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Can you identify these South Asian personalities?

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 Can you identify this South Asian country?

4-Name the country
Population: 216,108,345 (July 1999 est.) 
Area: three times the size of Texas
Religions: Muslim 88%, Protestant 5%
-Declared its independence in 1945 from the Netherlands
Capital: Jakarta

 

 

 


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 Mohandas Gandhi.  For many years, Gandhi had been friendly with Britain, but he became extremely upset at the passing of the Rowlatt Bills, which were bills that stated that those suspected of sedition could be imprisoned without trial. He immediately called a Satyagraha ("firmness in truth", civil disobedience) struggle against Great Britain. Gandhi had meant for the citizens to use ahimsa (non-injury) methods of protesting, but they protested violently in some areas, leading to the killing of 400 Indians.

    By 1920, Gandhi was extremely influential among Indians. He quickly reformed the old Indian National Congress into a newer, more serious organization. He called a huge boycott of British goods and services, including schools and the like. With a leader like Gandhi, the Indian people were no longer afraid of their foreign rulers and began protesting. When police arrived, they lined up to be arrested, hoping to clog the system and stop the British. Thousands were arrested and the movement was mostly a success, but a few violent outbreaks like in the previous protest caused the INC and their president (Gandhi) to call the protest off and admit it a mistake. Gandhi himself was arrested shortly afterward in 1922 and sentenced to six years, but he was released four years early due to appendicitis. However, even this short sentence took its toll. The INC had split into two parts and the strong bond that had grown between the Hindus and Muslims when they protested together had dissolved as well. Small struggles still took place in villages, prompting Gandhi to fast for three weeks, which brought about peace effectively.

    Perhaps his most amazing feat was the Satyagraha against the salt tax in 1930. Instead of buying salt from the British, Gandhi and several thousand other Indians marched to the Arabian Sea and made their own salt buy evaporating seawater. As a result, over 60,000 people were jailed. A year later, Gandhi met with Lord Irwin and the two agreed to allow Gandhi to act as a representative at conferences in London, but the conferences failed to help them, and upon Gandhi's return to India, he and the other leaders of the INC were jailed. While in jail, they found out that the new constitution would discriminate against the "untouchable" caste by placing them in a different electorate. Gandhi immediately started fasting for change. The government knew they had to change this portion of the constitution quickly, for if Gandhi were to die, revolution would be imminent. Gandhi resigned as president of the INC in 1934 and left the organization entirely to pursue a plan to educate "From the bottom up", starting with the rural areas of India, which accounted for 85% of the population. He encouraged the peasants to spin and weave to supplement their meager incomes. He himself eventually moved to Sevagram and centered his program there.

    When World War Two started, the INC supported Britain on the condition that they withdraw completely from India. Gandhi demanded their withdrawal as well. The British simply jailed all of them. When the end of the war came, India became independent shortly afterward, in 1947, but it split as it became independent, forming Pakistan. Gandhi was upset that Indian freedom did not come with Indian unity, but nonetheless plunged himself into helping repair the riot ravaged areas and fasting for peace in those places where the fighting continued over religion. In that way, he performed two great feats by stopping the riots in Calcutta in September of 1947 as well as causing a truce in Delhi in January of 1948. Alas, he was not able to celebrate freedom for long, as he was shot to death on January 30, 1948, on his way to the evening prayer. Yet he died with freedom, peace, and love within his heart.


Ho Chi Minh. To Western eyes, it seemed inconceivable that Ho would make the tremendous sacrifices he did. But in 1946, as war with the French loomed, he cautioned them, "You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, yet even at those odds, you will lose and I will win." The French, convinced of their superiority, ignored his warning and suffered grievously as a result. Senior American officers similarly nurtured the illusion that their sophisticated weapons would inevitably break enemy morale. But, as Ho's brilliant commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap, told me in Hanoi in 1990, his principal concern had been victory. When I asked him how long he would have resisted the U.S. onslaught, he thundered, "Twenty years, maybe 100 years--as long as it took to win, regardless of cost." The human toll was horrendous. An estimated 3 million North and South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died. In 1940, Japan's legions swept into Indochina and French officials in Vietnam, loyal to the pro-German Vichy administration in France, collaborated with them. Nationalists in the region greeted the Japanese as liberators, but to Ho they were no better than the French. Slipping across the Chinese frontier into Vietnam--his first return home in three decades--he urged his disciples to fight both the Japanese and the French. There, in a remote camp, he founded the Viet Minh, an acronym for the Vietnam Independence League, from which he derived his nom de guerre, Ho Chi Minh--roughly "Bringer of Light."

What he brought was a spirit of rebellion--against first the French and later the Americans. As Ho's war escalated in the mid-1960s, it became clear to Lyndon Johnson that Vietnam would imperil his presidency. In 1965, Johnson tried a diplomatic approach. Accustomed to dispensing patronage to recalcitrant Congressmen, he was confident that the tactic would work. "Old Ho can't turn me down," L.B.J. said. But Ho did. Any settlement, he realized, would mean accepting a permanent partition and forfeiting his dream to unify Vietnam under his flag.


Ferdinand Marcos. November, 1964. With Imelda's help in her first active political role as campaign manager, wins the Nacionalista Party nomination, besting NP stalwarts.

1965. Involved in one of the most vicious and expensive presidential campaigns in Philippine electoral history up to that time. Harnesses Imelda's capacity to campaign extensively with her coterie of Blue Ladies. Both candidates spend nearly 32 million pesos for the campaign; at one point, even Imelda's betrothal and wedding rings have to be pawned.

November, 1965. Elected sixth President of the Republic, defeating Macapagal by 670,000 votes.

January, 1966. In his State-of-the-Nation-Address, vows to be a "leader of the people." Reiterates his inaugural vow "to make this nation great again."

1969. Re-elected President for another four year term, defeating Sergio Osmena, Jr. This is the first Presidential re-election in Philippine history.

1972. Declares Martial law and suspends the 1935 Constitution which would have denied him third term.
Obituary of Ferdinand Marcos http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0911.html


  Gandhi

Ho Chi Minh

Ferdinand Marcos

 Can you identify this South Asian country?

4-Name the country: Indonesia

Blank Outline Map of Indonesia http://geography.about.com/library/blank/blxindonesia.htm



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