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Hijli Detention Camp (now called Shaheed Bhavan, IIT Kharagpur), is a former detention camp operated during the period of British colonial rule in India.[2] Located in Hijli, beside Kharagpur, (a part of former Hijli Kingdom) in the district of Midnapore West, West Bengal, India, it played a significant role in the Indian independence movement of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The large numbers of those who participated in armed struggles or the non-cooperation movement against the British could not be accommodated in ordinary jails. The British colonial government decided to establish a few detention camps; the first one was located in Buxa Fort followed by the creation of Hijli Detention Camp in 1930. A significant moment in the Indian independence movement occurred at here in 1931 when two unarmed detainees, Santosh Kumar Mitra and Tarakeswar Sengupta, were shot dead by the Indian Imperial Police. Subhas Chandra Bose came to Hijli to collect their bodies for interment. Many Indian nationalists, including Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, voiced strong protests against the British Raj over this incident. The firing which later known as "Hijli firing" is the only incident of police firing inside a detention camp.

The detention camp was closed in 1937 and was reopened in 1940. In 1942 it was closed for the final time and the detainees were transferred elsewhere. During the Second World War it was occupied by the US Air Force.

Today, the camp is also known for being the birthplace of Indian Institute of Technology - Kharagpur, which started in 1951. In 1990, a part of the former detention camp buildings were converted to house the Nehru Museum of Science and Technology.

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In 1927, the British government appointed the Simon Commission to propose constitutional reforms for India. But the Indian leaders of the nationalist movement were irked by the absence of Indian members in the Commission. Responding to their displeasure, the British challenged the Indians to prove that they could draw up a constitution themselves. Leaders of the nationalist movement, thus formed a committee and drafted the Nehru Report in 1928.

The leaders set up an All Parties Conference including representatives from the All India Liberal Federation, All India Muslim League, Sikh Central League and others. Some of the notable members of this Committee were: Motilal Nehnu, Sir Ali Imam, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Subash Chandra Bose. M.R. Jayakar and Annie Besant.

The Committee met at Delhi in January 1928, but a political consensus could not be reached. The second meeting of the All Parties Conference was held in March the same year, but the leaders still had their differences. The differences primarily arose over the electoral rights of the minorities. The Muslim League demanded separate electorate for Muslims, which was opposed by other groups. It was only during the third session of the All Parties Conference held at Bombay in May 1928 that a seven member-committee under the chairmanship of Motilal Nehru came up with the features of the Constitution.

The Nehru Report was presented in the fourth session of the All Parties Conference held in August 1928. It appealed for a new dominion status (India would be a self-governing nation of the British Empire) and a federal set-up of government for the Constitution of India. It also proposed for the Joint Electorates with reservation of seats for minorities in the legislatures.

Other notable features included a section on fundamental rights: the right to free expression, equality before the law, right to bear arms, freedom of conscience, free profession, free propagation of religion and most importantly the right to free and elementary education.

As we read on Page 15, the proposal for dominion status was squashed with the demand for 'Complete Independence at the Lahore Session in 1929 and soon Poorna Swaraj became the war cry. However, India was a dominion state until 1950, when it became a Republic.

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The Muslim League leaders rejected the Nehru Report proposals. Mohammad Ali Jinnah of the League drafted his Fourteen Points in 1929 to safeguard the political rights of Muslims in a self-governing India.

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There was much violence, and many Muslims from what would become India fled to Pakistan; and Hindus and Sikhs from what would become Pakistan fled to India. Many people left behind all their possessions and property to avoid the violence and flee to their new country.

On 4 June 1947, Mountbatten held a press conference in which he addressed the question of the princely states, of which there were over 565. The treaty relations between Britain and the Indian States would come to an end, and on 15 August 1947 the suzerainty of the British Crown was to lapse. They would be free to accede to one or the other of the new dominions contrary to popular beliefs independence was never an option for the princely states as per the Mountbatten plan.

Princely states had no option to remain independent.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah became the Governor-General of Pakistan, and Liaquat Ali Khan became the Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Between October 1947 and March 1948 the rulers of several Muslim-majority states signed instruments of accession to join Pakistan. These included Amb, Bahawalpur, Chitral, Dir, Kalat, Khairpur, Kharan, Las Bela, Makran, and Swat.

