Indian National Heros

Surendranath Banerjea

2009-03-02T07:14:00.001-08:00

A BRILLIANT leader of the early Congress, Surendranath Banerjea was born in Calcutta an November 10, 1848, and contributed enormously to the nation’s freedom movement. Surendranath was educated at the Parental Academic Education, which was largely attended by Agno-Indian boys. After graduating from the Calcutta University in 1868, he proceeded to England where he appeared for the Indian Civil Services examination, but was disqualified due to some confusion about his age.
Banerjea returned to India in june 1875 and branched out into a new career in academics as a professor of English. One of his greatest contributions to the freedom movement was his ability to harness the energy of the Bengali youth for the national cause.
His other contribution was the founding of the Indian Association in 1876, which became the centre of national political awakening. And it was here that, for the first time, the idea of India as a political whole emerged. He set the stage for a practical demonstration of the newly awakened sense of political unity by sponsoring the Indian Association, whose first session was held in Calcutta in 1883. This was a path-breaker and a complete departure from the past because for the first time a realistic picture of India’s political unity emerged as a precursor to the Indian National Congress. The first Congress session was held in Bombay in 1885 but Banerjea was not invited to it since he was preoccupied with the National Conference in Calcutta.
Later, he was to become President of the Congress in 1895 and in 1902. For years later his political career climaxed after which he began to fade out along with the moderates, whom he lead. Also because with Gandhiji’s emergence, most of the other nationalist leaders began to fade into insignificance.
In his Presidential address at the Indian National Congress in 1895 in Poona, he said: ”We cannot afford to have a schism in our camp. Already they tell us it is a Hindu Congress, although the presence of our Mohammedan friends completely contradicts the statement. Here we stand upon a common platform. Here we have all agreed to bury our social and religious differences.” He died in 1925, after having spread his message of national unity far and wide.

Badruddin Tyabji

2009-03-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

THIS ADVENTUROUS and intrepid freedom fighter, the scion of an emigrant Arab family, was born in Bombay on October 10, 1844. A tremendously self-reliant person, he passed the London matriculation exams. By 1867, he was a full-fledged barrister. But deteriorating eyesight compelled him to return to India.
In 1895 Tyabji accepted the Judgeship of Bombay High Court. He then went down in Indian legal history as the first Chief Justice of Bombay in 1902. Not only that, he was also the first Indian barrister in Bombay to reach the top of his profession within a decade.
As a Judge, he was particularly known for the spirit of courage and impartially, which was revealed when he not only granted bail to Tilak after it had been rejected thrice but also admonished the British for denigrating Indians. He entered Bombay politics when he was involved in the agitation for an elective Bombay Municipal Corporation and topped the list of those subsequently elected to that body. From that point in time, Tyabji, Pherozeshah Mehta and Telang came to be known as “The Triumvirate” of Bombay’s public life.
However, Tyabji’s popularity peaked when he was unanimously elected President of the third Congress session in 1887. This despite the fact that Tyabji, who was unable to attend the first and second Congress session due to pressing business and ill-health respectively, was accused of boycotting the party because he was a Muslim. But he declared that he had “denounced all communal and sectarian prejudices.”
A religious reformer and an enlightened Muslim, he was responsible for setting up the Anjuman-i-Islam school in Bombay for the upliftment of coreligionists. He campaigned against purdah and was the first prominent Muslim to discard it in his own household.
Being the first Muslim to create a secular political consciousness, naturally the burden of counter-acting the two-nation theory fell on Tyabji. This duty he performed with zeal and dedication.
Tyabji, a product of both Western and Eastern education, was aware of the backwardness of the Muslims. A farsighted thinker, he felt that an advanced representative Government was useless if the masses remained ignorant.
It was Tyabji’s intellectual charisma that enabled him to exert considerable influence on the British. Of him, Gandhiji once wrote: ”Badruddin was for years a decisive factor in the deliberations of the Congress”. In fact, the Congress gained a national character largly because of Tyabji’s influence on the Muslims.
In his Presidential address at the Indian National Congress in 1887 Tyabji said: “Be moderate in your demands, be just in your criticism, be accurate in your facts, be logical in your conclusions, and you may rest assured that any propositions you may rest make to our rulers will be received with that consideration which is characteristic of a strong and enlightened Government.” Tyabji died in London on September 19, 1906 after having led a heroic and patriotic life.

