Jawaharlal Nehru was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat, and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20th century. Nehru was a principal leader of the Indian nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s. Upon India's independence in 1947, he served as the country's first prime minister for 16 years. Nehru promoted parliamentary democracy, secularism, and science and technology during the 1950s, powerfully influencing India's arc as a modern nation. In international affairs, he steered India clear of the two blocs of the Cold War. A well-regarded author, his books written in prison, such as Letters from a Father to His Daughter (1929), An Autobiography (1936) and The Discovery of India (1946), have been read around the world. The honorific Pandit has been commonly applied before his name.
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was an Indian politician who played a central role in the politics of Jammu and Kashmir. He is responsible for anti-Dogra rule movement and for 13 July 1931 incident, widely seen as the start of the oppression of Kashmiri Hindus. Abdullah was the founding leader of the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference and the 1st elected Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir after its accession to India. He agitated against the rule of the Maharaja Hari Singh and urged self-rule for Kashmir. He served as the 1st elected Prime Minister of the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir and was later jailed and exiled. He was dismissed from the position of Prime Ministership on 8 August 1953 and Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad was appointed the new Prime Minister. The expressions 'Sadr-i-Riyasat' and 'Prime Minister' were replaced with the terms 'Governor' and 'Chief Minister' in 1965. Sheikh Abdullah again became the Chief Minister of the state following the accord with Indira in 1974 and remained in the top slot till his death on 8 September 1982.
Field Marshal Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw, also known as Sam Bahadur, was the Chief of the Army Staff of the Indian Army during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, and the first Indian Army officer to be promoted to the rank of field marshal. His active military career spanned four decades and five wars, beginning with service in World War II.
Gartok is made of twin encampment settlements of Gar Günsa and Gar Yarsa in the Gar County in the Ngari Prefecture of Tibet. Gar Gunsa served as the winter encampment and Gar Yarsa as the summer encampment. But in British nomenclature, the name Gartok was applied only to Gar Yarsa and the practice continues to date.
Rudok, also spelt Rutok and Rutog, more properly Rudok Dzong, is a town that served as the historical capital of the Rudok area in Western Tibet on the frontier with Ladakh. In the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, it is described as being "picturesquely situated" on the side of a hill standing isolated in the plain near the east end of Lake Pangong.
The Special Frontier Force (SFF) is an Indian special operations unit created on 14 November 1962. It mainly comprised Tibetan refugees living in India. Now it has increased in size and scope of operations. Its primary goal originally was to conduct covert operations behind Chinese lines in the event of another Sino-Indian War.
Manikonda Chalapathi Rau was an Indian journalist and author who served as the Editor-in-chief of the English daily National Herald from 1946 to 1978. He is regarded as one of the greatest editors in the history of Indian journalism. He worked as an assistant editor of Hindustan Times early in his career and his weekly column under the pseudonym 'Magnus' was one of the most widely read in the country. During the independence struggle he was a part of the underground press movement. He was also the author of several books on Indian journalism, politics, and personalities. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award in 1968, but refused to accept it.
Rameshwar Nath Kao was an Indian spymaster and the first chief of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) from its founding in 1968 to 1977. Kao was one of India's foremost intelligence officers, and helped build R&AW.
Karan Singh is an Indian politician and philosopher. He is the Maharaja of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. From 1952 to 1965 he was the Sadr-i-Riyasat (President) of the state of Jammu and Kashmir in the Republic of India. He is the chairperson trustee of the Dharmarth Trust of Jammu and Kashmir which maintains 175 temples in north India and works in other areas such as historical preservation.
Jagmohan Malhotra, known by the mononym Jagmohan, was an Indian civil servant and politician. After working with the Indian National Congress, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1995. He served as Lieutenant Governor of Delhi and Goa, as the 5th Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, and for three terms as Member of Parliament for New Delhi. In the cabinet, he served as Union Minister for Urban Development and Tourism.
