Rani Gaidinliu: Revolutionary Woman from Manipur

Described by Jawaharlal Nehru as the Rani 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.

Rash Behari Ghose: Moderate INC Leader

Born in Khandaghosh village in the Purba Bardhaman district in district of West Bengal in 1845, Rash Behari Ghose was an eminent lawyer, educationist, social worker and philanthropist. His was a brilliant academic career. He proved to be a very successful lawyer.

Rash Behari Ghose was a leading leader of the moderate wing of the Indian National Congress. During the freedom struggle for India there were two divisions in the Indian National Congress (INC)- moderate and extremist. He is said to have called the extremists “irresponsible agitators” and “pestilential demagogues”. He was a believer in the British sense of justice.    

Rash Behari Ghose was elected President of the Indian National Congress at the Surat session of 1907. It was at the Surat session when INC split into two sections: moderate and extremist. He was again elected president of the INC in its subsequent session in 1908.   

Rash Behari Ghose breathed his last on February, 28, 1921.  

The Congress Party which currently rules India at the centre has retained the name Indian National Congress.

Swami Shraddhanand: The great Hindu Reformist

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 Arya Samaj. His conversion programme was not liked by the Muslims. A Muslim fanatic named Abdul Rashid murdered him on 23rd December, 1926. 

 

Sri Narayan Guru: Reformer Saint of Kerala

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 instructed to inscribe the following words on the wall of the temple:

“Devoid of dividing walls of caste, of race, or hatred of rival faiths, we all live here in brotherhood”.  

Charles Freer Andrews: A Biography

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 Dalit (Harijan) demands in 1933. His love for the poor earned the title of Dinabandhu from Mahatma Gandhi.

Charles Freer Andrews died in Calcutta in 1940. 

A Selection of Famous Quotes on India

There is no doubt that world’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".

-       Will Durant, American writer and historian

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.

-       Albert Einstein, American scientist

If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should point to India.

-       Max Mueller, German scholar:

If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.

-       Romain Rolland, French scholar.  

India - The land of Vedas, the remarkable works contain not only religious ideas for a perfect life, but also facts which science has proved true. Electricity, radium, electronics, airship, all were known to the seers who founded the Vedas.

- Wheeler Wilcox, American Poet

India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.

-       Hu Shih, former Ambassador of China to the US.

History of Buddhism in Sri Lanka

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 feet in diameter, the Abhayagiri Dagaba at Anuradhapura was larger than some of the pyramids of the Egypt.  Another stupa at Anuradhapura, the Ruwanmalisaya Dabaga, used by the Buddhist as a place of worship, rises white in the distance out of the plain and is a marvel to look at.

Pali, one of the early Prakrit languages, is the religious language of the Buddhist in Sri Lanka.