Madan Mohan Malaviya

2009-02-28T10:07:00.000-08:00

THE FOUNDER OF the historic Benares Hindu University, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya was born in Allahabad in 1851. Says commentator Iqbal Masud: “What people overlook is the bitter power Struggle between the Nehru family and the Malaviya family. Malaviya wanted to deny the Nehrus their political importance by attacking them in their home base, Allahabad and Kanpur.”
Malaviya began schooling in a pathshala but later joined a zilla school to which his mother got him admitted by mortgaging her bangles. Life was tough but he managed to graduate from Calcutta University. Although he wanted to do M.A., poverty compelled him to seek a job instead, and he began to teach at a salary of Rs.40 per month. Next, he served as the Editor of the Hindi weekly Hindustan for a salary of Rs.200 per month. He also edited the weekly Indian Union. In 1907 he launched a Hindi weekly Abhyudaya and the English daily Leader in 1909. He served as chairman of Hindustan Times from 1924 to 1946 and remained a man of principles who opposed the Press Act and the Seditious Meetings Act. He wrote articles and poems in fluent Hindi; his journalism was of the fiery kind.
After minor political skirmishes, Malaviya was elected Congress President in the years 1909, 1918, 1932 and 1933. But due to his arrest he could not preside over the 1932 and 1933 sessions. Although a supporter of the Congress, he founded the Hindu Mahasabha in 1906. The idea was not only to oppose Muslim propaganda but also the British. He was elected to the Provincial Council in 1902; the emigration of industrial labour law was abolished at his instance.
But the founding of the Benares Hindu University remains Malaviya’s greatest achievement. When the foundation stone was laid by the Viceroy in 1916, Malaviya collected Rs.35 lakh and served as the Institution’s Vice Chancellor from 1919 to 1938. He remained a director of the University till his death.
Although Malaviya became a High Court lawyer in 1893, he withdrew from the legal profession in 1909. But he made an exception in 1922 when he made an appeal for the 225 persons condemned to death for their involvement in the Chauri Chaura riots in Gorakhpur district on account of which Gandhiji suspended the civil disobedience movement. Malaviya was successful in saving 153 accused from the hangman.
In keeping with the spirit of Gandhiji’s non-cooperation movement, Malaviya did not seek electionto the Indian Legislative Assembly in 1921. However, he served as a member of the Assembly from 1924 to 1930. He resigned to participate in Gandhiji’s salt satyagraha. He backed Motilal Nehru’s demand that India be granted Dominion status.
When the British invited him to the Round Table Conference in 1931, Malaviya accepted, but returned dissatisfied with their attitude towards India.
A conservative who believed in the caste system, Malaviya was however keen on changing with the times. He also had the courage to differ with Gandhiji and opposed the burning of foreign cloth, the boycott of schools and the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1921.
In his Presidential address at the Indian National Congress in 1933 in Calcutta, Malaviya said: “I take it that every Indian wants that we should have complete freedom for the management of our affairs. Truth is on our side. Justice is with us. God will help us. We are sure to win. Vande Mataram.” He died in 1946 after having contributed enormously to the freedom struggle.

