53 Facts About Chandrashekhar Agashe

Chandrashekhar Govind Agashe was an Indian industrialist and lawyer, best remembered as the founder of the Brihan Maharashtra Sugar Syndicate Ltd.

Chandrashekhar Agashe served as the managing agent of the company from its inception in 1934 till his death in 1956.

Chandrashekhar Agashe served as the President of the Bhor State Council from 1934 to 1948, having previously been the council's Vice President from 1933 to 1934, its Secretary from 1932 to 1933, and the Chief Justiciar of the Indian princely state itself from 1920 to 1932.

Chandrashekhar Agashe became the namesake of the Agashe pattern, a means of equity crowdfunding, among businesses and press in Maharashtra between 1934 and 1956.

Chandrashekhar Agashe was the eldest of four children to Govind Agashe II and Radhabai Agashe.

Chandrashekhar Agashe's family was Chitpavan Brahmin, and was established since the 1590s as the aristocratic Agashe gharana of the village of Mangdari in the Bhor State.

Chandrashekhar Agashe relocated the family to her parents' residence in Shaniwar Peth, Pune in 1900.

The loss of the family's estate, made Chandrashekhar Agashe accept secretarial work at the Indian Post Office to support himself and his siblings through school.

Chandrashekhar Agashe attended the Nutan Marathi Vidyalaya, matriculating in 1905 at the age of 17, and later graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Fergusson College in 1914, at the age of 26.

In 1914, Chandrashekhar Agashe married Dwarka Gokhale, the eldest daughter of Narayan Gokhale VI from the aristocratic Gokhale gharana of Dharwad.

Chandrashekhar Agashe's family had served as the hereditary royal saraf to the Peshwa Bhat family since the 18th century.

Chandrashekhar Agashe was a great niece of Bapu Gokhale, a general under Peshwa Baji Rao II of the Maratha Empire.

Chandrashekhar Agashe adopted the name Indirabai Agashe after marriage, and the couple had a total of eleven children, from which nine survived to adulthood.

From 1914 to 1917, Chandrashekhar Agashe taught mathematics at the Nutan Marathi Vidyalaya in Pune, after which he was occupied as a visiting professor at a convent school in Karachi.

Chandrashekhar Agashe began practicing his advocacy in Pune and was a lawmaking advisor to the Bhor State government.

Chandrashekhar Agashe encountered political unrest between the commoners and the gentry at the Pantsachiv's court resulting in violent rioting from the common-folk of the Bhor State.

Chandrashekhar Agashe co-wrote an opinion piece against this political factionalism with Narasimha Chintaman Kelkar in the newspaper Kesari.

The discouraging response to the Lokpaksh from the Pantsachiv's subjects led Chandrashekhar Agashe to consider retiring from law in the late 1920s.

Chandrashekhar Agashe supported several Indian freedom fighters, including Lokmanya Tilak and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, but never considered entering politics himself; his younger brother, Narayan Chandrashekhar Agashe III actively participated in politics surrounding the Indian independence movement, serving a brief prison time for rioting against the British Raj in the early 1930s, before aiding his elder brother in his business venture.

In 1932, Chandrashekhar Agashe was appointed as the Secretary of the Bhor State Council, and in under a year, he was elected to the post of Vice President in 1933, and then the President of the council in 1934, a post he maintained until the accession of the state into the Dominion of India in 1948.

Several legislations Chandrashekhar Agashe helped bring forth in favour of the commoners were opposed by the gentry, resulting in growing involvement from the Deccan States Agency.

In March 1933, Chandrashekhar Agashe visited Mahatma Gandhi when he was imprisoned at Yerawada Central Jail in Pune.

In June 1933, in an oratory address to Lieutenant-general Harold Wilberforce-Bell, the Agent to the Governor-General of India for the Deccan States Agency in Kolhapur at the time, Chandrashekhar Agashe put to rest the concerns of any mismanagement of the state and the success of the Lokpaksh in resolving any agitation between the subjects and the nobility of the state.

Chandrashekhar Agashe further referenced how the state and the 11th Raja's administration had performed in line with Lord Irwin's recommendations for the governments of Indian princely states.

In March 1948, a photograph of Chandrashekhar Agashe's was unveiled by the 11th Raja of Bhor during a state visit to Pali, Raigad.

