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Radcliffe Line

The Radcliffe Line was the boundary demarcated by the two boundary commissions for the provinces of Punjab and Bengal during the Partition of India. It is named after Cyril Radcliffe, who, as the joint chairman of the two boundary commissions, had the ultimate responsibility to equitably divide 175000 sqmi of territory with 88 million people.

The term "Radcliffe Line" is also sometimes used for the entire boundary between India and Pakistan. However, outside of Punjab and Bengal, the boundary is made of existing provincial boundaries and had nothing to do with the Radcliffe commissions.

The demarcation line was published on 17 August 1947, two days after the independence of Pakistan and India. Today, the Punjab part of the line is part of the India–Pakistan border while the Bengal part of the line serves as the Bangladesh–India border.

Events leading up to the Radcliffe Boundary Commissions
On 18 July 1947, the Indian Independence Act 1947 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom stipulated that British rule in India would come to an end just one month later, on 15 August 1947. The Act also stipulated the partition of the Presidencies and provinces of British India into two new sovereign dominions: India and Pakistan.

Pakistan was intended as a Muslim homeland, while India remained secular. Muslim-majority British provinces in the northwest were to become the foundation of Pakistan. The provinces of Baluchistan (91.8% Muslim before partition) and Sindh (72.7%) and North-West Frontier Province became entirely Pakistani territory. However, two provinces did not have an overwhelming Muslim majority— Punjab in the northwest (55.7% Muslim) and Bengal in the northeast (54.4% Muslim). After elaborate discussions, these two provinces ended up being partitioned between India and Pakistan.

The Punjab's population distribution was such that there was no line that could neatly divide the Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. Likewise, no line could appease both the Muslim League, headed by Jinnah, and the Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel. Moreover, any division based on religious communities was sure to entail "cutting through road and rail communications, irrigation schemes, electric power systems and even individual landholdings."

Prior ideas of partition
The idea of partitioning the provinces of Bengal and Punjab had been present since the beginning of the 20th century. Bengal had in fact been partitioned by the then viceroy Lord Curzon in 1905, along with its adjoining regions. The resulting 'Eastern Bengal and Assam' province, with its capital at Dhaka, had a Muslim majority and the 'West Bengal' province, with its capital at Calcutta, had a Hindu majority. However, this partition of Bengal was reversed in 1911 in an effort to mollify Bengali nationalism.

Proposals for partitioning Punjab had been made starting in 1908. Its proponents included the Hindu leader Bhai Parmanand, Congress leader Lala Lajpat Rai, industrialist G. D. Birla, and various Sikh leaders. After the 1940 Lahore resolution of the Muslim League demanding Pakistan, B. R. Ambedkar wrote a 400-page tract titled Thoughts on Pakistan. In the tract, he discussed the boundaries of Muslim and non-Muslim regions of Punjab and Bengal. His calculations showed a Muslim majority in 16 western districts of Punjab and non-Muslim majority in 13 eastern districts. In Bengal, he showed non-Muslim majority in 15 districts. He thought the Muslims could have no objection to redrawing provincial boundaries. If they did, "they [did] not understand the nature of their own demand".

After the breakdown of the 1945 Simla Conference of viceroy Lord Wavell, the idea of Pakistan began to be contemplated seriously. Sir Evan Jenkins, the private secretary of the viceroy (later the governor of Punjab), wrote a memorandum titled "Pakistan and the Punjab", where he discussed the issues surrounding the partition of Punjab. K. M. Panikkar, then prime minister of the Bikaner State, sent a memorandum to the viceroy titled "Next Step in India", wherein he recommended that the principle of 'Muslim homeland' be conceded but territorial adjustments made to the two provinces to meet the claims of the Hindus and Sikhs. Based on these discussions, the viceroy sent a note on the "Pakistan theory" to the Secretary of State for India. The viceroy informed the Secretary of State that Jinnah envisaged the full provinces of Bengal and Punjab going to Pakistan with only minor adjustments, whereas Congress was expecting almost half of these provinces to remain in India. This essentially framed the problem of partition.

The Secretary of State responded by directing Lord Wavell to send 'actual proposals for defining genuine Muslim areas'. The task fell on V. P. Menon, the Reforms Commissioner, and his colleague Sir B. N. Rau in the Reforms Office. They prepared a note called "Demarcation of Pakistan Areas", where they included the three western divisions of Punjab (Rawalpindi, Multan and Lahore) in Pakistan, leaving two eastern divisions of Punjab in India (Jullundur and Delhi). However, they noted that this allocation would leave 2.2 million Sikhs in the Pakistan area and about 1.5 million in India. Excluding the Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts of the Lahore Division from Pakistan would put a majority of Sikhs in India. (Amritsar had a non-Muslim majority and Gurdaspur a marginal Muslim majority.) To compensate for the exclusion of the Gurdaspur district, they included the entire Dinajpur district in the eastern zone of Pakistan, which similarly had a marginal Muslim majority. After receiving comments from John Thorne, member of the Executive Council in charge of Home affairs, Wavell forwarded the proposal to the Secretary of State. He justified the exclusion of the Amritsar district because of its sacredness to the Sikhs and that of Gurdaspur district because it had to go with Amritsar for 'geographical reasons'. The Secretary of State commended the proposal and forwarded it to the India and Burma Committee, saying, "I do not think that any better division than the one the Viceroy proposes is likely to be found".

Sikh concerns
The Sikh leader Master Tara Singh could see that any division of Punjab would leave the Sikhs divided between Pakistan and Hindustan. He espoused the doctrine of self-reliance, opposed the partition of India and called for independence on the grounds that no single religious community should control Punjab. Other Sikhs argued that just as Muslims feared Hindu domination the Sikhs also feared Muslim domination. Sikhs warned the British government that the morale of Sikh troops in the British Army would be affected if Pakistan was forced on them. Giani Kartar Singh drafted a scheme of a separate Sikh state if India was to be divided.

During the Partition developments, Jinnah offered Sikhs to live in Pakistan with safeguards for their rights. Sikhs refused because they opposed the concept of Pakistan and also because they did not want to become a small minority within a Muslim majority. Vir Singh Bhatti distributed pamphlets for the creation of a separate Sikh state "Khalistan". Master Tara Singh wanted the right for an independent Khalistan to federate with either Hindustan or Pakistan. However, the Sikh state being proposed was for an area where neither religion was in absolute majority. Negotiations for the independent Sikh state had commenced at the end of World War II and the British initially agreed but the Sikhs withdrew this demand after pressure from Indian nationalists. The proposals of the Cabinet Mission Plan had seriously jolted the Sikhs because while both the Congress and League could be satisfied the Sikhs saw nothing in it for themselves. as they would be subjected to a Muslim majority. Master Tara Singh protested this to Pethic-Lawrence on 5 May. By early September the Sikh leaders accepted both the long term and interim proposals despite their earlier rejection. The Sikhs attached themselves to the Indian state with the promise of religious and cultural autonomy.

Final negotiations
In March 1946, the British government sent a Cabinet Mission to India to find a solution to resolve the conflicting demands of Congress and the Muslim League. Congress agreed to allow Pakistan to be formed with 'genuine Muslim areas'. The Sikh leaders asked for a Sikh state with Ambala, Jalandher, Lahore Divisions with some districts from the Multan Division, which, however, did not meet the Cabinet delegates' agreement. In discussions with Jinnah, the Cabinet Mission offered either a 'smaller Pakistan' with all the Muslim-majority districts except Gurdaspur or a 'larger Pakistan' under the sovereignty of the Indian Union. The Cabinet Mission came close to success with its proposal for an Indian Union under a federal scheme, but it fell apart in the end because of Nehru's opposition to a heavily decentralised India.

In March 1947, Lord Mountbatten arrived in India as the next viceroy, with an explicit mandate to achieve the transfer of power before June 1948. Over ten days, Mountbatten obtained the agreement of Congress to the Pakistan demand except for the 13 eastern districts of Punjab (including Amritsar and Gurdaspur). However, Jinnah held out. Through a series of six meetings with Mountbatten, he continued to maintain that his demand was for six full provinces. He "bitterly complained" that the Viceroy was ruining his Pakistan by cutting Punjab and Bengal in half as this would mean a 'moth-eaten Pakistan'.

The Gurdaspur district remained a key contentious issue for the non-Muslims. Their members of the Punjab legislature made representations to Mountbatten's chief of staff Lord Ismay as well as the Governor telling them that Gurdaspur was a "non-Muslim district". They contended that even if it had a marginal Muslim majority of 51%, which they believed to be erroneous, the Muslims paid only 35% of the land revenue in the district.

In April, the Governor of Punjab Evan Jenkins wrote a note to Mountbatten proposing that Punjab be divided along Muslim and non-Muslim majority districts and proposed that a Boundary Commission be set up consisting of two Muslim and two non-Muslim members recommended by the Punjab Legislative Assembly. He also proposed that a British judge of the High Court be appointed as the chairman of the commission. Jinnah and the Muslim League continued to oppose the idea of partitioning the provinces, and the Sikhs were disturbed about the possibility of getting only 12 districts (without Gurdaspur). In this context, the Partition Plan of 3 June was announced with a notional partition showing 17 districts of Punjab in Pakistan and 12 districts in India, along with the establishment of a Boundary Commission to decide the final boundary. In Sialkoti's view, this was done mainly to placate the Sikhs.

Process and key people
A crude border had already been drawn up by Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India prior to his replacement as Viceroy, in February 1947, by Lord Louis Mountbatten. In order to determine exactly which territories to assign to each country, in June 1947, Britain appointed Sir Cyril Radcliffe to chair two boundary commissions—one for Bengal and one for Punjab.

The commission was instructed to "demarcate the boundaries of the two parts of the Punjab on the basis of ascertaining the contiguous majority areas of Muslims and non-Muslims. In doing so, it will also take into account other factors." Other factors were undefined, giving Radcliffe leeway, but included decisions regarding "natural boundaries, communications, watercourses and irrigation systems", as well as socio-political consideration. Each commission also had four representatives—two from the Indian National Congress and two from the Muslim League. Given the deadlock between the interests of the two sides and their rancorous relationship, the final decision was essentially Radcliffe's.

