THE MAKERS OF MODERN INDIA

THE MAKERS OF MODERN INDIA

Gopal Ganesh Agarkar (1856-1895)

• He was one of the founders of the Deccan Education Society (24 October 1884) and the Fergusson College, Pune (2 January 1885).

• He also became the Principal of the Fergusson College in 1892 and held that office till his death in 1895.

• He was the Editor of the English weekly the Mahratta and the Marathi weekly the Kesari.

• In 1888 he started his own weekly the Sudharak, the Marathi columns of which were written by him and the English ones by G.K.Gokhale.

• He battled to raise the age of marriage for boys to 20-22 years and for girls to 15-16 years.

Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898)

• He served as a judicial officer under the East India Company.

• After his retirement he was made a Knight Commander of the Star of India and was also nominated to the Governor General’s council.

• In 1875 he succeeded in establishing the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (which was raised, in 1920, to the level of present Aligarh Muslim University).

• In 1886 he founded Muhammadan Educational Congress, known since 1890 as Muhammadan Educational Conference (except in the tenth session, in 1895, when it was referred to as the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental Educational Conference).

• In 1888, he founded the ‘United Indian Patriotic Assocition’

• In 1847, Sir Sayyid published his important archaeological work Asarus-sanadid, which was a graphic study of the monuments of Delhi.

Moulvi Ahmadullah Shah (1789-1858)

• He was popularly known as Moulvi of Faizabad. He reached Lucknow shortly after the annexation of Awadh.

• He played a leading role in the Revolt of 1857 in Lucknow.

• Ahmadullah declared himself Khalifat Ullah, combining temporal and spiritual authority, and issued coins in his name.

Ajit Singh (died August 16, 1947)

• He was an uncle of Bhagat singh and was a close associate of Lala Lajpat Rai.

• He was arrested along with Lajpat Rai and deported to Mandalay in 1907.

• After his release he started a paper, the Peshwa, and founded the revolutionary Bharat Mata Society

• In 1908, he escaped from India and till 1947 he worked with the Ghadar Party, living in various countries.

Hakim Ajmal Khan (1863-1927)

• He belonged to the traditional family of physiciansof the indigenous system of medicine known as Tibb-i-Unani.

• He was one of the founders of the Muslim League, founded in 1906.

• In 1921 he was elected as the President of the Indian National Congress.

• He was also one of the founders of the Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Aruna Asaf Ali (1909-1983)

• Born in a Bengal family as Aruna Gangly, she married Asaf Ali

• She was a leading member of the Indo-Soviet Cultural Society, All India Peace Council and National Federation of Indian Women.

Asaf Ali (1888-1953)

• He defended Bhagat Singh in the Lahore conspiracy case.

• He was given the portfolio of Minister of Transport and Railways in the Interim Government.

• From 1947 to 1948 he served as India’s Ambassdor to USA and, from 1948 to 1952, as the Governor of Orissa.

Sufi Amba Prasad (1858-1915)

• He was a militant nationalist and a staunch follower of Tilak and Sardar Ajit Singh.

• He played a leading role in the Bharat Mata Society revolutionary movement.

• He died in exile in Iran.

Bhimarao Ramrao Ambedkar (1891-1956)

• In 1924, he founded the Depressed Classes Institute, and in 1927, the Samaj Samata Sangha

• He was appointed as the Law Minister in the interim Government and also Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly.

Amir Chand (1869-1915)

• A revolutionary, he was arrested in connection with the Lahore Bomb and Delhi conspiracy cases (the later an alleged plot to kill the Viceroy Lord Hardinge) in February 1914.

• He was sentenced to death and executed on May 8, 1915.

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur (1889-1964)

• She was the secretary of All-India Women’s Conference in 1930, and from 1931 to 1933, she served as the president of the Women’s Association.

• In 1932 she gave evidence before the Lothian Committee on Indian franchise.

• In 1938, she served as the President of All-India Women’s Conference.

• She also served as a secretary of Mahatma Gandhi for sixteen years

• She was the first woman to be appointed as a member of the Advisory Board of Education, but resigned in August 1942.

• She was a member of the Hindustani Talimi Sangh.

• She attended the UNESCO conference in London in 1945 and in Paris in 1946 as a member of the Indian delegation.

• She was a member of the Board of Trustees of the All-India Spinners’ Association.

• After Independence, in 1947, she was appointed as the first Minister of Health of the Government of India.

Charles Freer Andrews (Dinabandhu Andrews) (1871-1940)

• He was an English missionary and a teacher at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.

• He was closely associated with Rabindranath Tagore, G.K.Gokhale, and Mahatma Gandhi.

• He lived with Gandhiji at the Phoenix Ashram in South Africa.

• He was twice elected President of the Trade Union Congress, in 1925 and 1927.

• He joined the Vaikom Satyagraha in 1925 and worked with Dr. Ambedkar in formulating
• the Harijan demands in 1933.

• He earned the title of Dinabandhu from Mahatma Gandhi.

Madhav Srihari Aney (1880-1968)

• He was arrested during the Civil Disobedience Movement, 1930.

• He was Vice-President of Indian Home Rule League, and a member of Legislative Assembly from 1924-30 and 1935.

• He joined the Responsivist Party, formed in 1926.

• He was General Secretary of Anti-Communal Award Committee, 1935.

• He was a member of Governor-General’s Executive Council in 1941, but resigned in 1943.

• He was also a representative of India in Ceylon (1943-46), Member, Constituent Assembly and later Member of Parliament.

C.N. Annadurai (1909-1969)

• He was the founder of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).

• In his early life, he was associated with the Justice Party and finally with the Self-Respect
• Movement launched by E.V. Ramaswami Naicker, popularly known as Periyar.

• In 1949, he broke off from Periyar and founded Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) (Dravidian Progressive Federation).

• In 1965 he led the Anti-Hindi agitation in the former Madras State.

• In the 1967 General Elections the DMK Party obtained an absolute majority in Madras Legislature and formed the first DMK Government in Tamilnadu with Annadurai as the Chief Minister.

• Annadurai is regarded as the founder of new Tamilnadu.

M.A. Ansari (1880-1936)

• He was a renowned surgeon, who received his medical education in India and U.K.

• In December 1912, he was the leader of the Ansari Medical Mission to Turkey to provide medical and surgical aid to the Turkish army fighting in the Balkan War.

• He played an important role in forging the Lucknow Pact of 1916.

• He was the President of the Nagpur session of the All-India Muslim League and he also held a high position in the Congress.

• All through his life he was a member of the Congress working Committee.

• For six years he served as the General Secretary of the Congress and was elected its President at the Madras session in 1927.

• He took keen interest in the establishment of two national institutions, viz Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and the Kashi Vidyapith, Banaras.

George Sydney Arundale (1878-1945)

• He was an Englishman and he married Rukmini Devi, an accomplished Bharatnatyam exponent from Madras.

• He was the professor of English and later the Principal of the Central Hindu College, Banaras.

• He was a close associate of Mrs. Annie Besant and was the Organizing Secretary of the Home Rule League.

• He was a fervent advocate of national education and organized a Society for Promotion of National Education.

• He was the President of the Madras Labour Union, President of the Theosophical Society from 1934 to 1945 and was actively associated with the Scout movement.

Kumaran Asan (1873-1924)

• A renowned social reformer, scholar and poet from Kerala.

• His spiritual guide was Sri Narayana Guru.

• When the Sri Narayana Dharma Paripalanayogam (SNDP) was started in 1903, Asan became its Secretary and worked as such till 1919 and became its President in 1923.

• He was an acknowledged leader of the Ezhava community.

Asur Singh (1872-1916)

• He was a revolutionary and a terrorist. He killed a policeman and sabotaged railway lines.

• He was credited with a vital role in Delhi Conspiracy Case. He died at the gallows in the Lahore jail in Dec. 1916.

Abul Kalam Azad (1888-1958)

• He was born in Mecca.

• His Arab mother was the daughter of the Mufti of Medina.

• He was a great scholar of Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Islamic theology.

• He adopted the pen-name of Azad at the age of 16.

• In 1909, he took to journalism and published a number of papers, such as Al-nad-wah, the Vakil, Al-Hilal, and Al-Balalgh.

• He was elected President of the Congress when only 35, the youngest to hold that office.

• In 1940, he was elected a second time as the President of the Congress and continued to hold that position until June 1946.

• After independence and until his death on February 22, 1958, Azad was the Education Minister in Nehru’s cabinet.

• Azad’s autobiographical narrative, India Wins Freedom, is both famous and controversial.

Chandra Shekhar Azad (1906-1931)

• He is from present Uttar Pradesh.

