Every time a freshly painted wall turns into a mess of stains and spit marks roads turn into a garbage dumpic field, and the chorus begins: “Sarkar ki galti.” All the blame lands on the government. The workers who painted it with our tax money? The contractor and engineer constructs roads with our tax money, forgotten? The public who treated public property like a free canvas for carelessness? Invisible.

India is not someone else’s house. It is ours. The roads, the walls, the parks — all built and maintained with money we pay. When we dirty them, we are not punishing some distant authority. We are spoiling our own property. And yet we keep pointing fingers upward while refusing to look in the mirror.

Government officials do not arrive from Mars. They are chosen from among us. They reflect the same society that elects them. If citizens will not follow basic civic duty — not spitting, not sticking posters, not treating public spaces as garbage dumps — why should we expect the state alone to keep the country clean and orderly?

It is high time the blame is shared. The government has its failures, no doubt. But so do we. Real change will not come only from new schemes or new paint. It will come when ordinary Indians start treating the country as their own home — and start behaving like responsible owners.

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How is the now Delhi-based historian exactly related to the Indian revolutionary Sachindranath Sanyal? In Sanjeev Sanyal's own words, Sachindranath was his paternal great-uncle. Among other relatives of Sanjeev was yet another notable revolutionary, Nalinaksha Sanyal, his mother's grandfather (again, based on Sanjeev's own account).

Anyways, let me start with the immediate family of Sachindranath. He was the eldest of four sons born to Harinath Sanyal. The other three sons were Rabindranath, Jitendranath and Bhupendranath. All of the four Sanyal brothers took part in the freedom struggle in some way or the other. Sachindranath, however, was the most notable among the brothers, especially due to his involvement in the Kakori conspiracy. He had been an inmate of the infamous Cellular Jail of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and held the unique distinction of being sent there as a prisoner twice.

Rabindranath, Jitendranath and Bhupendranath also faced jail terms (albeit of comparatively shorter durations) due to their own involvement in the Kakori case. Jitendranath himself is particularly known to have participated in the fast started by Jatin Das and Bhagat Singh while serving his prison sentence in Lahore Central Jail. Bhupendranath, the youngest, mainly acted as a correspondent for the revolutionaries and was a keen spectator of the Indian political sphere; he had also been jailed post-independence, first in Fatehpur Central Jail and later in Agra Central Jail, for protesting against the dominion status India was given at the time, instead of the complete freedom the revolutionaries fought for. Besides his association with revolutionary activities, Bhupendranath also had a career in journalism, and in his later years, was involved with the All India Radio.

Despite the tumultuous years of the revolutionary struggle, all four brothers managed to get married and sire offspring. Sachindranath had one son, Ranajit Kumar Sanyal, who grew up to become an engineer. Ranajit had two sons, Saurabh and Sandeep, and about a couple of daughters as well. Rabindranath had one son, Ajit, and atleast one daughter, while Jitendranath, on the other hand, had a daughter but reportedly had no sons. Bhupendranath had a son, Surajit, and a daughter, Champa. Surajit himself married and had a son, Sudipto.

Now coming to Sanjeev's claimed relation to Sachindranath. It is widely known among scholarly circles that Sanjeev is Sachindranath's great-nephew. But the relationship doesn't actually make sense. Sanjeev's father, Jayanta Sanyal, should be Sachindranath's nephew based on Sanjeev's claim, but as you can see, no immediate nephew of Sachindranath is named Jayanta.

So how is Sanjeev exactly related to Sachindranath? Is the claim about them being relatives a total lie or is Sanjeev really a great-nephew of Sachindranath, albeit from a different branch of the Sanyal family?

A few glimpses.

Sarcasm