After arriving in India on 8 July 1947, Radcliffe was given just five weeks to decide on a border. He soon met with his fellow college alumnus Mountbatten and travelled to Lahore and Calcutta to meet with commission members, chiefly Nehru from the Congress and Jinnah, president of the Muslim League. He objected to the short time frame, but all parties were insistent that the line be finished by the 15 August British withdrawal from India. Mountbatten had accepted the post as Viceroy on the condition of an early deadline. The decision was completed just a couple of days before the withdrawal, but due to political considerations, not published until 17 August 1947, two days after the grant of independence to India and Pakistan.

Members of the commissions
Each boundary commission consisted of five people – a chairman (Radcliffe), two members nominated by the Indian National Congress and two members nominated by the Muslim League.

The Bengal Boundary Commission consisted of justices C. C. Biswas, B. K. Mukherji, Abu Saleh Mohamed Akram and S.A.Rahman.

The members of the Punjab Commission were justices Mehr Chand Mahajan, Teja Singh, Din Mohamed and Muhammad Munir.

Boundary-making procedures
All lawyers by profession, Radcliffe and the other commissioners had all of the polish and none of the specialized knowledge needed for the task. They had no advisers to inform them of the well-established procedures and information needed to draw a boundary. Nor was there time to gather the survey and regional information. The absence of some experts and advisers, such as the United Nations, was deliberate, to avoid delay. Britain's new Labour government "deep in wartime debt, simply couldn't afford to hold on to its increasingly unstable empire." "The absence of outside participants—for example, from the United Nations—also satisfied the British Government's urgent desire to save face by avoiding the appearance that it required outside help to govern—or stop governing—its own empire."

Political representation
The equal representation given to politicians from Indian National Congress and the Muslim League appeared to provide balance, but instead created deadlock. The relationships were so tendentious that the judges "could hardly bear to speak to each other", and the agendas so at odds that there seemed to be little point anyway. Even worse, "the wife and two children of the Sikh judge in Lahore had been murdered by Muslims in Rawalpindi a few weeks earlier."

In fact, minimizing the numbers of Hindus and Muslims on the wrong side of the line was not the only concern to balance. The Punjab Border Commission was to draw a border through the middle of an area home to the Sikh community. Lord Islay was rueful for the British not to give more consideration to the community who, in his words, had "provided many thousands of splendid recruits for the Indian Army" in its service for the crown in World War I. However, the Sikhs were militant in their opposition to any solution which would put their community in a Muslim ruled state. Moreover, many insisted on their own sovereign state, something no one else would agree to.

Last of all, were the communities without any representation. The Bengal Border Commission representatives were chiefly concerned with the question of who would get Calcutta. The Buddhist tribes in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bengal had no official representation and were left totally without information to prepare for their situation until two days after the partition.

Perceiving the situation as intractable and urgent, Radcliffe went on to make all the difficult decisions himself. This was impossible from inception, but Radcliffe seems to have had no doubt in himself and raised no official complaint or proposal to change the circumstances.

Local knowledge
Before his appointment, Radcliffe had never visited India and knew no one there. To the British and the feuding politicians alike, this neutrality was looked upon as an asset; he was considered to be unbiased toward any of the parties, except of course Britain. Only his private secretary, Christopher Beaumont, was familiar with the administration and life in Punjab. Wanting to preserve the appearance of impartiality, Radcliffe also kept his distance from Viceroy Mountbatten.

No amount of knowledge could produce a line that would completely avoid conflict; already, "sectarian riots in Punjab and Bengal dimmed hopes for a quick and dignified British withdrawal". "Many of the seeds of postcolonial disorder in South Asia were sown much earlier, in a century and half of direct and indirect British control of large part of the region, but, as book after book has demonstrated, nothing in the complex tragedy of partition was inevitable."

Haste and indifference
Radcliffe justified the casual division with the truism that no matter what he did, people would suffer. The thinking behind this justification may never be known since Radcliffe "destroyed all his papers before he left India". He departed on Independence Day itself, before even the boundary awards were distributed. By his own admission, Radcliffe was heavily influenced by his lack of fitness for the Indian climate and his eagerness to depart India.

The implementation was no less hasty than the process of drawing the border. On 16 August 1947 at 5:00 pm, the Indian and Pakistani representatives were given two hours to study copies, before the Radcliffe award was published on 17 August.

Secrecy
To avoid disputes and delays, the division was done in secret. The final Awards were ready on 9 and 12 August, but not published until two days after the partition.

According to Read and Fisher, there is some circumstantial evidence that Nehru and Patel were secretly informed of the Punjab Award's contents on 9 or 10 August, either through Mountbatten or Radcliffe's Indian assistant secretary. Regardless of how it transpired, the award was changed to put a salient portion of the non-Muslim majority Firozpur district (consisting of the two Muslim-majority tehsils of Firozpur and Zira) east of the Sutlej canal within India's domain instead of Pakistan's. There were two apparent reasons for the switch: the area housed an army arms depot, and contained the headwaters of a canal which irrigated the princely state of Bikaner, which would accede to India.

Implementation
After the partition, the fledgling governments of India and Pakistan were left with all responsibility to implement the border. After visiting Lahore in August, Viceroy Mountbatten hastily arranged a Punjab Boundary Force to keep the peace around Lahore, but 50,000 men was not enough to prevent thousands of killings, 77% of which were in the rural areas. Given the size of the territory, the force amounted to less than one soldier per square mile. This was not enough to protect the cities much less the caravans of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who were fleeing their homes in what would become Pakistan.

Both India and Pakistan were loath to violate the agreement by supporting the rebellions of villages drawn on the wrong side of the border, as this could prompt a loss of face on the international stage and require the British or the UN to intervene. Border conflicts led to three wars, in 1947, 1965, and 1971, and the Kargil conflict of 1999.

Disputes along the Radcliffe Line
There were disputes regarding the Radcliffe Line's award of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the Gurdaspur district. Disputes also evolved around the districts of Malda, Khulna, and Murshidabad in Bengal and the sub-division of Karimganj of Assam.

In addition to Gurdaspur's Muslim majority tehsils, Radcliffe also gave the Muslim majority tehsils of Ajnala (Amritsar District), Zira, Firozpur (in Firozpur District), Nakodar and Jullandur (in Jullandur District) to India instead of Pakistan.

Firozpur District
Indian historians now accept that Mountbatten probably did influence the Firozpur award in India's favour. The headworks of River Beas, which later joins River Sutlej flowing into Pakistan, were located in Firozpur. Congress leader Nehru and Viceroy Mountbatten had lobbied Radcliffe that headworks should not go to Pakistan.

Gurdaspur District
The Gurdaspur district was divided geographically by the Ravi River, with the Shakargarh tehsil on its west bank, and Pathankot, Gurdaspur and Batala tehsils on its east bank. The Shakargarh tehsil, the biggest in size, was awarded to Pakistan. (It was subsequently merged into the Narowal district of West Punjab. ) The three eastern tehsils were awarded to India. (Pathankot was eventually made a separate district in East Punjab.) The division of the district was followed by a population transfer between the two nations, with Muslims leaving for Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs arriving from there.

The entire district of Gurdaspur had a bare majority of 50.2% Muslims. (In the 'notional' award attached to the Indian Independence Act, all of Gurdaspur district was marked as Pakistan with a 51.14% Muslim majority. In the 1901 census, the population of Gurdaspur district was 49% Muslim, 40% Hindu, and 10% Sikh. ) The Pathankot tehsil was predominantly Hindu while the other three tehsils were Muslim majority. In the event, only Shakargarh was awarded to Pakistan.

Radcliffe explained that the reason for deviating from the notional award in the case of Gurdaspur was that the headwaters of the canals that irrigated the Amritsar district lay in the Gurdaspur district and it was important to keep them under one administration. Radcliffe might have sided with Lord Wavell's reasoning from February 1946 that Gurdaspur had to go with the Amritsar district, and the latter could not be in Pakistan due to its Sikh religious shrines. In addition, the railway line from Amritsar to Pathankot passed through the Batala and Gurdaspur tehsils.

Pakistanis have alleged that the award of the three tehsils to India was a manipulation of the Award by Lord Mountbatten in an effort to provide a land route for India to Jammu and Kashmir. However, Shereen Ilahi points out that the land route to Kashmir was entirely within the Hindu-majority Pathankot tehsil. The award of the Batala and Gurdaspur tehsils to India did not affect the Kashmir land route.

Pakistani view on the award of Gurdaspur to India
Pakistan maintains that the Radcliffe Award was altered by Mountbatten; Gurdaspur was handed over to India and thus was manipulated the accession of Kashmir to India. In support of this view, some scholars claim the award to India "had little to do with Sikh demands but had much more to do with providing India a road link to Jammu and Kashmir."

As per the 'notional' award that had already been put into effect for purposes of administration ad interim, all of Gurdaspur district, owing to its Muslim majority, was assigned to Pakistan. From 14 to 17 August, Mushtaq Ahmed Cheema acted as the Deputy Commissioner of the Gurdaspur District, but when, after a delay of two days, it was announced that the major portion of the district had been awarded to India instead of Pakistan, Cheema left for Pakistan. The major part of Gurdaspur district, i.e. three of the four sub-districts had been handed over to India giving India practical land access to Kashmir. It came as a great blow to Pakistan. Jinnah and other leaders of Pakistan, and particularly its officials, criticized the award as 'extremely unjust and unfair'.

Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, who represented the Muslim League in July 1947 before the Radcliffe Boundary Commission, stated that the boundary commission was a farce. A secret deal between Mountbatten and Congress leaders had already been struck. Mehr Chand Mahajan, one of the two non-Muslim members of the boundary commission, in his autobiography, has acknowledged that when he was selected for the boundary commission, he was not inclined to accept the invitation as he believed that the commission was just a farce and that decisions were actually to be taken by Mountbatten himself. It was only under British pressure that the charges against Mountbatten of last minute alterations in the Radcliffe Award were not officially brought forward by Pakistani Government in the UN Security Council while presenting its case on Kashmir.

