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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
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
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.
Bhagat Singh
(1907-1931)
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
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 Jahangir Bhabha
(1909-1966)
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.