INDIRA GANDHI

The Iron Lady of India Indira Gandhi Nehru was the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru, who was one of the chief figures in India’s struggle to achieve independence from Britain, was a top leader of the powerful and long-dominant Indian National Congress,and was the first prime minister (1947–64) of independent India. Her grandfather Motilal Nehru was one of the pioneers of the independence movement and was a close associate of Mohandas Gandhi. She attended, for one year each, Visva-Bharati University in Shantiniketan (now in Bolpur, West Bengal state) and then the University of Oxford in England. She joined the Congress Party in 1938.

In 1942 she married Feroze Gandhi (died 1960), a fellow member of the party. The couple had two children, Sanjay and Rajiv. However, the two parents were estranged from each other for much of their marriage. Indira’s mother had died in the mid-1930s, and thereafter she often acted as her father’s hostess for events and accompanied him on his travels.

The Congress Party came to power when her father took office in 1947, and Gandhi became a member of its working committee in 1955. In 1959 she was elected to the largely honorary post of party president. She was made a member of the Rajya Sabha in 1964, and that year Lal Bahadur Shastri—who had succeeded Nehru as prime minister—named her minister of information and broadcasting in his government.

On Shastri’s sudden death in January 1966, Gandhi was named leader of the Congress Party—and thus also became prime minister—in a compromise between the party’s right and left wings. Her leadership, however, came under continual challenge from the right wing of the party, led by former minister of finance Morarji Desai. She won a seat in the 1967 elections to the Lok Sabha (lower chamber of the Indian parliament), but the Congress Party managed to win only a slim majority of seats, and Gandhi had to accept Desai as deputy prime minister.

Tensions grew within the party, however, and in 1969 she was expelled from it by Desai and other members of the old guard. Undaunted, Gandhi, joined by a majority of party members, formed a new faction around her called the “New” Congress Party. In the 1971 Lok Sabha elections the New Congress group won a sweeping electoral victory over a coalition of conservative parties. Gandhi strongly supported East Pakistan in its secessionist conflict with Pakistan in late 1971, and India’s armed forces achieved a swift and decisive victory over Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh. She became the first government leader to recognize the new country.

In March 1972, buoyed by the country’s success against Pakistan, Gandhi again led her New Congress Party group to landslide victories in a large number of elections to state legislative assemblies. Shortly afterward, however, her defeated Socialist Party opponent from the 1971 national election charged that she had violated the election laws in that contest.

In June 1975 the High Court of Allahabad ruled against her, which meant that she would be deprived of her seat in the parliament and would be required to stay out of politics for six years. She appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court but did not receive a satisfactory response. Taking matters into her own hands, she declared a state of emergency throughout India, imprisoned her political opponents, and assumed emergency powers. Many new laws were enacted that limited personal freedoms. During that period she also implemented several unpopular policies, including large-scale sterilization as a form of birth control.

Public opposition to Gandhi’s two years of emergency rule was vehement and widespread, and after it ended in early 1977, the released political rivals were determined to oust her and the New Congress Party from power. When long-postponed national parliamentary elections were held later in 1977, she and her party were soundly defeated, whereupon she left office. The Janata Party (precursor to the Bharatiya Janata Party) took over the reins of government, with newly recruited member Desai as prime minister.

In early 1978 Gandhi and her supporters completed the split from the Congress Party by forming the Congress (I) Party—the “I” signifying Indira. She was briefly imprisoned (October 1977 and December 1978) on charges of official corruption. Despite those setbacks, she won a new seat in the Lok Sabha in November 1978, and her Congress (I) Party began to gather strength. 

Dissension within the ruling Janata Party led to the fall of its government in August 1979. When new elections for the Lok Sabha were held in January 1980, Gandhi and Congress (I) were swept back into power in a landslide victory. Her son Sanjay, who had become her chief political adviser, also won a seat in the Lok Sabha. All legal cases against Indira, as well as against Sanjay, were withdrawn.

Sanjay Gandhi’s death in an airplane crash in June 1980 eliminated Indira’s chosen successor from the political leadership of India. After Sanjay’s death, Indira groomed her other son, Rajiv, for the leadership of her party. She adhered to the quasi-socialist policies of industrial development that had been begun by her father. She established closer relations with the Soviet Union, depending on that country for support in India’s long-standing conflict with Pakistan.

During the early 1980s Indira Gandhi was faced with threats to the political integrity of India. Several states sought a larger measure of independence from the central government, and Sikh separatists in Punjab state used violence to assert their demands for an autonomous state. In 1982 a large number of Sikhs, led by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, occupied and fortified the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) complex at Amritsar, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine.

Tensions between the government and the Sikhs escalated, and in June 1984 Gandhi ordered the Indian army to attack and oust the separatists from the complex. Some buildings in the shrine were badly damaged in the fighting, and at least 450 Sikhs were killed (Sikh estimates of the death toll were considerably higher). Five months later Gandhi was killed in her garden in New Delhi in a fusillade of bullets fired by two of her own Sikh bodyguards in revenge for the attack in Amritsar. She was succeeded as prime minister by her son Rajiv, who served until 1989.source- britannica.com

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LEO TOLSTOY

Leo Tolstoy was born on 09.09.1828 at his family's estate, Yasnaya Polyana, in the Tula Province of Russia. He was the youngest of four boys. In 1830, when Tolstoy's mother, née Princess Volkonskaya, died, his father's cousin took over caring for the children. When their father, Count Nikolay Tolstoy, died just seven years later, their aunt was appointed their legal guardian. When the aunt passed away, Tolstoy and his siblings moved in with a second aunt, in Kazan, Russia. Although Tolstoy experienced a lot of loss at an early age, he would later idealize his childhood memories in his writing.