Zafrullah Khan states that, in fact, adopting the tehsil as a unit would have given Pakistan the Firozepur and Zira tehsils of the Firozpur District, the Jullundur and Nakodar tehsils of Jullundur district and the Dasuya tehsil of the Hoshiarpur district. The line so drawn would also give Pakistan the princely state of Kapurthala (which had a Muslim majority) and would enclose within Pakistan the whole of the Amritsar district of which only one tehsil, Ajnala, had a Muslim majority. It would also give Pakistan the Shakargarh, Batala and Gurdaspur tehsils of the Gurdaspur district. If the boundary went by Doabs, Pakistan could get not only the 16 districts which had already under the notional partition been put into West Punjab, including the Gurdaspur District, but also get the Kangra District in the mountains, which was about 93% Hindu and was located to the north and east of Gurdaspur. Or one could go by commissioners' divisions. Any of these units being adopted would have been more favourable to Pakistan than the present boundary line. The tehsil was the most favourable unit. But all of the aforementioned Muslim majority tehsils, with the exception of Shakargarh, were handed over to India while Pakistan didn't receive any Non-Muslim majority district or tehsil in Punjab. Zafruallh Khan states that Radcliffe used district, tehsil, thana, and even village boundaries to divide Punjab in such a way that the boundary line was drawn much to the prejudice of Pakistan. However, while Muslims formed about 53% of the total population of Punjab in 1941, Pakistan received around 58% of the total area of the Punjab, including more of the most fertile parts.

According to Zafrullah Khan, the assertion that the award of the Batala and Gurdaspur tehsils to India did not 'affect' Kashmir is far-fetched. If Batala and Gurdaspur had gone to Pakistan, Pathankot tehsil would have been isolated and blocked. Even though it would have been possible for India to get access to Pathankot through the Hoshiarpur district, it would have taken quite long time to construct the roads, bridges and communications that would have been necessary for military movements.

Assessments on the 'Controversial Award of Gurdaspur to India and the Kashmir Dispute'
Stanley Wolpert writes that Radcliffe in his initial maps awarded Gurdaspur district to Pakistan but one of Nehru's and Mountbatten's greatest concerns over the new Punjab border was to make sure that Gurdaspur would not go to Pakistan, since that would have deprived India of direct road access to Kashmir. As per "The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture", a part of UNESCO's Histories flagship project, recently disclosed documents of the history of the partition reveal British complicity with the top Indian leadership to wrest Kashmir from Pakistan. Alastair Lamb, based on the study of recently declassified documents, has convincingly proven that Mountbatten, in league with Nehru, was instrumental in pressurizing Radcliffe to award the Muslim-majority district of Gurdaspur in East Punjab to India which could provide India with the only possible access to Kashmir. Andrew Roberts believes that Mountbatten cheated over India-Pak frontier and states that if gerrymandering took place in the case of Firozepur, it is not too hard to believe that Mountbatten also pressurized Radcliffe to ensure that Gurdaspur wound up in India to give India road access to Kashmir.

Perry Anderson states that Mountbatten, who was officially supposed to neither exercise any influence on Radcliffe nor to have any knowledge of his findings, intervened behind the scenes – probably at Nehru's behest – to alter the award. He had little difficulty in getting Radcliffe to change his boundaries to allot the Muslim-majority district of Gurdaspur to India instead of Pakistan, thus giving India the only road access from Delhi to Kashmir.

However, some British works suggest that the 'Kashmir State was not in anybody's mind' when the Award was being drawn and that even the Pakistanis themselves had not realized the importance of Gurdaspur to Kashmir until the Indian forces actually entered Kashmir. Both Mountbatten and Radcliffe, of course, have strongly denied those charges. It is impossible to accurately quantify the personal responsibility for the tragedy of Kashmir as the Mountbatten papers relating to the issue at the India Office Library and records are closed to scholars for an indefinite period.

Chittagong Hill Tracts
The Chittagong Hill Tracts had a majority non-Muslim population of 97% (most of them Buddhists), but was given to Pakistan. The Chittagong Hill Tracts People's Association (CHTPA) petitioned the Bengal Boundary Commission that, since the CHTs were inhabited largely by non-Muslims, they should remain within India. The Chittagong Hill Tracts was an excluded area since 1900 and was not part of Bengal. It had no representative at the Bengal Legislative Assembly in Calcutta, since it was not part of Bengal. Since they had no official representation, there was no official discussion on the matter, and many on the Indian side assumed the CHT would be awarded to India. On 15 August 1947, Chakma and other indigenous Buddhists celebrated independence day by hoisting the Indian flag in Rangamati, the capital of Chittagong Hill Tracts. When the boundaries of Pakistan and India were announced by radio on 17 August 1947, they were shocked to know that the Chittagong Hill Tracts had been awarded to Pakistan. The Baluch Regiment of the Pakistani Army entered Chittagong Hill Tracts a week later and lowered the Indian flag at gun point. The rationale of giving the Chittagong Hill Tracts to Pakistan was that they were inaccessible to India and to provide a substantial rural buffer to support Chittagong (now in Bangladesh), a major city and port; advocates for Pakistan forcefully argued to the Bengal Boundary Commission that the only approach was through Chittagong.

The indigenous people sent a delegation led by Sneha Kumar Chakma to Delhi to seek help from the Indian leadership. Sneha Kumar Chakma contacted Sardar Patel by phone. Sardar Patel was willing to help, but insisted Sneha Kumar Chakma seek assistance from Prime Minister Pandit Nehru. But Nehru refused to help fearing that military conflict for Chittagong Hill Tracts might draw the British back to India.

Malda District
Another disputed decision made by Radcliffe was the division of the Malda district of Bengal. The district overall had a slight Muslim majority, but was divided and most of it, including Malda town, went to India. The district remained under East Pakistan administration for 3–4 days after 15 August 1947. It was only when the award was made public that the Pakistani flag was replaced by the Indian flag in Malda.

Khulna and Murshidabad Districts
The Khulna District (with a Hindu majority of 58%) was given to East Pakistan in lieu of the Murshidabad district (with a 70% Muslim majority), which went to India. However, the Pakistani flag remained hoisted in Murshidabad for three days until it was replaced by the Indian flag on the afternoon of 17 August 1947.

Karimganj
The Sylhet district of Assam joined Pakistan in accordance with a referendum. However, the Karimganj sub-division (with a Muslim majority) was separated from Sylhet and given to India, where it became a district in 1983. As of the 2001 Indian census, Karimganj district now has a Muslim majority of 52.3%.

Legacy
The Partition of India is one of the central events in the collective memory in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. As a crucial determiner in the outcomes of the partition, the Radcliffe Line and award process has been referred to in many films, books, and other artistic depictions of the Partition of India. Apart from the larger story of the partition, the specific commemoration of the award itself or the recounting of the story of the process and the people involved in it has been comparatively rare.

Legacy and historiography
As a part of a series on borders, the explanatory news site Vox featured an episode looking at "the ways that the Radcliffe line changed Punjab, and its everlasting effects" including disrupting "a centuries-old Sikh pilgrimage" and separating "Punjabi people of all faiths from each other."

Artistic depictions of the Radcliffe Line
One notable depiction is Drawing the Line, written by British playwright Howard Brenton. On his motivation for writing the play, Brenton said he first became interested in the story of the Radcliffe Line while holidaying in India and hearing stories from people whose families had fled across the new line. Defending his portrayal of Cyril Radcliffe as a man who struggled with his conscience, Brenton said, "There were clues that Radcliffe had a dark night of the soul in the bungalow: he refused to accept his fee, he did collect all the papers and draft maps, took them home to England and burnt them. And he refused to say a word, even to his family, about what happened. My playwright's brain went into overdrive when I discovered these details."

Indian filmmaker Ram Madhvani created a nine-minute short film where he explored the plausible scenario of Radcliffe regretting the line he drew. The film was inspired by W. H. Auden's poem on the Partition.

Visual artists Zarina Hashmi, Salima Hashmi, Nalini Malini, Reena Saini Kallat and Pritika Chowdhry have created drawings, prints and sculptures depicting the Radcliffe Line.

title: Radcliffe Line


text:
Steve Sansweet

Stephen J. Sansweet (born June 14, 1945) is the chairman and former president of Rancho Obi-Wan, a nonprofit museum that houses the world's largest collection of Star Wars memorabilia.

Prior to his retirement in April 2011, he was Director of Content Management and head of Fan Relations at Lucasfilm Ltd. for 15 years, and remains Fan Relations Advisor for the company. He is author or co-author of eighteen books, sixteen of them about Star Wars.

After Sansweet relocated to Northern California to be closer to his new office at Skywalker Ranch, he bought a former chicken ranch and refurbished its barns to house his collection. The property was renamed Rancho Obi-Wan. In September 2013, his collection of an estimated 300,000 items was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as being the largest of its kind in the world.

Biography
Sansweet was born in 1945 and raised in the Wynnefield section of Philadelphia. He says he knew he wanted to be a writer from age six, when he hand-printed a newsletter and sold copies to neighbors for three cents. School newspapers, magazines, and yearbooks followed, and he became a journalism major at Temple University.

Sansweet says that he got a lot out of his classes, many taught by working journalists. But he got as much out of a unique community of fellow students who put out the four-times-a-week Temple News. There was no better training, from reporting and writing to photography and editing — and even "paste-up" in the composing room to get the offset daily ready for the printer, he adds. He worked on the special issue reporting the assassination of John F. Kennedy; as two-term editor-in-chief a few years later, he called in late-night instructions to hand-print a banner headline announcing a next-day visit to the campus of President Lyndon Johnson.

Between his junior and senior years, Sansweet got a then-rare summer internship at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he worked the night police beat; he graduated magna cum laude and was named an Outstanding Journalism Graduate at Temple. In 2009, he was inducted into Temple's Media Hall of Excellence. Immediately after graduating, he went to work full-time for the Inquirer. During this time, Sansweet served a six-year stint in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, transferring to the Air National Guard.

In early 1969, Sansweet became a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. After working in the paper's Philadelphia and Montreal bureaus, Sansweet was transferred to Los Angeles, where he covered the gaming industry, aerospace, banking, and Hollywood. He helped break the first stories on massive foreign bribery by U.S.-based multinationals and was part of a journalism team that won the 1977 Sigma Delta Chi Public Service Award; he was a Loeb Award finalist in 1990.

