1) Bhagat Singh was born to Kishan Singh (father) and Vidyavati Kaur (mother) on 28 September 1907 in Jaranwala, Lyallpur district, Punjab, now a part of Pakistan. His father was a liberal and his family was a family of freedom fighters.
2) The Jallianwala Bagh massacre happened when Bhagat Singh was 14 years. Early in his youth, he was associated with the Naujawan Bharat Sabha and the Hindustan Republican Association.
3) The latter organisation was founded by Sachin Sanyal and Jogesh Chatterji. It was reorganised subsequently in September 1928 as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (H.S.R.A) by Bhagat Singh and his comrades.
4) Socialist ideals and the October Revolution in Russia of 1917 were large influences on these revolutionaries. Bhagat Singh was one of the leaders of the H.S.R.A along with Chandrashekhar Azad, Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar.
Bhagat Singh's Bomb Throwing
1) The image that comes to our mind at the very mention of Bhagat Singh's name is that of the bomb he threw in the Central Legislative Assembly on April 8, 1929. The bombs did not kill anybody. It was intended as a demonstrative action, an act of protest against the draconian laws of the British. They chose the day on which the Trade Disputes Bill, an anti-labour legislation was introduced in the assembly.
Lahore Conspiracy Case
1) Bhagat Singh along with Rajguru, Sukhdev, Jatindra Nath Das and 21 others were arrested and tried for the murder of Saunders (the case was known as the Second Lahore Conspiracy Case).
2) Jatindra Nath Das died in the jail after 64 days of hunger strike against the discriminatory practices and poor conditions in jail. The verdict in the bomb throwing case had been suspended until the trial of Lahore Conspiracy trials was over. It was in this case that Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were sentenced to death on 7 October 1930.
3) A letter from them to the Governor of Punjab shows their courage and their optimism over the future of India even while facing death for the cause of freedom of their country. It says, 'the days of capitalism and imperialism are numbered. The war neither began with us nor is going to end with our lives. According to the verdict of your court we had waged a war and we are therefore war prisoners. And we claim to be treated as such i.e.. we claim to be shot dead instead of being hanged.
4) Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged early in the morning of March 23, 1931 in the Lahore Jail. They faced the gallows with courage, shouting Inquilab Zindabad and Down with British Imperialism until their last breath.
5) The history of freedom struggle is incomplete without the revolutionary strand of nationalism and the ultimate sacrifice of these revolutionaries.

In April 1944, when the Congress leaders were in jail, C.Rajagopalachari put out a proposal to resolve the issue. It contained the following:
1)  A post-war commission to be formed to demarcate the contiguous districts where the Muslims were in absolute majority and a plebiscite of the adult population there to ascertain whether they would prefer Pakistan;
2) In case of a partition there would be a mutual agreement to run certain essential services, like defence or communication;
3) The border districts could choose to join either of the two sovereign states;
4) The implementation of the scheme would wait till after full transfer of power. After his release from prison, Gandhi, in July 1944, proposed talks with Jinnah based on what came to be the 'Rajaji formula'. The talks did not go anywhere.
Wavell Plan:
1) In June 1945 Lord Wavell moved to negotiate and called for the Simla conference.
2) The rest of the Congress leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and the Congress president, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad were released from jail for this.
3) Wavell convinced Churchill for a Congress-Muslim League coalition government as a way to deal with the post-war political crisis.
4) The Viceroy's proposal before the leaders of all political formations and most prominently the Congress and the Muslim League was setting up of an Executive Council, exclusively with Indians along with himself and the commander-in-chief; equal number of representatives in the council for the caste Hindus and the Muslims and separate representation for the Scheduled Castes; and start of discussions for a new constitution.
5) The proposal displeased everyone. The Simla Conference held between June 25 and July 14-1945 ended without resolution.
6) The talks broke down on the right of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League to nominate members to the Viceroy's Council.
7) The Muslim League insisted on its exclusive right to nominate Muslim members to the Council.
8) Its demand was that the Congress nominees shall only be caste Hindus and that the Indian National Congress should not nominate a Muslim or a member from the Scheduled Caste.
9) This was seen as a means to further the divide on communal lines and deny the Congress the status of representing the Indian people.
10) Lord Wavell found a council without Muslim League representation as unworkable and thus abandoned the Simla talks.
11) The years between the Lahore resolution of 1940 and the Simla Conference in 1945 marked the consolidation of a Muslim national identity and the emergence of Jinnah as its sole spokesperson.
12) It was at a convention of Muslim League Legislators in Delhi in April 1946, that Pakistan was defined as a 'sovereign independent state.
13) For the first time the League also declared its composition in geographical terms as 'the region consisting of the Muslim majority provinces of Bengal and Assam in the Northeast and the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan in the Northwest.
14) The Congress president Maulana Abul Kalam Azad rejected this idea and held that the Congress stood for a united India with complete independence.
15) All these were developments after the Simla conference of June-July 1945 and after Churchill was voted out and replaced by a Labour Party government headed by Clement Attlee.
16) Times had changed in a substantial sense. British Prime Minister, Attlee had declared the certainty of independence to India with only the terms left to be decided.

