Ram Manohar Lohia Biography - Birth date, Achievements, Career, Family, Awards

Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia was born on 23 March 1910 in Ayodhya district of Uttar Pradesh (present-day Ambedkar Nagar district) in a place called Akbarpur. His parents were Chanda Devi and Shri Hiralal. His father, Mr. Hiralal was a teacher by profession and a true patriot at heart. When he was two and a half years of age, his mother (Chanda Devi) died. His father was followed by Posan.

Ram Manohar Lohia died on 12 October 1967 (age 57) in New Delhi, India.

In 1918 he moved to Bombay with his father where he completed his high school education. After finishing first in the matriculation examinations of his school in 1927, he attended the Banaras Hindu University to complete his intermediate course work. He then enrolled at Vidyasagar College under the University of Calcutta and in 1929 he completed his B.A. Degree. He decided to attend Frederick William University (today's Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany), choosing it among the UK's prestigious educational institutions to clarify his view of British philosophy. He soon also learned German and received financial aid based on his outstanding academic performance, studying the national economy as his major subject as a doctoral student from 1929 to 1933. Lohia wrote his Ph.D. thesis paper on the subject of salt taxation in India, which focused on Gandhi's socio-economic theory.

He, along with his father, first attended the Ahmedabad Congress session in 1918. Ram Manohar Lohia was the founder of the Congress Socialist Party and the editor of its mouthpiece Congress Socialist. In 1936, he was elected by Jawaharlal Nehru as the Secretary of the Foreign Department of the All India Congress Committee (A.I.C.C), the supreme body of the Congress Party. By the time he relinquished this responsibility in 1938, Lohia began to develop his own political outlook through the Gandhian leadership of the Congress and the critical inquiry posts made by the Communists included in the CSP. In June 1940, he was sentenced to two years in prison for delivering an anti-war speech. Already released by the end of 1941, when Gandhiji and other Congress leaders were arrested on August 9, 1942, Lohia went underground and spread the "Quit India Movement" across the country.

Lohia became one of the prominent figures in the Central Directorate, who tried his best to organize the Quit India rebellion waged by Gandhi in August 1942. In May 1944, he was imprisoned and tortured at the Lahore Fort. As one of the last high security prisoners, Lohia was released on 11 April 1946 along with Jayaprakash Narayan. He remained a member of the Socialist Party in 1952 to form the Praja Social Party in association with the Kisan Mazdoor Party. During the Faizabad peasant movement in 1921, he met Jawaharlal Nehru. He lost to Nehru in the 1962 general election in Phulpur. After a by-election in Farrukhabad (Lok Sabha constituency) in 1963, Lohia became a member of the Lok Sabha and in 1965 the Samajwadi Party (Lohia) merged into the ranks of the Samyukta Socialist Party. Lohia played a key role in the formation of the first non-Congress government in Uttar Pradesh. This alliance was formed by Lohia and Bharatiya Jana Sangh leader Nanaji Deshmukh.

The name of Avadh University in Faizabad was changed to "Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University". Dr. of Lucknow Ram Manohar Lohia National Law University, one of the top national law schools in India, is named after him. The 18 June road in Panjim, Goa, is named after him. This was the date of 1946 where he launched a movement against colonial rule. Willingdon Hospital in New Delhi was renamed as Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in the 1970s. Ram Manohar Lohia died in this hospital due to health complications after a surgery Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia is a medical institute for undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow. Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Bhawan, Akbarpur, has a community hall in his hometown of Ambedkar Nagar and is the only monument to his name.