Khwaja Ahmad Abbas was an Indian film director, screenwriter, novelist, and journalist in Urdu, Hindi and English.
Dayanand Saraswati, was a Hindu philosopher, social leader and founder of the Arya Samaj, a reform movement of Hinduism. His book Satyarth Prakash has remained one of the influential texts on the philosophy of the Vedas and clarifications of various ideas and duties of human beings. He was the first to give the call for Swaraj as "India for Indians" in 1876, a call later taken up by Lokmanya Tilak. Denouncing the idolatry and ritualistic worship, he worked towards reviving Vedic ideologies. Subsequently, the philosopher and President of India, S. Radhakrishnan, called him one of the "makers of Modern India", as did Sri Aurobindo.
Ramdhari Singh, known by his pen name Dinkar, was an Indian Hindi language poet, essayist, freedom fighter, patriot and academic. He emerged as a poet of rebellion as a consequence of his nationalist poetry written in the days before Indian independence. His poetry exuded Veer Rasa, and he has been hailed as a Rashtrakavi and Yuga-Chāraṇa on account of his inspiring patriotic compositions. He was a regular poet of Hindi Kavi Sammelan and is hailed to be as popular and connected to poetry lovers for Hindi speakers as Pushkin for Russians.
The Ghadar Movement or Ghadar Party was an early 20th-century, international political movement founded by expatriate Indians to overthrow British rule in India. Many of the Ghadar Party founders and leaders, including Sohan Singh Bhakna, would go on and join the Babbar Akali Movement and would help it in logistics as a party and publishing its own newspaper in the post-World War I era. The early movement was created by revolutionaries who lived and worked on the West Coast of the United States and Canada, but the movement later spread to India and Indian diasporic communities around the world. The official founding has been dated to a meeting on 15 July 1913 in Astoria, Oregon, and the group would splinter into two factions the first time in 1914, with the Sikh-majority faction known as the “Azad Punjab Ghadar” and the Hindu-majority faction known as the “Hindustan Ghadar.” The Azad Punjab Ghadar Party’s headquarters and anti-colonial newspaper publications headquarters would remain in the Stockton Gurdwara located in Stockton, California, whereas the Hindustan Ghadar Party’s headquarters and Hindustan Ghadar newspaper would relocate to be based in nearby Oakland, a suburb of San Francisco, California.
Arya Samaj is a Hindu reform movement in South Africa. Like other parts of the world where people of Indian origin are settled, the teachings of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj, made their way to South Africa during the beginning of the twentieth century. The Arya Samaj encouraged Indian South Africans to take pride in their heritage and culture and promoted education and social reform.
Ramavriksha Benipuri was an independence activist, socialist leader, editor and Hindi writer. He was born in a small village named Benipur in Muzaffarpur district in a Bhumihar Brahmin family in the Indian state of Bihar. He had spent nine years in prison for fighting for India's independence. He was the founder of Bihar Socialist Party in 1931 and Congress Socialist Party in 1934. He served as the president of Patna District Congress Committee of Indian National Congress from 1935 to 1937 during the 1937 Indian provincial elections. He was elected as the Member of the Legislative Assembly (India) from Katra North in 1957. In 1958, he was elected as the Syndicate Member of Bihar University, Muzaffarpur.
Anarchism in India first emerged within the Indian independence movement, gaining particularly notoriety for its influence on Mohandas Gandhi's theory of Sarvodaya and his practice of nonviolent resistance. Anarchism was also an influence on the revolutionary movement, inspiring the works of Har Dayal, M. P. T. Acharya and Bhagat Singh, among others.
Vasant Desai (1912–1975) was an Indian film music composer, most remembered for his score in V. Shantaram films like Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje (1955), Do Aankhen Barah Haath (1957), Vijay Bhatt's Goonj Uthi Shehnai (1959), Sampoorna Ramayan (1961), Ashirwad (1968) and Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Guddi (1971).
Syed Asghar Wajahat, popularly known as Asghar Wajahat, is a Hindi scholar, fiction writer, novelist, playwright, an independent documentary filmmaker and a television scriptwriter, who is most known for his work, 'Saat Aasmaan' and his acclaimed play, 'Jis Lahore Nai Dekhya, O Jamyai Nai', based on the story of an old Punjabi Hindu woman who gets left behind in Lahore, after the Partition of India, and then refuses to leave.
Akhilendra Mishra is an Indian film and television character actor best known for his role as Kroor Singh in the 1990s Doordarshan fantasy television series Chandrakanta. His other notable works include the character of Mirchi Seth in the 1999 critically acclaimed film Sarfarosh. He also played the character of Arjan in the Academy Award nominated film Lagaan. He played the demon king Ravana in the 2008 television adaptation of the Hindu epic Ramayana.
Bhai Balmukund was an Indian revolutionary freedom fighter. He was sentenced to death and hanged by the British Raj for his role in Delhi conspiracy case. He was a cousin of another revolutionary Bhai Parmanand, who was a founder member of Ghadar Party.
Dr. Om Prakash Pandey, is a poet who won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Sanskrit in 2008.
Lala Har Dayal Mathur was an Indian nationalist revolutionary and freedom fighter. He was a polymath who turned down a career in the Indian Civil Service. His simple living and intellectual acumen inspired many expatriate Indians living in Canada and the U.S. in their campaign against British rule in India during the First World War.
Litterateur and parliamentarian Shankar Dayal Singh was twice elected to the Parliament of India. He was one of the youngest members of the Fifth Lok Sabha, in which he represented the Chatra parliamentary constituency in Bihar. Contesting his maiden Lok Sabha election in 1971, he defeated Smt. Vijaya Raje, the wife of Sri Kamakhya Narayan Singh, Raja of Ramgarh. He was again elected to the upper house, the Rajya Sabha, in 1990 from Bihar.
Giani Ditt Singh was a historian, scholar, poet, editor and an eminent Singh Sabha reformer. Singh wrote over 70 books on Sikhism, the most famous of which is Khalsa Akhbar. His Dayanand naal mera Samvaad and Durga Parbodh are considered major texts of Sikh philosophy.
Waryam Singh Sandhu is an Indian author of short stories. In 2000, he was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for his short story collection Chauthi koot. Although he writes in Punjabi, his works have been translated into Hindi, Bengali, Urdu and English.
Padma Sachdev was an Indian poet and novelist. She was the first modern woman poet of the Dogri language. She also wrote in Hindi. She published several poetry collections, including Meri Kavita Mere Geet, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1971. She also received the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award in 2001, and the Kabir Samman for poetry for the year 2007-08 given by Government of Madhya Pradesh, Saraswati Samman for the year 2015, Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 2019.
Rajkamal Kalamandir was a noted film production company and studio in Mumbai. It was established by V. Shantaram in 1942, after he left Prabhat Films. The studio produced films both in Hindi and Marathi, and it was best known for Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (1946), Amar Bhoopali (1951), Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje (1955), Do Aankhen Barah Haath (1957), Navrang (1959) and Pinjra (1972). In its heyday, Rajkamal was one of the most sophisticated studios of the country.
Sumita Misra is an Indian civil service servant. She is an Indian Administrative Service officer and poet. Currently, she is posted as ACS to Government of Haryana, Medical Education and Research Department.
Shrinarayan Chaturvedi was an Indian writer, litterateur, publicist, and journalist known for his contributions to the promotion of the Hindi language. He served as the editor of Saraswati. In 1984, he received the Padma Bhushan for contributions to literature from the Government of India.
