682. Latika Sen (1911-1949), 683. Lalit chandra Choudhury

Latika Sen was an educationist and a social activist. She was born in Narayangonj, Dhaka. She was a student of Nar i Siksha Mandir, founded by the revolutionary leader of Dhaka, Lila Nag. She came to to Calcutta and became a teacher of Beltala Girls' School, Calcutta. She became a member of Dipali Sangha and participated in different revolutionary and social work while she was a student. After coming to Calcutta she came in contact with Labour Party of Bengal. She was also associated with Sree Sangha, a revolutionary organisation.She became a member of CPI in 1936. She was the first female member of Communist Party.She married Dr. Ranen Sen of Communist Party in 1939. She had to leave Beltala Girls' School for being a member of Communist Party.She devoted herself in relief work in Nari Seva Sangha when Bengal was drowned with famine. She participated in the rally of the females with the demand of release of political prisoners on 27 April, 1949 . She along with Prativa Ganguly, Amiya Datta, and Gita Sarkar died on the street by police firing.


Lalit Chandra Choudhury was born in Coomilla. He was jailed for 10 years being cinvicted in the case of Munsiganj Bomb Case in 1911 with RI.He died in Mantgomari Jail of Punjab.

680. Lakshmi Sen, 681. Loatika Ghosh (1902-1987)

Lakshmi Sen was born in Chittagong. Her student life passed in Rangoon where her father was working. She joined in Fighting Squad at the call of Netaji and secured Best Brigade Girl in Jhansi Rani. She had come back to Rangoon after the disaster of INA in 1944.ssed her later life as an inspector of NCC.  She was a great freedom fighter.

Latika Ghosh was an Oxford-educated teacher and freedom fighter. She started the Mahila Rashtriya Sangha in 1928 at the instance of Subash Chandra Bose. The aim of the MRS was to fight for freedom by mobilising cadres of women for political work. It was born out of Latika’s efforts to organise resistance to the Simon Commission, which impressed Bose deeply. He remarked that if he could have ten more women workers like Latika he could advance the cause of women by a hundred years.

Latika was expert at mobilising people and staging spectacles that would fire their imaginations and inspire them to fight for the cause. She vetoed the idea of having Basanti Devi, a veteran of the Non-Cooperation Movement, as president of the MRS, preferring Subash Bose’s mother Prabhabati as a figurehead as she would appeal to ordinary housewives and lend prestige to the organization as the mother of Bengal’s best known activist. The Sangha was composed of Shakti mandirs, or working cells, which campaigned to raise consciousness among the ordinary women of Bengal. In the year of its foundation, the women in their uniform of red-bordered green saris and white blouses marched beside men, with ‘Colonel’ Latika leading them, in the procession to inaugurate the annual Congress meeting in Kolkata. This sight made a tremendous impression on the middle-class Bengali community, as all Latika’s lieutenants were educated, well-to-do high-caste women from respectable families. She became a member of Bangiya Congress Committee and later a member of Congress Working Committee in 1935.
Bina Das (q.v.), who later attempted to shoot the governor of Bengal, was one of her officers. She was also a founding member of the Saroj Nalini Dutt Memorial Association, set up by Gurusaday Dutt in memory of his wife.
At the end of her life she left politics and worked as a professor in a college.

677. Lakshman Coch, 678. Lakshman Nayek, 679. Lakshman Moitra (1883-1953)

Lakshman Coch was one of the hero of the revolution of Foolguli area of Naorang district of Assam.He was arrested in the hands of British soldiers and was hanged.His companions Narasing Laloong,Sambar Laloong, and Suren Coch were also hanged.


Lakshman Nayek was a leader of the tribes of Orissa. He participated in Quit India movement and was hanged.



Lakshmikanta Moitra was born in Nadia.He was a famous lawer.He became a member of Central Legislative Assembly of Indian National Congress.He took active role in construction of Costitution of India being elected in constituent assembly. He was a good speaker in parliament.

674.Ruplal Nandy (1870-1931), 675. Renu Sen,Basu (1909-1941), 676.Rebati Mohan Barman (1903-1952)

Ruplal Nandy was born in Chandannagar. He contributed in meny revolutionary work financially. His "gala Kuthy" in Chandannagar was a secret shelter for revolutionaries.


Renu Sen was born in Munsiganj, Dhaka. She was inspired in patriotism in the environment of her Maternal house. She gradually stepped into politics under the influence of a lover of mother land, Lila Nag. The Jayashree magazine was first published from Dhaka in 1931 under her guidance and efficiency in work.  She was arrested in 1930 in connection of the Bomb case at Dalhousie, though she was not involved in this affair. She remained as a detenu  in different jails from 20th Dec 1931.She remained intern in Munshiganj in April of 1937. She applied for D.A. of the intern prisoners or facility for doing work.It was only her initiative Jyashree began to publish from Calcutta. She was married with revolutionary Atin Basu on 25th Jan 1940. He inspired to a great extent for opening National Book Agency


Rebati joined in Non-Cooperation movement dueing his student life.He participated in Railway Strike under the leadership of Jatindramohan Sengupta. He participated in orgasing Sree Sangha of Dhaka in Calcutta, Bankura and Birbhum district. He remained in jail without trial upto 1938. He took up Communist ideology in 1938. He published many books on socialism and its economy. He died in Tripara.

