Rashbihari Ghosh

A STOUT different of India’s economic interests, Rashbihari Ghosh was born in Burdwan, West Bengal on December 23, 1845. After a short spell at a local Burdwan pathshala, Ghosh was enrolled into the Burdwan Raj Collegiate School. He passed the entrance examination from Bankura, entered Presidency College, Calcutta and obtained a first class in the M.A. examination in English. He passed the law examination with honours in 1871 and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Law.
Ghosh was a member of the Calcutta University syndicate from 1887 to 1899. he supported Gokhale’s plan of compulsory primary education and became the first President of the National Council of Education in 1906. He, however, did not associate himself publicity with the Indian National Congress until 1906. His first appearance on the national political scene was in 1905 when he presided over a meeting held in the Calcutta Town Hall as a protest against the offensive remarks of Lord Curzon at the convocation ceremony of Calcutta University. In 1906 he became the Chairman of the Reception Committee when the Congress held its session in Calcutta. The next year he presided over the Surat session which ended in utter chaos. In 1908 he presided over the historic Madras session.
Ghosh was a moderate who took an active part in the swadeshi movement, which he considered to be based on the “love of our country, not on hatred of the foreigner.” He stood for “the development of India for Indians”, but through constitutional agitation. He denounced the extremists within the Congress as “impatient idealists” and looked upon British rule in India as a blessing. However, he said that “it only remains for England now to fit us gradually for that autonomy which she had granted to her colonies.”
In his presidential address at the Indian National Congress in Madras in 1908, Ghosh said: “A fair share in the government of our own country has now been given to us. The problem of reconciling order with progress, efficient administration with thw satisfaction of aspirations encouraged by our rulers themselves which timid people thought was insoluble has at last been solved. The people of India will now be associated with the Government in the daily and hourly administration of their affairs.”
A nationalist in spirit, Ghosh looked upon the Swadeshi movement as a way of creating indigenous in industries, which the British Government had failed to protect by tariffs. He felt that the Government of India must be the “motive force in the industrial development of the country”. To set an example he personally financed the Bande Mataram Match Factory. He died in Madras in 1908.