Rabidranath Tagore

2009-02-28T10:05:00.000-08:00

THE GURU OF INDIAN poets, gurudev to his disciples, Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta on May 7, 1861, and went into a state of spiritual rest on August 7, 1941.
The budding poet went to England in 1878 and studied literature under Henry Morley at London University College. Initially a raconteur, his book Letters From A Sojourner In London, outspoken and discreet in its comments about life and times in London, was published in book form in 1881. And the year 1881 proved to be doubly creative: he wrote the play Valmiki Pratibha – it was a rare stage appearance when Tagore appeared in the title role.
Tagore’s genius entered a new phase when he composed the poems of Manasi, the musical play Mayar Khela and the drama Raja Rani.
Tagore captured the depth of nation’s feelings in his poem Into That Heaven Of freedom – a poem that moved many nationalist to tears.
Where the mind is without fear| And the head is held high,| where knowledge is free| where the world was not been broken up| into fragments by narrow domestic walls;| where words come out from the depth of truth;| where tireless striving| stretches its arm towards perfection;| Where the mind is led forward| by thee into ever-widening|thought and action –| into that heaven of freedom,| My father, | Let my country awake.
His bursting urge to express himself manifested itself in the monthly Sadhana, which soon became the sole organ of his self-expression – he utltimately published Sonar Tari and Panchabhuter in the same journal. He became its editor in 1894 but closed it down scarcely a year later.
Tagore had long-left need to set up a school, a different, spiritual kind of school that would integrate Indians with India. And in 1901 he founded one at Shantiniketan, which still remains unique – the only one of its kind in India. Among the famous, Mrs. Indira Gandhi went to Shantiniketan during her formative years.
He opposed the partition of Bengal and communal lines and resented the concept that would have his beloved state. He preached swadeshi, composed soul-stirring songs, wrote incisive essays, addressed meetings and led protest marches. On Tagore’s Hindu cultural roots Masud says, “In Tagore we have a culture going back 2000 years – it is what one can call the Hindu Culture. But a point that is often missed is that Tagore was a product of the Bengal Renaissance which in turn was a product of 19th century liberalism.”
Tagore gifted to India her national anthem, a prose paraphrase of which he read at over Town Hall as part of his world famous essay My Interpretation Of India’s History. The national anthem was composed for the Brahmo Samaj anniversary in 1912. The same year he sailed for the UK where the translation of the Gitanjali poems created a literary sensation among British poets, mainly Yeats.
Gitanjali established Tagore as a world poet with its translation into English and inevitable selection by the Swedish Academy for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Nobel Prize opened the sluice gates to fame: he was knighted in 1915 but gave up his knighthood in 1919 as a protest against British atrocities at Jallianwala Baug.
He experienced the poet’s vision which he immortalized in The Awakening Of The Waterfall. While his first poem Abhilash was published in Tattobodhini Patrika in 1874, his entire writings include 1000 poems, 2000 songs, and a large number of short stories.
Says commentator Iqbal Masud: “Tagore was not restricted to literature, he went on to painting, and each painting of his was very individualistic”

Rashbihari Ghosh

2009-02-27T10:31:00.001-08:00

A STOUT different of India’s economic interests, Rashbihari Ghosh was born in Burdwan, West Bengal on December 23, 1845. After a short spell at a local Burdwan pathshala, Ghosh was enrolled into the Burdwan Raj Collegiate School. He passed the entrance examination from Bankura, entered Presidency College, Calcutta and obtained a first class in the M.A. examination in English. He passed the law examination with honours in 1871 and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Law.
Ghosh was a member of the Calcutta University syndicate from 1887 to 1899. he supported Gokhale’s plan of compulsory primary education and became the first President of the National Council of Education in 1906. He, however, did not associate himself publicity with the Indian National Congress until 1906. His first appearance on the national political scene was in 1905 when he presided over a meeting held in the Calcutta Town Hall as a protest against the offensive remarks of Lord Curzon at the convocation ceremony of Calcutta University. In 1906 he became the Chairman of the Reception Committee when the Congress held its session in Calcutta. The next year he presided over the Surat session which ended in utter chaos. In 1908 he presided over the historic Madras session.
Ghosh was a moderate who took an active part in the swadeshi movement, which he considered to be based on the “love of our country, not on hatred of the foreigner.” He stood for “the development of India for Indians”, but through constitutional agitation. He denounced the extremists within the Congress as “impatient idealists” and looked upon British rule in India as a blessing. However, he said that “it only remains for England now to fit us gradually for that autonomy which she had granted to her colonies.”
In his presidential address at the Indian National Congress in Madras in 1908, Ghosh said: “A fair share in the government of our own country has now been given to us. The problem of reconciling order with progress, efficient administration with thw satisfaction of aspirations encouraged by our rulers themselves which timid people thought was insoluble has at last been solved. The people of India will now be associated with the Government in the daily and hourly administration of their affairs.”
A nationalist in spirit, Ghosh looked upon the Swadeshi movement as a way of creating indigenous in industries, which the British Government had failed to protect by tariffs. He felt that the Government of India must be the “motive force in the industrial development of the country”. To set an example he personally financed the Bande Mataram Match Factory. He died in Madras in 1908.