673. Rahul Sangkrityayan (1893-1963)

Rahul Sankrityayan
A sketch of Sankrityayan
Born	9 April 1893 Pandaha Village, Azamgarh District, Uttar Pradesh, British India
Died	14 April 1963 (aged 70) Darjeeling, West Bengal, India
Occupation	Writer, essayist, scholar, sociology, indian nationalist, history,Indology, philosophy,Buddhism, Tibetology,Lexicography, Grammar, Textual Editing, Folklore, Science, drama, Politics, Polymath,Polyglot
Nationality	Indian
Notable awards	1958: Sahitya Akademi Award 1963: Padma Bhushan

Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan (9 April 1893 – 14 April 1963), who is called the Father of Hindi Travel literature, was one of the most widely travelled scholars of India, spending forty-five years of his life on travels away from his home.He became a Buddhist monk (Bauddha Bhikkhu) and eventually took up Marxist Socialism. Sankrityayan was also an Indian nationalist, having been arrested and jailed for three years for creating anti-British writings and speeches He is referred to as the 'Greatest Scholar' (Mahapandit) for his scholarship. He was both a polymath as well as a polyglot.

He was born as Kedarnath Pandey on 9 April 1893 in Azamgarh district, in Eastern Uttar Pradesh. His father, Govardhan Pandey, was a farmer from the village Kanaila of Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh. His mother, Kulawanti, often stayed with her parents in the village of Kanaila, and this is where he was born. He was the eldest of four brothers. He spent part of his childhood in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. As both parents died when he was still quite young—his mother died at the age of twenty-eight and his father at the age of forty-five—he was brought up by his grandmother. His earliest memories as recorded by him were of the terrible famine in 1897. At age 9, he ran away from home to see the world, but later returned to his homeland.

He received formal schooling at a local primary school, though he later studied and mastered numerous languages independently, as well as the art of photography.

Rahulji's Tombstone at Darjeeling.

Travels

His travels took him to different parts of India,& all over the world including Ladakh, Kinnaur, and Kashmir. He also travelled to several other countries including Nepal, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Iran, China, and the former Soviet Union. He spent several years in the "Parsa Gadh" village in the Saran District in Bihar. The village's entry gate is named "Rahul Gate". While travelling, he mostly used surface transport, and he went to certain countries clandestinely; he entered Tibet as a Buddhist monk. He made several trips to Tibet and brought valuable paintings and Pali and Sanskrit manuscripts back to India. Most of these formed a part of the libraries of Vikramshila and Nalanda Universities. These objects had been taken to Tibet by fleeing Buddhist monks during the twelfth and subsequent centuries when the invading Muslim armies had destroyed universities in India. Some accounts state that Rahul Sankrityayan employed twenty-two mules to bring these materials from Tibet to India.He has a grandson named Prakhar Sankrityayan currently living in India. Patna Museum, Patna, has a special section of these materials in his honour, where a number of these and other items have been displayed.

Books

Sankrityayan was a multilingual linguist, well versed in several languages and dialects, including Hindi, Sanskrit, Pali, Bhojpuri,Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Kannada, Tibetan, Sinhalese, French and Russian. He was also an Indologist, a Marxisttheoretician, and a creative writer. He started writing during his twenties and his works, totalling well over 100, covered a variety of subjects, including sociology, history, philosophy, Buddhism, Tibetology, lexicography, grammar, textual editing, folklore, science, drama, and politics. Many of these were unpublished. He translated Majjhima Nikaya from Prakrit into Hindi.

One of his most famous books in Hindi is Volga Se Ganga (A journey from the Volga to the Ganges) – a work of historical fiction concerning the migration of Aryansfrom the steppes of the Eurasia to regions around the Volga river; then their movements across the Hindukush and the Himalayas and the sub-Himalayan regions; and their spread to the Indo-Gangetic plains of the subcontinent of India. The book begins in 6000 BC and ends in 1942, the year when Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian nationalist leader called for the quit India movement.

This book was translated by K.N. Muthiya-Tamilputhakalayam in Tamil as Valgavil irundu gangai varai and is still considered a best-seller. The Kannada translation done by B.N Sharma as "Volga Ganga" . The Telugu translation inspired many readers. Volga muthal Ganga vare, the Malayalam translation, became immensely popular among the young intellectuals of Kerala and it continues to be one of the most influential books of its times. The Bengali version is Volga Theke Ganaga[ভোল্গা থেকে গঙ্গা], which is still acclaimed by the critics.

More than ten of his books have been translated and published in Bengali. Mahapandit was awarded the Padmabhushan in 1963 and he received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1958 for his book Madhya Asia ka Itihaas.

He maintained daily diaries in Sanskrit which were used fully while writing his autobiography. In spite of profound scholarship, he wrote in very simple Hindi that a common person could follow. He wrote books of varied interest. He was aware of limitations of Hindi literature and singularly made up the loss in no small measure.

The historian Kashiprasad Jaisawal compared Rahul Sankrityayan with Buddha. Rahul's personality was as impressive and memorable as are his achievements. He travelled widely and wrote in five languages – Hindi, Sanskrit, Bhojpuri, Pāli and Tibetan. His published works span a range of genres, which include autobiography, biography, travelogue, sociology, history, philosophy, Buddhism, Tibetology, lexicography, grammar, text editing, folklore, science, fiction, drama, essays, politics, and pamphleteering.

Soviet Union

Although he had little formal education, in view of his knowledge and command over the subject, University of Leningrad appointed him Professor of Indology in 1937–38 and again in 1947–48.

