Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi 1962 India Stamp

Remembering  Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi.

"I am a fighter against oppression and injustice, whether practiced by bureaucracy, zamindars, capitalists or high caste. I have fought all my life against oppression an inhumanity and may God give me strength to fight on till the last." - Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi. No other words can nearly try to comprehend who Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi was and what was his contribution than the words he said himself.

He was exactly that and fight he did, until the very last breath before passing onto martyrdom by risking his own life to save thousands. Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, a journalist and a nationalist, was dedicated in bringing about a revolution through his writing and participation in the national movement. His writing had forceful yet clear style and his efforts to work in favor of the repressed caught attention of the biggies of the Indian politics including Mahatma Gandhi and Jawahar Lal Nehru. A lion hearted martyr!

Ganesh Shankar was born on 26th October 1890 in Fatehpur, near Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. His mother was Gomati Devi. His father, Shri Jai Narayan, was an assistant teacher in a middle school in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh.

Ganesh Shankar received his early education; under his father's wings, and passed the examination in 1907. In the same year, he joined the Kayastha Pathshala College in Allahabad, but had to leave after some time due to financial reasons.

He took up a job of a clerk in the currency office and later as a teacher in a high school in Kanpur. But it was political journalism towards which he was inclined. As an agent of popular Hindi and Urdu journals called 'Karamyogi' and 'Swarjya', Ganesh Shankar also began to contribute to them. In 1911,

He was made the sub-editor of Pandit Mahabir Prasad's monthly, 'The Saraswati', and later joined the Hindi weekly, 'Abhyudaya', a political journal, to fulfill his inclination towards political journalism.

 It was in 1913 that Ganesh Shankar came back to Kanpur and launched 'Pratap', a weekly that fought for the cause of the oppressed. It was through 'Pratap' that he fought many battles, including his famous fights for the peasants of Rae Bareli, workers of Kanpur Mills, and the repressed people of other Indian states.

He faced several prosecutions, paid fines, and was imprisoned five times in pursuit of justice for the subjugated. He remained its editor till his death. After a gap of three years since he launched 'Pratap';

it was in 1916 that Ganesh Shankar met Mahatma Gandhi in Lucknow for the first time and plunged into the national movement. It was about the same time when he got closely associated with Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru and became an active member of the Indian National Congress. 

In 1917-1918, Ganesh Shankar took an active part in the Home Rule Movement and also led the first strike of Kanpur's textile workers.

In 1920 that he was arrested on charges of causing an uprising by criticizing the government and zamindars and leading the peasants of Rae Bareli; all through launching the daily edition of 'Pratap'.

He was sentenced two years of imprisonment. Immediately after being released from the prison in 1922; Ganesh Shankar was imprisoned again for delivering an insurgent speech as the President of Provincial Political Conference at Fatehgarh.

He was released out of prison after two years in 1924. In 1925, he became the Chairman of the reception committee of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), and served as a member of the UP Legislative Council from 1926 to 1929. In 1929, ganesh Shankar became the president of the UP Political Conference held at Farrukhabad, and the President of the UP Congress Committee in 1930. 

The communal riots that had erupted in Kanpur, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi lost his life on 25th March, 1931 in trying to restore peace and saving innocent people of both Hindu and Muslim community.

The  Department of Posts released commemorative postage stamp on Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi

Issued Date: 25. 03. 1962
Denomination :15 Naya Paise

Srinivasa Ramanujan 1962 India

Srinivasa Ramanujan was a mathematician par excellence. He is widely believed to be the greatest mathematician of the 20th Century. Srinivasau Ramanujan made significant contribution to the analytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptic functions, continued fractions, and infinite series.

Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan was born on December 22, 1887 in Erode, Tamil Nadu. His  father worked in Kumbakonam as a clerk in a cloth merchant's shop. At the of five Ramanujan went to primary school in Kumbakonam. In 1898 at age 10, he entered the Town High School in Kumbakonam. At the age of eleven he was lent books on advanced trigonometry written by S. L. Loney by two lodgers at his home who studied at the Government college. He mastered them by the age of thirteen. Ramanujan was a bright student, winning academic prizes in high school. 

