Surprised in this otherwise excellent obit of legendary journalist Neil Sheehan, the @nytimes didn't mention that the Nixon admin tried to charge Sheehan and his wife Susan under the Espionage Act *after* the Pentagon Papers Supreme Court case.

#TodayInHistory Ram Prasad Bismil,Ashfaqullah Khan and Roshan Singh are hanged in 1927, as they give up their life for the cause of freedom and inspire many a revolutionary. #LestWeForget

Shahjahanpur was a hub of revolution during the freedom struggle. Most of the revolutioaries in the North, were from this town. And among them, the most famous were two friends, whom destiny would bring together- Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqullah Khan.

Ashfaqullah Khan was born at the turn of the 20th century on October 22, while Bismil was born 3 years earlier on June 11, in the same town. Both of them were excellent writers in Urdu and Hindi.

Both of them would come together under the Hindustan Republican Association, not to mention the fact that Ashfaq was an admirer of Bismil’s poetry, and became close friends with him on that account.

And both these men were hanged on the same date, December 19, 1927 for their involvement in the Kakori event. Two men from different religions, different backgrounds, yet destiny would bring them together.

'Tera mera rishta kya, hindu, hindu,hindutva' is a clear take on 'tera mera rishta kya,la ilaha illallah'. As much as Hindutva hates the monotheistic religions especially Islam, there's a strange wistfulness and subliminal need at display now, to BE that they hate. 1

Charlie Hebdo doesn’t come up as a cautionary tale now but rather 'why cant we be like that'?
Growing up, Hanuman was an adorable deity for us, who swallowed the sun, or who couldn’t figure out what was Sanjeevani booti so he picked up a whole mountain and came back with it. 2

Or he was loyal, admirable and when he cleaved his chest, you saw both Ram and Sita. Now we have a lot of “Angry Hanuman” stickers. Why is a cute childlike God angry? We don’t know. It's a convenient blank space where to paint all the angst of Hindu Khatre mein hain narrative. 3

The other strange thing that has started happening is pictures of Ram appearing sans Sita. “Jai Siya Ram” has become “Jai Shri Ram”. Some people disingenuously explain it as being the same thing - because Shri is a name of Lakshmi. Not really. Siya is an apbhransh of Sita. 4

Shri is a prefix of respect in this case. Hinduism is being militarised. A woman/Sita has no place in it. Even the militaristic Goddess that is Durga has no place in this conception of neo-Hindu divinity, as evidenced by Dilip Mandal wondering where Durga came from. 5

EVOLUTION OF CROWNS

The ancient Indian kings called a head crown as a Mukut and it would mostly constitute of a golden ornamental headgear like an oval cap with gems.

Sometimes it would also include a halo circle to show the divinity of the king

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As it was considered that kings were appointment by the gods themselves. Example the kings of mewar considered themselves to be the ‘Diwan of eklingji')

But in most cases very few Mukut with halo effect have been found.

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Samudragupta in the gupta era coin. You can see the helmet like headwear on him.

Till gupta era the solid golden head wear was used in most days of the monarch.

But since the onset of 8th century it reduced in usage and was now used only as a ceremonial headwear.

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Whereas earlier the Maharaja had to wear the mukut whenever his court was in session.

Still mukut was being used prominently for ceremonial activities till recent times.

Maharaj Dahir of Sindh👇

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But as times past the style of headwear also changed.

The kings mostly wore turbans ordained with pearls and gems while rarely anyone wore a true Mukut after 16th century.

Portrait of Sri Krishna Dev Raya👇

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Most software founders, particularly in B2B, need to get radically better at sales. @Steli , who is the best person for explaining the scrappy stages in the beginning and then building out a team with scripts and processes, wrote a guide to:

For technical founders it is irrationally, obscenely hard to reverse years of programming (ba dum bum) that sales is a value-destroying activity. Sales is CLEARLY a value-creating activity, contingent on you have a value-creating product.

The world will not drop what they are doing to adopt your work. This is particularly true in B2B, where simply building a better mousetrap won't overcome the activation energy required to get people with additional non-mice problems to prioritize changing mousetraps today.

This is very non-obvious for founders because founders are not often people who *want* to be sold to. We often come from a background where trying out tools is a bit of a fun hobby. We like looking at all the options, making charts, and ripping out partially complete tests.

"This week I unsuccessfully trialed four software options for automating that thing that has been killing us. Our actual production process remains the same as last week. Don't worry; this was a great use of time." is not a thing you want to write in a progress report to manager.