title: Wet-bulb temperature

text: In 2018, South Carolina implemented new regulations to protect high school students from heat-related emergencies during outdoor activities. Specific guidelines and restrictions are in place for wet-bulb globe temperatures between and ; wet-bulb globe temperatures of or greater require all outdoor activities to be canceled.


title: Wet-bulb temperature

text: The following locations have recorded wet-bulb temperatures of or higher. Weather stations are typically at airports, so other locations in the city may have experienced higher values.


title: Wet-bulb temperature

text: Study results indicate that limiting global warming to 1.5 °C would prevent most of the tropics from reaching the wet-bulb temperature of the human physiological limit of 35 °C.


title: Election

text: An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.


title: Election

text: Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operated since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the executive and judiciary, and for regional and local government. This process is also used in many other private and business organisations, from clubs to voluntary associations and corporations.


title: Election

text: The global use of elections as a tool for selecting representatives in modern representative democracies is in contrast with the practice in the democratic archetype, ancient Athens, where the elections were considered an oligarchic institution and most political offices were filled using sortition, also known as allotment, by which officeholders were chosen by lot.


title: Election

text: Electoral reform describes the process of introducing fair electoral systems where they are not in place, or improving the fairness or effectiveness of existing systems. Psephology is the study of results and other statistics relating to elections (especially with a view to predicting future results). Election is the fact of electing, or being elected.


title: Election

text: To "elect" means "to select or make a decision", and so sometimes other forms of ballot such as referendums are referred to as elections, especially in the United States.


title: Election

text: Elections were used as early in history as ancient Greece and ancient Rome, and throughout the Medieval period to select rulers such as the Holy Roman Emperor (see imperial election) and the pope (see papal election).


title: Election

text: In the Vedic period of India, the "raja" (kings) of a "gaṇa" (a tribal organization) was elected by the "gana". The "raja" always belonged to the Kshatriya varna (warrior class), and was typically a son of the previous "raja". However, the "gana" members had the final say in his elections. Even during the Sangam Period people elected their representatives by casting their votes and the ballot boxes (usually a pot) were tied by rope and sealed. After the election the votes were taken out and counted. The Pala King Gopala (ruled c. 750s – 770s CE) in early medieval Bengal was elected by a group of feudal chieftains. Such elections were quite common in contemporary societies of the region. In the Chola Empire, around 920 CE, in Uthiramerur (in present-day Tamil Nadu), palm leaves were used for selecting the village committee members. The leaves, with candidate names written on them, were put inside a mud pot. To select the committee members, a young boy was asked to take out as many leaves as the number of positions available. This was known as the "Kudavolai" system.


title: Election

text: The first recorded popular elections of officials to public office, by majority vote, where all citizens were eligible both to vote and to hold public office, date back to the Ephors of Sparta in 754 BC, under the mixed government of the Spartan Constitution. Athenian democratic elections, where all citizens could hold public office, were not introduced for another 247 years, until the reforms of Cleisthenes. Under the earlier Solonian Constitution (circa 574 BC), all Athenian citizens were eligible to vote in the popular assemblies, on matters of law and policy, and as jurors, but only the three highest classes of citizens could vote in elections. Nor were the lowest of the four classes of Athenian citizens (as defined by the extent of their wealth and property, rather than by birth) eligible to hold public office, through the reforms of Solon. The Spartan election of the Ephors, therefore, also predates the reforms of Solon in Athens by approximately 180 years.


title: Election

text: Questions of suffrage, especially suffrage for minority groups, have dominated the history of elections. Males, the dominant cultural group in North America and Europe, often dominated the and continue to do so in many countries. Early elections in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States were dominated by landed or ruling class males. However, by 1920 all Western European and North American democracies had universal adult male suffrage (except Switzerland) and many countries began to consider women's suffrage. Despite legally mandated universal suffrage for adult males, political barriers were sometimes erected to prevent fair access to elections (see civil rights movement).


title: Election

text: Elections are held in a variety of political, organizational, and corporate settings. Many countries hold elections to select people to serve in their governments, but other types of organizations hold elections as well. For example, many corporations hold elections among shareholders to select a board of directors, and these elections may be mandated by corporate law. In many places, an election to the government is usually a competition among people who have already won a primary election within a political party. Elections within corporations and other organizations often use procedures and rules that are similar to those of governmental elections.


title: Election

text: The question of who may vote is a central issue in elections. The electorate does not generally include the entire population; for example, many countries prohibit those who are under the age of majority from voting. All jurisdictions require a minimum age for voting.


title: Election

text: In Australia, Aboriginal people were not given the right to vote until 1962 (see 1967 referendum entry) and in 2010 the federal government removed the rights of prisoners serving for 3 years or more to vote (a large proportion of which were Aboriginal Australians).


title: Election

text: However, in the European Union, one can vote in municipal elections if one lives in the municipality and is an EU citizen; the nationality of the country of residence is not required.


title: Election

text: In some countries, voting is required by law. Eligible voters may be subject to punitive measures such as a fine for not casting a vote. In Western Australia, the penalty for a first time offender failing to vote is a $20.00 fine, which increases to $50.00 if the offender refused to vote prior.


title: Election

text: Historically the size of eligible voters, the electorate, was small having the size of groups or communities of privileged men like aristocrats and men of a city (citizens).


title: Election

text: With the growth of the number of people with bourgeois citizen rights outside of cities, expanding the term citizen, the electorates grew to numbers beyond the thousands.


title: Election

text: Elections with an electorate in the hundred thousands appeared in the final decades of the Roman Republic, by extending voting rights to citizens outside of Rome with the Lex Julia of 90 BC, reaching an electorate of 910,000 and estimated voter turnout of maximum 10% in 70 BC, only again comparable in size to the first elections of the United States. At the same time the Kingdom of Great Britain had in 1780 about 214,000 eligible voters, 3% of the whole population.


title: Election

text: A representative democracy requires a procedure to govern nomination for political office. In many cases, nomination for office is mediated through preselection processes in organized political parties.


title: Election

text: Non-partisan systems tend to be different from partisan systems as concerns nominations. In a direct democracy, one type of non-partisan democracy, any eligible person can be nominated. Although elections were used in ancient Athens, in Rome, and in the selection of popes and Holy Roman emperors, the origins of elections in the contemporary world lie in the gradual emergence of representative government in Europe and North America beginning in the 17th century. In some systems no nominations take place at all, with voters free to choose any person at the time of voting—with some possible exceptions such as through a minimum age requirement—in the jurisdiction. In such cases, it is not required (or even possible) that the members of the electorate be familiar with all of the eligible persons, though such systems may involve indirect elections at larger geographic levels to ensure that some first-hand familiarity among potential electees can exist at these levels (i.e., among the elected delegates).


title: Election

text: As far as partisan systems, in some countries, only members of a particular party can be nominated (see one-party state). Or, any eligible person can be nominated through a process; thus allowing him or her to be listed.


title: Election

text: Electoral systems are the detailed constitutional arrangements and voting systems that convert the vote into a political decision.


title: Election

text: The first step is for voters to cast the ballots, which may be simple single-choice ballots, but other types, such as multiple choice or ranked ballots may also be used. Then the votes are tallied, for which various vote counting systems may be used. and the voting system then determines the result on the basis of the tally. Most systems can be categorized as either proportional, majoritarian or mixed. Among the proportional systems, the most commonly used are party-list proportional representation (list PR) systems, among majoritarian are first-past-the-post electoral system (single winner plurality voting) and different methods of majority voting (such as the widely used two-round system). Mixed systems combine elements of both proportional and majoritarian methods, with some typically producing results closer to the former (mixed-member proportional) or the other (e.g. parallel voting).


title: Election

text: Many countries have growing electoral reform movements, which advocate systems such as approval voting, single transferable vote, instant runoff voting or a Condorcet method; these methods are also gaining popularity for lesser elections in some countries where more important elections still use more traditional counting methods.


title: Election

text: While openness and accountability are usually considered cornerstones of a democratic system, the act of casting a vote and the content of a voter's ballot are usually an important exception. The secret ballot is a relatively modern development, but it is now considered crucial in most free and fair elections, as it limits the effectiveness of intimidation.


title: Election

text: When elections are called, politicians and their supporters attempt to influence policy by competing directly for the votes of constituents in what are called campaigns. Supporters for a campaign can be either formally organized or loosely affiliated, and frequently utilize campaign advertising. It is common for political scientists to attempt to predict elections via political forecasting methods.


title: Election

text: The most expensive election campaign included US$7 billion spent on the 2012 United States presidential election and is followed by the US$5 billion spent on the 2014 Indian general election.


title: Election

text: The nature of democracy is that elected officials are accountable to the people, and they must return to the voters at prescribed intervals to seek their mandate to continue in office. For that reason, most democratic constitutions provide that elections are held at fixed regular intervals. In the United States, elections for public offices are typically held between every two and six years in most states and at the federal level, with exceptions for elected judicial positions that may have longer terms of office. There is a variety of schedules, for example, presidents: the President of Ireland is elected every seven years, the President of Russia and the President of Finland every six years, the President of France every five years, President of the United States every four years.


title: Election

text: Pre-decided or fixed election dates have the advantage of fairness and predictability. However, they tend to greatly lengthen campaigns, and make dissolving the legislature (parliamentary system) more problematic if the date should happen to fall at a time when dissolution is inconvenient (e.g. when war breaks out). Other states (e.g., the United Kingdom) only set maximum time in office, and the executive decides exactly when within that limit it will actually go to the polls. In practice, this means the government remains in power for close to its full term, and chooses an election date it calculates to be in its best interests (unless something special happens, such as a motion of no-confidence). This calculation depends on a number of variables, such as its performance in opinion polls and the size of its majority.