Tolstoy received his primary education at home, at the hands of French and German tutors. In 1843, he enrolled in an Oriental languages program at the University of Kazan. There, Tolstoy failed to excel as a student. His low grades forced him to transfer to an easier law program.

Prone to partyin in excess, Tolstoy ultimately left the University of Kazan in 1847, without a degree. He returned to his parents' estate, where he made a go at becoming a farmer. He attempted to lead the serfs, or farmhands, in their work, but he was too often absent on social visits to Tula and Moscow.

His stab at becoming the perfect farmer soon proved to be a failure. He did, however, succeed in pouring his energies into keeping a journal—the beginning of a lifelong habit that would inspire much of his fiction.

As Tolstoy was flailing on the farm, his older brother, Nikolay, came to visit while on military leave. Nikolay convinced Tolstoy to join the Army as a junker, south in the Caucasus Mountains, where Nikolay himself was stationed.

Following his stint as a junker, Tolstoy transferred to Sevastopol in Ukraine in November 1854, where he fought in the Crimean War through August 1855.

During quiet periods while Tolstoy was a junker in the Army, he worked on an autobiographical story called Childhood. In it, he wrote of his fondest childhood memories.

In 1852, Tolstoy submitted the sketch to The Contemporary, the most popular journal of the time. The story was eagerly accepted and became Tolstoy's very first published work.

After completing Childhood, Tolstoy started writing about his day-to-day life at the Army outpost in the Caucasus. However, he did not complete the work, entitled The Cossacks, until 1862, after he had already left the Army.

Amazingly, Tolstoy still managed to continue writing while at battle during the Crimean War. During that time, he composed Boyhood (1854), a sequel to Childhood, the second book in what was to become Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy.

In the midst of the Crimean War, Tolstoy also expressed his views on the striking contradictions of war through a three-part series, Sevastopol Tales. In the second Sevastopol Tales book, Tolstoy experimented with a relatively new writing technique: Part of the story is presented in the form of a soldier's stream of consciousness.

Once the Crimean War ended and Tolstoy left the Army, he returned to Russia. Back home, the burgeoning author found himself in high demand on the St. Petersburg literary scene. Stubborn and arrogant, Tolstoy refused to ally himself with any particular intellectual school of thought.

Declaring himself an anarchist, he made off to Paris in 1857. Once there, he gambled away all of his money and was forced to return home to Russia. He also managed to publish Youth, the third part of his autobiographical trilogy, in 1857.

Back in Russia in 1862, Tolstoy produced the first of a 12 issue-installment of the journal Yasnaya Polyana, marrying a doctor's daughter named Sofya Andreyevna Bers that same year.

Residing at Yasnaya Polyana with his wife and children, Tolstoy spent the better part of the 1860s toiling over his first great novel, War and Peace. A portion of the novel was first published in the Russian Messenger in 1865, under the title "The Year 1805." By 1868, he had released three more chapters. A year later, the novel was complete. Both critics and the public were buzzing about the novel's historical accounts of the Napoleonic Wars, combined with its thoughtful development of realistic yet fictional characters. The novel also uniquely incorporated three long essays satirizing the laws of history.

Among the ideas that Tolstoy extols in War and Peace is the belief that the quality and meaning of one's life is mainly derived from his day-to-day activities

Following the success of War and Peace, in 1873, Tolstoy set to work on the second of his best known novels, Anna Karenina. Like War and Peace, Anna Karenina fictionalized some biographical events from Tolstoy's life, as was particularly evident in the romance of the characters Kitty and Levin, whose relationship is said to resemble Tolstoy's courtship with his own wife.

The first sentence of Anna Karenina is among the most famous lines of the book: "All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina was published in installments from 1873 to 1877, to critical and public acclaim.

Despite the success of Anna Karenina, following the novel's completion, Tolstoy suffered a spiritual crisis and grew depressed. Struggling to uncover the meaning of life, Tolstoy first went to the Russian Orthodox Church, but did not find the answers he sought there. He came to believe that Christian churches were corrupt and, in lieu of organized religion, developed his own beliefs.

He decided to express those beliefs by founding a new publication called The Mediator in 1883.As a consequence of espousing his unconventional—and therefore controversial—spiritual beliefs, Tolstoy was ousted by the Russian Orthodox Church. He was even watched by the secret police. When Tolstoy's new beliefs prompted his desire to give away his money, his wife strongly objected. The disagreement put a strain on the couple's marriage, until Tolstoy begrudgingly agreed to a compromise: He conceded to granting his wife the copyrights—and presumably the royalties—to all of his writing predating 1881.

In addition to his religious tracts, Tolstoy continued to write fiction throughout the 1880s and 1890s. Among his later works' genres were moral tales and realistic fiction.

One of his most successful later works was the novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich, written in 1886. In Ivan Ilyich, the main character struggles to come to grips with his impending death.

The title character, Ivan Ilyich, comes to the jarring realization that he has wasted his life on trivial matters, but the realization comes too late.

In 1898, Tolstoy wrote Father Sergius, a work of fiction in which he seems to criticize the beliefs that he developed following his spiritual conversion. The following year, he wrote his third lengthy novel, Resurrection. While the work received some praise, it hardly matched the success and acclaim of his previous novels.

 Tolstoy's other late works include essays on art, a satirical play called The Living Corpse that he wrote in 1890, and a novella called Hadji-Murad (written in 1904), which was discovered and published after his death.

Over the last 30 years of his life, Tolstoy established himself as a moral and religious leader.

His ideas about nonviolent resistance to evil influenced the likes of social leader Mahatma Gandhi.

