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Born on August 29, 1905, in Allahabad to Sharadha Singh and Sameshwar Singh - a soldier in the British Indian Army, Dhyan Singh was drawn towards hockey at a very early age. Like his father, he too enrolled himself in the army at the age of 16 and continued to play his favourite sport there.

At the Mexico Olympics, when Bob Beaman jumped beyond 29 feet; the world record at that time being a few inches above 26 feet, the field judges went on to change the measuring tape to ensure that they were using the right measurement. Beamon's 'Leap to Infinity' was attributed later to the low gravitational pull at the altitude at which the jump was taken. Legend has it that something similar happened with Dhyan Chand after a match in the Netherlands where his hockey stick was changed as people thought that he had some sort of a magnet in his stick that made the ball stick to it. In fact, it was a great tribute to his dribbling talent.

To summarize Dhyan Chand's achievements, he played a major role in India winning gold medals in three successive Olympic Games; in 1928 (Amsterdam), 1932 (Los Angeles) and 1936 (Berlin) and scored 570 goals in his career which span from 1926 to 1949, during which he played 185 matches. The number of goals would exceed a thousand if his domestic matches were included in his total score. He indeed deserved titles like 'The Wizard' and 'The Magician'. It is a result of his exceptional career that India's highest sports award in any sportsperson's lifetime achievements is named after this great sportsman as 'Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award'.

Dhyan Singh was born on 29 August 1905 in Allahabad, which at that time was a part of the United Province of Agra and Oudh, and is named now as Prayagraj in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Dhyan's father, Sameshwar Singh, was a part of the British Indian Army and his frequent transfers affected the study of his three sons; Mool, Dhyan and Roop, till the family settled finally in Jhansi, another district in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Dhyan Chand hardly played any hockey till he was recruited as a sepoy in the 1st Brahman Regiment of the British Indian Army, in 1922, as a seventeen-year-old teenager. The Regiment was reorganised later as the 1st Punjab Regiment. Once Dhyan Chand joined the army, he started participating in various Regimental and Army games and hockey was one of them. Young Dhyan Singh was seen practising hockey even under the moonlight, which earned him the nickname of 'Chand' (the Moon), a name that stuck with him till the very end.

When an Army team was sent to New Zealand, Dhyan Chand was a member of that team. The team performed exceptionally well and Dhyan Chand started getting recognition as an attacking forward. In 1925, the Indian Hockey Federation started selections for forming an Indian hockey team for the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics; five Province teams were formed for the players to demonstrate their hockey skills. The teams played again in 1927 before the Indian team for the Olympics was finalised. Incidentally, before leaving for the Olympics, the team played against a Bombay team and lost. Obviously, not much was expected from the team who lost to their home team.

However, what happened thereafter was totally unexpected. The Indian team played a few matches in England, winning all of them and also all its pre-Olympic matches. In its pool matches in the Olympics, the Indian team beat Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Switzerland convincingly and despite some of its players indisposed and even an unfit Dhyan Chand taking field, the Indian team won the final match against the home team with Dhyan Chand scoring two out of three goals. The Indian team not only won the gold medal, but what was even more remarkable was that none of the teams could score even a single goal against India. Dhyan Chand scored 14 out of 29 goals scored by the Indian team in five matches.

The Indian Army did not relieve Dhyan Chand for the 1932 Olympic trials but the IHF selected him without any trial. This time, his younger brother Roop Singh was also in the Indian team and once again the Indian team routed all teams to win the gold medal. In the finals, India defeated the host team with a record margin of 24-1. Of the 35 goals scored by the Indian team during the Games, the two brothers had a combined tally of 25 goals.

In 1936, the Army refused to relieve Dhyan Chand once again for the trials and once again the IHF included him in the final team and as the proposed captain refused to participate, this time Dhyan Chand was called upon to lead the Indian team. In a pre-Olympic match, India suffered a defeat against Germany but when it mattered, India defeated Germany 8-1. It is said that Adolf Hitler was so impressed with Dhyan Chand's play that he offered the player a citizenship of Germany and the rank of Colonel in the Army which Dhyan Chand refused politely.

Dhyan Chand's scoring blitz can be measured from the fact that the second-highest international goal scorer is Sohail Abbas of Pakistan with 348 goals; way behind Dhyan Chand's tally of 570. For his achievements, Dhyan Chand was given an Emergency Commission in 1943. In 1956, the Indian Government honoured him with the Padma Bhushan and after his death in 1979, in 1980, the Indian Post and Telegraph Department issued a 35 paisa commemorative postage stamp in honour of him. In 2002, the National Stadium in New Delhi was also renamed as the Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium.

What Donald Bradman is to cricket or Muhammad Ali to boxing, Dhyan Chand is to hockey. Among all the sports' personalities of India, Dhyan Chand stands tall, head and shoulder above the rest just as his statue on Sipri Hill in Jhansi.

Credit : Gp Capt Achchyut Kumar

Picture Credit : Google 

Dr BR Ambedkar is one of the most luminous figures of modern Indian history and the principal architect of our constitution. He endeavoured to build a new social order based on the democratic ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Let us look back at one of his most iconic speeches at the Constituent Assembly.

