Biography Express

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 14:23:00 +0000

Introduction:

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, known as the “Iron Man of India’ is a revered name in Indian politics. A lawyer and a political activist, he played a leading role during the Indian Independence Movement. After independence, he was crucial in the integration of over 565 princely states into the Indian Union. He was deeply influenced by Gandhi’s ideology and principles, having worked very closely with leader. Despite being the choice of the people, on the request of Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel stepped down from the candidacy of Congress President, which ultimately turned out to be the election to choose the first Prime Minister of independent India. He was the first Home Minister of Independent India and his uncompromising efforts towards consolidation of the country earned him the title ‘Iron Man of India’.

In 2014, the Government of India had decided to celebrate the birthday of Sardar Patel as the "National Unity Day" to honor Sardar Patel's contribution to integrated India. Since 2014, we are celebrating the 31st October (date of birth of Sardar Patel) as the "National Unity Day". Apart from this, the world's tallest statue, the Statue of Unity, was dedicated to him on 31 October 2018, which is about 182 meters (597 ft) high.

Early life

Vallabhbhai Patel was born on October 31, 1875 in Nadiad village of modern day Gujarat to Zaverbhai and Ladbai. Vallabhbhai, his father had served in the army of the Queen of Jhansi while his mother was a very spiritual woman.

Starting his academic career in a Gujarati medium school, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel later shifted to an English medium school. In 1897, Vallabhbhai passed his high school and started preparing for law examination. He went to pursue a degree in law and travelled to England in 1910. He completed his law degree in 1913 from Inns of Court and came back to India to start his law practice in Godhra, Gujarat. For his legal proficiency, Vallabhbhai was offered many lucrative posts by the British Government but he rejected all. He was a staunch opponent of the British government and its laws and therefore decided not to work for the British.

In 1891 he married Zaverbai and the couple had two children.

Patel shifted his practice to Ahmedabad. He became a member of the Gujarat Club where he attended a lecture by Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi’s words deeply affected Vallabhbai and he soon adopted Gandhian principles to become a staunch follower of the charismatic leader.

Role in Indian National Movement

In 1917, Sardar Vallabhbhai was elected as the Secretary of the Gujarat Sabha, the Gujarat wing of the Indian National Congress. In 1918, he led a massive "No Tax Campaign" that urged the farmers not to pay taxes after the British insisted on tax after the floods in Kaira. The peaceful movement forced the British authorities to return the land taken away from the farmers. His effort to bring together the farmers of his area brought him the title of 'Sardar'. He actively supported the non-cooperation Movement launched by Gandhi. Patel toured the nation with him, recruited 300,000 members and helped collect over Rs. 1.5 million.

In 1928, the farmers of Bardoli again faced a problem of "tax-hike". After prolonged summons, when the farmers refused to pay the extra tax, the government seized their lands in retaliation. The agitation took on for more than six months. After several rounds of negotiations by Patel, the lands were returned to farmers after a deal was struck between the government and farmers’ representatives.

In 1930, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was among the leaders imprisoned for participating in the famous Salt Satyagraha movement initiated by Mahatma Gandhi. His inspiring speeches during the "Salt Movement" transformed the outlook of numerous people, who later played a major role in making the movement successful. He led the Satyagraha movement across Gujarat when Gandhi was under imprisonment, upon request from the congress members.

Sardar Patel was freed in 1931, following an agreement signed between Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Irwin, the then Viceroy of India. The treaty was popularly known as the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. The same year, Patel was elected as the President of Indian National Congress in its Karachi session where the party deliberated its future path. Congress committed itself towards defence of fundamental and human rights. It was in this session that the dream of a secular nation was conceived.

During the legislative elections of 1934, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel campaigned for the Indian National Congress. Though he did not contest, Sardar Patel helped his fellow party mates during the election.

In the 1942 Quit India Movement, Patel continued his unwavering support to Gandhi when several contemporary leaders criticized the latter’s decision. He continued travelling throughout the country propagating the agenda of the movement in a series of heart-felt speeches. He was arrested again in 1942 and was imprisoned in the Ahmednagar fort till 1945 along with other Congress leaders.

Sardar Patel’s journey often saw a number of confrontations with other important leaders of the congress. He voiced his annoyance at Jawaharlal Nehru openly when the latter adopted socialism in 1936. Patel was also wary of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and considered him to be "keen on more power within the party”.

Sardar Patel & the Partition of India

The separatist movement lead by Muslim League leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah led to a series of violent Hindu-Muslim riots across the country just before the independence. In Sardar Patel’s opinion, the open communal conflicts incited by the riots had the potential to establish a weak Government at the centre post-independence which will be disastrous for consolidating a democratic nation. Patel went on to work on a solution with V.P. Menon, a civil servant during December 1946 and accepted his suggestion of creating a separate dominion based on religious inclination of states. He represented India in the Partition Council.

Contributions to Post-independence India

After India achieved independence, Patel became the first Home Minister and also the Deputy Prime Minister. Patel played a very crucial role in post-independence India by successfully integrating around 562 princely states under the Indian Dominion. The British Government had presented these rulers with two alternatives - they could join India or Pakistan; or they could stay independent. This clause magnified the difficulty of process to mammoth proportions. Congress entrusted this intimidating task to Sardar Patel who started lobbying for integration on August 6, 1947. He was successful in integrating all of them barring Jammu and Kashmir, Junagarh and Hyderabad. He eventually dealt with the situation with his sharp political acumen and secured their accession. The India that we see today was a result of the efforts put in by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

Patel was a leading member of the Constituent Assembly of India and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar was appointed on his recommendation. He was the key force in establishing the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Police Service. He took personal interest in initiating a restoration endeavour of the Somnath Temple in Saurashtra, Gujarat. Patel dealt ruthlessly with the Pakistan’s efforts to invade Kashmir in September 1947. He oversaw immediate expansion of the army and marked improvement of other infrastructural aspects. He often disagreed with Nehru’s policies, especially about his dealings with Pakistan regarding the refugee issues. He organised multiple refugee camps in Punjab and Delhi, and later in West Bengal.

Death

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's health started declining in 1950. He realized that he was not going to live much longer. On 2nd November 1950, his health deteriorated further and he was confined to bed. After suffering a massive heart attack, on 15 December 1950, the great soul left the world. He was posthumously conferred the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest Civilian honour, in 1991. His birthday, October 31, was declared Rashtriya Ekta Divas in 2014.

Mother Teresa (Saint Teresa of Calcutta)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 13:36:00 +0000

Introduction:

Mother Teresa (1910-1997) was a Roman Catholic nun from the Republic of Macedonia who adopted India as her country of service. She dedicated her life in the service of the poor, ailing and the destitute through the Missionaries of Charities, an order of Roman Catholic nuns, in Kolkata, India. She had once said, “Love cannot remain by itself – it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service.” Her work transcended geo-political borders and she encompassed the whole of humanity in her healing embrace.

Her work was recognised through numerous international and national awards and recognitions. She was canonised at a ceremony in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican by Pope Francis on September 4, 2016 and came to be known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

Early Life

Mother Teresa was born on 26th August, 1910. She was born as Anjezë (Agnes) Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, the then Ottoman Empire (now the capital of Republic of Macedonia), on August 26, 1910 in an Albanian family. She was the youngest in the family. Her father, Nikola Bojaxhiu worked as a construction contractor as well as a trader and her mother, Dranafile Bojaxhiu hailed from a village near Gjakova. The family was devout catholic and Agnes’s father was a strong proponent of Albanian independence. Nikolai fell ill and ultimately succumbed to his ailments in 1919 when Agnes was just eight-year-old. Agnes was particularly close to her mother, who was a deeply religious woman with deep commitment to charity.

From a very young age, Agnes was attracted to a monastic life. She began her education in a Convent-run school and joined the local Sacred Heart choir in her church. She had heard the stories of Catholic Missionaries and their work of serving humanity. By the age of 12, she strongly believed that it was the calling of her life. Her pilgrimages to various Catholic churches, especially the shrine of the Black Madonna of Vitina-Letnice, strengthened her beliefs and inclinations.

Education and career

Mother Teresa used to go to the Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, to learn English, the language the Sisters of Loreto used to teach school children in India. After that she went to Darjeeling in India and there she learnt the language Bengali and taught at the St. Teresa's School, a schoolhouse close to her convent. She took her religious vows while serving as a teacher in eastern Calcutta. Later on after serving the school for almost twenty years, she became the Principal of the school. She loved serving as a teacher as it satisfied her and alongside helped immensely to those in despair and horror.

Dedication to poor

Mother Teresa's group continued to expand throughout the 1970s, opening new missions in places such as Amman, Jordan; London, England; and New York, New York. She received both recognition and financial support through such awards as the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize and a grant from the Joseph Kennedy Jr. Foundation. Benefactors, or those donating money, regularly would arrive to support works in progress or to encourage the Sisters to open new ventures.

By 1979 Mother Teresa's groups had more than two hundred different operations in over twenty-five countries around the world, with dozens more ventures on the horizon. The same year she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1986 she persuaded President Fidel Castro (1926–) to allow a mission in Cuba. The characteristics of all of Mother Teresa's works—shelters for the dying, orphanages, and homes for the mentally ill—continued to be of service to the very poor.

In 1988 Mother Teresa sent her Missionaries of Charity into Russia and opened a home for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS; an incurable disease that weakens the immune system) patients in San Francisco, California. In 1991 she returned home to Albania and opened a home in Tirana, the capital. At this time there were 168 homes operating in India.

The Call

When Mother Teresa was 12 years old, she began to feel called to serve God as a nun. Deciding to become a nun was a very difficult decision. Becoming a nun not only meant giving up the chance to marry and have children, but it also meant giving up all her worldly possessions and her family, perhaps forever.

For five years, Mother Teresa thought hard about whether or not to become a nun. During this time, she sang in the church choir, helped her mother organize church events, and went on walks with her mother to hand out food and supplies to the poor.

When Mother Teresa was 17, she decided to become a nun. Having read many articles about the work Catholic missionaries were doing in India, Mother Teresa was determined to go there. Mother Teresa applied to the Loreto order of nuns, based in Ireland but with missions in India.

In September 1928, 18-year-old Mother Teresa said goodbye to her family to travel to Ireland and then on to India. She never saw her mother or sister again.

Becoming a Nun

It took more than two years to become a Loreto nun. After spending six weeks in Ireland learning the history of the Loreto order and to study English, Mother Teresa then traveled to India, where she arrived on Jan. 6, 1929.

After two years as a novice, Mother Teresa took her first vows as a Loreto nun on May 24, 1931.

As a new Loreto nun, Mother Teresa (known then only as Sister Teresa, a name she chose after St. Teresa of Lisieux) settled into the Loreto Entally convent in Kolkata (previously called Calcutta) and began teaching history and geography at the convent schools.

Usually, Loreto nuns were not allowed to leave the convent; however, in 1935, 25-year-old Mother Teresa was given a special exemption to teach at a school outside of the convent, St. Teresa's. After two years at St. Teresa's, Mother Teresa took her final vows on May 24, 1937, and officially became "Mother Teresa."

Almost immediately after taking her final vows, Mother Teresa became the principal of St. Mary's, one of the convent schools, and was once again restricted to staying within the convent's walls.

Becoming a Saint

After Mother Teresa's death, the Vatican began the lengthy process of canonization. After an Indian woman was cured of her tumor after praying to Mother Teresa, a miracle was declared, and the third of the four steps to sainthood was completed on Oct. 19, 2003, when the Pope approved Mother Teresa's beatification, awarding Mother Teresa the title "Blessed."

The final stage required to become a saint involves a second miracle. On December 17, 2015, Pope Francis recognized the medically inexplicable waking (and healing) of an extremely ill Brazilian man from a coma on December 9, 2008, just minutes before he was to undergo emergency brain surgery as being caused by the intervention of Mother Teresa.

Mother Teresa was canonized (pronounced a saint) on September 4, 2016.

Founding the Missionaries of Charity

Mother Teresa started with what she knew. After walking around the slums for a while, she found some small children and began to teach them. She had no classroom, no desks, no chalkboard, and no paper, so she picked up a stick and began drawing letters in the dirt. Class had begun.

Soon after, Mother Teresa found a small hut that she rented and turned it into a classroom. Mother Teresa also visited the children's families and others in the area, offering a smile and limited medical help. As people began to hear about her work, they gave donations.

In March 1949, Mother Teresa was joined by her first helper, a former pupil from Loreto. Soon she had 10 former pupils helping her.

At the end of Mother Teresa's provisionary year, she petitioned to form her order of nuns, the Missionaries of Charity. Her request was granted by Pope Pius XII; the Missionaries of Charity was established on Oct. 7, 1950.

Awards and Recognitions

Mother Teresa believed in the good of Humanity. She believed “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” And that message became the basis of her life’s work. She worked tirelessly, tending to the ailing, teaching the children and speaking to the topmost tier of the society of her vision. Mother Teresa not only built a giant institution and gave it the vision but also inspired millions of people around the globe to do their bit.

She received numerous awards and recognitions for her endeavours. She received the Padma Shree in 1962 and the Bharat Ratna in 1980. She was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding in 1962 for her work in South East Asia. She accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 but refused to attend the ceremonial banquets and requested the authorities to donate the expenses to charity. She was honoured with a number of civilian recognitions in other countries like the UK, the US, Australia and Germany. The Roman Catholic Church recognised her voluminous work with the first ‘Pope John XXIII Peace Prize’ in 1979.

Controversies

Mother’s efforts received criticism from certain human rights agencies once she vocally expressed her views against contraception and abortion. Some allegations were made against her hospices for not providing proper pain alleviating methods or medical attentions to the dying despite receiving millions of dollars in donation for that specific purpose.

Later Years and Death

Despite the controversy, Mother Teresa continued to be an advocate for those in need. In the 1980s, Mother Teresa, already in her 70s, opened Gift of Love homes in New York, San Francisco, Denver, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for AIDS sufferers.

Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, Mother Teresa's health deteriorated, but she still traveled the world, spreading her message.

When Mother Teresa, age 87, died of heart failure on Sept. 5, 1997 (just five days after Princess Diana's death), the world mourned her passing. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets to see her body, while millions more watched her state funeral on television.

After the funeral, Mother Teresa's body was laid to rest at the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata. When Mother Teresa passed away, she left behind more than 4,000 Missionary of Charity Sisters at 610 centers in 123 countries.

Dr B.R. Ambedkar (Indian political reformer)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 14:27:00 +0000

Introduction:

B.R. Ambedkar “Babasaheb” was an Indian political reformer who campaigned for the rights of the ‘untouchable’ caste of India. He played a role in the Indian independence movement and also played a key role in drafting the Indian constitution and the reformation of Indian society through the promotion of greater equality and rights for both the poor and women.

Ambedkar was also a prolific scholar, attending university in Mumbai, New York and London; he specialised in law, economics and political science, and made contributions to Indian economic thought. In 1956, shortly before his death, he converted from Hinduism to Buddhism encouraging many fellow ‘untouchables’ to also convert.

Early Life

Bhimrao Ambedkar was born to Bhimabai and Ramji on 14 April 1891 in Mhow Army Cantonment, Central Provinces (Madhya Pradesh). Ambedkar’s father was a Subedar in the Indian Army and after his retirement in 1894, the family moved to Satara, also in Central Provinces. Shortly after this, Bhimrao’s mother passed away. Four years later, his father remarried and the family shifted to Bombay. In 1906, 15 year old Bhimrao married Ramabai, a 9 year old girl. His father Ramji Sakpal died in Bombay, in 1912.