1) India followed the example of the USSR in planning for development through five year plans. The Planning Commission was set up in 1950 to formulate plans for developing the economy.
2) Each Plan assesses the performance of the economy and the resources available for future development.
3) Targets are set in accordance with the priorities of the government. Resources are allocated to various sectors, like agriculture, industry, power, social sectors and technology, and a growth target is also set for the economy as a whole.
4) One of the primary objectives of planning was to build a self-sufficient economy.
5) The First Five Year Plan covered the period 1951-56. Till now there have been twelve Five Year Plans in addition to three one year plans between 1966 and 1969.
6) Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-2017) was the last plan. In 2015, the Planning Commission was wound up and replaced by the Niti Ayog
7) The First Plan (1951-56) focused on developing agriculture, especially increasing agricultural production. The allocation for Agriculture and Irrigation accounted for 31% of the total outlay.
8) After this, the emphasis shifted to industry, and the share of agriculture in total outlay hovered between 20 and 24%. By the Eleventh Plan it had come down to less than 20%.
9) The Second Plan (1956-61), commonly referred to as the Mahalanobis Plan, stressed the development of heavy industry for achieving economic growth.
10) The share of industry in Plan outlay was only 6% in the First Plan, and increased to about 24% after the Second Plan. But the share has been declining since the Sixth Plan, perhaps because the major investments in the public sector had been completed.
11) The allocation for power development was very low in the first four plans and this created a huge shortage of power in the country.
12) The first two Plans had set fairly modest targets of growth at about 4%, which economists described as the "Hindu rate of growth". These growth rates were achieved so that the first two Plans were considered to have been successful.

(i) Major parts of Spain like Aragon and Castile were under the control of the Moors.
(ii) Together King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella worked hard to drive away the Moors and unite Spain.
(iii) The king and queen took power in their hands and controlled the nobles by eliminating them from the royal councils.
(iv) This made Spain to emerge as a nation-state. England emerged as nation-states.
(v) There was conflict between two royal houses in England namely the House of york and House of Lancaster for the throne.
(vi) In this civil war, Henry Tudor emerged victorious and he started a new line of monarchy in England.
(vii) He entered into matrimonial alliance with Elizabeth of York family. This made England to emerge as a nation-state. France emerged as nation-states.
(viii) Burgundy and western parts of France was for long in English possession.
(ix) At the end of the hundred years war, Louis XI Burgundy returned, after he had driven the English out of the country.
(x) Finally brought under control and Burgundy became part of France in about 1483. This made France to emerge as a nation-state.

1. The UK imposed its US settlements on the NavigationActs, the Sugar Tax Stamp Act, the Townshend Act, the tea tax, and The Intolerable Acts.
2. So representatives of the colonies appealed for the intolerated laws to be removed.
3. They sent a request to the King of England, George III, with an olive branch. But the demand was rejected.
Course:
1. The British army was led by William Howe while the American forces were led by George Washington.
2. The Battle of Saratoga, the British General Burgoyne was forced to surrender.
3. Finally, the British forces surrendered to the American forces at York Town.
Results:
1. In England Lord North resigned as Prime Minister.
2. A peace treaty was signed between the Great Britain and America at Paris.
3. George Washington became the first president of the United States of America.

1. Metternich, the arbiter of Europe and enemy of nationality, was forced to leave Vienna in disguise.
2. Hungary and Bohemia both claimed national independence.
3. Milan expelled the Austrians.
4. Venice became an independent republic.
5. Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, declared war against Austria.
6. Absolutism seemed dead for a while. But it was not to be.
7. By the summer, the monarchs had begun their attacks on the revolutionaries.
8. They succeeded in crushing the democratic movements in important centres like Berlin, Vienna arid Milan.

