User:Hrishikes/sandbox

=Ancestry=

All people are necessarily descended from antiquity, but for most, records of their ancestry do not exist that far back. The British royal family is one of the few families for whom ancestry can be traced to many notable lineages of antiquity. They can be traced from Saxon, Scottish (Stuart dynasty), Welsh (Tudor dynasty), Irish, German (Hanover and Windsor), French (Norman and Angevin), Russian, Frank and perhaps even Byzantine lineages.

Viking-Norman descent
George I of Great Britain had descended, through both of his parents, from Rollo, the Viking founder of the ducal lineage of Normandy. Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, had a descent from King Henry II of England through his daughter Matilda.

Byzantine connection
One established connection is given below, starting with Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelos (for his descent, see Descent from antiquity).

Other possible connections are as under:
 * Kalinikia (w/o Radu I of Wallachia, see below), possible ancestress of Francis, Duke of Teck [shown in the first chart (detailed)], also had a Byzantine descent.
 * Both Charles and Diana are also direct descendants of first Polish king Mieszko I, through Anne of Denmark, Christian I of Denmark, who in turn descend from Estrid Svendsdatter, sister of Canute the Great and daughter of Sweyn Forkbeard and Sigrid the Haughty, Mieszko I's daughter.
 * Rosalind Bingham and Sarah Ferguson descended from King Charles II of England through his mistress, Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth.

Eastern Connections

 * A descent from Genghis Khan was proposed by Iain Moncreiffe in Royal Highness that requires descent of Thocomerius, Voivode of Wallachia, from Jöchi (presuming parentage from Mengu-Timur, possibly identifying Thocomerius with Toqta, Khan of the Blue Horde or one of his brothers), which is controversial. However, further on, this connection leads to Francis, Duke of Teck (shown in the first chart) through the half-brother of Dracula as proposed by Moncreiffe and Gerald Paget. This connection moves through Radu I of Wallachia. Another line through his sister Elisaveta (w/o Władysław Opolczyk, Duke of Opole), as proposed by William Addams Reitwiesner leads to Magdalene of Brandenburg (shown in the Viking lineage chart above). The Paget-Moncreiffe line has several uncertainties in between Mircea the Shepherd and Baroness Ágnes Kendeffy de Malmoviz (great-grandmother of Countess Claudine Rhédey von Kis-Rhéde). (also see Descent from Genghis Khan). However, the lineage proposed by Reitwiesner is easily verifiable, as under:

Wikisource
$$   \left. \begin{array}{cc} abc \\ - & - \\       - & -    \end{array} \right\} $$ \[ Yours faithfully\\ Madhusudan \left\} \begin{array}{l l} & \quad \text{Kolkata 1861} \end{array} \right.\]