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The legislature representatives of the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League, and the Sikh community came to an agreement with Lord Mountbatten on what has come to be known as the 3 June Plan or Mountbatten Plan. This plan was the last plan for independence.

In February, 1947, Lord Mountbatten was sent as the Viceroy to India to ensure early transfer of power. He put up his plan on June 3, 1947 which included partition of India. Following the Mountbatten Plan, June 3, 1947, India was made free, but by partitioning India the new state of Pakistan was created.

Seeing the kind of communal tension created in the name of religion, the Congress leaders thought it beneficial for the larger interest of humanity to accept the decision of partition. On 15 August 1947, India attained freedom.

To perform this job, George VI, King of the United Kingdom and the Emperor of British India, sent his cousin Lord Louis Francis Albert Victor “Dickie” Mountbatten to India as his last viceroy. 

Earl Louis Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy and the Governor-General of India, who arrived in India on March 22, 1947, had his task cut out – to liquidate the British empire and quit India as soon as possible. Initially, he was given time until June 1948 – not 1947 – to complete his mission. But, in a hurry to get back to Britain to advance his naval career, Dickey decided to prepone the transfer of power by ten months, to August 1947. To achieve this, he worked out a plan after having long discussions with Congress and the Muslim League leaders.

As Mountbatten’s efforts to keep India united failed and with increasing communal riots in the country, he asked Ismay, his Chief of Staff, to prepare a plan for the transfer of power to responsible hands and the division of the country. It was discussed that the entire plan was to be kept secretive, and none of the parties in India should have any information before the plan was finalised.

However, even before the announcement of the plan, Jawaharlal Nehru, who was staying with Mountbatten as a guest at his residence at Simla, had a look at the plan, who rejected the plan in totality. Mountbatten then asked VP Menon, the only Indian working in his personal staff, to present a new plan for transferring power.

Later, Mountbatten went to London, where he got it approved without any alteration. Attlee and his cabinet approved in a meeting that lasted not more than five minutes. On May 31, Mountbatten returned to India and met the Indian leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Acharya Kripalani, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Liaqat Ali, and Baldev Singh. After both Congress and Muslim League leaders approved the plan without raising any objections. Later, Mountbatten discussed it with Gandhi and convinced him saying partition was the best plan under the circumstances.

Credit : OpIndia

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On August 21, 1907, almost 40 years before India gained independence and officially adopted the national flag, a tricolour was introduced to the world as the flag of independent India. Bhikaiji Rustom Cama or simply Madam Cama had the unique distinction of unfurling India's first version of the national flag on a foreign soil. Speaking at the International Socialist Conference at Stuttgart, Germany, Madam Cama urged the people to stand and salute the flag. She said, "Behold, the flag of independent India is born! It has been made sacred by the blood of young Indians who sacrificed their lives in its honour. In the name of this flag, I appeal to lovers of freedom all over the world to support this struggle." The flag was designed by Cama and Shyamji Krishna Varma, an Indian patriot from London.

Born to a wealthy family in Bombay (Mumbai), Bhikaiji was drawn towards political and social issues at an early age. She involved herself in social work. Cama left India for London when she required medical attention post the bubonic plague attack.

After recovery, she continued to stay in England and worked for Indian independence by mobilising public opinion against the British rule in India. She worked alongside leaders such as Dadabhai Naoroji, Lala Har Dayal and Varma.

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In the flag co-designed by Madam Cama, the top green stripe had eight lotuses representing pre-independent India's eight provinces. ‘Bande Mataram’ was written across the central saffron stripe in Hindi. The bottom red stripe had a half moon on the right and a sun on the left, indicating the Hindu and Muslim faiths.

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The Lahore Session of 1929 was an important event in the history of freedom struggle. It was at this session, which opened on December 29, 1929, that the Indian National Congress voted for ‘Poorna Swaraj’ or complete independence against a dominion status that was being mooted. The goal of the freedom struggle had been fixed. It was complete independence. Nothing less, nothing more.

