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Sabha) from 1952-58, Vice - Chancellor of
Vishwabharati University (1956-58) and was
appointed National Professor in 1958.
Morarji Desai
(1896-)
Morarji Desai was born on February 29,
1896 in village Bhadeli, near Bulsar in the
Surat district of Gujarat. His father was a
schoolteacher. He had his primary education
in his village and secondary education in
Bulsar. After graduation from the Wilson
College in Bombay, he entered the Bombay-
provincial civil service in 1918 and served in
various capacities for 12 years. In response to
the call of Mahatma Gandhi to government
servants to give up their jobs, Moraiji resigned
his post as Deputy Collector in 1930 and
joined the Civil Disobedience Movement. In
1937 he was elected to the Bombay
Legislative Assembly and was Minister for
Revenue and Forests in the first Congress
Government (1937-39). In 1946 he was again
elected to the Bombay Legislative Assembly
and served as Home and Revenue Minister
from 1946 to 1952. After the first General
Election in 1952 he became the Chief Minister
of Bombay and continued in that capacity till
states'
reorganisation
in
1956.
His
administration in Bombay state was known for
its efficiency and integrity. He joined the
Union Cabinet as Minister for Industry and
Commerce in 1956. In 1958 he took over the
portfolio of Finance. After the General
Elections in 1962 he again became the Union
Minister for Finance in Nehru's Cabinet but
resigned in August 1963 under the Kamaraj
Plan. He was Chairman of the Administrative
Reforms Commission during 1966-67. Desai
joined the Indira Gandhi Cabinet in 1967 as
Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.
He resigned in July 1969 following
differences with Indira Gandhi. After the split
in the Congress he became the Chairman of
the Opposition Congress Party in Parliament.
In March 1977 Morarji Desai was sworn in as
the Prime Minister of India after the Janata
Party, formed by the merger of the
Congress(O), Bharatiya Lok Dal and Socialist
Party, and its allies, won the General
Elections. He resigned in 1979 after the Janata
Party lost its majority in the Lok Sabha. A
believer in naturopathy Moraiji Desai is
known for his spartan way of living.
Subhas Chandra Bose
(1897-1945)
He was born in Cuttack as the sixth son
and ninth child of Janaki Nath and Prabhavati
Bose. His father was a successful lawyer who
had climbed to the top rung of his
profession by the time Subhas was born. Bose
spent his formative years at the Protestant
European school and the Ravenshaw
Collegiate School in Cuttack. He stumbled on
the works of Swami Vivekananda in a friend's
house and went on to learn about
Ramakrishna. He wrote later: "Ramakrishna's
example of renunciation and purity entailed a
battle which raged with all the forces of the
lower self. And Vivekananda's ideal brought
me into conflict with the existing family and
social order. I was weak, the fight was a long-
drawn one in which success was not easy to
obtain, hence tension and unhappiness with
occasional fits of depression." He sat for the
matriculation examination in 1913 and was
ranked second. His parents decided to send
him to Calcutta for higher studies in the belief
that the atmosphere there would help him to
round off his eccentricities. He entered the
Presidency College in 1913, passed the
intermediate examination and entered the B.A
course in Philosophy. He was rusticated over
the Oaten incident in which Professor Oaten
was beaten up for manhandling a student,
although he was only an eyewitness to the
incident and had not taken any active part in
the beating. He went to Cuttack for a year and
returned to Calcutta securing admission in the
Scottish Church College in 1917. He passed
the B.A. in 1919 and was placed second in the
order of merit. He was sent by his father to
England in
1919
to study for the I.C.S. He passed the ICS
in 1920 but resigned a year later without
signing the covenant and left England for
India in 1921. He became a disciple of C.R.
Das who formed the Swaraj Party with Motilal
Nehru. The party won the municipal elections
in Calcutta in 1924 and Bose became the
Chief Executive officer of the Calcutta
Municipal Corporation. Fearing a wave of
revolutionary activities after the murder of an
European, the Government arrested Bose and
other Swarajist leaders. He was sent to
Mandalay Jail in Burma where he was till
1927 when he was transferred to Almora Jail
in Uttar Pradesh. He was released on May 16,
1927
because of serious illness. Later that
year he became a member of the Congress
Working Committee. He was chosen Mayor of
the Calcutta Municipal Corporation in 1930.
Arrested in 1932, he was released on medical
grounds and went to Europe for medical
treatment. In 1938 he presided over the
Congress session at Haripura in Gujarat. Bose
decided to stand for a second term but Gandhi
did not want,Bose to be president again. The
name of Pattabhi Sitaramayya was proposed.
He was acceptable to Gandhi
and most members of the Working
Committee. But Bose refused to withdraw. He
was re-elected after a bitter contest and
presided over the Tripuri session in March
1939. But it was a pyrrhic victory as Bose
found that he could not form the new working
committee without the consent of Gandhi. He
resigned in April 1939. Within three days of
his resignation, Bose announced the formation
of a new party, Forward Bloc, within the
Congress. He was expelled from the Congress
for a period of three years. World War II had
broken out in September
1939.
In July 1940 Bose began an agitation
for the demolition of all monuments of
political servitude which militated against
national consciousness
with particular
reference to the Holwell Monument in
Calcutta. He was arrested under the Defence
of India rules and taken to the Presidency Jail.
He began a hunger strike which forced the
authorities to release him on December 5,
1940.
He sent a letter to Gandhi requesting
him to give a call to launch a campaign
against the British. He hoped that the
Congress would launch such a campaign in
which he could take part. In January 1941 he
set out from Calcutta disguised as a Muslim,
reached Peshawar and then Kabul. He reached
Berlin via Moscow in March 1941. He
established the Azad Hind Radio and made
broadcasts to India. In July 1943 he arrived in
Singapore via Tokyo and assumed the
leadership of the Indian National Army. In
October 1943 the Provisional Government of
Free India was proclaimed with Bose
becoming Head of State and Prime Minister.
The INA took part in the Japanese offensive in
the Imphal - Kohima sector. On March
18,1944 the INA captured Tidum, crossed the
Burmese frontier and set foot on Indian soil.
However, the tide of war turned and the
Japanese withdrawal began in June 1944. Bose
was killed when his plane crashed in Formosa
(Taiwan) on August 18, 1945. His last words
spoken to Colonel Habibur Rahman who
survived the plane crash were : "Habib, my
end is coming very soon. I have fought all my
life for my country's freedom. Go and tell my
countrymen to continue to fight for India's
freedom. India will be free, and before long."
Zakir Husain
(1897-1969)
Zakir Husain was born in Hyderabad to where
his father, Fida Husain Khan, migrated from
Qaimganj in western Uttar Pradesh. His
ancestors were Pathans. He had his early •
education at a residential school in Etawah,
before going to the M.A.O. college at Aligarh