Pandurang Sadashiv Sane - 24 December 1899 – 11 June 1950), also known as Sane Guruji (Guruji meaning "respected teacher") by his students and followers, was a Marathi author, teacher, social activist and freedom fighter from Maharashtra, India. He is referred to as the National Teacher of India.
Sane played a crucial role in the spread of the Indian National Congress presence in rural Maharashtra, particularly in Khandesh. He was actively involved in the organisation of the Faizpur Session of the Congress. He also participated in the Election Campaign of the Bombay Provincial Elections of 1936.He participated in the 1942 Quit India Movement and was imprisoned for 15 months for it. During this period he became closely associated with Congress socialists like Madhu Limaye.
Ghanshyam Das Birla (10 April 1894 – 11 June 1983) was a pioneering Indian businessman and member of the Birla Family.
Ghanshyam Das Birla was one of the most prominent Indian businessmen from the era when India was struggling to get freedom from the British Empire. He belonged to the Birla family and is the founding father of the multi-billion dollar Birla Empire. He came from a humble background of Pilani in India where his grandfather was into the business of money lending—a tradition in that particular community. But Birla had dreams bigger than that and took him to Calcutta. He started a jute firm in Calcutta and gathered the kind of success which was impossible for an Indian businessman to achieve in those hard times. This led to one success after another and soon he expanded his empire into manufacturing, tea business, banking, chemical, cement, etc. It was his early efforts that made the Birla Empire what it is now and his impeccable business sense earned him the India's second highest civilian honor, the Padma Vibhushan.
Birla was a close associate and a steady supporter of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he met for the first time in 1916. Gandhi stayed at Birla's home in New Delhi during the last four months of his life.
Ram Prasad Bismil (11 June 1897 – 19 December 1927) was an Indian revolutionary who participated in Mainpuri conspiracy of 1918, and the Kakori conspiracy of 1925, and struggled against British imperialism. As well as being a freedom fighter, he was a patriotic poet and wrote in Hindi and Urdu using the pen names Ram, Agyat and Bismil. But, he became popular with the last name "Bismil" only. He was associated with Arya Samaj where he got inspiration from Satyarth Prakash, a book written by Swami Dayanand Saraswati. He also had a confidential connection with Lala Har Dayal through his guru Swami Somdev, a preacher of Arya Samaj.
Bismil was one of the founding members of the revolutionary organisation Hindustan Republican Association. Bhagat Singh praised him as a great poet-writer of Urdu and Hindi, who had also translated the books Catherine from English and Bolshevikon Ki Kartoot from Bengali.