title: Election

text: In many of the countries with weak rule of law, the most common reason why elections do not meet international standards of being "free and fair" is interference from the incumbent government. Dictators may use the powers of the executive (police, martial law, censorship, physical implementation of the election mechanism, etc.) to remain in power despite popular opinion in favour of removal. Members of a particular faction in a legislature may use the power of the majority or supermajority (passing criminal laws, and defining the electoral mechanisms including eligibility and district boundaries) to prevent the balance of power in the body from shifting to a rival faction due to an election.


title: Election

text: Non-governmental entities can also interfere with elections, through physical force, verbal intimidation, or fraud, which can result in improper casting or counting of votes. Monitoring for and minimizing electoral fraud is also an ongoing task in countries with strong traditions of free and fair elections. Problems that prevent an election from being "free and fair" take various forms.


title: Election

text: The electorate may be poorly informed about issues or candidates due to lack of freedom of the press, lack of objectivity in the press due to state or corporate control, and/or lack of access to news and political media. Freedom of speech may be curtailed by the state, favouring certain viewpoints or state propaganda.


title: Election

text: Gerrymandering, exclusion of opposition candidates from eligibility for office, needlessly high restrictions on who may be a candidate, like ballot access rules, and manipulating thresholds for electoral success are some of the ways the structure of an election can be changed to favour a specific faction or candidate.


title: Election

text: Those in power may arrest or assassinate candidates, suppress or even criminalize campaigning, close campaign headquarters, harass or beat campaign workers, or intimidate voters with violence. Foreign electoral intervention can also occur, with the United States interfering between 1946 and 2000 in 81 elections and Russia/USSR in 36.


title: Election

text: In 2018 the most intense interventions, utilizing false information, were by China in Taiwan and by Russia in Latvia; the next highest levels were in Bahrain, Qatar and Hungary.


title: Election

text: voter suppression, voter registration fraud, failure to validate voter residency, fraudulent tabulation of results, and use of physical force or verbal intimation at polling places. Other examples include persuading candidates not to run, such as through blackmailing, bribery, intimidation or physical violence.


title: Election

text: A sham election, or show election, is an election that is held purely for show; that is, without any significant political choice or real impact on the results of the election.


title: Election

text: Sham elections are a common event in dictatorial regimes that feel the need to feign the appearance of public legitimacy. Published results usually show nearly 100% voter turnout and high support (typically at least 80%, and close to 100% in many cases) for the prescribed or for the referendum choice that favours the political party in power. Dictatorial regimes can also organize sham elections with results simulating those that might be achieved in democratic countries.


title: Election

text: Sometimes, only one government-approved candidate is allowed to run in sham elections with no opposition candidates allowed, or opposition candidates are arrested on false charges (or even without any charges) before the election to prevent them from running.


title: Election

text: Ballots may contain only one "yes" option, or in the case of a simple "yes or no" question, security forces often persecute people who pick "no", thus encouraging them to pick the "yes" option. In other cases, those who vote receive stamps in their passport for doing so, while those who did not vote (and thus do not receive stamps) are persecuted as enemies of the people.


title: Election

text: Sham elections can sometimes backfire against the party in power, especially if the regime believes they are popular enough to win without coercion or fraud. The most famous example of this was the 1990 Myanmar general election, in which the government-sponsored National Unity Party suffered a landslide defeat to the opposition National League for Democracy and consequently, the results were annulled.


title: Election

text: Examples of sham elections are the 1929 and 1934 elections in Fascist Italy, the 1942 general election in Imperial Japan, those in Nazi Germany, East Germany, the 1940 elections of Stalinist "People's Parliaments" to legitimise the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the 1928, 1935, 1942, 1949, 1951 and 1958 elections in Portugal, the 1991 Kazakh presidential election, those in North Korea, the 1995 and 2002 presidential referendums in Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the 2021 Hong Kong legislative election.


title: Election

text: In Mexico, all of the presidential elections from 1929 to 1982 are considered to be sham elections, as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its predecessors governed the country in a "de facto" single-party system without serious opposition, and they won all of the presidential elections in that period with more than 70% of the vote. The first seriously competitive presidential election in modern Mexican history was that of 1988, in which for the first time the PRI candidate faced two strong opposition candidates, though the government still rigged the result. The first fair election was held in 1994, though the opposition did not win until 2000.


title: Election

text: A predetermined conclusion is permanently established by the regime through suppression of the opposition, coercion of voters, vote rigging, reporting several votes received greater than the number of voters, outright lying, or some combination of these.


title: Election

text: In an extreme example, Charles D. B. King of Liberia was reported to have won by 234,000 votes in the 1927 general election, a "majority" that was over fifteen times larger than the number of eligible voters.


title: Election

text: Scholars argue that the predominance of elections in modern liberal democracies masks the fact that they are actually aristocratic selection mechanisms that deny each citizen an equal chance of holding public office. Such views were expressed as early as the time of Ancient Greece by Aristotle. According to French political scientist Bernard Manin, the inegalitarian nature of elections stems from four factors: the unequal treatment of candidates by voters, the distinction of candidates required by choice, the cognitive advantage conferred by salience, and the costs of disseminating information. These four factors result in the evaluation of candidates based on voters' partial standards of quality and social saliency (for example, skin color and good looks). This leads to self-selection biases in candidate pools due to unobjective standards of treatment by voters and the costs (barriers to entry) associated with raising one's political profile. Ultimately, the result is the election of candidates who are superior (whether in actuality or as perceived within a cultural context) and "objectively unlike" the voters they are supposed to represent.


title: Election

text: Additionally, evidence suggests that the concept of electing representatives was originally conceived to be "different" from democracy. Prior to the 18th century, some societies in Western Europe used sortition as a means to select rulers, a method which allowed regular citizens to exercise power, in keeping with understandings of democracy at the time. However, the idea of what constituted a legitimate government shifted in the 18th century to include consent, especially with the rise of the enlightenment. From this point onwards, sortition fell out of favor as a mechanism for selecting rulers. On the other hand, elections began to be seen as a way for the masses to express popular consent repeatedly, resulting in the triumph of the electoral process until the present day.


