‘Dayar Sagar’ – a 205th birth anniversary tribute to Pandit Iswarchandra Vidyasagar

‘Dayar Sagar’, an evening of talks, discussions and the reading of articles and poems was organised on September 13, 2025 under the auspices of Dr. Pratip Banerji Memorial Clinic & Services, and hosted by its founder Sm. Rinku Banerji, as a 205^th birth anniversary tribute to Pandit Iswarchandra Vidyasagar and his extraordinary life and work in the spheres of education, social reform and philanthropy.

Philanthropist Vidyasagar’s pioneering role in popularising homeopathy

An important aspect of Pandit Iswarchandra Vidyasagar’s philanthropy was his pioneering role in the practice and popularisation of homeopathy as a low-cost form of medical treatment, which he often offered free for poor people not only in Kolkata and Karmatar, now in Jharkhand, where he spent the last 18 years of his life, but also with the help of his younger brother Ishanchandra at their ancestral village, Birsingha. Ishanchandra’s son Dr. Pareshnath Banerji, based in Mihijam, also in Jharkhand, became a veritable legend; three of his sons represented the family’s third generation of homeopaths, while Dr. Pratip Banerji – whose name this Clinic bears – belonged to the fourth, and with his father Dr. Prasanta Banerji, became internationally well-known homeopaths, co-authoring the book ‘The Banerji Protocols: A New Method of Treatment with Homeopathic Medicines’, and contributing importantly to the family’s serious involvement with homeopathy for over 150 years.

Speakers at ‘Dayar Sagar’

At ‘Dayar Sagar’, the talks to two erudite speakers assumed great importance: First, Shri Susanta Mutt from Santipur, who has been the Sampadak for the last 24 years of the 110-year-old Santipur Sahitya Parishad, is closely involved with various social welfare projects and organisations in Santipur, and researches and writes on various social and educational issues, spoke on the contents of ‘Bratyakatha’, a special publication on Pandit Iswarchandra Vidyasagar edited by him and published 2020 on the occasion of Vidyasagar’s 200^th birth anniversary celebrations; thereafter, Shri Dilip Banerjee, who belongs to Vidyasagar’s paternal uncle Kalidas Bandyopadhyay’s family, divides his time between the family’s ancestral village Birsingha and Karmatar, where Vidyasagar spent his last 18 years, and attends to several responsibilities, spoke on the basis of his encyclopaedic knowledge about Vidyasagar and his family for over 200 years. It was interesting that both Shri Mutt and Shri Banerjee pointed out that in the cases of both Vidyasagar (1820 – 1891), and before him, Rammohun Roy (1774 – 1833), sheer mastery over Hindu shastras fortified them well enough to combat all those who opposed them to achieve success in their efforts.

Response to the talks

These two talks generated excellent response from the audience. Veteran advertising professional Mrityunjoy Chatterjee read out a few paragraphs from Rabindranath Tagore’s well-known tribute ‘Vidyasagar-charit’; poet Gopa Bhattachary read out her poems, and regretted that Vidyasagar’s time-honoured ‘Barna Parichay’ finds no place in present-day syllabi; translator and website developer Mahasweta Ray read out an article she had written on Vidyasagar. Many in the audience pointed out that Vidyasagar helped not only well-known persons like Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Keshab Chandra Sen, but also hundreds of poor people, many of them unknown to him, including tribals in and around Karmatar. The importance of Vidyasagar’s role, along with those of Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, Rajnarain Bose and Akshoy Kumar Dutt, in the activities of the Tattvabodhini Sabha and the publication of its Tattavabodhini Patrika, was also discussed, along with Vidyasagar’s various other achievements in the spheres of education, social reform and philanthropy.

Family legacy and the present role of the Clinic

Sm. Rinku Banerji, who founded this Clinic to serve as a living memorial to her late husband, and organised and hosted ‘Dayar Sagar’, attached great importance to the Clinic’s efforts to continue doing justice to the family legacy… over 150 years of success in practising and popularising homeopathy. She narrated how its senior assistant doctors, who had been personally trained by Dr. Pratip Banerji, now continue to offer homeopathic treatment under the Banerji Protocols – a new method of treatment of using specific medicines for specific diseases, originally conceptualised by Vidyasagar’s nephew the legendary Dr. Pareshnath Banerji, and thereafter developed by Dr. Prasanta Banerji and Dr. Pratip Banerji, with the very best use of modern medical and diagnostic sciences and research based on the systematic documentation of data collected during their long experience as homeopaths, to earn international acceptance, recognition and acclaim. The clinic offers treatment for acute and chronic diseases to people of all ages at 61B Southend Park, Kolkata 700019, and also online consultations to outstation patients.