Indian History

Swami Shraddhanand was a leading member of the famous reform movement Arya Samaj and tried his best to propagate the ideals and teachings of Swami Dayanand Saraswati, who founded the movement in 1875. A nationalist leader from Punjab, he strove hard to reform Hinduism of purging it all later degenerate features that had crept into it.  A successful lawyer and great educationist, Shraddhanand plunged headlong into the freedom movement. He started a weekly, Satya Dharma Peacharak , from Jalandhar and in 1902 founded the Gurukula at Kangri near Haridwar (now in Uttrakhand and an important place of Hindu pilgrimage). During the anti-Rowlatt Act agitation, he joined the National Movement and was the Chairman of the Reception Committee of the Amritsar session of the Congress in 1919. Shraddhanand was a liberal social reformer who advocated widow remarriage and female education and opposed child marriage and caste discrimination. He was the president of the Suddhi (re-conversion) Sabha of the

Born in 1856, Sri Narayan Guru was a great socio – religious reformer, saint, seer, poet and philosopher of the southern state of Kerala. Belonging to a lower caste, he fight against the Brahmin domination was relentless. His contribution to the spread of education in Kerala was immense. He stressed the need of education and for freedom. According to him, the essence of all religions is one and same, and exhorted the people to study all religions. Aravipuram Movement In 1888 an important event took place in the life of Narayan Guru when he installed a Shiva idol at Aravipuram (consecration) located in the district of Thiruvananthapuram.   This event known as the Aravipuram pratistha is celebrated on Shivaratri Day every year. The consecration of Shiva by Narayan Guru assumes historical significance in Hinduism because it was done by a person who himself was forbidden from entering the shrine due to his being a lower caste. Revered by millions of people, Sri Narayan Guru instruc

An English missionary and social reformer, Charles Andrews Freer (also known as C. F. Andrews) had a fascination for everything Indian. Born in 1871 in England, He taught at St. Stephens College in Delhi. A close confidante of Mahatma Gandhi, he maintained close association with Gopal Krishna Gokhle, Rabindranath Tagore, and other Indian freedom fighters. He spent time with Gandhi at the Phoenix ashram in South Africa and worked hard to improve the lot of Indians living in African countries, West Indies, Fiji, etc. A veteran trade union activist, Charles Freer Andrews was president of the Trade Union Congress two times (1925 and 1927). He also actively participated in the movements for the eradication of untouchability. Andrews took active participation in the famous Vaikom Satyagraha in 1925. Vaikom Satyagraha was a movement in Travancore in Kerala against removal of deep-rooted malaise of untouchability in Hindu society. Working closely with Dr.B R Ambedkar he formulated the Dali

There is no doubt that w orld’s debt to India is immense. Many good things have been said, rightly so, about this country by scholars, scientists and great men of the world. Below are some of the famous quotes on India. "India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only." -        Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain. American Author "India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all". -  

Image Source: Wikipedia Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, is a country where Buddhism entered very early. Mahavamsa (Great Chronicle) of the island country deals with the history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. It was during the reign of the great Mauryan emperor Ashoka that Buddhism embarked on a career of world religion. Sri Lanka was converted to Buddhism in the 3rd century BC by Mahendra (in Pali Mahinda), Ashoka’s son or his brother by some sources, during the reign of great king Devanampiya - Tissa, who was Mahendra’s first convert. Mahendra had become a Buddhist monk. Asoka’s daughter Sanghamitta is said to have carried to Sri Lanka the southern branch of the original Bodhi tree of Gaya, under which the Buddha sat and got enlightenment. From then, this tree planted at Anuradhapura, capital of the early kings of Ceylon, has been an object of pilgrimage to the followers of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. The Buddhist stupas of gigantic proportions were built in Sri Lanka. 327

Akbar (1555-1605), the greatest of the Mughal emperors, was a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I and is known for his rejection of bigotry. He was firmly of the view that an empire can last only on a basis of complete toleration. Born in Umarkot into a Sunni Muslim family in 1542, Akbar had been brought up in an atmosphere where he came into contact with conflicting religious influences. Sufism also had an impact on him and he made it a point to visit the famous shrine of Shaikh Muinuddin Chisti at Ajmer every year from 1562, and continued this practice for eighteen long years. Formation of Akbar’s religious views in some part was determined by the influence of his Rajput wives   and   his Hindu officials like Man Singh, Todarmal and Birbal. Scholars like Faizi and his brother Abul Fazal and the Bhakti movement of the sixteenth century also helped in moulding his religious views. Subsequently In 1578, Akbar took the step of converting the Ibadatkhana into a “Parliament of Re

Mudrarakshasa (The Minister Signet’s Ring) is a 4th century AD Sanskrit drama written by Vishakhadatta, who is also credited with the authorship of Devichandragupta. It describes the overthrow of the Nandas ruling the Magadhan empire by the first Mauryan emperor Chandragupta Maurya who was aided in this endevour by Kautilya also called variously as Chanakya and Vishnugupta. There is no unanimity among the authorities on the date of Mudrarakshasa. However, majority of them are in favour of assigning the composition of this Sanskrit work to 4 th -5 th centuries AD. The Minister Signet’s Ring centers around the schemes of the wily Chankya to frustrate the plots of Raksasa, the minister of Dhana Nanda, the last ruler of the Nanda dynasty. Consequently Chankya was able to place Chandragupta on the throne of Patliputra (modern day Patna), the capital of Magadh. Though the plot of Mudrarakshasa is exceedingly complicated, Vishakhadatta has been able to unravel the story with great s