from 13,000 to 16,000. You can see from the above that one doesn't need to be a historian to appreciate the useful facts that emerge from its library andtreasure-house of past information.Besides its many books, XCHR has rare atlases, maps,dissertations and bibliographies, newspapers clippingsand some 200 cyclostyled volumes of government reportsand seminar papers. It also has photocopies ofinaccessible documents and articles.XCHR also houses around 200,000 Mhamai House documents. (Inthe eighteenth century, the Mhamais were engaged in businessat Old Goa, before they shifted to Panjim in 1759. They weretobacco revenue farmers, but faced bankruptcy in 1818.Besides other activities, they ran an agency house for theFrench, and counted the state shipyard as one of their clients.) It has received donations of books from as far apart as Lisbon, Porvorim, Delhi, Candolim, Margao, US,Anjuna and England.Computer printouts of the indexes of XCHR are available,while there is also a microfilm reader on hand. In keepingwith the wealth of information this centre contains, even theprestigious US Library of Congress has evinced interest inits information.It's another fact that people from in and around Goa have nottaken full benefit of this useful collection. But scholarslike Prof. Philomena Antony of Chowgule College haveundertaken interesting work -- for example, on the relationsbetween colonial Brazil and colonial Goa -- through thiscentre.Some other interesting exhibits have also found their way tothis centre. For instance, the family of the late Dr. Manuel F. de Albuquerque of Anjuna, gave a quaint gift to the XCHR.Dr. de Albuquerque was the personal physician to the former Sultan of Zanzibar. His family donated to the centre's museumthree swords, including the golden sword won by the Goan doctor for his discovery and combat of the bubonic plague in distant Africa in 1903! [This article was written some years back, and is being recirculated.The writer is a Goa-based independent journalist.]

A short history of Anglo-Jewry: The Jews in Britain, 1656-2006

Jews were banned from this country for three centuries, until Oliver Cromwell allowed their return. Today, a ceremony in London celebrates that decision 350 years ago, and the key role they have played ever since. Paul Vallely reports
Published: 13 June 2006
When people ask writer Ashley Perry where his family is from, he replies "Britain". If they ask where his grandparents came from, he gives the same reply. When the more persistent ask where his great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents came from, the reply is still "Britain".
"This answer is usually met with incredulity as most assume that Anglo- Jewry is in the main no more than two or three generations long and has its origins in Eastern Europe," says Mr Perry. But those who assemble today at the Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London know better. A varied group - including the Lord Mayor of London, several Government ministers, MPs, peers and representatives from a wide spectrum of Britain's religious communities - are gathering to celebrate the 350th Anniversary of the Resettlement of Jews in England.
The first record of Jews living in England dates from Norman times. Just after 1066, William the Conqueror invited a group from Rouen to bring their commercial skills and incoming capital to England. It was to become, to say the least, an ambiguous relationship.
In the Middle Ages, lending money with interest - usury - was considered a sin and forbidden to Christians. But medieval monarchs found it useful that Jews were allowed to engage in the practice. The outsiders financed royal consumption, adventures and wars - and made themselves rich in the process. By 1168, the value of the personal property of the Jews (around £60,000) was regarded as a quarter of the entire wealth of England. And when Aaron of Lincoln died not long after - all property obtained by usury passing to the king on the death of the usurer - Henry II inherited the then massive sum of £15,000.
During Henry II's reign, Jews lived on good terms with their Christian neighbours. They helped fund a large number of the abbeys and monasteries and were allowed to take refuge there in times of commotion which came from time to time for religious or commercial reasons.
They needed the refuge. Clerics and Popes routinely stirred up ill-feeling against the Jews as the "killers of Christ". Ill will was fed by the Crusades, in which the Jews were as much a target of the righteous sword-wielders as were the infidel Saracens. One of the most popular - and heinous - myths was that known by Jews as "the blood libel", which appears to have originated in England in an accusation against one William of Norwich in 1144.
It suggested that he and other Jews killed a young Christian boy to use his blood in the ritual preparation of unleavened bread for the Passover ritual - a claim which spread from England to France and Spain and throughout Europe in medieval times and which resurfaced in Nazi propaganda in the 20th century.
