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Mother Teresa

Biography

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje*, Macedonia, on August 27, 1910. Her family was of Albanian descent. At the age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of God. She knew she had to be a missionary to spread the love of Christ. At the age of eighteen she left her parental home in Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. After a few months' training in Dublin she was sent to India, where on May 24, 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun. From 1931 to 1948 Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta, but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that in 1948 she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Although she had no funds, she depended on Divine Providence, and started an open-air school for slum children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming. This made it possible for her to extend the scope of her work.

On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Holy See to start her own order, "The Missionaries of Charity", whose primary task was to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after. In 1965 the Society became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI.

Today the order comprises Active and Contemplative branches of Sisters and Brothers in many countries. In 1963 both the Contemplative branch of the Sisters and the Active branch of the Brothers was founded. In 1979 the Contemplative branch of the Brothers was added, and in 1984 the Priest branch was established.

The Society of Missionaries has spread all over the world, including the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. They provide effective help to the poorest of the poor in a number of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and they undertake relief work in the wake of natural catastrophes such as floods, epidemics, and famine, and for refugees. The order also has houses in North America, Europe and Australia, where they take care of the shut-ins, alcoholics, homeless, and AIDS sufferers.

The Missionaries of Charity throughout the world are aided and assisted by Co-Workers who became an official International Association on March 29, 1969. By the 1990s there were over one million Co-Workers in more than 40 countries. Along with the Co-Workers, the lay Missionaries of Charity try to follow Mother Teresa's spirit and charism in their families.
Mother Teresa's work has been recognised and acclaimed throughout the world and she has received a number of awards and distinctions, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding (1972). She also received the Balzan Prize (1979) and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards.

Mahatma Gandhi

Early Years
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948), also known as Mahatma Gandhi, was born in Porbandar in the present day state of Gujarat in India on October 2, 1869, and educated in law at University College, London. In 1891, after having been admitted to the British bar, Gandhi returned to India and attempted to establish a law practice in Bombay, without much success. Two years later an Indian firm with interests in South Africa retained him as legal adviser in its office in Durban. Arriving in Durban, Gandhi found himself treated as a member of an inferior race. He was appalled at the widespread denial of civil liberties and political rights to Indian immigrants to South Africa. He threw himself into the struggle for elementary rights for Indians.
See Also: Parentage and Childhood from Gandhi's autobiography

Resistance to Injustice
Gandhi remained in South Africa for twenty years, suffering imprisonment many times. In 1896, after being attacked and beaten by white South Africans, Gandhi began to teach a policy of passive resistance to, and non-cooperation with, the South African authorities. Part of the inspiration for this policy came from the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose influence on Gandhi was profound. Gandhi also acknowledged his debt to the teachings of Christ and to the 19th-century American writer Henry David Thoreau, especially to Thoreau's famous essay "Civil Disobedience." Gandhi considered the terms passive resistance and civil disobedience inadequate for his purposes, however, and coined another term, Satyagraha (from Sanskrit, "truth and firmness"). During the Boer War, Gandhi organized an ambulance corps for the British army and commanded a Red Cross unit. After the war he returned to his campaign for Indian rights. In 1910, he founded Tolstoy Farm, near Durban, a cooperative colony for Indians. In 1914 the government of the Union of South Africa made important concessions to Gandhi's demands, including recognition of Indian marriages and abolition of the poll tax for them. His work in South Africa complete, he returned to India.

Campaign for Home Rule
Gandhi became a leader in a complex struggle, the Indian campaign for home rule. Following World War I, in which he played an active part in recruiting campaigns, Gandhi, again advocating Satyagraha, launched his movement of non-violent resistance to Great Britain. When, in 1919, Parliament passed the Rowlatt Acts, giving the Indian colonial authorities emergency powers to deal with so-called revolutionary activities, Satyagraha spread throughout India, gaining millions of followers. A demonstration against the Rowlatt Acts resulted in a massacre of Indians at Amritsar by British soldiers; in 1920, when the British government failed to make amends, Gandhi proclaimed an organized campaign of non-cooperation. Indians in public office resigned, government agencies such as courts of law were boycotted, and Indian children were withdrawn from government schools. Throughout India, streets were blocked by squatting Indians who refused to rise even when beaten by police. Gandhi was arrested, but the British were soon forced to release him. Economic independence for India, involving the complete boycott of British goods, was made a corollary of Gandhi's Swaraj (from Sanskrit, "self-governing") movement. The economic aspects of the movement were significant, for the exploitation of Indian villagers by British industrialists had resulted in extreme poverty in the country and the virtual destruction of Indian home industries. As a remedy for such poverty, Gandhi advocated revival of cottage industries; he began to use a spinning wheel as a token of the return to the simple village life he preached, and of the renewal of native Indian industries. Gandhi became the international symbol of a free India. He lived a spiritual and ascetic life of prayer, fasting, and meditation. His union with his wife became, as he himself stated, that of a brother and sister. Refusing earthly possessions, he wore the loincloth and shawl of the lowliest Indian and subsisted on vegetables, fruit juices, and goat's milk. Indians revered him as a saint and began to call him Mahatma (great-souled), a title reserved for the greatest sages. Gandhi's advocacy of nonviolence, known as ahimsa (non-violence), was the expression of a way of life implicit in the Hindu religion. By the Indian practice of nonviolence, Gandhi held, Great Britain too would eventually consider violence useless and would leave India. The Mahatma's political and spiritual hold on India was so great that the British authorities dared not interfere with him. In 1921 the Indian National Congress, the group that spearheaded the movement for nationhood, gave Gandhi complete executive authority, with the right of naming his own successor. The Indian population, however, could not fully comprehend the unworldly ahimsa. A series of armed revolts against the British broke out, culminating in such violence that Gandhi confessed the failure of the civil-disobedience campaign he had called, and ended it. The British government again seized and imprisoned him in 1922. After his release from prison in 1924, Gandhi withdrew from active politics and devoted himself to propagating communal unity. Unavoidably, however, he was again drawn into the vortex of the struggle for independence. In 1930 the Mahatma proclaimed a new campaign of civil disobedience, calling upon the Indian population to refuse to pay taxes, particularly the tax on salt. The campaign was a march to the sea, in which thousands of Indians followed Gandhi from Ahmedabad to the Arabian Sea, where they made salt by evaporating sea water. Once more the Indian leader was arrested, but he was released in 1931, halting the campaign after the British made concessions to his demands. In the same year Gandhi represented the Indian National Congress at a conference in London.
V.N. O'key/Kamat's PotpourriSmiling GandhiPhotograph by V.N. O'key, circa 1945
Gandhi takes on Domestic Problems

In 1932, Gandhi began new civil-disobedience campaigns against the British. Arrested twice, the Mahatma fasted for long periods several times; these fasts were effective measures against the British, because revolution might well have broken out in India if he had died. In September 1932, while in jail, Gandhi undertook a "fast unto death" to improve the status of the Hindu Untouchables. The British, by permitting the Untouchables to be considered as a separate part of the Indian electorate, were, according to Gandhi, countenancing an injustice. Although he was himself a member of an upper caste, Gandhi was the great leader of the movement in India dedicated to eradicating the unjust social and economic aspects of the caste system. In 1934 Gandhi formally resigned from politics, being replaced as leader of the Congress party by Jawaharlal Nehru. Gandhi traveled through India, teaching ahimsa and demanding eradication of "untouchability." The esteem in which he was held was the measure of his political power. So great was this power that the limited home rule granted by the British in 1935 could not be implemented until Gandhi approved it. A few years later, in 1939, he again returned to active political life because of the pending federation of Indian principalities with the rest of India. His first act was a fast, designed to force the ruler of the state of Rajkot to modify his autocratic rule. Public unrest caused by the fast was so great that the colonial government intervened; the demands were granted. The Mahatma again became the most important political figure in India.


Independence for IndiaWhen World War II broke out, the Congress party and Gandhi demanded a declaration of war aims and their application to India. As a reaction to the unsatisfactory response from the British, the party decided not to support Britain in the war unless the country were granted complete and immediate independence. The British refused, offering compromises that were rejected. When Japan entered the war, Gandhi still refused to agree to Indian participation. He was interned in 1942 but was released two years later because of failing health.

By 1944 the Indian struggle for independence was in its final stages, the British government having agreed to independence on condition that the two contending nationalist groups, the Muslim League and the Congress party, should resolve their differences. Gandhi stood steadfastly against the partition of India but ultimately had to agree, in the hope that internal peace would be achieved after the Muslim demand for separation had been satisfied. India and Pakistan became separate states when the British granted India its independence in 1947 (see: Tryst with Destiny -- the story of India's independence). During the riots that followed the partition of India, Gandhi pleaded with Hindus and Muslims to live together peacefully. Riots engulfed Calcutta, one of the largest cities in India, and the Mahatma fasted until disturbances ceased. On January 13, 1948, he undertook another successful fast in New Delhi to bring about peace, but on January 30, 12 days after the termination of that fast, as he was on his way to his evening prayer meeting, he was assassinated by a fanatic Hindu. Gandhi's death was regarded as an international catastrophe. His place in humanity was measured not in terms of the 20th century, but in terms of history. A period of mourning was set aside in the United Nations General Assembly, and condolences to India were expressed by all countries. Religious violence soon waned in India and Pakistan, and the teachings of Gandhi came to inspire nonviolent movements elsewhere, notably in the U.S.A. under the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and in South Africa under Nelson Mandela.