Under the new leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress party passed a resolution fixing January 26, 1930 as the Complete Independence Day of India. Nehru read the pledge, “We believe that it is the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the necessities of life, so that they may have full and opportunities of growth. We believe also that if any government deprives a people of these rights and oppresses them the people have a further right to alter it or abolish it…”

On the midnight of December 31, 1929, standing on the bank of the river Ravi, Jawaharlal Nehru raised the "swaraj" flag that was later adopted as the national flag of India.

It was decided to launch the civil disobedience movement against the British during the Lahore Session. The session also saw the emergence of Jawaharlal Nehru as a prominent leader the Indian independence movement.

Though India, eventually, got Independence from the British on August 15, 1947, due to its symbolic importance, the date January 26' was chosen as the day the Constitution of an independent India would come into effect in 1950.

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The design of the Swaraj Flag that Nehru unfurled during the Lahore Session consisted of horizontal tribands of saffron, white, and green with a spinning wheel in the centre. When the National Flag of India was adopted, the charkha was replaced by the Ashoka Chakra representing the eternal wheel of law.

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Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav (January 15, 1926 – August 14, 1984) was an Indian athlete. He is best known as a wrestler who won a bronze medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He was the first athlete from independent India to win an individual medal in the Olympics.

Khashaba, who had no experience of mat wrestling, won five rounds in the bantamweight section at Helsinki to meet Japan’s Shohachi Ishii and lost by a point in a 15 minutes bout. Ishii later went on to win the gold. Immediately after this match, Jadhav was asked to fight with Soviet Union’s Rashid Mammadbeyov.

As per the rules, Jadhav should have got 30 minutes to break after the bout, but Indian officials who went with the Indian delegation were not present on the spot to present his case. He lost to Mammadbeyov, who reached the final and Jadhav had to content with bronze.

Khashaba met with a road accident and succumbed to injuries in 1984, and the government recognized his contribution only in 2001 by awarding him Arjuna Award posthumously. But even this award came after series of agitations by villagers. Villagers have been demanding Padma Award for Jadhav.

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Born in 1889 in a small village in Midnapore district (now in West Bengal), Khudiram Bose was drawn towards revolutionary activities from a rather young age after being inspired by public lectures delivered by Sri Aurobindo and sister Nivedita.

After actively participating in protests following the partition of Bengal, Bose joined organisations behind revolutionary activities and learnt how to make bombs.

Along with another revolutionary, Prafulla Chaki, Bose was tasked with the assassination of a British judge, Douglas Kingsford. Kingsford had earned the ire of the revolutionaries following his clamping down on revolutionaries.

In April 1908, Bose and Chaki threw a bomb on a carriage that they suspected carried Kingsford. Kingsford, however, was not in the carriage. Those in the carriage - the wife and daughter of another barrister named Pringley Kennedy - died.

Bose was arrested in a railway station called Waini, a place he had reached by walking 40 km. While Chaki killed himself to avoid being arrested, Bose went through a trial before being eventually executed in August 1908.

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As a teenager who was executed, Khudiram Bose is among the youngest revolutionary freedom fighters to have been executed.

Unaware that Prafulla Chaki had shot himself, Bose initially tried to take the entire responsibility for the incident himself in the hope that he could protect Chaki. Only after realising that Chaki had died that Bose revealed that both of them were involved in the event.

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Letters from a Father to His Daughter is a collection of letters written by Jawaharlal Nehru to his daughter Indira Priyadarshini, originally published in 1929 by Allahabad Law Journal Press at Nehru's request and consisting of only the 30 letters sent in the summer of 1928 when Indira was 10 years old. He arranged a second edition in 1931 and subsequently, further reprints and editions have been published with adapted titles, additional letters and prefaces and forewords by Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

The letters were education pieces on the subjects of natural and human history. At the time of the letter's writing, Nehru was in Allahabad, while Indira was in Mussoorie. While original letters written by Nehru were in English, they were translated into Hindi by the Hindi novelist Munshi Premchand under the name Pita Ke Patra Putri Ke Naam. In 2014 was edited a Cuban translation to Spanish of this book, using the tile "Cartas a mi hija Indira" (Letters to my daughter Indira), performed by Rodolfo Zamora. In that edition, other 5 letters were published. An amplified new edition was released in 2018, also in Cuba, honoring the 100th anniversary of the correspondence between Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

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Children’s Day is celebrated each year on the birth anniversary of India’s first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, which falls on November 14. On this day, many educational and motivational programmes are held across India for children which advocate for their rights.

