Personalities

Group Gujarat's eminent people by the ROLE they played, not by alphabet — roles are how questions are framed. NATION-BUILDERS: Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Morarji Desai (first Prime Minister from Gujarat), Vithalbhai Patel. SOCIAL REFORMERS AND SAINTS: Dayanand Saraswati (born at Tankara, founder of Arya Samaj), Swaminarayan, Narsinh Mehta, Ravishankar Maharaj (the 'Mook Sevak'), Indulal Yagnik. INSTITUTION-BUILDERS: Vikram Sarabhai (space), Verghese Kurien (Amul and the White Revolution, though Kerala-born he worked at Anand), Tribhuvandas Patel (Kaira co-operative), Sayajirao Gaekwad III. WRITERS AND SCHOLARS: covered under literature. Every Gujarat GK paper asks 'who founded / who led / who was first' — the role grouping answers all three shapes.

• Dadabhai Naoroji: the Grand Old Man, first Indian MP in Britain.

  Born in Bombay to a Gujarati Parsi family, Dadabhai Naoroji was elected to the British House of Commons in 1892 — the first Indian to sit in the UK Parliament — and authored the 'drain of wealth' theory explaining India's poverty under colonial rule.

• Vikram Sarabhai: space. Homi Bhabha and Gujarat: not born there, but PRL is his institute in Ahmedabad.

  Vikram Sarabhai, born in Ahmedabad, founded ISRO and the Physical Research Laboratory — the clean Gujarat-and-science pairing. Do not confuse him with Homi Bhabha, the architect of India's nuclear programme, who was not Gujarati but whose associated science institutions sometimes appear alongside Sarabhai's in the same question.

• 1Dadabhai Naoroji, a Gujarati Parsi, was the first Indian elected to the British House of Commons (1892) and developed the drain-of-wealth theory.
• 2Vikram Sarabhai, born in Ahmedabad, founded ISRO and the Physical Research Laboratory, and is regarded as the father of the Indian space programme.
• 3Dhirubhai Ambani, born in Chorwad, Gujarat, founded Reliance Industries and pioneered mass retail equity investing in India.
• 4Verghese Kurien, though not Gujarati by birth, built the Anand pattern dairy cooperative model from Gujarat and is called the father of the White Revolution.
• 5Morari Bapu, a renowned Ram Katha exponent, and Pandit Omkarnath Thakur, a leading Hindustani classical vocalist, are both prominent Gujarati cultural figures of the 20th century.

• Mahatma Gandhi was born at Porbandar on 2 October 1869 and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at Nadiad on 31 October 1875.
• Morarji Desai, from Gujarat, became Prime Minister of India in 1977 and is the only Indian to receive Pakistan's Nishan-e-Pakistan along with the Bharat Ratna.
• Swami Dayanand Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj, was born at Tankara in Morbi district of Saurashtra.
• Vikram Sarabhai, born at Ahmedabad, is regarded as the father of the Indian space programme and founded the Physical Research Laboratory at Ahmedabad; ISRO's Thiruvananthapuram centre is named after him.
• Verghese Kurien led the Amul co-operative at Anand and the Operation Flood White Revolution, working with Tribhuvandas Patel of the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union.
• Ravishankar Maharaj, known as the 'Mook Sevak' of Gujarat, worked among the poor and inaugurated the state of Gujarat on 1 May 1960.

• Homi Bhabha, architect of India's nuclear programme, was Parsi but not from Gujarat — do not credit him as a Gujarati personality even though PRL, which he helped inspire, sits in Ahmedabad.

• Standard Gujarat state board textbook on Gujarat's society and culture
• Gujarat State Gazetteer — biographical volume
• Standard Gujarat state board history textbook (modern Gujarat)

• Gujarat State Portal
• GPSC — official syllabus & papers