• He declared in the court trial as his name Azad, his father’s as a Swatantra and his home as Prison. From then on he became famous as Azad.

• He was actively associated with the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army and involved in many cases like Kakori Conspiracy Case, Lahore Conspiracy Case.

• He died at Alfred Park, Allahabad.

Prithvi Singh Azad (Baba) (1892-1973)

• He belonged to the undivided Punjab.

• He went to USA in 1911 and joined the Ghadar Party under the influence of Lala Hardayal.

• He was implicated in the Lahore Conspiracy Case of 1914-1915 and was sentenced to death. The death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment in the Andamans.

• He escaped from prison, crossed over to Russia and joined the Russian Bolshevik Party.

• On returning to India, he joined the HSRA Movement.

Jamnalal Bajaj (1889-1942)

• He belonged to a business family of Rajasthan, settled in Maharashtra.

• There was such a close bond between him and Gandhiji that the latter regarded him and Gandhiji that the latter regarded him as “his fifth son”.

• In 1921, he joined the Non-Cooperation Movement and founded the Satyagraha Ashram at Wardha.

• In 1923 Jamnalal Bajaj led the National Flag Satyagraha at Nagpur.

• In 1924, he founded Satyagraha Sabha at Nagpur.

• In 1924, he also founded the Gandhi Seva Sangh and the Sasta Sahitya Mandal to publish nationalist books.

• In 1930 he gave Segaon village as a gift to Gandhi, who named it Sevagram and founded his Ashram there.

• In 1938 he was elected President of the Jaipur State Praja Mandal.

• In 1941, he founded the Goseva Sangh at Wardha.

Bhai Bal Mukand (1891-1916)

• He was born in a Punjabi family of western Punjab and was a great follower of Lala Lajpat Rai and Lala Hardayal.

• He was a close associate of Rashbihari Bose of the Hardinge Bomb Case fame.

• He was arrested in connection with the Hardinge Bomb Case in 1912 and was hanged at the age of 25.

• He did very impressive constructive work for the uplift of the Harijans and the poor.

Upendra Nath Banerjee (1879-1950)

• He was closely associated with the Jugantar, a revolutionary society.

• In 1908, he was arrested and given a life sentence in the Muraripukur Bomb Case and sent to the Andamans, but was prematurely released after completing 11 years of prison term.

• After his release he joined the Swarajya Party and helped in the editing of the Swadesh, the Party organ.

Manindra Nath Banerjee (died in 1934)

• A revolutionary, he was involved in the Kakori Conspiracy Case.

• He killed his uncle, J.N. Banerji, the Superintendent of Police investigating the Kakori to Conspiracy Case.

• He was arrested and sentenced to 10 years rigorous imprisonment and died in Fatehgarh Central jail on June 20, 1934, after 66 days of hunger strike undertaken to protest against police ill-treatment.



Surendranath Banerjee (1848-1925)

• He successfully competed for the Indian Civil Service in 1869 but was disqualified on technical grounds.

• He published the paper Bengali.

• In January 1921, the Governor of Bengal appointed him as minister of local self-government and health. He thus became the first Indian to hold that position

Pandurang Mahadeva Bapat (Senapati) (1880-1967)

• He belonged to Maharashtra and was associated with the India House (London) of Shyamji Krishna Varma and an active member of the Abhinava Bharat of V.D.Savarkar

• In 1921, he led the Mulshi Satyagraha against the Tata Hydroelectric project which submerged 54 villages. It was during this movement that he was called ‘senapati’.

• After India’s independence, he actively participated in the Goa Liberation movement of 1995 and the Samyukta Maharshtra Satyagraha of 1956.

Annie Besant (1847-1933)

• An Irish woman, who came to India to work for the Theosophical Society and established her home in Varanasi, where she founded the Central Hindu College in 1889.

• In 1907, she was elected President of the Theosophical Society.

• In 1914 she began the publication of the Commonweal and New India.

• In 1915, she founded the Home Rule League to launch the Home Rule movement and was made President of the Calcutta session of the Congress in 1917.

• The same year (1917), she established the Indian Boy Scouts’ Association and also the Indian Women’s Association.

• The National University at Adyar was founded by her in 1918.

Sardar Bhagat Singh (1907-1931)

• He was born in a Jat Sikh peasant family of the Punjab.

• During his education at the DAV College, Lahore, he came under the influence of two teachers, namely Bhai Parmanand and Jai Chandra Vidyalankar.

• He graduated from the National College, Lahore founded by Lala Lajpat Rai.

• In 1923, he joined the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) and was elected its general secretary.

• In 1925, he founded the Nav Javan Sabha at Lahore.

• On December 18, 1928, to avenge the lathi charge on Lala Lajpat Rai while leading the anti-Simon Commission procession in Lahore, he shot dead Saunders, Asst. Superintendent of Police.

• On April 8, 1929, he and Batukeshwar Dutt threw a bomb in the Central Assembly in Delhi and offered themselves for arrest.

• Bhagat Singh, Sukh Dev and Rajguru were hanged in the Lahore Central Jail on March 23, 1931.

Sohan Singh Bhakna (1870-1968)

• He was a Namdhari Sikh who went to the USA in 1909 in search of employment

• In USA he founded, in 1913, the Hindu Association, later known as the Hind Association of the Pacific Coast.

• Sohan Singh Bhakhna was the founder President and Lala Hardayal, the Secretary of this association of the Indian settles in the USA and Canada.

• This Association began to publish a paper Ghadar, after which the revolutionary activities of the association came to be known as the Ghadar Party Movement.

• Sohan Singh was associated with Komagata Maru ship incident in 1914.

• He was arrested for his role in the Ghadar Party activities and was sentenced to death; but the sentence was commuted to transportation for life.

• He spent 16 years in the Andamans and other prisons in India.

• He was released in 1930 and devoted his remaining years to organizing Kisan Sabhas.





Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar (1837-1925)

• He was a great Sanskrit scholar and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay (1893-95), a member of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council in 1903 and was knighted at the Delhi Durbar in 1911.

• He was an active member of the Prarthana Samaj.

• On his 80th birthday, the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, was founded on July 6, 1917.

Ram Chandra Bharadwaj (1886-1918)

• A revolutionary journalist and editor of the Aftab, the Akash and the Bharat Mata, he left for the USA in 1911.

• He worked for the Ghadar Party and edited the Ghadar and also acted as the leader of the movement after Lala Hardayal’s departure from the USA.

• He was assassinated on April 23, 1918, inside a courtroom in San Francisco, USA by a secret agent of the British Government.

Subramania Bharati (1882-1921)

• An eminent poet of the Tamil renaissance, the title of Bharati was conferred on him by the Raja of Ettayapuram (Tamil Nadu) when he was only eleven years old.

Vinayak Narahari Bhave (Vinoba Bhave) (1895-1982)

• Born in a Chitpavan Brahmin family of Maharashtra.

• He actively participated in the Nagpur Flag Satyagraha, the Temple Entry Movement in Kerala, the Salt Satyagraha and the Dandi March in 1930.

• He was a staunch Gandhian and led the Bhoodan and Sarvodava movements after Independence.

Birsa Munda (1875-1901)

• A renowned tribal leader from the Chhotanagpur (now a part of Jharkhand).

• He was initially a religious reformer, who adopted Vaishnavism.

• He was captured in February 1902, but in course of his trial he died of cholera.

Ram Prasad Bismal (1897-1927)

• He was born at Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh.

• He was a member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association/Army.

• He was arrested and sentenced to death for participating in the Kakori train dacoity on August 9, 1925.

• He composed the famous revolutionary song ‘Sarfarshi ki tamana abhamare dil main hai dekhana hai zore kitna bazu-e-katil main hai’.

Woomesh Chandra Bonnerjee (1844-1905)

• He was the first Indian to contest election to the British House of Commons.

• He was twice elected President (1885 and 1891) of the Congress.

Ananda Mohan Bose (1847-1906)

• He strove hard to popularize the speed of education among women.

• In 1883, he founded a National Conference in Calcutta and launched an agitation to protest against the Vernacular Press Act as the Illbert Bill.

• He was the President of the Madras session of the Congress (1898).

Khudiram Bose (1889-1908)

• He was a member of Yugantar, of Barindra Ghosh.

• He along with Prafulla Chaki, threw a bomb at the carriage of Kingsford, an English Judge, at Muzaffarpur (Bihar).

• He was arrested in the Muzaffarpur Conspiracy Case and sentenced to death. He was hanged on August 11, 1908.

Rajnarayan Bose (1826-1899)

• He was closely associated with the Adi Brahmo Samaj founded by Devendra Nath Tagore.

