Hemanta Kumar Sarkar

Hemanta Kumar Sarkar হেমন্ত কুমার সরকার
Hemanta Kumar Sarkar as the Home Minister of Dewas State in 1927.
Born	1897 Baganchra, Nadia, Bengal, British India
Died	1952 Krishnanagar, West Bengal, India
Nationality	Indian
Occupation	Peasant leader
Parent(s)	Madan Mohan Sarkar Kadambari Devi

Hemanta Kumar Sarkar (Bengali: হেমন্তকুমার সরকার) (1897–1952) was an Indian philologist, author, biographer, editor, publisher, union leader, leader of the Indian freedom movement and an associate of Subhas Chandra Bose. He was a close friend and the first biographer of Subhas Chandra Bose, the co-founder of Labour Swaraj Party in Bengal along with Muzaffar Ahmed and Kazi Nazrul Islam and led the movement for the Partition of Bengal and formation of Bengali Hindu homeland in 1947.

Sarkar was born in 1897 in the village of Baganchra near Shantipur in the district of Nadia, the fifth of six sons to Madan Mohan Sarkar and Kadambari Devi. His father was the owner of a banking business started by his great grandfather and his mother was the granddaughter of Raghunandan Mitra, the diwan of the Nadia Raj. In his childhood, Sarkar attended the Krishnagar Collegiate School. In 1912, Sarkar came under the influence of Beni Madhab Das who had arrived as the new headmaster of the school from Ravenshaw Collegiate School in Cuttack. Das introduced him to his former pupil Subhas Chandra Bose, which culminated in a lifelong friendship between Sarkar and Bose. In May 1913, Bose came to Krishnanagar and stayed with Sarkar during the summer recess. In 1914, Sarkar and Bose ran away from home in search of a spiritual guru and travelled to Ayodhya, Haridwar, Mathura, Vrindavan and Varanasi. At Vrindavan, Baba Ramakrishnadas advised them to give up looking for a guru because they were argumentative and spiritual life was not suitable for them. They returned home after three months. Inspired by the worker's education programmes in Manchester and Birmingham, he along with Sailen Ghosh started the Krishnanagar Workmen's Institute, a night school that offered free education to the working-class people. In 1917, Sarkar earned his BA with First Class Honours in Sanskrit from the Krishnanagar College. He was awarded the Mohini Mohan Roy Prize for standing first among all the BA and BSc students in his college. After his graduation, Sarkar took admission in the University of Calcutta in a masters programme in Comparative Philology. In 1919, he stood first in the MA in Comparative Philology and received the university gold medal.