Birendra was born with the surname Bhattacharjee. His ancestors were all Gangopadhyay, but in native Bramhanbaria they took the title of Bhattacharjee. His was a lower middle-class family from an obscure village and the family income came from what little land they owned, supplemented by his father Mahendra Chandra’s salary from a Dhaka landlord’s office. The family was always financially constrained. Mahendra would disembark from the train several stops before his destination and walk up to twenty miles to save a few annas. Birendra was the great hope for the family. From a young age his intelligence, charm and charisma were remarked upon. But he left his family, his home and a comfortable professional path for a life of ideology, action, danger and ultimately arrest, torture and imprisonment. This sacrifice is impossible to understand in today’s world.
He played a prominent role in the revolutionary cadres of the time in Bengal but, seeking more action and impact, he formed his own small organisation with some faithful associates and went on to strike out at the British Empire. Providence however did not grant him much time. His one act of insurrection became a prominent and celebrated case, but he was betrayed and turned over to the authorities, arrested, tortured and imprisoned. More gravely still, after Independence, he and his fellows from Bengal were side-lined by the Congress party and airbrushed from the history of the Independence movement of India.
Many freedom fighters died of starvation and poverty after being displaced from East Pakistan after the Bengal Partition. And it was only in the 1960s and 1970s that the government arranged the most meagre pension for those who were still alive. It amounted to little more than a few tens of rupees. In sharp contrast, the new democratic rulers of India continued to live in a style that could only be described as imperial.
Accrding to Tapan Kumar Bhattacharyya, Birendra's Son - Birendra himself confessed that at the time of his activities he did not map out the likely path of the future. Tapan said, In 1975 I recall him reminiscing with a former comrade involved in the Steven’s assassination. They had been assured by the senior members of their organizations that India, once free, would provide a brighter, equitable future for all its citizens but that was clearly not the case. They wondered if it had been worth making the extreme sacrifices, they made for the status quo they now saw about them. The personal cost to them was everything they had and the societal cost, through the passage of history and political mismanagement, led to the death and displacement of millions and the continued disenfranchisement of so many.
After being released from prison, he joined the Marxist party, which was then illegal and was jailed once more. After that he returned home after many years, his father now dead and his mother very old. With a sense of guilt at her despair, noting too how he had not attained the more secure future they had hoped he would give he had been at Dhaka Medical School, he promised her to follow a more conventional path and embark on a family life. But finding conventional work was not easy. I still remember how despite a grave fever, he embarked on a perilous journey to a remote hill station tea garden. He loved a challenge and it took him beyond transportation, to a place where he had to wade across the river with his luggage and papers held aloft. In the absolute darkness he finally discerned a dim light and there found, within a small hut, a man from a local tribe who took him in. Rather than be unnerved at such a journey and the remoteness, he felt remarkably at home.
His sacrifices cost him dear but also impacted his family. Working in remote places and being absent from home meant that the burden of raising the family in the most challenging circumstances fell squarely on his wife, Suhashini. She had also been imprisoned by the British. She had been a teacher and left that profession to raise her family. Though he lived until 87 and worked hard into his 70s, he could never catch up commercially with the counterfactual life he had given up. His selfless attitude to his fellow workers made him a wonderful colleague but hardly a successful capitalist.