Heros who made modern India


Greetings to Indians across the world on independence day today August 15th.

India is an ancient civilization but a very modern nation. While it's great to look at our past glory from Ramayana, Mahabharata, Buddha, Yoga, Ayurveda, Guptas, Mughals to invention of Zero it's more important to remember our Heros of who built our Modern Nation.

We must be eternally thankful to Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Tilak, Rajaji, Tagore, Bose, Bhagat singh, Ambedkar and common people who got our independence from British. To throw out the once mighty British empire out of indian soil by a combination of moral conviction and non violent resistance is indeed great. This non violence but determined protest, especially by Gandi, inspired countless others most notably Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, Albert EINSTEIN to Steve Jobs.

Some of my ancestors gave up their suits and ties, in favor of indian dhoti and Kurtas, threw on flame British goods, to participate in the anti British movement and put their jobs in peril. Be that as it may, its one thing to get independence and another to retain the same in letter and spirit.

I was thinking about who were the biggest personalities who made us truly independent, POST independence.

In no particular order. 

. Scientists and Technocrats.

Nobel Laureate Sir CV Raman who recruited and nurtured physicists like Bhabha and made IISc a great institution. MS Swaminathan and other cytogenetics research scientists like my grand father Prof TS Raghavan who got us new varieties of rice, wheat, sugarcane, cotton and engineered the green revolution and made us self sufficient in food to feed a billion indians without importing food. M Vishveshvaraiya the great engineer. AMUL'S Varghese Kurien - white revolution and independence from importing milk. Homi Bhaba - nuclear power, foundation for  Pokhran. Vikram Sarabhai - space research foundation for ISRO. Sridharan for konkan railway and Delhi metro. ABDUL KALAM for missiles and rockets and showing how to add respect and love to the post of President.

. Social reformers

Ambedkar, Kailash Satyarthi, Jayprakash Narayan, Baba Amte, Periyar EVR, Vinobha Bhave who fought for social justice.

. Spiritual, Yoga

Swami Vivekananda, Shirdi and Sathya Sai Baba, Sankaracharyas, Sri Sri Ravishankar, Jaggi Vasudev, Gaur Gopal Das, Baba Ramdev to BKS Iyengar Yoga to even Mother Teresa. These people served others with a touch of spirituality.

. Bureaucrats 

TN Seshan for free and fair elections. N Vittal for IT policy which made India a super power in IT. Manmohan Singh (who also became our PM later)

. Politicians and national leaders 

PM Pandit Nehru - secular and scientific temper and our PM for 17 years who laid a solid foundation with 5 year plans, IITs, SAIL, GAIL etc. PM Indira Gandi who stood up both to the Americans and Chinese to cut Pakistan to size and liberate Bangladesh & Pokhan 1. PM Narasimha Rao and FM Manmohan singh for liberalisation and opening up our stagnant economy. PM AB Vajpaye for Pokhran 2 nuclear tests to keep both China and Pakistan at bay. Plus beautiful Road infrastructure. PM Modi and his team for his endeavour of building a strong nation across economic, military, political, diplomatic and social dimensions.

. Defence and Police 

Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw who executed the liberation of Bangladesh and KM Cariappa, KS Thimaiya, Arjan Singh to Vikram Batra and Sandeep Unnikrishnan. And police officers like Ribeiro, Kiran Bedi, Ajit Doval, Narendra kumar, Nazrul Islam.

. Sports

DHYAN CHAND, KAPIL DEV, GANGULY, Tendulkar, DHONI, Kohli, Leander Paes, Saina Nehwal, Sania Mirza, Mary Kom, Bhindra, Milka Singh, Vishy anand, Pankaj advani who made every Indian believe we can be world champions in hockey, cricket, tennis, chess, billiards, athletics, boxing etc.

. Films

Raj Kapoor, Satyajit Ray, Dilip Kumar, Yash Chopra, Amitabh, MGR, NTR, Rajkumar, Sivaji, Shah Rukh Khan, Rajini, Kamal, Sridevi for giving us great cinema  entertainment and being perfect ambassadors with grace and humility. And making indian cinema a great export to 80 plus countries.

