Families of over three lakh dead or alive victims of 1947 partition/riot who lost life and property should ask again and again :
Who is responsible for partition of India ?
Pl. find out from this brief write up…..
1884 :Congress was born. First congress President was Allen Octovian Hume (an European)
6 Aug 1914 : Gandhiji goes to London from South Africa
World War begins: Gandhi asks Indians to join British Army as the British is our master, we are slaves( MET- My Experiments with Truth).He helped British to recruit people for British Army. In Kheda village in Gujarat, people even refused to serve food to Gandhi. His right hand Mr. Pollack questioned whether helping in war is a non-violent move; to this Gandhiji said that for survival one has sometimes to take to violence.
1920 -1945: After death of Tilak in 1919, Congress came under the full control of Gandhi .With Ahimsa in the air, more than 20,000 died and more than 3,00,000 people became homeless in riots on the issue of partition of India which was handled by the then Congress and Muslim League leaders under the stewardship of Gandhiji.
9 th August 1942 : ‘Quit India’ movement launched by him did not have punch to drive out British.
1920 : Subhas Chandra Bose* (b.1897) saw Gandhiji on Bose’s return from England after he had passed ICS; but he refused to serve British Govt. Gandhiji promised to the people that he will get Swaraj within one year. In the same year C R Das and Motilal Nehru resigned from the Congress and formed SWARAJ party. Subhas joined Congress , became its President and decided to launch a fight against British. Gandhiji felt that Congress-led revolution against British will give opportunity to the Muslim League to lead another simultaneous revolution for a separate Pakistan. Subhas suggested that let Jinnah be the first Prime Minister of undivided India so that both Congress and Muslim League join hands in driving out British. But Gandhiji did not agree to that.
1939: Subhas again was elected Congress President defeating Mr. Sitaramaiya who was Gandhiji’s candidate. After his defeat Gandhiji said that Mr. Sitaramiah’s defeat is his own defeat.
3rd May 1939: Opposition from Gandhi followers in the Congress party compelled Subhas to leave Congress and form a new party called Forward Block.
Netaji Subhas strongly expressed his agony when freedom fighters like Jatin Das died while on hunger strike and when Bhagat Singh was hanged. Surprisingly Gandhiji was silent .
23 March 1940: Muslim League asks for a separate Pakistan
1940s: 17 provinces(Governors ruled 11 and chief commissioners ruled 6) and hundreds of princely states in British India .Hindus were in the majority in 7 and muslims in 4.Negotiators were Congress, Muslim League and British Govt. But not princely states, Shikhs, Christians, Dalits. Nehru was for a strong central Govt.
Jinnah had no thought for nation building, he wanted Muslim League and Congress parties at the centre and a complete autonomy at the provincial level(weak centre?)Though Muslim population was only 25%, Jinnah proposed equal representation of Muslims and Hindus at the centre.He saw Muslim league as the sole custodian og Muslims and Congress as representing upper class Hindus. But Congress viewed itself as a party representing all Indians(National Integration), it did not accept Muslim League as sole representative of Muslims. Such demands were anathema as we find many Muslims in Congress including Maulana Azad who was Congress President from 1940 -1945.But Jinnah was inflexible. Now one way to avoid partition is to yield to Jinnah’s demand. Nehru, who already made supreme sacrifice by going to Jail for 10 years, cannot agree with Jinnah who has not spent even a single day in the jail.Jinnah tried to preserve only one community and had little inclination to work cooperatively.
The 1946 interim Govt. (congress & Muslim League) confirmed the unworkable nature of their relationship.
Prior to arrival of Lord Mountbatten, Cabinet Mission 1945 : proposed weak Govt. at the Centre, weak provinces at the bottom, and strong group of provinces in the middle. GroupA: three contiguous Muslim majority provinces, Group B: six Hindu majority provinces, Group C: clubbing the vast Muslim majority Bengal with Assam. Each group has to write its own constitution with Centre’s jurisdiction in defence, foreign affairs and communications. Azad(CongressPresident) informed the mission that it “was entirely opposed to any executive or legislative machinery for a group of provinces”.
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*For his derogatory comment on India and Indians while teaching in a classroom of the Presidency College, Calcutta, Mr. Otten (it is said) was manhandled by Subhas who was then a student. My father who was then a student of a school in the vicinity of the college gave me a detailed account how Otten rolled down the stairs of the college after he was kicked. Undoubtedly Subhas was spirited and a super brave patriot. Those days no Indian(natives) would dare to even touch an English man or woman unintentionally while walking on a footpath.
1924,1932,1936: Subhas was arrested and without trial sent to Mandalay Jail, became a TB patient.
1941: House arrest
16 January, 1941: vanished from house and went to Europe through Afghanistan.
21 Aug.1943 : Subhas was recognized as Head of Provisional Govt. of Free India by 9 countries after he formed INA ( Indian National Army) outside India and marched towards India with the backing of Japanese Army.
6 Aug and 9th August 1945: US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively.
15 Aug1945:Japan surrenders to Am-British as 2nd world war ends.
In the last conference of INA at Singapore, he decided to surrender so that he is hanged which will create a total revolution in India towards freedom. As this was not approved in the conference, he decided to go in the hiding.
17,18 Aug 1945: While traveling from Saigon to Turin to Taihoku(now Taipei, then under Japan),it is said that at 2-30 PM on 18 Aug he died in a plane crash at Taihoku: Col. Habibur Rahman was also with him.
On 29.Aug.1945, Ananda Bazar Patrika quoted Nehru saying “Bose was criminal, his men killed Americans and forcibly collected funds for Malay and Burma”
Subhas took diksha in Kriyayoga (Autobiography of a Yogi …by Paramhansa Yogananda) on 16 June,1939 from Baroda Charan Majumder, Headmaster of Lalgola High School( greatest Yogi of Bengal as said by Aurobindo).Among other personal belongings, Subhas had a Japer Mala, a small Geeta and his specks.
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The objectives, philosophies and backgrounds of Nehru and Jinnah as well as of Congress and Muslim League were so fundamentally in conflict that the partition was inevitable. Indians believing in genuine national integration are bound to point the finger at Jinnah. More importantly Gandhiji with his weapons of Ahimsa and Anashan was very much alive as the leader of leaders to witness months of loot-mar and killings.
Monday 21 December 2009
Sunday 19 July 2009
events this week
With your good wishes and blessings, my daughter Deboleena (Radhu) has been blessed with a beautiful daughter at 12.55 hrs on 19 July at New Delhi. Her son has now a sister to play with.- Pushpak (Prof. IIT-Mumbai) has instituted a scholarship - "Paramesh Chandra Bhattacharjee memorial Scholarship for the best post graduate seminar in science" at the Presidency college, Kolkata after the name of his illustrious scholarly late father who was an alumnus of the Presidency college.
Saturday 4 July 2009
generation 15 and downwards...
The eldest of 15 th generation is Paramesh Bhattacharya( Kanu-da).The photo on the left(dt.23.3.1974, Shillong):Kanuda,Anjali Boudi flanked by Rana(Pushpak) and Raja(Pallab)
I want to introduce everybody of the 15 th generation starting from him. It will be appreciated if any of you could send better photographs with a complete life sketch. I am also uploading photographs of others of this generation. I shall edit this page after you give your inputs about each.
Thursday 25 June 2009
Spot news- June09
Raunak is flanked by his proud parents ,Pushpak and Aparna
Raunak (son of Pushpak, grandson of late Paramesh Bhattacharya and great grandson of late Purnachandra Shastri) is the latest sensation in scholastic achievement in the family.He has maintained the standard of his ancestors by scoring 98% marks in PCM, 95.4% in aggragate(class xii Board Exam) and then cracking IIT-JEE,09.
He is not only a scholar of excellence,but a good tennis player and a devoted singer. He continues our tradition of regular meditation (sandhya)at dusk.
His contact No.: C/O - Prof.Pushpak Bhattacharya,IIT-Mumbai,Tel25721955,25768718
All of us congratulate Raunak and pray to the almighty for an outstanding career.
(I took his photograph at Prodipto's flat in Mumbai on 24.06.09)
Friday 22 May 2009
Current events in the family
Wedding cremony of Priyabroto (Pablu) and Indrani was held at Kolkata on 10th May,2009 ( reception on 14th May) . Pablu is the only son of Partho Sarathi (Pintu) and grandson of Late Prahlad Chandra (A/129 BghaJatin Palli)I went to Kolkata from Delhi to attend the reception at Satyajit Roy Park, Patuli- Baishnabghata township on EM bypass. All family members may like to join me in wishing the couple a very happy and long conjugal ife.
Both of them are in service and posted at Hyderabad.
Both of them are in service and posted at Hyderabad.
Now I request both Priyabroto and Indrani to introduce themselves on this website , telling us about their career, aspirations,etc.
..................................................................................................................................................................
Six months ago, in November 2008 , the wedding creremony of Promit and Riya was held in Kolkata. Promit is the only son of Phalguni (Khoka), grandson of late Prahlad Chandra ( A/129 Bagha Jatin Palli). All family members may like to join me in wishing the couple a very happy and long conjugal life. Both of them are in service and posted at Pune.
Here I request Riya and Promit to irtroduce themselves to all of us over this website talking about their career,aspirations,etc.
NB. I may be excused for not-so-good quality of photos which I have transferred from my mobile phone. The top one was taken live whereas the bottomone from a printed photo. Pl. send me good photographs via e-mail : prosanto.bhattacharyya@gmail.com
Thursday 9 April 2009
Padmanath prosongo - 1
Saraswati and Swamiji
Padmanath Saraswati of generation 13 ( 1868 – 1938 ) in this family tree and Swami Vivekananda ( 1863 – 1902) were contemporary . In the ye
ar 1900 ( a day before bishubasankranti in 1307, Bengali calender) Swami Vivekananda went to vi
sit Kamaksha temple in Guwahati on his way to Shillong ; he again touched Guwahati on his way back to Kolkata. He was accompanied by many persons ; possibly his mother also came with him. Local people raised subscription to support their travel and stay . At Guwahati they stayed in a big bungalow.
Padmanath was then working in the Census office in Guwahati . He and one of his associates went to see Vivekananda at the bungalow. He had not seen Swamiji earlier. There he ran into a person of fair complexion , with large eyes , clad in saffron dhoti and genji and seated on a stool in the verandah.
Padmanth, – “ I have come to see Swamiji”.
The man replied - “ well, tell me what you want to discuss”
Padmanath realized that he was speaking to none other than Swamiji…now he could identify the big shining eyes, very charming radiant angel face that he saw in photographs. Padmanath noticed a prominent cut mark on his forehead ( not found in any of his photographs). There is a mention of this cut mark in Swamiji’s biography composed by Sri Pramatha Nath Basu ( page 28).
