Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. )

Role in India’s Integration : At the time of independence, India was divided into three parts. The first was the one directly under control of the British Government, the second was the territories rules by hereditary rulers and third was the territory colonized by France and Portugal. Patel had realized that the dream for a unified and free India could only be achieved if the three territories were integrated as one. Blessed with practical acumen, great wisdom and political foresight, he took up the uphill task of unifying India. He began lobbying with the princes and monarchs of the separate states to accede to the government in full faith, who were given two choices by the British – either to join India or Pakistan or stay independently. Patel’s untiring efforts and relentless appeals reaped fruitful result as he successfully persuaded 565 states, except the three states of Jammu and Kashmir, Junagadh, and Hyderabad. He used the tactics of invoking patriotism in the ...

Role in Partition : In the 1946 election for the Congress Presidency, Patel was nominated as the candidate for the elections. However, he refused the position on the advice of Gandhi, which was eventually taken over by Jawaharlal Nehru. The election was important in terms of the fact that the elected President would lead free India's first Government. Patel was free-India’s first Home Minister and Minister of Information and Broadcasting. He was also the first of the Congress leaders to support the partition of India, as a solution to curb the rising communal violence and Muslim separatist movement, led by Mohammad Jinnah. He managed to lobby for the partition successfully, by making Nehru, Gandhi and other Congress leaders accept the proposal. He represented India on the Partition Council, and oversaw the division of public assets. Though patel argued to have agreed for the partition to cease communal violence, little did he anticipate the bloody violence and popul...

Role in Quit India Movement : Since 1934, Patel played a significant role in the Indian National Congress; he became chairman of its Central Parliamentary Board. His profile included raising funds, selecting candidates and determining Congress stance on issues and opponents. Though he did not contest in the election, he helped several Congressmen in getting elected in the provinces and at the national level. An ardent supporter of Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel took active participation in the Gandhi-led Quit India Movement. He believed that the mass civil disobedience would compel the British to leave the nation like in Singapore and Burma. Under the pressure of Gandhi and Patel, the All India Congress Committee launched the mass civil disobedience in the form of Quit India Movement on August 7, 1942. Patel influenced the large crowd that had assembled to take part in the civil disobedience, which included forced shutdown of the civil services and refusal to pay taxes. It ...

Entry Into Politics :2.1 In 1928, the village of Bardoli suffered from famine and steep tax hikes. To curb the problem, Sardar Patel organized a struggle, which called for non-violent unity from the villagers and a demand for complete denial of the taxes to the Government. The fate of the satyagraha started in Bardoli was similar to that of Kheda as the British government agreed on repealing the tax hike. The victory brought Sardar Patel into limelight and highlighted his role as a typical ‘Sardar’ or ‘leader’. Due to this, more and more people started addressing him as Sardar Patel. Vallabhbhai Patel was appointed as the interim leader of Congress in the 1931 Karachi session. During his term, Patel committed to protecting the fundamental rights and human freedom and envisioned India as a secular nation. It was during this time that the relationship between Gandhi and Patel blossomed. The two, despite having arguments and contrasting theories, shared a close bond of lov...

Entry Into Politics :2. He travelled village to village, garnering support from peasants and other villagers for a state-wide revolt by refusing the payment of taxes. He laid emphasis on unity and non-violent demeanor despite provocation and also briefed the villagers of the potential hardships that they might have to face in the process. When the revolt was launched, the British government responded by conducting raids at the holdings of the farmers. They even imprisoned thousands of villagers. The revolt had attained a national status and earned empathy from people across the country. Embarrassed by the same, the government agreed to negotiate with Patel. Not only did they suspend the payment of revenue for the year, they even scaled back the rate of tax, thus making Patel a national hero. In 1920, Patel was nominated and elected as the President of the newly formed Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee. He supported the non-cooperative movement initiated by Gandhi. Onc...

Entry Into Politics :1. In 1917, Patel stood for an election to become the sanitation commissioner of Ahmedabad which he won comfortably. Meanwhile, Patel’s interest in politics grew, as he heard Gandhiji speak for the Swadeshi Movement. Inspired by the words of Gandhi, Patel started active participation in the Indian independence movement. A meeting with Gandhi at the Gujarat Political Conference in Godhra led to Patel being designated to the position of the secretary of the Gujarat Sabha, which would become the Gujarati arm of the Indian National Congress. Patel’s involvement in politics grew astronomically. He fought against servitude of Indians to Europeans, organized relief efforts during plague and famine in Kheda and took a leading role in the non-violent Civil Disobedience Movement against the payment of raised tax, levied by the British. His leadership activities earned him the title of ‘Sardar’. To be continued  ....

Childhood & Early Life : Born to a Gujarati family in the village of Karamsad, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was the fourth of the six children of his father, Jhaveribhai. He had three elder brothers, and a younger brother and sister. Ever since the young age, Vallabhbhai showed streak of being tough and physically strong. Twice a month, he would indulge in day-long fast, abstaining from food and water. Much of his education was attained in schools in Nadiad, Petlad and Borsad. He completed his matriculation at the age of 22. While others in his family thought him to be unambitious and unfocussed, Vallabhbhai had plans of becoming a barrister. To fulfill the same, he spent a number of years away from his family. He studied on borrowed books from lawyers, worked hard and saved funds and cracked the examination in two years. In the early years of practice, Vallabhbhai had a reputation of being a fierce and skilled lawyer. He practiced in Godhra, Borsad and Anand. He even...

