Great Uttar Pradesh People - Final Part

Couple of Days back i and my wife Sneha started reading about great Uttar Pradesh people.

Today i want to share remaining great people from Uttar Pradesh.

Few quotations i want to share with you about these great people.

1) Begum Qudsia Aizaz Rasul (1908-2001) was an Indian politician and the only Muslim woman to be a member of the Constituent Assembly of India.

A widely traveled person, Begum Rasul was a member of Prime Minister’s Goodwill Delegation to Japan in 1953 and Indian Parliamentary Delegation to Turkey in 1955. She also took keen interest in literature and authored the book Three Weeks in Japan and contributed to various newspapers and magazines. Her autobiography is titled From Purdah to Parliament: A Muslim Woman in Indian Politics.

2) Asifa Zamani is an eminent Indian scholar of persian language. She was awarded Padma Shri in 2004 by Government of India for her outstanding work. In 1999 she received 'President of India Certificate of Honor in Persian.

3) Shrilal Shukla (born December 31, 1925, Uttar Pradesh) is a Hindi writer, notable for his satire. He also worked as an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer. He has written over 21 books, including, "Umraonagar men Kuchh Din" and "Suni Ghati ka Suraj".

Shukla has highlighted the falling moral values in the Indian society in the post independence era through his novels. His writings expose the negative aspects of life in the rural and urban India in a satirical manner. His novel Raag Darbari has been translated into English. A soap opera based on this continued for several months the national TV network in 1980s. It is a little known fact that he also wrote a jasoosi novel entitled Aadmi ka Zahar which went generally unnoticed by his fans and critics alike.

Shukla received the Sahitya Academy Award, the highest Indian literary award, for his novel Raag Darbari in 1969, He received the Vyas Samman award in 1999 for the novel "Bisrampur ka Sant", and in 2008, he received the Padma Bhushan.

4) Abdul Waheed Khan (Born in 1947 of Indian nationality) holds a Ph.D. in Mass Communication (1973) and a master's degree in Agricultural Journalism (1970) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and a Masters in Agricultural Extension (1965) from Agra University (India).

He has been working as Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris since July 2001, where he is responsible for UNESCO’s programmes and activities in communication and information. He is also responsible for coordinating UNESCO’s contribution to the UN ICT Task Force and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Khan has extensive international experience in designing, planning and managing communication and information technology applications in education, sciences and culture.

5) Rangeya Raghav (17 January 1923 – 12 September 1962), birth name Tirumalla Nambakkam Viraraghava Acharya, was born in Agra, a city of Uttar Pradesh state, India. A prominent Hindi writer of the 20th century, he completed his post-graduation studies from St. John's College, Agra, and later completed his Ph.D. on Guru Gorakhnath. He started writing at the age of 13 years, and during his short life of almost 40 years, he was endowed with a number of prizes. His wife lives in Jaipur and is an associate professor.

6) Syed Waheed Akhtar (August 12, 1934—December 13, 1996) Was an Urdu poet, writer, critic, distinguished orator, and one of the leading Muslim scholars and philosophers of the century.

Syed Waheed Akhtar a poet, literary critic and scholar was born on 12th of August, 1934, in the city of Aurangabad (Deccan) of erstwhile Hyderabad State of Nizam (present day Maharashtra), in a family which migrated from [Nasirabad]-Jais (Jais-birth place of poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi/[1]), boroughs of Sa'adat inhabitants in Raebareily (or Raebareli) district of Uttar Pradesh. His father's name was Syed Nazr-e Abbas, and mother's name was Syeda Aliya Begum. They had seven children. Waheed Akhtar was the second child, among six sons and one daughter. After spending his childhood in Aurangabad, and completing high school and intermediate, he went to Hyderabad, to enroll at Osmania University as a bachelor of art student. He was in Hyderabad for eight years until he completed his Ph. D. and got appointment as lecturer at Aligarh Muslim University. Years in Hyderabad were crucial for moulding his personality as a poet and writer. Although, after Police Action Hyderabad acceded to the Dominion of India, it was still a very strong feudal society, dominated by rich and elite. At the same time, lot of muslims who held positions of importance had become defeatist, thinking they had lost their voice and authority in the conditions prevalent at that time. Hyderabad was still, the only University in subcontinent to teach modern sciences including medicine and engineering in Urdu, which was the fruit of Allamah Shibli Nomani's hardwork. Waheed Akhtar was not the one to resign to defeat, nor overwhelmed by the times and existing system. He was a born fighter and he made his ideas and voice heard in his writings. He was independent minded, freedom loving man who was well aware of Political and Literary Movements of his times around the world. He wrote prolifically in Urdu from very early age. During his initial years he adopted the pen name "Barq".

