Focus: GS I- Personalities in News
Why in News?
The Prime Minister has remembered contributions of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and has paid rich tributes to him on his Jayanti.
About Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee
- Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was born in a Bengali family on 6th July 1901. His father Ashutosh Mukherjee was a judge of the Calcutta High Court.
- He started his initial education in Bhawanipur’s Mitra Institution in 1906. He passed his matriculation exam and was admitted to Presidency College.
- He stood seventeenth in the Inter-Arts Examination in 1916 and graduated in English, securing the first position in first class in 1921.
- He lost his father in 1924, the same year he enrolled as an advocate in Calcutta High Court.
- At the age of 33, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee became the youngest vice-chancellor of Calcutta University in 1934.
- During Mukherjee’s term as Vice-Chancellor, Rabindranath Tagore delivered the university convocation address in Bengali for the first time, and the Indian vernacular was introduced as a subject for the highest examination.
- Mukherjee demanded the partition of Bengal in 1946 to prevent the inclusion of its Hindu-majority areas in a Muslim-dominated East Pakistan. A meeting held by the Mahasabha on April 15, 1947, in Tarakeswar, authorised him to take steps for ensuring partition of Bengal.
- In May 1947, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee wrote a letter to Lord Mountbatten telling him that Bengal must be partitioned even if India was not. He also opposed a failed bid for a united but independent Bengal made in 1947 by Sarat Bose, the brother of Subhas Chandra Bose, and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, a Bengali Muslim politician.
- After he left the Indian National Congress due to difference of opinion with the then-Prime Minister Dr Jawaharlal Nehru on Jammu and Kashmir issues, he co- founded Janata Party in the year 1977-1979, which later on became the Bharatiya Janata Party.
- Shyama Prasad Mukherjee died after 40 days of being arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir State police for entering the state without permit. He passed away in jail under mysterious circumstances.