Throughout his childhood, Ambedkar faced the stigmas of caste discrimination. Hailing from the Hindu Mahar caste, his family was viewed as “untouchable” by the upper classes. The discrimination and humiliation haunted Ambedkar at the Army school. Fearing social outcry, the teachers would segregate the students of lower class from that of Brahmins and other upper classes. The untouchable students were often asked by the teacher to sit outside the class. After shifting to Satara, he was enrolled at a local school but the change of school did not change the fate of young Bhimrao. Discrimination followed wherever he went. After coming back from the US, Ambedkar was appointed as the Defence secretary to the King of Baroda but there also he had to face the humiliation for being an ‘Untouchable’.

Education

He cleared his matriculation in 1908 from Elphinstone High School. In 1908, Ambedkar got the opportunity to study at the Elphinstone College and obtained his graduate degree in Economics and Political Science in the year 1912 from Bombay University. Besides clearing all the exams successfully Ambedkar also obtained a scholarship of twenty five rupees a month from the Gaekwad ruler of Baroda, Sahyaji Rao III. Ambedkar decided to use the money for higher studies in the USA. He enrolled in the Columbia University in New York City to study Economics. He completed his Master’s degree in June 1915 after successfully completing his thesis titled ‘Ancient Indian Commerce’.

In 1916, he enrolled in the London School of Economics and started working on his doctoral thesis titled “The problem of the rupee: Its origin and its solution”. With the help of the former Bombay Governor Lord Sydenham, Ambedkar became a professor of political economy at the Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics in Bombay. In order to continue his further studies, he went to England in 1920 at his own expense. There he was received the D.Sc by the London University. Ambedkar also spent a few months at the University of Bonn, Germany, to study economics. He received his PhD degree in Economics in 1927. On 8 June, 1927, he was awarded a Doctorate by the University of Columbia.

Movement Against Caste Discrimination

After returning to India, Bhimrao Ambedkar decided to fight against the caste discrimination that plagued him throughout his life. In his testimony before the Southborough Committee in preparation of the Government of India Act in 1919, Ambedkar opined that there should be separate electoral system for the Untouchables and other marginalised communities. He contemplated he idea of reservations for Dalits and other religious outcasts.

Ambedkar began to find ways to reach to the people and make them understand the drawbacks of the prevailing social evils. He launched a newspaper called “Mooknayaka” (leader of the silent) in 1920 with the assistance of Shahaji II, the Maharaja of Kolkapur. It is said that after hearing his speech at a rally, Shahu IV, an influential ruler of Kolhapur, dined with the leader. The incident also created a huge uproar in the socio-political arena of the country.

Ambedkar started his legal career after passing the Bar course in Gray’s Inn. He applied his litigious skills in advocating cases of caste discrimination. His resounding victory in defending several non-Brahmin leaders accusing the Brahmins of ruining India, established the bases of his future battles.

By 1927, Ambedkar launched full-fledged movements for Dalit rights. He demanded public drinking water sources open to all and right for all castes to enter temples. He openly condemned Hindu Scriptures advocating discrimination and arranged symbolic demonstrations to enter the Kalaram Temple in Nashik.

In 1932, the Poona Pact was signed between Dr. Ambedkar and Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, representative of the Hindu Brahmins relinquishing reservation of seats for the untouchable classes in the Provisional legislatures, within the general electorate. These classes were later designated as Scheduled Classes and Scheduled Tribes.

Political Career

In 1936, Ambedkar founded the Independent Labor Party. In the 1937 elections to the Central Legislative Assembly, his party won 15 seats. Ambedkar oversaw the transformation of his political party into the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, although it performed poorly in the elections held in 1946 for the Constituent Assembly of India.

Ambedkar objected to the decision of the Congress and Mahatma Gandhi to call the untouchable community as Harijans. He would say that even the members of untouchable community are same as the other members of the society. Ambedkar was appointed on the Defence Advisory Committee and the Viceroy’s Executive Council as Minister for Labor.

His reputation as a scholar led to his appointment as free India’s first Law Minister and chairman of the committee responsible to draft a constitution for independent India.

Framer of the Constitution of India

Dr. Ambedkar was appointed as the chairman of the constitution drafting committee on August 29, 1947. Ambedkar emphasized on the construction of a virtual bridge between all classes of the society. According to him, it would be difficult to maintain the unity of the country if the difference among the classes were not met. He put particular emphasis on religious, gender and caste equality. He was successful in receiving support of the Assembly to introduce reservation for members of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in education, government jobs and civil services.

Br Ambedkar & Conversion to Buddhism

In 1950, Ambedkar travelled to Sri Lanka to attend a convention of Buddhist scholars and monks. After his return he decided to write a book on Buddhism and soon, converted to Buddhism. In his speeches, Ambedkar lambasted the Hindu rituals and caste divisions. Ambedkar founded the Bharatiya Bauddha Mahasabha in 1955. His book, "The Buddha and His Dhamma" was published posthumously.

On October 14, 1956 Ambedkar organized a public ceremony to convert around five lakh of his supporters to Buddhism. Ambedkar traveled to Kathmandu to attend the Fourth World Buddhist Conference. He completed his final manuscript, "The Buddha or Karl Marx" on December 2, 1956.

Death

Since 1954-55 Ambedkar was suffering from serious health problems including diabetes and weak eyesight. On 6 December, 1956 he died at his home in Delhi. Since, Ambedkar adopted Buddhism as his religion, a Buddhist-style cremation was organized for him. The ceremony was attended by hundreds of thousands of supporters, activists and admirers.

P. T. Usha (Queen of Indian track and field)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 14:59:00 +0000

(27 June 1964)

P. T. Usha (Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil Usha) was one of India's best-known women athletes. She remained the queen of track and field for almost two decades. P.T. Usha was fondly called the "Payyoli express" and the golden girl because of her awesome speed on the track.

Early Life

Payyoli Tevaraparampil Usha was born in a poor family in Meladi-Payyoli village, near Calicut (Kozhikode), Kerala on June 27, 1964. Usha had to face ill health and poverty as a young girl. The initials in Usha's name stand for Payyoli Tevaraparampil, her family names, according to the traditional naming system in South India. In 1991, Usha married V. Srinivasan and gave birth to a son, Ujjwal.

Career

As a child Usha showed an early aptitude for sports. This won her a scholarship of Rs. 250 from the Kerala government and led Usha to a special sports school at Cannore. In 1979 Usha participated in the National School Games. It was here that O. M. Nambiar (who coached her throughout most of her career) spotted her. He realized that this girl had a great potential. This proved the turning point of her illustrious carrier.

Usha began her international carrier at the Moscow Olympics in 1980 but she proved her real mettle in the 1982 Asian Games in New Delhi, winning the silver in the 100 m and 200 m event. The Jakarta Asian Meet in 1985 Usha elevated her to the position of the sprint queen as she won five gold medals (in the 100m, 200m, 400m, 400m hurdles and the 4x400m relay) and a bronze in the 100m relay.

The Seoul Asian games proved an icing on cake of her athletics carrier, where Usha notched up four Gold medals and silver. Later, P.T Usha started an athletics school at Koyilandi near Kozhikode, Kerala to impart training to girls from all over the country. This school recruits children in the 10-12 age group.

In 1991, she married V. Srinivasan. After the birth of her son, she came back to athletics and won bronze medals in the 200 m and 400 m at the Asian Track Federation meet at Fukuoka in Japan in 1998. She retired from athletics in the year 2000 and set up her sports academy in Kerala.

Throughout her carrier Usha never looked back. In fact, at one point of time she returned back to track after a gap of 4 years and won a silver medal at the Hiroshima Asiad! But the greatest disappointment came at the Los Angeles Olympics, where Usha missed the bronze medal by just 1/100th of a second. This was a heart break for the whole country.

She was awarded the Arjuna Award in 1983 and the Padma Shree in 1985.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (Emperor of Literature)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 13:00:00 +0000

(27 June 1838 – 8 April 1894)

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay also known as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee was a Bengali writer, poet and journalist who standardized and modernized the prose form of Bengali literature, both in fiction and non-fiction, and is known as sahitya samrat (emperor of literature) in Bengali. India's national song Vande Mataram, which had given rise to the concept of the nation as mother and inspired the Indian nation during its struggle for independence, was taken from his novel Anandamath.

Early Life

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay or Bankim Chandra Chatterjee was born on 27 June 1838 in the village Kanthalpara in the town of North 24 Parganas, Near Naihati, in an orthodox Bengali Brahmin family, the youngest of three brothers, to Yadav Chandra Chattopadhyaya and Durgadebi. His father, a government official, went on to become the Deputy Collector of Midnapur. One of his brothers, Sanjib Chandra Chattopadhyay was also a novelist and his known for his famous book “Palamau”.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay was educated at the Hooghly Mohsin College and later at the Presidency College, graduating with a degree in Arts in 1858. He was one of the first two graduates of the University of Calcutta namely he and Jadunath Bose. He later obtained a degree in Law as well, in 1869.

He was appointed as a Deputy Collector, just like his father, of Jessore, Chattopadhyay went on to become a Deputy Magistrate, retiring from government service in 1891. His years at work were peppered with incidents that brought him into conflict with the ruling British. However, he was made a Companion, Order of the Indian Empire in 1894.

He was married when he was only eleven. At that time his wife was only five years old. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay was only twenty two when his wife died. After some time he married again. His second wife was Rajlakshmi Devi. They had three daughters but no son.

Career

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee firstly started to publish his Novel in a newspaper and sell it weekly and later he started to write his own novels and publish it. He began his career as a writer.

As a writer, he had a great talent in him. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay started to write his Novel in the Bengali language. He tried to write many novels in English but his literacy in English was very poor so he decided to move his novel writing to Bengali only. His first Bengali novel was published in 1865.

He shot into the limelight with Durgeshnandini, his first Bengali romance, published in 1865. He then went on to write other famous novels like Kapalkundala in 1866, Mrinalini in 1869, Vishbriksha in 1873, Chandrasekhar in 1877, Rajani in 1877, Rajsimha in 1881 and Devi Chaudhurani in 1884. Although Bankim is known for all of his novels and essays but he is known for ‘Anandamath (The Abbey of Bliss) the most as it was from this novel that Rabindranath Tagore took the song ‘Vande Mataram’ and converted into the national song of India.

Death

Superb story-teller, and a master of romance passed away on April 8, 1894. No Bengali writer before or since has enjoyed such spontaneous and universal popularity as Chatterjee. His novels have been translated in almost all the major languages of India.

Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam – The Missile Man of India

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 11:30:00 +0000

15-Oct -1931 to 27 July 2015

Bharat Ratna Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Ab dul Kalam, generally known as Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, was the 11th President of India (2002-2007). He was elected against Lakshmi Sehgal in 2002 and had support from both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress, the two leading political parties of India. By profession, he was a scientist and an administrator in India. He worked with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) as an aerospace engineer before becoming the President of India. His work on the development of launch vehicle and ballistic missile technology had earned him the name of the ‘Missile Man of India’. The Pokhran-II nuclear tests conducted in India in 1998 after the original nuclear test of 1974 saw him in a pivotal political, organisational and technical role.

Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was the visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Indore; the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; and the Indian Institute of Management, Shillong. He was a professor of Aerospace Engineering at the JSS University in Mysore and at the Anna University in Chennai, apart from being an adjunct and visiting faculty at other research and academic institutions in India. He was the honorary fellow of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and the Chancellor of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology at Thiruvananthapuram.

In his book ‘India 2020’, he recommended plans to make the nation a fully developed one by the year 2020. His interactions with the student community and his motivational speeches made him quite popular among the youth. In 2011, he launched a mission called ‘What Can I Give Movement’ aimed at the youth of India, which focused on defeating corruption in the country.

Early Life

Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was born in a necessitous and little educated Tamil family on 15 October 1931, at Rameswaram district of Tamil Nadu, India. His father, Jainulabdeen, was a boat owner, and his mother, Ashiamma, was a homemaker. He started working at a young age to support his father. He received average grades in school but was seen as a hardworking and bright student with a strong desire to learn things. He used to study for hours, especially mathematics. He completed his schooling from Rameswaram Elementary School. In 1954, he graduated in Physics from St. Joseph’s College in Tiruchirappalli, which was then affiliated to the University of Madras. Thereafter, in 1955, he moved to Madras (now Chennai) and joined the Madras Institute of Technology and studied aerospace engineering. His dream was to become a fighter pilot but he was ranked ninth while the IAF offered only eight slots. He remained a bachelor.

Kalam rose from obscurity through his personal and professional struggles and his work on Agni, Prithvi, Akash, Trishul and Nag missiles became a household name in India and raised the nation’s prestige to international reckoning.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as a President of India

In the Presidential election held on July 15, 2002, Dr. A.P.J. Kalam, a renowed scientist of the country, was elected with an overwhelming majority. The election of Dr. Kalam, the son of a poor boatman from Tamil Nadu, is a tribute not only to the sterling qualities of the man but also to the democratic process of the country. This ‘missile man’ of India, is a real visionary who rose to be Scientific Advisor to Prime Minister by sheer hard work and intelligence. He is a man with a vision.

On his election to the highest office in the country, Dr. Kalam said, “I am indeed delighted to have become President. I thank God, my parents and the great minds of India for having got me the status of First Citizen.” His message to the nation was: “We need a vision, a second Vision 2020, for the nation to get India transformed into a developed country in 20 years.”

Kalam’s Death

On 27 July 2015, Dr. Abdul Kalam was delivering a lecture at IIM Shillong where he suffered a heart attack and his condition became critical, so, he was shifted to Bethany Hospital where thereafter, he died of cardiac arrest. His last words, to Srijan Pal Singh, were "Funny guy! Are you doing well?"

Margot Robbie

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 10 Aug 2019 14:29:00 +0000

July 2, 1990

Margot Robbie is an Australian actress, who started with roles in a few Australian independent films and television series, and later moved to the U.S. to pursue her Hollywood dream. She relocated to Los Angeles after working on the successful Australian TV series 'Neighbours' for three years. Within a few years in Hollywood, she has managed to work with prominent Hollywood actors and directors, and has earned praise from the audience as well as critics. Starting with the film 'About Time', she went on to star in Martin Scorsese's biographical crime drama 'The Wolf of Wall Street', and attracted attention from film critics. She soon played lead roles in a number of successful movies like 'Focus', 'Suite Française', 'Z for Zachariah' and 'The Legend of Tarzan'. She won the hearts of the audience with her portrayal of Harley Quinn, an infamous DC Comics villain, in her latest movie 'Suicide Squad'. She soon got to host the 42nd season premiere of 'Saturday Night Live', along with musical guest The Weeknd. She has been selected as the face of the brand Calvin Klein for its women's fragrance Deep Euphoria.

Early life

Margot Elise Robbie was born in Dalby, Queensland, and grew up in the Gold Coast hinterland. Her parents are Sarie Kessler, a physiotherapist, and Doug Robbie, a former farm owner. She has three siblings: an elder brother, Lachlan or "Lachie"; a younger brother, Cameron; and a sister, Anya. Robbie grew up on a farm, where she and her siblings were raised by their single mother; she has minimal contact with her father. To make ends meet, Robbie worked three jobs simultaneously at the age of 16. She studied drama at school, graduating at Somerset College. At the age of 17, Robbie moved to Melbourne to begin acting professionally.

