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Gandhi was frustrated that even while protesting the British, every time a freedom fighter signed a document, they were using Quink (Parker)/Stephens (British) ink. He saw it as a symbolic defeat. Gandhi personally asked Satish Chandra Dasgupta (a legendary chemist, I will write separately about him) to create an ink that would not betray Indian paper. Satish Chandra did not want to run a business, so he passed the formula (Krishna Dhara) to 2 brothers, Nanigopal & Sankaracharya Maitra in Rajshahi (now Bangladesh). They started Sulekha (named by Tagore) in a small room with a single stove. British inks of the 1930s were notorious for being Iron-Gall based. These were highly acidic. If you look at British-era documents today, many have holes where the ink was the acid literally ate through the paper over 50 yrs. The Maitra brothers realized that Indian paper (often handmade/low-quality) would disintegrate under British ink. They engineered Sulekha to be pH-neutral. They used a secret infusion of tannins from indigenous sources & refined them to ensure the ink was archival. The reason many 1940s Indian revolutionary pamphlets are still readable today, w/o the paper crumbling, is specifically due to the non-corrosive chemistry of Sulekha. Also, Satyajit Ray, who was a master calligrapher (he designed his own fonts like Ray Roman), preferred Sulekha because of its Matte-Finish density.