In 1218, in what became the precursor of anti-Jewish laws all over the world, Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, made Jews wear a badge - an oblong white patch of two finger-lengths by four - to identify them. Barons, to whom Jews lent money, encouraged the mob responses to such claims, in which Jewish homes were ransacked and records of their debts were destroyed.
At the end of the 12th century, as part of an epidemic of religious fervour during preparations for Richard the Lionheart's Third Crusade against the Saracens, massacres of Jews were staged at Stamford fair, in Bury St Edmunds and, most notoriously, in York. In 1190 the city's Jews were given refuge in Clifford's Tower at York Castle only to be besieged by a mob demanding they convert to Christianity. Most of those inside committed suicide; those who surrendered were slaughtered. By 1290 the inevitable happened when Edward I - who had found an alternative source of finance in the Italian merchants known as the "pope's usurers" - banished the Jews from England.
For more than 300 years no Jew, officially, existed in the country. It was not until Charles I was beheaded that the Jews felt safe to return. Then, in 1656 a Dutch Jew named Menasseh ben Israel, petitioned Oliver Cromwell to allow his people to return.
Cromwell, a devout Puritan and a man of common sense, could see the attraction of allowing them back. For a start, there was the popular belief that the Second Coming of Christ could not occur until Jews existed in all the lands of the earth. And there was also a shattered national economy to rebuild after a devastating Civil War.
But when he summoned a national conference of the most eminent judges, divines, and merchants in the kingdom at Whitehall, the debate was inconclusive. The lawyers were happy. But the clerics and moneymen were opposed. To stop them reaching the wrong decision, Cromwell dissolved the meeting and gave the rich Jews of Amsterdam permission to come to London and transfer their vital trade interests with the Spanish Main from Holland to England.
Thus it was that in the middle of the 17th century, around 300 Marano merchants - Spanish and Portuguese Jews - settled in London. In 1701 they erected the country's first purpose-built synagogue, Bevis Marks, the only building in Europe where Jewish worship has continued without interruption for more than 300 years.
Resettlement was not a smooth process. Just as the relationship between Jew and Gentile had blown hot and cold during the medieval settlement, so it was in the new dispensation. Various coalitions of aristocrats, Christian zealots and businessmen tried to re-expel the Jews. But the new Jewish merchants were too useful. They had brought in £1,500,000 in capital which had increased by the middle of the century to £5,000,000. Marlborough's wars against the Spanish were financed by them. During the Jacobite rising of 1745 they showed particular loyalty, offering finance and volunteering for the corps raised to defend London. Their investment provided one-twelfth of the nation's profits and one-twentieth of its foreign trade.
As a reward, what was known as "The Jew Bill" was introduced in 1753 to allow them to be naturalised as British citizens. It was passed by the House of Lords, though it fell in the Commons with the Tories making great outcry against this "abandonment of Christianity".
The response of the Sephardic community was as nuanced. Many prominent Jews - like the Disraelis - allowed their children to grow up as Christians. Slowly acceptance came. In 1837, Queen Victoria knighted Moses Haim Montefiore. Four years later, Isaac Lyon Goldsmid became the first Jewish hereditary peer. The first Jewish Lord Mayor of London, Sir David Salomons, was elected in 1855, and the first Jewish MP, Lionel de Rothschild, took his seat three years later when the parliamentary oath was changed from an exclusively Christian one.
By 1874, Benjamin Disraeli became Prime Minister. He had been baptised a Christian but was open about his Judaic inheritance, once needling a Commons opponent with the jibe that "when the ancestors of the right honourable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon". Finally, by 1890, all restrictions for every position in the British Empire, except that of monarch, were removed to Jews, some 46,000 of whom now lived in England.
It was at this point that the big influx of Jews into this country occurred. From the 1880s onwards, the pogroms in Germany, Poland and Russia caused many Jews to flee. These were not Sephardim but Ashkenazi Jews with a more distinct East European and Yiddish culture. They soon outnumbered the Spanish and Portuguese.
