Eternal India Encyclopedia

She settled down in Banaras, completed her translation of the Bhagcivad Gita, and in 1898 established the Central Hindu College at Banaras which became the nucleus of the Banaras Hindu University. She made Adyar her permanent home in 1907. In 1914 she purchased the Madras Standard, renamed it New India and through it propagated her views on Home Rule for India. She believed that India should have her freedom but should remain within the British Commonwealth. She was made President of the Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress in 1917 but soon found herself in a minority over Gandhi's methods of Satyagraha and civil disobedience. She believed in constitutional methods and keeping within the law and opposed massive law breaking however non- violent. She concentrated on educational work. In 1918 she established the National University at Adyar, with Rabindranath Tagore as Chancellor. She passed away on September 21, 1933. She desired that her only epitaph should be the words "She tried to follow truth." Was one of the first Indians to be admitted to the Indian Civil Service but was dismissed for his failure to correct a false report prepared in his name by a subordinate. He went to London to appeal his case but when he failed he appeared for the bar examinations but was refused again. Returned to Calcutta, determined to spend his life" redressing our wrongs and protecting our rights, personal and collective". He founded a patriotic association, a newspaper and a college. When he was jailed for criticising an English judge, he started the tradition of welcoming the imprisonment in order to demonstrate the injustice of a governmental law or policy. He insisted that only constitutional means be used in the struggle for self-government. Twice President of the Congress he left it in 1918 to head the All-India Liberal Federation when the younger Congress leaders threatened to obstruct the introduction of the Montagu- Chelmsford Reforms. He earned the nickname of "Surrender-not" Banerjea because of his determination in continuing on his chosen path. Surendranath Banerjea (1848-1926)

This was set up in 1899 in Bangalore as the Tata Institute of Science. He studied hydroelectric generation in America. And this dream of his was realised in 1910 when the Tata Hydro-Electric Power Supply Company was established to supply power to the growing city of Bombay. Jamsetji Tata was an industrial seer who foresaw an industrialised India. He was born in an orthodox household. An extremely serious student he begged his father to send him to school in Bombay to complete his English education. He graduated from the Elphinstone College. Became a teacher of economics and later of history and literature in the Elphinstone College. But he opted for a judicial career and before he was thirty received his first appointment as a subordinate judge in Poona. As a judge Ranade worked for the reform of such social evils as child marriage and non-remarriage of widows. Ranade was one of the early members of the Prarthana Samaj (Prayer Society, modelled after the Brahmo Samaj). Ranade's views on economics grew from his study of Indian problems. He concluded that their solution lay in a vigorous policy of industrial and commercial development under British Government auspices. She was born in London. Her father was half-Irish, half-English, her mother was Irish. Her father, a doctor, died while she was still a child. She was educated at Harrow Public School. She later came under the care of Miss. Marryat, sister of the writer Capt. Marryat, whom she met in the house of a friend and who offered to look after her education. In 1867 she married the Rev. Frank Besant but the marriage was not a happy one and they separated in 1873. She was instrumental in starting the first trade union in London and became famous because of her struggle in connection with the improvement of the working conditions of girls working in match factories. She joined the Theosophical Society in 1889 after reading Mme Blavatsky's "The Secret Doctrine". After the death of Col. Olcott she was elected President of the Society in 1907, which position she held till her death in 1933. She came to India in 1893. She landed in Tuticorin, lectured in 12 towns in South India and attended the annual convention of the Theosophical Society at Adyar in Madras. Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842-1901) Annie Besant (1847-1933)

1886,1893 and 1906. He died in Bombay in 1917.

Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839-1904)

He was bom in a family of Parsi priests in Navsari, Gujarat. At the age of 17 he joined the Elphinstone College, Bombay from where he graduated a couple of years later. In 1868, at the age of 29, he started a private trading firm with a capital of Rs. 21,000. He got the idea of manufacturing cotton goods after visiting Manchester and in 1877 the Empress Mills was opened on the day Queen Victoria was formally proclaimed Empress of India. Jamsetji had decided to locate his mill at Nagpur, the centre of the cotton growing area, and not in Bombay where the other cotton mills were located. In 1882 Jamsetji read a report by a German geologist, Ritter Von Schwartz, that there were iron ore deposits in Chanda District in the Central Provinces, not far from Nagpur. But the mining terms then available were not favourable and Jamsetji could not pursue the project he had in mind. It was not until 1899 that Lord Curzon, the Viceroy, liberalised the mineral concession policy. A report was published at the same time on the feasibility of establishing an iron and steel works in India. The next year Jamsetji visited England and saw the Secretary of State, Lord George Hamilton, who told Jamsetji he could expect support from the Government of India. Jamsetji next visited the United States where he studied coking processes and in Pittsburg met the world's foremost metallurgical consultant, Julian Kennedy, who suggested Charles Page Perm as the best man who could undertake the survey. The Chanda field did not turn out to be feasible as there was no coal nearby. An iron ore field was finally discovered in 1907 in the Princely State of Mayurbhanj between the rivers, Kharkai and Subarnareka, which was to become Jamshedpur. Jamsetji had passed away three years earlier at Bad Manheim in Germany but his dream did not die with him. Jamsetji was a nationalist long before the term became fashionable. During his travels wherever he saw anything good he wanted to bring it to India. When he visited Japan in 1893 he invited the Japanese to establish the silk industry in Mysore. He had discovered that in the past silk was a flourishing industry in the state and that it had the right climate for the industry. In 1898 he offered his properties worth Rs.3,000,000 for the establishment of a science university as he saw that India could not modernise without science education.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920)

Learned Sanskrit and English from his father, a schoolteacher and deputy inspector of education in a small town on India's west coast. When he was ten, the family moved to