Harindranath Chattopadhyay

Poet, politician and actor; Sarojini Naidu's brother · 1898–1990

Harindranath Chattopadhyay was born in Hyderabad on 2 April 1898, the younger brother of Sarojini Naidu, and was married for a time to the reformer Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. He was a poet, playwright, actor and politician: he studied at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, began research on William Blake, and in 1951 won the Vijayawada seat in the Lok Sabha as an independent supported by the Communist Party of India.

Late in life he turned to films, and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962) was his screen debut. He plays Ghari Babu, a man obsessed with time and surrounded by clocks. He was memorable in Romu Sippy's Bawarchi (1972), sang the children's favourite 'Rail Gaadi' with Ashok Kumar in Aashirwad (1968), and in Bengali cinema played the magician Borfi in Satyajit Ray's Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, whose tricks include separating his head from his body. He died on 23 June 1990.