Satish Chandra Mukherjee
Satish Chandra Mukherjee | |
|---|---|
 Satish Chandra Mukherjee | |
| Born | 5 June 1865 |
| Died | 18 April 1948(aged 82) Varanasi,Uttar Pradesh, India |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Occupation | Educationist |
| Spouse | Charulata Mukherjee |
Satish Chandra Mukherjee(5 June 1865 – 18 April 1948) was a pioneer in establishing a system of national education in India, along withSri Aurobindo.
The positivist background[edit]
Satish Chandra was born atBanipurinHooghly districtof present-dayWest Bengal.His father, Krishnanath Mukherjee,[1]had been a childhood friend and classmate of Justice Dvarkanath Mitra, who appointed him as a translator of official documents in theCalcutta High Court.Mitra was a leading believer in theReligion of Humanityas founded by thePositivistAuguste Comte.Adept of this faith, anatheistservant of Man and of society, Krishnanath impressed this ideology on his sons, Tinkori and Satish.[2]Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyayhimself was not only one of the first in India to write on Comte and his philosophy but, also, he had zealous Positivist friends like Yogendrachandra Ghose and Rajkrishna Mukherjee; in 1874, Bankim published the latter's article on Positivism in hisBangadarshan,which began with the sentence, "Among the successfully educated classes of our country, there is a great deal of animation concerning the philosophy of Comte." While writing on psychological purification, Bankim wrote: "He who has been psychologically purified is the bestHindu,the best Christian, the bestBuddhist,the bestMuslim,the best Positivist. "[3]
In 1884, in theprefaceof his novelDevi Chaudhurani,Bankim quoted from theCatechism of Positive Religion:"The general law of Man's progress (...) consists in this that Man becomes more and more religious."[4]
Early life[edit]
As a student of theSouth Suburban SchoolinBhowaniporein Kolkata, Satish Chandra received inspiration fromIshwar Chandra Vidyasagarand would have a wide range of acquaintances likeAshvinikumar Datta,Sivanath Sastri,Bipin Chandra Pal,Brajendranath Seal,Ashutosh Mukherjee(his class-friend),Rabindranath Tagore,Sri Aurobindo,Raja Subodh Mullick.With his classmate Narendra Datta (Swami Vivekananda) and his friendKaliprasad Chandra(Swami Abhedananda), he attended the lectures byPanditSashadhar Tarka Chudamani on theshaD-darshana( "six schools of Hindu philosophy" ) at the Albert Hall, presided over by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. "Alive to the necessity and the usefulness of all other systems, secular or religious, Eastern or Western," Satish Chandra's intense religious temperament laid emphasis on the study of Hindu life, thought and faith. He joined thePresidency Collegeto obtained hisMAin 1886 and BL in 1890, and enrolled himself as a pleader of the Calcutta High Court. In 1887, he was appointed a lecturer in history and economics in the Berhampore College. In 1895 he founded the Bhagavat Chatuspathi, a first attempt to an alternate system of higher studies.
The Dawn Society[edit]
Founder-editor of theDawnmagazine (1897–1913), an organ of Indian Nationalism, in 1902 he organised the "Dawn Society"of culture, to protest against the Report of the Indian Universities Commission, representing the inadequate university education imposed by the Government to fabricate clerks for the merchant offices." The cry for thorough overhauling of the whole system of University education was in the air. ".[5]In 1889, he formulated the scheme for national education.[6]
Dawnoccupied an apartment on the first floor of the presentVidyasagar College(formerly known as the Metropolitan Institution: its Principal, Nagendranath Ghosh was the President, and Satish its general secretary). The Dawn Society was "functioning (...) as a training ground of youths and a nursery of patriotism, became in 1905 one of the most active centres for the propagation of Boycott-Swadeshi ideologies..."[7]
In tune with the programme of a newpedagogyintroduced by Sri Aurobindo, the Society's object was to draw the attention of the students to the needs of the country, to love Mother India, to cultivate their moral character, to inspire original thinking. It had a weekly session for a "general training course". One of the members,Benoy Kumar Sarkar,considering having lived significantly thanks to Satish Chandra's influence, would remember his ardent message of patriotism and philanthropy rousing the youth to dedicated service; he would also write about the method of Pandit Nilakantha Goswami's explaining theBhagavad Gita,impressing on the listeners' mind the futility of life and death, the insignificance of the body: the sole thing that counts is Duty, the right Action.[8]
Among active members of the "Dawn" wereSister Nivedita,Bagha Jatin(Jatin Mukherjee),Rajendra Prasad(firstPresident of India), Haran Chakladar,Radha Kumud Mukherjee,Kishorimohan Gupta (principal,Daulatpur College), Atulya Chatterjee, Rabindra Narayan Ghosh, Benoykumar Sarkar, all future celebrities. One day, Satish Chandra heard an inner voice uttering firmly: "God exists."[9]
The National College[edit]
The Positivist awaited further light from within. In September, a friend of his, follower of the saintBijoy Krishna Goswami,told him that the Master wanted him to come. After receiving initiation in September 1893, he learnt from the saint that on completing his present activities, Satish was to leave forVaranasi(Benares) for his spiritual pursuit.
