Mahadev Desai

Mahadev Desai
Date of Birth	:	Jan 1, 1892
Date of Death	:	Aug 15, 1942
Place of Birth	:	Gujarat

Mahadev Desai was an Indian freedom fighter, a nationalist writer and most famously known for being the personal secretary of Mahatma Gandhi. Mahadev Desai was born on January 1st, 1892 at Saras, a village in Olpad Taluka of Surat district of the Indian state of Gujarat, where his father Haribhai Desai was a school teacher. The family originally hailed from Dihen in the same district. He lost his mother Jamnaben when he was only seven years old. Gujarat was also the birthplace and home of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the most prominent leaders in the Indian Independence Movement. Desai was a young lawyer in Ahmedabad when he decided to join Gandhi along with Narhari Parikh, Mohanlal Pandya and Ravi Shankar Vyas, and became his most devoted secretary for over 25 years, from 1917 to 1942. The four were the earliest supporters of Gandhi. Mahadev Desai was arrested with Gandhi during all the nationalist revolts. The chief period of interest is the time Gandhi was incarcerated in the Yeravda Jail near Pune, Maharashtra from 1931 to 1934. Desai wrote most of his important works on Gandhi during this period. When arrested during the Quit India movement and sent to the Aga Khan Palace for imprisonment, he died on August 15th, 1942. Gandhi was devastated by Desai's death at a young age. Both Gandhi and his wife Kasturba Gandhi had seen him as their son, and his death was mourned by Gandhi's supporters across the country. He wrote several books on the non-violent struggles led by Gandhi in India, and a diary called 'Day to Day with Gandhi' in 9 volumes. His son Narayan Desai is also a non-violent activist.

His Writings

A Righteous Struggle

With Gandhi in Ceylon, 1928.

The Story of Bardoli, 1929

Swadeshi-True and False, 1929.

Unworthy of Wardha, 1929.

Eclipse of Faith, 1929.

The Nation's Voice, 1932.

The Epic of Travanancore, 1937.

Gandhi Seva Sangh, 1940.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, 1940.

Kheti ni Jamin, Gujarati, 1942.

The Geeta according to Gandhi, 1942.

Day to Day with Gandhi, post-mortem.

Jivatram Kripalani

Jivatram Kripalani
Date of Birth	:	1888
Date of Death	:	Mar 19, 1982
Place of Birth	:	Gujarat Jivatram Kripalani, also referred to with the prefix Acharya (Teacher), was an Indian freedom fighter, who became a nationwide leader of the Janata Party revolt against the Indian Emergency. Jivatram (also spelled Jiwatram) Bhagwandas Kripalani was born in current-day Gujarat in 1888. He was of Sindhi and Gujarati roots. He received college education, and was a learned and scholarly young man when he became a member of the Indian National Congress. He was a school teacher when he soon became a disciple of rising nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi, and adopted his teachings and leadership. Kripalani was involved in the Non-Cooperation Movement of the early 1920s, and worked in Gandhi's ashrams in Gujarat and Maharashtra on tasks of social reform and education, and later left for Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in northern India to teach and organize new ashrams. He also courted arrest on numerous occasions in the national struggles and smaller occasions of organizing protests and publishing what the British considered seditious materials. With the support of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Gandhi, Kripalani joined the All India Congress Committee and became its General Secretary in 1928-29, an important position. He would hold the position for many years. He was popular with nationalists and the common people in northern as well as western India. Kripalani drew close to Patel, and was prominently involved over a decade in top Congress party affairs, and in the organization of the Salt Satyagraha and the Quit India Movement. Kripalani served in the interim Government of India (1946-1947) was also the earliest supporters of Patel and Nehru over the Partition of India, and served in the Constituent Assembly of India. In 1946, when the Congress Working Committee met to elect its new President, who would also become the head of the first all-Indian government, the contest was between Sardar Patel, the choice of 15 provincial Congress organizations, and Jivatram Kripalani, the choice of one. But Jawaharlal Nehru was recommended by the Working Committee at the last moment. Before Gandhi pressured Patel to drop his candidacy in favor of Nehru, Kripalani withdrew his name and backed Nehru. After Patel's death in 1950 and Nehru's increasing popularity in the 1950s, Kripalani left the Congress. Kripalani remained a critic of Prime Minister Nehru's policies and administration, while working for social causes for the common people of India. He was now respectfully addressed as Acharya Jivatram Kripalani by his admirers and supporters, but did not attempt to resuscitate his political career. But in 1974, Kripalani joined Jaya Prakash Narayan in organizing major student and union strikes and protests nationwide against the rule of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter. Kripalani and Narayan felt that Gandhi's rule had become dictatorial and anti-democratic, and her conviction on charges of using government machinery for her election campaign galvanized her political opposition and public disenchantment against her policies. Both Kripalani and Narayan were arrested during the Indian Emergency (1975-1977), when Gandhi suspended political activities and elections under the Emergency clause in the Constitution of India. When Gandhi released all political prisoners and called fresh elections in 1977, Kripalani helped Narayan organize the coalition of political parties opposed to Gandhi's Congress Party, called the Janata (People's) Party. Janata Party swept the elections and Morarji Desai became India's new Prime Minister, but Kripalani receded to the background due to ill health and old age. He died on March 19, 1982, at the age of 94. His wife Sucheta Kripalani was also an Indian freedom fighter, a renowned singer and the first lady Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.

