Subject: Modern History

A noted filmmaker has recently announced his decision to produce the biopic of Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair, an acclaimed lawyer and judge in the Madras High Court and one of the early builders of the Indian National Congress.

Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair

• Nair was born in the year 1857 in Mankara village of Malabar’s Palakkad district.
• He belonged to an aristocratic family and his great grandfather was employed by the East India Company to enforce peace in the Malabar region.
• His grandfather was employed as the chief officer under the Civilian Divisional Officer.

His legal career

• Nair was drawn towards Law while he was completing his graduation from Presidency College in Madras.
• After completing his degree in Law, he was hired by Sir Horatio Shepherd who later became the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court.
• Since his early days as a lawyer, Nair was known for his defiant attitude.
• He went against a resolution passed by Indian vakils (advocates) of Madras stating that no Indian vakil would work as a junior to an English barrister.
• His stance on the issue made him so unpopular that he was boycotted by the other vakils, but he refused to let that bother him.

Legacy

• Nair was known for being a passionate advocate for social reforms and a firm believer in the self-determination of India.
• But what really stood out in his long glorious career is a courtroom battle he fought against the Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, Michael O’Dwyer.
• Nair had accused O’Dwyer in his book, ‘Gandhi and anarchy’ for being responsible for the atrocities at the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
• Consequently, he was fighting against an Englishman, in an English court that was presided over by an English jury.
• In all senses, the case was bound to make history.
• When the 1908 Montague-Chelmsford reforms were being discussed, he wrote an article in the Contemporary Review criticizing the English jury for being partial towards Englishmen.
• This infuriated the Anglo-Indian community who petitioned the Viceroy and the Secretary of State for India objecting to his appointment as high court judge the first time.
• He was once described by Edwin Montague, the secretary of state for India as an ‘impossible person’.

Key positions held

• In 1897 he became the youngest president of the INC in the history of the party till then, and the only Malayali to hold the post ever.
• By 1908 he was appointed as a permanent judge in the Madras High Court. In 1902 Lord Curzon appointed him a member of the Raleigh University Commission.
• In 1904 he was appointed as Companion of the Indian Empire by the King-Emperor and in 1912 he was knighted.
• In 1915 he became part of the Viceroy’s Council, put in charge of the education portfolio.

Career as judge

• As a Madras High Court judge, his best-known judgments clearly indicate his commitment to social reforms.
• In Budasna v Fatima (1914), he passed a radical judgement when he ruled that those who converted to Hinduism cannot be treated as outcasts.
• In a few other cases, he upheld inter-caste and inter-religious marriages.

The Prime Minister has paid tribute to the great social reformer, thinker, philosopher and writer Mahatma Jyotiba Phule on his birth anniversary.

Mahatma Phule

• Jotirao Govindrao Phule was an Indian social activist, thinker, anti-caste social reformer and writer from Maharashtra.
• His work extended to many fields, including the eradication of untouchability and the caste system and for his efforts in educating women and exploited caste people.
• He and his wife, Savitribai Phule, were pioneers of women’s education in India. Phule started his first school for girls in 1848 in Pune at Tatyasaheb Bhide’s residence or Bhidewada.
• He, along with his followers, formed the Satyashodhak Samaj (Society of Truth Seekers) to attain equal rights for people from exploited castes.
• People from all religions and castes could become a part of this association which worked for the upliftment of the oppressed classes.
• Phule is regarded as an important figure in the social reform movement in Maharashtra. He was bestowed with an honorific Mahātmā title by Maharashtrian social activist Vithalrao Krishnaji Vandekar in 1888.

His social work

Phule’s social activism included many fields, including the eradication of untouchability and the caste system, education of women and the Dalits, and welfare of downtrodden women.

1. Education

• In 1848, aged 21, Phule visited a girls’ school in Ahmadnagar, run by Christian missionaries.
• He realized that exploited castes and women were at a disadvantage in Indian society, and also that education of these sections was vital to their emancipation
• Phule first taught reading and writing to his wife, Savitribai, and then the couple started the first indigenously run school for girls in Pune.
• The conservative upper caste society of Pune didn’t approve of his work. But many Indians and Europeans helped him generously.

2. Women’s welfare

• Phule watched how untouchables were not permitted to pollute anyone with their shadows and that they had to attach a broom to their backs to wipe the path on which they had travelled.
• He saw young widows shaving their heads, refraining from any sort of joy in their life. He saw how untouchable women had been forced to dance naked.
• He made the decision to educate women by witnessing all these social evils that encouraged inequality.
• He championed widow remarriage and started a home for dominant caste pregnant widows to give birth in a safe and secure place in 1863.
• His orphanage was established in an attempt to reduce the rate of infanticide.
• Along with his longtime friend Sadashiv Ballal Govande and Savitribai, he started an infanticide prevention centre.
• Phule tried to eliminate the stigma of social untouchability surrounding the exploited castes by opening his house and the use of his water-well to the members of the exploited castes.