title: Election

text: This conceptual misunderstanding of elections as open and egalitarian when they are not innately so may thus be a root cause of the problems in contemporary governance. Those in favor of this view argue that the modern system of elections was never meant to give ordinary citizens the chance to exercise power - merely privileging their right to consent to those who rule. Therefore, the representatives that modern electoral systems select for are too disconnected, unresponsive, and elite-serving. To deal with this issue, various scholars have proposed alternative models of democracy, many of which include a return to sortition-based selection mechanisms. The extent to which sortition should be the dominant mode of selecting rulers or instead be hybridised with electoral representation remains a topic of debate.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Sigismund of Luxembourg (15 February 1368 – 9 December 1437) was a monarch as King of Hungary and Croatia ("jure uxoris") from 1387, King of Germany from 1410, King of Bohemia from 1419, and Holy Roman Emperor from 1433 until his death in 1437, as well as prince-elector of Brandenburg (1378–1388 and 1411–1415). He was the last male member of the House of Luxembourg.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Sigismund was the son of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and his fourth wife Elizabeth of Pomerania. He married Queen Mary of Hungary in 1385 and was crowned King of Hungary soon after. He fought to restore and maintain authority to the throne. Mary died in 1395, leaving Sigismund the sole ruler of Hungary.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1396, Sigismund led the Crusade of Nicopolis, but was decisively defeated by the Ottoman Empire. Afterwards, he founded the Order of the Dragon to fight the Turks and secured the thrones of Croatia, Germany and Bohemia. Sigismund was one of the driving forces behind the Council of Constance (1414–1418) that ended the Papal Schism, but which also led to the Hussite Wars that dominated the later period of his life. In 1433, Sigismund was crowned Holy Roman Emperor and ruled until his death in 1437.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Historian Thomas Brady Jr. remarks that Sigismund "possessed a breadth of vision and a sense of grandeur unseen in a German monarch since the thirteenth century". He realized the need to carry out reforms of the Empire and the Church at the same time. But external difficulties, self-inflicted mistakes and the extinction of the Luxembourg male line made this vision unfulfilled. Later, the Habsburgs would inherit this mission and imperial reform was carried out successfully under the reigns of Frederick III and especially his son Maximilian I, although perhaps at the expense of the reform of the Church, partly because Maximilian was not particularly focused on the matter.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In recent years, scholarly interest (especially from East-Central Europe) has grown greatly in the person and reign of Sigismund – the ruler who had gained and led an imperial association almost reaching the size of the later Habsburg Empire – as well as cultural developments associated with his era. The setbacks which have been seen as his major failures (like dealing with the Hussite movement) are now generally considered by most scholars to be the results of the lack of financial resources and other heavy constraints, rather than personal failings.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Born in Nuremberg or Prague, Sigismund was the son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV, and of his fourth and final wife, Elizabeth of Pomerania, who was the granddaughter of King Casimir III of Poland and the great-granddaughter of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Gediminas. He was named after Saint Sigismund of Burgundy, the favourite saint of Sigismund's father. From Sigismund's childhood he was nicknamed the "ginger fox" ("liška ryšavá") in the Crown of Bohemia, on account of his hair colour.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: King Louis the Great of Hungary and Poland always had a good and close relationship with Emperor Charles IV, and Sigismund was betrothed to Louis' eldest daughter, Mary, in 1374, when he was six years old and Mary but an infant. The marital project aimed to augment the lands held by the House of Luxembourg. Upon his father's death in 1378, young Sigismund became Margrave of Brandenburg and was sent to the Hungarian court, where he soon learned the Hungarian language and way of life, and became entirely devoted to his adopted country. King Louis named him as his heir and appointed him his successor as King of Hungary.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1381, the then 13-year-old Sigismund was sent to Kraków by his eldest half-brother and guardian Wenceslaus, King of Germany and Bohemia, to learn Polish and to become acquainted with the land and its people. King Wenceslaus also gave him Neumark to facilitate communication between Brandenburg and Poland.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: While Mary was accepted as monarch of Hungary, Sigismund vied for the crown of Poland as well. However, the Poles were unwilling to submit to a German sovereign, nor did they want to be tied to Hungary. The disagreement between Polish landlords of Lesser Poland on one side and landlords of Greater Poland on the other, regarding the choice of the future monarch of Poland, finally ended in choosing the Lithuanian side. The support of the lords of Greater Poland was however not enough to give Prince Sigismund the Polish crown. Instead, the landlords of Lesser Poland gave it to Mary's younger sister Jadwiga, who married Jogaila of Lithuania.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: On the death of her father in 1382, his betrothed, Mary, became queen of Hungary and Sigismund married her in 1385 in Zólyom (today Zvolen). The next year, he was accepted as Mary's future co-ruler by the Treaty of Győr. However, Mary was captured, together with her mother, Elizabeth of Bosnia, who had acted as regent, in 1387 by the rebellious House of Horvat, Bishop Paul Horvat of Mačva, his brother John Horvat and younger brother Ladislav. Sigismund's mother-in-law was strangled, while Mary was liberated.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Having secured the support of the nobility, Sigismund was crowned King of Hungary at Székesfehérvár on 31 March 1387. Having raised money by pledging Brandenburg to his cousin Jobst, Margrave of Moravia (1388), he was engaged for the next nine years in a ceaseless struggle for the possession of this unstable throne. The central power was finally weakened to such an extent that only Sigismund's alliance with the powerful Czillei-Garai League could ensure his position on the throne. It was not for entirely selfless reasons that one of the leagues of barons helped him to power: Sigismund had to pay for the support of the lords by transferring a sizeable part of the royal properties. (For some years, the baron's council governed the country in the name of the Holy Crown). The restoration of the authority of the central administration took decades of work. The bulk of the nation headed by the House of Garai was with him; but in the southern provinces between the Sava and the Drava, the Horvathys with the support of King Tvrtko I of Bosnia, Mary's maternal uncle, proclaimed as their king Ladislaus of Naples, son of the murdered Charles II of Hungary. Not until 1395 did Nicholas II Garai succeed in suppressing them. Mary died heavily pregnant in 1395.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: To ease the pressure from Hungarian nobles, Sigismund tried to employ foreign advisors, which was not popular, and he had to promise not to give land and nominations to anyone other than Hungarian nobles. However, this was not applied to Stibor of Stiboricz, who was Sigismund's closest friend and advisor. On a number of occasions, Sigismund was imprisoned by nobles, but with the help of the armies of Garai and Stibor of Stiboricz, he was able to regain power.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1396, Sigismund led the combined armies of Christendom against the Turks, who had taken advantage of the temporary helplessness of Hungary to extend their dominion to the banks of the Danube. This crusade, preached by Pope Boniface IX, was very popular in Hungary. The nobles flocked in their thousands to the royal standard, and were reinforced by volunteers from nearly every part of Europe. The most important contingent being that of the French led by John the Fearless, son of Philip II, Duke of Burgundy. Sigismund set out with 90,000 men and a flotilla of 70 galleys. After capturing Vidin, he camped with his Hungarian armies before the fortress of Nicopolis. Sultan Bayezid I raised the siege of Constantinople and, at the head of 140,000 men, completely defeated the Christian forces in the Battle of Nicopolis fought between the 25 and 28 September 1396. Sigismund returned by sea and through the realm of Zeta, where he ordained the local Montenegrin lord Đurađ II with the islands of Hvar and Korčula for resistance against the Turks; the islands were returned to Sigismund after Đurađ's death in April 1403.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The disaster at Nicopolis angered several Hungarian lords, leading to instability in the kingdom. Deprived of his authority in Hungary, Sigismund then turned his attention to securing the succession in Germany and Bohemia, and was recognized by his childless half-brother Wenceslaus IV as Vicar-General of the whole Empire. However, he was unable to support Wenceslaus when he was deposed in 1400, and Rupert of Germany, Elector Palatine, was elected German king in his stead.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: On his return to Hungary in 1401, Sigismund was imprisoned once and deposed twice. That year, he aided an uprising against Wenceslaus IV, during the course of which the Bohemian king was taken prisoner, and Sigismund ruled Bohemia for nineteen months. He released Wenceslaus in 1403. In the meantime, a group of Hungarian noblemen swore loyalty to the last Anjou monarch, Ladislaus of Naples, putting their hands on the relic of Saint Ladislas of Hungary in Nagyvárad (today Oradea). Ladislaus was the son of the murdered Charles II of Hungary, and thus a distant relative of the long dead King Louis I of Hungary. Ladislaus captured Zara (today Zadar) in 1403, but soon stopped any military advance. This struggle in turn led to a war with the Republic of Venice, as Ladislaus had sold the Dalmatian cities to the Venetians for 100,000 ducats before leaving for his own land. In the following years Sigismund acted indirectly to thwart Ladislaus' attempts to conquer central Italy, by allying with the Italian cities resisting him and by applying diplomatic pressure on him.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Due to his frequent absences attending to business in the other countries over which he ruled, he was obliged to consult Diets in Hungary with more frequency than his predecessors and institute the office of Palatine as chief administrator while he was away.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1404, Sigismund introduced the "Placetum Regium". According to this decree, Papal bulls could not be pronounced in Hungary without the consent of the king. During his long reign, the royal castle of Buda became probably the largest Gothic palace of the Late Middle Ages.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In about 1406, Sigismund married Mary's cousin Barbara of Celje, daughter of Count Hermann II of Celje. Hermann's mother Catherine (of the House of Kotromanic) and Mary's mother Queen Elisabeth of Bosnia were sisters, or at least cousins who were adoptive sisters.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Sigismund managed to establish control in Slavonia. He did not hesitate to use violent methods (see Bloody Sabor of Križevci), but from the river Sava to the south his control was weak. Sigismund personally led an army of almost 50,000 "crusaders" against the Bosnians, culminating with the Battle of Dobor in 1408, a massacre of about 200 noble families.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Threatened by Ottoman expansion, king Sigismund managed to strengthen the security of southern Hungarian borders by entering into a defensive alliance with despot Stefan Lazarević of Serbia. In 1403, Hungarian possessions in northwestern regions of Serbia (city of Belgrade and the Banate of Macsó), were given to despot Stefan, who pledged his allegiance to king Sigismund, remaining the king's loyal vassal until death in 1427. Stefan's successor George Branković of Serbia also pledged his allegiance to Sigismund, returning Belgrade to the king. By maintaining close relations with Serbian rulers, Sigismund succeeded in securing southern borders of his realm.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Sigismund founded his personal order of knights, the Order of the Dragon, after the victory at Dobor. The main goal of the order was fighting the Ottoman Empire. Members of the order were mostly his political allies and supporters. The main members of the order were Sigismund's close allies Nicholas II Garay, Hermann II of Celje, Stibor of Stiboricz, and Pippo Spano. The most important European monarchs became members of the order. He encouraged international trade by abolishing internal duties, regulating tariffs on foreign goods and standardizing weights and measures throughout the country.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: After the death of King Rupert of Germany in 1410, Sigismund – ignoring the claims of his half-brother Wenceslaus – was elected as successor by three of the electors on 20 September 1410, but he was opposed by his cousin Jobst of Moravia, who had been elected by four electors in a different election on 1 October. Jobst's death 18 January 1411 removed this conflict and Sigismund was again elected king on 21 July 1411. His coronation was deferred until 8 November 1414, when it took place at Aachen.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: On a number of occasions, and in 1410 in particular, Sigismund allied himself with the Teutonic Knights against Władysław II of Poland. In return for 300.000 ducats he would attack Poland from the south after the truce on St. John's Day, 24 June expired. Sigismund ordered his most loyal friend Stibor of Stiboricz to set up the attack on Poland. Stibor of Stiboricz was of Polish origin and from the main line of the powerful Clan of Ostoja that had also been against choosing Jagiello as King of Poland. With the support of Sigismund, Stibor become one of the most influential men in late medieval Europe, holding titles as Duke of Transylvania and owning about 25% of modern-day Slovakia, including 31 castles of which 15 were situated around the 406 km long Váh river with surrounding land that was given to him by Sigismund. In the diplomatic struggle to prevent war between Poland-Lithuania, which was supported by the Muscovites, and the Teutonic Knights, Sigismund used Stibor's fine diplomacy to gain financially. The Polish side appointed several negotiators and most of them were also from the Clan of Ostoja, distant relations of the Stibors. However, those "family meetings" could not prevent the war and an alliance of twenty-two western states formed an army against Poland in the Battle of Grunwald in July 1410. Stibor attacked then Nowy Sącz and burned it to the ground, but after that he returned with his army back to the Beckov Castle. After the Polish-Lithuanian victory in the Battle of Grunwald, the Teutonic knights had to pay a huge sum of silver to Poland as reparation and again, through diplomacy of his friend Stibor, Sigismund was able to borrow all this silver from King Władysław II of Poland on good conditions. In the light of facts about the diplomatic work of Stibor and the Clan of Ostoja that was following the politics of King Sigismund, one can question whether Sigismund actually joined the anti-Polish alliance.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1412, a Knights Tournament was held in Buda, Hungary, this was also a conference between Hungarian King Sigismund, Polish King Wladyslaw II and Bosnian King Tvrtko II of Bosnia. 2000 knights were present from all over Europe, even England. There were very many princes, lords, knights and servants at the court of Buda in Hungary. Three kings and three other monarchs of the three countries, Serbian despot, 13 herzogs(dukes), 21 counts, 2000 knights, 1 cardinal, 1 legate, 3 archbishops, 11 other bishops, 86 players and trumpeters, 17 messengers, and 40,000 horses.There were people from 17 countries and languages. A presumably contemporary list of the participants of the meeting has also survived.Besides the host, Sigismund, and his main guest, Władysław II,this text mentions Władysław's cousin Witold, Grand Duke of Lithuania, the king of Bosnia, usually identified as Tvrtko II of Bosnia. Some argues convincingly that it was not Tvrtko II but Stjepan Ostoja who visited Buda at that time. Besides him, Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić, Sandal Hranić Kosača and Pavle Radinović also came from Bosnia and the despot Stefan Lazarević from Serbia, was also, bringing two thousand horses. From Austria, dukes Ernest (the Iron) and Albert II, later successor of Sigismund, also took part in the Buda meeting. Also Heinrich von Plauen. the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Stibor of Stiboricz, Nikola II Gorjanski, count Herman II Celje and his son Friedrich II, count of Krbava - Karlo Kurjaković, Ivan Morović-ban of Machva. Długosz reports the arrival in Buda of the envoys of the Jalal al-Din, khan of the Golden Horde and son of Tokhtamysh, who wanted to meet Władysław II of Poland.Jalal al-Din was an ally of the Polish and Lithuanian rulers in their fight against the Teutonic Order, and according to some reconstructions of the events, Sigismund also wanted to rely on the Tatars against the Ottoman threat.A narrative source from Lübeck also mentions the proceedings in Buda in 1412. Detmar’s Lübeckische Chronik continued for the period of 1400 to 1413. Te continuation also gives a detailed description of the participants at the Budameeting.Te royal meeting was accompanied by festivities and various entertain-ments. At the tournament, a knight from Silesia named Nemsche and a page from Austria won the joust.A Polish priest and chronicler Jan Długosz talk in his "Annales seu cronici incliti regni Poloniae", that on the tournament there was also knights from Bulgaria, probably from the court of prince Fruzhin, Sigismund's vasal who also was on the conference.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: From 1412 to 1423, Sigismund campaigned against the Republic of Venice in Italy. The king took advantage of the difficulties of Antipope John XXIII to obtain a promise that a council should be called in Constance in 1414 to settle the Western Schism. He took a leading part in the deliberations of this assembly, and during the sittings travelled to France, England, and Burgundy in a vain attempt to secure the abdication of the three rival popes. The council ended in 1418, having resolved the Schism and — of great consequence to Sigismund's future career — having the Czech religious reformer, Jan Hus, burned at the stake for heresy in July 1415. The complicity of Sigismund in the death of Hus is a matter of controversy. He had granted Hus a safe conduct and protested against his imprisonment; and Hus was burned during Sigismund's absence.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: When at one point during the council a cardinal corrected Sigismund's Latin, Sigismund replied "Ego sum rex Romanus et super grammaticam" ("I am king of the Romans and above grammar").


