Rags to Riches : Mr. SAMPRADA SINGH

How a young Patna University graduate with a simple family background became the head of the major pharmaceutical company in India is Samprada Singh’s unusual story. Mr Singh, founder and chairman of Alkem Laboratories, a Rs 750 crore pharma company, could probably say he owes his success to his initial misfortunes which he translated into success with entrepreneurial zeal and a positive mental attitude. Born and brought up in Bihar, he wanted to be a doctor. Since this dream could not be realised he was compelled to explore other pastures. In 1946, he entered Gaya College, Patna University to specialise in commerce. Once he obtained his graduate degree, Mr Singh thought he would, like his parents, work in agriculture. However, successive droughts in the Bihar constrained him to change his plans once again. In 1953 Mr Singh opened his first business, a small chemist retail store in Patna. Seven years after opening his medical store, Mr Singh felt it wasn’t enough. He started a business of pharmaceutical distribution in 1960 under the banner of ‘Magadh Pharma’. During these years, he started cultivating doctors and senior executives from major pharma companies. “My relationships pharma big bosses were excellent,” he explains. Once again, after a few years, Mr Singh was already thinking of new ways to expand. Realising how limited were opportunities for the distribution business in Patna, he moved to Mumbai, where he decided to set up his own pharmaceutical company under the name ‘Alkem Laboratories’. The company’s beginnings were not easy, admits Mr Singh. “There were many conflicts of power then in the industry and many did not wish to see me succeed,” he said. Besides, “the capital initially invested in the company was small, and the first years were financially difficult.” The company started its activities by focusing on anti-bacterials, NSAIDs, etc which at that time were prime therapeutic segments.
Then came the turning point which catapulted Alkem Laboratories into the Big League. In 1989, Alkem Labs successfully manufactured and marketed Taxim, a generic version of the antibiotic cefotaxime. MNC Hoechst Marion Roussel (now Sanofi Aventis) were the innovators of the product and the company’s brand dominated the market at that time. “Aventis probably felt that a relatively small Indian company like ours may not pose them any threat but they were in for a big surprise. We surged way ahead of them,” said Mr Singh. The competitive prices offered by Alkem Labs could not possibly be matched by the French company, which soon had to completely halt production. “Taxim really changed the whole profile of the company. It gave the company more visibility and a new credibility,” he told ET. Today, Alkem Labs ranks number seven in the domestic market and sells 75 million vials of Taxim per year, which probably represents more in terms of volume than any given molecule’s sales in the world. Taxim also accounts for around 15% of the company’s revenues. Over the years marketing and finance became Alkem’s strengths. Alkem Labs has a very strong track record of building brands. In fact, Alkem is today a zero debt company and 12 of the company’s brands feature among the top 300 pharma brands in India. Mr Singh mainly attributes the growth of his company to his ability to entertain the best relations possible with his employees, associates and distributors. “Gaining people’s trust and commitment is one of the most important things to succeed. You have to make sure that all people you work with, whether they work within or with the company, are happy and you have to make them grow too, as the company expands,” explains Mr Singh. At 79 years, Mr Singh still has great plans for the company’s future. Not only is he about to open a new division dedicated to nutraceuticals and food processing, but he also intends to make Alkem Labs one of the top five Indian pharma companies within 2 years, primarily by increasing international presence in addition to domestic consolidation. The target is set high at Rs 2000 crore for 2010. But Mr Singh is confident. “That’s not a problem, it will be easy,” he concludes with a smile. Mr Singh’s life story epitomises the old English adage “From tiny acorns grow mighty oaks.”

more links on Samprada Singh , quite famous as SAMPRADA BABU who inspired a lot of youth to take PHARMA BUSINESS as thier CAREER .

http://www.indiainfoline.com/view/210804.html

http://www.alkemlabs.com/

Homage to Dr R.K.Sinha

Homage to Dr R.K.Sinha
Dr Suresh Nandan Sinha*
Dr Radha Krishna Sinha-a doyen of English literature in India is no more. After living a full life, he left for heavenly abode at the ripe old age of 88 on the 29th of August at the Patna residence of his eldest daughter, Dr Manju Rani Sinha, Retd Principal, Magadh Mahila college, Patna University.
Dr Sinha joined Patna University as a lecturer in English in the year 1937 and after eight years, he left for U.K to undertake research work under David Cecil-a renowned critic of English literature. He obtained DPhil degree from Oxford University on D. H. Lawrence. He was acclaimed in his time as one of the four great scholars on Lawrence in English world. His write-up entitled ‘Forms of fiction’ was widely appreciated all over the world in the field of English fiction.
On his return from U.K, he was elevated to the post of University Head of the department of English in Patna University in 1952 at the age 35 and had the distinction of being the youngest University Head of a department in Patna University.He held this post till he retired in 1977. Dr Sinha was a voracious reader of English novels. Whenever this scribe had had an occasion to go to his residence, he was found engrossed in reading books but he loved to remain surrounded by scholars of his liking. Being an aristocrat by birth and coming from an affluent family, he seldom did any manual work; even a pen he infrequently touched to write anything and wrote letters in others’ handwriting putting his signature only. Once while moving in a book fair in Delhi, I happened to see a book authored by him. I wondered and asked Mrs Rama Jha, ( Wife of eminent writer Akhileshwar Jha ) who was mannig the stall of Chanakya Publications as to how Dr R.K.Sinha could write the book when he was known as one who seldom touched pen. She narrated to me how She interviewed Dr Sinha and tape recorded the answers to her questions on varied aspects of English novel and produced the same in the book form which was then before my eyes.
Dr Sinha would ever be remembered not only for his scholarly career in English literature but also for his genial disposition, his sterling qualities of head and heart and above all for his loving temperament which endeared him to all.
*The writer is Retd Professor of MIT Muzaffarpur