Before 1964, India celebrated Children’s Day on November 20 (the United Nations observes it on this day.) However, after the death of Pandit Nehru in 1964, it was decided that his birthday be celebrated as Children’s Day.

Along with being a stalwart of the freedom struggle, Jawaharlal Nehru oversaw the establishment of some of the most prominent educational institutions in India post-Independence. His vision led to the establishment of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), and left behind a legacy of higher and technical education for the young.

On Children’s Day, schools organise various events such as essay writing competitions, music and dance performances to celebrate the occasion. Government and non-government organisations, NGOs, private bodies and other forums conduct a variety of events for the children to let them known about their rights and make them happy and cheer.

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Jawaharlal Nehru, byname Pandit Nehru, (born November 14, 1889, Allahabad, India—died May 27, 1964, New Delhi), first prime minister of independent India (1947–64), who established parliamentary government and became noted for his neutralist (nonaligned) policies in foreign affairs. He was also one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the 1930s and ’40s.

Jawaharlal was the eldest of four children, two of whom were girls. A sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, later became the first woman president of the United Nations General Assembly.

Until the age of 16, Nehru was educated at home by a series of English governesses and tutors. Only one of those—a part-Irish, part-Belgian theosophist, Ferdinand Brooks—appears to have made any impression on him. Jawaharlal also had a venerable Indian tutor who taught him Hindi and Sanskrit. In 1905 he went to Harrow, a leading English school, where he stayed for two years. Nehru’s academic career was in no way outstanding. From Harrow he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he spent three years earning an honours degree in natural science. On leaving Cambridge he qualified as a barrister after two years at the Inner Temple, London, where in his own words he passed his examinations “with neither glory nor ignominy.”

Credit : Britannica

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For decades the All-India Congress under the leadership of Mohandas K. Gandhi struggled to rally the millions of British-ruled peoples in the Indian subcontinent. Like similar movements in other countries, it early felt the need for a distinctive symbol that could represent its nationalist objectives. In 1921 a student named Pingali (or Pinglay) Venkayya presented a flag design to Gandhi that consisted of the colours associated with the two principal religions, red for the Hindus and green for the Muslims. To the centre of the horizontally divided flag, Lala Hans Raj Sondhi suggested the addition of the traditional spinning wheel, which was associated with Gandhi’s crusade to make Indians self-reliant by fabricating their own clothing from local fibres.

Gandhi modified the flag by adding a white stripe in the centre for the other religious communities in India, thus also providing a clearly visible background for the spinning wheel. In May 1923 at Nagpur, during peaceful protests against British rule, the flag was carried by thousands of people, hundreds of whom were arrested. The Congress flag came to be associated with nationhood for India, and it was officially recognized at the annual meeting of the party in August 1931. At the same time, the current arrangement of stripes and the use of deep saffron instead of red were approved.

To avoid the sectarian associations of the original proposal, new attributions were associated with the saffron, white, and green stripes. They were said to stand for, respectively, courage and sacrifice, peace and truth, and faith and chivalry. During World War II Subhas Chandra Bose used this flag (without the spinning wheel) in territories his Japanese-aided army had captured.

Credit : Britannica

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From 1757, the British East India Company had been bringing Indian areas under its rule, and expanding the Indian army. The conditions of service came into conflict. The final spark was the rumoured use of cow and pig fat in the newly introduced rifle cartridges, which the soldiers had to bite before loading into rifles, in 1857. While there has been no conclusive evidence to show that either of these materials was actually used on any of the cartridges in question, the perception gathered enough momentum.

The soldiers were offended and started openly expressing it. Later, sepoys in Meerut refused the cartridges. As a result of this, they were court-martialled and put in jail. This punishment angered their comrades, who rose on May 10, marking the beginning of the mutiny.