Presidents related to British royalty
According to a chart published by twelve-year-old student BridgeAnne d'Avignon, all U.S. presidents except Martin Van Buren (due to his Dutch ancestry) can trace descent from King John of England. However, Van Buren's ancestry can be traced from King Stephen of England through w/o Gerard I van Horne, Count of Horne (see chart 3 alongside).
 * George Washington (descendant of Edward III of England: father through both paternal grandparents of Lady Margaret Percy as well as her husband; mother through both parents of George Nevill, 4th Baron Bergavenny) (Chart 5 alongside)
 * Thomas Jefferson (descendant of Edward III of England through Edward Neville, 3rd Baron Bergavenny ) (Chart 5 alongside)
 * James Madison (descendant of Edward I of England through Elizabeth de Bohun, Countess of Arundel ) (Chart 4 alongside)
 * James Monroe (descendant of Edward III of England through John Stewart, 4th Earl of Atholl ) (Chart 5 alongside)
 * John Quincy Adams (descendant of Edward III of England through Cardinal Henry Beaufort ) (Chart 5 alongside)
 * Andrew Jackson (descendant of Edward III of England through w/o Martin De La See and Sir Anthony Jackson)
 * William Henry Harrison and his grandson, Benjamin Harrison (descendants of Edward I of England through Margaret de Bohun, Countess of Devon and Andrew Windsor, 1st Baron Windsor) (Chart 3 alongside)
 * Zachary Taylor (descendant of Edward I of England through father of Eleanor de Bohun; her mother descended from Henry III and husband was son of Edward III. Another descent from Edward III was through Anne de Greystoke, granddaughter of Robert Ferrers, 5th Baron Boteler of Wem; her husband descended from Henry I through Dervorguilla I of Galloway) (Charts 3 and 5 alongside)
 * Franklin Pierce (descendant of Henry I of England through Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester) (Chart 2 alongside)
 * Rutherford Hayes (descendant of William I of Scotland and William the Conqueror)
 * Grover Cleveland (descendant of Edward I of England through Isabel le Despenser, Countess of Arundel, Elizabeth de Bohun, Countess of Arundel, Margaret, Duchess of Norfolk and Eleanor de Bohun, Countess of Ormonde) (Chart 3 alongside)
 * Theodore Roosevelt [descendant of James I of Scotland (through George Seton, 6th Lord Seton) and Edward III of England (through Joan Beaufort, Queen of Scots)] (Chart 5 alongside)
 * William Taft (descendant of Edward III of England through both paternal grandparents of Lady Margaret Percy as well as her husband) (Chart 5 alongside)
 * Warren Harding (descendant of Henry II of England)
 * Calvin Coolidge (descendant of Edward I of England through Katherine de Stafford and Peter Hildyard, son-in-law of Martin De La See) (Chart 5 alongside for descent from Henry III and Edward III)
 * Herbert Hoover (descendant of Edward III of England through Lady Katherine Neville) (Charts 3 and 5 alongside)
 * Franklin Roosevelt (descendant of James II of Scotland) (Chart 2 alongside for descent from Henry I of England; Chart 5 for descent from Edward III)
 * Harry S. Truman (descendant of Robert III of Scotland)
 * Richard Nixon (descendant of Henry II of England)
 * Gerald Ford (descendant of Edward I of England) (Charts 2 and 3 alongside)
 * Jimmy Carter (descendant of Edward III of England)
 * Bill Clinton (descendant of Robert II of Scotland through w/o James Ross, 4th Lord Ross)
 * George H. W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush (descendants of Edward I of England and Robert II of Scotland (Chart 3 alongside for descent from Edward I)
 * Barack Obama (descendant of Edward I of England and William the Lion of Scotland) (Chart 4 alongside for descent from Henry II of England)

As a result, all presidents are direct descendants of Alfred the Great and William the Conqueror.

HM Queen Elizabeth II is among the closest living relatives of George Washington, through their descent from Augustine Warner, Jr., Speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses. His daughter Mildred was the grandmother of Washington, while his daughter Mary is an ancestor of the Queen's mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. (See here for common descent chart.)

Presidents related to Irish royalty

 * George Washington (descendant of Dermot MacMurrough)
 * Andrew Jackson (descendant of Dermot MacMurrough)
 * Ronald Reagan (descendant of Brian Boru)
 * Barack Obama (descendant of Brian Boru)

Presidents related to other royalty

 * Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt are related to the Rajahs of Sarawak



Books
Some of the important secondary sources for tracing ancestry of U.S. presidents to British and other royalties are as under:
 * The Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants to the American Colonies of the United States: who were themselves notable or left descendants notable in American history (2004) by Gary Boyd Roberts
 * The Magna Charta Sureties, 1215: The Barons named in the Magna Charta, 1215 and some of their descendants who settled in America during the early colonial years (5th ed., 1999) by Frederick Lewis Weis and William Ryland Beall
 * Ancestors of American Presidents (3rd ed., 1995) by Gary Boyd Roberts and Julie Helen Otto
 * Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study In Colonial And Medieval Families (2004) by Douglas Richardson and Kimball G. Everingham
 * Britain's Royal Families: The Complete Genealogy (2011) by Alison Weir
 * Ancestral Trails: The Complete Guide to British Genealogy and Family History (2010) by Mark Herber
 * Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families (2005) by Douglas Richardson and Kimball G. Everingham
 * Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1700: The lineage of Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Malcolm of Scotland, Robert the Strong, and some of their descendants (1992) by Frederick Lewis Weis, Walter Lee Sheppard and David Faris
 * Voyagers to the West: A passage in the peopling of America on the eve of the revolution (2011) by Bernard Bailyn
 * Lines of Succession: heraldry of the royal families of Europe (1991) by Jiří Louda and Michael Maclagan

