The document provides brief biographies of 15 Indian leaders who played important roles in India's independence movement and the drafting of the Indian constitution:
- Vallabhbhai Patel, Abul Kalam Azad, T. T. Krishnamachari, Rajendra Prasad, Jaipal Singh, Harendra Coomar Mookerjee, Durgabai Deshmukh, Baldev Singh, Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi, B. R. Ambedkar, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, Somnath Lahiri.
Many of these leaders served as ministers
2. Vallabhbhai Patel
Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel (Hindi pronunciation:
[ əlləb b a i pə e l] ( listen)) (31 October 1875 –ʋ ˈ ʱ ː ˈʈ ː
15 December 1950) was an Indian barrister and
statesman, one of the leaders of the Indian
National Congress and one of the founding fathers
of the Republic of India. He was a social leader
who played a leading role in the country's struggle
for independence and guided its integration into a
united, independent nation. In India and
elsewhere, he was often addressed as Sardar,
which means Chief in Hindi, Urdu and Persian.
3. Abul Kalam Azad
Abul Kalam Muhiyuddin Ahmed Azad (11 November 1888 –
22 February 1958) was an Indian scholar and a senior
political leader of the Indian independence movement.
Following India's independence, he became the first
Minister of Education in the Indian government. In 1992
he was posthumously awarded India's highest civilian
award, the Bharat Ratna.[1] There is also a theory which
suggests that earlier when he was offered Bharat Ratna he
promptly declined it saying that it should not be given to
those who have been on the selection committee. Later he
was awarded posthumously in 1992. He is commonly
remembered as Maulana Azad; the word Maulana is an
honorific meaning 'learned man', and he had adopted Azad
(Free) as his pen name. His contribution to establishing the
education foundation in India is recognised by celebrating
his birthday as "National Education Day" across India
4. T. T. Krishnamachari
Tiruvellore Thattai Krishnamachari (1899–1974) was the
Indian Finance Minister from 1956–1958 and from 1964-
1966. He was also a founding member of the first
Governing Body of NCAER, the National Council of
Applied Economic Research in New Delhi,India’s first
independent economic policy institute established in 1956.
Krishnamachari graduated from Madras Christian College
(MCC) and was a visiting professor to the department of
economics at MCC. He was popularly known as TTK. He
has the ignominy of being the first minister in free India to
have resigned due to his involvement in a scam.[1] He was
also a member of drafting committee, an entrepreneur and
congress leader.
5. Rajendra Prasad
Rajendra Prasad ; 3 December 1884 – 28 February 1963) was
the first President of the Republic of India.[1] An Indian
political leader, lawyer by training, Prasad joined the
Indian National Congress during the Indian independence
movement and became a major leader from the region of
Bihar. A supporter of Mahatma Gandhi, Prasad was
imprisoned by British authorities during the Salt
Satyagraha of 1931 and the Quit India movement of 1942.
Prasad served one term as President of the Indian National
Congress from 1934 to 1935. After the 1946 elections,
Prasad served as minister of food and agriculture in the
central government. Upon independence in 1947, Prasad
was elected president of the Constituent Assembly of
India, which prepared the Constitution of India and served
as its provisional parliament.
6. Jaipal Singh
Jaipal Singh Munda (January 3, 1903 – March 20, 1970) was
a Munda tribal man, who captained the Indian field hockey
team to clinch gold in the 1928 Summer Olympics in
Amsterdam. He is well known for his sportsmanship and
political skills.
Later he emerged as a sole leader of Adivasi cause and
creation of a separate home land for adivasis of central
India. As a member of the Constituent Assembly of India
he actively campaigned for the rights of the scheduled
tribes.
His dream came true on November 15, 2000, when Jharkhand
was carved out of Bihar.He is popularly known as "Marang
Gomke" which means the Great Leader. This name was
given to him by the tribal people of Chota nagpur region.
7. Harendra Coomar Mookerjee
Harendra Coomar Mookerjee (1887–1956), also spelt as H.C.
Mookherjee or H.C. Mukherjee or H.C. Mukerji or H.C.
Mukerjee, was the Vice-president of the Constituent
Assembly of India for drafting the Constitution of India
before Partition of India, and the first Governor of West
Bengal after India became a republic with partition into
India and Pakistan. He was an educationalist, prominent
Christian leader of Bengal, and was the chairman of the
Minority rights committee and Provincial constitution
committee of the Constituent Assembly—consisting of
indirectly elected representatives to draft the Constitution
of India, including for provinces of present Pakistan and
Bangladesh(then-East Bengal) - the assembly considered
only Muslims and Sikhs as religious minorities - after
India became republic, the same Constituent Assembly
became the first Parliament of India in 1947.
8. Durgabai Deshmukh
Durgābāi, Deshmukh (July 15, 1909 – May 9, 1981) was an
Indian freedom fighter, lawyer, social worker and
politician. She was a member of the Constituent Assembly
of India and the Planning Commission of India.
