Rajagopalachari

Rajagopalachari                      

(First recipient of Bharat Ratna Award)

Rajagopalachari was born to Chakravarti Venkataryan, munsiff of Thorapalli Village and Chakravarti Singaramma on 10 December 1878 in Thorapalli, Dharmapuri taluk, Salem district, Madras Presidency.He was born in an Iyengar Brahmin family.The couple already had two sons, Chakravarti Narasimhachari and Chakravarti Srinivasa.

As a young child, he was admitted to a village school in Thorapalli then at the age of five moved with his family to Hosur where Rajagopalachari enrolled at Hosur R.V.Government Boys Hr sec School. He passed his matriculation examinations in 1891 and graduated in arts from Central College, Bangalore in 1894. Rajagopalachari also studied law at the Presidency College, Madras, from where he graduated in 1897.

Rajagopalachari married Alamelu Mangalamma in 1897 and the couple had five children, three sons: C. R. Narasimhan, C. R. Krishnaswamy, and C. R. Ramaswami, and two daughters: Lakshmi Gandhi and Namagiri Ammal C. R. .Mangamma died in 1916 whereupon Rajagopalachari took sole responsibility for the care of his children.His son Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari Narasimhan was elected to the Lok Sabha from Krishnagiri in the 1952 and 1957 elections and served as a member of parliament for Krishnagiri from 1952 to 1962.He later wrote a biography of his father.His great-grandson, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari Kesavan, is a spokesperson of the Congress Party and Trustee of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee.

In 1900 he started a legal practice that in time became prosperous. On entering politics, he became a member and later President of the Salem municipality. He joined the Indian National Congress and participated in the agitations against the Rowlatt Act, joining the Non-Cooperation movement, the Vaikom Satyagraha, and the Civil Disobedience movement. In 1930, Rajagopalachari risked imprisonment when he led the Vedaranyam Salt Satyagraha in response to the Dandi March. In 1937, Rajagopalachari was elected Premier of the Madras Presidency and served until 1940, when he resigned due to Britain's declaration of war on Germany. He later advocated co-operation over Britain's war effort and opposed the Quit India Movement. He favoured talks with both Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League and proposed what later came to be known as the C. R. formula. In 1946, Rajagopalachari was appointed Minister of Industry, Supply, Education and Finance in the Interim Government of India, and then as the Governor of West Bengal from 1947 to 1948, Governor-General of India from 1948 to 1950, Union Home Minister from 1951 to 1952 and as Chief Minister of Madras state from 1952 to 1954. In 1959, he resigned from the Indian National Congress and founded the Swatantra Party, which fought against the Congress in the 1962, 1967 and 1971 elections.

 Rajagopalachari was instrumental in setting up a united Anti-Congress front in Madras state under C. N. Annadurai, which swept the 1967 elections.Rajagopalachari was an accomplished writer who made lasting contributions to Indian English literature and is also credited with composition of the song Kurai Onrum Illai set to Carnatic music. He pioneered temperance and temple entry movements in India and advocated Dalit upliftment. He has been criticised for introducing the compulsory study of Hindi and the controversial Madras Scheme of Elementary Education in Madras State. Critics have often attributed his pre-eminence in politics to his standing as a favourite of both Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Rajagopalachari was described by Gandhi as the "keeper of my conscience". He died on 25 December 1972 at age 94.

LIST OF HIS WORKS. *India's flag (1923, Ganesh).  

*Indian Prohibition Manual (1930)

*Plighted word (1933, Servants of Untouchables Society)

*The way out (1943, Oxford University Press)

*The impending fast of Mahatma Gandhi: the issues explained (1944, Servants of Untouchables Society)

*Reconciliation, why and how: a plea for immediate action (1945, Hind Kitabs)

*Ambedkar Refuted (1946, Hind Kitabs)

*The fatal cart and other stories(1946, Hindustan Times)

*Vedanta, the basic culture of India (1949)

*The Indian communists (1955, Cultural Books)

*The good administrator (1955, Government of India)

*Our democracy and other essays (1957, B.G. Paul & Co.)

*Mankind protests: a collection of speeches and statements on atomic warfare and test explosions (1957, All India Peace Council)

*Satyam eva jayate: a collection of articles contributed to Swarajya and other journals from 1956 to 1961, Volume 1 (1961, Bharathan Publications)

*Hinduism, doctrine and way of life (1959, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan)

*The Art of translation: a symposium (1962, Government of India)

*The question of English (1962, Bharathan Publications)

*Our Culture (1963, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan)

*Gandhiji's teachings and philosophy (1963, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan)

*Swatantra answer to Chinese Communist challenge (1964)

*English for unity (1965, Bharathan Publications)

*The unification of cultures: being an address delivered at the Indian Institute of World Culture on 18 August 1966, under Major-General S.L. Bhatia Endowment Lectureship (1966)

*Stories for the innocent (1967, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan)

Bharati, the Tamil poet (Bharathi Tamil Sangam).                   

Translations

*Bhagavad-gita abridged and explained: setting forth the Hindu creed, discipline and ideals (1949, Hindustan Times)

*Mahabharatha (1951, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan)

*Sri Ramakrishna Upanishad (1953, Sri Ramakrishna Math)

*Ramayana (1957, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan)

*Bhaja Govindam (1965, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan)

*Kural: the great book of Tiru-Valluvar (1965, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan)