Indian History

1872 - Death of   Richard Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo , the   Viceroy of India  (1869-72), on 8 February 1872. Lord Mayo, after whom   Mayo College   in Ajmer is named, was assassinated by Sher Ali Afridi at Port Blair. Afridi was hanged on March 11, 1872.  1995  - Death of  Kalpana Datta  on 8 February 1995 (27 July 1913 – 8 February 1995), Also known as Kalpana Joshi, Kalpana Datta was a woman revolutionary from Bengal. She was a member of the Chittagong Republican Army, formed by Surya Sen ( also known as “Masterda”). Chittagong Republican Army carried out the Chittagong armoury raid in 1930.

1942 - Death of revolutionary leader   Sachindra Nath Sanyal   who was born on 3rd June 1893 in Benares, then in North-Western Provinces. He died on 7th February 1942.  Sachindra Nath Sanyal / Image Credit-  Wikimedia Commons Jailed for his involvement in the  Kakori  conspiracy, Sanyal was the co-founder of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), which after 1928 became the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association).  He had written a book titled  Bandi Jeevan   (A Life of Captivity).

1931 - Death of Pt.  Motilal Nehru  (6 May 1861 –  6 February 1931 ), founder of Swaraj Party or the Congress-Khilafat Swaraj Party which was formed on 1st January, 1923. Motilal Nehru was the father of Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first Prime Minister.  

2008  - Death of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on  5 February 2008 . A self-styled Indian guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was the creator of  Transcendental Meditation  (TM), a form of silent meditation. 

1916   - Banaras Hindu University was founded on February 4th, 1916 by  Indian scholar, educational reformer, and political activist   Madan Mohan Malaviya.  1922  -The  Chauri Chaura  Incident took place on 4 February 1922 at Chauri Chaura in the Gorakhpur district of United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) in British India. On that day, a police station in the small town of Chauri Chaura was set on fire that killed 22 policemen, leading to Gandhi suspending his non-cooperation movement.  1948 - RSS was banned  on  4 February, 1948  following the assassination of Gandhi on 30th January, 1948.  1974  – Satyendra Nath Bose, Indian physicist and mathematician, passed away on  4th February, 1974   in Kolkata.

1509-  The Battle of Diu was fought on  3 February 1509  between the  Portuguese  and the combined forces of the  Sultan of Gujarat, the Zamorin of Calicut, the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt  with support from the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire. The Portuguese emerged victorious.  1816 - Birth of Ram Singh , one of the famous leaders of the Kuka movement, on 3rd February, 1816.  Initially started as a religious movement with a view to reforming the Sikh religion by purging it of the degenerate features, Kuka movement, founded in 1840 in the Western Punjab, turned into a political struggle against the British. The founder of Kuka movement was Bhagat Jawahar Mal.   The Kuka Revolt also came to be known as Namdhari Movement.  Ram Singh gave a call to his followers for boycott of British goods, government schools and government posts. Known to his followers as  Satguru , he was deported by the British to Burma where he...

  1835  - On 2 February 1835, British historian, politician and colonial administrator Thomas Babington Macaulay presented his ‘Minute on Indian Education’ that underscored the need to impart English education to native Indians.  1887 - Birth of Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, the first Health Minister of India in independent India, on 2nd  February. A member of India's Constituent Assembly that was responsible for the framing the Constitution of India, she played an important role in the Indian freedom struggle and was imprisoned by the British on several occasions.