His friend gave a brief introduction of Padmanath and his contribution to literature, education, history and society in Assam. Among others, they discussed architecture in ancient India, sacred thread of Brahmins, etc ( details omitted here) and decided to meet again at Vasishisthashram ( Guwahati) next day (bishubasankranti).
But for some reasons Swamiji could not go to Bashistashram next day and the meeting was cancelled.
However, on Swamiji’s way back from Shillong , he met Swamiji again - this time in a room in a tranquil atmosphere. Swamiji was so charming and amiable! Padmanath was pained to find him suffering from asthma like breathlessness ( shwaskastha ).
Padmanath - “ Swamiji, your guru Shrishri Ramkrishna obtained charam siddhi by worshipping idols. Then, why in your Chicago speech you said, ..’from high soaring flights of Vedanta philosophy to vulgar ideal of idolatry!’ Is idolatry vulgar ?”
- Swamiji , “Did I really say ‘vulgar’ ?”
- Padmanath , “ That’ s what I remember “
- Swamiji, “ Then, Vulgus = people , Vulgar means ‘popular’ . That’s what I meant”
…..Padmanath adds in the footnote of this writing that …. afterwards , when the speech was published , the sentence appeared as .. ..” from the high spiritual flights of Vedantic Philosophy ….. to the low ideas of idolatry.”
….excerpts from Padmanath Saraswati's writings in Journal “sahitya”( 1920 – 23, Bengali 1327-29) which were reprinted in the form of a book “ Ramkrishna Vivekananda Prasanga “, 45 No. House Katra, Kasidham,Laksmipurnima, Shakabda- 1846. These writings were translated in Hindi and also published in Journal- ‘Maryada’
ar 1900 ( a day before bishubasankranti in 1307, Bengali calender) Swami Vivekananda went to vi
sit Kamaksha temple in Guwahati on his way to Shillong ; he again touched Guwahati on his way back to Kolkata. He was accompanied by many persons ; possibly his mother also came with him. Local people raised subscription to support their travel and stay . At Guwahati they stayed in a big bungalow.Padmanath was then working in the Census office in Guwahati . He and one of his associates went to see Vivekananda at the bungalow. He had not seen Swamiji earlier. There he ran into a person of fair complexion , with large eyes , clad in saffron dhoti and genji and seated on a stool in the verandah.
Padmanth, – “ I have come to see Swamiji”.
The man replied - “ well, tell me what you want to discuss”
Padmanath realized that he was speaking to none other than Swamiji…now he could identify the big shining eyes, very charming radiant angel face that he saw in photographs. Padmanath noticed a prominent cut mark on his forehead ( not found in any of his photographs). There is a mention of this cut mark in Swamiji’s biography composed by Sri Pramatha Nath Basu ( page 28).
His friend gave a brief introduction of Padmanath and his contribution to literature, education, history and society in Assam. Among others, they discussed architecture in ancient India, sacred thread of Brahmins, etc ( details omitted here) and decided to meet again at Vasishisthashram ( Guwahati) next day (bishubasankranti).
But for some reasons Swamiji could not go to Bashistashram next day and the meeting was cancelled.
However, on Swamiji’s way back from Shillong , he met Swamiji again - this time in a room in a tranquil atmosphere. Swamiji was so charming and amiable! Padmanath was pained to find him suffering from asthma like breathlessness ( shwaskastha ).
Padmanath - “ Swamiji, your guru Shrishri Ramkrishna obtained charam siddhi by worshipping idols. Then, why in your Chicago speech you said, ..’from high soaring flights of Vedanta philosophy to vulgar ideal of idolatry!’ Is idolatry vulgar ?”
- Swamiji , “Did I really say ‘vulgar’ ?”
- Padmanath , “ That’ s what I remember “
- Swamiji, “ Then, Vulgus = people , Vulgar means ‘popular’ . That’s what I meant”
…..Padmanath adds in the footnote of this writing that …. afterwards , when the speech was published , the sentence appeared as .. ..” from the high spiritual flights of Vedantic Philosophy ….. to the low ideas of idolatry.”
….excerpts from Padmanath Saraswati's writings in Journal “sahitya”( 1920 – 23, Bengali 1327-29) which were reprinted in the form of a book “ Ramkrishna Vivekananda Prasanga “, 45 No. House Katra, Kasidham,Laksmipurnima, Shakabda- 1846. These writings were translated in Hindi and also published in Journal- ‘Maryada’
Thursday 2 April 2009
Monday 23 March 2009
Six Brothers of Generation 14 ( see section II below)
Myself and Dipali visited Kolkata during 13 to 23 Feb, 2009 primarily to collect/ take photographs and interview possibly everybody at Barasat, Barrackpur, BaghaJatin(Jadavpur),Kolkata .Besides taking photographs, I came across one of the famous publications of Padmanath Saraswati ( Shrihatter Itibritto .. a hardcover with around 400 pages with chrological and graphical description of rulers of Sylhet starting from medieval ages ).We are trying to digitize it and upload for all to read it.
Another important outcome ... meeting with my aunt(Nani Devi, wife of Late Prahlad Chandra) at BaghaJatin.She is the last survivor of previous generation. She is slim., fit to move without any support at 89. It was a pleasure to gossip; her intelligent look and talks have not lost shine at this age.
1.Purna Chandra Shastri .. ..
... eldest son of Parmananda Kaviratna
Born in 1893, left for heavenly abode 30.12.1977; 'Shastri 'from Beneras Hindu University. MA (gold medal in Sanskrit) , Calcutta University. Having lost his father when he was a college student and being the eldest, he had to bring up his three brothers. All of them were educated at Calcutta as he began his career as a resident tutor to the grandsons of 'Maharaja of Putia' staying at a sprawling palatial house in Shyambazar.He brought his younger brother Promod Chandra from Baniachong who was younger to him by 8 years and admitted him in the Sanskrit Collegiate School , College Street-Calcutta (the school was established by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar).
He taught at Murari Chand College-Sylhet,Sanskrit College,Maulavibazar College,at Govt.schools as Headmaster at Karimganj, Habiganj,Silchar,retired in April-1948 at the age of 55 .During British regime, that was the retirement age for Govt. officers. He and his brother Promod Chandra built a sprawling house in Habiganj in 1930( 20 miles from Baniachung) on the bank of river Khowai. Who knew that… they will lose all movable and immovable properties to the newly born East Pakistan in 1948 ? ....and they will have to flee their motherland due to communal clashes during partition of India (1947) ?. Otherwise Purna Chandra had planned (as said to me) to open a residential Sanskrit School in the premises of this house... to be named 'Uma Parananda Chatuspathi'
To be named after his parents.
The photograph was taken when he was around 80. With a sturdy frame in his youth ,he was a handsome man with a heavy personality. His uncompromising and relentless stand to stick to truth sometimes created problems in his service career. But he bravely faced odds.
He was not very tall(about 5ft.7 inches). He was dead against all types of luxury and indiscipline. He used to wear dhoti much above ankle .This exposed his adorable leg muscles. His left wrist lost its degrees of freedom due to a fatal fall from a tree in his boyhood. He was like a large banyan tree which sheltered whosoever wanted his help, whether material or otherwise. Children of poor near and far relations and friends , deprived of opportunity of schooling in villages , were sucked in his house during his entire service career. Recently in Shillong,I chanced upon a few of his thousands of students who fondly remembered "Purno Shastri".
He had seven sons and two daughters : Paramesh(Kanu), Bhanu (died at the age of 6 months),Paritosh(Bolu),Priyatosh(Bishu),Pranotosh(Bhola),Shibu, Haru; Ranu and Sarba.
I used to visit him when he was in a rented house with his sons and youngest daughter in Barrackpur( 18 Ghosepara Road) almost every weekend evenings during mid sixties. I was then studying at the Engineering college , Jadavpur. I was not bold enough to make eye contact with the head of the family and a living legend who brought up and gave shape to careers of all his brothers and near relations. Our discussion was often interrupted by the puffing and whistling of steam engines. Even tremor was felt every time a train passed by. Most noise was created by the 6-30 ‘East Bengal Express’ – a train with wooden compartments painted in green with a shining decorated engine which had very limited stoppages. It enjoyed a very special prestige like Rajdhani Express in India or Maglev in Europe today. The train used to deliberately give a long deafening whistle while crossing us. Through the window I could see one of the three red faced drivers shoveling coals from the tender to the hearth of the fire tube boiler of the engine. As the sound of the train subsided, he asked me to remind him of the last sentence he’d spoken before the interruption. Sometimes he smoked -- he was a mild smoker. He wanted to be alone during 8 PM news over All India Radio from a small transistor radio; this gave me some breather to gossip with my brothers .
He used to remind me of our talents as scholars through generations. “Do you have any idea of contribution by your forefathers to education?” – was his pet question. I used answer in the negative. He repented that his younger brother (my father) wasted his talent by branching out to the profession of lawyer, though he was the most gifted in his generation and one of the best in the university in Mathematics and Science. He used to study the least , but came out best in school and college.
After my return from Europe in 1972, I went to see him. He asked me whether I had taken a dip in the Ganges on my return. He did not allow me to touch his feet till I took a dip.
2. Promod Chandra Bhattacharjya …. Second son of Paramananda Kaviratna
1901 - 2 April,1966 1919 (?) - 2 Dec,1996
My father was exceptionally modest and a soft spoken man. From him I heard many stories of the then Calcutta, the capital of British India, where he had his school and university education. He was brought to Calcutta by his elder brother on his completion of middle school in Baniachong. On the lines of the freedom fighters, his priorities were character building and good physique. He joined Gym . At 6ft.2inches,he had a robust frame and a muscular body. Each of his long fingers were strong and artistic as each was tapered almost to a point at the tip; one can not but kept on looking at those talking fingers. His mother had dark and his father had very fair complexion; he got his complexion from his mother.
Not to forget that he saw the golden period of Calcutta when the all time greats of world fame were alive …Tagore, Sir JCBose, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee ( the royal Bengal tiger), subhas Chandra Bose, Sharat Ch. Bose, C.R Das, CVRaman,Satyen Bose, Meghnad Saha, Ramendra Sunder Trivedi … to name a few.
He was the very first man in the entire family tree who took up science instead of sanskrit. With almost record marks at his back, he got admitted at the law college. With his degrees in science and law, he began his career as a faculty in National Council of Bengal( now Jadavpur University) in Chemistry Department in 1926 (?).Dr. Triguna Charan Sen , who later on became the Vice Chancellor of Jadavpur University, Mayor of Calcutta and then the union Education Minister (1968 – 70), was his one of his friends and contemporary lecturers in the NCE. Had he settled at Jadavpur at that time ,he could have a glorious future. But destiny and call of motherland brought him back to Baniachong… the family wanted him to practice law at Habiganj Court to earn his livelihood as well as to look after the ancestral property in the form of agricultural land, plots of land , ancestral house with orchards, etc. He and his elder brother built a new house at Habiganj (20 miles from Baniachong ) , raised children and practiced law for nearly 20 years …. when suddenly in 1947 partition and communal riots .. everything was blown off…property, aspirations and dream. I was then only five. But I have in my memory graphic details of the build-up of riot clouds, house burning scenes among thunderous communal slogans by people armed with flashing swords, .. and finally our escape in the thick of darkness to Shayestaganj Railway station.
