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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.
Sarojini Naidu
(1879- 1949)
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.
Subramania Bharati
(1882-1921)
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"
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
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.
Rajendra Prasad
(1884-1963)
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