At age of 16 his life took a decisive turn after he obtained a book titled" A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics". The book was simply a compilation of thousands of mathematical results, most set down with little or no indication of proof. The book generated Ramanujan's interest in mathematics and he worked through the book's results and beyond. By 1904 Ramanujan had begun to undertake deep research. He investigated the series (1/n) and calculated Euler's constant to 15 decimal places. He began to study the Bernoulli numbers, although this was entirely his own independent discovery. He was given a scholarship to the Government College in Kumbakonam which he entered in 1904. But he neglected his other subjects at the cost of mathematics and failed in college examination. He dropped out of the college.

Ramanujan lived off the charity of friends, filling notebooks with mathematical discoveries and seeking patrons to support his work. In 1906 Ramanujan went to Madras where he entered Pachaiyappa's College. His aim was to pass the First Arts examination which would allow him to be admitted to the University of Madras. Continuing his mathematical work Ramanujan studied continued fractions and divergent series in 1908. At this stage he became seriously ill again and underwent an operation in April 1909 after which he took him some considerable time to recover.

On 14 July 1909 Ramanujan marry a ten year old girl S Janaki Ammal. During this period Ramanujan had his first paper published, a 17-page work on Bernoulli numbers that appeared in 1911 in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society. In 1911 Ramanujan approached the founder of the Indian Mathematical Society for advice on a job. He got the job of clerk at the Madras Port Trust with the help of Indian mathematician Ramachandra Rao.

The professor of civil engineering at the Madras Engineering College C L T Griffith was interested in Ramanujan's abilities and, having been educated at University College London, knew the professor of mathematics there, namely M J M Hill. He wrote to Hill on 12 November 1912 sending some of Ramanujan's work and a copy of his 1911 paper on Bernoulli numbers. Hill replied in a fairly encouraging way but showed that he had failed to understand Ramanujan's results on divergent series. In January 1913 Ramanujan wrote to G H Hardy having seen a copy of his 1910 book Orders of infinity. Hardy, together with Littlewood, studied the long list of unproved theorems which Ramanujan enclosed with his letter. Hardy wrote back to Ramanujan and evinced interest in his work.

University of Madras gave Ramanujan a scholarship in May 1913 for two years and, in 1914, Hardy brought Ramanujan to Trinity College, Cambridge, to begin an extraordinary collaboration. Right from the start Ramanujan's collaboration with Hardy led to important results. In a joint paper with Hardy, Ramanujan gave an asymptotic formula for p(n). It had the remarkable property that it appeared to give the correct value of p(n), and this was later proved by Rademacher.

Ramanujan had problems settling in London. He was an orthodox Brahmin and right from the beginning he had problems with his diet. The outbreak of World War I made obtaining special items of food harder and it was not long before Ramanujan had health problems.

On 16 March 1916 Ramanujan graduated from Cambridge with a Bachelor of Science by Research. He had been allowed to enrol in June 1914 despite not having the proper qualifications. Ramanujan's dissertation was on Highly composite numbers and consisted of seven of his papers published in England.

Ramanujan fell seriously ill in 1917 and his doctors feared that he would die. He did improve a little by September but spent most of his time in various nursing homes. On February 18, 1918 Ramanujan was elected a fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and later he was also elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of London. By the end of November 1918 Ramanujan's health had greatly improved.

Ramanujan sailed to India on 27 February 1919 arriving on 13 March. However his health was very poor and, despite medical treatment, he Last  his breath on April 26, 1920.

