a comprehensive history of

modern bengal
1700–1950
A Comprehensive History of
modern bengal
1700–1950

volume ii

edited by
sabyasachi bhattacharya

the asiatic society

1 Park Street  q Kolkata 16

in association with
 PRIMUS BOOKS
An imprint of Ratna Sagar P. Ltd.
Virat Bhavan
Mukherjee Nagar Commercial Complex
Delhi 110 009

Offices at
CHENNAI LUCKNOW
AGRA AHMEDABAD BANGALORE COIMBATORE
DEHRADUN GUWAHATI HYDERABAD JAIPUR JALANDHAR
KANPUR KOCHI KOLKATA MADURAI MUMBAI
PATNA RANCHI VARANASI

© the asiatic society 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Primus Books, or as expressly permitted by law,
by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights
organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to Primus Books at the address above.

First published 2020

ISBN: 978-93-89901-95-5 (hardback)

Published by Primus Books in association with The Asiatic Society

Laser typeset by Guru Typograph Technology

Crossings Republic, Ghaziabad 201 009

Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd.

This book is meant for educational and learning purposes. The author(s) of the book
has/have taken all reasonable care to ensure that the contents of the book do not
violate any existing copyright or other intellectual property rights of any person in
any manner whatsoever. In the event the author(s) has/have been unable to track
any source and if any copyright has been inadvertently infringed, please notify
the publisher in writing for correct
 Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Foreword xi
Introduction xiii

1. Caste in Bengal as Reflected in the Census,

1881–1951
ajit kumar danda 1
2. The Fate of Labour-Intensive Industries
under Colonialism
amiya kumar bagchi 21
3. Landed Proprietorship and the Evolution of Land
  Legislation in Colonial Bengal
nariaki nakazato 44
4. Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy in Bengal,
1793–1920
arun bandopadhyay 69
5. Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) and His Times
bruce carlisle robertson 117
6. The Era of Vidyasagar
brian a. hatcher 150
7. Derozio, Young Bengal, and the Making of
Modern India, 1831–1861
rosinka chaudhuri 185
8. Hinduism under Interpretative Stress: A View from
Nineteenth-Century Bengal
amiya prosad sen 212
vi A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

9. Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature,

1850–1947
amit dey 271
10. The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal: Events, Anxieties,
and Ambiguities
subhas ranjan chakraborty 308
11. ‘Hindu Law’: Invention of a Tradition and Legal
Modernity in India
nandini bhattacharyya-panda 356
12. The Idea of Justice and Evolution of the
Calcutta High Court, 1862–1915
mahua sarkar 382
13. The Nineteenth-Century Bengali Middle Class
prasanta ray 419
14. The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature
in the Nineteenth Century
pabitra sarkar 483
15. Asiatic Society and its Project of the ‘Science’ of
‘Man’ in the Late Nineteenth-early Twentieth
Century: An Ambivalent Space
bishnupriya basak 558
16. Demographic Trends in Western Bengal, 1881–1951
saswata ghosh and gorky chakraborty 583
17. Development of Calcutta as a Commercial Metropolis
in the Nineteenth Century
kaustubh mani sengupta 629
18. Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests of Bengal:
A Case Study of the Sundarbans
ranjan chakrabarti 659
19. Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal,
1850–1950
sujata mukherjee 697
 Contents vii

20. The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion

in Bengal, 1818–1910
swapan basu 737
21. Changing Hindu Women: Bengal in the Long
Nineteenth Century
tanika sarkar 804
22. Some Aspects of Popular Culture in Colonial Bengal
sumanta banerjee 841
23. Banking and the Credit System in Bengal in the
Nineteenth Century
abhik r. ray 870
Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History,
1967–2017
amiya kumar baul 895

Editor and Contributors 929

Index 935
 List of Illustrations

plates
18.1 The Royal Bengal Tiger 668
B.1 Transliteration Method, Journal of the Asiatic Society 896
B.2 Transliteration Method, Journal of the Asiatic Society 897

maps
18.1 Historical map showing colonial Sundarbans 686
18.2 The Sundarbans today (the bold dotted line dividing
the land area is the international border between
West Bengal [Indian] and Bangladesh Sundarbans) 687

figures
16.1 Inter-district variation of selected population
statistics in western Bengal 586
16.2 District-wise sex ratio (female population per
1000 male population)—1881, 1921, and 1951,
Western Bengal 587
16.3 Inter-district variation of percentage of rural and
urban population 588
16.4 District-wise variation of population density,
1881–1951 urban population 590
16.5 District-wise population density, 1881–1951,
except Calcutta 591
16.6 Age-sex pyramids of western Bengal, 1901–51 594
16.7 Dependency ratio of western Bengal, 1901–51 595
16.8 Inter-district variation of age-sex composition,
1901–51 596
16.9 Inter-district variation of CWR 599
x A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

16.10 Literacy rate by gender in western Bengal, 1901–51 600

16.11 District-wise percentage of female and male literacy
rates, 1901–51, West Bengal 603
16.12 Proportion of major religious groups, literacy rates
and occupation in agricultural activities in western
Bengal, 1901–51 604
16.13 Decadal CDR and IMR between 1901 and 1951 609
16.14 High density urban hubs of western Bengal
(in square kilometres), 1872–1951 614
16.15 Net migration (in-migration – out-migration) rate
in western Bengal, 1891–1951 615
 Foreword

A
s i sit down to write the ‘Foreword’ to this 3-volume
A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal, 1700–1950,
I cannot but refer to the last line written by the late
Professor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya in the ‘Introduction’ to this
monumental work. Aware that this would be his final contribution to
a glorious career, he brought to it his immense and wide scholarship,
his meticulous research and his brilliant mind to leave us a volume
that would be remembered as a milestone for many years to come.
In the history of the Asiatic Society’s recent publications, the three
volumes of A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal, 1700–1950
will be considered a landmark for a number of reasons. First, one
of the seniormost historians of our time, Professor Bhattacharya,
not only conceived of and pressed for the adoption of this proposal,
but also volunteered to be the Honorary Editor of this prestigious
project. In December 2016, when the green signal was given to it, a
three-year time limit was imposed for its completion by the Council
of the Asiatic Society. Second, a Working Committee constituted
by the Council duly monitored the progress of the work under the
academic stewardship of Professor Bhattacharya. The prerequisite
set by the Committee was that all the identified authors for these
three volumes be given a fixed date for the submission of their
respective chapters. They were also provided with a common style
sheet and editorial instructions and were required to present their
drafts at two successive authors’ workshops conducted at the Society’s
premises in Kolkata between 7 and 9 February 2018 and 3 and
5 August 2018. Third, Professor Bhattacharya, in spite of his failing
health, personally attended these two workshops and stayed longer
than was physically admissible or comfortable for him. Thereby, he
had the chance of meeting all the contributors and exchanging ideas
xii A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

and interacting with them, barring some who could not attend but
exchanged mails with him. Fourth, he meticulously went through all
the chapters, did the necessary editing and wrote a lucid but succinct
‘Introduction’ common to the three volumes. Because of his standing
in his field, he could gather a galaxy of scholars from various parts of
the globe who were determined to fulfil the mission of their beloved
Sabyasachida or Bappada (as he was referred to fondly) with whom
they had worked and whom they loved and revered. In watching him
supervise and prepare these volumes, we have had the rare pleasure
of witnessing a dedicated academician fighting a soldier’s battle unto
the last to complete his cherished last major work.
I sincerely feel that after a long time The Asiatic Society has
achieved, through these volumes, a demonstrable success in com­
pleting a time-bound important project which will register its
presence among scholars across all divides throughout the country
and beyond.
Kolkata S.B. Chakrabarti
15 January 2020 General Secretary
The Asiatic Society

 Introduction

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya

T
he earliest expositions of the history of Bengal in
modern times can be attributed to the confluence of four
historiographic traditions and cultures: the translation into
Bengali of J.C. Marshman’s History of Bengal in 1848 by Ishwar
Chandra Vidyasagar, a companion volume published by Ramgati
Nayaratna in 1859, and a relatively independent work, written by
Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay between 1865 and 1869.1 Another parallel
tradition of historiography is represented by works of historians like
Gulam Hussain’s Chronicles of Bengal, a derivative of the tradition
of Mughal or Indo-Persian historiography. And then there was the
stream that sprang from Europe’s discovery of Asia’s ancient past,
particularly the development of a whole new discipline of Indology.
Finally, there is the search for the past through the efforts of people
like Akshay Kumar Maitreya and Rabindranath Tagore.2
Given such diverse constitutive elements in the historicizing of
Bengal’s past, it is not surprising that the literature we encounter is
a complex discourse that has never been free of controversies. An
attempt to write history beyond controversy is universally admitted
to be an impossible task today, and our attempt will be no exception.
However, it was also widely felt that, given the advances in research
after 1967 as well as the newly developed approaches to history, a fresh
endeavour was needed to survey the present state of knowledge of the
history of modern Bengal in the period 1700–1950. Our attempt has
been, in so far as an enquiry comprehending hitherto known outlines
of contemporary and generally accepted modern knowledge by the

*We are indebted to Dr Promodini Varma for editing and finalizing the
‘Introduction’ to this three-volume series.
xiv A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

scholarly world may allow us, to form some idea of the location of a
consensus among scholars who otherwise hold differing views. The
principle we have relied upon is to identify recognized authorities
in their fields of specialization, who may belong to different schools,
ideologies, methodological categories, etc., and to allow them the
freedom to formulate their view of the consensus among scholars.
Hence, the apparently unexciting and unambitious request that was
sent out to scholars contributing to the projected volumes was that the
objective is to provide an evaluation of the present state of knowledge.

Regionalization
Some conceptual questions relating to regionalization need to be
addressed before we move forward. Questions like ‘What was the
concept of Bengal in the imagination of the traditional Bengali mind
in the eighteenth century?’, and ‘What sort of unity was attributed
to Bengal, other than the obvious one of language?’ inevitably come
to mind. Mukundaram Chakrabarti in early seventeenth century
prefaced his poetic narrative Chandi Mangal with the praise of
various gods and goddesses. As a routine, like other poetic texts of
the times, Chakrabarti begins with a dik-bandana (literally, worship
of the quarters of the compass),3 invoking the presiding deity at
each major pilgrimage centres as well as the smaller temple sites in
different directions. A larger number of sites are chosen from the
south of Bengal because when Chakrabarti was writing the Chandi
Mangal, he was situated in what is now the district of Midnapore,
having migrated from his native village in Burdwan. He begins with
major centres beyond Bengal: Neelachal in Orissa (present Odisha),
Vrindaban, Ayodhya (Ayodhyae bandibo thakur Sri Ram), Gaya,
Prayag, Dwaraka, Hastinapur, and Varanasi. Then the poet mentions
serially the temples and deities within his knowledge in Bengal,
ranging from major centres like Kalighat to lesser temples and sites
of pilgrimage like those in Bikrampur, Kharagpur, Teotia, Damanya,
Chandrakona, Tamralipta, etc. 4 Similarly, Ray Mangal, written in ad
1723 by the poet Hari Deb Sharma of the present district of Howrah,
has a dik-bandana listing places of pilgrimage, but his range is more
limited, not going beyond Puri and Vrindaban. What is interesting
here is the inclusion of pirs (holy men) revered by Muslims. Thus,
 Bhattacharya: Introduction xv

along with Mahamaya or Jagannath, you have Dafar Khan Gazi of

Tribeni or Sarenga Saheb also listed.5 Clearly, there is little sense of
demarcation here by region or religion.
The regionalization followed by the earlier scholars of Bengal
history, dividing Bengal into rarha and banga, appears to have no
relevance in our contemporary discourse just as little attention is paid
to pre-1971 subregional identities, except in moments of nostalgia
vis-à-vis the country that was left behind by migrants after 1947. And
though plenty of evidence is available of the fact that the cultivation
of local and regional history was important for the sustenance of
local patriotism, which is reflected in local history writing in the
Bengali-speaking regions in the early twentieth century, that still does
not help us answer the question: how do we define regional history?
I will begin with the proposition that though historians talk about
regions all the time, they usually do not give any thought to region
as a concept. I have in mind academic historians in the sphere of
professional historiography, as distinct from writers who use history
to build regional sentiments for political purposes.
Professional social scientists have often used regional categories
without paying much attention to how they are defined. Let us look
beyond Bengal. Some of the regions pertain to a particular historical
period: the Bombay Presidency was a colonial invention, without
a past and was wiped out as a category after Independence. Some
notions of regionalization have deep historical roots: the Oudh of the
British period, preceded by Awadh of the medieval times, in turn,
preceded by the semi-mythical, sacred Ayodhya though the spatial
boundaries of each shifted considerably. Sometimes historians also
use a regional category by projecting backwards, recently created
political or administrative units: there are now histories of Himachal
Pradesh and Jharkhand. Needless to say, the basis of regionalization
is also diverse: regions may be defined culturally (e.g. Maha-Koshala
or Jharkhand), or linguistically (e.g. the Bhojpuri region), or in
terms of administrative units (e.g. Northern Circars of the Madras
Presidency or any district of British India), or according to ecological
classification (e.g. the Gangetic delta), or again as ethnic identities
(e.g. the Telugu identity).
One begins to wonder, then, if any kind of systematic thinking has
been devoted to regionalization, given this diversity and confusion.
xvi A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

This is an important issue, because very often, a mentality called

‘regionalism’ exerts an influence over the public mind and claims
authority from real or supposed historical evidence. Therefore, a
great responsibility devolves upon the historian to examine the basis
on which we, as historians, so to speak, construct the ‘region’. Hence
the need to go about this business with more deliberation than we
are wont to employ on account of our tendency to take the regions
as ‘given’.
It is fairly obvious from the examples I have given earlier that what
historians denote as regions are not immutable, that they originate
in particular periods of history and may cease to be meaningful
in another period. Thus, Oudh was a meaningful category up to
its incorporation into British India: it ceased to be so afterwards.
Likewise, ‘Bombay Presidency’ might have meant something in
nineteenth-century gazettes and histories, but it is scarcely a viable
category before or after. And again, the limits of the region called
Bengal depends on which century we are talking about (and, if I
may suggest in jest, whether you are a Bengali or not). Regions are
therefore (except, of course, those defined technically in terms of
physical or ecological features) products of history. They are not
ephemeral, but nor are they unchanging and everlasting. Sometimes
a kind of regional chauvinism may lead the layman to assume that
they are everlasting, but historians know how history in the long run
makes and unmakes regions. Much as Fernand Braudel suggested
while defining a Mediterranean of historical dimension, regions can
arise and disintegrate, expand and contract, and the idea of Bengal
is a good example.
We must also understand that there is a great diversity in the
criteria of regionalization. Sometimes the criterion is linguistic,
sometimes political-administrative, sometimes communal, and
so on. Joseph Schwartzberg, long before he attained fame for
his historical atlas of India, wrote a perceptive paper in 1967 on
this question, in a collection of essays edited by R.G. Fox.61 As
a social geographer, Schwartzberg distinguished three types of
regionalizations: (a) ‘denoted’, (b) ‘instituted’, and (c) ‘naively given’.
By ‘denoted’, Schwartzberg meant regions which are distinguished
and delimited with a particular purpose by a linguist, or a historian,
or an anthropologist, but are unrelated to existing units created for
 Bhattacharya: Introduction xvii

administrative purposes. The ‘instituted’ region, on the other hand,

arises out of administrative functions, in order to facilitate the
performance of, and to define the spatial limits of, such functions.
Finally, the ‘naively given’ region is ‘recognized as a meaningful
territorial unity by the people who live there or by other people to
whom it is of some concern’, as for example, Saurashtra or Jharkhand
or Telangana.
This scheme allows us to think systematically about the criteria
for regionalization. It is, of course, quite possible that a region
may satisfy more than one criterion for the purpose of regional
delineation. For example, a ‘naively given’ region that is perceived as
a unit by itself and others, may also be an administrative unit and/
or be denoted as a unit in linguistic or ethnic or communal terms.
Ever since the linguistic reorganization of India was accepted by the
Congress in the pre-Independence period, it has promoted a trend
towards the congruence of ‘instituted’ with ‘naively given’ regional
boundaries. Even so, the epistemological status of the ‘naively
given’, ‘instituted’, and ‘denoted’ regions should be recognized to be
different.
Which of these types of regionalization schemes the historian
accepts will, obviously, depend upon his approach. For example,
the ‘instituted’ region, such as the 24 Parganas (in Bengal), will be
appropriate if one is working in the political-administrative field,
while one’s business will be with the so-called ‘naively given’ region
if one is into social and cultural history. It is, however, the ‘denoted’
region which is our major concern. The historian may begin with
given regions according to folk perception or administrative fiat,
but he may arrive at a pattern of regionalization on the basis of his
empirical findings and theoretical understanding.
Having underlined the caution required in regionalizing in
history, we have to admit that regional-level studies promise to
enrich our historiography in ways not achievable in the macro-
level approach. In economic history, this is the only way one
can test generalizations of a high order—for example, regional
deindustrialization, differentiation within the peasantry, peasant
rationality in crop choice, and so forth. Here, the regional approach
is the appropriate approach because much basic data are not available
at the all-India level. Anyone who has handled nineteenth century
xviii A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

statistical sources will have realized how difficult it is to construct

a continuous time series on an all-India scale, though an exercise
like this is feasible for some regions. Moreover, regional history
allows us to explore details of the interplay between economic,
social, and cultural factors in the explication of questions such
as: how the dominance of the rich peasant is related to caste
dominance; what accounts for the failure of technological innovations
to catch on; how power in rural society is an instrument to keep
the poor in their place; the forms of resistance of the exploited—
ranging from crime to political movements, etc. These are details
of the micro-level that the big maps at the national scale cannot
accommodate. Finally, the need to study ‘history from below’,
the history of the history-less common man, demands that we
address ourselves to regional, or what may even be called, micro-
level history.

Regional and National

As we have noted earlier, consciousness of regional identity and a
kind of local patriotism played an important role in the development
of regional history. We now turn to the question as to how that
consciousness relates with national consciousness and how regional
history relates with the history of the larger entity of which it is
a part. The point that needs to be made is that the term ‘regional
history’ posits or assumes a larger entity, called ‘national history’.
This, logically speaking, means that there was no such thing as
national history before; there was only regional history. Almost
all history was, in spatial coverage, regional. Such histories were
limited spatially, but epistemologically they were not limited, because
regional history occupied the whole notional space, ‘history’. We
need not pursue here this train of logic. All that needs to be stated
is that at one time, almost all history was about regions, without
being conceived of as ‘regional history’. It was the notion of a ‘nation’
with territoriality which created, in some societies, the notion of a
‘region’ as a part of that larger territory. This leads us to the nationalist
discourse of Indian civilization. It was this discursive tradition which
moulded a new concept of the relationship between regional and
national histories, between Bengali and Indian histories. As regards
 Bhattacharya: Introduction xix

consciousness of regional identity, there is no need to elaborate the

point about the multiplicity of identities, a point which Amartya Sen
has made already.2 Regional identity is only one of the many identities
struggling for priority and recognition.
The nationalist ideologues of the twentieth century developed
a discourse of civilization which made the conceptual leap from
regional histories to a national history thinkable. Thanks to govern-
ment propaganda and the political exploitation of the idea of ‘Indian
national unity’, we today tend to take it for granted. However, the
idea that the civilization of India unites diversities, including various
regional differences, began to play an important role from about the
beginning of the last century. We shall, for the present, limit ourselves
to some landmarks in the development of this discourse of civilization
developed by the makers of the nationalist ideology, to remind our
readers of the relationship between conceptions of the regional and
the national.
When I try to trace the origins of the idea of the dichotomy
between region and nation, of ‘the unity in diversity’ of the Indian
civilization, one of the earliest expositions of it, I find, is in Bengal—
particularly in the writings of Rabindranath Tagore at the turn of
the century. In 1902, Tagore wrote a remarkable essay which he
republished in expanded versions in 1905 and 1908, i.e. during the
Swadeshi or anti-partition agitation in Bengal. It is, perhaps, not
fortuitous that Tagore’s formulation of the unity of Indian civilization
developed in the turbulent Swadeshi movement.8 In 1902, Tagore
wrote:

We can see that the aim of Bharatbarsha has always been to establish unity
amidst differences (or diversities), to bring to a convergence different paths,
and to internalize within her soul the unity of the individual parts, that
is to say, to comprehend the inner union between externally perceptible
differences without eliminating the uniqueness of each element….
Bharatbarsha has endeavoured to tie up and accommodate in its appropriate
place such differences. You cannot legislate unity into existence. Elements
which cannot assimilate need to be recognized and put in their appropriate
separate places.  .  .  . Bharatbarsha knew the secret of this mode of unification.  .  .  .
Bharatbarsha limited the conflict between opposing and competing elements
in society by keeping them separate and at the same time engaged in a
common task that brought diverse elements together…9
xx A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

In 1909, Gandhi, not yet known as the Mahatma, focused upon

the unity of Indian civilization in his first political tract, Hind Swaraj.10
At the very beginning of this work, he asks, ‘What is civilization?’,
and then continues to talk about civilization, without saying much
about the idea that British rule had unified India. A notable feature
of the Hind Swaraj is that Gandhi speaks throughout this book of the
Indian civilization, not of the Hindu civilization. Although many of the
concepts and values he expounds form a part of Hindu civilization,
the concept of ‘Indian civilization’ is never substituted with ‘Hindu
culture or civilization’ because for Gandhi, India had ‘the faculty of
assimilation’.
Among professional historians, perhaps the earliest to postulate
a supra-regional unity in civilizational terms was Radha Kumud
Mookerji, in a work founded on ancient Indian texts, The Fundamental
Unity of India in 1914, published earlier as an essay in 1909.11 However,
the most popular exposition of the nationalist stance on the issue of
India’s unity as a civilization was the one authored by Jawaharlal
Nehru in the Ahmednagar Fort Jail in 1944, later published as The
Discovery of India. Though the idea of the civilizational unity of India
is a major theme in this work, what Tagore in 1902 or Gandhi in 1909
wrote about with confidence as an enduring fact of Indian history,
Nehru writes of as a dream, something to be aspired for. That is the
shift that has occurred between the perspective of the first decade
of the twentieth century and that of the 1940s when Nehru wrote of
India’s civilizational unity.
The notion of the syncretic and unifying nature of Indian civiliz-
ation also played a formative role in determining the relationship
between what came to be seen as Bengal’s regional history and the
history of India as a whole. The dialogue and debates between these
two perspectives, regional and national, continued through the
twentieth century and continue to this day. In a crucial moment
in the growth of Indian historiography and the advance of India
towards nationhood, this civilizational discourse made the idea of
national history thinkable, and thus, regional history was placed in
the context of its relationship with national history. We are witnessing
in our times the development of regionalism as a political force in
a direction that might threaten the integrity and unity of the larger
entity of which each region is a part. We hope that historians today
 Bhattacharya: Introduction xxi

will address themselves to the task of examining that relationship

between the part and the whole, the regional and the national, in
the light of the developments outlined earlier.

Consciousness of Bengali Identity

and History
Arguably, the project for the construction of a history of Bengal in
modern times originated with the emergence of a new consciousness
of Bengali identity, which was sometimes identified as new Bengali
patriotism, in the early decades of the twentieth century. Some
of the major exponents of this new Bengali patriotism were the
politician Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925), the litterateur Pramathanath
Chaudhuri (1868–1946), the linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji (1890–
1977), and the scientist Sir Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861–1944).
Pramathanath Chaudhuri, the founder of new Bengal journalism
propagating the idea of ‘Bengali patriotism’, declared: ‘If you charge
me with Bengali patriotism I will not deny the charge’. In his journal
Sabuj Patra, he stated:

National consciousness was something that everyone talked about in the

Swadeshi era [i.e. 1906–7]. In those days our people understood this only
in its political sense. In those days, what we meant by consciousness of
ourselves was an awareness of our deplorable lack of independence. Needless
to say, in that narrow sense the identity consciousness as an Indian and as
a Bengali is one and the same thing.12

Chaudhuri believed that there was a kind of unity in the solidarity

of prisoners, but that unity was different from the unity of free men
or the unity aspired for in the freedom struggle. This approach to the
concept of unity of Bengal, within a larger notion of Indian unity,
gave rise to new thinking about the history of Bengal.
In his brief political career, Chittaranjan Das upheld an ideal of
a federalist reconstitution of India, in which Bengal would be one of
several constituent elements but would retain her cultural identity.
Das’s role as the co-founder of the Swaraj Party along with Motilal
Nehru is well known, but much less is known of his contribution to a
kind of provincial solidarity which he sometimes described as Bengali
patriotism. In the last ten years of his life, Das led the provincial
xxii A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

political conference to form a strong Bengal-centred lobby and to

develop an image of Bengal as a distinctive historical entity.
Though it might have been admired as a piece of scholarship—did
not Amit Ray in Tagore’s Shesher Kavita hold it in his hands?—the
importance of Suniti Kumar Chatterji’s work on the Bengali language,
is apparent only in retrospect. The more widely read authors were
those who laid the basis for the construction of a collective identity
by configuring a history of the Bengali people. Ramaprasad Chanda’s
(1873–1942) work on Bengal’s ruling dynasties in the pre-Muslim
period, Gauda-raj-mala (1912), Akshay Kumar Maitreya’s (1861–
1930) epigraphic research in Gauda-lekha-mala (1912), Rakhaldas
Bannerji’s (1885–1930) history of Bengal (volumes I and II in 1915
and 1917, respectively), and the Marathi author who wrote in the
Bengali language, Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar (1869–1912), laid the
basis on which historiography developed in the Bengali language
from the 1920s. Among others, Haraprasad Sastri (1853–1931),
who discovered in Nepal the earliest Bengali manuscripts called
the Charyapadas (1912); Dinesh Chandra Sen (1866–1939),
Jogesh Chandra Ray (1859–1956), S. Wajed Ali (1890–1951),
and Muhammad Shahidullah (1885–1969), played important roles
in locating the language and history of Bengal in the historical
tradition to give a certain ‘body’ to the consciousness of regional
identity.
Also notable are institutional efforts in this direction. Akshay
Kumar Maitreya, along with Ramaprasad Chanda—who taught
ancient Indian history and anthropology at Calcutta University from
1919, as well as R.G. Basak, Ghulam Yazdani, and many younger
scholars who founded the Varendra Research Society in 1910 come
immediately to mind. The Bangiya Sahitya Parishad played a part
in collecting and publishing old manuscripts and folk ballads. The
annual Bangiya Sahitya Sammelan in the 1920s had a separate
section on history, a forum for the presentation of essays by Bengal
historians. Dinesh Chandra Sen, who also taught at the University
of Calcutta, published, between 1923 and 1932, a collection of old
Bengal ballads in eight volumes. The ‘recognition’ of Bengali by the
University of Calcutta, during the Vice-Chancellorship (1906–14) of
Sir Asutosh Mookerjee (1864–1924), was itself a landmark. In 1921,
Mookerjee took the initiative to change the rules of ‘matriculation’
 Bhattacharya: Introduction xxiii

(i.e. the final school examination and commencement of under-

graduate education) to allow students the option of choosing the
mother tongue in place of English as the medium of instruction
and examination; in 1932, this effort finally succeeded. 13 In the
meanwhile, the ‘Department of Indian Vernaculars’, created in 1925,
provided space for the teaching of Bengali in postgraduate studies.
The foundation of the University of Dhaka in 1921 provided a second
nucleus of advanced studies and the lead in Bengal studies was taken
by Muhammad Shahidullah. These were some of the institutional
developments which fed the stream of historical and cultural studies
of Bengal around the twenties.
In the late nineteenth century, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee had
rued the fact that the Bengali people were unaware of their past, that
they lacked a sense of the historical and had neglected to write their
own history. Maitreya, in his ‘Preface’ to Ramaprasad Chanda’s work
on the dynastic history of Bengal, quoted Bankim to state that the
attempt of the English to write the history of Bengal only highlighted
but did not exhaust the possibilities of further research, which was
now the responsibility of the Bengalis: ‘Those who have from misty
antiquity, generation after generation, made this their homeland,
those who have arrived at their present state through many twists
and turns of history, those are the people who can relate to the
history of this country most intimately.’14 At the same time, Maitreya
was careful to avoid the sort of parochialism that characterized the
writings of some of his contemporaries. He profusely acknowledged
the path-breaking work of A. Cunningham, W.W. Hunter, Heinrich
Blochmann et al., and spoke of the need to locate Bengal’s history
in a larger perspective.
That Bengal has been the meeting place of many cultures and traditions,
the focus of synthesis of many apparently contrary outlooks, a region
which has seen fascinating endeavours towards assertion of its identity—is
known to us in many ways…. The history of the Bengali people cannot
be comprehended if one limits oneself to the chronicle of what happened
within the boundaries of Bengal in an isolated manner. What has been the
history of Bengal is also an aspect of the history of mankind.15

These are noble sentiments, for departure from such norms was
not unknown, particularly in respect of ‘Muslim rule’ in Bengal.
xxiv A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

However, Maitreya’s injunction echoes a trend of thinking to which

we now turn.
While we have so far argued that a kind of ‘Bengali patriotism’
was ascendant in the second and third decades of the last century,
two qualifications need to be made. The first is about the iconization
of Mother Bengal, which had, in fact, taken place much earlier—
Bankim Chandra’s Vande Mataram was addressed to her and to
no other entity—and the Swadeshi era witnessed her worship on a
scale unknown in India till then. Moreover, in the popular theatre,
dramatists hailed her and poets and kabiwallahs (folk balladiers) sang
her praise. What was new in the second and third decades of the
last century was a political case being made for Bengali patriotism,
along with an intellectual effort to give a ‘body’ to it with cultural,
historical, and linguistic arguments to establish the Bengali identity.16
A different kind of contribution towards the same end came from
the scientist and social thinker Sir Prafulla Chandra Ray, who
believed that the Bengali ethnic identity was endangered and that
the Bengalis were falling back as compared to other ethnic groups in
Calcutta who, he felt, were leading the field in industrial production
and commercial businesses. This message is conveyed in the many
pamphlets and tracts he wrote in the 1910s and 1920s: ‘The Bengali
Intellect and its Abuse’ (1910, reprinted in 1920 and 1927), ‘The
Future Livelihood of the Bengalee Youth,’ ‘The Economic Problem:
What is the Position of the Bengalee People?’(1910), ‘The Internal and
External Obstacles to Nation-building’ (1921), and ‘The Problem of
Livelihood’ (1928).17 The idea of a Bengali identity, Chaudhuri’s new
Bengali patriotism, and Sir P.C. Ray’s warning that the Bengali identity
itself was endangered, were thought-trends which complemented
an intellectual environment that began to bring into existence the
efflorescence of Bengali culture.
Apart from some obvious elements in the nationalist ideology
promoting anti-imperialist thought-trends, a feature of the Bengali
mind was the effort to incorporate in Bengali culture a ‘scientific’
approach, which gave rise to an outlook that emphasized Bengal’s
distinctiveness. Most notably, the National Council of Education in
Bengal in their founding document, the Memorandum of Association,
declared (1905) that the promotion of scientific thinking was a major
aim of nationalist education in Bengal. The history of the Dawn
 Bhattacharya: Introduction xxv

Society, their journal and associated institution, and movements like

the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, founded by Dr
Mahendralal Sarkar, amply justify such an interpretation.
We mentioned, at the beginning of this ‘Introduction’, the
early efforts of Vidyasagar and his contemporaries to present a
comprehensive history of modern Bengal, particularly in their
writings in the Bengali language. Among the students of Hindu
College from 1817 and particularly from 1826, when Henry Louis
Vivian Derozio began to teach, there developed a new intellectual
movement in Calcutta, known as the ‘Young Bengal’ group. This
group of the young middle-class alumni of the college formed the
Society for the Acquisition of General Knowledge (SAGK), wrote
extensively on history and took up the task of responding to foreign
critics of Indian history and civilization. Consider, for instance, the
presentation made by Baboo Peary Chand Mitra at the meeting of
this association on 8 September 1841 on ‘the State of Hindoostan
under the Hindoos’.18 Mitra particularly contested the view that the
monarch in India possessed all the land, an error replicated from
Francois Bernier through James Mill to Karl Marx. Mitra’s argument
was founded upon the authority of H.H. Wilson (in his recent critical
edition of Mill’s History of India) and Mountstuart Elphinstone, as
well as original documents of the East India Company. Or consider
Gobinda Chandra Sen, 19 writing in 1840 about the ‘History of
India’, where he states: ‘In this country … we do not have any books
narrating the events of history. But now people desire to know the
history of our own native land and that is why we urgently need
today books on history.’20
Many other members of the SAGK contributed in the same vein,
and there developed a demand for such introductory historical works
in the Bengali language. Hence, the comprehensive plan to make
the substance of Ropes Letherbridge’s An Easy Introduction to the
History and Geography of Bengal (published in 1874–5) accessible to
Bengali readers. Meanwhile, more significant advances in historical
knowledge were being made. Maitreya published a volume titled Siraj-
ud-daula (1897), and brought out a historical journal called Aitihasik
Chitra (1899). The Riaz-us-Salatin was translated by Rampran Gupta
(1905). The Barendra Anusandhan Samity, founded to cultivate
regional history (1910), published Chanda’s Gauda-raj-mala and
xxvi A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Maitreya’s Gauda-lekha-mala (1911–12). In the early decades of the

twentieth century, regional history flourished, prompting Prabodh
Chandra Sen to remark that, ‘in the field of history writing in Bengal
there appeared suddenly a galaxy of authors: Rajanikanta (Gupta),
Haraprasad (Shastri), Akshay Kumar (Maitreya), Ramaprasad
(Chanda), Rakhaldas (Bandyopadhyay).’21 Further, a new genre of
subregional history enlarged Bengal’s history to include detailed
studies of Murshidabad, Jessore, Khulna, Dhaka, Varendrabhumi,
Gauda, Pabna, Vishnupur, Rajshahi, Tripura, etc.
Local history of this kind became a part of the literary activities
of the Bengali intelligentsia, and various literary societies nursed
local history by organizing in their annual conventions a section on
local history.

Archives and Regional History

The development of British Indian archival practices also deeply
affected the cultivation and writing of regional history. In British
India, modern archives were developed by the state. No doubt this
aided historical research, but it also led to a marginalization of local
history and to its subordination to the state-centred perspective of
the imperial state. In the archivization process, the history of the
imperial state naturally overshadowed history as it was perceived
in the regions and localities. Thus, the growth of the state archives
in British India meant the growth of a body of sources of historical
knowledge which focused on the imperial state to the detriment of
the autonomous histories of the localities and regions.
Sir William Hunter, a leading Civil Servant in Bengal and a
great enthusiast and protagonist for upholding regional history and
the importance of regional records, became sceptical of the utility
of records in his old age. In 1871, in response to the Government
of India’s question whether he, an authority on regional records,
recommended the expansion of the government’s archives, Hunter
replied that preservation of all records was unnecessary. He argued
that the state of intellectual advancement in India did not justify the
creation of a Central Record Office or government archives as the
‘object of a Central State Paper Office is to render important historical
documents available to the public’ but so far as his experience went,
 Bhattacharya: Introduction xxvii

there was no class of men of letters and leisure in Calcutta who

could put such a Central Office to good use. ‘Writers of considerable
ability are to be found both in the capital and throughout the rural
districts; but they constitute a very small body, and their talents are
devoted to the Press or other forms of current literature, rather than
to those graver researches which a State Paper Office in a European
capital subserves.’22
Hunter’s opinion was, however, set aside twenty years later when
the Government of India decided to set up the Imperial Records
Department in 1891.23 A top item in the archiving agenda was,
obviously, the centralization of all Government of India records
at one site in the new capital, New Delhi. The construction of the
building for the Imperial Record Office was completed in 1926. It
was an ideal location, compared to the half-a-dozen rooms given to
the Imperial Records Department in the Writers’ Building, i.e. the
Imperial Secretariat in Calcutta, though it took an inordinate amount
of time to shift the records to the new building in New Delhi from
where they had been in Calcutta since the eighteenth century. Thus, it
was only in the last ten years of British rule in India that the Imperial
Records Department, with all the Indian records in its archives, was
able to function in a manner appropriate to its role. A byproduct of
this exercise should have been the creation of a Provincial Records
Office separately, for Bengal, to accommodate the Presidency
records after their separation from the Government of India records.
However, no effort was made towards creating a proper Provincial
Record Office of the type that Madras and Bombay possessed till the
late 1940s. This was acknowledged by the Governor of Bengal, Lord
Lytton, while welcoming the Indian Historical Records Commission
to its session in Calcutta in 1923.24

Structuration and Periodization of the

Present Volumes
After numerous discussions between the editor, the Working
Committee and most of the authors contributing to the book now
before the readers, the following plan emerged. In the first place, it was
decided to break away from the tradition set not only in the volumes
edited by R.C. Majumdar and J.N. Sarkar (1943–8), and N.K. Sinha
xxviii A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

(1961–7), but also the majority of books published on the history of

modern Bengal before or after Independence. Earlier it was taken for
granted that Bengal history could be divided into ancient, medieval,
and modern, corresponding to what are known in European history
as the ancient, medieval, and modern periods. This tripartite division
of history is derived from James Mill’s History of India, which left a
deep impression on Indian colonial historiography, and later colonial
historians who came after Mill followed his example. In keeping
with this trend, Sarkar and Majumdar took 1757 as a landmark
(‘end of Muslim rule’) and Sinha accepted 1757 as the initial year
for his volume on modern Bengal, while deciding on 1905 as the
end point. Today, we consider this as inappropriate because there is
an inherent communal approach in identifying a period as Hindu
or Muslim or British. Further, this mode of periodization is also
questionable, because it takes for granted an equivalence between the
British period and modernity. We have, therefore, decided to begin
our history of modern Bengal from the beginning of the eighteenth
century, because a number of important historical landmarks
occurred about that time—the transfer of the capital of Bengal from
Dhaka to Murshidabad by the Nawabi regime,25 the rise of Murshid
Quli Khan, the death of Emperor Aurangzeb, etc. In contrast to the
turmoil in most other parts of India, this period in Bengal was marked
by the neat succession of Nawabs (Murshid Quli Khan, Subedar,
1717–27; Sujauddin Muhammad Khan, 1727–39; Sarfaraz, 1739–40;
Aliwardi Khan, 1740–56; Siraj-ud-Daula, 1756–87). Further, we
consider the eighteenth century as an important historical category
or a distinct period in Indian history, though it is now the subject of
much controversy, initiated by the so-called revisionist historians of
the Cambridge school, such as Christopher Bayly and his followers.
As regards the decision to terminate Volume I (on the eighteenth
century) with the year 1793 (which is, of course, as arbitrary as any
other choice we might have made), our argument is that 1793 and the
Permanent Zamindari Settlement in Bengal marked the culmination
of a period of experimentation in revenue and in other aspects of
administration by the East India Company. The middle period, 1793
to 1905, has the much-acclaimed Bengal Renaissance at its core, and
revolves around Rammohun Roy, the Derozians, the Tagores, and
other iconic figures. We break off with the Partition of Bengal in 1905,
 Bhattacharya: Introduction xxix

and the main theme of Volume III is the anti-imperialist struggle,

the Swadeshi movement onwards. The foundation of the Indian
Republic and the adoption of the Constitution may be considered
an appropriate landmark to conclude our last volume. To sum up,
we have divided our historical framework to form three thematically
distinct periods, the themes being the decline and fall of the Nawabi
regime in Bengal and the remaking of Bengal’s polity in Volume I
(1700–93), the reawakening of Bengal in Volume II (1793–1905), and
the freedom struggle against British Raj (1905–50) in Volume III.
In Volume I, there are some chapters that aim to cross the
usually accepted pattern of periodization, a natural and unavoidable
move. Environmental history, which aims to lay down the basic
parameters, is one such turn (Ranjan Chakrabarti). Another is the
essay by Rila Mukherjee on trade beyond the borders of Bengal,
which attempts to determine how Bengal was situated in the inter-
oceanic trade network. Kaushik Roy attempts something similar in
trying to show how historians situate Bengal in the overall history
of European ascendancy in South Asia in the eighteenth century,
and the role of military power of the Indian and foreign players in
Bengal politics. At the level of specialized studies of some aspects
of Bengal in this volume, we have a set of essays on European
companies: on the French in Bengal (Aniruddha Ray), on the Dutch
in Bengal (Rila Mukherjee), and on internal trade and markets in
Bengal and the rise of the English East India Company (Sudipta
Sen). Another set of essays in this volume focuses upon trade,
urbanization and de-urbanization in eighteenth-century Bengal
(Aniruddha Ray and Soumitra Sreemani); the rise and growth of
Calcutta between 1750 and 1850 (Soumitra Sreemani); and the wide
ranging theme of the English East India Company’s external trade
(Sushil Chaudhury). Some chapters also deal with long-range issues,
beyond the eighteenth century, such as Arun Bandopadhyay’s essay
on demography, man, and nature in Bengal; environmental history
and a tale of rivers (Ranjan Chakrabarti); Islam in early eighteenth-
century Bengal (Richard M. Eaton); and the Muslim literati and their
social, political, and religious thoughts in eighteenth-century Bengal
(Syed Ejaz Hussain). Specialized chapters can be found on zamindars
of Bengal (John R. McLane); history and historiography of Bengal,
1700–1757 (Syed Ejaz Hussain); social banditry in Bengal, 1757–1857
xxx A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

(Ranjit Sen); and on the banking and credit system in eighteenth-

century Bengal (Abhik R. Ray). Finally, there is the analysis of arts,
architecture, and iconography in early modern Bengal (Ratnabali
Chatterjee and Asok Kumar Das).
In Volume II, two central themes emerge. The first is the story
of the Renaissance which begins with chapters on Rammohun Roy
and his times (Bruce Robertson), on the Derozians, the Tagores,
and Vidyasagar (Rosinka Chaudhuri, Brian Hatcher), together with
a chapter on religious thought and social reform in nineteenth-
century Bengal (Amiya Prosad Sen). The other important theme
is the colonialization of the economy, comprising a study of the
labour-intensive industries of Bengal (Amiya K. Bagchi). In keeping
with the practice in recent historical writings on modern Bengal,
this volume is rich in social and cultural history. For instance, it has
essays on the spread of urbanization and the growth of Calcutta as a
metropolis in the nineteenth century (Kaustubh Mani Sengupta); a
wide ranging survey of the growth and development of the middle-
class intelligentsia (Prasanta Ray); and the examination of popular
culture at the level of the subaltern classes (Sumanta Banerjee). The
relatively new area of enquiry in social history is gender history,
and we have a very wide-ranging essay on that theme in Volume II
(Tanika Sarkar) which will be followed by more detailed studies in the
next volume by other scholars. Earlier histories of Bengal, by Sarkar
and Majumdar and by Sinha, contained a very cursory treatment of
literature, but in the present volumes, we have extensive accounts of
Bengali journalism in the early nineteenth century (Swapan Basu);
nationalism and communism in Bengali literature (Anuradha Roy);
natyasahitya (Devajit Bandyopadhyay); and the so-called high
literature (Pabitra Sarkar), and still, we think that we could have
given more space to literature.
Occasionally breaking away from the periodization of the earlier
scheme, in Volume II, we have placed one chapter that may be said
to be a bridge chapter. That is on the impact of the uprising of 1857
in Bengal which, so to speak, takes us back to the armed resistance
against the English and other East India Companies, so that while the
story of the eighteenth-century armed resistance is told by Kaushik
Roy in Volume I, Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty tells here the story of
the resistance of 1857.
 Bhattacharya: Introduction xxxi

A separate series of chapters has been designed to address

the socio-economic basis of the agrarian economy that produced
the surplus expended upon military ventures and foreign trade
expansion. These chapters cover important themes such as the peasant
question in middle-class consciousness in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries (Bipasha Raha); Landed Proprietorship
and the evolution of Land Legislation in Colonial Bengal (Nariaki
Nakazato); agrarian relations and peasant economy in Bengal (Arun
Bandopadhyay); the politics and civil society of early-twentieth-
century Bengal (Rajat Kanta Ray); on the idea of justice and the
evolution of the Calcutta High Court, 1862–1950 (Mahua Sarkar);
on Hindu Law (Nandini Bhattacharyya-Panda); and on the police
and the surveillance system in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
(Rajsekhar Basu). A glance at these chapters will immediately
show the difference between the earlier approach emphasizing
administrative history and the set of questions addressed by a new
generation of younger scholars in recent times. This is equally true
of a whole genre of political history represented here by the chapter
on Bengal politics in relation to communalism (Suranjan Das).
A major narrative that develops in Volume II concerns castes.
We have a detailed survey (Ajit Kumar Danda) and a chapter on
demographic trends in Western Bengal, 1881–1951 (Saswata Ghosh and
Gorky Chakraborty). This theme is further developed in Volume III:
Caste and politics in Bengal in late nineteenth and early twentieth
century (Sekhar Bandyopadhyay); on the composite society of
rural Bengal consisting of Muslims (Ranjit Kumar Bhattacharyya),
and on Bengali Muslims through literature (Amit Dey). There is a
comprehensive survey of the marginal communities, often perceived
as tribal people in the chapter on the Adivasi quest for a new culture in
colonial Bengal, 1855–1932 (Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri). Themes like
these on social structure and movements did not meet with adequate
examination and narrativization in earlier histories. In the treatment
of these subjects in our volume, we get away from the administrative
history of the days of W.K. Firminger and Ramsbotham to a new
approach, close to the question of the location of political power,
the relationship between social structures and ability to exercise
political power together with notions concerning legal sovereignty
and political hegemony.
xxxii A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

A departure from the earlier pattern of comprehensive history

edited by Sarkar and Majumdar and by Sinha is that the present book
emphasizes ideology and ideational history. For instance, chapters
on science and technology (Deepak Kumar); medicinal knowledge
systems and public health in modern Bengal (Sujata Mukherjee);
entrepreneurship in twentieth-century Bengal (Amit Bhattacharyya);
the Asiatic Society’s project on the science of man (Bishnupriya
Basak); art movements, nationalism, and trends in the Bengal School
at Santiniketan (R. Siva Kumar); as well as ideology and identity issues
in the writings of the Muslim intelligentsia (Tazeen M. Murshid)—are
included in this series. Two chapters which analyse the socio-cultural
aspects of this period are a study of the Hindi-speaking people of
Kolkata (Hitendra K. Patel) and the sartorial preferences of the elite
(Chitta Panda).
The narrative of the freedom struggle and anticipations of
freedom constitute our main story in Volume III. The first issue
concerns nationalist and communalist politics from the Partition of
Bengal in 1905 to the second Partition of 1947. The authors include
a pioneer in the field, Sumit Sarkar (on Bengal Partition 1905), along
with Rajat Kanta Ray, as also Harun-Or-Rashid, Bidyut Chakrabarty,
Suranjan Das, Nirban Basu, and others. The second major theme in
Volume III is continuity and progress in the economic colonization of
Bengal, the collection of resources for deepening and broadening the
base of exploitation in a part of India where the colonial impact lasted
longest and affected the economy most deeply. The authors in this
section include Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri and Amit Bhattacharyya.
Another dimension is added through the chapters addressing
economic and social conflict in twentieth-century Bengal by Prasanta
Ray, Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, and Bipasha Raha. Finally, we have in
Volume III a fourth set of essays which take us into the interior of the
household, the domain of Hindu and Muslim bhadramahila and the
lives of labouring women explored by Sonia Nishat Amin, Aparajita
Sengupta, and Samita Sen.
The chapters in these three volumes fall into three broad cate-
gories in terms of their functionality. First, there are three sets of
chapters that provide what many participants/scholars described as
‘the main narrative voice’. Second, there are some special chapters of
focused research on certain topics where recent research has advanced
 Bhattacharya: Introduction xxxiii

knowledge, or topics which have acquired significance in association

with research on wider connected fields. A third type of chapter
comprises writings which may be classified as parametric statements
which do not serve any narrative purpose but provide coverage of
the entire field and thus constitute the background. For instance,
demography of the entire territory is surveyed providing data on
population, which had been conspicuously missing in the earlier
series edited by Sarkar and Sinha; a similar purpose was intended to
be served by chapters commissioned on the environmental history of
the Bengal delta region. The point to bear in mind is that we will miss
the plot altogether if we fail to identify the chief object of our study:
the conflict between the freedom struggle and the colonization of
Bengal. Since the present set of volumes will inevitably be compared
with the two volumes of the History of Bengal (Sarkar and Majumdar)
and the History of Modern Bengal (Sinha) we need to emphasize the
ways in which we differ from the earlier set of authors.
As regards the strategy adopted in this volume, as any practitioner
of the art of history writing would surmise, our strategy differs from
author to author, from theme to theme. When one is dealing with
basic and long-term trends such as demography, or the relationship
between man and nature, or the vast planetary perspective of inter-
oceanic trade, or with environmental development over centuries, our
authors have been compelled to adopt a strategy different from that of
other authors who deal with issues on encounters in bread and butter
histories of politics and administration. Our historians of literary
creativity, economic transactions, and sociological formations display
a perspective that is attuned to their theme, and indeed some of them
do not belong to the conventionally defined discipline of history at all.
It is possible that the failure of our historians to respond to the need
for specialization discipline-wise, in other words, our failure to be
sufficiently multidisciplinary, has made it difficult for us to repeat the
‘comprehensive’ exercises undertaken earlier by Majumdar and Sarkar
and by Sinha. Our use of the term ‘comprehensive’ is intended to
capture the multidisciplinary dimensions of many scholars’ historical
research represented in the present volumes.
At this point, it is also important to note a basic difference
which Tagore observed between European style historical narratives
and India’s historical memory. Tagore argued that the European
xxxiv A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

civilization was unlike that of India in so far as it elevated state power

to a high level so that the driving force of civilization resides in state
power (raj-shakti) while in India it rests in the social order (samaja).
Decades earlier, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee had complained that
the British write a history even if it is to record their safari to shoot
birds, but where are Indian historians, he queried. 26 Expressing
similar sentiments, Tagore states that no doubt, India did not have
the tradition of writing history as did, for example, Greece and
Rome. But at the same time, he pointed out, there was a historical
consciousness among the Rajputs, the Sikhs, and the Marathas from
the time of Shivaji (Tagore mentions the bakhars). These exceptions
show that whenever there developed a political community with a
sense of purpose, a historical consciousness also developed to bring
together different isolates. Tagore explicitly makes a distinction here
between religious and political communities, and his examples make
it clear that he means the political community as the site of such
a process of development of historical consciousness. This is not
too distant from the well-known Hegelian viewpoint that the state
alone has history. Be that as it may, Tagore’s argument was that he
saw a new national awakening in India in recent years, which inspired
a new interest in the history of India. There had developed a ‘hunger
for history’, which suggested that ‘the Congress has not merely
been memorializing the rulers year after year without any result—
Congress has also … planted the seed of a new consciousness in our
minds.’ 27

Concluding Reflections on the Bengal

History Project
Looking back at the gestation of this project, I recall that in September
2005 the Council of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata, considered my
proposal for a new comprehensive history of Bengal, which I put
forward in my capacity as Council Member nominated by the
Government of India. Despite the consensus in the Council in
favour of this project, the execution of its resolution was postponed
since I was immediately thereafter appointed as Chairman, Indian
Council of Historical Research (2007–11) by the Government of
India. Subsequently, the Council resolved, again at my request, to
 Bhattacharya: Introduction xxxv

revive the project, and on 25 November 2016, a Committee was set

up, with me as editor and an Advisory Committee (whose names
are listed in the Acknowledgements). As editor, I refused to accept
any remuneration and a token honorarium has been paid to about
sixty distinguished contributors. Thus, this project is, so far as the
contributors and editor are concerned, a labour of love. My own
humble contribution to the history of Bengal has appeared in my
earlier publications and I have not felt compelled to intrude in this
volume as a contributor. My contribution to this volume has been
by way of emphasizing certain themes of research.
It is interesting to reflect upon some other changes which readers
will perceive in our present set of volumes, as compared to the earlier
comprehensive histories of Sarkar, Sinha, and Sirajul Islam. To begin
with, the impediments to rapid production due to slow movement of
manuscripts, proof sheets, copy-editors’ corrections, communication
between editors and authors, etc., which had earlier slowed down the
production process, have been replaced with modern technologies of
electronic communication such as electronic mails and other rapid
communication devices that have greatly reduced the time taken in
the journey of the book from the desk of the editor and author to
its final printed form.
The second significant change is in respect of the composition
of the intellectual community of professional historians and the
general body of readers. In the 1940s or the 1960s, and even upto
1980s, that community was more limited, and in a sense, indeed
provincial in composition. The authors who collaborated with Sarkar
and Majumdar, and Sinha were former students and colleagues of
the senior historians or some local scholars, who took up editorial
responsibility. With a global Indian diaspora the concerned
community of intellectuals has undergone a sea change in the
last two decades and now we find historians of Bengal operating
from distant countries. In this volume, we have authors working in
England, USA, Japan, Bangladesh, New Zealand, etc., and no list
of specialists on Bengal history would be complete without them.
This internationalization distinguishes the current situation and
the present set of volumes from the volumes produced before the
diaspora of Bengal and Bengal intelligentsia was exposed to the global
academic atmosphere in the second half of the twentieth century.
xxxvi A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Also, whereas not one author in the earlier series of volumes was a
woman, there is a substantial representation of that gender in the
present three volumes. Finally, the representation of the younger
generation of scholars was quite inadequate in the earlier volumes.
Another unique feature of the present three volumes is the inclusion
of a consolidated bibliography, and we thank Amiya Kumar Baul of
Jadavpur University for having undertaken that task.
As editors, Majumdar, Sarkar, and Sinha all complained of the
lack of support they received from prospective contributors and
this, they say, forced them to undertake a larger share of the task
of producing their volumes. For example, Sarkar writes that after
chapters had been allotted to different scholars ‘some of them after
wavering declined the task and others were found to be habitually
incapable of writing their promised chapters within the time limit,
or indeed ever at all. So at last the painful truth dawned upon the
mind of the editor that he must personally shoulder the burden of
writing the major portion, if this volume was to be completed within
his lifetime.’28 Sinha’s experience was not much better, because some
of his authors declined to contribute ‘three or four years after they
had agreed to write’ since they ‘perhaps thought of the project as
my personal venture’.29 My experience, on the contrary, has been just
the reverse, and I must record my deep gratitude to my professional
colleagues in many countries and across generations who contributed
to this volume at my request.
Finally, the thought that crosses our mind as we reflect on our
experience of writing a comprehensive history of modern Bengal is
that we the authors, editors, and readers may see in that experience
a reflection of our own evolving selves. Every generation of scholars
looks at the work of the previous generation with a critical eye, and
no doubt there will be worthwhile critiques of the present work
as well. The achievement of Sarkar, Majumdar, and Sinha in 1948
and in 1967 was tremendous, considering the constraints under
which they worked. At the same time historical scholarship has
evolved since then. The community of Bengal historians which was
somewhat parochial, has ceased to be so today; it is more open now
to the stimulus of the theoretical discourses of our times; members
of the community have an international profile now, having served
in many academic institutions abroad; compared to earlier times,
 Bhattacharya: Introduction xxxvii

many more of the younger generation are counted among the leaders
of the profession; the composition of the community has radically
changed with a greater degree of gender equality and consequently
less gender bias in their outlook. We have in India a tradition of
valuing the Guru-shishya parampara and we believe that the work
done by the earlier generation has enabled the present generation of
scholars to reach the level of scholarship evinced in the writings in
the present volumes. And we look forward to the work of the coming
generations of scholars who will join the intellectual community
devoted to the history of Bengal.
In conclusion, I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness
to all those who have helped me in putting together these three
volumes of A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal, 1700–1950.
First and foremost, I would like to thank the Asiatic Society and its
erudite Council Members for having nurtured this dream project
right from the moment of its inception to its culmination. Those
who have been pillars of support during this long journey merit my
deepest gratitude, namely the members of the Working Committee
(Dr Satyabrata Chakrabarti, General Secretary of The Asiatic Society;
Dr Ramkrishna Chatterjee, Coordinator of this project; and the other
members of the Committee: Professor Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty,
Professor Arun Bandopadhyay, and Dr Sujit Kumar Das, later joined
by Professor Alok Kanti Bhaumick, and Professor Swapan Kumar
Pramanick). Amiya Kumar Baul deserves special mention for his
timely aid in maintaining communication with the contributors,
collecting necessary data for me, providing assistance to several
authors, as well as for single-handedly compiling a comprehensive
bibliography on Bengal history, 1967–2017.
Here I must mention an indebtedness of a different order
altogether: being afflicted by a life-threatening illness in the last
few months, I would not have been able to finish my work without
the help of my wife Malabika, and the constant involvement of my
daughter Ashidhara, with whom I engaged in numerous discussions
concerning various relevant topics covered in these volumes.
I have meticulously gone through each and every chapter, and I
am confident that these three volumes of A Comprehensive History of
Modern Bengal, 1700–1950 will be of everlasting value. I would like
to reiterate my gratitude to all the authors who have enriched these
xxxviii A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

volumes with their scholarly work. Having confided in them about my

dreaded malady, I found that all of them made an exceptional effort
to submit their chapters within the prescribed time. Due credit must
be given to the enthusiastic response of the scholars who participated
in the two Authors’ Conferences organized under the auspices of the
Asiatic Society, one in February 2018, followed by another in August
of the same year.
I have had the satisfaction of seeing the whole set ready for print.
Faced with intimations of mortality, I leave these three volumes as a
legacy for future generations of students and scholars alike.