Awards[edit]

Awards	About	Awarded By
Rahul Sankrityayan National Award	Contribution to Hindi travel Literature (also called Travel Litterateur's Honour).	Kendriya Hindi Sansthan,Government of India
Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan Paryatan Puraskar	Awarded for contributing significantly in the field of travelogue and Discovery and Research in Hindi, for books written originally in Hindi on Tourism related subjects.	Ministry of Tourism,Government of India

Gallery

Rahulji's Museum Picture Gallery at his Birthplace Pandaha.

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Works

In Hindi

Novels

• Beesween Sadi – 1923
• Jeeney ke Liye – 1940
• Simha Senapathi – 1944
• Jai Yauddheya – 1944
• Bhago Nahin, Duniya ko Badlo – 1944
• Madhur Swapna – 1949
• Rajasthani Ranivas – 1953
• Vismrit Yatri – 1954
• Divodas – 1960
• Vismriti Ke Garbh Me
• Kinner Desh

Shekhar Ek Jeevani Short Stories

• Satmi ke Bachche – 1935
• Volga Se Ganga – 1944
• Bahurangi Madhupuri – 1953
• Kanaila ki Katha – 1955–56

Autobiography

• Meri Jivan Yatra I – 1944
• Meri Jivan Yatra II – 1950
• Meri Jivan Yatra III, IV, V – published posthumously

Biography

• Sardar Prithvi Singh – 1955
• Naye Bharat ke Naye Neta (2 volumes) – 1942
• Bachpan ki Smritiyan – 1953
• Ateet se Vartaman (Vol I) – 1953
• Stalin – 1954
• Lenin – 1954
• Karl Marx – 1954
• Mao-Tse-Tung – 1954
• Ghumakkar Swami – 1956
• Mere Asahayog ke Sathi – 1956
• Jinka Main Kritajna – 1956
• Vir Chandrasingh Garhwali – 1956
• Simhala Ghumakkar Jaivardhan – 1960
• Kaptan Lal – 1961
• Simhal ke Vir Purush – 1961
• Mahamanav Budha – 1956

Some of his other books are:-

• Mansik Gulami
• Rhigvedic Arya
• Ghumakkar Shastra
• Kinnar desh mein
• Darshan Digdarshan
• Dakkhini Hindi ka Vyaakaran
• Puratatv Nibandhawali
• Manava Samaj

In Bhojpuri

• Teen Natak – 1942
• Panch Natak – 1942

In Nepali (Translation)

• Bauddhadharnma Darshan – 1984

Related to Tibetan

• Tibbati Bal-Siksha – 1933
• Pathavali (Vol. 1,2 & 3) – 1933
• Tibbati Vyakaran (Tibetan Grammar) – 1933
• Tibbat May Budh Dharm-1948
• Lhasa ki or
• Himalaya Parichay Bhag 1
• Himalaya Parichay Bhag 2

672.Rash Behari Bose (1886-1945)

Rash Behari Bose
Born	25 May 1886 Subaldaha village, Burdwan Dist., British India(present-dayWest Bengal,India)
Died	21 January 1945(aged 58) Tokyo, Japan
Movement	Indian Independence movement,Ghadar Revolution,Indian National Army
Religion	Hinduism

Rashbehari Bose (25 May 1886 – 21 January 1945) was a revolutionary leader against the British Raj in India and was one of the key organisers of the Ghadar Revolution and later, the Indian National Army.
Bose was born in Subaldaha village, Burdwan, in the province of Bengal. He was educated in Chandannagar, where his father, Vinodebehari Bose, was stationed. He later earned degrees in the medical sciences as well as in Engineering from France and Germany.

Revolutionary activities

Though interested in revolutionary activities from early on in his life, he left Bengal to shun the Alipore bomb case trials of (1908). AtDehradun he worked as a head clerk at the Forest Research Institute. There, through Amarendra Chatterjee of the Jugantar led by Jatin Mukherjee(Bagha Jatin), he secretly got involved with the revolutionaries of Bengal and, thanks to Jatindra Nath Banerjee alias Niralamba Swami, the earliest political disciple of Sri Aurobindo, he came across eminent revolutionary members of the Arya Samaj in the United Provinces (currently Uttar Pradesh) and the Punjab. Originally Rash Behari Bose was born and lived in Chandannagar, Hooghly, West Bengal.

Following the attempt to assassinate Lord Hardinge, Rash Behari was forced to go into hiding. The attempt was made on 12 December 1912 after Lord Hardinge was returning form the Delhi Darbar of King George V. HE was attacked by Vasant Kumar Vishwas a disciple of Amrendar Chattarjee, but he missed the target and failed. Bose was hunted by the colonial police due to his active participation in the failed assassination attempt (actually Bose's aim was to prove to the world that Indians do not accept the subjection of his country to foreign rule by consent, but by force of military power, which was successful. Otherwise he had no personal enmity with Lord Hardinge) directed at the Governor General and Viceroy Lord Charles Hardinge in Delhi. He returned to Dehra Dun by the night train and joined the office the next day as though nothing had happened. Further, he organised a meeting of loyal citizens of Dehradun to condemn the dastardly attack on the Viceroy.
Lord Hardinge, in his My Indian Years, described the whole incident in an interesting way. During the flood relief work in Bengal in 1913, he came in contact with Jatin Mukherjee in whom he "discovered a real leader of men," who "added a new impulse" to Rash Behari's failing zeal. Thus during World War I he became extensively involved as one of the leading figures of the Ghadar Revolution that attempted to trigger a mutiny in India in February 1915. Trusted and tried Ghadrites were sent to several cantonments to infiltrate into the army. The idea of the Jugantar leaders was that with the war raging in Europe most of the soldiers had gone out of India and the rest could be easily won over. The revolution failed and most of the revolutionaries were arrested. But Rash Behari managed to escape British intelligence and reached Japan in 1915.

