Eternal India Encyclopedia

dismemberment of the Turkish empire of the Ottoman Sultans who claimed to be the Caliphs (caliphate) or supreme religious authority of the Muslim world. Gandhi supported the Khilafat movement and as the movement gathered strength it seemed that Hindu-Muslim unity had been achieved. The movement ran out of steam when Turkey abolished the caliphate in 1924. When the Arya Samajists launched the Sangathan and Suddhi movements which were aimed at the mass conversion of Muslims, Muhammed Ali complained that Gandhi never denounced the movements. The final break came in 1930 when Gandhi started the second civil disobedience movement. Muhammed Ali advised the Muslims to stand aloof from it. The same year Muhammed Ali died in London where he had gone against medical advice to participate in the first Round Table Conference. Daughter of Aghorenath Chattopadhyay, who came from a village in East Bengal, and Varoda Sundari. Aghorenath settled down in Hyderabad after obtaining his Doctor of Science from Edinburgh University. Founded the Hyderabad College and was appointed as its principal when it became the Nizam's College. Sarojini was sent for study to Madras where she obtained a first class in her matriculation . But she never again passed or even sat for an academic examination. Though she later attended King's College, London and Girton, Cambridge she returned to India without a degree. In 1896 she was sent to England because her parents did not want her to marry Govindarajulu Naidu, a widower and ten years her senior. After returning to India, she was allowed to marry the man she loved. Her first book of poems, The Golden Threshold (1905) published in England took that country by storm. This was followed by The Bird of Time (1912). She was known as the Nightingale of India. She joined the Freedom movement and in 1925 was elected the first woman president of the Indian National Congress at the Kanpur session. Became a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi. Was appointed Governor of Uttar Pradesh after Independence. Sarojini Naidu (1879- 1949)

from this shock. He was continuously ill and passed away on September 11th, 1921. Among his poetic works, the best-known are Kannan Pattu, Panchali Sapatham and Kuyil Pattu. His prose works include writings on social reform and the upliftment of women. V.D.Savarkar (1883-1966) A Chitpavan Brahmin like Ranade, Gokhale and Tilak, Savarkar was the second son of a landowner. At the age of ten, hearing of bloody Hindu-Muslim riots in the United Provinces, he led a gang of his schoolmates in a stone-throwing attack on the village mosque. At sixteen, his anger at the hanging of two Maharashtrian terrorists made him vow to devote his life to driving the British out of India. In 1905 he arranged for a huge bonfire of foreign cloth and persuaded Tilak to speak to the crowd that had gathered to witness the event. As a result he was rusticated from the Fergusson College where he was studying but with Tilak's help secured a scholarship to study in London from a patriot there. In London he organised the "New India" group which learned the art of bomb-making from a Russian revolutionary. One member of the group (Madanlal Dingra) shot and killed an important official of the India Office and was sent to the gallows. Savarkar himself was arrested a few months later but by this time he had already published his nationalistic interpretation of the 1857-58 mutiny and called it "The First Indian War of Independence". When the ship carrying him back to India stopped at Marseilles Savarkar swam ashore and claimed asylum on French soil. He was recaptured by the British. The Hague International Tribunal ultimately judged his recapture by the British irregular but justifiable. In 1911 Savarkar was transported to the Andaman Islands. He was released in 1924 but his movements were restricted and until 1947 he was forbidden to take part in politics. Later he was elected leader of the Hindu Mahasabha. He stood trial in 1948 along with N.V. Godse, assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, who was known as a devoted lieutenant of Savarkar. He was acquitted for lack of evidence linking him to the crime itself.

at the court of the Rajah of Ettayapuram in Tamil Nadu. His father Chinnaswami Iyer, a protege of the Rajah, was proprietor of one of the first textile mills in South India. He went to Banaras where an aunt of his and her husband were settled to continue his education and passed the matriculation examination in the first division. While at Banaras he developed an interest in the political happenings in India. Bharati returned to Tamil Nadu and in 1904 was a Tamil Pandit in a school in Madurai for a few months. This was a period noted for his patriotic poetry and poems laced with political satire. He then joined the newly-started Tamil daily Swadeshamitran where his job was translating into Tamil all the news that came in English. He attended the Calcutta session of the Congress in 1906 as a delegate and a journalist. Soon after his return to Madras he left the Swadeshamitran and started a weekly, India in Tamil. It was printed on red paper in keeping with its revolutionary character. He also began to introduce his poems to the public by reciting them on special occasions. He had a deep voice which held the audience spellbound. Bharati attended the Surat session of the Congress in 1907 where the organisation split into two. After the Surat Congress there was an outbreak of extremist activity in the country. Leaders like Aurobindo and Tilak were jailed and he was persuaded to go to the French territory of Pondicherry where he would be safe. So it was in 1908 that Bharati went to Pondicherry where he was joined in 1910 by Aurobindo. Under the stimulus of Aurobindo's new humanism, Bharati undertook an intensive study of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras making a Tamil version of some of them with his own commentary. Bharati's own powers matured through contact with Aurobindo. Patriotism continued to be his primary religion but it gradually bacame intertwined with and enriched by an awareness of spiritual realities. Bharati ended his exile at the end of World War I and left Pondicherry on November 11th 1918. He was arrested when he set foot on Indian soil and detained in Cuddalore Jail till December 14th 1918 •< when he gave an undertaking not to engage in political activities. He returned to Madras and rejoined the Swadeshamitran. He used to frequently visit the Parthasarathi Temple in Triplicane near his lodging and sing his songs in its precincts. He also spent a little time with the temple elephant feeding it with bananas and coconut. On one such visit on June 21 the elephant went berserk, seized him in its trunk and tossed him aloft. Bharati fell down unconscious. He never really recovered

Rajendra Prasad (1884-1963)

Subramania Bharati (1882-1921)

Rajendra Prasad was born on December 3, 1884 in a village in the Garan district of North Bihar. After his early education at home and in Presidency College, Calcutta. Not the Chapra 2 Z illa School, he joined the

A patriot who was also a born poet in Tamil, he was given the title of Bharati after he had won, at the age of 14, an extempore debating contest on the subject of "Education"