Jamshedji Tata

2009-02-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

THE FATHER of the Tata empire, J. N. Tata was in no small measure the chief architect of modern industrial India. A committed philanthropist and industrialist rolled into one, Tata was born at Navsari, Gujrat in 1839. Mrs. Indira Gandhi once paid him a fitting tribute by calling him the man who launched India on the road to industrialization by setting up basic industrial infrastructure.
The restless industrialist came later. The young Jamshedji studied at Elphinstone College, Bombay. Students of this college warmly remember this great man of India as one of their fold. He sought employment and quickly joined a firm that traded with China in opium and yarn; it was here that he tasted blood and the entrepreneur in him began to stir. Eager to learn business, he sailed to Hong Kong for training in trade.
Next, Tata became a relentless globe-trotter and returned to Bombay as a well-heeled young man in 1863 and started a cotton trade. He caught the boat to Liverpool to look after cotton shipments from India. But that was a brief interlude, cut short by the fall in cotton prices. When prices plummeted even further, he closed his office in Liverpool and return to Bombay where he would not only start a new life but would open a new chapter in the industrial history of India. In the interim period he booked supply orders for British troops and earned handsome profits. The budding entrepreneur had mastered the art and the science of business.
Manchester was a turning point in Tata’s – and India’s – life. He went there to study the working of textile mills and returned to start a mill in India. Quick off the mark, he purchased a string of textile mills, becoming the fastest rising industrialist in India.
But the pursuit of lucre was never an end in itself. For Tata was, at heart, a philanthropist. He started an educational endowment fund in keeping with his magnanimity. His legacies to the nation include projects that bear the stamp of history: the Tata Iron And Steel Company, the Tata Hydro Electirc Power Supply and the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore. He died in Bad Nauheim, Germany in 1904.

K. S. Ranjitsinhji

2009-02-26T08:24:00.000-08:00

RANJITSINHJI popularly known among cricket lovers as Ranji, was the first batsman in the history of the game to score over 3000 runs in just one season – in 1899. The intrepid cricketer repeated the feat the following year. What’s more, he was also the first batsman in the world to score 1000 runs twice during the same season – in August 1899. Earlier, in 1896, at Yorkshire he scored a century in each innings of the match on the same day. And in 1900, Ranji scored five double centuries, but narrowly missed the sixth century by only eight runs for Sussex against Kent, making this a record that stood unchallenged for 30 years until Bradman scored six double centuries on his first trip to England in 1930.
The master of the leg-glance, Ranji scored 24,696 runs in 500 innings and remained not out 62 times at an average of 56.37 runs. He notched up 72 centuries of which 14 were double centuries. Said Sir Edwin Arnold:“Ranji adopted cricket and turned it into an oriental poem of action.” Ranji has been immortalized in history as the inventor of the leg-glide, and as one of his contemporaries remarked: “He flicked lightning fours off his eyebrows and left ear”. The legendary cricket writer C. B. Fry wrote: “Not only was Ranji a beautiful driver on both sides of the wicket in the classical sense, he could drive, if he liked, hard and high just like a professional Hitler.”
In 1915, Ranji lost his right eye due to a careless shot fired by “a companion” while they were out on a shoot. But he concealed the identity of the person who shot at him.
Born on September 10, 1872 in the village of Sarodar, Ranji not only changed the entire style and technique of cricket but also authored what came to be regarded as a classic in cricket literature. This was his Jubilee Book Of Cricket which was thus reviewed by Francis Thompson: “The author has subjected everything in fielding, bowling and batting to an unprecedented process of analysis, which for the first time provides us with a textbook at all points corresponding to modern needs.”
Duleepsinhji, the nephew of Ranji, wrote: “There is no doubt that any success I have enjoyed at cricket is largely due to my uncle. He coached me and said to me: ‘If you want to play cricket I will give you every help you need.”
Ranji, like most batsman of his time, displayed a vast repertoire of strokes and this compelled C. B. fry to write: “He is more supple in his joints, especially in the wrist, than any English cricketer, and is appreciably quicker.”
Ranji died on April2, 1933 and in 1934 the Ranji Trophy was established to perpetuate the memory of this great Indian cricketer. The first match of the Ranji tournament was played in November 1934 between Mysore and Madras, and Madras won the golden Grecian-urn-shaped trophy.