Socialist Leader : KAPILDEO BABU : Barahiya

KAPILDEO SINGH : A TRIBUTE
Dr Shaibal Gupta

Kapildeo Singh died the day when two luminaries of India were born, Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri. He was possibly the last thinking leader from the once great socialist movement of Bihar. He was really a byproduct of Sahajanand’s Kisan movement, who had galvanized several Bhumihar tenants to turn leftward. Kapildeo Singh, however, had transcended from Kisan movement to Socialist movement. If economic deprivation alone had concerned him then, his natural ideological home would have been communism; but his deep concern for social issues as well led him to the path of socialist movement. He imbibed some of the best cultures of the left movement, in particular the quality of combining grassroot struggle with voracious reading. He would reel out names of several important books and authors with the drop of a hat. His reading list was wide ranging and enviable. With almost child like pride, he would display his library, a rare possession of a public figure, more so in the Hindi Heartland.
His general disposition pattern did have the brashness of ‘Baraiha’, which emerged as a counterfoil to ‘Arrah’, but he used his brashness for the toiling masses and for tormenting the landlords of the ‘Taal’. This ‘people centric’ brashness was not limited to his political movements only, it was also in full display during his short stint as a Minister as well. His brashness and academic efflorescence were in full use as a Minister of Food in the United Front Government in 1967. He, along with Indradeep Sinha (Minister of Revenue) and Chandra Sekhar Singh (Minister of Irrigation and Power), the two giants of the communist movement, not only tackled successfully the prevailing draught, but also laid the foundation for the ‘Green Revolution’ in Bihar. If Bihar is self-sufficient in food grain now, its foundations were laid by this trio. Indeed, that was possibly the only period of ‘good governance’ in Bihar which was the result of academic foundation of the men at the helm of affairs, their experience of grass root movement and public probity. After the JP movement, while the social base and political power of socialist ideology expanded, the formal party itself got eclipsed. Kapildeo Singh, unlike many of his socialist contemporaries, did not allow himself to be ideologically drifted. At the time of his death, he must have been an ideological loner. He kept up his intellectual probity and ideological brashness dying in the company of a veteran socialist, Janeshwar Mishra, fortunately not in the company of a ‘market centric’ socialist like Amar Singh.

In LALU - RABRI RAAJ

This was Published in The Economic Times and Reporter seems to be a Bhumihar Brahmin who written this in context of then Lalu Rabri raj & Bhumihar . But in present there is a sentence in BIHAR , KURMI ko TAAJ and BHUMIHAR ko RAAJ