Webpages

 * Medieval Genealogy for the Medievally-Challenged (Like Me) by Martin E. Hollick: This online article by a professional genealogist details various sources on the matter.
 * Jewels of the Crown, issue 4, Fall 2009: online newsletter; compares common ancestry of Presidents Madison and Obama and discusses the afore-mentioned sources.
 * Ancestors of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (Twenty-second Generation): This webpage with its linked pages gives details about the royal ancestry of the Roosevelt family; President Van Buren descends from a branch of this line (chart 2 above).
 * Descent of William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison from Edward I (Longshanks): This RootsWeb page traces royal ancestry of Presidents Harrison (chart 3 above).
 * Ancestors of Paul Bailey McBride: This RootsWeb page details the Courtenay line of descent from Reginald de Dunstanville, 1st Earl of Cornwall, an illegitimate son of King Henry I of England. This line leads to Presidents Jefferson and Harrison (chart 2 above).
 * Greene family pages: This is a descent from Fergus of Galloway who possibly married one of the illegitimate daughters of Henry I of England. This pagegroup contains pages on Hutchinson-Lillie line and Fay-Bush line leading to Presidents Bush and Hutchinson-Lyman line leading to Franklin Roosevelt (chart 2 above).
 * Ferrers, Earls of Derby: This line bifurcates from the Galloway line and leads to George Washington (chart 2 above).
 * Presidents of the United States: This RootsWeb page gives royal lineages of various presidents.
 * Ancestors of Michael Anthony Thompson (Seventeenth Generation): This page, with linked pages, describes the Savage line, having descent from Henry II, Henry III and Edward I and leading to James Madison (chart 4 above).
 * Presidential Ancestry: This page gives detailed royal lineages of several presidents, but a bit erroneous.
 * Gives descent of Washington's paternal grandfather from Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent, son of Edward I (chart 3 above);


 * descent of John Quincy Adams from Cardinal Henry Beaufort, grandson of Edward III (chart 5 above);


 * erroneous descent of Mary Isham (ancestress of Thomas Jefferson) from William Longespée, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, illegitimate son of Henry II
 * (erroneous because, his granddaughter Emmeline, w/o Maurice FitzGerald, 3rd Lord of Offaly, died childless)
 * (However, Mary Isham did have valid royal descent: her ancestors were Sir William Hopton and his wife Margaret Wentworth (d/o Margery le Despencer); husband descendant of King William the Lion of Scotland through his illegitimate daughter Isabella, w/o Robert de Ros, one of the Magna Carta sureties [this union also led to Franklin Roosevelt through Sir John Temple (shown in Chart 5)], and wife descendant of Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, through Eva of Leinster and Isabella de Beauchamp)
 * although her husband, William Randolph, did descend from Longespée, through the Mowbray line (shown in chart 4);


 * and descent of Franklin Roosevelt and the Bush duo from Henry I through the Galloway line (chart 2 above).


 * Isabella de Beauchamp, descendant of Brian Boru, was an important ancestress of American presidents. The above line to Thomas Jefferson was through her son by second marriage, Philip Despencer [also ancestor of Calvin Coolidge through Philip Wentworth (shown in Chart 5)]. Another son by her second marriage, Hugh Despenser the Younger, was ancestor of Presidents Washington, Bush and Franklin Roosevelt (chart 3). Her daughter by first marriage, Maud Chaworth, had six daughters, out of which, Joan of Lancaster was ancestress of Thomas Jefferson through the Mowbray line mentioned above (chart 4); Eleanor of Lancaster was ancestress of George Washington's paternal grandfather through the Sutton line (chart 3) as well as his mother through Richard de Beauchamp, 1st Earl of Worcester (chart 5) and a possible ancestress of John Quincy Adams through Alice FitzAlan, Lady Cherleton (chart 4) and also ancestress of Theodore Roosevelt and James Monroe through John Stewart, 1st Earl of Atholl (chart 5); Mary of Lancaster was ancestress of Washington through the Percy-Gascoigne line (chart 4). Isabella's brother's descendant, Philippa de Beauchamp, was ancestress of George Washington and William Taft (see chart 2).