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: His main acts during these years were an alliance with England against France, and a failed attempt, owing to the hostility of the princes, to secure peace in Germany by a league of the towns. Also, Sigismund awarded Brandenburg (which he had recovered after Jobst's death) to Frederick of Hohenzollern, burgrave of Nuremberg, in 1415. This step made the Hohenzollern family one of the most important in Germany.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Sigismund began to shift his alliance from France to England after the French defeat at the Battle of Agincourt. The signing of the Treaty of Canterbury on 15 August 1416 culminated diplomatic efforts between Henry V of England and Sigismund and resulted in a defensive and offensive alliance against France. This, in turn, led the way to the resolution of the papal schism. The close relationship that developed between Henry V and the Emperor resulted in Sigismund being inducted into the Order of the Garter.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1419, the death of Wenceslaus IV left Sigismund titular King of Bohemia, but he had to wait for seventeen years before the Czech Estates would acknowledge him. Although the two dignities of King of the Romans and King of Bohemia added considerably to his importance, and indeed made him the nominal temporal head of Christendom, they conferred no increase of power and financially embarrassed him. It was only as King of Hungary that he had succeeded in establishing his authority and in doing anything for the order and good government of the land. Entrusting the government of Bohemia to Sofia of Bavaria, the widow of Wenceslaus, he hastened into Hungary.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The Bohemians, who distrusted him as the betrayer of Hus, were soon in arms; and the flame was fanned when Sigismund declared his intention of prosecuting the war against heretics. Three campaigns against the Hussites ended in disaster although the army of his most loyal ally Stibor of Stiboricz and later his son Stibor of Beckov could hold the Hussite side away from the borders of the Kingdom. The Turks were again attacking Hungary.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: At the 1422 Diet of Nuremberg, Sigismund and German territorial princes collaborated to organize two armies against the Hussite rebels. The


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: first army was sent to relieve Karlštejn, which was under a Hussite siege; the second army was ordered to destroy the Hussite field army. But Jan Žižka defeated the Imperial force at the Battle of Kutná Hora and then at the Battle of Deutschbrod. These two unexpected defeats at the hands of the Hussites "ended the first Imperial and Catholic attempt to crush the Bohemian 'heretic rebellion'."


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The alliance against the Hussites continued to develop though, joined by Upper German princes and cities, even from "the regions furthest from Bohemia". In January 1424, associative activity of the German electors led to the Union ('einunge') of Bingen, "within which the Rhenish princes were joined by the duke of Saxony and Sigismund’s loyal partner Margrave Friedrich of Brandenburg, and mutual assistance, adjudication, and cooperation in the face of the Hussite threat were stipulated."


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Sigismund's rule in Germany and in the Empire in general was hampered by his complete lack of "Hausmacht" (domestic power) within the Kingdom of Germany.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: His rule relied on key allies and the culture of associative political mechanisms in Germany. Duncan Hardy remarks that, "both the local and the trans-regional dimensions of the political activity displayed by the sources from throughout Sigismund’s reign demonstrate that power at every level in the Empire was exercised and mediated through the customary institutions and mechanisms of associative mediated through the customary institutions and mechanisms ofassociative political culture. If Sigismund enjoyed considerable successes at certain junctures, it was not in spite of or independently from these institutions and mechanisms, but precisely because he devoted considerable energy to harnessing associative interactions and building strategic relationships with leading actors within elite networks. Even during his prolonged absences from the Empire’s core lands, Sigismund was able to make use of these partnerships, and could reasonably expect that the associative activity of princes, nobles, and towns would yield results — as indeed they did, in the form of large-scale collective activity against Duke Friedrich of Austria—Tyrol in the 1410 and the Hussites in the 1420. Not all of Sigismund’s projects came to fruition, and he could not always control the longer-term outcomes of his policies, but the notion that there were phases of an 'Empire without a king' during his reign clearly does not stand up to the abundant evidence of his interactions with regional clients and associations. At the same time, the somewhat adulatory view that has developed in recent years of Sigismund as a masterly politician can be tempered by the evidence that it was often felicitous alliances as much as personal skill which made his successes possible."


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The alliance between Sigismund and his two key allies in Germany, namely Frederick I, Elector of Brandenburg and Albert of Habsburg (who became his son-in-law and heir through the marriage with Sigismund's only daughter Elizabeth of Luxembourg, started the rise of the Hohenzollerns and reboosted the Habsburgs (who returned to the German throne and also inherited the connection with Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia from Sigismund).


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: In 1428, Sigismund led another campaign against the Turks, but again with few results. In 1431, he went to Milan where on 25 November he received the Iron Crown as King of Italy; after which he remained for some time at Siena, negotiating for his coronation as emperor and for the recognition of the Council of Basel by Pope Eugenius IV. He was crowned emperor in Rome on 31 May 1433, and after obtaining his demands from the Pope returned to Bohemia, where he was recognized as king in 1436, though his power was little more than nominal. Shortly after he was crowned, Pope Eugenius began attempts to create a new anti-Ottoman alliance. This was sparked by an Albanian revolt against the Ottomans, which had begun in 1432. In 1435, Sigismund sent Fruzhin, a Bulgarian nobleman, to negotiate an alliance with the Albanians. He also sent Daud, a pretender to the Ottoman throne, in early 1436. However, following the defeat of the rebels in 1436, plans for an anti-Ottoman alliance ended.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Sigismund died on 9 December 1437 at Znojmo (), Moravia (now Czech Republic), and as ordered in life, he was buried at Nagyvárad, Hungary (today Oradea, Romania), next to the tomb of the king Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary, who was the ideal of the perfect monarch, warrior and Christian for that time and was deeply venerated by Sigismund. By his second wife, Barbara of Celje, he left an only daughter, Elisabeth of Luxembourg, who was married to Albert V, duke of Austria (later German king as Albert II) whom Sigismund named as his successor. As he left no sons, his line of the House of Luxembourg became extinct on his death.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Sigismund married twice but had little luck in securing the succession to his crowns. Each of his two marriages resulted in the birth of one child. His first-born child, probably a son, was born prematurely as a result of a horse riding accident suffered by Queen Mary of Hungary when she was well advanced in pregnancy. Mother and child both died shortly after the birth in the hills of Buda on 17 May 1395. This caused a deep succession crisis because Sigismund ruled over Hungary by right of his wife, and although he managed to keep his power, the crisis lasted until his second marriage to Barbara of Celje. Barbara's only child, born in the purple on 7 October 1409, probably in the castle of Visegrád, was Elisabeth of Luxembourg, the future queen consort of Hungary, Germany, and Bohemia. Queen Barbara was unable to give birth to any further issue. Elisabeth of Bohemia was thus the only surviving legitimate offspring of Sigismund.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Sigismund was known to speak fluent Hungarian, wore Hungarian-style royal clothes, and even grew his beard in the Hungarian fashion. He also spent huge amounts of money during his reign to rebuild the Gothic castles of Buda and Visegrád in the Kingdom of Hungary, ordering the transportation of materials from Austria and Bohemia.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: His many affairs with women led to the birth of several legends, as the one that existed decades later during the reign of the King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. According to this, John Hunyadi was Sigismund's illegitimate son. Sigismund gave a ring to the boy's mother when he was born, but one day in the forest a raven stole it from her, and the ring was only recovered after the bird was hunted down. It is said that this incident inspired the coat of arms of the Hunyadis, and later also appeared in the coat of arms of Matthias "Corvinus".


