Happy Women's Day

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Being a self proclaimed polemic, I like to add my comments over this picture which is being shared by prominent people on social media.

The problem with analogies like the one in the pic is that it obfuscates history and exposes how Indians are still in colonial hangover.

Chess was invented in India, and the old stories say that it was invented by Ravana to charm his wife.
Indian Chess didn't have the "Queen" till it traveled to different parts of the world. Indian chess had "Mantri" or "Minister" and not the "Queen" or "Rani" as some Indians today call it.

The introduction of "Powerful Queen" happened in Europe. The Spanish Queen was not amused the way chess was being played and ordered the rules of the game to be changed. To please the Spanish Queen, the rules of Chess were slightly changed and it finally accommodated the "Powerful Queen". 

Prominent people should be careful while citing examples and analogies which have a fractured and dubious history. Crackpot Feminists love today's chess for obvious reasons, teach them the history of Chess and Indian Chess especially to Desi Feminists.

If you want to please women or feminists today as today is "Women's Day", tell them that quite often Ravana's wife Mandodari used to defeat him in the game of Chess.

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