Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar
BornIshwar Chandra Bandopadhyay
(1820-09-26)26 September 1820
Birsingha, Bengal Presidency, British India
(present-day West Bengal, India)
Died29 July 1891(1891-07-29) (aged 70)
Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India
(present-day West Bengal, India)
OccupationEducator, social reformer and author
LanguageBengali
NationalityIndian
Alma materSanskrit College (1828–1839)
SpouseDinamayee Devi
Children1

Ishwar Chandra Bandyopadhyay (26 September 1820 – 29 July 1891), popularly known as Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (lit. 'Vidyasagar, the Sea of Knowledge'),[1] was an Indian educator and social reformer of the nineteenth century.[2] His efforts to simplify and modernise Bengali prose were significant. He also rationalised and simplified the Bengali alphabet and type, which had remained unchanged since Charles Wilkins and Panchanan Karmakar had cut the first (wooden) Bengali type in 1780.

He was the most prominent campaigner for Hindu widow remarriage, petitioning the Legislative Council despite severe opposition, including a counter petition (by Radhakanta Deb and the Dharma Sabha) which had nearly four times as many signatures.[3][4] Even though widow remarriage was considered a flagrant breach of Hindu customs and was staunchly opposed, Lord Dalhousie personally finalised the bill and the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856 was passed. Against child marriage, efforts of Vidyasagar led to Age of Consent Act, 1891. In which the minimum age of consummation of marriage was 12 years.[5][6]

A weekly newspaper, Somprakash Patrika, was started on 15 November 1858 (1 Agrahayan 1265 BS) by Dwarakanath Vidyabhusan. Dwarakanath (1819–1886) was a professor of the Sanskrit College in Calcutta , India. The original plan was mooted by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–1891), who continued to advise Dwarakanath in editorial matters. He was also associated as secretary with Hindu Female School which later came to be known as Bethune Female School.

He so excelled in his undergraduate studies of Sanskrit and philosophy that Sanskrit College in Calcutta, where he studied, gave him the honorific title Vidyasagar ('Sea of Knowledge'; from the Sanskrit विद्या, vidyā, 'knowledge' and सागर, sāgara, 'sea').[7]

  1. ^ "29 July 1891: Social Reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar Passes Away". www.mapsofindia.com. 29 July 2013.
  2. ^ "Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar: A Profile of the Philanthropic Protagonist". americanchronicle.com. Retrieved 20 December 2008.
  3. ^ H. R. Ghosal (1957). "The Revolution Behind the Revolt (A comparative study of the causes of the 1857 uprising)". Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. 20: 293–305. JSTOR 44304480.
  4. ^ Pratima Asthana (1974). Women's Movement in India. Vikas Publishing House. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-7069-0333-1.
  5. ^ Amit Kumar Gupta (2015). Nineteenth-Century Colonialism and the Great Indian Revolt. Taylor & Francis. p. 30. ISBN 978-1-317-38668-1.
  6. ^ Belkacem Belmekki (2008). "A Wind of Change: The New British Colonial Policy in Post-Revolt India". AEDEAN: Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-americanos. 2 (2): 111–124. JSTOR 41055330.
  7. ^ Lal, Mohan (2006). "Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar". The Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature. Sahitya Akademi. pp. 4567–4569. ISBN 978-81-260-1221-3.