1. Marx and Engels held the firm view that the existence of the bourgeoisie was as necessary.
2. Influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx, Lenin believed that the way for freedom was through mass action.
3. The failure of the Tsar's regime, the defeat by Japan, the Sunday massacre land the defeat of the First World War, led to the revolution in Russia.
4. The Menshevik government was established in Russia through the revolution. Lenin schemed to overthrow it.
5. His slogan of All power to the Soviets soon won over the workers leaders.
6. The slogan' Bread, peace and land' attracted the victims of the war.
7. Devastated by war time shortages, the people were attracted by the slogan of Bread, Peace and Land.
8. Lenin persuaded the Bolshevik Central Committee to decide on an immediate revolution.
9. Accordingly, key government buildings, including the Winter Palace and the Prime Ministers headquarters, were seized.

1. On 5 November 1956, British and French troops landed at the Egyptian town of Port Said.
2. The General Assembly, at the initiative of the US, called for an emergency session and condemned the invasion.
3. So Israel, Great Britain and France stopped fighting and decided to withdraw their forces from Egypt.
4. ImriNegi introduced a multiparty system and established a coalition in Hungary.
5. Emaged by the development, Soviet Russia sent its army into Hungary and crushed the rebellion.
6. The UN has repeatedly tried to hold the International Peace Conference in its support to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict completely.
7. On the above issues, the Security Council's permanent states have used their veto power and extend the issue.
8. Moreover, the lJN was a silent observer, as the permanent members of the Security Council were involved in the issues.

Industrial policy Statement 1991:
1. Finally in 1991 the Indian government announced a shift in its industrial policy to remove controls and licences, moving to a liberalised economy permitting a larger role to the private sector.
2. The share of the public sector was to be reduced through a policy of disinvestment and closure of sick units.
3. This created a sea change in the economic outlook of the country, particularly from the point of view of the consumers.
4. It is not merely that the aspirations of the growning middle class for a better standard of living in terms of availability of goods and services have been met.
5. Even the lower income families could now buy such goods.
On the positive side:
1. Liberalisation has certainly made India a more attractive destination for foreign investment.
2. State governments are keen to advertise that they are relaxing restrictions to improve the ease of doing business in their state.
3. All this has created a general air of prosperity which is reflected in the growth statistics of the economy as a whole.
On the negative side:
1. Liberalisation and globalisation have resulted in a significant increase in income disparities between the top income groups and the lower income groups.
2. The removal of ceilings on corporate salaries has widened the disparities between the salaried class of corporate executives and wage earners.
3. The formal sector has very limited potential for additional employment and most of the new employment is generated in the informal sector, and disparities have also increased across these two sectors.

(i) During the First World War Germany's most fearsome weapon was the submarine or U-Boat.
(ii) The Germans adopted a strategy to starve Britain by sinking every ship it could. 880,000 tons of shipping went to the bottom of the seas in one month alone.
(iii) The Q-ships were Britain's answer to the Germany.
(iv) The British sent more than 200 steamers, travelers, and cargo vessels in a disguised form of a cargo ship and pressed into action against the U-boat menace.
(v) The idea was to lure the U-boats into attacking these decoy ships which would unleash its hidden armed force and weaponry.

Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO)
(i) In February 1955, Iraq and Turkey signed a "pact of mutual cooperation" at Baghdad.
(ii) The membership was open to all countries in the region. In April, Great Britain joined the Pact, followed by Pakistan and Iran.
(iii) The aim was to check communist influence. A series of events took place in Middle East in 1958 which threatened regional stability: the Egypt-Syria union, revolution in Iraq and civil unrest in Lebanon.
(iv) In response to these developments, the United States intervened in Lebanon.
(v) The members of the Baghdad Pact except for Iraq endorsed the US intervention. Iraq left the pact. As a result, the other signatories of the Baghdad Pact formed the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO), moving its headquarters to Ankara, Turkey.
(vi) United States continued to support the organisation as an associate, but not as a member. In 1979, the Iranian revolution led to the overthrow of the Shah and Iran withdrew from CENTO. 
(vii) Pakistan also withdrew that year after the organisation ceased to play an active role CENTO was formally disbanded in 1979.

Agricultural Policy:
1. At the time of Independence, agriculture in India was beset with many problems.
2. In general, productivity was low.
3. The total production of food grains was not enough to feed the country,so that a large quantity of food grains had to be imported.
4. Nearly 80 percent of the population depended on agriculture for their livelihood.
5. This automatically reduced the income of each person to very low levels.
6. This is a situation described as 'disguised unemployment'.
7. That is, even if many people shifted to other occupations, total production levels would remain the same,because this surplus population was not really required to sustain the activity, and was, in effect, unemployed.
8. Given the high level of poverty among the rural population, most of them were heavily indebted to moneylenders.
9. The backwardness of agriculture could be attributed to two factors: institutional and technological. Institutional factors refer to the social and economic relations that prevailed,particularly between the land- owning classes and the cultivating classes.
10. Technological factors relate to use of better seeds,improved methods of cultivation, use of chemical fertilizers, use of machinery like tractors and harvester combines,and provision of irrigation.
11.The government decided to tackle the institutional drawbacks first and began a programme of land reforms to improve the conditions in agriculture.
12. The basic assumption was that such measures would improve the efficiency of land use or productivity, apart from empowering the peasants by creating a socially just system. 

