Krishna Kanta Handique the Sanskrit Scholar:

Among all the modern Assamese, Krishna Kanta Handique understood his country and the world the best. A name synonymous with scholastic pursuits, he was a great Assamese of whom every Indian can justifiably be proud.
His life and works were a balancing of apparently irreconcilable opposites. A man given completely to profound study and never bothering about popularity, power and fame, Handique had a strong sense of social and moral obligation.
Krishna Kanta Handique was born on the July 20, 1898 in Jorhat town of Assam, to Rai-Bahadur Radha Kanta Handique. He was educated at Cotton College, Guwahati (1913-15), Sanskrit College, Calcutta (1915-17), Calcutta University (1917-19), Oxford University, Paris University and Berlin University (1920-27).
K.K. Handique was educated up to IA in Assam and went on to do his BA with Honours in Sanskrit (Vedic Group) from the University of Calcutta. He passed all the examinations with flying colours.

In 1920 he began his study tour of Europe. After doing his MA in Modern History from Oxford in 1923, he visited France, Germany and Italy to learn European languages and to study the Classics. After four years of travel and study, he returned home with knowledge of major European languages and a collection of over 2,000 books in different languages. Back home at Jorhat, Handique started learning the complex techniques that were essential to the management of his father's estate. He never entertained the idea of going into government service but he gladly agreed to become the principal of Upper Assam College (which later became Jorhat and finally J.B. College, Jorhat) the first non-government college in Assam

He also studied and learned many languages like Latin, Greek, French, German, Russian, Italian and Spanish. He is known to have known 13 languages: 8 European languages and 5 Indian languages including Pali and Prakrit.
Krishna Kanta … as a Social Reformer:

Handique was the founder Vice-Chancellor of Gauhati University for nine years (1948-57). Prior to this he was the founder Principal of J.B. College, Jorhat (1930-48) and established the Hemalata Handique Memorial Institute in Jorhat. He is well known for his munificence to literary and educational foundations. He bequeathed his massive personal library to Guwahati University making available to the public rare and valuable books in 11 languages of the world. He also gave the copy right of all his books to Deccan College PG & Research Institute, Pune; The Jaina Samskriti Samrakshaka Sangh, Maharastra and Prakrit Test Society, Ahmedabad.
Krishna Kanta Handique was the President of Axom Xahitya Xabha during the Guwahati conference in 1937 at the young age of 39, President of Classical Sanskrit Section, XVI All India Oriental Conference, Lucknow in 1951 and was elected the general President of the Srinagar Session of the same in 1961.
Three great works have brought Handique international fame as an eminent Sanskrit scholar and Indologist: Naisadhacarita, Yasastilaka and Setubandha. The first one is a 12th century Sanskrit epic of Sriharsha, acknowledged as a very difficult text among scholars. Eminent Sanskrit scholars of the world readily acclaimed Handique’s annotation and explication of the text as a great work.
Handique worked on Sriharsha's Naisadhacarita while he was the honorary principal of J.B. College, and it was first published by Motilal Benarasi Das, Lahore in 1934. Scholars like M.B. Emeneau, Prof. N. Winternitz and Prof. A.B. Keith praised Handique's work and he was recognised as a scholar of international fame at the age of 36. What surprises everybody is that the mind engaged in a very difficult 12th century Sanskrit text was also the mind that operated upon the immediate problems like poor accommodation of the students in a non-government college and the poor pay of the teachers.