Democracy is an occidental idea. A Hindu cannot comprehend it as long as he is a Hindu. It is against his religious belief. The divisions of Varna are the basis of his religion. He cannot see without distress a Brahman or Kshtriya serving a Sudra. A Brahman may beg or even may die, yet he will never touch a dish from which a Sudra has partaken food.
Shah Muhammad Zubair studied law in England. He was the founding President of the first farmers’ organization Kisan Sabha in 1922.
Maulana Syed Sulaiman Ashraf Bihari (1878-1939), a prominent figure in Indian history, dedicated his life to education, theology, and the pursuit of national unity.
This Letter was submitted to Sub-Committee on Minorities of the Constituent Assembly of India by Abdul Qaiyum Ansari on July 24, 1947
Pragjyotisha, an ancient princely state in Indian epics, included the western town of Kamarupa, later named Cooch Behar after the ruling Koch Dynasty.
Mirza Ismail, a Shia Muslim by faith, who was the Prime Minister of Mysore had spoken these words at the inauguration of Jamia Mosque, a Sunni mosque, in Bengaluru on 30 May 1941.
He was a peculiar and a very special representative in a high degree of that great composite culture that has gradually grown in India. I do not mean to say that everybody has to be like Maulana Azad to represent that composite culture. There are many representatives of it in various parts of India, but he here in Delhi or in Bengal or Calcutta, wherever he spent the greater part of his life-represented this synthesis of various cultures which have come one after another to India, rivers that had flowed in and lost themselves in the ocean of Indian life, India’s humanity affecting them, changing them and being changed themselves by them.
Mahatma Gandhi visited Dargah of Qutubbudin Bakhtiyar Kaki, Mehrauli, Delhi amidst the communal riots on 27th January, 1948. He was killed two days later on 30th January by Nathuram Godse. Generally women were not allowed in the innermost shrine but the condition was waived off in order to allow women with Gandhi inside.
For an observer, who had studied Jawaharlal Nehru’s handling of communist movements, the 1958 article did not come as ‘a welcome departure’. Surely, not after listening to him calling communists ‘the stupidest party in the world’, terrorists, anti-Indian, anti-people or anti-country.
Following is the English translation of Hindi speech addressed to a prayer meeting by Mahatma Gandhi on 12 November, 1947. It was the first Diwali of Independent India.
On the subject matter of this letter, I intended to write to you a long and open letter in the press. But on further consideration, I felt that the present moment was not suitable for such a step.
This is the text of the speech Sir Syed Ahmad Khan gave at the public dinner in honour of the foundation of the Mohamedan Anglo-Oriental College, Aligarh, at the Aligarh Institute Hall on 8th January, 1877
Following is an excerpt from ‘BUDDHA AND FUTURE OF HIS RELIGION’ authored by B.R Ambedkar & first published in ‘Maha Bodhi’: Maha Bodhi Society Journal, Culculta ; Vaishak Number, Vol. 58, May 1950
It is no secret that hand-spinned clothes and secularism became the cornerstone of Mahatma Gandhi’s movement. Gandhi was actually a fulfilment of Ganesh Kolhatkar’s prophecy made in 1868 that “those who wish to be remembered in the future history of India, ought not to shrink back from undertaking this work (of making clothes in India and boycott British made cloth)”.
In the areas where war is waged or which the Japanese occupy or where they infiltrate, the foreigner’s civil rule will weaken or come to an end. In these areas we must establish a Swaraj Government. In the name of this Government we must appeal to retreating units of the Indian Army to stay behind and become the people’s army.
He stayed in America for nearly eight years and studied at five different Universities. He started as a student of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry and then devoted years to the study of Biology, Psychology, Economics and Sociology. He had several times interrupted his studies in order to earn enough to carry on at his University for a term or two. He had worked as a farm labourer for ten hours a day, as a packer in a jam factory, as a mechanic in an iron concern, as a waiter in a restaurant. He had tried his hand as a salesman. When, therefore, he returned to India in 1929, it was not as a raw student looking forward to a comfortable life, but as one who had seen life at close quarters and was fully determined to devote himself to public life.
The machine (EVM) could also eliminate booth-capturing as it would become possible for the Election Commission to introduce mobile polling stations to take the machines to the doorsteps of the people, especially the weaker sections.
Akbar Allahabadi was senior to Iqbal and he wrote a reply to Sare Jahan Se Achcha in form of another poem.
The idea of reservation to OBCs (Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs) came about in 1990 after the Mandal Commission recommendations were implemented. The reservation under article 341 defined only SC community and most of these Pasmanda castes don’t come under this identification.
“This is the Congress radio calling on 42.34 meters from somewhere in India,” spoke Usha Mehta after the Quit India Movement had been silenced by the Britishers.
Bollywood actress Sara Ali Khan plays Usha Mehta in her movie Ae Watan Mere Watan.
Read our special feature about India’s bravest Radio Jockey ,fondly known as Radio Ben
CAPTAIN LAKSHMI SAHGAL – Doctor by Job, Freedom Fighter by Will
During the Bengal famine, Sahir Ludhianvi wrote a poem which has a couplet:
