Freedom Struggle & INC Presidents - Wiki-Book

WikiBook Freedom Struggle Personalities & Past Presidents of INC
Benjamin Guy Horniman (b. 1873 - d. 1948) was an Irish journalist and political activist who was one of the few Europeans to support the Indian independence movement. Horniman left England to work as the editor of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta's Bombay Chronicle. Horniman advocated Indian nationalism and resistance to British rule. He was one of the first in India to publish detailed accounts of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919. He smuggled to England photographs of the gruesome killings, which were published by The Daily Herald, the mouthpiece of the British Labour Party, causing major public outrage in England. One of his correspondents, Goverdhan Das, was imprisoned for three years. Horniman himself was arrested and deported to London, and the Chronicle closed down. After India's independence in 1947, the Elphinston Circle was renamed to the Horniman Circle Gardens, a large park in South Mumbai to commemorate his legacy. Rao Bahadur Arcot Sabhapathi Mudaliar was an Indian industrialist, businessman and Indian independence activist who was an early pioneer of the Indian National Congress and framed its constitution.
A. G. Horniman
A. Sabhapathi Mudaliar
Personal life Politics
Sabhapathi Mudaliar was born in a Tamil-speaking Arcot Mudaliar family from Bellary in the then Madras Presidency. on completion of his studies, Mudaliar started a successful textile business. Mudaliar entered politics in 1982 when he volunteered to lead a campaign for the economic growth of Rayalaseema.Mudaliar represented Bellary at the first session of the Indian National Congress held in Bombay in December 1985. During the third session held in Madras in 1987, Mudaliar was appointed member of the 35-member committee which wrote the constitution of the congress. Abdul Bari(Urdu: , Hindi: ; 18921947) was an Indian academic and social reformer. He was born in 1892 in Sahabad, Village Kansua of Jahanabad District in Bihar. He graduated Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias in 1918 and later engaged in post-graduate studies in History in 1920 at Patna University. He joined Bihar National College, which was then started under Mahatma Gandhi's inspiration, as Professor in 1921. From the very beginning of the life an idea was developing in his mind to bring about social reform in Indian society by awakening the people through propagation of education and teaching as well. He had a vision of India free from slavery, Social Inequality, communal disharmony. As a result of that he happens to be the founder of trade union. He took part in freedom movement and finally sacrificed his life for the cause of nation. He had taken part in many freedom movements along with Dr. Rajendra Prasad,Shri Babu & Anugraha babu. On the first death anniversary of Prof. Abdul Bari, Dr. Rajendra Prasad recalled his contriburtion to the nation through a message dated 22 March 1948 published in Mazdur Avaz.
Abdul Bari (professor)
Important milestones in life
Born in 1892 at Bhojpur (Sahabad), Bihar Father was Md Qurban Ali M.A. from Patna College, Patna University First time meeting with Mahatma Gandhi as congress worker in 1917 during his visit to Bihar. Played active role to unite worker section of Bihar, Bengal and Orissa for freedom struggle movement in 1921, 1922 and 1942 Played active role in Non-Cooperation Movement in 1922 with Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Dr Anugrah Narayan Sinha and Dr Sri Krishna Singh. A national level college has been established in Sadaqat Ashram, Patna in 1921 in which Dr. Rajendra Prasad was Principal and Abdul Bari was Professor along with Dr Anugrah Narayan SInha.
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In Provincial election in 1937, he was elected as an MLA of Bihar from Champaran area on Congress ticket. It was the same election when his relative Barrister Mohammad Yunus was leading second largest party of Bihar- Muslim Independent Party. Become Dy. Speaker of Bihar Assembly in July, 1937 of first Congress Government which formed on 19 July 1937 after the fall of 4 months long First democratic government of Bihar headed by First Premier(Prime Minister) of Bihar province Barrister Mohammad Yunus Become Vice Chairman of Bihar Labour Enquiry Committee under Chairmanship of Dr. Rajendra Prasad. Bihar Labour Enquiry Committee visited Jamshedpur to see the labour problem in Jamshedpur. On request of Netaji Subhas, then President of Jamshedpur Labour Association decided to lead the labour association in Jamshedpur. On advice of Netaji Subhash Bose decided to change the name of Jamshedpur Labour Association to Tata Worker's Union in 1937. In 1937 his first historical agreement with TISCO (now Tata Steel) Management. Played active role in Quit India Movement in 1942. In 1946 he becomes President, of Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee. In 1947 riot spread in Patna On request of Mahatma Gandhi he was coming to Patna by car from Jamshedpur, he was shot dead near Fatuah Railway Crossing on 28 March 1947. His killer never got punished because it is said that he was being killed by fellow congressmen in Power struggle for BPCC President and Chief Ministerial Candidate. He buried in Peermohani Qabristan. President of Tata Worker's Union from 19361947
Places and institutes named after him

Abdul Bari Memorial College, Golmuri, Jamshedpur Bari Maidan Sakchi, Jamshedpur Prof. Abdul Bari Technical Centre, Patna Prof. Abdul Bari Path, Patna
Abdul Hafiz Mohamed Barakatullah, known with his honorific as Maulana Barkatullah (c. 7 July 1854 20 September 1927) was an anti-British Indian revolutionary with sympathy for the PanIslamic movement. Barkatullah was born on 7 July 1854 at Itwra Mohalla Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, India. Barkatullah fought from outside India, with fiery speeches and revolutionary writings in leading newspapers, for the independence of India. He did not live to see India free. In 1988, Bhopal University was renamed Barkatullah University in his honour. He was educated from primary to college level at Bhopal. Later he went to Bombay and London for his higher education. He was a meritorious scholar and mastered seven languages: Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Turkish, English, German, and Japanese. Despite a poor background he topped the list of successful candidates in most of the examinations for which he appeared, both in India and England. He became the Quondam Professor of Urdu at the Tokyo University Japan. At the age of twelve he lost his father, Munshi Shaikh Kadaratullah, who was employed in the service of Bhopal State. Barakatullah was a very clever youth, (who) left home about 1883 and was employed as a tutor in Khandwa and later in Bombay, notes J.C. Ker. In 1887 he came to London, giving private lessons in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, while himself learning German, French, and Japanese. He was invited by the British Muslim Abdullah Quilliam to work at the Liverpool Muslim Institute. While there he got to know Sirdar Nasrullah Khan of Kabul, brother of the Amir. He reportedly kept the Amir informed about English affairs in India, issuing a weekly newsletter to the Amirs agent at Karachi from 1896 to 1898. He left for the United States in 1899.
Abdul Hafiz Mohamed Barakatullah
Early life
Policy of Revolution
While in England he came in close contact with Lala Hardayal and Raja Mahendra Pratap, son of the Raja

of Hathras. He became a friend of Afghan Emir and the editor of the Kabul newspaper Sirejul-ul-Akber'. He was one of the founders of the "Ghadar" (Rebellion) Party in 1913 at San Francisco. Later he became the first prime minister of the Provisional Government of India established on 1 December 1915 in Kabul with Raja Mahendra Pratap as its president. Barkatullah went to several countries of the world with a mission to rouse politically the Indian community and to seek support for the freedom of India from the famous leaders of the time in those countries. Prominent amongst those were Kaiser Wilhelm II, Amir Habibullah Khan, Mohammed Resched, Ghazi Pasha, Lenin, Hitler. In England, in 1897, Barakatullah was seen attending meetings of the Muslim Patriotic League. Here, he came across other revolutionary compatriots around Shyamji Krishnavarma. After about a year spent in America, in February 1904 he left for Japan, where he was appointed Professor of Hindustani at the University of Tokyo. In the autumn of 1906, at 1 West 34th Street in New York City, a Pan-Aryan Association was formed by Barakatullah and Samuel Lucas Joshi, a Maratha Christian, son of the late Reverend Lucas Maloba Joshi; it was supported by the Irish revolutionaries of the Clan-na-Gael, the antiBritish lawyer Myron H. Phelps and of the equally anti-British Swami Abhedananda who continued the work of Swami Vivekananda. On 21 October 1906, at a meeting of the United Irish League held in New York, Barakatullah asked Mr OConnor, representative of the Irish Parliamentary Party whether, "in the event of the Indian people rising against the oppressive and tyrannical rule of England in India, and in case England should concede Home Rule to Ireland," would OConnor "be in favour of the Irish people furnishing soldiers to the British Army to crush the Indian people." Wikipedia:Quotations No answer is recorded. According to a report in the Gaelic American, in June 1907, a meeting of Indians, held in New York, passed resolutions repudiating the right of any foreigner (Mr. Morley) to dictate the future of the Indian people, urging their countrymen to depend upon themselves alone and especially on boycott and swadeshi, condemning the deportation of Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh, and expressing detestation of the action of the British authorities in openly instigating one class of Indians against another at Jamalpur and other places." (Source: Ker, p225). In August 1907, the New York Sun published Barakatullahs letter stating how Englishmen were getting nervous "because of the Hindus and the Muslims are drawing together and the success of nationalism seems to be nearer."Wikipedia:Quotations More vehement was his letter in Persian, which appeared in the Urdu Mualla of Aligarh, U.P., in May 1907, in which Barakatullah strongly advocated the necessity for unity between Hindus and Muslims, and defined the two chief duties of Muslims as patriotism and friendship with all Muslims outside India. This prophetic argument preceded by four years the publication of Germany and the Coming War, by Bernhardi, warning England to be aware of the extreme danger represented by the unity of Hindu and Muslim extremists in Bengal, as reported by the Rowlatt Commission (Chapter VII). He thought that the performance of both these duties depended entirely upon one rule of conduct, namely concord and unity with the Hindus of India in all political matters. (Ker, p226). In October 1907, Madame Cama reached New York and declared to journalists: "We are in slavery, and I am in America for the sole purpose of giving a thorough expos of the British oppression ... and to interest the warm-hearted citizens of this great Republic in our enfranchisement."Wikipedia:Quotations On 16 August 1908 arrived from Kolkata Bhupendra Nath Datta, Vivekanandas hot-blooded brother. Invited by George Freeman to edit the Free Hindustan from the Gaelic American newspaper office, Taraknath Das went to New York to join his old colleague Datta. In March 1909 Barakatullah left again for Japan.
Activities in Japan
Early in 1910, he started the Islamic Fraternity in Tokyo. In JuneJuly 1911 he left for Constantinople and Petrograd, returned to Tokyo in October and published an article referring to the advent of a great pan-Islamic Alliance including Afghanistan which he expected to become "the future Japan of Central Asia". In December he converted to Islam three Japanese: his assistant Hassan U. Hatanao, his wife, and her father, Baron Kentaro Hiki. This is said to be the first conversion to Islam in Japan. In 1912, Barakatullah became at once more fluent in his use of the English language and more anti-British in his tone, observes Ker (p133). Discussing in his paper the Christian Combination against Islam, Barakatullah singled out the Emperor William of Germany as really the one

man who holds the peace of the world as well as the war in the hollow of his hand : it is the duty of the Muslims to be united, to stand by the Khalif; with their life and property, and to side with Germany. Quoting a Roman poet, Barakatullah reminded that the Anglo-Saxons had been sea-wolves, living on the pillage of the world. The difference in modern times was the added refinement of hypocrisy which sharpens the edge of brutality. On 6 July 1912, the entry of the paper into India was prohibited, before the Japanese Government suppressed it. Meanwhile, since September, copies of another paper called El Islam appeared in India, continuing Barakatullahs political propaganda. On 22 March 1913 its importation was prohibited in India. In June 1913, copies were received in India of a lithographed Urdu pamphlet, "The Sword is the Last Resort". On 31 March 1914 Barakatullahs teaching appointment was terminated by the Japanese authorities. It was followed by another similar leaflet, Feringhi ka Fareb (The Deceit of the English) : according to Ker (p135), it surpassed in violence Barakatullahs previous productions, and was modelled more on the style of the publications of the Gadhar party of San Francisco with whom Barakatullah now threw in his lot. In May 1913, G.D. Kumar had sailed from San Francisco for the Philippine Islands and had written from Manila to Taraknath Das : I am going to establish base at Manila (P.I.) forwarding Dept, supervise the work near China, Hong Kong, Shanghai. Professor Barakatullah is all right in Japan. (Ker, p237). On 22 May 1914, Barakatullah returned to San Francisco with Bhagwan Singh alias Natha Singh, the granthi (priest) of the Sikh temple at Hong Kong and joined the Yugantar Ashram and worked with Taraknath Das. With the outbreak of the War in August 1914, meetings were held at all the principal centres of the Indian population from Asia in California and Oregon and funds were raised to go back to India and join the insurrection : Barakatullah, Bhagwan Singh and Ramchandra Bharadwaj were among the speakers. (Portland (Oregon) Telegram, 7 August 1914; Fresno Republican, 23 September 1914). Reaching Berlin on time, Barakatullah met Chatto or Virendranath Chattopadhyay and sided Raja Mahendra Pratap in the Mission to Kabul. Their role was significant in indoctrinating with anti-British feelings the Indian prisoners of war held by Germany. They arrived at Herat on 24 August 1915 and were given a royal reception by the Governor. On 1 December 1915, Pratap's 28th birthday, he established the first Provisional Government of India at Kabul in Afghanistan, during First World War. It was a government-in-exile of Free Hindustan with Raja Mahendra Pratap as president, Maulana Barkatullah, Prime Minister, Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi, Home Minister. Anti-British forces supported his movement. But, for some obvious loyalty to the British, the Amir kept on delaying the expedition. Then they attempted to establish relations with foreign powers. (Ker, p305). In Kabul, the Siraj-ul-Akhbar in its issue of 4 May 1916 published Raja Mahendra Prataps version of the Mission and its objective. He stated: "His Imperial Majesty the Kaiser himself granted me an audience. Subsequently, having set right the problem of India and Asia with the Imperial German Government, and having received the necessary credentials, I started towards the East. I had interviews with the Khedive of Egypt and with the Princes and Ministers of Turkey, as well as with the renowned Enver Pasha and His Imperial Majesty the Holy Khalif, Sultan-ul-Muazzim. I settled the problem of India and the East with the Imperial Ottoman Government, and received the necessary credentials from them as well. German and Turkish officers and Maulvi Barakatullah Sahib were went with me to help me; they are still with me."Wikipedia:Quotations Unable to take Raja Mahendra Pratap seriously, Jawaharlal Nehru later wrote in An Autobiography (p. 151): "He seemed to be a character out of medieval romance, a Don Quixote who had strayed into the twentieth century." Under pressure from the British, the Afghan government withdrew its help. The Mission was closed down.
The Ghadar Episode
Government of Free India
Moscow Experience
Barakatullah returned to Germany, edited and published the Naya Islam. For a period he was attached to the German General Staff. On 18 April 1919, he wrote to Paul Kesselring in Switzerland: "It is four years now since I saw you last. I was 3 years and half in Afghanistan as the guest of the state. Being cut off from the civilised world, I used to get the news of the great war very late. The Afghan government did

their best to make me and my companions comfortable. We had all sorts of luxuries provided for us during our stay in that country. Lately I saw Bokhara, Samarkand and Tashkend [sic],- the region rich with historical associations./ It took me 22 days by train to reach Mascow [sic] from Tashkend. I hope to go back to Tashkend before long. I should very much like to hear about your health, happiness & prosperity, as soon as postal communication between Russia & Switzerland is established./ I am in good health."Wikipedia:Quotations In MarchMay 1921, he accompanied Chatto in a delegation of Indian revolutionaries to Moscow; Agnes Smedley, Bhupendranath Datta, Pandurang Khankhoje, Biren Dasgupta, Abdul Hafiz, Abdul Wahid, Herambalal Gupta and Nalini Dasgupta were among the other delegates. M.N. Roy had preceded them and had already secured a mandate from Lenin himself. However, thanks to Smedleys animosity against Roy, the delegation did not cooperate with him. Hence, a Commission of the Comintern examined the differences between the two factions before making its recommendation. The Commission was composed of Michael Borodin, August Thalheimer (the leader and theoretician of the German Communist Party), S.J. Rutgers (Holland), Mtys Rkosi (Hungary), Tom Quelch and James Bell[0] (Great Britain) : according to Sibnarayan Ray, after sitting for three days, they refused to give the Berlin Committee the status of a recognised group; Thalheimer compared this batch to the "bourgeois democrats of nineteenth century Germany who used to pose themselves as social democrats."Wikipedia:Quotations In December 1921, when Chatto started an Indian News and Information Bureau in Berlin, Datta refused to accept his old friends leadership and formed a rival body called India Independence Party, with Barakatullah as its president. It was financed by the Soviet Union. According to Sir Cecil Kaye, this support came via the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (Narkomindel), headed by Georgy Chicherin, who considered it worthwhile to cultivate the non-communist group of revolutionary nationalists.(Kaye, pp. 5657) According to the Russian State Archives of Socio-Political History, Moscow (RGASP), Barakatullah sent to the Comintern two documents outlining a secret plan for collaboration between the Comintern and the Indian national revolutionaries through Jawaharlal Nehru. He wanted the reformulation of certain strategies which were damaging the anti-imperialist struggle. The first letter to the Comintern was written from Berlin on 6 May 1926. It states: "It was only lately that I saw the famous Indian revolutionary, Jawhar [sic] Lal Nehru, in Switzerland, who has been especially delegated to me from India in order to explain to me the diametrically opposite effect of the propaganda of Comintern in India to the intentions of the said association, and to ask me to communicate the standpoint of the Indian revolutionaries to the Comintern. If necessary, Mr. Nehru is himself willing to come over to Berlin and explain to you the whole situation of the propaganda of the Comintern in India himself. ... the whole thing falls into the hands of the English agents with the only result that the true Indian revolutionaries are being exposed and put to all sorts of troubles by the police... I, therefore, propose that a meeting should be convened to take place at Berlin with the participation of Mr. Nehru and the representatives of Comintern including Mr. Roy and other comrades concerned in this propaganda. In this case we shall be able to find out the proper way of crushing our mutual enemy, which can only be done if we work hand in hand and not against each other." (RGASP 495-68-186). This was followed by a note to the Comintern, dated 2 February 1927, encouraging better organisation and communication channels by involving the Comintern more closely in the activities of Indias nationalist revolutionaries. It added: "M. Barakatullah Maulavie and Jawahar Lal Nehru will be the only Indian representatives to come into personal contract with the representatives of the Comintern, in order to maintain secrecy". (RGASP 495-68-207).[citation needed] Earlier, in June 1926, Barakatullah had sent with Lakha Singh twenty thousand rupees to India, for helping the families of Sikh prisoners. In May 1927, he accompanied Mahendra Pratap to revisit the United States and, encouraged by Smedley, contacted Sailendra Nath Ghose, follower of Bagha Jatin. Invited by the United India League, they went to Detroit in June. Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru met Barkatullah in Berlin and later at the Brussels Conference in 1927 and was highly impressed with his revolutionary thoughts and deeds. After the Brussels Congress, he and Raja Mahendra Pratap went to USA to carry on their mission.
Last years

Barakatullah died in San Francisco on 20 September 1927. His body was taken from San Francisco to Sacramento. Then his coffin was taken to Maryville where he was buried in the Muslim Cemetery with the promise that after the freedom of his country, his body would be transferred to his own motherland, to Bhopal. His remains nonetheless lie buried in Sacramento City Cemetery, California.
Abdul Majeed Khwaja

Abdul Majeed Khwaja
Abdul Majeed Khwaja (18851962) Indian lawyer, educationist, social reformer and freedom fighter, was born at Aligarh, a small but historically significant town in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. A liberal Muslim, he was deeply committed to Gandhis ethical approach of Nonviolent resistance. He actively opposed the partition of India in 1947 and dedicated his entire life to the promotion of HinduMuslim harmony. He made a lasting contribution to the education of Indian Muslims in the modern era. He died on December 2, 1962 and was buried in the family graveyard adjacent to the shrine of the Sufi saint Shah Jamal on the outskirts of Aligarh.
Family background
Abdul Majeed was the younger of the two sons of Khwaja Muhammad Yusuf, a prominent lawyer and landowner of Aligarh who firmly believed that Western style scientific education was critically important for the social and economic development of Indian Muslims. Khwaja Muhammad Yusuf was one of the earliest supporters of the Aligarh Movement under the leadership of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the founder of the famous Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College which later developed into the Aligarh Muslim University. Khwaja Yusuf donated large sums to the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College Fund Committee and also toured the country along with Zahoor Hussain, and Zainul Abdeen. Also accompanying the group were the much younger duo of Syed Mahmood, son of Sir Syed and Hamied Ullah Khan (his future son in law), son of Maulvi Sami Ullah Khan to raise funds for the proposed Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College. Khwaja Muhammad Yusuf was also very active in the affairs of the Scientific Society founded earlier in 1864 by Sir Syed to translate Western works into Urdu.
Education
Abdul Majeed was initially educated at home in the traditional manner by reputed private tutors who taught him the Quran, Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and social etiquette, etc. However his father Khwaja Muhammad Yusuf, made sure that his son also got the best possible modern Western style education. Abdul Majeed was therefore sent in 1906 for higher studies to Cambridge University, England, as a member of Christs College Cambridge. He graduated in history and was called to the Bar in 1910. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of The Republic of India, Sir Shah Sulaiman, the eminent jurist, and Muhammad Iqbal, the famous philosopher and poet, were among his contemporaries in Cambridge. It was in Cambridge that he first saw and heard Barrister Mohandas

Karamchand Gandhi of South African fame and, then, a great admirer of British liberalism.
Marriage
Abdul Majeed Khwaja had three sons: Jamal Khwaja, Rasheed Khwaja and Ajmal Khwaja and six daughters. His wife, Begum Khursheed Khwaja [d. 1981] was the daughter of Hamied Ullah later Nawab Sarbuland Jung who was the son of Maulvi Sami Ullah, and Begum Akhtar Sarbuland Jung. Maulvi Sami Ullah was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) for diplomatic services rendered to the British Empire in Egypt. This Order is the sixth-most senior in the British honours system. She was the first born of her parents and her ancestors include the famous Mughal era poet Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib. She was amongst the very first Muslim ladies in Aligarh to come out of purdah. She was a social and political activist and worked diligently for womens education and freedom from British colonial rule. She interacted closely with the Nehru family, especially Padmaja Naidu, the daughter of the famous Sarojini Naidu, who was her classmate at Hyderabad and Vijayalaksmi Pandit, sister of Jawaharlal Nehru. She was the first among the Muslims of Allahabad to get her daughters admitted as boarders in the famous St. Mary's Convent Inter College, Allahabad. The young Indira Gandhi was also a student at this Convent for a short period. In the early 1930s Begum Khursheed Khwaja founded and managed the Hamidia Girls School in the interior of the city of Allahabad to promote education among the relatively weaker section of Muslim women. This primary school has now developed into a Hamidia Girls Degree College affiliated to the Allahabad University. During the days of the Non-cooperation movement she was torn between divided loyalties to her father, a Westernized liberal aristocrat who supported British rule, and her husband, an Indian freedom fighter who, under Gandhijis inspiration, had made a bonfire of his expensive and fashionable Saville Row English suits and switched over to wearing khadi [Indian handspun and hand-woven cloth]. In fact Khursheed Khwaja set fire to all her fashionable garments and donated her ornaments to the freedom movement. She did not waver even when dozens of policemen surrounded the house to arrest her husband, who calmly went along with them for a long stay in the district jail. She died on July 7, 1981 at the ripe age of eighty-seven and was buried in the family graveyard adjacent to the shrine of the Sufi saint Shah Jamal on the outskirts of Aligarh. Returning home from England in 1910 Abdul Majeed Khwaja built up a flourishing legal practice first at the District Court, Aligarh and later at Patna High Court. At the call of Gandhiji he gave up his practice in 1919, joined the Civil Disobedience Movement as also the Khilafat movement, and suffered six months imprisonment. The next six years (19191925) were devoted largely to nurturing the fledgling Jamia Millia Islamia. He resumed legal practice at Allahabad High Court in 1926. Domestic and health reasons kept him out of active politics until the end of 1943, though he continued to support both the Jamia and the Indian National Congress party. The period from 1943 to 1948 was very stressful for Abdul Majeed Khwaja. The demand for the creation of Pakistan based on the Two-Nation Theory caused him great anguish. He had suffered a heart attack in 1942, nevertheless he returned to the political arena and devoted all of his considerable energies to preserving the unity of India. In 1936 Khwaja was appointed as Chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia on the insistence of Dr. Zakir Hussain. Zakir Sahab was subsequently elected as Vice President and eventually in 1967 as the third President of India. Khwaja continued to serve as Chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia until his death on December 2, 1962.
Career
Political work
Abdul Majeed Khwaja was uncompromising in his commitment to Islamic liberalism and secular

nationalism. He was vehemently opposed to the fragmentation of Indian society on the basis of caste, creed and religion and hence the creation of Pakistan. Gandhiji was the only Indian leader he looked up to for inspiration and guidance. He also worked closely with Chittaranjan Das, Maulana Azad, Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, T.A.K. Sherwani and Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. Under Ghandhijis inspiration he gave up his flourishing legal practice at Patna in 1919, joined the struggle for Indian freedom and suffered imprisonment for his role in the Civil Disobedience and Khilafat movement. The raising of the demand for Pakistan by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and others stirred him into actively opposing the partition of India on religious lines. He and some close associates founded the umbrella All India Muslim Majlis to co-ordinate the activities of all Muslims opposed to partition on the basis of the Two-Nation Theory and Abdul Majeed Khwaja was unanimously elected as its President. In this capacity he met the 1946 Cabinet Mission to India at Delhi and also extensively toured the country to influence Muslim public opinion in favor of preserving the unity of India. He and others like him patiently bore the ire of the separatist forces without losing faith in their mission. Though his efforts to keep India united failed, he continued to work to protect the national fabric with stalwarts like Maulana Azad, Maulana Hifzur Rahman Seoharwi, N.A. Sherwani, and others. But for him the assassination of Gandhi on 30 January 1948 was a shock he could never overcome and thereafter Khwaja almost faded out of active election politics in independent India. It was Abdul Majeed Khwaja, who recited the Quran at the funeral service of Mahatma Gandhi. Jamia Millia Islamia was founded at Aligarh on October 29, 1920, as an institution of higher Western style education managed entirely by Indians without any British support or control. The Jamia Millia Islamia was the brainchild of Maulana Muhammad Ali, Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, and Hakim Ajmal Khan. Muhammad Ali was the first Principal of the College, but due to his intense political activism, he decided to abdicate in favor of his close friend and associate, Abdul Majeed Khwaja. The young and dynamic Zakir Hussain was the most prominent student leader of the Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College to join the Jamia at its very inception and formation, and his zeal and commitment to the cause led him to join the staff as an honorary instructor. In this critical period the greatest measure of moral and material support came from Gandhiji through his generous disciple, G.D.Birla. But there were other sources of much needed sustenance also, such as Hakim Ajmal Khan, Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, and several dedicated teachers at the Jamia, like Maulana Aslam Jairajpuri, Shafiqur Rahman Kidwai, Kalat Sahab and Aqil Sahab among others. In 1925, with Ghandhijis and Hakim Ajmal Khans concurrence and blessings, Abdul Majeed Khwaja shifted the Jamia from Aligarh to Karol Bagh, Delhi and handed over charge to Dr. Zakir Hussain, who had just returned from Germany after completing his higher studies in Economics. After the death of Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari in 1936 the mantle of the Chancellorship of the Jamia fell on the shoulders of Abdul Majeed Khwaja. A responsibility he shouldered till his death in 1962. In line with his family tradition Abdul Majeed Khwaja took great interest in the affairs of his alma mater, Aligarh Muslim University. He was a generous donor and served on the Aligarh Muslim University Executive Council for many years.
Educational work
Miscellaneous
He was the author of the book, The Early Life of the First Student of the M.A.O. College, published by The Allahabad Law Journal Press, Allahabad, 1916. Abdul Matlib Mazumdar (18901980), was an Indian freedom fighter and political leader based in undivided Assam State. In 1946, when India was still under British rule, he became an MLA and also Cabinet Minister of Assam. He was one of the prominent Muslim leaders of eastern India to support Hindu-Muslim unity, opposing the partition of India on communal lines. Mazumdar along with Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (who later became the 5th President of India) became the most prominent Muslim opponents of the demand for a separate Muslim state of Pakistan, especially in the eastern part of the country.
Abdul Matlib Mazumdar

Early life
Moulvi Abdul Matlib Mazumdar was born at Barjurai (Ujankupa) village near Hailakandi in southern Assam. Orthodoxy among Muslims of that time could not prevent him from pursuing his studies. He used to swim across a river daily on way to school He was awarded 'Earle Medal' for academic excellence in 1915. Mazumdar took Master of Arts Degree in English literature from Dhaka University in 1921 and B.L. from Calcutta in 1924. He started legal practice at Hailakandi Bar in 1925. He rose to prominence as a lawyer. The then government offered him the post of a Magistrate, which he refused. He was well versed on religion and philosophy. He was a very good rider and was a member of Dacca Riders' Club. Shikar and farming were his hobbies. In the early 1920s, he was at the forefront of the Khilafat Movement as a student at Dhaka. It was during that time that he came into contact with top other Indian leaders such as Ali brothers and became an ardent supporter of Mahatma Gandhi's ideas. He joined the Indian National Congress in 1925. He founded the Hailakandi Congress Committee in 1937 and became its first President. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru visited Hailakandi in 1939 and 1945 respectively at the invitation of Mazumdar to strengthen the freedom movement as well as the Congress party in southern Assam. It was Netaji who initiated establishment of contact between Moulana Abul Kalam Azad and Matlib Mazumdar for gearing up nationalist Muslims against a growing Muslim League in the region. Mazumdar became the first Chairman of Hailakandi township in 1939 and in 1945 he became the first Indian Chairman of the Hailakandi Local Board, a post always held by the European tea planters. The Muslim League proved its might in the Muslim-dominated areas of India in 1937 elections. To counter the rising popularity of Muslim League, he successfully organised the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind movement in Assam. Jamiat was an ally of the Congress having a mass following among the nationalist Muslims. In the very crucial 1946 General Elections just on the eve of Indias independence, he wrested the Muslim majority Hailakandi seat from the hold of Muslim League. That victory virtually sealed the hopes and aspirations of the Muslim League to include southern Assam in Pakistan. It may be mentioned here that in that election, the bulk of the Muslim nominees of the Indian National Congress including Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (5th President of India in later years) had lost to their Muslim League rivals miserably. Assam's Surma Valley (now partly in Bangladesh) had Muslim-majority population. On the eve of partition, hectic activities intensified by the Muslim League as well Congress with the former having an edge. A referendum had been proposed for Sylhet District (now in Bangladesh). Mazumdar along with Basanta Kumar Das (then Home Minister of Assam) travelled throughout the valley organising the Congress and addressing meetings educating the masses about the outcome of partition on the basis of religion. On 20 February 1947, Moulvi Mazumdar inaugurated a convention Assam Nationalist Muslim's Convention at Silchar. Thereafter another big meeting was held at Silchar on 8 June 1947. Both the meetings, which were attended by a large section of Muslims paid dividend. He was also among the few who were instrumental in retaining the Barak Valley region of Assam with India. Mazumdar was the leader of the delegation that pleaded before the Radcliffe Commission that ensured that a part of Sylhet (now in Bangladesh) remains with India despite being Muslim-majority (present Karimganj district). [11]. Moulvi Mazumdar joined as a Cabinet Minister of Assam in 1946 with the portfolios of Local SelfGovernment, Agriculture and Veterinary.
Indian Independence Movement
Post-independence politics
In 1947, India became free from British rule, when Mazumdar again took charge of the same departments in Gopinath Bordoloi's cabinet as the only Muslim minister (Moulana Tayyebulla was inducted in 1948) and also the lone member from the entire Barak valley region. The entire eastern India was swept by violence just after India's partition and independence on 15 August 1947, scores of Hindus fled the newly created East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) for India, and Muslims fled Assam for East Pakistan. A large number of people lost their lives owing to violence, which resurfaced with more ferocity in 1950. Mazumdar, the only Muslim in the cabinet, along with his cabinet and party colleagues took up

responsibility for the safety of both Hindus and Muslims in Assam, touring affected areas and arranging camps and rehabilitation for the refugees, organizing supplies and security. As Assams first Minister of Veterinary, Agriculture, etc., he is credited with the establishment of Veterinary college at Nagaon. He continued as a Cabinet Minister in Bishnuram Medhis cabinet till 1957. His last election was in 1967 when at the age of 77, Mazumdar reached Assam Assembly victorious. He then became the Minister for Law, Social Welfare and Political Sufferers in Bimala Prasad Chalihas cabinet. As Law minister, he initiated the separation of executive and judiciary at the district level. During the Bangladeshs war of liberation in 1970-71, he was in charge of relief-&-rehabilitation of the thousands of refugees who fled the then East Pakistan. He resigned from active politics in 1971. Other posts held by him during his long career are the Chairman, Assam Madrassa Board; Chairman, State Haj Committee and the Pro tem Speaker of the Assam Legislative Assembly (in 1967). He was instrumental in setting up the hajj house [haji musafir khana] at Guwahati. As Chairman of Madrassah Board, he initiated modernization of these theological schools and is also credited for the introduction of English and science in the curriculum of madrassas of Assam. He was the key person to set up centres of higher education at Hailakandi. Moulvi Mazumdar was a socialist of the Gandhian type. He was deeply religious but strictly secular. He also had good command over Arabic, Persian and Urdu languages. His widow Sumsunnahar Mazumdar died in June 1989 at Guwahati. Mazumdar was a silent worker and hence, his works and role during Indias partition on religious lines, especially in eastern India were relatively less publicised. Abdul Matlib Mazumder was to quote Gauri Shankar Bhattacharjee, an opposition leader of eastern India, 'honest, uncorrupt, incorruptible and simple man'. Abdul Qaiyum Ansari (1 July 1905 18 January 1973) was a participant in the freedom struggle of India. He was known for his commitment to national integration, secularism and communal harmony. He was a leader who worked against the demand of Muslim league for creation of a separate Muslim nation from India as an independent state.
Abdul Qaiyum Ansari
Birth and education
He was born on 1 July 1905 at Dehri-on-Sone, Bihar. He was born in a wealthy Momin/Ansari family. After studying at Sasaram and Dehri-on-Sone High Schools, he went on to attend Aligarh Muslim University, Calcutta University, and Allahabad University, though his education was interrupted from time to time due to his active involvement in the struggle for Indias freedom.
Participation in freedom struggle of India and pre-independence period works
He was involved in the freedom struggle of India at a very early age and as a part of the same he left the government run school at his home town. He established a national school for the students who had boycotted government schools in response to the call of the Indian National Congress. For this he was arrested and imprisoned at the young age of 16 since it amounted to participation in Non-Cooperation and Khilafat Movements. He worked closely with the Indian National Congress throughout as a youth leader and even took part in the students agitation against the Simon Commission during its visit to Calcutta in 1928. Abdul Qaiyum Ansari was also an accomplished journalist, writer and poet. He was editor of Urdu weekly "Al-Islah" (The Reform) and an Urdu monthly "Musawat" (Equality) in the preindependence days.
Opposition to Muslim League and formation of Momin Movement
He opposed the communal policies of the Muslim League. Abdul Ansari was against the demand of Muslim League for creation of Pakistan by dividing India. To counter the demand of the Muslim League for a separate Muslim nation he started the Momin Movement in 1937-38. Under this banner he worked for the social, political, and also economic emancipation and upliftment of the backward Momin community which was at least half of Indias Muslim population then. Momin movement supported the Indian National Congress Party which he perceived to be fighting for

freedom for a united India, and for the establishment and development of social equality, secularism and democracy. He also worked for the welfare of artisan and weavers communities, and for the development of the handloom sector in the textile industry of the country. His party fought the general elections of 1946 held on the basis of separate electorates and managed to win six seats in the Bihar Provincial Assembly against the Muslim League. Thus he became the first Momin to become a Minister of Bihar in the cabinet of Bihar Kesari Sri Krishna Singh. Eventually he dissolved the Momin Conference as a political body, and made it a social and economic organization. He was a Minister in the Bihar Cabinet for about seventeen years and held various important portfolios and discharged his responsibilities most ably, building up a reputation for selfless service and integrity.
Post-independence efforts
During the aggression of Pakistan on Kashmir in October 1947, he came forward as the first Muslim Leader of India to condemn the same and strenuously worked to rouse the Muslim masses to counter such aggressions as true citizens of India. As an aftermath of this he founded the Indian Muslim Youth Kashmir Front in 1957 to "liberate" Azad Kashmir. Later on, he exhorted the Indian Muslims to support the Government of India in the anti-Indian uprising of the Razakars in Hyderabad during September, 1948. A champion of the poor and downtrodden, Abdul Qaiyum Ansari worked for the spread of education and literacy and the first All India Backward Classes Commission was appointed by the Government of India in 1953 largely at his initiative.
Death
Abdul Qaiyum Ansari died on 18 January 1973, at village Amiawar of Bihar, while inspecting damages caused to the village by the collapse of the Dehri-Arrah canal and organizing relief to its homeless people. Abdur Razzaq Malihabadi (1875-1959?) was the autobiographer of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. He wrote the books Zikar-e-Azad and Azad Ki Kahani Khud Azad Ki Zubani which was posthumously published after the death of Azad in 1959 from Daftar Azad Hind publications. He participated in the Khilafat Movement where he was a staff member of Jihan-i-Islam a journal in Arabic and Urdu published from Istanbul. He was the founder editor of the Urdu daily Azad Hind published from Kolkata and was very close to Azad during his stay in the 19-A, Ballygaunge Circular Road, kolkata where he stayed during his youth and the period of freedom movement of India. He is the father of current Rajya Sabha TMC MP Saeed Malihabadi who was the editor of Urdu daily Azad Hind after his death. At present the newspaper is owned by Saradha Group. Abdur Razzaque Ansari was a nationalist, freedom fighter and a weavers revolution leader. Abdur Razzaque Ansari Memorial Hospital was established in his honor by Chotanagpur Regional Handloom Weavers Co-operative Union Ltd and the members of his family in Ranchi in 1966. On September 10, 2009, Vice-President of India Hamid Ansari inaugurated Abdur Razzaque Ansari Cancer Institute. Abul Kalam Muhiyuddin Ahmed Azad pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Abulkalam.ogg (Urdu: , Bengali: ) (11 November 1888 22 February 1958) was an Indian scholar and a senior political leader of the Indian independence movement. One of the most prominent Muslim leaders, he opposed the partition of India because he thought Muslims would be more powerful and dominant in a united India. Following India's independence, he became the first Minister of Education in the Indian government. In 1992 he was posthumously awarded India's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna. He is commonly remembered as Maulana Azad; the word Maulana is an honorific meaning `learned man', and he had adopted Azad (Free) as his pen name. His contribution to establishing the education foundation in India is recognised by celebrating his birthday as "National Education Day" across India.
Abdur Razzaq Malihabadi
Abdur Razzaque Ansari
Abul Kalam Azad

As a young man, Azad composed poetry in Urdu, as well as treatises on religion and philosophy. He rose to prominence through his work as a journalist, publishing works critical of the British Raj and espousing the causes of Indian nationalism. Azad became the leader of the Khilafat Movement, during which he came into close contact with the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. Azad became an enthusiastic supporter of Gandhi's ideas of non-violent civil disobedience, and worked to organise the non-cooperation movement in protest of the 1919 Rowlatt Acts. Azad committed himself to Gandhi's ideals, including promoting Swadeshi (indigenous) products and the cause of Swaraj (Self-rule) for India. In 1923, at an age of 35, he became the youngest person to serve as the President of the Indian National Congress. Azad was one of the main organisers of the Dharasana Satyagraha in 1931, and emerged as one of the most important national leaders of the time, prominently leading the causes of Hindu-Muslim unity as well as espousing secularism and socialism. He served as Congress president from 1940 to 1945, during which the Quit India rebellion was launched. Azad was imprisoned, together with the entire Congress leadership, for three years. Azad became the most prominent Muslim opponent of the demand for a separate Muslim state of Pakistan and served in the interim national government. Amidst communal turmoil following the partition of India, he worked for religious harmony. As India's Education Minister, Azad oversaw the establishment of a national education system with free primary education and modern institutions of higher education. He is also credited with the establishment of the Indian Institutes of Technology and the foundation of the University Grants Commission, an important institution to supervise and advance the higher education in the nation.. Azad was born on 11 November 1888 in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. His forefathers had immigrated to India from Herat, Afghanistan, after the Shi'a Safavids took over Persia and Babur established the Sunni Mughal Empire in India. Azad's father was Maulana Khairuddin, a Bengali Muslim of Afghan origins, while his mother was an Arab, the daughter of Sheikh Mohammad Zaher Watri. Azad's real name was Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin who became known as Maulana Azad by everyone. He lived with his family in the Bengal region until he left India during the First Indian War of Independence and settled in Mecca, where he met his wife, Zulaikha Begum. He returned to Calcutta with his family in 1890. Azad began to master several languages, including Arabic, English, Urdu, Hindi, Persian and Bengali. He was also trained in the subjects of Hanbali fiqh, shariat, mathematics, philosophy, world history and science by reputed tutors hired by his family. An avid and determined student, the precocious Azad was running a library, a reading room, a debating society before he was twelve, wanted to write on the life of Ghazali at twelve, was contributing learned articles to Makhzan (the best known literary magazine of the day) at fourteen, was teaching a class of students, most of whom were twice his age, when he was merely fifteen and succeeded in completing the traditional course of study at the young age of sixteen, nine years ahead of his contemporaries, and brought out a magazine at the same age. In fact, in the field of journalism, he was publishing a poetical journal (Nairang-e-Aalam) and was already an editor of a weekly (Al-Misbah), in 1900, at the age of twelve and, in 1903, brought out a monthly journal, Lissan-us-Sidq, which soon gained popularity. At the age of thirteen, he was married to a young Muslim girl, Zulaikha Begum. Azad compiled many treatises interpreting the Qur'an, the Hadith, and the principles of Fiqh and Kalam. A young man, Azad was also exposed to the modern intellectual life of Kolkata, the then capital of British-ruled India and the centre of cultural and political life. He began to doubt the traditional ways of his father and secretly diversified his studies. Azad learned English through intensive personal study and began learning Western philosophy, history and contemporary politics by reading advanced books and modern periodicals. Azad grew disillusioned with Islamic teachings and was inspired by the modern views of Muslim educationalist Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who had promoted rationalism. Increasingly doubtful of religious dogma, Azad entered a period of self-described about atheist and about sin that lasted for almost a decade.
Early life
Revolutionary and journalist
Azad developed political views considered radical for most Muslims of the time and became a full-fledged

Indian nationalist. He fiercely criticised the British for racial discrimination and ignoring the needs of common people across India. He also criticised Muslim politicians for focusing on communal issues before the national interest and rejected the All India Muslim League's communal separatism. Azad developed curiosity and interest in the pan-Islamic doctrines of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and visited Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Turkey. But his views changed considerably when he met revolutionary activists in Iraq and was influenced by their fervent anti-imperialism and nationalism. Against common Muslim opinion of the time, Azad opposed the partition of Bengal in 1905 and became increasingly active in revolutionary activities, to which he was introduced by the prominent Hindu revolutionaries Sri Aurobindo and Shyam Sundar Chakravarthy. Azad initially evoked surprise from other revolutionaries, but Azad won their praise and confidence by working secretly to organise revolutionaries activities and meetings in Bengal, Bihar and Bombay (now called Mumbai). Azad's education had been shaped for him to become a cleric, but his rebellious nature and affinity for politics turned him towards journalism. He established an Urdu weekly newspaper in 1912 called Al-Hilal and openly attacked British policies while exploring the challenges facing common people. Espousing the ideals of Indian nationalism, Azad's publications were aimed at encouraging young Muslims into fighting for independence and Hindu-Muslim unity. His work helped improve the relationship between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal, which had been soured by the controversy surrounding the partition of Bengal and the issue of separate communal electorates. With the onset of World War I, the British stiffened censorship and restrictions on political activity. Azad's Al-Hilal was consequently banned in 1914 under the Press Act. Azad started a new journal, the AlBalagh, which increased its active support for nationalist causes and communal unity. In this period Azad also became active in his support for the Khilafat agitation to protect the position of the Sultan of Ottoman Turkey, who was the caliph for Muslims worldwide. The Sultan had sided against the British in the war and the continuity of his rule came under serious threat, causing distress amongst Muslim conservatives. Azad saw an opportunity to energise Indian Muslims and achieve major political and social reform through the struggle. With his popularity increasing across India, the government outlawed Azad's second publication under the Defence of India Regulations Act and arrested him. The governments of the Bombay Presidency, United Provinces, Punjab and Delhi prohibited his entry into the provinces and Azad was moved to a jail in Ranchi, where he was incarcerated until 1 January 1920.
Non-cooperation
Upon his release, Azad returned to a political atmosphere charged with sentiments of outrage and rebellion against British rule. The Indian public had been angered by the passage of the Rowlatt Acts in 1919, which severely restricted civil liberties and individual rights. Consequently, thousands of political activists had been arrested and many publications banned. The killing of unarmed civilians at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on 13 April 1919 had provoked intense outrage all over India, alienating most Indians, including long-time British supporters from the authorities. The Khilafat struggle had also peaked with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and the raging Turkish War of Independence, which had made the caliphate's position precarious. India's main political party, the Indian National Congress came under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, who had aroused excitement all over India when he led the farmers of Champaran and Kheda in a successful revolt against British authorities in 1918. Gandhi organised the people of the region and pioneered the art of Satyagraha combining mass civil disobedience with complete non-violence and self-reliance. Taking charge of the Congress, Gandhi also reached out to support the Khilafat struggle, helping to bridge Hindu-Muslim political divides. Azad and the Ali brothers warmly welcomed Congress support and began working together on a programme of non-cooperation by asking all Indians to boycott British-run schools, colleges, courts, public services, the civil service, police and military. Non-violence and HinduMuslim unity were universally emphasised, while the boycott of foreign goods, especially clothes were organised. Azad joined the Congress and was also elected president of the All India Khilafat Committee. Although Azad and other leaders were soon arrested, the movement drew out millions of people in peaceful processions, strikes and protests. This period marked a transformation in Azad's own life. Along with fellow Khilafat leaders Dr. Mukhtar

Ahmad Ansari, Hakim Ajmal Khan and others, Azad grew personally close to Gandhi and his philosophy. The three men founded the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi as an institution of higher education managed entirely by Indians without any British support or control. Both Azad and Gandhi shared a deep passion for religion and Azad developed a close friendship with him. He adopted the Prophet Muhammad's ideas by living simply, rejecting material possessions and pleasures. He began to spin his own clothes using khadi on the charkha, and began frequently living and participating in the ashrams organised by Gandhi. Becoming deeply committed to ahinsa (non-violence) himself, Azad grew close to fellow nationalists like Jawaharlal Nehru, Chittaranjan Das and Subhas Chandra Bose. He strongly criticised the continuing suspicion of the Congress amongst the Muslim intellectuals from the Aligarh Muslim University and the Muslim League. The rebellion began a sudden decline when with rising incidences of violence; a nationalist mob killed 22 policemen in Chauri Chaura in 1922. Fearing degeneration into violence, Gandhi asked Indians to suspend the revolt and undertook a five-day fast to repent and encourage others to stop the rebellion. Although the movement stopped all over India, several Congress leaders and activists were disillusioned with Gandhi. The following year, the caliphate was overthrown by Mustafa Kemal Atatrk and the Ali brothers grew distant and critical of Gandhi and the Congress. Azad's close friend Chittaranjan Das cofounded the Swaraj Party, breaking from Gandhi's leadership. Despite the circumstances, Azad remained firmly committed to Gandhi's ideals and leadership. In 1923, he became the youngest man to be elected Congress president. Azad led efforts to organise the Flag Satyagraha in Nagpur. Azad served as president of the 1924 Unity Conference in Delhi, using his position to work to re-unite the Swarajists and the Khilafat leaders under the common banner of the Congress. In the years following the movement, Azad travelled across India, working extensively to promote Gandhi's vision, education and social reform.
Congress leader
Azad became an inspiring personality in the field of politics. Azad became an important national leader, and served on the Congress Working Committee and in the offices of general secretary and president many times. The political environment in India re-energised in 1928 with nationalist outrage against the Simon Commission appointed to propose constitutional reforms. The commission included no Indian members and did not even consult Indian leaders and experts. In response, the Congress and other political parties appointed a commission under Motilal Nehru to propose constitutional reforms from Indian opinions. In 1928, Azad endorsed the Nehru Report, which was criticised by the Ali brothers and Muslim League politician Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Azad endorsed the ending of separate electorates based on religion, and called for an independent India to be committed to secularism. At the 1928 Congress session in Guwahati, Azad endorsed Gandhi's call for dominion status for India within a year. If not granted, the Congress would adopt the goal of complete political independence for India. Despite his affinity for Gandhi, Azad also drew close to the young radical leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Bose, who had criticised the delay in demanding full independence. Azad developed a close friendship with Nehru and began espousing socialism as the means to fight inequality, poverty and other national challenges. Azad Decided the name of Muslim political party Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam. He was also a friend of Syed Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari founder of All India Majlis-e-Ahrar. When Gandhi embarked on the Dandi Salt March that inaugurated the Salt Satyagraha in 1930, Azad organised and led the nationalist raid, albeit non-violent on the Dharasana salt works in order to protest the salt tax and restriction of its production and sale. The biggest nationalist upheaval in a decade, Azad was imprisoned along with millions of people, and would frequently be jailed from 1930 to 1934 for long periods of time. Following the Gandhi-Irwin Pact in 1934, Azad was amongst millions of political prisoners released. When elections were called under the Government of India Act 1935, Azad was appointed to organise the Congress election campaign, raising funds, selecting candidates and organising volunteers and rallies across India. Azad had criticised the Act for including a high proportion of un-elected members in the central legislature, and did not himself contest a seat. He again declined to contest elections in 1937, and helped head the party's efforts to organise elections and preserve coordination and unity amongst the Congress governments elected in different provinces. At the 1936 Congress session in Lucknow, Azad was drawn into a dispute with right-wing Congressmen

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari regarding the espousal of socialism as the Congress goal. Azad had backed the election of Nehru as Congress president, and supported the resolution endorsing socialism. In doing so, he aligned with Congress socialists like Nehru, Subhash Bose and Jayaprakash Narayan. Azad also supported Nehru's re-election in 1937, at the consternation of many conservative Congressmen. Azad supported dialogue with Jinnah and the Muslim League between 1935 and 1937 over a Congress-League coalition and broader political cooperation. Less inclined to brand the League as obstructive, Azad nevertheless joined the Congress's vehement rejection of Jinnah's demand that the League be seen exclusively as the representative of Indian Muslims. In 1938, Azad served as an intermediary between the supporters of and the Congress faction led by Congress president Subhash Bose, who criticised Gandhi for not launching another rebellion against the British and sought to move the Congress away from Gandhi's leadership. Azad stood by Gandhi with most other Congress leaders, but reluctantly endorsed the Congress's exit from the assemblies in 1939 following the inclusion of India in World War II. Nationalists were infuriated that the viceroy had entered India into the war without consulting national leaders. Although willing to support the British effort in return for independence, Azad sided with Gandhi when the British ignored the Congress overtures. Azad's criticism of Jinnah and the League intensified as Jinnah called Congress rule in the provinces as "Hindu Raj," calling the resignation of the Congress ministries as a "Day of Deliverance" for Muslims. Jinnah and the League's separatist agenda was gaining popular support amongst Muslims. Muslim religious and conservative leaders criticised Azad as being too close to the Congress and placing politics before faith. As the Muslim League adopted a resolution calling for a separate Muslim state in its session in Lahore in 1940, Azad was elected Congress president in its session in Ramgarh. Speaking vehemently against Jinnah's Two-Nation Theory the notion that Hindus and Muslims were distinct nations Azad lambasted religious separatism and exhorted all Muslims to preserve a united India, as all Hindus and Muslims were Indians who shared deep bonds of brotherhood and nationhood. In his presidential address, Azad said: "...Full eleven centuries have passed by since then. Islam has now as great a claim on the soil of India as Hinduism. If Hinduism has been the religion of the people here for several thousands of years Islam also has been their religion for a thousand years. Just as a Hindu can say with pride that he is an Indian and follows Hinduism, so also we can say with equal pride that we are Indians and follow Islam. I shall enlarge this orbit still further. The Indian Christian is equally entitled to say with pride that he is an Indian and is following a religion of India, namely Christianity." In face of increasing popular disenchantment with the British across India, Gandhi and Patel advocated an all-out rebellion demanding immediate independence. The situation had grown precarious as the Japanese conquered Burma and approached India's borders, which left Indians insecure but resentful of the British inability to protect India. Azad was wary and sceptical of the idea, aware that India's Muslims were increasingly looking to Jinnah and had supported the war. Feeling that a struggle would not force a British exit, Azad and Nehru warned that such a campaign would divide India and make the war situation even more precarious. Intensive and emotional debates took place between Azad, Nehru, Gandhi and Patel in the Congress Working Committee's meetings in May and June 1942. In the end, Azad became convinced that decisive action in one form or another had to be taken, as the Congress had to provide leadership to India's people and would lose its standing if it did not. Supporting the call for the British to "Quit India," Azad began exhorting thousands of people in rallies across the nation to prepare for a definitive, all-out struggle. As Congress president, Azad travelled across India and met with local and provincial Congress leaders and grass-roots activists, delivering speeches and planning the rebellion. Despite their previous differences, Azad worked closely with Patel and Dr. Rajendra Prasad to make the rebellion as effective as possible. On 7 August 1942 at the Gowalia Tank in Mumbai, Congress president Azad inaugurated the struggle with a vociferous speech exhorting Indians
Quit India

into action. Just two days later, the British arrested Azad and the entire Congress leadership. While Gandhi was incarcerated at the Aga Khan Palace in Pune, Azad and the Congress Working Committee were imprisoned at a fort in Ahmednagar, where they would remain under isolation and intense security for nearly four years. Outside news and communication had been largely prohibited and completely censored. Although frustrated at their incarceration and isolation, Azad and his companions attested to feeling a deep satisfaction at having done their duty to their country and people. Azad occupied the time playing bridge and acting as the referee in tennis matches played by his colleagues. In the afternoons, Azad began working on his classic Urdu work, the Ghubhar-i-Khatir. Sharing daily chores, Azad also taught the Persian and Urdu languages, as well as Indian and world history to several of his companions. The leaders would generally avoid talking of politics, unwilling to cause any arguments that could exacerbate the pain of their imprisonment. However, each year on 26 January, the leaders would gather to remember their cause and pray together. Azad, Nehru and Patel would briefly speak about the nation and the future. Azad and Nehru proposed an initiative to forge an agreement with the British in 1943. Arguing that the rebellion had been mis-timed, Azad attempted to convince his colleagues that the Congress should agree to negotiate with the British and call for the suspension of disobedience if the British agreed to transfer power. Although his proposal was overwhelmingly rejected, Azad and a few others agreed that Gandhi and the Congress had not done enough. When they learnt of Gandhi holding talks with Jinnah in Mumbai in 1944, Azad criticised Gandhi's move as counter-productive and ill-advised. With the end of the war, the British agreed to transfer power to Indian hands. All political prisoners were released in 1946 and Azad led the Congress in the elections for the new Constituent Assembly of India, which would draft India's constitution. He headed the delegation to negotiate with the British Cabinet Mission, in his sixth year as Congress president. While attacking Jinnah's demand for Pakistan and the mission's proposal of 16 June 1946 that envisaged the partition of India, Azad became a strong proponent of the mission's earlier proposal of 16 May. The proposal advocated a federation with a weak central government and great autonomy for the provinces. Additionally, the proposal called for the "grouping" of provinces on religious lines, which would informally band together the Muslim-majority provinces. While Gandhi and others were suspicious of this clause, Azad argued that the Jinnah's demand for Pakistan would be buried and the concerns of the Muslim community would be assuaged. Under Azad and Patel's backing, the Working Committee approved the resolution against Gandhi's advice. Jawaharlal Nehru replaced Azad as Congress president and led the Congress into the interim government. Azad was appointed to head the Department of Education. However, Jinnah's Direct Action Day agitation for Pakistan, launched on 16 August sparked communal violence across India. Thousands of people were killed as Azad travelled across Bengal and Bihar to calm the tensions and heal relations between Muslims and Hindus. Despite Azad's call for Hindu-Muslim unity, Jinnah's popularity amongst Muslims soared and the League entered a coalition with the Congress in December, but continued to boycott the constituent assembly. Azad had grown increasingly hostile to Jinnah, who had described him as the "Muslim Lord Haw-Haw" and a "Congress Showboy." Despite being a learned scholar of Islam and a Maulana, Azad had been assailed by Muslim religious leaders for his commitment to nationalism and secularism,Wikipedia:Disputed statement which were deemed un-Islamic. Muslim League politicians accused Azad of allowing Muslims to be culturally and politically dominated by the Hindu community. Azad continued to proclaim his faith in Hindu-Muslim unity: "I am proud of being an Indian. I am part of the indivisible unity that is Indian nationality. I am indispensable to this noble edifice and without me this splendid structure is incomplete. I am an essential element, which has gone to build India. I can never surrender this claim." Amidst more incidences of violence in early 1947, the Congress-League coalition struggled to function.
Partition of India

The provinces of Bengal and Punjab were to be partitioned on religious lines, and on 3 June 1947 the British announced a proposal to partition India on religious lines, with the princely states free to choose between either dominion. The proposal was hotly debated in the All India Congress Committee, with Muslim leaders Saifuddin Kitchlew and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan expressing fierce opposition. Azad privately discussed the proposal with Gandhi, Patel and Nehru, but despite his opposition was unable to deny the popularity of the League and the unworkability of any coalition with the League. Faced with the serious possibility of a civil war, Azad abstained from voting on the resolution, remaining silent and not speaking throughout the AICC session, which ultimately approved the plan.
Post-Independence
India's partition and independence on 15 August 1947 brought with it a scourge of violence that swept the Punjab, Bengal, Bihar, Delhi and many other parts of India. Millions of Hindus and Sikhs fled the newly created Pakistan for India, and millions of Muslims fled for West Pakistan and East Pakistan, created out of East Bengal. Violence claimed the lives of an estimated one million people. Azad took up responsibility for the safety of Muslims in India, touring affected areas in Bengal, Bihar, Assam and the Punjab, guiding the organisation of refugee camps, supplies and security. Azad gave speeches to large crowds encouraging peace and calm in the border areas and encouraging Muslims across the country to remain in India and not fear for their safety and security. Focusing on bringing the capital of Delhi back to peace, Azad organised security and relief efforts, but was drawn into a dispute with the Deputy prime minister and Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel when he demanded the dismissal of Delhi's police commissioner, who was a Sikh accused by Muslims of overlooking attacks and neglecting their safety. Patel argued that the commissioner was not biased, and if his dismissal was forced it would provoke anger amongst Hindus and Sikhs and divide the city police. In Cabinet meetings and discussions with Gandhi, Patel and Azad clashed over security issues in Delhi and Punjab, as well as the allocation of resources for relief and rehabilitation. Patel opposed Azad and Nehru's proposal to reserve the houses vacated by Muslims who had departed for Pakistan for Muslims in India displaced by the violence. Patel argued that a secular government could not offer preferential treatment for any religious community, while Azad remained anxious to assure the rehabilitation of Muslims in India. secularism, religious freedom and equality for all Indians. He supported provisions for Muslim citizens to make avail of Muslim personal law in courts. Azad remained a close confidante, supporter and advisor to prime minister Nehru, and played an important role in framing national policies. Azad masterminded the creation of national programmes of school and college construction and spreading the enrollment of children and young adults into schools, in order to promote universal primary education. Elected to the lower house of the Indian Parliament, the Lok Sabha in 1952 and again in 1957, Azad supported Nehru's socialist economic and industrial policies, as well as the advancing social rights and economic opportunities for women and underprivileged Indians. In 1956, he served as president of the UNESCO General Conference held in Delhi. Azad spent the final years of his life focusing on writing his book India Wins Freedom, an exhaustive account of India's freedom struggle and its leaders, which was published in 1957. As India's first Minister of Education, he emphasised on educating the rural poor and girls. As Chairman of the Central Advisory Board of Education, he gave thrust to adult illiteracy, universal primary education, free and compulsory for all children up to the age of 14, girls education, and diversification of secondary education and vocational training. Addressing the conference on All India Education on 16 January 1948, Maulana Azad emphasised, We must not for a moment forget, it is a birth right of every individual to receive at least the basic education without which he cannot fully discharge his duties as a citizen. He oversaw the setting up of the Central Institute of Education,Delhi which later became the Department of Education of the University of Delhi as "a research centre for solving new educational problems of the country". Under his leadership, the Ministry of Education established the first Indian Institute of

Technology in 1951 and the University Grants Commission in 1953., He also laid emphasis on the development of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and the Faculty of Technology of the Delhi University. He foresaw a great future in the IITs for India: "I have no doubt that the establishment of this Institute will form a landmark in the progress of higher technological education and research in the country."
Criticism
During his life and in contemporary times, Maulana Azad has been criticised for not doing enough to prevent the partition of India although he was committed to united India till his last attempt. He was condemned by the advocates of Pakistan, especially Muslim League.
Legacy and Influence
Azad is remembered as amongst the leading Indian nationalists of his time. His firm belief in HinduMuslim unity earned him the respect of the Hindu community and he still remains one of the most important symbols of communal harmony in modern India. His work for education and social upliftment in India made him an important influence in guiding India's economic and social development. The Ministry of Minority Affairs of the central Government of India setup the Maulana Azad Education Foundation in 1989 on the occasion of his birth centenary to promote education amongst educationally backward sections of the Society. The Ministry also provides the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad National Fellowship, an integrated five-year fellowship in the form of financial assistance to students from minority communities to pursue higher studies such as M. Phil and PhD Numerous institutions across India have also been named in his honour. Some of them are the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi, the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology in Bhopal, the Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad, Maulana Azad Centre for Elementary and Social Education (MACESE Delhi University) the Maulana Azad College in Kolkata, the Maulana Azad library in the Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh and Maulana Azad Stadium in Jammu. He is celebrated as one of the founders and greatest patrons of the Jamia Millia Islamia. Azad's tomb is located next to the Jama Masjid in Delhi. In recent years great concern has been expressed by many in India over the poor maintenance of the tomb. On 16 November 2005 the Delhi High Court ordered that the tomb of Maulana Azad in New Delhi be renovated and restored as a major national monument. Azad's tomb is a major landmark and receives large numbers of visitors annually. Jawaharlal Nehru referred to him as Mir-i- Karawan (the caravan leader), "a very brave and gallant gentleman, a finished product of the culture that, in these days, pertains to few". The Emperor of learning" remarked Mahatma Gandhi about Azad counting him as "a person of the calibre of Plato, Aristotle and Pythagorus. Azad was portrayed by actor Virendra Razdan in the 1982 biographical film, Gandhi, directed by Richard Attenborough. His Birthday, 11 November is celebrated as National Education Day in India.
Trivia
Maulana Azad was born on the same day as Acharya Kripalani, who also was prominent freedom fighter and succeeded the former as the President of Indian National Congress at the Meerut session in 1946. Comrade Achhar Singh Chhina (18991981) was an Indian communist politician and independence activist. He served as a MLA in the Punjab Legislative Assembly for two terms. In 1962 he contested Member Parliament (MP) election from Taran Taran and defeated by 1990 votes.
Achhar Singh Chhina
Early life
He was born at village Harsha Chhina, Tehsil Ajnala, Amritsar, Punjab, India. Achhar Singh Chhina done his basic studies from Khalsa College Amritsar where he played a pivotal role along with Pratap Singh Kairon former Chief Minister of Punjab. In 1920-1921, the students and teachers of the college registered

their protest against the British rule by boycotting the visit of the Prince of Wales to the college. In 1921 Comrade Chhina and Pratap Singh Kairon went to the USA for further studies. Both joined Berkeley University, California to do Masters in Economics. The same year he joined the Gadar Party in San Francisco and got his first lesson in national politics.
Political career
In 1932 he left America and went to the Soviet Union for further studies on socialism. He returned to India in 1936 and was arrested at Lahore in the same year, and was detained in Lahore Fort for two months.
Fatehwal murder case 1938-39
In 1937 British Government ordered Comrade Achhar Singh Chhina to live in his own village (curfew) for the whole year. In March 1938, on completion of his curfew period the communist party organised a conference on 13 March at Fatehwal village Amritsar, to be headed by Comrade Achhar Singh Chhina and Mohan Singh Batth "and addressed by Gopi Chand Bhargava, Sohan Singh Josh and Begum Fatima. The goondas of Mir Maqbool, the local landlord and parliamentary secretary of the Unionist ministry, disrupted the conference and destroyed the stage. Achhar Singh Chhina and his associates arrived on the scene and held the proposed meeting, despite the impending threat. After Chhina left for Amritsar, Goondas attacked the people who were dispersing. When people retaliated, two attackers were killed, after being pushed down from a roof". Police registered a criminal Case against Comrade Achhar Singh Chhina and Joginder Singh Chhina along with other 47 persons under section 302 IPC. This case was highlighted throughout country and defense appointed a committee to fight a case. The committee was headed by Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru and Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew, the Congress leader and Karam Singh Mann, both lawyers, were actively involved in the defence. Police forced Mr. Ram Lal, a police constable, to give false statement in the court that at the time of murder Mr. Chhina was the main person who attacked the victim; however, he refused to give this statement in the court. Being involved in the Fathehwall Murder Case he had to go underground to escape the clutches of the police and he escaped to Russia to help Bose. The case was defended by Advocate Saifuddin Kitchlew along Advocate Mann where judiciary founded Comrade Achhar Singh Chhina not guilty on all counts and sentenced Joginder Singh Chhina for 20 years against this Case. "The Defence Committee fought the case till the High Court and Succeeded in getting everyone released in 1941". Subash Chandra Bose aka Netaji had first met Comrade Achhar Singh Chhina in April 1939 when he was visiting the Gaya district. At that time Chhina was hiding himself from the police as a result of the Fathewall Murder Case. Chhina sought Boses help and Bose advised him not to give himself up to the Police. In early June 1940 Subhas Chandra Bose surveyed the world war situation and came to the conclusion that Indian freedom fighters should have first hand knowledge as to what was happening abroad and should join the fight against British. After considering the various means with the Comrades of various organisations and parties he found no other alternative but to travel abroad. Initial detail plan of escape was primarily consulted and discussed with Niranjan Singh Talib, editor "Desh Darpan". Sardar Baldev Singh and the former defence minister Government of India. Talib introduced Achhar Singh Chhina name to execute the plan. The executive committee of Communist Party of Lahore decided that Achhar Singh Chhina whose Soviet name was Larkin, one of the organisers of Kirti in North West Frontier, should meet Subhas Chandra Bose in order to chalk out the detail escape plan. Achhar Singh Chhina visited Calcutta and met Netaji. Bose further explained to Achhar Singh Chhina to approach Comrade Joseph Stalin for seeking armed help for India's struggle against Independence, In order to vouch for his intentions to seek Soviet support for India's freedom movement, his speeches should be studied and not the changes in his political principles.For this purpose Achhar Singh Chhina visited the Frontier Province to make arrangements for his escape to Russia. In June 1940 Comrade Achhar Singh Chhina and Comrade Ram Kishan came to meet Bhagat Ram Talwar
Netaji and Comrade Achhar Singh Chhina (Larkin)

in his village in North West Frontier. Bhagat Ram Talwar was member of Forward Bloc and was engaged in secret activities of Kirti Party. They requested him to help Subhas Chandra to reach the border of Soviet Union crossing through the tribal belt of Afghanistan. Bhagat Ram Talwar agree to make arrangements for the stay of Netaji at Peshawar and from there for his escape to Kabul. After making necessary arrangements he returned to Calcutta to bring Netaji to Peshawar, but Bose was arrested for taking part in Black Hole of Calcutta Movement in 1940 and consequently could not avail himself of the opportunity. But Achhar Singh Chhina himself utilized the opportunity and went to the Soviet Union in 1940 by crossing the Hindukush Mountains on foot through Kabul and discussed the possibility of Independence with top Soviet Leaders.In December 1940, Comrade Achhar Singh Chhina (Larkin) submitted the thesis "The National Front in India" to Comrade Stalin. Bhagat Ram Talwar accompanied Subhas Chandra Bose to Kabul and started establishing contact with the Soviet and German embassies in Kabul. Subhas Bose lived incognito and was busy in drawing the detail plan of work. In Kabul his Russian contact did not work out well. Bhagat Ram introduced himself to the German diplomats as Rahamat Khan and also met Alberto Quaroni, the Italian representative in Kabul. Bose tried to enter the Soviet Union twice, but couldn't succeed. After six weeks stay Subhas Bose left Kabul with an Italian passport in the name of Orlando Mazzato with the Soviet transit visa.
Achhar Singh Chhina and international politics
In 1942. The CPI was officially against the Quit India movement. When Hitler attacked his erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union, in 1941, the fight against Nazism overnight became a People's War for all communists. Achhar Singh Chhina [known as Larkin in Soviet Union] was actively involved in international politics. He worked closely with CPI to develop a directive of CPI, and carried that directive from the Soviet Union to India with the full knowledge of the British authorities. In India, it meant communists had to isolate themselves from the mainstream of national life and politics and see British rule as a friendly force since the communists' "fatherland", Soviet Russia, was an ally of Britain. A critical decision affecting the strategic and the tactical line of the party was thus taken defying national interests at the behest of a foreign power, whose orders determined the positions and actions of the CPI. While crossing the Hindukush he was arrested by British government at Gilgit and was brought back to Lahore where he was locked up in Lahore Fort Cell. After staying for 4 months in Lahore Fort, he was transferred to the Campbell pore Jail from where he was released on 1 May 1942.
President of the Punjab Kisan Sabha
In 1942 he was elected as President of the All India Kisan Sabha - Punjab and held this position for seven years. It was in that capacity that he organized the Harsha Chhina Moga Morcha in 1946, as a result of which he was detained in Lahore jail for three months. He also held a post of Secretary of the Punjab Communist Party.
Harsha Chhina Mogha Morcha 1946-47
Harse Chhina Mogha Morcha was an agrarian revolt in Punjab that took place in 1946-1947. The campaign was launched in June 1946 by remodelling the moghas (canal outlets) under the leadership of the Communist Party, which was later joined by all major political parties of the time, to stand against the decision of the British Government to decrease the supply of irrigation water to farmers. The campaign was headed by Comrade Achhar Singh Chhina, Sohan Singh Josh, Mohan Singh Batth, Baba Karam Singh Cheema, Jagbir Singh Chhina, and Gurdial Singh Dhillon. During the campaign all prominent leaders along with 950 protesting peasants were arrested by the police and detained in Lahore jail for three months. As a result of this movement, the British government agreed to provide more farming water to agriculturists as per the previous agreed terms. The participants of the Harsha Chhina Mogha Morcha were later recognized by the Indian government as freedom fighters, and were made entitled to freedom fighter pensions.
After independence
Comrade Achhar Singh Chhina Sr. Sec. School In 1948 after India independence he went underground but was arrested in 1950 and detained in Ambala jail. While he was in jail, he was elected from Ajnala as a member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly

(MLA) in 1952. In 1957 he was again elected from Ajnala as a member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly (MLA) and remained its member till 1962.He was a founder of Naveen Janta Public school which was taken over by the Punjab Government later and the name of the school was changed to Comrade Achhar Singh Chhina Senior Secondary School.
Positions held
Monument Comrade Achhar Singh Chhina President of the Kisan Sabha Punjab Secretary of the Punjab Communist Party Member Punjab Legislative Assembly - Ajnala (19521957) Member of the Legislative assembly - Ajnala (19571962) Member of the Ghadar Party Martyrs Memorial (Desh Bhagat Yaadgar), Punjab Member Gadhar Party San Francisco (1922) Founder of Naveen Vidhya Mandir, School Achyut Patwardhan (Devangar: ; 5 February 1905 5 August 1992.) was an Indian independence activist and political leader and founder of the Socialist Party of India. He was also a philosopher who believed fundamental change in society begins with man himself.
Achyut Patwardhan
Early life
Achyut's father, Hari Keshav Patwardhan, was a prosperous legal practitioner at Ahmednagar. He had six sons of whom Achyut was the second. When Achyut was a boy of four years, Sitaram Patwardhan, a retired Deputy Educational Inspector, adopted him. Sitaram died in 1917, leaving considerable property for Achyut. Patwardhans are amongst the talented Chitpavan Brahmins who migrated from the Konkan region to all parts of Maharashtra and formed mostly the English-educated gentry from the end of the last century till recent times. After finishing his primary and secondary education at Ahmednagar, Achyut passed the B. A. and M. A. examination from the Central Hindu College of Benares. His subject was Economics and he obtained a first class. Achyuts own and adoptive fathers were both Theosophists and, therefore, he was sent to the college founded by Dr. Annie Besant. He was in contact with Dr. G. S. Arundale, the Theosophist Principal of the college, Dr. Annie Besant and Professor Telang. Their influence made him studious, meditative and ascetic. It must also be the reason of his lifelong bachelorship.
Social activities
After passing his M. A. he worked as Professor of Economics at the College till 1932. During this period he thrice visited England and other European countries and came in contact with Socialist leaders and scholars. He studied Communist and Socialist literature, resigned his Professorship and plunged in 1932 into Gandhijis civil disobedience movement. He was imprisoned several times during the next ten years. His aim in joining the Congress, like his associates Acharya Narendra Deo, Jaya Prakash Narayan and others, was to turn the Congress to Socialism. In 1934 he and his associates in jail formed the Congress Socialistic Party with a view to working for socialistic objectives from within the Congress. Achyut was taken on the CongressWorking Committee by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1936, but he resigned in a few months and thereafter resisted Nehrus invitations to join it. From 1935 to 1941 he organised Shibirs( education camps of young men ), to teach them Socialism and to prepare them for socialistic activities. He took a prominent part in the Quit India movement which started in 1942. In 194546 he went underground, and evading arrest, he ably directed the movement of a parallel government mainly in the Satara district. He was called thereafter by many as (The Lion of Satara). The parallel government was established by terrorist methods. It was called Patri Sarkar. Patri was the name given to the terrible and torturous punishments administered to Government servants and people who dared to obstruct the parallel government. These punishments disabled people for life. The ring-leader of the gangs who looted Government offices,

treasuries and trains was Nana Patil. The parallel government thus collected a loot of more than a lakh. Some of the associates in these atrocities were mere desperadoes who knew little of politics or socialism. The Government penetrated into the villages where the Government machinery broke down completely. Achyut personally served the workers in this movement by washing their clothes and cooking their food. He became a popular hero thereafter, not so much for his Socialism as for his bravery and skill in carrying out this underground movement and establishing peoples government in the Satara district for over two years. Annual Sessions of the Congress Socialist Party were held from 1934 onwards. But it was found difficult for Achyut and his co-workers to promote Socialism from within the Congress. In 1947 they formed the Socialist Party of India, independently of the Congress. In 1950 Achyut retired from politics and worked again as Professor in the Central Hindu College till 1966. Since then he was passing an entirely secluded and retired life in Pune, not appearing in public and not even answering correspondence.
Publications
Patwardhan, Achyut (1971). Ideologies and the perspective of social change in India. Issue 1 of Balwantrai Mehta memorial lectures. University of Bombay. p. 42. Retrieved 17 May 2011. The communal triangle in India. Kitabistan. 1942. p. 263. Retrieved 17 May 2011. Alfred John Webb (1834 1908) was a Quaker from a family of activist printers and he became an Irish Parliamentary Party politician and Member of Parliament (MP), as well as a participant in nationalist movements around the world. He supported Butts Home Government Association and the United Irish League. At Madras in 1894, he became the third non-Indian to preside over the Indian National Congress.
Alfred Webb
Early Life in an Activist Family
Alfred Webb was the first child and only son of the three children of Richard Davis Webb (18051872) and Hannah Waring Webb (18101862). The family ran a printing shop in Dublin and belonged to a Quaker group that supported reforms such as suffrage, the abolition of slavery and anti-imperialism. The family press printed booklets for many of these causes, and in turn their regular customers grew to include other such organizations, including the Irish Protestant Home Rule Association and the Ladies Land League, an organization founded by Fanny and Anna Parnell in 1880 that fought for poor tenant farmers.
Career
Alfred Webb was interested in literature and history and began to write a Compendium of Irish Biography. In 1865, he began to take a more active interest in Irish politics. He was inspired by the Fenians, although he believed in non-violence and the Fenians of that time believed that Ireland could only gain independence through an armed revolution. He was first elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom on 24 February 1890, when he won a by-election for the West Waterford constituency. He was again returned for West Waterford in the 1892 general election, this time as an anti-Parnellite MP. His family had taken an interest in the welfare of British colonies and had been outspoken opponents of the opium traffic into China. Webb was a close friend of Dadabhai Naoroji, a key member of the Indian National Congress, who was also a friend of other Irish nationalists including Michael Davitt and Frank Hugh ODonnell. While they attempted to involve Naoroji in Irish politics, Webb was invited by Naoroji to preside over the Indian National Congress in 1894. Webb was a supporter of Anti-Caste, Britain's first anti-racism journal which fellow Quaker activist Catherine Impey founded in 1888. Webb was able to rally subscribers and activists for the journal around the world. For example, although he was not a regular subscriber, Webb and Dadabhai Naoroji co-signed a letter with others to request support for a new association: The Society for the Furtherance of Human Brotherhood. Amar Shahid Bandhu Singh (Hindi: ) was a guerrilla who fought the British.
Amar Shahid Bandhu Singh

Shaheed Bandhu Singh was born on 1st May 1833 in a Zamindar family of Babu Shiv Prasad Singh of Dumari Riyasat. He had five brothers named Dal Hamman Singh, Tejai Singh, Fateh Singh, Jheenak Singh and Karia Singh. He was a devotee of Tarkulaha Devi. He was finally arrested by the British and hanged publicly at Ali Nagar Chauraha in Gorakhpur on 12 August 1857. There is a month long Mela (funfair) every year starting from Chaitra Ramnavami at the Tarkulaha Devi Temple. People from far-flung locations visit Tarkulaha Mela to shop for their annual requirements of Garam Masala (Indian Spices) and to enjoy the traditional Nautanki (drama), Nag Kanya shows and small circuses. Also, Tarkulaha Devi Temple was Shaheed Bandhu Singh's favourite place Ambica Charan Mazumdar (18501922) was an Bengali Indian politician who served as the president of the Indian National Congress.
Ambica Charan Mazumdar
Early life and education Career
Born in East Bengal, Mazumdar graduated from the Scottish Church College as a graduating student of the University of Calcutta. He presided over the 1899 Bengal Provincial Conference at Burdwan as well as the 1910 Conference in Calcutta. He had served as the president of the 31st session of the Indian National Congress in 1916.
Bibliography
Indian National Evolution
Amir Chand Bombwal was a journalist, a freedom fighter in the Indian independence movement, a Khudai Khidmatgar and a political leader of the Indian National Congress Party from Peshawar, NorthWest Frontier Province (NWFP) of British India. He was the founder, editor and publisher of a weekly newspaper called The Frontier Mail and a close associate of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. He lived from 8 August 1893 - 10 February 1972. He was born to a Hindu Mohyal Brahmin family of Peshawar and was the son of Mehr Chand Bombwal. An active member of the Indian National Congress party, he was jailed for participation in the first NonCooperation Movement in 1921-23. This photograph of Pandit Amir Chand Bombwal was taken after transfer from Central Jail to Central Jail while undergoing three years rigorous imprisonment under Section 40 , in connection with the in the North-West Frontier Province of in 1921-23. Wooden identification tablet with the steel ring around the neck indicates the serial number of the prisoner in jail "884", the Section under which punished "40", and the period of imprisonment "3Y", showing from "22.2.21 to 21.2.24" Upon release from jail, he worked to rehabilitate the refugees and victims of the 1924 Kohat riots. Mahatama Gandhi commended him for the service he provided to the riot victims. After the Partition of India, he was arrested without charges, along with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Dr. Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan (known as Dr. Khan Sahib) by the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah who suspected them of undermining the accession of NWFP to Pakistan. They were jailed in Peshawar Central Jail and there was little hope for their release. Upon the death of Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was on friendly terms with them, assumed the reins of power in Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan facilitated their release from jail, and transferred Bombwal to India in 1948, where he arrived on a flight carrying the ceasefire delegation of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947 from Pakistan. After Partition, he settled down in Dehradun, India and continued to publish The Frontier Mail from there. He gifted the Indian people a floor-to-ceiling height oil painting of Vithalbhai Patel that now hangs on right side of the dais in Central Hall of the Indian Parliament. He died in Delhi of natural causes. Upon his death, fifteen trunks containing his documents were
Amir Chand Bombwal

transferred to the National Archives of India. Sir Panambakkam Anandacharlu CIE (18431908) was an Indian advocate, freedom fighter and one of the early doyens of the Indian National Congress. He was the President of the Nagpur session of the Indian National Congress held in 1891.
Anandacharlu
Early life
Anandacharlu was born in the village of Kattamanchi in Chittoor District, Madras Presidency in a Brahmin family. He moved to Madras city at an early age and became an apprentice to a leading Madras advocate called Kayali Venkatapathi. His practise as a full lawyer began in 1869 when he became a member of the Chambed of the Madras High Court.
Legal career
Anandacharlu became a member of the Chamber of the High Court of Madras in the year 1869. Soon he emerged as a prominent advocate and was appoined Leader of the Bar. It was in his Chambers that the Madras Advocates' Association was born in 1899.
Politics
From the very beginning, Anandacharlu was interested in politics and journalism. He contributed regularly to magazines as Native Public Opinion and the Madrasi. In 1878 he helped G. Subrahmania Iyer and C. Viraraghavachariar in starting the Hindu and became a frequent contributor to it. He founded the Triplicane Literary Society (of which he was elected President) and the Madras Mahajana Sabha in 1884. He was one of the 72 delegates at the first session of the Indian National Congress held at Bombay in 1885. He also participated in the Nagpur session of the Indian National Congress in 1891 of which he was elected President. When the Congress split in 1906, he was on the side of the moderates. However, he died soon after the split.
References
A short biography of P.Anandacharlu from an Indian National Congress website Speech Delivered, "Not an Alien Rule" Ananda Mohan Bose (Bengali: ) (September 23, 1847 August 20, 1906), a barrister, was one of the earliest Indian political leaders during the British Raj. He co-founded the Indian National Association, one of the earliest Indian political organizations, and later became a senior leader of the Indian National Congress. In 1874, he became the first Indian Wrangler (a student who has completed the third year of the Mathematical Tripos with first-class honours) of the Cambridge University. He was also a prominent religious leader of Brahmoism and with Sivanath Sastri a leading light of Adi Dharm.
Anandamohan Bose
Early life
Anandamohan was born at Jaysiddhi village in Mymensingh District of Bengal province in British India (in Itna Upazila of Kishoreganj District of present-day Bangladesh). His father was Padmalochan Bose and mother was Umakishori Devi. He passed his matriculation examination from the Mymensingh Zilla School and stood ninth in the examination. He passed his F.A. and B.A. examination from the Presidency College, Calcutta and secured first position in both the examination. In 1870, he received the Premchand Roychand studentship. In 1878, he went to England for higher education along with Keshab Chandra Sen.
Anadamohan and the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj
Anandamohan was a supporter of Brahmo Dharma from his student days. He was officially converted to Brahmo religion along with his wife Swarnaprabha Devi (sister of Jagadish Chandra Bose) by Keshab Chandra Sen in 1869. The young members of Brahmo Samaj differed with Keshab Chandra Sen regarding matters like child marriage, running of the organisation and various other matters. As a result, on May 15, 1878 he, along with Shibnath Shastri, Sib Chandra Deb, Umesh Chandra Dutta and others founded the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj. He was elected its first president. On April 27, 1879 he founded the Chhatrasamaj, the student's wing of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj movement. In 1879, he founded the

City College, Calcutta, as an initiative by the movement.
His political and educational contributions
Anandamohan was the founder of City School and City College in Kolkata. He founded the Students' Association with an objective of promoting nationalism among the students and along with Surendranath Banerjee and Shibnath Shastri organised regular lectures. He was also associated with Calcutta University and was elected a member of Education Commission. He protested against changing the composition of Educational Service. Anandamohan was interested in politics from his student days. While in England, he founded "India Society" along with a few other Indians. He was also associated with "Indian League" founded by Sisir Kumar Ghosh. He was the secretary of "Indian Association" till 1884 and was its president throughout his lifetime. He protested against acts like Vernacular Press Act and the reduction of the maximum age for Indian Civil Service Examination. He presided in the protest meeting against Partition of Bengal held at Federation Hall in 1905, where his address was read by Rabindranath Tagore due to his ill health. Annapurna Maharana (November 3, 1917 December 31, 2012) was an India pro-independence activist active in the Indian independence movement. She was also a prominent social and women's rights activist. Maharana was a close ally of Mohandas Gandhi. Maharana was born in Odisha on November 3, 1917, the second child of Rama Devi and Gopabandhu Choudhury. Both of her parents were active in the Indian independence movement from the United Kingdom. Maharana began actively campaigning for independence when she was fourteen years old, becoming a supporter of Mohandas Gandhi. In 1934, she joined Gandhi on his "Harijan Pada Yatra" march through Odisha from Puri to Bhadrak. Maharana was arrested several times by British and British Raj, including August 1942 during the Quit India Movement civil disobedience campaign. Following independence, Maharana advocated on behalf of women and children in India. She opened a school in Odisha's Rayagada district for the children of the area's tribal population. Maharana also became involved with the Bhoodan movement, or Land Gift Movement, started by Vinoba Bhave. She further campaigned to integrate the Dacoits active of the Chambal Valley. The Central University of Odisha awarded Maharana a Honoris Causa (honorary degree) in a ceremony held at her Cuttack home on August 19, 2012. Maharana died of lengthy illnesses related to old age at her home in Bakharabad, Cuttack, Odisha, at 10:30 p.m. on December 31, 2012, at the age of 96. She was survived by two of her sons. Her late husband, Sarat Maharana, died in 2009. She was cremated with honors at the Khannagar crematorium in Cuttack on January 2, 2012. Governor of Odisha Murlidhar Chandrakant Bhandare and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik described her death as "irreparable loss" to India and Odisha. Annie Besant (1 October 1847 20 September 1933) was a prominent British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator and supporter of Irish and Indian self-rule. She was married at 19 to Frank Besant but separated from him over religious differences. She then became a prominent speaker for the National Secular Society (NSS) and writer and a close friend of Charles Bradlaugh. In 1877 they were prosecuted for publishing a book by birth control campaigner Charles Knowlton. The scandal made them famous and Bradlaugh was elected M.P. for Northampton in 1880. She became involved with union actions including the Bloody Sunday demonstration and the London matchgirls strike of 1888 and was a leading speaker for the Fabian Society and the Marxist Social Democratic Federation (SDF). She was elected to the London School Board for Tower Hamlets, topping the poll even though few women were qualified to vote at that time. In 1890 Besant met Helena Blavatsky and over the next few years her interest in theosophy grew while her interest in secular matters waned. She became a member of the Theosophical Society and a prominent lecturer on the subject. As part of her theosophy-related work, she travelled to India where in
Annapurna Maharana
Annie Besant

1898 she helped establish the Central Hindu College and, in 1902, she established the first overseas Lodge of the International Order of Co-Freemasonry, Le Droit Humain in England. Over the next few years she established lodges in many parts of the British Empire. In 1907 she became president of the Theosophical Society, whose international headquarters were in Adyar, Madras, (Chennai). She also became involved in politics in India, joining the Indian National Congress. When World War I broke out in 1914 she helped launch the Home Rule League to campaign for democracy in India and dominion status within the Empire. This led to her election as president of the India National Congress in late 1917. After the war she continued to campaign for Indian independence and for the causes of theosophy until her death in 1933.
Early life
Annie Wood was born in 1847 in London into a middle-class family of Irish origin. She was proud of her heritage and supported the cause of Irish self-rule throughout her adult life. Her father died when she was five years old, leaving the family almost penniless. Her mother supported the family by running a boarding house for boys at Harrow School. However, she was unable to support Annie and persuaded her friend Ellen Marryat to care for her. Marryat made sure that Besant had a good education. She was given a strong sense of duty to society and an equally strong sense of what independent women could achieve. As a young woman, she was also able to travel widely in Europe. There she acquired a taste for Roman Catholic colour and ceremony that never left her. In 1867, at age twenty, she married 26-year-old clergyman Frank Besant, younger brother of Walter Besant. He was an evangelical Anglican who seemed to share many of her concerns. On the eve of marriage, she had become more politicised through a visit to friends in Manchester, who brought her into contact with both English radicals and the Manchester Martyrs of the Irish Republican Fenian Brotherhood, as well as with the conditions of the urban poor. Soon Frank became vicar of Sibsey in Lincolnshire. Annie moved to Sibsey with her husband, and within a few years they had two children, Arthur and Mabel; however, the marriage was a disaster. The first conflict came over money and Annie's independence. Annie wrote short stories, books for children, and articles. As married women did not have the legal right to own property, Frank was able to take all the money she earned. Politics further divided the couple. Annie began to support farm workers who were fighting to unionise and to win better conditions. Frank was a Tory and sided with the landlords and farmers. The tension came to a head when Annie refused to attend Communion. In 1873 she left him and returned to London. They were legally separated and Annie took her daughter with her. Besant began to question her own faith. She turned to leading churchmen for advice, going to see Edward Bouverie Pusey, leader of the Catholic wing of the Church of England. When she asked him to recommend books that would answer her questions, he told her she had read too many already. Besant returned to Frank to make a last unsuccessful effort to repair the marriage. She finally left for London.
Birkbeck
For a time she undertook part-time study at the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution, where her religious and political activities caused alarm. At one point the Institution's governors sought to withhold the publication of her exam results.
Reformer and secularist
She fought for the causes she thought were right, starting with freedom of thought, women's rights, secularism (she was a leading member of the National Secular Society alongside Charles Bradlaugh), birth control, Fabian socialism and workers' rights. Divorce was unthinkable for Frank, and was not really within the reach of even middle-class people. Annie was to remain Mrs Besant for the rest of her life. At first, she was able to keep contact with both children and to have Mabel live with her; she also got a small allowance from her husband. Once free of Frank Besant and exposed to new currents of thought, she began to question not only her long-held religious beliefs but also the whole of conventional thinking. She began to write attacks on the churches and the way they controlled people's lives. In particular she attacked the status of the Church of England as a state-sponsored faith.

Soon she was earning a small weekly wage by writing a column for the National Reformer, the newspaper of the NSS. The NSS stood for a secular state and an end to the special status of Christianity, and allowed her to act as one of its public speakers. Public lectures were very popular entertainment in Victorian times. Besant was a brilliant speaker, and was soon in great demand. Using the railway, she criss-crossed the country, speaking on all of the most important issues of the day, always demanding improvement, reform and freedom. For many years Besant was a friend of the National Secular Society's leader, Charles Bradlaugh. Bradlaugh, a former soldier, had long been separated from his wife; Besant lived with him and his daughters, and they worked together on many issues. He was an atheist and a republican; he was also trying to get elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Northampton. Besant and Bradlaugh became household names in 1877 when they published a book by the American birth-control campaigner Charles Knowlton. It claimed that working-class families could never be happy until they were able to decide how many children they wanted. It suggested ways to limit the size of their families. The Knowlton book was highly controversial, and was vigorously opposed by the Church. Besant and Bradlaugh proclaimed in the National Reformer: We intend to publish nothing we do not think we can morally defend. All that we publish we shall defend. The pair were arrested and put on trial for publishing the Knowlton book. They were found guilty, but released pending appeal. As well as great opposition, Besant and Bradlaugh also received a great deal of support in the Liberal press. Arguments raged back and forth in the letters and comment columns as well as in the courtroom. Besant was instrumental in founding the Malthusian League during the trial, which would go on to advocate for the abolition of penalties for the promotion of contraception. For a time, it looked as though they would be sent to prison. The case was thrown out finally only on a technical point, the charges not having been properly drawn up. The scandal cost Besant custody of her children. Her husband was able to persuade the court that she was unfit to look after them, and they were handed over to him permanently. Bradlaugh's political prospects were not damaged by the Knowlton scandal and he got elected to Parliament in 1881. Because of his atheism, he asked to be allowed to affirm rather than swear the oath of loyalty. When the possibility of affirmation was refused, Bradlaugh stated his willingness to take the oath. But this option was also challenged. Although many Christians were shocked by Bradlaugh, others (like the Liberal leader Gladstone) spoke up for freedom of belief. It took more than six years before the whole issue was sorted out (in Bradlaugh's favor) after a series of by-elections and court appearances. Meanwhile Besant built close contacts with the Irish Home Rulers and supported them in her newspaper columns during what are considered crucial years, when the Irish nationalists were forming an alliance with Liberals and Radicals. Besant met the leaders of the Irish home rule movement. In particular, she got to know Michael Davitt, who wanted to mobilise the Irish peasantry through a Land War, a direct struggle against the landowners. She spoke and wrote in favour of Davitt and his Land League many times over the coming decades. However, Bradlaugh's parliamentary work gradually alienated Besant. Women had no part in parliamentary politics. Besant was searching for a real political outlet, where her skills as a speaker, writer and organiser could do some real good.
Political activism
For Besant, politics, friendship and love were always closely intertwined. Her decision in favour of Socialism came about through a close relationship with George Bernard Shaw, a struggling young Irish author living in London, and a leading light of the Fabian Society. Annie was impressed by his work and grew very close to him too in the early 1880s. It was Besant who made the first move, by inviting Shaw to live with her. This he refused, but it was Shaw who sponsored Besant to join the Fabian Society. In its early days, the society was a gathering of people exploring spiritual, rather than political, alternatives to the capitalist system. Besant began to write for the Fabians. This new commitment and her relationship with Shaw deepened the split between Besant and Bradlaugh, who was an individualist and opposed to

Socialism of any sort. While he defended free speech at any cost, he was very cautious about encouraging working-class militancy.[citation needed] Unemployment was a central issue of the time, and in 1887 some of the London unemployed started to hold protests in Trafalgar Square. Besant agreed to appear as a speaker at a meeting on 13 November. The police tried to stop the assembly, fighting broke out, and troops were called. Many were hurt, one man died, and hundreds were arrested; Besant offered herself for arrest, an offer disregarded by the police.[citation needed] The events created a great sensation, and became known as Bloody Sunday. Besant was widely blamed or credited for it. She threw herself into organising legal aid for the jailed workers and support for their families. Bradlaugh finally broke with her because he felt she should have asked his advice before going ahead with the meeting. Another activity in this period was her involvement in the London matchgirls strike of 1888. She was drawn into this battle of the "New Unionism" by a young socialist, Herbert Burrows. He had made contact with workers at Bryant and May's match factory in Bow, London, who were mainly young women and were very poorly paid. They were also prey to industrial illnesses, like the bone-rotting Phossy jaw, which was caused by the chemicals used in match manufacture. Some of the match workers asked for help from Burrows and Besant in setting up a union. Besant met the women and set up a committee, which led the women into a strike for better pay and conditions, an action that won public support. Besant led demonstrations by "match-girls", who were cheered in the streets, and prominent churchmen wrote in their support. In just over a week they forced the firm to improve pay and conditions. Besant then helped them to set up a proper union and a social centre. At the time, the matchstick industry was a very powerful lobby, since electric light was not yet widely available, and matches were an essential commodity; in 1872, lobbyists from the match industry had persuaded the British government to change its planned tax policy. Besant's campaign was the first time anyone had successfully challenged the match manufacturers on a major issue, and was seen as a landmark victory of the early years of British Socialism. During 1884, Besant had developed a very close friendship with Edward Aveling, a young socialist teacher who lived in her house for a time. Aveling was a scholarly figure and it was he who first translated the important works of Marx into English. He eventually went to live with Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx. Aveling was a great influence on Besant's thinking and she supported his work, yet she moved towards the rival Fabians at that time. Aveling and Eleanor Marx had joined the Marxist Social Democratic Federation and then the Socialist League, a small Marxist splinter group which formed around the artist William Morris. It seems that Morris played a large part in converting Besant to Marxism, but it was to the SDF, not his Socialist League, that she turned in 1888. She remained a member for a number of years and became one of its best speakers. She was still a member of the Fabian Society; neither she nor anyone else seemed to think the two movements incompatible at the time. Soon after joining the Marxists, Besant stood for election to the London School Board. Women at that time were not able to take part in parliamentary politics, but had been brought into the local electorate in 1881. Besant drove about with a red ribbon in her hair, speaking at meetings. "No more hungry children," her manifesto proclaimed. She combined her socialist principles with feminism: "I ask the electors to vote for me, and the non-electors to work for me because women are wanted on the Board and there are too few women candidates." Besant came out on top of the poll in Tower Hamlets, with over 15,000 votes. She wrote in the National Reformer: "Ten years ago, under a cruel law, Christian bigotry robbed me of my little child. Now the care of the 763,680 children of London is placed partly in my hands."[citation needed] Besant was also involved in the London Dock Strike (1889), in which the dockers, who were employed by the day, were led by Ben Tillett in a struggle for the "Dockers' Tanner". Besant helped Tillett draw up the union's rules and played an important part in the meetings and agitation which built up the organisation.

She spoke for the dockers at public meetings and on street corners. Like the match-girls, the dockers won public support for their struggle, and the strike was won.
Theosophy
Besant was a prolific writer and a powerful orator. In 1889, she was asked to write a review for the Pall Mall Gazette on The Secret Doctrine, a book by H. P. Blavatsky. After reading it, she sought an interview with its author, meeting Blavatsky in Paris. In this way she was converted to theosophy. Besant's intellectual journey had always involved a spiritual dimension, a quest for transformation of the whole person. As her interest in theosophy deepened, she allowed her membership of the Fabian Society to lapse (1890) and broke her links with the Marxists. When Blavatsky died in 1891, Besant was left as one of the leading figures in theosophy and in 1893 she represented it at the Chicago World Fair. In 1893, soon after becoming a member of the Theosophical Society she went to India for the first time. After a dispute the American section split away into an independent organization. The original society, then led by Henry Steel Olcott and Besant, is today based in Chennai, India, and is known as the Theosophical Society Adyar. Following the split Besant devoted much of her energy not only to the society, but also to India's freedom and progress. Besant Nagar, a neighborhood near the Theosophical Society in Chennai, is named in her honor.
Co-freemasonry
Besant saw freemasonry, in particular co-freemasonry, as an extension of her interest in the rights of women and the greater brotherhood of man and saw co-freemasonry as a "movement which practised true brotherhood, in which women and men worked side by side for the perfecting of humanity. She immediately wanted to be admitted to this organisation", known now as The International Order of CoFreemasonry, Le Droit Humain. The link was made in 1902 by the theosophist Francesca Arundale, who accompanied Besant to Paris, along with six friends. "They were all initiated, passed and raised into the first three degrees and Annie returned to England, bearing a Charter and founded there the first Lodge of International Mixed Masonry, Le Droit Humain." Besant eventually became the Order's Most Puissant Grand Commander, and was a major influence in the international growth of the Order.
President of Theosophical Society
Besant met fellow theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater in London in April 1894. They became close co-workers in the theosophical movement and would remain so for the rest of their lives. Leadbeater claimed clairvoyance and reputedly helped Besant become clairvoyant herself in the following year. In a letter dated 25 August 1895 to Francisca Arundale, Leadbeater narrates how Besant became clairvoyant. Together they clairvoyantly investigated the universe, matter, thought-forms, and the history of mankind, and co-authored In 1906 Leadbeater became the centre of controversy when it emerged that he had advised the practice of masturbation to some boys under his care and spiritual instruction. Leadbeater stated he had encouraged the practice in order to keep the boys celibate, which was considered a prerequisite for advancement on the spiritual path. Due to the controversy, he offered to resign from the Theosophical Society in 1906, which was accepted. The next year Besant became president of the society and in 1908, with her express support, Leadbeater was readmitted to the society. Leadbeater went on to face accusations of improper relations with boys, but none of the accusations were ever proven and Besant never deserted him. Until Besant's presidency, the society had as one of its foci Theravada Buddhism and the island of Sri Lanka, where Henry Olcott did the majority of his useful work. Under Besant's leadership there was more stress on the teachings of "The Aryavarta", as she called central India, as well as on esoteric Christianity.[citation needed] Besant set up a new school for boys, the Central Hindu College (CHC) at Benares which was formed on underlying theosophical principles, and which counted many prominent theosophists in its staff and faculty. Its aim was to build a new leadership for India. The students spent 90 minutes a day in prayer and studied religious texts, but they also studied modern science. It took 3 years to raise the money for

the CHC, most of which came from Indian princes. In April 1911, Besant met Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and they decided to unite their forces and work for a common Hindu University at Varanasi. Besant and fellow trustees of the Central Hindu College also agreed to Government of India's precondition that the college should become a part of the new University. The Banaras Hindu University started functioning from 1 October 1917 with the Central Hindu College as its first constituent college. Blavatsky had stated in 1889 that the main purpose of establishing the society was to prepare humanity for the future reception of a "torch-bearer of Truth", an emissary of a hidden Spiritual Hierarchy that, according to theosophists, guides the evolution of mankind. This was repeated by Besant as early as 1896; Besant came to believe in the imminent appearance of the "emissary", who was identified by theosophists as the so-called World Teacher. In 1909, soon after Besant's assumption of the presidency, Leadbeater "discovered" fourteen-year-old Jiddu Krishnamurti (18951986), a South Indian boy who had been living, with his father and brother, on the grounds of the headquarters of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, and declared him the probable "vehicle" for the expected "World Teacher". The "discovery" and its objective received widespread publicity and attracted worldwide following, mainly among theosophists. It also started years of upheaval, and contributed to splits in the Theosophical Society and doctrinal schisms in theosophy. Following the discovery, Jiddu Krishnamurti and his younger brother Nityananda ("Nitya") were placed under the care of theosophists and Krishnamurti was extensively groomed for his future mission as the new vehicle for the "World Teacher". Besant soon became the boys' legal guardian with the consent of their father, who was very poor and could not take care of them. However, his father later changed his mind and began a legal battle to regain the guardianship, against the will of the boys. Early in their relationship, Krishnamurti and Besant had developed a very close bond and he considered her a surrogate mother a role she happily accepted. (His biological mother had died when he was ten years old). In 1929, twenty years after his "discovery", Krishnamurti, who had grown disenchanted with the World Teacher Project, repudiated the role that many theosophists expected him to fulfil. He dissolved the Order of the Star in the East, an organization founded to assist the World Teacher in his mission, and eventually left the Theosophical Society and theosophy at large. He spent the rest of his life travelling the world as an unaffiliated speaker, becoming in the process widely known as an original, independent thinker on philosophical, psychological, and spiritual subjects. His love for Besant never waned, as also was the case with Besant's feelings towards him; concerned for his wellbeing after he declared his independence, she had purchased 6 acres (24,000 m2) of land near the Theosophical Society estate which later became the headquarters of the Krishnamurti Foundation India.
"World Teacher" project
The Home Rule movement
Along with her theosophical activities, Besant continued to actively participate in political matters. She had joined the Indian National Congress. As the name suggested, this was originally a debating body, which met each year to consider resolutions on political issues. Mostly it demanded more of a say for middle-class Indians in British Indian government. It had not yet developed into a permanent mass movement with local organisation. About this time her co-worker Leadbeater moved to Sydney, Australia. In 1914 World War I broke out, and Britain asked for the support of its Empire in the fight against Germany. Echoing an Irish nationalist slogan, Besant declared, "England's need is India's opportunity". As editor of the New India newspaper, she attacked the colonial government of India and called for clear and decisive moves towards self-rule. As with Ireland, the government refused to discuss any changes while the war lasted. In 1916 Besant launched the Home Rule League along with Lokmanya Tilak, once again modeling demands for India on Irish nationalist practices. This was the first political party in India to have regime change as its main goal. Unlike the Congress itself, the League worked all year round. It built a structure of local branches, enabling it to mobilise demonstrations, public meetings and agitations. In June 1917 Besant was arrested and interned at a hill station, where she defiantly flew a red and green flag. The Congress and the Muslim League together threatened to launch protests if she were not set free; Besant's

arrest had created a focus for protest. The government was forced to give way and to make vague but significant concessions. It was announced that the ultimate aim of British rule was Indian self-government, and moves in that direction were promised. Besant was freed in September 1917, welcomed by crowds all over India, and in December she took over as president of the Indian National Congress for a year. After the war, a new leadership emerged around Mohandas K. Gandhi one of those who had written to demand Besant's release. He was a lawyer who had returned from leading Asians in a peaceful struggle against racism in South Africa. Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi's closest collaborator, had been educated by a theosophist tutor. The new leadership was committed to action that was both militant and non-violent, but there were differences between them and Besant. Despite her past, she was not happy with their socialist leanings. Until the end of her life, however, she continued to campaign for India's independence, not only in India but also on speaking tours of Britain. In her own version of Indian dress, she remained a striking presence on speakers' platforms. She produced a torrent of letters and articles demanding independence.
Later years
Besant tried as a person, theosophist, and president of the Theosophical Society, to accommodate Krishnamurti's views into her life, without success; she vowed to personally follow him in his new direction although she apparently had trouble understanding both his motives and his new message. The two remained friends until the end of her life. Besant died in 1933 and was survived by her daughter, Mabel. After her death, colleagues Jiddu Krishnamurti, Aldous Huxley, Guido Ferrando, and Rosalind Rajagopal, built Happy Valley School, now renamed Besant Hill School in her honour.
Descendants
The subsequent family history became fragmented. A number of Besant's descendants have been traced in detail from her son Arthur Digby's side. One of Arthur Digby's daughters was Sylvia Besant, who married Commander Clem Lewis in the 1920s. They had a daughter, Kathleen Mary, born in 1934, who was given away for adoption within three weeks of the birth and had the new name of Lavinia Pollock. Lavinia married Frank Castle in 1953 and raised a family of five of Besant's great-great-grandchildren James, Richard, David, Fiona and Andrew Castle the last and youngest sibling being a former British professional tennis player and now television presenter and personality. The Political Status of Women (1874) My Path to Atheism (1877) The Law Of Population (1877) Marriage, As It Was, As It Is, And As It Should Be: A Plea For Reform (1878) Autobiographical Sketches (1885) Why I became a Theosophist (1889) The Devachanic Plane. Theosophical Publishing House, London, ca 1895. The seven principles of man (1892) The Ancient Wisdom (1898) Thought Forms (1901) Bhagavad Gita (translation) (1905) Study in Consciousness A contribution to the science of psychology. Theosophical Publishing House, Madras, ca 1907. Introduction to Yoga (1908) Australian Lectures(1908) Jainism Man and his bodies. Theosophical Publishing House, London, 1911. Man's life in this and other worlds. Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, 1913. Occult Chemistry (With Charles Webster Leadbeater) Initiation: The Perfecting of Man (1923)
Selected works

The Doctrine of the Heart (1920) Esoteric Christianity. The Future of Indian Politics (booklet), Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, 1922 The Life and Teaching of Muhammad, Madras, 1932 Memory and Its Nature, Theosophical Publishing House, Madras, ca 1935. (With Helena Blavatsky).
Arjun Singh Gurjar (1910 c. 1947) was a freedom fighter for India. He was born in Sirsa, Haryana.
Arjun Singh Gurjar
Role in Independence of India
Born to a Gurjar family, he participated in the Indian freedom struggle.The financial position of his father, Ram Karan Gujar was not strong, which created problems in proper arrangements for his education. Gujar acquired working knowledge of Hindi. The political atmosphere of the town inspired him and as a result he started to attend the public meetings of the congress party which he joined formally during session 1935-36 and became its active worker.
Satyagraha and Quit India Movement
His participation and role in the freedom struggle grew. He emerged and gained such a ranking and respected position in the town that he was allowed to court his arrest during the individual satyagraha Movement in 1941 and was sentenced to rigorous imprisonment in the district jail, Ferozepore. After release from the jail, he was again arrested in 1942 during the Quit India Movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi and was sentenced to one year's rigorous imprisonment in the old central jail, Multan. He remained in the forefront during the course of the struggle until attainment of freedom. Shortly after the attainment of freedom Gurjar died. Aruna Asaf Ali (Bengali: ) (July 16, 1909 July 29, 1996), born Aruna Ganguly, was an Indian independence activist. She is widely remembered for hoisting the Indian National Congress flag at the Gowalia Tank maidan in Bombay during the Quit India Movement, 1942. She was 87 years old at the time of her death.
Aruna Asaf Ali
Early life
Aruna Asaf Ali was born as Aruna Ganguly on July 16, 1908 at Kalka, Punjab, British India, but now in the state of Haryana into a Bengali Brahmo family. She was educated at Sacred Heart Convent in Lahore and then in Nainital. She graduated and worked as a teacher. She taught at the Gokhale Memorial School in Calcutta. She met Asaf Ali, a leader in the Congress party at Allahabad and married him in 1928, despite parental opposition on grounds of religion (she was a Brahmo while he was a Muslim) and age (a difference of more than 20 years).
Freedom struggle: early days
She became an active member of Congress Party after marrying Asaf Ali and participated in public processions during the Salt Satyagraha. She was arrested on the charge that she was a vagrant and hence not released in 1931 under the Gandhi-Irwin Pact which stipulated release of all political prisoners. Other women co-prisoners refused to leave the premises unless she was also released and gave in only after Mohandas K. Gandhi intervened. A public agitation secured her release. In 1932, she was held prisoner at the Tihar Jail where she protested the indifferent treatment of political prisoners by launching a hunger strike. Her efforts resulted in an improvement of conditions in the Tihar Jail but she was moved to Ambala and was subjected to solitary confinement. She was politically not very active after her release.
Family
Her father Upendranath Ganguly hailed from Barisal district of Eastern Bengal but settled in the United Province. He was a restaurant owner and a very adventurous man. Mother Ambalika Devi was the daughter of Trailokyanath Sanyal, a renowned Brahmo leader who wrote many beautiful Brahmo hymns.

Upendranath Ganguly's younger brother Dhirendranath Ganguly (D G) was one of the earliest film directors. Another brother Nagendranath, a soil biologist was married to Rabindranath Tagore's only surviving daughter Mira Devi though they got separated after sometime. Her sister, Purnima Banerjee was a member of the Constituent Assembly of India. On August 8, 1942, the All India Congress Committee passed the Quit India resolution at the Bombay session. The government responded by arresting the major leaders and all members of the Congress Working Committee and thus tried to pre-empt the movement from success. A young Aruna Asaf Ali presided over the remainder of the session on 9 August and hoisted the Congress flag at the Gowalia Tank maidan. This marked the commencement of the movement. The police fired upon the assembly at the session. Aruna was dubbed the Heroine of the 1942 movement for her bravery in the face of danger and was called Grand Old Lady of the Independence movement in her later years. Despite absence of direct leadership, spontaneous protests and demonstrations were held all over the country, as an expression of desire of Indias youth to achieve independence. An arrest warrant was issued in her name but she went underground to evade the arrest and started underground movement in year 1942 . Her property was seized and sold. In the meanwhile, she also edited Inquilab, a monthly magazine of the Congress Party, along with Ram Manohar Lohia. In a 1944 issue, she exhorted youth to action by asking them to forget futile discussions about violence and nonviolence and join the revolution. Leaders such as Jayaprakash Narayan and Aruna Asaf Ali were described as "the Political children of Gandhi but recent students of Karl Marx." The government announced a reward of Rs. 5,000/- for her capture. She fell ill and was for a period hiding in Dr Joshi's Hospital in Karol Bagh in Delhi. Mahatma Gandhi sent her a hand-written note to her to come out of hiding and surrender herself as her mission was accomplished and as she could utilize the reward amount for the Harijan cause. However, she came out of hiding only after the warrant against her was withdrawn in 1946. She treasured the note from the Mahatma and it adorned her drawing room. However, she also faced criticism from Gandhi for her support of the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny, a movement she saw as the single greatest unifying factor of Hindus and Muslims at a time that was the peak of the movement for Pakistan.
Face of Quit India movement
Countdown to Independence
Post-Independence
She was a member of the Congress Socialist Party, a caucus within the Congress Party for activists with socialist leanings. Disillusioned with the progress of the Congress Party on socialism she joined a new party, Socialist Party in 1948. She however left that party along with Edatata Narayanan and they visited Moscow along with Rajani Palme Dutt. Both of them joined the Communist Party of India in the early 1950s. On domestic front, she was bereaved when Asaf Ali died in 1953. In 1954, she helped form the National Federation of Indian Women, the women's wing of CPI but left the party in 1956 following Nikita Khrushchev's disowning of Stalin. In 1958, she was elected the first Mayor of Delhi. She was closely associated with social activists and secularists of her era like Krishna Menon, Vimla Kapoor, Guru Radha Kishan, Premsagar Gupta, Rajani Palme joti, Sarla Sharma and Subhadra Joshi for social welfare and development in Delhi. She was the first elected Mayor of Delhi. She and Narayanan started Link publishing house and published a daily newspaper, Patriot and a weekly, Link the same year. The publications became prestigious due to patronage of leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishna Menon and Biju Patnaik. Later she moved out of the publishing house due to internal politics, stunned by greed taking over the creed of her comrades. In 1964, she rejoined the Congress Party but stopped taking part in active politics. Despite reservations about the emergency, she remained close to Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
Legacy
Aruna Asaf Ali was awarded International Lenin Peace Prize for the year 1964 and the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1991. She was awarded Indias second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan in her lifetime in 1992, and finally the highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna,

posthumously in 1997. In 1998, a stamp commemorating her was issued. Aruna Asaf Ali marg in New Delhi was named in her honour. All India Minorities Front distributes the Dr Aruna Asaf Ali Sadbhawana Award annually.
Anecdote
Aruna Asaf Ali was well known for her Spartan lifestyle she used public transport. In her eighties, once she was travelling in a crowded bus in Delhi and no seat was vacant. A fashionable young lady also boarded the bus and a gentleman trying to impress her, vacated his seat. This lady, in turn, offered the seat to Aruna Asaf Ali who accepted it. At this, that man protested, saying to the lady, "I vacated that seat for your sake, sister." Aruna Asaf Ali retorted with her quick wit, "Never mind, mother always comes before sister."
External links
An Obituary of Mrs. Aruna Asaf Ali by Inder Malhotra in The Guardian A write-up on Aruna Asaf Ali Another write-up on Aruna Asaf Ali Asaf Ali (May 11, 1888 April 1, 1953) was an Indian independence fighter and noted Indian lawyer. He was the first ambassador from India to the United States. He also worked as the governor of Odisha. Educated in the St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and called to bar from Lincoln's Inn in England, he entered the Indian independence movement and was imprisoned many times. In 1928, he married Aruna Ganguli, a marriage that raised eyebrows on the grounds of religion (Asaf Ali was a Muslim while Aruna was a Hindu) and age difference (Aruna was 22 years junior to him). He defended Shaheed Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt as a lawyer, after they threw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly on April 8, 1929, during the passage of a controversial ordinance. He was elected in 1935 as a member of the Central Legislative Assembly from Delhi representing the Muslim Nationalist Party. He was re-elected as a Congress candidate against a Muslim League candidate. He worked as Deputy Leader of the Congress Party in the Assembly. In 1945, Ali came to be the convenor of the INA defence team established by the Congress for the defence of the officers of the INA charged with treason later in November 1945. He was the minister in charge of the Railways and Transport in the interim Government of India from September 2, 1946 before serving as the first ambassador from India to the USA from February 1947 to mid-April, 1948. He was appointed the governor of Odisha, but he resigned from the post in May 1952 on health grounds. His last assignment was as India's minister to Switzerland, Austria and the Vatican; he died in office in Bern.
Asaf Ali
Atulprasad Sen (Bengali: ) (20 October 1871 26 August 1934) was an Bengali composer, lyricist and singer. He is principally remembered as a musician and composer. His songs centred around three broad subjects- patriotism, devotion and love. The sufferings he experienced in his life found their ways into his lyrics; and this has made his songs full of pathos. Atulprasad is credited with introducing the Thumri style in Bengali music. He also pioneered Ghazal's in Bengali, composing about 6 or 7 ghazals.
Atulprasad Sen
Early life
Atulprasad Sen's family hailed from the village Magor in South Bikrampur, Faridpur. He was born in his maternal uncle's house in Dhaka (as was the custom at that time). His father died when he was a toddler. Atulprasad was raised by his maternal grandfather Kalinarayan Gupta, who initiated him in music and devotional songs. In 1890, Atulprasad passed the Entrance examination. Next, he studied at Presidency College in Kolkata, and then went to London to study law. After successfully becoming a lawyer, he returned to Bengal, and opened up a law practice in Rangpur and Kolkata. Later he moved to Lucknow, where he became the president of the Oudh Bar Association and the Oudh Bar Council.

Rani Avantibai (or Avanit Bai Lodhi) (died March 20, 1858) was a brave and was the wife of Vikramaditya Singh, the ruler of the Indian state of Ramgarh. She was a Lodhi-tribe warrior-queen in the area now known as Madhya Pradesh. When he died, leaving his wife with no heir, the British placed Ramgarh under their administration. Avantibai vowed to fight the British to regain her land and her throne. She raised an army of four thousand and personally led it against the British in 1857. When, after a few months' struggle, she saw that her defeat was imminent, she killed herself with her own sword. Benjamin Guy Horniman (1873 1948) was a Irish journalist and editor of the Bombay Chronicle.
Avantibai
B. G. Horniman
Early Life
Horniman was born in Dove Court, Sussex County, England, to William and Sarah. His father was an officer in the Royal Navy. He was educated at the Portsmouth Grammar School and later at a military academy.
Career
Horniman began his journalistic career at the Portsmouth Evening Mail in 1894. Before coming to India in 1906 to join the Statesman in Calcutta as its news editor, he had worked with several dailies in England including the Daily Chronicle and the Manchester Guardian. In 1913, he became editor of the Bombay Chronicle, a daily founded by Pherozeshah Mehta. The paper adopted a trenchant anti-colonial voice and became a mouthpiece of the freedom movement under Horniman. Following the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, Horniman managed to smuggle photographs of the incident and broke the story about the massacre and its aftermath in the Labour Party's mouthpiece Daily Herald. The expos broke through the censorship on the matter and unleashed a wave of revulsion in the British public over the incidents and the Hunter Commission. His coverage of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre and criticism of the colonial government led to his deportation to England in 1919. In England he continued his journalistic crusade against the colonial government and authored British Administration and the Amritsar Massacre in 1920. He returned to India a few years later and resumed the editorship of the Chronicle. In 1929 he launched his own newspaper, the Indian National Herald and its Weekly Herald. He later resigned from Bombay Chronicle to start the Bombay Sentinel an evening newspaper which he edited from 1933 for 12 years. In 1941, Horniman along with Russi Karanjia and Dinkar Nadkarni founded the tabloid Blitz.
Death and legacy External Links
He died in 1948. Mumbai's Horniman Circle has been named in his honour. His memoir, unfinished at the time of his death, was titled Fifty Years of Journalism. A FRIEND OF INDIA: SELECTIONS FROM THE SPEECHES AND WRITINGS OF B. G HORNIMAN. Rao Bahadur Sir Bayya Narasimheswara Sarma, KCSI (Telugu: ; listen Wikipedia:Media helpFile:BNSarma.ogg) (18671932) was an Indian lawyer, politician and activist of the Indian independence movement.
B. N. Sarma
Biography
Sarma was born in 1867 to Bayya Mahadeva Sastry, a Velandu Vaidik Brahmin inamdar in Vishakapatnam, Madras Presidency, now in Andhra Pradesh and had his early education in the Hindu High School, Vishakapatnam. He graduated with first class in his B.A from the Rajahmundry Government College, then under Madras University. He won the Metcalfe scholarship for his academic ability. Narasimheswara Sarma studied law at Madras University and joined the Congress during its Madras session in 1887. He began his career as a lawyer as a member of the Vishakapatnam bar in 1891. He was municipal chairman of Vishakapatnam twice and he did good work to improve the town. As a result of his success in public life, he was nominated to the council of the presidency of Madras in 1906 and

developed a keen interest in politics .He was responsible for the Madras The Land Estates Act(1908), which gave rights to tenant farmers in estates and streamlined estate and inam revenue administration. He was the first president of the Andhra Mahasabha held at Bapatla in 1913. In 1914 he went to London as a member of a Congress delegation along with Jinnah, S.Sinha, Lajpat Rai, Mazhar- ul- Haque and Samarth,where he delivered speeches in Kensington hall and also spoke before groups of British parliamentarians appraising them of Indian problems and the need for political reform. He quit active legal practice at a very young age as he felt it would be contradictory to his position in public life. He became a member of the imperial council in 1916. In 1918 he put forth a resolution in the imperial council recommending linguistic provinces . This was opposed vehemently, ironically by Jinnah. He was a champion of indianization of services and strove hard for the development of industry, agriculture and education and took great pains to develop a well regulated banking system in the country. He strove hard for the amelioration of indentured labor in Africa, Fiji, etc. He was considered one of the foremost authorities in land tenures, revenue and estate matters in the country. He stressed the need for the development of a national capital city and took great interest in the development of New Delhi. He fought with the British establishment for release of adequate funding for the development of Delhi, a fact acknowledged by Lutyens and Baker in their book Indian Summer. Narasimhesvara Sarma was a theosophist from his early days. However, in the beginning, he was opposed to Annie Besant. But when Besant launched the Home Rule Movement, he supported her. Sarma also joined the national education board set up by her . He co-authored with B.N. Basu the Memorandum of nineteen which put the Indian perspective of reforms to the government. He was a committed moderate in his political views and was conservative in his personal life to which many took affront. He was highly respected for his personal philanthropy and many institutions received benefactions from him. When the MontaguChelmsford Reforms were passed in 1919, Sarma differed from the Tilak group of Congressmen and Besant and supported the moderate view that the reforms were a step in the right direction and should be given a chance. He was one of the few members of the Indian Congress to give a speech in the Imperial Legislative Council supporting the reforms while still in the Congress, the other moderates already having left and formed the liberal party. He opposed the recall of Viceroy Lord Chelmsford, on behalf of the moderates for which he was criticized. He was made a member of the viceroy's executive council in 1920 from which he retired in 1925. He held the portfolios of revenue, agriculture, public works, finance and education during his tenure. His Indian colleagues in the council were sir T.B.Sapru and Sir Mohd. Shafi. He was knighted in the 1923 Birthday Honours List as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India (KCSI). In 1924 he was made president of the council of state. when the Andhra University was formed, he presided over its first general body meeting. He was also president of the railway rates commission, a post which he held till his death in 1932.
References
Some Madras Leaders. Allahabad: Bishamber Nath Bhargava. 1922. pp. 4851. Baba Kanshi Ram (11 July 1882 15 October 1943) was an Indian poet and independence activist from the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. When Kanshi Ram was seven years old, he married Sarasvati Devi who, at that time, was five. He went to the village school but could not study any further.[citation needed] Over the span of his thirteenth year, he lost both of his parents. He had to move to Lahore in search of livelihood. It was here that he came in contact with many revolutionaries such as Lala Lajpat Rai, Lala Hardayal, Sardar Ajit Singh and Maulavi Barkatullah for the first time.[citation needed]
Baba Kanshi Ram
Early life and family
Independence campaign
Kangra Valley was hit by a Kangra earthquake in 1905. Kanshi Ram took an active part in a teamWikipedia:Vagueness led by Lala Lajpat Rai. He also attended the Delhi Durbar in 1911. The turning point for him however came in 1919, when the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre happened. He was in Amritsar at that time. After this incident, he returned home to Kangra and started spreading Mahatma

Gandhi's message through his poetry and songs in the Pahari languages. He was arrested for the first time on 5 May 1920 for two years and lodged in the Dharamshala jail along with Lala Lajpat Rai. He was released on 11 November 1922. He was again arrested while reciting self-composed poems at a gathering in Palampur. He spent nine years in various jails, after being arrested 11 times. He continued writing sensitive poetry in jail against the British administration. The title Pahari Gandhi was given him by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru at a rally in Hoshiarpur in 1937. The title stuck with him thereafter. The death sentences handed out to Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev in 1931 had great impact on him. He vowed to wear black clothes till India achieved its independence. He adhered to his vow until he died on 15 October 1943 and came to be known affectionately the Siahposh General (General in Black). Baba Kanshi Ram used his poetry to protest against the British Raj. His verses landed him in jail more than once.[citation needed] An anthology by him of 500 poems, eight short stories and a novelette, covering a number of subjects like metaphysics, mysticism, romance and hardships of farmers of Himachal. Some of his poems are: Angrez Sarkar Da Tigha Par Dhiare ("The British Government is on Her Last Legs") Smaj nee roya ("Society, Do Not Shed Tears") Nikke, nikke mahnua jo dukh bara bhari ("Great Sorrows of Small People") Ujari kangre des jana ("Kangra will be Destroyed") Mera suneha bhukhyan nangiyan yo ("My Call to the Hungry and Poor") Na kar gallan munuan kanne jaane diyan ("Oh Lad, Do Not Talk about Going Together") Kanshi ra suneha ("Call from Kanshi") He was conferred the title of Bulbul-e-pahar (Nightingale of the hills) by Sarojini Naidu, herself called the Nightingale of India.
Poetry
Further reading
Biography by Prof. Narain Chand Parashar Badruddin Tyabji (10 October 18441906) was an Indian lawyer who served as the third President of the Indian National Congress. He was born on 10 October 1844 in Mumbai, India. He was the son of Mullah Tyab Ali Bhai Mian, a Sulaimani Bohra, and a scion of an old Cambay emigrant Arab family. He sent all of his eight sons to Europe for further studies, at a time when English education was considered anathema for Muslims in India. Badruddin Tyabji returned to India in 1867 as the first Indian Solicitor, one of the other brother was sent to Najran for religious studies. Apart from Badruddin Tyabji (who at one time was the vice-chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University ), all of his other brothers were prominent and well respected members of Indian establishment. Their accomplishments included the first Muslim Chief Justice of Bombay High Court, the first Indian barrister and the first Muslim to qualify as an Engineer. He passed the London Matriculation and joined the Middle Temple. He became the first Indian Barrister in Mumbai in April, 1867. He accepted a Judgeship of the Bombay High Court in 1895. In 1902, he became the first Indian to hold the post of Chief Justice in Mumbai. He is considered to be one of the most moderate muslims during the freedom movement of India. He- along with Pherozshah Mehta, K.T. Telang and others- formed the Bombay Presidency Association in 1885.
Badruddin Tyabji
Quotes
"Be moderate in your demands, be just in your criticism, be accurate in your facts, be logical in your conclusions, and you may rest assured that any propositions you may make to our rulers will be received with that benign consideration which is the characteristic of a strong and enlightened Government". From the Presidential Address - Badruddin Tyabji I.N.C. Session, 1887, Madras

Source
Badruddin Tyabji biography Bal Gangadhar Tilak ( pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Ma-LokmanyaTilak.ogg), born as Keshav Gangadhar Tilak (23 July 1856 1 August 1920), was an Indian nationalist, journalist, teacher, social reformer, lawyer and independence activist who was the first popular leader of the Indian Independence Movement. The British colonial authorities derogatorily called him "Father of the Indian unrest" (Marathi: [ ]). He was also conferred with the honorary title of "Lokmanya", which literally means "Accepted by the people (as their leader)". Tilak was one of the first and strongest advocates of "Swaraj" (self-rule) and a strong radical in Indian consciousness. His famous quote, "Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it!" (Marathi: [ !]) is well-remembered in India even today. Tilak was born in the village of Chikhal in Ratnagiri district, Maharashtra. His father, Shri Gangadhar Tilak was a school teacher and a Sanskrit scholar who died when Tilak was sixteen. Young Keshav graduated from Deccan College, Pune in 1877. Tilak was amongst one of the first generation of Indians to receive a college education . Tilak was expected, as was the tradition then, to actively participate in public affairs[citation needed]. He stated: "Religion and practical life are not different. To take Sanyasa (renunciation) is not to abandon life. The real spirit is to make the country your family work together instead of working only for your own. The step beyond is to serve humanity and the next step is to serve God." This dedication to humanity would be a fundamental element in the Indian nationalist movement[citation ] needed . After graduating, Tilak began teaching mathematics at a private school in Pune. Later due to ideological differences with the colleagues in the New School, he decided to withdraw from that activity. About that time, he became a journalist. He organized the Deccan Education Society with a few of his college friends, including Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Mahadev Ballal Namjoshi and Vishnushastri Chiplunkar whose goal was to improve the quality of education for India's youth. The Deccan Education Society was set up to create a new system that taught young Indians nationalist ideas through an emphasis on Indian culture. The Society established the New English School for secondary education and Fergusson College for postsecondary studies. Tilak taught mathematics at Fergusson College. He began a mass movement towards independence that was camouflaged by an emphasis on a religious and cultural revival.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Early life
Political career Indian National Congress
Tilak joined the Indian National Congress in 1890. He opposed its moderate attitude, especially towards the fight for self-government. He was one of the most-eminent radicals at the time. Despite being personally opposed to early marriage, Tilak opposed the 1891 Age of Consent bill, seeing it as interference with Hinduism and a dangerous precedent. The act raised the age at which a girl could get married from 10 to 12 years. A plague epidemic spread from Bombay to Pune in late 1896, and by January 1897, it reached epidemic proportions. In order to suppress the epidemic and prevent its spread, it was decided to take drastic action, accordingly a Special Plague Committee, with jurisdiction over Pune city, its suburbs and Pune cantonment was appointed under the Chairmanship of W. C. Rand, I.C.S., Assistant Collector of Pune by way of a government order dated 8 March 1897. Troops were brought in to deal with the emergency. The measures employed included forced entry into private houses, examination of occupants, evacuation to

hospitals and segregation camps, removing and destroying personal possessions, and preventing plague cases from entering or leaving the city. By the end of May, the epidemic was under control. Even if the British authorities' measures were well-meant, they were widely regarded as acts of tyranny and oppression. Tilak took up this issue by publishing inflammatory articles in his paper Kesari (Kesari was written in Marathi, and Maratha was written in English), quoting the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, to say that no blame could be attached to anyone who killed an oppressor without any thought of reward. Following this, on 22 June 1897, Rand and another British officer, Lt. Ayerst were shot and killed by the Chapekar brothers and their other associates. Tilak was charged with incitement to murder and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. When he emerged from prison, he was revered as a martyr and a national hero. He adopted a new slogan, "Swaraj (self-rule) is my birthright and I shall have it." (Marathi: [ !]) Following the 1905 Partition of Bengal, which was a strategy set out by Lord Curzon to weaken the nationalist movement, Tilak encouraged the Swadeshi movement and the Boycott movement. The Boycott movement consisted of the boycott of foreign goods and also the social boycott of any Indian who used foreign goods. The Swadeshi movement consisted of the usage of goods produced by oneself or in India. Once foreign goods were boycotted, there was a gap which had to be filled by the production of those goods in India itself. Tilak, therefore, rightly said that the Swadeshi and Boycott movements are two sides of the same coin. Tilak opposed the moderate views of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and was supported by fellow Indian nationalists Bipin Chandra Pal in Bengal and Lala Lajpat Rai in Punjab. They were referred to as the LalBal-Pal triumvirate. In 1907, the annual session of the Congress Party was held at Surat, Gujarat. Trouble broke out between the moderate and the radical factions of the party over the selection of the new president of the Congress. The party split into the "Jahal matavadi" ("Hot Faction" or radicals), led by Tilak, Pal and Lajpat Rai, and the "Maval matavadi" ("Soft Faction" or moderates). Nationalists like Aurobindo Ghose, V. O. Chidambaram Pillai were Tilak supporters.
Imprisonment in Mandalay
On 30 April 1908, two Bengali youths, Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose, threw a bomb on a carriage at Muzzafarpur, in order to kill the Chief Presidency Magistrate Douglas Kingsford of Calcutta fame, but erroneously killed two women travelling in it. While Chaki committed suicide when caught, Bose was hanged. Tilak, in his paper Kesari, defended the revolutionaries and called for immediate Swaraj or selfrule. The Government swiftly arrested him for sedition. But a special jury convicted him, and the Parsi judge Dinshaw D. Davar gave him the controversial sentence of six years' transportation and a fine of Rs 1,000. The jury by a majority of 7:2 convicted him. On being asked by the judge whether he had anything to say, Tilak uttered these memorable words "All that I wish to say is that, in spite of the verdict of the jury, I still maintain that I am innocent. There are higher powers that rule the destinies of men and nations; and I think, it may be the will of Providence that the cause I represent may be benefited more by my suffering than by my pen and tongue". The judge sentenced Tilak to six years' transportation and a fine of Rs. 1,000. In passing sentence, the judge indulged in some scathing strictures against Tilak's conduct. He threw off the judicial restraint which, to some extent, was observable in his charge to the jury. He condemned the articles as "seething with sedition", as preaching violence, speaking of murders with approval. "You hail the advent of the bomb in India as if something had come to India for its good. I say, such journalism is a curse to the country". Tilak was sent to Mandalay, Burma from 1908 to 1914. While imprisoned, he continued to read and write, further developing his ideas on the Indian nationalist movement. While in the prison he wrote the most-famous Gita Rahasya. Many copies of which were sold, and the money was donated for the freedom fighting.
Life after prison
Tilak had mellowed after his release in June 1914, more because of the diabetes and hardship in Mandalay prison. When World War I started in August, Tilak cabled the King-Emperor in Britain of his support and turned his oratory to find new recruits for war efforts. He welcomed The Indian Councils Act,

popularly known as Minto-Morley Reforms, which had been passed by British Parliament in May 1909, terming it as "a marked increase of confidence between the Rulers and the Ruled". Acts of violence actually retarded, than hastened, the pace of political reforms, he felt. He was eager for reconciliation with Congress and had abandoned his demand for direct action and settled for agitations "strictly by constitutional means" - a line advocated by his rival Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Tilak saw the spark in Mohandas Gandhi and tried his best to convince Gandhi to leave the idea of "Total Ahinsa" and try to get "Swarajya" by all means. Gandhi, though looked upon him as his guru, did not change his mind. Later, Tilak re-united with his fellow nationalists and re-joined the Indian National Congress in 1916. He also helped found the All India Home Rule League in 191618, with G. S. Khaparde and Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Annie Besant. After years of trying to reunite the moderate and radical factions, he gave up and focused on the Home Rule League, which sought self-rule. Tilak traveled from village to village trying to conjure up support from farmers and locals to join the movement towards self-rule. Tilak was impressed by the Russian Revolution, and expressed his admiration for Vladimir Lenin. Tilak, who started his political life as a Maratha propagandist, progressed into a prominent nationalist after his close association with Indian nationalists following the partition of Bengal. When asked in Calcutta whether he envisioned a Maratha-type of government for Free India, Tilak replied that the Maratha-dominated governments of 17th and 18th centuries were outmoded in the 20th century, and he wanted a genuine federal system for Free India where every religion and race was an equal partner. He added that only such a form of government would be able to safeguard India's freedom. He was the first Congress leader to suggest that Hindi written in the Devanagari script be accepted as the sole national language of India. In 1894, Tilak transformed the household worshipping of Ganesha into a public event(Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav). In 1895, Tilak founded the Shri Shivaji Fund Committee for celebration of "Shiv Punya Tithi" or the death anniversary of Shivaji Maharaj, the founder of 17th century Maratha Empire. The project also had the objective of funding the reconstruction of the tomb (Samadhi) of Shivaji Maharaj at Fort Raigad. For this second objective, Tilak established the Shri Shivaji Raigad Smarak Mandal along with Senapati Khanderao Dabhade II of Talegaon Dabhade, who became the Founder President of the Mandal. Tilak started the Marathi weekly,Kesari in 1880-81 with Gopal Ganesh Agarkar as the first editor. Kesari later became a daily and continues publication to this day. Tilak said, "I regard India as my Motherland and my Goddess, the people in India are my kith and kin, and loyal and steadfast work for their political and social emancipation is my highest religion and duty".
All India Home Rule League
Social contributions
Books
In 1903, he wrote the book The Arctic Home in the Vedas. In it, he argued that the Vedas could only have been composed in the Arctics, and the Aryan bards brought them south after the onset of the last ice age. He proposed the radically new way to determine the exact time of the Vedas. He tried to calculate the time of Vedas by using the position of different Nakshatras. Positions of Nakshtras were described in different Vedas. Tilak authored Shrimad Bhagvad Gita Rahasya in prison at Mandalay, Burma - the analysis of 'Karma Yoga' in the Bhagavad Gita, which is known to be gift of the Vedas and the Upanishads. As noted in Shree Gajanan Vijay, he was devotee of Gajanan Maharaj of Shegaon. Many reference texts of his are available in the epic.
Legacy
The Kesari is still published as a daily newspaper in Marathi. The Deccan Education Society that Tilak founded with others in the 1880s still runs much respected Institutions in Pune like the Fergusson College. The Public Ganesh festival (Ganeshotsav) has become a central part of the culture of Marathi Hindu communities throughout the world. Increasingly, other Hindu communities are also adopting the practice.

