Son of Jogendranath Dey, Pravashchandra Dey(1885-1954) was born in Calcutta. In 1904 he passed the BA examination with scholarship from the Presidency College, Calcutta; followed by his MA and LLB degrees from Calcutta University in 1907.
Through his classmate and the later day revolutionary, Jyotishchandra Ghosh, he got associated with the anti-Partition movement in 1905. The ideology of Atma shakti and swadeshi so entered his soul that he along with Raghunath Bandyopadhyay, Nibaran Bhattacharyya, and others established the Atmonnati Samgha, which later emerged as one of the leading revolutionary groups of Calcutta. Later, when he started legal practice on his own, police, suspecting his revolutionary links, continued to harass him, which forced him to give up the practice.
Away from the din and bustle of the city, he shifted to the farthest part of Bengal, Rangpur as a teacher of the newly-established National School; indoctrinated a whole set of future revolutionaries like Prafulla Chaki, Prafulla Chakraborty, Jadugopal Mukherjee, and others. He then shifted to Berahampore’s Krishnath College as a professor of English; then moved to Krishnanagar College and the Victoria College of Coochbehar. But, everywhere the college authority dismissed him after a while on the police ings.
On 10 July 1916, he was arrested from Coochbehar under the Defense of India Act for his alleged involvement in the conspiracy of looting arms from the Manton Company of Calcutta. Released in 1920 as a part of the general amnesty, he served the Ripon College and the Maharaja Manindra Chandra College of Calcutta, as a professor of English till retirement.
Source: Nihar Roy, Biplabi: Jader Mane Rakhini, 2021, in Bengali; Subodhchandra Sengupta Ed., Samsad Bangali Charitabhidhan, 1976, in Bengali; Shubhendu Majumdar, Agniyuger Abhidhan, 2022, in Bengali.