Career

Robbie has been acting professionally since 2007, when she starred in two feature films, ICU and Vigilante. After impressing the director with her performance during an audition, she won the lead in I.C.U. without an agent at the time. Robbie also acted in commercials and had guest roles in The Elephant Princess as Juliet and City Homicide as Caitlin Brentford. Robbie began appearing as Donna Freedman on Neighbours from June 2008. The character was originally only a guest role, but she was soon promoted to a regular cast member. In an interview with Digital Spy, Robbie said she had gone on a snowboarding holiday to Canada with her boyfriend soon after auditioning, but had to return after only two days when told that she had won the role.

In early 2009, Robbie appeared in various Network Ten promotions, featuring an ensemble of popular Australian faces on the network. In July 2009, she filled the "Generation Y" guest spot on the Network Ten show Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation. Robbie also became a youth ambassador for missing persons as part of National Youth Week. In the same year, Robbie was nominated for Most Popular New Female Talent at the Australian Logie Awards. She was also nominated for Favorite Hottie at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards and was up against her Neighbours co-star Dean Geyer. In September 2010, Robbie announced that she was to leave Neighbours after almost three years to pursue an acting career in Hollywood. Her final scenes aired on 26 January 2011 and in April of that year, Robbie was nominated for Most Popular Actress at the Logie Awards.

After arriving in Los Angeles for pilot season, Robbie auditioned for the new series of Charlie's Angels. However, the producers at Sony Pictures Television preferred her for a role in ABC drama series Pan Am alongside Christina Ricci. Robbie landed the role of Laura Cameron, a newly trained flight attendant. Pan Am was cancelled after one season due to falling ratings, despite receiving positive reviews from critics.

2013–2016

Robbie joined the cast of Richard Curtis' romantic comedy About Time (2013) alongside Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy. About Time was released in the United Kingdom on 4 September 2013 and in the United States on 1 November 2013. The film received positive reviews and grossed $87 million on its $12 million budget. Robbie was next cast in the role of Naomi Belfort, the wife of the film's protagonist Jordan Belfort in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill. Garnering positive reviews it became a commercial success with a worldwide gross of $392 million, making it Scorsese's highest-grossing film. The film was subsequently nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. For her performance as Jordan Belfort's second wife Naomi Lapaglia, Robbie was praised by critics for her Brooklyn accent. Critic Sasha Stone wrote "She's Scorsese's best blonde bombshell discovery since Cathy Moriarty in Raging Bull. Robbie is funny, hard and kills every scene she's in". She received a nomination for the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance and won the Empire Award for Best Newcomer. In 2014, Robbie founded her own production company, LuckyChap Entertainment.

In 2015, Robbie starred opposite Will Smith in romantic comedy-drama film Focus. In the film, she plays an inexperienced grifter learning the craft from Smith's character. The film was released on 27 February 2015 to generally mixed reviews. However, Robbie's performance was praised. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote "Robbie is a wow and then some. The Aussie actress who made us sit up and take notice as Leonardo DiCaprio's wife in The Wolf of Wall Street shows a comic flair backed up with beauty and steel. Even when Focus fumbles, Robbie deals a winning hand. Focus grossed over $150 million worldwide. In 2015, Robbie received a nomination for the BAFTA Rising Star Award. Also in 2015, Robbie played the leading role of Ann Burden in the film adaptation of Z for Zachariah with Chris Pine and Chiwetel Ejiofor, which was shot in New Zealand. The film premiered on 24 January 2015 at the Sundance Film Festival and had its theatrical release on 28 August 2015, receiving positive reviews. Robbie's performance was praised by critics. Drew McWeeny of HitFix wrote "Robbie's work here establishes her as one of the very best actresses in her age range today".

Robbie appeared in a documentary special celebrating Neighbours' 30th anniversary titled Neighbours 30th: The Stars Reunite, which aired in Australia and the UK in March 2015. She also appeared in Suite Française (2015) alongside Michelle Williams, Kristin Scott Thomas and Matthias Schoenaerts, an adaptation of Irène Némirovsky's novel. The film received positive reviews.^[55] Robbie made a cameo appearance in Adam McKay's comedy-drama The Big Short, released on 11 December 2015.

Robbie co-starred with Tina Fey in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a film adaptation of The Taliban Shuffle. She plays Tanya Vanderpoel, a British TV journalist. The film also stars Martin Freeman and Alfred Molina and was released on 4 March 2016 by Paramount Pictures. Later that year, Robbie starred as Jane Porter in David Yates's The Legend of Tarzan, opposite Alexander Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz. The film was released on 1 July.

Robbie's third 2016 role was Harley Quinn in Warner Bros.' DC Comics supervillain film Suicide Squad, as part of an ensemble cast that includes Will Smith, Jared Leto, Viola Davis and Joel Kinnaman. Principal photographycommenced on 13 April 2015, and the film was released on 5 August 2016. Robbie hosted the season 42 premiere of Saturday Night Live on 1 October 2016, with musical guest The Weeknd. She was scheduled to voice a character in the DreamWorks Animation Larrikins, before the project was cancelled.

2017

In 2017, Robbie starred alongside Domhnall Gleeson in Goodbye Christopher Robin as Daphne de Sélincourt, wife of author A. A. Milne. She next portrayed the American figure skater Tonya Harding in I, Tonya, written by Steven Rogers and directed by Craig Gillespie. Reviewing the film for The Boston Globe, Ty Burr wrote, "Robbie is taller, bigger than the tiny, fierce Harding, but she gets the athlete's forward drive, and the anger that seemed to fuel the dynamo, and when life hands Tonya lemons, Robbie sets her jaw and bears down. For her portrayal of Harding, Robbie was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical and the Academy Award for Best Actress. She was the first actress nominated for an Academy Award for playing a real-life athlete.

In 2018, Robbie voiced the character of Flopsy Rabbit in the animated/live-action film Peter Rabbit, an adaptation of the Beatrix Potter book series. She then starred in Vaughn Stein's thriller film Terminal as Annie. She then made a cameo appearance as Audrey in Slaughterhouse Rulez, and portrayed Queen Elizabeth I in Mary Queen of Scots, opposite Saoirse Ronan as Mary Stuart. David Sims of The Atlantic dismissed the latter film as a "tawdry soap opera" but wrote that "with her little screen time, [Robbie] still manages to convey a real sense of resentment over Mary's status as a more traditional queen". She received BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Supporting Actress.

Robbie began 2019 by starring as a femme fatale in Dreamland, a period crime thriller set during the 1930s Dust Bowl, which she also produced.^[85] She next agreed to portray the actress Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino's black comedy Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, due to her desire to work with Tarantino. To prepare, she read the autobiography Roman by Polanski, by Roman Polanski, who was married to Tate. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that despite a lack of female roles in the film, "Robbie gives a sympathetic portrayal of Tate", and Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph considered a sequence in which Tate watches her own performance in a cinema to be the film's "most delightful" scene.

Sarojini Naidu (The Nightingale of India)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 10 Aug 2019 12:38:00 +0000

13 February, 1879 - 2 March, 1949

Known as the "Ccuckoo of India", Sarojini Devi was a distinguished poet, renowned freedom fighter and one of the great orators of her time. Her father Aghoranath Chattopadhyaya was a good scholar of Sanskrit, Greek, Hebrew, Persian and English languages. He was the principal of The Nizam's College at Hyderabad, now capital of Andhra Pradesh. Sarojini's mother Varadasundari Devi wrote poetry in Bengali and knew Sanskrit. Sarojini was the eldest among their eight children. All the children grew learning and speaking besides Bengali, their mother-tongue, Urdu, Telugu and English. One of her brothers Birendranath was a revolutionary and spent his life outside India all the time for fear of getting extradited for sedition and black waters. Other brother Harindranath was a poet, dramatist and actor.

Childhood and Early Life

Sarojini Naidu (née Chattopadhyay) was born on February 13, 1879 in Hyderabad. Her father, Dr. Aghore Nath Chattopadhyay was a scientist, philosopher, and educator. He founded the Nizam College of Hyderabad. Her mother, Varada Sundari Devi was a poetess in the Bengali language. Dr. Aghore Nath Chattopadhyay was the first member of the Indian National Congress in Hyderabad. For his socio-political activities, Aghore Nath was dismissed from his position of Principal. One of his brothers, Virendranath Chattopadhyay, played key role in establishing the Berlin Committee. As a political activist involved in India’s on-going struggle for self-rule, he was heavily influenced by Communism. Her second brother Harindranath Chattopadhyay was a renowned poet and a successful playwright. Her sister, Sunalini Devi was a dancer and actress

Since childhood, Sarojini was a very bright and intelligent child. She was proficient in multiple languages including English, Bengali, Urdu, Telugu and Persian. She topped her matriculation exams from Madras University. Her father wanted Sarojini to become a mathematician or scientist, but young Sarojini was attracted to poetry.

She applied her prodigious literary skills to write a 1300 lines long poem in English titled ‘The Lady of the Lake’. Impressed with Sarojini’s skills of expressing emotions with appropriate words, Dr. Chattopadhyaya encouraged her works. Few months later, Sarojini, with assistance from her father, wrote the play "Maher Muneer" in the Persian language.

Sarojini met Muthyala Govindarajulu Naidu, a South Indian, and a non-Brahmin physician while she was studying in England and fell in love. After returning to India, she married him at the age of 19, with his family’s blessings. They were married by the Brahmo Marriage Act (1872), in Madras in 1898. The marriage took place at a time when inter-caste marriages were not allowed and tolerated in the Indian society. Her marriage was a very happy one. They had four children.

Role of Sarojini Naidu in freedom movement

Sarojini was initiated into the Indian political arena by iconic stalwarts of the Indian freedom struggle, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Gandhi. She was deeply affected by the partition of Bengal in 1905 and decided to join the Indian freedom struggle. She met regularly with Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who in turn introduced her to the otherleaders of the Indian freedom movement. Gokhale urged her to devote her intellect and education for the cause. She took a respite from writing and devoted herself fully to the political cause. She met Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, C. P. Ramaswami Iyer and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Her relationship with Gandhi was that of mutual respect as well as of benign humour. She famously called Gandhi ‘Mickey Mouse’ and quipped "It costs a lot to keep Gandhi poor!”

She met Jawaharlal Nehru in 1916, worked with him for the disheartening conditions of the Indigo workers of Champaran in the western district of Bihar and fought vehemently with the British for their rights. Sarojini Naidu travelled all over India and delivered speeches on welfare of youth, dignity of labor, women's emancipation and nationalism. In 1917, she helped found the Women’s India Association with Annie Besant and other prominent leaders. She also presented to Congress the need to involve more women in the freedom struggle. She travelled extensively to the United States of America and many European countries as the flag-bearer of the Indian Nationalist struggle.

In March 1919, the British government passed the Rowlatt Act by which the possession of seditious documents was deemed illegal. Mahatma Gandhi organized the Non-Cooperation Movement to protest and Naidu was the first to join the movement. Sarojini Naidu religiously followed Gandhi’s example and actively supported his other campaigns like the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, the Khilafat issue, the Sabarmati Pact, the Satyagraha Pledge and the Civil Disobedience Movement. When Gandhi was arrested after the Salt March to Dandi in 1930, she led the Dharasana Satyagraha with other leaders. She accompanied Gandhi to London to take part in the Round Table Talks with the British Government in 1931. Her political activities and role in the Freedom struggle led to several stints in prison – in 1930, 1932, and 1942. Her 1942 arrest led to imprisonment for 21 months.

She went to England in 1919 as a member of the All-India Home Rule Deputation. In January 1924, she was one of the two delegates of the Indian National Congress to attend the East African Indian Congress. As a result of her selfless contribution to the cause of freedom, she was elected as the President of the Indian National Congress Party in 1925.

Naidu played an immense role in presenting the nuances of the Indian non-violent struggle for freedom to the world. She travelled to Europe and even to the United states to disseminate Gandhian principles and was partly responsible for establishing him as this icon of peace.

After the independence of India, she became the first governor of the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) and remained in the role till her death in 1949. Her birthday, March 2, is honoured as Women's Day in India.

Literary Achievements

Besides her role and contribution to the Indian Nationalist Movement, Sarojini Naidu is also revered for her contribution in the field of Indian poetry. Many of her works were transformed into songs. She drew her inspiration from nature as well as surrounding daily life and her poetry echoed with the ethos of her patriotism. In 1905, her collection of poems was published under the title "Golden Threshold". Later, she also published two other collections called "The Bird of Time", and "The Broken Wings", both of which attracted huge readership in both India and England. Apart from poetry, she also penned articles and essays like ‘Words of Freedom’ on her political beliefs and social issues like women empowerment.

One of the famous poem of her:

The Gift of India

by Sarojini Naidu (India, 1915)

Is there ought you need that my hands withhold,
Rich gifts of raiment or grain or gold?
Lo! I have flung to the East and the West
Priceless treasures torn from my breast,
And yielded the sons of my stricken womb
To the drum-beats of the duty, the sabers of doom.
Gathered like pearls in their alien graves
Silent they sleep by the Persian waves,
Scattered like shells on Egyptian sands,
They lie with pale brows and brave, broken hands,
they are strewn like blossoms mown down by chance
On the blood-brown meadows of Flanders and France
Can ye measure the grief of the tears I weep
Or compass the woe of the watch I keep?
Or the pride that thrills thro' my heart's despair
And the hope that comforts the anguish of prayer?
And the far sad glorious vision I see
Of the torn red banners of victory?
when the terror and the tumult of hate shall cease
And life be refashioned on anvils of peace,
And your love shall offer memorial thanks
To the comrades who fought on the dauntless ranks,
And you honour the deeds of the dauntless ones,
Remember the blood of my martyred sons!

Death & Legacy

Sarojini Naidu was the first women Governor of Uttar Pradesh. Naidu died of cardiac arrest at 3:30 p.m. (IST) on 2 March 1949 at the Government House in Lucknow. She lived her glorious life by her own words, “As long as I have life, as long as blood flows through this arm of mine, I shall not leave the cause of freedom…I am only a woman, only a poet. But as a woman, I give to you the weapons of faith and courage and the shield of fortitude. And as a poet, I fling out the banner of song and sound, the bugle call to battle. How shall I kindle the flame which shall waken you men from slavery...” Her childhood residence at Nampally was bequeathed to the University of Hyderabad by her family and it was christened as ‘The Golden Threshold’ after Naidu’s 1905 publication. The University renamed its School of Fine Arts and Communication as ‘Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication’ to honour the Nightingale of India.

Stephen Hawking (Physicist, Scientist)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 11:28:00 +0000

(1942 - 2018)

Stephen Hawking is known for his work regarding black holes and for authoring several popular science books. He suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Synopsis

Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England. At an early age, Hawking showed a passion for science and the sky. At age 21, while studying cosmology at the University of Cambridge, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Despite his debilitating illness, he has done groundbreaking work in physics and cosmology, and his several books have helped to make science accessible to everyone. Part of his life story was depicted in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything.

Early Life and Background

The eldest of Frank and Isobel Hawking's four children, Stephen William Hawking was born on the 300th anniversary of the death of Galileo—long a source of pride for the noted physicist—on January 8, 1942. He was born in Oxford, England, into a family of thinkers. His Scottish mother had earned her way into Oxford University in the 1930s—a time when few women were able to go to college. His father, another Oxford graduate, was a respected medical researcher with a specialty in tropical diseases.