Notes
1. The texts of some of these works have recently been collected and reprinted
from the original editions by Kamal Choudhuri, Banglar Itihas: Prachin
Jug theke Ingrej Amol, Kolkata: Dey’s, 2006, pp. 55–349. I may add here
that in the present ‘Introduction’, in order to present to the general reader
a reader-friendly style, I have reduced the number of footnotes and other
paraphernalia historians generally depend upon.
2. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Talking Back: The Idea of Civilization in the Indian
Nationalist Discourse, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 97–9.
3. Kabikankan Mukundaram Chakrabarti probably wrote his Chandi Mangal
around ad 1603–4; Sukumar Sen attributed it to mid-sixteenth century;
according to the latest view, this wrong dating was due to a misplaced
pushpika (Colophon). See, Khudiram Das, Kabikankan Chandi, Kolkata:
Pustak Biponi, pp. xxii–iv; and ‘Dik Devata Bandana’, ibid., pp. 275–6.
4. It appears from Kabikankan Chandi that dik-bandana does not occur in
some manuscripts, although it is part of the major manuscripts collated;
it is also possible that another contemporary poet or copyist added ‘Dik-
Bandana’, but that leaves my argument unaffected.
5. Hari Deb Sharma, ‘Ray Mangal’ (MS in Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan), in
Sahitya Prabeshika, ed. Panchanan Mandal, Calcutta: Visva-Bharati, 1960,
pp. 7–8, and ‘Introduction’.
6. R.G. Fox, ed., Realm and Region in Traditional India, Durham: Duke
University Press, 1967, pp. 197–223.
7. Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian, London: Penguin, 2005; see also,
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ‘The Acquiescent Indian’ (review), Economic and
Political Weekly, vol. 40, no. 41, 8 October 2005, pp. 4425–8; and Sen’s reply,
vol. 41, no. 47, 25 November 2006, pp. 4877–86.
8. R. Tagore ‘Bharatbarsher Itihas’, Bangadarshan, 1902; reprinted in his
collection of essay entitled Bharatbarsha, Calcutta, 1905 and Swadesh,
Calcutta, 1908.
 Bhattacharya: Introduction xxxix
9. R. Tagore, ‘Bharatbarsher Itihas’, Bangadarshan, 1902; reprinted in Itihas,
Calcutta: Visva-Bharati, 1955, pp. 10–12.
10. M.K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, chap. X, p. 28.
11. Radha Kumud Mookerji, The Fundamental Unity of India, London:
Longmans Green and Co., 1914; he states in the prefatory statement to his
book that he published the essay first in the journal of the Dawn Society,
a nationalist organization which played a pioneering role in the National
Education movement, which played an important role in questioning the
colonial stereotypes about India; vide Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Joseph
Barar, Chinna Rao Yagati, eds., Educating the Nation, 1880–1920, New
Delhi: Kanishka, 2003.
12. Pramathanath Chaudhuri, ‘Bengal Patriotism’, Sabuj Patra, Agrahayan,
1327 bs; tr. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya.
13. Calcutta University, Hundred Years of the University of Calcutta, Calcutta,
Calcutta University Press, 1957, chaps.VI–VII. For a list of historical publi­
cations, see, Prabodh Chandra Sen, Bengal: A Historiographical Quest,
Calcutta, 1995 (Bengali edn., 1953). There is no standard work on Bengal
historiography.
14. Akshay K. Maitreya, ‘Preface’, Gauda-raj-mala, R.P. Chanda, Ist edn.,
Calcutta, 1912, repr., 1973, p. 19.
15. Ibid., p. 37.
16. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, The Defining Moments in Bengal, 1920–1947,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 12–15.
17. Ibid., p. 9.
18. Gautam Chattopadhyay, ed., Awakening in Bengal in Early Nineteenth
Century: Select Documents, Calcutta: Paschim Banga Itihas Samsad and
Progressive, 1965; 2nd revd edn., 2018, pp. 192–238, 291–310, 357–89,
393–407.
19. Ibid., pp. 254–77.
20. Ibid., p. 254.
21. Prabodh Chandra Sen, Banglar Itihas Sadhana, Calcutta: Paschimbangha
Bangla Akademi, 1970, p. 42.
22. Home Department, Public Branch, No. 649, W.W. Hunter to A.P. Howwell,
Government of India, 17 November 1871, cited in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya,
Archiving in British Raj, 1858–19747, New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2019, pp. 21–2.
23. I draw upon my recently published work, Archiving in British Raj, 1858–
1947, New Delhi: National Archives of India and Oxford University Press,
2019, chap. II.
24. Indian Historical Records Commission Proceedings, 1923, Governor of
Bengal, Lord Lytton’s address to IHRC.
25. In 1992, the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh published a set of volumes on
History of Bangladesh, 1704–1971, edited by Sirajul Islam, where it was
xl A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
stated that, ‘From regional point of view the shifting of the capital of subah
Bangla from Dhaka to Murshidabad in 1704 was surely an event of great
historical significance.’ Dhaka and East Bengal gradually languished and
Murshidabad, as an administrative centre, emerged as the new imperial
metropolis for eastern India.
26. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, ‘Banglar Itihas Sambandhe Koyekti Katha’
[A few words concerning the history of Bengal], Bangadarshan, 1281 bs
(1874); in J.C. Bagal, ed., Bankim, Rachanavali, vol, II, Calcutta: Sahitya
Samsad, 1959, pp. 336–40.
27. R. Tagore, ‘Aitihasik Chitra’ [Images from History], Itihas, p. 140.
28. Jadunath Sarkar, The History in Bengal, vol. II. Muslim Period, Delhi: B.R.
Publishing Corporation, 1943, repr., 2003, p. viii.
29. N.K. Sinha, ed., History of Bengal, 1757–1905, Calcutta: Calcutta University
Press, 1967, p. vi.
 1
Caste in Bengal as Reflected in
the Census, 1881–1951

Ajit Kumar Danda

B
eing a major in the field of Social/Cultural Anthropology,
I do not think I have the necessary competence to do adequate
justice to the subject assigned to me, as there appear several
constraints in meeting the demand of the task. First, in view of the
variability in manifestations of caste across regions of undivided
India, a wholesome discussion on it seems rather impossible when
the boundary of the discourse is restricted to Bengal alone. Second,
from the very emergence of census in India, caste has remained a
major item of enquiry; and over the decades, the foci of enquiry have
experienced change. Therefore, it may not be possible to honour the
timespan of the assigned job either. Third, emphasis on caste shifted
over the decades, often assuming new meanings. Therefore, for due
appreciation of the same, periodic transcendence of restrictions
outlined by the title appears unavoidable. As I apprehend, I may not
be able to come up to the expectations of my dear colleagues from
the discipline of history and other related areas. Nevertheless, I have
faith that they would tolerate what I have to offer.
Despite obvious reservations, two facts guided me to accept
the invitation. First, I had the privilege of once being invited to

*Let me at the outset express my sincere gratitude to the General Editor of

the proposed three volumes of A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal for
inviting me to contribute an essay to one of the three volumes. Indeed, I feel
much honoured by the invitation.
2 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

participate in a discourse convened by reputed academician Professor

Ashin Dasgupta on ‘Tribal History of India’. I knew that whatsoever
credits might have been considered as the background, my long
experience of working among the tribes of this country was one of
them. Unfortunately, the vision Professor Dasgupta had could not
register any major breakthrough during his lifetime. Still, what he
had envisaged provided the participants with many opportunities to
discuss and debate in great detail, encompassing certain related issues
at the same time. Appropriate definition, delineation of boundaries,
specificities of research methodologies, scope and coverage of the
discipline, and such others were some factors that received special
attention. Second, it may be reasonable to recall in this context that
Professor Bernard S. Cohn had published a much acclaimed title, An
Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays.1 He appeared
at extraordinary ease in dealing with many seminal issues relating
to both anthropology and history, and was sufficiently emphatic to
state that a historian can do much better in his profession with some
input of anthropology, and an anthropologist can definitely benefit a
good deal by incorporating elements of history in his analysis. This
has had been the impetus.
Being fully aware that I possess neither the skill of Professor
Dasgupta nor the capability of Professor Cohn, it is natural to have
reservations about what I intend to present. Still, I am at it with the
clear intention to learn what my illustrious colleagues might tend to
communicate through their valuable comments.

II
Before we go further into the substantive details of the topic
assigned to me, it may be worthwhile to briefly touch upon what
is understood by history in India, whether there is any standardized
global approach to the discipline, of which history of India constitutes
a part, and if not, how the history of India differs from what is there
in the West.
As we all know, history in the West by and large presents a
narrative of dynasties in a strict chronological sequence. If, for
example, history is understood as the description of the performance
of the ruling powers, is it necessary that history in India becomes a
poor imitation of what has been found over there? The subject matter
 Danda: Caste in Bengal as Reflected in the Census 3

we are supposed to deal with itself varies considerably from what we

have come to learn through our exposure to the British system of
education. According to the perceptions of the illustrious thinkers
of India, we can ill-afford to imitate the West while defining history
in India. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Rabindranath Tagore,
Niharranjan Ray, Ashin Dasgupta, Prabodh Chandra Sen, Amlan
Dutta, and Sunil Khilnani are few among those who opted for a
non-Western model for the history of India. Of course there were
issues of mutual disagreements, but those were mostly in matters of
details. Noted Indian specialist Professor A.L. Basam, in this context,
perhaps thought of a compromise formula when he stated that India’s
problems were no doubt quite unique in their own way and could
not be resolved through slavish imitation of the West.2 He further
added, it would be quite safe to predict that the coming generation
in India would not be mere copies of Europe. There is hardly any
doubt that they would remain rooted to their tradition, ensuring the
continuity of culture.3
Yuval Noah Harari, through his Sapiens: A Brief History of
Humankind4 drew attention to three important revolutions that
shaped up the course of the history of humankind. He identified
them as the cognitive revolution, the agricultural revolution,
and the scientific revolution. As he predicted, the application of
technological transformation, brought about as the outcome of the
scientific revolution, had accelerated the pace of life to an extent that
it threatened the very survival of life on the surface of the earth. This
indirectly meant the end of history.
Guy D. Middleton, another illustrious scholar, had a somewhat
different opinion, when in the context of collapses of civilizations he
observed that civilization never collapses. State, a tangible identifiable
unit perhaps does. Since circumstances and values change, the
civilization experiences transformation. He, however, regretfully
added that wherever the ‘White men’ establish themselves, the
‘indigenous populations’ perish. They appropriate historians of the
past to dwell on the supposed failures of the non-Western societies,
ignoring their extraordinary resilience in encountering adverse
circumstances.
Despite the apparent rejection of history of the European model,
it would be nearly impossible to deny its influence altogether. Harari
took history to an elevation from where local specificities become
4 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

mostly invisible. So did Middleton. What transpired thus, was the fact
that even if we deal with specific issues in a local context, we could
never be totally protected against exposures to the global forces of
history. Dag Herbjornsurd too, added in this context that the ideals
taught or propagated by the Western masters like Locke (1632–1704),
Voltaire (1694–1778), Kant (1724–1804), Hume (1711–76), and such
others who had been primarily responsible for shaping the knowledge
system initially of the Western world, and then through their colonial
tentacles, of the world over, also had their precursors elsewhere. He
added names of Zera Yaqob of Ethiopia and Anton Wilhelm Amo of
present day Ghana, who, according to him, could rightfully claim a
place among the philosophers of the ‘Age of Enlightenment’. Besides,
new findings in history had clearly demonstrated that the most
successful event that sprang from the Enlightenment ideas of ‘Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity’ was in Haiti, rather than in France. The
Haitian Revolution (1791–1806) paved the way for the independence
of the state, new Constitution, and the abolition of slavery in 1804.
When I draw attention to such details, this is certainly not to
discourage any attempt to promote equality or fraternity, from
whatever sources they may come, but instead, to face the situation
with extra zeal, if not enthusiasm, to demonstrate what our Western
brethren could not achieve yet, are not altogether unachievable.
In view of the facts stated above, there seemed a valid reason to
cultivate a ‘World System of Knowledge’, keeping aside the segmental
approach of the divided humanity that more often promoted
confusion than reflecting a universal understanding of the realities.
This, by and large, presupposed the need for correcting the course
of approaches, methodologies, and applications, a fact that deserved
serious consideration.
The very reason for a somewhat extensive discussion on scopes
and coverage of research was to appreciate the assigned job with some
amount of commitment. The present author was aware that Census
of India is a legacy of the West, initially to appreciate the nature and
character of caste, and its morphic forms. This enquiry has been
carried over to a post-independent Indian scenario that aimed for a
casteless society. How the initial endeavour transformed itself over
the decades is the major issue of discussion. Dr Sumit Mukherjee,
who had a fairly long tenure both at the Anthropological Survey of
 Danda: Caste in Bengal as Reflected in the Census 5

India and at the office of the Registrar General of India, published

a substantive paper5 dealing with the Census Publications of India
through decades. Professor Cohn, a Bachelor of Arts in History
from the University of Wisconsin (1949) and a PhD in Cultural
Anthropology from Cornell University (1954) published a very
seminal essay ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in
South Asia’.6 The present author primarily would depend on both for
basic information in his presentation.

III
Mukherjee, in his account (referred to earlier) dealing with the
census operations of India through decades, tried, with particular
reference to both tribes and castes, to isolate the special characteristics
of the major census operations of the country and recorded data
from 1872 to 1991 (see Table 1.1). Although his time frame goes

Table 1.1: Evolution of the Census Questionnaire

over the Years
Census Year Census Questionnaire Questions On

1881 Census Schedule Religion, Caste—if Hindu;

Sect—if of other religion
1891 Census Schedule Main Religion, Sect of Religion,
Caste or Race—Main Caste and
Subdivision of Caste or Race
1901 Census Schedule Religion, Caste of Hindus and
Jains, Tribe, or Race of others
1911 Census Schedule Religion, Sects of Christians, Caste
of Hindu and Jains, Tribe or Race
of those of other religion
1921 Census Schedule Religion, Caste, Tribe or Race
1931 Census Schedule Religion and Sect, Race, Tribe or Caste
1941 Individual Slip Race, Tribe or Caste, Religion
1951 Individual Slip Nationality, Religion and Special Group
Part (a) Nationality
Part (b) Religion
Part (c) Special Group

Source: Sumit Mukherjee, ‘Conceptualisation and Classification of Castes and

Tribes by the Census of India’, Journal of the Anthropological Survey of
India, vol. 62, no. 2, 2013, p. 815.
6 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

beyond the limits on either side, as prescribed by the assignment,

this was perhaps not without a reason. For proper appreciation of
the concerns of the census authorities towards understanding caste
and then promoting a journey towards achieving a casteless society,
such instances of transcendences seem inevitable.
The very first entry in Dr Mukherjee’s table refers to, along with
other matters, ‘House Register’, and not any ‘Census Questionnaire’.
Nevertheless, it tried to elicit information on ‘Caste or Class’. From
the nature of coverage of the ‘House Register’, it becomes more or
less evident that the then census authorities initially paid attention
to the horizontal segmentation of caste and tried to draw parallels of
what was known as ‘class’ in the West. There was perhaps a degree of
uncertainty in such parallels, and hence the entry was caste or class.
Despite references to race or nationality, there appeared hardly any
confusion on that count, as neither was much of a reality in India
as in Europe. Incidentally, caste as an occupational category never
appeared to make much impression on the exercise.
The year 1881, in a way, announced the beginning of the formal
census in India when, according to Dr Mukherjee, a schedule
especially developed for the purpose was administered for the first
time. Among the main items of enquiry, religion and caste were
given priority. As it is seen from the details of the questions, the
uncertainty in the minds of the census authorities continued. Caste as
an institution of the Hindu social system did not get due recognition
then. Instead, doubts had been expressed whether it represented
Hinduism as well as other religions. Therefore, questions were thus
framed: ‘Caste—if Hindu; Sect—if of other religion’.
In the 1891 census, questions related to caste got almost separated
from questions on religion. Nevertheless, caste appeared to have got
entangled with the issues of race. Although race was a major issue
elsewhere, particularly in Europe, Africa, and the USA, it did not
receive that much attention from the scholars in India yet. Therefore,
the census questions mentioned: ‘Caste or Race, Main Caste and
Subdivision of Caste or Race’. The census questions thus reflected
others’ reality relatively more than the reality of the Indian social
system.
The census of 1901, carried out under the guidance of Sir Herbert
Risley, initiated several major breakthroughs. He was appointed the
 Danda: Caste in Bengal as Reflected in the Census 7

Census Commissioner in 1899, and he formulated an elaborate code

of regulations that formed the basis on which the census of 1901
and the census of 1911 were conducted. The memorial edition, The
People of India,7 originally compiled by W. Crooke, in a way summed
up his four-volume Tribes and Castes of Bengal. The memorial
edition had, besides seven substantive chapters—(a) The Physical
Types, (b) Social Types, (c) Caste in Proverbs and Popular Sayings,
(d) Caste and Marriage, (e) Caste and Religion, (f) The Origin of Caste,
(g) Caste and Nationality—seven appendices. They together explained
Risley’s concerns about race, caste, and nationality—a new approach
altogether. In chapter 1, under physical types, his basic concern had
been to produce a racial classification of the people of India. The
other six chapters that followed discussed various aspects of castes
and their nature of penetration in other social institutions. Here,
under ‘Social Types’, Risley attempted a classification of what he called
‘Types of Castes’. He named them as Tribal Castes, Functional Castes,
Sectarian Castes, Castes formed by Crossing, National Castes, Castes
formed by Migration, and Castes formed by Change of Customs. This
typology, however, appeared neither entirely acceptable to scholars
of the subject, nor totally exhaustive. Nevertheless, here for the first
time, we find a free play of race, caste, religion, and nationality.
As already pointed out, the census of 1911, in many respects,
was a continuity of the previous decade. Exceptions have been found
in the enumeration of sects among the Christians, castes of Hindus
and Jains, and tribe or race of those of other religions. In terms of
priority, religion here appeared to have had an edge over castes. In
comparison, in the 1921 census, religion, caste, tribe, or race seemed
to enjoy more or less equal weight, with practically no innovations.
In the Census of India, 1931, there had been a further dilution
in the importance of caste and its ramifications. In comparison
to the earlier decades, priority might have been switched over to
race. It is somewhat queer though that as a part of the 1931 census,
another anthropometric survey was carried out, resulting in a
fresh classification of the people of India. The new classification
considerably altered the one produced by Risley three decades earlier.
Nevertheless, religions and sects earned more importance than tribe
or caste in the census enumeration. In other words, caste in 1931
census had been relegated to a lower level of priority.
8 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

During 1941, census authorities of India, in the interest of

generating relatively more precise information, adopted a series
of innovations. Accordingly, ‘Census Schedule’ as the tool for
enumeration, got replaced by ‘Individual Slip’. This change, however,
did not alter the course of the process that had started during the
previous decade. Thus, analysis of anthropometric data continued,
resulting in further elaboration of the classification of races in India.
Besides, attempts were afoot to appreciate the major divisions of the
population in India on the basis of race, tribe, caste, and religion,
attributing more or less equal importance to each. There were also
initiatives to measure the degree of martial character of each such
agglomerate. Whether it was the Second World War that followed,
or as preparatory to encountering the emerging spirit of nationalism
among the people of India that indirectly influenced the decision was
not definitely known. In the 1941 census, religion played a role even
in the identification of castes. This was considered particularly for
distribution of privileges among the Scheduled Castes. Thus, people
of the Buddhist and Islamic communities, or those of any of the tribal
regions, were excluded from these privileges. Exceptions were those
tribes that declared Hinduism as their religion. It may be mentioned
in this context that although such a strategy was developed essentially
to remove anomalies from the record, this was hardly achieved.
It happened so that a tribal Santal was Scheduled in Bihar, but in
West Bengal, such recognition was denied. Despite such an arrange-
ment, a Hindu Santal as well as a Christian Santal of West Bengal
reserved the right to have their representatives in the government of
the state.
Attempts were made to rectify such positions during the 1951
census. Consequently, many of the communities excluded on the
previous occasions were enlisted in the Schedule. In this context, it is
important to note that the process of ‘Hinduisation’ of tribes became
vastly evident around this period and the census authorities took
serious note of this phenomenon. In fact, during the 1951 census, only
about one-third of the total number of estimated tribal population of
24.6 million returned themselves as adhering to tribal religions, while
the majority of the other population marked themselves as Hindus.
What was apparently conspicuous was the glaring ignorance of the
other transferral processes.
 Danda: Caste in Bengal as Reflected in the Census 9

IV
The transformation of tribes into peasants, primarily depending on
the development of technology, often failed to receive appropriate
attention. Naturally, therefore, the resultant fusion of culture received
little attention, as if religious transformation was the only one and
was evidently perceptible. It is important to recall that the first ever
list of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was notified as early
as in 1950, in pursuance of Articles 341 and 342 of the Constitution
of India. This has been modified, amended, and supplemented from
time to time, to be relatively more appropriate to the demands of the
situations. But the act as such appeared no match to the varieties of
anomalies that existed over regions.
As per the census records, the tendency of tribal people turning
to some form of Hinduism or Christianity, in fact, started as early as
in 1931, reducing the followers of tribal religions to about 6 per cent
of the total tribal population by the 1981 census—the break up being
87 per cent to Hinduism and 7 per cent to Christianity. Such official
positions notwithstanding, in the great majority of cases, elements
of tribal religions did not altogether disappear. Rather, their precious
identities based primarily on religion appeared carefully preserved.
This seemed evident when we look at the provisions of the Fifth
Schedule of the Constitution of India.
It is important here to recall that the Fifth Schedule of the
Constitution of India outlined the provision for each state to form
a special Tribal Advisory Council for identifying Scheduled Areas
and Scheduled Tribes, so as to ensure proportionate representation
to the Legislative Assembly of respective states, and the extension of
other special benefits to tribes.
As part of encountering the intricate path of identification
and categorization of the population of India, the census author-
ities, to start with, also initiated a move to identify a category
of the population, called the ‘Depressed Class’, as early as in 1921.
The basic objective was to enlist, under this category, those who
were victimized by certain stigmas like untouchability. Among
such apparently isolated groups, many of whom were the tribes
on way toward Hinduism, belonged the so-called ‘Depressed
classes’.
10 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Nationality as an issue was deliberated by the census authorities

of India as early as in 1872, though it did not appear as a direct
question till 1951. The issue was discussed fairly extensively by Risley
when he had observed that national sentiment in India can derive
no encouragement from the study of Indian history. The standard
elements of nationality either do not exist in India or make for
diversity rather than uniformity.
With specific reference to caste and nationality, Risley had further
observed:
If what might have been the germ of a nation can shrink into caste  .  .  .  may
not the convergence process be possible and a number of castes, without
sacrificing their individual characteristics, draw together.  .  .  . The standard
literature of the subject approaches the question from the European
standpoint, and the development of the idea of nationality in Asia has as
yet received no exhaustive treatment.8
The census of 1951, took up the issue of nationality in a rather
extensive way, besides matters related to religion and caste. It was
accordingly decided that the question of nationality, being basically of
ethnic origin, had no direct relationship with citizenship. Accordingly,
during Census of India, 1961, which was otherwise a landmark year
for the census operations, the issue of nationality hardly got any
priority; and in 1971, the issue was dropped altogether.
Questions on caste, tribe, or race were asked from every citizen
right from 1872, though the type of information gathered on them
varied from decade to decade. In the 1881 census, in case of the
Hindus, their caste was enumerated. For other religions, information
was gathered regarding their sect. In the 1891 census, as already
indicated, the emphasis was on the main castes, subdivisions of
castes or races. During the 1901 and 1911 censuses, in case of the
Hindus and Jains, their caste affiliation was enquired about. For other
religious groups, their positions as tribes or races were enumerated
upon. During the 1921, 1931, and 1941 censuses, caste, tribe, or racial
identities of all individuals were enumerated.
In accordance with the policy decision of the Government of
India to discourage distinction among population based on caste, the
1951 census made a rather calculated departure from the traditional
enumeration of race, tribe, or caste. Instead, individuals were asked
whether they were from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes,
Backward Classes, or were Anglo-Indians.
 Danda: Caste in Bengal as Reflected in the Census 11

India had been the home of numerous populations from early

historical periods. But it was not until the attempt towards counting
them that they emerged as conglomerated wholes. They became
distinct, discrete, and often mutually antagonistic. Each such
conglomerated entity, nevertheless, had a common but discrete
identity—the caste. The evident controversies and contradictions,
as they were apparent, had been mostly because of this special tag,
and India as a country seemed to have learnt to live comfortably
with the same.

V
I am aware that through my narrative, I have often transgressed the
time period stipulated for this chapter. For a clear understanding
of evolution of thoughts regarding census operations, however,
this is important, if not essential. It may further be stated in this
connection that the overall census operations of India can be better
understood by dividing them in three separate phases. Right from the
very beginning until the mutiny in 1857, the major preoccupations
of the census were to make reasonable estimates about population
strength, its distribution, density in villages and urban areas, etc. They
together represent Phase 1. The mutiny as such had been a turning
point, as it thrusted a new demand towards understanding the social,
cultural, and political facts of India. Thus, the emphases shifted to
caste, including its subdivisions; tribes, including their divergences
of faith; religions, including sects and sub-sects. Nationality, as well
as citizenship, were also added to the agenda for information. Thus,
from 1881 till the Independence of the country, or 1951, can be taken
as Phase 2. From 1961 onwards can be marked as Phase 3. It may be
noted in this connection that 1961, as already indicated, happened
to be another major turning point, so far as the census operations
of India were concerned. Under the able leadership of Shri Ashok
Mitra of Indian Civil Service, who had the background of serving
in West Bengal as the Census Superintendent during 1951 census,
several initiatives were undertaken. Study of crafts, textiles, plantation
labourers, boatmen, and people of other important calling were
completed. A separate division, called the Social Studies Section,
was created as a part of the Census Organization that had, among
other duties, the responsibility of studying 500 villages with special
12 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

emphasis on their social structure, cultural calendar, economic

cycle, etc. It was expected to provide intensive details from all over
the country. Somehow, however, the nation-wide analyses are not
available yet.

VI
As already mentioned, Professor Cohn dealt with the census of
India fairly extensively.9 Although the title of his essay implies his
overall commitment to South Asia, he by and large spoke of India
alone. According to him, the entire exercise needed to be properly
understood in the context of the colonial power’s efforts to gather
systematic information regarding various aspects of Indian society,
culture, and economy. Initially, it was a drive mostly towards
collection of revenue with the acquisition of such rights, from some
of the territories of Bengal and Bihar. Thus, in 1769, the British
authorities appointed fifteen revenue supervisors with their defined
responsibilities of overseeing the duties of Indian tax officials. Henry
Verelst, the then Governor of Bengal, besides collection of revenue,
also stressed the need for collection of information on the history
of the districts as well as of the leading families, including their
customs. Incidentally, such attempts for collection of information
was never carried out carefully. Hence, the job was taken over by
reputed scholars and bureaucrats. This happened to be the symbolic
foundation of activities that, in turn, developed into various gazetteers
published in late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
In the early decades of the nineteenth century, special inquiries
of the administration of justice and revenue were directed by the
Governor-General in India. In 1814, district judges were asked
to supply information on the functioning of courts, along with
information on population of the districts and brief descriptions of
economy and society there. Some such reports contained, mostly in
passing though, narratives of major castes and tribes inhabiting the
districts. Estimation of population was also often done, but their
bases were never made clear.
The earliest attempt to produce complete gazetteers was done
by Walter Hamilton in 1820. He organized his gazetteers largely
following the Mughal territorial divisions; for the source materials,
 Danda: Caste in Bengal as Reflected in the Census 13

he initially depended a good deal on the contributions of Major

James Rennel (1793). During the early decades of the nineteenth
century, attempts were made to conduct censuses of various cities,
and perhaps the earliest among them was the description of Banaras
by Zulficar Ali Khan in 1801. For estimation of the population of that
city, Hamilton largely depended on the works of Khan.

VII
It is to be admitted at this stage that from the very beginning of
Indian census, it had to encounter several knotty problems of
conceptualization, specifically towards defining economic categories.
There were also problems in developing categories adequate to
encompass aspects of Indian social structure. In the report of A.
Shakespear (1848), adequate awareness was demonstrated for
accuracy of information, but on failing to obtain them, the collectors
often used their individual freedom to define concepts according to
their respective wisdom, particularly related to house, family, age,
childhood, adulthood, etc.
Within five years of publication of the census of 1847, preparations
were afoot for conducting another census, since the estimates received
through the previous attempt were considered not very satisfactory.
There were several attempts to provide specific definitions, neither
of which appeared appropriate. Although doubts had been expressed
regarding accuracy of information thus gathered, G.J. Christian
(1853–4),10 firmly stood for their genuineness. He, nevertheless, was
found visibly unhappy with the way agriculturists of the country
were enumerated. As he had suggested, in future censuses, caste and
occupation of the head of each family had to be carefully recorded.
There was a general but widespread idea among the European
observers, that all members of a caste followed the same culturally
assumed occupation. In reality, this was never so.
A detailed census of India was scheduled to have been attempted
in 1861, but because of the dislocations caused by the suppression of
the so-called rebellion of 1857–9, this was postponed till 1871–2. For
nearly twenty years since then, there were problems even in getting
an accurate list of villages. H. Beverly, the then Census Commissioner
of Bengal, therefore commented that the only way an accurate list of
14 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

villages could be obtained was by sending a responsible official to each

revenue village to check the boundaries and particulars of that village.
This, however, did not elicit necessary support. Attempts,
were made to settle the issues related to boundaries through the
intervention of the boundary commissioner, an office created in
1853. This work was finished in time to provide the necessary list of
villages for the 1881 census. In 1891, residential villages became the
bases for census units. Nevertheless, in the real census operations
across provinces, even this approach was found inadequate.
In the 1871–2 census, a town was distinguished from a village
rather arbitrarily by defining any place with more than 5,000 people
as a town. This was practised for some time, but it was highly
unsatisfactory and lead to enormous confusion about information
across provinces. Perhaps the most complex question the census
enumerators had to encounter was around caste. It may be worthwhile
to recall that until 1950, scholars’ and scientists’ views on the nature,
structure, and functioning of the Indian caste system were shaped
primarily by the data and conceptions growing out of census
operations.
It was felt by many colonial administrators that caste and religion
were the sociological keys toward unlocking the Indian social system.
It was, therefore, important that information was systematically
collected about caste and religion. It may be noted that when the
census authorities were beginning to collect information on caste,
the Indian army began to reorganize themselves on the assumption
about the nature and character of ‘martial races’. Serious questions
were raised, whether certain castes or races had been monopolizing
access to new educational opportunities. Questions also made rounds
whether there was any hidden agenda of certain castes toward
organizing themselves to displace the British rule.
The encouragement to gather information on caste, as observed
by Professor Cohn, went way beyond mere curiosity. Ideas about
caste, its origin, and functions played quite an important role in
shaping of policy during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Serious attempts were made in the census of 1871–2 to collect
genuine information on caste. The major preoccupation was to place
castes or jatis in the four-fold varna system and in categories of
outcastes or aborigines. There were attempts by the census authorities
 Danda: Caste in Bengal as Reflected in the Census 15

to classify castes that by and large went unsuccessful due to non-

availability of uniform data. Although from the very beginning of
census operations it was felt necessary to have an all-India system of
classification of castes, it remained, more or less, ever illusive. In the
development of a classification for castes, there were severe problems
as the actual enumeration was a two-step affair, neither of which had
sufficient control over the entire process. The lists and instructions
issued by the census authorities to encounter the problems were
found inadequate for the job.

VIII
In the 1881 census, the Commissioner for India, W.C. Plowden,
mandated that castes should be arranged in five categories:
Brahmans, Rajputs, castes of good social position, inferior castes,
and non-Hindus, or aboriginal castes. Whether he presumed the
categories to be mutually exclusive as well as internally homogenous
obviously remained unstated. Later on, finding himself in a rather
uncomfortable position, if not altogether unprepared, to face the
enormity of problems in the application of such categorization, he
left it to the provincial census commissioners to appropriately handle
the situation.
The then Census Commissioner for Bengal, J.A. Bourdillon was
of the view that the classification proposed by Plowden would totally
misrepresent the caste system as found in Bengal. He was in favour
of having separate classifications for castes and the Hinduized tribes.
He further felt that certain groups like Kayasthas, Khandaits, and
Babhans were very close to Brahmans and Rajputs in social hierarchy,
and therefore much higher to that of the Koiris and Kumhars.
When these issues came to the attention of the then Lt governor,
he consulted Babu Rajendra Lal Mitra, an erudite Sanskrit scholar,
who prepared a list on his own, placing Babhans (Bhumihars) in the
same category as the Brahmans and ranking Kayasthas just below the
Rajputs. The Lt governor then desired that any anomalies of this kind
be resolved by consulting the list of Mitra. It may be mentioned that
Mitra himself based the scheme on what he termed ‘Hindu Ideas’. As
asserted by him, it was not the responsibility of the census authorities
to deal with the claims and counter claims regarding positions of
16 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

caste in the social hierarchy. Consulting the textbooks of the Hindus

should be appropriate for deciding such matters.
The next serious effort to determine hierarchical positions of
castes was done by Risley, who was responsible for conducting the
ethnographic survey of Bengal. Risley drew up lists of castes and
arranged them, according to his information and judgement, on the
basis of their respective social positions. He then circulated the same
to government officials as well as to non-officials across the country
to assess their degree of acceptability and accuracy. The responses
he thus received, varied widely. Most of Risley’s correspondents,
nevertheless, cited Hindu sacred texts, mythologies, and legends in
order to support their respective views. Even then there were more
differences than unanimity.
The most-used validation for altering Risley’s list was reference
to learned pundits and Sanskrit scholars. Risley’s The Tribes and
Castes of Bengal, in particular, while it side-stepped the issue of social
precedence of castes, instead, decided to put them in alphabetical
order. He obviously had a weakness for his theory of ‘race sentiment’
for the origin of castes, although he was not that vocal about the
same. In the 1901 census, which was done under Risley’s direction,
the question of caste precedence and race came together as he
himself felt that through the anthropometric measurements, he had
confirmed his hypothesis that social precedence itself was based on
a scale of racial purity.

IX
A close scrutiny of the experiences of the Indian Census Operations
from the pre- to post colonial period demonstrates more or less an
unending endeavour towards perfection of strategies. Despite such
efforts, seldom had there been any serious attempt to make the data
adequately valid for a healthy statistical analysis, as well as for making
it socio-politically acceptable, rather uncontested. From the very
early historical period, India was the home for numerous identifiable
entities, but the actual counting of the conglomerated population
as such, as it appears, made them periodically antagonistic to one
another. If one looks at the Indian situation from a higher elevation,
the dynamics of perpetual adjustment of the conglomerated entities
becomes conspicuous.
 Danda: Caste in Bengal as Reflected in the Census 17

The sense of otherness, hierarchy, majority or minority, purity or

impurity, hypergamy or hypogamy, and in selected cases, presence
and absence of caste got evidently intensified through the formal
recognition extended by the census. Aspirations for ascendancy
in the caste ladder or outright rejection of caste identity were also
issues that needed to be carefully looked into. For some time before
the Independence of India, as well as immediately thereafter, caste
identity was used as an important tool to earn political mileage. The
‘otherness’ on counts of caste, religion, language, etc., for instance,
was never a permanent feature for separateness. The dynamics of
recombination that prevailed, could perhaps explain the situation
better.
The great religious divide of the Muslim Bengalees and Hindu
Bengalees got homogenized by their common linguistic heritage.
Hierarchy, by and large, spoke of a system of vertical segmentation
of caste; though with more or less permanent positions, on counts
of majority-minority, they often got collapsed. The boundary of
the majority and the minority being basically porous, was ever in a
state of fluidity, incorporating new elements. The divisions of purity
and pollution, because of the interpenetrating nature of cultural
processes, tended to have different degrees of dilution at the centre
and the periphery. Thus, among the Muslims, Saids and Julahs
refused to get homogenized by the spirit of Islamic brotherhood. In
fact, there were several instances to demonstrate where such spirit
of brotherhood had no impact on the traditional caste structure.
Movements of propagation for Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism in
particular, including the neo-Buddhist movement, no doubt had
been able to curve out new identities, but could not, by any means,
throw away caste or its impact on religion and society. Vaishnavite
movements in Bengal could apparently homogenize castes even across
religion to a major extent, though when the Vaishnavas themselves
behaved like a caste in rural Bengal with a new identity—‘Bostom’,
the very result of the movement become questionable. The Arya
Samaj Movement and the Brahma Samaj Movement were found no
match for the resilient character of caste. The Namasudras, mostly
from eastern Bengal, made no exception in this respect. Similar had
been the result of Neo-Buddhist Movement.
Association of caste with traditional calling was apparently
absolute, though not inflexible. In fact, exceptions in this regard
18 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

were relatively more visible than mutuality. There were instances

when Islam could cause a vertical split among the people adhered
to their caste-prescribed profession, without altering the caste-based
profession. Religious differences with their Hindu counterparts
notwithstanding, the prescribed caste-calling of the Muslim brethren
experienced no change.
The Hindu village deity, Dharmaraj Thakur in Bardhaman, is
worshipped by the villagers with great reverence, though the people
of Bagdi, Bauri, and Dom castes do not enjoy access to the temple.
Nevertheless, in His annual round of the village, He passes through
all wards of the village, including those inhabited by the so-called
lower castes. The Brahman priest moves along with the deity and
accepts offerings on behalf of the deity as long as He moves along the
wards inhabited by the so-called upper castes. In the wards inhabited
by the lower castes, a Sadgope takes over the functions of the priest,
assuming a new name, ‘Deasi’. Ma Guptamoni is worshipped as
an expression of Chandi, where the Lodha Savar, wearing a sacred
thread, acts as a priest. The Brahman priest also can officiate in
making offerings to Chandi, after removing his sacred thread.
Priesthood, the exclusive profession of the Brahmans, thus gets
diluted. There are hundreds of such shrines spread all over Bengal
and beyond, where principles of sacred profession are compromised.
Rules of hypergamy as well as hypogamy are strictly regulated by
caste, though instances of their violation are often found regulated
by the code of caste. Thus, it is not adequate to consider caste merely
as a system of stratification or hierarchy, it was and still is an enigma.
References of some such ethnographic details obviously have no
apparent relationship with what the census tried to present over the
decades. While the census of India primarily concentrates attention
to the morphic composition of caste, ethnographic details could add
to the meanings of their functional behaviour, establishing a sort of
complementarity between the two.
Caste analyses were often criticized with allegations for
perpetuating separatism and fission in the Hindu society. Perhaps
for all practical purposes, they were the most-used tools for political
and social manoeuvring, both by the governments and by the people
themselves. The concern of the framers of the Constitution of India
for ensuring a casteless society is evident in the treatment of caste
in that sensitive document. But unlike language and religion, there
 Danda: Caste in Bengal as Reflected in the Census 19

is no protective provision for caste in the Constitution, except the

policy of reservations in selected cases.
Since racism prevailed in overseas European colonies, particularly
in Africa, it was used as the first order of classification, followed by
religion, caste, and tribe. But the concept of Scheduled Tribe and
Scheduled Caste seems to have evolved out of mixing up of race,
religion, and caste during the enumeration process of the census
of India. Thus, administrative definitions enjoyed priority over the
academic configuration while categorizing the people of India. It
may be worthwhile to mention in this connection that the ambitious
nation-wide enumeration of caste, covering every household under
the title ‘Socio-Economic and Caste Census: 2011’, met with no
satisfactory results. The strategy worked out thus far has been to
drop out reference to caste from public life, though this still remains
a distant reality.
While summing up, let me honestly confess that it has not been
possible for me to keep the present discussion necessarily restricted
within the boundary of Bengal. The nature of caste is so inexplicable
that it has not been possible for me even to make a casual appreciation
of it, without violating the limit of space. There has been repeated
transcendences of the limit of time as well. This was felt essential for
proper comprehension of the development of thoughts of the census
authorities of India. That explains the reason for this apparently
chaotic presentation. Nevertheless, I will remain ever indebted to the
general editor for giving me this extraordinary exposure.

Notes
1. Bernard S. Cohn, An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987.
2. A.L. Basam, The Wonder that was India, New York: Grove Press, 1954.
3. Ibid.
4. Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, New York:
Harper Collins, 2015.
5. Sumit Mukherjee, ‘Conceptualisation and Classification of Castes and
Tribes by the Census of India’, Journal of the Anthropological Survey of
India, vol. 62, no. 2, 2013, pp. 805–20.
6. Bernard S. Cohn, ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in
South Asia’, An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 224–54.
20 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
7. H.H. Risley, The People of India, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1915.
8. Ibid.
9. Cohn, ‘Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia’.
10. G.J. Christian, Report of the Census of North West Provinces of the Bengal
Presidency, Calcutta: J. Thomas, 1854.

References
Basam, A.L., The Wonder that was India, New York: Grove Press, 1954.
Christian, G.J., Report of the Census of North West Provinces of the Bengal
Presidency, Calcutta: J. Thomas, 1854.
Cohn, Bernard S., An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Diamond, Jared, Collapse, New York: Penguin, 2005.
Harari, Yuval Noah, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, New York: Harper
Collins, 2015.
Khilnani, Sunil, Incarnations: India in Fifty Lives, London: Allen Lane, 2016.
Mukherjee, Sumit, ‘Conceptualisation and Classification of Castes and Tribes
by the Census of India’, Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India,
vol. 62, no. 2, 2013, pp. 805–20.
Risley, H.H., The People of India, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1915.
 2

The Fate of Labour-Intensive

Industries under Colonialism

Amiya Kumar Bagchi

Living Standards of Wage Labour

I
n this essay, I am concerned as much with the wages of the
handicraft workers as with their employment situation. For this
information, I have depended primarily on Hunter’s Statistical
Accounts of Bengal, which cover the 1870s, and O’Malley’s District
Gazetteers (apart from Jack’s volume on Bakarganj). For information
on the situation of workers, I have depended, apart from my
earlier work, on the secondary work of J. Krishnamurty, Sunanda
Krishnamurty, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, and Hitesh Sanyal’s work
on iron smelting, in the two splendid volumes on Bengal’s industries,
published by Indrajit Ray of North Bengal University in 2011 and
2018.
By now, the fact of deindustrialization in Gangetic Bihar, and
by extension in Bengal as a whole, in the nineteenth century is well
established—the controversy being about its extent, and the sectors
most affected.
I will quote here two tables from my reply to Professor Marika
Vicziany and leave it at that (see Tables 2.1 and 2.2).
These two tables conclusively establish that there was a massive
decline in the proportion of population dependent on secondary
industry in Gangetic Bihar. The result of my work has been extended
in time and confirmed by Clingingsmith and Williamson.1 However,
Clingingsmith and Williamson are so blinded by the habitual thinking
22 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Table 2.1: Estimated Population and Population dependent

on Secondary Industry in Gangetic Bihar, 1809–19
Region Estimated total Population dependent Percentage of
population on secondary industry (2) to (1)
(1) (2) (3)
Patna-Gaya 2,533,315 552,257 21.8
Bhagalpur 1,514,925 234,383 15.5
Purnea 2,178,285 505,865 23.2
Shahabad 1,064,640 238,763 22.4
  total 7,291,165 1,531,268 21.0

Table 2.2: Total Population and Population Dependent on

Secondary Industry (including construction)
in 1901 in Six Districts in Bihar
District Total population Population dependent Percentage of
on secondary industry (2) to (1)
(1) (2) (3)
Patna 1,624,985 197,758 12.2
Gaya 2,059,933 211,489 10.3
Shahabad 1,962,696 268,879 13.7
Monghyr 2,068,804 183,817 8.9
Bhagalpur 1,874,794 137,330 7.3
Purnea 11,680,165 1,231,472 10.5

of neoclassical economists that they think that deindustrialization

was the result of willing transfer of craft workers to agriculture,
without bothering to find out what was happening to agriculture in
Bihar and Bengal. Agriculture in Bihar was badly affected by the fact
that landlords were no longer obliged to keep up irrigation works
and maintain other rural infrastructure.2 Thus, productivity per acre
drastically declined, and many of the cultivators became virtual serfs
on indigo planters’ estates, or migrated to Calcutta and joined the
labour force of the jute and cotton mills. The less fortunate joined
the mining and tea plantation workforce. The only growth area was
the abad area of eastern Bengal.
Since the centre piece of the British industrial revolution lay in its
import substitution of Indian cotton textiles by using first prohibitive
 Bagchi: The Fate of Labour-Intensive Industries 23

tariffs and severe quantitative restrictions on imports, followed by

mechanical innovations, first in spinning and then in weaving (India’s
deindustrialization affected cotton spinners and weavers the most),
scholars have continued to crowd into the debating arena.
There has been a spate of writings on the Indian textile industry
and its important place in the global economy.3 But none of them
mention the factor of imperialism or the special characteristics of
capitalism that allowed Britain to reduce India from being the largest
exporter of cotton textile at the end of the eighteenth century to
becoming the largest importer of cotton textiles from the third quarter
of the nineteenth century. Broadberry and Gupta4 rightly argue, for
example, that up to the beginning of the eighteenth century, India
had a cost advantage over England, where real wages were four times
those of India. Then they go on to argue that this led England to
invent a succession of capital-intensive techniques which allowed it to
bring its cost down to below that of India, and eventually outcompete
the Indian cotton textile industry. This argument is flawed on three
counts. First, it takes a very short-term view of induced innovation.
England had already embarked on a path of highly capital-intensive
innovations by the beginning of the seventeenth century. The first
beneficiary of these innovations was the military sector. English
ships of the royal navy required more capital than textile factories
all through the eighteenth century. Moreover, it was the disciplined
management techniques of naval ships that were translated into
methods of factory management.
Second, Broadberry and Gupta do not ask why other countries,
such as Portugal and Spain, which were also importing Indian textiles,
failed to make innovations similar to those of England.
Third, there is another critical lacuna in the argument of
Broadberry and Gupta. Unlike in the case of India, the cotton textile
industry was a brand new one in the case of England. Moreover,
England was totally unfit to produce cotton. It was only by using
its dominance over the world economy, down to the middle of the
nineteenth century, that it was able to import slave-produced cotton
from the US and later from its colony of India and the semi-colony
of Egypt.
Let me now turn to the argument of Wolcott and Clark.5 They
adapt to the case of the Indian cotton textile industry, the argument
24 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

that Clark had advanced. 6 That argument is, briefly, to quote

Clark:

In 1910 one New England cotton textile operative performed as much work
as 1.5 British, 2.3 German, and nearly 6 Greek, Japanese, Indian, or Chinese
workers. Input substitution, and differences in technology, management,
and workers’ training or inherent abilities do not explain this. Instead local
culture seems to have determined worker performance. Such differences,
if widespread, would explain much of the international variation in wages.
They also have important consequences for understanding labour migration,
the choice of technique, and the sources of economic growth.7

First, this argument fails to take account of J.H. Habakkuk’s

argument that land abundance in the US made labour expensive
there, and it was highly inelastic in supply. This judgement is
confirmed by the data given by Maddison,8 where the per capita GDP
of the US at 1,257 (1,990 international dollars) was already near the
west European average of 1,274 and short of the GDP of five west
European countries—the Netherlands, UK, Switzerland, Belgium,
and Denmark—and was surpassing the per capita GDPs of most of
these countries by the second half of the nineteenth century. These
data also demonstrate that Peter Temin’s argument9 that labour cost
was low in the US—was seriously flawed. These factors led the US
to adopt both land- and capital- intensive techniques. Second, the
argument takes insufficient account of the dynamics of capitalism.
The same Japan, which was woefully inefficient in 1910, according to
Clark, was posing such a challenge against Britain in the field of cotton
textiles in India that the British Indian government had ultimately to
introduce the system of Imperial Preference in the 1930s, and even
then its market dwindled practically to nothing.
Clark quotes Pearse10 to argue that Indian workers refused to
handle as many ring spindles as women in the US did; weavers
also refused to handle more than two looms. Thus, he attributes all
these failures to the malingering of workers. What he fails to take into
account is the fact that the mill workers were working in an ocean
of unemployment, so it was in their interest to protect as many jobs
as possible. Second, they were so badly paid and were physically so
weak that it was impossible for them to work without taking frequent
breaks. Most of them were also illiterate, and so it would have been
 Bagchi: The Fate of Labour-Intensive Industries 25

impossible for them, unlike in the case of the Japanese workers, to

intelligently devise or adopt new managerial techniques.11 Finally,
by the 1930s, Japan had invented its own automatic loom and was
adopting it on a large scale, thus giving a large boost to productivity
per worker.
Wolcott and Clark adapt the argument of Clark12 to the particular
case of the Indian textile mills in the colonial period. To quote them:

Between 1890 and 1938 Japan experienced rapid economic growth. India
stagnated. This national divergence was reflected in the performance of both
countries’ leading modern industry, cotton textiles. The parallels between
national and industry performance suggest the problems of the Indian textile
industry may have been those of India as a whole. Weak management is
widely blamed for poor performance in textiles. An analysis of managerial
decisions in Bombay shows, however, that on all measurable dimensions
Indian managers performed as well as they could. The problem instead
was one factor they could not change—the effort levels of Indian workers.13

I have already stated that if it is true as Wolcott and Clark argue,

that if in the 1890s the Indian workers were not doing more than
four hours of work, they were physically unable to do so. Works by
Hufton,14 Fogel,15 and Fogel, Floud, Harris, and Hong16 have shown
that similar complaints were made about French workers in the late
eighteenth century as well, and the reasons were the same. In the
argument of Wolcott and Clark, the factor of colonialism and its
effect in causing endemic malnourishment and the frequent famines
caused by it never figure. In the 1890s, Bombay was afflicted by two
of the worst famines in recorded history, causing millions of deaths.
Krishnamurty,17 though sceptical about my figures, had to admit
that there was a drastic decline in employment in cotton textiles;
but he argued that carpet-making was not affected. However, my
argument factored in all handicraft industries, so that stability or
even expansion of some minor industries would not affect the basic
argument.
Ray,18 in this context, has concluded that:

.  .  .  the phase of perpetual decline [of Bengal textiles] started in the mid-
1820s because of setbacks to the industry in both the overseas and domestic
markets. The pace of decline was rather slow, though steady,  .  .  .  65,000 in
26 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the 1820s, 144,000 in the 1830s, and 160,000 in the 1840s. The situation
had reached crisis point in 1860, when 563,000 workers in aggregate lost
their traditional livelihoods.

He does not give his method of calculation. But if it is true, this figure
would mean the loss of livelihood, considering spinners and weavers
together, of several million persons in Bengal alone.
There is no dispute about the fact that weaving of coarse cloth
survived for local use in many, if not most, districts of Bengal and
Bihar. There is also no dispute about the fact that there was some
revival of cotton weaving with the use of flying shuttle looms from
the 1890s.19 We do not have a precise idea of how the revival was
spread across the districts of Bengal.20

Differential Effects of Colonial Rule and

Deindustrialization on Bihar and
Bengal Proper
The deindustrialization process had a much more adverse effect on
most of the districts of Bihar than on most of the districts of Bengal.
One indicator of this is the availability of cheap labour in Bihar. For
example, Hunter states: ‘According to the Collector in 1871, coolies
were paid 2 as per day. Agricultural labourers received 1 anna per
day. Smiths received from 2.5 to 4 as; bricklayers were paid 2.5 as;
carpenters from 2.5 to 3 as.’21 The Deputy Magistrate of the Bihar
Sub-division, who is a native of Bengal, remarks on the cheapness
of labour compared with most parts of Bengal.
But in some cases, public works—such as opening of canals in
Shahabad—raised wages. ‘Before the opening of the canal works,
masons, carpenters, and blacksmiths received from 3 to 4 as. Now
masons receive from 4 to 4.75 as, carpenters from 4 to 6 as and
blacksmiths from 4 as 8 pies to 6 as. Unskilled labourers receive from
1.5 to 2 as, but those employed on canal works get 2.5 as.’22
The conditions in typical Bengal districts were only marginally
better than in Patna or Shahabad. For example, for Rajshahi district,
we have: ‘In 1870 the Collector returned the wages of a coolie at 2 as
and those of an agricultural labourer as 2.5 as. Boys employed in the
field or otherwise now earn 1.4 as a day. Blacksmiths and carpenters
 Bagchi: The Fate of Labour-Intensive Industries 27

earn 6 as and masons 4 as.’23 But by the time O’Malley wrote the
District Gazetteers in 1916, the situation had improved considerably:
‘The cultivator would then have to pay from 5 to 8 as for field labour.
The wages of masons had risen to 6 to 12 as a day and of blacksmiths
to 12 as a day.’24
For Bogra, we read, in 1871, ‘Coolies and agricultural day
labourers earn 2.4 to 3 as a day. Agricultural day labourers also
often received food in addition, particularly in the busy seasons of
ploughing and harvesting. Thatchers earned 3 as; bricklayers from
4 to 5 as; and smiths and carpenters from 5 to 6 as.’25
In Murshidabad, in 1872–3 (daily rates of wages): ‘labourers,
including silk spinners 2 to 2.5 as; women 1.5 as; boys 1 to 1.5
as; masons 3 to 4 as; carpenters 4 as; smiths 4.75 as.’26 ‘The chief
manufacture of Murshidabad is the winding of silk. In 1857 there
were many filatures belonging to European or native merchants, the
former’s being generally larger. Since then there has been a severe
decline in the industry owing to competition from China and south
of Europe’.27
For Pabna, we have:
For coolies (men) 3 as and for women and boys 1 anna 3 pies; for agricultural
day labourers 2 as 3 pies; bricklayers 5 as; carpenters and smiths 8as.
Unskilled workers when engaged by the month earn from Rs 4 to Rs 5 in
Pabna town; and from Rs 5 to 6 at Sirajganj. The jute factory at Sirajganj
pays: women Rs 3 12 as per month; children Rs 2 8 as per month.28

By 1922, when O’Malley’s Gazetteers was published, the situation

in Pabna had considerably improved, with the establishment of a large
number of jute presses, three hosiery mills, and the revival of cotton
weaving with the help of flying shuttle looms. There were about 8,500
looms in the district, of which 3,000 were flying shuttle looms. Other
industries there were making of earthenware pots, blankets, ropes,
etc. The minimum rate for field labour was 3 to 4 annas with food;
it could go up to 8 annas in the busy season. Labour was imported
not only from neighbouring districts, but also from Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh.
Bengal in the nineteenth century was, however, different from
Bihar in one respect: there was no equivalent of the kamiya, who was
bonded not only for life, but also over generations. Besides Monghyr,
28 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

kamiyas were also to be found in most of the districts of south Bihar.