Subhaschandra bose

Subhas Chandra Bose was born on January 23, 1897. His father was Rai Bahadur Janakinath Bose, a prominent lawyer of Cuttack, Orissa. His mother was Prabhavati Bose, a remarkable example of Indian womanhood.
Later, the world came to know him as Netaji. After completing his early studies at the European Protestant Collegiate School in Cuttack, he came to Calcutta to study at Presidency College in 1913. Upon completing his graduation, he left India for England to appear at the Indian Civil Service Examination, but he was reluctant to work under the British Government. Thus he resigned and returned to India on the call of Chittaranjan Das.
Subhas Chandra Bose felt that young militant groups could be molded into a military arm of the freedom movement and used to further the cause. Gandhiji opposed this ideology because it directly conflicted with his policy of ahimsa (non-violence). The British Government in India perceived Subhas as a potential source of danger and had him arrested without any charge on October 25, 1924. He was sent to Alipore Jail, Calcutta and in January 25, 1925 transferred to Mandalay, Burma. He was released from Mandalay in May, 1927 due to his ill health. Upon return to Calcutta, Subhas was elected President of the Bengal Congress Committee on October 27, 1927.
Subhas was one of the few politicians who sought and worked towards Hindu-Muslim unity on the basis of respect of each community's rights. Subhas, being a man of ideals, believed in independence from the social evil of religious discord.
In January 1930 Subhas was arrested while leading a procession condemning imprisonment of revolutionaries. He was offered bail on condition that he signs a bond to refrain from all political activities, which he refused. As a result he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment.
On his release from jail, Subhas was sworn in as Mayor of the Calcutta Corporation. In 1931 the split between Gandhiji and Subhas crystallized. Although the two never saw eye to eye on their view of freedom and the movement itself, Subhas felt that Gandhiji had done a great disservice to the movement by agreeing to take part in the Second Round Table Conference. Subhas viewed freedom as an absolute necessity, unlike the freedom which Gandhiji was "negotiating" with the British.
Subhas was arrested again while returning from Bombay to Calcutta, and imprisoned in several jails outside West Bengal in fear of an uprising. His health once again deteriorated and the medical facilities diagnosed him with tuberculosis. It was recommended that he be sent to Switzerland for treatment. Realizing that his avenues abroad were greater with the restrictions of the British, Subhas set sail for Europe on February 23, 1933. Subhas stayed in various parts of Europe from March 1993 to March 1936 making contacts with Indian revolutionaries and European socialists supporting India's Struggle for Independence. Subhas met Mussolini in Italy and made Vienna his headquarters. Subhas was opposed to the racial theory of Nazism but appreciated its organizational strength and discipline. On March 27, 1936 he sailed for Bombay and but was escorted to jail immediately after disembarking.
After lying low for a year, he was able to work actively. He attended the All India Congress Committee Session in Calcutta, the first one he attended after a lapse of nearly six years. Time had healed the tensions between Subhas and Gandhiji, and Gandhiji supported Subhas in his efforts to become the President of the next Congress session, 1938. He went to England for a month in 1938 and rallied for the Indian freedom cause amongst Indian students and British labor leaders sympathetic toward India's cause. It was a bold move since he was constantly under British surveillance. Upon his return to India in February 1938, Subhas was elected President of the Indian National Congress. An excerpt from his Presidential address read, "I have no doubt in my mind that our chief national problems relating to the eradication of poverty, illiteracy and disease and the scientific production and distribution can be tackled only along socialistic lines... ." Subhas emphasized that political freedom alone would not be sufficient, as the ills of the British reign would continue to haunt post-Independent India. He stressed the need to solve linguistic and religious prejudices and to achieve a high literacy rate amongst Indians. Gandhiji found Subhas's ideologies far too leftist and strongly disagreed with Subhas's criticism of village industries and stress on competing with the rest of the world in the Industrial age. Opposition from Sardar Vallabhai Patel, lack of support from Gandhiji and Nehru's indecision marked Subhas's year as the President of the Congress. One of Subhas' major contributions was setting up of a National Planning Committee, for the development of an economic program running parallel to the national movement. Differences between Gandhiji and Subhas led to a crisis when Gandhiji opposed Subhas' idea that the Bengal Government (a coalition between the Krishak Praja Party & Muslim League) be ousted and the Congress take charge in coalition with the Krishak party. The idea was criticized by Gandhiji and Nehru, which resulted in the strengthening of the Muslim League in Bengal and ultimately partition of India. It is obvious today that had Subhas been able to carry out his plans, Bengal would be a different entity on the atlas.
Despite opposition from the Congress brass, Subhas was a favorite amongst the majority as he was re-elected for a second term in March 1939. Gandhiji considered Subhas's victory as his personal defeat and went on a fast to rally the members of the Working Committee to resign. Subhas resigned and Dr. Rajendra Prasad assumed the Presidency of the Congress.
In May 1939, Subhas formed the Forward Bloc within the Congress as an umbrella organization of the left forces within the Congress. Gandhiji and his supporters accused Subhas of breach of Congress party discipline and drafted a resolution removing Subhas from the Congress Working Committee and restrained him from holding any office for three years. On September 3, 1939 Subhas was informed that war had broken out between Britain and Germany. Subhas discussed the idea of an underground struggle against the British with members of the Forward Bloc. Subhas pressurized the Congress leaders to get a Declaration of War Aims from the Viceroy; he declined.
Subhas was elected President of the West Bengal Provincial Congress. In December the Congress Working Committee subverted the Provincial Committee's authority and appointed its own ad hoc committee.
The Forward Bloc progressively became militant and by April 1940 most of its senior members were arrested. Subhas was convinced that the only way he could bring about India's Independence was by leaving the country and fighting from foreign territories. He had made contact with radical Punjab and Pathan activists who had contacts in Afghanistan and Russia to organize a militia. Subhas knew that Britain was in a vulnerable position following the surrender of France in June 1940. He announced the launch of Siraj-ud-daula Day on July 3, in memory of the last king of Bengal who was defeated by Clive. His plan was to hold a procession and to unify Hindu and Muslim nationalists. The Government interceded and imprisoned Subhas on July 2, 1940 in Presidency Jail, Calcutta.
Netaji believed that foreign assistance was a must to free India from British rule. In 1939, when the Second World War broke out, Subhas sought assistance from Germany, Italy, and Japan as they were enemies of Britain and thus would be natural allies. In 1941, he evaded a house-arrest in Calcutta by disguising himself as a Maulavi and going to Kabul, Afghanistan. Later, he procured an Italian passport and fled to Berlin, Germany.
There he met Hitler and discussed his plans and sought his assistance to free India. He also sought assistance from Mussolini. From time to time, he aired his speeches on the Azad Hind Radio from Berlin to communicate his intentions to fellow Indians and to prove that he was still alive. After the defeat of Germany, Netaji realized that he could not continue his struggle from Germany anymore.
Ultimately, Netaji reached Japan in June, 1943. He established the Indian National Army (INA) with some 30,000 Indian soldiers. He also set up a radio network in South East Asia in order to appeal to the people, both in India and outside, for support. The INA declared war against Britain and America. However, the INA had to retreat from the Indo-Burmese border after a heavy defeat of the Japanese troops there. The British defense was impenetrable. Though the "Delhi Chalo" mission failed, Netaji proved to the world that his determination was strong and his attitude was positive in his dream to free India from the clutches of the British.
On August 16, 1945 Netaji boarded a plane from Singapore to Bangkok. Netaji was scheduled to fly in a Type 97-2 bomber 'Sally' from Bangkok to Saigon. The plane made a stopover in Taipei and crashed within minutes of take-off from Taipei. Netaji's body was cremated in Taipei on August 20, 1945 and his ashes were flown to Tokyo on September 5, 1945 where they rest in the Renkoji Temple. To this day, many believe that Netaji escaped from the air crash and went into hiding.
Netaji wanted unconditional and complete freedom. He dreamed of a classless society with no caste barriers, social inequalities or religious intolerance. He believed in equal distribution of wealth and destruction of communalism. His slogan "Jai Hind" still acts as a great binding force today
BOSE MYSTERY: AN OVERVIEW By Anuj Dhar
It's amazing how Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose continues to be in news 60 years after his disputed death. In a way, this has been in defiance of successive Indian governments who would rather want the people to sideline him as they have. A recent BBC online poll named Bose the third most popular leader in South Asia after Jinnha and Gandhi. Strikingly, as per the same poll, the stalwarts like Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and the inimitable Atal Bihari Vajpayee don't even blip on the radar anymore.
The coming months will see Subhas making a comeback of a sort. India's longest running political controversy is heading towards its grand finale. For five years the media and the lawmakers in India have adopted a touch and go sort of approach towards the inquiry of Justice MK Mukherjee into the "death" of Subhas Bose. Not any longer. The Commission, formed in 1999 following a Court order, is gearing up to present its report by November. The Government will have to present it in Parliament along with an action taken report. All those of you who have interest in either politics, or history, or intrigue, or mystery better watch out: It doesn't get any bigger than this.
Psst ...Top Secret!
Let this impression be trashed at the outset that the Netaji mystery belongs to a different era. No doubt it started in 1945; but it has been simmering till date. The controversy is a bombshell and that's what the official records hint at. Netaji is supposed to have died at the end of Second World War, and yet the Indian Government continues to sit on files about him. And they are wary of approaching the British and Russian Governments to release the papers they are keeping to themselves.
But why so much of precaution over some details about man who ceased to be a problem to his adversaries in and outside India decades back? This is for you Gen-X dudes: Some of the classified Netaji files maintained by the Government of India are of mid-1990s vintage! That is, post-Rajiv Gandhi period. Perish the idea ... "Oh, such an old story, what is the fuss now!" The Government of India wouldn't agree. They think there is something about Netaji that can spell big time trouble even now. That's why they refused to hand over several Top Secret files to the Mukherjee Commission. Why would they be doing so? Well, in the case of two Narasimha Rao period files, they reasoned that the "disclosure of the nature and contents of these documents would ... hurt the sentiments of the people at large and may evoke wide-spread reactions .... Diplomatic relations with friendly countries may also be adversely affected if the said documents are disclosed."
Should not we demand to know what these documents have to say? How on earth some bits about a dead man affect India's relations with other countries? Should not we ask our Government to state facts? Don't we have a right to know what happened to the man who liberated us?
Pre-conceived notions
It's cynicism exemplified when people say, "How long we can go on inquiring?" If Americans, for instance, were to be besotted with same defeatist thinking, they would not have become the great power they are. Indeed they don't give up. How can one leave out in cold those who fight for one's country? Last year only the US Government asked the Indian Government to help them trace out their missing WWII airmen. Netaji went missing while waging war for freedom for us and we don't want to know what happened to him. What is it if not brazen ungratefulness?
Those who dismissively say that "there have been commissions after commissions" have no idea whatsoever what sort of frauds were played on the nation by the previous "commissions". In 1956, Shah Nawaz Khan, a Congress MP and a secretary to then Railway Minister, headed a committee -- a puppet on a string, actually. There are reasons to believe that he did what he was told by Nehru government. After his "command performance" Shah Nawaz was made a minister. GD Khosla, who headed a commission in early 1970s, was a friend of Nehru's to start with. He wrote the biography of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi even as he inquired into Netaji's disappearance. Can you imagine such things happening now? Both these panels declared that Netaji had died in a plane crash in Taiwan. Never mind that they did not bother to know what the Taiwan Government thought much as people wanted them to.
"But the issue is dead!" Ok, for argument's sake, if that be the case, it is going to COME ALIVE. A Commission of Inquiry headed by a former judge of the Supreme Court of India is going to hand over a report to Home Minister Shivraj Patil, who, at the moment, doesn't seem to be at ease with the direction the Commission is heading to. The report will have to be discussed by the Cabinet before being presented in Parliament for a free for all debate. It is inevitable that Netaji mystery will become a hot topic.
Perplexing past
Funny how people jump to conclusions. "My grandfather was in the INA and he said Netaji died and therefore I believe so." This is how some give their verdict on the issue the nation is debating for 6 decades. If only it were that easy. There were over 50,000 people aligned with the Provisional Government of Free India and only a handful knew what happened to Netaji in his last known days. The rest were in as much dark as the Indians back home. They all heard stories ... Netaji died or Netaji escaped. The truth, or inkling of it, came out after interrogations and inquiries, whose reports are not in public domain.
On August 25, 1945 the Indian newspapers broke the news that Netaji had died in a freak plane crash in Taipei (then Taihoku) on August 18th. He had been flying to Tokyo to work out the INA's surrender when this happened. The British would believe none of it. Viceroy Wavell noted in his diary on 23 August that "I wonder if the Japanese announcement of Subhas Chandra Bose's death in a air-crash is true. I suspect it very much, it is just what should be given out if he meant to go underground..." They dispatched their crack intelligence teams to South East Asia. The findings were bewildering. Netaji was not heading to Tokyo. Months before the world war staggered to a halt, he'd begun planning a new chapter of his war on colonialism. He saw the Cold War coming and reached out to the USSR. The British intelligence got clear information that Subhas was going to Russia at the time of his death. The Japanese had given out a false story about his destination. The survivors of the crash were rounded up and records were captured. The pictured that emerged was of deceit. Eyewitnesses were found to be lying and records appeared as if they had been planted.
Americans chipped in with help. In fact it were they who had the best knowledge. They reached Taiwan in September 1945 and guess what they found. " ... there is no direct evidence that Subhas Chandra Bose was killed in a airplane crash … despite the public statements of the Japanese to that effect." This, stated the State Department, ten months after Netaji's "death". What really happened? "The D.I.B. during his recent visit to London mentioned the receipt ... of information to the effect that Subhas Bose was alive in Russia." This is from a May 1946 report and D.I.B. means, the Director of Intelligence Bureau Sir Norman Smith.
The Government of free India knew about the Soviet connection to the Netaji mystery. But all they did was to dilly-dally and state that no inquiry was required. It took ten years of pressure before Prime Minister Nehru agreed to inquire into the matter. This must be hammered: the Government never wanted to probe Netaji's fate. From Shah Nawaz to Monoj Mukherjee, each time they were forced to. Isn't it revolting?
Present perfect
Thank God for Mukherjee Commission! Or shall we thank Mikhail Gorbahev? The fall of the USSR brought the Netaji issue out. In mid-1990s the Russians themselves began saying that Subhas was with them after his death. The matter reached India and the press did rake it up. But Narasimha Rao, with Pranab Mukherjee in tow, would not say a thing. A patriotic fellow moved to Calcutta High Court and the court found the matter to be wide open for inquiry. The Government was chided and told to form a commission of inquiry to find out where and how Netaji had died. Mercifully, at the time the verdict came, the NDA was in power.
The inquiry of the Mukherjee Commission in past five years has been pathbreaking. They have found out, among others, that the Government of India, at the PMO level, indulged in systematic, unlawful destruction of evidence concerning the Netaji death case. The Government did not want any inquiry in Taiwan, which is precisely what Justice Mukherjee did. The result: the ROC Government ruled out the very occurrence of the crash that we had been told over decades had killed Netaji.
Indian Government also did not want any inquiry in Russia; but that is happening now. After much pulls and pressures, the Mukherjee Commission will visit Russia from September 20 onwards. However, that's not a good enough development. The Government's communication to the Commission suggests that they won't do anything to help the Commission access security and intelligence related classified papers in Russia, said to be containing definite information about Netaji's "post-death" life. Time has come for us, the people of India, to demand from our Government something that they should have done decades back: For God's sake, request the Head of the Russian Government to state facts. The people of India must know what happened to their liberator.

