Dr Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya (),was born in a
Telugu 6000 Niyogi Brahmin family on November 24, 1880 in
Gundugolanu village, Krishna district (now part of West Godavari district) in
Andhra Pradesh, was an Indian independence activist and political leader in the state of
Andhra Pradesh.
Pattabhi graduated from the prestigious
Madras Christian College, fulfilled his ambition to become a medical practitioner by securing a M.B.C.M. degree. He started his practice as a doctor in the coastal town of
Machilipatnam. He left his lucrative practice to join the freedom fighting movement. He was recruited to run for the presidency of the
Indian National Congress as the candidate closest to
Mohandas Gandhi, against the more-radical
Subhas Bose in 1939. He lost owing to Bose's rising popularity and the belief that Pattabhi favored the inclusion of
Tamil-majority districts in a future
Telugu state in independent India.
Serving on the
Congress Working Committee when
Quit India was launched in 1942, Pattabhi was arrested with the entire committee and incarcerated for three years without outside contact in the fort in
Ahmednagar,
Maharashtra. During this time he maintained a detailed
diary of day-to-day life during imprisonment, which was published later as
Feathers and Stones .He is also the author of
The History of the Congress published in 1935 with an introductory note given by the Rajendra Prasad. He ran successfully for Congress presidency in 1948, winning with the support of......
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