Freedom Fighter Lala Lajpat Rai popularly known as ‘Punjab Kesari’ or the ‘Lion of Punjab’ was born on January 28th in 1865 . He was a great leader, historian, eminent editor, social and religious reformer, and powerful orator.

Lala Lajpat Rai along with Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal formed the trinity of revolutionary nationalist leaders ‘Lal-Bal-Pal; which found basic faults in the “Moderate” politics – what they called “political mendicancy” and the inadequacies of gradual constitutional progress. This nationalist leader played a vital role in India’s independence movement.

He was elected President of the Indian National Congress at the Calcutta session (1920).

Lala Lajpat Rai was a follower of Dayanand Saraswati and helped establish the nationalistic Dayanand Anglo-Vedic School. Lala Lajpat Rai was the founder of a bank, which is now known as the Punjab National Bank. advocacy of a militant anti-British nationalism in the Indian National Congress. He was also elected President of the All India Trade Union Congress.

Lajpat Rai’s most important writings include The Story of My Deportation (1908), Arya Samaj (1915), The United States of America: A Hindu’s Impression (1916), England’s Debt to India: A Historical Narrative of Britain’s Fiscal Policy in India (1917), and Unhappy India (1928).
He was the editor of the Arya Gazette, which he had founded.

He founded the Servants of People Society in 1921.

He co-founded the Punjab National Bank in 1894.

He was leading a silent protest against the Simon Commission in Lahore when he was brutally lathi-charged by Superintendent of Police, James Scott. Rai died of injuries sustained a few weeks later. Bhagat Singh and a few other revolutionaries vowed to take revenge for Rai’s death and plotted to kill Scott. But he shot and killed John Saunders, an Assistant Superintendent of Police in a case of mistaken identity.