Also during his later years, Tolstoy reaped the rewards of international acclaim. Yet he still struggled to reconcile his spiritual beliefs with the tensions they created in his home life. His wife not only disagreed with his teachings, she disapproved of his disciples, who regularly visited Tolstoy at the family estate.

Their troubled marriage took on an air of notoriety in the press. Anxious to escape his wife's growing resentment, in October 1910, Tolstoy, his daughter, Aleksandra, and his physician,  Dr. Dushan P. Makovitski, embarked on a pilgrimage. Valuing their privacy, they traveled incognito, hoping to dodge the press, to no avail.

Unfortunately, the pilgrimage proved too arduous for the aging novelist. In November 1910, the stationmaster of a train depot in Astapovo, Russia opened his home to Tolstoy, allowing the ailing writer to rest. Tolstoy died there shortly after, on November 20, 1910.

He was buried at the family estate, Yasnaya Polyana, in Tula Province, where Tolstoy had lost so many loved ones yet had managed to build such fond and lasting memories of his childhood. Tolstoy was survived by his wife and their brood of 8 children.

To this day, Tolstoy's novels are considered among the finest achievements of literary work. War and Peace is, in fact, frequently cited as the greatest novel ever written. In contemporary academia, Tolstoy is still widely acknowledged as having possessed a gift for describing characters' unconscious motives.He is also championed for his finesse in underscoring the role of people's everyday actions in defining their character and purpose.To read more www.biography.com/people/leo-tolstoy-9508518

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ALBERT EINSTEIN

Albert Einstein born in Germany 1879, Albert Einstein is one of the most celebrated scientists of the Twentieth Century. His theories on relativity laid the framework for a new branch of physics, and Albert Einstein ’s E = mc2 on mass-energy equivalence is one of the most famous formulas in the world.

In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to theoretical physics and the evolution of Quantum Theory.

Albert Einstein  is also well known as an original free-thinker, speaking on a range of humanitarian and global issues. After contributing to the theoretical development of nuclear physics and encouraging F.D. Roosevelt to start the Manhattan Project, he later spoke out against the use of nuclear .

Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Albert Einstein settled in Switzerland and then, after Hitler’s rise to power, the United States. Albert Einstein  was a truly global man and one of the undisputed genius’ of the Twentieth Century.

Albert Einstein  was born 14 March 1879, in Ulm the German Empire. His parents were working-class (salesman/engineer) and non-observant Jews. Aged 15, the family moved to Milan, Italy where his father hoped Albert would become a mechanical engineer.

 However, despite Albert Einstein ’s intellect and thirst for knowledge, his early academic reports suggested anything but a glittering career in academia. His teachers found him dim and slow to learn. Part of the problem was that Albert expressed no interest in learning languages and the learning by rote that was popular at the At the age of 12, Albert Einstein  picked up a book on geometry and read it cover to cover. – He would later refer to it as his ‘holy booklet’.

He became fascinated by maths and taught himself – becoming acquainted with the great scientific discoveries of the age.

Despite Albert’s independent learning, he languished at school. Eventually, he was asked to leave by the authorities because his indifference was setting a bad example to other students.

He applied for admission to the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. His first attempt was a failure because he failed exams in botany, zoology and languages.

However, he passed the next year and in 1900 became a Swiss citizen.At college, he met a fellow student Mileva Maric, and after a long friendship, they married in 1903; they had two sons before divorcing several years later.

in 1896 Albert Einstein  renounced his German citizenship to avoid military conscription. For five years he was stateless, before successfully applying for Swiss citizenship in 1901.

After graduating from Zurich college, he attempted to gain a teaching post but none was fortcoming; instead he gained a job in the Swiss Patent Office.

While working at the Patent Office, Albert Einstein  continued his own scientific discoveries and began radical experiments to consider the nature of light and space.

He published his first scientific paper in 1900, and by 1905 had completed his PhD entitled “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions. In addition to working on his PhD, Albert Einstein  also worked feverishly on other papers. In 1905, he published four pivotal scientific works, which would revolutionise modern physics. 1905 would later be referred to as his ‘annus mirabilis‘

Albert Einstein ’s work started to gain recognition, and he was given a post at the University of Zurich (1909) and, in 1911, was offered the post of full-professor at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague (which was then part of Austria-Hungary Empire).

He took Austrian-Hungary citizenship to accept the job. In 1914, he returned to Germany and was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. (1914–1932)

Albert Einstein  suggested that light doesn’t just travel as waves but as electric currents. This photoelectric effect could force metals to release a tiny stream of particles known as ‘quanta’.

From this Quantum Theory, other inventors were able to develop devices such as television and movies. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.

 Albert Einstein  suggested that light doesn’t just travel as waves but as electric currents. This photoelectric effect could force metals to release a tiny stream of particles known as ‘quanta’. From this Quantum Theory, other inventors were able to develop devices such as television and movies.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.

In 1911, Albert Einstein  predicted the sun’s gravity would bend the light of another star. He based this on his new general theory of relativity. On 29 May 1919, during a solar eclipse, British astronomer and physicist Sir Arthur Eddington was able to confirm Albert Einstein ’s prediction.

 The news was published in newspapers around the world, and it made Albert Einstein  internationally known as a leading physicist. It was also symbolic of international co-operation between British and German scientists after the horrors of the First World War.

Albert Einstein was involved in many civil rights movements such as the American campaign to end lynching. He joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and  considered racism, America’s worst disease.