In Bengal, certainly, people could lose right to land because of debt
and become bonded, but this did not last for more than a few years,
and it generally did not involve the whole family.29

The Indigo Industry and Coal Mining

From now on, by Greater Bengal, I will designate the Bengal
Presidency minus Orissa (present Odisha)—that existed until 1911.
The British introduced two industries into Greater Bengal. One was
the indigo industry and the other coal mining. In some ways, to call
indigo production by planters an industry is a courtesy, because most
of the operations were purely manual. I have not seen any breakdown
of the processing operations involving any special implements. For the
same reason, I have not included the tea industry, especially because
it was an enclave industry.
Indigo had been produced in India from ancient times and had
been traded internationally. But it was not either not produced at
all in Greater Bengal or was produced in small quantities. In Bengal
proper, the industry became the major channel of remitting the profit
of private capitalists and the Company’s servants to Britain, and it
reached its peak in the 1830s. But it was absolutely unprofitable for
the Bengalee peasants and could be produced only with the use of
coercive methods.30 It led to the Indigo Revolt of 1860–1, and as
the government took measures to regulate the actions of planters in
Bengal, it became extinct by 1865.31
The industry then moved to Bihar, which had two attributes
favoured by the planters. One was that the wages there were even
lower than in Bengal. The second was that Bihar had many big
landlords, with practically absolute power over the peasants—who
were often insecure tenants of theirs. The maharaja of Darbhanga was
one of the biggest landlords in India, richer than most of the native
princes. In the territory controlled by him in Darbhanga, Muzafferpur
and Champaran, the indigo industry was a major employer of labour.
In the districts of Patna, Gaya, and Shahabad, the industry was
important as well, but there the planters had acquired a prescriptive
right to the land, and so cultivation was carried out on their own
land. From the 1870s onwards, as the artificially created dyes came on
 Bagchi: The Fate of Labour-Intensive Industries 29

to the market, the industry entered into a difficult stage.32 In spite of

rice, gram, wheat, and indigo all being labour-intensive crops, there
was open unemployment of labour in some districts. For instance,
in Muzafferpur, ‘It is estimated that the supply of labour exceeds
demand by 68 per cent, and there is work for one-third of the female
labouring population after the male population has been satisfied.’33
It is also interesting to note that in some other districts, women
formed an important part of the labour force. In many districts, apart
from spinning cloth, winnowing, and husking rice, women formed
a significant part of the field labour, especially among the lowest
castes such as Musahars and Dosadhs, or among the Kol migrants
from Chhota Nagpur. The indigo industry had a brief revival during
the First World War. Some British scientists tried to give advice to
the planters regarding indigo cultivation, who, however, considered
that advice irrelevant. The Java method of cultivation had already
improved yields and what the Bihar soil needed was superphosphate.
But the planters were unwilling to incur the additional cost.34 Between
that attitude and Gandhi’s Champaran Satyagraha, the indigo industry
died an unlamented death.
Iron was smelted with charcoal in India, and as fuel Indians used
wood, shrubs, and cow dung, not mineral coal. Coal was introduced
as fuel by the British:

The genesis of the coal mining industry goes back to 1774 when Messers
Sumner, Heatly and Redferne took leasehold land from the government,
bordering Birbhum and Panchet districts, promising to sell 10,000 maunds
of coal to the government at an agreed price. But although some coal was
excavated and sent to the government, the project failed because of an
adverse report on its quality.
After this, for a time, the government showed no interest in Bengal
coal.  .  .  . The government attitude changed when the increasing imports of
coal strained the government exchequer and in 1808, the Court of Directors
decided to relocate the ordnance works from Bengal to England in case
Bengal coal could not be obtained.35

‘The government decided to promote the prospecting project

of William Jones, an engineer and gave a loan of Rs 49,000 under
the security of Alexander & Co.’36 The success of the pioneer project
attracted a plethora of competitors. But Alexander & Co., determined
30 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

to preserve its monopoly, took them all to court. Only one firm,
Bell, could open a mine at Chinakuri. Jessop & Co. also opened a
mine in 1824, but closed it down at the behest of Alexander & Co.
The latter firm also deliberately fomented lawlessness in the areas
of operation of its competitors. After 1830, however, a few mines
started emerging—three by Jessop & Co., and two by Rogers & Co.
In 1859, Thomas Oldham, the first superintendent of the
Geological Survey of India, calculated that annual payments to lathials
by the coal companies were almost equal to the payments for general
superintendence.37
‘Figure 3.1 shows that coal production in Bengal increased very
slowly from a little above zero around 1830 to about 2 million tons
in 1890 and then grew fast to reach 15 million tons in 1914.’38
‘Although the lion’s share of the mines was held by British
companies, indigenous coal companies were also in the field. The
Bengal Coal Company set up by Dwarakanath Tagore was the largest
in its time. But generally the mines owned by Indians had small
coal-bearing capacity.’39
‘The industry was saddled with labour problems. In the initial
years labourers came from the tribe of Bauris, who were essentially
cultivators and who would go back to agriculture when there was
a good monsoon. They were accused of absenteeism for imaginary
reasons, and were yet to learn industrial discipline.’40 (It was a common
complaint at the beginning of industrial capitalism everywhere.41)
‘The labour problem was eased once the East Indian Railway
began operating in the region where the coalfields lay.’42 Once the
East Indian Railway began using Bengal coal profitably, other railway
companies followed by the 1880s: Oudh and Rohilkhand Railway,
Tirhoot Railway, Cawnpore-Achnera Railway, Dacca Railway, and
Nalhati Railway. In 1877, domestic coal accounted for 71.87 per cent
of coal consumption by railways, which went up to 97.15 per cent in
1900 and 99.29 per cent in 1914.
‘Though certainly low by international standards, the colliery
wages were higher than in Bihar and United Provinces, the main
sources of colliery labour in later days. Those regions provided Rs
3 to 5 per month for agricultural labour in the 1880–4 period as
against an opportunity of earning Rs 6 to 8 per month.’43 Blanford,
a Geological Survey official writing in 1865, considered the colliery
wage to be high.
 Bagchi: The Fate of Labour-Intensive Industries 31

The Silk,44 Jute, Cotton, and Iron Industries

in Bengal
When it came to the silk industry in Bengal:
Based on data and information from contemporary sources this study
rejects the hypothesis that the silk industry declined during the first half of
the nineteenth century. It rather suggests that both the raw silk branch and
the weaving branch of the industry prospered through the period because
of strong market supports domestically and from Europe. Our estimate is
that the industry employed annually 10,300 persons in sericulture, 54,200
persons in the raw silk branch and 18,550 in the wrought silk branch. The
raw silk branch began to decline in 1870–71 and the wrought silk branch
in 1888–89.45
In the Birbhum district:
In point of its scale and general significance in the economy, the silk industry
was the second major industry in the district, the first being the cotton
industry. However, the silk industry could scarcely make good the loss
that the breakdown of the cotton industry caused to the economy. Cotton
spinners and weavers could not find any employment in the silk industry.
This is due to the basic difference between the organization of the cotton
industry and that of the silk industry. The cotton weavers produced their
commodities at home with implements of their own, while the filature
silk was mainly produced at factories set up by the Company and also by
the private entrepreneurs. The very organization of cotton manufacture
resulted in the fact that the weavers were scattered throughout the district,
while the silk manufacturers were concentrated in a few select regions. A
striking feature of silk manufacture was its geographical concentration in
north-eastern region of the district and the benefits of employment were
entirely confined to this particular region.46
It is not possible to ascertain precisely the number of persons
employed in the silk industry, although the mulberry cultivators,
cocoon rearers, silk-winders, and pykars taken together must have
been a sizable group. The Ganutea filature alone with 1,200 reels (each
usually requiring 31/2 workmen for its operation) employed more than
4,000 reelers, apart from the persons connected with other processes.
At the time Sherwill surveyed the region the industry presumably
had lost its old prosperity. Even then Sherwill estimated that rearing
the worms and gathering the silk gave occupation to one-sixth of the
whole population of the region, i.e. more than 9,500 persons out of
32 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

57,051. Besides, ‘Many of the Hindu inhabitants’ of southern portion

of Duri Maureswar were found to have been ‘engaged in rearing of
silk worms’. The largest of the income generated by the industry went,
as we noted above, to the Company and the private merchants, only
a very small fraction having trickled through to the pykars and the
substantial ryots. The rearers and winders lived on a subsistence level.
It is presumable that despite this pattern of distribution of income,
the silk industry as long as it was active provided some fillip to the
economy of the region of the region of the district.47
Another handicraft industry that went into terminal decline
because of the advent of machine-based processing was the handmade
jute industry.48 Long before the advent of British rule, the spinning of
jute used to be a key support to rural livelihoods in Bengal, engaging
the whole family in labour. It was customary for artisans to keep
bundles of jute fibres hanging from their thatched roof, so that every
member of the family could spin in his/her spare time. For the sake of
variety, three implements were used—dhera, takku, and ghurghuria.
The first process involving dhera was used for weaving coarser
cloth—gun, later called, gunny.49 The second process involving takku
was used to produce finer cloth, called tat, that poor people used as
apparel. The third process involving ghurghuria was used to make
ropes.
Weaving was traditionally done on a contraption that consisted
of five bamboo or wooden spars, 37–40 in. in length. One of them
was hung from a post, another was horizontally secured to two posts
at their top and three others were placed in between them in such
a way that two of them could be used for warping and one for weft.
Ray50 shows that exports of handmade jute articles grew from
around Rs.500,000 between 1835 and 1845 to about Rs.3 million
in the 1850s, reached a peak of Rs.3 million around 1860 and then
dwindled fast to a figure of barely Rs.35,000. More specifically, it
has been shown that from a level of Rs.20,069 in 1828–9, exports of
handmade jute products grew to a peak of Rs.3,007,086 and again
declined to a level of Rs.35,659 during 1890–4.51 On the basis of census
figures of 1881, after deducting employment in the mechanized jute
industry, the employment in the handmade jute industry, including
rope-making was estimated as 27,151.52
Ray53 has separately estimated the decline in Bengal’s cotton
weaving employment. Between 1809–10 and 1850–9, in the
 Bagchi: The Fate of Labour-Intensive Industries 33

cotton textile industry of Bengal, full-time employment, part-time

employment of assistants, and total employment (counting two part-
time employed as equal to one full-time employed) fell by 293,730,
97,194, 220,850, and 563,168, respectively. This estimate is based
only on the number of weavers, excluding the vaster number of
spinners.
Iron had been smelted in India, using charcoal and ready-to-erect
furnaces for a long time.54 There are differing opinions about the
reason for the decline of iron smelting in Bengal: it may have been the
exhaustion of easily available iron ore, or the overdetermining factor
of import of cheap iron goods from abroad. Whatever the reason,
‘the decline of traditional iron smelting had catastrophic effects on
employment. On the basis of data provided by Montgomery Martin
1838 (really Buchanan Hamilton), total employment was estimated as
299,522 around the middle of the eighteenth century. In the middle
of the nineteenth century it had fallen to just 19,596 in crude iron
and 5,186 in refined iron.’55

Salt Industry
The salt industry56 in Bengal inherited by the British was in a highly
developed state. According to the Company’s financial analyst James
Grant, Midnapore produced around 932,000 maunds of salt per
annum during the reign of Mir Jaffer. The industry continued to
prosper during the initial phase of the Company Raj, both in absolute
terms and relative to other contemporary industries. Its production in
Midnapore alone was worth Sicca Rs.8 million in the late eighteenth
century, compared to the turnover of Rs.10 million in Dacca. The
contemporary value of its production in Bengal was Rs.14 million,
well above the mark of Rs.10 million of indigo output. The industry
employed around 28,000 men in Midnapore alone at the beginning
of British rule. But in the second half of the nineteenth century, the
industry was decimated in Bengal. Its workers, with little to subsist
on, suffered a terrible famine.57
The Bengal salt industry enjoyed a comparative advantage over
British salt, in respect of cost and flavour. Salt was produced at costs
ranging from Sicca Rs.58.20 to Sicca Rs.97.73 per 100 maunds in
various agencies in Bengal, as against a c.i.f. price of Sicca Rs.102.97
for Liverpool salt.58
34 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Under the pressure of British salt interests, of three alternatives—a

monopoly, competitive pricing, and administered pricing—the
last was chosen, because under competitive conditions, salt from
other provinces with lower costs would have dominated imports
into Bengal. The pricing policy stipulated in 1836 its administrative
price at the mean value of auction rates in the previous ten years,
so that the resultant price inherited the inefficiency, high dividends,
and overhead costs of the previous regime. It ranged between Sicca
Rs.3.85 and 4.70 per maund, on an average cost of Sicca Rs.0.76 per
maund. This margin of profit on indigenous salt outweighed the duty
obligation on British salt, earmarked at Sicca Rs.3.25 per maund. The
comparative disadvantage of British salt thus was overcompensated
by keeping the price of Bengal salt higher. Further hikes in 1838–44
worsened the condition of the Bengal salt industry.59
Owing to the discriminatory pricing policy, in 1845 imports
surged by 63 per cent. The indigenous salt industry lost 14.55 per
cent of its market during 1835–44. Another 23.31 per cent was lost
in the next ten years. The government suspended salt operations in
24 Parganas in 1848 and in Chittagong in 1852. British salt flooded
the market with 2.55 million maunds per annum during 1855–9,
3.98 million maunds during 1860–4, and 6.04 million maunds during
1865–9 as against the domestic supply of 2.26 million maunds, 0.55
million maunds and 0.08 million maunds, respectively. The industry
limped along until 1898, when it was banned on the ground of
hygiene.
Along the coast of the Bay of Bengal, the salt industry employed
45,000 persons in the beginning of British rule. The skilled labour,
constituting 12 per cent of the labour force, was provided by the
Molungges, the rest being unskilled.60 Up to the 1840s, the salt trade
seems to have been controlled by Bengalee merchants.61
One result of this was that salt, an essential commodity, became
much more expensive than rice, wheat, or gram in Bihar and Bengal
until 1910, when the duty on salt was slashed.

Shipbuilding Industry
Prior to British rule in Bengal, demand for ships was generated for
both defence and mercantile purposes. The Mughal government
 Bagchi: The Fate of Labour-Intensive Industries 35

maintained a flotilla under a naval establishment (the Admiralty)

to resist frequent attacks by pirates and invaders in eastern India.
It guarded a vast coastline across the coast of the subah of Bengal.
Since one area of operation was the building of boats for mercantile
purposes, it provided a strong base for the ship-building industry.62
The government also procured boats from private builders at Dacca,
Hooghly, Baleswar, Murang, and Karibari.
The industry also developed under the patronage of Hindu
landlords at Sripur, Bakla, the Sagar Islands, Dudhali, Chaksri,
and Jahajghata. The Bengal flotilla in the early seventeenth century
consisted of 4,000–5,000 ships similar to the Arab dhows and Chinese
junks. The industry also found a lucrative outlet in the carrying
trade for Bengal products, especially rice, sugar, and cotton textiles,
which were exported to Goa, Malabar, and the Moluccas and Sunda
(Sunada) Islands.63
With the onset of British rule, the industry went into a decline
because both sea trade and state patronage were lost to Indians.
British entrepreneurs, however, helped to revive the industry and
give it a competitive edge. Compared with British ships, Bengal
ships cost less to produce and suffered less wear and tear. Moreover,
there was an acute shortage of ships in the carrying trade during the
Napoleonic wars, 1803–14, which brought a congenial environment
for development. An amendment to the Navigation Acts provided
Bengal ships with all the advantages of British ships. However, once
the shortage was over, and Bengal ships lost their relevance to Britain’s
economic development, the Navigation Acts were so amended that
the industry lost its market totally. Denial of the advantages of British
registration in Bengal, ships on certain lucrative international routes,
and withdrawal of the recognition of lascars as British seamen, were
the most harmful measures that led to a decline again by the middle
of the nineteenth century.64 However, there is little doubt that with
the advent of steamships, the sailing vessels of the earlier era were
doomed.
Before we leave this account, on the basis of Hunter’s Statistical
Accounts of Bengal and O’Malley’s District Gazetteers, certain
generalizations can be made. First, the difference in terms of wages,
both in case of day labourers and skilled labourers such as masons,
carpenters, and blacksmiths, between the districts of Bihar and most
36 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

of the districts of Bengal, increased between the 1870s and 1890s to

the 1910s. Second, lower the wage of the day labourers, more flat was
the wage structure—meaning that the skill premium was also lower.

Notes
1. David Clingingsmith and Jeffrey G. Williamson, ‘De-industrialization in
18th and 19th Century India: Mughal Decline, Climate change and British
Industrial Ascent’, Explorations in Economic History, vol. 45, no. 3, 2008,
pp. 209–34.
2. A.K. Bagchi, ‘Reflections on Patterns of Regional Growth in India during
the Period of British Rule’, Bengal Past and Present, vol. 95, no. 1, 1976,
pp. 247–89; repr. in A.K. Bagchi, Colonialism and Indian Economy,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 13–56. Also see, Nirmal
Sengupta, ‘The Indigenous Irrigation Organization in South Bihar’, The
Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 17, no. 2, 1980, pp. 157–89.
3. See, for example, Susan Wolcott and Gregory Clark, ‘Why Nations
Fail: Managerial Decisions and Performance in Indian Cotton Textiles,
1890–1938’, Journal of Economic History, vol. 59, no. 2, 1999, pp. 397–423;
Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta, ‘Cotton Textiles and the Great
Divergence: Lancashire and Shifting Comparative Advantage, 1600–1850’,
Discussion Paper No. 5183, Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2005;
and Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy, eds, The World of South Asian
Textiles, Leiden: Brill, 2009.
4. Broadberry and Gupta, ‘Cotton Textiles and the Great Divergence’.
5. Susan Wolcott and Gregory Clark, ‘Why Nations Fail: Managerial Decisions
and Performance in Indian Cotton Textiles, 1890–1938’, Journal of
Economic History, vol. 59, no. 2, 1999, pp. 397–423.
6. Gregory Clark, ‘Why isn’t the Whole World Developed? Lessons from the
Cotton Mills’, Journal of Economic History, vol. 47, no. 1, 1987, pp. 141–73.
7. Ibid., p. 141.
8. Angus Maddison, Monitoring the World Economy, Paris: OECD
Development Centre, 1995, Table A1-c.
9. Peter Temin, ‘Labor Scarcity and the Problem of American Industrial
Efficiency in the 1850’s’, The Journal of Economic History, vol. 26, no. 3,
September 1966, pp. 277–98.
10. A.S. Pearse, The Cotton Industry of China and Japan: Being the Report of
the Journey to Japan and China, Manchester: Manchester International
Cotton Federation, 1929.
11. See, in this connection, Beryl M. Le Power (‘Indian Labour Conditions’,
Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. 80, no. 4153, 1932, pp. 763–82),
 Bagchi: The Fate of Labour-Intensive Industries 37
quoted in Chapter 7 of A.K. Bagchi, Private Investment in India 1900–1939,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972, pp. 219–61.
12. Clark, ‘Why isn’t the Whole World Developed?’.
13. Wolcott and Clark, ‘Why Nations Fail’, p. 397.
14. Olwen H. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth Century France, 1750–1789,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974.
15. Robert W. Fogel, The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100:
Europe, America and the Third World, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004.
16. Robert W. Fogel et al., The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human
Development in the Western World since 1700, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011.
17. J. Krishnamurty, ‘De-industrialization in Gangetic Bihar during the
Nineteenth Century: Another Look at the Evidence’, Indian Economic and
Social History Review, vol. 22, no. 4, 1985, pp. 399–416.
18. Indrajit Ray, Bengal Industries and the British Industrial Revolution,
1757–1857, London: Routledge, 2011, p. 84.
19. Bagchi, Private Investment in India, section 7.1, pp. 219–28.
20. R. Chatterjee, ‘Cotton Handloom Manufactures of Bengal, 1870–1921’,
Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 22, no. 25, 1987, pp. 988–97.
21. W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. XI, Districts of Patna
and Saran, London: Trübner & Co., 1877, p. 119.
22. W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. XII, District of Shahabad,
London: Trübner & Co., 1877, p. 244.
23. W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. VIII, Districts of Rajshahi
and Bogra, London: Trübner & Co., 1877, p. 66.
24. L.S.S. O’Malley, Bengal District Gazetteers, Rajshahi, Calcutta: The Bengal
Secretariat Book Depot, 1910, pp. 100–1.
25. Ibid., p. 224.
26. W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. IX: Districts of
Murshidabad and Pabna, London: Trübner & Co., 1877, p. 110.
27. Ibid., p. 148.
28. Ibid., pp. 333–4.
29. Hiranmoy Dhar, ‘Agricultural Servitude in Bengal Presidency around 1800’,
Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 8, no. 30, 1973, pp. 1349–57.
30. John Beames, Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian, London: Chatto and Windus,
1961.
31. Subhas Bhattacharya, ‘The Indigo Revolt of Bengal’, Social Scientist, vol. 5,
no. 12, 1977, pp. 13–23; and Ray, Bengal Industries, p. 135.
32. Rachel Wellhausen and Gautam Mukunda, ‘Aspects of the Political
Economy of Development and Synthetic Biology’, Systems and Synthetic
Biology, vol. 3, 2009, pp. 115–29.
38 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
33. L.S.S. O’Malley, Bengal District Gazetteers, Muzaffarpur, Calcutta: Bengal
Secretariat Book Depot, 1907.
34. Prakash Kumar, ‘Scientific Experiments in British India: Scientists, Indigo
Planters and the State, 1890–1930’, The Indian Economic and Social History
Review, vol. 38, no. 3, 2001, pp. 249–70.
35. Indrajit Ray, The Development of Modern Industries in Bengal:
Re-industrialisation, 1858–1914, London: Routledge, 2018, p. 48.
36. Ibid., p. 49.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., p. 50.
39. Ibid., pp. 53–4.
40. Ibid., p. 56.
41. See, for example, E.P. Thompson, ‘Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial
Capitalism’, in Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture,
London: Merlin Press, pp. 352–403.
42. Ray, Development of Modern Industries, Ray, p. 57.
43. Ibid., p. 64. For an account of how colliery owners used coercive methods,
including occasional violence, on colliery workers and peasants living
in their zamindaris, see, Dietmar Rothermund and D.C. Wadhwa, eds.,
Zamindars, Mines, and Peasants: Studies in the History of an Indian Coalfield
and its Rural Hinterland, New Delhi: Manohar, 1978.
44. Mainly based on Chapter 4 of Indrajit Ray, Bengal Industries and the British
Industrial Revolution, 1757–1857, London: Routledge, 2011; supplemented
by Ranjan Gupta, ‘Birbhum Silk Industry: A Study of its Growth to Decline’,
The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. XVII, no. 2, 1980,
pp. 211–26.
45. Ray, Bengal Industries, p. 128.
46. W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. IV, Districts of Bardwan,
Bankura and Birbhum, London: Trübner & Co., 1877, pp. 376–7.
47. Gupta, ‘Birbhum Silk Industry’, pp. 226–7.
48. Ibid., p. 113.
49. Ibid., p. 114.
50. Ray, Development of Modern Industries, p. 121, Figure 5.3.
51. Ibid., p. 121, Table 5.5.
52. Ibid., p. 123.
53. Ray, Bengal Industries, p. 71, Table 3.11.
54. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ‘Cultural and Social Constraints on Technological
Innovation and Economic Development’, The Indian Economic and Social
History Review, vol. 3, no. 3, 1966, pp. 240–67; Hitesranjan Sanyal, ‘The
Indigenous Iron Industry of Birbhum’, The Indian Economic and Social
History Review, vol. 5, no. 1, 1968, pp. 102–5.
55. Ray, Bengal Industries, p. 91.
 Bagchi: The Fate of Labour-Intensive Industries 39
56. Based solely on Chapter 5 of Indrajit Ray, Bengal Industries and the British
Industrial Revolution, 1757–1857, London: Routledge, 2011.
57. Ibid., p. 133.
58. Ibid., p. 149.
59. Ibid., pp. 156–7.
60. Ibid., pp. 163–7.
61. On their management techniques, see, Sayako Kanda, ‘Family, Caste and
Beyond: The Management Techniques of Bengal Salt Merchants, c.1780–
1840’, paper presented at the International Economic History Congress,
21–5 August 2006, Helsinki.
62. This account in again based on Chapter 6 of Indrajit Ray, Bengal Industries
and the British Industrial Revolution, 1757–1857, London: Routledge, 2011.
63. Ray, Bengal Industries, pp. 172–3.
64. Ibid., p. 202.

References
Bagchi, A.K., Private Investment in India 1900–1939, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1972.
———,  Colonialism and Indian Economy, New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2010.
———,  ‘Reflections on Patterns of Regional Growth in India during the Period
of British Rule’, Bengal Past and Present, vol. 95, no. 1, 1976, pp. 247–89;
repr. in A.K. Bagchi, Colonialism and Indian Economy, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2010, pp. 13–56.
———,  ‘A Reply’ (to Marika Vicziany), The Indian Economic and Social History
Review, vol. 16, no. 2, 1979, pp. 147–61.
———,  ‘Introduction’, in Colonialism and Indian Economy, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2010, pp. xv–lii.
Beames, John, Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian, London: Chatto and Windus, 1961.
Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi, ‘Cultural and Social Constraints on Technological
Innovation and Economic Development’, The Indian Economic and Social
History Review, vol. 3, no. 3, 1966, pp. 240–67.
Bhattacharya, Subhas, ‘The Indigo Revolt of Bengal’, Social Scientist, vol. 5,
no. 12, 1977, pp. 13–23.
Broadberry, Stephen and Bishnupriya Gupta, ‘Cotton Textiles and the Great
Divergence: Lancashire and Shifting Comparative Advantage, 1600–1850’,
Discussion Paper No. 5183, Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2005.
Chakravarty, L., ‘Emergence of an Industrial Labour Force in a Dual Economy:
British India, 1880–1920’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review,
vol. 15, no. 3, 1978, pp. 249–327.
40 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Chatterjee, R., ‘Cotton Handloom Manufactures of Bengal, 1870–1921’, Economic
and Political Weekly, vol. 22, no. 25, 1987, pp. 988–97.
Clark, Gregory, ‘Why isn’t the Whole World Developed? Lessons from the
Cotton Mills’, Journal of Economic History, vol. 47, no. 1, 1987, pp. 141–73.
Clingingsmith, David and Jeffrey G. Williamson, ‘De-industrialization in 18th
and 19th Century India: Mughal Decline, Climate Change and British
Industrial Ascent’, Explorations in Economic History, vol. 45, no. 3, 2008,
pp. 209–34.
Collin, E.W., Report on the Existing Arts and Industries of Bengal, Calcutta:
Bengal Secretariat Press, 1890.
Dhar, Hiranmoy, ‘Agricultural Servitude in Bengal Presidency around 1800’,
Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 8, no. 30, 1973, pp. 1349–57.
Fogel, Robert W., The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100:
Europe, America and the Third World, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004.
Fogel, Robert W. et al., The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human
Development in the Western World since 1700, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011.
Gupta, G.N., A Survey of the Industries and Resources of Eastern Bengal and
Assam for 1907–8, Shillong: Printed at the Eastern Bengal and Assam
Secretariat Office, 1908.
Hufton, Olwen H., The Poor of Eighteenth Century France, 1750–1789, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1974.
Hunter, W.W., A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. IV, Districts of Bardwan,
Bankura and Birbhum, London: Trübner & Co., 1877.
———,  A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. V: Districts of Dacca, Bakarganj,
Faridpur and Maimansingh, London Trübner & Co., 1877.
———,  A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. VII: Districts of Maldah, Rangpur
and Dinajpur, London: Trübner & Co., 1877.
———,  A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. VIII, Districts of Rajshahi and Bogra,
London: Trübner & Co., 1877
———,  A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. IX: Districts of Murshidabad and
Pabna, London: Trübner & Co., 1877.
———,  A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. XI, Districts of Patna and Saran,
London: Trübner & Co., 1877.
———,  A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. XII, District of Shahabad, London:
Trübner & Co., 1877.
———,  A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. XV: Districts of Monghyr and Purniah,
London: Trübner & Co., 1877.
Jack, J.C., Bengal District Gazetteers, Bakarganj, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat
Book Depot, 1918.
 Bagchi: The Fate of Labour-Intensive Industries 41
Kanda, Sayako, ‘Family, Caste and Beyond: The Management Techniques of
Bengal Salt Merchants, c.1780–1840’, paper presented at the International
Economic History Congress, 21–5 August 2006, Helsinki.
Karim, Abdul, Dacca: The Mughal Capital, Dacca: The Asiatic Society of
Pakistan, 1964.
Krishnamurty, J., ‘De-industrialization in Gangetic Bihar during the Nineteenth
Century: Another Look at the Evidence’, Indian Economic and Social History
Review, vol. 22, no. 4, 1985, pp. 399–416.
Krishnamurty, Sunanda, ‘Real Wages of Agricultural Labourers in the Bombay
Deccan 1874–1922’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review,
vol. 24, no. 1, 1987, pp. 81–98.
Kumar, Prakash, ‘Scientific Experiments in British India: Scientists, Indigo
Planters and the State, 1890–1930’, The Indian Economic and Social History
Review, vol. 38, no. 3, 2001, pp. 249–70.
Macpherson, W.J., The Economic Development of Japan, London: Macmillan,
1987.
Maddison, Angus, Monitoring the World Economy, Paris: OECD Development
Centre, 1995.
Mukerji, N.G., A Report on the Silk Fabrics of Bengal, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat
Press, 1903.
O’Malley, L.S.S., Bengal District Gazetteers, Shahabad, Calcutta: Bengal
Secretariat Book Depot, 1906.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Gaya, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book
Depot, 1906.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Muzaffarpur, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat
Book Depot, 1907.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Patna, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book
Depot, 1907.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Champaran, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat
Book Depot, 1907.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Bankura, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book
Depot, 1908.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Howrah, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book
Depot, 1909.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Monghyr, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book
Depot, 1909.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Rajshahi, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book
Depot, 1910.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Birbhum, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book
Depot, 1910.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Purnia, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book
Depot, 1910.
42 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Santal Parganas, Calcutta: Bengal Book
Depot, 1910.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Midnapore, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book
Depot, 1911.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers: Hooghly, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book
Depot, 1912.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers: Jessore, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book
Depot, 1912.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, 24 Parganas, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat
Book Depot, 1914.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Murshidabad, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat
Book Depot, 1914.
———,  Bengal District Gazetteers, Pabna, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book
Depot, 1923.
Pearse, A.S., The Cotton Industry of China and Japan: Being the Report of the
Journey to Japan and China, Manchester: Manchester International Cotton
Federation, 1929.
Piore, Michael J. and Charles F. Sabel., The Second Industrial Divide: The
Possibilities of Prosperity, New York: Basic Books, 1984.
Power, Beryl M. Le, ‘Indian Labour Conditions’, Journal of the Royal Society of
Arts, vol. 80, no. 4153, 1932, pp. 763–82.
Raychaudhuri, Tapan, 1985, ‘The Idea of Mass Poverty in South Asia: A Hypo-
thesis’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 20, no. 18, pp. 801–906.
Ray, Indrajit, Bengal Industries and the British Industrial Revolution, 1757–1857,
London: Routledge, 2011.
Ray, Indrajit, The Development of Modern Industries in Bengal: Re-industrialisation,
1858–1914, London: Routledge, 2018.
Riello, Giorgio and Tirthankar Roy, eds., The World of South Asian Textiles,
Leiden: Brill, 2009.
Rothermund, Dietmar and D.C. Wadhwa, eds., Zamindars, Mines, and Peasants:
Studies in the History of an Indian Coalfield and its Rural Hinterland, New
Delhi: Manohar, 1978.
Sanyal, Hitesranjan, ‘The Indigenous Iron Industry of Birbhum’, The Indian
Economic and Social History Review, vol. 5, no. 1, 1968, pp. 102–5.
Sengupta, Nirmal, ‘The Indigenous Irrigation Organization in South Bihar’, The
Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 17, no. 2, 1980, pp. 157–89.
Temin, Peter, ‘Labor Scarcity and the Problem of American Industrial Efficiency
in the 1850’s’, The Journal of Economic History, vol. 26, no. 3, September
1966, pp. 277–98.
Thompson, E.P., Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture,
London: Merlin Press, 1991.
———,  ‘Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’, Customs in Common:
Studies in Traditional Popular Culture, London: Merlin Press, pp. 352–403.
 Bagchi: The Fate of Labour-Intensive Industries 43
Wellhausen, Rachel and Gautam Mukunda, ‘Aspects of the Political Economy
of Development and Synthetic Biology’, Systems and Synthetic Biology,
vol. 3, 2009, pp. 115–29.
Wolcott, Susan and Gregory Clark, ‘Why Nations Fail: Managerial Decisions
and Performance in Indian Cotton Textiles, 1890–1938’, Journal of Economic
History, vol. 59, no. 2, 1999, pp. 397–423.
Yamazawa, Ippei, Economic Development and Foreign Trade: The Japanese Model,
Honolulu, Hawaii: East-West Center, 1990.
 3

Landed Proprietorship and the

Evolution of Land Legislation
in Colonial Bengal

Nariaki Nakazato

T
he permanent settlement of 1793, the heart of the
Cornwallis reforms which laid a firm foundation for British
colonial rule in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, conferred landed
proprietorship upon several upper categories of landholders—namely,
the zamindars, independent talukdars and others (hereafter the
zamindars)—and thus provided a fundamental legal framework
for colonial society to shape itself; or as Cornwallis himself put
it,‘there flowed from a system of landed property a natural ordering
of society into ranks and classes  .  .  .  for preserving order in civil
society’.1 Setting aside the presumptions that colonial Bengal could
actually be characterized as a ‘natural’ ordering or a ‘civil’ society, the
governor-general’s words certainly had a grain of truth in that they
foresaw the pivotal role which private landed property would play,
even if in a considerably different manner from the case of Europe.
One important feature of the Permanent Settlement that tends to
be overlooked is its longevity. It survived in Bengal for no less than
a century and a half up to the 1950s, and during that period exerted
wide and deep influence in every nook and cranny of Bengali society,
differentiating its people into social classes based on their legal status
vis-à-vis landed proprietorship. And as the colonial order developed,
 Nakazato: Landed Proprietorship and the Evolution 45

property rights in land began to perform the function of a social axis

around which diverse activities, economic as well as cultural and
political, grew in importance and interacted. It is no wonder that
the affluent members of the colonial elite would soon regard landed
proprietorship as if it were a constitutional right. Rather than wishful
thinking on the part of some Anglicized elite, such a perception
should probably be regarded as somewhat faithfully reflecting the
social realities surrounding it. If such is the case, the establishment
of landed proprietorship and its historical consequences should be
subjected to critical study from a wide variety of viewpoints.
One can view the advocates of private property as a case of
applying or grafting the political and economic ideology of modern
Europe, at least the Whiggish one, to the colonial context in Asia, and
stress the historical irony of Cornwallis and his associates aiming to
create an enterprising landed proprietor on the model of the British
gentleman farmer, but ultimately fostering a parasitic landed class
sitting atop a highly involuted colonial land-system.2 On the other
hand, one may choose the more positivistic approach of economic
history, enquiring into many facets of the actual operation of the
Permanent Settlement in rural Bengal.3 This latter approach will be
taken in the present chapter, barring one respect. That is, we will
draw more on the research findings to date in the fields of legal and
institutional history than on economic history per se.
Here we will discuss how landed proprietorship stood in relation
to the other landed interests and to the sovereignty of the colonial
state, and conclude by briefly sketching out the way colonial land
code evolved in interaction with indigenous economic and social
forces. In doing this, it is hoped, given the axial functions of private
property in organizing colonial society, our legal and institutional
approach may help see through the surface into the society’s skeletal
structure, like an X-ray photograph, and bring its basic characteristics
into relief in a somewhat different way than the economic historian
probably would.4

II
The Permanent Settlement conferred upon the zamindars the right
to ‘transfer to whomsoever they may think proper, by sale, gift or
46 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

otherwise, their proprietary rights in the whole or any portions of

their respective estates, without applying to Government for its
sanction to the transfer.  .  .  .’5 During the nineteenth century both
Indian intellectuals and British high officials alike ordinarily saw
this conferral as ‘an absolute right of proprietorship in the soil’.6
The stress laid by them on the ‘absolute’ character of the new right
no doubt echoed the modern European idea of private property
rights. In Europe in general, the right to property grew with the
rise of bourgeois civil society in early modern times and came to
be counted among fundamental human rights, or natural rights, by
Enlightenment thinkers of the eighteenth century.7 It was considered
by them to be a personal, exclusive, and absolute right. In France,
for example, private property was declared ‘inviolable’ and ‘sacred’
by the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizens.
As to colonial Bengal, however, there are ample grounds for doubt
whether the zamindars’ proprietary rights in land were congruent
with those of French farmers or English landlords of the eighteenth
century, and therefore whether the former was ‘absolute’ in the same
sense as the latter.8 To be sure, as is apparent from the above quotation,
Cornwallis’s proprietary right did share one essential feature of private
property—freedom to transfer—with its European counterparts; but it
appears to have differed from them in a few other significant respects.
One important aspect of the Permanent Settlement is that
Cornwallis conferred upon the zamindars exclusive proprietary rights
with respect to every kind of land.9 It was, so to speak, a blanket
deal concluded between the colonial authorities and a few privileged
land-holding classes. Under this system, in addition to cultivated land
and homesteads which were let out to the raiyats, all the remaining
varieties of land—pasture, forest, wasteland, marketplaces, ferries,
roads, rivers, lakes and marshes, mines, for example—were also
declared to be the private property of the zamindars, in disregard
of the interests held in them by other classes. That is to say, the
Permanent Settlement had the effect of ‘effacing’ all the rights to land
in existence on the zamindar’s estate at the time of its promulgation.10
Not only the raiyat’s customary right to his holdings, but also all the
intermediate tenures existing between the zamindari and the raiyati
rights were rendered legally null and void. The customary right of
the raiyats was supposed to be assured by Regulation VIII, which
 Nakazato: Landed Proprietorship and the Evolution 47

provided that the zamindar should issue his raiyat with a written
deed (patta, pottah) specifically stating ‘the rents to be paid  .  .  .  by
whatever rule or custom they may be regulated’ and outlined a few
other important terms of contract;11 but these provisions were ignored
by the zamindars with impunity and turned out to be ‘a complete
failure’.12
The undifferentiated and all-pervasive character of the zamindar’s
landed proprietorship gave rise to a series of problems, beginning
with the irony of the colonial state itself encountering difficulties
in claiming land for such public purposes as transportation and
irrigation. In response, the government framed a regulation in 1824
regarding the acquisition of land and pushed forward a policy of
placing major roadways, for example, under its control.13 Nevertheless
reports on Survey and Settlement Operations indicate that this
problem continued to vex the government well into the twentieth
century. In one rather extreme case, a group of landlords headed
by a powerful zamindar of Faridpur were reported to have asserted
proprietorship over Jessore Road, a highway connecting Calcutta
and Dacca.14
If such was the case with the colonial administration, it is not
difficult to imagine how rural society was afflicted by the sudden
creation of ‘an absolute right of proprietorship in the soil’. To be
sure, the most serious problem caused by the Permanent Settlement
was the effacing of the customary rights of peasants regarding their
small holdings. However, in order to paint a comprehensive picture
of peasant status under the Cornwallis system, it is necessary to take
into serious consideration another set of problems which goes beyond
the limits of the peasant holdings. The Permanent Settlement denied
not only their interests in their holdings but also their traditional
rights of access to various useful land and water resources of various
types in their villages and their environs.
According to the research done to date on pre-capitalist peasant
society, such land as pasture, forest, wasteland, as well as rivers
and lakes, were often put into use as ‘commons’, in which the local
peasantry enjoyed the customary right to enter to gather firewood,
cut thatching grass, graze cattle, fish, maintain irrigation systems, and
so forth without payment in accordance with a set of rules agreed
by the whole community. It was this type of communal system that
48 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

played such an important role in supporting production process on

small individual peasant family holdings, as well as in organizing
those households into a sustainable community. In the case of Bengal,
while there is little direct evidence that such a communal system
existed in pre-colonial times, official records of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century contain several cases in which raiyats
asserted their customary rights to cut wood in forest owned by their
zamindars and to catch fish in the zamindar’s fishery, examples which
should be interpreted as the last surviving relics of communal rights
enjoyed in earlier times.
Viewed from this perspective, the Permanent Settlement appears
as a radical reform officially turning the peasant ‘commons’, along
with their holdings and homesteads, into the private property of the
zamindars, who exercised absolute right to the total exclusion of
former customary rights and interests. Add to this land for public
purposes, such as roads, marketplaces, ferries, etc., and one gets an
overall picture of the economic and social circumstances in which
the peasantry found itself after 1793. They had little alternative but
to depend upon zamindars in almost every aspect of social and
economic life. By contrast, the zamindars reaped a handsome profit
from their ‘absolute’ right by reclaiming pasture, forest and wasteland
for agricultural production, establishing fisheries (jalkar) in rivers
and lakes, selling timber and other forest products, opening new
marketplaces (hat, bazaar, and ganj), and excavating coal. Then at
the turn of the century when such free and disorderly reclamation
movement reached its natural limits, the peasantry came to be
confronted with more serious problems, like an acute shortage of
pasture.
Of course, peasants’ customary rights were not as weak and infirm
as to be effaced with a stroke of the foreign ruler’s pen. Certain legal
steps would be taken by the colonial authorities during the latter
half of the nineteenth century to restore them in part. Nevertheless,
it is no exaggeration to state that the legal framework set up by the
Permanent Settlement, which empowered the zamindar to sit vis-à-vis
his raiyats as if he were the absolute lord of the land, served
to preserve pre-modern social relations and mentality in rural
Bengal for 150 years to come, as big zamindars continued to exer-
cise direct control over the ‘person’ of their raiyats even into the
 Nakazato: Landed Proprietorship and the Evolution 49

twentieth century by imposing such illegal cesses (abwabs) as

marriage fees and forced labour (begar).
Landed proprietorship in colonial Bengal was certainly an
‘absolute’ right if the adjective ‘absolute’ may be taken to mean
‘absolved of ’ all other legal claims to land made by various social
classes populating eighteenth-century Bengal. Yet, no matter how it
towered high above the ruins of other landed interests, there is no
denying that this ‘absolute’ right was an odd, artificial phenomenon
for the kind of developed agrarian society, which arguably, had
already reached its early modern stage, organized into an intricate
social system. Therefore, some form of readjustment was inevitable,
and it did not take long for the British to realize that inevitability. But
before addressing this question, we would do better to describe the
relationship of this ‘absolute’ right to the sovereignty of the colonial
state.
III
Since the zamindars were conferred landed proprietorship subject
to the payment of land revenue to the government, it was the
imperatives of the land revenue administration which set limits on
their proprietary rights. In this respect, one might as well enquire
the historical and social nature of such revenue. At first glance,
it seems like a property tax, since it was levied on the private
landowners by the state according to modern law; but when one
takes a closer look at the exceedingly high rate of assessment, which
the British colonial government had basically inherited from the
nawabi administration, one cannot help but wonder if it was rather
akin to feudal tribute arbitrarily fixed by a despotic monarch. Such
ambiguous character of land revenue left its indelible marks on the
peculiarly twisted relationship the Bengal zamindars formed with
the colonial sovereignty.
Since in colonial finance, land revenue remained the most
important source of annual revenue until the mid-nineteenth century,
it was only natural for the British authorities to take special care to
subject payers of land revenue to state power. Despite the general
understanding that the zamindars, as private owners of land, were
free to dispose of their estates in whatever manner they chose, their
landed proprietorship was in actuality tightly tied and subjected to
50 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the state’s revenue-collection apparatus by two rather contrasting

methods: coercion under sale laws and protection through the Court
of Wards system.
According to John Shore’s estimate, the gross produce of land
was divided between the state, the zamindars, and the raiyats in the
ratio of 45, 15 and 40, respectively.15 Aside from the accuracy of these
figures, an assessment rate of somewhere around 45 per cent of gross
produce and 75 per cent of the zamindars’ rent collection from the
raiyats was so burdensome that many zamindars defaulted in their
payment to the state and were subjected to the public sale of their
estates under strict sale laws.
Sale laws stipulated that when a zamindar failed to pay a part or
the whole of land revenue by the last day fixed for payment, his estate
was to be put up for public auction to realize the arrears, and that no
excuses for his failure were to be accepted.16 Such sales usually took
place within the first or second month after the end of the year in
which payment was due. There are two features of this system that
are particularly relevant for the discussion at hand.
First, it should be pointed out that the public sale for recovery
of arrears was new to Bengal society. During the Mughal period the
defaulters were occasionally confined, but the right to their estates
was left untouched. It was the introduction of saleable property rights,
or what comes to the same thing, the transformation of a social class
similar to feudal lords into private landed proprietors, that made
this innovation possible.17 It is interesting to note that, according
to the revenue authorities, the modern method of sale laws proved
far better in terms of collection efficiency than the older threat of
imprisonment, because ‘the fear of losing their estates  .  .  .  would
operate more powerfully with the zamindars than any considerations
of personal disgrace.’18 According to the sale laws, the collector
was authorized, just as his counterpart during the nawabi period,
to imprison the defaulting zamindar without due process;19 but,
in reality, there was little need for recourse to such disagreeable
measures. Zamindars’ landed property was securely bound to the
revenue-collection mechanism by the modern device of public sales.
Their right to enjoy the exclusive possession of land was coupled with
the fear of being stripped of it within one year at most after going
into default.
 Nakazato: Landed Proprietorship and the Evolution 51

Our second feature concerns the right to lodge an appeal to a

higher authority which had been conceded to defaulters in the 1793
regulation, but was rescinded the following year, most probably in
order to avoid delay and litigation. Here, the principle of due process
of law was easily diverted with regard to a supposedly important legal
right of ownership.
The sale laws were enforced with great efficiency, causing
zamindari estates to change hands at a very frequent pace, particularly
during the first few decades.20 Besides the problem of over-assessment,
there were other contributory factors working behind such drastic
turnover. The management of the estates had been thrown into
confusion due to the political turmoil that had accompanied
colonization, while the government seems to have pursued a policy
of dividing several large estates for the apparent reason of removing
political threats from the countryside and making estate management
more efficient. The empirical research to date shows that a great part
of the purchasers came from the established landed class, including
neighbouring zamindars and former revenue farmers, rather than
from the new commercial class of Calcutta. Broadly speaking, what
happened was a kind of redistribution at a very high social cost of
the zamindari estates among the same class.
As to the second method of binding the zamindars to the revenue-
collecting mechanism, the colonial state created the Court of Wards
with the aim of saving a few categories of ‘sick’ estates from extinction.
Needless to say, the function of the Court was in danger of colliding
with one of the basic principles of the Permanent Settlement, namely,
free transfer of landed property on the market to purchasers best
qualified to develop Bengal agriculture. It is interesting to note that
such a contradictory institution was conceived almost simultaneously
with the Permanent Settlement itself and played a significant role in
stabilizing the Settlement system throughout the colonial period.21
It was Phillip Francis, an ardent advocate of the Settlement,
who first emphasized the need for a Court of Wards, while John
Shore dwelt upon his own plan in his minute of 18 June 1789. The
Governor-General and Council passed rules in 1791, in conformity
with which Regulation X of 1793 was enacted.22
The role assigned to the Court was to place under its direct manage-
ment the zamindari estates which had come into the possession of
52 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

what it deemed ‘disqualified’ proprietors and prevent them from

breaking up or going to public sale. At first, four grounds existed on
which the Court was authorized to declare a zamindar disqualified
and assume management of his/her estate: in case where the owner
was (i) a female, (ii) a minor, (iii) suffering from ‘lunacy, idiotism,
or other disqualifying natural defects or infirmity’, and (iv) subject
to ‘contumacy or notorious profligacy of character’. 23 A Wards’
Institution was established in Calcutta to bring minor proprietors of
important estates together to give them an education suitable to their
rank and qualify them for the future management of their estates.
The fourth ground, which was found susceptible to flagrant abuses,
was rescinded in 1796.
Extensive reform of the Court of Wards system was implemented
during the 1870s. Under the new system five grounds for takeover
were given: (i) females, (ii) minors, (iii) persons of unsound mind,
(iv) persons of physical defects or infirmities, (v) ‘persons as to
whom the Court has declared, on their own application, that they are
disqualified, and that it is expedient in the public interest that their
estates should be managed by the Court’.24 The Wards’ Institution
was closed down in 1881, marking the end of government policy of
directly interfering in the private life of zamindars. The responsibility
for educating wards fell on the collector, who began to exercise
governmental influence in more covert ways. Minors were allowed
to live with their mothers and other relatives in their home villages
and to go to local schools.25 The fifth ground for disqualification,
takeover by application, was in most cases invoked to save heavily
indebted proprietors, those same zamindars the architects of the
Permanent Settlement would have desired to go bankrupt and quit
the zamindari business altogether. At the same time, the Court was
granted the freedom to reject the assumption of estates which it
judged beyond rehabilitation.
Official reports suggest that as the Permanent Settlement gained
stability, priorities in Court policy gradually shifted from the
protection of government revenue to the benefit of the proprietors.26
Colonial officials appear to have been of the view that the Court of
Wards grew into an institution practising benevolent paternalism; yet
such an opinion was just one aspect of complex reality. The crux of
the Court of Wards system lay in enabling the government to exercise
 Nakazato: Landed Proprietorship and the Evolution 53

a wide range of discretion to intervene in and adjust the operation

of the Permanent Settlement, which had in theory been left to the
self-regulating market mechanism. The Court had been empowered
to decide which estates it should take over from among many sick
estates and, how many years it would manage the ones chosen. This
function was certainly paternalistic, but also selective. And since
the Permanent Settlement was not merely a system for financing
the colonial state but also the mainstay of the whole configuration of
the colonial regime in Bengal, the Court’s administration inevitably
took on political character. In fact, the Bengal Wards’ Manual made
no secret of this when plainly stipulating: ‘Ordinarily protection
may be given on political and semi-political grounds to families,
(i) whose members have at some time rendered meritorious service
to Government or, (ii) whose preservation is a matter of interest to
the public or Government’.27 Indeed such instances were not rare. For
example, when the Dacca Nawab’s huge estate faced a crisis caused
by serious dissensions among the co-sharers, the government quickly
intervened in the dispute, and after ‘negotiations of much delicacy’,
took over the management of the whole estate.28
The importance of the Court of Wards in land revenue adminis-
tration may be measured by the ratio of the amount of land revenue
due from the estates under its management to the total government
demand. It is reckoned at 18, 5, 23, and 21 per cent for 1885–6,
1915–16, 1935–6, and 1939–40, respectively.29 The figures for the
1930s appear to suggest that during its last phase in Bengal landed
proprietorship had become more and more of an onerous burden
than the mainstay of the region’s colonial system. Besides, it is known
that nearly all of the important estates in the Dacca division came
under the Court’s direct management at least once between the last
quarter of the nineteenth century and Independence.30
In sum, the manner in which the Bengal zamindars who had been
granted landed proprietorship under the Permanent Settlement, were
subordinated to the colonial state was twofold: by direct government
action (sale laws), on the one hand, and the exercise of paternalistic
protection (the Court of Wards), on the other. This subordination
underwent a transformation from a financial stage, where official
concerns were predominated by land revenue collection, to a political
stage, in which the government could afford to take measures to
54 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

protect the colonial system as a whole. In either case, the basic line of
the colonial sovereignty commanding an overwhelmingly dominant
position appears never to have been shaken throughout, barring
possibly the final decade or two. In this sense, it may be remarked that
the zamindari system was a curious mixture of private proprietorship
and strict state supervision.

IV
C.D. Field, an able barrister, judge, and supporter of the tenancy
legislations of the late nineteenth century, once remarked, ‘The
proprietary right conferred by the Permanent Settlement was really an
estate (in the legal sense) of much greater dimensions than an English
fee-simple’.31 As has already been observed, zamindars’ proprietary
rights excluded all other landed interests; and, in this sense, Field is
correct in saying that it was greater than its counterpart in England,
the most developed capitalist nation of the day. On the other hand,
the owners of land, water resources or buildings cannot turn their
property rights over them into economic gains until they enter into
concrete social relations with other social classes by negotiating
some kind of contract. In order to accomplish this, the latter’s rights
must be defined and protected by law to one degree or another in
accordance with social realities. To be sure, the proprietors may
be able to earn fabulous profits by ruthlessly exploiting tenure-
holders, cultivators and workers without rights or protection, but
the transaction costs involved in such exploitation would run too
high in the long run to sustain such a system.32 In fact, one of the
hallmarks of bourgeois society is not merely the legal establishment of
exclusive proprietary rights, but also the relativization, or restriction,
of them vis-à-vis other rights like leasehold or lien so as to guarantee
a smooth operation of property in society.33 The striking feature of
the Permanent Settlement is that it took the British more than two
generations to build a fairly acceptable and stable legal framework
to accommodate proprietary rights and a variety of other rights
held by tenure-holders, cultivators and the like. The remainder of
this chapter will be devoted to sketching out the evolution of land
legislation up to the mid-nineteenth century when the Bengal Rent
Act came into being.
 Nakazato: Landed Proprietorship and the Evolution 55

The enormous number of civil suits filed at local courts all over
Bengal is indicative of the painful process rural society was going
through to adapt itself to the uncalled-for luxury of ‘an estate  .  .  .  of
much greater dimensions than an English fee-simple’. It is also a
sign of the huge transaction costs that the inconsiderate Cornwallis
reforms entailed. In 1813 alone, 1,17,229 civil suits were filed with
district judges, registrars, head native commissioners and mofussil
native commissioners of Bengal proper.34 While this figure includes
every kind of civil suits, it may be reasonably assumed that they were
mainly connected with disputes concerning land and rents.
In dealing with the uncertainties and confusions created in
rural Bengal by the Permanent Settlement, the British resorted to
undisguised, heavy-handed measures out of a foremost concern to
protect and reinforce the administrative machinery for extracting
agrarian surplus from cultivators into government coffers by means
of intermediaries like the zamindars. In order to realize this primary
objective, the government had no qualms about abandoning the
Whiggish ideology underlying the Cornwallis reforms and enacting
Regulation VII in 1799, undoubtedly aiming to intimidate the
raiyats, dependent talukdars, and under-farmers (hereafter raiyats)
to prostrate themselves before the colonial regime and its agents,
the zamindars.35 This cruel law would be remembered as ‘Haptam’
(seventh) in rural Bengal for generations to come.
The 1799 law had been designed to bolster and toughen the
provisions of Regulation XVII of 1793, which had apparently been
added to the other Cornwallis regulations as the prop of the Permanent
Settlement, empowering the zamindars to ‘distrain without sending
notice to any court of justice or any public officer,  .  .  .  the crops and
products of the earth of every description, the grain, cattle, and all
other personal property’ belonging to the raiyats in default of their
payment of rents.36 The coercive system of rent collection framed by
Regulation VII of 1799, when read with Regulations XVII of 1793
and a few others, had the following distinctive features. 37

1. Legalization of the seizure of a civilian’s (raiyat’s) personal

property by a private individual (zamindar).
2. On the grounds of what may be called ‘private distress’, a
zamindar could apply to the police daroga to depute a police
56 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

officer ‘with a view to prevent resistance or other breaks of

peace’. If any resistance were offered, the offender would be
apprehended and prosecuted before the criminal courts for
breach of the peace. In other words, the government openly
took sides with the zamindars in civil disputes over private
contracts to lease out land to the raiyats.
3. Zamindars were authorized, in the presence of a police officer,
not only to force open the outer door of a defaulter’s house,
but also to enter the ‘zenana apartments’, which had been
explicitly forbidden in zamindars’ searches under Regulation
XVII.
4. The provision of Regulation XVII allowing the defaulting
raiyat fifteen days, before the public sale of his personal
property was rescinded by Regulation VII, enabling the
zamindar to offer it for ‘immediate public sale’, to be held,
at the latest, within five days after the attachment.
5. When the amount of rent in arrears exceeded five hundred
rupees, the defaulter was made ‘liable to confinement, after
notice of three days’.
6. Distraint was a summary process, against which the defaulter
could not file an appeal to higher authorities. The only way
open to him was to bring suit before the Dewanny Adawlut.

These provisions were somewhat modified by Regulation V of

1812, which excluded ‘ploughs and other implements of husbandry,
bullocks, and other cattle employed in agriculture  .  .  .’ from distraint
and sale (sec. 14). At the same time, this Regulation contained several
stipulations which made an already difficult situation still worse and
would win the dreaded name of the ‘Panjam’ (fifth) law among the
rural population.
It should be obvious that the harshness of the regulations on rent
collection corresponded to the coercive character of sale laws for
zamindars. While the British introduced the rule of law into Bengal
with the enactment of many statute laws and an extensive network
of police stations and courts of justice, as far as their land code
was concerned, they fell far short of the standards set by European
liberalism, which found its loftiest expression in such documents as
the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizens of 1789.
 Nakazato: Landed Proprietorship and the Evolution 57

The confused, if not anarchic or lawless, state of affairs in

the countryside was put into order step-by-step by the colonial
authorities, by defining various landed interests and incorporating
them into a legal code, positioning those interests in relation to
landed proprietorship at the top, and imposing certain restrictions
on what was regarded as ‘absolute’ right to land. This was a two-way
process, in which the Permanent Settlement underwent a mutation
so as to absorb both the primordial elements and the modernization
of Bengal society, and conversely, where the direction of Bengal’s
social development was influenced by the Permanent Settlement.
Broadly speaking, this process of legal adjustment moved very slowly,
centering on two issues: amending the sale laws and protecting the
customary rights of raiyats.
One of the main assumptions on which the Permanent Settlement
rested was that the market price of zamindari estates could be
maintained at a sufficiently high level for the government to recover
the amount due from defaulting zamindars by the public sale.38 To
support the market value of estates, the colonial authorities considered
it essential to keep them free of all incumbrances. Consequently, the
landed proprietors were prohibited by Regulation XLIV of 1793
from leasing their estates or part of them ‘for a period exceeding
ten years’ (sec. 2). This restriction was applied not only to contracts
with dependent talukdars and under-farmers, but also to the pattas
to be issued to raiyats. The same Regulation contained an important
corollary on the rights of the purchaser of an estate, whereby he was
authorized to take possession of the defaulted estate purchased at the
public sale similarly free of all incumbrances. In other words, when
an estate went on public auction, all the existing landed interests,
including customary raiyati rights, became null and void.39 It was as
a matter of course that unscrupulous zamindars took advantage of
this extraordinary provision to nullify all landed interests, at times
deliberately defaulting on the payment of revenue, then buying back
their estates at auction in fictitious names (benami).
It should be readily apparent that the legal process of readjusting
the relationship between private property in the soil and other types
of landed interests could not move forward without revising the
provisions regarding the avoidance of incumbrances. The question
was whether the other interests in land would only encumber the
58 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

right of ‘absolute’ private property or would be given a legitimate

position in the land code. It should also be clear that this question
would inevitably entail an additional query as to whether customary
raiyati rights should be treated as incumbrances. It was roughly in this
way that land legislation was to unfold in colonial Bengal until the
mid-nineteenth century. Since the actual history of land legislation
is complex and full of technicalities, it would suit our purpose here
to confine the discussion to an overview of the major turning points
chronologically.

Regulation V of 1812
(Land-Revenue Sales Regulation)
Sec. 2 of this Regulation rescinded sec. 2 of Regulation XLIV of 1793,
which had forbidden the zamindars to let lands in farm or to ‘grant
pottahs to ryots or other persons for the cultivation of lands’, ‘for a
term exceeding ten years’, thus legalizing long-term or even perpetual
leases. Read with the following Regulation VIII of 1819, Regulation
V cleared the way for the subinfeudation (subletting) to proceed
forward. This amendment also marked the first legal measure for
resuscitating customary raiyati occupancy rights, no matter in how
minimal and insufficient a manner.

Regulation VIII of 1819

(Patni Taluks Regulation)40
This regulation was enacted to incorporate a particular type of
perpetual lease, called patni, into the Permanent Settlement system.
Created by the zamindar of Burdwan around 1800, patni was a tenure
‘to be held at a rent fixed in perpetuity by the lessee and his heirs
for ever’. The raja of Burdwan granted patni in return for a payment
of handsome premiums (salami), and would bring it to sale in case
of rent falling into arrears. This arrangement enabled the Burdwan
family to overcome acute financial difficulties with income from
salami, as well as to avoid the responsibility of directly managing its
estate. It was as a matter of course that the patni holders (patnidar)
would adopt the Burdwan estate model in creating a sublease, the
darpatni (patni of the second rung). While there are cases in which
 Nakazato: Landed Proprietorship and the Evolution 59

the patni was used as a means to encourage reclamation, on the whole,

it worked as a major legal device to advance subinfeudation, which
led to the formation of an involuted multi-tiered tenurial system
and of a large swarm of leisured classes dependent upon it. Besides,
subinfeudation was not necessarily a new phenomenon in Bengal,
for the various landed interests, which existed in the eighteenth
century to be ‘effaced’ by the Permanent Settlement, appear to have
been revived and realigned under the auspices of the patni system.
Although the house of Burdwan started out granting patni in
open violation of Regulation XLIV of 1793, the colonial government
chose to look the other way and accept the practice ex post facto. It
probably had no choice but to tolerate a powerful zamindar’s neglect
of the rule of law in order to maintain a smooth flow of agricultural
surplus from the countryside to the government’s coffer.
Special legal care was taken to ensure that the complex patni
system functioned smoothly and soundly. The Patni Regulation
authorized the zamindars and the holders of the patni tenures of
various grades to recover rent in arrears by summary proceedings
when their subtenants defaulted. Moreover, in such a case the patni
taluk in question was to be sold ‘free of all incumbrances’ that may
have accrued by act of the defaulter, with the exception of bona fide
engagements with raiyats (sec. 11). The regulation was equipped
with strong and extraordinary provisions resembling those of the
sale laws, to regulate the legal disputes arising among the zamindars
and holders of various tenures. It may therefore be said that in
terms both of procedural rules and the substance of tenurial rights,
the patni system can be seen as a ‘mini’-Permanent Settlement. The
principles of the Permanent Settlement had now permeated from the
level of the zamindars into the levels of intermediate tenure-holders,
forming a similar order of legal relationships between landed property
and intermediate tenures. Another way of putting it would be that
the land-system of Bengal was penetrated by the colonial state’s
prerogative regarding revenue demand.

Regulation XI of 182241
Within this major amendment to the sale laws, several provisions
making exceptions to the avoidance of incumbrances attract
60 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

our attention. Sections 32 and 33 stipulate that ‘a khoodkhasht,

kudeemeeryot, or resident and hereditary cultivator, having a
prescriptive right of occupancy’, was exempted from the rule, and
was not to be ejected by an auction-purchaser, although his rent
might be enhanced under certain conditions. In other words, the
prescriptive rights of ‘resident and hereditary cultivators’ became
protected interests under this technical amendment. ‘[B]onâ-fide
leases of ground for the erection of dwelling houses, or buildings,
or for offices thereunto belonging, or for gardens, tanks, canals,
watercourses, or the like purposes’ formed another category of landed
interests exempted from incumbrance avoidance (sec. 30).

Acts XII of 1841 and I of 1845

(Land-Revenue Sales Acts)42
These twin acts were enacted to determine the general principles
by which sales of land for recovery of arrears of revenue were to be
regulated. It was Act XII of 1841 that introduced the famous ‘sunset’
rule. The same act made the following exceptions to incumbrance
avoidance.
1. Istimrari or mukarrari tenures held at a fixed rent for more
than twelve years before the Permanent Settlement.
2. Tenures existing at the time of the Decennial Settlement, but
not proved to be liable to increase of assessment.
3. Lands held by khudkasht or kadimi raiyats having rights of
occupancy at fixed rents, or at rents assessable according to
fixed rules.
4. Lands held under bonâ-fidel eases at fair rents, temporary
or perpetual, for the erection of dwelling-houses or
manufactories, or for mines, gardens, tanks, canals, places
of worship, burying grounds, clearing of jungle, or the like
beneficial purposes.
5. Farms granted in good faith at fair rents and for specified
areas, for terms not exceeding twenty years under written
leases.
As the Permanent Settlement gradually gained systemic stability,
the colonial power seemed to have found enough leeway to mitigate
the harshness of the public sale system.
 Nakazato: Landed Proprietorship and the Evolution 61

Act XI of 1859
(Land-Revenue Sales Act)43
While retaining the basic principles established by the Act of 1841,
this sale law added several new provisions to furnish protection to
new interests which had appeared since the early 1840s.
To begin with, it afforded security to persons who had liens
upon the estates put up for public sale, indicating an attempt to
coordinate the legal relations between state sovereignty, property, and
chose in action (a credit). Second, it provided absentee landholders
with facilities in guarding against the accidental sale of their estates.
This provision was criticized for encouraging absenteeism. Next, it
provided for the voluntary registration of dependent taluks existing
at the time of the Permanent Settlement and under-tenures created
since the Settlement, to protect the growing class of intermediate
tenure-holders, an experiment that turned out to be a comparative
failure, partly attributable to the diminishing number of public sales.
Finally, it extended to plantations protection against the avoidance
by public sales, a concession to the long time demands of indigo and
sugar planters in Jessore and other districts.