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: Sigismund adopted the Hungarian reverence for Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary, who was considered to be an ideal Christian knight at that time. He went on pilgrimage several times to his tomb in Nagyvárad. Before Sigismund died, in Znaim, Moravia, he ordered to be buried next to the king saint.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: The Reformatio Sigismundi appeared in connection with efforts to reform the Holy Roman Empire during the reign of Emperor Sigismund (1410–1437). It was presented in 1439 at the Council of Basel, published by an anonymous author, and referred to the injustice of the German rulers. It included a vision of Sigismund's about the appearance of a priest-king, Frederick, as well as plans for a wide reform of the monarchy and emperorship and the German empire.


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: "Sigismund, by the grace of God elected Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King in Germany, of Hungary, Bohemia, Italy, Dalmatia, Croatia, Rama, Serbia, Galicia, Lodomeria, Cumania and Bulgaria; Duke of Silesia and Luxembourg; Margrave of Moravia, Lusatia and Brandenburg."


title: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

text: King Sigismund is portrayed by British actor Matthew Goode in the 2022 film "Jan Žižka" by director Petr Jákl.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (10 December 1878 – 25 December 1972), popularly known as Rajaji or C.R., also known as Mootharignar Rajaji (Rajaji", the Scholar Emeritus"), was an Indian statesman, writer, lawyer, and independence activist. Rajagopalachari was the last Governor-General of India, as India became a republic in 1950. He was also the first Indian-born Governor-General, as all previous holders of the post were British nationals. He also served as leader of the Indian National Congress, Premier of the Madras Presidency, Governor of West Bengal, Minister for Home Affairs of the Indian Union and Chief Minister of Madras state. Rajagopalachari founded the Swatantra Party and was one of the first recipients of India's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna. He vehemently opposed the use of nuclear weapons and was a proponent of world peace and disarmament. During his lifetime, he also acquired the nickname 'Mango of Salem'.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Rajagopalachari was born in the Thorapalli village of Hosur taluk in the Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu and was educated at Central College, Bangalore, and Presidency College, Madras. In the 1900s he started legal practice at the Salem court. On entering politics, he became a member and later Chairperson of the Salem municipality. One of Mahatma Gandhi's earliest political lieutenants, he joined the Indian National Congress and participated in the agitations against the Rowlatt Act, joining the Non-Cooperation movement, the Vaikom Satyagraha, and the Civil Disobedience movement. In 1930, Rajagopalachari risked imprisonment when he led the Vedaranyam Salt Satyagraha in response to the Dandi March. In 1937, Rajagopalachari was elected Prime minister of the Madras Presidency and served until 1940, when he resigned due to Britain's declaration of war on Germany. He later advocated co-operation over Britain's war effort and opposed the Quit India Movement. He favoured talks with both Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League and proposed what later came to be known as the "C. R. formula". In 1946, Rajagopalachari was appointed Minister of Industry, Supply, Education and Finance in the Interim Government of India, and then as the Governor of West Bengal from 1947 to 1948, Governor-General of India from 1948 to 1950, Union Home Minister from 1951 to 1952 and as Chief Minister of Madras state from 1952 to 1954. In 1959, he resigned from the Indian National Congress and founded the Swatantra Party, which fought against the Congress in the 1962, 1967 and 1971 elections. Rajagopalachari was instrumental in setting up a united Anti-Congress front in Madras state under C. N. Annadurai, which swept the 1967 elections. He died on 25 December 1972 at the age of 94 and received a state funeral.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Rajagopalachari was an accomplished writer who made lasting contributions to Indian English literature and is also credited with the composition of the song "Kurai Onrum Illai" set to Carnatic music. He pioneered temperance and temple entry movements in India and advocated Dalit upliftment. He has been criticized for introducing the compulsory study of Hindi and the Madras Scheme of Elementary Education in Madras State, dubbed by its critics as Hereditary Education Policy put forward to perpetuate caste hierarchy. Critics have often attributed his pre-eminence in politics to his standing as a favourite of both Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Rajagopalachari was described by Gandhi as the "keeper of my conscience".


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Rajagopalachari was born to Chakravarti Venkatarya Iyengar and his wife Singaramma on 10 December 1878 in Thorapalli village on the outskirts of Hosur, in Dharmapuri taluk, Salem district, Madras Presidency, British Raj. His father was the "munsiff" of Thorapalli Village. Rajaji was born in a Hindu Tamil Brahmin family belonging to the Srivaishnava sect. The couple already had two sons, Narasimhachari and Srinivasa.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: A weak and sickly child, Rajagopalachari was a constant worry to his parents who feared that he might not live long. As a young child, he was admitted to a village school in Thorapalli then at the age of five moved with his family to Hosur where Rajagopalachari enrolled at Hosur R.V.Government Boys Higher Secondary School. He passed his matriculation examinations in 1891 and graduated in arts from Central College, Bangalore in 1894. Rajagopalachari also studied law at the Presidency College, Madras, from where he graduated in 1897.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Rajagopalachari married Alamelu Mangalamma in 1897 when she was ten years old and she gave birth to her son a day after her thirteenth birthday. The couple had five children, three sons: C. R. Narasimhan, C. R. Krishnaswamy, and C. R. Ramaswami, and two daughters: Lakshmi Gandhi ("née" Rajagopalachari) and Namagiri Ammal. Mangamma died in 1916 whereupon Rajagopalachari took sole responsibility for the care of his children. His son Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari Narasimhan was elected to the Lok Sabha from Krishnagiri in the 1952 and 1957 elections and served as a member of parliament for Krishnagiri from 1952 to 1962. He later wrote a biography of his father. Rajagopalachari's daughter Lakshmi married Devdas Gandhi, son of Mahatma Gandhi while his grandsons include biographer Rajmohan Gandhi, philosopher Ramchandra Gandhi and former governor of West Bengal Gopalkrishna Gandhi. Rajagopalachari's great-grandson, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari Kesavan, is a spokesperson of the Congress Party and Trustee of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Rajagopalachari's interest in public affairs and politics began when he commenced his legal practice in Salem in 1900. At the age of 28, he joined the Indian National Congress and participated as a delegate in the 1906 Calcutta session. Inspired by Indian independence activist Bal Gangadhar Tilak, he later became a member of the Salem municipality in 1911. In 1917, he was elected chairman of the municipality and served from 1917 to 1919 during which time he was responsible for the election of the first Dalit member of the Salem municipality. In 1917, he defended Indian independence activist P. Varadarajulu Naidu against charges of sedition and two years later participated in the agitations against the Rowlatt Act. Rajagopalachari was a close friend of the founder of Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company V. O. Chidambaram Pillai as well as greatly admired by Indian independence activists Annie Besant, Subramania Bharati and C. Vijayaraghavachariar.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: After Mahatma Gandhi joined the Indian independence movement in 1919, Rajagopalachari became one of his followers. He participated in the Non-Cooperation movement and gave up his law practice. In 1921, he was elected to the Congress Working Committee and served as the General Secretary of the party before making his first major breakthrough as a leader during the 1922 Indian National Congress session at Gaya when he strongly opposed collaboration with the colonial administration and participation in the diarchial legislatures established by the Government of India Act 1919. While Gandhi was in prison, Rajagopalachari led the group of "No-Changers", individuals against contesting elections for the Imperial Legislative Council and other provincial legislative councils, in opposition to the "Pro-changers" who advocated council entry. When the motion was put to the vote, the "No-changers" won by 1,748 to 890 votes resulting in the resignation of important Congress leaders including Pandit Motilal Nehru and C. R. Das, the President of the Indian National Congress. When the Indian National Congress split in 1923, Rajagopalachari was a member of the Civil Disobedience Enquiry Committee. He was also involved in the Vaikom Satyagraha movement against untouchability during 1924–25. In a public speech on May 27, 1924, he reassured the anxious upper caste Hindus in Vaikom, "Mahatmaji does not want the caste system abolished but holds that untouchability should be abolished...Mahatmaji does not want you to dine with the Thiyyas or the Pulayas. What he wants is that we must be prepared to go near or touch other human beings as you go near a cow or a horse".