…. Thanks to the clever political leaders and demigods of those days and of today who are very good in speeches and assurances and are ever ready to sacrifice their lives to uphold secularism from a safe distance.… Newspapers were busy in printing their speeches and photos of crowds traveling on the roofs of more than overcrowded trains. Then, what happened to Promod Chandra ?
He stayed with his youngest brother Paresh Chandra who was then an officer with Indian Railways at Calcutta for sometime. Got job as school teacher readily, but in remote areas of West Bengal. Like Pandavas the family moved from one place to another in this process ; villages thus visited were - Lokenathpur( near Tarakeshwar) infested with deadly snakes and hundreds of langurs, Rajivpur, Shibhati (near Itindaghat) where tigers sometimes strike during night, Hingalganj where salt water river Ichamati infested with sharks used to flood the habitation every year… outbreak of cholera and small pox was no surprise, Taki -- where fear of wild animals were not there but the school had no money to pay teachers. Ultimately he found a better place in Jhargram among long spreads of thick sal and teak forests and population of simple and lovable people of Santhal tribe. Promod Chandra’s background in science became an asset to K.K.Institution, the famous local school as the then Intermediate science entered the West Bengal school curriculum at class XI stage. He now found some solace after years of distress. The popular ‘Sir’ was the talk of the town as an ideal teacher and advocate of man-making education. Jhargram , with its number of boys’ schools, girls’ schools, basic training institute, polytechnic, junior polytechnic, Ramkrishna Sevayatan, Sharada vidyapeeth, college, agriculture college, B.Ed college continues to be a good destination for students.
He breathed his last in Jhargram among the whispering of tall trees ,twittering of hundreds of birds and cooing of a lone cuckoo from the nearby mango tree in the early hours of 2nd April. Those days healthy persons like him did not go to the doctor nor cared for regular BP or blood sugar check up. On his deathbed ,we came to know that he had high BP and had a severe stroke.
At marriage my mother Labonya Prova was twelve and my
father thirty . At Habiganj she was the only
mother of the joint family of the first and second
brothers having nine children , since the
premature demise of Purna Chandra’s wife. Before my birth she spent a few years first in Baniachong and then Sylhet where Purna Chandra used to teach in the Murari Chand College. Prahlad Chandra and Paresh Chandra were then college students in the joint family. Since then her day started in the kitchen in the early morning and ended at midnight, cooking and feeding hungry mouths four times a day. In Habiganj, the three family members of the servant who stayed in the outhouse helped her , besides milking the cow, washing clothes and cleaning the house. She was fair, pretty and famous among friends and relations for her witty jokes and her superb skills in innovative cooking. Yet she found time to teach children who used to sit around her with books in the big kitchen; sat at the harmonium with Ranu, the eldest daughter of Purna Chandra.
Needless to say that , subsequent to partition of India, moving to village after village with children , protect them, feed them and educate them properly was difficult enough to describe in words. As a child I saw her reading out loudly Anandamath ( Bankim Chandra) to a congregation of illiterate village women. I was born in her parental house at a village called Betal in Mymensingh district.
My mother was actually a goddess who came to earth to rescue others from distress and to share others’ sufferings. Her three sons and three daughters did their best to give her their best . She came to Delhi to stay with me and my younger brother. At least her last days had been happier among sons and their wives , daughters and their husbands, her most beloved grand daughters and grandsons, before she went back to heaven without much suffering. She left behind three sons and three daughters: Pravakar(Kajol), Anima (Anu), Prosanto (kanchan),Aparna(Shukla),Pronab(Ranju),Anjana(Khuku)
3. Prahlad Chandra Bhattacharjya…third son of late Parmananda Kaviratna
.. ..long live sejokakima,89
Prahlad Chandra
Bhattacharjya
2 October1904 – 4 April,1989
That’s how Kaku looked like when he was in his forties. Above photo of Sejokakima was taken a month ago. At 89 she is so fit and witty. The house at A/129 Bagha Jatin was almost a make-shift shelter in early fifties, where Sejokakima spent most of the time in the kitchen cooking and feeding husband and five children: Haimanti(Minu), Basanti(Khuku), Phalguni ( Khoka), Partha Sarathi(Pintu) and Jayanti(Jhunu). The colony then did not have civic facilities like sewage or sanitation. Today all houses there speak of affluence .
Prahlad Chandra joined teaching after his graduation in Science. He was also M.Ed ( Master of Education) from Calcutta University. Like brothers he was also well-built ; he was around 5 ft 8 inches tall. Though I saw him many times, I did not know how he looked like till I crossed twenty; as a child I was so afraid of him due to his gravity that I did not dare to look at him. I used to always find him engrossed in reading. He taught at Chetla Boys’ school, Calcutta, Rajivpur High school, Bapujinagar Sammilito Udvastu Vidyalaya,and finally at Mukul Bose memorial Institute - Baghajatin
( 1959 – 1970) from where he retired as Headmaster.
His sons and daughter should mail me more information about him.
4. Paresh Chandra Bhattacharjee… 4th son of Paramananda Kaviratna
( 1907 - 1978 )
This photograph was taken in December 1941 0n the occasion of his marriage. This rare photo has been made available to me by Basanti(Khuku) and Jayanti(Jhunu). He graduated in Mechanical Engineering from Bengal Engineering college, Shibpur. During British period , getting an officers’ position in Indian Railways demanded exceptional merit which he had. He used to talk of those days when he had cross Hoogly river( Ganges) by walking along boats lined up across the river; Howrah bridge was under construction then. He had to commute from Calcutta to his workshop at Howrah. I still remember his huge staff quarter (Kolvin Courts) near Howah Maidan , and then at 15 Belvedere Park, Alipur. During those post- partition days he sheltered innumerable relations and friends. Provided employment to at least 300 men. He was really handsome; one might mistake him for the then popular film hero Ashok Kumar. He was very fair and about 6 feet tall. He was posted at various important places like Kurseong, Malogaon, Guwahati and finally Delhi. When cars were rare, he had bought his first car in early fifties.
He was the very first man in the family tree who went to London on a training program way back in 1950 … an event so rare and prestigious to the family.
I stayed for two months with him at his Bunglow at 6 State Entry Road, Connaught Place, New Delhi on my joining as a Lecturer at NCERT, New Delhi in 1969. He was then the Chief Engineer, Northern Railways. He retired from the Railways in 1971.
Soon after that he built a house at Salt Lake, Calcutta. He suddenly fell ill in 1976 due to prostrate trouble. He breathed his last in 1978 in Chandigarh .
Our Kakima Roma Bhattacharjya was the pride of the family. She was highly educated ,very pretty and an accomplished singer over All India Radio. Some of her songs are available on gramophone discs. She was also a teacher at Dakshini , the famous institute for teaching Rabindra sangeet in Calcutta. She was the daughter of Kalipada Mukherjee, the then Public Prosecutor. Kakima went to stay with her daughter in the USA where she breathed her last.
They left behind : Nandita (Nanda), twins - Joyashree (Jaya) ang Monjushree(Monju).
5. Dr. Pudarikaksha Bhattacharya,M.Sc. M.B. DTM.DPH… eldest son of Padmanath Saraswati
I had special love and respect for daktarkaka due to his frankness and strong sense of humour. Look at his photograph, don’t you find a special radiance of perfection and talent from the extremely sharp feature ?. He was well built but not tall. His height is comparable to that of Napoleon Bonaparte.
My daktarkakima Sushama Bhattacharjya was a benovalent woman with leadership qualities. She was generous in helping whosoever wanted her help to the extent of rehabilitating some of them with land in Calcutta. Extending medical help to elderly people was her routine job.
They have left behind one son and four daughters : Shaktiprosad (Photo), Kalyani (Dolli), Dipali (Lili), Shephali (Shefu), Anjali (Oli)
5. Birupaksha Bhattacharjya…. Second son of Padmanath Saraswati
( 1905 ? -- 1978)
Out of six brothers , he is the only one who did not flee Baniachong even in the face of riots. He was B Sc, DMS. He was a student of Surendra nath college, Calcutta. Once when his father visited him in the college hostel, he was playing sitar. Though the father did not appreciate this, the boy who had a strong musical intelligence could play almost all instruments; harmonium, flute, tabla, violin,etc. He had close association with Sachin Dev Burman who was a rising star musician that time. He persued music as an integral part of his life. As per the wish of his father he used to practice homeopathy and treat poor villagers free of cost. He left behind one daughter and seven sons : Annapurna (Joly),Debiprosad (Ganesh),Ramaprosad(Sontu),Debaprosad(Tapan), Haraprosad(died young),Kaliprosad(Arun),Baniprosad(Bishnu),Satiprosad(Binu).
Myself and Dipali visited Kolkata during 13 to 23 Feb, 2009 primarily to collect/ take photographs and interview possibly everybody at Barasat, Barrackpur, BaghaJatin(Jadavpur),Kolkata .Besides taking photographs, I came across one of the famous publications of Padmanath Saraswati ( Shrihatter Itibritto .. a hardcover with around 400 pages with chrological and graphical description of rulers of Sylhet starting from medieval ages ).We are trying to digitize it and upload for all to read it.
Another important outcome ... meeting with my aunt(Nani Devi, wife of Late Prahlad Chandra) at BaghaJatin.She is the last survivor of previous generation. She is slim., fit to move without any support at 89. It was a pleasure to gossip; her intelligent look and talks have not lost shine at this age.
1.Purna Chandra Shastri .. ..
... eldest son of Parmananda Kaviratna
Born in 1893, left for heavenly abode 30.12.1977; 'Shastri 'from Beneras Hindu University. MA (gold medal in Sanskrit) , Calcutta University. Having lost his father when he was a college student and being the eldest, he had to bring up his three brothers. All of them were educated at Calcutta as he began his career as a resident tutor to the grandsons of 'Maharaja of Putia' staying at a sprawling palatial house in Shyambazar.He brought his younger brother Promod Chandra from Baniachong who was younger to him by 8 years and admitted him in the Sanskrit Collegiate School , College Street-Calcutta (the school was established by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar).
He taught at Murari Chand College-Sylhet,Sanskrit College,Maulavibazar College,at Govt.schools as Headmaster at Karimganj, Habiganj,Silchar,retired in April-1948 at the age of 55 .During British regime, that was the retirement age for Govt. officers. He and his brother Promod Chandra built a sprawling house in Habiganj in 1930( 20 miles from Baniachung) on the bank of river Khowai. Who knew that… they will lose all movable and immovable properties to the newly born East Pakistan in 1948 ? ....and they will have to flee their motherland due to communal clashes during partition of India (1947) ?. Otherwise Purna Chandra had planned (as said to me) to open a residential Sanskrit School in the premises of this house... to be named 'Uma Parananda Chatuspathi'
To be named after his parents.
