Quote:
Originally Posted by SS80 I agree to every thing you posted above, except for the sharp object or knife part. As in case of a emergency, the same tool if lands in the wrong hands, we ourselves would be bringing more trouble on ourselves. Unless you are really comfortable using it and if you are well built, to avoid getting over powered. |
If you carry a knife (or get a gun license and carry a pistol) make sure you're good at using it, or else it'll simply be snatched away from you and you'll get hurt worse. The same with trying to punch assailants without having some sort of boxing or martial arts training, the typical software engineer type (me included) will simply get bashed up worse. Pepper spray or Mace is a safe alternative.
You need a bit of a history lesson I am afraid. This is entirely off topic to the discussion so I will keep it brief, and away from politics.
The areas you describe (not just Mewar, but large parts of Haryana etc) still have a flourishing countrymade pistol (katta) cottage industry so I am not sure banning metalworking there was all that bad an idea.
The British did their own recruitment since the 1500s so that there were several hereditary military service families especially in certain communities with a military tradition (Sikhs, Rajputs, Mahars, Jats, Kodavas ..). Gandhiji did have a hope back then that India supporting the British in the war would lead to "Home Rule" or "Dominion Status" (similar to Australia, with a greater amount of self governance) but revised that opinion soon after World War 1.
The edge the British had was training army officers in strategy and training soldiers, British and Sepoy alike, to use volley fire (three to four aimed shots a minute using muzzle loading weapons back during the 19th century). That, and excellent artillery and a powerful navy.
Indian rajas for the most part had swords and spears, or antiquated firearms, armies created by calling up all their able bodied subjects to turn up and fight (no standing army), and very little artillery - the East India Company and after them the Crown were quite careful to whom they sold or allowed others to sell modern firearms and artillery. Exceptions to the rule were for example the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh and Mysore under Hyder Ali / Tipu Sultan, and the Maratha Confederacy, where they engaged European officers - often Frenchmen and Italians, or deserters from the English side - to manufacture modern weapons and train their infantry, cavalry and artillery. These had several victories and the British were in general wary of taking on, for example, the Sikhs.
The "cowardly Indians" phrase was more like the British originally recruited their troops for the most part from a very small set of communities and regarded others as not sufficiently martial enough. And even there they had a prejudice (probably informed by many victories over unprofessionally run and disorganized local armies) that Indian troops would only be useful when professionally trained and under European commanders. In other cases, where the 1857 mutiny was particularly severe in some parts (eg the Bengal army was the first to join the mutiny) the British simply stopped recruiting from there for several years.
Gandhiji did convince many people from outside these communities to join the British Indian Army for World War 1 - and that had the sort of indirect benefit that today our armed forces can now recruit from across all of India, and even the community named regiments are quite homogenous now. The Indian army still does recruit based on region and language rather than caste for several regiments for "cultural cohesion" reasons. However there are still some exceptions such as the Presidential Bodyguard which accepts only Jats, Jat Sikhs and Rajputs, and this has been the subject of more than one lawsuit (eg earlier this year,
https://www.news18.com/news/india/co...t-1992713.html)
There's a much longer story to be told but
1. It is not on topic for this thread and
2. Please avoid trying to make this all about Gandhiji, the story is much more complex and some of the themes you mention predate him by several decades. You'll need to do a bit more research.