But he also spoke highly of the meritocracy in American society and the value of being able to speak freely. On the outbreak of war in 1939, Albert Einstein  wrote to President Roosevelt about the prospect of Germany developing an atomic bomb. He warned Roosevelt that the Germans were working on a bomb with a devastating potential. Roosevelt headed his advice and started the Manhattan project to develop the US atom bomb. But, after the war ended, Albert Einstein  reverted to his pacifist views. Albert Einstein  said after the war. Source biographyonline.net

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KARIKALAN

Karikalan the greatest among the early Chola kings of the Sangam age in South India, had been the son of Ilamcetcenni and ruled around 120 C.E. He had been known by the epithets Karikala Chola  Peruvallattan and Thirumavalavan . Karikala Chola  led the Chola empire successfully in campaigns to unify the three Dravidian kingdoms. His name meant "the man with the charred leg," an injury he received during a fight to escape capture from a scheming competitor for his throne. He had earned praise for the beauty of his war chariots. In the Battle of Venni, Karikala Chola  crushed the Pandya and Chera forces, leading to the unifying of the three kingdoms into one under Karikala Chola 's rule. His legendary campaign into northern India may have been royal hype, since no records exist of the campaign n. In any case, his skill as a commander had been acclaimed.

Karikala Chola 's garnered great wealth in trade with the Roman empire. He used that wealth to fund his military campaigns and to build his cities. He is reputed to have decorated the capital city of Kanchipuram with gold. He earned lasting fame by building dikes along the banks of Kaveri. He built the Grand Anaicut, the oldest dam in the world, and irrigation canals as well as tanks. His innovations and projects with irrigation greatly aiding agriculture in his kingdom.He left a legacy as an able and just king, promoting commerce and administering justice. He appears to have been sincerely mourned by the people of Chola at his death.

The story of Karikala Chola  mixes legend and anecdotal information gleaned from Sangam literature. Karikala Chola  has left history no authentic records of his reign. The numerous mentions in Sangam poetry constituted the only sources available to us. The extant literature of the Sangam has been difficult to date with any measure of certainty, leaving the time period in question.

Pattinappaalai,Porunaraatruppadai,and a number of individual poems in Akananuru and Purananuru have been the main source for the information attributed to Karikala Chola .

Karikala Chola , the son of Ilamcetcenni, had been distinguished for the beauty of his numerous war chariots. The name Karikala Chola n means "the man with the charred leg" and perpetuates the memory of a fire accident in the early years of his life. Porunaraatruppadai describes the legend of that incident as follows:

The king of Urayur Ilancetcenni married a Velir princess from Azhundur and she became pregnant and gave birth to Karikala Chola . Ilamcetcenni died soon after. Due to his young age, Karikala Chola 's right to the throne was overlooked and there was political turmoil in the country.

Karikala Chola  was exiled. When normality returned, the Chola ministers sent a state elephant to look for the prince. The elephant found the prince hiding in Karuvur. His political opponents arrested and imprisoned him. The prison was set on fire that night. Karikala Chola  escaped the fire and, with the help of his uncle Irumpitarthalaiyan, defeated his enemies. Karikala Chola ’s leg was scorched in the fire and from thence Karikala Chola  became his name

Pattinappaalai, written in praise of Karikala Chola , also describes the incident:Like the Tiger cub with its sharp claws and its curved stripes growing (strong) within the cage, his strength came to maturity (like wood in grain) while he was in the bondage of his enemies. As the large trunked elephant pulls down the banks of the pit, and joins its mate, even so after deep and careful consideration, he drew his sword, effected his escape by overpowering the strong guard and attained his glorious heritage in due course 

According to Porunaraatruppadai, Karikala Chola  fought a great battle at Venni near Thanjavur in which both Pandya and Chera suffered crushing defeats. Although very little is known about the circumstances leading to that battle, it marked the turning point in Karikala Chola ’s career, the battle breaking the back of the powerful confederacy formed against him. Besides the two crowned kings of the Pandya and Chera countries, eleven minor chieftains took their side in the campaign and shared defeat at the hands of Karikala Chola . The Chera king, wounded on his back in the battle, committed suicide by starvation.

Venni proved the watershed in the career of Karikala Chola , which established him firmly on his throne and secured for him a virtual hegemony among the three crowned monarchs.

After the battle of Venni, Karikala Chola  had other opportunities to exercise his arms. He defeated the confederacy of nine minor chieftains in the battle of Vakaipparandalai. Paranar, a contemporary of Karikala Chola , in his poem from Agananuru mentions that incident without giving any information on the cause of the conflict.

Pattinappaalai also describes the destruction caused by Karikala Chola ’s armies in the territories of his enemies and adds that as the result of those conflicts, the "Northerners and Westerners were depressed… and his flushed look of anger caused the Pandya’s strength gave way" Evidence showing that Karikala Chola ’s conquests extended beyond the land of the Kaveri has been missing.

Since ancient times Karikala Chola  became the subject of many myths, which in modern times have often been accepted as serious history. Cilappatikaram (c. sixth century C.E.) which attributes northern campaigns and conquests to all the three monarchs of the Tamil country, gives a glorious account of the northern expeditions of Karikala Chola , which took him as far north as the Himalayas and gained for him the alliance and subjugation of the kings of Vajra, Magadha and Avanti countries. No contemporary evidence, either in Sangam literature or from the north Indian source, supports such an expedition taking place.

Later Chola kings referred to Karikala Chola  Chola as a great ancestor, and attributed him with the building of dikes along the banks of the Kaveri. The raising of the banks of the river Kaveri by Karikala Chola  seems to be first mentioned by the Melapadu plates of Punyakumara, a Telugu Choda king of the seventh or the eighth century C.E.