Because of Tilak's efforts, Shivaji, the founder of Maratha Empire is the only figure from that era revered by contemporary Marathi masses and Hindu nationalist parties like the Shivsena. The Swadeshi movement started by Tilak at the beginning of the 20th century became part of the Independence movement until that goal was achieved in 1947. One can even say Swadeshi remained part of Indian Government policy until the 1990s when the Congress Government liberalized the economy. Tilak Smarak Ranga Mandir, a theatre auditorium in Pune was dedicated to him. In 2007, the Government of India released a coin to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
Further reading External links
Lokmanya Tilak: A Biography, by A K Bhagwat and G P Pradhan (Publisher JAICO). Shrimad Bhagwat Geeta: Geeta Rahasya by Lokmanya Tilak (Sharda Prakashan) Remembering Tilak Maharaj by Jyotsna Kamat Full & authentic report of the Tilak trial (1908) being the only authorised verbatim account of the whole proceedings with introduction and character sketch of Bal Gangadhar Tikak: Together with press opinion, 1908, Narsinha Chintaman Kelkar Antiquity of the Hindu Calendar, an interactive aid to understanding "The Orion" by Bal Gangadhar Thilak by Kishore S Kumar Frank Herbert Brown (1922). "Tilak, Bal Gangadhar". Encyclopdia Britannica (12th ed.). Tilak born in ratnagiri (Encyclopdia Britannica) Tilak born in Ratnagiri Tilak Smarak photo Tilak Smarak photo Bantwal Vaikunta Baliga (18951968) was a lawyer who played an active role in Indian governance and politics. He was actively involved in Indias struggle for freedom and worked closely with Mahatma Gandhi. He was elected as MLA and subsequently became Law Minister and Speaker of Mysore State Assembly. He died while he was the Speaker of Mysore State assembly. His term as Speaker spanned from March 1962 to June 1968. As the Speaker he was known to be very strict in conducting the House proceedings. He is also the founder president of Karnataka Library Association Vaikunta Baliga College of Law was established in the year 1957 and is named after Late Sri.Bantwal Vaikunta Baliga, a legal luminary and then minister of Law, Government of Mysore.[3] Begum Hazrat Mahal (Urdu: born c. 1820) also known as Begum of Awadh, was the first wife of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah[citation needed]. She rebelled against the British East India Company during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. After her husband had been exiled to Calcutta, she took charge of the affairs of the state of Awadh, seized control of Lucknow and set up her son, Prince Birjis Qadir, as the Wali (ruler) of Awadh, but was soon forced to abandon it. She rejected the promises of allowance and status held out to her by the British. She finally found asylum in Nepal where she died in 1879.
Bantwal Vaikunta Baliga
Begum Hazrat Mahal
Biography
Her maiden name was Muhammadi Khanum, she was born at Faizabad, Awadh, India. She was a courtesan by profession and had been taken into the royal harem as a Khawasin, after being sold by her parents to Royal agents and later promoted to a Pari. She became a Begum after being accepted as a royal concubine of the King of Oudh, and the title 'Hazrat Mahal' was bestowed on her after the birth of their son, Birjis Qadra. She was a junior wife of the last Tajdaar-e-Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah. The British had annexed Oudh in 1856 and Wajid Ali Shah was exiled to Calcutta. After her husband was exiled to Calcutta, she took charge of the affairs of the state of Awadh despite her divorce from the Nawab which then was a large part of the

current state of Uttar Pradesh, India. During the Indian Rebellion of 18571858, Begum Hazrat Mahal led a band of her supporters against the forces of the British East India Company, and was even able to seize control of Lucknow. She declared her son Birjis Qadar as the ruler (Wali) of Oudh. When the forces under the command of the British recaptured Lucknow and most of Oudh, she was forced to retreat. Hazrat Mahal worked in association with Nana Saheb but later joined the Maulavi of Faizabad in the attack on Shajahanpur. One of the principal complaints of Begum Hazrat Mahal was that the East India Company had casually demolished temples and mosques in order to make way for roads. In a proclamation issued during the final days of the revolt, she mocked the British claim to allow freedom of worship: "To eat pigs and drink wine, to bite greased cartridges and to mix pig's fat with sweetmeats, to destroy Hindu and Mussalman temples on pretense of making roads, to build churches, to send clergymen into the streets to preach the Christian religion, to institute English schools, and pay people a monthly stipend for learning the English sciences, while the places of worship of Hindus and Mussalmans are to this day entirely neglected; with all this, how can people believe that religion will not be interfered with?
Indian Rebellion of 1857
Later life
Ultimately, she had to retreat to Nepal, where she was initially refused asylum by the Rana prime minister Jang Bahadur but was later allowed to stay. She died there in 1879 and was buried in a nameless grave in the grounds of Kathmandu's Jama Masjid.[citation needed]
Commemoration Begum Hazrat Mahal Park
On 15 August 1962, she was honored at a ceremony in the old Victoria Park. Here a marble memorial has been built by the state Government in the memory of the Begum as she played a very crucial role during the era of the first freedom movement in 1857. This memorial was adorned with strings of flowers and brightened by multi-coloured bulbs and neon tubes. There is also a marble tablet that has four round brass plaques bearing the coat of arms of Awadh royal family. It is located in the heart of the city, Begum Hazrat Mahal Park once used to be a rally ground. Its been witness to many Ravanas, going up in fire during Dusshera. A number of Lucknow Mahotsavas have also been hosted here. But what you see today is a totally different landmark, a walkers paradise. With pathways that are interwoven into the beautiful, green landscaping in the Park, its also a visual delight of sorts. While the mornings are marked by scores of people walking at different paces, the evenings are relatively inactive at the park. But when the fountains go up and the lights turn on, its a sight most of us can feast our eyes on. And one which comes as a relief from the mundane sight of the traffic zipping past it. It is on the crossing of B.H.M and opposite to hotel Clarks Avadh.
Commemorative stamp
Government of India issued a commemorative stamp in the honour of Begum Hazrat Mahal on 10 May 1984. Bhikaiji Rustom Cama (24 September 1861 13 August 1936) was a prominent figure in the Indian independence movement.
Bhikaiji Cama
Early life
Bhikhaiji Rustom Cama was born Bhikai Sorab Patel on 24 September 1861 in Bombay (now Mumbai) into a large, well-off Parsi family. Her parents, Sorabji Framji Patel and Jaijibai Sorabji Patel, were wellknown in the city, where her father Sorabjia lawyer by training and a merchant by professionwas an influential member of the Parsi community. Like many Parsi girls of the time, Bhikhaiji attended Alexandra Native Girl's English Institution. Bhikhaiji was by all accounts a diligent, disciplined child with a flair for languages. On 3 August 1885, she married Rustom Cama, a wealthy, pro-British lawyer who aspired to enter politics.

It was not a happy marriage, and Bhikhaiji spent most of her time and energy in philanthropic activities and social work. In October 1896, the Bombay Presidency was hit first by famine, and shortly thereafter by bubonic plague. Bhikhaiji joined one of the many teams working out of Grant Medical College (which would subsequently become Haffkine's plague vaccine research centre), in an effort to provide care for the afflicted, and (later) to inoculate the healthy. Cama subsequently contracted the plague herself, but survived. Severely weakened, she was sent to Britain for medical care in 1901. She was preparing to return to India in 1908 when she came in contact with Shyamji Krishna Varma, who was well known in London's Indian community for fiery nationalist speeches he gave in Hyde Park. Through him, she met Dadabhai Naoroji, then president of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress, and for whom she came to work as private secretary. Together with Naoroji and Singh Rewabhai Rana, Cama supported the founding of Varma's Indian Home Rule Society in February 1905. In London, she was told that her return to India would be prevented unless she would sign a statement promising not to participate in nationalist activities. She refused. That same year Cama relocated to Paris, wheretogether with Singh Rewabhai Rana and Munchershah Burjorji Godrejshe co-founded the Paris Indian Society. Together with other notable members of the movement for Indian sovereignty living in exile, Cama wrote, published (in Holland and Switzerland) and distributed revolutionary literature for the movement, including Bande Mataram (founded in response to the Crown ban on the poem Vande Mataram) and later Madan's Talwar (in response to the execution of Madan Lal Dhingra). These weeklies were smuggled into India through the French colony of Pondichry on the subcontinent's south-east coast. On 22 August 1907, Cama attended the International Socialist Conference in Stuttgart, Germany, where she described the devastating effects of a famine that had struck the Indian subcontinent. In her appeal for human rights, equality and for autonomy from Great Britain, she unfurled what she called the "Flag of Indian Independence". It has been speculated that this moment may have been an inspiration to African American writer and intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois in writing his 1928 novel Dark Princess. Cama's flag, a modification of the Calcutta Flag, was co-designed by Cama, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Shyamji Krishna Varma, and would later serve as one of the templates from which the current national flag of India was created. In 1909, following Madan Lal Dhingra's assassination of William Hutt Curzon Wyllie, an aide to the Secretary of State for India, Scotland Yard arrested several key activists living in Great Britain, among them Vinayak Savarkar. In 1910, Savarkar was ordered to be returned to India for trial. When the ship Savarkar was being transported on docked in Marseilles harbour, he squeezed out through a porthole window and jumped into the sea. Reaching shore, he expected to find Cama and others who had been told to expect him (who got there late), but ran into the local constabulary instead. Unable to communicate his predicament to the French authorities without Cama's help, he was returned to British custody. The British Government requested Cama's extradition, but the French Government refused to cooperate. In return, the British Government seized Cama's inheritance. Lenin reportedly invited her to reside in the Soviet Union, but she did not accept. Influenced by Christabel Pankhurst and the Suffragette movement, Bhikhaiji Cama was vehement in her support for gender equality. Speaking in Cairo, Egypt in 1910, she asked, "I see here the representatives of only half the population of Egypt. May I ask where is the other half? Sons of Egypt, where are the daughters of Egypt? Where are your mothers and sisters? Your wives and daughters?" Cama's stance with respect to the vote for women was however secondary to her position on Indian independence; in 1920, upon meeting Herabai and Mithan Tata, two Parsi women outspoken on the issue of the right to vote, Cama is said to have sadly shaken her head and observed: "'Work for Indian's freedom and [i]ndependence. When India is independent women will not only [have] the [v]ote, but all other rights.'" With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, France and Britain became allies, and all the members of Paris India Society except Cama and Singh Rewabhai Rana left the country (Cama had been advised by fellowsocialist Jean Longuet to go to Spain with Acharya, but she had preferred to stay). Cama and Rana were
Social life

briefly arrested in October 1914 when they tried to agitate among Punjab Regiment troops that had just arrived in Marseilles on their way to the front. They were required to leave Marseilles, and Cama then moved to Rana's wife's house in Arcachon, near Bordeaux. In January 1915, the French government deported Rana and his whole family to the Caribbean island of Martinique, and Cama was sent to Vichy, where she was interned. In bad health, she was released in November 1917 and permitted to return to Bordeaux provided that she report weekly to the local police. Following the war, Cama returned to her home at 25, Rue de Ponthieu in Paris. Cama remained in exile in Europe until 1935, when, gravely ill and paralysed by a stroke that she had suffered earlier that year, she petitioned the British government through Sir Cowasji Jehangir to be allowed to return home. Writing from Paris on 24 June 1935, she acceded to the requirement that she renounce sedetionist activities. Accompanied by Jehangir, she arrived in Bombay in November 1935 and died nine months later, aged 74, at Parsi General Hospital on 13 August 1936. Bikhaiji Cama bequeathed most of her personal assets to the Avabai Petit Orphanage for girls, which established a trust in her name. Rs. 54,000 (1936: 39,300; $157,200) to her family's fire temple, the Framji Nusserwanjee Patel Agiary at Mazgaon, in South Bombay. Several Indian cities have streets and places named after Bhikhaiji Cama, or Madame Cama as she is also known. On 26 January 1962, India's 11th Republic Day, the Indian Posts and Telegraphs Department issued a commemorative stamp in her honour. In 1997, the Indian Coast Guard commissioned a Priyadarshini-class fast patrol vessel ICGS Bikhaiji Cama after Bikhaiji Cama. Following Cama's 1907 Stuttgart address, the flag she raised there was smuggled into British India by Idulal Yagnik and is now on display at the Maratha and Kesari Library in Pune. In 2004, politicians of the BJP, India's Hindu nationalist party, attempted to identify a later design (from the 1920s) as the flag Cama raised in Stuttgart. The flag Cama raised misrepresented as "original national Tricolour" has an (Islamic) crescent and a (Hindu) sun, which the later design does not have. Bhikaiji Cama is the subject of several biographies: Sethna, Khorshed Adi (1987), Madam Bhikhaiji Rustom Cama, Builders of Modern India, New Delhi: Government of India Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Kumar, Raj; Devi, Rameshwari; Pruthi, Romila, eds. (1998), Madame Bhikhaiji Cama, (Women and the Indian Freedom Struggle, vol. 3), Jaipur: Pointer, ISBN 81-7132-162-3. Yadav, Bishamber Dayal; Bakshi, Shiri Ram (1992), Madam Cama: A True Nationalist, (Indian Freedom Fighters, vol. 31), New Delhi: Anmol, ISBN 81-7041-526-8.
Legacy
Dr Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya (December 24, 1880 December 17, 1959) was born in a Telugu Niyogi Brahmin family in Gundugolanu village, Krishna district (now part of West Godavari district) in Andhra Pradesh, was an Indian independence activist and political leader in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Pattabhi graduated from the prestigious Madras Christian College, fulfilled his ambition to become a medical practitioner by securing a M.B.C.M. degree. He started his practice as a doctor in the coastal town of Machilipatnam, the then headquarters of Krishna District and the political centre of Andhra. He left his lucrative practice to join the freedom fighting movement. During the years 1912-13, when there was a great controversy over the desirability of forming a separate province for Andhra, he wrote a number of articles in "The Hindu" and other journals explaining the need for immediate formation of linguistic provinces. At the Lucknow session of the Congress in 1916, he demanded the formation of separate Congress circle for Andhra. The demand was opposed by Mahatma Gandhi, but as Tilak supported Pattabhi, the Andhra Congress Committee came into existence in 1918. He was a member of the Working Committee of the Congress for a number of years and the President of Andhra Provincial Congress Committee during the
Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya

years 1937-40. He ran for the presidency of the Indian National Congress as the candidate closest to Mohandas Gandhi, against the more-radical Subhas Bose in Tripura Session of 1939. He lost owing to Bose's rising popularity and the belief that Pattabhi favoured the inclusion of Tamil-majority districts in a future Telugu state in independent India. Serving on the Congress Working Committee when Quit India was launched in 1942, Pattabhi was arrested with the entire committee and incarcerated for three years without outside contact in the fort in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. During this time he maintained a detailed diary of day-to-day life during imprisonment, which was published later as Feathers and Stones .He is also the author of The History of the Congress published in 1935 with an introductory note given by the Rajendra Prasad. His other popular publication was Gandhi and Gandhism . He ran successfully for Congress presidency in 1948, winning with the support of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India. He was a member of the J.V.P. Committee( Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Pattabhi) which formally rejected the reorganization of states on linguistic lines but after a 56 day hunger strike by Potti Sriramulu the formation of Andhra State without Madras City took place. Prior to this he served as a member in the Constituent Assembly, in 1952 he was elected to Rajya Sabha. Pattabhi also served as the Governor of Madhya Pradesh from 1952 to 1957. He established Andhra Bank in Machilipatnam on 28 November 1923 which is currently one of the major commercial banks of India. He also started Andhra Insurance Company and Bhagyalakshmi Bank. Bhupendra Nath Bose (18591924) was an Indian politician and President of the Indian National Congress in 1914. Bose was born in Krishnanagar, West Bengal in 1859. He graduated from the Presidency College, Calcutta in 1880. He completed his master's degree in 1881 and his law degree in 1883. From 1904 to 1910, Bose was a member of the Bengal Legislature. During this period, he was involved in the nationalist movement. In 1905 he presided over the Bengal Provincial Conference held at Mymensingh. He joined the anti-partition agitation and campaign against British goods throughout Bengal. He opposed the passing of the Press Act in 1910. He became the President of the Indian National Congress in 1914. Bose was a member and under-secretary in the Council of the Secretary of State for India from 1917 to 1923. In 1923 he was made a member of the Executive Council of the Governor of Bengal. He then became the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta. He was the first president of Mohun Bagan AC, Calcutta. He died in 1924.
Bhupendra Nath Bose
Family
His grandson was Kamal Basu, a member of parliament from West Bengal and later the mayor of Calcutta.
References and sources

References Sources Bhupendra Nath Bose
Bijayananda Patnaik (5 March 1916 17 April 1997), better known as Biju Patnaik (Oriya: ) or Biju Babu was an Indian politician and Chief Minister of Odisha for two terms.
Biju Patnaik
Early life
Biju Patnaik was born on 5 March 1916 to Lakshminarayan and Ashalata Patnaik. His parents belong to G.Nuagan, Bhanjanagar, Ganjam district, around 80 km from Bramhapur). He was educated at

Ravenshaw College in Odisha but due to his interest in aviation he dropped out and trained as a pilot. Patnaik flew with private airlines but at the start of the second world war he joined the Royal Indian Air Force eventually becoming head of air transport command. While in service he began an interest in nationalist politics and used air force transports to deliver what was seen as subversive literature to Indian troops. But Patnaik remained committed to fighting the axis powers and when he was jailed for his illegal activities he only served two years in prison. Shortly after independence Pakistani tribesman invaded Kashmir and at Nehru's request he helped airlift the first Indian soldiers into Srinagar.
Role in Indonesian freedom struggle
Biju Patnaik came in contact with Nehru during his participation in Indian freedom struggle. He became one of his trusted friends. Nehru was sympathetic to the freedom struggle of the Indonesian people who had traditional links with Indian sub-continent from the ancient days. Indonesia was under Dutch rule from 1816 to 1941 when it was occupied by the Japanese. The Indonesian freedom fighters declared the independence of Indonesia on 17 August 1945 two days after the Japanese collapse in the Second World War. The Dutch tried to regain control over these territories and started fomenting trouble for the new Government. The new Government under Dr. Sukarno as President, launched a vigorous propaganda activity to gain support for their cause. Dr. Sjahrir who became Prime Minister of Indonesia on 14 November 1945 was a trusted lieutenant of Dr. Sukarno. He also became friendly with Nehru who was at that time the Foreign Minister and the leader of the Interim Government of India. In July 1946, Government of Indonesia concluded an agreement with India Government to supply 40,00,000 tonnes of rice in exchange of textile, agricultural implements, tyres and other goods which India would send to Indonesia for her economic rehabilitation. On 23 March 1947 Nehru called 22 Asian countries for First Inter-Asia Conference to which Sjahrir was specially invited. He addressed the conference after concluding the agreement with Dutch on 25 March. The Dutch continued to foment trouble on one pretext or the other. Finally they launched a large scale attack on Indonesia on 21 July 1947. Immediately President Sukarno consulted Sjahrir and ordered him to leave the country to create international public opinion against the Dutch and also persuade the friendly countries to raise the issue before the UNO. He tried to come out but could not succeed as the Dutch had absolute control over Indonesian sea and air routes. He was also under surveillance. Nehru came to his help at this critical juncture. He entrusted this task to Biju Patnaik, who was an expert Pilot and was famous for his passion for adventurous achievements. Biju Patnaik sprang up to instant action. As an avid reader of the history of Kalinga, Biju knew how Kalinga and Indonesia had a longstanding cultural link in the past and the opportunity now at hand to render some service to the people of Indonesia at their crucial hour of need should never be lost sight of. He braved all hazards. He flew to Java and brought Sultan Sjahrir aboard from Java islands on 22 July 1947 using a Dakota and reached India via Singapore on 24 July. Sjahrir was successful in his mission at last. For his act of bravery Patnaik was given honorary citizenship of Indonesia and awarded 'Bhoomi Putra', the highest Indonesian award and a rare distinction ever granted to a foreigner. Patnaik's political ideals were centred in socialism and federalism. His strong advocacy for equal resources to all Indian states who needed such, made him a champion of his Oriya constituents. In 1946 Patnaik was elected uncontested to the Odisha Legislative Assembly from North Cuttack constituency. In 1952 and 1957 he won from Jagannath Prasad and Surada, respectively. In 1961 he assumed the presidency of the state Congress. Under his leadership, the Congress Party won 82 of 140 seats and Patnaik (representing Chowdwar constituency) became the chief minister of Odisha on 23 June 1961 and remained in the position until 2 October 1963 when he resigned from the post under the Kamaraj Plan to revitalise the Congress party. He was the Chief Minister of Odisha at the age of 45. Patnaik was close to Indira Gandhi who took over the Congress Party in 1967. However, they clashed in 1969 over the Presidential election. He left the Congress and formed a regional partythe Utkal Congress. In the 1971 assembly poll, his party did reasonably well. Patnaik then re-established contact with his old friend Jayaprakash Narayan and plunged into the JP movement as it picked up momentum in 1974. When the Emergency was declared in 1975, Biju Patnaik was one of the first to be arrested along
Politics in independent India

with other opposition leaders. He was released in 1977. Later, in the same year, he was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time from Kendrapara and became Union minister for steel and mines in both the Morarji Desai and the Charan Singh governments until 1979. He was re-elected to the Lok Sabha again in 1980 and 1984 from Kendrapara as Janata Party candidate despite the Congress wave in 1984 following Indira Gandhi's death. With the Congress defeat in 1989, he bounced back into the political limelight. However, after playing a key behind-the-scenes role in manoeuvring V.P.Singh to the Prime Minister's post, he again chose to go back to Odisha, and prepared for the assembly election. In 1990 state assembly election, the Janata Dal received a thumping majority (two third assembly seats) which saw Biju Patnaik being the Chief Minister of Odisha for the second time until 1995. He was re-elected to the Lok Sabha in 1996 from Cuttack and Aska constituencies as a Janata Dal candidate. He retained the latter until his death on 17 April 1997 of cardio-respiratory failure. In 1992, Bijayananda Patnaik left this quote for the people of Odisha; "In my dream of the 21st century for the State, I would have young men and women who put the interest of the State before them. They will have pride in themselves, confidence in themselves. They will not be at anybodys mercy, except their own selves. By their brains, intelligence and capacity, they will recapture the history of Kalinga."
Achievements as a public representative
Biju Patnaik set up Kalinga tubes, Kalinga Airlines, Kalinga Iron work, Kalinga Refractories and the Kalinga, a daily Oriya Newspaper. In 1951 he established the international Kalinga Prize for popularisation of Science and Technology among the people and entrusted the responsibility to the UNESCO. The projects which he was known to have spearheaded includes the Hirakud Dam, Port of Paradip, Orissa aviation centre, Bhubaneswar Airport, the Cuttack-Jagatpur Mahanadi highway bridge, Regional Engineering College, Rourkela, Sainik School Bhubaneswar, Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology-Bhubaneswar, NALCO (National Aluminum Company), Rourkela Steel Plant and the Choudwar & Barbil industrial belts. He also established the Kalinga Cup in football.
Family
Biju Patnaik was married to Gyan Patnaik. Biju Patnaik's son, Naveen Patnaik, is the current Chief Minister of Odisha. His daughter, Gita Mehta, is an English writer. His elder son Prem Patnaik is a Delhi based industrialist.
Popular incidents and quotes
Paradeep Port: Patnaik was keen to build the port at Paradeep. When the Central government refused to give funds to build the Paradeep port, he said: To hell with the Government of India. I will build the port with state government and my own money. And he spent Rs 1.60 billion on it. Later, of course, Nehru sanctioned funds for the project. Today that is Odisha's most prominent port. Nehru and Patnaik: Nehru Patnaik "India's buccaneer". When Nehru was criticised in the Parliament for his decision to provide more aid to Odisha. Nehru replied, '"Biju Patnaik has the courage, dynamism and zeal to work. So there is no blunder in giving more aid to Odisha." During the Sino-Indian War in 1962, Nehru consulted the Oriya leader repeatedly for advice. For sometime he was Nehru's defence advisor, unofficially of course. 'The prime minister was dazzled by Mr Patnaik's familiarity with military subjects,' wrote a political commentator of the time. Anti-corruption stand: To fight against corruption he once proclaimed 'beat up all corrupt officials'. Although his government failed to control and defeat corruption.[citation needed] On death: When a journalist asked in him on his 79th birthday how he would like to die, he had quipped, 'I would like to die in an air crash rather than from prolonged illness. I would like to die instantly, just fall down and die'. This was later narrated by one of Biju Patnaik's close associates Mr.Manas Ranjan,Advocate. On Odisha and for Oriyas: To be born poor is not a crime but to remain so is indeed a crime'. 'Be loyal not to me but to the destiny of the State'. 'Odisha is a rich state where poor people live'. 'Be a pride

to your State and not a shame'.
Memorials
The Government of Odisha has named several institutions after the name of Biju Patanaik. They include the Biju Patnaik Airport at Bhubaneswar, the Biju Patnaik University of Technology, etc. Also his son Naveen Patanaik made his birthday March 5 as the Panchayat Raj Divas, a holiday in Odisha in his memory.
Birsa Munda pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Birsa Munda.ogg (18751900) was an Indian tribal freedom fighter and a folk hero, who belonged to the Munda tribe, and was behind the Millenarian movement that rose in the tribal belt of modern day Bihar, and Jharkhand during the British Raj, in the late 19th century, thereby making him an important figure in the history of the Indian independence movement. His portrait hangs in the Central Hall of Indian Parliament, the only tribal leader to have been so honoured. Birsa Munda is named with great respect as one of the freedom fighters in the Indian struggle for independence against British colonialism. His achievements in the freedom struggle became even greater considering he accomplished this before his 25th year.
Birsa Munda
Early Childhood
Birsa Munda was born on 15 November in the year 1875 on a Thursday. and hence was named after the day of his birth according to the then prevalent Munda custom. The folk songs reflect popular confusion and refer to both Ulihatu and Chalkad as his birthplace. Ulihatu was the birthplace of Sugana Munda, father of Birsa. The claim of Ulihatu rests on Birsas elder brother Komta Munda living in the village and on his house which still exists albeit in a dilapidated condition. Birsas father, mother Karmi Hatu, and younger brother, Pasna Munda, left Ulihatu and proceeded to Kurumbda near Birbanki in search of employment as labourers or crop-sharers (sajhadar) or ryots. At Kurmbda Birsas elder brother, Komta, and his sister, Daskir, were born. From there the family moved to Bamba where Birsas elder sister Champa was born followed by himself. Soon after Birsas birth, his family left Bamba. A quarrel between the Mundas and their ryots in which his father was involved as a witness was the immediate reason for proceeding to Chalkad, Suganas mothers village, where they were granted refuge by Bir Singh, the Munda of the village. Birsas birth ceremony was performed at Chalkad. As a Munda, he was very respectable in the society and also it was said that Birsa had the strength of 100 elephants as he was seen bending British rifles by his own hands and also he was seen tearing machines made by the British in the factories that they attacked. Birsa Munda had a very nice and joyful childhood. He was a boy living with Britishers. Birsas early years were spent with his parents at Chalkad. His early life could not have been very different from that of an average Munda child. Folklore refers to his rolling and playing in sand and dust with his friends, and his growing up strong and handsome in looks; he grazed sheep in the forest of Bohonda. When he grew up, he shared an interest in playing the flute, in which he became adept, and so movingly did he play that all living beings came out to listen to him. He went round with the tuila, the one-stringed instrument made from the pumpkin, in the hand and the flute strung to his waist. Exciting moments of his childhood were spent on the akhara (the village dancing ground). One of his ideal contemporaries and who went out with him, however, heard him speak of strange things. Driven by poverty Birsa was taken to Ayubhatu, his maternal uncles village. Komta Munda, his eldest brother, who was ten years of age, went to Kundi Bartoli, entered the service of a Munda, married and lived there for eight years, and then joined his father and younger brother at Chalkad. At Ayubhatu Birsa lived for two years. He went to school at Salga, run by one Jaipal Nag. He accompanied his mothers younger sister, Joni, who was fond of him, when she was married, to Khatanga, her new home. He came in contact with a pracharak who visited a few families in the village which had been converted to
After childhood

Christianity and attacked the old Munda order. He remained so preoccupied with himself or his studies that he left the sheep and goat in his charge to graze in the fields covered with crops to the dismay of their owners. He was found no good for the job and was beaten by the owner of field. He left the village and went to his brother at Kundi Bartoli, and stayed with him for some time. From there he probably went to the German mission at Burju where he passed the lower primary examination. He also studied at Chaibasa at Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Mission school run by German missionaries. Birsa was a man mostly seen roaming in the forest and village of Chota Nagpur in Bihar. He died on June 9, 1900 in jail under mysterious circumstances. Birsas long stay at Chaibasa from 1886 to 1890 constituted a formative period of his life. The influence of Christianity shaped his own religion. This period was marked by the German and Roman Catholic Christian agitation. Chiabasa was not far for the centre of the Sardars activities influenced Sugana Munda in withdrawing his son from the school. The sardars agitation in which Birsa was thus caught up put the stamp of its anti-missionary and anti-Government character on his mind. Soon after leaving Chaibasa in 1890 Birsa and his family gave up their membership of the German mission in line with the Sardars movement against it. He left Corbera in the wake of the mounting Sardar agitation. He participated in the agitation stemming form popular disaffection at the restrictions imposed upon the traditional rights of the Mundas in the protected forest, under the leadership of Gidiun of Piring in the Porhat area. During 1893-4 all waste lands in villages, the ownership of which was vested in the Government, were constituted into protected forests under the Indian Forest Act VII of 1882. In Singhbhum as in Palamau and Manbhum the forest settlement operations were launched and measures were taken to determine the rights of the forestdwelling communities. Villages in forests were marked off in blocks of convenient size consisting not only of village sites but also cultivable and waste lands sufficient of the needs of villages. In 1894, Birsa had grown up into a strong and handsome young man, shrewd and intelligent. He was tall for a Munda, 5 feet and 4 inches, and could perform the feat of repairing the Dombari tank at Gorbera damaged by rains. His real appearance was extraordinary pleasant: his features were regular, his eyes bright and full of intelligence and his complexion much lighter than most of his people. During the period he had a spell of experience typical of a young man of his age and looks. While on a sojourn in the neighbourhood of village Sankara in Singhbhum, he found suitable companion, presented her parents with jewels and explained to her his idea of marriage. Later, on his return form jail he did not find her faithful to him and left her. Another woman who served him at Chalkad was the sister of Mathias Munda. On his release form prison, the daughter of Mathura Muda of Koensar who was kept by Kali Munda, and the wife of Jaga Munda of Jiuri insisted on becoming wives of Birsa. He rebuked them and referred the wife of Jaga Munda to her husband. Another rather well-known woman who stayed with Birsa was Sali of Burudih. Birsa stressed monogamy at a later stage in his life. Birsa rose form the lowest ranks of the peasants, the ryots, who unlike their namesakes elsewhere enjoyed far fewer rights in the Mundari khuntkatti system, while all privileges were monopolized by the members of the founding lineage the ryots were no better than crop-sharers. Birsas own experience as a young boy, driven from place to place in search of employment, given him an insight into the agrarian question and forest matters; he was no passive spectator but an active participant in the movement going on in the neighbourhood.
The Formative Period (18861894)
The Making of a Prophet
Birsas claim to be a messenger of God and the founder of a new religion sounded preposterous to the mission. There were also within his sect converts from Christianity, mostly Sardars. His simple system of offering was directed against the church which levied a tax. And the concept of one God appealed to his people who found his religion and economical relig healer, a miracle-worker, and a preacher spread, out of all proportion to the facts. The Mundas, Oraons, and Kharias flocked to Chalkad to see the new prophet and to be cured of their ills. Both the Oraon and Munda population up to Barwari and Chechari in Palamau became convinced Birsaities. Contemporary and later folk songs commemorate the

tremendous impact of Birsa on his people, their joy and expectations at his advent. The name of Dharti Aba was on everybodys lips. A folk songs in Sadani showed that the first impact cut across the lines of caste Hindus and Muslims also flocked to the new Sun of religion. All roads led to Chalked.
Birsa Munda and his movement
The British colonial system intensified the transformation of the tribal agrarian system into feudal state. As the tribals with their primitive technology could not generate a surplus, non-tribal peasantry were invited by the chiefs in Chhotanagpur to settle on and cultivate the land. This led to the alienation of the lands held by the tribals. The new class of Thikadars were of a more rapacious kind and eager to make most of their possessions. In 1856 the number of the Jagirdars stood at about 600, and they held from a village to 150 villages. By 1874, the authority of the old Munda or Oraon chiefs had been almost entirely effaced by that of the farmers, introduced by the superior landlord. In some villages the aborigines had completely lost their proprietary rights, and had been reduced to the position of farm labourers. To the twin challenges of agrarian breakdown and culture change, Birsa along with the Munda responded through a series of revolts and uprisings under his leadership. The movement sought to assert rights of the Mundas as the real proprietors of the soil, and the expulsion of middlemen and the British. He was treacherously caught on 3 February 1900 and died in mysterious conditions on 9 June 1900 in Ranchi Jail. He didn't show any symptoms of cholera. Though British government declared that he died because of cholera. Though he lived for a very short span of 25 years, he aroused the mind-set of the tribals and mobilised them in a small town of Chhotanagpur and was a terror to the British rulers. After his death the movement faded out. However, the movement was significant in at least two ways . First it forced the colonial government to introduce laws so that the land of the tribals could not be easily taken away by the dikus. Second it showed once again that the tibal people had the capacity to protest against injustice and express their anger against colonial rule. They did this in their own way, inventing their own rituals and symbols of struggle.
Birsa Munda in popular culture
His birth anniversary which falls on 15 November, is still celebrated by tribal people in as far as Mysore and Kodagu districts in Karnataka, and official function takes place at his Samadhi Sthal, at Kokar Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand. Today, there are a number of organizations, bodies and structures named after him, notably Birsa Munda Airport Ranchi, Birsa Institute of Technology Sindri, Birsa Munda Vanvasi Chattravas, Kanpur, Sidho Kanho Birsha University, Purulia, and Birsa Agricultural University. The war cry of Bihar Regiment is Birsa Munda Ki Jai (Victory to Birsa Munda). In 2008, Hindi film based on the life of Birsa, Gandhi Se Pehle Gandhi was directed by Iqbal Durran based on his own novel by the same name. Another Hindi film, "Ulgulan-Ek Kranti (The Revolution)" was made in 2004 by Ashok Saran, in which 500 Birsaits or followers of Birsa acted Ramon Magsaysay Award winner, writer-activist Mahasweta Devis historical fiction, "Aranyer Adhikar" (Right to the Forest, 1977), a novel for which she won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Bengali in 1979, is based on his life and the Munda Rebellion against the British Raj in the late 19th century; she later wrote an abridged version Birsa Munda, specifically for young readers.
Commemoration
He is commemorated in the names of the following institutions: Birsa Institute of Technology Sindri, Birsa Agricultural University, and the Sidho Kanho Birsha University. The Birsa Munda Athletics Stadium, Birsa Munda Airport,Birsa Institute Of Technical Education ( B.I.T.E. Ramgarh) and the Birsa Seva Dal also pay homage to his name..
Dr. Bishambhar Nath Pande (23 December 1906 in India 1 June 1998 in Delhi) was a freedom fighter, social worker, and an eminent parliamentarian in India. Dr. Pande devoted his life to the cause of National Integration, and to the spread of the Gandhian way of life.
Bishambhar Nath Pande

Dr. B N Pande devoted his life to the service of the nation, and was a lifelong member of the Indian National Congress. He was a close associate of Pt.Jawaharlal Nehru (the first prime minister of Independent India), Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. He has also worked very closely with Sonia Gandhi until his death in 1998. Dr. Pande was believer in and follower of the "Gandhian Principles and Philosophy", and was Vice Chairperson of the Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti (GSDS) for 18 years. The primary objective of GSDS is the spread of the "Gandhian Principles and Philosophy" globally. He was invited to give lectures to Japan, Russia, Germany and Canada on the life and ideals of Mahatama Gandhi. Dr.Pande & Dr.Daisaku Ikeda were friends.
Life
Awards
Dr. B N Pande was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri by the President of the Republic of India for his achievements in the field of social work in 1976. Dr. B N Pande was awarded the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration by P. V. Narasimha Rao (the Prime Minister of India) in 1996 for his lifetime achievements in the field of Hindu Muslim unity in India. He was also awarded the Khuda Baksh Award for his work on the composite culture of India.
Achievements in Indian Politics
1. Member of the Legislative Assembly, Uttar Pradesh (from --- to ---) 2. Mayor of Allahabad (from --- to ---) 3. Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha (Upper House) (from 1976 to 1984 and from 1989 to 1998) 4. President of the Pradesh Congress Committee, Uttar Pradesh (from 1980 - 1983) 5. Governor of Odisha (from 1984 to 1988)
Books
Dr. Pande devoted a major part of his life to research on secularism with the objective of promoting unity amongst all religions in India. As part of his research, he wrote several books. 1. Centenary history of the Indian National Congress 1885-1985 2. A Concise History of the Indian National Congress, 19471985 (1986) 3. Indira Gandhi 4. Islam and Indian culture
Family
Dr. Pande was married to Shanta Pande, a former freedom fighter in her own right.
Bishan Narayan Dar was an Indian politician who served as the President of the Indian National Congress for one term. Dr. Boyi Bhimanna (Telugu: ) (19 September 1911 16 December 2005), also
Bishan Narayan Dar Boyi Bhimanna
transliterated as Bheemanna, Bheemana and in other ways, was a famous Telugu poet.
Early life Writings
Bhimanna was born in a poor Dalit family in Mamidikuduru village, East Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh. He participated in the Quit India movement and worked as a journalist. He was influenced by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and B. R. Ambedkar. His writings reflected the angst of the down-trodden. He wore several hats such as writer, poet, journalist and academician. He was a member of the senate of Andhra University. He was the director of the Andhra Pradesh state translation division for some time. He wrote in English as well and his "Seventh Season," a collection of his English poetry was well received. He wrote over 70 books in total, with his "Gudiselu

Kaalipothunnaayi" (literal translation: "the huts are burning") being the most popular. List of Boyi Bhimanna Rachanalu[GangaRao.v JRF Ph.D Scholor.O.U.] 1 Gudiselu kaalipotthunnaayi 2 Naku telicina jasuva 3 Uugadulu 4 Rajakiya Veerrudu Dr.khan 5 Paleru (Play) 6 Pilli satakam 7 Paleru to Padmasree (auto biography) He won several awards including the Sahitya Akademi award for "Gudiselu Kaalipothunnaayi" in 1975. He was honoured by the Government of India with the fourth and third highest civilian awards in the country, namely the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan in 1973 and 2001 respectively. He was awarded the title Kala Prapoorna (honorary doctorate) by the Andhra University. From 1978 to 1984, he was a member of the Andhra Pradesh state Legislative Council. In 1992, the Telugu University conferred a special award on him and in 1996, the state government awarded him the atma gauravam puraskaram (literal translation: Self-respect award). He received the prestigious Raja-Lakshmi Literary Award from Sri Raja-Lakshmi Foundation, Chennai for the year 1991, and the Loknayak award are among the other awards he won.
Awards
Death
He suffered from Parkinson's Disease and after ailing for some time, died at The Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences at Hyderabad.
References
Cover story from Eenadu (Pages 1 & 2) and editorial (Page 4) dated 17 December 2005. News item about his death Brahmabandhav Upadhyay [real name: Bhavani Charan Banerjee] (February 1, 1861 - October 27, 1907 (aged 46)) was an Indian freedom fighter, journalist, theologian, and a mystic.
Brahmabandhav Upadhyay
Biography Early life and education
He was born in Khanyan, a small village in the district of Hooghly in southern Bengal on February 11, 1861. He received his education in institutions such as Scottish Mission School, Hooghly Collegiate School, Metropolitan Institution (now Vidyasagar College), and the General Assembly's Institution (now Scottish Church College in Calcutta. In the General Assembly's Institution, his classmate was Narendranath Dutta, the future Swami Vivekananda.
A quest for freedom and truth
When he was in the high school, Upadhyay became inclined towards the Indian nationalist movement for freedom, and during his college education, he plunged into the freedom movement. It is regrettable that despite his active participation in the freedom struggle Upadhyay has not been given the due recognition that he deserves. In the words of his biographer, Professor Julius Lipner, (Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (1861-1907) made a significant contribution to the shaping of the new India whose identity began to emerge from the first half of the nineteenth century. He was contemporary to and friend of the Poet Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda. It is said that Vivekananda lit the sacrificial flame or revolution, Brahmabandhab in fuelling it, safeguarded and fanned the sacrifice. Upadhyay joined the Brahmo Samaj and was a disciple of Keshub Chunder Sen and was closely associated with Sen and his successor Protap Chunder Mozoomdar. Early on life, Upadhyay had been drawn to the person of Jesus Christ, and his association with Sen and Mozoomdar further deepened that devotion. Upadhyay who initially opposed his uncle, Kali Charan Banerjee's conversion, began to study the Christian faith more seriously under a Catholic priest and sought conversion. However, being denied, he sought and received baptism at the hands of an Anglican priest, R. Heaton. Later on, Upadhyaya was conditionally re-baptized and admitted into the Catholic Church. After his conversion, he assumed the new name Brahmabandhab Upadhyay. Upadhyay believed in the possibility of indigenizing Christianity in India through the use of Hindu categories, which he found to be an important task if Christianity were to take root in India. In this search

for reconciliation, Upadhyay explored the feasibility of employing Hindu philosophy in interpreting the Christian faith for the Indian context in the same way Greek philosophy was used for articulating the Christian faith in the west. Upadhyay believed Christianity to be the true revelation of God and as a complete religion, which did not require any deletion from or any addition to it. However, he felt it necessary, in the Indian context, to seek the help of Indian philosophy, in order to strengthen revelation by preserving its unity through the process of reason. He found the Advaita Vedanta philosophy expounded by ankara, the great Vedanta philosopher, to be an appropriate aid in supplying new clothing to Christianity without affecting in the least the essential Christian tenets. But Upadhyay's vision was far in advance of the Roman Catholic Church of his time. His desire to begin a training school was not approved. His writings were declared forbidden reading. As he grew increasingly estranged from the Catholic Church his experiments with Hindu expressions of faith in Jesus became more radical. He finally was identified as a trouble maker by the British government as well, and died while imprisoned for sedition. Hindu friends saw to his cremation, but Christian friends always maintained that he had never renounced his faith in Christ even despite once having performed a cleansing ceremony from his associations with Christians. Animananda's writings especially began his reclamation by Christians, and today he has almost iconic status among Roman Catholic Christians who desire to express their faith consistently with classical Hindu traditions.
Excerpts
Upadhyaya wrote in the Sophia, July 1897: Are we Hindus? By birth we are Hindus and we shall remain Hindu till death. But as dvija (twice-born), by virtue of our sacramental rebirth we are Catholics, we are members of the indefectible communion embracing all ages and times. In customs and manners, in observing caste and social distinctions, in eating and drinking, in our life and living we are genuine Hindus, but in our faith we are neither Hindu nor European, nor American nor Chinese, but allinclusive.... The test of being a Hindu cannot therefore be in religious opinions. Yet, we have drunk of the spirit of Hinduism... We agree in spirit with Hindu lawgivers in regard to their teaching that sacramental rites (samskaras) are vehicles of sanctification. With wondering reverence do we look upon their idea of establishing a sacred hierarchy vested with the highest authority in religious and social matters.... Upadhyay was the composer of the famous hymn Vande Saccidananda ("Saluting the Holy Trinity") which is today widely sung during vernacular services in Christian Churches all over India. This CANTICLE TO THE TRINITY was published in October 1898, and is widely regarded as a magnificent gem of Christian hymnology. This hymn is considered one of the most original contributions of Upadhyay to Indian Christian Theology. Upadhyay here has combined ideas from the Christian Scriptures with Greek and Hindu sources and adapted the Christian faith to the cultural patterns of Indian religious thought.
CANTICLE TO THE TRINITY

I bow to Him who is
Being, Consciousness and Bliss. I bow to Him whom worldly minds loathe, Whom pure minds yearn for, The Supreme Abode. He is the Supreme,

The Ancient of days, The Transcendent, Indivisible Plenitude, Immanent yet above all things. Three-fold relation, Pure, unrelated knowledge beyond knowledge. The Father, Sun Supreme Lord, unborn, The seedless seed of the tree of becoming, The cause of all, Creator, Providence, Lord of the Universe. The infinite and perfect Word, The Supreme person begotten, Sharing in the Father's nature, Conscious by essence, Giver of true Salvation. He who proceeds from Being and Consciousness Replete with the breath of perfect bliss The purifier, the Swift, The Revealer of the Word the Life-giver. Used under the fair use policy of the United States copyright law, and under Wikipedia fair use policy See also: What is "Fair Use" in Copyright Law?"
Writing
Hundreds of articles in Bengali and English in short-lived journals and magazines of Bengal such as Sophia, Jote, Sandhya, The Twentieth Century, Svaraj, etc. The Writings of Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (ed. by J.Lipner and G.Gispert-Sauch), 2 vols., Bangalore, 1991 and 2001.
Brij Krishna Chandiwala was an Indian freedom fighter from Delhi and a political associate of Mahatma Gandhi who was awarded the Padma Shri in 1963 for his contributions to the field of social work.
Brij Krishna Chandiwala
Early Life and Education
Brij Krishna was born in 1900, the sixth child of Banarsidas Chandiwala and Janki Devi. The Chandiwalas were a family of silver traders of Chandni Chowk in Delhi. He was educated at St Stephen's College, Delhi where he met Gandhi, who had come there as a guest of the college principal, S. K. Rudra, in 1918.
Gandhi's Associate
His meeting with Gandhi deeply influenced Chandiwala and he became an ardent follower and close associate of Gandhi. Chandiwala took to spartan meals and to wearing khadi under Gandhi's influence. Also, he took to himself the task of supplying Gandhiji his goat's milk whenever he stayed in Delhi and his earnestness in this matter earned him the nickname gwalin (milkmaid) from Dr. M A Ansari. During the 1930s, Chandiwala helped organise the stone breakers of Delhi into a union and took up cases of violation of their rights with the Delhi administrators and in courts of law to ensure better compliance to government regulations regarding their work and to get compensation for them. While in Delhi, Gandhi used to stay at Chandiwala's house and Gandhi's 21 day fast for communal harmony in 1924 was

undertaken there. Chandiwala was with Gandhi on the day of his assassination and it was he who prepared Gandhi's body for cremation. After Independence, Chandiwala took to social work and became a founding member and president of the Bharat Sewak Samaj and Sadachar Samiti. In 1952 he founded the Shri Banarsidas Chandiwala Sewa Smarak Trust Society which was initially headed by Gandhi's son Devdas. The trust runs several hospital and educational institutes in Delhi including the Janki Devi College for Women which has been named in honour of his mother. For his contributions to the field of social work Chandiwala was awarded the Padma Shri in 1963. Chandiwala authored a three volume book in Hindi titled Bapu Ke Charanon Mein which was later translated into English as At the Feet of Bapu. His other notable work is the Gandhiji ki Delhi Diary which chronicles Gandhi's days in Delhi. Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair, CIE (July 11, 1857 1934) was the President of the Indian National Congress in 1897 held at Amraoti. Until present he is the only Keralite to hold the post.
Social Work
Books
C. Sankaran Nair
Early life and education
He was born on July 11, 1857 on the Malabar Coast. His early education began in the traditional style at home and continued in schools in Malabar, till he passed the Arts examination with a first class from the Provincial School at Calicut. Then he joined the Presidency College, Madras. In 1877 he took his Arts degree, and two years later secured the Law degree from the Madras Law College.
Career
Sir Sankaran Nair started as a lawyer in 1880 in the High Court of Madras. In 1884, the Madras Government appointed him as a member of the Committee for an enquiry into the state of Malabar. Till 1908, he was the Advocate-General to the Government and an Acting Judge from time to time. In 1908 he became a permanent Judge in the High Court of Madras and held the post till 1915.He was a part of the bench that tried Collector Ashe Murder case along with C. A. White, then the Chief Justice of Madras, Mr. Justice Ayling, as a special case. In the meantime, in 1902, the Viceroy, Lord Curzon appointed him Secretary to the Raleigh University Commission, In recognition of his services he was appointed a Companion of the Indian Empire by the King-Emperor in 1904 and in 1912 he was knighted. He became a member of the Viceroy's Council in 1915 with the charge of the Education portfolio. As member, he wrote in 1919 two famous Minutes of Dissent in the Despatches on Indian Constitutional Reforms, pointing out the various defects of British rule in India and suggesting reforms. For an Indian to offer such criticism and make such demands was incredible in those days. The British government accepted most of his recommendations. He played an active part in the Indian National movement which was gathering force in those days. In 1897, when the First Provincial Conference met in Madras, he was invited to preside over it. The same year, when the Indian National Congress assembled at Amraoti, he was chosen its President. In a masterly address he referred to the highhandedness of foreign administration, called for reforms and asked for self-government for India with Dominion Status. In 1900 he was a Member of the Madras Legislative Council. His official life from 1908 to 1921 interrupted his activities as a free political worker. In 1928 he was the President of the Indian Central Committee to co-operate with the Simon Commission. The Committee prepared a well-argued report asking for Dominion Status for India. When the Viceregal announcement came granting Dominion Status as the ultimate goal for India, Sir Sankaran Nair retired from active politics. He died in 1934, aged 77. Sir Sankaran Nair's eldest daughter Lady Madhavan Nair and son-in-law Sir C Madhavan Nair ( a legal luminary and a judge of the Privy Council)lived in Chennai, on a large estate known as Lynwood. Within this property in the area now known as Lady Madhavan Nair colony/Mahalinagapuram, is situated the Iyappan temple, the land for which was donated by Lady Madhavan Nair . There are still many roads

bearing names of the house Lynwood avenue and of the children of Sir and Lady Nair Palat Narayani Amma road, Palat Sankaran Nair road, Palat Madhavan Nair road . Lt General Candeth, a war hero and the liberator of Goa, was another of Sir Sankaran Nair's grandsons.
Bibliography
Gandhi and Anarchy (1922). Archive.org. Retrieved on 2012-06-11. Chakravarti Vijayaraghavachariar (18 June 1852 - 19 April 1944) was an Indian politician. He rose to prominence following his appeal against the charges alleging him to have instigated a Hindu - Muslim riot in Salem (now in Tamil Nadu). The legal battle and eventual victory in proving his innocence earned him the title The Lion of South India. He entered politics as a member of the Salem Municipal Council in 1882. His prominence in the national media and friendship with Allan Octavian Hume, a civil servant and reformer, led him to be invited to the first sessions of the Indian National Congress. Once within the Congress, he rose to serve as its president in 1920. He played a key role in framing the Swaraj Constitution. He also was part of the Propaganda Committee of the Congress and thus served in spreading the ideologies of the party to the masses. Apart from his role in the Congress, he also served as the president of Hindu Mahasabha, a Hindu nationalist party, in 1931.
C. Vijayaraghavachariar
Early years
Vijayaraghavachariar was born on June 18, 1852 into a Vaishnavite Brahmin family in the village of Pon Vilaindha Kalathur, in the district of Chengalpattu in the state of Madras Presidency, in what was then the British Raj. His father, Sadagoparchariar, was a priest and raised his son as an orthodox religious believer. At a very early age, Vijayaraghavachariar was sent to a school in his village where he learned Sanskrit and the Vedas, the holy language and the scriptures of Hinduism respectively. His English education began when he was twelve. He joined the Pachaiyappa High School and passed out in 1870, ranking second in the Madras Presidency, the province that included most of South India. He joined Presidency College in Madras (now Chennai) the following year, graduated in 1875, and the same year was appointed a lecturer there. He was transferred to the Government College, Mangalore, and after three years resigned his post. Subsequently he joined the Salem Municipal College as a lecturer in English and mathematics.
Career as lawyer Salem riot
During his time in Salem Municipal College Vijayaraghavachariar took Law examinations privately without attending formal classes and qualified as a pleader in 1881. In 1882, a short time after Vijayaraghavachariar had set up practice in Salem an riot broke out in the city. Vijayaraghavachariar was charged for instigating the violence that led to demolition of a Mosque and was sentenced to prison for ten years. Nevertheless, he fought the charges in the Court of Law and finally proved his innocence. Fighting the case for those implicated in the Salem riots of 1882 made Vijayaraghavachariar famous overnight. Subsequently through his efficiency in advocacy he successfully pleaded to Lord Ripon for others who were sentenced for the riots to be released from Andaman Cellular Prison. Besides, he took objection to his being disqualified from the membership of the Municipal Council, Salem, of which he a member during the period of the riot. As a result of his appeal, he was not only reinstated in the Municipal Council, but was able to obtain from the Secretary of State for India a sum of Rs 100 as a nominal damage for removing him from the Municipal Council during the period. He also proceeded against the witnesses who falsely deposed against him and got them convicted. The Salem riots of 1882 made Vijayaraghavachariar famous overnight. The riot case was highly publicised in the Indian national media and newspapers hailed him as a great champion of civil liberties. Thus came to be called The Lion of South India and "The Hero of Salem".

Entry into politics
Vijayaraghavachariar's entry into the public life began with his membership of the Salem Municipal Council in 1882. In 1895 he was elected to the Madras Legislative Council which body he served for 6 years, till 1901.
Indian National Congress
When the Indian National Congress was started in 1885 Vijayaraghavachari attended the first convention as one of the special invitees. He was a close associate of A. O. Hume, the founder of the Congress. Even prior to December 1885, Vijayaraghavachariar had suggested to Hume that a national organization like the Indian National Congress which he was proposing to create should be political in outlook and at the same time should look into the economic and social needs of the masses. He felt that only then the influence of such a body could spread wide all over the country. He attended the Bombay session of the Congress and in 1887 he was one of the members of the committee which drafted the constitution of the Indian National Congress. He held high influence in the Congress that most of the early names in Congress history were either his friends or co-worker. His counsels and leadership were much sought after by the Congressmen of the early days. In 1899 (fifteenth session of the Congress, Lucknow) he was made a member of the Indian Congress Propaganda Committee. Through the Propaganda Committee he commanded a wide national influence and played a very key role in spreading the message of the Congress throughout the length and breadth of the country. It was as a result of the committee's work that multitudes were brought within the fold of the Congress.
Relationship with other Congress leaders
Vijayaraghavachariars close associates in the Congress included Dadabhai Naoroji, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Dr. Ansari, Maulana Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Lala Lajpat Rai, C. Rajagopalachari and Motilal Nehru. With the advent of Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent ideologies in the party, there was a rift in the Congress ranks between the old moderates and the new radicals. Vijiaraghavachariar was a Nationalist and the Moderate Congress policy did not appeal to his judgement. He, therefore, stood aloof from the Congress after the organisation split following Surat session. Nevertheless, he later joined to carry the message of Gandhi. The climax of his political career came when in 1920 he was elected to preside over the Indian National Congress Session at Nagpur, where Gandhi's advocacy of Poorna Swaraj through non-violent non-cooperation was debated and accepted. He, with his powerful oratory, gave many a wordy battle to C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru on the question of the Council Entry Programme drawn up by them. He was also in the vanguard of the opposition to the Simon Commission that toured the country in 1929. He took an active part in the Committee that met under Motilal Nehru to frame the Constitution for Congress. He appealed to the League of Nations to intervene and arbitrate in the Indian deadlock that proceeded after the Simon Commission. He considered that the League of Nations as the hope of humanity.
Constitution for Indian National Congress
Earlier in 1913 he was elected to the Imperial Legislative Council with which he was associated till 1916. At Delhi he worked in close co-operation with great leaders like Madan Mohan Malaviya, Surendranath Banerjea and Gopala Krishna Gokhale. In the third session of the Congress was held at Madras in December 1887 which was presided over by Badruddin Tyabji a historic decision was taken to draw up the Constitution of the Indian National Congress. Vijayaraghavachariar was the leading member of this Committee. It was he who drafted the Constitution of the Congress which became the Swaraj Constitution for India. He performed this task with great care and ability and won the appreciation of all his colleagues. Vijayaraghavachariar advocated post-puberty marriage for women and also the right of a daughter to have a share in her father's property. He rendered great assistance to Swami Sharathananda in his work connected with the Anti-Untouchability League. His multi-sided personality also found expression in his participation in the organization of the Hindu Mahasabha. He presided over the All India Hindu Mahasabha Sessions at Akola in 1931. He was one of the two Vice Presidents of the Madras' Branch of
Achievements and social outlook

the Passive Resistance Movement. Mahatma Gandhi was its President; the other Vice-President was G. Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, Editor of the Hindu. His powerful advocacy of the cause of labour and the non Brahmins bear ample testimony to the largeness of his heart. He was also munificent in his donations to causes dear to him. The Anti-Untouchability League and the Congress Propaganda Organization in England in its early days received liberal financial support from him. His life was filled with relentless struggle against Imperialism and economic and social distress. Though an anti-imperialist, he had lifelong friendship with some of the representatives of Imperialism in India, viz., Governors and Viceroys. Lord Ripon, Lord Curzon, Lord Pentland, Lord and Lady Hardinge, Sir Conran Smith and Sir William Meyer were his friends from the Imperialistic Bloc, while Eardley Norton, the great Advocate, who argued his Salem Riots Case and saved him from transportation to the Andamans, was his intimate friend. Edwin Montague, the then Secretary of State for India, commented that Vijayaraghavachariar was a vigorous thinker but with impractical ideas.
Last years
Though the leadership of the Congress in South India, passed on from his hands to C. Rajagopalachari, he contented himself with giving periodic advice on matters of public importance through his regular contributions to the Madras journals. He died on April 19, 1944. After his death, his valuable collections were treasured in the Memorial Library and Lecture Halls in Salem specially constructed and named after him. His portrait hangs on the walls of Parliament of India.
Chittaranjan Das pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Chitrajnjan Das.ogg (C. R. Das) (Bengali: Chittornjon Dash) (popularly called Deshbandhu "Friend of the country") (5 November 1870 16 June 1925) was an Indian politician and leader of the Swaraj (Independence) Party in Bengal under British rule.
Chittaranjan Das
Personal life
He belonged to the famous Das family of Telirbagh, in Bikrampur, Dhaka (now in Bangladesh). He was the son of Bhuban Mohan Das, and nephew of the Brahmo social reformer Durga Mohan Das. Some of his cousins were Satish Ranjan Das, Sudhi Ranjan Das, Sarala Roy and Lady Abala Bose. His eldest grandson was Siddhartha Shankar Ray and his granddaughter is Justice Manjula Bose. Educated in England, where he became a Barrister, his public career began in 1909 when he successfully defended Aurobindo Ghosh on charges of involvement in the previous year's Alipore bomb case. He was a leading figure in Bengal during the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1919-1922, and initiated the ban on British clothes, setting an example by burning his own European clothes and wearing Khadi clothes. He brought out a newspaper called Forward and later changed its name to Liberty to fight the British Raj. When the Calcutta Corporation was formed, he became its first Mayor. He resigned his presidency of the Indian National Congress at the Gaya session after losing a motion on "No Council Entry" to Gandhi's faction. He then founded the Swaraj Party, with veteran Motilal Nehru and young Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, to express his immoderate opinions . He was a believer of non-violence and constitutional methods for the realisation of national independence, and advocated Hindu-Muslim unity, cooperation and communal harmony and championed the cause of national education. His legacy was carried forward by his disciples, and notably by Subhas Chandra Bose. He is generally referred to by the honorific Desh Bandhu meaning "friend of the nation." In 1925, Das's health began to fail and in May he withdrew to a mountain home in Darjeeling, where Mahatma Gandhi visited him. On 16 June 1925, with a severe fever, he died. The funeral procession in Calcutta was led by Gandhi, who said:
Career
Deshbandhu was one of the greatest of men... He dreamed... and talked of freedom of India and of nothing else... His heart knew no difference between Hindus and Mussalmans and I should like to tell Englishmen, too, that he bore no ill-will to them.
A few years before his death Das gifted his house and the adjoining lands to the nation to be used for the betterment of the lives of women. Today it is a huge hospital called Chittaranjan Seva Sadan and has gone from being a women's hospital to one where all specialties are present. The Chittaranjan Cancer Hospital which was established in these premises in 1950 is now the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute. Chittaranjan Park is a locality adjoining Greater Kailash II in South Delhi, which houses many Bengalis who fled to India during partition His name (and his nickname as samiran), is commemorated in the name of the following places and institutions: Chittaranjan Avenue, Chittaranjan College, Chittaranjan High School, Chittaranjan Locomotive Works, Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute, Chittaranjan Park, Chittaranjan Station, Deshbandhu College for Girls, and the Deshbandhu Mahavidyalaya.
Legacy and commemoration
External links
Chitta Ranjan at Project Gutenberg (1921 biography) Chittu Pandey (10 May 1865 - 1946), popularly referred to as the Shere Ballia (Lion of Ballia), was an Indian independence activist. Pandey was born in Rattuchak, a village in Ballia District of Uttar Pradesh. A distinguished freedom fighter, he led the Quit India Movement in Ballia; described as the "Tiger of Ballia" by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, he headed the National Government declared and established on 19 August 1942 for a few days before it was suppressed by the British. The parallel government succeeded in getting the Collector to hand over power and release all the arrested Congress leaders. But within a week, soldiers marched in and the leaders had to flee. He used to call himself a Gandhian.
Chittu Pandey
External links
Profile at indyarocks.com Colvin Reginald de Silva (19071987) (known as Colvin R. de Silva) was a former Cabinet Minister of Plantation Industries and Constitutional Affairs, prominent member of parliament, Trotskyist leader and lawyer in Sri Lanka. He was one of the founders of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party the first Marxist party in Sri Lanka.
Colvin R. de Silva
Personal life
Colvin R. de Silva received his education at St. John's College Panadura and at the prestigious Royal College Colombo and. He then went on to study at the University College, Ceylon. He gained his PhD from the University of London for his thesis: Ceylon Under the British Occupation, later published as a book. Dr De Silva died on 27 February 1987. A Sri Lankan news source credits him with coining the famous response to the slogan The Sun never sets on the British Empire: " That's because God does not trust the British in the dark." During the Second World War he fled to India, after escaping from Bogambara Prison, where he had been imprisoned for anti-war activities. In India he became part of the leading nucleus of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma (BLPI). After the war he returned to Ceylon and became the main leader of the Bolshevik Samasamaja Party. In 1947 he was one of five BSP candidates who were elected to
Political career

parliament. His constituency was Wellawatte-Mount Lavinia. After the reunification of LSSP and BSP, de Silva became an important leader of LSSP. In 1952 he lost the Wellawatte-Mount Lavinia seat to a United National Party candidate, but regained it in 1956 and 1960. De Silva was responsible on behalf of LSSP for the liaisons with the Fourth International. He was elected to the International Executive Committee of the International, a position he held until the LSSP was expelled from the International. In 1964 de Silva had urged against the LSSP joining the government, but unlike others who stood by that line he stayed in the party. He won the Agalawatte parliamentary seat in a by-election in 1967 and in 1970. In 1970 he became the Minister of Plantation Industries and Constitutional Affairs in the cabinet of Sirimavo Bandaranaike. His tasks included drafting the new republican constitution of Sri Lanka, which is seen by Kumari Jayawardena as the first constitutional enshrinement of Sinhala chauvanism which had previously been limited to statute law. He served until 1975, when his party was dismissed from government following a split. LSSP nominated de Silva as its presidential candidate in 1982. He finished 5th and only polled around 1% of the votes cast, as the election was polarised between the ruling United National Party and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party the latter being backed by almost all the other left parties. Lanka Sama Samaja Party Youth Leagues Suriya-Mal Movement Bracegirdle Incident 1953 Hartal Personalities Philip Gunawardena Pieter Keuneman Anil Moonesinghe N.M. Perera Edmund Samarakkody Tissa Abeysekara Colvin R de Silva Caroline Anthonypillai S.A. Wickremasinghe European Radicals in Sri Lanka Politics of Sri Lanka Political parties in Sri Lanka Elections in Sri Lanka Trotskyism Fourth International Communism Portal In the court room, he enjoyed an unparalleled reputation as a criminal lawyer of great distinction. He appeared in virtually every high profile criminal trial of his day. In the Sathasivam murder case, his exceptionally brilliant cross-examining skills resulted in the acquittal of his client, while in the Kularatne Murder case appeal, it was his intimate knowledge of the law of circumstantial evidence that saved the accused. With the advent of Fundamental Rights litigation, Dr. de Silva also appeared in many such cases before the Supreme Court, most notably in the Vivienne Goonewardena assault case.
Legal career

Dada Amir Haider Khan (1900?-1989) was a communist activist in India and Pakistan, and revolutionary during the Indian independence movement
Dada Amir Haider Khan
Biography
Dada Amir Haider Khan was born in 1900 in a remote village called, Siahlian Umar Khan, in Rawalpindi district and orphaned at an early age. He was then put in a madrassah. In 1914 he joined British merchant navy in Bombay transferring to the United States Merchant Marine in 1918. At this time he met Joseph Mulkane, an Irish nationalist who introduced him to anti-British political ideas. In 1920, he met Indian nationalists and Ghadar Party members in New York. He Started distributing Ghadar ki Goonj to Indians in sea ports around the world. He was dismissed from ship after the great post war strike and worked and traveled inside the USA. He then became a political activist, works with Anti-Imperialist League and the Workers (Communist) Party of the USA who sent him to the Soviet Union to study at the University of the Toilers of the East. In 1928 he completed the University course in Moscow and arrived in Bombay. He established contact with G.V. Ghate, S.A. Dange,P.C. Joshi, B.T. Randive Bradley, senior communists in Bombay. In March 1929, he escaped arrest in the Meerut Conspiracy Case and made his way to Moscow to inform the Communist International (Comintern) on the situation in India and seek their assistance. Dada attended the International Trade Union (Profintern) Congress as member of the presidium and also attended the 16th Congress of the CPSU in 1930. After his return to Bombay he was sent to Madras to avoid arrest as still he was wanted in the Meerut Conspiracy case. He carried on the political work all over South India under the pseudonym of Shankar. He also set up the Young Workers League. In 1932, he was arrested by the British for bringing out a pamphlet praising the Bhagat Singh Trio and sent to Muzzafargarh jail, then transferred to Ambala jail. When he was released in 1938 he started open public political activity in Bombay. The left wing of Congress elected him to the Indian National Congress (INC)'s Bombay Provincial Committee. He also attended the INC Annual General meeting in Ramgarh, Bihar. He was rearrested in 1939 as Second World War broke out. Later interned in Nashik jail where Dada wrote the first part of his memoirs. In 1942 he was the last of the Communists to be released after Peoples War thesis. He worked for the Trade Union in Mumbai. He also attended the Natrakona (Mymansingh) All India Kissan Sabah in 1944. Dada arrived in Rawalpindi on the eve of Pakistan to look after local party work. He organized a network all over Pakistan to hide, when wanted by the Government. Lahore was the nucleus of his activities. In Lahore, he used to take refuge in the house of a Sufi saint named Hussain Baksh Malang. He safely repatriated Hindu families during the partition riots. In 1949, Dada was arrested from the Party office Rawalpindi under the Communal Act and released after 15 months. He got re-arrested after a few months from Rawalpindi Kutchery for organizing the defense of Hassan Nasir and Ali Imam. When the Pakistani government launched operation as a result of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, Dada was moved to Lahore Fort and imprisoned with Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Fazal Din Qurban, Dada Feroz ud Din Mansur, Syed Kaswar Gardezi, Hyder Bux Jatoi, Sobo Gayan Chandani, Chaudhry Muhammad Afzal, Zaheer Kashmiri, Hameed Akhtar etc. He was released after campaign in The Pakistan Times and Imroze, but restricted to his village. He shifted to Rawalpindi when seen influencing the military soldiers from his area. In 1958 when Ayub imposed martial law, Dada was arrested and interned in Rawalpindi jail with Afzal Bangash, Kaka Sanober and other comrades. Dada spent his twilight years in the 1970s and 1980s in Rawalpindi but, whenever founds time, used to visit Lahore to meet his intimate friend Hussain Baksh Malang. He donated his land and with his own labour built a boys' high school in his village, then built a girls school' together with a science laboratory. These schools were later approved by the government and placed under it. Dada died on 26 December 1989 in Rawalpindi.

Shankar Trimbak Dharmadhikari (June 18, 1899 December 1, 1985), better known throughout the world as Acharya Dada Dharmadhikari was an Indian freedom fighter, and a leader of social reform movements in India. He was one of the strongest adherents of Mahatma Gandhi's principles.
Dada Dharmadhikari
Early life
Born on June 18, 1899 at Multai, district Baitul, Madhya Pradesh, Dada's family was known for its learning and scholarship as also for the study of Vedanta. His father Shri T. D. Dharmadhikari was a district and sessions judge, highly-regarded for his integrity and professional acumen. Dada studied at the Indore Christian College and later at Morris College in Nagpur. But left his studies half way to join the freedom struggle under Mahatma Gandhi. He however spent a year in studying Vedantic works of Adi Shankaracharya. He married his wife, Damayantibai, early in life and she was his companion in the Quit India movement and in jail too. She was his partner in his work, and shared his beliefs and lifestyle. Dada's lifelong passions were human relationship, enlightenment of youth, women and total transformation of society. He lectured every section of society in Gandhian concepts of truth, love, nonviolence, trusteeship. Jaya Prakash Narayan saw him as the most outstanding commentator, crusader of his vision of revolution. He took part in every moment launched by Gandhi and the Congress. He was imprisoned in 1930, 1932 and 1942. A thinker, philosopher and very good orator and writer. He was well-versed in Hindi, Marathi, English, Gujarati and Bengali. He was awarded Gandhi Award of the Rashtra Bhasha Prachar Samiti for his valuable contribution to Hindi Literature. He refused to accept honorary directorate. A staunch Gandhian, dedicated to the cause of humanity and Indian nationalism, Dada Dharmaadhikari had engaged himself in studying, thinking and propagating the Gandhian thoughts with the relevance to the existing universal problems. From early days in his public life, he had close relations with Vinoba Bhave. Dada participated in Vinoba Bhave's Sarvodaya movement. He was closely associated with Jaya Prakash Narayan, a revolutionary, versatile writer and a powerful orator. He was universally acknowledged as one of the best interpreters of Gandhian philosophy.
In the Freedom struggle and social work
Philosophy
Dada always reiterated that the great persons who influenced him in life included Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave, Kishorilalbhai Mashruwala, Jamnalal Bajaj and J. Krishnamurti. Dada imbibed the vision, thinking, principles, conduct from all these personalities. He had a razor sharp intellect, discretion, with bhakti of Gandhian wisdom, insights and revolutionary spirit. Dada was a highly respected social philosopher and free thinker, and unlike others, was also active in public life. Dada sent a message to the young pioneer of freedom movement Guru Radha Kishan when he came to know about the courage shown by him during an independence rally in Indore. He was a visionary who can foresee and encourage the talent in an individual and inspiring each one to think independently and rationally. He also had a rare ability to communicate his patently unorthodox ideas in an easy and simple style laced with a subtle sense of humor. His thoughts on status of women were revolutionary. He was particularly pained to see they do not enjoy equal status and regarded not only as second class citizens but also as second class human beings. He wanted women and young men to participate in total revolution, so as to bring about a revolution in all walks of life. He believed that youth has a revolutionary mind and the future of this country and the world depends on their active participation.
Passing
He died in Sevagram, Wardha on December 1, 1985, one of the most prominent Gandhians and freedom fighters of the generation. Dada's son Chandrashekhar Shankar Dharmadhikari served as the Acting Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, a prominent jurist and educationalist.

Dada Dharmadhikari had four sons and one daughter. Their names were Usha Dharmadhikari (Tamaskar), Pradyumna Dharmadhikari, Yashwant Dharmadhikari, Chandrashekar Dharmadhiari and Bacchu Dharmadhikari. Of all his children, only Chandrashekar Dharmadhikari is now alive and is staying at Mumbai. His grandson, Late Shri Priyadarshan Dharmadhikari, a noted lawyer was initially practising in the MP High Court later went on to become the Minister in the State of MP. He died on 2 July 1999 at Jabalpur. One of his granddaughters Dr. Mrs. Shubhada Pandey, daughter of Late Yashwant Dharmadhikari and sister of Late Shri Priyadarshan Dharmadhikari is currently residing in Jabalpur and holds the position of 'Managing Secretary' at Shiksha Mandal M.P Shakha. Other grandsons, Justice Bhushan Dharmadhikari and Justice Satyaranjan Dharmadhikari are presently sitting judges of the Bombay High Court. Another grandson Ashutosh Dharmadhikari is a noted civil and constitutional lawyer practicing before the Nagpur Bench of the High Court of Bombay. Amongst his great grandsons,Shivendra Pandey, Akshay Dharmadhikari and Shreyas Dharmadhikari, who are presently practising at the High Court of MP at Jabalpur, whereas Deoul Pathak and Charuhas Dharmadhikari currently practice before the Bench of Bombay High Court at Nagpur. Dadabhai Naoroji (Hindi: ) (4 September 1825 30 June 1917), known as the Grand Old Man of India, was a Parsi intellectual, educator, cotton trader, and an early Indian political and social leader. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) in the United Kingdom House of Commons between 1892 and 1895, and the first Asian to be a British MP. Naoroji is also credited with the founding of the Indian National Congress, along with A.O. Hume and Dinshaw Edulji Wacha. His book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India brought attention to the draining of India's wealth into Britain. He was also member of Second International along with Kautsky and Plekhanov.
Dadabhai Naoroji
Career
At the early age of 25, he was appointed leading Professor at the Elphinstone Institution in 1850, becoming the first Indian to hold such an academic position. Being an Athornan (ordained priest), Naoroji founded the Rahnumae Mazdayasne Sabha (Guides on the Mazdayasne Path) on 1 August 1851 to restore the Zoroastrian religion to its original purity and simplicity. In 1854, he also founded a fortnightly publication, the ''Rast Goftar'' (or The Truth Teller), to clarify Zoroastrian concepts. By 1855 he was Professor of Mathematics and Natural philosophy in Mumbai. He travelled to London in 1855 to become a partner in Cama & Co, opening a Liverpool location for the first Indian company to be established in Britain. Within three years, he had resigned on ethical grounds. In 1859, he established his own cotton trading company, Naoroji & Co. Later, he became professor of Gujarati at University College London. In 1867 Naoroji helped to establish the East India Association, one of the predecessor organizations of the Indian National Congress with the aim of putting across the Indian point of view before the British public. The Association was instrumental in counter-acting the propaganda by the Ethnological Society of London which, in its session in 1866, had tried to prove the inferiority of the Asians to the Europeans. This Association soon won the support of eminent Englishmen and was able to exercise considerable influence in the British Parliament. In 1874, he became Prime Minister of Baroda and was a member of the Legislative Council of Mumbai (188588). He was also a member of the Indian National Association founded by Sir Surendranath Banerjee from Calcutta a few years before the founding of the Indian National Congress in Bombay, with the same objectives and practices. The two groups later merged into the INC, and Naoroji was elected President of the Congress in 1886. Naoroji published Poverty and unBritish Rule in India in 1901. Naoroji moved to Britain once again and continued his political involvement. Elected for the Liberal Party in Finsbury Central at the 1892 general election, he was the first British Indian MP. He refused to take the oath on the Bible as he was not a Christian, but was allowed to take the oath of office in the name of God on his copy of Khordeh Avesta. In Parliament, he spoke on Irish Home Rule and the condition of the Indian people. In his political campaign and duties as an MP, he was assisted by Muhammed Ali Jinnah,

the future Muslim nationalist and founder of Pakistan. In 1906, Naoroji was again elected president of the Indian National Congress. Naoroji was a staunch moderate within the Congress, during the phase when opinion in the party was split between the moderates and extremists. Naoroji was a mentor to both Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He was married to Gulbai at the age of eleven. He died in Bombay on 30 June 1917, at the age of 91. Today the Dadabhai Naoroji Road, a heritage road of Mumbai, is named after him. Also, the Dadabhoy Naoroji Road in Karachi, Pakistan is also named after him as well as Naoroji Street in the Finsbury area of London. A prominent residential colony for central government servants in the south of Delhi is also named Nauroji Nagar. He was president of Indian National Congress, Calcutta section1906.
Drain Theory and Politics
Dadabhai Naorojis work focused on the drain of wealth from India into England through colonial rule. One of the reasons that the Drain theory is attributed to Naoroji is his decision to estimate the net national profit of India, and by extension, the effect that colonization has on the country. Through his work with economics, Naoroji sought to prove that Britain was draining money out of the India. Naoroji described 6 factors which resulted in the external drain. Firstly, India is governed by a foreign government. Secondly, India does not attract immigrants which bring labour and capital for economic growth. Thirdly, India pays for Britains civil administrations and occupational army. Fourthly, India bears the burden of empire building in and out of its borders. Fifthly, opening the country to free trade was actually a way to exploit India by offering highly paid jobs to foreign personnel. Lastly, the principal income-earners would buy outside of India or leave with the money as they were mostly foreign personnel. In Naorojis book Poverty he estimated a 200-300 million pounds loss of revenue to Britain that is not returned. Naoroji described this as vampirism, with money being a metaphor for blood, which humanized India and attempted to show Britains actions as monstrous in an attempt to garner sympathy for the nationalist movement. When referring to the Drain, Naoroji stated that he believed some tribute was necessary as payment for the services that England brought to India such as the railways. However the money from these services were being drained out of India; for instance the money being earned by the railways did not belong to India, which supported his assessment that India was giving too much to Britain. India was paying tribute for something that was not bringing profit to the country directly. Instead of paying off foreign investment which other countries did, India was paying for services rendered despite the operation of the railway were already profitable for Britain. This type of drain was experienced in different ways as well, for instance, British workers earning wages that were not equal with the work that they have done in India, or trade that undervalued Indias goods and overvalued outside goods. Englishmen were encouraged to take on high paying jobs in India, and the British government allowed them to take a portion of their income back to India. Furthermore, the East India Company was purchasing Indian goods with money drained from India in order to export to Britain. Which was a way that the opening up of free trade allowed India to be exploited. When elected to Parliament by a narrow margin of 3 votes his first speech was about questioning Indias place in India. Naoroji explained that they were either British subjects of British slaves which would be identified based on how willing Britain was to give India the institutions that Britain already operated. By giving these institutions to India it would allow India to govern itself and as a result the revenue would stay India. It is because Naoroji identified himself as an imperial citizen that he was able to address the economic hardships facing India to an English audience. By presenting himself as an Imperialist citizen he was able to use rhetoric to show the benefit to Britain that an ease of financial burden on India would have. He argued that by allowing the money earned in India to stay in India, tributes would be willingly and easily paid without fear of poverty; He argued that this could be done by giving equal employment opportunities to Indian professionals who consistently took jobs they were over qualified for. Indian labour would be more likely to spend their income within India preventing one aspect of the drain. Naoroji believed that to solve the problem of the drain it was important to allow India to develop industries; this would not be possible without the revenue draining from India into England. It was also important to examine British and Indian trade in order to prevent the end of budding

industries due to unfair valuing of goods and services. By allowing industry to grow in India, tribute could be paid to Britain in the form of taxation and the increase in interest for British goods in India. Over time, Naoroji became more extreme in his comments as he began to lose patience with Britain. This was shown in his comments which became increasingly aggressive. Naoroji showed how the ideologies of Britain conflicted when asking them if they would allow French youth to occupy all the lucrative posts in England. He also brought up the way that Britain objected to the drain of wealth to the papacy during the 16th century. Naorojis work on the drain theory was the main reason behind the creation of the Royal commission on Indian Expenditure in 1896 in which he was also a member. This commission reviewed financial burdens on India and in some cases came to the conclusion that those burdens were misplaced.
Works
The manners and customs of the Parsees (Bombay, 1864) The European and Asiatic races (London, 1866) Admission of educated natives into the Indian Civil Service (London, 1868) The wants and means of India (London, 1870) Condition of India (Madras, 1881) Poverty of India: A Paper Read Before the Bombay Branche of the East India Association, Bombay, Ranima Union Press, (1876) C. L. Parekh, ed., Essays, Speeches, Addresses and Writings of the Honourable Dadabhai Naoroji, Bombay, Caxton Printing Works (1887). An excerpt, "The Benefits of British Rule", in a modernized text by J. S. Arkenberg, ed., on line at Paul Halsall, ed., Internet Modern History Sourcebook. Lord Salisburys Blackman (Lucknow, 1889) Naoroji, Dadabhai (1861). The Parsee Religion. University of London. Dadabhai Naoroji (1901). Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India.; Commonwealth Publishers, 1988. ISBN 81-9000662-2
Dadala Raphael Ramanayya (June 30, 1908 May 5, 1991), was an Indian nationalist leader, instrumental in the merger of French territory Yanam into the Indian Union.
Dadala Raphael Ramanayya
Early life
Ramanayya was born into a poor family from a tiny hamlet, called Farampeta, about 2 kilometers from Yanam. His father, Dadala Bhairvaswamy, was a farm worker, and his mother's name was Ramanamma. Ramanayya was orphaned at the age of four and was taken under the care of his paternal Grandmother Veeramma, along with whom he had to work for food in the fields of landlords of the neighbouring villages. The French priests of Yanam Catholic Church, Father Artic and later Father Gangloff took him under their patronage and educated him. Father Gangloff helped him to study in the high school of the Petit Seminaire college, Pondicherry and later on to finish his Baccalaureate (B.A.) from the Government's Arts College, Pondicherry. During February 1932, during his student days, on the occasion of "Mardigras" and during a fancy dress procession, a few European students misbehaved with some Brahmin girls of a high family in open public. The governor dismissed the petitions sent to him saying "The youngsters had some fun in jovial mood. Nothing is offending in it." Dadala was indignant that the sons of the governor and other high officials could escape scot-free without even an apology to the parents of the girls. He raised a student group to rebel against this and beat up some European students in retaliation. He was immediately arrested along with another student, but later due to a great public outcry, the then governor of Pondicherry ordered his release. In February 1933, he passed a competitive examination of teachers for teaching French and worked for about two months as a teacher in Bahour. Later again he passed in First Class the competitive examination to be appointed as a Sub-Inspector of Police of Mudaliarpet.

French police career
During this period Monsieur Sellane Naicker even though a pro-French leader at that time, had passed a bill in the assembly cutting the salaries of the European officials. This enraged the French who through their cohorts, encouraged terrorization of the voters against Sellane Naicker in the municipal and assembly elections of 1934. Dadala made Mudaliarpet and all communes behind it, bastions against these goonda acts. The French did not like this and as a result he was suspended from service by the order of then Deputy Chief Justice. But after a prolonged court battle, he was acquitted and reinstated three months later. In 1936 Monsieur Andr Mnard (who later came back to India on July 31, 1950 as Governor of French settlements in India), then chef de cabinet and Secretary to the Governor's establishment went into Bharati Mills to negotiate a settlement with the workers who were on strike and was instead taken by them as a hostage for fulling their demands. Monsieur Dadala who was the in charge police officer for that area and who knew that any aggressive act against the French will be a serious affair that could harm the workers' safety, acted deftly and defused the situation. With a surprising and a lightning charge he entered the mills and liberated Mr. Mernard without any harm to either side. After this incident he enjoyed great friendship of the French leadership in Pondicherry, some of whom even volunteered to be godfather to his children. But however much he was happy with his French friends, in his heart Monsieur Dadala always yearned to be an active part of the nationalist movement surrounding him. After Indian Independence from the British rule and in deference to the feelings of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, France proposed a referendum in India to decide the fate of the French settlements merger into India. The referendum agreement was signed in June 1948. The main clause of this agreement stated expressly that there should not be any internal or external pressure during referendum. In 1948 the French India Socialist Party, A Pro-French outfit rigged the elections and won all the seats in all but one of the Municipal Assemblies. Dr. P. Subbarayan who was the president of the P.C.C. of Tamilnad and Dr. N. Rajkumar, Secretary for Foreign affairs of the Indian National Congress who saw the farce of these elections sent a damaging report to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The first Consul General of India at Pondicherry Sri Rasheed Ali Baig, did his best to boost the Nationalist movement at that time but little was achieved. In 1950, Sri RK Tandon replaced Sri Rasheed Ali Baig. Around this period Monsieur Sellane Naiker, a Chevalier by title and who was already an influential political figure of Pondicherry, persuaded Dadala to join and lead the existing nationalist movement. On 14 September 1950, Monsieur Dadala along with Sellane Naicker prepared a memorandum to Dr. Keskar, Deputy External Affairs minister of India who had paid a visit to Pondicherry. This led to immediate confrontation between him and his French Superiors. His meeting with Dr. Keskar was considered Treachery by the then French Deputy Chief of Police Monsieur Lagisqet and Captain Bouhard, Chief of police who confronted Monsieur Dadala with arrest threats and punitive departmental actions. Dadala immediately resigned and expecting reprisals from the French police who now openly showed despise for his turn towards pro-nationalist movement, and for the safety of his family, moved to Cuddalore - a frontier town on the Indian side, situated on the banks of river Pennar separating the French and Indian territories.
Entry into nationalist movement
Life as a nationalist leader
As his first step he chose the Bahour commune, inhabited by about twenty five thousand people, as his area of operations. He worked hard to enroll municipal members, and especially the youth as members of "French India liberation volunteer corp", an organisation, which he founded in order to fight the proFrench violent activists. He also co-founded along with Monsieur Sellane, A pro merger freedom fighting organization which was named as "the French India merger congress". Monsieur Sellane accepted to be its president and Dadala assumed charge of secretary general. Their primary task was to cancel the

referendum, as the French settlements were dominated by pro-French parties who by threats and subjugation of citizens, has retained hold. Thereafter, his aggressive nationalist programmes in French territories disturbed and enraged the French government, who initially tried to woo him back through influence and gain and later by subjugation and threats. Warrants with extradition demands against him were pressed by the French ambassador to Prime Minister Nehru who deputed Sri C Rajagopalachari, then the chief minister, of Madras (now Tamil Nadu) to look into the case. Rajaji met Monsieur Dadala in Cuddalore collector's rest house and after taking his full statement, approved his actions and promised his support. A few days after, along with Monsieur Sellane Naicker and Advocate Sri Perumal, Monsieur Dadala met Prime Minister Nehru in Bangalore, in the presence of Sri Sheikh Abdullah and the chief minister KC Reddy of Mysore and submitted to him a memorandum requesting his help. With no visible action was taken by Indian Government, on Monsieur Dadala and other nationalist parties in French Settlements, the French cabinet petitioned the UNO against the violation of the referendum agreement, and by allowing "gangs" to operate against the "Peaceful French citizens". The UNO in turn, deputed a board of observers consisting of Messrs. Holgar Anderson of Holland, Senor Baron Rodolfo Castro of Spain, Montieor Perreard of Switzerland, Mr Chan of Philippines and Mr Krabbe of Denmark to visit the French Settlements and give a full report to the International Court of Justice. The observers arrived in Pondicherry in March 1951. On 19 April 1951 in the traveler's bungalow on the frontier, Dadala was called for a meeting with them where he had attended with proofs and reports of the Pro-French parties actrocities on the Indian nationalists. After a month of the observers departure from Pondicherry, the press published the report they submitted to the international court of justice and which contained detailed report about the unfair pro-French atmosphere prevalent at that time in French Settlements and that they conclude that in those circumstances a fair and impartial referendum was not possible. But in spite of the damaging report of the observers against the French government, the pro-French parties went harping on the referendum. These landlords and others who perhaps thought that as far as Sellane Naicker and Dadala existed they would have trouble, had on 29 August 1952, engaged hooligans to shoot at Monsieur Sellane Naicker while he was in his house. Sellane escaped miraculously after receiving two bullet wounds in his left thigh, while four or five bullets entered the wall of his room . He refused to lodge a compliant with the French police or to be treated in a French hospital at Pondicherry. He was taken and admitted in the General hospital Madras. A leader who ruled the French settlements for over a decade, who was a president of the assembly and a knight commander of the French legion of honour, was shot and the local government did not make any arrest. All the Indian leaders in particular Prime Minister Nehru had condemned the attempt to murder sri naicker, in very strong words. On October 10, 1952, the Prime Minister of India addressing a mammoth public meeting on the Island grounds in Madras referred to this episode and declared "Even a respected leader in Pondicherry only a few days ago was badly attacked and came to the general hospital in Madras. What has the French government in Pondicherry have done about it?. Nothing. I believe that they arrested someone and later released him. Now, am I to understand that there is no government left in Pondicherry and only goondaism rules there?". On the same day, Sri Naicker, Dr. Ambrose, Advocate Perumal, Sri Srikanta Ramanujam, Advocate Xavery, Sri I K Kumaran, Sri Baradan and Monsieur Dadala met Prime Minister Nehru in the Rajbhavan, Madras, while all the top leaders of Madras were also present. Prime Minister Nehru called upon the Tamil Nadu Congress Leaders to extend all material help to the refugees of Pondicherry who were under Monsieur Dadala's care. late Sri Raghunandan Saran, Managing Partner of Ashok Leyland Automobile Factory of Ennore, Madras, extended great help to the refugees and provided for their maintenance. He also introduced Monsieur Dadala to Sri Lal Bahadur Shastri for whom he they shared great respect. About 10 December 1953, Consul General RK Tandon was transferred and Sri Kewal Singh took his place. He stood behind Monsieur Sellane Naicker and Monsieur Dadala . He was able to detach the pro-French leaders and members of the assembly from the French camp and took them to New Delhi. A provisional Government with Edouard Goubert, as the head, was formed in the enclave of Nettapacom. The Indian

Armed Reserve was posted round its borders. In the meanwhile, negotiations were going on between the two governments in Delhi and Paris. Sri Kewal Singh met all the leaders of the provisional Government at a conference in Kandamangalam in the night of 11 April 1954. He explained that the French authorities were making fun of the petty provisional government of Nettapacom. He suggested that if the leaders wanted real liberation of all settlements they should occupy any of the big four settlements. While Dropping Dadala at his home from the meeting, Sri Kewal Singh requested Dadala what he thought of the plan and if he had any ideas. Subsequently, a plan for Dadala to try to liberate Yanam was formed.
Struggle for creation of a pro-merger atmosphere in Yanam
On 13 April 1954, Dadala arrived in Yanam for working out a possibility of its liberation from the French. On arrival he realised that Yanam was dominated by Pro-French atmosphere and hence, there were no living nationalism signs. On 14 April 1954, He proceeded to Kakinada, a border town to Yanam and coming under "East Godavari District" of Andhra Pradesh State in India, and met all the district leaders and officials for help and aid. He didn't find any encouraging response from them. Likewise, in Yanam, his handful of friends and relatives warned him, that he shall be captured and killed if he ventured to start a nationalist agitation there. Everybody in Yanam seemed to have stood four square behind the French administration. The following day when Monsieur Dadala stepped in to meet some of his followers in Farampeta village, he was ambushed by the French police. He pulled out his revolver, fired in the air, and escaped over a nearby flood bank. He then hastily retreated to the Indian territory. Returning to Kakinada he purchased a large number of Indian National Congress flags and started a house to house campaign, requesting students and their leaders to organise a meeting in the town hall grounds. He along with his new nationalistic recruits hired lorries bedecked with congress flags and loads of people, made tours in the streets of Yanam, inviting them to the meetings. Once the meetings were organised, he urged the people to help him in his struggle for liberation of Yanam and incited patriotism in their young minds. Within a few days he was able to create an anti-French atmosphere in all surroundings. Then the French police committed a blunder. They raided some of the villages on Indian territory. Monsieur Dadala sent a telegram to Sri Kewal Singh complaining about the high handedness of the French police. He installed loudspeakers around Yanam town, played patriotic songs and explained to people the reasons for merger with India. Inside Yanam, the pro-French leaders organised daily meetings and processions against the merger and normally ended them with effigies being burnt. In the beginning of June, the secretary general of the French administration from Pondicherry met Dadala and informed that the government were transferring the two European officials who were residing in Yanam. He requested safety of these officials from the nationalist volunteers while leaving the place. Dadala followed the two officials till Kakinada from where they departed by train to Pondicherry.
Liberation of Yanam
Now with all white French leaders out of fear of any mob fury, the merger leaders, decided, it was right time to strike. Monsieur Dadala made required arrangements to take the administration of Yanam after consultation with the officials of Kakinada and other local Yanam leaders Sri Maddimsetti Satyanandam, Kamichetty Sri Parasurama Varaprasada Rao Naidu etc., In the early morning on Sunday 13 June 1954, Dadala marched at the head of a few thousand volunteers from Kakinada towards the bungalow of the administrator of Yanam, in order to capture it and hoist the Indian Flag. Bayankar Achary, another famous Indian revolutionary and patriot was also a member of the volunteer corps. Marching 50 Yards ahead of his volunteers with a megaphone, he requested the French police and other officials to cooperate and surrender. The French police retaliated and threw a few grenades which fell at 20 meters from Monsieur Dadala and exploded harmlessly. Then they started firing on the volunteers. The volunteers took shelter behind the Manyam Zamindar's choultry and fired many rounds against the French police who were in open place and in front of the police station. About four policemen were wounded and fell. The remaining policemen stopped firing and ran away to lock

themselves inside the police building fearing mob fury. Monsieur Dadala surrounded them and had them disarmed. The volunteers combed the town and arrested all the pro-French leaders and conducted a court martial against them. When they admitted to their guilt, clemency was shown to them. The coup d'tat of Yanam was announced by All India Radio and Press.
Return to civil life and last days
The Yanam coup d'tat had enraged the French authorities of Pondicherry. Rumours were spread to the effect that the French government were despatching a cruiser to Yanam to capture merger leaders and to re-establish their authority. Towards the end of June 1954, Sri Kewal Singh paid a visit to Yanam and requested his return to Pondicherry to continue his activities there. On 3 July on Kewal Singh's request, Monsieur Dadala left Yanam, after making all arrangements for its proper administration. Once back in Pondicherry, he took the agitations alongside the followers of Sri V Subbiah, Clemencedu Goubert, Venkata Subbareddiar, to its peak and from all sides of the entire pondicherry territory. One day when Dadala, was returning with a hundred volunteers from the Bahour commune and heading towards Cuddalore, he was ambushed and fired at by a dozen French troops. He was then at the rear of a column of volunteers. A volunteer beside him was shot dead and another was wounded. One fine morning in October, the Government of France had agreed to the de facto transfer of power to India after holding a nominal vote of members of the Assembly and the municipal members. Monsieur Edouard Goubert also a trusted friend of Dadala, had played the most important role in these elections. The defacto transfer of power took place on First November 1954. Prime Minister Nehru had visited Pondicherry on 16 January 1955. Messrs Edouard Goubert, S. Perumal, Sri Dadala and Sri Pakirisamy Pillai presented addresses to Pandit Nehru in a public meeting in the maidan of Gorimedu. After the French left Indian shores, Dadala wanted to come out of politics which he always despised and was anxious to settle in his home state of Andhra Pradesh, and to provide his children with education through his native regional language-Telugu. For his sacrifices to the nation and from intervention of the central cabinet, he was resettled as a high-ranking officer in the then excise department of the state of Andhra Pradesh from where he has finally retired on June 29, 1963 and led a peaceful farmer life, until his death on May 5, 1991. He was buried alongside his wife Subadramma and other family members, and near the Grave of Father Gangloff, in the Catholic cemetery of Jagannaickpur, Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh. In 1993, He was honored by the Pondicherry Government who gave him a befitting salute by installing a lifesize bronze statue in the Yanam town square near the regional administrator building and the Catholic Church. His family consisting of six sons and two daughters settled themselves in Kakinada, London and Chicago and did not show any interest in politics or administrative affairs and went out of public eye.
References
My Struggle for freedom of French Provinces in India, autobiography written by Sri Dadala Raphael Ramanayya
Debakanta Barua (also spelled as Dev Kant Baruah) (Assamese: ) (22 February 1914 28 January 1996) was an Indian politician from Assam, who served as the President of the Indian National Congress during the Indian Emergency (1975-1977) and was one of the most loyal supporters of then-Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He is most remembered for his infamous saying that "Indira is India and India is Indira", which most considered sycophancy and undue glorification of Indira Gandhi. He later joined Congress (Urs) which was later renamed as Indian Congress (Socialist). He was the Governor of Bihar from 1 February 1971 to 4 February 1973. He died in New Delhi. Barua was a noted poet as well. His collection of Assamese poems, Sagar Dekhisa ( ) is still very popular. He was the elder brother of famous Assamese poet Nabakanta Barua.
Devakanta Baruah

Devdas Gandhi (19001957) was the fourth and youngest son of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He was born in South Africa on the 2.October and returned to India with his parents as a young man. He became active in his father's movement, spending many terms in jail. He spent a lot of time with his father. He also became a prominent journalist, serving as editor of Hindustan Times. Devdas fell in love with Lakshmi, the daughter of Rajaji, Devdas's father's associate in the Indian independence struggle. Due to Lakshmi's age at that time she was only fifteen, whereas Devdas was twenty eight years both Devdas's father and Rajaji asked the couple to wait for five years without seeing each other. After five years had passed, they were married with their fathers' permissions in 1933. Devdas and Lakshmi had four children, Rajmohan Gandhi, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Ramchandra Gandhi and Tara (Bhattacharya). Kotwal Dhan Singh Gurjar was one of the rebels of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
Devdas Gandhi
Dhan Singh Gurjar
Early life
He was born in village Panchali in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh.
Revolt of 1857 in Meerut

The freedom movement, which started in 1822 from Kunja Bahadurpur[citation needed], came to shape in 1857. In the Indian mutiny of 1857, the mutineers had the support of most of the Bengal army. Dhan Singh Gurjar, at this time the Kotwal of Meerut, was the leader of this initial battle[citation needed]. On 10 May 1857 Dhan Singh Gurjar opened the gate of the prison in Meerut; this act launched the rebellion. People took up weapons and marched to kill the British. Important places in Meerut were captured[citation needed]. After completing the task at Meerut[citation needed], the revolutionaries marched towards Delhi, with the slogan "Dilli Chalo". In memory of this martyr of the 1857 rebellion, the newly-built campus community centre of Meerut University is named after him. Dharampal(Hindi: ) (19222006), Gandhian thinker, historian and political philosopher from India. He authored The Beautiful Tree (1983), Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century (1971) and Civil Disobedience and Indian Tradition (1971), among other seminal works, which have led to a radical reappraisal of conventional views of the cultural, scientific and technological achievements of Indian society at the eve of the British conquest. Dharampal was born on 19 February 1922 in Kandhala, a small town in the Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh, and died on 24 October 2006 at Sevagram (Mahatma Gandhis ashram), near Wardha, Maharashtra, which had been his main abode since the early 1980s. He has been associated in various ways with the regeneration of Indias diverse people and the restoration of their decentralized social, political and economic organization manifested through their local communities. Involvement in the Freedom Movement Dharampal was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi throughout his life; he received his first glimpse of Gandhiji at the age of seven, when he accompanied his father to attend the 1929 Lahore Congress. In March 1931, when Sardar Bhagat Singh and his colleagues were sentenced to death and executed by the British colonial authorities, Dharampal recalls that many of his friends took to the streets of Lahore, shouting slogans in protest. Yet remaining critical of this rebellious assertion, and despite the influence of his semi-westernized education at school and college, he was drawn towards the movement led by Mahatma Gandhi: soon he started wearing khadi, a practice he followed all his life. Mahatma Gandhis call for Individual Satyagraha in October 1940 marked the beginning of his involvement in national politics and the subsequent abandonment of his B.Sc. in Physics. In August 1942, he was present as a fervent spectator at the Quit India session of the Congress in Bombay, whereupon he joined the movement and was active as an under-ground member of the AICC group run by Sucheta Kriplani until his arrest in April 1943. After 2 months in police detention, he was released, but debarred from Delhi. A year later in August 1944, being interested in village community work, he was introduced
Dharampal

to Mirabehn (the British born disciple of Mahatma Gandhi) and joined her soon after at the Kisan Ashram, situated midway between Roorkee and Haridwar.
Engagement in national reconstruction, post 1947
At the time of Partition, he was put in charge of the Congress Socialist Party centre for the rehabilitation of refugees from West Pakistan, and came in close contact with Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya and Ram Manohar Lohia, as well as with numerous younger friends, such as L.C. Jain, in Delhi. He was also a founding member of the Indian Cooperative Union set up in 1948. The following year he intended to visit Israel for the purpose of studying its rural and community reconstruction programmes, but due to the closure of the Suez Canal had to reschedule his route via England where he met and married Phyllis who was English. On their way back to India by land, they stayed in Israel to study the communitarian lifestyle in Degania Alif, the oldest kibbutz, set up by Russian Jews. In 1950, Dharampal resumed his work with Mirabehn, and the community village of Bapugram near Rishikesh began to be formed. However, disillusioned by the futility of this idealistic experiment in community development, which seemed to have no impact on the Nehruvian mainstream, he left the village in 1954 to join his wife and two small children in London where he spent three years, mostly working for Peace News, a journal published by the War Resisters International, focusing on peace issues and nonviolent social change. Dharampal returned to Delhi in late 1957 after a visit to several Buddhist and Hindu holy places in Sri Lanka and South India. From 1958 to 1964 he was elected General Secretary of the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development (AVARD), founded in 1958 by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya who, a year later, passed on the couch of President to Jayaprakash Narayan(known as JP), with whom Dharampal developed a very close relationship of mutual respect and appreciation.
Socio-Political Statements
While at AVARD, Dharampal made regular contributions to the AVARD Newsletter, often taking to task governmental planning and development projects. In 1962, he published a small monograph containing the proceedings of the Indian Constituent Assembly relating to the discussion on the subject of Panchayat Raj as the Basis of Indian Polity which highlighted the failure of the Constitution to incorporate indigenous administrative and political structures. In November 1962, incensed by the debacle of the Indo-Chinese war, Dharampal wrote an open letter to the members of the Lok Sabha asking for Jawaharlal Nehrus resignation on moral grounds. For this act of protest, Dharampal (along with two friends, Narendra Datta and Roop Narayan, who were co-signatories of the letter) was arrested and imprisoned in Tihar jail. After some months, the three satyagrahis were released after Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Home-Minister, and JP had intervened. Towards the end of 1963, Dharampal was appointed Director of Study and Research of the All India Panchayat Parishad and spent more than a year in Tamil Nadu collecting historical material that was later published as The Madras Panchayat System: A General Assessment (1971) in which not only the destruction of the indigenous panchayat-based polity due to the colonial land revenue system, compounded with systematic political and bureaucratic intervention, is underscored, but also its replacement in the 19th century by a colonial bureaucratic apparatus which has continued even after Independence, more or less unchanged, despite its debilitating influence. Convinced about the urgent need for an objective understanding about Indias past, before the onslaught of colonial rule, Dharampal, from the mid-1960s, living in London for family reasons, decided to embark on an exploration of British-Indian archival material, based on documents emanating from commissioned surveys of the East India Company, lodged in various depositories spread over the British Isles. His pioneering historical research, conducted intensively over a decade, led to the publication of works that have since become classics in the field of Indian studies. The first book on Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century (1971), containing detailed empirical data on sophisticated Indian astronomy, medical science and practice, the technologies of iron and steel, of ice making, and agricultural implements, created quite a stir in academic and political circles, and with subsequent extensive research a new perspective on the development of Indian science and technology could have emerged, if
Historical research into 18th and early 19th century Indian society

substantial institutional backing had been forthcoming. Dharampals second book on Civil Disobedience and Indian Tradition (1971) foregrounds the Indian roots of Gandhian satyagraha by focusing on British administrative reports of a major protest against the imposition of a house-tax in Varanasi and neighbouring regions which took place between 1810-1811. The documentation exemplifies, firstly, how socio-political popular assertions, governed by deeply rooted conceptions of justice, explicitly aiming to safeguard the interests of the governed, were simultaneously attempting to redress the balance of power between the rulers and the ruled. Secondly, it underscores that colonial intervention changed the hitherto practised rules of the game with regard to negotiating political asymmetries of power. This was achieved, on the one hand, by illegalizing such traditionally exercised trials of strength, and on the other, by redefining relationships between social groups. Consequently, the starkly rigid asymmetry between colonial authority and the colonized became the hallmark of the socio-political arena. Dharampals third major work entitled The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century (1983) provides evidence from extensive early British administrators reports of the widespread prevalence of educational institutions in the Bengal and Madras Presidencies as well as in the Punjab, teaching a sophisticated curriculum, with daily school attendance by about 30% of children aged 615, where those belonging to communities who were classed as Shudras or even lower constituted the majority of students, and in some areas, for instance in Kerala, where Muslim girls were quite well represented. The impressive picture of early colonial India that emerges from this pioneering historical research is supplemented by an extensive collection of essays in which Dharampal stresses the need for further investigation, firstly, into the sophisticated societal, economic, and cultural mechanisms that had facilitated these accomplishments, and secondly, into understanding the processes by which these institutions declined and gradually fell into oblivion, and thirdly, into how knowledge generated in India had been appropriated, refined and integrated into early modern British and European scientific and cultural institutions, and fourthly, a rigorous study of the mechanisms by which Indian society had been shattered and cognitively colonized under the impact of British rule. An incisive understanding of the Indian cultural ethos, and the manner in which it differs from modern conceptions, is presented in a slim volume in Hindi entitled Bharatiya Chitta, Manas and Kala (1991, English translation: 1993). The British Origin of Cow-Slaughter in India (2002), besides providing historical evidence about the genesis of mass cow-slaughter under British auspices, presents extensive documentary material about one of the most significant resistance movements in India against kine-killing by the British during the years 1880-1894. By highlighting the support given by some prominent Muslims during phases of this mass protest as well as by emphasizing the crucial fact that it was the British and not the Muslims who were the main consumers of beef, Dharampal is able to dispel one of the deep-seated myths perpetuated in the interest of reinforcing divisive colonial strategies. Understanding Gandhi (2002) is a profoundly insightful portrayal of the unfolding of Mahatma Gandhis genius in leading the Indian struggle for Swaraj. A complete listing of his published works is compiled below. Founder General Secretary of the Indian Cooperative Union (ICU) of which Smt. Kamladevi Chattopadhyay was the Founder Chairperson; the ICU, established in the early 1950s by a group of freedom fighters, played a vital role in the post-Independence period At the behest of Jayaprakash Narayan, Dharampal was appointed a Fellow of the A. N. Sinha Institute, Patna during 1972-73. From the mid-1970s onwards Dharampal articulated his views most forcefully in public venues, academic conferences and Indian national papers. In the 1980s, Dharampals historical research and understanding of Indian society served as an inspiration for a group of young scientists called the Patriotic and People-oriented Science and
Other significant publications
Activities and influence in the public sphere

Technology (PPST) Group to engage in serious research into indigenous scientific and technological traditions with a view to underpinning their civilisational anchorage, technical sophistication and contemporary relevance. During 1990-2006, he was Emeritus Fellow of the Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai In early 1990s, he was elected Member of the Indian Council of Historical Research for two terms and for a third term during 1999-2001. In 2001, he was appointed Chairman of the National Commission on Cattle set up by the Government of India
Legacy
Whereas Dharampals published oeuvre, in dispelling colonial myths about Indias recent past, serves as a seminal and powerful inspiration for engaging in crucial reinterpretations about the nature of Indian society, the enormous portent of his research (much of which in the form of extensive notes and typed extracts of documents from British and Indian archives still remains in manuscript form) has yet to impact more extensively on radically transforming conventional historiography of modern India. Copies of Dharampals extensive archival collection are lodged in the library of the Gandhi Seva Sangh, Sevagram, Wardha and at the Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai. Major Durga Malla was the first Gorkha soldier of the Indian National Army (INA) to sacrifice his life for the cause of the nation. Major Malla was born in July 1913 at Doiwala near Dehradun. He was the eldest son of Nb Sub Ganga Malla. In 1930, when Mahatma Gandhi was leading the countrymen for Independence through Dandi March, Malla was in class nine. Though he was young, he caught everybodys attention by making outbursts in public against the Britishers. In 1931, when he was 18 years-old, he moved to Dharamsala and got enrolled in 2/1 Gorkha Rifles. His patriotism brought him close to INA. In 1942, Malla joined INA. His devotion to duty and valour coupled with other skills elevated him to the rank of a Major in INA and was asked to work in the intelligence wing of the INA. When he was collecting information about the enemy camps, he was caught in action at Kohima on March 27, 1944. He was given death sentence by the Court of Trial at Red Fort, New Delhi. However, before the death sentence was finally executed, the authorities tried to coerce Major Durga Malla into confessing sedition. His wife was brought at the prison cell but Malla did not succumb to the pressure. The sacrifice I am offering shall not go in vain. India will be free. I am confident. This is only a matter of time, Sharda! Dont worry, crores of Hindustanis are with you, said Malla to his wife. Those were his last words to his wife. Malla was married to Sharda Malla of Shyam Nagar, Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh in 1941. Only three days after marriage, Malla was recalled at his headquarters and was directed to go abroad. He could meet his wife only before his hanging at Delhi District Jail. In 1944, Major Durga Malla was sent to the gallows. To honour this great hero, a statue was unveiled at the Parliament House Complex by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in 2004. Vice President Mr Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, Lok Sabha Speaker Mr Som Nath Chatterjee and other dignitaries were present on the occasion. Edatata Narayanan (19071978) was a famous journalist and a freedom fighter from India. He took active part in the freedom struggle through the Congress Socialist Party, a caucus within the Congress Party for activists with socialist leanings. He was among those who were disillusioned with the progress of Congress party on socialism and formed a new party, Socialist Party in 1948. He however left that party along with Aruna Asaf Ali and they visited Moscow along with Rajani Palme Dutt. Both of them joined the Communist Party of India (CPI) before Joseph Stalin's death but left the party in 1956 following Nikita Khrushchev's disowning of Stalin. Edatata Narayanan started a daily newspaper, Patriot(1963) as the Chief Editor and was also associated with a weekly, Link in 1958 along with Aruna Asaf Ali. The publications became prestigious due to patronage of leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishna Menon and Biju Patnaik. When Edatata Narayanan wanted to make some editorial changes amidst reported
Durga Malla
Edatata Narayanan

opposition from the editorial staff, he told them in no uncertain terms that he belonged to the school of journalism where the editor's view is final. He brought Patriot into the spotlight by publishing the income tax returns of top industrialists in it and thus, bringing the information into public domain. He pursued a pro-CPI and pro-Left editorial policy - Indira Gandhi, a good friend and later the Prime Minister of India herself was pro-left. The publications and the associated publishing house were successful. The relationship between him and Aruna Asaf Ali was controversial as they were believed to be living together, despite no formal marriage. He wrote a book titled Praja Socialism: Monopoly's Pawn on the merger of the Socialist Party with the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (founded by Acharya Kripalani).
External links
An Obituary of Mrs. Aruna Asaf Ali by Inder Malhotra in The Guardian Approach of Narayanan as a tough boss Edatata among top Indian editors O. V. Vijayan under Edatata Nrayanan Publishing the Income tax returns of top industrialists Book by Edatata Narayanan. Editorial approach of Patriot Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (Assamese: pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Fkha.ogg (13 May 1905 11 February 1977) was the fifth President of India from 1974 to 1977. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was born on 13 May 1905, in a Gujjar Muslim at the Hauz Qazi area of Old Delhi, India. His father was Col. Zalnur Ali and his mother a daughter of the Nawab of Loharu. Ahmed's grandfather, Khaliluddin Ali Ahmed, was from Kacharighat near Golaghat, Assam and part of a well known Assamese Muslim family.[citation needed] Ahmed was educated at the Government High School in Gonda district, Uttar Pradesh and matriculated from the Delhi Government High School. He attended St. Stephen's College, Delhi and St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He was called to the Bar from the Inner Temple of London and began legal practice in the Lahore High Court in 1928.
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed
Early life and background
Political years
He met Jawaharlal Nehru in England in 1925. He joined the Indian National Congress and actively participated in the Indian freedom movement. In 1942 he was arrested in the Quit India movement and sentenced to 3 1/2 years' imprisonment. He was a member of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee from 1936 and of AICC from 1947 to 74, and remained the Minister of Finance, Revenue and labour in the 1938 Gopinath Bordoloi Ministry. After Independence he was elected to the Rajya Sabha (19521953) and thereafter became AdvocateGeneral of the Government of Assam. He was elected on Congress ticket to the Assam Legislative Assembly on two terms (19571962) and (19621967). Subsequently, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Barpeta constituency, Assam in 1967 and again in 1971. In the Central Cabinet he was given important portfolios relating to Food and Agriculture, Cooperation, Education, Industrial Development and Company Laws. Picked for the presidency by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1974, and on 20 August 1974, he became the second Muslim to be elected President. He is known to have issued the proclamation of emergency by signing the papers at midnight after a meeting with Indira Gandhi the same day. He used his constitutional authority as head of state to allow her to rule by decree once Emergency in India was proclaimed in 1975. He is well known among Indian diplomats for his visit to Sudan in 1975 where the whole town showed up to see him. He was the second Indian president to die in office, on 11 February 1977. Today his grave lies right across Parliament of India, next to Sunhari Masjid, at Sansas chowk, in New Delhi.