Born in Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh, India. Durgabai was
married at the age of 14 to a Telugu person, later left and
married C.D. Deshmukh, the first Indian Governor of the
Reserve Bank of India and Finance Minister in India's
Central Cabinet during 1950 - 1956. She was a public
activist for women's emanicipation and was also the
founder of Andhra Mahila Sabha. She was also the founder
chairperson of central social welfare board.
9. Baldev Singh
Baldev Singh was an Indian Sikh political leader, he was an
Indian independence movement leader and the first
Defence Minister of India. Moreover, he represented the
Punjabi Sikh community in the processes of negotiations
that resulted in the independence of India, as well as the
Partition of India in 1947.
After independence, Baldev Singh was chosen to become as
the first Minister of Defence, and served in this post during
the first Kashmir war between India and Pakistan. He is
addressed often with the title of Sardar, which in Punjabi
and Hindi means Leader or Chief.
10. Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi
Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi, (30 December 1887 –
8 February 1971) popularly known as Kulpati Dr.
K. M. Munshi, was an Indian independence
movement activist, politician, writer and
educationist from Gujarat state. A lawyer by
profession, he later turned to literature and
politics. He was a well known name in Gujarati
literature. He founded Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, an
educational trust, in 1938.
11. B. R. Ambedkar
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar ; 14 April 1891 – 6 December
1956), popularly known as Babasaheb, was an Indian
jurist, politician and social reformer who inspired the
Modern Buddhist Movement and campaigned against
social discrimination in India, striving for equal social
rights for Dalits, women and labour. He was independent
India's first law minister and the principal architect of the
Constitution of India.In 1990, Ambedkar was
posthumously conferred with the Bharat Ratna, India's
highest civilian award.[4] Present day India had various
followers of Ambedkar and numerous memorials have
been erected in his memory.
12. Syama Prasad Mookerjee
Syama Prasad Mookerjee (6 July 1901 – 23 June 1953) was
an Indian politician, who served as Minister for Industry
and Supply in Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's cabinet.
After falling out with Nehru, Mookerjee quit the Indian
National Congress party and founded the nationalist
Bharatiya Jana Sangh party in 1951.To voice his
opposition he turned outside Parliament and on Kashmir he
termed the arrangement under Article 370 as Balkanisation
of India and three nation theory of Shaikh Abdullah.
Bharatiya Jana Sangh along with Hindu Mahasabha and
Ram Rajya Parishad launched a massive Satyagraha to get
removed the pernicious provisions. Mookerjee went to
visit Kashmir in 1953 and was arrested on 11th May while
crossing border. He died as detenu on June 23, 1953.
13. Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was
the first Prime Minister of India and a central figure in
Indian politics for much of the 20th century. He emerged
as the paramount leader of the Indian independence
movement under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi and
ruled India from its establishment as an independent nation
in 1947 until his death in office in 1964. Nehru is
considered to be the architect of the modern Indian nation-
state: a sovereign, socialist, secular, and democratic
republic. The Constitution of India was enacted in 1950,
after which he embarked on an ambitious program of
economic, social and political reforms. Chiefly, he
oversaw India's transition from a monarchy to a republic,
while nurturing a plural, multi-party democracy
14. Sarojini Naidu
Sarojini Naidu, born as Sarojini Chattopadhyay also known
by the sobriquet as The Nightingale of India, was a child
prodigy, Indian independence activist and poet. Naidu
served as the first governor of the United Provinces of
Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949; the first woman to
become the governor of an Indian state. She was the
second woman to become the president of the Indian
National Congress in 1925 and the first Indian woman to
do so.In 1925, Naidu presided over the annual session of
Indian National Congress at Cawnpore (now Kanpur). In
1929, she presided over East African Indian Congress in
South Africa. She was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal
by the British government for her work during the plague
epidemic in India.
15. Somnath Lahiri
Somnath Lahiri (1901–1984)[1] was an Indian statesman and
a leader of Communist Party of India. He was a member of
Constituent Assembly of India from Bengal and later
served as a Member West Bengal legislative assembly.A
brilliant student of chemistry, Lahairi did not study beyond
graduation. The life unbound called him to its struggles. Its
waves engulfed him. The scion of a renaissance family
became a Marxist-Leninist, never saving a single rupee as
bank balance, never purchasing a house or a piece of land.
Somnath Lahiri remained perpetually poor, and proudly
declared that he wanted to remain so. Thus, in our mind’s
eye, he attains a titanic stature. He died in 1984.
![Vallabhbhai Patel
Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel (Hindi pronunciation:
[ əlləb b a i pə e l] ( listen)) (31 October 1875 –ʋ ˈ ʱ ː ˈʈ ː
15 December 1950) was an Indian barrister and
statesman, one of the leaders of the Indian
National Congress and one of the founding fathers
of the Republic of India. He was a social leader
who played a leading role in the country's struggle
for independence and guided its integration into a
united, independent nation. In India and
elsewhere, he was often addressed as Sardar,
which means Chief in Hindi, Urdu and Persian.](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)