That story mingles with another stream of legend centering around Trinetra Pallava, and culminates in the celebrated jingle of the late Telugu Choda inscriptions: Karuna—saroruha vihita—vilochana—pallava—trilochana pramukha kilapritvisvara karita kaveri tira ("He who caused the banks of the Kaveri to be constructed by all the subordinate kings led by the Pallava Trinetra whose third eye was blinded by his lotus foot.

Pattinappaalai describes Karikala Chola  as an able and just king. It gives a vivid idea of the state of industry and commerce under Karikala Chola  who promoted agriculture and added to the prosperity of his country by reclamation and settlement of forest land. He also built the Grand Anaicut, one of the oldest dams in the world and also a number of irrigation canals and tanks.

We know next to nothing regarding Karikala Chola ’s personal life. Naccinarkkiniyar, the annotator of Tolkappiyam, states that Karikala Chola  married a Velir girl from Nangur. He most certainly had more than one queen. Evidence exists in Purananuru for Karikala Chola ’s faith in the then embryonic Vedic Hinduism in the Tamil country. Purananuru (poem 224) movingly expresses his faith and the grief caused by his passing away:He who stormed his enemies' forts undauntedly, who feasted his minstrels and their families and treated them to endless draughts of toddy, who in the assembly of Brahmins noted for their knowledge of Dharma and purity of life, guided by priests learned in their duties and attended by his noble and virtuous queen, performed the vedic sacrifice in which the tall sacrificial post stood on a bird-like platform, within the sacrificial court surrounded by a high wall with round bastions, he, the great and wise king alas, is no more! Poor indeed is this world, which has lost him. Like the branches of the vengi tree, which stands bare, when their bright foliage has been stripped down by shepherds eager to feed their cattle in the fierce summer, are his fair queens, who have cast off their jewels, source newworldencyclopedia.org

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RANI VEERAMANGAI VELU NACHIYAR

Velu Nachiyar was the queen of the Tamil kingdom of Shivagangai – today found in the Madurai Division of Tamil Nadu – from 1769 to 1790 CE, barring an 8-year gap from 1772 to 1780. The Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar  is one of the few rulers of princely states to have successfully defeated the British to regain her kingdom and go on to rule it until her death, over a decade later.She was also the first female ruler of India to take up arms against the British.

Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar  Velu Nachiyar was born in 1730 CE, the only child to Mannar (King) Chellamuthu Sethupathy and to Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar  Sakandhimuthal of the Ramnad Kingdom. Perhaps it was because there was no male heir, or perhaps it was because she showed an aptitude for it, but the royal family brought up the young Princess Velu Nachiyar like a male child would have been, at the time.

She was well trained in the use of weapons and also in martial arts like silambam, use of the valari, varmakalai, and fighting off horse back. She was also a gifted archer.

The Royal couple had also engaged teachers for languages such as French, English, and Urdu. Also, the young Princess had spent countless hours studying the rules of war. She was a scholar in many languages and had been bred to rule. She married the Mannar of Sivagangai, Muthuvaduganathar, at the age of sixteen. All was well, and they were to remain undisturbed for over 2 decades before the big bad imperial wolves would come knocking on their door.

In the year 1772, the English invaded her kingdom and Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar  Velu Nachiyar soon received the news that her husband Raja Muthuvaduganathar and her daughter young Princess Gowri Nachiyar had been killed in war for Kalaiyar Koil Palace – which the British troops stormed under the command of Lt. Col. Bonjour who had teamed up with the traitorous Nawab of Arcot.

Thandavarayan Pillai and the Maruthu Pandiyar brothers sustained injuries during the attack. They promised the Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar  that they would recapture the kingdom and “punish” the English, and the Nawab of Arcot, who had been placed on the throne by the British.Thandavarayan Pillai, the military head as well as prime minister, is said to have been an incredibly strong and distinguished person, and history remembers him as the epitome of the loyalist – he is also among the most powerful administer in the history of the Tamils.

Thandavarayan Pillai served as the chief of the military under three different rulers of Sivagangai – King Sasivarna Periya Oodaya Thevar (1730–1750), Muthuvaduganatha Periya Udaya Thevar (1750–1772), and Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar  Velu Nachiyar, for whom he also performed the duties of prime minister. Essentially, he held the two most important and critical administrative functions in the state for around 60 years.

Thandavarayan Pillai was the son of Kathavaraya Pillai, who was an accountant and administrator in Sivagangai. Kathavarya Pillai had rendered his services with loyalty from the time he took office, so much so that Raja Oodaya Thevar bestowed upon his family the hereditary title of management.

Anyway, Thandavarayan Pillai advised Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar  Velu Nachiyar just as ably as he and his father had advised previous rulers. It was based on his advise that the Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar  decided to keep shifting her bases of operations so as to keep the British in a constant state of doubt.Meanwhile, Thandavarayan Pillai wrote to Sultan Hyder Ali on behalf of the Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar , with a request that he provide 5000 infantry and 5000 cavalry to help her defeat the British army, but he was an old man and passed away in his sleep around this time.

The Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar  went through with the meeting anyway, accompanied by Thandavarayan Pillai’s son, in Mysore. It helped that she and Haider Ali were able to converse in fluent Urdu, swapping stories about their problems with the East India Company. Hyder Ali was very impressed with her resolve and promised to help her with her conflict – and provided the necessary military assistance.

Haider Ali deputed Syed Karki of Dindigul Fort to Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar  Velu Nachiyar, and immediately released 5000 infantry and 5000 cavalry under them. Her now-bolstered troops advanced on Sivagangai under the leadership of the Maruthu Pandiyar brothers.