Honors
He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Pristina, in Kosovo in 1975, during his visit to Yugoslavia. He was elected President of the Assam Football Association and the Assam Cricket Association for several terms; he was also the Vice-President of the Assam Sports Council. In April 1967, he was elected President of the All India Cricket Association. He was a member of the Delhi Golf Club and the Delhi Gymkhana Club from 1961. In 1942 he was arrested in the Quit India movement and sentenced to 3 1/2 years' imprisonment.[2] He was a member of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee from 1936 and of AICC from 1947 to 74, and remained the Minister of Finance, Revenue and labour in the 1938 Gopinath Bordoloi Ministr
Feroze Gandhi (12 September 1912 8 September 1960) was an Indian politician and journalist, and publisher of the The National Herald and The Navjivan newspapers from Lucknow. He became a member of the provincial parliament (19501952), and later a member of the Lok Sabha, the Lower House of India's parliament. In 1942 he married Indira Nehru (later Prime Minister of India) and they had two sons, Rajiv Gandhi (also later a Prime Minister) and Sanjay Gandhi, and thus became part of the NehruGandhi dynasty.
Feroze Gandhi
Early life
Feroze Jehangir Gandhi was born at the Tehmulji Nariman Hospital situated in Fort, Bombay. Feroze was not related to Mohandas K. Gandhi. His family had migrated to Bombay from Bharuch in South Gujarat where their ancestral home, which belonged to his grandfather, still exists in Kotpariwad. Feroze was the youngest of the five children of Jehangir Faredoon Gandhi and Ratimai Gandhi(formerly Ratimai Commissariat). His elder brothers were Dorab Jehangir Gandhi and Faridun Jehangir Gandhi . while his two elder sisters were Tehmina Kershashp Gandhi and Aloo Gandhi Dastur. His parents lived in Nauroji Natakwala Bhawan in Khetwadi Mohalla in Bombay. His father Jehangir Gandhi was a Marine Engineer in Kellick Nixon and was later promoted as a Warrant Engineer. In the early 1920s, after the death of his father, Feroze and his mother moved to Allahabad to live with his unmarried maternal aunt, Shirin Commissariat, a surgeon at the city's Lady Dufferin Hospital. He attended the Vidya Mandir High School and then graduated from the British-staffed Ewing Christian College.
Family and Career
In March 1930, the youth wing of Congress Freedom fighters, the Vanar Sena was formed. Feroze met Kamala Nehru and Indira among the women demonstrators picketing outside Ewing Christian College. Kamala fainted with the heat of the sun and Feroze went to comfort her. The next day, he abandoned his studies in 1930 to join the Indian independence movement. He was imprisoned in 1930, along with Lal Bahadur Shastri, head of Allahabad District Congress Committee, and lodged in Faizabad Jail for nineteen months. Soon after his release, he was involved with the agrarian no-rent campaign in the United Province (now Uttar Pradesh) and was imprisoned twice, in 1932 and 1933, while working closely with Nehru. Feroze first proposed to Indira in 1933, but she and her mother rejected it, putting forward that she was too young, only 16. He grew close to the Nehru family, especially to Indira's mother Kamala Nehru, accompanying her to the TB Sanatorium at Bhowali in 1934, helping arrange her trip to Europe when her condition worsened in April 1935, and visiting her at the sanitarium at Badenweiler and finally at Lausanne, where he was at her bedside when she died on 28 February 1936. In the following years, Indira and Feroze grew closer to each other while in England. They married in March 1942 according to Hindu rituals. Indira's father Jawaharlal Nehru opposed her marriage and approached Mahatma Gandhi to dissuade the young couple, but to no avail. The couple were arrested and jailed in August 1942, during the Quit India Movement less than six months after their marriage, he was imprisoned for a year in Allahabad's Naini

Central Prison. The coming five years were of comfortable domestic life and the couple had two sons, Rajiv and Sanjay, born in 1944 and 1946 respectively. After independence, Jawaharlal became the first Prime Minister of India. Feroze and Indira settled in Allahabad with their two young children, and Feroze became Managing Director of The National Herald, a newspaper founded by his father-in-law. He was also the first chairman of Indian Oil Corporation Limited. After being a member of the provincial parliament (19501952), Gandhi won independent India's first general elections in 1952, from Rae Bareli constituency in Uttar Pradesh. Indira came down from Delhi and worked as his campaign organizer. Gandhi soon became a prominent force in his own right, criticizing the government of his father-in-law and beginning a fight against corruption. In the years after independence, many Indian business houses had become close to the political leaders, and now some of them started various financial irregularities. In a case exposed by Gandhi in December 1955, he revealed how Ram Kishan Dalmia, as chairman of a bank and an insurance company, used these companies to fund his takeover of Bennett and Coleman and started transferring money illegally from publicly held companies for personal benefit. In 1957, he was re-elected from Rae Bareli. In the parliament in 1958, he raised the Haridas Mundhra scandal involving the government controlled LIC insurance company. This was a huge embarrassment to the clean image of Nehru's government and eventually led to the resignation of the Finance Minister T.T. Krishnamachari. His rift with Indira had also become public knowledge by then, and added to the media interest in the matter. Feroze also initiated a number of nationalization drives, starting with the Life Insurance Corporation. At one point he also suggested that Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company (TELCO) be nationalized since they were charging nearly double the price of a Japanese railway engine. This raised a stir in the Parsi community since the Tatas were also Parsi. He continued challenging the government on a number of other issues, and emerged as a parliamentarian well-respected on both sides of the bench.
Death
Gandhi suffered a heart attack in 1958. Indira, who stayed with her father at Teen Murti House, the official residence of the prime minister, was at that time away on a state visit to Bhutan. She returned to look after him in Kashmir. Gandhi died in 1960 at the Willingdon Hospital, Delhi, after suffering a second heart attack. He was cremated and his ashes interred at the Parsi cemetery in Allahabad. His Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituency seat was held by his daughter-in-law, and wife of Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi in 2004. G A Vadivelu (born 12 June 1925) was a freedom fighter and a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, Jayaprakash Narayan, Rajaji and Kamaraj.
G A Vadivelu
Early life
Vadivelu, born at Gollahalli, Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu, studied in Dharmapuri High School, discontinued his studies for taking part in the national freedom struggle. He joined the congress in his age of 15 and took part in 1940 Individual Satyagraha and 1942 Quit India Movement and was imprisoned in the Palayamkottai Jail.
Late 1940s
Though India was freed in 1947, Pondicherry territory was not freed. He went to Pondicherry and took part in freedom struggle. During his tenure in Pondicherry, he ran a journal, Samudayam. When Jayaprakash Narayan formed a separate group in congress to serve the down-trodden vigorously, Vadivelu joined Jayaprakash Narayan and have become an active member of his socialist group. After the country obtained Independence, Jayaprakash left congress in 1948 to serve have-nots and formed the socialist party. Vadivelu followed him. Vadivelu fought for the causes of down-trodden, imprisoned 17 times in free India. Because of his tireless efforts and his struggles, around 2,000 landless
After Independence

peasants got forest lands and revenue lands in Salem, Dharmapuri and Madurai districts. About 1,800 hut-dwellers of Dharmapuri got house sites in railway lands. Sri Madhu Dantavate, then Railway Minister, mentioned Vadivelu's tireless effort in a conference at Delhi and praised him stating : "Vadivelu is the only man in whole India who got Railway lands free of cost for the poor". When emergency was declared in 1975 he was imprisoned, handcuffed for days together and paraded in streets. In Chennai, the railway department began the metro line work. If it was continued, nearly 12,000 poor families would have been evicted. Vadivelu struggled for them and compelled the government to change the Railway line which saved 12,000 poor families. He is a socialist in words and deeds. Leading a clean life, active and Gandhian, even though he is 86 years old, he is very active and serving the people as usual. He was the state general secretary of Praja Socialist Party, then President of Tamil Nadu Janata Dal for eight years and senior vice president of National Janata Dal for two years. In 2002 he has rejoined congress after 54 years. Now he is a member of AICC and executive member of TNCC and its coordination committee member. Apart from his political activities, he is a journalist and writer. He was the editor of Janata, Samudhayam and Pudhu vazhvu journals for many years. His articles were published in various journals such as Puratchi, Tamil Nadu, Manjari, Dravida Naidu, Baratha Devi, Sangoli, Malai, Murasu, Theyagi, Dinamani, Dina malar, etc. As a writer, he has authored around 30 books, among which is a historical novel Sembiyar Thilagam (1200 pages). This book was awarded as the best book published in the years 1985 and 1986. He has researched the Tamil Nadu history for many years and enlightened the 300-year dark rule of kalapralas. M Karunanidhi, the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu has appreciated this book.
Writing and Journalism
References
Ghulam Murtaza Shah Syed G. M. Syed (Sindhi: ( ) January 17, 1904 April 25, 1995) was a political leader who pioneered the Jeay Sindh movement for the freedom of Sindh from Pakistan. He is regarded as one of the founding fathers of modern Sindhi nationalism. In 1930 he founded the Sindh Hari Committee, later led by Hyder Bux Jatoi. He was known by the people of Sindh as "Saeen" (), son of Syed Mohammed Shah Kazmi, descendant of a famous saint of Sindh, Syed Haider Shah Kazmi, of whose mausoleum he is the Sajjada Nashin.
G. M. Syed
Political activism
He was the founder of Sindh Awami Mahaz, which went on to join the National Awami Party (National Peoples Party). Like Ibrahim Joyo, G.M. Syed blended Sindhi nationalism with Communism and Sufism through the ideas of Gandhi and Marx. In his early political life, he was a strong vocal supporter of the Pakistan Movement in Sindh and was said to be one of the driving forces in making sure the Sind Assembly voted to join Pakistan in 1947.
Timeline
At the early age of fourteen years, Syed started his career as an activist. In 1919 he became Chairman of the School Board of his own tehsil. Subsequently, he was elected as a President of Karachi District Local Board in 1929. He later became its President. In 1930, he organized the Sindh Hari (Peasants) Conference and became its Secretary. In 1937, he was for the first time elected a member of Sindh Legislative Assembly. In 1938, he joined the All-India Muslim League. In 1940, he became Minister of Education in Sindh. In 1941, he became one of the members of the Central Committee of the Muslim League. In 1943, he became President of the Sindh Muslim League. In 1944, he played a pivotal role in politics and got a resolution passed in the Sindh Assembly in favor of

Pakistan, which was the first resolution of its kind in the whole of undivided India. In 1946, conditions compelled him to dissociate from the Muslim League, and formed a new party named the Progressive Muslim League. The same year, he was elected as leader of the Coalition Party in the Sindh Assembly. In 1954, he acted as Chairman of Sindhi Adabi Board. In 1955, he played an active part in the formation of the Pakistan National Party. In 1966, he founded Bazm-e-Soofia-e Sindh. In 1969, he formed the Sindh United Front. In 1973, he formed Jeay Sindh Mahaz.
Literary contribution
Syed was the author of more than Forty nine books. His books are on numerous subjects, ranging from literature to politics, religion and culture. He was himself a mystic had a lot of love and regard for mystics of all faiths. Besides being a man of immense learning, Syed possessed a personality that was graceful and poised. Highly cultured and refined manners, hospitality and geniality were the salient traits of his character. Wit and humor were the keynotes of his personality. He respected all genuine difference of opinions. For decades, Sindh and Sindhi people had constituted the center of his interest and activity, and all his love energies were devoted to their good. His famous Books are Janam Guzarium Jin Sein.(Sindhi) Dayar Dil Dastan-e- Muhabt.(Sindhi) Sindh Ja Soorma.(Sindhi) Sindh speaks.(English) Struggle for New Sindh.(English) Religion and Reality.(English) Shah Latif's Message.(English) GM Syed proposed the 1940 Pakistan Resolution in the Sindh Assembly, which ultimately resulted in the creation of Pakistan. However, he became the first political prisoner of Pakistan because of his differences with the leadership of the country, as he believed that they had deceived the Sindhis.
Jeay Sindh movement
In 1971, when East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) seceded from Pakistan at the behest of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who wanted to come in power in West Pakistan. Saieen G.M. Syed began to demand self-determination for the people of Sindh. In 1972 he founded the Jeay Sindh movement, aimed at establishing an independent/autonomous Sindhi state ('Sindhu Desh') on the concept of Bangladesh. For his political views against the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, he was kept either in jail or in solitary confinement for a period of more than 30 years. On 19 January 1992, G.M. Syed was put under house arrest and his house was declared a sub-jail. He was detained until his death. Ganda Singh, whose home town was Firozpur in India, was a prominent member of the Ghadar Party. He spent some time in Hankou, China, where he met Chiang Kai-shek. in 1926, and M. N. Roy, in 1927. On the occasion of the visit of the former, he was reported to have made an anti-British speech, whilst he participated in the reception for Roy's visit to the Sikh gurdwara that formed a hub for Ghadarite activity. Singh was then on the staff of the Hindustan Ghadar Dhandora. He moved to Nanking in October 1927, where he worked as editor of the Hindustan Ghadar Dhandora and also managed a branch of the Eastern Oppressed Peoples Association. He was joined in his 1927 move to Nanking by Arjun Singh and Udham Singh, and by others in 1929. Thereafter, he was among a group of Ghadar Party leaders who were deported from the country. Ganga Gurjar was a freedom fighter of India who took active part in the Great revolt of 1857. He captured by Britishers and hanged in December 1857. He was from Rithauj, Gurgaon district, Haryana. Garimella Satyanarayana (Telugu: ) (1893 December 18, 1952) was a Poet and
Ganda Singh
Ganga Singh Gurjar
Garimella Satyanarayana
Freedom Fighter of Andhra Pradesh, India. Satyanarayana Garimella was a great nationalist who influenced and mobilized the Andhra people against the British with his patriotic songs and writings for which he was jailed several times by the

British government.
Career
rule). He himself used to sing this song. This particular song was a popular in the households of Andhra Pradesh during the Indian independence movement. He was helped to study by a kind lawyer, called Kannepalli Narasimha Rao and finished graduation (BA). He worked as a clerk in collector's office of Ganjam district and as a teacher at a high school in Vijayanagaram. He gave up his studies by the call of Mahatma Gandhi to participate in civil disobedience movement. During this time, he wrote his famous song Maakoddee Telladoratanamu for which he was jailed in 1922 for one year. After the release from Jail, he continued his participation in the movement by singing songs in villages. For this he was sentenced for two and half years rigorous imprisonment. His entire family (wife, father and grandfather) died when he was in jail. He died in a destitute state on December 18, 1952 after spending several years in poverty.
He was born in a poor Brahmin family to Venkatanarasimham and Suramma. He was born in Gonepadu village in Narasannapeta taluq of Srikakulam district in 1893. Garimella Satyanarayana is identified by his famous song - (We dont need this white
Works
Swaraajya geetamulu (1921) Harijana paatalu (1923) Khandakaavyalu, baalageetaalu (1926) Telugu translation of the Economic Conquest of India by Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya. Several articles in various daily and weekly journals.
George Yule (1829 in Stonehaven 1892) was a Scottish merchant in England and India who served as the fourth President of the Indian National Congress in 1888, the first non-Indian to hold that office. He was founder of George Yule & Co. of London, and headed Andrew Yule & Co., of Calcutta. He served as Sheriff of Calcutta and as President of the Indian Chamber of Commerce.
George Yule
Merchant in England and India
Around 1855 George Yule and his brother Andrew Yule moved to Manchester and in 1858 they established a warehouse partnership there. The business flourished, enabling George Yule to reside at Platt Hall, Manchester, and at 22A Austin Friars, London, while his brother moved to India. In 1875 George Yule, accompanied by their nephew David Yule, joined his brother in India and served as the principal director of the various family enterprises. He is interred at Dunnottar kirkyard.
Further reading
"Past Presidents of Indian National Congress". Indian National Congress. Retrieved 28 November 2012. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, CIE pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Gokhle.ogg(Marathi: ) (9 May 1866 19 February 1915) was one of the founding social and political leaders during the Indian Independence Movement against the British Empire in India. Gokhale was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and founder of the Servants of India Society. Through the Society as well as the Congress and other legislative bodies he served in, Gokhale promoted not only primarily independence from the British Empire but also social reform. To achieve his goals, Gokhale followed two overarching principles: non-violence and reform within existing government institutions.
Gopal Krishna Gokhale
Background and education
Gopal Krishna Gokhale was born on May 09, 1866 in Kothluk village of Guhagar taluka in Ratnagiri district, Maharashtra, a state on the western coast of India that was then part of the Bombay Presidency. Although they were Chitpavan Brahmins, Gokhales family was relatively poor. Even so, they ensured that

Gokhale received an English education, which would place Gokhale in a position to obtain employment as a clerk or minor official in the British Raj. Being one of the first generations of Indians to receive a university education, Gokhale graduated from Elphinstone College in 1884. Gokhales education tremendously influenced the course of his future career in addition to learning English, he was exposed to western political thought and became a great admirer of theorists such as John Stuart Mill and Edmund Burke. Although he would come to criticize unhesitatingly many aspects of the English colonial regime, the respect for English political theory and institutions that Gokhale acquired in his college years would remain with him for the rest of his life. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, was one of the founding social and political leaders during the Indian Independence Movement against the British Empire in India. Gokhale was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and founder of the Servants of India Society. Through the Society as well as the Congress and other legislative bodies he served in, Gokhale promoted not only primarily independence from the British Empire but also social reform. To achieve his goals, Gokhale followed two overarching principles: non-violence and reform within existing government institutions.
Indian National Congress and Rivalry with Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Gokhale became a member of the Indian National Congress in 1889, as a protg of social reformer Mahadev Govind Ranade. Along with other contemporary leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Dadabhai Naoroji, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai and Annie Besant, Gokhale fought for decades to obtain greater political representation and power over public affairs for common Indians. He was moderate in his views and attitudes, and sought to petition the British authorities by cultivating a process of dialogue and discussion which would yield greater British respect for Indian rights. Gokhale had visited Ireland and had arranged for an Irish nationalist, Alfred Webb, to serve as President of the Indian National Congress in 1894. The following year, Gokhale became the Congresss joint secretary along with Tilak. In many ways, Tilak and Gokhales early careers paralleled both were Chitpavan Brahmin (though unlike Gokhale, Tilak was wealthy), both attended Elphinstone College, both became mathematics professors, and both were important members of the Deccan Education Society. When both became active in the Congress, however, the divergence of their views concerning how best to improve the lives of Indians became increasingly apparent. Gokhales first major confrontation with Tilak centered around one of his pet projects, the Age of Consent Bill introduced by the British Imperial Government, in 1891-92. Gokhale and his fellow liberal reformers, wishing to purge what they saw as superstitions and abuses from their native Hinduism, wished through the Consent Bill to curb child marriage abuses. Though the Bill was not extreme, only raising the age of consent from ten to twelve, Tilak took issue with it; he did not object per se to the idea of moving towards the elimination of child marriage, but rather to the idea of British interference with Hindu tradition. For Tilak, such reform movements were not to be sought after under imperial rule when they would be enforced by the British, but rather after independence was achieved when Indians would enforce it on themselves. The bill however became law in the Bombay Presidency. In 1905, Gokhale became president of the Indian National Congress. Gokhale used his now considerable influence to undermine his longtime rival, Tilak, refusing to support Tilak as candidate for president of the Congress in 1906. By now, Congress was split: Gokhale and Tilak were the respective leaders of the moderates and the "extremists" (the latter now known by the more term, 'aggressive nationalists') in the Congress. Tilak was an advocate of civil agitation and direct revolution to overthrow the British Empire, whereas Gokhale was a moderate reformist. As a result, the Congress Party split into two wings and was largely robbed of its effectiveness for a decade. The two sides would later patch up in 1916 after Gokhale died.
Servants of India Society
In 1905, when Gokhale was elected president of the Indian National Congress and was at the height of his political power, he founded the Servants of India Society to specifically further one of the causes dearest to his heart: the expansion of Indian education. For Gokhale, true political change in India would only be possible when a new generation of Indians became educated as to their civil and patriotic duty to their country and to each other. Believing existing educational institutions and the Indian Civil Service did not do enough to provide Indians with opportunities to gain this political education, Gokhale hoped the

Servants of India Society would fill this need. In his preamble to the SISs constitution, Gokhale wrote that The Servants of India Society will train men prepared to devote their lives to the cause of country in a religious spirit, and will seek to promote, by all constitutional means, the national interests of the Indian people. The Society took up the cause of promoting Indian education in earnest, and among its many projects organized mobile libraries, founded schools, and provided night classes for factory workers. Although the Society lost much of its vigor following Gokhales death, it still exists to this day, though its membership is small.
Involvement with British Imperial Government
Gokhale, though an earlier leader of the Indian nationalist movement, was not primarily concerned with independence but rather with social reform; he believed such reform would be best achieved by working within existing British government institutions, a position which earned him the enmity of more aggressive nationalists such as Tilak. Undeterred by such opposition, Gokhale would work directly with the British throughout his political career in order to further his reform goals. In 1899, Gokhale was elected to the Bombay Legislative Council. He was elected to the Council of India of Governor-General of India on 22 May 1903 as non-officiating member representing Bombay Province. He later served to Imperial Legislative Council after its expansion in 1909. He there obtained a reputation as extremely knowledgeable and contributed significantly to the annual budget debates. Gokhale developed so great a reputation among the British that he was invited to London to meet with secretary of state Lord John Morley, with whom he established a rapport. Gokhale would help during his visit to shape the Morley-Mentos Reforms introduced in1909. Gokhale was appointed a CIE (Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire) in the 1904 New Year's Honours List, a formal recognition by the Empire of his service.
Mentor to both Jinnah and Gandhi
Gokhale was famously a mentor to Mahatma Gandhi in his formative years. In 1912, Gokhale visited South Africa at Gandhi's invitation. As a young barrister, Gandhi returned from his struggles against the Empire in South Africa and received personal guidance from Gokhale, including a knowledge and understanding of India and the issues confronting common Indians. By 1920, Gandhi emerged as the leader of the Indian Independence Movement. In his autobiography, Gandhi calls Gokhale his mentor and guide. Gandhi also recognised Gokhale as an admirable leader and master politician, describing him as 'pure as crystal, gentle as a lamb, brave as a lion and chivalrous to a fault and the most perfect man in the political field'. Despite his deep respect for Gokhale, however, Gandhi would reject Gokhale's faith in western institutions as a means of achieving political reform and ultimately chose not to become a member of Gokhale's Servants of India Society. Gokhale was also the role model and mentor of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the future founder of Pakistan, who in 1912, aspired to become the "Muslim Gokhale". Even the Aga Khan ( the Spiritual Head of the Islamic sect of Ismaili Khojas & grandfather of the present Aga Khan) has stated in his autobiography that Gokhale's influence on his thinking was probably considerable.
Death
Gokhale continued to be politically active through the last years of his life. This included extensive traveling abroad: in addition to his 1908 trip to England, he also visited South Africa in 1912, where his protg Gandhi was working to improve conditions for the Indian minority living there. Meanwhile, he continued to be involved in the Servants of India Society, the Congress, and the Legislative Council while constantly advocating the advancement of Indian education. All these stresses took their toll, however, and Gokhale died on Feb 19, 1915 at an early age of forty-nine. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, his lifelong political opponent, said at his funeral: "This diamond of India, this jewel of Maharastra, this prince of workers is taking eternal rest on funeral ground. Look at him and try to emulate him".
Impact on Indian Nationalist Movement
Gokhale's impact on the course of the Indian nationalist movement was considerable. Through his close relationship with the highest levels of British imperial government, Gokhale forced India's colonial masters to recognize the capabilities of a new generation of educated Indians and to include them more

than ever before in the governing process. Gokhales firm belief in the need for universal education deeply inspired the next great man on the Indian political stage, Mohandas K. Gandhi; his faith in western political institutions though rejected by Gandhi, was adopted by an independent India in 1950.
Commemoration
His name is commemorated in the names of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics in Pune, the Gokhale Memorial Girls' College in Kolkata, the Gokhale Hall in Chennai, the Gokhale Centenary College in Ankola, the Gopal Krishna Gokhale College in Kolhapur, Gokhale Road in Mumbai, and the Gokhale Institute of Public Affairs in Bangalore.
Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant - receiver of Bharat Ratna; (10 September 1887 7 March 1961) was a statesman of India, an Indian independence activist, and one of the foremost political leaders from Uttarakhand (then in United Provinces) and of the movement to establish Hindi as the official language of India.
Govind Ballabh Pant
Early life
Govind Ballabh Pant was born on 10 September 1887 in Khoont village of Shyahi Devi hills in District Almora. His mother's name was Govindi. His father, Manorath Pant, was constantly on the road. Govind was brought up by his grandfather, Bandri Dutt Joshi, who played a significant part in molding his political views. As a lawyer in Kashipur, Pant began his active work against the British Raj in 1914, when he helped a local parishad, or village council, in their successful challenge of a law requiring locals to provide free transportation of the luggage of travelling British officials. In 1921, he entered politics and was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh.
In the freedom struggle
In 1930, he was arrested and imprisoned for several weeks for organizing a Salt March inspired by Gandhi's earlier actions. In 1933, he was arrested along with Harsh Dev Bahuguna (Gandhi of Choukot)and imprisoned for seven months for attending a session of the then-banned provincial Congress. In 1935, the ban was rescinded, and Pant joined the new Legislative Council. During the Second World War, Pant acted as the tiebreaker between Gandhi's faction, which advocated supporting the British Crown in their war effort, and Subhas Chandra Bose's faction, which advocated taking advantage of the situation to expel the British Raj by any means necessary. In 1934, the Congress ended its boycott of the legislatures and put up candidates, and Pant was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly. His political skills won the admiration of the leaders of the Congress, and he became deputy leader of the Congress party in the Assembly. In 1940, Pant was arrested and imprisoned for helping organize the Satyagraha movement. In 1942 he was arrested again, this time for signing the Quit India resolution, and spent three years in Ahmednagar Fort along with other members of the Congress working committee until March 1945, at which point Jawaharlal Nehru pleaded successfully for Pant's release, on grounds of failing health.
Chief Minister
In 1937, provincial elections were held as a result of the Government of India Act 1935. The Indian National Congress secured a majority in the United Provinces, but did not immediately take office because of a dispute over the use of the Governor's special powers. Therefore, on 1 April 1937, the Nawab of Chhatari, the leader of NAPs (National Agriculturist Parties), was invited to form a minority government. Within a few months, the Congress accepted to form the government under Pant who was made the Chief Minister on 17 July 1937 and was in power till 1939 when all Congress ministries in India resigned. As Chief Minister, Pant won the confidence of the Indian Civil Service, and Sir Harry Haig, the governor of the United Provinces, wrote to the Viceroy that Pant was "an interesting and rather attractive personality... essentially a conciliator and not a dictator" However, in 1939 the Viceroy's declaration of

war, without consultation, led to a clash with the Indian National Congress, and its Provincial ministers resigned. In 1945, the new British Labour government ordered new elections to the Provincial legislatures. The Congress won a majority in the 1946 elections in the United Provinces and Pant was again made the Chief Minister, continuing even after India's independence in 1947.He was the first Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in Independent India. Among his achievements in that position was the abolition of the zamindari system. He served as Union Home Minister from 1955-1961. In 1955, he was awarded the Bharat Ratna. As Home minister, his chief achievement was the re-organisation of States along linguistic lines. He was also responsible for the establishment of Hindi as an official language of the central government and a few states.
Union Home Minister of india
Controversies and criticisms
As Union Minister, Ballabh Pant and the then Government of Indian National Congress announced on 30 September 1957 that the Jeep scandal case was closed for judicial inquiry ignoring suggestion by the Inquiry Committee led by Ananthsayanam Ayyangar. He declared that "as far as Government was concerned it has made up its mind to close the matter. If the opposition was not satisfied they can make it an election issue."
Death
In 1960, he had a heart attack. After this his health started deteriorating and he later died on 7 March 1961 after spending several days in a coma.
Family
Pant's son, Krishna Chandra Pant, was likewise a politician.
Gulab Singh Saini was an Indian freedom fighter and commander-in-chief of the army of princely state of Ballabhgarh. He led the army of Ballabhgarh state in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and was hanged on January 9, 1858 in Delhi's Chandni Chowk along with two other leaders of the mutiny.
Gulab Singh Saini
Early life
He was the son of Jodh Singh Saini. His ancestors were close associates of Raja Nahar Singh's family for many generations and Gulab Singh's forefathers traditionally held the ranks of army chief successively in this predominantly Jat principality. Gulab Singh Saini's father, Jodh Singh, was also the 'senapati', or commander-in-chief, of Ballabhgarh's army during the time of Raja Ram Singh, who was Nahar Singh's father. Raja Nahar Singh is said to have received all of his military training from Jodh Singh, and later Jodh Singh's son, Gulab Singh, was appointed as the 'senapati' or the army chief upon the coronation of Nahar Singh as the Raja of Ballabhgarh. On May 10, 1857 when English soldiers advanced from Merut and Ambala to attack Delhi, they had to fight a fierce battle with Gulab Singh Saini and his dare-devil native army. Having completely routed the English army and having made them flee for their lives, he thus played significant role in the coronation of Bahadur Shah Zafar once again as the emperor of India. According to B.P. Dheeraj, a correspondent of Punjab Kesari, Gulab Singh Saini took a stand against the English army in the village of Sihi. He led a composite army which consisted of Muslims, Jats, Sainis, Meos and a lot of other soldiers of Rajput extractions. On May 10, 1857 Gulab Singh and his native army inflicted a crushing defeat on the army of East India Company and forced them to retreat. This campaign was undertaken to prevent the English army's entry into Delhi to dethrone Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last nominal Mughal emperor of India. Due to Gulab Singh's efforts English temporarily failed in
Role in 1857 mutiny

accomplishing this and this allowed Bahadur Shah Zafar to be coronated once again as the emperor of India and the nominal leader of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 by a congress of Indian rulers
Capture and execution
Gulab Singh Saini was hanged, along with Nahar Singh, Khushal Singh and Madho Singh, in the Chandni Chowk of New Delhi on January 9, 1858 after they had been allegedly captured by deception by English forces. Thereupon, all of his property and land was confiscated by the British colonialists and all public records pertaining to him and his companions were burnt down to erase the influence of their martyrdom on the natives. Gulabchand Hirachand Doshi (18981967) was scion of Walchand group, noted industrialist, philanthropist and Hindu activist.
Gulabchand Hirachand
Background
Gulabchand was a son of Hirachand Doshi from his second marriage and was step-brother of Walchand Hirachand, who was born from the first marriage of his father. He was born in Sholapur in Maharashtra into a Jain family. The name of his other brothers were Lalchand Hirachand and Ratanchand Hirachand.
Activist
From the years 19441945 Gulabchand was President of the Maharashtra Hindu Sabha and close associate of Veer Savarkar. In the 1930s, he was even arrested by British for his nationalist activities
Walchandnagar Industries
Gulabchand was responsible for the modernization and transformation of the flagship group company, Walchandnagar Industries, from growing sugarcane to diversification into other core manufacturing businesses, when he was at the helm of affairs.
Family
Several sons were born from Gulabchand's two marriages of which Bahubali Gulabchand and Ajit Gulabchand are noted and Ajit now heads several group companies including flagship, HCC Limited. Whereas the other flagship company, Walchandnagar Industries is now run by sons of his brother, Lalchand Hirachand, after family division of businesses, as the founder of the Walchand group, Walchand Hirachand died without any heirs.
Other Works
Gulabchand was the trustee of various schools, colleges and hospitals run by Walchand group. Further, he was the author of several book about the Jain religion like Kunda-Kunda Prabhrita sangraha. Volume 9 of Jivaraja Jaina Granthaml. Authors, Kunda Kunda, Gulabchand Hirachand Doshi, Kailash Chandra Jain Guran Ditt Kumar, also known as G.D. Kumar Singh, was an Indian revolutionary associated with the pioneers of the Gadhar movement involved in the Indo-German conspiracy during the First World War.
Guran Ditt Kumar
Beginning in the North-West of India
Guran Ditt Kumar (born ? died ?), was a native of Bannu on the North-West Frontier Province, now in Pakistan. "Guran Ditta" is Punjabi for "Given By the Gurus" - a comparatively common name in the Sikh community, so his actual name is more likely to be Guran Ditta Singh. In 1893 the 2,640 km long Durand line was created to separate British India from the rebel tribes in Afghanistan. Kumar began his working life as an apprentice to an Indian photographer at Rawal Pindi.
Emigration to West Bengal
Attracted by the National College at Kolkata with Sri Aurobindo as principal, in 1907 he joined it as a teacher of Hindi and Urdu. Earlier he had come to know Taraknath Das and Surendramohan Bose. Moreover, the Maratha Lodge, where he resided, was a boarding-house frequented by other

revolutionary suspects of the time. Arrested in Mumbai, in February 1909, Ganesh Savarkar, brother of Vinayak Savarkar, was found in possession of 60 pages of closely typed matter in English, which proved to be a copy of the same bomb manual () found in the Manicktolla garden [in Kolkata]. Savarkars copy was more complete, as it contained 45 sketches of the bombs, mines and buildings to illustrate the text. (Ker, p182). On 31 October 1907, Kumar landed in Victoria, B.C., and was received by Taraknath Das to look after a grocery store. In February 1908, the Canadian Press accused him of directing a seditious organisation among the Sikh labourers in British Columbia; he repudiated this charge in a letter published in the Punjabee of Lahore on 5 November 1908, claiming himself to be a Sikh, signing himself G.D. Kumar Singh. Constantly visiting Taraknath Das in Seattle, in August 1909, he settled there. In November he opened at 1632, 2nd Avenue West, Fairview, in Vancouver, a hostel called the Swadesh Sewak (Servant of the Motherland) : in addition to a night school of Shashida type, to teach English and Mathematics, the building was used for the office and the press of the a monthly paper of the same name that he published in Gurumukhi, broadly reflecting the objectives of Free Hindustan edited by Taraknath Das. Its tone generally became more and more objectionable, and as it was addressed principally to the Sikhs in the Indian Army in their own language, and was being sent out to India in considerable numbers () Its importation into India was prohibited in March 1911, under the Sea Customs Act. (Ker, pp230231). With a new immigration law passed on 9 May 1910, when the condition of Indians in British Columbia further deteriorated, Kumar as the Secretary of the local Hindustani Assoiation wrote, on 28 June, to the Prime Minister of Canada to protest against the unfair move. Availing of Taraks return to Vancouver in September, they utilised the temper of the Indians to organise among them a revolutionary movement. (Bose, p53). These grievances were to bring about much trouble in the future years. For example, reports of two meetings held at Vancouver on 24 April and at Victoria on 15 May 1910, Kumar in the May issue of his paper discussed: (1) The law creates an unfair distinction between the European and the Indian subjects of the British Government. (2) Indians are subjected to an additional disgrace in that even Japanese are admitted more readily than they are. (3) Only Indians who have come direct from an Indian port are admitted: two examples of the working of this rule are given. (4) As there is no direct route from India to Canada, the above rule operates to prevent immigration altogether. (5) Other countries, e.g., the United States, have laws to prohibit the immigration of Chinese and other labourers; but Canada prohibits even the immigration of Indian merchants and students as in the case of Jogesh Chandra Misra who was sent out by a Kolkata association as a student, was prevented from landing, and is now studying at Seattle University. (6) Even the members of the families of Indians owning land in Canada have to show 200 dollars each on landing. (7) The present law is a restriction on the liberty of the subject. (8) Other British subjects get a vote after six months residence, but Indians do not. No doubt such antiIndian distinctions exist in America, Germany or Japan; the result of the Canadian law is that Indians have to admit with regret that they are better off in foreign countries than in British territory. (Ker, pp231232). The paper came to an end in 1911. In spite of a considerably moderate tone than that of the Free Hindustan, Kumar as much as Das raised the presumption of sedition, as confirmed by the discovery early in 1911 that they distributed, among other harmful publications, the Bande Mataram published by Madame Cama and the Talvar by Virendranath Chattopadhyay from Paris. They drew the attention of Sikhs in America and India to the vulgar effusions of certain Canadian papers on the immigration question.
Activity in Canada
Racism Towards Hindus in Canada
They circulated, for instance, the reprint of an article quoted by the Aryan in its issue of MarchApril 1912 : The smoke-coloured Hindu, exotic, unmixable, picturesque, a languid worker and a refuge for fleas, we will always have with us, but we dont want any more of him. We dont want any Hindu women. We dont want any Hindu children. Its nonsense to talk about Hindu assimilation. The Sikh may be of Aryan stock; I always thought he was of Jewish extraction. He may be near-white though he does not look it. But we know him, and dont want any more of him. British Columbia cannot allow any more

of the dark meat of the world to come to this province. To deport these British subjects from India would be the wisest thing. These Sikhs are far too obtrusive. They are of no use to the country. British Columbia would be a hundred times better off without them. Certainly no more of them must be allowed to come. Both Das and Kumar with the help of Surendramohan Bose and Hussain Rahim had set to bring together the various Indian communities in terms of a united action, until it reached the climax in the Gadhar organisation. Bose had been sent to Japan by the Scientific and Industrial Association of Kolkata in 1906. On reaching Canada at the end of 1907, Bose had informed Sri Aurobindo on 26 December, that Bengalis were wrong in hoping for Japanese help in their nationalist movement, although they had some sympathisers. Specialised in chemistry, he also toured as a lecturer on Indian subjects. In 1913 he became the general secretary of the Hindustan Association of the USA. Shortly before leaving America, in 1913, from Chicago, he sent to Harnam notes and formulae of his own for making bombs. In January 1914, Bose wrote again from Paris along with a valuable copy of the process used by the Russian Revolutionists... Having visited revolutionaries in Paris and Geneva, Bose reached India in February 1914. Harnam Singh (of Sahri) was the other important revolutionary who shared with them this patriotic task : a former trooper of the 4th Cavalry in India, he had gone to China in 1904 and, three years later, reached Canada with Kumar. In 1908-1909 he attended school at Seattle, and went to Vancouver as Kumars guest. In a letter to Das, in July 1913, Kumar described Harnam as the leader of the revolutionary movement in Vancouver. Owing to his friendship with Harnam, Baba Gurdit Singh of the Komagata Maru affair knew well this zealous group and, prior to his expedition, had received from Das names and addresses of the leading Jugantar figures like Atulkrishna Ghose and Satish Chakravarti who worked under Jatindranath Mukherjee. Harnam was deported from San Francisco on 26 September 1914.
Mission to the Far East
While the Gadhar ramifications extended widely, in May 1913, Kumar sailed from San Francisco for the Philippine Islands. He plainly expressed the object of this trip when he wrote Taraknath Das : I am going to establish a base at Manila (P.I.) forwarding Dept, supervise the work near China, Hongkong, Shanghai. Professor Barakatullah is all right in Japan."(Ker, p237). According to Kers report, he was engaged in supervising the work of the Ghadr Party in the Far East. Amongst the correspondence of Harnam Singh of Sahri were several letters from G.D. Kumar showing that he was working hard on behalf of the cause. He was in constant touch with Bhagwan Singh and Barakatullah and was collecting money for the Ghadr campaign and was sending to Har Dayal. He afterwards went to Japan, where he busied himself meeting Ghadr parties passing through Yokohama on the way to India. (p425).
Last Trace
In the Special List of Record Group 118 (Records of the U.S. Attorney) preserved in San Francisco, and in San Francisco Chronicle of 19 January 1918, we find report of Taraknath Dass trial as defendant. Kumar, too, was mentioned during the 1917-18 San Francisco Trial consisting of The German Hindu Conspiracy and Violations of U.S. Neutrality 1913-20. He was accused of having formed party in Shanghai in 1914. Associate of German agent Mueller and of Scrinivas (sic!) R. Wagel. Sent arms and ammunition to revolutionary agents in India. No further information is available on this rebel's later life. Gurubari Meher was killed in fighting against a raja in India as part of the struggle to end British rule. Except for a small mention of her participation in the Praja Mandal Movement, very few facts are known about her. On January 28, 1947, a few months before India became independent, the then (princely) state government of Sonepur let loose a reign of terror at Binika. The people rose in revolt against the king for his pro-British stance. Nearly 20,000 freedom fighters, led by Gurubari Meher, organized a mass movement against the king. Police resorted to baton charge and subsequently the woman leader of the movement was shot dead by the police. A news item had been published in 'Dainik Asha' from Sambalpur with the headline 'Victory For the People Of Sonepur' which remains as the sole witness to her contribution.
Gurubari Meher

Ajmal Khan (or Hakim Ajmal Khan) (18681927) was an Indian physician specialising in the field of South Asian traditional Unani medicine as well as a Muslim nationalist politician and freedom fighter. Through his founding of the Tibbia College in Delhi, he is credited with the revival of Unani medicine in early 20th century India. Khan also recognised the talents of chemist Dr. Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, whose subsequent research into important medicinal plants used in the field gave it a new direction. A close associate of Gandhi, he participated in the Non-cooperation movement (Satyagraha), led the Khilafat Movement, and became the fifth Muslim President of the Indian National Congress during the 1921 session held in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Khan was one of the founders of the Jamia Millia Islamia University, becoming its first chancellor in 1920 and remaining in office until his death in 1927.
Hakim Ajmal Khan
Biography
Hakim Born in 1868 (17th Shawwal 1284), Khan descended from a distinguished line of physicians who had come to India during the reign of Mughal Emperor Babar. His family were all Unani doctors who had practiced this ancient form of medicine since their arrival in the country. They were then known as the Rais of Delhi. His grandfather, Hakim Sharif Khan, was physician to Mughal Emperor, Shah Alam and built the Sharif Manzil, a hospital-cum-college teaching Unani medicine. Khan learnt the Quran by heart and as a child studied traditional Islamic knowledge including Arabic and Persian, before turning his energy to the study of medicine under the guidance of his senior relatives, all of whom were well-known physicians. To promote the practice of Tibb-i-unani or Unani medicine, his grandfather had set up the Sharif Manzil hospital-cum-college known throughout the subcontinent as one of the best philanthropic Unani hospitals where treatment for poor patients was free. He completed his Unani studies under Hakeem Abdul Jameel of Siddiqui Dawakhana, Delhi. On qualifying in 1892, Khan became chief physician to the Nawab of Rampur. Hailed as "Massiha-eHind" (Messiah of India) and "a king without a crown", Khan, like his father, was reputed to effect miraculous cures and to have possessed a "magical" medicine chest, the secrets of which were known to him alone. Such was his medical acumen that it is said that he could diagnose any illness by just looking at a persons face. Hakim Ajmal Khan charged Rs.1000 per day for an out-of-town visit but if the patient came to Delhi, he was treated free, regardless of his position in society. Khan proved to be the most outstanding and multifaceted personality of his era with matchless contributions to the causes of Indian independence, national integration and communal harmony. He took great interest in the expansion and development of the native system of Unani medicine and to that end built three important institutions, the Central College in Delhi, the Hindustani Dawakhana and the Ayurvedic and Unani Tibbia College, which expanded research and practice in the field and saved the Unani System of Medicine from extinction in India. His untiring efforts in this field infused a new force and life into an otherwise decaying Unani medical system under British rule. Khan proposed the absorption of Western concepts within the Unani system, a view diametrically opposite to that adopted by physicians of the Lucknow school who wanted to maintain the system's purity. As one of its founders, Khan was elected first chancellor of the Jamia Milia Islamia University on 22 November 1920, holding the position until his death in 1927. During this period he oversaw the University's move to Delhi from Aligarh and helped it to overcome various crises, including financial ones, when he carried out extensive fund raising and often bailed it out using his own money.
Nationalism
Khan changed direction from medicine towards politics after he started writing for the Urdu weekly Akmal-ul-Akhbar launched by his family. Khan also headed the Muslim team who met the Viceroy of India in Shimla in 1906 and presented him with a memorandum written by the delegation. The following year, he was present at the Dhaka inauguration of the All India Muslim League on 30 December 1906. At a time when many Muslim leaders faced arrest, Khan approached Mahatma Gandhi for help, thereafter uniting with him and other Muslim leaders such as Maulana Azad, Maulana Mohammad Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali in the well-known Khilafat movement. Khan was also the sole person elected to the

Presidency of the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League and the All India Khilafat Committee.
Legacy
Before he died of heart problems on 29 December 1927 Khan had renounced his government title, and many of his Indian followers awarded him the title of Masih-ul-Mulk (Healer of the Nation). He was succeeded to the position of JMI Chancellor by Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari. Ajmaline, a class Ia antiarrhythmic agent and Ajmalan a parent hydride, are named after him.
After partition
After the partition of India Khan's grandson Hakim Muhammad Nabi Khan moved to Pakistan. Hakim Nabi had learnt Tibb (medicine)Wikipedia:Please clarify from his grandfather and opened 'Dawakhana Hakim Ajmal Khan' in Lahore which has branches throughout Pakistan. The motto of the Ajmal Khan family is Azal-ul-Allah-Khudatulmal, which means that the best way to keep oneself busy is by serving humanity.
Quotes
"The spirit of non-cooperation pervades throughout the country and there is no true Indian heart even in the remotest corner of this great country which is not filled with the spirit of cheerful suffering and sacrifice to attain Swaraj and see the Punjab and the Khilafat wrongs redressed." From the Presidential Address, I.N.C., 1921 Session, Ahmedabad.
Further reading
Hakim Ajmal Khan, the versatile genius, by Mohammed Abdur Razzack. Central Council for Research in Unani Medicine, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Govt. of India, 1987. Hakim Ajmal Khan by Zafar Ahmed Nizami, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1988.[17] Hakim Ajmal Khan(Indian freedom fighters series), by Shri Ram Bakshi. Anmol Publications, 1996. ISBN 81-7488-264-2. Hakim Ajmal Khan (Hindi, Urdu and English Version) by Hakim Syed Zillur Rahman, National Book Trust, Government of India, New Delhi, India, 2004.
References
Faruqi, Ziaulhasan (1999). Dr. Zakir Hussain, quest for truth. APH Publishing. ISBN 81-7648-056-8.
External links
'Dawakhana Hakim Ajmal Khan, Lahore website 'Dawakhana Hakim Ajmal Khan Online Store, International website Hakim Ajmal Khan (1863-1927): Medicine, Freedom Fighter Harihar Singh was an Indian politician and a former Chief Minister of Bihar. He succeeded Bhola Paswan Shashtri, as the Chief Minister of Bihar in 1969.
Harihar Singh
References
Anugrah Abhinandan Granth samiti. 1947 Anugrah Abhinandan Granth. Bihar. Anugrah Narayan cenetary year celebration Committee. 1987. Bihar Bibhuti: Vayakti Aur Kriti , Bihar. Bimal Prasad (editor). 1980. A Revolutionary's Quest: Selected Writings of Jayaprakash Narayan. Oxford University Press, Delhi.
External links
Members of Constituent Assembly from Bihar First Bihar Government:The Anugrah Babu-Sri Babu Raj Freedom Fighters of India Maulana Hasrat Mohani (b. 1875 Unnao, d. 1951 Lucknow) (Urdu: Mo ln
Hasrat Mohani

asrat Mhn) was a Romantic Poet of Urdu language, journalist, politician, parliamentarian of British India, besides a being a part of the Indian Independence Movement. The real name of Maulana was Syed Fazl-ul-Hasan. Hasrat was his pen name which he used in the Urdu poetry and the word Mohani refers to the native place of Mohan where he was born.
Short biography
The real name of Hasrat Mohani was Syed Fazl-ul-Hasan. He was born in 1875 at Mohan (town) in the Unnao district of United Province in British India. Since he was a poet of Urdu, he had opted the pen name of Hasrat Mohani in Urdu shayri. Hasrat Mohani was not just a maverick when it came to publicly championing the radical thinking of Tilak. He also wrote verses expressing deep love for Krishna, and often went to Mathura to celebrate Krishna Janmashtami.
Career
Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a brilliant and hardworking student as well as a topper in his first state level exams. Later, he studied in Aligarh Muslim University, where some of his colleagues were Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Maulana Shaukat Ali. His teachers in poetry were Tasleem Lucknawi and Naseem Dehlvi.
Acedamic
A few of his books are Kulliyat-e-Hasrat Mohani (en. Collection of Hasrat Mohani's poetry), Sharh-eKalam-e-Ghalib (en. Explanation of Ghalib's poetry), Nukaat-e-Sukhan (en. Important aspects of poetry), Mushahidaat-e-Zindaan (en. Observations in Prison), etc. A very popular ghazal Chupke Chupke Raat Din sung by Ghulam Ali, was penned by him. He was also featured in the film Nikaah of 1982. The famous slogan of Indian freedom fighters Inquilab Zindabad was coined by Hasrat Mohani himself. In 1921 Ram Prasad Bismil attended Ahmedabad Congress along with many volunteers from Shahjahanpur and occupied a place on the dias. A senior congressman Prem Krishna Khanna and revolutionary Ashfaqulla Khan was also with him. Bismil played an active role in the Congress with Maulana Hasrat Mohani and got the most debated proposal of Poorn Swaraj passed in the General Body meeting of Congress. Mohandas K. Gandhi, who was not in the favour of this proposal became quite helpless before the overwhelming demand of youths. It was another victory of Bismil against the Liberal Group of Congress. He returned to Shahjahanpur and mobilised the youths of United Province for non-cooperation with the Government. The people of U.P. were so much influenced by the furious speeches and verses of Bismil that they became hostile against British Raj.
Political
Struggle for Indian independence
Hasrat Mohani participated in the struggle for Indian Independence (end of British Raj); and was jailed for many years by British authorities. He was the first person in Indian History who demanded 'Complete Independence' (Azadi-e-Kaamil) in 1921 as he presided over an annual session of All India Muslim League. He was not only a practising Muslim but also a strong supporter of the communist philosophy, as he could see that the British could be defeated by following its principles.
Communist movement
He was among the founders of the Communist Party of India. He was also imprisoned for promoting antiBritish ideas, especially for publishing an article against British policies in Egypt, in his magazine 'Urdu-eMualla'. Afterwards, unlike some Urdu poets like Josh Malihabadi and Nasir Kazmi, and many Muslim leaders, he chose to live in India rather than move to Pakistan after independence (1947)in order to represent left over Indian Muslims on various platforms. In recognition for his efforts, he was made a member of the constituent assembly which drafted the Indian constitution. But unlike other members, he never signed it since he saw hypocrisy towards Muslim minorities in it (he was a Muslim himself).
Critical appreciations
According to Akhtar Payami: Hasrat's poetic genius has been acclaimed by many writers and critics. In

the not too distant past (beginning and the first half of the 20th century), Hasrat Mohani, Jigar Moradabadi and Asghar formed a constellation of emerging poets in a crucial period of India's history. Major political developments were taking place in the subcontinent and the sun was about to set on the British Empire. As conscious members of society, poets and writers do not remain indifferent to the changes in their socio-political milieu. Not only India but the whole world was in a state of flux.
Death and legacy
Maulana Hasrat Mohani died on 13 May 1951 in Lucknow, India. Hasrat Mohani Memorial Society was founded by Maulana Nusrat Mohani in 1951. In Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan, Hasrat Mohani Memorial Library and Hall Trust, Karachi have been established by Hasrat Mohani Memorial Society (Regd.) Every year, on his death anniversary, a memorial meeting is conducted by this Trust as well as many other organisations in India and Pakistan. Also Hasrat Mohani Colony, at Korangi Town in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan, was named after Maulana Hasrat Mohani. A famous and vast road is named after him in the financial hub of Karachi. Kulliyat-e-Hasrat Mohani (Collection of Hasrat Mohani's poetry) Sharh-e-Kalam-e-Ghalib (Explanation of Ghalib's poetry) Nukaat-e-Sukhan (Important aspects of poetry) Mushahidaat-e-Zindaan
Collection
Hemanta Kumar Sarkar (Bengali: ) (1896 - 1952) was an Indian writer, linguist and politician. He was the first biographer of Subhas Chandra Bose, the co-founder of Labour Swaraj Party in Bengal along with Muzaffar Ahmed and Kazi Nazrul Islam and led the movement for the Partition of Bengal and formation of Bengali Hindu homeland in 1947.
Hemanta Kumar Sarkar
Early life
Hemanta Kumar Sarkar was born in 1896 in the village of Bag Anchra in the district of Nadia to Madan Mohan Sarkar. He spent his childhood in Orissa. There he attended the Ravenshaw Collegiate School in Cuttack along with Subhas Chandra Bose who later became his good friend. Both of them were the pupils Benimadhab Das, the headmaster of the school. After schooling, Sarkar took admission in the Sanskrit College in Krishnanagar. Soon after he joined the University of Calcutta as a professor, he was drawn into the freedom struggle. In 1920-21 he took part in the Non Cooperation Movement under the leadership of Chitta Ranjan Das and courted imprisonment. After his release, he began to work in the Congress and the Swarajya Party. He was nominated to the Bengal Legislative Assembly from Nadia district on a Swarajya Party ticket and became of chief whip of the party in the assembly. Later he left the Congress over differences with the leadership and engaged himself in workers movement. Sarkar began to fight for the rights of the peasants and the workers and came to be known as the leader of the proletariat. On 1 November 1925, he along with Kazi Nazrul Islam, Qutubuddin Ahmad and Shamsuddin Hussain founded the Labour Swaraj Party in Bengal. At the All Bengal Praja Conference held in Krishnanagar on 6 February 1926, the name of the party was changed to Peasants and Workers Party of Bengal and Sarkar became the joint secretary along with Qutubuddin Ahmad. In 1927, he published the first biographical sketch of Subhas Chandra Bose. Between 1927 and 1929, Sarkar organized three tenants conference in Kushtia. In 1927, the All Bengal Praja Conference was held at Kushtia in Nadia District presided over by Sarkar himself. Soumendra Nath Tagore and Philip Spratt spoke at the conference. Next year, the regional tenants conference was held at the Jatindra Mohan Hall in Kushtia presided over by Muzaffar Ahmed. Hemanta Kumar Sarkar and Philip Spratt spoke at the conference. In March 1929, the regional tenants conference was presided over by Sarkar himself where Philip Spratt, Muzaffar Ahmed, Abdul Halim and others spoke.
Career

In 1934, he contested in the Central Legislative Council on a Congress ticket and lost. After the defeat, he stayed away from politics for some time. In 1940, when the district ad-hoc committees were being constituted, he became the member of the ad hoc committee. During the Second World War, he joined Mohandas Gandhi in the Satyagraha movement and was sent to jail for one year. In late 1946, Sarkar formed the Bengal Partition League along with Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Nalinakshya Sanyal, Colonel A.C. Chatterjee and others to press for the partition of Bengal and formation of a separate province for the Bengali Hindu people. He wrote a series of articles in Dainik Basumati justifying the need for the partition. He founded a Bengali daily named Paschimbanga Patrika in support of West Bengal.
Books Bengali
Sir Henry John Stedman Cotton, KCSI (13 September 1845 22 October 1915) had a long career in the Indian Civil Service, during which he was sympathetic to Indian nationalism. After returning to England, he served as a Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Nottingham East from 1906 to January 1910. He entered Magdalen College School in 1856, Brighton College in 1859, and King's College London in 1861. He visited Switzerland in 1863. He married his wife Mary on August 1, 1867. Cotton joined the Indian Civil Service, arriving in India in 1867. His first posting was at Midnapore, where his immediate superior was William James Herschel, then the local magistrate. His eldest son H. E. A. Cotton was born in that city in 1868. He later served in Chuadanga, where he witnessed the great flood of 1871. In 1872 he was posted to Calcutta, and in 1873 he was appointed Assistant Secretary to the Bengal Government by Sir George Campbell, and later worked under Sir Richard Temple. In 1878 he became magistrate and collector at Chittagong; in 1880 he became Senior Secretary to the Board of Revenue in Bengal. He later became Revenue Secretary to Government, Financial and Municipal Secretary, and then a member of the Bengal Legislative Council. Cotton eventually rose to be Chief Commissioner of Assam (1896 to 1902), during which time he experienced the 1897 Assam earthquake. Cotton College, Guwahati was established by him in 1901. Cotton supported Indian Home Rule and got into serious trouble when he advocated the cause in his 1885 book New India, or India in Transition (revised edition 1907). In 1904, he served as President of Indian National Congress, one of the few non-Indians to do so. As such, he led the opposition to Curzon's invasion of Tibet and partition of Bengal. In 1911 he published his memoirs, Indian and Home Memories.
Henry John Stedman Cotton
Family
He was the father of H. E. A. Cotton. Through his great-grandfather Joseph Cotton (17461825), Henry John Stedman Cotton was a first cousin once removed of both the judge Henry Cotton (his godfather, who he was named after) and of the African explorer William Cotton Oswell.
Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi

Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi Born Died Other names Alma mater Organization 25 August 1888 Amritsar, Punjab, British India 27 August 1963 (aged 75) Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan Allama Mashriqi University of the Punjab University of Cambridge Khaksar movement

Political movement Indian independence movement Pakistan Movement Religion Islam Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi, also known as Allama Mashriqi, (25 August 1888 27 August 1963) was a Pakistani mathematician, logician, political theorist, Islamic scholar and the founder of the Khaksar movement. Mashriqi was a noted mathematical intellectual who became a college Principal at the age of 25, and then became an Under Secretary, at the age of 29, in the Education Department of the Government of India. He wrote an exegesis of the Qur'an which was nominated for the 1925 Nobel Prize. He was offered an ambassadorship to Afghanistan at age 32, but he declined all honours. He subsequently resigned government service and in 1930 founded the Khaksar Movement, aiming to advance the condition of the masses irrespective of any faith, sect, or religion. As its leader, he was imprisoned several times. Through his philosophical writings, he asserted that the science of religions was essentially the science of collective evolution of mankind.
Education
Mashriqi had a passion for mathematics from his childhood. He completed his Master's degree in Mathematics from the University of the Punjab at the age of 19 and broke all previous records. In October 1907 he matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge, England, to read for the mathematics tripos. He was awarded a college foundation scholarship in May 1908. In June 1909 he was awarded first class honours in Mathematics Part I, being placed joint 27th out of 31 on the list of wranglers. For the next two years, he read for the oriental languages tripos in parallel to the natural sciences tripos, gaining first class honours in the former and third class in the latter. After three years' residence at Cambridge he had qualified for his Bachelor of Arts degree, which he took in 1910. In 1912 he completed a fourth tripos in mechanical sciences, and was placed in the second class. Following the year, Mashriqi was conferred with D.Phil. in mathematics receiving a gold medal in his doctoral graduation ceremony. He left Cambridge and returned to India in December 1912. During his stay in Cambridge his religious and scientific conviction was inspired by the works and concepts of the professor Sir James Jeans.Wikipedia:Citing sources On his return to India, Mashriqi was offered the premiership of Alwar, a princely state, by the Raja. He declined owing to his interest in education. At the age of 25 he was appointed Vice Principal of Islamia College, Peshawar, by Chief Commissioner Sir George Roos-Keppel. He was made Principal of the same college in 1917. In Oct 1917 he was appointed Under Secretary to the Government of India in the Education Department in succession to Sir George Anderson (18761943). He became headmaster of the High School, Peshawar on 21 October 1919. Aged 32, he was offered an ambassadorship to Afghanistan, which he declined.[citation needed] In 1930 he was passed over for a promotion in the government service, following which he went on medical leave. In 1932 he resigned, taking his pension, and settled down in Ichhra, Lahore.Wikipedia:Citing sources In 1924, at the age of 36, Mashriqi completed the first volume of his book, Tazkirah. It is a commentary on the Qur'an in the light of science. It was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1925,Wikipedia:Citing sources#What information to include subject to the condition it was translated into one of the European languages. Mashriqi, however, declined the suggestion of translation.
Career
Nobel nomination
Fellowships
Mashriqi's fellowships included:Wikipedia:Citing sources Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, 1923 Fellow of the Geographical Society (F.G.S), Paris Fellow of Society of Arts (F.S.A), Paris Member of the Board at Delhi University

President of the Mathematical Society, Islamia College, Peshawar Member of the International Congress of Orientalists (Leiden), 1930 President of the All World's Faiths Conference, 1937 Mashriqi was interested in the conflict within various religions. Instead of getting disgusted with the conflict and discarding religion, he tried to fathom the fallacy. To him, messengers from the same Creator could not have brought different and conflicting messages to the same creation. He could not conceive of a contradictory and conflicting state of affairs in the Universe, nor could he accept the conflict within various religions as real. Either Religion was a fraud and the prophets were impostors who misguided and disrupted mankind, or they were misprojected by their followers and misunderstood by the mankind.[citation needed] He delved into the religious scriptures and arrived at the conclusion that all the prophets had brought the same message to man. He analysed the fundamentals of the Message and established that the teachings of all the prophets were closely linked with the evolution of mankind as a single and united species in contrast to other ignorant and stagnant species of animals.[citation needed] It was on this basis that he declared that the science of religions was essentially the science of collective evolution of mankind; all prophets came to unite mankind, not to disrupt it; the basic law of all faiths is the law of unification and consolidation of the entire humanity.Wikipedia:Citing sources According to Markus Daeschel, the philosophical ruminations of Mashriqi offer an opportunity to re-evaluate the meaning of colonial modernity and notion of post-colonial nation-building in modern times. Mashriqi is often portrayed as a controversial figure, a religious activist, a revolutionary, and an anarchist; while at the same time he is described as a visionary, a reformer, a leader, and a scientist-philosopher who was born ahead of his time. After Mashriqi resigned from government service, he laid the foundation of the Khaksar Tehrik (also known as Khaksar Movement) in 1930.Wikipedia:Citing sources#What information to include Mashriqi was opposed to the partition of India which he believed played into the hands of the British.[citation needed] He founded Al-Islah in 1934.[citation needed]
Mashriqi's philosophy
Political life
Imprisonments and allegations
Mashriqi was first imprisoned in 1939, by the Congress Government of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (now Uttar Pradesh) during his efforts in resolving the sectarian conflicts between Sunnis and Shias. In 1940, he was arrested during a clash between the police and the Khaksars. The newspapers reported it as the "battle of spades and guns". He was only freed from solitary confinement in 1942 after he fasted for 80 days.[citation needed] On 20 July 1943, an assassination attempt was made on Muhammad Ali Jinnah by Rafiq Sabir who was assumed to be a Khaksar worker. The attack was deplored by Mashriqi, who denied any involvement. Later, Justice Blagden of Bombay High Court, in his ruling on 4 November 1943 dismissed any association of Khaksars. In Pakistan, Mashriqi was imprisoned at least five times: in 1950 prior to election; in 1958 for alleged complicity in the murder of republican leader Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan; and, in 1962 for suspicion on attempt to overthrow President Ayub's government. However, none of the charges were proved, and he was acquitted in each case.Wikipedia:Citing sources In 1957 Mashriqi allegedly led 300,000 of his followers to the borders of Kashmir, intending, it is said, to launch a fight for its liberation. However, the Pakistan government persuaded the group to withdraw and the organisation was later disbanded.
Death
Mashriqi died on August 27, 1963.

Mashriqi's prominent works include: Armughan-i-Hakeem, a poetical work Dahulbab, a poetical work Ishaarat, the "Bible" of the Khaksar movement Khitab-e-Misr (The Egypt Address), based on his 1925 speech in Cairo as a delegate to the Motmar-eKhilafat Maulvi Ka Ghalat Mazhab Tazkirah Volume I, 1924, discussions on conflicts between religions, between religion and science, and the need to resolve these conflicts Tazkirah Volume II. Posthumously published in 1964 Tazkirah Volume III. Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (Hindustani: [ndr andi] ( listen); ne Nehru; 19 November 1917 31 October 1984) was the third Prime Minister of India and a central figure of the Indian National Congress party. Gandhi, who served from 1966 to 1977 and then again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984, is the second-longest-serving Prime Minister of India and the only woman to hold the office. Indira Gandhi was the only child of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. She served as the Chief of Staff of her father's highly centralized administration between 1947 and 1964 and came to wield considerable unofficial influence in government. Elected Congress President in 1959, she was offered the premiership in succession to her father. Gandhi refused and instead chose to become a cabinet minister in the government. She finally consented to become Prime Minister in succession to Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966. As Prime Minister, Gandhi became known for her political ruthlessness and unprecedented centralisation of power. She presided over a period where India emerged with greater power than before to become the regional hegemon of South Asia with considerable political, economic, and military developments. Gandhi also presided over a state of emergency from 1975 to 1977 during which she ruled by decree and made lasting changes to the constitution of India. She was assassinated in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star. In 2001, Gandhi was voted the greatest Indian Prime Minister in a poll organised by India Today. She was also named "Woman of the Millennium" in a poll organised by the BBC in 1999.
Mashriqi's works
Indira Gandhi
Early life and career
Indira Nehru was born on 19 November 1917 in Allahabad. Her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, led India's political struggle for independence from British rule, and became the first Prime Minister of the Union (and later Republic) of India. She was an only child (a younger brother was born, but died young), and grew up with her mother, Kamala Nehru, at the Anand Bhavan; a large family estate in Allahabad. Indira had a lonely and unhappy childhood. Her father was often away, directing political activities or being incarcerated in prison, while her mother was frequently bed-ridden with illness, and later suffered an early death from tuberculosis. She had limited contact with her father, mostly through letters. Indira was mostly taught at home by tutors, and intermittently attended school until matriculation in 1934.</ref> She went on to study at the Viswa Bharati University in Calcutta. A year later, however, she had to leave university to attend to her ailing mother in Europe. While there, it was decided that Indira would continue her education at the University of Oxford in Britain. After her mother passed away, she briefly attended the Badminton School before enrolling at Somerville College in 1937 to read history. Indira had to take the entrance examination twice; having failed at her first attempt, with a poor performance in Latin. At Oxford, she did well in history, political science and economics, but her grades in Latina compulsory subjectremained poor. During her time in Europe, Ms. Indira was plagued with ill-health and was constantly attended by doctors. She had to make repeated trips to Switzerland to recover, disrupting her studies. She was being treated by the famed Swiss doctor Auguste Rollier in 1940, when the Nazi armies rapidly conquered

Europe. Indira tried to return to England through Portugal but was left stranded for nearly two months. She managed to enter England in early 1941, and from there returned to India without completing her studies at Oxford. The university later conferred on her an honorary degree. In 2010, Oxford further honored her by selecting her as one of the ten Oxasians, illustrious Asian graduates from the University of Oxford. During her stay in the UK, young Indira frequently met her future husband Feroze Gandhi, whom she knew from Allahabad, and who was studying at the London School of Economics. The marriage took place in Allahabad according to Adi Dharm rituals though Feroze belonged to a Parsi family of Gujarat. In the 1950s, Indira, now Mrs. Indira Gandhi after her marriage, served her father unofficially as a personal assistant during his tenure as the first Prime Minister of India. After her father's death in 1964 she was appointed as a member of the Rajya Sabha (upper house) and became a member of Lal Bahadur Shastri's cabinet as Minister of Information and Broadcasting.
Prime Minister
When Indira became Prime Minister in 1966, the Congress was split in two factions, the socialists led by Gandhi, and the conservatives led by Morarji Desai. Rammanohar Lohia called her Gungi Gudiya, which means 'Mute Doll'. The internal problems showed in the 1967 election where the Congress lost nearly 60 seats winning 297 seats in the 545-seat Lok Sabha. She had to accommodate Desai as Deputy Prime Minister of India and Minister of Finance. In 1969, after many disagreements with Desai, the Indian National Congress split. She ruled with support from Socialist and Communist Parties for the next two years. In the same year, in July 1969 she nationalised banks. South Asia In 1971, Gandhi intervened in the Pakistani Civil War in support of East Pakistan. India emerged victorious in the resulting conflict to become the regional hegemon of South Asia. During the war, the U.S. had supported Pakistan, while India received help from the Soviet Union. U.S. President Richard Nixon disliked Gandhi personally, referring to her as a "witch" and "clever fox" in his private communication with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Relations with the U.S. grew distant as Gandhi developed close ties with the Soviet Union after the war. The latter emerged to become India's largest trading partner and its biggest arms supplier for much of Gandhi's premiership. Nixon later wrote of the war: "[Gandhi] suckered [America]. Suckered us.....this woman suckered us." India's new hegemonic position as articulated under the "Indira Doctrine" led to attempts to bring the Himalayan states under the Indian sphere of influence. Nepal and Bhutan remained aligned with India, while in 1975, after years of building up support, Gandhi annexed Sikkim to India. This was denounced as a "despicable act" by China. India maintained close ties with neighbouring Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) following the Liberation War. Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman recognized Gandhi's contributions to the independence of Bangladesh. However, Mujibur Rahman's pro-India policies antagonised many in Bangladeshi politics and the military, who feared that Bangladesh had become a client state of India. The Assassination of Mujibur Rahman in 1975 led to the establishment of Islamist military regimes that sought to distance the country from India. Gandhi's relationship with the military regimes was strained, due to her alleged support of anti-Islamist leftist guerrilla forces in Bangladesh. Generally, however, there was a rapprochement between Gandhi and the Bangladeshi regimes, although issues such as border disputes and the Farakka Dam remained an irritant in bilateral ties. In 2011, the Government of Bangladesh conferred its highest state award posthumously on Gandhi for her "outstanding contribution" to the country's independence. Gandhi's approach to dealing with Sri Lanka's ethnic problems was initially accommodating. She enjoyed cordial relations with Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike. In 1974, India ceded the tiny islet of Kachchatheevu to Sri Lanka in order to save Bandaranaike's socialist government from a political disaster. However, relations soured over Sri Lanka's turn away from socialism under Junius Jayewardene, whom Gandhi despised as a "western puppet." India under Gandhi was alleged to have supported LTTE militants in the 1980s to put pressure on Jayewardene to abide by Indian interests. Nevertheless, Gandhi
Foreign policy

rejected demands to invade Sri Lanka in the aftermath of Black July 1983, an anti-Tamil pogrom carried out by Sinhalese mobs. Gandhi made a statement emphasizing that she stood for the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka, although she also stated that India cannot "remain a silent spectator to any injustice done to the Tamil community." India's relationship with Pakistan remained strained following the Shimla Accord in 1972. Gandhi's authorization of the detonation of a nuclear device at Pokhran in 1974 was viewed by Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as an attempt to intimidate Pakistan into accepting India's hegemony in the subcontinent. However, in May 1976, Gandhi and Bhutto both agreed to reopen diplomatic establishments and normalize relations. Following the rise to power of General Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan in 1978, India's relations with its neighbour reached a nadir. Gandhi accused General Zia of supporting Khalistani militants in Punjab. Military hostilities recommenced in 1984 following Gandhi's authorization of Operation Meghdoot. India was victorious in the resulting Siachen conflict against Pakistan. Middle East Gandhi remained a staunch supporter of Palestinians in the Arab-Israeli conflict and was critical of the Middle East diplomacy sponsored by the United States. Israel was viewed as a religious state and thus an analogue to India's arch rival Pakistan. Indian diplomats also hoped to win Arab support in countering Pakistan in Kashmir. Nevertheless, Gandhi authorized the development of a secret channel of contact and security assistance with Israel in the late 1960s. Her lieutenant, Narasimha Rao, later became Prime Minister and approved full diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992. India's pro-Arab policy had mixed success. Establishment of close ties with the socialist and secular Baathist regimes to some extent neutralized Pakistani propaganda against India. However, the IndoPakistani war in 1971 put the Arab and Muslim states of the Middle East in a dilemma as the war was fought by two states both friendly to the Arabs. The progressive Arab regimes in Egypt, Syria, and Algeria chose to remain neutral, while the conservative pro-American Arab monarchies in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates openly supported Pakistan. Egypt's stance was met with dismay by the Indians, who had come to expect close co-operation with the Baathist regimes. But, the death of Nasser in 1970 and Sadat's growing friendship with Riyadh, and his mounting differences with Moscow, constrained Egypt to a policy of neutrality. Gandhi's overtures to Muammar Gaddafi were rebuffed. Libya agreed with the Arab monarchies in believing that Gandhi's intervention in East Pakistan was an attack against Islam. The 1971 war temporarily became a stumbling block in growing Indo-Iranian ties. Although Iran had earlier characterized the Indo-Pakistani war in 1965 as Indian aggression, the Shah had launched an effort at rapprochement with India in 1969 as part of his effort to secure support for a larger Iranian role in the Persian Gulf. Gandhi's tilt towards Moscow and her dismemberment of Pakistan was perceived by the Shah as part of a larger anti-Iran conspiracy involving India, Iraq, and the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Iran had resisted Pakistani pressure to activate the Baghdad Pact and draw in the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) into the conflict. Gradually, Indian and Iranian disillusionment with their respective regional allies led to a renewed partnership between the nations. Gandhi was unhappy with the lack of support from India's Arab allies during the war with Pakistan, while the Shah was apprehensive at the growing friendship between Pakistan and the Gulf states, specially Saudi Arabia, and the growing influence of Islam in Pakistani society. There was an increase in Indian economic and military cooperation with Iran during the 1970s. The 1974 India-Iranian agreement led to Iran supplying nearly 75 percent of India's crude oil demands. Gandhi appreciated the Shah's disregard of Pan-Islamism in diplomacy. Asia-Pacific One of the major developments in Southeast Asia during Gandhi's premiership was the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967. Relations between ASEAN and India was mutually antagonistic. ASEAN in the Indian perception was linked to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), and it was therefore, seen as a pro-American organisation. On their part, the ASEAN nations were unhappy with Gandhi's support of the Viet Cong and India's strong links with the USSR. Furthermore, they were also apprehensions in the region about Gandhi's future plans, particularly

after India played a big role in breaking up Pakistan and facilitating in the emergence of Bangladesh as a sovereign country in 1971. India's entry into the nuclear weapons club in 1974 contributed to tensions in Southeast Asia. Relations only began to improve following Gandhi's endorsement of the ZOPFAN declaration and the disintegration of the SEATO alliance in the aftermath of Pakistani and American defeats in the region. Nevertheless, Gandhi's close relations with Vietnam and her decision to recognize the People's Republic of Kampuchea in 1980 meant that India and ASEAN were not able to develop a viable partnership. Africa Although independent India was initially viewed as a champion of anti-colonialism, its cordial relationship with the Commonwealth of Nations and liberal views of British colonial policies in East Africa had harmed its image as a staunch supporter of the anti-colonial movements. Indian condemnation of militant struggles in Kenya and Algeria was in sharp contrast to China, who had supported armed struggle to win African independence. After reaching a high diplomatic point in the aftermath of Nehru's role in the Suez Crisis, India's isolation from Africa was complete when only four nations; Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Libya supported her during the Sino-Indian War in 1962. After Gandhi became Prime Minister, diplomatic and economic relations with the states which had sided with India during the SinoIndian War were expanded. Gandhi began negotiations with the Kenyan government to establish the Africa-India Development Cooperation. The Indian government also started considering the possibility of bringing Indians settled in Africa within the framework of its policy goals to help recover its declining geo-strategic influence. Gandhi declared the people of Indian origin settled in Africa as "Ambassors of India." Efforts to rope in the Asian community to join Indian diplomacy, however, came to naught, partly because of the unwilligness of Indians to remain in politically insecure surroundings and partly due to the exodus of African Indians to Britain with the passing of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1968. In Uganda, the African Indian community even suffered presecution and eventually expulsion under the government of Idi Amin. Foreign and domestic policy successes in the 1970s enabled Gandhi to rebuild India's image in the eyes of African states. Victory over Pakistan and India's possession of nuclear weapons showed the degree of India's progress. Furthermore, the conclusion of the Indo-Soviet treaty in 1971 and threatening gestures by the major western power, the United States, to send its nuclear armed Task Force 74 into the Bay of Bengal at the height of the East Pakistan crisis had enabled India to regain its anti-imperialist image. Gandhi firmly tied Indian anti-imperialist interests in Africa to those of the Soviet Union. Unlike Nehru, she openly and enthusiastically supported liberation struggles in Africa. At the same time, Chinese influence in Africa had declined owing to its incessant quarrels with the Soviet Union. These developments permanently halted India's decline in Africa and helped reestablish its geo-strategic presence.
Economic policy
Gandhi presided over three Five-Year plans as Prime Minister. All but one of them succeeding in meeting the targeted growth. There is considerable debate regarding whether Gandhi was a socialist on principle or out of political expediency. S. K. Datta-Ray described her as "a master of rhetoric...often more posture than policy", while the The Times journalist, Peter Hazelhurst, famously quipped that Gandhi's socialism was "slightly left of self-interest." Critics have focused on the contradictions in the evolution of her stance towards communism; Gandhi being known for her anti-communist stance in the 1950s with Meghnad Desai even describing her as "the scourge of [India's] Communist Party." Yet, she later forged close relations with Indian communists even while using the army to break the Naxalites. In this context, Gandhi was accused of formulating populist policies to suit her political needs; being seemingly against the rich and big business while preserving the status quo in order to manipulate the support of the left at times of political insecurity, such as the late 1960s. Although Gandhi came to be viewed in time as the scourge of the right-wing and reactionary political elements of India, leftist opposition to her policies emerged. As early as 1969, critics had began accusing her of insincerity and machiavellism. The Indian Libertarian wrote that: "it would be difficult to find a more machiavellian leftist than Mrs Indira Gandhi...for here is

Machiavelli at its best in the person of a suave, charming and astute politician." Rosser wrote that "some have even seen the declaration of emergency rule in 1975 as a move to suppress [leftist] dissent against Gandhi's policy shift to the right." In the 1980s, Gandhi was accused of "betraying socialism" after the beginning of Operation Forward, an attempt at economic reform. Nevertheless, others were more convinced of Gandhi's sincerity and devotion to socialism. Pankaj Vohra noted that "even the late prime ministers critics would concede that the maximum number of legislations of social significance was brought about during her tenure...[and that] she lives in the hearts of millions of Indians who shared her concern for the poor and weaker sections and who supported her politics." In summarizing the biographical works on Gandhi, Blema S. Steinberg concluded she was decidedly nonideological. Only 7.4% (24) of the total 330 biographical extractions posit ideology as a reason for her policy choices. Steinberg noted Gandhi's association with socialism was superficial; only having a general and traditional commitment to the ideology, by way of her political and family ties. Gandhi personally had a fuzzy concept of socialism. In one of the early interviews she had given as Prime Minister, Gandhi had ruminated: "I suppose you could call me a socialist, but you have understand what we mean by that term...we used the word [socialism] because it came closest to what we wanted to do here which is to eradicate poverty. You can call it socialism; but if by using that word we arouse controversy, I don't see why we should use it. I don't believe in words at all." Regardless of the debate over her ideology or lack of thereof, Gandhi remains a left-wing icon. She has been described as the "arguably the greatest mass leader of the last century." Her campaign slogan, Garibi Hatao (Eng: Remove Poverty), has become the iconic motto of the Indian National Congress. To the rural and urban poor, untouchables, minorities and women in India, Gandhi was "Indira Amma or Mother Indira." Green Revolution and the Fourth Five Year Plan Gandhi inherited a weak and troubled economy. Fiscal problems associated with the war with Pakistan in 1965, along with a drought-induced food crisis that spawned famines, had plunged India into the sharpest recession since independence. The government responded by taking steps to liberalize the economy, and by agreeing to the devaluation of the currency in return for the restoration of foreign aid. The economy managed to recover in 1966 and ended up growing at 4.1% over 19661969. But, much of that growth was offset by the fact that the external aid promised by the United States government and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), meant to ease the short-run costs of adjustment to a liberalized economy, never materialized. American policy makers had complained of continued restrictions imposed on the economy. At the same time, Indo-US relations were straining due to Gandhi's criticism of the American bombing campaign in Vietnam, and because of President Johnson's policy of withholding food grain shipments to coerce Indian support for the war. In light of the circumstances, liberalization became politically suspect and was soon abandoned. Grain diplomacy and currency devaluation became matters of intense national pride in India. After the bitter experience with Johnson, Gandhi decided not to request food aid in the future. Moreover, Gandhi's government resolved never again to become "so vulnerably dependent" on aid, and painstakingly began building up substantial foreign exchange reserves. When food stocks slumped after poor harvests in 1972, the government made it a point to use foreign exchange to buy US wheat commercially rather than seek resumption of food aid. The period of 196775 was characterized by socialist ascendency in India which culminated in 1976 with the official declaration of state socialism. Gandhi not only abandoned the short lived liberalization programme but also aggressively expanded the public sector with new licensing requirements and other restrictions for industry. She began a new course by launching the Fourth Five-Year Plan in 1969. The government targeted growth at 5.7% while stating as its goals, "growth with stability and progressive achievement of self-reliance." The rationale behind the overall plan was Gandhi's Ten Point Programme of 1967. This had been her first economic policy formulation, six months after coming to office. The programme emphasized greater state control of the economy with the understanding that government control assured greater welfare than private control. Related to this point were a set of policies which were meant to regulate the private sector. By the end of the 1960s, the reversal of the liberalization process was complete, and India's policies were characterised as "protectionist as ever."

To deal with India's food problems, Gandhi expanded the emphasis on production of inputs to agriculture that had already been initiated by her father, Jawaharlal Nehru. The Green Revolution in India subsequently culminated under her government in the 1970s and transformed the country from a nation heavily reliant on imported grains and prone to famine to being largely able to feed itself, and become successful in achieving its goal of food security. Gandhi had a personal motive in pursuing agricultural self-sufficiency, having found India's dependency on the U.S. for shipments of grains humiliating. The economic period of 196775 became significant for its major wave of nationalisations amidst the increased regulation of the private sector. Some of the other objectives of the economic plan for the period was to provide for the minimum needs of the community through a rural works program and the removal of the privy purses of the nobility. Both these, and many other goals of the 1967 program were accomplished by 197475. Nevertheless, the success of the overall economic plan was tempered by the fact that annual growth at 3.33.4% over 196974 fell short of the targeted figure. State of Emergency and the Fifth Five Year Plan The Fifth Five Year Plan (197479) was enacted in the backdrop of the state of emergency and the Twenty Point Program of 1975. The latter was the economic rationale of the emergency, a political act which has often been justified on economic grounds. In contrast to the reception of Gandhi's earlier economic plan, this one was criticized for being a "hastily thrown together wish list." Gandhi promised to reduce poverty by targeting the consumption levels of the poor and enact wide ranging social and economic reforms. The government additionally targeted an annual growth of 4.4% over the period of the plan. The measures of the emergency regime was able to halt the economic trouble of the early to mid-1970s, which had been marred by harvest failures, fiscal contraction, and the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchanged rate; the resulting turbulence in the foreign exchange markets being further accentuated by the oil shock of 1973. The government was even able to exceed the targeted growth figure with an annual growth rate of 5.05.2% over the five-year period of the plan (197479). The economy grew at the rate of 9% in 197576 alone, and the Fifth Plan, became the first plan during which the per capita income of the economy grew by over 5%. Operation Forward and the Sixth Five Year Plan Gandhi inherited a weak economy when she again became Prime Minister in 1980. The preceding year in 197980 under the Janata Party government had led to the strongest recession (5.2%) in the history of modern India with inflation rampant at 18.2%. Gandhi proceeded to abrogate the Janata Party government's Five Year Plan in 1980 and launched the Sixth Five Year Plan (198085). The government targeted an average growth of 5.2% over the period of the plan. Measures to check the inflation were also taken; by the early 1980s inflation was under control at an annual rate of about 5%. Although Gandhi continued professing socialist beliefs, the Sixth Five Year Plan was markedly different from the years of Garibi Hatao. Populist programs and policies were replaced by pragmatism. There was an emphasis on tightening public expenditures, greater efficiency of the State Owned Enterprises (SOE), which Gandhi qualified as a "sad thing", and in stimulating the private sector through deregulation and liberation of the capital market. The government subsequently launched Operation Forward in 1982, the first cautious attempt at reform. The Sixth Plan went on to become the most successful of the Five Year plans yet; showing an average growth of 5.7% over 198085. Inflation and unemployment During Lal Bahadur Shastri's last full year in office (1965), inflation averaged 7.7%, compared to 5.2% at the end of Gandhi's first stint in office (1977). On average, inflation in India had remained below 7% through the 1950s and 1960s. But, it then accelerated sharply in the 1970s, from 5.5% in 197071 to over 20% by 197374, due to the international oil crisis. Gandhi declared inflation the gravest of problems in 1974 (at 25.2%) and devised a severe anti-inflation program. The government was successful in bringing down inflation during the emergency; achieving negative figures of 1.1% by the end of 197576. Gandhi inherited a tattered economy in her second term; harvest failures and a second oil shock in the

late 1970s had again caused inflation to rise. During Charan Singh's last year in office (1980), inflation averaged 18.2%, compared to 6.5% during Gandhi's last year in office (1984). General economic recovery under Gandhi led to an average inflation at 6.5% from 198182 to 198586; the lowest since the beginning of India's inflation problems in the 1960s. Unemployment stayed constant at 9% over a nine-year period (197180) before declining to 8.3% in 1983. Nationalisation Despite the provisions, control and regulations of Reserve Bank of India, most banks in India had continued to be owned and operated by private persons. Businessmen who owned the banks were often accused of channeling the deposits into their own companies, and ignoring the priority sector. Furthermore, there was a great resentment against class banking in India, which had left the poor (the majority population) unbanked. After becoming Prime Minister, Gandhi expressed the intention of nationalising the banks in a paper titled, "Stray thoughts on Bank Nationalisation" in order to alleviate poverty. The paper received the overwhelming support of the public. In 1969, Gandhi moved to nationalise fourteen major commercial banks. After the nationalisation of banks, the branches of the public sector banks in India rose to approximate 800 percent in deposits, and advances took a huge jump by 11,000 percent. Nationalisation also resulted in a significant growth in the geographical coverage of banks; the number of bank branches rose from 8,200 to over 62,000, most of which were opened in the unbanked, rural areas. The nationalization drive not only helped to increase household savings, but it also provided considerable investments in the informal sector, in small and medium-sized enterprises, and in agriculture, and contributed significantly to regional development and to the expansion of Indias industrial and agricultural base. Jayaprakash Narayan, who became famous for leading the opposition to Gandhi in the 1970s, was solid in his praise for her bank nationalisations. Having been re-elected in 1971 on a nationalisation platform, Gandhi proceeded to nationalise the coal, steel, copper, refining, cotton textiles, and insurance industries. Most of these nationalisations were made to protect employment and the interest of the organised labour. The remaining private sector industries were placed under strict regulatory control. During the 1971 war against Pakistan, foreign owned private oil companies had refused to supply fuel to the Indian Navy and Indian Air Force. In response, Gandhi nationalised oil companies in 1973. After nationalisation the oil majors such as the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) and the Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) had to keep a minimum stock level of oil, to be supplied to the military when needed. Administration In 1966, Gandhi accepted the demands of the Akali's to reorganize Punjab on linguistic lines. The Hindispeaking southern half of Punjab became a separate state, Haryana, while the Pahari speaking hilly areas in the north east were joined to Himachal Pradesh. In doing so, she had hoped to ward off the growing political conflict between Hindu and Sikh groups in the region. However, a contentious issue that was considered unresolved by the Akali's was the status of Chandigarh, a prosperous city on the PunjabHaryana border, which Gandhi declared a union territory to be shared as a capital by both the states. Victory over Pakistan in 1971 consolidated Indian power in Kashmir. Gandhi indicated that she would make no major concessions on Kashmir. The most prominent of the Kashmiri separatists, Sheikh Abdullah, had to recognize India's control over Kashmir in light of the new order in South Asia. The situation was normalized in the years following the war after Abdullah agreed to an accord with Gandhi, by giving up the demand for a plebiscite in return for a special autonomous status for Kashmir. In 1975, Gandhi declared the state of Jammu and Kashmir as a constituent unit of India. The Kashmir conflict remained largely peaceful if frozen under Gandhi's premiership. In 1972, Gandhi granted statehood to Meghalaya, Manipur and Tripura, while the North-East Frontier Agency was declared a union territory and renamed Arunachal Pradesh. The transition to statehood for these territories was successfully overseen by her administration. This was followed by the annexation of Sikkim in 1975.
Domestic policy

Social reform The principle of equal pay for equal work for both men and women was enshrined in the Indian Constitution under the Gandhi administration. Gandhi questioned the continued existence of a privy purse for Indian monarchs. She argued the case for abolition based on equal rights for all citizens and the need to reduce the government's revenue deficit. The nobility responded by rallying around the Jana Sangh and other right-wing parties that stood in opposition to Gandhi's attempts to abolish royal privileges. The motion to abolish privy purses, and the official recognition of the titles, was originally brought before the Parliament in 1970. It was passed in the Lok Sabha but felt short of the two-thirds majority in the Rajya Sabha by a single vote. Gandhi responded by having a Presidential proclamation issued; de-recognizing the princes; with this withdrawal of recognition, their claims to privy purses were also legally lost. However, the proclamation was struck down by the Supreme Court of India. In 1971, Gandhi again motioned to abolish the privy purse. This time, it was successfully passed as the 26th Amendment to the Constitution of India. Many royals tried to protest the abolition of the privy purse, primarily through campaigns to contest seats in elections. They, however, received a final setback when many of them were defeated by huge margins. Gandhi claimed that only "clear vision, iron will and the strictest discipline" can remove poverty. She justified the imposition of the state of emergency in 1975 in the name of the socialist mission of the Congress. Armed with the power to rule by decree and without constitutional constraints, Gandhi embarked on a massive redistribution program. The provisions included rapid enforcement of land ceilings, housing for landless labourers, the abolition of bonded labour and a moratorium on the debts of the poor. North India was at the centre of the reforms; millions of acres of land were acquired and redistributed. The government was also successful in procuring houses for landless labourers; according to Frankel, three-fourths of the targeted four million houses was achieved in 1975 alone. Nevertheless, others have disputed the success of the program and criticized Gandhi for not doing enough to reform land ownership. The political economist, Jyotindra Das Gupta, cryptically questioned "...whether or not the real supporters of land-holders were in jail or in power?" Critics also accused Gandhi of choosing to "talk left and act right", referring to her concurrent pro-business decisions and endeavours. Rosser wrote that "some have even seen the declaration of emergency rule in 1975 as a move to suppress dissent against Gandhi's policy shift to the right." Regardless of the controversy over the nature of the reforms, the long term effects of the social changes gave rise to prominence of middle-ranking farmers from intermediate and lower castes in North India. The rise of these newly empowered social classes challenged the political establishment of the Hindi Belt in the years to come. Language policy Under the Indian Constitution of 1950, Hindi was to have become the official national language by 1965. This was not acceptable to many non-Hindi speaking states, who wanted the continued use of English in government. In 1967, Gandhi made a constitutional amendment that guaranteed the de facto use of both Hindi and English as official languages. This established the official government policy of bilingualism in India and satisfied the non-Hindi speaking Indian states. Gandhi thus put herself forward as a leader with a pan-Indian vision. Nevertheless, critics alleged that her stance was actually meant to weaken the position of rival Congress leaders from the northern states such as Uttar Pradesh, where there had been strong, sometimes violent, pro-Hindi agitations. Gandhi came out of the language conflicts with the strong support of the south Indian populace. National security In the late 1960s and 1970s, Gandhi had the Indian army crush militant Communist uprisings in the Indian state of West Bengal. The communist insurgency in India was completely suppressed during the state of emergency. Gandhi considered the north-eastern regions important, because of its strategic situation. In 1966, the Mizo uprising took place against the government of India and overran almost the whole of the Mizoram region. Gandhi ordered the Indian army to launch massive retaliatory strikes in response. The rebellion was suppressed with the Indian Air Force even carrying out airstrikes in Aizawl; this remains the only instance of India carrying out an airstrike in its own civilian territory. The defeat of Pakistan in 1971 and

the secession of East Pakistan as pro-India Bangladesh led to the collapse of the Mizo separatist movement. In 1972, after the less extremist Mizo leaders came to the negotiating table, Gandhi upgraded Mizoram to the status of a union territory. A small-scale insurgency by some militants continued into the late 1970s but was successfully dealt with by the government. The Mizo conflict was definitively resolved during the administration of Indira's son Rajiv Gandhi. Today, Mizoram is considered as one of the most peaceful states in the north-east. Responding to the insurgency in Nagaland, Gandhi "unleashed a powerful military offensive" in the 1970s. Finally, a massive crackdown on the insurgents took place during the state of emergency ordered by Gandhi. The insurgents soon agreed to surrender and signed the Shillong Accord in 1975. While the agreement was considered a victory for the Indian government and ended large-scale conflicts, there has since been spurts of violence by rebel holdouts and ethnic conflict amongst the tribes. Nuclear Program of India Gandhi contributed and further carried out the vision of Jawarharalal Nehru, former Premier of India to develop the program. Gandhi authorised the development of nuclear weapons in 1967, in response to the Test No. 6 by People's Republic of China. Gandhi saw this test as Chinese nuclear intimidation, therefore, Gandhi promoted the views of Nehru to establish India's stability and security interests as independent from those of the nuclear superpowers. The program became fully mature in 1974, when Dr. Raja Ramanna reported to Gandhi that India had the ability to test its first nuclear weapon. Gandhi gave verbal authorisation of this test, and preparations were made in a long-constructed army base, the Indian Army Pokhran Test Range. In 1974, India successfully conducted an underground nuclear test, unofficially code named as "Smiling Buddha", near the desert village of Pokhran in Rajasthan. As the world was quiet by this test, a vehement protest came forward from Pakistan. Great ire was raised in Pakistan, Pakistan's Prime minister Zulfi Ali Bhutto described this test as "Indian hegemony" to intimidate Pakistan. Gandhi directed a letter to Bhutto and, later to the world, describing the test for peaceful purposes and India's commitment to develop its programme for industrial and scientific use.
1971 election victory and second term
The government faced major problems after her tremendous mandate of 1971. The internal structure of the Congress Party had withered following its numerous splits, leaving it entirely dependent on her leadership for its election fortunes. Garibi Hatao (Eradicate Poverty) was the theme for Gandhi's 1971 bid. The slogan and the proposed anti-poverty programs that came with it were designed to give Gandhi an independent national support, based on rural and urban poor. This would allow her to bypass the dominant rural castes both in and of state and local government; likewise the urban commercial class. And, for their part, the previously voiceless poor would at last gain both political worth and political weight. The programs created through Garibi Hatao, though carried out locally, were funded, developed, supervised, and staffed by New Delhi and the Indian National Congress party. "These programs also provided the central political leadership with new and vast patronage resources to be disbursed... throughout the country." On 12 June 1975 the High Court of Allahabad declared Indira Gandhi's election to the Lok Sabha void on grounds of electoral malpractice. In an election petition filed by Raj Narain (who later on defeated her in 1977 parliamentary election from Rae Bareily), he had alleged several major as well as minor instances of using government resources for campaigning. The court thus ordered her to be removed from her seat in Parliament and banned from running in elections for six years. The Prime Minister must be a member of either the Lok Sabha (Lower house in the Parliament of India) or the Rajya Sabha (the Higher house of the Parliament). Thus, this decision effectively removed her from office. Mrs Gandhi had asked one of her colleagues in government, Mr Ashoke Kumar Sen to defend her in court. But Gandhi rejected calls to resign and announced plans to appeal to the Supreme Court. The verdict was delivered by Mr Justice Jagmohanlal Sinha at Allahabad High Court. It came almost four years after the case was brought by Raj Narain, the premier's defeated opponent in the 1971 parliamentary election.
Verdict on electoral malpractice

Gandhi, who gave evidence in her defence during the trial, was found guilty of dishonest election practices, excessive election expenditure, and of using government machinery and officials for party purposes. The judge rejected more serious charges of bribery against her. Gandhi insisted the conviction did not undermine her position, despite having been unseated from the lower house of parliament, Lok Sabha, by order of the High Court. She said: "There is a lot of talk about our government not being clean, but from our experience the situation was very much worse when [opposition] parties were forming governments". And she dismissed criticism of the way her Congress Party raised election campaign money, saying all parties used the same methods. The prime minister retained the support of her party, which issued a statement backing her. After news of the verdict spread, hundreds of supporters demonstrated outside her house, pledging their loyalty. Indian High Commissioner BK Nehru said Gandhi's conviction would not harm her political career. "Mrs Gandhi has still today overwhelming support in the country," he said. "I believe the prime minister of India will continue in office until the electorate of India decides otherwise".
State of Emergency (19751977)
Gandhi moved to restore order by ordering the arrest of most of the opposition participating in the unrest. Her Cabinet and government then recommended that President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed declare a state of emergency because of the disorder and lawlessness following the Allahabad High Court decision. Accordingly, Ahmed declared a State of Emergency caused by internal disorder, based on the provisions of Article 352 of the Constitution, on 26 June 1975.
Rule by decree
Within a few months, President's Rule was imposed on the two opposition party ruled states of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu thereby bringing the entire country under direct Central rule or by governments led by the ruling Congress party. Police were granted powers to impose curfews and indefinitely detain citizens and all publications were subjected to substantial censorship by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Finally, impending legislative assembly elections were indefinitely postponed, with all opposition-controlled state governments being removed by virtue of the constitutional provision allowing for a dismissal of a state government on recommendation of the state's governor. Indira Gandhi used the emergency provisions to change conflicting party members. "Unlike her father Jawaharlal Nehru, who preferred to deal with strong chief ministers in control of their legislative parties and state party organizations, Mrs. Gandhi set out to remove every Congress chief minister who had an independent base and to replace each of them with ministers personally loyal to her...Even so, stability could not be maintained in the states..." President Ahmed issued ordinances that did not require debate in the Parliament, allowing Gandhi to rule by decree.
In 1977, after extending the state of emergency twice, Indira Gandhi called elections, to give the electorate a chance to vindicate her rule. Gandhi may have grossly misjudged her popularity by reading what the heavily censored press wrote about her. In any case, she was opposed by the Janata Party. Janata, led by her long-time rival, Desai and with Jai Prakash Narayan as its spiritual guide, claimed the elections were the last chance for India to choose between "democracy and dictatorship." Gandhi's Congress party was crushed soundly in the elections which followed. Indira and Sanjay Gandhi both lost their seats, and Congress was cut down to 153 seats (compared with 350 in the previous Lok Sabha), 92 of which were in the south.
Elections
Removal, arrest, and return
The Congress Party split during the election campaign of 1977: veteran Gandhi supporters like Jagjivan Ram and her most loyal Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna and Nandini Satpathy, the three were compelled to part ways and form a new political entity CFD (Congress for Democracy) primarily due to intra party

politicking and also due to circumstances created by Sanjay Gandhi. The prevailing rumour was that Sanjay had intentions of dislodging Gandhi and the trio stood between that. A coalition of opposition, under the leadership of Morarji Desai, came into power after the State of Emergency was lifted. The coalition parties later merged to form the Janata Party under the guidance of Gandhian leader, Jayaprakash Narayan. The other leaders of the Janata Party Charan Singh, Raj Narain, George Fernandes and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The Janata government's Home Minister, Choudhary Charan Singh, ordered the arrest of Indira and Sanjay Gandhi on several charges, none of which would be easy to prove in an Indian court. The arrest meant that Indira Gandhi was automatically expelled from Parliament. These allegations included that she had planned or thought of killing all opposition leaders in jail during the Emergency. However, this strategy backfired disastrously. Her arrest and long-running trial, however, gained her great sympathy from many people. The Janata coalition was only united by its hatred of Gandhi (or "that woman" as some called her). With so little in common, the Morarji Desai government was bogged down by infighting. Desai resigned in June 1979 after Charan Singh and Raj Narain formed their own breakaway party. Charan Singh was appointed Prime Minister, by President Reddy, after Gandhi promised Singh that Congress would support his government from outside. After a short interval, Congress withdrew support and President Reddy dissolved Parliament in the winter of 1979. In elections held the following January, Congress was returned to power with a landslide majority. In 1979, when she visited Madurai, some hooligans attacked her. Nedumaran saved her from the attacks. In the 1977 elections, a coalition led by the Sikh-majority Akali Dal came to power in the northern Indian state of Punjab. In an effort to split the Akali Dal and gain popular support among the Sikhs, Indira Gandhi's Congress helped bring the orthodox religious leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale to prominence in the Punjab politics. Later, Bhindranwale's organisation Damdami Taksal became embroiled in violence with another religious sect called the Sant Nirankari Mission, and he was accused of instigating the murder of the Congress leader Jagat Narain. After being arrested in this matter, Bhindranwale disassociated himself from Congress and joined hands with the Akali Dal. In July 1982, he led the campaign for the implementation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, which demanded greater autonomy for the Sikh-majority state. Meanwhile, a small section of the Sikhs including some of Bhindranwale's followers, turned to militancy in support of the Khalistan movement, which aimed to create a separate sovereign state for the Sikhs. In 1983, Bhindranwale and his militant followers headquartered themselves in the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs, and started accumulating weapons. After several futile negotiations, Indira Gandhi ordered the Indian army to enter the Golden temple in order to subdue Bhindranwale and his followers. In the resulting Operation Blue Star, the shrine was damaged and many civilians were killed. The State of Punjab was closed to international media, its phone and communication lines shut. To this day the events remain controversial with a disputed number of victims; Sikhs seeing the attack as unjustified and Bhindrawale being declared the greatest Sikh martyr of the 21st century by Akal Takht (Sikh Political Authority) in 2003.
Operation Blue Star
Assassination
The day before her death Indira Gandhi visited Orissa on 30 October 1984 where she gave her last speech: "I am alive today, I may not be there tomorrow. I shall continue to serve till my last breath and when I die every drop of my blood will strengthen India and keep a united India alive." Indira Gandhi delivered her last speech at the then Parade Ground in front of the Secretariat of Orissa. After her death, the Parade Ground was converted to the Indira Gandhi Park which was inaugurated by her son, Rajiv Gandhi. On 31 October 1984, two of Gandhi's bodyguards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, shot her with their

service weapons in the garden of the Prime Minister's residence at 1 Safdarjung Road, New Delhi. The shooting occurred as she was walking past a wicket gate guarded by Satwant and Beant. She was to have been interviewed by the British actor Peter Ustinov, who was filming a documentary for Irish television. Beant Singh shot her three times using his side-arm, and Satwant Singh fired 30 rounds. Beant Singh and Satwant Singh dropped their weapons and surrendered. Afterwards they were taken away by other guards into a closed room where Beant Singh was shot dead. Kehar Singh was later arrested for conspiracy in the attack. Both Satwant and Kehar were sentenced to death and hanged in Delhi's Tihar jail. Indira Gandhi was brought at 9:30 AM to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where doctors operated on her. She was declared dead at 2:20 PM. The post-mortem examination was conducted by a team of doctors headed by Dr. T.D. Dogra. Dr. Dogra stated that as many as 30 bullet wounds were sustained by Indira Gandhi, from two sources, a Sten gun and a pistol. The assailants had fired 31 bullets at her, of which 30 had hit; 23 had passed through her body while 7 were trapped inside her. Dr. Dogra extracted bullets to establish the identity of the weapons and to correlate each weapon with the bullets recovered by ballistic examination. The bullets were matched with respective weapons at CFSL Delhi. Subsequently Dr. Dogra appeared in the court of Shri Mahesh Chandra as an expert witness (PW-5), and his testimony lasted several sessions. The cross examination was conducted by Shri P. N. Lekhi, the defence counsel. Gandhi was cremated on 3 November near Raj Ghat. The site where she was cremated is today known as Shakti Sthala. Her funeral was televised live on domestic and international stations, including the BBC. Following her cremation, millions of Sikhs were displaced and nearly three thousand were killed in antiSikh riots. Rajiv Gandhi on a live TV show said of the carnage, "When a big tree falls, the earth shakes."
Family and personal life
She was married to Feroze Gandhi. Firstly, her younger son Sanjay had been her chosen heir; but after his death in a flying accident in June 1980, his mother persuaded a reluctant elder son Rajiv Gandhi to quit his job as a pilot and enter politics in February 1981. Over a decade later, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. Gandhi's yoga guru, Dhirendra Brahmachari, helped her in making certain decisions and also executed certain top level political tasks on her behalf, especially from 1975 to 1977 when Gandhi "dissolved Parliament, declared a state of emergency and suspended civil liberties."
Legacy
Indira Gandhi is associated with fostering a culture of nepotism in Indian politics and in India's institutions. The Indira Awaas Yojana, a central government low-cost housing programme for the rural poor, is named after her. The international airport at New Delhi is named Indira Gandhi International Airport in her honour. The Indira Gandhi National Open University, the largest university in the world, is also named after her. Indian National Congress established the annual Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration in 1985, given in her memory on her death anniversary. The Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust also constituted the annual Indira Gandhi Prize.
Indradeep Sinha (July 1914 June 9, 2003) was a freedom fighter and veteran communist leader. He was born in a Bhumihar Brahmin family at Shakara village in present-day Siwan District of Bihar, India, in July 1914. He had an academic career and secured a gold medal in post-graduation in Economics from Patna University in 1938. He wrote about 25 books. He chose to serve the people by fighting for political freedom of the nation and social and economic justice to its people. With a master's degree in economics from Patna University and a gold medal, Sinha joined the Communist Party of India in 1940 and served the party as state secretary. A lecturer and journalist, Sinha was Secretary of the Bihar State Council of the Communist Party of India from 1962 to 1967 and had served as the General Secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha from 1973 until the late 1990s. Sinha was also editor of the Hunkar, Janasakti and New Age weeklies. Indradeep Sinha started his legislative career with the membership of the Bihar Legislative
Indradeep Sinha

Council, where he was a member from 1964 to 1974. He also served as the Minister of Revenues in the United Front Government of Bihar from 1967 to 1968. As Revenues Minister, he took several initiatives to ameliorate the condition of the poor and took steps for distribution of land to the landless in the State. Sinha represented the State of Bihar in the Rajya Sabha for two terms from April 1974 to April 1980 and again from July 1980 to July 1986.
Partial bibliography of books authored
Crisis of capitalist path in India: The policy alternatives, Communist Party of India (1982). On certain ideological positions of Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Communist Party of India (1983). Real face of JP's total revolution, Communist Party of India (1974). Some features of current agrarian situation in India, All India Kisan Sabha, (1987). The changing agrarian scene: Problems and tasks, Peoples Publishing House (1980). Some questions concerning Marxism and the peasantry, Communist Party of India (1982). Sathi ke Kisanon ka Aitihasic Sangharsha (Historic Struggle of Sathi Peasants), in Hindi, Patna (1969). Ishwar Das Varshnei (died 1948) was the father of the glass industry in India. He was born in Aligarh and was the son of Lala Jagannath Prasad and grandson of Lala Gabdamal, famous cloth merchants in Sikandra Rao. He received the BSc in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1906 and he was the first Indian student to graduate from MIT. Known for his dreams and vision of a modern India, he started the first glass factory by the name of Paisa Fund Glass Works in Talegaon near Poona with the help of Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Later he established the first flat glass factory in Bahjoi by the name of United Provinces Glass Works, incorporated as a limited liability company in 1916. He was assisted by his wife Vidya Devi Varshnei in times of struggle. An able scholar and industrialist, he was instrumental in starting country level organizations like AIGMF (All India Glass Manufacturers' Federation), CGCRI (Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute), and IDTI (Ishwar Das Technical Institute). He died in 1948 and was survived by three of his four sons. The eldest, Bishambar Dayal Varshnei who died in 1939, introduced hollow ware technoloy to India. His second son, Harish Chandra Varshnei is is credited with the introduction of sheet glass manufacturing (with the Fourcault process) to Continental Asia (ex-Japan) in the 1920s. The I. D. Varshnei Memorial Lecture of the Indian Ceramic Society is given in his honor. Jivatram Bhagwandas Kripalani (11 November 1888 19 March 1982), popularly known as Acharya Kripalani, was an Indian politician, noted particularly for holding the presidency of the Indian National Congress during the transfer of power in 1947. During the election for the post of the future Prime Minister of India held by the Congress party, he had the second highest number of votes after Sardar Patel. However, on Gandhi's insistence, both Patel and Kripalani backed out to allow Jawahar Lal Nehru to become the first Prime Minister of India. Kripalani was a Gandhian Socialist, environmentalist, mystic and freedom fighter. He grew close to Gandhi and became in time one of his most ardent disciples. Kripalani was a familiar figure to generations of dissenters, from the Non-Cooperation Movements of the 1920s through till the Emergency of the 1970s.
Ishwar Das Varshnei
J. B. Kripalani
Early life
Jivatram (also spelled Jayant) Bhagwandas Kripalani was born in Hyderabad in Sindh in 1888. Following his education at Fergusson College in Pune, he worked as a schoolteacher before joining the freedom movement in the wake of Gandhi's return from South Africa. Kripalani was involved in the Non-Cooperation Movement of the early 1920s. He worked in Gandhi's ashrams in Gujarat and Maharashtra on tasks of social reform and education, and later left for Bihar and the United Provinces in northern India to teach and organize new ashrams. He courted arrest on

numerous occasions during the Civil Disobedience movements and smaller occasions of organizing protests and publishing seditious material against the British raj.
Congress leader
Kripalani joined the All India Congress Committee, and became its General Secretary in 1928-29. Kripalani was prominently involved over a decade in top Congress party affairs, and in the organization of the Salt Satyagraha and the Quit India Movement. Kripalani served in the interim government of India (19461947) and the Constituent Assembly of India. In spite of being ideologically at odds with both the right-wing Vallabhbhai Patel and the left-wing Jawaharlal Nehru - he was elected Congress President for the crucial years around Indian independence in 1947. After Gandhi's assassination in January 1948, Nehru rejected his demand that the party's views should be sought in all decisions. Nehru, with the support of Patel, told Kripalani that while the party was entitled to lay down the broad principles and guidelines, it could not be granted a say in the government's day-to-day affairs. This precedent became central to the relationship between government and ruling party in subsequent decades. Nehru, however, supported Kripalani in the election of the Congress President in 1950. Kripalani, supported by Nehru, was narrowly defeated against Patel's candidate Purushottam Das Tandon. Tandon defeated Kripalani. Bruised by his defeat, and disillusioned by what he viewed as the abandonment of the Gandhian ideal of a countless village republics, Kripalani left the Congress and became one of the founders of the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party. This party subsequently merged with the Socialist Party of India to form the Praja Socialist Party. For a while it was even believed that Nehru, stung by the defeat, was considering abandoning the Congress as well; his several offers of resignation at the time were all, however, shouted down. A great many of the more progressive elements of the party left in the months following the election. Congress's subsequent bias to the right was only balanced when Nehru obtained the resignation of Tandon in the run up to the general elections of 1951.
As Congress President and the election of 1950
1961 Candidacy
In October 1961, Kripalani contested the Lok Sabha seat of V.K. Krishna Menon, then serving as Minister of Defence, in a race that would come to attract extraordinary amounts of attention. The Sunday Standard observed of it that "no political campaign in India has ever been so bitter or so remarkable for the nuances it produced". Kripalani, who had previously endorsed Menon's foreign policy, devoted himself to attacking his vituperative opponent's personality, but ultimately lost the race, with Menon winning in a landslide. Kripalani remained in opposition for the rest of his life and was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1952, 1957, 1963 and 1967 as a member of Praja Socialist Party. His wife since 1938, Sucheta Kripalani, remained in Congress and went from strength to strength in the Congress Party, with several Central ministries; she was also the first female Chief Minister, in Uttar Pradesh. The Kripalanis were frequently at loggerheads in Parliament. One matter they agreed on was the undesirability of vast parts of the Hindu Marriage Act, particularly the controversial 'Restitution of Conjugal Rights' clause. By this clause a partner who had survived an unsuccessful filing for divorce could move the courts to return to the status quo ante in terms of conjugal interaction. Kripalani, horrified, made one of his most memorable speeches, saying "this provision is physically undesirable, morally unwanted and aesthetically disgusting."[citation needed] Kripalani was also concerned with the privilege of parliament over the press. During Nehru's premiership, the Lok Sabha called the Chief Editor of the weekly Blitz, the well-known Russi Karanjia to the bar and admonished him for "denigration and defamation of a Member of Parliament" for calling Kriplani Cripple-loony. This was despite Karanjia's closeness to and Kripalani's estrangement from, Nehru. Kripalani moved the first-ever No confidence motion on the floor of the Lok Sabha in August 1963, immediately after the disastrous India-China War.
Socialist Party

Kripalani remained a critic of Nehru's policies and administration, while working for social and environmental causes. While remaining active in electoral politics, Kripalani gradually became more of a spiritual leader of the socialists than anything else; in particular, he was generally considered to be, along with Vinoba Bhave, the leader of the what remained of the Gandhian faction. He was active, along with Bhave, in preservation and conservation activities throughout the 1970s. In 1972-3, he agitated against the increasingly authoritarian rule of Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India. Kripalani and Jayaprakash Narayan felt that Gandhi's rule had become dictatorial and anti-democratic. Her conviction on charges of using government machinery for her election campaign galvanized her political opposition and public disenchantment against her policies. Along with Narayan and Lohia, Kripalani toured the country urging non-violent protest and civil disobedience. When the Emergency was declared as a result of the vocal dissent he helped stir up, the octogenarian Kripalani was among the first of the Opposition leaders to be arrested on the night of 26 June 1975. He lived long enough to survive the Emergency and see the first non-Congress government since Independence following the Janata Party victory in the 1977 polls. He died on 19 March 1982, at the age of 94. In the 1982 film Gandhi by Richard Attenborough, J.B. Kripalani was played by Indian actor Anang Desai. His autobiography " My Times" was released 22 years after his death by Rupa publishers in 2004.In the book, he accused his fellow members of Congress (except Ram Manohar Lohia, Mahatma Gandhi and Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan)of " moral cowardice" for accepting or submitting to plan to partition India. A postal Stamp was issued in his in the year 11/11/1989 on his Birth Centenary.
Later life
Trivia
Acharya Kripalani was born on the same day as Maulana Azad, who also was prominent freedom fighter. Kripalani succeeded the latter as the President of Indian National Congress at the Meerut session in 1946. Jagannath Sarkar (25 September 1919 8 April 2011) was an Indian Communist leader, freedom fighter, and writer on social issues.
Jagannath Sarkar
Early life
Jagannath Sarkar was born in Puri, Orissa, India, on 25 September 1919. His father, Dr Akhilnath Sarkar, was a gynaecologist at the Prince of Wales Medical College (now the Patna Medical College and Hospital). The historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar was his uncle. The young Sarkar grew up in the atmosphere of Bengal renaissance, with his family being inspired by Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore.
Early political interests
One of the priests of the Ramakrishna Mission at Patna, which Sarkar frequented in his youth, introduced him to Marxist literature, which was then banned in British India. Sarkar went on to study economics at Patna University, where he associated with the Freedom Movement and the nascent Communist Party in Bihar, and he became an activist among students and educated people. After joining the Communist Party, he moved to the working class areas of Bihar and then Jharkhand, were, in the 1940s and 1950s, he engaged in campaigns for miners' and colliery workers' rights. His father (who had been awarded the honour of Rai Bahadur) was sympathetic to the cause of his son and his comrades, and he secretively provided resources for their revolutionary activities until his death.
Later career
Sarkar was a leader in the Communist Party in Bihar in the 1950s and 1960s when it came to power in the state, and he railed against supporters of military dictatorship and ideology-less rule. Several land reforms in favour of landless labourers were achieved during this period. Sarkar also wrote on a number of social issues, including secularism, left-wing extremism, tribal

development, and socialist ideological issues in India, and he was patron and editor of the Hindi daily Janashakti for a time. In the 1970s, Sarkar became a member of the Central Secretariat of the Communist Party and moved to Delhi. But at the age of 65, he decided to cease participation in active politics, wanting the younger generation to play a leadership role in progressive movements. He was extensively quoted and written about by national and international academics, including Bipan Chandra and Paul Brass. Sarkar died on 8 April 2011, in Patna.
Writing
Many of Sarkar's writings are not easily traceable, but from what was available, an anthology was published as a book in 2010. Enitled Many Streams, it is a collection of selected essays by Sarkar, with some reminiscences from his friends and colleagues. The book was released on 14 May 2010, in Patna by Prof Prabhat Patnaik of Jawaharlal Nehru University. The preface to the book was written by Shaibal Gupta, Member Secretary of the Asian Development Research Institute, Patna.
Further reading
Paul R. Brass, Political Parties of the Radical Left in South Asian Politics, in the book Radical Politics in South Asia, MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, P. 329. Paul R. Brass, Radical Parties of the Left in Bihar: A Comparison of the SSP and the CPI, Ibid, P. 347. vii The Decline of Communist Mass Base in Bihar: Jagannath Sarkar http://kafila.org/2011/09/25/the-declineof-communist-mass-base-in-bihar-jagannath-sarkar/ Babu Jagjivan Ram (Hindi: ) (5 April 1908 6 July 1986), known popularly as Babuji, was a freedom fighter and a social reformer hailing from the scheduled castes of Bihar in India. He was from the Chamar caste and was a leader for his community. He was instrumental in foundation of the 'All-India Depressed Classes League', an organisation dedicated to attaining equality for untouchables, in 1935 and was elected to Bihar Legislative Assembly in 1937, that is when he organised, rural labour movement. In 1946, he became the youngest minister in Jawaharlal Nehru's provisional government, the First Union Cabinet of India as a Labour minister, and also a member of Constituent Assembly of India, where he ensured that social justice was enshrined in the Constitution. He went on serve as a minister in the Indian parliament with various portfolios for more than forty years as a member of Indian National Congress (INC), most importantly he was the Defence Minister of India during the Indo-Pak war of 1971, which resulted in formation of Bangladesh. His contribution to the Green Revolution in India and modernising Indian agriculture, during his two tenures as Union Agriculture Minister are still remembered, especial during 1974 drought when he was asked to hold the additional portfolio to tide over the food crisis. Though he supported Indira Gandhi during the Emergency in India (19751977), he left Congress in 1977 and joined Janata Party alliance in 1977, along with his Congress for Democracy, he later served as the Deputy Prime Minister of India (19771979), then in 1980, he formed Congress (J).
Jagjivan Ram
Jagjivan Ram was born at Chandwa near Arrah in Bihar, to a family of five siblings, elder brother Sant Lal, and three sisters. His father Sobhi Ram was with British Indian Army, posted at Peshawar, but later resigned due to some differences and bought some farming land in his native village Chandwa, and settled there. He also became a Mahant of Shiv Narayani sect, skilled in calligraphy he illustrated many book of the sect and distributed locally. Young Jagjivan started going a local school in January 1914, but shortly afterward his father died prematurely, leaving him and his mother Vasanti Devi to economic hardships. He joined Aggrawal Middle School in Arrah in 1920, where the medium of instruction was English for the first time, and joined Arrah

Town School in 1922, it was here that is faced caste discrimination for the first time, yet remained unfazed. An often cited incident occurred in the school, there was this tradition of having two water pots in the school, one for Hindus and another for Muslims, so when Jagjivan drank water from the Hindu pot, while being from an untouchable class, the matter was reported to the Principal, who placed a third pot for "untouchables" in the school, but this pot was broken by him twice, eventually the Principal decided against placing the third pot. A turning point in his life came in 1925, when Pt. Madan Mohan Malviya visited his school, and impressed by his welcome address, invited him to join Banaras Hindu University.[citation needed] Jagjivan Ram passed his matriculation in the first division and joined the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in 1927, where he was awarded the Birla scholarship, and passed his Inter Science Examination; while at BHU he organised the scheduled castes to protest against social discrimination. As a Dalit student, he would not be served meals in his hostel, denied haircut by local barbers, a Dalit barber would arrive from Ghazipur from occasionally to trim his hair, eventually he left BHU and pursued graduation from Calcutta University. In 2007, the BHU set up a Babu Jagjivan Ram Chair in its faculty of social sciences to study caste discrimination and economic backwardness. He received a BSc degree from the University of Calcutta in 1931, here again he organised conferences to draw the attention towards issues of discrimination, and also participated in the anti-untouchability movement started by Mahatma Gandhi.
Early career
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose took notice of him at Kolkata, when in 1928 he organised a Mazdoor Rally at Wellington Square, in which approximately 50,000 people participated. When the devastating Bihar earthquake of 1934 occurred he got actively involved in the relief work and his efforts were appreciated his work. When popular rule was introduced under the 1935 Act and the scheduled castes were given representation in the legislatures, both the nationalists and the British loyalists sought him because of his first-hand knowledge of the social and economic situation in Bihar, Jagjivan Ram was nominated to the Bihar Council. He chose to go with the nationalists and joined Congress, which wanted him not only because he was valued as an able spokesperson for the depressed classes, but also that he could counter Ambedkar; he was elected to the Bihar assembly in 1937. However, he resigned his membership on the issue of irrigation cess. In 1935, he contributed to the establishment of the 'All-India Depressed Classes League', an organisation dedicated to attaining equality for untouchables. He was also drawn into the Indian National Congress, in the same year he proposed a resolution in the 1935 session of the Hindu Mahasabha demanding that temples and drinking water wells be opened up to Dalits. and in the early 1940s was imprisoned twice for his active participation in the Satyagraha and the Quit India Movements. He was among the principal leaders who publicly denounced India's participation in the World War II between the European nations and for which he was imprisoned in 1940.
Parliamentary career
In 1946 he became the youngest minister in Jawaharlal Nehru's provisional government and also the subsequent First Indian Cabinet, as a Labour Minister, where he is credited for laying the foundation for several labour welfare policies in India. He was a part of the prestigious high profile Indian delegation that attended to attend the International Labour Organization (ILO)'s International Labour Conference on 16 August 1947 in Geneva along with the great Gandhian Bihar Bibhuti Dr. Anugrah Narayan Sinha his chief political mentor and also the then head of the delegation, and few days later he was elected President of the ILO. He served as Labour minister until 1952, later he several Ministerial posts in Nehru's Cabinet,Communications (195256), for Transport and railways (195662), and for Transport and communications (196263). In Indira Gandhi's government he worked as minister for Labour, employment, and rehabilitation (1966 67), and Union minister for Food and agriculture (196770), where he is best remembered for having successfully led the Green Revolution during his tenure. When the Congress Party split in 1969, Jagjivan Ram joined the camp led by Indira Gandhi, and became the president of that faction of Congress. He

worked as the Minister of Defence (197074) making him the virtual No. 2 in the cabinet, minister for Agriculture and irrigation (197477). It was during his tenure as the minister of Defence that the IndoPakistani War of 1971 was fought, and Bangladesh achieved independence. While loyal to prime minister Indira Gandhi for most of the Indian Emergency, in 1977 he along with five other politicians resigned from the Cabinet and formed the Congress for Democracy party, within the Janata coalition. A few days before the elections, on a Sunday, Jagjivan Ram addressed an Opposition rally at the famous Ram Lila Grounds in Delhi. The national broadcaster Doordarshan allegedly attempted to stop crowds from participating in the demonstration by telecasting the blockbuster movie Bobby. The rally still drew large crowds, and a newspaper headline the next day ran "Babu beats Bobby" . He was the Deputy Prime Minister of India when Morarji Desai was the prime minister, from 1977 to 1979, though initially reluctant to join the cabinet, and was not present at the oath-taking ceremony on 27 March 1977; he eventually did so at the behest of Jai Prakash Narayan, who insisted that his presence for necessary, "not just as an individual but as a political and social force" and took oath later on. However, he was once again given the defence portfolio. Disillusioned with the Janata party he formed his own party, the Congress (J). He remained a member of Parliament till his death in 1986, after over forty years as a parliamentarian. He was elected from Sasaram parliament constituency in Bihar. His uninterrupted representation in the Parliament from 1936 to 1986 is a world record. .
Positions held
He holds the record for being the longest-serving cabinet minister in India for 30 years. (Ref. Kendriya Mantripraishad 19472004, published by Loksabha Secretriate) Union Minister of Labour, 19461952. Union Minister for Communications, 19521956. Union Minister for Transport and Railways, 19561962. Union Minister for Transport and Communications, 19621963. Union Minister for Labour, Employment and Rehabilitation, 19661967. Union Minister for Food and Agriculture, 19671970. Union Minister of Defence, 19701974, 19771979. Union Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation, 19741977. Founding Member, Congress for Democracy party (aligned with Janata Party), 1977. Deputy Prime Minister of India, 23 March 1977 22 August 1979. Founder, Congress (J). He served as President of the Bharat Scouts and Guides from September 1976 to April 1983.
Personal life
In August 1933 his first wife died after a brief illness, thereafter in June 1935 he married Indrani Devi, a daughter of Dr. Birbal, a well-known social worker of Kanpur, and the couple had two children, Suresh Kumar and Meira Kumar.
Legacy
The place he was cremated has been turned into the memorial Samata Sthal, and his birth anniversary is observed as Samatha Diwas., (Equality Day) in India, his centenary celebrations were held all over the nation in 2008, especially at his statues at the Parliament and at Nizam College; demands for awarding him posthumous Bharat Ratna have been raised from time to time Hyderabad. Andhra University which had conferred an honorary doctorate on him in 1973, and in 2009 on the occasion of his 101st birth anniversary, his statue was unveiled on the university premises . His daughter, Meira Kumar, is a prominent INC leader, who has won his former seat Sasaram, both 2004 and 2009 and was later the Minister for Social Justice in the Manmohan Singh government (2004 '09), thereafter she became the Speaker of Lok Sabha in 2009. To propagate his ideologies, the 'Babu Jagjivan Ram National Foundation', has been set up by Ministry of Social Justice, Govt. of India in Delhi. The first indigenously built electric locomotive to have been built in India, a WAM-1 model, was named after him, which was recently restored by the Eastern Railway.
Works
Ram, Jagjivan; Shachi Rani Gurtu (1951). Jagjivan Ram on labour problems. Ram. Ram, Jagjivan (1980). Caste challenge in India. Vision Books. Jairamdas Daulatram (July 21, 1891 March 1, 1979) :
Jairamdas Daulatram

was an Indian political leader in the Indian independence movement. After India's independence, Daulatram served as the Governor of the Indian states of Bihar and later Assam.
Early life
Jairamdas Daulatram was born into a Sindhi Hindu family in Karachi, Sindh, which was then part of the Bombay Presidency in British India on July 21, 1891. His academic career was brilliant throughout. After taking his degree in law, he started a legal practice, but soon gave it up as it often led to conflict with his conscience. In 1915, Jairamdas came into personal contact with Mahatma Gandhi, who had then returned from South Africa, and became his devoted follower. At the Amritsar session of the Indian National Congress in 1919, he worded Gandhii's resolution in such a way that it avoided an impending rift between Gandhii and his other Congress colleagues. Since then Gandhii came to repose great faith in him. Gandhii spoke of him as 'one of the greatest persons in India'. He compared him with pure gold saying : 'I swear by Jairamdas. Truer man I have not has the honour of meeting.' Jairamdas enjoyed the trust and affection of Mrs. Sarojini Naidu who described his as a 'Lamp in the Desert' because of his services in the Sind, which was mostly a desert. His ties with Sardar patel and Dr. Rajendra Prasad were also very close. Jairamdas Daulatram became a participant as an activist in the Home Rule Movement led by Annie Besant and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, demanding "Home Rule", or self-government and Dominion status for India within the British Empire. He also joined the Indian National Congress, which was the largest Indian political organisation. Daulatram was deeply influenced by the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, which advocated simple living, and a struggle for independence through ahimsa (non-violence) and satyagraha. perhaps Gandhi's sweetest relations were with Jairamdas. At the Amritsar session of the Congress, 1919, acute differences had arisen on the reforms resolution between Gandhiji on the one hand and Tilak, C.R. Das and Mohammed Ali on the other. Recalled Gandhiji years later: ``Jairamdas, that cool- headed Sindhi, came to the rescue. He passed me a slip containing a suggestion and pleading for a compromise. I hardly knew him. Something in his eyes and face captivated me. l read the suggestion. It was good. I passed it on to Deshbandhu. 'Yes, if my party Will accept it' was his response. Lokmanya said, `I don't want to see it. If Das has approved, it is good enough for me.' Malaviyaji (who was presiding anxiously) overheard it, snatched the paper from my hands and, amid deafening cheers, announced that a compromise had been arrived at. When Gandhiji was launching the ``Salt Satyagraha in 1930, he wrote to Jairamdas, who was then member of the Bombay Legislative Council: ``I have taken charge of the Committee for Boycott of Foreign Cloth. I must have a whole-time secretary, if that thing is to work. And I can think of nobody so suitable like you. Jairamdas immediately resigned his seat, took up the new charge, and made a tremendous success of the boycott of foreign cloth. Daulatram participated in the Non-cooperation movement (1920-1922), agitating against British rule through non-violent civil disobedience. Daulatram rose in the ranks of the Congress and became one of its foremost leaders from Sindh. He was a leading activist in the Salt Satyagraha (193031) and the Quit India movement (194245), being imprisoned by British authorities. Daulatram was shot and wounded in the thigh when police opened fire on street protestors agitating outside a magistrate's court in Karachi in 1930.
Freedom struggle
Post-independence
India became an independent nation on August 15, 1947 but was simultaneously partitioned to create a separate Muslim state of Pakistan; Daulatram's native Sindh was included in Pakistan, of which Karachi became the national capital. Daulatram stayed in India and was appointed the first Indian Governor of Bihar, a post he held until 1948, when he was appointed the Union Minister for Food Supply. Daulatram represented a constituency from East Punjab in the Constituent Assembly of India and contributed in drafting and shaping the Constitution of India. He served as a member of the advisory, union subjects, and provincial constitution committees. From 1950 to 1956, Daulatram served as the Governor of Assam.

Preservation of Sindhi literature
Jairamdas Daulatram was one of the founding members of the Akhil Bharat Sindhi Boli Ain Sahit Sabha (All India Sindhi Language and Literature Congress). Barrister Jan Muhammad Junejo: (Urdu: , title: Raees-Ul-Muhajireen: ) born in 1886 Larkana, Sindh. was a prominent leader of the Khilafat Movement and took active part in their struggle against the British Raj. He died "soon after" February 1921. Barrister Junejo was leading landlord and politician from larkana took a strong part in Tehreek khilafat at very young age and the large number of intending muhajireen began to register their name and 25 thousand originally announced accompanied by their families, left for Peshawar under Barrister Junejo. Ttempt to stop them did not succeed. The rail fare of the entire kafila amounting to thousand of rupees was paid by Barrister Junejo from his own packet. wherever the train stop the emotional scene were witnessed the local turned out to welcome the thousands of muhajireens who were garlanded and showered with gifts and money speeches were made and recited in their honour at the wazirabad junction when some people began to cry in response to such overtures Barrister Junejo stopped them from doing so saying that it was not the occasion for the crying but time for action, they are going to kabul not to eat grapes and pomegranates of kandahar but to save Islam.
Jan Muhammad Junejo
References
Qureshi, M. Naeem. Pan-Islam in British Indian Politics: A Study of the Khilafat Movement, 19181924. Brill Academic Publishers. p. 224. ISBN 978-90-04-11371-8. Jatindra Mohan Sengupta (18851933) was an Indian revolutionary against the British rule. Jatindra Mohan was arrested several times by the British police. In 1933, he died in a prison located in Ranchi, India. As a student, he traveled to England to pursue the study of law. During his stay there, he met and married Edith Ellen Gray (later known as Nellie Sengupta). After returning to India, Jatindra Mohan started a legal practice. He also joined in Indian politics, becoming a member of the Indian National Congress and participating in the Non-Cooperation Movement. Eventually, he gave up his legal practice in favor of his political commitment.
Jatindra Mohan Sengupta
Early life
Jatindra Mohan Sengupta was born on 22 February 1885 to a prominent, land-owner (Zamindar) family of Baramw , in Chittagong district of British India (now in Chittagong in Bangladesh). His father, Jatra Mohan Sengupta, was an advocate and a member of the Bengal Legislative Council. Jatindra Mohan became a student of the Presidency College in Kolkata. After completing his university studies, Jatindra Mohan went to England to acquire a Bachelor's degree in Law. While in England, he met his future wife, Edith Ellen Gray (better known as Nellie Sengupta).
Career
After completing his education in England, Jatindra Mohan returned with his wife to India. After reaching India, he began practicing law as a barrister. In 1911, Jatindra Mohan represented Chittagong in the Bengal Provincial Conference at Faridpur. This was the beginning of his political career. Later, he joined the Indian National Congress. He also organized the employees of the Burma Oil Company to form a union. In 1921, Jatindra Mohan became the Chairman of the Bengal Reception Committees of the Indian National Congress. That same year, during a strike at the Burma Oil Company, he was also serving as the secretary of the employees' union. Jatindra Mohan abandoned the practice of law due to his commitment to political work, particularly related to the Non-Cooperation Movement led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. In 1923, Jatindra Mohan was selected as a member of the Bengal Legislative Council. In 1925, after the death of Chitta Ranjan Das, Jatindra Mohan was elected president of the Bengal Swaraj Party. He also became president of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee. From 10 April 1929 to 29

April 1930, Jatindra Mohan served as mayor of Calcutta. In March 1930, at a public meeting in Rangoon, he was arrested on charges of provoking people against the Government and opposing the IndiaBurma separation. In 1931, Jatindra Mohan went to England to attend the Round Table Conference, supporting the position of the Indian National Congress.
Death
Because of his political activities, Jatindra Mohan was repeatedly arrested by the British police. In January 1932, he was arrested and detained in Poona and then in Darjeeling. Later, he was transferred to Ranchi. There, his health started to decline. On 23 July 1933, Jatindra Mohan Sengupta died while still in the Ranchi prison.
Influence
Because of his popularity and contribution to the Indian freedom movement, Jatindra Mohan Sengupta is affectionately remembered by people of Bengal with the honorific Deshpriya or Deshapriya, meaning "beloved of the country". In 1985, a postal stamp was issued by the Indian Government in memory of Jatindra Mohan and his wife, Nellie.
Further reading
Jatindra Mohan Sen Gupta (1933). Deshapriya Jatindra Mohan Sen-Gupta: his life and work. Modern Book Agency. Jawaharlal Nehru (Hindi: ) (Hindustani: [darlal neru] ( listen); 14 November 1889 27 May 1964) was the first Prime Minister of India and a central figure in Indian politics for much of the 20th century. He emerged as the paramount leader of the Indian Independence Movement under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi and ruled India from its establishment as an independent nation in 1947 until his death in office in 1964. Nehru is considered to be the architect of the modern Indian nationstate; a sovereign, socialist, secular, and democratic republic. He was the father of Indira Gandhi and the maternal grandfather of Rajiv Gandhi, who were to later serve as the third and sixth Prime Ministers of India, respectively. The son of a prominent lawyer and nationalist statesman, Nehru was a graduate of Cambridge University and the Inner Temple, where he trained to be a barrister. Upon his return to India, he enrolled at the Allahabad High Court while taking an interest in national politics. Nehru's involvement in politics would gradually replace his legal practice. A committed nationalist since his teenage years, Nehru became a rising figure in Indian politics during the upheavals of the 1910s. He became the preeminent leader of the left-wing factions of the Indian National Congress during the 1920s, and eventually of the entire Congress, with the tacit approval of his mentor, Gandhi. As Congress President, Nehru called for complete independence from Britain, and initiated a decisive shift towards the left in Indian politics. He was the principal author of the Indian Declaration of Independence (1929). Nehru and the Congress dominated Indian politics during the 1930s as the country moved towards independence. His idea of a secular nation state was seemingly validated when the Congress under his leadership swept the provincial elections in 1937 while the separatist Muslim League failed to form a government in any of the Indian provinces. But, these achievements were seriously compromised in the aftermath of the Quit India Movement in 1942 which saw the British effectively crush the Congress as a political organisation. Nehru, who had reluctantly heeded Gandhi's call for immediate independence, for he had desired to support the Allied war effort during the World War II, came out of a lengthy prison term to a much altered political landscape. The Muslim League under his old Congress colleague and now bte noire, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had come to dominate Muslim politics in India. Negotiations between Nehru and Jinnah for power sharing failed and gave way to the independence and bloody partition of India in 1947. Nehru was elected by the Congress to assume office as independent India's first Prime Minister although the question of leadership had been settled as far back in 1941, when Gandhi acknowledged Nehru as his
Jawaharlal Nehru

political heir and successor. As Prime Minister, Nehru set out to realise his vision of India. The Constitution of India was enacted in 1950, after which he embarked on an ambitious program of economic, social and political reforms. Chiefly, he oversaw India's transition from a monarchy to a republic, while nurturing a plural, multi-party democracy. In foreign policy, Nehru took a leading role in Non-Alignment while projecting India as a regional hegemon in South Asia. Under Nehru's leadership, the Congress emerged as a catch-all party, dominating national politics and winning consecutive elections in 1951, 1957, and 1962. He remained popular with the people of India in spite of political troubles in his final years as exemplified by the defeat in the Sino-Indian War. Guha writes, "[had] Nehru retired in 1958 he would be remembered as not just India's best prime minister, but as one of the great statesmen of the modern world." Nehru, thus, left behind a disputed legacy, being "either adored or reviled for India's progress or lack of it." What is not disputed, however, is his impact on India, with it being observed "that if Nehru had been a different kind of man, India would have been a different kind of country." Jawaharlal Nehru was born on 14 November 1889 in Allahabad in British India. His father, Motilal Nehru (18611931), a wealthy barrister who belonged to the Kashmiri Pandit community, served twice as President of the Indian National Congress during the Independence Struggle. His mother, Swaruprani Thussu (18681938), who came from a wellknown Kashmiri Brahmin family settled in Lahore, was Motilal's second wife, the first having died in child birth. Jawaharlal was the eldest of three children, two of whom were girls. The elder sister, Vijaya Lakshmi, later became the first female president of the United Nations General Assembly. The youngest sister, Krishna Hutheesing, became a noted writer and authored several books on her brother. Nehru described his childhood as a "sheltered and uneventful one." He grew up in an atmosphere of privilege at wealthy homes including a large palatial estate called the Anand Bhawan. His father had him educated at home by private governesses and tutors. Under the influence of a tutor, Ferdinand T. Brooks, Nehru became interested in science and theosophy. Nehru was subsequently initiated into the Theosophical Society at age thirteen by family friend Annie Beasant. However, his interest in theosophy did not prove to be enduring and he left the society shortly afterwards Brooks departed as his tutor. Nehru wrote: "for nearly three years [Brooks] was with me and in many ways he influenced me greatly." Although Nehru was disdainful of religion, his theosophical interests had induced him to the study of the Buddhist and Hindu scriptures. According to B.R. Nanda, these scriptures were Nehru's "first introduction to the religious and cultural heritage of [India]....[they] provided Nehru the initial impulse for [his] long intellectual quest which culminated...in the Discovery of India." Nehru became an ardent nationalist during his youth. The Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War intensified his feelings. About the latter he wrote, "[The] Japanese victories [had] stirred up my enthusiasm... Nationalistic ideas filled my mind... I mused of Indian freedom and Asiatic freedom from the thraldom of Europe." Later when Nehru had begun his institutional schooling in 1905 at Harrow, a leading school in England, he was greatly influenced by G.M. Trevelyan's Garibaldi books, which he had received as prizes for academic merit. Nehru viewed Garibaldi as a revolutionary hero. He wrote: "Visions of similar deeds in India came before, of [my] gallant fight for [Indian] freedom and in my mind India and Italy got strangely mixed together." Nehru went to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1907 and graduated with an honours degree in natural science in 1910. During this period, Nehru also studied politics, economics, history and literature desultorily. Writings of Bernard Shaw, H.G Wells, J.M. Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Lowes Dickinson and Meredith Townsend moulded much of his political and economic thinking. After completing his degree in 1910, Nehru went to London and stayed there for two years for law studies at the Inns of Court School of Law (Inner Temple). During this time, he continued to study the scholars of the Fabian Society including Beatrice Webb. Nehru passed his bar examinations in 1912 and was admitted to the English bar. After returning to India in August 1912, Nehru enrolled himself as an advocate of the Allahabad High Court and tried to settle down as a barrister. But, unlike his father, he had only a desultory interest in his
Early life and career (18891912)

profession and did not relish either the practice of law or the company of lawyers. Nehru wrote: "Decidedly the atmosphere was not intellectually stimulating and a sense of the utter insipidity of life grew upon me. His involvement in nationalist politics would gradually replace his legal practice in the coming years.
Struggle for Indian Independence (191247)
Nehru had developed an interest in Indian politics during his time in Britain. Within months of his return to India in 1912 he had attended an annual session of the Indian National Congress in Patna. Nehru was disconcerted with what he saw as a "very much an English-knowing upper class affair." The Congress in 1912 had been the party of moderates and elites. Nehru harboured doubts regarding the ineffectualness of the Congress but agreed to work for the party in support of the Indian civil rights movement in South Africa. He collected funds for the civil rights campaigners led by Mohandas Gandhi in 1913. Later, he campaigned against the indentured labour and other such discriminations faced by Indians in the British colonies. When the First World War broke out in August 1914, sympathy in India was divided. Although educated Indians "by and large took a vicarious pleasure" in seeing the British rulers humbled, the ruling upper classes sided with the Allies. Nehru confessed that he viewed the war with mixed feelings. Frank Moraes wrote: "If [Nehru's] sympathy was with any country it was with France, whose culture he greatly admired." During the war, Nehru volunteered for the St John Ambulance and worked as one of the provincial secretaries of the organisation in Allahabad. Nehru also spoke out against the censorship acts passed by the British government in India. Nehru emerged from the war years as a leader whose political views were considered radical. Although the political discourse had been dominated at this time by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a moderate who said that it was "madness to think of independence", Nehru had spoken "openly of the politics of noncooperation, of the need of resigning from honorary positions under the government and of not continuing the futile politics of representation." Nehru ridiculed the Indian Civil Service (ICS) for its support of British policies. He noted that someone had once defined the Indian Civil Service, "with which we are unfortunately still afflicted in this country, as neither Indian, nor civil, nor a service." Motilal Nehru, a prominent moderate leader, acknowledged the limits of constitutional agitation, but counseled his son that there was no other "practical alternative" to it. Nehru, however, was not satisfied with the pace of the national movement. He became involved with aggressive nationalists leaders who were demanding Home Rule for Indians. The influence of the moderates on Congress politics began to wane after Gokhale died in 1915. Antimoderate leaders such as Annie Beasant and Lokmanya Tilak took the opportunity to call for a national movement for Home Rule. But, in 1915, the proposal was rejected due to the reluctance of the moderates to commit to such a radical course of action. Besant nevertheless formed a league for advocating Home Rule in 1916; and Tilak, on his release from a prison term, had in April 1916 formed his own league. Nehru joined both leagues but worked especially for the former. He remarked later: "[Besant] had a very powerful influence on me in my childhood... even later when I entered political life her influence continued." Another development which brought about a radical change in Indian politics was the espousal of Hindu-Muslim unity with the Lucknow pact at the annual meeting of the Congress in December 1916. The pact had been initiated earlier in the year at Allahabad at a meeting of the All-India Congress Committee which was held at the Nehru residence at Anand Bhawan. Nehru welcomed and encouraged the rapprochement between the two Indian communities.
Home rule movement
Several nationalist leaders banded together in 1916 under the leadership of Annie Besant to voice a demand for self-government, and to obtain the status of a Dominion within the British Empire as enjoyed by Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Newfoundland at the time. Nehru joined the movement and rose to become secretary of Besant's All India Home Rule League. In June 1917 Besant was arrested and interned by the British government. The Congress and various other Indian organisation threatened to launch protests if she were not set free. The British government was subsequently forced to release Besant and make significant concessions after a period of intense protests.