Indian National Army

A dinner party given to Bose in his honour by his close Japanese friends, including Mitsuru Tōyama, a right-wing nationalist and Pan-Asianism leader (center, behind the table), and Tsuyoshi Inukai, future Japanese 

prime

 minister (to the right of Tōyama). Behind Tōyama is Bose. 1915.

In Japan, Bose found shelter with various radical Pan-Asian groups. From 1915–1918, he changed residences and identities numerous times, as the British kept pressing the Japanese government for his extradition. He married the daughter of Soma Aizo and Soma Kotsuko, the owner of Nakamuraya restaurant in Tokyo a noted Pan-Asian supporters in 1918 and became a Japanese citizen in 1923, living as a journalist and writer. It is also significant that he was instrumental in introducing Indian-style curry in Japan. Though more expensive than the usual curry, it became quite popular, with Rash Bihari becoming known as Bose of Nakamuraya. It is still one of the most popular curry restaurant in Tokyo.
Bose along with A M Nair was instrumental in persuading the Japanese authorities to stand by the Indian nationalists and ultimately to officially support actively the Indian independence struggle abroad. Bose convened a conference in Tokyo on 28–30 March 1942, which decided to establish the Indian Independence League. At the conference he moved a motion to raise an army for Indian independence. He convened the second conference of the League at Bangkok on 22 June 1942. It was at this conference that a resolution was adopted to invite Subhas Chandra Bose to join the League and take its command as its president.
The Indian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Malaya and Burma fronts were encouraged to join the Indian Independence League and become the soldiers of the Indian National Army (INA), formed on 1 September 1942 as the military wing of Bose's Indian National League. He selected the flag called as azad and handed over the flag to Subhas Chandra Bose when there some fight between Subhas Chandra Bose & Mahatma Gandhi for independence dispute But his rise to actual power was terminated by an action of the Japanese military command, which expelled him and his general Mohan Singh from the INA leadership. But though he fell from grace, his organisational structure remained, and it was on the organisational spadework of Rashbehari Bose that Subhas Chandra Bose later built the Indian National Army (also called 'Azad Hind Fauj'). Prior to being killed near the end of World War II, the Japanese Government honoured him with the Order of the Rising Sun (2nd grade). In 2013 The ash of Rash Behari Bose was brought to Chandannagar from Japan by the mayor of Chandannagar and emersed at the Hooghly river banks at Chandannagar.

669. Ramendrasundar Trivedi (1864_1919), 670. Rameshwar Bandyopadhyay (1925-1945), 671. Rameshwar Bera (1897-1942)

Ramendra Sundar Trivedi (1864–1919) was a renowned Bengali author.

Life

He was born at Jemo situated at Kandi subdivision of Murshidabad (a district that is in present West Bengal) on 20 August 1864. His father's name was Govindasundar and his mother's name was Chandra Kamini. From his childhood, Ramendra was a successful student. After obtaining his B.Sc. degree (coming first in the exams), he competed for the prestigious Premchand Roychand Scholarship with physics and chemistry as his subjects. He won the scholarship (1888). The examiners' report said:

"The candidate who took up Chemistry and Physics appears to be about the best student who has yet taken up these subjects for the examination and on this account deserves recognition.”^[1]

He was a teacher and later, the principal of the Ripon College of Kolkata.

Ramendra Sundar Trivedi passed away on 6 June 1919.

Writing career

Ramendra Sundar was a polymath who wrote on a host of themes, including popular science and the philosophy of science. His first articles appeared in the periodical 'Navajiban'.

His contribution to the functioning and development of the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad is considered to be momentous.

His writings have been used in school and college textbooks in West Bengal and Bangladesh

In Bengal, Ramendra Sundar's fame rests mostly on his popular science essays. As a popular science writer, Ramendra's commitment seems to have been “to share with everyone else the fun, the delight and ecstasy of science (in Ramendra’s case, the themes and findings of modern western science). This could only be achieved by dissolving the alien terms and themes in an indigenous, flexible, and comprehensible linguistic medium. Thus, when creating scientific terms, Ramendra took care to select words which were sweet sounding and easily pronounced, drew examples from mythology, folklore and local traditions…, cemented his prose with humour, lined his comments with mild irony and talked of the gravest things with his tongue in his cheek. In this witty, sly, sceptical, gay and eminently human vein, he dragged science, epistemology and philosophy into the midst of a Bengali adda and domesticated them on the couch of a bhadralok’s drawing room."

Books

1Prakriti [Collected essays on philosophy ] ,2.Jigmasa [Collected essays on science ]3.Charit-Katha [Collected essays and lectures on few eminent personalities in Bengali literature]4.Bichitra Prasanga5.Bangalakshmir Bratakatha           

Rameshwar Bandyopadhyay was born in Dhaka. He participated in Quit India Movement in 1942. During legal procedure of INA fauz in 1946 of Sah Noaz Khan, Dhiloan Shygal etc a rally was organised in Calcutta in prohibited area  to go to Dalhousie Square with the demand of their release order .When the police fired a student Rameshwar Bandyopadhyay became dead by the bullets of the police.