• He founded the Society for the Promotion of Nationalism and worked with Navagopal Mitra, the editor of the National Paper.

Rashbihari Bose (1886-1945)

• He was associated with the Yugantar and the Ghadar party

• In 1912, he and Basant Biswas threw a bomb at the procession of Viceroy Hardinge at Chandini Chowk, Delhi.

• In 1915, he escaped to Japan, where he founded the Indian Independence Leauge (1924) and also the Indian National Army.

Satyendranath Bose (1882-1908)

• He was the founder of the Anand Math, a revolutionary secret Society at Midnapur.

• He was dismissed from government service in April 1906 for his role in the Swadeshi movement in Bengal.

• He was sentenced to death in the Muzaffarpur Bomb Case, Alipur Bomb Case and for his part in the killing of the approver in the case, Narendra Gossain, in Alipur Jail. He died on the gallows.

Subhas Chandra Bose (1897-1945)

• He was born at Cuttack in Orissa; he appeared for the Indian Civil Service Examination in 1920 and stood fourth in order of merit.

• He was unanimously elected President of the Haripura session of the Congress in 1938 and was re-elected for the second term at the Tripuri Congress session in 1939, defeating Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, who had been backed by Mahatma Gandhi.

• He resigned the presidentship of the Congress in April 1939 and founded the All-India Forward Bloc.

• In January 1941, he escaped from India and reached Berlin (Germany), from where he arrived in Singapore on July 2, 1943.

• In Singapore, Rasbehari Bose handed over the command of the Indian Independence Movement in East Asia and the Azad Hind Fauj (the Indian National Army) to Subhas Bose, who became its Supreme Commander on August 25, 1943.

• In January 1944, the INA headquarters was shifted from Singapore to Rangoon.

• The Andaman and Nicobar Islands were handed over to him by Japan, which he renamed Shaheed and Swaraj Islands respectively.

• Subhas Chandra Bose was reportedly killed in an air crash over Taipei, Taiwan on August 18, 1945.

Madam Bhikaji Cama (1861-1936)

• She was India’s first and most famous woman revolutionary.

• She came in contact with the Russian revolutionary and corresponded with Lenin, who invited her to visit Moscow.

• From 1909, Paris was her headquarters and the meeting place of young revolutionaries like Hardayal and Shaklatvala.

• She was also the moving spirit in the Abhinav Bharat Society of the Indians residing in Europe.

• In 1907, she attended the Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, where she unfurled the first Indian National flag designed by her, which was indeed the parent and precursor of the flag of independent India; the only difference in colour being the use of red instead of orange.

• She declared that India would be a Republic and Hindi would be the national language, and Devnagri the national script.

• Along with Sardar Singh Rana, she smuggled revolutionary literature and explosives into India.

• In 1935, at the age of 74, she returned to Bombay and died the same year.

• She has been rightly regarded as “the mother of Indian revolutionaries”.

Kharshedji Rustamji Cama (1831-1909)

• He was a Parsi businessman.

• He advocated socio-religious reforms among the Parsis.

• In 1858, he took over the proprietorship of the Parsi weekly paper, the Rast Goftar.

• The famous revolutionary Madam Bhikaji Cama was his daughter-in-law.





Chapekar Brothers

Damodar (1870-1897) Balkrishna (1873-1899) and Wasudeo (1879-1899)

• The three Chapekar brohers from Maharashtra came under the influence of Tilak and organized an association for physical and military training, which they called The Society for the Removal of Obstacles to the Hindu Religion.

• In June 1897, during Queen Victoria’s diamond jublieee celebrations, Damodar and Balkrishna Chapekar murdered two British officers - Rand and Lt. Amherst in Poona.

• The third brother, Wasudeo, murdered Ganesh Shankar Dravid, who had got Damodar and Balkrishna arrested.

P. Anandacharlu (1843-1908)

• He belonged to an orthodox Brahmin family of Andhra Pradesh.

• In 1884 he founded the Madras Mahajan Sabha (a great public institution in the pre-Congress era).

• In 1885, he was one of the ‘brave 72’ delegates to the first session of the Indian National Congress held in Bombay

• He was elected President of the Nagpur session of the Congress in 1891.

Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee (1895-1969)

• He was a revolutionary, who was associated with the Anushilan Samiti in Bengal, but later on made Kanpur his organizational centre and was one of the founders of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA).

• He was arrested in the Kakori Conspiracy Case and sentenced to transportation for life.

• After his release he founded a separate organization of the Anushilanites under the name of Revolutionary Socialist Party, in 1940.

• He spent about 24 years in various jails during which he was on hunger strike for about two and a half years on several occasions, the longest being 142 days at a stretch.




Ramananda Chatterjee (1865-1943)

• He was a publisher and editor of the Bengali monthly Prabasi and the English periodical, the Modern Review.

• He also started a Hindi companion journal, the Vishal Bharat, edited by Chaturvedi.

• He was one of the founders of the Prabasi Banga Sahitya Sannelan and the Bangiya Sahitya Sammelan.

Bankim Chandra Chatterji (1838-1894)

• He wrote his first novel Durgeshnandini in 1865.

• He composed his famous patriotic song Bande Mataram some time in 1874, which he later on included in his most famous novel Anandmath.

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya (1903-1987)

• She was born in a Brahmin family of Karnataka, but breaking off from orthodoxy, she married Harin Chattopadhyaya

• She showed keen interest in the national movement and in the agrarian problems of India

• She joined the Congress Socialist Party in 1948.

• She also worked towards promotion of Handicrafts and Handloom.

• She was President of the All-India Women’s Conference and the Indian Cooperative Union; Chairperson, All-India Handicrafts Board, and All-India Designs Centre, etc.

• She was the recipient of Magsaysay Award (1966) for Community Leadership.

Asutosh Chaudhuri (1860-1924)

• Asutosh was the founder and guiding spirit of the National Council of Education, which was set up in 1905, during the Swadeshi Movement.

• For some time he was also the President of the Adi Brahmo Samaj.





Sir P. Theagaraja Chetty (1852-1925)

• One of the founders of the South-Indian Liberal Federation, which came to publish a paper The Justice.

Sir Chhotu Ram (1881-1945)

• His actual name was Ram Richpal. He was born in the Punjab.

• He was a prominent Jat peasant leader and one of the founders of the Unionist Party in 1923.

C.Y. Chintamani (1880-1941)

• He was one of the finest editors of pre-independence India one of the founders of the Liberal Party.

• His name is closely associated with The Leader published from Allahabad.

• Before joining that paper, he edited The Indian People, an Allahabad-based weekly and the Hindustan Review of Patna.

• He was General Secretary of the National Liberal (Party) Federation of India for eight years and presided over its annual sessions.

• He also represented the Liberal party at the Round Table Conference

Vishnukrishna Chiplunkar (1850-1882)

• He is also referred as Nibandha Malakar (after the name of the outstanding Marathi magazine Nibandhamala, which he published from 1874 to 1881.

• He was also associated with Tilak in the foundation of the Kesari and the Mahratta (respectively, the English and Marathi weeklies).

• He is regarded as the founder of Marathi prose writing.

Henry Cotton (1845-1915)

• He was a member of the Indian Civil Service.

• After his retirement he presided over the 20th session of the Indian National Congress in Bombay in 1904.

• Returning back to London in 1906, Cotton became a member of the House of Commons, where he strongly opposed the banning of the song Bande Mataram in India.

Sripad Amrit Dange (1899-1976)

• He was born in a Marathi Brahmin family in Nashik.

• He deserves to be regarded as a pioneer of India’s Trade Union and Communist movements.

• In 1922, he launched The Socialist, the first Communist journal in India, which continued to be edited by him until his arrest in the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case in 1924, in which he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment.

• In March 1929 he, along with thirty trade union leaders was arrested and sentenced in the Meerut Conspiracy Case, and remained in jail until 1935.

• In May 1943, he was elected President of the All-India Trade Union Congress.

Bina Das (1911-1976)

• She was from Bengal.

• She was associated with the revolutionary Jugantar Party.

• On 6 February 1932, when the Governor of Bengal, Sir Stanley Jackson, was delivering his Convocation Address at the University of Calcutta, Bina Das fired at him with a pistol, but narrowly missed.

• She was arrested on the spot and was sentenced to nine years’ rigorous imprisonment.

• From 1946 to 1951, she was a member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly.

Chitta Ranjan Das (Deshbandhu) (1870-1925)

• A great nationalist and famous jurist, he defended Aurobindo Ghose in the Alipore Conspiracy Case (1908) and was the defence counsel in the Dacca Conspiracy Case.

• He was the elected President of the Congress session held in Ahmedabad in 1921.

• He was a founder of the Swarajya Party.

