Respected Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar,
There are some people who never can die. After their death, they live on in statues or photos. You remain in these groups.
But you are livelier than those living in only statues and photos. You brought in Renaissance ideals in Bengal. You set up schools for girls. Women empowerment was your priority. The social activist in you
got you to marry your only son off to a widow to espouse the cause of widow remarriage. You uprooted the system of child marriage and multiple marriages by a Hindu Brahmin.
So you were rejected by your society. No wonder, you took yourself away from the so-called Bhadrolok society and spent the last days of your life among the Santhals.
After your death, your statues became the target of vested groups. In early seventies you were beheaded. In 2019 you experienced the same fate.
In life and after life you are targeted. It means you are living and remain a living threat to vested, vitiated, headless society.
Jol pore/ Pata nore – your lilting rhyme in your BarnoPorichoy continues to thrill us as much as your reformist zeal.
Vidyasagar, continue to live on by getting smashed and mashed repeatedly even after two hundred years of your birth, instead of looking out of stony statues in stony silence decade after decade.
It is your resolute fate. And you are feted. So are we.
— By your anonymous follower