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NEW DELHI: For the Bhumihars, a landowning upper caste localised mainly in Bihar, these are very difficult times. A community which played a glorious role in the freedom movement and the zamindari-abolition agitation is today fighting hard to maintain its identity. Having produced the first chief minister of the state in the post-independence era, the community, like the other upper castes, is now struggling to maintain its relevance in the political space. A community which delivered luminaries such as Dr Shrikrishna Sinha, Sir Ganesh Dutt, Chandrashekhar Singh, Ram Dayalu Singh, Shyam Nandan Mishra, Langat Singh in the field of politics, and Ram Dhari Singh `Dinkar,’ Rahul Sankrityayana, Rambriksha Benipuri and Gopal Singh `Nepali’ in the domain of Hindi literature, is in the throes of a major turmoil, with history-sheeters and criminals threatening to become role-models. The first attempt to rally the Bhumihars under a banner can be traced back to the 1880s, when Hathua Maharaj, one of the several members who had been assigned land revenue-collection rights by the British, and Rai Bahadur Ram Gopal Singh Chaudhary formed the `Akhil Bharatiya Bhumihar Brahmin Mahasabha.’ When Mahatama Gandhi launched the movement against the British indigo planters’ exploitation of the farmers of Motihari in north Bihar in 1917, intellectuals and educated persons, cutting across caste-lines, joined it in droves. Among the prominent Bhumihars who were lured into the movement were Dr Shrikrishna Sinha, Ram Dayalu Singh, Ramnandan Mishra, Shilbhadra Yaji, Karyanand Sharma as well as kisan movement leaders such as Swami Shahjanand Saraswati.
Two main streams gradually developed among the Bhumihars. While Sir Ganesh Dutt went on to represent the interests of the landed class, Swami Shahjanand took up cudgels on behalf of the farmers and instigated them to rise against the exploitation of the zamindars and the British administration. Inspired by Mahatama Gandhi’s call to all Indians to join the freedom movement, quite a few Bhumihars laid the foundations for educational institutions. Son a poor farmer hailing from north Bihar, Langat Singh set up the famous L S College in Muzaffarpur. Several other colleges and schools were set up in places like Muzaffarpur, Sitamarhi, Begusarai, Munger and Biharsharif. While a substantial number of Bhumihars joined the Congress heeding Gandhiji’s call, the socialist and communist movements also drew them in large numbers. Dr Shrikrishna Sinha went on become the first chief minister of undivided Bihar. Under his leadership, Bihar went on to become the first state after the attainment of independence to abolish the zamindari system. The socialist stream in the state too had its fair share of Bhumihars. Prominent among them were Ramnandan Mishra, Ganga Sharan Sinha, Basawan Singh and Kapildeo Singh.
A close associate of Loknayak Jai Prakash Narain, Ramnandan Mishra shot into fame when he, along with JP, scaled the walls of the Hazaribagh central jail during the Quit India movement to lead the underground movement against the British. The Communist movement in the state too drew a large number of Bhumihars. Leaders such as Karyanand Sharma, Chandrashekhar Singh, Kishori Prasanna Singh and Indradeep Sinha made a mark among the peasants and landless labourers. In the 1967 general election, the Communists joined hands with the socialists and the Bharatiya Jan Sangh to defeat the Congress party for the first time. They subsequently formed the first non-Congress United Front government in the state under the chief ministership of late Mahamaya Prasad Sinha. Chandrshekhar Singh, Indradeep Sinha and Kapildeo Singh went on to become cabinet ministers in the government. As per the 1930 census, Bhumihars comprised some 4 % of the total population of undivided Bihar. Districts such as Begusarai, Lakhisarai, Muzaffarpur, Jahanabad, Gaya, Vaishali, Patna, Khagaria, Sitamarhi, Gopalganj and Samastipur have a Bhumihar population ranging from 1.5 lakh to 4 lakh. The Bhumihars as a political force lost their clout in the post-Mandal era, ceding the space to the Yadavs and the other OBCs. In the Rabri Devi ministry, there is just one Bhumihar.

Swami Sahjanand Saraswati

The Swami
The foremost of the leaders of the peasantry in Bihar was Swami Sahajanand Saraswati. Sahajanand was born in Ghazipur district in eastern U.P. in the late nineteenth century (1889?) [Sahajanand, 1952] to a family of Jujautia Brahmins. He was the last of six sons and had no sisters. His mother died when he was a child and Naurang Rai (as he was known then) was raised by an aunt. His father, Beni Rai, although a Brahmin, was primarily a cultivator, and was so divorced from priestly functions that he did not even know the gayatri mantras. The family held a small zamindari, income from which had sufficed in Sahajanand's grandfathers' time, but as the family grew and the land was partitioned, prosperity dwindled and (tenant) cultivation became the main occupation. However, the family was not so extremely poor that its condition would prevent Naurang from going to school, where he did very well both in the primary grades and in the German Mission high school where he studied English. Even at an early age, however, Naurang showed sings of brilliance and scepticism of conventional populist religious practices. He questioned the institution of people taking guru- mantra from fake religious personages and wanted to study religious texts deeply in order to be able to find real spiritual solace by renouncing the world. To prevent him from doing this, his family had him married to a child bride but, before the marriage could stablise, in 1905 or early 1906, his wife died. The last fetter in his way to sanyas (renunciation of the world) having been removed, in 1907 Naurang Rai was initiated into holy orders and took on the name of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati. This adoption of sanyas prevented him from appearing for the matriculation examination but he spent the rest of his life, especially the first seven years after sanyas, in studying religion, politics and social affairs. In all these he became increasingly radicalised so that towards the end of his life, the world was presented with the incongruous sight of a saffron-clad swami who denounced organised religion [Sahajanand, 1948:96-123].

However, before Sahajanand came to this stage, he had to traverse a long road. His first involvement in public activity started from the very narrow casteist Bhumihar platform. Only gradually did Sahajanand become involved in nationalist Congress politics, and then in peasant movements, progressively in Patna, Bihar and, finally, all over India.