• He presided over the All-India Trade Union Congress at Lahore in 1923 and at Ahmedabad in 1924.

Gopabandhu Das (1877-1928)

• Hailed as ‘Utkalmani’, Gopabandhu was one of the earliest and great nationalists and an architect of modern Orissa.

• Gopabandhu associated himself with the Utkal Union Conference (Utkal Sammilani), organized by top leaders of Orissa to fight for the amalgamation of all the Oriya speaking areas.

• It was at his instance that the Nagpur session of the Indian National Conference in 1920 accepted the principle of linguistic division of provinces and creation of Provincial Congress Committee on this principle.

Jatindra Nath Das (1904-1929)

• He was arrested in the Lahore Conspiracy Case.

• He died in Lahore jail on Sept 13, 1929 after observing fast for sixty-three days.

Taraknath Das (1884-1958)

• In 1905, he disguised as a sadhu under the assumed name of Tarak Brahma Brahmachari, he sailed for Japan. After a year’s stay in Japan, he sailed for San Francisco (USA), where he launched his journal named Free Hindustan.

• He also established the Indian Independence League in California and helped Lala Hardayal in organizing the Ghadar Party Movement in the USA.

• He became of a Professor of Political Science at the University of California.

Akshay Kumar Datta (1820-1886)

• He was an ardent follower of Devendranath Tagore, a member of the Tattvabodhini Sabha and an editor of the Tattvabodhini Patrika.

• He was also a great author who enriched Bengali literature.

Batukeshwar Datta (1908-1965)

• He was born at Kanpur (U.P) and was one of the founders of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA).

• He came into prominence in the Kakori Conspiracy Case.

• In April 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Datta threw two bombs and ‘Red Pamphlets’ in the Central Legislative Assembly.

• He was tried in Lahore Conspiracy Case and was given life imprisonment.

• He was kept imprisoned in the Andamans but was released prematurely on the ground of his health in 1938.

Bhupendra Nath Datta (1880-1961)

• A brother of Narendra Nath Datta, universally known as Swami Vivekananda, he joined the Bengal Revolutionary Society in 1902 and became the editor of the Yugantar.

• He obtained his doctorate from the Hamburg University.

• During the First World War the centre of Bhupendra Nath’s political activities was Germany.

• He became the Secretary of the Indian Independence Committee in Berlin.

Kalpana Datta (1913-1978)

• A famous woman revolutionary of Bengal and a member of the Indian Republican Army led by Surya Sen.

• She was the leader of the Chittagong Armoury Raid.

• In 1939 she joined the Communist Party of India and married the Communist leader P.C. Joshi.

Radha Kant Deb (Raja) (1783-1867)

• His greatest achievement was the compilation of the Sanskrit Encyclopedia named Sabda-Kalpadruma in eight volumes.

• He was one of the pioneers of female education in India.

Heary Louis Vivian Derizio (1809-1831)

• He was a poet and lecturer of Literature and History in Hindu College, Calcutta.

• Derozio and his followers, popularly known as Derozians or ‘Young Bengal’.



Bhulabhai Desai (1877-1946)

• He was the Advocate-General of Bombay.

• He led the Congress Party in the Central Assembly for nine years.

• In 1944, in an effort to bring about a compromise between the Congress and the Muslim League, he entered into extensive private negotiations with Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, leading to the Desai-Liaquat Pact on an Interim Government.

• His last great act, before his death in May 1946, was his defence of the Indian National Army Prisoners.

Mahadev Desai (1892-1942)

• He was Mahatma Gandhi’s Secretary for 25 years.

• Mahadev Desai edited The Independence published from Allahabad and the Navajivan from Ahmedabad.

Gopal Hari Deshmukh (Lokhitwadi) (1823-92)

• He edited the Lokhitwadi, a monthly magazine in Marathi.

• He started the Punarvivah Mandal (Window Remarriage Institute) at Ahmedabad.

• Lokhitwadi helped to start the Marathi newapapers, Induprakash and Gyanprakash, in Bombay and Poona respectively.

Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar (1869-1912)

• He was born in Maharashtra but learnt Bengali thoroughly well and later created a name as a great writer in Bengali.

• In 1902, he organized in Bengal the Shivaji Utasav.

• In 1904, he published Desher Katha (The Plight of the Nation), which was banned by the British Government.

• Tilak was his political guru.





Acharya Narendra Dev (1889-1956)

• He was the founder member of the Congress Socialist Party, Vice- Chancellor of Lucknow and Banaras Universities.

Gopal Krishna Devadhar (1871-1935)

• He helped G.K. Gokhale in starting the Servants of India Society in 1905.

• Devadhar also associated himself with Ramabai Ranade in founding the Seva Sadan or Women’s Home.

• He was the President of the All-India Social Conference at Lucknow in 1929 and at Madras in 1933.

• Devadhar was the editor of the Dhyanprakash (a daily), an organ of the Servants India Society, and also of the Sheti and Shetkari, devoted to agriculture.

Madan Lal Dhingra (1887-1909)

• He was also associated with the Indian Home Rule Society, the Abhinav Bharat Society and the India House in London.

• He shot dead Curzon Wyllie, an Adviser to the Secretary of State of India, and Cowas Lolcaca at the meeting of the India National Association in London in 1909.

Kanailal Dutt (1888-1908)

• He was arrested in connection with the Muzaffarpur Conspiracy Case and also tried as an accused in the Alipur Conspiracy Case.

• He shot dead an accused turned approver in the Alipur Conspiracy Case in the Alipur prison and was sentenced to death.

Romesh Chandra Dutt (1848-1909)

• He presided over the Lucknow session of the Congress in 1899.

• His works include The Economic History of British India, India in the Victorian Age, and History of Civilization in Ancient India.





Rani Gaidinliu (1915-81)

• A Naga woman nationalist leader and successor to the political movement launched by the Naga leader Jadonang.

• She tried to drive away the British from Manipur.

• In 1937, when Jawaharlal Nehru visited Assam, he called her the ‘Rani of the Nagas’

Devdas Gandhi (1900-1957)

• He was the most well-known of the four sons of Mahatma Gandhi and a son-in-law of C. Rajagopalachari.

• The main field of his activities was journalism.

• In 1920-21 he joined the staff of an Allahabad paper, the Independent, owned by Moti Lal Nehru.

• Later, he assisted his father Mahatma Gandhi in publishing the Young India and the Navajivan.

• From 1933 he was one of the staff of Hindustan Times (New Delhi).

Kasturba Gandhi (1869-1944)

• Wife of Mahatma Gandhi.

• She was arrested on Aug 9, 1942 and died on Feb. 24, 1944 in prison.

Kadambini Ganguly (1861-1923)

• She was one of the first woman graduates, the other being Chandramukhi Basu, in India.

• She did her graduation from the University of Calcutta in 1882.

• She was also one of the first woman graduates in Medical Sciences.

• She attended the Bombay session of the Indian National Congress in 1889 and was the first woman to speak from the platform of the Congress.




Rash Behari Ghose (1845-1921)

• He called the extremists “pestilential demagogues” and “irresponsible agitators”.

• He was elected President of the Congress at the Surat Session in 1907.

Aurobindo Ghosh (1872-1950)

• In 1908-09, the government involved him in the Maniktala Bomb Conspiracy Case and imprisoned him for a year, but he was eventually acquitted.

• In 1910, he retired to Pondicherry, where he spent his life in meditation and spiritual pursuits.

Barindra Kumar Ghosh (1880-1959)

• He was deeply influenced by the revolutionary ideas of Aurbindo Ghosh.

• In the wake of the Swadeshi movement, Barindra started a Bengali weekly, the Jugantar in 1906.

• In 1907, he started the Maniktala Party.

• He devoted his times to journalism and was associated with the The Statesman and Basumati, the oldest Bengali daily, as its Editor.

Lal Mohan Ghosh (1849-1909)

• In 1879, he represented the British Indian Association, Calcutta in England to agitate for the admission of Indians into the Civil Services.

• He was presided over the 19th annual session of the Indian National Congress, held at Madras in 1903.

Shishir Kumar Ghosh (1840-1911)

• He actively supported the Indigo Agitation in Bengal.

• He was the founder and editor of the Amirita Bazar Patrika, which made its first appearance in February 1868 as a Bengali weekly, but from the second year it became bilingual.

• In 1875, Shishir Kumar established the India League.

• Bal Gangadhar Tilak saluted Shishir Kumar as his Political Guru.

Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915)

• In 1905, he founded the Servants of India Society.

• On his death in 1915 Tilak called him the “diamond of India”.