On November 24, 1949, B. R. Ambedkar presented his concluding remarks on the adoption of the Constitution in the Constituent Assembly. His address recalled the detailed discussions and deliberations on fundamental rights, union powers, and upliftment of minorities that laid the foundation of our Constitution's legal framework. But what makes this speech significant in present-day's political environment is its orators prophetic predictions of the factors that threaten India's political identity as a socialist democracy.

The quest of the hour Even at the helm of liberty, what crippled Ambedkars mind with anxiety was the thought of the stronghold ideals of caste and creed had on the average citizen. Recalling past incidents like the invasion of Sind by Mahommed-Bin-Kasim, he elaborated on how India had once before lost its independence to the treachery of its people and the rise of new political parties that possess diverse and opposing political standing can cause history to repeat itself.

He declared that the day politicians choose creed over the country, the purpose of democracy will be defeated.

Therefore, the quest of the hour was to ensure that proper measures are taken to enforce and safeguard equality, liberty and fraternity as a nascent nation moved forward

Abandon the grammar of anarchy

In his address to the constituent assembly, Ambedkar implored to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving social and economic objectives and abandon methods of rebellion like civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. According to him, in a society that is built on good well and justice and is governed by leaders elected by the people there is no valid justification to employ unsanctioned methods of rebellion.

Dangers of hero-worship Calling Bhakti culture or Hero-worship a sure road to degradation and eventual dictatorship, he said "There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have rendered lifelong services to the country. But there are limits to gratefulness... With independence, we have lost the excuse of blaming the British for anything going wrong. If hereafter things go wrong, we will have nobody to blame. Except ourselves...If we wish to preserve the Constitution...let us resolve not to be tardy in the recognition of the evils that lie across our path...nor to be weak in our initiative to remove them. That is the only way to serve the country. I know of no better." (excerpt from the speech)

Key takeaways from the speech

1. Equality, liberty and fraternity are the foundations of our constitution.

2. Blind faith in any entity or individual is an enemy of the truth.

3. A good citizen understands the responsibility that comes with freedom.

DID YOU KNOW?

1. Dr Ambedkar was the first law minister of Independent India
2. Ambedkar's 20-page autobiography titled "Waiting for a Visa" is part of Columbia University's curriculum.
3. Ambedkar was the first member of the backward classes to become a lawyer.
4. Ambedkar was the first and only Satyagrahi to conduct "Satyagraha for drinking water”. Ambedkar had master's degrees in around 64 subjects and was the first Indian to obtain a doctorate in Economics from a foreign university.

Picture Credit : Google 

William Bateson was an English biologist who was the first person to use the term genetics to describe the study of heredity, and the chief populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel following their rediscovery in 1900 by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns. His 1894 book Materials for the Study of Variation was one of the earliest formulations of the new approach to genetics.

Bateson became the chief popularizer of the ideas of Mendel following their rediscovery. In 1909 he published a much-expanded version of his 1902 textbook entitled Mendel's Principles of Heredity. This book, which underwent several printings, was the primary means by which Mendel's work became widely known to readers of English.

"Bateson first suggested using the word "genetics" (from the Greek [Offsite Link]  genn?, ?????; "to give birth") to describe the study of inheritance and the science of variation in a personal letter to Alan Sedgwick... dated April 18, 1905. Bateson first used the term genetics publicly at the Third International Conference on Plant Hybridization in London in 1906. This was three years before Wilhelm Johannsen used the word "" to describe the units of hereditary information. De Vries had introduced the word "pangene" for the same concept already in 1889, and etymologically the word genetics has parallels with Darwin's concept of pangenesis.

Bateson co-discovered genetic linkage with Reginald Punnett, and he and Punnett founded the Journal of Genetics in 1910. Bateson also coined the term "epistasis" to describe the genetic interaction of two independent traits.

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It has been found on the reverse side of one of his painting, hidden behind glue and cardboard. Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch painter, generally considered to be the greatest after Rembrandt van Rijn, and one of the greatest of the Post-Impressionists. He sold only one artwork during his life, but in the century after his death he became perhaps the most recognized painter of all time.

The sensational discovery was made when an x-ray image was taken of Van Gogh's Head of a Peasant Woman" (1885) in advance of a forthcoming Impressionism exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, the U.K.

Currently, the self-portrait is covered by layers of glue and cardboard believed to have been applied to the reverse of "Head of a Peasant Woman" before being framed for an exhibition held in Amsterdam around 1905. Experts are researching to see if they can uncover the self-portrait, but warn that removing the glue and cardboard will require delicate conservation work to avoid harming the painting on the other side It's believed Van Gogh painted the self-portrait after he moved to Paris and was exposed to the work of French Impressionists.

"Head of a Peasant Woman", which shows a local woman from the town of Nuenen in the Netherlands, was donated to the National Gallery of Scotland collection in 1960 by a prominent Edinburgh lawyer. It will feature in the "A Taste for Impressionism" exhibition on The Mound in Edinburgh on till November 13, 2022, together with an illuminated copy of the x-ray image.

Picture Credit : Google