Pherozeshah Mehta

2009-02-25T09:07:00.000-08:00

A FOUNDER MEMBER of the Indian National Congress, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta was born on August 4, 1845. He entered Lincoln’s Inn in England in 1864 to study law and was called to the Bar in 1868. On his return to India, he delved into public life with characteristic dedication and served as the commissioner of the Bombay Municipal Corporation in 1873. He grew in stature and served as the chairman of the corporation from 1884 to 1885. He later served as Additional Member of the Legislative Council of the Governor of Bombay.
Throughout his life Mehta remained a moderate who believed in the good sense of the British who, he assumed, would give India a fair chance. He played a mediatory role in the split of the Congress at the Surat session in 1907. After the exit of the extremists, whom he helped to keep out of the party, he dominated the politics of his party up to his depth in 1915.
As a student in England, Mehta used to frequent the house of Dadabhai Naoroji and these visits shaped his liberal outlook. Many of his close friends were, in fact, liberals; Telang, Badruddin and Mehta were known as the “Three Bright boys of Bombay”. His Antipathy to violence in politics alienated him from Tilak and his dislike of communal methods made him criticize Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. To him, education was a means by which India could modernize rapidly.
Mehta, in fact, played a role in establishing a Swadeshi bank – the Central bank of India. He was responsible for founding the English newspaper Bombay Chronicle an April 1913, which went on to become an important platform for expressing Indian public opinion.
Mehta held a commanding position in the founding of the Indian National Congress. He presided over the congress session held in Calcutta in 1890 and was twice President of the Reception Committee when the Congress session met in Bombay in 1889 and 1904. In the various Congress sessions he attended, he either moved or supported resolution for reforming the administration of the country. He founded the Bombay Presidency Association in 1885 along with Telang and served as its secretary.
A decorated leader, Mehta was made a Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire in 1894 and was knighted in 1904. In the Presidential address of the Congress in 1890 he said: “All movement of the kind in which we are concerned pass through several phases as they run their course. The first of the ridicule. That is followed, as the movement progresses, by one of abuse, which is usually succeeded by partial concession and misapprehension of aim. The final stage is a substantial adoption of the object of the movement, with some expression of surprise that it was not adopted before.”
The leading role Mehta played in forming the Congress has left an impress which is immortalized in the party’s constitution. He died in 1915.

Dinshaw Wacha

2009-02-25T09:02:00.000-08:00

A GREAT PACIFIST, Dinshaw Wacha was born in Bombay on August 2, 1844 into a middle-class family. He studied at Ayrton School, after which he joined college. But he left soon after to assist his father in business.
One of the early political stalwarts, Wacha came into contact with other great minds of the time- Dadabhai Naoroji and Pherozeshah Mehta- with whom he worked closely for peaceful evolution of India. He believed in spreading education and bringing about social reforms by political participation in politics.
Moreover, Wacha was a founder member of the Congress and its President in 1901. He scaled tremendous political heights as a member of the Bombay Legislative Council and the Imperial Legislative Council. He was ranked with Pherozeshah Mehta as the founder of the Bombay Municipal Corporation and with Gokhale as the custodian of India’s finances. A keen observer of the country’s financial policies, he was a strident
Critic of the UK Government’s financial policies and condemned the Morley-Minto reforms.
A founder of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Wacha was a prolific writer and published his works in the Indian Spectator, Advocate and Indian Review. He took keen interest in the Bombay Municipal Corporation and was its member for 40 years. Early in life he revealed a poignant grasp of public finance and economic issues. Moderate as he was, Wacha embarrassed the Government by his strident criticism of it’s his strident criticism of its economic and financial policies. In 1897 he gave a “correct and adequate expression” to the national view before the Welby Commission in London. He pointed out that the financial embarrassment of the Government of India was caused not by the falling rupee exchange by the reckless increase in military and civil expenditure.
Wacha held many positions in his political career and was knighted in 1917. He was a committed writer and no economic lapse escaped his eagly eye. He condemned the “homeopathic dose” of Indian participation in legislation provided by the Morley-Minto and Montford Reforms. A farsighted rationalist and financial wizard, he died in 1936.

