Damal
Krishnaswamy Pattammal, born on 19
March1919, popularly known as D. K. Pattammal or DKP, was an
Indian Carnatic musician and a playback singer for film songs in Tamil. Pattammal, along with her
contemporaries M.S. Subbulakshmi and M.L. Vasanthakumari, are popularly
referred to as the female trinity of Carnatic Music. This trio initiated the entry of women
into mainstream Carnatic Music. She has been appreciated all over the world by
Carnatic music lovers.
St. Joseph,
(flourished 1st century CE, Nazareth, Galilee, region of
Palestine; principal feast day March 19, Feast of St. Joseph the Worker
May 1), in the New Testament, Jesus’ earthly father and the Virgin Mary’s
husband. St. Joseph is the patron of the universal church in Roman Catholicism,
and his life is recorded in the Gospels, particularly Matthew and Luke.
Joseph is
the patron saint of the dying because, assuming he died before Jesus' public
life, he died with Jesus and Mary close to him, the way we all would like to
leave this earth.
Joseph is
also patron saint of the Universal Church, families, fathers, expectant mothers
(pregnant women), travelers, immigrants, house sellers and buyers, craftsmen,
engineers, and working people in general.
We
celebrate two feast days for Joseph: March 19 for Joseph the Husband of Mary
and May 1 for Joseph the Worker. March 19 has been the most commonly celebrated
feast day for Joseph, and it wasn't until 1955 that Pope Pius XII
established the Feast of “St. Joseph the Worker” to be celebrated on May 1.
This is also May Day (International Workers' Day) and believed to reflect
Joseph's status as the patron of workers.
Many places
and churches all over the world are named after St. Joseph, including the
Spanish form, San Jose, which is the most commonly named place in the world.
Joseph is considered by many to also be the patron saint of the New World; of
the countries China, Canada, Korea, Mexico, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Peru,
Vietnam; of the regions Carinthia, Styria, Tyrol, Sicily; and of several main
cities and dioceses.
Sydney Harbour Bridge, the steel-arch bridge across Sydney Harbour (Port Jackson), Australia
was formally opened on 19 March 1932. The bridge serves as the primary
transportation link between Sydney and its suburbs on the northern
side of the harbour. It spans about 500 metres (1,650 feet), making it one of
the longest steel-arch bridges in the world. Along its length, it features four
railroad tracks, a highway, and two pedestrian walkways.
In 1912 John Bradfield, a civil engineer with
the New South Wales Department of Public Works, presented plans to Australia’s
parliament for the construction of a bridge over Sydney Harbour, with options
for either a suspension bridge or a cantilever bridge design. He envisioned the
structure as part of an electric railway system for Sydney and its suburbs. The
year after Bradfield submitted his plans, his
cantilever design was accepted, and he was appointed to lead the project. Work
on the bridge was delayed by World War I,
however, and it was not until 1922, with the passage of the Sydney Harbour
Bridge Act, that funding for the project became available. By that time too,
progress in steelmaking had made possible the construction of an arch bridge.
The building contract was awarded to the English
enterprise Dorman Long & Co., which hired Sir Ralph Freeman to perform
detailed design work. The final, approved plan called for a steel-arch bridge
linking Dawes Point on the south with Milsons Point on the north. An arch
bridge was chosen because it was less expensive than a cantilever design and
capable of handling heavier loads. Construction began in 1924 under Bradfield’s
supervision. The deep waters of Sydney Harbour made temporary supports
impractical, so the steel arch was assembled by building out from each bank.
The two sides met in the middle in 1930, and the bridge was officially opened
with an elaborate ceremony on 19 March 1932.
Despite Bradfield’s submission of proposals for the bridge
design, Freeman considered himself to be the bridge’s true designer. The claim
was supported by some authorities, though the controversy was never fully
resolved.
Güyük Khan, born on 19 March 1206 in Mongolia, was the grandson of Genghis
Khan and eldest son and successor of Ögedei,
the first khagan, or
great khan, of the Mongols.
Güyük was elected to the throne in 1246, partly through the manoeuvring
of his mother. He was strongly influenced by Nestorianism, a form of
Christianity considered a heresy by Western Christians, and he favoured
Christian advisers. His election to the throne embittered the conqueror of
Russia, Batu (d. c. 1255),
also a grandson of Genghis. Güyük’s early death, however, prevented the dispute
from tearing the Mongol Empire completely asunder.
Wyatt Earp, an American Frontier lawman was born on 19 March 1848 in Monmouth, Illinois, USA. Earp was a central figure in the legendary shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone. Prior to his time in Tombstone Wyatt had moved around the western boom towns, often getting into trouble, though he served as an assistant city marshal in Dodge City, Kansas.
Elamkulam Manakkal Sankaran Namboodiripad, popularly known as E.M.S., who passed away on March 19, 1998, in Thiruvananthapuram, aged 88, was an Indian communist leader and theorist who served as chief minister of Kerala state from 1957 to 1959 and from 1967 to 1969.
Namboodiripad was born to an
upper-caste Nambdudiri Brahman family in a small village near
Perinthalmanna, in what is now central Kerala. He was initially tutored at home
in Sanskrit scriptures, especially the Rigveda. He then attended a
school founded by the Namboodiri Yogakshema Sabha, a social-reform society that
advocated modernized education and criticized the injustices of the caste
system. Namboodiripad joined the civil disobedience movement launched
by Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi in 1932 and was imprisoned for a year by
the British government.
Namboodiripad became a member
of the Congress Socialist Party in 1934, but he soon shifted to the Communist Party of India (CPI).
He was elected to the party’s central committee in 1941 and to its politburo in
1951. During that period, he played a key role in formulating party doctrine,
and he studied and wrote extensively about the economic and social problems
facing Kerala, which included insufficient agricultural output, high
unemployment, and overpopulation.
