Word: durbars
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Bleats of a Goat. "Forever" might have been a longer time if it had not been for a scrawny, timid schoolboy then in the northwest India town of Porbandar on the Arabian Sea, 700 miles away. Mohandas Kamarchand Gandhi was eight years old at the time of the Great Durbar at Delhi. He was already sensitive about his British rulers. His schoolmates used to recite a bit of doggerel...
...youthful conscience matured into a towering spirit that laid the meat eaters low, five cubits or not. Winston Churchill had once called Gandhi "a half-naked, seditious fakir. . . . These Indian politicians," he said in 1930, "will never get dominion status in their lifetimes." But 70 years after the Great Durbar both Gandhi and Churchill were still alive, and freedom was only 50 days away...
...sacred cows were startled. The roar of gun salutes echoed from the peaks of the Himalayas. The 108,000 inhabitants of Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, knew that the big event was taking place in ornate Singha Durbar Hall. Before the glittering assembly of 35 white-uniformed Nepalese generals, His Highness, the Maharaja Padma Shum Shere Jung Bahadur Rana, Prime Minister and Supreme Commander in Chief of Nepal, and Joseph C. Satterthwaite, President Truman's personal representative, were signing exchange notes which established U.S. diplomatic relations and opened trade. Their watches carefully synchronized, the 73-year-old Maharaja...
...train-car-horseback-and-foot journey, which involved crossing two mountain passes, 7,200 and 7,700 feet high. In Kathmandu they found a two-storied bungalow awaiting their occupancy, together with gifts including venison, fowls and fruits from the Maharaja. Their guest house, as well as various durbar halls, were decorated with the Nepalese flag (a double red pennant on which is inscribed a sun and moon), flying beside the Stars & Stripes which had only 13 stars...
...Americans nightly. They played Nepalese hill tunes and a creditable version of the Star-Spangled Banner. There were numerous dinners, receptions, reviews, movie showings and sightseeing tours. Formal afternoon clothes, as well as white ties and tails, were frequently worn. But the highlights of the visit were two official durbars. For the first durbar Nepal's King, Maharajadhiraja Tribhubana Bir Bikram Jung Bahadur Shah Bahadur Shum Shere Jung Deva,* who rarely appears in public, officially presided in a long baroque hall hung with pictures of his predecessors. Satterthwaite presented a letter from President Truman to his "Great and Good...