Syama Prasad Mookerjee was an Indian politician,barrister and academician,who served as India's first Minister for Industry and Supply in Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's cabinet. After falling out with Nehru,protesting against the Liaquat–Nehru Pact,Mukherjee resigned from Nehru's cabinet. With the help of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,he founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh,the predecessor to the Bharatiya Janata Party,in 1951.
Gopalkrishna Devadas Gandhi is a former administrator and diplomat who served as the 22nd Governor of West Bengal serving from 2004 to 2009. He is the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji). As a former IAS officer he served as Secretary to the President of India and as High Commissioner to South Africa and Sri Lanka,among other administrative and diplomatic posts. He was the United Progressive Alliance nominee for Vice President of India 2017 elections and lost with 244 votes against NDA candidate Venkaiah Naidu,who got 516 votes.
Bipan Chandra was an Indian historian,specialising in economic and political history of modern India. An emeritus professor of modern history at Jawaharlal Nehru University,he specialized on the Indian independence movement and is considered a leading scholar on Mahatma Gandhi. He authored several books,including The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism.
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.
Tanika Sarkar is a historian of modern India based at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Sarkar's work focuses on the intersections of religion,gender,and politics in both colonial and postcolonial South Asia,in particular on women and the Hindu Right.
AndréBeteille,is an Indian sociologist,writer and academician. He is known for his studies of the caste system in South India. He has served with educational institutions in India such as Delhi School of Economics,North Eastern Hill University,and Ashoka University.
Ramachandra "Ram" Guha is an Indian historian,environmentalist,writer and public intellectual whose research interests include social,political,contemporary,environmental and cricket history,and the field of economics. He is an important authority on the history of modern India.
Politics in West Bengal is dominated by the following major political parties:the All India Trinamool Congress,the Communist Party of India (Marxist),the Bharatiya Janata Party,and the Indian National Congress. For many decades,the state underwent gruesome and terrible political violence. Since the 2011 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election,it has been governed by the Trinamool Congress party. Previously,it was ruled by Left Front led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for over three decades.
Barun De was an Indian historian. He served as the first professor of social and economic history of the Indian Institute of Management,Calcutta,founder-director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,Calcutta and the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies,Kolkata and as the honorary state editor for the West Bengal District Gazetteers. He was chairman of the West Bengal Heritage Commission.
The Noakhali riots were a series of semi-organized massacres,rapes and abductions,combined with looting and arson of Hindu properties,perpetrated by the Muslim community in the districts of Noakhali in the Chittagong Division of Bengal in October–November 1946,a year before India's independence from British rule.
Birjis Qadr was the son of Wajid Ali Shah,the last Nawab of Awadh. He was a pretender to the throne after his father had been deposed by the East India Company in 1856 under the terms of the Doctrine of lapse and Oudh State was annexed into the Bengal Presidency.
Swapan Kumar Chakravorty was an Indian academic who was a distinguished Professor of Humanities at the Presidency University,Kolkata.
Susobhan Chandra Sarkar (1900–1982) was an Indian historian.
Mahesh Rangarajan is a researcher,author and historian with a special interest in environmental history and colonial history of British and contemporary India. He has taught Environmental Studies and History at Ashoka University and Krea University,and served as the Vice Chancellor of Krea University. He appears frequently on Indian television as a political analyst. He is also a columnist in the print media writing on wildlife conservation,political and environmental issues. In 2010,he chaired the Elephant Task Force (Gajah) of the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests. The Task Force was formed to formulate measures for the protection of elephants in India.
The Bengal Club is a social and business club in Kolkata,India. Founded in 1827,the club is the oldest social club in India. When Kolkata was the capital of British India,the club was considered to be the "unofficial headquarters of the Raj". The club is nowadays known for its old-world ambience and patronage among contemporary social and corporate elites,and is among a small number of Indian clubs featured in the elite list of the "Platinum Clubs of the World".
Tulsipur State was a small kingdom in the Awadh region of India that became the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh under the British Raj. Tulsipur also extended north beyond Dundwa Range of the Siwaliks to include the Dang and Deukhuri Valleys later part of the Kingdom of Nepal. It was one of the areas traditionally inhabited by the Tharu people.
Partha Sarathi Gupta was an Indian professor of British and European history at Delhi University and president of the Indian History Congress. He was firstborn son of Ashoka Gupta and Saibal Gupta,an Indian Civil Services officer in Bengal state of British India. His childhood memory of watching Mahatma Gandhi's walk through riot-torn Noakhali in 1946 where his mother joined in the walk had a long-lasting impact. He was awarded Eshan scholarship for the highest marks in West Bengal in Presidency College,Calcutta. Fellow students included Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner Amartya Sen and member of planning commission Sukhamoy Chakravarty in 1953.
Abu Sayeed Ayyub was an Indian philosopher,teacher,literary critic and writer in both Bengali and English. Though born into a traditional,Urdu-speaking,Muslim family in Calcutta (Kolkata),he was so deeply captivated in his early teenage by the poems of the Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore that he taught himself Bengali so as to appreciate Tagore better. Later,when he started to write,it was mostly in his adopted language,Bengali. During the initial part of his writing career,Ayyub wrote on aesthetics,religion and socialism. However,it was his philosophical and scientific analysis of creative literature - in particular the poetry and the drama of Tagore - that finally brought him wide recognition as "one of the most serious and original Tagore scholars". Ayyub is also credited with "co-editing the first anthology of modern Bengali poetry". He taught philosophy at the University of Calcutta,the Visva-Bharati University and the University of Melbourne,and edited the literary and philosophical journal Quest.
Rana Beni Madho or Beni Madho Baksh Singh Bais was one of the most important leaders in the Indian rebellion of 1857 from the Oudh region. He belonged to the Bais clan of Rajputs and was the ruler of the Shankarpur estate in modern-day Rae Bareli,part of the old Baiswara region in Oudh. He led a rebellion against the British forces in 1857. His son was married to the grand daughter of another prominent revolutionary leader Kunwar Singh of Jagdishpur estate.
Pramod Kapoor is an Indian writer and publisher,who in 1978 founded Roli Books,a publishing company that prints books pertaining to Indian heritage. In 2016,for his contributions to publishing,he was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.
