Sasipada Banerji

Sasipada Banerji (1840–1924) was a social worker and leader of the Brahmo Samaj who is remembered as a champion of women's rights and education and as one of the earliest workers for labour welfare in India. He was the founder of several girls' schools, a widow's home, temperance societies, a workers' organisation and the editor of the journal Bharat Sramajibi.

Sasipada Banerji was born in 1840 at Baranagar near Kolkata (then Calcutta). He married Rajkumari Devi, then a thirteen-year-old girl, in 1860 and taught her to read and write within a year. The couple had a son, Albion Rajkumar Banerji, who went on to become a member of the Indian Civil Service and served as Diwan of Cochin. Rajkumari died in 1876 and Sasipada remarried the following year.

Banerji became involved in the social reform movement in Bengal through the Brahmo Samaj which he joined in 1861. Banerji was an advocate of women's rights and education. He promoted the establishment of schools to train women teachers, organised several widow remarriages and established a Widows' Home at Baranagar in 1887. He founded girls' schools in 1865 and 1871 and later established an institute for their higher education. Banerji is credited with founding the first women's journal in Bengali which was headed by his two daughters and run exclusively by a team of women.

Banerji was a member of the Temperance movement in India and was a close associate of Mary Carpenter whom he first met during her visit to India in 1866. On her invitation, Sasipada and Rajkumari paid a return visit to England in 1871. His decision to visit England was met with approbation in Bengal (as it would involve them crossing the oceans, an act that would lead to the Banerjis' loss of caste) and Banerji and Rajkumari were stoned when they paid a visit to his ancestral home before leaving for Britain. The Asiatic of London declared in 1872 that Rajkumari was "the first Hindu lady who has ever visited England". The couple had their first-born child, a son, while in England whom they name Albion.

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