Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar,Bombay, Hindu and Indian nationalist and leading figure in the Hindu Mahasabha (“Great Society of Hindus”), a Hindu nationalist organization and political party.
While a student of law in London (1906–10), Savarkar helped to instruct a group of Indian revolutionaries in methods of sabotage and assassination that associates of his had apparently learned from expatriate Russian revolutionaries in Paris. During this period he wrote The Indian War of Independence, 1857 (1909), in which he took the view that the Indian Mutiny of 1857 was the first expression of Indian mass rebellion against British colonial rule.
In March 1910 Savarkar was arrested on various charges relating to subversion and incitement to war and was sent to India for trial and convicted. In a second trial he was convicted of his alleged complicity in the assassination of a British district magistrate in India, and, after sentencing, he was transported to the Andaman Islands for detention “for life.” He was brought back to India in 1921 and released from detention in 1924. While imprisoned he wrote Hinditva: Who Is a Hindu? (1923), coining the term Hindutva (“Hinduness”), which sought to define Indian culture as a manifestation of Hindu values; this concept grew to become a major tenent of Hindu nationalist ideology.
Savarkar resided in Ratnagiri until 1937, when he joined the Hindu Mahasabha, which militantly defended the Hindus’ claims of religious and cultural supremacy over Indian Muslims. He served as president of the Mahasabha for seven years. In 1943 he retired to Bombay. When Mohandas K. Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 by a former member of the Mahasabha, Savarkar was implicated, but he was aquitted in his subsequent trial because of insufficient evidence.
Annabhau Sathe
Tukaram Bhaurao Sathe (1 August 1920 – 18 July 1969), popularly known as Annabhau Sathe, was a social reformer, folk poet, and writer from Maharashtra, India. Sathe was a Dalit born into the untouchable Mang community, and his upbringing and identity were central to his writing and political activism.
He was born on 1 August 1920, in Wategaon village, part of present-day Maharashtra’s Sangli district, to a family that belonged to the untouchable Matang caste. Members of the caste used to play traditional folk instruments in tamasha performances.
Sathe wrote 35 novels in the Marathi language. They include Fakira (1959), which is in its 19th edition and received a state government award in 1961. There are 15 collections of Sathe’s short stories, of which a large number have been translated into many Indian and as many as 27 non-Indian languages. Besides novels and short stories, Sathe wrote a play, a travelogue on Russia, 12 screenplays, and 10 ballads in the Marathi powada style.
Sathe’s use of folkloric narrative styles like powada and lavani helped popularise and make his work accessible to many communities. In Fakira, Sathe portrays Fakira, the protagonist, revolting against the rural orthodox system and British Raj to save his community from utter starvation. The protagonist and his community are subsequently arrested and tortured by British officers, and Fakira is eventually killed by hanging.
Sathe was initially influenced by communist ideology. Together with writers such as D. N. Gavankar and Amar Shaikh, he was a member of Lal Bawta Kalapathak (Red Flag Cultural Squad), the cultural wing of the Communist Party of India, and a tamasha theatrical troupe that challenged government thinking. It had been active in the 1940s and, according to Tevia Abrams, was “the most exciting theatrical phenomenon of the 1950s” before communism in India generally fragmented in the aftermath of independence. He was a significant figure also in the Indian People’s Theatre Association, which was a cultural wing of the Communist Party of India, and in the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement, which sought the creation of a separate Marathi-speaking state through a linguistic division of the extant Bombay State.
Sathe shifted toward Dalit activism, following the teachings of B. R. Ambedkar, and used his stories to amplify the life experiences of Dalits and workers. In his inaugural speech at the first Dalit Sahitya Sammelan, a literary conference that he founded in Bombay in 1958, he said that “The earth is not balanced on the snake’s head but on the strength of Dalit and working-class people,” emphasising the importance of Dalit and working-class people in global structures. Unlike most Dalit writers of the period, Sathe’s work was influenced by Marxism rather than Buddhism.
Sathe has become an icon to Dalits, and especially the Mang caste. The Lokshahir Annabhau Sathe Development Corporation was established in 1985 to further the cause of the Mang people, and women in local branches of the Manavi Hakk Abhiyan (Human Rights Campaign, a Mang-Ambedkarite body) organise jayanti (processions) in his name and those of Ambedkar and Savitribai Phule. Political parties, such as the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliance, have attempted to appropriate his image as a means of drawing electoral support from the Mangs.
Krantiveer Nana Patil
Nana Patil, popularly known as Krantisinh, was an Indian independence activist and Member of Parliament for the Communist Party of India representing Beed District of Marathwada region.He was a source of inspiration for the people. Earlier, he had been a founder of the revolutionary Prati-sarkar formed in Satara district of west Maharashtra .Krantisinh Nana Patil established a parallel government in the district of Satara.He died on 6 December 1976.
Nana Patil was born on 3 August 1900 at Bahegaon, Maharashtra. His full name was Nana Ramchanra Pisal and he was a founder member of the Hindustan Republican Association who went underground between 1929 and 1932. Patil was imprisoned eight or nine times during the struggle with the British Raj from 1932 to 1942. He went underground for a second time for 44 months during the Quit India movement in 1942. He was active mainly in Tasgaon, Khanapur, Walva and south Karad talukas in Satara district. For a few months he stayed in the village of Dhankawadi, Purandhar, and received help from the then Patil (village headman), Shamrao Takawale. Patil’s method was direct attack on the colonial government and was widely accepted in the district.
In 1919, Patil began his social work with Prarthana Samaj for the development of depressed classes and creationg of awareness against blind faith and harmful traditions. He spent ten years working for the Prarthana Samaj and the associated Satyashodhak Samaj. During this period he started welfare initiatives such as ‘samaj-vivah’ (low budget marriage) and bhaiyya education. He was against the caste system and throughout his life he fought for the right of the poor and farmers. He taught them to avoid extra expenses incurred in traditional marriage ceremonies and festivals, he also advised them to avoid taking loans and also emphasized the importance of education for social development.
Patil started his public life in the Indian National Congress but in 1948 joined the Peasants and Workers Party of India with Shankarrao More, Keshavrao Jedhe, Bhausaheb Raut, Madhavrao Bagal. He got a ticket from Communist Party of India in 1957 to contest the Lok Sabha elections in the Satara constituencySatara constituency and in 1967 from Beed constituency. He was successful in 1957 and 1967. Patil also fought along with Aacharya Atre for the creation of the state of Maharashtra.
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