Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar । ঈশ্বরচন্দ্র বিদ্যাসাগর

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was born as Ishwar Chandra Bandyopadhyay in Birsingha, in Midnapore, on September 26, 1820. He was an educationist, a philanthropist, social reformer, and a polymath, who fiercely advocated women’s education and widow remarriage, and opposed polygamy being a staunch activist.

One of Bengal’s towering cultural icons, and among the greatest personalities of the Bengal Renaissance, he was conferred the title of ‘Vidyasagar’ (Ocean of knowledge) by the Sanskrit College, Calcutta.

Vidyasagar simplified and modernised Bengali prose and the Bengali alphabet. His Bengali primer Barna Parichay refined the language. He also made an invaluable contribution to interpret the complexities of Sanskrit grammar in Bengali. When he passed away on July 29, 1891, Rabindranath Tagore said, “One wonders how God, in the process of producing forty million Bengalis, produced a man.”