. Music

It's countless. Across genres like hindustani and carnatic. MS Subbulakshmi, Ravi Shankar, Bhimsen Joshi, Bismillah Khan, Hariprasad Chaurasia, L Subramanium, To film music from RD Burman, Illayaraja to AR Rahman and Pandit Ravishankar for making Indian music global. Singers Mohd Rafi, Kishore Kumar, SP Balu, Lata Mangeshkar, P Susheela, TMS, Yesudas

. Writers cartoonists artists 

Tagore and Amartya Sen (Nobel Laureate also a great writers), Subramanya Bharati, RK Narayan, Khushwant Singh, RK Lakshman, Mario Miranda, MF Hussain 

. Business 

The Tatas who showed how business can be done with heart for national development. From IISC to TIFR we can see thier impact in education. And TCS TO AIRINDIA TO TITAN all world class stuff. The Birlas, Ambani and Adani for thinking in gigantic scale and execution. And the millions of jobs created. IT industry Shiv Nadar, Azim Premji, Narayana Murthy who are also the greatest philanthropists.

. And saving the best for our unsung heros

And the unsung heros of our farmers who give us food, soldiers who protect our borders, teachers who educate our children, police who protect our cities, women homemakers and moms who get no salary but contribute as much as earning dads, the faceless migrant and domestic workers, the small business owner serving us against odds, 

And the honest tax payer (like me) who are just 70m people or 5% of our 1.4 billion population !!

We owe our independence to you all.

Happy independence day.

Jai Hind.

PS:  Apologies if I missed some one important, you can add in comments.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SEVEN LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM KING KOHLI.

Image
SEVEN LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM KING KOHLI. Sports can teach us a lot about business leadership and life. What happens... When you are the leading run scorer of Indian cricket team which is a religion to over 1.4 billion people? When you are the fastest run getter in ODI with maximum centuries?  When you have pulverized the opposition with multiple centuries in almost every continent from Australia to Africa to Asia to North America?  When you are dating a Bollywood star for few years and then marry her in an private Italian location?  When you are the top 10 highest paid athlete among all sports, even ahead of football God Lionel Messi and drive a Ferrari in Delhi? When you have over quarter billion followers on Instagram?  You have to bow to the genius in him. Is it Talent? Is it hardwork? Is it Attitude? What motivates this guy?  In the Champions trophy 2025 in One Day cricket match today (4th March 2025) Virat Kohli once again proved why he is called the "King...
Read more

India Trilogy Part 2 - Real Indian History

Image
An African proverb says "Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter,". This metaphor aptly describes how dominant groups inscribe power through historical narrative. And a story is never complete until we hear from all the sides. The one who does not have a voice or who does not have the means to publish his or her side of the story, is often treated as loser. Who wrote India's history? British or Indians? Let's find out. Being a history buff, I make it a point to visit museum in any major city if I have the time. Have seen the London Museum to Te papa Museum in Wellington New Zealand. But one of the most memorable ones was in 2004, when I went to Taipei Taiwan for the first time. I landed on a Sunday and had time to visit the National Palace Museum. Spent may be 5 to 6 hours there. It's a brilliant museum which captured well 8000 years of Chinese civilisation. As luck would have it on that day, there was a complet...
Read more

Brand story - Mercedes Benz

Image
As a marketer I'm fascinated by stories told by brands about thier heritage.  MERCEDES BENZ   Do you know How Mercedes Benz got its name? How they got thier 3 pointed star logo? And how the man who invented the automobile (Karl Benz) is their founder? And how it took a gutsy woman (Bertha Benz), to promote the automobile to the masses? And do you know Mercedes, is named after the daughter of entrepreneur called Emil Jellineck? Karl Benz is widely regarded as "the father of the car", as well as the "father of the automobile industry". His Benz Patent-Motorwagen from 1885 is considered the first practical modern automobile and first car put into series production. He received a patent for the motorcar in 1886, the same year he first publicly drove the Benz Patent-Motorwagen. He was a prolific inventor. While designing what would become the production standard for his two-stroke engine, Benz patented the speed regulation system, the ignition using sparks with batte...
Read more