Mother Teresa honoured with the Bharat Ratna

 

On 25 January 1980, Mother Teresa was honoured with India's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna.

Mother Teresa (1910–1997) was a Roman Catholic nun who devoted her life to serving the poor and destitute around the world. She spent many years in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India where she founded the Missionaries of Charity, a religious congregation devoted to helping those in great need. In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and became a symbol of charitable, selfless work. In 2016, Mother Teresa was canonised by the Roman Catholic Church as Saint Teresa.

 

Vijaya Raje Scindia Death Anniversary

 

Vijaya Raje Scindia, passed away on 25 January 2001, was a prominent Indian political personality. In the days of the British Raj, as consort of the last ruling Maharaja of Gwalior, Jivajirao Scindia, she ranked among the highest royal figures of the land. In later life, she became a politician of considerable influence and was elected repeatedly to both houses of the Indian parliament. She was also an active member, for many decades, of the Jana Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

N.M.R. Subbaraman Death Anniversary

 

N. M. R. Subbaraman, passed away on 25 January 1983, was an Indian freedom fighter and politician from Tamil Nadu. He was a member of Parliament from the Madurai constituency (1962–1967). A doyen of Gandhian philosophy and a great freedom fighter N.M.R. Subbaraman was popularly known as ‘Madurai Gandhi’.

He was an ardent follower of Gandhiji and his ideals created a tremendous impact on his life. That is why in 1922, he refused to go to London for higher studies and joined the freedom struggle.

In 1923, he became a primary member of the Madurai District Congress Committee and was elected the President in 1925. He was instrumental in selecting 27 youths from Madurai to participate in the Vedaranyam Salt March in 1930. In the same year, he participated in Toddy Shop picketing along with his wife and courted arrest. He took part in all the Satyagraha Movements of Gandhiji. His belief in Gandhiji’s ideology and programs was firm and unflinching.

He was elected Chairman of Madurai Municipality from 1935 to 1942. He also held positions as a member of the Madras Legislative Assembly before and after independence. He was elected to the Lok Sabha from Madurai Constituency from 1962 to 1967.

He was deeply committed to the cause of the emancipation of Harijans. His work among Harijans to bring them into the mainstream of socio-political life is an example of his genuine concerns for their plight and his relentless efforts to ameliorate their miseries. Through Tamilnadu Harijan Sevak Sangh, a unit of all India Harijan Sevak Sangh founded by Gandhiji, N.M.R. Subbaraman was instrumental in establishing a chain of Harijan Hostels.

N.M.R. Subbaraman also got deeply involved in the Bhoodan Movement started by Vinobaji and donated 100 acres of land.

N.M.R. Subbaraman was the Secretary of the Gandhi Works publications Committee, which brought out Gandhiji’s works in Tamil in 17 volumes and many other unique publications. When Madurai University was established in Madurai, N.M.R. Subbaraman was a Member of the First Senate of the University. He was instrumental in the introduction of a course on Gandhian thoughts for the first time in the country. He was instrumental in establishing the first Gandhi Museum in the country at Madurai. He was also the Chairman of Gandhi Niketan Ashram at T. Kallupatti near Madurai. He was closely associated with Gandhi Gram in Madurai.

M.N. Roy Death Anniversary

 

Manabendra Nath Roy known better as M.N. Roy, who passed away on 25 January 1954, was a leader of India’s communists until the independence of India in 1947.

His interest in social and political issues eventually led to involvement with various Indian groups engaged in trying to overthrow British colonial rule by acts of terrorism. In 1915 he became involved in a plot by Bengal revolutionaries to smuggle arms into India. The plot failed, and he vainly searched for the needed arms among various countries of East and Southeast Asia. In 1916 he reached San Francisco, Calif., where he changed his name to Manabendra Nath Roy.

Moving to Mexico, Roy helped found the Mexican Communist Party soon after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. In Moscow he made a favourable impression on Russian communist leader, Vladimir Ilich Lenin and was put on the executive committee of the Communist International (Comintern).

