Lala Lajpat Rai

Lala Lajpat Rai was an Indian independence leader and social reformer known across the country as the Lion of Punjab. Born in 1865 in Dhudike in the Punjab province of British India to a Hindu Agarwal family, he studied law at Government College in Lahore and built a successful practice while becoming active in the Arya Samaj reform movement.

He joined the Indian National Congress in the 1880s and became part of the Lal-Bal-Pal trio of nationalist leaders alongside Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal, who pushed Congress towards a more assertive line during the 1905 Bengal partition agitation. The colonial authorities deported him without trial to Mandalay in Burma in 1907 for organising peasant protests in Punjab.

Lajpat Rai founded the Punjab National Bank in 1894 and the Servants of the People Society in 1921, both as practical instruments of swaraj, and he wrote widely on Hindu reform, history, and economics. During a 1914 lecture tour of the United States he founded the Indian Home Rule League of America in New York.

On 30 October 1928 he led a peaceful march in Lahore against the all-British Simon Commission. Police under James Scott baton-charged the protesters, and Lajpat Rai was struck on the chest. He died of his injuries on 17 November, and his death galvanised younger revolutionaries including Bhagat Singh, who later assassinated a police officer in retaliation.

The name Lajpat Rai combines Sanskrit elements meaning lord of modesty or honour. He carried it as a masculine name traditional in north Indian Hindu families.