In 1780, she struck back with the first recorded “suicide bombing” in history. Velu Nachiyar had employed her intelligence gathering agents to discover where the British stored their ammunition. One of her followers, Kuyili, doused herself in oil, set herself alight, and walked into the storehouse. She also employed another agent, her adopted daughter Udaiyaal, to detonate a british arsenal, blowing herself up along with the barracks. Velu Nachiyar formed a woman’s army she named “udaiyaal” in honour of her adopted daughter.

The Nawab of Arcot plotted vigorously and placed many obstacles to the advancement of the Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar ’s troops – sinking so low as to resort to repeated sabotage. The Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar  and her forces overcame all the hurdles as they marched on like a colossus and entered Sivagangai.

The Nawab of Arcot was defeated dramatically and taken captive – eventually traded in exchange that the Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar ’s kingdom be left alone by the British. She recaptured Sivagangai and was again crowned queen – with the Maruthu Pandiyar brothers and Syed Karki both swearing undying love for and loyalty to her.

Rani Veeramangai Velu Nachiyar  Velu Nachiyar was loved by all who met her. Where many rulers commanded loyalty with their wealth or by invoking divine will, she invoked nothing more than the admiration and adulation of all who ever met her, with her common sense approach and unquestionable bravery.

She was the first female ruler to revolt against the British empire, take them on, and win – and she continued to win for over a decade after regaining her kingdom.Sadly, upon her death, the Maruthu Pandiyar brothers were captured by the British and the Kingdom of Sivagangai became the district of Sivagangai, under the control of the British East India Company.source bodahub

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KANJITH THALAIVANUM KANNITH TAMILUM

Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna as known as C N Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna , was the Chief Minister of  Tamil Nadu from the year 1967 - 1969 and was also the first Dravidian party member to hold that post. Famously known for issuing an order for the removal of the posters of gods and religious signs from offices and buildings, Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  was born on this day in the year 1909. He died in the year 1969 and did you know, his funeral was attended by over 15 million people as per the Guinness Book of Records.

A post graduate in Economics and Politics, Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  had worked as an English teacher in Pachaiyappa High School. He later quit this job to work as a journalist

Being secular to the core, his attitude towards religion was 'One race, One god'

Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  used to describe himself as a Hindu without the sacred ash, a Christian sans the holy cross, and a Muslim without the prayer cap

Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  was famous for attacking superstitions and religious exploitation

He also served as a sub-editor of the Justice magazine, editor for Viduthalai (Freedom) and was also associated with the Tamil weekly paper, Kudi Arasu

He started his own journal called Dravida Nadu

Anna severely attacked Brahmanism and 'Aryan' values as the cause of Tamil political and national corruption

The founder of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam(DMK) party, Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  was also known as one of the best Tamil orators India has ever had

He publicly opposed Hindi being recommended as an official language of India. He believed that it would make the Tamils second class citizens when compared to the Hindi speaking North Indians

According to Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  if Hindi should be "the common language because it is spoken by the majority, why should we then claim the tiger as our national animal instead of the rat which is so much more numerous? Or the peacock as our national bird when the crow is ubiquitous?"

One of the best Tamil orators, Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  was known for developing a unique style in Tamil public speaking using metaphors and alliterations

He has published several novels, short stories and plays based on political themes

Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  also acted in some of his plays during his time

Some of his well-known works include Annavin Sattasabai Sorpolivukal (Anna's speeches at the state legislative), Ilatchiya varalaru (History of Principles), Valkkaip puyal (Storm of life) and Rankon rata (Radha from Rangon)

Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  legalised Self-respect marriages for the first time in the country. Self-respect marriages promoted the idea that priests and Brahmins were not needed to carry out a wedding

Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  renamed Madras state to Tamil Nadu.

Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  was born in a middle class family. Natarajan and Bangaru Ammal are his parents. His sister named Rajamani Ammal raised him and he married Rani when he was a student at the age of 21.

They had no children. He did his schooling in Pachaiappa’s High school and finished his degree in Pachaiappa’s college in Chennai. Then he joined as an English teacher in Pachaiappa’s High school. In the middle, he left his job and involved in politics.

Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  was an excellent writer in Tamil.

 He had acted in many plays. Some of them were made into movies. He was a strict follower of Periyar E. V. Ramasamy.

Later he started his own political party named Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. The Madras anti-Hindi agitation of 1965 made him very popular.

Self-respect marriages were legalized by him. He converted the name of Madras state into Tamil Nadu

Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  entered into politics and joined the Justice Party.

Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  worked as a sub-editor in Justice Magazine and later he became the editor in Viduthalai.

Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  launched his own journal named Dravida Nadu. Justice party was renamed as Dravida Kazhagam by Periyar in 1944.

Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  served as the Member of Parliament in the year 1962-1967. He won in the State Legislative Assembly election of 1967 and became the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu

Anna received the award of Chubb Fellowship at Yale University and received the Doctorate award on the same year from Annamalai University. Due to cancer, he died on 3^rd February 1969.

Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  centenary library was placed in Chennai in memory of C. N. Kanjith Thalaivar Arignar Anna  and he was buried in Marina Beach. This place is known as Anna Square. Anna Nagar and Anna Salai are the places in Chennai which were named after him

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ANGELA MERKEL

Angela Merkel became the first woman ever to lead Germany as chancellor.

Angela Merkel and the party she chairs, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), formed a coalition with two other parties in 2005, and the agreement installed the former physicist as head of government.

Perhaps more notable than her gender is Angela Merkel's background: she is the first person to lead a reunified Germany who comes from the formerly Communist eastern states, a division that endured for more than four decades following the end of Germany's defeat in World War II.

“My life changed completely in 1989,” Angela Merkel said once at a rally, according to Judy Dempsey in the International Herald Tribune.

