The most nationalist voice of India which Gandhi ignored.

One of the most effective voice against British Imperialism, during India’s freedom struggle, was— Sachindra Sanyal. Gandhians (Gaandhivadi, Blind devotees of Gandhi) sought to crush this personality under Gandhi’s imaginary idealism, The communists who occupied the educational institutions of the country were only devoted to their fatherland they believed in a murderous ideology and the idolatry of their dictators. They carved such an image of Sachindra Sanyal’s character in everyone’s mind that everybody hated him, except the true nationalists because they knew what he was after and were very familiar with him. Sachindra Sanyal – The most belligerent, most patriotic, and the most visionary voice in India’s freedom struggle.

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU & THE DISCOVERY OF INDIA

Nehru was born in a wealthy family. At the age of fifteen, Nehru went to England and attended the Harrow School there. In those days, children of the rich families in England used to attend the Harrow School. After attending the Harrow School, Nehru pursued a degree in law from Cambridge. Nehru returned back to India in 1912. Even after returning back to India, for years, Nehru’s “Knowledge about India” was limited only to the anti-Indian talk in the British newspapers and the conversation about India that took place in the British elite houses. Nehru was much more like a British youth, unaware of India and its history(the real history not the bookish one). Once he was back in India, he took up the profession of law like his father in his hometown of Allahabad. Due to lack of interest in law, he started taking interest in politics. Around 1920, a movement against the British started among the farmers of the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh). Around 200 farmers who came from different, remote villages came together and decided to appoint Nehru as their lawyer to present their legal case in the Allahabad court. Many of the farmers who came to meet Nehru at his home had traveled hundreds of kms on foot. Nehru decided to travel with the farmers to see their actual economic conditions. He traveled to many remote villages to understand the problems of the farmers. Nehru wrote that he had no idea about the plight of the farmers. Nehru used to travel to the villages, talk to the farmers, this was a very new experience for him, so while talking to the farmers, Nehru used to prepare many notes. Nehru used to travel in his car. (It was a great deal in India during the 1920s to own a car and travel in it. It was simply a true sign of luxury). Even nowadays there aren’t very metalled roads in the remote villages so you can easily understand what would have been the condition of the roads back in those days, people of many villages worked together to repair the road so that Nehru’s car could reach their villages. Understanding India with the help of notes like a school-going child, watching the life of a common man like a prince was it a fancy hoax or a blatant imitation of Lenin’s way of using peasants as weapons to seize power in the Soviet Union???

MAHATMA GANDHI & MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH 

Mahatma Gandhi also came back to India after spending a long time abroad, mainly in South Africa. Because of his long struggle abroad

Gandhi became quite a popular personality in India. Despite his fighting image and huge popularity, Gandhi didn’t become a role model for the youth. After the end of the Satyagraha movement of 1921, Gandhi contributed nothing to the political movements that followed in India for the next 10 years. In the meantime, Sachindra Nath Sanyal and other revolutionaries kept a light of hope in the hearts of the people of India, fighting against the biggest imperialist power of the world in severely adverse conditions. Nehru, the President of the Congress, during the meeting in Lahore in 1929, also had to admit in a veiled voice that it was the revolutionary youth who did not let the torch of freedom against the British Empire in India be extinguished even in the most difficult circumstances.

Who was Sachindra Nath Sanyal :-

1. Sachindranath Sanyal as a Revolutionary

He was the only revolutionary in India’s freedom struggle who was sentenced to life imprisonment twice. Sachindranath Sanyal had a life span of fifty years out of which he spent twenty-one years in jail. Sachin Da was a close associate of Subhas Chandra Bose, Ras Bihari Bose, some of the most important revolutionaries of India’s freedom struggle. Sachindra Nath Sanyal was also the political teacher (GURU) of many great revolutionaries like Chandrashekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Trilokya Chakraborty, Bhagwati Charan Vohra, Nalini Kishore Guh, Baba Prithvi Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Lala Hardayal, Ajit Singh. 