Rameshwar Bera was born in Midnapore. He joined  quit India movement and while attacking the Shankarara bridge Than he became wounded by a bullet of the security police and died there. 

668.Rammohan Roy (1772-1833)

Achievements
Raja Ram Mohan Roy is considered as the pioneer of modern Indian Renaissance for the remarkable reforms he brought in the 18th century India. Among his efforts, the abolition of the sati-pratha-a practice in which the widow was compelled to sacrifice herself on the funeral pyre of her husband-was the prominent. His efforts were also instrumental in eradicating the purdah system and child marriage. In 1828, Ram Mohan Roy formed the Brahmo Samaj, a group of people, who had no faith in idol-worship and were against the caste restrictions. The title 'Raja' was awarded to him by Mughal emperor Akbar, the second in 1831 when Roy visited England as an ambassador of the King to ensure that Bentick's regulation of banning the practice of Sati was not overturned. 

Background
Raja Ram Mohan Roy was born on 14 August, 1774 to Ramakanta Roy and Tarini Devi in Murshidabad district, West Bengal. His father was a wealthy Brahmin and strictly performed the duties set by the religion. Ram Mohan himself was also devoted to lord Vishnu and in his 14th year, he wanted to become a monk but his mother, Tarini Devi objected to his desire. 

Though his father Ramakanto was very orthodox but he wanted his son to have higher education and after the basic formal education in Sanskrit and Bengali in the village school, Ram Mohan was sent to Patna to study Persian and Arabic in a madrasa. After that he went to Benares (Kashi) for learning the intricacies of Sanskrit and Hindu scripture, including the Vedas and Upanishads. He learnt English language at the age of 22 years.

Father of Renaissance
Ram Mohan viewed education as a medium to implement the social reforms. So, in 1815, Ram Mohan came to Calcutta and the very next year, started an English College by putting his own savings. He was well aware that the students should learn the English language and scientific subjects and that's why he criticized the government's policy of opening only Sanskrit schools. According to him, Indians would lag behind if they do not get to study modern subjects like Mathematics, Geography and Latin. Government accepted this idea of Ram Mohan and also implemented it but not before his death. Ram Mohan was also the first to give importance to the development of the mother tongue. His 'Gaudiya Byakaran' in Bengali is the best of his prose works. Rabindranath Tagore and Bankimchandra also followed the footsteps of Ram Mohan Roy.

Freedom of Press
Ram Mohan Roy was a staunch supporter of free speech and expression and fought for the rights of vernacular press. He also brought out a newspaper in Persian called 'Miratul- Akhbar' (the Mirror of News) and a Bengali weekly called 'Sambad Kaumudi' (the Moon of Intelligence). In those days, items of news and articles had to be approved by the government before being published. Ram Mohan protested against this control by arguing that newspapers should be free and that the truth should not be suppressed simply because the government did not like it. 

His Last Days
Raja Ram Mohan Roy, during his visit to United Kingdom as an ambassador of Akbar- the second, died of meningitis at Stapleton in Bristol on 27 September, 1833. He went there to request the British government to increase the royalty, received by the Mughal Emperor and to ensure that Lord Bentick's regulation of banning the practice of Sati was not overturned. Recently, the British government has named a street as 'Raja Rammohan Way' in the memory of Raja Ram Mohan Roy.

667.Dr. Rammonohar Lohia (1910-1967)

Ram Manohar Lohia (23 March 1910 – 12 October 1967) was an activist for the Indian independence movement and a Nationalist political leader.

Ram Manohar Lohia
Born	23 March 1910 Akbarpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
Died	12 October 1967 (aged 57) New Delhi, India
Nationality	Indian
Education	B.A (Calcutta University), PH.D (Humboldt University of Berlin,Germany)
Known for	Quit India Movement
Parents	Hira Lal and Chanda

Early life

Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, Mani Ram Bagri, Madhu Limay, S M Joshi

Lohia was born in a village Akbarpur in Ambedkar Nagar district then Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh, in India to Hira Lal, a nationalist and Chanda,a teacher. His mother died when he was very young. Ram was introduced to the Indian Independence Movement at an early age by his father through the various protest assemblies Hira Lal took his son to. Ram made his first contribution to the freedom struggle by organising a small hartal on the death of Lokmanya Tilak.

Hira (also spelt Heera) Lal, an ardent follower of Mahatma Gandhi, took his son along on a meeting with the Mahatma. This meeting deeply influenced Lohia and sustained him during trying circumstances and helped seed his thoughts, actions and love for swaraj. Ram was so impressed by Gandhi's spiritual power and radiant self-control that he pledged to follow the Mahatma's footsteps. He proved his allegiance to Gandhi, and more importantly to the movement as a whole, by joining asatyagraha march at the age of ten.

Lohia met Jawaharlal Nehru in 1921. Over the years they developed a close friendship. Lohia, however, never hesitated to censure Nehru on his political beliefs and openly expressed disagreement with Nehru on many key issues. Lohia organised a student protest in 1928 to protest the all-white Simon Commission which was to consider the possibility of granting India dominion status without requiring consultation of the Indian people.

Lohia attended the Banaras Hindu University to complete his intermediate course work after standing first in his school's matriculation examinations in 1927. He then joined the Vidyasagar College, under the University of Calcutta and in 1929, earned his B.A. degree. He decided to attend Berlin University, Germany over all prestigious educational institutes in Britain to convey his dim view of British philosophy. He soon learned German and received financial assistance based on his outstanding academic performance.