DR. A.P.J. ABDUL KALAM

Born on 15th October 1931 at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu, Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, specialized in Aeronautical Engineering from Madras Institute of Technology. Dr. Kalam made significant contribution as Project Director to develop India's first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III) which successfully injected the Rohini satellite in the near earth orbit in July 1980 and made India an exclusive member of Space Club. He was responsible for the evolution of ISRO's launch vehicle programme, particularly the PSLV configuration. After working for two decades in ISRO and mastering launch vehicle technologies, Dr. Kalam took up the responsibility of developing Indigenous Guided Missiles at Defence Research and Development Organisation as the Chief Executive of Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP). He was responsible for the development and operationalisation of AGNI and PRITHVI Missiles and for building indigenous capability in critical technologies through networking of multiple institutions. He was the Scientific Adviser to Defence Minister and Secretary, Department of Defence Research & Development from July 1992 to December 1999. During this period he led to the weaponisation of strategic missile systems and the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in collaboration with Department of Atomic Energy, which made India a nuclear weapon State. He also gave thrust to self-reliance in defence systems by progressing multiple development tasks and mission projects such as Light Combat Aircraft.As Chairman of Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) and as an eminent scientist, he led the country with the help of 500 experts to arrive at Technology Vision 2020 giving a road map for transforming India from the present developing status to a developed nation. Dr. Kalam has served as the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, in the rank of Cabinet Minister, from November 1999 to November 2001 and was responsible for evolving policies, strategies and missions for many development applications. Dr. Kalam was also the Chairman, Ex-officio, of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet (SAC-C) and piloted India Millennium Mission 2020.Dr. Kalam took up academic pursuit as Professor, Technology & Societal Transformation at Anna University, Chennai from November 2001 and was involved in teaching and research tasks. Above all he took up a mission to ignite the young minds for national development by meeting high school students across the country.In his literary pursuit four of Dr. Kalam's books - "Wings of Fire", "India 2020 - A Vision for the New Millennium", "My journey" and "Ignited Minds - Unleashing the power within India" have become household names in India and among the Indian nationals abroad. These books have been translated in many Indian languages.Dr. Kalam is one of the most distinguished scientists of India with the unique honour of receiving honorary doctorates from 30 universities and institutions. He has been awarded the coveted civilian awards - Padma Bhushan (1981) and Padma Vibhushan (1990) and the highest civilian award Bharat Ratna (1997). He is a recipient of several other awards and Fellow of many professional institutions.Dr. Kalam became the 11th President of India on 25th July 2002. His focus is on transforming India into a developed nation by 2020.

