Binda Prasad Khattri

Binda Prasad Khattri (1898-1985) was a notable educator, poet, writer, homeopathic medicine practitioner and social worker towards the end of British rule of India and in the early few decades of independent India. Born in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, India, he was educated at various places within what was then British India's United Provinces of Agra and Awadh, with three Master’s degree in Persian (1923), Geography and English. Apart from Persian and English, he was proficient in Hindi and Urdu. He worked as the Inspector of Schools mainly concentrating his efforts in teachers' training to prepare a new generation of high school teachers after India gained her independence from British. He retired from this job in 1953 at Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, India and thereafter concentrated his efforts by directly getting involved in educational issues. In doing so, he served as the principal of the Verni Jain Intermediate College, Lalitpur India, from where he retired for the second time in 1963. Immediately thereafter, he taught at various institutes of higher learning at Lucknow and at Maharaja Degree College at Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. He finally moved to his native town of Banda where he again taught at the Teachers Training Institute. Binda Prasad Khattri was a prolific writer and during his retirement, he undertook a big project of translating the entire set of thirteen writings of the fifteenth century poet Goswami Tulsi Das into Persian and English from Awadhi dialect of Hindi language. He translated all the main Upanishads from Sanskrit into English. Additionally, he also translated the Bhagwad Gita as "The Song Divine" into English. Following are the two samples of his translations of Gita:

" O Arjuna, when your mind crosses
Mud of delusion, dirty and deep,
It is then that it will be possible for you
Indifference and equanimity to keep.

Then you will not mind what had been heard
And what, of two worlds' is yet to be known.
You remain undisturbed and unruffled
As, within you, equanimity has grown. " (Chapter 2, Verse 52)


"One's ownself serves a friend to him
Who passes an essential test of a kind
He must have conquered his lowerself
His body and senses and his own mind.

Whereas for one who fails in the test
And lowerself leaves unconquered he
His ownself then reacts on him
most enemically as great enemy." (Chapter 6, Verse 6)

Times of India (March 22, 1980) calls him as a Hermit Pundit and quotes, “…critics have lauded the quality of his translation of Ramcharit Manas, Gitavali, Vinaya Patrika and other works. He has also translated the main Upanishads, the Gita and some of the choicest poems in Persian and Urdu into English….”

Mr. Khattri was a descendent of Raja Todar Mal, who was one of nine leading ministers in the court of the King Akbar, the Great. He had a total of nine children - four sons (Govind, Chaturbhuj, Jagdish, Hari) and five daughters (Zanno, Kamala, Radha, Prem and Asha), all of whom except Radha are now deceased. He was also the paternal grandfather of the statistician and educator Ravindra Khattree. Mr. Khattri died in 1985 due to natural causes at his home Devi Ashram, New Market in his hometown of Banda, Uttar Pradesh, India.