Nehru returned to India in 1912, where he worked as a barrister in Allahabad while moving up the ranks of the Congress during World War I. His close association with the Congress dates from 1919, in the immediate aftermath of World War I. Nehru first met Gandhi in 1916, at the Lucknow session of the Congress. It was to be the beginning of a lifelong partnership between the two, which lasted until the Gandhi's death. Nehru quickly rose to prominence with Gandhi as his mentor. Nehru's political apprenticeship under Gandhi lasted from 1919 to 1929. By late 1921, he had already become one of the most prominent leaders of the Congress. He was elected general secretary of the Congress party for two terms in the 1920s. His first term began with the Kakinada session of the Congress in 1923. Nehru co-operated with Dr. N.S. Hardiker in founding the Hindustani Seva Dal in 1923. In the same year Nehru was elected chairman of the Allahabad Municipal Board. Nehru's second term as general secretary began with the Madras session of the Congress in 1927. Along with Subhas Chandra Bose, Nehru was considered a radical within the party during his tenure as general secretary due to his rejection of dominion status for India in favour of complete independence.
Political apprenticeship
Non-cooperation
The first big national involvement of Nehru came at the onset of the non-cooperation movement in 1920. He led the movement in the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh). Nehru was arrested on charges of anti-governmental activities in 1921, and was released a few months later. In the rift that formed within the Congress following the sudden closure of the non-cooperation movement after the Chauri Chaura incident, Nehru remained loyal to Gandhi and did not join the Swaraj Party formed by his father Motilal Nehru and CR Das.
Internationalising the struggle
Nehru played a leading role in the development of the internationalist outlook of the Indian freedom struggle. He sought foreign allies for India and forged links with movements for freedom and democracy all over the world. In 1927, his efforts paid off and the Congress was invited to attend the congress of oppressed nationalities in Brussels in Belgium. The meeting was called to coordinate and plan a common struggle against imperialism. Nehru represented India and was elected to the Executive Council of the League against Imperialism that was born at this meeting. During the mid-1930s, Nehru was much concerned with developments in Europe, which seemed to be drifting toward another world war. He was in Europe early in 1936, visiting his ailing wife, shortly before she died in a sanitarium in Switzerland. Even at this time, he emphasised that, in the event of war, Indias place was alongside the democracies, though he insisted that India could only fight in support of Great Britain and France as a free country. Nehru closely worked with Subhash Bose in developing good relations with governments of free countries all over the world. However, the two split in the late 1930s, when Bose agreed to seek the help of fascists in driving the British out of India. At the same time, Nehru had supported the people of Spain who were fighting to defend themselves against Franco. People of many countries volunteered to fight the fascist forces in Spain and formed the International Brigade. Nehru along with his aide V.K. Krishna Menon went to Spain and extended the support of the Indian people to the people of Spain. Nehru refused to meet Mussolini, the dictator of Italy when the latter expressed his desire to meet him. Thus, Nehru came to be seen as a champion of freedom and democracy all over the world.
Republicanism
Nehru was one of the first nationalist leaders to realise the sufferings of the people in the states ruled by Indian Princes. He suffered imprisonment in Nabha, a princely state, when he went there to see the struggle that was being waged by the Sikhs against the corrupt Mahants. The nationalist movement had been confined to the territories under direct British rule. Nehru helped to make the struggle of the people in the princely states a part of the nationalist movement for freedom. The All India states people's conference was formed in 1927. Nehru who had been supporting the cause of the people of the princely states for many years was made the President of the conference in 1935. He opened up its ranks to

membership from across the political spectrum. The body would play an important role during the political integration of India, helping Indian leaders Vallabhbhai Patel and V.K. Krishna Menon (to whom Nehru had delegated the task of integrating the princely states into India) negotiate with hundreds of princes. In July 1946, Nehru pointedly observed that no princely state could prevail militarily against the army of independent India. In January 1947, Nehru said that independent India would not accept the Divine Right of Kings, and in May 1947, he declared that any princely state which refused to join the Constituent Assembly would be treated as an enemy state. During the drafting of the Indian constitution, many Indian leaders (except Nehru) of that time were in favour of allowing each Princely state or Covenanting State to be independent as a federal state along the lines suggested originally by the Government of India act (1935). But as the drafting of the constitution progressed and the idea of forming a republic took concrete shape (due to the efforts of Nehru), it was decided that all the Princely states/Covenanting States would merge with the Indian republic. Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, de-recognized all the rulers by a presidential order in 1969. But this was struck down by the Supreme Court of India. Eventually, the government by the 26th Amendment to the constitution was successful in abolishing the Princely states of India. The process began by Nehru was finally completed by his daughter by the end of 1971.
Declaration of Independence
Nehru was one of the first leaders to demand that the Congress Party should resolve to make a complete and explicit break from all ties with the British Empire. He introduced a resolution demanding "complete national independence" in 1927, which was rejected because of Gandhi's opposition. In 1928, Gandhi agreed to Nehru's demands and proposed a resolution that called for the British to grant dominion status to India within two years. If the British failed to meet the deadline, the Congress would call upon all Indians to fight for complete independence. Nehru was one of the leaders who objected to the time given to the British he pressed Gandhi to demand immediate actions from the British. Gandhi brokered a further compromise by reducing the time given from two years to one. Nehru agreed to vote for the new resolution. Demands for dominion status was rejected by the British in 1929. Nehru assumed the presidency of the Congress party during the Lahore session on 29 December 1929 and introduced a successful resolution calling for complete independence. Nehru drafted the Indian declaration of independence, which stated: "We believe that it is the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the necessities of life, so that they may have full opportunities of growth. We believe also that if any government deprives a people of these rights and oppresses them the people have a further right to alter it or abolish it. The British government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually. We believe therefore, that India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj or complete independence." At midnight on New Year's Eve 1929, Nehru hoisted the tricolour flag of India upon the banks of the Ravi in Lahore. A pledge of independence was read out, which included a readiness to withhold taxes. The massive gathering of public attending the ceremony was asked if they agreed with it, and the vast majority of people were witnessed to raise their hands in approval. 172 Indian members of central and provincial legislatures resigned in support of the resolution and in accordance with Indian public sentiment. The Congress asked the people of India to observe 26 January as Independence Day. The flag of India was hoisted publicly across India by Congress volunteers, nationalists and the public. Plans for a mass civil disobedience were also underway. After the Lahore session of the Congress in 1929, Nehru gradually emerged as the paramount leader of

the Indian independence movement. Gandhi stepped back into a more spiritual role. Although Gandhi did not officially designate Nehru his political heir until 1942, the country as early as the mid-1930s saw in Nehru the natural successor to Gandhi.
Civil disobedience
Nehru and most of the Congress leaders were initially ambivalent about Gandhi's plan to begin civil disobedience with a satyagraha aimed at the British salt tax. After the protest gathered steam, they realised the power of salt as a symbol. Nehru remarked about the unprecedented popular response, it seemed as though a spring had been suddenly released. Nehru was arrested on 14 April 1930 while entraining from Allahabad for Raipur. He had earlier, after addressing a huge meeting and leading a vast procession, ceremoniously manufactured some contraband salt. He was charged with breach of the salt law, tried summarily behind prison walls and sentenced to six months of imprisonment. Nehru nominated Gandhi to succeed him as Congress President during his absence in jail, but Gandhi declined, and Nehru then nominated his father as his successor. With Nehru's arrest the civil disobedience acquired a new tempo, and arrests, firing on crowds and lathi charges grew to be ordinary occurrences. The Salt Satyagraha succeeded in drawing the attention of the world. Indian, British, and world opinion increasingly began to recognise the legitimacy of the claims by the Congress party for independence. Nehru considered the salt satyagraha the high-water mark of his association with Gandhi, and felt that its lasting importance was in changing the attitudes of Indians: "Of course these movements exercised tremendous pressure on the British Government and shook the government machinery. But the real importance, to my mind, lay in the effect they had on our own people, and especially the village masses....Non-cooperation dragged them out of the mire and gave them self-respect and self-reliance....They acted courageously and did not submit so easily to unjust oppression; their outlook widened and they began to think a little in terms of India as a whole....It was a remarkable transformation and the Congress, under Gandhi's leadership, must have the credit for it." Nehru elaborated the policies of the Congress and a future Indian nation under his leadership in 1929. He declared that the aims of the congress were freedom of religion, right to form associations, freedom of expression of thought, equality before law for every individual without distinction of caste, colour, creed or religion, protection to regional languages and cultures, safeguarding the interests of the peasants and labour, abolition of untouchability, introduction of adult franchise, imposition of prohibition, nationalisation of industries, socialism, and establishment of a secular India. All these aims formed the core of the "Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy" resolution drafted by Nehru in 192931 and were ratified by the All India Congress Committee under Gandhi's leadership. However, some Congress leaders objected to the resolution and decided to oppose Nehru. The espousal of socialism as the Congress goal was most difficult to achieve. Nehru was opposed in this by the right-wing Congressmen Sardar Patel, Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari. Nehru had the support of the left-wing Congressmen Maulana Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose. The trio combined to oust Dr. Prasad as Congress President in 1936. Nehru was elected in his place and held the presidency for two years (193637). Nehru was then succeeded by his socialist colleagues Bose (1938 39) and Azad (194046). After the fall of Bose from the mainstream of Indian politics (due to his support of violence in driving the British out of India), the power struggle between the socialists and conservatives balanced out. However, Sardar Patel died in 1950, leaving Nehru as the sole remaining iconic national leader, and soon the situation became such that Nehru was able to implement many of his basic policies without hindrance. The conservative right-wing of the Congress (composed of India's upper class elites) would continue opposing the socialists until the great schism in 1969. Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, was able to fulfill her father's dream by the 42nd amendment (1976) of the Indian constitution by which India officially became "socialist" and "secular".
Architect of India

During Nehru's second term as general secretary of the Congress, he proposed certain resolutions concerning the foreign policy of India. From that time onwards, he was given carte blanche in framing the foreign policy of any future Indian nation. Nehru developed good relations with governments all over the world. He firmly placed India on the side of democracy and freedom during a time when the world was under the threat of fascism. Nehru was also given the responsibility of planning the economy of a future India. He appointed the National Planning Commission in 1938 to help in framing such policies. However, many of the plans framed by Nehru and his colleagues would come undone with the unexpected partition of India in 1947.
Electoral politics
Nehru visit to Europe in 1936 proved to be the watershed in his political and economic thinking. Nehrus real interest in Marxism and his socialist pattern of thought stem from that tour. His subsequent sojourns in prison enabled him to study Marxism in more depth. Interested in its ideas but repelled by some of its methods, he could never bring himself to accept Karl Marxs writings as revealed scripture. Yet from then on, the yardstick of his economic thinking remained Marxist, adjusted, where necessary, to Indian conditions. When the Congress party under Nehru chose to contest elections and accept power under the Federation scheme, Gandhi resigned from party membership. Gandhi did not disagree with Nehru's move, but felt that if he resigned, his popularity with Indians would cease to stifle the party's membership. When the elections following the introduction of provincial autonomy (under the government of India act 1935) brought the Congress party to power in a majority of the provinces, Nehru's popularity and power was unmatched. The Muslim League under Mohammed Ali Jinnah (who was to become the creator of Pakistan) had fared badly at the polls. Nehru declared that the only two parties that mattered in India were the British Raj and Congress. Jinnah statements that the Muslim League was the third and "equal partner" within Indian politics was widely rejected. Nehru had hoped to elevate Maulana Azad as the pre-eminent leaders of Indian Muslims, but in this, he was undermined by Gandhi, who continued to treat Jinnah as the voice of Indian Muslims.
World War II and Quit India
When World war II started, Viceroy Linlithgow had unilaterally declared India a belligerent on the side of the Britain, without consulting the elected Indian representatives. Nehru hurried back from a visit to China, announcing that, in a conflict between democracy and Fascism, our sympathies must inevitably be on the side of democracy...... I should like India to play its full part and throw all her resources into the struggle for a new order. After much deliberation the Congress under Nehru informed the government that it would cooperate with the British but on certain conditions. First, Britain must give an assurance of full independence for India after the war and allow the election of a constituent assembly to frame a new constitution; second, although the Indian armed forces would remain under the British Commander-in-Chief, Indians must be included immediately in the central government and given a chance to share power and responsibility. When Nehru presented Lord Linlithgow with the demands, he chose not to take them seriously. A deadlock was reached. The same old game is played again, Nehru wrote bitterly to Gandhi, the background is the same, the various epithets are the same and the actors are the same and the results must be the same. On 23 October 1939, the Congress condemned the Viceroys attitude and called upon the Congress ministries in the various provinces to resign in protest. Before this crucial announcement, Nehru urged Jinnah and the Muslim League to join the protest but the latter declined. In March 1940 Jinnah passed what would come to be known as the Pakistan Resolution, declaring Muslims are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory and their State. This state was to be known as Pakistan, meaning Land of the Pure. Nehru angrily declared that all the old problems...pale into insignificance before the latest stand taken by the Muslim League leader in Lahore. Linlithgow made Nehru an offer on 8 October 1940. It stated that Dominion status for India was the objective of the British government. However, it referred neither to a date nor method of accomplishment. Only Jinnah got something more precise. "The British would not

contemplate transferring power to a Congress-dominated national government the authority of which was denied by large and powerful elements in Indias national life. In October 1940, Gandhi and Nehru, abandoning their original stand of supporting Britain, decided to launch a limited civil disobedience campaign in which leading advocates of Indian independence were selected to participate one by one. Nehru was arrested and sentenced to four years imprisonment. After spending a little more than a year in jail, he was released, along with other Congress prisoners, three days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. When the Japanese carried their attack through Burma (now Myanmar) to the borders of India in the spring of 1942, the British government, faced by this new military threat, decided to make some overtures to India, as Nehru had originally desired. Prime Minister Winston Churchill dispatched Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of the war Cabinet who was known to be politically close to Nehru and also knew Jinnah, with proposals for a settlement of the constitutional problem. As soon as he arrived he discovered that India was more deeply divided than he had imagined. Nehru, eager for a compromise, was hopeful. Gandhi was not. Jinnah had continued opposing the Congress. Pakistan is our only demand, declared the Muslim League newspaper Dawn and by God we will have it. Crippss mission failed as Gandhi would accept nothing less than independence. Relations between Nehru and Gandhi cooled over the latters refusal to cooperate with Cripps but the two later reconcilled. On 15 January 1941 Gandhi had stated: "Some say Pandit Nehru and I were estranged. It will require much more than difference of opinion to estrange us. We had differences from the time we became co-workers and yet I have said for some years and say so now that not Rajaji but Jawaharlal will be my successor." Gandhi called on the British to leave India; Nehru, though reluctant to embarrass the allied war effort, had no alternative but to join Gandhi. Following the Quit India resolution passed by the Congress party in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 8 August 1942, the entire Congress working committee, including Gandhi and Nehru, was arrested and imprisoned. Nehru emerged from thishis ninth and last detentiononly on 15 June 1945. During the period where all of the Congress leadership were in jail, the Muslim League under Jinnah grew in power. In April 1943, the League captured the governments of Bengal and, a month later, that of the North West Frontier Province. In none of these provinces had the League previously had a majority only the arrest of Congress members made it possible. With all the Muslim dominated provinces except the Punjab under Jinnahs control, the artificial concept of a separate Muslim State was turning into a reality. However by 1944, Jinnahs power and prestige were on the wane. A general sympathy towards the jailed Congress leaders was developing among Muslims, and much of the blame for the disastrous Bengal famine of 19434 during which two million died, had been laid on the shoulders of the provinces Muslim League government. The numbers at Jinnahs meetings, once counted in thousands soon numbered only a few hundreds. In despair, Jinnah left the political scene for a stay in Kashmir. His prestige was restored unwittingly by Gandhi, who had been released from prison on medical grounds in May 1944 and had met Jinnah in Bombay in September. There he offered the Muslim leader a plebiscite in the Muslim areas after the war to see whether they wanted to separate from the rest of India. Essentially, it was an acceptance of the principle of Pakistan but not in so many words. Jinnah demanded that the exact words be said; Gandhi refused and the talks broke down. Jinnah however had greatly strengthened his own position and that of the League. The most influential member of Congress had been seen to negotiate with him on equal terms. Other Muslim league leaders, opposed both to Jinnah and to the partition of India, lost strength.
Prime Minister of India (194764)
Nehru and his colleagues had been released as the British Cabinet Mission arrived to propose plans for transfer of power. Once elected, Nehru headed an interim government, which was impaired by outbreaks of communal violence and political disorder, and the opposition of the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who were demanding a separate Muslim state of Pakistan. After failed bids to form coalitions, Nehru reluctantly supported the partition of India, according to a plan released by the British on 3 June 1947. He took office as the Prime Minister of India on 15 August, and delivered his inaugural address titled "A

Tryst With Destiny" "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity." On 30 January 1948, Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi was shot while he was walking to a platform from which he was to address a prayer meeting. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a Hindu nationalist with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening India by insisting upon a payment to Pakistan. Nehru addressed the nation through radio: "Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions and millions in this country."Jawaharlal Nehru's address to Gandhi Yasmin Khan argued that Gandhi's death and funeral helped consolidate the authority of the new Indian state under Nehru and Patel. The Congress tightly controlled the epic public displays of grief over a twoweek periodthe funeral, mortuary rituals and distribution of the martyr's ashesas millions participated and hundreds of millions watched. The goal was to assert the power of the government, legitimise the Congress party's control and suppress all religious para-military groups. Nehru and Patel suppressed the RSS, the Muslim National Guards, and the Khaksars, with some 200,000 arrests. Gandhi's death and funeral linked the distant state with the Indian people and made more understand the need to suppress religious parties during the transition to independence for the Indian people. In later years there emerged a revisionist school of history which sought to blame Nehru for the partition of India, mostly referring to his highly centralised policies for an independent India in 1947, which Jinnah opposed in favour of a more decentralised India. Such views has been promoted by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which favours a decentralised central government in India. In the years following independence, Nehru frequently turned to his daughter Indira to look after him and manage his personal affairs. Under his leadership, the Congress won an overwhelming majority in the elections of 1952. Indira moved into Nehru's official residence to attend to him and became his constant companion in his travels across India and the world. Indira would virtually become Nehru's chief of staff. Nehru's study in .
Economic policies
Nehru presided over the introduction of a modified, Indian version of state planning and control over the economy. Creating the Planning commission of India, Nehru drew up the first Five-Year Plan in 1951, which charted the government's investments in industries and agriculture. Increasing business and income taxes, Nehru envisaged a mixed economy in which the government would manage strategic industries such as mining, electricity and heavy industries, serving public interest and a check to private enterprise. Nehru pursued land redistribution and launched programmes to build irrigation canals, dams and spread the use of fertilizers to increase agricultural production. He also pioneered a series of community development programs aimed at spreading diverse cottage industries and increasing efficiency into rural India. While encouraging the construction of large dams (which Nehru called the "new temples of India"), irrigation works and the generation of hydroelectricity, Nehru also launched

India's programme to harness nuclear energy. For most of Nehru's term as prime minister, India would continue to face serious food shortages despite progress and increases in agricultural production. Nehru's industrial policies, summarised in the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956, encouraged the growth of diverse manufacturing and heavy industries, yet state planning, controls and regulations began to impair productivity, quality and profitability. Although the Indian economy enjoyed a steady rate of growth at 2.5% per annum (mocked by leftist economist Raj Krishna as a "Hindu rate of growth"), chronic unemployment amidst widespread poverty continued to plague the population. D. D. Kosambi, a well-known Marxist historian, criticised Nehru in his article for the bourgeoisie class exploitation of Nehru's socialist ideology. Nehru was accused of promoting capitalism in the guise of democratic socialism among other things. Land and agrarian reform Under Nehrus leadership, the government attempted to develop India quickly by embarking on agrarian reform and rapid industrialisation. A successful land reform was introduced that abolished giant landholdings, but efforts to redistribute land by placing limits on landownership failed. Attempts to introduce large-scale cooperative farming were frustrated by landowning rural elites, who formed the core of the powerful right-wing of the Congress and had considerable political support in opposing the efforts of Nehru. Agricultural production expanded until the early 1960s, as additional land was brought under cultivation and some irrigation projects began to have an effect. The establishment of agricultural universities, modelled after land-grant colleges in the United States, contributed to the development of the economy. These universities worked with high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, initially developed in Mexico and the Philippines, that in the 1960s began the Green Revolution, an effort to diversify and increase crop production. At the same time a series of failed monsoons would cause serious food shortages despite the steady progress and increase in agricultural production.
Domestic policies
States reorganisation The British Indian Empire, which included present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, was divided into two types of territories: the Provinces of British India, which were governed directly by British officials responsible to the Governor-General of India; and princely states, under the rule of local hereditary rulers who recognised British suzerainty in return for local autonomy, in most cases as established by treaty. Between 1947 and about 1950, the territories of the princely states were politically integrated into the Indian Union under Nehru and Sardar Patel. Most were merged into existing provinces; others were organised into new provinces, such as Rajputana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Bharat, and Vindhya Pradesh, made up of multiple princely states; a few, including Mysore, Hyderabad, Bhopal, and Bilaspur, became separate provinces. The Government of India Act 1935 remained the constitutional law of India pending adoption of a new Constitution. The new Constitution of India, which came into force on 26 January 1950, made India a sovereign democratic republic. Nehru declared the new republic to be a "Union of States". The constitution of 1950 distinguished between three main types of states: Part A states, which were the former governors' provinces of British India, were ruled by an elected governor and state legislature. The Part B states were former princely states or groups of princely states, governed by a rajpramukh, who was usually the ruler of a constituent state, and an elected legislature. The rajpramukh was appointed by the President of India. The Part C states included both the former chief commissioners' provinces and some princely states, and each was governed by a chief commissioner appointed by the President of India. The sole Part D state was the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were administered by a lieutenant governor appointed by the central government. In December 1953, Nehru appointed the States Reorganisation Commission to prepare for the creation of states on linguistic lines. This was headed by Justice Fazal Ali and the commission itself was also known as the Fazal Ali Commission. The efforts of this commission were overseen by Govind Ballabh Pant, who served as Nehru's Home Minister from December 1954. The commission created a report in 1955 recommending the reorganisation of India's states. Under the Seventh Amendment, the existing

distinction between Part A, Part B, Part C, and Part D states was abolished. The distinction between Part A and Part B states was removed, becoming known simply as "states". A new type of entity, the union territory, replaced the classification as a Part C or Part D state. Nehru stressed commonality among Indians and promoted pan-Indianism. He refused to reorganise states on either religious or ethnic lines. Western scholars have mostly praised Nehru for the integration of the states into a modern republic but the act was not accepted universally in India.
Education and social reform
Jawaharlal Nehru was a passionate advocate of education for India's children and youth, believing it essential for India's future progress. His government oversaw the establishment of many institutions of higher learning, including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Management and the National Institutes of Technology. Nehru also outlined a commitment in his five-year plans to guarantee free and compulsory primary education to all of India's children. For this purpose, Nehru oversaw the creation of mass village enrolment programmes and the construction of thousands of schools. Nehru also launched initiatives such as the provision of free milk and meals to children in order to fight malnutrition. Adult education centres, vocational and technical schools were also organised for adults, especially in the rural areas. Under Nehru, the Indian Parliament enacted many changes to Hindu law to criminalise caste discrimination and increase the legal rights and social freedoms of women. A system of reservations in government services and educational institutions was created to eradicate the social inequalities and disadvantages faced by peoples of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Nehru also championed secularism and religious harmony, increasing the representation of minorities in government. Nehru specifically wrote Article 44 of the Indian constitution under the Directive Principles of State Policy which states : 'The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.' The article has formed the basis of secularism in India. However, Nehru has been criticised for the inconsistent application of the law. Most notably, Nehru allowed Muslims to keep their personal law in matters relating to marriage and inheritance. Also in the small state of Goa, a civil code based on the old Portuguese Family Laws was allowed to continue, and Muslim Personal law was prohibited by Nehru. This was the result of the annexation of Goa in 1961 by India, when Nehru promised the people that their laws would be left intact. This has led to accusations of selective secularism. While Nehru exempted Muslim law from legislation and they remained un-reformed, he did pass the Special Marriage Act in 1954. The idea behind this act was to give everyone in India the ability to marry outside the personal law under a civil marriage. As usual the law applied to all of India, except Jammu and Kashmir (again leading to accusations of selective secularism). In many respects, the act was almost identical to the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955, which gives some idea as to how secularised the law regarding Hindus had become. The Special Marriage Act allowed Muslims to marry under it and thereby retain the protections, generally beneficial to Muslim women, that could not be found in the personal law. Under the act polygamy was illegal, and inheritance and succession would be governed by the Indian Succession Act, rather than the respective Muslim Personal Law. Divorce also would be governed by the secular law, and maintenance of a divorced wife would be along the lines set down in the civil law. Nehru led the faction of the Congress party which promoted Hindi as the ligua-franca of the Indian nation. After an exhaustive and divisive debate with the non-Hindi speakers, Hindi was adopted as the official language of India in 1950 with English continuing as an associate official language for a period of fifteen years, after which Hindi would become the sole official language. Efforts by the Indian Government to make Hindi the sole official language after 1965 were not acceptable to many non-Hindi Indian states, who wanted the continued use of English. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a descendant of Dravidar Kazhagam, led the opposition to Hindi. To allay their fears, Nehru enacted the Official Languages Act in 1963 to ensure the continuing use of English beyond 1965. The text of the Act did not satisfy the DMK and increased their scepticism that his assurances might not be honoured by future administrations. The issue was resolved during the premiership of Lal Bahadur Shastri, who under great pressure from Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, was made to give assurances that English would

continue to be used as the official language as long the non-Hindi speaking states wanted. The Official Languages Act was eventually amended in 1967 by the Congress Government headed by Indira Gandhi to guarantee the indefinite use of Hindi and English as official languages. This effectively ensured the current "virtual indefinite policy of bilingualism" of the Indian Republic. Nehru led newly independent India from 1947 to 1964, during its first years of freedom from British rule. Both the United States and the Soviet Union competed to make India an ally throughout the Cold War. Nehru also maintained good relations with the British Empire. Under the London Declaration, India agreed that, when it became a republic in January 1950, it would join the Commonwealth of Nations and accept the British monarch as a "symbol of the free association of its independent member nations and as such the Head of the Commonwealth". The other nations of the Commonwealth recognised India's continuing membership of the association. The reaction back home was favourable; only the far-left and the far-right criticised Nehru's decision. On the international scene, Nehru was a champion of pacifism and a strong supporter of the United Nations. He pioneered the policy of non-alignment and co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement of nations professing neutrality between the rival blocs of nations led by the US and the USSR. Recognising the People's Republic of China soon after its founding (while most of the Western bloc continued relations with the Republic of China), Nehru argued for its inclusion in the United Nations and refused to brand the Chinese as the aggressors in their conflict with Korea. He sought to establish warm and friendly relations with China in 1950, and hoped to act as an intermediary to bridge the gulf and tensions between the communist states and the Western bloc. Nehru had promised in 1948 to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir under the auspices of the UN. Kashmir was a disputed territory between India and Pakistan, the two having gone to war with each other over the state in 1948. However, as Pakistan failed to pull back troops in accordance with the UN resolution and as Nehru grew increasingly wary of the UN, he declined to hold a plebiscite in 1953. His policies on Kashmir and the integeration of the state into India was frequently defended in front of the United Nations by his aide, Krishna Menon, a brilliant diplomat who earned a reputation in India for his passionate speeches. Nehru, while a pacifist, was not blind to the political and geo-strategic reality of India in 1947. While laying the foundation stone of the National Defence Academy (India) in 1949, he stated: "We, who for generations had talked about and attempted in everything a peaceful way and practiced non-violence, should now be, in a sense, glorifying our army, navy and air force. It means a lot. Though it is odd, yet it simply reflects the oddness of life. Though life is logical, we have to face all contingencies, and unless we are prepared to face them, we will go under. There was no greater prince of peace and apostle of nonviolence than Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, whom we have lost, but yet, he said it was better to take the sword than to surrender, fail or run away. We cannot live carefree assuming that we are safe. Human nature is such. We cannot take the risks and risk our hard-won freedom. We have to be prepared with all modern defence methods and a well-equipped army, navy and air force." Nehru envisioned the developing of nuclear weapons and established the Atomic Energy Commission of India (AEC) in 1948. Nehru also called Dr. Homi J. Bhabha, a nuclear physicist, who was entrusted with complete authority over all nuclear related affairs and programs and answered only to Nehru himself. Indian nuclear policy was set by unwritten personal understanding between Nehru and Bhabha. Nehru famously said to Bhabha, "Professor Bhabha take care of Physics, leave international relation to me". From the outset in 1948, Nehru had high ambition to develop this program to stand against the industrialized states and the basis of this program was to establish an Indian nuclear weapons capability as part of India's regional superiority to other South-Asian states, most particularly Pakistan. Nehru also told Bhabha, later it was told by Bhabha to Raja Rammanna that, "We must have the capability. We should first prove ourselves and then talk of Gandhi, nonviolence and a world without nuclear weapons. "
National security and foreign policy

Nehru was hailed by many for working to defuse global tensions and the threat of nuclear weapons after the Korean war (19501953). He commissioned the first study of the human effects of nuclear explosions, and campaigned ceaselessly for the abolition of what he called "these frightful engines of destruction." He also had pragmatic reasons for promoting de-nuclearisation, fearing that a nuclear arms race would lead to over-militarisation that would be unaffordable for developing countries such as his own. Nehru ordered the arrest of the Kashmiri politician Sheikh Abdullah in 1953, whom he had previously supported but now suspected of harbouring separatist ambitions; Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad replaced him. In 1954 Nehru signed with China the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, known in India as the Panchsheel (from the Sanskrit words, panch: five, sheel: virtues), a set of principles to govern relations between the two states. Their first formal codification in treaty form was in an agreement between China and India in 1954. They were enunciated in the preamble to the "Agreement (with exchange of notes) on trade and intercourse between Tibet Region of China and India", which was signed at Peking on 29 April 1954. Negotiations took place in Delhi from December 1953 to April 1954 between the Delegation of the PRC Government and the Delegation of the Indian Government on the relations between the two countries with respect to the disputed territories of Aksai Chin and South Tibet. The treaty was disregared in the 1960s, but in the 1970s, the Five Principles again came to be seen as important in Sino-Indian relations, and more generally as norms of relations between states. They became widely recognised and accepted throughout the region during the premiership of Indira Gandhi and the 3-year rule of the Janata Party (19771980). In 1956 Nehru had criticised the joint invasion of the Suez Canal by the British, French and Israelis. The role of Nehru, both as Indian Prime Minister and a leader of the Non Aligned Movement was significant; he tried to be even-handed between the two sides, while denouncing Eden and co-sponsors of the aggression vigorously. Nehru had a powerful ally in the US president Dwight Eisenhower who, if relatively silent publicly, went to the extent of using Americas clout in the IMF to make Britain and France back down. The episode greatly raised the prestige of Nehru and India amongst the third world nations. During the Suez crisis, Nehru's right hand man, Menon attempted to persuade a recalcitrant Gamal Nasser to compromise with the West, and was instrumental in moving Western powers towards an awareness that Nasser might prove willing to compromise. In 1957, Menon was instructed to deliver an unprecedented eight-hour speech defending Indias stand on Kashmir; to date, the speech is the longest ever delivered in the United Nations Security Council, covering five hours of the 762nd meeting on 23 January, and two hours and forty-eight minutes on the 24th, reportedly concluding with Menon's collapse on the Security Council floor. During the filibuster, Nehru moved swiftly and successfully to consolidate Indian power in Kashmir (then under great unrest). Menon's passionate defence of Indian sovereignty in Kashmir enlarged his base of support in India, and led to the Indian press temporarily dubbing him the 'Hero of Kashmir'. Nehru was then at the peak of his popularity in India; the only (minor) criticism came from the far-right. The USA had hoped to court Nehru after its intervention in favour of Nasser during the Suez crisis. However, Cold War suspicions and the American distrust of Nehruvian socialism cooled relations between India and the US, which suspected Nehru of tacitly supporting the Soviet Union. Nehru maintained good relations with Britain even after the Suez Crisis. Nehru accepted the arbitration of the UK and World Bank, signing the Indus Water Treaty in 1960 with Pakistani ruler Ayub Khan to resolve long-standing disputes about sharing the resources of the major rivers of the Punjab region. Although the Pancha Sila (Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence) was the basis of the 1954 Sino-Indian border treaty, in later years, Nehru's foreign policy suffered through increasing Chinese assertiveness over border disputes and Nehru's decision to grant political asylum to the 14th Dalai Lama. After years of failed negotiations, Nehru authorised the Indian Army to liberate Goa in 1961 from Portuguese occupation, and then he formally annexed it to India. It increased his popularity in India, but he was criticised by the communist opposition in India for the use of military force. The use of military force against Portugal earned him goodwill amongst the right-wing and far-right groups. However, this goodwill was to be lost with India's tactical defeat in the 1962 war with China.

India China War 1962
From 1959, in a process that accelerated in 1961, Nehru adopted the "Forward Policy" of setting up military outposts in disputed areas of the Sino-Indian border, including in 43 outposts in territory not previously controlled by India. China attacked some of these outposts, and thus the Sino-Indian War began, which India lost, and China withdrew to pre-war lines in eastern zone at Tawang but retained Aksai Chin which was within British India and was handed over to India after independence. Later, Pakistan handed over some portion of Kashmir near Siachen controlled by Pakistan since 1948 to China. The war exposed the unpreparedness of India's military which could send only 14 thousand troops to the war zone in opposition to many times larger Chinese army, and Nehru was widely criticised for his government's insufficient attention to defence. In response, Nehru sacked the defence minister Krishna Menon and sought US military aid. Nehru's improved relations with USA under John F. Kennedy proved useful during the war, as in 1962, President of Pakistan (then closely aligned with the Americans) Ayub Khan was made to guarantee his neutrality in regards to India, who was threatened by "communist aggression from Red China." The Indian relationship with the Soviet Union, criticised by right-wing groups supporting free-market policies was also seemingly validated. Nehru would continue to maintain his commitment to the non-aligned movement despite calls from some to settle down on one permanent ally. The aftermath of the war saw sweeping changes in the Indian military to prepare it for similar conflicts in the future, and placed pressure on Nehru, who was seen as responsible for failing to anticipate the Chinese attack on India. Under American advice (by American envoy John Kenneth Galbraith who made and ran American policy on the war as all other top policy makers in USA were absorbed in coincident Cuban Missile Crisis) Nehru refrained, not according to the best choices available, from using the Indian air force to beat back the Chinese advances. The CIA later revealed that at that time the Chinese had neither the fuel nor runways long enough for using their air force effectively in Tibet. Indians in general became highly sceptical of China and its military. Many Indians view the war as a betrayal of India's attempts at establishing a long-standing peace with China and started to question Nehru's usage of the term "Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai" (meaning "Indians and Chinese are brothers"). The war also put an end to Nehru's earlier hopes that India and China would form a strong Asian Axis to counteract the increasing influence of the Cold War bloc superpowers. The unpreparedness of the army was blamed on Defence Minister Menon, who "resigned" his government post to allow for someone who might modernise India's military further. India's policy of weaponisation via indigenous sources and self-sufficiency began in earnest under Nehru, completed by his daughter Indira Gandhi, who later led India to a crushing military victory over rival Pakistan in 1971. Toward the end of the war India had increased her support for Tibetan refugees and revolutionaries, some of them having settled in India, as they were fighting the same common enemy in the region. Nehru ordered the raising of an elite Indian-trained "Tibetan Armed Force" composed of Tibetan refugees, which served with distinction in future wars against Pakistan in 1965 and 1971. During the conflict, Nehru wrote two desperate letters to US President John F. Kennedy, requesting 12 squadrons of fighter jets and a modern radar system. These jets were seen as necessary to beef up Indian air strength so that air to air combat could be initiated safely from the Indian perspective (bombing troops was seen as unwise for fear of Chinese retaliatory action). Nehru also asked that these aircraft be manned by American pilots until Indian airmen were trained to replace them. These requests were rejected by the Kennedy Administration (which was involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis during most of the Sino-Indian War), leading to a cool down in Indo-US relations. According to former Indian diplomat G Parthasarathy, "only after we got nothing from the US did arms supplies from the Soviet Union to India commence". Per Time Magazine's 1962 editorial on the war, however, this may not have been the case. The editorial states, 'When Washington finally turned its attention to India, it honoured the ambassador's pledge, loaded 60 US planes with $5,000,000 worth of automatic weapons, heavy mortars and land mines. Twelve huge C-130 Hercules transports, complete with US crews and maintenance teams, took off for New Delhi to fly Indian troops and equipment to the battle zone. Britain weighed in with Bren and Sten guns, and airlifted 150 tons of arms to India. Canada prepared to ship six transport planes. Australia

opened Indian credits for $1,800,000 worth of munitions'. Nehru had led the Congress to a major victory in the 1957 elections, but his government was facing rising problems and criticism. Disillusioned by alleged intra-party corruption and bickering, Nehru contemplated resigning but continued to serve. The election of his daughter Indira as Congress President in 1959 aroused criticism for alleged nepotism, although actually Nehru had disapproved of her election, partly because he considered it smacked of "dynastism"; he said, indeed it was "wholly undemocratic and an undesirable thing", and refused her a position in his cabinet. Indira herself was at loggerheads with her father over policy; most notably, she used his oft-stated personal deference to the Congress Working Committee to push through the dismissal of the Communist Party of India government in the state of Kerala, over his own objections. Nehru began to be frequently embarrassed by her ruthlessness and disregard for parliamentary tradition, and was "hurt" by what he saw as an assertiveness with no purpose other than to stake out an identity independent of her father. In the 1962 elections, Nehru led the Congress to victory yet with a diminished majority. Communist and socialist parties were the main beneficiaries although some right wing groups like Bharatiya Jana Sangh also did well.
Death
Nehru's health began declining steadily after 1962, and he spent months recuperating in Kashmir through 1963. Some historians attribute this dramatic decline to his surprise and chagrin over the Sino-Indian War, which he perceived as a betrayal of trust. Upon his return from Kashmir in May 1964, Nehru suffered a stroke and later a heart attack. He was "taken ill in early hours" of 27 May 1964 and died in "early afternoon" on the same day, and his death was announced to Lok Sabha at 1400 local time; cause of death is believed to be heart attack. Nehru was cremated in accordance with Hindu rites at the Shantivana on the banks of the Yamuna River, witnessed by hundreds of thousands of mourners who had flocked into the streets of Delhi and the cremation grounds. Nehru, the man and politician made such a powerful imprint on India that his death on 27 May 1964, left India with no clear political heir to his leadership (although his daughter was widely expected to succeed him before she turned it down in favour of Shastri). Indian newspapers repeated Nehru's own words of the time of Gandhi's assassination: "The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere." Nehru rejected religion. He observed the effects of superstition on the lives of the Indian people and wrote of religion that it shuts its eyes to reality. Nehru thought that religion was at the root of the stagnation and lack of progress in India. The basis of Indian society at that time was unthinking obedience to the authority of sacred books, old customs, and outdated habits. Nehru observed that these attitudes and religious taboos were preventing India from going forward and adapting to modern conditions: No country or people who are slaves to dogma and dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded. Therefore, he concurred, that religions and all that went with them must be severely limited before they ruined the country and its people. He was deeply concerned that so many Indian people could not read or write and wanted mass education to release Indian society from the limitations that ignorance and religious traditions imposed. The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the preservation of vested interests. Nehru considered that his afterlife was not in some mystical heaven or reincarnation but in the practical achievements of a life lived fully with and for his fellow human beings: Nor am I greatly interested in
Religion

life after death. I find the problems of this life sufficiently absorbing to fill my mind, he wrote. In his Last Will and Testament he wrote: I wish to declare with all earnestness that I do not want any religious ceremonies performed for me after my death. I do not believe in such ceremonies, and to submit to them, even as a matter of form, would be hypocrisy and an attempt to delude ourselves and others.
Personal life
Nehru married Kamala Kaul in 1916. Their only daughter Indira was born a year later in 1917. Kamala gave birth to a boy in November 1924, but he lived only for a week." Nehru was alleged to have had relationships with Padmaja Naidu and Edwina Mountbatten. Edwina's daughter Pamela acknowledged Nehru's platonic affair with Edwina. As India's first Prime minister and external affairs minister, Jawaharlal Nehru played a major role in shaping modern India's government and political culture along with sound foreign policy. He is praised for creating a system providing universal primary education[citation needed], reaching children in the farthest corners of rural India. Nehru's education policy is also credited for the development of worldclass educational institutions such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Indian Institutes of Technology, and the Indian Institutes of Management. "Nehru was a great man... Nehru gave to Indians an image of themselves that I don't think others might have succeeded in doing." Sir Isaiah Berlin In addition, Nehru's stance as an unfailing nationalist led him to also implement policies which stressed commonality among Indians while still appreciating regional diversities. This proved particularly important as post-Independence differences surfaced since British withdrawal from the subcontinent prompted regional leaders to no longer relate to one another as allies against a common adversary. While differences of culture and, especially, language threatened the unity of the new nation, Nehru established programs such as the National Book Trust and the National Literary Academy which promoted the translation of regional literatures between languages and also organised the transfer of materials between regions. In pursuit of a single, unified India, Nehru warned, "Integrate or perish." In his lifetime, Jawaharlal Nehru enjoyed an iconic status in India and was widely admired across the world for his idealism and statesmanship. His birthday, 14 November, is celebrated in India as Baal Divas ("Children's Day") in recognition of his lifelong passion and work for the welfare, education and development of children and young people. Children across India remember him as Chacha Nehru (Uncle Nehru). Nehru remains a popular symbol of the Congress Party which frequently celebrates his memory. Congress leaders and activists often emulate his style of clothing, especially the Gandhi cap and the "Nehru Jacket", and his mannerisms. Nehru's ideals and policies continue to shape the Congress Party's manifesto and core political philosophy. An emotional attachment to his legacy was instrumental in the rise of his daughter Indira to leadership of the Congress Party and the national government. Nehru's personal preference for the sherwani ensured that it continues to be considered formal wear in North India today; aside from lending his name to a kind of cap, the Nehru jacket is named in his honour due to his preference for that style. Numerous public institutions and memorials across India are dedicated to Nehru's memory. The Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi is among the most prestigious universities in India. The Jawaharlal Nehru Port near the city of Mumbai is a modern port and dock designed to handle a huge cargo and traffic load. Nehru's residence in Delhi is preserved as the Teen Murti House now has Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, and one of five Nehru Planetariums that were set in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Allahabad and Pune. The complex also houses the offices of the 'Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund', established in 1964 under the Chairmanship of Dr S. Radhakrishnan, then President of India. The
Legacy
Commemoration

foundation also gives away the prestigious 'Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fellowship', established in 1968. The Nehru family homes at Anand Bhavan and Swaraj Bhavan are also preserved to commemorate Nehru and his family's legacy.
In popular culture
Many documentaries about Nehru's life have been produced. He has also been portrayed in fictionalised films. The canonical performance is probably that of Roshan Seth, who played him three times: in Richard Attenborough's 1982 film Gandhi, Shyam Benegal's 1988 television series Bharat Ek Khoj, based on Nehru's The Discovery of India, and in a 2007 TV film entitled The Last Days of the Raj. In Ketan Mehta's film Sardar, Nehru was portrayed by Benjamin Gilani. Girish Karnad's historical play, Tughlaq (1962) is an allegory about the Nehruvian era. It was staged by Ebrahim Alkazi with National School of Drama Repertory at Purana Qila, Delhi in 1970s and later at the Festival of India, London in 1982.
Writings Awards
Nehru was a prolific writer in English and wrote a number of books, such as The Discovery of India, Glimpses of World History, and his autobiography, Toward Freedom. In 1955 Nehru was awarded Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour. Jayanti Prasad Tiwari (192528 March 1983) was a social activist from Uttar Pradesh. He was born in the village of Bandanpur, to a well-known Tiwari Brahmin family. At a young age, he moved to Ahmedabad in 1932 and worked with Rustomji Cama, a famous name of Ahmedabad. So, according to not being able to study as he desired in his childhood, Jayanti Prasad Tiwari thought to open schools and colleges in his village; he then started collecting money by his hard work and some donations by his supporters and then founded the Jan Sewa Ashram schools in the village Bandanpur of Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh. Now thousands of students are getting benefit of facilities provided by Jan Sewa Ashram. He died in 1983, but in his memory, on 28 March on his death anniversary, people remember him in his schools as a legendary social activist. It was a dream of Jayanti Prasad Tiwari to have a school, as he was not able to study. Jansewa Ashram is one of the disciplined schools in Bandanpur, Faizabad, and children from many communities study by the vision of the Founder of Jan Sewa Ashram, Jayanti Prasad Tiwari. Jayanti Prasad Tiwari was the person to take Mahatma Gandhi's ashes with Rustomji Cama in Ahmedabad.[citation needed] Jnananjan Niyogi was actively associated with the Indian independence movement and was a social reformer.
Jayanti Prasad Tiwari
Jnananjan Niyogi
Early life
The son of Braja Gopal and Sumangala Niyogi, he was born at Gaya on 7 January 1891. His father had converted to the Brahmo Samaj, under the influence of his maternal uncle, Hari Sundar Bose, and had moved from Berabuchina (now in Tangail District, Bangladesh) to settle initially at Gaya. The family later moved to Bankipore, where he had his early education. Braja Gopal Niyogi finally joined Keshub Chunder Sen's New Dispensation as a missionary. He was in the thick of politics and social reform even before he had completed his college education. He was attracted towards the movement against partition of Bengal in 1905. However, he was strongly influenced by Brahmo ideals and tried to implement them in life. He formed a youth organisation named Band of Hope and in 1916, was appointed president of Temperance Federation, a movement against consumption of alcoholic drinks. Affected by the suffering of humanity he was drawn towards social efforts that saw him actively participate in the relief work during the floods of Damodar River in 1914 and Atrai River in 1916. He was actively associated with and was secretary of Bengal Social Service League established by Dr Dwijendranath Maitra. Among others involved was Nishi Kanta Bose, another leading social reformer.

Niyogi helped to form the Pallisree Sangha for the consolidation of village uplift movement. Having come in contact with and influenced by Chittaranjan Das he formed the Deshbandhu Pallisanskar Samiti.
Working Mens Institution
In 1870, Keshub Chunder Sen had established the Working Mans Institution, under the auspices of Indian Reforms Association, thereby putting into practice an idea he had imbibed during his earlier visit to England. It was meant for education of the working class and practical training of the middle class. The institution closed down after sometime. In order to revive the idea, Jnananjan Niyogi got together a group of youngsters to form the Calcutta Working Mens Institution at 1/5 Raja Dinendra Street, Kolkata in 1909. That was an institution with which he was actively associated the rest of his life. Amongst others who were involved in the establishment of the institution were Satyananda Roy, Jitendra Mohan Sen and Benoy Krishna Gupta. The institution had eighteen branches at one point of time. It organised night classes for workingmen. Apart from regular school classes for primary and secondary education, it organised practical training for such crafts as book binding, tailoring, umbrella making, leatherwork and signboard painting. Apart from its educational and training activities, it organised medical assistance and carried out development work for the benefit of the poor residents living in slums.
Magic lantern lectures
He extensively toured the rural areas of Bengal and started using the magic lantern for spreading consciousness amongst the poor and uneducated sections of the population. He was a pioneer in this matter and acquired fame for adopting this method of mass communication in India. It proved to be highly effective and soon attracted the wrath of the administration. The popular Bengali writer Bimal Mitra has given a vivid description of one of his magic lantern lectures in Kolkata, in his Bengali novel Kori Diye Kinlam. Kiran and Dipankar (Dipu) are two characters of the novel, which had the first half of the twentieth century Kolkata as its backdrop. It was initially serialised in the leading literary magazine Desh and then published in book form. It sold like hot cake. The incident involving Jnananjan Niyogi is quoted below. Even on that day, Kiran had gone to school. After the classes were over, Dipankar asked, Wont we go to the sadhu? Kiran replied, We will go to the sadhu only at dusk. Let us go and attend a meeting before that. Where? In Harish Park. There was a big meeting in Harish Park that evening. The place was full of police personnel. Dipankar felt a bit frightened, but many people had collected. Kiran was used to those places as he went to sell sacred thread in such places. He was not afraid and said, Lets go inside. By then, many people were sitting on the floor. It was a Congress meeting. Two small tables were there. There was a carbide gas lamp, waiting to be lit up once it was dark. Two gentlemen were occupying two chairs. Half the park was occupied with people. Two or three chairs were there by the side. Newspaper people, as well as police reporters, were waiting with pencils and paper. Dipankar did not know anybody. He did not know who was Pratap Guha Roy, who was Jnanjan Niyogi or who was Subhas Bose. He did not know any one of them. He asked, Which one is Subhas Bose?

Kiran replied, Subhas Bose hasnt come. Jnananjan Niyogi has come. Just wait and see. He will deliver such a speech that tears will roll down your cheeks. There will be a magic lantern show. It was not just an ordinary lecture; it was a lantern lecture. The pictures started appearing on a white screen. It seemed that movie pictures had come to a stand still. The images were not moving but once the lecture started everything could be understood. How English soldiers came and occupied India, how the Englishmen cut off the fingers of the weavers, the oppression at Char Minor, the barbarous tyranny against the Sikhs at Budge Budge. The pictures were being shown on the screen and Jnananjan Niyogi was delivering the lecture. What a lecture! Everybody was listening in silence. The English occupied India with one tyranny after another, Picture after picture there were displays about how bad the English were, how tyrannous they were, picture after picture it was that. Jnananjan Niyogi said, Are we human beings or animals? Are we trees or stones? What are we? We are neither human beings nor animals. Even if we were animals we would have stood up against them, we would have protested, we would have taken revenge. They have shot us but what have we done? You say what have we done? Somebody said, We have flattered them. Jnananjan Niyogi said, No, we have licked their feet. A man sitting beside said, Correct, correct. Jnananjan Niyogi continued with his speech. It was the month of Aswina. Mr Catel was walking down the road at Madaripur. The Englishman was manager of a jute mill. A college boy was walking alongside; his umbrella spread open over his head. On seeing it, the blue blood started boiling inside the Englishman. What, such impertinence! Black nigger, you have so much of courage? The Englishman said, Close your umbrella. The boy said, Why, why should I close my umbrella? The Englishman said, Its my order. The boy queried, Who are you to order? The Englishman said, You want to see who I am? See He gave the boy a good beating. The boy lay there, half dead. The Englishman went away. The matter went to court. The case was put up. The judge delivered the judgement. The boy was at fault. He had incited the Englishman. Mr Catel was not at fault. Then, Mr Templeton himself came for an investigation. After weighing all the arguments, he passed a judgement that Ananga Mohan Das and his three associates would be caned twenty-five times in front of the magistrate. Friend, if we were human beings, then there would have been cane marks even on my back. We are trees and stones and so we lick the feet of those Englishmen. And these people? These people who are sitting beside me and writing reports for Illisheum Row, what will I say about them. He thumped the ground with his shoes.

Suddenly, where nothing was there, some policemen came running into the meeting from somewhere, waving their sticks. There was chaos all around. People who were listening quietly until then, started running Kiran said, Dipu run, run away quickly Thereafter, where was Kiran, where was Dipu, where was Harish Park An avid reader, some of his books are preserved in the Asiatic Society library, Kolkata. He wrote extensively and published highly provocative booklets inspiring people against British rule. Some of his booklets Desher Dak, Biplabi Bangla, Bharate Tular Chas, Bharate Kaporer Itihas and Bilati Bastra Barjon Koribo Keno - were extremely popular. The government banned some of these and he was often jailed for revolting against the king. In 1931, he was lodged in Buxa fort in North Bengal, which was turned into a prison "for dangerous revolutionaries". While he was a Congressman and was close to Chittaranjan Das, Subhas Chandra Bose and Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy he maintained links with many underground revolutionaries and provided them with support and sustenance.
Jailed for writing
Promotion of Swadeshi goods
He was a leader in the field of promotion of swadeshi goods. In order to promote the use of indigenous materials, he used to organise Swadeshi Mela during the Durga Puja festivities. He set up a permanent exhibition at Barabazar and opened a sales counter named Swadeshi Bhandar at College Street Market. At the request of Subhas Chandra Bose, then Mayor of Kolkata, he set up the Commercial Museum on the first floor of College Street Market and organised a Buy Swadeshi movement. He displayed his organisational capabilities in setting up the Indigenous Manufacturers' Association. He established a Salesman Training Institute for the purpose.
Post independence activities and later life
With the attainment of Indian independence, he was associated with the organisational matters of the Congress Party. When refugees poured in from East Pakistan, he put his heart and soul in rehabilitation work. He organised a mobile exhibition on rails the promotion of indigenously manufactured products and displayed his organisational skills during the first all-India exhibition at Eden Gardens in 1948. During the period, he also established the National Chamber of Commerce and All India Manufacturers Association. He took an active interest in the rehabilitation of those affected by the project work of Damodar Valley Corporation and visited many of the rehabilitation villages for interaction with those affected. He was responsible for the site selection, at the primary stage, and initial development work for the setting up of the industrial township at Durgapur.
Personal life
He was married in 1920 to Asoka, daughter of Damodar Paul. Both his children were brilliant scholars. His daughter, Dr Roma Niyogi, was professor of history at Bethune College, Kolkata. His son, Dr Dipankar Niyogi, was professor of geology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
Death
He died, aged 65, on 13 February 1956 at the Calcutta Working Men's Institution.
References
Sansad Bangali Charitabhidhan (Biographical dictionary) in Bengali edited by Subodh Chandra Sengupta and Anjali Bose Joseph "Kaka" Baptista (17 March 1864 1930) was an Indian politician and activist from Bombay (today known as Mumbai), closely associated with the Lokmanya Tilak and the Home Rule Movement. He was elected as the Mayor of Bombay in 1925. He was given the title Kaka that means "uncle".
Joseph Baptista

Early life
Joseph Baptista was born on 17 March 1864 in Matharpacady in Mazagaon, Bombay. His father, John Baptista hailed from Uttan, near Bassein (now Vasai). The Baptistas belonged to the East Indian ethnic community, who were converted to Roman Catholicism during Portuguese rule between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. After completion of his schooling from St. Mary's High School at Mazagaon, he joined the College of Engineering in Pune, graduating in civil engineering. In 1896, he acquired the Licentiate in Civil Engineering from the University of Bombay. Baptista then joined the Bombay Provincial Government as an engineer in the Forest Department. He was initially posted at Thane, and then in Sindh (now in Pakistan). Dissatisfied with corruption in the government, mostly by the British, he quit his post in 1898. He then sailed to England to pursue a BA degree in Political Science from the Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. During this period, he first met Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
Political activism
In 1901, Baptista joined the Bombay Municipal Corporation, and would be a part of the BMC for the next 17 years. Influenced by the Irish Home Rule movement, Baptista's ideas on an Indian version took root. His ideas deeply influenced Tilak and the two became close associates. He assisted Tilak by launching the Sarvajanik Ganpati (public Ganpati celebrations) to raise nationalistic feelings. In addition, Baptista coined the phrase "Swaraj is my Birthright", that was later made popular by Tilak. In 1916, along with Tilak, Annie Besant founded the Home Rule Movement, with Baptista opening the Belgaum unit. He was also the legal advisor to Lokmanya Tilak. Later he interviewed British Prime Minister David Lloyd George for the British government's views on the Home Rule. In the interview, Baptista gained the impression "that the Cabinet had decided to give India the fullest possible measure of Home Rule without delay." Baptista was also a practising barrister at the Bombay High Court. One of his most high profile clients was Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, where he demanded an open trial to assure the dignity of fundamental rights. In 1920, founded the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC). As a labour leader he took up the cause of mill workers and postmen and other blue collar workers. Although religious, he refused to mix politics and religion refusing to have separate religion-based electorates. I thoroughly disapprove of separate electorate for Indian Christians in water-tight compartments In 1925, Baptista was elected as the Mayor of the Bombay Municipal Corporation, a post that he occupied for a year. Baptista died in 1930 and is buried in the Sewri cemetery. The Mazagon Gardens, site of the demolished Mazagaon Fort, near Dockyard Road station is named after him. On 12 October 2008, his tomb at Sewri cemetery was restored with the funds of local MLC Kapil Patil. The ceremony was attended by members of the Bombay Catholic Sabha and Shikshak Bharati, a teacher's organisation. In 1999, a book on Baptista titled Joseph Baptista: The father of Home Rule in India was released by K R Shirsat at Lalbaug in Mumbai. Through the book, the author hoped that Baptista would be a role model for modern-day youths. Kailashpati Mishra (5 October 1923 3 November 2012) was an Indian politician. He was leader of the Bharatiya Janta Party and a former Governor of Gujarat and for a short duration Governor of Rajasthan following the death of the incumbent Governor Nirmal Chandra Jain.
Death
Kailashpati Mishra
Early life
Kailashpati Mishra was born in Dudharchak, Buxar, Bihar, into a Bhumihar Brahmin family. He was a bachelor and popularly called the "Bhishmapitamah" of Bihar. He was affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh from 1944 onwards, and was even jailed after the assassination of Mahatma

Gandhi. He took part in the Quit India Movement in 1942 and was arrested for the same and was a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh from 1943. He won the Assembly election for Bikram Patna, and was Finance Minister in Bihar Government. Mishra was also appointed Bihar's finance minister in 1977-78 when the Janata Party government was in power. Known as the Bhishma Pitamaha of the ruling BJP in Bihar, Mishra was away from direct political activities for over two years but remained a source of inspiration for the party. The freedom fighter and former finance minister in Bihar, who also served as the governor of Rajasthan for about four months, was also liked by the socialists due to his participation in JPs 1974 anti-Congress agitations. Born in 1923 in Bihars Buxar, Mishra was a lifelong bachelor. Mishra died, aged 89, in Patna, Bihar.
Political career
Mr. Mishra had served as finance minister in the government of Karpoori Thakur in Bihar in 1977. In 1980, he became the first BJP Bihar president. He also served as BJP national Vice President from 1995 to 2003. While studying in class X, Mr. Mishra was arrested for picketing at the main gate of his school at Buxar in support of 1942 Quit India Movement. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his deputy and senior Bihar BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi visited his residence to pay condolence. Mr. Kumar said Mr. Mishra would be cremated with state honour. State BJP President Dr. C.P.Thakur said the body of Mr. Mishra, who had his roots in the Jan Sangh, would be taken to assembly first. Thereafter his body would be kept at the state party headquarters before cremation tomorrow. Leader of Opposition in state Assembly Abdul Bari Siddiqui, Bihar Congress chief Chaudhary Mehboob Ali Kaiser and R.J.D. President Ramchandra Purve among others also condoled the death. Veteran BJP leader, former governor of Gujarat and Rajasthan and former finance minister of Bihar, Kailashpati Mishra, passed away on Saturday. He was 90 and was not keeping good health for some time. A number of politicians belonging to different parties condoled his death. His funeral will take place with state honour at Bans Ghat on Sunday evening (4 November 2012). Expressing his grief, CM Nitish Kumar rushed to Kailash Kunj in Kautilya Nagar in the state capital to pay his last respect to the departed leader. He said with Mishra's death, a chapter of the Indian politics closed. He said Mishra nurtured political workers and he would be remembered for his services to the society for about seven decades. He always held high positions in the Jansangh and the BJP. Despite his poor health, he would take keen interest in the ongoing developments in body politics. The CM said he was introduced to Mishra's name when he was a student. "We should take inspiration from his life and works," said Nitish Kumar who spent an hour consoling the bereaved family and ordered the DM for arranging state funeral for the departed leader. Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi said Mishra was Ajatshatru of politics and the father figure in BJP. He nurtured the small BJP plant into a big tree and became its most popular leader. Chairman, Bihar legislative council Awadhesh Narayan Singh, leader of opposition Abdul Bari Siddiqui, road construction minister Nand Kishore Yadav, art and culture minister Sukhda Pandey, cooperative minister Ramadhar Singh, BJP's deputy leader in Rajya Sabha Ravi Shankar Prasad, Radha Mohan Singh, Ram Kripal Yadav, Jagdish Sharma, state BJP chief Dr. C.P. Thakur, state RJD president Ramchandra Purbe, former minister Ramashray Prasad Singh and a number of legislators and other leaders paid their respect to Mishra. BPCC chief Mehboob Ali Kaiser, CLP leader Sadanand Singh and vice-president of Citizens' Council Bhola Prasad Singh also mourned Mishra.
Legacy
Homage
The Bihar government declared a one-day state mourning on Sunday, 4 November 2012, in honour of senior BJP leader Kailashpati Mishra for his contribution to the state in the last seven decades of his active life. According to an official statement the national flag was flown at half mast as a mark of

respect to the departed leader in all government offices. The statement said Considering the spectacular contribution of Kailashpati Mishra in our social life, the Bihar government has declared one day state mourning today. Mortal remains of veteran BJP leader and former governor Kailashpati Mishra was consigned to flames on the bank of Ganga in the presence of scores of leaders hailing from all parties, including Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, LJP national president Ram Vilas Paswan and state BJP president Dr. C.P.Thakur. Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, several MPs and legislators of the BJP and the JD-U were also present. Several top leaders of BJP including former deputy prime minister L.K.Advani, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, Jharkhand chief minister Arjun Munda, party's leader in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, its national general secretary Ananth Kumar and chief national spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad flew in the state capital especially to pay floral tributes to the departed leaders who played a leading role in the expansion of Jan Sangh and B.J.P. in several states, including Bihar and Jharkhand.
Condolence
Top BJP leaders paid rich tributes to former Gujarat & Rajasthan governor Kailashpati Mishra at a condolence meeting held at Rabindra Bhavan, Patna on Friday (9 November 2012). BJP president Nitin Gadkari recalled Mishra's contribution in strengthening the party's base since his joining the Jan Sangh in 1959. "BJP is in government in eight states and has hundreds of MLAs mainly because of the sacrifices made by leaders like Kailashji," said Gadkari. Describing Mishra as 'Rajniti ke Ajatshatru,' leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, said Kailashji always maintained a cordial relation even with the leaders of other parties. The second in command of the RSS, Suresh Soni, BJP MP and film actor Shatrughan Sinha, party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad, deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, state BJP president Dr. C.P.Thakur, state Janata Dal (United) president Vashistha Narayan Singh, Bihar Assembly speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary, RJD leader Shakuni Chaudhary, former Bihar legislative council chairperson Tarakant Jha, Congress leader Vinod Sharma, Communist Party of India leaders Badri Narayan Lal and Kedar Pandey and several state level BJP leaders also recalled Mishra's contribution to the state politics. Former civil aviation minister Syed Shahnawaz Hussain recalled the rechristening of the Port Blair Airport as Veer Sawarkar International Airport in 2002. Hussain said it was only after the suggestion of Kailashji that the airport was renamed when he had taken charge as the civil aviation minister.). "When I conveyed Kailashji's message to the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the latter happily agreed to rename the airport," Hussain said. BJP's ex-president Rajnath Singh also recalled how Kailashji had refused nomination to the Rajya Sabha for a second term and opted to work for the organization at a time when party leaders were virtually gatecrashing for a ticket to the Upper House.
Book Written & Published

Chetana Ke Swar - Collection of Poems Path Ke Sansmaran - Autobiography
Shaheed Chaudhary Kaliram Dahiya (died 1944) fought against the British rule of India, in the Indian independence movement. He was injured at Pune harbour and died of his injuries. Dahiya was born in a Jat family of village Nahara, Sonepat District, Haryana. His father Chaudhary Deepender Dahiya was the head of 24 villages of Dahiya community popularly known as 'Dahiya Chaubisa Villages'. And his mother Smt. Sama Kaur Dahiya was from the royal family of Maharaja Surajmal of Bharatpur. He had two elder brothers Chaudhary Shishram Dahiya and Chaudhary Ratan Singh Dahiya. Kamala Das Gupta (born 11 March 1907) was an Indian freedom fighter. She was born in 1907, to a bhadralok Vaidya family of Bikrampur in Dhaka, now in Bangladesh; the family later moved to Calcutta, where she got a Master of Arts degree in history from Bethune College, Calcutta University. Nationalist
Kaliram Dahiya
Kamala Das Gupta

ideas were current among the young people in Calcutta she met at university, and she was filling with a strong desire to take part in the freedom struggle. She tried to quit her studies and enter Mohandas Karamchand Gandhis Sabarmati Ashram, but her parents disapproved. Finishing her education, she became friends with some members of the extremist Jugantar Party, and was quickly converted from her original Gandhism to the cult of armed resistance. In 1930 she left home and took a job as manager of a hostel for poor women. There she stored and couriered, bombs and bomb-making materials for the revolutionaries. She was arrested several times in connection with bombings but was released every time for want of evidence. She supplied Bina Das with the revolver that she used to try to shoot Governor Stanley Jackson in February 1922, and was arrested also on that occasion, but released. In 1933 the British finally succeeded in putting her behind bars. In 1936 she was released and placed under house arrest. In 1938 the Jugantar Party aligned itself with the Indian National Congress, and Kamala also transferred her allegiance to the larger party. Thenceforth she became involved in relief work, especially with the Burmese refugees of 1942 and 1943 and in 194647 with the victims of communal rioting. She was in charge of the relief camp at Noakhali that Gandhi visited in 1946. She worked for womens vocational training at the Congress Mahila Shilpa Kendra and the Dakshineshwar Nari Swabalambi Sadan. She edited the groundbreaking womens journal Mandira for many years. She authored two memoirs in Bengali, Rakter Akshare (In Letters of Blood, 1954) and Swadhinata Sangrame Nari (Women in the Freedom Struggle, 1963). Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (3 April 1903 29 October 1988) was an Indian social reformer and freedom fighter. She is most remembered for her contribution to the Indian independence movement; for being the driving force behind the renaissance of Indian handicrafts, handlooms, and theatre in independent India; and for upliftment of the socio-economic standard of Indian women by pioneering the co-operative movement. Several cultural institutions in India today are a gift of her vision, including the National School of Drama, Sangeet Natak Akademi, Central Cottage Industries Emporium, and the Crafts Council of India. The doyen of Indian arts and crafts, a person single-handedly responsible for reviving Indian crafts back from oblivion of 200 years of foreign rule where they went without any patronage, be it government or public, due lack of awareness of its richness as well as its accessibility to the common man. She stressed the significance which handicrafts and cooperative grassroot movements, play in the social and economic upliftement of the Indian people. To this end she withstood great opposition both before and after independence from the power centres, but managed to leave behind a rich and formidable legacy of thriving Indian handicrafts, theatre forms and arts that have now become an integral of our rural economy, across the nation.
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay
Biography Early life
Born on 3 April 1903, Kamaladevi was the fourth and youngest daughter of a Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin couple in Mangalore. Her father, Ananthaya Dhareshwar was the District Collector of Mangalore, and her mother Girijabai, from whom she inherited an independent streak, belonged to an aristocratic family from Karnataka. Kamaladevi's grandmother was herself, a scholar of ancient Indian texts, and her a mother was also well-educated though mostly home-educated. Together their presence in the household, gave Kamaladevi a firm grounding and provided benchmarks to respect for her intellect as well as her voice, something that she came to known for in the coming years, when she stood as the voice of the downtrodden as well as the unheard. Kamaladevi was an exceptional student and also exhibited qualities of determination and courage from an early age. Her parents befriended many prominent freedom fighters and intellectuals such as Mahadev Govind Ranade, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and women leaders like Ramabai Ranade, and Annie Besant, this made young Kamaladevi an early enthusiast of the swadeshi nationalist movement. She studied about ancient Sanskrit drama tradition of Kerala- Kutiyattam, from its greatest Guru and

authority of Abhinaya, Ntychrya Padma Shri Mni Mdhava Chkyr by staying at Guru's home at Killikkurussimangalam. Tragedy struck early in life, when her elder sister, Saguna, whom she considered a role model, died in her teens, soon after her early marriage, and when she was just seven years old her father died as well. To add to her mother, Girijabai's trouble, he died without leaving a will for his vast property, so according to property laws of the times, the entire property went to her stepson, and they only got a monthly allowance. Girijabai defiantly refused the allowance and decided to raise her daughters on her dowry property. Her rebellious streak was visible even as a child, when young Kamaladevi questioned the aristocratic division of her mothers household, and preferred to mingle with her servants and their children wanting to understand their life as well.
First Marriage and widowhood
In 1917, when was only fourteen years of age, she was married to Krishna Rao[23], and within two years she was widowed, while she was still at school. According to orthodox Hindu rules of the times, being a widow she was not allowed to continue her education, yet she defiantly moved to Chennai, and continued her education from St. Mary's School, Chennai and finally completed her high school in 1918. Marriage to Harin Meanwhile studying at Queen Marys College in Chennai, she came to know with Suhasini Chattopadhyay, a fellow student and the younger sister of Sarojini Naidu, who later introduced Kamaladevi to their talented brother, Harin, by then a well-known poet-playwright-actor. It was their mutual interest in the arts, which brought them together. Finally when she was twenty years old, Kamaladevi married Harindranath Chattopadhyay, much to the opposition of the orthodox society of the times, which was still heavily against widow marriage. Their only son Ramu was born in the following year. Harin and Kamaladevi stayed together to pursue common dreams, which wouldnt have been possible otherwise, and in spite of many difficulties, they were able to work together, to produce plays and skits. Later she also acted in a few films, in an era when acting was considered unsuitable for women from respectable families. In her first stint, she acted in two silent films, including the first silent film of Kannada film industry, 'Mricchakatika'(Vasantsena) (1931), based on the famous play by Sudraka, also starring Yenakshi Rama Rao, and directed by pioneering Kannada director, Mohan Dayaram Bhavnani. In her second stint in films she acted in a 1943 Hindi film, Tansen, also starring K. L. Saigal and Khursheed, followed by Shankar Parvati (1943), and Dhanna Bhagat (1945). Eventually after many years of marriage, they parted ways amicably. Here again, Kamaladevi broke a tradition by filing for divorce much to the chagrin of the society, rather than stay in a non-functional marriage. Move to London Shortly after their marriage, Harin left for London, on his first trip abroad, and a few months later Kamaladevi joined him, where she joined Bedford College, University of London, and later she received a diploma in Sociology. Call of the Freedom Movement While still in London, Kamaladevi came to know of Mahatma Gandhis Non-Cooperation Movement in 1923, and she promptly returned to India, to join the Seva Dal, a Gandhian organisation set up to promote social upliftment. Soon she was placed in charge of the women's section of the Dal, where she got involved in recruiting, training and organizing girls and women of all ages women across India, to become voluntary workers, 'sevikas'. In 1926, she met the suffragette Margaret E. Cousins, the founder of All India Women's Conference (AIWC), and was inspired her to run for the Madras Provincial Legislative Assembly. Thus she became the first woman to run for a Legislative seat in India. Though she could campaign for only a few days, she lost only by 200 votes.
1920s

The All-India Women's Conference In the following year, she founded the All-India Women's Conference (AIWC) and became its first Organizing Secretary. In the following years, AIWC, grew up to become a national organization of repute, with branches and voluntary programs run throughout the nation, and work steadfastly for legislative reforms. During her tenure, she travelled extensively to many European nations and was inspired to initiate several social reform and community welfare programs, and set up educational institutions, run for the woman, and by women. Another shining example in this series was the formation of Lady Irwin College for Home Sciences, a one of its kind college for women of its times, in New Delhi. Later she was a part of the seven member lead team, announced by Mahatma Gandhi, in the famous Salt Satyagraha (1930), to prepare Salt at the Bombay beachfront, the only other woman volunteer of the team was Avantikabai Gokhale. Later in a startling move, Kamaladevi went up to a nearby High Court, and asked a magistrate present there whether he would be interested in buying the 'Freedom Salt' she had just prepared. On 26 January 1930 she captured the imagination of the entire nation when in a scuffle, she clung to the Indian tricolour to protect it. First Indian woman to be arrested In the 1930s, she was arrested for entering the Bombay Stock Exchange to sell packets of contraband salt, and spent almost a year in prison. In 1936, she became president of the Congress Socialist Party, working alongside Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia and Minoo Masani. For her, feminism was inseparable from socialism, and where necessary she opposed her own colleagues when they ignored or infringed womens rights. For instance, when Mahatma Gandhi opposed the inclusion of women in the Dandi March (claiming that Englishmen would not hurt women, just as Hindus would not harm cows), Kamaladevi spoke out against this stand. Some time in the 1920s she and Harindranath separated and divorced by mutual consent; their marriage had largely been one of convenience and they had followed different paths.
1930s
1940s
When World War II broke out Kamaladevi was in England, and she immediately began a world tour to represent Indias situation to other countries and drum up support for Independence after the war. Post-Independence work Independence of India, brought Partition in its wake, and she plunged into rehabilitation of the refugees. Her first task was to set up the Indian Cooperative Union to help with rehabilitation, and through the Union she made plans for a township on cooperative lines. At length Mahatma Gandhi reluctantly gave her permission on the condition that she did not ask for state assistance, and so after much struggle, the township of Faridabad was set up, on the outskirts of Delhi, rehabilitating over 50,000 refugees from the Northwest Frontier. She worked tirelessly helped the refugees to establish new homes, and new professions, for this they were trained in new skills, she also helped setting up health facilities in the new town. Thus began the second phase of life's work in rehabilitation of people as well their lost crafts, she is considered single handedly responsible for the great revival of Indian handicrafts and handloom, in the post-independence era, and is considered her greatest legacy to modern India.
1950s and beyond
Around this time she became concerned at the possibility that the introduction of Western methods of factory-based mass production in India as part of Nehru's vision for Indian's development would affect traditional artisans, especially women in the unorganised sectors. She set up a series of crafts museums to hold and archive India's indigenous arts and crafts that served as a storehouse for indigenous known how. This included the Theatre Crafts Museum in Delhi. She equally promoted arts and crafts, and instituted the National Awards for Master Craftsmen, and a culmination of her enterprising spirit lead to the setting up Central Cottage Industries Emporia, throughout the nation to cater to the tastes of a nation, rising to its ancient glory. In 1964 she started the Natya Institute of Kathak and Choreography (NIKC), Bangalore, under the aegis of

Bharatiya Natya Sangh, affiliated to the UNESCO. Its present director is famous danseuse Smt. Maya Rao. Kamaladevi was a woman ahead of her times, she was instrumental in setting up the All India Handicrafts Board, she was also it's the first chairperson, The Crafts Council of India was also the first president of the World Crafts Council, Asia Pacific Region. She also set up the National School of Drama and later headed the Sangeet Natak Akademi, and also a member of UNESCO. Her acclaimed autobiography, Inner Recesses and Outer Spaces: Memoir was published in 1986.
Awards and recognition
The Government of India conferred on her the Padma Bhushan (1955) and later the second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan in 1987, which are among the highest civilian awards of the Republic of India. She also received the Ramon Magsaysay Award (1966) for Community Leadership. She was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship, Ratna Sadsya, the highest award of Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama, given for lifetime achievement in 1974,. UNESCO honoured her with an award in 1977 for her contribution towards the promotion of handicrafts. Shantiniketan honoured her with the Desikottama, its highest award. UNIMA (Union Internationals de la Marlonette), International Puppetry organization, also made her their Member of Honour.
Legacy
In 2007, the Outlook Magazine chose Kamaladevi amongst its list of 60 Great Indians. and she was India Today's, 100 Millennium People. Today, the World Crafts Council gives two awards in her memory, the Kamaladevi Awards and the Kamala Sammaan, for exceptional craft persons or to individual for their outstanding contribution to the field of Crafts. Apart from that the Crafts Council of Karnataka, also gives the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Vishwakarma Awards, each year to noteworthy crafts persons. For over three decades now, Bhartiya Natya Sangha has been awarding the 'Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya Award' for the best play of the year. Pandit Karyanand Sharma (19011965) was an eminent nationalist and peasant leader who led movements against zamindars and British.
Karyanand Sharma
Biography
Pandit Karyanand Sharma was born in Sahoor village in Monghyr district into a poor tenant Bhumihar Brahmin family. Although he started studying in 1906, he had soon to leave school and help the family in cultivation. However, between 1914 and 1920, he educated himself and matriculated in 1920 just in time to join the non-cooperation movement.
Contribution to freedom movement and peasant movement
He was arrested and sentenced to one year. After release from jail, he became more and more involved in peasant issues and in 1927 organized a struggle of the tenants at Chanan against arbitrary extortions by the zamindars. This was particularly directed against the Giddhaur Raj and Kaira estate. Since these zamindars and their minions were particularly oppressive, the local Indian National Congress leaders permitted Karyanand to carry on the struggle though they themselves did not extend much help. Nevertheless, because of the unity among the tenants, the zamindars had to bow down and this victory became a great morale-booster for the peasants in Monghyr. After the famous Barahiya Bakasht Andolan in 1937-39, strictures were passed against him and in 1938 he was arrested by the then Congress government. After his release from prison when he joined the Kisan Movement he was jailed again and again. During these long sojourns he got a chance to read Marxist literature and joined the Communist Party of India although, until 1943 he remained a member of the All India Congress Committee. After independence, he became one of the top leaders of the Communist Party of India and leader of its legislature party until his death. It was under the able leadership of Karyanand Sharma that the Communist Party of India waged some important agrarian struggles in the 1950s, the most notable among them being Sathi farm struggles in Champaran.

References
Also refer :people.indiatimes.com/articleshow/813210.cms Swami and Friends- By Arvind N Das http://www.virginia.edu/soasia/symsem/kisan/papers/swami.html Kasturba Mohandas Gandhi listen Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Kasturba Gandhi.ogg (born Kastur Kapadia; 11 April 1869 22 February 1944) was the wife of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, marrying him in an arranged marriage.
Kasturba Gandhi
Born to Gokuladas and Vrajkunwerba Kapadia of Porbandar, little is known of her early life. Kasturba was married to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in an arranged marriage in 1882. When Gandhi left to study in London in 1888, she remained in India to raise their newborn son Harilal Gandhi. She had three more sons: Manilal Gandhi, Ramdas Gandhi, and Devdas Gandhi.
Political career
Working closely with her husband, Kasturba Gandhi became a political activist fighting for civil rights and Indian independence from the British. After Gandhi moved to South Africa to practice law, she travelled to South Africa in 1897 to be with her husband. From 1904 to 1914, she was active in the Phoenix Settlement near Durban. During the 1913 protest against working conditions for Indians in South Africa, Kasturba was arrested and sentenced to three months in a hard labour prison. Later, in India, she sometimes took her husband's place when he was under arrest. In 1915, when Gandhi returned to India to support indigo planters, Kasturba accompanied him. She taught hygiene, discipline, health, reading, and writing.
Health and death
Kasturba suffered from chronic bronchitis due to complications at birth. While her husband could move his mind from one thing to another, she would sometimes brood over troubles. Stress from the Quit India Movement's arrests and hard life at Sabarmati Ashram caused her to fall ill. Kasturbai fell ill with bronchitis which was subsequently complicated by pneumonia. In January 1944, Kasturba suffered two heart attacks. She was confined to her bed much of the time. Even there she found no respite from pain. Spells of breathlessness interfered with her sleep at night. Yearning for familiar ministrations, Kasturba asked to see an Ayurvedic doctor. After several delays(which Gandhi felt were unconscionable), the government allowed a specialist in traditional Indian medicine to treat her and prescribe treatments. At first she respondedrecovering enough by the second week in February to sit on the verandah in a wheel chair for a short periods, and chat then came a relapse. The doctor said Ayurvedic medicine could do no more for her. To those who tried to bolster her sagging morale saying "You will get better soon," Kasturba would respond, "No, my time is up." Even though she had a simple illness. Shortly after seven that evening, Devdas took Gandhi and the doctors aside. The doctors pleaded fiercely that Ba be given the life saving medicine, though Gandhi refused. It was Gandhi, after learning that the penicillin had to be administered by injection every four to six hours, who finally persuaded his youngest son to give up the idea. Gandhi didn't believe in modern medicine. After a short while, Kasturba stopped breathing. She died in Gandhi's arms while both were still in prison, in Poona (now Pune).
Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan (Urdu: ( ) born 1882 May 9, 1958), popularly known as Dr. Khan Sahib, was a pioneer in the Indian Independence Movement and a Pakistan politician.
Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan
Early life
He was born in the village of Utmanzai, near Charsadda in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. His father, Bahram Khan was a local landlord.

Khan Sahib was eight years older than his brother, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Badshah Khan). After matriculating from the Edwardes Mission High School in Peshawar, Khan Sahib studied at Grant Medical College, Bombay (present day Mumbai). He subsequently completed his training from St Thomas' Hospital in London. During the first World War he served in France and after the war, he joined the Indian Medical Service and was posted in Mardan with the Guides regiment. He resigned his commission in 1921, after refusing to be posted in Waziristan, where the British Indian Army was launching operations against fellow Pakhtuns.
Contribution to the Indian independence movement
In 1935, Khan Sahib was elected alongside Peer Shahenshah of Jungle Khel Kohat as representatives of the North-West Frontier Province to the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi. With the grant of limited self-government and announcement of provincial elections in 1937, Dr. Khan Sahib led his party to a comprehensive victory. The Frontier National Congress, an affiliate of the Indian National Congress emerged as the single largest party in the Provincial Assembly.
Politics in Pakistan 1947 1954
At the time of independence, he was the chief minister. Later he was jailed by Abdul Qayyum Khan's government. After Qayyum Khan's appointment to the Central government and the personal efforts of the Chief Minister of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa at the time, Sardar Bahadur Khan, he along with his brother and many other activists were released.
Back in government
He joined the Central Cabinet of Muhammad Ali Bogra as Minister for Communications in 1954. This decision to join the government led to his split with his brother. In October 1955, he became the first Chief Minister of West Pakistan following the amalgamation of the provinces and princely states under the One Unit scheme. After differences with the ruling Muslim League over the issue of Joint versus Separate Electorates, he created the Republican Party. He resigned in March 1957 after the provincial budget was rejected by the assembly. In June, he was elected to the National Assembly representing the constituency of Quetta, the former capital of Balochistan.
Assassination
He was assassinated by Atta Mohammad at approximately 8:30 am on May 9, 1958. "Allama Mashriqi Maliciously Implicated in Murder Case" This tragic incident occurred while Dr. Khan Sahib was sitting in the garden of his son Sadullah Khan's house at 16 Aikman Road, GOR, Lahore. He was waiting for Colonel Syed Abid Hussein of Jhang to accompany him to a meeting organized in connection with the scheduled February 1959 General Elections. The assailant, 30-year-old Atta Mohammad was a Patwari (Land Revenue Clerk) from Mianwali who had been dismissed from service two years previously. He reportedly ran after his assailant during the ensuing mellee but fell down. Subsequently Dr. Khan Sahib was rushed to the Mayo Hospital. However the severe bleeding and grievous injuries caused by the multiple stab wounds meant that the doctors were unable to save his life. The body of Dr. Khan Sahib was taken to his village Utmanzai in Charsadda about 30 miles from Peshawar, where he was laid to rest by side of his English wife Mary Khan. All West Pakistan Government offices remained closed on May 9 and flags flew at half-mast in memory of Dr. Khan Sahib. Speaking of his passing, Pakistani President Iskander Mirza said, about him that he was "the greatest Pathan of his times, a great leader and a gallant gentleman whose life-long fight in the cause of freedom, his sufferings and sacrifices for the sake of his convictions and his passion to do good to the common man were the attributes of a really great man." Dr. Khan Sahib was survived by three sons; Sadullah Khan (a civil engineer from Loughborough University), Obaidullah Khan (a politician) and the youngest, Dr. Hidayatullah Khan. After his death, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was elected to fill the vacancy arising in the National Assembly. It is important to note that Dr.Khan Sahib's brother, Ghaffar Khan and his Red Shirt movement stayed

away from the electoral politics. Ghaffar Khan actively opposed the One Unit and Dr. Khan Sahib's government. No major Red Shirt leader or worker ever joined the Republican Party, founded by Dr. Khan Sahib. The Red Shirts or Khudai Khidmatgar (servants of God) joined hands with nationalist and progressive workers and leaders from both the then East Pakistan and West Pakistan to form the National Awami Party (National Peoples Party) in 1957. Krishna Kumar Sharma "Betaab" (1924 Muzaffarnagar 2001 New Delhi) was a prominent activist in the Indian Independence Movement. He was the President of the Allahabad University Student Association in 1942 when Mahatma Gandhi called for the Quit India Movement. He led the movemet at Allahabad University and at Allahabad. He received injuries to his right eye during a scuffle with the British Police and had permanent loss of vision. He eventually graduated with a Masters in Law from Allahabad University, receiving a Gold Medal for academic excellence, and became a prominent poet and literary figure under the nom de plume "Betaab". He had command over Persian, Urdu, English, Arabic, Hindi and Sanskrit; most of his literary work was in the form of Urdu Shers. He is widely renowned for his translation of the Hindu holy scripture, Bhagvad Geeta, from Sanskrit to Arabic, English and Persian. He wrote the lyrics for a few Bollywood movie songs in the 1950s. He was a close friend of Harivanshrai Bachchan, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Feroze Gandhi. He was Honored as Proud Past Alumni" in the list of 42 members, from "Allahabad University Alumni Association", Ghaziabad. along with the likes of Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma, Shri Vishwanath Pratap Singh, Shri Harivansh Rai Bachchan and Acharya Narendra Dev. Krishnammal Jagannathan (Tamil: : born 1926) is a social service activist from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. She and her husband, Sankaralingam Jagannathan (1912 12 February 2013), have protested against social injustice and they are well known as Gandhian activists. Her work includes upliftment of Dalits, the landless, and the poor; she has sometimes fought against governments as well as big industries. She was earlier involved in the Indian independence movement, along with her husband, and was also a close associate of Vinoba Bhave. She has received several awards and recently has been listed for Right Livelihood Award for 2008, which she would share with four others, including her husband.
Krishna Kumar Sharma
Krishnammal Jagannathan
Early life
Krishnammal Jagannathan was born to a landless Dalit family in 1926. Her first encounter with social injustice and poverty was by looking at her mother Nagammal who had to toil very hard and had to work even when she was in advanced stage of pregnancy. Despite being from a poor family she managed university education and was soon involved with the Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement. It was through Sarvodaya did she meet Sankaralingam Jagannathan, who was much later to be her husband. Sankaralingam Jagannathan hailed from a wealthy family, yet gave up his college studies in 1930 in response to Gandhi's call for non-cooperation movement and civil disobedience. At one stage Krishnammal even shared a stage with Gandhi and also met Martin Luther King. Sankaralinga later joined the Quit India Movement in 1942 and spent years in jail before India gained its independence in 1947. Having decided only to marry in independent India Sankaralingam and Krishnammal married in 1950. She would later head the Salt Satyagraha march in Vedaranyam, this time not in protest, but to commemorate the platinum jublee of the event in 2006.
Land to the landless
Sankaralingam Jagannathan and Krishnammal Jagannathan believed that one of the key requirements for achieving a Gandhian society is by empowering the rural poor through redistribution of land to the landless. For two years between 1950 and 1952 Sankaralingam Jagannathan was with Vinoba Bhave in Northern India on his Bhoodan (land-gift) Padayatra (pilgrimage on foot), the march appealing to

landlords to give one sixth of their land to the landless. Meanwhile Krishnammal completed her teachertraining course in Madras (now renamed Chennai). When Sankaralingam returned to Tamil Nadu to start the Bhoodhan movement the couple, until 1968, worked for land redistribution through Vinoba Bhave's Gramdan movement (Village Gift, the next phase of the land-gift movement), and through Satyagraha (non-violent resistance). Sankaralingam Jagannathan was imprisoned many times for this work. Between 1953 and 1967, the couple played an active role in the Bhoodhan movement spearheaded by Vinoba Bhave, through which about 4 million acres (16,000 km2) of land were distributed to thousands of landless poor across several Indian states. After the burning of 42 Dalit Christians including women and children in Kilavenmani in Nagapattinam district following a wage-dispute with the landlord in 1968, the couple started to work in Thanjavur District in Tamil Nadu to concentrate on land reform issues. It was this incident that would inspire the couple, Krishnammal and Sankaralaingam to start the organisation LAFTI.
Land for the Tillers' Freedom (LAFTI)
Krishnammal along with her husband found Land for the Tiller' Freedom in 1981. The purpose of the organisation was to bring "the landlords and landless poor to the negotiating table, obtain loans to enable the landless to buy land at reasonable price and then to help them work it cooperatively, so that the loans could be repaid". Although the initial response was lukewarm with banks unwilling to lend and the high rates of stamp duty, Krishnammal managed to go on and with the cause and by 2007, through LAFTI she had transferred 13,000 acres (53 km2) to about 13,000 families. Through LAFTI, she also conducts workshops to allow people, during the nonagricultural season, to support themselves through entrepreneurial efforts like mat weaving, tailoring, plumbing, carpentry, masonry, computer education and electronics. LAFTI would gain such popularity that later even the Government of India would implement LAFTI's approach to increase the peaceful transfer of land.
Protecting the coastal ecosystem The issue
From 1992 Krishnammal started working issues concerned with prawn farms along the coast of Tamil Nadu. This time the problems were not from the local landlords, but from large industries from cities such as Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkatta, Delhi and Hyderabad which occupied large areas of land for aquaculture along the coast, which not only threw the landless laborers out of employment but also converted fertile and cultivable land into salty deserts after a few years when the prawn companies moved on. The prawn farms also caused heavy seepage of seawater into the groundwater in the neighborhood, thus the local people were deprived of clean drinking water resources. The result is that even more small farmers sell their meager land-holdings to multinational prawn companies and move to the cities, filling urban slums.
LAFTI and prawn industry
To address prawn farm issue the Jagannathans organised the whole of LAFTI's village movement to raise awareness among the people to oppose the prawn farms. Since 1993, the villagers have offered Satygraha (non-violent resistance), through rallies, fasts, and demonstrations in protest of establishing the prawn farms. They have been beaten up by hired goons, their houses have been burnt, and LAFTI workers have been imprisoned, because of false accusations of looting and arson.
Final victory
Undeterred by this, Sankaralingam Jagannathan filed a 'public interest petition' in the Indian Supreme Court, which in turn asked NEERI (National Environmental Engineering Institute of India) to investigate the matter. NEERI's investigation report highlighted the environmental cost of the prawn farms to the nation and recommended all prawn farms within 500 meters of the coast to be banned. In December 1996, the Supreme Court issued a ruling against intensive shrimp farming in cultivable lands within 500 meters of the coastal area. It is said that because of the prawn farmers' local political influence, the Supreme Court judgement was not implemented on the ground. The legal battle around the prawn farms is still not resolved and the Jagannathans continue their struggle to establish non-exploitative, ecofriendly communities in the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu.

Upliftment of women
Krishnammal is also in working towards upliftment of women in Dalits and poor. She believes in mobilising women's cause by peaceful means. Krishnammal Jagannathan, either independently or together with her husband, has established a total of seven non-governmental institutions for the poor. Besides this, Krishnammal Jagannathan has also played an active role in wider public life. She has been a Senate member of the Gandhigram Trust and University and of Madurai University. She was also a member of a number of local and state social welfare committees and a member of the National Committee on Education, the Land Reform Committee and the Planning Committee. These activities have gained for the Jagannathans a high profile in India and they have won many prestigious Awards: the Swami Pranavananda Peace Award (1987); the Jamnalal Bajaj Award (1988) and Padma Shri in 1989. In 1996 the couple received the Bhagavan Mahaveer Award "for propagating nonviolence." In 1999 Krishnammal was awarded a Summit Foundation Award (Switzerland), and in 2008 she was awarded 'Opus Prize' by the University of Seattle and also Right Livelihood Award along with four others which included her husband. She is lovingly called as Amma (Mother in Tamil) by her followers. She plans to use the award money for her projects rather than for herself. Inspired by Amma's contribution of enabling more than 11000 poor and landless women to become landowners, a M.Phil research dissertation is dedicated to Amma. The dissertation is titled as Aspects of Agrarian History of Tamilakam:Region, Women and Technology during 16th and 17th Centuries AD,submitted to Department of History, University of Hyderabad in 2009. Krushnashastri Chiplunkar (Devanagari: ) (1824-1878) was a social activist and a Marathi writer from Maharashtra, India. For some years, he served as a principal of the Teachers' Training College in Pune. Chiplunkar was a scholar especially in Sanskrit Nyaya () (Logic), Dharma () (Religion, Law, and Ethics), and Artha () (Economics). Learning English was not common among Indian scholars of his time, yet he started learning it at age 25, and mastered it along with Sanskrit and Marathi and mastered it extremely well. He was a leading Pune personality of his time and his personal life was highly flavoured.
Further achievements and honours
Krushnashastri Chiplunkar
Works
(1852)
(1852)
(1859) (1865) (1961)
(1855)
Translations into Marathi
(Hari Krushna Damle and Krushnashastri's son Vishnushastri Chiplunkar completed the above last book in 1890 after Krushnashastri's death.)
Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas Kalidas's Meghadoot ( ) Jagannath Pandit's Karunavilas () 5656 Lalmohan Ghosh (18491909) was the sixteenth President of the Indian National Congress.
Lalmohan Ghosh

He was born in Krishnagar, West Bengal in 1849. He studied in England and qualified as a Barrister-atlaw and joined the Calcutta Bar in 1873. Ghosh was elected President of the Madras session (1903) of the Indian National Congress. His social and political ideals were derived mostly from the liberal humanism of Victorian England. He strongly believed the importance of Western education for the people of India as a force to unite the people into one nation and he pleaded for compulsory primary education in India in his Presidential address at the Madras session of the Congress.
References
Lalmohan Ghosh Laxmi Raman Acharya was born on 2 November 1914 in Alwar, Rajasthan as the eldest son of Late Shri Rewati Raman Acharya who was a revenue minister in the princely state of Alwar and later on quit his high profile position due to the British leaning of the King and joined the Indian National Congress.
Laxmi Raman Acharya
Early life
He was the eldest child of his parents. Joined St. John's College Agra for studies and later became President of Student Union of College
Pre Independence
Spent 7 years Rigorous Imprisonment in Mathura Jail for being declared as the Prime accused in famous Agra Conspiracy Case.
After independence
After independence he became Chairman of Crime Prevention Society of Mathura in 1947. He won 1951 Assembly election from Maant Constituency in mathura and represented it several times. was made deputy minister in first ever cabinet of Uttar pradesh in 1954 by then chief minister Shri Gobind Bhallabh Pant. Later handled important portfolios like Law, PWD, Jail, Revenue, etc. Open air jail system was introduced by him during his stint as Jail Minister. Became Finance Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1967, with Chandra Bhanu Gupta as Chief Minister. Known as close associate of Smt. Indira Gandhi, he was sent to Mexico as ambassador to represent the country in international conference on developing countries and poverty alleviation in 1976. Was later made Chairman of All India Khadi and Village Industries Commission, a position equivalent to the rank of union cabinet minister in 1982 by then Prime Minister Smt. Indira Gandhi. One of the most prominent lawyers of his time, he also handled important political cases during times of emergency of likes of Sanjay Gandhi, Smt. Indira Gandhi and other national figures.
Death
He died in 1997 after inaugurating a function organized by a reputed social welfare organization.
External links
Ministers in Uttar Pradesh Government [25]
Leela Roy ne Nag (Bengali: ) (21 October 1900 11 June 1970), was a radical leftist Indian politician and reformer, and a close associate of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose
Leela Roy
Family
She was born into an upper middle class Bengali Hindu Kayastha family in Sylhet in Bengal (now in Bangladesh) and educated at the Bethune College in Calcutta, graduating with a gold medal in English. She fought with university authorities and became the first woman to be admitted to the University of Dhaka and earned her M.A. degree.
Social work
She threw herself into social work and education for girls, starting the second girls school in Dhaka. She encouraged girls learning skills and receiving vocational training and emphasized the need for girls to

learn martial arts to defend themselves. Over the years, she set up a number of schools and institutes for women. She met Netaji Subhash Bose when he was leading the relief action after the 1921 Bengal floods, Smt. Leela Nag, then a student of the Dhaka University, was instrumental in forming the Dhaka Women's Committee and, in that capacity, raised donations and relief goods to help Netaji. In 1931, she began publishing Jayasree, the first magazine edited, managed, and wholly contributed by women writers. It received the blessings of many eminent personalities including Rabindranath Tagore, who suggested its name.
Politics
Leela Nag formed a rebellion organization called Deepali Sangha where combat training were given. Pritilata Waddedar took courses from there. She took part in the Civil Disobedience Movement and was imprisoned for six years. In 1938, she was nominated by Congress President, Subhas Chandra Bose to the National Planning Committee of the Congress. In 1939 she married Anilchandra Roy. On Bose's resignation from the Congress, the couple joined him in the Forward Bloc. In 1941, when there was a serious outburst of communal rioting in Dhaka, she along with Sarat Chandra Bose formed the Unity Board and National Service Brigade. In 1942, during the Quit India Movement both she and her husband were arrested and her magazine was forced to cease. On her release in 1946, she was elected to the Constituent Assembly of India. During the partition violence, she joined Gandhi in Noakhali. Even before Gandhiji reached there, she opened a relief center and rescued 400 women after touring on foot 90 miles in just six days. After the Partition of India, she ran homes in Calcutta for destitute and abandoned women and tried to help refugees from East Bengal.
Leelay Roy & Bhagwanji/ Netaji
There are evidences that Leela Roy knew Netaji alive & was in his contact till her death. She remained a great source of help to Bhawanji/Netaji until her death in 1970. However, before she died, Leela Roy wrote to Netajis dearest friend Dilip Roy on September 7, 1963 (on Bhagwanjis order): I wanted to tell you something about your friend he is alive in India. There is a letter in which Netaji/Bhagwanji pays homage to Leela Roy, who died in 1970. Netaji used to call Leela Roy as "Lee". According to the expert Mr. B. Lal, by writing in upper case the writer tried to hide his identity, but failed. The handwriting matches with that of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya (Hindi: ) pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Madan Mohan Malaviya.ogg (18611946) was an Indian educationist, and freedom fighter notable for his role in the Indian independence movement and his espousal of Hindu nationalism. Later in life, he was also addressed as 'Mahamana'. He was the President of the Indian National Congress on four occasions and today is most remembered as the founder of the largest residential university in Asia and one of the largest in the world, having over 12,000 students across arts sciences, engineering and technology, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) at Varanasi in 1916, of which he also remained the Vice Chancellor, 19191938 Pandit Malviya was one of the founders of Scouting in India. He also founded a highly influential, English-newspaper, The Leader published from Allahabad in 1909. On his 150th birth anniversary (i.e. 25 Dec 2011), Indian PM Dr. Manmohan Singh announced that a Centre for Malviya Studies will be set up at the Banaras Hindu University apart from establishment of scholarships and education related awards in his memory, and UPA chairperson released a biography of Madan Mohan Malaviya. He was also the Chairman of Hindustan Times from 1924 to 1946. His efforts resulted in the launch of its Hindi edition in 1936.
Madan Mohan Malaviya
Pandit Malviya was born in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India on 25 December 1861, in a Sri Gaud

(Malviya) Brahmin family of Brijnath and Moona Devi. He was the fifth child in a family of five brothers and two sisters. His ancestors, known for their Sanskrit scholarship, originally hailed from Malwa, Madhya Pradesh and hence came to be known as 'Malviyas'. His father Pandit Brijnath was also a learned man in Sanskrit scriptures, and used to recite the Bhagvat Katha to earn a living. Pandit Malviya's education began at age five in Sanskrit, when he was sent to Pandit Hardeva's Dharma Gyanopadesh Pathshala, where he completed his primary education and later another school run by Vidha Vardini Sabha. He then joined Allahabad Zila School (Allahabad District School), where he started writing poems under the pen name Makarand which were published in journals and magazines. Pandit Malviya matriculated in 1879 from the Muir Central College, now known as Allahabad University. Harrison College's Principal provided a monthly scholarship to Pandit Malviya, whose family had been facing financial hardships, and he was able to complete his B.A. at the University of Calcutta. Though he wanted to pursue an M.A. in Sanskrit, his family conditions did not allow it and his father wanted him to take his family profession of Bhagavat recital, thus in July 1884 Madan Mohan Malviya started his career as teacher in Allahabad District School. In December 1886, he attended the 2nd Congress session in Calcutta under chairmanship of Dadabhai Naoroji, where he spoke on the issue of representation in Councils. His address not only impressed Dadabhai but also Raja Rampal Singh, ruler of Kalakankar estate near Allahabad, who started a Hindi weekly Hindustan but was looking for a suitable editor to turn it into a daily. Thus in July 1887, he left his school job and joined as the editor of the nationalist weekly, he remained here for two and a half years, and left for Allahabad to join L.L.B., it was here that he was offered co-editorship of The Indian Union, an English daily. After finishing his law degree, he started practising law at Allahabad District Court in 1891, and moved to Allahabad High Court by December 1893 Malviya Ji became the president of the Indian National Congress in 1909, 1918, 1930 and 1932. Like many of the contemporary leaders of Indian National Congress he was a Moderate. Though, Scouting in India was officially founded in British India in 1909, at the Bishop Cotton's Boys School in Bangalore, Scouting for native Indians was started by Justice Vivian Bose, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, Pandit Hridayanath Kunzru, Girija Shankar Bajpai, Annie Besant and George Arundale, in 1913, he also started a Scouting inspired organisation called Seva Samithi. It was a unique and rare combination in him that he was a political leader of mass acceptance, together with being a widely respected educational luminary. To redeem his resolve to serve the cause of education and social-service he renounced his well established practice of law in 1911, for ever. In order to follow the tradition of Sannyasa throughout his life, he pursued the avowed commitment to live on the society's support. But when 177 freedom fighters were convicted to be hanged in the Chouri-choura case he appeared before the court, despite his vow and got acquitted 156 freedom fighters. In April 1911, Annie Besant met him and they decided to unite their forces and work for a common Hindu University at Varanasi. Annie and fellow trustees of the Central Hindu College, which she has founded in 1898 also agreed to Government of India's precondition that the college should become a part of the new University. Thus Banaras Hindu University (BHU) was established in 1916, through under the Parliamentary legislation, 'B.H.U. Act 1915', today it remains a prominent institution of learning in India. He remained a member of the Imperial Legislative Council from 1912 and when in 1919 it was converted to the Central Legislative Assembly it remained its member as well, till 1926. In early 1920s, he became one of the important figures in the Non-cooperation movement of Mahatma Gandhi, and was subsequently arrested on 25 April 1932, along with 450 other Congress volunteers in Delhi, only a few days after he was appointed the President of Congress after the arrest of Sarojini Naidu. Then in 1928 he joined Lala Lajpat Rai, Jawaharlal Nehru and many others in protesting against the Simon Commission, which had been set up by the British to consider India's future. Just as the "Buy British" campaign was sweeping England, he issued, on 30 May 1932, a manifesto urging concentration on the "Buy Indian" movement in India. Totally opposed to the politics of appeasement, Malviya had opposed the separate electorates for Muslims under the Lucknow Pact of 1916 and also opposed the participation of Congress in the Khilafat
Career

movement in early 20's. Giving his clear verdict against the division of the country, he cautioned Gandhiji against bargaining for freedom at the cost of division of the country. He also represented India at the First Round Table Conference in 1930. In 1939, he left the Vice chancellorship of BHU and was succeeded by none other than S. Radhakrishnan, who went on to become the President of India. Malviya Ji popularised the slogan Satyameva Jayate (Truth alone will triumph). Malaviya ji also graced the position of Chairman of Hindustan Times from 1924 to 1946. His efforts resulted in the launch of its Hindi edition in 1936. The paper was saved from an untimely demise when he stepped in to realise his vision of a newspaper in Delhi." Malaviya raised Rs.50,000 rupees to acquire the Hindustan Times along with the help of nationalist leaders Lala Lajpat Rai and M. R. Jayakar and industrilist Ghanshyam Das Birla, who paid most of the cash. The paper is now owned by the Birla family.
Social work
He worked for the eradication of caste barrier in temples and other social barriers. He is believed to have undergone a rejuvenation.Because of his Social works in Dalit areas, Sri Gaud Brahmins had expelled him initially but after understanding their mistakes the elite people has taken back Malviyaji's in Shi Gaud Brahmin samaj. Also, he organised a mass of 200 Dalit peoples, including the Hindu Dalit (Harijan) leader P. N. Rajbhoj to demand entry at the Kalaram Temple on a Rath Yatra day. All those who participated in this event took a dip in the Godavari River and chanted Hindu mantras. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya made massive efforts for the entry into any Hindu temple. Malviya Nagar[26] in Allahabad, Lucknow, Delhi, Bhopal, Durg and Jaipur are named after him. A postage stamp has been printed in India in his honour. Malaviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT) at Jaipur is named after him, as is Madan Mohan Malaviya Engineering College in Gorakhpur, UP. He started the tradition of Aarti at Har ki Pauri Haridwar to the sacred Ganges river which is performed till date, the Malviya Dwipa, a small island across the ghat, named after him. This was inline with the Ganesha Festival started by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in Maharashtra to organise the masses. Mahamana's life size portrait was unveiled in the Central Hall of India's Parliament by the then President of India Dr. Rajendra Prasad, and his life-size statue was unveiled in 1961 by the then President of India Dr. S. Radhakrishnan in front of the BHU main gate on the occasion of his birth centenary. This year 2011 is being celebrated as his 150th birth centenary by the Government of India under the Chairmanship of India's prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh. In front of the main Gate leading to the Assembly Hall and outside the porch, there exists a bust of Pt. Madan Mohan Malviya, which was inaugurated by the former Lt. Governor of Delhi, Dr. A.N. Jha on 25 December 1971. Pt. On 25 December 2008, on his birth anniversary, the national memorial of Mahamana Madan Mohan Malaviya was inaugurated by the then president A P J Abdul Kalam at 53, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg, in Delhi. As was the tradition in those days, he was married in 1878, when he was about sixteen years of age to Kundan Devi of Mirzapur. The couple had five sons and five daughters, out of which four sons, Ramakant, Radhakant, Mukund, Govind and two daughters Rama and Malati survived. Mahamana's youngest son Pt. Govind Malaviya (19021961)(Freedom Fighter), was a Member of India's Parliament till his death in 1961. He was the only one from Mahamana's family who became ViceChancellor of the Banaras Hindu University. At the stroke of the midnight hour when India was granted freedom on 15 August 1947, it was Pandit Govind Malaviya who blew the conch three times to herald the coming of the new age and freedom for India. One of Madan Mohan Malaviya's grand daughter inlaw Smt Saraswati Malviya (Freedom Fighter), wife of Late Shri Shridhar Malaviya (Freedom Fighter, and eldest son of Mahamana's eldest son Shri Ramakant Malviya) lives in Allahabad with her daughters. The house in which she currently resides has hosted numerous political luminaries including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Feroz Gandhi, Sarojini Naidu, Late Shri Rajiv Gandhi to name a few. Apart from the Benaras Hindu University, another legacy of Mahamana is the National Motto that he gave us "Satyameva Jayate". The slogan was popularised and brought into the national lexicon by
Legacy

Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya in 1918 when serving his second of four terms as President of the Indian National Congress.[24]
Works
A criticism of Montagu-Chelmsford proposals of Indian constitutional reform. Printed by C. Y. Chintamani, 1918. Speeches and writings of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya. Publisher G.A. Natesan, 1919. Maganti Ankineedu (born 1 January 1915, date of death unknown) was an Indian independence activist, politician and Member of Parliament. He was born to Maganti Venkata Ramdas at Tamirisa village, Krishna district. He was educated at Hindu College, Machilipatnam.[citation needed] He participated in the Indian independence movement and imprisoned twice during the Civil Disobedience Movement and the Quit India Movement. He was elected to 6th Lok Sabha and 7th Lok Sabha from Machilipatnam constituency as a member of Indian National Congress in 1977 and 1980 respectively. Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade (18 January 1842 16 January 1901) was a distinguished Indian scholar, social reformer and author. He was a founding member of the Indian National Congress and owned several designations as member of the Bombay legislative council, member of the finance committee at the centre, and the judge of Bombay High Court.[citation needed] A well known public figure, his personality as a calm and patient optimist would influence his attitude towards dealings with Britain as well as reform in India. During his life he helped establish the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and the Prarthana Samaj, and would edit a Bombay Anglo-Marathi daily paper, the Induprakash, founded on his ideology of social and religious reform. Ranade was born in Niphad, a Taluka town in Nashik district.. He spent much of his childhood in Kolhapur where his father was a minister. He began studies at the Elphinstone College in Bombay (now known as Mumbai), at the age of fourteen. He belonged to Bombay University, one of the three new British universities, and was part of the first batches for both the B.A. (1862) and the LL.B. (Government Law School, 1866) where he graduated at the top of his class. Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar was his classmate. Ranade later got his MA degree at the top of his class.[citation needed] He was appointed Presidency magistrate, fourth judge of the Bombay Small Causes Court in 1871, firstclass sub-judge at Pune in 1873, judge of the Poona Small Causes Court in 1884, and finally to the Bombay High Court in 1893. From 1885 until he joined the High Court, he belonged to the Bombay legislative council. In 1897, Ranade served on a committee charged with the task of enumerating imperial and provincial expenditure and making recommendations for financial retrenchment. This service won him the decoration of Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire. Ranade also served as a special judge under the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act from 1887. Ranade held the offices of syndic and dean in arts at Bombay University, where he displayed much organizing power and great intimacy with the needs of the student class. A thorough Marathi scholar, he encouraged the translation of standard English works and tried, with some success, to introduce vernacular languages into the university curriculum. He published books on Indian economics and on Maratha history. He saw the need for heavy industry for economic progress and believed in Western education as a vital element to the foundation of an Indian nation. He felt that by understanding the mutual problems of India and Britain both reform and independence could be achieved to the benefit of all and insisted that an independent India could only be stable after such reforms were made. Reform of Indian culture and use of an adaptation of Western culture, in Ranades view, would bring about common interest&nbssp;... and fusion of thoughts,
Maganti Ankineedu
Mahadev Govind Ranade
Biography

amongst all men.
Activism Religious
With his friends Dr Atmaram Pandurang, Bal Mangesh Wagle and Vaman Abaji Modak, Ranade founded the Prarthana Samaj, a Hindu movement inspired by the Brahmo Samaj, espousing principles of enlightened theism based on the ancient Vedas. Prarthana Samaj was started by Keshav Chandra Sen, a staunch Brahma Samajist, with the objective of carrying out religious reforms in Maharashtra. He presided a function to honor his friend, Virchand Gandhi , who had defended Indian culture and jainism in 1893's world religion parliament in Chicago, USA.
Political
Ranade founded the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and later was one of the originators of the Indian National Congress. He has been portrayed as an early adversary of the politics of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and a mentor to Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Ranade was a founder of the Social Conference movement, which he supported till his death, directing his social reform efforts against child marriage, the shaving of widows' heads, the heavy cost of marriages and other social functions, and the caste restrictions on traveling abroad, and he strenuously advocated widow remarriage and female education. He was one of the founders of the Widow Marriage Association in 1861. Ranade attempted to work with the structure of weakened traditions, reforming, but not destroying the social atmosphere that was Indias heritage. Ranade valued Indias history, having had a great interest in Shivaji and the Bhakti movement, but he also recognized the influence that British rule over India had on its development. Ranade encouraged the acceptance of change, believing traditional social structures, like the caste system, should accommodate change, thereby preserving Indias ancient heritage. An overall sense of national regeneration was what Ranade desired. Though Ranade criticised superstitions and blind faith, he was conservative in his own life. He chose to take prayaschitta (religious penance) in case of Panch-houd Mission Case rather than taking a strong side of his opinions. Upon the death of his first wife, his reform-minded friends expected him to marry (and thereby rescue) a widow. However, he adhered to his family's wishes and married a child bride, Ramabai Ranade, whom he subsequently provided with an education. After his death, she continued his social and educational reform work. He had no children. Ramabai Ranade in her memoirs has stated that when one equally prominent Pune personality, Vishnupant Pandit, married a widow, Ranade entertained him and a few guests at his home. This was not liked by his orthodox father who decided to leave Ranade's home in Pune and go to Kolhapur. It was only after he, Mahadev G. Ranade, told the father that he would resign from his government job that the father relented and canceled his plans to go to Kolhapur. Ranade decided never to do any such thing in the future. He however was insistent that his young wife, Ramabai Ranade, should do his bidding in the matters of social reforms. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (pronounced [mondas krmtnd andi] ( listen); 2 October 1869 30 January 1948), commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi or Bapu (Father of Nation), was the preeminent leader of Indian nationalism in British-ruled India. Employing non-violent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for non-violence, civil rights and freedom across the world. The son of a senior government official, Gandhi was born and raised in a Bania community in coastal Gujarat, and trained in law in London. Gandhi became famous by fighting for the civil rights of Muslim and Hindu Indians in South Africa, using new techniques of non-violent civil disobedience that he developed. Returning to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants to protest excessive land-taxes. A lifelong opponent of "communalism" (i.e. basing politics on religion) he reached out widely to all religious groups. He became a leader of Muslims protesting the declining status of the Caliphate. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for
Social
Mahatma Gandhi

easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, increasing economic self-reliance, and above all for achieving Swarajthe independence of India from British domination. Gandhi led Indians in protesting the national salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in demanding the British to immediately Quit India in 1942, during World War II. He was imprisoned for that and for numerous other political offenses over the years. Gandhi sought to practice non-violence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the same. He saw the villages as the core of the true India and promoted self-sufficiency; he did not support the industrialization programs of his disciple Jawaharlal Nehru. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn he had hand spun on a charkha. His chief political enemy in Britain was Winston Churchill, who ridiculed him as a half-naked fakir. He was a dedicated vegetarian, and undertook long fasts as means of both self-purification and political mobilization. In his last year, unhappy at the partition of India, Gandhi worked to stop the carnage between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs that raged in the border area between India and Pakistan. He was assassinated on 30 January 1948 by Nathuram Godse who thought Gandhi was too sympathetic to India's Muslims. 30 January is observed as Martyrs' Day in India. The honorific Mahatma ("Great Soul") was applied to him by 1914. In India he was also called Bapu ("Father"). He is known in India as the Father of the Nation; his birthday, 2 October, is commemorated there as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and world-wide as the International Day of Non-Violence. Gandhi's philosophy was not theoretical but one of pragmatism, that is, practicing his principles in the moment. Asked to give a message to the people, he would respond, "My life is my message." Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 in Porbandar, a coastal town which was then part of the Bombay Presidency, British India. He was born in his ancestral home, now known as Kirti Mandir. His father, Karamchand Gandhi (18221885), served as the diwan (chief minister) of Porbander state, a small princely salute state in the Kathiawar Agency of British India. His grandfather was Uttamchand Gandhi, also called Utta Gandhi. His mother, Putlibai, who was from a Pranami Vaishnava family, was Karamchand's fourth wife, the first three wives having apparently died in childbirth. The Indian classics, especially the stories of Shravana and king Harishchandra, had a great impact on Gandhi in his childhood. In his autobiography, he admits that they left an indelible impression on his mind. He writes: "It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number." Gandhi's early self-identification with truth and love as supreme values is traceable to these epic characters. In May 1883, the 13-year-old Mohandas was married to 14-year-old Kasturbai Makhanji (her first name was usually shortened to "Kasturba", and affectionately to "Ba") in an arranged child marriage, according to the custom of the region. In the process, he lost a year at school. Recalling the day of their marriage, he once said, "As we didn't know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives." However, as was prevailing tradition, the adolescent bride was to spend much time at her parents' house, and away from her husband. In 1885, when Gandhi was 15, the couple's first child was born, but survived only a few days. Gandhi's father, Karamchand Gandhi, had also died earlier that year. The religious background was eclectic. Gandhi's father was Hindu Modh Baniya and his mother was from Pranami Vaishnava family. Religious figures were frequent visitors to the home. Mohandas and Kasturba had four more children, all sons: Harilal, born in 1888; Manilal, born in 1892; Ramdas, born in 1897; and Devdas, born in 1900. At his middle school in Porbandar and high school in Rajkot, Gandhi remained a mediocre student. He shone neither in the classroom nor on the playing field. One of the terminal reports rated him as "good at English, fair in Arithmetic and weak in Geography; conduct very good, bad handwriting." He passed the matriculation exam at Samaldas College in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, with some difficulty. Gandhi's family wanted him to be a barrister, as it would increase the prospects of succeeding to his father's post.

English barrister
In 1888, Gandhi travelled to London, England, to study law at University College London, where he studied Indian law and jurisprudence and to train as a barrister at the Inner Temple. His time in London was influenced by a vow he had made to his mother upon leaving India, in the presence of a Jain monk, to observe the precepts of abstinence from meat and alcohol as well as of promiscuity. Gandhi tried to adopt "English" customs, including taking dancing lessons. However, he could not appreciate the bland vegetarian food offered by his landlady and was frequently hungry until he found one of London's few vegetarian restaurants. Influenced by Henry Salt's writing, he joined the Vegetarian Society, was elected to its executive committee, and started a local Bayswater chapter. Some of the vegetarians he met were members of the Theosophical Society, which had been founded in 1875 to further universal brotherhood, and which was devoted to the study of Buddhist and Hindu literature. They encouraged Gandhi to join them in reading the Bhagavad Gita both in translation as well as in the original. Not having shown interest in religion before, he became interested in religious thought. Gandhi was called to the bar in June 1891 and then left London for India, where he learned that his mother had died while he was in London and that his family had kept the news from him. His attempts at establishing a law practice in Bombay failed because he was too shy to speak up in court. He returned to Rajkot to make a modest living drafting petitions for litigants, but he was forced to close it when he ran afoul of a British officer. In 1893, he accepted a year-long contract from Dada Abdulla & Co., an Indian firm, to a post in the Colony of Natal, South Africa, then part of the British Empire.
Civil rights movement in South Africa (18931914)
Gandhi was 24 when he arrived in South Africa to work as a legal representative for the Muslim Indian Traders based in the city of Pretoria. He spent 21 years in South Africa, where he developed his political views, ethics and political leadership skills. Indians in South Africa were led by wealthy Muslims, who employed Gandhi as a lawyer, and by impoverished Hindu indentured laborers with very limited rights. Gandhi considered them all to be Indians, taking a lifetime view that "Indianness" transcended religion and caste. He believed he could bridge historic differences, especially regarding religion, and he took that belief back to India where he tried to implement it. The South African experience exposed handicaps to Gandhi that he had not known about. He realised he was out of contact with the enormous complexities of religious and cultural life in India, and believed he understood India by getting to know and leading Indians in South Africa. In South Africa, Gandhi faced the discrimination directed at all coloured people. He was thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg after refusing to move from the first-class. He protested and was allowed on first class the next day. Travelling farther on by stagecoach, he was beaten by a driver for refusing to move to make room for a European passenger. He suffered other hardships on the journey as well, including being barred from several hotels. In another incident, the magistrate of a Durban court ordered Gandhi to remove his turban, which he refused to do. These events were a turning point in Gandhi's life and shaped his social activism and awakened him to social injustice. After witnessing racism, prejudice and injustice against Indians in South Africa, Gandhi began to question his place in society and his people's standing in the British Empire. Gandhi extended his original period of stay in South Africa to assist Indians in opposing a bill to deny them the right to vote. In regards to this bill Gandhi sent out a memorial to Joseph Chamberlain, British Colonial Secretary, asking him to reconsider his position on this bill. Though unable to halt the bill's passage, his campaign was successful in drawing attention to the grievances of Indians in South Africa. He helped found the Natal Indian Congress in 1894, and through this organisation, he moulded the Indian community of South Africa into a unified political force. In January 1897, when Gandhi landed in Durban, a mob of white settlers attacked him and he escaped only through the efforts of the wife of the police superintendent. He, however, refused to press charges against any member of the mob, stating it was one of his principles not to seek redress for a personal wrong in a court of law. In 1906, the Transvaal government promulgated a new Act compelling registration of the colony's Indian population. At a mass protest meeting held in Johannesburg on 11 September that year, Gandhi adopted

his still evolving methodology of Satyagraha (devotion to the truth), or non-violent protest, for the first time. He urged Indians to defy the new law and to suffer the punishments for doing so. The community adopted this plan, and during the ensuing seven-year struggle, thousands of Indians were jailed, flogged, or shot for striking, refusing to register, for burning their registration cards or engaging in other forms of non-violent resistance. The government successfully repressed the Indian protesters, but the public outcry over the harsh treatment of peaceful Indian protesters by the South African government forced South African leader Jan Christiaan Smuts, himself a philosopher, to negotiate a compromise with Gandhi. Gandhi's ideas took shape, and the concept of Satyagraha matured during this struggle. Gandhi focused his attention on Indians while in South Africa and opposed the idea that Indians should be treated at the same level as native Africans while in South Africa. He also stated that he believed "that the white race of South Africa should be the predominating race." After several treatments he received from Whites in South Africa, Gandhi began to change his thinking and apparently increased his interest in politics. White rule enforced strict segregation among all races and generated conflict between these communities. Bhana and Vahed argue that Gandhi, at first, shared racial notions prevalent of the times and that his experiences in jail sensitized him to the plight of blacks. During the Boer War Gandhi volunteered in 1900 to form a group of ambulance drivers. He wanted to disprove the British idea that Hindus were not fit for "manly" activities involving danger and exertion. Gandhi raised eleven hundred Indian volunteers. They were trained and medically certified to serve on the front lines. At Spion Kop Gandhi and his bearers had to carry wounded soldiers for miles to a field hospital because the terrain was too rough for the ambulances. Gandhi was pleased when someone said that European ambulance corpsmen could not make the trip under the heat without food or water. General Redvers Buller mentioned the courage of the Indians in his dispatch. Gandhi and thirty seven other Indians received the War Medal. In 1906, the British declared war against the Zulu Kingdom in Natal, Gandhi encouraged the British to recruit Indians. He argued that Indians should support the war efforts in order to legitimise their claims to full citizenship. The British accepted Gandhi's offer to let a detachment of 20 Indians volunteer as a stretcher-bearer corps to treat wounded British soldiers. This corps was commanded by Gandhi and operated for less than two months. The experience taught him it was hopeless to directly challenge the overwhelming military power of the British armyhe decided it could only be resisted in non-violent fashion by the pure of heart. After the black majority came to power in South Africa, Gandhi was proclaimed a national hero with numerous monuments.
Gandhi and the Africans
Struggle for Indian Independence (191547)
In 1915, Gandhi returned to India permanently. He brought an international reputation as a leading Indian nationalist, theorist and organizer. He joined the Indian National Congress and was introduced to Indian issues, politics and the Indian people primarily by Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Gokhale was a key leader of the Congress Party best known for his restraint and moderation, and his insistence on working inside the system. Gandhi took Gokhale's liberal approach based on British Whiggish traditions and transformed it to make it look wholly Indian. Gandhi took leadership of Congress in 1920 and began a steady escalation of demands (with intermittent compromises or pauses) until on 26 January 1930 the Indian National Congress declared the independence of India. The British did not recognize that and more negotiations ensued, with Congress taking a role in provincial government in the late 1930s. Gandhi and Congress withdrew their support of the Raj when the Viceroy declared war on Germany in September 1939 without consulting anyone. Tensions escalated until Gandhi demanded immediate independence in 1942 and the British responded by imprisoning him and tens of thousands of Congress leaders for the duration. Meanwhile the Muslim League did cooperate with Britain and moved, against Gandhi's strong opposition, to demands for a totally separate Muslim state of Pakistan. In August 1947 the British partitioned the land, with India and Pakistan each achieving independence on terms Gandhi disapproved.

Role in World War I
In April 1918, during the latter part of World War I, the Viceroy invited Gandhi to a War Conference in Delhi. Perhaps to show his support for the Empire and help his case for India's independence, Gandhi agreed to actively recruit Indians for the war effort. In contrast to the Zulu War of 1906 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, when he recruited volunteers for the Ambulance Corps, this time Gandhi attempted to recruit combatants. In a June 1918 leaflet entitled "Appeal for Enlistment", Gandhi wrote "To bring about such a state of things we should have the ability to defend ourselves, that is, the ability to bear arms and to use them...If we want to learn the use of arms with the greatest possible despatch, it is our duty to enlist ourselves in the army." He did, however, stipulate in a letter to the Viceroy's private secretary that he "personally will not kill or injure anybody, friend or foe." Gandhi's war recruitment campaign brought into question his consistency on nonviolence as his friend Charlie Andrews confirms, "Personally I have never been able to reconcile this with his own conduct in other respects, and it is one of the points where I have found myself in painful disagreement." Gandhi's private secretary also had acknowledged that "The question of the consistency between his creed of 'Ahimsa' (non-violence) and his recruiting campaign was raised not only then but has been discussed ever since."
Champaran and Kheda
Gandhi's first major achievements came in 1918 with the Champaran and Kheda agitations of Bihar and Gujarat. The Champaran agitation pitted the local peasantry against their largely British landlords who were backed by the local administration. The peasantry was forced to grow Indigo, a cash crop whose demand had been declining over two decades, and were forced to sell their crops to the planters at a fixed price. Unhappy with this, the peasantry appealed to Gandhi at his ashram in Ahmedabad. Pursuing a strategy of non-violent protest, Gandhi took the administration by surprise and won concessions from the authorities. In 1918, Kheda was hit by floods and famine and the peasantry was demanding relief from taxes. Gandhi moved his headquarters to Nadiad, organising scores of supporters and fresh volunteers from the region, the most notable being Vallabhbhai Patel. Using non-cooperation as a technique, Gandhi initiated a signature campaign where peasants pledged non-payment of revenue even under the threat of confiscation of land. A social boycott of mamlatdars and talatdars (revenue officials within the district) accompanied the agitation. Gandhi worked hard to win public support for the agitation across the country. For five months, the administration refused but finally in end-May 1918, the Government gave way on important provisions and relaxed the conditions of payment of revenue tax until the famine ended. In Kheda, Vallabhbhai Patel represented the farmers in negotiations with the British, who suspended revenue collection and released all the prisoners.
Khilafat movement
In 1919 Gandhi, with his weak position in Congress, decided to broaden his base by increasing his appeal to Muslims. The opportunity came from the Khilafat movement, a worldwide protest by Muslims against the collapsing status of the Caliph, the leader of their religion. The Ottoman Empire had lost the World War and was dismembered, as Muslims feared for the safety of the holy places and the prestige of their religion. Although Gandhi did not originate the All-India Muslim Conference, which directed the movement in India, he soon became its most prominent spokesman and attracted a strong base of Muslim support with local chapters in all Muslim centers in India. His success made him India's first national leader with a multicultural base and facilitated his rise to power within Congress, which had previously been unable to reach many Muslims. In 1920 Gandhi became a major leader in Congress. By the end of 1922 the Khilafat movement had collapsed. Gandhi always fought against "communalism", which pitted Muslims against Hindus in politics, but he could not reverse the rapid growth of communalism after 1922. Deadly religious riots broke out in numerous cities, including 91 in U.P. (Uttar Pradesh) alone. At the leadership level, the proportion of Muslims among delegates to Congress fell sharply, from 11% in 1921 to under 4% in 1923.