The photograph was taken when he was around 80. With a sturdy frame in his youth ,he was a handsome man with a heavy personality. His uncompromising and relentless stand to stick to truth sometimes created problems in his service career. But he bravely faced odds.
He was not very tall(about 5ft.7 inches). He was dead against all types of luxury and indiscipline. He used to wear dhoti much above ankle .This exposed his adorable leg muscles. His left wrist lost its degrees of freedom due to a fatal fall from a tree in his boyhood. He was like a large banyan tree which sheltered whosoever wanted his help, whether material or otherwise. Children of poor near and far relations and friends , deprived of opportunity of schooling in villages , were sucked in his house during his entire service career. Recently in Shillong,I chanced upon a few of his thousands of students who fondly remembered "Purno Shastri".
He had seven sons and two daughters : Paramesh(Kanu), Bhanu (died at the age of 6 months),Paritosh(Bolu),Priyatosh(Bishu),Pranotosh(Bhola),Shibu, Haru; Ranu and Sarba.
I used to visit him when he was in a rented house with his sons and youngest daughter in Barrackpur( 18 Ghosepara Road) almost every weekend evenings during mid sixties. I was then studying at the Engineering college , Jadavpur. I was not bold enough to make eye contact with the head of the family and a living legend who brought up and gave shape to careers of all his brothers and near relations. Our discussion was often interrupted by the puffing and whistling of steam engines. Even tremor was felt every time a train passed by. Most noise was created by the 6-30 ‘East Bengal Express’ – a train with wooden compartments painted in green with a shining decorated engine which had very limited stoppages. It enjoyed a very special prestige like Rajdhani Express in India or Maglev in Europe today. The train used to deliberately give a long deafening whistle while crossing us. Through the window I could see one of the three red faced drivers shoveling coals from the tender to the hearth of the fire tube boiler of the engine. As the sound of the train subsided, he asked me to remind him of the last sentence he’d spoken before the interruption. Sometimes he smoked -- he was a mild smoker. He wanted to be alone during 8 PM news over All India Radio from a small transistor radio; this gave me some breather to gossip with my brothers .
He used to remind me of our talents as scholars through generations. “Do you have any idea of contribution by your forefathers to education?” – was his pet question. I used answer in the negative. He repented that his younger brother (my father) wasted his talent by branching out to the profession of lawyer, though he was the most gifted in his generation and one of the best in the university in Mathematics and Science. He used to study the least , but came out best in school and college.
After my return from Europe in 1972, I went to see him. He asked me whether I had taken a dip in the Ganges on my return. He did not allow me to touch his feet till I took a dip.
2. Promod Chandra Bhattacharjya …. Second son of Paramananda Kaviratna
1901 - 2 April,1966 1919 (?) - 2 Dec,1996
My father was exceptionally modest and a soft spoken man. From him I heard many stories of the then Calcutta, the capital of British India, where he had his school and university education. He was brought to Calcutta by his elder brother on his completion of middle school in Baniachong. On the lines of the freedom fighters, his priorities were character building and good physique. He joined Gym . At 6ft.2inches,he had a robust frame and a muscular body. Each of his long fingers were strong and artistic as each was tapered almost to a point at the tip; one can not but kept on looking at those talking fingers. His mother had dark and his father had very fair complexion; he got his complexion from his mother.
Not to forget that he saw the golden period of Calcutta when the all time greats of world fame were alive …Tagore, Sir JCBose, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee ( the royal Bengal tiger), subhas Chandra Bose, Sharat Ch. Bose, C.R Das, CVRaman,Satyen Bose, Meghnad Saha, Ramendra Sunder Trivedi … to name a few.
He was the very first man in the entire family tree who took up science instead of sanskrit. With almost record marks at his back, he got admitted at the law college. With his degrees in science and law, he began his career as a faculty in National Council of Bengal( now Jadavpur University) in Chemistry Department in 1926 (?).Dr. Triguna Charan Sen , who later on became the Vice Chancellor of Jadavpur University, Mayor of Calcutta and then the union Education Minister (1968 – 70), was his one of his friends and contemporary lecturers in the NCE. Had he settled at Jadavpur at that time ,he could have a glorious future. But destiny and call of motherland brought him back to Baniachong… the family wanted him to practice law at Habiganj Court to earn his livelihood as well as to look after the ancestral property in the form of agricultural land, plots of land , ancestral house with orchards, etc. He and his elder brother built a new house at Habiganj (20 miles from Baniachong ) , raised children and practiced law for nearly 20 years …. when suddenly in 1947 partition and communal riots .. everything was blown off…property, aspirations and dream. I was then only five. But I have in my memory graphic details of the build-up of riot clouds, house burning scenes among thunderous communal slogans by people armed with flashing swords, .. and finally our escape in the thick of darkness to Shayestaganj Railway station.
…. Thanks to the clever political leaders and demigods of those days and of today who are very good in speeches and assurances and are ever ready to sacrifice their lives to uphold secularism from a safe distance.… Newspapers were busy in printing their speeches and photos of crowds traveling on the roofs of more than overcrowded trains. Then, what happened to Promod Chandra ?
He stayed with his youngest brother Paresh Chandra who was then an officer with Indian Railways at Calcutta for sometime. Got job as school teacher readily, but in remote areas of West Bengal. Like Pandavas the family moved from one place to another in this process ; villages thus visited were - Lokenathpur( near Tarakeshwar) infested with deadly snakes and hundreds of langurs, Rajivpur, Shibhati (near Itindaghat) where tigers sometimes strike during night, Hingalganj where salt water river Ichamati infested with sharks used to flood the habitation every year… outbreak of cholera and small pox was no surprise, Taki -- where fear of wild animals were not there but the school had no money to pay teachers. Ultimately he found a better place in Jhargram among long spreads of thick sal and teak forests and population of simple and lovable people of Santhal tribe. Promod Chandra’s background in science became an asset to K.K.Institution, the famous local school as the then Intermediate science entered the West Bengal school curriculum at class XI stage. He now found some solace after years of distress. The popular ‘Sir’ was the talk of the town as an ideal teacher and advocate of man-making education. Jhargram , with its number of boys’ schools, girls’ schools, basic training institute, polytechnic, junior polytechnic, Ramkrishna Sevayatan, Sharada vidyapeeth, college, agriculture college, B.Ed college continues to be a good destination for students.
He breathed his last in Jhargram among the whispering of tall trees ,twittering of hundreds of birds and cooing of a lone cuckoo from the nearby mango tree in the early hours of 2nd April. Those days healthy persons like him did not go to the doctor nor cared for regular BP or blood sugar check up. On his deathbed ,we came to know that he had high BP and had a severe stroke.
At marriage my mother Labonya Prova was twelve and my
father thirty . At Habiganj she was the only
mother of the joint family of the first and second
brothers having nine children , since the
premature demise of Purna Chandra’s wife. Before my birth she spent a few years first in Baniachong and then Sylhet where Purna Chandra used to teach in the Murari Chand College. Prahlad Chandra and Paresh Chandra were then college students in the joint family. Since then her day started in the kitchen in the early morning and ended at midnight, cooking and feeding hungry mouths four times a day. In Habiganj, the three family members of the servant who stayed in the outhouse helped her , besides milking the cow, washing clothes and cleaning the house. She was fair, pretty and famous among friends and relations for her witty jokes and her superb skills in innovative cooking. Yet she found time to teach children who used to sit around her with books in the big kitchen; sat at the harmonium with Ranu, the eldest daughter of Purna Chandra.
Needless to say that , subsequent to partition of India, moving to village after village with children , protect them, feed them and educate them properly was difficult enough to describe in words. As a child I saw her reading out loudly Anandamath ( Bankim Chandra) to a congregation of illiterate village women. I was born in her parental house at a village called Betal in Mymensingh district.
My mother was actually a goddess who came to earth to rescue others from distress and to share others’ sufferings. Her three sons and three daughters did their best to give her their best . She came to Delhi to stay with me and my younger brother. At least her last days had been happier among sons and their wives , daughters and their husbands, her most beloved grand daughters and grandsons, before she went back to heaven without much suffering. She left behind three sons and three daughters: Pravakar(Kajol), Anima (Anu), Prosanto (kanchan),Aparna(Shukla),Pronab(Ranju),Anjana(Khuku)
3. Prahlad Chandra Bhattacharjya…third son of late Parmananda Kaviratna
.. ..long live sejokakima,89Prahlad Chandra
Bhattacharjya
2 October1904 – 4 April,1989
That’s how Kaku looked like when he was in his forties. Above photo of Sejokakima was taken a month ago. At 89 she is so fit and witty. The house at A/129 Bagha Jatin was almost a make-shift shelter in early fifties, where Sejokakima spent most of the time in the kitchen cooking and feeding husband and five children: Haimanti(Minu), Basanti(Khuku), Phalguni ( Khoka), Partha Sarathi(Pintu) and Jayanti(Jhunu). The colony then did not have civic facilities like sewage or sanitation. Today all houses there speak of affluence .
Prahlad Chandra joined teaching after his graduation in Science. He was also M.Ed ( Master of Education) from Calcutta University. Like brothers he was also well-built ; he was around 5 ft 8 inches tall. Though I saw him many times, I did not know how he looked like till I crossed twenty; as a child I was so afraid of him due to his gravity that I did not dare to look at him. I used to always find him engrossed in reading. He taught at Chetla Boys’ school, Calcutta, Rajivpur High school, Bapujinagar Sammilito Udvastu Vidyalaya,and finally at Mukul Bose memorial Institute - Baghajatin
( 1959 – 1970) from where he retired as Headmaster.
His sons and daughter should mail me more information about him.
4. Paresh Chandra Bhattacharjee… 4th son of Paramananda Kaviratna
( 1907 - 1978 )
This photograph was taken in December 1941 0n the occasion of his marriage. This rare photo has been made available to me by Basanti(Khuku) and Jayanti(Jhunu). He graduated in Mechanical Engineering from Bengal Engineering college, Shibpur. During British period , getting an officers’ position in Indian Railways demanded exceptional merit which he had. He used to talk of those days when he had cross Hoogly river( Ganges) by walking along boats lined up across the river; Howrah bridge was under construction then. He had to commute from Calcutta to his workshop at Howrah. I still remember his huge staff quarter (Kolvin Courts) near Howah Maidan , and then at 15 Belvedere Park, Alipur. During those post- partition days he sheltered innumerable relations and friends. Provided employment to at least 300 men. He was really handsome; one might mistake him for the then popular film hero Ashok Kumar. He was very fair and about 6 feet tall. He was posted at various important places like Kurseong, Malogaon, Guwahati and finally Delhi. When cars were rare, he had bought his first car in early fifties.
