Famous Personalities of Uttar Pradesh: Names and Districts

No other state has given the country as many national figures as Uttar Pradesh. Three of its sons served as Prime Minister, the first Chief Minister of a state who was a woman governed it, the Revolt of 1857 took its best known leaders from its cities, and its towns produced the writers, singers, dancers and players whose names fill the general knowledge papers. This chapter gathers the personalities a candidate is expected to place with a district, a field and one achievement, which is exactly the form in which the question comes.

National leaders and Prime Ministers

Jawaharlal Nehru was born at Allahabad, now Prayagraj, on 14 November 1889, in the house called Anand Bhavan that his father Motilal Nehru gave to the Congress; he became the first Prime Minister of India and his birthday is observed as Children's Day. Lal Bahadur Shastri was born at Mughalsarai, now Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Nagar, on 2 October 1904, became the second Prime Minister, gave the country the slogan Jai Jawan Jai Kisan and died at Tashkent in 1966. Indira Gandhi was born at Allahabad in 1917 and became the first woman Prime Minister of India. Chaudhary Charan Singh, born at Noorpur in Meerut district in 1902, rose from the farmers' movement to the office of Prime Minister, and his birthday, 23 December, is observed as Kisan Diwas. Govind Ballabh Pant was the first Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and Sucheta Kripalani, who headed the state government from 1963, was the first woman Chief Minister of any Indian state.

Heroes of the freedom struggle

Along with them the state gave the Congress its ground: the sessions at Lucknow in 1916, where the pact with the Muslim League was signed, the Non-cooperation call at Chauri Chaura in Gorakhpur district in 1922, and the Kisan Sabha of Awadh under Baba Ramchandra.

Education, thought and reform

Madan Mohan Malaviya, born at Allahabad in 1861 and called Mahamana, founded the Banaras Hindu University at Varanasi in 1916 and edited the newspaper Leader; he was given the Bharat Ratna in 2015. Purushottam Das Tandon of Prayagraj, called Rajarshi, worked for Hindi and for the peasants and received the Bharat Ratna in 1961. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in 1875, which became the Aligarh Muslim University in 1920. Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya was born at Nagla Chandrabhan in Mathura district in 1916 and is known for the idea of integral humanism. Sant Kabir of Kashi and Sant Ravidas of Varanasi are the social reformers of the bhakti age whom the state claims.

Literature, music, dance and screen

The literary names of the state belong to the chapter on its literature, but a paper will still ask them here: Tulsidas and Kabir, Premchand of Lamhi in Varanasi, Jaishankar Prasad of Varanasi, Mahadevi Verma of Farrukhabad and Firaq Gorakhpuri of Gorakhpur. In music and dance, the Lucknow gharana of Kathak, founded in the line of Kalka and Bindadin Maharaj, gave Achchhan Maharaj, Shambhu Maharaj, Lachhu Maharaj and Birju Maharaj, the best known Kathak dancer of his time. Begum Akhtar of Faizabad was called Mallika-e-Ghazal, the queen of the ghazal; Girija Devi of Varanasi carried the thumri of the Banaras gharana; Ravi Shankar, the sitar player who received the Bharat Ratna in 1999, was born at Varanasi, and Ustad Bismillah Khan, though born in Bihar, made Varanasi his home. Naushad and Talat Mahmood of Lucknow, Kaifi Azmi of Azamgarh, Majrooh Sultanpuri of Sultanpur and Amitabh Bachchan, born at Allahabad in 1942, carried the state into Hindi cinema.

Sport

Major Dhyan Chand, the hockey player known as the wizard, was born at Allahabad on 29 August 1905 and grew up at Jhansi; he won Olympic gold with India in 1928 at Amsterdam, 1932 at Los Angeles and 1936 at Berlin, received the Padma Bhushan in 1956, and his birthday is observed as National Sports Day. The country's highest sporting honour was renamed the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award in 2021. Kunwar Digvijay Singh, called Babu, was another hockey Olympian of the state, after whom the K. D. Singh Babu Stadium at Lucknow is named. In cricket the state has sent up Mohammad Kaif of Allahabad, Suresh Raina of Ghaziabad district, Praveen Kumar and Bhuvneshwar Kumar of Meerut and Mohammed Shami of Amroha.

How the question is set

A paper gives a name and asks for the district, or gives a district and asks for the name, so the pairs matter: Shastri with Mughalsarai, Charan Singh with Meerut, Mangal Pandey with Ballia, Bismil and Ashfaqullah with Shahjahanpur, Dhyan Chand with Allahabad, Begum Akhtar with Faizabad and Malaviya with Banaras Hindu University. The second kind of question gives an achievement, the first Prime Minister, the first woman Prime Minister, the first woman Chief Minister, the founder of a university, and asks for the person.