On this Day in History

A prominent leader of the independence movement, scholar and symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity, Abul Kalam Muhiyuddin Ahmed Azad, better known as Maulana Azad, was born on November 11, 1888, at Makkah in Saudi Arabia. His father Maulana Khairuddin was a Muslim from Bengal of Afghan origins. His mother was an Arab. The family, which had moved to Saudi Arabia after... Read More →

Known as a “Young Turk” for his outspokenness, Chandra Shekhar became India’s eight Prime Minister on November 10, 1990. A committed socialist, he had a reputation for being blunt and opposed to personality cults. Born in a Hindu Rajput agriculturist family on July 1, 1927 in Ibrahimpatti, a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia district, he secured a Master’s degree from... Read More →

Social reformer Dhondo Keshav Karve, whose pioneering contribution to women’s education in India has rarely been surpassed, died on November 9, 1962. Karve was born on April 18, 1858 at Sheravali in the Khed taluka of Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district in a Chitpavan Brahmin family. From an early age, education was an important aspect of his life. He once walked 110... Read More →

The face of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and one of the most senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Lal Krishna Advani was born on November 8, 1927, in Karachi, Sindh (now in Pakistan). With the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coming to power in 1998–2004, Advani served as Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister under Prime Minister Atal... Read More →

Bipin Chandra Pal, a nationalist politician, renowned orator and writer, was born on November 7, 1858, in Poil, a village in Habiganj District (Sylhet), now a part of Bangladesh, to a wealthy Hindu Kayastha family. He was part of a group of leaders including Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Aurobindo Ghosh, collectively known as ‘militant nationalists’, representing the... Read More →

The shy 23-year-old Indian lawyer who landed in the South African port city of Durban in 1893 was unsure of what the future held for him, and there was little in his personality to suggest that he had the leadership skills to lead a mass movement. Yet, more than 20 years later, when Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi returned to India, he... Read More →

Known at the ‘Bard of Brahmaputra’, Bhupen Hazarika, a singer, poet, musician and more, died on November 5, 2011. One of the greatest cultural icons of Assam, Hazarika, who wrote songs mainly in Assamese, was also a political activist and filmmaker. His songs, known for their themes of humanity and empathy, have been translated into several languages, especially Bengali and... Read More →

Born on November 4, 1925, the Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak got limited recognition in his lifetime, but was hailed as one of the great Indian filmmakers after his death. He was born at Dhaka in East Bengal, which was then a part of India, but in his lifetime became East Pakistan and, then, Bangladesh. Like millions of others, Ghatak too... Read More →

The Times of India (ToI), the world’s largest selling English-language newspaper, was founded at a time when the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar still sat at his throne in Delhi, the seven islands of Bombay had not yet been fully joined, and there was no such thing as the Indian Railways. When it came to life on November 3, 1838,... Read More →

A writer, journalist, politician and union minister, Arun Shourie has worn several hats — and never been far from controversy. Shourie was born on November 2, 1941, in Jalandhar, Punjab, to H. D. Shourie and Dayawanti Devasher, and educated in elite institutions of Delhi — Modern School and St. Stephen’s College. He then studied economics at Syracuse University in the... Read More →