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A BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF
TANASUKHARAM MANASSUKHARAM TRIPATHI.
No sketch of the life of Tanasukharam could ever be adequate without a reference to that remarkable personage, Manassuklaram, his father, who was one of the most distinguished figures of Bombay and of Gujarat during the closing decades of the last century. Manassukharam hailed from Nadiad, the most important town, though not the official capital, of the Kaira district in the Bɔmbay Presidency. Long before the advent of "Satyâgraha" and Nou-co-operation, that have during recent years brought Kaira and Nadiad to the forefront as possibly the best centre of Mahatma Gandhi's work and influence, Nadiad had a reputation of its own, not merely among the neighbouring districts as a trade-centre, but, what was more valuable, throughout the Gujarati-speaking world, as the caufa of Gujarat. Aud, indeed, the phalanx of her worthy sons that went out during the last half of the 19th century and that have earned rich distinction as poets and philosophers, as authors and politicians, as scholars and statesmen, has given such an undying glory to Nadiad as would give a just cause of pride to any city in the world. It is but right to observe that in winning and maintaining this glory both father and son, Manassukharam and Tanasukharam, have had their own individual share.
Manassukharau thus belonged to that worthy, but 110w almost extinct, generation, which in the palmy days of early British rule and under the first stimulus of what is called Western education, went out, with iron in their souls, as the first pioneers in education, in reform, in politics, and even in the Vernacular literatures. Himself a self-made 1130, in the true sense of the word: for, though belonging to the highest Brâhmana Community of Gujarat (kgown as the Vadanagara Någar Brâhmana caste,) he had to struggle against extreme poverty and against all the other difficulties which eveu in
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