By 1919, the Jewish population had increased to about 250,000 primarily in cities like London, Manchester and Liverpool. But though their culture was more distinct - and though they maintained it, building kosher businesses, welfare networks, Jewish schools and cultural bodies - unlike their fellows in places like Poland, the Jewish community in England (apart from a handful of ultra-Orthodox isolationists in places like Stamford Hill) generally embraced their integration into wider English culture. And unlike their American counterparts, British Jews anglicised their names and their customs, starting youth movements like the Jewish Lads Brigade in emulation of the British Scouts.
Families like the one which founded the jewellers, H Samuel, in Liverpool attempted to overturn prejudice and seek public office. In 1806 the city's Seel Street synagogue became the first in England to deliver sermons in English. In Manchester groups of Jewish intelligentsia were shaping new expressions of Judaism, including the Reform Movement, the political notion of Zionism and creating tools for activism which made the Jewish community strong in the traditions of British socialism and trade unionism. This in part explains why anti-semitism, which in most of Europe is most prevalent among the working classes, in Britain met stout opposition from many ordinary people, as events such as the Battle of Cable Street showed. Indeed anti-semitism has been more common among the British upper, rather than the lower, classes - a phenomenon which Ashley Perry puts down to aristocratic resentment.
"The British consider themselves the height of civilization, the founder of democracy and the force that brought culture to much of the world," he says. But the Jews remind them that "there is one people that has lived with the British for many years which reminds them that their 'civilisation' is relatively new".
And though the nation did not open its arms unreservedly to Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi regime in the 1930s, it did allow some 40,000 Jews from Austria and Germany to settle in Britain along with 50,000 Jews from Italy, Poland, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe - and the 10,000 Kindertransport children rescued on the eve of war.
Today, when many fear that anti-semitism is on the rise again, they acknowledge that, in the judgement of the Jewish peer Lord Janner, "in the UK it's not as serious as it is in France, Denmark, the Netherlands or Belgium." Instead Lord Janner perceives a different threat. Today there are about 350,000 Jews in the UK - around two-thirds in London, with around 40,000 in Manchester and significant communities in Leeds, Glasgow, Brighton, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Gateshead and Southend. That spreads the community pretty thin.
"Not less than 30 per cent [marry outside the faith] and that's really serious," Lord Janner says. They have, perhaps, for some of their number, integrated and assimilated just a little too well.
Men of influence
Menasseh Ben Israel
Friend of Rembrandt whose family suffered the full force of 17th-century anti-semitism when they fled the Inquisition in Portugal. Petitioned Oliver Cromwell for the readmission of Jews to England. His campaign was eventually successful after Cromwell ruled that a law banning Jews should no longer be enforced.
Daniel Mendoza
Such was Mendoza's standing as a prize fighter in late 18th-century London, newspapers reported his latest victorious bout ahead of the storming of the Bastille in 1789. The Jewish boxer from Aldgate, who learnt to use his fists in fights over anti-semitic remarks, is regarded as the father of scientific boxing and published The Art of Boxing in 1789.
Benjamin Disraeli
Entered Downing Street in 1874 as Britain's first Jewish prime minister. He was in fact baptised an Anglican after his father, Isaac, a literary critic and historian, fell out with the family synagogue. His most lasting achievement was the creation of the modern Conservative Party.
Lionel de Rothschild
By the beginning of the 19th century, the De Rothschilds were prominent members of society, bankrolling Britain in the Napoleonic Wars. But when he was elected to the House of Commons in 1847, Lionel was barred for his refusal to take the Christian oath of allegiance. It took another decade of red tape before Lionel became Britain's first Jewish MP.
Yehudi Menuhin
When his family were turned away by a landlady because they were Jewish, his mother vowed her unborn son would be called Yehudi, the Hebrew for Jew. He went on to become one of the most famous violinists of the 20th century and founded the Yehudi Menuhin School.
Harold Abrahams
After a lacklustre performance in the 1920 Olympics, the Bedford-born sprinter and lawyer became the first British athlete to hire a personal trainer. Four years later, Abrahams won the 100 metres at the Paris Olympiad - the first non-American to do so at a Games. His rivalry with Eric Liddell became the subject of the film Chariots of Fire.