Thomas Alva Edison

"... Thomas Edison was more responsible than any one else for creating the modern world .... No one did more too shape the physical/cultural makeup of present day civilization.... Accordingly, he was the most influential figure of the millennium...." The Heroes Of The Age: Electricity And Man



Surprisingly, little "Al" Edison, who was the last of seven children in his family, did not learn to talk until he was almost four years of age. Immediately thereafter, he began pleading with every adult he met to explain the workings of just about everything he encountered. If they said they didn't know, he would look them straight in the eye with his deeply set and vibrant blue-green eyes and ask them "Why?"

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Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Edison was not born into poverty in a backwater mid-western town. Actually, he was born -on Feb. 11, 1847 - to middle-class parents in the bustling port of Milan, Ohio, a community that - next to Odessa, Russia - was the largest wheat shipping center in the world. In 1854, his family moved to the vibrant city of Port Huron, Michigan, which ultimately surpassed the commercial preeminence of both Milan and Odessa....
At age seven - after spending 12 weeks in a noisy one-room schoolhouse with 38 other students of all ages - Tom's overworked and short tempered teacher finally lost his patience with the child's persistent questioning and seemingly self centered behavior. Noting that Tom's forehead was unusually broad and his head was considerably larger than average, he made no secret of his belief that the hyperactive youngster's brains were "addled" or scrambled.



If modern psychology had existed back then, Tom would have probably been deemed a victim of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and proscribed a hefty dose of the "miracle drug" Ritalin. Instead, when his beloved mother - whom he recalled "was the making of me... [because] she was always so true and so sure of me... And always made me feel I had someone to live for and must not disappoint." - became aware of the situation, she promptly withdrew him from school and began to "home-teach" him. Not surprisingly, she was convinced her son's slightly unusual demeanor and physical appearance were merely outward signs of his remarkable intelligence.



A descendant of the distinguished Elliot family of New England, New York born Nancy Edison was the devout and attractive daughter of a highly respected Presbyterian minister and an accomplished educator in her own right. After the above incident, she commenced teaching her favorite son the "Three Rs" and the Bible. Meanwhile, his rather "worldly" and roguish father, Samuel, encouraged him to read the great classics, giving him a ten cents reward for each one he completed.

It wasn't long thereafter that the serious minded youngster developed a deep interest in world history and English literature. Interestingly, many years later, Tom's abiding fondness for Shakespeare's plays lead him to briefly consider becoming an actor. However, because of his high-pitched voice and his extreme shyness before every audience - except those he was trying to influence into helping him finance an invention - he soon gave up the idea.

Tom especially enjoyed reading and reciting poetry. His life-long favorite was Gray's Elegy In A Country Churchyard. Indeed, his favorite lines - which he endlessly chanted to himself and any within hearing distance - came from its 9th stanza: “The boast of heraldry of pomp and power, All that beauty all that wealth ere gave, Alike await the inevitable hour. The path to glory leads but to the grave.”

At age 11, Tom's parents tried to appease his ever more voracious appetite for knowledge by teaching him how to use the resources of the local library. This skill became the foundation of many factors that gradually caused him to prefer learning via independent self instruction.

Starting with the last book on the bottom shelf, Tom set out to systematically read every book in the stacks. Wisely, however, his parents promptly guided him into towards being more selective in what he read.... By age 12, Tom had not only completed Gibbon's Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Sears' History Of The World, and Burton's Anatomy Of Melancholy, he had devoured The World Dictionary of Science and a number of works on Practical Chemistry.

Unfortunately, in spite of their noble efforts, Tom's dedicated parents eventually found themselves incapable of addressing his ever increasing interest in the Sciences. For example, when he began to question them about concepts dealing with Physics - such as those contained in Isaac Newton's great "Principia" - they were utterly stymied. Accordingly, they scraped enough money together to hire a clever tutor to help their precocious son in trying to understand Newton's complex mathematical principles and unique style....

Unfortunately, this experience had some negative affects on the highly impressionable boy. He was so disillusioned by how Newton's sensational theories were written in classical aristocratic terms -which he felt were unnecessarily confusing to the average person -he overreacted and developed a hearty dislike for all such "high-tone" language and mathematics....

On the other hand, the simple beauty of Newton's physical laws did not escape him. In fact, they very much helped him sharpen his own free wheeling style of clear thinking, proving all things to himself through his own method of objective examination and experimentation." Tom's response to the Principia also enhanced his propensity towards gleaning insights from the writings and activities of other great men and women of wisdom, never forgetting that even they might be entrenched in preconceived dogma and mired down in associated error....

All the while he was cultivated a strong sense of perseverance, readily expending whatever amount of perspiration needed to overcome challenges. This was a characteristic that he later noted was contrary to the way most people respond to stress and strain on their body.... The key upshot of this attribute was that his unique mental, and physical, stamina stood him in good stead when he took on the incredible rigors of a being a successful inventor in the late 19th Century....

Oddly, a factor that shaped Tom's personality in both a negative and a positive way was his poor hearing.... Even though this condition -and the fact that he had only three months of formal schooling - prevented him from taking advantage of the benefits of a secondary education in contemporary mathematics, physics, and engineering, he never let it interfere with finding ways of compensating.... More precisely, it was this his highly individualistic style of acquiring knowledge that eventually led him to question scores of the prevailing theories on the workings of electricity..... Approaching this complex field like a "lone eagle," he used his kaleidoscopic mind and his legendary memory, dexterity, and patience to perform whatever experiments were necessary to come up with his own related theories... As many of his contemporaries continued to indulge the popular electrical pontifications of the day, he was ever sharpening his now ingrained style of dispassionate and bold analysis.... "I accept almost nothing dealing with electricity without thoroughly testing it first." he often declared. Not surprisingly, by arming his brains with this perspective, he soon established a firm foothold in the world of practical electrical science And of course, at the dawn of the "Age Of Electric Light And Power," nothing could have better served his ultimate destiny in the field of invention...



Returning to the story of his youth, by age 12, Tom had already become an "adult." He had not only talked his parents into letting him go to work selling newspapers, snacks, and candy on the local railroad, he had started an entirely separate business selling fruits and vegetables.....

And at age 14 -during the time of the famous pre-Civil War debates between Lincoln and Douglas -he exploited his access to the associated news releases that were being teletyped into the station each day and published them in his own little newspaper. Focusing upon such newsworthy "scoops," he quickly enticed over 300 commuters to subscribe to his splendid little paper: the Weekly Herald.... Interestingly, because this was the first such publication ever to be type-set, printed, and sold on a train, an English journal now gave him his first exposure to international notoriety when it related this story in 1860.

After his hero, Abraham Lincoln, was nominated for president, Tom not only distributed campaign literature on his behalf, he peddled flattering photographs of "the great emancipator." (Interestingly, some 25 years later, Tom's associated feelings about abolition caused him to select Brockton, Massachusetts as the first place to model the first standardized central power system, described elsewhere on the Brockton web site.)

At its peak, Tom's mini-publishing venture netted him more than ten dollars per day. Because this was considerably more than enough to provide for his own support, he had a good deal of extra income, most of which went towards outfitting the chemical laboratory he had set up in the basement of his home. But hen his usually patient and tolerant mother finally complained about the odors and danger of all the "poisons" he was amassing, he transferred most of them to a locked room in the basement and put the remainder in his locker room on the train.

One day, while traversing a bumpy section of track, the train lurched, causing a stick of phosphorous to roll onto the floor and ignite. Within moments, the baggage car caught fire. The conductor was so angry, he severely chastised the boy and struck him with a powerful blow on the side of his head. Purportedly, this may have aggravated some of the loss of hearing he may have inherited and from a later bout he had with scarlet fever. In any case, the station master penalized him by restricting him to peddling his newspaper to venues in railroad stations along the track ....

