Hem Chandra Chowdhury

Hemchandra Choudhury (1833-1915) was a Hindu Zamindar in Gopalpur Upazila in Tangail in what is now Bangladesh.

Early life Hemchandra Banerjee Choudhury was born in 1833 in Brahmin family of Ambaria, Madhupur Upazila, Tangail District. He was born in the Ambaria Zamindar family. His father was Kalichandra Banerjee Choudhury a pious Brahmin. He was educated at the Presidency University in Calcutta. The palace sheltered freedom fighters during the Bangladesh War of Liberation and in 1989 the main portion was leased to Hemnagar Degree College.

Choudhury built the first concrete road in the upazila, from Subornokhali to Jagannathganj Ghat, and was instrumental in having the railway extended to Jagannathganj Ghat in 1905. He donated money for the construction of Mymensingh Victorial Hospital, Pingna Charitable Hospital, and the Mymensingh Hospital. He founded the Hemnagar Haradurga Devi Choudhurani Charity Hospital in 1901.

After Hemchandra Choudhury's death, his successors crossed the country in fear of communal riots during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1946. Shyamkanta Ganguly and his son Kamal Ganguly went to Hemnagar, but during the war of 1965, they also emigrated. During the Bangladesh War of Liberation, the Rajbari of Hemanagar was used as a shelter for the freedom fighters.

His descendants currently live in parts of Bangladesh, West Bengal and Other parts of the country Indiathey married into Maharaja (King) Kaliprasad Mukhopadhayay's family and the Tagore family, of which Rabindranath Tagore became the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

His great-granddaughter, Indrani Roy (1943-2016), continued his socialist work. She was part of the first generation of feminist Bengali poets writing after the Partition of Bengal, and one of the founding members of the Aurobindo Nari Chetana Mancha (The Aurobindo Society for Women's Empowerment), a feminist writers' society in Calcutta under the Sri Aurobindo Foundation for Indian Culture (SAFIC),