National Anthem

Republic Day

Republic Day is India’s national festival and is celebrated with great pomp and show in the capital and other parts of the country. Every year on 26 January, an impressive parade that showcase the military might of the India takes place on Rajpath near India Gate in New Delhi.

Cultural programs are an integral part of the Republic Day celebrations and artists from different states of India participate in the Republic Day Parade.
On the occasion of the Republic Day, all government buildings are illuminated. The Rashtrapati Bhawan (President’s House) in particular wears a festive look. Every year security is beefed up during the occasion of Republic Day celebrations. The city looks like a fortress with police and security agencies on every nook and corner of the city. The entry to the Republic Day Parade in Delhi is either through VIP passes Rs. 50 and 20 tickets that can be obtained from several counters opened by ITDC in Delhi.

Jai Hind

Guru Nanak

Guru Nanak is founder of the Sikh religion. His goal was to unify the Hindus and Muslims. So he studied both religions and created Sikhism, which combined the best of both. 'Sikh' means 'disciple' and Guru Nanak believed that one can evolve or achieve salvation only through direct contact with a true master or a 'sadguru'. His religion has spread not only in North India but also in America, Singapore and Africa.

Guru Nanak's Teachings

Nanak did not subscribe to blind ritualism or mindless superstitions. He believed that there was just one God, who was almighty omnipresent and all encompassing. The chanting of whose name, and a life of purity and charity would lead to freedom from the cycle of birth and death. He believed in the theory of Karma and Rebirth. He spread Sikhism to Burma, Iraq, Tibet and Sri Lanka as a message of love.

The 'Japji Sahib': 'Japji' means morning prayer. He has composed a set of poems that form the first chapter of the Sikh scripture and holy book - the Guru Granth Sahib. These poems talk about meditations and thoughts from his teachings, and serve to inspire many - a - Sikh to live a good life, following the basic principles of prayer, right living and thinking and the Unity of God and our fellow beings.


Guru Nanak passed on in 1538 AD. at the age of 70. His own son did not succeed him. Instead he chose Lelna and renamed him Angad, which means 'my own limb' to be his successor and guide the Sikhs into a new awakening.

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Ravindra Nath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal and which attempted a revival of the ultimate monistic basis of Hinduism as laid down in the Upanishads. He was educated at home; and although at seventeen he was sent to England for formal schooling, he did not finish his studies there. In his mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary activities, he managed the family estates, a project which brought him into close touch with common humanity and increased his interest in social reforms. He also started an experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his Upanishadic ideals of education. From time to time he participated in the Indian nationalist movement, though in his own non-sentimental and visionary way; and Gandhi, the political father of modern India, was his devoted friend. In 1913 He became the first Asian to receive Nobel Prize for literature. Tagore was knighted by the ruling British Government in 1915, but within a few years he resigned the honour as a protest against British policies in India.

Tagore had early success as a writer in his native Bengal. With his translations of some of his poems he became rapidly known in the West. In fact his fame attained a luminous height, taking him across continents on lecture tours and tours of friendship. For the world he became the voice of India's spiritual heritage; and for India, especially for Bengal, he became a great living institution.

Although Tagore wrote successfully in all literary genres, he was first of all a poet. Among his fifty and odd volumes of poetry are Manasi (1890) [The Ideal One], Sonar Tari (1894) [The Golden Boat], Gitanjali (1910) [Song Offerings], Gitimalya (1914) [Wreath of Songs], and Balaka (1916) [The Flight of Cranes]. The English renderings of his poetry, which include The Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering (1916), and The Fugitive (1921), do not generally correspond to particular volumes in the original Bengali; and in spite of its title, Gitanjali: Song Offerings (1912), the most acclaimed of them, contains poems from other works besides its namesake. Tagore's major plays are Raja (1910) [The King of the Dark Chamber], Dakghar (1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan (1912) [The Immovable], Muktadhara (1922) [The Waterfall], and Raktakaravi (1926) [Red Oleanders]. He is the author of several volumes of short stories and a number of novels, among them Gora (1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) [The Home and the World], and Yogayog (1929) [Crosscurrents]. Besides these, he wrote musical dramas, dance dramas, essays of all types, travel diaries, and two autobiographies, one in his middle years and the other shortly before his death in 1941. Tagore also left numerous drawings and paintings, and songs for which he wrote the music himself.


Some Effective Quotations of Guru Dev Ravindra Nath Tagore

1. You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

2. I slept and dreamt that life was Joy. I woke and saw that life was Duty. I acted, and behold, Duty was Joy.

3. Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

4. The emancipation of our physical nature is in attaining health, of our social being in attaining goodness, and of our self in attaining love.

5. Do not say, “It is morning,” and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.

6. Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God’s dust is greater than your idol.

7. I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can’t make it through one door, I’ll go through another door – or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

8. We live in the world when we love it.

9. We gain freedom when we have paid the full price.

10. We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.

11. There are two kinds of adventurers; those who go truly hoping to find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won’t.