Sansweet was a lecturer in business journalism at the University of Southern California in the mid-1980s, teaching a course that he created. He became the Wall Street Journal's Los Angeles bureau chief in 1987, a position he kept until 1996 when he made a leap of faith and "followed his bliss" — and passion – to become Director of Specialty Marketing at Lucasfilm Ltd. His title later changed to Director of Content Management and Head of Fan Relations.

Sansweet turned his love of the Star Wars saga into a second career, acting as Lucasfilm's liaison to fans worldwide, and their liaison to the company. He did presentations at well over 100 conventions in the U.S. and many more internationally from the U.K., France, Spain, and Germany, to Australia, Japan, Mexico, and Finland. He appeared on more than 50 hours of Star Wars collectibles programming on QVC in the last half of the 1990s, and has amassed the world's largest private collection of Star Wars memorabilia, housed in a 9000 sqft converted chicken barn in Sonoma County, Calif. Not abandoning his love of writing, Sansweet has eighteen books to his credit, sixteen of them on Star Wars, including the 1.2 million word Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia in 2008 and 2012's Star Wars: The Ultimate Action Figure Collection.

It was announced on October 20, 2010, that Sansweet would be stepping down as head of fan relations effective April 2011. He stated via press release: "Nearly 15 years ago I left my post as Los Angeles Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal to follow my bliss and take a 'one-year job' as Lucasfilm's Star Wars ambassador," said Sansweet. "Now it's time for another change and new challenges, while still maintaining an active role in the Star Wars fan community."

In June 2017 Sansweet said that he was a victim of theft and that over 100 items from his collection have been stolen, "The majority of them vintage U.S. and foreign carded action figures, many of them rare and important pieces." Reportedly, several of those pieces have already been, "Resold or professionally appraised for a total of more than $200,000." According to Sansweet, a man named Carl Edward Cunningham, whom Sansweet refers to as, "A good and trusted friend," surrendered to police at the end of March 2017, but is currently out on bail pending additional hearings.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Steve Sansweet


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Kallil Temple

Kallil Temple is a hindu temple located at Kerala, South India. It is 8 km away from Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district of Kerala. Kallil in Malayalam means 'in stone'. It is one of the most ancient hindu temple in Kerala. It is one of the protected monuments in Kerala under Kerala State Department of Archaeology.

Overview
The temple, located in a 28-acre (113,000 m2) plot, is cut from a huge rock, and a climb of 69 steps leads to the temple. To reach the temple one has to travel a distance of about 2 km from Odakkali, on the Aluva Munnar Road and 10 km from Perumbavoor. The temple is owned by the Kallil Pisharody family. The present Karanavar of the family turned over all the administrative control of the temple and all its belongings to 'Chenkottukonam Sree Ramadasashramam'. But all that retrieved back due to some hassle between local people and Ashram authorities.

Location

The temple is located at Methala near Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district. The temple is located at a distance of 10 km from Perumbavoor. It is located at a distance of 4 km from Odakali between Perumbavoor and Kothamangalam.

Kallil Bhagavathi Temple

There are many temples where history and legend converge. The temples that still stand tall today with unbelievable stories and myths that overcome it. The Kallil Bhagwati Temple is one such temple. The story of the Kallil Bhagwati Temple is located in the village of Methala near Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district. To the highlights of the Kallil Bhagavathi Temple, which is believed to be over five thousand years old and has become a part of the history of Kerala itself !!!

Perumbavoor is famous for its stone Bhagavathi Temple, which can be reached by crossing over a hundred steps in the jungle. The temple is said to be over five thousand years old and is marked by Perumbavoor on the temple map. It is now preserved as a protected monument under the Archaeological Department.

Legend

If you search for the history of the Kallil Temple, you will come across Jainism. It is believed that this was a Jain temple in the early days. It is believed that Padmavati, the Yakshiya of Jainism, is worshiped here as Bhagwati. It is believed that the Jain temple later became the Bhagwati temple. It is believed that this change took place in the ninth century. The legend spread here is related to a woman. Once upon a time, people came to the forest and saw a woman of extraordinary beauty. They disappeared when he went to see them playing with stones. They hide in the cave with the stones they were playing with. It is believed that the goddess was Bhagwati. It is believed that the stone that went up while the goddess was playing became the roof of the temple and came down as a seat.The stones that were worshiped by the Goddess are still here today ... The huge rock that stands on the roof of the shrine does not touch the ground. This rock that stands tall in the air does not move even if 15 elephants pull it together!

The two most important vows here are the stone vow and the broom vow. The broom vows are made for women to grow hair and for men to change family troubles. The broom vow is made of wool without touching the iron and offered to the temple.

The stone vows to complete the housework that was stopped half way. If you bring two or three stones from the house where the work is being done and bring them to the temple for prayers, the work will be completed within a year. People who can do whatever they want come here and give thanks again and make vows and pray.

Cave Temple

This temple is also known as the Kallil Cave Temple. The Goddess is enshrined in a cave made of stone. As it is a cave temple, it is not possible to walk around behind the shrine like in normal temples. Therefore, when circling Bhagwati, the circumambulation is completed by bowing to the stone.There is ample evidence that this was a Jain temple in the early days. The idols of Parshvanath and Mahavira in Jainism have become idols of Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu.

Pooja time

The festival is celebrated on the Karthika day in the month of Scorpio. The festival lasts for eight days.

Until a few days ago, it was customary to walk after noon pooja.

This was due to the difficulty of returning so far for evening poojas. But now even though the walk is closed for noon pooja, the walk is reopened for evening devotional and Athazha pooja.

Main deity
Rock-carved images of the 23rd Tirthankara, Parshvanatha, Vardhaman Mahavira (24th Tirthankara) and Padmavati devi are present in the temple. Padmavati devi is worshipped as Bhagawathi by the local population. The major festival of the temple is celebrated from Karthika of month Vrishchika and usually lasts for a week.

title: Kallil Temple


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Euoplocephalus

Euoplocephalus is a genus of large herbivorous ankylosaurid dinosaurs, living during the Late Cretaceous of Canada. It has only one named species, Euoplocephalus tutus.

The first fossil of Euoplocephalus was found in 1897 in Alberta. In 1902, it was named Stereocephalus, but that name had already been given to an insect, so it was changed in 1910. Later, many more ankylosaurid remains were found from the Campanian of North America and often made separate genera. In 1971, Walter Coombs concluded that they all belonged to Euoplocephalus, which then make it one of the best-known dinosaurs. Recently, however, experts have come to the opposite conclusion, limiting the authentic finds of Euoplocephalus to about a dozen specimens. These include a number of almost complete skeletons, so nevertheless much is known about the build of the animal.

Euoplocephalus reached 5.3 m in length and 2 MT in body mass. Its body was low-slung and very flat and wide, standing on four sturdy legs. Its head had a short drooping snout with a horny beak to bite off plants that were digested in the large gut. Like other ankylosaurids, Euoplocephalus was largely covered by bony armor plates, among them rows of large high-ridged oval scutes. The neck was protected by two bone rings. It could also actively defend itself against predators like Albertosaurus, Daspletosaurus, and Gorgosaurus using a heavy club at the end of its tail.

Size
Among the ankylosaurids, Euoplocephalus was exceeded in size only by Ankylosaurus, and perhaps Tarchia and Cedarpelta. Euoplocephalus was about 5.3 m long and weighed about 2 MT. Like other ankylosaurids, it had a very broad and flat low-slung torso, about four feet high, positioned on four short legs.

Distinguishing traits
The skull of Euoplocephalus can be distinguished from most other ankylosaurids by several anatomical details, including: the pattern of bony sculpturing in the region in front of the eyes; the form of the palpebral bones (small bones over the eyes), which may have served as bony eyelids; the shallowness of the nasal vestibule at the entrance of the nasal cavity; the medial curve of the tooth rows in the upper jaw; and the teeth, which are relatively small, lacking true cingula, and having variable fluting of the denticles. However, these traits are shared with a number of closely related forms, some of which in the past have been included in the genus. Combining such forms, Walter Coombs and Teresa Maryańska in 1990 stated that Euoplocephalus could be distinguished based on four traits. The premaxillae, the front snout bones, are not covered by dermal ossifications. The external bony nostrils are slit-like, face to the front and are each divided by a vertical bone sheet or septum. The beak has a width equal to or greater than the distance between the rear maxillary, upper cheek, teeth rows. The foot has three digits, metatarsals with toes. In 2013, Victoria Arbour and Phil Currie provided a differential diagnosis, setting Euoplocephalus apart from its nearest relatives. When compared with Anodontosaurus and Scolosaurus, Euoplocephalus lacks round osteoderms at the base of the squamosal and quadratojugal horns. Compared with Anodontosaurus it lacks small osteoderms at the bases of the large osteoderms on the first cervical half-ring, but, contrary to that genus, does in top view have large rounded osteoderms at the sides of the tail club. It differs from Dyoplosaurus in possessing sacral ribs that perpendicularly point outwards. It differs from Scolosaurus in possessing keeled osteoderms with a round or oval base on the top and sides of the first cervical half-ring and having a shorter rear blade of the ilium. Euoplocephalus differs from Ankylosaurus in possessing anteriorly directed external nostrils and in lacking a continuous keel between the squamosal horn and the supraorbitals.

Skeleton
The skull of Euoplocephalus resembles a truncated equilateral triangle when viewed from above, and is slightly wider than it is long. The largest known skull, that of specimen AMNH 5403, has a length of 411 millimetres and a width of 478 millimetres. Most skull elements are completely fused and two skull openings normally present with dinosaurs, the antorbital fenestra and the upper temporal fenestra, have closed. The skull has nineteen to twenty-four teeth in each upper jaw. The frontmost snout bone, the premaxilla, is toothless. The teeth are very small, with a maximal height and width of just 7.5 millimetres. The strongly drooping snout is blunt, wide and high, and filled with very complex air passages and sinuses, the form and function of which are not yet completely understood. Each side has two external nostrils. The lower jaw has a very concave upper rim with twenty-one teeth. At its front a short low extension is present, to provide contact with the wide predentary, the bony core of the lower horny beak, that fitted within the upper beak of the snout.

