Shyamji Krishna Varma - Death and Commemoration

Death and Commemoration

He published two more issues of Indian Sociologist in August and September 1922, before ill health prevented him continuing. He died in hospital at 11:30pm on March 30, 1930 leaving his wife, Shrimati Bhanumati Krishnavarma.

News of his death was suppressed by the British government in India. Nevertheless tributes were paid to him by Sardar Bhagat Singh and his co-revolutionist brothers in Lahore Jail where they were undergoing a long-term drawn-out trial. Maratha, a daily newspaper started by Shri Tilak in Marathi, paid very touching tribute to him as a great revolutionary.

Pandit Shyamaji Krishnavarma did not live to witness the independence of Bharat, but his confidence in India gaining its freedom from British rule in future was so strong that he made prepaid arrangements with the local government of Geneva and St Georges cemetery to preserve his and his wife’s ashes (Asthis) at the cemetery for 100 years and to send their urns to India whenever it became independent during that period. The Congress Party who took over control of India at the end of British rule did not bother to pursue the matter of bringing his ashes for sectarian reasons. Informed about the proposal made by Dr Prithwindra Mukherjee (a Paris-based historian) to late Prime Minister Smt Indira Gandhi, in 1980, and by the interest she showed in favour of repatriating these relics, Shri Mangal Lakhamshi Bhanushali of the Shyamji Krishna Varma Smarak Samiti from Mumbai approached Dr Mukherjee in August 1989. Encouraged by the "good news of the progress achieved" through Mukherjee's "continuous efforts," Shri Bhanushali in his letter to Mukherjee (9 November 1989) requested him "to activate the concerned Embassy Staff," which was earnestly followed up by Mukherjee, by contacting the Indian delegations in Paris and Geneva.

Due to the joint efforts of Mangal Lakhamshi Bhanushali, corporator of Mumbai and trustee of Krishnavarma Foundation, Mandavi, Shri Kirit Somaiya, Member of Parliament, Mulund, Mumbai, Hemantkumar Padhya, researcher and founder/president of Hindu Swatantryavir Smruti Sansthanam, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, Vinod Khanna, MP, Bollywood actor and Minister of External Affairs for the Government of India, Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat State and many others, finally succeeded in returning the urns of Pandit Shyamaji and his wife Bhanumati, which were officially handed over to the Chief Minister of Gujarat State on August 22, 2003, by the Ville de Genève and the Swiss government 55 years after Indian Independence.

In 1970s, a new town developed in his native state of Kutch, was named after him as Shyamji Krishna Varmanagar in his memory and honor.