Act X of 1859 (Bengal Rent Act)44

The British rulers had declared in 1793 that they retained the right
to enact laws necessary for the protection and welfare of raiyats and
other cultivators of the soil.45 A few attempts had been made since that
time to keep their word, but none hadled to a full-scale commitment.
Act X of 1859 was the first comprehensive legislation to authorize,
define and protect the rights of raiyats. Governmental deliberations
had started in 1855 with the rather narrow objective of redressing
the peasants’ deep grievances against the ‘Haptam’ and ‘Panjam’ laws.
But when passed by the Legislative Council four years later, the Act
had grown into a voluminous bill consisting of 168 sections and a
schedule. Not merely consolidating scattered provisions of the past
into one piece of legislation, but also introducing new principles, the
Act set the baseline for the development of agrarian legislation in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
The system of distraint and summary sale which had triggered
the whole process of legislation, was retained in the Rent Act, but
62 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

was considerably curtailed. Distraint was now not to be implemented

‘for any arrear which has been due for a longer period than one
year’; and cultivators who had given security were exempted from
it (sec. 112). At the same time, the power of zamindars to compel
‘the attendance of their tenants for the adjustment of their rents or
for any other purpose’ was withdrawn. They were also prohibited
from ‘adopting any means of compulsion for enforcing payment of
the rents’ (sec. 11).
The most significant of the Act’s 168 provisions were those
concerning the right of occupancy, which had intermittently been
taken up for discussion since the late eighteenth century, but had
not yet found a place deserving its importance in the land code. The
Act divided raiyats into four classes—raiyats holding at fixed rates of
rent, raiyats having right of occupancy, but not holding at fixed rates,
non-occupancy raiyats,and under-raiyats—and defined the right of
occupancy as follows (sec. 6):

Every raiyat who has cultivated or held land for a period of twelve years has
a right of occupancy in the land so cultivated or held by him, whether it be
held under patta or not, so long as he pays the rent payable on account of
the same; but this rule does not apply to khamar, nijjot or sir land belonging
to the proprietor of the estate or tenure and let by him on lease for a term
or year by year, nor (as respects the actual cultivator) to lands sublet for a
term or year by year by a raiyat having a right of occupancy.
The holding of the father or other person from whom a raiyat inherits
shall be deemed to be the holding of the raiyat within the meaning of this
section.

A twelve-year rule was introduced, and the occupancy raiyats

were not only afforded legal protection, but also granted the right to
sublet their holdings. Khamar, nijjot or sir land—namely, land under
the landholder’s direct possession—was excluded from the rule, a
move that would have grave implications for the future. Moreover,
the Act was silent about the issue of the transferability of occupancy
holdings. As to the rates of rent, occupancy raiyats were entitled to
pay rent ‘at fair and equitable rates’ (sec. 5), a rather vague provision
compared to the clear provision empowering the zamindars to
enhance rent payable by occupancy raiyats on three specific grounds,
including the increased value of the produce of land (sec. 17).
 Nakazato: Landed Proprietorship and the Evolution 63

The Bengal Rent Act was a mixed blessing for the peasantry, while
the zamindars took advantage of the vagueness of some provisions
to defeat the major objective of protecting raiyati rights. Compelled
virtually to abandon it, the government would pass another pro-
peasant act, the Bengal Tenancy Act, in 1885. Nevertheless it is
noteworthy that the land code, the legal institution supporting
the Permanent Settlement system, had finally reached the level of
cultivators in incorporating a considerable part of their customary
rights into the colonial legal system, although non-occupancy raiyats,
sharecroppers and agricultural workers were still left outside the
bounds of the law. In this sense, it may not be incorrect to say that
the Permanent Settlement had attained full maturity sixty-six years
after its birth in 1793.

Notes
1. Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1959, p. 5.
2. Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of the
Permanent Settlement, 2nd edn., New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1981,
pp. 6, 186. As to ‘involution’, see, Clifford Geertz, Agricultural Involution:
The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1963, pp. 32–7.
3. For the important research on the operations of the Permanent Settlement,
see, Binay Bhushan Chauduri, Peasant History of Late Pre-Colonial and
Colonial India, Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations/Pearson Longman,
2008, Bibliography.
4. A brief account of the history of land legislation may be found in
Government of Bengal (GoB), Report of the Land Revenue Commission
Bengal (LRCB), vol. 1, Alipore: Superintendent, Government Printing,
1940, pp. 18–30. Peter Robb has made a significant contribution to
a comprehensive understanding of the Permanent Settlement in his
Ancient Rights and Future Comfort: Bihar, the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885,
and British Rule in India, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997; repr.,
Abingdon: Routledge, 2013, see Introduction and chap. 1.
5. Sec. 9, Regulation I of 1793. References to major law codes are given in
Bibliography below.
6. C.D. Field, Introduction to the Regulations of the Bengal Code, Calcutta:
Thacker, Spink & Co., 1888, p. 46. Rammohun Roy deemed it ‘an
unqualified proprietary right in the soil’ (‘Questions and Answers on the
64 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Revenue System of India’, in The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy,
ed. Kalidas Nag and Debajyoti Burman, 1995; repr., Calcutta: Sadharan
Brahmo Samaj, 1995, pt. III, p. 41.
7. As to the historical character of private property, this chapter draws on the
research done on comparative sociological jurisprudence by such Japanese
jurists as Takeyoshi Kawashima and Michiatsu Kaino.
8. Strictly speaking, English law does not confer ‘absolute’ rights in the soil
on any social class. It adopts, for certain historical reasons, a legal fiction
that land belongs to the Crown and that the landholder merely holds his
land on a particular tenure under it. But, practically speaking, ‘fee simple’
or ‘fee simple absolute’ may safely be regarded as an equivalent to the
property right under Roman or continental law.
9. This section draw on Nariaki Nakazato, chap. 13, Agrarian System in Eastern
Bengal, c.1870–1910, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1994 (Swarochish Sarkar, tr.,
Purba Banglar Bhumi byabastha, 1870–1910, ed. Sirajul Islam and Ratan
Lal Chakraborty, Dhaka: University Press, 2004). On commons in the
Punjab, see, Minoti Chakravarty-Kaul, Common Lands and Customary
Law: Institutional Change in North India over the Past Two Centuries,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996. As to South India, see, Haruka
Yanagisawa, ‘The Decline of Village Common Lands and Changes in Village
Society: South India, c.1850–2000’, Conservation and Society, vol. 6, no. 4,
pp. 293–307. Finally, on this issue of commons in the broader context of the
economic history of British India, see, Peter Robb, ed., ‘Agrarian Structure
and Economic Development’, in Empire, Identities, and India: Peasants,
Political Economy, and Law, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007.
10. Field, 1888, p. 45.
11. Sec. 57, Reg. VIII of 1793.
12. LRCB, vol. 1, p. 21.
13. Reg. I of 1824.
14. J.C. Jack, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the
Faridpur District, 1904 to 1914, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depôt,
1916, paragraph 203. This claim was rejected by the settlement officer.
In addition, the Bengal government had to fight a prolonged legal battle
for the possession of the vast forest areas in the Sundarbans with certain
zamindars who claimed proprietary rights in them on the strength of the
Permanent Settlement.
15. ‘Minute of Mr Shore, 8 December 1789’, paragraph 5, in The Fifth Report from
the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company,1812–1813,
P.P., 1812(377)VII, p. 478.
16. Reg. XIV of 1793 and Reg. III of 1794. As regards sale laws, see, GoB,
A Manual of the Revenue and the Patni Sale Laws with Notes and the Rules,
etc., Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depôt, 1933, pp. xiv–xxix; Field,
 Nakazato: Landed Proprietorship and the Evolution 65
1888, p. 96ff; and John Herbert Harington, An Elementary Analysis of the
Laws and Regulations enacted by the Governor General in Council at Fort
William in Bengal, etc., 3 vols., Calcutta: Printed at the Calcutta Gazette
Press, 1805–17, vol. 2, p. 355ff.
17. There was a debate among the British officials of the eighteenth century
over the social and historical character of the Bengal zamindars. Some held
that the zamindars were not feudal lords, but rather office-holders under
the Mughals. For this writer’s view, see Nakazato, 1994, chap. 13.
18. GoB, 1933, p. xviii.
19. This rule was considerably modified by Regulation III of 1794, which states
that proprietors are not liable to be confined except in cases where the
amount due from the defaulter might not be recoverable by public sale. It
was renewed five years later by Regulation VII of 1799, which stipulated
in section 23 that when the sum realized at the public sale fell short of the
amount of revenue arrears, the deficiency would be supplemented by sale
of defaulter’s other personal property or by imprisonment of his person
(ibid., pp. xx–xxii).
20. Sirajul Islam, The Permanent Settlement in Bengal: A Study of its Operation
1790–1819, Dacca: Bangla Academy, 1979, pp. 76–81, 144–57; Binay
Bhushan Chaudhuri, ‘Land Market in Eastern India, 1793–1940, Part I:
The Movement of Land Prices’, Indian Economic and Social History Review,
vol. 12, no. 1, 1975a, pp. 1–22; and Chaudhuri, ‘Land Market in Eastern
India, 1793–1940, Part II: The Changing Composition of the Landed
Society’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 12, no. 2, 1975b,
pp. 145–50.
21. Nakazato, 1994, pp. 299–302; and Anand A. Yang, ‘An Institutional Shelter:
The Court of Wards in Late Nineteenth-Century Bihar’, Modern Asian
Studies, vol. 13, no. 2 , 1979, pp. 248–9. A short history of the Courts of
Wards in England and in various parts of colonial India may be found in
Benjamin B. Cohen, ‘The Court of Wards in a Princely State: Bank Robber
or Babysitter?’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 41, no. 2, 2007, pp. 397–402. As
to the Court and its operations in eastern India, see also, Akinobu Kawai,
Landlords’ and Imperial Rule: Change in Bengal Agrarian Society, c.1885–
1940, 2 vols., Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures
of Asia and Africa, 1986–7; Stephen Henningham, ‘The Raj Darbhanga
and the Court of Wards, 1860–79: Managerial Reorganization and Elite
Education’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 19, nos. 3/4,
1982, pp. 347–63; Ananda A. Yang, chap. 4 and Conclusion, The Limited
Raj: Agrarian Relations in Colonial India, Saran District, 1793–1920, Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1989; John R. McLane, Land and Local Kingship
in Eighteenth-century Bengal, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993, pp. 313–16; and Partha Chatterjee, chaps. 2, 4, A Princely Impostor?:
66 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
The Kumar of Bhawal and the Secret History of Indian Nationalism,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
22. W.K. Firminger, Historical Introduction to the Bengal Portion of the Fifth
Report, Calcutta: Cambray, 1917; repr., Calcutta: Indian Studies: Past &
Present, 1962, p. 302; and ‘Mr. Shore’s Minute of 18 June 1789’, paragraphs
318, 337 in Fifth Report, pp. 200–1.
23. Sec. 5, Reg. X of 1793; Harington, 1805–17, vol. 2, pp. 103–9.
24. GoB, The Bengal Wards’ Manual, 1909, revd edn., Calcutta, 1909, p. 49;
The Court of Wards Act, 1879, sec. 6.
25. GoB, Report on the Wards’ and Attached Estates in the Lower Province
(RWAE), 1879–80, paragraph 19; 1880–1, paragraph 28.
26. Yang, 1979, pp. 248–9; RWAE, 1878–9, paragraph 9.
27. GoB, 1909, p. 49.
28. J. Hodding, Report on the Dacca Nawab’s Family Estate, Dacca, 1909,
pp. 1–2; and Resolution on Report on Wards’, Attached and Trust Estates
in the Plains Districts of the Province of Eastern Bengal & Assam, 1907–8.
As to the Burdwan estate, see Kawai 1986–7 and McLane 1993.
29. Akinobu Kawai, ‘Bengaru niokerukokencho no kinonitsuite (On the
function of the Court of Wards in Bengal)’, Ajiakenkyu, vol. 31, no. 4, 1985,
pp. 48–9. The figure for 1939–40 is based on this writer’s calculation.
30. Nariaki Nakazato, ‘Bengaruniokerutochishoyuken no tenkai (The Historical
Character of Landed Proprietorship in Bengal)’, Rekishi to Chiri, 402, 1989,
p. 7. This observation is based on a perusal of the Court of Wards’ annual
administration reports from 1874–5 to 1940–1.
31. Field, 1888, p. 44.
32. As to the concept of transaction costs, see, Douglas C. North, chaps. 1–4,
Structure and Change in Economic History, New York: W.W. Norton, 1981.
33. Takeyoshi Kawashima, Shoyukenho no riron (A Theory of Property Law),
Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1949; and Michiatsu Kaino, Igirisutochisho-
yukenhokenkyu (Studies in English Land Laws), Tokyo: Iwanami shoten,
1980 [in Japanese].
34. Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on the Affairs of the
East India Company with Appendix and Index, P.P. 1831–2 (735-IV) XII,
pt. IV, pp. 538–9. ‘Bengal proper’ here means the districts belonging to
present-day West Bengal and Bangladesh. It excludes Cuttack, Bhaugulpore,
Purnea and the districts of the Patna Division from what used to be
called the ‘Lower Provinces’ in the early nineteenth century. Washbrook
states that 62,787 cases, namely about half of the total, were contributed
by ‘Calcutta’ (‘Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India’, Modern
Asian Studies, vol. 15, no. 3, 1981, p. 658, fn 32). But this figure is not for
the city of ‘Calcutta’ but for the ‘Calcutta Division’ of the time consisting of
 Nakazato: Landed Proprietorship and the Evolution 67
Burdwan, Cuttack, Hooghly, Jessore, Jungle Mehals, Midnapore, Nuddea
and 24 Pergunnahs.
35. Harington, 1805–17, vol. 3, pp. 514ff. Valuable information about the
‘Haptam’ and ‘Panjam’ laws has also been drawn from articles published
in Japanese by Minoru Takabatake and Shikichi Taniguchi. The writer is
grateful to both of them.
36. Sec. 2, Reg. XVII of 1793.
37. Harington, 1805–17, vol. 3, pp. 514ff.
38. As to the operation of the market for zamindari estates, see Chaudhuri,
1975b.
39. Sec. 5, Reg. XLIV of 1793; Harington, 1805–17, vol. 2, p. 412ff.
40. Shinkichi Taniguchi, ‘The Patni System: A Modern Origin of the “Sub-
Infeudation” of Bengal in the Nineteenth Century’, Hitotsubashi Journal
of Economics, vol. 22, no. 1, 1981, pp. 32–60.
41. Field, 1888, pp. 106–10; LRCB, vol. 1, pp. 22–3.
42. GoB, 1933, pp. xxv–xxvi; Field, 1888, pp. 111–21; and Chittabrata Palit,
Tensions in Bengal Rural Society: Landlords, Planters and Colonial Rule,
1830–1860, Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 1975, pp. 19, 115, 130.
43. GoB, 1933, p. xxvii; Field, 1888, pp. 122–8.
44. Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri, ‘The Agrarian Question in Bengal and the
Government 1850–1900’, Calcutta Historical Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, 1976,
pp. 51–62. See also, Palit, chap. 6, 1975. I also benefited from two papers
on the Rent Act, written in Japanese by Hirokazu Tada and by Shinkichi
Taniguchi.
45. Sec. 8, Reg. I of 1793.

References
Anonymous, ed., The Regulations and Laws enacted by the Governor General in
Council, for the Civil Government of the Whole of the Territories under the
Presidency of Fort William in Bengal, Vol. I, containing the Regulations for
1793, Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1827.
Government of Bengal, Report on Wards’ and Attached Estates in the Lower
Provinces.
———,  The Bengal Wards’ Manual, 1909, revd edn., Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat
Book Depôt, 1909.
———,  A Manual of the Revenue and the Patni Sale Laws with Notes and the
Rules, etc., Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depôt, 1933.
———,  Report of the Land Revenue Commission, Bengal, 6 vols., Alipore:
Superintendent, Government Printing, 1940.
Field, C.D., The Regulations of the Bengal Code, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink &
Co., 1875.
68 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Government of United Kingdom, The Fifth Report from the Select Committee
on the Affairs of the East India Company, 1812–1813, P.P., 1812(377), VII.
———,  Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on the Affairs of
the East India Company with Appendix and Index, P.P. 1831–2 (735-IV)
XII, pt. IV.
White, Henry, ed., The Regulations and Laws Enacted by the Governor General
in Council for the Civil Government of the Whole of the Territories under the
Presidency of Fort William in Bengal, vol. 3, Calcutta: Printed at the Monthly
Gazetteer Press, 1819; vol. 6, Calcutta, 1820.
Wigley, F.G., ed., The Bengal Code, in Four Volumes, 4th ed., Calcutta: Bengal
Secretariat Book Depôt, 1913–15.
 4

Agrarian Relations and

Peasant Economy in Bengal
1793–1920

Arun Bandopadhyay

O
ne inherent difficulty of devising and writing this
chapter is that it intends to cover the themes and issues
most widely discussed in Bengal’s modern history in the
last two hundred years. Whether taken as a departure in the region’s
agrarian history or as a sort of a development to hint at the semblance
of a continuity, the Permanent Settlement of Bengal in 1793 opened up
a new trajectory of hopes, disaster, frustration, mistrust, discontent,
and agitated moments of action for its landlords and cultivators for
about a century and a half. Naturally, so much has been written on
the subject from a variety of viewpoints by economists, historians,
politicians, sociologists, and political analysts that any synthetic study
attempt for, as this chapter is purported to be, is most arduous to
gain ground. The scope of the present study is limited by two other
intervening factors. First, it acknowledges, with due appreciation,
what the two most reputed agrarian historians of Bengal have already
done in terms of producing an incisive account of the subject in the
early 1980s and 1990s, respectively,1 and continues re-examining some
of the contending issues raised so far. If B.B. Chaudhuri, the first of
them, focuses on a number of social and economic issues emanating
*I am grateful for comments and observations of Professor Sabyasachi
Bhattacharya, Professor Rajat Kanta Ray, Professor Bidyut Chakrabarti and a
number other scholars on the first draft and presentation of my chapter.
70 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

from the Permanent Settlement or similar such land systems in his

discussion in areas what was then known as Bengal proper, Bihar,
Orissa (present Odisha), and Assam under the broad rubric of Bengal
Presidency during British rule, Sirajul Islam’s study is, for all practical
purposes, restricted to Bengal proper in general, but mainly to the
districts now under the independent state of Bangladesh. Second, the
coverage of the present study is limited in the sense that it mostly
concentrates on Bengal proper, with more attention to districts of
modern West Bengal, and exceptionally to some districts of Bihar
at certain points of time to test the element of similarity in between
these two areas.
It is well known that by Lord Cornwallis’s proclamation of the
Permanent Settlement of Bengal, which came into effect on 22 March
1793, the proprietors of land of the extensive territories of Bengal and
Bihar were promised a land revenue demand from the state, ‘fixed
for ever’. Regulation I, Article VI, of the Permanent Settlement Act
of 1793 went on further clarifying:

The Governor-General-in-Council trusts that the proprietors of the land,

sensible of the benefits conferred upon them by the public assessment fixed
for ever will exert themselves in the cultivation of their lands, under certainty
that will enjoy exclusively the fruits of their own good management and
industry, and that no demand will ever be made upon them, or their heirs,
or successors, by the present or any future government, for an augmentation
of the public assessment in consequence of the improvement of their
respective estates.2

A closer scrutiny of this Regulation and other similar ones in

the Act makes some interesting interpretative suggestions. One is
that it had a past, an immediate history, and indeed a background
which finally led to this proclamation, and also a future, a course of
action in store or to be opened up later, even if all the directions of
that path were not clear at that time. Second, from its very beginning,
the Permanent Settlement of Bengal was enmeshed with a number
of issues arising from agrarian relations of the past and present,
involving stakeholders—representing zamindars, talukdars, farmers,
and various kinds of other landholding interests on the one hand,
and ryots or various kinds of cultivators on the other, besides the
supervising role of the government all along. Third, the very nature
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 71

of the peasant economy of Bengal, the actual circumstances under

which it was carried on from place to place and from time to time,
the economy’s very incentives and deterrents from agrarian, social,
and ecological viewpoints, and above all the courses of direction open
to it in its long trajectory, were the other features which constantly
impinged upon the operations of the Permanent Settlement in Bengal
from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century.
It will be perfectly in order to clarify these points a bit further
before we take up the actual task of re-examination of some of the
emerging, confusing, or perplexing issues of agrarian relations and
peasant economy of Bengal in the whole of the nineteenth and
early twentieth century. The first question relates to the origin and
multiple legal, practical, and conventional connections of the Act.
The Permanent Settlement was not made all of a sudden, it had a
history behind it, hidden in a series of land revenue experiments
beginning since 1759—the first time when auction was practised in
the newly acquired 24 Parganas after Plassey.3 This argument is further
stretched in the East India Company’s policy of revenue maximization
in Bengal through various farming experiments, including the
notorious Five Year Farming (1772–7), and even after the return of
the zamindari system in Bengal in 1777 and the Decennial Settlement
in 1789, there was no return from maximization.4 That land revenue
increased phenomenally in the thirty-five years after Plassey has
been later corroborated by other historians also. Sirajul Islam, in his
first monograph on the Permanent Settlement, finds that the taxes
associated with it were ‘unbearably high’.5 Even in Peter Marshall’s
moderate estimation, the tax burden in 1793 was about 20 per cent
higher than in 1757.6 In a case study on the district of Chittagong,
A.M. Sirajuddin computes the increase within ten years (1761–72) of
its first farming as ‘phenomenal’ (asal jama being increased from
Rs.4.18 lakh to Rs.4.78 lakh), and above that, the entire amount was
now collected, unlike in the previous years.7 An elaborate account of the
process of maximization during 1757–93 is also found in Ranjit
Sen’s monograph on the subject.8 Amales Tripathi explains the root
of this maximization in the Company’s increasing financial crisis be-
cause of mounting cost of war and expansion in other parts of India.9
The other, intellectually more forceful, argument of the origin of
the idea of the Permanent Settlement is put forward by Ranajit Guha
72 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

in his celebrated book, A Rule of Property for Bengal.10 According to

Guha, it was first formulated as a policy recommendation in 1770,
and was given expression in the writing of Henry Pattullo in 1772,
Philip Francis in 1776, in the idea of India Act of 1784, and in the
measures taken by Thomas Law in his mukarari experiments in Bihar.
It was then included in the Decennial Settlement as a reregulation
in 1789–90, and finally became Regulation I of 1793. Of these five
figures of Dow, Pattullo, Francis, Law, and Cornwallis, Guha gave
more importance to Philip Francis, the most important exponent of
the idea of a permanent settlement and his ‘Plan for Settlement of
the Revenues of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa’ of 22 January 1776. Francis
was greatly influenced by the physiocratic idea of development. The
social philosophy of the physiocrats rested in the overwhelming
importance of private property, or more properly private property
in terms of land. Hence came Francis’s emphasis on the security of
land tenure, and consequently of the right of the landholders, the
so-called zamindars. Assurance of government revenue was based
on a guarantee of the rights of proprietorship.11 Indeed, the themes
of his ‘Plan of 1776’ and earlier writings can be subdivided in
six neat parts—(a) general state of economic decay, (b) failure of
the farming system, (c) decline in revenue, (d) problems of internal
trade, (e) currency crisis, and (f) the future procedure of revenue
collection. It is interesting to note that the security of tenure and
security of land revenue were present in an interconnected way in
the very idea of Permanent Settlement, whatever may be its intellec-
tual origin. Philip Francis was a test case to illustrate this historical
point.
This has been, however, quite apparent to some scholars long
before Guha wrote his dissertation on the subject. In 1901, when
Jogendra Chandra Ghosh made arrangement for a reprint of Francis’s
Minutes on Permanent Settlement, his friend Romesh Dutt wrote its
preface from London in November 1900.12 Dutt believed that Francis,
who had been known to the English readers as the writer of Letters
of Junius should be credited for taking a ‘broader and juster view’
of the Bengal situation, and called his Minutes as ‘one of the ablest
minutes that have been penned in India’, and congratulated Francis
for making the land revenue demand of Bengal ‘permanent and
unalterable’. He, then, quoted a sentence from Fancis’s Minutes and
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 73

emphasized part of it: ‘If there be any hidden wealth still existing,
it will then be brought forth and employed in improving the land,
because the proprietor will be satisfied that he is laboring for himself’.13
He added, ‘The italics are mine, and they show that the brilliant
and thoughtful writer of the “Letters of Junius” knew that a secure
property and certain prospect of gain are the strongest motives for
improvement and progress of all countries.’14
It thus appears that without naming the physiocrats and their
overarching ideas, Dutt was pinpointing the crucial root of Francis’s
essentially arguments for the Permanent Settlement. But he also
realized in 1900 that the Permanent Settlement was only a half
solution of the great ‘land question’, and ‘a similar assurance was also
proposed to the actual cultivators, but the fulfillment of the promise
was long delayed’.15
The second point to elaborate is the legality of the question of
rights of the various stakeholders in the agrarian context in Bengal
after Permanent Settlement. It is true that the primary concern of the
makers of the Settlement were the landholders of various categories,
but the nature of agrarian relations forced government to count in
other interests soon. We are noting the voices of different kinds of
raiyati interests from the beginning of the nineteenth century, if
not earlier, and by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, these
voices and protests become unmistakable. In a sense, the signs of
the decline of the Bengal zamindars were visible during this time,
and they assume a definite form when we close our account around
1920. Strangely enough, this was scarcely noted in the intellectual
presentation by the contemporaries.
Viewed in this context, the change in the peasant economy in
Bengal in the whole of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century
makes an interesting reading. There is a running debate over the
control of land between zamindars and different kinds of jotedars
in different parts of Bengal ever since the time of, if not before, the
Permanent Settlement.16 Here, one dominant view held by Rajat
Kanta Ray and Ratnalekha Ray together in 1975, and Ratnalekha
Ray individually in 1979 suggests that rural power primarily derived
from ‘control over land’, in which zamindars never constituted a
significant constituent, as jotedars ‘were the real landlords in effective
possession of land and labour within the village’, while the contending
74 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

view, mainly propagated by Chaudhuri, indicates the zamindars’

important role in the rural economy, especially in the twin areas of
control over reclamation and the maintenance of irrigation works
both inside and outside the villages. But this debate cannot miss the
changing contours of the peasant economy, particularly the small
peasant economy in various part of Bengal. It is quite possible that
Rajat Ray and Ratnalekha Ray’s views were mostly formed by the
survey report of Francis Buchanan on Dinajpur,17 while the rest of
Bengal was particularly marked by the absence of this type jotedars
with full control over the village economy. Indeed, Sugata Bose finds
small peasant economy as a distinct form, quite ubiquitous in most
parts of Bengal in the early twentieth century.18 In a review article
published after Ratnalekha Ray’s death, Rajat Ray substantially revised
their old position of the preponderance of the jotedari control of
land in much of Bengal, while still maintaining their significant, if
not increasing, role in the twentieth century.19
As we have already indicated, we shall not try to develop in
this chapter a unilateral narrative of agrarian relations and peasant
economy of Bengal from 1793 to about 1920. We are not doing it
not because we think it is impossible or impracticable, or that there
is no need for it. Indeed, some of the extant narratives are fairly
good, precise, and sufficiently subtle and complex, and we have
already mentioned some of them. Instead of making an effort to
develop another account of the narrative, we prefer to catch up and
reexamine certain categories and issues relating to the subject in
order to comprehend the complexity of it more thoroughly. Such
a re-evaluation may or may not lead to another substantially new
narrative, but it definitely provides a vista within an oft-repeated
discussion. The categories/issues detected by us represent not merely
definitional or analytical ones, but also illustrative ones, fed by
historical events/developments as far as possible.

The New Landlords: Meanings,

Connotations, Implications
History is generally concerned with concrete developments in any
distinct sphere of life, but very often the understanding of its course
remains incomplete without a simultaneous exercise of examining
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 75

the meanings of terms, categories, and activities that the sphere is

exposed to in real life. The makers of Permanent Settlement were
categorical in their emphatic preference for the ‘proprietors of the soil’,
but who these proprietors were, as accredited by the prevailing law
and custom, was not clear everywhere. It is true that a few Company
officials, who had been engaged in their search for the history of
landed institutions of Bengal, finally found in the term ‘zamindar’
some replica of it, but that did not clear the matter from the historical
and definitional points of view. First of all, the connotation of the
word zamindar, in the Mughal period, indicated more of its revenue
collecting right than the landholding right. It is true that Irfan Habib
made a substantial change in the definition of the Mughal zamindar
in the second edition of his well-known book20 from some sort of a
‘vassal chief ’ as indicated by Moreland,21 to one with more complex
attributes in different parts of India, especially Bengal. But even then,
a ‘zamindari is nearly always said to comprise a village or certain
fractional part of it, seldom so many bighas or definite units of area’.22
However, the very notion of ‘land’ has also been posed as a contested
area in terms of its varied meanings and implications in European
and Indian history, as once shown emphatically by Walter C. Neale in
his much quoted article entitled ‘Land is to Rule’.23 Second, studies of
zamindars with more specific connection to Bengal in the eighteenth
century also suggest variety. N.K. Sinha noted some of them, specially
zamindars and talukdars, in his work.24 A more elaborate description
was given by Sirajul Islam.25
Islam quoted Beaufoy’s report on the landed interests of Bengal
in 1788 to argue that the landed society before the Permanent
Settlement was divided in an ‘unequal five-member house’ comprising
zamindars, independent talukdars, dependent talukdars, revenue
farmers, and raiyats. 26 No doubt, this division was made for
administrative purposes, and each group was further differentiated
not only in state and status but also in geographical distributions.
In Mughal India, the ‘generic term zamindar accommodated the
entire intermediate revenue collecting population from the princely
rajas and maharajas, controlling autonomous “states”, to the pettiest
pattadar holding a “dot” in a village.’27 During Nawab Murshid Quli
Khan’s time (1717–27), big territorial estates began to emerge in
Bengal at the expense of smaller estates, so much so that by the
76 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

1770s, the great landed families of Bengal controlled 52 per cent of

the government revenue demand. Even then, about half of the lands
of Bengal were held by lesser landlords, who included dependent
talukdars of various denominations, chaudhuris (local chiefs) as
small landholders, and raiyats divided as khudkasht (resident) and
pahikasht (non-resident) categories, some even calling themselves
jotedars. Aditee Nag Chaudhuri-Zilly has shown how the meanings of
some of these lesser land rights, particularly khudkasht and pahikasht,
radically changed during the extensive desertions that took place after
the famine of 1770 in different parts of Bengal.28 She, however, differed
with Ratnlekha Ray29 and Ranjan Gupta30 with regard to the latter’s
claim that the dominant landholders such as jotedars substantially
gained from such a calamity.
Elsewhere, Sirajul Islam indicated two other distinctions of the
landholding as represented by the big zamindars of Bengal. First,
unlike the British landlords, ‘the Bengal zamindars were saddled
with a pre-existing peasantry who had rights in land acknowledged
by customs and usages’.31 Second, most of the large zamindari estates
such as Burdwan, Birbhum, Nadia, Dinajpur, Rajsahi, Lashkarpur,
and Muhammedshahi were situated around the precolonial centre of
power—Murshidabad.32 Most of these zamindaris, except Burdwan,
declined after the Permanent Settlement.
Ratnalekha Ray, on the other hand, hinted that since land
control was not in their hands, these zamindars were wrong people
to settle with, and even went so far as to claim that the Permanent
Settlement was thus made with people ‘with mistaken identity’.33
Even while dismissing the claim of the zamindars in terms of rural
power both before and after the Permanent Settlement, she gave them
almost universal credit of landholding as part of what she termed
as ‘tribute paying structure’, namely land revenue payment.34 This is
an aspect where Chittabrata Palit put forward a contrary view.35 He
has preferred to use the term ‘landlord’ over the term ‘zamindar’,
as the latter had ‘excluded all other grades of rent-receivers who
represented landlordism no less than the estate-holders.’36 He divided
the landlords of Bengal of around 1873 into three categories—
Category I, holding more than 20,000 acres; Category II, from 500
to 20,000 acres; and Category III below 500 acres. It is notable that
in all districts except Dinajpur and Rangpur, Category III landlords
were numerous, and their numbers were the most in Sylhet (53,368),
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 77

Dacca (7,324), Mymensing (5,829), Buckergunj (4,618), Chittagong

(3,577), Faridpur (2,817), Burdwan (2,804), Murshidabad (2,449), and
Midnapur (1,983).37 An equally notable feature is that in Dinajpur and
Rangpur, Category II landlords dominated in number. It may be that
the statement of the numerical strength of the different categories of
landlords concealed significant changes in landownership through
sale laws in the first two quarters of the nineteenth century, but
the preponderance of the lesser landlords in the third quarter of
the century is also a fact, the significance of which should not be
mistaken.
Much has been written on the beginning and expansion of
subinfeudation within the scale of landlordism after the Permanent
Settlement, but its very impact on the nature and quantum of
landholding remains largely unnoticed. It had a queer beginning.
Maintaining estates through the regular collection and payment of a
high land revenue demand to the Company’s government, under the
context of sunset laws immediately after the Permanent Settlement,
was not easy. Indeed, within ten years of 1793, a considerable number
of old zamindari houses collapsed and their estates were put on
auction. In order to ensure a regular flow of income, and to bring back
the semblance of stability of their estates, zamindars started to begin
the leasing of contracts with the renters under the same terms and
conditions that they themselves had entered in Permanent Settlement.
‘Tenurally these rights stood between the zamindars and raiyats and
thus properly these rights were called madhyasvatvas or intermediate
property. Madhyasvatva was as transferable and inheritable as the
zamindari svatva’.38 Very soon, there was a proliferation of such
tenurial rights, so much so that Tapan Raychaudhuri found the
occurrence of as many as thirty-three intermediaries between the
zamindar and the cultivator in the district of Bukargunj.39
Sirajul Islam has written a full book on these intermediary
tenures, and the circumstances under which varieties of such
tenures proliferate.40 In short, there were two such madhyasvatvas,
one was called pattani svatva and the other patitabad svatva. The
first was invented by the Maharaja of Burdwan, who ‘divided his
vast estate into thousands of blocks each of which was settled with
a taluqdar called pattanidar.’41 The pattanidar’s tenure was treated
as a permanent property, and he could create, for his own safety,
second degree (dar-pattani) or third degree (se-pattani) tenures.
78 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

It was entirely a rent collecting device without having any connection

to the management of the cultivation of land, and was mostly
prevalent in large zamindaris in western Bengal. The other system,
called patitabad svatva, prevalent in eastern Bengal, mostly for the
reclamation of cultivable wastelands in the districts of Chittagong,
Noakhali, Comilla, Bakargunj, Khulna, Jessore, and specially Barind
lands. F. Halliday, the Secretary to Government, noted them as early
as 1839 ‘as fee-simple intermediate tenure holders as vested with
perpetual rights in lands reclaimed’.42 Patitabad activities were found
usually in four categories—noabad (newly cleared lands), char abad
(alluvial lands), bil abad (depression lands), and Sundarban abad
(Sundarban lands).
It thus appears that the landholding rights created by the Perma-
nent Settlement had multiple meanings from the very beginning, and
with time and local contexts, their connotations and implications
changed substantially. In this transformation of meanings and their
workings, many factors meddled in over a century and three decades.
One of them was, of course, the legal regime that the Company and
the Raj built over time. We now turn towards it.

The Circle of the Legal Framework

In recent years, scholars have shown renewed interest in the
legal framework of change in colonial empires worldwide, and
a historiography has developed out of their multiple attempts to
test the efficacy of colonial law as means to regulate the social and
political order of the empires.43 More recently, Tirthankar Roy and
Anand S. Swamy have the taken the task of reviewing the progress
of Indian colonial economy from legal perspectives, the codification
of laws and their working.44 Generally, these attempts are marked
by two broad approaches of institutional economic history. The first
approach takes a line to evaluate the ‘extractive’ institutions of the
colonial rule, initially working without any regard to the protection
of private property rights, but then for various reasons, willing to
ensure the security of that property. The second approach of legal
origins hypothesis highlights the importation of English law in India,
going so far as to claim that Indian law had, in this way, developed a
more efficient system than that of many other colonies. But strictly
speaking, the Indian case was a bit unique. A study of the process
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 79

of legislation in India during 1772–1857 shows that the Indian

framework was an amalgam of the Hastings project, giving more
importance to indigenous laws and the Council era (1781–1861),
focusing more on the importation of English laws.45
By all standards of analysis, the Permanent Settlement was a legal
document. Indeed, this proclamation of Cornwallis came with the
declaration of Cornwallis Code in the same year of 1793. It is true
that in Cornwallis’s mind, the government’s security of land revenue
came pari passu with the security of tenure of the landholders. But
he was also aware of the two other things. First, the tenants had
customary rights with regard to rent payments and protection from
eviction. Second, there was not enough information about these rights
in terms of law; at least, it was not available to the Company as part
of any codification. Weeks before his Proclamation, Cornwallis even
wrote on 11 February 1793 that the ‘vague terms of usage was the only
rule for deciding upon any question respecting the Revenues and the
rights of those concerned in the payment of it’.46 Thus the Permanent
Settlement, it has been claimed, declared both the landholders’ right
subject to the payment of a fixed land revenue demand (Regulation
I) and a warning to them if they acted arbitrarily against the tenant
(Regulation VIII of 1793). Most important of all, the government
reserved its right to intervene to protect the tenants’ rights in future.47
But the course of events that led the government to intervene in
the agrarian relations of Bengal in the early 1790s was in the opposite
direction. It was the zamindars who were complaining against the
raiyats for not paying their rents in due time in certain parts of Bengal,
and hence came the notorious Regulation VII of 1799, which gave
the zaminders the power of distraint over the tenants’ property, and
even their arrest before any investigation. Why was it necessary?
An elaborate study of the Regulation VII of 1799 was made
by Chaudhuri.48 Chaudhuri argues that it was preceded by a fear
of the raiyats regarding the grant of pattas by the zamindars and
their limited validity. The official explanation was that bad faith
and dishonesty of the raiyats in paying their rents to the zamindars
called for such ‘dreadful’ legislation. J.H. Harington, who moved
the VIIth Regulation, made this view a fundamental assumption
of his reasoning, later supported by several letters of the Governor-
General-in-Council to the Court of Directors.49 The argument went
in the following directions. First, the raiyats, formerly a ‘weaker
80 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

party’ subjected to arbitrary exactions, became the ‘stronger party’

now. Second, this change was possible because of the protection
advanced by the Company’s rule. Third, this legal protection was
abused by the raiyats, by what was called in contemporary records
‘licentiousness of the tenantry’. Consequently, if the original design
of the legal protection to the raiyats was to ensure ‘future security of
public revenue’, the purpose was entirely defeated by this bad faith of
the raiyats. Without punctual payments of the raiyats, the zamindars
could not be punctual in their payment. Hence, the VIIth Regulation
of July 1799 was implemented to give the zamindars wide powers to
realize their arrears in lieu of long process of law.
Now, what was the evidence before the government to warrant
such a belief? Chaudhuri says that Harington could only quote a
long letter from the commissioner of Bhoosna and a petition of
the zamindar of Dinajpur, supplemented by several letters from the
collector of Burdwan, and a few stray petitions.50 He concludes that
this evidence was doubtful and that even if they were true locally, they
did not support the universal introduction of such hash measures.
Over and above all, the existing regulations and laws were enough
for the zamindars and other landholders to exercise ‘the power of
summoning, and if necessary of compelling the attendance of their
tenants, for the adjustment of their rents, or any other purpose.’
There was no need of any further regulation on this matter. The VIIth
Regulation remains an enigma in this sense.
However, the Company’s information deficits were not filled up
immediately, and even in the first decade of the nineteenth century,
an official thought that ‘there was actually no sufficient evidence of
the rates and usages of pergunnahs which could be appealed to’ for
the framing of landlord-tenant relations. Regulation V of 1812 gave
some amorphous benefits to the tenants in relation to court cases
to contest within five days, but together the Regulation VII (1799)
and Regulation V (1812) remained as nightmarish haptam-panjam
(colloquial Bengalee version of saptam and pancham or seventh and
fifth) in popular memory.
This apparently pro-zamindari stand of the government did
not end even by the end of the second decade of the nineteenth
century, though the early signs of the improvement of the zamindars’
economic position were seen by that time. It was as if giving the
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 81

zamindars the freedom to set rents as he or she liked. As late as 1819,

the Court of Directors interpreted law in such a way that it seemed
that they authorized the zamindars, ‘by the existing law, to oust even
the hereditary ryots from the possession of their lands, when the latter
refused to accede to any terms of rent which may be demanded of
them, however exorbitant’.51
This legal position taken in the highest circles did not necessarily
mean that all disputes were settled accordingly, lower in the scale of
courts. Of the two sets of legal relationships, we have already talked
about the relation between the zamindar and the tenant, and we shall
now turn to the regulation between the state and the zamindar. Here,
the courts had already stated to play the role of checking the power
of the state, a potential development with long-term implications.
A case can be cited from Collector of Moorshidabad vs Bishennath
Rai and Sheonath Rai, where a zamindar successfully disputed the
state’s right to tax a portion of his property, on the grounds of prior
exemption.52 The details of the case makes interesting reading. Here,
the zamindars held 4,536 bighas of land that was free of land tax, as
it was devoted to religious establishment. The grant had been made
by Rani Bhovani, formerly zamindar of Rajsahi, and the maintenance
of the religious establishment was to be done by her family. After the
sale of the zamindari, these 4,536 bighas remained in the possession
of her grandsons. The collector’s argument was two-fold. First, the
Rani could not make a grant to herself. Second, as the grant had been
made after the Diwani without the permission of the government,
it was invalid. The defendants argued that the grant had been made
before the Diwani. The district judge ruled in favour of the collector,
arguing that the Rani had committed a fraud by making a grant to
herself. The provincial court, however, disagreed and ruled in favour
of the defendant. Barring 888 bighas, which had been awarded after
the Diwani, all were returned. On appeal by the collector to the
Sudder Dewanee Adalat, the highest relevant court, it added further
558 bighas to the previous 888, and the remainder, roughly 72 per
cent of the disputed land, was ruled to be tax-free.
The operation of the sale laws was another mechanism of change
in the composition of the landed estate. Ranjan Gupta has given a
vivid account of the operation of these laws in the district of Birbhum.
In May 1795, Raja Muhammad-uz-Zaman Khan, the zamindar of
82 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the district, was proclaimed unfit and T.H. Ernst was proclaimed
Commissioner to the zamindari with its sole charge. The rigorous
implementation of the sunset laws was proverbial, and there were
cases when zamindaris were put on sale without the knowledge of
their employees who turned up after the artificially fixed time of
sunset.53 From 1803 onwards, land sales for arrears of public revenue
decreased, and auction sales became insignificant in the 1820s. Sale
laws were also modified in the 1840s.
It has already been shown that the government made it open
from the very beginning of the Permanent Settlement that legislation
might come in the sphere of tenancy legislation in future. However,
no such specific measures were taken in the first three decades. A
regulation was proposed to protect the tenants in 1827, but it was
finally dropped because of administrative difficulties. Strangely
enough, the proposal was put forward by no less a person than
Harington, the maker of the draconian VIIth Regulation of 1799.
What happened in the meanwhile?
Harington came to India as a writer in 1780, and soon he was
promoted to the revenue department as a Persian translator. In 1793,
he was appointed judge of the Diwani Adalat, and in 1799 the fourth
member of the Board of Revenue, in which capacity he drafted the
Regulation VII of that year. In 1801, he was elevated to the judge of
the Sadar Diwani and Nizamat Adalat, and in the next eight years,
he started collection of materials on Bengal Regulations. In 1803, he
published the first part of his analysis of Bengal Regulations, in 1805
its second part, and in 1821, he brought out a revised new edition
of the whole.54 In 1823, he was appointed as a senior member of the
Board of Revenue, and in 1825, the president of the Board of Control.
His Minute and Draft of Regulation of the Rights of Ryots in Bengal
was published in 1827, before his retirement in the next year. His
minute emphasized, despite some doubts of their practicability, the
importance of the measures of ‘restricting’ the misappropriation of
zamindari rights, and those of ‘protecting’ the rights of the ryots,
while his draft regulations focused on the nitty-gritty of the change.
Both the minute and the draft regulations made a historical and
judicial survey of the changes that had occurred in the relations
between landholders and ryots from 1793 down to the late 1820s,
including the increase of rent, 55 but nowhere in the documents
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 83

was referred the Regulation VII of 1799, which he drafted in his

early career. The government, however, found ‘difficulty in resolving
on the immediate adoption of the measures recommended, entertain-
ing the doubts as to the necessity of some, and as to the expediency
and justice of others, of the enactments contemplated’ and only
ordered that 400 copies of the Minute and Draft of Regulation be
printed for circulation among officers of both judicial and revenue
departments.56
Agrarian unrest continued, especially in tribal areas because of
rent increases, rise of debts, and official abuses. The Kol insurrection
of Chhota Nagpur had to be suppressed in 1831–2. Palit has also
shown that rural tensions in Bengal proper mounted in the three
decades after 1830 for various reasons, including the unlawful
activities of the European planters.57
The absence of any law, defining the relations between the
landlord and tenant in the countryside, became prominent during
this time. The failure of the Permanent Settlement to achieve its
desired goal was also becoming clear in the highest official circles.58
The horrors of the mutiny (1857) were another possible, immediate
cause of the change of mind of the authorities. It was in this context
that Halliday, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, took up the cause of
the raiyats to pass the Rent Act X of 1859, ‘an Act which has been
called the Magna Charta of the raiyat’.59 The object of the Act was to
reform the whole of the existing system of recovery of rents and the
adjudication of questions connected therewith. The Act defined and
settled several important questions connected with the relative rights
of the landlord and tenant, of which a stipulation and settlement ‘had
long been considered desirable and necessary’.60 The Act divided
peasantry into the following three categories—raiyats holding land at
fixed rate of rent from the time of the Permanent Settlement, raiyats
having the rights of occupancy for continuous holding of twelve years
or more, and non-occupancy raiyats. The Act provided that the first
group of raiyats had the full privilege of fixity of rent, that the rent of
the second group of raiyats could be enhanced only when the landlord
could prove that the land in question was underrated, and that
there was no protection in case of the non-occupancy of raiyats. In
the official circles, it was claimed that the statute would contribute
to the accumulation of capital in the hands of the raiyats, as the
84 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

landlords henceforward would be unable to appropriate peasant

surpluses.61
In reality, these official hopes did not come true, at least
immediately. The general unrest was the main concern of the
government. The 1859 Rent Act was not satisfying either to the
tenants or the zamindars. It has been argued that the development
of madhyasvatva had led to the rise of a rural elite, who acquired
both tenurial and raiyati rights. The loss of vitality of the zamindar
class was thus apparent. The concern of the old landholding class
was partly addressed by government through the 1878 legislation,
but strengthening tenant protection under their rising aspiration
was more of a challenge. The ordinary raiyats were also dissatisfied.
Hence came the idea of a complete overhaul of the Rent Act, and the
appointment of a Rent Commission in 1880.62
But the background to these changes was not merely legalistic,
there were important economic considerations behind them.
Chaudhuri has made a survey of tenurial relations between the Rent
Act of 1859 and Bengal Tenancy Legislation of 1885 precisely from
these perspectives.63 The Act X of 1859 allowed zamindars to take a
part of the increased prices of crops from the peasants, but did not
refer to any fixed principle. The principle was fixed at the case of Hills
vs Issure Ghose (1862) in the High Court, based on the Malthusian
definition of rent. The cultivator had the right only over the wages of
his labour and the profits of his capital employed in cultivation. The
entire surplus, minus the cost, was the zamindar’s share. Chaudhuri
thinks it was virtually the victory of the planter-zamindar.
However, the victory was more theoretical or legal than practical.
It was not easy to implement the judicial decrees. According to the
Collector of Pabna, these decrees in the 1860s actually worked as
pressure for collecting the amount due in arrears. By contrast, it
strengthened the spirit of the anti-planter movement of the peasants.
Even in normal times, it was thought absurd to increase the rent on
the basis of the principles of the High Court. The Commissioner of
Nadia wrote, at the same time, that it was not easy to convince the
measurement of the value of livestock and capital even to the deputy
collector, and the determination of rent on this ground was most
difficult.
The High Court judgement of a 1864 case (Thakurani Dasi vs
Bisweshwar Mukherjee) changed the principle of 1862. It stated that
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 85

the proportion of the increased rent to the previous rent would be

equal to the proportion of the increased price to the previous price.
However, the zamindars could not use this rule of proportion for
various reasons.
Sometimes urgent economic needs also led the zamindars to
increase rents. The Amrita Bazar Patrika stated on 11 August 1871
that a civilian judge was better off than a zamindar, and Sir Richard
Temple pointed out that there were many zamindars who were so
poor as to take up other professions. Very often the entire zamindari
property was mortgaged. Increasing number of dependents, bad
management, and conspicuous consumption of the zamindars
were stated to be the main causes of their poverty. By contrast, the
zamindars could scarcely take recourse to the confiscation of property
of the peasants. It was rather used as a threat. Extra legal measures
were more rampantly used in Bihar.
Under such socio-economic conditions in Bengal in the last
quarter of the nineteenth century came remedial recommendations
under the cover of legal prescriptions. The main objective of the
Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 was to create a social situation in which
the production relations between the landlords and tenants of various
categories could smoothly operate and that it moved towards capital
accumulation in the hands of the raiyats. Accordingly, the following
features got prominence in the Act.
First, the landlords had no right to increase the rent of the
raiyats whose rents had remained unchanged since 1793. Second, the
occupancy rights of raiyats holding lands for more than twelve years
would be outright recognized as settled, and their rents could only
be enhanced if the resources of the concerned lands were improved
by the landlords. The rents of the karfa or short-term contractual
raiyats could be increased, but the increase would not come into effect
before the expiry of the current contract. Finally, all raiyats except
the karfa raiyats would have the right to transfer their holdings on
payment of a transfer fee to the proprietors of land.
The Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 was considered a step forward
in tenancy legislation, and its operation was closely studied by the
government periodically. The recognition of the raiyati right over
the sale of their land, even under certain conditions, was the most
important step forward. The power of the landlords to enhance
the rent was also considerably restricted. But strangely enough,
86 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the number of rent law suits in Bengal subordinate courts did not
decrease after the Act. The total number of such suits in Bengal
and Bihar was 126,902 in 1878, which further increased to 284,288
in 1900.64 Stranger than this, the same figure for only Bengal was
283,049 in 1912, which rose to 323,407 in 1923.65 It is true that the
phenomenal increase of the number of such suits might not be rooted
in any defect of the Act. In fact, it was quite possible that the precise
definition of the correct rent as emanating from the Act actually
encouraged such litigations in the early twentieth century. There was
a wide, unmistakable awareness of the tenant’s rights by this time.
‘But the raiyats were still deprived of the privileges of cutting trees,
mortgaging land beyond a certain time, transferring lands without
the permission of the landholders, building pucca structure and
digging tanks and ponds without the zamindari sanctions.’66 These
restrictions were increasingly violated in various parts of Bengal in
the early twentieth century, though the final removal of most of them
came in 1928, followed by the total abolition of the salami system in
the sale of land by the raiyats through the Amendment Act of 1938.
It thus appears that the legal framework of change in the
operation of Permanent Settlement had to pass a long way before
its establishment, and that it was no easy way either through
‘extractive’ codification or legal origins from Western influence. The
legal framework was built up at various levels—policy formulation,
codification, and court room justices at various layers. The connection
between them was not always as clear as it should be. The legal
formulation and codification had their own contradictions also,
as exemplified in Harrington’s illustrious case. More important
than that, the legal remedies came much after the necessity of their
change had been widely felt. Their origin and implementation also
connected them with other factors of change—social and economic.
The circulation of the legal framework was, therefore, long and by
no analysis definitive.

