Lala Lajpat Rai (January 28, 1865 - November 17,1928) was an author and politician, and he played a vital role in the independence movement. He was popularly known as Punjab Kesari. He was associated with management activities of Punjab National Bank and Lakshmi Insurance Company in their early stages in 1894. Lajpat Rai was an exceptionally good writer and has penned several books like Unhappy India, History of Arya Samaj, The story of My Deportation, Young India, and England’s Debt to India.
Lala Lajpat Rai was born in 1865 into an Agarwal Jain family in Dhudke village, Faridkot district, Punjab. His father, Munshi Radha Krishan, was an Urdu and Persian teacher and his mother, Gulab Devi, motivated him to become a freedom fighter. Rai had his initial education in Government Higher Secondary School Rewari, where his father was posted as an Urdu teacher. In 1880, he joined Government College Lahore to study law, where he came in contact with patriots and future freedom fighters. At Lahore he was influenced by the Hindus reformist movement of Sawami Dayanand Saraswati, became a member of Arya Samaj Lahore (founded 1877) and was the founder editor of Lahore base Arya Gazette.
In 1886, Rai moved to Hisar, where he practiced law, led the Arya Movement, and was elected to the Municipal Committee. He moved to Lahore to practice before the High Court in 1892. In 1897, he founded the Hindu Orphan Relief Movement to keep the Christian Mission from securing custody of these children. Rai lived in the United States from 1914 to 1920. He founded The Indian Home Rule League in New York and published several important volumes on Indian problems. In 1921, he founded Servants of the People Society, a non-profit organization in Lahore, which shifted its base to Delhi after partition, and has branches in many parts of India. He took part in the Non-cooperation Movement and was imprisoned from 1921 to 1923 and elected to the Legislature Assembly on his release.
In 1928, Lala Lajpat Rai led the demonstration against the Simon Commission on Indian constitutional reforms. He was injured by the police in a mass demonstration and died of a heart attack on November 17,1928, and was mourned as a nationalist martyr. His followers, like Bhagat Singh, Shivram Rajguru, Sukdev Thapar and Chandra Shaker, vowed to take revenge on the British for his death, and they planned to kill James A Scott, however with the mistaken identity Bhagat Singh and Rajguru killed Saunder.
Image Credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lala_Lajpat_Rai
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