Amitabh Mattoo is one of India's leading thinkers and writers on Modern and Contemporary History, Political science, International relations. He was awarded Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2009. He is a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and honorary professor of international relations at the University of Melbourne. Mattoo is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies and was recently elected unanimously as its Deputy Chair. He was the founding CEO of the Australia India Institute at the University of Melbourne and served as chairman of the governing board of Miranda House, University of Delhi, the highest-ranked women's college in India, and served as Chair of Kirori Mal College earlier He has also been a member of the Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing. In 2002, he was the youngest person to be appointed as vice chancellor of a public university in independent India. Mattoo's advice on policy matters has been sought across political parties and across governments, including by Prime Ministers Atal Behari Vajpayee and Dr Manmohan Singh. Until 19 June 2018, he served as Advisor to the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, with the status of a Cabinet Minister. Following the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution of India, he has offered a political roadmap for securing the future of Jammu and Kashmir. He has been a persistent advocate of multiculturalism and of reconciliation between Kashmiri Pandits and Kashmiri Muslims.
Narinder Nath Vohra, popularly referred as N. N. Vohra, is a retired 1959 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Punjab cadre who was the 12th governor of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. He was the first civilian governor of Jammu and Kashmir in eighteen years after Jagmohan.
Madan Mohan Lal Hooja was an Indian Imperial Police officer who became Director General of Security and Director of the Intelligence Bureau.
Brijalal Nehru was a noted civil servant and member of the Nehru family.
Rangaswamy Narasimhan was an Indian computer and cognitive scientist, regarded by many as the father of computer science research in India. He led the team which developed the TIFRAC, the first Indian indigenous computer and was instrumental in the establishment of CMC Limited in 1975, a Government of India company, later bought by Tata Consultancy Services. He was a recipient of the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri from the Government of India in 1977.
K. Sankaran Nair, known as Colonel Menon among his colleagues, was an Indian civil servant, diplomat and the director of Research and Analysis Wing. He served as the Indian High Commissioner to Singapore from 1986 to 1988 and was the last surviving member of the Indian Imperial Police. He was reported to have played a crucial role in the formation of Bangladesh, through R&AW operations during the Bangladesh Liberation War.
On 27 December 1963, Moi-e-Muqqadas, a holy relic believed by many to be a strand from the beard of prophet Muhammad, went missing the Hazratbal Shrine in Jammu and Kashmir, leading to widespread protests across the Indian subcontinent.
The Directorate General of Security is an organisation of covert operations under India's Cabinet Secretariat. It is one of the four legally defined intelligence organisations of India and listed in the Schedule of the Intelligence Organisations Act, 1985, the other three being I.B., R&AW and NTRO. Since 1971, the Secretary, Research and Analysis Wing has usually held the post of Director General. This organisation used to be composed of Special Service Bureau, Aviation Research Centre, Special Frontier Force and Chief Inspectorate of Armaments. Since the shifting of SSB and CIOA to the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2001, DGS consists of ARC and SFF only. The Special Group, a non-Tibetan and Sarsawa-based unit of SFF, is also a DGS component.
Gogra (also referred to as Nala Junction) is a pasture and campsite in the Ladakh union territory of India, near its disputed border with China. It is located in the Kugrang River valley, a branch valley of Chang Chenmo Valley, where the Changlung River flows into Kugrang. During the times of the British Raj, Gogra was a halting spot for travellers to Central Asia via the 'Chang Chenmo route', who proceeded through the Changlung river valley and the Aksai Chin plateau.
Tsogtsalu or Tsolu is a pasture and campsite in the Ladakh union territory of India, in the Chang Chenmo Valley close India's border with China. It is located at the confluence of the Rimdi Chu river that flows down from Marsemik La and the Chang Chenmo River. During the British Raj, this was a halting spot for travellers to Central Asia via the 'Chang Chenmo route', passing through Aksai Chin. After Indian independence, a border outpost was established here by a border police party headed by Captain Karam Singh. It continues to serve as a base for India's border forces.