Breaking with the Comintern in 1929 over the policies of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Roy tried to return secretly to India but was arrested by the British and imprisoned. He was released a few years later and joined the Indian National Congress. Giving higher immediate priority to the defeat of fascism than to Indian independence, Roy opposed the Congress in its reluctance to aid the British in World War II. After India gained independence in 1947, Roy abandoned communism and became a founder of radical humanism, a mixture of socialist and liberal humanitarian ideas.

Robert Boyle Birth Anniversary

 

Robert Boyle, born on 25 January 1627, was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher and theological writer, a preeminent figure of 17th-century intellectual culture. He was best known as a natural philosopher, particularly in the field of chemistry, but his scientific work covered many areas including hydrostatics, physics, medicine, earth sciences, natural history, and alchemy.

Known for the law of gases, Boyle was a 17th-century pioneer of modern chemistry. Every general-chemistry student learns of Robert Boyle as the person who discovered  that the volume of gas decreases with increasing pressure and vice versa - the famous Boyle's law. 

His prolific output also included Christian devotional and ethical essays and theological tracts on biblical language, the limits of reason, and the role of the natural philosopher as a Christian. He sponsored many religious missions as well as the translation of the Scriptures into several languages. In 1660 he helped found the Royal Society of London.

Michael Madhusudan Datta Birth Anniversary

 

Michael Madhusudan Datta, born on 25 January 1824, was a popular 19th-century Bengali poet and dramatist, the first great poet of modern Bengal literature.

Datta was adynamic, erratic, erratic personality and an original genius of a high order. He was educated at the Hindu College, Calcutta, the cultural home of the Western-educated Bengali middle class. In 1843 he became a Christian.

His early compositions were in English, but they were unsuccessful and he turned, reluctantly at first, to Bengali. His principal works, written mostly between 1858 and 1862, include prose drama, long narrative poems, and lyrics. His first play, Sarmistha (1858), based on an episode of the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahābhārata, was well received. His poetical works are Tilottamasambhab (1860), a narrative poem on the story of Sunda and Upasunda; Meghnadbadh (1861), his most important composition, an epic on the Rāmāyaṇa theme; Brajangana (1861), a cycle of lyrics on the Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa theme; and Birangana (1862), a set of 21 epistolary poems on the model of Ovid’s Heroides.

Datta experimented ceaselessly with diction and verse forms, and it was he who introduced amitraksar (a form of blank verse with run-on lines and varied caesuras), the Bengali sonnet—both Petrarchan and Shakespearean—and many original lyric stanzas.

Ramabai Ranade Birth Anniversary

 

A 19th-century Indian feminist who fought for women’s freedoms, trained them in public speaking, teaching, and weaving, Ramabai Ranade played a monumental role in bringing women into the public space — just like Savitribai Phule and Fatima Sheikh did. And yet, M.K. Gandhi called Ramabai the embodiment of “all that a Hindu widow could be”.

Born on 25 January 1862 in Maharashtra’s Sangli district, Ramabai’s world was one in which the feminist movement still lacked spark. Under social, religious, and community constraints, very few women could stand up for chickenfeed privileges, let alone gain education or work. But Ramabai, with her steely strength, could expand her horizon beyond her small village of Devrashtre.

She joined the Indian female suffrage movement, chaired the first India Women Conference in 1904, and raised her voice for the rights of Indian labourers in Fiji and Kenya. She now rests in history books as the first woman to write an autobiography in the Marathi language titled Amchya Ayushyatil Kahi Athavani.

Breaking orthodoxy 

Where Raja Ram Mohan Roy was raising a cry against the practices of sati and child marriage in Bengal, Ramabai Ranade found sanctuary with Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade, whom she was married to at the tender age of 11. The latter, called ‘The Prince of Graduates’, was known for leading the social reform movement in Maharashtra.

Their early marriage laid the foundation for their idealist philosophy — Ramabai, an illiterate wife, was set on the path to a robust education and training, despite the opposition from their family. A true feminist ally, Govind Ranade sent a young Ramabai to school, where she learnt to be fluent in Marathi, English, and Bengali.