Dr. Hari Singh Gour (1870-1949)

• He obtained his degree in Law Tripos (Cambridge University) and D. Litt. from the London University.

• He got passed in the Central Legislative Assembly a number of important social legislations such as the Civil Marriage Act, Women’s Freedom Act, the Hindu Marriage Dissolution Act and the Age of Consent Act.

• He was the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Delhi.

Mahatma Hansraj (1864-1938)

• He was one of the greatest leaders of the Arya Samaj and was one of the founders of the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic Education Movement.

• He became the First Headmaster of the DAV School in Lahore.

A.K. Fazlul Haq (1873-1962)

• He was one of the founders of the All-India Muslim League at Dacca in 1906.

• He served as the General Secretary of the Congress in 1918-19.

• He represented the Muslim League at the Round Table Conference (1930-33).

• On the eve of the elections in 1937, he resigned from the Krishak Praja Party and formed a Coalition Government with the Muslim League in Bengal.

Lala Hardayal (1884-1939)

• He was a founder of the Ghadar Party in the USA.

• In 1913, he went to the USA and started a journal, the Ghadar.

• In March 1914, he had to leave the USA and went to Switzerland, where he started another anti-British paper, the Bandemataram.

• From Switzerland he went to Germany and opened an Oriental Bureau.

• In the USA he was appointed Professor of Sanskrit and Philosophy at the Berkeley University.

David Hare (1775-1842)

• He was closely associated with the Young Bengal movement and was the founder of the Hindu College in Calcutta.

• It was through his efforts that the Calcutta Medical College was founded (February 1835).

Hasarat Mohani (1878-1951)

• He was a famous Urdu poet and a great nationalist Muslim, who disagreed with Jinnah’s separatist outlook.

• At the Ahmedabad session of the Congress in 1921, he moved the resolution of Complete Independence.

• He very strongly opposed the Muslim Leauge’s damand for Pakistan.

Dr. Keshavrao Baliram Hedgewar

• His greatest contribution was the foundation of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, 1925.

Allan Octavian Hume (A.O. Hume) (1829-1922)

• “Father and founder” of the Indian National Congress (Congress).

Dr. Zakir Husain (1897-1969)

• He formulated the Wardha Scheme of Education.

• He served as the Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia (1926-53) Muslim University, Aligarh, was Governor of Bihar (1957-62) and Vice-President of India (1962-67).

• He was elected President of India in 1967. He died in office.





Syed Hasan Imam (1871-1938)

• A nationalist he was the Congress and was President in 1918.

• He joined the Anti-Rowlatt Act Satyagraha.

Indra Vidya-Vachaspati (1889-1960)

• He was a son of the great Arya Samajist leader Swami Sraddhananda.

• He edited the Vijaya (Delhi) in 1920 and later started Vir Arjun.

Sir Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938)

• He was a great Urdu poet and lawyer.

• He wrote the famous song: ‘Sare Jahan Se Achha Hindustan Hamara’.

• He presided over the Allahabad session of the League in 1930.

• Iqbal in known as the father of the idea of Pakistan.

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820-1891)

• Ishwar Chandra Bandopadhyaya was given the title of Vidyasagar by the authorities of the Sanskrit College, Calcutta.

A. Rangaswami Iyengar (1877-1934)

• He edited the Tamil daily Swadeshmitram.

• He was actively associated with Mrs. Annie Besant’s Home Rule Movement and served as the Secretary of the Home Rule League.

• He was one of the founders of the Swarajist Party in South India and was the Secretary of the Swarajist Party in the Central Assembly.

• In 1928, he took up the editorship of The Hindu.

• He attended the second Round Table Conference in London in 1931, as Mahatma Gandhi’s political secretary and his constitutional adviser.




S. Kasturi Ranga Iyengar (1859-1923)

• He acquired the paper The Hindu in 1905, which he edited till his death in 1923.

Seshadri Srinivasa Iyengar (1874-1941)

• He was the Deputy Leader of the Swarajist Party in the Central Assembly, presided over the Guwahati session of the Congress in 1926.

• He established the London branch of the Indian National Congress and organized the Independence Leauge with himself as President and Jawahar Lal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose as Secretaries.

C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer (1879-1966)

• He was a Law Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council in 1931 and served as the Diwan of Travancore State from 1936 to 1947.

• He was responsible for the famous Temple Entry proclamation of November 1936, opening the temple of Travancore State to the Harijians.

• After India’s Independence, he was appointed the Chairman of the Hindu Religious Endowments Commission and the Press Commission.

G. Subramania Iyer (1855-1916)

• He founded The Hindu in 1878.

• He changed The Hindu into a daily in April 1889.

• In 1892, he launched the Tamil paper Swadeshamitram.

• He also started the United India in 1902 for a close study of Indian economics

• He got his widowed daughter remarried. The famous Tamil poet S. Subramania Iyer was so struck by this action that he immortalized Iyer in his novel Chandrikayin Kathai.

S. Subramania Iyer (1842-1924)

• He is popularly known as the ‘Grand Old Man of South India’

• He was the first Indian to be appointed as the Vice-Chancellor of the Madras University

Jadonang (1905-1931)

• A pioneer Naga tribal freedom fighter of Manipur

Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1875-1948)

• He was the founder of Pakistan.

• He was responsible for the passage of the Pakistan Resolution at the Lahore session of the League on March 20, 1940.

• After the partition of India, he became the Governor-General of Pakistan. He is known as “Qaid-e-Azam”.

Mukund Ramarao Jayakar (1873-1959)

• He was a delegate to the Round Table Conference.

Narayana Malhar Joshi (1875-1955)

• Father of the Trade Union movement in India, he founded the All-India Trade Union Congress in 1921 and remained its Secretary till 1929.

• After the Communist elements infiltrated the Trade Union Congress, he left the Congress and started the Trade Union Federation.

Pratap Singh Kairon (1901-65)

• He soon became an important worker of the Desh Bhagat Parivar Sahaik Committee.

• He started a journal entitled New Era.

• He served the Punjab Cabinet as a Minister and later as Chief Minister.

• He resigned in 1964, and was shot dead on February 6, 1965.

Pandurang Vaman Kane (1880-1972)

• He was the author of several Sanskrit works but Kane’s magnum opus was the History of the Darmashastras, in five volumes, covering over 6500 pages.

• He has many honours to his credit including the Bharat Ratna.



Dhondo Keshav Karve (alias Annasaheb Maharshi Karve) (1858-1962)

• In 1893 he founded the Vidhava Vivahottejak Manadali (Society for the Promotion of Window Remarriage). In 1895, the name of the institution was changed to Vidhava Vivaha Praribandh Nivarak Mandali (Society for the Removal of Obstacles to window Remarriage).

• In 1898, he started the Mahila-ashrams or Window’s Homes in Poona.

• He started Mahila Vidyalayas or Women’s Schools in 1907 and, in the following year, the Nishkam Karma Math, a volunteer institution to train workers for the Window’s Homes and Mahila Vidyalayas.

• In 1916, he founded the Indian Women’s University.

• In 1944, he founded the Samata Sangh or the Association for the Promotion of Human Equality.

• He was conferred the Bharat Ratna in 1958.

Kailash Nath Katju (1887-1969)

• He defended prisoners of the Meerut Conspiracy Case, 1933.

• He was a Minister for Justice, Industries and Development, in the Congress Ministry of United Provinces under G.B. Pant.

• He was a member, Constituent Assembly of India, Minister for Home Affairs, Government of India (1951), and later the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh.

Narsimha Chintamani Kelkar (1872-1947)

• Lokmanya Tilak’s most prominent disciple and colleague, he was editor, Mahratta, 1897-1919; Editor, Kesari.

Fazl-i-Hussain Khan (1877-1936)

• He was the founder of the Unionist Party in the Punjab in 1920

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Frontier Gandhi) (1890-1988)

• In 1929 he founded the Khudai Khidmatgar (literally, God’s Servants) a peace corps of dedicated workers who gave him his title Fakhr-e-Afghan (i.e. Pride of the Afghan).

• He was popularly known as Frontier Gandhi, Badshah Khan, Fakhr-e-Afghan, etc..

• He was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1987.

Rafi Ahmad Kidwai (1894-1954)

• After the independence, he became the Minister for Food and Agriculture, and later headed the Ministry of Communications.

J.B. Kripalani (Acharya) (1888-1975)

• He was elected President of the Congress in 1946 at the crucial time of the transfer of power. However, on account of his differences with Nehru and Patel, he resigned as the President of the Congress and was succeeded by Dr. Rajendra Prasad

• In 1951, he resigned from the Congress party itself and floated the Krishak Mazdoor Praja Party, which later on merged into the Praja Socialist Party.

