Arvind Narayan Das (popularly known as Aravind N. Das) was a social scientist, journalist, activist and a documentary filmmaker from Bihar, eastern India..
He was influenced by Naxalbari, the peasant rebellion, while a student at St. Stephen's College, Delhi in late 1960s. Journalist Harsh Sethi wrote of him: "Rarely before, or since, at least in post-Independence India, had otherwise comfortably placed students taken the cause of the underdog to heart. Among those who were permanently marked by the experience of the ‘spring thunder’ was Arvind N. Das." [1] His experiences in the period he spent underground as part of the Naxalites movement, shaped most of his life thereafter. He joined the Times of India as a research editor, and pioneered the books that the Times group produced on its sesquicentennial celebrations. In 1994 he left the Times and helped co-found Asia Pacific Communication Associates Pvt. Ltd. (APCA) with Dileep Padgaonkar, Anikendra Nath Sen and Darryl D'Monte. In 1995 he began travelling around India for the 18-part documentary India Invented, inspired by D.D. Kosambi's vision of Indian history. It took more than two years to make, and was a defining moment of Das's career. Das was also the founder-editor of Biblio, a review of books.
At his sudden death due to heart attack in 2000, Indian journalist Dileep Padgaonkar wrote, "But Arvind's real obsession, the one that shaped his thinking, guided his written output and nourished his conversations, was his native Bihar. It can be said without exaggeration that no contemporary Indian thinker has spoken and written about the glorious past, the dismal present and potential for a great future of this state with such lofty eloquence as he did. In his eyes, Bihar was a metaphor for India itself. At a pinch, he would have deemed it to be the very centre of the universe. While he loathed its venal, caste-ridden, ineffective governance, the violent nature of its society, its decrepit intellectual and cultural life and the slothful ways of its elite, he never missed an opportunity to recall its rich cultural and spiritual legacy, the noble character of its long-suffering people and the revolutionary potential of its youth. Two of his books - The Republic of Bihar and Changel: The Biography of a Village - bear vivid testimony to what the state meant to him." [2]
Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly referred to as JP or Lok Nayak, was an Indian independence activist, theorist, socialist and political leader. He is remembered for leading the mid-1970s opposition against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, for whose overthrow he had called for a "total revolution". His biography, Jayaprakash, was written by his nationalist friend and the writer of Hindi literature, Rambriksh Benipuri. In 1999, he was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in recognition of his social service. Other awards include the Magsaysay award for Public Service in 1965.
The Communist Party of India (CPI) is the oldest Marxist–Leninist communist party in India and one of the nine national parties in the country. The CPI was founded in modern-day Kanpur on 26 December 1925.
Rajendra Prasad was an Indian politician, lawyer, Indian independence activist, journalist & scholar who served as the first president of Republic of India from 1950 to 1962. He joined the Indian National Congress during the Indian Independence Movement and became a major leader from the region of Bihar and Maharashtra. A supporter of Mahatma Gandhi, Prasad was imprisoned by British authorities during the Salt Satyagraha of 1931 and the Quit India movement of 1942. After the constituent assembly 1946 elections, Prasad served as Minister of Food and Agriculture in the central government. Upon independence in 1947, Prasad was elected as President of the Constituent Assembly of India, which prepared the Constitution of India and served as its provisional Parliament.
Amitava Kumar is an Indian writer and journalist who is Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair at Vassar College.
All India Kisan Sabha, is the peasant or farmers' wing of the Communist Party of India, an important peasant movement formed by Sahajanand Saraswati in 1936.
Sahajanand Saraswati( real name Navrang Rai )pronunciation (help·info) was an ascetic, a nationalist and a peasant leader of India.
Raj Kamal Jha is an Indian newspaper editor and novelist writing in English. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express. He has written five novels that have been translated into more than 12 languages. His journalism and fiction have won national and international awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize; Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize; Tata Literature Live! Book of The Year; the International Press Institute India Award for Excellence in Journalism; and the Mumbai Press Club Journalist of the Year award. In September 2021, Jha was awarded Editor of The Year by the India Chapter of the International Advertising Association Annual Leadership Awards.
Dilip Purushottam Chitre was one of the foremost Indian poets and critics to emerge in the post Independence India. Apart from being a notable bilingual writer, writing in Marathi and English, he was also a teacher, a painter, a filmmaker and a magazine columnist.