He was the very first man in the family tree who went to London on a training program way back in 1950 … an event so rare and prestigious to the family.
I stayed for two months with him at his Bunglow at 6 State Entry Road, Connaught Place, New Delhi on my joining as a Lecturer at NCERT, New Delhi in 1969. He was then the Chief Engineer, Northern Railways. He retired from the Railways in 1971.
Soon after that he built a house at Salt Lake, Calcutta. He suddenly fell ill in 1976 due to prostrate trouble. He breathed his last in 1978 in Chandigarh .
Our Kakima Roma Bhattacharjya was the pride of the family. She was highly educated ,very pretty and an accomplished singer over All India Radio. Some of her songs are available on gramophone discs. She was also a teacher at Dakshini , the famous institute for teaching Rabindra sangeet in Calcutta. She was the daughter of Kalipada Mukherjee, the then Public Prosecutor. Kakima went to stay with her daughter in the USA where she breathed her last.
They left behind : Nandita (Nanda), twins - Joyashree (Jaya) ang Monjushree(Monju).
5. Dr. Pudarikaksha Bhattacharya,M.Sc. M.B. DTM.DPH… eldest son of Padmanath Saraswati
(1904 – 1980) 
H e was one of the meritorious students of the Presidency college and Medical college of Calcutta. According to his famous economist friend Bhabatosh Dutta, he is perhaps the first M.Sc. MB in India. He stood first in Physiology and was being groomed to become heart specialist to the extent that the British Principal of the Medical college asked him to proceed to London for higher studies with scholarship. But his father Padmanath Saraswati did not allow him to cross Kalapani lest his son lose character and qualities of a pure Brahmin by mixing with Europeans. He was in service in Calcutta and retired as Health Officer, Calcutta corporation.
Sushama Devi in her youth(photo)
I had special love and respect for daktarkaka due to his frankness and strong sense of humour. Look at his photograph, don’t you find a special radiance of perfection and talent from the extremely sharp feature ?. He was well built but not tall. His height is comparable to that of Napoleon Bonaparte.
My daktarkakima Sushama Bhattacharjya was a benovalent woman with leadership qualities. She was generous in helping whosoever wanted her help to the extent of rehabilitating some of them with land in Calcutta. Extending medical help to elderly people was her routine job.
They have left behind one son and four daughters : Shaktiprosad (Photo), Kalyani (Dolli), Dipali (Lili), Shephali (Shefu), Anjali (Oli)
5. Birupaksha Bhattacharjya…. Second son of Padmanath Saraswati
( 1905 ? -- 1978)
Out of six brothers , he is the only one who did not flee Baniachong even in the face of riots. He was B Sc, DMS. He was a student of Surendra nath college, Calcutta. Once when his father visited him in the college hostel, he was playing sitar. Though the father did not appreciate this, the boy who had a strong musical intelligence could play almost all instruments; harmonium, flute, tabla, violin,etc. He had close association with Sachin Dev Burman who was a rising star musician that time. He persued music as an integral part of his life. As per the wish of his father he used to practice homeopathy and treat poor villagers free of cost. He left behind one daughter and seven sons : Annapurna (Joly),Debiprosad (Ganesh),Ramaprosad(Sontu),Debaprosad(Tapan), Haraprosad(died young),Kaliprosad(Arun),Baniprosad(Bishnu),Satiprosad(Binu).
Part B...please read Part-A first dt. 27 Jan 09 (below this part) before reading this
Six Brothers of Generation 14 ( see Section II below)
I and Dipali visited Kolkata to collect/ take photographs of possibly everybody at Barasat, Barrackpur,BaghaJatin (Jadavpur). I feel lucky today to upload their photographs along with short boigraphy of each. To start with I saw Sh. Sontu and Sh. Tapan at Barasat.Besides taking photographs, I found the book"Srihatter Itibritto" written by Saraswati( about 400 pages). I have requested Sh. Tapan to make a photocopy for me to upload to this site . I was overjoyed to see Sejokakima ( aged 89) in good health and spirit at A/129 Bagha Jatin; she is the last surviving member of the previous generation.
1.Purna Chandra Shastri...... son of Parmananda Kaviratna
Born in 1893, left for heavenly abode 30.12.1977; 'Shastri 'from Beneras Hindu University. MA (gold medal in Sanskrit) , Calcutta University. Having lost his father when he was a college student and being the eldest, he had to bring up his three brothers. All of them were educated at Calcutta as he began his career as a resident tutor to the grandsons of 'Maharaja of Putia' staying at a sprawling palatial house in Shyambazar.He brought his younger brother Promod Chandra from Baniachong who was younger to him by 8 years and admitted him in the Sanskrit Collegiate School , College Street-Calcutta (the school was established by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar).He taught at Murari Chand College-Sylhet,Sanskrit College,Maulavibazar College,at Govt.schools as Headmaster at Karimganj, Habiganj,Silchar,retired in April-1948 at the age of 55 .During British regime, that was the retirement age for Govt. officers. He and his brother Promod Chandra built a sprawling house in Habiganj in 1930( 20 miles from Baniachung) on the bank of river Khowai. Who knew that… they will lose all movable and immovable properties to the newly born East Pakistan in 1948 ? ....and they will have to flee their motherland due to communal clashes during partition of India (1947) ?. Otherwise Purna Chandra had planned (as said to me) to open a residential Sanskrit School in the premises of this house... to be named 'Uma Parananda Chatuspathi'
To be named after his parents.
The photograph was taken when he was around 80. With a sturdy frame in his youth ,he was a handsome man with a heavy personality. His uncompromising and relentless stand to stick to truth sometimes created problems in his service career. But he bravely faced odds. He was not very tall(about 5ft.7 inches). He was dead against all types of luxury and indiscipline. He used to wear dhoti much above ankle .This exposed his adorable leg muscles. His left wrist lost its degrees of freedom due to a fatal fall from a tree in his boyhood. He was like a large banyan tree which sheltered whosoever wanted his help, whether material or otherwise. Children of poor near and far relations and friends , deprived of opportunity of schooling in villages , were sucked in his house during his entire service career. Recently in Shillong,I chanced upon a few of his thousands of students who fondly remembered "Purno Shastri".
He raised seven sons and two daughters : Paramesh(Kanu), Bhanu (died at the age of 6 months),Paritosh(Bolu),Priyatosh(Bishu),Pranotosh(Bhola),Shibu, Haru; Ranu and Sarba.
I used to visit him when he was in a rented house with his sons and youngest daughter in Barrackpur( 18 Ghosepara Road) almost every weekend evenings during mid sixties. I was then studying at the Engineering college , Jadavpur. I was not bold enough to make eye contact with the head of the family and a living legend who brought up and gave shape to careers of all his brothers and near relations. Our discussion was often interrupted by the puffing and whistling of steam engines. Even tremor was felt every time a train passed by. Most noise was created by the 6-30 ‘East Bengal Express’ – a train with wooden compartments painted in green with a shining decorated engine which had very limited stoppages. It enjoyed a very special prestige like Rajdhani Express in India or Maglev in Europe today. The train used to deliberately give a long deafening whistle while crossing us. Through the window I could see one of the three red faced drivers shoveling coals from the tender to the hearth of the fire tube boiler of the engine. As the sound of the train subsided, he asked me to remind him of the last sentence he’d spoken before the interruption. Sometimes he smoked -- he was a mild smoker. He wanted to be alone during 8 PM news over All India Radio from a small transistor radio; this gave me some breather to gossip with my brothers .
He used to remind me of our talents as scholars through generations. “Do you have any idea of contribution by your forefathers to education?” – was his pet question. I used answer in the negative. He repented that his younger brother (my father) wasted his talent by branching out to the profession of lawyer, though he was the most gifted in his generation and one of the best in the university in Mathematics and Science. He used to study the least , but came out best in school and college.
After my return from Europe in 1972, I went to see him. He asked me whether I had taken a dip in the Ganges on my return. He did not allow me to touch his feet till I took a dip.
2. Promod Chandra Bhattacharjya …. Second son of Paramananda Kaviratna
(1901 - 2 April,1966 )
My father was exceptionally modest and a soft spoken man. From him I heard many stories of the then Calcutta, the capital of British India, where he had his school and university education. He was brought to Calcutta by his elder brother on his completion of middle school in Baniachong.
On the lines of the freedom fighters, his priorities were character building and good physique. He joined Gym . At 6ft.2inches,he had a robust frame and a muscular body. Each of his long fingers were strong and artistic as each was tapered almost to a point at the tip; one can not but kept on looking at
those talking fingers. His mother had dark and his father had very fair complexion; he got his complexion from his mother.
Not to forget that he saw the golden period of Calcutta when the all time greats of world fame were alive …Tagore, Sir JCBose, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee ( the royal Bengal tiger), subhas Chandra Bose, Sharat Ch. Bose, C.R Das, CVRaman,Satyen Bose, Meghnad Saha, Ramendra Sunder Trivedi … to name a few.
He was the very first man in the entire family tree who took up science instead of sanskrit. With almost record marks at his back, he got admitted at the law college. With his degrees in science and law, he began his career as a faculty in National Council of Bengal( now Jadavpur University) in Chemistry Department in 1926 (?).Dr. Triguna Charan Sen , who later on became the Vice Chancellor of Jadavpur University, Mayor of Calcutta and then the union Education Minister (1968 – 70), was his one of his friends and contemporary lecturers in the NCE. Had he settled at Jadavpur at that time ,he could have a glorious future. But destiny and call of motherland brought him back to Baniachong… the family wanted him to practice law at Habiganj Court to earn his livelihood as well as to look after the ancestral property in the form of agricultural land, plots of land , ancestral house with orchards, etc. He and his elder brother built a new house at Habiganj (20 miles from Baniachong ) , raised children and practiced law for nearly 20 years …. when suddenly in 1947 partition and communal riots .. everything was blown off…property, aspirations and dream. I was then only five. But I have in my memory graphic details of the build-up of riot clouds, house burning scenes among thunderous communal slogans by people armed with flashing swords, .. and finally our escape in the thick of darkness to Shayestaganj Railway station.
…. Thanks to the clever political leaders and demigods of those days and of today who are very good in speeches and assurances and are ever ready to sacrifice their lives to uphold secularism from a safe distance.… Newspapers were busy in printing their speeches and photos of crowds traveling on the roofs of more than overcrowded trains. Then, what happened to Promod Chandra ?