Gopal Krishna Gokhale

2009-02-19T04:05:00.000-08:00

ONE OF THE earliest examples of the turn-of-the-century Indian politician, G.K. Gokhale was born into a poor Chitpawan Brahmin family at Katulk in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra on May 8,1886. He could complete his studies only because his elder brother sacrificed his own education. He di his matriculation in 1881, but could not complete L.L.B. He taught mathermatics at Fergusson College, Pune but retired in 1902 to enter public life. He authored a popular arithmetic text book and ended his academic career on that note.
In public, life he quickly scaled great heights as a member of the Imperial Legislative Council and established himself as a brilliant orator. He founded the Servants of India Society to train men to devote themselves to the service of India. He joined the Congress in 1889 and became a Joint Secretary in 1895. He represented the Deccan area on the Royal Commission in 1897, was elected to the Bombay Kegislative Council in 1904. He rise was speedy and inevitable. In 1912, he became a member of the Public Service Commission. But, in what was a tremendously nationalistic move, he declined the Knight Commander of Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE) in 1914.
Gokhale’s brilliance was noticed early when he made his first public speech at the age of 20. He was greatly influenced by Ranade, whom he regarded as his guru in political and public life. Some of his great speeches were made in the Imperial Legislative Council. He went to the UK as a member of the Welby Commission in 1905 to educate British opinion on the Indian situation and again in 1906 to urge British MPs to introduce reforms in India. Inall, he made seven visits to advance India’s case for reforms.
Gokhale edited Quarterly and Rashtra Sabha Samachar in order to shape public opinion. Basically a frontline reformer, he criticized the caste system and untouchability. He fought for the emancipation of women and their education. A firm believer in mass education, he advocated that primary education should be free in Indian schools.
Gokhale’s concept of nationalism was based on the premise of greater autonomy for Indians who would operate with the Government in reforms and obtain, through consultation means, Dominion status India within the British rule, he unfailingly criticized their high handedness.
Gokhale’s position in the Indian National Congress was crucially important. He was feared by the Government and respected by the people. And within the Congress he belonged to the moderate faction opposed to the group led by Tilak. He dedicated three decades of his life to the nation and is thus immortalized in Indian history.
In his Presidential address at the Indian National Congress in 1905, he said: “ The minds of the people have been familiarized with the idea of a united India working for her salcation; a national public opinion has been created; close bonds of sumpathy now knit together the different provinces; the dignity of consciousness of national existence has spread over the whole land”.
In Gokhale’s vies, British rule in India brought disaster to the Indian economy, resulting in mass poverty. He pleaded for industrial education and simultaneous mechanization of agriculture. On the textiles front, he praised the good work done by the handloom industry but acknowledged the fact progress would be achieved by machines, not men alone, Gokhale, who was considered India’s Gladstone, died in 1915.

