Lala Jagat Narain Chopra | |
---|---|
Personal details | |
Born |
Gujranwala, Pakistan |
31 May 1899
Died | 9 September 1981 Jalandhar, Punjab |
(aged 82)
Spouse(s) | Shanti Devi |
Children | 2 sons: Romesh Chander and Vijay Kumar Chopra |
Residence | Jalandhar |
Religion | Hindu - Arya Samaj |
Lala Jagat Narain (31 May 1899 − 9 September 1981) was the founder of the Hind Samachar group. Lala Jagat Narain, a Chopra Khatri and Congress Party leader, was born at Wazirabad, Gujranwala District (now in Pakistan) in 1899. He graduated from D.A.V. College, Lahore in 1919, and joined the Law College, Lahore. He left his studies in 1920at the call of Mahatma Gandhi to join the non-co-operation movement. He was sentenced in two and a half years imprisonment, in jail he acted as Lala Lajpat Rai's Personal Secretary. In 1924 he became the editor of Bhai Parmanand's Weekly Hindi Paper Akashvani. He participated in all the Satyagraha movement and was in jail for about nine years on different occasions. His wife was in jail for six months. His eldest son, Ramesh Chandra, was arrested during the Quit India movement.
Narain was President of the Lahore City Congress Committee for seven years, leader of the Congress Party in the Lahore Corporation, a member of the Punjab Provincial Congress Committee for more than thirty years and member of the All-India Congress Committee for about 30 years.
Narain had come to Jalandhar as a refugee from Lahore and started an Urdu daily, Hind Samachar in 1948. Urdu then was the language of the salaried urban men of Punjab, the people who could afford the time and money for a newspaper. But Urdu in independent India lacked government support. In the schools of Punjab, Punjabi and Hindi became the languages and Gurmukhi and Devanagari the scripts of instruction. In 1965, Jagat Narain founded Punjab Kesari, a Hindi daily.