As in most quadrupedal ornithischians, its neck is moderately short. The scapula is massive and robust, and the very robust forelimbs are shorter than the hindlimbs. The tail is long and ends in a bony club. Old restorations of Euoplocephalus and rejected synonyms (Dyoplosaurus, Scolosaurus) often show a club with two large vertical spikes. This is an error based on a restoration of Scolosaurus by Franz Nopcsa; the specimen he used had an incomplete tail that stopped just beyond the pair of conical spikes now known to have been positioned halfway along its length. He restored the tail as ending just after the spines. Other artists combined the spikes with the tail club, compounding the inaccuracy. The narrow distal half of the tail is stiffened by bundles of ossified tendons.

The vertebral column of Euoplocephalus is made up of at least seven cervical vertebrae, at least eleven "free" dorsal vertebrae, typically four sacrodorsals forming a fused "sacral rod" in front of the sacrum proper, three "true" sacral vertebrae, and between one and four caudosacrals. Like with other ankylosaurians, the last four dorsal vertebrae and the first caudal vertebra are thus fused to the sacrum, forming a reinforced synsacrum of at least eight vertebrae, the spines of which form a fused supraneural plate, also incorporating the zygapophyses. There are at least twenty-one caudal vertebrae; the total number of caudal vertebrae is uncertain because approximately ten are fused to form part of the tail club, bringing the total to about thirty. This fusion is also seen in other ankylosaurids; it is possible that the extent of fusion is an age-related feature.

The humerus is very robust with strongly expanded upper and lower joints, combined with a narrow shaft. On the upper shaft an enormous deltopectoral crest is present of which the lower part does not gradually merge with the shaft but is warped to the front, forming a thick knob or lip. All this indicates a very heavy musculature. In the lower arm the robust ulna has a well-developed olecranon process. The wrist and hand bones are not well known. In the pelvis, the front blade of the ilium splayed out to the front, reaching all the way to the widest point of the belly to support the gut. This blade also forms a bone shelf at the rear side of the body. The rear blade of the ilium is shorter than the diameter of the hip socket it was located behind, meaning the leg is located at the rear end of the pelvis, near the tail base and much closer to the midline than the belly sides. The pubic bone is unknown. The ischium is a short, curved, vertically positioned bone strap. The thighbone is short, robust and straight with a low fourth trochanter positioned below the midpoint of the shaft. The robust shinbone is shorter than the thighbone. The foot is not well known but functionally tridactyl with hoof-shaped instead of sharp claws.

Armor
The head and body of Euoplocephalus were covered with bony armor, except for parts of the limbs and possibly the distal tail. The armor consisted of osteoderms, skin ossifications that are not part of the skeleton proper. This armor was in 1982 extensively described by Kenneth Carpenter, who however, largely based himself on the very complete specimen NHMUK R5161, the holotype of Scolosaurus, which genus no longer is seen as a synonym of Euoplocephalus. When limited to the certain material of the latter genus, little is known of the exact configuration of the armor, with the exception of the head and the neck. The most informative specimen in this respect would then be ROM 1930, having conserved some osteoderms of the torso in their original position.

In any case, much of the armor was made up of small ossicles, bony round scutes with a diameter of less than five millimetres, of which often hundreds have been found with a single specimen. If the armor was configured in an identical way to that of Scolosaurus, many of these small ossicles had fused into a kind of pavement, forming transverse bands on the body. The banded arrangement is thought to have permitted some freedom of movement. Four of these bands might have been present on the anterior half of the tail, three on the pelvis, perhaps fused into a single "sacral shield", and four across the front part of the torso. Inset in these bands were horizontal rows of larger oval, flat or keeled, scutes. Types of large scutes varied by body region. It might be that the scutes on the shoulder, near the midline of the body, were largest and tallest; ROM 1930 includes some osteoderms with a base length of fifteen centimeters. Little is known about the armor of the limbs. Large keeled plates were present on the upper arms as shown by specimen TMP 1997.132.01 conserving a round osteoderm near the humerus with a diameter of twenty centimeters and narrower spikes associated with the lower arm. The neck was protected by two bone rings, open at the underside, that are called "cervical half-rings". Earlier seen as a fusion of osteoderms, this was doubted by Arbour et al. in 2013, who pointed out that they formed a lower layer, possibly consisting of ossified cartilage, as indicated by a smooth surface and a woven bone texture. Each half-ring is constructed out of six rectangular concave plates, three per side. Each plate has a large keeled osteoderm on top, often not fused with it. With Euoplocephalus, these neck osteoderms do not have smaller osteoderms at their bases, and their keels do not overhang their posterior edges.

The armor of the skull consists of a large number of ossicles, called caputegulae ("head tiles"), that have fused with the normal skull elements, largely fading their sutures. On the snout they form a chaotic and asymmetric mosaic. On the rear nasal region, at the midline a single hexagonal larger plate is present. A keeled plate per side, somewhat more to the back forms the snout rim. Behind the level of the eye sockets the caputegulae fuse into a single bone surface. The upper rim of the eye sockets is formed by two pyramid-shaped osteoderms pointing to the sides and rear. In addition, Euoplocephalus had two pyramid-shaped squamosal "horns" growing from the back corners of its head. Between them the nuchal crest is covered by two osteoderms per side. At the lower rear side of the skull, a quadratojugal horn is present, in the form of an enormous tongue-shaped osteoderm projecting below.

Discovery and species
Canadian paleontologist Lawrence Morris Lambe discovered the first specimen on 18 August 1897 in the area of the present Dinosaur Provincial Park, in the valley of the Red Deer River, Alberta, Canada. In 1902, this fossil, CMN 210 (also NMC 210) was designated as the holotype specimen of the type species Stereocephalus tutus. This specimen consists of the upper part of a cranium and a transverse series of five scutes that were part of a cervical half ring. The generic name was derived from Greek στερεός, stereos, "solid", and κεφαλή, kephalè, "head", which refers to the formidable armour. However, the genus name was already preoccupied — the name had already been given to an insect, the beetle Stereocephalus Lynch 1884 — so Lambe changed it to Euoplocephalus in 1910, with as combinatio nova (new combination name) Euoplocephalus tutus. The type species remains Stereocephalus tutus. In 1915, Edwin Hennig classified E. tutus under the genus Palaeoscincus Leidy 1856, coining a Palaeoscincus tutus. Today however, Palaeoscincus is considered to be a nomen dubium based on indeterminate ankylosaurian teeth. In 1964, Euoplocephalus was by Oskar Kuhn referred to Ankylosaurus, as a Ankylosaurus tutus.

The genus name Euoplocephalus, meaning "well-armed head", is derived from the Greek words eu (εὖ) meaning "well", hoplo~ (ὁπλο~) meaning "armed", and kephale (κεφαλή) meaning "head". This name has been misspelled more than a dozen different ways in formal scientific literature. The specific name tutus means "safely protected" in Latin. The only valid species known today is Euoplocephalus tutus.

Referred material
During the early twentieth century many more ankylosaurid fossils were uncovered in North America. Some were referred to Euoplocephalus, others named as separate genera. In 1971 however, Walter Coombs submitted a dissertation containing a landmark re-appraisal of North American ankylosaurs. He noted that, among the many specimens similar to Euoplocephalus, their skulls varied so much that either every known specimen must be a new species, or they all represented individual variation within a single species: Euoplocephalus tutus. Starting from this assumption that there was only one species of ankylosaur during the Campanian stage of the Upper Cretaceous, Coombs synonymized the genera Anodontosaurus, Dyoplosaurus, and Scolosaurus with Euoplocephalus and the species A. lambei, D. acutosquameus, and S. cutleri with E. tutus, creating a species that spanned nearly ten million years, or the entire Campanian. The fossils now referred to this species contained more than forty individuals discovered in Alberta, Canada and Montana in the United States, which would have made Euoplocephalus the best known ankylosaurid. This included fifteen skulls, teeth, and a few almost-complete skeletons, found with the armor still attached. Individual armor plates are the most commonly found element from them. In 1978, Coombs even included the Asian ankylosaurid Tarchia in the genus, renaming it as Euoplocephalus giganteus.

The synonymy of all Campanian North-American ankylosaurids was followed for several decades, until scientists from the University of Alberta began to re-examine the fossils. A 2009 study found that Dyoplosaurus is in fact a valid taxon, and identified unique characteristics that differentiated it from Euoplocephalus, including its triangular claws. Victoria Arbour (2010) argued that Anodontosaurus (known from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation) is distinct from Euoplocephalus and is also a valid taxon; according to Arbour, Anodontosaurus differs from Euoplocephalus in distinctive skull and cervical half ring ornamentation, as well as tail club morphology, including the presence of pointed, triangular knob osteoderms in Anodontosaurus. Furthermore, Arbour (2010) suggested to reassign all Horseshoe Canyon Formation ankylosaurine specimens from Euoplocephalus to Anodontosaurus. The validity of Anodontosaurus was accepted in two subsequent studies. The first, published by Paul Penkalski and William T. Blows in 2013, re-validated Scolosaurus as well. The second study, by Penkalski (2013), named and described Oohkotokia from Montana on the basis of remains that were originally thought to be referable to Euoplocephalus.

Palaeoscincus asper, "the rough one", is now considered to be Euoplocephalus. It is a dubious tooth taxon from the late Campanian Dinosaur Park Formation of Alberta, named by Lambe in 1902. It consists of a single tooth, specimen NMC 1349.

In 2013 Arbour limited the specimens that could be reliably referred to Euoplocephalus to the lowest thirty metres of the Dinosaur Park Formation. The material would in that case, apart from the holotype, consist of partial skeletons with skull AMNH 5337, AMNH 5403, AMNH 5404, AMNH 5405, ROM 1930 and UALVP 31; partial skeleton lacking the skull AMNH 5406; CMN 842, a cervical half-ring; CMN 8876, a skull, TMP 1979.14.74, a fragmentary skull; and UALVP 47977, a skull roof piece. The hands, feet and tail, including the club, are therefore not completely known. However, many of those specimens have now been reassigned to other, new taxa, including Scolosaurus and Platypelta, and others.

