Tanguturi Prakasam Pantulu (టంగుటూరి ప్రకాశం పంతులు ; 23 August 1872 – 20 May 1957) was an Indian politician and freedom fighter, Chief Minister of the Madras Presidency, and subsequently became the first Chief Minister of the new Andhra State, created by the partition of Madras State along linguistic lines. He was also known as Andhra Kesari
(literally, the "Lion of Andhra").The Andhrapradesh Government issued
G.O on 10-AUG-2014 declaring his Birth Anniversary as state festival.
He was born to Subbamma and Gopala Krishnaya, in a Niyogi Telugu Brahmin family, in the village of Vinodarayunipalem (or Vinoda Rayudu Palem), 26 km from Ongole in Madras Presidency (now Prakasam district, Andhra Pradesh).
When he was 11, his father died and his mother had to run a boarding
house at Ongole, a profession that was looked down upon at the time.
When E. Hanumantha Rao Naidu, his teacher at school, moved to Rajahmundry, he took Prakasam along with him as that place had better opportunities for education. He acted in Gayopakhyanam by Chilakamarti Lakshmi Narasimham in 1890 along with his teacher. He was interested in becoming a lawyer since childhood, but Prakasam failed his matriculation examination. However, he managed to go to Madras and become a second-grade pleader.
Returning to Rajahmundry, he eventually became a successful lawyer. He
was elected as Municipal Chairman of Rajahmundry in 1904 when he was 31
years old. This election was a tough one at that point in time.
After completing the barrister course with a certificate of honour in London, Prakasam relocated to Madras high court. He was one of the only Telugu barristers to be successful; until then, most of the successful lawyers were either European or Tamil. He dealt with both civil and criminal cases. Of the latter, one of the important cases was the Ashe murder case. Ashe was the Collector of Tirunelveli and was shot dead in 1907. This was at a time when Bipin Chandra Pal,
the nationalist leader from Bengal, was touring the region, making
fiery speeches on nationalism. Prakasam defended one of the accused and
ensured that he got away with a light sentence. Prakasam also edited Law Times,
a legal magazine. The same year he presided over Bipin Chandra Pal’s
lecture at Madras when others were afraid to come forward, given that
the government of the day considered Pal’s speeches to border on
sedition. He started attending the Congress Party sessions regularly after the Lucknow Pact and signed the Satyagraha pledge in October 1921. He gave up his lucrative law practice. He also started and was the working editor of a newspaper Swarajya (literally self-rule). The paper was published simultaneously in English, Telugu and Tamil.
Prakasam ran a national school and a khādī production centre. He was elected the general secretary of the Congress Party in December 1921 at the Ahmedabad session. Whenever there was unrest or strife such as a riot, he tried to be there so as to comfort people. He visited Punjab during Akali Satyagraha and the Hindu-Muslim riots in Multan. He toured Kerala during the Moplah rebellion despite a ban on visitors from outside the area and had his property at Ooty attached by the government as a consequence. In 1922, during the Non-cooperation movement, he organised a demonstration by 30,000 Congress volunteers at Guntur. In 1926, he was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly on a Congress Party ticket.
When the Simon Commission visited India,
the congress party decided to boycott it with the slogan "Simon, go
back". There were a host of reasons for this boycott, the most important
being that the commission did not have a single Indian in its ranks.
The commission was greeted with demonstration of black flags wherever it
went. When the commission visited Madras on 3 February 1928, the police
did not allow protests in some sensitive areas of Madras. Nevertheless,
the crowd grew large and restive near the Madras High Court at Parry's Corner
and the police resorted to firing with a view to control it. A young
man named Pardha Saradhi was killed on the spot. The police warned the
people that they would shoot if anyone tried to come near the body. At
this, Prakasam grew enraged and tore open his shirt, baring his chest
and daring the police to shoot at him. Understanding the situation, the
police gave way to him and other supporters.[citation needed] After this incident, he was known respectfully as "Andhra Kesari" (the Lion of Andhra).
In 1930, when the Congress party wanted all the legislators to
resign, he did so but was not convinced about its alternative programme
and hence contested and won the by-election. He joined the Congress Party led by Madan Mohan Malaviya
but resigned from it as well and persuaded others to do so after
Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party broke the salt tax law with the Dandi March.
Prakasam also resigned as a legislator and was at the forefront in
breaking the tax law at Madras. In the meantime, he had to suspend the
publication of Swarajya due to the high deposit demanded by the government. It was revived after the Gandhi–Irwin Pact
of 1931 but it had to be suspended again due to cash flow problems.
Unsuccessful attempts were made to restart it again in 1935.
In 1937, Congress Party contested the provincial elections and achieved majority in Madras province, among others. Though Prakasam was in the running for Chief Minister’s post, he made way for Rajaji, who returned to active politics as per the wishes of the Congress Working Committee. Prakasam became the revenue minister – his major contribution was the founding and chairing of the Zamindari Enquiry Committee which looked at the structural distortions in agriculture perpetrated due to the Zamindari system followed by the British Government. With the onset of World War II,
the Congress ministries resigned from office as they were not consulted
by the government about India’s participation. Prakasam was the first
prominent leader from South India to offer individual satyagraha against the war effort in 1941.
Prakasam was arrested and jailed for more than three years for participating in the Quit India movement of 1942. After his release in 1945, he toured South India to get back in touch with the masses.
In 1946, after the Congress' victory in elections in Madras Presidency, Prakasam became the chief minister on 30 April 1946, as he and Kamaraj, a Tamil leader, were against Rajaji – the choice of leaders such as Gandhi and Nehru –
becoming the chief minister. However, the government lasted for only 11
months, as it was felt that Prakasam was not accommodating enough to
various interests and corruption charges. Mahatma Gandhi faulted
Prakasam for accepting gifts and using party funds, ordered Prakasam to
resign from congress party.
During his tenure as Premier, Prakasam publicly declared his
intention to scrap all existing textile industries in the province and
replace them with khadi manufacturing and weaving units. In February 1947, Communists broke into a full-scale revolt. On Vallabhbhai Patel's advice, Prakasam responded with widespread arrests and tough crackdown on arsonists.