 * Kyme, Baron (E, 1295 - abeyant 1577) on Cracroft's Peerage: This lineage descends from Henry I through the Galloway line; leads to Washington through William Tailboys (chart 2) and to Presidents Bush and Franklin Roosevelt through Sir John Tailboys (chart 2).
 * Descendants of Edward III: most American presidents descended through lineages described in this document.
 * Descent of Martin Van Buren: shows descent from Godfrey, Lord of Gaesbeek (descendant of Stephen, King of England through his daughter Marie I, Countess of Boulogne) through Isabelle van Horne and the Burchgraeff family (chart 3). From Godfrey's brother, Henry II, Duke of Brabant, descends Theodore Roosevelt (chart 3).
 * Ancestry of Barack Obama by William Addams Reitwiesner: shows ancestry up to Martha Eltonhead (chart 4).
 * Descent from Henry II: shows descent of Martha Eltonhesd from Henry II through w/o Robert de Holland, 1st Baron Holand (shown in chart 4), citing Douglas Richardson as source (see here for original).
 * Maud (Matilda) de Swynnerton: This page, with its linked pages, gives biographical details about ancestors of Martha Eltonhead.
 * Ancestors of Pres. George Walker Bush: shows ancestry up to generation 23. [Error in generation 21: shows Sir Edward Stradling (1474-1535) as ancestor, thereby making the Bushes descendants of Henry Beaufort; correct ancestor was Sir Edmund Stradling of Winterbourne (1429-61), Sheriff of Wiltshire; see here for discussion. Further error in generation 19: shows Maurice Berkeley, 3rd Baron Berkeley (chart 3) as son of James Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley and Elizabeth Ferrers, 6th Baroness Ferrers of Groby, thereby showing a descent from Joan of Acre through Isabel de Verdun and Elizabeth of England through Sir Henry de Ferrers, 2nd Baron Ferrers of Groby; in effect, Maurice Berkeley was Lady Ferrers's half-brother.]
 * Daniel T. Rogers(b. 1943) - all my relatives: This page, with linked pages, gives ancestry of James Monroe.

Bhabani Bhattacharya
Bhabani Bhattacharya (ভবানী ভট্টাচার্য) (1906-1988) was one of India's major writers of fiction in English and is being increasingly recognised in the West.

Life
He was born in Bhagalpur, Bihar, on November 10, 1906 to a Bengali Brahmin couple, Pramatha and Kiranbala Bhattacharya. After schooling at Puri and Patna, he sailed to England for further studies. While in London, Bhattacharya leaned towards Marxism and participated in a famous meeting of Indian and British writers in November, 1935, that led to Progressive Writers' Movement and formation of the Indian Progressive Writers' Association. From 1929, he contributed to various British periodicals. In 1930, his English translation of Tagore's book of poems, Sonar Tari, was published to wide acclaim as The Golden Boat (the translation also contained stories and sketches from Tagore's other works). He graduated from the University of London with a degree in history in 1931, and got his PhD in historical research in 1934. His PhD dissertation was later published as Socio-political currents in Bengal: a nineteenth century perspective. He returned to India in 1934, settled in Calcutta and turned to journalism. He married Salila Mukherjee, short story writer, in 1935. In 1949, he moved to Washington as Press Attaché for the Indian Embassy. On return, he lived in ‘Godhuli’, Nagpur. In 1969 he left India to become Visiting Professor at the University of Hawai’i. In 1972, he moved permanently to the US. He died of a heart attack on October 9, 1988.

Works

 * The Golden Boat (translation) (London: Allen & Unwin, 1930)
 * Indian Cavalcade, a collection of historical sketches
 * So Many Hungers! (London: Victor Gollancz, 1947)
 * The devastating Bengal famine of 1943, which became famous to the Bengalis as Panchasher Manwantar (Famine of '50, i.e., 1350 B.E.), was the background to his first novel So Many Hungers. Other famous novels on this sublect were Aakaaler Sandhane by Amalendu Chakraborty, cinematised by Mrinal Sen, and Ashani Sanket by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, cinematised by Satyajit Ray.


