Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, (born 1879, Hosur, India, died December 25, 1972, in Madras (Chennai]), the only Indian governor-general of independent India. He was a founder and leader of the Swatantra, Independent Party in 1959. December 25, 2020 marks his 48th death anniversary.

“I know they won’t listen to me. But when the history of India is written, no future historian should pity us that in a country where great saints have lived, there was not a single Indian to point out the absurdity of the ‘permit license quota raj’.”

These are the words of Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, the last governor-general of India and the founder of Swatantra Party, India’s first liberal party. While political parties from across the spectrum are busy appropriating leaders from Gandhi to Ambedkar and Patel to Bose, Rajaji remains consigned to oblivion in the mainstream politics of India.

Leaving a lucrative law practice, Rajagopalachari edited Mohandas K. Gandhi’s paper Young India while Gandhi was in prison in the early 1920s. For 20 years (1922–42) he served on the Working Committee of the Indian National Congress and was prime minister of his home state of Madras (now Tamil Nadu) from 1937 to 1939.

In June 1948 Rajagopalachari took over as governor-general of India’s interim government, serving until January 1950. From 1952 to 1954 he was again chief minister of Madras. He received the Bharat Ratna award in 1954 for meritorious service to India.

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