1 March in Indian and World History is celebrated, observed, and remembered for various reasons. 1 March is the birth anniversary of Tsangyang Gyatso, Jashwant Singh, Paresh Chandra Bhattacharya, Puthuvayil Narayana Panicker, Kartar Singh Duggal, Rama Prasad Goenka, Monu Mukhopadhyay, Sundarrajan, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Nitish Kumar, and Salil Ashok Ankola.
1 March is also observed as the death anniversary of Sohan Lal Dwivedi, Vasantrao Banduji, Manmohan Desai, and Fateh Singh Rathore.
Birth Anniversary
1 March in Indian history is celebrated as the birth anniversary of the following personalities:
Tsangyang Gyatso (1 March 1683 – 15 November 1706), the 6th Dalai Lama. He was a Monpa by ethnicity and was born at Urgelling Monastery. He was of extremely high intelligence, liberal to a fault, fond of pleasure. He disappeared near Qinghai, possibly murdered, on his way to Beijing in 1706. The 6th Dalai Lama composed poems and songs that have become popular not only in modern-day Tibet but all across China. He was born on 1 March 1683 in Arunachal Pradesh, India.
Jashwant Singh (1 March 1851 – 12 December 1893), the ruler of the princely state of Bharatpur from 1853 to 1893 in Rajasthan, India. He was the successor of Maharaj Ram Singh. Jaswant Singh was born on 1 March 1851, Rajasthan, India.
Paresh Chandra Bhattacharya, the seventh Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 1 March 1962 to 30 June 1967. P C Bhattacharya, a member of the Indian Audit and Account Service, served as Secretary in the Finance Ministry and later as Chairman of the State Bank of India prior to his appointment as Governor. His tenure saw the establishment of the Industrial Development Bank of India (1964), and the establishment of the Agricultural Refinance Corporation (1963) and the Unit Trust of India (1964). Other developments were the introduction of the Credit Authorisation Scheme as an instrument of Credit Regulation, the devaluation of the Rupee in 1966, with a package of measures including import liberalization and elimination of export subsidies. He was born on 1 March 1903 in West Bengal, India.
Puthuvayil Narayana Panicker (1 March 1909 – 19 June 1995), known as the father of the library movement. His activities of the Kerala Grandhasala Sangham initiated and triggered a popular cultural movement in Kerala which produced universal literacy in the state. Panicker was born on 1 March 1909.
Kartar Singh Duggal (1 March 1917 – 26 January 212), an Indian writer who wrote in Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, and English. His works include short stories, novels, dramas and plays. His works have been translated into Indian and foreign languages. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 1988. In 2007, he was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, the highest honor given by Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of Letters.
Rama Prasad Goenka (1 March 1930 – 14 April 213), the founder and Chairman Emeritus of the RPG Group, a multi-sector Indian industrial conglomerate. He was born on 1 March 1930.
Monu Mukhopadhyay (1 March 1930 – 6 December 2020), an Indian actor who worked in Bengali language films and television serials. He had worked with directors Satyajit Ray and Ron and Joffy also. He is remembered for his portrayal as Machhli Baba in the 1979 film Joy Baba Felunath. Manu Mukherjee was born on 1 March 1930.
Sundarrajan (17 March 1935 – 1 March 2003), an Indian actor and director who performed predominantly in Tamil language films and plays. He was popularly known as Major Sundarrajan. He was born on 17 March 1935 in Madurai, Tamandu, India.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, an Indian politician and a former member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He was the Chief Minister of West Bengal from 2000 to 211. He was the MLA of the Jadavpur constituency for twenty-four years until 13 May 211. He was born on 1 March 1944 in Kolkata, India.