 “I have had many opportunities in the last 15 years. I would like to give my country back what I myself have gained in terms of the opportunities from reunification.”

Angela Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner on July 17, 1954, in Hamburg, Germany. This was one of the largest cities of West Germany, but her parents moved east just a few months later to the German Democratic Republic, or GDR, as Communist East Germany was called.

The decision was made by Angela Merkel's father, Horst, a Lutheran pastor, who was offered M job at a seminary in the state of Brandenburg, about an hour north of Berlin. Berlin was surrounded by the GDR, but had a Western sector that remained technically part of West Germany.

 Soviet and U.S. troops monitored the different Berlin zones, but in 1961 the East Germans, with Soviet aid, began constructing a massive wall that divided the city into East and West, like Germany itself.

East German border guards patrolled the no-man's land adjacent to the Wall, with orders to shoot on sight any trespassers.

 Nearly all of those who died were East Germans seeking freedom in the West instead of the strictly regulated state socialism of the East.

Angela Merkel was raised as the eldest of three children in the Brandenburg city of Templin. After she became chancellor, a biography was published in Germany which revealed that her father had been instrumental in the creation of a separate Protestant church in the GDR—allowing GDR officials to keep a closer watch on its members—and his tacit support of the German Communist Party likely gave the family the few perks they were able to enjoy.

These included two cars—when one automobile was an almost unheard-of luxury in much of Communist Eastern Europe—and travel visas that permitted them to visit relatives back in West Germany and even vacation in Italy.

As a youth, Angela Merkel was nicknamed “Kasi” from her surname, Kasner, and was a studious high schooler who excelled in languages, as had her mother, who had been a teacher of English back in Hamburg.

 Angela Merkel became so fluent in Russian that she even won a prize trip to Moscow. Like nearly all other college-bound East German teens, she was a member of the Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth, or FDJ), the official socialist youth organization in the GDR, but most reports of her young adult years portray her as a dutiful East German who avoided political rhetoric of any stripe.

“I would have loved to have become a teacher,” she once reflected, according to a profile written by Ruth Elkins in London's Independent. “But not under that political system.” Instead she chose to study the sciences, remarking that “physics was harmless and uncontroversial,” according to Elkins.

Angela Merkel entered the University of Leipzig in 1973. According to a German-language biography by Gerd Langguth published in Germany as Angela Angela Merkel: Aufstieg zur Macht (Angela Angela Merkel: Rise to Power), her father's “proregime attitude helped Angela's career,” noted Luke Harding, correspondent for London's Observer.

Horst's status with GDR authorities permitted his daughter “to study at an elite comprehensive school and go on to university, at a time when the children of clergy were routinely refused places.”

 During her student years, Angela Merkel worked as a barmaid in a discotheque, and a year before earning her degree married a fellow student, Ulrich Angela Merkel.

 They moved to an apartment with neither toilet nor hot water in the Prenzlauer Berg district of East Berlin, and began renovating it while Angela Merkel also went to work on her doctorate in quantum chemistry at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. The marriage ended in 1982.

Angela Merkel earned her doctorate in 1986 and remained affiliated with the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry as a researcher.

In 1989 she became involved in prodemocracy groups that were suddenly being allowed to operate in East Berlin and other GDR cities. One of them was Demokratischer Aufbruch (Democratic Awakening), which had its roots in several pacifist Protestant church groups in the GDR.

 The pro-democracy movement escalated, leading to the opening of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989, when the wall was demolished and thousands of East Berliners jubilantly streamed through, signalling the beginning of the end for the GDR.

 Angela Merkel's first mentor in politics was Lothar de Maizière (born 1940), who headed the East German branch of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

The East Germany Communist Party allowed the CDU to operate as a token nod to a multiparty electoral system, but parties like the CDU had little power until the fall of the Berlin Wall. Soon de Maizière was named head of a caretaker government in the lead-up to reunification, and in March of 1990 Angela Merkel became the deputy spokesperson for his government.

The former East German Länder, or states, were reunified with the rest of Germany in October of 1990. Two months later the first post-reunification parliamentary elections were held, and Angela Merkel won a seat in the Bundestag (Germany's lower house) from the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

 The East German branch of the CDU merged with its West German counterpart that same year, and Angela Merkel became a rising star in the party when its powerful leader, German chancellor Helmut Kohl (born 1930), made her his protégé.

 Kohl had served as chancellor of West Germany since 1982, and was heralded as the architect of reunification, which just three years earlier had been considered an entirely unfeasible hope by most Germans. Kohl famously dubbed Angela Merkel das Mädchen,, or “the Girl,” and made her a member of his cabinet in 1991 as minister for women and young people. In December of 1991, thanks to Kohl's support, she was elected deputy party leader.

Angela Merkel became the first politician from the former East to become a government minister in a newly reunited Germany.

 In 1994 Kohl gave her a more significant cabinet assignment, this time as minister for the environment and reactor safety, but Kohl was ousted in 1998 elections and stepped down accordingly. Weeks later, she was elected a secretary-general of the CDU, the first woman to attain that post in party history, and over the next two years she distanced herself from Kohl and older members of the CDU when a series of financial misdeeds came to light.

 In 2000 she bested the latest CDU chair, Wolfgang Schäuble (born 1942), in a leadership contest, and became the first woman ever to lead the party.

At the time, the CDU was relegated to one of its rare periods out of power. Its main rival, the center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), had won in 1998 and Gerhard Schröder (born 1944) succeeded Kohl as chancellor.

Schroder and the SPD held onto power in the 2002 elections, but by 2005 the German public appeared ready to shift their political allegiances once again. In parliamentary elections that year, voters gave the CDU a small margin of victory.

