Birendra Sutradhar

Birendra Sutradhar (1937 - 19 May 1961) (Bengali: বীরেন্দ্র সূত্রধর) was an Indian carpenter who took part in the Bengali Language Movement in the Barak Valley in 1961. On 19 May 1961, while participating in a satyagraha demanding the official status for Bengali language in Barak Valley, he was shot by the paramilitary forces, dying in hospital twenty hours later, on 20 May 1961.

Birendra Sutradhar was born to a Bengali Hindu family in the village of Baharampur under Nabiganj police station in the Habiganj sub-division in the undivided Sylhet district in September 1937. In British India, the undivided Sylhet district and the undivided Cachar district constituted the Bengali-speaking majority Surma Valley Division of Assam. At the age of two Birendra lost is mother. A year later Birendra's father died, and he was raised by his grandmother. She had him admitted to school, but he had to discontinue his studies after the first standard. At that time, the Partition of India was imminent, and ten-year-old Birendra persuaded his grandmother to migrate to what was to become India. They arrived in Silchar as refugees.

Early in his career, Birendra had to struggle to earn a livelihood. He chose carpentry, the traditional trade of his caste, becoming a skilled carpenter. In 1959, he married fifteen-year-old Dhankumari in Dharmanagar, Tripura. A year later their daughter Rani was born. In order to support his family, Birendra went to Aizawl in Mizo District for a better livelihood, where he began working under a contractor. He left his wife and daughter with a distant uncle of his at the Manipur Tea Estate in Hailakandi.

During his long stay at Aizawl, Birendra longed to return home and take his wife and daughter along with him. He terminated his contract prematurely and returned to Silchar on 17 May 1961. In the street, he met Chandicharan Sutradhar, who took him to his workshop. At the workshop, Birendra came to know about the Bengali language movement and the problems of the Bengali speaking people from the student leaders of the movement. Birendra was instantly drawn into the movement. At Silchar, he put up at his residence of his grandfather. Even after repeated requests by his grandfather, he refused to see his wife and daughter in Hailakandi, instead he was determined to join the protest on 19 May.

On 19 May he took part in the satyagraha at the Tarapur railway station in Silchar. At around 2-35 pm, the paramilitary personnel posted at the site began to fire at the satyagrahis, killing six persons on the spot and wounding many others. The dead and the injured were carried to the Red Cross Hospital and the Silchar Civil Hospital for treatment. On 21 May 1961, the bodies of Birendra Sutradhar and Satyendra Deb were recovered from a water body adjacent to the Tarapur railway station. His death was mourned by hundreds of mourners who cremated him according to Hindu rites. He was survived by his eighteen-year-old widow and one-year-old daughter.