Vasudev Balwant Phadke, one of India’s first revolutionaries in the independence movement, was born on this day November 4th 1845.

He led the first revolutionary army of India. He took complete control of the city of Pune for a few days, by catching the British soldiers off guard during one of his surprise attacks.

He was captured in 1879 and transported to a jail in Aden, Yemen, because the British feared the Indian public’s reaction to his arrest. In February 1883, he escaped jail by pulling the prison door off its hinges, but was arrested again immediately.

He went on a hunger strike to death and passed away on February 17th 1883. He was 38.

“Geetanjali” by  Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been
broken up into fragments by
narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from
the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches
its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary
desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is lead forward by thee
into ever-widening thought and action-
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father,
let my country awake.