Person · Bengali nationalist · India
Surendranath Banerjee
Also known as Surendranath Banerjee, S.N. Banerjea, Rashtra Guru, Surrender Not Banerjee
Bengali nationalist (1848-1925), one of the first Indians to pass the Indian Civil Service examination (1869), dismissed from the ICS in 1874 on charges he contested as racial. He turned to political and journalistic work, founded the Indian Association in 1876 as the first substantial Indian political organisation, convened the Indian National Conference in 1883 and 1885 that pre-dated the Indian National Congress by a few weeks (and merged with it in 1886), presided twice over the INC (1895 and 1902), and edited the Bengalee newspaper from 1879. His 1905-1911 campaign against the partition of Bengal was the moderate wing of the Swadeshi movement that forced the partition's reversal.
- Date
- 1848–1925
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Tradition
- Standard reference and biographical literature; INC proceedings and contemporary memoirs.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
He was called the 'Rashtra Guru' and the 'Surrender Not Banerjee' — the second after he refused to apologise to a judge in 1883 over an editorial, and was imprisoned briefly for contempt. His 1925 autobiography A Nation in Making is one of the fullest contemporary accounts of the Indian political movement's first fifty years. He later broke with the Non-Cooperation movement in 1920 and accepted a knighthood in 1921, which cost him his nationalist standing.
About the place
Placed at Calcutta where he edited the Bengalee.
Connections (2)
- President ofIndian National Congress (founding era)
Surendranath Banerjee presided over the Indian National Congress at the 1895 Poona and 1902 Ahmedabad sessions, and his earlier Indian Association (1876) and Indian National Conference (1883, 1885) merged with the Congress in 1886 to form its organisational base. The 1905-1911 anti-Bengal-partition campaign that Banerjee led from Calcutta was the moderate wing of the Swadeshi movement; the partition's reversal in 1911 was his career's defining political success.
- Based atKolkata
Surendranath Banerjee edited the Bengalee newspaper from Calcutta from 1879 to 1925, served on the Calcutta Corporation and the Bengal Legislative Council, and founded the Indian Association in 1876 at Albert Hall — the first substantial Indian political organisation. His Barrackpore Road house in north Calcutta was the Bengali moderate nationalist movement's working headquarters through four decades. The city, the newspaper and the Association together were the Bengal moderate nationalism's institutional geography.