Personalities in News

Source: The post is based on the article “Nobel Prize for Peace: Who is Narges Mohammadi, the Iranian woman awarded this year?” published in “Indian Express” on 7th October 2023

What is the News?

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi the 2023 Nobel Prize for Peace.

She has been awarded for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.

Who is Narges Mohammadi?

Narges Mohammadi is an Iranian human rights activist and scientist. 

She is the vice president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), headed by fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.

Arrest: In 2011, she was arrested for the first time and sentenced to many years of imprisonment for her efforts to assist incarcerated activists and their families.

– After securing a bail in 2013, she campaigned against the use of the death penalty.She was again arrested in 2015 and was sentenced to additional years

Writings: Over the years she has written many articles arguing for social reforms in Iran and published an essay collection, ‘The Reforms, the Strategy, and the Tactics’. 

– Her book ‘White Torture: Interviews with Iranian Women Prisoners’ also won an award for reportage at the International Film Festival and Human Rights’ Forum.

Recognition: She has received various awards over the years — from the Alexander Langer Award in 2009 to the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize and the Olof Palme Prize earlier in 2023.

 In 2022, she was featured in the BBC’s list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world.

Significance: She is the 19th woman to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian woman to win the award – after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi in 2003. 

– It is also the fifth time in the 122-year history of the awards that the peace prize has been given to someone who is in prison or under house arrest.

Source: The post is based on the article “Copper plates decoded by Pune-based Bhandarkar Institute sheds light on celebrated ancient Sanskrit poetess Shilabhattarika” published in The Hindu on 3rd May 2023

What is the News?

Researchers at the Pune-based Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) have decoded the copper based inscriptions.

The inscriptions have revealed that the celebrated Sanskrit poetess Shilabhattarika was a daughter of Chalukyan Emperor, Pulakeshin II of Badami (in modern Karnataka).

Who was Shilabhattarika? 

Shilabhattarika was an ancient Sanskrit poet.

She is considered a leading figure of the Panchali literary style, which maintains a balance between words and meaning.

According to Rajashekhara, the Panchali style can be traced to the works of Shilabhattarika and possibly in some of the works of the 7th-century poet Bana.

Sharangadhara-paddhati, a 14th-century anthology, praises her and three other female poets for their great poetic genius and erudition.

One of the most iconic songs of the noted Marathi poetess Shanta Shelke, “toch chandrama nabhat” (it is the same moon in the sky), draws inspiration from the verses of Shilabhattarika.

What did the researchers find out about Shilabhattarika?

Researchers have found that Shilabhattarika was the daughter of Chalukyan Emperor, Pulakeshin II.

This finding marks a notable shift in the historiography of Badami Chalukyas by placing Shilabhattarika as having lived in the 7th century CE rather than the current theory which believes that she was the wife of 8th-century Rashtrakuta ruler, Dhruva.

Who was Pulakeshin II?

Pulakeshin II was the most famous ruler of the Chalukya dynasty of Vatapi (present-day Badami in Karnataka). He ruled from 610-642 CE.

He defeated Harshavardhan of Kanauj in a battle near the banks of the Narmada River in 618 CE.

– Note: Badami Chalukyan rulers affixed the title of ‘Satyashraya’ (translated as “patron of truth”) to their names, the only ruler to be known purely by this title was Pulakeshin II.

Source: The post is based on the article “Getting it right: a historian’s effort to document the life of Bhagat Singh” published in The Hindu on 23rd March 2023

What is the News?

Prime Minister has paid tributes to freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru on Martyrs’ Day (Shaheed Diwas)

What is Shaheed Diwas?

Shaheed Diwas also known as Martyrs’ Day is observed on March 23rd in India to honor and pay tribute to the three Indian freedom fighters who sacrificed their lives for the country’s independence from British rule. 

The three freedom fighters who are remembered on this day are Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar, and Shivaram Rajguru who were executed by the British government in 1931 in Lahore (now in Pakistan). 

These three brave souls were hanged to death by the British government on March 23, 1931 in Lahore (now in Pakistan) for their involvement in the assassination of British police officer John Saunders. 