One of the greatest leaders of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel played a crucial role in the freedom struggle and unifying of India. ALSO KNOWN AS Sardar, Iron Man of India, Bismarck of India , Patron Saint NATIONALITY Indian    Famous Indian Men RELIGION Hinduism POLITICAL IDEOLOGY Indian National Congress BORN ON 31 October 1875 AD    Famous 31st October Birthdays ZODIAC SIGN Scorpio    Scorpio Men BORN IN Nadiad DIED ON 15 December 1950 AD PLACE OF DEATH Mumbai FATHER Jhaverbhai Patel MOTHER Laad Bai SIBLINGS Dahiba, Kashibhai, Somabhai, Narsibhai, Vithalbhai Patel SPOUSE: Jhaverba Patel CHILDREN Maniben Patel, Dahyabhai Patel EDUCATION Middle Temple AWARDS: 1991 - Bharat Ratna Popularly known as the Iron Man of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was one of the founding fathers of the Republic of India. A statesman of integrity, he played a quintessential role in helping India garner independence from th...

Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabhudin Adbul Kalam, the twelfth President of India, is rightfully termed as the father of India's missile technology. He was born to parents Jainulabdeen Marakayar and Ashiamma on 15th October, 1931, at Dhanushkodi in Rameshwaram district, Tamil Nadu. Dr. Kalam as an eminent Aeronautical Engineer, contributed for the development of India’s first Satellite launch vehicle SLV-3 and the missiles like the Trishul, Agni, Pritvi etc. He did his secondary education at Schwartz High School in Ramanathapuram, B.Sc. at St. Joseph's College(1950), Tiruchi, and DMIT in Aeronautical Engineering at the MIT, Madras during 1954-57. After passing out as a graduate aeronautical engineer, Kalam joined Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Bangalore as a trainee and later joined as a technical assistant in the Directorate of Technical Development and Production of the Ministry of Defence. In the 1960's Kalam joined the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Thumba in ...

The time has now come to bring these chapters to a close. My life from this point onward has been so public that there is hardly anything about it that people do not know. Moreover, since 1921 I have worked in such close association with the Congress leaders that I can hardly describe any episode in my life since then without referring to my relations with them. For though Shraddhanandji, the Deshabandhu, Hakim Saheb and Lalaji are no more with us today, we have the good luck to have a host of other veteran Congress leaders still living and working in our midst. The history of the Congress, since the great changes in it that I have described above, is still in the making. And my principal experiments during the past seven years have all been made through the Congress. A reference to my relations with the leaders would therefore be unavoidable, if I set about describing my experiments further. And this I may not do, at any rate for the present, if only from a sense of propriet...

The resolutions adopted at the Calcutta special session of the Congress were to be confirmed at its annual session at Nagpur. Here again, as at Calcutta there was a great rush of visitors and delegates. The number of delegates in the Congress had not been limited yet. As a result, so far as I can remember, the figure on this occasion reached about fourteen thousand. Lalaji pressed for a slight amendment to the clause about the boycott of schools, which I accepted. Similarly some amendments were made at the instance of the Deshabandhu, after which the non-co-operation resolution was passed unanimously. The resolution regarding the revision of the Congress constitution too was to be taken up at this session of the Congress. the sub- committee's draft was presented at the Calcutta special session. The matter had therefore been thoroughly ventilated and thrashed out. At the Nagpur session, where it came up for final disposal, Sjt. C. Vijayaraghavachariar was the President. The...

I must not devote any more chapters here to a description of the further progress of Khadi. It would be outside the scope of these chapters to give a history of my various activities after they came before the public eye, and I must not attempt it, if only because to do so would require a treatise on the subject. My object in writing these chapters is simply to describe how certain things, as it were spontaneously, presented themselves to me in the course of my experiments with truth. To resume, then, the story of the non-co-operation movement. Whilst the powerful Khilafat agitation set up by the Ali Brothers was in full progress, I had long discussions on the subject with the late Maulana Abdul Bari and the other Ulema, especially, with regard to the extent to which a Musalman could observe the rule of non-violence. In the end they all agreed that Islam did not forbid its followers from following non-violence as a policy, and further, that, while they were pledged to that ...

From its very inception the Khadi movement, Swadeshi movement as it was then called, evoked much criticism from the mill-owners. The late Umar Sobani, a capable mill-owner himself, not only gave me the benefit of his own knowledge and experience, but kept me in touch with the opinion of the other mill-owners as well. The argument advanced by one of these deeply impressed him. He pressed me to meet him. I agreed. Mr. Sobani arranged the interview. The mill-owner opened the conversation. 'You know that there has been Swadeshi agitation before now ?' 'Yes, I do,' I replied. 'You are also aware that in the days of the Partition we, the mill- owners, fully exploited the Swadeshi movement. When it was at its height, we raised the prices of cloth, and did even worse things.' 'You, I have heard something about it, and it has grieved me.' 'I can understand your grief, but I can see no ground for it. We are not conducting our business out of ...

At last, after no end of wandering in Gujarat, Gangabehn found the spinning wheel in Vijapur in the Baroda State. Quite a number of people there had spinning wheels in their homes, but had long since consigned them to the lofts as useless lumber. They expressed to Gangabehn their readiness to resume spinning, if someone provide them with a regular supply of slivers, and to buy the yarn spun by them. Gangabehn communicated the joyful news to me. The providing of slivers was founded to be a difficult task. On my mentioning the thing to the late Umar Sobani, he solved the difficulty by immediately undertaking to send a sufficient supply of slivers from his mill. I sent to Gangabehn the slivers received from Umar Sobani, and soon yarn began to pour in at such a rate that it became quite a problem how to cope with it. Mr. Umar Sobani's generosity was great, but still one could not go on taking advantage of it for ever. I felt ill at ease, continuously receiving slivers from him...