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| Sunday, 13 March 2005 |
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Junior Observer |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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International symbol of free India
Mahatma Gandhi was born in Porbandar, now known as Gujarat, on October 2, 1869 and was educated in law at University College, London. In 1891, after having been admitted to the British Bar (association of barristers), Gandhi returned to India and attempted to establish a law practice in Bombay, with little success. Two years later, an Indian firm with interests in South Africa retained him as legal adviser in its office in Durban. Arriving in Durban, Gandhi found himself treated as a member of an inferior race. He was shocked at the widespread denial of civil liberties and political rights to Indian immigrants in South Africa. This prompted Gandhi to begin the struggle to win elementary rights for Indians. He remained in South Africa for 20 years, suffering imprisonment many times. However, during the Boer War, Gandhi organized an ambulance corps for the British army and commanded a Red Cross unit. After the war, he returned to his campaign for Indian rights. In 1910, he founded Tolstoy Farm, near Durban, a cooperative colony for Indians. In 1914, the government of the Union of South Africa made important concessions to Gandhi's demands, including the recognition of Indian marriages and the abolition of the poll tax. His work complete in South Africa, he returned to India. Gandhi became a leader in a complex struggle, in the Indian campaign for home rule. Following World War I, in which he played an active part in recruiting campaigns, Gandhi, again advocating Satyagraha, launched his movement of passive resistance to Great Britain. Economic independence for India, involving the complete boycott of British goods, was an objective for Gandhi's Swaraj ("self-ruling" in Sanskrit) movement. During this time, British industrialists had destroyed many Indian home industries. As a remedy, Gandhi took initiatives to revive cottage industries; he began to use a spinning wheel as a token of the return to the simple village life that he preached, and of the renewal of native Indian industries. Gandhi became the international symbol of a free India. He lived a spiritual and ascetic life of prayer, fasting and meditation. Refusing earthly possessions, he wore the loincloth and the shawl of the lowliest Indian and lived on vegetables, fruit juices and goat's milk. Indians revered him as a saint and began to call him Mahatma (great-souled). Gandhi's preaching of non-violence, known as ahimsa, was the expression of a way of life pointed out in the Hindu religion. By the Indian practice of non-violence, Gandhi believed, Great Britain too would eventually consider violence useless and would leave India. In 1934, Gandhi formally resigned from politics, being replaced as the leader of the Congress Party by Jawaharlal Nehru. A few years later, in 1939, he returned to an active political life because of the federation of Indian principalities which was taking shape. On January 13, 1948, he undertook a successful fast in New Delhi to bring about peace, but on January 30, 12 days after the the fast was concluded, as he was on his way to his evening prayer meeting, he was assassinated by a fanatic Hindu. Gandhi's death was regarded as an international catastrophe(great disaster). A period of mourning was set aside in the United Nations General Assembly, and condolences to India were expressed by all countries. The teachings of Gandhi came to inspire non-violent movements, notably in the U.S. under the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and in South Africa, under Nelson Mandela. ************** Marie Curie : An inspiration for women scientists
Marie Curie, then known as Maria Sklodowska, was born in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867. She received a general education in the local schools and some scientific training from her father. In 1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne University where she obtained Licentiateships in Physics and Mathematical Sciences. She met Pierre Curie, Professor in the School of Physics in 1894, and in the following year, they were married. Her early researches, together with her husband, were often performed under difficult conditions; laboratory arrangements were poor, and both had to undertake teaching jobs to earn a livelihood. The discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 inspired the Curies in their brilliant researches and analyses, which led to the isolation of polonium, named after the country of Marie's birth, and radium. Marie succeeded her husband as Head of the Physics Laboratory at the Sorbonne. She gained her Doctor of Science degree in 1903, and following the tragic death of Pierre Curie in 1906, took his place as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences, becoming the first woman to hold this position. She was also appointed Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris, founded in 1914. Throughout her life, Curie actively promoted the use of radium, and during World War I, assisted by her daughter, Irene, she personally devoted herself to carry out work to alleviate the sufferings of the people. Her desire for science continued throughout her life and contributed towards establishing a radioactivity laboratory in her native city. In 1929, President Hoover of the United States presented her with a gift of 50,000 US dollors, donated by American friends of science, to purchase radium for use in the laboratory in Warsaw. Curie was known as a quiet, dignified and unassuming personality. She was highly regarded and admired by scientists throughout the world. She was a member of the Conseil du Physique Solvay from 1911 until her death, and since 1922, she was a member of the Committee of Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations. Her work is recorded in numerous papers in scientific journals. The importance of Curie's work is reflected in the numerous awards presented to her. She received many honorary science, medicine and law degrees and honorary memberships of learned societies throughout the world. Marie and Pierre Curie were the joint winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, for their study into the unique radiation discovered by Becquerel, who was the other joint winner of the award. In 1911 she received a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, in recognition of her work in radioactivity. She also received, jointly with her husband, the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903. In 1921, President Harding of the United States, on behalf of the women of America, presented her with one gram of radium in recognition of her service to science. Marie died of leukaemia in July 1934, exhausted and almost blind, her fingers burnt, and affected by "her" dear radium. This 67-year-old woman had been exposed to incredibly high levels of radiation. |
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We have all heard of Mahatma Gandhi, a great leader from our
neighbouring country, India. He was one of the leaders of India's
independence struggle against its colonial masters, and his fight was
unique in the sense that it was based on non-violence. 
Marie Curie was one of the well-known women scientists and was a
trend-setter as well as an inspiration, for the many women who later
followed in her footsteps. 