Hriday Nath Kunzru (1887-1974)

• In 1920 he left the Congress with other moderates and formed the National Liberal Federation.

• He was the establishment of the Indian Council of World Affairs (Sapru House, New Delhi), which ran a Research Institute known as the School of International Studies.

• He was General Secretary of the Seva Samiti, Allahabad.

• He was member of the States Reorganisation Commission (SRC).

Rajendra Nath Lahiri (1898-1927)

• A leading member of the HSRA, he played an active part in the Kakori Dacoity Case on August 9, 1925, and in raids by revolutionaries at Sherganj, Bichpuri and Mainpuri. He was arrested and sentenced to death.

Lala Lajpat Rai (1865-1938)

• He was popularly known as the ‘Punjab Kesari’.

• In 1907, he organized and led a massive agrarian movement in the Punjab, for which he was deported, along with Ajit Singh, to Burma.

• In 1920, he presided over the Calcutta session of the Congress.

• He actively participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement and, after its suspension, joined the Swarajya Party.

• On October 30, 1928, while leading the anti-Simon Commission procession in Lahore, he was brutally lathi charged and died of the injuries received eighteen days later on Nov. 17, 1928.

• He was founded an Urdu daily, the Bande Mataram, and an English weekly, The People. Earlier he had published Young India in the USA.

• Some of his important works are:
1. England’s Debt to India
2. India’s Will to Freedom
3. Call to Young India
4. Unhappy India.

• In collaboration with Mahatma Hans Raj, he founded the DAV College, Lahore.

• He also established the National College, Lahore (of which Sardar Bhagat Singh and Sukh Dev were two illustrious products).

Liaqat Ali Khan (1845-1951)

• In 1946 he was appointed the Finance Minister.

• In August 1947, he became the first Prime Minister of Pakistan and continued in office till October 1951, when he was killed at a public meeting in Rawalpindi.

Husain Ahmad Madani (Maulana) (1879-1957)

• He assumed the leadership of the Jamiatul Ulemai-i-Hind.

• He was totally opposed to the two-nation theory propouned by Jinnah.

• He was primarily a nationalist and head of the Deoband School.

T.K. Madhavan (1886-1930)

• He launched the Temple Entry Movement in Kerala.

• He was a follower of Sri Narayana Guru and in 1927 he was elected as the Organising Secretary of the Shree Narayana Dharma Paripalanayogam.

• From 1917 onwards he was the Editor of the Desabhimani daily.


Raja Mahendra Pratap (1886-1964)

• He was one of the few Indian princes who actively participated in the freedom struggle.

• In 1915, he reached Afghanistan, where he worked as the leader of Indian revolutionaries in Kabul.

• He set up a Provisional Government of Free India in Kabul with himself as the President and Maulana Barkatullah as the Prime Minister.

• Later, he worked in cooperation with the Hindustan Ghadar Party in the USA which sent him to Tibet (1926) to organize a rebellion against the British.

• He started an Indian League in Japan.

• He founded the Prem Vidyalaya, a technical college, at Brindaban (U.P).

• Before going abroad in 1914, he started two papers - Prem in Hindi and Nirbal Sewak in Hindi and Urdu.

Behramji Malabari (1853-1912)

• He founded the Seva Sadan - a social service organization- and was the Editor of a newspaper, Voice of India.

Madan Mohan Malaviya (1861-1946)

• He was initially a school teacher subsequently an advocate.

• He published a number of weeklies and dailies in Hindi and English such as the Hindustan, the Indian Union, Abhyudaya (weeklies), Maryada and Kisan (monthly) and a daily, The Leader, in English.

• He was the President of the Congress in 1909.

• He was elected to the Imperial Council in 1921.

• He was a founder member of the Hindu Mahasabha.

• He founded the Banaras Hindu University in 1916 and remained its Vice-chancellor from 1919 to 1938.



Ganesh Vasudeo Mavalankar (1888-1956)

• He was a member and the Speaker of the Bombay Legislative Assembly, from 1937 to 1945.

• He was the first Speaker of the Lok Sabha.

Ambica Charan Mazumdar (1850-1922)

• In 1916 he became the President of the 31st session of Congress in Lucknow.

• He joined the National Liberal Federation in 1918.

Meera Behn (1892-1982)

• Born as Madeleine Slade in England, she was named Meera Behn by Mahatma Gandhi, whose disciple and associate she was.

• She was awarded Padma Vibhushan in 1982.

Pherozeshah Mehta (1845-1915)

• He was popularly known as the ‘Uncrowed King of Bombay’.

• He was a founder of the Bombay Presidency Association and the Congress.

Dinabandhu Mitra (1830-73)

• He wrote against the exploitation of the indigo cultivators by the European planters in his Bengali drama, Neel Darpan Natakam, which was published in 1860 from Dacca.

• Neel Darpan was translated and published in English by Madhusudan Dutt.

Naba Gopal Mitra (1842-1894)

• He is popularly known as ‘Natioanl Mitra’ since all the institutions founded by him began with the prefix ‘National’.

• He was a follower of the Brahmo Samaj and was a leader of the Adi Brahmo Samaj.

• He published a weekly The National Paper, and promoted the Hindu Mela, popularly known as the National or Jatiya Mela.



• Naba Gopal founded:
1. The National School
2. The National Gymnasium
3. The National Circus
4. The National Theatre (Calcutta’s first public theatre)

Maulana Mohammad Ali (1877-1931)

• President of the 38th session of the Indian National Congress in 1923 at Kakinada

Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerji (1901-1953)

• He was a son of Sir Asutosh Mookerji.

• He was the youngest Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta.

• In 1937 he joined the Hindu Maha Sabha and became its President in 1939.

• He played a very crucial role at the time of partition of India and Shyama Prasad used to say proudly that ‘he saved half of Punjab and half of Bengal for India’.

• He joined the first National Government in August 1947 as Minister of Industries and Supplies. He resigned from the Ministry in April 1950.

• In October 1951 he became the founder President of the Bhartiya Jana Sangh (the fore-runner of the Bhartiya Janata Party).

• In 1953 he was arrested in Jammu and Kashmir and died in Srinagar prison.

Jatindranth Mukherjee (1879-1915)

• He was an ardent follower of Vivekananda and Aurobindo Ghose and an active member of the revolutionary societies - the Jugantar, the Anushilan Samiti and the Ghadar Party.

• He was popularly known as ‘Bagha Jatin’ or ‘Jatin the Tiger’.

K.M. Munshi (1887-1971)

• He was the founder of Bharatiya Vidhya Bhawan.

E.V. Ramaswami Naicker (1879-1973)

• In 1925, he launched the Self-Respect Movement.

• In 1944, he became the President of the Justice Party, which he later turned into the Dravida Kaz.hagam (Dravidian Federation)

Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949)

• She was the first Indian women President of the Indian National Congress, at the 40th annual session at Kanpur in 1925.

• She was also Governor of U.P (1947-48).

Chettar Sankaran Nair (Sir) (1857-1934)

• He was a Judge in the High Court of Madras till 1915, when he was appointed a member of the Viceroy’s Council.

• To protest against the Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, tragedy, he resigned from the Victory’s Council.

• He was President of the Depressed Classes Mission Society and the Madras Social Reform Association.

Furdoonji Naoroji (1817-1885)

• With Dadabhai Naoroji, he founded the Rahamumai Mazdyasnan Sabha (Guides of the Mazdyasnan (Parsi) faith).

• He published a fortnightly, The Rast Goftar (Truth Teller).

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917)

• He is known as the ‘grand old man of India’.

• In 1865, he founded the London India Society in collaboration with W.C. Bonnerjee. He was the first Indian to be elected to be its president.

• He enunciated the ‘Drain Theory’ in his long paper, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India.

• He was thrice elected as the President of the Congress in 1886, 1893 and 1906.

Kamakshi Natarajan (1868-1948)

• He was from former Madras State.

• He launched the India Social Reformer in 1889.

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964)

• He was Prime Minister of India from 1947 to 1964

• His works include:
1. The Discovery of India
2. Glimpses of World History
3. A Bunch of Old Letters

Motilal Nehru (1861-1931)

• He was the father of Jawahar Lal Nehru.

• He was elected to preside over the Amritsar session of the Congress (December 1919).

• He and C.R. Das founded the Swarajya Party in January 1923.

• He was Chairman of the All-Parties Committee appointed to draft the Swaraj constitution for India, which popularly came to be known as the Nehru Report.

Sister Nivedita (1867-1911)

• Sister Nivedita, alias Margaret Elizabeth Noble, was an Irish woman.

• She was an ardent disciple of Vivekananda, who gave her the name Nivedita.

