On this Day in History

Meena Kumari, one of India’s most popular film stars, was born on 1 August 1932. Known as the ‘Tragedy Queen’, both for her on-screen roles and off-screen persona, she died on 31 March 1972 at the age of 39. Her father, Ali Baksh, a Shia Muslim, was a theatre personality who dabbled in music and poetry and played minor roles... Read More →

Balwant Pandurang Kirloskar founded the Kirloskar Natak Mahal in 1880. This was a breakthrough performing company which gained instant recognition in the Marathi theatre. After the death of Anna saheb, the company presented a range of plays of Govind Ballal Deval and Shripad Krushna Kolhatkar in addition to Kirloskar’s Shakintal and Saubhadra. Kirloskar played a pivotal role in using and... Read More →

Ootupulackal Velukkuty Vijayan, a renowned cartoonist and writer, was born on 2 July 1930 in a village in Kerala’s Palakkad district. Vijayan, whose most famous work was the novel Khasakkinte Itihasam (later translated by the writer himself from Malayalam to English as The Legends of Khasak), died on 30 March 2005. His father, O. Velukkutty, was employed with the Malabar... Read More →

Utpal Dutt, a talented and versatile actor who was equally comfortable acting on stage and in front of the camera, was born on 29 March 1929 in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Dutt, whose roles made him a popular name in both Hindi and Bengali cinema, studied in St. Edmunds School (Shillong) and Calcutta’s St. Xavier’s Collegiate School before securing a degree... Read More →

Sundara Sastri Satyamurti, an Indian independence activist and leading Congress politician of Madras Presidency, was born on 19 August 1887 in Thirumayam (Pudukkottai) in present-day Tamil Nadu. He died on 28 March 1943. He is also regarded as the mentor of Madras state chief minister and senior Congress leader K. Kamaraj. Satyamurti completed his college education from the renowned Madras... Read More →

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, a leading Muslim reformer and educationist who was arguably the most important political voice among Indian Muslims in the latter half of the 19th century, was born on 17 October 1817 in Delhi (which was then the capital, albeit nominal, of the fading Mughal empire). Sir Syed, who established a Muslim centre of learning that later... Read More →

On 26 March 1974, Gaura Devi, a peasant woman, gathered other women around her in a village in the Garhwal Himalayas and—by hugging trees and through other forms of defiance—together prevented loggers from felling trees. This act by illiterate tribal and village women to reclaim their traditional forest rights was a dramatic moment in the ‘Chipko Andolan’, a non-violent struggle... Read More →

Farooq Sheikh, an Indian film, theatre and television actor whose style of acting was noted for its effortlessness, was born on 25 March 1948 in Gujarat’s Surat district in a Muslim zamindar family. His father, Mustafa, was a lawyer based in Mumbai. Farooq had four younger siblings. He studied at Mumbai’s St. Mary’s School and St. Xavier’s College. Following his... Read More →

One of the Musical Trinity of Carnatic music, the legendary composer and poet Muthuswami Dikshitar was born on 24 March 1775. Tyagaraja and Syama Sastri are the other members of the Trinity. Carnatic music was transmitted orally for hundreds of years. So students had to rely on a great guru to learn music. The written notation of the music was... Read More →

“Leave sentimentalism aside. Be prepared to face the facts. Revolution is a very difficult task. It is beyond the power of any man to make a revolution. Neither can it be brought about on any appointed date. It is brought about by special environments, social and economic. The function of an organised party is to utilise such an opportunity offered... Read More →