November's crop of national leaders

Sometimes discussions that take place in an unplanned and incidental way in the classroom turn out to be much more valuable than organized, systematic, and syllabus-based teaching.  A casual question about the relative importance of the different months of the year threw some unusual light on November.  Students pointed out that November was an important month because both Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi were born in this month.  Further explorations, which took the form of an assignment, led us to the fact that, in terms of the births of national leaders, November is a significant month in the history of the nation because as many as twelve illustrious national leaders were born in this month.

In the very first week of the month, four great leaders were born.  Both Dadabhai Naoroji, the Grand Old Man of India, who, in collaboration with Hume, founded the Indian National Congress, and Jamanlal Bajaj, the Gandhian capitalist, whom the Mahatma described as his "fifth son", were born on November 4.  Desh Bandhu Chittaranjan Das was born on November 5, while his friend, Bepin Chandra Pal, 12 years his senior, was born on November 7.

Pal was known for his thundering speeches.  On his silver tongue, VS Srinivasa Sastry, himself a master orator, commented thus:  "Pal burst out into full flame in Madras as a preacher of the new political creed.  For several days on the sands of the beach, he spoke words with emotion, subtlety and logic, which were wafted by the swift evening breeze to tens and thousands of listeners, invading their whole souls and setting them aflame with the flavour of a wild consuming fire.  Oratory had never dreamt of such triumphs in India.  The value of the spoken word was never demonstrated on such a large scale."

Four formidable personalities were born in the second week.  Both Surendranath Banerjee, who guided the national movement even before the Indian National Congress came into existence, and Sachchidananda Sinha, one of the makers of modern Bihar, were born on November 10.  CP Ramaswamy Iyer to whom not many could hold a candle in intellectual brilliance and generosity was born on November 12.  And Pandit Jawharlal Nehru, "the gentle colossus", as Hiren Mukherjee described him, was born on November 14, which is celebrated as Children's Day.

For the third week of November, we were able to find only one name -- that of Indira Gandhi, who was born on November 19.

In the fourth week was born the multi-faceted Pattabhi Sitaramayya on the 24th^.  It is well known that he wrote the 1600-page History of the Congress in just two months during a hot summer at Machilipatnam.  What is not so well known is Gandhi's description of himself as a "bania sutrakar" and Pattabhi Sitaramayya as his "brahmin bhashyakar".  Hari Singh Gour and MR Jayakar, members of the Constituent Assembly, were born on November 26 and 30 respectively.