On this Day in History

Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru and founder of the Khalsa, was born on December 22, 1666, in Patna in present-day Bihar, to Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh Guru, and Mata Gujri. Guru Gobind Singh was called Gobind Rai as a child and studied Hindi, Sanskrit, Punjabi and Persian. In 1672 Guru Tegh Bahadur took his family to... Read More →

A Bollywood actor whose comic timing helped him ride a wave of popularity in the 1990s particularly when teaming up with director David Dhawan, Govinda was born on December 21, 1963, in Virar, a suburb of Mumbai. His father Arun Ahuja was also associated with the film industry.  Govinda made his debut in the 1986 film ‘Ilzaam’ and worked in... Read More →

By leading his party to its third straight victory in the 2012 Gujarat assembly elections, with him at the helm, Narendra Modi paved the way for his appointment as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate for prime minister in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The controversial but charismatic Gujarat chief minister was born on September 17, 1950, at Vadnagar in... Read More →

Pratibha Devisingh Patil, the 12th President of India and the first woman to hold the office, was born on December 19, 1934, at Nadgaon village in Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district. After completing her basic education, she secured a Master’s degree in Political Science and Economics from Jalgaon and a law degree from Mumbai. She practiced law at the Jalgaon District Court. ... Read More →

When India became a free nation, Portugal continued to hold on to Goa, Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. With Portugal unwilling to give up its control over these enclaves, the Indian government eventually authorised its military to launch an operation to take over Goa, and Daman and Diu. After the December 18-19, 1961 military action by India,... Read More →

On December 17, 1927, the revolutionaries Bhagat Singh and Shivaram Rajguru shot and killed assistant superintendent of police John Saunders. They were supported in this act by their compatriots Sukhdev Thapar and Chandrashekhar Azad. However, their original target was not Saunders but superintendent of police James Scott who had ordered his men to lathi-charge protesters leading to the death of... Read More →

‘Jai Bangla! Jai Bangla!’ From the banks of the great Ganges and the broad Brahmaputra, from the emerald rice fields and mustard-coloured hills of the countryside, from the countless squares of countless villages came the cry. ‘Victory toBengal! Victory to Bengal!’ They danced on the roofs of buses and marched down city streets singing their anthem Golden Bengal . .... Read More →

One of the founding fathers of the Indian Republic, Sardar Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel was born on October 31, 1875. At the cusp of independence and just after it as the first union home minister, he played a vital role in integratingIndiainto a united country. He died on December 15, 1950. Patel’s place of birth, Karamsad, was a village in Bombay... Read More →

Known as the greatest showman of Indian cinema, actor, director and producer Raj Kapoor was born on December 14, 1924, in Peshawarto Prithviraj, an actor himself, and Ramsarni Devi. He got his first film role at the age of 11 in ‘Inquilab’. The 1947 film ‘Neel Kamal’ is considered to be the first time he played a major lead role.... Read More →

A brilliant actresses known for her portrayal of strong female characters in Indian parallel cinema in the 1970s and 1980s, Smita Patil had a lot more to offer art and cinema when her life was cut short at the tragically young age of 31. But in the little over a decade that she acted in films, she left a permanent... Read More →