Stephen Hawking's birth came at an inopportune time for his parents, who didn't have much money. The political climate was also tense, as England was dealing with World War II and the onslaught of German bombs. In an effort to seek a safer place, Isobel returned to Oxford to have the couple's first child. The Hawkings would go on to have two other children, Mary (1943) and Philippa (1947). And their second son, Edward, was adopted in 1956.

The Hawkings, as one close family friend described them, were an "eccentric" bunch. Dinner was often eaten in silence, each of the Hawkings intently reading a book. The family car was an old London taxi, and their home in St. Albans was a three-story fixer-upper that never quite got fixed. The Hawkings also housed bees in the basement and produced fireworks in the greenhouse.

In 1950, Hawking's father took work to manage the Division of Parasitology at the National Institute of Medical Research, and spent the winter months in Africa doing research. He wanted his eldest child to go into medicine, but at an early age, Hawking showed a passion for science and the sky. That was evident to his mother, who, along with her children, often stretched out in the backyard on summer evenings to stare up at the stars. "Stephen always had a strong sense of wonder," she remembered. "And I could see that the stars would draw him."

Early in his academic life, Hawking, while recognized as bright, was not an exceptional student. During his first year at St. Albans School, he was third from the bottom of his class. But Hawking focused on pursuits outside of school; he loved board games, and he and a few close friends created new games of their own. During his teens, Hawking, along with several friends, constructed a computer out of recycled parts for solving rudimentary mathematical equations.

Hawking was also frequently on the go. With his sister Mary, Hawking, who loved to climb, devised different entry routes into the family home. He remained active even after he entered University College at Oxford University at the age of 17. He loved to dance and also took an interest in rowing, becoming a team coxswain.

Hawking expressed a desire to study mathematics, but since Oxford didn't offer a degree in that specialty, Hawking gravitated toward physics and, more specifically, cosmology.

By his own account, Hawking didn't put much time into his studies. He would later calculate that he averaged about an hour a day focusing on school. And yet he didn't really have to do much more than that. In 1962, he graduated with honors in natural science and went on to attend Trinity Hall at Cambridge University for a PhD in cosmology.

Disability outreach

Since the 1990s, Hawking has accepted the mantle of role model for disabled people, lecturing and participating in fundraising activities. At the turn of the century, he and eleven other luminaries signed the Charter for the Third Millennium on Disability which called on governments to prevent disability and protect disability rights. In 1999 Hawking was awarded theJulius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society. Motivated by the desire to increase public interest in spaceflight and to show the potential of people with disabilities, in 2007 he participated in zero-gravity flight in a "Vomit Comet", courtesy of Zero Gravity Corporation, during which he experienced weightlessness eight times.

In August 2012 Hawking narrated the "Enlightenment" segment of the 2012 Summer Paralympics opening ceremony. In 2013, the biographical documentary film Hawking, in which Hawking himself is featured, was released. In September 2013, he expressed support for the legalisation of assisted suicide for the terminally ill. In August 2014, Hawking accepted the Ice Bucket Challenge to promote ALS/MND awareness and raise contributions for research. As he had had pneumonia in 2013, he was advised not to have ice poured over him, but his children volunteered to accept the challenge on his behalf.

Appearances in popular media

At the release party for the home video version of the A Brief History of Time, Leonard Nimoy, who had played Spock on Star Trek, learned that Hawking was interested in appearing on the show. Nimoy made the necessary contact, and Hawking played a holographic simulation of himself in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1993. The same year, his synthesiser voice was recorded for the Pink Floyd song "Keep Talking", and in 1999 for an appearance on The Simpsons. Hawking appeared in documentaries entitled The Real Stephen Hawking (2001) Stephen Hawking: Profile (2002) and Hawking (2013), and the documentary series Stephen Hawking, Master of the Universe (2008). Hawking has also guest-starred in Futurama and The Big Bang Theory. Hawking allowed the use of his trademarked voice in the biographical 2014 film The Theory of Everything.

Hawking has used his fame to advertise products, including a wheelchair.

Awards and honours

Hawking has received numerous awards and honours. Already early in the list, in 1974 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). At that time, his nomination read:"Hawking has made major contributions to the field of general relativity. These derive from a deep understanding of what is relevant to physics and astronomy, and especially from a mastery of wholly new mathematical techniques. Following the pioneering work of Penrose he established, partly alone and partly in collaboration with Penrose, a series of successively stronger theorems establishing the fundamental result that all realistic cosmological models must possess singularities. Using similar techniques, Hawking has proved the basic theorems on the laws governing black holes: that stationary solutions of Einstein's equations with smooth event horizons must necessarily be axisymmetric; and that in the evolution and interaction of black holes, the total surface area of the event horizons must increase. In collaboration with G. Ellis, Hawking is the author of an impressive and original treatise on "Space-time in the Large". The citation continues:

"Other important work by Hawking relates to the interpretation of cosmological observations and to the design of gravitational wave detectors."

Rani Lakshmibai (The Queen of Jhansi)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 04 Oct 2014 11:35:00 +0000

(19 November 1828 – 17 June 1858)

Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi 19 November 1828 – 17 June 1858; 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.

JHANSI KI RANI was the great heroine of the First War of Indian Freedom. She became a widow at the tender age of 18 and lived only till 22 yet she has inspired many and is still a living legend. She was the embodiment of patriotism, self-respect and heroism. Her life is a thrilling story of womanliness, courage, adventure, deathless patriotism and martyrdom. In her tender body there was a lions spirit.

At birth she was named Manu. The young Manu, unfortunately she lost her mother when she was only four. The entire duty of bringing up the daughter fell on her father. Along with formal education she acquired the skill in sword fighting, horse riding and shooting. Manu later became the wife of Gangadhar Rao, Maharaj of Jhansi, in 1842. From then on she was known as Maharani Laksmi Bai of Jhansi.

In 1851 Maharani Lakshmi Bai bore a son but her fate was cruel and she lost her child within three months. The Maharaja passed away on the 21st November 1853. Although prior to this the Maharaja and Maharani adopted a boy the British government claimed they did not recognise the right of the adopted boy. Thus they tried to buy off the Rani however she stated: "No, impossible! I shall not surrender my Jhansi!"It did not take her long to realise how difficult it was for the small state of Jhansi to oppose the British when even the Peshwas and Kings of Delhi had bowed down to the British Demands. The Rani’s battle now was against the British who had cunningly taken her kingdom from her.

After the British took over her government her daily routine changed. Every morning from 4am to 8am were set apart for bathing, worship, meditation and prayer. From 8am to 11am she would go out for a horse ride, practise shooting, and practise swordmanship and shooting with the reins held on her teeth. Thereafter she would bathe again, feed the hungry, give alms to the poor and then have food; then rested for a while. After that she would chant the Ramanyan. She would then exercise lightly in the evening. Later she would go through some religious books and hear religious sermons. Then she worshipped her chosen deity and had supper. All things were done methodically, according to her strict timetable. Such a dedicated and devoted women!

All these disciplined and training patterns came in use during the Indian Mutiny in 1857. Many lives were lost and innocence people killed. Although Bharat did not gain independence the Rani did win back Jhansi and created the state to its former glory having a full treasury and army of women matching the army of men. However Sir Hugh Rose attacked Jhansi on 17th March 1858. The next day’s battle was the Rani’s last. Her death was heroic, her army had declined as they were out numbered by the opposition. The British Army had encircled her and her men. There was no escape blood was flowing, darkness was approaching. The British army was pursuing her. After a great struggle the Rani died muttering quotes from the Bhagvad Gita.

When she went to War and took up arms she was the very embodiment of the War Goddess Kali. She was beautiful and frail. But her radiance made men diffident. She was young in years, but her decisions were mature. Such an confident and dominant women! A lesson is to be learnt for us all from her experiences! The words of the British General Sir Hugh Rose who fought against the Maharani several times and was defeated time and time again stated: "Of the mutineers the bravest and the greatest commander was the Rani".

Sanaya Irani (Most searched Biography on the internet)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 21 Sep 2014 14:25:00 +0000

Born in the year 1983 on 17th September, Sanaya is the most captivating beauty of television industry; it is her vivacious self which has swept the whole television fraternity. This talented actress Sanaya is a typical Maharashtrian girl; she completed her schooling from Ooty and went on to pursue her graduation from Sydneyham College, Mumbai. Sanaya doesn’t like to talk much about her personal life and is quite spiritual, she follows Zoroastrianism. Sanaya is a clandestine girl and hence not much is disclosed about her family, one could not find much in Sanaya Irani biography too. But she couldn’t keep her relationship under wraps as her boyfriend Mohit Sehgal belongs from the same industry. She has always enacted the role of a cute, chirpy, friendly young girl, therefore it can be said that she is the ultimate bubbly lass of TV.

According to Sanaya Irani’s biography floated in the internet after her first television debut was in the serial Left Right Left which has patriotism as it prime theme and was telecast ed on Sab TV in 2008. The show was meant for the youth and Sanaya was a perfect choice for her role. Her next venture was Radhaa Ki Betiyaan Kuch Kar Dikhaengi which was an NDTV Imagine production. This serial gave her the required exposure in the industry and she was lucky to bag a role in Star One’s Miley Jab Hum Tum. This again was a juvenile and fresh show for the youngsters, which beleaguered college students. The serial depicted the story of a group of college goers and their college life. Sanaya was chosen to enact the role of Gunjan Bhushan Shregill, the protagonist and an introverted, soft-spoken, small-town young girl. Where Gunjan felt love for the male protagonist Samrat, the role played by Sanaya’s real life boyfriend Mohit, who is the blue eyed boy of excel college. Since Gunjan and her elder sister nupur are from Morena she is made fun of by the rich trendy students of the college. Later Samrat and Gunjan fell in deep love and the show went on to showcase the rise and fall of their relationship. The teen production had a season 2 as well but the TRP kept on reducing and the show came to an end.

Sanaya Irani is on gem of an actor, at an age of 28, she has achieved so much that girls of her age can only think about, but achievement wasn’t just plain luck she had struggled a lot to reach her destination. She is a stupendous actress has played the role of a married woman with élan and confidence. She handles her act sensibly and delivers a excellent performance just she did in portraying the character of Khushi Kumari Gupta in Star Plus’s highest TRP ranking soap Iss Pyaar Ko Kyaa Naam Doon. In 2011 Sanaya started the shooting of the popular television series of Iss Pyaar Ko Kyaa Naam Doon. She played the female protagonist, in this TRP rich show, it had excellent public reviews and Sanaya became a household name. Her strong chemistry with her co-star Barun Sobti was very appreciable and enjoyable to; the couple had a very sweet love- hate relationship and everyone loved the couple and cherished their performance. In a few episodes of Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Du, Sanaya Irani showcased her dancing skills which were again very heart winning. Sanaya Irani biography has been a hot search in the internet since then. She is tall and has slender body, which makes her look very appealing and hot. Sanaya Irani is a package performer. She later on did perform in several dance reality shows and award functions. She is a poised dancer and her dancing skills have also been commended by her fans.

She is among those actresses who can make even the most lulled person on earth glued to the television screen to enjoy her chirpy performance. She is one of the most attractive heroines on the television. In addition to her carnage looks is a great entertainer as well. She is one thrusting actor who can burn the screen with her hot presence. Sanaya Irani has a deadly merger of killer looks and gorgeous attitude. This fine lady knows how to keep the audience captivated; this is the reason why she is going sturdy and stable in her profession unlike other television actresses who enjoys fame for a fortnight.

Sanaya Irani’s biography has lot to give out to her fans as her achievement’s bag is full of successful projects and plausible reviews. She has worked in a numerous commercials and she has been fortunate enough to share screen space with the current super stars like Sharhrukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan. Where many wish to catch a glance of these legends, Sanaya was certainly very lucky to have worked with them. She has also acted in Fanaa a blockbuster of Bollywood queen Kajol and the perfectionist Aamir Khan. She was shot by the veteran actor Boman Irani, in the start of her career, who then was a photographer by vocation. She has done advertisements for huge brands like Reliance, Pepsi and Airtel. In her struggling days she bagged a role in a music video of the great legendary singer Jagjit Singh’s “Tumko Dekha To Yeh….”

TV stars now have become very popular globally so is Sanaya Irani, and this can be measured by the number of fall in the website which shows Sanaya Irani’s Biography. Production houses are putting more and more funds on TV serials because it’s a sure shot money making business in today’s times, and if they get to associate with actors like Sanaya Irani the serial is bound to hit the jackpot. That is the probable reason why producer Vipul D. Shah (Optimistix Production) chose Sanaya Irani to essay the character of a modern bahu, Chhan Chhan, in his new show. As the entire publicity and USP of the show is solely banking on the popularity of Sanaya, she has repriced her role before the show's launch. It shows the level of popularity and influence she has gained in the Industry. Hence now big business firms are producing popular soap operas; or chats shows where they show interviews of small screen actors, bring out the scoops and scandals of who is dating whom, which show will go off-air, the forthcoming happenings of the popular serials etc. Sanaya Irani is one such actor who can give the TRP’s of such money making serials a great high.

Jawaharlal Nehru (The First Prime Minister of India)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:30:00 +0000

Jawaharlal Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru, also known as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, was one of the foremost leaders of Indian freedom struggle. He was the favourite disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and later on went on to become the first Prime Minister of India. Jawahar Lal Nehru is widely regarded as the architect of modern India. He was very fond of children and children used to affectionately call him Chacha Nehru.

Born on November 14, 1889 in Allahabad, Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Prime Minister of India. The only son of Motilal Nehru and Swarup Rani was a patriot, a freedom fighter and the most highly respected personality. Nehrus were Saraswat Brahmin of Kashmiri lineage.

Jawaharlal Nehru received education in some of the finest schools and universities of the world. He did his schooling from Harrow and completed his Law degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. The seven years he spent in England widened his horizons and he acquired a rational and skeptical outlook and sampled Fabian socialism and Irish nationalism, which added to his own patriotic dedication.

Jawaharlal Nehru returned to India in 1912 and started legal practice. He married Kamala Nehru in 1916. Jawahar Lal Nehru joined Home Rule League in 1917. His real initiation into politics came two years later when he came in contact with Mahatma Gandhi in 1919. At that time Mahatma Gandhi had launched a campaign against Rowlatt Act. Nehru was instantly attracted to Gandhi's commitment for active but peaceful, civil disobedience. Gandhi himself saw promise and India's future in the young Jawaharlal Nehru.

Nehru family changed its family according to Mahatma Gandhi's teachings. Jawaharlal and Motilal Nehru abandoned western clothes and tastes for expensive possessions and pastimes. They now wore a Khadi Kurta and Gandhi cap. Jawaharlal Nehru took active part in the Non- Cooperation Movement 1920-1922) and was arrested for the first time during the movement. He was released after few months.

Jawaharlal Nehru was elected President of the Allahabad Municipal Corporation in 1924, and served for two years as the city's chief executive. This proved to be a valuable administrative experience for stood him in good stead later on when he became the prime minister of the country. He used his tenure to expand public education, health care and sanitation. He resigned in 1926 citing lack of cooperation from civil servants and obstruction from British authorities.