3. Views on religion and caste

• Phule recast Aryan invasion theory, proposing that the Aryan conquerors of India, were in fact barbaric suppressors of the indigenous people.
• He believed that they had instituted the caste system as a framework for subjugation and social division that ensured the pre-eminence of their Brahmin successors.
• He saw the subsequent Muslim conquests of the Indian subcontinent as more of the same sort of thing, being a repressive alien regime.
• But he considered the British to be relatively enlightened and not supportive of the varnashrama dharma system instigated and then perpetuated by those previous invaders.
• In his book, Gulamgiri, he thanked Christian missionaries and the British colonists for making the exploited castes realise that they are worthy of all human rights.
• His critique of the caste system began with an attack on the Vedas, the most fundamental texts of Hindus. He considered them to be a form of false consciousness.
• He is credited with introducing the Marathi word ‘Dalit’ (broken, crushed) as a descriptor for those people who were outside the traditional varna system.
• He advocated making primary education compulsory in villages. He also asked for special incentives to get more lower-caste people in high schools and colleges.

Satyashodhak Samaj

• On 24 September 1873, Phule formed Satyashodhak Samaj to focus on the rights of depressed groups such as women, the Shudra, and the Dalit.
• Through this the samaj opposed idolatry and denounced the caste system.
• Satyashodhak Samaj campaigned for the spread of rational thinking and rejected the need for priests.
• Phule established Satyashodhak Samaj with the ideals of human well-being, happiness, unity, equality, and easy religious principles and rituals.
• A Pune-based newspaper, Deenbandhu, provided the voice for the views of the Samaj.
• The membership of the samaj included Muslims, Brahmins and government officials. Phule’s own Mali caste provided the leading members and financial supporters for the organization.

Published works

• Tritiya Ratna, 1855
• Manav Mahammand (Muhammad) (Abhang)
• Gulamgiri, 1873
• Sarvajanik Satya Dharma Poostak, April 1889
• Sarvajanic Satya Dharmapustak, 1891

The Prime Minister (in an election campaign) has called 17th-century Ahom General Lachit Borphukan a symbol of India’s “atmanirbhar” military might.

Try this PYQ:

Q.What was the immediate cause for Ahmad Shah Abdali to invade and fight the Third Battle of Panipat:

(a) He wanted to avenge the expulsion by Marathas of his viceroy Timur Shah from Lahore

(b) The frustrated governor of Jullundhar Adina Beg khan invited him to invade Punjab

(c) He wanted to punish Mughal administration for non-payment of the revenues of the Chahar Mahal (Gujrat Aurangabad, Sialkot and Pasrur)

(d) He wanted to annex all the fertile plains of Punjab upto borders of Delhi to his kingdom

Who was Lachit Borphukan?

• The year was 1671 and the decisive Battle of Saraighat was fought on the raging waters of the Brahmaputra.
• On one side was Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s army headed by Ram Singh of Amer (Jaipur) and on the other was the Ahom General Lachit Borphukan.
• He was a commander in the Ahom kingdom, located in present-day Assam.
• Ram Singh failed to make any advance against the Assamese army during the first phase of the war.
• Lachit Borphukan emerged victorious in the war and the Mughals were forced to retreat from Guwahati.

Lachit Diwas

• On 24 November each year, Lachit Divas is celebrated statewide in Assam to commemorate the heroism of Lachit Borphukan.
• On this day, Borphukan has defeated the Mughal army on the banks of the Brahmaputra in the Battle of Saraighat in 1671.
• The best passing out cadet of National Defence Academy has conferred the Lachit gold medal every year since 1999 commemorating his valour.

PM Modi will be on a two-day visit to Bangladesh where he will take part in commemorations of some epochal events there.

Bangabandhu shrine in Tungipara

• Located about 420 kilometres from Dhaka, Tungipara was the place of birth of Rahman, the architect of the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence.
• This is also the place where he lies buried inside a grand tomb called the ‘Bangabandhu mausoleum’.
• Millions of people gather here every year on August 15, to observe the day when Rahman was assassinated by a group of disgruntled army officers.

Harichand Thakur’s shrine in Orakandi

• Thakur was the founder of the Matua Mahasangha, which was a religious reformation movement that originated in Orakandi in about 1860 CE.
• At a very early age, Thakur experienced spiritual revelation, following which he founded a sect of Vaishnava Hinduism called Matua.
• Members of the sect were the namasudras who were considered to be untouchables.
• The objective of Thakur’s religious reform was to uplift the community through educational and other social initiatives.
• Members of the community consider Thakur as God and an avatar of Vishnu or Krishna.
• After the 1947 Partition, many of the Matuas migrated to West Bengal.

‘Sugandha Shaktipith’ (Satipith) temple in Shikarpur

• Modi is also scheduled to visit the Sugandha Shaktipeeth which is located in Shikarpur, close to Barisal.
• The temple, dedicated to Goddess Sunanda is of immense religious significance to Hinduism.
• It is one of the 51 Shakti Pith temples.
• The Shakti Pith shrines are pilgrimage destinations associated with the Shakti (Goddess worship) sect of Hinduism.

