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 (formerly known as Shahabad district) in the Indian state of Bihar. It is the headquarters of Bhojpur district, located near the confluence of the ...

, in

Bengal Presidency The Bengal Presidency, officially the Presidency of Fort William and later Bengal Province, was a subdivision of the British Empire in India. At the height of its territorial jurisdiction, it covered large parts of what is now South Asia an ...

(in present-day

Bihar Bihar (; ) is a state in eastern India. It is the 2nd largest state by population in 2019, 12th largest by area of , and 14th largest by GDP in 2021. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West ...

) 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 ...

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 Benga ...

. He studied law in London to become a barrister. Following his return from London, Sinha began a movement for a separate

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions out ...

of Bihar with a small group of others. It was realized in 1912 with the formation of the

Bihar and Orissa Province Bihar and Orissa was a province of British India, which included the present-day Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha. The territories were conquered by the British in the 18th and 19th centuries, and were governed by the then Indian C ...

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 b ...

. 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 The Patna High Court is the High Court of the state of Bihar. It was established on 9 February 1916 and later affiliated under the Government of India Act 1915. The court is based in Patna, the administrative capital of the state of Bihar, ...

starting 1916. In his early years, Sinha was a member of the

Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British E ...

, from 1899 till 1920, serving one term as secretary. He participated in the Home Rule League Movement. He was one of the vice-chancellors of

Patna University Patna University is a public state university in Patna, Bihar, India. It was established on 1 October 1917 during the British Raj. It is the first university in Bihar and the seventh oldest university in the Indian subcontinent in the modern ...

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 The Imperial Legislative Council (ILC) was the legislature of the British Raj from 1861 to 1947. It was established under the Charter Act of 1853 by providing for the addition of 6 additional members to the Governor General Council for legislativ ...

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 India. It was created by the Government of India Act 1919, implementing the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms. It was also some ...

. 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 Aurangabad ( is a city in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the administrative headquarters of Aurangabad district and is the largest city in the Marathwada region. Located on a hilly upland terrain in the Deccan Traps, Aurangabad is the ...

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 Minist ...

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 Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

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 Truma ...

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