Freedom Fighter

While in Europe, Lohia attended the League of Nations assembly in Geneva. India was represented by the Maharaja of Bikaner, an ally of the British Raj. Lohia took exception to this and launched a protest then and there from the visitors gallery. He fired several letters to editors of newspapers and magazines to clarify the reasons for his protest. The whole incident made Lohia a recognised figure in India overnight. Lohia helped organise the Association of European Indians and became secretary of the club. The main focus of the organisation was to preserve and expand Indian nationalism outside of India

Lohia wrote his PhD thesis paper on the topic of Salt Satyagraha, focusing on Gandhi's socio-economic theory.

Return to India

Lohia joined the Indian National Congress as soon as he returned to India. Lohia was attracted to socialism and helped lay the foundation of Congress Socialist Party, founded 1934, by writing many impressive articles on the feasibility of a socialist India, especially for its journal, the Congress Socialist. When elected to the All India Congress Committee in 1936, Lohia formed a foreign affairs department for the first time. Nehru appointed Lohia as the first secretary of the committee. During the two years that he served he helped define what would be India's foreign policy.

In the onset of the Second World War, Lohia saw an opportunity to collapse the British Raj in India. He made a series of caustic speeches urging Indians to boycott all government institutions. He was arrested on 24 May 1939, but released by authorities the very next day in fear of a youth uprising.

Soon after his release, Lohia wrote an article called "Satyagraha Now" in Gandhi's newspaper, Harijan, on 1 June 1940. Within six days of the publication of the article, he was arrested and sentenced to two years of jail. During his sentencing the Magistrate said, "He (Lohia) is a top-class scholar, civilized gentleman, has liberal ideology and high moral character." In a meeting of the Congress Working Committee Gandhi said, "I cannot sit quiet as long as Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia is in prison. I do not yet know a person braver and simpler than him. He never propagated violence. Whatever he has done has increased his esteem and his honour."Lohia was mentally tortured and interrogated by his jailers. In December 1941, all the arrested Congress leaders, including Lohia, were released in a desperate attempt by the government to stabilise India internally.

He vigorously wrote articles to spread the message of toppling the British imperialist governments from countries in Asia and Africa. He also came up with a hypothetical blueprint for new Indian cities that could self-administer themselves so well that there would not be need for the police or army.(need Citation)

Quit India

Gandhi and the Indian National Congress launched the Quit India movement in 1942. Prominent leaders, including Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Azad, were jailed. The "secondary cadre" stepped up to the challenge to continue the struggle and to keep the flame for swaraj burning within the people's hearts. Leaders who were still free carried out their operations from underground. Lohia printed and distributed many posters, pamphlets and bulletins on the theme of "Do or Die" on his secret printing-press. Lohia, along with freedom fighter Usha Mehta, broadcast messages in Bombay from a secret radio station called Congress Radio for three months before detection, as a measure to give the disarrayed Indian population a sense of hope and spirit in absence of their leaders. He also edited Inquilab (Revolution), a Congress Party monthly along with Aruna Asaf Ali,Abdan Shaikh and Madiha took part in the Quit India Movement.

Lohia then went to Calcutta to revive the movement there. He changed his name to hide from the police who were closing in on him. Lohia fled to Nepal's dense jungles to evade the British. There he met, among other Nepalese revolutionaries, the Koirala brothers, who remained Lohia's allies for the rest of their lives.

Lohia was captured in May 1944, in Bombay. Lohia was taken to a notorious prison in Lahore, where it is alleged that he underwent extreme torture. His health was destroyed but even though he was never as fit his courage and willpower strengthened through the ordeal. Under Gandhi's pressure, the Government released Lohia and his comrade Jayaprakash Narayan.

As India's tryst with freedom neared, Hindu-Muslim strife increased. Lohia strongly opposed partitioning India in his speeches and writings. He appealed to communities in riot torn regions to stay united, ignore the violence surrounding them and stick to Gandhi's ideals of non-violence. On 15 August 1947, as the rest of India's leadership gathered in Delhi for the handover of power, Lohia stayed by Gandhi's side as he mourned the effects of Partition.

Goa and Nepal

Portrait of Lohia

Following his release by the British at Gandhi's intervention, Lohia decided to vacation with a communist friend in Goa, Juliao Menezes, author of the anti-Catholic and anti-Portuguese work "Contra Roma e além de Benares" ("Against Rome And Returning To Benares"), 1939.

Juliao Menezes has admitted that his intention in inviting Lohia to Goa was to "disturb the peace in Goa".

Moreover, Jawaharlal Nehru publicly admitted that Goa was foreign territory where Indian politicians had no business.^{[citation needed]} ("Eighteen years ago a Congress Committee was started in Goa by Mr. Tristao Braganza Cunha and for some years he was a member of the All-India Congress Committee. Later under the constitution of the Congress such foreign committees were not affiliated")

Once there, despite being an outsider and a tourist, Lohia began to meddle in local political affairs, assisting the minuscule Goan Communist movement and fostering sedition. He decided to deliver a public speech but was arrested, briefly imprisoned, then expelled to British India.

Gandhi wrote to vehemently protest the Goan Government's actions, affirming Indian irredentism viz-a-viz Goa, stating that Goa would not be allowed to remain separate from India.