Even in order to get to the peasant question, however, Sahajanand went through political schooling in Congress under Gandhi. In fact, the Swami and the Mahatma had a curious filial relationship. Sahajanand started off in Congress as a devoted Gandhian, admiring Gandhi's fusion of tradition, religion and politics and, by 1920, threw himself into the nationalist movement as directed by Gandhi. However, he first became disgusted with the petty, comfort-seeking hypocrisy of the self-proclaimed `Gandhians' especially in jail and, within 15 years, he was disillusioned with Gandhi's own ambiguity and devious pro-propertied attitudes. The final break came in 1934 after Bihar had been violently shaken by the great earthquake of that year. During the relief operations in which Sahajanand was deeply involved, he came across many cases where, in spite of the destruction perpetrated by the natural calamity, he found the suffering of the people to be less on account of the earthquake than as the result of the cruelty of the landlords in rent collection. When Sahajanand found no way of tackling this situation, he went to meet Gandhi, who was then camping at Patna, to ask for advice. Gandhi sanguinely told him, `The zamindars will remove the difficulties of the peasants. Their managers are Congressmen. So they will definitely help the poor' [Sahajanand, 1952:426]. In spite of this, the oppression of the peasantry by the `zamindari machinery including Congressmen managers' continued. These platitudes of Gandhi disgusted Sahajanand and he broke off his 14 year association with the Mahatma. After that, he consistently saw the Mahatma as a wily politician who, in order to defend the propertied classes, took recourse in pseudo-spiritualism, professions of non-violence and religious hocus-pocus.

After his break with Gandhi, Sahajanand kept out of party politics (though he continued to be a member of the Congress) and turned his energies into mobilising the peasants [Hauser, 1961:109-133]. By the end of the decade, he emerged as the foremost kisan leader in India. In this task of organising the peasants, at different times his political impetuosity took him close to different individuals, parties and groups. He first joined hands with the Congress Socialists for the formation of the All-India Kisan Sabha; then with Subhas Chandra Bose organised the Anti-Compromise Conference against the British and the Congress [Sahajanand, 1940]; then worked with the CPI during the Second World War [Das, 1981]; and finally broke from them, too, to form an `independent' Kisan Sabha [Rai, 1946]. In spite of these political forays, however, Sahajanand remained essentially a non-party man and his loyalty was only to the peasants for whom he was the most articulate spokesman and forthright leader. As a peasant leader, `by standards of speech and action, he was unsurpassed' [Hauser, 1961:85]. He achieved that status by a remarkable ability to speak to and for the peasants of Bihar; he could communicate with them and articulate their feelings in terms whose meaning neither peasant nor politicians could mistake. `He was relentlessly determined to improve the peasants' condition and pursued that objective with such force and energy that he was almost universally loved by the peasants, and almost equally both respect and feared by the landlords, Congressmen and officials. The Swami was a militant agitator; he sought to expose the condition of agrarian society and to organise the peasants massively to achieve change. He did this through countless meetings and rallies which he organised and which he addressed in his own inimitable forthright manner. He was a powerful speaker speaking the language of the peasants. Sahajanand was a Dandi Sanyasi and always carried a long bamboo staff (danda). In the course of the movement, this staff became the symbol of peasant resistance. They cry of "Danda Mera Zindabad" (Long live my staff), was thus taken to mean "Long live the danda (lathi) of the Kisans" and it became the watchword of the Bihar peasant movement. The inevitable response by the masses of peasants was "Swamiji ki Jai" (Victory to Swamiji) [Hauser, op cit]. "Kaise Logey Malguzari, Latth Hamara Zindabad" (How will you collect rent as long as our sticks are powerful?) became the battle cry of the peasants.

This was the manner in which a common communication was achieved. And it was vastly enhanced by the fact that Sahajanand was a Swami, which gave him a tremendous charisma. In 1937, he was reported to have said that as religious robes had long exploited the peasants, now he would exploit those robes on behalf of the peasants' [Hauser, ibid]. When landlords raised the question as to how a sanyasi (mendicant) was taking part in temporal problems of the poor, Sahajanand quoted the scriptures at them:

Prayen deva munayah swavimukti kama
Maunam charanti vijane na pararthnsihthah
Naitan vihaya kripnan vimumuksha eko
Nanyattwadasya sharanam bhramato nupashye

(Mendicants are selfish, living away from society, they try for their own salvation without caring for others. I cannot do that, I do not want my own salvation apart from that of the many destitutes. I will stay with them, live with them and die with them)[Sahajanand, 1952:171].
Such was Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, the charismatic sanyasi rebel, who laid the foundations of kisan organisation in Bihar, built it up into a massive movement, spread it to other parts of India and radicalised it to such an extent that what had started off as a move to bring about reform in the zamindari system, ended up by destroying the system itself. Sahajanand could not, however,m witness the legal death of zamindari in BIhar. While the battle for this was still being fought in the legislature and the courts, on 26 June 1950, Sahajanand passed away [Sudhakar, 1973:14].