Satyendra Narayan Sinha was an Indian politician and statesman, participant in the Indian independence movement, a leading light of Jaya Prakash Narayan's ‘complete revolution’ movement during the Emergency and a former Chief Minister of Bihar. Affectionately called Chhote Saheb, he was also a seven-time Member of Parliament from the Aurangabad constituency, a three-term Member of the Bihar Legislative Assembly, and a Member of the Bihar Legislative Council once. Regarded to be one of India's most influential regional people of the time, his reputation was synonymous with being a strict disciplinarian and tough taskmaster.
Sheila Dhar was an Indian author and singer of Kirana gharana. She is known for her writings about music and musicians, which included three books. She also taught English literature and language at Delhi University. She was the wife of P. N. Dhar, an economist and an advisor of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Indian English poetry is the oldest form of Indian English literature. Indian poets writing in English have succeeded to nativize or indianize English in order to reveal typical Indian situations. Henry Louis Vivian Derozio is considered the first poet in the lineage of Indian English poetry followed by Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Sarojini Naidu, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, and Toru Dutt, among others.
Mangesh Keshav Padgaoankar was a legendary Marathi poet from Maharashtra, India.
Thayil Jacob Sony George is an Indian writer and biographer who received a Padma Bhushan award in 2011 in the field of literature and education. The fourth of eight siblings, TJS was born in Kerala, India to Thayil Thomas Jacob, a magistrate, and Chachiamma Jacob, a homemaker. Although his roots are in Thumpamon, Kerala, he lives in Bangalore and Coimbatore with his wife Ammu. He has a daughter, Sheba Thayil and a son, Jeet Thayil. American TV journalist Raj Mathai is his nephew.
Groom kidnapping, colloquially known as Pakaruah shaadi or Jabaria shaadi, is a phenomenon in the western parts of Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh states, more prominent in Munger and Dumka wherein eligible bachelors are abducted by the bride's family and later forcibly married, to get men with better education and/or richer men. Considering the traditional regard for the marriage sacrament, most such marriages are not annulled. Additionally, the groom may suffer fake criminal charges under Indian dowry law, and end up fighting lengthy legal battles.
Pandit Nilakantha Das (1884-1967) was one of the most illustrious sons of Odisha, who appeared both in its political and literary arena at the most crucial period of its history, when Odisha had no political identity in the map of India, and Odia as a language was about to be extinct. He worked relentlessly for Odisha's recognition both politically and linguistically, and helped bring to fruition the dreams of Utkala Gaurab Madhusudan Das, Utkalamani Gopabandhu Das and all other Odia loving people.
Badri Narain Sinha was born at village Saramohanpur in Darbhanga district of Bihar. An officer of Indian Police Service of 1952 batch of Bihar cadre of India, Sinha died in harness as Deputy Inspector General (CID), Government of Bihar. Sinha, described as ‘erudite and knowledgeable police chief’ by noted sociologist-journalist Arvind N Das, was a poet, critic, journalist, and a close associate of Jayprakash Narayan. Apart from the unique alchemy of brain and brawn that he displayed as an administrator and police officer, he was a thinker, littérateur, poet, a secular devout who broke bread with Muslims during the holy month of Ramzan as much as practicing austere Hindu fast during the whole month of Kartik, personifying in his life the multi-faceted moral actions that he highlights as Gandhi's character and, therefore, his message in his writings on the Mahatma.
George Buist FRSE FRS FRSSA FGS LL.D. (1805–1860) was a Scottish journalist and scientist. He was the editor of The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce which his successor Robert Knight renamed The Times of India. He is described "as India's foremost man of letters".
Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bhagalpur is one of the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIIT), a group of institutes of Higher education in India focused on Information Technology. It was established by the Ministry of Education (MoE), formerly the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, and few industry partners as a Not-for-profit Public Private Partnership (N-PPP) Institution. IIIT Bhagalpur was declared as an Institute of National Importance (INI) in September 2020.The institute started functioning from July 2017 in a 50-acres campus at Bhagalpur College of Engineering. It was being mentored by Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IITG) till April 2019 when it got its own director.
Deo Kumar Singh, commonly known by his nom de guerre Arvind Ji, Vikash Ji and Sujeet Ji, was the leader of the Indian Maoist movement and the Politburo Member of Communist Party of India (Maoist), a banned communist party in India. He spent his life as a student leader, a mass organiser and later led and strategised the guerrilla warfare against the Indian state.
Editors Guild of India (EGI) is a non profit organization of journalists based in India. The organization has declared "objectives of protecting press freedom and for raising the standards of editorial leadership of newspapers and magazines". It was founded in 1978, by Kuldip Nayar. EGI has represented Indian newspapers in communications to the government.