Shashibhushan Raychaudhury - Early Life

Early Life

Shashida was born on 8 January 1863 at the village Tegharia near Barrackpore in present West Bengal. He was the youngest son of Saudamini Devi and Anandachandra, who owned some land and belonged to an old respectable family. As a student at Sodepur high school, Shashida opened a traditional primary school of the Pathshala style, to give secular education to children of indigent families, usually looked after by zealous Christian preachers. In course of time, Shashida created also evening classes for adults and, in addition to rudiments of Bengali, history and mathematics, he invited competent collaborators to initiate them to weaving, agriculture including growing silk-worms, and cottage industry. In 1880, Shashida passed his Entrance examination and was admitted at the Metropolitan Institution of Kolkata, haloed by the presence of Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar as one of its directors and of Rashtraguru Surendranath Banerjea and Khudiram Bose (not the martyr) as its faculty. Rashtraguru had instructed Yogendra Vidyabhushan to popularise the lives of Mazzini and Garibaldi and had a nation-wide reputation as orator. Khudiram Bose was a disciple of the famous Young Bengal leader, Reverend Kalicharan Banerjee, and knew Keshub Chunder Sen intimately. There was an active physical education course in the college, supervised by Chandidas Ghosh. In no time Shashida caught the sparks of a nascent patriotic activism and, with Anandamohan Basu, formed the Students’ Association, which had contacts with Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das, Pramathanath Mitra also known as Barrister P. Mitter and Brahmabandhab Upadhyay. He was a regular visitor to the gymnasium attached to the General Assembly's Institution (later Scottish Church College) and the Gohas’ club. For traditional self-defence, he met Swami Vivekananda who practised wrestling with the Gohas. The Swami’s philosophy of man-making consolidated Shashida’s own plans of action. Here, probably thanks to Vivekananda, he discovered Jatindranath Mukherjee, too, the future Bagha Jatin.