 * Music for Mohini (New York: Crown Publishers, 1952)
 * His second novel, this deals with caste distinctions and poverty.


 * He Who Rides a Tiger (New York: Crown Publishers, 1954)
 * A Goddess Named Gold (New York: Crown Publishers, 1960)
 * Towards Universal Man. Essays by Rabindranath Tagore, selected and edited by Bhabani Bhattacharya, under the auspices of the Tagore Commemorative Volume Society (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1961)
 * Shadow from Ladakh (New York: Crown Publishers, 1966): Received the Sahitya Akademi Award in English.
 * Steel-Hawk and Other Stories (1968), a collection of fifteen short stories
 * Gandhi, the writer: the image as it grew (National Book Trust, 1969), a highly stimulating and provocative study released on the occasion of the birth centenary of Mahatma Gandhi
 * A Dream in Hawaii (Macmillan, 1978), a novel that shows the conflicting values of the East and the West.
 * Glimpses of Indian History: Historical Sketches

Bhabani Bhattacharya
Bhabani Bhattacharya (ভবানী ভট্টাচার্য) (1906-1988) was one of India's major writers of fiction in English and is being increasingly recognised in the West.
 * http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/3350/Bhabani-Bhattacharya.html
 * http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/2301/11/11_bibliography.pdf


 * http://books.google.co.in/books?id=ObFCT5_taSgC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA481&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Life
He was born in Bhagalpur, Bihar, on November 10, 1906 to Bengali parents. He started his writing career with the Bengali magazine, MouchakDesai, Shantinath K., Bhabani Bhattacharya: Makers of Indian Literature Series, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1995 at the age of fourteen. In 1927 he did his B.A. in English literature from Patna University and then sailed to England for further studies. He enrolled at King’s College, London, initially to study English literature, but shifted to history after an acrimonious encounter with one of his professorsBhabani Bhattacharya, Making Britain: Discover how South Asians shaped the nation, 1870-1950. One of his teachers was the political philosopher and author Harold Laski who would be, along with Tagore and Gandhi, a lasting influence on his writing.

While in London, Bhattacharya leaned towards Marxism and became an active member of the League Against Imperialism. From 1929, he contributed to various British periodicals, including The Bookman, The Manchester Guardian and The Spectator. Francis Yeats-Brown, assistant editor of the Spectator, urged Bhattacharya to concentrate on English, rather than Bengali. In 1930, his English translation of Tagore's book of poems, Sonar Tari, was published to wide acclaim under name The Golden Boat. He graduated from the University of London with a degree in history in 1931, and got his PhD in historical researchRao, B. Syamala, Dr. Bhabani Bhattacharya as a Novelist in 1934. From 1932 to 1933 he travelled extensively through Europe, including places such as Berlin, Budapest, Warsaw, Paris and Vienna.

He returned to India in 1934, settled in Calcutta and turned to journalism. He married Salila Mukherjee, short story writer, in 1935. In 1947, So Many Hungers was published. Music for Mohini, one of his most acclaimed novels, was published in 1952 and in 1966 Shadow from Ladakh, which received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1967. His novels were translated into twenty-eight languages, sixteen of which were European. Bhattacharya’s achievement as a novelist has had a purposeful thrust relevant to the India of today.

In 1949 he moved to Washington as Press Attaché for the Indian Embassy. On return, he lived in ‘Godhuli’, Nagpur. In 1969 he left India to become Visiting Professor at the University of Hawai’i. In 1972 he moved permanently to the US. He died of a heart attack on October 9, 1988.

Works

 * The Golden Boat (translation) (London: Allen & Unwin, 1930)
 * Indian Cavalcade, a collection of historical sketches
 * So Many Hungers! (London: Victor Gollancz, 1947)
 * The devastating Bengal famine of 1943, which became famous to the Bengalis as Panchasher Manwantar (Famine of '50, i.e., 1350 B.E.), was the background to his first novel So Many Hungers. Other famous novels on this sublect were Aakaaler Sandhane by Amalendu Chakraborty, cinematised by Mrinal Sen, and Ashani Sanket by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, cinematised by Satyajit Ray. Bhattacharya was so profoundly moved by the famine that he wrote it piecing the story together from newspaper clippings. It was published in 1947 and became a best-seller in various translations. Literary critic L.N. Gupta states, “It was a terrible indictment of the British Raj for all their crimes which aggregated into the disastrous famine of Bengal in 1943.”Gupta, L. N., Bhabani Bhattacharya: A Bridge Between India and the West, Nagpur: The Hitavada, 1969