With Congress now behind him in 1920, Gandhi had the base to employ non-cooperation, non-violence and peaceful resistance as his "weapons" in the struggle against the British Raj. His wide popularity among both Hindus and Muslims made his leadership possible; he even convinced the extreme faction of Muslims to support peaceful non-cooperation. The spark that ignited a national protest was overwhelming anger at the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (or Amritsar massacre) of hundreds of peaceful civilians by British troops in Punjab. Many Britons celebrated the action as needed to prevent another violent uprising similar to the Rebellion of 1857, an attitude that caused many Indian leaders to decide the Raj was controlled by their enemies. Gandhi criticised both the actions of the British Raj and the retaliatory violence of Indians. He authored the resolution offering condolences to British civilian victims and condemning the riots which, after initial opposition in the party, was accepted following Gandhi's emotional speech advocating his principle that all violence was evil and could not be justified. After the massacre and subsequent violence, Gandhi began to focus on winning complete selfgovernment and control of all Indian government institutions, maturing soon into Swaraj or complete individual, spiritual, political independence. During this period, Gandhi claimed to be a "highly orthodox Hindu" and in January 1921 during a speech at a temple in Vadtal, he spoke of the relevance of noncooperation to Hindu Dharma, "At this holy place, I declare, if you want to protect your 'Hindu Dharma', non-cooperation is first as well as the last lesson you must learn up.". In December 1921, Gandhi was invested with executive authority on behalf of the Indian National Congress. Under his leadership, the Congress was reorganised with a new constitution, with the goal of Swaraj. Membership in the party was opened to anyone prepared to pay a token fee. A hierarchy of committees was set up to improve discipline, transforming the party from an elite organisation to one of mass national appeal. Gandhi expanded his non-violence platform to include the swadeshi policythe boycott of foreign-made goods, especially British goods. Linked to this was his advocacy that khadi (homespun cloth) be worn by all Indians instead of British-made textiles. Gandhi exhorted Indian men and women, rich or poor, to spend time each day spinning khadi in support of the independence movement. Gandhi even invented a small, portable spinning wheel that could be folded into the size of a small typewriter. This was a strategy to inculcate discipline and dedication to weeding out the unwilling and ambitious and to include women in the movement at a time when many thought that such activities were not respectable activities for women. In addition to boycotting British products, Gandhi urged the people to boycott British educational institutions and law courts, to resign from government employment, and to forsake British titles and honours. "Non-cooperation" enjoyed widespread appeal and success, increasing excitement and participation from all strata of Indian society. Yet, just as the movement reached its apex, it ended abruptly as a result of a violent clash in the town of Chauri Chaura, Uttar Pradesh, in February 1922. Fearing that the movement was about to take a turn towards violence, and convinced that this would be the undoing of all his work, Gandhi called off the campaign of mass civil disobedience. This was the third time that Gandhi had called off a major campaign. Gandhi was arrested on 10 March 1922, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years' imprisonment. He began his sentence on 18 March 1922. He was released in February 1924 for an appendicitis operation, having served only 2 years. Without Gandhi's unifying personality, the Indian National Congress began to splinter during his years in prison, splitting into two factions, one led by Chitta Ranjan Das and Motilal Nehru favouring party participation in the legislatures, and the other led by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, opposing this move. Furthermore, cooperation among Hindus and Muslims, which had been strong at the height of the non-violence campaign, was breaking down. Gandhi attempted to bridge these differences through many means, including a three-week fast in the autumn of 1924, but with limited success. In this year, Gandhi was persuaded to preside over the Congress session to be held in Belgaum. Gandhi agreed to become president of the session on one condition: that Congressmen should take to wearing homespun khadi. In his long political career, this was the only time when he presided over a Congress session.
Non-cooperation

Gandhi stayed out of active politics and, as such, the limelight for most of the 1920s. He focused instead on resolving the wedge between the Swaraj Party and the Indian National Congress, and expanding initiatives against untouchability, alcoholism, ignorance and poverty. He returned to the fore in 1928. In the preceding year, the British government had appointed a new constitutional reform commission under Sir John Simon, which did not include any Indian as its member. The result was a boycott of the commission by Indian political parties. Gandhi pushed through a resolution at the Calcutta Congress in December 1928 calling on the British government to grant India dominion status or face a new campaign of non-cooperation with complete independence for the country as its goal. Gandhi had not only moderated the views of younger men like Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru, who sought a demand for immediate independence, but also reduced his own call to a one year wait, instead of two. The British did not respond. On 31 December 1929, the flag of India was unfurled in Lahore. 26 January 1930 was celebrated as India's Independence Day by the Indian National Congress meeting in Lahore. This day was commemorated by almost every other Indian organisation. Gandhi then launched a new Satyagraha against the tax on salt in March 1930. This was highlighted by the famous Salt March to Dandi from 12 March to 6 April, where he marched 388 kilometres (241 mi) from Ahmedabad to Dandi, Gujarat to make salt himself. Thousands of Indians joined him on this march to the sea. This campaign was one of his most successful at upsetting British hold on India; Britain responded by imprisoning over 60,000 people. Women Gandhi strongly favoured the emancipation of women, and he went so far as to say that "the women have come to look upon me as one of themselves." He opposed purdah, child marriage, untouchability, and the extreme oppression of Hindu widows, up to and including sati. He especially recruited women to participate in the salt tax campaigns and the boycott of foreign products. Sarma concludes that Gandhi's success in enlisting women in his campaigns, including the salt tax campaign, anti-untouchability campaign and the peasant movement, gave many women a new self-confidence and dignity in the mainstream of Indian public life. Gandhi as folk hero Congress in the 1920s appealed to peasants by portraying Gandhi as a sort of messiah, a strategy that succeeded in incorporating radical forces within the peasantry into the nonviolent resistance movement. In thousands of villages plays were performed that presented Gandhi as the reincarnation of earlier Indian nationalist leaders, or even as a demigod. The plays built support among illiterate peasants steeped in traditional Hindu culture. Similar messianic imagery appeared in popular songs and poems, and in Congress-sponsored religious pageants and celebrations. The result was that Gandhi became not only a folk hero but the Congress was widely seen in the villages as his sacred instrument. Negotiations The government, represented by Lord Edward Irwin, decided to negotiate with Gandhi. The GandhiIrwin Pact was signed in March 1931. The British Government agreed to free all political prisoners, in return for the suspension of the civil disobedience movement. Also as a result of the pact, Gandhi was invited to attend the Round Table Conference in London as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress. The conference was a disappointment to Gandhi and the nationalists, because it focused on the Indian princes and Indian minorities rather than on a transfer of power. Lord Irwin's successor, Lord Willingdon, taking a hard line against nationalism, began a new campaign of controlling and subduing the nationalist movement. Gandhi was again arrested, and the government tried and failed to negate his influence by completely isolating him from his followers.
Salt Satyagraha (Salt March)
Untouchables
In 1932, through the campaigning of the Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar, the government granted untouchables separate electorates under the new constitution, known as the Communal Award. In protest, Gandhi embarked on a six-day fast on 20 September 1932, while he was imprisoned at the Yerwada Jail, Pune. The resulting public outcry successfully forced the government to adopt an equitable arrangement (Poona Pact) through negotiations mediated by Palwankar Baloo. This was the start of a

new campaign by Gandhi to improve the lives of the untouchables, whom he named Harijans, the children of God. On September 8th 1931, Mahatma Gandhi who was sailing on SS Rajputana, to the second Round Table Conference in London, Mahatma Gandhi met Meher Baba in his cabin on board the ship, and discussed issues of untouchables, politics, state Independence and spirituality On 8 May 1933, Gandhi began a 21-day fast of self-purification and launched a one-year campaign to help the Harijan movement. This new campaign was not universally embraced within the Dalit community, as Ambedkar condemned Gandhi's use of the term Harijans as saying that Dalits were socially immature, and that privileged caste Indians played a paternalistic role. Ambedkar and his allies also felt Gandhi was undermining Dalit political rights. Gandhi had also refused to support the untouchables in 192425 when they were campaigning for the right to pray in temples. Because of Gandhi's actions, Ambedkar described him as "devious and untrustworthy". Gandhi, although born into the Vaishya caste, insisted that he was able to speak on behalf of Dalits, despite the presence of Dalit activists such as Ambedkar. Gandhi and Ambedkar often clashed because Ambedkar sought to remove the Dalits out of the Hindu community, while Gandhi tried to save Hinduism by exorcising untouchability. Ambedkar complained that Gandhi moved too slowly, while Hindu traditionalists said Gandhi was a dangerous radical who rejected scripture. Guha noted in 2012 that, "Ideologues have carried these old rivalries into the present, with the demonization of Gandhi now common among politicians who presume to speak in Ambedkars name." Guha adds that their work complemented each other, and Gandhi often praised Ambedkar. In the summer of 1934, three attempts were made on Gandhi's life.
Congress politics
In 1934 Gandhi resigned from Congress party membership. He did not disagree with the party's position but felt that if he resigned, his popularity with Indians would cease to stifle the party's membership, which actually varied, including communists, socialists, trade unionists, students, religious conservatives, and those with pro-business convictions, and that these various voices would get a chance to make themselves heard. Gandhi also wanted to avoid being a target for Raj propaganda by leading a party that had temporarily accepted political accommodation with the Raj. Gandhi returned to active politics again in 1936, with the Nehru presidency and the Lucknow session of the Congress. Although Gandhi wanted a total focus on the task of winning independence and not speculation about India's future, he did not restrain the Congress from adopting socialism as its goal. Gandhi had a clash with Subhas Chandra Bose, who had been elected president in 1938, and who had previously expressed a lack of faith in non-violence as a means of protest. Despite Gandhi's opposition, Bose won a second term as Congress President, against Gandhi's nominee, Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya; but left the Congress when the All-India leaders resigned en masse in protest of his abandonment of the principles introduced by Gandhi. Gandhi declared that Sitaramayya's defeat was his defeat. Gandhi initially favoured offering "non-violent moral support" to the British effort when World War II broke out in 1939, but the Congressional leaders were offended by the unilateral inclusion of India in the war without consultation of the people's representatives. All Congressmen resigned from office. After long deliberations, Gandhi declared that India could not be party to a war ostensibly being fought for democratic freedom while that freedom was denied to India itself. As the war progressed, Gandhi intensified his demand for independence, calling for the British to Quit India in a speech at Gowalia Tank Maidan. This was Gandhi's and the Congress Party's most definitive revolt aimed at securing the British exit from India. Gandhi was criticised by some Congress party members and other Indian political groups, both pro-British and anti-British. Some felt that not supporting Britain more in its struggle against Nazi Germany was unethical. Others felt that Gandhi's refusal for India to participate in the war was insufficient and more direct opposition should be taken, while Britain fought against Nazism, it continued to refuse to grant India Independence. Quit India became the most forceful movement in the history of the struggle, with mass arrests and violence on an unprecedented scale. In 1942, although still committed in his efforts to "launch a non-violent movement", Gandhi clarified
World War II and Quit India

that the movement would not be stopped by individual acts of violence, saying that the "ordered anarchy" of "the present system of administration" was "worse than real anarchy." He called on all Congressmen and Indians to maintain discipline via ahimsa, and Karo ya maro ("Do or die") in the cause of ultimate freedom. Gandhi and the entire Congress Working Committee were arrested in Bombay by the British on 9 August 1942. Gandhi was held for two years in the Aga Khan Palace in Pune. It was here that Gandhi suffered two terrible blows in his personal life. His 50-year old secretary Mahadev Desai died of a heart attack 6 days later and his wife Kasturba died after 18 months imprisonment on 22 February 1944; six weeks later Gandhi suffered a severe malaria attack. He was released before the end of the war on 6 May 1944 because of his failing health and necessary surgery; the Raj did not want him to die in prison and enrage the nation. He came out of detention to an altered political scenethe Muslim League for example, which a few years earlier had appeared marginal, "now occupied the centre of the political stage" and the topic of Jinnah's campaign for Pakistan was a major talking point. Gandhi met Jinnah in September 1944 in Bombay but Jinnah rejected, on the grounds that it fell short of a fully independent Pakistan, his proposal of the right of Muslim provinces to opt out of substantial parts of the forthcoming political union. While the leaders of Congress languished in jail, the other parties supported the war and gained organizational strength. Underground publications flailed at the ruthless suppression of Congress, but it had little control over events. At the end of the war, the British gave clear indications that power would be transferred to Indian hands. At this point Gandhi called off the struggle, and around 100,000 political prisoners were released, including the Congress's leadership.
Partition and independence, 1947
As a rule, Gandhi was opposed to the concept of partition as it contradicted his vision of religious unity. Concerning the partition of India to create Pakistan, while the Indian National Congress and Gandhi called for the British to quit India, the Muslim League passed a resolution for them to divide and quit, in 1943. Gandhi suggested an agreement which required the Congress and Muslim League to cooperate and attain independence under a provisional government, thereafter, the question of partition could be resolved by a plebiscite in the districts with a Muslim majority. When Jinnah called for Direct Action, on 16 August 1946, Gandhi was infuriated and personally visited the most riot-prone areas to stop the massacres. He made strong efforts to unite the Indian Hindus, Muslims, and Christians and struggled for the emancipation of the "untouchables" in Hindu society. On 14 and 15 August 1947 the Indian Independence Act was invoked. In border areas some 1012 million people moved from one side to another and upwards of a half million were killed in communal riots pitting Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs against each other. But for his teachings, the efforts of his followers, and his own presence, there perhaps could have been much more bloodshed during the partition, according to prominent Norwegian historian, Jens Arup Seip. Stanley Wolpert has argued, The "plan to carve up British India was never approved of or accepted by Gandhi...who realised too late that his closest comrades and disciples were more interested in power than principle, and that his own vision had long been clouded by the illusion that the struggle he led for India's freedom was a nonviolent one." On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was shot while he was walking to a platform from which he was to address a prayer meeting. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a Hindu nationalist with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha, who held Gandhi guilty of favouring Pakistan and strongly opposed the doctrine of nonviolence. Godse and his co-conspirator were tried and executed in 1949. Gandhi's memorial (or Samdhi) at Rj Ght, New Delhi, bears the epigraph "H Ram", (Devanagari: ! or, He Rm), which may be translated as "Oh God". These are widely believed to be Gandhi's last words after he was shot, though the veracity of this statement has been disputed. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru addressed the nation through radio:
Assassination
"Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions and millions in this country."Jawaharlal Nehru's address to Gandhi Gandhi's death was mourned nationwide. Over two million people joined the five mile long funeral procession that took over five hours to reach Raj Ghat from Birla house, where he was assassinated. Gandhi's body was transported on a weapons carrier, whose chassis was dismantled overnight to allow a high-floor to be installed so that people could catch a glimpse of his body. The engine of the vehicle was not used, instead four drag-ropes manned by 50 people each pulled the vehicle. All Indian owned establishments in London remained closed in mourning as thousands of people from all faiths and denominations and Indians from all over Britain converged at India House in London. While India mourned and communal (inter-religious) violence escalated, there were calls for retaliation, and even an invasion of Pakistan by the Indian army. Nehru and Patel, the two strongest figures in the government and in Congress, had been pulling in opposite directions; the assassination pushed them together. They agreed the first objective must be to calm the hysteria. They called on Indians to honor Gandhi's memory and even more his ideals. They used the assassination to consolidate the authority of the new Indian state. The government made sure everyone knew the guilty party was not a Muslim. Congress tightly controlled the epic public displays of grief over a two-week periodthe funeral, mortuary rituals and distribution of the martyr's ashesas millions participated and hundreds of millions watched. The goal was to assert the power of the government and legitimize the Congress Party's control. This move built upon the massive outpouring of Hindu expressions of grief. The government suppressed the RSS, the Muslim National Guards, and the Khaksars, with some 200,000 arrests. Gandhi's death and funeral linked the distant state with the Indian people and made more understood the need to suppress religious parties during the transition to independence for the Indian people.
Ashes
By Hindu tradition the ashes were to be spread on a river. Gandhi's ashes were poured into urns which were sent across India for memorial services. Most were immersed at the Sangam at Allahabad on 12 February 1948, but some were secretly taken away. In 1997, Tushar Gandhi immersed the contents of one urn, found in a bank vault and reclaimed through the courts, at the Sangam at Allahabad. Some of Gandhi's ashes were scattered at the source of the Nile River near Jinja, Uganda, and a memorial plaque marks the event. On 30 January 2008, the contents of another urn were immersed at Girgaum Chowpatty. Another urn is at the palace of the Aga Khan in Pune (where Gandhi had been imprisoned from 1942 to 1944) and another in the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Los Angeles. Gandhism designates the ideas and principles Gandhi promoted. Of central importance is nonviolent resistance. A Gandhian can mean either an individual who follows, or a specific philosophy which is attributed to, Gandhism. M.M.Sankhdher argues that Gandhism is not a systematic position in metaphysics or in political philosophy. Rather, it is a political creed, an economic doctrine, a religious outlook, a moral precept, and especially, a humanitarian world view. It is an effort not to systematize wisdom but to transform society and is based on an undying faith in the goodness of human nature. However Gandhi himself did not approve of the notion of "Gandhism", as he explained in 1936:
Principles, practices and beliefs
There is no such thing as "Gandhism", and I do not want to leave any sect after me. I do not claim to have originated any new principle or doctrine. I have simply tried in my own way to apply the

eternal truths to our daily life and problems...The opinions I have formed and the conclusions I have arrived at are not final. I may change them tomorrow. I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills.
Historian R.B. Cribb argues that Gandhi's thought evolved over time, with his early ideas becoming the core or scaffolding for his mature philosophy. In London he committed himself to truthfulness, temperance, chastity, and vegetarianism. His return to India to work as a lawyer was a failure, so he went to South Africa for a quarter century, where he absorbed ideas from many sources, most of them nonIndian. Gandhi grew up in an eclectic religious atmosphere and throughout his life searched for insights from many religious traditions. He was exposed to Jain ideas through his mother who, was in contact with Jain monks. Themes from Jainism that Gandhi absorbed included asceticism; compassion for all forms of life; the importance of vows for self-discipline; vegetarianism; fasting for self-purification; mutual tolerance among people of different creeds; and "syadvad", the idea that all views of truth are partial, a doctrine that lies at the root of Satyagraha. He received much of his influence from Jainism particularly during his younger years. Gandhi's London experience provided a solid philosophical base focused on truthfulness, temperance, chastity, and vegetarianism. When he returned to India in 1891, his outlook was parochial and he could not make a living as a lawyer. This challenged his belief that practicality and morality necessarily coincided. By moving in 1893 to South Africa he found a solution to this problem and developed the central concepts of his mature philosophy. N. A. Toothi felt that Gandhi was influenced by the reforms and teachings of Swaminarayan, stating "Close parallels do exist in programs of social reform based on to non-violence, truth-telling, cleanliness, temperance and upliftment of the masses." Vallabhbhai Patel, who grew up in a Swaminarayan household was attracted to Gandhi due to this aspect of Gandhi's doctrine. Gandhi's ethical thinking was heavily influenced by a handful of books, which he repeatedly meditated upon. They included especially Plato's Apology, (which he translated into his native Gujarati); William Salter's Ethical Religion (1889); Henry David Thoreau's On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1847); Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1893); and John Ruskin's Unto this Last (1862), which he also translated into Gujarati. Ruskin inspired his decision to live an austere life on a commune, at first on the Phoenix Farm in Natal and then on the Tolstoy Farm just outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Balkrishna Gokhale argues that Gandhi took his philosophy of history from Hinduism and Jainism, supplemented by selected Christian traditions and ideas of Tolstoy and Ruskin. Hinduism provided central concepts of God's role in history, of man as the battleground of forces of virtue and sin, and of the potential of love as an historical force. From Jainism, Gandhi took the idea of applying nonviolence to human situations and the theory that Absolute Reality can be comprehended only relatively in human affairs. Historian Howard Spodek argues for the importance of the culture of Gujarat in shaping Gandhi's methods. Spodek finds that some of Gandhi's most effective methods such as fasting, noncooperation and appeals to the justice and compassion of the rulers were learned as a youth in Gujarat. Later on, the financial, cultural, organizational and geographical support needed to bring his campaigns to a national audience were drawn from Ahmedabad and Gujarat, his Indian residence 19151930.
Influences
Tolstoy
In 1908 Leo Tolstoy wrote A Letter to a Hindu, which said that only by using love as a weapon through passive resistance could the Indian people overthrow colonial rule. In 1909, Gandhi wrote to Tolstoy seeking advice and permission to republish A Letter to a Hindu in Gujarati. Tolstoy responded and the two continued a correspondence until Tolstoy's death in 1910. The letters concern practical and theological applications of non-violence. Gandhi saw himself a disciple of Tolstoy, for they agreed regarding opposition to state authority and colonialism; both hated violence and preached nonresistance. However, they differed sharply on political strategy. Gandhi called for political involvement; he

was a nationalist and was prepared to use nonviolent force. He was also willing to compromise. It was at Tolstoy Farm where Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach systematically trained their disciples in the philosophy of nonviolence. Gandhi dedicated his life to the wider purpose of discovering truth, or Satya. He tried to achieve this by learning from his own mistakes and conducting experiments on himself. He called his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Bruce Watson argues that Gandhi based Satyagraha on the Vedantic ideal of self-realization, and notes it also contains Jain and Buddhist notions of nonviolence, vegetarianism, the avoidance of killing, and 'agape' (universal love). Gandhi also borrowed Christian-Islamic ideas of equality, the brotherhood of man, and the concept of turning the other cheek. Gandhi stated that the most important battle to fight was overcoming his own demons, fears, and insecurities. Gandhi summarised his beliefs first when he said "God is Truth". He would later change this statement to "Truth is God". Thus, satya (truth) in Gandhi's philosophy is "God". The essence of Satyagraha (a name Gandhi invented meaning "adherence to truth") is that it seeks to eliminate antagonisms without harming the antagonists themselves and seeks to transform or "purify" it to a higher level. A euphemism sometimes used for Satyagraha is that it is a "silent force" or a "soul force" (a term also used by Martin Luther King Jr. during his famous "I Have a Dream" speech). It arms the individual with moral power rather than physical power. Satyagraha is also termed a "universal force", as it essentially "makes no distinction between kinsmen and strangers, young and old, man and woman, friend and foe." Gandiji wrote: "There must be no impatience, no barbarity, no insolence, no undue pressure. If we want to cultivate a true spirit of democracy, we cannot afford to be intolerant. Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause." Civil disobedience and non-cooperation as practised under Satyagraha are based on the "law of suffering", a doctrine that the endurance of suffering is a means to an end. This end usually implies a moral upliftment or progress of an individual or society. Therefore, non-cooperation in Satyagraha is in fact a means to secure the cooperation of the opponent consistently with truth and justice. Although Gandhi was not the originator of the principle of non-violence, he was the first to apply it in the political field on a large scale. The concept of nonviolence (ahimsa) and nonresistance has a long history in Indian religious thought and has had many revivals in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Jewish and Christian contexts. Gandhi explains his philosophy and way of life in his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Some of his other remarks were widely quoted, such as "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." "There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for." Gandhi realized later that this level of nonviolence required incredible faith and courage, which he believed everyone did not possess. He therefore advised that everyone need not keep to nonviolence, especially if it were used as a cover for cowardice, saying, "where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Gandhi thus came under some political fire for his criticism of those who attempted to achieve independence through more violent means. His refusal to protest against the hanging of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Udham Singh and Rajguru were sources of condemnation among some parties. Of this criticism, Gandhi stated, "There was a time when people listened to me because I showed them how to give fight to the British without arms when they had no arms [...] but today I am told that my non-violence can be of no avail against the [HinduMoslem riots] and, therefore, people should arm themselves for self-defense." Gandhi's views came under heavy criticism in Britain when it was under attack from Nazi Germany, and later when the Holocaust was revealed. He told the British people in 1940, "I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions... If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow
Truth and Satyagraha
Nonviolence

yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them." In a post-war interview in 1946, he said, "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butchers knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs... It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions." Gandhi believed this act of "collective suicide", in response to the Holocaust, "would have been heroism". Muslims One of the Gandhi's major strategies, first in South Africa and then in India, was uniting Muslims and Hindus to work together in opposition to British imperialism. In 191922 he won strong Muslim support for his leadership in the Khilafat Movement to support the historic Ottoman Caliphate. By 1924 that Muslim support had largely evaporated. Jews In 1931, he suggested that while he could understand the desire of European Jews to emigrate to Palestine, he opposed any movement that supported British colonialism or violence. Muslims throughout India and the Middle East strongly opposed the Zionist plan for a Jewish state in Palestine, and Gandhi (and Congress) supported the Muslims in this regard. By the 1930s all major political groups in India opposed a Jewish state in Palestine. This led to discussions concerning the persecution of the Jews in Germany and the emigration of Jews from Europe to Palestine, which Gandhi framed through the lens of Satyagraha. In 1937, Gandhi discussed Zionism with his close Jewish friend Hermann Kallenbach. He said Zionism was not the right answer to the Jewish problem and instead recommended Satyagraha. Gandhi thought the Zionists in Palestine represented European imperialism and used violence to achieve their goals; he argued that "the Jews should disclaim any intention of realizing their aspiration under the protection of arms and should rely wholly on the goodwill of Arabs. No exception can possibly be taken to the natural desire of the Jews to found a home in Palestine. But they must wait for its fulfillment till Arab opinion is ripe for it." In 1938, Gandhi stated that his "sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions." Philosopher Martin Buber was highly critical of Gandhi's approach and in 1939 wrote an open letter to him on the subject. Gandhi reiterated his stance on the use of Satyagraha in Palestine in 1947.
Vegetarianism and food
Stephen Hay argues that Gandhi in London looked into numerous religious and intellectual currents. He especially appreciated how the theosophical movement encouraged a religious eclecticism and an antipathy to atheism. Hay says the vegetarian movement had the greatest impact for it was Gandhi's point of entry into other reformist agendas of the time. The idea of vegetarianism is deeply ingrained in Hindu and Jain traditions in India, especially in his native Gujarat. Gandhi was close to the chairman of the London Vegetarian Society, Dr. Josiah Oldfield, and corresponded with Henry Stephens Salt, a vegetarian campaigner. Gandhi became a strict vegetarian. He wrote the book The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism and wrote for the London Vegetarian Society's publication. Gandhi was somewhat of a food faddist taking his own goat to travels so he could always have fresh milk. Gandhi noted in his autobiography that vegetarianism was the beginning of his deep commitment to Brahmacharya; without total control of the palate, his success in Brahmacharya would likely falter. "You wish to know what the marks of a man are who wants to realize Truth which is God", he wrote. "He must reduce himself to zero and have perfect control over all his senses-beginning with the palate or tongue."
Fasting
Gandhi used fasting as a political device, often threatening suicide unless demands were met. Congress publicized the fasts as a political action that generated widespread sympathy. In response the government tried to manipulate news coverage to minimize his challenge to the Raj. He fasted in 1932 to protest the voting scheme for separate political representation for Dalits; Gandhi did not want them segregated. The government stopped the London press from showing photographs of his emaciated body, because it would elicit sympathy. Gandhi's 1943 hunger strike took place during a two-year prison term

for the anticolonial Quit India movement. The government called on nutritional experts to demystify his action, and again no photos were allowed. However his final fast in 1948, after India was independent, was lauded by the British press and this time did include full-length photos. Alter argues that Gandhi's fixation on diet and celibacy were much deeper than exercises in selfdiscipline. Rather, his beliefs regarding health offered a critique of both the traditional Hindu system of ayurvedic medicine and Western concepts. This challenge was integral to his deeper challenge to tradition and modernity, as health and nonviolence became part of the same ethics. A core Gandhian value that came in for much bantering and ribald music hall humour in Britain was his nakednessChurchill publicly called him "half-naked." and his experiments in "brahmacharya" or the elimination of all desire in the face of temptation. In 1906 Gandhi, although married and a father, vowed to abstain from sexual relations. In the 1940s, in his mid-seventies, he brought his grandniece Manubehn to sleep naked in his bed as part of a spiritual experiment in which Gandhi could test himself as a "brahmachari." Several other young women and girls also sometimes shared his bed as part of his experiments. Gandhi discussed his experiment with friends and relations; most disagreed and the experiment ceased in 1947. Religious studies scholar Veena Howard argues that Gandhi made "creative use":130 of his celibacy and his authority as a mahatma "to reinterpret religious norms and confront unjust social and religious conventions relegating women to lower status.":130 According to Howard, Gandhi "developed his discourse as a religious renouncer within Indias traditions to confront repressive social and religious customs regarding women and to bring them into the public sphere, during a time when the discourse on celibacy was typically imbued with masculine rhetoric and misogynist inferences.... his writings show a consistent evolution of his thought toward creating an equal playing field for members of both sexes and even elevating women to a higher planeall through his discourse and unorthodox practice of brahmacharya.":137 Gandhi's educational policies reflected Nai Talim ('Basic Education for all'), a spiritual principle which states that knowledge and work are not separate. It was a reaction against the British educational system and colonialism in general, which had the negative effect of making Indian children alienated and careerbased; it promoted disdain for manual work, the development of a new elite class, and the increasing problems of industrialisation and urbanisation. The three pillars of Gandhi's pedagogy were its focus on the lifelong character of education, its social character and its form as a holistic process. For Gandhi, education is 'the moral development of the person', a process that is by definition 'lifelong'. Nai Talim evolved out of the spiritually oriented education program at Tolstoy Farm in South Africa, and Gandhi's work at the ashram at Sevagram after 1937. After 1947 the Nehru government's vision of an industrialized, centrally planned economy had scant place for Gandhi's village-oriented approach. Rudolph argues that after a false start in trying to emulate the English in an attempt to overcome his timidity, Gandhi discovered the inner courage he was seeking by helping his countrymen in South Africa. The new courage consisted of observing the traditional Bengali way of "self-suffering" and, in finding his own courage, he was enabled also to point out the way of 'Satyagraha' and 'ahimsa' to the whole of India. Gandhi's writings expressed four meanings of freedom: as India's national independence; as individual political freedom; as group freedom from poverty; and as the capacity for personal self-rule. Gandhi was a self-described philosophical anarchist, and his vision of India meant an India without an underlying government. He once said that "the ideally nonviolent state would be an ordered anarchy." While political systems are largely hierarchical, with each layer of authority from the individual to the central government have increasing levels of authority over the layer below, Gandhi believed that society should be the exact opposite, where nothing is done without the consent of anyone, down to the individual. His idea was that true self-rule in a country means that every person rules his or herself and that there is no state which enforces laws upon the people. This would be achieved over time with nonviolent conflict mediation, as power is divested from layers of
Celibacy
Nai Talim, basic education
Swaraj, self-rule

hierarchical authorities, ultimately to the individual, which would come to embody the ethic of nonviolence. Rather than a system where rights are enforced by a higher authority, people are selfgoverned by mutual responsibilities. On returning from South Africa, when Gandhi received a letter asking for his participation in writing a world charter for human rights, he responded saying, "in my experience, it is far more important to have a charter for human duties." A free India did not mean merely transferring the established British administrative structure into Indian hands. He warned, "you would make India English. And when it becomes English, it will be called not Hindustan but Englishtan. This is not the Swaraj I want." Tewari argues that Gandhi saw democracy as more than a system of government; it meant promoting both individuality and the self-discipline of the community. Democracy was a moral system that distributed power and assisted the development of every social class, especially the lowest. It meant settling disputes in a nonviolent manner; it required freedom of thought and expression. For Gandhi, democracy was a way of life.
Gandhian economics
A free India for Gandhi meant the flourishing of thousands of self-sufficient small communities who rule themselves without hindering others. Gandhian economics focused on the need for economic selfsufficiency at the village level. His policy of "sarvodaya" called for ending poverty through improved agriculture and small-scale cottage industries in every village. Gandhi challenged Nehru and the modernizers in the late 1930s who called for rapid industrialization on the Soviet model; Gandhi denounced that as dehumanizing and contrary to the needs of the villages where the great majority of the people lived. After Gandhi's death Nehru led India to large-scale planning that emphasized modernization and heavy industry, while modernizing agriculture through irrigation. Historian Kuruvilla Pandikattu says "it was Nehru's vision, not Gandhi's, that was eventually preferred by the Indian State." After Gandhi's death activists inspired by his vision promoted their opposition to industrialization through the teachings of Gandhian economics.
Literary works
Gandhi was a prolific writer. One of Gandhi's earliest publications, Hind Swaraj, published in Gujarati in 1909, is recognisedWikipedia:Avoid weasel words as the intellectual blueprint of India's freedom movement. The book was translated into English the next year, with a copyright legend that read "No Rights Reserved". For decades he edited several newspapers including Harijan in Gujarati, in Hindi and in the English language; Indian Opinion while in South Africa and, Young India, in English, and Navajivan, a Gujarati monthly, on his return to India. Later, Navajivan was also published in Hindi. In addition, he wrote letters almost every day to individuals and newspapers. Gandhi also wrote several books including his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Gujart " "), of which he bought the entire first edition to make sure it was reprinted. His other autobiographies included: Satyagraha in South Africa about his struggle there, Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, a political pamphlet, and a paraphrase in Gujarati of John Ruskin's Unto This Last. This last essay can be considered his programme on economics. He also wrote extensively on vegetarianism, diet and health, religion, social reforms, etc. Gandhi usually wrote in Gujarati, though he also revised the Hindi and English translations of his books. Gandhi's complete works were published by the Indian government under the name The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi in the 1960s. The writings comprise about 50,000 pages published in about a hundred volumes. In 2000, a revised edition of the complete works sparked a controversy, as it constituted large number of errors and omissions. The Indian government later withdrew the revised edition. The word Mahatma, while often mistaken for Gandhi's given name in the West, is taken from the Sanskrit words maha (meaning Great) and atma (meaning Soul). Rabindranath Tagore is said to have accorded the title to Gandhi. In his autobiography, Gandhi nevertheless explains that he never valued the title, and was often pained by it.
Legacy and depictions in popular culture

Followers and international influence
Gandhi influenced important leaders and political movements. Leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States, including Martin Luther King, James Lawson, and James Bevel, drew from the writings of Gandhi in the development of their own theories about non-violence. King said "Christ gave us the goals and Mahatma Gandhi the tactics." King sometimes referred to Gandhi as "the little brown saint." Antiapartheid activist and former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, was inspired by Gandhi. Others include Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Steve Biko, and Aung San Suu Kyi. In his early years, the former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela was a follower of the non-violent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. Bhana and Vahed commented on these events as "Gandhi inspired succeeding generations of South African activists seeking to end White rule. This legacy connects him to Nelson Mandela...in a sense Mandela completed what Gandhi started." Gandhi's life and teachings inspired many who specifically referred to Gandhi as their mentor or who dedicated their lives to spreading Gandhi's ideas. In Europe, Romain Rolland was the first to discuss Gandhi in his 1924 book Mahatma Gandhi, and Brazilian anarchist and feminist Maria Lacerda de Moura wrote about Gandhi in her work on pacifism. In 1931, notable European physicist Albert Einstein exchanged written letters with Gandhi, and called him "a role model for the generations to come" in a later writing about him. Einstein said of Gandhi: Mahatma Gandhi's life achievement stands unique in political history. He has invented a completely new and humane means for the liberation war of an oppressed country, and practised it with greatest energy and devotion. The moral influence he had on the consciously thinking human being of the entire civilized world will probably be much more lasting than it seems in our time with its overestimation of brutal violent forces. Because lasting will only be the work of such statesmen who wake up and strengthen the moral power of their people through their example and educational works.We may all be happy and grateful that destiny gifted us with such an enlightened contemporary, a role model for the generations to come. Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood. Lanza del Vasto went to India in 1936 intending to live with Gandhi; he later returned to Europe to spread Gandhi's philosophy and founded the Community of the Ark in 1948 (modelled after Gandhi's ashrams). Madeleine Slade (known as "Mirabehn") was the daughter of a British admiral who spent much of her adult life in India as a devotee of Gandhi. In addition, the British musician John Lennon referred to Gandhi when discussing his views on nonviolence. At the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in 2007, former U.S. Vice-President and environmentalist Al Gore spoke of Gandhi's influence on him. President of the United States Barack Obama in an address to a Joint Session of the Parliament of India said that: "I am mindful that I might not be standing before you today, as President of the United States, had it not been for Gandhi and the message he shared with America and the world."Barack Obama in an address to a Joint Session of the Parliament of India, 2010 Obama in September 2009 said that his biggest inspiration came from Mahatma Gandhi. His reply was in response to the question 'Who was the one person, dead or live, that you would choose to dine with?'. He continued that "He's somebody I find a lot of inspiration in. He inspired Dr. King with his message of nonviolence. He ended up doing so much and changed the world just by the power of his ethics."

Time Magazine named The 14th Dalai Lama, Lech Wasa, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Aung San Suu Kyi, Benigno Aquino, Jr., Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela as Children of Gandhi and his spiritual heirs to non-violence. The Mahatma Gandhi District in Houston, Texas, United States, an ethnic Indian enclave, is officially named after Gandhi. In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly declared Gandhi's birthday 2 October as "the International Day of Non-Violence." First proposed by UNESCO in 1948, as the School Day of Non-violence and Peace (DENIP in Spanish), 30 January is observed the School Day of Non-violence and Peace in schools of many countries In countries with a Southern Hemisphere school calendar, it is observed on 30 March.
Global holidays
Awards
Time magazine named Gandhi the Man of the Year in 1930. Gandhi was also the runner-up to Albert Einstein as "Person of the Century" at the end of 1999. The Government of India awards the annual Gandhi Peace Prize to distinguished social workers, world leaders and citizens. Nelson Mandela, the leader of South Africa's struggle to eradicate racial discrimination and segregation, is a prominent nonIndian recipient. In 2011, Time magazine named Gandhi as one of the top 25 political icons of all time. Gandhi did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize, although he was nominated five times between 1937 and 1948, including the first-ever nomination by the American Friends Service Committee, though he made the short list only twice, in 1937 and 1947. Decades later, the Nobel Committee publicly declared its regret for the omission, and admitted to deeply divided nationalistic opinion denying the award. Gandhi was nominated in 1948 but was assassinated before nominations closed. That year, the committee chose not to award the peace prize stating that "there was no suitable living candidate" and later research shows that the possibility of awarding the prize posthumously to Gandhi was discussed and that the reference to no suitable living candidate was to Gandhi. When the 14th Dalai Lama was awarded the Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi."
World Farm Animals' Day Film and literature
Gandhi's birthday is chosen as a commemoration for the billions of non-human animals that are slaughtered by the human farming industry each year. The practice started in 1983 Mahatma Gandhi has been portrayed in film, literature, and in the theatre. Ben Kingsley portrayed him in the 1982 film Gandhi, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Gandhi is a central figure in the 2006 Bollywood comedy Lage Raho Munna Bhai. The 1996 film The Making of the Mahatma documents Gandhi's time in South Africa and his transformation from an inexperienced barrister to recognised political leader. Anti-Gandhi themes have also been showcased through films and plays. The 1995 Marathi play Gandhi Virudh Gandhi explored the relationship between Gandhi and his son Harilal. The 2007 film, Gandhi, My Father was inspired on the same theme. The 1989 Marathi play Me Nathuram Godse Boltoy and the 1997 Hindi play Gandhi Ambedkar criticized Gandhi and his principles. Several biographers have undertaken the task of describing Gandhi's life. Among them are D. G. Tendulkar with his Mahatma. Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in eight volumes, and Pyarelal and Sushila Nayyar with their Mahatma Gandhi in 10 volumes. There is another documentary, Mahatma: Life of Gandhi, 18691948, which is 14 chapters and six hours long. The 2010 biography, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India by Joseph Lelyveld contained controversial material speculating about Gandhi's sexual life. Lelyveld, however, stated that the press coverage "grossly distort[s]" the overall message of the book.
Current impact within India
India, with its rapid economic modernization and urbanization, has rejected Gandhi's economics but accepted much of his politics and continues to revere his memory. Reporter Jim Yardley notes that, "modern India is hardly a Gandhian nation, if it ever was one. His vision of a village-dominated economy was shunted aside during his lifetime as rural romanticism, and his call for a national ethos of personal

austerity and nonviolence has proved antithetical to the goals of an aspiring economic and military power." By contrast Gandhi is "given full credit for Indias political identity as a tolerant, secular democracy." Gandhi's birthday, 2 October, is a national holiday in India, Gandhi Jayanti. Gandhi's image also appears on paper currency of all denominations issued by Reserve Bank of India, except for the one rupee note. Gandhi's date of death, 30 January, is commemorated as a Martyrs' Day in India. There are two temples in India dedicated to Gandhi. One is located at Sambalpur in Orissa and the other at Nidaghatta village near Kadur in Chikmagalur district of Karnataka. The Gandhi Memorial in Kanyakumari resembles central Indian Hindu temples and the Tamukkam or Summer Palace in Madurai now houses the Mahatma Gandhi Museum.
Mahavarat Vidyalankar (also spelled Mahavrat) S/O Har Dayal Singh Saini was a prominent Indian Freedom Fighter and scholar. He was a close advisor and comrade of Subhas Chandra Bose and a founding member of the All India Forward Bloc, a leftist party which held the most uncompromising position on India's Independence. Contrary to the position of the Indian National Congress, Forward Bloc demanded complete Independence from the British Empire and severance from the British Commonwealth. Great Britain was so threatened by the party that they outlawed the party and arrested all of its leaders including Mahavarat Vidyalankar, who was imprisoned in the famous Red Fort prison.
Mahavarat Vidyalankar
Early life
As a young man Mahavarat Vidyalankar was sent by his father to study Engineering at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. There he came in contact with many leftist scholars and was highly influenced by Marxist philosophy. After obtaining his degree he secretly left England to further study Marxist-Leninism in Russia. He spent almost 17 years in Russia and became a scholar of the Russian language translating Russian literature into Hindi. During that time he travelled extensively to Mongolia and translated literature from Mongolian to Hindi as well. While in Mongolia he came in contact with Borjigin Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj a Mongolian poet and writer. They became close friends and later he translated many of Natsagdorj's works into Hindi.[27] He returned to India with a unique understanding of imperialism and believed that only socialism could give India meaningful and true Independence.
Later Lifer
After working many years with Congress members he met Subhas Chandra Bose and sharing a common vision for India's future and a common understanding of India's needs the two formed a close friendship. He convinced Bose to travel to Russia for assistance in India's struggle. Mahavarat Vidyalankar was also a writer of many books on both politics and Sanskrit. As a scholar of Sanskrit, Russian, and Mongolian and he has also translated many books from these languages into Hindi and English. He died in 1965. He had 3 children all of whom eventually left India.
Homeland
Mahavarat Vidyalankar lived in Pahari Dhiraj in Old Delhi. His house, known as "Dayal Vas" named after his father Har Dayal Singh Saini was known to be the hub and hiding placed of many prominent Indian Freedom Fighters such as Sheel Bhadra Yajee, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Sarojini Naidu, Mahavir Tyagi, and many I.N.A heroes such as Dhillon and Sehgal. In fact, when he was imprisoned by the British it was Sarojini Naidu who arranged for his daughter, Indira, to be sent to live in Hyderabad with her son Jayasuria and her daughter-in-law, as her mother had died many years earlier from tuberculosis. The historic house is still standing in Old Delhi, in Mandir Wali Gali .
Children
His three children all emigrated to America in the 50's and lived in Northern Pennsylvania. Indira Kumari, his only daughter became a professor of Botany and Biology in Scranton. She married Gokran Nath Srivastrava who was a prominent professor of Physics at the University of Scranton and one of the first Physicists to work with the electron microscope.

Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh (December 1, 1886April 29, 1979) was a Hindu freedom fighter, journalist, writer, and Marxist revolutionary social reformist of India. He was popularly known as the Aryan Peshwa. Pratap was born to the Thenua gotra Jat Hindu princely family of state of Mursan in the Hathras District of Uttar Pradesh on December 1, 1886. He was the third son of Raja Ghanshyam Singh. At the age of three, Raja Harnarayan Singh of Hathras adopted him as his son. He was married to a Jat Sikh family of Jind princely state of Haryana (then in Punjab) in 1902 while studying in college. She died in 1925. In 1895 Pratap was admitted to the Government High School in Aligarh, but soon he switched over to the Muslim Anglo-Oriental Collegiate School. Here he received his education under British Headmasters and Muslim teachers all from Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College Aligarh founded by Sir Sayed Ahmad Khan. With this background he shaped into a true representative of secular society. To bring India to a par with European countries, Pratap established the free indigenous technical institute Prem Mahavidyalaya in his palace at Vrindavan on May 24, 1909. In spite of objections from his father-in-law, Pratap went to Kolkata in 1906 to attend the Congress session, and met several leaders involved in the Swadeshi movement, deciding to promote small industries with indigenous goods and local artisans. He was very much against social evils, especially untouchability. To eliminate this evil he dined with a Tamata family of Almora in 1911, and a Mehtarfamily of Agra in 1912. He was influenced by the speeches of Dadabhai Naoroji, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Maharaja Baroda, and Bipin Chandra Pal, helping to make him a patriot who turned Swadeshi. He started the movement to burn the foreign-made clothes in his state. After trying sincerely to liberate his motherland, on December 20, 1914 at the age of 28 Pratap left India for the third time, with a desire to liberate India from the clutches of British colonial rule by obtaining outside support. In January 1915 on learning about his presence in Switzerland, Chatto alias Virendranath Chattopadhyay of the newly-founded Berlin Committee (Deutsche Verein der Freunde Indien) requested Von Zimmermann of the German foreign ministry to get Pratap invited to Berlin. Already Chatto had sent a first mission to Afghanistan led by the Parsi revolutionary Dada Chanji Kersasp. Informed about Chatto's activities from Shyamji Krishnavarma and Lala Hardayal, Pratap insisted on meeting the Kaiser Wilhelm II personally; Chatto rushed to Geneva to tell Pratap of the Kaiser's eagerness to see him, and they went to Berlin together. Har Dayal, too, followed them. Decorating Pratap with the Order of the Red Eagle, the Kaiser showed his awareness of the strategic position of the Phulkian States (Jind, Patiala and Nabha), if India was invaded through the Afghan frontier. According to Pratap's wish, he was taken to a military camp near the Polish border to gain a firsthand knowledge of army policies and functioning. On 10 April 1915 accompanied by the German diplomat Von Hentig, Maulavi Barkatullah and a few other members, Pratap left Berlin, with due credentials from the Kaiser. In Vienna the delegation met the Khedive of Egypt who during a conversation with Pratap expressed his desire to see the end of the British Empire. On their way, in Turkey they had an excellent visit with Enver Pasha, son-in-law of the Sultan and Defense Minister, who appointed a trusted military officer to guide them. They were received by Rauf Bey with a detachment of 2000 soldiers at Ispahan. They reached Kabul on 2 October and were greeted by Habibullah, having a number of discussions.
Mahendra Pratap
Education
Freedom movement
Provisional Government of India
On December 1, 1915 during World War I (his 28th birthday) Pratap established the first Provisional Government of India at Kabul in Afghanistan as a Muslim government-in-exile of Free Hindustan, with himself as President, Maulavi Barkatullah as Prime Minister, and Maulavi Abaidullah Sindhi as Home Minister, declaring jihad on the British. Anti-British forces supported his movement, but because of

obvious loyalty to the British, the Amir kept on delaying the expedition to overthrow British rule in India. Due to his revolutionary ideas Pratap had a good relationship with Lenin, who invited him to Russia after its liberation and welcomed him. By this time he had become a real threat to British rule in India, and the British Government of India put a bounty on his head, attacked his entire estate, and declared him a fugitive, causing him to flee to Japan in 1925.
In Japan
In Japan he published the World Federation Monthly Magazine in 1929, trying his best to utilize the world war situations to free India. During Second World War he stayed at Tokyo in Japan and continued his movement from World Federation Centre to free India from British rule. He formed the Executive Board of India in Japan in 1940 during Second World War. At last the British government relented and Raja Mahendra Pratap was permitted to come to India from Tokyo with respect. He was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1932. He returned to India after 32 years on the ship City of Paris, and landed at Madras on 9 August 1946. On reaching India he immediately rushed to Wardha to meet Mahatma Gandhi. After independence also he continued his struggle for transfer of power to the common man. His vision was that the Panchayat Raj was the only tool which can put real power in the hands of people and reduce corruption and bureaucratic hurdles. He was the member of the second Lok Sabha in 1957-1962. He was elected as an independent candidate from Mathura constituency. He was president of Indian Freedom Fighters Association. He was president of All India Jat Mahasabha also. He died on 29 April 1979.
Back to India
References
Dr. Vir Singh (2004), My Life History: 1986-1979, Raja Mahendra Pratap, ISBN 81-88629-24-3 "Mahendra Pratap (Raja)" in Dictionary of National Biography, 1974, Vol.III,pp1011 Les origines intellectuelles du mouvement d'indpendance de l'Inde (1893-1918) by Prithwindra Mukherjee, Paris, 1986 (PhD Thesis)
External links
http://www.rajamahendrapratap.net/index.html http://www.punjabiamericanheritagesociety.com/paf/paf2000/ghadar_ki_goonj.html http://www.punjabilok.com/misc/freedom/history_of_the_ghadar_movement8.htm Mahendra Pratap materials at the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) Mahmud al-Hasan (Urdu: , Mamdu'l-asan) also known as Mahmud Hasan (1851 30 November 1920) was a Deobandi Sunni Muslim scholar who was active against British rule in India. For his efforts and scholarship he was given the title "Shaykh al-Hind" ("Shaykh of India") by the Central Khilafat Committee. Mahmud al-Hasan was born in 1851 in the town of Bareilly (in modern Uttar Pradesh, India) to a family with a scholarly background. His father, Maulana Muhammad Zulfiqar Ali, was a scholar of the Arabic language and worked in the education department of the British East India Company's administration in the region. As a child, Mahmud al-Hasan was with his father in Meerut during the Mutiny of 1857. Mahmud al-Hasan received a traditional Islamic education with a strong emphasis on the study of Islam, the Persian language and Urdu. His primary education was under Maulana Mongeri, Maulana Abdul Latif, and later, his uncle, Maulana Mahtab Ali. While Mahmud al-Hasan was studying the books Mukhtasar al-Quduri and Sharh-i-Tahdhib, Darul Uloom Deoband was opened. His father sent him to the newly established school, where he was the first student. He completed his basic studies in 1286 AH (1869/1870), after which he lived in attendance to Muhammad Qasim Nanotvi, with whom he studied hadith. Afer that, he studied higher level books under his father. He graduated from Darul Uloom
Mahmud al-Hasan
Early life

Deoband in 1873. In 1874, Mahmud al-Hasan joined Darul Uloom Deoband as a teacher.
Revolutionary activities
Although focused on his work at the school, Maulana Mahmud al-Hasan developed an interest in the political environment of British India and the world. When the Ottoman Empire entered World War I against the British Empire, Muslims across the world were concerned of the future of the Sultan of Ottoman Empire, who was the caliph of Islam and spiritual leader of the global Muslim community. Known as the Khilafat struggle, its leaders Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali organised protests across the country (see: partitioning of the Ottoman Empire). Mahmud al-Hasan was fervently active in encouraging Muslim students to join the movement. Hasan organised efforts to start an armed revolution against British rule from both within and outside India. He launched a programme to train volunteers from among his disciples in India and abroad who joined this movement in a large number. The most eminent among them were Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi and Maulana Mohammad Mian Mansoor Ansari. Sending Sindhi to Kabul and Ansari to the North-West Frontier Province to mobilize popular support and recruit volunteers, Mahmud al-Hasan himself travelled to Hijaz to secure Turkish support. Obtaining the Turkish governor Ghalib Pasha's signature on a declaration of war against the British, Mahmud al-Hasan planned to return to India via Baghdad and Baluchistan to start the rebellion. The plan, referred to as the Silk Letter Conspiracy, however, was captured by Punjab CID, and he was arrested in Mecca. He was imprisoned in Malta, Malta exiles, for more than three years before his release in 1920. Mahmud al-Hasan's endeavours won him the admiration not only of Muslims but also of Indians across the religious and political spectrum. He became an icon of the Indian independence movement, and was given the title of "Shaykh al-Hind" by the Central Khilafat Committee. Upon his release, Mahmud al-Hasan returned to India to find the nation on the verge of revolt over the Rowlatt Acts. Hasan issued a fatwa making it the duty of all Indian Muslims to support and participate with Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, who had prescribed a policy of non-cooperation mass civil disobedience through non-violence. He laid the foundation stone of the Jamia Millia Islamia, a university founded by Indian nationalists Hakim Ajmal Khan, Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari to develop an institution independent of British control. He also wrote a well known translation of the Quran, the commentary of which was written by one of his students, Shabbir Ahmad Usmani. Mahmud al-Hasan died on 30 November 1920.
Legacy
Tafsir-e-Usmani
He co-wrote an Urdu exegesis (Tafsir) of the Qur'an, called Tafsir-e-Usmani, with Shabbir Ahmad Usmani. Makhdoom Mohiuddin (Urdu: , Telugu : ) or Abu Sayeed
Makhdoom Mohiuddin
Mohammad Makhdoom Mohiuddin Huzri (February 4, 1908 August 25, 1969) was an Urdu poet and Marxist political activist of India. He was a distinguished revolutionary Urdu poet. On February 4 and 5, 2008, a slew of programmes were organized in Hyderabad to mark his birth centenary celebrations in which top writers like Vice-Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya, Vibhuti Narain Rai, scientists like P. M. Bhargava and Vice-Chancellor of Hyderabad University Syed E. Hasnain participated.
Early life
Mohiuddin was born in the village of Andole in Medak district in the princely state of Hyderabad, India. He earned a masters degree in 1936 from Osmania University. He founded the Progressive Writers Union in Hyderabad and was active with the Comrades Association and the Communist Party of India, and at the forefront of the 19461947 Telengana Rebellion against the Nizam of the erstwhile Hyderabad state.
Career
Makhdoom grew up to become an Urdu language poet of incredible versatility. He is best known for his collection of poems Bisat-e-Raqs (The Dance Floor), for which he was awarded the 1969 Sahitya Akademi

Award in Urdu. His published works include an essay "Tagore" and his Poetry, a play, Hosh ke Nakhun (Unravelling), an adaptation of Shaw's Widowers' Houses, and a collection of prose essays. Bisat-e-Raqs is a complete collection of Makhdoom's verse including his two earlier collections Surkh Savera (The Red Dawn) 1944, and Gul-e-Tar (The Dewdrenched Rose) 1961 He is known as Shayar-e-Inquilab' ('Poet of the Revolution'). His ghazals and lyrics have been used in many Hindi films. Among his notable is the romantic ghazal: Ek Chameli Ke Mandve Taley and Phir Chhidi Baat, Baat PhooloN Ki.
Personal life
Makhdoom had a mixed childhood. His father died when he was just six years of age and his mother got married to another man. His paternal uncle took over his guardianship and ensured that he gets the best education and treated him fairly. Makhdoom was very kind to children and loved them a lot, since he got orphaned at very young age probably he very well knew the feelings of a child. He got his school and religious education in his village and later on moved to Hyderabad city for higher education (Bachelors and Masters Degree). He settled down in Hyderabad after completing his higher education and got involved in the fight for "Free India" against the British rule . He was the founder of Communist Party in Andhra Pradesh (southern) Indian state. Therefore he is also called as "Freedom Fighter" of India and has also rallied against the then Monarchy of the Princely State of Hyderabad to merge with India. The then ruler of Hyderbad, Mir Osman Ali Khan (Nizam) had ordered to kill him for awkening people for freedom and get rid of the Nawab or the princely rule. He got married to Rabia Begum and had three children with her. The elder among his children is daughter Zakia Begum followed by two sons. The first son is Nusrath Mohiuddin, ex-employee of State Bank of Hyderabad, a well-known poet, a member of CPI, secretary of Insaf Tehreek. The second son is Zafar Mohiuddin, works for Singareni Coal minses, Hyderabad. He was also a member of Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council for 5 years and the most popular political leader across India. He had travelled almost all European countries that exist under the umbrella of Russia and also visited China. He also met Yuri Gagarin when he visited Moscow and wrote a poem on him. His collection of poems, ghazals is titled "Besat E Raqs" and can be obtained at any book shops in Hyderabad. Mallappa Dhanshetty (Marathi: ) (1898 January 12, 1931) was an Indian freedom fighter and revolutionary. The British Government had imposed a "Shoot on sight" order under martial law in Solapur in 1930 to suppress the freedom movement. Mallappa, along with Shrikisan Laxminarayan Sarada, Abdul Rasool Qurban Hussain, and Jagannath Bhagwan Shinde, defied the martial law. In order to quell the freedom movement, the Government sentenced all four to death. Manager Singh (Jan 20, 1920 - October 28, 1993), widely known as Malviya of Dwaba or JanNayak (leader of the common people), was an Indian independence activist and political leader. He is especially remembered for promoting the educational system and his anti-corruption efforts. He was elected five times as the MLA from Dwaba constituency. Manager Singh was born in Karmanpur village of Ballia District of Uttar Pradesh. Mangilal Arya (1918 23 August 1992) was an Indian freedom fighter and social reformer.
Mallappa Dhanshetty
Manager Singh
Mangilal Arya
Early life
Shri Mangilal Arya was born in 1918 at village Ararka, Ajmer district, Rajasthan. Arya, whose actual birth name was Mangilal Goyal, was the son of Sultan Goyal. He completed his basic education up to 10th standard in the local area of Ajmer district. Later on at the age of 16 he married Gulab Devi.

Career
Arya devoted his career to Arya Samaj, the Hindu reform movement of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, working as a freedom fighter and social reformer. He took part in the satyagraha organized by Arya Samaj in Hyderabad from 1938 to 1939. After India won independence in 1947, Arya continued to work as a social reformer for Arya Samaj in Ajmer, and was given the title of "Mantri Ji".
Awards and honours
On 15 August 1988 Arya was awarded "Tamra Patra" by Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India. From 1986 to 1992 while Arya was alive he was honoured as Freedom Fighter for Indian Independence by the District collector of Ajmer on every Republic Day and Independence Day celebration at Sardar Patel Stadium in Ajmer. After his death his wife Gulab Devi was honoured for her husband's contribution for Independence of India. Manikuntala Sen (Bengali: )(c. 1911-1987) was one of the first women to be active in the Communist Party of India. She is best known for her Bengali-language memoir Shediner Kotha (published in English as In Search of Freedom: An Unfinished Journey), in which she describes her experiences as a woman activist during some of the most turbulent times in India's history.
Manikuntala Sen
Early life
Manikuntala Sen was born in Barisal in what is now Bangladesh, an area known for the activities of the nationalist jatra playwright Mukunda Das. Ashwini Kumar Dutta, a prominent nationalist leader and educationist, was a friend of the family and an early influence on her, as was Jagadish Chandra Mukhopadhyay, principal of Brajamohan College, then affiliated with the University of Calcutta, where Manikuntala Sen got her BA degree; Mukhopadhyay especially encouraged her to develop her mind. Sen met Gandhi when he visited Barishal in 1923, and was particularly impressed by the way he exhorted a group of prostitutes to work towards liberation. The family stopped wearing imported fabrics and patronised the Bangalakshmi Mills, owned and run by Indians and an icon of the nationalist movement. Barishal was then a hotbed of revolutionary politics, with the extremist Anushilan Samiti very active. Sen took up teaching at a girls' school where she met Shantisudha Ghosh, a member of the Jugantar party, whose circle read and shared the writings of Marx and Lenin. Initially sceptical, Sen became more and more influenced by their ideas, even more so when she saw Shantisudha Ghosh taken in for questioning and harassed by the police. Sen persuaded her family to allow her to go to Calcutta to complete her studies and, she secretly hoped, to make contact with the Communist Party.
Studenthood in Calcutta
At that time Hindu bhadralok communities in Bengal were more liberal about sending their daughters long distances to study further; Sen found herself part of a group of young girls like herself living in the city for the first time. She stayed in a hostel and soon got over her initial awe at being in the big city. The conservatism and narrowmindedness of the established families she sometimes encountered rather disgusted her, and she also writes with remarkable frankness for her time about the harassment that she and her friends often faced from men. Through her friend Bimalpratibha Devi she became acquainted with leaders of the Mahila Shakti Sangha and several prominent Congress women; this nurtured her nascent feminism and inspired her to think about the need for change in women's position in society. She made contact with Soumyendranath Tagore's Revolutionary Communist Party of India. The 'real' Communist Party of India, part of the Third International was then underground, and after much searching she eventually discovered that its headquarters were in fact in Barishal.
Early experiences as a communist
Sen's parents were initially ambivalent about her involvement with the party, as it was then regarded as a dangerous group of rebels wanted by the authorities, but shortly after she became a communist in 1939, Sen took her mother to a meeting addressed by Biswanath Mukherjee. His impassioned speech converted

her mother to the cause and for a few days she could talk of nothing else. Sen took the opportunity to ask that she be allowed to travel (alone in the company of young male activists) to another meeting. Reluctantly she was given permission. Living on a nominal party stipend, from 1942 Sen began to travel the country, staying in small villages and addressing the people. She describes how the men would shun her because she was a woman, and the women, in purdah, stayed away because she was a 'leader' and the equivalent of a man. Much patience and tact were required to overcome this barrier.
World War II and after
The year 1943 saw a devastating famine sweep over Bengal, caused by the loss of Burmese rice and the dislocations of war. A cyclone also devastated part of Midnapore district. Sen began relief work there and spent most of the war years travelling the districts helping destitute women. In 1947 India attained Independence; a few months later the Communist Party of India was outlawed and Sen was jailed in 1948. She remained in custody till 1951, and was released to find the Party embroiled in controversy and her beloved Barishal now part of East Pakistan. She withdrew somewhat from the ideological debates dividing Indian communism and increased her work for various feminist organisations such as the Women's International Democratic Federation and the All India Women's Conference. She had come to realise that the Party had integral biases against women and that she would not rise in its hierarchy. Around this time she met her future husband, the Kashmiri Jolly Kaul, also a Party activist. She was elected to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly from the Kalighat constituency in 1952, campaigned for the Hindu Code Bill and clashed with rightwing leaders such as Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.
War with China
The war with China in 1962 brought to a head the various disagreements in the Communist Party of India, and led to a split, with the Indian government conducting a short-lived crackdown on those who continued to support China. Kaul and Sen were unable to bear the thought of choosing between the CPI and the new Communist Party of India (Marxist). Kaul resigned, and though Sen stayed within the party she withdrew from active participation. The couple moved to Delhi but returned within a few years to Calcutta, where Sen died on 11 September 1987.
Sources
Manikuntala Sen, In Search of Freedom: An Unfinished Journey, (Calcutta: Stree, 2001). Translated from the Bengali by Stree. Original Bengali title Shediner Katha (Calcutta: Nabapatra Prakashan, 1982).
Manubhai Shah
Manubhai Shah (Hindi: , Gujarati: ; 1915-2000) was a leading Indian statesman and politician who played an important political and developmental role in independent India for over half a century. A veteran Freedom Fighter, Manubhai participated in the Indian Independence Movement and was imprisoned for three years. He was highly active in the movement in the 1940s, having already participated in the freedom struggle as early as 1932 when he was 17 years old. He was a Member of Saurashtra Legislative Assembly from 1948 to 1956 and served as Minister of Finance, Planning and Industries, in the State Government, and was Union Cabinet Minister in the governments of Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi having held portfolios such as industries, commerce and foreign trade. An active social and political worker, Manubhai was an institution builder and initiated a wide range of educational, social, infrastructure, research and industrial institutions in India. Quick witted, having an acutely sharp memory with facts and figures at his finger tips, he was a brilliant orator, planner and executor of outstanding ideas and concepts on economic development of India. Journalists and the public were attentive to his every word, his speeches in the Indian Parliament and other public forums having become legendary. On his demise in December 2000, the then President of India K R Narayanan called Manubhai Shah the architect of Modern India. The very foundation of modern Indian industry was laid by him, and he was therefore also called the builder of Indian Industry, and as such was the first to liberalise and push the building of Industry in India years before the so-called liberal wave of 1992.

Early years
Manubhai was born in the village of Wadhwan Camp (present day Surendranagar), a British Camp as the third of ten children to Mansukhlal, a Thanedaar in charge of 101 villages, and Iccha Baa. Though he came to be known as Manubhai, at birth his family had named him Manharlal. His paternal grandfather was Maneklal Shah, a school teacher who taught Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi for many years in middle and high school years, also giving him private coaching as Gandhi was having difficulty with his studies. Manubhai was to later become associated with Mahatma Gandhi when in 1932 he joined the Indian movement for independence against the British. Manubhai went to jail for three years for his participation in the Quit India Movement. Having had his primary education in Wadhwan, Gujarat in Gujarati medium of instruction, Manubhai then studied for a few years at NTM High School in Wadhwan in English medium. He completed his matriculation examination (year 10 of school) in the town of Lakhtar, Gujarat living with his maternal uncle as his father was posted as Thanedaar in a village where there was no school. The family with ten children and one adopted child, daughter of Mansukhlals brother, was large with modest means but was managed efficiently by Iccha Baa who was a feisty lady of high thinking and great principles and spirits. Like many women of her generation, she only wore a white khadi saree since the 1940s till her death in 1983 at the age of 90. Mansukhlal was of enlightened views and if the women in the family tried to knead the dough at home to make paapad, he was known to throw the dough away saying the family wives were already overburdened with domestic duties and women from poorer families needed to earn a living by selling paapad and should be given an opportunity to make them and sell them for profit. Manubhai inherited many of the values of fairness, equality and justice from his parents displaying these principles throughout his career as statesman and politician. His acts of honesty as a politician are legendary. He did not allow his sisters husband Dr Rasiklal Kamdar who was a medical surgeon to be posted as the Chief Surgeon to the Government Hospital in Bhavnagar in erstwhile Saurashtra in case the decision of the Board could be influenced by Manubhais position as Minister in the Saurashtra Government. He did not permit his wifes brother Chandrakant Mehta who was a chartered accountant to audit companies which may have needed any kind of official action from Manubhai in his capacity as Union Minister. One example had become very famous in the 1950s when Manubhai requested his wife not to accept donation for Triveni Kala Sangam an arts institution she was involved in building in Delhi; the interested donor was SASMIRA an independent research association of the silk industry which was likely to require Manubhais assistance as he was the Minister in charge of textiles at the time. Another well known incident is where he had made a large purchase for his employer the Delhi Cloth Mills, and the supplier of the items asked him how his personal commission should be paid, to which his reply was that any amount that the supplier would consider as payment for his services should be deducted from the total bill as the employer already paid him a monthly salary for his services. After completing his intermediate from Samaldas College in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, Manubhai obtained a B. Sc. (Honours) degree from Baroda College of Science (present day Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda). He studied chemical engineering in Mumbai at University of Mumbais University Department of Chemical Technology (UDCT) (present day Institute of Chemical Technology) and received a B. Tech. degree in 1937 funding his way through by teaching part-time. Manubhai was a brilliant student and always stood first amongst his peers, frequently winning gold medals and recognition, including a gold medal from the UDCT, Mumbai for his achievements in B.Tech. Later he went on to study economics on his own and was proficient in socialist as well as liberal economics. He was the pioneer of the first phase of industrialisation and liberalisation in independent India. Though born in a Jain family, encouraged by his mother he studied and fully memorised the Bhagavad Gita which he frequently recited in family gatherings. After completing his chemical and textile engineering degree, Manubhai was very keen to pursue further studies in a subject he loved very much. He was a natural and brilliant mathematician and had been considering going to Cambridge University to obtain a tripos in mathematics. But in 1936, Sir Lala Shri Ram (Lalaji) of the Delhi Cloth Mills (DCM), one of the largest textile businesses in India, interviewed Manubhai at the UDCT and, through the persistent efforts of the then Director of UDCT, persuaded Manubhai to join DCM.

Manubhai married Vidyaben who he had met in 1940 at a social function. Their marriage was delayed by five years due to their active involvement in the Indian Freedom Movement and also Manubhai was imprisoned by the British Colonial Authority being released from jail in 1945. They have one daughter, three sons and four grandchildren. Vidyaben Shah is a leading social activist known for her work with children, women and the elderly in India since the 1940s. She was Vice-President and then President of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) between 1973 and 1977, and Chairperson of the Central Social Welfare Board (CSWB) between 1995 and 1998. Both Manubhai and Vidyaben have been institution builders and some of the leading institutions in Gujarat and Delhi were jointly built by them. While being activists and working for the society, they did not ignore their duties to the family, and the large extended family was always invited to their home, sometimes with fifty people living under one roof for several months at a time, with Vidyaben kneading a gigantic dough to make chapati for fifty family members for each of the two meals a day. In 1936 when Manubhai was studying at the UDCT in Mumbai, Sir Lala Ram (Lalaji) of the Delhi Cloth Mills (DCM) arrived at the UDCT on a recruitment mission and interviewed Manubhai for a post of textile engineer at DCM. After an hour long interview, Manubhai declined to go to Delhi as he had ideas to study further. Lalaji however persisted through the then UDCT Director Dr R B Foster to recruit Manubhai who relented and joined DCM in 1937. Very soon Manubhai displayed his entrepreneurial abilities and sharp intelligence. Having thoroughly researched and deeply understood the chemical and other processes of textile and garment production from raw material to yarn to looms to garment making, he contributed to the setting up of a research unit which was the forerunner to what is now the Shriram Institute for Industrial Research and several modern units of production and exports including exports of USHA which has been an international brand of sewing machines. Manubhais contribution to Indian industry was growing in leaps when the call from Gandhi came for the youth and young professionals to court arrest and join the Quit India Movement in 1941. Manubhais career as engineer and entrepreneur came to an abrupt halt as he was drawn to the call for country and plunged into the Movement though after assuring Lalaji that he would be back to DCM after India gained independence. At that moment no one could predict how long the Freedom Movement would take to force the British to leave India. Manubhais first action was to lead a workers strike in DCM as part of civil disobedience. When he was imprisoned Lalaji sent him his salary on the basis of paid leave but he refused to accept it. Manubhais activities as a Freedom Fighter were manifold depending on the need of the hour. Through the Freedom Movement he had become close friends with Biju Patnaik (later to have become Chief Minister of Orissa) and Hemati Nandan Bahuguna (later Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh), and one night along with Mr Patnaik and Mr Bahuguna, Manubhai climbed the statue of George V at India Gate in New Delhi in an attempt to demolish it. They did not manage to achieve their goal but symbolically broke the nose of the statue. Ultimately the statue was removed from under the canopy after India became independent and to this day the canopy remains vacant. Such a symbolic activity apart, Manubhai did not support any violent actions, such as once during the movement he strongly opposed the blowing up of the Delhi power station. Other activities in the freedom struggle involved gathering people for demonstrations to impress upon the British that they should leave India, seeking co-operation of Indian peoples to close shops, markets and factories in protest, and participating in discussions and preparing documents on building a modern India. Manubhai managed to avoid arrest for some time, wearing a beard and disguising himself and carrying out underground activities. He also worked underground very closely with the freedom fighters Aruna Asaf Ali and Jayaprakash Narayan. Subsequently Manubhai was imprisoned for three years. First he was kept in a cell for three months at the Red Fort in Delhi where severe torture was routine, such as freedom fighters being made to lie down on slabs of ice. For the rest of the time he was in Ferozepur Jail in Punjab where he went on a fast to protest against the offensive food being served to certain categories of prisoners. In 1945 after his release from jail Manubhai married Vidyaben in Surendranagar at the NTM High School grounds requesting her to bring with her only two pairs of clothes, following which he returned to work for DCM, though with Lalaji's permission he continued to take part in activities of the Independence
Career as engineer interspersed with Freedom Struggle

Movement while working to earn for the growing family. During his professional as well as political career Manubhai also wrote extensively either directly to Indian entrepreneurs giving detailed plans on how they could set up industries or published numerous newspapers articles on issues concerning the economy and the industry. Once indirectly through writing a newspaper article he conveyed to Lalaji that Lalajis employees were not trained or paid well, at which point Lalaji himself requested Manubhai to start a training scheme for DCM employees, which he promptly did. Manubhai was also generous and caring towards his fellow employees, a trait which made Lalaji appoint him as Chairman of the first ever in the county, DCM Employees Welfare Benefit Fund which also encouraged labour participation in management. Lalaji treated Manubhai as a son and was in the process of offering him a partnership in DCM when suddenly in early 1948 a few months after Indian independence, Manubhais career with DCM came to an end.
State politics
In early 1948 Sardar Vallabbhai Patel wrote to Lalaji to release Manubhai to work for the then new Saurashtra Government (part of present day Gujarat). With much reluctance and after much persuasion, Lalaji agreed and Manubhai moved to Rajkot and joined the Saurashtra Government and served as the Finance, Planning and Industries Minister, youngest of all the ministers in the State Cabinet. In the Saurashtra Government, the team of four ministers Dhebarbhai, Rasikbhai, Nanubhai and Manubhai became famous as "Dhebar Rasik chhe, Manu sauthi Nano chhe" (Dhebarbhai is jolly and Manubhai is the youngest). In the interim Manubhai also took on the work of Ministry of Agriculture. He remained a Member of Saurashtra Legislative Assembly from 1948 to 1956. Manubhais career as a politician saw a number of major pioneering developments in independent India. He plunged into development work, looking at a wide range of areas, from finance and budgeting, to infrastructure building including roads, to institution building, to crop protection, to industrial growth. He had conceived of a range of ideas on development and the rebuilding of India while in Ferozepur Jail from where he used to write to Vidyaben about his ideas. After some doing these letters used to be smuggled out of the jail. His ideas were always full of practical wisdom as he believed that the first task of rebuilding India was to provide opportunities and the necessary resources to all the people of India to enable them to contribute to the process of development and to reduce the economic and social gap between the different strata of Indian society. Under his entrepreneurial decisions and rapid implementation programmes, Saurashtra saw the building of a wide network of pucca (tar) roads, protection of crops wherever there were problems with infection and destruction of crops, encouraging the start up of cottage, small and medium industries side by side with supporting large business houses, and creation of jobs and employment. Manubhai would personally sprinkle manure to protect crops, oversee construction of infrastructure and provide ideas and business cases to young entrepreneurs wishing to start new businesses. Having worked hard in the field and perhaps having exerted too hard in prison where bodily torture was routine, Manubhai fell ill and had to take rest for three months from his political duties while in Saurashtra. However, after a brief interlude, he came back with greater vigour to continue with his mission of rebuilding Saurashtra. Manubhai Mansukhlal Shah, MMS, as he was affectionately written about was also called the Maker of Modern Saurashtra (MMS). Apart from his political and executive duties, Manubhai also supported his wife Vidyaben in carrying out her activities with children and women. Vidyaben Shah became the first President of the Saurashtra Council for Child Welfare. Together they invited Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi to Rajkot to inaugurate the first Balbhavan (Childrens Movement) in the country. With the work of many supporters then and over the years Balbhavan has become a highly successful childrens institution in the country from which many others have drawn inspiration and ideas. Fifty years on, in 2002 industrialists and traders in Rajkot which was the capital city of the erstwhile State of Saurashtra worried about the declining and recessionary performance in industrial exports, and were still praising and admiring the "sustained efforts made by late Manubhai Shah" and the golden period in industry under him. As at 2013, in the streets of Rajkot, there are people who tell stories of how Manubhai helped to concretise an idea or to hasten the building of a school or a business or a hospital or a park.

National politics
Manubhai Shah was a Member of Second and Third Lok Sabha from 1957 to 1967 representing Madhya Saurashtra Parliamentary Constituency of erstwhile Bombay State and Jamnagar Parliamentary Constituency of Gujarat. He was also a Member of Rajya Sabha during 1956-57 and from 1970 to 1976. An obituary in the Indian Parliament called him a renowned parliamentarian and an able administrator, [who] served with distinction in the Union Council of Ministers. During his tenure, he held various portfolios as Union Minister including Industries, International Trade and Commerce. Jawaharlal Nehru Prime Minister of India was keen to invite Manubhai to join the central Government of India in Delhi as he had seen Manubhais work in Saurashtra. While Nehru had a vision for mega projects for India to modernise it, Manubhai not only had a vision but also the drive to build the modern India through mega as well as cottage and small industry projects which he had dreamt of doing while incarcerated during the Quit India Movement. As in Saurashtra, Manubhai now plunged into development work for the country as a whole, and his activities as institution builder were ceaseless, including in the arts, higher education and the industrial sector. He was instrumental in the setting up of nearly 400 industrial estates in the country. He was also responsible over five decades for promoting industrial and economic development and setting up of industries of all sizes in India, heavy, medium scale, small scale, cottage and village industries in private as well as public sectors. The 1974 Nobel Prize winner in Economics Gunnar Myrdal quotes Manubhai in his book Asian Drama: The policy has always been pragmatic [as] the prime consideration has always been rapid growth rather than doctrinaire division of spheres. There is so much to be done that whoever can do it always gets encouragement. He was a visionary and a man of action, quick to take decisions and even quicker to implement them and made his officers work very hard. His contribution to heavy industries was particularly noteworthy. Myrdal again quotes Manubhai: Long run growth of income will proceed fastest if instead of trying to do everything at the same time, we concentrate initially on basic and heavy industry". An eminent Indian industrialist once said of Manubhai that, "Often Mr Manubhai Shah, without waiting for us to go to him, would himself come to us and ask us to state our problems, after which he would immediately take up those problems and find solutions for them. Such co-operation cut through many of the official procedures and gave us solutions much earlier than can normally be had". Manubhai had the courage to differ with his ministerial colleagues or even the Prime Minister if it became necessary in matters of policy and principles. On one occasion when he was Foreign Minister he had a disagreement with the Commerce Minister on Industrial Licensing Policy, but there was also respect for one another and the matter was resolved with Prime Minister Nehru. Another time when Manubhai opposed the move on devaluation of the rupee, there were differences with the Finance Minister and Manubhai resigned his portfolio as Industry Minister, later to be persuaded by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to take back his resignation. Manubhai was the pioneer of the first phase of liberalisation in independent India, having set up necessary institutional facilities and having made the process simple and easy to set up industry, to acquire licenses and permits, even for entrepreneurs with limited resources at hand who would otherwise have needed to meet many pecuniary and procedural challenges. He would invite small entrepreneurs as well as established industrialists personally to set up innovative and essential businesses and industrial plants, even if there was disapproval from institutions like the Reserve Bank of India. The Maruti small car project was his brainchild. His most notable pioneering initiative was the setting up of the Small Industries Development Organisations and the Small Industries Service Institutes (SISI) which he was determined to create in every State and District of the country (which are now also known as Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises & Development Institutes (MSME-DI)). The first prototypes of these he had already set up as a Minister in the Saurashtra government, such as in Bhavnagar and Rajkot, where facilities were provided for starting up small units, procuring loans, providing technical and product advice, skills training, exhibiting and selling of produce through creation of emporiums, bringing together interested potential small entrepreneurs and organising seminars, and even setting up of industrial townships, such as the Bhavnagar Small Industries Association and the Rajkot Bhaktinagar Udyognagar which became forerunners to the SISIs and the Industrial Estates Manubhai helped set up across the

country when he became Union Minister for Industries. As such these ideas of economic and industrial development were already conceived by Manubhai when he was in Ferozepur jail. He was also responsible for promoting extensive foreign trade throughout the world and in later years of his life particularly in Commonwealth of Independent States countries (formerly part of USSR) for which he founded the India CIS Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCCI). Among the institutions that Manubhai was instrumental in creating are Jawaharlal Nehru University having also suggested its name, Cottage Industries Emporium in New Delhi, the State Trading Corporation (STC), the Metals and Minerals Trading Corporation (MMTC), Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation, Gujarat Industrial Investment Corporation, Gujarat Industrial Finance Corporation, Gujarat State Finance Corporation, M P Shah Medical College Jamnagar, Akhil Bharat Gujarati Samaj, Triveni Kala Sangam, Sardar Patel Vidyalaya School. He also served as Chairman of National Research Development Corporation, Banking Commission, Central Board of Rehabilitation, Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation and Gujarat Industrial Investment Corporation. Manubhai also pushed and helped to expand, modernise and professionalise the Amul Dairy in Anand, Gujarat on an international scale and design. He was instrumental in initiating many of the industrial units that are situated along the lengths and breadths of the Faridabad Industrial Estate, Okhla Industrial Estate, Vapi Industrial Estate, Ankleshwar Industrial Estate, Bhavnagar District Small Industries, and Rajkot Udyog Nagar. Manubhai also worked extensively on the idea of improving industrial productivity in India. He was instrumental in setting up the National Productivity Council. In Asian Drama, Myrdal quotes Manubhai as saying: "Practically all of us can do in half the time what we are doing at the moment. This silver lining to the situation, if it could be so called, is that almost extraordinary increase in productivity could be achieved practically in no time at no cost, with almost everybody better off than before. We have only to turn our faces to the sun to see the light".
Expanding the trade sector
Manubhais contribution to the world of trade was significant and which also set a trend for further development of exports and widening of foreign trade in India. Immediately upon taking over office as Union Minister in New Delhi in 1956, he began setting up trade bodies to increase exports and make easy the bringing into the country imports of essential goods. During the tenure in office of Premier Khrushchev from 1956 to 1964, Manubhai worked closely with Khrushchev to effect a massive augmentation in trade between India and the Soviet Union. Manubhai's work with the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade throughout the decades until his death is legendary. He was President of the Indian Council of Foreign Trade in the 1970s. After he had left active politics, he continued to labour to expand trade with other countries. His most notable contribution to international trade is his setting up in 1986 of the INDIA CIS Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCCI) as Founder President. With his vast experience in the field of trade and his networking skills with leaders worldwide, the ICCCI flourished and businessmen from India and the independent States of the erstwhile USSR were brought together for augmenting trade between India and the CIS States.
Welfare of Gujaratis
In 1967 Manubhai became Chairman of Akhil Bharat Gujarati Samaj committee to set up an all India Society of Gujaratis and bring together all the State level Gujarati Samaj from across India and those throughout the world in other countries. Even today visitors to Shri Delhi Gujarati Samaj are made welcome at the entrance by a huge photograph of the founders of this great institution Union Minister Shri Manubhai Shah and Shrimati Vidyaben Shah seen with Prime Minister Pandit Nehru and other eminent citizens of India.
Concern for justice
Manubhai Shah was deeply concerned about communal politics that divided the country in 1947. He wanted a united India that treated all its people equally and wrote extensively on the issues and wrote a book on the condition of Muslims in India. During the freedom movement because of his name and his activities, he was mistakenly known to the British as a Muslim and was hunted as one. The British

became aware of their error only on his capture and subsequent imprisonment.
Books and publications
Manubhai Shah, 1959, Committee Appointed by the Government of India to Consider Certain Matters Connected with the Development of the Salt Industry, Published by the Government of India. Manubhai Shah, 1964, Trade Trends and Policies: Address at the Export-Import Advisory Council Meeting. Published by Directorate of Commercial Publicity, Ministry of Commerce, Government of India. Manubhai Shah, 1967, Commerce, Issues 1-11, Vora & Company Publishers Pvt Limited. Manubhai Shah, 1967, Management by Competence, Vora & Company Publishers Pvt Limited. Manubhai Shah, 1968, Developing countries and UNCTAD: (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), 1st ed, Vora & Company Publishers Pvt Limited. Manubhai Shah, Chairman, 1968, Report of the Working Group on Developmental, Control and Regulatory Organisations, Indian Administrative Reforms Commission. Manubhai Shah, 1969, Report on the Reserve Bank of India, Working Group on the Reserve Bank of India, Indian Administrative Reforms Commission. Manubhai Shah, 1970, The new role of Reserve Bank in India's economic development, Vora & Company Publishers Pvt Limited. Manubhai Shah, 1974, Indian Parliamentary Committee 'A' on Draft Fifth Five Year Plan (Policy, Resources, and Allocations), Lok Sabha Secretariat. Manubhai Shah, 1974, Synopsis of Proceedings of the Indian Parliamentary Committee A on Draft Fifth Five Year Plan (Policy, Resources and Allocations). Manubhai Shah, 1976, Report of the Joint Committee, Indian Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Bill of 1973, Rajya Sabha Secretariat. Maulana Shaukat Ali was an Indian Muslim nationalist and leader of the Khilafat movement. He was the brother of Maulana Mohammad Ali.
Maulana Shaukat Ali
Early life
Shaukat Ali was born in 1873 - in Rampur state in what is today Uttar Pradesh or known as Lucknow. He was educated at the Aligarh Muslim University. He was extremely fond of playing cricket, captaining the university team. Mahatma Gandhi brought him into politics. Ali served in the civil service of United Provinces of Oudh and Agra from 1896 to 1913.
Khilafat Movement
Shaukat Ali helped his brother Mohammed Ali publish the Urdu weekly Hamdard and the English weekly Comrade. In 1919, while jailed for publishing what the British charged as seditious materials and organizing protests, he was elected as the first president of the Khilafat conference. He was re-arrested and imprisoned from 1921 to 1923 for his support to Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress during the Non-Cooperation Movement (1919-1922). His fans accorded him and his brother the title of Maulana. In March 1922, he was in Rajkot jailNehru Report-While still a supporter of Congress and its non-violent ethos, Ali emulated some of his colleagues in also providing support to the revolutionary independence movement. To this end, he supplied guns to Sachindranath Sanyal. Along with his brother, Shaukat Ali grew disillusioned with the Congress and Gandhi's leadership. Maulana Md.Ali Jauhar was in jail, so Maulana Shaukat along with Begum Md. Ali led Khilafat Committee at All Parties Conference on Nehru Report with 30 representatives of Central Khilafat Committee which included Md. Ifran,Mohiuddin Ajmery,Yasin Noori,S.K.Nabibullah,Gulsher Khan,Md. Ibrahim,Manzoor Ali Taib,Musa Khan,Azad Subhani,Md. Jafri,Lal Badshah,Abdul Majid Daryabadi,Rauf Pasham,Md. Usman,Abdul majid,Doctor Maghfoor Ahmad Ajazi,Hashim Abdur Rahman,Khwaja Ghyasuddin,Elahi Bakhsh,Abdul Mohasin Md. Sajjad,Sulaiman Qasim,Ali Md. Jalaluddin,Abdul Rauf,Fateh Md.,Md. Jan,Ahmad Bhamriwala,Abdul Ahad Khan,Himaytullah,Md. Bakhsh and Zahid Ali. He opposed the 1928 Nehru Report, demanding separate electorates for Muslims and
Nehru Report

finally Khilafat Committee rejected Nehru Report. Attended the first and second Round Table Conferences in London. His brother died in 1931, and Ali continued on and organized the World Muslim Conference in Jerusalem. In 1936, Ali joined the All India Muslim League and became a close political ally of and campaigner for Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the future founder of Pakistan. He served as member of the Central Assembly from 1934 to 1938. He travelled over the Middle East, building support for India's Muslims and the struggle for independence. Shaukat Ali died in 4 January 1939.
External links
Video Clip of Maulana Shaukat Ali from University of South Carolina---In order to view this clip you must download QuickTime Player. Maulana Shaukat Ali materials in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) Maurice Frydman (Maurycy Frydman or Maurycy Frydman-Mor in Polish), aka Swami Bharatananda (1901 in Warsaw, Poland - 9 March 1977, India), was an engineer and humanitarian who spent the later part of his life in India. He lived at the ashram of Mohandas Gandhi and took an active part in India's fight for independencenotably in helping to draft a new constitution for the State of Aundh that became the Aundh Experiment. He was a Polish Jew who subsequently converted to Hinduism.
Maurice Frydman
Biography
Frydman came to India in the late 1930s as a Jewish refugee from Warsaw. A successful capitalist, he was managing director of the Mysore State Government Electrical Factory in Bangalore. Eventually he was won over by Hindu philosophy and became a sannyasi. Frydman was instrumental, along with Gandhi and the Raja of Aundh, in helping to draft the November Declaration, which handed over rule of the state of Aundh from the Raja to the residents in 1938-9. He became acquainted with one of the sons of the Raja of Aundh, and was well regarded by the Raja himself. According to the Raja's son, Apa Pant, "Frydman had great influence with my father, and on his seventy-fifth birthday he said, 'Raja Saheb, why don't you go and make a declaration to Mahatma Gandhi that you are giving all power to the people because it will help in the freedom struggle.'" As a sympathiser with the Indian independence movement, the Raja accepted this idea. Frydman wrote a draft declaration, and the Raja and his son, Apa Pant, travelled to see Gandhi in Wardha, where the Mahatma drew up a new constitution for the state. The constitution, which gave full responsible government to the people of Aundh, was adopted on 21 January 1939. This "Aundh Experiment" was a rare event in pre-independence India, where the rulers of princely states were generally reluctant to give up their power. After some initial hesitation among the populace of the state it proved to be very successful, lasting until the merger of the princely states into India in 1948. While in India, Frydman became a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and lived in his ashram, where he made the spinning wheel that Gandhi himself used. Frydman used his engineering skill to create several new types of spinning wheels for Gandhi, which piqued his interest in finding the most efficient and economical spinning wheel for India. He was close to Nehru, and was associated with Sri Ramana Maharshi and J. Krishnamurti. A longtime friend to Advaita guru, Nisargadatta Maharaj, who considered him a Jnani, Maurice Frydman died in 1976 in India, with Sri Nisargadatta by his bedside. Frydman edited and translated Nisargadatta Maharaj's tape-recorded conversations into the English-language book I Am That, published in 1973. Frydman helped Wanda Dynowska, a Polish theosophist who came to India in the 1930s, to establish a Polish-Indian Library (Biblioteka Polsko-Indyjska). The library holds a collection of books aimed "to show India to Poland and Poland to India", containing translations from Indian languages to Polish and from Polish to English. During the 2nd World War he helped with the transfer of Polish orphans from Siberia, displaced there by the Soviets after their annexation of Eastern Poland to Siberia in 1939-1941. They were moved from Siberia via Iran (with the Polish army of Gen. Wadysaw Anders) mainly to India,

Kenya and New Zealand. After 1959 he helped Wanda Dynowska with Tibetan refugees in India.
Meduri Nageswara Rao

Meduri Nageswara Rao MP Constituency Personal details Born Machilipatnam and Tenali
31 March 1910 Etukur, Guntur district Died 13 January 1998 Political party Indian National Congress Spouse(s) Musalamma Children 4; 2 sons and 2 daughters Religion Hindu Meduri Nageswara Rao (31 March 1910 13 January 1998) was an Indian independence activist, politician and Member of Parliament. He was born to Shri Venkatrayadu in Etukur, Guntur district on March 31, 1910. He was educated at A.E.L.M. High School. He has married Smt. Musalamma in 1930. They had four children; two sons and two daughters. He left studies and participated in Salt Satyagraha in 1930. He was jailed in Vellore and Alipur. He was member of Pradesh Congress Committee between 1936 to 1971 and Secretary of Guntur District Congress Committee for 10 years between 1937-1947. He was Chairman of Guntur Zilla Parishad for three terms between 1959 and 1970. He was member of Indian Council of Agricultural Research between 1951-52. He was elected as member of Madras Legislative Assembly in 1946 and Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly in 1954 and 1956. He was elected to the 5th Lok Sabha from Machilipatnam constituency in 1971 as a member of Indian National Congress. He was again elected to the 6th Lok Sabha and 7th Lok Sabha from Tenali constituency in 1977 and 1980 respectively. He was felicitated and Sahasra purna chandrodayam celebrated in 1994 under the chairmanship of Kotla Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy. He died on 13 January 1998.
Life sketch
External links
Biodata of M. Nageswara Rao at Lok Sabha website. Minocheher Rustom Masani (20 November 1905-27 May 1998), popularly known as Minoo Masani, was a politician and leader of the Swatantra Party in India. He was a member of the second, third and fourth Lok Sabha, representing Rajkot constituency in Gujarat. Masani was a Parsi from Rajkot. He was among the founders of the Indian Liberal Group, a think tank to promote Liberalism in India. A barrister trained in London, Masani joined the freedom struggle with the Quit India Movement and was drawn into the Communist Party in the 1930s. He was arrested several times by British for his participation in Indian independence movement. He was in the Nashik jail in 1930, when Jaiprakash Narayan came in contact with him and others like Prof. Dantwala, Ashok Mehta and others. He was a close friend of Jawaharlal Nehru and was also a member of Constituent Assembly of India, representing Indian National Congress. He was the one who introduced proposal for a Uniform Civil Code to be included in Constitution of India in 1947, which was rejected. However, he moved away to become a Socialist and a supporter of the mixed economy. He was one of the founders of Congress Socialist Party along with Jaiprakash Narayan. Post Independence, Masani's political conviction propelled him to support "democratic socialism" in India as it "avoided monopoly,
Minocher Rustom Masani

private or public." His public life began in the Bombay Municipal Corporation, where he was elected as Mayor in 1943. He also became a member of the Indian Legislative Assembly. In August 1960, he along with C. Rajagopalachari and N. G. Ranga formed the Swatantra Party, while international Communism was at its peak. He was one of the few politicians who opposed the nationalisation of banks by Indira Gandhi. While his Swatantra Party was India's largest Opposition group, Masani often initiated debate on finance bills and forced the Congress government to work rigorously. A collection of his speeches was published as Congress Misrule and Swatantra Alternative. He died at the age of 92 years at his home at Breach Candy. His funeral was held at Chandanwadi. He was also an author and have written many books. His first book Our India was best seller and even prescribed text book in pre-independence India. Our India (1940) Socialism Reconsidered (1944) Picture of a Plan (1945) A Plea for a Mixed Economy (1947) Our Growing Human Family (1950) Neutralism in India (1951) The Communist Party of India: A Short History (1954) Congress Misrule and Swatantra Alternative (1967) Too Much Politics, Too Little Citizenship (1969) Liberalism (1970) The Constitution, Twenty Years Later (1975) Bliss was it in that Dawn ... (1977) Against the tide (1981) We Indians (1989)
Works
Madeleine Slade (Mirabehn) (22 November 1892 20 July 1982), daughter of the British RearAdmiral Sir Edmond Slade, was a British woman who left her home in Britain to live and work with Mohandas Gandhi, the leader of the Indian independence movement. She devoted her life to human development, the advancement of Gandhi's principles and the freedom struggle in India. In doing so, Gandhi gave her the name Mirabehn, after Meera Bai, the great devotee of Lord Krishna. Mirabehn was born into an aristocratic British family in 1892. Her father was an officer in the Royal Navy who was posted in her early years as the Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies Squadron. She spent much of her childhood with her maternal grandfather who owned a large country estate and was from an early age a nature and animal lover. The other great passion of the young Mirabehn was the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. She took to the piano and concerts and even went on to become a concert manager. In 1921 she even arranged for a German conductor to lead the London Symphony Orchestra in concerts featuring Beethoven and helped bring about an end to the British boycott of German musicians that followed the First World War. She also visited Vienna and Germany to see the places where Beethoven had lived and composed his music and she read extensively on him. She read Romain Rolland's books on Beethoven and later sought and met with him at Villeneuve, where he was then living. During this meeting, Rolland mentioned about a new book of his called Mahatma Gandhi which she had not read then. Rolland described Gandhi as another Christ and as the greatest figure of the 20th century. On her return to England she read Rolland's biography of Gandhi and the book convinced her to become a disciple of the Mahatma. She wrote to Gandhi asking him if she could become his disciple and live with him in Sabarmati Ashram. Gandhi replied, inviting her over but also warning her of the ascetic discipline of the Ashram's inmates. Having
Mirabehn
Early life

made her decision, she went about training herself for all the demands of an ascetic's life in India including vegetarianism, spinning and teetotalism. That year in England, she subscribed to Young India and spent a part of her time in Paris reading the Bhagvad Gita and some of the Rigveda in French. She arrived in Ahmedabad on 7 November 1925 where she was received by Mahadev Desai, Vallabhbhai Patel and Swami Anand. This was the beginning of her stay in India that lasted almost thirty four years. Mirabehn during her stay in India went to the Gurukul Kangri to learn Hindi. Thereafter she went to Bhagwat Bhakti Ashram of Rewari established by Swami Parmanand Maharaj in order to be blessed by him. She also wrote to Mahatma Gandhi about her experiences there in Bhagwat Bhakti Ashram. Mirabehn's stay in India coincided with the zenith Gandhian phase of the freedom struggle. She accompanied Gandhi and others to the Round Table Conference in London in 1931. While on their way back from London, Mirabehn and Gandhi visited Rolland for a week and as they took his leave, Rolland gave her a book on Beethoven which he had written while she was in India. In 1960 as she began to read it, it convinced her to move to Austria and spend her remaining days in the land of Beethoven's music. The resumption of the Non Cooperation Movement in 1931 saw her being imprisoned during 1932-'33. To plead India's case she also went abroad meeting, among others, David Lloyd George, General Smuts and Winston Churchill, and visited the United States where she met Mrs. Roosevelt at the White House. Mirabehn also took an active interest in the establishment of the Sevagram Ashram and worked among the people of Odisha to resist any potential Japanese invasion non-violently in the beginning of 1942. She was arrested and detained with Gandhi in the Aga Khan Palace, Pune, from August 1942 to May 1944 where she saw Mahadev Desai and Kasturba Gandhi pass away. She was also a witness to the Simla Conference and the Cabinet Mission, the Interim Government and the Constituent Assembly, the Partition of India and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. After her release from the Aga Khan Palace, with Gandhiji's permission, she established the Kisan Ashram at a site near Roorkee. The land was donated to her by the local villagers. After Independence, she established the Pashulok Ashram near Rishikesh and a settlement named Bapu Gram and the Gopal Ashram in Bhilangana in 1952. She took to dairying and farming experiments in these ashrams and also spent a while in Kashmir. During the time she spent in Kumaon and Garhwal she observed the destruction of the forests there and the impact it was having on floods in the plains. She wrote about it in an essay titled Something Wrong in the Himalaya but her advice was ignored by the Forest Department. In the 1980s, these areas witnessed a large Gandhian environmental campaign to save the forests called the Chipko Movement. She returned to England in 1959. In 1960, she relocated to Austria and spent twenty-two years in Vienna where she died in 1982. She was awarded India's second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan in 1981.
Life in India and role in the freedom struggle
Post-independence life in India
Books by Mirabehn
Mirabehn's autobiography is titled The Spirit's Pilgrimage. She also published Bapu's Letters to Mira and New and Old Gleanings. At the time of her death she had also left behind an unpublished biography of Beethoven, the Spirit Of Beethoven.
In popular culture
Actress Geraldine James portrayed her in Richard Attenborough's film, Gandhi, which premiered several months after Madeleine Slade's death in 1982. Sudhir Kakar's Mira and the Mahatma is a fictional account on the relationship between Gandhi and Madeleine as his disciple Mirabehn.
Bibliography
Spirits Pilgrimage, by Mirabehn. Great River Books. 1984. ISBN 0-915556-13-8. New and old gleanings, by Mirabehn. Navajivan Pub. House. 1964.

References
Letters to Mirabehn, by Mahatma Gandhi. # Greenleaf Books. 1983. ISBN 0-934676-53-4. Biography from mkgandhi.org In the company of Bapu: In the just-released Mira & the Mahatma, psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar delves into the complex relationship between a remarkable Englishwoman and the man she worshiped - The Telegraph Video interview with Mirabehn Mohammad Ali Jouhar (10 December 1878 4 January 1931) was an Indian Muslim leader, activist, scholar, journalist and poet, and was among the leading figures of the Khilafat Movement. He was the sixth Muslim to become the President of Indian National Congress and it lasted only for few months. He was one of the founders of the All India Muslim League and he was also the former president of the All India Muslim League. Mohammad Ali, also known as Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar ( ), was born in 1878 in Rampur, India. He was the brother of Maulana Shoukat Ali and Zulfiqar Ali. Despite the early death of his father, Jouhar attended the Darul Uloom Deoband, Aligarh Muslim University and, in 1898, Lincoln College, Oxford University, studying modern history. Upon his return to India, he served as education director for the Rampur state, and later joined the Baroda civil service. He became a writer and orator, contributing to major English and Indian newspapers, in both English and Urdu. He launched the Urdu weekly Hamdard and English Comrade in 1911. He moved to Delhi in 1913. Jouhar worked hard to expand the AMU, then known as the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, and was one of the co-founders of the Jamia Millia Islamia in 1920, which was later moved to Delhi. Jouhar had attended the founding meeting of the All India Muslim League in Dhaka in 1906, and served as its president in 1918. He remained active in the League till 1928. He represented the Muslim delegation that travelled to England in 1919 in order to convince the British government to influence the Turkish nationalist Mustafa Kemal not to depose the Sultan of Turkey, who was the Caliph of Islam. British rejection of their demands resulted in the formation of the Khilafat committee which directed Muslims all over India to protest and boycott the government. Now accorded the respectful title of Maulana, Ali formed in 1921, a broad coalition with Muslim nationalists like Shaukat Ali, Maulana Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari and Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi, who enlisted the support of the Indian National Congress and many thousands of Hindus, who joined the Muslims in a demonstration of unity. Jouhar also wholeheartedly supported Gandhi's call for a national civil resistance movement, and inspired many hundreds of protests and strikes all over India. He was arrested by British authorities and imprisoned for two years for what was termed as a seditious speech at the meeting of the Khilafat Conference. He was elected as President of Indian National Congress in 1923. Jouhar was however, disillusioned by the failure of the Khilafat movement and Gandhi's suspension of non-cooperation in 1922, owing to the Chauri Chaura incident. He restarted his weekly Hamdard, and left the Congress Party. He opposed the Nehru Report, which was a document proposing constitutional reforms and a dominion status of an independent nation within the British Empire, written by a committee of Hindu and Muslim members of the Congress Party headed by President Motilal Nehru. It was a major protest against the Simon Commission which had arrived in India to propose reforms but containing no Indian nor making any effort to listen to Indian voices. Md.Ali was in jail.so All Parties Conference on Nehru report was represented by Shaukat Ali,Begum Md. Ali and 30
External links
Mohammad Ali Jouhar
Early life
Khilafat and political activities
Alienation from Congress

other members of Central Khilafat Committee which included Abdul Majid Daryabadi,Azad Subhani,Dr.Maghfoor Ahmad Ajazi,Abul Mohasin Md. Sajjad and others. Mohammad Ali opposed the Nehru Report's rejection of separate electorates for Muslims, and supported the Fourteen Points of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the League. He became a critic of Gandhi, breaking with fellow Muslim leaders like Maulana Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, who continued to support Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. Ali attended the Round Table Conference (The chairman being Sir Agha Khanof the Muslim delegation) to show that only the Muslim League spoke for India's Muslims. In 1921, British Government established the Court in Khalikdina Hall in karachi and punished him with two and half years imprisonment in Karachi Central Jail. Later exile to Kala Paani where he was dead on January 4, 1931 and was buried in Jerusalem according to his own wish. The inscription written on his grave near the Dome of the Rock says: Here lies al-Sayyid Muhammad Ali al-Hindi. Jouhar died at a time when the Pakistan movement had not been formed, and it is a matter of continuing debate if he would have ever supported the idea.[citation needed] Various places have been named after Jouhar. These include: Muhammad Ali Road in south Mumbai, India The Gulistan-e-Jauhar (Urdu: )neighborhood of Karachi, Pakistan Mohammad Ali Co-operative Housing Society (M.A.C.H.S.) in Karachi Johar Town in Lahore, Pakistan Jauharabad, a city in Punjab, Pakistan The Jauharabad area in Karachi Maualana Muhammad Ali mosque in Singapore Gandhi Muhammad Ali Memorial Inter College, a Senior Secondary School in Bilthera Road town of Ballia district, Uttar Pradesh, India. Mohammad Ali Jauhar University TwoCircles.net, a news website, is inspired by a quote of Mohammad Ali Jouhar. TwoCircles.net
Legacy
Quotes
"I had long been convinced that here in this Country of hundreds of millions of human beings, intensely attached to religion, and yet infinitely split up into communities, sects and denominations, Providence had created for us the mission of solving a unique problem and working out a new synthesis, which was nothing low than a Federation of Faiths... For more than twenty years I have dreamed the dream of a federation, grander, nobler and infinitely more spiritual than the United States of America, and today when many a political Cassandra prophesies a return to the bad old days of Hindu-Muslim dissensions I still dream that old dream of "United Faiths of India." Mohammad Ali From the Presidential Address, I.N.C. Session, 1923, Cocanada(now Kakinada). Mohammad Iqbal Shedai was a revolutionary who spent his entire life fighting against British imperialism. The best part of his life was spent in self-exile in Asian and European countries away from his homeland .
Mohammad Iqbal Shedai
Early life
He was born in 1888 in Pura Hairanwala an outskirt of Sialkot city. His father, Ch. Ghulam Ali Bhutta was a teacher of Science, Mathematics and English language in Scotch Mission High School. Ch. Ghulam Ali Bhutta always took pride in being a teacher of Allama Muhammad Iqbal the Philosopher Poet of the Sub-continent. Shedai graduated from Murray College Sialkot.
Political struggle
From 1914 he participated in politics under guidance of Maulana Muhammad Ali Jouhar and Maulana Shaukat Ali. He joined Anjuman Khadami Kaaba, organized by the Ali brothers. Soon he became

Shedai e Kaaba. Throughout India there were only nine Shedais and Muhammad Iqbal Shedai was one of them. In 1915, he went to Hoti Mardan, where he taught for sometime in the local government school. Soon he was externed from N.W.F.P. for his Anti-British stance because the British considered him dangerous for their Imperialism. In August, 1915 his movements were restricted to Pura Hairanwala, Sialkot and he was not allowed to move. In 1915 (October) the Deputy Commissioner Sialkot removed those restrictions. Next year he tried to get admission in Law College, Lahore but the Principal refused him admission, considering him dangerous for British Rule in India.
Ghadr Party
In 1918, he joined the Hindustan Ghadr Party, which stood for overthrow of British imperialism. Soon he became one of the top-most leaders of Ghadr Party
Hijrat Movement
In early 1920, Hijrat Movement started when Maulana Muhammad Ali Jouhar and Maulana Abdul Majeed Sindhi declared India as Darul Harab and exhorted Muslims to migrate to Afghanistan. Shedai took an introductory letter from Maulana Jouhar in name of Mujahid Fazl Elahie Wazirabadi then living in Chamarkand (Mohamad) to help Shedai to cross over to Afghanistan. He travelled to Haripur where he was joined by Akbar Qureshi and both reached Kabul. Thousands of Indian Muslims were already there as refugees. King Amanullah appointed Shedai as his Minister for Indian refugees. Shedais heart was pained to see the miserable plight of Indian Muslims because they lived as destitute, without work and food.
Visit to Moscow
So he decided to leave Kabul and reach Moscow, where Red Revolution had already come in 1917. Both Shedai and Akbar Qureshi had a chance to study socialism in Moscow. They were assigned the task of working for socialism and they came back to Kabul. Qureshi went back to Haripur, while Shedai went to Ankara, Turkey.
Interview with Mustafa Kamal Pasha
He sought an interview with Mustafa Kemal Atatrk, the first President of Turkish Republic and smet nn, the first Prime Minister. Both of them were full of praise for the excellent work done by Dr. Ansari and his medical mission. But they were bitter against the Indian Muslims of Indian Army, whom they considered as hirelings responsible for Turkish defeat in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria during the First World War. They expressed their disgust for the role of Arab Guerillas of Riyadh, who stabbed the Turks in the back. Mustafa Kamal Pasha had earlier defeated and routed ANZAC army and inflicted 100,000 casualties upon the enemy in the Gallipoli campaign. But he was helpless against the Indian Muslim Army of British and the Guerilla war tactics of Arabs, who were led by Lawrence of Arabia.
His struggle In Europe (Italy)
Italy had supported Indian independence movements in the 1920s and 1930s, and during World War II created the Battaglione Azad Hindoustan from Indian POWs. On March 1942 about 15 Indian volunteers were placed in Villa Marina (near Rome), and at the foundation of the "Centro I" ("I" for "Indians"), on 15 July 1942, they were 44. Their instructors were Italian officers and NCOs speaking English and sometimes that had lived in India. There was an Indian political commissar and consulent: Mohamed Iqbal Sheday. On 3 Aug. were formed a command squad and three fusilers platoon (but with the manpower of a squad), but in Sept., with the arrival of about 200 new volunteers, were formed: 4 fusiliers platoons 3 machineguns platoons 1 parachters platoon (55 men, sent to Tarquinia for training) On 1 Oct. the platoons (except the para) were united into a fusiliers company and a machineguns company. On 22 Oct. the "Centro I" (except the para) was sent to Tivoli for intensive training, and the following day was renamed "Battaglione Hazad Hindostan". Its strength (without the 55 para) was the following: Italians: 21 officers, 12 NCOs, 34 soldiers Indians: 5 NCOs, 185 soldiers. Realising the potentiality of Indian revolutionaries abroad as propaganda material for the purpose of weakening Western Colonialism in the East, Mussolinis government gave facilities just before the war to two Indians to carry on anti-British propaganda. They were Iqbal Shedai and Sardar Ajit Singh. Both of them had, of course, different political and ideological outlooks. Shedai had kept his links with the panText : Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License | Source: Wikipedia: Compiled by www.gktoday.in 187 | P a g e

Islamic movements and was in favour of independence for Muslim countries. On the other hand, Sardar Ajit Singh had been deported from India in 1908 and since then he had been fighting for the liberation of India along with other members of the Ghadr Party. He had come from Brazil and at first took up a teaching assignment at Naples. After sometime, he began propaganda work which was mainly directed towards the soldiers of the British Indian army in North Africa. They were instigated to desert and not to fight for the British. It is not easy to determine the basis for Shedais position in Italy, but it is known that from 1933 onwards, the Italian Foreign Ministry accepted his advice as regards Muslims in India and the Middle East. At the beginning of war, his advice became indispensable for the Italians and he along with Ajit Singh carried on the propaganda from Radio Himalaya. Shedai became a dangerous rival for Bose, when Bose tried to seek cooperation of the Italians. His position is best summarized by Trott who met him in 1941. He wrote: The driving force in the entire Indian and partly in the oriental activities of the Italian External Ministry is the Indian Iqbal Shedai, who is known in Berlin. He enjoys the fullest confidence of all Italian authorities concerned. Shedai and Bose meetings in Italy Martellos book dwells at length on the rivalry that developed in Italy and Germany between the endeavours of Chandra Bose and Mohammed Iqbal Shedai to further attention and support towards the Indian cause. In fact, partly because of Netajis choice to give priority to seeking German support (in consideration of its stronger position within the Axis) Iqbals position in Italy became gradually more important, so as to become the principal point of reference to Italys Eastern policy. Of course Chandra Bose kept good contacts and support of friends in the Italian Foreign Office, but Foreign Minister Ciano gradually showed mistrust towards Netaji and Italys policy in general grew more and more supportive (because of its interest in courting Arab support in the Middle East) of the Muslim element in the struggle for Indian independence. Martelli records the Bose-Shedai misunderstandings and growing rivalry in detailed reports of their meetings in Italy in MayJune 1941. A common, persuasive support by both on the need of a clear statement of support to Indias independence by the Axis emerged from a GermanItalian policy meeting in December 1941 to which Chandra Bose, Shedai and Gulam Siddiq Khan were invited to represent Indias interests. I can make the full report on this meeting, as drafted by the responsible officer in the Italian Foreign Ministry, available for the records. As it emerges from the conclusion the result of the common proddings was only a German commitment to try to have HitlerRibbentrop reconsider their cautious attitude of not acting prematurely. It might be interesting to note that, at this meeting, a new element had emerged, Japans entry into war. Both Bose and Shedai expressed their apprehensions about Japans real war aims of dominating Asia and used this as a further necessity to gain Germanys and Italys clear support for Indian national aims. External Reference 7. Bose had to cooperate (and compete) with Shedai, take his help in setting up his own radio infrastructure, even staff, and retained even the name of Shedais organization Azad Hindustan with a minor abridgement as Azad Hind.8. Shedai decided to leave for France where he landed in Marseilles, a part of France. For a decade from 1930 to 1939, he lived in Paris. He married a French lady, whom he named as Bilquis. They lived together for 10 years in Paris. Bilquis gave birth to a daughter named Shirin. The Second World War started in September 1939, Shedai was externed from Paris on plea of the British Government. His wife decided to get divorce from Shedai and migrated to London along with her daughter. That proved to be the greatest shock of his life. After externment from France, Shedai reached Luson in Switzerland. There he was introduced to the younger brother of Mussolini, the Italian Dictator. He accompanied younger Mussolini and reached Rome in 1941. Benito Mussolini permitted Shedai to work against the British from 1941 till his down-fall in 1944. Shedais work against the British imperialism was on three fronts. He organized the Azad Hind Government (in exile), established Radio Himala in Rome and recruited the Indian prisoners-of-war in Azad Hindoustan Battalion to fight against the British rule in subcontinent.
Family life

Organizations
Some details of the three organizations follow.
Azad Hind Government
The Azad Hind Government (in Exile) was established by Shedai in 1941 in Rome by approval of Benito Mussolini. Shedai was appointed as the President of this Government, which worked till 1944, when the Allies captured Sicily and then Rome. With the downfall of Mussolini, Shedai left Rome and took refuge in Milan with his Italian friends. Sardar Ajit Singh, a Sikh Revolutionary was Shedais Minister of Information and Broadcasting. In spite of the best efforts of British, they could not capture Shedai.
Radio Himalaya 1941 Rome, (Radio of Free Indian movement)
Radio Himalaya started its programs on daily basis from Rome, Italy 1941. Muhammad Iqbal Shedai, A Revolutionary, who spent his entire life fighting against British occupation of his Homeland IndiaPakistan. Shedai broadcasting almost daily over the Italian Radio Himalaya to India calling on the people to rebel against foreign rule. The British rulers of India were perturbed very much because all freedom lovers listened to those programs. The British rulers in India banned those programs but to no avail. Shedai, s listeners believe that the radio station was in India because, whether they were Moslems or Hindus, they were opposed to the occupation of their country by the British and yearned for independence. In those days only the rich could afford having a radio. Every evening the drawing rooms of the rich owners of radio were filled with people to listen to those programs. Shedai and Ajit Singh used to conduct those programs. According to an old BBC publication, a RSI shortwave service known as Radio Himalayas used to "broadcast to India in Indian languages and English and claimed to speak for an Indian liberation movement". The program had been previously broadcast from Rome and was run by an Indian Moslem revolutionary known as Iqbal Shedai. (Roger Tidy, UK): Books reviews about Radio Himalaya. India in Axis strategy: Germany, Japan, and Indian nationalists in Milan. Hauner 1981, The chief consultant on the Indian question in the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs was Muhammad Iqbal Shedai, on Free India, Shedai was broadcasting almost daily over the Italian Radio Himalaya to Afghanistan and India.The sign of the Tiger:. Rudolf Hartog The nationalist leader there who presented a dangerous challenge to Bose was the Punjabi Mohammed Iqbal Shedai, Shedai not only broadcasts daily to India over the Himalaya Radio ; he is also consulted regularly. Subhas Chandra Bose and Nazi Germany, Tilak Raj Sareen 1996. they were Iqbal Shedai and Sardar Ajit Singh. Both of them had of course different political and ideological outlooks. became indispensable for the Italians and he along with Ajit Singh carried on the propaganda from Radio Himalaya .East and west: Volume 56 Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente - 2006 Shedai was also one of the editors of the Italian clandestine Radio Himalaya, which caused so many problems for Allied intelligence owing to its repercussions on the tribes along the Durand Line ( Martelli 2002). Passage through a turbulent era: historical.. Mukund R.1982 In the French capital, Subhas Bose also met another interesting person by the name of Iqbal Shedai. He single handedly took over the task of organising what was known as a secret "Himalaya Radio Station", and broadcast daily. Buried alive: Joginder Singh1984 He ( Sardar Ajit Singh) became a prominent member of the Free India Movement in Rome and assisted Iqbal Shedai in directing that movement. ... By this time the Germans permitted Himalaya Radio to resume its broadcasting. Raj, secrets, revolution: Mihir Bose Shedai,s Azad Hindustan organisation consisted entirely of Muslims, including a relative of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and a former Foreign Minister of Afghanistan, close to ex- King Amanullah . Himalaya Radio, which now began broadcasting . India in the Second World War. H. Voigt - 1987 Shedai does not only broadcast daily from the so-called Himalaya radio to India, but is also consulted continuously in other oriental problems by the section for overseas matters. Iqbal Shedai became a dangerous rival for Bose. In silenzio gioite e soffrite : Andrea Vento 2010 Always in t he Afghan capital is finally to record the activity from 1941 to retransmission of radio programmes in the Himalayas, the phoney clandestine radio station that has the main speaker the Indian nationalist Muslim Iqbal Shedai .Im Zeichen des Tigers:. Rudolf Hartog - 1991 This was all the more important for Boss as a competitor in Italy by a Muslim named Iqbal Shedai was founded, Shedai also made radio broadcasts himalaya radio and was in centro militare India.

Manifesto of Azad Hind Government
The manifesto of Azad Hind Government was frequently put on the Radio Himala, which inspired love of freedom among all and sundry. Salient features of the Manifesto were: (a) The free and independent India will be a welfare state, providing equal opportunities of progress and development to all its citizens without any distinction of caste, creed or Religion. (b) Every Indian child will get free and compulsory education up to Matric level. The state will endeavour to get 100% literacy in shortest possible time. The syllabi will be uniform for school as well as higher levels of education. Primary Education will be provided in mother-tongue only, while secondary education will be provided in Urdu, Hindi, Bengali etc. depending upon the local and provincial requirements. (c) Every citizen of free Indian will be entitled to free medical cover in government dispensaries and hospitals. (d) Land Reforms will be introduced. Maximum land ceiling per peasant family will be 30 Acres (240 Kanals) of irrigated land and 60 Acres (480 Kanals) of Barani land. The excess land will be confiscated and re-distributed free to the landless peasants. (After 63 years of independence, the fruits of freedom have not reached the poor of either India, Bangladesh or Pakistan). Shedai was a Romantic Revolutionary and the vested interest of every society is always against such Revolutionary ideas.
Return to Pakistan
Shedai returned to Pakistan after Independence of the sub-continent. He was included in Kashmir Delegation led by Ch. Sir Zafarullah Khan. When cease-fire was declared by the U.N. in 1948; he returned to Karachi. The Brownies of Pakistan (Browns of establishment) like Ghulam Muhammad & Iskandar Mirza with their intelligence agencies pursued him doggedly wherever he went for his progressive ideas and links with progressives. So in early 1950s he went back to Italy. He became Professor of Urdu in Turin University and he taught Urdu language to the Italians for a decade. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first Education Minister of India met him in Rome and offered him to settle down in Delhi. He would get free residence in Delhi, free servants and handsome stipend. Shedai thanked Maulana Sahib and declined to accept this offer. His reply to Maulana Sahib was: I was born in Pakistan and I would like to be buried in Pakistan. Molana Mian Mohammed Abdullah Alvi was an Islamic scholar from Darul Uloom Deoband India in 1940. He was a legend of Circle Bakote who got the highest degree in Fiqh from a Islamic World University. Molana Mian Dafter Alvi was the first person who was early student of Deoband of his family. Second was his brother in law Hazrat Molana Mian Pir Atiqullah Bakoti and his younger brother Hadhrat Pir Haqiqullah Bakoti, the first member of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly in 1952.
Molana Mian Mohammed Abdullah Alvi
His ethnological background
Molana Mian Mohammed Abdullah Alvi encestors who were fundamental eliments of Alvies Movement came from Iraq to Egypt during Abbasid Caliph Haron ul Rashid. They migrated to India in 11th century and remigrated to Kashmir in 15th century. His grand grandfather Hazrat Molana Mian Naik Mohammed Alvi came in Birote in 1835 on invitation of Kamlal sub tribe of Dhund Abbasies. He and his tribe also known as Naik Mohammadal of Birote from Gondalal sub tribe of Alvi Awan. His ancestors were all highly educated Islamic Scholars of their times.
Early life
Molana Mian Mohammed Abdullah Alvi was born in 1914 to a scholarly family; his father Molana Mian Mir Ji Alvi and second wife belonged to Rahimkote, Kashmir. His step mother died in 1912 and his father was alone with his six children in Union Council Numble, Circle Bakote at his in laws house. His uncle Hazrat Molana Mian Pir Fakir-u-llah Bakoti insisted to his father that he remarry, and he wed an 18 years old lady of Kalgan Awan tribe. He was the first son of his parents, the second wife of Molana Mian Mir Ji Alvi. He was born prematurely and was very sick in his early life. His parents named him Khalilullah Alvi, but Hazrat Molana Mian Pir Fakir-u-llah Bakoti changed his name to Mohammad Abdullah Alvi in 1918.

He started health recovery immediately, changed into a slim and athletic boy. He got admission in a local Vernacular Primary School where his elder brother Molana Mian Mohammed Ismael Alvi was head teacher and Syed Fazal Husain Shah was second teacher. He went to Shaikhulbandi, Abbottabad for his religious education in 1922. Shaikhulbandi was a great religious center of the time in Hazara. He passed his Ders e Nizami syllabus there, and went to Delhi, India where he met many scholars and teachers of higher education in Islam. He enrolled in Deoband in 1928. He also joined Jamiat Ulemae-Hind in 1940 and played a positive role beside learning higher education in Islamic sciences. That time was full of revolutionary thoughts and young Alvi met with Molana Ubaidullah Sindhi, Molana Abul Kalam Azad and top leadership of his time. Molana Husain Ahmad Madani was his teacher and his point of view about freedom of India constructed his new religio political thoughts in new dimension. Molana Ubaidullah Sindhi was his ideal and he named his elder son after him. He often met Molana Ashraf Ali Thanwi who washed of his confusions related to Muslim League and Pakistan. He was also a fan of Allama Syed Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari, a religios leader of anti false Prophecies of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and participated Shah Sahib public meetings. He completed his education in 1938 and returned to Delhi where he started a job of Islamic teacher in Madrasah-i Rahimiyah, Jamia Millia Islamia and other educational institutions. Molana Mian Mohammed Abdullah Alvi was in Delhi, India when Sub Continent divided into two independent state Pakistan and India. He tried to adjust him in new born Indian state capital but he finally decided he should returned to Pakistan because the circumstances now totally changed and not favored to Muslims. He farewell to Delhi at last in September, 1948 and came to Degree city of Tharparker in Sindh, Pakistan where his elder step brother Molana Mian Mohammed Ayub Alvi was satteled. Molana Mian Mohammed Ayub Alvi helped him in adjustment there and he opened a clinic because he was qualified Herbal Doctor (Hakeem) of Ajmal Tibbia College Delhi, India in 1945. He started teaching in a local madrissa but he did not satisfy himself in a poor environment therefore he established a standard Islamic College named Jamea Alvia where managed a hostel for abroad students also free of cost. Jamea Alvia got attention of local intelligentsia and notables within a very short period and had become a center of Tehreek-e-Khatme Nabuwwat (Last Prophethood Movement) district Therparker. He worked devotionaly for Islamic cause and arrested in 1951 as a Tehreek-e-Khatme Nabuwwat activist among thousands of other workers. He freed in 1953 and came to Birote, his birth place after 30 years where his mother, brothers and sisters were satteled. He returned back to Sindh a few week later. His brother in law Hazrat Molana Mian Haqiqullah Bakoti died in 1952, elder brother Molana Mian Mohammed Ayub Alvi died in 1956 and some other domestic issues of his family disturbed him seriously, felt boredom and loneliness. He tried to change his life when he get married in September, 1958 but he returned again to his workplace. Finally in mid of 1960 he decided to handed over his Jamea Alvia to a trust, all property sold and returned to Birote forever till his death. Molana Mian Mohammed Abdullah Alvi was a thirsty fellow of his people and relative's interactions and family relations but not aware of the local social problems that faced by his people. He blindedly soled his property and left his scholarly character as well as social status in abroad more than 1,500 kilometers from his native village that possessed no values of knowledgeable person in 1960. He had taken sociofinancial responsibilities of his family but he turned to sourceless day by day because he had not planned anything before coming to Birote for his future. He have penniless in 1963 and joined a very less income source of Imamat (Leadership in religious maters) in a local masque. He taught his pupils for 25 years instead of a large and immortal religious cause. Hakim Molana Heyat Ali, a veteran social scientist, Kashmiri leader in Sindh and his close friend also insisted him to come back to his work place but he refused based on many reasons, first his 80 years old paralyzed mother, second he was father of three kids in old age and ]]thir]]dly he was tired of in last quarter of his life. He died in a road accident in Basian, Union Council Birote on 17 August 1984.
Education
Migration to Pakistan
His last 25 years in Birote

Spouse and descendants
Molana Mian Mohammed Abdullah Alvi was son in law of his primary teacher Syed Fazal Husain Shah. His marriage had occurred with Masooda Khanum on 11 September 1958 and his father in law died unfortunately two week later. Three sons among World famed journalist Qazi Mohammad Obaidullah Alvi and two daughters were his family. One son and one daughter expired in their early age. His second son Qazi Mohammad Samiullah Alvi is a teacher in local primary school in Birote and daughter Mrs. Naseer Ahmed Awan is housewife in Bhara kahu Islamabad with her family. His five grandsons and four granddaughters are living in Birote and Islamabad with their parents.
The other famous personalities of his family
Molana Mian Mohammed Abdullah Alvi was scholar of Islam from Deoband, India and gained reputation in India and in Southern Pakistan after independence. Other personalities who also won popularity and national and international reputation are many more. Molana Mian Mohammed Dafter Alvi was the first scholar of Islam from Deoband who gained knowledge directly to Molana Mahmud al-Hasan and Molana Muhammad Qasim Nanotvi, the founders of Darul Uloom Deoband. He died in November, 1908. Molana Mian Mohammed Yaqoob Alvi Birotvi was also a scholar of Islam but his fame related to his Urdu, Persian and Arabic revolutionary poetry. He was epitaph writer and poet of Jihad e Kashmir. He wrote Naghma e Jihad or Melody of Holy War during 194750. He was his elder brother and teacher in local school. He died in June 1985. His elder brother in iaw Hazrat Molana Mian Pir Haqiqullah Bakoti was also a scholar of Islam from Deoband but he died in his prime age. His younger brother Molana Mian Abdul Hadi Alvi was also a Islamic scholar and exponder of the itrrevocable code of Muslim law in Circle bakote since 1968 to his death in May 2005. His elder brother Molana Mian Mohammed Ismael Alvi was a first modern teacher of Birote and a great Soofi of his time. He was mystic diciple of Hazrat Molana Mian Pir Faqirullah Bakoti. Mosalikanti Thirumala Rao (Telugu: ) (b: 29 January 1901 - d: 1970) was Indian Freedom activist and Parliament member.
Mosalikanti Thirumala Rao
He was born to Shri Bayanna Pantulu in Pithapuram, East Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, India. He joined Indian Independence movement on the call of Mahatma Gandhi and actively participated in many activities and also jailed many a times. He was elected president of District of East Godavari Congress Committee twice. He was Member of Central Legislative Assembly, 193740; Council of States. 194547; Constituent Assembly of India 194850 and Provisional Parliament, 195052. He was elected thrice from the Kakinada constituency for 2nd Lok Sabha, 3rd Lok Sabha and 4th Lok Sabha as member of Indian National Congress and served the ministry. He was Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, Government of India between 195052. He was Lieutenant Governor of Vindhya Pradesh in 1956. He has translated the God Speaks" by Avatar Meher Baba into Telugu language. Motilal Nehru (6 May 1861 6 February 1931) was a lawyer, an activist of the Indian National Movement and an important leader of the Indian National Congress, who also served as the Congress President twice, 19191920 and 19281929. He was the founder patriarch of India's most powerful political family, the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Life Sketch
Motilal Nehru

Motilal Nehru spent the early part of childhood in Khetri, second largest thikana estate within the princely Jaipur State, now in Rajasthan, where his elder brother, Nandlal was Diwan (Chief Minister). Thereafter in 1870, when Nandlal left his job, qualified as a lawyer and started practicing English law at Agra, the family moved with him. Subsequently the High Court shifted base to Allahabad, and the family settled there. He became one of the first generation of young Hindu's to receive a Western-style college education. He passed the matriculation examination from Kanpur, and went on to attend Muir Central College at Allahabad, but failed to appear for the final year B.A. examinations. Later he qualified "Bar at law" from University of Cambridge and then enlisted as a lawyer in the English courts. Honored with Proud Past Alumni" in the list of 42 members, from "Allahabad University Alumni Association", NCR
Career
Motilal passed lawyer examination in 1883, started practicing as a lawyer at Kanpur, three years he moved to Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh., as his elder brother Nandlal already had a lucrative practice at the High Court. Here he became a barrister and settled in the city. The following year, in April 1887 his brother Nandlal died at the age of forty-two, leaving behind five sons and two daughters, thus Motilal at the age of 25 became sole bread-winner of the family. Many of Motilal's suits involved civil cases and soon he made a mark for himself in the legal profession of Allahabad. With the success of his practice, in 1900 he bought a large family home in the Civil Lines of the city, rebuilt it and named as Anand Bhavan (lit. Happy house). In 1909 he reached the pinnacle of his legal career by gaining the approval to appear in the Privy Council of Great Britain. His frequent visits to Europe, angered the Kashmiri Brahmin community as he refused to perform the traditional "prayashchit" or reformation ceremony after crossing the ocean (according to Orthodox Hinduism, one lost his caste after crossing the ocean, and was required to perform certain rites to regain caste). He was the first Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Leader, and a leading daily published from Allahabad. On February 5, 1919 he launched a new daily paper, the Independent, as a counterblast to the Leader, which was much too liberal for Motilal's standard and articulate thought in 1919. He started on the path to become wealthy among the few leaders of the Indian National Congress. Under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi in 1918, Nehru became one of the first to transform his life to exclude western clothes and material goods, adopting a more native Indian lifestyle. To meet the expenses of his large family and large family homes (he built Swaraj Bhavan later), Nehru had to occasionally return to his practice of law. Motilal Nehru twice served as President of the Congress Party, once in Amritsar (1919) and the second time in Calcutta (1928). Elected to preside over the Amritsar Congress (December 1919), Motilal was in the centre of the gathering storm which pulled down many familiar landmarks during the following year. He was the only front rank leader to lend his support to non-cooperation at the special Congress at Calcutta in September 1920.The Calcutta Congress (December 1928) over which Motilal presided was the scene of a head-on clash between those who were prepared to accept Dominion Status and those who would have nothing short of complete independence. A split was averted by a via media proposed by Gandhiji, according to which if Britain did not concede Dominion Status within a year, the Congress was to demand complete independence and to fight for it, if necessary, by launching civil disobedience. He was arrested during the Non-Cooperation Movement. Although initially close to Gandhi, he openly criticized Gandhi's suspension of civil resistance in 1922 due to the murder of policemen by a riotous mob in Chauri Chaura in Uttar Pradesh. Motilal joined the Swaraj Party, which sought to enter the Britishsponsored councils. In 1923, Nehru was elected to the new Central Legislative Assembly of British India in New Delhi and became leader of the Opposition. In that role, he was able to secure the defeat, or at least the delay, of Finance bills and other legislation. He agreed to join a Committee with the object of promoting the recruitment of Indian officers into the Indian Army, but this decision contributed to others going further
Political career

and joining the Government itself. In March 1926, Nehru demanded a representative conference to draft a constitution conferring full Dominion status on India, to be and enacted by the parliament. This demand was rejected by the Assembly, and as a result Nehru and his colleagues left the Assembly and returned to the Congress. The entry of Motilal's glamorous, highly-educated son Jawaharlal Nehru into politics in 1916, started the most powerful and influential Indian political dynasty. When in 1929, Motilal Nehru handed over the Congress presidency to Jawaharlal (Jawaharlal was not elected but had Gandhi's backing), it greatly pleased Motilal and Nehru family admirers to see the son take over from his father. Jawaharlal had opposed his father's preference for dominion status, and had not left the Congress Party when Motilal helped found the Swaraj Party. Motilal Nehru chaired the famous Nehru Commission in 1928, that was a counter to the all-British Simon Commission. Nehru Report, the first constitution written by Indians only, conceived a dominion status for India within the Empire, akin to Australia, New Zealand and Canada. It was endorsed by the Congress Party, but rejected by more nationalist Indians who sought complete independence, and by many Muslims who didn't feel their interests, concerns and rights were properly represented.[citation needed]
Nehru report
Personal life
Motilal Nehru married Swaroop Rani,a Kashmiri Brahmin. His eldest son Jawaharlal was born in 1889, followed by two daughters, Sarup (later Vijayalakshmi Pandit) and Krishna (later Krishna Hutheesing) born in 1900 and 1907 respectively. Motilal Nehru's age and declining health kept him out of the historic events of 1929-1931, when the Congress adopted complete independence as its goal and when Gandhi launched the Salt Satyagraha. He was arrested and imprisoned with his son; but his health gave way and he was released. In the last week of January 1931 Gandhiji and the Congress Working Committee were released by the Government as a gesture in that chain of events which was to lead to the Gandhi-lrwin Pact. Motilal had the satisfaction of having his son and Gandhiji beside him in his last days. On February 6, 1931 he died. Motilal Nehru is largely remembered for being the patriarch of India's most powerful political dynasty which has since produced three Prime Ministers. One of his great-great-grandsons, Rahul Gandhi, is a Member of Parliament and the General Secretary of Congress Party. Another great-great-grandson, Varun Gandhi, is also a member of India's Parliament representing the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Today there are a number of educational institution named after him, like Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, Motilal Nehru College, Delhi, and Motilal Nehru Medical College, Allahabad. A prominent road in Central Delhi is named after him. Nehru has the following descendants, most of whom played an active role in the Politics of India: Lakshmi Narayan Nehru Ganga Dhar Nehru (son of Lakshmi Narayan Nehru, Kotwal of Delhi) Motilal Nehru (son of Ganga Dhar Nehru) president of congress party Nand lal Nehru (son of Ganga Dhar Nehru, Diwan of Khetri State) Bansi Dhar Nehru (son of Ganga Dhar Nehru) Pt Braj Lal Nehru (son of Nand Lal Nehru, Finance Minister of Jammu and Kashmir) Rameshwari Nehru (wife of Braj lal Nehru) Pt Braj Kumar Nehru (son of Braj Lal Nehru, Economic Minister in the Embassy of India in Washington, Indian Director of the World Bank, Ambassador to the USA, High Commissioner to U.K, Governor of Jammu & Kashmir and Gujarat) Swaraj Mati Nehru (relative of Jawaharlal Nehru Member of Parliament Jawaharlal Nehru (son of Motilal - late Prime Minister of India) Kamala Nehru (wife of Jawaharlal Nehru)
Death and legacy
Family and descendants

shyam lal Nehru (son of Nand lal Nehru) Member of Legislative Assembly Uma Nehru (wife of Shyam lal Nehru) Member of Parliament Shyam kumari (daughter of Shyam lal Nehru) Member of Rajya Sabha Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (daughter of Motilal Nehru, Cabinet minister, Governor, and ambassador to the USSR, USA, Mexico, High Commissioner to UK and President of the UN General Assembly) Krishna Hutheesing (daughter of Motilal Nehru) Ajit Hutheesing (son of Krishna Nehru Hutheesing) Nayantara Sahgal (daughter of Vijaya Lakshmi - eminent writer on women's issues and politics) Prof. Kailas Nath Kaul (brother-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru), renowned botanist and world authority on palms Sheila Kaul (aunt of Indira Gandhi) was a Minister and Governor Vikram Kaul (son of Sheila Kaul) Deepa Kaul (daughter of Sheila Kaul, former minister, Uttar Pradesh) Indira Gandhi (daughter of Jawaharlal - late Prime Minister of India) Feroze Gandhi (husband of Indira Gandhi, Member of Parliament Arun Nehru (son of Shyam Kumari) Member of Parliament Rajiv Gandhi (son of Indira - late Prime Minister of India) Sanjay Gandhi (son of Indira) Member of Parliament Sonia Gandhi (wife of Rajiv - Italy-born - MP current Parliament of India): President of the Indian National Congress, Leader of the Majority Maneka Gandhi (wife of Sanjay - MP current Parliament of India) Rahul Gandhi (son of Rajiv Gandhi - MP current Parliament of India) Varun Gandhi (son of Sanjay Gandhi)- MP current Parliament of India) Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (daughter of Rajiv Gandhi) Nikhil Ajit Hutheesing (son of Ajit Hutheesing) Vivek Ajit Hutheesing (son of Ajit Hutheesing) Ravi Ajit Hutheesing (Son of Ajit Hutheesing)
Works
The Voice of Freedom: selected speeches of Pandit Motilal Nehru. ed. Kavalam Madhava Panikkar, A. Pershad. Asia Pub. House, 1961 Motilal Nehru: essays and reflections on his life and times, by Preet Chablani. S. Chand, 1961. Selected Works of Motilal Nehru (Volume 1-6), ed. Ravinder Kumar, D. N. Panigrahi. Vikas Pub., 1995. ISBN 0-7069-1885-1.
Biographies
Pandit Motilal Nehru: His life and work, by Upendra Chandra Bhattacharyya, Shovendu Sunder Chakravarty. Modern Book Agency, 1934 Motilal Nehru: a short political biography, by A. Pershad, Promilla Suri. S. Chand, 1961. Motilal Nehru (Builders of modern India), by Bal Ram Nanda. Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1964. Pandit Motilal Nehru, a great patriot, with D. C. Goswami, R. K. Nayak, Shankar Dayal Singh. National Forum of Lawyers and Legal Aid, 1976
Further reading
Katherine Frank, Indira: the life of Indira Nehru Gandhi Jawaharlal Nehru, My Autobiography
Maulana Mufti Mahmud (Pashto: ) , was a powerful far-right cleric, veteran member of Congress Party, and the founding member of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). Born in January 1919, he was an ethnic Marwat Pashtun and hailed from Abdul Khel was a military activist of the Indian National
Mufti Mahmud

Congress, participating in the Indian Independence Movement in 1940s. Although objecting the idea of establishment of Pakistan and bitterly campaigned against the Muslim League, he nonetheless moved to Pakistan after the Indian partition. After the 1970 General Elections, he became the president of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam founded by Moulana Shabir Ahmed Usmani. And into a coalition with the National Awami Party & Pakistan Peoples Party. On March 1, 1972, he was elected as the Chief Minister of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. He along with his cabinet resigned in protest at the dismissal of the NAP - JUI (F) coalition government in Balochistan on 14 February 1973. He supported Afghan-Jihad against USSR (see also Soviet-Afghan War). He died on 14 October 1980. He was buried in Abdul Khel, Paniala, his home town. His son Fazal-ur-Rahman would became a notable in the national politics of Pakistan.
Muhammad Ali Jauhar

Muhammad Ali Jauhar (1878 - 1931) was a prominent political figure of British India. He was an outstanding journalist and a poet as well. He was the Pioneer of the Khilafat Movement and a dauntless fighter in the struggle of independence, Maulana Mohammad Ali was fiery orator, and a courageous journalist. He was educated at Aligarh and Oxford and like the Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, he also began his political career in the Indian National Congress and made great sacrifices. But after the publication of the Nehru Report which revealed the communal bias of those who held the reigns of that Hindu-dominated organisation, and disgusted with the attitude of Mr. Gandhi and his Congress, he broke away from them and worked for the Muslim League. He revolutionized Muslim thought by his writings in English weekly "Comrade", and in Urdu weekly "Hamdard" published by him. He was also a Member of the Round Table Conference where he expressed his prophetic demand: "I would prefer to die on the soil of a country which is free, rather than return to a slave country". He never returned to his country and died soon after. He was buried in Bait-ul-Maqdis.
Muhammad Qasim Nanotvi

Muhammad Qasim Nanotvi Muhammad Qasim Nanotvi was an Islamic Scholar and one of the main people responsible for establishing the Deobandi movement. Nanotvi was born in 1833 in Nanota, a village near Saharanpur, India. He completed his primary education in his hometown and then he was sent to Deoband, where he studied in Maulvi Mahtab Ali's primary school. Then, he travelled to Saharanpur, where he remained with his maternal grandfather. In Saharanpur, he studied elementary kitabs of Arabic grammar and syntax under Maulvi Nawaz. At the end of 1843, Mamluk-Ul-Ali escorted him to Delhi. There, he studied Kafia and various kitabs. Later he was admitted to Delhi College, without having written the annual examination. [citation needed] his close relative, Muhammad Yaqub Nanotvi wrote: "My late father enrolled him at the Government Arabic Madrasa and said, 'Study Euclid yourself and complete the arithmetical exercises.' After a few days, he had attended all of the ordinary discourses and completed the arithmetical exercises. Munshi Zakatullah asked a few questions of him, which were difficult. Because he was able to solve them, he became wellknown. When the annual examination drew near, he did not write it and left the madrasa. The whole staff of the madrasa, particularly the headmaster, regretted this very much". Prior to his enrollment at Delhi College, he had studied kitabs on logic, philosophy, and scholastic theology under Mamluk Ali at his house. he joined a study circle, which possessed a central position in India with regards to the teaching of the sciences of the Qur'an and Hadith. He studied hadith under Abdul Ghani Mujaddidi. [citation needed] After the completion of his education, he became the editor of the press at Matbah-e-Ahmadi. During

this period, at Ahmad Ali's insistence, He wrote a scholium on the last few portions of Sahihul Bukhari. Before the establishment of Darul Uloom Deoband, he taught Euclid for some time at the Chhatta Masjid. His lectures were delivered within the printing press and attended by a few people only. his teaching produced a group of accomplished Ulama, the example of which had not been seen since Shah Abul Ghani's time. went on to establish Darul Uloom Deoband. [citation needed] In 1860, he performed Hajj and, on his return, he accepted a profession of collating books at Matbah-eMujtaba in Meerut. He remained attached to this press until 1868. he performed Hajj for the second time and, thereafter, he accepted a job at Matbah-e-Hashimi in Meerut. [citation needed] He conformed to the Shari'a and Sunnah and tried his best to motivate people to do so as well. It was through his efforts that a prominent madrasa for impartation of Islamic education of religious sciences was established in Deoband and a fine masjid was built. Besides this, through his efforts and endeavours, Islamic madaris were established at various other locations as well. [citation needed]
View on Seal of Prophet
Muhammad Qasim Nanotvi, the founder of Deoband seminary seems to conform to the Sufi idea of Seal i.e. honour and last. He writes,
According to the layman, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings on him, being Khatam is supposed to have appeared after all the other prophets. But men of understanding and the wise know it very well that being the first or the last, chronologically, does not carry any weight. How could, therefore, the words of the Holy Qur'an "'But he is the messenger of Allah and the Seal of Prophets" (33:40) mean to glorify him? But I know very well that none from among the Muslims would be prepared to agree with the common men.
"In short, if the meaning of the word Finality is accepted as explained, then his Finality of Prophethood will not be exclusively attached to the past Prophet. But even if for instance another Prophet appeared during the era of the Prophet then too, him being the Final Prophet remains intact as normal."
"If for instance even after the era of the Prophet any Prophet is born, then too it will not make any difference to the Finality of Prophethood of the Prophet." scholars have taken a more simplistic view of this concept and they support their belief by quoting Qasim Nanotvi himself where he declared:
"That Finality of time is something on which there is Ijmah"
"It's my firm Belief that after Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w) there is NO chance of a prophet, Who has a belief against this, I consider him as a Kafir"

Establishment of the madaris
His greatest achievement was the revival of an educational movement for the renaissance of religious sciences in India and the creation of guiding principles for the madaris on which their survival depends. Under his attention and supervision, madaris were established in various areas such as Thanabhavan, Galautti, Kerana, Danapur, Meerut, and Muradabad. Most of them continue to exist, rendering educational and religious services in their vicinity. During his lifetime, Christianity began to rise in India and prodigious efforts were made to convert the people of India to Christianity in every possible way. When he, during his sojourn in Delhi, witnessed this situation, he ordered his pupils to stand in the bazaars and deliver sermons against Christianity. One day, he himself, without introduction or the statement of his name, attended a gathering and repulsed Christianity publicly in the bazaar. [citation needed] On May 8, 1876, a "Fair for God-Consciousness" was held at Chandapur village, near Shahjahanpur (U.P.), under the auspices of the local Zamindar, Piyare Lal Kabir-panthi, under the management of Padre Knowles, and with the support and permission of the collector of Shahjahanpur, Mr. Robert George. Representatives of all the three religions, Christian, Hindu and Muslim, were invited through posters to attend and prove the truthfulness of their respective religions. At the suggestion of Muhammad Munir Nanautawi and Maulawi Ilahi Bakhsh Rangin Bareillwi, Nanautawi, accompanied by numerous colleagues also participated. All these Ulama delivered speeches at this fair, causing the desired effect. In repudiation of the Doctrine of Trinity and Polytheism, and on affirmation of Divine Unity (Monotheism), he Nanautawi spoke so well that the audience, both those who were against and those who were for him, were convinced. One newspaper wrote: "In the gathering of 8 May of the current year (1876), Muhammad Qasim gave a lecture and stated the merits of Islam. The Padre Sahib explained the Trinity in a strange manner, saying that in a line are found three attributes: length, breadth and depth, and thus Trinity is proven in every way. The said Maulawi Sahib confuted it promptly. Then, while the Padre Sahib and the Maulawi Sahib were debating regarding the speech, the meeting broke up, and in the vicinity and on all sides arose the outcry that the Muslims had won. Wherever a religious divine of Islam stood, thousands of men would gather around him. In the meeting of the first day the Christians did not reply to the objections raised by the followers of Islam, while the Muslims replied the Christians word by word and won." Next year this "fair" was held again in March 1877. On this occasion, Prof. Muhammad Ayyub Qadiri, writing in Ahmed Hasan Nanautawi's biography, wrote that: "One thing specially deserves deliberation here that the fair for God consciousness at Shahjahanpur was held consecutively for two years with announcement and publicity, throwing in a way.
Nanotvi died in 1880, aged 47. His grave is to the north of the Darul-Uloom. This place is known as Qabrastan-e-Qasimi, where countless Deobandi scholars, students, and others are buried. Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari (Hindi: , Urdu: ) was an Indian nationalist and political leader, and former president of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League during the Indian Independence Movement. One of the founders of the Jamia Millia Islamia University he remained its Chancellor 1928 to 1936.
Death
Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari

Early life and medical career
Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari was born on December 25, 1880 in Yusufpur-Mohammadabad town, Ghazipur district,(now part of Uttar Pradesh). Educated at the Victoria School, Ansari and his family moved to Hyderabad. Ansari obtained a medical degree from the Madras Medical College and went to England on scholarship studies. He achieved the M.D. and M.S. degrees. He was a top-class student and worked at the London Lock Hospital and the Charing Cross Hospital in London. He was an Indian pioneer in surgery, and today there is an Ansari Ward in the Charing Cross Hospital in honour of his work.[citation needed] Dr. Ansari became involved in the Indian Independence Movement during his stay in England. He moved back to Delhi and joined both the Indian Congress and the Muslim League. He played an important role in the negotiation of the 1916 Lucknow Pact and served as the League's president in 1918 and 1920. He was an outspoken supporter of the Khilafat movement, and led the Indian medical mission to treat the wounded Turkish soldiers during the Balkan Wars. (Syed Tanvir Wasti, The Indian Red Crescent Mission to the Balkan Wars, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 45, No. 3, 393406, May 2009) Dr. Ansari served several terms as the AICC General Secretary, as well as the President of the Indian National Congress during its 1927 session. As a result of in-fighting and political divisions within the League in the 1920s, and later the rise of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Muslim separatism, Dr. Ansari drew closer to Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party. [citation needed] Dr. Ansari was one of the (Foundation Committee of Jamia Millia Islamia) founders and also served as the chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia university in Delhi soon after the death of its primary founder, Dr. Hakim Ajmal Khan in 1927. Dr. Ansari's wife was a deeply religious woman, who worked with him for the uplift of Delhi's Muslim women. The Ansaris lived in a palatial house, called the Darus Salaam or Abode of Peace in Urdu. The Ansaris would often host Mahatma Gandhi when he visited Delhi, and the house was a regular base for Congress political activities. However, he never stopped practising medicine, and often came to the aid of Indian political leaders and the Indian princely order. [citation needed] Dr. Ansari was amongst a new generation of Indian Muslim nationalists, which included Maulana Azad, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and others. He was very passionate about the issues of common Indian Muslims, but unlike Jinnah, was resolutely against separate electorates and opposed Jinnah's viewpoint that the Muslim League could be the only representative of India's Muslim communities.[citation needed] Dr. Ansari was very closeWikipedia:Avoid weasel words to Mahatma Gandhi and an adherent of Gandhism, with his core teachings of ahimsa and non-violent civil resistance. He enjoyed an intimate friendship with the Mahatma. [citation needed] Dr. Ansari died in 1936 en route from Mussoorie to Delhi on a train due to a heart attack, and is buried in the premises of the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi. The Indian National Congress (Hindi: ) (abbreviated INC, and commonly known as the Congress) is the oldest Political Party in India. Founded in 1885 with the objective of obtaining a greater share in government for educated Indians, the Indian National Congress was initially not opposed to British rule. The Congress met once a year during December. Indeed, it was a Scotsman, Allan Octavian Hume, who brought about its first meeting in Bombay, with the approval of Lord Dufferin, the thenViceroy. Womesh Chandra Bannerjee was the first President of the INC. The first meeting was scheduled to be held in Pune, but due to a plague outbreak there, the meeting was later shifted to Bombay. The first session of the INC was held from 2831 December 1885, and was attended by 72 delegates, Badruddin Tyabji and his brother Camruddin, Rahimtulla M. Sayani were among its delegates. List of Muslims who became president of The Indian National Congress before Independence of India.
Nationalist activities
Personal life and beliefs
Muslim presidents of Indian National Congress

1. Badruddin Tyabji became President in 1887 INC Session - Madras 2. Rahimtulla M. Sayani became President in 1896 INC Session - Calcutta 3. Nawab Syed Muhammad Bahadur became President in 1913 INC Session - Karachi 4. Syed Hasan Imam became President in 1918 INC Special Session - Bombay 5. Hakim Ajmal Khan became President in 1921 INC Session - Ahamedabad 6. Maulana Mohammad Ali became President in 1923 INC Session - Cocanada (now Kakinada) 7. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad became President in 1923 INC Special Session - Delhi 8. Dr.Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari became President in 1927 INC Session - Madras Maulana Abul Kalam Azad again become President of The Indian National Congress in 1940 - INC Session - Ramgarh and he was the President of Indian National Congress until 1946, he was the only person who served as president of INC for THE LONGEST PERIOD (7 years) before Independence. Sir Narayan Ganesh Chandavarkar (Konkani: )(December 2, 1855 - May 14, 1923) was an early Indian National Congress politician and Hindu reformer. He was regarded by some as the "leading Hindu reformer of western India"
N. G. Chandavarkar
Early life
Narayan Ganesh Chandavarkar was born in Honavar in the Bombay Presidency on December 2, 1855. His maternal uncle was Shamrao Vithal Kaikini, another notable reformer from the Saraswat community. He served as a Dakshina Fellow in Elphinstone College for some time before earning a law degree in 1881. Shortly before the Indian National Congress was founded in 1885, N. G. Chandavarkar went to England as a member of the three-man delegation. The group was sent to educate public opinion about India right before general elections took place in England. G.L. Chandavarkar writes His visit to England in 1885 carved out for Chandavarkar a political career, and he threw himself whole-heartedly into the work of the Indian National Congress which was founded in Bombay in 1885 on December 28, the day on which he and the other delegates returned to India
Career
He was elected the president of the annual session of the Indian National Congress in 1900 and one year later he was promoted to the high bench at the Bombay High Court. He took a break from politics for the next twelve years and devoted his time to the judicial system and various social groups till 1913. The main social group he worked with was the Prarthana Samaj ("Prayer Society"). He took the leadership reins from Mahadev Govind Ranade after the death of the latter in 1901. The organization was inspired by the Brahmo Samaj and was involved in the modernization of Hindu society. Chandavarkar was knighted in the 1910 New Year Honours List. He returned to the realm of Indian politics in 1914. A schism in the Congress in 1918 came to separate the organization into two camps. Chandavarkar became the head of the All-India Moderates Conference in 1918 along with Surendranath Banerjea and Dinshaw Wacha. In 1920 "he presided over the public meeting held in Bombay to protest against the report of the Hunter Committee on the Jallianwala Bagh atrocities which was appointed by the Government of India." Mahatma Gandhi was inspired by this to move a resolution on the topic. Later, on Chandavarkar's advice, Gandhi called off his Civil Disobedience campaign in 1921.
Return to politics
Notable quotes
Noting the general trend of Hindu reform movements in the early twentieth century he remarked

The ideas that lie at the heart of the gospel of Christ are slowly but surely permeating every part of Hindu society.
Nanayakkarapathirage Martin Perera, better known as Dr. N. M. Perera,(Sinhala .. [en em pe reaira]; 6 June 1905 14 August 1979) was one of the leaders of the Sri Lankan Trotskyist Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP). He was the first Trotskyist to become a cabinet minister.
N. M. Perera
NM Perera was born to Nanayakkarapathirage Abraham Perera who was a rent collector At No 36 St Joseph s Street, in Grandpass, Colombo.His Mother Johana perera and He was Fifth of nine members of family of five Boy and four girls. Perera started his schooling in the vernacular section of St. Joseph's School, Grandpass and was later was admitted to the English section. From there he was sent for one year to a Branch School of S. Thomas' College, Mutwal, then known as Cathedral Boys School, Mutwal. In 1919 he entered St Thomas' prep, but left in 1922 and joined Ananda College. At Ananda he played cricket for the school. He obtained a bachelor's degree from University of London External System at the University College, Colombo during 1922-27 and then left for the UK to join the London School of Economics and University of London, 1927-33. There he was a student of the legendary Professor Harold Laski, being awarded a PhD for his thesis on the Constitution of the German Weimar Republic. A further comparative study, of the Constitutions of the UK, United States, France and Germany, won him a DSc from the University of London. At the time Perera was the only person in Sri Lanka to hold the degree of Doctor of Science. The work done by Perera (as a member of the Suriya-Mal Movement) in the Kegalle district during the Malaria Epidemic of 1934 and during the subsequent floods gained for him the support of the poor and caste-oppressed people of the area, who called him Parippu Mahathmaya after the dhal (or parippu) he distributed as relief supplies. In 1935 Perera was one of the founder members of the LSSP. In 1936 he contested the Ruwanwella constituency, which at the time was the Thun Korale areas of Yatiyantota, Ruwanwella and Dereniyagala and parts of the present Galigamuwa electoral division, from the LSSP. His opponent was Molamure Kumarihamy of the Meedeniya Walauwa, the feudal manor which had tremendous power over the poor people of the Sabaragamuwa area at the time. He was to hold this seat, or its Yatiyantota portion on division, continuously until 1977. After his election, he and Philip Gunawardena (the other LSSP member of the State Council), acting as people's tribunes used the State Council as a platform to carry forward the party's struggle to gain full independence for the country from the British. At the time only people like N.M. Perera and the LSSP stood for complete independence for Sri Lanka: the leaders of the Ceylon National Congress were only concerned with obtaining concessions from the British. He was imprisoned in 1940 during World War II, but succeeded in escaping on 5 April 1942. He secretly went to India and worked with the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma (BLPI) in that country's independence struggle. But According to Encyclopedia of Marxism 1936-40. LSSP delegate to Indian National Congress session, 1937. Formed Ratmalana Railway Workers Union, 1937, and AllCeylon Estate Workers Union, 1939. Led militant strike at Mooloya Plantation, January 1940. Arrested June 1940, incarcerated at Wellikade Jail and Bogambara Prison. Escaped to Bombay, July 1942. Arrested in Bombay, July 1943. Jailed at Badulla, 1943-45. After the war, when the LSSP split, Perera was the leader of the faction that retained the party name. After the 1947 general election, he was elected Leader of the Opposition. On reunification with the Bolshevik Samasamaja Party (BSSP), he remained with the LSSP when the Viplavakari Lanka Sama Samaja Party (VLSSP) split off under Philip Gunawardena.
Political life

Perera was elected Mayor of Colombo in 1954, the only non-United National Party-politician to take that office after 1945. He was Mayor for two years. In 1956 he was elected Leader of the Opposition again, a post he held until 1960. When LSSP was divided over possible government participation in early 1960s, Perera was the principal leader of the wing that wanted to enter into government with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, which led to LSSP's expulsion from the Fourth International in 1964. He was Minister of Finance in the short lived Coalition government of 1964 - 1965 and in the United Front government of 1970 - 1975. In the general election of 1977, he lost his parliamentary seat for the first time, (except for the period he was imprisoned during the Second World War) having won every single election for the Ruanwella constituency or for its successor, Yatiyantota. His funeral in 1979 was one of the largest ever seen in Sri Lanka.
Trade union activities
Perera was the president of the All Ceylon United Motor Workers' Union, the and United Corporations and Mercantile Union the Ceylon Federation of Labour (CFL). He was appointed their chief negotiator by the striking workers during the 1946 general strike.
Other activities
An avid cricket fan, like many Commonwealth Trotskyists, he became Chairman of the Board of Control of Cricket in Sri Lanka, and worked hard to obtain test status for Sri Lanka. Nagarjun (Hindi: , Baba Nagarjun, Vaidya Nath Mishra, Yatri) (June 30, 1911 November 4, 1998) was a major Hindi and Maithili poet who has also penned a number of novels, short stories, literary biographies and travelogues, and was known as Janakavi- the People's Poet.
Nagarjun
Born Vaidya Nath Mishra, in 1911, into a Maithil Brahmin family in a small village of Satlakha in Madhubani District of Bihar, India, which was his mother's village, though his family belonged to Tarauni village in Darbhanga district, Bihar. He later converted to Buddhism and got the name Nagarjun. His mother died when he was only three, and his father being a vagabond himself, couldn't support him so young Vaidya Nath thrived on the support of his relatives, and the scholarships he won on the account of him being an exceptional student. Soon he became proficient in Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit languages, which he first learnt locally and later at Varanasi and Calcutta, where he was also semi-employed, while pursuing his studies. Meanwhile he married Aparajita Devi and the couple had six children. He started his literary career with Maithili poems by the pen-name of Yatri () in early 1930s. By mid 1930s, he started writing poetry in Hindi. His first permanent job of a full-time teacher, took him to Saharanpur (Uttar Pradesh), though he didn't stay there for long as his urge to delve deeper into Buddhist scriptures, took him to the Buddhist monastery at Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, where in 1935, he became a Buddhist monk, as needed to enter the monastery and study the scriptures, just as his mentor, Rahul Sankrityayan had done earlier, and hence took upon the name "Nagarjun". While at the monastery, he also studied Leninism and Marxism ideologies, before returning to India in 1938 to join 'Summer School of Politics' organized by noted peasant leader, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, founder of Kisan Sabha. A wanderer by nature, Nagarjun spent a considerable amount of his time in the 30s and the 40s traveling across India. He also participated in many mass-awakening movements before and after independence. Between 1939 and 1942, He was jailed by the British courts for leading a farmer's agitation in Bihar. For a long time after independence he was involved with journalism. He played an active role in Jaya Prakash Narayan's movement prior to the emergency period (1975 1977), and therefore was jailed for eleven months, during the emergency period. He was strongly
Career

influenced by Leninist-Marxist ideology. This was one of the reasons that he never found patronage from the mainstream political establishments. He died in 1998 at the age of 87 in Darbhanga. The subjects of his poetry are varied. Effects of both his wandering tendencies and activism, is evident in his middle and later works. His famous poems like Badal ko Ghirate Dekha hai ( ), is a travelogue in its own right. He often wrote on contemporary social and political issues. His famous poem Mantra Kavita ( ), is widely considered the most accurate reflection of a whole generation's mindset in India. Another such poem is Aao Rani Ham Dhoenge Palaki ( ), which sarcastically humiliates the then prime minister of India, Pt. Nehru, for the extravagant welcome thrown by him for Queen Elizabeth. Besides these accepted subjects of poetry, Nagarjun found poetic beauty in unconventional subjects. One of his most astonishing works is a poem based on a female pig ( ) called paine daanto wali ( ). Another such creation is a series of poems on a full-grown jack fruit (). Because of the breadth of his poetry, Nagarjun is considered the only Hindi poet, after Tulsidas, to have an audience ranging from the rural sections of society to the elite. He effectively freed poetry from the bounds of elitism.
Style and influence
Languages
Maithili was his mother tongue and he authored many poems, essays and novels in Maithili. He was educated in Sanskrit, Pali, and Hindi. Hindi remained the language of the bulk of his literature. The Hindi of his works varies from highly sanskritized to vernacular forms. He was a poet of the masses, and preferred to write in the language of immediate local impact. Therefore he never adhered to specific bounds of languages. He also had good grasp of the Bengali language and used to write for Bengali newspapers. He was close to the Bengali Hungry generation or Bhookhi Peerhi poets and helped Kanchan Kumari in translating Malay Roy Choudhury's long poem JAKHAM in Hindi.
Awards
Nagarjun was given the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1969 for his historic book Patarheen Nagna Gachh, and the 'Bharat Bharati Award' by the Uttar Pradesh government for his literary contributions in 1983. He was also honored by the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, India's highest literary award for lifetime achievement, in 1994.NAGARJUN BIRTH DAY 19 APR 1991
Major literary works Poetry
Yugdharao Satrange Pankhon Wali Talab ki Machhliyan Khichri Viplava Dekha Humne Hazar Hazar Bahon Wali Purani Juliyon Ka Coras Tumne Kaha Tha Akhir Aisa Kya Kah Diya Maine Is Gubare Ki Chhaya Mein. Yhe Danturit Muskan Mein Military Ka Boodha Ghoda Ratnagarbha Aise bhi hum kya Bhool jao purane sapne Apne Khet Mein Chandana

Novels
Rati Nath Ki Chachi Balachnama Baba Bateshar Nath Himalaya ki betiya Nai Paudh Varun Ke Bete Dukh Mochan Ugratara Jamania Ka Baba Kumbhi Pak Paro and Asman Mein Chanda Tare. Abhinandan Imaratia sitA USKO
Essay collections
Ant Hinam Kriyanam. Bum Bholenath Ayodhya ka Raja
Maithili works
Patrahin Nagna Gachh (collection of poems) citra(collection of poems) paro(novel) navturiya(novel) balchnma(novel) His work on culture has been published in the form of books entitled Desh Dashkam and Krishak Dashkam.
Nalinaksha Sanyal (born 1898, date of death unknown) was an Indian politician, economist and freedom fighter.
Nalinaksha Sanyal
Education
He studied at Krishnath College, Berhampur University and Presidency College, Kolkata and taught economics at Krishnath College. He earned a Master's degree from the London School of Economics and PhD in Economics from London University.
Career
While in London, Sanyal served on several committees for the London branch of the Indian National Congress, a banned organization. He was arrested twice for his participation. Sanyal returned to India to become a professor at Calcutta University, but the government disallowed his appointment because of his activism. Sanyal took a position with insurance companies New India Assurance Co., the Metropolitan Assurance Co., and the Hindustan Co-operative Society Ltd. Sanyal continued to actively protest against British colonial rule and was imprisoned seven times. He was elected to the Bengal Assembly and served as Chief Whip of the Indian National Congress of undivided Bengal, prior to the partition of the province. He was a vocal critic of the colonial government's policies during the Bengal Famine in 1943. In 1946, Dr. Sanyal was at the forefront of efforts to avoid the Partition of India. His suggestion of a loose federation was widely circulated and debated but was ultimately not adopted (link to correspondence with Dr Rajendra Prasad is given below). When India was partitioned in 1947, he and Atulya Ghosh were able to convince the British to leave Maldah district in India (the area had a population that was evenly divided between Hindus and Muslims).