Issy Smith
Born Ishroulch Shmeilowitz in 1890 in Egypt, his name was anglicised to Issy Smith by a recruiting sergeant when he enlisted in the Manchester Regiment at the age of 14. During the second battle of Ypres in 1915 he ran towards German lines carrying a wounded comrade 250 yards to safety before repeating similar actions throughout the day. He was awarded the Victoria Cross.
Ernst B Chain
The son of a Berlin industrialist, Chain fled the Nazis in 1933 to work in Oxford. On the eve of the Second World War, he rediscovered the work of Alexander Fleming and found a way of mass-producing penicillin. Along with Fleming and Howard Florey, Chain was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945.
Moses Haim Montefiore
Mentioned in the diaries of Dickens and George Eliot, Sir Moses was one of the Victorian era's most prominent Jews. After a career in the City, during which he co-founded the Alliance Life insurance giant, he devoted himself to a life of philanthropy. A loan raised by Sir Moses helped the British government abolish slavery.
When people ask writer Ashley Perry where his family is from, he replies "Britain". If they ask where his grandparents came from, he gives the same reply. When the more persistent ask where his great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents came from, the reply is still "Britain".
"This answer is usually met with incredulity as most assume that Anglo- Jewry is in the main no more than two or three generations long and has its origins in Eastern Europe," says Mr Perry. But those who assemble today at the Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London know better. A varied group - including the Lord Mayor of London, several Government ministers, MPs, peers and representatives from a wide spectrum of Britain's religious communities - are gathering to celebrate the 350th Anniversary of the Resettlement of Jews in England.
The first record of Jews living in England dates from Norman times. Just after 1066, William the Conqueror invited a group from Rouen to bring their commercial skills and incoming capital to England. It was to become, to say the least, an ambiguous relationship.
In the Middle Ages, lending money with interest - usury - was considered a sin and forbidden to Christians. But medieval monarchs found it useful that Jews were allowed to engage in the practice. The outsiders financed royal consumption, adventures and wars - and made themselves rich in the process. By 1168, the value of the personal property of the Jews (around £60,000) was regarded as a quarter of the entire wealth of England. And when Aaron of Lincoln died not long after - all property obtained by usury passing to the king on the death of the usurer - Henry II inherited the then massive sum of £15,000.
During Henry II's reign, Jews lived on good terms with their Christian neighbours. They helped fund a large number of the abbeys and monasteries and were allowed to take refuge there in times of commotion which came from time to time for religious or commercial reasons.
They needed the refuge. Clerics and Popes routinely stirred up ill-feeling against the Jews as the "killers of Christ". Ill will was fed by the Crusades, in which the Jews were as much a target of the righteous sword-wielders as were the infidel Saracens. One of the most popular - and heinous - myths was that known by Jews as "the blood libel", which appears to have originated in England in an accusation against one William of Norwich in 1144.
It suggested that he and other Jews killed a young Christian boy to use his blood in the ritual preparation of unleavened bread for the Passover ritual - a claim which spread from England to France and Spain and throughout Europe in medieval times and which resurfaced in Nazi propaganda in the 20th century.
In 1218, in what became the precursor of anti-Jewish laws all over the world, Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, made Jews wear a badge - an oblong white patch of two finger-lengths by four - to identify them. Barons, to whom Jews lent money, encouraged the mob responses to such claims, in which Jewish homes were ransacked and records of their debts were destroyed.
At the end of the 12th century, as part of an epidemic of religious fervour during preparations for Richard the Lionheart's Third Crusade against the Saracens, massacres of Jews were staged at Stamford fair, in Bury St Edmunds and, most notoriously, in York. In 1190 the city's Jews were given refuge in Clifford's Tower at York Castle only to be besieged by a mob demanding they convert to Christianity. Most of those inside committed suicide; those who surrendered were slaughtered. By 1290 the inevitable happened when Edward I - who had found an alternative source of finance in the Italian merchants known as the "pope's usurers" - banished the Jews from England.
