ACHARYA KRIPLANI
Context
- The Prime Minister has paid tributes to Acharya Kripalani on his Birth Anniversary (11th November).
MORE ABOUT ACHARYA KRIPLANI
- JivatramBhagwandasKripalani (1888 –1982), popularly known as Acharya Kripalani.
- Kripalani was an environmentalist, mystic and independence activist who was long a Gandhian socialist, before joining the economically right wing Swatantra Party later in life
- He grew close to Gandhi and at one point, he was one of Gandhi’s most ardent disciples. He had served as the General Secretary of the INC for almost a decade.
- He had experience working in the field of education and was made the president to rebuild the INC.
- Disputes between the party and the Government over procedural matters affected his relationship with the colleagues in the Government.
- While remaining active in electoral politics, Kripalani contested the Lok Sabha seat in 1961 but lost the race to VK Krishna Menon.
- Later in his life, he agitated against the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, and felt that her tenure had become dictatorial and anti-democratic.
- When the Emergency was declared on the night of 26 June 1975, he was among the first of the Opposition leaders to be arrested.
- At the age of 93, Kripalani took his last breath at the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad. His autobiography My Times was released 22 years after his death.
- Acharya Kripalani moved the first-ever No confidence motion on the floor of the Lok Sabha.
- In 1963, Sucheta Kripalani, a Congress leader became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, a first for any woman in the country while her husband Acharya remained an opponent to the Congress.