From 1926 to 1928, Jawaharlal served as the General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee. In 1928-29, the Congress's annual session under President Motilal Nehru was held. During that session Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose backed a call for full political independence, while Motilal Nehru and others wanted dominion status within the British Empire. To resolve the point, Gandhi said that the British would be given two years to grant India dominion status. If they did not, the Congress would launch a national struggle for full, political independence. Nehru and Bose reduced the time of opportunity to one year. The British did not respond.

In December 1929, Congress's annual session was held in Lahore and Jawaharlal Nehru was elected as the President of the Congress Party. During that sessions a resolution demanding India's independence was passed and on January 26, 1930 in Lahore, Jawaharlal Nehru unfurled free India's flag. Gandhiji gave a call for Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930. The movement was a great success and forced British Government to acknowledge the need for major political reforms.

When the British promulgated the Government of India Act 1935, the Congress Party decided to contest elections. Nehru stayed out of the elections, but campaigned vigorously nationwide for the party. The Congress formed governments in almost every province, and won the largest number of seats in the Central Assembly. Nehru was elected to the Congress presidency in 1936, 1937, and 1946, and came to occupy a position in the nationalist movement second only to that of Gandhi. Jawaharlal Nehru was arrested in 1942 during Quit India Movement. Released in 1945, he took a leading part in the negotiations that culminated in the emergence of the dominions of India and Pakistan in August 1947.

In 1947, he became the first Prime Minister of independent India. He effectively coped with the formidable challenges of those times: the disorders and mass exodus of minorities across the new border with Pakistan, the integration of 500-odd princely states into the Indian Union, the framing of a new constitution, and the establishment of the political and administrative infrastructure for a parliamentary democracy.

Jawaharlal Nehru played a key role in building modern India. He set up a Planning Commission, encouraged development of science and technology, and launched three successive five-year plans. His policies led to a sizable growth in agricultural and industrial production. Nehru also played a major role in developing independent India's foreign policy. He called for liquidation of colonialism in Asia and Africa and along with Tito and Nasser, was one of the chief architects of the nonaligned movement. He played a constructive, mediatory role in bringing the Korean War to an end and in resolving other international crises, such as those over the Suez Canal and the Congo, offering India's services for conciliation and international policing. He contributed behind the scenes toward the solution of several other explosive issues, such as those of West Berlin, Austria, and Laos.

But Jawahar Lal Nehru couldn't improve India's relations with Pakistan and China. The Kashmir issue proved a stumbling block in reaching an accord with Pakistan, and the border dispute prevented a resolution with China. The Chinese invasion in 1962, which Nehru failed to anticipate, came as a great blow to him and probably hastened his death. Jawaharlal Nehru died of a hear attack on May 27, 1964.

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (The German physicist)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 06:38:00 +0000

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz

The German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894) demonstrated experimentally the propagation of electrical oscillations in space.

Born on February 22, 1857, in Hamburg, Heinrich Hertz was the oldest of the five children of Gustav Hertz, a lawyer and later a senator and the head of the judiciary of the city of Hamburg, and Elizabeth Pfefferkorn Hertz. Heins, as the boy was called in the family, soon gave evidence of his extraordinary aptitudes in mathematics, science, languages, and manual skills. The galvanometer and the spectroscope which he constructed as a teen-ager served him well during his university studies.

In addition to a thorough acquaintance with Homer and the Greek dramatists, Hertz acquired through his own efforts a knowledge of Sanskrit and Arabic. Following his graduation with highest honors from the gymnasium in Hamburg in 1875, he thought that his future lay with engineering. He spent a year in Frankfurt with an engineering firm, and in the summer of 1876 he attended courses at the Polytechnic in Dresden. After a year of volunteer military service in Berlin he began his regular engineering studies at the University of Munich in 1877.

No sooner had the classes gotten under way than it dawned on Hertz that he would prefer physics to engineering. He spent the winter of 1877/1878 studying the treatises of Pierre Simon de Laplace and Joseph Louis Lagrange and the spring in the laboratory working under G. von Jolly. To achieve the best training, he sought out the best teachers, and these were at the University of Berlin. Soon after his arrival there he became Hermann von Helmholtz's student. By spring 1879 Hertz completed the experimental verification of a question about electrical inertia, and his work won a gold medal at the university on August 4.

Demonstration of Electromagnetic Oscillations

Hertz's combination of theoretical and experimental work was so remarkable that during the next spring he was allowed to present his research as his doctoral dissertation, "On Induction in Rotating Spheres," and received the degree magna cum laude. He became Helmholtz's assistant at the Physikalisches Institut at the University of Berlin, and during his 3 years there Hertz's most remarkable achievement was his work on the pressure arising between two plates in contact. The influence of his conclusions on the construction of precision instruments was so great that his paper "On the Contact of Elastic Solids" was simultaneously published in a scientific and a technical magazine. But the promise of the future lay with his work on electric and cathode-tube discharge, published in 1883 in two papers.

Hertz next went to the University of Kiel, where he did some work on meteorological and thermoelectric problems, but his real interest was in James Clerk Maxwell's theory as shown by his paper from 1884, "On the Relations between Maxwell's Fundamental Electromagnetic Equations and the Fundamental Equations of the Opposing 'Electromagnetics.'" Hertz was at Karlsruhe as the head of the Physics Institute at the Polytechnic when he began his experimental research on the effect of electric and cathode-tube discharges. In Karlsruhe he met Elizabeth Doll, the daughter of a well-known geodesist, and married her on July 31, 1886.

On surveying the equipment in his laboratory, Hertz came across two Riess spirals and found "that it was not necessary to discharge large batteries through one of these spirals to obtain sparks in the other; ... that even the discharge of a small induction coil would do, provided it had to spring across a spark gap." He soon noticed that the oscillations thus produced were rather regular. By spring 1887 Hertz knew that sparks were more readily formed when the metal spheres forming the gap were exposed to ultraviolet radiation.

This discovery put Hertz within reach of producing with relative ease oscillations of sufficiently high frequency with corresponding wavelengths that could be detected with apparatus tailored to the dimensions of ordinary laboratories. By summer he succeeded in showing the effect of a rectilinear electric oscillation upon a neighboring circuit. On November 10, 1887, he sent to the Berlin Academy the now historic report "On Electromagnetic Effects Produced by Electrical Disturbances in Insulators," disclosing that he had obtained oscillatory inductive action at distances up to 12 meters. While the result was a triumph for Maxwell's theory, Hertz knew that one also had to settle the question of the finite velocity of the propagation of the inductive effect across space. This he did in 1888, and the same year he also proved that electromagnetic waves could be reflected as predicted by Maxwell's theory. Later that year he accepted the chair of physics at the University of Bonn, which had been vacant since the death of R. J. E. Clausius.

Hertz's work at Bonn aimed at a generalization of a cherished idea of his revered teacher, Helmholtz, that electromagnetic effects were products of the motion of the ether atoms, obeying the law of least action. Hertz now wanted a formulation of the whole science of physics along these lines. His Principles of Mechanics took him 3 years to write; it was published posthumously.

In 1889 Hertz was the principal speaker at the Congress of German Scientists at Heidelberg, where he described the impact of the verification of Maxwell's theory on the physics of the future. Needless to say, he believed with the rest of the late-19th-century physicists that it was to become a physics of the ether. Hertz succumbed to an infection of the inner ear on January 1, 1894. Most likely Hertz would have been among the first to perceive the fallacies inherent in the concept of the ether and to usher in a new age of physics.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (an American clergyman)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:59:00 +0000

Martin Luther King, Jr.

(January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. King has become a national icon in the history of modern American liberalism.

Martin Luther King's Childhood and Education:

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, GA. His birth certificate listed his first name as Michael but this was later changed to Martin. His Grandfather and then his Father both served as the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. King graduated from Morehouse College in 1948 with a degree in Sociology. He further received a Bachelor's of Divinity in 1951 and then a Ph.D. from Boston College in 1955. It was in Boston where he met and later married Coretta Scott. They had two sons and two daughters together.

Becoming a Civil Rights Leader:

Martin Luther King, Jr. was appointed the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in 1954. It was while serving as pastor of the church that Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. This occurred on December 1, 1955. By December 5, 1955, the Montgomery Bus Boycott had begun.

Montgomery Bus Boycott:

On December 5, 1955, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was unanimously elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association which led the Montgomery Bus Boycott. During this time, African-Americans refused to ride the public bus system in Montgomery. King's home was bombed due to his involvement. Thankfully his wife and baby daughter who were home at the time were unharmed. King was then arrested in February on the charges of conspiracy. The boycott lasted 382 days. In the end on December 21, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation on public transportation was illegal.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference:

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was formed in 1957 and King was named its leader. Its goal was to provide leadership and organization in the fight for civil rights. He used the ideas of civil disobedience and peaceful protests based on the writings of Thoreau and the actions of Mohandas Gandhi to lead the organization and the fight against segregation and discrimination. Their demonstrations and activism helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail:

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a major part of many nonviolent protests as he helped lead the fight for desegregation and equal rights. He was arrested numerous times. In 1963, numerous "sit-ins" were staged in Birmingham, Alabama to protest segregation in restaurants and eating facilities. King was arrested during one of these and while he was imprisoned wrote his famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." In this letter he argued that only through visible protests would progress be made. He argued that it was an individual's duty to protest and in fact disobey unjusts laws.

Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Speech:

On August 28, 1963, the March on Washington led by King and other Civil Rights Leaders took place. It was the largest demonstration of its kind in Washington, D.C. up to that time and approximately 250,000 demonstrators were involved. It was during this March that King gave his awe-inspiring "I Have a Dream" speech while speaking from the Lincoln Memorial. He and the other leaders then met with President John F. Kennedy. They asked for many things including an end to segregation in public schools, greater protections for African-Americans, and more effective civil rights legislation amongst other things.

Nobel Peace Prize:

In 1963, King was named Time Magazine's Man of the Year. He had stepped onto the world stage. He met with Pope Paul VI in 1964 and then was honored as the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He was awarded this on December 10, 1964 at the age of thirty-five. He gave the entire amount of the prize money to help with the Civil Rights movement.

Selma, Alabama:

On March 7, 1965, a group of protestors attempted a march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery. King was not part of this march because he had wanted to delay its start date until the 8th. However, the march was extremely important because it was met by terrible police brutality that was captured on film. The images of this made a huge impact on those not directly involved in the fight resulting in a public outcry for changes to be made. The March was attempted again and the protestors successfully made it to Montgomery on March 25, 1965 where they heard King speak at the Capitol.

Assassination:

Between 1965 and 1968, King continued with his protest work and fight for Civil Rights. King became a critic of the War in Vietnam. While speaking from a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. The day before he gave a poignant speech where he , "[God's] allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you." While James Earl Ray was arrested and charged with the assassination, there have been and still are questions to his guilt and whether there was a larger conspiracy at work.

Swami Vivekananda (A spiritual genius of commanding intellect and power)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:16:00 +0000

Swami Vivekananda

A spiritual genius of commanding intellect and power, Vivekananda crammed immense labor and achievement into his short life, 1863-1902. Born in the Datta family of Calcutta, the youthful Vivekananda embraced the agnostic philosophies of the Western mind along with the worship of science.

At the same time, vehement in his desire to know the truth about God, he questioned people of holy reputation, asking them if they had seen God. He found such a person in Sri Ramakrishna, who became his master, allayed his doubts, gave him God vision, and transformed him into sage and prophet with authority to teach.

In America Vivekananda's mission was the interpretation of India's spiritual culture, especially in its Vedantic setting. He also tried to enrich the religious consciousness of the Americans through the rational and humanistic teachings of the Vedanta philosophy. In America he became India's spiritual ambassador and pleaded eloquently for better understanding between India and the New World in order to create a healthy synthesis of East and West, of religion and science.

In his own motherland Vivekananda is regarded as the patriot saint of modern India and an inspirer of her dormant national consciousness, To the Hindus he preached the ideal of a strength-giving and man-making religion. Service to man as the visible manifestation of the Godhead was the special form of worship he advocated for the Indians, devoted as they were to the rituals and myths of their ancient faith. Many political leaders of India have publicly acknowledged their indebtedness to Swami Vivekananda.

The Swami's mission was both national and international. A lover of mankind, he strove to promote peace and human brotherhood on the spiritual foundation of the Vedantic Oneness of existence. A mystic of the highest order, Vivekananda had a direct and intuitive experience of Reality. He derived his ideas from that unfailing source of wisdom and often presented them in the soulstirring language of poetry.

The natural tendency of Vivekananda's mind, like that of his Master, Ramakrishna, was to soar above the world and forget itself in contemplation of the Absolute. But another part of his personality bled at the sight of human suffering in East and West alike. It might appear that his mind seldom found a point of rest in its oscillation between contemplation of God and service to man. Be that as it may, he chose, in obedience to a higher call, service to man as his mission on earth; and this choice has endeared him to people in the West, Americans in particular.

After Sri Ramakrishna's death, Vivekananda renounced the world and criss-crossed India as a wandering monk. His mounting compassion for India's people drove him to seek their material help from the West. Accepting an opportunity to represent Hinduism at Chicago's Parliament of Religions in 1893, Vivekananda won instant celebrity in America and a ready forum for his spiritual teaching.

During his travels all over India, Swami Vivekananda was deeply moved to see the appalling poverty and backwardness of the masses. He was the first religious leader in India to understand and openly declare that the real cause of India’s downfall was the neglect of the masses. The immediate need was to provide food and other bare necessities of life to the hungry millions. For this they should be taught improved methods of agriculture, village industries, etc. It was in this context that Vivekananda grasped the crux of the problem of poverty in India (which had escaped the attention of social reformers of his days): owing to centuries of oppression, the downtrodden masses had lost faith in their capacity to improve their lot. It was first of all necessary to infuse into their minds faith in themselves. For this they needed a life-giving, inspiring message. Swamiji found this message in the principle of the Atman, the doctrine of the potential divinity of the soul, taught in Vedanta, the ancient system of religious philosophy of India. He saw that, in spite of poverty, the masses clung to religion, but they had never been taught the life-giving, ennobling principles of Vedanta and how to apply them in practical life. Thus the masses needed two kinds of knowledge: secular knowledge to improve their economic condition, and spiritual knowledge to infuse in them faith in themselves and strengthen their moral sense. The next question was, how to spread these two kinds of knowledge among the masses? Through education – this was the answer that Swamiji found.

Soon after his return to Kolkata, Swami Vivekananda accomplished another important task of his mission on earth. He founded on 1 May 1897 a unique type of organization known as Ramakrishna Mission, in which monks and lay people would jointly undertake propagation of Practical Vedanta, and various forms of social service, such as running hospitals, schools, colleges, hostels, rural development centres etc, and conducting massive relief and rehabilitation work for victims of earthquakes, cyclones and other calamities, in different parts of India and other countries.

In June 1899 he went to the West on a second visit. This time he spent most of his time in the West coast of USA. After delivering many lectures there, he returned to Belur Math in December 1900. The rest of his life was spent in India, inspiring and guiding people, both monastic and lay. Incessant work, especially giving lectures and inspiring people, told upon Swamiji’s health. His health deteriorated and the end came quietly on the night of 4 July 1902. Before his Mahasamadhi he had written to a Western follower: “It may be that I shall find it good to get outside my body, to cast it off like a worn out garment. But I shall not cease to work. I shall inspire men everywhere until the whole world shall know that it is one with God.”