After independence, Sanyal remained an active force in building the new India and held many senior positions in government as well as represented India in international bodies. Sanyal's book Development of Indian Railways is still considered a classic on railway transport and a primary source on the history of the Indian Railways. It was based on his Ph.D. thesis accepted by the University of London and was published by the University of Calcutta, 1930.
References
Biography: Nalinaksha Sanyal, Haripura Congress Souvenir, 1938 [42], Correspondence between Dr Sanyal and Dr Rajendra Prasad regarding ways to avoid the Partition of India [43], Development of Indian Railways, Calcutta University Press 1930 [44], Krishnath College, Behrampore Nalini Ranjan Sarkar (Bengali: ) (1882January 25, 1953) was a Indian businessman, industrialist, economist, public leader, and was greatly involved in the political and economic regeneration of Bengal. He was Finance Minister of West Bengal in 1948. The Sarkar Committee Report was instrumental in the subsequent establishment of establish the five Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) by the Government of India.
Nalini Ranjan Sarkar
He was born in a middle class Kayastha family of greater Mymensingh district (now Netrokona District, Bangladesh)), British India. After passing the Entrance Examination in 1902 from the Pogose School, Dhaka, he joined the Jagannath College in Dhaka. Subsequently, he joined the City College, Calcutta, of the University of Calcutta but could not continue his studies for financial reasons. Sarkar had close contacts with Surendranath Banerjee, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Motilal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Chittaranjan Das, which developed his ideas related to nationalism and economic freedom. He joined the movement against the partition of Bengal in 1905. In later years, influenced by Gandhi's ideas of non-violence, he participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920. In the early 1920s, when C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru founded the Swarajya Party, he joined it and soon became one of its leaders. He was, at the same time, involved with the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee. He was also a member of the Bengal Legislative Council from 1923 to 1930 and again from 1937 to 1946 as well as Chief Whip of the parliamentary Swarajya Party in Bengal. In the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress in 1928, he acted as the Secretary of the Exhibition organised for the occasion. Following the death of CR Das, he with Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, Nirmal Chandra Chunder, Sarat Chandra Bose and Tulsi Chandra Goswami dominated the Congress movement in Bengal and constituted what was known as the "Big Five" of the Bengal Congress. He was elected a Councillor of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation in 1932 and became its Mayor in 1935.
Career
From 1935 to 1953
In 1936, he with A. K. Fazlul Huq organised the Krishak Praja Party and in 1937 joined the first Huq ministry as the Finance Minister. In 1938, he resigned, but later joined the reconstituted ministry. In 1939, he resigned again, expressing his disappointment with the change in the outlook of the cabinet. He joined the Viceroy's Executive Council (194142) first as Member in charge of Education, Health and Lands and then as the person in charge of Commerce, Industry and Food. In 1943, he resigned protesting the detention of Gandhi. He was Finance Minister of West Bengal in 1948 and retired from politics in 1952 after officiating as Chief Minister of West Bengal for a few months in 1949.
Non-political life
In 1911, he entered the Hindusthan Cooperative Insurance Society and from a humble position rose to the high position of its General Manager and ultimately became its President, a position he held till his death. He was also the President of both the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) in 1933 & the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry and member of Consultation Committee

for revision of Company Law, Central Banking Enquiry Committee, Board of Income Tax Referees, Railway Retrenchment Committee, Separation Council and Board of Economic Enquiry, Research Utilisation Committee and Central Jute Committee. He was a delegate to the Indo-Japanese Trade Conference in 1923. He was also a Commissioner of the Calcutta port and a trustee of the Chittaranjan Seva Sadan. He also acted as the Vice-President of National Council of Education, Bengal, and contributed to the spread of education in India. He was made a Fellow of the Calcutta University Senate in 1934, a Member of the Court of the University of Dacca in 1940-41 and the President of Presidency College Governing Body in 1942. He was the Pro-Chancellor of Delhi University during the period 1941-42 as well as Banaras Hindu University. He also served as the Chairman of the All India Council of Technical Education during 1946 - 1952. It was the Nalini Ranjan Sarkar committee that recommended the set up of IIT's, along the along the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) He died on January 25, 1953 of a heart attack at his home in Kolkata (then Calcutta), at the age of 70 Nanduri Prasada Rao who was popularly known as NPR was a famous freedom fighter who ceaselessly worked to promote for the communist cause in Andhra Pradesh and he was one of the eminent figures who organized the communist movement in India. He came from an upwardly mobile family but he chose to relinquish material comforts and he led an ascetic life as a comrade. He died on November 29, 2001. Naranjan Singh Bhalla popularly known as Bhalla Sahib (died 1996) was a 20th-century Sikh leader from Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of India. Born in the early 19th century in the village of Shalkote in the undivided princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, Naranjan Singh Bhalla was one of the most prominent Sikh faces of the Kashmir valley. He played an active role in the Indian freedom movement and many a times evaded arrest. He played a prominent role to save the members of the Sikh community in the Kashmir valley during the tribal raid of 1947 when the Tribal aided by the Pakistan army attacked Kashmir. Naranjan Singh Bhalla saved many lives of the members of the Sikh community who were easily identifiable and attacked and brutally killed by the raiders. He led a group of Sikhs to stay in a jungle where they stayed without food for 18 days and he risked his life to bring food for the trapped members of the community. They waited there till the arrival of the Indian Army on October 27, 1947 after which the tribal invasion was repulsed. He played an active role to retrieve the heads of the five Sikhs beheaded by the tribal. Bhalla was a close relative of a revolutionary Sikh leader Akali Kaur Singh and was also a close associate of Sant Singh Tegh. Bhalla remained an active member of the Shiromani Akali Dal in Kashmir.
Nanduri Prasada Rao
Naranjan Singh Bhalla
Life
Roles
Naranjan Singh Bhalla played another vital role in rescuing the female members of the Sikh and Kashmiri pandit community who were kidnapped by the tribal. He led a small group of Sikhs and attacked the exhausted tribal groups and rescued the ladies of the two communities. After the partition he served for 50 years at the Gurudwara chattipatshahi in Baramulla district of North Kashmir in various capacities and before his death on August 22, 1996 he was the manager of the Gurudwara. He was placed in charge of the affairs of the Gurudwara Sant Rocha Singh Technical Ashram Baramulla by the then sitting Mahant of Dera Nangali Sahib Poonch Mahant Bachiter Singh. When the olden structure of the complex was dismantled by the government and the compensation was given to Mahant Sahib, some dissidents filed a case against Mahant Sahib in the court of Law. Mahant Bachiter Singh, who trusted Naranjan Singh Bhalla, gave power of attorney to him and asked him to fight the case on his behalf. Fearing that the dissidents might encroach upon the land given to Mahant Sahib at Dewan Bagh Baramulla, Bhalla along with his wife and children constructed a small hut on the piece of land and saved it from encroachment. The case was fought for seven years, after which Bhalla won the case and

handed over the property to Mahant Sahib. A fabulous Gurudwara was constructed on the new place after winning the case; it was constructed under the guidance and supervision of Bhalla, whom people used to call Bhalla Sahib as a mark of respect. Finally after completion the Gurudwara was handed over to the Sikh Sangat and to this day the Gurudwara stands at the place. Before and during the construction of the Gurudwara, Mahant Bachiter Singh used to stay at the house of Bhalla Sahib whenever he visited Baramulla. It is said that once Bhalla sahib and Mahant Sahib were standing in near the Nishan Sahib at the Gurudwara when Bhalla Sahib questioned Mahant Sahib as what would happen to the righteous people in the ongoing Kalyug. Mahant Sahib asked Bhalla Sahib to see in the sky, and when he looked in the sky he saw people wearing white robes with white flying beard. Bhalla sahib was drenched in sweat when Mahant Sahib asked him to come back; after that Mahant Sahib told him that those were the Khalsa who had died in different wars with Mughals and the time will come when these people would protect the good souls in the times of trouble. Naranjan Singh Bhalla was married to Gurbaksh Kour who too was a dedicated Sikh. She died on November 30, 2007 in Lahore, Pakistan when she was on a pilgrimage to the Sikh shrines in Pakistan. To visit the place of the birth of the first Guru of the Sikh Guru Nanak Dev ji was her last dream, and she fulfilled her last dream and gave her life at the very place which she longed for. Naranjan Singh Bhalla and Gurbakh Kour are survived by three sons and two daughters Surjeet Kaur and Diljeet Kaur.
History
The word Bhalla means good and humble, this was not the actual surname of Naranjan Singh. His family name was Kala, but the family attained the name Bhalla because of their good deeds. It is said that in the early eighteenth century, whenever people used to Visit Sialkot on pilgrimage to Gurudwara Tapiana Sahib they had to treck several kilometres by foot and were exhausted, the ancestors of Naranjan Singh used to feed them with Lassi (curd shake) and Makki di roti (corn bread). The surname Bhalla was added to the clan in recognition of their goodness and humility.
References
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2007/20071201/punjab1.htm Nawab Syed Muhammad Bahadur was an Indian politician who served as the President of the Indian National Congress in 1913 at Karachi conference.He was elected as the "President of Congress" and became the Third Muslim to achieve such Position Nawab Syed Muhammad Bahadur was the "Third Muslim" to become the "President of Indian National Congress", in 1913 at KARACHI. Nawab Syed Muhammad was the son of Mir Humayun Bahadur, one of the wealthiest Muslims of South India. Humayun Bahadur was a sincere nationalist-minded Muslim who helped the Indian National Congress in its early stages, by giving both financial and intellectual support. When the third Indian National Congress was held in 1887, Mr. Humayun Bahadur gave monetary help to the Congress leaders. On his mother's side Nawab Syed Muhammad was descended from the famous Tipu Sultan of Mysore. He was the grandson of Shahzadi Shah Rukh Begum, daughter of Sultan Yasin, the fourth son of Tipu Sultan. The date of his birth is not known from any reliable source; according to the Hindu he died on February 12, 1919. He joined the Indian National Congress in 1894 and became an active member of the organisation. In all his speeches and addresses Syed Muhammad convincingly maintained that the Muslims and the Hindus must live like brothers and their different religions must not separate them but bind them together. He sincerely believed that the main aim of the Indian National Congress was to unite the peoples of India into a strong nation He was the first Muslim Sheriff of Madras and was appointed as such in 1896. He was nominated to the Madras Legislative Council, in 1900. He was nominated to the Imperial Legislative Council in 19 December 1903 as a non-official member representing the Madras Provinces. Syed Muhammad was
Nawab Syed Muhammad Bahadur

awarded the title of "Nawab" in 1897 by the British Government when he attended the Diamond Jubilee Celebration of Queen Victoria. "The reluctance to revive the old village organisation and to establish village panchayats is particularly pronounced in some Provinces, while a degree of tardiness in considering proposals for the expansion of local and municipal administration coupled with the oft-repeated desire to hedge further advance with over-cautious restriction, is noticeable among all grades of administrative authorities in India." From the Presidential Address, I.N.C., - Nawab Syed Muhammad Bahadur I.N.C. Session, 1913, Karachi
Quotes
External links
Official Indian National Congress website Neelam Sanjiva Reddy pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Nsr.ogg (19 May 1913 - 1 June 1996) was the sixth President of India, serving from 1977 to 1982. Over the course of a long political career, Reddy held several key offices, as the first and two-time Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, a twotime Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Union Minister. He remains the only person to be elected to the office of the President of India unopposed.
Neelam Sanjiva Reddy
Education and Family
Reddy was born in Illur village in Madras Presidency in the present day Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. He had his primary education at the High School run by Theosophical Society Adyar, Madras. He joined the Government Arts College at Anantapur, then an affiliate of the University of Madras for his higher studies. Much later, in 1958, the degree of Honorary Doctor of Laws was conferred on him by the Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati. Reddy was married to Neelam Nagaratnamma. The couple had one son and three daughters.
Freedom Fighter
Reddy joined the freedom struggle following Mahatma Gandhi's visit to Anantapur in July 1929. In 1931, Reddy gave up his studies to become an active participant in the nationalist struggle. He was closely associated with the Youth League and participated in a student satyagraha. In 1938, Reddy was elected Secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Provincial Congress Committee and he held that office for 10 years. During the Quit India Movement, he was imprisoned and was mostly in jail between 1940 to 1945. Released in March 1942, he was arrested again in August of that year and sent to the Amraoti jail where he served time with T Prakasam, S. Satyamurti, K Kamaraj and V V Giri till 1945.
Political career
Reddy was elected to the Madras Legislative Assembly in 1946 and became the Secretary of the Madras Congress Legislature Party. He was also a Member of the Indian Constituent Assembly which framed the Constitution of India. From April 1949 till April 1951, he served as the Minister for Prohibition, Housing and Forests of the then Madras State.
Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh
In 1951 he was elected President of the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee. When the Andhra State was formed the following year, T. Prakasam became its Chief Minister and Sanjeeva Reddy the Deputy Chief Minister. When the state of Andhra Pradesh came into being by incorporating Telengana with Andhra State, Sanjeeva Reddy became its first Chief Minister serving from November 1956 to January 1960. He was Chief Minister for a second time from March 1962 to February 1964 thus serving in all for over 5 years as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Reddy was MLA from Sri Kalahasti and Dhone respectively during his stints as Chief Minister. The Nagarjuna Sagar and Srisailam multipurpose river valley projects were initiated during Reddy's tenure as Chief Minister. In 2005, the Chandrababu Naidu led government of the Telugu Desam Party renamed the Srisailam project as the Neelam Sanjiva Reddy Sagar in his honour. The Congress governments under Reddy placed emphasis on rural development and agriculture and allied sectors. The shift towards industrialisation remained limited however and was largely driven by the central government's investments in large public sector enterprises in the state.

Reddy first term as Chief Minister ended in 1960 after he resigned as Chief Minister on being elected President of the Indian National Congress while in 1964 he resigned voluntarily following adverse remarks made against the Government of Andhra Pradesh by the Supreme Court in the Bus Routes Nationalisation case.
Congress President and Union Minister
Reddy was elected President of the Indian National Congress thrice consecutively at its Bangalore, Bhavnagar and Patna sessions from 1960 to 1962. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha twice. From June, 1964 Reddy was Union Minister of Steel and Mines in the Lal Bahadur Shastri government. He also served variously as Union Minister of Transport, Civil Aviation, Shipping and Tourism from January 1966 to March 1967 in Indira Gandhi's Cabinet.
Speaker of the Lok Sabha
In the general elections of 1967, Reddy was elected to the Lok Sabha from Hindupur in Andhra Pradesh. On 17 March 1967, Reddy was elected Speaker of the Fourth Lok Sabha. He thus became only the third person to be elected Speaker of the house on serving his first term as its member. Upon his election as the Speaker, he resigned from the Congress Party, to underline the independence of his office. As Speaker he admitted, for the first time, a No-Confidence Motion to be taken up for discussion on the same day as the President's address to a joint sitting of the Houses of Parliament. It was during his tenure that the House for the first time sentenced a person to imprisonment for Contempt of the House. The establishment of the Committee on the Welfare of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was another achievement of Reddy's speakership. Although he described himself as the 'watchman of the Parliament' and conducted himself with dignity and handled parliamentary business in an orderly and effective manner, he had several hostile encounters with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the House that proved costly when he became, two years later, the Congress Party's nominee to succeed Zakir Hussain as President.
Presidential Election of 1969
In 1969, following the death of President Zakir Hussain, Reddy was nominated as the official candidate of Congress party. In particular he was seen as the candidate of the old guard of the Congress. Although she had nominated Reddy as the Congress party's presidential candidate, the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was opposed to Reddy's candidacy. She asked Congress legislators to "vote according to their conscience" rather than blindly toe the Party line, in effect giving a call to support the independent candidate V V Giri. In a tightly contested election held on August 16, 1969, V V Giri emerged victorious, winning 48.01 per cent of the first preference votes and subsequently getting a majority on counting the second preference votes. In the final tally, Giri had 4,20,077 votes against the quota of 4,18,169 votes required to be elected President and Reddy 4,05,427 votes. The election led to much discord within the Congress Party and culminated in the historic split of 1969 and the subsequent rise of Indira Gandhi in Indian politics. The 1969 Indian presidential election remains the most closely fought in independent India's history. Subsequently, Reddy, who had resigned as Speaker of the Lok Sabha to contest the election, retired from active politics and moved back to Anantapur where he took to farming.
Return to active politics
In response to Jayaprakash Narayan's call for a Total Revolution, Reddy emerged from his political exile in 1975. In January 1977 he was made a member of the Committee of the Janata Party and in March of that year, he fought the General Election from the Nandyal constituency in Andhra Pradesh as a Janata Party candidate. He was the only non-Congress candidate to be elected from Andhra Pradesh. Reddy was unanimously elected Speaker of the Sixth Lok Sabha on 26 March 1977. However he resigned four months later to contest in the presidential elections of July 1977. Reddy's second term as Speaker remains the shortest tenure for anyone to have held that post.
Presidential Elections of 1977
Although Prime Minister Morarji Desai wanted to nominate danseuse Rukmini Devi Arundale for the post, Reddy was elected unopposed, the only President to be elected thus, after being unanimously supported

by all political parties including the opposition Congress party. At 65, he became the youngest ever person to be elected President of India. He was also the only serious presidential candidate to have contested twice - in 1969 against V V Giri and in 1977. 37 candidates had filed their nominations for the presidency of whom 36 were rejected by the returning officer. Following these disqualifications, Reddy remained the only validly nominated candidate in the fray which made elections unnecessary. Reddy thus became the first person to be elected President of India without a contest. He was the fourth President to be elected from South India and the third from Andhra Pradesh.
President of India
Neelam Sanjiva Reddy was elected, unopposed, on 21 July 1977 and was sworn in as the sixth President of India on 25 July, 1977. During his term of office, Reddy had to work with three governments under Prime Ministers Morarji Desai, Charan Singh and Indira Gandhi. Relations between Reddy and Desai soon soured over the latter's promotion of his son, Kanti Desai, in politics and over Desai's communication with Chief Ministers Vengala Rao and Channa Reddy on the issue of land ceilings in Andhra Pradesh. As President, he appointed Charan Singh as Prime Minister following the fall of the Morarji Desai government with the condition that he prove his majority on the floor of the House. Charan Singh was sworn in on July 28, 1979 but never faced Parliament to prove his majority when the President convened it on August 20. This convention of appointing a Prime Minister in a hung House but with conditions on time to prove majority was later adopted by President R Venkataraman. Following Charan Singh's resignation, Reddy summoned Chandrashekhar and Jagjivan Ram to Rashtrapati Bhavan to look into the possibility of forming an alternate government but convinced that they would not be able to form one, he went along with Charan Singh's advice and dissolved Lok Sabha, calling for mid term polls which the Congress Party won handsomely.
Retirement and Death
Following his Presidential term, the then Chief Minister of Karnataka Ramakrishna Hegde invited Reddy to settle down in Bangalore but he chose to retire to his farm in Anantapur. He died of pneumonia in Bangalore in 1996 at the age of 83. His samadhi is at Kallahalli near Bangalore. Parliament mourned Reddy's death on June 11, 1996 and members cutting across party lines paid him tribute and recalled his contributions to the nation and the House. The Postal Department of India released a commemorative stamp and special cover in honour of Reddy on the occasion of his birth centenary. The Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy College Of Education in Hyderabad has been named after him. As part of the centenary celebrations of his birth, the Government of Andhra Pradesh has announced that it will rename the Andhra Pradesh State Revenue Academy, Reddy's alma mater the Government Arts College, Anantapur and the Government Medical College, Anantapur after the former president. Reddy authored a book, Without Fear or Favour : Reminiscences and Reflections of a President, published in 1989. In 2004, a statue of his was erected at the Secretariat in Hyderabad. The character of chief minister Mahendranath in former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao's novel, The Insider, draws on Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy's career in Andhra Pradesh and his political rivalry with Kasu Brahmananda Reddy. Nellie Sengupta (18861973) was an Englishwoman who fought for Indian Independence and was elected President of the Indian National Congress.
Nellie Sengupta
Family
Born Edith Ellen Gray, she was the daughter of Frederick and Edith Henrietta Gray. She was born and brought up in Cambridge, where her father worked at a club. As a young girl, she fell in love with Jatindra Mohan Sengupta, a young Bengali student at Downing College who lodged at her parental home. Despite parental opposition, she married Jatindra Mohan and returned to Calcutta with him. Nellie as she was known and Jatin had two sons Sishir and Anil.
Non-Cooperation Movement
On returning to India, Nellie's husband Jatindra Mohan started a very successful career as a lawyer in

Calcutta. However in 1921 he joined the Indian freedom struggle and was Mahatma Gandhi's right hand man in Bengal apart from being the Mayor of Calcutta for three terms and the head of the Legislative Assembly. Nellie joined her husband in participating in the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1921. After his imprisonment during the Assam-Bengal Railwaymen's strike, she forcefully protested against the District authorities imposition of a ban on assembly, addressed mass meetings and courted arrest. She defied the law by selling Khadi(hand spun cloth) door to door. In 1931 she suffered four months' imprisonment at Delhi for addressing an unlawful assembly. Jatin was imprisoned in Ranchi and died in 1936.
Congress president
During the turmoil of the Salt Satyagraha many senior Congress leaders were imprisoned. Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya the President elect of the Congress was arrested before the Calcutta Session of 1931. Nellie Sengupta was elected in his place, thus becoming the third woman, and the second European-born woman to be elected. She was also elected as an Alderman to the Calcutta Corporation in 1933 and 1936. She was also elected on a Congress ticket to the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1940 and 1946. During the Second World War she drew attention to the misbehaviour of foreign troops.
Post-independence
After independence, she chose to live in East Pakistan, in her husband's hometown of Chittagong on the specific request of the then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who asked her to look after the interests of the Hindu minority in East Pakistan. She was elected unopposed to the East Pakistan Legislative Assembly. She was a member of the Minority Board and remained an active social activist. When Bangladesh came into being in 1971 she continued to live on in Chittagong and was well cared for by the Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. In 1972 she broke her hip and through the intervention of Indira Gandhi she was brought to Calcutta where she was operated on and all medical expenses were paid for by the Indian Govt. She was accorded a tremendous welcome in Calcutta and honoured by both the Govt and the people for her contribution to both the Indian Freedom struggle along with her husband Deshapriya Jatindra Mohan Sengupta and her work for the minorities in Bangladesh. She died in Calcutta in 1973. Shri Nolini Kanta Gupta (13 January 1889 7 February 1983), a revolutionary, linguist, scholar, critic, poet, philosopher and yogi, was the most senior of Sri Aurobindo's disciples. He was born in Faridpur, East Bengal, to a cultured and prosperous Vaidya-Brahmin family. While in his teens he came under the influence of Sri Aurobindo, then a well known revolutionary fighting for independence against the British. When in his fourth year at Presidency College, Calcutta, he left a promising academic career and rejected a lucrative government job to join a small revolutionary group under Sri Aurobindo. In May 1908 he was among those arrested for conspiracy in the Alipore bomb case. Acquitted a year later, after having spent a year in jail, he worked as a sub-editor for the Dharma and the Karmayogin, two of Sri Aurobindo's Nationalist newspapers, in 1909 and 1910. He was taught Greek, Latin, French and Italian by Sri Aurobindo himself and was among the four disciples who were with Aurobindo in 1910 at Pondicherry. When the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was founded in 1926 he settled permanently in Pondicherry serving the Mother and Sri Aurobindo as secretary of the ashram and later as one of its trustees. A prolific writer on a wide range of topics, he has about 60 books to his credit of which about 16 are in English and 44 in Bengali, as well as many articles and poems in English, Bengali and French. Nolini Kanta Gupta died at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram on 7 February 1984.
Nolini Kanta Gupta
Bibliography
Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta (8 volumes), Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
1. 1. The Coming Race


2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 2. Essays on Poetry and Mysticism 3. The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo 4-5. Light of Lights (poems) 6-7. Sweet Mother 8. Vedic Hymns
Reminiscences (with K.Amrita) Evolution and the Earthly Destiny About Woman (a compilation, ed. by Sacar) Tributes to Nolini Kanta Gupta ed. by Nirodbaran Nolini: Arjuna of our Age by Dr.V.M.Reddy Lights from Nolini Kanta Gupta
2004) was an Indian lawyer, politician and freedom fighter who served as the ninth Prime Minister of India (19911996). He led an important administration, overseeing a major economic transformation and several home incidents affecting national security of India. Rao who held the Industries portfolio was personally responsible for the dismantling of the Licence Raj as this came under the purview of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. He is often referred to as the "Father of Indian Economic Reforms". Future prime ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh would continue the economic reform policies pioneered by Rao's government. Rao accelerated the dismantling of the License Raj, reversing the socialist policies of Rajiv Gandhi's government. He employed Dr. Manmohan Singh as his Finance Minister to embark on historic economic transition. With Rao's mandate, Dr. Manmohan Singh launched India's globalisation angle of the reforms that implemented the International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies to rescue the almost bankrupt nation from economic collapse. Rao was also referred to as Chanakya for his ability to steer tough economic and political legislation through the parliament at a time when he headed a minority government. Narasimha Rao was termed as the best Prime Minister after former PM Lal Bahadur Shastri who crafted India's post-Cold War diplomacy and economic reforms. According to Natwar Singh "Unlike Nehru his knowledge of Sanskrit was profound. Nehru had a temper, PV a temperament. His roots were deep in the spiritual and religious soil of India. He did not need to Discover India". Former President Kalam described Rao as "patriotic statesman who believed that the nation is bigger than the political system". Even APJ Abdul Kalam acknowledged that Rao in fact asked Kalam to get ready for nuclear tests in 1996 but it was not carried out as government at center got changed due to elections and it was later carried out by Vajpayee led NDA government. In fact Rao briefed Vajpayee on nuclear plans. Rao's term as Prime Minister was an eventful one in India's history. Besides marking a paradigm shift from the industrialising, mixed economic model of Jawaharlal Nehru to a market driven one, his years as Prime Minister also saw the emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a major right-wing party, as an alternative to the Indian National Congress which had been governing India for most of its post-independence history. Rao's term also saw the destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh when BJP's Kalyan Singh was CM which triggered one of the worst Hindu-Muslim riots in the country since its independence. Rao died in 2004 of a heart attack in New Delhi. He was cremated in Hyderabad. Rao had "humble social origins". He was born in 28 June 1921 at Lakkampally village near Narsampet in Warangal District to a Telugu Brahmin family. At the age of 3 years he was adopted and brought up to
Pamulaparti Venkata Narasimha Rao (Telugu: ..) (28 June 1921 23 December
P. V. Narasimha Rao
Early life

Vangara village in the present-day Karimnagar district of Andhra Pradesh, then part of Hyderabad State. His father P. Ranga Rao and mother Rukminiamma hailed from agrarian families. Popularly known as PV, he studied Bachelor's in the Arts college at the Osmania University and later on went to Fergusson College now under University of Pune where he completed a Master's degree in law Rao's mother tongue was Telugu and had an excellent command of Marathi. In addition to eight Indian languages (Telugu, Hindi, Urdu, Oriya, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil), he spoke English, French, Arabic, Spanish, German, Greek, Latin and Persian. Along with his distant cousin Pamulaparthi Sadasiva Rao, Ch. Raja Narendra and Devulapalli Damodar Rao, PV edited a Telugu weekly magazine called Kakatiya Patrika in the 1940s. PV and Sadasiva Rao used to contribute articles under the pen-name Jaya-Vijaya. Narasimha Rao has three sons and five daughters. His eldest son P.V. Rangarao was an education minister in Kotla Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy cabinet and MLA from Hanamakonda Assembly Constituency, in Warangal District for two terms. His second son P.V. Rajeswara Rao was a Member of Parliament of the 11th Lok Sabha (15 May 1996 4 December 1997) from Secunderabad Lok Sabha constituency.
Political career
Narasimha Rao was an active freedom fighter during the Indian Independence movement and joined fulltime politics after independence as a member of the Indian National Congress. Narasimha Rao served brief stints in the Andhra Pradesh cabinet (19621971) and as Chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh (19711973). His tenure as Chief minister of Andhra Pradesh is well remembered even today for his land reforms and strict implementation of land ceiling acts in Telangana region. President rule had to be imposed to counter the 'Jai Andhra' movement during his tenure. When the Indian National Congress split in 1969 Rao stayed on the side of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and remained loyal to her during the Emergency period (197577). He rose to national prominence in 1972 for handling several diverse portfolios, most significantly Home, Defence and Foreign Affairs, in the cabinets of both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. In fact, it is speculated that he was in the running for the post of India's President along with Zail Singh in 1982. Rao very nearly retired from politics in 1991. It was the assassination of the Congress President Rajiv Gandhi that made him make a comeback. As the Congress had won the largest number of seats in the 1991 elections, he got the opportunity to head the minority government as Prime Minister. He was the first person outside the Nehru-Gandhi family to serve as Prime Minister for five continuous years, the first to hail from southern India and also the first from the state of Andhra Pradesh. Since Rao had not contested the general elections, he then participated in a by-election in Nandyal to join the parliament. Rao won from Nandyal with a victory margin of a record 5 lakh (500,000) votes and his win was recorded in the Guinness Book Of World Records. His cabinet included Sharad Pawar, himself a strong contender for the Prime Minister's post, as defence minister. He also broke convention by appointing a non-political economist and future prime minister, Manmohan Singh as his finance minister.
Achievements Economic reforms
adopted to avert impending international default in 1991. The reforms progressed furthest in the areas of opening up to foreign investment, reforming capital markets, deregulating domestic business, and reforming the trade regime. Rao's government's goals were reducing the fiscal deficit, Privatization of the public sector and increasing investment in infrastructure. Trade reforms and changes in the regulation of foreign direct investment were introduced to open India to foreign trade while stabilising external loans. Rao wanted I.G. Patel as his finance minister. Patel was an official who helped prepare 14 budgets, an ex-governor of Reserve Bank of India and had headed The London School of Economics and Political Science. But Patel declined. Rao then chose Manmohan Singh for the job. Manmohan Singh, an acclaimed economist, played a central role in implementing these reforms. Major reforms in India's capital markets led to an influx of foreign portfolio investment. The major economic policies adopted by Rao include: Abolishing in 1992 the Controller of Capital Issues which decided the prices and number of shares that

firms could issue. Introducing the SEBI Act of 1992 and the Security Laws (Amendment) which gave SEBI the legal authority to register and regulate all security market intermediaries. Opening up in 1992 of India's equity markets to investment by foreign institutional investors and permitting Indian firms to raise capital on international markets by issuing Global Depository Receipts (GDRs). Starting in 1994 of the National Stock Exchange as a computer-based trading system which served as an instrument to leverage reforms of India's other stock exchanges. The NSE emerged as India's largest exchange by 1996. Reducing tariffs from an average of 85 percent to 25 percent, and rolling back quantitative controls. (The rupee was made convertible on trade account.) Encouraging foreign direct investment by increasing the maximum limit on share of foreign capital in joint ventures from 40 to 51% with 100% foreign equity permitted in priority sectors. Streamlining procedures for FDI approvals, and in at least 35 industries, automatically approving projects within the limits for foreign participation. The impact of these reforms may be gauged from the fact that total foreign investment (including foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, and investment raised on international capital markets) in India grew from a minuscule US $132 million in 199192 to $5.3 billion in 199596. Rao began industrial policy reforms with the manufacturing sector. He slashed industrial licensing, leaving only 18 industries subject to licensing. Industrial regulation was rationalised.
National security, foreign policy and crisis management
Rao energised the national nuclear security and ballistic missiles program, which ultimately resulted in the 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests. It is speculated that the tests were actually planned in 1995, during Rao's term in office, and that they were dropped under American pressure when the US intelligence got the whiff of it. Another view was that he purposefully leaked the information to gain time to develop and test thermonuclear device which was not yet ready. He increased military spending, and set the Indian Army on course to fight the emerging threat of terrorism and insurgencies, as well as Pakistan and China's nuclear potentials. It was during his term that terrorism in the Indian state of Punjab was finally defeated. Also scenarios of aircraft hijackings, which occurred during Rao's time ended without the government conceding the terrorists' demands. He also directed negotiations to secure the release of Doraiswamy, an Indian Oil executive, from Kashmiri terrorists who kidnapped him, and Liviu Radu, a Romanian diplomat posted in New Delhi in October 1991, who was kidnapped by Sikh terrorists. Rao also handled the Indian response to the occupation of the Hazratbal holy shrine in Jammu and Kashmir by terrorists in October 1993. He brought the occupation to an end without damage to the shrine. Similarly, he dealt with the kidnapping of some foreign tourists by a terrorist group called Al Faran in Kashmir in 1995 effectively. Although he could not secure the release of the hostages, his policies ensured that the terrorists demands were not conceded to, and that the action of the terrorists was condemned internationally, including by Pakistan. Rao also made diplomatic overtures to Western Europe, the United States, and China. He decided in 1992 to bring into the open India's relations with Israel, which had been kept covertly active for a few years during his tenure as a Foreign Minister, and permitted Israel to open an embassy in New Delhi. He ordered the intelligence community in 1992 to start a systematic drive to draw the international community's attention to alleged Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism against India and not to be discouraged by US efforts to undermine the exercise. Rao launched the Look East foreign policy, which brought India closer to ASEAN. He decided to maintain a distance from the Dalai Lama in order to avoid aggravating Beijing's suspicions and concerns, and made successful overtures to Tehran. The 'cultivate Iran' policy was pushed through vigorously by him. These policies paid rich dividends for India in March 1994, when Benazir Bhutto's efforts to have a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir failed, with opposition by China and Iran. Rao's crisis management after the 12 March 1993 Bombay bombings was highly praised. He personally visited Bombay after the blasts and after seeing evidence of Pakistani involvement in the blasts, ordered

the intelligence community to invite the intelligence agencies of the US, UK and other West European countries to send their counter-terrorism experts to Bombay to examine the facts for themselves.
Challenges faced in office Economic crisis and initiation of liberalisation
Rao decided that India, which in 1991 was on the brink of bankruptcy, would benefit from liberalising its economy. He appointed an economist, Dr. Manmohan Singh, a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, as Finance Minister to accomplish his goals. This liberalization was criticized by many socialist nationalists at that time.
Handling of separatist movements
Rao has successfully decimated the Punjab separatist movement and neutralised Kashmir separatist movement. It is said that Rao was 'solely responsible' for the decision to hold elections in Punjab, no matter how narrow the electorate base would be. In dealing with Kashmir Rao's government was highly restrained by US government and its president Mr.Clinton. Rao's government introduced the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), India's first anti-terrorism legislation, and directed the Indian Army to eliminate the infiltrators. Despite a heavy and largely successful Army campaign, the state descended into a security nightmare. Tourism and commerce were largely disrupted. Special police units were often accused of committing atrocities against the local population, Rape, kidnapping, torture and detention under false accusations. see also Separatist movements of India In the late 1980s, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) brought the temple issue to the centrestage of national politics, and the BJP and VHP began organising larger protests in Ayodhya and around the country Members of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) demolished the Babri Mosque (which was constructed by India's first Mughal emperor, Babar) in Ayodhya on 6 December 1992. The site is believed by Hindus to be the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama and is believed by the Hindu Community to be a place of a Hindu temple created in the early 16th century. The destruction of the disputed structure, which was widely reported in the international media, unleashed large scale communal violence, the most extensive since the Partition of India. Hindus and Muslims were indulged in massive rioting across the country, and almost every major city including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bhopal struggled to control the Unrest. [citation needed] Later Liberhan Commission, after extensive hearing and investigation, exonerated PV Narasimha Rao. It pointed out that Rao was heading a minority government, the Commission accepted the centres submission that central forces could neither be deployed by the Union in the totality of facts and circumstances then prevailing, nor could Presidents Rule be imposed "on the basis of rumours or media reports". Taking such a step would have created "bad precedent" damaging the federal structure of and would have "amounted to interference" in the state administration, it said. The state deliberately and consciously understated" the risk to the disputed structure and general law and order. It also said that the Governors assessment of the situation was either badly flawed or overly optimistic and was thus a major impediment for the central government. The Commission further said, "... knowing fully well that its facetious undertakings before the Supreme Court had bought it sufficient breathing space, it (state government) proceeded with the planning for the destruction of the disputed structure. The Supreme Courts own observer failed to alert it to the sinister undercurrents. The Governor and its intelligence agencies, charged with acting as the eyes and ears of the central government also failed in their task. Without substantive procedural prerequisites, neither the Supreme Court, nor the Union of India was able to take any meaningful steps." In yet another discussion with journalist Shekhar Gupta, answered several of the questions on the demolition. He said he was wary of the impact of hundreds of deaths on the nation, and it could have been far worse. And also he had to consider the scenario in which some of troops turned around and joined the mobs instead. Regarding dismissal of Kalyan Singh (government), he said, "mere dismissal does not mean you can take control. It takes a day or so appointing advisers, sending them to Lucknow,
Babri Mosque riots

taking control of the state. Meanwhile, what had to happen would have happened and there would have been no Kalyan Singh to blame either."
Latur earthquake
A strong earthquake in Latur, Maharashtra, also killed 10,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands in 1993. Rao was applauded by many for using modern technology and resources to organise major relief operations to assuage the stricken people, and for schemes of economic reconstruction.[citation needed]
Corruption charges and Rao Acquittal
In July 1993, Rao's government was facing a no-confidence motion, because the opposition felt that it did not have sufficient numbers to prove a majority. It was alleged that Rao, through a representative, offered millions of rupees to members of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), and possibly a breakaway faction of the Janata Dal, to vote for him during the confidence motion. Shailendra Mahato, one of those members who had accepted the bribe, turned approver. In 1996, after Rao's term in office had expired, investigations began in earnest in the case. In 2000, after years of legal proceedings, a special court convicted Rao and his colleague, Buta Singh (who is alleged to have escorted the MPs to the Prime Minister). PV Narasimha Rao, has been sentenced to three years in prison for corruption. "I sentence the accused PV Narasimha Rao and Buta Singh to rigorous imprisonment up to three years and a fine of 100,000 rupees ($2,150)," the judge said in his order. Rao appealed to a higher court and remained free on bail. The decision was overturned mainly due to the doubt in credibility of Mahato's statements (which were extremely inconsistent) and both Rao and Buta Singh were cleared of the charges in 2002. Rao, along with fellow minister K.K. Tewary, Chandraswami and K.N. Aggarwal were accused of forging documents showing that Ajeya Singh had opened a bank account in the First Trust Corporation Bank in St. Kitts and deposited $21 million in it, making his father V. P. Singh its beneficiary. The alleged intent was to tarnish V. P. Singh's image. This supposedly happened in 1989. However only after Rao's term as PM had expired in 1996, was he formally charged by the Central Bureau of Investigation for the crime. Less than a year later the court acquitted him due to lack of evidence linking him with the case. Lakhubhai Pathak, an Indian businessman living in England alleged that Chandraswami and K.N. Aggarwal alias Mamaji, along with Mr. Rao, cheated him out of $100,000. The amount was given for an express promise for allowing supplies of paper pulp in India, and Pathak alleged that he spent an additional $30,000 entertaining Chandraswami and his secretary. Narasimha Rao and Chandraswami were acquitted of the charges in 2003 and before his death Rao was successfully acquitted of all the cases charged against him , In the 1996 general elections Rao's Congress Party was badly defeated and he had to step down as Prime Minister. He retained the leadership of the Congress party until late 1996 after which he was replaced by Sitaram Kesri. According to Congress insiders who spoke with the media, Rao had kept an authoritarian stance on both the party and his government, which led to the departure of numerous prominent and ambitious Congress leaders during his reign.[citation needed] Rao rarely spoke of his personal views and opinions during his 5-year tenure. After his retirement from national politics Rao published a novel called The Insider (ISBN 0-670-87850-2). The book, which follows a mans rise through the ranks of Indian politics, resembled events from Raos own life. According to a vernacular source, despite holding many lucrative posts he faced many financial troubles. One of his sons was educated with the assistance of his son-in-law. He also faced trouble in paying fees for a daughter of his who was then studying medicine. According to PVRK Prasad, an IAS officer who was Narasimha Rao's media advisor when the latter was Prime Minister, Rao asked his friends to sell away his house at Banajara hills to clear the dues of advocates. Rao was afraid of dying before clearing his dues to the lawyers. Rao suffered a heart attack on 9 December 2004, and was taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences where he died 14 days later at the age of 83.
Later life and financial difficulties

Death
In Delhi his body was not allowed inside AICC building but was cremated with full state honours in Hyderabad after the then Chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Dr. Y.S.Rajashekhar Reddy intervened. His body was kept in state at the Jubilee Hall in Hyderabad. His funeral was attended by the incumbent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, former Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda, the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president L.K. Advani, the then Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, the then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and many other dignitaries. Rao was a long-time widower, and he is survived by his eight children.
Literary Achievement
Rao had great interest in Indian literature among many languages. He was very fluent in many languages including his mother tongue Telugu, Marathi, Hindi, English, Tamil, French etc. Due to his college education in Fergusson College In Pune,he was very prolific reader & speaker of Marathi. He translated the great Telugu literary work Veyipadagalu of Kavi Samraat Viswanatha Satyanarayana into Hindi as Sahasraphan. He also translated Hari Narayan Apte's Marathi novel 'Pan Lakshat Kon Gheto?'(But who thinks?) into Telugu. He was also invited to be the chief guest of Akhil Bhartiya Marathi Sahitya Sanmelan where he gave speech in Marathi. In his later life, he wrote his autobiography 'The Insider' which depicts his experiences in politics.
Rao's legacy and the current Congress leadership
Narasimha Rao changed the name of the Congress Party from Congress (Indira) to Bhartiya Rashtriya Congress (Indian National Congress), a symbolic but significant departure from one person owning up the party and to bring it back to its historic roots. It has been noted that the current leadership of the Congress party attempts to undermine Rao's legacy by denying him the credit for fostering economic reforms in India. For instance, it is reported that in a speech to mark the 125th anniversary of the Congress, the party president Sonia Gandhi "made it a point to ignore P.V. Narasimha Rao". It is also reported that "Sonia Gandhi praised contributions of all Congress prime ministers except P V Narasimha Rao in her speech ... Making no mention of Rao in her 15minute speech, she said Rajiv Gandhi scripted the course of economic policies that were followed by the government (headed by Rao) for the following five years." Several commentators argue that while Rao should be rightly blamed for his failure to protect the Babri Masjid, at the same time, he should be given credit for initiating the process of economic reforms in India. In an op-ed article published in Business Standard, A.K. Bhattacharya writes: "Even today, the Congress leadership shows extreme reluctance to acknowledge the role PV Narasimha Rao played in appointing Manmohan Singh as his finance minister and giving him the freedom to unveil the economic reforms package to bail the Indian economy out of an unprecedented crisis. The Congress leadership was correct in blaming Narasimha Rao for his political misjudgment on the Ayodhya issue. But it is now time the same leadership also acknowledged Narasimha Raos role in ushering in economic reforms." In similar vein, Harsh V. Pant argues:
"Clearly as Prime Minister Rao failed in his duty to protect the disputed structure in Ayodhya ... Rao's failure cannot be an excuse to deprive him of all the credit that is his due as the nation's prime minister at one of the most difficult times in India's contemporary history ... Manmohan Singh is touted as the father of Indian economic reforms but as Singh has himself acknowledged it was Rao who fathered the process ... Rao deftly navigated the political waters ... and made economic reforms politically tenable. How ironical then that today the same Congress party functionaries ... trying to take credit for India's economic success without acknowledging the role of Rao who envisioned and executed the process?" Historian Ramachandra Guha asserts that Rao has become "the great unmentionable" in the Congress party. In an op-ed article in The Telegraph (Calcutta), Guha writes: "Narasimha Rao may be denied the credit by the present Congress leadership for taking the Indian economy well above the Hindu rate of growth of two to three per cent per annum. But they do not let the public forget his greatest defeat, which was his failure to stop the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December, 1992 ... From the point of view of the present Congress leadership, Raos problem was not just that he was not a Nehru-Gandhi, it was also that as prime minister he did not genuflect enough to the Nehru-Gandhis ... Now that the Nehru-Gandhis once more control both party and government, P.V. Narasimha Rao has become the great unmentionable within Congress circles. I should modify that statement Rao can be mentioned only if it is possible to disparage him. Thus his contributions to economic growth and to a more enlightened foreign policy are ignored, while his admittedly pusillanimous attitude towards the kar sevaks in Ayodhya is foregrounded ... To forget his achievements, but to remember his mistakes, is a product of cold and deliberate calculation." Commenting on the report of the Liberhan Commission, which exonerated Rao for his role in the Babri Masjid demolition, Indian Express editor Shekhar Gupta writes: "He surely failed as prime minister to prevent the tragedy at Ayodhya. But his rivals in the Congress did their own party such disservice by spreading the canard that his (and their) government was responsible for that crime. This, more than anything else, lost them the Muslim vote in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar ... any dispassionate reading of recent political history will tell you that this is a self-inflicted injury. The Congress has itself built a mythology whereby the Muslims have come to hold their party as responsible for Babri as the BJP ... If you take Justice Liberhans indictment of so many in the BJP seriously, you cannot at the same time dismiss his exoneration of Rao, and the government, and the Congress Party under him. You surely cannot put the clock back on so much injustice done to him, like not even allowing his body to be taken inside the AICC building. But the least you can do now is to give him a memorial spot too along the Yamuna as one of our more significant (and secular) prime ministers who led us creditably through five difficult years, crafted our post-Cold War diplomacy, launched economic reform and, most significantly, discovered the political talent and promise of a quiet economist called Manmohan Singh."

Padmaja Naidu (1900 - May 2, 1975) was the daughter of Sarojini Naidu. She devoted herself to the cause of India like her mother. At the age of 21, she entered the national scene and became the joint founder of the Indian National Congress of Hyderabad. She spread the message of Khadi and inspired people to boycott foreign goods. She was jailed for taking part in the Quit India movement in 1942. After Independence, she became the Governor of West Bengal. During her public life spanning over half a century, she was associated with the Red Cross.[citation needed] The Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park in Darjeeling is named after her. Pamulaparthi Sadasiva Rao (July 17, 1921 - August 26, 1996) was a thinker, philosopher, and free lance journalist. He started the magazine Kakatiya Patrika in Warangal, India, in 1948 with his cousin P. V. Narasimha Rao, later Prime Minister of India.
Padmaja Naidu
Pamulaparthi Sadasiva Rao
Early life
Sadasiva Rao was born in Warangal to Durgabai and Hanumantha Rao. He was educated at the then Collegiate High School, Hanamkonda in Warangal district of the then Hyderabad State.[citation needed] Among his Telugu writings were GatiTarkika Bhotika Vadam (on dialectic materialism), Charitra, Sanskriti, Kala (history, tradition, culture and art), and Tatva Shastra Praadhamika Paathalu (fundamentals of philosophy). He translated Theory of Knowledge, an English language book by Maurice Cornforth, into the Telugu Gyana Siddhantam, published by the Visalandhra Publishing House.
Literary career
Death
He died of cancer on August 26, 1996.
Commemoration Further reading
There is a memorial trust and an annual Pamulaparthi Sadasiva Rao endowment lecture at Kakatiya University. Ekashila Vaithalikulu, Edited by T.Ranga Swamy, Srilekha Sahithi, Warangal,1991 (Pages 2736) Kovela Suprasannacharyulu- Vajmaya Jeevitha Suchika, T.Ranga Swamy, Visalandhra Book House, 1991 (Pages 5,6)
Phanishwar Nath 'Renu' ( ) (March 4, 1921 April 11, 1977) was one of the most successful and influential writers of modern Hindi literature in the post-Premchand era. He is the author of Maila Anchal, which after Premchand's Godaan, is regarded as the most significant Hindi novel. Phanishwar Nath 'Renu' is best known for promoting the voice of the contemporary rural India through the genre of 'Aanchalik Upanyas' (Regional Story), and is placed amongst the pioneering Hindi writers who brought regional voices into the mainstream Hindi literature. His short story Maare Gaye Gulfam was adapted into a film Teesri Kasam (The Third Vow), by Basu Bhattacharya (produced by the poet-lyricist Shailendra) in 1966 for which he also wrote the dialogues. Later his short story Panchlight (Petromax) was made into a TV short film.
Phanishwar Nath 'Renu'
Biography
Phanishwar Nath 'Renu' was born on 4 March 1921 at village Aurahi Hingna near Forbesganj, in Araria district (then Purnea district), Bihar. He was educated in India and Nepal. His primary education was held in Araria and Forbesganj. He did his Matriculation from Biratnagar Adarsh Vidyalaya(school), Biratnagar, Nepal while staying with Koirala Family. After Passing out IA from Kashi Hindu Vishvavidyalay (university) in 1942 he took part in the Indian Freedom Struggle. Later he participated in the Nepali revolutionary movement in 1950 which resulted in the establishment of democracy in Nepal. He ushered in 'AnchalikText : Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License | Source: Wikipedia: Compiled by www.gktoday.in 219 | P a g e

katha' (Regional Story) of Hindi writing. He had a very close friendship with Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayana Agyey - his contemporary poet.
Writing style
The intimacy in writing brought to the reader with use of local flavor of Hindi in contrast to Khari Boli Hindi was entirely new literary experience. His very first novel which is also considered his masterpiece, Maila Anchal (The Soiled Linen, 1954), was a social novel that depicted the life of rural Bihar and its people, especially the backward and the deprived. He was subsequently awarded one of India's highest civilian honours, the Padma Sri in 1970. Later during Jayaprakash Narayan Andolan, he gave up his award in solidarity. His short story Panchlight (Petromax) is beautiful in its depiction of human behavior. One can find many parallels between his and Premchand's writings. Curiously, Katihar railway station figures in many of his writings. He wrote descriptive prose with rapid character building. He would then go about reflecting on his characters and backgrounds from every angle. Ek Aadim Ratri Ki Mehak which is straight forward story with touchy ending, is one example his unending need for exploring pristine emotions of his characters.
Literary works Novels

Maila Anchal Parti Parikatha Juloos & Janaja Deerghtapa Kitne Chaurahe Paltu Babu Road
Memoirs
Rindjal Dhanjal Van Tulsi ki gandh Shrut Ashrut Purva Totapur
Reportage
HrinJal- DhanJal Nepali Kranti Katha Van tulsi ki gandh Shruth Asruth purve Pahli kranti katha
Further reading
Dr. Renu Shah (Associate Professor, J.N.V. University Jodhpur). Phanishwar Nath Renu Ka Katha Shilp. Published under University Grants Commission (UGC) Grant. 1990. Maare Gaye Gulfaam by Phanishwar Nath 'Renu' (Hindi) The Third Vow and Other Stories: and other stories. Tr. by Kathryn G. Hansen. Chanakya Publications, 1986. ISBN 81-7001-013-6.
External links
Phanishwar Nath 'Renu' at Gadya Kosh (Online Encyclopedia of Hindi Literature) Extract from Atma-Sakhsi, and Phanisvarnath Renu: Dialogue with Lothar Lutze; Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, KCIE (August 4, 1845 - November 5, 1915) was a Parsi Indian political leader, activist, and a leading lawyer of Bombay (now Mumbai), India, who was knighted by the British Government in India for his service to the law. His political ideology was, as was the case with most of the Indian leaders of his time, moderate. Hence, he was not directly opposed to the British Crown's sovereignty, but only demanded more autonomy for Indians to self-rule.
Pherozeshah Mehta

He became the Municipal commissioner of Bombay Municipality in 1873 and its President four times 1884, 1885, 1905 and 1911. He was chosen the president of the Indian National Congress in 1890.
Early life
Sir Pherozeshah Mehta Pherozeshah Merwanjee Mehta was born on August 4, 1845 in Bombay (now Mumbai) to a Parsi business family. Graduating from the Elphinstone College in 1864 he passed the M.A. examination, with honours, six months later, being the first Parsi to have obtained a Master's degree from the University of Mumbai. He later went to England to study law at Lincoln's Inn in London. In 1868 he returned to India and was admitted to the bar, and soon established a practice for himself in a profession which was till then dominated by British lawyers. It was during a legal defence of Arthur Crawford that he pointed out the need for reforms in the Bombay municipal government. Later, he drafted the Bombay Municipal Act of 1872, and is thus considered the father of Bombay Municipality. Eventually, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta left his law practice to join politics.
Political and social activities
When the Bombay Presidency Association was established in 1885, Pherozeshah Mehta became its president, and remained so for the rest of his years. He encouraged Indians to obtain western education and embrace its culture to uplift India. He contributed to many social causes for education, sanitation and health care in the city and around India. Pherozeshah Mehta was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress and its President in 1890, as its president he presided over Indian National Congress session held in Calcutta. Pherozeshah Mehta was nominated to the Bombay Legislative Council in 1887 and in 1893 a member of the Imperial Legislative Council. In 1894, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) and was appointed a Knight Commander (KCIE) in 1904. In 1910, he started Bombay Chronicle, an English-language weekly newspaper, which became an important nationalist voice of its time, and an important chronicler of the political upheavals of a volatile pre-independent India. He saw through the British tactics of binding Parsi loyalty to the crown, by repeatedly making Parsis feel superior by showering them with decorations and praise, as by 1946 as many as 63 Parsis had been knighted. In his presidential address to Indian National Congress, he once said: "In speaking of myself as a native of this country, I am not unaware that, incredible as it may seem, Parsis have been both called and invited and allured to call themselves, foreigners." Pherozeshah Mehta died on November 5, 1915, in Bombay.
Legacy
A portrait of Pherozeshah Mehta at the Indian Parliament House, shows his importance in the making of the nation. He was known as the Lion of Bombay. In Mumbai, even today Sir Pherozeshah Mehta is a much revered man, there are roads, halls and law colleges named after him. He is respected as an important inspiration for young Indians of the era, his leadership of India's bar and legal profession, and for laying the foundations of Indian involvement in political activities and inspiring Indians to fight for more self-government. In Mehta's lifetime, few Indians had discussed or embraced the idea of full political independence from Britain. As one of the few people who espoused involvement of the activity of Indians in politics, he was nicknamed Ferocious Mehta." Don Philip Gunawardena Don Philip Rupasinghe Gunawardena (11 January 1901 26 March 1972) introduced Trotskyism to Sri Lanka, where he is a national hero, known as 'the Father of Socialism' and as 'the Lion of Boralugoda'.
Philip Gunawardena

Early life & education
Don Philip Rupasinghe Gunawardena popularly known as Philip was born on 11 January 1901, to a well-to-do family in Boralugoda, Avissawella, in Sri Lanka. He attended the local village school for his primary education and went on to the Prince of Wales' College, Moratuwa. He attended Ananda College in Colombo and then University College, Colombo. At the age of 21, he moved to the United States where he studied economics at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He became radical minded and associated himself actively in the mass struggles which stormed the United States at the time. Two years later, he moved to the more radical University of WisconsinMadison. where he met Jayaprakash Narayan. The two were introduced by Avrom Landy to the Communist Party of the United States. Woodward has recorded that Gunawardena received his training in Marxism from Scott Nearing (18831983). In 1925, he joined Columbia University for post-graduate work.
Early Political career in the US and Europe
In 1927 Gunawardena joined the League Against Imperialism in New York, where he worked with Jos Vasconcelos of Mexico, gaining a working knowledge of Spanish. In 1929 he went to London, where he participated in mass agitations and anti-colonial movements, excelling as a brilliant orator, trade unionist, and political columnist. Shri Jawaharlal Nehru and Krishna Menon of India, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Tan Malaka of Malaya, and Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam of Mauritius were some of his contemporary colleagues who later played prominent roles in their motherlands. He joined the staff of the new Daily Worker and took over the Workers' Welfare League of India, an organisation founded by Shapurji Saklatvala. He crossed the channel to Europe and worked with socialist groups in France and Germany. In the midst of the Comintern's 'Left Turn', Gunawardena surreptitiously joined the Marxian Propaganda League of FA Ridley and Hansraj Aggarwala, who opposed the Stalinists' characterisation of the Social Democratic parties as social fascist. When Ridley and Aggarwala broke with Leon Trotsky, Gunawardena sided with the latter. In 1932 he travelled on the Orient Express to meet Trotsky at Prinkipo, but was stopped at Sofia by police. At the British conference of the League Against Imperialism, in May 1932, Gunawardena introduced a counter-resolution on India against those moved by Harry Pollitt. As a result, the Communist Party of Great Britain expelled him for Trotskyism. However, he had gathered around him several like-minded Sri Lankans, including NM Perera, Colvin R de Silva and Leslie Goonewardena. They came to be known as the 'T-Group' - later forming the nucleus of the Trotskyist faction of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party. Scotland Yard, under orders from the India Office, thwarted him from his aim of going to India to build a new Communist Party there. He set out for the continent, meeting members of the Left Opposition in Paris. He then hiked over the Pyrenees to Barcelona, where he had a rare opportunity to meet the Trotskyists of Spain who were soon to undergo a civil war.
'T-Group'
Early political career in Sri Lanka and India
Soon after his return to Sri Lanka in November 1932, he plunged into active politics organising rural peasants, plantation workers and urban workers. He pioneered the founding of Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) in 1935. In 1936 he was elected to the State Council where he continued his struggle for the betterment of workers and peasants. When World War II broke out Philip Gunawardena was detained on Governor's orders. However, he escaped to India and participated in the independence struggle there. In 1943 he was rearrested and detained in Mumbai, and after many months deported to Sri Lanka to be imprisoned till the end of war.
Post-war political career
On his release in 1945 he again started political and trade union activities. At the General Election in 1947 he was elected to the first Parliament to represent Avissawella seat, but soon he was unseated on his involvement in the General Strike in 1947, and lost his civic rights for seven years.

He led the Viplavakari Lanka Sama Samaja Party (VLSSP) since 1951 and as constituent party formed the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP, Peoples United Front) in 1956 under the leadership of Mr.SWRD Bandaranaike to form the first people's government in 1956 General Election. At that election, in 1956, he won the Avissawella seat with a large majority and served as a key member of the Cabinet of SWRD Bandaranaike as the Minister of Agriculture, Food, & Co-operatives. He is remembered as the architect of the Paddy Lands Bills which brought relief to the tenant cultivator and spearheaded the Port & Bus nationalization, introduction of Multipurpose Co-operatives movement and establishing of the People's Bank, those brought tremendous change to society in Sri Lanka. Subsequently, Gunawardena served in the National Government of Mr.Dudley Senanayake, 19651970, as the Cabinet Minister of Industries and Fisheries. He established the Industrial Development Board, strengthened & expanded state industrial corporations and national private sector industries, and planned the development of the Fisheries sector. Philip Gunawardena married Kusuma (Amarasinha), in 1939, who later served as Member of Parliament from 19481960. They are parents to Indika (Ex-Cabinet Minister), Prasanna (Ex-Mayor of Colombo), Lakmali (State Award Winner of literature), Dinesh (Cabinet Minister & Chief Government Whip), & Gitanjana (Minister). Philip Gunawardena died on 26 March 1972. Pingali Venkayya (Telugu: ) (2 August 1878 4 July 1963) was an Indian freedom fighter and the designer of the Indian national flag.
Pingali Venkayya
Early life and family
Pingali Venkaiah was born to Hanumantha Raidu and Venkat Ratnamma in Pedakallepalli, Divi Taluq, Krishna district, near Masulipatnam, the present day Machilipatnam of Andhra Pradesh, British India. He belonged to a Telugu Brahmin family. He was brought up in Batlapenumarru village near Machilipatnam where he had his primary education. After finishing his primary education at Challapalli and school at the Hindu High School, Masulipatnam, he went to Colombo to complete his Senior Cambridge. Enthused by patriotic zeal, he enlisted himself for the Boer war at 19. While in Africa he met Gandhi, and their rapport lasted for more than half a century. He was the eldest of 6 brothers and 2 sisters. His grandfather's name is also Venkayya. His younger brothers were Gopalakrishnaiah, Seetharamaiah, Balaramaiah, Achyutharamayya, Sivaramaiah and sisters were Mahalakshmi and Tripuramma. He married Rukminamma, daughter of Turlapati Venkatachalam and Mangamma. They have 2 sons and 1 daughter. The eldest son Pingali Parasuramaiah worked Indian Express as a correspondent. He was also a geologist. He lived in Jandrapet, Chirala Prakasam district with his wife Damayanthi and daughters Annapurna,Nagalakshmi and Bhavani. Pingali only daughter Seethamahalakshmi, widow of Ghantasala Vugra Narasimham is the only direct sibling living now. She bore 3 sons and 3 daughters. Pingali's son late Chalapathi Rao worked in the Indian army. His wife Janaki bore them 2 children. The eldest son Pingali Dasaratharam was the editor of Encounter, a political fortnightly from Vijayawada. He was murdered on 31-10-1985 in Satyanarayanapuram Vijayawada. His wife Suseela lives in Nandigama with her 2 sons and daughter. Chalapathirao's daughter Girija is living in Vijayawada with her husband Subramanyam.they have 1 daughter and one son.
Career
In Andhra Pradesh, this knowledge enabled him to spend most of his fortune experimenting with developing new crop cultivars and becoming an authority on diamond mining, leading to his popular nickname of "Diamond Venkayya". He served in the British Indian army during the Anglo-Boer wars in South Africa. It was there he came in contact with Mahatma Gandhi and was influenced by his ideology. He worked as a railway guard at Bangalore and Madras and subsequently joined the government service as the plague officer at Bellary before moving to Lahore, where he enrolled in the Anglo-Vedic college to study Urdu and Japanese. During his five years stay in the north, he became active in politics. Pingali met many revolutionaries and

helped plan to overthrow colonial rule. The 1906 Congress session with Dadabhai Naoroji allowed Pingali to emerge as an activist and a force behind the decision-making committee. Here he met the famous philanthropist, the Raja of Munagala, and from 190611, he spent his time in Munagala researching agriculture and crops. For his pioneering study on Cambodian cotton, he came to be called Patti Venkayya. Even the British were impressed by his contributions to agriculture and conferred on him honorary membership of the Royal Agricultural Society of Britain. He returned to his roots at Masulipatnam and focused on developing the National School (at Masulipatnam), where he taught basic military training, horse riding, history and knowledge of agriculture, soil, crops and agriculture's relation to nature. In 1914, he turned his agricultural land into an estate and named it Swetchapuram. During the National conference of the Indian National Congress at Kakinada, Venkayya suggested that India should have a national flag. Gandhi liked this proposal. He suggested that Venkayya come up with a design. During the National conference at Vijayawada, Venkayya proposed a tricolour with an Ashoka Chakra at the middle. Gandhi liked the result, and the design was later adopted as the National Flag of India. After researching 30 flags, Pingali design a flag that became the forerunner of the Indian national flag. The flags antecedents can be traced back to the Vande Mataram movement. The years 192131 constitute a heroic chapter in both Pingali Venkayya's life and in the history of the Andhra freedom struggle. The AICC met at a two day session at Bezwada (31 March-1 April 1921). At this session Pingali approached Gandhi with the flag. Pingali's flag was made of red and green, representing the country's two major communities. The Indian flag was not officially accepted by the All India Congress Committee. However, Gandhi's approval made it popular and it was hoisted at all Congress sessions. Hansraj of Jallandar suggested the representation of the charkha, symbolising progress and the common man. Gandhi insisted on a white strip to represent India's remaining minority communities. A consensus was not reached until 1931. The colour choices produced controversy as communal tension broke over its interpretation. The final resolution passed when the AICC met at Karachi in 1931. The flag was interpreted as saffron for courage, white for truth and peace, and green for faith and prosperity. The dharma chakhra which appears on the abacus of the Sarnath at the capital of Emperor Ashoka was adopted in place of spindle and string as the emblem on the national flag. Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan proposed that saffron denote renunciation or disinterestedness of political leaders towards material gains in life, that white depict enlightenment, lighting the path of truth to guide our conduct and that green symbolise our relation to the soil, to the plant life here on which all other life depends. The Ashoka wheel in the centre of the white strip represented the law of dharma. Speaking philosophically, he remarked that the national flag ought to control the principles of all those who worked under it. The wheel denoted motion and India should no more resist change as there was death produced only stagnation.
National Flag
Death
Pingali Venkayya passed away on 4 July 1963 in Vijayawada. His only daughther Ghantasala Sita Mahalakshmi (about 90 years old [in 2012])) lives in the town of Macherla, in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh along with her second son G.V.N. Narasimham, a retired Principal of a Government College. Her third son Ghantasaala Gopi Krishna lives in A. S. Rao Nagar suburb of Hyderabad. Sri.Pingali Venkaiah was recommended for the highest civilian award in India Bharat Ratna on 18 November 2012 by Government of Andhra Pradesh. Ponaka Kanakamma (18921963) was a social worker, activist and freedom fighter, imprisoned over a year, as a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, in India. She founded Sri Kasturidevi Vidyalam, a large school for girls in Nellore.
Ponaka Kanakamma
Life
Ponaka Kanakamma was born in Nellore district, on June 10, 1892 at Minagallu. Her father was Marupooru Konda Reddy and mother: Kaamamma.

She hailed from a very rich landlord community. She got married in her childhood. Though she had no formal schooling, she acquired proficiency in Telugu, Hindi and Sanskrit by her own efforts. In 1913, she started 'Sujana Ranjani samajam' in Potlapudi village, near Nellore to serve the society. She worked for the uplift of Harijans and poor. Her friends established 'Vivekananda Library' in Kottur in the year 1913, with the help of people Nellore Rama Naidu and others. For a brief period, she was under the spell of revolutionary politics and later became the ardent disciple of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhiji inaugurated in Pallipadu village, about 6 miles (9.7 km) from Nellore, the 'Pinakini Satyagraha Ashram' on 7 April 1921. Chaturuvedula Krishnaiah, Digumarti Hanumantu Rao and others founded the Ashram and Kanakamma donated 13 acres of land to establish the Ashram. She participated in the noncooperation movement and Salt Satyagraha. She underwent one and a half years rigorous imprisonment, in two installments at Rayavellore. She hosted Bipin Chandra Pal during his visit to Nellore in 1907. In 1923, she founded Sri Kasturidevi Vidyalam as a part of Gandhiji's constructive programme, a school for girls in Nellore, and Gandhiji laid the foundation stone for the permanent building in 1929. This sprawling Kasturidevi Vidyalam campus, extended to about 23 acres (93,000 m2), is the living monument for Kanakamma. For some time, she acted as a member of AICC. She also acted as vice-president of Andhra Congress committee. After she lost her only daughater, M.Venkatasubbamma who was a budding writer and social worker, she became a devotee of Ramana Maharshi and Ramayogi (of Annareddy palem). Ponaka Kanakamma and Dronamraju Lakshmibaiyamma were the first twin poetesses. They wrote several philosophical poems on Ramana Maharshi - important ones are Aradhana and Nivedyam. They translated Bhagavadgita into Telugu by name "Gnana Netram". She wrote the autobiography of Sri Rama Yogi, both in Telugu and English. She founded the Jameen Raitu, a Telugu weekly at Nellore in support of Zameendari Raitu movement in Nellore district. She lost her property due to the tyranny and repression of Venkatagiri Zameendar. Her short stories,essays and poems are published in Anasuya, Gruha Lakshmi, Hindu sundari, Bharati, Jameen raitu (newspapers ) etc. She established an industrial training centre for under-privileged women. During her life, she hosted many eminent freedom fighters and poets at her residence in Potalpudi. She is the recipient of 'Grulakshmi Swarnakankana' sanmanam (felicitation). In connection with the silver jubilee celebrations of Madras Mahila Sabha organisation, Smt. Durga Bhai Deshmukh honoured Kanakamma with a silver plank. Ponaka Kanakamma died in Nellore, on September 15, 1963. In 2011, her auto-biography in Telugu by name "Kanakapushyaragam" was released by Dr.K.Purushotham.
Prabhavati Devi (1906 1973) was at the forefront of freedom struggle in Bihar. She was born in a reputed Kayastha family in Shrinagar now in Siwan district in Bihar to Brajkishore Prasad and Phool Devi. Brajkishore Prasad was himself an ardent Gandhian perhaps the first Congressman in Bihar who had given up a lucrative legal practise to devote himself to freedom struggle.She was married to Jayprakash Narayan in October 1920. She was married to Jayaprakash Narayan who went off to the US to initially study science in California but studied Marxism in Wisconsin. She moved to Gandhi's ashram where she devoted herself completely to Kasturba Gandhi who started regarding her as her daughter. She also built up a very close relationship with Kamala Nehru and became her confidante. She also spent time in gaol on several occasions. Kamala Nehru wrote several letters to her when she was having problems with the Nehru family.All the letters were returned to Indira Gandhi by her husband following her death but a few somehow found their way into the press after Jayaprakash Narayan's death which demonstrate the ill treatment she received at the hands of the Nehru family as she came from a less suave background. When her husband returned, he was regarded a revolutionary and this led to several differences with her because of her Gandhian orientation. Nevertheless they respected each other and jointly decided not to have any children until the country was free from foreign yoke. It was under her influence that her husband by now a cult figure in India joined the Sarvodaya movement and actively participated in peace overtures in the North East India and the Middle East. She established
Prabhavati Devi

Mahila Charkha Samiti in Patna to involve deserted and abandoned women in the charkha or the spinning wheel movement on the Gandhian model. The last few years were specially painful for her as she was found to be suffering from advanced cancer.On April 15, 1973, Prabhavati died of cancer, leaving Jayaprakash alone. Pramathanath Mitra (30 October 1853-1910), known widely as P. Mitra was a Bengali Indian barrister and Indian nationalist who was among the earliest founding members of the Indian revolutionary organisation Anushilan Samiti.
Pramathanath Mitra
Pratap Singh Kairon (19011965) was the Chief Minister of the Punjab province (then comprising Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh), and is widely acknowledged as the architect of postIndependence Punjab Province (or Punjab, Haryana and Himachal as of today). Moreover, he was an Indian independence movement leader. He was jailed twice by the British Empire, once for five years for organizing protests against British rule. His political influence and views are still consideredWikipedia:Avoid weasel words to dominate Punjabi politics.
Pratap Singh Kairon
Early life
Pratap was born on October 4, 1901, into a Jatt Sikh family in the village of Kairon, the Amritsar district, province of Punjab during the British Raj. His father, Nihal Singh Kairon, was a pioneer in initiating women's education in the province. Pratap studied at the Khalsa College, Amritsar and then went to the U.S., where he supported himself with work on farms and factories. He did his Masters in political science from the University of Michigan.He also did his Masters in Economics from University of California at Berkeley before going to Michigan. He was influenced by farming methods practised in the U.S.A and hoped to replicate the same in India later.
Political career Entry into politics
Kairon returned to India in 1929. On April 13, 1932 he started an English language weekly paper called The New Era in Amritsar. He joined politics and the newspaper was eventually shut down. He was first a member of the Shiromani Akali Dal, and later of the Indian National Congress. He was jailed in 1932 for five years for participating in civil disobedience. He entered the Punjab Legislative Assembly as an Akali nominee in 1937, defeating the Congress candidate, Baba Gurdit Singh of Sarhali. From 1941 to 1946, he was the General Secretary of the Punjab Provincial Congress Committee. He was jailed again in the 1942 Quit India Movement and was elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1946.
In power
After Independence in 1947, Pratap Singh Kairon held various offices in the elected state government including Rehabilitation Minister, Development Minister (19471949) and Chief Minister (19521964).
Minister for Rehabilitation
As Minister for Rehabilitation in the days immediately after the Partition of India, Kairon handled the task of resettlement of millions of refugees who had migrated from West Punjab. Over three million people were re-established in East Punjab in new homes and often in new professions, in a very short period of time.
Chief Minister
Pratap Singh Kairon was a man of vision. He laid the base on which Punjab prospered. In his role in implementing land reforms, the late leader established the Punjab Agricultural University, which played a key role in the Green Revolution. He also placed Punjab on the industrial map of the country. He was behind the creation of the city of Chandigarh and the industrial township of Faridabad(in present-day Haryana). Kairon made primary and middle school education free and compulsory. He opened three engineering colleges and a polytechnic in each district. He was responsible for establishing much of the state's basic infrastructure in terms of irrigation, electrification and roads.

Death
In 1964, following the publication of the report of the commission of inquiry which had exonerated him of the bulk of the allegations made against him by his political adversaries, Pratap Singh Kairon resigned from his position as chief minister of the Punjab. On February 6, 1965, he was assassinated by Sucha Singh, in his car on the main highway (the G.T. Road) from Delhi to Amritsar. Sucha Singh was later hanged.
References
Pratap Singh Kairon Biography of the legendary Sikh leader
External links
Pratap Singh Kairon materials in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
Puran Chand Joshi (Hindi: ) (born April 14, 1907, Almora died November 9, 1980, Delhi), one of the early leaders of the communist movement in India. He was the first general secretary of the Communist Party of India from 193547.
Puran Chand Joshi
Early years
Joshi was born on April 14, 1907, in a Kumaoni Brahmin family of Almora,in Uttarakhand. His father Harinandan Joshi was a teacher. In 1928, he passed his M.A. examination from the Allahabad University. Soon, he became the General secretary of the Workers and Peasants Party of Uttar Pradesh, formed at Meerut in October 1928. In 1929, at the age of 22, the British Government arrested him as one of the suspects of the Meerut Conspiracy Case. The other early communist leaders who were arrested along with him included Shaukat Usmani, Muzaffar Ahmed, S.A. Dange and G.V. Ghate. Joshi was given six years of transportation to the penal settlement of Andaman Islands.Considering his age, the punishment was later reduced to three. After his release in 1933, Joshi worked towards bringing a number of groups under the banner of the Communist Party of India (CPI). In 1934 the CPI was admitted to the Third International or Comintern.
As the General Secretary
After the sudden arrest of Somnath Lahiri, then Secretary of CPI, during end-1935, Joshi became the new General Secretary. He thus became the first general secretary of Communist Party of India, for a period from 1935 to 1947. At that time the left movement was steadily growing and the British government banned communist activities from 1934 to 1938. In February 1938, when the Communist Party of India started in Bombay its first legal organ, the National Front, Joshi became its editor. The Raj re-banned the CPI in 1939, for its initial anti-War stance. When, in 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the CPI proclaimed that the nature of the war has changed to a people's war against fascism.
Expulsion and rehabilitation
In the post-freedom period, the Communist Party of India, after the second congress in Calcutta (new spelling: Kolkata) adopted a path of taking up arms. Joshi was advocating unity with Indian National Congress under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru. He was severely criticized in the Calcutta congress of the CPI in 1948 and was removed from the general secretaryship. Subsequently, he was suspended from the Party on January 27, 1949, expelled in December 1949 and readmitted to the Party on June 1, 1951. Gradually he was sidelined, though rehabilitated through making him the editor of the Party weekly, New Age. After the Communist Party of India split, he was with the CPI. Though he explained the policy of the CPI in the 7th congress in 1964, he was never brought in the leadership directly.
Last days
In his last days, he kept himself busy in research and publication works in Jawaharlal Nehru University to

establish an archive on the Indian communist movement.
Personal life
In 1943, He married Kalpana Datta (19131995), a revolutionary, who participated in the Chittagong armoury raid. They had two sons, Chand and Suraj. Chand Joshi was a noted journalist, who worked for the Hindustan Times. He was also known for his work, Bhindranwale: Myth and Reality (1985). Chand's second wife Manini (ne Chatterjee) is also a journalist, who works for The Telegraph. She penned a book on the Chittagong armoury raid, titled, Do and Die: The Chittagong Uprising 1930-34 (1999).
translator, journalist and editor. He was born in Salur, Vizianagaram district on November 13, 1904. After primary education, he learned Telugu, Sanskrit and many other languages including Oriya, Hindi, Bengali and English. He actively participated in Indian Freedom Movement particularly Non-cooperative movement, Harijan upliftment and Khadi Prachar movement. He worked as organizer in All India Charaka Sangham at Visakhapatnam. He has distinguished skill in the field of journalism. He has worked as associate editor for 'Swasakti', a national newspaper. He used to write articles for 12 years in 'Andhra Patrika' as freelance journalist. He has organized 'Satyavani' magazine with very informative editorials. He published 'Vaisakhi', a monthly magazine with a praise from literary populace. The credit of discovering the Mahakavi Sri Sri should go to Puripanda, who identified him at young age and published his poems in his own journal. Puripanda was his friend, phylosopher and guide as long as he lived. He took him to London and got his voice and handwriting recorded and published by Gutala Krishnamurthy. Sri Sri reciprocated this by translating the poems of Puripanda into English and remained his lifelong friend and admirer. He was actively involved in the Library Movement in Andhra Pradesh. He has developed libraries in Sriramavaram, Parvathipuram and established a library in Marakam. He was life member of Andhra Pradesh Library Society. He was president of Visakha Writers Association and member of Andhra Pradesh Lalit Kala Akademi and Sahitya Akademi. He was awarded Kalaprapoorna by Andhra University in 1973 for his contributions to Indian literature. He died on November 18, 1982. His statue was erected in Visakhapatnam on the beach road. Brief biographic book was written by Dwana Sastry and Bandi Satyanarayana and released on the occasion.
Puripanda Appala Swamy (Telugu: ) (19041982) was a multi languist, writer,
Puripanda Appala Swamy
Literary works
Mahabharatam Sridevi Bhagavatam Srimadbhagavatam (1979) Valmiki Ramayanam Odiya Sahitya Caritra Historyof Bengali Literature Ratna Patakam Mohammad Charitra Soudamini Oriya Songs Jagadguru Shankaracharya Vishwa Kala Veedhi Hangary Viplavam Amrutha Santanam (translation)

Matti Manushulu (translation) Purnima Banerjee was an Indian freedom fighter, and a member of the Constituent Assembly of India. She was also the sister of Aruna Asaf Ali. Purushottam Das Tandon pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Purshottamdas Tandon.ogg,(August 1, 1882 July 1, 1962), was a freedom fighter from Uttar Pradesh in India. He is widely remembered for his efforts in achieving the Official Language of India status for Hindi. He was customarily given the title Rajarshi (Etymology: Raja + Rishi = Royal Saint). He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in 1961.
Purnima Banerjee
Purushottam Das Tandon
Early life
Purushottam Das Tandon was born at Allahabad. After obtaining a degree in law and an MA in history, he started practising in 1906 and joined the bar of Allahabad High Court in 1908 as a junior to Tej Bahadur Sapru. He gave up practise in 1921 to concentrate on public activities. He was a member of Congress Party since his student days in 1899. In 1906, he represented Allahabad in the AICC. He was associated with the Congress Party committee that studied the Jallianwala Bagh incident in 1919. He was also a part of the Lok Sevak Sangh. In the 1920s and 1930s he was arrested for participating in the Non-Cooperation movement and Salt Satyagraha respectively. He and Nehru were among the people arrested even before Mahatma Gandhi returned from the Round Table Conference at London in 1931. He was known for his efforts in farmers movements and he served as the President, Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha in 1934. He worked as the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of the present-day Uttar Pradesh for a period of 13 years, from July 31, 1937 to August 10, 1950. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly of India in 1946.
Freedom struggle
Post-Independence
He tried for the position of the President of the Congress Party unsuccessfully against Pattabhi Sitaramayya in 1948 but contested successfully against Acharya Kriplani in the controversial and difficult 1950 election to head the Nagpur session. He was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1952 and the Rajya Sabha in 1956. He retired from active public life after that due to indifferent health. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, Indias highest civilian award in 1961.
Controversies Religious tolerance
Several controversies and contradictions abound in the life of Purushottam Das Tandon. While he emphasized the similarities between Hindu and Muslim cultures, he is regarded to have carried the image of a soft Hindu nationalist leader. He was not as successful as Mahatma Gandhi in summoning religious ideals to aspects of Public Service despite being associated with the moderate Radha Soami cult. He and KM Munshi were among those who strongly opposed religious propagation and conversion of a people of one religion to another; they strongly argued in the constituent assembly for a condemnation in the constitution of religious conversion. On June 12, 1947, the Congress Working Committee met and passed a resolution accepting the Partition of India. When the same had to be ratified on 14 June by the AICC, one of the dissenting voices came from Tandon. On that occasion, he said, Acceptance of the resolution will be an abject surrender to the British and the Muslim League. The admission of the Working Committee was an admission of weakness and the result of a sense of despair. The Partition would not benefit either community the Hindus in Pakistan and the Muslims in India would both live in fear. Thus, it can be argued that he was against partition. However, another school of thought believes that his reluctance in sharing power with the Muslim League in the provinces after the 1937 elections with the argument
Partition of India

that the Congress Party has achieved majority on its own may have precipitated matters towards partition. He and Nehru had good relations in the beginning; Nehru who commended the No Tax campaign started by Tandon in 1930. In the 1940s the differences between them increased. While Tandon was not perceived to be power-hungry, his relation with Nehru was not on good terms and he was believed to be a protg of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. In 1950, his successful election to the post of Congress President against Acharya Kriplani, who was widely believed to be backed by Nehru, put the latter in a tight spot. The relations between the party and the government suffered during that period. Subsequently, it became a sort of unwritten norm for the leader of the government to also be the party president or at the least, have a pliable candidate in the post.
Relations with Nehru
Advocation of Hindi
While it is acknowledged that he brought Hindi to the forefront through his activities in the Hindi Prachar Sabhas, his exclusion of other alternatives bordered on chauvinism despite Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders advocating the adoption of Hindustani, a mixture of Hindi and Urdu as the National language. He insisted on the usage of Devanagari script and the rejection of the Urdu script as well as words with Arabic-Persian roots. This led to him being called a political reactionary by Nehru. His attitude towards the Sanskritisation or making the language more formal was also controversial. His insistence on the usage of numerals of devanagari script over the international system and his debates in the constituent assembly on adoption of Hindi as the official language irked Dravidian leaders. His stand became all the more inexplicable since he held a conviction that mother-tongue is the most ideal as a medium of instruction.
Anecdotes
A Speaker is supposed to be impartial and hence, speakers generally do not participate in their party meetings. Tandon, however, used to participate actively in his party meetings, as he was clear in his conscience that since he could separate these into different compartments, there should not be any issue. When he was questioned on this stand on the floor of the house, he offered to step down if any of the members of the house lacked confidence in him. No member pressed the issue. As a staunch believer in ahimsa, he started using rubber chappals to avoid usage of leather. Rajarshi Purushottam Das Tandon was at the time a Member of Parliament. Once, when he went to collect his salary cheque in the Parliament Office, he asked the clerk there to transfer the amount directly to a Public Service Fund. The officials over there were pleasantly surprised by his generosity. One of his colleagues standing nearby said: There are hardly four hundred rupees as your allowance for the whole month. And you are donating the entire amount for social service? Tandon ji humbly replied You see, I have seven sons and all are earning sufficiently to raise their families; each one sends me one hundred rupees per month. I spend only about rupees three to four hundred from that and the rest goes to some philanthropic causes. This allowance as a Member-of-Parliament is again extra for some one like me. Why should I save it for myself or my family? It was because of this natural austerity and detachment from selfish possessions that he was called a Rajarshi. Rao Bahadur Raghunath Narasinha Mudholkar was an Indian politician who served as the President of the Indian National Congress for one term, succeeding Pandit Bishan Narayan Dar. He presided over 27th session of Indian National Congress at Bankipore (Patna) in 1912. Raghunath Mudholkar was born in Dhulia, Khandesh, in a respectable middle-class family on May 16, 1857. He had his education partly at Dhulia and partly in Vidarbha. Then he went to Bombay and graduated from Elphinstone College where he was granted a Fellowship. He was leading Lawyer practising at Amravati along with G. S. Khaparde and Moropant V Joshi. He was made Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire in January 1914, in recognition of his public services. He was a devout Hindu, advocated social reforms like female education, widow remarriage and removal of Untouchability. As a follower of Gokhale, he believed that developing nationalism required British
Raghunath Narasinha Mudholkar

cooperation and therefore the national movement should be constitutional and nonviolent. He was in the Congress from 1888 to 1917, and thereafter joined the Liberals. He was in the Congress delegation of 1890 sent to England to voice the grievances of the Indians. He was President of the Indian National Congress held at Bankipur in 1912. He admired Parliamentary democracy but opposed British bureaucracy. He criticised the economic policy of the Government, helped to establish a number of industries in Vidarbha and advocated technical education. He founded several social organisations and worked for the uplift of the poor. He died on January 13, 1921. His son Janardhan became Judge at Supreme Court of India during 1960-1966. Rahimtulla M. Sayani (April 5, 18471902),was an Indian politician who served as the President of the Indian National Congress for one term, succeeding Surendranath Banerjea. Rahimtullah M Sayani, born in 1847, a century before the Independence of India, belongs to Khoja Muslim Community, who were the disciples of the Aga Khan. He was associated with the Indian National Congress since its inception and he was one of the two Indian Muslims who attended its First Session of INC held at Bombay in 1885, where "Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee" was elected as the first President of Congress. Rahimtullah M Sayani was the "Second Muslim" to become the "President of Indian National Congress". In the year 1896 he presided over the 12th Annual Session of the Congress held at Calcutta where he was elected as the "President of Congress" and became the Second Muslim to achieve such Position. His presidential address to the Session was the "Best delivered so far" as it was hailed by a contemporary journal of that period. Rahimtullah M Sayani,was western educated, a Lawyer by profession who achieved public eminence and professional excellence, he was elected as a member of the Bombay Municipal Corporation and was the Sheriff of Bombay in 1885, also elected as President of the Corporation in 1888. Twice he was elected to the Bombay Legislative Council and was also elected to the Imperial Legislative Council (18961898).
Rahimtulla M. Sayani
Quotes
"We should endeavour to promote personal intimacy and friendship amongst all the great communities of India, to develop and consolidate sentiments of national growth and unity, to weld them together into one nationality, to effect a moral union amongst them, to remove the taunt that we are not a nation, but only a congeries of races and creeds which have no cohesion in then and to bring about stronger and stronger friendly ties of common nationality." From the Presidential Address, I.N.C., - Rahimtulla M. Sayani I.N.C. Session, 1896, Calcutta.
External links
Indian National Congress Website Dr. Rajendra Prasad ( listen Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Rajendra_prasad.ogg; 3 December 1884 28 February 1963) was an Indian political leader who served as the first President of the Republic of India from 1950 to 1962. A lawyer by training, Prasad joined the Indian National Congress during the Indian independence movement and became a major leader from the region of Bihar. A supporter of Mahatma Gandhi, Prasad was imprisoned by British authorities during the Salt Satyagraha of 1931 and the Quit India movement of 1942. Prasad served one term as President of the Indian National Congress from 1934 to 1935. After the 1946 elections, Prasad served as minister of food and agriculture in the central government. Upon independence in 1947, Prasad was elected president of the Constituent Assembly of India, which prepared the Constitution of India and served as its provisional parliament. When India became a Republic in 1950, Prasad was elected its first President by the Constituent
Rajendra Prasad

Assembly. Following the general election of 1951, he was elected President by the electoral college of the first Parliament of India and its state legislatures. As President, Prasad established a tradition of nonpartisanship and independence for the office-bearer, and retired from Congress party politics. Although a ceremonial head of state, Prasad encouraged the development of education in India and advised the Nehru government on several occasions. In 1957, Prasad was re-elected to the presidency, becoming the only president to have been elected twice for the office.
Early life
Rajendra Prasad was a Kayastha and born in Zeradei, in the Siwan district of Bihar near Chappra. His father Mahadev Sahai, was a scholar of both the Persian and Sanskrit languages, while his mother, Kamleshwari Devi, was a religious woman who would tell stories from the Ramayana to her son. When Prasad was 5 years old, his parents placed him under the tutelage of a Moulavi, an accomplished Muslim scholar, to learn the Persian language, Hindi and arithmetic. After the completion of traditional elementary education, he was sent to the Chapra District School and at a small age of 12, he was married to Rajavanshi Devi. He, along with his elder brother Mahendra Prasad, then went to study at T.K. Ghosh's Academy in Patna for a period of two years.He secured first in the entrance examination to the University of Calcutta and was awarded Rs.30 per month as a scholarship. He joined the Presidency College, Kolkata in 1902, initially as a science student. He passed Intermediate level classes then called as F. A. under the University of Calcutta in March 1904. He was a great scholar. It can be proved from the comment of an examiner who wrote on his answer sheet "examinee is better than examiner". Later he decided to focus on the arts and did his M.A. in Economics with first division from the University of Calcutta in December 1907. There he lived with his brother in the Eden Hindu Hostel. A devoted student as well as a public activist, he was an active member of The Dawn Society. It was due to his sense of duty towards his family and education that he refused to join Servants of India Society. Rajendra Prasad was instrumental in the formation of the Bihari Students Conference in 1906 in the hall of the Patna College.It was the first organization of its kind in India and produced some of the eminent leaders of Bihar like Dr. Anugrah Narayan Sinha and Sri Krishna Sinha.
Student life
Career As a teacher
Rajendra Prasad served in various educational institutions as a teacher. After completing his M.A in economics, he became a professor of English at the Langat Singh College of Muzaffarpur in (Bihar) and went on to become the principal. However later on he left the college for his legal studies. In 1909, while pursuing his law studies in Kolkata he also worked as Professor of Economics at Calcutta City College. In 1915, Prasad appeared in the examination of Masters in Law, passed the examination and won a gold medal. He completed his Doctorate in Law from Allahabad University in 1937.
As a lawyer
In the year 1916, he joined the High Court of Bihar and Odisha. Later in the year 1917, he was appointed as one of the first members of the Senate and Syndicate of the Patna University. He also used to practice law at Bhagalpur, the famous silk-town of Bihar.[citation needed] Prasad had formally joined the Indian National Congress way back in the year 1911. During the Lucknow Session of Indian National Congress held in 1916, he met Mahatma Gandhi. During one of the factfinding missions at Champaran, Mahatma Gandhi asked him to come with his volunteers. He was so greatly moved by the dedication, courage, and conviction of Mahatma Gandhi that as soon as the motion of Non-Cooperation was passed by Indian National Congress in 1920, he retired his lucrative career of lawyer as well as his duties in the university to aid the movement. He also responded to the call by Gandhi to boycott Western educational establishments by asking his son, Mrityunjaya Prasad, to drop out of his studies and enroll himself in Bihar Vidyapeeth, an institution he along with his colleagues founded on the traditional Indian model. During the course of the independent movement, he interacted with Dr Rahul Sankrityayan, a writer, and
Role in the Independence Movement

polymath. Rahul Sankrityayan was greatly influenced by Prasad's intellectual prowess, finding him to be a guide and guru. In many of his articles he mentioned about his meeting with Sankrityayan and narrated about their meetings. He wrote articles for the revolutionary publications Searchlight and the Desh and collected funds for these papers. He toured widely, explaining, lecturing, and exhorting the principles of the independence movement.[citation needed] He took an active role in helping the affected people during the 1914 floods that struck Bihar and Bengal. When an earthquake affected Bihar on 15 January 1934, Prasad was in jail. During that period, he passed on the relief work to his close colleague Anugrah Narayan Sinha. He was released two days later and set up Bihar Central Relief Committee on 17 January 1934, and took the task of raising funds to help the people himself. During the May 31, 1935 Quetta earthquake, when he was forbidden to leave the country due to government's order he set up Quetta Central Relief Committee in Sindh and Punjab under his own presidentship. He was elected as the President of the Indian National Congress during the Bombay session in October 1934. He again became the president when Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose resigned in 1939. On 8 August 1942, Congress passed the Quit India Resolution in Bombay which led to the arrest of many Indian leaders. He was arrested from Sadaqat Ashram, Patna and sent to Bankipur Jail. After remaining incarcerated for nearly three years, he was released on 15 June 1945.[citation needed] After the formation of Interim Government of 12 nominated ministers under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru on Sep 2 1946, he got the Food and Agriculture department. Later, he was elected the President of Constituent Assembly on 11 December 1946. Again on 17 November 1947 he became Congress President for a third time after Jivatram Kripalani submitted resignation. Two and a half years after independence, on January 26, 1950, the Constitution of independent India was ratified and Dr. Rajendra Prasad was elected the nation's first President.He served as the President of constituent assembly. Prasad acted independently of politics, following the expected role of the president as per the constitution. Following the tussle over the enactment of the Hindu Code Bill, he took a more active role in state affairs. In 1962, after serving twelve years as the president, he announced his decision to retire. After relinquishing the office of the President of India on May 1962, he returned to Patna on 14 May 1962 and preferred to stay in the campus of Bihar Vidyapeeth. He was subsequently awarded the Bharat Ratna, the nation's highest civilian award. He died on 28 February 1963.Sadakat Ashram memorial in Patna is dedicated to him.
Literary contributions
Satyagraha at Champaran (1922) India Divided (1946, online) Atmakatha (1946), his autobiography written during his 3-year prison term in Bankipur Jail Mahatma Gandhi and Bihar, Some Reminisences" (1949) Bapu ke Kadmon Mein (1954) Since Independence (published in 1960) bharitya shiksha
Rajiv Gandhi ( i/rdivHelp:IPA for English#Keyndi/; 20 August 1944 21 May 1991) was the sixth Prime Minister of India (19841989). He took office after his mother's assassination on 31 October 1984; he himself was assassinated on 21 May 1991. He became the youngest Prime Minister of India when he took office at the age of 40. Rajiv Gandhi was the eldest son of Indira and Feroze Gandhi. He went to study at Trinity College, Cambridge, and later at Imperial College London, but did not complete a degree at either. At Cambridge he met the Italian-born Antonia Albina Maino, who was also studying in the university, whom he later married. After dropping out of university, he became a professional pilot for Indian Airlines. He remained aloof from politics, despite his family's political prominence. Following the death of his younger brother Sanjay Gandhi in 1980 Rajiv entered politics. Following the assassination of his mother in 1984 after
Rajiv Gandhi

Operation Blue Star, the Indian National Congress party leaders nominated him to be Prime Minister. Rajiv Gandhi led the Congress to a major election victory in 1984 soon after, amassing the largest majority ever seen in the Indian Parliament, the Congress party winning 411 seats out of 542. He began dismantling the License Raj government quotas, tariffs and permit regulations on economic activity modernised the telecommunications industry, the education system, expanded science and technology initiatives and improved relations with the United States. In 1988, Gandhi reversed the coup in Maldives antagonising the militant Tamil outfits such as PLOTE. He was also responsible for first intervening and then sending Indian troops (Indian Peace Keeping Force or IPKF) for peace efforts in Sri Lanka in 1987, which soon ended in open conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In mid-1987, the Bofors scandal broke his honest, corruption-free image and resulted in a major defeat for his party in the 1989 elections. Rajiv Gandhi remained Congress President until the elections in 1991. While campaigning, he was assassinated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. His widow Sonia Gandhi became the leader of the Congress party in 1998, and led the party to victory in the 2004 elections. His son Rahul Gandhi is a Member of Parliament and the Vice President of the Indian National Congress. Rajiv Gandhi was posthumously awarded the Highest National Award of India, Bharat Ratna (1991), joining a list of 40 luminaries, including Indira Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi was an active amateur radio operator, and used the callsign VU2RG. He also founded INTACH in 1984 that seeks to preserve India's art and cultural heritage.
Early life and career
Rajiv Gandhi was born into India's most famous political family. His grandfather was the Indian independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru, who was India's first Prime Minister after independence. Rajiv Gandhi was not related to Mahatma Gandhi, although they share the same surname. His father, Feroze, was one of the younger members of the Indian National Congress party, and had befriended the young Indira, and also her mother Kamala Nehru, while working on party affairs at Allahabad. Subsequently, Indira and Feroze grew closer to each other while in England, and they married, despite initial objections from Jawaharlal due to his religion (Zoroastrianism). Rajiv was born in 1944 in Mumbai, during a time when both his parents were in and out of British prisons. In August 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru became the prime minister of independent India, and the family settled in Allahabad, and then at Lucknow, where Feroze became the editor of the National Herald newspaper (founded by Motilal Nehru). The marriage was faltering and, in 1949, Indira and the two sons moved to Delhi to live with Jawaharlal, ostensibly so that Indira could assist her father in his duties, acting as official hostess, and helping run the huge residence. Meanwhile, Feroze continued alone in Lucknow. In 1952, Indira helped Feroze manage his campaign for elections to the first Parliament of India from Rae Bareli. After becoming an MP, Feroze Gandhi also moved to Delhi, but "Indira continued to stay with her father, thus putting the final seal on the separation." Relations were strained further when Feroze challenged corruption within the Congress leadership over the Haridas Mundhra scandal. Jawaharlal suggested that the matter be resolved in private, but Feroze insisted on taking the case directly to parliament: "The Parliament must exercise vigilance and control over the biggest and most powerful financial institution it has created, the Life Insurance Corporation of India, whose misapplication of public funds we shall scrutinise today." Feroze Gandhi, Speech in Parliament, 16 December 1957. The scandal, and its investigation by justice M C Chagla, lead to the resignation of one of Nehru's key allies, finance minister T.T. Krishnamachari, further alienating Feroze from Jawaharlal. After Feroze Gandhi had a heart attack in 1958, the family was reconciled briefly when they holidayed in Kashmir. Feroze died soon afterwards from a second heart attack in 1960.
Education
At the time of his father's death, Rajiv was away at a private boarding school for boys: The Doon School,

located in Dehradun, Uttarakhand. He was sent to London in 1961 to study his A-levels. In 1962, he was offered a place at Trinity College, Cambridge, to study engineering. Rajiv stayed at Cambridge until 1965, but did not complete his degree. In 1966, he was offered and took up a place at Imperial College London, but after a year left that course also without a degree. Rajiv began working for Indian Airlines as a professional pilot while his mother became Prime Minister in 1966. He exhibited no interest in politics and did not live regularly with his mother in Delhi at the Prime Minister's residence. In 1970, his wife gave birth to their first child Rahul Gandhi, and in 1972, to Priyanka Gandhi, their second. Even as Rajiv remained aloof from politics, his younger brother Sanjay became a close advisor to their mother.
Entry into politics
Following his younger brother's death in 1980, Gandhi was pressured by Indian National Congress party politicians and his mother to enter politics. He and his wife were both opposed to the idea, and he even publicly stated that he would not contest for his brother's seat. Nevertheless, he eventually announced his candidacy for Parliament. His entry was criticised by many in the press, public and opposition political parties. Rajiv also became member of the Asian Games Organizing Committee in 1982 with his close friend and then sports Minister Sardar Buta Singh as president of the committee He fought his first election from Amethi Loksabha seat. In this by-election, he defeated Lokdal leader Sharad Yadav by m Elected to Sanjay's Lok Sabha (parliamentary) constituency of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh state in February 1981, Gandhi became an important political advisor to his mother. It was widely perceived that Indira Gandhi was grooming Rajiv for the prime minister's job, and he soon became the president of the Youth Congress the Congress party's youth wing. Rajiv Gandhi was in West Bengal when his mother, Indira Gandhi was assassinated on 31 October 1984 by two of her Sikh bodyguards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, to avenge the military attack on the Harmandir Sahib (Sikhism's holiest shrine, also called "The Golden Temple") during Operation Blue Star. Senior Congress Leader and then union minister Sardar Buta Singh, as well as President Zail Singh pressed Rajiv to become India's Prime Minister, within hours of his mother's assassination by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Commenting on the anti-Sikh riots in the national capital Delhi, Rajiv Gandhi said, "When a giant tree falls, the earth below shakes"; a statement for which he was widely criticised. Many Congress politicians were accused of orchestrating the violence. Soon after assuming office, Rajiv asked President Zail Singh to dissolve Parliament and hold fresh elections, as the Lok Sabha completed its fiveyear term. Rajiv Gandhi also officially became the President of the Congress party. The Congress party won a landslide victory with the largest majority in history of Indian Parliament<ref name=%26quot%3B%26quot%3B%26quot%3Bautogenerated1%26quot%3B%26gt%3B[http%3A%2F %2Fnews%2Ebbc%2Eco%2Euk%2Fonthisday%2Fhi%2Fdates%2Fstories%2Fdecember%2F29%2Fnewsi dUS953314000%2F3314987%2Estm%26quot%3B%26quot%3B BBC ON THIS DAY | 29 | 1984: Rajiv Gandhi wins landslide election victory]</ref> giving Gandhi absolute control of government. He also benefited from his youth and a general perception of being free of a background in corrupt politics.
Premiership
Economic policy
He increased government support for science and technology and associated industries, and reduced import quotas, taxes and tariffs on technology-based industries, especially computers, airlines, defence and telecommunications. In 1986, he announced a National Policy on Education to modernise and expand higher education programs across India. He founded the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya System in 1986 which is a Central government based institution that concentrates on the upliftment of the rural section of the society providing them free residential education from 6th till 12 grade. His efforts created MTNL in 1986, and his public call offices, better known as PCOs, helped spread telephones in rural areas. He introduced measures significantly reducing the License Raj, in post-1990 period, allowing businesses and individuals to purchase capital, consumer goods and import without bureaucratic restrictions.
Foreign policy
Rajiv Gandhi began leading in a direction significantly different from his mother's socialism. He improved

bilateral relations with the United States long strained owing to Indira's socialism and friendship with the USSR and expanded economic and scientific cooperation. During his state visit to the Soviet Union he met with Premier Nikolai Tikhonov, Andrey Gromyko of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mikhail Gorbachev.
Security policy
Rajiv authorised an extensive police and army campaign to contain terrorism in Punjab. A state of martial law existed in the Punjab state, and civil liberties, commerce and tourism were greatly disrupted. There are many accusations of human rights violations by police officials as well as by the militants during this period. It is alleged that even as the situation in Punjab came under control, the Indian government was offering arms and training to the LTTE rebels fighting the government of Sri Lanka. The Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord was signed by Rajiv Gandhi and the Sri Lankan President J. R. Jayewardene, in Colombo on 29 July 1987. The very next day, on 30 July 1987, Rajiv Gandhi was assaulted on the head with a rifle butt by a young Sinhalese naval cadet named Vijayamunige Rohana de Silva, while receiving the honour guard. The intended assault on the back of Rajiv Gandhi's head glanced off his shoulder and it was captured in news crew photographs and video. With his speech while addressing the Joint Session of the US Congress and India, he said, "India is an old country, but a young nation; and like the young everywhere, we are impatient. I am young and I too have a dream. I dream of an India, strong, independent, self reliant and in the forefront of the front ranks of the nations of the world in the service of mankind."
This refers to the statement of Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister at a Boat Club rally 19-days after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, which read as Some riots took place in the country following the murder of Indiraji. We know the people were very angry and for a few days it seemed that India had been shaken. But, when a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it does shake a little. This statement sent a wrong signal to the authorities, who adopted a callous approach of not allowing the truth to come out despite the government setting up probe panels one after the other, including two full fledged judicial commissions, the first headed by retired Chief Justice of India Ranganath Misra and the second by a former apex court judge G.T. Nanavati. According to the authors of the book titled When a Tree Shook Delhi written by senior advocate H.S. Phoolka and co-author, journalist Manoj Mitta (who have based the details of the book mainly on evidence produced before the nine panels and trial courts and high courts in the form of sworn affidavits by hundreds of witnesses). Based on eyewitness accounts the book said that instead of targeting the aggressors the police cracked down on the Sikh victims, who had been defending their properties when they were attacked by hooligans led by local Congress leaders.
Controversies Anti-Sikh riots
Bofors scandal
Rajiv Gandhi's finance minister, V. P. Singh, uncovered compromising details about government and political corruption, to the consternation of Congress leaders. Transferred to the Defence ministry, Singh uncovered what became known as the Bofors scandal, involving tens of millions of dollars concerned alleged payoffs by the Swedish Bofors arms company through Italian businessman and Gandhi family associate Ottavio Quattrocchi, in return for Indian contracts. Upon the uncovering of the scandal, Singh was dismissed from office, and later from Congress membership. Rajiv Gandhi himself was later personally implicated in the scandal when the investigation was continued by Narasimhan Ram and Chitra Subramaniam of The Hindu newspaper. This shattered his image as an honest politician; he was posthumously cleared over this allegation in 2004. Opposition parties united under Singh to form the Janata Dal coalition. In the 1989 election, the Congress suffered a major setback. With the support of Indian communists and the Bharatiya Janata Party, Singh and his Janata Dal formed a government. Rajiv Gandhi became the Leader of the Opposition, while remaining Congress president. While some believe that Rajiv and Congress leaders influenced the collapse of V. P. Singh's government in October 1990 by promising support to Chandra Shekhar, a highText : Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License | Source: Wikipedia: Compiled by www.gktoday.in 236 | P a g e

ranking leader in the Janata Dal, sufficient internal contradictions existed, within the ruling coalition, especially over the controversial reservation issue, to cause a fall of government. Rajiv's Congress offered outside support briefly to Chandra Sekhar, who became Prime Minister. They withdrew their support in 1991, and fresh elections were announced. Then Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa opposed the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord, but accepted it due to pressure from then President Junius Richard Jayewardene. In 1987, When he was inspecting guard of honour in Sri Lanka, he was attacked by a Sri Lankan soldier Vijitha Rohana de Silva of Naval rating. His own agility and Indian Special Protection Group saved Rajiv from that brutal attack. In January 1989 Premadasa was elected President and on a platform that promised that the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) leave within three months. In the 1989 elections, both the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and United National Party wanted the IPKF to withdraw, and they got 95 percent of the vote. The police action was unpopular in India as well, especially in Tamil Nadu, as India was fighting the Tamil separatists. Rajiv Gandhi refused to withdraw the IPKF, believing that the only way to end the civil war was to politically force Premadasa and militarily force the LTTE to accept the accord. Gandhi had concluded a visit to Sri Lanka; this was just after the Indian Peace Keeping Force (a contingent of India armed forces sent to Sri Lanka to help with their battle against Tamil insurgents) had been recalled and there was a good deal of resentment that Indian troops had been deployed there. In December 1989, Singh was elected Prime Minister and completed the pullout. The IPKF operation killed over 1100 Indian soldiers, 5000 Tamil civilians and cost over 10000 crores.
Sri Lanka policy
Shah Bano case
In 1985, the Supreme Court of India ruled in favour of Muslim divorcee Shah Bano, declaring that her husband should give her alimony. Muslim fundamentalists in India treated it as an encroachment in Muslim Personal Law and protested against it. Gandhi agreed to their demands. In 1986, the Congress (I) party, which had an absolute majority in Parliament at the time, passed an act that nullified the Supreme Court's judgement in the Shah Bano case. This was viewed by many in India, including the Bharatiya Janata Party as appeasement of Muslims. In November 1991, the Schweizer Illustrierte (Swiss Illustrated) magazine published an article on black money held in secret accounts by Imelda Marcos and 14 other rulers of Third World countries. Citing McKinsey as a source, the article stated that Rajiv Gandhi held 2.5 billion Swiss francs in secret Indian accounts in Switzerland. Several leaders of opposition parties in India have raised the issue citing the Schweizer Illustrierte article. In December 1991, Amal Datta raised the issue in the Indian Parliament the then speaker of the Lok Sabha, Shivraj Patil, expunged Rajiv Gandhi's name from the proceedings. In December 2011, Subramanian Swamy wrote a letter to the director of the Central Bureau of Investigation which cited the article, asking him to take action on black money accounts of the Nehru-Gandhi family. On 29 December 2011, Ram Jethmalani made an indirect reference to the issue in the Rajya Sabha, calling it a shame that one of India's former Prime Ministers was named by a Swiss magazine. This was met by uproar and a demand for withdrawal of the remark by the ruling Congress party members.
Allegations of black money
Allegations of funding from KGB
In 1992, two Indian newspapers, the Times of India and The Hindu, published reports alleging that Rajiv Gandhi had received funds from the KGB. The Russian government confirmed this disclosure and defended the payments as necessary for the Soviet ideological interest. In their 1994 book The State Within a State, the journalists Yevgenia Albats and Catherine Fitzpatrick quoted a letter signed by Viktor Chebrikov in the 1980s, the then-head of the KGB. The letter says that the KGB maintained contact with Rajiv Gandhi, who expressed his gratitude to the KGB for benefits accruing to his family from commercial dealings of a controlled firm, and a considerable portion of funds obtained from this channel were used to support his party. Albats later revealed that in December 1985, Chebrikov had asked for authorisation from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to make payments to family

members of Rajiv Gandhi including Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. The payments were authorised by a resolution and endorsed by the USSR Council of Ministers, and had been coming since 1971. In December 2001, Subramanian Swamy filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court, acting on which the court ordered CBI to ascertain the truth of the allegations in May 2002. After two years, the CBI told the Court that Russia would not entertain such queries without a registered FIR.
WikiLeaks allegations Assassination
Diplomatic cables published in 2013 through WikiLeaks detailing the opinions of American civil servants asserted that Rajiv Gandhi was an arms middleman. Rajiv Gandhi's last public meeting was at Sriperumbudur on 21 May 1991, in a village approximately 30 miles from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, where he was assassinated while campaigning for the Sriperumbudur Lok Sabha Congress candidate. The assassination was carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. At 10:21 pm, a woman (later identified as Thenmozhi Rajaratnam) approached Rajiv Gandhi in a public meeting and greeted him. She then bent down to touch his feet (an expression of respect among Indians) and detonated a belt laden with 700 grams of RDX explosives tucked under her dress. The explosion killed Rajiv Gandhi, his assassin and at least 14 other people. The assassination was caught on film through the lens of a local photographer, whose camera and film were found at the site. The cameraman himself died in the blast but the camera remained intact. Rajiv Gandhi's mutilated body was airlifted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi for post-mortem, reconstruction and embalming. A state funeral was held for Rajiv Gandhi on 24 May 1991. His funeral was telecast live nationally and internationally, and was attended by dignitaries from over 60 countries. He was cremated on the banks of the river Yamuna, near the samadhis of his mother, brother, grandfather and Mahatma Gandhi. Today, the site where he was cremated is known as Vir Bhumi.
Aftermath
The Rajiv Gandhi Memorial was built at the site recently and is one of the major tourist attractions of the small industrial town. The Supreme Court judgement, by Judge Thomas, confirmed that the killing was carried out due to personal animosity of the LTTE chief Prabhakaran towards Mr Rajiv Gandhi arising out of his sending the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka and the alleged IPKF atrocities against Sri Lankan Tamils. The Rajiv Gandhi administration had already antagonised other Tamil militant organisations like PLOTE for reversing the military coup in Maldives back in 1988. The judgment further cites the death of Thileepan in a hunger strike and the suicide by 12 LTTE cadres in a vessel in Oct 1987. In the Jain Commission report, various people and agencies are named as suspected of having been involved in the murder of Rajiv Gandhi. Among them, the cleric Chandraswami was suspected of involvement, including financing the assassination. S Nalini Sriharan is the lone surviving member of the five-member squad behind the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and is serving life imprisonment. Arrested on June 14, 1991, she was sentenced to death, along with 25 others, by a special court on January 28, 1998. The SC confirmed death only for four of the convicts, including Nalini, on May 11, 1999. Nalini, who was a close friend of an LTTE operative known as V Sriharan alias Murugan, another convict in the case who has been sentenced to death, later gave birth to a girl,Harithra Murugan in prison.Nalini was earlier given the death sentence. On the intervention of Rajiv Gandhi's widow and Congress president Sonia Gandhi in 2000, the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Nalini was being treated as an 'A' class convict from September 10, 1999 till the privilege was withdrawn in May 2010 after a mobile phone was allegedly recovered from her cell during a surprise check. She "regrets" the killing of the former Prime Minister and claims that the real conspirators have not been booked yet. President of India had rejected the clemency pleas of Murugan and two others on death row, T Suthendraraja alias Santhan and A G Perarivalan alias Arivu in August 2011. The execution of the three convicts was scheduled on September 9, 2011. However, the Madras High Court intervened and stayed their execution for eight weeks based on their petitions. Nalini was shifted back to Vellore prison from Puzhal prison

amidst tight security on September 7, 2011.In 2010,Nalini had moved the Madras High Court seeking release as she served more than 20 years in prison. She argued that even life convicts were released after 14 years of prison term. However, the state government rejected her request. Interestingly, Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan, the three convicts condemned to death sentence, claim that they are not ordinary criminals but political prisoners. The interim report of the Jain Commission created a storm when it accused Karunanidhi of a role in the assassination, leading to Congress withdrawing its support for the I. K. Gujral government and fresh elections in 1998. LTTE spokesman Anton Balasingham told the Indian television channel NDTV that the killing was a "great tragedy, a monumental historical tragedy which we deeply regret." A memorial christened Veer Bhumi was constructed at his cremation spot in Delhi. In 1992, the Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana Award was instituted by All India Congress Committee (AICC) of the Indian National Congress Party (INC). The International Airport constructed at Hyderabad has been named Rajiv Gandhi International Airport and was inaugurated by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. Rajeev Gandhi Memorial Boarding School in Sheopur is named after him.
Ramadevi was an Indian advocate of the Indian independence movement, and also a civil rights advocate supporting the deprived within India. Ramarshi Deo Trivedi (190576) a son of landlord from Mamarkha(now in Govindganj),left his school for the freedom movement. He was the private secretary of Gandhiji (for ten days) during his visit to champaran. He was nicknamed as "RISHIJI"- "RUKHIJI"-'a squirrel',as called by Britons because they could not catch him, he would flee away after executing his task successfully during the freedom struggle. He was a very close friend of Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India, who used address him as "Rishiji". A special task force was formed by the Britishers to arrest. He was later arrested by the Special Task Force. He was sentenced 58 years of KALA-PANI imprisonment but spent only 8.5 years in jail during the national freedom movement because India got freedom from British rule before his departure to Andaman & Nicobar islands. Post independence he established an "Aashram" and ran Khadi Gramodyog (a small Khadi industry) where Vinoba Bhave and other eminent freedom-fighters very often used to visit and spent their time. He donated all his property for Bhoodan Movement carried by Vinoba Bhave and refused to take pensioner pass (A pass given to all national freedom fighter) because he believed that he had not participated in the freedom struggle for personal gain. Rishi ji was one of the most renowned freedom fighters of Bihar. He was a very close associate of Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Vinoba Bhave, who addressed him as 'Rishi ji'. He was also known as Badshah as he established a parallel government in Champaran which was known as Badshah ki Sarkar. A special task force was formed by the Britishers to arrest him. He was arrested in 1942 and was sentenced 58 years of imprisonment. He was released in 1947, after independence, and later he spent his days in his Ashram in Malaahi where he ran a Khadi Gramudyog (A small industry). He donated all his property for land reform movement "Bhoodan Movement" carried by Vinoba Bhave and refused to take pensioner pass (A pass given to all national freedom fighter) because he believed that he had not participated in the freedom struggle for personal gain. He died in 1976. Rani Gaidinliu was a Naga leader who led a revolt against British rule in India. She joined the freedom struggle at the age of 13 and led a socio-political movement to drive out the British from Manipur and Naga areas. She was arrested in 1932 at the age of 16 and to life imprisonment. She was released in 1947 after India's independence. After her release she continued to work for the uplift of her people. She organised a resistance movement
Ramadevi
Ramarshi Dev Trivedi
Rani Gaidinliu

against the Naga National Council (NNC)-led insurgents in 1966 and had to go underground. She was honoured as a freedom fighter and was awarded a Padma Bhushan. Rani Gaidinliu died in 1993.
Early life
Gaidinliu was born on 26 January 1915 at Longkao village in the present Tousem Sub-division of Tamenglong District in Manipur. She was from Rongmei (Kabui/Zeliangrong) tribe. She was the fifth of eight children, including six sisters and a younger brother, born to Lothonang Pamei and Kachaklenliu. In 1927, when she was just 13, she met Haipou Jadonang, a prominent local leader at Puilon Village. Persuaded by his ideology and principles, she became his disciple and a part of his movement against the British. In three years, by the age of 16, she became a leader of guerrilla forces fighting against the British rulers. Jadonang's movement was a reaction to the British regime and its ruthlessness against the Zeliangrong people of Manipur during and after the Kuki rebellion (191719).
Rebellion and Incarceration
The revolutionary movement of the western hills of Manipur popularly known as the Naga Raj movement gained momentum with the arrival of guns from Cachar, Assam and the boycott of British taxes and forced labor. However as the movement gained traction, Haipou Jodonang was arrested and subsequently hanged on 29 August 1931 at Imphal jail by the Britishers. Following Jadonang's execution, the responsibility of the movement fell on Gaidinliu who took up the leadership of the movement and became the spiritual, social and political successor of Jadonang. She went underground along with her followers. The British authorities launched a manhunt for her and a Rs. 500/- reward was announced for information leading to her arrest. Her people in Manipur, Cachar, North Cachar and Naga Hills of Assam stood firm behind her. She was finally arrested from Poilwa (Pulomi) village in modern Nagaland on 17 October 1932 by a British Army team led by Captain Mac Donald. Following a trial, she was convicted on the charges of murder and abetment of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1933. From 1933 to 1947 she served time at the Gauhati, Shillong, Aizawl and Tura jails. Jawaharlal Nehru met her at the Shillong Jail in 1937 and he promised to pursue her release. His statement, published in the Hindustan Times , described Gaidinliu as a daughter of the hills and he gave her the title 'Rani' or Queen of her people. Nehru wrote to Lady Aston, M.P. in London to do something for the release of Rani Gaidinliu but the Secretary of State for India rejected her request stating that trouble may rise again if Rani was released.
Life in Independent India
When India became free, Rani Gaidinliu was released on Prime Minister Nehru's orders from Tura jail, having spent 14 years in various prisons. She was however not allowed to return home to her native village in Manipur and she stayed at Vimrap village of Tuensang with her younger brother Marang till 1952. In 1952, she was finally allowed to move back to her native village of Longkao. In 1953, Prime Minister Nehru visited Imphal where Rani Gaidinliu met and conveyed to him the gratitude and goodwill of her people. Later she met Nehru in Delhi to discuss the development and welfare of Zeliangrong people. Independent India also had to contend with an insurgency among the Nagas. The rebel Naga leaders criticized Rani Gaidinlius movement for integration of Zeliangrong tribes under one administrative unit. They were also opposed to her working for the revival of the traditional Naga religion of animism or Heraka. The NNC leaders considered her actions an obstacle to the Naga struggle. The Baptist leaders deemed the Heraka revival movement anti-Christian and she was warned of serious consequences if she were not to change her stand. In order to defend the Heraka culture and to strengthen her position, she went underground in 1960. She organized a private army of about a thousand men equipped rifles to defend and press for her demand for a single Zeliangrong district. In 1964, the overground Zeliangrong leaders in consultation with underground leaders led by Rani Gaidinliu, demanded a separate Zeliangrong Administrative Unit or Political Unit within the Union of India. In 1966, after six years of hard underground life in old age, under an agreement with the Government of India, Rani Gaidinliu came out from her jungle hideout to work for the betterment of her people through

peaceful, democratic and non-violent means. Her followers were absorbed into the Nagaland Armed Forces. During her stay at Kohima, she was conferred Tamrapatra Freedom Fighter Award in 1972, the Padma Bhushan (1981) and the Vivekananda Seva Award (1983). She returned to Longkao (tousem sub division) tamenglong district of manipur in 1991 where she died on 17 February 1993 at the age of 78. The Governor of Manipur, Chintamani Panigrahi, the Home Secretary of Nagaland, officials from Manipur and many people from all parts of the North Eastern region attended her funeral at her native village on February 29, 1993. In Imphal, the Chief Minister of Manipur R.K. Dorendro Singh, Deputy Chief Minister, Rishang Keishing and others paid floral tributes and a general holiday was declared by the State Government. Rani Gaidinliu was also conferred the Birsa Munda Award posthumously. The Government of India issued a postal stamp in her honour in 1996.
External links
Rani Gaidinliu: The Rani Of The Nagas Rani Gaidinliu: Manipur Online Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Laxmi bai.ogg (19 November 1828 18 June 1858; Marathi: ) was the queen of the Maratha-ruled princely state of Jhansi, situated in the north-central part of India. She was one of the leading figures of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and for Indian nationalists a symbol of resistance to the rule of the British East India Company in the subcontinent. Lakshmibai was born probably on 19 November 1828 in the holy town of Varanasi into a Brahmin family. She was named Manikarnika and was nicknamed Manu. Her father was Moropant Tambe and her mother Bhagirathi Bai. Her parents came from Maharashtra. Her mother died when she was four. Her father worked for a court Peshwa of Bithoor district who brought Manikarnika up like his own daughter. The Peshwa called her "Chhabili", which means "playful". She was educated at home. She was more independent in her childhood than others of her age; her studies included archery, horsemanship, and self-defence.[citation needed] Manikarnika was married to the Maharaja of Jhansi, Raja Gangadhar Rao, in 1842, and was afterwards called Lakshmibai (or Laxmibai). She gave birth to a boy named Damodar Rao in 1851, but when he was four months old he died. The Raja adopted a child called Anand Rao, the son of Gangadhar Rao's cousin, who was renamed Damodar Rao, on the day before he died. The adoption was in the presence of the British political officer who was given a letter from the raja requesting that the child should be treated with kindness and that the government of Jhansi should be given to his widow for her lifetime. After the death of the raja in November 1853 because Damodar Rao was adopted, the British East India Company, under Governor-General Lord Dalhousie, applied the Doctrine of Lapse, rejecting Damodar Rao's claim to the throne and annexing the state to its territories. In March 1854, Lakshmibai was given a pension of Rs. 60,000 and ordered to leave the palace and the fort. Rani Lakshmibai was accustomed to ride on horseback accompanied by a small escort between the palace and the temple though sometimes she was carried by palanquin. Her horses included Sarangi, Pavan and Badal (see her escape from the fort during the siege, below). The Rani Mahal, the palace of Rani Lakshmibai, has now been converted into a museum. It houses a collection of archaeological remains of the period between 9th and 12th centuries AD. According to a memoir purporting to be by Damodar Rao he was among his mother's troops and household at the battle of Gwalior; together with others who had survived the battle (some 60 retainers with 60 camels and 22 horses) he fled from the camp of Rao Sahib of Bithur and as the village people of Bundelkhand dared not aid them for fear of reprisals from the British they were forced to live in the forest and suffer many privations. After two years there were about 12 survivors and these together with another group of 24 they encountered sought the city of Jhalrapatan where there were yet more refugees
Rani Lakshmibai
Biography

from Jhansi. Damodar Rao surrendered himself to a British official and his memoir ends in May 1860 when he has been allowed a pension of Rs. 10,000, seven retainers only, and is in the guardianship of Munshi Dharmanarayan.
Indian Rebellion of 185758
May July 1857 A rumour that the cartridges supplied by the East India Company to the soldiers in its army contained pork or beef fat began to spread throughout India in the early months of 1857. On 10 May 1857 the Indian Rebellion started in Meerut; when news of this reached Jhansi the Rani asked the British political officer, Captain Alexander Skene, for permission to raise a body of armed men for her own protection and Skene agreed to this. The city was relatively calm in the midst of unrest in the region but the Rani conducted a Haldi Kumkum ceremony with pomp in front of all the women of Jhansi to provide assurance to her subjects,Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Chronological items and to convince them that the British were cowards and not to be afraid of them. Till this point, Lakshmibai was reluctant to rebel against the British. In June 1857 a few men of the 12th Bengal Native Infantry seized the fort containing the treasure and magazine, and massacred the European officers of the garrison along with their wives and children. Her involvement in this massacre is still a subject of debate. An army doctor, Thomas Lowe, wrote after the rebellion characterizing her as the "Jezebel of India ... the young rani upon whose head rested the blood of the slain". Four days after the massacre the sepoys left Jhansi having obtained a large sum of money from the Rani, and having threatened to blow up the palace where she lived. Following this as the only source of authority in the city the Rani felt obliged to assume the administration and wrote to Major Erskine, commissioner of the Saugor division explaining the events which had led her to do so. On July 2 Erskine wrote in reply that he requested her to "manage the District for the British Government" until the arrival of a British Superintendent. The Rani's forces defeated an attempt by the mutineers to assert the claim to the throne of a rival prince who was captured and imprisoned. There was then an invasion of Jhansi by the forces of Company allies Orchha and Datia; their intention however was to divide Jhansi between themselves. The Rani appealed to the British for aid but it was now believed by the governor-general that she was responsible for the massacre and no reply was received. She set up a foundry to cast cannon to be used on the walls of the fort and assembled forces including some from former feudatories of Jhansi and elements of the mutineers which were able to defeat the invaders in August 1857. Her intention at this time was still to hold Jhansi on behalf of the British. August 1857 June 1858 From August 1857 to January 1858 Jhansi under the Rani's rule was at peace. The British had announced that troops would be sent there to maintain control but the fact that none arrived strengthened the position of a party of her advisers who wanted independence from British rule. When the British forces finally arrived in March they found it well defended and the fort had heavy guns which could fire over the town and nearby countryside. Sir Hugh Rose, commanding the British forces, demanded the surrender of the city; if this was refused it would be destroyed. After due deliberation the Rani issued a proclamation: "We fight for independence. In the words of Lord Krishna, we will if we are victorious, enjoy the fruits of victory, if defeated and killed on the field of battle, we shall surely earn eternal glory and salvation." She defended Jhansi against British troops when Sir Hugh Rose besieged Jhansi on 23 March 1858. The bombardment began on 24 March but was met by heavy return fire and the damaged defences were repaired. The defenders sent appeals for help to Tatya Tope; an army of more than 20,000, headed by Tatya Tope, was sent to relieve Jhansi but they failed to do so when they fought the British on 31 March. During the battle with Tatya Tope's forces part of the British forces continued the siege and by 2 April it was decided to launch an assault by a breach in the walls. Four columns assaulted the defences at different points and those attempting to scale the walls came under heavy fire. Two other columns had already entered the city and were approaching the palace together. Determined resistance was encountered in every street and in every room of the palace. Street fighting continued into the following day and no quarter was given, even to women and children. "No maudlin clemency was to mark the fall of the city" wrote Thomas Lowe. The Rani withdrew from the palace to the fort and after taking counsel

decided that since resistance in the city was useless she must leave and join either Tatya Tope or Rao Sahib (Nana Sahib's nephew). According to tradition with Damodar Rao on her back she jumped on her horse Badal from the fort; they survived but the horse died. The Rani escaped in the night with her son, surrounded by guards. She decamped to Kalpi with a few guards, where she joined additional rebel forces, including Tatya Tope. They occupied the town of Kalpi and prepared to defend it. On 22 May British forces attacked Kalpi; the Indian forces were commanded by the Rani herself and were again defeated. The leaders (the Rani of Jhansi, Tatya Tope, the Nawab of Banda, and Rao Sahib) fled once more. They came to Gwalior and joined the Indian forces who now held the city (Maharaja Scindia having fled to Agra from the battlefield at Morar). They moved on to Gwalior intending to occupy the strategic Gwalior Fort and the rebel forces occupied the city without opposition. The rebels proclaimed Nana Sahib as Peshwa of a revived Maratha dominion with Rao Sahib as his governor (subedar) in Gwalior. The Rani was unsuccessful in trying to persuade the other rebel leaders to prepare to defend Gwalior against a British attack which she expected would come soon. General Rose's forces took Morar on 16 June and then made a successful attack on the city. On 17 June in Kotah-ki-Serai 261244.26N 781024.76E near the Phool Bagh of Gwalior, a squadron of the 8th (King's Royal Irish) Hussars, under Captain Heneage, fought the large Indian force commanded by Rani Lakshmibai which was trying to leave the area. The 8th Hussars charged into the Indian force, killing many Indian soldiers, taking two guns and continuing the charge right through the Phool Bagh encampment. In this engagement, according to an eyewitness account, Rani Lakshmibai put on a sowar's uniform and attacked one of the hussars; she was unhorsed, fired at him with a pistol, and also wounded, probably by his sabre, followed by a fatal shot from his carbine. According to another tradition Rani Lakshmibai, the Queen of Jhansi, dressed as a cavalry leader, was badly wounded; not wishing the British to capture her body, she told a hermit to burn it. After her death a few local people cremated her body. The British captured the city of Gwalior after three days. In the British report of this battle, Hugh Rose commented that Rani Lakshmibai is "personable, clever and beautiful" and she is "the most dangerous of all Indian leaders". Rose reported that she had been buried "with great ceremony under a tamarind tree under the Rock of Gwalior, where I saw her bones and ashes". Her tomb is in the Phool Bagh area of Gwalior. Twenty years after her death Colonel Malleson wrote in the History of the Indian Mutiny; vol. 3; London, 1878 Whatever her faults in British eyes may have been, her countrymen will ever remember that she was driven by ill-treatment into rebellion, and that she lived and died for her country.
Cultural depictions and memorials
Equestrian statues of Lakshmibai are seen in many places of India, which show her and her son tied to her back. Laxmibai National University of Physical Education in Gwalior and Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College in Jhansi are named after her. The Rani Jhansi Marine National Park is located in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. A women's unit of the Indian National Army was named the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. Patriotic songs have been written about the Rani; one of them includes these lines (translated): "How valiantly like a man fought she, / The Rani of Jhansi / On every parapet a gun she set / Raining fire of hell, / How well like a man fought the Rani of Jhansi / How valiantly and well!" In 1957 two postage stamps were issued to commemorate the centenary of the rebellion: the 15 n.p. stamp portrayed the Rani on horseback. The most famous composition of Subhadra Kumari Chauhan is the Hindi poem Jhansi ki Rani, an emotionally charged description of the life of Rani Lakshmi Bai. Novels Flashman in the Great Game by George MacDonald Fraser, a historical fiction novel about the Indian Revolt describing several meetings between Flashman and the Rani. La femme sacre, in French, by Michel de Grce. A novel based on the Rani of Jhansi's life in which the author imagines an affair between the Rani and an English lawyer. Rani, a 2007 novel in English by Jaishree Misra.