Gandhi said in response to the Goan Government's arrest & expulsion of Lohia:

"The little Portuguese settlement which merely exists on the sufferance of the British Government can ill afford to ape its bad manners. In free India, Goa cannot be allowed to exist as a separate entity in opposition to the laws of the free State. Without a shot being fired, the people of Goa will be able to claim and receive the rights of citizenship of the free State. The present Portuguese Government will no longer be able to rely upon the protection of British arms to isolate and keep under subjection the inhabitants of Goa against their will. I would venture to advise the Portuguese Government of Goa to recognise the signs of the times and come to honourable terms with the inhabitants, rather than function on any treaty that might exist between them and the British Government" 

Gandhi also said:

"...it is ridiculous... to write of Portugal as the Motherland of the Indians of Goa. Their mother country is as much India as is mine. Goa is outside British India, but it is within geographical India as a whole. And there is very little, if anything, in common between the Portuguese and the Indians in Goa." 

Lohia attempted to re-enter Goa again on 28 September 1946 but was arrested at the Colem Railway Station at Colem, jailed with solitary confinement and then once again expelled with a ban on his re-entry for the next five years.

When he began to prepare to enter Goa a third time, he desisted on the advice of Gandhi & Nehru.

In alliance with his socialist and communist friends in Nepal, Lohia then began a parallel movement to bring Nepal within the ambit of the Indian state, Indian and Congress politics. While his friends, the Koiralas and their Nepal Congress, remained personally popular, the masses of the Nepalese people reacted negatively and with hostility at this attempt to extend Indian irredentism against them, aggressively forcing Lohia on the back foot and to precipately abandon the notion.

Post Independence

Dr. Lohia favoured Hindi as the official language of India, arguing

"The use of English is a hindrance to original thinking, progenitor of inferiority feelings and a gap between the educated and uneducated public. Come, let us unite to restore Hindi to its original glory."

Lohia decided to make the mass public realise the importance of economic robustness for the nation's future.

He encouraged public involvement in post-freedom reconstruction. He pressed people to construct canals, wells and roads voluntarily in their neighbourhood. He volunteered himself to build a dam on river Paniyari which is standing till this day and is called "Lohia Sagar Dam." Lohia said "satyagraha without constructive work is like a sentence without a verb." He felt that public work would bring unity and a sense of awareness in the community. He also was instrumental in having 60 percent of the seats in the legislature reserved for minorities, lower classes, and women.

As a democracy, the Parliament of India was obliged to listen to citizens' complaints. Lohia helped create a day called "Janavani Day" on which people from around the nation would come and present their grievances to members of Parliament. The tradition continues even today.

When he arrived in Parliament in 1963, the country had a one-party government through three general elections. Lohia shook things up. He had written a pamphlet, "25,000 Rupees a Day", the amount spent on 

Prime

 Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, an obscene sum in a country where the vast majority lived on 3 annas (less than one-quarter of a rupee) a day. Nehru demurred, saying that India's Planning Commission statistics showed that the daily average income was more like 15 annas (a little under a rupee) per day. Lohia demanded that this was an important issue, one that cried out for a special debate. The controversy, still remembered in India as the "Teen Anna Pandrah Anna (3 annas −15 annas)" controversy. Member after member gave up his time to Lohia as he built his case, demolishing the Planning Commission statistics as fanciful. Not that the Commission was attempting to mislead, but the reality was that a small number of rich people were pulling up the average to present a wholly unrealistic picture. At that time, Lohia's figure was true for over 70% of the population.

Unlike the Marxist theories which became fashionable in the third world in the 1950s and 1960s, Lohia recognised that caste, more than class, was the huge stumbling block to India's progress. It was Lohia's thesis that India had suffered reverses throughout her history because people had viewed themselves as members of a caste rather than citizens of a country.

Caste, as Lohia put it, was congealed class. Class was mobile caste. As such, the country was deprived of fresh ideas, because of the narrowness and stultification of thought at the top, which was composed mainly of the upper castes, Brahmins and Baniyas, and tight compartmentalisation even there, the former dominant in the intellectual arena and the latter in the business. A proponent of affirmative action, he compared it to turning the earth to foster a better crop, urging the upper castes, as he put it, "to voluntarily serve as the soil for lower castes to flourish and grow", so that the country would profit from a broader spectrum of talent and ideas.

In Lohia's words,

"Caste restricts opportunity. Restricted opportunity constricts ability. Constricted ability further restricts opportunity. Where caste prevails, opportunity and ability are restricted to ever-narrowing circles of the people".

In his own party, the Samyukta (United) Socialist Party, Lohia promoted lower caste candidates both by giving electoral tickets and high party positions. Though he talked about caste incessantly, he was not a casteist—his aim was to make sure people voted for the Socialist party candidate, no matter what his or her caste. His point was that to make the country strong, everyone needed to have a stake in it. To eliminate caste, his aphoristic prescription was, "Roti aur Beti", that is, people would have to break caste barriers to eat together (Roti) and be willing to give their girls in marriage to boys from other castes (Beti).

Lohia's views on Capitalism and Marxism

Lohia was early to recognise that Marxism and Capitalism were similar in that both were proponents of the Big Machine. It was his belief that Big Industry was no solution for the third world (he even warned Americans, back in 1951, about their lives being taken over by big corporations). He called Marxism the "last weapon of Europe against Asia". Propounding the "Principle of Equal Irrelevance", he rejected both Marxism and Capitalism, which were often presented as the only alternatives for third world nations. Nehru too had a similar view, at least insofar as he observed to Andre Malraux that his challenge was to "build a just society by just means". Lohia had a strong preference for appropriate technology, which would reduce drudgery but not put the common man at the mercy of far away forces. As early as 1951, he foresaw a time of the 'monotonic mind', with nothing much to do because the problems of living had been all addressed by technology.