Dadabhai Naoroji

2009-02-17T20:39:00.001-08:00

THE FIRST INDIAN member of the British Parliament, Dadabhai Naoroji was born on September 4, 1825 in a priestly Parsi family.
The grand old man of India. Dadabhai Naoroji studied at Elphinstone College, Bombay, won the Clare Scholarship and graduated in 1825, At 25 Naoroji wa appointed Assistant Professor of Mathematics and natural philosophy at Elphinstone College, But after a six- year stint, he left for UK to manage the historic Parsi firm Cama & Company of which he was a partner.. Four years later, on his return toIndia, he started his own firm. In 1886, he went to the UK to contest the parliamentary elections. While in Bombay he did various things; he organized the Students Literary and Scientific Society, pioneered women’s education, took an active interest in establishing various organizations including the Bombay Association, the Framji Institute, the Irani Fund, the Parsi Gymnasium, the Widow Marriage Association and the celebrated Victoria And Albert Museum.
Naoroji’s forays into publishing peaked when he became the Founder-Edition of Rast Goftar, a Gujarati weekly at the young age of 26. He authored a critical book, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, and in 18183 started a news paper called Voice of India. In addition, he frequently contributed articles to various newspapers.
With age and maturity the laurels lietally feel into Naoroji’s lap: he was aooiunted Dewan of Baroda in 1874 but resigned later and returned to Bombay. He was elected Member of Pariliament in England in 1902 as a member of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons, representing Central Finsbury, a parliamentary constituency in England.
Naoroji presided over the Congress session thrice in 1886, 1893 and 1906 and was the first to make the demand for swarajya which went on to become the watchword of the freedom struggle. In his Presidential speech at the Indian National Congress at Lahore in 1893, he said: “Whether I am a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Pasi, a Christian or any other creed, I am above all an Indian. Our country is India: our nationality is Indian”.
A product of Western liberalism, Naoroj’s circle of friends included Sorabjee Bengali the social reformer K.R. Cama the orientalist; F.G.Bhandarker, the Orientalist; N.G.Chandavarkar, the nationalist reformer; Pherozeshah Mehta; Gopal Krishna Gokhale; Dinshaw Wacha; Jamshedji Tata and Gandhi.
Naoroji founded various organizations, both in India and the UK, includeing the Indian National Congress, the East India Association of London, the Royal Asiatic Society of Bomaby among others.
A leading social reformer, Naoroji did not believe in caste restrictions and pioneered women’s education. Being a moderate, he believed in constitutional methods. A pregressive, he championed the cause of swadeshi, but did not oppose the use of machines in industry. In fact, he urged J.N.Tata to raise Indian capital for his iron and steel plants. But the time he died on June 30, 1917, he had come to be known as the father of Indian politics.

Lokmanya Tilak

2009-02-17T20:37:00.000-08:00

One of the earliest architects of the independence movement, Bal Gangadhar Tilak was born in Ratnagiri on July 23, 1856. Educated in Poona, where he got his B.A. degree, Tilak’s thinking was greatly influenced by Hegel, Kant, Spencer, Mill and Bentham. After graduating, he spurned the possibility of Government service and devoted himself to the national awakening. He opposed the Consent Bill and, being a staunch nationalist , actually went to the extent of doing penance for drinking tea in a Christian school. He remained dead against the British and when he acquired complete control of two news-papers, Kesari and Maratha, he used them as vehicles to propagate his nationalistic views.
The great famine and plague of 1896 that ravaged Bombay brought him into direct conflict with the authorities. A treatment critic of the measures taken by the British to combat the plague and the harassment of the public, he was tried and jailed for 18 months. He aimed at developing a militant mass movement and roused the people to demand swarajya at the Calcutta session of the Congress in 1908.
When he opposed the partition of Bengal he was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. After his release, he launched the Home Rule agitation along with Anie Besant. He rejected Indian Reform Act of 1919 as inadequate and launched the Congress Democratic Party in 1920 to carry on freedom struggle. He did not stop there. He filed a suit against Sir Valentine Chirol in 1918 for defaming him in the book Indian Unrest and fought the case doggedly in London. However, he lost.
Tilak’s contribution to the education system was considerable: he founded the New English School along with Agarkar ad Namjoshi.
Says a political observer: “People like Tilak, Gandhi and Ali brothers chose the path of religious symbolism. I do not see Tilak as a communalist, but the emphasis he gave the fight against the British put a premium on the use of Hindu sysymbol and the greatest manifestation of that the idol of Ganesh. The symbol of Ganesh was first used as a political instrument to fight the British.”
Tilak, in fact, touched the nation’s psychology when he said: “ if you wake up people in the basis of religion it will show results.” Adds a political commentator: “ The difference between Gandhi and Tilak was this- while Gandhi, who operated on an all-India scale and had a frasp of what was wrong with Indian society and its fragmentation, used Hindu symbols very carefully, Tilak, on the other hand, used them very emotionally. Tilak did, in fact, hard back to the golden past—Shivaji was his hero and Shivaji syndrome had a further separatist effect upon India’s future. However, after Gandhi came on the scene. Tilak’s importance declined”. When he died on August 1, 1920, what had come to be known as the Tilak era of the freedom struggle came to an end.

