Frieze
In architecture the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. When neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon the architrave and is capped by the moldings of the cornice. A frieze can be found on many Greek and Roman buildings, the Parthenon Frieze being the most famous, the most elaborate; this style is typical for the Persians. In interiors, the frieze of a room is the section of wall above the picture rail and under the crown moldings or cornice. By extension, a frieze is a long stretch of painted, sculpted or calligraphic decoration in such a position above eye-level. Frieze decorations may depict scenes in a sequence of discrete panels; the material of which the frieze is made of may be plasterwork, carved wood or other decorative medium. In an example of an architectural frieze on the façade of a building, the octagonal Tower of the Winds in the Roman agora at Athens bears relief sculptures of the eight winds on its frieze.
A pulvinated frieze is convex in section. Such friezes were features of 17th-century Northern Mannerism in subsidiary friezes, much employed in interior architecture and in furniture; the concept of a frieze has been generalized in the mathematical construction of frieze patterns. Media related to Friezes at Wikimedia Commons "Frieze". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911
British Raj
The British Raj was the rule by the British Crown in the Indian subcontinent from 1858 to 1947. The rule is called Crown rule in India, or direct rule in India; the region under British control was called British India or India in contemporaneous usage, included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom, which were collectively called British India, those ruled by indigenous rulers, but under British tutelage or paramountcy, called the princely states. The whole was informally called the Indian Empire; as India, it was a founding member of the League of Nations, a participating nation in the Summer Olympics in 1900, 1920, 1928, 1932, 1936, a founding member of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. This system of governance was instituted on 28 June 1858, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria, it lasted until 1947, when it was partitioned into two sovereign dominion states: the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan.
At the inception of the Raj in 1858, Lower Burma was a part of British India. The British Raj extended over all present-day India and Bangladesh, except for small holdings by other European nations such as Goa and Pondicherry; this area is diverse, containing the Himalayan mountains, fertile floodplains, the Indo-Gangetic Plain, a long coastline, tropical dry forests, arid uplands, the Thar Desert. In addition, at various times, it included Aden, Lower Burma, Upper Burma, British Somaliland, Singapore. Burma was separated from India and directly administered by the British Crown from 1937 until its independence in 1948; the Trucial States of the Persian Gulf and the states under the Persian Gulf Residency were theoretically princely states as well as presidencies and provinces of British India until 1947 and used the rupee as their unit of currency. Among other countries in the region, Ceylon was ceded to Britain in 1802 under the Treaty of Amiens. Ceylon was part of Madras Presidency between 1793 and 1798.
The kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan, having fought wars with the British, subsequently signed treaties with them and were recognised by the British as independent states. The Kingdom of Sikkim was established as a princely state after the Anglo-Sikkimese Treaty of 1861; the Maldive Islands were a British protectorate from 1887 to 1965, but not part of British India. India during the British Raj was made up of two types of territory: British India and the Native States. In its Interpretation Act 1889, the British Parliament adopted the following definitions in Section 18: The expression "British India" shall mean all territories and places within Her Majesty's dominions which are for the time being governed by Her Majesty through the Governor-General of India or through any governor or other officer subordinates to the Governor-General of India; the expression "India" shall mean British India together with any territories of any native prince or chief under the suzerainty of Her Majesty exercised through the Governor-General of India, or through any governor or other officer subordinates to the Governor-General of India.
In general, the term "British India" had been used to refer to the regions under the rule of the British East India Company in India from 1600 to 1858. The term has been used to refer to the "British in India"; the terms "Indian Empire" and "Empire of India" were not used in legislation. The monarch was known as Empress or Emperor of India and the term was used in Queen Victoria's Queen's Speeches and Prorogation Speeches; the passports issued by the British Indian government had the words "Indian Empire" on the cover and "Empire of India" on the inside. In addition, an order of knighthood, the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, was set up in 1878. Suzerainty over 175 princely states, some of the largest and most important, was exercised by the central government of British India under the Viceroy. A clear distinction between "dominion" and "suzerainty" was supplied by the jurisdiction of the courts of law: the law of British India rested upon the laws passed by the British Parliament and the legislative powers those laws vested in the various governments of British India, both central and local.