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: In the early 1930s, Rajagopalachari emerged as one of the major leaders of the Tamil Nadu Congress. When Gandhi organised the Dandi march in 1930, Rajagopalachari broke the salt laws at Vedaranyam, near Nagapattinam, along with Indian independence activist Sardar Vedaratnam. Rajagopalachari was sentenced to six-months of rigorous imprisonment and was sent to the Trichinopoly Central Prison. He was subsequently elected President of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee. Following the enactment of the Government of India Act in 1935, Rajagopalachari was instrumental in getting the Indian National Congress to participate in the 1937 general elections.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: The Indian National Congress first came to power in the Madras Presidency (also called Madras Province by the British), following the Madras elections of 1937. Except for a six-year period when Madras was under the Governor's direct rule, the Congress administered the Madras Presidency until India became independent on 15 August 1947 as the Dominion of India. At the age of 59, Rajagopalachari won the Madras University seat and entered the Assembly as the first Premier of the Madras Presidency from the Congress party.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: In 1938, when Dalit members of the Madras Legislative Council proposed a Temple Entry Bill, Congress Chief Minister Rajagopalachari asked them to withdraw it. Rajagopalachari issued the Temple Entry Authorization and Indemnity Act 1939, under which restrictions were removed on Dalits and Shanars entering Hindu temples. In the same year, the Meenakshi temple at Madurai was also opened to the Dalits and Shanars. In March 1938, Rajagopalachari introduced the Agricultural Debt Relief Act, to ease the burden of debt on the province's peasant population.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: He also introduced prohibition, along with a sales tax to compensate for the loss of government revenue that resulted from the ban on alcohol. The Provincial Government shut down hundreds of government-run primary schools, citing lack of funds. His opponents said that this deprived many low-caste and Dalit students of their education. His opponents also attributed casteist motives to his government's implementation of Gandhi's Nai Talim scheme into the education system.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Rajagopalachari's tenure as Chief Minister of Madras is largely remembered for the compulsory introduction of Hindi in educational institutions, which made him highly unpopular. This measure sparked off widespread anti-Hindi protests, which led to violence in some places and the jailing of over 1,200 men, women and children who took part in the unrest. Two protesters, Thalamuthu Nadar and Natarasan, were killed during the protests. Dravidar Kazhagam founder Periyar E.V. Ramasamy opposed the decision of C. Rajagopalachari to make learning Hindi compulsory in schools in 1937. During the anti-Hindi agitations, Rajagopalachari was constantly identified as an enemy and destroyer of Tamil thai. The opposition to Rajagopalachari grew because he continued to openly criticize the Anti-Hindi agitation of 1937–40 in the most elitist terms and casually ignored the death of a young protester in 1938 when he was asked about it.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: In 1940, Congress ministers resigned in protest over the declaration of war on Germany without their consent, leaving the governor to take over the reins of the administration. On 21 February 1940, the unpopular new law on the use of Hindi was quickly repealed by the Governor of Madras. Despite its numerous shortcomings, Madras under Rajagopalachari was still considered by political historians as the best-administered province in British India.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Some months after the outbreak of the Second World War, Rajagopalachari resigned as premier along with other members of his cabinet in protest at the declaration of war by the Viceroy of India. Rajagopalachari was arrested in December 1940, in accordance with the Defence of India rules, and sentenced to one year in prison. However, subsequently, Rajagopalachari differed in opposition to the British war effort. He also opposed the Quit India Movement and instead advocated dialogue with the British. He reasoned that passivity and neutrality would be harmful to India's interests at a time when the country was threatened with invasion. He also advocated dialogue with the Muslim League, which was demanding the partition of India. He subsequently resigned from the party and the assembly following differences over resolutions passed by the Madras Congress legislative party and disagreements with the leader of the Madras provincial Congress K. Kamaraj.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Following the end of the war in 1945, elections followed in the Madras Presidency in 1946. During the last years of the war, Kamaraj was requested by Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad to make Rajagopalachari the Premier of Madras Presidency. Kamaraj, President of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee, was forced to make Tanguturi Prakasam as Chief Ministerial candidate, by the elected members, to prevent Rajagopalachari from winning. However, Rajagopalachari did not contest the elections, and Prakasam was elected.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Rajagopalachari was instrumental in initiating negotiations between Gandhi and Jinnah. In 1944, he proposed a solution to the Indian Constitutional tangle. In the same year, he proposed an "absolute majority" threshold of 55 per cent when deciding whether a district should become part of India or Pakistan, triggering a huge controversy among nationalists.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: From 1946 to 1947, Rajagopalachari served as the Minister for Industry, Supply, Education, and Finance in the Interim Government headed by Jawaharlal Nehru.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: When India and Pakistan attained independence, the province of Bengal was partitioned into two, with West Bengal becoming part of India and East Bengal part of Pakistan. At that time, Rajagopalachari was appointed as the first Governor of West Bengal.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Disliked by the Bengali political class for his criticism of Subhas Chandra Bose during the 1939 Tripuri Congress session, Rajagopalachari's appointment as Governor of West Bengal was protested by Bose's brother Sarat Chandra Bose. During his tenure as governor, Rajagopalachari's priorities were to deal with refugees and to bring peace and stability in the aftermath of the Calcutta riots. He declared his commitment to neutrality and justice at a meeting of Muslim businessmen: "Whatever may be my defects or lapses, let me assure you that I shall never disfigure my life with any deliberate acts of injustice to any community whatsoever." Rajagopalachari was also strongly opposed to proposals to include areas from Bihar and Odisha as part of the province of West Bengal. One such proposal by the editor of a newspaper led to the reply:


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: "I see that you are not able to restrain the policy of agitation over inter-provincial boundaries. It is easy to yield to the current pressure of opinion and it is difficult to impose on enthusiastic people any policy of restraint. But I earnestly plead that we should do all we can to prevent ill-will from hardening into a chronic disorder. We have enough ill-will and prejudice to cope with. Must we hasten to create further fissiparous forces?"


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Despite the general attitude of the Bengali political class, Rajagopalachari was highly regarded and respected by Chief Minister Prafulla Chandra Ghosh and his ministry.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: From 10 until 24 November 1947, Rajagopalachari served as Acting Governor-General of India in the absence of the Governor-General Lord Mountbatten, who was on leave in England to attend the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to Mountbatten's nephew Prince Philip. Rajagopalachari led a very simple life in the viceregal palace, washing his own clothes and polishing his own shoes. Impressed with his abilities, Mountbatten made Rajagopalachari his second choice to succeed him after Vallabhbhai Patel, when he was to leave India in June 1948. Rajagopalachari was eventually chosen as the governor-general when Nehru disagreed with Mountbatten's first choice, as did Patel himself. He was initially hesitant but accepted when Nehru wrote to him, "I hope you will not disappoint us. We want you to help us in many ways. The burden on some of us is more than we can carry." Rajagopalachari then served as Governor-General of India from June 1948 until 26 January 1950 and was not only the last Governor-General of India but the only Indian citizen ever to hold the office.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: By the end of 1949, an assumption was made that Rajagopalachari, already Governor-General, would continue as president. Backed by Nehru, Rajagopalachari wanted to stand for the presidential election but later withdrew, due to the opposition of a section of the Indian National Congress mostly made up of North Indians who were concerned about Rajagopalachari's non-participation during the Quit India Movement.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: He was elected to the Constituent Assembly of India from Madras. He was a part of Advisory Committee and Sub-Committee on Minorities. He debated on issues relating to rights of religious denominations.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: At Nehru's invitation, in 1950, Rajagopalachari joined the Union Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio where he served as a buffer between Nehru and Home Minister Sardar Patel and on occasion offered to mediate between the two. Following Patel's death on 15 December 1950, Rajagopalachari was finally made Home Affairs Minister and went on to serve for nearly 10 months. As had his predecessor, he warned Nehru about the expansionist designs of China and expressed regret over the Tibet problem. He also expressed concern over demands for new linguistically based states, arguing that they would generate differences amongst the people.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: By the end of 1951, the differences between Nehru and Rajagopalachari came to the fore. While Nehru perceived the Hindu Mahasabha to be the greatest threat to the nascent republic, Rajagopalachari held the opinion that the Communists posed the greatest danger. He also adamantly opposed Nehru's decision to commute the death sentences passed on those involved in the Telangana uprising and his strong pro-Soviet leanings. Tired of being persistently over-ruled by Nehru concerning critical decisions, Rajagopalachari submitted his resignation on the "grounds of ill-health" and returned to Madras.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: In the 1952 Madras elections, the Indian National Congress was reduced to a minority in the state assembly with a coalition led by the Communist Party of India winning most of the seats. The Congress did not want the Communists taking power or to impose Governor's rule in the state. It brought Rajagopalachari out of retirement to form the government as a consensus candidate. On 31 March 1952, Kamaraj presented a resolution, proposing the election of Rajagopalachari as the leader of the Madras Legislature Congress party. The resolution was approved by the party and Kamaraj revealed that Rajagopalachari had been reluctant to accept the responsibility as Chief Minister and the leader of the Madras Legislature Congress party as his health was fragile and added that by acceding to the request of the party, Rajagopalachari had put country before self. Rajagopalachari did not contest the by-election and on 10 April 1952, Madras Governor Sri Prakasa appointed him as Chief Minister by nomination as MLC without consulting either the Prime Minister Nehru or the ministers in the Madras state cabinet. It was the first time when the governor office was accused of acting inappropriately after independence. P. C. Alexander, a former governor of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra wrote about the appointment of Rajagopalachari as "The most conspicuous case of constitutional impropriety by the Governor in the exercise of discretion to choose the Chief Minister..."