Classification
In 1910, Lambe assigned Euoplocephalus to the Stegosauria, a group then encompassing all armoured dinosaur forms and thus having a much wider range than the present concept. In 1917, Charles Whitney Gilmore assigned it to the Ankylosauridae. Today, Euoplocephalus is still seen as an ankylosaurid, but as a member of the Ankylosauria, not the Stegosauria. It is likely also a member of the derived subgroup Ankylosaurinae. The recent splitting of the ankylosaurid Campanian material of North America has complicated the issue of the direct affinities of Euoplocephalus. Penkalski (2013) performed a small phylogenetic analysis of some ankylosaurine specimens. The only Anodontosaurus specimen that was included in this analysis was its holotype. Anodontosaurus was placed in a polytomy with the holotype of Euoplocephalus and some specimens that are referred to it, while Oohkotokia was placed in a clade with Dyoplosaurus, and specimens that are thought to represent either Dyoplosaurus or Scolosaurus.

The following cladogram is based on a 2015 phylogenetic analysis of the Ankylosaurinae conducted by Arbour and Currie:

The results of an earlier analysis of the ankylosaurid tree by Thompson et al. (2011), is shown by this cladogram.

Paleoecology
Euoplocephalus, following the synonymizations proposed by Coombs (1971), was thought to exist for far longer, and was a member of more distinct faunas, than any of its contemporaries, as these fossils date to between 76.5 and 67 million years ago, in the Campanian-Maastrichtian ages of the late Cretaceous period, and came from the Dinosaur Park and Horseshoe Canyon Formations of Alberta, Two Medicine Formation of Montana, and possibly from the Oldman Formation of Alberta. Fossils that were initially believed to be from the Judith River Formation of Montana, are actually from the Dinosaur Park Formation. However, recent studies referred all Horseshoe Canyon Formation specimens to Anodontosaurus, and all Two Medicine Formation specimens to Oohkotokia. A specimen from the lowermost Dinosaur Park, or possibly from the underlying Oldman Formation, was reassigned back to Scolosaurus. Although the stratigraphic range of the holotype of Euoplocephalus is uncertain, all specimens that can be reliably referred to E. tutus came from the lower 40 m and the upper >10 m of the Dinosaur Park Formation. There are no known ankylosaurids from the top 20–25 m of the Formation. Thus, all Euoplocephalus specimens date to between 76.4 (or less) and 75.6 million years ago, in the late Campanian stage.

Paleobiology
According to Coombs, Euoplocephalus may have had cursorial abilities on par with those of the modern rhinoceros and hippopotamus. Based on the form of the humerus-shoulder articulation and the arrangement of the protracting muscles of the upper arm, it appears that the upper arm sloped away from the body. Coombs and Maryanska (1990) observed that Euoplocephalus specimens are usually discovered as isolated elements or partial skeletons, which suggested that this animal engaged in solitary habits and was usually either solitary or participated in small group clusters.

The armor of Euoplocephalus may have had a keratinous covering, or it may have floated in the skin, as is seen in modern crocodiles. In addition to protection, the heavily vascularized armor may have had a role in thermoregulation. The palpebral bones over the eyes may have provided additional protection for the eyes. Such bones with Euoplocephalus have been discovered in the upper part of the eye socket, instead of in front of the upper socket rim which is the more common position. Coombs explained this by assuming that these bones were located in the eyelid musculature and were probably mobile enough to be moved over the eyes.

Defense
The tail club of ankylosaurids has often been interpreted as a defensive weapon. In Euoplocephalus, the presence of ossified tendons only with the distal half of the tail may support such a function. Because only the distal half of the tail was stiffened by tendons, the anterior half could still move freely from side to side. The ossified tendons would have transmitted the force of the swing to the club and reinforced the supporting vertebrae. The club was likely held just above the ground, as there was not sufficient musculature to raise the tail very high. A 2009 study concluded that "large ankylosaurian clubs could generate sufficient force to break bone during impacts, while average and small ones could not". It has also concluded that "tail swinging behavior is feasible in ankylosaurids, but it remains unknown whether the tail was used for interspecific defense, intraspecific combat, or both". The tail club could be swung low, toward the fragile metatarsals or shin bones of attacking theropods.

Senses and airflow
Euoplocephalus had relatively small eyes, but this does not necessarily mean that it had restricted vision. The complex respiratory passages observed in the skull suggest that Euoplocephalus had a good sense of smell, although in 1978 an examination of casts of the endocranium did not show an enlarged olfactory region of the brain. Teresa Maryanska, who has worked extensively on Mongolian ankylosaurids, suggested that the respiratory passages were primarily used to perform a mammal-like treatment of inhaled air, based on the presence and arrangement of specialized bones, which are present in Euoplocephalus.

A 2011 study found that the nasal passages of Euoplocephalus were looped and complex; possibly an adaptation for heat and water balance and vocal resonance, and researchers discovered an enlarged and vascularised chamber at the back of the nasal tract, which was considered by the authors to be an adaptation to improve its sense of smell. The researchers also managed to reconstruct the dinosaur's inner ear and concluded that it was capable of hearing at low frequencies. They suggested that this may have been an adaption to hearing low-toned resonant sounds produced by the nasal passages.

Diet
Euoplocephalus, like other ankylosaurians, is thought to have been a herbivore. It had a broad muzzle, which could indicate that it was a non-selective feeder, perhaps similar to a hippopotamus. This would provide niche separation from contemporaneous nodosaurids with narrower muzzles. Ankylosaurians have historically been thought of as feeding using simple up-and-down movements of the jaws. Georg Haas (1969) examined the evidence for the jaw muscles of two skulls (AMNH 5337 and 5405) and concluded that despite the large size of the skulls the associated musculature was relatively weak. He also thought jaw movement was largely orthogonal, in the vertical plane only. Haas extrapolated from this that dinosaurs like Euoplocephalus likely ate relatively soft non-abrasive vegetation.

However, later research indicated that forward and sideways jaw movement was possible, the skull being able to withstand considerable forces. Euoplocephalus appears to have been able to make more complex movements. Tooth wear and jaw articulations (within the lower jaw and at the lower jaw-quadrate joint) suggest that the lower jaws were pulled back during feeding, and also slightly pivoted inward. This action would have sheared food. A study conducted in 2014 found that the ankylosaurs were capable of eating of tough fibrous plant material, though not to the same degree as their nodosaur relatives or the ceratopsians and hadrosaurs.

title: Euoplocephalus


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Wikipedia talk:Elections/Endorsements poll

False dichotomy
I'm abstaining, the question as posed provides a false dichotomy where I believe in both positions and neither. Shane King 12:10, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

 * Which part of the poll do you consider to hold a false dichotomy? --[[User:Eequor| ᓛᖁ  [[Image:Venus symbol (blue).gif|♀]] [ ᑐ ]]] 16:18, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * It's been changed now, I think I can vote. Shane King 23:45, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)


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Rodney riots

The Rodney riots were riots and civil disturbances in Kingston, Jamaica in October 1968.

The riots were sparked by the Jamaican government of Hugh Shearer banning Guyanese university lecturer Dr. Walter Rodney from returning to his teaching position at the University of the West Indies. Rodney, a historian of Africa had been active in the Black power movement, and had been sharply critical of the middle class in many Caribbean countries. Rodney was an avowed socialist who worked with the poor of Jamaica in an attempt to raise their political and cultural consciousness.

When Rodney attended a black writers' conference in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in October 1968 the government took the opportunity to ban him from returning, citing among other things trips to Cuba and the USSR as justification.

On learning of the ban, students at UWI, Mona began a demonstration under the leadership of the Guild of Undergraduates, closing down the campus. They then proceeded to march first to the prime minister's residence, and then to the parliament building in Kingston. On the way many more demonstrators joined in, and eventually the disturbance became increasingly violent spreading across the city. Eventually, several people were killed and there were millions of dollars in property damages.

The riots were part of an emerging black consciousness movement in the Caribbean, and helped inspire the 1970 Black Power Revolution in Trinidad and Tobago.

title: Rodney riots


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Belize River

The Belize River runs 180 mi through the center of Belize. It drains more than one-quarter of the country as it winds along the northern edge of the Maya Mountains to the sea just north of Belize City (17.53333°N, -88.23333°W). The Belize river valley is largely tropical rainforest.

Also known as the Old River, the Belize River begins where the Mopan River and Macal River join just east of San Ignacio, Belize (17.18333°N, -89.06667°W). The Belize River – Mopan River Catchment contains over 45 percent of the population of Belize. The Belize River, in spite of 78 runs or rapids, is passable via the Mopan to the Guatemalan border. It served as the main artery of commerce and communication between the interior and the coast until well into the twentieth century, and has long been associated with forestry, of logwood (for dye) and of mahogany which survives in small stands.

Early on, loggers using the river encountered the Maya and had conflicts with them and with the Spaniards. In 1807 there was a request for "arms and ammunitions" for the loggers. In the late 1820s, the Methodist minister Thomas Wilkinson found three to four thousand men working at camps most of the year. By the late 19th century there were over 130 small settlements along the river. Burrell Boom just above Belize Town served as a catch-point for logs.

Today the Belize River is a vital source of drinking water and other domestic use for the populations living along the river; however, water quality is degraded from sediment, nutrient loading, pesticides and other toxins. The major source of degradation is the extensive deforestation in the upper reaches of the Mopan River and non-sustainable agriculture. Karper and Boles have asserted: "The greater Mopan/Belize River Catchment provides a prime example of a watershed under stress from extensive non-sustainable agricultural practices that have occurred within the region over the past three decades." Traditional slash and burn agricultural practices also contribute to watershed degradation.

Maya sites
There are a number of Maya archaeological sites in the watershed of the Belize River and its tributaries: Mopan River, Macal River, and Chaa Creek. These sites include Xunantunich, Chaa Creek, and Cahal Pech.

title: Belize River


text:
SR Class 2-NOL

The Southern Railway (SR) gave the designation 2-NOL to the electric multiple units built during the 1930s from old London and South Western Railway carriage bodies on new underframes. None of these units survived long enough in British Rail ownership to be allocated a TOPS class.