Abraham Lincoln (An Inspirational Rise to Fame)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:19:00 +0000

Abraham Lincoln

The sixteenth president of the United States and president during the Civil War (1861–1865), Abraham Lincoln will forever be remembered by his inspirational rise to fame, his efforts to rid the country of slavery, and his ability to hold together a divided nation. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address, and two outstanding inaugural addresses are widely regarded as some of the greatest speeches ever delivered by an American politician.

Early Life

Lincoln was born on Feb. 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Hardin (now Larue) County, Ky. Indians had killed his grandfather, Lincoln wrote, "when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest" in 1786; this tragedy left his father, Thomas Lincoln, "a wandering laboring boy" who "grew up, literally without education." Thomas, nevertheless, became a skilled carpenter and purchased three farms in Kentucky before the Lincolns left the state. Little is known about Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Abraham had an older sister, Sarah, and a younger brother, Thomas, who died in infancy.

In 1816 the Lincolns moved to Indiana, "partly on account of slavery," Abraham recalled, "but chiefly on account of difficulty in land titles in Kentucky." Land ownership was more secure in Indiana because the Land Ordinance of 1785 provided for surveys by the federal government; moreover, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 forbade slavery in the area. Lincoln's parents belonged to a faction of the Baptist church that disapproved of slavery, and this affiliation may account for Abraham's later statement that he was "naturally anti-slavery" and could not remember when he "did not so think, and feel."

Indiana was a "wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods." The Lincolns' life near Little Pigeon Creek, in Perry (now Spencer) County, was not easy. Lincoln "was raised to farm work" and recalled life in this "unbroken forest" as a fight "with trees and logs and grubs." "There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education," Lincoln later recalled; he attended "some schools, so called," but for less than a year altogether. "Still, somehow," he remembered, "I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three; but that was all."

Lincoln's mother died in 1818, and the following year his father married a Kentucky widow, Sarah Bush Johnston. She "proved a good and kind mother." In later years Lincoln could fondly and poetically recall memories of his "childhood home." In 1828 he was able to make a flatboat trip to New Orleans. His sister died in childbirth the same year.

In 1830 the Lincolns left Indiana for Illinois. Abraham made a second flatboat trip to New Orleans, and in 1831 he left home for New Salem, in Sangamon County near Springfield. The separation may have been made easier by Lincoln's estrangement from his father, of whom he spoke little in his mature life. In New Salem, Lincoln tried various occupations and served briefly in the Black Hawk War (1832). This military interlude was uneventful except for the fact that he was elected captain of his volunteer company, a distinction that gave him "much satisfaction." It opened new avenues for his life.

Entering public life

Life in New Salem was a turning point for Lincoln, and the great man of history began to emerge. To the store came people of all kinds to talk and trade and to enjoy the stories told by this unique and popular man. The members of the New Salem Debating Society welcomed him, and Lincoln began to develop his skills as a passionate and persuasive speaker. When the Black Hawk War (1832) erupted between the United States and hostile Native Americans, the volunteers of the region quickly elected Lincoln to be their captain.

After the war he announced himself as a candidate for the Illinois legislature. He was not elected, but he did receive 277 of the 300 votes cast in the New Salem precinct. In 1834, after another attempt, Lincoln was finally elected to the state legislature. Lincoln's campaign skills greatly impressed John Todd Stuart (1807–1885), a leader of the Whigs, one of two major political parties in the country at the time. Stuart was also an outstanding lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, and soon took Lincoln under his care and inspired him to begin the study of law.

Lincoln served four straight terms in the legislature and soon emerged as a party leader. Meanwhile, he mastered the law books he could buy or borrow. In September 1836 Lincoln began practicing law and played an important part in having the Illinois state capital moved from Vandalia to Springfield. In 1837 Lincoln himself moved to Springfield to become Stuart's law partner. He did not, however, forget politics. In 1846 Lincoln was elected to the U.S. Congress. During these years Lincoln had become engaged to Mary Todd (1818–1882), a cultured and well-educated Kentucky woman. They were married on November 2, 1842.

First failure

When Congress met in December 1847, Lincoln expressed his disapproval with the Mexican War (1846–48), in which American and Mexican forces clashed over land in the Southwest. These views, together with his wish to abolish, or end, slavery in the District of Columbia, brought sharp criticism from the people back in Illinois. They believed Lincoln was "not a patriot" and had not correctly represented his state in Congress.

Although the Whigs won the presidency in 1848, Lincoln could not even control the support in his own district. His political career seemed to be coming to a close just as it was beginning. His only reward for party service was an offer of the governorship of far-off Oregon, which he refused. Lincoln then returned to Illinois and resumed practicing law.

War on the horizon

During the next twelve years, while Lincoln rebuilt his legal career, the nation was becoming divided. While victory in the Mexican War added vast western territory to the United States, then came the issue of slavery in those new territories. To Southerners, the issue involved the security and rights of slavery everywhere. To Northerners, it was a matter of morals and justice. A national crisis soon developed. Only the efforts of Senators Henry Clay (1777–1852) and Daniel Webster (1782–1852) brought about the Compromise of 1850. With the compromise, a temporary truce was reached between the states favoring slavery and those opposed to it. The basic issues, however, were not eliminated. Four years later the struggle was reopened.

Lincoln's passionate opposition to slavery was enough to draw him back into the world of politics. He had always viewed slavery as a "moral, social and political wrong" and looked forward to its eventual abolition. Although willing to let it alone for the present in the states where it existed, he would not see it extended one inch.

At the same time, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) drafted the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would leave the decision of slavery up to the new territories. Lincoln thought the bill ignored the growing Northern determination to rid the nation of slavery. Soon, in opposition to the expansion of slavery, the Republican party was born. When Douglas returned to Illinois to defend his position, Lincoln seized every opportunity to point out the weakness in it.

Republican leader

Lincoln's failure to receive the nomination as senator in 1855 convinced him that the Whig party was dead. By summer 1856 he became a member of the new Republicans. Lincoln quickly emerged as the outstanding leader of the new party. At the party's first national convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he received 110 votes for vice president on the first ballot. Although he was not chosen, he had been recognized as an important national figure.

National attention began turning toward the violence in Kansas and the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case, which debated the issue of slavery in the new territories. Meanwhile, Douglas had returned to Illinois to wage his fight for reelection to the Senate. But unlike in earlier elections, Illinois had grown rapidly and the population majority had shifted from the southern part of the state to the central and northern areas. In these growing areas the Republican party had gained a growing popularity—as had Abraham Lincoln.

As Lincoln challenged Douglas for his seat in the Senate, the two engaged in legendary debates. During the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln delivered his famous "house divided" speech, stating "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe the government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." Lincoln proved his ability to hold his own against the man known as the "Little Giant." In the end Douglas was reelected as senator, but Lincoln had gained national attention and his name was soon mentioned for the presidency.

The sixteenth president

In 1860 the Republican National Convention met and chose Lincoln as their candidate for president of the United States. With a divided Democratic party and the recent formation of the Constitutional Union party, Lincoln's election was certain. After Lincoln's election victory, parts of the country reacted harshly against the new president's stand on slavery. Seven Southern states then seceded, or withdrew, from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America.

In his inaugural address he clarified his position on the national situation. Secession, he said, was wrong, and the Union could not legally be broken apart. He would not interfere with slavery in the states, but he would "hold, occupy, and possess" all property and places owned by the federal government. By now there was no avoiding the outbreak of the Civil War.

The Civil War

From this time on, Lincoln's life was shaped by the problems and fortunes of civil war. As president, he was the head of all agencies in government and also acted as commander in chief, or supreme commander, of the armies. Lincoln was heavily criticized for early failures. Radicals in Congress were soon demanding a reorganization of his cabinet, or official advisors, and a new set of generals to lead his armies. To combat this, Lincoln himself studied military books. He correctly evaluated General Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) and General William T. Sherman (1820–1891) and the importance of the western campaign. Thanks, in part, to Lincoln's reshuffling of his military leaders, the Union forces would soon capture victory over the Confederates.

Afterward, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation called for the freeing of all slaves in territories still at war with the Union. Later, during his Gettysburg Address, he gave the war its universal meaning as a struggle to preserve a nation based on freedoms and dedicated to the idea "that all men are created equal."

Lincoln was reelected in 1864. As the end of the Civil War appeared close, Lincoln urged his people "to bind up the nation's wounds" and create a just and lasting peace. But Lincoln would never be able enjoy the nation he had reunited. Five days after the Confederate army surrendered and ended the Civil War, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1965. The president died the next day.

Although the reasons for Lincoln's assassination would be debated, his prominent place in American history has never been in doubt. His work to free the slaves earned him the honorable reputation as the Great Emancipator. His ability to hold together a country torn apart by civil war would forever secure his place as one of America's greatest presidents.

Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 08:51:00 +0000

Mahatma Gandhi

In January 1948, before three pistol shots put an end to his life, Gandhi had been on the political stage for more than fifty years. He had inspired two generations of India, patriots, shaken an empire and sparked off a revolution which was to change the face of Africa and Asia. To millions of his own people, he was the Mahatma- the great soul- whose sacred glimpse was a reward in itself. By the end of 1947 he had lived down much of the suspicion, ridicule and opposition which he had to face, when he first raised the banner of revolt against racial exclusiveness and imperial domination. His ideas, once dismissed as quaint and utopian ,had begun to strike answering chords in some of the finest minds in the world. "Generations to come, it may be", Einstein had said of Gandhi in July 1944, "will scarcely believe that such one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon earth."

Though his life had been continual unfolding of an endless drama, Gandhi himself seemed the least dramatic of men. It would be difficult to imagine a man with fewer trappings of political eminence or with less of the popular image of a heroic figure. With his loin cloth, steel-rimmed glasses, rough sandals, a toothless smile and a voice which rarely rose above a whisper, he had a disarming humility. He used a stone instead of soap for his bath, wrote his letters on little bits of paper with little stumps of pencils which he could hardly hold between his fingers, shaved with a crude country razor and ate with a wooden spoon from a prisoner’s bowl. He was, if one were to use the famous words of the Buddha, a man who had "by rousing himself, by earnestness, by restraint and control, made for himself an island which no flood could overwhelm."

Gandhi’s, deepest strivings were spiritual, but he did not-as had been the custom in his country- retire to a cave in the Himalayas to seek his salvation. He carried his cave within him. He did not know, he said, any religion apart from human activity; the spiritual law did not work in a vacuum, but expressed itself through the ordinary activities of life. This aspiration to relate the spirit- not the forms-of religion to the problems of everyday life runs like a thread through Gandhi’s career; his uneventful childhood, the slow unfolding and the near- failure of his youth, reluctant plunge into the politics of Natal, the long, unequal struggle in South Africa, and the vicissitudes of the Indian struggle for freedom, which under his leadership was to culminate in a triumph not untinged with tragedy.

Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi) was born into a Hindu Modh family in Porbandar, Gujarat, India in 1869. He was the son of Karamchand Gandhi, the diwan (Chief Minister) of Porbandar, and Putlibai, Karamchand's fourth wife (his previous three wives had died in childbirth), a Hindu of the Pranami Vaishnava order. Growing up with a devout mother and surrounded by the Jain influences of Gujarat, Gandhi learned from an early age the tenets of non-injury to living beings, vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and mutual tolerance between members of various creeds and sects. He was born into the vaishya, or business, caste.

In May 1883, at the age of 13, Gandhi was married through his parents' arrangement to Kasturba Makhanji (also spelled "Kasturbai" or known as "Ba"), who was the same age as he. They had four sons: Harilal Gandhi, born in 1888; Manilal Gandhi, born in 1892; Ramdas Gandhi, born in 1897; and Devdas Gandhi, born in 1900. Gandhi was a mediocre student in his youth at Porbandar and later Rajkot. He barely passed the matriculation exam for the University of Bombay in 1887, where he joined Samaldas College. He was also unhappy at the college, because his family wanted him to become a barrister. He leapt at the opportunity to study in England, which he viewed as "a land of philosophers and poets, the very centre of civilization." Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a major political and spiritual leader of India, and the Indian independence movement. He was the pioneer and perfector of Satyagraha - the resistance of tyranny through mass civil disobedience strongly founded upon ahimsa (total non-violence) - which led India to independence, and has inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.

Gandhi is commonly known and addressed in India and across the world as Mahatma Gandhi and as Bapu. Though his elders objected, Gandhi could not be prevented from leaving; and it is said that his mother, a devout woman, made him promise that he would keep away from wine, women, and meat during his stay abroad. Gandhi left behind his son Harilal, then a few months old. In London, Gandhi encountered theosophists, vegetarians, and others who were disenchanted not only with industrialism, but with the legacy of Enlightenment thought. They themselves represented the fringe elements of English society. Gandhi was powerfully attracted to them, as he was to the texts of the major religious traditions; and ironically it is in London that he was introduced to the Bhagavad Gita. Here, too, Gandhi showed determination and single-minded pursuit of his purpose, and accomplished his objective of finishing his degree from the Inner Temple.

He was called to the bar in 1891, and even enrolled in the High Court of London; but later that year he left for India. After one year of a none too successful law practice, Gandhi decided to accept an offer from an Indian businessman in South Africa, Dada Abdulla, to join him as a legal adviser. Unbeknown to him, this was to become an exceedingly lengthy stay, and altogether Gandhi was to stay in South Africa for over twenty years. The Indians who had been living in South Africa were without political rights, and were generally known by the derogatory name of 'coolies'. Gandhi himself came to an awareness of the frightening force and fury of European racism, and how far Indians were from being considered full human beings, when he thrown out of a first-class railway compartment car, though he held a first-class ticket, at Pietermaritzburg. From this political awakening Gandhi was to emerge as the leader of the Indian community, and it is in South Africa that he first coined the term satyagraha to signify his theory and practice of non-violent resistance. Gandhi was to describe himself preeminently as a votary or seeker of satya (truth), which could not be attained other than through ahimsa (non-violence, love) and brahmacharya (celibacy, striving towards God). Gandhi conceived of his own life as a series of experiments to forge the use of satyagraha in such a manner as to make the oppressor and the oppressed alike recognize their common bonding and humanity: as he recognized, freedom is only freedom when it is indivisible. In his book 'Satyagraha in South Africa' he was to detail the struggles of the Indians to claim their rights, and their resistance to oppressive legislation and executive measures, such as the imposition of a poll tax on them, or the declaration by the government that all non-Christian marriages were to be construed as invalid. In 1909, on a trip back to India, Gandhi authored a short treatise entitled 'Hind Swaraj' or Indian Home Rule, where he all but initiated the critique, not only of industrial civilization, but of modernity in all its aspects.

Gandhi returned to India in early 1915, and was never to leave the country again except for a short trip that took him to Europe in 1931. Though he was not completely unknown in India, Gandhi followed the advice of his political mentor, Gokhale, and took it upon himself to acquire a familiarity with Indian conditions. He traveled widely for one year. Over the next few years, he was to become involved in numerous local struggles, such as at Champaran in Bihar, where workers on indigo plantations complained of oppressive working conditions, and at Ahmedabad, where a dispute had broken out between management and workers at textile mills. His interventions earned Gandhi a considerable reputation, and his rapid ascendancy to the helm of nationalist politics is signified by his leadership of the opposition to repressive legislation (known as the "Rowlatt Acts") in 1919.