Who was Bhagat Singh?

Bhagat Singh was born in 1907 in Lyallpur district (now in Pakistan), Bhagat Singh grew up in a Sikh family deeply involved in political activities.

He belonged to a generation that was to intervene between two decisive phases of the Indian national movement – the phase of the ‘Extremism’ of Lal-Bal-Pal and the Gandhian phase of nonviolent mass action. 

CGetting it right: a historian’s effort to document the life of Bhagat Singhbution:

In 1924 in Kanpur, he became a member of the Hindustan Republican Association, started by Sachindranath Sanyal a year earlier. The main organizer of the Association was Chandra Shekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh became very close to him.

In 1928, HRA was renamed from Hindustan Republican Association to Hindustan Socialist Republic Association (HSRA).

In 1925, Bhagat Singh returned to Lahore and within the next year, he and his colleagues started a militant youth organization called the Naujawan Bharat Sabha.

In April 1926, Bhagat Singh established contact with Sohan Singh Josh and through him the ‘Workers and Peasants Party’ which brought out the monthly magazine Kirti in Punjabi. For the next year, Bhagat Singh worked with Josh and joined the editorial board of Kirti.

In 1927, he was first arrested on charges of association with the Kakori Case, accused for an article written under the pseudonym Vidrohi (Rebel).

To take revenge for the death of Lala Lajpat Rai, Bhagat Singh and his associates plotted the assassination of James A. Scott, the Superintendent of Police. However, the revolutionaries mistakenly killed J.P. Saunders. The incident is famously known as Lahore Conspiracy case (1929).

Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt threw a bomb on 8th April 1929 in the Central Legislative Assembly, in protest against the passing of two repressive bills, the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Dispute Bill.

Bhagat Singh was re-arrested for the murder of J.P. Saunders and bomb manufacturing in the Lahore Conspiracy case. He was found guilty in this case and was hanged on 23rd March 1931 in Lahore along with Sukhdev and Rajguru.

Source: The post is based on the article “As part of Banjara community outreach, Union government to mark Sant Sevalal Maharaj Jayanti” published in The Hindu on 27th February 2023

What is the News?

The Government of India is celebrating the birth anniversary of Banjara community icon Santh Sevalal Maharaj Jayanti for the first time at a national level.

Who is Sevalal Maharaj?

Santh Sevalal Maharaj was born on 15 February 1739 at Surgondankoppa in Shivamogga district of Karnataka. 

He is considered a social reformer and spiritual teacher of the Banjara community. 

His final resting place or Samadhi is situated at Pohradevi in Maharashtra’s Washim district, also known as Banjara Kashi.

Who are Banjaras?

The Banjara (also known as Lambadi, Gour Rajput, Labana) are a historically nomadic trading tribe who may have origins in Rajasthan.

They have settled across the country with different names and have permanently abandoned their nomadic lifestyle and settled in their settlements called Tandas.

They are now mainly distributed in Maharastra, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal States and living in all the other States except the North-Eastern States and Union Territories. 

They speak Gor Boli also called Lambadi which belongs to the Indo-Aryan Group of Languages.

Banjara people celebrate the festival of Teej during Shravanam (in the month of august). In this festival young unmarried Banjara girls pray for a good groom.

Fire dance and Chari are the traditional dance forms of the banjara people.

Source: The post is based on the article “129th birth anniversary of Satyendra Nath Bose: a look at the scientist’s contributions” published in Indian Express on 3rd January 2023

What is the News?

The 129th birth anniversary of Satyendra Nath Bose was celebrated recently.

Who was Satyendra Nath Bose?

Satyendra Nath Bose was born on January 1, 1894. He was a mathematician and physicist specializing in theoretical physics. 

Contributions

Bose Einstein Statistics: At the age of 22, Bose was appointed lecturer at Calcutta University, along with astrophysicist Meghnad Saha. 

In 1921, he joined the then-Dacca University as Reader in Physics. It was here while teaching that he documented his findings in a report called Planck’s Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta. 

Even though his research was rejected by a journal, he decided to mail his paper to Albert Einstein.