• She founded the Ramkrishna Guild of Help in the USA.

• She attacked Lord Curzon for the partion of Bengal in 1905.

• She was described as a real lioness by Vivekananda, ‘Lokmata’ (the mother of the people) by Rabindra Nath Tagore and Agnishikha (the flame of fire) by Aurobindo Ghosh.

• In England she was known as ‘The Champion for India’.

Bipin Chandra Pal (1858-1932)

• He was popularly known as the father of revolutionary thought in India.

• He published Paridarsak, a weekly, and later worked as an assistant editor of the Bengal public Opinion and The Tribune.

• His most famous work being Memories of My Life and Times (in two volumes).

Govind Billabh Pant (1887-1961)

• He was badly injured in a lathi charge while leading a demonstration against the Simon Commission (1927).

• He became the Chief Minister of U.P. in 1946.

• He was called to the central government as Minister of Home Affairs.

Bhai Parmanand (1874-1947)

• He was a prominent Arya Samaj leader of the Punjab and also one of the leading figures of the Ghadar Party in the USA.

• He was a close associate of Lala Hardayal.

• In 1913, he was arrested and tried in the first Lahore Conspiracy Case. He was sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life-imprisonment by the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge.

• After his release in 1920, he became the Chancellor of the National College, Lahore.

• In 1933, he was elected President of the Ajmer session of the Hindu Mahasabha.


Sardar Vallabhabai Patel (1875-1950)

• In 1918 he participated in the Kheda satyagraha.

• In 1922, he participated in a peasant movement in Bardoli taluka of Gujarat popularly known as Bardoli Satyagraha.

• In recognition of his great success in Bardoli Satyagraha, Mahatma Gandhi called him Sardar.

• After independence Sardar Patel became independent India’s Deputy Prime Minister.

• His portfolios included Home, the Indian States and Information and Broadcasting.

Vithalbhai Patel (1873-1933)

• He represented the Indian National Congress at the London Conference (1919) on the Government of India Act.

• He died in exile in Switzerland in 1933.

Sohan Lal Pathak (1883-1916)

• He was the editor of a journal, Bande Mataram, under Lala Lajpat Rai, he went to the USA in 1914 to join the Ghadar Party in California.

• He was arrested in Burma while trying to organize an uprising. He was sentenced to death.

Dr. Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya (1880-1959)

• He was a medico by profession.

• He founded the Andhra Bank (1923) and the Hindustan Insurance Company (1935).

• He started the nationalist English weekly called the Janmabhoomi.

• He started the Andhra Sahakar Patrika.

• In 1936 he presided over the All-India States People’s Conference (AISPC) and was elected President of the AISPC in 1939 and 1946-48.

• In 1948 he was elected President of the Jaipur session of the Indian National Congress.

• In 1952 he was appointed the Governor of Madhya Pradesh.

Achyut Patwardhan (1905-1981)

• He was one of the founders of the Congress Socialist Party in 1934.

• In 1947, he was one of the founders of the Socialist Party of India.

Wasudev Balwant Phadke (1845-83)

• He organized the members of the Ramoshi tribe in Bombay Presidency into a trained fighting force.

• He died in 1883 after undertaking a fast unto death.

Tanguturi Prakasam (1872-1957)

• He was popularly known as Andhra Kesari (Lion of Andhra).

• He started the nationalist daily, the Swarajya.

• In 1946, he became the Chief Minister of Composite Madras State.

• After the creation of the separate Andhra State on October 1, 1953, he became its first Chief Minister.

Jyotirao Govindrao Phule (Mahatma) (1827-1890)

• In 1873, Jyotiba founded the Satyashodhak Samaj (The Truth Seeking Society).

Dr. S. Radhakrishna (1888-1967)

• He was a professor of philosophy at various Universities, including London, Manchester and Oxford, and Vice-Chancellor of the Banaras Hindu University.

• Among the political appointment held by him were Ambassador to USSR and Vice-President of India twice (1952-66).

• Author of:
1. Indian Philosophy
2. The Future of Civilization
3. Idealistic View of Life.

Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906)

• He belonged to the royal family of Travancore (Kerala).

• He was one of the greatest legends in the history of modern Indian painting.

• He specialized in the painting of the characters and incidents from Indian mythology.

• One of his masterpieces is a painting showing Shakuntala writing her love letter to Dushyamta.

C. Rajagopalachari (1878-1972)

• He was Chief Minister of Madras (1937-39), minister Union Government (1947), Governor of West Bengal (1947-48), and the first and last Indian Governor- General India (1948-50).

• He was opposed to the introduction of decimal coinage and introduction of Hindi language in the South.

• He started a new Political party called the Swatantra Party.

Shiv Ram Hari Rajguru (1908-1931)

• He was a Maharastrian Brahmin, who at an early age came to Varanasi for the study of Sanskrit.

• Became an active member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA).

• He took part in the murder of Saunders, the Deputy Superintendent of Police of Lahore, on December 17, 1928.

• He was hanged on March 23, 1931, along with Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev.

Baba Ram Chandra (1875-1950)

• He hailed from a poor Brahmin from former Gwalior State, who in his early youth went to Fiji Islands as an indentured labourer.

• In Fiji he organized the Indian indentured labourers against their exploitation by the British employers.

• Baba Ram Chandra’s unique method for the mobilization of the peasantry was the recitation of Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, before them.

• In 1935-36, he launched the Eka or the unity movement of the peasantry.

Baba Ram Singh (1826-1885)

• He was the founder of the famous Kuka Movement in the Punjab.

• Baba Ram Singh was arrested and deported to Burma.

Pandita Rambai (1868-1922)

• She embraced Christianity in 1883.

• In 1889, she founded the Sharda Sadan for education of widows and other women.

• She founded the Mukti Mission, to provide shelter to destitute women and a rescue home, Kripa Sadan, for fallen women.

Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842-1901)

• A founder of the Indian National Congress, he also founded the Deccan Educational Society.

Prof N.G. Ranga (1900-1997)

• He founded the Andhra Raiyat Association.

• In 1936, he became the founder Secretary of the All-India Kisan Sabha.

• Ranga was one of the founders of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers.

• In 1959, along with C. Rajagopalachari, he founded the Swatantra Party and was its President

S. Muthulakshmi Reddi (1886-1968)

• In 1907 she became the first female student to join the Madras Medical College for medical graduation.

• In 1926, she became the first woman legislator when she was nominated as a member of the Madras Legislative Council.

• She became the President of Women’s Indian Association after the death of Mrs. Besant in 1933.

• Dr. Muthulakshmi was one of the greatest women of the 20th century India, with many firsts to her credit:-
1. The first woman to study medicine,
2. The first Indian woman to be a member of the legislature
3. The first woman Deputy President of a Legislature in the world

Mannbendra Nath Roy (M.N.Roy) (1887-1954)

• He was a communist leader.

• At the invitation of Lenin he visited the former Soviet Union.

• He was elected a full member of the Communist International in 1924 and was in charge of organizing the communist movement in Asia, including China.

• He was arrested in the Kanpur Communist Conspiracy Case and was jailed for six years.

• He founded the Radical Democratic Party and also and organization of labour known as the Indian Federation of Labour.

• He was a founder of an organization known as the International Humanists.

Saifuddin Kitchlew(1888-1963)

• He had seconded the Purna Swarajya Resolution at the Lahore session of the Congress, 1929.

Pandurang Sadashiv Sane alias Sane Guruji (1899-1950)

• He wrote about 200 books in Marathi.

• To promote national integration, he evolved a scheme of Antar Bharati Schools.

Sachindra Nath Sanyal (1895-1945)

• He was a close associate of Rasbehari Bose.

• He was a founder of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA)

• He was arrested in the Kakori Conspiracy Case in 1925.

• His autobiographical work, Bandi jiban, became a Bible for the Indian revolutionaries.

Bhawani Dayal Sanyasi (1892-1950)

• He was born in South Africa.

• He was elected President of the Transvaal Indian Association and also helped Gandhiji in his work in South Africa. He was an Arya Samajist.

• He devoted himself completely to the propagation of the Arya Samaj in South Africa.

• His report on the overseas Indians, published in 1930, created a stir, as a result of which the repatriation was stopped.

Tej Bahadur Sapru (1875-1949)

• He was a founder and also the President of a National Convention, founded with the object of India’s constitutional development.

• He was instrumental in enabling Mahatma Gandhi to attend the Second Round Table Conference.

• In 1934, Dr. Sapru was elevated to a Membership of the Privy Council in London.

Dayananad Sarswathi (1824-99)

• He founded the Arya Samaj.

• His book Satyaratha Prakash.

