Sir Edward Grimwood Mears | |
---|---|
Chief justice of the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad, India | |
Personal details | |
Born | 21 January 1869 |
Died | 20 May 1963 |
Spouse | Margaret Tempest |
Relations | Alex Paton (grandson) |
Alma mater | Exeter College, University of Oxford |
Sir Edward Grimwood Mears KCIE (21 January 1869 - 20 May 1963) was a British barrister, who gave up his practice at the bar to work on the Committee on Alleged German Outrages, which looked at the 1914-15 German atrocities in Belgium. He was appointed secretary of the Dardanelles Commission in return for a knighthood, worked on the reply to The German White Book , and in 1916 was part of the Royal Commission on the Easter Rising in Ireland.
In 1919, Mears was appointed chief justice of the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad, India.
Edward Grimwood Mears was born on 21 January 1869, [1] the only son of William Mears of Winchester. [2] He graduated from Exeter College, University of Oxford, in 1893 and two years later was called to the bar at the Inner Temple. [2]
In 1896, he married Annie, daughter of G. P. Jacob of Bryngoleu, Shawford. [1] They had a son, Brigadier-General Gerald Grimwood Mears and a daughter, Isabel, [1] whose son was the noted gastroenterologist, Alex Paton. [3] After the death of his wife Annie in 1943, Mears in 1951 married her cousin, Margaret Tempest, an author and illustrator of children's books. [4]
At the request of the British government, Mears gave up his practice at the bar to work on the Bryce Commission, also known as the Committee on Alleged German Outrages, which looked at the 1914-15 German atrocities in Belgium. [5] [6] [7] He worked on the reply to The German White Book . [6] [8] In 1915 he was appointed secretary of the Dardanelles Commission, in return for a knighthood. [9] [10] The following year, he was appointed secretary to the Royal Commission on the Easter Rising in Ireland. [7] [11] In 1918, he was Lord Reading's assistant on a trip to Washington, [7] when he represented Britain on the inter-allied cereal committee. [2]
In 1919, Mears was appointed chief justice of the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad, India. [12] He despised Indian nationalism and during his time in Allahabad, he tried to persuade Jawaharlal Nehru to become education minister for the British government in India. [13] [14] [15]
In India, Mears acted as an intermediary between the then viceroy Edward Wood (later Lord Irwin) and key leaders in the Indian National Congress. [16] [17] On 24 March 1929, Mears met with Motilal Nehru at the residence of Tej Bahadur Sapru. [16] [17] There, he heard of the request for Dominion status of India. [16] [17] It was subsequently at Mears' suggestion to Irwin that a round table conference was convened to discuss the request. [16] [17]
Jawaharlal Nehru was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, statesman, 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 Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party or simply the Congress, is a political party in India with deep roots in most regions of India. Founded on 28 December 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire in Asia and Africa. From the late 19th century, and especially after 1920, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, the Congress became the principal leader of the Indian independence movement. The Congress led India to independence from the United Kingdom, and significantly influenced other anti-colonial nationalist movements in the British Empire.
Subhas Chandra Bose was an Indian nationalist whose defiance of British authority in India made him a hero among many Indians, but his wartime alliances with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan left a legacy vexed by authoritarianism, anti-Semitism, and military failure. The honorific 'Netaji' was first applied to Bose in Germany in early 1942—by the Indian soldiers of the Indische Legion and by the German and Indian officials in the Special Bureau for India in Berlin. It is now used throughout India.
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Motilal Nehru was an Indian lawyer, activist, and politician affiliated with the Indian National Congress. He served as the Congress President twice, from 1919 to 1920 and from 1928 to 1929. He was a patriarch of the Nehru-Gandhi family and the father of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister.
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was an Indian freedom fighter, diplomat and politician. She served as the 8th President of the United Nations General Assembly from 1953 to 1954, the first woman appointed to this post. She was also the 3rd Governor of Maharashtra from 1962 to 1964. Noted for her participation in the Indian independence movement, she was jailed several times during the movement.
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Syed Sajjad Zaheer was an Indian Urdu writer, Marxist ideologue and radical revolutionary who worked in both India and Pakistan. In the pre-independence era, he was a member of the Communist Party of India and the Progressive Writers' Movement. Upon independence and partition, he moved to the newly created Pakistan and became a founding member of the Communist Party of Pakistan.
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Indian nationalism is an instance of territorial nationalism, which is inclusive of all of the people of India, despite their diverse ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds. Indian nationalism can trace roots to pre-colonial India, but was fully developed during the Indian independence movement which campaigned for independence from British rule. Indian nationalism quickly rose to popularity in India through these united anti-colonial coalitions and movements. Independence movement figures like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru spearheaded the Indian nationalist movement. After Indian Independence, Nehru and his successors continued to campaign on Indian nationalism in face of border wars with both China and Pakistan. After the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971 and the Bangladesh Liberation War, Indian nationalism reached its post-independence peak. However by the 1980s, religious tensions reached a melting point and Indian nationalism sluggishly collapsed in the following decades. Despite its decline and the rise of religious nationalism, Indian nationalism and its historic figures continue to strongly influence the politics of India and reflect an opposition to the sectarian strands of Hindu nationalism and Muslim nationalism.
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Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, also known by his pseudonym Chatto, was a prominent Indian revolutionary who worked to overthrow the British Raj in India using armed force. He created alliances with the Germans during World War I, was part of the Berlin Committee organising Indian students in Europe against the British, and explored actions by the Japanese at the time.
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