Surendra Nath Banerjea was born in 1848. He belonged to a Kulin Brahmin fam
ily of Calcutta. His father, Durga Charan Banerjea was a successful medical practitioner. He joined the Indian Civil Services through an open competition in the year 1868. However, he was dismissed from the services because of racialist consideration of the British government of the time and progressive nationalistic views of Surendera Nath Banerjea. He then joined as a Professor of English in Metropolitan Institute at Calcutta. He founded Ripon College in Calcutta. Later he took over the Bengalee Weekly and made it a daily newspaper. It is in journalism that he established his stature as a leading voice of India. He also wrote a book “A Nation in the Making” about which P Sitaramayya writes: “For command of language, for elegance of diction, for rich imagery, for emotional heights, for a spirit of manly claming, his orations are hard to beat. They remain unapproachable.”He is considered as a pioneer of undertaking constitutional agitations and public opinion making in India. He undertook a political mobilization in a movement against reducing the age for Civil Services Entrance test from 21 to 19. For that, he undertook tours of whole country to make the public opinion which was a new activity to be experienced by Indians.
Later he founded Indian Association in 1876. He was one of the founder of The Indian National Congress founded in 1885. However, he did not attend the first conference of the INC. He headed the sessions of Indian National Congress in 1898 and 1902.
He was elected to the Imperial Legislative Council in 1892. He was a supporter of Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms of 1919. He joined as the Ministry of Bengal under the Dyarchy system established by the Indian Act of 1919.
He disassociated himself from Indian National Congress in 1918 and form the National Liberal Federation.
He was in favour of getting benefit from the British Rule for India.
He died in 1925.
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Further References available online:
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For Photograph: Wikipedia
External Sources:
Speeches of Babu Surendra Nath Banerjea, 1876-80
A nation in making;: Being the reminiscences of fifty years of public life
An explanatory analysis of the Law of criminal procedure in India (Act V of 1898);: Intended for students for various law examinations and prepared under special instructions of Dr. Jadu Nath Kanjilal
Was he dismissed because of racialist consideration and progressive nationalistic views of S N Banerjea?
ReplyDeleteBanerjea was dismissed not because he, still an ICS probationer, displayed his patriotic proclivity. An Assistant Magistrate in district Sylhet, he showed utter callousness and incompetence in a case of theft of a country boat which belonged to one Jaikrishna. The thief was one Yudhishtir. His bench clerk Kailash Chandra Deb one day submitted the case record with a note, the accused was "absconding" though he had not.
The District Magistrate H C Sutherland called for explanation and Banerjea for inordinate delay in disposal gave a fabricated explanation, "I did not understand the significance of the order" was "under heavy pressure of work."
Banerjea went to take ICS examination to England. His mother was not kept informed. His father was helping Surendra Nath and carefully concealed critical information from the poor mother. Son wrote, “when at last on the eve of my departure the news had to be broken, she fainted away under shock of what to her was terrible news.” The son, notwithstanding mother’s fainting, went away to England.
His father died while Surendra Nath Banerjea was there in England but he was not informed about the bereavement.
Surendra Nath’s reputation as a nationalist and patriot has been monumental. Juxtapose Surendra Nath Banerjea's soulful slogan, "Bande Mataram" and his mother fainting and give us a candid evaluation of the patritic pretention in evidence.
He was great orator and political agitator no doubt. Did you know that he went to the British and applied for enrolment as an honorary soldier in the army for fighting against the Russians. A few Afgan border posts were captured by Russia in 1885. There were rumours acccompanied by tension in India about impending outbreaks of conflict between the two countries.
Banerjea addressed 30 meetings for recruiting Bengali youths after World War I broke out and succeeded in enrolling 6000 youth of respectable families from better classes. He appealed to upper caste youths only to join the army for the Empire which was under distress.
In 1905 Bengal was partitioned before which a big meeting attended by bigs guns of Bengal was held in Calcutta Town Hall. Banerjea had a long hand in drafting the resolution, opposing the partition, which was submitted to the authorities. One of the resolutions reads as follows:
“A Brahman or a Kayastha of one part of Bengal will not now object to form matrimonial connection with a Brahman or a Kayastha of the other. But, divided by two governments, they will not have opportunities of associating with each other, and all social connections will in due course cease to exist between them.” (Paragraph 48)
Brahman and Kayasth were the only favoured elements of Bengal. This was character of nationalism of leaders whorshipped as heroes.
Banerjea opposed the Compulsory Primary Education Bill Gopal Krishna Gokhale introduced in 1911 in the Central Legislative Council. Prof. Prafulla Chandra Roy, founder of the Bengal Chemicals told in a meeting in Calcutta in 1937 that Gokhale died of shock because his friends betrayed him over the aforesaid Bill. Gokhale was a friend of Banerjea who opposed the Bill because he was apprehensive that funds would be diverted to primary education and higher education in which he had interest would be deprived.
When after partion of Bengal was annulled in 1911, Viceroy Hardinge announced the scheme of establishment of a University at Dacca [Dhaka]. Banerjea along with Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee and Sir Provash Chandra Mitra, Minister of Education in Bengal then among others, vehemently opposed the proposal, led a delegation to the Governor General and pleaded that the university would mean an internal partition. They establishment of Dacca University was delayed by one decade. The ambassadors of darkness were heroes in India.
They resorted to cunningness of every shade to deprive education for the masses.