About Surendranath Banerjee
Sir Surendranath Banerjee (10 November 1848 – 6 August 1925), often known as Rashtraguru (lit. 'Teacher of the Nation'), was an Indian nationalist leader during the British Raj. He founded the Indian National Association to bring Hindus and Muslims together for political action. He was also one of the founding members of the Indian National Congress. Unlike Congress, however, Surendranath supported Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms, and with many liberal leaders he left Congress and founded a new organisation, Indian National Liberation Federation, in 1919. == Early life == Surendranath Banerjee was born in Calcutta, in the province of Bengal to a Rarhi Kulin Brahmin family, suggesting that the ancestral seat of the family was at Rarh region of present-day West Bengal. His great-grandfather Babu Gour Kishire Banerjee emigrated and settled in a village called Monirampur near Barrackpore. He was deeply influenced in liberal, progressive thinking by his father Durga Charan Banerjee, a doctor. After graduating from the University of Calcutta, he travelled to England in 1868, along with Romesh Chunder Dutt and Behari Lal Gupta, to compete in the Indian Civil Service examinations. He cleared the competitive examination in 1869, but was barred owing to a claim he had misrepresented his age. After clearing the matter in the courts by arguing that he calculated his age according to the Hindu custom of reckoning age from the date of conception rather than from birth, Banerjee cleared the exam again in 1871 and was posted as assistant magistrate in Sylhet.
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