Bihar Kesari : Dr. Sri Krishna Singh

'Bihar Kesari' Dr. Sri Krishna Sinha was born on 21st October, 1887 in his maternal grandfather's house, Khanwa.He got his early education in his village school, and later in Zila School, Monghr, where he gradually emerged as promising student leader. At Monghyr, by the Ganges, he avowed to work relentlessly and without rerspipte to free India from the English. Dr. Sri Krishna completed his education in Patna University. He started practising law in1915, but gavae it up in 1921 to take active part in Mahtma Gandhi's non co-operation movement . As the echoes of his voice spread around Bihar, people began calling him 'Bihar Kesari'.Sri Krishna Babu first went to Jail in 1922. He underwent different terms of imprisonment for a total of about eight years. In 1930, Sri Babu played an important trole in 'Namak Satyagrah' at Garhppura. During arrest he suffered severe scalding injuries to his hands and chest.Under the Act of 1935, Sri Babu formed his Cabine Patna on 20th July, 1937. He disagreed with the Governor on the issue of the realease of political prisoners and resigned. The Governor had to give in finally and Sri Krishna Baby resumed his office. But he again resigned im 1939 over the question of involving India in the Second World War without the consent of the Indian people. Impressed by this courage ofDr. Sinha, Mahatma Gandhi in 1940 awarded him the distincting of being called ' the first Satyagrahi'm of Bihar.Ast the Chief Minister, Dr. Sri Krishna Sinha served Bihar continuously from 1946 to 1961. He was always interested in self study and his ideas and speeches were noted for their wisdom. He wasa staunch opponent of casteism and always rose in defence of the oppressed, the backward and the Harijans.

He passed away on 31st January, 1961.

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Rashtra Kavi : Ramdhari Singh "DINKAR"

RAMDHARI SINGH DINKAR :

Ramdhari Singh 'Dinkar' (रामधारी सिंह दिनकर) (1908 - April 24, 1974) was one of the most famous modern Hindi poets. He emerged as a rebellious poet with his nationalist poetry in pre-Independence days.
Dinkar was born at the Simariya village in Begusarai district of Bihar in a Bhumihar family. As a student, Dinkar's favorite subjects were history, politics and philosophy. He studied Hindi, Sanskrit, Bengali, Urdu and English literature. Dinkar was greatly influenced by Iqbal, Rabindranath Tagore, Keats and Milton.
In his early days, Dinkar supported the revolutionary movement during the Indian Independence struggle. But later, he became a Gandhian. However, he used to call himself a 'Bad Gandhian' because he supported the feelings of indignation and revenge among the youth. In Kurukshetra, he accepts that the war is destructive, but says that it is necessary for the protection of freedom.
Dinkar was awarded the Jnanpith Award in 1972 for Urvashi, a work of poetry, published in 1961. The theme of Urvashi revolves round love, passion, and relationship of man and woman on a spiritual plain, distinct from their earthly relationship. The name Urvashi is derived from the name of an Apsara of the same name (Urvashi), a celestial damsel of the court of Hindu mythological god, Indra.

Major poetical works
Renuka, Hunkaar, Dwandwageet, Saamdheni, Rasavanti, Baapu, Kurukshetra, Rashmirathi, Urvashi, Dhoop aur Dhuan, Itihaas ke aansoo, Neel Kusum.

PARICHAY : Rashtra Kavi Ram Dhari Singh DINKAR

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Please Download This POEM and then Inlarge it by Inlarge Button or Click on link given

Sheel Bhadra Yajee : Freedom Fighters Part - II

Sheel Bhadra Yajee

Sheel Bhadra Yajee (1906-1996) the fiery freedom fighter from Bihar was associated with the non-violent and the violent form of freedom struggle. Yajee's participation in the freedom movement began in 1928 when, as a student, he attended the Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress. He joined the Congress Socialist Party four years later and became involved in the Kisan movement. Later, he came in close touch with Subhas Chandra Bose, as well as Mahatma Gandhi. In 1939 he joined Subhas Chandra Bose to found the All India Forward Bloc. He was actively associated with the INA movement. Yajee raised his voice against caste prejudices and other social evils. He was a firm believer in the active participation of the peasants, workers and the middle classes in the struggle for the transformation of society. He authored several books like' A Glimpse of the Indian Labour Movement', 'Forward Bloc and Its Stand', 'Is Socialism a Necessity to India', and 'True Face of Monopolistic American Democracy'.

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His native was BAKHTIYARPUR , PATNA and so Bhumihars from this area are known as YAJEE bhumihars . Ghoswari- Champapur is SASURAAl of Mukhiya Jee ( Ranjan Rituraj Sinh) .