His saintliness was not uncommon, except in someone like him who immersed himself in politics, and by this time he had earned from no less a person than Rabindranath Tagore, India's most well-known writer, the title of Mahatma, or 'Great Soul'. When 'disturbances' broke out in the Punjab, leading to the massacre of a large crowd of unarmed Indians at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar and other atrocities, Gandhi wrote the report of the Punjab Congress Inquiry Committee. Over the next two years, Gandhi initiated the non-cooperation movement, which called upon Indians to withdraw from British institutions, to return honors conferred by the British, and to learn the art of self-reliance; though the British administration was at places paralyzed, the movement was suspended in February 1922 when a score of Indian policemen were brutally killed by a large crowd at Chauri Chaura, a small market town in the United Provinces.

Gandhi himself was arrested shortly thereafter, tried on charges of sedition, and sentenced to imprisonment for six years. At The Great Trial, as it is known to his biographers, Gandhi delivered a masterful indictment of British rule. Owing to his poor health, Gandhi was released from prison in 1925. Over the following years, he worked hard to preserve Hindu-Muslim relations, and in 1924 he observed, from his prison cell, a 21-day fast when Hindu-Muslim riots broke out at Kohat, a military barracks on the Northwest Frontier. This was to be of his many major public fasts, and in 1932 he was to commence the so-called Epic Fast unto death, since he thought of "separate electorates" for the oppressed class of what were then called untouchables (or Harijans in Gandhi's vocabulary, and dalits in today's language) as a retrograde measure meant to produce permanent divisions within Hindu society. Gandhi earned the hostility of Ambedkar, the leader of the untouchables, but few doubted that Gandhi was genuinely interested in removing the serious disabilities from which they suffered, just as no one doubt that Gandhi never accepted the argument that Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate elements in Indian society.

These were some of the concerns most prominent in Gandhi's mind, but he was also to initiate a constructive programme for social reform. Gandhi had ideas -- mostly sound -- on every subject, from hygiene and nutrition to education and labor, and he relentlessly pursued his ideas in one of the many newspapers which he founded. Indeed, were Gandhi known for nothing else in India, he would still be remembered as one of the principal figures in the history of Indian journalism. In early 1930, as the nationalist movement was revived, the Indian National Congress, the preeminent body of nationalist opinion, declared that it would now be satisfied with nothing short of complete independence (purna swaraj). Once the clarion call had been issued, it was perforce necessary to launch a movement of resistance against British rule. On March 2, Gandhi addressed a letter to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, informing him that unless Indian demands were met, he would be compelled to break the "salt laws".

Predictably, his letter was received with bewildered amusement, and accordingly Gandhi set off, on the early morning of March 12, with a small group of followers towards Dandi on the sea. They arrived there on April 5th: Gandhi picked up a small lump of natural salt, and so gave the signal to hundreds of thousands of people to similarly defy the law, since the British exercised a monopoly on the production and sale of salt. This was the beginning of the civil disobedience movement: Gandhi himself was arrested, and thousands of others were also hauled into jail. It is to break this deadlock that Irwin agreed to hold talks with Gandhi, and subsequently the British agreed to hold a Round Table Conference in London to negotiate the possible terms of Indian independence. Gandhi went to London in 1931 and met some of his admirers in Europe, but the negotiations proved inconclusive. On his return to India, he was once again arrested. For the next few years, Gandhi would be engaged mainly in the constructive reform of Indian society.

He had vowed upon undertaking the salt march that he would not return to Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, where he had made his home, if India did not attain its independence, and in the mid-1930s he established himself in a remote village, in the dead center of India, by the name of Segaon (known as Sevagram). It is to this obscure village, which was without electricity or running water, that India's political leaders made their way to engage in discussions with Gandhi about the future of the independence movement, and it is here that he received visitors such as Margaret Sanger, the well-known American proponent of birth-control. Gandhi also continued to travel throughout the country, taking him wherever his services were required. One such visit was to the Northwest Frontier, where he had in the imposing Pathan, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (known by the endearing term of "Frontier Gandhi", and at other times as Badshah Khan), a fervent disciple. At the outset of World War II, Gandhi and the Congress leadership assumed a position of neutrality: while clearly critical of fascism, they could not find it in themselves to support British imperialism. Gandhi was opposed by Subhas Chandra Bose, who had served as President of the Congress, and who took to the view that Britain's moment of weakness was India's moment of opportunity. When Bose ran for President of the Congress against Gandhi's wishes and triumphed against Gandhi's own candidate, he found that Gandhi still exercised influence over the Congress Working Committee, and that it was near impossible to run the Congress if the cooperation of Gandhi and his followers could not be procured. Bose tendered his resignation, and shortly thereafter was to make a dramatic escape from India to find support among the Japanese and the Nazis for his plans to liberate India. In 1942, Gandhi issued the last call for independence from British rule. On the grounds of what is now known as August Kranti Maidan, he delivered a stirring speech, asking every Indian to lay down their life, if necessary, in the cause of freedom.

He gave them this mantra: "Do or Die"; at the same time, he asked the British to 'Quit India'. The response of the British government was to place Gandhi under arrest, and virtually the entire Congress leadership was to find itself behind bars, not to be released until after the conclusion of the war. A few months after Gandhi and Kasturba had been placed in confinement in the Aga Khan's Palace in Pune, Kasturba passed away: this was a terrible blow to Gandhi, following closely on the heels of the death of his private secretary of many years, the gifted Mahadev Desai. In the period from 1942 to 1945, the Muslim League, which represented the interest of certain Muslims and by now advocated the creation of a separate homeland for Muslims, increasingly gained the attention of the British, and supported them in their war effort. The new government that came to power in Britain under Clement Atlee was committed to the independence of India, and negotiations for India's future began in earnest. Sensing that the political leaders were now craving for power, Gandhi largely distanced himself from the negotiations. He declared his opposition to the vivisection of India.

It is generally conceded, even by his detractors, that the last years of his life were in some respects his finest. He walked from village to village in riot-torn Noakhali, where Hindus were being killed in retaliation for the killing of Muslims in Bihar, and nursed the wounded and consoled the widowed; and in Calcutta he came to constitute, in the famous words of the last viceroy, Mountbatten, a "one-man boundary force" between Hindus and Muslims. The ferocious fighting in Calcutta came to a halt, almost entirely on account of Gandhi's efforts, and even his critics were wont to speak of the Gandhi's 'miracle of Calcutta'. When the moment of freedom came, on 15 August 1947, Gandhi was nowhere to be seen in the capital, though Nehru and the entire Constituent Assembly were to salute him as the architect of Indian independence, as the 'father of the nation'. The last few months of Gandhi's life were to be spent mainly in the capital city of Delhi. There he divided his time between the 'Bhangi colony', where the sweepers and the lowest of the low stayed, and Birla House, the residence of one of the wealthiest men in India and one of the benefactors of Gandhi's ashrams. Hindu and Sikh refugees had streamed into the capital from what had become Pakistan, and there was much resentment, which easily translated into violence, against Muslims. It was partly in an attempt to put an end to the killings in Delhi, and more generally to the bloodshed following the partition, which may have taken the lives of as many as 1 million people, besides causing the dislocation of no fewer than 11 million, that Gandhi was to commence the last fast unto death of his life. The fast was terminated when representatives of all the communities signed a statement that they were prepared to live in "perfect amity", and that the lives, property, and faith of the Muslims would be safeguarded.

A few days later, a bomb exploded in Birla House where Gandhi was holding his evening prayers, but it caused no injuries. However, his assassin, a Marathi Chitpavan Brahmin by the name of Nathuram Godse, was not so easily deterred. Gandhi, quite characteristically, refused additional security, and no one could defy his wish to be allowed to move around unhindered. In the early evening hours of 30 January 1948, Gandhi met with India's Deputy Prime Minister and his close associate in the freedom struggle, Vallabhai Patel, and then proceeded to his prayers. That evening, as Gandhi's time-piece, which hung from one of the folds of his dhoti (loin-cloth), was to reveal to him, he was uncharacteristically late to his prayers, and he fretted about his inability to be punctual. At 10 minutes past 5 o'clock, with one hand each on the shoulders of Abha and Manu, who were known as his 'walking sticks', Gandhi commenced his walk towards the garden where the prayer meeting was held. As he was about to mount the steps of the podium, Gandhi folded his hands and greeted his audience with a namaskar; at that moment, a young man came up to him and roughly pushed aside Manu. Nathuram Godse bent down in the gesture of an obeisance, took a revolver out of his pocket, and shot Gandhi three times in his chest. Bloodstains appeared over Gandhi's white woolen shawl; his hands still folded in a greeting, Gandhi blessed his assassin: He Ram! He Ram! As Gandhi fell, his faithful time-piece struck the ground, and the hands of the watch came to a standstill. They showed, as they had done before, the precise time: 5:12 P.M.

Khudiram Bose - Fighter of Independence

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 09:51:00 +0000

Khudiram Bose

Khudiram Bose was one of the thousands who fought for their birthright "freedom" and also curbed the power and stirred the British Government. In Indian history, several revolutionists without a backward glance moved forward to free their motherland. Their love for India was intense and they never thought of their personal relations and comfort. Among them, Khudiram Bose who at a tender age, was attracted towards the sacred words of Vande Mataram and showed the guts to devote his soul to the war of Independence.

Khudiram Bose was an Indian freedom fighter, one of the youngest revolutionaries early in the Indian independence movement. He was born on 3rd December 1889 in the village Bahuvaini in Medinipur district of Bengal. His father Trailokyanath Basu was the Tahsildar of the town of the Nadazol prince. His mother Lakshmipriya Devi was a pious lady, who was well known for her virtuous life and generosity. Bose was inspired by his readings of the Bhagavad Gita, which helped him embrace revolutionary activities aimed at ending the British Raj. He was especially disillusioned with the British following the partition of Bengal conflagration in 1909. He joined Jugantar - the party of revolutionary activists. At the nascent age of sixteen, Bose was defying police after planting bombs near police stations and targeting government officials. He was arrested three years later on charges of conducting a series of bomb attacks.The specific bombing for which he was sentenced to death resulted in the deaths of 3 unrelated innocents: Mrs Kennedy, her daughter and a servant. Khudiram and Prafulla Chaki were sent to Muzaffarpur, Bihar to assasinate Kingsford, the Calcutta Presidency Magistrate, and later, magistrate of Muzaffarpur,Bihar.

Khudiram and Prafulla watched the usual movements of Kingsford and prepared a plan to kill him.In the evening of 30 April 1908, the duo waited in front of the gate of European Club fot the carriage of Kingsford to come.When a vehicle came out of the gate, they threw bombs and blew up the carriage. Unfortunately, the vehicle was not carrying Kingsford, rather two innocent British ladies - Mrs and Miss Kenedy (the wife and daughter of barrister Pringle Kennedy ) were killed.The terrorist duo fled. Prafulla committed suicide when cornered by police at the Samastipur Railway station. Khudiram was later arrested. On this Muzaffarpur bombing and other charges of bombings carried out by him, a pretence of trial was carried out for two months. In the end, he was sentenced to death at a tender age of 19.He was hanged on 11 August 1908.

Subhash Chandra Bose (Netaji)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 15:21:00 +0000

Subhash Chandra Bose

Introduction

Subhash Chandra Bose was one of India’s greatest freedom fighter. He revived the Indian National Army, popularly known as ‘Azad Hind Fauj’ in 1943 which was initially formed in 1942 by Rash Behari Bose. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose had visited London during pre-independence period to discuss the future of India, with the members of the Labor party. His sudden disappearance from Taiwan, led to surfacing of various theories, unfortunately none of which were investigated thoroughly by successive governments; leaving people in the dark about one of the most beloved leaders India has ever produced.

Life history of Subhash Chandra Bose

Subhash Chandra Bose was born on 23 January, 1897 in Cuttack (Orissa) to Janakinath Bose and Prabhavati Devi. Janakinath Bose was one of the successful lawyer in Cuttack and received the title of “Rai Bahadur”. He, later became a member of the Bengal Legislative Council.
Subhash Chandra Bose was a very intelligent and sincere student but never had much interest in sports. He passed his B.A. in Philosophy from the Presidency College in Calcutta. He was strongly influenced by Swami Vivekananda’s teachings and was known for his patriotic zeal as a student. He also adored Vivekananda as his spiritual Guru.

Start of the opposition to British by Subhash Chandra Bose

Subhash Chandra Bose decided to take revenge, after reading so many incidents about the exploitation of the fellow Indians by the British. In 1916, Subhash reportedly beat and thrashed one of his British teachers E F Otten. The professor made a racist remark against the Indian students. As a result, Subhash Chandra Bose was expelled from the Presidency College and banished from Calcutta University. The incident brought Subhash in the list of rebel-Indians. In December 1921, Bose was arrested and imprisoned for organizing a boycott of the celebrations to mark the Prince of Wales’s visit to India.

Subhash Chandra Bose in Britain for ICS and return to India

Subhash Chandra Bose at young age

Subhash Chandra Bose’s father wanted him to become a civil servant and therefore, sent him to England to appear for the Indian Civil Service Examination. Bose was placed fourth with highest marks in English. But his urge for participating in the freedom movement was intense that in April 1921, Bose resigned from the coveted Indian Civil Service and came back to India. Soon, he left home to become an active member of India’s independence movement. He, later joined the Indian National Congress, and also elected as the president of the Youth wing party.

Subhash Chaandra Bose with Congress

Subhash Chandra Bose worked under the leadership of Chittaranjan Das, an active member of Congress in Calcutta. It was Chittaranjan Das, who along with Motilal Nehru, left Congress and founded the Swaraj Party in 1922. Subhash would regard Chittaranjan Das as his political guru.
While Chittaranjan Das was busy in developing the national strategy, Subhash Chandra Bose played a major role in enlightening the students, youth and labourers of Calcutta. He was eagerly waiting to see India, as an independent, federal and republic nation.

Subhash Chandra Bose Vs. Congress

        In freedom struggle congress was large organisation. Subhash Chandra Bose became a strong leader in Congress and he made brave attempt to mould the entire party differently. Congress party was always lenient and never in a position to oppose. Saubhashbabu outrightly opposed this behaviour. This opposition was against Gandhi‘s philosophy. Therefore Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders were hurt and since then they opposed him.
        Congress party had undertaken a mission of opposing his every thought, insulting him and to stifle his highflying ambitions. In this manoeuvre of congress many a time he felt suffocated. Once there was a picture of ‘Subhash Chandra Bose against entire congress party’. It was first election of congress that time. Usually closer aide of Mahatma Gandhi used to get elected; but this time Subhash Chandra Bose got elected with higher votes. This insulted Gandhi group, which lead to their less interest of thinking towards parties campaign for independence.
        In order to acknowledge outside support and get freedom he journeyed to far away Germany, Japan when it was period of 2nd world war! He decided to induce soldiers from outside to get freedom. Nehru at that time said “If Subhash would bring soldiers from outside and enter India, then I would be the first person to wield a sword and oppose him.” That was the extent to which he detested Subhash babu.