Sri Aurbindo

2009-02-17T20:32:00.000-08:00

Poet Revolutionary, social and religious thinker. Sri Aurobindo was born on August 15, 1872. born into a rich Calcutta family.Sri Aurobindo studied at St. Paul’s School, London during the years 1884 to 1890. He left St. Paul’s to go to King’s College, Cambridge on a scholarship from 1890 to 1892. Throughly Anglicized, he returned to India and passed the Indian Civil Service examination but refused to take the mandatory riding test.
A brilliant scholar in Greek and Latin, Aurobindo passed the Cambridge tripos to return to India to join the Baroda State Services as Administrator and Professor. But by 1906 he was disillusioned with both his British education and the British rulers of India. He resigned his post in 1906 to return to Bengal, where he joined the freedom struggle. He took part in the Swadeshi movement and the anti-partition riot during the years 1906 and 1910. In his quest for spiritual peace he also took to the practice of yoga during this period.
Aurobindo, a true nationalist, edited Bande Mataram, a beautifully produced nationalistic publication. He was arrested in May 1908 in the Alipore conspiracy case but was released for lack of evidence. It was in 1909 in Alipore jail that he had a spiritual vision of Vasudeva and heard his command to abandan politics. He made his mark in the field of journalism by publishing karmayogin, an English weekly and Dharma, a Bengali weekly.
Aurobindo broke away from materialistic existence and settled down secretly in Pondicherry in1910, devoting more nad more time to spiritual work and sadhna. During this time (1914 to 1921), he published Arya, a philosophical monthly and went on to write a series of philosophic works – The Life Divine, The Synthesis of yoga, Essays On The Gita, Isha Upanishad. The Foundation Of Indian Culture, The Secret Of The Vedas, etc.
Sri Aurbindo wrote: “Evolution is the one eternal dynamic law and the hidden process of the earth nature. An evolution of the instruments of the spirit in a medium of the values of the earth existence. All its other laws are its values of operation and process; the spiritual evolution is its one pervading secret sense.“ He also wrote: “The movement of the ignorance is egotistic at his core and nothing is more difficult for us than to get rid of egoism while yet we admit personality and adhere to action in the half-light and half force of our unfinished nature. It is easier to starve the ego by renouncing the impulse to act or to kill it by cutting away from us all movement of personality.”
A prolific English language poet, his range extended to lyrics, sonnets and epics. His major work is the 24000-line blank verse, cosmic epic, Savitri, on which he worked for 30 years. The saint was, thus, aptly called the poet of the human soul. When he died on December 5, 1950, he left behind thousands of bereaved followers collectively known as the Sri Aurbindo Society.

Swami Vivekananda

2009-02-17T20:26:00.000-08:00

A SEEKER OF truth who never had any faith in religion, Swami Vivekananda was born in Calcutta on January 9, 1862. Vivekananda studied law after graduating and when he stepped out into the world in quest of truth, his young mind was brimming with questions about nature of life, death and human consciousness. Soon after , he came into contact with intellectuals of Brahmo Samaj like Maharshi Debandranath Tagore and Keshab Chandra Sen, who helped him organize his spiritual energies.
Wherever he went Vivekananda searched for somebody who had seen God and who could guide him to him. In 1882, he found Sri Ramakrishna the man who had seen God. Yong Vivekananda was overjoyed when he great Sri Ramakrishna entrusted him to carry on his work. He toured north India of several years as a preacher. In 1893 he joined the Parilament Of Religious in Chicago to preach the Vedanta, but was not allowed to speak because he did not have any credentials. Eventually, he was accepted as a delegate on the recommendation of Professor J. H. Wright.
Vivekananda, who had a universal view of the world, went to the UK where he developed friendships with Max Mueller and Paul Robeson. He returned to India as a world famous figure to establish the Ramakrishna Mission.
Swami Vivekananda’s teachings are contained in The complete Works Of Swami Vivekananda and seekers of truth are still his faithful followers. They flock of the two monastries he founded at Belur and Mayavati. Althogh he was spiritualist, Swami Vivekananda’s lectures had deeper messages for the Indian freedom fighters and he swayed an entire nation to shake off British rule. When he died on July 4, 1902, the nation felt that it had lost its spiritual consciousness.