Swami Sahajanand Sarswati (1889-1950)

• He was a leading Kisan leader from Bihar.

• The central theme of his programme of agrarian reforms was the abolition of the Zamindari system and creation of peasant proprietorship.

• In 1929 he founded the Bihar Kisan Sabha under his leadership.

• He presided over several sessions of the All-India Kisan Sabha.

• For his devoted services to the peasants, he came to be addressed as Kisan Pran (Life of Kisans).

Har Bilas Sarda (1867-1955)

• He was from Rajasthan.

• He was the author of the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929, which is popularly known as the Sarda Act.

• He also presided over the Indian Social Conference, held in Lahore in 1929, along with the historic session of the Congress.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri (1869-1946)

• He was one of the moderate leaders in the Congress and one of the founders of the National Liberal Federation in 1918 and represented it at the Round Table Conference in London in 1930-31.

• He published the weekly organ of the Servants of India Society.

S. Satyamurti (1887-1943)

• He was popularly known as the Firebrand of South India.




Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1833-1966)

• He was popularly known as Veer Savarkar.

• In 1899, he founded the first revolutionary society, the Mitra Mela (Friends Assembly), which in 1904 was named as the Abhinav Bharat Society (New India Society).

• In 1906, he sailed to England and joined the revolutionary group led by Shyam Krishna Verma.

• On the 50th anniversary of the Revolt of the 1857, he wrote a book in which he called the Revolt the First War of India Independence.

• In London, he was a close associate of Madan Lal Dhingra who murdered Curzon Wyllie.

• In 1910, he was arrested in the Nasik Conspiracy Case.

• He was sentenced to two consecutive life transportation.

• He was elected President of Hindu Mahasabha for five successive years, 1937-42.

Surya Sen (1894-1934)

• A revolutionary leader from East Bengal, he founded the Chittagong Republican Army.

Chattrapati Shahu (Maharaja) (1874-1922)

• The Maharaja of Kolhapur.

• His greatest work was in the direction of education.

• He started a number of free schools in Kolhapur and built a number of hostels where the children of the poor were housed free of charge.

• He favoured western liberal education.

• He was a follower of the Arya Samaj.

• He was the first among the Indian princes to take the courage to ban untouchability in his state.


Swami Shraddhanand (1856-1926)

• He was from the Punjab.

• He started a weekly, Satya Dharma Pracharak, from Jalandhar and in 1902 founded the Gurukula at Hardwar.

• He was the Chairman of the Reception Committee of the Amritsar session of the Congress in 1919.

• He was the president of the Shuddhi Sabha of the Arya Samaj.

• A Muslim fanatic murdered him in 1926.

Shri Narayana Guru (1845-1928)

• He was a great socio-reformer of Kerala.

• In spite of belonging to a lower caste, he installed the Siva idol at Aravipuram in 1888.

Krishnavarma Shyamji (1857-1930)

• He was a Gujarati scholar.

• He settled down in London, where he founded the India Home Rule Society and began publication of his English monthly, The Indian Sociologist.

• Shyamji also founded the India House in London as a residential centre for Indian students.

• After the arrest of V.D. Savarkar in London in 1910, Shyamji shifted his activities to Paris.

Tikendrajit Singh 1858-1891)

• He was a prince of Manipur state and also the hero of the Manipur Revolt of 1891.

Alluri Sitaram Raju (1897-1924)

• The earliest known non-tribal, he organized and led the Rampa tribal uprising in 1923-24 in Andhra Pradesh.




Rabindranth Tagore (1861-1941)

• He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.

• He founded the International University at Santiniketan (Bolepur) in Bengal.

Purshottamdas Tandon (1882-1961)

• He was from Allahabad. In 1930, he organized a very successful no-tax campaign in the province.

• Tandon was intimately associated with the Servants of thePeople Society, The Hindi Sahitya Sammelan and the Rashtrabhasa Prachar Samiti.

• He strove zealously for propagation of Hindi and for the development of its literature.

• Mahatma Gandhi fondly him Rajarshi.

• In 1961, he was conferred the Bharat Ratna.

T.L. Vaswani (1879-1966)

• Thanwardas Lilaram Vaswani, popularly known as Sadhu Vaswani, was born in Hyderabad (Pakistan).

• In 1910, he went to Berlin as India’s representative to the World Congress of Religions.

• He wrote a number of inspiring nationalist books, like
1. India Arisen
2. India in Chains
3. Awake Young India
4. My Mother Land

• Sadhu Vaswani was a prolific writer, who wrote over 100 books in English and over 300 books in Sindhi.

Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839-1904)

• He was the founder of India’s most forward-looking industrial house, The Tata Sons.

• He founded the Empress Textile Mill at Nagpur in 1877.

• He also prepared the ground for the first hydroelectric project in Western India.

• The Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore owes its existence to his efforts.

• His biographer, Harris, notes that about 20% of the Indian member of the ICS had been Tata scholars.

Tantiya Tope (1813-1859)

• Tatya Tope alias Ram Chandra Pandurang was a Maharashtrian Brahmin, whose family migrated to Bithur (near Kanpur, U.P), where the last Peshwa Baji Rao II had been exiled.

• Tantiya Tope was an intimate friend of Nana Dhundu Pant, the adopted son of the last Peshwa, who raised the banner of the Revolt of 1857 at Kanpur.

• He was defeated by General Rose in a memorable battle in which Rani Lakshmi Bai achieved martyrdom.

• He was the only leader of the Revolt of 1857, who defied the British for the longest period.

Thakkar Bapa (alias Amritalal) (1869-1951)

• He made a pioneering contribution to tribal welfare.

• He was the General Secretary to the Harijan Sevak Sangh.

• During 1933-34, he undertook a Harijan tour along with Gandhiji.

• He was a devoted member of the Servants of India Society.

• He founded the Gond Seva Sangh, now called the Vanavasi Seva Mandal in Mandala district, Madhya Pradesh.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (Lokmanya) (1856-1920)

• He started the Marathi Kesari and its English counterpart Mahratta.

• He revived the Ganapati festival in 1894 and two years later the Shivaji festival (1896).

• He was one of the founders of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha.

• His growing difference with moderates led to the ‘Surat Split’ and finally the expulsion of
• Tilak from the Congress.

• Immediately after his expulsion from the Congress, he was arrested, deported to Burma and imprisoned in the Mandalay fort for six years.

• After his release in 1914, he joined Mrs. Annie Besant and launched the Home Rule Movement in April 1920.

• He started the Congress Democratic Party.

• He died shortly afterwards in Bombay on 1 August 1920, the day Mahatma Gandhi formally launched the Non-Cooperation Movement.

• He wrote Gita Rahasya, a commentary on the Bhagavadgita in the Mandalay prison in 1911.

Udham Singh (1899-1940)

• To avenge the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy, he murdered Michael O’Dwyer.

• O’Dwyer’s killing took place in London in March 1940. Udham Singh was arrested and sentenced to death.

Veersalingam Pantulu (1848-1919)

• He was the father of social reform and literary Renaissance in Andhra.

• He started a number of Telugu journals like
1. The Vivek Vardhini (1874)
2. Sambardhini (1891)
3. The Satyavadini(1905)

• He also set up reform organizations like the
1. Samgha Samskara Samajam (1876),
2. Stree Punarvivah Samajam (1880).

• He got the first window remarriage in Andhra Pradesh solemnized in 1881.

Dinshaw Edulji Wacha (1844-1936)

• He belonged to Bombay and one of the founder members of the Indian National Congress.

• He functioned as the Secretary of the Congress and was elected its President in 1901.


Preetilata Wadedar (1911-32)

• Woman revolutionary from Bengal, She was an active member of the Jugantar and the Chittagong Republican Army, formed by Surya Sen.

• She led a group of revolutionaries and attacked a European club at Pahartali on September 24, 1932, in which a number of Europeans were killed and wounded. After successfully raiding the club, she swallowed poison and committed suicide.

Indulal Yajnik (1892-1972)

• He was from Gujarat.

• He started two Gujarati monthlies - Navjivan Ane Satya and Yugadharm, and a daily Nutan Gujarat.

• He became secretary of the Antyaj Seva Mandal, with Thakkar Bapa as its President.

• In 1942, he presided over the annual session of the Akhil Hind Kisan Sabha.

• He was a founder of the Gujarat Vidyapeeth.

• In 1956, he became the founder-President of the Maha Gujarat Janta Parishad.

Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775-1862)

• He was the last Mughal emperor.

• Zafar was his poetic sobriquet. He was a keen student of Sufi philosophy, an eminent Persian scholar and an Urdu Poet.

• Ibrahim Zauq and Asadullah Khan Ghalib were two of the greatest poets of his age.