His early education took place at Chelipura High School, a government school in Aurangabad. He was educated at Osmania University, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh and received his bachelor's degree in arts, and master's and Ph. D degrees in Philosophy. He was appointed lecturer of philosophy at Aligarh Muslim University and went on to settle in Aligarh for the rest of his life, where he retired in 1995.

7) Jagdish Gandhi born Jagdish Agarwal is a Lucknow-based educator who is the founding chairman of City Montessori School. The school has 20 branches in Lucknow with over 30,000 enrolled students, which has earned it a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records.The Peace and other initiatives of Jagdish Gandhi are indeed praiseworthy. His annual conference of Chief Justices of the World at Lucknow is a unique attempt to create a common enforcable international law for the global village.

8) Madan Mohan Malaviya (1861-1946) was an Indian politician, notable for his role in the freedom struggle and his espousal of Hindu nationalism. He was one of the founders of scouting in India.

Malaviya was born to an orthodox Hindu family at Allahabad on December 25, 1861. He studied the scriptures from an early age.

With Mahatma Gandhi he represented India at the First Round Table Conference in 1931.

Malviya Nagar in Allahabad, Lucknow, Delhi and Jaipur are named after him. A postage stamp has been printed in India in his honour.

9) Meghnad Saha FRS (October 6, 1893 – February 16, 1956) was an Indian astrophysicist best known for his development of the Saha equation, used to describe chemical and physical conditions in stars.

Saha was born on October 6, 1893 in Shaoratoli village near Dhaka (in present Bangladesh). Son of Jagannath Saha, Megh Nad Saha belonged to a poor family and struggled to rise in life. He had his initial schooling at Dhaka Collegiate School, and later moved to Dhaka College. He was also a student at the Presidency College, Kolkata; a professor at Allahabad University from 1923 to 1938, and thereafter a professor and Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Calcutta until his death in 1956. He became Fellow of the Royal Society in 1927. He was president of the 21st session of the Indian Science Congress in 1934.

10) Padma Bhushan Syed Zahoor Qasim (born December 31, 1926 in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India) is one of India's leading marine scientists. Qasim is known as the man who lead India's maiden exploration to Antarctica and successfully organized and guided the other seven expeditions to the frozen continent from 1981 to 1988.

He was Member of Planning Commission of India from 1991-1996. Qasim is Honorary Professor of many universities, including Aligarh Muslim University, Madurai Kamraj University, Anna Malai University, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Jamia Millia Islamia.

Qasim did his schooling from Majidiya Islamiya Intermediate College Allahabad, and then moved to Aligarh Muslim University, where he obtained a B.Sc. degree in 1949 and an M.Sc. degree in Zoology in 1951. He stood first in the order of Merit for which he was awarded University Gold Medal. For a few years, he was a lecturer in the Department of Zoology at Aligarh before proceeding to the United Kingdom for higher studies in 1953. In 1956 he completed his D.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from University College of North Wales (UK).

11) Y.P. Varshni (born 1932) is a scientist in the areas of physics and astrophysics.

Varshni studied at Allahabad University, where he obtained his B.Sc in 1950, his M.Sc. in 1952, and his Ph.D. in 1956. He published his first research paper in 1951 at the age of 19. He served as an Assistant Professor in the Physics Dept., Allahabad University for the period 1955-60.

Varshni immigrated to Canada as a postdoctorate fellow at the National Research Council, Ottawa, Canada in July 1960. For the next two years he worked in theoretical physics under Ta-You Wu, a distinguished physicist who in China taught T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957. In July 1962, Varshni was appointed as Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Ottawa. He became Associate Professor in July 1965 and Full Professor in July 1969. He retired in June 1997 and was then appointed as Emeritus Professor. Varshni has worked in a number of areas of physics and astrophysics. He wrote on the Plasma Laser Star Theory of quasars.

