Syama Prasad Mookerjee birth anniversary

Context

Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tribute to Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901-1953) on his birth anniversary and remembered his contribution to India’s development particularly in sectors such as commerce and industry.

About Syama Prasad Mookerjee

Early life

• Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was born in a Bengali family on 6th July 1901. 
• 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.

Major Contribution

• 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.
• Shyama Prasad Mukherjee is an example of great leadership and political milestone. 
• He was the part of the first cabinet of Independent India. 
• Syama Prasad Mookerjee founded the Bharatiya Jan Sangh in 1951 after consulting Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s MS Golwalkar.
  • Mookerjee became the first president of the party.
• He was the independent India’s first Minister of Industry and Supply.
• 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.

Death

• Mookerjee died in mysterious circumstances on June 23, 1953, after he was arrested in Kashmir.
• The leader was detained in Srinagar for over a month before his death, for protesting against the special status granted to Kashmir and the permit system in place there.