Nitish Kumar, the 22nd Chief Minister of Bihar. From 215, he served the state in the same role for five different occasions. Nitish studied engineering and did a stint with the Bihar State Electricity Board before turning to politics. Perhaps his first major lesson in the art of political mobilization came in the mid-1970s when he participated in Jayaprakash Narayan’s mass movement against the Indira Gandhi-led Congress regime. He is affiliated with Janata Dal (United) political party. Kumar’s government was hailed by the state as a pleasant change from a long spell of rampant corruption, crimes, and misgovernance. As the Chief Minister, he appointed more than 100,000 schoolteachers, ensured that doctors worked in primary health centers, electrified many villages, paved roads, cut female illiteracy by half, turned around a lawless state by cracking down on criminals, and doubled the income of the average Bihari. Nitish Kumar was born on 1 March 1951 in Bakhtiarpur, Bihar, India.
Salil Ashok Ankola, an Indian actor and former international cricketer. Salil has played one Test match and twenty-One Day Internationals (ODIs) from 1989 to 1997 for India. He was born on 1 March 1968 in Karnataka, India.
Read More: 28 February in Indian and World History
Death Anniversary
1 March in Indian history is remembered as the death anniversary of the following personalities:
Sohan Lal Dwivedi (22 February 1906 – 1 March 1988) was an Indian poet. He is known for his patriotic poems such as Tumhe Naman, a poem on Mahatma Gandhi, Ali Racho Chand, Khadi Geet, Giriraj, Nayanon ki Resham Dori se, Mathrubhumi, Prakriti Sandesh, Jay Rashtra Nishan, Re Man, Vandana and Himalay. He died on 1 March 1988.
Vasantrao Banduji (13 November 1917 – 1 March 1989), an Indian politician. He was known as the first modern Maratha strongman and the first mass leader in Maharashtrian politics. Patil served as Chief Minister of Maharashtra from 17 May 1977 to 18 July 1978 and again from 2 February 1983 to 1 June 1985. He also served as the Governor of Rajasthan for a little under two years from 1985 to 1987. He died on 1 March 1989 in Mumbai, India.
Manmohan Desai (26 February 1937 – 1 March 1994) was a veteran Indian film producer and director. A common theme in his films were the lost and found plot where family members would be separated and reunited. He had a string of hits with Amitabh Bachchan in the 70s and early 80s which helped cement Bachchan’s status as a superstar of Indian cinema. He died on 1 March 1994 in Mumbai, India.
Fateh Singh Rathore (10 August 1938 – 1 March 2011), an Indian tiger conservationist. Fateh Singh joined the Indian Forest Service in 1960 and was part of the first Project Tiger team. He was widely acknowledged as the tiger guru for his legendary knowledge of the big cat. He worked for over 50 years in wildlife conservation. Fateh Singh died on 1 March 2011.
Read More: 27 February in Indian and World History
Notable events on 1 March in Indian and World history
1 March 1776 – Pact between the Peshwa (chief minister) of the Marāthā people and the supreme government of the British East India Company in Calcutta. It was an example of the tangled relations between the British and the Marāthās1 March in Indian and World History
1 March 1910 – Archer Martin, a British chemist, and Nobel Prize Laureate, was born.
1 March 1939 – Warehouse No. 15 of the Imperial Japanese Army’s Kinya ammunition dump in Hirakata, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, suffered a catastrophic explosion. Subsequent explosions followed over the next few days as the depot burned, for a total of 29 explosions by 3 March. Japanese officials reported that 94 people died, 604 were injured, and 821 houses were damaged, with 4,425 households in all suffering the effects of the explosions.
1 March 1941 – Bulgaria signs the Tripartite Pact, allying itself with the Axis powers.
1 March 1995 – Georges J. F. Kohler, a German immunologist, and Nobel Prize Laureate, died.
1 March 1991 – Uprisings against Saddam Hussein begin in Iraq. Uprising continued for more than a month. It led to exodus of 1.8 million refugees from the country and death of more than 25,000 people mostly civilian.
1 March 2019 – Zhores Alferov a Russian physicist, academic, and Nobel Prize Laureate, died.
1 March is celebrated as Zero Discrimination Day to celebrate the right to live a full and productive life with respect and dignity. It is an annual day celebrated on 1 March each year by the United Nations (UN) and other international organizations.