Remarkably, years later and not long after he had acquired the means to have an operation that "would have likely restored his hearing," he flatly refused to act upon the option.... His rationale was that he was afraid he "would have difficulty re-learning how to channel his thinking in an ever more noisy world." Whatever the cause for this defect, by the time Tom was 14 years of age, it was virtually impossible for him to acquire knowledge in a typical educational setting. Amazingly, however, he never seemed to fret a whole lot over the matter. Naturally inclined towards accepting his fate in life - and promptly adapting to whatever he was convinced was out of his control -he always reacted by committing himself to compensating via alternative methods....

Ultimately, Tom became totally deaf in his left ear, and approximately 80% deaf in his right ear. Poignantly, he once stated that the worst thing about this condition was that he was unable to enjoy the beautiful sounds of singing birds. Indeed, he loved the creatures so much, he later amassed an aviary containing over 5,000 of them. One day while he was on the train, the stationmaster's very young son happened to wander onto the tracks in front of an oncoming boxcar. Tom leaped to action. Luckily - as they tumbled away from its oncoming wheels - they ended up being only slightly injured.





Now, one of the most significant events in Tom's life occurred when - as a reward for his heroism - the child's grateful father taught him how to master the use of Morse code and the telegraph. In the "age of telegraphy," this was akin to being introduced to learning how to use a state-of-the-art computer.

By age 15, Tom had pretty much mastered the basics of this fascinating new career and obtained a job as a replacement for one of the thousands of "brass pounders" (telegraph operators) who had gone off to serve in the Civil War. He now had a golden opportunity to enhance his speed and efficiency in sending and receiving code and performing experiments designed to improve this device....



Once the Civil War ended, to his mother's great dismay, Tom decided - that it was time to "seek his fortune." So, over the next few years, he meandered throughout the Central States, supporting himself as a "tramp operator.

At age 16, after working in a variety of telegraph offices, where he performed numerous "moonlight" experiments, he finally came up with his first authentic invention. Called an "automatic repeater," it transmitted telegraph signals between unmanned stations, allowing virtually anyone to easily and accurately translate code at their own speed and convenience. Curiously, he never patented the initial version of this idea.

In 1868 - after making a name for himself amongst fellow telegraphers for being a rather flamboyant and quick witted character who enjoyed playing "mostly harmless" practical jokes - he returned home one day ragged and penniless. Sadly, he found his parents in an even worse predicament.... First, his beloved mother was beginning to show signs of insanity "which was probably aggravated by the strains of an often difficult life." Making matters worse, his rather impulsive father had just quit his job and the local bank was about to foreclose on the family homestead.

Tom promptly came to grips with the pathos of this situation and - perhaps for the first time in his life - also resolved to come to grips with a number of his own immature shortcomings. After a good deal of soul searching, he finally decided that the best thing he could do would be to get right back out on his own and try to make some serious money....

Shortly thereafter, Tom accepted the suggestion of a fellow "lightening slinger" named Billy Adams to come East and apply for a permanent job as a telegrapher with the relatively prestigious Western Union Company in Boston. His willingness to travel over a thousand miles from home was at least partly influenced by the fact that he had been given a free rail ticket by the local street railway company for some repairs he had done for them. The most important factor, however, was the fact that Boston was considered to be "the hub of the scientific, educational, and cultural universe at this time...."

Throughout the mid-19th century, New England had many features that were analogous to today's Silicon Valley in California. However, instead of being a haven for the thousands of young "tekkies" - who communicate with each other in computerese and internet code of today - it was the home of scores of young telegraphers who anxiously stayed abreast of the emerging age of electricity and the telephone etc. by conversing with via Morse code.

During these latter days of the "age of the telegraph," Tom toiled 12 hours a day and six days a week for Western Union. Meanwhile, he continued "moonlighting" on his own projects and, within six months, had applied for and received his very first patent. A beautifully constructed electric vote-recording machine, this first "legitimate" invention he was to come up with turned out to be a disaster.

When he tried to market it to members of the Massachusetts Legislature, they thoroughly denigrated it, claiming "its speed in tallying votes would disrupt the delicate political status-quo." The specific issue was that - during times of stress - political groups regularly relied upon the brief delays that were provided by the process of manually counting votes to influence and hopefully change the opinions of their colleagues.... "This is exactly what we do not want" a seasoned politician scolded him, adding that "Your invention would not only destroy the only hope the minority would have in influencing legislation, it would deliver them over - bound hand and foot - to the majority."

Although Tom was very much disappointed by this turn of events, he immediately grasped the implications. Even though his remarkable invention allowed each voter to instantly cast his vote from his seat - exactly as it was supposed to do - he realized his idea was so far ahead of its time it was completely devoid of any immediate sales appeal.

Because of his continuing desperate need for money, Tom now made a critically significant adjustment in his, heretofore, relatively naive outlook on the world of business and marketing.... From now on, he vowed, he would "never waste time inventing things that people would not want to buy."

It is important to add here that it was during Tom's 17 month stint in Boston that he was first exposed to lectures at Boston Tech (which was founded in 1861 and became the Mass. Institute of Technology in 1916) and the ideas of several associates on the state-of-the-art of "multiplexing" telegraph signals. This theory and related experimental quests involved the transmission of electrical impulses at different frequencies over telegraph wires, producing horn-like simulations of the human voice and even crude images (the first internet?) via an instrument called the harmonic telegraph.

Not surprisingly, Alexander Graham Bell, who was also living in Boston at the time, was equally fascinated by this exciting new aspect of communication science. And no wonder. The principles surrounding it ultimately led to the invention of the first articulating telephone, the first fax machine, the first microphone, etc.

During this epiphany, Edison also became very well acquainted with Benjamin Bredding. Bredding's family obligations combined with his business naivte prevented him from persuing his dreams. The same age as Bell and Edison, this 21 year old genius would soon provide critically important assistance to Bell in perfecting long distance telephony, the first reciprocating telephone, and the magneto phone. A crack electrician, Bredding, with Watson's assistance, later set up the world's first two-way long distance telephone apparatus for his close friend Alexander Graham Bell, who at the time "knew almost nothing about electricity."



Copyrighted - never before published - tintype of Bredding and Bell in October of 1876 on the day they successfully communicated across Boston's Charles River in the world's first long distance two-way telephone conversation. i.e., "The world's first practical telephone conversation."

Bredding had originally worked for the well known promoter, George B. Stearns, who - with Bredding's help - had beaten everyone to the punch when he obtained the first patent for a duplex telegraph line. A device that exploits the fact that electromagnetism and the number and direction of wire windings associated with a connection between telegraph keys can influence the current that flows between them, and greatly facilitate two-way telegraphic communication, it powerfully intrigued Edison....

Stearns, finally sold the patent for this highly significant cost-cutting invention to Western Union for $750,000. Bredding (and Edison, of course) wound up getting absolutely nothing from the venture. In the meantime, however, Bredding provided his pal, Tom Edison, with his first detailed introduction and understanding of the state-of-the-art of the harmonograph and the multiplex transmitter....

Unlike Edison, Bredding was an extremely modest individual with little taste for aggrandizement and self promotion... The pathetic upshot of all this was that - while the caprice associated with the rough and tumble world of patenting inventions in the mid-19th century ultimately crushed Bredding's innately mild and somewhat naive spirit and his extraordinary potential - it merely spurred the tough-minded Edison on to not only improve the duplex transmitter, but to later patent the world's first quadruplex transmitter....

Deeply in debt and about to be fired by Western Union for "not concentrating on his primary responsibilities and doing too much moonlighting," Edison now borrowed $35.00 from his fellow telegrapher and "night owl" pal, Benjamin Bredding, to purchase a steamship ticket to the "more commercially oriented city of New York."



During the third week after arriving in "the big apple" Tom (seen above) was purportedly "on the verge of starving to death." At this precipitous juncture, one of the most amazing coincidences in the annals of technological history now began to unfold. Immediately after having begged a cup of tea from a street vendor, Tom began to meander through some of the offices in New York's financial district. Observing that the manager of a local brokerage firm was in a panic, he eventually determined that a critically important stock-ticker in his office had just broken down....

Noting that no one in the crowd that had gathered around the defective machine seemed to have a clue on how to fix it, he elbowed his way into the scene and grasped a momentary opportunity to have a go at addressing what was wrong himself.... Luckily, since he had been sleeping in the basement of the building for a few days - and doing quite a bit of snooping around - he already had a pretty good idea of what the device was supposed to do.

After spending a few seconds confirming exactly how the stock ticker was intended to work in the first place, Tom reached down and manipulated a loose spring back to where it belonged. To everyone's amazement, except Tom's, the device began to run perfectly.