Nightrunners of Bengal, a 1951 novel in English by John Masters. Manu and Queen of Glory, (2011 & 2012) by Christopher Nicole, two novels about Lakshmibai from the time of her marriage until her death during the 'Indian Revolt' as seen and experienced by an English woman companion. Film and television The Tiger and the Flame (1953), one of the first technicolor films released in India, was directed and produced by Indian filmmaker Sohrab Modi. Jhansi Ki Rani (TV series) an Indian historical drama television series aired on Zee TV. The Rebel is a new film by Ketan Mehta, and is a companion piece to his film Mangal Pandey: The Rising. The screenplay is by Farrukh Dhondy from a story by Chandra Prakash Dwivedi. Other works The Queen of Jhansi, by Mahasweta Devi (translated by Sagaree and Mandira Sengupta). This book is a reconstruction of the life of Rani Lakshmi Bai from extensive research of both historical documents (collected mostly by G. C. Tambe, grandson of the Queen) and folk tales, poetry and oral tradition; the original in Bengali was published in 1956; the English translation by Seagull Books, Calcutta, 2000, ISBN 8170461758.
Rao Kadam Singh, the Gurjar, was elected by his clansmen as their leader to fight against the British during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. He hailed from Parikshitgarh, Meerut.
Rao Kadam Singh
Revolt of 1857
The Gurjar rebels dug up the old guns which had been buried at Parikshitgarh during the reign of Gurjar King Nain Singh fifty years earlier. With these they destroyed the British army posts and police stations in the area. Towards the end of June 1857, the British formed a corps consisting mainly of unemployed Europeans. Known as the Khaki Risala, it was led by Majors Williams and Dunlop. This force defeated Singh and his clansmen, whose leaders were all either killed in action or hanged. Rashbihari Ghosh(23 December 1845 - 1921) was an Indian politician who served as the President of the Indian National Congress for one term (Surat, 1907; Madras, 1908), succeeding Dadabhai Naoroji.
Rashbihari Ghosh
Early life
Rashbihari Ghosh was born 23 December 1845 in Burdwan, West Bengal. After a short spell in the local pathshala, Rashbihari was educated in the Burdwan Raj Collegiate School, Bardhaman at West Bengal. Passing the entrance examination from Bankura, he entered the Presidency College, Calcutta. He obtained a first class in the M.A. examination in English. In 1871 he passed with honours the Law examination and in 1884 was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws. Ratanchand Hirachand Doshi (19021981) was a scion of Walchand group, a noted industrialist, philanthropist, freedom fighter, and Jain social leader. He was son of Hirachand Doshi from his second marriage and was step-brother of Walchand Hirachand, who was born from first marriage of his father. He was born in Sholapur in Maharashtra in a Jain family of Gujarati origin. Name of his other brothers were Gulabchand Hirachand and Lalchand Hirachand. When he grew up he joined his brother, Walchand and served its various group companies like The Scindia Steam Navigation Company Ltd., Walchandnagar Industries, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Ravalgaon Sugar, Hindustand Construstion, Premier Automobiles, etc. In 1931, when Walchand floated
Ratanchand Hirachand

Indian Hume Pipe, he made Ratanchand its Director-in-charge. Further, he headed Walchand group, Cooper Engineering for several years. He also served on various committees and planning commission in decade of 1940. Further, he published several books on Jain religion of which the book titled The Religion of Ahimsa published in 1957 is noted one. He also published in Marathi, as well in Hindi, biographies on his father Seth Hirachand Nemchand and others like Dinanath Bapuji, Magudkar, etc. He was trustee of various schools, collages and hospitals run by Walchand group. He is survived by a son, Rajas Doshi, who is director in several Walchand group companies. Ravi Narayana Reddy, (5 June 1908 7 September 1991), was a founding member of the Communist Party of India. He was a leader in the Telengana Rebellion against the rule of Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII. Reddy was also a philanthropist, social reformer, and parliamentarian. In the 1952 Indian general election, Reddy stood for the People's Democratic Front, (a pseudonym for the banned Communist Party of India), and polled more votes than Jawaharlal Nehru.[citation needed] In 1994, a protest over water supplies at Bhongir, led by Reddy under the auspices of the Jalasadhana Samithi,Wikipedia:Please clarify led to the filing of 485 nominations for the Nalgonda parliamentary seat, requiring officials to produce the election's longest ballot paper.[citation needed] An auditorium, the Ravi Narayana Reddy Memorial Auditorium Complex at Banjara Hills in Hyderabad, was built and named in his memory by the Telangana Martyrs' Memorial Trust. In 2006, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, presented the Ravi Narayana Reddy memorial national foundation award to A.B. Bardhan, Communist Party of India general secretary. Ruchi Ram Sahni (April 5, 1863 June 3, 1948) was a Punjabi freedom fighter having a wide influence as an educationist and creator of scientific temper in the pre-partition Punjab.He was a scientist, an innovator, an enthusiastic educationist, a fierce patriot, a devoted social worker and the catalyst behind popularizing science education in Punjab .
Ravi Narayana Reddy
Post 1947
Ruchi Ram Sahni
S. K. Wankhede
S. K. Wankhede Born 24 September 1914 Nagpur Died 30 January 1988 (aged 73) Mumbai Occupation Lawyer, Politician Title President of BCCI Term 1980-1982 Predecessor M. Chinnaswamy Successor N. K. P. Salve Seshrao Krishnarao Wankhede (September 24, 1914 in Nagpur January 30, 1988 in Mumbai) was a cricket administrator and politician. Wankhede had his early college education in Nagpur and entered the bar in England. On his return, he started practice in Nagpur. In the 1940s, he entered politics and was jailed for taking part in the Indian freedom struggle. He was elected in 1952 elections to then Madhya Pradesh State assembly and later served as the deputy speaker of Bilingual Bombay State during 23 November 1956 to 5 April 1957. He was elected from Kalmeshwar in 1957 elections to Bombay State and later 1962 and 1967 elections to Maharashtra Assembly. He became Speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly after 1972 elections during 22 March 1972 till 20 April 1977. He was also the mayor of Nagpur for three years. In 1967, Wankhede was

a member of the Indian delegation that took part in the 22nd session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Wankhede was the President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India from 1980-81 to 1982-83, and the Vice president from 1972-73 to 1979-80. He led the Bombay Cricket Association from 1963-64 till his death. He also chaired various other sporting bodies. He was an agriculturist and businessman by profession. The Bombay Cricket Association (BCA) had persistent disputes with the Cricket Club of India over ticketing revenues from Brabourne Stadium, which is owned by CCI. After a particularly bitter dispute in the early 1970s, the BCA decided to build a stadium of its own in Mumbai. Built under his leadership, it is now named after him as Wankhede Stadium, and is a prominent international cricketing venue.
Sardar Singh Rewabhai Rana (18781957), often abbreviated 'S.R. Rana', was an Indian political activist, founding member of the Paris Indian Society and the vice-president of the Indian Home Rule Society. Singh Rewabhai Rana was born to a high-caste Rajput family in the Kathiawar district, and was a claimant to the throne of the princely state of Limbdi, hence also Rana's title of 'Sardar'. Rana was educated at Elphinstone College, graduating with a baccalaureate from Bombay University in 1898. In 1899, Rana left for Paris, where he began a jewellery business trading in pearls. He is known to have lived with a German woman who although she was not married to him came to be known as Mrs. Rana. It was at this time that Rana came to associate with Indian nationalist politicians, including Lala Lajpat Rai who is known to have visited Paris and stayed with the Ranas. In 1905, Rana became one of the founding-members of the Indian Home Rule Society, of which he was the vice president. Together with Munchershah Burjorji Godrej and Bhikaji Cama he founded the Paris Indian Society that same year as an extension of the Indian Home Rule Society on the European continent. As Shyamji Krishna Varma did also, Rana announced three scholarships in memory of Rana Pratap Singh for Indian students, each worth Rs 2,000. Together with Cama he came to develop close links with the French and Russian Socialist movements. and with her attended the second Socialist Congress at Stuttgart in 1907. From then on, he was a regular contributor to Bande Mataram (published by Cama from Paris) and The Talvar (from Berlin), which were then smuggled into India. The years immediately prior to World War I were however the turning point for Rana's personal and political life. Along with his dying son Ranjit and his German Wife, he was expelled by the French Government to Martinique in 1911. The activities of the Paris Indian Society were curtailed under pressure from the French Sret, and finally suspended in 1914. His wife was also refused permission to enter France for a cancer operation. Seshadri Srinivasa Iyengar CIE (Tamil: ) (11 September 1874 19 May 1941), also seen as Sreenivasa Iyengar and Srinivasa Ayyangar, was an Indian lawyer, freedom-fighter and politician from the Indian National Congress. Iyengar was the Advocate-General of Madras Presidency from 1916 to 1920. He also served as a member of the bar council from 1912 to 1920, the law member of Madras Presidency from 1916 to 1920 and as the president of the Swarajya Party faction of the Indian National Congress from 1923 to 1930. Srinivasa Iyengar was the son-in-law of renowned lawyer and first Indian Advocate-general of Madras, Sir Vembaukum Bhashyam Aiyangar. Iyengar's followers called him Lion of the South. Srinivasa Iyengar was born in the Ramanathapuram district of Madras Presidency. He graduated in law and practised as a lawyer in the Madras High Court rising to become Advocate-General in 1916. He also served as a member of the bar council and was nominated as the law member of the Governor's executive council. He resigned his Advocate-General post, his seat in the Governor's executive council and returned his C. I. E. in 1920 in protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and joined the Indian
S. R. Rana
S. Srinivasa Iyengar

National Congress. He participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement. However, in 1923, he broke away along with other leaders as Motilal Nehru and Chittaranjan Das due to differences with Mahatma Gandhi over participating in elections. The breakaway faction later formed the Swarajya Party. Iyengar served as the President of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee and later, the Madras Province Swarajya Party and was the leader of the party when it refused to form the government in the province despite winning a majority in the 1926 elections. In later life, he established the Independence of India league and organized protests against the Simon Commission. He retired from politics due to differences with other Congress politicians over the goal of Dominion status. He briefly returned to politics in 1938. On May 19, 1941, Iyengar died in his house in Madras. Srinivasa Iyengar remains the youngest lawyer from the Madras bar to be made Advocate-General. Srinivasa Iyengar was also the mentor of freedom-fighters U. Muthuramalingam Thevar and Sathyamurthy. K. Kamaraj, who later became the President of Tamil Nadu Congress Committee and served as the Chief Minister of Madras from 1954 to 1962 is believed to be his greatest find. Srinivasa Iyengar's 1939 book on "Mayne's Hindu laws" is a much-acclaimed and well read book. During Iyengar's tenure as leader, the Congress was often criticized by Periyar and politicians of the Justice Party as a party dominated by Brahmins. This was due to the fact that top Congress leaders as Iyengar, Sathyamurthy and C. Rajagopalachari were all Brahmins.
Early life
Srinivasa Iyengar was born on September 11, 1874 to Seshadri Iyengar, a prominent landowner of Ramanathapuram district. His parents were orthodox Sri Vaishnava Brahmins of Madras Presidency. Srinivasa Iyengar had his schooling in Madurai and graduated from Presidency College, Madras. His early schooling was in his mother tongue, Tamil.
Legal career
Srinivasa Iyengar commenced practice as lawyer in the Madras High Court in 1898. He had an extensive knowledge of Hindu Dharmasastra and this helped him make a mark for himself. Soon, Iyengar became the right-hand for C. Sankaran Nair. During this time, the Indian freedom-fighter S. Satyamurthi worked as a junior under Iyengar. Later, he followed Iyengar into the Indian National Congress and the Indian independence movement. Satyamurthi worked under Iyengar while he was the president of the Swarajya Party. He later referred to Iyengar as his "political mentor". In 1911, Bhupendranath Basu introduced the Civil Marriages Bill in the Imperial legislature. This bill was heavily criticized. Iyengar led agitations for the bill. When V. Krishnaswamy Iyer was criticized by extremists after his death, Iyengar defended him. In 1912, Iyengar was appointed to the Madras Bar Council and he served from 1912 to 1916. In 1916, he became the Advocate-General of Madras Presidency, the youngest ever to occupy the post. He also served as a member of the Madras Senate from 1912 to 1916. In recognition of his services, Srinivasa Iyengar was appointed Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) in the 1920 New Year Honours. Iyengar also served as the Law member on the executive council of the Governor of Madras from 1916 to 1920.
Political activities Indian independence movement
Right from his younger days, Srinivasa Iyengar displayed an interest, though trivial, in politics. He attended the historically significant 1907 session of the Indian National Congress held at Surat which is remembered for the split between the moderates and the extremists. In 1908, V. Krishnaswamy Iyer introduced him to Rash Behari Bose "as the son-in-law of Sir V. Bhashyam Aiyangar and in some ways greater than him". However, Iyengar took politics seriously only after the Jallianwala Bagh episode. In 1920, Srinivasa Iyengar resigned as the Advocate-General of Madras and from the Governor's executive council protesting the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre. In February 1921, he also returned his C.I.E in protest. He joined the Indian National Congress and participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement. In 1927, Srinivasa Iyengar chaired the reception committee of the 29th session of the Indian National Congress which met in Madras.

Iyengar presided over the 1920 Madras Provincial Conference held at Tinnevely and participated in the Congress sessions held at Ahmedabad(1921), Gaya(1922), Kakinada(1923), Delhi(1923), Belgaum(1924), Kanpur(1925), Gauhati(1926), Madras (1927), Calcutta(1928) and Lahore (1929). His work is believed to have given an unparalleled lead to the Congress in Madras for about ten years. Srinivasa lyengar presided over the Guwahati session of the Congress in 1926. Iyengar worked hard to deliver a resolution upholding Hindu-Muslim unity, bringing about a temporary political agreement between the political leaders of the two communities. He published Swaraj Constitution, in 1927, outlining a federal scheme of government for future India. When the Congress split in 1923 between the Gandhians and those in support of Council entry, Srinivasa Iyengar was in the non-Gandhian camp and founded the Madras Province Swarajya Party. The Madras Province Swarajya Party contested in the elections to the provincial legislature held between September 11, 1923 and November 10, 1923. Though, as expected, the performance of the Swarajya Party wasn't by any means remarkable, its presence had a major impact on the fortunes of the Justice Party whose majority was considerably reduced compared to the 1920 elections. The Swaraj Party won 20 seats in the 98 member assembly and was the leading opposition party. More importantly, however, the Justice Party won just 44 seats in the 1923 elections compared to the 1920 elections when it had won 64 seats. The Raja of Panagal was elected for a second term as Premier while Srinivasa Iyengar was elected leader of opposition in the assembly. A little later, a few prominent members of the Justice Party broke off to form the United Nationalist Party and projected themselves as "Democrats". The dissidents were led by C. R. Reddy, a leader of the Justice Party, who complained of the dictatorial rule of the Raja and his insensitive, unimaginative policies. Backed by Srinivasa Iyengar and the Swarajists, Reddy introduced a no-confidence motion against the government of the Raja of Panagal on November 27, 1923. The no-confidence motion was, however, defeated by a margin of 65 votes to 44. The Swarajya Party won 44 seats in the 1926 elections and emerged as the single largest party in the house. Comparatively, the Justice Party had won just 20 seats. The Raja of Panagal stepped down as Premier. The Governor Lord Goschen invited Srinivasa Iyengar as leader of opposition to form the government. However, Srinivasa Iyengar refused. As a result, the Governor set up an independent government under P. Subbarayan and nominated 34 members to the assembly to support it. Because of the fact that Subbarayan's regime was appointed and largely controlled by the Governor, it became the target of strong criticism both from the Justicites as well as the Swarajists. In March 1927, P. Munuswamy Naidu of the Justice Party passed a motion recommending salary cuts for Government ministers. However, they were defeated by a margin of 41 votes. A no-confidence motion was passed on August 23, 1927, but was defeated 56 to 67 with the support of the Governor and the members nominated by him. The Simon Commission was appointed by the British Parliament in 1927 to report on the working of the progress of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms. The Swarajya Party moved a resolution to boycott the Commission and this was passed 61 to 50 with 12 remaining neutral. Subbarayan opposed the resolution but his cabinet ministers Ranganatha Mudaliar and Arogyaswamy Mudaliar supported it. Subbarayan resigned as Chief Minister, but at the same time, he also compelled his ministers to submit their resignations. Fearing the possibility of the formation of a Swarajya Party-Justice Party coalition Government, the Governor stepped in to foster discord amongst the opposition. In order to obtain the support of the Raja of Panagal,he appointed Krishnan Nair, a leading member of the Justice Party as his Law Member. Led by the Raja of Panagal, the Justice Party switched sides and lent its support to the Subbarayan government. Soon afterward, the Justice Party passed a resolution welcoming the Simon Commission. The Simon Commission visited Madras on February 28, 1928 and February 18, 1929 and was boycotted by the Swarajya Party and the Indian National Congress. However, the Justicites and the Subbarayan Government accorded the Commission a warm reception.
Madras Province Swarajya Party
Nehru report
See Also: Simon Commission


In the Congress session held at Nagpur in November 1927, decision was made to draw up a "Labour Constitution of the future Government of India". Motilal Nehru was elected as the convenor of the Constitution Drafting Committee. On August 10, 1928, the committee submitted its report declaring dominion status as the goal of the Congress. The report was presented at the Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress held between August 28, 1928 and August 31, 1928. On August 30, 1928, Jawaharlal Nehru, Srinivasa Iyengar and Subhas Chandra Bose formed the Indian Independence League. This league declared purna swaraj or complete independence from British rule as its ultimate goal and not dominion status. Srinivasa Iyengar was elected President of the league with Nehru and Bose as its secretaries. When the All-Parties Report (known as the Nehru Report) was published in 1928 outlining a constitution for India in terms of Dominion status, Srinivasa Iyengar organised the Independence League with himself as President and Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose as leading members. Iyengar was elected President of the Congress Democratic Party with Subhas Chandra Bose as its Secretary. Srinivasa lyengar, however, announced his retirement from active public life early in 1930.
Later life
Srinivasa Iyengar briefly returned to politics in 1938 and supported Subhas Chandra Bose as president of the Congress. However, when Bose formed the Forward Bloc, he described it as a "leaky boat." He was also upset with the outbreak of the Second World War. While presiding over a session of the Tyagaraja Bakajana Sabha in 1938, Srinivasa Iyengar spoke: Lawyers do not ask musicians to preside over their deliberations, but it had become a fashion to invite a man who knew nothing about music, like myself, to preside over musical events. As a body of selfrespecting men and women, musicians should conduct their affairs without outside interference, and communal politics
Death
Iyenger made a brief return to political life in 1939, upon the outbreak of World War II and the debate of whether Indians should back the British effort, banking on their goodwill later to deliver independence, or oppose the entry of Indian army into the war without consultation of the Indian people. He died suddenly on May 19, 1941, at his residence in Madras. Iyengar died at his residence in Madras on May 29, 1941. He was 66 years old at the time.
Family
Srinivasa Iyengar was married to the third daughter of Sir V. Bhashyam Aiyangar. He had a son, S. Parthasarathy. and a daughter, S. Ambujam Ammal who was the founder of the Srinivasa Gandhi Nilayam. Parthasarathy studied law and practiced as a lawyer before becoming an entrepreneur. He served as the founder and director of the Industrial Development Commission of Madras state and founded the Prithvi Insurance company. In his later life, he became a Hindu monk and adopted the name Swami Anvananda.
Legacy
Besides law, Srinivasa Iyengar's other interest were education, social reform, and politics. Iyengar's 1939 book Mayne's Hindu Law is considered to be a masterpiece. Among his early influences were Sir Sankaran Nair and C. Vijayaraghavachariar, two former Congress leaders. He was also an admirer of Gopal Krishna Gokhale (in whose name he endowed a prize) and later of Mahatma Gandhi. Iyengar was the personal lawyer and a family friend of Muthuramalingam Thevar whom he encouraged to participate in the 1927 Congress session that was held in Madras. Thevar was eventually drawn to the Congress and participated in agitations against the British rule. Iyengar was also close to Swami Suddhananda Bharathi. One British CID officer described Iyengar as a "political ideas factory". He was described as frank and

generous and having brought a fresh and young look to his political ideas. He was known for making brave and outspoken comments on the Governor or Government officials. A contemporary remarks that Iyengar's opinions were as clear cut as his legal arguments. His proficiency in the legal profession was supposedly noticeable right from his early days. In politics, Iyengar was considered to be a champion of the Mylapore clique in Madras politics. Iyengar tried to bring reforms in Indian society. He worked for the elevation of depressed sections of society and educated underprivileged children on his own expense. He also a fine writer and frequently wrote columns for The Hindu, Swadesamitran and Indian Patriot. Iyengar is credited with having popularized the Congress at the village level in South India. He was a staunch believer in the concept of "linked leadership". He was responsible for the induction of K. Kamaraj and Muthuramalinga Thevar in the Indian National Congress. Iyengar's followers and colleagues called him "Lion of the South".
Criticism
At the 1920 session of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee, E. V. Ramasamy, a leader of the Congress desired to propose a resolution introducing communal representation in education and employment. However, Iyengar who presided over the session refused to permit it reasoning that it would cause unnecessary communal tension. Periyar criticized Iyengar along with the rest of the Brahmin leadership of the Congress and declared that non-Brahmins can never hope to get justice from the Congress.
Works
S. Srinivasa Iyengar; John D. Mayne (1939). Mayne's Treatise on Hindu Law and Usage. Madras: Higginbotham's. Saifuddin Kitchlew (Kashmiri: (Devanagari), ( Nastaleeq)) (January 15, 1888 October 9, 1963) was an Indian freedom fighter, barrister and an Indian Muslim nationalist leader. An Indian National Congress politician, he first became Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (Punjab PCC) head and later the General Secretary of the AICC in 1924. He is most remembered for the protests in Punjab after the implementation of Rowlatt Act in March 1919, after which on April 10, he and another leader Dr. Satya Pal, were secretly sent to Dharamsala. A public protest rally against their arrest and that of Gandhi, on April 13, 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, led to the infamous Jallianwala Bagh massacre. He was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize (now known as Lenin Peace Prize) in 1952.
Saifuddin Kitchlew
Early life
Saifuddin Kitchlew was born to the Kashmiri Muslim family of Azizuddin Kitchlew and Dan Bibi on January 15, 1888, in Amritsar, Punjab. His father owned a pashmina and saffron trading business and originally belonged to a Brahmin family of Baramulla. As it was his ancestor, Prakash Ram Kitchlew, who had converted into Islam and later his grandfather, Ahmed Jo migrated from Kashmir in mid 19th century to Amritsar after of the great Kashmir famine of 1871. Kitchlew went to Islamia High School in Amritsar, and later obtained a B.A. from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. from a German university, and began practicing law in India.
Career
On his return he established his legal practice in Amritsar, and soon came in contact with Mahatma Gandhi. In 1919, he was elected the Municipal Commissioner of the city of Amritsar. He took part in the Satyagraha (Non-cooperation) movement and soon left his practice, to become part of the freedom movement, as well as the All India Khilafat Committee.
Political career Jallianwala Bagh
Dr. Kitchlew was first exposed to Indian nationalism when the whole country was outraged by the Rowlatt Acts. Kitchlew was arrested with Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Satyapal for leading protests in Punjab against the legislation. To protest the arrest of the trio, a public meeting had gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh, when Gen. Reginald Dyer and his troops fired mercilessly upon the unarmed, civilian

crowd. Hundreds of people were killed, and hundreds more injured. This act, the worst case of civilian massacre since the Indian rebellion of 1857 outraged the nation, and riots broke out all throughout the Punjab.
Political mainstream
Kitchlew rose in the Indian National Congress, first heading its Punjab unit, and then rising to the post of AICC General Secretary, an important executive position in 1924. Kitchlew was also the chairman of the reception committee of the Congress session in Lahore in 1929-30, where on January 26, 1930, the Indian National Congress declared Indian independence and inaugurated an era of civil disobedience and revolution aimed to achieve full independence. Kithclew was also a founding leader of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha (Indian Youth Congress), which rallied hundreds of thousands of students and young Indians to nationalist causes. He was also the member of the Foundation Committee of Jamia Millia Islamia, which met on 29 October 1920 and led to the foundation of Jamia Millia Islamia University. He started an Urdu daily Tanzim to uplift the Muslims and was instrumental in establishment of Swaraj Ashram in January 1921 at Amritsar to train young men for the national work and to promote Hindu-Muslim unity. Throughout the 1930-1934 struggles, Kitchlew was repeatedly arrested, and in all spent fourteen years behind bars.
Post Independence
Dr. Kitchlew was opposed to the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan and later in the 1940s became President of the Punjab Congress Committee. In 1947 he strongly opposed the acceptance of the Partition of India by the Congress Party. He spoke out against it at public meetings all over the country, and at the All India Congress Committee session that ultimately voted for the resolution. He called it a blatant "surrender of nationalism for communalism". Some years after partition and Independence, he left the Congress. He began to come closer to the Communist Party of India. He was the founder president of the All-India Peace Council and also remained President of 4th Congress of All-India Peace Council, held at Madras in 1954, besides remaining Vice President of the World Peace Council. Dr. Kitchlew moved to Delhi after their house was burnt down during partition of India riots of 1947, thereafter he spent the rest of his years working for closer political and diplomatic relations with the USSR, and received the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952, which was renamed for Lenin Peace Prize under DeStalinization. In 1951, a Government Act made him, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, life trustees of the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial Trust. He died on October 9, 1963, survived by a son, Toufique Kitchlew, who now lives in a Lampur village on the outskirts of Delhi, and five daughters. While four of his daughters were married into Pakistan, (two survive to date), one daughter, Zahida Kitchlew, was married to the Malyalam music director M. B. Sreenivasan, a Hindu gentleman.
Legacy
Indian Post released a special commemorative stamp featuring him in 1989. The Jamia Milia Islamia created a Saifuddin Kitchlew Chair at the MMAJ Academy of Third world Studies in 2009. Sami Venkatachalam Chetty (died 17 November 1958) was an Indian politician, businessman and Indian independence activist who served as member of Madras Legislative Council and Imperial Legislative Council of India and President of the Madras Corporation. He is largely known for his surprise victory over Assembly Speaker, R. K. Shanmukham Chetty in the 1934 elections to the Imperial Legislative Council.
Sami Venkatachalam Chetty
Career
Chetty joined the Indian National Congress in the early 1920s and was elected to the Madras Legislative Council in the 1926 elections. He served as the leader of the Swaraj Party in the house during the visit of the Simon Commission. In 1925-26, Chetty served as President of the Madras Corporation. In 1934, Chetty defeated R. K. Shanmukham Chetty in the elections to the Imperial Legislative Council of

India. He served as a member of the council before retiring from politics in the late 1930s. Saraswathi Gora (19122006) was an Indian social activist. Notable as the leader of the Atheist Centre for many years, she campaigned against untouchability and the caste system. Born on September 28, 1912 at Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh, she got married at the age of ten to Goparaju Ramachandra Rao. Along with her husband, Saraswathi Gora established Atheist Center with the intention of promoting human values based on atheism, rationalism and Gandhism. A political activist of India's freedom movement, she was imprisoned during the Quit India movement. She went to jail carrying her two-and-half-year old son, Niyanta. The wedding of her eldest daughter Manorama with Arjun Rao was performed in the presence of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1960.
Saraswathi Gora
Awards and recognition
In 2001, she was selected for the Basava Puraskar, conferred by the Karnataka Government. She is also the recipient of the G.D.Birla International Award for Humanism ; the Jamnalal Bajaj Award (1999); the Janaki Devi Bajaj Award; and the Potti Sriramulu Telugu University Award. She is the mother of Dr. Samaram. Saraswathi Gora died of lung infection on August 19, 2006 at Vijayawada. Sarla Behn (born Catherine Mary Heilman; 5 April 1901 8 July 1982) was an English Gandhian social activist whose work in the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, India helped create awareness about the environmental destruction in the Himalayan forests of the state. She played a key role in the evolution of the Chipko Movement and influenced a number of Gandhian environmentalists in India including Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Bimala behn and Sunderlal Bahuguna. Along with Mirabehn, she is known as one of Mahatma Gandhi's two English daughters. The two women's work in Garhwal and Kumaon, respectively, played a key role in bringing focus on issues of environmental degradation and conservation in independent India.
Sarla Behn
Early life
Sarla Behn was born Catherine Mary Heilman in the Shepherd's Bush region of west London in 1901 to a father of Swiss-German extraction and an English mother. Due to his background, her father was interned during the First World War and Catherine herself suffered ostracism and was denied scholarships at school; she left early. She worked for a while as a clerk, leaving her family and home and during the 1920s came in contact with Indian students in London who introduced her to Gandhi and the freedom struggle in India. Inspired, she left England for India in January 1932, never to return again.
Life with Gandhi
She worked for a while at a school in Udaipur before moving on to meet Gandhi with whom she remained for eight years at his ashram at Sevagram in Wardha. Here she was deeply involved in Gandhi's idea of nai talim or basic education and worked to empower women and protect the environment at Sevagram. It was Gandhi who named her Sarla Behn. The heat and bouts of malaria afflicted her at Sevagram and with Gandhis concurrence she headed out to the more salubrious climes of Kausani in the Almora district of the United Provinces in 1940. She made it her home, establishing an ashram and working to empower the women of the hills in Kumaon.
Role in the freedom struggle
While in Kumaon Sarla Behn continued to associate herself with the cause of Indias freedom movement. In 1942, in response to the Quit India Movement launched by the Indian National Congress under Gandhi, she helped organise and lead the movement in the Kumaon district. She travelled extensively in the region reaching out to the families of political prisoners and was imprisoned for her actions. She served two terms in prison during the Quit India Movement for violation of house arrest orders and served time at the Almora and Lucknow jails for nearly two years.

Lakshmi Ashram
During her political activism in Kumaon, Sarla Behn was deeply impressed by the determination and resourcefulness of the women heading the families of the arrested independence activists but dismayed at their absence of self-worth when in response to her call for meetings they responded "Behnji, we are like animals. All we know is work, Meetings and other such social activities are meant only for men." She now set to work to make them realise that they were no mere passive animals but rather goddesses of wealth. This she aimed to achieve through the Kasturba Mahila Utthan Mandal, Lakshmi Ashram, Kausani, an institution she founded in 1946 with the aim of fostering women's empowerment. It was named the Lakshmi Ashram after the wife of the donor of the land. The ashram which began with only three students imparted education to girls through the Gandhian idea of nai talim with its focus on not just academics but also on manual labour and holistic learning. Since its inception, the Ashram has produced several notable reformers and social workers including Vimala Bahuguna, Sadan Misra and Radha Bhatt.
Activism
Although Sarla Behn is best remembered for her role as an environmental activist who helped shape and spearhead the Chipko movement, she was also associated with the Gandhian movements led by Acharya Vinoba Bhave and Jai Prakash Narayan. After she had handed over the reins of the Ashram to Radha Bhatt, she worked with Bhave on the Bhoodan movement in Bihar in the late 1960s and with Narayan and the families of surrendered dacoits in the Chambal river valley in the early 1970s. Sarla Behns role as an environmental activist was even greater, and together with Mirabehn she helped shape a response to the environmental crisis engulfing the Himalayan region. As the activist-academician Vandana Shiva notes, "While the philosophical and conceptual articulation of the ecological view of the Himalayan forests has been done by Mirabehn and [Sunderlal] Bahuguna, the organisational foundation for it being a womens movement was laid by Sarla Behn with Bimla Behn in Garhwal and Radha Bhatt in Kumaon". Under Behn's guidance the Uttarakhand Sarvodaya Mandal came into being in 1961 with principal aims of organising women, fighting alcoholism, establishing forest based small scale industries and fighting for forest rights. Throughout the 1960s the Mandal and its members worked actively towards these ends. In the wake of the Stockholm Conference of 1972, Behn initiated the Chipko Movement which began with a popular demonstration in the Yamuna valley at a site where colonial authorities had shot dead several activists in the 1930s for protesting against the commercialisation of forests. The term 'Chipko' (which means to hug) came to be associated with the movement only later after the villagers decided they would hug the trees to prevent them from being felled and the name was popularised through the folk songs of Ghanshyam Sailani. In 1977, Behn helped organise activists and consolidate the Chipko movement in its resistance to lumbering and excessive tapping of resin from the pine trees.
Role as an environmentalist
As an author
Sarla Behn was a prolific author, writing 22 books in Hindi and English on issues of conservation, women's empowerment and environment including Reviving Our Dying Planet and A Blueprint for Survival of the Hills. Her autobiography is titled A Life in Two Worlds: Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi's English Disciple.
Death and commemoration
In 1975 Sarala Behn moved to a cottage at Dharamghar in Pithoragarh district where she lived until her death in July, 1982. She was cremated according to Hindu rites at the Lakshmi Ashram. She was a winner of the Jamnalal Bajaj Award and on the occasion of her 75th birthday called the "daughter of the Himalaya" and the "mother of social activism" in Uttarakhand. Ever since her death, the Lakshmi Ashram commemorates her anniversary by hosting a gathering of Sarvodaya workers and community members to discuss and chalk out strategies for dealing with pressing social and environmental issues. In 2006, the Government of Uttarakhand announced that it would set up

a Sarla Behn Memorial Museum in Kausani.
Legacy
Sarla Behn's influence on Uttarakhand in particular and Indian environmentalism has been significant although she remains a relatively unknown figure. She played a key role in inspiring grassroots organisations in Uttarakahand and helped spread the Sarvodaya movement in the state. Besides several environmentalists, she also influenced the author Bill Aitken. Her activism and the ashram she established helped, as the historian Ramachandra Guha notes, "groom a new generation of social workers, among them such remarkable activists as Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Radha Bhatt and Sunderlal Bahuguna. In the 1970s, these activists started the Chipko Movement, while in turn training the next generation of activists, those who led the movement for a state of Uttarakhand." Sarojini Naidu, also known by the sobriquet as The Nightingale of India, was a child prodigy, Indian independence activist and poet. Naidu was one of the framers of the Indian Constitution. Naidu was the first Indian woman to become the President of the Indian National Congress and the first woman to become the Governor of Uttar Pradesh state. Her birthday is celebrated as Women's Day all over India.
Sarojini Naidu
Early life
Naidu was born in Hyderabad to a Bengali Hindu Kulin Brahmin family to Agorenath Chattopadhyay and Barada Sundari Devi on 13 February 1879. Her father was a doctor of science from Edinburgh University, settled in Hyderabad State, where he founded and administered the Ahemdabad College, which later became the Nizam's College in Ahemdabad. Her mother was a poetess baji and used to write poetry in Bengali. Sarojini Naidu was the eldest among the eight siblings. One of her brothers Birendranath was a revolutionary and her other brother, Harindranath was a poet, dramatist, and actor. Sarojini Naidu passed her Matriculation examination from the University of Madras. She took four years' break from her studies and concentrated upon studying various subjects. In 1895, she travelled to England to study first at King's College London and later at Girton College, Cambridge. She fell in love with Govindarajulu and married him in 1898. They had five children namely- Jayasurya, Padmaja, Randheer, Nilawar and Leelamani. Her daughter Padmaja got a position of the governor of West Bengal.
Education
Career Indian Freedom Fighter
Sarojini Naidu joined the Indian national movement in the wake of partition of Bengal in 1905. She came into contact with Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Rabindranath Tagore, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Annie Besant, C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. During 1915-1918, she traveled to different regions in India delivering lectures on social welfare, women empowerment and nationalism. She awakened the women of India and brought them out of the kitchen. She also helped to establish the Women's Indian Association (WIA) in 1917. She was sent to London along with Annie Besant, President of WIA, to present the case for the women's vote to the Joint Select Committee.
President of the Congress
In 1925, Sarojini Naidu presided over the annual session of Indian National Congress at Cawnpore. In 1929, she presided over East African Indian Congress in South Africa. She was awarded the hind a kesari medal by the British government for her work during the plague epidemic in India. In 1931, she participated in the Round table conference with Gandhiji and Madan Mohan Malaviya. Sarojini Naidu played a leading role during the Civil Disobedience Movement and was jailed along with Gandhiji and other leaders. In 1942, Sarojini Naidu was arrested during the "Quit India" movement. She was a great freedom fighter and an equally great poet.
Literary career
Sarojini Naidu began writing at the age of 12. Her play, Maher Muneer, impressed the Nawab of Hyderabad. In 1905, her collection of poems, named "The Broken Exes" was published. Her poems were

admired by many prominent Indian politicians like Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Named Golden Threshold after Sarojini Naidus much celebrated collection of poems, this premise has a long and wider history. This was the residence of her father, Dr. Aghornath Chattopadhyay, the first Principal of Hyderabad College, later named Nizam College. This was the home of many reformist ideas in Hyderabad - in areas ranging from marriage, education, womens empowerment, literature and nationalism apart from being the home of brilliant, radical and creative members of the Chattopadhyay family, which included the anti-imperialist revolutionary Birendranath; maverick poet, actor and connoisseur of music and dance Harindranath; dancer and film actress Sunalini Devi; communist leader Suhasini Devi and of course the poet, crusader for womens rights, nationalist leader and Nightingale of India Sarojini Devi. Harindranath Chattopadhyay said about this house, where anyone and any ideas were welcome for discussion, a museum of wisdom and culture,a zoo crowded with a medley of strange types some even verging on the mystique. Golden Threshold now houses Theatre Outreach Unit an initiative of University of Hyderabad started in August 2012 arrested during Quit India movement.
Golden Threshold
Marriage
During her stay in England, Sarojini met Dr. Govindarajulu Naidu, a non-Brahmin and a doctor by profession, and fell in love with him. After finishing her studies at the age of 19, she got married to him during the time when inter-caste marriages were not allowed. Her father approved the marriage and her marriage was a very happy one. The couple had five children. Jayasurya, Padmaja, Randheer, Nilawar and Leelamani. Her daughter Padmaja followed in to her footprints and became the Governor of West Bengal. In 1961, she published a collection of poems entitled The Feather of The Dawn.
Death
In 1949 she fell ill. Her physician came and gave her a sleeping pill for good sleep. She smiled and said "Not eternal sleep I hope". But that night on March 2, 1949 she died in her sleep.
Works
Each year links to its corresponding "year in poetry" article: 1905: The Golden Threshold, published in the United Kingdom (text available online) 1912: The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death & the Spring, published in London 1917: The Broken Wing: Songs of Love, Death and the Spring, including "The Gift of India" (first read in public in 1915) 1916: Muhammad Jinnah: An Ambassador of Unity 1943: The Sceptred Flute: Songs of India, Allahabad: Kitabistan, posthumously published 1961: The Feather of the Dawn, posthumously published, edited by her daughter, Padmaja Naidu 1971:The Indian Weavers Damayante to Nala in the Hour of Exile Ecstasy Indian Dancers The Indian Gypsy Indian Love-Song Indian Weavers In Salutation to the Eternal Peace In the Forest In the Bazaars of Hyderabad Leili Nightfall in the City of Hyderabad Palanquin Bearers
Famous Poems

The Pardah Nashin Past and Future The Queen's Rival The Royal Tombs of Golconda The Snake-Charmer Song of a Dream The Soul's Prayer Suttee To a Buddha Seated on a Lotus To the God of Pain Wandering Singers Street Cries Alabaster Autumn Song Bangle Sellers The Coromandel Fishers
Quotes
Naidu writes: "Shall hope to prevail where clamorous hate is rife, Shall sweet love prosper or high dreams have place Amid the tumult of reverberant strife 'Twixt ancient creeds, 'twixt race and ancient race, That mars the grave, glad purposes of life, Leaving no refuge save thy succoring face?" Naidu said, "When there is oppression, the only self-respecting thing is to rise and say this shall cease today, because my right is justice." She adds, "If you are stronger, you have to help the weaker boy or girl both in play and in the work."
Commemoration
She is commemorated through the naming of several institutions including the Sarojini Naidu College for Women, Sarojini Naidu Medical College, Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital and Sarojini Naidu School of Arts & Communication, University of Hyderabad Satyananda Stokes (16 August 1882 - 14 May 1946) was an American who settled in India and participated in the Indian Freedom Movement. He is best remembered today for having introduced apple cultivation to the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, where apples are today the major horticultural export crop. Satyananda was born Samuel Evans Stokes, Jr., into an American Quaker family. His father, a very successful businessman, was the founder of the Stokes and Parish Machine Company which was a leading manufacturer of elevators in the USA. The Young Samuel did not acquire any professional skill as he was not interested in business. Nevertheless, his father made many efforts to involve him in running the business but Samuel was not interested as he believed in doing greater good in life. Since the family was wealthy, they provided for his needs. In 1904, aged 22, Samuel came to India to work at a leper colony located at Subathu in the Simla Hills. His parents were opposed to this move, but he did it anyway because it was a job where he felt happy and satisfied. India was also far away from his parents and other people who looked down on him for not taking over his family business with eagerness. The lepers needed him and adored him and the other local people treated him with great respect because he was a white man doing a pious job. Once his
Satyananda Stokes
Early life

parents realized that this job fulfilled some deep emotional need of their son, they supplied him with considerable money, which he used both for the leper colony and for helping local villagers in small ways, all of which further enhanced his respectability. Raised a Quaker, Samuel was drawn to the asceticism that is exalted in Indian spirituality and began living a simple, frugal life among the villagers, becaming a sort of Christian sannyasi. A few years later, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was visiting the Viceroy at Shimla (the summer capital of the British Raj) heard of the leper colony and was impressed. He encouraged Samuel to form an order of Franciscan Friars, an order of monkhood committed to living in poverty and aiding the diseased and dying. Samuel formed such an order, but his membership in this wandering brotherhood of monks lasted only two years. In 1912, Samuel married a local Rajput lass, gave up his life of poverty, purchased a chunk of farmland near his wife's village and settled there. His wife, Agnes, was the daughter of a first generation Rajput Christian. Samuel's father had settled a considerable fortune upon Samuel, and the purchasing power of this inheritance was magnified manifold in the remote, beautiful part of India where he settled. He had also by now dealt with the demons of failure that had plagued his growing years, and as a white man in an uncritical rural society, in the company of an Indian wife who was non-judgmental and made few demands on his, Samuel was happier than he had ever been before. The family grew with the birth of five children. Samuel applied himself to improving the farmland he had purchased and was able to access scholarly resources unknown to the other villagers in this endeavour. He identified a new strain of apples developed by the Stark brothers of Louisiana, USA as being suitable to the Simla Hills and began cultivating them on his farm. This was in the year 1916. The resulting bumper crops, coupled with Samuel's access to the white people who ran the export business in Delhi encouraged the other farmers to do as Samuel was doing, and he helped them wholeheartedly in every way. Indeed, he purchased more land and devoted it to groving apple cultivars which the villagers would use to seed their own farms. The local economy was vastly reinvigorating. This happy idyll was shattered with the loss of his son Tara to amoebic dysentery. He moved closer to Hinduism and a few years later in 1932 he converted to Hinduism, taking the name "Satyanand" while his wife Agnes changed her name to "Priyadevi". Stokes' decision to convert to Hinduism was painful for his wife Agnes because it would cut her off from those she loved but she was prepared to follow the rest of the family through the painful readjustment. Stokes had always had a strong sense of social justice and later became active in India's freedom struggle for independence from Great Britain. Stokes had the rare honour of being the only American to become a member of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) of the Indian National Congress. Along with Lala Lajpat Rai, he represented Punjab. He was the only non-Indian to sign the Congress manifesto in 1921, calling upon Indians to quit government service. He was jailed for sedition and promoting hatred against the British government in 1921, becoming the only American to become a political prisoner of Great Britain in the freedom struggle. On Stokes arrest, Mahatma Gandhi wrote: That he (Stokes) should feel with and like an Indian, share his sorrows and throw himself into the struggle, has proved too much for the government. To leave him free to criticise the government was intolerable, so his white skin has proved no protection for him He died on 14 May 1946 after an extended illness shortly before India's Independence.
Works
The failure of European civilisation as a world culture. (as Samuel Evans Stokes). Pub. S. Ganesan & Co., 1921 National self-realisation and other essays. (as Samuel Evans Stokes) Rubicon Pub. House. 1977 Satyakama : Man Of True Desire. Indian Publishers Distributors, 1998. ISBN 81-7341-070-4. Arjun - The Life-Story of an Indian Boy. BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2009. ISBN 1-115-47127-9. (org. 1911) Satyendra Chandra Mitra (Bengali: ) (23 December 1888 27 October 1942) was an Indian freedom
Satyendra Chandra Mitra

fighter, who started his political career as a revolutionary in the Jugantar Party in 1916, to being elected the Chief Whip of the Swarajya Party in the Central Legislative Assembly in 1927 and later became the President of the Bengal Legislative Council (of un-divided Bengal) in 1937.
Background
He was born on 23 December 1888 in Radhapur village in Noakhali District (now in Bangladesh). Youngest of eight children of lawyer, Uday Chandra Mitra and Udaytara Mitra, he did his Entrance Examination (school leaving) from Zilla School, Noakhali in 1905, graduated from City College, Calcutta in 1910, did his M. A from University of Calcutta in 1912 and his B. L (law degree) in 1913. He then enrolled as an Advocate of the Calcutta High Court. Satyen Mitra, as he was popularly known as, was drawn into the revolutionary politics of the Jugantar Party trying to throw off the British yoke during the First World War. These activities led to his arrest in 1916, and he was interned at Janjira, an island (char) in the Padma River basin in what is now Bangladesh. He lost both his parents while he was interned. He was released in 1919. He participated in the Congress Partys session in 1920 in Calcutta, when the Non-cooperation Resolution was passed. In 1921, he became a follower of Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das, along with Subhas Chandra Bose. Deshabandhu chose Satyen to be his Assistant, which he was until Deshabandhus death. He was Secretary of the Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee in 192223. Subsequently, he organised and joined the Swarajya Party started by Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das. In 1923, he was arrested along with Subhas Chandra Bose and others, by the British Indian Government under Regulation III of 1818 and detained without trial till 1927 in Mandalay Jail in Burma (now Myanmar). In 1924, while in prison, he was elected to the Bengal Legislative Council as a Swarajya Party member. In 1926, he was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly as a Swarajya Party member. It was the Assembly that carried a motion for his release (despite the British Indian Governments opposition). On being released, he was elected the Chief Whip of the Swarajya Party, when Pandit Motilal Nehru (Jawaharlal Nehrus father and Indira Gandhis grandfather) was the Leader of the Party in the Assembly. He organised the defeat of the Government by the Swarajists on many occasions in the Assembly (now the Indian Parliament). A few years after Deshabandhus death, the Swarajya Party merged with the Congress. In 1930, Congress members resigned from the Assembly to organise direct action (Civil disobedience) under Gandhiji. Satyen Mitra disagreed with the policy and after some time resigned from the Congress Party and sought re-election to the Central Legislative Assembly and won. He was not re-elected in 1935. In 1937, he was elected by the members of the Assembly to the upper House, the Bengal Legislative Council, and was then elected President of the Legislative Council, a position he held until his death in 1942. He was in close touch with Subhas Chandra Bose till his death on 27 October 1942.
Politics and career
Personal
He was progressive in his views, and married a child-widow, Uma Mitra, a Congress worker, in 1922. They had one daughter, Aroti (later Aroti Dutt), who later married Birendrasaday, son of Gurusaday Dutt. She was an eminent social worker in her own right. Satyen Mitra was a deeply religious man. He became a follower of Sri Sri Ram Thakur. His Guru was very fond of him and did occasionally stay at his residence. Amongst his many friends was Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, the eminent Bengali writer. As a public figure, he had held various positions in life. He was prominently associated with the National Council of Education in Jadavpur (which is now Jadavpur University), and was Rector and Chairman of the Managing Council of that organisation. He was also a Member of the Board of the Imperial Bank of India (later known as the State Bank of India) and with various youth organisations. He was active in the labour movement, being associated with the Bengal Trade Union Federation. He was known for his amiable disposition that made him loved in different circles, while his political intelligence and shrewdness stood him in good stead as a Whip, in the legislative work of his day. His portrait adorns the walls of the Mahajati Sadan, Kolkata, and the Paschimbanga (West Bengal)

Assembly, Kolkata.
Seth Harchandrai Vishandas

Diwan Bahadur 'Sir Seth Harchandrai Vishandas (Sindhi: ) KCSI KCIE KIH QC MA LL.B. (1st May 1862-16th February 1928), was an Indian attorney and politician. He is considered a great Sindhi and the father of modern Karachi. His social, educational, and political services rendered to the people of Sindh are so great that he is now recognized as one of the makers of modern Karachi. He was one of the first six Sindhi young men who graduated from Elphinstone College, Bombay, before 1887. Seth Harchandrai Vishandas after completing law in the year 1885, accepted for a short period, a junior position in Shikarpur court, but he resigned soon and start a law practice in Karachi. Harchandrai was the elected Honorary Secretary of Karachi Bar Association for full 38 years just after its establishment in 1890. He was the elected president of Karachi Municipality for 19111921, and before that he was elected as member of Municipality in 1888.
Early life
Seth Harchandrai Vishandas was born in May 1862, in a village Manjhu in tehsil Kotri, Sindh. He relates to a Bharvani family, known for its public-spirited members. He achieved his primary education in a school founded by Seth Vishandas Nihalchand, father of Seth Harchandrai in his birthplace Manjhu. After completing his primary, he was sent to Kotri for middle education in missionary school of Kotri and used to live there in a spacious bungalow with great comfort. After that he got admitted in NJV High School in Karachi. He matriculated in 1878 and went to live with his maternal grandfather. After matriculating, he went to Bombay for higher education and joined Elphinstone College, Bombay. Seth Harchandrai Vishandas received his law degree from Elphinstone College in 1882, which he later patronised as his Alma mater.
Professional background Legal field
Harchandrai was a lawyer and Queen's (later King's) Counsel, under Queen Victoria, King Edward VII and King George V. He joined a subordinate job in Shikarpur court. Persuaded by his father he resigned and started his own law practice in Karachi in 1886. He was elected honorary secretary of the Karachi Bar Association.
Social services and politics
Harchandrai was the first Sindhi to join the Indian National Congress and served the cause of national independence with dedication. He was a strong Congress man and was the Chairman of Reception Committee of Congress of 1913 and presided over many Congress conferences in Sindh. Harchandrai was a believer of Hindu-Muslim unity and was a Sufistic. Theosophical society made him the member of society. Seth Harchandrai plays a role as a freedom fighter of India.
Death
Harchandrai Vishandas died on 16 February 1928 in Delhi. When the white Simon Commission disputed to India to review the working of 1919 reforms, the Congress party to press for its boycott. Harchandrai's vote was required for that purpose. He left Karachi against the advice of doctor and friends just to record his vote against the Simon Commission but died, on his way from the railway station to the Assembly Hall. In the front of Karachi Municipal Corporation Building, on the 6th death anniversary of Seth Haarchandrai Vishanda on 16 February 1934, the statue of Harchandrai was unveiled and removed just after the partition of India in 1947. Shankar Dayal Sharma pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Sds.ogg (19 August 1918 26 December 1999) was the ninth President of India, serving from 1992 to 1997. Prior to his presidency, Dr. Sharma had been the eighth Vice President of India, serving under President R. Venkataraman. He was also Chief Minister (19521956), and Cabinet Minister (19561967), holding the portfolios of Education, Law, Public Works, Industry and Commerce, National Resources and Separate Revenue. He was the
Shankar Dayal Sharma

President of the Indian National Congress in 19721974 and returned to government as Union Minister for Communications from 1974 to 1977. The International Bar Association presented Dr. Sharma with the 'Living Legends of Law Award of Recognition' for his outstanding contribution to the legal profession internationally and for commitment to the rule of law. Dr. Sharma was born in Bhopal, then the capital of the princely state of Bhopal.
Education and early life
Sharma comes from the city of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Sharma received his education at St. John's College, Agra College, Punjab University and Lucknow University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Law from Fitzwilliam College. Sharma was awarded the Chakravarti Gold Medal for Social Service by Lucknow University. Dr. Sharma taught Law at Lucknow University and at Cambridge University. While at Cambridge, Dr. Sharma was Treasurer of the Tagore Society and the Cambridge Majlis. He taught law at Cambridge University from 1946 to 1947. He was Honored as Proud Past Alumnus" in the list of 42 members, from "Allahabad University Alumni Association", Ghaziabad. While at Cambridge, Dr. Sharma was Treasurer of the Tagore Society and the Cambridge Majlis. Called to the Bar from Lincoln's Inn, he was later a Fellow at Harvard Law School. He has been elected Honorary Bencher and Master of Lincoln's Inn and Honorary Fellow, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. The University of Cambridge has honoured him with degree of Doctor of Law (Honoris Causa).
Political initiation
During the 1940s he was involved in the struggle for Indian independence from the British, and joined the Indian National Congress, a party which he would remain loyal to for the rest of his life. In 1952 he became the chief minister of the Bhopal state and served in that position until the state reorganization of 1956, when Bhopal state merged with several other states to form the state of Madhya Pradesh.
Active political life
During the 1960s Sharma supported Indira Gandhi's quest for leadership of the Congress Party.He was elected as the President, AICC in 1972 and presided over the AICC session in Calcutta. From 1974,he served in the union cabinet as the minister for Communication from 197477. In 1971 and 1980 he won a Lok Sabha seat from Bhopal. Later on, he was given a variety of ceremonial posts. In 1984 he began serving as a governor of Indian states, first in Andhra Pradesh. During this time, his daughter Geetanjali Maken and son-in-law Lalit Maken, a young member of parliament and a promising political leader, were killed by Sikh militants. In 1985, he left Andhra Pradesh and became governor of Punjab during a time of violence between the Indian government and Sikh militants, many of whom lived in Punjab. He left Punjab in 1986 and took up his final governorship in Maharashtra. He remained governor of Maharashtra until 1987 when he was elected for a 5-year term as the eighth Vice-President of India and chairman of the Rajya Sabha. Sharma was known to be a stickler for parliamentary norms. He is known to have broken down in the Rajya Sabha while witnessing the members of the house create a din on a political issue. His grief brought back some order into the proceedings of the house.
Presidential election
Sharma served as Vice-President until 1992, when he was elected President.He received 66% of the votes in the electoral college, defeating George Gilbert Swell. During his last year as President, it was his responsibility to swear in three prime ministers. He did not run for a second term as President.
Illness and death
During the last five years of his life, Sharma suffered from ill health. On 26 December 1999, he suffered a massive heart attack and was admitted to a hospital in New Delhi, where he died. He was cremated at Karma Bhumi. Dr. Sharma is survived by his son Satish Dayal Sharma from his first wife and a son Ashutosh Dayal Sharma, from his second wife, Smt. Vimala Sharma.
External links

Bio details (not updated) from Congress Sandesh at [54] accessed 26 July 2006
Shankarlal Banker was an Indian independence movement activist. He was one of the first most loyal recruits of Mahatma Gandhi, and had a major role to play in textile labour struggle in Ahmedabad. On March 10, 1922, Gandhiji and Shankarlal Banker as an editor-producer of NAV JIVAN-YOUNG INDIA were accused for treason and arrested. Shibram Chakrabarty Bengali: (13 December 190328 August 1980) was a popular Bengali writer, humorist and revolutionary, best known for humorous stories. His best known short stories and novels are renowned for their unique use of pun, alliteration, play of words and ironic humor. He was a prolific author who also wrote poems, plays, non-fiction, and novels for mature audiences in his long career. He worked as a volunteer in the Swadeshi movement and came under the affection of Chittaranjan Das [ ]. During this time he became involved with the magazine Bijli [] and Forward as a journalist, later becoming publisher of Jugantar []. His initial foray into literature was as a poet. His first book of poems was called Manush (Man). He worked as a feature writer in daily newspapers and magazines such as Basumati [], Ananda Bazar Patrika [ ] and Desh []. These were tinged with humor and got him notice in the public eye. Subsequently he started writing stories and novels. His writing is noted for use of literary puns as a key story vehicle speculated to be a first in Bengali literature, as well as for his self-deprecating humor. An example of this is the convoluted way in which he would spell his name in Bengali in his stories: (Shee-bram Cho-ko-ro-bo-ro-ty). He would often insert himself into his stories among fictional characters. The most famous and recurring characters in his stories are the brothers Harshabardhan [] and Gobardhan [] and his sister Bini. Advertisements for his books often bill him as the King of Laughter. Aside from funny stories, his other notable writings include the dramatization of Sharat Chandra Chatterji's novel Dena Paona under the title Shoroshi [] (Sixteen Year Old Girl), the political work Moscow bonam Pondicheri [ ] (Moscow Versus Pondicheri; ) and the play Jokhon Tara Kotha Bolbe [ ] (When They Will Speak). His (so called) autobiography Eeshwar Prithibee Valobasa [ ] (God Earth Love) is also regarded as one of his best works. During his 60-year career he authored more than 150 books. Chakrabarty was born into the well-known Chachal Rajbari (royal house of Chachal) family, although his ancestral home was in Malda. He was born at his maternal uncle's house in Kolkata, the capital of British India. His father's name was Shibprashad Chakrabarty [ ]. A spirtualist by nature, Shibprashad would often talk to the road. Shibram later inherited this wanderlust from his father. Shibram spent his early days in Paharpur and Chachal. In his boyhood days, he once ran away from home penniless. This experience would later inspire his novel Bari Theke Paliye [ ] (Running Away From Home), which was made into a film by Ritwik Ghatak. While still in school he played an active role in the Swadeshi movement and as a result was sent to jail, which resulted in his inability to sit the matriculation exam. Despite not progressing further with his education, Chakrabarty studied on his own and was knowledgeable in a variety of subjects. He spent the most part of his life on the second-floor mess room of a bedsit on Muktaram Babu Street in Kolkata. He added his personal touch to the room by turning its walls into a hand-written calendar, documenting the time he had lived there. He never married and was known as a "free spirit" and was generous to his friends [citation needed]. He did not maintain proper records or preserve the manuscripts of some of his works. In the last phase of his life, he ran into serious financial difficulties and the West
Shankarlal Banker
Shibram Chakraborty
Literary career
Personal life

Bengal Government had to put him on a monthly allowance. He died in Kolkata in 1980. Eeshwar Prithibee Valobasa [ ] (God Earth Love), 1974: (So called) autobiography. Valobasa Prithibee Eeshwar [ ] (Love Earth God), 1976: Another (so called) autobiography. Aaj O Agamikaal [ ] (Today & Tomorrow), 1929: A collection of short stories. Ekti Swarnaghotita Apokeerti [ ] (An Missdoing Due to Gold): Drama Debotar Jonmo [ ] (Birth of a God): Short story
Literary works
Quotations
"Yet may be not the ultimate goal,but the communists do have an extreme goal, and that is All for one and one for all." "The history of human civilization is sub-divided into two kinds of people. One who is selfishly screaming that all of this earth belongs to me. State that's me! I'll be benefittedthis happenes to be the biggest thing of this world. The other is sacrificing himself by exiling into the forest or on the cross;they said, I have come for all; I have sacrificed myself to all. Both of them show the incompleteness of the civilization." "My respect for Rabindranath is not because he is a so-called superman,but because he is a complete human being." "The basis of a human being's completeness lies in the maturity of body, mind and intellect ... the bottom line of completeness is congruence,harmony." "To earn the freedom of a nation, a freedom fighter have to sacrifice his own freedom." 'Sri Dev Suman' (25 May 1916 25 July 1944) was a freedom fighter from Tehri District of Uttarakhand. He was born at Jaul village patti Bamund of Tehri Garhwal. His father was a doctor and his mother a housewife. When the whole of India was fighting for freedom from the British government, Suman was fighting for the freedom of Tehri Riyasat from the King of Garhwal. He was a great fan of Gandhi and used the nonviolence way for the freedom of Tehri. Environment leader Sunderlal Bahuguna was also with Shri Dev Suman. During his fight with the King of Tehri who called as Bolanda Badri (speaking Badrinath), he demand complete freedom for the Tehri. On 30 December 1943 he was declared a rebel and arrested by Tehri kingdom. In jail, Suman was tortured, very heavy cuffs was given to him, pieces of stone were mixed with his food, sand mixed roti was given to him, and many more tortures were applied by the jailer Mohan Singh and other staff. Then he decided to go on hunger strike. Jail staff tried to give him food and water forcibly, with no success. After being in prison for 209 days, and on hunger strike for 84 days, Shri Dev Suman died on 25 July 1944. His dead body was thrown into the Bhilangna River without a funeral. aajkapahad.blogspot.com/2009/02/sri-dev-suman.html http://www.nainitalsamachar.in/tag/sri-devsuman/ books.google.co.in/books?isbn=8173871345...
Shri Dev Suman
Padmabhushan Pandit Shripad Damodar Satwalekar was an author, proponent of Surya Namaskar, and Vedic values. He was also the founder of the Swadhyay Mandal.
Shripad Damodar Satwalekar

Shripad Satwalekar was born in 1867, at Kolgaon, District Ratnagiri in the erstwhile Bombay State, India. Satwalekar started his career as an artist and photographer with a studio in Lahore, Punjab State. His mainly painted portraits of Maharajas and other prominent personalities of the day. He moved to the Princely State of Aundh with a strong patronage offered by the then Maharaja of the State. Satwalekar was a follower of Indian Nationalist Leader, Lokamanya Tilak and attended the Surat Congress session in 1905. He supported Gadar and Home Rule movements and activities of Quit India movement. For this he was prosecuted on many occasions by the then British Raj authorities. He was interested in both individual and social health, Ayurved, Yoga,and Vedas and wrote several books on these subjects. [citation needed] Satwalekar was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1968.
Biography
Personal
Satwalekar's son, Madhav Satwalekar was also a painter and artist . Pandit Shyam Sunder Surolia (Hindi: , August 25, 1920 July 20, 2001) was an Indian freedom fighter since 1934. Then a 14 year old child, he raised his voice against the feudal powers of the state of Rajasthan.
Shyam Sunder Surolia
Early life
In 1939 he was sentenced by the Kushtia district court to six months in a juvenile home in Chuadanga, Bangladesh in British India for the offence of making bombs along with other young revolutionaries, highly moved by the ideals of nationalism and freedom struggle. In 1942, he became an active member of the Praja Mandal (Democratic Council) and the only elected member of the Town committee of Mukundgarh. He carried the wave of freedom struggle started by Indian freedom fighters such as Gandhi and Nehru to the neighbouring areas of Nawalgarh, Jhunjhunu and Dundlod among many other towns, often single-handedly but also in association with compatriots.
Work for the society
He was an active social servant and worked for the poor. His advent into politics was solely for this purpose. He served as the Chairman of the Mukundgarh Municipality from 1960 to 1963. Later, from 1966 to 1985, he also served as the President of the Mukundgarh Town Congress Committee. He came in close contact with the leading social workers like Basant Lal Murarka and Bhagirath Mal Kanodia which further enlightened his spirit for social services. He started the Harijan Development Programme immediately after taking over as the Chairman of the Mukundgarh Municipality. He ensured the admissions of the Dalit students into schools. He also ensured that the benefits of various government schemes like scholarship, hostel facilities etc. for the wards of the down-trodden segment of the society. This was the time when the untouchability system was in vogue. At that time, it was considered a Brahmin do nothing for the neglected lower caste people. He was inspired by the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi and dedicated his life for the upliftment of the down-trodden, despite the severe resistance from his own caste and other high caste people.
Work as town committee chairman
During his time as Mayor, Mukundgarh was a very small municipality compared to the District Headquarters of Jhunjhunu and Nawalgarh. Due to his relentless efforts, the water works, telephone and the electricity system was first set up there and the bigger towns and municipality could get the same only after it. He implemented several long lasting works in Mukundgarh. He sanctioned the setting up of water supply systems, electrification of households, telephone system for better communication, concrete cement road in the main market, connectivity of the Mukundgarh town with the Mukundgarh mandi (community shop) and railway station which ushered in the overall growth of the town and opened several new vistas for future development and sustainable source of income for the Mukundgarh Municipality per se.

Educational work and qualifications
He had a vast knowledge of Sanskrit and Astrology. He was exponent of the Vedas, Shrimad Bhagvad Gita and Niti Shastra. His erudition in all these had earned him the epithet of Shastri. He had been the Founder of the All India Astrology Research Centre at Jaipur and remained the President throughout his life. He had also been associated with a large number of educational institutions due to his inclination towards creating a newer educated generation next.
Personal life
He was married to Draupadi Devi Surolia in 1959, and the couple have four children, Sarla Mukesh, Rajesh Pratibha Surolia, Sanjeev Parul Surolia, and Sarita Vinay. He had started a small distribution firm in 1967, which had a good amount of annual turnover. Later the business was transferred to his youngest son after his demise.
Late life and death
He used to be very popular in Mukundgarh and the nearby areas and people used to come to him for sorting out all kind of disputes amicably. The entire district administration and the politicians used to visit him only due to his charismatic personality and traits. He used to be popularly called as Shyamji in the area.
Death
He left behind a very big fan following. He remained an active social worker till his death. He died on July 20, 2001, after a brief illness. As he was a freedom fighter, the state of Rajasthan honored him with State funeral. Sitaram Kesri (1916 - October 24, 2000) was an Indian politician and parliamentarian who became a Union Minister and President of the Indian National Congress (199698).
Sitaram Kesri
Biography
Sitaram Kesri took part in India's freedom struggle at the age of 13, and was arrested in 1930, 1933, and 1942. He became the President of Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee in 1973 and Treasurer of All India Congress Committee (AICC) in 1980. Kesri was elected to the Lok Sabha from Katihar Lok Sabha Constituency in 1967 when he won on a Janata Party ticket after being given a last moment call by then Bihar Janata Party President S N Sinha. He represented Bihar in the Rajya Sabha for five terms between July 1971 and April 2000. He was Union Minister during the regimes of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and P.V. Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister of India. Kesri served as Treasurer of the Congress party for more than a decade. In addition, he was elected unanimously as the President of the Congress Parliamentary Party on 3 January 1997. After P.V. Narasimha Rao stepped down as president of Congress in September 1996, Kesri was appointed the new president of the party. The following years were difficult for the Congress Party. Kesri's lack of popular support among the masses caused further damage to the party. Kesri's most controversial act was the sudden withdrawal of support to H.D. Deve Gowda's United Front government that led to the fall of the government in April 1997. However, a compromise was reached and the United Front elected I.K. Gujral as the new leader with continued support from the Congress party. In the first week of November 1997, part of the report of the Jain Commission inquiring into the conspiracy angle of assassination of Rajiv Gandhi was leaked to the press. It was reported that the Jain Commission had indicted Dravid Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) for its ties with LTTE, the organization involved in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. DMK was one of the constituents of the United Front that was in power at the center. Moreover the party had three ministers in the council of ministers headed by Prime Minister Gujral. The Congress Party demanded removal of the ministers belonging to DMK from the government. Between 20 and 28 November 1997, an exchange of letters took place between Kesri and Prime Minister Gujral. However the Prime Minister refused to meet the demand of the Congress party.

Finally, on 28 November 1997, Congress withdrew support to the Gujral government. When no alternative government could be formed, the Lok Sabha was dissolved, paving the way for mid-term elections . The Congress Party did not adequately prepare for the mid-term elections. A number of senior leaders of the party, such as Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, Aslam Sherkhan and other leaders openly expressed displeasure with Kesri's leadership and left the party. After Sonia Gandhi decided to campaign for the party, she replaced Kesri as the main campaigner for the party. Sonia attracted huge crowds in her campaign rallies but did not win the election for the party. Nevertheless Congress party did maintain a respectable tally of 140 seats. During the election campaign, there were a series of bomb blasts in Coimbatore, where BJP President L.K. Advani was scheduled to address the election rally. About 50 people were killed in the blasts. After the blasts, Kesri made a statement that the bomb blasts in Coimbatore were the handiwork of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and moreover he had the proof of RSS involvement in the blasts. The RSS sued Kesri for defamation but Kesri was granted bail by a city court in 1998 After the electoral defeat, Kesri was stripped of his post in March 1998 by the Congress Working Committee. Sonia Gandhi was appointed President of the Congress party in his place. Kesri's removal from the Congress Working Committee is considered by some as a betrayal of the party constitution considering how Pranab Mukherjee and others conspired to eliminate Kesri for Sonia Gandhi from the party. Kesri, along with other members of the Working Committee including Tariq Anwar was "roughed up" at Congress Party headquarters on 19 May 1999 by what has been described as an "angry mob" and "Congress goons", following the split in the Congress that led to the formation of the Nationalist Congress Party. After his exit from the office, he maintained a relatively low profile in politics. He was also denied party candidature for Rajya Sabha when his term ended in April 2000. Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna (18701968) was as Indian revolutionary, the founding president of the Ghadar Party, and a leading member of the party involved in the Ghadar Conspiracy of 1915. Tried at the Lahore Conspiracy trial, Sohan Singh served sixteen years of a life sentence for his part in the conspiracy before he was released in 1930. He later worked closely with the Indian labour movement, devoting considerable time to the Kisan Sabha and the Communist Party of India.
Sohan Singh Bhakna
Early life
Sohan Singh was born in January 1870 at the village of Khutrai Khurd, north of Amritsar, which was the ancestral home of his mother Ram Kaur. His father was Bhai Karam Singh, who lived with his family in the village of Bhakna, 16 km southwest of Amritsar. Young Sohan Singh spent his childhood at Bhakhna, where he received his childhood education in the village Gurudwara. He learnt to read and write in the Punjabi language at an early age, and was also instructed on the rudiments of Sikh faith. Sohan Singh was married at the age of ten to Bishan Kaur, daughter of a landlord near Lahore by the name of Khushal Singh. Sohan Singh finished school at the age of sixteen, by which time he was also proficient in Urdu and Persian. His marriage to Bishan Kaur, however, remained childless. Sohan Singh became involved in the nationalist movement and the agrarian unrest that emerged in Punjab in the 1900s. He participated in the protests against the anti-Colonization Bill in 1906-07. Two years later, in February 1909, he left home to sail for the United States. After a two month journey, Singh reached Seattle on 4 April 1909.
United States
Sohan Singh soon found work as a labourer in a timber mill being constructed near the city. In this first decade of the 1900s, the Pacific coast of North America saw large scale Indian immigration. A large proportion of the immigrants were especially from Punjab British India which was facing an economic depression and agrarian unrest. The Canadian government met this influx with a series of legislations aimed at limiting the entry of South Asians into Canada, and restricting the political rights of those already in the country. The Punjabi community had hitherto been an important loyal force for the British

Empire and the Commonwealth, and the community had expected, to honour its commitment, equal welcome and rights from the British and commonwealth governments as extended to British and white immigrants. These legislations fed growing discontent, protests and anti-colonial sentiments within the community. Faced with increasingly difficult situations, the community began organising itself into political groups. A large number of Punjabis also moved to the United States, but they encountered similar political and social problems. Early works among these groups date back to the time around 1908 when Indian students and Punjabi immigrants of the likes of P S Khankhoje, Pandit Kanshi Ram, Taraknath Das and Bhai Bhagwan Singh were working towards and for a political movement. Khankhoje himself founded the Indian Independence League in Portland, Oregon. Sohan Singh at this time came to be strongly associated with this political movement taking shape among Indian immigrants. His works also brought him close to other Indian nationalists in United States at the time. Meanwhile, India House and nationalist activism of Indian students had begun declining in the East Coast towards 1910, but gradually shifted west to San Francisco. The arrival at this time of Har Dayal from Europe bridged the gap between the intellectual agitators in New York and the predominantly Punjabi labour workers and migrants in the west coast, and laid the foundations of the Ghadar movement. In the summer of 1913, representatives of Indians living in Canada and the United States met at Stockton, where the decision was taken to establish an organization, Hindustani Workers of the Pacific Coast. The Pacific Coast Hindustan Association, was formed in 1913 in the United States under the leadership of Har Dayal, P.S. Khankhoje and Sohan Singh Bhakna. Bhakna was its president. It drew members from Indian immigrants, largely from Punjab. Many of its members were also from the University of California at Berkeley including Dayal, Tarak Nath Das, Kartar Singh Sarabha and V.G. Pingle. The party quickly gained support from Indian expatriates, especially in the United States, Canada and Asia. Ghadar meetings were held in Los Angeles, Oxford, Vienna, Washington, D.C., and Shanghai.
Ghadar Conspiracy
The Ghadar Party evolved from the Pacific coast association. The Ghadar's ultimate goal was to overthrow British colonial authority in India by means of an armed revolution. It viewed the Congress-led mainstream movement for dominion status modest and the latter's constitutional methods as soft. Ghadar's foremost strategy was to entice Indian soldiers to revolt. To that end, in November 1913 Ghadar established the Yugantar Ashram press in San Francisco. The press produced the Hindustan Ghadar newspaper and other nationalist literature. The Ghadar leadership,under Sohan Singh Bhakna, began at this time their first plans for mutiny. The inflammatory passions surrounding the Komagata Maru incident helped the Ghadarite cause, and Ghadar leaders including Sohan Singh, Barkatullah and Taraknath Das used it as a rallying point and successfully brought many disaffected Indians in North America into the party's fold. Sohan Singh himself had contacted the returning Komagata Maru at Yokohama and delivered to Baba Gurdit Singh a consignment of arms when he learnt of hostilities breaking out in July 1914. The war in Europe hastened Ghadar's plans. It was already in touch with Indian revolutionaries in Germany and with the German consulate in San Fracisco. Ghadar also had party members in South-East Asia and had made contact with the Indian revolutionary underground. Elaborate plans were made to ship funds and arms from the United States and from South-East Asia, to India in what came to be called the Hindu German Conspiracy. These were to be used for a planned mutiny in India sometime in late 1914 or early 1915. The plans for the latter came to be known as the Ghadar Conspiracy. Sohan Singh, as one of the top of the Ghadar leadership, sailed to India in the SS Namsang at the outbreak of the war, in the wake of the Komagata Maru incidence to organise and direct the rebellion from India. However, British intelligence was already picking up traces of the revolutionary conspiracy. Returning to India, Singh was arrested in Calcutta on 13 October 1914 and sent to Ludhiana for interrogation. He was subsequently sent to the Central Jail in Multan and later tried in the Lahore Conspiracy Case and sentenced to death, with forfeiture of property. The death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment in the Andamans, where he reached on 10 December 1915 and where he undertook several hunger strikes successively to secure the detenues better treatment.

In 1921, Sohan Singh was transferred to Coimbatore jail and then to Yervada. Here however, Singh embarked on a hunger strike in protest against Sikh prisoners not being allowed to wear turbans and their Kacchera, amongst their religious obligations. In 1927, he was shifted to the Central Jail at Lahore, where he again went on hunger strike in June 1928 to protest against the segregation of the so-called low-caste Mazhabi Sikhs from other 'high-caste' Sikhs during meals. In 1929, while still interned, he went on a hunger strike in support of Bhagat Singh. He ultimately served sixteen years before he was released early in July 1930. After his release, he continued working in the nationalist movement and labour politics. His works were identified closely with the works of the Communist party of India, devoting most of his time to organizing the Kisan Sabhas. He also made the release of interned Ghadarites a key part of his political work. He was interned a second time during World War II, when he was jailed at the Deoli Camp in what is today Rajasthan. He remained incarcerated for nearly three years. After Independence he veered decisively towards the Communist Party of India. He was arrested on 31 March 1948, but released on 8 May 1948. However, he was seized again, but jail-going ended for him finally at the intervention of Independent India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Bent with age and ravaged by pneumonia, Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna died, at Amritsar, on 21 December 1968.
Later life
Subhadra Joshi (nee Datta) (March 23, 1919 October 30, 2003) was a noted Indian freedom activist, politician and parliamentarian from Indian National Congress. She took part in the 1942 Quit India movement, and later remained the president of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC). She belonged to a well known family in Sialkot (now in Pakistan). Her father V.N Datta was a police officer with the Jaipur State and a cousin, Krishnan Gopal Datta was an active Congressman in Punjab.
Subhadra Joshi
She did her schooling from the Maharaja Girls' School, Jaipur, the Lady Maclegan High School, Lahore and the Kanya Mahavidyalaya at Jalandhar. She obtained a Master's degree in Political Science from the Forman Christian College, Lahore. It was during her college days that she became involved with political activities.
Career Role in the freedom struggle
Attracted by the ideals of Gandhiji, she visited his Ashram at Wardha when she was studying in Lahore. As a Student she took part in the Quit India Movement in 1942 and worked with Aruna Asaf Ali. During this time, she relocated to Delhi where she went underground and edited a journal Hamara Sangram. She was arrested and after serving time at the Lahore Women's Central Jail, she started working among industrial workers. During the communal riots that ensued in the wake of Partition she set up a peace volunteer organization,Shanti Dal which became a powerful anti communal force during those troubled times. She also organized rehabilitation of evacuees from Pakistan.
Role in Independent India
Subhadra Joshi was an ardent secularist who dedicated her life to the cause of communal harmony in India. She spent several months in Sagar when the first major post independence riots of India broke out there in 1961. The following year she set up the 'Sampradayikta Virodhi Committee' as common anticommunal political platform and in 1968, launched the journal Secular Democracy in support of the cause. In 1971, the Qaumi Ekta Trust was established to further the cause of secularism and communal amity in the country.
As a Parliamentarian
She was a parliamentarian for four terms from 1952-1977 from Balrampur and Chandni Chowk Lok Sabha constituency. She made important contributions to the passage of Special Marriage Act, the

Nationalization of Banks, Abolition of Privy Purses and the Aligarh University Amendment Act. Her crowning achievement however was her successful move to amend the code for Criminal Procedure that made any organized propaganda leading to communal tensions or enmity a cognizable offence. She is alleged to have had an affair with Indira Gandhi's husband, Feroze Gandhi. She was awarded the Rajiv Gandhi Sadhbhavana Award given by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.
Death and legacy
Subhadra Joshi died on October 30, 2003, at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Delhi, after a prolonged illness at the age of 86. A commemorative stamp was issued in her honour by Department of Posts on her birth anniversary, March 23, 2011. Subhas Chandra Bose ( listen Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Bn - Netaji pronunciation.ogg; 23 January 1897 unknown) also known as Netaji (Bengali/Oriya/Hindi): Respected Leader), was one of the most prominent Indian nationalist leaders who attempted to gain India's independence from British rule by force during the waning years of World War II with the help of the Axis powers. Bose, who had been ousted from the Indian National Congress in 1939 following differences with the more conservative high command, and subsequently placed under house arrest by the British, escaped from India in early 1941. He turned to the Axis powers for help in gaining India's independence by force. With Japanese support, he organised the Indian National Army (INA), composed largely of Indian soldiers of the British Indian army who had been captured in the Battle of Singapore by the Japanese. As the war turned against them, the Japanese came to support a number of countries to form provisional governments in the captured regions, including those in Burma, the Philippines and Vietnam, and in addition, the Provisional Government of Azad Hind, presided by Bose. Bose's effort, however, was short lived; in 1945 the British army first halted and then reversed the Japanese U Go offensive, beginning the successful part of the Burma Campaign. The INA was driven down the Malay Peninsula, and surrendered with the recapture of Singapore. It was reported that Bose died soon thereafter from third degree burns received after attempting to escape in an overloaded Japanese plane which crashed in Taiwan, which is disputed. The trials of the INA soldiers at Red Fort, Delhi, in late 1945 caused huge public response in India. Clement Attlee, the British Prime Minister during whose rule India became independent, mentioned that INA activities of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (which weakened the Indian Army the very foundation of the British Empire in India) and the Royal Indian Navy mutiny in 1946 were major reasons that made the British realise that they were no longer in a position to rule India.
Subhas Chandra Bose
Early life
Subhas Chandra Bose was born on 23 January 1897 in Cuttack, then a part of Bengal Presidency, to Janakinath Bose, an advocate and Prabhavati Devi. His parents' ancestral house was at Kodalia village (near Baruipur; now known as Shubhashgram, South 24 Parganas, West Bengal). He was the ninth child of a total of fourteen siblings. He studied at Stewart School, Cuttack, an Anglo school, until the seventh standard and then shifted to Ravenshaw Collegiate School. After securing the second position in the matriculation examination of Calcutta province in 1911, he got admitted to the Presidency College where he studied briefly. His nationalistic temperament came to light when he was expelled for assaulting Professor Oaten for the latter's anti-India comments. He later joined Scottish Church College under University of Calcutta and passed his B.A. in 1918 in philosophy. Subhas Chandra Bose left India in 1919 for Great Britain with a promise to his father that he would appear in the Indian Civil Services Examination (ICS). He went to study in Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and matriculated on 19 November 1919. He came fourth in the ICS examination and was selected but he did not want to work under an alien government which would mean serving the British. He resigned from the civil service job and returned to India. He started the newspaper Swaraj and took charge of publicity for the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee. His mentor was Chittaranjan Das who was a spokesman for aggressive nationalism in Bengal. In the year 1923, Bose was elected the President of All India Youth Congress and also the Secretary of Bengal State Congress. He was also editor of the newspaper "Forward", founded by

Chittaranjan Das. Bose worked as the CEO of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation for Das when the latter was elected mayor of Calcutta in 1924. In a roundup of nationalists in 1925, Bose was arrested and sent to prison in Mandalay, where he contracted tuberculosis.
In 1927, after being released from prison, Bose became general secretary of the Congress party and worked with Jawaharlal Nehru for independence. Again Bose was arrested and jailed for civil disobedience; this time he emerged to become Mayor of Calcutta in 1930. During the mid-1930s Bose travelled in Europe, visiting Indian students and European politicians, including Benito Mussolini. He observed party organisation and saw communism and fascism in action. By 1938 Bose had become a leader of national stature and agreed to accept nomination as Congress president. He stood for unqualified Swaraj (self-governance), including the use of force against the British. This meant a confrontation with Mohandas Gandhi, who in fact opposed Bose's presidency, splitting the Indian National Congress party. Bose attempted to maintain unity, but Gandhi advised Bose to form his own cabinet. The rift also divided Bose and Nehru. Bose appeared at the 1939 Congress meeting on a stretcher. He was elected president again over Gandhi's preferred candidate Pattabhi Sitaramayya. U. Muthuramalingam Thevar strongly supported Bose in the intra-Congress dispute. Thevar mobilised all south India votes for Bose. However, due to the manoeuvrings of the Gandhi-led clique in the Congress Working Committee, Bose found himself forced to resign from the Congress presidency. On 22 June 1939 Bose organised the Forward Bloc, aimed at consolidating the political left, but its main strength was in his home state, Bengal. U Muthuramalingam Thevar, who was disillusioned by the official Congress leadership which had not revoked the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA), joined the Forward Bloc. When Bose visited Madurai on 6 September, Thevar organised a massive rally as his reception. His correspondence reveals that despite his clear dislike for British subjugation, he was deeply impressed by their methodical and systematic approach and their steadfastly disciplinarian outlook towards life. In England, he exchanged ideas on the future of India with British Labour Party leaders and political thinkers like Lord Halifax, George Lansbury, Clement Attlee, Arthur Greenwood, Harold Laski, J.B.S. Haldane, Ivor Jennings, G.D.H. Cole, Gilbert Murray and Sir Stafford Cripps . He came to believe that a free India needed socialist authoritarianism, on the lines of Turkey's Kemal Atatrk, for at least two decades. Bose was refused permission by the British authorities to meet Atatrk at Ankara for political reasons. During his sojourn in England, only the Labour Party and Liberal politicians agreed to meet with Bose when he tried to schedule appointments. Conservative Party officials refused to meet Bose or show him courtesy because he was a politician coming from a colony. In the 1930s leading figures in the Conservative Party had opposed even Dominion status for India. It was during the Labour Party government of 19451951, with Attlee as the Prime Minister, that India gained independence. On the outbreak of war, Bose advocated a campaign of mass civil disobedience to protest against Viceroy Lord Linlithgow's decision to declare war on India's behalf without consulting the Congress leadership. Having failed to persuade Gandhi of the necessity of this, Bose organised mass protests in Calcutta calling for the 'Holwell Monument' commemorating the Black Hole of Calcutta, which then stood at the corner of Dalhousie Square, to be removed. He was thrown in jail by the British, but was released following a seven-day hunger strike. Bose's house in Calcutta was kept under surveillance by the CID.
National politics Indian National Congress
All India Forward Bloc
Escape from British India to Nazi Germany and Japan
Bose's arrest and subsequent release set the scene for his escape to Germany, via Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. A few days before his escape, he sought solitude and on this pretext avoided meeting British guards and grew a beard on the night of his escape, he dressed as a Pathan to avoid being identified. Bose escaped from under British surveillance at his house in Calcutta. On 19 January 1941, accompanied by his nephew Sisir K. Bose in a car that is now on display at his Calcutta home. He journeyed to Peshawar with the help of the Abwehr, where he was met by Akbar Shah, Mohammed Shah and Bhagat Ram Talwar. Bose was taken to the home of Abad Khan, a trusted friend of Akbar

Shah's. On 26 January 1941, Bose began his journey to reach Russia through British India's North West frontier with Afghanistan. For this reason, he enlisted the help of Mian Akbar Shah, then a Forward Bloc leader in the North-West Frontier Province. Shah had been out of India en route to the Soviet Union, and suggested a novel disguise for Bose to assume. Since Bose could not speak one word of Pashto, it would make him an easy target of Pashto speakers working for the British. For this reason, Shah suggested that Bose act deaf and dumb, and let his beard grow to mimic those of the tribesmen. Bose's guide Bhagat Ram Talwar, unknown to him, was a Soviet agent. Supporters of the Aga Khan III helped him across the border into Afghanistan where he was met by an Abwehr unit posing as a party of road construction engineers from the Organization Todt who then aided his passage across Afghanistan via Kabul to the border with Soviet Russia. After assuming the guise of a Pashtun insurance agent ("Ziaudddin") to reach Afghanistan, Bose changed his guise and travelled to Moscow on the Italian passport of an Italian nobleman "Count Orlando Mazzotta". From Moscow, he reached Rome, and from there he travelled to Germany. Once in Russia the NKVD transported Bose to Moscow where he hoped that Russia's traditional enmity to British rule in India would result in support for his plans for a popular rising in India. However, Bose found the Soviets' response disappointing and was rapidly passed over to the German Ambassador in Moscow, Count von der Schulenburg. He had Bose flown on to Berlin in a special courier aircraft at the beginning of April where he was to receive a more favorable hearing from Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Foreign Ministry officials at the Wilhelmstrasse. In Germany, he instituted the Special Bureau for India under Adam von Trott zu Solz, broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio. He founded the Free India Center in Berlin, and created the Indian Legion (consisting of some 4500 soldiers) out of Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for the British in North Africa prior to their capture by Axis forces. The Indian Legion was attached to the Wehrmacht, and later transferred to the Waffen SS. Its members swore the following allegiance to Hitler and Bose: "I swear by God this holy oath that I will obey the leader of the German race and state, Adolf Hitler, as the commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India, whose leader is Subhas Chandra Bose". This oath clearly abrogates control of the Indian legion to the German armed forces whilst stating Bose's overall leadership of India. He was also, however, prepared to envisage an invasion of India via the USSR by Nazi troops, spearheaded by the Azad Hind Legion; many have questioned his judgment here, as it seems unlikely that the Germans could have been easily persuaded to leave after such an invasion, which might also have resulted in an Axis victory in the War. In all, 3,000 Indian prisoners of war signed up for the Free India Legion. But instead of being delighted, Bose was worried. A left-wing admirer of Russia, he was devastated when Hitler's tanks rolled across the Soviet border. Matters were worsened by the fact that the now-retreating German army would be in no position to offer him help in driving the British from India. When he met Hitler in May 1942, his suspicions were confirmed, and he came to believe that the Nazi leader was more interested in using his men to win propaganda victories than military ones. So, in February 1943, Bose turned his back on his legionnaires and slipped secretly away aboard a submarine bound for Japan. This left the men he had recruited leaderless and demoralised in Germany. Bose lived in Berlin from 1941 until 1943. During his earlier visit to Germany in 1934, he had met Emilie Schenkl, the daughter of an Austrian veterinarian whom he allegedly married in 1937. Anita Bose Pfaff is the daughter who was said to have been born to them in 1942. However, his party, the Forward Bloc, does not believe the same, and discards it as false propaganda. In 1943, After being disillusioned that Germany could be of any help in liberating India, he left for Japan. He travelled by the German submarine U-180 around the Cape of Good Hope to southeast of Madagascar, where he was transferred to the Japanese submarine I-29 for the rest of the journey to Imperial Japan. This was the only civilian transfer between two submarines of two different navies in World War II.
Leadership of Azad Hind Fauj and later events
The Indian National Army (INA) was originally founded by Captain General Mohan Singh in Singapore on 1 September 1942 with Japan's Indian POWs in the Far East. This was along the concept ofand with support ofwhat was then known as the Indian Independence League, headed by expatriate nationalist

leader Rash Behari Bose. The first INA was however disbanded in December after disagreements between the Hikari Kikan and Mohan Singh, who came to believe that the Japanese High Command was using the INA as a mere pawn and propaganda tool. Mohan Singh was taken into custody and the troops returned to the prisoner-of-war camp. However, the idea of a liberation army was revived with the arrival of Subhas Chandra Bose in the Far East in 1943. In July, at a meeting in Singapore, Rash Behari Bose handed over control of the organisation to Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose was able to reorganise the fledgling army and organise massive support among the expatriate Indian population in south-east Asia, who lent their support by both enlisting in the Indian National Army, as well as financially in response to Bose's calls for sacrifice for the national cause. INA had a separate women's unit, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment (named after Rani Lakshmi Bai) headed by Capt. Lakshmi Swaminathan, which is seen as a first of its kind in Asia. Even when faced with military reverses, Bose was able to maintain support for the Azad Hind movement. Spoken as a part of a motivational speech for the Indian National Army at a rally of Indians in Burma on 4 July 1944, Bose's most famous quote was "Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom!" In this, he urged the people of India to join him in his fight against the British Raj. Spoken in Hindi, Bose's words are highly evocative. The troops of the INA were under the aegis of a provisional government, the Azad Hind Government, which came to produce its own currency, postage stamps, court and civil code, and was recognised by nine Axis statesGermany, Japan, Italy, the Independent State of Croatia, Wang Jingwei regime in Nanjing, China, a provisional government of Burma, Manchukuo and Japanese-controlled Philippines. Recent researches have shown that the USSR too had recognised the "Provisional Government of Free India". Of those countries, five were authorities established under Axis occupation. This government participated in the so-called Greater East Asia Conference as an observer in November 1943. The INA's first commitment was in the Japanese thrust towards Eastern Indian frontiers of Manipur. INA's special forces, the Bahadur Group, were extensively involved in operations behind enemy lines both during the diversionary attacks in Arakan, as well as the Japanese thrust towards Imphal and Kohima, along with the Burmese National Army led by Ba Maw and Aung San. Japanese also took possession of Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 1942 and a year later, the Provisional Government and the INA were established in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands with Lt Col. A.D. Loganathan appointed its Governor General. The islands were renamed Shaheed (Martyr) and Swaraj (Independence). However, the Japanese Navy remained in essential control of the island's administration. During Bose's only visit to the islands in early 1944, when he was carefully screened, by the Japanese authorities, from the local population who at that time were torturing the leader of the Indian Independence League on the Islands, Dr. Diwan Singh, who later died of his injuries, in the Cellular Jail. The islanders made several attempts to alert Bose to their plight, but apparently without success. Enraged with the lack of administrative control, Lt. Col Loganathan later relinquished his authority and returned to the Government's headquarters in Rangoon. On the Indian mainland, an Indian Tricolour, modelled after that of the Indian National Congress, was raised for the first time in the town in Moirang, in Manipur, in north-eastern India. The towns of Kohima and Imphal were placed under siege by divisions of the Japanese, Burmese and the Gandhi and Nehru Brigades of INA during the attempted invasion of India, also known as Operation U-GO. However, Commonwealth forces held both positions and then counter-attacked, in the process inflicting serious losses on the besieging forces, which were then forced to retreat back into Burma. When Japanese funding for the army diminished, Bose was forced to raise taxes on the Indian populations of Malaysia and Singapore . When the Japanese were defeated at the battles of Kohima and Imphal, the Provisional Government's aim of establishing a base in mainland India was lost forever. The INA was forced to pull back, along with the retreating Japanese army, and fought in key battles against the British Indian Army in its Burma campaign, notable in Meiktilla, Mandalay, Pegu, Nyangyu and Mount Popa. However, with the fall of Rangoon, Bose's government ceased to be an effective political entity. A large proportion of the INA troops surrendered under Lt Col Loganathan . The remaining troops retreated with Bose towards Malaya or made for Thailand. Japan's surrender at the end of the war also led to the

eventual surrender of the Indian National Army, when the troops of the British Indian Army were repatriated to India and some tried for treason. On 6 July 1944, in a speech broadcast by the Azad Hind Radio from Singapore, Bose addressed Mahatma Gandhi as the "Father of the Nation" and asked for his blessings and good wishes for the war he was fighting. This was the first time that Gandhi was referred to by this appellation. His most famous quote/slogan was Give me blood and I will give you freedom. Another famous quote was Dilli Chalo ("On to Delhi)!" This was the call he used to give the INA armies to motivate them. Jai Hind, or, "Glory to India!" was another slogan used by him and later adopted by the Government of India and the Indian Armed Forces. Another slogan coined by him was "Ittefaq, Etemad, Qurbani" (Urdu for "Unity, Agreement, Sacrifice"). INA also used the slogan Inquilab Zindabad, which was coined by Maulana Hasrat Mohani. Bose is alleged to have died in a plane crash at Taipei, Taiwan, on 18 August 1945 while en route to Tokyo and possibly then the Soviet Union. The Imperial Japanese Army Air Force Mitsubishi Ki-21 bomber he was travelling on had engine trouble and when it crashed Bose was badly burned, dying in a local hospital four hours later. His body was then cremated, and a Buddhist memorial service was held at Nishi Honganji Temple in Taihoku. His ashes were taken to Japan and interred at the Renkji Temple in Tokyo. This version of events is supported by the testimonies of a Captain Yoshida Taneyoshi, and a British spy known as "Agent 1189." However, his alleged disappearance on August 18, i.e. just 3 days after the Japanese surrendered to the British fructifies the possibility of a rumour. This may have been to ward off his British pursuers, or may be at their instance. The latter is more probable, as had it been otherwise we'd have seen his political resurgence in some form or the other. The absence of his body has led to many theories being put forward concerning his possible survival. One such claim is that Bose actually died later in Siberia, while in Soviet captivity. Several committees have been set up by the government of India to probe into this matter. In May 1956, a four-man Indian team known as the Shah Nawaz Committee visited Japan to probe the circumstances of Bose's alleged death. However, the Indian government did not then request assistance from the government of Taiwan in the matter, citing their lack of diplomatic relations with Taiwan. However, the Inquiry Commission under Justice Mukherjee, which investigated the Bose disappearance mystery in the period 19992005, did approach the Taiwanese government, and obtained information from the Taiwan government that no plane carrying Bose had ever crashed in Taipei, and there was, in fact, no plane crash in Taiwan on 18 August 1945 as alleged. The Mukherjee Commission also received a report originating from the U.S. Department of State supporting the claim of the Taiwan Government that no such air crash took place during that time frame. The Justice Mukherjee Commission of Inquiry submitted its report to the Indian government on 8 November 2005. The report was tabled in Parliament on 17 May 2006. The probe said in its report that Bose did not die in the plane crash, and that the ashes at the Renkoji Temple (said to be of Bose's) are not his. However, the Indian Government rejected the findings of the Commission, though no reasons were cited. Recently Netaji's grand nephew Sugata Bose in his book His Majesty's Opponent claimed that the founder of the Indian Independence League in Tokyo, Rama Murti, had hidden a portion of alleged cremated remains of Bose as "extra precaution" in his house and secondly, this portion has been brought to India in 2006 and the Prime Minister was informed about the development. But the Prime Minister's Office refused this claim in a statement issued in response to an RTI application, as "As per records, no such information exists." On the other hand in February 2012 Dr Purabi Roy, an expert on Russia and research scholar who also held a Chair in St Petersburg University, claimed that Bose was in USSR during Second World War. Roy claims to have found "a unique photograph of Subhas Chandra Bose taken during Second World War" that might have been taken in Sibera. Mystery over Netajis disappearance was first revealed by Satyendra Narain Sinha, who went to Japan,
Disappearance and alleged death

Taipei and China to follow the missing links. His article were published in a national daily in 1960s. But, Dr. Roy is the first who is claiming that Bose was in Russia. Reportedly Khrushchev had told an interpreter during his New Delhi visit that Bose can be produced within 45 days if Nehru wishes. But, that never happened. the Third Enquiry Commission on Netaji Disappearance, led by Justice Mukherjee, categorically announced Bose did not die at the Taihoku plane crash in 1945 as there was no plane crash during that period in an around the air strip, now in Taipei. Thus the Commission had quashed the so-called urn of Netaji at Renkoji Temple in Tokyo, Japan. In 1992, Bose was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, but it was later withdrawn in response to a Supreme Court directive following a Public Interest Litigation filed in the Court against the "posthumous" nature of the award. The Award Committee could not give conclusive evidence on Bose's death and thus the "posthumous" award was invalidated. No headway was made on this issue however. Bose's portrait hangs in the Indian Parliament, and a statue of him has been erected in front of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly.
Bose mystery in contemporary India
Mission Netaji is a Delhi-based Indian non-profit trust that conducts research on Subhas Chandra Bose's disappearance. Some documents the organization has dug out have information connected to Bose's disappearance. This led to more documents that remain classified. Several Indian ministries, including the Indian Prime Minister's Office, have refused to make public the documents under the Right to Information Act campaign launched by Mission Netaji, on the ground that their disclosure will affect India's relations with foreign countries.
Books on the mystery
Many books have been published in independent India, dealing with the subject of Bose death mystery. This includes books such as Netaji: Dead or Alive? by Samar Guha and Back from Dead: Inside the Subhas Bose Mystery by Anuj Dhar. Dhar's India's Biggest Cover-up contains many allegations and uses many "top secret" documents and photographs to argue that Bose was alive at least until 1985. The book accuses Pranab Mukherjee and the Indian Intelligence Bureau of foul play to prevent the truth from being revealed.
Ideology and philosophy
Bose advocated complete unconditional independence for India, whereas the All-India Congress Committee wanted it in phases, through Dominion status. Finally at the historic Lahore Congress convention, the Congress adopted Purna Swaraj (complete independence) as its motto. Gandhi was given rousing receptions wherever he went after Gandhi-Irwin pact. Subhas Chandra Bose, travelling with Gandhi in these travels, later wrote that the great enthusiasm he saw among the people enthused him tremendously and that he doubted if any other leader anywhere in the world received such a reception as Gandhi did during these travels across the country. He was imprisoned and expelled from India. Defying the ban, he came back to India and was imprisoned again. Bose was elected president of the Indian National Congress for two consecutive terms, but had to resign from the post following ideological conflicts with Mohandas K. Gandhi and after openly attacking the Congress' foreign and internal policies. Bose believed that Gandhi's tactics of non-violence would never be sufficient to secure India's independence, and advocated violent resistance. He established a separate political party, the All India Forward Bloc and continued to call for the full and immediate independence of India from British rule. He was imprisoned by the British authorities eleven times. His famous motto was: "Give me blood and I will give you freedom". His stance did not change with the outbreak of the Second World War, which he saw as an opportunity to take advantage of British weakness. At the outset of the war, he left India, travelling to the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, seeking an alliance with each of them to attack the British government in India. With Imperial Japanese assistance, he re-organised and later led the Azad Hind Fauj or Indian National Army (INA), formed with Indian prisoners-of-war and plantation workers from British Malaya, Singapore, and other parts of Southeast Asia, against British forces. With Japanese monetary, political, diplomatic and military assistance, he formed the Azad Hind Government in exile, and regrouped and led

the Indian National Army in failed military campaigns against the allies at Imphal and in Burma. His political views and the alliances he made with Nazi and other militarist regimes at war with Britain have been the cause of arguments among historians and politicians, with some accusing him of fascist sympathies, while others in India have been more sympathetic towards the realpolitik that guided his social and political choices. It is also believed among a section of people in India that if Subhas Ch. Bose could win the freedom of India himself the face of today's Indian sub-continent would have been different. Subhas Chandra Bose believed that the Bhagavad Gita was a great source of inspiration for the struggle against the British. Swami Vivekananda's teachings on universalism, his nationalist thoughts and his emphasis on social service and reform had all inspired Subhas Chandra Bose from his very young days. The fresh interpretation of the India's ancient scriptures had appealed immensely to him. Many scholars believe that Hindu spirituality formed the essential part of his political and social thought throughout his adult life, although there was no sense of bigotry or orthodoxy in it. Subhas who called himself a socialist, believed that socialism in India owed its origins to Swami Vivekananda. As historian Leonard Gordon explains "Inner religious explorations continued to be a part of his adult life. This set him apart from the slowly growing number of atheistic socialists and communists who dotted the Indian landscape.". Bose's correspondence (prior to 1939) reflects his deep disapproval of the racist practices of, and annulment of democratic institutions in Nazi Germany. However, he expressed admiration for the authoritarian methods (though not the racial ideologies) which he saw in Italy and Germany during the 1930s, and thought they could be used in building an independent India. Bose had clearly expressed his belief that democracy was the best option for India. The pro-Bose thinkers believe that his authoritarian control of the Azad Hind was based on political pragmatism and a postcolonial recovery doctrine rather than any anti-democratic belief. However, during the war (and possibly as early as the 1930s), Bose seems to have decided that no democratic system could be adequate to overcome India's poverty and social inequalities, and he wrote that a socialist state similar to that of Soviet Russia (which he had also seen and admired) would be needed for the process of national rebuilding. Accordingly, some suggest that Bose's alliance with the Axis during the war was based on more than just pragmatism, and that Bose was a militant nationalist, though not a Nazi nor a Fascist, for he supported empowerment of women, secularism and other liberal ideas; alternatively, others consider he might have been using populist methods of mobilisation common to many post-colonial leaders. Bose never liked the Nazis, but when he failed to contact the Russians for help in Afghanistan, he approached the Germans and Italians for help. His comment was that if he had to shake hands with the devil for India's independence he would do that.[citation needed] On 23 August 2007, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the Subhas Chandra Bose memorial hall in Kolkata. Abe said to Bose's family "The Japanese are deeply moved by Bose's strong will to have led the Indian independence movement from British rule. Netaji is a much respected name in Japan." However, in India, many believe that Netaji was not given the due respect that he deserved. Infosys Technologies founder-chairman N. R. Narayana Murthy, delivering the annual Netaji oration, said, "We have not paid him due respect. It is time this is corrected." Adding, "If only Netaji had participated in post-independence nation building." The West Bengal government decided in 2011 to observe Bose's birth anniversay (23 January) as Desh Prem Divas which means Day of Patriotism. Though the Forward Bloc requested the Indian government to declare Bose's birth anniversay as Desh Prem Divas at a national level, the government did not approve of it, citing that "Many eminent personalities took part in the freedom struggle of India and the immense contribution made by them cannot be judged relatively. If at all a day is to be declared as Desh Prem Divas, it does not appear to be appropriate to be so declared on the birth anniversary of any particular personality. Even the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi has not been declared as any
Political philosophy
Desh Prem Divas

special day relating to the freedom movement of India." Michael Edwardes, a British historian of the Raj, wrote of Bose that, "Only one outstanding personality of India took a different and violent path, and in a sense India owes more to him than to any other man even though he seemed to be a failure." After reviewing INA parade at Singapore on 5 July 1943 Bose's concluding words were: "I have said that today is the proudest day of my life. For an enslaved people, there can be no greater pride, no higher honour, than to be the first Soldier in the Army of Liberation. But this honour carries with it a corresponding responsibility and I am deeply conscious of it. I assure you that I shall be with you in darkness and in sunshine, in sorrow and in joy, in suffering and in victory. For the present, I can offer you nothing except hunger, thirst, privation, forced marches and death. But if you follow me in life and in death, as I am confident you will, I shall lead you to victory and freedom. It does not matter who among us will live to see India free. It is enough that India shall be free and that we shall give our all to make her free. May God now bless our Army and grant us victory in the coming fight."
Legacy
Bose's chair at Red Fort
The following words are inscribed on a brass shield in front of the chair which is symbolic to the sovereignty of the Republic of India, and also add to enthusiasm of the Armed Forces of India. The chair rests in a glass case and is a symbol of pride as well as national heritage.[citation needed] "Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in order to free India from the shackles of British imperialism organized the Azad Hind Government from outside the country on October 21, 1943. Netaji set up the Provisional Government of Independent India (Azad Hind) and transferred its head-quarter at Rangoon on January 7, 1944. On the 5th April, 1944, the "Azad Hind Bank" was inaugurated at Rangoon. It was on this occasion that Netaji used this chair for the first time. Later the chair was kept at the residence of Netaji at 51, University Avenue, Rangoon, where the office of the Azad Hind was also housed. Afterwards, at the time of leaving Burma, the British handed over the chair to the family of Mr. A.T. Ahuja, a well-known businessman of Rangoon. The chair was officially handed over to the Government of India in January 1979. It was brought to Calcutta on the 17th July, 1980. It has now been ceremonially installed at the Red Fort on July 7, 1981."
Artistic depictions
Films 1950: Bose is a minor character in the successful 1950 Hindi film Samadhi, which is set in colonial Singapore against the backdrop of the second INA rising. The film also features the famous regimental quick march song Kadam Kadam Badaye Ja of INA.[citation needed] 1966: Subash Chandra was a Bengali film portraying his life. 2002: Bose is portrayed by Keneth Desai in the film The Legend of Bhagat Singh directed by Rajkumar Santoshi. It is a historical biographical film about the Indian freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. 2005: Sachin Khedekar stars as Subhas Chandra Bose in Shyam Benegal's biopic Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero which deals with the last five years of Bose's leadership as well as some aspects of his personal life. 2005: Subash Chandra Bose, a poorly-received action film concerning an Indian warrior figure, played by

Daggubati Venkatesh, during the time of the INA. He worships Bose and adopts his name for the purpose of his image. Books 1989: In a satirical novel The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor, the character of Pandu is simultaneously based on Bose as well as the mythological character Pandu.[citation needed] 2005: Back from Dead: Inside the Subhas Bose Mystery by Anuj Dhar. 1994: Netaji: Dead or Alive by Samar Guha. 2005: Mrityu Se Vapsi: Netaji Ka Rahasya (Hindi translation of Back from Dead: Inside the Subhas Bose Mystery). 2008: CIA's Eye on South Asia by Anuj Dhar. 2012: India's Biggest Cover-up by Anuj Dhar.
Sucheta Kriplani
Sucheta Kriplani
25 June 1908 Ambala, Punjab, British India Died 1 December 1974 Political party INC Spouse(s) Acharya Kriplani Sucheta Kriplani (Bengali: , Hindi: ) (25 June 1908 1 December 1974), born Sucheta Mazumdar, was an Indian freedom fighter and politician in Uttar Pradesh, India. She became the first woman to be elected Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh
Sucheta Kriplani Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh In office 2 October 1963 13 March 1967 Preceded by Succeeded by Personal details Born
Chandra Bhanu Gupta Chandra Bhanu Gupta
Early life
She was born in Ambala, Haryana to a Bengali family. Her father, S.N. Majumdar though a government doctor was a nationalist. Educated at Indraprastha College and St.Stephen's College, Delhi, she became a Professor of Constitutional History at Banaras Hindu University. In 1936, she married socialist, Acharya Kriplani and became involved with the Indian National Congress.
Freedom Movement and Independence
Like her contemporaries Aruna Asaf Ali and Usha Mehta, she came to the forefront during the Quit India Movement. She later worked closely with Mahatma Gandhi during the Partition riots. She accompanied him to Noakhali in 1946. She was one of the few women who were elected to the Constituent Assembly

and was part of the subcommittee that drafted the Indian Constitution. She became a part of the subcommittee that was handed over the task of laying down the charter for the constitution of India. On 15 August 1947 she sang Vande Mataram in the Independence Session of the Constituent Assembly.
Post Independence
After independence she remained involved with politics in Uttar Pradesh. She was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1952 and 1957 from New Delhi constituency and served as a Minister of State for Small Scale Industries. In 1962, she was elected to the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha from Kanpur and served in the Cabinet in 1962. In 1963, she became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, the first woman to hold that position in any Indian state. The highlight of her tenure was the firm handling of a state employees strike. The first-ever strike by the state employees which continued for 62 days took place during her regime. She relented only when the employees' leaders agreed for compromise. Although the wife of a socialist, Kriplani cemented her reputation as a firm administrator by refusing their demand for pay hike. In 1967, she was elected to the 4th Lok Sabha from Gonda constituency in Uttar Pradesh. She retired from politics in 1971 and remained in seclusion till her death in 1974.
Sudhamoy Pramanick
Sudhamoy Pramanick
September 11, 1884. Shantipur Died October 2, 1974. Calcutta Residence New Alipore, Kolkata Ethnicity Bengali Home town Shantipur Spouse(s) Swarnabala Pramanick Children Diptendu Pramanick and other sons & daughters Parents Radharani & Gobindo Chandra Pramanik Sudhamoy Pramanick (September 1884 October 1974) ( Bengali: ) was a Bengali advocate from Shantipur. He was the lifetime secretary of the Tili Samaj, a societal benefit organization. In his time he was one of the fortunate Presidencians - a year senior to Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India. He was a social activist - member of the Indian National Congress and involved with the Satyagraha movement to campaign for Indian independence.
Born

Sudhamoy was the eldest of ten siblings born to the Pramanick / Pramanik family in 1884 in Shantipur. He did his early schooling in Shantipur and went on to the Presidency College, Calcutta to acquire his degree in science in the early 1900s. Later he obtained a degree in law from the University of Calcutta and practised in Raiganj and the Sealdah courts as an advocate. He was literarily inclined. Being well versed in Sanskrit, he translated and edited papers on Sanskrit literature. As a secretary of the Tili Samaj he was vociferous against social evils like the Pon protha (Dowry) in the Bangiya Tili Samaj Patrika. His Presidency days had instilled nationalism in his mind. He'd joined the Congress and was a senior leader during his tenure at Raigunj Court. In 1930, Raigunj celebrated Independence day (Purna Swaraj) on 26 January against the British Raj - he and Umeshchandra Bhowmik were the Congress leaders enacting the historic Lahore resolution of the CWC. In March 1930, as mass disobedience gathered momentum in Bengal, several Congress leaders (including Netaji - then Bengal Provincial Congress Committee President), were arrested. On April 15, on the occasion of the Bengali New Year, Sudhamoy presided over public meetings in Raigunj as a part of the Civil Disobedience Movement in blatant violation of the Salt Laws. Braving arrests by the British, volunteers from all over the district, including women, paraded the streets of Raigunj. Few years later he moved to Calcutta. With his eldest sons completing their education, he started devoting more time in Sealdah Civil Court - fighting to free many an activist - at times risking his career. He was also known for helping poor students. He was one of the lucky few who lived on to see fourth generation of his children (Bengali: ). Sudhir Kanta Adhikary (19152002) was a notable freedom fighter of India under British rule. He was a member of Anushilan Samiti (sasastra biplovi). He was jailed for several years (more than 10 years in boxer jail, rajshahi jail, Alipore central jail). He had to work undercover as organiser of freedom fighters in various corners of India including Kashi(Benaras), Undivided Dinajpur, etc. He was considered dangerous for the then British Rulers of India thus he was jailed repeatedly until India was freed in 1947, 15 August. He was so remarkable that he was let loose by the Indian army after ten days of freedom from BOXER JAIL. He was awarded tamrapatra by the president of India by a ceremonial function held at DELHI. He got freedom fighter pension both from government of west Bengal & government of India. After freedom of India he lived a life of a simple school teacher of Harirampur. He was never asked by any party to contest in any election. He was not at all interested in local politics and to expose him as an M.L.A/.M.P. He did not find any difference between Hindu and Muslim. He prevented many religious riots with the help of D.M. Every man & woman of his locality respected him like their father. He died after suffering from kidney cancer at P.G. Medical college at the age of 87. He was cremated at Harirampur as per the demand of local people. He left his wife, Smt Madhuri Adhikary (who was his co-worker and worked as weapon supplier). She is still active in enlisting the help of poor people of her locality with her own tension. These people were the actual freedom fighters who struggled to free India,the benefit of which is enjoyed by others. Thus they should be recorded in our history and remembered.
Early life, education and career
Sudhir Kanta Adhikary
References
Reference- Smt Madhuri Adhikary receives the freedom fighters pensions (which are the proof that Late Sudhir Kanta Adhikary was a Freedom Fighter of India and was recognised by the government of India) from both Government of India and Government of West Bengal from which are issued from the office of district magistrate of Dakshin Dinajpur. They may be contacted via their official website for verification of the information.
Surendranath Banerjee
Surendranath Banerjee
10 November 1848 Kolkata, Bengal, British India Died 6 August 1925 (aged 76) Barrackpore, Bengal, British India Nationality Indian Ethnicity Bengali Hindu Occupation Professor Religion Hinduism Sir Surendranath Banerjee pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Surendra nath benarji.ogg (Bengali: ) (10 November 1848 6 August 1925) was one of the earliest Indian political leaders during the British Raj. He founded the Indian National Association, one of the earliest Indian political organizations, and later became a senior leader of the Indian National Congress. He was also known by the sobriquet, Rashtraguru (the teacher of the nation).
Surendranath Banerjee Born
Early life
Surendranath Banerjee was born in Kolkata (Calcutta), in the province of Bengal to a Bengali Brahmin family. He was deeply influenced in liberal, progressive thinking by his father Durga Charan Banerjee, a doctor. Banerjee was educated at the Parental Academic Institution and at the Hindu College. After graduating from the University of Calcutta, he traveled to England in 1868, along with Romesh Chunder Dutt and Behari Lal Gupta to compete in the Indian Civil Service examinations. He cleared the competitive examination in 1869, but was barred owing to a dispute over his exact age. After clearing the matter in the courts, Banerjee cleared the exam again in 1871 and was posted as assistant magistrate in Sylhet. However, Banerjee was dismissed soon from his job owing to racial discrimination. Banerjee went to England to protest this decision, but was unsuccessful. During his stay in England (18741875), he studied the works of Edmund Burke and other liberal philosophers. These works guided him in his protests against the British.
Political career
Upon his return to India in June, 1875, Banerjee became an English professor at the Metropolitan Institution, the Free Church Institution and at the Ripon College, founded by him in 1882. He began delivering public speeches on nationalist and liberal political subjects, as well as Indian history. He founded the Indian National Association with Anandamohan Bose, one of the earliest Indian political organization of its kind, on 26 July 1876. He used the organization to tackle the issue of age-limit for Indian students appearing for ICS examinations. He condemned the racial discrimination perpetrated by British officials in India through speeches all over the country, which made him very popular. In 1879, he founded the newspaper, The Bengalee. In 1883, when Banerjee was arrested for publishing remarks in his paper, in contempt of court, protests and hartals erupted across Bengal, and in Indian cities such as Agra, Faizabad, Amritsar, Lahore and Pune. The INA expanded considerably, and hundreds of delegates from across India came to attend its annual conference in Calcutta. After the founding of the

Indian National Congress in 1885 in Bombay, Banerjee merged his organization with it owing to their common objectives and memberships. He was elected the Congress President in 1895 at Poona and in 1902 at Ahmedabad. Surendranath was one of the most important public leaders who protested the partition of the Bengal province in 1905. Banerjee was in the forefront of the movement and organized protests, petitions and extensive public support across Bengal and India, which finally compelled the British to reverse the bifurcation in 1912. Banerjee became the patron of rising Indian leaders like Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Sarojini Naidu. Banerjee was also one of the senior-most leaders of the moderate Congress - those who favoured accommodation and dialogue with the British - after the "extremists" - those who advocated revolution and political independence - led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak left the party in 1906. Banerjee was an important figure in the Swadeshi movement - advocating goods manufactured in India against foreign products - and his popularity at its apex made him, in words of admirers, the uncrowned king of Bengal.
Later career
The declining popularity of moderate Indian politicians affected Banerjee's role in Indian politics. Banerjee supported the Morley-Minto reforms 1909 which were resented and ridiculed as insufficient and meaningless by the vast majority of the Indian public and nationalist politicians. Banerjee was a critic of the proposed method of civil disobedience advocated by Mahatma Gandhi, the rising popular leader of Indian nationalists and the Congress Party. Accepting the portfolio of minister in the Bengal government earned him the ire of nationalists and much of the public, and he lost the election to the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1923 to Bidhan Chandra Roy, the candidate of the Swarajya Party ending his political career for all practical purposes. He was knighted for his political support of the British Empire. Banerjee made the Calcutta Municipal Corporation a more democratic body while serving as a minister in the Bengal government. He is remembered and widely respected today as a pioneer leader of Indian politics - first treading the path for Indian political empowerment. He published an important work, A Nation in Making which was widely acclaimed. The British respected him and referred to him during his later years as Surrender Not Banerjee. But nationalist politics in India meant opposition, and increasingly there were others whose opposition was more vigorous and who came to center stage. Banerjee could accept neither the extremist view of political action nor the noncooperation of Gandhi, then emerging as a major factor in the nationalist movement. Banerjee saw the Montague-Chelmsford reforms of 1919 as substantially fulfilling Congress's demands, a position which further isolated him. He was elected to the reformed Legislative Council of Bengal in 1921, knighted in the same year, and held office as minister for local selfgovernment from 1921 to 1924. He was defeated at the polls in 1923. Surendranath died at Barrackpore on August 6, 1925.
Commemoration
His name is commemorated in the names of the following institutions: Barrackpore Rastraguru Surendranath College, Raiganj Surendranath Mahavidyalaya, Surendranath College, Surendranath College for Women, Surendranath Evening College, and the Surendranath Law College Surya Sen
Surya Sen
Surya Sen Born
22 March 1894 Chittagong, Bengal,
British
India
(now
Bangladesh) 12 January 1934 (aged 39) Chittagong, Bengal, British India Ethnicity Bengali Organization Indian National Congress Known for Chittagong armoury raid Political movement Indian Independence movement Surya Sen (Bengali: ; 18941934) was a Bengali freedom fighter (against British rule) who is noted for leading the 1930 Chittagong armoury raid In Chittagong of Bengal in British India (now in Bangladesh). Sen was a school teacher by profession and was popularly called as Master Da ("da" is a suffix in Bengali language denoting elder brother). He was influenced by the nationalist ideals in 1916, when he was a student of B.A. in Behrampore College. In 1918 he was selected as president of Indian National Congress, Chittagong branch. Died
Early life
Sen was born on 22 March 1894 at Noapara, under Raozan upazilla in Chittagong. His father Ramaniranjan Sen was a teacher. In 1916 when he was a B.A. student in Behrampore College he learned about Indian freedom movement from one of his teachers. He felt attracted towards revolutionary ideals and joined a revolutionary organization Anushilan Samity. After completing his studies he returned to Chittagong in 1918 and joined as a teacher at National school, Nandankanan . At that time, Indian National Congress was the most prominent political party there.[citation needed]
Chittagong armoury raid
Surya Sen led a group of revolutionaries on 18 April 1930 to raid the armoury of police and auxiliary forces from the Chittagong armoury. The plan was elaborate and included seizing of arms from the armoury as well as destruction of communication system of the city (including telephone, telegraph and railway), thereby isolating Chittagong from the rest of British India. However, although the group could loot the arms, they failed to get the ammunition. They hoisted the national flag on the premises of the armoury, and then escaped. A few days later, a large faction of the revolutionary group was cornered in the nearby Jalalabad hills by the British troops. In the ensuing fight, twelve revolutionaries died, many were arrested, while some managed to flee, including Surya Sen.
Arrest and death
Surya Sen and some other members of the group escaped the British police for several years. Sen was

eventually arrested on 16 February 1933. Following a trial, he was hanged on 12 January 1934 along with Tarakeshwar Dastidar. Before execution, Surya Sen was tortured brutally. All his teeth and joints were broken with a hammer. His unconscious body was then dragged to gallows and then he was hanged. Surya Sen sent the following last message to his comrades through a letter, "Death is knocking at my door. My mind is flying away towards infinity, this is the moment for myself to embrace death as the dearest of friends. In this happy, sacred and crucial moment, what am I leaving for you all? Only one thing, my dream, a golden dream, the dream of a Free India. Dear friends, march ahead; never retrace your step. Days of servitude are receding. Freedoms illuminating ray is visible over there. Arise and never give way to despair. Success is sure to come."[citation needed] Swami Gopal Das (Hindi: ) (18221936) was a social worker, educationist, environmentalist and freedom fighter from Churu in Rajasthan state in India.
Swami Gopal Das
Childhood
Swami Gopal Das was born in 1822 in the village of Bhainrusar, 22 kilometres (14 mi) north of Churu in Rajasthan. His parents were Binja Ram Kaswan and Nauji Devi. His father died while Das was a child and thereafter mother and son moved to Churu in order to find work.
Came to Churu
Mahant Mukund Das of 'Chhote temple' in Churu provided some support to her mother. Nauja Devi handed over child Gopal to Mahant Mukund Das, who was impressed by the intelligence of the child and sent him to a school run by Pandit Kanhaya Lal Dhandh. Sharp and intelligent, Gopal Das learned the lesson of humanity from a guru and obtained knowledge of Ayurvedic treatment. Looking to talents of Gopal, Mahant Mukund Das declared him his disciple. After death of Mahant Mukund Das, the 19-year Gopal was made the mahanta of Nimbarka sampradaya in his place and became Swami Gopal Das. The personality of Swami Gopal Das was very impressive. He was tall, handsome with well built physique and broad headed wearing khadi dhoti-kurta and turban.
Committed to the welfare of cows
He was all his life committed to the welfare of cow as he considered cow to be an essential part of Indian life and culture. Cows used to suffer greatly during the famine years when Gopal Das arranged fodder and water for cows. There was a 'pinjarapol' (goshala) in Churu, which was at the verge of closure due to insufficient funds. Gopal Das started a fair on 'gopashtami' at this 'pinjarapol' and gave new life to it. The fair is still organized every year.
An environmentalist
He took large chunks of wasteland from the rich Seths of Churu and developed these as pasturelands for the grazing of cows and did extensive plantations. These pasturelands and plantations not only saved the cows but also stopped the expansion of desert. The nearby villagers also got motivated from these works and developed pasturelands in their villages. Love for tree plantation was there in Swamis from childhood. This becomes clear from his letter written from Sardarshahar to Shri Gigdas to take care of Pipal tree planted by him. It was his efforts that covered the deserted sand dunes with trees. The big trees on both sides of the road from railway station to present Ram temple in Churu town are the result of his hard work and irrigation provided to these trees carrying water over his head.
Social Services
Swami Gopal Das was a committed social worker. In 1917-1918 Churu was infected by epidemic of plague and malaria. People died in large number. Rest of the people started running out leaving the weak and ill people behind. The town was deserted. The left out people started dying due to no care. There were no people left to even lift the dead persons. At this juncture Swami Gopal Das came to help the left out people by providing food, water and medicines and arranged to lift dead persons for cremation. It became difficult to move around on foot to look after the people so he took a horse and started taking round of the town. The famous poet from Churu Pandit Amolak Chand has written following poetry on

the services rendered by Swami Gopal Das during this epdemic in Rajasthani language as under:
" ,
, "
The epidemic was so severe that Post and Telegraph services collapsed. Swami Gopal Das arranged the delivery of letters and telegrams to the concerned people. His knowledge of Ayurveda proved a boon at this crisis. With his initiatives and efforts the Ayurveda Vidyapith centers started functioning in Churu.
Public awakening
The social services by Swami Gopal Das were multi dimensional. The Churu area prior to independence was suffering from illiteracy, poverty, famines, and lack of medical facilities. The people were exploited not only by British Raj but also by local Jagirdars. To talk about independence or read a new paper in those days was considered a disloyalty to the crown. Under such circumstances Swami Gopal Das started 'sarvahitkarini sabha' in 1907. The objectives of the sabha were: satya, ahinsa, asteya and brahmcharya. For the first three years he was chairman of the sabha and thereafter minister. The Jagirdars were not happy with the foundation of 'sarvahitkarini sabha' as a result he faced lot of opposition. There was no building of 'sarvahitkarini sabha'. So he vowed that he would not take food till the sabha has its own building. He collected money from various sources for the building of the sabha and survived on fruits only till multi-storied building was ready for the sabha. He took number of steps to improve the conditions of downtrodden people. To remove untouchability from society, he started 'Kabir pathshala with his disciple shri Dhanpat Ray Kalla in the KALERA BASS'.
Woman education
Swami Gopal Das believed that woman's education was a first step in the development of society and nation. To spread woman education, first of all, he started a 'sarvahitkaruni putri pathshala'. This institute provided free textbooks to women and also trained them in sewing weaving so that they can get earnings. This institute provided education to widows also to improve their condition. Later the branches of 'putri pathshalas' were started in neighbouring villages and towns. Taranagar putri pathshala was run by Churu sabha itself. These initiatives taken by Swami Gopal Das in Rajasthan at a time when even Mahatma Gandhi was not on seen are considered revolutionary. 'Putri pathshala' and 'Kabir pathshala' were considered antireligious activities at that time. On the establishment of putri pathshala, the backward and conservative public had done stone throwing on Swami Gopal Das, but he moved with firmness and was successful in his mission. Swami Gopal Das raised a voice for compulsory education in Bikaner princely state. The 'sarvahitakarini sabha' in his guidance run a number of libraries, 'putripathshala', 'Kabir pathshala', 'uddyog vardhini sabha', aturalaya and mahilashrama. In addition there were number of constructive activities like shilpshala, sevasadan, anathalaya, goshala etc. To eradicate social evils sarvahitakarini sabha also took steps like ban on child marriages and old age marriages, ban on use of toxic materials, spread of Hindi and Sanskrit languages etc. Swami Gopal Das through, sarvahitakarini sabha, also took steps to construct wells, kundas, johars, ponds and renovate old wells and ponds. The works done by sarvahitakarini sabha during famines and epidemics are a landmark in the history of Churu. The rich Seths of area were very influenced by the honesty and sincerity of Swami Gopal Das. They were ready to provide finances through him. The public park 'Indramani Park' in Churu was established through his efforts. Industrialist J.K.Birla on the initiatives of Swami Gopal Das established the 'Dharmastupa' in Churu. The statues of Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha on this stupa indicate the faith in all religions. Sarvahitakarini sabha did not differentiate between Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist and Jain.