2. Sachindranath Sanyal as a revolutionary thinker

Sachindra Nath Sanyal was not only a great revolutionary but also a great revolutionary thinker. Sachindra Nath Sanyal was the one who created the trend of serious study of political literature among Indian revolutionaries. Sachindra Nath Sanyal wrote many articles, many revolutionary pamphlets, apart from this he also wrote books like Bandi- jeevan , Deshvasiyon se nivedan (request to the countrymen), Vichar- Vinmay (exchange of ideas) Sahitya ,Samaj aur Sanskriti , (literature, society and culture )etc. Sachindra Nath Sanyal was the founder of “Hindustan Republica Association”  Sachindranath Sanyal’s ideas were completely nationalist, completely original. His writings were greatly Influenced by Hindu ancient religious texts, Hindu sanyasis, and Hindu culture.

Bandi Jeevan:– This book written by Sachindra Nath Sanyal is in my opinion the best work written by any Indian revolutionary ever. This book got the status of Gita among the Indian revolutionaries and was translated into more than twenty-eight languages. For more detailed information about Sachindra Nath Sanyal’s life and his monumental work please visit:-  https://nithinks.com/2021/08/12/sachindra-nath-sanyal-a-great-forgotten-freedom-fighter/

The School of revolutionaries:- 

After India’s independence school’s course books have always been written by Marxist writers. In these books only Lenin, Stalin have been glorified and only the revolutionaries influenced by communist ideology have been given place. Sachindra Nath Sanyal has been dealt with in two lines.

I spent my childhood in the hometown of Sachindra Nath Sanyal, yet my whole knowledge about Sachindra Nath Sanyal was limited only to 2 facts till my school days.

These 2 facts were -:   1) Sachindranath Sanyal was the founder of the Hindustan Republican Association. 2) Sachindranath Sanyal wrote the Book Bandi Jeevan. I knew nothing else other than these two facts about Sachindranath Sanyal, during my school days.

While graduating from Banaras Hindu University(BHU), I learned for the first time that Sachindra Nath Sanyal was a resident of Varanasi during a lecture by my history teacher in class who was discussing about the contribution of Varanasi to the freedom struggle. Ravindra, a boy in my class also had good knowledge of this subject. When the teacher left, I asked Ravindra, “Where do you get to know all this stuff from?” He smiled and said from the wall of the school!! I was confused I didn’t understand what he meant. He revealed “I have been an alumnus of the Bengali Tola School. The main building of the school has the names and information related to Sachindra Nath Sanyal and some of the revolutionaries written on it who were former students of that school”.

I had seen the building of Bengali Tola School from a distance, this school is situated on the road which links Godauliya to the Banaras Hindu University. A few days later, when I went on that route again, I remembered Ravindra as soon as I saw the school building. I parked my cycle near the school gate and went inside. The main building of the school is situated at a distance of about 10 meters from the school gate. As told by Ravindra, the names of some students and teachers were written on the wall of the main building who had made an important contribution to India’s freedom struggle.

An unfinished story that taught me a lot

About five-six years after this incident, when I started my journalism career and started writing in some magazines, a magazine company requested me to write an article on India’s Independence Day. While writing on this subject, I was thinking about what should I write next in this article when it suddenly struck me and I remembered the revolutionaries lodged in the building of the Bengali Tola School. I thought of writing a separate story on these revolutionaries. Years later, I reached the campus of the Bengali Tola school once again. I carefully wrote the names of all the revolutionaries written on the wall of the school on a piece of paper and went home. I thought this was a simple story which I will finish soon. When I was back home, I called my colleague, the great photographer friend of mine “Dinesh Bhaiya” whose name I have also mentioned in my second last post regarding the Vishwanath Corridor Project, and requested him to mail me the pictures after taking the photo of the stone plate on the Bengali Tola school.

I was addicted to reading in those days. I used to go to a library nearby and I used to think that information related to these revolutionaries will be and must be available in abundance in these libraries. I thought that many experienced journalists have become familiar with me now as I have been working with them for quite a long time, I will take help from them on this subject. I thought that I will take photographs of places related to the life of revolutionaries. I will collect information from the residents of the places related to the life of the revolutionaries. I also had a time of about fifteen days, so I was pretty sure that I would be able to complete this story comfortably in the stipulated time. But when I started working on the story I found that I was completely wrong. There was no special information available on this subject in the library near my house. Even the old and experienced journalists didn’t seem to have any specific information on this subject.

