Freedom Fighters

 Dheeran Chinnamalai 

(born as Chinnamalai Theerthagiri Gounder on April 17, 1756) was a Kongu chieftain and Palayakkarar from Tamil Nadu who rose up in revolt against the British East India Company.

Polygar wars

Dheeran Chinnamalai was one of the main commanders in the Polygar Wars and commanded a vast army, notably during the Second Polygar War that took place in 1801–1802. His army took French military training in modern warfare alongside Tipu's Mysore forces to fight against the British East India company. They helped Tipu Sultan in his war against the British and were instrumental in victories at Chitheswaram, Mazahavalli and Srirangapatna.
After Tipu's death, Chinnamalai defeated the British in battles at Cauvery in 1801, Odanilai in 1802 and Arachalur in 1804. Later, Chinnamalai left his fort to avoid cannon attack and engaged in guerrilla warfare while he was stationed at Karumalai in Palani region. He was captured by the British who hanged him at Sankagiri Fort on 31 July 1805.

Lakshmi Sahgal ( pronunciation (help·info)) (born Lakshmi Swaminathan^[2]) (24 October 1914 - 23 July 2012) was a revolutionary of the Indian independence movement, an officer of the Indian National Army, and the Minister of Women's Affairs in the Azad Hind government. Sahgal is commonly referred to in India as "Captain Lakshmi", a reference to her rank when taken prisoner in Burma during the Second World War.

Early life

Sahgal was born as Lakshmi Swaminathan in Malabar under Madras Presidency on 24 October 1914 to S. Swaminathan, a lawyer who practiced criminal law at Madras High Court, and A.V. Ammukutty, better known as Ammu Swaminathan, a social worker and independence activist from an aristocratic Nair family known as "Vadakkath" family of Anakkara in Palghat, Kerala.^[3]
Sahgal chose to study medicine and received an MBBS degree from Madras Medical College in 1938. A year later, she received her diploma in gynaecology and obstetrics.^[4] She worked as a doctor in the Government Kasturba Gandhi Hospital located at Triplicane Chennai.^[3]
In 1940, she left for Singapore after the failure of her marriage with pilot P.K.N. Rao.^[3] During her stay at Singapore, she met some members of Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army.^[3] she established a clinic for the poor, most of whom were migrant laborers from India.^{[citation needed]} It was at this time that she began to play an active role in the India Independence League.

The Azad Hind Fauj

In 1942, during the surrender of Singapore by the British to the Japanese, Sahgal aided wounded prisoners of war, many of whom who were interested in forming an Indian liberation army. Singapore at this time had several nationalist Indians working there including K. P. Kesava Menon, S. C. Guha and N. Raghavan, who formed a Council of Action. Their Indian National Army, or Azad Hind Fauj, however, received no firm commitments or approval from the occupying Japanese forces regarding their participation in the war.^[5]
It was against this backdrop that Subhas Chandra Bose arrived in Singapore on 2 July 1943. In the next few days, at all his public meetings, Bose spoke of his determination to raise a women's regiment which would "fight for Indian Independence and make it complete".^{[citation needed]} Lakshmi had heard that Bose was keen to draft women into the organisation and requested a meeting with him from which she emerged with a mandate to set up a women’s regiment, to be called the Rani of Jhansi regiment. Women responded enthusiastically to join the all-women brigade and Dr. Lakshmi Swaminathan became Captain Lakshmi, a name and identity that would stay with her for life.^[5]
The INA marched to Burma with the Japanese army in December 1944, but by March 1945, with the tide of war turning against them, the INA leadership decided to beat a retreat before they could enter Imphal. Captain Lakshmi was arrested by the British army in May 1945, remaining in Burma until March 1946, when she was sent to India – at a time when the INA trials in Delhi heightened popular discontent with and hastened the end of colonial rule.^[5]

Later years

In 1971, Sahgal joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and represented the party in the Rajya Sabha. During the Bangladesh crisis, she organized relief camps and medical aid in Calcutta for refugees who streamed into India from Bangladesh. She was one of the founding members of All India Democratic Women's Association in 1981 and led many of its activities and campaigns.^[6] She led a medical team to Bhopal after the gas tragedy in December 1984, worked towards restoring peace in Kanpur following the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and was arrested for her participation in a campaign against the Miss World competition in Bangalore in 1996.^[5] She was still seeing patients regularly at her clinic in Kanpur in 2006, at the age of 92.^[5]
In 2002, four leftist parties – the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Revolutionary Socialist Party, and the All India Forward Bloc – nominated Sahgal as a candidate in the presidential elections. She was the sole opponent of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who emerged victorious.^[7]

Personal life

Sahgal married Prem Kumar Sahgal in March 1947 in Lahore. After their marriage, they settled in Kanpur, where she continued with her medical practice and aided the refugees who were arriving in large numbers following the Partition of India. They had two daughters: Subhashini Ali and Anisa Puri.
The Sahgals' daughter, Subhashini, is a prominent Communist politician and labor activist. According to Ali, Sahgal was an atheist. The filmmaker Shaad Ali is her grandson.^[8]

Death

On 19 Jul 2012, Sehgal suffered a cardiac arrest and died on 23 July 2012 at 11:20 A.M. at the age of 97 at Kanpur.^[9][10] Her body was donated to Kanpur Medical college for medical research.^[11] Captain Lakshmi Sehgal International Airport is proposed at Kanpur Dehat district.