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: On 3 July 1952, Rajagopalachari was then able to prove that he had a majority in the assembly by luring MLAs from opposition parties and independents to join the Indian National Congress. 19 members of the Tamil Nadu Toilers Party led by S. S. Ramasami Padayachi, 5 members of the Madras State Muslim League and 6 members of Commonweal Party also provided their support to Rajagopalachari to prevent the Communists from gaining power. Nehru was furious and wrote to Rajagopalachari saying "the one thing we must avoid giving is the impression that we stick to office and we want to keep others out at all costs." Rajagopalachari, however, refused to contest a by-election and remained as a nominated member of the Legislative Council.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: During Rajagopalachari's tenure as Chief Minister, a powerful movement for a separate Andhra State, comprising the Telugu-speaking districts of the Madras State, gained a foothold. On 19 October 1952, an Indian independence activist and social worker from Madras named Potti Sriramulu embarked on a hunger strike reiterating the demands of the separatists and calling for the inclusion of Madras city within the proposed state. Rajagopalachari remained unmoved by Sriramulu's action and refused to intervene. After fasting for days, Sriramulu eventually died on 15 December 1952, triggering riots in Madras city and the Telugu-speaking districts of the state. Initially, both Rajagopalachari and Prime Minister Nehru were against the creation of linguistically demarcated states but as the law and order situation in the state deteriorated, both were forced to accept the demands. Andhra State was thus created on 1 October 1953 from the Telugu-speaking districts of Madras, with its capital at Kurnool. However, the boundaries of the new state were determined by a commission which decided against the inclusion of Madras city. Though the commission's report suggested the option of having Madras as the temporary capital of Andhra State to allow smooth partitioning of the assets and the secretariat, Rajagopalachari refused to allow Andhra State to have Madras even for a day.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: On 7 June 1952, Rajagopalachari ended the procurement policy and food rationing in the state, abolishing all price and quota controls. His decision was a rejection of a planned economy in favour of a free market economy. He also introduced measures to regulate the running of universities in the state.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: In 1953, he introduced a new education scheme known as the "Modified Scheme of Elementary education 1953", which reduced schooling for elementary school students from five hours to three hours per day and suggested that boys to learn the family crafts from their father and girls housekeeping from their mothers. Rajaji had not even consulted his own cabinet or members of the legislative assembly before the scheme's implementation. He said: “Did Shankara or Ramanuja announce their philosophy after consulting others?". The scheme came in for sharp criticism and evoked strong protests from the Dravidian parties. Two amendments were proposed against the scheme at the Madras State legislative assembly. One advocated for a study by an expert group, while another advocated for the scheme's abolition. Both sides launched publicity campaigns in June 1953. At the Adyar riverside, Rajaji made a speech to the washermen. He stated kuladharma, or each clan's or caste's social obligation. He delivered talks and made radio broadcasts to clarify his views. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam dubbed the scheme "Kula Kalvi Thittam" or Hereditary Education Policy which was put forward with the intention of perpetuating the caste system. and attempted to organize massive demonstrations outside Rajagopalachari's house on 13 and 14 July 1953. The scheme was criticized from political leaders from all sides as casteist. Opponents and critics claimed that the system would reinforce deep-seated, caste-based inequality in society. They regarded the plan as an attempt to place children from the upper caste in an advantageous place than children from oppressed groups, who were simply supposed to learn their father's job. Rajagopalachari argued, It is a mistake to imagine that the school is within the walls. The whole village is a school. The village polytechnic is there, every branch of it, the dhobi, the wheelwright, the cobbler.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: The Scheme was stayed by the house and the Parulekar Committee was commissioned to review the scheme. The committee found the scheme to be sound and endorsed the Government's position. India's President Rajendra Prasad and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru also offered their support to the scheme.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Rajagopalachari closed down 6000 schools, citing financial constraints. Kamaraj opposed this policy and eventually opened 12,000 schools in his tenure.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Despite his government's efforts to postpone the Modified Scheme of Elementary Education 1953, public resistance grew, particularly in response to initiatives that sought to establish Hindi as the national language. The rising unpopularity of his government forced Rajagopalachari to resign on 26 March 1954, as the President of the Madras Congress Legislature Party (CLP) thereby precipitating new elections. Kamaraj's name was proposed by P. Varadarajalu Naidu for the post of CLP leader. M. Bakthavatsalam, another senior Congress leader, fielded C. Subramaniam. On 30 March 1954, the election took place, Subramaniam could garner only 41 votes to Kamaraj's 93 and lost the elections. Rajagopalachari eventually resigned as Chief Minister on 13 April 1954, attributing the decision to poor health.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Following his resignation as Chief Minister, Rajagopalachari took a temporary break from active politics and instead devoted his time to literary pursuits. He wrote a Tamil re-telling of the Sanskrit epic "Ramayana" which appeared as a serial in the Tamil magazine "Kalki" from 23 May 1954 to 6 November 1955. The episodes were later collected and published as "Chakravarthi Thirumagan", a book which won Rajagopalachari the 1958 Sahitya Academy award in Tamil language.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Rajagopalachari tendered his official resignation from the Indian National Congress and along with a number of other dissidents organised the Congress Reform Committee (CRC) in January 1957. K. S. Venkatakrishna Reddiar was elected president and the party fielded candidates in 55 constituencies in the 1957 state assembly elections, to emerge as the second largest party in Madras state with 13 seats in the legislative assembly. The Congress Reform Committee also contested 12 Lok Sabha seats during the 1957 Indian elections. The committee became a fully-fledged political party and was renamed the Indian National Democratic Congress at a state conference held in Madurai on September 28–29, 1957.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: On 4 June 1959, shortly after the Nagpur session of the Indian National Congress, Rajagopalachari, along with Murari Vaidya of the newly established Forum of Free Enterprise (FFE) and Minoo Masani, a classical liberal and critic of socialist Nehru, announced the formation of the new Swatantra Party at a meeting in Madras. Conceived by disgruntled heads of former princely states such as the Raja of Ramgarh, the Maharaja of Kalahandi and the Maharajadhiraja of Darbhanga, the party was conservative in character. Later, N. G. Ranga, K. M. Munshi, Field Marshal K. M. Cariappa and the Maharaja of Patiala joined the effort. Rajagopalachari, Masani and Ranga also tried but failed to involve Jayaprakash Narayan in the initiative.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: In his short essay "Our Democracy", Rajagopalachari explained the necessity for a right-wing alternative to the Congress by saying:


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: since... the Congress Party has swung to the Left, what is wanted is not an ultra or outer-Left [viz. the CPI or the Praja Socialist Party, PSP], but a strong and articulate Right


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: operate not privately and behind the closed doors of the party meeting, but openly and periodically through the electorate.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: He outlined the goals of the Swatantra Party through twenty one "fundamental principles" in the foundation document. The party stood for equality and opposed government control over the private sector. Rajagopalachari sharply criticised the bureaucracy and coined the term "licence-permit Raj" to describe Nehru's elaborate system of permissions and licences required for an individual to set up a private enterprise. Rajagopalachari's personality became a rallying point for the party.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: In 1961, Rajagopalachari criticized Operation Vijay, the Indian military action in which Portuguese rule in Goa was forcibly ended and the territory was incorporated into India, writing that India had "totally lost the moral power to raise her voice against militarism" and had undermined the power and prestige of the United Nations Security Council. According to Rajagopalachari, while Portuguese rule in Goa had been an "offense to Indian nationalism", it was not a greater offense than the Chinese occupation of territories claimed by India or the social evil of untouchability, and the "great adventure" of seizing Goa undermined India's devotion to Gandhian principles of non-violence.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Rajagopalachari's efforts to build an anti-Congress front led to a patch up with his former adversary C. N. Annadurai of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Annadurai grew close to Rajagopalachari and sought an alliance with the Swatantra Party for the 1962 Madras legislative assembly elections. Although there were occasional electoral pacts between the Swatantra Party and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Rajagopalachari remained non-committal on a formal tie-up with the DMK due to its existing alliance with Communists whom he dreaded. The Swatantra Party contested 94 seats in the Madras state assembly elections and won six as well as won 18 parliamentary seats in the 1962 Lok Sabha elections.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: On 26 January 1950, the Government of India adopted Hindi as the official language of the country, but because of objections in non-Hindi-speaking areas, it introduced a provision tentatively making English the second official language on a par with Hindi for a stipulated fifteen-year period to facilitate a switch to Hindi in non-Hindi speaking states. From 26 January 1965 onwards, Hindi was to become the sole official language of the Indian Union and people in non-Hindi speaking regions were compelled to learn Hindi. This led to vehement opposition and just before Republic Day, severe anti-Hindi protests broke out in Madras State. Rajagopalachari had earlier been sharply critical of the recommendations made by the Official Languages Commission in 1957. On 28 January 1956, Rajagopalachari signed a resolution along with Annadurai and Periyar endorsing the continuation of English as the official language. At an All-India Language Conference held on 8 March 1958, he declared: "Hindi is as much foreign to non-Hindi speaking people as English [is] to the protagonists of Hindi". When the Anti-Hindi agitations broke out in 1965, Rajagopalachari completely reversed his 1938 support for the introduction of Hindi and took a strongly anti-Hindi stand in support of the protests, coining the slogan ‘English Ever, Hindi Never’. On 17 January 1965, he convened the Madras state Anti-Hindi conference in Tiruchirapalli. angrily declaring that Part XVII of the Constitution of India which declared that Hindi was the official language should "be heaved and thrown into the Arabian Sea."