He stayed with his youngest brother Paresh Chandra who was then an officer with Indian Railways at Calcutta for sometime. Got job as school teacher readily, but in remote areas of West Bengal. Like Pandavas the family moved from one place to another in this process ; villages thus visited were - Lokenathpur( near Tarakeshwar) infested with deadly snakes and hundreds of langurs, Rajivpur, Shibhati (near Itindaghat) where tigers sometimes strike during night, Hingalganj where salt water river Ichamati infested with sharks used to flood the habitation every year… outbreak of cholera and small pox was no surprise, Taki -- where fear of wild animals were not there but the school had no money to pay teachers. Ultimately he found a better place in Jhargram among long spreads of thick sal and teak forests and population of simple and lovable people of Santhal tribe. Promod Chandra’s background in science became an asset to K.K.Institution, the famous local school as the then Intermediate science entered the West Bengal school curriculum at class XI stage. He now found some solace after years of distress. The popular ‘Sir’ was the talk of the town as an ideal teacher and advocate of man-making education. Jhargram , with its number of boys’ schools, girls’ schools, basic training institute, polytechnic, junior polytechnic, Ramkrishna Sevayatan, Sharada vidyapeeth, college, agriculture college, B.Ed college… continues to be a good destination for students.
He breathed his last in Jhargram among the whispering of tall trees ,twittering of hundreds of birds and cooing of a lone cuckoo from the nearby mango tree in the early hours of 2nd April. Those days healthy persons like him did not go to the doctor nor cared for regular BP or blood sugar check up. On his deathbed ,we came to know that he had high BP and had a severe stroke.
At marriage my mother Labonya Prova ( 19 18 - 1 Dec.1896) was twelve and my
My mother father thirty . At Habiganj she was the only
mother of the joint family of the first and second
brothers having nine children , since the
premature demise of Purna Chandra’s wife. Before my birth she spent a few years first in Baniachong and then Sylhet where Purna Chandra used to teach in the Murari Chand College. Prahlad Chandra and Paresh Chandra were then college students in the joint family. Since then her day started in the kitchen in the early morning and ended at midnight, cooking and feeding hungry mouths four times a day. In Habiganj, the three family members of the servant who stayed in the outhouse helped her , besides milking the cow, washing clothes and cleaning the house. She was fair, pretty and famous among friends and relations for her witty jokes and her superb skills in innovative cooking. Yet she found time to teach children who used to sit around her with books in the big kitchen; sat at the harmonium with Ranu, the eldest daughter of Purna Chandra.
Needless to say that , subsequent to partition of India, moving to village after village with children , protect them, feed them and educate them properly was difficult enough to describe in words. As a child I saw her reading out loudly Anandamath ( Bankim Chandra) to a congregation of illiterate village women. I was born in her parental house at a village called Betal in Mymensingh district.
My mother was actually a goddess who came to earth to rescue others from distress and to share others’ sufferings. Her three sons and three daughters did their best to give her their best . She came to Delhi to stay with me and my younger brother. At least her last days had been happier among sons and their wives , daughters and their husbands, her most beloved grand daughters and grandsons, before she went back to heaven without much suffering. She left behind three sons and three daughters: Pravakar(Kajol), Anima (Anu), Prosanto (kanchan),Aparna(Shukla),Pronab(Ranju),Anjana(Khuku)
3. Prahlad Chandra Bhattacharjya…third son of late Parmananda Kaviratna
Prahlad Chandra
Bhattacharjya
2 October1904 – 4 April,1989
That’s how Kaku looked like when he was in his forties. Above photo of Sejokakima was taken a month ago. At 89 she is so fit and witty. The house at A/129 Bagha Jatin was almost a make-shift shelter in early fifties, where Sejokakima spent most of the time in the kitchen cooking and feeding husband and five children: Hai
manti(Minu), Basanti(Khuku), Phalguni ( Khoka), Partha Sarathi(Pintu) and Jayanti(Jhunu). The colony then did not have civic facilities like sewage or sanitation. Today all houses there speak of affluence .
Prahlad Chandra joined teaching after his graduation in Science. He was also M.Ed ( Master of Education) from Calcutta University. Like brothers he was also well-built ; he was around 5 ft 8 inches tall. Though I saw him many times, I did not know how he looked like till I crossed twenty; as a child I was so afraid of him due to his gravity that I did not dare to look at him. I used to always find him engrossed in reading. He taught at Chetla Boys’ school, Calcutta, Rajivpur High school, Bapujinagar Sammilito Udvastu Vidyalaya,and finally at Mukul Bose memorial Institute - Baghajatin
( 1959 – 1970) from where he retired as Headmaster.
His sons and daughter should mail me more information about him.
4. Paresh Chandra Bhattacharjee… 4th son of Paramananda Kaviratna
( 1907 - 1978 )
This photograph was taken in December 1941 0n the occasion of his marriage. This rare photo has been made available to me by Basanti(Khuku) and Jayanti(Jhunu) He graduated in Mechanical Engineering from Bengal Engineering college, Shibpur. During British period , getting an officers’ position in Indian Railways demanded exceptional merit which he had. He used to talk of those days when he had cross Hoogly river( Ganges) by walking along boats lined up across the river; Howrah bridge was under construction then. He had to commute from Calcutta to his workshop at Howrah. I still remember his huge staff quarter (Kolvin Courts) near Howah Maidan , and then at 15 Belvedere Park, Alipur. During those post- partition days he sheltered innumerable relations and friends. Provided employment to at least 300 men. He was really handsome; one might mistake him for the then popular film hero Ashok Kumar. He was very fair and about 6 feet tall. He was posted at various important places like Kurseong, Malogaon, Guwahati and finally Delhi. When cars were rare, he had bought his first car in early fifties.
He was the very first man in the family tree who went to London on a training program way back in 1950 … an event so rare and prestigious to the family.
I stayed for two months with him at his Bunglow at 6 State Entry Road, Connaught Place, New Delhi on my joining as a Lecturer at NCERT, New Delhi in 1969. He was then the Chief Engineer, Northern Railways. He retired from the Railways in 1971.
Soon after that he built a house at Salt Lake, Calcutta. He suddenly fell ill in 1976 due to prostrate trouble. He breathed his last in 1978 in Chandigarh .
Our Kakima Roma Bhattacharjya was the pride of the family. She was highly educated ,very pretty and an accomplished singer over All India Radio. Some of her songs are available on gramophone discs. She was also a teacher at Dakshini , the famous institute for teaching Rabindra sangeet in Calcutta. She was the daughter of Kalipada Mukherjee, the then Public Prosecutor. Kakima went to stay with her daughter in the USA where she breathed her last.
They left behind : Nandita (Nanda), twins - Joyashree (Jaya) ang Monjushree(Monju).
5. Dr. Pudarikaksha Bhattacharya,M.Sc. M.B. DTM.DPH… eldest son of Padmanath Saraswati
(1904 – 1980) He was one of the meritorious students of the Presidency college and Medical college of Calcutta. According to his famous economist friend Bhabatosh Dutta, he is perhaps the first M.Sc. MB in India. He stood first in Physiology and was being groomed to become heart specialist to the extent that the British Principal of the Medical college asked him to proceed to London for higher studies with scholarship. But his father Padmanath Saraswati did not allow him to cross Kalapani lest his son lose character and qualities of a pure Brahmin by mixing with Europeans. He was in service in Calcutta and retired as Health Officer, Calcutta corporation.
I had special love and respect for daktarkaka due to his frankness and strong sense of humour. Look at his photograph, don’t you find a special radiance of perfection and talent from his extremely sharp feature ?. He was well built but not tall. His height is comparable to that of Napoleon Bonaparte.
My daktarkakima Sushama Bhattacharya was a benovalent woman with leadership qualities. She was generous in helping whosoever wanted her help to the extent of rehabilitating some of them with land in Calcutta. Extending medical help to elderly people was her routine job.
They have left behind one son and four daughters : Shaktiprosad (Photo), Kalyani (Dolli), Dipali (Lili), Shephali (Shefu), Anjali (Oli)
5. Birupaksha Bhattacharjya…. Second son of Padmanath Saraswati
( 1905 ? -- 1978)
Out of six brothers , he is the only one who did not flee Baniachong even in the face of riots. He was B Sc, DMS. He was a student of Surendra nath college, Calcutta. Once when his father visited him in the college hostel, he was playing sitar. Though the father did not appreciate this, the boy had a strong music sense and could play almost all instruments; harmonium, flute, tabla, violin,etc. He had close association with Sachin Dev Burman who was a rising star musician that time. He persued music as an integral part of his life. As per the wish of his father he used to practice homeopathy and treat poor villagers free of cost. He left behind one daughter and seven sons : Annapurna (Joly),Debiprosad (Ganesh),Ramaprosad(Sontu),Debaprosad(Tapan), Haraprosad(died young),Kaliprosad(Arun),Baniprosad(Bishnu),Satiprosad(Binu).
...end of part B
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
....start of part A (below)
Six Brothers of Generation 14 ( see Section II below)
I and Dipali visited Kolkata to collect/ take photographs of possibly everybody at Barasat, Barrackpur,BaghaJatin (Jadavpur). I feel lucky today to upload their photographs along with short boigraphy of each. To start with I saw Sh. Sontu and Sh. Tapan at Barasat.Besides taking photographs, I found the book"Srihatter Itibritto" written by Saraswati( about 400 pages). I have requested Sh. Tapan to make a photocopy for me to upload to this site . I was overjoyed to see Sejokakima ( aged 89) in good health and spirit at A/129 Bagha Jatin; she is the last surviving member of the previous generation.
1.Purna Chandra Shastri...... son of Parmananda Kaviratna
Born in 1893, left for heavenly abode 30.12.1977; 'Shastri 'from Beneras Hindu University. MA (gold medal in Sanskrit) , Calcutta University. Having lost his father when he was a college student and being the eldest, he had to bring up his three brothers. All of them were educated at Calcutta as he began his career as a resident tutor to the grandsons of 'Maharaja of Putia' staying at a sprawling palatial house in Shyambazar.He brought his younger brother Promod Chandra from Baniachong who was younger to him by 8 years and admitted him in the Sanskrit Collegiate School , College Street-Calcutta (the school was established by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar).He taught at Murari Chand College-Sylhet,Sanskrit College,Maulavibazar College,at Govt.schools as Headmaster at Karimganj, Habiganj,Silchar,retired in April-1948 at the age of 55 .During British regime, that was the retirement age for Govt. officers. He and his brother Promod Chandra built a sprawling house in Habiganj in 1930( 20 miles from Baniachung) on the bank of river Khowai. Who knew that… they will lose all movable and immovable properties to the newly born East Pakistan in 1948 ? ....and they will have to flee their motherland due to communal clashes during partition of India (1947) ?. Otherwise Purna Chandra had planned (as said to me) to open a residential Sanskrit School in the premises of this house... to be named 'Uma Parananda Chatuspathi'
To be named after his parents.