Swami Gopal Das started freedom movement in Churu. He wrote series of articles in magazines on the eradication of social evils and demand for freedom. He invited the national leaders of freedom movement and arranged their lectures in Churu. He started placing photographs of Tilak and Gandhi in public conferences and preached use of swadeshi things. The movement of Swami Gopal Das frightened the princely ruler of Bikaner, who lodged a case of rajadroha against him in 1932 and arrested. He was kept in Bikaner Central Jail for three years. Due to his active involvement in the freedom movement he was elected member of Provincial Congress Committee.[citation needed] He died in the month of Magha on the banks of river Ganges in 1936.
Freedom fighter
References
Dr Mahendra Singh Arya, Dharmpal Singh Dudi, Kishan Singh Faujdar & Vijendra Singh Narwar: dhunik Jat Itihasa (The modern history of Jats), Agra 1998 Parvati Chaudhary: Jat Samaj monthly magazine, Agra, October 1997 Swami Ramanand Tirtha or Swami Ramanand Teerth,(Marathi: : ),(Telugu: : ) (19031972), was an Indian Freedom fighter, educator and social activist who led the Hyderabad liberation struggle, during the reign of the last Nizam. He was the main leader of the Hyderabad State Congress.
Swami Ramanand Tirtha
Life
Swami Ramanand Tirtha fought the Nizam after the Congress party established its wing in 1938. He participated in Satyagrahas and was imprisoned for 111 days by the last Nizam. He created a revolutionary movement which helped Hyderabad to integrate with the Indian union in 1948. The integration was successful after The Hyderabad Police Action. Swamiji had communist leanings initially, but later on became a Hindu sannyasi (monk). His original name was Vyenkatesh Bhagvanrao Khedgikar. He was given the name "Swami Ramanand Tirtha" after taking the Sanyas initiation of accepting voluntary bachelorship for rest of his life. He took Sanyas at the villages of: Hipparge Rava, Taluka- Lohara, and the District of Osmanabad. He started first the National School (Rashtriya Shala) at Hipparge Rava. He worked as a teacher in Ausa in Latur district.
Memorial
Dr. P.V.Narasimha Rao, former Prime Minister of India started "Swami Ramananda Teerth Memorial" in Hyderabad. Swamiji's mortal remains are resting here in the premises at Brahmanvada, Begumpet, Hyderabad. Several other eminent people from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharastra were his followers. Several of them headed mostly congressional governments in their respective states. Some have served in the Central Cabinet, too.
University
The Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University, Nanded which servers the southern part of Marathwada Region of Maharashtra State, specifically to the districts of Nanded, Latur, Parbhani and Hingoli has been named after him. The University, set up in 1994, has 172 colleges affiliated to it.
External links
Swamy Ramananda Tirtha Rural Institute http://www.srtist.ac.in/
Publications by Swami Ramanand Teertha
Hyderabad Swatantrasangramachya Aathavani by Swami Ramanand Teerth Swami Shraddhanand (18561926) was an Indian educationist and an Arya Samaj missionary who propagated the teachings of Swami Dayanand. This included the establishment of educational
Swami Shraddhanand

institutions, like the Gurukul Kangri University, and played a key role on the Sangathan (consolidation) and the Shuddhi (re-conversion) a Hindu reform movement in 1920s. His death at the hands of a Muslim fanatic caused religious strife in India.
, -
-- , , (The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi) He was born on 22 February 1856 in the village of Talwan in the Jalandhar District of the Punjab Province of India. He was the youngest child in the family of Lala Nanak Chand, who was a Police Inspector in the East India Company administered United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh). His given name was Brihaspati, but later he was called Munshi Ram by his father, a name that stayed with him till he took Sanyas in 1917, variously as Lala Munshi Ram and Mahatma Munshi Ram. His school education began at Varanasi and ended at Lahore. His early education was interrupted because of his father's frequent transfer to Mirzapur, Banda, Mathura and Bareilly. This led to him befriending rich friends involved in activities frowned upon by religion. He adopted atheism after a few incidents, such as when he was prevented from entering the temple while a noble woman was praying. He also was witness to a "compromising" situation involving a church's father with a nun, the attempted rape of a young devotee by pontiffs of the Krishna cult, and the suspicious death of a little girl at the home of a Muslim lawyer. All of these events cemented his atheism. He eventually passed mukhtari exams and began studying to become a lawyer.
Meeting Swami Dayanand
He first met Swami Dayanand Saraswati when Swami Dayanand visited Bareilly to give lectures. His father was handling arrangements and security at the events, due to the attendance of some prominent personalities and British officers. Munshiram's father asked Munshiram to attend the lectures. Munshiram, who originally went with the intent of spoiling the arrangements, instead claimed to be strongly influenced by Dayanand's courage, skill, and strong personality. After completing the studies Munshiram started his practice as lawyer.
Career Schools
In 1892 Arya Samaj was split into two factions after a controversy over whether to make Vedic education

the core curriculum at the DAV College Lahore. He left the organization and formed Punjab Arya Samaj. In 1897, after the assassination of Lala Lekh Ram, he became his successor, and headed the 'Punjab Arya Pratinidhi Sabha', and started its monthly journal, Arya Musafir. In 1902 he established a Gurukul in Kangri near Haridwar. This school is now a recognized University known as Gurukul Kangri University. Gandhi In 1915, upon his return from South Africa, M. K. Gandhi stayed at the university campus and met Swami Shraddhanand. In 1916 Shraddhanand also established gurukul Indraprashtha in Aravali near Faridabad, Haryana.
Activism
In 1917, Swami Shraddhanand, till now known as Mahatma Munshiram, took sanyas and left Gurukul to become an active member of the Hindu reform movements and the Indian Independence movement. He began working with the Congress, which he invited to hold its session at Amritsar in 1919. This was because of the Jalianwala tragedy, and no one in the Congress Committee agreed to have a session at Amritsar. Shraddhanand presided over the session. He also joined the nationwide protest against the Rowlatt Act, and that same year he defiantly protested in front of a posse of Gurkha soldiers at the Clock Tower in Chandni Chowk. After his defiance he was allowed to proceed. In the early 1920s he emerged as an important force in the Hindu Sangathan (consolidation) movement, which was a by product of the now revitalized Hindu Maha Sabha. Swami Shradhanand was the only Hindu Sanyasi who addressed a huge gathering from the minarates of the main Jama Masjid New Delhi, for national solidarity and vedic dharma starting his speech with the recitation of ved mantras. He wrote on religious issues in both Hindi and Urdu. He published newspapers in the two languages as well. He promoted Hindi in the Devanagri script, helped the poor and promoted the education of women. By 1923, he left the social arena and plunged whole-heartedly into his earlier work of the shuddhi movement (re-conversion to Hinduism), which he turned into an important force within Hinduism. In late 1923, he became the president of Bhartiya Hindu Shuddhi Sabha, created with an aim to reconvert Muslims, specifically 'Malkana Rajputs' in western United Province. This antagonized the Muslims and brought him into direct confrontation with Muslim clerics and leaders of the time.
Assassination
On 23 December 1926 he was assassinated by a Muslim fanatic named Abdul Rashid, who entered his home at Naya Bazar, Delhi, by posing as a visitor. Upon his death, Gandhiji moved a condolence motion at the Guwahati session of the Congress on December 25, 1926. Today, the 'Swami Shraddhanand Kaksha' at the Archeological Museum at the Gurukul Kangri University in Haridwar houses a photographic journey of his life.
Personal life
Shraddhanad and his wife Shiwa Devi had two sons and two daughters. His wife died when Shraddhanad was only 35 years old.
Bibliography
The Arya Samaj and Its Detractors: A Vindication, Rama Deva. Published by s.n, 1910. Hindu Sangathan: Saviour of the Dying Race, Published by s.n., 1924. Inside Congress, by Swami Shraddhanand, Compiled by Purushottama Rmacandra Lele. Published by Phoenix Publications, 1946. Kalyan Marg Ke Pathik (Autobiography:Hindi), New Delhi. n.d. Autobiography (English Translation), Edited by M. R. Jambunathan. Published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1961

Syed Hasan Imam, born in year 1871, was an Indian politician who served as the President of the Indian National Congress. He was the fourth Muslim to become the President of Indian National Congress. One of his ancestors was the private tutor to Aurangzeb. Hasan Imam's father was a professor of history at Patna College. Hasan Imam's son by his first wife was Syed Medhi Imam, educated at Harrow and Oxford University, a barrister of the Supreme Court of India and scholar of Latin and Greek. Hasan Imam also married a British woman and Ballu Imam the human rights campaigner, and wildlife expert is their grandson. Regarded as one of India's finest barristers, some barristers such as Chittaranjan Das(C.R. Das) and H.D.Bose considered Hasan as the best barrister in British India. He is related to many other barristers besides those within his own immediate family including Sir Sultan Ahmed and Syed Abdal Aziz. Hasan Imam's Cambridge University educated nephew Syed Jafar Imam was also his son-in-law and later become a Supreme Court judge. Hasan Imam, son of lmdad Imam, and younger brother of Sir Ali Imam, was born at Neora, District Patna, on August 31, 1871. A Shia Muslim by faith, he belonged to a distinguished, educated landed family. After a course of schooling, interrupted frequently by ill-health, he left for England in July 1889 and joined the Middle Temple. While there he campaigned actively for Dadabhai Naoroji during the General Election of England in 1891. He was called to the Bar in 1892; he returned home the same year and started practice in the Calcutta High Court. Hasan Imam was a Judge of the Calcutta High Court. On the establishment of the Patna High Court in March 1916, Imam resigned the Judgeship of the Calcutta High Court and started practice at Patna. In 1921 he was nominated a Member of the Bihar and Orissa Legislative Council. From 1908 onwards he took part in political affairs. In October 1909 he was elected President of the Bihar Congress Committee and in the next month he presided over the fourth session of the Bihar Students' Conference. He resumed political activity on a larger scale after resigning the Judgeship in 1916. Hasan Imam was one of the prominent Indian leaders who called upon Montagu, the Secretary of State for India, in November 1917 and was listed by him among "the real giants of the Indian Political World". He presided over the special session of the Indian National Congress held at Bombay, 1918, to consider the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms Scheme. It was an important, but difficult, session to handle because opinion was sharply divided on the merits of the scheme. Hasan Imam played a moderating role. A staunch constitutionalist he was opposed to the ideology of the Non-Cooperation Movement. Hasan Imam took a leading part in the Khilafat Movement. He joined the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930 and was elected Secretary of the Swadeshi League formed in Patna. He actively campaigned for the boycott of foreign goods and use of Khaddar. Earlier in 1927, he "materially conduced to the success" of the boycott of the Simon Commission in Bihar. Hasan Imam was a strong advocate of social reforms, particularly the amelioration of the position of women and the depressed classes. As a member of the Tikari Board of Trustees, he promoted schemes for girls' education. He exposed the economic exploitation of the country, both under the Company and the Imperial rule. He was President of the Board of Trustees of the Beharee, the leading English daily of Bihar; he was also one of the founders of the succeeding Searchlight.
Syed Hasan Imam
Death
He died on April 19, 1933 and lies buried at Japala, District Shahabad. "The traditions that we of the present generation have inherited from those that founded and established this great national organisation are of perseverance in the face of even tremendous opposition, and today it stands acknowledged as the champion of the rights of the Indian people. Those traditions are dear to us and we cherish them. We know no extremists and we know no moderates, names that have been devised by "our enemies" to divide us. We know only one cause and we have only one purpose in view. Our demand is the demand of a United India, and so long as our rights are denied to us we shall continue the struggle! Unchained in soul-though manacled in limb Unwarped by prejudice- unawed by wrong, Friends to the weak and fearless of the strong". Syed Hasan Imam - From the Presidential Address,
Quotes

I.N.C., - Session, 1918, Bombay (Special Session) Dr. Syed Mahmud was an Indian politician and senior leader in the Indian National Congress during the Indian independence movement and in post-independence India.
Syed Mahmud
Early life
Mahmud was born in the village of Saidpur, near Ghazipur in modern Uttar Pradesh, India. He was educated at the Aligarh Muslim University. During his time at the University, Mahmud became involved in student political activities and attended the 1905 session of the Indian National Congress, the largest Indian nationalist organisation in what was then British-ruled India. Along with fellow student and later political leader, Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew, Mahmud was amongst the Muslim students who opposed the pro-British loyalties of the All India Muslim League and were drawn more to the nationalist Congress. After being expelled from Aligarh for his political activities, Mahmud travelled to England to study at Lincoln's Inn to become a barrister. In 1909, he earned a Ph.D. from Germany and returned to practise law in India. After practising law for a few years, he was soon drawn into the strengthening movement for India's independence.
Political career
Syed Mahmud was one of the young Muslim leaders who played a role in crafting the 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the Muslim League. He participated in the Home Rule movement in 1916 and in the Non-cooperation movement and the Khilafat movement under the influence and leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. In 1923 he was elected to the post of deputy general secretary of the All India Congress Committee. In 1930, he was imprisoned in Allahabad along with Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru during the Civil disobedience movement. After the sweeping Congress victory in the 1937 central and provincial elections, Syed Mahmud was considered one of the leading prospective candidates to serve as Chief Minister of Bihar but instead eminent nationalists Anugrah Narayan Sinha and Shri Krishna Sinha were called from Central Legislative Assembly(Council of Estates) and groomed for Chiefministership.The succession of fellow Bihari Congressman Srikrishna Sinha to the post over Mahmud caused some controversy, but Mahmud joined Sinha's government as a cabinet minister and was accorded third place in the cabinet.
Quit India controversy
By 1942, the Congress ministries across India had resigned over opposition to Indian involvement in the Second World War. Syed Mahmud was one of the members of the Congress Working Committee that endorsed the 1942 Quit India movement, calling for an immediate end to British rule. Between 1942 and 1946, the entire Congress Working Committee was imprisoned in Ahmednagar. During imprisonment, Mahmud's health deteriorated due to an allergy to the inoculation against cholera that had been administered by the prison medical authorities. After a fortnight of illness, Mahmud's health had begun to recover when he was released by the government in 1944. After his release, the British authorities announced that Mahmud had written a letter to the Viceroy of India apologizing for his participation in the movement. Mahmud initially expressed surprise at his release, but after anger and a sense of betrayal spread amongst other freedom fighters over, Mahmud admitted to writing the letter. After meeting with Gandhi, he apologized for doing so and letting down his colleagues and the movement. Mahmud's standing with Indian nationalists improved over the succeeding years. He was one of the secular Muslim leaders who opposed the Muslim League's demand for the creation of a separate Muslim state of Pakistan, and worked with other Indian leaders against the resulting communal violence between Muslims and Hindus in Bihar and other parts of India.
Post-independence
After India's independence, Syed Mahmud was elected to the first Lok Sabha (lower house of the Indian Parliament) from the constituency of Champaran-East in Bihar and second Lok Sabha from the constituency of Gopalganj in Bihar. He served as the deputy Minister of External Affairs between 1954 and 1957 and represented India at the Bandung Conference.

Thakur Deshraj (19031970) was a social worker, journalist, nationalist, freedom fighter and author of many books. He was from Rajasthan state in India. He was revenue minister in the princely state of Bharatpur.
Thakur Deshraj
In Sikar district, Rajasthan, there were 500 villages of the Jats in one grouping, but in contrast to Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab their condition was very backward during British rule. The condition was poor and destitute. The reason for this was the existence of the Rajput feudal Thakurs (Bikaner and Shekhawati). In this vast spread out region, there was not a single primary school. The farmer communities, including Jats, could not put Singh to their names. They were not allowed to wear gold ornaments. On his wedding day the their bridegroom was not allowed to ride a horse. Fifty-one kinds of taxes called lagh were imposed on the farmers. There was no Law or Court. The only law was that of the Thakur. The Jats and other communities had totally suppressed by the continual atrocities committed by the feudal arrogant Rajput . Thakur Deshraj wrote the Jat history in 1934 at the same time he also published local newspapers to promote the farmers to fight for their rights and awakened them to realize the self-respect. He started a newspaper named Rajasthan Sandesh in 1931 for this purpose. With his efforts the All India Jat Mahsabha could be associated with the farmer movement in Shekhawati.
Thakur Deshraj in Shekhawati farmers movement Background
Pushkar adhiveshan (conference) 1925
Thakur Deshraj came to Pushkar in 1925 in the adhiveshan of All India Jat Mahasabha, which was presided over by Maharaja Kishan Singh of Bharatpur. Sir Chhotu Ram, Madan Mohan Malviya, Chhajju Ram etc. farmer leaders had also attended. This function was organized with the initiative of Master Bhajan Lal Bijarnia of Ajmer-Merwara. The farmers from all parts of Shekhawati had come namely, Chaudhary Govind Ram, Kunwar Panne Singh Deorod, Ram Singh Bakhtawarpura, Chetram Bhadarwasi, Bhuda Ram Sangasi, Moti Ram Kotri, Har Lal Singh etc. The Shekhawati farmers took two oaths in Pushkar namely, They would work for the development of the society through elimination of social evils and spreading of education. Do or Die in the matters of exploitation of farmers by the Jagirdars.
Visit to Mandawa
Thakur Deshraj came to Mandawa in 1929 to take part in Arya Samaj function and realized the social problems of Jats in Shekhawati region. He published a series of articles in Jatveer on the acts of oppression on farmers, which awakened them. Later Jatveer paper was also published from Jhunjhunu. The paper Ganesh published by him from Agra also played an important role in farmers movement. Thakur Deshraj along with Pundit Tarkeshwar Sharma circulated hand written newspaper called Gram Samachar started in 1929. Later he also published newspaper Kisan. All these papers created a revolutionary change in the farmers.
Formation of Rajasthan Jat Mahasabha
In the series of Pushkar function next adhiveshan of All India Jat Mahasabha was organized at Delhi in 1931 under the chairmanship of Rana Udaybhanu Singh of Dholpur state. Large number of farmers from Shekhawati took part in it. At this adhiveshan Thakur Deshraj constituted Rajasthan Jat Mahasabha.
Establishment of Shekhawati Kisan Jat Panchayat
With the efforts of Thakur Deshraj a sabha of Rajasthan Jat Mahasabha took place at Badhala village in Palsana. It was attended by famous revolutionist Vijay Singh Pathik, Baba Nrisingh Das, Chaudhary Laduram (Gordhanpura). It was resolved in this meeting that

Jat Panchayats be established to prevent the excesses of Jagirdars, The sons of farmers be given education and fight with Jagirdars with the organizational support. Efforts are made for the economical, social and cultural development of farmers. The farmers are given the khatoni parcha after the settlements of their lands. With these objectives Shekhawati Kisan Jat Panchayat was established in 1931 in Jhunjhunu.
Jhunjhunu adhiveshan (conference) 1932
There was a grand gathering of farmers under the banner of Jat Mahasabha in Jhunjhunu on 1113 February 1932. 60000 Jat farmers attended it. Thakur Deshraj camped at Jhunjhunu for 15 days to make it a success. The farmers from all parts of India attended it. It was presided by Rao Sahib Chaudhary Rishal Singh Rayees, who was escorted from station to the place of meeting on elephant accompanied by a carvan of camels. This program was of Jats but all the communities cooperated and welcomed. Kunwar Panne Singh Deorod welcomed this rally whereas Vidyadhar Singh Sangasi did the welcome of Jaipur Prantiya Jat Kshatriya Sabha rallies. Though the Jagirdars did all attempts to make it a failure, but it proved a success. On the appeal of fund collection the participant farmers donated their gold ornaments, which they were wearing. This was the first opportunity of awakening the Shekhawati farmers and proved a grand success. Sardar Harlal Singh and Chaudhary Ghasi Ram had traveled a lot for its publicity and spread its message. Some of the competent people were awarded Kshatriya titles. For example Chaudhary Har Lal Singh was awarded as Sardar, Ratan Singh of Bharatpur as Kunwar and Chaudhary Ram Singh as Thakur. Thus the Rajput monopoly over these titles vanished. As the tenth guru of Sikhs Guru Gobind Singh made Sikhs as Singh, Thakur Deshraj made the farmers of Shekhawati as Singh. Thakur Deshraj floated three slogans in this function namely, Keep your aims high Leave the social evils Change your dress and put Singh after your name. The Jhunjhunu adhiveshan brought wonderful changes in the life and culture of the farmers of Shekhawati. Their morals were boosted up and other classes accepted the Jats as noble Aryans and Kshatriyas. The success of Jhunjhunu adhiveshan not only changed the life of Shekhawati farmers but those of Jaipur and Bikaner princely states also. After this there were programmes started to improve the social life of the Jat community.
The Jat Prajapati Maha-Yagya 1934
After successful Jhunjhunu adhiveshan in 1932, a deputation of Jats from Sikar district, under the leadership of Prithvi Singh Gothra met Thakur Deshraj and requested him to do a similar adhiveshan in Sikar also. After long discussions Thakur Deshraj proposed to have a yagya at Sikar. A meeting for discussing this issue was called in Palthana village in October 1933. This was attended by all activists from Shekhawati and one member was invited from each family in Sikar district. About 5000 people gathered in the meeting. The Sikar thikana wanted to make this meeting a failure. For this, the thikanedar sent hundreds of handcuffs loaded on camels along with the police force to terrorize the people taking part in the meeting. Thakur Deshraj addressed the people that "these handcuffs would get you independence. If you are afraid of these you would never get freed. We have gathered here for a religious purpose and we will complete". These words of Thakur Deshraj played a lightning effect amongst the people and they all were energized for further struggle with the Jagirdars. People listened the leaders very calmly and meeting was a great success. Police could do nothing. The leaders who attended the meeting were Sardar Harlal Singh, Chaudhary Ram Singh Kunwarpura, Chaudhary Ghasi Ram, Kunwar Net Ram Singh, Panne Singh Deorod's elder brother Bhoor Singh etc. There was a speech by Master Ratan Singh Pilani. A resolution was passed in this meeting to conduct a seven day "Jat Prajapat Mahayagya" (Prayer ceremony for the Lord of Universe) in Sikar on next basant in 1934, to spread the principles of Arya Samaj and create

awakening in Shekhawati. It was decided for this purpose to collect ghee and money from each household. A yagya committee was formed consisting of Chaudhary Hari Singh Burdak of Palthana village as its president, Master Chandrabhan Singh as minister. Deva Singh Bochalya, Thakur Hukum Sing and Bhola Singh were put in charge of publicity. The office of managing committee was earlier in Palthana. In December 1933 this office was transferred to Sikar.[citation needed] The Jat Prajapati Maha-Yagya took place at Sikar from 2029 January 1934. Kunwar Hukam Singh Rahees Angai (Mathura) was made Yagyapati or Chairman of the Yagya. Chaudhary Kaluram of village Kudan was the Yagyaman. Acharya Shri Jagdev Sidhanthi received an invitation for this Yagya at his Gurukul at Kirttal, In that invitation was he requested to attend the Yagya and bring twenty Bhramcharis and disciples with him. Volunteers went to all the households in all the villages in the region and collected material that would be needed. They collected Ghee, Flour, Gur, and invited all the householders to participate. Hundreds of cans of Ghee and hundreds of sacks of flour were collected.[citation needed] During the Yagya 3000 men and women adopted the Yogyopavit, which was a symbol of "Kisan sangathan"(farmers' organization). Sheetal Kumari daughter of Kunwar Netram Singh adopted yagyopavit. Chaudhary Chimana Ram of Sangasi brought his wife wearing salwar-kurta. The unity of Jat farmers in this Yagya had terrified the Jagirdars of Sikar. The role played by Sardar Har Lal Singh and Thakur Deshraj was unparallel which made this yagya a grand success.[citation needed] In December 1934, All India Jat Students Federation Conference was organized at Pilani; the coordinator of it was Master Ratan Singh. Sir Chhotu Ram, Kunwar Netram Singh, Chaudhary Ram Singh, Thakur Jhumman Singh, Thakur Deshraj and Sardar Har Lal Singh, along with large number of farmers from various states, attended it. This conference gave a great strength to the Jat youth.[citation needed]
Expulsion from Jaipur State
He was expelled from Jaipur State by the Jaipur Sarkar on 10 April 1935 due to which he could not guide the farmers of Shekhawati any more. After this in 1938 he joined Bharatpur Rajya Praja Mandal, Zamindar Kisan Sabha, Braj-jaya Pratinidhi Sabha. He joined Bharatpur state cabinet also as revenue minister. After Independence he left politics and concentrated on Jat History. Deshraj is author of the book on the History of the Jats in Hindi, Jat-Itihasa (Hindi: ) published in 1934. He also published local newspapers to promote the farmers to fight for their rights and awakened them to realize the self-respect. He started a newspaper named Rajasthan Sandesh in 1931 for this purpose. He published a series of articles in Jatveer on the acts of oppression on farmers, which awakened them. Later Jatveer paper was also published from Jhunjhunu. The paper Ganesh was published by him from Agra. Deshraj along with Tarkeshwar Sharma circulated hand written newspaper called Gram Samachar started in 1929. Later he also published newspaper Kisan. All these papers created a revolutionary change in the farmers. He published History of Jats of Marwar in 1954 and 'Sikh Itihas' in 1954. As a journalist he wrote about the oppressive measures of the Jagirdars in Shekhawati region in Rajasthan and the Nawabs of Loharu in Haryana. His voice through these news papers reached up to House of Commons of the United Kingdom. Questions were asked in the House of Commons about excesses by Jagirdars on farmers of Shekhawati. Trilochan Pokhrel was first Sikkimese freedom fighter of Indian National freedom movement who sacrifice his life for the cause of the nation. In Sikkim and North Bengal he is popularly called as Gandhi Pokhrel. Born at Tareythang Busty in Eastern Sikkim, Pokhrel was highly influenced by the movements of Mahatma Gandhi which were based on the fundamental principles of peace and non violence. He was actively involved in the movements of Mahatma Gandhi like Non-Cooperation Movement, Civil Disobedience Movement and Quit India Movement. Pokhrel is known for propagating the concept of Swadeshi of Mahatma Gandhi among the Sikkimese peasantry.
As historian
Trilochan Pokhrel

Turrebaz Khan is an Indian revolutionary who fought aginast the British in Hyderabad State during 1857 revolt.
Turrebaz Khan
Life
Turrebaz Khan was born in Begum Bazar in erstwhile Hyderabad State. He revolted against the British, despite opposition from the ruling Nizam. A street is named after him in Begum Bazar. Ubaidullah Sindhi (Sindhi: , Urdu: ) , (March 10, 1872 - August 22, 1944) was a noted nationalist leader a political activist of the Indian independence movement. Born in a Sikh family of Sialkot, Ubaidullah converted to Islam early in his life and later enrolled in the Darul Uloom Deoband, where he was at various times associated with other noted Islamic scholars of the time, including Maulana Rasheed Gangohi and Mahmud al Hasan. Maulana Sindhi returned to the DarulUloom Deoband in 1909, and gradually involved himself in the Pan-Islamic movement. During World War I, he was amongst the leaders of the Deoband School, who, led by Maulana Mahmud al Hasan, left India to seek support of the Central Powers for a Pan-Islmaic revolution in India in what came to be known as the Silk Letter Conspiracy. Ubaidullah reached Kabul during the war to rally the Afghan Amir Habibullah Khan, and after brief period, he offered his support to Raja Mahendra Pratap's plans for revolution in India with German support. He joined the Provisional Government of India formed in Kabul in December 1915, and remained in Afghanistan until the end of the war, and left for Russia. He subsequently spent two years in Turkey and, passing through many countries, eventually reached Hijaz (Saudi Arabia) where he spent about 14 years learning and pondering over the philosophy of Islam especially in the light of Shah Waliullah's works. In his early career he was a Pan-Islamic thinker. However, after his studies of Shah Waliullah's works, Ubaidullah Sindhi emerged as non-Pan-Islamic scholar. He was one of the most active and prominent members of the faction of Indian Freedom Movement led by Muslim clergy chiefly from the Islamic School of Deoband. Ubaidullah Sindhi died on August 22, 1944. Ubaidullah was born on March 17, 1872 (12 Muharrarm 1289 AH) to a Sikh family at Chilanwali, in the district of Sialkot (now in Pakistan). His father Ram Singh Zargar died 4 months Ubaidullah was born, and the child Ubaidullah was raised for the first years of his life under the care of his grandfather. Following the latter's death when Ubaidullah was two years of age, he was taken by his mother to the care of her father, his maternal grandfather's house. Ubaidullah, was after sometime, entrusted to the care of his uncle at Jampur when his grandfather died. It was at Jampur that young Ubaidullah received his initial secular education.
Ubaidullah Sindhi
Early life
Islam
When he was at school, a Hindu friend gave him a book "Tufatul hind" to read. It was written by a convert scholar Maulan Ubaidullah of Malerkotla. After reading this book and others like Taqwiyatul Eeman and Ahwaal ul Aakhira, Ubaidullah's interest in Islam grew, leading eventually to his conversion to Islam. In 1887, the year of his conversion, he left for Sindh where he was taken as a student by Hafiz Muhammad Siddque of Chawinda. He subsequently studied at Deen Pur under Maulana Ghulam Muhammad where he delved deeper into Islamic education and training in mystical order. In 1888 Ubaidullah was admitted to Darul Uloom Deoband, where he studied various Islamic disciplines at depth under the tutelage of noted Islamic scholars of the time, including Maulana Abu Siraj, Maulana Rasheed Gangohi and Maulana Mahmud al Hasan. He took lessons in Bukhari and Tirmidhi from Maulana Nazeer Husain Dehlvi and read Logic and Philosophy from Maulana Ahmad Hasan Cawnpuri. In 1891, Ubaidullah graduated from the Deoband school. He left for Sukkur, and started teaching in Amrote Shareef. He married at this time the daughter of Maulana Azeemullah Khan, a teacher at Islamiyah High School. In 1901, Ubaidullah established the Darul Irshaad in Goth Peer Jhanda in Sindh.

He worked on propagating his school for nearly seven years. In 1909, requested by Mahmud Al Hasan, Ubaidullah returned to Deoband. Here, he accomplished much for the student body, Jamiatul Ansaar. Ubaidullah was at this time very active in covert anti-British propaganda activities, which led to him alienating a large part of the Deoband leaders. Subsequently, Ubaidullah moved his work to Delhi at Hasan's request. At Delhi, he worked with Hakeem Ajmal Khan and Dr. Ansari. In 1912, he established a madrassah, Nazzaaratul Ma'arif which achieved much in the field of propagating Islam. With the onset of World War I, efforts emerged from the Darul Uloom Deoband to forward the cause of Pan-Islam in India with the help of the Central Powers. Led by Mahmud al Hasan, plans were chalked out for an insurrection beginning in the tribal belt of North-west India. Mahmud al Hasan, left India to seek the help of Galib Pasha, the Turkish governor of Hijaz, while at Hasan's directions Ubaidullah proceeded to Kabul to seek the Emir Habibullah's support. The initially plans were to raise an Islamic army (Hizb Allah) headquartered at Medina, with an Indian contingent at Kabul. Maulana Hasan was to be the General-in-chief of this army. Ubaidullah himself was preceded to Kabul by some of his students. While at Kabul, Ubaid Ullah came to the conclusion that focussing on the Indian Freedom Movement would best serve the pan-Islamic cause. Ubaidullah's proposed to the Afghan Emir that he declare war against Britain. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad is known to have been involved in the movement prior to his arrest in 1916. Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi and Mahmud al Hasan (principle of the Darul Uloom Deoband) had proceeded to Kabul in October 1915 with plans to intiate a Muslim insurrection in the tribal belt of India. For this purpose, Ubaid Allah was to propose that the Amir of Afghanistan declares war against Britain while Mahmud al Hasan sought German and Turkish help. Hasan proceeded to Hijaz. Ubaid Allah, in the meantime, was able to establish friendly relations with Amir. At Kabul, Ubaid Allah, along with some students who had preceded him to make way to Turkey to join the Caliph's "Jihad" against Britain, decided that the pan-Islamic cause was to be best served by focusing on the Indian Freedom Movement. In late 1915, Sindhi was met in Kabul by the Niedermayer-Hentig Expedition sent by the Indian Independence Committee in Berlin and the German war ministry. Nominally led by the exiled Indian prince Raja Mahendra Pratap, it had among its members the Islamic scholar Maulavi Barkatullah, the German officers Werner Otto von Hentig and Oskar Niedermayer, as well as a number of other notable individuals. The expedition tried to rally Emir Habibullah to the Central powers and through him begin a campaign into India, which it was hoped would initiate a rebellion in India. On December 1, 1915, the Provisional Government of India was founded at Habibullah's Bagh-e-Babur palace in the presence of the Indian, German and Turkish members of the expedition and friends. It was declared a revolutionary government-in-exile which was to take charge of independent India when British authority had been overthrown. Ahendra Pratap was proclaimed President, Barkatullah the Prime minister, Ubaidullah Sindhi the Minister for India, another Deobandi leader Maulavi Bashir its war Minister, and Champakaran Pillai the Foreign Minister. It obtained support from Galib Pasha and proclaimed Jihad against Britain. Recognition was sought from Tsarist Russia, Republican China and Japan. The Government would later attempt to obtain support from Soviet leadership. After the February Revolution in Russia in 1917, Pratap's government corresponded with the nascent Soviet government. In 1918, Mahendra Pratap met Trotsky in Petrograd before meeting the Kaiser in Berlin, urging both to mobilise against British India. However, these plans faltered, Habibullah remained steadfastly neutral while he awaited a concrete indication where the war headed, even as his advisory council and family members indicated their support against Britain. The Germans withdrew in 1917, but the Indian government stayed behind at Kabul. In 1919, the government was ultimately dissolved under British diplomatic pressure to Afghanistan. Ubaidullah stayed in Kabul for nearly seven years. He encouraged young King Amanullah Khan, who took power after Habibullah's assassination, in the Third Anglo-Afghan War. The conclusion of the war, ultimately, forced him to leave as Amanullah came under pressure from Britain.
Afghanistan
Later works
Ubaidullah proceeded to Russia, where he spent seven months at the invitation of the Soviet leadership,

and was afforded official treatment as a guest of the state. During this period, he studied the ideology of socialism. He was however, unable to meet Lenin because he (Lenin) was severely ill at the time. It is thought Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words that Sindhi was impressed by Communist ideals during his stay in Russia. In 1923, Ubaidullah left Russian for Turkey, where he initiated the third phase of the Waliullah Movement in 1924. He issued the Charter for the Independence of India from Istanbul. Ubaidullah left for Mecca in 1927 and remained there until 1929. During this period, he brought the message of the rights of Muslims and other important Deeni issues to the masses. During his stay in Russia He was not impressed by the Communist ideas but rather after soviet revolution he presented to the soviet government that "Communism is not a natural law system but rather is a reaction to oppression, the natural law is offered by Islam".Wikipedia:Quotations He convinced them the fact in very systematic and logical manner, but he was left unanswered when they asked him to show example state which is being run according to the laws of Islam.
Death
In 1936, the Indian National Congress requested his return to India and subsequently permitted him to return. He remained at Delhi, where he began a programe teaching Shah Waliullahs Hujjatullahil Baalighah to Akbarabadi, who would then write an exegesis in his own words. Ubaidullah left for Lahore to visit his daughter in 1944. At Lahore, he was taken seriously ill and died on 22 of August 1944 at Lahore. His body was then taken to his native village named Deen pur and he was buried in the graveyard adjacent to the grave of his Mentors. (Deen pur is one KM before the Khanpur and almost 8 KM from Lal Pir by pass, Near Rahim Yar Khan, District Bahawalpur, Punjab, Pakistan)
Umaji Naik Khomane

September 7, 1791 Bhiwadi, Purandar taluka, Pune district, Maharashtra, India Died February 3, 1832 (aged 40) Pune, India Cause of death hanged Nationality Indian Other names Veer Umaji Naik Known for Indian Independence Movement Parents Dadaji Naik Khomane Lakshmibai Naik Khomane Umji Nik Khomne (Marathi: ) (September 7, 1791 February 3, 1832) was an Indian freedom fighter, a revolutionary. He was The First Freedom Fighter against British Rule in India. Soon after the fall of Maratha Empire Umaji raised a tiny army against the British. His anti-British manifesto asked the country-men to fight against the foreign rulers. To capture him, the British Government announced a bounty of Rupees 5,000.It has been said that his sister was responsible for arrest of this great freedom fighter. She invited him on Dinner on holy occasion as per planned and british force came to arrest him. Though he fought so hard against the english force . Somehow , British managed to arrest him. After his capture, he was hanged in Pune. Vithal Mahadeo Tarkunde (3 July 1909, Saswad 22 March 2004, Delhi), also popularly known as "Justice V. M. Tarkunde", was a prominent Indian lawyer, civil rights activist, and humanist leader and has been referred to as the "Father of the Civil Liberties movement" in India. The Supreme Court of India also praised him as "undoubtedly the most distinguished judge of the post-Chagla 1957 period" in the Bombay High Court. Umaji Naik Khomane Born
V. M. Tarkunde
Vithal Mahadeo Tarkunde was born in Saswad, Pune District, Maharashtra on July 3, 1909. He was the 2nd of the five children of Mahadeo Rajaram Tarkunde, a popular lawyer and social reformer at

Saswad,then headquarters of Purandar taluka adjoining Pune. His father, a Brahmin by caste, had fought against the practice of untouchability. In 1920 he migrated from Saswad to Pune and joined the New English School, Pune. In the Matriculation examination of 1925 held by the Bombay University, he stood first in the erstwhile Bombay Presidency. He also secured the prestigious Jagannath Shankersheth Scholarship for Sanskrit. He then joined the Fergusson College for B.A which he completed in 1929, subsequently moving to London, where he attended the Lincolns Inn and qualified as a Barrister-at-Law in 1931. He also attended lectures in economics, political science and social anthropology at the London School of Economics(LSE) as an external student. He returned to India the next year in December and commenced his legal practice in Pune.
Legal career
Tarkunde started practice at Pune soon after he returned to India in 1933. He continued there till 1942 when he gave up his practice to become a full-time member of the Radical Democratic Party. He resumed his legal practice in the Bombay High Court in 1948 after Independence and was elevated to the bench as a Judge of the Bombay High Court in September 1957. He stepped down voluntarily as Judge of the Bombay High Court in 1969 and set up practice in the Supreme Court of India where he continued till his resignation in 1977 at the age of 68. He was chiefly concerned with Public Interest Litigations and constitutional cases, most of which he conducted with little or no fees.
Activism
In 1933, he joined the Congress Socialist Party(CSP) and the Indian National Congress but later left the CSP disillusioned with their vote against Subhas Chandra Bose in the January 1939 Tripura Congress. He then joined the League of Radical Congressmen led by his mentor M. N. Roy in April 1939. In 1940, Roy and Tarkunde, along with several others, left the Congress after dissenting on the question of participation in the Second World War. Roy advocated participation in the war against the Axis powers, while simultaneously striving for Indian independence, and founded the Radical Democratic Party to further this cause.In 1942, Tarkunde gave up his legal practice to become a full-time member of the Radical Democratic Party and was elected General Secretary of the RDP in 1944, thereby migrating to Delhi. By 1946 Roy formulated the philosophy of New Humanism. By 1948 he and Roy decided that political parties were an inadequate instrument for promoting freedom of the people and so dissolved the RDP in December 1948. He returned to legal practice the same year.
Radical Humanism
In 1969, Tarkunde founded the Indian Radical Humanist Association as an organisation for radical humanists. He also began editing the Radical Humanist (founded in 1937 by Roy as Independent India) in April 1970, supporting it initially with his own income. In 1973 he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.
Emergency
During the emergency, he worked closely with Jayaprakash Narayan, providing leadership to the NGOs Citizens for Democracy and People's Union for Civil Liberties, of which he was the founding president. He also worked on the Citizen's Justice Committee and played a principal part in resisting and investigating the excesses of the period, including the 1984 Anti-Sikh riots, and human rights violations in the Punjab, Kashmir, and the North-East. His refusal to consider kashmiri pandits who had fled valley in 1990 as human right victims caused much controversy and led to his dubbing as " Terrorists' defender in chief" as he regularly attacked Indian army for fake encounters and extra judicial killings.In 1995, he departed from his earlier stand of considering firing by police as human rights violation and defended UP government in Muzaffarnagar police firing and rape on Uttarakhand state demand activists on 2 October 1994 in Supreme Court.His volte face was noted by honourable bench with humour and he won the case with court ruling that there was not adequate evidence of wilful human rights violation by State government.But it led to his breaking ranks with radical humanists. Tarkunde was a Board Member for the International Humanist and Ethical Union(IHEU), the world union of Humanist organizations for over 40 years.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel ((Hindi: (Hindi pronunciation: [llbbai pel] ( listen)) (31 October 1875 15 December 1950) was an Indian barrister and statesman, one of the leaders of the Indian National Congress and one of the founding fathers of the Republic of India. He is known to be a social leader of India who played an unparalleled role in the country's struggle for independence and guided its integration into a united, independent nation. In India and elsewhere, he was often addressed as Sardar, which means Chief in Hindi, Urdu, and Persian. He was raised in the countryside of Gujarat in a family of Leva- Patidar Vallabhbhai Patel was employed in successful practice as a lawyer when he was first inspired by the work and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. Patel subsequently organised the peasants of Kheda, Borsad, and Bardoli in Gujarat in nonviolent civil disobedience against oppressive policies imposed by the British Raj; in this role, he became one of the most influential leaders in Gujarat. He rose to the leadership of the Indian National Congress and was at the forefront of rebellions and political events, organising the party for elections in 1934 and 1937, and promoting the Quit India movement. As the first Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of India, Patel organised relief for refugees in Punjab and Delhi, and led efforts to restore peace across the nation. Patel took charge of the task to forge a united India from the British colonial provinces allocated to India and more than five hundred selfgoverning princely states, released from British suzerainty by the Indian Independence Act 1947. Using frank diplomacy, backed with the option and use of military force, Patel's leadership persuaded almost every princely state which did not have a Muslim majority to accede to India. Often known as the "Iron Man of India" or "Bismarck of India", he is also remembered as the "Patron Saint" of India's civil servants for establishing modern all-India services. Patel was also one of the earliest proponents of property rights and free enterprise in India. Patel was born to a Gujarati family from the Leva Patel community. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was a native of Karamsad. His actual date of birth was never officially recordedPatel entered 31 October as his date of birth on his matriculation examination papers. They lived in the village of Karamsad, Bombay Presidency, where Jhaverbhai owned a homestead. Somabhai, Narsibhai and Vithalbhai Patel (also a future political leader) were his elder brothers. He had a younger brother, Kashibhai and a sister, Dahiba. As a young boy, Patel helped his father in the fields and twice a month kept a day-long fast, abstaining from food and watera Hindu cultural observance that helped him to develop physical toughness. His father was a devotee of the Swaminarayan Sampraday, and would often take Patel to the Swaminarayan Temple in Vadtal about 20 km from Karamsad on foot. When he was eighteen years old, Patel's marriage was arranged with Jhaverba, a young girl of twelve or thirteen years from a nearby village. According to custom, the young bride would continue to live with her parents until her husband started earning and could establish their household. Patel traveled to attend schools in Nadiad, Petlad and Borsad, living self-sufficiently with other boys. He reputedly cultivated a stoic charactera popular anecdote recounts how he lanced his own painful boil without hesitation, even as the barber supposed to do it trembled. Patel passed his matriculation at the late age of 22; at this point, he was generally regarded by his elders as an unambitious man destined for a commonplace job. Patel himself harboured a planhe would study to become a lawyer, work and save funds, travel to England and study to become a barrister. Patel spent years away from his family, studying on his own with books borrowed from other lawyers and passed examinations within two years. Fetching Jhaverba from her parents' home, Patel set up his household in Godhra and was called to the bar. During the many years it took him to save money, Patel now an advocate earned a reputation as a fierce and skilled lawyer. His wife bore him a daughter, Manibehn, in 1904, and a son, Dahyabhai, in 1906. Patel also cared for a friend suffering from Bubonic plague when it swept across Gujarat. When Patel himself came down with the disease, he immediately sent his family to safety, left his home and moved into an isolated house in Nadiad (by other accounts, Patel spent this time in a dilapidated temple); there, he recovered slowly.
Vallabhbhai Patel
Biography

Patel practised law in Godhra, Borsad and Anand while taking on the financial burdens of his homestead in Karamsad.Patel was also the first chairman and founder of the E.M.H.S. "Edward Memorial High School" Borsad which is at presently known as Jhaverbhai Dajibhai Patel High School. When he had saved enough for England and applied for a pass and a ticket, they arrived in the name of "V. J. Patel," at Vithalbhai's home, who bore the same initials. Having harboured his own plans to study in England, Vithalbhai remonstrated to his younger brother that it would be disreputable for an older brother to follow his younger brother. In keeping with concerns for his family's honour, Patel allowed Vithalbhai to go in his place. He also financed his brother's stay and began saving again for his own goals. In 1909, Patel's wife Jhaverba was hospitalised in Bombay (now Mumbai) to undergo a major surgical operation for cancer. Her health suddenly worsened and despite successful emergency surgery, she died in the hospital. Patel was given a note informing him of his wife's demise as he was cross-examining a witness in court. According to others who witnessed, Patel read the note, pocketed it and continued to intensely cross-examine the witness and won the case. He broke the news to others only after the proceedings had ended. Patel himself decided against marrying again. He raised his children with the help of his family and sent them to English-medium schools in Mumbai. At the age of 36, he journeyed to England and enrolled at the Middle Temple Inn in London. Finishing a 36-month course in 30 months, Patel topped his class despite having no previous college background. Returning to India, Patel settled in the city of Ahmedabad and became one of the city's most successful barristers. Wearing European-style clothes and urbane mannerisms, he also became a skilled bridge player. Patel nurtured ambitions to expand his practise and accumulate great wealth and to provide his children with modern education. He had also made a pact with his brother Vithalbhai to support his entry into politics in the Bombay Presidency, while Patel himself would remain in Ahmedabad and provide for the family. He was a vegetarian.
Fighting for independence
At the urging of his friends, Patel won an election to become the sanitation commissioner of Ahmedabad in 1917. While often clashing with British officials on civic issues, he did not show any interest in politics. Upon hearing of Mohandas Gandhi, he joked to Mavlankar that Gandhi would "ask you if you know how to sift pebbles from wheat. And that is supposed to bring independence." But Patel was deeply impressed when Gandhi defied the British in Champaran for the sake of the area's oppressed farmers. Against the grain of Indian politicians of the time, Gandhi wore Indian-style clothes and emphasised the use of one's mother tongue or any Indian language as opposed to Englishthe lingua franca of India's intellectuals. Patel was particularly attracted to Gandhi's inclination to actionapart from a resolution condemning the arrest of political leader Annie Besant, Gandhi proposed that volunteers march peacefully demanding to meet her. Patel gave a speech in Borsad in September 1917, encouraging Indians nationwide to sign Gandhi's petition demanding Swarajindependencefrom the British. Meeting Gandhi a month later at the Gujarat Political Conference in Godhra, Patel became the secretary of the Gujarat Sabhaa public body which would become the Gujarati arm of the Indian National Congressat Gandhi's encouragement. Patel now energetically fought against veththe forced servitude of Indians to Europeansand organised relief efforts in wake of plague and famine in Kheda. The Kheda peasants' plea for exemption from taxation had been turned down by British authorities. Gandhi endorsed waging a struggle there, but could not lead it himself due to his activities in Champaran. When Gandhi asked for a Gujarati activist to devote himself completely to the assignment, Patel volunteered, much to Gandhi's personal delight. Though his decision was made on the spot, Patel later said that his desire and commitment came after intensive personal contemplation, as he realised he would have to abandon his career and material ambitions.
Satyagraha in Gujarat
Supported by Congress volunteers Narhari Parikh, Mohanlal Pandya and Abbas Tyabji, Vallabhbhai Patel began a village-to-village tour in the Kheda district, documenting grievances and asking villagers for their support for a statewide revolt by refusing the payment of taxes. Patel emphasised potential hardships with the need for complete unity and non-violence despite any provocation. He received enthusiastic

responses from virtually every village. When the revolt was launched and revenue refused, the government sent police and intimidation squads to seize property, including confiscating barn animals and whole farms. Patel organised a network of volunteers to work with individual villageshelping them hide valuables and protect themselves during raids. Thousands of activists and farmers were arrested, but Patel was not. The revolt began evoking sympathy and admiration across India, including with pro-British Indian politicians. The government agreed to negotiate with Patel and decided to suspend the payment of revenue for the year, even scaling back the rate. Patel emerged as a hero to Gujaratis and admired across India. In 1920, he was elected president of the newly formed Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committeehe would serve as its president till 1945. Patel supported Gandhi's Non-cooperation movement and toured the state to recruit more than 300,000 members and raise over Rs. 1.5 million in funds. Helping organise bonfires of British goods in Ahmedabad, Patel threw in all his English-style clothes. With his daughter Mani and son Dahya, he switched completely to wearing khadi. Patel also supported Gandhi's controversial suspension of resistance in wake of the Chauri Chaura incident. He worked extensively in the following years in Gujarat against alcoholism, untouchability and caste discrimination, as well as for the empowerment of women. In the Congress, he was a resolute supporter of Gandhi against his Swarajist critics. Patel was elected Ahmedabad's municipal president in 1922, 1924 and 1927during his terms, Ahmedabad was extended a major supply of electricity and the school system underwent major reforms. Drainage and sanitation systems were extended over all the city. He fought for the recognition and payment of teachers employed in schools established by nationalists (out of British control) and even took on sensitive Hindu-Muslim Issues. Sardar Patel personally led relief efforts in the aftermath of the intense torrential rainfall in 1927, which had caused major floods in the city and in the Kheda district and great destruction of life and property. He established refuge centres across the district, raised volunteers, arranged for supply of food, medicines and clothing, as well as emergency funds from the government and public. When Gandhi was in prison, Sardar Patel was asked by Members of Congress to lead the satyagraha in Nagpur in 1923 against a law banning the raising of the Indian flag. He organised thousands of volunteers from all over the country in processions hoisting the flag. Patel negotiated a settlement that obtained the release of all prisoners and allowed nationalists to hoist the flag in public. Later that year, Patel and his allies uncovered evidence suggesting that the police were in league with local dacoits in the Borsad taluka even as the government prepared to levy a major tax for fighting dacoits in the area. More than 6,000 villagers assembled to hear Patel speak and supported the proposed agitation against the tax, which was deemed immoral and unnecessary. He organised hundreds of Congressmen, sent instructions and received information from across the district. Every village in the taluka resisted payment of the tax, and through cohesion, also prevented the seizure of property and lands. After a protracted struggle, the government withdrew the tax. Historians believe that one of Patel's key achievements was the building of cohesion and trust amongst the different castes and communities, which were divided on socio-economic lines. In April 1928, Sardar Patel returned to the freedom struggle from his municipal duties in Ahmedabad when Bardoli suffered from a serious predicament of a famine and steep tax hike. The revenue hike was steeper than it had been in Kheda even though the famine covered a large portion of Gujarat. After crossexamining and talking to village representatives, emphasising the potential hardship and need for nonviolence and cohesion, Patel initiated the strugglecomplete denial of taxes. Sardar Patel organised volunteers, camps and an information network across affected areas. The revenue refusal was stronger than in Kheda and many sympathy satyagrahas were undertaken across Gujarat. Despite arrests, seizures of property and lands, the struggle intensified. The situation reached a head in August, when through sympathetic intermediaries, he negotiated a settlement repealing the tax hike, reinstating village officials who had resigned in protest and the return of seized property and lands. It was during the struggle and after the victory in Bardoli that Patel was increasingly addressed by his colleagues and followers as Sardar.
Leading the Congress
As Gandhi embarked on the Dandi Salt March, Patel was arrested in the village of Ras and tried without

witnesses, with no lawyer or pressman allowed to attend. Patel's arrest and Gandhi's subsequent arrest caused the Salt Satyagraha to greatly intensify in Gujaratdistricts across Gujarat launched an anti-tax rebellion until and unless Patel and Gandhi were released. Once released, Patel served as interim Congress president, but was re-arrested while leading a procession in Mumbai. After the signing of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, Patel was elected Congress president for its 1931 session in Karachihere the Congress ratified the pact, committed itself to the defence of fundamental rights and human freedoms, and a vision of a secular nation, minimum wage and the abolition of untouchability and serfdom. Patel used his position as Congress president in organising the return of confiscated lands to farmers in Gujarat. Upon the failure of the Round Table Conference in London, Gandhi and Patel were arrested in January 1932 when the struggle re-opened, and imprisoned in the Yeravda Central Jail. During this term of imprisonment, Patel and Gandhi grew close to each other, and the two developed a close bond of affection, trust, and frankness. Their mutual relationship could be described as that of an elder brother (Gandhi) and his younger brother (Patel). Despite having arguments with Gandhi, Patel respected his instincts and leadership. During imprisonment, the two would discuss national and social issues, read Hindu epics and crack jokes. Gandhi also taught Patel Sanskrit language. Gandhi's secretary Mahadev Desai kept detailed records of conversations between Gandhi and Patel. When Gandhi embarked on a fast-unto-death protesting the separate electorates allocated for untouchables, Patel looked after Gandhi closely and himself refrained from partaking of food. Patel was later moved to a jail in Nasik, and refused a British offer for a brief release to attend the cremation of his brother Vithalbhai, who had died in 1934. He was finally released in July of the same year. Patel's position at the highest level in the Congress was largely connected with his role from 1934 onwards (when the Congress abandoned its boycott of elections) in the party organisation. Based at an apartment in Mumbai, he became the Congress's main fund-raiser and chairman of its Central Parliamentary Board, playing the leading role in selecting and financing candidates for the 1934 elections to the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi and also for the Provincial elections of 1936. As well as collecting funds and selecting candidates, he would also determine the Congress stance on issues and opponents. Not contesting a seat for himself, Patel nevertheless guided Congressmen elected in the provinces and at the national level. In 1935, Patel underwent surgery for haemorrhoids, yet guided efforts against plague in Bardoli and again when a drought struck Gujarat in 1939. Patel would guide the Congress ministries that had won power across India with the aim of preserving party disciplinePatel feared that the British would use opportunities to create conflicts among elected Congressmen, and he did not want the party to be distracted from the goal of complete independence. But Patel would clash with Nehru, opposing declarations of the adoption of socialism at the 1936 Congress session, which he believed was a diversion from the main goal of achieving independence. In 1938, Patel organised rank and file opposition to the attempts of then-Congress president Subhas Chandra Bose to move away from Gandhi's principles of non-violent resistance. Patel considered Bose to want more power over the party. He led senior Congress leaders in a protest, which resulted in Bose's resignation. But criticism arose from Bose's supporters, socialists and other Congressmen that Patel himself was acting in an authoritarian manner in his defence of Gandhi's authority.
Quit India
On the outbreak of World War II Patel supported Nehru's decision to withdraw the Congress from central and provincial legislatures, contrary to Gandhi's advice, as well as an initiative by senior leader Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari to offer Congress's full support to Britain if it promised Indian independence at the end of the war and install a democratic government right away. Gandhi had refused to support Britain on the grounds of his moral opposition to war, while Subhas Chandra Bose was in militant opposition to the British. The British rejected Rajagopalachari's initiative, and Patel embraced Gandhi's leadership again. He participated in Gandhi's call for individual disobedience, and was arrested in 1940 and imprisoned for nine months. He also opposed the proposals of the Cripps' mission in 1942. Patel lost more than twenty pounds during his period in jail. While Nehru, Rajagopalachari and Maulana Azad initially criticised Gandhi's proposal for an all-out campaign of civil disobedience to force the British to Quit India, Patel was its most fervent supporter.

Arguing that the British would retreat from India as they had from Singapore and Burma, Patel stressed that the campaign start without any delay. Though feeling that the British would not quit immediately, Patel favoured an all-out rebellion which would galvanise Indian people, who had been divided in their response to the war, In Patel's view, an all-out rebellion would force the British to concede that continuation of colonial rule had no support in India, and thus speed power transfer to Indians. Believing strongly in the need for revolt, Patel stated his intention to resign from the Congress if the revolt was not approved. Gandhi strongly pressured the All India Congress Committee to approve of an all-out campaign of civil disobedience, and the AICC approved the campaign on 7 August 1942. Though Patel's health had suffered during his stint in jail, Patel gave emotional speeches to large crowds across India, asking people to refuse paying taxes and participate in civil disobedience, mass protests and a shutdown of all civil services. He raised funds and prepared a second-tier of command as a precaution against the arrest of national leaders. Patel made a climactic speech to more than 100,000 people gathered at Gowalia Tank in Bombay (Mumbai) on 7 August: "The Governor of Burma boasts in London that they left Burma only after reducing everything to dust. So you promise the same thing to India? ... You refer in your radio broadcasts and newspapers to the government established in Burma by Japan as a puppet government? What sort of government do you have in Delhi now?...When France fell before the Nazi onslaught, in the midst of total war, Mr. Churchill offered union with England to the French. That was indeed a stroke of inspired statesmanship. But when it comes to India? Oh no! Constitutional changes in the midst of a war? Absolutely unthinkable ... The object this time is to free India before the Japanese can come and be ready to fight them if they come. They will round up the leaders, round up all. Then it will be the duty of every Indian to put forth his utmost effortwithin nonviolence. No source is to be left untapped; no weapon untried. This is going to be the opportunity of a lifetime." Historians believe that Patel's speech was instrumental in electrifying nationalists, who had been sceptical of the proposed rebellion. Patel's organising work in this period is credited by historians for ensuring the success of the rebellion across India. Patel was arrested on 9 August and was imprisoned with the entire Congress Working Committee from 1942 to 1945 at the fort in Ahmednagar. Here he spun cloth, played bridge, read a large number of books, took long walks, practised gardening. He also provided emotional support to his colleagues while awaiting news and developments of the outside. Patel was deeply pained at the news of the deaths of Mahadev Desai and Kasturba Gandhi later in the year. But Patel wrote in a letter to his daughter that he and his colleagues were experiencing "fullest peace" for having done "their duty." Even though other political parties had opposed the struggle and the British had employed ruthless means of suppression, the Quit India movement was "by far the most serious rebellion since that of 1857," as the viceroy cabled to Winston Churchill. More than one hundred thousand people were arrested and thousands killed in police firings. Strikes, protests and other revolutionary activities had broken out across India. When Patel was released on 15 June 1945 he realised that the British were preparing proposals to transfer power to Indian hands.
Integration after Independence and Role of Gandhi
In the 1946 election for the Congress presidency, Patel stepped down in favour of Nehru at the request of Gandhi. The election's importance stemmed from the fact that the elected President would lead free India's first Government. Gandhi asked all 16 states representatives and Congress to elect the right person and Sardar Patel's name was proposed by 13 states representatives out of 16, but Patel respected Gandhi's request to not be the first prime minister. As the first Home Minister, Patel played a key role in integration of many princely states into the Indian federation.

In the elections, the Congress won a large majority of the elected seats, dominating the Hindu electorate. But the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah won a large majority of Muslim electorate seats. The League had resolved in 1940 to demand Pakistanan independent state for Muslimsand was a fierce critic of the Congress. The Congress formed governments in all provinces save Sindh, Punjab and Bengal, where it entered into coalitions with other parties. When the British mission proposed two plans for transfer of power, there was considerable opposition within the Congress to both. The plan of 16 May 1946 proposed a loose federation with extensive provincial autonomy, and the "grouping" of provinces based on religious-majority. The plan of 16 June 1946 proposed the partition of India on religious lines, with over 600 princely states free to choose between independence or accession to either dominion. The League approved both plans, while the Congress flatly rejected the 16 June proposal. Gandhi criticised the 16 May proposal as being inherently divisive, but Patel, realising that rejecting the proposal would mean that only the League would be invited to form a government, lobbied the Congress Working Committee hard to give its assent to the 16 May proposal. Patel engaged the British envoys Sir Stafford Cripps and Lord Pethick-Lawrence and obtained an assurance that the "grouping" clause would not be given practical force, Patel converted Nehru, Rajendra Prasad and Rajagopalachari to accept the plan. When the League retracted its approval of the 16 May plan, the viceroy Lord Wavell invited the Congress to form the government. Under Nehru, who was styled the "Vice President of the Viceroy's Executive Council," Patel took charge of the departments of home affairs and information and broadcasting. He moved into a government house on 1, Aurangzeb Road in Delhithis would be his home till his death in 1950. Vallabhbhai Patel was one of the first Congress leaders to accept the partition of India as a solution to the rising Muslim separatist movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He had been outraged by Jinnah's Direct Action campaign, which had provoked communal violence across India and by the viceroy's vetoes of his home department's plans to stop the violence on the grounds of constitutionality. Patel severely criticised the viceroy's induction of League ministers into the government, and the revalidation of the grouping scheme by the British without Congress approval. Although further outraged at the League's boycott of the assembly and non-acceptance of the plan of 16 May despite entering government, he was also aware that Jinnah did enjoy popular support amongst Muslims, and that an open conflict between him and the nationalists could degenerate into a Hindu-Muslim civil war of disastrous consequences. The continuation of a divided and weak central government would in Patel's mind, result in the wider fragmentation of India by encouraging more than 600 princely states towards independence. Between the months of December 1946 and January 1947, Patel worked with civil servant V. P. Menon on the latter's suggestion for a separate dominion of Pakistan created out of Muslim-majority provinces. Communal violence in Bengal and Punjab in January and March 1947 further convinced Patel of the soundness of partition. Patel, a fierce critic of Jinnah's demand that the Hindu-majority areas of Punjab and Bengal be included in a Muslim state, obtained the partition of those provinces, thus blocking any possibility of their inclusion in Pakistan. Patel's decisiveness on the partition of Punjab and Bengal had won him many supporters and admirers amongst the Indian public, which had tired of the League's tactics, but he was criticised by Gandhi, Nehru, secular Muslims and socialists for a perceived eagerness to do so. When Lord Louis Mountbatten formally proposed the plan on 3 June 1947, Patel gave his approval and lobbied Nehru and other Congress leaders to accept the proposal. Knowing Gandhi's deep anguish regarding proposals of partition, Patel engaged him in frank discussion in private meetings over the perceived practical unworkability of any Congress-League coalition, the rising violence and the threat of civil war. At the All India Congress Committee meeting called to vote on the proposal, Patel said: "I fully appreciate the fears of our brothers from [the Muslim-majority areas]. Nobody likes the division of India and my heart is heavy. But the choice is between one division and many divisions. We must face facts. We cannot give way to emotionalism and sentimentality. The Working Committee has not
Cabinet mission and partition
acted out of fear. But I am afraid of one thing, that all our toil and hard work of these many years might go waste or prove unfruitful. My nine months in office has completely disillusioned me regarding the supposed merits of the Cabinet Mission Plan. Except for a few honourable exceptions, Muslim officials from the top down to the chaprasis (peons or servants) are working for the League. The communal veto given to the League in the Mission Plan would have blocked India's progress at every stage. Whether we like it or not, de facto Pakistan already exists in the Punjab and Bengal. Under the circumstances I would prefer a de jure Pakistan, which may make the League more responsible. Freedom is coming. We have 75 to 80 percent of India, which we can make strong with our own genius. The League can develop the rest of the country." Following Gandhi's and Congress' approval of the plan, Patel represented India on the Partition Council, where he oversaw the division of public assets, and selected the Indian council of ministers with Nehru. However, neither he nor any other Indian leader had foreseen the intense violence and population transfer that would take place with partition. Patel would take the lead in organising relief and emergency supplies, establishing refugee camps and visiting the border areas with Pakistani leaders to encourage peace. Despite these efforts, the death toll is estimated at between five hundred thousand to a million people. The estimated number of refugees in both countries exceeds 15 million. Understanding that Delhi and Punjab policemen, accused of organising attacks on Muslims, were personally affected by the tragedies of partition, Patel called out the Indian Army with South Indian regiments to restore order, imposing strict curfews and shoot-at-sight orders. Visiting the Nizamuddin Auliya Dargah area in Delhi, where thousands of Delhi Muslims feared attacks, he prayed at the shrine, visited the people and reinforced the presence of police. He suppressed from the press reports of atrocities in Pakistan against Hindus and Sikhs to prevent retaliatory violence. Establishing the Delhi Emergency Committee to restore order and organising relief efforts for refugees in the capital, Patel publicly warned officials against partiality and neglect. When reports reached Patel that large groups of Sikhs were preparing to attack Muslim convoys heading for Pakistan, Patel hurried to Amritsar and met Sikh and Hindu leaders. Arguing that attacking helpless people was cowardly and dishonourable, Patel emphasised that Sikh actions would result in further attacks against Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan. He assured the community leaders that if they worked to establish peace and order and guarantee the safety of Muslims, the Indian government would react forcefully to any failures of Pakistan to do the same. Additionally, Patel addressed a massive crowd of approximately 200,000 refugees who had surrounded his car after the meetings: "Here, in this same city, the blood of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims mingled in the bloodbath of Jallianwala Bagh. I am grieved to think that things have come to such a pass that no Muslim can go about in Amritsar and no Hindu or Sikh can even think of living in Lahore. The butchery of innocent and defenceless men, women and children does not behove brave men... I am quite certain that India's interest lies in getting all her men and women across the border and sending out all Muslims from East Punjab. I have come to you with a specific appeal. Pledge the safety of Muslim refugees crossing the city. Any obstacles or hindrances will only worsen the plight of our refugees who are already performing prodigious feats of endurance. If we have to fight, we must fight clean. Such a fight must await an appropriate time and conditions and you must be watchful in choosing your ground. To fight against the refugees is no fight at all. No laws of humanity or war among honourable men permit the murder of people who have sought shelter and protection. Let there be truce
for three months in which both sides can exchange their refugees. This sort of truce is permitted even by laws of war. Let us take the initiative in breaking this vicious circle of attacks and counter-attacks. Hold your hands for a week and see what happens. Make way for the refugees with your own force of volunteers and let them deliver the refugees safely at our frontier." Following his dialogue with community leaders and his speech, no further attacks occurred against Muslim refugees, and a wider peace and order was re-established soon over the entire area. However, Patel was criticised by Nehru, secular Muslims and taxed by Gandhi over his alleged wish to see Muslims from other parts of India depart. While Patel vehemently denied such allegations, the acrimony with Maulana Azad and other secular Muslim leaders increased when Patel refused to dismiss Delhi's Sikh police commissioner, who was accused of discrimination. Hindu and Sikh leaders also accused Patel and other leaders of not taking Pakistan sufficiently to task over the attacks on their communities there, and Muslim leaders further criticised him for allegedly neglecting the needs of Muslims leaving for Pakistan, and concentrating resources for incoming Hindu and Sikh refugees. Patel clashed with Nehru and Azad over the allocation of houses in Delhi vacated by Muslims leaving for PakistanNehru and Azad desired to allocate them for displaced Muslims, while Patel argued that no government professing secularism must make such exclusions. However, Patel was publicly defended by Gandhi and received widespread admiration and support for speaking frankly on communal issues and acting decisively and resourcefully to quell disorder and violence. This event formed the cornerstone of Patel's popularity in post-independence era and even today, he is remembered as the man who united India. He is, in this regard, compared to Otto von Bismarck of Germany, who did the same thing in 1860s. Under the 3 June plan, more than 562 princely states were given the option of joining either India or Pakistan, or choosing independence. Indian nationalists and large segments of the public feared that if these states did not accede, most of the people and territory would be fragmented. The Congress as well as senior British officials considered Patel the best man for the task of achieving unification of the princely states with the Indian dominion. Gandhi had said to Patel "the problem of the States is so difficult that you alone can solve it". He was considered a statesman of integrity with the practical acumen and resolve to accomplish a monumental task. Patel asked V. P. Menon, a senior civil servant with whom he had worked over the partition of India, to become his righthand as chief secretary of the States Ministry. On 6 May 1947, Patel began lobbying the princes, attempting to make them receptive towards dialogue with the future Government and trying to forestall potential conflicts. Patel used social meetings and unofficial surroundings to engage most monarchs, inviting them to lunch and tea at his home in Delhi. At these meetings, Patel stated that there was no inherent conflict between the Congress and the princely order. Nonetheless, he stressed that the princes would need to accede to India in good faith by 15 August 1947. Patel invoked the patriotism of India's monarchs, asking them to join in the freedom of their nation and act as responsible rulers who cared about the future of their people. He persuaded the princes of 565 states of the impossibility of independence from the Indian republic, especially in the presence of growing opposition from their subjects. He proposed favourable terms for the merger, including creation of privy purses for the descendants of the rulers. While encouraging the rulers to act with patriotism, Patel did not rule out force, setting a deadline of 15 August 1947 for them to sign the instrument of accession document. All but three of the states willingly merged into the Indian uniononly Jammu and Kashmir, Junagadh, and Hyderabad did not fall into his basket.
Political integration of India
Somnath temple Restoration
Somnath temple ruins, 1869
Sardar Patel ordered Somnath temple reconstructed in 1948. Junagadh was especially important to Patel, since it was in his home state of Gujarat and also because this Kathiawar district had the ultra-rich Somnath temple which had been plundered 17 times by Mahmud of Ghazni who broke the temple and its idols to rob it of its riches, emeralds, diamonds and gold. The Nawab had under pressure from Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto acceded to Pakistan. It was however, quite far from Pakistan and 80% of its population was Hindu. Patel combined diplomacy with force, demanding that Pakistan annul the accession, and that the Nawab accede to India. He sent the Army to occupy three principalities of Junagadh to show his resolve. Following widespread protests and the formation of a civil government, or Aarzi Hukumat, both Bhutto and the Nawab fled to Karachi, and under Patel's orders, Indian Army and police units marched into the state. A plebiscite later organised produced a 99.5% vote for merger with India. In a speech at the Bahauddin College in Junagadh following the latter's take-over, Patel emphasised his feeling of urgency on Hyderabad, which he felt was more vital to India than Kashmir: If Hyderabad does not see the writing on the wall, it goes the way Junagadh has gone. Pakistan attempted to set off Kashmir against Junagadh. When we raised the question of settlement in a democratic way, they (Pakistan) at once told us that they would consider it if we applied that policy to Kashmir. Our reply was that we would agree to Kashmir if they agreed to Hyderabad. Hyderabad was the largest of the princely states, and included parts of present-day Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Maharashtra states. Its ruler, the Nizam Osman Ali Khan was a Muslim, although over 80% of its people were Hindu. The Nizam sought independence or accession with Pakistan. Muslim forces loyal to Nizam, called the Razakars, under Qasim Razvi pressed the Nizam to hold out against

India, while organising attacks on people on Indian soil. Even though a Standstill Agreement was signed due to the desperate efforts of Lord Mountbatten to avoid a war, the Nizam rejected deals and changed his positions. In September 1948, Patel emphasised in Cabinet meetings that India should talk no more, and reconciled Nehru and the Governor-General, Chakravarti Rajgopalachari to military action. Following preparations, Patel ordered the Indian Army to integrate Hyderabad (in his capacity as Acting Prime Minister) when Nehru was touring Europe. The action was termed Operation Polo, in which thousands of Razakar forces had been killed, but Hyderabad was comfortably secured into the Indian Union. The main aim of Mountbatten and Nehru in avoiding a forced annexation was to prevent an outbreak of HinduMuslim violence. Patel insisted that if Hyderabad was allowed to continue with its antics, the prestige of the Government would fall and then neither Hindus nor Muslims would feel secure in its realm. After defeating Nizam, Patel retained him as the ceremonial chief of state, and held talks with him. Lakshadweep Islands The inhabitants of these islands, remote from the mainland of India, heard the final news of the Partition and Independence of India some days after it occurred on 15 August 1947. As the islands were then British possessions and part of the Madras Presidency, in accordance with the Indian Independence Act 1947, enacted by the British parliament a month before, the islands transferred automatically to the new Union of India. However, considering that they also had a Muslim majority, it seemed possible that the new dominion of Pakistan might seek to lay claim to them. On the orders of Vallabhbhai Patel, a ship of the Royal Indian Navy was sent to the Laccadives (as they were then called) to hoist the Indian national flag and ensure the islands' integration into the new Union of India, aiming to thwart any similar attempt by Pakistan. Hours after the arrival of the Indian ship, vessels of the Royal Pakistan Navy were seen near the islands, but after observing the Indian presence they returned to Karachi.
Leading India
Governor General Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, Nehru and Patel formed the triumvirate which ruled India from 1948 to 1950. Prime Minister Nehru was intensely popular with the masses, but Patel enjoyed the loyalty and the faith of rank and file Congressmen, state leaders and India's civil services. Patel was a senior leader in the Constituent Assembly of India and was responsible in a large measure for shaping India's constitution. He is also known as the "Bismarck of India" Patel was a key force behind the appointment of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar as the chairman of the drafting committee, and the inclusion of leaders from a diverse political spectrum in the process of writing the constitution. Patel was the chairman of the committees responsible for minorities, tribal and excluded areas, fundamental rights and provincial constitutions. Patel piloted a model constitution for the provinces in the Assembly, which contained limited powers for the state governor, who would defer to the Presidenthe clarified it was not the intention to let the governor exercise power which could impede an elected government. He worked closely with Muslim leaders to end separate electorates and the more potent demand for reservation of seats for minorities. Patel would hold personal dialogues with leaders of other minorities on the question, and was responsible for the measure that allows the President to appoint Anglo-Indians to Parliament. His intervention was key to the passage of two articles that protected civil servants from political involvement and guaranteed their terms and privileges. He was also instrumental in the founding the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Police Service, and for his defence of Indian civil servants from political attack, he is known as the "patron saint" of India's services. When a delegation of Gujarati farmers came to him citing their inability to send their milk production to the markets without being fleeced by intermediaries, Patel exhorted them to organise the processing and sale of milk by themselves, and guided them to create the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union Limited, which preceded the Amul milk products brand. Patel also pledged the reconstruction of the ancient but dilapidated Somnath Temple in Saurashtrahe oversaw the creation of a public trust and restoration work, and pledged to dedicate the temple upon the completion of work (the work was completed after Patel's death, and the temple was inaugurated by the first President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad). When the Pakistani invasion of Kashmir began in September 1947, Patel immediately wanted to send troops into Kashmir. But agreeing with Nehru and Mountbatten, he waited till Kashmir's monarch had

acceded to India. Patel then oversaw India's military operations to secure Srinagar, the Baramulla Pass and the forces retrieved much territory from the invaders. Patel, along with Defence Minister Baldev Singh administered the entire military effort, arranging for troops from different parts of India to be rushed to Kashmir and for a major military road connecting Srinagar to Pathankot be built in 6 months. Patel strongly advised Nehru against going for arbitration to the United Nations, insisting that Pakistan had been wrong to support the invasion and the accession to India was valid. He did not want foreign interference in a bilateral affair. Patel opposed the release of Rs. 55 crores to the Government of Pakistan, convinced that the money would go to finance the war against India in Kashmir. The Cabinet had approved his point but it was reversed when Gandhi, who feared an intensifying rivalry and further communal violence, went on a fast-unto-death to obtain the release. Patel, though not estranged from Gandhi, was deeply hurt at the rejection of his counsel and a Cabinet decision. In 1949, a crisis arose when the number of Hindu refugees entering West Bengal, Assam and Tripura from East Pakistan climbed over 800,000. The refugees in many cases were being forcibly evicted by Pakistani authorities, and were victims of intimidation and violence. Nehru invited Liaquat Ali Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan to find a peaceful solution. Despite his aversion, Patel reluctantly met Khan and discussed the matters. Patel strongly criticised, however, Nehru's intention to sign a pact that would create minority commissions in both countries and pledge both India and Pakistan to a commitment to protect each other's minorities. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and K.C. Neogy, two Bengali ministers resigned and Nehru was intensely criticised in West Bengal for allegedly appeasing Pakistan. The pact was immediately in jeopardy. Patel however, publicly came out to Nehru's aid. He gave emotional speeches to members of Parliament, and the people of West Bengal, and spoke with scores of delegations of Congressmen, Hindus, Muslims and other public interest groups, persuading them to give peace a final effort.
Gandhi's death and relations with Nehru
Patel was intensely loyal to Gandhi and both he and Nehru looked to him to arbitrate disputes. However, Nehru and Patel sparred over national issues. When Nehru asserted control over Kashmir policy, Patel objected to Nehru's sidelining his home ministry's officials. Nehru was offended by Patel's decisionmaking regarding the states' integration, having neither consulted him nor the cabinet. Patel asked Gandhi to relieve him of his obligation to serve, believing that an open political battle would hurt India. After much personal deliberation and contrary to Patel's prediction, Gandhi on 30 January 1948 told Patel not to leave the government. A free India, according to Gandhi, needed both Patel and Nehru. Patel was the last man to privately talk with Gandhi, who was assassinated just minutes after Patel's departure. At Gandhi's wake, Nehru and Patel embraced each other and addressed the nation together. Patel gave solace to many associates and friends and immediately moved to forestall any possible violence. Within two months of Gandhi's death, Patel suffered a major heart attack; the timely action of his daughter, his secretary and nurse saved Patel's life. Speaking later, Patel attributed the attack to the "grief bottled up" due to Gandhi's death. Criticism arose from the media and other politicians that Patel's home ministry had failed to protect Gandhi. Emotionally exhausted, Patel tendered a letter of resignation, offering to leave the government. Patel's secretary persuaded him to withhold the letter, seeing it as fodder for Patel's political enemies and political conflict in India. However, Nehru sent Patel a letter dismissing any question of personal differences and his desire for Patel's ouster. He reminded Patel of their 30-year partnership in the freedom struggle and asserted that after Gandhi's death, it was especially wrong for them to quarrel. Nehru, Rajagopalachari and other Congressmen publicly defended Patel. Moved, Patel publicly endorsed Nehru's leadership and refuted any suggestion of discord. Patel publicly dispelled any notion that he sought to be prime minister. Though the two committed themselves to joint leadership and non-interference in Congress party affairs, they would criticise each other in matters of policy, clashing on the issues of Hyderabad's integration and UN mediation in Kashmir. Nehru declined Patel's counsel on sending assistance to Tibet after its 1950 invasion by the People's Republic of China and ejecting the Portuguese from Goa by military force. When Nehru pressured Dr. Rajendra Prasad to decline a nomination to become the first President of India in 1950 in favour of Rajagopalachari, he thus angered the party, which felt Nehru was attempting to

impose his will. Nehru sought Patel's help in winning the party over, but Patel declined and Prasad was duly elected. Nehru opposed the 1950 Congress presidential candidate Purushottam Das Tandon, a conservative Hindu leader, endorsing Jivatram Kripalani instead and threatening to resign if Tandon was elected. Patel rejected Nehru's views and endorsed Tandon in Gujarat, where Kripalani received not one vote despite hailing from that state himself. Patel believed Nehru had to understand that his will was not law with the Congress, but he personally discouraged Nehru from resigning after the latter felt that the party had no confidence in him.
Death
On 29 March 1949, authorities lost radio contact with a plane carrying Patel, his daughter Maniben and the Maharaja of Patiala. Engine failure caused the pilot to make an emergency landing in a desert area in Rajasthan. With all passengers safe, Patel and others tracked down a nearby village and local officials. When Patel returned to Delhi, thousands of Congressmen gave him a resounding welcome. In Parliament, MPs gave a long, standing ovation to Patel, stopping proceedings for half an hour. In his twilight years, Patel was honoured by members of Parliament and awarded honorary doctorates of law by the Punjab University and Osmania University. Patel's health declined rapidly through the summer of 1950. He later began coughing blood, whereupon Maniben began limiting his meetings and working hours and arranged for a personalised medical staff to begin attending to Patel. The Chief Minister of West Bengal and doctor Bidhan Roy heard Patel make jokes about his impending end, and in a private meeting Patel frankly admitted to his ministerial colleague N. V. Gadgil that he was not going to live much longer. Patel's health worsened after 2 November, when he began losing consciousness frequently and was confined to his bed. He was flown to Mumbai on 12 December on advice from Dr Roy, to recuperate as his condition deemed critical. Nehru, Rajagopalchari, Rajendra Prasad and Menon all came to see him off at the airport in Delhi. Patel was extremely weak and had to be carried onto the aircraft in a chair. In Bombay, large crowds gathered at Santacruz Airport to greet him, to spare him from this stress, the aircraft landed at Juhu Aerodrome, where Chief Minister B.G. Kher and Morarji Desai were present to receive him with a car belonging to the Governor of Bombay, that took Vallabhbhai to Birla House. After suffering a massive heart attack (his second), he died on 15 December 1950 at Birla House in Bombay. In an unprecedented and unrepeated gesture, on the day after his death more than 1,500 officers of India's civil and police services congregated to mourn at Patel's residence in Delhi and pledged "complete loyalty and unremitting zeal" in India's service. His cremation was planned at Girgaum Chowpatty, however this was changed to Sonapur (Now Marine Lines) when his daughter conveyed that it was his wish to be cremated like a common man in the same place as his wife and brother were earlier cremated. His cremation in Sonapur in Bombay, was attended by a one million strong crowd including Prime Minister Nehru, Rajagopalachari, President Prasad.
Criticism and legacy
During his lifetime, Vallabhbhai Patel received criticism of an alleged bias against Muslims during the time of partition. He was criticised by nationalist Muslims such as Maulana Azad as well as Hindu nationalists for readily plumping for partition. Patel was criticised by supporters of Subhas Chandra Bose for acting coercively to put down politicians not supportive of Gandhi. Socialist politicians such as Jaya Prakash Narayan and Asoka Mehta criticised him for his personal proximity to Indian industrialists such as the Birla and Sarabhai families. Some historians have criticised Patel's actions on the integration of princely states as undermining the right of self-determination for those states. However, Patel is credited for being almost single-handedly responsible for unifying India on the eve of independence.Till date, he is regarded as the most successful Home Minister. He won the admiration of many Indians for speaking frankly on the issues of Hindu-Muslim relations and not shying from using military force to integrate India. His skills of leadership and practical judgement were hailed by British statesmenhis opponents in the freedom strugglesuch as Lord Wavell, Cripps, Pethick-Lawrence and Mountbatten. Some historians and admirers of Patel such as Rajendra Prasad and industrialist J.R.D. Tata have expressed opinions that Patel would have made a better prime minister for India than Nehru.

Nehru's critics and Patel's admirers cite Nehru's belated embrace of Patel's advice regarding the UN and Kashmir and the integration of Goa by military action. Proponents of free enterprise cite the failings of Nehru's socialist policies as opposed to Patel's defence of property rights and his mentorship of the Amul co-operative project. Among Patel's surviving family, Manibehn Patel lived in a flat in Mumbai for the rest of her life following her father's death; she often led the work of the Sardar Patel Memorial Trustwhich organises the prestigious annual Sardar Patel Memorial Lecturesand other charitable organisations. Dahyabhai Patel was a businessman who eventually was elected to serve in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of the Indian Parliament) as an MP in the 1960s. For many decades after his death, there was a perceived lack of effort from the Government of India, the national media and the Congress party regarding the commemoration of Patel's life and work. However, Patel is lionised as a hero in Gujarat and his family home in Karamsad is still preserved in his memory. Patel was officially awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour posthumously in 1991. Patel's birthday, 31 October, is celebrated nationally in India as Sardar Jayanti. The Sardar Patel National Memorial was established in 1980 at the Moti Shahi Mahal in Ahmedabad. It comprises a museum, a gallery of portraits and historical pictures and a library, which stores important documents and books associated with Patel and his life. Amongst the exhibits are many of Patel's personal effects and relics from various periods of his personal and political life. He appeared on the cover page of TIME Magazine in its Jan. 1947 publication. Patel is the namesake of many public institutions in India. A major initiative to build dams, canals and hydroelectric power plants on the Narmada river valley to provide a tri-state area with drinking water, electricity and increase agricultural production was named the Sardar Sarovar. Recently, the Gujarat government has announced its plans to build a 182 m tall statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel near the main dam, which will be the world's tallest statue. Patel is also the namesake of the Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, the Sardar Patel University, Sardar Patel High School and the Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, which are among the nation's premier institutions. India's national police training academy is also named after him.
Statue of Unity
The Statue of Unity is a proposed 182 metres (597 ft) monument of Sardar Patel that will be created directly facing the Narmada Dam, 3.2 km away at the Sadhu Bet, near Bharuch in Gujarat state of India.
Institutions and monuments
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture & Technology, Modipuram MEERUT. (U.P) Sardar Patel Memorial Trust Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Memorial, Ahmedabad Sardar Sarovar Dam, Gujarat Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, Surat Sardar Patel University, Gujarat Sardar Patel Institute of Technology, Vasad Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, New Delhi Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy, Hyderabad Sardar Patel College of Engineering, Mumbai Sardar Patel Institute of Technology, Mumbai Statue of Unity, Gujarat Sardar Patel Institute of Public Administration, Ahmedaad Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Foundation, Delhi Sardar Patel Education Trust, Anand Sardar Patel College of Communications & Management, Delhi Sardar Patel Public College, Delhi Vallabh Vidhayanagar, Educational Township, Named after him Anand, Gujarat

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Chowk in Katra Gulab Singh, Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh Sardar Patel College of Education, Gurgaon Sardar Patel Medical College, Bikaner Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Institute of Technology, Vasad Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, Ahmedabad Sardar Patel Stadium Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium, Ahmedabad Sardar Patel Institute of Economic & Social Research Vallabh Vidhyalay, Bochasan, Anand Sardar Vallbhbhai Patel Vidyalay, Vadodara Sardar vallabhbhai patel polytechnic college,bhopal(m.p.) 2000: Arun Sadekar plays Patel in Hey Ram a film made by Kamal Haasan. 1993: The biopic Sardar was produced and directed by Ketan Mehta and featured noted Indian actor Paresh Rawal as Patel; it focused on Patel's leadership in the years leading up to independence, the partition of India, India's political integration and Patel's relationship with Gandhi and Nehru. 1989: In a satirical novel "The Great Indian Novel" by Shashi Tharoor, the character of Vidur Hastinapuri is simultaneously based on Patel as well as the mythological character Vidura. 1982: In Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982), actor Saeed Jaffrey portrayed Patel. 1976: Kantilal Rathod directed a documentary on Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
Artistic depictions of Patel
Vennelakanti Raghavaiah
June 4, 1897 Singapeta villaage, Kovur tq, Nellore district, Andhra Pradesh Died November 24, 1981 Vennelakanti Raghavaiah B.A., B.L. (born: 4 June 1897 - died: 24 November 1981) was social worker and Indian freedom activist. He was affectionately called "Girijan Gandhi" for his selfless service to the Adivasi people. He is born at Singapeta village in Kovur Taluq of Nellore district to Vennelakanti Papaiah and Subbamma. He has completed Bachelor of Arts and Law (B.A.,B.L.) from Madras University. He has joined Indian National Congress led by Mahatma Gandhi and actively participated in Non-coperation movement, Salt Satyagraha and was jailed for 21 months. He was again arrested for participating in Quit India movement for two and half years. He was elected to the Combined Madras State from Nellore constituency for two terms. He held the position of Parliamentary secretary in 1946 headed by Tanguturi Prakasam. During his tenure he fought for the scraping of Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. He has received Padma Bhushan from Government of India in 1973. Vinyak Dmodar Svarkar (Marathi: pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Ma-VinayakDamodarSavarkar.ogg) (28 May 1883 26 February 1966) was an Indian revolutionary and politician. He was the proponent of liberty as the ultimate ideal. Savarkar was a poet, writer and playwright. He launched a movement for religious reform advocating dismantling the system of caste in Hindu culture, and reconversion of the converted Hindus back to Hindu religion. Savarkar created the term Hindutva, and emphasized its distinctiveness from Hinduism which he associated with social and political disunity. Savarkars Hindutva sought to create an inclusive collective identity. The five elements of Savarkar's philosophy were Utilitarianism, Rationalism and Positivism, Humanism and Universalism, Pragmatism and Realism.
Vennelakanti Raghavaiah Born
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar

Savarkar's revolutionary activities began when studying in India and England, where he was associated with the India House and founded student societies including Abhinav Bharat Society and the Free India Society, as well as publications espousing the cause of complete Indian independence by revolutionary means. Savarkar published The Indian War of Independence about the Indian rebellion of 1857 that was banned by British authorities. He was arrested in 1910 for his connections with the revolutionary group India House. Following a failed attempt to escape while being transported from Marseilles, Savarkar was sentenced to two life terms amounting to 50 years' imprisonment and moved to the Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. While in jail, Savarkar wrote the work describing Hindutva, openly espousing Hindu nationalism. He was released in 1921 under restrictions after signing a plea for clemency in which he renounced revolutionary activities. Travelling widely, Savarkar became a forceful orator and writer, advocating Hindu political and social unity. Serving as the president of the Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar endorsed the ideal of India as a Hindu Rashtra and opposed the Quit India struggle in 1942, calling it a "Quit India but keep your army" movement. He became a fierce critic of the Indian National Congress and its acceptance of India's partition, and was one of those accused in the assassination of Indian leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He was acquitted as the charges could not be proven. The airport at Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar's capital, has been named Veer Savarkar International Airport. The commemorative blue plaque on India House fixed by the Historic Building and Monuments Commission for England reads "Vinayak Damodar Savarkar 1883-1966 Indian patriot and philosopher lived here". Vinayak was born in the family of Damodar and Radhabai Savarkar in the village of Bhagur, near the city of Nashik, Maharashtra. He had three other siblings namely Ganesh, Narayan, and a sister named Mainabai. After death of parents the eldest sibling Ganesh, known as Babarao, took responsibility of the family. Babarao played a supportive and influential role in Vinayak's teenage life. During this period, Vinayak organised a youth group called Mitra Mela (Band of Friends) and encouraged revolutionary and nationalist views of passion using this group. In 1901, Vinayak Savarkar married Yamunabai, daughter of Ramchandra Triambak Chiplunkar, who supported his university education. Subsequently in 1902, he enrolled in Fergusson College, in Pune . As a young man, he was inspired by the new generation of radical political leaders namely Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai along with the political struggle against the partition of Bengal and the rising Swadeshi campaign. He was involved in various nationalist activities at various levels. In 1905, during Dussehra festivities Vinayak organised setting up of a bonfire of foreign goods and clothes. Along with his fellow students and friends he formed a political outfit called Abhinav Bharat. Vinayak was soon expelled from college due to his activities but was still permitted to take his Bachelor of Arts degree examinations. After completing his degree, nationalist activist Shyam Krishnavarma helped Vinayak to go to England to study law, on a scholarship. It was during this period that Garam Dal, (literally translated as Hot Faction) was formed under the leadership of Tilak, due to the split of Indian National Congress. The members of Garam Dal, did not acknowledge the moderate Indian National Congress leadership agenda which advocated dialogue and reconciliation with the British Raj. Tilak advocated the philosophy of Swaraj and was soon imprisoned for his support of revolutionary activities.
Early life
Activities at India House
After his joining Gray's Inn law college in London Vinayak took accommodation at Bharat Bhawan India House. Organised by expatriate social and political activist Pandit Shyamji, India House was a thriving centre for student political activities. Savarkar soon founded the Free India Society to help organise fellow Indian students with the goal of fighting for complete independence through a revolution, declaring, We must stop complaining about this British officer or that officer, this law or that law. There would

be no end to that. Our movement must not be limited to being against any particular law, but it must be for acquiring the authority to make laws itself. In other words, we want absolute independence Savarkar envisioned a guerrilla war for independence along the lines of the famous armed uprising of 1857. Studying the history of the revolt, from English as well as Indian sources, Savarkar wrote the book, The History of the War of Indian Independence. He analyzed the circumstances of 1857 uprising and assailed British rule in India as unjust and oppressive. It was via this book that Savarkar became one of the first writers to allude the uprising as India's "First War for Independence." The book was banned from publication throughout the British Empire. Madame Bhikaji Cama, and expatriate Indian revolutionary obtained its publication in the Netherlands, France and Germany. Widely smuggled and circulated, the book attained great popularity and influenced rising young Indians. Savarkar was studying revolutionary methods and he came into contact with a veteran of the Russian Revolution of 1905, who imparted him the knowledge of bomb-making. Savarkar had printed and circulated a manual amongst his friends, on bomb-making and other methods of guerrilla warfare. In 1909, Madan Lal Dhingra, a keen follower and friend of Savarkar, assassinated British MP Sir Curzon Wylie in a public meeting. Dhingra's action provoked controversy across Britain and India, evoking enthusiastic admiration as well as condemnation. Savarkar published an article in which he all but endorsed the murder and worked to organise support, both political and for Dhingra's legal defence. At a meeting of Indians called for a condemnation of Dhingra's deed, Savarkar protested the intention of condemnation and was drawn into a hot debate and angry scuffle with other attendants. A secretive and restricted trial and a sentence awarding the death penalty to Dhingra provoked an outcry and protest across the Indian student and political community. Strongly protesting the verdict, Savarkar struggled with British authorities in laying claim to Dhingra's remains following his execution. Savarkar hailed Dhingra as a hero and martyr, and began encouraging revolution with greater intensity. In India, Ganesh Savarkar had organised an armed revolt against the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909. The British police implicated Savarkar in the investigation for allegedly plotting the crime. Hoping to evade arrest, Savarkar moved to Madame Cama's home in Paris. He was nevertheless arrested by police on March 13, 1910. In the final days of freedom, Savarkar wrote letters to a close friend planning his escape. Knowing that he would most likely be shipped to India, Savarkar asked his friend to keep track of which ship and route he would be taken through. When the ship S.S. Morea reached the port of Marseilles on July 8, 1910, Savarkar escaped from his cell through a porthole and dived into the water, swimming to the shore in the hope that his friend would be there to receive him in a car. But his friend was late in arriving, and the alarm having been raised, Savarkar was re-arrested.
Arrest in London and in Marseilles
Savarkar case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration
Savarkar's arrest at Marseilles caused the French government to protest to the British, which argued that the British could only recover Savarkar if they took appropriate legal proceedings for his rendition. This dispute came before the Permanent Court of International Arbitration in 1910, and it gave its decision in 1911. The case excited much controversy as was reported by the New York Times, and it considered it involved an interesting international question of the right of asylum. The Court held, firstly, that since there was a pattern of collaboration between the two countries regarding the possibility of Savarkar's escape in Marseilles and since there was neither force nor fraud in inducing the French authorities to return Savarkar to them, the British authorities did not have to hand him back to the French in order for the latter to hold rendition proceedings. On the other hand, the tribunal also observed that there had been an "irregularity" in Savarkar's arrest and delivery over to the Indian Army Military Police guard.
Trial and Andaman
Arriving in Bombay (colonial name of Mumbai), he was taken to the Yervada Central Jail in Pune.

Following a trial, Savarkar was sentenced to 50 years imprisonment and transported on July 4, 1911 to the infamous Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. His fellow captives included many political prisoners, who were forced to perform hard labour for many years. Reunited with his brother Ganesh, the Savarkars nevertheless struggled in the harsh environment. Forced to arise at 5 am, tasks including cutting trees and chopping wood, and working at the oil mill under regimental strictness, with talking amidst prisoners strictly prohibited during mealtime. Prisoners were subject to frequent mistreatment and torture. Contact with the outside world and home was restricted to the writing and mailing of one letter a year. In these years, Savarkar withdrew within himself and performed his routine tasks mechanically. Obtaining permission to start a rudimentary jail library, Savarkar would also teach some fellow convicts to read and write. Savarkar appealed for clemency in 1911 and again during Sir Reginald Craddock's visit in 1913, citing poor health in the oppressive conditions. In 1920, the Indian National Congress and leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Vithalbhai Patel and Bal Gangadhar Tilak demanded his unconditional release. Savarkar tactically signed a statement endorsing the trial, verdict and British law, and renouncing violence, a bargain for freedom. I hereby acknowledge that I had a fair trial and just sentence. I heartily abhor methods of violence resorted to in days gone by and I feel myself duty bound to uphold law and constitution to the best of my powers and I am willing to make the [1919 MontagueChelmsford Reforms] a success in so far as I may be allowed to do so in future On May 2, 1921, the Savarkar brothers were moved to a jail in Ratnagiri, and later to the Yeravda Central Jail. He was finally released on January 6, 1924 under stringent restrictions he was not to leave Ratnagiri District and was to refrain from political activities for the next five years. However, police restrictions on his activities would not be dropped until provincial autonomy was granted in 1937. Jaywant Joglekar, an eminent historian, considers Savarkar's appeal for clemency a tactical ploy, like Shivaji's letter to Aurangzeb, during his arrest at Agra, Vladimir Lenin's travel by sealed train through Germany as a part of a deal with Germany and Joseph Stalin's pact with Adolf Hitler. During his incarceration, Savarkar's views began turning increasingly towards Hindu cultural and political nationalism, and the next phase of his life remained dedicated to this cause. In the brief period he spent at the Ratnagiri jail, Savarkar wrote his ideological treatise Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?. Smuggled out of the prison, it was published by Savarkar's supporters under his alias "Maharatta." In this work, Savarkar promotes a radical new vision of Hindu social and political consciousness. Savarkar began describing a "Hindu" as a patriotic inhabitant of Bharatavarsha, venturing beyond a religious identity. While emphasising the need for patriotic and social unity of all Hindu communities, he described Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism as one and same. He outlined his vision of a "Hindu Rashtra" (Hindu Nation) as "Akhand Bharat" (United India), purportedly stretching across the entire Indian subcontinent. He defined the Hindu race as neither Aryan, Kolarian or Dravidian but as that People who live as children of a common motherland, adoring a common holyland Scholars, historians and Indian politicians have been divided in their interpretation of Savarkar's ideas. A self-described atheist, Savarkar regards being Hindu as a cultural and political identity. While often stressing social and community unity between Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains, Savarkar's notions of loyalty to the fatherland are seen as an implicit criticism of Muslims and Christians who regard Mecca,
Hindutva

Medina and Jerusalem as their holiest places. Savarkar openly assailed what he saw as Muslim political separatism, arguing that the loyalty of many Muslims was conflicted. After his release, from jail on 6 January 1924 Savarkar help found the Ratnagiri Hindu Sabha, aiming to work for the social and cultural preservation of Hindu heritage and civilisation. Becoming a frequent and forceful orator, Sarvakar agitated for the use of Hindi as a common national language and against caste discrimination and untouchability. Focusing his energies on writing, Savarkar authored the Hindu Pad-pada-shahi a book documenting and extolling the Maratha empire and My Transportation for Life an account of his early revolutionary days, arrest, trial and incarcertaion. He also wrote and published a collection of poems, plays and novels. Another activity he started was to reconvert to Hinduism those who had converted to other faiths.He also wrote a book named 'Majhi Janmathep'(Meaning My Lifeterm) about his experience in Andaman prison. In the wake of the rising popularity of the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Savarkar and his party began gaining attraction in the national political environment. Savarkar moved to Mumbai and was elected president of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1937, and would serve until 1943. The Congress swept the polls in 1937 but conflicts between the Congress and Jinnah would exacerbate Hindu-Muslim political divisions. Jinnah derided Congress rule as a "Hindu Raj", and hailed December 22, 1939 as a "Day of Deliverance" for Muslims when the Congress resigned en masse in protest of India's arbitrary inclusion into World War II. Savarkar's message of Hindu unity and empowerment gained increasing popularity amidst the worsening communal climate. Savarkar as president of the Hindu Mahasabha, during the Second World War, advanced the slogan "Hinduize all Politics and Militarize Hindudom", he decided to support the British war effort in India seeking military training for the Hindus. When the Congress launched the Quit India movement in 1942, Savarkar criticised it and asked Hindus to stay active in the war effort and not disobey the government, he urged the Hindus to enlist in the armed forces in order to learn the "arts of war". Under his leadership, the Mahasabha won several seats in the central and provincial legislatures, but its overall popularity and influence remained politicians. Hindu Mahasabha activists protested Gandhi's initiative to hold talks with Jinnah in 1944, which Savarkar denounced as "appeasement." He assailed the British proposals for transfer of power, attacking both the Congress and the British for making concessions to Muslim separatists. Soon after Independence, Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee resigned as Vice-President of the Hindu Mahasabha dissociating himself from its Akhand Hindustan plank, which implied undoing partition.
Leader of the Hindu Mahasabha
Opposition to the partition of India
The Muslim League adopted the Lahore Resolution in 1940, calling for a separate Muslim state based on the Two-Nation Theory, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar summaries Savarkar's position, in his Pakistan or The Partition of India as follows, Mr. Savarkar... insists that, although there are two nations in India, India shall not be divided into two parts, one for Muslims and the other for the Hindus; that the two nations shall dwell in one country and shall live under the mantle of one single constitution;... In the struggle for political power between the two nations the rule of the game which Mr. Savarkar prescribes is to be one man one vote, be the man

Hindu or Muslim. In his scheme a Muslim is to have no advantage which a Hindu does not have. Minority is to be no justification for privilege and majority is to be no ground for penalty. The State will guarantee the Muslims any defined measure of political power in the form of Muslim religion and Muslim culture. But the State will not guarantee secured seats in the Legislature or in the Administration and, if such guarantee is insisted upon by the Muslims, such guaranteed quota is not to exceed their proportion to the general population.
Support for Jewish state in Palestine
Savarkar in a statement issued on 19 December 1947, expressed joy at the recognition of the claim of Jewish people to establish an independent Jewish state, and likened the event to the glorious day on which Moses led them out of Egyptian bondage. He considered that justice demanded restoration of entire Palestine to the Jews, their historical holy land and Fatherland. He regretted India's vote at the United Nations Organisation against the creation of the Jewish state terming the vote a policy of appeasement of Muslims. Veer Savarkar wrote more than 10,000 pages in the Marathi language. His literary works in Marathi include "Kamala", "Mazi Janmathep" (My Life Sentence), and most famously "1857 - The First War of Independence", about what the British referred to as the Sepoy Mutiny. Savarkar popularised the term 'First War of Independence'. Another noted book was "Kale Pani" (similar to Life Sentence, but on the island prison on the Andamans), which reflected the treatment of Indian freedom fighters by the British. In order to counter the then accepted view that India's history was a saga of continuous defeat, he wrote an inspirational historical work, "Saha Soneri Pane" (Six Golden Pages), recounting some of the Golden periods of Indian history. At the same time, religious divisions in India were beginning to fissure. He described what he saw as the atrocities of British and Muslims on Hindu residents in Kerala, in the book, "Mopalyanche Band" (Muslims' Strike) and also "Gandhi Gondhal" (Gandhi's Confusion), a political critique of Gandhi's politics. Savarkar, by now, had become a committed and persuasive critic of the Gandhi-an vision of India's future. He is also the author of poems like "Sagara pran talmalala" (O Great Sea, my heart aches for the motherland), and "Jayostute" (written in praise of freedom), one of the most moving, inspiring and patriotic works in Marathi literature. When in the Cellular jail, Savarkar was denied pen and paper. He composed and wrote his poems on the prison walls with thorns and pebbles, memorised thousands lines of his poetry for years till other prisoners returning home brought them to India. Savarkar is credited with several popular neologisms in Marathi and Hindi, like "Hutatma"(Martyr),"Mahapaur" ( Mayor),Digdarshak (leader or director, one who points in the right direction), Shatkar (a score of six runs in cricket), Saptahik (weekly), Sansad (Parliament), "doordhwani" ("telephone"), "tanklekhan" ("typewriting") among others. He chaired Marathi Sahitya Sammelan in 1938. Books by Savarkar: Saha Soneri Paane (translation: Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History )
Works

1857 che Svatantrya Samar Hindupadpaatshahi Hindutva Jatyochhedak Nibandha Moplyanche Banda Maazi Janmathep (translation: My life imprisonment) Kale Pani Shatruchya Shibirat Londonchi batamipatre (translation: London Newsletters) Andamanchya Andheritun Vidnyan nishtha Nibandha Joseph Mazzini (on Giuseppe Mazzini) Hindurashtra Darshan Hindutvache Panchapran Kamala Savarkaranchya Kavita (translation: Poems by Savarkar) Sanyasta Khadg All these Books are available as Free E-Books (PDF) on
Arrest and acquittal in Gandhi's assassination
Following the assassination of Gandhi on January 30, 1948, police arrested the assassin Nathuram Godse and his alleged accomplices and conspirators. He was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS's Swayansevak an organisation started by among others Pundit Madan Mohan Malviya and Lala Lajpat Rai. Godse was the editor of Agrani - Hindu Rashtra a Marathi daily from Pune which was run by a company "The Hindu Rashtra Prakashan Ltd." This company had contributions from such eminent persons as Gulabchand Hirachand, Bhalji Pendharkar and Jugalkishore Birla. Savarkar had invested 15000 in the company. Savarkar a former president of the Hindu Mahasabha, was arrested on 5 February 1948, from his house in Shivaji Park, and kept under detention in the Arthur Road Prison, Mumbai. He was charged with murder, conspiracy to murder and abetment to murder. A day before his arrest, Savarkar in a public written statement, as reported in The Times of India", Mumbai dated 7 February 1948, termed Gandhi's assassination a fratricidal crime, endangering India's existence as a nascent nation. Godse claimed full responsibility for planning and carrying out the attack, However according to Badge the approver, on 17 January 1948, Nathuram Godse went to have a last darshan of Savarkar in Bombay before the assassination. While Badge and Shankar waited outside, Nathuram and Apte went in. On coming out Apte told Badge that Savarkar blessed them "Yashasvi houn ya" (" ", be successful and return). Apte also said that Savarkar predicted that Gandhi's 100 years were over and there was no doubt that the task would be successfully finished. However Badge's testimony was not accepted as the approver's evidence lacked independent corroboration and hence Savarkar was acquitted.
The approver's testimony
Kapur commission
On November 12, 1964, a religious programme was organised in Pune, to celebrate the release of the Gopal Godse, Madanlal Pahwa, Vishnu Karkare from jail after the expiry of their sentences. Dr. G. V. Ketkar, grandson of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, former editor of Kesari and then editor of Tarun Bharat, who presided over the function, gave information of a conspiracy to kill Gandhi, about which he professed knowledge, six months before the act. Ketkar was arrested. A public furore ensued both outside and inside the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly and both houses of the Indian parliament. Under pressure of 29 members of parliament and public opinion the then Union home minister Gulzarilal Nanda, appointed Gopal Swarup Pathak, M. P. and a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India, in charge of inquiry of

conspiracy to murder Gandhi. The central government intended on conducting a thorough inquiry with the help of old records in consultation with the government of Maharashtra, Pathak was given three months to conduct his inquiry, subsequently Jevanlal Kapur a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India was appointed to conduct the inquiry. The Kapur Commission was provided with evidence not produced in the court; especially the testimony of two of Savarkar's close aides - Appa Ramachandra Kasar, his bodyguard, and Gajanan Vishnu Damle, his secretary, Kasar told the Kapur Commission that Godse and Apte visited Savarkar on or about January 23 or 24, which was when they returned from Delhi after the bomb incident. Damle deposed that Godse and Apte saw Savarkar in the middle of January and sat with him (Savarkar) in his garden. Justice Kapur concluded: "All these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group."
Later life and death
After Gandhi's assassination Savarkar's home in Mumbai was stoned by angry mobs. After he was acquitted of the allegations related to Gandhi's assassination and released from jail, Savarkar was arrested by the Congress government, for making "militant Hindu nationalist speeches", he was released after agreeing to give up political activities. He continued addressing social and cultural elements of Hindutva. He resumed political activism after the ban on it was lifted, it was however limited until his death in 1966 because of ill health. His followers bestowed upon him honours and financial awards when he was alive. His body was visited by over a hundred thousand Wikipedia:Please clarify people, when it lay in repose. Two thousand RSS workers gave his funeral procession a guard of honour. According to McKean, there was public antipathty between Savarkar and the Congress for most of his political career, yet after independence Patel and Deshmukh unsuccessfully sought partnership with the Hindu Mahasabha and Savarkar. It was forbidden for Congress party members to participate in public functions honouring Savarkar. Nehru refused to share the stage during the centenary celebrations of the India's First War of Independence held in Delhi. After the death of Nehru, the Congress government, under Prime Minister Shastri, started to pay him a monthly pension. On November 8, 1963 Savarkar's wife Yamuna passed away. On February 1, 1966 Savarkar renounced medicines, food and water which he termed as 'atmaarpan' (fast until death). Before his death he had written an article titled 'atmahatya nahi atmaarpan' in which he argued that when one's life mission is over and ability to serve the society is left no more, it is better to end the life at will rather than waiting for death. He died on February 26, 1966 at the age of 83. He was mourned by large crowds that attended his cremation. He left behind a son Vishwas and a daughter Prabha Chiplunkar. His first son, Prabhakar, had died in infancy. His home, possessions and other personal relics have been preserved for public display. After his death, since Savarkar was championing militarization, some thought that it would be fitting if his mortal remains were to be carried on a gun-carriage. A request to that effect was made to the then Defence Minister, Y.B. Chavan, who later on became Deputy Prime Minister of India. But Chavan turned down the proposal and not a single minister from the Maharashtra Cabinet showed up in the cremation ground to pay homage to Savarkar. In New Delhi, the Speaker of the Parliament turned down a request that it pay homage to Savarkar. In fact, after the independence of India, Jawaharlal Nehru had put forward a proposal to demolish the Cellular Jail in the Andamans and build a hospital in its place. When Y.B. Chavan, as the Home Minister of India, went to the Andamans, he was asked whether he would like to visit Savarkar's jail but he was not interested. Also when Morarji Desai went as Prime Minister to the Andamans, he too refused to visit Savarkar's cell.
Film
In the 1996 Malayalam movie Kaala Pani directed by Priyadarshan, the noted Hindi actor Annu Kapoor played the role of Veer Savarkar. Great singer,Marathi & Hindi (film & light music) Musician and a renowned Savarkar follower Sudhir Phadke and Ved Rahi made the biopic film Veer Savarkar, which was released in 2001 after many years in production. Savarkar is portrayed by Shailendra Gaur. This movie was made after over a decade of fund raising efforts by Sudhir Phadke and his 'Savarkar

Darshan Prathisthaan', an organization established solely with the purpose of depicting the life of Savarkar. The finance for the film came entirely from hundreds of Veer Savarkar followers. Phadke spent many years raising funds through his musical concerts in an effort to bring the wishes of Savarkar followers to reality. The Maharashtra Government made the movie tax free when it opened in theatres.
Vinoba Bhave pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Vinoba bhave.ogg (Marathi: ), Vinayak Narahari Bhave (September 11, 1895 - November 15, 1982) often called Acharya (Sanskrit for teacher), was an Indian advocate of nonviolence and human rights. He is best known for the Bhoodan Movement. He is considered as a National Teacher of India and the spiritual successor of Mohandas Gandhi.
Vinoba Bhave
He was born in Ghagode village in Raigad District, Maharashtra on 11 September 1895 to father, Narahari Shumbhurao and mother, Rukmini Devi. His original name was Vinayak Narahari Bhave. He was brought up in Ghagode and then went for studies in Baroda, Gujarat. He was highly inspired after reading the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata, and the Ramayana at a very early age. His two brothers, Balkoba and Shivaji, were also bachelors devoted to social work.
Association with Mahatma Gandhi
After a series of exchange of letters between Mahatma Gandhi and Bhave, Vinoba went to meet Mahatma Gandhi. Five years later, on 8 April 1921, Vinoba went to Wardha to start a Gandhi ashram there. During his stay at Wardha, Bhave also brought out a monthly in Marathi, (the official language of Maharashtra) named `Maharashtra Dharma'. The monthly consisted of his essays on the Upanishads. Over the years, the bond between Vinoba and Mahatma Gandhi grew stronger and his involvement in constructive programs for the society kept on increasing. In 1932, accusing Vinoba Bhave of conspiring against the colonial rule, the British government sent him to jail in Dhule for six months. There he gave talks in Marathi on the Bhagavad Gita to fellow prisoners. All the lectures given by him on Gita in Dhulia jail were collected by Saneguruji and later published as a book. Until 1940, Vinoba Bhave was known only to the people around him. On 5 October 1940 Mahatma Gandhi introduced Bhave to the nation by issuing a statement. He was also chosen as the first individual Satyagrahi by Mahatma Gandhi himself. Acharya Vinoba Bhave was a freedom fighter and a spiritual teacher. He is best known as the founder of the Bhoodan Movement (Gift of the Land). The reformer had an intense concern for the deprived masses. Vinoba Bhave had once said, "All revolutions are spiritual at the source. All my activities have the sole purpose of achieving a union of hearts." In 1958, Vinoba was the first recipient of the international Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. He was also conferred with the Bharat Ratna (India's highest civilian award) posthumously in 1983.
Death
In November 1982, Vinoba Bhave fell ill and, realizing that the purpose of his body had become exhausted, decided to end his life by fasting to death - that is, refusing to accept any food or medicine during his last days. He died on 15 November 1982.
Career Freedom struggle
He was associated with Mahatma Gandhi in the Indian independence movement. He stayed for some time at Gandhi's Sabarmati ashram in a cottage that was named after him, 'Vinoba Kutir'. In 1932 he was sent to jail by the British colonial government because of his activism against British rule. There he gave a series of talks on the Gita, in his native language Marathi, to his fellow prisoners. These highly inspiring talks were later published as the book "Talks on the Gita", and it has been translated into many languages both in India and elsewhere. Vinoba felt that the source of these talks

was something from above and he believed that its influence will endure even if his other works were forgotten. In 1940 he was chosen by Gandhi to be the first individual Satyagrahi (an individual standing up for Truth instead of a collective action) against the British rule. It is said that Gandhi envied and respected Bhave's celibacy, a vow he made in his adolescence, in fitting with his belief in the Brahmacharya principle. Bhave also participated in the Quit India Movement.
Religious and social work
Vinoba's religious outlook was very broad and it synthesized the truths of many religions. This can be seen in one of his hymns "Om Tat Sat" which contains symbols of many religions. Vinoba observed the life of the average Indian living in a village and tried to find solutions for the problems he faced with a firm spiritual foundation. This formed the core of his Sarvodaya (uplifting of all) movement. Another example of this is the Bhoodan (land gift) movement started at Pochampally on 18 April 1951, after interacting with 80 Harijan families. He walked all across India asking people with land to consider him as one of their sons and so give him one sixth of their land which he then distributed to landless poor. Non-violence and compassion being a hallmark of his philosophy, he also campaigned against the slaughtering of cows. Vinoba said, "I have walked all over India for 13 years. In the backdrop of enduring perpetuity of my lifes work, I have established 6 ashrams. Although I have accomplished a lot, one of the achievements Baba would like to be remembered for, is the establishment of these ashrams. Hence, six geographical sites were chosen. Three in the three corners of India and three in the middle, on the lines of Adi Shankara. Samanvay Ashram in Bodhgaya, Bihar Brahma Vidya Mandir in Paunar, Maharashtra Prasthan Ashram in Pathankot, Punjab Visarjan Ashram in Indore, Madhya Pradesh Maitri Ashram in North Lakhimpur, close to Sino-India border, Assam
Literary career
Vinoba Bhave was a scholar, thinker, and writer who produced numerous books. He was a translator who made Sanskrit texts accessible to the common man. He was also an orator and linguist who had an excellent command of several languages (Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, Urdu, English, Sanskrit). Vinoba Bhave was an innovative social reformer. Shri Vinoba Bhave called Nagari script the "Queen of World Scripts." He wrote brief introductions to, and criticisms of, several religious and philosophical works like the Bhagavad Gita, works of Adi Shankaracharya, the Bible and Quran. His criticism of Dnyaneshwar's poetry and works by other Marathi saints is quite brilliant and a testimony to the breadth of his intellect. Vinoba Bhave had translated the Bhagavad Gita into Marathi. He was deeply influenced by the Gita and attempted to imbibe its teachings into his life, often stating that "The Gita is my life's breath". Some of his works are : The essence of Quran The essence of Christian teachings Thoughts on education Swarajya Sastra A University has been named after him, Vinoba Bhave University, which is located in Hazaribagh district in the State of Jharkhand. In 1951 Vinoba Bhave started his land donation movement, the Bhoodan Movement. He took donated land from land owner Indians and gave it away to the poor and landless, for them to cultivate. Then after 1954, he started to ask for donations of whole villages in a programme he called Gramdan. He got more than 1000 villages by way of donation. Out of these, he obtained 175 donated villages in Tamil Nadu alone.
Vinobha Bhave and Land Donation Movement

Later life and death
Vinoba spent the later part of his life at his Brahma Vidya Mandir ashram in Paunar, Maharashtra. He died on 15 November 1982 after refusing food and medicine for a few days. Indira Gandhi cut short her visit from attending the funeral of Brezhnev, and came back to attend the funeral of Vinoba Bhave. V. S. Naipaul has given scathing criticism of Bhave in his collection of essays citing his lack of connection with rationality and excessive imitation of Gandhi. Even some of his admirers find fault with the extent of his devotion to Gandhi. Much more controversial was his support, ranging from covert to open, to Congress Party's government under Indira Gandhi, which was fast becoming unpopular. He controversially backed the Indian Emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, calling it Anushasana Parva (Time for Discipline). However, in his end days he was very much against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as she had ordered a shootout of the Sant Samaj who had undertaken a gherao of Parliament against cow slaughter.[citation needed]
Criticism
Awards
In 1958 Vinoba was the first recipient of the international Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1983.
Wanda Dynowska (Umadevi) (30 June 1888 - 20 March 1971) Polish Theosophist, writer, translator, publisher, social activist, promoter of intercultural exchanges between India and Poland, jogini, foundress of the Indian-Polish Library. Born in Sankt-Petersburg (Russia) to a family of Polish nobility. Studied in Krakow and Lausanne. From 1919 she became an active promoter of theosophy in Poland. She was General Secretary for Poland in Theosophical Society. In 1935 Dynowska came to India and got involved in new Hindu religious movements (with Ramana Maharishi, and philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, among others). She also became a close collaborator of Mahatma Gandhi supporting Indian movements for independence. In 1944, together with another Polish Hindu Maurice Frydman, she founded the Indian-Polish Library in Madras, which became for more than thirty years a major editorial body for Polish translations of main Hindu religious texts (e.g. Bhagavat Gita, Mahabharata, Ramayana) as well as for contemporary Indian poetry and literature. Dynowska translated from Polish to English, Tamil, and Hindi most important works of Polish poets, and published these works in India. She was an exceptionally active promoter of Polish culture and history in India. From 1960 she started helping Tibetan refugees in India. Living in their main centre in Dharmasala, Dynowska organized schools, education, and social infrastructure there. Additionally, she published Polish translations of Buddhist texts. She died in Mysore, and according to her will, her burial had an inter-religious (Catholic-Buddhist-Hindu) character. Sir William Wedderburn, 4th Baronet, JP DL (25 March 1838 25 January 1918) was a Scottish civil servant in India and a politician. He attempted to bring about reforms in banking to solve the problems of peasants during his working career. Failing to find support in reforms, he retired to help found the Indian National Congress and support local self-government.
Wanda Dynowska
Biography
William Wedderburn
Early life
Born in Edinburgh, the fourth and youngest son of Sir John Wedderburn, 2nd Baronet and Henrietta

Louise Milburn, he was educated at Hofwyl Workshop, then Loretto School and finally at Edinburgh University. He joined the Indian Civil Service as his father and an older brother had done. His older brother John had been killed in the 1857 uprising and William joined the service in 1860 after ranking third (of 160 applicants) in the entrance exam of 1859.
Career
He entered the Indian Civil Service in Bombay in 1860, served as District Judge and Judicial Commissioner in Sind; acted as secretary to Bombay Government, Judicial and Political Departments; and from 1885 acted as Judge of the High Court, Bombay. He retired when acting Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay in 1887. During his work he noted the troubles of peasantry arising from moneylending and he suggested that co-operative agricultural banks be established to provide credits at reasonable rates. The proposal was supported in India but was blocked by the India Office in India. Wedderburn supported reforms suggested by Lord Ripon to develop local self-government and equality to Indian judges. He was seen as supporting the aspirations of Indians and was denied a judge position in the Bombay high court. This led him to retire early in 1887. Along with Allan Octavian Hume he was a founder of the Indian National Congress and served as its president in 1889 and 1910. He worked along with influential Congress leaders in Bombay and in 1890 he chaired the British committee of the Indian National Congress, helped publish the journal India and attempted to support the movement through parliamentary action in Britain. He developed a close working relationship with G. K. Gokhale of the Congress. He was an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate in North Ayrshire in 1892 and served as Liberal Member of Parliament for Banffshire from 1893 to 1900. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Indian Expenditure in 1895 and chairman of Indian Parliamentary Committee. He was considered a great friend of the Indian Progressive Movement and presided at the Indian National Congress, 1889, later Chairman, British Committee of the Indian National Congress. In 1910 he returned to India as Congress president and tried to solve the rift between Hindus and Muslims and attempted to reconcile the differences between those who wished to work constitutionally and those who wanted to use more militant actions. He wrote a biographical memoir of A. O. Hume who died in 1912. He succeeded his brother, Sir David, to the baronetcy on 18 September 1882. He married Mary Blanche Hoskyns, daughter of Henry William Hoskyns, on 12 September 1878. A daughter, Dorothy, was born in Poona in 1879 and in 1884 they had a second daughter in London, Margaret Griselda. He died at his home in Meredith, Gloucestershire on 25 January 1918. Willie MacRae (May 18, 1923 April 7, 1985) was a Scottish nationalist politician and lawyer, best remembered for the mystery surrounding his death. MacRae was an active member of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and an anti-nuclear campaigner. A solicitor, MacRae had contested the SNP leadership in 1979, coming third in a three-way contest with 52 votes to Stephen Maxwell's 117 votes and winner Gordon Wilson's 530 votes. He was active outside Scotland too, having served in the Royal Indian Navy and becoming friendly to the campaign for independence for India. He was also the author of the maritime law code of Israel and emeritus professor at the University of Haifa. After his death a forest of 3,000 trees was planted in Israel to mark his death.
Willie MacRae
Death
MacRae left his Glasgow flat at 18:30 on 5 April 1985, to weekend at his cottage near Dornie. He was not seen again until the following morning around 10:00, when two Australian tourists saw his car lying on the moor a short distance from the junction of the A87 and A887 roads, about 30 yd (27 m) from the roadway, straddling a burn. The tourists flagged down the next car to pass by, which turned out to be driven by a doctor, Dorothy Messer, accompanied by her fianc as well as David Coutts, a Dundee SNP councillor who knew MacRae. It was discovered that MacRae was in the car. His hands were "folded on his lap", his head was "slumped on his right shoulder", and there was a "considerable amount of blood on his temple". He was

not wearing a seat belt. Another car was sent to call the emergency services. Dr Messer examined MacRae and found that he was still alive and breathing. She noted that one of his pupils was dilated, indicating the possibility of brain damage, and estimated that he had been in that state for 10 hours. MacRae was removed by ambulance to Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, accompanied by Dr Messer. After arrival it was decided to transfer him to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. At Aberdeen it was realised that the incident was more than a road accident; six hours after he had been found, a nurse washing his head discovered what appeared to be the entry wound of a gunshot. An X-ray confirmed that McRae had been shot above his right ear and a bullet was detected in his head. His brain was severely damaged and his vital functions very weak. The following day, on Sunday 7 April, after consultation with his next of kin, MacRae's life-support machine was switched off.
Investigation
The investigation was headed by Chief Superintendent Andrew Lester of Northern CID. Despite no weapon having yet been found, MacRae's car was moved at 12:00 on 7 April. It later transpired that the police had kept no record of the precise location where the car had been found, and the position stated by them was later found to be 1 mi (1.6 km) in error, and was corrected by a witness who had been present at the scene. A weapon was found the next day, in the burn over which the car had been discovered, 60 ft (18 m) from the vehicle. It was a Smith and Wesson .45 revolver belonging to MacRae which had been fired twice. No fingerprints were found on the gun, despite MacRae not wearing gloves when he was found.
Controversy
Although it was ruled at the time by authorities that Macrae's death was a suicide, the official account has been disputed, some claiming that the distance from Macrae's car at which the gun was found and the lack of fingerprints on it rendered a such a verdict not credible. Hamish Watt, a Scottish Member of Parliament from 1974 to 1979, has been quoted as saying that MacRae was assassinated for his too-extensive study of NATO activities in Scotland. At the time of his death, McRae had been working to counter plans to dump nuclear waste from Dounreay into the sea. Due to his house being burgled on repeated occasions prior to his death, he had taken to carrying a copy of the documents relating to his Dounreay work with him at all times. However, they were not found following his death, and the sole other copy which was kept in his office was stolen when it was burgled, no other items being taken.
Subsequent events
In 2005, Fergus Ewing MSP requested a meeting with Elish Angiolini, the Scottish Solicitor General to discuss allegations that have persisted that MacRae was under surveillance at the time of his death. The request was rebuffed, with Angiolini claiming that he had not been under surveillance and that she was satisfied that a thorough investigation into the case had been carried out. However, in July, 2006 a retired police officer, Iain Fraser who was working as a private investigator at the time of MacRae's death claimed that he had been anonymously employed to keep MacRae under surveillance only weeks before he died. The death of Willie MacRae received further attention when the events surrounding it formed the basis of a broadcast of the STV show Unsolved, originally broadcast in November 2006. In November 2010 John Finnie, the SNP group leader on Highland Council and a former police officer, wrote to the Lord Advocate urging her to reinvestigate MacRae's death and release any details so far withheld. Finnie's request was prompted by the release the previous month of further details concerning the death of David Kelly. In January 2011 the Crown Office requested the files on the case from Northern Constabulary.
External links
Death of William Macrae Official Northern Constabulary files and photographs The Death of William McRae Call for new probe of SNP activist Willie McRae's death

Who Killed Willie MacRae? Womesh Chaunder Bonnerjee (or Umesh Chandra Banerjee by current English orthography of Bengali names) (December 29, 1844 July 21, 1906) was an Indian barrister and was the first president of Indian National Congress. He was the first Indian to contest the election for British House of Commons. However he lost the election. He made two unsuccessful attempts to enter the British parliament.
Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee
Early days
Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee was born on December 29, 1844 at Calcutta (now Kolkata), in the presentday state of West Bengal in an upper middle class Bengali Hindu Kulin Brahmin family of considerable social standing. His father Grees Chunder was an attorney at the Calcutta High Court. He studied at the Oriental Seminary and the Hindu School. In 1859, he married Hemangini Motilal. His career began in 1862 when he joined the firm of W. P. Gillanders, Attorneys of the Calcutta Supreme Court, as a clerk. In this post he acquired a good knowledge of law which greatly helped him in his later career. In 1864 he was sent to England through a scholarship from Mr. R. J. Jijibhai of Bombay where he joined the Middle Temple and was called to the Bar in June, 1867. On his return to Calcutta in 1868, he found a patron in Sir Charles Paul, Barrister-at-Law of the Calcutta High Court. Another barrister, J. P. Kennedy, also greatly helped him to establish his reputation as a lawyer. Within a few years he became the most sought after barrister in the High Court. He was the first Indian to act as a Standing Counsel, in which capacity he officiated four times. In 1883 he defended Surendranath Banerjee in the famous Contempt of Court Case against him in the Calcutta High Court.
As a president of Indian National Congress
He presided over the first session of the Indian National Congress held at Bombay in 1885. In the 1886 session held at Calcutta, under the presidency of Dadabhai Naoroji, he proposed the formation of standing committees of the Congress in each province for the better co-ordination of its work and it was on this occasion that he advocated that the Congress should confine its activities to political matters only, leaving the question of social reforms to other organisations. He was the president of the Indian National Congress again in the 1892 session in Allahabad where he denounced the position that India had to prove her worthiness for political freedom. He founded East India association in 1865. In 1906, Banerjee died after a long illness and was given a non-religious burial in accordance with his wishes. He dictated his epitaph to his daughter Susie: Here beside the ashes of his son rest the ashes of Wyomesh Chandra Bannerjee Hindu Brahmin who died on a visit to England [and] fell victim to Brights disease on 21-07-06. One of his grandsons, Joyanto Nath Chaudhuri later on headed the Indian Army. Yamuna Karjee (1898-1953) was an Indian independence activist.
Death
Yamuna Karjee
Yamuna Karjee was born in a small village name Deopar near Pusa in Darbhanga District of Bihar in 1898 in a Bhumihar Brahmin family. His father Anu Karjee was a farmer who died when Yamuna Karjee was just 6 months old. From his school days itself, he was drawn towards Indias freedom struggle and the Kisan Movement and Peasant movement under Swami Sahajanand Saraswatis leadership. In the peasant movement he became a close associate of other revolutionary peasant leaders like Karyanand Sharma, Yadunandan Sharma and Panchanan Sharma. For higher studies he went to the Presidency College, Kolkata, and also obtained a degree in Law. In Calcutta he came in contact with several freedom fighters and Congress leaders like Dr. B.C. Roy, Dr. Sri Krishna Sinha, Rahul Sankrityayan etc.
Career
Spurning the offers of several government jobs, he became a Hindi journalist of repute. He joined the

editorial wing of Hindi weekly Bharat Mitra published in Calcutta. He also took part in Gandhijis non cooperation movement from 192021 and was jailed in 1929-30 for taking part in civil disobedience movement and Namak Satyagrah. He won the first election for Bihar and Orissa Assembly in 1937 as a Congress candidate. He was one of the strongest pillars of the peasant movement in Bihar under the leadership of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati. Yamanu Karjee was also one of tallest Bhumihar Leaders in North Bihar. He along with Rahul Sankritayan, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar and other popular Hindi literaries started publishing a Hindi weekly Hunkar from Bihar in 1940, guided by his respected Gandhian friend & relative Bashishtha Narayan Thakur, a Graduate from Presidency College Calcutta who refused to join Bihar Provincial Services, popularly known as Guruji (Master Saheb). Hunkar later became the mouthpiece of the peasant movement and the agrarian movement in Bihar. Yamuna Karjee was also the President of the Kisan Sabha for some time & was elected to the post of President Bihar Journalist association in 1947-48.
Death and afterward
He died of cancer in October 1953 at an early age of 55. After his untimely demise the peasant movement lost momentum in Bihar and became rudderless. His name also appears in Bipan Chandra's masterpiece India's Struggle for Independence. There is a college near Muzaffarpur named after Yamuna Karjee. Giani Zail Singh ( pronunciation Wikipedia:Media helpFile:Zail_singh.ogg; May 5, 1916 December 25, 1994) was the seventh President of India, serving from 1982 to 1987. Prior to his presidency, he was a politician with the Indian National Congress party, and had held several ministerial posts in the Union Cabinet, including that of Home Minister. His presidency was marked by Operation Blue Star, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and the 1984 antiSikh riots. He died of injuries in 1994 after a car accident.
Zail Singh
Early life
He was born in Sandhwan, Faridkot district on May 5, 1916 to Kishan Singh. He was a Sikh by religion, was given the title of Giani, as he was educated and learned about Guru Granth Sahib at Shaheed Sikh Missionary College in Amritsar. However, he did not have formal secular education.
State Politics (1947-1971)
In 1947, with the reorganization of India along secular lines an, he opposed Harindar Singh, ruler of Faridkot State and was incarcerated and tortured for five years. He was called on to be the Revenue Minister of the recently formed Patiala and East Punjab States Union, under Chief Minister Gian Singh Rarewala in 1949 and later became Minister of Agriculture in 1951. From 1956 to 1962, he was a member of the Rajya Sabha.[citation needed]
Chief Minister of Punjab (1972-77)
Zail Singh was elected as a Congress Chief Minister of Punjab in 1972. He arranged massive religious gatherings, started public functions with a traditional Sikh prayer, inaugurated a highway named after Guru Gobind Singh, and named a township after the Guru's son. He created a lifelong pension scheme for the freedom fighters of the state. He repatriated the remains of Udham Singh from London, armaments and articles belonging to Guru Gobind Singh.
Central Government President of India
In 1980, Zail Singh was elected to the 7th Lok Sabha, and appointed to join Indira Gandhi's cabinet as Minister of Home Affairs. In 1982 he was unanimously nominated to serve as the President. Nonetheless, some in the media felt that the president had been chosen for being an Indira loyalist rather than an eminent person. If my leader had said I should pick up a broom and be a sweeper, I would have done that. She chose me to be President, Singh was quoted to have said after his election. He took the oath of office on July 25, 1982.

He served beside Gandhi, and protocol dictated that he should be briefed every week by her on the affairs of the state. The day before Operation Blue Star, he met with Gandhi for more than an hour, but she omitted even sharing a word about her plan. Following the operation he was pressured to resign from his post by Sikhs. He decided against resignation fearing to aggravate the situation on advice from Yogi Bhajan. He was subsequently called before the Akal Takhat to apologize and explain his inaction at the desecration of the Harimandir Sahib and killing of innocent Sikhs. Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984, and he appointed Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister.
Latter Term
His remaining term was full of controversies on account of his soured relations with prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. During this time, he ensured that the prime minister adhered to protocols and forced him to remove KK Tewary, a congress MP who alleged on the floor of the Lok Sabha that the president had sheltered terrorists in the Rashtrapati Bhawan. Singh refused assent to the "Indian Post Office (Amendment) Bill" in 1986 to show his opposition to the bill. The bill was later withdrawn by the V. P. Singh Government in 1990.
Death
On November 29, 1994 Zail Singh was involved in a serious vehicle accident near Kiratpur Sahib in Ropar District on his way to the Anandpur Sahib. He later died at the Post Graduate Institute, Chandigarh on 25 December 1994 and was cremated at the Raj Ghat Memorial near Old Delhi.

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President of the Punjab Kisan Sabha

Harsha Chhina Mogha Morcha 1946-47

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