Einstein recognised the significance of Bose’s theory and generalised it to a wider range of phenomena, and the theory came to be known as Bose-Einstein statistics.

X-ray crystallography laboratory: In 1927, Bose was appointed professor of physics and then Head of Department at Dhaka University in 1927. 

Here, Bose designed equipment for setting up an X-ray crystallography laboratory at the university, and wrote several papers on a range of subjects, such as ‘D2 Statistics’, and ‘Total Reflection of Electromagnetic Waves in the Ionosphere’.

In 1945, he left Dhaka to return to his alma mater, the University of Calcutta as the Khaira Professor of Physics. He retired from the University of Calcutta in 1956 and spent a year as the Vice Chancellor at the Viswa-Bharati University.

Headed many institutions: He served as president of many scientific institutions, which include the Indian Physical Society, the National Institute of Science, the Indian Science Congress and the Indian Statistical Institute.

He also acted as an advisor to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research(CSIR) and later became a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Recognition of his contributions: Bose was awarded Padma Vibhushan, one of the highest civilian awards in the country, by the Indian government in 1954.

Source: The post is based on the article “Amid VHP row over song in school, recalling Muhammad Iqbal, also the poet of Saare Jahan Se Achcha” published in Indian Express on 24th December 2022

What is the News?

Police in Uttar Pradesh has booked the principal of a government school for hurting religious sentiments by making students recite “Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua” poem during a morning assembly.

Who wrote Lab pe Aati Hai Dua?

Lab pe Aati Hai Dua was written by Iqbal in 1902. It has been sung at several educational institutions in India and Pakistan including some prestigious schools which sing it in their morning assembly.

Who was Muhammad Iqbal?

Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) was a writer, philosopher and scholar and politician whose poetry in the Urdu language is considered among the greatest of the twentieth century.

Iqbal is commonly referred to as Allama, which is a title given to Islamic scholars.

Important work: The most celebrated work of Iqbal is the immortal ‘Saare jahan se achcha Hindustan hamara’ written in 1904. This beautiful poem to India became one of the songs that inspired the freedom fighters against British rule.

The idea of Pakistan: In his later life, Iqbal came to favour the idea of a separate nation for Muslims, and is believed to have been the influence behind Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s vision of a separate nation of Pakistan.

In Pakistan, Iqbal is regarded as the ideological founder of the nation — the man who envisioned the state that Jinnah gave physical shape.

Source: The post is based on the article “Sri Aurobindo inspired generations, left his mark wherever he went: PM Modi” published in The Hindu on 14th December 2022

What is the News?

The Prime Minister has virtually released a commemorative coin and postage stamp to mark the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Sri Aurobindo.

Who was Sri Aurobindo? 

Sri Aurobindo was born on August 15, 1872. He was an Indian philosopher, yogi, maharishi, poet, and Indian nationalist.

Aurobindo’s pragmatic strategies to get rid of British rule marked him as “the Prophet of Indian Nationalism”.

Education: His education began in a Christian convent school in Darjeeling.

He entered the University of Cambridge, where he became proficient in two classical and several modern European languages.

In 1892, he held various administrative posts in Baroda and Calcutta.

Freedom Movement: The partition of Bengal in 1905 provoked Aurobindo to leave his job in Baroda and plunge into the nationalist movement. 

He started the patriotic journal Bande Mataram to propagate radical methods and revolutionary tactics instead of supplication. 

He was arrested thrice by the British — twice for sedition and once for conspiring to “wage war”. 

In 1908, he was arrested on the charge of the Alipore bomb conspiracy case but was acquitted in 1909 after a long trial.

Integral Yoga: Though acquitted, Aurobindo faced a constant threat of jail or exile to the Andamans, forcing him to seek refuge in Pondicherry, a French enclave.

At Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo developed a spiritual practice called Integral Yoga. The central theme of his vision was the evolution of human life into a divine life in the divine body.

Aurobindo’s Ideas on Second World War: Several Indians saw the Second World War as an opportune moment to get rid of colonial occupation; Aurobindo asked his compatriots to support the Allies and ensure Hitler’s defeat.

– In 1943, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature and then again in 1950 for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Literary works: He was also a journalist and his first philosophical magazine called Arya was published in 1914. Among his many writings are The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and Savitri.

