Surendranath Banerjee

The Story

Born in 1848 in Calcutta, Banerjee was among the first Indians to pass the Indian Civil Service examination — and among the first to be thrown out of it on a technicality, an injustice that made him a lifelong opponent of colonial administration. He turned to law and journalism, taking The Bengalee as his platform.

In 1876 he founded the Indian National Association, one of the earliest all-India political bodies, using its annual sessions to build a network of patriotic associations from Bombay to Bengal. The association's energies fed directly into the formation of the Indian National Congress nine years later.

He was prosecuted for sedition in the 1880s and again later, serving prison terms that only enlarged his stature — the first great martyr of constitutional nationalism. He presided over the Congress in 1895 and again in 1902, steering the movement between moderation and the rising tide of extremism.

In his old age he joined the Council of States in 1921, still hoping to work constitutional change from within, and died in 1925. Rabindranath Tagore, attending his funeral, said that Banerjee's name would not fade while India's history was remembered.