Surendranath Sarkar and the Nationalist Movement in Birbhum: Navigating Local and National Agendas

Abstract

The nationalist movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a remarkable phenomenon in Indian history, culminating in reshaping the entire country's political landscape. The masses of India responded to the exploitative British rule by vigorously engaging in the freedom struggle. However, an attempt to draw a universal pattern for the nationalist movement across the entire subcontinent would inevitably result in a fiasco. As a result, recent historiography of the Indian Freedom Struggle has placed the diverse local aspects of the movement at the centre of discussion. The intersection and interaction of various forms of consciousness and their spontaneous outbursts at the grassroots level metamorphosed the local movements in nearly all provinces into distinctive forms. The Bengal Presidency was one of the storm centres of the anti-colonial movement. The uncontrolled wave of anti-British struggle inevitably reached various remote parts of the Bengal province, and our Birbhum district was no exception. Unfortunately, many of the architects of these micro-regional activities have been overshadowed by the metanarratives of the mainstream national movement. This paper aims to examine the contributions of Surendranath Sarkar, one of the unsung architects from Birbhum district, who, by moving away from manipulative ideologies, crafted mass movements guided by the local principles that have remained uncelebrated and unrecognised in our mainstream history.