GREAT INDIAN

PERSONALITIES

MAHATMA GANDHI
Mahatma

Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869

in Porbandar, Gujrat, India.

His

full name was Mohandas Karamchand

Gandhi.

He

spent his life working for the cause of freeing

India from the clutches of British rule, by using
noble means and principles of non-violence and
satyagrah.

He is known as Mahatma, meaning 'great soul',

because of his work on non-violence, satyagrah
and selfless service to his people.

On

15 August 1947, he and his followers forced

the British to leave India.

Rightfully,

he is called the father of the nation.

 Mother

MOTHER
TERESA
Teresa, whose original name was Agnes

Gonxha Bojaxhiu, was born on August 26, 1910

in what is now Skopje, Macedonia .

She

always wrote her birthday as the 27th of

August because that was the day of her baptism,
which was always more important to her than
her birth.

For

her work with the poor around the world she

received the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize.

 In

1950, she founded a religious order in

Calcutta called the Missionaries of Charity.

The order provides food for the needy and

operates hospitals, schools, orphanages, youth
centers, and shelters for lepers and the dying
poor.

Mother

Teresa died on September 5, 1997.

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
A spiritual

genius of commanding intellect and

power, Vivekananda crammed immense labor
and achievement into his short life, 1863-1902.

Born

in the Datta family of Calcutta, the youthful

Vivekananda embraced the agnostic
philosophies of the Western mind along with the
worship of science.

He

found his master in Sri Ramakrishna

Paramahamsa.

 Accepting

an opportunity to represent Hinduism

at Chicago's Parliament of Religions in 1893,
Vivekananda won instant celebrity in America
and a ready forum for his spiritual teaching.

For

three years he spread the Vedanta

philosophy and religion in America and England
and then returned to India to found the
Ramakrishna Math and Mission.

He

died July 4, 1902, after a second, much

shorter sojourn in the West.

ARYABHATTA

Aryabhatta was born in Patliputra in Magadha, modern

Patna in Bihar.

He was born in 476 AD in Kerala. He studied at the

University of Nalanda.

Aryabhatta is a renowned mathematician and

astronomer of ancient India.

One of his major work was Aryabhatiya written in 499

AD. The book dealt with many topics like astronomy,
spherical trigonometry, arithmetic, algebra and plane
trigonometry.

In the field of astronomy, Aryabhatta was the pioneer to

infer that the Earth is spherical and it rotates on its own
axis which results in day and night.

His propounded methods of astronomical calculations in

his Aryabhatta-Siddhatha which was used to make the
the Panchanga (Hindu calendar).

What Copernicus and Galileo propounded was

suggested by Aryabhatta nearly 1500 years ago.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta, India into a

wealthy Brahmin family.

Greatest writer in modern Indian literature, Bengali poet,

novelist, educator, and an early advocate of Independence for
India.

Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.

Tagore's influence over Gandhi and the founders of modern

India was enormous, but his reputation in the West as a
mystic has perhaps mislead his Western readers to ignore his
role as a reformer and critic of colonialism.

 "When

one knows thee, then alien there is

none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my
prayer that I may never lose touch of the one
in the play of the many." (from Gitanjali)

Composed
He

the National Anthem of India.

was the one who gave the name

MAHATHMA to Gandhiji.