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Showing posts with the label Indian Freedom Struggle

Bipin Chandra Pal, Father of Revolutionary Thoughts

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One of the famous triumvirate called “Lal-Bal-Pal”, Bipin Chandra Pal is known as "Father of Revolutionary Thoughts" in India. He was born in 1858 in Sylhet (now in Bangladesh).    Bipin Chandra Pal joined Indian National Congress in 1886. He started newspapers with a view to educating public opinion. He was the founder editor of Paridarshak, a weekly, and later worked as assistant editor of the Bengal Public Opinion and the Tribune. Nationalist to the core, Bipin Chandra Pal was an exponent of concept of Indian Swaraj and Swadeshi. He vehemently opposed the partition of Bengal announced in 1905. He was a noted writer and a powerful speaker. His most famous work was Memories and My Life and Times (in two volumes). He also launched English newspaper Bande Mataram of which the revolutionary and later a mystic Aurobindo Ghose became an editor. I n 1907, h e was convicted for six months following publication of seditious views in the paper. Bipin Chandra Pal worked for Associatio

Amir Chand, Martyr of Hardinge Bomb Case

Born in 1869, Amir Chand was a revolutionary arrested in connection with the Delhi Conspiracy case, also known as the Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy. The case refers to an alleged plot to kill the then Viceroy of India, Lord Hardinge, in 1912. Amir Chand along with Bhai Bal Mukand, Awadh Behari  and Basant Kumar Biswas was sentenced to death and hanged at Delhi Jail on May 8, 1915.

Forgotten Revolutionary Kanailal Dutta (1888-1908)

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  Born in Chandan Nagar in West Bengal, Kanailal Dutta was a great revolutionary who was arrested in connection with the Muzaffarpur Conspiracy Case in 1908. He was sentenced to death for the murder of a revolutionary-turned-approver in the Alipur Conspiracy Case.   Kanailal Dutta was hanged on November 10, 1908 inside the Alipore Jail in Kolkata.

Gopal Hari Deshmukh: A voice against women's oppression

Famous by the pen-name of ‘Lokahitawadi’, Gopal Hari Deshmukh was a social reformer from western India. Born in 1893 in Pune,  Gopal Hari Deshmukh was a rational thinker who worked as a member of the Governor General's Council.  He advocated widow remarriage and opposed child marriage, caste system and slavery in any form through a Marathi monthly magazine Lokahitawadi of which he was the editor.  Gopal Hari Deshmukh started the Punarvivah Mandal (Widow Remarriage Institute) at Ahmedabad and helped to launch Marathi newspapers, Induprakash and Jnanprakash, in Bombay and Poona. A champion of national self-reliance,  Gopal Hari Deshmukh  made it a point to wear  handspun khadi cloth while  attending the Delhi Durbar in 1877.  Gopal Hari Deshmukh died in 1892. 

Manindra Nath Banerjee: Unsung Revolutionary of India

Born on 13th January in 1907 at Varanasi, Manindra Nath Banerji was a revolutionary who had shot his maternal uncle J.N. Banerji, the Deputy Superintend of Police investigating the Kakori Conspiracy case. J.N. Banerji had played a dubious role in getting Rajendra Lahiri hanged.  Rajendra Lahiri was  convicted in the famous Kakori conspiracy case and hanged in the Gonda District Jail. Manindra Nath Banerjee was arrested and sentenced to ten years of rigorous imprisonment. While demanding better treatment for the political prisoners he breathed his last on June 20  in 1934 in the Fatehgarh Central Jail in Farrukhabad district in the Uttar Pradesh after 66 days of hunger strike.

George Yule, First English President of Indian National Congress

George Yule was a Scottish entrepreneur who was the first British to serve as president of the Indian National Congress.  He was elected to that position in the fourth session of the Congress in 1888 at Allahabad.  He served as Sheriff of Calcutta and President of the Indian Chamber of Commerce.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, First Education Minister in India

Born in Mecca (now in Saudi Arabia) in 1888, Abul Kalam Azad was an Islamic theologian and a great scholar of Arabic, Persian and Urdu. He adopted the pen-name of Azad at the age of 16. He published a number of papers such as Al-Nadwah, the Vakil, Al-Hilal (“The Crescent”) and Al-Balagh.  He was 35 when he was elected President of the INC in its Delhi session in 1923, becoming the youngest to hold that office. He was again elected to the presidentship of Congress in 1940 and continued to hold that position until 1946. After Indian independence in 1947, he became the Education Minister in Jawahar Lal Nehru’s cabinet. He had written autobiographical narrative, 'India Wins Freedom' which holds more than religion politics was responsible for the partition of the country.  Azad died in 1958.  In 1992, he was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award.

Annie Besant (1847-1933)

A leading member of the Theosophical Society, Annie Besant was an Irish English woman who came to India in 1893 to spread the beliefs of the society which she had joined in 1889.    In India, Annie Besant settled in Varanasi where she founded the Central Hindu College in 1898. In 1907, she was elected president of the Theosophical Society. In 1914 she started the publication of the Commonweal and New India. These journals soon became her chief vehicle for propagating the beliefs of India’s freedom. In 1916 Besant established the Indian Home Rule League. She was a leading member of the Indian National Congress of which she was elected president in the Calcutta session in 1917.  She was also the founder of Indian Boy Scouts Association and Indian Woman’s Association.   Credited with the foundations of several schools and colleges, she had also established the National University at Adyar in 1918. Besant died in 1933.

Badruddin Tyabji: First Muslim President of Indian National Congress

Badruddin Tyabji was the third President of the Indian National Congress (INC) after Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee (1885) and Dadabhai Naoroji (1886). He was the first Muslim president of INC.  Together with Pherozeshah Mehta and K. T. Telang, he formed the Bombay Presidency Association in 1885. Bombay Presidency Association came into being as a result of the reactionary policies of Lytton, governor-general of India, and dissatisfaction with the Ilbert Bill.  He died of heart attack in London in 1906.

Dadabhai Naoroji: First Indian MP in British Parliament

Born of priestly Parsi family in 1825 in Bombay, Dadabhai Naoroji took a leading part in founding the Indian National Congress of which he was the president for three times (in 1886, 1893 and 1906). Affectionately called the 'Grand Old Man of India', he was the first Indian to be elected to the British Parliament. He entered the British House of Commons as a member of the Liberal Party in 1892.  In 1852, Naoroji established Bombay Association, India’s first political association.  In 1867 he helped establish the East India Association which aimed to put across Indian viewpoints across to the British public  A critic of British economic policy in India, Naoroji is known for his enunciations of the Drain Theory in his long paper, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. Dadabhai Naoroji died in 1917 in Mumbai.

Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, First INC President

A successful lawyer, W C Bonnerjee was born in 1844 in Calcutta and comes lauded as the first president of the Indian National Congress. He was the first Indian to contest election to the British House of Commons.  He was again elected president of the INC in the Allahabad session in 1892. He was a moderate in politics. He had defended nationalist leader Surendranath Banerjee in a contempt of court case in the High Court of Calcutta. W C Bondnerjee died in England in 1906.

Romesh Chunder Dutt, historian and political leader

Romesh Chunder Dutt (1848-1909) was a famous historian, economic thinker and political leader. In 1899, he presided over the annual conference of the Indian National Congress held in Lucknow.   According to revolutionary and mystic Aurobindo Ghose, Romesh Chunder Dutt “prepared the public mind for the boycott movement” and “not only wrote history but created it.”    His famous work is the Economic History of India (1902). Apart from translating the Ramayana and Mahabharata in English, he also translated the Rig Veda in Bengali. 

Tantia Tope: Hero of the Revolt of 1857

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Tantia Tope was the leader of the rebels of Central India who unfurled the banner of rebellion during the Revolt of 1857, known variously as First War of Independence, Sepoy Mutiny etc. The original name of this brave Maratha Brahmana was Ramchandra Panduranga who was endowed with indomitable spirit. During the uprising, Tantia Tope, an expert in the original Maratha Gurilla tactics, joined the troops of Nana Saheb, leader of the revolt in Kanpur. He helped Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi in her fight against the British forces. After her death in the battle on the 17th June, 1858, the British devoted their energy chasing him from place to place. An act of betrayal by Man Singh, a feudatory of Sindhia, found Tantia Tope in the hands of the British who sentenced him to death on charges of rebellion and murder on April 18, 1859.

Rani Gaidinliu: Revolutionary Woman from Manipur

Described by Jawaharlal Nehru as the R ani of the Nagas, Rani Gaidinliu was a Naga woman revolutionary leader and successor to the political movement launched by the Naga leader Haipou Jadonang (1905-31) to derive away the British from Manipur. She was born in 1915.    After the execution of Jadonang in 1931 by the British,  Rani Gaidinliu led a popular rebellion against the British rule at the young age of sixteen. In order to suppress her followers and capture her, the British deployed regular army columns. In 1932, she was arrested by the British government who sentenced her to life imprisonment. She spent fourteen years in different jails of Guwahati, Shillong, Aizawl, Tura and others. Rani Gaidinliu was finally released from the prison after India’s independence in 1947. She died in 1993.

Udham Singh (1899-1940)

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Born on 26th December in Sunam Village in Sangrur district of the north-western state of Punjab, Udham Singh was a great revolutionary. He avenged the infamous Jalianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar by murdering Michael O’Dwyer, who was the  Lieutenant Governor of Punjab in 1919 when  Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, the military commander of Amritsar   had ordered the firing on the innocent people who have gathered here to protest the arrest of Congress leaders Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr. Satya Pal under Rowlatt Act. Udham Singh killed O’Dwyer in London on 13th March 1940. He was arrested on the spot and sentenced to death on 21st July in the same year.