By the side ofSubodh Chandra Mullick,in 1906, Satish took a leading part in forming the Council of National Education and became a lecturer in theBengal National College.In 1907, after Sri Aurobindo's resignation on 2 August 1907 (fearing "that he might be spirited away to prison at any moment, and his association with the National College might cause great damage to the institution"[10]), Satish Chandra succeeded him as principal, and a contributor to the dailyBande Mataram.Four years after Sri Aurobindo's retiring toPuducherry,Satish left for Varanasi in 1914, settled there till his death. Prominent among the regular visitors who consulted him for guidance, there was Malani, Professor of English at the Hindu University, who took profuse notes while listening to Satish Chandra.[11]There were alsoMadan Mohan Malaviya,Narendra Deva,Jadunath Sarkar.
Satish Chandra and Gandhi[edit]
Another professor of the same university,Jivatram Kripalani,introduced him toMohandas Karamchand Gandhi,who held Satish Chandra so high that whenever Gandhi went to Varanasi, he spent some time with Satish Chandra. At a juncture, it seems Gandhi even approached him for receiving initiation; but Satish Chandra did not feel that Gandhi needed it. Both of them were seekers of God. Gandhi strove to solve the problem of suffering in man's daily life and look for the Truth; Satish Chandra sought after spiritual deliverance.
Following Gandhi's arrest in 1922, he spent two months at theSabarmati Ashramhelping in the management and publication ofYoung India.Those were years when Gandhi had been moving all over India, without caring for his failing health. One day Satish Chandra was asked by hisGuruBejoykrishna to send Gandhi one hundredrupeesevery month for his personal use. Gratefully Gandhi accepted this gift. In 1924, hospitalised forappendicitis,whereas Gandhi was flooded with messages of solicitude, he wondered about Satish Chandra's silence and wanted his son Devdas to enquire. The only reply that came was that Satish Chandra knew that Gandhi was going to recover soon.
The concluding message[edit]
In the habit of exchanging letters regularly, the last time Satish Chandra wrote to Gandhi was on 24 January 1947, explaining how to repeat the name ofRamawith a breath control; happy with that instruction, on 1 February, Gandhi thanked Satish Chandra for "Your lovely letter":[12]on 30 January 1948, Gandhi breathed his last by repeatingHe Rama.
Satish Chandra died on 18 April 1948.
References[edit]
- ^abSengupta, Subodh Chandra and Bose, Anjali (editors), (1976),Samsad Bangali Charitabhidhan(Biographical dictionary),(in Bengali),p 536
- ^Mukherjee, Satish Chandra inDictionary of National Biography,Calcutta, 1974, Vol. III, pp169-171
- ^Prachâr,Phalgun 1292 [March 1885]
- ^Darshanik Bankimchandra,by Hirendranath Datta, 1940, p36
- ^History of the Freedom Movement,[abbrev.Majumdar], byR. C. Majumdar,1975, Vol. II, p70
- ^"Swadeshi movement - UPSC - helloscholar".7 July 2018.
- ^Majumdar., p18
- ^Benoy Sarkar'er baiThake,Haridas Mukherjee, 1942, pp262-263
- ^Gandhi o Acharya Satish Chandra by Shobhen Bandyopadhyay, [abbrev.Jayashri,inJayashri,April 2007, pp534-537
- ^Majumdar., p77
- ^Published in theSelected Works of Acharya Satish Chandra Mukhopadhyay,University of Jadavpur, 2 vols
- ^Jayashri,p537
The Origins of the National Educational Movement- Haridas Mukherjee and Uma Mukherjee, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, 1957
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
- Anushilan Samiti
- 1865 births
- 1948 deaths
- Bengali Hindus
- 20th-century Bengalis
- 19th-century Bengalis
- Das family of Telirbagh
- People from Hooghly district
- 19th-century Indian educational theorists
- 20th-century Indian educational theorists
- 19th-century Indian scholars
- 20th-century Indian scholars
- 19th-century Indian educators
- 20th-century Indian educators
- Educationists from India
- Indian magazine editors
- Founders of Indian schools and colleges
- Presidency University, Kolkata alumni
- Indian lecturers
- Judges of the Calcutta High Court
- Indian jurists
- 19th-century Indian judges
- 20th-century Indian philosophers
- 19th-century Indian philosophers
- Indian philanthropists
- Indian social workers
- Hindu philosophers and theologians
- 20th-century Hindu philosophers and theologians
- 19th-century Hindu philosophers and theologians
- Indian theologians
- Scholars from West Bengal
- Indian independence activists from Bengal
- Social workers from West Bengal