For more than 300 years no Jew, officially, existed in the country. It was not until Charles I was beheaded that the Jews felt safe to return. Then, in 1656 a Dutch Jew named Menasseh ben Israel, petitioned Oliver Cromwell to allow his people to return.
Cromwell, a devout Puritan and a man of common sense, could see the attraction of allowing them back. For a start, there was the popular belief that the Second Coming of Christ could not occur until Jews existed in all the lands of the earth. And there was also a shattered national economy to rebuild after a devastating Civil War.
But when he summoned a national conference of the most eminent judges, divines, and merchants in the kingdom at Whitehall, the debate was inconclusive. The lawyers were happy. But the clerics and moneymen were opposed. To stop them reaching the wrong decision, Cromwell dissolved the meeting and gave the rich Jews of Amsterdam permission to come to London and transfer their vital trade interests with the Spanish Main from Holland to England.
Thus it was that in the middle of the 17th century, around 300 Marano merchants - Spanish and Portuguese Jews - settled in London. In 1701 they erected the country's first purpose-built synagogue, Bevis Marks, the only building in Europe where Jewish worship has continued without interruption for more than 300 years.
Resettlement was not a smooth process. Just as the relationship between Jew and Gentile had blown hot and cold during the medieval settlement, so it was in the new dispensation. Various coalitions of aristocrats, Christian zealots and businessmen tried to re-expel the Jews. But the new Jewish merchants were too useful. They had brought in £1,500,000 in capital which had increased by the middle of the century to £5,000,000. Marlborough's wars against the Spanish were financed by them. During the Jacobite rising of 1745 they showed particular loyalty, offering finance and volunteering for the corps raised to defend London. Their investment provided one-twelfth of the nation's profits and one-twentieth of its foreign trade.
As a reward, what was known as "The Jew Bill" was introduced in 1753 to allow them to be naturalised as British citizens. It was passed by the House of Lords, though it fell in the Commons with the Tories making great outcry against this "abandonment of Christianity".
The response of the Sephardic community was as nuanced. Many prominent Jews - like the Disraelis - allowed their children to grow up as Christians. Slowly acceptance came. In 1837, Queen Victoria knighted Moses Haim Montefiore. Four years later, Isaac Lyon Goldsmid became the first Jewish hereditary peer. The first Jewish Lord Mayor of London, Sir David Salomons, was elected in 1855, and the first Jewish MP, Lionel de Rothschild, took his seat three years later when the parliamentary oath was changed from an exclusively Christian one.
By 1874, Benjamin Disraeli became Prime Minister. He had been baptised a Christian but was open about his Judaic inheritance, once needling a Commons opponent with the jibe that "when the ancestors of the right honourable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon". Finally, by 1890, all restrictions for every position in the British Empire, except that of monarch, were removed to Jews, some 46,000 of whom now lived in England.
It was at this point that the big influx of Jews into this country occurred. From the 1880s onwards, the pogroms in Germany, Poland and Russia caused many Jews to flee. These were not Sephardim but Ashkenazi Jews with a more distinct East European and Yiddish culture. They soon outnumbered the Spanish and Portuguese.
By 1919, the Jewish population had increased to about 250,000 primarily in cities like London, Manchester and Liverpool. But though their culture was more distinct - and though they maintained it, building kosher businesses, welfare networks, Jewish schools and cultural bodies - unlike their fellows in places like Poland, the Jewish community in England (apart from a handful of ultra-Orthodox isolationists in places like Stamford Hill) generally embraced their integration into wider English culture. And unlike their American counterparts, British Jews anglicised their names and their customs, starting youth movements like the Jewish Lads Brigade in emulation of the British Scouts.
Families like the one which founded the jewellers, H Samuel, in Liverpool attempted to overturn prejudice and seek public office. In 1806 the city's Seel Street synagogue became the first in England to deliver sermons in English. In Manchester groups of Jewish intelligentsia were shaping new expressions of Judaism, including the Reform Movement, the political notion of Zionism and creating tools for activism which made the Jewish community strong in the traditions of British socialism and trade unionism. This in part explains why anti-semitism, which in most of Europe is most prevalent among the working classes, in Britain met stout opposition from many ordinary people, as events such as the Battle of Cable Street showed. Indeed anti-semitism has been more common among the British upper, rather than the lower, classes - a phenomenon which Ashley Perry puts down to aristocratic resentment.
