01Mindon’s city
King Mindon founded Mandalay in 1857 at the foot of Mandalay Hill, with a square walled palace city and a moat. It was the capital for less than thirty years. In November 1885 a British force came up the Irrawaddy, and King Thibaw was sent into exile at Ratnagiri on the Konkan coast, where he lived until his death in 1916. The palace became Fort Dufferin. Burned in the fighting of 1945, it was rebuilt in the 1990s.
02Exiles from Bharat
Under an old regulation of 1818 the British could hold a man without trial, and Mandalay was far enough away. Lala Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh were deported here in May 1907 and released that November. In 1908 Bal Gangadhar Tilak was sentenced to six years for articles in Kesari, and spent them in Mandalay jail, where he wrote the Gita Rahasya in Marathi, an exposition of the Bhagavad Gita as a call to selfless action, published in 1915. Subhas Chandra Bose was held here from 1925 to 1927.
The life of this place
- 1857King Mindon founds Mandalay.
- 1885The British take Mandalay; Thibaw is exiled to Ratnagiri.
- May 1907Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh are deported to Mandalay.
- 1908–14Tilak is imprisoned here and writes the Gita Rahasya.
- 1925–27Subhas Chandra Bose is held in Mandalay jail.