I got the biggest shock when I came to know that no one even knew about the places of residence of most of the revolutionaries. I started searching for literature, documents, and books related to this subject in the old libraries of Banaras. I would say that I was able to find some literature related to the subject but it was spread across dozens of books, so I had to study patiently and read all these books to write the story which was certainly not possible in fifteen days. Some names were suggested to me by my journalist friends, from whom, they thought I could get as much information as possible, but once again it wasn’t possible to meet all these people just in fifteen days. So I just decided to drop this idea of mine to cover this story on the revolutionaries of Varanasi and I decided that I would cover it afterwards.

Later, while doing journalism, I found the famous book Bandi Jeevan written by Sachindra Nath Sanyal in the Carmichael Library, one of the oldest libraries in Varanasi. Note: – It is also a coincidence that in the book Bandi Jeevan, Sachindra Nath Sanyal has also mentioned about the Carmichael Library. Sachindra Nath Sanyal also used to come to this library to leaf through the pages of some books. A few years back this book has been republished by a Delhi publication.

While working on another article in those days, I was introduced to Bhattacharya Ji, a homeopathic doctor, despite being a doctor by profession, his knowledge of history was commendable. During a conversation about Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Dr. Bhattacharya advised me to meet Bhaduri Ji. A few days later I reached the address that Dr.Bhattacharya had given me. I met Bhaduri’s son, I explained the reason for my visit, he urged me to sit in his dining room and wait for some time. While talking to him I came to know that Bhaduri Ji has himself been a freedom fighter and has also been imprisoned during the freedom struggle. Bhaduri ji’s was also a great scholar, his son told me that while India’s one of the greatest filmmakers and Oscar award winner Satyajit Ray was in Varanasi during the shoot for his famous film “Feluda”, he came to take some advice from his father(Bhaduri Ji) at his home. Now Bhaduri Ji was old and he had difficulty in speaking, so his son requested me not to ask too many questions from him. (Bhaduri Ji’s age was around 90 by that time) I agreed immediately. Bhaduri Ji’s son gave him support from his shoulder so that he can walk and brought him to the place where he made me sit, I also without wasting any time immediately asked whether he had ever met Sachindra Sanyal? He answered “Yes, I met him thrice” I was completely baffled by this answer of his, I wasn’t accepting this answer at all. Suppressing my excitement a bit, I asked him if there was any special thing about him that he remembered. Bhaduri Ji told me that the last time he met him was probably in 1939 near Niranjani Akhara. (I did know that Sachindra Nath Sanyal had also been an associate of Subhas Chandra Bose and had been an editor of Subhash Chandra Bose’s mouthpiece Agragami paper around 1939, this paper was published near Niranjani Akhara). Referring to his last meeting, Bhaduri Ji said “Sachindra da told me that soon Hindus will have to fight on two fronts — against British imperialism and also against Islamic Imperialism. Because of some personal reasons I have changed the name of some of the people in this post so they aren’t 100% accurate.

There was nothing surprising in this because, on both of these subjects, Sachindra Nath Sanyal used to write equally in his writings.

I touched Bhaduri’s feet and returned back.

By meeting Bhaduri Ji it became very clear that Sachindranath Sanyal was probably the only revolutionary who had foreseen the terrible problem that was to come. The reason for this was his philosophy which stood on the basis of reality, Sachindranath Sanyal was the voice of a common Indian, he didn’t explore India sitting in a car. Nor did he believe in Gandhi’s mere idealism and the world of imagination. Gandhi’s idealism became helpless in front of Jinnah’s Two Nation Theory. His idealism disintegrated like a straw in the face of the massacre of millions of Hindus and the demand for the new nation of Pakistan.

Sachindra Nath Sanyal had no prejudice towards Muslims, but he strongly opposed the Muslim leaders because he knew that the Muslims gave their preference to Muslim countries and not to India. He has mentioned this in his writings in many places. He strongly opposed a Muslim leader who said that Kabul government should attack India and establish an Islamic state. The Muslim leaders had a sense of indifference towards India, they considered the pride of Turkey as their pride. Even today there is a large number of Muslims in India who believe in the spirit of the Muslim Brotherhood instead of India and don’t even regard themselves as Indians. Even today some political parties can be seen supporting Muslim extremists in the lust and greed of votes. The fake idealism and the goody-goody ideas of the fancy cannot suppress the truth. It is necessary to teach the actual thoughts of Sachindra Nath in the textbooks of schools, colleges, and universities, this true son of Mother India should also get a proper place in history.