Two Markets and a Long Movement of

Rent in Bengal
It is now important to locate these other factors of change, social
and economic, and link them with the operations of the Permanent
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 87

Settlement in the twin areas of agrarian relations and the direction of

the peasant economy in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
We are now considering how the changes in the two markets—the
land market and the market for grains and commercial crops during
this period—had substantially influenced and virtually transformed
some of the contested issues related to the landlords and the raiyats.
The changing facets of their contestations in the wake of the varying
trajectories of these two markets are most intelligible if we take a
long view of the movement of rent in Bengal since the Permanent
Settlement.
Let us begin with the land market—the causes and quantum of
its fall and rise since 1793. Though the quantitative sources on the
secular movement of land in Bengal are not easily available, and when
available, are highly sporadic, Chaudhuri made an interesting study of
the market prices of the landed estates when put on sale over a period
of 140 years.67 Landed estates were sold even before the Permanent
Settlement,68 but the market was too low, and the data more scanty.
During Warren Hastings’s time (1773–85), ‘the prices of even entire
estates seldom exceeded 50 per cent of the revenue due from them,
and were far lower where the states lay far away from Calcutta’.69
The situation did not change significantly even after such lands
were made a saleable property after the Permanent Settlement. ‘The
long spell of agricultural prices, soon after the new system began to
operate (1794–97), inevitably aggravated such difficulties, immensely
and it was during this period that the largest number of land sales
occurred.’70 Land purchases were considered not at all worthwhile in
view of the low net income from most estates. When the impact of
the first distress sale of the zamindaris was visible in the mid-1790s,
‘the purchase money as the multiple of the land revenue of the estates’
was as low as 1.57 in 1795–6 and 1.25 in 1796–7, which was then
reduced to only 0.96 in 1797–8.71 The classic statement of two Greek
purchasers in Bakargunj that ‘what we intended as a purchase of land
has only been the purchase of disputes’ pertains to this period. The
situation did not improve till 1810–11, and change was visible only
after that. If the land prices are counted as multiples of land revenue
demand, the four quinquennial periods after 1805 show the signs
of transformation: 1805–9: 1.23; 1810–14: 4.77; 1815–18: 4.71; and
1819–23: 5.19. There was a temporary setback in the early 1830s
88 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

during the failure of the Union Bank, but even then the sale prices
of estates as number of times of the land revenue were 4.28 (1830–1),
3.23 (1831–2), and 4.31 (1832–3). The land prices remained stationary
in Bengal for more than fifteen years after 1839, and the commercial
crisis of 1847 made little impact on them.
The decisive factor in the secular rise in the land market was no
doubt the increasing income from land, and increased security of land
as a property. As old constraints of mortgage of land disappeared,
more credit was available to landholders from moneylenders also.
Indeed, the prospects of zamindari property were quite bright by 1850.
N.K. Sinha commented that the unique strength of Dwarakanath
Tagore even after the crisis of business in Bengal after 1847 was the
ownership of the latter’s landed property both in eastern Bengal and
Calcutta.72 This explains why he survived while many of his fellow
businessmen were wiped out in the commercial crisis.
Land prices in Bengal, generally speaking, were improving in
the three decades after 1850. As exemplified by its prices in the
multiples of revenue demand in the five-year periods beginning
since 1853–4, the figures were fairly high and even touched double
digits for a consecutive period of ten years: 1853–8 (8.77), 1859–64
(10.25), 1865–9 (10.16), 1870–4 (7.72), and 1875–9 (8.79). However,
in the three decades following 1880, a stagnation or fall in land
prices was registered in Bengal in terms of the same yardstick in
five-year periods: 1879–83 (6.91), 1884–9 (6.10), 1889–94 (6.64),
1898–1903 (6.36), 1904–8 (4.90), 1914–18 (4.29), and 1919–23 (3.63).
By contrast, the prices of landed estates in Bihar, from the late 1870s
onwards, showed both a higher market value in terms of the multiples
of land revenue demand, and a consistent rise. Here, the figure was as
high as 14.63 at the end of the five–year period following 1875, and
it went up to 16.13 at the similar group of periods ending in 1923,
when the Bengal figure by contrast was only 3.63.73
There is no detailed study of the movement of the peasants’ land
market in the long term, mainly because of the paucity of data for
the earlier period. However, Nariaki Nakazato made an interesting
study on raiyati land market from the 1870s to the 1930s in a chapter
of his monograph on eastern Bengal.74 His account is based on four
types of mortgages for principal money less than Rs.100, which
mostly consisted of raiyati holdings with right of occupancy, and
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 89

the mortgagors were mostly occupancy ryots. He has shown the

movement of the mortgages of value less than Rs.100 to register ‘a
phenomenal rise in both number and value during the three decades
from 1874 to 1904’.75 Indeed, it is notable that the mortgages began
to increase from 1881 (No. 5,455, Value Rs.255,609) and reached
the maximum in 1904 (No. 40,525, Value Rs.1,987,192). The sale
of occupancy holdings also recorded a sharp increase during the
two decades from 1882 to 1903 in the Dacca division of undivided
Bengal, both in terms value (Rs.) and area (bighas). The total area
and value of the raiyati holdings which were sold with right of
occupancy in 1882 were 20,441 bighas and Rs.217,139, respectively
but in 1903 these amounted to 90,743 bighas and Rs.3,098,073,
indicating a phenomenal rise of more than 450 and 1,400 per cent,
respectively.76 The general price of occupancy holdings remained at
about Rs.10 a bigha in the early 1880s, but took an upward turn in
1888 and finally reached to Rs.30 per bigha in 1903.77 It is difficult
to make a generalization of the sale market of occupancy holdings
at an all-Bengal level, but on balance, ‘the Registration statistics
show that the Burdwan division, or western Bengal, constituted the
region where the sale of occupancy holdings, and hence the process
of the differentiation of peasantry, was most active.’78 The role of
rural creditors in this situation seems most important, as they did
in the other parts of India. Chaudhuri, in his analysis of rural credit
in Bengal in the crucial years from 1859 to 1885, highlights several
aspects at the same time: (a) moneylenders’ significant association
with agricultural production as supplier of credit to the small peasants
as owner-cultivators, (b) their sudden disassociation from credit
supply in years of extensive crop failures so common during the
period, and (c) the insufficiency of most of the peasant proprietors as
suppliers of credit in such situations, and the virtual inability of the
share-croppers to make use of credit in agricultural activities in any
way.79 It is true that the occupancy holdings of the ryots turned into
a ‘property’ mostly because of the implementation of Bengal Tenancy
Act of 1885, but these lands may not have been readily taken up by
moneylenders for cultivation through transfer.80
There is no study of the secular movement of prices of food grains
and market crops in Bengal and Bihar for a long period, as has been
done in the case of land market. However, a few individual studies
90 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

suggest significant changes at certain periods of time. For example,

the fact that grain prices were very low in the 1790s did not go
unnoticed by historians,81 and the high rate of sales of landed estates
immediately after the Permanent Settlement in Bengal and Bihar has
also been linked with the grain market. Depressing prices did not
improve much in the early years of the nineteenth century. However,
the great depression that overwhelmed Orissa for about twenty-five
years since the mid-1830s did not have the same devastating effect
in Bengal and Bihar. From the 1860s onwards, there was a rise in
grain prices, which, despite fluctuations, continued throughout the
late nineteenth century.82 The cultivation of commercial crops such
as indigo and jute was increasingly connected with the international
market and its ups and downs. But on the whole, viewed in the long
term, most historians detected a sort of a positive effect of their prices
in the generation of income of the peasants. In Bihar, the history of
produce rent (in contrast to money rent) makes an interesting reading
only in the context of the secular movement of prices.
It thus appears that the contested issues of agrarian relations and
peasant economy in Bengal and Bihar were closely connected with
changes in the land and crop market, and that both the outlook and
the activities of the zamindars and raiyats have been largely coloured
by them. Since rent was the most important economic connection
between the landlord and the peasants, a short view of its history in
the framework of a longer time period would be in order here.
Studies of the movement of rent in Bengal and Bihar have
mainly been based on various administrative reports at the time
of the Permanent Settlement, some of the Survey and Settlement
later conducted at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth
century, and the multi-volume reports of the popularly known
Floud Commission in 1940.83 The records of the zamindari estates
on rent are either not available or extensively used. Based on these
limited records (but supplemented by data taken from spheres of
other developments), Chaudhuri makes an interesting reading of
the movement of rent in Bengal from a long historical perspective.84
The basic assumption of the popular views on the movement of
rent in Bengal and Bihar is four-fold. First, an enormous increase of
the gross rental of the zamindars occurred since 1793. Second, almost
the whole of this increase took place at the cost of the peasantry.
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 91

Third, as the increased rent was met out of the pre-existing resources
of the peasantry, the increased gross rental tended to impoverish
them. Finally, various institutional innovations since 1793 gradually
led to the reduction of the small owner-peasants to mere tenants-at-
will. It will be historically rewarding if we try to verify the assumptions
one by one.
The main source of estimation of rent in Bengal and Bihar is
the comparative estimate of rent in 1793 and 1876–7, when fresh
information regarding the gross rental was available. The estimation
of the gross land revenue of the zamindars of Bengal at the time of
the Permanent Settlement moved around a conjecture that it
absorbed as much as 90 per cent of the gross rental. Since the revenue
demand fixed was about Rs.2.70 crore, the rental has been estimated
at around Rs.3 crores. By contrast, the Road Cess Statistics collected
under the Bengal Road Cess Act, 1871, show that the gross rental
as stated by the zamindars in 1876–7 was about Rs.13 crore. As the
cess varied according to the size of the rental, such information was
collected.
The most important precaution to be taken against this kind of
comparative study of rent in Bengal with a gap of about 100 years
is that the original estimation, if wrong, can vitiate the work of
comparison with similar estimation in later years. Chaudhuri thinks
that the estimate of the rental of the base year 1793 is just a guess.
Even then, he shows that the increase of the gross rental between 1793
and 1880, indicating how many times the rental of 1880 exceeded the
rental of 1793. Interestingly enough, in districts such as Burdwan,
Midnapore, Nadia, and Dinajpur, which had the largest estates, the
increase in the gross rental was small, the difference varying from
1.2 to 1.8.85
The second precaution of the comparative study is that the so-
called Road Statistics were not entirely trustworthy. There were doubts
in the circles of government which had no means of testing their
accuracy. Three specific objections were round the corner. First, such
statistics are sometimes related not to the actual rent collection, but
to the rent demand. The zamindars had a motive of putting up the
rent demand before the government, since such data might help them
in courts in the innumerable of number of rent suits that followed.
Second, the increase in gross rental was sometimes not real at all.
92 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

A considerable part of the increase resulted from the increasing

number of estates that the official valuation gradually included.
Finally, sometimes the zamindars concealed some sources of income
at the first assessment, particularly abwabs (extra cess), out of fear that
the government would prohibit their collection. With time, because
of increasing peasant resistance, the zamindars thought it discreet
to consolidate them with the original rent rates.
The third precaution about the comparative statistics was that the
so-called gross rental was not necessarily entirely composed of rent
payments by peasants; there were other components also. With the
proliferation of rural markets resulting from population growth and
with increasing exploitation of mineral resources, the income of the
zamindars increased. Another source of this increase was the revision
of rent demand on different grades of tenure holders, particularly
various privileged social and economic groups. Nilmani Mukherjee
has given a vivid account of this in his monograph on Jaykrishna
Mukherjee, with special reference to two groups, the Mandals and
Brahmans.86 As regards the first, Jaykrishna tried to curb the power
of such Mandals who, as village headmen, had appropriated the best
lands of the village through a redistribution of their holdings among
the peasants. He was equally stern against the Brahmans, some of
whom were usually the holders of rent-free and other privileged
tenures. In his study on Birbhum, Ranjan Gupta also pointed out
how Jaykrishna placed them on the same footing as other peasants,
by using every device of litigation to break them down and squeeze
them out.
The fourth precaution to be taken is that the so-called gross rental
did not indicate the real rent burden, because only a part of it was
actually realized. The root cause was the failure of the zamindars to
collect as much as they demanded. The most decisive factor in this
failure was the occasional shortfall in production. In addition, there
were local crop failures, which happened to be almost an annual
feature of agriculture in Bengal. The state of rent collection in the
wards and attached estates in Bengal in the late nineteenth century
can be taken as a test case. The percentages of the total collection
to the total demand in the wards and attached estates during this
period are illustrative: they varied from 37 per cent, which was very
low, to 62 per cent, which was very high. There is reason to believe
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 93

that the same was the case for the earlier period also. The common
zamindars suffered more, since they did not have the extraordinary
power of the Court of Wards for collecting rent.
The fifth important point to critically review the popular notion
of a phenomenal increase of the gross rental is to locate and link it to
the changes in agriculture and peasant resources in the first seventy
years after the Permanent Settlement. Since this theme would be
taken up in the next section, a brief discussion would be made here.
Two things happened during this period. First, there was a large
increase in the size of cultivated area, followed by an increase in
stability of agriculture. The area under cultivation barely exceeded 30
to 35 per cent of the available land in Bengal in around 1793, which
increased to 75 to 80 per cent of the available land by the close of
the nineteenth century. It was permissible both under law and local
customs to adjust the rent demand in accordance with the changes
in the size of cultivation. But this process of adjusting the rent with
agricultural changes was not easy, as it was actually a compromise
based on an agreement between the zamindars and the peasants
on the basis of some give and take. The attractive rental terms which
the zamindars had earlier offered to entice the cultivators for the
increase of cultivation ceased to be necessary with the growth of
population.
Finally, the assumption that the so-called property rights in the
land vested by the Permanent Settlement to the landholders was
incompatible with the peasants’ rights in land and that the extinction
of the latter was therefore inevitable, is to be critically judged. Legal
power of the auction-purchasers of the zamindaris to annul leases of
the existing under-renters does not necessarily mean violation of all
peasant rights. Campbell, Buchanan and a large number of district
officers also made the same mistake. Buchanan in particular argued
that the custom of receiving leases was falling into disuse, and he
eventually regarded a raiyat without a lease as ‘one holding [land]
without title’. In his own words, ‘The leases are seldom renewed, so
that the tenants are moveable at will’.87
This assumption needs critical scrutiny. As we have already
shown, the government during the time of the Permanent Settlement
scarcely regarded the so-called property rights of the zamindars
as being necessarily antagonistic to those of the peasants. The
94 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

declaration that the zamindars were made ‘proprietors of the soil’

was primarily a negation of the farming system. In one sense, it
was merely a confirmation of the old established position of the
zamindars. It is also true that the new regulations strengthened the
legal status of the zamindars with regard to mortgage and sale of their
estates, and that the auction-purchasers annulled in some cases the
leases of under-renters. However, none of them virtually disturbed
the actual cultivators. Moreover, cultivation mostly continued on
mere verbal agreements, and the cultivators did not bother much
about formal leases. Buchanan’s inference from the non-existence of
formal leases was, therefore, misleading. Indeed, the very origin of
short term tenure lay with the particular organization of agricultural
production. In many cases, the peasants themselves insisted on short
term arrangements, as they feared that long term arrangement would
bind them unnecessarily to a fixed commitment in the context of
recurring agricultural hazards which required from them a continual
shifting of cultivation. In this sense, it would be unhistorical to treat
land tenure as an exogenous variable and not as a function of the
particular organization of agricultural production.

Peasant Economy, Landlords, and Agrarian

Improvement in Bengal and Bihar
It now appears that the contested claims on different kinds of land
rights, their working, and the collection rent from a variety of under-
tenures were closely entangled with the actual operations of peasant
economy, and the role that the landlords and the raiyats played in
them. It has been argued by some historians that the original idea
of the Permanent Settlement for creating a new class of proprietors
as improving landlords in Bengal and Bihar was proved belied to
the highest authorities in India as early the 1820s, and that the
government’s attention was gradually shifted to the raiyats as agents
of change, though its dramatic effect was reflected only in the third
and fourth quarters of the nineteenth century.88 A slightly different
view is seen in an article by Peter Robb, where the meanings of
the property rights in land have been extended in various ways
with special reference to Bihar.89 Earlier, he had also talked about
agricultural development in Bihar during 1880–1920 through state
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 95

intervention, with apparently twin results: significant changes on

the one hand, and specific distortions in economic development
because of continual state influence on the other hand.90 An equally
forceful argument regarding the nature of peasant economy, viewed
through the twin glasses of landholding and land controlling
structures in Bengal, received critical appreciation in the last several
decades.91
One significant import of the last controversy is that more
attention has been given by the historians to the nature and opera-
tions of the peasant economy. It is true that the so-called jotedar
thesis on dominance in the land controlling structure has now been
generally revised, and more narrowly restricted to the areas of north
Bengal rather than to areas of western and eastern Bengal. But its
significance as analytical categories of long term change in Bengal
agriculture has not diminished. In later years, it tried to address the
roots and trajectories of a ‘basic conflict’ between the modern type
kulak landlord and the share-cropping cultivators in various parts
of West Bengal.92
How the peasant economy adjusted with the dramatic changes
both before and after the Permanent Settlement has naturally become
a subject of intense discussion. A part of this question was addressed
by Chaudhuri93 in several of his works. The famine of 1770 fatally
dislocated Bengal agriculture through extensive depopulation,
starvation, deaths, and remarkable contraction of agriculture. The
process of recovery was slow and took several decades to return
to the normal state. Choudhuri-Zilly has shown that desertion
in large numbers from villages continued till the early decades of
the nineteenth century.94 In a sense, when the proclamation of the
Permanent Settlement was made, the Bengal economy was still in
a crisis.
Admittedly, there was an increase of cultivation over time. But
what was the quantum of the increase? The impressionistic statements
mainly came from the elaborate queries of Lord Wellesley during
1801–2 about the effect of the Permanent Settlement on the increase
of cultivation. The replies that came from the district officers were
not generally based on statistical evidence. The general impression
that cultivation increased was, however, probably not misleading.
In Saran, for example, it was assumed that there was a 20 per cent
96 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

increase since 1793. But the extent of increase could not always be
estimated properly, since the earlier figures did not include concealed
holdings, something which were widely practised.
Later reports based on more reliable information show that
there was an increase of cultivation, but the trends were uneven.
It is surprising to note that in the backward districts, agricultural
resources were better exploited. Here again, the case of Saran can be
cited as an example. It was a well-developed district at the time of
the Permanent Settlement, but the new cultivation in the following
seventy years was negligible. By contrast, Trihut, which was not very
developed in the early 1790s, experienced a phenomenal increase of
new cultivation. Even in as late as 1796, the collector did not notice
considerable reclamation in the district, and the extent of wasteland
exceeded land under cultivation. Here, the beginning of change
was slow, and hence unidentifiable. By 1847, however, an area of
75 per cent of the cultivable land in the district was estimated as
under cultivation. At the end of the nineteenth century, we find the
confirmation of massive reclamation of land in the district.
In the Darbhanga district, available statistics suggest a sustained
period of growth in agriculture in the nineteenth century. In 1870, in
Alapur Pargana of the district, about 77 per cent of the total area was
under cultivation. It was undoubtedly one of the richest parts of the
district. The same was the story of the Pargana Bharwara. However,
in the district as a whole, cultivation seems to have expanded very
slowly till the 1820s. By 1837, however, agricultural progress in the
district was fairly impressive. The exact date of change could not be
identified.
One of the most backward districts of Bihar was Champaran. In
1794, the collector noted that about 25 per cent of land there was
cultivated. Here, the growth was phenomenal. The cadastral survey
that was made in the last decade of the nineteenth century showed
unbelievable figures: the cultivated area under Betia Raj increased
by 586 per cent since 1793, by 155 per cent since 1820, by about 77
per cent if we compare with the average extent of cultivation during
1820–50, and by 30 per cent even if we compare with the nearest
average figure of 1850–70.
The scale of the new cultivation in the western districts of Bengal
seems to be smaller compared to that of the eastern districts. The
eastern districts had the following advantages. First, the effects of the
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 97

famine of 1770 here were marginal. Second, here was more or less an
assured water supply because of the presence of greater number of
water resources. Though major setbacks were created by occasional
floods, there were no demographic reverses.
By contrast, there was only limited expansion of cultivation in
Midnapore and Bankura districts in West Bengal. More surprising is
the finding of the cadastral survey of 1911–17, when a decline of 5 per
cent was noted. The settlement officer attributed it to indiscriminate
deforestation and the lack of caution in the felling of trees.
How were the financing and organization of the new cultivation
done? Here we again face the old controversy of whether the
zamindars had any role in this at all. The popular view is that the
zamindars, as a ‘superior landlord class’, were entirely and universally
a parasitical group. The view needs critical scrutiny. There was also
a question of time and chronology associated with the development.
The validity of the popular version largely depends on an
assumption that the small peasants had enough to spare for financing
any new cultivation. The peasants were generally poor and dependent
on the moneylenders and grain merchants. In Dinajpur, according
to Buchanan, half of the cultivation was based on loans provided by
the substantial farmers and grain merchants.
It is true that there were places where an increase of labour
force (because of the increase of peasant families) played a decisive
role in the new cultivation. This mainly occurred where serious
demographic reverses followed the devastating famine of 1770. The
raiyats here preferred to cultivate the wastelands than to clear the
jungles. However, this was not merely the result of the replenishment
of labour force, but also the reduction of rent rates by the zamindars.
The popular view of the parasitic nature of the zamindars was
mainly influenced by certain mid-nineteenth century developments.
Increasing pressure of population created, by that time, a considerable
portion of ‘unearned income’ in the hands of the zamindars. The
agrarian situation was different at the time of the Permanent
Settlement and for quite some time afterwards. The non-existence of
the role of the zamindars in the increase of cultivation was, therefore,
largely an inference from the inefficiency of their estate management
in a later period. However, the enormous size of their existing rent-
free lands and their huge expenditure for the digging of tanks always
worked as a deterrent in their finances.
98 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The absence of a greater degree of participation on the part

of the zamindars did not preclude the adoption of measures for
the improvement of agriculture. One example was the special in-
centive given in the matter of reclamation of waste. The ijaradars’
interests were also towards the increase of cultivation. A few
zamindars found it worthwhile to create long-term leases for ijaradars
and thikadars.
The failure of the zamindars in certain cases to provide indirect
or direct assistance toward the increase in cultivation was largely due
to their financial stringency, which was acute during the period of the
Permanent Settlement. The rigidity of the collection of revenues, even
under unfavourable conditions of natural calamities, was another
factor. The zamindars’ income was also not large. It was barely 10 to
15 per cent of the rent collected. Chaudhuri, in an earlier work, has
shown how the zamindars of Rajsahi, Bishnupur, and Midnapore
in the early years after the Permanent Settlement tried their best
to improve agriculture, but failed. 95 In Patna-Gaya, the minute
subdivision of property reduced a large number of zamindars to the
condition of mere peasants.
We shall now examine the main agricultural trends in Bengal
and Bihar in the second half of the nineteenth century.96 During
this period, population growth was particularly striking in eastern
and northern Bengal. The growth in eastern Bengal was largely due
to the relative absence of the malaria epidemic, unlike in western
Bengal. In Bihar, a rapid growth in population was noticeable during
1872–81, a relatively smaller growth in the 1880s, and a declining
trend in the 1890s.
Two features were noticeable in the new cultivation during this
period. First, its sites were often far away from the settled villages.
Second, immigrant labour, including tribal labour, had a significant
role in it. For example, immigrant labourers, mostly Santals, had
a decisive role in the huge tract called the Barind, covering parts
of Dinajpur, Maldah, Bogura, and Rajsahi. Population growth was
particularly visible in those parts of the Barind where Santals were
active in reclamation. The districts where immigrants had little or no
role to play may be classified into three groups: (a) demographically
decadent districts having some small pockets of growth, (b) some
districts of central and eastern Bengal having a large population
growth and at the same time a great scope for new cultivation, and
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 99

(c) districts of Bihar with a growing population but with much smaller
amount of cultivable wasteland.
In the first group of districts, i.e. the demographically decadent
districts, the main urge behind the search for new cultivation was
to escape from the ravages of malaria. In Nadia, a considerable
group of peasants left their villages in search for physical safety. In
Midnapore, a new kind of land was available in Contai and Tamluk
subdivisions. This was called jalpai lands, or lands once reserved for
salt manufacture, now available where salt production was stopped
in the early 1860s. Rich entrepreneurs leased such lands, and spent
money to keep out salt water to make these lands ready for cultivation.
Consequently, they encouraged peasant migration from other places.
Here, the population grew about 25 per cent during 1872–1901.
Similarly, there were incentives for jute cultivation in Rangpur and
for ganja cultivation in pockets of Rajsahi.
In the second group of districts, i.e. eastern and northern Bengal,
increase of cultivation was a general phenomenon, though there were
few exceptions. Three major areas of new cultivation may be located
here: (a) the vast Sunderban forest tract, (b) different chars or fertile
alluvial formations constantly formed by the system of active rivers,
and (c) particular parts of some districts offering opportunity for new
cultivation. It was in Bakarganj that cultivation increased fastest by
the formation of chars. New cultivation was considerable in another
district of the second group—Faridpur. Here, the Namasudras played
a leading role in land reclamation. In Dhaka, a relatively smaller area
called Madhupur came under cultivation during this period.
The third group of districts, namely the districts of north Gangetic
Bihar, experienced a large population growth, but there was a much
smaller scope for new cultivation in this region. The density of
population was the highest in Saran, Muzaffarpur, and Darbhanga.
The new cultivation was negligible here, though there was a desperate
search for new land. Rural disputes, contestation about boundary of
land, and claims over little plots of wasteland were rampant here. The
practice of fallowing nearly disappeared, and peasants increasingly
encroached on the pastures. Even mango groves were cut down,
though planting such groves was part of the religious practice of the
Hindus.
Cultivation increased by nearly 2 per cent in Saran, and 5 per
cent in Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur during this period. This was
100 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

definitely a negligible growth. Local officials were convinced that an

increase in cultivation was now possible at the cost of the perilously
small size of pastures. The cultivators had two options: they could
either migrate to other districts or adopt the techniques of intensive
cultivation. As regards the first, the peasant migration to the north,
the site of most new cultivation, meant shift of peasants from a region
of multiple crops to one of limited number of crops. It was, in other
words, a shift from a region of valuable cash crops to one of mostly
‘subsistence agriculture with rice dominant’. It was also a shift from a
more or less secure area of cultivation to one where the crops, mainly
dependent on rainfall, frequently failed. As regards the second, the
new hazards were the decay of the traditional large scale irrigation
system based on ahar (reservoir of water) and pyne (artificial channels
of water to fill the ahar) in Bihar, especially Gaya.
When the small peasant economy of Bengal was facing these
economic and ecologic problems and adjusting with many of them
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many landlords
of Bengal were experiencing definite signs of the decline of their
fortunes. The study of both Akinobu Kawai and Nariaki Nakazato
have taken up a few issues of the agrarian society in Bengal from this
period and linked them with the signs of decline of the landlords in
various ways.97 Chitta Panda’s recent book covers the story of this
decline more graphically in the context of Midnapore.98 Panda shows
that the zamindars failed to close the widening gap between their
assets and liabilities during this period, and the government also
had no inclination to bail them out from the crisis. The number of
rent suits increased manifold and the fragmentation of their estates
continued unabated. ‘Many former zamindars were reduced from
the level of peasants and a few from the ranks of the peasants with
adequate control over resources achieved the status of zamindars’.99
Robb, on the other hand, has taken up the issue of the develop-
ment of property rights in Bihar from the colonial land experiments
and expanded the question in multiple ways. Though his specific
work relates to the working of the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 in
Bihar,100 his expansion of the legal meaning of property rights is most
interesting. First, he attaches these rights both to the landlords and
the tenants. Second, he finds their origin and expansion both in the
legal codification from Western influence and indigenous customs.
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 101

Finally, he finds a long legacy of such rights, taking them from the
influence of nationalism in the late colonial period to the postcolonial
period.

Discontent and Protest

Our discussion of this theme would be very short within the analytical
framework of our study. However, we think that a more elaborate
discussion of the discontent and protest is possible from perspectives
of popular attitudes and peasant movement during this period. Only
two pertinent questions are taken up here. First, what was the true
nature of the rent discontent during the second half of the nineteenth
century? Second, how can the root cause of the Pabna Revolt that
took place in the 1870s be explained?
As regards the first question, there were various manifestations
of the rent discontent of the period. Palit even took it to the earlier
period, and tried to explain the rural tensions within Bengal in the
three decades following 1830, in terms of the activities of European
planters in Bengal. One important sign of discontent was no doubt
the increasing litigation. But such litigation significantly increased
since the 1880s. Nakazato even went to the extent of noting that
‘in the rent problems at the turn of the century the first indications
that the zamindari system, or zamindari-raiyat relationship began
to lose its overwhelming and predominant position in the surplus
appropriation in eastern Bengal’.101 The second manifestation of
such discontent was found in some sporadic publications and some
reflections in the press.102 Some early signs of the discontent of petty
landlords were available during this period. There were also some
differences in the nature of these discontents in Bengal and Bihar,
which should be critically looked into. The voice of the substantial
raiyats was more often heard.
As regards the second question, there are two explanations.
One was that the revolt mostly took place because of the violation
of rights of the more substantial raiyats in connection with their
occupancy right. This view was put forward by Kalyan Kumar Sen
Gupta in 1974.103 The other view was developed by Chaudhuri a year
earlier.104 Here, the argument was that the general increase of rent
made by the zamindars was the main reason of the protest movement
102 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

of the peasants, the violation of the occupancy rights of a section of

cultivators playing a supplementary factor only. Since Chaudhuri did
not deny the participation of the raiyats in the revolt, it is possible
that his insistence on the increase of rent was mainly to explain the
spread and intensity of the revolt. Judged by hindsight, it seems both
views were complementary to each other.

Legacy of the Permanent Settlement in

Historical Perspectives
Both in the contemporary and nationalist literature, the Permanent
Settlement figured as a very important development of deliberations.
In the high official circles, Permanent Settlement ceased to be favoured
ever since the middle of the nineteenth century as a form of tenure to
be extended elsewhere. There is a full chapter in the third volume of
this series by Bipasha Raha as part of the Indian intellectual reflections
on it. Elsewhere also, she has talked about the salient features of the
agrarian thinking and its various spokespersons in Bengal in the
nineteenth century.105 Her main argument is that ‘the momentous
changes in the agrarian economy of Bengal’ in the nineteenth century
led to the formation of important agrarian issues for the officials
and the intellectuals for deliberation and propagation in the course
of the century. The educated urban middle class began to express
their opinions regarding the new system of landlordism in Bengal
since the 1830s onwards. Initially Hindu reformers, and later even
some Muslim writers commented on the agrarian question. Three
features were apparent in these observations: (a) issues pertaining
from plantation activities, involving zamindars in the process,
(b) issues emanating from the widely ‘perceived’ zamindari ex-
ploitation, particularly with regard to the question of rent, and
(c) increasing aspirations of the ‘ryots’ for rights and property,
particularly following the two Rent Acts of 1859 and 1885 in Bengal.
There had been a series of literary reflections on this in the
course of the nineteenth century. Beginning with Rammohan Roy’s
answers to a limited number of questions circulated by the East
India Company officials on the zamindari system and its associated
features, these reflections were extended by the literary inputs of such
writers as Sanjib Chandra Chattopadhyay (Bengal Ryots, 1864), R.C.
Dutt (The Peasantry of Bengal, 1873), Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 103

(‘Bangadesher Krishak’, 1872), Dinabandhu Mitra (Nil Darpan,

1860–1), and Mir Musarraf Hussain (Jamidar Darpan, 1873).106 This
would not be an appropriate place to discuss each of them or their
works, but two statements must be made regarding two publications
from the five mentioned above. First, Bankim Chandra’s pro-ryot
position was mostly the product of the historical developments in
the zamindar-ryot relations in the 1860s and 1870s, so much so
that he issued a revised edition of his essay in 1892, arguing that
much of the problems of the ryots were resolved favourably by the
Bengal Tenancy Act, 1885. Second, Ranajit Guha in particular made
a forceful argument that Dinabandhu Mitra’s Nil Darpan did not
represent the true peasant voices following the well-known Indigo
Revolt of 1858–9, and that instead, it worked as a mirror of the Bengali
middle class through an exegetical analysis of the work.107
This brings us to the other aspects of the legacy of the Permanent
Settlement in Bengal in the early twentieth century when the decline
and fall of Bengal zamindars was being gradually pronounced, or in
the late colonial period of the 1930s and 1940s when their fate was
almost doomed, or in the great nationalist and left upsurge of the
period and thereafter, when they were often treated as the bête noire
of the prevailing agrarian system. As early as in 1938, the Fazlul Huq
government in Bengal officially proposed for its abolition on fiscal
ground, for augmenting the income of the government, and the
majority recommendation of the Floud Commission was also for that.
Riddhi Sankar Ray has argued that what happened after Partition in
the 1950s—the official abolition of zamindari in East Bengal (later
Bangladesh) in 1950 and the same in West Bengal in 1953—was
quite superficial, as the ‘abolition merely confirmed, and ratified
the position of, half the “agriculturist” population as the absolute
masters of the other half ’.108 Indeed, the abolition was actually the
acquisition of the raiyati rental by the government predominantly
for fiscal reasons, and it established the privileged holders of raiyati
title as the unchallenged bosses of the Bengal countryside. It did not
care, both in the late colonial and early postcolonial era, for the rights
and claims of the vast number of under-tenants and sharecroppers
working hard for their livelihoods in various parts of Bengal.
Even in the postcolonial era, in the history books for schools
and colleges, and in the political development of post-Independence
India, this subject occurs prominently for discussion. It is generally
104 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

formulated that the abolition of the zamindari system was made in

two parts of Bengal in the 1950s only as part of the new principles
of democracy and public order. However, as far as the Permanent
Settlement in Bengal was concerned, its real death occurred in
1938, if not earlier. The nationalist ideology also perceived it mostly
negatively in its late formulations. It gave a new weapon to the
nationalist ideology in the form of no-rent campaign, but its efficacy
in Bengal was limited. In the Quit India Movement in 1942, the local
landholders managed to redirect the people’s movement against it.109
The legacy is, therefore, more imaginary than real.

A Short Concluding Note

As we have stated in the beginning, this concluding note is not
to be taken as a new narrative but as quick revisits to some of the
vexed issues emanating from the grand system of the Permanent
Settlement. One very important aspect of it is the multiplicity of
meanings that it generated over the years, with regard to both land
rights and tenancy rights. There is no urgent need to specifically
see the landholding right as something exclusively emanating from
European ideas, but the importance of property rights remains.
There is a circularity in the legal framework of it, but over and above
it, there comes the questions related to markets of land, credit, and
product, and the long movement of rent. With the passing of years,
the rent question predominates and the property questions of land,
in the old sense of the term, recede in the background. This becomes
particularly possible with the working of the peasant economy in
myriad directions. The end was as dramatic as the beginning. If the
Permanent Settlement began with the novel idea of a new land right,
it ended in the early twentieth century by the creation of several
others, including the rights of the ryots of various types. But this is
not the end of the story. The contest of the rights and claims of various
stakeholders in an agrarian society continues, and the legacy of the
Permanent Settlement is to be searched both from the distant past and
the near present, in the form of ‘facts’ with their many interpretations,
and ‘fiction’ with its distant connection with some of the facts. There
is a concept of ‘conspicuous’ and ‘submerged’ history in the seminal
writing of Fernand Braudel. There is much in the history of agrarian
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 105

relations and peasant economy of Bengal during the crucial period

between 1793 and 1920, which can be called both conspicuous and
submerged. It is the historian’s task to link them up.

Notes
1. See, for example, B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Agrarian Relations: Eastern India’, in The
Cambridge Economic History of India, Volume II: c.1757–1970, ed. Dharma
Kumar, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 86–177; and
Sirajul Islam, ed., ‘Permanent Settlement and Peasant Economy’, History
of Bangladesh: 1704–1971, Volume II: Economic History, Dhaka: Asiatic
Society of Bangladesh, 1992, pp. 246–71.
2. F.G. Wriggley, The Eastern Bengal and Assam Code: Containing the
Regulations and Local Acts in force in the Province of Eastern Bengal and
Assam, vol. I, Calcutta: Government Press, 1907, p. 5.
3. N.K. Sinha, The Economic History of Bengal, from Plassey to the Permanent
Settlement, vol. II, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1962. Sinha’s reading of primary
documents suggest that it was J.Z. Holwell who introduced the idea of
auction (known also as ‘outcry’ system at that time) ‘for knowing the
resources of the country in the absence of any other prevalent mechanism’,
a system leading to the maximization of land revenue.
4. Ibid. This is the crudest summing up of Sinha’s chapters on the
development of revenue administration in Bengal prior to Permanent
Settlement.
5. Sirajul Islam, The Permanent Settlement in Bengal: A Study of its
Operations, Dacca: Bangla Academy, 1979, p. 25.
6. Peter Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987, p. 144.
7. A.M. Serajuddin, The Revenue Administration of the East India Company
in Chittagong, 1761–1785, Chittagong: University of Chittagong, 1971;
see, Chapter I.
8. Ranjit Sen, Economics of Revenue Maximization in Bengal, 1757–1793,
Calcutta: Nalanda, 1988.
9. Amales Tripathi, Trade and Finance in the Bengal Presidency, 1793–1833,
new revd edn., Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979.
10. Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of
Permanent Settlement, new edn., Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.
11. Indeed, on 5 July 1778, Francis wrote to William Young, ‘.  .  .  without
private Property, there can be no public Revenue. I mean that regular
and permanent revenue on which alone a wise Government ought to
place its dependence’. See, Guha, Rule of Property, chapter 4, section 2,
pp. 96–126.
106 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
12. Philip Francis, Sir Philip Francis’s Minute on the Subject of Permanent
Settlement of Bengal, Behar and Orissa (with a preface by Romesh Dutt
and an introduction by Jogendra Chandra Ghosh), Calcutta: s.n., 1901.
13. Ibid., p. 47; emphasis by Romesh Dutt himself.
14. Ibid., p. vi.
15. Ibid., p. vii.
16. See, Rajat Kanta Ray and Ratnalekha Ray, ‘Zamindars and Jotedars:
A Study of Rural Politics in Bengal’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 9, no. 1,
1975, pp. 81–102; Ratnalekha Ray, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society,
c.1760–1850, Delhi: Manohar, 1979; and B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Rural Power
Structure and Agricultural Productivity in Eastern India, 1757–1947’, in
Agrarian Power and Agricultural Productivity in South Asia, ed. Meghnad
Desai, Susanne Rudolph, and Ashok Rudra, Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1984, pp. 100–70.
17. Francis Buchanan, A Geographical, Statistical and Historical Description
of the District or Zila of Dinajpur, in the Province or Soubah of Bengal,
Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1833.
18. Sugata Bose, Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure and Politics, 1919–
1947, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; see, particularly
Chapter I. He writes: ‘The typical agricultural work unit in Bengal was
small peasant family farm’ (p. 19).
19. Rajat Kanta Ray, ‘The Retreat of the Jotedars?’, The Indian Economic and
Social History Review (hereafter IESHR), vol. 25, no. 2, 1988, pp. 237–47.
20. Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556–1707, 2nd revd
edn., Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.
21. W.H. Moreland took this distinct position in his work, but he admitted
that it was possible for the term zamindar to have a wider connotation
in Bengal. See, W.H. Moreland, The Agrarian System of Moslem India,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929, pp. 191–4.
22. Habib, Agrarian System of Mughal India, p. 174.
23. See, Walter C. Neale, ‘Land is to Rule’, Developing Rural India: Policies,
Politics, and Progress, Delhi: Allied, 1990, pp. 11–25. The article was first
published in R.E. Frykenberg, ed., Land Control and Social Structure
in Indian History, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969,
enlarged Indian edn., Delhi: Manohar, 1979. Neale made a basic
distinction between ‘land to own’ and ‘land to rule’ in terms of meaning,
and stated that the distinction was not so clear in precolonial Bengal.
24. See, Sinha, Economic History of Bengal, vol. II.
25. Sirajul Islam, Bengal Land Tenure: The Origin and Growth of Intermediary
Interests in the 19th Century, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1988.
26. Ibid., p. 2.
27. Ibid., pp. 2–3.
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 107
28. Aditee Nag Chaudhuri-Zilly, ‘The Vicious Circle Begins: The Weakened
Zamindar, the Opportunist Mudole and the Exploited Peasant’, in
The Vagrant Peasant: Agrarian Distress and Desertion in Bengal, 1770 to
1830, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982, pp. 40–63.
29. Ratnalekha Ray, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society.
30. Ranjan Gupta, The Economic Life of a Bengal District, Birbhum, 1770–1857,
Burdwan: University of Burdwan, 1984.
31. Sirajul Islam, ‘Permanent Settlement and Peasant Economy’, p. 250.
32. Islam, Bengal Land Tenure, p. 4.
33. Ray, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society.
34. There was an important change in Ratnalekha Ray’s stand with regard
to the zamindari position in land control, as indicated by an article
published after her death. See, Ratnalekha Ray, ‘The Changing Fortunes
of the Bengali Gentry—The Palchaudhuris of Maheshganj 1800–1950’,
Modern Asian Studies, vol. 21, pt. 3, 1987, pp. 511–19.
35. Chittabrat Palit, ‘Landlords after the Permanent Settlement’, in Tensions
in Bengal Rural Society: Landlords, Planters and Colonial Rule, 1830–1860,
Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1998, pp. 6–24.
36. Ibid., p. 6.
37. D.J. McNeille, Memorandum on the Revenue Administration of the Lower
Provinces of Bengal, Calcutta: Government Press, 1873, see Appendix I,
cited in Palit, ‘Landlords after the Permanent Settlement’, pp. 16–17.
38. Islam, ‘Permanent Settlement and Peasant Economy’, p. 256.
39. Tapan Raychaudhuri, ‘Permanent Settlement in Operation: Bakarganj
District, East Bengal’, in Land Control and Social Structure in Indian
History, ed. R.E. Frykenberg, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press,
1969, pp. 163–74.
40. Islam, Bengal Land Tenure.
41. Islam, ‘Permanent Settlement and Peasant Economy’, p. 256.
42. Halliday’s note on under-tenures, 30 July 1839, Bengal Revenue
Consultations, 12 November 1839, no. 90, cited in ibid., p. 258.
43. L. Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; and R. Birla, Stages of
Capital: Law, Culture and Market Governance in Late Colonial India,
Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
44. Tirthankar Roy and Anand V. Swami, Law and the Economy of Colonial
India, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2016.
45. For an elaborate discussion, see, ‘The Process of Legislation, 1772–1857’,
in ibid., pp. 10–26.
46. Great Britain, House of Commons, Revenue: Appendix to the Report from
the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East
India Company, Minute of Evidence, London: J.L. Cox and Sons, 1833,
p. 131; cited in Roy and Swami, Law and Economy, p. 186.
108 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
47. The Governor-General-in-Council will, whenever they deem it proper,
enact such Regulations as he may think necessary for the protection and
welfare of dependent talookdars, ryots and other cultivators of the soil, and
no zamindar, independent talookdar, or other actual proprietor of land,
shall be entitled, on this account, to make any objection to the discharge
of the fixed assessment which they have respectively agreed to pay.
   See, House of Commons, Revenue: Appendix to the Report, p. 128;
cited in Roy and Swami, Law and Economy, p. 36.
48. B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Agrarian Relationships in Bengal after the Permanent
Settlement: 1793–1819’, Unpublished PhD thesis, Calcutta University,
1959; see Chapter IV, pp. 107–38.
49. Letters from the Governor-General-in-Council to the Court of Directors,
dated 15 May 1795, 31 October 1799, and 6 March 1800, cited in ibid.,
p. 137.
50. Ibid., p. 109.
51. Roy and Swami, Law and Economy, p. 36.
52. W.H. Macnaghlen, Report of Cases Determined in the Court of Sudder
Dewani Adawlat, with Tables of the Names of the Cases and Principal
Matters, vol. I, Calcutta: Bishop’s College Press, 1827, p. 27.
53. Gupta, ‘Permanent Settlement in Operation’, Economic Life of a Bengal
District, pp. 68–111.
54. J.H. Harington, Minute and Draft of Regulations on the Rights of Ryots
in Bengal, Calcutta: Government Press, 1827; see also J.H. Harington,
Extracts from Harington’s Analysis on the Bengal Regulations, Calcutta:
Military Orphan Press, 1866, pp. v–vi.
55. See also, Harington, Minute and Draft of Regulations, p. 22, para. 18,
where it has been mentioned ‘that in one district (Burdwan), between the
years 1800 and 1810, the rents of the ryots had, in general, been nearly
doubled’.
56. Ibid.
57. See the fourth and fifth chapters in Palit, Tensions in Bengal, pp. 87–134.
58. The earliest evidence is the Minute of Lord Hastings in 1819, see, British
Parliamentary Papers, 1831–32, vol. XI, Reports IV–V; cited in Islam,
‘Permanent Settlement and Peasant Economy’, p. 255.
59. C.E. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant-Governors: Being a Narrative
of the Principal Events and Public Measures during their Periods of Office
from 1854 to 1898, vol. I, Calcutta: S.K. Lahiri & Co., 1901, p. 54.
60. Ibid.
61. Proceedings of the Legislative Council of India, vol. 5, January–December
1859, Calcutta: Government Press, 1859, pp. 221–30; cited in Islam,
‘Permanent Settlement and Peasant Economy’, p. 263.
62. For a detailed discussion of the general intellectual debates over rent
during the period, see, Asok Sen, ‘Agrarian Structure and Tenancy Laws
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 109
in Bengal, 1850–1900’, in Perspectives in Social Sciences 2: Three Studies
on the Agrarian Structure of Bengal, 1850–1947, ed. Asok Sen, Partha
Chatterjee, and Saugata Mukherjee, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982,
pp. 1–112.
63. B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Agrarian Economy and Agrarian Relations in Bengal,
1859–1885’, Unpublished DPhil thesis, Oxford University, 1968; see
Chapter 2, pp. 82–129.
64. Report on the Administration of the Lower Province of Bengal, respectively
for 1878 and 1900, Calcutta: Government Press, 1879 and 1901.
65. Report on the Administration of Civil Justice in the Presidency of Bengal,
Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1913 and 1924. For full
information from 1878 to 1946, see Table 3.3 in Roy and Swamy, Law
and Economy, p. 43.
66. Islam, ‘Permanent Settlement and Peasant Economy’, p. 265.
67. B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Land Market in Eastern India: Movement of Land Prices,
1790–1930’, IESHR, vol. 12, no. 1, 1975, pp. 1–42.
68. Sinha, Economic History of Bengal, vol. II.
69. Chaudhuri, ‘Land Market in Eastern India’, p. 3.
70. Chaudhuri, ‘Agrarian Relations: Eastern India’, p. 98.
71. Ibid.
72. N.K. Sinha, Economic History of Bengal, Volume III: 1793–1833, Calcutta:
Firma KLM, 1970.
73. Nariaki Nakazato, ‘The Peasants’ Land Market’, in Agrarian System in
Eastern Bengal, c.1870–1910, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1994, pp. 41–68.
74. Ibid., p. 43; see also Table 5.1, p. 44.
75. See Table 5.2 in ibid., p. 48.
76. Ibid., p. 51.
77. Ibid., p. 66.
78. B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Rural Credit Relations in Bengal, 1859–1885’, IESHR,
vol. 6, no. 3, 1969, pp. 203–57.
79. Nakazato, ‘The Peasants’ Land Market’, pp. 51–7, 66–7.
80. Chaudhuri, ‘Agrarian Relations: Eastern India’, pp. 104–5.
81. See, for example, the related documents on economic history of
British Rule in India of the period in Amiya Kumar Bagchi and Arun
Bandopadhyay, eds., Eastern India in the Late Nineteenth Century, Part I:
1860s–1870s and Part II: 1880s-1890s, Delhi: Manohar, 2009 and 2011.
82. See, for example, B.B. Chaudhuri, Peasant History in Late Pre-colonial
and Colonial India, Delhi: Pearson Longman, 2008, pp. 230–47.
83. Report of the Land Revenue Commission, Bengal 1938–40, 6 vols., Alipore:
Bengal Secretariat Press, 1940. The chairman of the Commission was
Sir Francis Floud.
84. B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Movement of Rent in Eastern India, 1793–1930’, The
Indian Historical Review, vol. III, no. 2, 1977, pp. 308–90.
110 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
85. Ibid.
86. Quoted in Chaudhuri, ‘The Movement of Rent’.
87. Nilmani Mukherjee, Jaykrishna Mukherjee of Uttarpara and His Times,
Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1976.
88. For a modern presentation of this view, see, Sirajul Islam, ‘Permanent
Settlement and Peasant Economy’.
89. Peter Robb, ‘Property Rules: Examples from English and Indian History,
and a Brief Discussion’, in In Quest of the Historian’s Craft: Essays in
Honour of Professor B.B. Chaudhuri, Part I: The Economy, ed. Arun
Bandopadhyay and Sanjukta Das Gupta, Delhi: Manohar, 2018, pp. 39–74.
90. Peter Robb, ‘Bihar, the Colonial State, and Agricultural Development in
India, 1880–1920’, IESHR, vol. 25, no. 2, 1988, pp. 205–35.
91. The argument has been referred to earlier in this chapter, with reference
to the works of Rajat and Ratnalekha Ray (1975), Ratnalekha Ray (1979),
B.B. Chaudhuri (1982, 1984, 2008), Aditee Nag Choudhuri-Zilly (1982),
Ranjan Gupta (1984), and Sugata Bose (1986).
92. A. Ghosh and K. Dutt, Development of Capitalist Relations in Agriculture:
A Case Study of West Bengal 1793–1971, New Delhi: People’s Publishing
House, 1977.
93. B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Agricultural Growth in Bengal and Bihar, 1770–1860’,
Bengal Past and Present, vol. 95, pt. I, 1976, pp. 290–340. See also,
Chaudhuri, ‘Agrarian Economy and Agrarian Relations’, pp. 1–81 (Chapter
1); and Chaudhuri, Peasant History, pp. 232–47, 307–24.
94. Choudhuri-Zilly, ‘The Vicious Circle Begins’, pp. 40–63.
95. Chaudhuri, ‘Agrarian Relationships in Bengal’, pp. 307–41.
96. See specially, Chaudhuri, Peasant History, pp. 232–47, 307–24.
97. Akinobu Kawai, Landlords and Imperial Rule: Change in Bengal Agrarian
Society, c.1885–1940, 2 vols., Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages
and Culture, 1986–7; and Nariaki Nakazato, Agrarian System in Eastern
Bengal, c.1870–1910, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1994.
98. Chitta Panda, The Decline of Bengal Zamindars, Midnapore 1870–1920,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.
99. Ibid., p. x.
100. Nakazato, Agrarian System, p. 277.
101. Peter Robb, Ancient Rights and Future Comfort: Bihar, the Bengal Tenancy
Act of 1885 and British Rule in India, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1997.
102. See, Bipasha Raha, ‘Agrarian Thinking in Bengal in the Nineteenth
Century’, in In Quest of the Historian’s Craft: Essays in Honour of Professor
B.B. Chaudhuri, Part I: The Economy, ed. Arun Bandopadhyay and
Sanjukta Das Gupta, Delhi: Manohar, 2018, pp. 275–306.
103. Kalyan Kumar Sen Gupta, Pabna Disturbances and the Politics of Rent,
1873–1885, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1974.
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 111
104. B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘The Story of a Peasant Revolt in a Bengal District’, Bengal
Past and Present, vol. 92, no. 2, 1973, pp. 220–78.
105. See, Raha, ‘Agrarian Thinking in Bengal’.
106. Sanjib Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bengal Ryots: Their Rights and Liabilities,
being an Elementary Treatise on the Law of Landlord and Tenant, Calcutta:
D’ Rozario and Co., 1864, revd edn with introduction by A.C. Banerjee
and B.K. Ghosh, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1977; R.C. Dutt, The Peasantry
of Bengal, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Company, 1873, revd edn with
an introduction by Narahari Kabiraj, Calcutta: Manisha Granthalaya,
1980; Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, ‘Bangadesher Krishak’, Bangadarshan,
vol. I, no. 5, 1872, pp. 307–14, later included in Bankim Rachanavali,
vol. II, Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1361 B.S; Dinabandhu Mitra, Nil
Darpan, published originally anonymously, in Bengali from Dacca,
1859–60, and in English translation from Calcutta, 1861, later included
in Dinabandhu Rachanavali, Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1967; and Mir
Musharraf Hussain, Jamidar Darpan, Calcutta: s.n., 1873, later included
in Bishnu Bose, ed., Mir Musharraf Hussain Rachanasangraha, Calcutta:
Mitra O Ghosh, 1978. For brief discussion of each of them, see Raha,
‘Agrarian Thinking in Bengal’, pp. 281–7.
107. Ranajit Guha, ‘Neel-Darpan: The Image of a Peasant Revolt in a Liberal
Mirror’, Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 1974, pp. 1–46.
108. Riddhi Sankar Ray, ‘The Permanent Settlement in Late Colonial Bengal’,
in The Eighteenth Century in South Asia: New Terrains, ed. Subhas Ranjan
Chakrabarti, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 2012, pp. 262–3.
109. See, for an illustrative narrative, Bidyut Chakrabarti, Local Politics and
Indian Nationalism: Midnapore, 1919–1944, Delhi: Manohar, 1997.

References

Books
Bagchi, Amiya Kumar and Arun Bandopadhyay, eds., Eastern India in the Late
Nineteenth Century, Part I: 1860s–1870s and Part II: 1880s–1890s, Delhi:
Manohar, 2009 and 2011.
Benton, L., Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Birla, R., Stages of Capital: Law, Culture and Market Governance in Late Colonial
India, Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
Bose, Sugata, Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure and Politics, 1919–1947,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Buckland, C.E., Bengal under the Lieutenant-Governors: Being a Narrative of
112 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
the Principal Events and Public Measures during their Periods of Office from
1854 to 1898, vol. I, Calcutta: S.K. Lahiri & Co., 1901.
Chakrabarti, Bidyut, Local Politics and Indian Nationalism: Midnapore, 1919–
1944, Delhi: Manohar, 1997.
Chattopadhyay, Sanjib Chandra, Bengal Ryots: Their Rights and Liabilities, being
an Elementary Treatise on the Law of Landlord and Tenant, Calcutta: D’
Rozario and Co., 1864; revd edn with introduction by A.C. Banerjee and
B.K. Ghosh, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1977.
Chaudhuri, B.B., Peasant History in Late Pre-colonial and Colonial India, Delhi:
Pearson Longman, 2008.
Chaudhuri-Zilly, Aditee Nag, The Vagrant Peasant: Agrarian Distress and
Desertion in Bengal, 1770 to 1830, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982.
Dutt, R.C., The Peasantry of Bengal, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Company,
1873; revd edn with an introduction by Narahari Kabiraj, Calcutta: Manisha
Granthalaya, 1980.
Francis, Philip, Sir Philip Francis’s Minute on the Subject of Permanent Settlement
of Bengal, Behar and Orissa (with a preface by Romesh Dutt and an
introduction by Jogendra Chandra Ghosh), Calcutta: s.n., 1901.
Frykenberg, R.E., ed., Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History,
Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969; enlarged Indian edition,
Delhi: Manohar, 1979.
Ghosh, A. and K. Dutt, Development of Capitalist Relations in Agriculture: A
Case Study of West Bengal 1793–1971, New Delhi: People’s Publishing
House, 1977.
Guha, Ranajit, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent
Settlement, Paris: Mouton, 1963; new edn., Durham: Duke University Press,
1996.
Gupta, Kalyan Kumar Sen, Pabna Disturbances and the Politics of Rent, 1873–
1885, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1974.
Gupta, Ranjan, The Economic Life of a Bengal District, Birbhum, 1770–1857,
Burdwan: University of Burdwan, 1984.
Habib, Irfan, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556–1707, Bombay: Asia
Publishing House, 1963; 2nd revd edn., Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1999.
Hussain, Mir Musharraf, Jamidar Darpan, Calcutta: s.n., 1873; later included
in Bishnu Bose, ed., Mir Musharraf Hussain Rachanasangraha, Calcutta:
Mitra O Ghosh, 1978.
Islam, Sirajul, The Permanent Settlement in Bengal: A Study of its Operations,
Dacca: Bangla Academy, 1979.
———,  Bengal Land Tenure: The Origin and Growth of Intermediary Interests
in the 19th Century, Rotterdam: Irasmus University, 1985, and Calcutta:
K.P. Bagchi, 1988.
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 113
Islam, Sirajul, ed., History of Bangladesh 1704–1971, Volume II: Economic History,
Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1992.
Kawai, Akinobu, Landlords and Imperial Rule: Change in Bengal Agrarian
Society, c.1885–1940, 2 vols., Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages
and Culture, 1986–7.
Kumar, Dharma, ed., The Cambridge Economic History of India, Volume II:
c.1757–1970, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Marshall, Peter, Bengal: The British Bridgehead, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987.
Mitra, Dinabandhu, Nil Darpan, published originally anonymously, in Bengali
from Dacca, 1859–60, and in English translation from Calcutta, 1861, later
included in Dinabandhu Rachanavali, Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1967.
Moreland, W.H., The Agrarian System of Moslem India, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1929.
Mukherjee, Nilmani, Jaykrishna Mukherjee of Uttarpara and His Times, Calcutta:
Firma KLM, 1976.
Nakazato, Nariaki, Agrarian System in Eastern Bengal, c.1870–1910, Calcutta:
K.P. Bagchi and Company, 1994.
Neale, Walter C., Developing Rural India: Policies, Politics, and Progress, Delhi:
Allied, 1990.
Palit, Chittabrat, Tensions in Bengal Rural Society: Landlords, Planters and
Colonial Rule (1830–1860), Calcutta: Progressive, 1975; 2nd edn., Hydera-
bad: Orient Longman, 1998.
Panda, Chitta, The Decline of Bengal Zamindars, Midnapore 1870–1920, Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1996.
Ray, Ratnalekha, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society, c.1760–1850, Delhi:
Manohar, 1979.
Robb, Peter, Ancient Rights and Future Comfort: Bihar, the Bengal Tenancy Act
of 1885 and British Rule in India, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1997.
Roy, Tirthankar and Anand V. Swami, Law and the Economy of Colonial India,
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Sen, Ranjit, Economics of Revenue Maximization in Bengal, 1757–1793, Calcutta:
Nalanda, 1988.
Serajuddin, A.M., The Revenue Administration of the East India Company in
Chittagong, 1761–1785, Chittagong: University of Chittagong, 1971.
Sinha, N.K., Economic History of Bengal, from Plassey to the Permanent
Settlement, vol. II, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1962.
———,  Economic History of Bengal, Volume III: 1793–1833, Calcutta: Firma
KLM, 1970.
Tripathi, Amales, Trade and Finance in the Bengal Presidency, 1793–1833,
Calcutta: Orient Longman, 1956; new revd edn., Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1979.
114 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Wriggley, F.G., The Eastern Bengal and Assam Code: Containing the Regulations
and Local Acts in force in the Province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, vol. I,
Calcutta: Government Press, 1907.

Articles
Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra, ‘Bangadesher Krishak’, Bangadarshan, vol. I,
no. 5, 1872, pp. 307–14; later included in Bankim Rachanavali, vol. II,
Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1361 B.S.
Chaudhuri, B.B., ‘Rural Credit Relations in Bengal, 1859–1885’, IESHR, vol. 6,
no. 3, 1969, pp. 203–57.
———,  ‘ The Story of a Peasant Revolt in a Bengal District’, Bengal Past and
Present, vol. 92, no. 2, 1973, pp. 220–78.
———,  ‘Land Market in Eastern India: Movement of Land Prices, 1790–1930’,
IESHR, vol. 12, no. 1, 1975, pp. 1–42.
———,  ‘Agricultural Growth in Bengal and Bihar, 1770–1860’, Bengal Past and
Present, vol. 95, pt. I, 1976, pp. 290–340.
———,  ‘Movement of Rent in Eastern India, 1793–1930’, The Indian Historical
Review, vol. III, no. 2, 1977, pp. 308–90.
———,  ‘Agrarian Relations: Eastern India’, in The Cambridge Economic History of
India, Volume II: c.1757–1970, ed. Dharma Kumar, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982, pp. 86–177.
———,  ‘Rural Power Structure and Agricultural Productivity in Eastern India,
1757–1947’, in Agrarian Power and Agricultural Productivity in South Asia,
ed. Meghnad Desai, Susanne Rudolph, and Ashok Rudra, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1984, pp. 100–70.
Guha, Ranajit, ‘Neel-Darpan: The Image of a Peasant Revolt in a Liberal Mirror’,
Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 1974, pp. 1–46.
Islam, Sirajul, ed., ‘Permanent Settlement and Peasant Economy’, History of
Bangladesh: 1704–1971, Volume II: Economic History, Dhaka: Asiatic Society
of Bangladesh, 1992, pp. 246–71.
Raha, Bipasha, ‘Agrarian Thinking in Bengal in the Nineteenth Century’, in In
Quest of the Historian’s Craft: Essays in Honour of Professor B.B. Chaudhuri,
Part I: The Economy, ed. Arun Bandopadhyay and Sanjukta Das Gupta,
Delhi: Manohar, 2018, pp. 275–306.
Ray, Rajat Kanta, ‘The Retreat of the Jotedars?’, IESHR, vol. 25, no. 2, 1988,
pp. 237–47.
Ray, Rajat Kanta and Ratnalekha Ray, ‘Zamindars and Jotedars: A Study of Rural
Politics in Bengal’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 1975, pp. 81–102.
Ray, Ratnalekha, ‘The Changing Fortunes of the Bengali Gentry—The
Palchaudhuris of Maheshganj, 1800–1950’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 21,
pt. 3, 1987, pp. 511–19.
 Bandopadhyay: Agrarian Relations and Peasant Economy 115
Ray, Riddhi Sankar, ‘The Permanent Settlement in Late Colonial Bengal’, in
The Eighteenth Century in South Asia: New Terrains, ed. Subhas Ranjan
Chakrabarti, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 2012, pp. 261–79.
Raychaudhuri, Tapan, ‘Permanent Settlement in Operation: Bakarganj District,
East Bengal’, in Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History, ed. R.E.
Frykenberg, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969, pp. 163–74.
Robb, Peter, ‘Bihar, the Colonial State, and Agricultural Development in India,
1880–1920’, IESHR, vol. 25, no. 2, 1988, pp. 205–35.
Robb, Peter, ‘Property Rules: Examples from English and Indian History, and
a Brief Discussion’, in In Quest of the Historian’s Craft: Essays in Honour of
Professor B.B. Chaudhuri, Part I: The Economy, ed. Arun Bandopadhyay
and Sanjukta Das Gupta, Delhi: Manohar, 2018, pp. 39–74.
Sen, Asok, ‘Agrarian Structure and Tenancy Laws in Bengal, 1850–1900’, in
Perspectives in Social Sciences 2: Three Studies on the Agrarian Structure of
Bengal, 1850–1947, ed. Asok Sen, Partha Chatterjee, and Saugata Mukherjee,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982, pp. 1–112.