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Sri Yajee jee also founded All-India Freedom Fighters' Organisation , when he retired from active politics . There are several books on Yajee jee contribution to Society as Freedom Fighter , as Kisan Leader and as a parliamentrian . and one of them is Sheel Bhadra Yajee, a living legend of the freedom struggle: Books: V.L Sundar Rao by V. L Sundar Rao.

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he represented Bihar as Indian National Congress member in RAJYASABHA to counter the philosphy of LOHIA in

First Time : 27/04/1957 to 02/04/1958

Second Time : 03/04/1958 to 02/04/1964

Third Time : 03/04/1966 to 02/04/1972

Yogendra Shukla & Baikunth Shukla : Freedom Fighters - Part I

Yogendra Shukla and Baikunth Shukla

Yogendra Shukla (1896-1966) as well as his nephew Baikunth Shukla (1907-1934) hailed from village Jalalpur in Muzaffarpur (now Vaishali), district of Bihar and were torch bearers of the revolutionary spirit of freedom struggle. Young Yogendra made his greatest contribution to the cause of Indian freedom between 1930 and 1942, as one of the leaders of the revolutionary movement in Bihar and U.P. becoming "Almost a legendary figure for his many exploits". He was a close associate of Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Datta. He had to serve prison terms for a total of more than sixteen and a half years for his revolutionary activities. During imprisonment in different jails of India, he was subjected to extreme torture, which corroded his iron constitution.
Baikunth Shukla was also initiated into the freedom struggle at a young age taking active part in the 'Salt Satyagraha' of 1930. He was associated with revolutionary organisations like the Hindustan Seva Dal and Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. The execution of the great Indian revolutionaries, Bhagat Singh,Rajguru and Sukhdev in 1931 as a result of their trial in the 'Lahore conspiracy case' was an event that shook the entire country. Phanindra Nath Ghosh hitherto a key member of the Revolutionary Party had treacherously betrayed the cause by turning an approver, giving evidence, which led to the execution. Baikunth was commissioned to plan the execution of Ghosh as an act of ideological vendetta which he carried out successfully on 9th November 1932. He was arrested and tried for the killing. Baikunth was convicted and hanged in Gaya Central Jail on May 14th, 1934. He was only 28 years old.

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There is a GIRLS HIGH SCHOOL on the name of Yogendra Shukla in "HAKAAM" , Gopalganj , Bihar . Its native of MUKHIYA JEE ( Ranjan Rituraj Sinh) , on 29th January 2001 , Sri ram Vilas Paswan released this stamp in the capacity of Union minister under Mr Vajpae Government .

A Maharajah's Festival for Body and Soul

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THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN NEW YORK TIMES ,Just 30 days back to Maharaja death .
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November 26, 2000
A Maharajah's Festival for Body and Soul

By RICHARD SCHECHNER, a professor of performance studies at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, is working on a book about Indian theater and ritual.

RAMNAGAR, India A KING, his prince and his courtiers ride in full pomp atop richly caparisoned elephants. They, along with tens of thousands of spectator-devotees, their hands pressed together in the Hindu prayer-salute, admire and worship the gods Vishnu and Lakshmi in their incarnations as Rama and Sita. Titanic battles pit human-size gods against 50-foot-high demons.
For a whole month there is continuous theater, 31 daily episodes of love, war, exile, intrigue and adventure. The stages for this performance of great magnitude are locations dispersed, filmlike, throughout Ramnagar (literally, Ramatown), a midsize settlement across the Ganges River from the holy city of Benares in the north Indian province of Uttar Pradesh.
Ramnagar is the seat of the Maharajah of Benares, Vibhuti Narain Singh, still revered by multitudes of Indians more than 50 years after losing his crown and his kingdom when the Princely State of Benares was dissolved into the Union of India in 1949.
This is Ramlila, or Rama's play: participatory environmental theater on a grand scale. Ramlila is theater — and it is religious devotion, pilgrimage, a festive fair and political action. Audiences range from a few thousand for some episodes to 100,000 for others. Every Hindu Indian, and most Muslims, know the story of Ramlila; it is always being presented in films, on television, as graphic art and in literature, ranging from great poetry to comic books. There are thousands of local Ramlilas enacted all over Hindi-speaking India — and in the diaspora, too, from Trinidad to Queens.
But the Ramlila of Ramnagar is different. It features the Maharajah of Benares as patron, director and player. It is many days longer than other Ramlilas. It is more skillfully produced theatrically. It draws much larger and more devoted crowds. And its future may be more precarious.
During Ramlila, Ramnagar is transformed into a living theatrical model of the entire Indian subcontinent, from the Himalayan mountains in the north to Sri Lanka off the southeast coast. Nothing of Ramlila's size, totality and intensity has been seen in the West since medieval times. Compared with Ramlila, the Oberammergau Passion Play and Peter Brook's "Mahabharata" are small scale.