Construction
The 2-NOL (2-car NO Lavatory stock, numbers 1813–1890) units were built in 1934–1936 by taking former LSWR carriage bodies, lengthening them, and placing them on new underframes. They were intended for use on slow services on the South Coast and in South London.

The motor third brakes were produced by taking a 48-foot eight-compartment third (378 of which were built between June 1894 and December 1902 of which 32 were originally 2nd/3rd composites), removing half of one compartment, and adding on a steel-panelled guard's van and a driving cab. The driving trailer composites were also produced from 48-foot eight-compartment thirds, but two whole compartments were removed, and three first-class compartments from a 46-foot six-compartment lavatory first (70 of which were built between 1895 and 1900) were added at one end, and a steel-panelled driving cab at the other.

Formations
Initial formations of these units were as follows (carriages were not necessarily formed in numerical order):

Accidents and incidents

 * On 2 December 1955, two units of the class formed a passenger train that was in collision with a freight train at Barnes, London due to a signalman's error. A fire broke out due to electrical arcing. Thirteen people were killed and 41 were injured. Unit 1853 was gutted by the fire and was consequently withdrawn.

Withdrawal
Four units were withdrawn between 1941 and 1955. Of these, two units (1828 and 1855) were withdrawn in 1941, one being the result of bomb damage. Two units sustained accidents in 1951, damaging one coach in each unit; but it was possible to form one good unit from the two undamaged coaches, so only one unit (1838) needed to be withdrawn. Unit 1853 withdrawn following an accident at Barnes in December 1955, as detailed above. The majority of these units were withdrawn between 1956 and 1959, when the old bodies were scrapped and the underframes were re-used. Four units (1870/1/7/8) donated their frames to new 4-EPB coaches, but the frames from 70 units were used to construct 34 new 2-EPB and 36 new 2-HAP units. There remained 31 units in stock in the Summer of 1959, but they had all been withdrawn by the end of August 1959.

title: SR Class 2-NOL


text:
Port of Hong Kong

The Port of Hong Kong located by the South China Sea, is a deepwater seaport dominated by trade in containerised manufactured products, and to a lesser extent raw materials and passengers. A key factor in the economic development of Hong Kong, the natural shelter and deep waters of Victoria Harbour provide ideal conditions for berthing and the handling of all types of vessels. It is one of the busiest ports in the world, in the three categories of shipping movements, cargo handled and passengers carried. This makes Hong Kong a Large-Port Metropolis.

Administration
Responsibility for administering the port is vested in the Director of Marine. The Port Operations Committee advises him on all matters affecting the efficient operations of the port, except those matters that are the responsibility of the Pilotage Advisory Committee and the Provisional Local Vessels Advisory Committee. The Hong Kong Maritime and Port Board (HKMPB) advises the Government on matters related to port planning and development and promoting Hong Kong as a regional hub port and a leading container port in the world as well as on measures to further develop Hong Kong's maritime industry and to promote Hong Kong's position as an international maritime centre. The HKMPB replaced (in April 2016) the former Hong Kong Maritime Industry Council and Hong Kong Port Development Council and is chaired by the Secretary for Transport and Housing, as they both were.

The Marine Department is responsible for ensuring that conditions exist to enable ships to enter the port, work their cargoes and leave as quickly and as safely as possible. It is concerned with many aspects of safety standards for all classes and types of vessels, from the largest oil-carrying tankers to the smallest passenger-carrying sampans. It also maintains aids to navigation and mooring buoys for seagoing ships, manages three cross-boundary ferry terminals and administers eight public cargo working areas.

Shipping

Hong Kong is one of several hub ports serving the South-East and East Asia region, and is an economic gateway to mainland China. The port is part of the Maritime Silk Road that runs from the Chinese coast via the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean, there to the Upper Adriatic region of Trieste with its rail connections to Central and Eastern Europe.

Hong Kong set a record in its container throughput in 2007 by handling 23.9 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units of containers), maintaining its status as the largest container port serving southern China and one of the busiest ports in the world. Some 456,000 vessels arrived in and departed from Hong Kong during the year, carrying 243 million tonnes of cargo and about 25 million passengers. The average turnaround time for container vessels in Hong Kong is about 10 hours. For conventional vessels working in mid-stream at buoys or anchorages, it is 42 and 52 hours respectively.

Container Port traffic
The port has been one of the busiest container ports in the world for many years, and at times the busiest. It was the world's busiest container port from 1987 to 1989, from 1992 to 1997, and from 1999 to 2004. The amount of container ships that went through Hong Kong's container port was 25,869 in 2016, with a net register tonnage of 386,853 tonnes in 2016.

Container terminals
There are currently nine container terminals situated at Kwai Chung, Stonecutters Island and Tsing Yi (the last one completed in 2004). Substantial container throughput is handled by the River Trade Terminal at Tuen Mun and by mid-stream.

Kwai Tsing Container Terminals

The Kwai Tsing Container Terminals (Kwai Chung Container Terminals until Container Terminal 9 was opened on Tsing Yi), located in the north-western part of the harbour, has nine container terminals with 24 berths of about 8,500 metres of frontage. It covers a total terminal area of about 2.7 km2 which includes container yards and container freight stations. The nine container terminals have a total handling capacity of over.

These terminals are operated by five companies, namely:
 * Modern Terminals Ltd. (MTL)
 * Hongkong International Terminals Ltd. (HIT)
 * COSCO Information & Technology (H.K.) Ltd. (COSCO)
 * Dubai Port International Terminals Ltd. (DPI)
 * Asia Container Terminals Ltd. (ACT)

The existing 9 terminals occupy 2.17 square kilometres of land, providing 18 berths and 6,592 metres deep water frontage. These terminals handle about 60% of total container traffic handled in Hong Kong.

In July, 2020, The Port of Hong Kong welcomed HMM Gdansk, the world's largest container vessel, on its maiden call to Hong Kong at Kwai Tsing Container Terminal 7.

Planning is underway for a potential Container Terminal 10 (CT10), with possible sites narrowed down to either southwest Tsing Yi or northwest Lantau, to the west of the airport.

River Trade Terminal at Tuen Mun
The River Trade Terminal at Tuen Mun involves the consolidation of containers, break bulk and bulk cargo shipped between the Hong Kong port and ports in the Pearl River Delta. The terminal is located near Pillar Point in Tuen Mun, New Territories, and is operated by River Trade Terminal Company Ltd. The 65-hectare terminal, completed in November 1999, has about 3,000 metres of quay, according to Hong Kong Port Development Council data.

Mid-stream

Mid-stream operation involves loading and unloading containers to and from ships while at sea, with barges or dumb steel lighters performing the transfer, and then distributing or landing the containers to piers nearby. Due to high handling fees at the container terminals, Hong Kong has become the only place in the world with at-sea loading and unloading operations.

Currently, there are 11 different yard sites solely for mid-stream operations, occupying a total land area of 27.5 hectares and waterfrontage of 3,197 metres.

Ferry services
The Hong Kong–Macau Ferry Terminal between Central and Sheung Wan and the China Ferry Terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui provide centralised ferry services to Macau and 24 ports on mainland China. About 100 vessels, mostly high-speed passenger craft such as jetfoils, catamarans and hoverferries, operate from these terminals. In 2001, over 17 million passengers passed through the terminals, comprising approximately 11.2 million passenger trips to/from Macau and 6.5 million passenger trips to/from mainland ports.

Government fleet
There are over 600 vessels of different types and sizes in the government fleet. About 152 vessels are major mechanised vessels serving under 16 government departments such as the Marine Police, Customs and Excise, and Fire Services. Some user departments operate and man their purpose-built vessels. The Marine Department itself controls about 100 vessels, including patrol launches, personnel carriers, pontoons, self-propelled barges and specialised vessels such as hydrographic survey launches and explosive carriers. These vessels provide support to the department's own port operations or serve other departments which do not have their own fleet. The Government Dockyard is responsible for the design, procurement and maintenance of all vessels owned by the Government. It occupies a site of 980,000 m2 on Stonecutters Island and has an 83,000 m2 protected water basin as an operational base for vessels operated by the Marine Department. The dockyard has a ship-lift system and three ship-hoists capable of drydocking vessels of up to 750 tonnes. An on-line computerised information system is employed to co-ordinate the maintenance activities and support services to maximise maintenance efficiency and vessel availability.

Drydocks and slipways
The port has extensive facilities for repairing, maintaining, drydocking and slipping of all types of vessels. Two floating drydocks are located off the west coast of Tsing Yi Island and two northeast of Lantau Island. The largest is capable of docking vessels up to. There is also a large number of smaller shipyards, which carry out repairs to vessels and build specialised craft, including sophisticated patrol craft and pleasure vessels for overseas markets.

Moorings and anchorages
The Marine Department operates and maintains 58 mooring buoys for seagoing vessels. Of these 31 are suitable for ships up to 183 metres in length and 27 for ships up to 137 metres. There are 44 special typhoon mooring buoys to which ships can remain secured during typhoons. This improves efficiency and reduces operational costs of vessels through elimination of unnecessary movements. In addition to the three Immigration and Quarantine Anchorages designated for visiting vessels to complete port formalities, there are eight dangerous goods and eight general-purpose anchorages providing temporary berthing spaces for vessels.

The areas and water depths of the anchorages are diversified to accommodate different sizes and draughts of ships calling at Hong Kong. There are over 460 modern marine aids to navigation throughout Hong Kong waters to guide mariners to and from their berths.

Navigation safety

All fairway buoys are lit and fitted with radar reflectors. Traffic Separation Schemes operate in the East Lamma Channel and Tathong Channel. The Marine Department's VHF radio network provides comprehensive marine communication coverage throughout the harbour and its approaches. The department has direct communication links with other maritime authorities and users worldwide. Locally, the department's Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre (MRCC) maintains direct contact with emergency response services, which include the Government Flying Service, Marine Police and Fire Services. MRCC provides 24-hour maritime distress alert monitoring and co-ordinates all maritime search and rescue operations within the Hong Kong search and rescue region in the South China Sea.