1) The colonial government aided the spread of modem education in India for a different reason than educating and empowering the Indians.
2) To administer a large colony like India, the British needed a large number of personnel to work for them. It was impossible for the British to import the educated lot, needed in such large numbers, from Britain.
3) With this aim, the English Education Act was passed by the Council of India in 1835. T.B. Macaulay drafted this system of education introduced in India
4) Consequently, the colonial administration started schools, colleges and universities, imparting English and modem education, in India
5) Universities were established in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta in 1857.
6) The colonial government expected this section of educated Indians to be loyal to the British and act as the pillars of the British Raj.
7) The British created an educated Indian middle class for their own ends but sneered at it as the Babu class.
8) That every class, however, became the progressive intelligentsia of India and played a leading role in mobilising the people for the liberation of the country.
9) The economic and administrative transformation on the one side and the growth of Western education on the other gave the space for the growth of new social classes.
10)  From within these social classes, a modem Indian intelligentsia emerged
11) The "neo-social classes" created by the British Raj, which included the Indian trading and business communities, landlords, money lenders, English-educated Indians employed in imperial subordinate services, lawyers and doctors, initially adopted a positive approach towards the colonial administration.
12)  However, soon they realised that their interests would be better served only in independent India
13)  People of the said social classes began to play a prominent role in promoting patriotism amongst the people.
14) The consciousness of these classes found articulation in a number of associations prior to the founding of the Indian National Congress at the national level.

(i) Recently, the Prime Minister paid tribute to V. O. Chidambaram Pillai, the legendary freedom fighter on his 150^th birth anniversary.
(ii) He was popularly known as Kappalottiya Tamilan (The Tamil Helmsman) and Sekkizuththa Semmal (scholarly gentry who suffered at the oil press). 
Birth:
Vallinayagam Olaganathan Chidambaram Pillai (VOC) was born 5^th September 1872 to an eminent lawyer Olaganathan Pillai and Paramyee Ammai in Ottapidaram, Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu.
Early Life:
(i) VOC graduated from Caldwell College, Tuticorin. Before beginning his law studies, he worked for a brief period as the taluk office clerk.
(ii) His tussle with the judge forced him to seek fresh pastures at Tuticorin in 1900.
(iii) Until 1905, professional and journalistic activities consumed most of his energy.
Entry in Politics:
(i) VOC entered politics in 1905 following the partition of bengal
(ii) Towards the end of 1905, VOC visited Madras and was drawn closer to the Swadeshi movement initiated by Bal gangadhar tilak and Lala rajpat rai.
(iii) VOC was drawn towards Ramakrishna mission and came into contact with Subramania Bharati and the Mandayam family.
(iv) It was not until the arrival of VOC at Tuticorin (Present day Thoothukudi) that the Swadeshi movement in Tirunelveli district began to gather force and momentum.
Role Played in Freedom Movement:
(i) By 1906, VOC won the support of merchants and industrialists in Tuticorin and Tirunelveli for the idea of establishing a Swadeshi merchant shipping outfit by the name of the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company (SSNCo).
(ii) He established many institutions like Swadeshi Prachar Sabha, Dharmasanga Nesavu Salai, National Godown, Madras Agro-Industrial Society Ltd and Desabimana Sangam.
(iii) VOC and Siva were aided in their efforts by a number of Tirunelveli-based lawyers, who formed an organisation called the Swadeshi Sangam, or ‘National Volunteers’.
(iv) The nationalist movement acquired a secondary character with the beginning of the Tuticorin Coral Mills strike (1908).
(v) Even prior to Gandhiji's champaren satyagraha(1917), VOC took up the cause of the working class in Tamil Nadu, and thus he is a forerunner to Gandhiji in this respect.
(vi) VOC, along with other leaders, resolved to take out a mammoth procession on the morning of 9^th March 1908 to celebrate the release of Bipin Chandra Pal from jail and to hoist the flag of Swaraj.
Writings: Meyyaram (1914), Meyyarivu (1915), Anthology (1915), Thirukural with literary notes of Manakudavar (1917), Tholkappiam with literary notes of Ilampooranar (1928), Autobiography (1946).
Death: V.O.C died on 18^th November 1936 in the Indian National Congress Office at Tuticorin as was his last wish.