Like all great art, Ramlila changes its meaning over time. Nationalist sentiments, present mostly as a vague background 25 years ago, now operate openly, especially among many younger male spectators. And today's Hindu nationalists, wanting to turn India into a Hindu state, hold Ramraj up as their ideal.

Under the watchful eye of the Maharajahs of Benares, Ramlila has been performed in Ramnagar every year since the early 1800's. But how long it will continue is no longer certain. The pressures of India's ever-increasing population and the nation's vigorous economic growth threaten this unique theatrical-religious cycle.
Ramlila needs lots of time and space — scarce in today's India. People who once would support Rama in his war against Ravana now run businesses that can't be ignored for a month. At the same time, forests, ponds and open sites are being eaten up by housing and highways. Even finding younger actors and technicians to replace those already well past retirement age is proving difficult.
As an American theater director who has studied Ramlila since 1976, I am fascinated by its scale, by the attention to detail in its staging, lighting, scenic design and costuming, by the acting and singing, and by the convergence of narrative, spectacle, devotion and politics. I have seen all 31 episodes twice and, along the way, interviewed the Maharajah, the Rajkumar (crown prince) and many participants and performers in the play, as well as a number of spectators. In September, I went to Ramnagar to see portions of this year's spectacle, as I have in other years.
Ramayana means Rama's journey, and Ramlila suggests this journey literally. There are no seats. People sit on the ground, stand, watch from rooftops or perch on walls. When the action calls for it, the crowd moves from one location to another. Following in Rama's footsteps is fundamental to Ramlila. This movement is a kind of pilgrimage, a worship-in-action.
The festival itself transforms an area of many square miles. Some of the stages are enclosures in the middle of the town, others are deep in what was once forest and jungle, or on grassy hillsides and in open fields, or amid large gardens of fragrant blooming trees and temples and marble gazebos built by former maharajahs. For one scene, the stage is the Maharajah's own palace, known as the Fort, which it really once was.
Each episode is called a lila. On most days, Ramlila begins at 5 p.m. and continues until 10 at night. Some episodes last late into the evening and one, Rama's coronation, does not end until dawn.
The staging is simple and iconographic, replicating images from temples, religious paintings and popular posters. The costumes are richly woven silks in resplendent gold and red. The faces of some actors are adorned with glittering jewels. Many colorful masks and large, brightly painted papier-mâché effigies animate the performances.

But this tradition is no longer secure, though it has persevered for more than 100 years. Kaushal said he did not want his son to portray Ravana. "Life as a farmer is too hard," he said. "The Maharajah has no money anymore. I want my son to work in the city." The sentiment is heard frequently these days.

The original Ramayana poem itself is never spoken because Sanskrit is a language very few Indians understand. Instead, what people hear is the Ramcharitmanas, a 16th-century Hindi version of the epic. The entire Manas, as it is called, is chanted by 12 men sitting each night in a circle close to the Maharajah. But even though at Ramlila one can see dozens of people reading texts of the Manas, many others cannot understand its archaic Hindi. To enable everyone to follow the story, a maharajah in the mid-19th century, Ishwari Prasad Narain Singh, commissioned a group of poets and scholars to compose dialogue in vernacular Hindi for the Ramlila.

First, the Maharajah ritually worships weapons and horses — the symbols of his royal power. Next, he and his court mount magnificently adorned elephants and parade through the adoring crowd from the Fort to Lanka. The Maharajah then proceeds through the battleground and departs. "It is not proper for one king to witness the death of another," the Maharajah told me. "Therefore, I do not stay to watch this lila."

One group that always gains maximum pleasure and devotion from Ramlila are the sadhus, holy men who have renounced worldly goods, live on alms and spend their days and nights singing praises to the gods. The Maharajah provides all sadhus with daily rations of rice and lodging. But despite this generosity, there are many fewer sadhus than before. "Who wants to renounce the world these days?" a man asked me.
And where there used to be lightly traveled paths leading into the quiet countryside, now there are streets clogged with diesel fume spewing trucks and buses, horn- blasting cars and motorcycles, not to mention bicycles, cows, water buffalo and goats. The deeply rutted dirt roads have not been filled or smoothed for years.
Why is the Ramlila so enormous? The most direct answer is that since the early 19th century, the Ramlila has been the defining project of the Maharajahs of Benares. The current line was established in the mid- 18th century and, caught between a failing Mughal power and an emergent British presence, was not secure on the throne. Sponsoring a large Ramlila was the way for the Maharajahs of Benares to shore up their religious and cultural authority at a time when they were losing both military power and economic autonomy.

Vibhuti Narain Singh ascended the throne in 1939 when he was a boy of 12. Ten years later, his kingdom was dissolved. But the Maharajah continued to rule, not in political fact but by virtue of his learning, his religious devotion and his patronage of Ramlila. Wherever he goes, people greet him with ringing shouts of "Hara! Hara! Mahadev!" ("Shiva! Shiva! Great God!"), because he is believed to be a manifestation of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and reproduction. Now 73 and frail, unable to walk unassisted, the Maharajah is doing all he can to pass the Ramlila on unchanged.

