Person · India House founder
Shyamji Krishna Varma
Also known as Shyamji
Shyamji Krishna Varma (4 October 1857 - 30 March 1930), the Gujarati Arya Samajist and freedom fighter who established the India House at Highgate, London in 1905 as the headquarters of Indian student-revolutionaries in Britain. Born at Mandvi in Kutch district, Varma was Oxford-educated (Balliol College) and a Sanskrit scholar. The India House hosted Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1906-1909), Madanlal Dhingra (who assassinated William Hutt Curzon Wyllie in 1909), Virendranath Chattopadhyay, Madame Cama and other revolutionaries. The 1907 Indian Sociologist monthly magazine from India House was banned in British India. Varma shifted the base to Paris in 1909 after the Dhingra assassination; he died at Geneva on 30 March 1930. His ashes were brought to India in 2003.
- Date
- 1857–1930
- Function
- Social reform & movement
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Connections (1)
- Court associationVallabhbhai Patel
Shyamji Krishna Varma's 1905 India House at Highgate, London, hosted Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1906-1909) as its chief inmate. Savarkar was Varma's protégé during his London period and the author of the 1909 book 'The Indian War of Independence 1857' (banned by the British in 1910). The India House-London Veterans' Society connection between Varma and Savarkar framed the formative London-Paris revolutionary network of 1905-1914.
Sources
Standard biography; regional historiography.
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