Google doodle today features Annie Besant, one of the first proponents of self rule in India, on the occasion of her 168th birth anniversary.

The doodle depicts Annie Besant sitting on a chair holding a copy of “New India”, a newspaper that she published in 1914.

In 1914, she purchased the ‘Madras Standard’ and renamed it ‘New India’. It was through this paper that she started writing for the ‘Home Rule’ for India.

Even before moving to India, British-born Besant made her mark as a social and political trailblazer, fighting for women’s rights and religious freedom in the UK.

Besant in 1898 also founded the Central Hindu College at Varanasi (then Benares), where she drafted a curriculum that combined secular education and Hindu tenets.

She was also chosen to lead the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress, India’s most storied political party, in 1917.

Her self desired epitaph read – “She tried to follow Truth.”

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