The office manager was so ecstatic, he made an on-the-spot decision to hire Edison to make all such repairs for the busy company for a salary of $300.00 per month.... This was not only more than what his pal Benjamin Bredding was making back in Boston but twice the going rate for a top electrician in New York City. Later in life, Edison recalled that the incident was more euphoric than anything he ever experienced in his life because it made him feel as though he had been "suddenly delivered out of abject poverty and into prosperity."



Success at last!

It should come as no surprise that, during his free time, Edison soon resumed his habit of "moonlighting" with the telegraph, the quadruplex transmitter, the stock-ticker, etc. Shortly thereafter, he was absolutely astonished - in fact he nearly fainted - when a corporation paid him $40,000 for all of his rights to the latter device.

Convinced that no bank would honor the large check he was given for it, which was the first "real" money he had ever received for an invention, young Edison walked around for hours in a stupor, staring at it in amazement. Fearful that someone would steal it, he laid the cash out on his bed and stayed up all night, counting it over and over in disbelief. The next day a wise friend told him to deposit it in a bank forthwith and to just forget about it for a while.

A few weeks later, Edison wrote a series of poignant letters back home to his father: "How is mother getting along?... I am now in a position to give you some cash... Write and say how much....Give mother anything she wants...." Interestingly, It was at this time that he also repaid Bredding the $35.00 he had borrowed earlier.

Over the next three years, Edison's progress in creating successful inventions for industry really took off.... For example, in 1874 - with the money he received from the sale of an electrical engineering firm that held several of his patents - he opened his first complete testing and development laboratory in Newark, New Jersey.



At age 29, he commenced work on the carbon transmitter, which ultimately made Alexander Graham Bell's amazing new "articulating" telephone (which by today's standards sounded more like someone trying to talk through a kazoo than a telephone) audible enough for practical use. Interestingly, at one point during this intense period, Edison was as close to inventing the telephone as Bell was to inventing the phonograph. Nevertheless, shortly after Edison moved his laboratory to Menlo Park, N.J. in 1876, he invented - in 1877 - the first phonograph.

In 1879, extremely disappointed by the fact that Bell had beaten him in the race to patent the first authentic transmission of the human voice, Edison now "one upped" all of his competition by inventing the first commercially practical incandescent electric light bulb...



And if that wasn't enough to forever seal his unequaled importance in technological history, he came up with an invention that - in terms of its collective affect upon mankind - has had more impact than any other. In 1883 and 1884, while beating a path from his research lab to the patent office, he introduced the world's first economically viable system of centrally generating and distributing electric light, heat, and power. (See "Greatest Achievement?") Powerfully, instrumental in impacting upon the world we know today, even his harshest critics grant that it was a Herculean achievement that only he was capable of bringing about at this specific point in history.



By 1887, Edison was recognized for having set up the world's first full fledged research and development center in West Orange, New Jersey. An amazing enterprise, its significance is as much misunderstood as his work in developing the first practical centralized power system. Regardless, within a year, this fantastic operation was the largest scientific testing laboratory in the world.

In 1890, Edison immersed himself in developing the first Vitascope, which would lead to the first silent motion pictures.

And, by 1892, his Edison General Electric Co. had fully merged with another firm to become the great General Electric Corporation, in which he was a major stockholder.

At the turn-of-the-century, Edison invented the first practical dictaphone, mimeograph, and storage battery. After creating the "kinetiscope" and the first silent film in 1904, he went on to introduce The Great Train Robbery in 1903, which was a ten minute clip that was his first attempt to blend audio with silent moving images to produce "talking pictures."



By now, Edison was being hailed world-wide as The wizard of Menlo Park, The father of the electrical age," and The greatest inventor who ever lived." Naturally, when World War I began, he was asked by the U. S. Government to focus his genius upon creating defensive devices for submarines and ships. During this time, he also perfected a number of important inventions relating to the enhanced use of rubber, concrete, and ethanol.

By the 1920s Edison was internationally revered. However, even though he was personally acquainted with scores of very important people of his era, he cultivated very few close friendships. And due to the continuing demands of his career, there were still relatively long periods when he spent a shockingly small amount of time with his family.

It wasn't until his health began to fail, in the late 1920s, that Edison finally began to slow down and, so to speak, "smell the flowers." Up until obtaining his last (1,093rd) patent at age 83, he worked mostly at home where, though increasingly frail, he enjoyed greeting former associates and famous people such as Charles Lindberg, Marie Curie, Henry Ford, and President Herbert Hoover etc. He also enjoyed reading the mail of admirers and puttering around, when able, in his office and home laboratory.



Thomas Edison died At 9 P.M. On Oct. 18th, 1931 in New Jersey. He was 84 years of age. Shortly before passing away, he awoke from a coma and quietly whispered to his very religious and faithful wife Mina, who had been keeping a vigil all night by his side: "It is very beautiful over there..."

Recognizing that his death marked the end of an era in the progress of civilization, countless individuals, communities, and corporations throughout the world dimmed their lights and, or, briefly turned off their electric power in his honor on the evening of the day he was laid to rest at his beautiful estate at Glenmont, New Jersey. Most realized that, even though he was far from being a flawless human being and may not have really had the avuncular personality that was so often ascribed to him by myth makers, he was an essentially good man with a powerful mission.... Driven by a superhuman desire to fulfill the promise of research and invent things to serve mankind, no one did more to help realize our Puritan founders dream of creating a country that - at its best - would be viewed by the rest of the world as "a shining city upon a hill."

ADDENDUM

Because of the peculiar voids that Edison often evinced in areas such as cognition, speech, grammar, etc., a number of medical authorities have argued that he may have been plagued by a fundamental learning disability that went well beyond mere deafness.... A few of have conjectured that this mysterious ailment - along with his lack of a formal education - may account for why he always seemed to "think so differently" compared to others of his time: "Always tenaciously clinging to those unique methods of analysis and experimentation with which he alone seemed to feel so comfortable...."

Whatever the impetus for his unique personality and traits, his incredible ability to come up with a meaningful new patent every two weeks throughout his working career "added more to the collective wealth of the world - and had more impact upon shaping modern civilization - than the accomplishments of any figure since Gutenberg...." Accordingly, most serious science and technology historians grant that he was indeed "The most influential figure of our millennium."

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor

Born: 3 March 1847
Birthplace: Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 2 August 1922
Best Known As: Inventor of the telephone


Bell, Alexander Graham

(1847-1922), inventor and speech teacher. Bell owes his immortality to his having been the first to design and patent a practical device for transmitting the human voice by means of an electric current. But Bell always described himself simply as a "teacher of the deaf," and his contributions in that field were of the first order.

Bell, who was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, was educated there and at the University of London. He also studied under his grandfather, Alexander Bell, a noted speech teacher. He taught elocution, assisted his father, also a speech teacher and noted phonetician, and taught at a school for the deaf in England, using his father's methods. In 1870, Bell immigrated with his parents to Canada.

Two years later he established a school for the deaf in Boston, Massachusetts, and the following year became a professor in speech and vocal physiology at Boston University. While teaching he experimented with a means of transmitting several telegraph messages simultaneously over a single wire and also with various devices to help the deaf learn to speak, including a means of graphically recording sound waves.

In 1874 the essential idea of the telephone formed in his mind. As he later explained it, "If I could make a current of electricity vary in intensity precisely as the air varies in density during the production of sound, I should be able to transmit speech telegraphically." Two years later he applied for a patent, which was granted on March 7, 1876. On March 10, the first coherent complete sentence--the famous "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you"--was transmitted in his laboratory.

Many others had worked to develop a practical telephone (the word itself was coined as early as 1849), and in all some six hundred suits were filed against Bell's patent. But it was ultimately upheld and he became a very rich man, in part thanks to his father-in-law, Gardiner G. Hubbard, who organized the first Bell Telephone Company. That firm evolved in the next few decades into the Bell Telephone System owned by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T).

In later years Bell experimented with a means to detect metal in wounds and with a vacuum-jacket respirator that led to the development of the iron lung. He helped bring Thomas A. Edison's phonograph to commercial practicality and experimented with hydrofoil boats and with airplanes as early as the 1890s.

With the wealth derived from the telephone, Bell was able to assist the careers of other scientists. He also founded and helped finance the journal Science, today the premier American scientific journal, and the National Geographic Society.

While constantly engaged in scientific experiments, Bell crusaded tirelessly on behalf of the deaf, encouraging their integration into society with the help of lip-reading and other techniques. In 1890 he founded the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf.

He died in 1922 at his summer home on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. People throughout North America were urged to refrain from making phone calls during his burial so that telephones would remain silent as a tribute.