Formation of Azad Hind Fauj by Subhash Chandra Bose

Netaji with Azad Hind Fauj

        Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was against rendering any kind of help to the British during the World War II. He warned them so. The second World War broke out in September of 1939, and just as predicted by Bose, India was declared as a warring state (on behalf of the British) by the Governor General, without consulting Indian leaders. The Congress party was in power in seven major states and all state governments resigned in protest.
        Subhash Chandra Bose now started a mass movement against utilizing Indian resources and men for the great war. To him, it made no sense to further bleed poor Indians for the sake of colonial and imperial nations. There was a tremendous response to his call and the British promptly imprisoned him . He took to a hunger-strike, and after his health deteriorated on the 11th day of fasting, he was freed and was placed under house arrest. The British could do nothing except locking him in the prison.
        It was in 1941, that Subhash Chandra Bose suddenly disappeared. The authorities did not come to know for many days that he was not in his Barrack (the house in which he was being guarded). He traveled by foot, car and train and resurfaced in Kabul (now in Afghanistan), only to disappear once again. In November 1941, his broadcast from German radio sent shock waves among the British and electrified the Indian masses who realized that their leader was working on a master plan to free their motherland. It also gave fresh confidence to the revolutionaries in India who were challenging the British in many ways.
        The Axis powers (mainly Germany) assured Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose military and other help to fight the British. Japan by this time had grown into another strong world power, occupying key colonies of Dutch, French, and British colonies in Asia. Netaji Bose had struck alliance with Germany and Japan. He rightly felt that his presence in the East would help his countrymen in freedom struggle and second phase of his saga began. It is told that he was last seen on land near Kiel canal in Germany, in the beginning of 1943. A most hazardous journey was undertaken by him under water, covering thousands of miles, crossing enemy territories. He was in the Atlantic, the Middle East, Madagascar and the Indian ocean. Battles were being fought over land, in the air and there were mines in the sea. At one stage he traveled 400 miles in a rubber dingy to reach a Japanese submarine, which took him to Tokyo. He was warmly received in Japan and was declared the head of the Indian army, which consisted of about 40,000 soldiers from Singapore and other eastern regions. These soldiers were united by another great revolutionary Rash Behari Bose. Rash Behari handed over them to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. Netaji Bose called it the Indian National Army (INA) and a government by the name “Azad Hind Government” was declared on the 21st of October 1943. INA freed the Andaman and Nicobar islands from the British and were renamed as Swaraj and Shaheed islands. The Government started functioning.
        Subhash Chandra Bose wanted to free India from the Eastern front. He had taken care that Japanese interference was not present from any angle. Army leadership, administration and communications were managed by Indians only. Subhash Brigade, Azad Brigade and Gandhi Brigade were formed. INA marched through Burma and occupied Coxtown on the Indian Border. A touching scene ensued when the solders entered their ‘free’ motherland. Some lay down and kissed, some placed pieces of mother earth on their heads, others wept. They were now inside India and were determined to drive out the British! Delhi Chalo (Let’s march to Delhi) was the war cry.
        The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed the history of mankind. Japan had to surrender.

Effect of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s earlier visits to England

During his sojourn to England, he met with the leaders of British Labor Party and political thinkers including Clement Attlee, Arthur Greenwood, Harold Laski, G.D.H. Cole, and Sir Stafford Cripps. Bose also discuss with them about the future of India. It must also be noted that it was during the regime of the Labor Party (1945-1951), with Attlee as the Prime Minister, that India gained independence.

Disappearance of Subhash Chandra Bose

Although it was believed that Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose died in a plane crash, his body was never recovered. There have been many theories put forward regarding his disappearance. The government of India set up a number of committees to investigate the case and come out with truth.
In May 1956, the Shah Nawaz Committee visited Japan to look into the situation of Bose’s assumed death. Citing their lack of political relations with Taiwan, the Centre, did not seek for the assistance from their government. The reports of Justice Mukherjee Commission, tabled in Parliament on 17 May, 2006 said, “Bose did not die in the plane crash and the ashes at Renkoji temple are not his”. However, the findings were rejected by the government of India.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak "The Father of Indian Unrest"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:33:00 +0000

Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (29th Couplet) Described by British as "The Father of Indian Unrest " Tilak was born on 23.07.1856. His slogan, "Swaraj (Self Rule) is my birthright", inspired millions of Indians. His book "Geetarahasya"a classic treatise on Geeta in Marathi was written by him, in prison at Mandalay.Great journalist- editor, an authority on Vedas, Sanskrit Scholar, mathematician and a natural leader of India. Died 01.08.1920 "Swaraj is our birthright," thundered Tilak, the Lion of India.He founded schools andpublished newspapers, all for his motherland. He rotted in a distant jail at Manda lay, in Burma. he wore himself out till his last breath, to awaken his countrymen.

He had imbibed values, cultures and intelligence from his father Gangadhar Ramchandra Tilak who was a Sanskrit scholar and a famous teacher. At the age of 10, Bal Gangadhar went to Pune with his family as his father was transferred. In Pune, he was educated in an Anglo-Vernacular school. After some years he lost his mother and at the age of 16 his father too he got married to a 10-year-old girl named Satyabhama while he was studying in Matriculation. In 1877, Tilak completed his studies and continued with studying Law.

With an aim to impart teachings about Indian culture and national ideals to India’s youth, Tilak along with Agarkar and Vishnushstry founded the ‘Deccan Education Society’. Soon after that Tilak started two weeklies, ‘Kesari’ and ‘Marathi’ to highlight plight of Indians. He also started the celebrations of Ganapati Festival and Shivaji Jayanti to bring people close together and join the nationalist movement against British.

Tilak authored the well-regarded The Orion, or, Researches into the antiquities of the Vedas (1893) in which he used astronomy to establish that the Vedic people were present in India at least as early as the 4th millennium BC. Later, in 1903, he wrote the much more speculative 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. Tilak also authored 'Geetarahasya' - the analysis of 'Karmayoga' in the Bhagavadgita, which is known to be gist of the Vedas and the Upanishads.

In fighting for people’s cause, twice he was sentenced to imprisonment. He launched Swadeshi Movenment and believed that ‘Swaraj is my birth right and I shall have it’. This quote inspired millions of Indians to join the freedom struggle. With the goal of Swaraj, he also built ‘Home Rule League’. Tilak constantly traveled across the country to inspire and convince people to believe in Swaraj and fight for freedom. He was constantly fighting against injustice and one sad day on August 1, 1920, he died.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak was one of the prime architects of modern India and is still living in the hearts of millions of India.

Chandra Shekhar Azad - the freedom fighter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:41:00 +0000

Chandra Shekhar Azad

Chandra Shekhar Azad was born on July 23,1906 in village Bhavra in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh. His parents were Pandit Sitaram Tiwari and Jagarani Devi. He received his early schooling in Bhavra. For higher studies he went to the Sanskrit Pathashala at Varanasi. He was an ardent follower of Hanuman and once disguised himself as a priest in a hanuman temple to escape the dragnet of British police.

Chandrasekhar Azad was a great Indian freedom fighter and revolutionary thinker. Revered for his audacious deeds and fierce patriotism, he was the mentor of Bhagat Singh, the famous Indian martyr. Chandrasekhar Azad is considered one of the greatest Indian freedom fighter along with Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru, Ram Prasad Bismil, and Ashfaqulla Khan. Chandrasekhar Azad's parents were Pandit Sita Ram Tiwari and Jagrani Devi. He received his early schooling in Bhavra District Jhabua (Madhya Pradesh). For higher studies he went to the Sanskrit Pathashala at Varanasi. Young Azad was one of the young generation of Indians when Mahatma Gandhi launched the Non-Cooperation Movement. But many were disillusioned with the suspension of the struggle in 1922 owing to the Chauri Chaura massacre of 22 policemen. Although Gandhi was appalled by the brutal violence, Azad did not feel that violence was unacceptable in the struggle, especially in view of the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, where Army units killed hundreds of unarmed civilians and wounded thousands in Amritsar. Young Azad and contemporaries like Bhagat Singh were deeply and emotionally influenced by that tragedy. As a revolutionary, he adopted the lastname 'Azad', which means "Free" in Urdu.There is an interesting story that while he adopted the name "Azad" he made a pledge that the Police will never capture him alive. Azad and others had committed themselves to absolute independence by any means. He was most famous for The Kakori Rail Dacoity in 1925 and the assassination of the assistant superintendent of Police John Poyantz Saunders in 1928.

Azad and his compatriots would target British officials known for their oppressive actions against ordinary people, or for beating and torturing arrested freedom fighters. Azad was also a believer in socialism as the basis for a future India, free of social and economic oppression and adversity. Bhagat Singh joined Azad following the death of Lala Lajpat Rai, an Indian leader who was beaten to death by police officials. Azad trained Singh and others in covert activities, and the latter grew close to him after witnessing his resolve, patriotism and courage. Along with fellow patriots like Rajguru and Sukhdev, Azad and Singh formed the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, committed to complete Indian independence and socialist principles of for India's future progress.

Chandrashekhar Azad was a terror for British police. He was on their hit list and the British police badly wanted to capture him dead or alive. On February 27, 1931 Chandrashekhar Azad met two of his comrades at the Alfred Park Allah bad. He was betrayed by an informer who had informed the British police. The police surrounded the park and ordered Chandrashekhar Azad to surrender. Chandrashekhar Azad fought alone valiantly and killed three policemen. But finding himself surrounded and seeing no route for escape, Chandrashekhar Azad shot himself. Thus he kept his pledge of not being caught alive.

Shaheed Bhagat Singh

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:06:00 +0000

Bhagat Singh

Bhagat Singh was a freedom fighter and one of the most famous revolutionaries of Indian Independence Movement. It is also believed that he was one of the earliest Marxists in India. Bhagat Singh was born in a family that was actively involved in revolutionary activities against the British rule in the country. The name given to Bhagat Singh meant `devotee`. `Arya Samaj` had a huge impact on the life of Bhagat Singh`s father Sardar Kishan Singh Sandhu. His uncles as well as his father were all part of the `Ghadar Party` that was led by Kartar Singh Sarabha. Bhagat Singh`s mentor was Kartar Singh Sarabha, who was a freedom fighter of the country.

Bhagat Singh, a symbol of heroism, was born in a Sikh family in Layalpur, Punjab on September 27, 1907. He was a national hero who gave a new wave to the revolutionary movement in India. His only goal in life was the destruction of British Empire.

Bhagat started his education in DAV School in Lahore but was not able to complete his studies because he was highly disturbed and influenced by the Jalianwala Bagh massacre at the age of 12. His desire to drive British out from India became stronger and he joined the Non-Cooperation Movement called by Gandhi Ji in 1921. The incidence of Chauri-Chaura in Gorakhpur made Bhagat violent and he decided to earn freedom with armed revolution rather than non-violence. He then joined the National College in Lahore, a center of revolutionary activities.

To spread message of revolution in Punjab, Bhagat formed a union of revolutionaries by the name ‘Naujavan Bharat Sabha’ and gave a call for mass mobilization. In 1928, he went to Delhi to attend a meeting of revolutionaries’ and there he came in contact with Chandrashekhar Azad. With a common aim to establish republic in India they both formed ‘Hindustan Samajvadi Prajatantra Sangha’. There were protests against of Simon Commission visit to India and in this protest Lala Lajpat Rai was brutally lathi charged and later on he died. This added to the anger and discontent of Bhagat and he was determined to kill the British official and Deputy Inspector General Scott responsible for the death of Lala Lajpat Rai. By mistake, he killed assistant superintendent Saunders and ran from Lahore to escape punishment. He threw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly on April 18, 1929 and was sentenced to death on March 23, 1931.

While Bhagat Singh was in prison along with his other three friends, he wrote a letter to the Viceroy. He wanted that he should treat him as the prisoners of war thus; they should not be hanged but, should execute them by firing squad. Bhagat Singh was a true soldier who fought for his country and got hanged when he was just 23 years of age. On March 20, one of Bhagat Singh’s friends visited him in jail as he wanted him to sign on a letter for mercy, but this great man refused to sign that letter. Thus, on 23rd March he was executed and the life story of this great freedom fighter ended.

Though dead, Bhagat Singh is still living in the history of humanity and remembered as a prominent face of the freedom struggle.

Mangal Pandey (Shaheed Mangal Pandey)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 11:44:00 +0000

Mangal Pandey

Born on July 19, 1827 in the village of Nagwa, district Ballia, Uttar Pradesh, Mangal Pandey was introduced to Indian history as the first freedom fighter and martyr of 1857. He is popularly named ‘Shaheed Mangal Pandey’ because ‘Shaheed’ means martyr in Urdu and he was the first Indian sepoy who woke up the Indian masses to fight for the nation.

Mangal Pandey had spent a quintessential village life during his childhood in Akbarpur Tehsil. He had his all-time companion Nakki Khan, the son of the village Maulavi. They belonged to the typical village middle-class, with his father serving as a peasant. Mangal Pandey was yet to become enlightened in British policies and politics. A young Mangal had remained witness to two remarkable incidents, which was to transform his life forever and alter his view of the British masters.

Mangal Pandey was 22 years old when he joined the Bengal Native Infantry (BNI) in the 34th Regiment. However, his joining in the army was entirely unplanned. During his visit to Akbarpur, a regiment that was marching towards Varanasi recruited him on the road. He willingly gave his consent. However, his move was not entertained by his friend Nakki Khan although his father, Divakar Pandey, had agreed to it impassively. He was a true freedom fighter who gave a spark to the First War of Indian Independence. The British termed it as Sepoy Mutiny 1857 as it was a mass revolt of Indian soldiers in the British Army.

The main reason of Sepoy Mutiny was the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifled musket. To load a new rifle, the soldiers had to bite the cartridge and open to pour gunpowder into the rifle’s muzzle. There was a widespread rumor that these cartridges were greased with lard or tallow. Lard is the pork fat which the Muslims regarded as unclean and tallow is the beef fat which the Hindus regarded as sacred. The British army constituted 96% of Indians and so both the Hindus and the Muslims refused to accept these cartridges. Everyone had a firm belief that this was done intentionally and this discontent turned into a major revolt.

Mass revolt forced Pandey to attack his British sergeant on the parade ground, besides wounding an adjutant. A native soldier stopped him from killing them. The officer in charge ordered a Jamadaar of the troop to arrest Pandey but he refused to do so. Mangal tried to commit suicide to light the flame of nationalism in the hearts of millions of Indians but he failed to do so. He was then captured and sentenced to death on April 8, 1857 in Barrackpore. March 29, 1857 is considered to be a day when Mangal Pandey reaped the seed for a struggle which gave India her freedom.

Introduction to Indian freedom fighters

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 10:39:00 +0000

‘Free India’ was a dream of all Indians under the British rule. Everyone during that rule fought in some way or the other with a common aim of ending British and other colonial authorities in India. After a century of revolutions, struggle, blood shedding, battles and sacrifices, India finally achieved independence on August 15, 1947.

India was free in 1947 from the British Empire but the country lost many men and women who were filled with undaunted courage and spirit of patriotism. Today, they are known as freedom fighters because they sacrificed their lives for their motherland.

Indian freedom fighters

Indian freedom fighters with their true spirit and undaunted courage had faced various tortures, exploitations and hardships to earn us freedom.

The pioneers of the freedom movement were Mangal Pandey, Tantia Tope, Rani of Jhansi and the great Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi who introduced non-violent ways of fighting the enemy. Other notable freedom fighters of India are Annie Besant, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bhagat Singh, Bipin Chandra Pal, Sukhdev, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Chandrashekhar Azad, Sarojini Naidu>, Dadabhai Naoroji, Sucheta Kriplani and Chakravarti Rajagopalachari.

There are endless number of men and women other than the above list who daringly fought for India’s freedom.