Schroder refused to concede power, however, and finally a so-called “Grand Coalition” was negotiated, with Angela Merkel becoming chancellor on November 22, 2005.

She agreed to form a government comprised of cabinet members from her own party as well as its counterpart in the southern German state of Bavaria, the Christian Socialist Union (CSU), and members of Schroder's SPD.

Political pundits often compare Angela Merkel to Margaret Thatcher (born 1925), who served as British prime minister from 1979 to 1990. Like Angela Merkel, Thatcher had enjoyed an impressive career in the sciences before becoming the first woman to head her country's leading center-right party, the Conservative (Tory) Party.

The reforms enacted during Angela Merkel's years in office also had echoes of the Thatcher era: Angela Merkel instituted some sweeping tax cuts for German businesses and began to move Germany to a more active role as a leader in foreign policy.

Her accomplishments in this realm included a reworking of the compact between France and Germany that gave both powers a shared leadership role in the powerful European Union (EU), but for the first time since the end of World War II the new arrangement meant that more decisions were made in Berlin, not Paris.

In other foreign-policy initiatives, Angela Merkel has established more cordial relations than her predecessor with the United States, meeting several times with U.S. president George W. Bush (born 1946). Unlike her predecessor Schröder, she has been a vocal critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin (born 1952), despite the fact that she is modern Europe's first leader to speak fluent Russian.

Political analysts have wryly noted that while Angela Merkel was busy with the pro-democracy movement in East Germany in 1989, Putin was serving as a station agent for the KGB, the Soviet state-security apparatus, in Dresden East Germany.

In 2007 Angela Merkel took over two temporary posts in addition to her duties as chancellor of Germany: the rotating presidencies of both the EU and the G8 (Group of Eight, an international forum comprised of the world's most powerful nations). As chair of the latter, she proposed a transatlantic free trade zone that might become known by the acronym TAFTA.

“I consider it my job to express to America what's in the interest of Europe,” New York Times correspondent Mark Landler quoted her as saying about TAFTA. “And for me, the trans-Atlantic partnership, in general, is in the European interest. Europeans know that we cannot accomplish things without America,” but she added, “America must also know that Europe is needed in many areas.”

Angela Merkel earns consistently high marks in public opinion polls, receiving the highest approval ratings among all postWorld War II German chancellors.

In 2007 Forbes magazine ranked her at the top of its list of the world's most powerful women for the second year in a row. In 1993 she married her former doctoral advisor, Joachim Sauer, a chemistry professor. Like many German women of her generation, she is childless; the country has regularly posted some of the world's lowest birth rates since 1980s.

 On the domestic front, this demographic shortfall may keep her in power as the median voter age in Germany remains close to her own actual agebut may also portend disaster for the country's future. “If birthrates continue to decline, the country will one day have a workforce too small to support the social and medical programs that its elderly will need,” explained Andrew  Purvis in Time International. “Previous governments have sounded the alarm about this scenarioand then done little or nothing about it. If Angela Merkel uses her leadership to find ways in which women can be better integrated into the economy, she will go down in history for a lot more than her gender.” source encyclopedia

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SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

Winston Churchill was born on 30 November 1874, in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire and was of rich, aristocratic ancestry.

Although achieving poor grades at school, his early fascination with militarism saw him join the Royal Cavalry in 1895. As a soldier and part-time journalist, Churchill travelled widely, including trips to Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt and South Africa.

Churchill was elected as Conservative MP for Oldham in 1900, before defecting to the Liberal Party in 1904 and spending the next decade climbing the ranks of the Liberal government.

He was First Lord of the Admiralty (the civil/political head of the Royal Navy) by the time of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, which he created. Heavily criticised for this error, he resigned from this position and travelled to the Western Front to fight himself.

The interwar years saw Churchill again ‘cross the floor’ from the Liberals, back to the Conservative Party. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924, when he controversially opted for Britain to re-join the Gold Standard.

 Following the Tory electoral defeat in 1929, Churchill lost his seat and spent much of the next 11 years out of office, mainly writing and making speeches.

Although he was alone in his firm opposition to Indian Independence, his warnings against the Appeasement of Nazi Germany were proven correct when the Second World War broke out in 1939.

Following Neville Chamberlain’s resignation in 1940, Churchill was chosen to succeed him as Prime Minister of an all-party coalition government.

Churchill, who also adopted the self-created position of Minister for Defence, was active both in administrative and diplomatic functions in prosecuting the British war effort.

 Some of his most memorable speeches were given in this period, and are credited with stimulating British morale during periods of great hardship.

 However, Labour leader Clement Attlee’s unexpected General Election victory in 1945 saw Churchill out of office and once again concentrating on public speaking.

In his 1946 speech in the USA, the instinctive pro-American famously declared that “an iron curtain has descended across the Continent”, and warned of the continued danger from a powerful Soviet Russia.

By his re-election in 1951, Churchill was, in the words of Roy Jenkins, “gloriously unfit for office”. Ageing and increasingly unwell, he often conducted business from his bedside, and while his powerful personality and oratory ability endured, the Prime Minister’s leadership was less decisive than during the war. His second term was most notable for the Conservative Party’s acceptance of Labour’s newly created Welfare State, and Churchill’s effect on domestic policy was limited.

His later attempts at ecreasing the developing Cold War through personal diplomacy failed to produce significant results, and poor health forced him to resign in 1955, making way for his Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, Anthony Eden.Churchill died in 1965, and was honoured with a state funeral. SOURCE - gov.uk

SOME FAMOUS QUOTE

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”

“I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.”

“If you're going through hell, keep going.”

“Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.”

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”

“If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”

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