36

THE MEN WHO MATTER

.A country is known by the men who flash In the horizon and
brighten the times they live and in the subsequent years the life
and times of their emergence are reckoned as the age of the historic
-figure in question. The great names of history stand for an age
.and live forever, like Gautam, Ashoka, Akbar and Mahatma
-Gandhi on the Indian scene and Christ, Cromwell, Peter the
-Great, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Lenin and Churchill in
Europe. Likewise in the history of Uttarakhand, the names of
Sankracharya, Maularam, Gumani, Sir Henry Ramsay, Govind
Ballabh Pant, Chandra Singh Garhwali, Barrister Mukundi Lai,
Badri Dutt Pandey, Sombari Baba, 1008-Tapovan Maharaj,
Krishashram Maharaj, Heriya Khand Maharaj and Neem Karon,
Sumitranandan Pant, Mohan Lai Shah stand out heads and
shoulders above others. They rose in eminence due to their
indefatigable efforts to uplift the lot of their brethren and fellow
people and untiring devotion to their cause which has left perma-
nent imprint on the sands of time and pages of history.
We must, when we think of Himalayas, pay tribute to them
and remember them because whatever is there in the Uttara-
khand is because of their untiring zeal and intense devotion to
Ihe cause which was in ferment at the time they lived and pro-