Documents
British Parliamentary Papers, 1831–32, vol. XI, Reports IV–V.
Buchanan, Francis, A Geographical, Statistical and Historical Description of the
District or Zila of Dinajpur, in the Province or Soubah of Bengal, Calcutta:
Baptist Mission Press, 1833.
Great Britain, House of Commons, Revenue: Appendix to the Report from the
Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East India
Company, Minute of Evidence, London: J.L. Cox and Sons, 1833.
Harington, J.H., Minute and Draft of Regulations on the Rights of Ryots in Bengal,
Calcutta: Government Press, 1827.
———,  Extracts from Harington’s Analysis on the Bengal Regulations, Calcutta:
Military Orphan Press, 1866.
Macnaghlen, W.H., Report of Cases Determined in the Court of Sudder Dewani
Adawlat, with Tables of the Names of the Cases and Principal Matters,
vol. I, Calcutta: Bishop’s College Press, 1827.
McNeille, D.J., Memorandum on the Revenue Administration of the Lower
Provinces of Bengal, Calcutta: Government Press, 1873.
Report of the Land Revenue Commission, Bengal 1938–40, 6 vols., Alipore: Bengal
Secretariat Press, 1940.
Report on the Administration of the Lower Province of Bengal, respectively for
1878 and 1900, Calcutta: Government Press, 1879 and 1901.
Report on the Administration of Civil Justice in the Presidency of Bengal, Calcutta:
Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1913 and 1924.
116 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Unpublished Theses
B.B. Chaudhuri, ‘Agrarian Relationships in Bengal after the Permanent
Settlement: 1793–1819’, Unpublished PhD thesis, Calcutta University, 1959.
———,  ‘Agrarian Economy and Agrarian Relations in Bengal, 1859–1885’,
Unpublished DPhil thesis, Oxford University, 1968.
 5
Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy)
and His Times

Bruce Carlisle Robertson

B
engal in the eighteenth century was turbulent like the mighty
Ganga or the Hugli in full spate in the monsoon season.
The Mughal Empire was collapsing, the British Empire was
on the ascendant—one interloping, non-ethnic Bengali overlord
exploiting the downfall of another. The Bengal of Sayyid Ghulam
Hussain Khan (d. 1817), the Mughal chronicler, Rammohan’s
contemporary, author of The Siyar-ul-Mutakherin: A History of the
Mohamedan Power in India during the last Century—written in Patna
in 1782, was a far cry from the Bengal under the glorious reign of the
Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum
for his favourite wife. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, author of
Anandamatha, India’s first novel, told the story of the devastation
caused by the famine of 1770 and of a violent sannyasi rebellion, from
the peasants’ perspective. These were dark days of social unrest with
only the consolation of poets like Ram Prasad Sen (1718–75) and
Bharat Chandra Roy (1712–60), whom Rammohan greatly admired.
Ghulam Hussain Khan wrote ‘It is only since the times of Aoren-zib-
Aalemghir,  .  .  .  an extremely war-like and ambitious, that evils have
crept upon the land’.1

The Education and Nurture of a Kulin

Brahman in Eighteenth-
Century Bengal
Rammohan Ray (1772–1833) was the third child of Tarini Devi,
his father’s third wife. His father Ramkanta was embroiled in the
118 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

turbulent transition from Mughal to East India Company rule. As

the Company appointed khansamanidiwan (chief administrator)
the head of a prominent talukdar (mid-rank landholder) family
and granted the vassals of one of the four major zamindari (large
landholder) houses, Ramkanta had used his position as diwan and
family priest of the Bardhaman Raj—and rumored notorious lover
of Rani Bishnukumari—to personal advantage.2 He was furthermore
implicated in the biggest high profile case of corruption of the day,
the infamous Nandakumar scandal. Governor General Warren
Hastings personally directed the trial of Nandakumar, who was
convicted of malfeasance in office and incarcerated. Ramkanta was
also convicted of embezzlement from Rani Bishnukmari’s estate
and served jail time.3 Perhaps it was a matter of bad timing with the
Nandakumar case going on, but a connection between the prominent,
notoriously corrupt diwans was inevitable. Rammohan was acutely
aware of his father’s chequered reputation, and separated from his
family as a teenager. The taint of his father’s reputation however
branded him and his family as bhangakulin—Brahmans who had
‘broken kula’ by adopting a secular lifestyle and furthermore, as
lawbreakers. They were no longer respectable Brahmans, and were
ostracized by orthodox Hindu pandits. They were, in other words,
pariah—outcastes.
Rammohan’s older brother, Jagmohan, is only mentioned by
biographers because his wife committed sati. Rammohan’s older
sister (name not recorded) married Sridhar Mukherji, a Kulin
Brahman. Their son, his nephew Gurudas, was according to Collet,
one of the first to join Rammohan’s following.4 Subhadra, Ramkanta’s
first wife, was childless. With his second wife, Rammoni Devi, he
had a son named Ram Lochan. Collet records a brief conversa-
tion with Rammohan’s third wife Uma, who had once asked him
which religion was the best. His reply was, ‘Cows are of different
colours, but the colour of the milk they give, is the same. Different
teachers have different opinions, but the essence of every religion is
to adopt the true path’.5 This is all that is known of Rammohan’s family.
Tarini Devi entrusted Rammohan’s early education to her pujari,
the eminent pandit Nandakumar Vidyalankara, better known as
Hariharanandanath Tirthaswami, a vamacari (follower of the left-
hand way), Shakta tantric sannyasi, a world-renouncer.6 The tantric
tradition was divided on the matter of how to attain enlightenment.
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 119

One group claimed to follow the Vedas in teaching that the highest
path to attaining knowledge of the Supreme Being, Brahman or
Bhagavan, was transcendental meditation—dhyana, and the study
of sacred texts. They were daksinacari (follower of the right-hand
way) tantrics. The other group were branded vamacari tantrics,
signifying that they taught impure, left-hand (unclean hands used
for daily ablutions) doctrines. The vamacaris practiced rituals,
including chanting of mantras and performing secret magical
formulaic techniques, to give an added boost towards enlightenment.
These occult rituals included indulging in the pancamakara, the five
forbidden Ms—madya (wine), mangsa (meat), matsya (fish), mudra
(parched grain), and maithuna (sexual intercourse), sorcery, astral
projection, magic, divination, alchemy, and necromancy. In other
words, they taught that enlightenment could be induced without
dependence on the help of deities. Their principal sacred texts were
two late eighteenth century Shakta treatises, the Mahanirvana Tantra
(hereafter referred to as MT), a manual of religious instruction and
the Kularnava Tantra.7 Duncan Derrett dates the composition of the
MT between 1793 and 1780, citing a mixture of Christian and Hindu
doctrines in the text. This was the period when Hariharananda was
Rammohan’s teacher.8
The MT is an esoteric dialogue between Shiva and Parvati, Siva
and Shakti. It is an account of an exchange of questions and answers
between them. The first chapter begins with Parvati’s question about
the cosmic time frame, and Shiva explains the four yugas or ages.
The cryptic dialogue goes back and forth with Avalon’s ‘commentary-
translation’ spliced in with the dialogue.9 Rammohan mentions
composing a tract in his adolescent years, raising a question whether the
dialogue in the MT between Shiva and Parvati was a ‘transcript’ of or a
summary of an acharya and chela’s (pupil), Hariharananda and
Rammohan’s, tutorial.10 The Adi Brahmo Samaj published it over a
generation after Rammohan’s death, clearly viewing it a Brahmo manual
of instruction in Vedanta doctrine. Avalon explains, ‘This Tantra
is  .  .  .  one which is well known and esteemed, though perhaps more high-
ly so amongst that portion of the Indian public which favours “reform-
ed” Hinduism than amongst some Tantrikas, to whom, as I have been
told, certain of its provisions appear to display unnecessary timidity.’11
Rammohan’s early religious formation was thus, in a late eight-
eenth century sectarian movement, left-hand Shaktavamacara
120 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

tantrism. He also used tantric terminology. Spiritual exercise is

sadhana, and the worshipper is a sadhaka. Comparison of the MT
with Rammohan’s first Vedanta publication, Vedantasara (1816),
reveals striking commonalities. Both are catechisms, manuals
of religious instruction for the Kali Age. Both declare the Vedas
obsolete, thus necessitating new scriptures. Their sequence of topics
are also identical. They begin with the topic of the knowledge of
the Supreme Being, Brahman in the Vedas, and Brahman and
Bhagavan in the MT. Both hold up meditation, dhyana, on
the pranava Aum, and the Brahma Mantra (Gayatri) as the
highest sadhanas. Both declare that there are no caste distinc-
tions in the Kali Age. Both uphold Advaita Vedanta as the true
doctrine.
As an adult, however, Rammohan took the daksinacara
path, going straight to the Vedic Upanisads and the Dharmasastras
for support for the new teachings which Hariharananda’s younger
brother, the equally learned Ramachandra Vidyabagisa, taught.12
Ramachandra would later become the first acharya of the Brahmo
Samaj. Rammohan came to the conclusion that Vedic society
provided a model for the modern society, and that European cultural
encroachment had been largely facilitated by the decline and outright
failure of indigenous institutions.
Rammohan arrived in Calcutta, tainted by family reputation—a
pariah in the orthodox Hindu pandit community. He added to his
notoriety in the orthodox Brahman community at Calcutta when
he published Vedantasara, literally ‘Essence of Vedanta’, which,
following the MT, he presented as a summation of Sankaracarya’s
commentaries on the Vedic Upanisads (Vedanta). The Hindu
orthodox Brahman community fired back, challenging his claim
to being an Advaitin with a point by point rebuttal of Vedantasara,
titled Vedantacandrika, or ‘Moonlight of Vedanta’, characterizing
their teachings symbolically as the brilliant light of a full moon, in
comparison to the obscurantic darkness of Rammohan’s doctrines.
Rammohan, a Kulin Brahman, responded by summarily dismissing
his non-Brahman Hindu critics’ claim to being the spokesmen
for the orthodox tradition by presenting them as corrupt, money
seeking, fraudulent, presumed leaders of the Hindu society who were
ignorant of their own sacred writings, and challenged them to a public
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 121

disputation. Consequently, Calcutta was in an uproar. Competition

for Company recognition of the leadership of Hindu majority pitted
Rammohan, the controversial Hindu reformer, and a majority of
his Brahman Atmiya Sabha following against the traditional Hindu
Dharma Sabha of the orthodox pandits, controversially led by a
non-Brahman, who was a wealthy, politically connected, scholarly
Kayastha—Radhakanta Deb. Radhakanta’s qualification was the
authorship of the monumental, widely acclaimed Sabdakalpadruma,
a Sanskrit encyclopedic dictionary. He was embraced as a colleague
by the Orientalists, H.H. Wilson and H.T. Colebrooke. Within the
Hindu community, caste politics pit the traditional Bengali Brahmans
against Kayastha entrepreneurial commercial leadership, headed by
Radhakanta. The crux of the confrontation was that it was a reversal
of the traditional varna order, which dictated that spiritual authority
ranked above commercial power. This put banias (merchants) on an
equal footing with priests in the new colonial social order, though
not in the varna order of precedence. Rammohan, a Kulin Brahman,
the highest on the Brahman scale of precedence, did not recognize
Radhakanta’s (a Shudra) legitimacy as a spokesman for the Hindu
community.
Ghulam Hussain Khan, a relative of the Mughal Subahdar
(Viceroy) Alivardi Khan, expressed a non-ethnic Bengali nobleman’s
gloom at the disintegration of his privileged world. He blamed the
Emperor Aurangzeb for all the problems. In The Mughal Nobility
under Aurangzeb, historian M. Athar Ali, however, places much
of the blame on the migrant nobility. ‘The nobles were, by far and
large, corrupt and open bribe-takers, robber barons, imitators of
the Emperor himself ’.13 Aurangzeb recruited north Indian Mughals
rather than the ethnic Bengalis for leadership positions in the
mansabdari (military) ranks. New migrant sardars replaced the old
ones. Gradually, Persian, Deccani, and Afghans began to outnumber
Rajputs and Turani, the mainstays of the Mughal mansabdari system.
Ramkant was one of the typical old Bengali family patriarchs
surviving in the unstable environment of the late Mughal regime.
He was the khansamanidiwan, the chief minister, of the Bengali
Bardhaman (Burdwan) Raj family, who were Kapoor Rajputs, not
ethnic Bengalis. But this meant a loss of caste. The prominent Sava
Bazaar Raj dal, a political family, were parvenus—the newly rich.
122 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Maharaja Navakrishna Deva (Deb), the patriarch of the family,

was an adventurer from Arcot in south India, who had fled due to
the bargui (Maratha) terror. He quickly ingratiated himself with
Robert Clive as an informant and insider deal-maker, embedded in
the court of the erratic last Mughal Subhadar (Governor) Siraj-ud
Daulah.14 Navakrishna amassed a large fortune as Clive’s munshi
(personal assistant).15 The Sava Bazaar Raj family was one of the
richest and most influential political families in Bengal. The family
patriarchs were the most powerful dalpati, party bosses, in Bengal.
Navakrishna adopted Gopimohan (1763–1837), the eldest son of his
eldest brother, Ramsundar Berwatti. Gopimohan was the dalapati, the
head of the Sava Bazaar Raj dynasty/dal founded by Nabakrishna. His
son, Radhakanta Deb (1784–1867), according to the begrudgingly
admiring obituary in the conservative English journal Calcutta
Review, was ‘not a gifted man yet he was endowed with a keen intellect
and a retentive memory, which enable him to master those branches
of learning (Sanskrit and Persian) to which he devoted himself ’.16
The rivalry between Radhakanta and Rammohan was largely
an ethnic-caste contest for leadership of the Bengali Brahman
community at Calcutta under British colonial rule. The very wealthy
Sava Bazaar Deb family were non-Brahmans and non-ethnic Bengalis.
Rammohan’s family was, on both fronts, pure Bengali Brahmans. His
paternal side was purali, or outcast, as bhangakulin Brahmans, like the
Tagores who too had abandoned their sacerdotal roles by adopting a
secular lifestyle (specifically meat-eating) in the service of the Mughal
rulers. His mother’s family was, however, pure Kulin sacerdotal
Shakta Brahmans, who still officiated as priests. This advantageous
marriage alliance resurrected the social status of Rammohan’s family.
Both Rammohan and Radhakanta claimed to be spokesmen for the
Bengali Brahman community under British colonial rule. It was a
contest between parvenu economic power and traditional Brahman
authority.
Ghulam Hussain Salim (Khan) described the reigns of the
Mughal subahdars Murshid Quli Khan (d. 1720) and Alivardi
Khan (1676–1756) as a time of relative peace ‘unknown in that age
elsewhere in India’.17 The first Mughal chronicle of this period—The
Riyazu-s-Salatin: A History of Bengal, by Ghulam Hussain Salim
Zaidpuri (from the village of Zaidpur in the south), the dakmunshi
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 123

(postmaster) of the Company factory in Malda—was composed at

the request of George Udney, the Commercial Resident in Malda.
He had migrated from Allahabad in the Mughal province of Awadh
(Oudh), further illustrating a brain drain from western and southern
India to Calcutta in the eighteenth century.18 Delhi and Agra were
the administrative and ceremonial capitals of the Mughal Empire,
but Calcutta was its godown on the Hugli, its economic capital. In
contemporary parlance, the entrepreneurial classes went where the
money was.
After the death of Alivardi Khan, his nephew Siraj-ud Daula, both
an infamous villain of the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ narrative, and a hero
because he was at least not a British conscript, became the subahdar.
Consequently, the Bengali society dramatically declined. Ghulam
Hussain Khan put it as—‘Everyone does as he pleases  .  .  .  there is no
master of the house’.19 Rammohan welcomed the Honourable East
India Company as the new master of the ‘house’. The British at least
saved Bengal from descending into utter chaos—adharma.
Rammohan’s own historical survey of India, ‘A Brief Preliminary
Sketch of the Ancient and Modern Boundaries and of the History of
that Country’ was the preface to his testimony before the House of
Commons on the eve of the Charter Debate of 1833, published under
the title Exposition of the Particular Operation of the Judicial and
Revenue Systems of India and of the General Character and Condition
of its Native Inhabitants as submitted in Evidence to the Authorities in
England with Notes and Illustrations. 20
However, Rammohan’s ‘historical’ sketch of India ignored both of
the contemporary Mughal chronicles, just as the Mughal historians
had ignored the Hindu historical narrative of the Hindu-majority
region they ruled. In ‘Additional Queries Respecting the Condition of
India’, written in London on 28 September 1831, Rammohan noted,
‘The country, having been so long under subjection to the arbitrary
military government of the Mohammedan rulers, which shewed little
respect for Hindu learning  .  .  .’. 21 He very briefly discussed the ancient
sacred geography of the mythical ‘Bharatvarsha’, the Gangetic plateau
ruled by the mythical Bharat, ancestor of Vedic antiquity. Bharat is
the name for India today. He included a map giving the latitude and
longitude boundaries of ‘Aryavarta’, the realm of the ‘worthies’—the
Aryans—the holy land, punyabhumi of Hindutva, Hinduism. He
124 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

recounts the mythological Aryan civilized domain vs mlechcha

barbarian wilds, according to the Kulin Brahman narrative as though
it were historical fact, then skips over millenniums of history, the
dynastic historical development of Hindu civilization from the
Magadha epoch, and the Mauryan, Gupta, Kanauj, and Gauda
periods. His sketch concluded with the Muslim period in a three
sentence paragraph and a footnote enumerating dynastic changes
in the Mughal period, without noting any impact of Islamic culture
upon Hindu civilization. He credited the English period, however,
with ushering India into the modern world. There is no record of the
response of members of the House of Commons Select Committee to
Rammohan’s expositions on Indian history and institutions. However,
many of the members of the House of Commons and of the British
colonial service, educated at the best public and other preparatory
schools, who read this document, would have been unimpressed with
Rammohan’s history lesson and possibly his credibility as an expert.
Rammohan’s assessment of the British judicial system was that
it was much better than the Mughal system. The integrity of British
officials at all levels was unimpeachable. Corruption was almost
unheard of; yet the native inhabitants had little confidence in the
system. However, the defects in the system were crippling. The
attempt to integrate the British ad hoc jury system with the traditional
rural panchayat format of a verdict of five village elders had been a
disaster. The language fluency of British judges and lawyers was so
low that they were forced to depend upon the corrupt amlah, local
Bengali interpreters (who were Mughal officials), who thus had an
undue influence upon legal and administrative decisions, and those
who alone could detect perjury. The onerous caseloads at all levels
of appeal—local, circuit and Supreme Court—furthermore, put the
system under extreme pressure to speed up due processes, facilitating
an atmosphere of collusion between judges, lawyers, and juries which
opened the door to many inequities. Rammohan’s fix of the broken
system was to blend Hindu and Muslim civil legal traditions, but
adapt the British legal system of the separation of powers of judges
and juries and double the caseload of both.22 The British revenue
system was a little, if any, better. It favoured the zamindar at the
expense of the raiyat, cultivator class. He recommended the Mitaksara
code, a ryotwari (peasant-based) system, a ground-up model for
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 125

legal reform over the Dayabhaga code, the zamindari (landholder)

model. These were the transitions going on in the time in which he
lived.
Modernity was gradually dawning over the society, and ‘Liberal’
was the buzzword. What it meant to be ‘modern’ was hotly debated.
Was it to be Europeanized, ‘up with the times’ as C.A. Bayly phrased
it, or did it signal a rejection of foreign invasive culture, or yet an
advantageous accommodation to the new power culture?23
Rammohan identified the root cause of this radical fall from Vedic
standards—the modern degradation of women. According to Vedic
norms, the mother is the nurturer, protector, and the centre of the
household, the day-to-day caregiver. The litmus test of a just society,
he argued, was the way it treated its female members. His first attempt
to reassert Vedic norms was to campaign to eradicate the culture of
sati—the ‘self-immolation’ of helpless, vulnerable bereaved widows,
which he characterized as medieval ritual lynching, unsanctioned
by sacred texts.
Rammohan’s family was an example of the fall from the social
status of a high caste Brahman, since his father had abandoned his
conventional, contemporary sacerdotal caste role of a temple priest
by taking up commercial employment with a Mughal zamindar. His
mother, Tarini Devi, was the dominant force in the family. His father
Ramkanta was mostly an absent figure, too caught up in scandals
and intrigues to be a significant presence within the household. His
household was typical of talukdari extended families. Jagmohan,
the eldest son, was groomed to inherit the family estate. The system
pushed younger brothers out of the home to seek their own fortunes.
Rammohan ran away from home as a teenager. He viewed his mother
as a victim in a corrupt social system. The women of Rammohan’s
household were tragic figures, as in many aristocratic families of
Bengal. After the death of Ramkanta, Tarini Devi’s self-imposed
penance for not being the faithful wife in keeping her husband alive,
renounced her Brahman identity by spending the last years of her life
as a lowly, nameless outcast sweeper in the Jagannatha temple in Puri
on the coast of the Bay of Bengal. A widow’s choices were few—to
be abandoned as a non-productive elderly parasite on the family,
another useless mouth to feed; or be daily subject to the relentless
abuse that widows endured as household slaves; or set out on sacred
126 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

pilgrimage, sannyasa; homelessness; or die on the funeral pyre. Being

a devout, she chose the option of a religious mendicant, sannyasa.
Where the Mitaksara law code was followed, as in north-west
India, excluding the Rajputana, a joint family included only the male
members, and there was little family friction because a widow or the
living parent, had social security benefits until death. Rammohan
provided statistical support for his anti-sati campaign—there were
more satis annually in Bengal, where the Dayabhaga law code was
in force, than in the rest of India combined. The practice of sati was
the symbol of a degraded society and a violation of the civil rights
issued in early nineteenth century Bengal.24
The Dayabhaga also granted widows equal share in the in-
heritance of property with sons. However, the difference lay in the
interpretation of the law in each region. Rammohan charged the
rank and file Bengali Brahman, the putative leaders of Hindu society,
with abysmal ignorance of the sacred Vedic canonical texts, and
deliberate misrepresentation of the Dharmasastras, the legal texts.
He denounced them as frauds. They had kept the common people
in complete ignorance for financial gains and were alone responsible
for the endemic corruption in the society. Historically, Bengal has
had problems with its Brahmans. According to past records, the
eleventh century King Adisura brought in five families of Brahmans
and Kayasthas from north India to re-establish a Brahman kula and
social support system, with pure lineages descended from the five
families of antiquity.25 The new families were called ‘Kulin’ (highest
caste) Brahmans, to distinguish them from ‘Bengali Brahmans’, who
were corrupted by intermarriage with non-Brahmans.26
Rammohan’s first public campaign was to promote legislation for
criminalizing sati as a first step towards restoring the ancient rights
of women. This became the platform for more reforms, namely his
campaigns for regulating the British revenue and legal administrations.
As a journalist-founder of Bangla and English language newspapers,
he championed freedom of the press; as a schoolmaster, he founded
and supported missionary English language schools with a modern
curriculum, and ignited almost single-handedly the glowing embers
of Bengali intellectual culture.
Raja Rammohan Ray (as he was later known popularly) inaugu-
rated the nineteenth century Bengal Renaissance that shaped the
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 127

climate of Bengali and British opinion which connected grassroots

dissent in Bengal with reform movements worldwide, including
Europe and America. Bengal, once the most prosperous province,
the cash cow of the Mughal Empire, became the golden goose of
the East India Company in the eighteenth century. Its capital city,
Calcutta, was a bustling international commercial enterprise zone,
the godown of the burgeoning China trade, abuzz with every Trade
Wind borne global political and social controversy like London,
Boston, Baltimore, and Paris.
Rammohan’s message was that Vedic society provided a model for
modern society, and that European cultural encroachment had been
largely facilitated by the decline and outright failure of indigenous
Brahman led institutions. Mughal rule had seriously compromised
Bengali traditional Hindu institutions. Ironically, Baptist missionary,
European Indologists, and scholars came to the rescue by reviving
interest in the great Sanskrit texts, thus laying the foundations for the
nineteenth century Bengal Renaissance. His own family was a case
in point. His father had been a part-time Vaisnav temple pujari who
dabbled in local Mughal politics. His mother was the daughter from a
prominent, orthodox Shakta priestly family, the learned Bhattacaryas
of Chatra near Serampore, according to Collet, who did not document
her source of information. Rammohan’s mother was the dominant
force in the family and oversaw his education. It was an advantageous
marriage for his paternal grandparents, who were socially ostracized
as bhangakulins—who had broken caste regulations in adopting a
secular occupation and lifestyle.
Rammohan left home as a teenager, very likely on a Tantric
pilgrimage to the Chardham—the four sacred Himalayan dhams
(pilgrimage shrines)—Gangotri, Kedarnath, Badrinath, and Kangri.
He had exhibited deep interest in sacred traditions early on and
was said to have had an almost compulsive habit of performing the
purashacarana Kularnava tantric rite—repeating the Brahma mantra
100,000 or more times to maximize the cumulative merit acquired
from performing other rites.27 Collet also reported his devotion to
the Bhagavat Purana. Besides, he was said to have showed interest
in Zoroastrianism, Christendom, and Islam from an early age as
well. Rammohan was restless, seeking to escape his ‘dysfunctional’
family, and pilgrimage was the perfect alibi. A letter by a ‘native
128 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

correspondent’ in the Calcutta Monthly Journal for December 1830

explained a widow’s choices.

If the British Indian Government, after having mercifully extended its

protecting arm over Hindoo females, to prevent them from burning on
the funeral piles of their husbands, should remain indifferent to the causes
which often lead them to the determination of ending a life of misery in
this inhuman manner, it will not have fulfilled the expectations which such
a glorious measure has raised. Among other circumstances which tend
to make the condition of a Hindoo female extremely miserable, the two
principal are the marriage of Kooleens, or persons considered of high birth,
the receiving of large sums of money in return, for daughters, sisters, or other
female relatives given in marriage. The Kooleans are generally an ignorant,
unprincipled and unfeeling race, destitute of property. Their alliances are
eagerly sought after, and bought with large sums of money, on account of the
honour which their intermarriage with a family is supposed to confer upon
it. Thus, finding marriage a source of considerable pecuniary gain. They
often have a great many wives, who being generally left with their paternal or
maternal relations, in a state of wretched dependence on them for support,
have frequently, for a wish to better their condition, been induced to lead
immoral lives, or desirous to put an end to their misery, have resorted to
the funeral pile authorized by religion.  .  .  . Money will procure wives to the
lame, the blind, the idiot, and the lunatic. Can there possibly be a state of
society more conducive to the misery of the female sex?28

When his older brother died, the sati of his sister-in-law tragically
dramatized the widow’s plight even in a prominent, somewhat
Westernized aristocratic family. Rammohan now became the titular
head of the household. However, his permanent residence was at
Calcutta, having separated from his family and retaining little contact
with them. The family was deeply divided. Rammohan’s modernist
views alienated both of his parents from them. Rammohan made
attempts at reconciliation, but was rebuffed. This story provides an
insight into the social pressures on the old world bhadralok (genteel
class) families torn apart by the powerful competing forces of
modernization and traditional culture. The abolition of sati became
a personal vendetta. Rammohan went again to the texts to build his
case against sati.
In Vedic times, the mother was the nurturer and protector, the
centre of the household, the day-to-day caregiver. The litmus test of
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 129

a just society, Rammohan believed, was the way it treated its female
members—grandmother, mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters.
Sati was a crime against humanity. Rammohan asked how anyone
could be so barbaric as to mistreat women, the pillars of society. His
first campaign was to strike at the most visible and tragic violation
of the civil rights of every woman, man, and child in experiencing
a life of liberty and happiness—the rite of sati. Sati was a crime
against mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, wives, and even
the husbands—the entire family structure. Sati was ritual murder,
a horrific medieval rite, an alibi to sanctify greed unsanctioned by
sacred texts. It was, in his mind, emblematic of the depravity of the
eighteenth–nineteenth century Bengali society. Rammohan’s first
public campaigns were to force legislation criminalizing sati through
the British legal administration. The abolition of sati was the first
plank in the platform from which he launched other reforms to
restore the ancient rights of women.
In Brief Remarks Regarding Modern Encroachments on the Ancient
Rights of Females, According to the Hindu Law of Inheritance published
in 1822, Rammohan argued that the medieval degradation of women
had precipitated a sharp decline in Bengali society.29 The justness of
any society, he argued, was determined by the level of protection of
the civil rights of every member of the society from birth to death.
The most egregious civil rights violation of his day was the heinous
ritual murder of female family members—daughters, mothers,
grandmothers—called sahamaran, ‘accompanying the husband on
the funeral pyre’ and sahagaman, ‘going on the funeral pyre with
the husband’, popularly known as sati, a practice allegedly followed
by ‘real, true woman’. Rammohan cited sruti (revealed Vedic sacred
texts) and smriti (textual repository of ‘remembered’ tradition or
custom), which clearly supported widows’ rights to inheritance, and
invoked her operational role as a grandmother within the joint family.
He then denounced the abject misery of contemporary widows,
whose only options were to be unpaid, abused slaves of their sons’
families, forbidden to remarry; or withdraw from the world, living
as ascetics; or submit to an agonizing ‘heroic’ death on the funeral
pyre of their dead husbands as faithful wives to the bitter end.
Rammohan cited sacred texts which clearly promoted the widow’s
role as active nurturer, protector, and day-to-day caregiver within
130 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the household. Therefore, the immediate abolition of the atrocity

of the medieval ritual murder of the most vulnerable members of
a society, bereaved widows, was the humanitarian thing to do, not
to speak of the Christian duty of a ‘Christian’ British government.
Rammohan also noted that widows had no recourse to legal action
because of their poverty.
In Essay on the Rights of Hindoos over Ancestral Property,
According to the Law of Bengal, published in 1830, Rammohan
noted that the Dayabhaga was favoured in traditional zamindari,
the rich landholder society, and was therefore an accepted authority
in British courts, which wrongly took it to be one of the ancient
laws of the land. As noted above, he echoed the view of Colebrooke,
the Indologist who was the translator of both the Dayabhaga and
Mitaksara, that the Dayabhaga was held to be the higher authority by
learned orthodox jurists. ‘Opinions are said to be of two kinds, one
founded on the authority of the Dayabhaga, and the other opposed
to it; [but] what is opposed to the Dayabhaga is not approved of by
the learned.’30 Rammohan shared Colebrooke’s high opinion of the
Mitaksara. Rammohan attributed the modern encroachments upon
the ancient rights of females to the Dayabhaga. He singled out the
Dayabhaga’s exclusive right of the head of the households to dispose of
self-acquired and ancestral property as modern innovation, rejecting
ancient Bengali tradition, commenting—‘This horrible polygamy
among Brahmans is directly contrary to the law given by ancient
author; for Yajnavalkya authorizes second marriages, while the first
wife is alive.’
There was a correlation between polygamy, sati, and inheritance
laws, Rammohan argued. There were many more satis in regions
where the Dayabhaga was in force than in regions where the Mitaksara
was the operating law code. According to the Mitaksara, wives and
husbands shared the inheritance in a joint family with the sons and
their families. The joint family provided social security against hard
times for everyone in the family. However, the Dayabhaga granted
the father the absolute right to self-acquired and family property,
which fostered a level of insecurity and rivalry over distribution of
the inheritance after his death, in which fewer claimants increased
the potential share for all. However, Colebrooke wrote, ‘The range
of its [Mitaksara] authority and influence is far more extensive than
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 131

that of Jimutavahana’s treatise [Dayabhaga], for it is received in all the

schools of Hindu law, from Benares to the southern extremity of the
peninsula of India, as the chief groundwork of the doctrines which
they follow, and as an authority from which they rarely dissent.’31
In his Essay on the Rights of Hindoos over Ancestral Property,
Rammohan further stated that the Mitaksara ruled a wife as equal
to her husband, while in the Dayabhaga, the mother’s welfare was
dependent upon her children, her primary role being to beget
children. Rammohan argued that most satis were committed to
escape abusive relationships, and often abetted tragically by relatives.
Furthermore, the institution of sati, combined with the dowry system,
promoted polygamy (more the number of wives, more will be the
dowries), one of the greatest causes of misery within a joint family, one
that drove many ‘to walk the paths of unrighteousness’. A generation
earlier, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97), a Unitarian, cited polygamy
as a crime against English women in A Vindication of the Rights of
Women published in 1792—‘Polygamy is another physical degradant,
a custom that blasts of domestic virtue.32 A Vindication of the Rights
of Women followed her A Vindication of the Rights of Men, and
together they ignited the Suffragette Movement in England. English
Unitarians and quakers were among the first to join the movement
and make civil rights the centrepiece of their message to the world.
Wollstonecraft’s view was that there ought to be no difference in the
rights of women and men. Not coincidentally, Rammohan’s campaign
also advocated equal rights for women and men.
Richmond Thackeray, the father of William Makepeace Thacke-
ray, voiced the displeasure of the East India Company at the socially
divisive revolutionary ideas that Rammohan was spreading when,
as a member of the Board of Trade in Calcutta, he rejected the
nomination of Rammohan in 1809 to the position of the diwan in
Rangpur.33 Rammohan argued that the Dayabhaga had contributed
to a culture of degradation of women in Bengali society. His message
to the British Government was that British law had the Mitaksara,
the true ancient law of the land, on its side in protecting the women’s
rights within the family, so there could be no excuse for delay.
Women’s rights were the first civil rights issue in nineteenth
century India, as it was in America. Mary Wollstonecraft and
Rammohan Ray were among the first champions of women’s
132 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

civil rights across the world, generations before the first feminist
movement. In Vindication of the Rights of Women, Wollstonecraft was
responding to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand’s essay advocating that
a woman’s education should prepare her for the domestic duties that
she was supposed to do. Talleyrand was the French foreign minister
in England when Rammohan was there. Talleyrand escorted him to
an audience with the French king during his visit to France in 1832.
While Rammohan did not quote Wollstonecraft, his close ties with
Talleyrand, a vocal critic of her early feminist writings, establishes
that Rammohan would have been aware of her writings and campaign
for women’s civil rights.
A letter to the editor of the Bengal Hurkaru on 24 September
1830, signed ‘A Hindoo’, supported Rammohan’s denunciation of the
Dayabhaga’s grant of exclusive ownership of the father to the family
property as both contrary to Hindu law and immoral.34 Rammohan’s
reply, published on the 24th, agreed that this provision in the
Dayabhaga was an example of an act which was both morally and
legally objectionable. He quoted, in a footnote, the New Testament
Gospel of Matthew (5:32) as scriptural dictate that laws have the force
of moral injunctions. Sati was therefore illegal and it was immoral.35
‘A Hindoo’ was clearly well acquainted with Hindu traditional law
and British legal opinion and was possibly connected to the Supreme
Court. The learned Supreme Court pandit, Mrtyunjaya Vidyalankar,
Rammohan’s own former acharya, was likely the anonymous writer
of the letter.
Rammohan Ray followed European politics closely. By reading
the Calcutta Journal edited by his friend James Silk Buckingham
(1786–1855). The Calcutta Journal brought the world beyond to
Rammohan’s doorstep, connecting him to global revolutionary
movements. He became aware of what was happening in Europe and
America. Locally, the pages of the journal reported every insurrection
around the world. It was the vehicle of popular dissent in Bengal,
including the Young Bengal movement led by Vivian Louis Derozio,
the orthodox Hindu community, and the foes and proponents of sati,
alike. The Calcutta Journal paved the way for freedom of the press. As
a disciple of Jeremy Bentham, the mastermind for a new generation of
global revolutionaries, the editor, Buckingham, welcomed Rammohan
into his society of revolutionaries. In turn, Rammohan promoted
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 133

his campaign against sati, the Indian version of the women’s rights
movement in the US and England, in the pages of the Calcutta
Journal. By connecting with revolutionary leaders around the world—
Sparks in Baltimore, Bentham in London, Robert Dale Owen in
England, del Valle in Gautemala, Talleyrand in France, and Simon
Bolivar, ‘El Liberatdo’, in Venezuela—Rammohan was isolating the
British in India. He admired Napoleon’s rise to power as the populist
leader, but became disillusioned with his militarism. The French
and American Revolutions inspired dissent in Bengal. Rammohan
carried on a lively correspondence with Abbe Gregoire, the Bishop
of Blois; and later Prince Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, in France;
Jared Sparks, Minister of the first American Unitarian Church in
Baltimore, Maryland; William Ellery Channing and the New England
Unitarians; Elias Hicks, a leading American quaker abolitionist
and advocate for women’s rights; Jeremy Bentham, founder of the
Utilitarian movement in England; the French Foreign Minister Prince
Talleyrand; Marie del Valle in Guatemala, with the underground Irish
Catholic uprising, though no correspondence documents this; and
key leaders of Spanish Revolution, who dedicated the republication
of the Spanish Constitution of 1812 to ‘Al liberalismo del noble, sabio,
y virtuoso Brahma Ram-Mohun Roy’.36 Rammohan was in tune with
the times, with revolutionaries around the world.
In 1815, Rammohan founded the Atmiya Sabha, the ‘Friends
Society’, very likely on the model of the Quaker Friends Society, to
provide a forum for his growing following of dissident young sons
and daughters of Calcutta’s leading families, and students of the Hindu
College, that would blossom into the Young Bengal Movement under
the leadership of a brilliant young intellectual, Henry Louis Vivian
Derozio—son from a Portuguese-Bengali marriage. Rammohan
published a steady stream of tracts which are a record of the vigorous
closed door debates of the Atmiya Sabha meetings. His mind,
however, always homed in on the intellectual environment in Calcutta
and his anti-sati crusade, debates with orthodox pandits, publication
of his Vedanta commentaries and essays, and founding and leading
the Atmiya Sabha and later the Brahmo Samaj.
Between 1815 and 1819, he published nine essays and commentaries
on Sankaracarya’s commentaries on five principal Vedic Upanisads.
He published them first in the Bangla language, and then in English.
134 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

These works were to establish his global reputation. Consequently,

American and English Unitarians adopted him as their favourite
theologian and savant. The philosopher Schopenhauer praised his
exposition of the Upanisads, a few of which he had already read
in translation. The original Bangla version was followed by his
English translation, Translation of an Abridgement of the Vedanta,
or Resolution of all the Veds, which was published in 1816. Strangely
enough, he never mentioned his sons, Radhaprasad and Ramaprasad,
nor his wives.
With the founding of the Atmiya Sabha in 1815, Rammohan
turned to the politics of the foreign sarkar, government. The Mission-
ary Register, a Unitarian journal published in London, introduced
readers to Rammohan Ray in 1816—
He is a Brahmin, about 32 years of age, of extensive landed property, and
of great consideration and influence; shrewd, vigilant, active, ambitious,
prepossessing in his manners, versed in various languages, and busily
employed in giving lectures to a number of his countrymen on the Unity of
the Godhead. He is acquainted with the New Testament; and seems disposed
to hear anything which can be enforced by the authority of Christ.37

The author estimated Rammohan’s following to be around five

hundred, and also noted that attempts had been made on his life by
orthodox Brahmans, and that he had expressed a desire to travel to
England and enroll in one of the great universities. Rammohan was
admired by the Baptist missionaries and the Church of England as
one on the right track as a reformer, even though they denounced his
Precepts of Jesus: Guide to Peace and Happiness as a heretical portrayal
of Jesus of Nazareth as a social reformer, and not the third person
of the holy Trinity. A brief, but bitter and almost comic, controversy
over the Christian doctrine of the Trinity with a Company chaplain,
the irascible Deocar Schmid, reported in the Missionary Register in
1819, raised Rammohan’s profile both in Bengal and Europe. Schmid
was no match for Rammohan Ray, who was revered as a savant by
English and French Indologists, although considered a villain in the
orthodox Hindu community of Calcutta. A letter to the editor in
the India Gazette, quoted by the Asiatic Journal in February 1820,
reported a meeting of probably the Atmiya Sabha on 30 May 1819, at
the Kidderpore house of Motu Chundru, a member of the Burdwan
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 135

Raj family, and quoted a poem written for the occasion, which
expressed the views of members of the Atmiya Sabha—
‘See Time’s destroying hand efface,
Each form that vision’s power can trace,
Think you then human sight extends,
To Him on whom e’en Time depends?
That soul if no one can pourtray,
Which animates our mortal clay,
Say how can human eye embrace,
That Mind that fills all Natures space?’38

Rammohan was viewed as an all-purpose agent provocateur,

a polarizing and unifying figure. The Calcutta Monthly Journal for
August 1817, reported a meeting of the Asiatic Society held on the
6th of August, where a Mr Ellis from Madras gave an address on
a recent publication in Paris of a book titled L’Ezour Vedam, ‘The
Gospel of Jesus’, a copy of which was in the library of the Jesuit
Mission in Madras, another at the Catholic Mission in Pondicherry,
a third copy was reported to have been given to Voltaire by Louis-
Laurent de Fedebe, chevalier de Maudave. Ellis noted that native
Christians in Pondicherry (present Puducherry) believed it to have
been written by Roberto de Nobili (1577–1656), a Jesuit priest.
Ellis quoted a M. Sonnerat, who believed it to be a forgery by a
missionary at Masulapatam, ‘sous le manteaux Brame’. Ellis further
argued that the forger was from Bengal-Orissa. Noting ‘similarities’
between Rammohan’s Vedanta and L’Ezour Vedam, Ellis jumped to
the conclusion that Rammohan Ray was the only Brahman learned
enough in Vedic and Biblical studies capable of so sophisticated a
production, and therefore he was the likely forger.39
Letters to the editor of the Calcutta Journal praised Rammohan
for inspiring a new spirit of social and political reform in Bengal
and vilified him for corrupting the youth. A report in the Bengal
Hurkaru newspaper for 10 January 1828 of an examination of students
at Rammohan’s Anglo-Hindu School held in the Harkaru Public
Rooms read—

Besides three classes that were examined in Reading, Spelling, Grammar

and Translation, the first or most advanced class, was also examined in
Joyce’s Scientific Dialogues on Mechanics and Astronomy in the first sixteen
136 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

propositions of the First Book of Euclid, and in translating into Bengallee

a passage of Voltaire’s History of Charles XII of Sweden, in all of which
they acquitted themselves apparently very much to the satisfaction of the
auditors.40

An editorial reported on Rammohan’s growing reputation abroad—

‘An American Review has been lately put into our hands, in which
we have seen with much pleasure that the able exposition of the
idolatrous worship of the Hindoos, by the learned and philosophic
Ram Mohun Roy, has reached even to the remote quarter of the
globe, and that its merits and its probable consequences have been
duly appreciated.’
Rammohan Ray founded the Brahmo Samaj in 1829 to great
fanfare. The Trust Deed of the new building was drawn up in the
legal language of the day by British barristers; and the manifesto of
the new movement was published in the India Gazette on 11 January
1830. The Trust Deed of the Brahmo Samaj meeting centre in north
Calcutta was the statement of a dissenting tantric society, including
a summation of the central doctrines of the MT. The wording of this
deed showed clear quaker and Unitarian influence. It was to be a—

place of Public Meeting, of all sorts and descriptions of people, without

distinction, as shall behave and conduct themselves in an orderly, sober,
religious, and devout manner; for the worship and adoration of the Eternal,
Unsearchable, and Immutable Being, who is the Author and Preserver of
the Universe, but not under, or by any other name, designation, or title,
particularly used for, and applied to, any particular, Being, or Beings, by
any man, or set of men, whatsoever.41

The Trust Deed was as controversial to the Calcutta European

Christian community as it was to the orthodox Hindus. The pro-
EI Company John Bull, a Calcutta newspaper named for a cartoon
caricature of the conservative Englishman, quoted the India Gazette
announcement that ‘several learned and wealthy Hindoos’ purchased
property in north Calcutta, upon which to build a meeting house
for religious purposes. This touched off a series of derisive letters.
A letter to the editor, dated 12 January 1830, signed ‘A Christian’,
scoffed that this new ‘Chitpore Road Association’ was ‘at least curious,
if not instructive, as exhibiting the tendency of educated natives,
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 137

to reject all the established forms of belief and worship,  .  .  .  under the

comprehensive tolerance of a universal Theophilanthropism!  .  .  .  It
is sometime ago since  .  .  .  the Unitarianism of Ram Mohun Roy
had stepped into this “Hindu Theism”.’ The editor responded, ‘We
will venture to foretell, judging from those who are said to be at its
head, that the day of its existence will be but short lived. We only
wonder how men of common sense can be led away by such—
humbug.’(Rammohan’s emphasis)42
Rammohan had volunteered to work with William Yates and
William Adam of the Serampore Baptist Mission on an idiomatically
correct Bangla translation of the four Gospels. He commented that
this was the most difficult translation he had ever attempted. As
they worked together, Rammohan began to question the traditional
Trinitarian doctrine. Consequently, the translation team broke up,
with William Adam siding with Rammohan on this issue. Overnight,
he became the bête noire of the nominally Christian community of
Europeans in Calcutta. Rammohan turned to the English Unitarians
for comfort, in what was a unsettling breakup of communication
with the Baptist missionaries, whom he admired as first rate Sanskrit
scholars and whose friendship had been a sustaining force in his
controversies with the Calcutta orthodox Hindu community. He was
suddenly shunned by both Christians and Hindus. Consequently, he
sought solace in the small struggling Calcutta Unitarian community
and formed the Unitarian Committee.
The Unitarians and quakers at Baltimore, Boston, and Bristol
observed these developments from afar and welcomed Rammohan
into their community. The Bristol Unitarians publicized his writings
and connected him with American Unitarians like the Revd Jared
Sparks, founder of the first Unitarian Church in Baltimore, and
later president of Harvard College. Sparks wrote a letter on 3 March
1822 to Rammohan, where he said ‘much curiosity has been excited
respecting the results to which you have come in relation to the unity
of God’.43 Sparks published his correspondence with Rammohan
in the Unitarian Miscellany and the Christian Monitor (which he
edited) calling him the ‘East Indian Apostle of Unitarianism’. The
Revd Henry Ware, Sr, a Harvard Professor of Divinity, described the
controversy which Rammohan had stirred up between the evangelical
Christians and Unitarian Christians as ‘one of the bitterest involving
138 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

liberals and Calvinists’. Behind the scenes, the American and English
Unitarians, well connected with the leading lights of the American
fledgling Congress and Parliament, introduced Rammohan’s
Vedanta publications and his highly controversial tracts against sati
to the political leadership on both sides of the Atlantic. Very soon,
Rammohan was hailed as a global champion of liberty, especially of
the rights of women. The Revd Jared Sparks, founding minister of
the First Unitarian Church in Baltimore, Maryland, who went on to
become the president of Harvard College, had broad international
connections including Prince Talleyrand, two Presidents of the United
States—Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, the great orator
Henry Clay, the founding father of American Unitarianism William
Ellery Channing, and one of the founders of the Quaker Society of
Friends in America Elias Hicks. Rammohan was, for Sparks, a fellow
political liberal and promoted him within his circle of revolutionaries
in America, The anti-slavery tracts of Channing, the leader of the
Boston Unitarians, and Elias Hicks’ Observations on the Slavery of
Africans and their Descendants and on the use of the Produce of their
Labour (1811) connected him with the vanguard of social reform
in America. Rammohan sided with the abolitions in America. He
echoed Channing’s and Hicks’ views when he expressed shock at the
system of slavery in America, the bastion of liberty.
In Bristol and London, Rammohan drew the attention of Jeremy
Bentham, the Utilitarian philosopher, who compared him with Simon
Bolivar in Argentina, calling them both his disciples. Bentham
launched a campaign to have Rammohan, a British subject, stand
as the first Indian member in Parliament.44 Bentham was, at this
time, a consultant to the commission which was revising the Spanish
Constitution of 1812. When it was republished in 1832, the title page
dedication read ‘Al Liberalismo del noble, sabio, y virtuoso Brahma
Ram-Mohun Roy’, ‘To the Liberal, the Noble, Wise, and Virtuous
Brahmin Ram Mohun Roy.’45 There was little doubt who was behind
this dedication—Bentham himself.
One of the primary motivations for Rammohan’s trip to England
in 1832 was to be present in the gallery at the Parliamentary hearings
on the renewal of the East India Company Charter to take effect the
following year, 1833. His main reason for the trip, however, was to
lobby for the defeat the orthodox petition to rescind the Sati Act of
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 139

1829 declaring sati ‘illegal and punishable by the Criminal Courts’.

The Calcutta orthodox Hindu dalpatis denounced the Sati Act as
an unlawful interference in ancient customs and denial of a dutiful
widow’s right to honour the marital vow to be true to her husband
in life and death. Rammohan countered arguing that it was not an
issue of fidelity to the marital bond since husbands were not expected
to submit to the flames on the death of their wives’ funeral pyres. It
was a degraded medieval custom linked to Dayabhaga inheritance
laws, which granted widows equal share in the family inheritance.
Rammohan further argued that there was no textual support for this
custom; it was a barbarous custom motivated by family infighting
to reduce the number of shares in the inheritance; in other words,
it was a consequence of pure greed. He mounted a high profile one-
man lobby to counteract the orthodox Hindu pro-sati campaign
and won. Governor-General Lord William Cavendish Bentinck
commented upon Rammohan’s support in his Minute on Suttee,
dated 8 November 1829:

I must acknowledge that a similar opinion as to the probable excitation of a

deep distrust of our future intentions, was mentioned to me in conversation
by that enlightened native, Ram Mohun Roy, a warm advocate for the
abolition of suttees, and of all other superstitions and corruptions, engrafted
on the Hindu Religion, which he considers originally to have been a pure
Deism. It was his opinion that the practice might be suppressed, quietly
and unobtrusively by increasing the difficulties and by the indirect agency
of the police. He apprehended that shy public enactment would give rise to
general apprehension that the reasoning would be, ‘While the English were
contending for power, they deemed it politic to allow universal toleration,
and to respect our religion, but having obtained the supremacy their first
act is a violation of their professions, and the next will probably be, like the
Mahommedan conquerors, to force upon us their Religion’.46

Francis Bathie, Esq., was appointed head of delegation to London

to present the pro-sati petition to Parliament. Bathie avoided the
awkward position of endorsing murder by arguing only that the
abolition of sati was in violation of the British stated policy of
non-intervention in the religious life of the Hindu community
they ruled, and that their loyal subjects needed to be reassured that
their religious freedoms would be safeguarded in the future.47 The
140 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

orthodox petition was, however, denied. Rammohan’s presence was

duly noted by the court reporter—‘Rammohun Roy and several
distinguished individuals connected with India were present during
the argument.’48 Calcutta was in a state of uproar. Upcountry, in the
mofussil, there was a sudden increase in the number of satis to test
the willingness and/or readiness of the British government to enforce
the new regulation. The orthodox Hindu leadership went into high
gear and founded the Dharma Sabha, to restore the rite of sati and
counter the influence of Rammohan Ray and the Brahmo Samaj. At
a meeting on 2 August 1830, the Samacar Kaumudi (Rammohan’s
Bangla newspaper) reported that in the month of November in the
previous year, the police had prevented a sati attempt by a sixty-year-
old widow.49 On 17 September 1831, the Samacar Darpan reported
a graphic account of the sati of a member of a local raja’s harem that
created a stir in Calcutta. A consort of the raja attempted to escape
the raging fire but was held down on the pyre by family members
with long poles, ignoring her agonized screams; upwards of twenty
other members of the harem were drugged and forced upon the
conflagration, along with the nobleman’s favourite horse. Rammohan’s
famous letter to the Marquis of Lansdowne, Chairman of the Privy
Council, one titled gentleman to another, was a steely cold, straight
to the point statement on the eve of the pro-sati petition, which
backed the Privy Council into the impossible position of officially
advocating ritual murder.
Rajah Rammohun Roy presents his compliments to the Marquis of
Lansdowne, and feels very much obliged by his Lordship’s informing him
of the day (Saturday next) on which the argument on the suttee question
is to be heard before the Privy Council.
R.R. will not fail to be present there at 11o’clock, to witness personally
the scene in which an English Gentleman (or Gentlemen) of highly liberal
education professing Christianity is to pray for the re-establishment of
suicide, and in many instances actual murder.50

‘In politics he was a Republican’, the Times (London) wrote in its

obituary on 3 October 1833. In London, Rammohan Ray provided
testimony before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on
the eve of the East India Company Charter renewal in 1832. It was
published under the title Exposition of the Practical Operation of the
Judicial and Revenue Systems of India and of the General Character
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 141

and Condition of its Native Inhabitants. ‘A Brief Preliminary Sketch of

the Ancient and Modern Boundaries and History of India’ was its first
section. Rammohan may well have retraced his runaway wanderings
as a teenager here. He included a map of ‘Bharatvarsha’, the mythical
ancient South Asian subcontinent, demarcating the latitude and
longitude boundaries of each period of the geographical spread of
sanskriti, Hindu civilization, by shading. ‘Aryavarta’, the ‘civilized and
sacred land’ of the fair-skinned Aryans, was roughly a right-angled
triangle, the vertical side went north through Rajasthan (Malwar)
on the current map of the subcontinent, and Pakistan ended at the
southern tip of Tajikistan. The horizontal base stretched from Baruch
on the Gulf of Cambay to the Sunderbans in the Bay of Bengal. The
boundary followed the Ganges northwards to just below Rangpur,
then turned north-west and followed the irregular terrain south of the
border of the Kingdom of Nepal to the Bay of Bengal. This was the
Hindu heartland, the punyabhu (sacred land) of ancient Vedic India.
‘A Brief Preliminary Sketch of the Ancient and Modern Boundaries
and History of India’ is perhaps the earliest ‘modern’ example of the
glorification of the Aryan idea of the Fatherland. The only source
Rammohan quotes is Smarta Raghunandan, the legendary Bengali
lawgiver, and then only to quote his translation of mlecchadesh as
‘barbarous country’. Yet, ironically, Rammohan’s narrative almost
parallels and identifies with another historic migratory community—
the Israelites—who had a law code, who were people guided by
Revelation, who were wanderers, who kept sacred their history in
chronicles written in their own highly developed language, who
conquered their enemies, who survived every natural disaster and
regional political obstacle to be a major global community today, and
who live in a Holy Land.
Rammohan Ray’s major contribution, other than his much
heralded presence, to the Parliamentary debate on the renewal of
the East India Company charter was his testimony on the revenue
and legal systems under British rule. In Paper on the Revenue System
of India, dated 19 August 1831, he gave a failing grade to Governor
General Cornwallis’ Permanent Settlement of 1793, which had
fixed the revenue rate in perpetuity. His conclusion was that it was
well-meant, but ill-informed and ill-advised. Both cultivators and
landholders were taking advantage of the other in the collection of
rents, recording of accurate land assessments, fudging of records,
142 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

and in variable disclosures of farm production. The only people who

were getter richer were landholders and dealers in commodities. As
a result, the cultivators and peasants were living in abject poverty.
The only solution, Rammohan argued, was to turn over the revenue
system in each district to the collector, the chief British district
administrator, who would act as the superintendent over the local
native agents. Corruption was rife at the field and during collections.
Rammohan’s recommendations echoed Adam Smith’s basic canons
of taxation in the Wealth of Nations. The tax rate for cultivators and
landholders were to be well publicized, so that everyone knew his
liability, and equitably and efficiently collected to insure a living wage
at every level of society. He also advocated rewards for meritorious
service, regular audits of accounts and immediate punitive action on
defaulters and corrupt officials. He concluded by noting that these
recommendations were in accord with the views of Sir Thomas
Munro, Robert Rickards, Mr H. Ellis and other ‘distinguished
Honourable East India Company officials’.51
Rammohan has generally given low scores to the British
administration of justice in India, in Questions and Answers on
the Judicial System of India, published in 1832. Rammohan’s first-
hand district fieldwork as a Company diwan was the source of his
information. First, there was no common language in the courts, and
critical information and judgements were lost in translation. Second,
the cultural divide between native subjects and the English judiciary
stifled communication. Third, there was the same cultural divide
between the bench and native pleaders. In other words, British judges
were culturally illiterate. Fourth, there was inadequate court reporting
and newspaper coverage of court proceedings, which meant that there
was no public scrutiny of judicial proceedings, and deliberations were
conducted behind closed doors. Fifth, the language barriers meant
that there was a ‘great prevalence of perjury’ due to the unchecked
suborning of witnesses by the amlah. Sixth, the language barrier and
dishonest amlahs were responsible for increase in forgeries. Seventh,
public ignorance of the law, long distances to courts, and absenteeism
of witnesses at proceedings disrupted the courts’ functioning. Eighth,
the language barrier at every level—among judges, pleaders, and
witnesses—multiplied the deficiencies in the dysfunctional system
beyond redemption.52 Rammohan’s recommendation was to make
English the court language, eliminate Persian and Bangla entirely
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 143

from the court room, and raise the wages of all court officials to
bolster them against the temptations of corruption.53 He also graded
court officials at all levels. The Sudder Dewanee Adalat, the Calcutta
High Court, received the highest marks, while the zillah or provincial
courts received the lowest scores.54 Furthermore, Muslim lawyers
were of a higher calibre than the general run of Hindu lawyers.
Lastly, he argued that the only equitable remedy for the cultural and
language discontinuities would be the implementation of trial by a
jury of peers.55
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, great changes were rapidly
taking place across the globe. European presence in India had been
both an asset and a liability; furthermore, they were in India to stay.
Rammohan weighed the pros and cons of European settlement in
India in Remarks on the Settlement in India by Europeans, published
on 14 July 1832. He listed the advantages to India of their continued
presence. First, they had brought with them the new scientific
learning that had swept Europe. They had also introduced the latest
methods of production in agriculture and commerce to the great
benefit of Bengal. Second, they had exposed the religious, social,
and political prejudices and superstitions that had kept Bengalis
trapped in self-defeating customs, and made them easy prey for
Mughal and European conquest. Third, they introduced a ‘liberal’
government founded upon British law, and demolished the traditional
despotic systems. Fourth, they introduced checks and balances
to prevent the abuse of power by the zamindars and government
officials. Fifth, they introduced the people of India to the English
language. Sixth, they led India out of its historic isolation and into
the world. Seventh, by introducing the idea of civil and political
rights, Europeans encouraged a sense of national pride among their
subjects. Eighth, a permanent bond between India and Great Britain
was cemented by this new sense of being a ‘nation’. Ninth, if in the
future there would be a separation from Great Britain, India would
be on solid ground because of the integration of cultural; economic,
political, and scientific knowledge; methods of production; the great
wealth; and Christian values espoused, if not always acted upon, by
European settlers and their descendants. It would also be a force for
enlightenment for the entire Asian world.56
Yet, there were certain disadvantages. First, the European sense
of racial and cultural superiority towards the lower classes was
144 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

a detriment to good working relations. His remedy was to bring

in better-educated Europeans, as he thought they would be less
likely to discriminate and take unfair advantage of the natives, and
mix Europeans and native amlahs on all juries in order to put all
subjects of the Crown on an equal footing in courts of law. Second,
Europeans exploited their privileges and better connections with the
government officials in their dealings with native Bengalis. The third
disadvantage is related to the second, namely, that the upper-class
Europeans were naturally deferred to by natives but the emigration of
Europeans of middle and lower class standing would encourage social
equality. Rammohan presciently suggested the possibility of a fourth
liability, that if Europeans settled in India and were progressive, the
resultant mixed community, raised ‘in wealth, intelligence and public
spirit  .  .  .  would revolt (as the United States of America formerly did)
against the power of Great Britain, and would ultimately established
independence.’57 Rammohan continued—

In reference to this, however, it must be observed that the Americans were

driven to rebellion by misgovernment, otherwise they would not have
revolted and separated themselves from England. Canada is a standing
proof that an anxiety to effect a separation from the mother country is
not the natural wish of a people, even tolerably well ruled. The mixed
community of India, in like manner, so long as they are treated liberally,
and governed in an enlightened manner, will feel no disposition to cut off
its connection with England, which may be preserved with so much mutual
benefit to both countries. Yet, as before observed, if events should occur to
effect a separation,  .  .  .  still a friendly and highly advantageous commercial
intercourse may be kept up between two free and Christian countries, united
as they will then be by resemblance of language, religion, and manners.58

This was said in the year 1832. Jawaharlal Nehru would declare ‘at the
stroke of the midnight hour’, 115 years later, that India was an inde-
pendent, sovereign nation.
The Europeans settling in India also encountered certain
unforeseen challenges. First among them was the almost unbearable
heat in the summer months, with temperatures often reaching more
than a 100 degrees Fahrenheit on a daily basis. This was followed by
the months of torrential rain, which brought relentless infestations
of insects, snakes, and other critters seeking shelter from the rain.
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 145

It was during Rammohan’s last days at Stapleton Grove, outside of

Bristol, England, where he was surrounded by his Unitarian friends
that he opened up and revealed his inner-most thoughts. He was a
very private man. He and Raja Ram, his adopted son, were warmly
embraced by the the Carpenter and Estlin families, according to Mary
Carpenter’s The Last Days in England of Rajah Rammohan Ray. Miss
Kiddel and Miss Castle tutored Raja Ram at their home. He lived with
David Hare, his friend from the Calcutta days. Hare’s daughter, who
had heard all the stories about Rammohan from Calcutta, looked
upon him as a grandfather figure, according to an entry in Estlin’s
diary. It has been noted, ‘He is evidently much attached to her, and her
regard for him is quite filial.’59 Miss Hare and Dr Estlin provided for
his medical care, when his health started failing and he was in need
of care. Rammohan also attended Lewin’s Chapel on Sundays with
them, at least on two occasions. He was impressed with the openness
of the Unitarian theology and impressed them with the openness
of his ‘Brahmo Dharma’. He professed emphatically his belief in the
resurrection of Christ and in the Christian miracles generally and
said that the internal evidence of Christianity had been the most
decisive of his convictions.
Rammohan’s instructions for his funeral were that ‘a small piece
of freehold ground might be purchased for his burying place, and a
cottage be built on it for the gratuitous residence of some respectable
poor person, to take charge of it’. After his death, ‘The Coffin was
borne on men’s shoulders, with a pall, and deposited in the grave,
without any ritual and in silence’. Collet adds, ‘So he was buried. Alone
in his death as in his life, in alien soil, but carefully protected to the
last from violation of his native customs. The silence that fell at the
grave which closed so active and vocal a life is strangely suggestive.
Rammohun’s last word remains unspoken.’60
Rammohan followed to the end the guidance of Hariharanandanath
Tirthaswami, set forth in the MT, ‘Of the four classes of Avadhutas,
the fourth is called the Hangsa (Parama-hangsa). The other three
both practice yoga and have enjoyment. They are all liberated and
are like unto Shiva.’61 The word unspoken is declared in the MT. ‘He
who, renouncing all acts (rites), has been cleansed by the Sangskara
(rites) of Shaiva Avadhuta (holy man), ceases to have any right to
worship Devas, to perform the Shraddha (veneration) of the Pitris
146 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

(ancestors), or to honour the Rishis (ancient sages)’.62 Rammohan

was laid to rest in accordance with the instructions in the MT for
the obsequies of an avadhuta.
‘Having thus prayed to be free from all debts, bowing again and
again, and being thus freed from all debts, he should perform his
own funeral rites’.63 Rabindranath Tagore summed up Rammohan’s
greatness in the words—‘The greatest man of modern India, Raja
Ram Mohan Roy was born in Bengal and was the best friend of my
grandfather. He had courage to overcome the prohibition against
sea-voyage, and came in touch with the great Western minds.’64

Notes
1. Ghulam Hussain Khan, Siyar-ul-Mutakherin: A History of the Mohamedan
Power in India during the last Century, tr. John Briggs, London: John
Murray, 1832, p. 159.
2. John R. McLane, Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-century Bengal,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 244.
3. Ibid., p. 245.
4. Sophia Dobson Collet, The Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy,
ed. Dilip Kumar Biswas and Prabhat Chandra Ganguli, 3rd edn., Calcutta:
Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, 1962, p. 3.
5. Ibid., p. 33.
6. Ibid., p. 45
7. Ibid., p. 9; also see, Arthur Avalon, tr., Mahanirvana Tantra: The Tantra of
the Great Liberation, Middletown, DE: Wildside Press, 2016.
8. Collet, Life and Letters, p. 45.
9. J. Duncan Derrett, Essays in Classical and Modern Hindu Law, Leiden:
E.J. Brill, 1976, p. 227. Derrett dismisses the Mahanirvana Tantra as a
late nineteenth century (1793–80) fabrication of a tantra composed by a
‘tantric addict’ who duped his student, Rammohan Ray, into believing it
to be an ancient legal text. See, J. Duncan M. Derrett, Dharmasastra and
Juridical Literature, Weisbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1973, p. 47, n. 369.
Arthur Avalon, translator of the Mahanirvana Tantra, agrees with this time
frame. It is also possible that the Mahanirvana Tantra was a transcription
of or composed as a dialogue between acharya and student, Hariharananda
and Rammohan, alias Shiva and Parvati.
10. See, chapter 1 in Avalon, tr., Tantra of the Great Liberation, p. 81.
11. Ibid., p. 5.
12. Collet, Life and Letters, p. 69. Collet refers to Ramachandra as a vamacari
tantrik like his brother, even though his reputation was as an eminent
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 147
shastri, a Vedic scholar, in the daksinacara tradition, rather than a
practitioner of vamacari rites.
13. M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility Under Aurangzeb, Calcutta, 1968, p. 99.
14. Jadunath Sarkar, The History of Bengal, vol. II, Dacca: University of Dacca,
1948, p. 397.
15. Ghulam Hussain Salim Zaidpuri, The Riyazu-s-Salatin: A History of Bengal,
tr. Maulvi Abdus Salam, Calcutta: Asia Society, 1902, p. 17.
16. Haricarana Vasu, Varadaprasada Vasu, Radhakanta Deva, A Rapid Sketch
of the Life of Raja Radhakanta Deva Bahadur, n.d., p. 15.
17. Khan, Siyar-ul-Mutakherin, p. 159.
18. Banglapedia, National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh, see http://
en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Riyaz-us-Salatin, accessed 10 April
2019; and Bruce Carlisle Robertson, The Essential Writings of Raja
Rammohan Ray, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 194.
19. Khan, Siyar-ul-Mutakherin, p. 159.
20. Robertson, Essential Writings, p. 175.
21. Ibid., p. 194.
22. Ibid., p. 211f.
23. Ibid., p. 244; see Collet, Life and Letters, p. 258.
24. Collet, Life and Letters, p. 258.
25. Ronald B. Inden, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture: A History of Caste
and Clan in Middle Period Bengal, Berkeley: University of California Press,
1976, p. 53.
26. Ibid.
27. Kalidas Nag and Debajyoti Burman, eds., The English Works of Raja
Rammohun Roy, vol. II, Calcutta: Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, 1945, p. 15.
28. J.K. Majumdar, ed., Raja Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements in
India, vol. I (1775–1845), Calcutta: Brahmo Mission Press, 1983, p. 210.
29. Robertson, Essential Writings, p. 147f.
30. Kalidas Nag and Debajyoti Burman, eds., The English Works of Raja
Rammohun Roy, vol. I, Calcutta: Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, 1945, p. 25.
31. Ibid., p. 15.
32. See, chapter 4 (‘The State of Degradation to which Woman is Reduced
by various Causes’) in Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the
Rights of Women, 1792, see p. 48 in earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/
wollstonecraft1792.pdf, accessed on 20 August 2018.
33. Robertson, Raja Rammohan Ray, p. 46.
34. Dilip Kumar Biswas, The Correspondence of Rammohun Roy, vol. I (1809–
1831), Calcutta: Saraswat Library, 1992, p. 495.
35. Ibid., pp. 296, 496 note.
36. Collet, Life and Letters, p. 162.
148 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
37. J.K. Majumdar, ed., Raja Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements
in India, vol. I (1775–1845), Calcutta: Brahmo Mission Press, 1983,
p. 4.
38. Ibid., p. 30.
39. Ludo Rocher has confirmed Ellis’s view, attributing it to a French Jesuit
missionary because of its blending of Vedic and Christian themes. See,
Ludo Rocher, ed., Ezourvedam: A French Veda of the Eighteenth Century,
Netherlands: John Benjamin Publishing Co., 1984.
40. Majumdar, ed., Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements, vol. I, p. 264.
41. Robertson, Essential Writings, p. 175.
42. Majumdar, ed., Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements, p. 82.
43. Bruce Carlisle Robertson, ‘Rammohan Ray and American Unitarians’, in
Patterns of Change in Modern Bengal, ed. Richard L. Park, Asian Studies
Center, East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, p. 50; and Inden,
Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture, p. 53.
44. Robertson, Raja Rammohan Ray, p. 48.
45. Collet, Life and Letters, p. 162
46. Majumdar, ed., Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements, vol. I, p. 142.
47. Ibid., p. 218.
48. Ibid., p. 195.
49. Ibid., p. 179.
50. Robertson, Essential Writings, p. 271.
51. Ibid., p. 202.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., p. 203.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid., pp. 227–8.
57. Ibid., p. 228.
58. Ibid., p. 230.
59. Collet, Life and Letters, p. 361.
60. Ibid., p. 365.
61. Avalon, tr., Tantra of the Great Liberation, verse 167, p. 250.
62. Ibid., verse 166, p. 250.
63. Ibid., verse 204, p. 156.
64. Uma Dasgupta, ed., Rabindranath Tagore: My Life in My Words, New Delhi:
Penguin, 2006, pp. 8–9.