"The British consider themselves the height of civilization, the founder of democracy and the force that brought culture to much of the world," he says. But the Jews remind them that "there is one people that has lived with the British for many years which reminds them that their 'civilisation' is relatively new".
And though the nation did not open its arms unreservedly to Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi regime in the 1930s, it did allow some 40,000 Jews from Austria and Germany to settle in Britain along with 50,000 Jews from Italy, Poland, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe - and the 10,000 Kindertransport children rescued on the eve of war.
Today, when many fear that anti-semitism is on the rise again, they acknowledge that, in the judgement of the Jewish peer Lord Janner, "in the UK it's not as serious as it is in France, Denmark, the Netherlands or Belgium." Instead Lord Janner perceives a different threat. Today there are about 350,000 Jews in the UK - around two-thirds in London, with around 40,000 in Manchester and significant communities in Leeds, Glasgow, Brighton, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Gateshead and Southend. That spreads the community pretty thin.
"Not less than 30 per cent [marry outside the faith] and that's really serious," Lord Janner says. They have, perhaps, for some of their number, integrated and assimilated just a little too well.
Men of influence
Menasseh Ben Israel
Friend of Rembrandt whose family suffered the full force of 17th-century anti-semitism when they fled the Inquisition in Portugal. Petitioned Oliver Cromwell for the readmission of Jews to England. His campaign was eventually successful after Cromwell ruled that a law banning Jews should no longer be enforced.
Daniel Mendoza
Such was Mendoza's standing as a prize fighter in late 18th-century London, newspapers reported his latest victorious bout ahead of the storming of the Bastille in 1789. The Jewish boxer from Aldgate, who learnt to use his fists in fights over anti-semitic remarks, is regarded as the father of scientific boxing and published The Art of Boxing in 1789.
Benjamin Disraeli
Entered Downing Street in 1874 as Britain's first Jewish prime minister. He was in fact baptised an Anglican after his father, Isaac, a literary critic and historian, fell out with the family synagogue. His most lasting achievement was the creation of the modern Conservative Party.
Lionel de Rothschild
By the beginning of the 19th century, the De Rothschilds were prominent members of society, bankrolling Britain in the Napoleonic Wars. But when he was elected to the House of Commons in 1847, Lionel was barred for his refusal to take the Christian oath of allegiance. It took another decade of red tape before Lionel became Britain's first Jewish MP.
Yehudi Menuhin
When his family were turned away by a landlady because they were Jewish, his mother vowed her unborn son would be called Yehudi, the Hebrew for Jew. He went on to become one of the most famous violinists of the 20th century and founded the Yehudi Menuhin School.
Harold Abrahams
After a lacklustre performance in the 1920 Olympics, the Bedford-born sprinter and lawyer became the first British athlete to hire a personal trainer. Four years later, Abrahams won the 100 metres at the Paris Olympiad - the first non-American to do so at a Games. His rivalry with Eric Liddell became the subject of the film Chariots of Fire.
Issy Smith
Born Ishroulch Shmeilowitz in 1890 in Egypt, his name was anglicised to Issy Smith by a recruiting sergeant when he enlisted in the Manchester Regiment at the age of 14. During the second battle of Ypres in 1915 he ran towards German lines carrying a wounded comrade 250 yards to safety before repeating similar actions throughout the day. He was awarded the Victoria Cross.
Ernst B Chain
The son of a Berlin industrialist, Chain fled the Nazis in 1933 to work in Oxford. On the eve of the Second World War, he rediscovered the work of Alexander Fleming and found a way of mass-producing penicillin. Along with Fleming and Howard Florey, Chain was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945.
Moses Haim Montefiore
Mentioned in the diaries of Dickens and George Eliot, Sir Moses was one of the Victorian era's most prominent Jews. After a career in the City, during which he co-founded the Alliance Life insurance giant, he devoted himself to a life of philanthropy. A loan raised by Sir Moses helped the British government abolish slavery.