Lohia viewed capitalism as the doctrine of "people living upward of 40 degrees north of the equator'. He found capitalism as being the doctrine of individual, free enterprise, mass production and balance of power based- 'peace.' Capitalism imposed the peace of death on Asia and elsewhere, caused their population to grow and their economic apparatus to decay, Lohia stated. He found how population and production proceeded simultaneously among the white or pink people, but the coloured people suffered crisis in culture and crafts along with the rampant population growth. He rejected the capitalist integration of Asia as capitalism bred poverty and war. He held a staunch view that capitalism will destroy the precarious national freedom.

His view on communism was as strong. Marxism and Soviet system was a fad among the first generation political elite of independent nations of Asia. Lohia was never enamored by these prevailing trends. He found a crisis inherent at the centre of the communist system. Communism necessitates a centralised party and subsequently a centralised state to develop the forces of production. A dictatorial party and state is immoral and cannot uphold the morality of a utopia.

Dr. Lohia viewed that communism inherits from capitalism its technique of production, it only seems to smash the capitalist relations of production. He viewed both as part of a single civilisation as both are driven by continuous application of science to economy and rising standard of living. An individual may be either in US or in the Soviet Russia, is impelled by "identical aims of increasing output through mass production." Lohia stated that the modern civilisation has split up into these two warring camps to renew itself.

Revolutionary thinker

Aside from the procedural revolution of non-violent civil disobedience, bridging the rich-poor divide, the elimination of caste and the revolution against incursions of the big-machine, other revolutions in Lohia's list included tackling Man-Woman inequality, banishing inequality based on color, and that of preserving individual privacy against encroachment of the collective.

Many of Lohia's revolutions have advanced in India, some with greater degrees of success than others. In some instances the revolutions have led to perverse results which he would have found distasteful. However,Lohia was not one to shy away from either controversy or struggle. Lohia believed that a party grew by taking up causes. He was a strong believer in popular action. In India's parliamentary system, where elections could be called even before the term was over, he once said that "Live communities don't wait for five years (the term of the parliament)", meaning that a government which misruled should be thrown out by the people. He carried out this idea by moving the first no-confidence motion against the Nehru government, which had by then been in office for 16 years!

Lohia is often called a maverick socialist, a cliched but nevertheless apt description. He gave that impression not to be controversial, but because he was always evolving his thoughts, and like his mentor Gandhi, did not hesitate to speak the truth as he saw it. He often surprised both supporters and opponents. He astounded everyone by calling for India to produce the bomb, after the Sino-Indian War of 1962.

Lohia's anti-English views

He was anti-English, saying that the British ruled India with bullet and language (bandhook ki goli aur angrezi ki boli). Full of unforgettable phrases which would characterise a point of view, he captured who was a member of India's ruling class with near-mathematical precision that has not been bettered in three decades –"high-caste, wealth, and knowledge of English are the three requisites, with anyone possessing two of these belonging to the ruling class".

Lohia wanted to abolish private schools and establish upgraded municipal (government) schools which would give equal academic opportunity to students of all castes. This he hoped would help eradicate the divisions created by the caste system.

At the Socialist Party's Annual Convention, Lohia set up a plan to decentralise the government's power so that the general public would have more power in Indian politics. He also formed Hind Kisan Panchayat to resolve farmers' everyday problems.

Experiment with Non-Congressism

In 1963, he propounded the strategy of Anti-Congressism. He was of the opinion that since in the past three general elections the Congress had won with a thumping majority, there was a feeling among the masses that the Congress could not be defeated and it had come to stay in power for ever. Lohia invited all the Opposition parties to field a single candidate against Congress nominees so that the masses could be disabused of this illusion. This formula of Dr Lohia saw success in the 1967 general elections with the Congress party defeated in nine States and Samyuktha Vidhayak Dal governments formed by the Opposition parties of the time.

Lohia was a socialist and wanted to unite all the socialists in the world to form a potent platform. He was the General Secretary of Praja Socialist Party. He established the World Development Council and eventually the World Government to maintain peace in the world.

During his last few years, besides politics, he spent hours talking to thousands of young adults on topics ranging from Indian literature to politics and art.

Lohia, who was unmarried, died on 12 October 1967 in New Delhi. He left behind no property or bank balance.

Major writings in English

• The Caste System: Hyderabad, Navahind [1964] 147 p.
• Foreign Policy: Aligarh, P.C. Dwadash Shreni, [1963?] 381 p.
• Fragments of a World Mind: Maitrayani Publishers & Booksellers ; Allahabad [1949] 262 p.
• Fundamentals of a World Mind: ed. by K.S. Karanth. Bombay, Sindhu Publications, [1987] 130 p.
• Guilty Men of India’s Partition: Lohia Samata Vidyalaya Nyas, Publication Dept.,[1970] 103 p.
• India, China, and Northern Frontiers: Hyderabad, Navahind [1963] 272 p.
• Interval During Politics: Hyderabad, Navahind [1965] 197 p.
• Marx, Gandhi and Socialism: Hyderabad, Navahind [1963] 550 p.
• Collected Works of Dr Lohia" A nine volume set edited by veteran Socialist writer Dr Mastram Kapoor in English and published by Anamika Publications, New Delhi.