References
Ali, M. Athar, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, Calcutta, 1968.
Avalon, Arthur, tr., Mahanirvana Tantra: The Tantra of the Great Liberation,
Middletown, DE: Wildside Press, 2016.
 Robertson: Rammohan Ray (Rammohun Roy) 149
Banglapedia, National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh, see http://en.banglapedia.
org/index.php?title=Riyaz-us-Salatin, accessed 10 April 2019.
Biswas, Dilip Kumar, The Correspondence of Rammohun Roy, vol. I (1809–1831),
Calcutta: Saraswat Library, 1992.
Bharati, Aghehananda, The Tantric Tradition, 4th edn., London: Rider and
Company, 1975.
Collet, Sophia Dobson, The Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy, 3rd edn.,
ed. Dilip Kumar Biswas and Prabhat Chandra Ganguli, Calcutta: Saharan
Brahmo Samaj, 1962.
Dasgupta, Uma, ed., Rabindranath Tagore: My Life in My Words, New Delhi:
Penguin, 2006.
Derrett, J. Duncan M., Dharmasastra and Juridical Literature, Weisbaden: Otto
Harrassowitz, 1973.
———,  Essays in Classical and Modern Hindu Law, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976.
Gaborieau, Marc and Alice Thorner, eds., Asie du sud: Traditions et Changements,
Paris: Editions du SCNRS, 1979.
Inden, Ronald B., Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture: A History of Caste
and Class in Middle Bengal, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
Khan, Ghulam Hussain, Siyar-ul-Mutakherin: A History of the Mohamedan Power
in India during the Last Century, tr. John Briggs, London: John Murray, 1832.
Majumdar, J.K., ed., Raja Rammohun Roy and Progressive Movements in India,
vol. I (1775–1845), Calcutta: Brahmo Mission Press, 1983.
McLane, John R., Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-century Bengal,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Nag, Kalidas and Debajyoti Burman, eds., The English Works of Raja Rammohun
Roy, 6 vols., Calcutta: Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, 1945–51.
Park, Richard L., ed., Patterns of Change in Modern Bengal, East Lansing:
Michigan State University Press, 1979.
Robertson, Bruce Carlisle, Raja Rammohan Ray: The Father of Modern India,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995.
———,  The Essential Writings of Raja Rammohan Ray, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
Rocher, Ludo, ed., Ezourvedam: A French Veda of the Eighteenth Century,
Netherlands: John Benjamin, 1984.
Sarkar, Jadunath and Ramesh Chundra Majumdar, eds., The History of Bengal,
vol. II, Dacca: University of Dacca, 1948.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792, see
earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/wollstonecraft1792.pdf, accessed on
20 August 2018.
Zaidpuri, Ghulam Hussain Salim, The Riyazu-s-Salatin: A History of Bengal,
tr. Maulvi Abdus Salam, Calcutta: Asia Society, 1902.
 6

The Era of Vidyasagar

Brian A. Hatcher

I
f this chapter chooses to define an era in relation to a single,
remarkable historical figure, it is less in the spirit of adulation,
than it is out of the desire to use the course of Ishwar Chandra
Vidyasagar’s life (1820–91) as the dramatic background against which
to chart some of the most important changes taking place in mid-
nineteenth-century Bengal. The life and career of Vidyasagar serve
well for this purpose since he was born, educated, and commenced his
public career in the era of the early colonial modern, but would spend
the latter half of his career alienated and frustrated by the conditions
of life in late colonial Bengal. While it would be wrong to read the
entire course of this era in light of one life, we shall see it is nonetheless
possible to map some of the most important developments, figures,
and movements of this period in relation to Vidyasagar’s life. In this
chapter, the goal will be to highlight certain thematics and changes
that are characteristic of the decades between the 1820s and the 1880s.
Due to his own enormous presence throughout this period—not to
mention his enduring legacy in Bengali history and imagination—
there are ample reasons for calling this the era of Vidyasagar.1
The period that Partha Chatterjee has dubbed the ‘early colonial
modern’ was one with distinctive lineaments, not least in respect to
new opportunities, new kinds of relationships with non-Indians, and
new modes of public life.2 As a period, it may be thought of as running
from roughly 1750 to 1850.3 Two key moments for the articulation
of this singular era were Lord Clive’s victory in the Battle of Plassey
in 1757, and the East India Company’s establishment of the College
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 151

of Fort William in 1800. The former led to fundamental changes in

the practice of politics and trade in eastern India, while the latter
introduced into the Indian context new institutional, pedagogical,
and epistemological norms. These, in turn, set into motion new
pathways of intellectual production and social mobility. During the
early colonial period, a variety of British policy initiatives fostered a
refiguring of the socio-economic landscape. One thinks of Governor-
General Hastings’s emphasis on non-interference in religion (after
1772), the Permanent Settlement under Lord Cornwallis (1793),
and increased openings for the evangelization of India by Christian
missionary actors (especially after 1813). What was unleashed were
changes that fostered the rise of new economic elites, new forms
of public religious disputation and polemic, and new occasions for
innovation in the areas of South Asian public ritual and theology.4
At the same time, the rise of the printing press and the expansion of
colonial law courts fostered new modes of public debate and social
intercourse, which would contribute over time to the reframing of
the meaning of religion in modern South Asia.
Notwithstanding the fact of British intervention in political
economy, it is important not to project onto this early period the
kinds of fears over cultural deracination (and concomitant resistance)
that would come to characterize Bengal by the close of the century.5
Early colonial Calcutta witnessed a number of meaningful—though
short-lived—experiments that engaged Indians and Europeans alike,
whether in the areas of associational behaviour, creative art, learning,
or philanthropy. Not yet frozen within the enumerative logic of late
colonial modernity, it was a ‘more fluid’ time, as Rosinka Chaudhuri
has put it—a time in which intercourse between colonized and
colonizer remained open and fruitful.6 It was an age during which
Bengalis, not least Rammohun Roy and Vidyasagar, were happy
to ponder the benefits that might accrue to India through its new
connection to Europe. At the forefront of concerns in Vidyasagar’s
day—following on the success of Rammohun’s campaign for the
abolition of sati in 1829—was the issue of social and religious reform.
Vidyasagar would inherit the mantle of reform from Rammohun
and go on to place his own stamp on the pursuit of social change.
Characteristic of his age was the conviction that Indians could
advance the task of ‘improving’ Indian society through targeted
152 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

efforts around social reform that would earn the active support
of the British colonial government. Overall then, we may say that
intellectuals from Rammohun in the 1820s to Vidyasagar in the 1850s
applied themselves to the task of redressing a variety of presumed
social evils (kusamskara).
This reformist impulse had its root in the belief that British rule
had opened up new avenues for pursuing meaningful social change.
As Asok Sen put it, the reformer’s goal was to enlighten the public,
educate the government, and thereby win the ‘necessary state and
social support for his desired goals’.7 Equally characteristic of this early
colonial moment was the belief that so-called ‘native improvement’
could be advanced with help from British administrators and
philanthropists. In particular, the period from the 1820s to 1840s
found a range of British actors working alongside Bengalis on various
fronts; one thinks of figures like George Thompson (1804–78), David
Hare (1775–1842), and John Eliot Drinkwater Bethune (1801–51).
The 1830s, in particular, were a vibrant time for such engagements
in the public sphere, as coalitions formed around the pursuit of
new educational opportunities, the representation of landholder’s
rights, or the promotion of what was often dubbed ‘general welfare’.
In conjunction with such activity, the journal, book, and polemical
tract came into their own as the most vital means for connecting with
both the Bengali public and the state. One of the crowning pieces of
print-based reform from the early colonial era would be Vidyasagar’s
two-part work arguing for the right of Hindu widows to remarry.
His effort was crowned with success with the passage of Act XV on
the Remarriage of Hindu Widows in 1856.8 We will return to this
below.
Even as such measures for reform seemed to confirm the potential
of the early colonial times to foster progress, well before the passage
of Act XV there were already signs that such colonial possibilities
might be limited. In the 1820s, Calcutta witnessed robust debates
around the issue of free press and the institution of jury trials. In
1835, Macaulay’s famous Minute on Education had adopted an
unmistakable tone of English cultural arrogance, and during the
1840s, global economic strains caused significant hardship in Bengal,
where the jointly owned Union Bank failed.9 Viewed against the
backdrop of such trends, Act XV comes to seem not merely like
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 153

Vidyasagar’s crowning achievement, but also like the last flourish of

a more optimistic age of reform.
In 1857, much of north India was plunged into violent strife. In
the aftermath of the Rebellion, the foundation of a more despotic
British Raj was laid. At this very moment, in 1858, Vidyasagar chose
to retire from government service. While he remained active in
the fields of education, social reform, and philanthropy, public life
would soon change so remarkably that his latter career was marked
with far greater frustration. The failure of his campaign against
Kulin polygamy (bahuvivaha) in the 1870s underscored how much
the landscape of reform had changed in Bengal; not only had the
confidence in government support for robust social change vanished,
but also the rise of culturalist and more defensive postures towards
the preservation of Hindu culture meant that the reform strategy that
had worked so well in 1855 was suddenly rendered suspect. It is no
exaggeration to say that a unique and dynamic era in Bengali social
and intellectual life had drawn to a close.
In the immediate wake of 1857, there were those among the
British who drew a direct correlation between passage of Act XV
and the outbreak of insurrection across north India.10 While we
know that the causes and ramifications of the Mutiny were far more
complex than this, it cannot be denied that the British drew one
important lesson: never again should the customs of native Indians be
so directly interfered with, as had been done with passage of Act XV.
At the same time, this period also witnessed the promulgation of new
regulations around government support for education. Vidyasagar,
whose early career had paired teaching and administrative oversight
at the Calcutta Government Sanskrit College—not to mention the
active promotion of vernacular education beyond Calcutta—became
disenchanted with the new emphases of government policy. This
would seem to be at least one factor why he resigned as the Principal
of the Sanskrit College in 1858.
While Vidyasagar’s resignation may have its roots in his notori-
ously intransigent personality, we may also read it as evidence of
the changing tenor of the times. His precipitate decision reminds
us that much of the optimism shared among Bengali social and
intellectual leaders in the first half of the nineteenth century quickly
gave way after 1857 to despair over liberal dreams of improvement in
154 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

personal and social life under East India Company’s rule. Vidyasagar
had already experienced his share of racism from his British superiors
in the Bengal administration, which he tended to counter in effective
but largely ad hoc fashion.11 When he announced his loss of hope in
the possibility of ‘further advancement’, it was a clear indication of
how much his world had changed.12 It also foreshadows the increasing
frustrations of the later colonial period, which would engender new
forms of cultural assertion and political resistance.

Sanskrit and Modernity

Some of the impact exerted by Vidyasagar throughout the middle
of the century has to do with the groundbreaking role he played
in shaping the Bengali language, promoting Bengali literature, and
helping to advance Bengali vernacular education.13 For better or worse,
the quintessential form of Bengali prose that became a hallmark of
this era owed its origins to Vidyasagar’s efforts to rationalize such
issues as spelling, sentence structure, and punctuation, and to
normalize a kind of Sanskrit-dependent vocabulary that in his mind
had the virtues of cultural depth and semantic clarity.14 The scope
and effectiveness of his strategies in this regard are evident from his
canny promotion of a range of children’s new schoolbooks such as
his Barnaparichay, which introduced young readers to his disciplined
and consistent parsing of the language. At the same time, he created
new Bengali language texts across a range of reading levels, so that
young learners were given the chance to savour Shakespeare or
Kalidasa in Bengali, while his intellectual peers were treated to learned
disquisitions on the Sanskrit language in Bengali or could even begin
the study of Sanskrit by means of innovative grammatical works such
as his Vyakaran Kaumudi.
We must not lose sight of the fact that Vidyasagar was a pandit,
which is to say a classically trained Sanskrit scholar. This explains
his respect for and reliance on Sanskrit as a linguistic and cultural
compass. But Vidyasagar was not unique in this regard. His life helps
bring into view the consequential role played by a range of Bengali
Sanskrit scholars during this era. In fact, the pandits of Vidyasagar’s
day proved among the most adept at taking to the printing press and
at undertaking new, sometimes Western-inspired, efforts towards
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 155

the creation of new intellectual resources like dictionaries, critical

editions, and scholarly translations.15 At the same time, if Vidyasagar
found himself drawn into the field of social reform, so did his pandit
peers. The raging print battles around the issue of widow remarriage
(vidhava vivaha) provide ample evidence that Vidyasagar was but
one pandit among many who sought to mobilize their learning to
promote or oppose change.16
To consider the activities of pandits at this time is to call attention
to the particular lineaments of social and political life in Calcutta
during the early 1850s. This was still a public space shaped by the
interplay of numerous interest groups: not least newly rich ruling
families such as the Shobhabajar Raj family and powerful social
groups (dals) affiliated to voluntary associations like the Dharma
Sabha and Brahmo Samaj, which still bore the traits of petty ruling
polities. These groups had the power to press the special interests
of mercantile, professional, or particular caste groups.17 This should
remind us that Vidyasagar was never a lone pioneer pressing into
the darkness of premodern superstition; like his opponents, he also
depended on the support of influential ruling families in the city,
the help of other Sanskrit scholars, and the sympathy of government
officials. The battle over widow remarriage was thus nothing like
a battle between tradition and modernity. Actors on both sides
deployed the resources of the modern public sphere, while skillfully
drawing upon elements of Hindu or Shastric tradition. When we place
the passage of Act XV in 1856 in this context, we have to complicate
the competencies, allegiances, and objectives of all those involved,
including the British. This would be the last major public feat of
scripture-based reform during the early colonial era.
We can think of the mobilization of Sanskrit resources for social
reform as the expression of what might be called Shastric Modernity.18
This phrase attempts to highlight a distinctly modern attitude towards
Sanskrit scriptural sources in which it is presumed that ancient
classical Sanskrit sources can be repurposed in pursuit ofchange. The
‘modernity’ of Shastric Modernity lies in the historically conditioned
fact that unlike earlier eras, when the viability of a custom might be
debated in a royal courts by trained pandits, in the early colonial
setting, such debates took place in the public sphere, where they were
mediated by a range of new political, technological, institutional,
156 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

and epistemological frameworks.19 Vidyasagar epitomizes—but does

not monopolize—this approach to change. A pandit by training, he
also became a hugely successful author and a major publisher in his
own right. He held important teaching and administrative positions
at institutions like the College of Fort William and the Sanskrit
College, both artifacts of colonial modernity (the first founded in
1800, the latter in 1823); and he demonstrated a robust sense of the
epistemological challenges implicit in India’s encounter with Western
philosophical and scientific thought.
To appreciate the role of Sanskrit within the imaginary of Shastric
Modernity, we may quote Michael Dodson, who has argued that in
the attempts made by colonial-era pandits to engage meaningfully
with Enlightenment modernity, they acted ‘knowingly’ with respect
to their intellectual tradition.20 The key point to stress is that their
recourse to Shastra should not be construed to suggest they were
hidebound or hopelessly in thrall to tradition, as standard accounts
tend to suggest. Dodson argues that the goal of the modern pandit
was to link the new and putatively universal categories cherished by
the British—such as ‘reason’—to their own localized understandings,
for instance by translating ‘reason’ in terms of tarka.21 As inherently
translational, their approach to cultural encounter need not be framed
in terms of a priori assumptions about the superiority of modern
reason and the West; it may be understood instead as the active,
engaged negotiation with cultural, ethical and symbolic systems
that they presumed could be made congruent with other forms of
colonial knowledge. As Vidyasagar himself famously remarked to the
orientalist James Ballantyne—who had supported a colonial Sanskrit
curriculum that featured philosophical systems Vidyasagar felt were
no longer valid—truth is truth; it is not double.22
The turn to shastra was therefore a reasoned gesture that worked
in concert with other epistemological orientations, not least the
historical and scientific methods. Vidyasagar’s earliest tract against
child marriage, in fact, clearly reveals his willingness to draw upon
what we might think of as modern sociological reasoning.23 Here,
he framed arguments about the risks of early marriage in terms
of empirical evidence about the emotional and physical costs
experienced by young spouses. Even when he deliberately adopted a
scripturalist methodology for the vidhava vivaha campaign, he was
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 157

not above invoking historical-critical judgments about the validity of

the Dharmasastra texts he surveyed.24 The published text of his two-
part argument even features footnotes, in which he refers to material
published in none other than the Journal of the Asiatic Society.25 As
a pandit, the Hindu scriptures may have been his métier, but the
conditions of early colonial modernity provided him with a new set
of interpretive tools to apply alongside those scriptures. This is one
way to think of Shastric Modernity.
One of the strengths of the concept of Shastric Modernity is
that it does not apply only to the case of the so-called modernists
or progressives like Vidyasagar. It is characteristic of a wide range of
intellectual and cultural projects during the first half of the nineteenth
century. We know that many other pandits in Bengal composed tracts
to support or refute Vidyasagar’s arguments; these are amply attested
even within the body of Vidyasagar’s Bengali work. The number and
range of Sanskrit or Sanskrit-oriented works created around the
controversy over widow remarriage is truly staggering.26 Surveying
such literatrue, we realize that even Vidyasagar’s opponents resorted
to shastric reflection and exegesis as an authoritative space within
which to address pressing public matters.27 It is thus not the case that
pandits represented a deterrent to the progress of Indian modernity;
just as it would be wrong to conclude that Vidyasagar was unique in
being both a pandit and modern. Such formulations draw on tropes
of Indian backwardness and the negative influence of tradition that
no longer hold water today.28
Thinking of Sanskrit and modernity in this way, the great
precursor may well have been Rammohun Roy himself, who was a
skillful interpreter of the ancient Vedic texts. Just as in Vidyasagar’s
case, Rammohun too was opposed on reform issues by other shastric
intellectuals. The most notable of these was Mrtyunjay Vidyalankar,
who was no less adept than Rammohun at the deployment of
shastra to address issues of change, and who simply happened to
reject Rammohun’s particular understanding of Vedanta (or what
Rammohun called Hindu theism). Like Vidyasagar, Mrtyunjay’s
career was shaped by changes in early colonial technological,
institutional, and epistemological life. He held a teaching role at the
College of Fort William, and sought to move his writings into publicly
accessible print editions. He also wrestled with ways to reconcile
158 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Indian learning with what he was coming to know about British

political and moral concepts.29 It may seem a stretch, but one could
even argue that this model of Shastric Modernity makes sense of
the way a new brahmin convert to Christianity, like Krishna Mohan
Banerjea, went about formulating his critique of Hinduism. Banerjea
did not dismiss the shastras tout court, but sought to engage with
them ‘knowingly’ (in Dodson’s terms) in order to arrive at what he
thought were reasonable refutations of Hindu doctrines.30
This is not to say there were not those who rejected outright what
they took to be the outmoded or irrational recourse to scripture and
religious tradition. We know of the skepticism of the Young Bengal
group. Their patent adoption of Westernized habits and public
displays of scorn for brahminical customs and norms would have
precluded any significant recognition of the meaning-producing
character of ancient Indian literature. In fact, when it came to
radicalism, even Rammohun manifested certain opinions that were
reminiscent of the critiques of religion and authority one associates
with the Radical Enlightenment in the West.31 The complexity of
Rammohun’s positionality in this regard—scripturalist, radical, and
universalist—should, in fact, remind us of the varied streams of
thought that vitalized thought during the first half of the century.
Another example might be the poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt, who
was only too willing to embrace the radicalism of the Young Bengal
group, but for whom Sanskrit texts like the Ramayana proved to be
powerful beacons guiding both artistic and moral striving. Michael’s
ability to move ‘knowingly’ among the ancient Greeks and the ancient
Indians only confirms the open, cosmopolitan, and conjunctural
character of early colonial thought.32

New Associations for New Publics

This robust intellectual world was fostered by an equally robust early
colonial public sphere. The early decades of the century witnessed
a virtual explosion of public sphere activities around the practice of
debate, the pursuit of modern journalism, and the articulation of a
wide range of associational groups. The cataloguing of vernacular
newspapers and voluntary associations that began to sprout up in
Calcutta is the stuff of entire volumes. Here again, it is possible to
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 159

connect the birth of associational activity in colonial Calcutta with

the name of Rammohun, who famously established his ‘Atmiya Sabha’
or ‘Society of Friends’ in 1815. His friends included the likes of the
merchant entrepreneur, Dwarkanath Tagore—who was also a stalwart
supporter of Rammohun’s projects. It seems likely there were never
more than a dozen people who attended these meetings, but the
group continued to meet regularly until 1823.33 It is significant that
Rammohun’s name is connected with what S.N. Mukherjee called
India’s ‘first organization for collective thinking, discussion, and
reform’.34 This reminds us that his goal was to promote discussions
that would issue into change or reform at a public level. This was to
be a central feature of life in early colonial Calcutta: the constitution
of new societies, pledged to collective goals in relation to issues like
education, publishing, agriculture, or general welfare.
Rammohun’s original society rather remarkably possessed ‘no
formal organization, no constitution, and no program for action’.35
But this is merely a function of the fact that the processes for learning,
sharing, and improving upon the arts of such civic and collective
behaviour were only just beginning in Rammohun’s day. Needless
to say, Rammohun would go on to create the Brahmo Samaj in
1828, which could arguably be called the most important religious
association established during the early colonial era.36 And while
the Atmiya Sabha may have lacked formal structure and guiding
rules, the Brahmo Samaj improved on this deficit. The Trust Deed
codified in 1828 was a public and legally ratified covenant and served
to place the management of the Samaj in the hands of a board of
trustees. This speaks of how, in a decade’s time, local understandings
of associational behaviour had grown more sophisticated.37
Once again, we must be careful not to think of such associational
behaviour as only applying to the so-called progressives. Records
attest to an expanding field of collective organization that drew in
many kinds of actors. Importantly too, we have evidence of more
than one European-native joint endeavour focused on civic concerns.
Here, one could mention the original meetings held in 1816 to discuss
plans for the creation of the Hindu College (est. 1817), as well as two
highly influential associations established to promote vernacular
education—the Calcutta School Book Society (est. 1817), and the
Calcutta School Society (est. 1818). The latter two associations
160 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

are especially notable for the evidence they provide of the active
cooperation among British administrators, Christian missionaries,
Hindu bhadralok, and members of the Muslim intelligentsia in
Calcutta. Such collaboration was another distinctive feature of public
life in this period.38
These associations live on in the records because almost
universally they took to the printing press, not merely to broadcast
their ideals, but to provide detailed reports on their organizational
structures, finances, and membership requirements. The connection
between meeting for the public good and publicizing through print
cannot thus be overstressed. It seems likely, for instance, that the
first native to establish a press in Calcutta was a gentleman named
Babu Ramaswami (about whom we know little). What we do know
from archival sources is that Babu Ramaswami was also associated,
in 1826, with a proposal to create a society in Calcutta to address
the short-term housing needs of itinerant Hindu, Muslim, and
Jain pilgrims.39 He published an appeal to the wealthy members of
Calcutta society to contribute funds for this purpose, and offered that
the well-known British trader John Palmer would stand security for
any funds collected.40
By September of 1830, the Bengali weekly Samachar Darpan
alerted its readers to the rapid explosion of associational activity in
Calcutta. Among the many societies mentioned in the Darpan article
were the Dharma Sabha, the Bangavagvichara Sabha, Bangahita Sabha,
and the Jnanasandipana Sabha. Each of these societies was reported
to be an important organ for promoting the well-being (mangala)
of Bengalis.41 As the list suggested, the specific concerns of such
groups varied, from advancing proper understanding of the Hindu
law (in the face of Rammohun’s reforms), promoting the Bengali
language and advancing general knowledge, to simply fostering the
welfare (hita) of the Bengali society. This was the kind of public world
within which Vidyasagar came of age, having studied throughout the
1830s at the Sanskrit College. With its campus in the very heart of
north Calcutta, the Sanskrit College offered the young Vidyasagar
ample opportunity to witness and master the related skills of
associational activity, printing, publishing, debating, and petitioning
to meet desired ends. While he would prove masterful in all these areas,
he was not unique; this was the way the world looked at the time.42
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 161

We can see how many of these themes are woven into the story
of Vidyasagar’s life if we focus on the first decade of his public career,
before his name had become a household word around the topic of
widow marriage. While still a student at the Sanskrit College, records
indicate that Vidyasagar joined the Society for the Acquisition of
General Knowledge (SAGK). This would have been most likely in
1838. Like the Landholders Society (both were established in 1838),
the SAGK drew into its orbit some of the most notable names
in Calcuttan social and political life, not least such associates of
Rammohun as Tarachand Chakravarti and Debendranath Tagore,
Dwarkanath’s son. It is unclear how active a role Vidyasagar would
have played at this point, being only eighteen and still short of
completing the studies that would earn him the title ‘Vidyasagar’.
But he surely formed valuable social connections and came to learn
the overall potential of associational activity. We know the SAGK
survived about six years, and by that time, Vidyasagar was well on
his way.
He completed his studies at the Sanskrit College in 1841 and was
immediately rewarded with the position of head writer (sheristadar) at
the College of Fort William by his mentor G.T. Marshall.43 So would
begin his steady (if not completely stress-free) professional climb up
the rungs of the Bengal education administration. In the course of
that climb, he would refine his skills as a school-book author, establish
himself as a publisher and printer, and begin to make an impact on
the way Sanskrit and other subjects would be taught at institutions
like the Sanskrit College. Two other important temporal markers
can be flagged here as well. No sooner had he completed his study of
Sanskrit than Vidyasagar turned to some contemporaries who were
well-versed in English to help him gain proficiency in a language
he clearly needed to know if he was to succeed. This desire to learn
English helps account for the second important event from this
period. It would seem that in 1842, Vidyasagar met Akshay Kumar
Datta through their common acquaintance with Anandakrishna
Basu, the grandson of the wealthy faction leader Radhakanta Deb
(of the Shobhabajar Raj family). Insofar as Radhakanta’s name is in-
delibly associated with the work of the Dharma Sabha in opposing
reform under Rammohun, this set of acquaintances should again
caution us against painting colonial battle lines too starkly. Men like
162 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Radhakanta were as multiply active in Calcutta public life as was

Vidyasagar.
It was the encounter with Akshay Kumar that was the most
consequential event in Vidyasagar’s life at this time. Akshay Kumar
represents one of the most compelling, if as yet under-studied, figures
from this period—a man with prodigious intellectual gifts, but
whose adult life was plagued by near constant suffering and illness.
Hailing from a village north of Calcutta, he was educated early on in
both Persian and Sanskrit before moving to the neighbourhood of
Kidderpore and studying in Gourmohan Adhya’s Oriental Seminary
(est. 1829). There he was educated in English without being exposed
to the proselyzing work associated with Christian schools in the city.
Studying subjects in Greek, history, and science, Akshay appears to
have early on developed a critical eye for religious error as found in
all established systems, not least Hinduism. A rationalist at heart,
he was comfortable with the kind of natural religion we associate
with the likes of William Paley, and in keeping with Rammohun’s
example, sought to ground moral behaviour in awareness of divine
law as inscribed in nature.44 He would go on in later years to pen
influential works in this vein, such as his Bahya Vastur Sahita Manava
Prakritir Sambandha Vichara and Dharmaniti.

The Tattvabodhini Sabha

We have no evidence that Akshay ever joined the SAGK, but he did
come into the orbit of Debendranath Tagore, who was just on the
verge of launching his own religious association—the Tattvabodhini
Sabha (est. 1839). The Tattvabodhini Sabha was Debendranath’s
attempt to advance Rammohun’s project of Hindu theism through
the propagation of the truth (tattva) of Vedanta as taught in the
Upanisads. Those who initially gathered around Debendranath in
this endeavour were what may be called ‘Brahmos in all but name’.
Importantly, Debendranath’s most trusted guide was a Sanskrit pandit
named Ramchandra Vidyavagish, who had been Rammohun’s right-
hand man. Under Debendranath, the group began meeting in 1839
and it rapidly drew into its meetings and membership lists a diverse
and talented cadre of the educated bhadralok.
Among these was the poet Ishvarchandra Gupta, who attended
some of the early meetings and seems to have been the first one who
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 163

told Akshay about them. When the poet asked Akshay if he would
like to attend, Akshay is said to have replied, ‘If I do not go where
knowledge is cultivated, where will I go?’45 No sooner did Akshay
begin attending meetings and come to know Debendranath than
he became a member, and from being a member he rose rapidly
to become almost a second guiding spirit behind the Sabha.46 This
fact should hold our attention, since in many respects, Akshay and
Debendranath were very different types of people, drawn to radically
different visions of truth and religious authority. Debendranath, son
of the so-called ‘Merchant Prince of Calcutta’, could have pursued a
career in the Union Bank, in which his father was an investor. But
a chance encounter with the Isha Upanisad set him on a different
course. With the aid of Ramchandra Vidyavagish, Debendranath
developed a deep love of the Upanisads and made their promulgation
his life’s commitment. By contrast, Akshay could boast of far less
prestige in the community and (more importantly) was no fan of
religious inspiration, talk of divine will, or recourse to holy writ. All
these he questioned from the position of a committed rationalist. This
made him an odd fit to work closely with Debendranath, but Akshay
had a clear aptitude for helping the Sabha achieve a visible public
profile. Even if he and Debendranath disagreed over theological
matters, they worked successfully to grow the association. In 1840, a
school was established in Bansberia in large part to shield the Hindu
youth from Christian proselytizing that had grown more virulent
under the likes of Alexander Duff. In 1843, the Sabha brought out
the first number of a new journal, the Tattvabodhini Patrika, which
would go on to become one of the most-read and influential among
Bengali-language periodicals throughout the nineteenth century.
Vidyasagar joined the Tattvabodhini Sabha in its first year. This
fact had been long overlooked until a rare set of Bengali discourses
came to light, which had been delivered before the Sabha during the
years 1839–40. Among those discourses are two that were composed
(and most likely delivered orally) by Vidyasagar himself. 47 The
contents of the discourses need not concern us here, since in many
respects all the discourses in the small pamphlet Sabhyadiger Vaktrita
(1841) are similar in the stress they place upon moral diligence,
sense restraint, and knowledge of supreme reality. What is of greater
importance in this context is the range of people featured in this little
collection, including not just the Sanskrit pandit Vidyasagar and the
164 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

rationalist Akshay Kumar, but also the poet-satirist Ishvarchandra

Gupta, and the spiritual founder of the movement, Debendranath
himself. It was a mixed and multitalented group, reflecting the
convergence of a number of castes, classes, and occupational interests
around the ideal of articulating an authentic vision of Vedanta that
could hold its own in the face of persisent Christian polemic (which
the group both weathered and returned in kind).
Vidyasagar and Akshay worked together for the Sabha during the
1840s, overseeing the selection of materials to include in the Patrika
and contributing works of their own. Characteristically, Vidyasagar
began to publish his own Bengali translation of the Mahabharata, a
project he subsequently abandoned when he learned that a similar
project had been undertaken by Kaliprasanna Sinha (with assistance
from a range of other Sanskrit scholars).48 Vidyasagar contributed
less frequently to the Patrika, perhaps because he was already on
his way to a successful career publishing his own and other writers’
works. By contrast, Akshay used the Patrika as the platform from
which to publish serially some of his best known and consequential
works. I have mentioned two already, both of which appeared first
in the pages of the Patrika. Another hugely influential work was his
Bharatbarshiya Upasak Sampraday, in which (building off the work
of H.H. Wilson on the sects of Hinduism) he amassed extensive
information on major and minor religious organizations from all
across South Asia. This is a work that remains in print to this day.

Widow Marriage and Beyond

Among the works that Vidyasagar contributed to the Patrika, one
would constitute his shot across the bow of local Hindu custom. In
January 1855, he published a short essay entitled simply ‘Vidhava
vivaha’ (‘Widow Marriage’). This essay drew immediate public
attention, and provoked the ire of other pandits and faction leaders,
who claimed to speak on behalf of custom and orthodoxy. Vidyasagar
rapidly republished his essay as a small book. This was to become the
first part of an eventual two-part work whose title was Vidhava Vivaha
Prachalita Haoya Uchita Ki Na Etad-Vishayak Prastab (‘A Proposal
on the Question of whether or not to Promote Widow Marriage’).
While the first part was concise and to the point, Vidyasagar used the
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 165

period between January and October (1855) to process the growing

criticism and to gather all the scriptural ammunition he could find.
As a result, the second part grew to ten times the length of the first
and featured some 200 citations from a wide range of Sanskrit works.
This effort, the crowning expression of Shastric Modernity and the
fruit of Calcutta’s robust new world of public activity, would cement
Vidyasagar’s reputation. He was both fêted and lambasted in the
media, and soon even illiterate villagers would learn his name from
the words of popular songs and satires.
True to their moment, these two tracts displayed all the
conventions of modern print technology as it had developed to that
point; they were clearly written to effectively engage with the educated
Bengali reading public.49 Vidyasagar understood that the ‘published
word’ was rapidly becoming what Habermas has called the ‘decisive
mark’ of the public sphere.50 But he was also aware of the fact that
this was a public still in the making, not least in its ability to follow
him in the act of translating long-standing practices of Sanskrit
exegesis and legal argumentation into a form that would answer their
concerns while persuading the colonial government. He refers to his
public as largely elite and engaged in the world (the so-called visayi
loka). For all its success in negotiating colonial economy and society,
this audience nonetheless lacked sufficient command of Sanskrit to
be able to grasp what he called the meaning (artha) and purport
(tatparya) of the shastras.51 This was a crucial issue for him, since
these same educated and wealthy leaders of the Calcuttan society were
inclined to follow the judgment of their own pandits and hangers-
on. Unlike many of the pandits who published tracts in opposition
to his proposal, Vidyasagar understood that only a deliberate and
clear-minded attempt to render shastric knowledge in vernacular
terms would succeed. His goal was to convince all significant factions
with a stake in the matter (from zamindars to merchants, educators,
and government servants). In other words, without the support of
Calcutta’s indigenous elite, Vidyasagar knew his campaign would
have little success.52
Evidence of the growing audience for such shastric publications
can already be found from the 1830s. At that time, the editors of the
influential journal Samachar Chandrika had taken to publishing
materials from pandits, in which readers could see the legal decisions
166 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

(vyavastha) they had reached on certain contentious topics. For

instance, in 1833, the Chandrika editors had published materials
related to a series of questions that turned on the norms of deference
that should apply between a Vaishnava devotee of the shudra class
and a brahmin.53 The decision was issued in the name of four pandits,
three of whom were employed as instructors at the Sanskrit College.
What most strikes the eye is the fact that the text was printed as if
it were a traditional Sanskrit punthi or handwritten manuscript.
This reflected the Chandrika’s desire to position itself as the voice of
conservation rather than change.
While the Chandrika vyavastha reproduced relevant scriptural
sources in Sanskrit with a Bengali translation, it was the decision to
adopt the punthi format that most distinguished it from Vidyasagar’s
tract on widow marriage. Though himself a pandit, Vidyasagar
adopted a more vigorous embrace of emergent disciplinary norms
associated with the promulgation of orientalist ideas of critical
accuracy and scholarly communicability. He had no interest in
dressing up his arguments in the garb of traditionalism, but sought
to bring his reasoning and analysis in line with emerging colonial
standards for legal decision-making. Thus, he produced a printed
book recognizable to educated Bengalis and government officials
as both authoritative and reasoned. The text of Vidhava Vivaha is
clearly formatted as a book, equipped with footnotes, and framed
by powerful appeals to the conscience of his readers for the moral
recognition of the widow’s plight.54
Today, the limitations of Vidyasagar’s approach are better
understood. To begin with, his battle to amass textual proof to
counter the force of local customs (achara) was flawed both by
overestimating the power texts might have in shaping practice, and
by assuming that securing the right to remarriage for widows would
directly lead to a rise in actual remarriages. On these two scores,
Vidyasagar’s reform was to be a notable failure. Custom held firm.
While some widow remarriages followed, these were typically met
with significant opposition. A new morality in this regard could not
be produced out of mere legislative fiat on the part of the British, no
matter the attendant rhetoric of compassion and progress. Finally,
like Rammohun’s arguments against sati, Vidyasagar’s scripture-based
arguments both reflected and reinforced an increasing deference
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 167

to text-based understanding of Hinduism in the colonial context.

What had begun in the late eighteenth century under William Jones
and Warren Hastings, came to fruition in the nineteenth century
through the cementing of orientalist constructions of Hinduism that
sought to give precedence to texts over practice and to antiquity over
the present. As a result, the premodern fluidity of Hindu customs
increasingly came to be frozen; consequently, it became susceptible
to a new kind of patriarchal politics.55
Thinking of Vidyasagar’s success as being shadowed by failure
in this way is a useful reminder that in many ways, by the middle
of the century, things had begun to bend inexorably away from the
early colonial embrace of reform towards concerns over preserving
the integrity of Indian life in the face of colonial rule. Thus, while
principled (and sometimes less noble) criticisms were directed at
the logic and scriptural reasoning behind Vidyasagar’s proposal,
some also raised questions about what it all meant in terms of the
Bengali’s right to cultural autonomy and self-determination. We find
a contemporary editor remarking:

Much as we wish that the absurd and cruel custom should be abolished
of obliging the women who have been unfortunate enough to lose their
husbands, to drag on a life of wretchedness and asceticism we cannot yet
help agreeing with old Bengal that the proposed legislative interference
on this subject is improper and quite uncalled for. The legislative body of
the country, not being a representative assembly of the people for whom
it legislates, is under the necessity of using great care and circumspection
in the enactment of laws, so as to enact no laws but what are adapted to
the state of society.  .  .  . It is argued that according to the Hindu Shastras,
the remarriage of widows is valid.  .  .  . Now if the thing itself be valid, but
the community has chosen to set it aside—it is for the community itself to
bring it back into use, and all extraneous influence exerted by authority,
assumes the form of tyranny.56

The strains of patriotic sentiment evident here were to grow

stronger over the succeeding decades, even as scripture-based
reform projects began to seem increasingly problematic to both the
Bengalis and British alike. Even so, the impulse could not be quelled
overnight. For one thing, Vidyasagar worked tirelessly to promote
(and sometimes provide financial support for) the celebration of
168 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

widow marriages. Likewise, as reasoned objections to his arguments

poured forth, he went on revising the original text of his work on
widow remarriage, right up into the 1880s. Finally, and most notably,
the nominal success marked by Act XV encouraged him in the
pursuit of his next great reformist goal—a ban on the practice of high
caste (or Kulin) polygamy. In his bahuvivaha campaign during the
1870s, he adopted the same method of yoking scripture-based legal
analysis to a print-mediated refutation of local customs around
polygamy. However, by now the cultural stakes were higher. The
opposition became even more organized and resistance often took
the form of virulent attacks on Vidyasagar. To all this, Vidyasagar
responded in kind, producing not just two massive works under
his own name, but also pseudonymous tracts that attacked his
opponents (sometimes humorously, often mercilessly). Sadly, by this
time, one of his most redoubtable opponents was a pandit who had
originally assisted him in the widow remarriage campaign, Taranath
Tarkavacaspati.
Taranath had been one of Vidyasagar’s closest collaborators in
the widow remarriage movement; the two were united by bonds
of friendship that went back to their school days and subsequent
employment at the Sanskrit College.57 Because Taranath boasted
a more robust training in traditional tol-based education than
Vidyasagar, and was an acknowledged master of many technical
subjects, it is not too much to say that his role in the campaign
significantly bolstered Vidyasagar’s efforts and his local standing. 58 If
already in the 1850s Vidyasagar was labeled ‘new-fangled’ (abhinava)
for his openness to aspects of colonial modernity (like sliced bread
and leather-bound books), Taranath presented the image of a
traditional pandit. But as an acknowledged scholar in his own right,
he was under no compulsion to follow Vidyasagar down every path.
Taranath chose to oppose Vidyasagar’s arguments in the
bahuvivaha campaign, meeting his old friend on the same ground
of Shastric Modernity. He promoted the claim that the shastra was
clear in its support for the practice of polygamy. Tellingly, he himself
accused Vidyasagar of introducing ‘new-fangled’ meanings into the
shastra. A tactic that Vidyasagar attempted to adopt in his response
was to attack Taranath’s stubborn reliance on Sanskrit as the medium
in which to make his case. He faulted Taranath for composing a tract
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 169

like Bahuvivahavada in a language that most would find abstruse, if

not inaccessible.59 He chided Taranath, asking him how he thought
a Sanskrit work like Bahuvivahavada could be of any use to a public
uneducated in the language.60 It was a valid point. By this time,
Sanskrit had become increasingly remote to all but the most educated
or parochial. Ironically, it may be the case that many readers only
learned the substance of Taranath’s arguments by reading the Bengali
translations provided by Vidyasagar in his own tracts!
Even so, Taranath’s recourse to the shastra had its appeal among
groups fearful of the decline of traditional norms in colonial India.
Even if the majority of educated Bengalis could not read Taranath’s
arguments in Sanskrit, they were prone to respect the fact that he
operated in, and appeared to pay the highest honour to, the authority
of the Sanskrit scriptures. For them, the invocation of Sanskrit had
a kind of performative efficacy. One might even say that a work
like Taranath’s Bahuvivahavada, trades on a growing fetishization
of Sanskrit, in which the language became more of an emblem of
cultural authority than a medium in which to conduct reasoned
argument. In this respect, to invoke shastra was enough in its own
right to set in motion a chain of powerful symbolic associations that
carried the late colonial reading public down nostalgic pathways to a
glorified Hindu past. In this, we have one clear marker not merely of
the failure of Vidyasagar’s reformist project, but more broadly of the
rise of what is often called revivalist Hinduism.61 It is no coincidence
that Taranath spent the latter part of his career publishing works
that extolled the excellence of ‘Vaidika Dharma’ and that he argued
forcefully for the preservation of brahmanical orthopraxy.62 In
Taranath’s break with Vidyasagar, we thus witness something like the
final collapse of Shastric Modernity. The sad irony is that having so
successfully promoted the ideal of going to the scriptures to resolve
issues of pressing social concern, Vidyasagar had opened the door
to the very strategy that would be adopted by Taranath and other
revivalists. Shastric Modernity lived by the shastra, but it died by
the shastra as well.
Vedanta for an Awakened India
Earlier, I have quoted at length an author who questioned the
prudence of Vidyasagar’s widow remarriage campaign, not least
170 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

because of what it meant for Bengalis to rest their hopes for native
improvement on the goodwill of a foreign ruler, whose control over
their lives was not far from tyrannical. In that comment, we hear the
expression of the kind of grave concerns over colonial rule that would
grow in intensity and become an important dimension of political
and intellectual life in the final quarter of the nineteenth century.
This is not to say that concerns over the conduct of British rule in
India had not been present from the first decades of the century,
when Bengali thinkers wrestled with the consequences of colonial
interventions around landholding and revenue collection, with the
nature of rights and the practice of justice, and with issues connected
with evangelization and anglicization.
What was different then was that the early colonial moment
had been marked by more fluid possibilities for social interaction
and economic profit. Racism there was, to be sure, and it often took
formal expression in government policies on official employment or
trial by jury, not to mention the daily expressions of crude bigotry
on the part of the British. Vidyasagar himself stomached insults to
both his identity as an Indian and his standing as colonial official in
the education establishment, being in one case asked to wear ‘proper’
footwear (i.e. shoes, not sandals) to enter the library of the Asiatic
Society, and in another being greeted by a British colleague who sat
with his feet on his desk while never offering his visitor a seat.63 If
during the first half of the century such insults could be met with a
sense of moral dignity or countered by subtle acts of quiet resistance,
the situation changed in the post-1857 era, with the cementing of
the ‘colonial rule of difference’.64 Where Indians had earlier adopted a
kind of meliorism that expected better days to come, with the transfer
of ruling power to the Crown in 1858 and the declaration of Queen
Victoria as Empress in 1877, room for such optimism diminished.
As is well known, the controversy regarding the passage of the Ilbert
Bill in 1883 made the reality of racially based colonial subjugation
painfully obvious.
We now also know only too well the widespread frustrations
experienced by a generation or two of young Bengalis who had been
educated in Calcutta’s new colleges, but who often found themselves
destined for little more than careers as low level clerks or underpaid
pleaders within a two-tier colonial economy. Sumit Sarkar has
famously shown how many young men in this position—dubious of
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 171

worldviews like Brahmoism that seemed too perfectly slotted into a

go-along-to-get-along posture vis-à-vis colonial power—took refuge
in the teachings of the rustic saint, Shri Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna
offered a powerful rebuke to the high-minded Brahmo moralism
and the bourgeois world of the followers of Debendranath Tagore.
He had no formal schooling, knew but little English, and made
his meager living serving as a priest at the Kali temple to north of
the city. However, what he lacked in wealth and standing, he made
up for with vibrant spiritual gifts and an unvarnished critique of
bourgeois religion. He had no need for the trappings of the elite
society in Calcutta, but instead taught his new disciples to look past
the easy allurements of women and gold (kamini, kanchan).65 No
one illustrates the transformative power of Ramakrishna’s unique
practice better than the English-educated follower of the Brahmo
Samaj, Narendranath Datta, who would recognize Ramakrishna as his
guru and master. As Swami Vivekananda, he would go on to achieve
global fame, and along the way become one of the most important
voices for Indian dignity from the period.
Vivekananda’s story, and his travels across the subcontinent and
on to Europe and America—where he promulgated the religion
of an awakened India (prabuddha Bharata)—is too well known to
merit extensive discussion here. But he serves as a useful compass
for appreciating the intellectual, moral, and political sea changes
associated with the latter decades of the century. We can get our
bearings most easily if we recognize that the young Narendranath
Datta had begun his schooling in 1871 at the Metropolitan Institution,
which had been founded by Vidyasagar himself.66 The school
represented many of Vidyasagar’s ideals, not least the pursuit of
learning in a secular environment. It would be the early home of
another great voice from this period, Keshub Chunder Sen, the fiery
Brahmo evangelist.67 While Narendranath would go on to study
at the Presidency College, he retained a keen sense of admiration
for Vidyasagar, no doubt acquired during his early years at school.
However unlike Vidyasagar, Vivekananda chose to make the
promotion of religious truth a key part of the eventual program he
advocated to promote Hinduism and the Indian nation. If Vidyasagar
famously kept religion at arm’s length (many would say he was an
atheist), Vivekananda made the promotion of Vedantic spirituality
his hallmark.
172 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Once again, there is a bit of an irony here. After all, it had been
the Brahmos under Rammohun and the latter-day followers of
Debendranth who had done much to support the propagation of
Vedanta. The difference was that theirs was largely a textual and
emotionally cool embrace of the spirituality found in the Upanishads
(as captured in mantras like ekamevadvitiyam, ‘God is one without
a second’). By contrast, Vivekananda claimed a direct experience of
Vedantic truth and demanded that Vedanta be realized more than it
was discussed. His was an active vision of religion (as captured in the
mantra, uttishthata jagrata prapya varan nibodhata, ‘arise, awake and
stop not ‘til the goal is reached’). If the Brahmos had given birth to
modern Vedanta, it was Vivekananda who raised it to the maturity of a
national rallying cry. Under his leadership, as embodied in institutions
like the Ramakrishna Math and Mission—Vedanta became the
key to a revitalized India and active Hinduism.68 In fact, the putative
superiority of Vedanta as a religious vision became a powerful
claim that allowed Indians to assert their spiritual superiority
over the West. Like his contemporary Keshub Chunder Sen, Viveka-
nanda took his religious vision overseas, where he became the
embodiment of Eastern wisdom and a living rebuke to triumphalist
Christianity.