Narhari Parikh

Narhari Parikh
Date of Birth	:	-
Date of Death	:	-
Place of Birth	:	India

Narhari Parikh was an Indian freedom fighter and social reformer, who was a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi and the chief architect of the Indian Independence Movement in Gujarat. Hailing from the western Indian state of Gujarat, Parikh was an educated lawyer in Ahmedabad, when in 1916 he gave up his practice to work with Mahatma Gandhi, the future leader of the Indian Independence Movement, just like fellow Gujarati lawyers Mohanlal Pandya, Ravi Shankar Vyas and Mahadev Desai to work on a collection of missions for social reform in Gujarat, such as fighting untouchability, alcoholism, illiteracy and working to expanding freedom for women, Indian-run schools, sanitation and health care. Understanding Gandhi's point that the real India was in the 900,000 villages of the land, Parikh focused especially on hundreds of villages in Gujarat, going from village to village despite all the pains and obstacles of weather, terrain and lack of resources. When the first revolts led by Gandhi, of the Indian Independence Movement broke in Gujarat, Parikh was the chief lieutenant of Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.He formed a close bond of friendship and trust with the latter, both working under a common teacher, Gandhi. Patel and Parikh scaled all of Gujarat to muster support for the tax and land revolt in Kheda (1918-19), Borsad (1924) and Bardoli (1928), the latter being the most famous Indian revolt, catapaulted Vallabhbhai Patel to the national stage. When the Indian National Congress inaugurated the Salt Satyagraha of 1930-34, Parikh was the chief organizer in Gujarat. He also was one of the first supporters of and the key Gujarati organizer of the Quit India Movement, but all through his life remained working only in Gujarat and not on the national stage. He was tirelessly supportive of Gandhi, adhering to his leadership even when the Congress Party as such chose a different path. All through his years of association with Gandhi and the freedom struggle, Parikh was arrested by British authorities and spent many years in prison. Parikh worked tirelessly with Gujarati women's and student's associations, labor and farmer groups to alleviate people from social and economic ills, as well as fighting political and social oppression. After India's independence and despite Gandhi's death in 1948, he remained active with Gandhi's ashrams in Gujarat, and in 1949 penned a biography of his close friend Sardar Patel, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

Parikh is revered in Gujarat today, and by many Indians conscious of his important role alongside Gandhi and Patel.

Ravi Shankar Vyas

Ravi Shankar Vyas
Date of Birth	:	-
Date of Death	:	-
Place of Birth	:	Gujarat

Ravi Shankar Vyas was an Indian freedom fighter and social reformer, hailing from and working in the state of Gujarat. He was one of the earliest and closest associates of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and along with Narhari Parikh and Mohanlal Pandya, the chief organizer of nationalist revolts in Gujarat in the 1920s and 1930s.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Date of Birth	:	Jul 23, 1856
Date of Death	:	1920
Place of Birth	:	Maharashtra