At the turn of the 20th century, British India consisted of eight provinces that were administered either by a governor or a lieutenant-governor. During the partition of Bengal, the new provinces of Assam and East Bengal were created as a Lieutenant-Governorship. In 1911, East Bengal was reunited with Bengal, the new provinces in the east becam
Emblem
An emblem is an abstract or representational pictorial image that represents a concept, like a moral truth, or an allegory, or a person, like a king or saint. Although the words emblem and symbol are used interchangeably, an emblem is a pattern, used to represent an idea or an individual. An emblem crystallizes in concrete, visual terms some abstraction: a deity, a tribe or nation, or a virtue or vice. An emblem may be otherwise used as an identifying badge or patch. For example, in America, police officers' badges refer to their personal metal emblem whereas their woven emblems on uniforms identify members of a particular unit. A real or metal cockle shell, the emblem of St. James the Apostle, sewn onto the hat or clothes, identified a medieval pilgrim to his shrine at Santiago de Compostela. In the Middle Ages, many saints were given emblems, which served to identify them in paintings and other images: St. Catherine had a wheel, or a sword, St. Anthony Abbot, a pig and a small bell; these are called attributes when shown carried by or close to the saint in art.
Kings and other grand persons adopted personal devices or emblems that were distinct from their family heraldry. The most famous include Louis XIV of France's sun, the salamander of Francis I of France, the boar of Richard III of England and the armillary sphere of Manuel I of Portugal. In the fifteenth and sixteenth century, there was a fashion, started in Italy, for making large medals with a portrait head on the obverse and the emblem on the reverse. Pisanello produced many of the finest of these. A symbol, on the other hand, substitutes one thing for another, in a more concrete fashion: The Christian cross is a symbol of the Crucifixion; the Red Cross is one of three symbols representing the International Red Cross. A red cross on a white background is the emblem of humanitarian spirit; the crescent shape is a symbol of the moon. The skull and crossbones is a symbol identifying a poison; the skull is an emblem of the transitory nature of human life. A totem is an animal emblem that expresses the spirit of a clan.
Heraldry knows its emblems as charges. The lion passant serves as the emblem of England, the lion rampant as the emblem of Scotland. An icon consists of an image. A logo is an impersonal, secular icon of a corporate entity. Since the 15th century the terms of emblem and emblematura belong to the termini technici of architecture, they mean an iconic painted, drawn, or sculptural representation of a concept affixed to houses and belong—like the inscriptions—to the architectural ornaments. Since the publication of De Re Aedificatoria, by Leon Battista Alberti, patterned after the De architectura by the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius, emblema are related to Egyptian hieroglyphics and are considered as being the lost universal language. Therefore, the emblems belong to the Renaissance knowledge of antiquity which comprises not only Greek and Roman antiquity but Egyptian antiquity as proven by the numerous obelisks built in 16th and 17th century Rome; the 1531 publication in Augsburg of the first emblem book, the Emblemata of the Italian jurist Andrea Alciato launched a fascination with emblems that lasted two centuries and touched most of the countries of western Europe.
"Emblem" in this sense refers to a didactic or moralizing combination of picture and text intended to draw the reader into a self-reflective examination of his or her own life. Complicated associations of emblems could transmit information to the culturally-informed viewer, a characteristic of the 16th-century artistic movement called Mannerism. A popular collection of emblems, which ran to many editions, was presented by Francis Quarles in 1635; each of the emblems consisted of a paraphrase from a passage of Scripture, expressed in ornate and metaphorical language, followed by passages from the Christian Fathers, concluding with an epigram of four lines. These were accompanied by an emblem that presented the symbols displayed in the accompanying passage. Emblems are certain gestures; these meanings are associated with the culture they are established in. Using emblems creates a way for humans to communicate with one another in a non-verbal way. An individual waving their hand at a friend, for example, would communicate "hello" without having to verbally say anything.