12) Bhagwati Charan Verma (August 30, 1903 -October 5, 1981), was one of the leading writers in Hindi. He wrote many novels, but his magnum opus was 'Chitralekha', which was made into two successful Hindi films, 1941 and 1964.

He was awarded the 1961 Sahitya Akademi Award in Hindi, for his epic five-part novel, Bhoole Bisre Chitra and in 1971 the Padma Bhushan, one of India's civil honours and nominated to Rajya Sabha in 1978.

13) Swami Kalyandev (June 21, 1876? - July 14, 2004) was an ascetic who was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award in India, for his years of social work in the villages of India.

Kalyandev was born as Kaluram in Kotana village in the district of Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh to Bhoi Devi, wife of Pherdudatt. He grew up in the village of Mundbhar in the Muzaffarnagar district. In his youth he travelled to Ayodhya and Haridwar with few belongings and begging along the way to sustain himself. At Haridwar, he heard of Swami Vivekananda's visit to Khetri. He travelled to Khetri to meet Vivekananda.[3]

In 1982, he received the Padma Sri award, and in 2000, the prestigious Padma Bhushan. He was also awarded an honorary D.Litt. by Meerut University. In the late 1980s, Vishwanath Pratap Singh came to Shukatal to pray along with his wife and Swamiji told him to do his first rally near Bhayla. VP Singh's career had taken a nosedive and Swamiji's advice essentially brought him back to political centrestage culminating in his becoming the Prime Minister of India. In 2002, Sri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the then prime minister of India, had printed The Seer of Three Centuries: Swami Kalyandev.

14) Akeel Bilgrami is an Indian-born philosopher and the author of Belief and Meaning, Self-Knowledge and Resentment, and Politics and the Moral Psychology of Identity, as well as various articles in Philosophy of Mind as well as in Political and Moral Psychology. Some of his articles in these latter subjects speak to issues of current politics in their relation to broader social and cultural issues. He has also increasingly joined debates in the pages of larger-circulation periodicals such as The New York Review of Books and The Nation. Bilgrami is currently the Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University in New York.

Bilgrami received a degree in English Literature from Bombay University before switching to philosophy. He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, leaving with a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He earned his Ph.D from the University of Chicago with a dissertation titled "Meaning as Invariance," on the subject of the indeterminacy of translation and issues concerning realism and linguistic meaning. He joined Columbia’s Philosophy Department in 1985 after spending two years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

15) Arjan SinghA former hunter turned avid conservationist and author Feisty 'Billy' Arjan Singh is a conservationist recognised by most tiger lovers. Born in Gorakhpur in 1917, he joined the British army in 1940 and fought in World War II. Upon his return to India he purchased a farm on the edge of Dudhwa National Park in the Lakhimpur Kheri district of India. He still lives here in a residence he designed and calls 'Tiger Haven'.

Singh was honoured for his conservation efforts with Padma Shri in 1995. One of India's highest national awards it is conferred on people who distinguish themselves in different fields. This was closely followed by the world wildlife gold medal in 1996, then the Order of the Golden Ark only a year later and the lifetime award for tiger conservation in March 1999.

In 2004, when in his eighties, Billy Arjan Singh received the J.Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation award - a global honor administered by the World Wildlife fund - in recognition of his outstanding contribution to international conservation. He has been honored by several awards including the Padma Bhushan in 2006.

16) Harsh Narain is an Indian author. He has a Ph.D. from Lucknow University, and was a professor at Benares Hindu University, Aligarh Muslim University and North Eastern Hill University.

He wrote on Buddhism, Islam, Vedanta, Bertrand Russell, Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Iqbal. He wrote for the Urdu Encyclopedia, the Hindi Sahitya Kosha and the Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies. He speaks Sanskrit, Pali, Persian, Arabic, English, Hindi and Urdu.

17) Naresh Chandra Saxena (1934-) is a Padma Vibhushan awarded Indian Civil Servant.

Born in Allahabad on August 1, 1934. He was educated at Allahabad and obtained M.Sc. (Maths) degree from the Allahabad University. He was a lecturer in the Allahabad University for a short period.

He was conferred Padma Vibhushan award in 2007.