Talk:Mahua Dabar

Untitled

I tried to get the proof of cutting thumbs of Indian weavers from the British Parliament proceeding but I could not find any thing in this regard.This does not mean that the story in not true.If one read the history of the rivalry between the European powers to gen foot in Indian waters some 80 to 100 tears before 1760 one would find that these powers were mere looters.They looted one another`s ships.in a way they were mere thieves,some times protected by their respective Governments.For India they were traders.No they were not traders but criminal looters.They just wanted to earn money by hook or crook.Indian could not understand this and so they had to pay the price for this.Indian textile industry which had no parallel in the hole of the then world was destroyed.Just to wipe out this industry of not less than 5000 years The British had to cut the thumbs of the remaining weavers.As a matter of fact the British Govt should apologize for what their four fathers have done!-A.V.Vishwarupe Nagpur,India.

If, as some people claim, the British were only in India so that the Indians could be 'exploited', then why would the British then mutilate the very people they were supposed to be exploiting, thus preventing them working and being able to be 'exploited'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.247.9 (talk) 10:53, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

The "thumb cutting" claims are misunderstandings of a statement by William Bolts, in the very early days of East India Company rule in Bengal, in the 1760s. He claimed Company servants were so brutal in their attempts to get maximum work from silk winders for minimum pay, that the winders decided they were better off as unskilled labourers, so they cut their own thumbs, making it impossible for them to wind silk. Nobody (including M.K. Gandhi, who was naturally interested in the topic) has ever found any evidence other than family legends for the "Company cutting weavers' thumbs" version of the story. David Trochos (talk) 18:54, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

I've now added an external link to a large resource of document transcripts about Mahua Dabar, which includes a page on the thumb-cutting David Trochos (talk) 17:15, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

"Slaughter"

If anybody can find a 19th century source for the claim that the inhabitants of Mahua Dabar were slaughtered in 1857, then by all means cite it as a reason for removing the caveat "according to local legend". A study of the abundant 19th century evidence for other aspects of the story suggests that no such source exists. David Trochos (talk) 16:28, 8 March 2022 (UTC)