Although sign language uses hand gestures to communicate words in a non-verbal way, it should not be confused with emblems. Sign language contains linguistic properties, similar to those used in verbal languages, is used to communicate entire conversations. Linguistic properties are verbs, pronouns, adjectives, etc... In contrast with sign language, emblems are a non-linguistic form of communication. Emblems are single gestures. Emblems are associated with the culture they are established in and are subjective to that said culture. For example, the OK sign used in America to communicate "OK" in a non-verbal way, used to mean "money" in the country of Japan, in some southern European countries the OK sign used to mean something sexual. Furthermore, the thumbs up sign in America means "good job ", but in some parts of the Middle East the thumbs up sign means something offensive. Coat of Arms Crest Emblem book Meme Mission patch National emblem Saint symbology Seal Symbol Badge Drysdall, Denis. "Claude Mignault of Dijo
Currency
A currency, in the most specific sense is money in any form when in use or circulation as a medium of exchange circulating banknotes and coins. A more general definition is that a currency is a system of money in common use for people in a nation. Under this definition, US dollars, pounds sterling, Australian dollars, European euros, Russian rubles and Indian Rupees are examples of currency; these various currencies are recognized as stores of value and are traded between nations in foreign exchange markets, which determine the relative values of the different currencies. Currencies in this sense are defined by governments, each type has limited boundaries of acceptance. Other definitions of the term "currency" are discussed in their respective synonymous articles banknote and money; the latter definition, pertaining to the currency systems of nations, is the topic of this article. Currencies can be classified into two monetary systems: fiat money and commodity money, depending on what guarantees the currency's value.
Some currencies are legal tender in certain political jurisdictions. Others are traded for their economic value. Digital currency has arisen with the popularity of the Internet. Money was a form of receipt, representing grain stored in temple granaries in Sumer in ancient Mesopotamia and in Ancient Egypt. In this first stage of currency, metals were used as symbols to represent value stored in the form of commodities; this formed the basis of trade in the Fertile Crescent for over 1500 years. However, the collapse of the Near Eastern trading system pointed to a flaw: in an era where there was no place, safe to store value, the value of a circulating medium could only be as sound as the forces that defended that store. A trade could only reach as far as the credibility of that military. By the late Bronze Age, however, a series of treaties had established safe passage for merchants around the Eastern Mediterranean, spreading from Minoan Crete and Mycenae in the northwest to Elam and Bahrain in the southeast.
It is not known what was used as a currency for these exchanges, but it is thought that ox-hide shaped ingots of copper, produced in Cyprus, may have functioned as a currency. It is thought that the increase in piracy and raiding associated with the Bronze Age collapse produced by the Peoples of the Sea, brought the trading system of oxhide ingots to an end, it was only the recovery of Phoenician trade in the 10th and 9th centuries BC that led to a return to prosperity, the appearance of real coinage first in Anatolia with Croesus of Lydia and subsequently with the Greeks and Persians. In Africa, many forms of value store have been used, including beads, ivory, various forms of weapons, the manilla currency, ochre and other earth oxides; the manilla rings of West Africa were one of the currencies used from the 15th century onwards to sell slaves. African currency is still notable for its variety, in many places, various forms of barter still apply; these factors led to the metal itself being the store of value: first silver both silver and gold, at one point bronze.
Now we have other non-precious metals as coins. Metals were mined and stamped into coins; this was to assure the individual accepting the coin that he was getting a certain known weight of precious metal. Coins could be counterfeited, but the existence of standard coins created a new unit of account, which helped lead to banking. Archimedes' principle provided the next link: coins could now be tested for their fine weight of metal, thus the value of a coin could be determined if it had been shaved, debased or otherwise tampered with. Most major economies using coinage had several tiers of coins of different values, made of copper and gold. Gold coins were the most valuable and were used for large purchases, payment of the military and backing of state activities. Units of account were defined as the value of a particular type of gold coin. Silver coins were used for midsized transactions, sometimes defined a unit of account, while coins of copper or silver, or some mixture of them, might be used for everyday transactions.
This system had been used in ancient India since the time of the Mahajanapadas. The exact ratios between the values of the three metals varied between different eras and places. However, the rarity of gold made it more valuable than silver, silver was worth more than copper. In premodern China, the need for credit and for a medium of exchange, less physically cumbersome than large numbers of copper coins led to the introduction of paper money, i.e. banknotes. Their introduction was a gradual process which lasted from the late Tang dynasty into the Song dynasty, it began as a means for merchants to exchange heavy coinage for receipts of deposit issued as promissory notes by wholesalers' shops. These notes were valid for temporary use in a small regional territory. In the 10th century, the Song dynasty government began to circulate these notes amongst the traders in its monopolized salt industry; the Song government granted several shops the right to issue banknotes, in the early 12th century the government took over these shops to produce state-issued currency.
