Eternal India Encyclopedia

1951 he moved to New Delhi to become the General Secretary of the Congress. He organised the party's campaign for the first general election in 1952. After the general election he was invited to stand for the Raj ya Sabha and following his election he was appointed Cabinet Minister with the twin portfolios of Railways and Transport. He resigned following the Ariyalur train accident in Tamil Nadu in November 1956 in which 144 people were killed. This proved to be a blessing in disguise. His organising ability was once again available for the1957 General Elections. This time he stood for election and was returned from the Allahabad (South) constituency. In the new Cabinet he was given the Ministry of Transport and Communication. In the following year, he moved to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry after a Cabinet reshuffle following the resignation of T.T.Krishnamachari from Finance after the Mundra scandal. He was appointed Union Minister of Home Affairs following the death of Govind Ballabh Pant. In 1963 he resigned from the Union Cabinet along with five other Union Ministers and six Chief Ministers under the so-called Kamaraj Plan to revitalise the Congress at the organisational level. Two weeks after the Bhubaneswar Congress session in January 1964 he was recalled to the Cabinet and appointed Minister without Portfolio following Nehru's ill-health. Most of Nehru's duties were allotted to him. One of the first tasks which he faced was the explosive situation in Kashmir following the loss from the Hazratabal Mosque in Srinagar of a hair of the Prophet Muhammad. His tactful handling of the situation won him kudos. After Nehru's death in May 1964 Shastri became Prime Minister because of support from the Congress President Kamaraj and influential leaders of the Congress. In September 1965 the Pakistani Army crossed the Chhamb sector in Jammu. Shastri blunted the attack by authorising the Indian Army to cross the international border into West Punjab. He died of a heart-attack in January 11, 1966 in Tashkent in the Soviet Union where he had gone to sign the pact that ended the war with President Ayub Khan of Pakistan

entered.a Sanskrit Pathshala. He was drawn into Gandhi's non-co-operation movement of 1920-21. When he was still in his teens he was arrested. He gave his name as "Azad" his father's name as " Swatantra" and his residence as "Prison". The magistrate before whom he came up for trial sentenced him to fifteen lashes. When he was being flogged he shouted "Mahatma Gandhi Ki Jai", "Bande Matharam " etc. He was known thereafter as "Azad”. When the non-co-operation movement was withdrawn he joined the revolutionary Hindustan Socialist Republican Army. He was involved in the shooting of the Police officer Saunders at Lahore (1928). He was betrayed by an associate and surrounded by a police party at the Alfred Park, Lucknow on Feb. 27,1931. For quite some time he held them at bay with a small pistol. Left with only one bullet he killed himself with it, living up to his resolve that he would never be arrested and dragged to the gallows to be hanged. Born in a poor family to Krishan Singh and Vidyavati, at Banga in the Lyallapur District of West Punjab. On completion of his primary education in Banga Bhagat Singh was sent to the D.A.V. College at Lahore. Here he came under the influence of two nationalists who left an indelible impression on his mind. He became the leader of the student community but in response to the non-co- operation call of Gandhi, he left the D.A.V. College and later joined the National College founded by Lala Lajpat Rai from where he graduated in 1923. In 1925 he founded the Nav Jawan Bharat Sabha at Lahore to inculcate a spirit of revolution among the youth. He came in touch with other revolutionaries like Sukhdev, Yashpal, Chandra Shekhar Azad, Jatindra Nath Das and others. Das taught him how to make crude bombs. On February 3,1928 when the Simon Commission landed in Bombay, Lala Lajpat Rai, led a black flag demonstration against it in response to a call given by the Congress. He received injuries in a police lathi-charge and later died. Bhagat Singh, Raj Guru and Azad decided to kill the Deputy Superintendent of Police who had ordered the lathi-charge. They shot dead the Asst. Police Superintendent, Saunders, whom they mistook for Scott. On April 8, 1929 Bhagat Singh threw a bomb when the Central Assembly was in session. They offered themselves for arrest shouting Inquilab Zindabad (Long live the Revolution). They were arrested and later Bhagat Singh, Rajguru Bhagat Singh (1907-1931)

and Sukhdev were tried and hanged at the Central Jail, Lahore on March 23, 1931. At the trial a statement on behalf of Bhagat Singh was read out. It said: "The bomb was necessary to awaken England from her dreams. We dropped the bomb on the floor of the Assembly chamber to register our protest on behalf of those who had no other means left to give expression to their heart-rending agony. Our sole purpose was to make the deaf hear and to give the heedless a timely warning." Homi Bhabha who founded and developed atomic energy in India was the older of the two sons of Jahangir Bhabha and Meherbai Franji Panday, granddaughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit. After studying at the Cathedral School, Elphinstone College and the Royal Institute of Science in Bombay, Bhabha went to Cambridge. His parents wanted him to qualify as an engineer and then work in the Tata Iron and Steel Company at Jamshedpur. But Homi Bhabha was keen on becoming a physicist. A compromise was reached. If he obtained a first in physics, his father agreed to finance further studies. He obtained a first and began work in Theoretical Physics. When World War II broke out, Bhabha was in India on a holiday. As he could not return to Cambridge he accepted the post of Reader in Theoretical Physics at the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore. The five years (1940-1945) were fruitful years. In 1941 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, London, at the age of 31, the youngest Fellow so far elected. In 1944 he took the first step in the establishment of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Atomic Energy Commission when he wrote to Sir Sorab Saklatvala, Chairman of the Sir Dorab Tata Trust, requesting that a school of research in theoretical and experimental physics be founded in India with special reference to cosmic rays and nuclear physics. The Atomic Energy Commission was founded in 1948 with Homi Bhabha as chairman and the TIFR was inaugurated in 1952. The Atomic Energy Establishment was set up at Trombay and on August 4,1956 the first Indian-built reactor Apsara became critical. Bhabha was awarded thePadmaBhushanin 1954. On January 24, 1966 he died in an air crash over Mount Blanc while on his way to Vienna to attend a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Atomic Energy Establishment at Trombay was renamed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Homi Jahangir Bhabha (1909-1966)

Chandra Shekhar Azad (1906-1931)

He was born in Bhavra , a village in the Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh. His father was a watchman who had left his home village of Badarka in Uttar Pradesh in search of a livelihood. He received his early schooling in Bhavra and then went to Varanasi where he