Indian History

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.

Born in 1848 in Calcutta, Surendranath Banerjee was an educationist, journalist and political leader. In 1868 he successfully competed for the Indian Civil Service but on technical grounds he was disqualified. After a court judgment that went in his favour, he was inducted into the Civil Services but not long after, was dismissed over a procedural error. After dismissal, he became more politically active. In 1876, together with Anand Mohan Bose they formed the Indian Association of Calcutta.  In 1879, he became editor of The Bengalee, an English language newspaper in Kolkata.  He was a vocal critic of the partition of Bengal in 1905.  One of the founders of the Indian National Congress, Surendranath Banerjee became its president on two occasions in 1895 at Poona and in 1902 at Ahmedabad.  He left Congress following the emergence of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian political scene. After accepting a knighthood from the British in 1921 he was appointed as minister of local self-government an

  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.

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. 

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 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.

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.