S. Muthulakshmi Reddi (1886-1968)

• In 1907 she became the first female student to join the Madras Medical College for medical graduation.

• In 1926, she became the first woman legislator when she was nominated as a member of the Madras Legislative Council.

• She became the President of Women’s Indian Association after the death of Mrs. Besant in 1933.

• Dr. Muthulakshmi was one of the greatest women of the 20th century India, with many firsts to her credit:-
1. The first woman to study medicine,
2. The first Indian woman to be a member of the legislature
3. The first woman Deputy President of a Legislature in the world

Mannbendra Nath Roy (M.N.Roy) (1887-1954)

• He was a communist leader.

• At the invitation of Lenin he visited the former Soviet Union.

• He was elected a full member of the Communist International in 1924 and was in charge of organizing the communist movement in Asia, including China.

• He was arrested in the Kanpur Communist Conspiracy Case and was jailed for six years.

• He founded the Radical Democratic Party and also and organization of labour known as the Indian Federation of Labour.

• He was a founder of an organization known as the International Humanists.

Saifuddin Kitchlew(1888-1963)

• He had seconded the Purna Swarajya Resolution at the Lahore session of the Congress, 1929.

Pandurang Sadashiv Sane alias Sane Guruji (1899-1950)

• He wrote about 200 books in Marathi.

• To promote national integration, he evolved a scheme of Antar Bharati Schools.

Sachindra Nath Sanyal (1895-1945)

• He was a close associate of Rasbehari Bose.

• He was a founder of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA)

• He was arrested in the Kakori Conspiracy Case in 1925.

• His autobiographical work, Bandi jiban, became a Bible for the Indian revolutionaries.

Bhawani Dayal Sanyasi (1892-1950)

• He was born in South Africa.

• He was elected President of the Transvaal Indian Association and also helped Gandhiji in his work in South Africa. He was an Arya Samajist.

• He devoted himself completely to the propagation of the Arya Samaj in South Africa.

• His report on the overseas Indians, published in 1930, created a stir, as a result of which the repatriation was stopped.

Tej Bahadur Sapru (1875-1949)

• He was a founder and also the President of a National Convention, founded with the object of India’s constitutional development.

• He was instrumental in enabling Mahatma Gandhi to attend the Second Round Table Conference.

• In 1934, Dr. Sapru was elevated to a Membership of the Privy Council in London.

Dayananad Sarswathi (1824-99)

• He founded the Arya Samaj.

• His book Satyaratha Prakash.

Swami Sahajanand Sarswati (1889-1950)

• He was a leading Kisan leader from Bihar.

• The central theme of his programme of agrarian reforms was the abolition of the Zamindari system and creation of peasant proprietorship.

• In 1929 he founded the Bihar Kisan Sabha under his leadership.

• He presided over several sessions of the All-India Kisan Sabha.

• For his devoted services to the peasants, he came to be addressed as Kisan Pran (Life of Kisans).

Har Bilas Sarda (1867-1955)

• He was from Rajasthan.

• He was the author of the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929, which is popularly known as the Sarda Act.

• He also presided over the Indian Social Conference, held in Lahore in 1929, along with the historic session of the Congress.

V.S. Srinivasa Sastri (1869-1946)

• He was one of the moderate leaders in the Congress and one of the founders of the National Liberal Federation in 1918 and represented it at the Round Table Conference in London in 1930-31.

• He published the weekly organ of the Servants of India Society.

S. Satyamurti (1887-1943)

• He was popularly known as the Firebrand of South India.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1833-1966)

• He was popularly known as Veer Savarkar.

• In 1899, he founded the first revolutionary society, the Mitra Mela (Friends Assembly), which in 1904 was named as the Abhinav Bharat Society (New India Society).

• In 1906, he sailed to England and joined the revolutionary group led by Shyam Krishna Verma.

• On the 50th anniversary of the Revolt of the 1857, he wrote a book in which he called the Revolt the First War of India Independence.

• In London, he was a close associate of Madan Lal Dhingra who murdered Curzon Wyllie.

• In 1910, he was arrested in the Nasik Conspiracy Case.

• He was sentenced to two consecutive life transportation.

• He was elected President of Hindu Mahasabha for five successive years, 1937-42.

Surya Sen (1894-1934)

• A revolutionary leader from East Bengal, he founded the Chittagong Republican Army.

Chattrapati Shahu (Maharaja) (1874-1922)

• The Maharaja of Kolhapur.

• His greatest work was in the direction of education.

• He started a number of free schools in Kolhapur and built a number of hostels where the children of the poor were housed free of charge.

• He favoured western liberal education.

• He was a follower of the Arya Samaj.

• He was the first among the Indian princes to take the courage to ban untouchability in his state.

Swami Shraddhanand (1856-1926)

• He was from the Punjab.

• He started a weekly, Satya Dharma Pracharak, from Jalandhar and in 1902 founded the Gurukula at Hardwar.

• He was the Chairman of the Reception Committee of the Amritsar session of the Congress in 1919.

• He was the president of the Shuddhi Sabha of the Arya Samaj.

• A Muslim fanatic murdered him in 1926.

Shri Narayana Guru (1845-1928)

• He was a great socio-reformer of Kerala.

• In spite of belonging to a lower caste, he installed the Siva idol at Aravipuram in 1888.

Krishnavarma Shyamji (1857-1930)

• He was a Gujarati scholar.

• He settled down in London, where he founded the India Home Rule Society and began publication of his English monthly, The Indian Sociologist.

• Shyamji also founded the India House in London as a residential centre for Indian students.

• After the arrest of V.D. Savarkar in London in 1910, Shyamji shifted his activities to Paris.