MaharashtraBhushan - BABA AMTE

Baba Amte Murlidhar Devidas Amte was born on December 24, 1914 in Hingaighat, Wardha. "He came to be known as Baba not because he is a saint or any such thing, but because his parents addressed him by that name," reveals Sadhanatai, his wife. The seeds of social activism were sown early. Belonging to a family of brahmin jagirdars, regardless of his parents's disapproval, Baba Amte often ate with servants and played with lower caste children. As a nine-year-old, he was so moved by the sight of a blind beggar that he dropped a handful of silver coins in his bowl.

He studied law and started a lucrative practice in Wardha, but was appalled by the poverty in his family estate in the Chandrapur district of Maharashtra. He relinquished his robes and began working with sweepers and carriers of night soil.

Baba Amte with Sadhanatai He married Sadhana Guleshastri in 1946. He was touched when he saw her leave a wedding party to help an old servant. "I went to her house and told her parents that I was the suitable groom for her," he quips.

"She has been giving me a tulsi, haldi and milk concoction for years, she thinks it will make me fair," he laughs, while tai explains how good it is for his throat. Tai spends time between Anandwan and Kasrawad, and has always been at Baba Amte's side during all his campaigns.



After marriage, Baba Amte started working for those struck by leprosy outside Warora. He set up 11 weekly clinics around Warora and later started Anandwan, where they dug the lower depths of the earth in temperatures as high as 47 degrees before they found water. He took a formal course for leprosy treatment and even allowed his body to be used for an experiment to grow leprae germs. As it was ineffective, the experiment was abandoned later.

Anandwan was registered in 1951 and more land was given by the government. Two hospitals, a university, an orphanage, a school for the blind and technical wings were added subsequently. The ashram is now a self sufficient unit and more than 5,000 people are dependent on it for their livelihood.




Baba Amte on the banks of Narmada Baba Amte also launched two Bharat Jodo -- Knit India -- Movements from Kashmir to Kanyakumari in 1985 and Assam and Gujarat in 1988. His aim was to establish peace and generate environmental awareness.



The proceeds of the several awards won by him and his family, amounting to nearly Rs 15 million have been given to Anandwan. Many familiar with his work say Baba should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. To this, he has a simple answer: "Mine is a Noble Enterprise," he says ...........

Mother

Mother Teresa - The Nobel Peace Prize 1979

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 26, 1910. Her family was of Albanian descent. At the age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of God. She knew she had to be a missionary to spread the love of Christ. At the age of eighteen she left her parental home in Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. After a few months' training in Dublin she was sent to India, where on May 24, 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun. From 1931 to 1948 Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta, but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that in 1948 she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Although she had no funds, she depended on Divine Providence, and started an open-air school for slum children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming. This made it possible for her to extend the scope of her work.

On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Holy See to start her own order, "The Missionaries of Charity", whose primary task was to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after. In 1965 the Society became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI.

Today the order comprises Active and Contemplative branches of Sisters and Brothers in many countries. In 1963 both the Contemplative branch of the Sisters and the Active branch of the Brothers was founded. In 1979 the Contemplative branch of the Brothers was added, and in 1984 the Priest branch was established.

The Society of Missionaries has spread all over the world, including the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. They provide effective help to the poorest of the poor in a number of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and they undertake relief work in the wake of natural catastrophes such as floods, epidemics, and famine, and for refugees. The order also has houses in North America, Europe and Australia, where they take care of the shut-ins, alcoholics, homeless, and AIDS sufferers.

The Missionaries of Charity throughout the world are aided and assisted by Co-Workers who became an official International Association on March 29, 1969. By the 1990s there were over one million Co-Workers in more than 40 countries. Along with the Co-Workers, the lay Missionaries of Charity try to follow Mother Teresa's spirit and charism in their families.

Mother Teresa's work has been recognised and acclaimed throughout the world and she has received a number of awards and distinctions, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding (1972). She also received the Balzan Prize (1979) and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards.

Mother Teresa Quotes

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.

God doesn't require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.

Good works are links that form a chain of love.

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.

I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

Mother Teresa praying to Gandhi

Mother Teresa praying to Mahatma Gandhi at his tomb in New Delhi.

A gesture which implies that the Hindu leader was saved and shares
the glory of the Blessed.

It is a behavior hardly consistent with traditional Catholic doctrine
as taught until Vatican II.

Swami Vivekananda

A spiritual genius of commanding intellect and power, Vivekananda crammed immense labor and achievement into his short life, 1863-1902. Born in the Datta family of Calcutta, the youthful Vivekananda embraced the agnostic philosophies of the Western mind along with the worship of science.

At the same time, vehement in his desire to know the truth about God, he questioned people of holy reputation, asking them if they had seen God. He found such a person in Sri Ramakrishna, who became his master, allayed his doubts, gave him God vision, and transformed him into sage and prophet with authority to teach.

After Sri Ramakrishna's death, Vivekananda renounced the world and criss-crossed India as a wandering monk. His mounting compassion for India's people drove him to seek their material help from the West. Accepting an opportunity to represent Hinduism at Chicago's Parliament of Religions in 1893, Vivekananda won instant celebrity in America and a ready forum for his spiritual teaching.

For three years he spread the Vedanta philosophy and religion in America and England and then returned to India to found the Ramakrishna Math and Mission. Exhorting his nation to spiritual greatness, he wakened India to a new national consciousness. He died July 4, 1902, after a second, much shorter sojourn in the West. His lectures and writings have been gathered into nine volumes.