Source: The post is based on the article “Ministry of Culture organizes International conference on the contributions of J C Bose: A Satyagrahi Scientist” published in PIB on 5th December 2022.

What is the News?

The Ministry of Culture has organized an international conference on the contributions of J C Bose: A Satyagrahi Scientist” on his 164th birth anniversary.

Who is Jagdish Chandra Bose?

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858 – 1937) was an Indian physicist and plant physiologist. 

He earned a B.Sc. from University College London, which was connected with the University of London in 1883, and a BA (Natural Sciences Tripos) from the University of Cambridge in 1884.

Contributions

In 1917, he established Bose Institute – Asia’s first modern research center devoted to interdisciplinary studies. 

He discovered wireless communication and was named Father of Radio Science by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering.

He invented the crescograph, a device for measuring the growth of plants. He for the first time demonstrated that plants have feelings.

He was the first to demonstrate radio communication with millimetre wavelengths, which fall in the 30GHz to 300GHz spectrum.

Bose is considered the father of Bengali science fiction. A crater on the moon has been named in his honour.

In 1896, he published Niruddesher Kahini, first work of science fiction in the Bengali language

Bose was the first Asian to be awarded a US patent. In 1904, he was awarded a patent for his invention of a detector for electrical disturbances.

Books: Response in the Living and Non-Living, The Nervous: Mechanism of Plants etc. 

Source: The post is based on the article “400th birth anniversary of Assam’s war hero Lachit Borphukan to be celebrated” published in The Hindu on 23rd November.

What is the News?

A three-day celebration of the 400th birth anniversary of the legendary Assamese general and folk hero Lachit Borphukan began in New Delhi on November 23.

Who was ​​Lachit Borphukan?

​​Lachit Borphukan was a commander in the erstwhile Ahom kingdom.

He is known for his leadership in the 1671 Battle of Saraighat that thwarted an attempt by Mughal forces to capture Assam. 

The battle of Saraighat was fought on the banks of the Brahmaputra in Guwahati.

He defeated the Mughal Army by brilliant uses of the terrain, guerrilla tactics, clever diplomatic negotiations to buy time, military intelligence and by exploiting the sole weakness of the Mughal forces—its navy.

What is the significance of ​​Lachit Borphukan?

Lachit Divas has been celebrated on November 24, his birth anniversary in Assam since the 1930s.

He was the inspiration behind strengthening India’s naval force and revitalizing inland water transport and creating infrastructure associated with it due to his great naval strategies.

The Lachit Borphukan gold medal is awarded to the best cadet from the National Defence Academy. The medal was instituted in 1999 to inspire defence personnel to emulate Borphukan’s heroism and sacrifices.

Source: The post is based on the article “Legal battle over demolitions near tomb of Afzal Khan in Maharashtra” published in Indian Express on 15th November 2022

What is the News?

The Supreme Court(SC) has sought reports from the Maharashtra government on the demolition drive conducted around the tomb of Afzal Khan.

Who was Afzal Khan?

Afzal Khan was a 17th-century commander of the Adil Shahi dynasty of Bijapur.

With Chhatrapati Shivaji’s rise and increasing control of the region, Afzal Khan was seen as the man to subdue him in the Deccan.

Afzal Khan put together a force of 10,000 cavalry and marched from Bijapur to Wai, plundering Shivaji’s territory along the way.

Shivaji called a council of war at the fort of Pratapgarh, where most of his advisers urged him to make peace. However, Shivaji was not eager to back down and he set up a meeting with Khan.

During the meeting, an embrace between the two turned into an attack in which Shivaji emerged victorious. This was followed by a rout of the Adilshahi army at the hands of the Marathas.

As per Maratha sources, Khan’s remains were buried at the fort and a tomb was constructed on Shivaji’s orders.

In an act of grace, Shivaji erected a tomb over the remains of Afzul Khan and built a tower in his honour which is still known by the name ‘Afzul Buruj’ at Pratapgarh.

The sword of Afzal Khan was preserved as a valued trophy in the armoury of Shivaji and his descendants.