Awards

In 1998, Sahgal was awarded the Padma Vibhushan by Indian president K. R. Narayanan.

Lala Lajpat Rai  pronunciation (help·info), (28 January 1865 – 17 November 1928) was an Indian Punjabi author and politician who is chiefly remembered as a leader in the Indian Independence movement. He was popularly known as Punjab Kesari'. He was part of the Lal Bal Pal trio.^[1] He was also associated with activities of Punjab National Bank and Lakshmi Insurance Company in their early stages. He sustained serious injuries by the police when leading a non-violent protest against the Simon Commission and died less than three weeks later. His death anniversary (17 November) is one of several days celebrated as Martyrs' Day in India.

Early life

Lala Lajpat Rai in 1908

Lajpat Rai was born in Dhudike (now in Moga district, Punjab) on 28 January 1865.^[2][3][4] (The word 'Lala' is an honorific, applied to prominent Hindu men of the time.) His father was an Aggarwal by caste .^[5] Rai had his initial education in Government Higher Secondary School, Rewari (now in Haryana, previously in Punjab), in the late 1870s and early 1880s, where his father, Radha Krishan, was an Urdu teacher. Rai was influenced by Hinduism and created a career of reforming Indian policy through politics and writing.^[6] (When studying law in Lahore, he continued to practice Hinduism. He became a large believer in the idea that Hinduism, above nationality, was the pivotal point upon which an Indian lifestyle must be based.) Hinduism, he believed, led to practices of peace to humanity, and the idea that when nationalist ideas were added to this peaceful belief system, a non-secular nation could be formed. His involvement with Hindu Mahasabha leaders gathered criticism from the Bharat Sabha as the Mahasabhas were non-secular, which did not conform with the system laid out by the Indian National Congress.^[7] This focus on Hindu practices in the subcontinent would ultimately lead him to the continuation of peaceful movements to create successful demonstrations for Indian independence. He was a devotee of Arya Samaj and was editor of Arya Gazette, which he set up during his student time.^[8] After studying law at the Government College in Lahore, Lajpat Rai practised at Hissar and Lahore, where he helped to establish the nationalistic Dayananda Anglo-Vedic School and became a follower of Dayananda Sarasvati, the founder of the reformist Hindu society Arya Samaj ("Society of Noble People"). After joining the Indian National Congress, and taking part in political agitation in the Punjab, Lajpat Rai was deported to Mandalay, Burma (Myanmar), without trial, in May 1907. In November, however, he was allowed to return when the viceroy, Lord Minto, decided that there was insufficient evidence to hold him for subversion. Lajpat Rai's supporters attempted to secure his election to the presidency of the party session at Surat in December 1907, but elements favouring co-operation with the British refused to accept him, and the party split over the issues
Graduates of the National College, which he founded inside the Bradlaugh Hall at Lahore as an alternative to British institutions, included Bhagat Singh.^[9] He was elected President of the Congress party in the Calcutta Special Session of 1920.^[5] In 1921, He founded Servants of the People Society, a non-profit welfare organisation, in Lahore, which shifted based to Delhi after partition, and has branches in many parts of India.^[10]

Travels to America

See also: Ghadar Party

A banquet given in honour of Lala Lajpat Rai by the California Chapter of the Hindustan Association of America at Hotel Shattuck in Berkeley on 12 February 1916.

Lajpat Rai travelled to the US in 1907, and then returned during World War I. He toured Sikh communities along the US West Coast; visited Tuskegee University in Alabama; and met with workers in the Philippines. His travelogue, The United States of America (1916), details these travels and features extensive quotations from leading African American intellectuals, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Fredrick Douglass. The book also argues for the notion of "color-caste," suggesting sociological similarities between race in the US and caste in India. During World War I, Lajpat Rai lived in the United States, but he returned to India in 1919 and in the following year led the special session of the Congress Party that launched the non co-operation movement. Imprisoned from 1921 to 1923, he was elected to the legislative assembly on his release.^[11]

Commission protests and death

Photo of Rai printed in the February 1920 issue of Young India.