The Indian sepoys shot their British officers and marched to Delhi, where the local sepoy garrison joined them. By nightfall they had made old Bahadur Shah II the emperor. The mutiny soon spread to Kanpur, Agra and Lucknow and almost throughout northern India. The Indians, however, lost their battles and British India was taken over by the government.

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The Indian Sepoy Mutiny is also referred to as just the Indian Mutiny or the Sepoy Mutiny. It is also called the First War of Independence.

Considering the Indian Sepoy Mutiny purely as a rebellion underestimates the root causes leading to it. It marked the realisation that the British were trying to undermine traditional Indian society.

Indian soldier Mangal Pandey's name is often invoked when speaking about the mutiny, even though he was executed before the event took place. This is because he played a key part in the events immediately leading up to the mutiny.

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Hampi or Hampe, also referred to as the Group of Monuments at Hampi, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in east-central Karnataka, India.

Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire in the 14th century. Chronicles left by Persian and European travellers, particularly the Portuguese, say that Hampi was a prosperous, wealthy and grand city near the Tungabhadra River, with numerous temples, farms and trading markets. By 1500 CE, Hampi-Vijayanagara was the world's second-largest medieval-era city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at that time, attracting traders from Persia and Portugal. The Vijayanagara Empire was defeated by a coalition of Muslim sultanates; its capital was conquered, pillaged and destroyed by sultanate armies in 1565, after which Hampi remained in ruins.

The Vitthla temple is the most exquisitely ornate structure on the site and represents the culmination of Vijayanagara temple architecture. It is a fully developed temple with associated buildings like Kalyana Mandapa and Utsava Mandapa within a cloistered enclosure pierced with three entrance Gopurams. In addition to the typical spaces present in contemporary temples, it boasts of a Garuda shrine fashioned as a granite ratha and a grand bazaar street. This complex also has a large Pushkarani (stepped tank) with a Vasantotsava mandapa (ceremonial pavilion at the centre), wells and a network of water channels.

Another unique feature of temples at Hampi is the wide Chariot streets flanked by the rows of Pillared Mandapas, introduced when chariot festivals became an integral part of the rituals. The stone chariot in front of the temple is also testimony to its religious ritual. Most of the structures at Hampi are constructed from local granite, burnt bricks and lime mortar. The stone masonry and lantern roofed post and lintel system were the most favoured construction technique. The massive fortification walls have irregular cut size stones with paper joints by filling the core with rubble masonry without any binding material. The gopuras over the entrances and the sanctum proper have been constructed with stone and brick. The roofs have been laid with the heavy thick granite slabs covered with a water proof course of brick jelly and lime mortar.

Vijayanagara architecture is also known for its adoption of elements of Indo Islamic Architecture in secular buildings like the Queen’s Bath and the Elephant Stables, representing a highly evolved multi-religious and multi-ethnic society.Building activity in Hampi continued over a period of 200 years reflecting the evolution in the religious and political scenario as well as the advancements in art and architecture. The city rose to metropolitan proportions and is immortalized in the words of many foreign travellers as one of the most beautiful cities. The Battle of Talikota (1565 CE) led to a massive destruction of its physical fabric.

Credit : Indian Culture

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Annie Besant, a prominent member of the Theosophical Society in Chennai, launched the Home Rule League - a self-government movement-in 1916. Around the same time, Indian nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak had founded the Home Rule for India League.

The term Home Rule League, which was borrowed from a similar movement in Ireland, was used to refer to both. The objective was to achieve self-rule from the British Indian government and bolstered the Indian nationalists efforts towards this cause.

The popularity of the Home Rule movement alarmed the British government. Tilak was imprisoned. But the governments harsh measures created great public enthusiasm. The movement forced the British government to allow Indians freedom to rule themselves at certain levels of administration.

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The popularity of the Home Rule League led to Annie Besants election as president of the Indian National Congress, becoming the first woman to hold the position.

Besant not only supported self-rule in India, but also supported the cause for the Irish.

Besant became a member of the Theosophical Society and went on to become a prominent speaker on the subject. By 1907, she became the president of the Theosophical Society, whose international headquarters is located in Adyar, Chennai.

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