Alfred Nobel

Alfred Nobel
Corbis-Bettmann

Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born on Oct. 21, 1833, in Stockholm, Sweden, and was the fourth son of Immanuel and Caroline Nobel. Immanuel was an inventor and engineer who had married Caroline Andrietta Ahlsell in 1827. The couple had eight children, of whom only Alfred and three brothers reached adulthood. Alfred was prone to illness as a child, but he enjoyed a close relationship with his mother and displayed a lively intellectual curiosity from an early age. He was interested in explosives, and he learned the fundamentals of engineering from his father. Immanuel, meanwhile, had failed at various business ventures until moving in 1837 to St. Petersburg in Russia, where he prospered as a manufacturer of explosive mines and machine tools. The Nobel family left Stockholm in 1842 to join the father in St. Petersburg. Alfred's newly prosperous parents were now able to send him to private tutors, and he proved to be an eager pupil. He was a competent chemist by age 16 and was fluent in English, French, German, and Russian, as well as Swedish.

Alfred Nobel left Russia in 1850 to spend a year in Paris studying chemistry and then spent four years in the United States working under the direction of John Ericsson, the builder of the ironclad warship Monitor. Upon his return to St. Petersburg, Nobel worked in his father's factory, which made military equipment during the Crimean War. After the war ended in 1856, the company had difficulty switching to the peacetime production of steamboat machinery, and it went bankrupt in 1859.

Alfred and his parents returned to Sweden, while his brothers Robert and Ludvig stayed behind in Russia to salvage what was left of the family business. Alfred soon began experimenting with explosives in a small laboratory on his father's estate. At the time, the only dependable explosive for use in mines was black powder, a form of gunpowder. A recently discovered liquid compound, nitroglycerin, was a much more powerful explosive, but it was so volatile that it could not be handled with any degree of safety. Nevertheless, Nobel in 1862 built a small factory to manufacture nitroglycerin, and at the same time he undertook research in the hope of finding a safe way to control the explosive's detonation. In 1863 he invented a practical detonator consisting of a wooden plug inserted into a larger charge of nitroglycerin held in a metal container; the explosion of the plug's small charge of black powder serves to detonate the much more powerful charge of liquid nitroglycerin. This detonator marked the beginning of Nobel's reputation as an inventor as well as the fortune he was to acquire as a maker of explosives. In 1865 Nobel invented an improved detonator called a blasting cap; it consisted of a small metal cap containing a charge of mercury fulminate that can be exploded by either shock or moderate heat. The invention of the blasting cap inaugurated the modern use of high explosives.

Nitroglycerin itself, however, remained difficult to transport and extremely dangerous to handle. So dangerous, in fact, that Nobel's nitroglycerin factory blew up in 1864, killing his younger brother Emil and several other people. Undaunted by this tragic accident, Nobel built several factories to manufacture nitroglycerin for use in concert with his blasting caps. These factories were as safe as the knowledge of the time allowed, but accidental explosions still occasionally occurred. Nobel's second important invention was that of dynamite in 1867. By chance, he discovered that nitroglycerin was absorbed to dryness by kieselguhr, a porous siliceous earth, and the resulting mixture was much safer to use and easier to handle than nitroglycerin alone. Nobel named the new product dynamite ( from Greek dynamis, "power") and was granted patents for it in Great Britain (1867) and the United States (1868). Dynamite established Nobel's fame worldwide and was soon put to use in blasting tunnels, cutting canals, and building railways and roads.


Alfred Nobel, portrait by Emil Österman, 1915;
in the Nobel Foundation, Stockholm

In the 1870s and '80s Nobel built a network of factories throughout Europe to manufacture dynamite, and he formed a web of corporations to produce and market his explosives. He also continued to experiment in search of better ones, and in 1875 he invented a more powerful form of dynamite, blasting gelatin, which he patented the following year. Again by chance, he had discovered that mixing a solution of nitroglycerin with a fluffy substance known as nitrocellulose results in a tough, plastic material that has a high water resistance and greater blasting power than ordinary dynamites. In 1887 Nobel introduced ballistite, one of the first nitroglycerin smokeless powders and a precursor of cordite. Although Nobel held the patents to dynamite and his other explosives, he was in constant conflict with competitors who stole his processes, a fact that forced him into protracted patent litigation on several occasions.

Nobel's brothers Ludvig and Robert, in the meantime, had developed newly discovered oilfields near Baku (now in Azerbaijan) along the Caspian Sea and had themselves become immensely wealthy. Alfred's worldwide interests in explosives, along with his own holdings in his brothers' companies in Russia, brought him a large fortune. In 1893 he became interested in Sweden's arms industry, and the following year he bought an ironworks at Bofors, near Varmland, that became the nucleus of the well-known Bofors arms factory. Besides explosives, Nobel made many other inventions, such as artificial silk and leather, and altogether he registered more than 350 patents in various countries.

Nobel's complex personality puzzled his contemporaries. Although his business interests required him to travel almost constantly, he remained a lonely recluse who was prone to fits of depression. He led a retired and simple life and was a man of ascetic habits, yet he could be a courteous dinner host, a good listener, and a man of incisive wit. He never married, and apparently preferred the joys of inventing to those of romantic attachment. He had an abiding interest in literature and wrote plays, novels, and poems, almost all of which remained unpublished. He had amazing energy and found it difficult to relax after intense bouts of work. Among his contemporaries, he had the reputation of a liberal or even a socialist, but he actually distrusted democracy, opposed suffrage for women, and maintained an attitude of benign paternalism toward his many employees. Though Nobel was essentially a pacifist and hoped that the destructive powers of his inventions would help bring an end to war, his view of mankind and nations was pessimistic.

By 1895 Nobel had developed angina pectoris, and he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at his villa in San Remo, Italy, on Dec. 10, 1896. At his death his worldwide business empire consisted of more than 90 factories manufacturing explosives and ammunition. The opening of his will, which he had drawn up in Paris on Nov. 27, 1895, and had deposited in a bank in Stockholm, contained a great surprise for his family, friends, and the general public. He had always been generous in humanitarian and scientific philanthropies, and he left the bulk of his fortune in trust to establish what came to be the most highly regarded of international awards, the Nobel Prizes.
We can only speculate about the reasons for Nobel's establishment of the prizes that bear his name. He was reticent about himself, and he confided in no one about his decision in the months preceding his death. The most plausible assumption is that a bizarre incident in 1888 may have triggered the train of reflection that culminated in his bequest for the Nobel Prizes. That year Alfred's brother Ludvig had died while staying in Cannes, France. The French newspapers reported Ludvig's death but confused him with Alfred, and one paper sported the headline "Le marchand de la mort est mort" ("The merchant of death is dead.") Perhaps Alfred Nobel established the prizes to avoid precisely the sort of posthumous reputation suggested by this premature obituary. It is certain that the actual awards he instituted reflect his lifelong interest in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology, and literature. There is also abundant evidence that his friendship with the prominent Austrian pacifist Bertha von Suttner inspired him to establish the prize for peace.

Nobel himself, however, remains a figure of paradoxes and contradictions: a brilliant, lonely man, part pessimist and part idealist, who invented the powerful explosives used in modern warfare but also established the world's most prestigious prizes for intellectual services rendered to humanity.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921

Biography
Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Six weeks later the family moved to Munich and he began his schooling there at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree.

During his stay at the Patent Office, and in his spare time, he produced much of his remarkable work and in 1908 he was appointed Privatdozent in Berne. In 1909 he became Professor Extraordinary at Zurich, in 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague, returning to Zurich in the following year to fill a similar post. In 1914 he was appointed Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and Professor in the University of Berlin. He became a German citizen in 1914 and remained in Berlin until 1933 when he renounced his citizenship for political reasons and emigrated to America to take the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton*. He became a United States citizen in 1940 and retired from his post in 1945.

After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, he was offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined, and he collaborated with Dr. Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Einstein always appeared to have a clear view of the problems of physics and the determination to solve them. He had a strategy of his own and was able to visualize the main stages on the way to his goal. He regarded his major achievements as mere stepping-stones for the next advance.

At the start of his scientific work, Einstein realized the inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics and his special theory of relativity stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. He dealt with classical problems of statistical mechanics and problems in which they were merged with quantum theory: this led to an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules. He investigated the thermal properties of light with a low radiation density and his observations laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.

In his early days in Berlin, Einstein postulated that the correct interpretation of the special theory of relativity must also furnish a theory of gravitation and in 1916 he published his paper on the general theory of relativity. During this time he also contributed to the problems of the theory of radiation and statistical mechanics.

In the 1920's, Einstein embarked on the construction of unified field theories, although he continued to work on the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory, and he persevered with this work in America. He contributed to statistical mechanics by his development of the quantum theory of a monatomic gas and he has also accomplished valuable work in connection with atomic transition probabilities and relativistic cosmology.

After his retirement he continued to work towards the unification of the basic concepts of physics, taking the opposite approach, geometrisation, to the majority of physicists.

Einstein's researches are, of course, well chronicled and his more important works include Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics (1938). Among his non-scientific works, About Zionism (1930), Why War? (1933), My Philosophy (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950) are perhaps the most important.

Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. During the 1920's he lectured in Europe, America and the Far East and he was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world. He gained numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925, and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1935.