Rabindra Kuthi Bari in Kushtia

• The Kuthi Bari is a country house built by Dwarkanath Tagore, the grandfather of Nobel laureate and Bengali poetic giant Rabindranath Tagore.
• The latter stayed in the house for over a decade in irregular intervals between 1891 and 1901.
• In this house Tagore composed some of his masterpieces like Sonar Tari, Katha o Kahini, Chaitali etc. He also wrote a large number of songs and poems for Gitanjali here.
• It was also in this house that Tagore began translating the Gitanjali to English in 1912, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Ancestral home of Bagha Jatin in Kushtia

• Jatindranath Mukherjee, better known as ‘Bagha Jatin’ (tiger Jatin) was a revolutionary freedom fighter.
• He was born in Kayagram, a village in Kushtia district, where his ancestral home is located.
• Jatin acquired the epithet ‘Bagha’ after he fought a Royal Bengal Tiger all by himself and killed it with a dagger.
• Jatin was the first commander-in-chief of the ‘Jugantar Party’ which was formed in 1906 as a central association dedicated to train revolutionary freedom fighters in Bengal.
• This was the period when Bengal was seething with nationalist furore against Lord Curzon’s declaration of Partition of the province.
• Inspired by Jatin’s clarion call, “amra morbo, jagat jagbe” (we shall die to awaken the nation), many young revolutionaries joined the brand of the freedom struggle that the Jugantar Party represented.

His legend:

• Jatin is most remembered for an armed encounter he engaged in with the British police at Balasore in Orissa.
• They were expecting a consignment of arms and funds from Germany to lead an armed struggle when the British found out about the plot and raided the spot where the revolutionaries were hiding. A
• lthough Jatin lost his life in the Battle of Balasore, his activities did have an impact on the British forces.
• The colonial police officer Charles Augustus Tegart wrote about Jatin: “If Bagha Jatin was an Englishman, then the English people would have built his statue next to Nelson’s at Trafalgar Square.”

PM will flag off a commemorative ‘Dandi March’ on March 12 to launch the celebrations of the 75th year of Independence.

Dandi March

• The Dandi March was an act of nonviolent civil disobedience in colonial India led by Mahatma Gandhi.
• The twenty-four day march lasted from 12 March 1930 to 5 April 1930 as a direct action campaign of tax resistance and nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly.
• Another reason for this march was that the Civil Disobedience Movement needed a strong inauguration that would inspire more people to follow Gandhi’s example.
• Growing numbers joined them along the way.
• When Gandhi broke the British Raj salt laws at 6:30 am on 6 April 1930, it sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the salt laws by millions of Indians.

Try this PYQ:

Q. Who of the following organized a March on the Tanjore coast to break the Salt Law in April 1930?

(a) V. O. Chidambaram Pillai

(b) C. Rajagopalachari

(c) K. Kamaraj

(d) Annie Besant

Followed by Dharasana Satyagraha

• After making the salt at Dandi, Gandhi continued southward along the coast, making salt and addressing meetings on the way.
• The INC planned to stage a satyagraha at the Dharasana Salt Works, 40 km south of Dandi.
• However, Gandhi was arrested on the midnight of 4–5 May 1930, just days before the planned action at Dharasana.
• The Dandi March and the ensuing Dharasana Satyagraha drew worldwide attention to the Indian independence movement through extensive newspaper and newsreel coverage.
• The satyagraha against the salt tax continued for almost a year, ending with Gandhi’s release from jail and negotiations with Viceroy Lord Irwin at the Second Round Table Conference.

Its aftermath

• The March to Dandi had a significant influence on American activists Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel, and others during the Civil Rights Movement for African Americans in the 1960s.
• The march was the most significant organised challenge to British authority since the Non-cooperation movement of 1920–22.
• It directly followed the Purna Swaraj declaration of sovereignty and self-rule by the Indian National Congress on 26 January 1930.
• It gained worldwide attention which gave impetus to the Indian independence movement and started the nationwide Civil Disobedience.

The Prime Minister has tweeted tributes to Sri Mannathu Padmanabhan on his death anniversary.

UPSC is digging deeper in the regional freedom movements to get such questions beyond our knowledge base.Try this question from CSP 2020

Q.The Vital Vidhvansak, the first monthly journal to have the untouchable people as its target audience was published by:

(a) Gopal Babu Walangkar

(b) Jyotiba Phule

(c) Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

(d) Bhimarao Ramji Ambedkar

Here, we know something about options b, c and d. So it is less dicey to pull the odd man out.

Mannathu Padmanabhan

• Padmanabhan was an Indian social reformer and freedom fighter from the south-western state of Kerala.
• He is recognised as the founder of the Nair Service Society (NSS), which claims to represent the Nair community that constitutes 12.10% (From KMS 2011) of the population of the state.
• He fought for social equality, the first phase being the Vaikom Satyagraha, demanding the public roads near the temple at Vaikom be opened to low caste Hindus.
• He took part in the Vaikom (1924) and Guruvayoor (1931) temple-entry Satyagrahas; the anti-untouchability agitations. He opened his family temple for everyone, irrespective of caste distinction.
• He became a member of the Indian National Congress in 1946 and took part in the agitation against Sir C. P. Ramaswamy Iyer’s administration in Travancore.
• As the first president of the Travancore Devaswom Board, he revitalised many temples which had almost ceased to function.