In 1928, the British government set up the Commission, headed by Sir John Simon, to report on the political situation in India. The Indian political parties boycotted the Commission, because it did not include a single Indian in its membership, and it met with country-wide protests. When the Commission visited Lahore on 30 October 1928, Lajpat Rai led silent march in protest against it. The superintendent of police, James A. Scott, ordered the police to lathi (baton) charge the protesters and personally assaulted Rai.^[12] Despite being injured, Rai subsequently addressed the crowd and said that "I declare that the blows struck at me today will be the last nails in the coffin of British rule in India".^[13] He did not fully recover from his injuries and died on 17 November 1928 of a heart attack. Doctors thought that Scott's blows had hastened his death.^[12] However, when the matter was raised in the British Parliament, the British Government denied any role in Rai's death.^[14] Although Bhagat Singh did not witness the event,^[15] he vowed to take revenge,^[14] and joined other revolutionaries, Shivaram Rajguru, Sukhdev Thapar and Chandrashekhar Azad, in a plot to kill Scott.^[16] However, in a case of mistaken identity, Bhagat Singh was signalled to shoot on the appearance of John P. Saunders, an Assistant Superintendent of Police. He was shot by Rajguru and Bhagat Singh while leaving the District Police Headquarters in Lahore on 17 December 1928.^[17] Chanan Singh, a Head Constable who was chasing them, was fatally injured by Azad's covering fire.^[18]
This case of mistaken identity did not stop Bhagat Singh and his fellow-members of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association from claiming that retribution had been exacted.^[16]

Legacy

The statue of Rai at Shimla, Himachal Pradesh.

Rai has been described as "a pillar of extremist nationalism in India".^[19]
The Lala Lajpat Rai Trust was formed in 1959 on the eve of his Centenary Birth Celebration, to promote education. The trust was founded by a group of Punjabi philanthropists (including R.P Gupta and B.M Grover) who have settled and prospered in the Indian State of Maharashtra. The Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences, in Hisar, Haryana, is a state university was created in memory of Lajpat Rai. A statue of Lajpat Rai stands at the central square in Shimla, India (having been originally erected in Lahore and moved to Shimla in 1948). Lajpat Nagar and Lajpat Nagar Central Market in New Delhi, Lajpat Rai Market in Chandani Chowk, Delhi; Lala Lajpat Rai Hall of Residence at Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) in Kanpur and Kharagpur; as well as the Lala Lajpat Rai Institute of Engineering and Technology, Moga are named in his honour. Also many institutes, schools and libraries in his hometown of Jagraon, district Ludhiana are named after him. The bus terminus in Jagraon, Punjab, India is named after Lala Lajpat Rai. Lala Lajpat Rai Hospital, Kanpur is also named in his honour. Further, there are several roads named after him in many metropolis and other towns of India.
Lala Lajpat Rai was also head of the "Lakshmi Insurance Company," and commissioned the Lakshmi Building in Karachi - which still bears a plaque in remembrance of him.

Gulab Devi Chest Hospital

Lajpat Rai's mother, Gulab Devi, died of tuberculosis in Lahore. In 1927, Lajpat Rai established a trust in her memory to build and run a tuberculosis hospital for women, reportedly at the location where she had died.^[20] This became known as the Gulab Devi Chest Hospital and opened on 17 July 1934.

LLRU University in Hisar

Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences in Hisar, Haryana is named after Lala Lajpat Rai.

Works

Rai's writings include:

• The Story of My Deportation (1908)
• Arya Samaj (1915)
• The United States of America: A Hindu’s Impression (1916)
• Young India (1916)
• Unhappy India (1928)
• England's Debt to India (1917)
• Autobiographical Writings .

Young India was written shortly after World War I broke out in Europe. Lajpat Rai was traveling in the United States at the time of Franz Ferdinand's assassination.^[21] Rai wrote the book to exclaim his people's desire to help the British, who had been ruling in India since the mid-1700s, fight against the Germans. While the book makes the Indian people sound good, saying that they were rushing en masse to volunteer for war, one must take what Rai says with a grain of salt.^[22] Rai is trying to gain American support in India against British colonialism, and the Indian people would look bad in the American public's, as well as government's, eyes if they were not willing to fight for the greater good, even on the side of Britain. Rai also makes the point to emphasize that the Indian people do not want to engage in a military conflict with Britain.^[23] In Young India, Rai makes many parallels to the American fight for independence against the British, such as their common enemy (the British), their wish for self-sovereignty, and the right to bear arms as an independent nation. Rai uses Young India to convey his idea of an independent India, free from the viceroys and rule of the English Parliament. Rai wishes to have complete sovereignty from all foreign rule, but he needs to gain the support of America, his only true hope for an ally against Britain. Young India gives a first-hand account of one of the primary freedom fighters in India in the early 1900s. Rai was one of the most well-known leaders of the Nationalist, as well as Independence, Movement in India. By writing an account outlining the history of India, showing that the Indian people are better than the stereotype given by the West, willing and able to govern themselves, and attempting to gain American support against the Colonial British, Rai allows his readers to understand what is actually happening in India and why India should become an independent nation.