Thread by @sheshapatangi1

SHASHIBHUSHAN RAYCHAUDHARI – The ACHARYA who laid foundation for Revolution against British in Bengal.
As usual, another Unsung Hero in India but a LEGEND if born in any other country.
Shashida was born on 8 January 1863 at Barrackpore, West Bengal.
BY THE AGE OF 17,

1 Shashida had 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.
2 Shashida created 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.
By 1880, Shashida got admitted to Metropolitan Institute which had eminent personalities like Ishwara Chandra Vidyasagar,

Surendranath Bannerjee, Yogendra Vidyabhushan etc.
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. 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.

In 1900, P. Mitter asked Shashida to send him some young men of character. It was the moment when Mitter was busy founding the Kolkata Anushilan Samiti and knew Shashida's popularity among the college students.
Shashida sent a few students and personally introduced Bhaga Jatin.

On 6 Jan 1902, Shashida joined the first batch of teachers at the new boarding school established by Tagore at Santiniketan.
In March 1902, Shashida had to return to Kolkata for the inauguration of the Anushilan Samiti.
Soon, with the coming of Jatin Banerjee, Mitter was

under the impression that the organisation was taking too much of a military turn, while Banerjee disagreed with Barin Ghose’s untimely terrorist enterprise. In the midst of this tension, Shashida & Bagha Jatin served as mediators. Coming from Baroda, in 1903, Sri Aurobindo at

Yogendra Vidyabhushan’s place, tried to settle the disputes, and discussed with Bagha Jatin and Banerjee his programme for Bengal. Very soon, Banerjee chose to set out for Upper India, where he continued his work as a revolutionary missionary. The Anushilan Samiti, under

Shashida’s guidance, opened in Kolkata the Shramajivi Vidyalay or "Working Men’s Institution" where evening classes attracted people who had no means to be educated. Many poor students, too, received there supplementary coaching in various subjects.

The Samiti also recruited

volunteers for social services such as nursing the sick; cremating; sell handmade soaps, padlocks from Shashida's village and cottage industry products, on a cooperative basis; organise significant public functions as the Shivaji, Pratapaditya and Sitaram festivals.

This was the

prototype of the well-known Chatra-bhandar or "Students’ Store" and, later, of the Shramajivi Samavaya run by Amarendranath Chatterjee and other associates of Bagha Jatin.
In 1905, he went to Orissa, and inspired Utkalamani Gopabandhu Das to start a physical culture centre at

Bhubaneswar, in collaboration with Nilakantha Das, Krupasindhu Misra, Acharya Harihar Das and Godavarish Misra. This was the beginning of the Satyavadi Vidyalaya, founded near Puri in 1909.
Alerted by Shashida about the terrible flood in Orissa, in 1908, P. Mitter sent a relief

delegation headed by Naren Bhattacharya alias M.N. Roy and Harikumar Chakravarti, two direct recruits of the restless Vedic scholar and radical leader Mokshada Charan Samadhyai.
(Yes, the same M N Roy, the true top Communist leader)
In a short time, due to Alipore Bomb Case,

many revolutionaries got arrested and many went underground, Shashida with Bagha Jatin and few others started the Bengal Youngmen's Zamindari Co-operative Society in the Sundarban area, the idea was to place revolutionary young men in the rural agricultural sector, organising

small-scale cottage industries and Swadeshi stores.
In 1909, Shashida was to leave for Dehra Dun as a private tutor at the house of Prafullanath Tagore; on learning that Rasbehari Bose was suspected by the police of involvement in the bomb making, Shashida arranged to send Bose

to Dehra Dun for safety. He himself went to Daulatpur College as Superintendent of its hostel, shared his room with Manindranath Seth, the Vice-Principal & member of secret society & Bhupendra Kumar Datta, a brilliant student leader. (All the three were to be arrested in 1917).

Shattered by the sudden martyrdom of Bagha Jatin in 1915, in the teeth of massive arrests under the Defence of India Act, Shashida with his students concentrated on social work, while helping the stray revolutionaries to reorganise the party.
Shashida who was arrested in 1917,

the Government decided to home intern him with his wife Urmila Devi, his daughters Rani and Durga, and son Ashok, first in Daulatpur, then in Khulna, as he was a TB Patient.

Released in 1919, Shashida returned to Tegharia to improve the status of his school and to campaign

against malaria. In spite of his poor health, he maintained his social activities till his death in April 1922.

#ForgottenHeroes
#VANDEMATARAM