RAJA MAHENDRA PRATAP SINGH

About:

• Born into a royal family in the Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh in 1886, Singh was a social reformer, freedom fighter and Marxist revolutionary.
  
  
• An alumnus of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental Collegiate School, later called Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), he was active in the political arena from a young age.
  
  
• He also participated in the 1911 Balkan War with his fellow students at the college.
  
  
• The freedom fighter set up the first Provisional Government of India in Afghanistan in 1915, declaring himself as the President. He also declared a jihad against colonial rule, leading to the British announcing a bounty on his head.
  
  
• Singh later fled to Japan, where he established the Executive Board of India in Japan in 1940.
  
  
• A firm believer in Mahatma Gandhi’s policy of non-violence, Singh also set up the Prem Maha Vidyalaya, a polytechnic institution in his palace in Vrindavan.
  
  
• The social reformer was also a firm proponent of Panchayat Raj, believing it would reduce corruption and put more power in the hands of the common man.
  
  
• Singh, who called himself “the servant of the powerless and weak,” was nominated for the Noble Peace Prize in 1932.
  
  
• Post-independence, he was elected to Parliament in 1957 after defeating then Jan Sangh (and later BJP) candidate Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Singh passed away in 1979.