The photograph was taken when he was around 80. With a sturdy frame in his youth ,he was a handsome man with a heavy personality. His uncompromising and relentless stand to stick to truth sometimes created problems in his service career. But he bravely faced odds. He was not very tall(about 5ft.7 inches). He was dead against all types of luxury and indiscipline. He used to wear dhoti much above ankle .This exposed his adorable leg muscles. His left wrist lost its degrees of freedom due to a fatal fall from a tree in his boyhood. He was like a large banyan tree which sheltered whosoever wanted his help, whether material or otherwise. Children of poor near and far relations and friends , deprived of opportunity of schooling in villages , were sucked in his house during his entire service career. Recently in Shillong,I chanced upon a few of his thousands of students who fondly remembered "Purno Shastri".
He raised seven sons and two daughters : Paramesh(Kanu), Bhanu (died at the age of 6 months),Paritosh(Bolu),Priyatosh(Bishu),Pranotosh(Bhola),Shibu, Haru; Ranu and Sarba.
I used to visit him when he was in a rented house with his sons and youngest daughter in Barrackpur( 18 Ghosepara Road) almost every weekend evenings during mid sixties. I was then studying at the Engineering college , Jadavpur. I was not bold enough to make eye contact with the head of the family and a living legend who brought up and gave shape to careers of all his brothers and near relations. Our discussion was often interrupted by the puffing and whistling of steam engines. Even tremor was felt every time a train passed by. Most noise was created by the 6-30 ‘East Bengal Express’ – a train with wooden compartments painted in green with a shining decorated engine which had very limited stoppages. It enjoyed a very special prestige like Rajdhani Express in India or Maglev in Europe today. The train used to deliberately give a long deafening whistle while crossing us. Through the window I could see one of the three red faced drivers shoveling coals from the tender to the hearth of the fire tube boiler of the engine. As the sound of the train subsided, he asked me to remind him of the last sentence he’d spoken before the interruption. Sometimes he smoked -- he was a mild smoker. He wanted to be alone during 8 PM news over All India Radio from a small transistor radio; this gave me some breather to gossip with my brothers .
He used to remind me of our talents as scholars through generations. “Do you have any idea of contribution by your forefathers to education?” – was his pet question. I used answer in the negative. He repented that his younger brother (my father) wasted his talent by branching out to the profession of lawyer, though he was the most gifted in his generation and one of the best in the university in Mathematics and Science. He used to study the least , but came out best in school and college.
After my return from Europe in 1972, I went to see him. He asked me whether I had taken a dip in the Ganges on my return. He did not allow me to touch his feet till I took a dip.
2. Promod Chandra Bhattacharjya …. Second son of Paramananda Kaviratna
(1901 - 2 April,1966 )
My father was exceptionally modest and a soft spoken man. From him I heard many stories of the then Calcutta, the capital of British India, where he had his school and university education. He was brought to Calcutta by his elder brother on his completion of middle school in Baniachong.
On the lines of the freedom fighters, his priorities were character building and good physique. He joined Gym . At 6ft.2inches,he had a robust frame and a muscular body. Each of his long fingers were strong and artistic as each was tapered almost to a point at the tip; one can not but kept on looking at
those talking fingers. His mother had dark and his father had very fair complexion; he got his complexion from his mother.Not to forget that he saw the golden period of Calcutta when the all time greats of world fame were alive …Tagore, Sir JCBose, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee ( the royal Bengal tiger), subhas Chandra Bose, Sharat Ch. Bose, C.R Das, CVRaman,Satyen Bose, Meghnad Saha, Ramendra Sunder Trivedi … to name a few.
He was the very first man in the entire family tree who took up science instead of sanskrit. With almost record marks at his back, he got admitted at the law college. With his degrees in science and law, he began his career as a faculty in National Council of Bengal( now Jadavpur University) in Chemistry Department in 1926 (?).Dr. Triguna Charan Sen , who later on became the Vice Chancellor of Jadavpur University, Mayor of Calcutta and then the union Education Minister (1968 – 70), was his one of his friends and contemporary lecturers in the NCE. Had he settled at Jadavpur at that time ,he could have a glorious future. But destiny and call of motherland brought him back to Baniachong… the family wanted him to practice law at Habiganj Court to earn his livelihood as well as to look after the ancestral property in the form of agricultural land, plots of land , ancestral house with orchards, etc. He and his elder brother built a new house at Habiganj (20 miles from Baniachong ) , raised children and practiced law for nearly 20 years …. when suddenly in 1947 partition and communal riots .. everything was blown off…property, aspirations and dream. I was then only five. But I have in my memory graphic details of the build-up of riot clouds, house burning scenes among thunderous communal slogans by people armed with flashing swords, .. and finally our escape in the thick of darkness to Shayestaganj Railway station.
…. Thanks to the clever political leaders and demigods of those days and of today who are very good in speeches and assurances and are ever ready to sacrifice their lives to uphold secularism from a safe distance.… Newspapers were busy in printing their speeches and photos of crowds traveling on the roofs of more than overcrowded trains. Then, what happened to Promod Chandra ?
He stayed with his youngest brother Paresh Chandra who was then an officer with Indian Railways at Calcutta for sometime. Got job as school teacher readily, but in remote areas of West Bengal. Like Pandavas the family moved from one place to another in this process ; villages thus visited were - Lokenathpur( near Tarakeshwar) infested with deadly snakes and hundreds of langurs, Rajivpur, Shibhati (near Itindaghat) where tigers sometimes strike during night, Hingalganj where salt water river Ichamati infested with sharks used to flood the habitation every year… outbreak of cholera and small pox was no surprise, Taki -- where fear of wild animals were not there but the school had no money to pay teachers. Ultimately he found a better place in Jhargram among long spreads of thick sal and teak forests and population of simple and lovable people of Santhal tribe. Promod Chandra’s background in science became an asset to K.K.Institution, the famous local school as the then Intermediate science entered the West Bengal school curriculum at class XI stage. He now found some solace after years of distress. The popular ‘Sir’ was the talk of the town as an ideal teacher and advocate of man-making education. Jhargram , with its number of boys’ schools, girls’ schools, basic training institute, polytechnic, junior polytechnic, Ramkrishna Sevayatan, Sharada vidyapeeth, college, agriculture college, B.Ed college… continues to be a good destination for students.
He breathed his last in Jhargram among the whispering of tall trees ,twittering of hundreds of birds and cooing of a lone cuckoo from the nearby mango tree in the early hours of 2nd April. Those days healthy persons like him did not go to the doctor nor cared for regular BP or blood sugar check up. On his deathbed ,we came to know that he had high BP and had a severe stroke.
At marriage my mother Labonya Prova ( 19 18 - 1 Dec.1896) was twelve and my
My mother father thirty . At Habiganj she was the only
mother of the joint family of the first and second
brothers having nine children , since the
premature demise of Purna Chandra’s wife. Before my birth she spent a few years first in Baniachong and then Sylhet where Purna Chandra used to teach in the Murari Chand College. Prahlad Chandra and Paresh Chandra were then college students in the joint family. Since then her day started in the kitchen in the early morning and ended at midnight, cooking and feeding hungry mouths four times a day. In Habiganj, the three family members of the servant who stayed in the outhouse helped her , besides milking the cow, washing clothes and cleaning the house. She was fair, pretty and famous among friends and relations for her witty jokes and her superb skills in innovative cooking. Yet she found time to teach children who used to sit around her with books in the big kitchen; sat at the harmonium with Ranu, the eldest daughter of Purna Chandra.
Needless to say that , subsequent to partition of India, moving to village after village with children , protect them, feed them and educate them properly was difficult enough to describe in words. As a child I saw her reading out loudly Anandamath ( Bankim Chandra) to a congregation of illiterate village women. I was born in her parental house at a village called Betal in Mymensingh district.
My mother was actually a goddess who came to earth to rescue others from distress and to share others’ sufferings. Her three sons and three daughters did their best to give her their best . She came to Delhi to stay with me and my younger brother. At least her last days had been happier among sons and their wives , daughters and their husbands, her most beloved grand daughters and grandsons, before she went back to heaven without much suffering. She left behind three sons and three daughters: Pravakar(Kajol), Anima (Anu), Prosanto (kanchan),Aparna(Shukla),Pronab(Ranju),Anjana(Khuku)
3. Prahlad Chandra Bhattacharjya…third son of late Parmananda Kaviratna
Prahlad Chandra
Bhattacharjya
2 October1904 – 4 April,1989
That’s how Kaku looked like when he was in his forties. Above photo of Sejokakima was taken a month ago. At 89 she is so fit and witty. The house at A/129 Bagha Jatin was almost a make-shift shelter in early fifties, where Sejokakima spent most of the time in the kitchen cooking and feeding husband and five children: Hai
manti(Minu), Basanti(Khuku), Phalguni ( Khoka), Partha Sarathi(Pintu) and Jayanti(Jhunu). The colony then did not have civic facilities like sewage or sanitation. Today all houses there speak of affluence .Prahlad Chandra joined teaching after his graduation in Science. He was also M.Ed ( Master of Education) from Calcutta University. Like brothers he was also well-built ; he was around 5 ft 8 inches tall. Though I saw him many times, I did not know how he looked like till I crossed twenty; as a child I was so afraid of him due to his gravity that I did not dare to look at him. I used to always find him engrossed in reading. He taught at Chetla Boys’ school, Calcutta, Rajivpur High school, Bapujinagar Sammilito Udvastu Vidyalaya,and finally at Mukul Bose memorial Institute - Baghajatin
( 1959 – 1970) from where he retired as Headmaster.
His sons and daughter should mail me more information about him.
4. Paresh Chandra Bhattacharjee… 4th son of Paramananda Kaviratna
( 1907 - 1978 )
This photograph was taken in December 1941 0n the occasion of his marriage. This rare photo has been made available to me by Basanti(Khuku) and Jayanti(Jhunu) He graduated in Mechanical Engineering from Bengal Engineering college, Shibpur. During British period , getting an officers’ position in Indian Railways demanded exceptional merit which he had. He used to talk of those days when he had cross Hoogly river( Ganges) by walking along boats lined up across the river; Howrah bridge was under construction then. He had to commute from Calcutta to his workshop at Howrah. I still remember his huge staff quarter (Kolvin Courts) near Howah Maidan , and then at 15 Belvedere Park, Alipur. During those post- partition days he sheltered innumerable relations and friends. Provided employment to at least 300 men. He was really handsome; one might mistake him for the then popular film hero Ashok Kumar. He was very fair and about 6 feet tall. He was posted at various important places like Kurseong, Malogaon, Guwahati and finally Delhi. When cars were rare, he had bought his first car in early fifties.
He was the very first man in the family tree who went to London on a training program way back in 1950 … an event so rare and prestigious to the family.
I stayed for two months with him at his Bunglow at 6 State Entry Road, Connaught Place, New Delhi on my joining as a Lecturer at NCERT, New Delhi in 1969. He was then the Chief Engineer, Northern Railways. He retired from the Railways in 1971.
Soon after that he built a house at Salt Lake, Calcutta. He suddenly fell ill in 1976 due to prostrate trouble. He breathed his last in 1978 in Chandigarh .