Yet the banknotes issued w
Varanasi
Varanasi known as Benares, Banaras, or Kashi, is a city on the banks of the river Ganga in Uttar Pradesh, India, 320 kilometres south-east of the state capital, 121 kilometres east of Allahabad. A major religious hub in India, it is the holiest of the seven sacred cities in Hinduism and Jainism, played an important role in the development of Buddhism and Ravidassia. Varanasi lies along National Highway 2, which connects it to Kolkata, Kanpur and Delhi, is served by Varanasi Junction railway station and Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport. Varanasi is one of 72 districts in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. At the time of the 2011 census, there were 1329 villages in this district; the main native languages of Varanasi are Bhojpuri. Varanasi grew as an important industrial centre, famous for its muslin and silk fabrics, ivory works, sculpture. Buddha is believed to have founded Buddhism here around 528 BCE when he gave his first sermon, "The Setting in Motion of the Wheel of Dharma", at nearby Sarnath.
The city's religious importance continued to grow in the 8th century, when Adi Shankara established the worship of Shiva as an official sect of Varanasi. During the Muslim rule through Middle Ages, the city continued as an important centre of Hindu devotion, pilgrimage and poetry which further contributed to its reputation as a centre of cultural importance and religious education. Tulsidas wrote his epic poem on Rama's life called Ram Charit Manas in Varanasi. Several other major figures of the Bhakti movement were born in Varanasi, including Kabir and Ravidas. Guru Nanak visited Varanasi for Maha Shivaratri in 1507, a trip that played a large role in the founding of Sikhism. In the 16th century, Varanasi experienced a cultural revival under the Mughal emperor Akbar who patronised the city, built two large temples dedicated to Shiva and Vishnu, though much of modern Varanasi was built during the 18th century, by the Maratha and Brahmin kings; the Kingdom of Benares was given official status by the Mughals in 1737, continued as a dynasty-governed area until Indian independence in 1947.
The city is governed by the Varanasi Nagar Nigam and is represented in the Parliament of India by the current Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, who won the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 by a huge margin. Silk weaving and crafts and tourism employ a significant number of the local population, as do the Diesel Locomotive Works and Bharat Heavy Electricals. Varanasi Hospital was established in 1964. Varanasi has been a cultural centre of North India for several thousand years, is associated with the Ganges. Hindus believe; the city is known worldwide for its many ghats, embankments made in steps of stone slabs along the river bank where pilgrims perform ritual ablutions. Of particular note are the Dashashwamedh Ghat, the Panchganga Ghat, the Manikarnika Ghat and the Harishchandra Ghat, the last two being where Hindus cremate their dead and the Hindu genealogy registers at Varanasi are kept here; the Ramnagar Fort, near the eastern bank of the Ganges, was built in the 18th century in the Mughal style of architecture with carved balconies, open courtyards, scenic pavilions.
Among the estimated 23,000 temples in Varanasi are Kashi Vishwanath Temple of Shiva, the Sankat Mochan Hanuman Temple, the Durga Temple. The Kashi Naresh is the chief cultural patron of Varanasi, an essential part of all religious celebrations. An educational and musical centre, many prominent Indian philosophers, poets and musicians live or have lived in the city, it was the place where the Benares gharana form of Hindustani classical music was developed. One of Asia's largest residential universities is Banaras Hindu University; the Hindi-language nationalist newspaper, Aj, was first published in 1920. Traditional etymology links "Varanasi" to the names of two Ganges tributaries forming the city's borders: Varuna, still flowing in northern Varanasi, Assi, today a small stream in the southern part of the city, near Assi Ghat; the old city is located on the north shores of the Ganges, bounded by Assi. In the Rigveda, an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns, the city is referred to as Kāśī from the Sanskrit verbal root kaś- "to shine", making Varanasi known as "City of Light", the "luminous city as an eminent seat of learning".