With the participation of Nissar Allana, a stage designer, and myself, the Maharajah is planning a Ramlila museum, which will take shape first as an Internet site with thousands of images, as well as sound recordings and scholarly and historical materials. Kapila Vatsyayan, one of India's leading performance scholars, hopes to edit a facsimile edition of an early-19th-century illuminated manuscript, a four-volume version of the Manas with hundreds of original illustrations in a style influenced by Mughal painting.

I am helping to prepare a prompt book detailing all of the current staging — a how- to-do-it manual that the Maharajah hopes will assist his son, Anant Narain Singh, who is now in his 30's, when it becomes his turn to oversee the Ramlila.

The Ramnagar Ramlila has thrived for nearly two centuries as a magnificent spectacle, a religious experience and a cosmic drama. But will it make it through the next 25 years? The crown prince has never known what it is to rule a state. Is his devotion as intense as his father's? Can he command the same respect? He is a more modern man than his father. Is it an irony or a sign of the times that on several occasions when we have met, I was dressed in Indian kurta and pajamas, while he wore casual Western clothes?

Meanwhile, money is a big problem. Environments and costumes are beginning to look rundown. Performers receive a few hundred rupees as a contribution to those who do sacred work. At one time, this money amounted to something, but no longer. Atmaram, the 80-year-old supervisor of props, sets, lights, costumes and special effects, was not sanguine about the future. "I am training no one," he said. "After I am gone, who will know what to do?" Atmaram has been on the job for more than 50 years. The knowledge he carries in his head is not replaceable.
Until now, few outsiders have attended Ramlila. It doesn't make sense to go for one day, and Ramnagar does not have the infrastructure to accommodate longer visits, unless one is ready to rough it. For more foreigners to come — or even for upscale Indians from Delhi and Calcutta — Ramnagar will require extensive upgrading. The crown prince is studying the possibility of converting a portion of the Fort into a five- star hotel.
Yet everyone recognizes that Ramlila's uniqueness is a function of its nontourist Indianness, of its being theater and more than theater at the same time. Will increased attention from outsiders help preserve or further disturb Ramlila?

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Although , I teach Technology and Management but HISTORY always fascinate me . i just delight whenever i see my forefathrs (Bhumihar Brahmins) were in lead to serve the society or to make society enable.

Kashi Naresh : History Part II

His Highness Maharaja Bahadur Dr Vibhuti Narayan Singh

Consequently, during the nineteenth century the British administered the Banaras region directly, with the ruling Bhumihar family occupying a vague position somewhere between that of large landlord and the ruler of a princely state ( For a delineation of the rights accorded to the Raja, and how they exceeded those available to ordinary large landholders) While the government officially maintained the distinction in status between Banaras and the other "native princes" ruling elsewhere in the subcontinent (these enjoyed legal status under the doctrine of "internal" or "limited sovereignty"), India Office administrators debated in the 1870s whether or not the characterization of Banaras as a "mere zamindary" was grossly misleading ("A History," 1873). Earlier studies have suggested that nineteenth-century direct rule by the British represented a collapsing of the levels of political authority from three to two; that the British came to represent both the national and the regional level of authority. ( The new interpretation of the political history of the Banaras region sketched here reflects a shift of focus from overtly political arenas to those expressed by cultural activities. This shift enables us to make different measurements about the extent of power and influence exercised by the dynasty within the political economy of the area. As a result, we argue that the Raja maintained an important politicocultural influence that kept alive the intermediate "regional" function within local society.)

But in 1910–11 the British government took the unusual action of creating a new princely state of Banarasinvesting the Maharaja with "full ruling powers" over the area encompassed within his zamindari. ( He was to receive a 15-gun salute, and could be received and visited by the Viceroy.)While retaining direct British rule in the city of Banaras, the British nevertheless recognized the Maharaja's cultural influence there by allowing him to retain his capital at Ramnagar (situated directly across the Ganges River, and the only other town of any size in the district). This decision to re-create the princely state was informed in part by early-twentieth-century British political concerns.

The move also, however, officially recognized the ongoing politicocultural influence possessed by that triad of collaborators—the Bhumihar dynasty, the Gosains, and the merchant-bankers. In turn, it also perpetuated this influence: in its unofficial and then official role as princely state, Banaras provided important patronage for Indian artists and intellectuals, as well as opportunities for talented Indian administrators. The Maharaja's council, for instance, reflected the confluence of mercantile, landowning, caste, and educational elite possessing what we refer to here as "Hindu merchant-style" culture (see below). Together the triad shaped this culture so successfully that it integrated those who resided in the city in a way that came to be virtually unparalleled in urban north India.

to be continued.......

Ranjan Rituraj Sinh , Gopalganj