Our Kakima Roma Bhattacharjya was the pride of the family. She was highly educated ,very pretty and an accomplished singer over All India Radio. Some of her songs are available on gramophone discs. She was also a teacher at Dakshini , the famous institute for teaching Rabindra sangeet in Calcutta. She was the daughter of Kalipada Mukherjee, the then Public Prosecutor. Kakima went to stay with her daughter in the USA where she breathed her last.
They left behind : Nandita (Nanda), twins - Joyashree (Jaya) ang Monjushree(Monju).
5. Dr. Pudarikaksha Bhattacharya,M.Sc. M.B. DTM.DPH… eldest son of Padmanath Saraswati
(1904 – 1980) He was one of the meritorious students of the Presidency college and Medical college of Calcutta. According to his famous economist friend Bhabatosh Dutta, he is perhaps the first M.Sc. MB in India. He stood first in Physiology and was being groomed to become heart specialist to the extent that the British Principal of the Medical college asked him to proceed to London for higher studies with scholarship. But his father Padmanath Saraswati did not allow him to cross Kalapani lest his son lose character and qualities of a pure Brahmin by mixing with Europeans. He was in service in Calcutta and retired as Health Officer, Calcutta corporation.
I had special love and respect for daktarkaka due to his frankness and strong sense of humour. Look at his photograph, don’t you find a special radiance of perfection and talent from his extremely sharp feature ?. He was well built but not tall. His height is comparable to that of Napoleon Bonaparte.
My daktarkakima Sushama Bhattacharya was a benovalent woman with leadership qualities. She was generous in helping whosoever wanted her help to the extent of rehabilitating some of them with land in Calcutta. Extending medical help to elderly people was her routine job.
They have left behind one son and four daughters : Shaktiprosad (Photo), Kalyani (Dolli), Dipali (Lili), Shephali (Shefu), Anjali (Oli)
5. Birupaksha Bhattacharjya…. Second son of Padmanath Saraswati
( 1905 ? -- 1978)
Out of six brothers , he is the only one who did not flee Baniachong even in the face of riots. He was B Sc, DMS. He was a student of Surendra nath college, Calcutta. Once when his father visited him in the college hostel, he was playing sitar. Though the father did not appreciate this, the boy had a strong music sense and could play almost all instruments; harmonium, flute, tabla, violin,etc. He had close association with Sachin Dev Burman who was a rising star musician that time. He persued music as an integral part of his life. As per the wish of his father he used to practice homeopathy and treat poor villagers free of cost. He left behind one daughter and seven sons : Annapurna (Joly),Debiprosad (Ganesh),Ramaprosad(Sontu),Debaprosad(Tapan), Haraprosad(died young),Kaliprosad(Arun),Baniprosad(Bishnu),Satiprosad(Binu).
...end of part B
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
....start of part A (below)
Tuesday 27 January 2009
Bhattacharya's of Sylhet...Scholars thro' generations:part..A
Remains of our ancestral house in Baniachong (Habiganj subdivision,Sylhet) Vidya cha avidya cha yastad ubhayam sah
Avidyaya mrityum tirtwa vidyaya amritam ashnutey ..Ishavashya Upanishad
Life eternal through Learning .......
I. Who will benefit from this website?
- (A). those interested in studying transformation of society ,culture, education, life style, values , migration pattern due to pressure of politics and other factors over a period of nearly 3 centuries
- (B). those having origin in Sylhet (now in Bangladesh)
- (C). those having ‘Bhattachryya’, ‘Mishra’, ‘Biswas’ as surnames, and ‘Katyayan’ as gotra
N.B. readers of category (C) above have the responsibility to post information about profiles /photo of self, her/his father and children as this site is dedicated to FUTURE generations.
[Author :Prof.(Dr.) Prosanto K.Bhattacharyya nicknamed 'Kanchan' (jointdirector@hotmail.com), belonging to generation 15 in the chart ,son of Late Promod Chandra(generation 14)]
Baniachong is pronounced as Bai’na’chng in Sylheti tongue
I , took up this task of joining bits and pieces of information about my illustrious ancestors who were great scholars ,litterateurs of Sanskrit besides being educators through during last 350 years or so. The starting point is a very old torn piece of handwritten paper ( from my late uncle) which has turned yellowish and brittle .This gives some account of descendants starting from KESHAB MISHRA .
II. Generations 1 to 14: 1. KESHAB MISHRA ………2. Jagannath/Nandan—3.Ganapati—4.Sadashiv—
5.Laksminath—6.Jagadish Vidyabhusan---7.Gopal---8.Hrishikesh---9. Ramananda—
10.Ramkanto/Rameshwar(Harubhat)
11. Shyamananda, Shivananda, Gangananda, Sadananda
12. Panchananda
13. Paramananda Kabiratna , Padmanath Saraswati(Vidyabinod)
14 Purna Shastri, Promod-,Prahlad-,Paresh chandra,
Dr. Pundarikaksha,Birupaksha,Sahasraksha(died in infancy)
Shyamananda had 4 sons; eldest Panchananda had two : Paramananda and Padmanath. Paramananda had 4 sons: Purno,Promod,Prahlad,Paresh; while Padmanath had three: Pundarikasha,Birupaksha,Sahasraksha( died in infancy).Names of daughters are not given here. III. It is said that
KESAB MISRA, a Brahmin from Mithila / Kanauj was the founder of habitation in Baniachong. Date of Keshab Mishra is not known . There remains a missing link between him and Jagannath/ Nandan. Another Jagannath Mishra, father of Mahaprabhu Srikrishna Chaitanya Dev (Nimai, born 522 years ago) migrated to Nabadweep from Sylhet. As the population was sparse and Mishra community was very small those days, he might be possibly related to our family tree, though there is no evidence. It also could not been established when exactly habitation at Baniachong started. Being extremely fertile , Baniachong was a surplus zone in rice and other agricultural production. It was well connected to neighbouring villages and towns particularly by navigable crisscrossing perennial rivulets and canals similar to Alleppey in Kerala, So it flourished into a large village of extra ordinary beauty in the district of Srihatta or Sylhet (termed by the British). We learn that Baniachong was declared the largest village in India ( survey- 1934 ?). Due to torrential rains during rainy season ,even a child had to row a boat to go the school, as roads and fields were submerged.
The name of the district continues to be called Sylhet even today . It belonged to Bengal in Mughal, post Mughal and British periods .Sylhet was a part of Assam which during British rule was a very large province encompassing today’s seven states ,eg. Arunachal Pradesh, Assam,Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland . Due to partition of India / Bengal in 1947,Sylhet became integral part of East Pakistan ; and then after 24 years East Pakistan became Bangladesh when it got freedom from Pakistan in 1971 with the military intervention from India.
IV. Paradise lost due to Partition of India/Bengal
One of the severest blow on India in recent times is the unfortunate splitting of undivided India into India and Pakistan, by cruel designs of the then politicians in 1947; in the same year India broke the shackles of British rule of nearly 200 years. Bengal was mercilessly cut into two - West Bengal( India) and East Pakistan ( Pakistan) as result of referendum, Sylhet came under East Pakistan .Foolishness of the then politicians combined with hunger for power created that mess where thousands died in riots and millions became refugees overnight after the referendum. Though Hindus and Muslims have been staying together for centuries and continue to stay together even today in India, politicians found the reason for creating a separate state for Muslims, that too in two pockets - west Pakistan and East Pakistan separated by more than 1500 km. Situations during partition days were even worse than the political unrests and mass massacre that we see now in certain parts of Africa, middle east and Afghanistan. My father and other relations with their families had to run for life and flee Baniachong and Habiganj (Sylhet District) with four or five bags packed overnight with essential things leaving behind agricultural land, property, library, everything for ever. They did not have time even to sell properties . Such evacuees had to brave traveling on the roof of train and the risk of being ambushed and killed by violent mobs en route to Calcutta ( now called Kolkata). Civilized societies talk of “heritage”,” Culture”, “motherland”. In our case, these terms hardly make any sense. We had to remain happy to survive the massacre, to be alive .But remaining alive with abject poverty is also a curse. The story of remaining alive is painfully long. Let’s forget it for the time being.
V. Family of Scholars
Through generations we were scholars in Sanskrit and used to house Chatuspathi (or the institute for Vedic/Sanskrit studies) in the sprawling premises of the residence. Though originally we were Mishra's, but subsequent generations were Biswas, Bhattacharyya, etc.
Many of our ancestors were awarded 'Churamani',’Siddhanta’ 'Vidyabhusan', 'Vidyabinod', 'Saraswati',’Shastri’, etc. by the civic authorities/government for their scholarship and contribution to education. As I learn from my parents, our ancestral house in Baniachung used to have an intake of 80 students for various courses in Sanskrit even during early 20th Century. The locality was known as Bidyabhusaner Para. My grandfather groomed his only younger brother Padmanath Saraswati (photo-left) to be an outstanding personality with chracter.Padmanath became a household name in Sylhet / Assam as he had the topmost academic record as a profound scholar in sanskrit, philosophy and literature.He had been teaching at the university/colleges. He has many publications in Bengali;his contemporary greats were Rabindra Nath Tagore,Ramkrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekananda,Madan Mohan Malvia.. to name a few. Being in the intellectual circle, he had immense interaction with them face-to-face as well as through letters.Poet Kalidas Roy once came all the way from Calcutta (now Kolkata) to Baniachung to visit him at our ancestral house at Baniachung and wrote an account of the daily life of this great man titled Panditer sathe kayek din.Padmanath Saraswati has been acknowledged as one of the great sons of Bengal by Bangiya Sahitya Parishad ,Calcutta. My father's elder brother Purna Chandra Shastri was a topper at the universty ; he was the last Sanskrit scholar down the line so far, who spent his lifetime in teaching in schools, colleges and universities.
I shall post biography of Padmanath Saraswati,his writings,etc. subsequently.
VI. Today's Baniachong : photo album has been contributed by Shri Santosh(Sontu), Barasat,15th generation,son of late Birupaksha Bhattacharya
Very old Kali Mandir ( the deity was 'jagroto'in the true sense) established by our forefathers. Name of descendants of this family (Katyayan Gotra)are on the tablet(left).Note that most of them are scholars with titles
'vidyanivas','Vedanta Shi
romani',etc.
Samadhisthal of Sanyasis who used to stay in the temple complex.They had supernatural powers.I have seen one of them when I was five.He healed my dying mother ; she got a new lease of life.
This pond was exavated by Padmanath Saraswati , dedicated to his foster mother and opened it to public.Saraswati lost his mother when he was a few days old; only a foster mother ( a wet nurse) could save the new born.
A village with tranquility...
113 year old School: functoional even today
Outer wall of our ancestral house
.....Sri Santosh (Sontu) and Smt. Rekha
visited Banichong in 2007 and took these photos
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About Me
- Bhattacharyasofsylhet
- Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering( Jadavpur Univ),PhD(IIT-Delhi)