The name was used by pilgrims dating from Buddha's days. Hindu religious texts use many epithets to refer to Varanasi, such as Kāśikā, Avimukta, Ānandavana, Rudravāsa. According to Hindu mythology, Varanasi was founded by Shiva, one of three principal deities along with Brahma and Vishnu. During a fight between Brahma and Shiva, one of Brahma's five heads was torn off by Shiva; as was the custom, the victor carried the slain adversary's head in his hand and let it hang down from his hand as an act of ignominy, a sign of his own bravery. A bridle was put into the mouth. Shiva thus dishonored Brahma's head, kept it with him at all times; when he came to the city of Varanasi in this state, the hanging head of Brahma dropped from Shiva's hand and disappeared in the ground. Varanasi is therefore considered an holy site; the Pandavas, the protagonists of the Hindu epic Mahabharata, are said to have visited the city in search of Shiva to atone for their sin of fratricide and Brāhmana
Nandalal Bose
Nandalal Bose was one of the pioneers of modern Indian art and a key figure of Contextual Modernism. A pupil of Abanindranath Tagore, Bose was known for his "Indian style" of painting, he became the principal of Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan in 1922. He was influenced by the murals of Ajanta. Today, many critics consider his paintings among India's most important modern paintings. In 1976, the Archaeological Survey of India, Department of Culture, Govt. of India declared his works among the "nine artists" whose work, "not being antiquities", were to be henceforth considered "to be art treasures, having regard to their artistic and aesthetic value". He was given the work of illustrating the constitution of India. Nandalal Bose was born on 3 December 1882 in a middle-class Bengali family of Kharagpur, in Munger district of Bihar state, his father, Purna Chandra Bose, was at that time working in the Darbhanga Estate. His mother Khetramoni Devi was a housewife with a skill in improvising toys and dolls for young Nandalal.
From his early days Nandalal began taking an interest in modelling images and decorating Puja pandals. In 1898, at the age of fifteen, Nandalal moved to Calcutta for his high school studies in the Central Collegiate School. After clearing his examinations in 1902, he continued his college studies at the same institution. In June 1903 he married the daughter of a family friend. Nanadalal wanted to study art. Unable to qualify for promotion in his classes, Nandalal moved to other colleges, joining the Presidency College in 1905 to study commerce. After repeated failures, he persuaded his family to let him study art at Calcutta's School of Art; as a young artist, Nandalal Bose was influenced by the murals of the Ajanta Caves. He had become part of an international circle of artists and writers seeking to revive classical Indian culture. To mark the 1930 occasion of Mahatma Gandhi's arrest for protesting the British tax on salt, Bose created a black on white linocut print of Gandhi walking with a staff.
It became the iconic image for the non-violence movement. His genius and original style were recognised by famous artists and art critics like Gaganendranath Tagore, Ananda Coomaraswamy and O. C. Ganguli; these lovers of art felt that objective criticism was necessary for the development of painting and founded the Indian Society of Oriental Art. He became principal of the Kala Bhavana at Tagore's International University Santiniketan in 1922, he was famously asked by Jawaharlal Nehru to sketch the emblems for the Government of India's awards, including the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Shri. Along with his disciple Rammanohar, Nandalal Bose took up the historic task of beautifying/decorating the original manuscript of the Constitution of India, he died on 16 April 1966 in Calcutta. Today, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi holds 7000 of his works in its collection, including a 1930 black and white linocut of the Dandi March depicting Mahatma Gandhi, a set of seven posters he made at the request of Mahatma Gandhi for the 1938 Haripura Session of the Indian National Congress.
In his introduction for the Christie's catalogue, R. Siva Kumar wrote- Nandalal Bose occupies a place in the history of Modern Indian art that combines those of Raphael and Durer in the history of the Renaissance. Like Raphael Nandalal was a great synthesizer, his originality lay in his ability to marshal discrete ideas drawn from Abanindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, E. B. Havell, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Okakura Kakuzo and Mahatma Gandhi into a unique and unified programme for the creation of a new art movement in India, and like Durer he combined a passion bordering on devotion with an irrepressible analytical mind that compelled him to prise open different art traditions and unravel their syntactic logic, make them accessible to a new generation of Indian artists. But he did this so and without self-assertive fanfare that the significance of his work is yet to be grasped in India; some of his students were Benode Behari Mukherjee, Ramkinkar Baij, Beohar Rammanohar Sinha, K. G. Subramanyan, A. Ramachandran, Henry Dharmasena, Pratima Thakur, Ramananda Bandopadhyay, Sovon Som, Jahar Dasgupta, Sabita Thakur, Menaja Swagnesh, Yash Bombbut, Satyajit Ray, Dinkar K Kowshik, Amritlal Vegad, Gauranga Charan and Kondapalli Seshagiri Rao.
