Sachchidananda Sinha (10 November 1871 – 6 March 1950) was an Indian lawyer, parliamentarian, and journalist.

Early life

Sinha was born on 10 November 1871 in

Arrah Arrah (also transliterated as Ara) is a city and a municipal corporation in Bhojpur district, India, Bhojpur district (formerly known as Shahabad district) in the Indian state of Bihar. It is the headquarters of Bhojpur district, located near ...

, in Bengal Presidency (in present-day Bihar) into a well-to-do Srivastava

Kayastha Kayastha (also referred to as Kayasth) denotes a cluster of disparate Indian communities broadly categorised by the regions of the Indian subcontinent in which they were traditionally locatedthe Chitraguptavanshi Kayasthas of North India, the C ...

family who had served for several generation for Dumraon Raj. His Father He was educated in Patna and

City College, Calcutta City College is a composite fully state government-aided public college, affiliated to the University of Calcutta. Established in 1881, it is one of the heritage institutions of Kolkata, and played a prominent role in the wake of the Bengal ...

. He studied law in London to become a barrister. Following his return from London, Sinha began a movement for a separate province of Bihar with a small group of others. It was realized in 1912 with the formation of the Bihar and Orissa Province.

Career

Sinha began his career as an advocate in 1893 practicing in the

Calcutta High Court The Calcutta High Court is the oldest High Court in India. It is located in B.B.D. Bagh, Kolkata, West Bengal. It has jurisdiction over the state of West Bengal and the Union Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The High Court buildi ...

. He subsequently practiced in the

Allahabad High Court Allahabad High Court, also known as High Court of Judicature at Allahabad is the high court based in Prayagraj that has jurisdiction over the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It was established on 17 March 1866, making it one of the oldest high ...

starting 1896 and Patna High Court starting 1916. In his early years, Sinha was a member of the Indian National Congress, from 1899 till 1920, serving one term as secretary. He participated in the

Home Rule League Movement A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or many humans, and sometimes various companion animals. It is a fully or semi sheltered space and can have both interior and exterior aspects to it. ...

. He was one of the vice-chancellors of Patna University and held the post from 1936 to 1944. He built the Sinha Library in 1924 in memory of his wife, Radhika. He was a member of the Imperial Legislative Council from 1910 to 1920 and the

Indian Legislative Assembly The Central Legislative Assembly was the lower house of the Imperial Legislative Council, the legislature of British Raj, British India. It was created by the Government of India Act 1919, implementing the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms. It was ...

. He was Deputy President of the Assembly in 1921. He also held the office of the President in the Bihar and Orissa Legislative Council. He was appointed Executive Councillor and Finance Member of the Government of Bihar and Orissa, and, thus, was the first Indian who was ever appointed as a Finance Member of a Province.Constituent Assembly of India
Later, he also was a member of the Bihar Legislative Assembly.. On 9 December 1946, After the first Constituent Assembly election, the first meeting of Constituent Assembly was held in which Dr. Sachchidananda Sinha was selected as the temporary President of Constituent Assembly as he was the eldest member., following the French Practice. A constituent college in Aurangabad is dedicated to him and was named Sachchidanand Sinha College, which was founded by Akhouri Krishna Prakash Sinha along with eminent Gandhian

Anugrah Narayan Sinha Anugrah Narayan Sinha (18 June 1887 – 5 July 1957), known as '' Bihar Vibhuti'', was an Indian nationalist statesman, participant in Champaran Satyagraha, Gandhian & one of the architects of modern Bihar, who was the first Deputy Chief Minis ...

before independence, in 1943, who named it after Sinha, as a living tribute to him, who was at that time 72 years of age. In January 2015, when US President Barack Obama visited India, he was presented with a copy of the first telegram sent from the US to India. It was sent by then acting secretary of state

Dean Acheson Dean Gooderham Acheson (pronounced ; April 11, 1893October 12, 1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman ...

to Sinha.

Author

Sinha was a journalist and a writer. He was the publisher of the ''Indian Nation'' and editor of ''Hindustan Review''. His works include
''Some Eminent Indian Contemporaries''
an
''Iqbal: The Poet and His Message''
(1947).

Early life

Career

Author

References

Further reading