Tikendrajit Singh 1858-1891)

• He was a prince of Manipur state and also the hero of the Manipur Revolt of 1891.

Alluri Sitaram Raju (1897-1924)

• The earliest known non-tribal, he organized and led the Rampa tribal uprising in 1923-24 in Andhra Pradesh.

Rabindranth Tagore (1861-1941)

• He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.

• He founded the International University at Santiniketan (Bolepur) in Bengal.

Purshottamdas Tandon (1882-1961)

• He was from Allahabad. In 1930, he organized a very successful no-tax campaign in the province.

• Tandon was intimately associated with the Servants of thePeople Society, The Hindi Sahitya Sammelan and the Rashtrabhasa Prachar Samiti.

• He strove zealously for propagation of Hindi and for the development of its literature.

• Mahatma Gandhi fondly him Rajarshi.

• In 1961, he was conferred the Bharat Ratna.

T.L. Vaswani (1879-1966)

• Thanwardas Lilaram Vaswani, popularly known as Sadhu Vaswani, was born in Hyderabad (Pakistan).

• In 1910, he went to Berlin as India’s representative to the World Congress of Religions.

• He wrote a number of inspiring nationalist books, like
1. India Arisen
2. India in Chains
3. Awake Young India
4. My Mother Land

• Sadhu Vaswani was a prolific writer, who wrote over 100 books in English and over 300 books in Sindhi.

Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839-1904)

• He was the founder of India’s most forward-looking industrial house, The Tata Sons.

• He founded the Empress Textile Mill at Nagpur in 1877.

• He also prepared the ground for the first hydroelectric project in Western India.

• The Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore owes its existence to his efforts.

• His biographer, Harris, notes that about 20% of the Indian member of the ICS had been Tata scholars.

Tantiya Tope (1813-1859)

• Tatya Tope alias Ram Chandra Pandurang was a Maharashtrian Brahmin, whose family migrated to Bithur (near Kanpur, U.P), where the last Peshwa Baji Rao II had been exiled.

• Tantiya Tope was an intimate friend of Nana Dhundu Pant, the adopted son of the last Peshwa, who raised the banner of the Revolt of 1857 at Kanpur.

• He was defeated by General Rose in a memorable battle in which Rani Lakshmi Bai achieved martyrdom.

• He was the only leader of the Revolt of 1857, who defied the British for the longest period.

Thakkar Bapa (alias Amritalal) (1869-1951)

• He made a pioneering contribution to tribal welfare.

• He was the General Secretary to the Harijan Sevak Sangh.

• During 1933-34, he undertook a Harijan tour along with Gandhiji.

• He was a devoted member of the Servants of India Society.

• He founded the Gond Seva Sangh, now called the Vanavasi Seva Mandal in Mandala district, Madhya Pradesh.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (Lokmanya) (1856-1920)

• He started the Marathi Kesari and its English counterpart Mahratta.

• He revived the Ganapati festival in 1894 and two years later the Shivaji festival (1896).

• He was one of the founders of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha.

• His growing difference with moderates led to the ‘Surat Split’ and finally the expulsion of
• Tilak from the Congress.

• Immediately after his expulsion from the Congress, he was arrested, deported to Burma and imprisoned in the Mandalay fort for six years.

• After his release in 1914, he joined Mrs. Annie Besant and launched the Home Rule Movement in April 1920.

• He started the Congress Democratic Party.

• He died shortly afterwards in Bombay on 1 August 1920, the day Mahatma Gandhi formally launched the Non-Cooperation Movement.

• He wrote Gita Rahasya, a commentary on the Bhagavadgita in the Mandalay prison in 1911.

Udham Singh (1899-1940)

• To avenge the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy, he murdered Michael O’Dwyer.

• O’Dwyer’s killing took place in London in March 1940. Udham Singh was arrested and sentenced to death.

Veersalingam Pantulu (1848-1919)

• He was the father of social reform and literary Renaissance in Andhra.

• He started a number of Telugu journals like
1. The Vivek Vardhini (1874)
2. Sambardhini (1891)
3. The Satyavadini(1905)

• He also set up reform organizations like the
1. Samgha Samskara Samajam (1876),
2. Stree Punarvivah Samajam (1880).

• He got the first window remarriage in Andhra Pradesh solemnized in 1881.

Dinshaw Edulji Wacha (1844-1936)

• He belonged to Bombay and one of the founder members of the Indian National Congress.

• He functioned as the Secretary of the Congress and was elected its President in 1901.

Preetilata Wadedar (1911-32)

• Woman revolutionary from Bengal, She was an active member of the Jugantar and the Chittagong Republican Army, formed by Surya Sen.

• She led a group of revolutionaries and attacked a European club at Pahartali on September 24, 1932, in which a number of Europeans were killed and wounded. After successfully raiding the club, she swallowed poison and committed suicide.

Indulal Yajnik (1892-1972)

• He was from Gujarat.

• He started two Gujarati monthlies - Navjivan Ane Satya and Yugadharm, and a daily Nutan Gujarat.

• He became secretary of the Antyaj Seva Mandal, with Thakkar Bapa as its President.

• In 1942, he presided over the annual session of the Akhil Hind Kisan Sabha.

• He was a founder of the Gujarat Vidyapeeth.

• In 1956, he became the founder-President of the Maha Gujarat Janta Parishad.

Bahadur Shah Zafar (1775-1862)

• He was the last Mughal emperor.

• Zafar was his poetic sobriquet. He was a keen student of Sufi philosophy, an eminent Persian scholar and an Urdu Poet.

• Ibrahim Zauq and Asadullah Khan Ghalib were two of the greatest poets of his age