Namboodiripad was elected chief minister of Kerala in 1957.
During his tenure he oversaw land reforms, increased salaries for civil
servants, and helped attract new private industrial investment to the state.
His efforts to require private schools to hire teachers from a government list
met with opposition from religious leaders and members of the upper castes, who
feared that schools would be used for communist indoctrination. In 1959 the
national government in Delhi, fearing that communism would
spread beyond Kerala, dismissed the Kerala state government and imposed
presidential rule.
In 1960 Namboodiripad was elected to the Kerala legislative
assembly, where he served as the leader of the opposition. Internal disputes
led to the breakup of the CPI in 1964, and Namboodiripad’s hard-line faction
became the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He won another term as chief
minister in 1967. In 1969 his coalition split, and he resigned as chief
minister to once again become the leader of the opposition in the Kerala
legislative assembly. Although he retired from active political life in 1991,
he continued to write prolifically about politics.
Jivatram Bhagwandas Kripalani, popularly known as Acharya Kripalani, passed away on 19 March 1982, in Ahmadabad, aged 93. He was a prominent Indian educator, social activist, and politician in both pre- and post-independence India, who was a close associate of Mohandas K. Gandhi and a longtime supporter of his ideology. He was a leading figure in the Indian National Congress (Congress Party) during the 1930s and ’40s and later was a founder of the Praja Socialist Party (PSP).
Kripalani was born in Hyderabad (now in Sindh province, Pakistan)
and was raised in the Sindh and Gujarat regions
in a middle-class Hindu family. His father was a minor government official.
He earned a Master's degree in history and economics from
Fergusson College in Pune. In 1912 he embarked on a teaching career.
As a student, Kripalani had
participated in social and political activism. It was during his time as a
teacher that he first encountered Gandhi, and he was associated with Gandhi by 1917, after Gandhi had taken up the cause
of indigo workers in Gujarat. Kripalani subsequently joined
the Congress Party and worked on Gandhi’s ashrams (religious retreats) in
Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Bihar. From 1922 to 1927 he was the principal of Gujarat Vidyapith in Ahmadabad, a school founded by Gandhi, and it was during his tenure there that he acquired the
nickname Acharya (“Teacher”). After 1920 Kripalani also participated in many of
the acts of civil disobedience associated with Indian opposition to
British rule, in the process earning several prison terms.
Kripalani rose to become a senior leader within Congress. His
first major post was as general secretary of the All India Congress Committee
in 1928–29, and from 1934 to 1945 he served as general secretary of the party.
In 1946 he was elected president of the party, but his tenure in that post was
controversial. Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minster, objected to the high level of involvement that Kripalani
wanted the party to play in governing the country. In My Times, his autobiography published posthumously in
2004, Kripalani strongly condemned nearly the entire Congress leadership—Gandhi
being one of the few exceptions—for allowing a united India to be partitioned
in 1947. Late that year he resigned as party president.
While that drama was unfolding, he was a member (1946–47) of India’s interim government and (1946–51) of the Constituent Assembly that drafted the country’s new constitution.. In 1951 Kripalani resigned from Congress, a year after he was defeated in a bid to become president of the party again, and he helped form the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party that in 1952 became the core of the Praja Socialist Party (PSP); he later resigned from the PSP. Also in 1951 he was elected to the Lok Sabha (the lower chamber of the Indian parliament) and won re-election to that chamber in 1957, 1963, and 1967. His only electoral defeats came in 1962, when he lost his seat to V.K. Krishna Menon (then minister of defence), and in 1971, his last bid for public office.
Kripalani was an avowed
follower of Gandhi. After Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, he took upon himself
the task of standard bearer for Gandhian principles in a world he thought was
losing respect for idealism. Kripalani later
included in his autobiography this passage that he had once written to Gandhi,
“I cannot live in the light of the doctrines I have learnt from you. But
intellectually I am convinced that humanity’s salvation lies that way.” He long
championed social and environmental causes and became a spiritual leader of the
socialists in India.
Kripalani was a harsh critic of both Nehru and Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, He opposed Nehru’s policies, which he thought went against the Gandhian ideal of village republics, and he strongly denounced Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian rule as prime minister. In 1972–73 he, Jaya Prakash (or Jayaprakash) Narayan, and other socialist leaders toured the country urging nonviolent protest and civil disobedience against Indira Gandhi’s government. Kripalani was among the first lot of political leaders to be arrested in June 1975 after she had imposed a nationwide state of emergency, but because of his prominence he was only briefly held in custody. Kripalani was the author of several books, including Gandhi: His Life and Thought (1970).
On 19
March 1944, the Azad Hind Fauj led by Colonel Shaukat Malik hoisted
the Tricolour for the first time on Indian soil with the help of
Manipuris like Mairembam Koireng Singh and other Indian National Army (INA)
members in Moirang, Manipur.
Incidentally,
Subhas Chandra Bose as Supreme Commander of Azad Hind Fauj adopted in 1943, a
variant of Purna Swaraj Flag that included the words "AZAD" on the
saffron band on top, "HIND" on the bottom green band and in the
centre white band a 'Springing Tiger' in lieu of Gandhi's 'Charkha's
symbolising INA's strength and their indomitable will to fight.
Moirang was
the headquarters of INA.
On this
event, Bimal Roy, an Indian film director, produced the film 'Pehla Aadmi' in
1950.'
On the
occasion, I share a stamp issued by India Post on 23 January 1964 to
commemorate Subhas Chandra Bose's 67th Birth Anniversary. The postage 55NP
stamp depicts the Nationalist Bose and Indian National Army.
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, born on 19 November 1917, was an Indian politician, stateswoman and a central figure of the Indian National Co...
