- Shashibhushan Raychaudhury
Shashibhushan Raychaudhuri also known as Shashida (1863-1922) was a patriotic educationist connected with the radical revolutionary activities that had their origins in
Bengal . He was the pioneer in what came to be known as the night-school movement, for building up a self-reliant society.Early life
Shashida was born on 8 January 1863 at the village
Tegharia nearBarrackpore in presentWest Bengal . He was the youngest son of Saudamini Devi and Anandachandra, who owned some land and belonged to an old respectable family. As a student atSodepur high school, Shashida opened a traditional primary school of thePathshala style, to give secular education to children of indigent families, usually looked after by zealous Christian preachers. In course of time, Shashida created also evening classes for adults and, in addition to rudiments of Bengali, history and mathematics, he invited competent collaborators to initiate them to weaving, agriculture including growing silk-worms, and cottage industry. In 1880, Shashida passed hisEntrance examination and was admitted at the Metropolitan Institution of Kolkata, haloed by the presence of Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar as one of its directors and of RashtraguruSurendranath Banerjea and Khudiram Bose (not the martyr) as its faculty. Rashtraguru had instructed Yogendra Vidyabhushan to popularise the lives ofMazzini andGaribaldi and had a nation-wide reputation as orator. Khudiram Bose was a disciple of the famousYoung Bengal leader,Reverend Kalicharan Banerjee , and knewKeshub Chunder Sen intimately. There was an active physical education course in the college, supervised by Chandidas Ghosh. In no time Shashida caught the sparks of a nascent patriotic activism and, withAnandamohan Basu , formed the Students’ Association, which had contacts with DeshabandhuChittaranjan Das ,Pramathanath Mitra also known asBarrister P. Mitter andBrahmabandhab Upadhyay . He was a regular visitor to the gymnasium attached to the General Assembly's Institution (later Scottish Church College) and the Gohas’ club. For traditional self-defence, he metSwami Vivekananda who practised wrestling with the Gohas. The Swami’s philosophy of man-making consolidated Shashida’s own plans of action. Here, probably thanks to Vivekananda, he discoveredJatindranath Mukherjee , too, the futureBagha Jatin .Revolutionary Organisation
In 1900, P. Mitter asked Shashida to send him some young men of character. It was the moment when Mitter was busy founding the Kolkata
Anushilan Samiti and knew Shashida’s popularity among the college students. Shashida sent himSatish Mukherjee ,Nibaran Bhattacharya ,Indranath Nandi ,Nikhileshvar Ray Maulik . And he personally introducedJatindranath Mukherjee aliasBagha Jatin , who had already known Mitter during a meeting aroundKakuzo Okakura atSurendranath Tagore ’s house. Meanwhile, invited by Brahmabandhav, on 6 January 1902, Shashida joined the first batch of teachers at the new boarding school established byRabindranath Tagore at Santiniketan, along withJagadananda Ray ,Revachand Makhijani ,Shivadhan Vidyarnav ,Subodhchandra Majumdar andManoranjan Banerjee . In March 1902, Shashida had to return to Kolkata for the inauguration of theAnushilan Samiti . Soon, with the coming ofJatin Banerjee aliasNiralamba , Mitter was under the impression that the organisation was taking too much of a military turn, while Banerjee disagreed withBarin Ghose ’s untimely terrorist enterprise. In the midst of this tension, Shashida andBagha Jatin served as mediators. Coming from Baroda, in 1903,Sri Aurobindo atYogendra Vidyabhushan ’s place, tried to settle the disputes, and discussed withBagha Jatin and Banerjee his programme for Bengal. Very soon, Banerjee chose to set out for Upper India, where he continued his work as a revolutionary missionary.TheAnushilan Samiti , under Shashida’s guidance, opened in Kolkata theShramajivi Vidyalay or “Working Men’s Institution” where evening classes attracted people who had no means to be educated. Many poor students, too, received there supplementary coaching in various subjects. The Samiti also recruited volunteers for social services such as nursing the sick; cremating; sell handmade soaps, padlocks from Shashida’s village and cottage industry products, on a cooperative basis; organise significant public functions as theShivaji ,Pratapaditya andSitaram festivals. This was the prototype of the well-knownChatra-bhandar or “Students’ Store” and, later, of theShramajivi Samavaya run byAmarendranath Chatterjee and other associates ofBagha Jatin .Probably as the Party’s emissary, Shashida went toMungheyr inBihar towards the end of 1904 and, encouraged byNimdhari Singh and other regional leaders, he opened a model school. Then, in 1905, he went toOrissa , and inspiredUtkalamani Gopabandhu Das to start a physical culture centre atBhubaneswar , in collaboration withNilakantha Das ,Krupasindhu Misra ,Acharya Harihar Das andGodavarish Misra . This was the beginning of theSatyavadi Vidyalaya , founded nearPuri in 1909. Alerted by Shashida about the terrible flood in Orissa, in 1908, P. Mitter sent a relief delegation headed byNaren Bhattacharya aliasM.N. Roy andHarikumar Chakravarti , two direct recruits of the restless Vedic scholar and radical leaderMokshada Charan Samadhyai .Daulatpur College
With the
Alipore Bomb Case , when associations were officially banned by repressive laws,Bagha Jatin and other leaders of theAnushilan Samiti started the Bengal Youngmen’s Zamindari Co-operative Society in the Sundarban area: “the idea was to place revolutionary young men in the rural agricultural sector (…), organising small-scale cottage industries andswadeshi stores…,” remembers Arun Chandra Guha. Others went to Shashida’s village. In 1909, Shashida was to leave for Dehra Dun as a private tutor at the house of Prafullanath Tagore; on learning thatRasbehari Bose was suspected by the Police of involvement in the bomb making, Shashida arranged to send Bose to Dehra Dun for safety. He himself went toDaulatpur College as the Superintendent of its hostel. He shared his room withManindranath Seth , the Vice-Principal and member of the secret society, andBhupendra Kumar Datta , a brilliant student leader : all the three were to be arrested in 1917. Every morning and evening, after some physical culture, the students assembled for meditating, accompanied by select readings, and devotional and patriotic songs conducted by Shashida. Since 1911, drawn by Shashida and the promising students he had been training,Bagha Jatin visited the campus, while touring these districts regularly. Advised by the latter, the students took to intensive riding, rowing and military drills. In 1913, Shashida formed a volunteers’ corps to assist Jatin in theDamodar flood relief. Shattered by the sudden martyrdom ofBagha Jatin in 1915, in the teeth of massive arrests under theDefence of India Act , Shashida with his students concentrated on social work, while helping the stray revolutionaries to reorganise the party. He was arrested in 1917. Judging from the state of this TB patient, the Government decided to home intern him with his wife Urmila Devi, his daughters Rani and Durga, and son Ashok, first in Daulatpur, then in Khulna. Released in 1919, Shashida returned to Tegharia to improve the status of his school and to campaign against malaria. In spite of his poor health, he maintained his social activities till his death in April 1922.References
"Biplabi Shashibhushan: jiban o sadhana", by Krishanu Bhattacharya, 2003;
"agniyug o biplabi bhupendrakumar datta", by Samyukta Mitra, 1995;
"biplaber padachinha," by Bhupendrakumar Datta, 2nd edition, 1973;
"sadhak biplabi jatindranath," by Prithwindra Mukherjee, 1990;
"biplabi jibaner smriti," by Jadupopal Mukherjee, 2nd edition, 1982.
"First Spark of Revolution," by A.C. Guha, 1971.
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.