DOP Issued  commemorative  stamp on his 75th Birth Anniversary. of Srinivasa Ramanujan

Issued  Date : 22.12.1962
Denomination :15 Naya  Paisa

Dr. Babu Rajendra Prasad India 1962

Dr. Babu Rajendra Prasad

First President of independent India; President of the Constituent Assembly; President of Congress in 1943 and 1939. Dr. Rajendra Prasad was the first President of independent India. He was the President of the Constituent Assembly that drafted the Constitution. He had also served as a Cabinet Minister briefly in the first Government of independent India.

Dr. Rajendra Prasad was one of the foremost disciples of Gandhiji and he played a crucial role in Indian freedom struggle.

 Dr. Rajendra Prasad was born on December 3, 1884 in Ziradei village in Siwan district of Bihar. His father's name was Mahadev Sahay and his mother's name was Kamleshwari Devi. Rajendra Prasad was youngest among his siblings. Mahadev Sahay was a Persian and Sanskrit language scholar.

Dr. Rajendra Prasad was greatly attached to his mother and elder brother Mahendra. At the age of five Rajendra Prasad was, according to the practice in the community to which he belonged, put under a Maulavi who taught him Persian. Later, he was taught Hindi and arithmetic. At the age of 12, Rajendra Prasad was married to Rajvanshi Devi.

 Dr. Rajendra Prasad was a brilliant student. He stood first in the entrance examination to the University of Calcutta, and was awarded a monthly scholarship of Rs.30. He joined the famous Calcutta Presidency College in 1902. Here his teachers included the great scientist Jagdish Chandra Bose and the highly respected Prafulla Chandra Roy.

Later on he switched from Science to Arts and completed his M.A. and Masters in Law. Meanwhile, in 1905, Doctor, Rajendra Prasad was initiated into the Swadeshi Movement by his elder brother Mahendra. He also joined the Dawn Society run by Satish Chandra Mukherjee, and Sister Nivedita. The arrival of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian national scene greatly influenced Dr. Rajendra Prasad. While Gandhiji was on a fact-finding mission in Champaran district of Bihar, he called on Rajendra Prasad to come to Champaran with volunteers.

Dr. Rajendra Prasad was greatly impressed by the dedication, conviction and courage that Gandhiji displayed. Gandhiji's influence greatly altered Dr. Rajendra Prasad's outlook. He sought ways to simplify his life and reduced the number of servants he had to one. He started doing his daily chores such as sweeping the floor, washing the utensils-the tasks he had all along assumed others would do for him. After coming into contact with Gandhiji,

Dr. Rajendra Prasad, immersed himself fully into the freedom struggle. He played a active role during Non-Cooperation Movement. Dr. Rajendra Prasad was arrested in 1930 while participating in Salt Satyagraha.

He was in jail when on 15 January 1934 a devastating earthquake struck Bihar. Rajendra Prasad was released from the jail two days later and he immediately set himself for the task of raising funds and organizing relief. The Viceroy also raised a fund for the purpose. However, while Rajendra Prasad's fund collected over Rs.3.8million, the Viceroy could only manage one-third of that amount. The way the relief was organized, it amply demonstrated the administrative acumen of Dr. Rajendra Prasad. Soon after this Dr Rajendra Prasad was elected as the President of the Bombay session of the Indian National Congress.

He was elected as Congress President again in 1939 in the following the resignation of Netaji Subash Chandra Bose. In July 1946, when the Constituent Assembly was established to frame the Constitution of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad was elected its President. Two and a half years after  independence, on January 26, 1950, the Constitution of independent India was ratified and Dr. Rajendra Prasad was elected as India's first President. As a President, he used his moderating influence silently and unobtrusively and set a healthy precedent for others to follow. During his tenure as President he visited many countries on missions of goodwill and sought to establish and nourish new relationships.

 In 1962, after 12 years as President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad retired, and was subsequently awarded the Desh Ratna, the nation's highest civilian award. He spent the last few months of his life in retirement at the Sadaqat Ashram in Patna.

Issued  Date : 13.05.1962
Denomination : 15 Naya  Paisa