A comprehensive vessel traffic service is provided by the department's Vessel Traffic Centre (VTC), with radar surveillance and tracking capabilities as well as a fully integrated data handling sub-system, covers 95% of Hong Kong waters used by seagoing vessels and ferries. The VTC offers advice on the activities of other vessels and gives navigational information to mariners through a sectorised VHF network. This ensures the safety standard and traffic efficiency of the port. An upgraded vessel tracking system, which can track 4,000 moving vessels plus 1,000 stationary targets in real time, has been in operation since early 2002. It provides the latest technology such as AIS, ECDIS, CCTV, new VHF-direction finders and modern communications systems to further improve navigation safety and operation efficiency. Marine Department patrol launches maintain a watch on shipping, traffic separation schemes, fairways, navigational channels, typhoon shelter and cargo-working areas. They provide on-scene support to the VTC, and are in continuous radio contact with the VTC and local marine traffic control stations located at Ma Wan and Kwai Chung Container Port. The VTC is thus able to promptly initiate and co-ordinate actions required to facilitate safe navigation in the port.

The Hydrographic Office of the Marine Department surveys Hong Kong waters and produces nautical charts to facilitate safe navigation within the port. It functions with reference to the standards laid down by the International Hydrographic Organisation (IHO). Notices to Mariners are promulgated fortnightly to update bilingual nautical charts. A Differential Global Positioning System correction signal is broadcast continuously on 289 kHz to assist mariners using GPS navigation to position-fix their vessels more accurately. Tidal height predictions and real-time tidal information are provided on the department's website. Pilotage is compulsory for ships of 3,000 gross tons and above and gas carriers of any tonnage. Quarantine and immigration facilities are available on a 24-hour basis. Advance immigration clearance and radio pratique may be obtained by certain vessels on application.

Dangerous goods
Dangerous goods are moved in the waters of Hong Kong strictly in accordance with the International Maritime Dangerous Goods Code. Their movements must be recorded in Marine Department's Dangerous Goods Information System. Fire-fighting vessels operated by the Fire Services Department are kept in a state of readiness at all times. The Marine Department's pollution control vessels are on 24-hour standby to deal with oil spills.

Other working facilities
To facilitate transfer of cargo between vessels and the shore, and cargo to and from Pearl River ports, the Marine Department provides and manages 7,756 metres of public cargo-working sea frontage in various parts of Hong Kong. Bulk handling facilities for coal and oil are provided at the power generating stations at Tap Shek Kok in Castle Peak and at Po Lo Tsui on Lamma Island.

Hong Kong Shipping Register
Hong Kong is a major centre of ship ownership and management. Ships owned or managed in Hong Kong amount to 100 million gross tons. Hong Kong has been recognised by the international shipping sector as a first-rate ship registration centre, where registration of ships is entirely voluntary. At the end of 2001, 653 ships were registered in Hong Kong, with a total gross tonnage of 13.7 million tons – a 32 per cent growth over the previous year. The Hong Kong Shipping Register operates independently in its maritime policy and administration. The HKSAR Government issues related certificates under its own legislation in the name of 'Hong Kong, China'. As a quality shipping register, Hong Kong adopts all major international conventions promulgated by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). As an associate member of the IMO, the Government ensures that ships registered in Hong Kong are maintained to the highest international safety and marine environmental protection standards.

A Flag State Quality Control (FSQC) System was introduced in 1999 to monitor the performance of authorised classification societies and to maintain the quality of ships on the Hong Kong shipping register. Any Hong Kong-registered ship whose quality standard is found to be declining or which is detained by a port state for serious deficiencies will be subject to FSQC inspections by Marine Department surveyors. The department regulates the safety standards of all locally licensed vessels, currently numbering over 10,000. Marine Department surveyors also carry out surveys of new vessels being built abroad for licensing in Hong Kong. Examinations are held regularly for the issuance of both foreign-going and river-trade certificates of competency for masters, deck officers and engineers. In addition, local certificates of competency are issued to coxswains and engineers of locally licensed vessels, which operate within the waters of Hong Kong. An inspection and advice service is provided to promote safe working practices in ship-repairing, ship breaking, cargo-handling on ships and safety afloat.

Seafarers
Hong Kong is a centre for employment of seafarers. 1,200 Hong Kong officers and ratings serve on board more than 420 seagoing ships of 12 different maritime nations. The mercantile marine office registers seafarers, regulates their employment on board ships of all flags and supervises the employment and discharge of seafarers on Hong Kong ships and foreign ships not represented in Hong Kong by a consulate office.

title: Port of Hong Kong


text:
Yenish people

The Yenish (Jenische; Yéniche, Taïtch) are an itinerant group in Western Europe who live mostly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and parts of France, roughly centered on the Rhineland. A number of theories for the group's origins have been proposed, including that the Yenish descended from members of the marginalized and vagrant poor classes of society of the early modern period, before emerging as a distinct group by the early 19th century. Most of the Yenish became sedentary in the course of the mid-19th to 20th centuries.

Name
The Yenish people as a distinct group, as opposed to the generic class of vagrants of the early modern period, emerged towards the end of the 18th century. The adjective jenisch is first recorded in the early 18th century in the sense of "cant, argot". A self-designation Jauner is recorded in 1793. Jenisch remained strictly an adjective that refers to the language, not the people, until the first half of the 19th century. Jean Paul (1801) glosses jänische Sprache ("Yenish language") with so nennt man in Schwaben die aus fast allen Sprachen zusammengeschleppte Spitzbubensprache ("this is the term used in Swabia for an argot used by young rogues which has been cobbled together from all sorts of languages"). An anonymous author in 1810 argues that Jauner is a deprecating term, equivalent to card sharp, and that the proper designation for the people should be jenische Gasche.

Germany
Many Yenish people in Germany became sedentary in the second half of the 19th century. The Kingdom of Prussia in 1842 introduced a law forcing municipalities to provide social welfare to permanent residents without citizenship. As a consequence, there were attempts to prevent Yenish people from taking permanent residence. Recently established settlements of Yenish, Sinti, and Roma, dubbed "gypsy colonies" (Zigeunerkolonien), were discouraged and attempts were made to incite the settlers to move away, in the form of various forms of harassment, and in some cases physical attacks. By the late 19th century, many recently sedentary Yenish were nevertheless integrated into local populations, gradually moving away from their tradition of endogamy thus being absorbed into the general German population. Those Yenish who did not become sedentary by the late 19th century took to living in trailers.

The persecution of Romani people under Nazi Germany beginning in 1933 was directed not exclusively against the Romani people but also targeted "vagrants who travel around after the manner of the gypsies" (nach Zigeunerart umherziehende Landfahrer), which included the Yenish and people without permanent residence in general. Travellers were scheduled for internment in Buchenwald, Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme. Yenish families began to be registered in a Landfahrersippenarchiv ('archive of travelling families'), but this effort was incomplete by the end of World War II. It appears that only very limited numbers of Yenish (compared with the number of Romani victims) were actually deported: five Yenish individuals are on record as having been deported from Cologne, and a total of 279 woonwagenbewoners ('caravan dwellers') are known to have been deported from the Netherlands in 1944. Lewy (2001) has discovered one case of the deportation of a Yenish woman in 1939. The Yenish people are mentioned as a persecuted group in the text of the 2012 Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism in Berlin.

Switzerland
In 2001, Swiss National Councillor Remo Galli, as speaker of the foundation Zukunft für Schweizer Fahrende, reported an estimate of 35,000 "travellers" (Fahrende, a term combining Sinti, Roma and Yenish), both sedentary and non-sedentary, in Switzerland, among them an estimated 20,000 Yenish people.

From the 1920s until the 1970s, the Swiss government had a semi-official policy of institutionalizing Yenish parents and having their children adopted by members of the sedentary Swiss population. The name of this program was Kinder der Landstrasse ('Children of the Road'). What was ostensibly intended as a charitable effort to remove children from what was perceived as precarious conditions in a criminal milieu of homelessness and vagrancy was later criticized as a violation of the fundamental rights of the Yenishe to family life, with children separated from parents by force without due criminal procedure, and resulting in many of the children suffering an ordeal of successive foster homes and orphanages. In all, 590 children were taken from their parents and institutionalized in orphanages, mental institutions, and even prisons. Child removals peaked in the 1930s to 1940s, in the years leading up to and during World War II. After public criticism in 1972, the program was discontinued in 1973.

An organisation for the political representation of travellers (Yenish as well as Sinti and Roma) was founded in 1975, named Radgenossenschaft der Landstrasse ("Wheel Cooperative of the Road"). The Swiss federal authorities have officially recognized the "Swiss Yenish and Sinti" as a "national minority". With the ratification of the European language charter in 1997, Switzerland has given the status of a "territorial non-tied language" to the Yenish language.

Yenish organisations

 * Radgenossenschaft der Landstrasse (Switzerland)
 * Jenischer Kulturverband (Austria)
 * Jenischer Bund in Deutschland und Europa (Germany)
 * Woonwagenbelangen Nederland (Netherlands)

Film and television

 * 1957: Es geschah am hellichten Tag
 * 1979: Das gefrorene Herz
 * 1992: Kinder der Landstrasse
 * 2008: Hunkeler macht Sachen
 * 2016: Fog in August based on the 2008 book Fog in August
 * 2017: Dove cadono le ombre
 * 2023: Ruäch — eine Reise ins jenische Europa
 * 2023: Lubo

Notable people

 * Mariella Mehr (1947–2022), notable for documenting the plight she suffered under the Kinder der Landstrasse project in the 1970s, contributing to its discontinuation
 * Stephan Eicher (b. 1960), Swiss musician, Yenish on his father's side
 * Oliver Kayser (musician), Luxembourgish musician and variété performer
 * Rafael van der Vaart (b. 1983), Dutch footballer
 * Pierre Bodein (b. 1947), French spree killer

title: Yenish people


text:
Koireng people

The Koireng people are one of the ethnic groups inhabiting Manipur in North-East India. They speak the [Koireng language]. They are mentioned in the Meitei royal chronicle Cheitharol Kumbaba in the year 1404, one of the oldest tribes to be so mentioned. They have a shared common ancestry, history, cultural traits, folklore and dialects with their kindred people like Aimol and Kom. They use Meitei language as their second language (L2) according to the Ethnologue.

title: Koireng people