That same month, Chandrashekhar Agashe served as one of the pleaders who declared the 11th Raja's resolution to accede the Bhor State into the Dominion of India as progressive and liberal in nature.

Between 1934 and 1936, Chandrashekhar Agashe envisioned opening a factory branch of the Syndicate in his hometown of Bhor, and began cultivating 2,000 acres of land for the plantation of sugar cane.

Plans for the factory were shot down after Chandrashekhar Agashe met with strong opposition from the local landed gentry.

Between 1935 and 1937, Chandrashekhar Agashe toured several states and jagirs within the Deccan States Agency, promoting the syndicate at several village gram panchayats.

Chandrashekhar Agashe became associated with this procedure after becoming one of the first few businesses in Maharashtra to successfully raise funds with this method.

In November 1937, Chandrashekhar Agashe ordered sugar cane processing machinery from Skoda Works in Czechoslovakia before the outbreak of World War II.

Chandrashekhar Agashe began construction for the first factory in April 1938, and finally established the syndicate's first sugar cane processing factory in the village of Bhorgaon in March 1939, further purchasing an estate and the surrounding lands as a means to look after his own sugar plantations, with the syndicate's principal factory soon producing 150,000 sacs of sugar per annum by 1940.

Chandrashekhar Agashe founded the Laxmi Narayan Farmers' Union so as to meet the demand for food crops from the British Raj without disrupting the sugar cane processing; this move was not popular with many of Chandrashekhar Agashe's employed farmers because of low profitability.

Chandrashekhar Agashe was among several other notable politicians, industrialists, and Indian princes who were named as having donated sums to the Hindu Rashtra Dal founded by Godse prior to the assassination.

Chandrashekhar Agashe responded to these scandals by writing all of the press releases of the syndicate himself in the newspaper Kesari, which gained him notoriety among the newspaper's predominantly Marathi readership for their humor or references to pop culture of the time.

Chandrashekhar Agashe further published a 400-page report criticizing his retractors of corruption and factionalism based on evidence that his critics were backed by his competitor Karamshi Jethabhai Somaiya, who had previously shown interest in purchasing the syndicate.

On 9 June 1956, while on a spiritual retreat in Jogeshwari, Chandrashekhar Agashe began showing symptoms of myocardial infarction and was recommended by his doctor to return home.

Chandrashekhar Agashe died that same day, from a heart attack upon reaching his residence in Shaniwar Peth, Pune.

Chandrashekhar Agashe is widely remembered as a philanthropist and patron of the arts.

Chandrashekhar Agashe's donation was further used by the society in development of their Willingdon College, Ahilyadevi High School, Navin Marathi School and the Ranade Baalak Mandir.

Chandrashekhar Agashe donated to the Brihan Maharashtra Bhuvan in New Delhi.

Chandrashekhar Agashe's philanthropy was heavily criticized by his competition, who viewed it as self-fulfilling.

Chandrashekhar Agashe began constructing the Chandrashekhar Agashe Primary School in the village of Shreepur in April 1942, with the school receiving sanctions from the Government in July 1943.

Chandrashekhar Agashe further advised on and donated to the campaign of Indian freedom fighter Narhar Vishnu Gadgil.

Chandrashekhar Agashe donated to the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute towards their research work on the Mahabharata, and its subsequent printing and publication in 1947, having been a patron of the institute since 1945.

Chandrashekhar Agashe served as one of the vice presidents of the Bharat Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal from 1953 to 1955, during the presidency of Malojiraje Nimbalkar IV, Raja of Phaltan, having become a member of the Mandal in 1945.

Chandrashekhar Agashe established the Brihan Maharashtra Bhavan in New Delhi for the growing Marathi diaspora in the capital.

Chandrashekhar Agashe was a patron of the Sugar Technologists' Association of India in Kanpur.

Chandrashekhar Agashe died of a Myocardial infarction at the age of 68 on 9 June 1956 at his residence in Shaniwar Peth, Pune.

Chandrashekhar Agashe was survived by his wife Indirabai Agashe, until her death in 1981.

Chandrashekhar Agashe was survived in business by his sons Panditrao Agashe and Dnyaneshwar Agashe.

Chandrashekhar Agashe is remembered as one of the influential people from Pune in the 20th century.

In 1992, Chandrashekhar Agashe was the subject of a biography written by his second-eldest daughter Shakuntala Karandikar.