The new ‘Indian Woman’ 

At the age of 18, Ramabai joined the Prarthana Samaj — founded by her husband — a liberal hub for 19th-century Maharashtra. Acknowledging how important rituals and religion were for the women around her, Ramabai’s gatherings were far from didactic, straight-jacketing lectures that lacked spirit.

What she added to the Prarthana Samaj was an element of community harmony, celebration, and inter-cultural unison. Her gatherings involved the Marathi tradition of halad kunku, a festival where women apply turmeric and vermillion to each other and sing kirtans, popularised in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film Bajirao Mastani (2015). Through these rituals, Ramabai was able to teach them about the importance of education and also train them in skills like public speaking.

At the turn of the century, between 1893 and 1901, Ramabai’s Hindu Ladies Social Club and Literary Club in Bombay became famous for teaching the art of public speaking, sewing and weaving to women. In essence, she became India’s ‘new woman’ — an eclectic mix of sophisticated modernity and traditional belonging.

Seva Sadan, a legacy 

By the time Florence Nightingale passed away in 1910, Ramabai was taking shape as India’s own pioneer nurse.

Her legacy is perhaps best represented by the Seva Sadan Society, which she founded in 1909 in Poona. The organisation stands strong more than a century later, with a message inscribed on its website that says, “The girl child is often neglected and deprived of a normal childhood, including her right to education and a life of equal opportunity.”

Ramabai’s Seva Sadan Nursing and Medical Association started with a simple question put to other women, “Don’t you have a father or brother in your house? When you are sick, don’t you take care of them? Then why don’t you see father or brother among male patients?”

From that point onwards, Ramabai was successful in training women as nurses and serving patients with utmost dedication.

Ramabai today 

Ramabai Ranade’s relevance has seeped into popular culture in multiple ways. On 15 August 1962, the Indo-Australian Post issued a stamp picturing Ramabai on her birth centenary for her contribution to women’s rights and social activities. In 2012, Zee Marathi aired a TV series named Unch Maaza Zoka based on her life.

Ramabai’s contributions to the women’s movement in India can hardly be relegated as fringe elements of history. With other feminist stalwarts like Pandita Ramabai and Tarabai Shinde, she stands tall.

National Voters' Day - India

 

The National Voters’ Day is celebrated every year in India on January 25 to encourage the country’s voters to participate in the electoral process. This year, it is the 14th edition which is being celebrated.

The first-ever National Voter's Day was celebrated on January 25, 2011, to encourage more young voters to take part in the electoral process where the Union Government, then led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Had approved a proposal to the law ministry to this effect. Former information and broadcasting minister Ambika Soni at that time had pointed out that the new voters who had attained the age of 18 were showing less interest in getting enrolled in the electoral rolls.

To address this issue, the Election Commission decided to launch a nationwide effort to identify all eligible voters who reach the age of 18 on January 1, of each year, in all polling stations across India. Such voters would be enrolled and be given the Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) on January 25 every year.

Himachal Pradesh Full Statehood Day

Parliament on December 18, 1970, had passed the State of Himachal Pradesh Act and the new state came into being on January 25, 1971. Thus, Himachal Pradesh emerged as the 18th state of India.

Himachal Pradesh celebrated the Golden Jubilee of its Statehood on January 25, 2021. On the occasion, India Post released a commemorative postage stamp.

Himachal Pradesh is a northern Indian state in the Himalayas. It is home to scenic mountain towns and resorts such as Dalhousie. Host to the Dalai Lama, Himachal Pradesh has a strong Tibetan presence. This is reflected in its Buddhist temples and monasteries, as well as its vibrant Tibetan New Year celebrations. The region is also known for its trekking, climbing and skiing areas.

National Tourism Day - India

 

Every year, India celebrates National Tourism Day on January 25. The day is dedicated to raise awareness and promote tourism for the economic and financial growth and development of the country.

India is considered as one of the best tourist destinations in the world due to its rich cultural heritage, natural beauty, eco-tourism, and mythological heritage.

It is unclear when National Tourism Day in India began. Although in 1948, a Tourism Traffic Group was constituted to promote tourism and in 1958, a department was created by the Ministry of Tourism and Communication. It can be deduced that the Government of India started to celebrate National Tourism Day ever since.