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: The fourth elections to the Madras Legislative assembly were held in February 1967. At the age of 88, Rajagopalachari worked to forge a united opposition to the Indian National Congress through a tripartite alliance between the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Swatantra Party and the Forward Bloc. The Congress party was defeated in Madras for the first time in 30 years and the coalition led by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam came to power. C. N. Annadurai served as Chief Minister from 6 March 1967 until his death on 3 February 1969. Rajagopalachari delivered a moving eulogy to Annadurai at his funeral.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: The Swatantra Party also did well in elections in other states and to the Lok Sabha, the directly elected lower house of the Parliament of India. It won 45 Lok Sabha seats in the 1967 general elections and emerged as the single largest opposition party. The principal opposition party in the states of Rajasthan and Gujarat, it also formed a coalition government in Odisha and had a significant presence in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Bihar.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: In 1971, Annadurai's successor M. Karunanidhi relaxed prohibition laws in Tamil Nadu due to the poor financial situation of the state. Rajagopalachari pleaded with him not to repeal prohibition but to no avail and as a result, the Swatantra Party withdrew its support for the state government and instead allied with the Congress, a breakaway faction of the Indian National Congress led by Kamaraj.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: In January 1971, a three-party anti-Congress coalition was established by the Congress (O), Jan Sangh and the Samyukta Socialist Party then on 8 January, the national executive of the Swatantra Party took the unanimous decision to join the coalition. The dissident parties formed an alliance called the National Democratic Front and fought against the Indian National Congress led by Indira Gandhi in the 1971 Indian general elections. However, the alliance fared badly. The Swatantra Party's tally was reduced to 8 seats from 23 in the 1967 elections. The decline of the Swatantra Party was also visible in the 1971 Tamil Nadu Legislative assembly elections in which it won just 19 seats down from 27 in the 1967 elections.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: By November 1972, Rajagopalachari's health had begun to decline and on 17 December the same year, a week after his 94th birthday, he was admitted to the Government Hospital, Madras suffering from uraemia, dehydration and a urinary infection. In the hospital, he was visited by Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, V. R. Nedunchezhiyan, V. V. Giri, Periyar and other state and national leaders. Rajagopalachari's condition deteriorated in the following days as he frequently lost consciousness and he died at 5:44 pm on 25 December 1972 at the age of 94. His son, C. R. Narasimhan, was at his bedside at the time of his death reading him verses from a Hindu holy book. He was a widower for 56 years, and also outlived a son and both his sons-in-law.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: On his death, condolences poured in from all corners of the country. Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India commented:


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: An accomplished writer both in his mother tongue Tamil as well as English, Rajagopalachari was the founder of the Salem Literary Society and regularly participated in its meetings. In 1922, he published "Siraiyil Tavam" (Meditation in jail), a day-to-day account of his first imprisonment by the colonial government from 21 December 1921 to 20 March 1922.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Rajagopalachari started the Tamil Scientific Terms Society in 1916, a group that coined new words in Tamil for terms connected to botany, chemistry, physics, astronomy and mathematics. It received a mixed reception because it relied on Sanskrit roots to coin new Tamil words.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: In 1951, he wrote an abridged retelling of the "Mahabharata" in English, followed by one of the "Ramayana" in 1957. Earlier, in 1961, he had translated Kambar's Tamil "Ramayana" into English. In 1965, he translated the Thirukkural into English and also wrote books on the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads in English as well as works on Socrates and Marcus Aurelius in Tamil. Rajagopalachari often regarded his literary works as the best service he had rendered to the people. In 1958, he was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for works in the Tamil language for his retelling of the "Ramayana" – "Chakravarti Thirumagan". He was also one of the founders of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, an organisation dedicated to the promotion of education and Indian culture. In 1959, the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan published his book: "Hinduism: Doctrine and Way of Life".


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Apart from his literary works, Rajagopalachari also composed a devotional song "Kurai Onrum Illai" devoted to Lord Venkateswara, a song set to music and a regular at Carnatic concerts. Rajagopalachari composed a benediction hymn sung by M. S. Subbulakshmi at the United Nations General Assembly in 1967.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: In 1954, during US Vice-president Richard Nixon's nineteen country Asian tour, he was lectured by Rajagopalachari on the consuming emotional quality of nuclear weapons. The pair discussed spiritual life, particularly reincarnation and predestination. Nixon wrote three pages of notes recording Rajagopalachari's words, claiming in his memoirs thirty-six years later that the afternoon "had such a dramatic effect on me that I used many of his thoughts in my speeches over the next several years."


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: While on a tour to the United States as a member of the Gandhi Peace Foundation delegation, in September 1962, Rajagopalachari visited American President John F. Kennedy at the White House. Rajagopalachari warned Kennedy of the dangers of embarking on an arms race, even one which the US could win. At the end of the meeting Kennedy remarked "This meeting had the most civilizing influence on me. Seldom have I heard a case presented with such precision, clarity and elegance of language". On 1 May 1955, Rajagopalachari appealed to the Government of India to cancel receipt of aid from America if the country continued with its nuclear tests. India's use of military force against Portugal to capture the Portuguese enclave of Goa was criticised by Rajagopalachari who said of the operation and subsequent acts of international diplomacy, "India has totally lost the moral power to raise her voice against the use of military power."


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: E. M. S. Namboodiripad, a prominent Communist Party leader, once remarked that Rajagopalachari was the Congress leader he respected the most despite the fact he was also someone with whom he had the most differences. Of Rajagopalachari, Periyar, one of his foremost political rivals remarked "he was a leader unique and unequaled, who lived and worked for high ideals".


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Regarded as a pioneer of social reform, Rajagopalachari issued temple entry proclamations in the Madras Presidency and worked towards the upliftment of Dalits. He played a pivotal role in the conclusion of the Poona Pact between B. R. Ambedkar and the Indian National Congress and spearheaded the Mahabal Temple Entry program in 1938. He was a staunch advocate of prohibition and was elected Secretary of the Prohibition League of India in 1930. On assuming the premiership of the Madras Presidency, he introduced prohibition throughout the province. where it remained in vogue until its removal by M. Karunanidhi over thirty years later in 1971 and again prohibited by Karunanidhi in 1974 until it was reintroduced by M.G. Ramachandran in 1981. Rajagopalachari was also an active member of the All India Spinners Association. and a strong opponent of "linguistic states", which he felt would bring anarchy to India.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: He is also remembered for his literary contributions, some of which are considered modern-day classics. He frequently wrote articles for "Kalki" and his own journal "Swarajya", of which Philip Spratt was editor.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Richard Casey, Governor of Bengal from 1944 to 1946, regarded Rajagopalachari as the wisest man in India. The best possible tribute to Rajagopalachari was from Mahatma Gandhi who referred to him as the "keeper of my conscience". Today, his private papers are part of the archives at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, at Teen Murti House, Delhi.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: On 21 August 1978, a portrait of Rajagopalachari is put in the Central Hall of Parliament House. The portrait of Rajagopalachari, painted by N. S. Subbakrishna, was unveiled by the then President of India, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Critics opine that he failed to gauge the thoughts and feelings of the masses in provincial and then state administrations. His introduction of Hindi and the Modified Scheme of Elementary education 1953 (dubbed by its critics as Hereditary Education Policy) have been the target of extensive criticism. His pacifist stance during the Quit India Movement and his C. R. Formula angered most of his colleagues in the Indian National Congress.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Referring to Rajagopalachari, Sarojini Naidu, who was never on good terms with him, remarked that 'the Madras fox was a dry logical Adi Shankaracharya while Nehru was the noble, compassionate Buddha'.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Although his popularity at the regional level fluctuated greatly, Rajagopalachari was able to exercise his stranglehold over provincial politics mainly because he was favored by national leaders such as Gandhi, Patel and Nehru. The President of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee, K. Kamaraj, and a majority of the provincial leaders opposed him in the 1940s, Rajagopalachari clung on to a position of influence in regional politics through support from his colleagues at the center.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Rajagopalachari has always been the archetype of the Tamil Brahmin nemesis of the Dravidian movement. He was accused of being pro-Sanskrit and pro-Hindi, despite his fierce support for the Anti-Hindi agitations of 1965. Rajagopalachari claimed that jati was “the most important element in the organization of our society”. Christophe Jaffrelot argued that Rajagopalachari and other political leaders including Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel praised the caste system both indirectly and directly as a glue that binds the social structure together. As a governor-general, Rajaji stated, The food is grown, the cloth is woven, the sheep are shorn, the shoes are stitched, the scavenging is done, the cartwheels and the ploughs are built and repaired because, thank God, the respective castes are still there and the homes are trade schools as well and the parents are masters as well, to whom the children are automatically apprenticed.


title: C. Rajagopalachari

text: Vasanthi Srinivasan, Gandhi's Conscience Keeper: C Rajagopalachari and Indian Politics (Permanent Black 2009)


title: Green Room (film)

text: Green Room is a 2015 American horror-thriller film written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier, and produced by Neil Kopp, Victor Moyers and Anish Savjani. Starring Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner and Patrick Stewart, the film focuses on a punk band who find themselves attacked by neo-Nazi skinheads after witnessing a murder at a remote club in the Pacific Northwest. The film came from Saulnier's desire to direct a thriller set in a green room.


title: Green Room (film)

text: Principal photography took place during October 2014 in Portland, Oregon. The film was financed and produced by Broad Green Pictures. "Green Room" was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. At the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, the film finished third in the balloting for the Grolsch People's Choice Midnight Madness Award. The film began a limited release on April 15, 2016, before being widely released on May 13 through A24. It appeared on many critics' lists as one of the best films of 2016 and received a 2017 Empire Award nomination for Best Horror, but grossed just $3 million against a budget of $5 million.


title: Green Room (film)

text: D.C. punk band the Ain't Rights—Pat, Sam, Reece, and Tiger—are travelling the Pacific Northwest, low on funds. After their gig is cancelled, a radio host arranges a new show in a rural area outside Portland through his cousin, Daniel. Arriving at the venue, they realize it's a neo-Nazi skinhead bar and they're opening for an NSBM band, Cowcatcher. They go ahead with the show anyway. During their set, Pat notes two young women, Emily and Amber, looking disturbed and being shepherded out of sight.


title: Green Room (film)

text: As the band is about to leave, Pat returns to the bar's green room to retrieve Sam's cellphone, where he stumbles upon Amber and the members of Cowcatcher standing over the body of Emily, who's been stabbed to death by Werm. Pat calls the police as he flees, but is caught, and bar employees Gabe and Big Justin capture the rest of the band and confine them in the green room with Amber. Gabe pays one young skinhead to stab another to create a cover story for the police who respond to Pat's call. He consults with the bar's owner, skinhead leader Darcy, who decides all witnesses need to be eliminated. He arranges for Cowcatcher to be gifted poisoned heroin, while more skinheads assemble at the bar, waiting until nightfall to kill the band and Amber.