While India is already in the celebration of 150th Birth Anniversary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on October 2 and it forgets some of the equally important sons of this soil who had also contributed to freedom struggles.
In the 21st century, we need more people like Valangaiman Sankaranarayana Srinivasa Sastri not Gandhi!
We have many Gandhis in our everyday walk of life protesting, hunger strike, etc. But there is hardly anyone promoting constitutional methods of fighting the government's injustice done to people, environment, etc.
I am referring the great classical liberal VS Srinivasa Sastri whose 150th birth anniversary was on last Sunday. Gandhi called him as elder brother.
"Sastri was a leading statesman during the Indian independence movement"
Sastri was born ten days before Gandhi on 22nd September, 1869 at a village called Valangaiman in Kumbakonam Town in Tamil Nadu. Unlike Gandhi, Sastri was born to a poor family and rose to school teacher and later Headmaster.
After 17 years of teaching at various schools in Tamil Nadu, he become close associate of Gopala Krishna Gokhale in 1907 as part of Servants of India Society which was working for attaining freedom from British Empire.
Gokhale passed away in 1915 and Sastri was made as President of Servants of India Society. Sastri joined Indian National Congress in 1908 and left the party in 1922 due to differences on measures for attaining freedom from British.
In a major reforms methods differences erupted in 1918, Sastri formed National Liberal Federation of India or Liberal Party in 1919 to fight for independence through constitutional methods which was followed by both MG Ranade and Gokhale. In 1922, Sastri was president of the liberal party.
The other main leaders of Liberal Party was Dinshah Wacha, Surendranath Banarjee, Bhupendranath, Ambica Charan Mazumdar, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Pherozeshah Mehta and M.R.Jayakar.
Sastri was the true follower of Gokhale and not Gandhi as many would think and give wrong credit. None of Gokhale's core principles are accepted by Gandhi after he arrived from South Africa in 1914.
"in a lecture hall at Stanford, .... the eminent British historian Christopher Bayly speak on the history of liberalism in India. In a section others might well have glazed over, I heard Bayly mention Sastri’s name, clubbing him with other prominent liberals of his time: Hriday Nath Kunzru, Tej Bahadur Sapru, C.Y. Chintamani. Each of them opposed Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement because they believed the only effective opposition to the British government would come from within the constitutional process, that is, with certain deference for the law." More here.
Like Gokhale, Sastri strive from poor family to national figure after leaving the teaching profession. Both had every kind of parallels in their life and contribution to the freedom struggles through constitutional measures rather than revolutionary and direct action methods followed by Tilak etc.
Sastri was known for his masterful use of English oratory skills and diplomatic leadership role in different countries across the Empire. He was even called "The silver-tongued orator".
Sastri helped several poor students for their education. Sastri was Vice Chancellor of Annamalai University between 1935-1940. He faced the first Hindi agitation of students when Rajaji was Premier of Madras Presidency and introduced Hindi as one of the language in all the schools in the Presidency.
The following are some of the most fascinating readings about Sastri's life and contribution to India's Freedom Movements.
V.S.Srinivasa Sastri - A Political Bioigraphy
SILVER TONGUED SRINIVASA SASTRY by K. Gopalakrishna Murthy
V. S. SRINIVASA SASTRI: Hero as a Gentleman by Dr. D. ANJANEYULU
The Indian Express news report on Sastri passing away
Most of Sastri's works are maintained at Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics
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