Bal Gangadhar Tilak, was an Indian nationalist, social reformer and freedom fighter who was the first popular leader of the Indian Independence Movement. Tilak sparked the fire for complete independence in Indian consciousness, and is considered the father of Hindu nationalism as well. Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it! This famous quote of his is very popular and well-remembered in India even today. Reverently addressed as Lokmanya (meaning "Beloved of the people" or "Revered by the world"), Tilak was a scholar of Indian history, Sanskrit, Hinduism, mathematics and astronomy. He was born on July 23, 1856, in a village near Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, into a middle class Chitpavan Brahmin family. Tilak was an avid student with a special aptitude for mathematics. He was among India's first generation of youth to receive a modern, college education. After graduation, Tilak began teaching mathematics in a private school in Pune and later became a journalist. He became a strong critic of the Western education system, feeling it demeaning to Indian students and disrespectful to India's heritage. He organized the Deccan Education Society to improve the quality of education for India's youth. Tilak founded the Marathi daily Kesari (The Lion) which fast became a popular reading for the common people of India. Tilak strongly criticized the government for its brutalism in suppression of free expression, especially in face of protests against the division of Bengal in 1905, and for denigrating India's culture, its people and heritage. He demanded the British immediately give the right to self-government to India's people. Tilak joined the Indian National Congress in the 1890s, but soon fell into opposition of its liberal-moderate attitude towards the fight for self-government. Tilak opposed the moderate views of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and was supported by fellow Indian nationalists Bipin Chandra Pal in Bengal and Lala Lajpat Rai in Punjab. In 1907, the Congress Party split into the Garam Dal (literally, "Hot Faction"), led by Tilak, Pal and Lajpat Rai, and the Naram Dal (literally, "Soft Faction") led by Gokhale during its convention at Surat in Gujarat. When arrested on charges of sedition in 1906, Tilak asked a young Mohammad Ali Jinnah to represent him. But the British judge convicted him and he was imprisoned from 1908 to 1914 in Mandalay, Burma. Upon his release, Tilak re-united with his fellow nationalists and re-united the Indian National Congress in 1916. He also helped found the All India Home Rule League in 1916-18 with Annie Besant and Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Tilak proposed various social reforms, such as a minimum age for marriage, and was especially keen to see a prohibition placed on the sale of alcohol. His thoughts on education and Indian political life have remained highly influential - he was the first Congress leader to suggest that Hindi, written in the devanagari script, should be accepted as the sole national language of India, a policy that was later strongly endorsed by Mahatma Gandhi. However, English, which Tilak wished to remove completely from the Indian mind, remains an important means of communication in India. But the usage of Hindi (and other Indian languages) has been reinforced and widely encouraged since the days of the British Raj, and Tilak's legacy is often credited with this resurgence. Another of the major contributions relates to the propagation of Sarvajanik (public) Ganesh festival, over 10-11 days from Bhadrapada Shukla (Ganesh) Chaturthi to (Anant) Chaturdashi (in Aug/Sept span), which contributed for people to get together and celebrate the festival and provided a good platform for leaders to inspire masses. His call for boycott of foreign goods also served to inspire patriotism among Indian masses. Tilak was a critic of Mahatma Gandhi's strategy of non-violent, civil disobedience. Although once considered an extremist revolutionary, in his later years Tilak had considerably mellowed. He favored political dialogue and discussions as a more effective way to obtain political freedom for India, and did not support leaving the British Empire. However, Tilak is considered in many ways to have created the nationalist movement in India, by expanding the struggle for political freedoms and self-government to the common people of India. His writings on Indian culture, history and Hinduism spread a sense of heritage and pride amongst millions of Indians for India's ancient civilization and glory as a nation.

Tilak was considered the political and spiritual leader of India by many, and Gandhi is considered his successor. When Tilak died in 1920, Gandhi paid his respects at his cremation in Bombay, along with 200,000 people. Gandhi called Tilak "The Maker of Modern India".

Tilak is also today considered the father of Hindu Nationalism. He was the idol of Indian revolutionary Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who penned the political doctrine of Hindutva.

His writings

- Tilak authored the well-regarded The Orion, or, Researches into the antiquities of the Vedas (1893) in which he used astronomy to establish that the Vedic people were present in India at least as early as the 4th millennium BC.

- Later, in 1903, he wrote the much more speculative Arctic Home in the Vedas. In it he argued that the Vedas could only have been composed in the Arctics, and the Aryan bards brought them south after the onset of the last Ice age.

- Tilak also authored 'Geetarahasya' - the analysis of 'Karmayoga' in the Bhagavadgita, which is known to be gist of the Vedas and the Upanishads.

Other collections of his writings include:

- The Hindu philosophy of life, ethics and religion (published in 1887).

- Vedic chronology and vedanga jyotisha.

- Letters of Lokamanya Tilak, edited by M. D. Vidwans.

- Selected documents of Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, 1880-1920, edited by Ravindra Kumar.

- Trial of Tilak.