 * It was a man-made famine that took a toll of two million innocent men, women and children. An authentic record of this famine and the Quit India Movement of 1942, the story's central theme is man's hunger for food and political freedom. There are two intertwined plots: the story of Samarendra Basu's family with young Rahoul as the central figure; and the story of a peasant family with a young girl Kajoli as the principal character. The first plot deals with India's struggle for freedom in the early 'forties; and the second represents, in miniature, as K. K. Sharma puts it, the pathetic fate of millions who suffered immeasurably from a famine, which was the result of the most heinous selfishness of profiteers and the relentless indifference of the British government.Sharma, Kaushal Kishore, Bhabani Bhattacharya, His Vision and Themes, Abhinav Publications, 1979


 * Bhattacharya paints the naked horror of it all with a pitiless precision and cumulative detail. Dr. Srinivasa Iyengar states, “So many Hungers! is no doubt an impeachment of man’s inhumanity to man, but it is also a dramatic study of a set of human beings caught in a unique and tragic predicament.”Iyengar, K. R. Srinivasa, Indian writing in English, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1985 The story has been effectively told and the tragic pathos of the real mass-starvation described in the guise of fiction moves the reader deeply. The novel describes, as The Times Literary Supplement puts it, “a factual and vivid account of one of the most shocking disasters in history.”


 * Music for Mohini (New York: Crown Publishers, 1952)
 * His second novel, this deals with caste distinctions and poverty. L. N. Gupta remarks, Music for Mohini blows up the citadel of old traditions and superstitions which menace India’s progress.” Reviewing this novel, The New York Times observed, ‘It blends the story of an attractive girl’s marriage with the eternal problems of that caste-ridden land and its divorcement from various kinds of imperial rule. And the main brick-bats are not hurled at Britain.’ The Chicago Tribune showered its praise on this novel by stating that “India as presented by Rudyard Kipling, Rabindranath Tagore and others has become to us a multiple image. Now these diverse pictures are brought into focus by a native son. In a splendid novel that may rank with Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, Bhabani Bhattacharya gives us modern India.”


 * Semi-autobiographical in nature, it is, according to Dorothy Blair Shimer , Bhattacharya’s most “light-hearted novel”. In this novel, a young girl of seventeen, brought up in the city in the 'modern' way, is married to a quiet rural scholar in the traditional manner after observing the auspicious signs and comparing the horoscopes. Mohini's city-bred manners and ideas encounters her mother-in-law's village based orthodoxy and traditionalism. East vs West, village vs town, tradition vs modernity, astrology vs rationalism, the daughter-in-law vs the mother-in-law, the novel is full of tensions, which are resolved at the end, transforming Mohini's ascetic intellectual husband, through conjugal and moral stimuli, into village reformer, and through the interaction of such opposing values, putting the village on the path of progress and modernisation.


 * He Who Rides a Tiger (New York: Crown Publishers, 1954)
 * The third novel, this is an attack on both who profited on people’s misery during the famine and those who exploited them as caste tyrants. It is a legend of freedom, a legend to inspire and awaken. Here he discusses a variation on the theme of hunger. It has a fascinating beginning. The story runs rapidly surging with emotion and agitation. Its sharp and vivid characterisation and untainted realism make this novel a very interesting one. It is a grim satire on Hindu orthodoxy. Dr. Iyengar says, “The tempo of life in Calcutta–the complex of urban vices and urban sophistication, the pressure of mass movements and mass hysteria, the reign of superstition and mumbo jumbo–gives the novel an entire and piquant quality all its own.”<ref