A. D. Jayathilake was one of his student from Ceylon and had the opportunity to study under Dr. Nandalal Bose in the final batch. Dr. Nandalal Bose's uniquely drawn two paintings. Nandalal Bose, who left a major imprint on Indian art, was the first recipient of a scholarship offered by the Indian Society of Oriental Art, founded in 1907. In 1956, he became the second artist to be elected Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi, India's National Academy of Art. In 1954, Nandalal Bose was awarded the Padma Vibhushan. In 1957, the University of Calcutta conferred honorary D. Litt on him. Vishvabharati University honoured him by conferring on him the title of'Deshikottama'; the Academy of Fine Arts in Calcutta honoured Nandalal with the Silver Jubilee Medal. The Tagore Birth Centenary Medal was awarded to Nandalal Bose in 1965 by the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Nandalal Bose and Indian painting, by Ramyansu Sekhar Das. Tower Publishers, 1958. Nandalal Bose
Government of India
The Government of India abbreviated as GoI, is the union government created by the constitution of India as the legislative and judicial authority of the union of 29 states and seven union territories of a constitutionally democratic republic. It is located in the capital of India. Modelled after the Westminster system for governing the state, the union government is composed of the executive, the legislature, the judiciary, in which all powers are vested by the constitution in the prime minister and the supreme court; the President of India is the head of state and the commander-in-chief of the Indian Armed Forces whilst the elected prime minister acts as the head of the executive, is responsible for running the union government. The parliament is bicameral in nature, with the Lok Sabha being the lower house, the Rajya Sabha the upper house; the judiciary systematically contains an apex supreme court, 24 high courts, several district courts, all inferior to the supreme court. The basic civil and criminal laws governing the citizens of India are set down in major parliamentary legislation, such as the civil procedure code, the penal code, the criminal procedure code.
Similar to the union government, individual state governments each consist of executive and judiciary. The legal system as applicable to the union and individual state governments is based on the English Common and Statutory Law; the full name of the country is the Republic of India. India and Bharat are official short names for the Republic of India in the Constitution, both names appears on legal banknotes, in treaties and in legal cases; the terms "union government", "central government" and "Bhārata Sarakāra" are used and unofficially to refer to the Government of India. The term New Delhi is used as a metonym for the central government, as the seat of government is in New Delhi; the powers of the legislature in India are exercised by the Parliament, a bicameral legislature consisting of the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha. Of the two houses of parliament, the Rajya Sabha is considered to be the upper house or the Council of States and consists of members appointed by the president and elected by the state and territorial legislatures.
The Lok Sabha is considered the House of the people. The parliament does not have complete control and sovereignty, as its laws are subject to judicial review by the Supreme Court. However, it does exercise some control over the executive; the members of the cabinet, including the prime minister, are either chosen from parliament or elected thereto within six months of assuming office. The cabinet as a whole is responsible to the Lok Sabha; the Lok Sabha is a temporary house and can be dissolved only when the party in power loses the support of the majority of the house. The Rajya Sabha can never be dissolved; the members of the Rajya Sabha are elected for a six-year term. The executive of government is the one that has sole authority and responsibility for the daily administration of the state bureaucracy; the division of power into separate branches of government is central to the republican idea of the separation of powers. The executive power is vested in the President of India, as per Article 53 of the constitution.
The president has all constitutional powers and exercises them directly or through officers subordinate to him as per the aforesaid Article 53. The president is to act in accordance with aid and advice tendered by the prime minister, who leads the council of ministers as described in Article 74 of the Constitution of India; the council of ministers remains in power during the'pleasure' of the president. However, in practice, the council of ministers must retain the support of the Lok Sabha. If a president were to dismiss the council of ministers on his or her own initiative, it might trigger a constitutional crisis. Thus, in practice, the council of ministers cannot be dismissed as long as it holds the support of a majority in the Lok Sabha; the president is responsible for appointing many high officials in India. These high officials include the governors of the 29 states; the president, as the head of state receives the credentials of ambassadors from other countries, whilst the prime minister, as head of government, receives credentials of high commissioners from other members of the Commonwealth, in line with historical tradition.
The president is the de jure commander-in-chief of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India can grant a pardon to or reduce the sentence of a convicted person for one time in cases involving punishment of death; the decisions involving pardoning and other rights by the president are independent of the opinion of the prime minister or the Lok Sabha majority. In most other cases, the president exercises his or her executive powers on the advice of the prime minister; the vice president is the second highest constitutional position in India after the president. The vice president represents the nation in the absence of the president and takes charge as acting president in the incident of resignation impeachment or removal of the president; the vice president has the legislative function of acting as the chairman of the Rajya Sabha. The
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