Einstein's gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation, music played an important part in his life. He married Mileva Maric in 1903 and they had a daughter and two sons; their marriage was dissolved in 1919 and in the same year he married his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, who died in 1936. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey.

From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967

This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures.

PERIYAR

Born: September 17, 1879
Erode, Tamil Nadu, India
Died: December 24, 1973
Tamil Nadu, India
Occupation: Trader, Social Worker
Spouse: Nagammal, Maniammai

Life and beliefs

MGR with EVREVR's given name was Ramaswami. He was from a prominent Naicker caste, a community that descended from the Nayak rulers of Mysore. Hence he is called E. V. Ramaswami Naicker. "Periyar" means 'respected one' or an 'elder' in Tamil.

EVR was an atheist, noted for his anti-theistic statement, "He who created god was a fool, he who spreads his name is a scoundrel, and he who worships him is a barbarian." In 1956, he took a procession of Rama's picture garlanded with slippers near Dharmapuri and destroyed the portrait in public. EVR's most popular writing is The Ramayana: A True Reading (1959), on the Ramayana, a Hindu epic.


MGR paying respects to Periyar's mortal remainsThough he was born in an affluent Telugu origin family, he fought against the untouchability practiced by upper castes, specifically targeting Brahmins, the rituals of Hinduism, and the caste system. He later opposed Mohandas K. Gandhi and the Indian National Congress preferring the Justice Party.

His Early life

Periyar was the son of a merchant Venkata, who was a devout Hindu of the Vaishnavite school of thought. His mother was Chinna Thayammal alais Muthammal; he had one elder brother named Krishnaswamy and two sisters named Kannamma and Ponnuthoy. Periyar studied for 5 years and joined his father's trade at the age of 12. He used to listen to Tamil Vaishnavite gurus who gave discourses in his house enjoying his father's hospitality. Periyar was married to Nagammal. He became the father of a female child which soon died and he had no more children. After being reprimanded by his father, Periyar left his house for Kasi.


Pilgrimage to Kaasi

He went on a pilgrimage to Varanasi to worship in the famous Siva temple Kashi Vishwanath in 1904. He wanted to enter a free-lunch place but finding that it was meant only for Brahmins he disguised himself as a one. But it was discovered that he was not a Brahmin and he was removed from the place. Later he learnt that the free-lunch place was built with the donation of a Dravidian merchant. He saw the discrimination against non-Brahmins. He had pictured Kasi as a place where all Hindus would be treated equally. This humiliation was the turning point in Periyar's life and after that made a deep wound in the heart of Periyar and it inflamed intense hatred towards the caste system and Hindu religion itself. On returning to Erode his father delegated all his trade rights to this second son and renamed his major commercial concern under the title: "E.V. Ramasamy Mandi".


A Freedom Fighter as a Congress Party Leader

EVR, the freedom fighter fought for India's freedom till 1930[5] and after that he fought against India's freedom. However his critics dispute this and say his role was magnified. On 15-8-1947, when India became free of British domination, he grieved the coming of Indian Independence by wearing black armband and waving black flag.


A Committed Rationalist and Rebel

Periyar was a religious man upto the age of 28 and he was a manager (dharmakartha) of a temple for a considerable time. After that he became an atheist and followed western philosopher Nietzsche and claimed that God is dead. The Tamil public started a great following and he became the Messiah for all the agnostic and atheistic masses. He educated the public and the low-caste masses around India started following his teachings. His conflict with the Brahmins in Congress Party made him an anti-brahmin activist. He was able to have some learned articulate politicians like Annadurai and Karunanidhi as his chief followers.


Leader of Justice Party: 1939-1944

Justice Party was a rich man's party and had no grass roots support or proper leaders. Before the World War II they were able to seize power of Madras for a short period. People opted for Congress Party and voted out the Justice Party from the power. As it was nearing its demise they wanted a charismatic rich leader. Periyar was their choice and what a choice it was. Soon the Justice Party was leading the way for social equality and reform.


Leader of Dravidar Kazhagam

Periyar was more bent on social reform and he changed the name of the Justice Party into Dravidar Kazhagam. He avoided parliamentary democracy and started social reforms. His followers who wanted politics split with him on his marriage issue and started Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.


Anti-Hindi

Hindi imposition in Tamil Nadu started in 1937 when the Congress Government of the Madras Presidency under Rajaji introduced Hindi in the school curriculum. Tamils opposed Hindi immediately and the Justice Party under Sir A. D. Panneerselvam and Periyar organized anti-Hindi protests in 1938 and were arrested and jailed by the Rajaji government. More than 1200 people, including women and children, were imprisoned in 1938, of which two, Thalamuthu and Natarasan, lost their lives. In 1939 the Rajaji government quit due to the decision of the Indian National Congress to protest India's participation in World War 2. The teaching of Hindi was withdrawn in 1940 by the British governor.


EVR and Kula Kalvi Thittam/Hereditary Education Policy

Rajaji introduced a new education policy based on family vocation which its opponents dubbed Kula Kalvi Thittam (Hereditary Education Policy). As per this policy schools will work in the morning and students had to compulsorily learn the family vocation in the afternoon. A Carpenter’s son would learn Carpentry, a priest's son chanting hymns and a barber’s son hair cutting and shaving after school in the afternoon. EVR felt that the scheme was a clever device against Dalits and Other Backward Classes as their first generation was getting educated only then. EVR demanded its withdrawal and launched protests against the Kula Kalvi Thittam (Hereditary Education Policy) which he felt was caste-based and was aimed at maintaining caste hegemony. Rajaji quit in 1954 and Kamaraj scrapped it after becoming chief minister.


EVR's ideas on Modern Tamil Alphabet

He instituted Tamil alphabet reforms and his reasons are as follows:

In writings and publications of 70 or 80 years ago, the vowel 'ee' (i:), indicated today as ' ¼ ', was a cursive and looped representation of the short form, ' ¬ ' (i). In stone inscriptions of 400 or 500 years ago, many Tamil letters are found in other shapes. The older and the more divine a language and its letters are said to be, they, in truth, need reform.

Just as some compound characters have separate signs to indicate their length as in ' æè ' , ' îæ ' (ka: , ke:), why should not other compound characters like ' æ¨ ' , ' æ© ' , ' Æ ' , ' Ô ' (ki, ki:,ku, ku:) (indicated integrally as of now), also have separate signs? This indeed requires consideration.

Changing the shape of letters, creating new symbols and adding new letters and similarly, dropping those that are redundant, are quite essential.

The glory and excellence of a language and its script depend on how easily they can be understood or learnt and on nothing else.

Tamil alphabet looks primitive! How many loops! How many dashes! How many upward turns! How many downward turns! Such cumbersome orthography in the present day! Do we need so many letters today? Why do we need 216 letters? The Englishman does wonders and has only 26 letters. And he turns the whole world round with just 26 letters.


Criticism

He declared Indian independence as a day of slavery and declared it as a day of mourning. He fought for the separation of Tamil areas of India and Sri Lanka and for the human rights of the oppressed Tamil diaspora. He backed colonial rule and attempted to forge an alliance with both Ambedkar and Jinnah.
Periyar created the oldest anti-Brahmin movement in India. Tamil Brahmins (Iyers and Iyengars) were frequently held responsible by Periyarites for direct or indirect oppression of lower-caste people on the canard of "Brahmin oppression" and resulted in innumerable hate attacks on Brahmins and started a wave of ethnic cleansing, resulting in forced mass-migration of the Brahmin population.[14]Periyar repeatedly called for "Brahmin killing"s and burning down Brahmin homes. Later, in regards to a DK member's attempt to assassinate Rajagopalachari, he "expressed his abhorrence of violence as a means of settling political differences".The canard of "Brahmin oppression" rationalized conspiracy theories and pointed to Brahmins as enemies against whom the radical movements pitted themselves. The legacy of the anti-Brahmanism of the self-respect movement was taken over by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.Growing anti-Brahmanism in Chennai provided a rationale for polarization of the lower castes in the DMK movement. Eventually, the virulent anti-Brahmanism subsided somewhat with the replacement of the DMK party by the AIADMK

EVR's followers have broken temple icons, cut sacred threads and tufts from brahmin priests, and have often portrayed Brahmins in the most derogatory manner in their meetings and magazines (see http://www.viduthalai.com and http://www.unmaionline.com - both in Tamil language).

Gandhi did not like his views as he wanted to bring in reforms gradually and spoke of inclusion, not exclusion and hate; Periyar bolted away from the freedom movement.

Notable followers

Bharatidasan
Sathyaraj
K.Veeramani, leader of Dravidar Kazhagam after Periyar.
Kavignar Inkulab, rationalist Tamil poet.
Poondi Kumaraswamy, engineer and hydroglogist.
Periyar Thasan
S.Vallatharasu
Dr. Karunanidhi