name="iyengar"/>


 * This novel is based on an ancient saying “He who rides a tiger cannot dismount.” A humble village blacksmith, named Kalo takes his revenge on a rigid, caste-ridden society and makes a living for himself and his daughter by faking a miracle–a miracle that begins as a fraud and ends as a legend–and passing himself off as a Brahmin priest. The story ends with a note of triumph for the soul over flesh. Eventually when the fraud is detected, other low caste people hail him as their brother and the outraged upholders of caste and custom panic. Reviewing this novel, Orville Prescott of The New York Times says, “He who rides a tiger is a skilful and entertaining and an illuminating fictional glimpse inside the corner of India. Bhattacharya writes of Indians and the social, cultural and religious world in which they live with an authority and understanding that no Western writer can hope to match.”<ref

name="Syamala"/>


 * A Goddess Named Gold (New York: Crown Publishers, 1960)
 * His fourth novel, this is one of the best novels on Indian village life and makes a most illuminating and satisfying reading experience. B. Syamala Rao describes it as "a masterly satire on those who live by the lure of gold. It tells how high spiritual values like spontaneous kindness are sought to be prostituted for purposes of gold. It is a modern fable of rural India and the close textured fabric of its life on the eve of Independence in 1947. The characters are introduced one by one in a leisurely manner and we see among them a pretty girl, a strolling minstrel and a magic talisman."<ref

name="Syamala"/> Dr. Iyengar states, “It entertains as a story, but it also disturbs us as a warning and as a prophecy.”<ref name="iyengar"/>


 * Meera’s grandfather, a wandering minstrel, gives her an amulet and tells her that it will acquire the power to turn the base metals into gold, if she does an act of real kindness. She rescues a child. Seth Samsunderji seeks to profit out of India’s new-found freedom and enters into a business deal with Meera on a fifty-fifty basis. Meera gets disgusted with it finally and throws the amulet into the river. The minstrel returns soon and explains that freedom is the real touchstone.


 * Towards Universal Man. Essays by Rabindranath Tagore, selected and edited by Bhabani Bhattacharya, under the auspices of the Tagore Commemorative Volume Society (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1961)


 * Shadow from Ladakh (New York: Crown Publishers, 1966)
 * This novel tells an extremely gripping story of unsurpassed drama on a broad and revealing canvas. It tells what India needs for survival–a meeting point between Gandhian social ethics and tremendous forces of science and technology. It deals with India’s conflict with China and her response to the challenge. The theme presents a considerable amount of truth of a politically conscious Indian family.


 * It provides an insight into the contrasting contemporary life of India symbolised by Satyajit who regards Indian village life as the ideal life and by the westernized American trained Bhaskar, the forward-looking Chief Engineer in a steel plant, who feels India’s future lies in industrialisation, ends on a weak note of coexistence of these two ideologies. Bhaskar wants to dispossess Gandhigram, because it is a hindrance to India’s industrialisation. He brings every pressure to bear, but to his surprise, the community of the believers in non-violence stands firm under its great leader Satyajit, and he himself falls in love with Satyajit’s daughter, Sunita, a bare-foot white-saried girl...


 * On winning the Sahitya Akademi Award for this novel, Bhattacharya had remarked, “It is good to be known abroad. Even so, I must confess that I would like to be known to my countrymen too. The award redresses a balance. So far I have been better known in the U. S. and Europe than in my own country.”


 * Steel-Hawk and Other Stories (1968), a collection of fifteen short stories


 * Gandhi, the writer: the image as it grew (National Book Trust, 1969), a highly stimulating and provocative study released on the occasion of the birth centenary of Mahatma Gandhi


 * A Dream in Hawaii (Macmillan, 1978), a novel that shows the conflicting values of the East and the West.


 * Glimpses of Indian History: Historical Sketches

Dim-dam Fly
Dim-dam fly is a pestilent sandfly with a noxious bite. Says Bikram Grewal about his personal experience :


 * Sessni literally means stinging nettle, and this pernicious weed surrounds the camp, but the real threat came from a small mite that rejoices under the name of Dam-Dim. Found at lower altitudes (I had first encountered them in the Mishmi Hills of Eastern Arunachal) their bite is so noxious that the afflicted area gets swollen and the bite itself starts suppurating. Needless to say I was the only person to be attacked and both my hands swelled and would not fit my gloves. I was miserable and the wounds remained infected well after I returned home. I did not sleep well that night due to the pain and told my companions that I would not join them for the pre-breakfast jaunt.