Voices of a New Age

Vivekananda and Keshub are but two compelling voices from an era
that was beginning to self-consciously style itself as a ‘new age’ (nava-
yug). Their names are closely linked to the notion that during the
final decades of the nineteenth century, Bengalis began to experience
an awakening (jagaran) across all areas of life, from religion and
literature to politics. This new age, with its more explicit embrace of
Hinduism as a measure of truth, and its increasing dissatisfaction
with older, meliorist models of social change, would quickly take
on a new character that offset to a degree the defeats of Vidyasagar’s
latter-day reform efforts and his increasing disillusionment with the
limitations of colonial society. Because this new era also witnessed
the first, full flowering of new Bengali literary achievements, it has
seemed appropriate to some scholars of Bengali literature to see in
it the birth of a new era. Indeed, one authoritative study of Bengali
literature effectively treats everything before this period as a precursor
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 173

to the arrival of modern Bengali literature as represented by the

advent of the noted author Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. Seen in
this light, Vidyasagar appears as merely the representative of the
pre-Bankim (prag-Bankim) era.69
It is worth recalling that Bankim was only eighteen years younger
than Vidyasagar, and thus not so distantly removed from Vidyasagar’s
world. In fact, like Vidyasagar, he hailed from a community with deep
ties to Sanskrit learning. Bankim’s birthplace and family home was in
Bhatpara, just north of Calcutta, which was renowned for its pandits
and its tols. Though not himself a fully-fledged pandit like Vidyasagar,
Bankim was deeply grounded in Sanskrit; and like Vidyasagar, he
felt the need to build upon, rather than reject, that heritage. But
at a generation’s remove from Vidyasagar, and deeply informed by
new educational opportunities that had arisen at institutions like
the University of Calcutta (established in 1858), Bankim adopted a
much more deliberate posture of engagement with modern European
thought and politics. He knew his Shakespeare and Kalidasa just like
Vidyasagar, but his reading, his interests, and his desire to synthesize
went even further. His critical thought was early on fired by the
likes of John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Auguste Comte.
Indeed, Bankim would take his place among an active cadre of
Bengali intellectuals who remained eager to apply the emerging
insights of post-enlightenment thought to the exploration of Indian
society.70
By situating Bankim within his wider cohort of contemporaries,
we can see something else about the socio-economic character of
his times. He represents one of several well-educated bhadraloks
who found employment within the official establishment, typically
at mid-level posts like those of headmasters or district magistrates.
Alongside Bankim, we may mention the educator and social theorist
Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, and the neo-Vaishnava expositor, Kedarnath
Datta (aka Bhaktivinod Thakur). No less than Bankim, these men
hailed from families with deep connections to precolonial traditions
of learning. They also shared a rationalist approach to knowledge,
coupled with the instinct to foster change that would benefit Indian
society without compromising its integrity. In them, respect for the
past was merged with a desire to apply new epistemologies to the
sorting out of truth from error and to the eventual articulation of
what was true and enduring about Bengali and Indian culture.
174 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

New methods of historical writing played an important role in

this regard.71 If Vidyasagar had been able to apply historical critical
methods to Sanskrit texts, he did so only sparingly and towards
more limited ends. He was neither equipped for nor interested in the
crafting of larger historical narratives that could make sense of what
Rabindranath Tagore would later dub the ‘flow’ of Indian history.72
By contrast, men like Kedarnath and Bankim shared a fascination
with new historical methods; they saw what could be accomplished if
Bengalis began to recover and celebrate the glories of India, the truths
of her ancient religious systems, or the meaning of Krishna devotion
as found in Bengali Vaishnava movements, which had suffered
considerable stigmatization under the British. Bankim thus creatively
disentangled the heroic Krishna from his playful and erotically
tinged counterpart, in order to offer Indian readers a model for the
cultivation of strength, truth, and morality.73 For his part, Kedarnath
yoked the tools of historical imagination, reason, and reform to the
task of rethinking the meaning of Bengali Vaishnavism. In doing so,
he was concerned both to revitalize love for Shri Krishna-Chaitanya
and to rescue the movement from its perceived connections to illicit
behaviour or esoteric beliefs.74
What ultimately set Bankim apart from the likes of Kedarnath was
his gift for fiction and the crafting of historical romances on the model
of Walter Scott. This assured for him a place in the Bengali popular
imagination—not to mention the history of Bengali literature—
that towers over that of Vidyasagar. We may compare Bankim to
Vivekananda in the sense that both men looked with admiration
on Vidyasagar, but in their own ways also sought to address matters
that Vidyasagar had not. So while Bankim expressed admiration for
Vidyasagar and his accomplishments in shaping a more chaste and
rational prose form, he could also be scathing in his criticism of the
old pandit and his overly Sanskritic diction.75
One of Bankim’s most consequential works of fiction is the
historical drama Anandamath or the ‘Monastery of Bliss’.76 At once
a stirring re-imagination of Bengal’s immediate colonial past and a
call for Indians to rise to protect the honour of their motherland,
Anandamath—with its powerful anthem, ‘Bande Mataram’—
announces another theme that would come to distinguish the Bankim
era from Vidyasagar’s: the ardent expression of national pride, coupled
with the conviction that Indians needed to take greater control over
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 175

their destiny. In this respect, the end of Vidyasagar’s era is signalled

by two major developments in the realm of politics: the controversy
over the passage of the Ilbert Bill in 1883, which Indians construed
as inherently racist, and the constitution of the first Indian National
Congress in 1885, which marked the beginning of growing Indian
demands for political representation.77
Chafing in the aftermath of the failure of his campaign against
polygamy as practiced among the higher castes, Vidyasagar became
in his final years a picture of dejection. As he increasingly took shelter
in the remote environs of Jharkhand, where he built a small house,
he also began to look skeptically on new expressions of organized
political will.78 Whatever his view regarding British rule had become
by this time, he had witnessed too much infighting and factionalism
among his contemporaries to trust that unity could be found; and
he had grown suspicious of those who paraded their mastery of
religious knowledge in public. If men like Vivekananda and Bankim
represented new developments in both national aspiration and
religious mobilization, then it was clear that the era of Vidyasagar
was drawing to a close.
This leaves us to reflect upon one final conundrum about Vidya-
sagar’s era. In the year of his death, i.e. 1891, the last great social
reform bill was passed by the British. The Age of Consent Bill was
promoted by liberal Brahmos and other progressives as a necessary,
humanizing antidote to retrograde Hindu marriage customs. Given
his earlier stance on reform and his moral preference to protect young
women and widows from unjust laws and practices, one might have
expected Vidyasagar to support the Bill. But he did not. Interestingly,
his opposition was once again premised on a careful reading of
the shastras, in which could be found injunctions about the risks
incurred by fathers who allowed their daughters to remain unwed
after the onset of menstruation. Vidyasagar had not abandoned his
compassionate stance towards Hindu women; in delivering his final
opinion opposing passage of the Bill, he expressed his desire to protect
‘child-wives’ from harm. However, his respect for scripture proved
stronger; he could not countenance a law that would contravene ‘a
rule laid down in the Sastras’.79
This apparent tension between his humanism and his deference
to the shastras illustrates some of the general tensions that defined
Vidyasagar’s era. In trying to make sense of such matters, we must
176 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

follow Amiya Sen’s advice and resist the temptation to make ‘complex
matters look trivial’.80 Hard and fast dichotomies between liberals
and conservatives, or reformers and revivalists, simply do not help
us make sense of either a man like Vidyasagar, or the period upon
which he so clearly placed his stamp. Like Vidyasagar, the era through
which he lived was complex and open to change. Whether we view
him as complicit with foreign rule or as a proto-nation builder, it
remains the case that in his complexity, Vidyasagar—like his era—
can be associated with a range of values that have endured—from
love for the Indian nation and the courage to face down challenges,
to respect for tradition and the embrace of reason, humanity, and
justice. These are the values Vidyasagar passed on to young men
like Vivekananda and Keshub. These two, like another Metropolitan
Institution alumnus, Surendranath Bannerjee, would go on to take
their place at the forefront of a new generation who rose to confront
colonial racism, to seek a more just and favourable colonial economy,
and to mobilize the Indian public sphere in the task of forging an
independent nation.81

Notes
1. See, Brian A. Hatcher, Vidyasagar: The Life and After-life of an Eminent
Indian, Delhi: Routledge, 2014.
2. Partha Chatterjee, The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice
of Power, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.
3. Rosinka Chaudhuri views the early colonial period as the period between
the death of Bharatchandra Ray in 1760 and the death of Ishvarchandra
Gupta in 1859; see, ‘Three Poets in Search of History: Calcutta, 1752–
1859’, in Trans-colonial Modernities in South Asia, ed. M.S. Dodson and
B.A. Hatcher, New York: Routledge, 2012, pp. 189–207.
4. See, Rachel McDermott, Revelry, Rivalry and Longing for the Goddesses of
Bengal: The Fortunes of Hindu Festivals, New York: Columbia University
Press, 2011.
5. On this, see, Brian A. Hatcher, ‘Imitation, Then and Now: On the
Emergence of Philanthropy in Early Colonial Calcutta’, Modern Asian
Studies, vol. 52, no. 1, 2018, pp. 62–98.
6. Rosinka Chaudhuri, Freedom and Beef Steaks: Colonial Calcutta Culture,
New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2012, p. 40.
7. Asok Sen, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and his Elusive Milestones, Calcutta:
Riddhi-India, 1977, p. 73. See also, Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 177
its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993, p. 132. See especially, Chatterjee’s comment that
‘Vidyasagar’s own attempts at social reform  .  .  .  placed great reliance upon
liberal backing by the colonial government’ (p. 25).
8. For materials relating to the widow marriage movement, see, N.K. Vaidya,
ed., A Collection Containing the Proceedings which led to the passing of Act
XV of 1856, Bombay: Mazagaon Printing Press, 1885.
9. See, Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1997, p. 226.
10. Tanika Sarkar, ‘Wicked Widows: Law and Faith in Nineteenth-Century
Public Sphere Debates’, in Behind the Veil: Resistance, Women and the
Everyday in Colonial South Asia, ed. Anindita Ghosh, New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008, p. 86.
11. See, chapter 5 in Hatcher, Vidyasagar, pp. 107–29.
12. Vidyasagar’s letter of resignation, directed to F.J. Halliday, was dated 5
August 1858; it is reproduced in Arabinda Guha, ed., Unpublished Letters of
Vidyasagar, Calcutta: Reba Guha, distributed by Ananda Publishers, 1971,
p. 47. On his other criticisms of government policy around education at
this time, see, Brian A. Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement: Vidyasagar and
Cultural Encounter in Bengal, Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp.
109–10.
13. See, Sisir Kumar Das, Early Bengali Prose, Calcutta: Bookland, 1966, ch.
10.
14. See, A.K. Bandyopadhayay, ed., Bangla Sahityer Itivritta, vol. 8, repr. edn.,
Calcutta: Modern Book Agency, 2015–16, pp. 19–50.
15. See, Brian A. Hatcher, ‘What’s become of the Pandit? Rethinking the History
of Sanskrit Scholars in Colonial Bengal’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 39,
no. 3, 2005, pp. 683–723.
16. For background, see the Introduction to Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Hindu
Widow Marriage: An Epochal Work on Social Reform from Colonial India,
tr. Brian A. Hatcher, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
17. The classic study of factions and factionalism in early colonial Calcutta
remains, S.N. Mukherjee, Calcutta: Myths and History, Calcutta:
Subarnarekha, 1977.
18. See, Brian A. Hatcher, ‘Sastric Modernity: Mediating Sastric Knowledge in
Colonial Bengal’, in Modernities in Asian Perspective: Polity, Society, Culture,
Economy, ed. Kausik Bandyopadhyay, Kolkata: Setu Prakashani, 2010,
pp. 117–51.
19. In the eighteenth century, Raja Rajvallabha of Vikrampur sought support
from pandits on this issue; see Sen, Vidyasagar and his Elusive Milestones,
pp. 54–5.
178 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
20. Michael S. Dodson, Orientalism, Empire, and National Culture: India,
1770–1880, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 14.
21. Ibid., p. 15.
22. The comment was made in response to a report on the Sanskrit College
written by Ballantyne in 1853; the report and Vidyasagar’s reply can be
found in Benoy Ghosh, Vidyasagar o Bangali Samaj, repr., Calcutta: Orient
Longman, 1984, p. 520.
23. See, Brian A. Hatcher, tr., ‘The Evils of Child Marriage: Ishvarcandra
Vidyasagar’, Critical Asian Studies, vol. 35, no. 3, 2003, pp. 476–84.
24. See for instance his comments on the text of the Dattaka Chandrika, which
though attributed to the ancient author Kubera, Vidyasagar argued was
most likely a recent creation; see, Vidyasagar, Hindu Widow Marriage,
p. 203, n. 3.
25. Ibid., pp. 146–7.
26. Representative examples include Vidhava Vivaha Nisedha Visayakavyavastha
(1846), Vidhavavivahavada (1855), Vidhava Vivaha Nishedha (1874),
Vidhava Vivaha Prativada (1885).
27. In relation to another important issue of the day, Madanmohan Tarkalankar
turned to Sanskrit sources to support the idea of female education,
finding support from a verse in the Mahanirvana Tantra. Madanmohan
also had an active career editing, translating, and publishing Sanskrit
sources in Bengali, sometimes in concert with Vidyasagar; for details, see
Yogendranath Vidyabhushan, Madanmohana Tarkalankarer Jivanacarita, ,
Calcutta: New India Press, 1871.
28. For more on this, see, Hatcher, ‘What’s become of the Pandit?’.
29. See the essays collected in A.K. Bandyopadhyay, ed., Pandit Mrtyunjay
Vidyalankar Prabandhavali, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1995.
30. Needless to say, Banerjea’s mentor, Alexander Duff could not meet his
convert on this ground. As a result of his conversion, Banerjea was forced
to adopt a stance on Hinduism that saw it as irredeemably flawed, as one
finds in Alexander Duff, India and India Missions, 2nd edn., Edinburgh:
John Johnson, 1840.
31. On this see, Milinda Banerjee, ‘“All this is indeed Brahman”: Rammohun
Roy and a “Global” History of the Rights-Bearing Self ’, Asian Review of
World Histories, vol. 3, no. 1, 2015, pp. 81–112.
32. See, Clinton B. Seely, tr., The Slaying of Meghanada: A Ramayana from
Colonial Bengal, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
33. As reported in the Tattvabodhini Patrika, vol. 50, pt. 1, Calcutta, Ashvin
1847, pp. 89–92.
34. Mukherjee, Calcutta, p. 43.
35. Ibid., p. 43.
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 179
36. The standard history remains, David Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj and the
Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1979.
37. For perspectives on this moment, especially in its relation to later colonial
concerns, see, Hatcher, ‘Imitation, Then and Now’.
38. See, Chatterjee, Black Hole of Empire, p. 157.
39. See, Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay, ed., Bangla Samayik-patra, 1225
(1818)–1274 (1838), 3rd edn., Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, 1947.
40. Based on a report titled ‘On the Matter of an Almshouse’, originally pub-
lished in the Samachara Darpa]na, 25 March 1826, and reprinted in
Brajendranath Bandyopdhyay, ed., Sambad Patre Sekaler Katha, vol. 1,
Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, 1970, pp. 134–5.
41. Bandyopadhyay, ed., Sambad Patre Sekaler Katha, vol. 2, p. 396.
42. For useful perspectives on the period 1830–60, see, Cittabrata Palit,
New Viewpoints on Nineteenth Century Bengal, Calcutta: Progressive,
1980.
43. Further details may be found in Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement, pp. 86–90.
44. Akshay’s life is reviewed briefly in ibid., pp. 220–30.
45. Mahendranath Ray, quoted in Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement, p. 221.
46. This history is covered in more detail in Brian A. Hatcher, Bourgeois
Hinduism, or the Faith of the Modern Vedantists: Rare Discourses from Early
Colonial Bengal, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
47. See, Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement, p. 235; a translation of the discourses
can be found in chapter 8 of Hatcher, Bourgeois Hinduism, pp. 141–73.
48. The portions of the translation completed by Vidyasagar come from the
‘Adi Parvan’ and can be found in most editions of his collected works under
the title Mahabharata Upakraminika Bhag.
49. See, Tapti Roy, ‘Disciplining the Printed Text: Colonial and Nationalist
Surveillance of Bengali Literature’, in Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines
in Colonial Bengal, ed. Partha Chatterjee, Calcutta: Samya, 1996, pp. 30–62.
50. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An
Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, tr. Thomas Burger, Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1991, p. 16.
51. Vidhava vivaha prachalita haoya uchita ki na etad-vishayak prastab,
in Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Vidyasagar-Granthavali, ed. S.K.
Chattopadhyay, B. Bandyopadhyay, and S.K. Das, vol. 2, Calcutta: Ranjan
Publishing, 1937, p. 40.
52. He hoped especially to convince the influential Deb family of Shobabajar;
see Biharilal Sarkar, Vidyasagar: Ishvarchandra Vidyasagarer Jivani, 4th
edn., ed. P.K. Pramanika, Calcutta: Orient Book Company, 1986, pp. 173–4.
53. See Viprabhakti Chandrika, Calcutta: Samachar Chandrika Press, 1833.
180 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
54. On the theme of recognition, see, Brian A. Hatcher, ‘The Shakuntala
Paradigm: Vidyasagar, Widow Marriage and the Morality of Recognition’,
Journal of Hindu Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, 2013, pp. 363–83.
55. See, Lata Mani, ‘Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial
India’, in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, ed.
K. Sangari and S. Vaid, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990,
pp. 88–126; and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Culture and Hegemony:
Social Domination in Colonial Bengal, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004.
56. Benoy Ghose, ed., Selections from English Periodicals of 19th Century Bengal,
Calcutta: Papyrus, 1980, vol. 3, pp. 137–8.
57. See, Hatcher, ‘What’s become of the Pandit?’.
58. Taradhana Tarkabhusana, Taranath Tarkavacaspatir Jivana Evam Sanskrta
Vidyar Unnati, Calcutta: Brahmo Mission Press, 1893, p. 47.
59. Taranath Tarkavachaspati, Bahuvivahavada, Calcutta: Kavyaprakash Press,
1872.
60. See, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Vidyasagar-racana-samgraha, ed. Gopal
Haldar, vol. 2, Calcutta: Pashchim Banga Niraksharata Durikarana Samiti,
1972, pp. 248–9.
61. See, Amiya Sen, Hindu Revivalism in Bengal: 1872–1905, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1993.
62. See, for instance, Taranath Tarkavacaspati, Gayatriprakaranam, Calcutta:
Sanskrit Press, 1871.
63. These incidents and their implications are discussed in chapter 5 of Hatcher,
Vidyasagar, pp. 107–29.
64. See, Chatterjee, Nation and its Fragments.
65. Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, p. 337.
66. The Metropolitan Institution, later the Vidyasagar College, had the credit
of being the first Indian private college; see, Sen, Vidyasagar and his Elus-
ive Milestones, pp. 138–9.
67. On Keshub, see, John Stevens, Keshab: Bengal’s Forgotten Prophet, London:
Hurst & Company, 2018. Surendranath Bannerjee commented on
Vidyasagar’s influence over Keshub’s mature views on reform and the West;
see Surendranath Bannerjee, A Nation in Making: Being the Reminiscences
of Fifty Years of Public Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925.
68. This is explored in Brian A. Hatcher, ‘Contemporary Hindu Thought’, in
Contemporary Hinduism: Ritual, Culture, and Practice, ed. Robin Rinehart,
New York: ABC-Clio, 2004, pp. 179–211.
69. See, Bandyopadhayay, ed., Bangla Sahityer Itivritta, vol. 8.
70. There is a danger in oversimplifying a career as complex as Bankim’s, since
it has been noted that he tended to move away from some of his early
embrace of Western philosophy and egalitarian values in his later career;
see, Sen, Hindu Revivalism, p. 3.
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 181
71. See especially, Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra
Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India, Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1998.
72. See, Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Bharatvarshe Itihaser Dhara’, in Rabindra-
Rachanavali, vol. 9, repr. edn., Calcutta: Visva Bharati, 1995, pp. 575–92.
73. See, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, ‘Krishna-charitra’, in Bankim-Rachanavali,
vol. 2, ed. J.C. Bagal, Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1985, pp. 407–582.
74. On Kedarnath, see, Jason Fuller, ‘Re-Branding Gaudiya Vaishnavism:
Bhaktivinod Thakur and the Religious Marketplace in 19th-century Bengal’,
Journal of Vaishnava Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, 2014, pp. 99–108; and Varuni
Bhatia, Unforgetting Chaitanya: Vaishnavism and Cultures of Devotion in
Colonial Bengal, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
75. Bankim once called Vidyasagar’s Bengali retelling of Bhavabhuti’s
Uttararamacharitam a ‘tear-jerker’; see, Hatcher, Vidyasagar, p. 103, n. 8;
for his part, Vidyasagar was not impressed by Bankim’s mastery of Sanskrit.
76. Bankimchandra Chatterjee, Anandamath, or the Sacred Brotherhood, tr.
Julius Lipner, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
77. Sen, Hindu Revivalism, p. 58, mentions the controversial trial of
Surendranath Bannerjee for contempt in connection with his protest of
the racist bill.
78. Just how closely Vidyasagar and Bankim are related in their entrapment
within colonial discourse can be seen from how Kaviraj finds in Bankim
the true figure of colonial alienation (see Kaviraj, Unhappy Consciousness,
p. 168), whereas Asok Sen (in his Vidyasagar and his Elusive Milestones)
had early penned a telling portrait of Vidyasagar as defeated and bereft of
hope for his cherished goals; on this comparison, see, Hatcher, Vidyasagar,
pp. 123–4.
79. From Vidyasagar’s letter to the government, dated 16 February 1891, as
quoted in Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement, p. 259.
80. Sen, Hindu Revivalism, p. 392.
81. Alluding to the title of Bannerjee, Nation in Making.

References
Bandyopadhayay, A.K., ed., Pandit Mrtyunjay Vidyalankar Prabandhavali,
Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1995.
———,  Bangla Sahityer Itivritta, 8 vols., repr. edn., Calcutta: Modern Book
Agency, 2013–17.
Bandyopadhyay, Brajendranath, ed., Sambad Patre Sekaler Katha, 2 vols.,
Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, 1970.
———,  Bangla Samayik-patra, 1225 (1818)–1274 (1838), 3rd edn., Calcutta:
Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, 1947.
182 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar, Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Domination in
Colonial Bengal, New Delhi: Sage, 2004.
Banerjee, Milinda, ‘“All this is indeed Brahman”: Rammohun Roy and a “Global”
History of the Rights-Bearing Self ’, Asian Review of World Histories, vol 3,
no. 1, 2015, pp. 81–112.
Bannerjee, Surendranath, A Nation in Making: Being the Reminiscences of Fifty
Years of Public Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925.
Bhatia, Varuni, Unforgetting Chaitanya: Vaishnavism and Cultures of Devotion
in Colonial Bengal, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Chatterjee, Bankimchandra. Bankim-Rachanavali, vol. 2, ed. J.C. Bagal, Calcutta:
Sahitya Samsad, 1985.
———,  Anandamath, or the Sacred Brotherhood, tr. Julius Lipner, New York:
Oxford University Press, 2005.
Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial
Histories, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
———,  The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2012.
Chaudhuri, Rosinka, ‘Three Poets in Search of History: Calcutta, 1752–1859’, in
Trans-colonial Modernities in South Asia, ed. M.S. Dodson and B.A. Hatcher,
New York: Routledge, 2012, pp. 189–207.
———,  Freedom and Beef Steaks: Colonial Calcutta Culture, New Delhi: Orient
Blackswan, 2012.
Das, Sisir Kumar, Early Bengali Prose, Calcutta: Bookland, 1966.
Dodson, Michael S., Orientalism, Empire, and National Culture: India, 1770–
1880, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Dodson, Michael S. and Brian A. Hatcher, eds., Trans-Colonial Modernities in
South Asia, New York: Routledge, 2012.
Duff, Alexander, India and India Missions, 2nd edn., Edinburgh: John Johnson,
1840.
Fuller, Jason, ‘Re-Branding Gaudiya Vaishnavism: Bhaktivinod Thakur and the
Religious Marketplace in 19th-century Bengal’, Journal of Vaishnava Studies,
vol. 23, no. 1, 2014, pp. 99–108.
Ghosh, Benoy, ed., Selections from English Periodicals of 19th Century Bengal,
Calcutta: Papyrus, 1980.
———,  Vidyasagar o Bangali Samaj, repr., Calcutta: Orient Longman, 1984.
Guha, Arabinda, ed., Unpublished Letters of Vidyasagar, Calcutta: Reba Guha,
distributed by Ananda Publishers, 1971.
Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry
into a Category of Bourgeois Society, tr. Thomas Burger, Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press, 1991.
Hatcher, Brian A., Idioms of Improvement: Vidyasagar and Cultural Encounter
in Bengal. Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1996.
 Hatcher: The Era of Vidyasagar 183
———,  tr., ‘The Evils of Child Marriage: Ishvarcandra Vidyasagar’, Critical Asian
Studies, vol. 35, no. 3, 2003, pp. 476–84.
———,  ‘Contemporary Hindu Thought’, in Contemporary Hinduism: Ritual,
Culture, and Practice, ed. Robin Rinehart, New York: ABC-Clio, 2004,
pp. 179–211.
———,  ‘What’s Become of the Pandit? Rethinking the History of Sanskrit
Scholars in Colonial Bengal’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 39, no. 3, 2005,
pp. 683–723.
———,  Bourgeois Hinduism, or the Faith of the Modern Vedantists: Rare Discourses
from Early Colonial Bengal, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
———,  ‘Sastric Modernity: Mediating Sastric Knowledge in Colonial Bengal’,
in Modernities in Asian Perspective: Polity, Society, Culture, Economy,
ed. Kausik Bandyopadhyay, Kolkata: Setu Prakashani, 2010.
———,  ‘The Shakuntala Paradigm: Vidyasagar, Widow Marriage and the Morality
of Recognition’, Journal of Hindu Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, 2013, pp. 363–83.
———,  Vidyasagar: The Life and After-life of an Eminent Indian, New Delhi:
Routledge, 2014.
———,  ‘Imitation, Then and Now: On the Emergence of Philanthropy in Early
Colonial Calcutta’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 52, no. 1, 2018, pp. 62–98.
Kaviraj, Sudipta, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay
and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India. Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1998.
Kopf, David, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Mani, Lata, ‘Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India’, in
Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, ed. K. Sangari and
S. Vaid, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990, pp. 88–126.
McDermott, Rachel, Revelry, Rivalry and Longing for the Goddesses of Bengal:
The Fortunes of Hindu Festivals, New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
Mukherjee, S.N., Calcutta: Myths and History, Calcutta: Subarnarekha, 1977.
Palit, Cittabrata, New Viewpoints on Nineteenth Century Bengal, Calcutta:
Progressive, 1980.
Roy, Tapti, ‘Disciplining the Printed Text: Colonial and Nationalist Surveillance
of Bengali Literature’, in Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial
Bengal, ed. Partha Chatterjee, Calcutta: Samya, 1996, pp. 30–62.
Samachar Chandrika, Viprabhakti Chandrika, Calcutta: Samachar Chandrika
Press, 1833.
Sarkar, Biharilal, Vidyasagar: Ishvarchandra Vidyasagarer Jivani, 4th edn., ed.
P.K. Pramanika, Calcutta: Orient Book Company, 1986.
Sarkar, Sumit, Writing Social History, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Sarkar, Tanika, ‘Wicked Widows: Law and Faith in Nineteenth-Century Public
Sphere Debates’, in Behind the Veil: Resistance, Women and the Everyday in
184 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Colonial South Asia, ed. Anindita Ghosh, New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2008, pp. 83–115.
Seely, Clinton B., tr., The Slaying of Meghanada: A Ramayana from Colonial
Bengal, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Sen, Amiya, Hindu Revivalism in Bengal: 1872–1905, Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1993.
Sen, Asok, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and his Elusive Milestones, Calcutta:
Riddhi-India, 1977.
Stevens, John, Keshab: Bengal’s Forgotten Prophet, London: Hurst & Company,
2018.
Tagore, Rabindranath, Rabindra-Rachanavali, 15 vols., repr. edn., Calcutta:
Visva Bharati, 1995.
Tarkabhusana, Taradhana, Taranath Tarkavacaspatir Jivana Evam Sanskrta
Vidyar Unnati, Calcutta: Brahmo Mission Press, 1893.
Tarkavacaspati, Taranath, Gayatriprakaranam, Calcutta: Sanskrit Press, 1871.
———,  Bahuvivahavada, Calcutta: Kavyaprakash Press, 1872.
Vaidya, N.K., ed., A Collection containing the Proceedings which led to the passing
of Act XV of 1856, Bombay: Mazagaon Printing Press, 1885.
Vidyabhushan, Yogendranath, Madanmohana Tarkalankarer Jivanacarita,
Calcutta: New India Press, 1871.
Vidyasagar, Ishwar Chandra, Vidyasagar-Granthavali, ed. S.K. Chattopadhyay,
B. Bandyopadhyay, and S.K. Das, Calcutta: Ranjan, 1937–9.
———,  Vidyasagar-racana-samgraha, ed. Gopal Haldar, vol. 2, Calcutta:
Pashchim Banga Niraksharata Durikarana Samiti, 1972.
———,  Hindu Widow Marriage: An Epochal Work on Social Reform from Colonial
India, tr. Brian A. Hatcher, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
 7

Derozio, Young Bengal,

and the Making of Modern India
1831–1861

Rosinka Chaudhuri

Derozio’s Death and Legacy:

Myth and Reality

N
ewspaper reports in the Bengali press that had appeared
during Derozio’s lifetime and immediately after his death
were, predictably, sensationalist in character. Derozio’s
dismissal from the Hindu College for preaching atheism was much
reported; his death mourned despite his teachings; and the proposal
for the erection of a monument also reported, for which funds were
solicited.1 The Sambad Ratnakar’s summary of the relationship
between Derozio and his students was more or less typical:

Droju sāheber upadeśe je kayak jan bālak nashta hayiāche ekkhane tāhārā
bara bipadgrasta hayila kenona tāhārdiger gyan chilo Droju hartākartā
bidhātā—ai abodherā mātāpitār bākya helan kariyāo Drojur āgyānubartī
hayiyāchilo—ihāte keha jātyantara hoyiyāche tāhāteo tāhārā dukhī nahe—
Drojur marane tāhārā jibanmrita prāy hayiyā thākibek.

[Those youths who have been spoiled by Derozio sahib’s advice are now in
a terrible state because they knew Derozio to be both their leader and their
god—these stupid boys disobeyed their parents and obeyed Derozio—if, as
a result, any among them lost caste, then too they were not worried—and
at his death they must have become almost like the living dead.]2
186 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

About a month before he died, in November 1831, a fierce attack

in the weekly column of the Prabhakar (edited at that time by the
well-known Bengali poet and journalist, Iswar Gupta), had perceived
Derozio to be attempting to dismantle the edifice of established
religion. The report began by blaming the ‘shameless’ Droju, who
had failed ‘to achieve any harm through the Enquirer or the East
Indian’, for instigating unrest, continuing, in an almost untranslatable
language that mixed aggression with alliteration:

.  .  .  kintu he phiringi sāhib Drojo bhāyā tumi hājār prāņpaņe pariśram kariyā
dargār thāme tāl ţhukiyā dalbal sange kare dharmer biruddhe laŗāi karate
aso kintu kālāmen bāngālidiger phate karite pāribe na ataeb he bhāyā sāmāl,
tomār jānkjamakrup kurti tupi keŗe niye phurti bhenge dibe yehetu e daleo
pradhān yoddhā Śrījuta Bhairabcandra Cakrabartī.

[.  .  .  but you, firing brother Drojo saheb, you might try a thousand times with
all your might to bring your gang and beat the drum of war at the pillars
of the dargah and fight against dharma, but you will not be able to finish
off these black Bengalis, so proceed carefully brother, or we shall snatch
your splendid hat and coat [kurti tupi] and break your spirit, for the chief
warrior in our group too is Sri Bhairabchandra Chakrabarty.]3

Nine years later, in 1840, the religious-minded correspondent of the

Calcutta Courier drummed up a similar attack against Derozio; but
because in this instance the language used was English, he had had
to face a spirited defence from David Drummond, Derozio’s old
school teacher, then the editor of The Weekly Examiner. The nature
of the grievances of Calcutta civil society, as reported by the Courier,
is enlightening with respect to the sort of outrages the students
surrounding Derozio were associated with, outrages that became
more and more well-known to Bengalis with the passage of time:

When the minds of the young Hindoos were fully saturated with the leaven
of atheism and infidelity, not only the Collegians, but almost the whole
body of the fraternizing illuminati of the Calcutta Schools became truly
intolerant and ungovernable in all their proceedings.  .  .  . ‘Beef and Bur-
gundy’ were their watchword, and no hereafter their shibboleth. They
trampled upon the Hindoo idols, desecrated their temples, and publicly
denounced their officiating priests. Who does not remember the enormities
they used to commit almost every night on their return from Mr Hare’s
 Chaudhuri: Derozio, Young Bengal 187

school, where the late Mr Derozio then delivered a course of lectures on

Metaphysics?4

This mention here of the ‘enormities’ committed ‘almost every night’

by Derozio’s students was preceded by a deploring of the lack of
‘sobriety’ and of characteristic ‘licentious’ behaviour among them,
exactly the sort of thing that was to provide abundant material to
playwrights and satirists in the not too distant future.
The substance of the attack made by the Courier against Derozio
so many years after his death concerned the putative inheritance by
his students of his atheism. Derozio was identified as the teacher who,
‘in his intemperate and indiscreet zeal of disseminating the licentious
and pestilent doctrines of infidelity, gave a fatal turn to the minds
and principles of his over-zealous disciples.’ Drummond’s reply in The
Weekly Examiner was outraged hurt, and intemperate. His main line
of attack seems to be the fact that this maligning of Derozio is being
done by one who is ‘a rank infidel himself!’, because he is a ‘native’.
‘The truth is’, Drummond writes,

Mr Derozio was devoutly attached to that glorious study, the Science of the
Human Mind; and knowing how wonderfully this species of knowledge,
beyond all others, quickens and elevates the conceptions of youth, he
strove, and with astonishing success, to extend it to his pupil [sic]: all
of whom loved him with the dearest affections, and if the philosophy of
Locke, Stewart and Brown  .  .  .  opened their minds to the folly and absurdity
of Hindu superstition, let not the amiable and benevolent Derozio be
blamed.  .  .  .5

Some of Drummond’s own experiences in teaching youths and his

own love for philosophy—specifically the Scottish Enlightenment—
comes across in this passage, which also echoes Derozio’s own letter
explaining himself to Dr Wilson after his forced resignation from
Hindu College. This first editorial ends with a reminder to the
attacker of Derozio that it was only ‘one or two native bigots’ in the
management who had gone against him at the Hindu College, and
that most were convinced that, ‘as a teacher, they might never look
upon his like again’.6
In the last of Drummond’s pieces on the subject in his paper, he
comes, crucially, to the manner of Derozio’s death. In this last piece,
188 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

called ‘The Late Mr Derozio and the Christian Advocate’, Drummond

refutes the claim made by the Christian Advocate that Derozio, at the
moment of his death, called for the Revd Hill and died repentant.
(This rumour can, in fact, even be found printed in an editorial in
the India Gazette in 1832.) Drummond then writes:
This is perhaps the ‘unkindest cut’ of all our contemporary has aimed; for
although wrapt up in the language of religion, and might seem to bear
[sic] that our poor friend died penitent, it is introduced purely to ‘confirm’
the unjust aspersions previously indulged in. But the whole is a fabrication
from beginning to end. Poor Derozio was struck with cholera, and was soon
rendered insensible to everything around him.  .  .  . It would have been well
if the unfortunate victim after receiving the fatal stroke, had been able to
make his peace with Heaven, but this was not the case, his sufferings were
far too overwhelming for any such purpose. He neither sent for the Rev.
Mr Hill, nor was he conscious of what was passing around him. There is
not, then, a word of truth in his expressing contrition for what he had
inculcated, nor in any other portion of the recital.7

This picture of Derozio’s deathbed scene, it must be emphasized, is a

radically revisionist account—like the rest of the legacy, what has been
carried down the ages is more myth and emotion than actual fact.
Thomas Edwards, Derozio’s chief and the only nineteenth century
biographer, had provided the most moving account of his death,
which derives its power from seemingly being recreated from the
reminiscences of those still alive:
There crowded round his sick-bed, not terrified by the ravages of cholera, but
rising above the fear of contagion, the pupil-friends of the Hindu College.
All through the sleepless, weary, painful nights and days, there watched the
sick-bed of the dying Derozio, Krishna Mohun Banerjee, Ramgopal Ghose,
Mohes Chunder Ghose, and others, sharing the anxiety and fatigue of
Derozio’s mother and his sister, Amelia. Dr John Grant  .  .  .  was in constant
attendance  .  .  .  reading to the East Indian boy the second book of Campbell’s
Pleasures of Hope. The pleasures of hope were very brief. Racked with pain
that filled the room with low moaning, worn out by sleepless days and nights
and the violence of the cholera-morbus, on Saturday, the 23rd December
1831, the weary eyes closed in death.  .  .  .8

Myths surrounding the figure of Derozio, however, were not

confined merely to stories recounting the circumstances of his death
 Chaudhuri: Derozio, Young Bengal 189

and his religious belief. While we might not go as far as to say, with
Drummond, ‘But the whole is a fabrication from beginning to end’, a
closer investigation of facts often reveals a different picture from the
general perception of Derozio and his students. Take, for example,
the marble plaque installed in the 1980s on the wall of the porter’s
lodge next to the gates of the present house on the grounds where
Derozio lived. This proclaims, in Bengali, that Derozio was the
‘greatest of teachers, pathfinder of rationalism, and forceful warrior
against the practice of widow-burning’. Going back to Derozio’s
own notes, poems, and prose, however, one is surprised to see how
the man who is celebrated as an agitator against the rite of sati,
was, in his own detailed notes in the Fakeer of Jungheera (1828),
totally against forcibly imposing a ban on a subject that affected the
feelings of the Hindus. Without having read these, a noted scholar,
in a foreword to Derozio’s poems, applauds his anti-sati activism,
wondering why ‘there is no mention of him in the anti-suttee papers
of Rammohun Roy and William Bentinck’.9 That he famously wrote
a poem celebrating the ban when it happened in 1829 in the pages
of the India Gazette point to the fluctuations in opinion that Derozio
encouraged; as he wrote to Dr Wilson quoting Bacon, ‘If a man will
begin with certainties he shall end in doubt.’10
Derozio’s own writings contain a testament to the ‘philosophy
of life’ he shared with his students, quite different from the usual
anecdotes of drink and prohibited food, but nevertheless startling in
many ways. In a poem published in 1831 called ‘Philosophical Utopia:
A Fragment’, for instance, two young men, uncannily reminiscent
of Young Bengal, yet situated in an imaginary Grecian arcadia, are
described in a context of high-minded idealism that is inspired by
Epicurus. In the epigraph to the poem, Derozio writes,
Now with the patriot-poet’s fire I burn,
Now to the gardens of the Sage I turn,
And Epicurus! chief to thine and thee.  .  .  .’11

This spelling out of Derozio’s own allegiance here is significant, for

Epicurus had developed an unsparingly materialistic metaphysics,
an empiricist epistemology, and hedonistic ethics, purporting that
the basic constituents of the world are atoms. Philosopher Alasdair
MacIntyre comments, in an influential text on moral thinking, that
190 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

‘The moral consequences of atomism are negative; the gods do not

control or interest themselves in human life.’12 Epicurus’s ‘practical
atheism’ and ‘high valuation of friendship’ would have been attractive
to Derozio, as would his teaching that ‘Morality is concerned with
the pursuit of pleasure  .  .  .’ inasmuch as pleasure is equated with
tranquillity.13 Epicurus founded the Garden, which Derozio refers
to in the poem, as a combination of philosophical community and
school in Athens around 306 bce. The residents of the Garden, young
men such as those depicted in the poem, put Epicurus’s teachings into
practice, aiming, as the poem says, ‘for spreading wide the ties that
fasten man/even to his slighted brotherhood’. Derozio emphasises
that this is ‘a pure scene’, and these are men ‘high in soul’; to the
attentive reader, the imagery describing this philosophical utopia
seems to have a certain suggestion of homoeroticism:
‘And O! how daring is the love of those
Who, suffering what the idle world deem woes,
Send out their minds on dark untraversed seas
In search of happiness, although the breeze
That swells their sail is death. Such were these men:’14

What those dark and virgin seas are, upon which these youths
set sail, can only be a matter of conjecture, but the imagery is almost
physical in its immediacy, conceiving a landscape in which ‘the
trembling stream, which with the kisses glowed of tired Apollo’ and
the ‘green woods round/Put forth their arms to catch the evening
breeze/Which wantoned past them  .  .  .’, while ‘between them and the
sky’ there was ‘Mysterious intercourse’. These men speak of ‘nought
but love’; and the poet asks, ‘What is the fire with which such breasts
are warmed?’
Whatever the fire, in that sylvan setting it would not have been,
in all probability, the fire of alcoholic spirits, which is the topic of an
early prose piece by Derozio, ‘On Drunkenness’, published under the
pseudonym Leporello.15 The writer is very young, still in his teens,
but this should not surprise us when we consider the fact that he
was employed as a teacher at the Hindu College at the tender age of
seventeen, in 1826, to teach students only a few years younger than
himself. Here, he is two years younger, and as must be obvious, writes
adopting a literary persona, which means we must not treat this
 Chaudhuri: Derozio, Young Bengal 191

material as strictly ‘autobiographical’, though resonances might be

unavoidable. Leporello descends, in this piece, from the lofty heights
of Greek philosophy to the dregs of the wine cup, and the theme, as
we shift from poetry to prose, takes an abrupt turn to the delightfully
profane. Employing a range of authoritative quotations, beginning
with Byron and Beaumont and Fletcher in the epigraph, to the Latin
of Horace and Euclid, the writer sets out to show us the virtues of
drunkenness. A hilarious paragraph of ‘personal’ recollection follows:

I have a distinct recollection of having, in my younger and uninitiated days,

fallen down stairs, and inflicted severe injury upon my nose one evening
upon which I am positive that I had not drunk more than six bottles. In
fact, however, all that I now complain of is an inability to get drunk as fast
as I could wish. I drink out of tumblers, whilst the rest of the company are
using wine-glasses; but ’tis to no purpose—they are invariably in Elysium
before me. Whilst they are gay, I am sombre; and by the time I am beginning
to get into spirits, they are all under the table.16

‘Amiable readers of the Helter Skelter, sympathise with my sorrows!’—

the passage continues, ‘I stand alone in the world’. Reprinted from
the Helter Skelter (which was shut down within a year of starting
publication) in the India Gazette, this is the only first-hand account we
have, from the pen of Derozio himself, of what came to be perceived
as the besetting sin of the Derozians and of the elegant Bengali babu
in this period, and in it we can see why orthodox Calcutta society
was alarmed with greater immediacy than ever before.
Around thirty years after the death of Derozio, the inheritance of
the legacy of Derozio’s students’ wildest excesses came to be portrayed
in the vehement caricature of popular works such as Michael
Madhusudan Dutt’s well-known farce, Ekei ki boley shabhyata? (Is
this Civilization?, 1860), followed closely by Kaliprasanna Sinha’s
Hutom Pyanchar Naksha (The Night-Owl’s Sketch, 1861). Dutt’s play
was the model for Dinabandhu Mitra’s Sadhabar Ekadasi (The Wife’s
Widowhood, 1866)—the most savage satire yet on the subject of
Derozian iniquities some generations down the line. The formation of
the Jnyānataranginī Sabhā as depicted in Madhusudan’s farce, where
the nouveau riche squander their wealth on drink, prostitutes, and
forbidden meat, and the character of Nimchand Datta (magnificently
learned and utterly drunk, object of both satire and admiration) in
192 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Dinabandhu’s play, both derive their inspiration from the legacy of

Derozio and his students, without actually naming Derozio directly.17
Nimchand mentions Young Bengal in a mock parodic chant to a
prostitute (‘O witch, destroyer of the Young Bengal group’), and asks
a character who boasts that he has read ‘Merchant of Venerials’ many
times: ‘which of your fathers taught Shakespeare in Hare Saheb’s
school?’.18 In an epigraph to his essay, ‘On Drunkenness’, Derozio/
Leporello had quoted from Byron: ‘Man being reasonable, must get
drunk/The best of life is but intoxication’; these two lines are repeated
here by a drunken Nimchand—who habitually quotes from English
literature and philosophy—in one of his speeches. In another, he
proclaims: ‘The sister-****** has ruined the college’s name—he doesn’t
want to drink.’19 And so it was that Derozio’s most radical students, a
brilliant, radical, and courageous group of young men who achieved
much in the course of their later, often very distinguished, public lives,
were reduced to caricature and farce in popular works that remained
imprinted indelibly on public memory.

Defining Young Bengal

This chapter will explore the aggravated perceptions of Bengali society
in relation to the actual events on the ground as they occurred in
the thirty-year interregnum between Derozio’s death in 1831 to
the publication of the farces and plays mentioned above from 1861
onward. A curiously under-researched area of Indian history, this
thirty-year period was remarkable in many ways, not least for being
germane to the contribution made by Young Bengal to Indian society
and polity in perpetuity. To deny that the activities of this period
had an imprint on the nature of Indian modernity would be to deny
history. Certainly, it should not be possible to claim, as Sumit Sarkar
has done, that nothing significant emerged from so long a period in
the capital of the British Empire in India.20 Many political agitations,
social movements, and cultural advances occurred in Bengal in this
period—what is of interest here is why these have been elided so
entirely in Indian historiography. The answer, as is usual, may be
found in later reconstructions of the past by historians who found
no use for a period dominated by a group of ‘elite’ men who did not
fit into the paradigms of Indian nationalism, linguistic chauvinism,
 Chaudhuri: Derozio, Young Bengal 193

or class structures championed by the nationalist historians, literary

historians, or subaltern historians in the years immediately preceding
and following Indian Independence. Young Bengal comprised men
(none of who, with the exception of Dakshinaranjan, were rich) who
spoke and wrote both in Bengali and in English (though they were
perceived to be anglicized); who practised a species of liberal politics
that was universalist and humanist, and were confined to the upper
strata of society with no mass appeal (although that is exactly the
character of philosophical radicals like Mill in England at this time
as well); who campaigned, agitated, and gained victories against the
colonizers while never actually surrendering the belief that they were
subjects of the British Empire (however equal they thought they were
as such subjects). These paradigms were completely overturned by
the advent of high modernity, later Indian nationalism, and gradual
democratization; as a result, the period in which Derozio’s students
and others, later labelled Young Bengal, wrought the most remarkable
changes in modern India has been erased from the memory of the
general narrative of the history of the nation.
Exactly when Derozio’s students and others began to be clubbed
together as a group called ‘Young Bengal’ remains unexcavated by the
historian and scholar. A letter-writer to the Hurkaru, who signs as
‘K’ (in all likelihood Kissory Chand Mittra), uses the term in 1848,
in the earliest use of the term Young Bengal that I have located in
the English press to date. A series of letters are exchanged between
‘A Friend of India’, who doubts what this generation of young men
have, in fact, achieved in the end, and K, who attempts to defend them
against these charges. Young Bengal is self-consciously defined for
the first time in K’s piece, as he says, ‘we want a proper definition of
the term’, for ‘it is not very unusual that ill-defined terms have given
rise to much frivolous discussion’. He then attempts a definition:
Instead of, therefore, having it determined by the Legislative Council,
whose authority, in this instance, would be an actual mockery of law, I
would beg your permission to define the term, according to its general
acceptation, and as it is chiefly understood by the native aristocracy of
Calcutta. ‘Young Bengal’ may be said to include that portion of intelligent
Hindus who were led to disbelieve the religion of their ancestors, and to
set at nought the authority of the Shastras. Guided by more enlightened
views about religion, morality, or ethics, they were inclined to expose the
194 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

system of Hindu idolatry—a circumstance which has drawn upon their

heads the wrath and indignation of the whole orthodox Hindus. They have
been reckoned as a separate and distinct class; and their principles as quite
inimical to Hinduism. If this be the proper definition of ‘Young Bengal’,
and its application is quite consistent, I am willing to enter the lists, in
vindication of my fellow countrymen; but if mere lightheadedness, beef and
beer, constitute the principles of ‘Young Bengal’, I will most gladly eschew
such unnecessary discussions, and leave their cause to be advocated by one
of their own body.21

The main category of the definition here rests on the fact that this is a
group of young men who disbelieve the tenets of Hindu orthodoxy—
this is at the core of who they are. K then goes on to lay out a much
broader field than the narrow association of the term with Derozio’s
students, claiming in fact, that ‘Young Bengal, in the light I have
viewed the subject, might be said to have had its beginning from
the time of the late Rajah Rammohun Roy—with whom that class
did originate’ [emphasis mine]. Such a definition would, in effect,
mean that members of the Brahmo Samaj, the Brahmos, were the
members of Young Bengal—a definition that not only broadens the
genre, but also immediately gives to it a different imputation of high
seriousness that was so characteristic of that sect through the course
of the nineteenth century.
Three years later, in 1851, two publications, the Citizen and the
Calcutta Review, used the term in opposite senses. In the latter, in
an austere voice that combined anthropological intent with moral
disapproval, the anonymous contributor writes: ‘A band of Kavis
or Kaviwallas as they are often called is composed of a number of
songsters of different castes leagued together under a leader, who gives
name to the association. The leader may be a brahmin, a confectioner
or of any caste. The manner of singing is one of which Young Bengal
may well be ashamed  .  .   .’. 22 The imputation here seems to be to the
high moral fibre of Young Bengal (which, in light of K’s letter, may
well be read as the high moral ground of the Brahmo constituency),
consonant with the by then almost apocryphal assertion that
the ‘college boy’ was synonymous with truth.23 However, in the
Citizen, the sense in which it was used was in line with the farces of
Madhusudan and Dinabandhu:
 Chaudhuri: Derozio, Young Bengal 195

‘Young Bengal’ is generally a Calcutta Babu—a young man of course—with

a smattering of English which he fails not to dignify with the name of solid
learning.  .  .  . He is an ultra-fashionable in dress.  .  .  . Money and sensual
delights are the goddess of his idolatry.  .  .  . He eats beef, cracks whole bottles
of Cognac at Spence’s or Wilson’s but as soon as he makes his appearance in
Native Society  .  .  .  [h]e is then a pattern of the most thorough-going Hindu.24

The characteristics of Young Bengal, then, seem self-divided from

the start. Like the nature of Indian modernity, it is always either
derivative of the West and therefore somehow degenerate, or it is of
high moral fibre, the upholder of truth and sound principles. With
the onrush of high modernity and late nationalism in the latter
half of the nineteenth century, that high moral ground began to be
philosophically assigned solely to the ancient Indian or essentially
Indian spiritual inheritance, rather than to Enlightenment values or
Scots philosophers, leaving this period of modernity to be represented
solely, instead, by the decline in manners associated with imitative
Western idioms in a colonial society.

‘A New Race of Men in the East’

More intriguingly, and not at all famously, it was an English poet in
India and a friend of Derozio’s, Henry Meredith Parker (1796–1868),
who had, in the title to his satirical poem, ‘Young India: A Bengal
Eclogue’, first used the term ‘Young India’ to describe these radicalized
students, bringing both the word ‘young’ and ‘Bengal’ into close
proximity.25 Writing from Calcutta in the early nineteenth century,
Parker, in his poem, ‘Young India: A Bengal Eclogue’, lampooned
Young Bengal for the manner in which their ardour for ideological
freedoms sometimes took on an adolescent character. The youth
of this generation had led hitherto unthinkable attacks on the
conventions of traditional Hinduism; some well-known examples
include Rasik Krishna Mullick’s open denial of the sanctity of the
Ganges and Ramgopal Ghose’s refusal to undergo the ritual of
penance.26 K.M. Banerji, one of the earliest converts to Christianity
among the members of Young Bengal, had declared in 1830 that
Pope and Dryden were to be held in higher esteem than the Hindu
shastras.27 Peary Chand Mittra comments on these young men’s
196 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

penchant for ‘ridiculing the Hindu religion’, citing instances when,

‘they were required to utter mantras or prayers, [but instead] repeated
lines from the Iliad. There were some who flung [sic] the Brahminical
thread instead of putting it on’.28 One of the newspapers of the period
memorably accused the youth of this generation of ‘cutting their way
through ham and beef and wading to liberalism through tumblers
of beer.29
Parker’s title for his poem is ‘Young India’, rather than ‘Young
Bengal’; consequently, the group of people under discussion are
given a larger significance as the emerging identity of modern
India. Subverting the expectations of a pastoral dialogue that the
latter half of its title, ‘A Bengal Eclogue’, creates, the poem consists
instead of a dialogue between two Bengali students of the ‘Anglo-
Indian College’ (Hindu College) in Calcutta.30 These two urban
youths, ‘with muslin robes and frizzled hair’, are shown strolling at
the base of the Ochterlony column in Calcutta at twilight. They are
dressed contrastingly, one traditionally and effeminately, in ‘pyjamas’
and ‘spangled slipper’, with ‘many a yard’ of thread round his neck
(referring to the sacred thread of the brahmin), and the other,
following Western fashion, in a military, masculine style, in ‘Irish
linen shorts’, ‘polish’d jockey boot[s]’, ‘a watch’, ‘a bunch of seals’, and
‘guard’.31 The latter is called ‘Hurry Mohun Bhose’ (Hari Mohan Bose)
and the former ‘Sam Chund’ (Shyam Chand). In characterizing the
two contrasting portraits of the youths thus, Parker captures the
binary self-division at the heart of colonial modernity, the tussle
between the orthodox and the progressives, and by showing how
fluid the categorizations are, also gestures toward the impossibility
of separating the two camps into any rigid compartments.
Hurry Mohun begins his speech on a high note, invoking the
virtues of liberty. He mentions France first, followed by ‘shades of
all the Bruti’, Cobden and William Tell, ‘Freedom’s sworn children
each, from wig to shoe tye’.32 After Sam Chund asks him to get to
the point, he does so:

‘Kings, Priests, and Laws, and Creeds, are but the tools
Which cunning knaves employ to govern fools,
Down with Kings, Laws and Creeds then, and in chief
With any creed prohibiting roast beef.’
 Chaudhuri: Derozio, Young Bengal 197

Roast beef, to much comical effect, is at the centre of the young men’s
thoughts in this poem. Outside of it, however, it was an immensely
serious issue in Indian society, one that provoked hysterical responses
from orthodox Hindus. It was also an issue inextricably linked to the
freethinking Young Bengal, primarily concerned with challenging
the traditional strictures of Hinduism, one of which forbade the
consumption of beef. The activities of Derozio’s Academic Association
correspond with Parker’s observation of the revolutionary sentiments
expressed in the poem—‘Down with Kings, Laws and Creeds’:

Free-will, fore-ordination, fate, faith, the sacredness of truth, the high duty
of cultivating virtue, and the meanness of vice, the nobility of patriotism,
the attributes of God, and the argument for and against the existence of
the deity as these have been set forth by Hume on the one side, and Reid,
Dugald Stewart and Brown on the other, the hollowness of idolatry and the
shams of priesthood were subjects which stirred to their very depths the
young, fearless, hopeful hearts of the leading Hindoo youths of Calcutta.33

Alexander Duff wrote disapprovingly that ‘Their great authorities  .  .  .  

were Hume’s Essays and Paine’s Age of Reason. With copies of the
latter, in particular, they were abundantly supplied.  .  .  .’34 This revolt
against religious superstition, then, was not only the outcome of
colonial contact with British liberalism, as is often presumed, but
also directly linked to Tom Paine’s philosophy of individual rights.
Paine was read avidly by students of the Hindu College at that time;
Duff despaired of the craven commercial considerations that brought
Paine’s book to Calcutta.

It was some wretched bookseller in America, who—basely taking advantage

of the reported infidel leanings of a new race of men in the East, and
apparently regarding no God but his silver dollars—despatched to Calcutta
a cargo of that most malignant and pestiferous of all anti-Christian
publications.
From one ship a thousand copies were landed, and at first sold at the
cheap rate of one rupee per copy; but such was the demand, that the price
soon rose, and after a few months, it was actually quintupled. Besides the
separate copies of the Age of Reason, there was also a cheap American
edition, in one thick vol. 8vo., of all Paine’s works, including the Rights of
Man, and other minor pieces, political and theological.35
198 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The phenomenal response to this cargo among Calcutta’s ‘new

race of men’ gives an indication of the background, which made
possible Parker’s depiction of Hurry Mohun’s character and charter
of demands.
The poem’s protagonist, unsurprisingly in such a context, was
most probably based on a real person—one among Derozio’s inner
circle of students called Radhanath Sikdar, the man or ‘computer’, who
was actually the first to calculate the height of what later came to be
named Mount Everest, as a member of the Trigonometrical Survey
of India. Despite this remarkable achievement, he is nevertheless
immortalized in history as ‘a mathematician and free-thinker with a
somewhat satirical faith in the efficacy of beef as a factor in national
development.’36 Peary Chand also catalogues Sikdar’s obsession,
observing, ‘Radha Nauth Sickdar [sic] had an ardent desire to benefit
his country. His hobby was beef, as he maintained that beefeaters
were never bullied, and that the right way to improve the Bengalees
was to think first of the physique or perhaps physique and morale
simultaneously.’37 Sikdar’s views were sufficiently infamous for it to
be almost certain that Parker would have heard about them, and in
this poem, he is quick to pick up on the potential for comedy in the
situation, continuing Hurry Mohun’s tirade with sentiments that
Sikdar would no doubt have approved of:
‘Roast beef! To what do these pale English owe,
(Or rather, yellow English,) that the blow
Of British arms is strong, their heads are thick,
And, therefore, fitted for the frequent lick?’38
Parker’s poem exploits a repository of prejudices typical of the
European perception of Hindus, specifically Bengalis, as a passive and
effeminate people. In Colonial Masculinity, Mrinalini Sinha traces,
in one instance, the course of this prejudice from Richard Orme in
the 1770s and Bishop Heber in the 1820s, through evangelical and
utilitarian contributors such as Charles Grant and James Mill, to the
most eloquent passages on the subject in Macaulay’s essay on Clive.
Parker satirizes the frenzy of reform that swept through nineteenth
century Bengal, which began, it would be fair to say, in the classrooms
of the Hindu College and at the initiative of Young Bengal. A modern
historian comments on how Derozio’s Academic Association:
 Chaudhuri: Derozio, Young Bengal 199

.  .  .  launched a bold, uncompromising attack on Hinduism, denouncing

it as vile and corrupt.  .  .  . As time passed  .  .  .  more frequent was the cry,
‘Down with orthodoxy; down with tradition.’ An incident in 1831 brought
matters to a fever heat. A student of Hindu College threw roast beef into
a neighbouring Brahmin’s house, shouting to the horrified inmates, ‘Beef!
Beef!’39

The year 1831 was also the year in which Derozio died, after having
been forced by the managing committee of the Hindu College to
submit his resignation without a hearing two years earlier, so alarmed
were the guardians of the college with the sort of extreme attitudes
displayed there two years later.40

The Babu in Relation to Young Bengal

Parker’s ridicule of these Hindu College students has something in
common with many critiques of Young Bengal by Bengalis themselves,
where these intellectuals were criticized for denying the validity of
their entire cultural heritage. Two strands of Bengali society which
sometimes overlapped are often confused by both commentators
and historians, that of the babu and that of Young Bengal—perhaps
because the two often had overlapping characteristics. But as we shall
see, while some among Young Bengal (a small group of intellectuals
and progressives) were certainly babus in their lifestyle, not all babus
(an entire class in nineteenth century Bengal) were members of Young
Bengal. Bengalis had satirized the effete babus of their day variously
through lampoons, songs, journalism, literature, and even popular
paintings such as the Kalighat pat, and this constituency was simply
the nouveau riche class, which was sometimes also the educated class.
As early as 1823, the Bengali writer Bhavanicharan Bandopadhyay
(1787–1848) had ridiculed the contemporary babu for his absence of
roots in Indian traditional culture. His opinion, in Kalikata Kamalalay
(Calcutta, Home of Kamala [Goddess of Wealth]), was that this new
breed of men had simply grown rich by canvassing, commissioning,
cheating, and pimping. Bhavanicharan also pilloried extravagant
upstart babu culture in social sketches such as Nabababubilas
(Enjoyments of the New Babu, 1825) and Nababibibilas (Enjoyments
of the New Woman, 1831), while Peary Chand Mittra, the famous
Derozian, himself one of the most prominent members of Young
200 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Bengal, also gave a scathing account of the decadent babus in his

novel, Alaler Gharer Dulal (The Rich Man’s Spoilt Child, 1858).
Mittra (1814–83) may be cited, in fact, as typical of the group
labelled Young Bengal—indeed he is one of its most distinguished
representatives. Having joined the Hindu College in 1827, he was a
direct student of Derozio, and his life’s work stands as a testament
to the hard work and seriousness so typical of the group. Fluent in
Persian, English, and Bengali, he wrote in both the latter languages
prolifically throughout his life, sometimes with pedagogic intent, and
sometimes in the cause of literary innovation. Remembered chiefly
today as the inventor of colloquial Bengali prose in his work Alaler
Gharer Dulal (published serially from 1854, and as a book in 1858),
acknowledged as the first novel in the Bengali language, he also
wrote on many other subjects throughout his life. His publications,
‘The Heads of the People—The Ryot’ (1842–3) and ‘The Zemindar and
the Ryot’ (1846) are an early expression of concern for the wretched
condition of the peasantry, a concern that would gather its fullest
momentum in Dinabandhu Mitra’s incendiary and hugely popular
play, Nildarpan (1861). Mitra was also representative of Young Bengal
in his concern for gender equality, publishing, along with Radha-
nath Sikdar, a periodical called Masik Patrika, aimed at the welfare
of women. This was where he first published Alaler Gharer Dulal
serially in order to show the follies that accrue from a spoilt
upbringing. A long and active public life meant that he involved
himself with many societies—he was a member of the University
Senate, of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, of
the Bethune Society, the Gyananneshan, and of the British India
society—besides being the librarian at the Calcutta Public Library
set up in Metcalfe Hall in 1835, and a successful entrepreneur in his
own right.
This was the type of man designated as Young Bengal by ‘K’—our
letter-writer who first publicly defines the group—who, if he was
indeed Kissory Chand Mittra, was the younger brother of Peary
Chand. Seriousness and sobriety define such a life and career, and
if the latter quality was to be taken literally, then too, Peary Chand
would qualify, even if many others in the group may have failed that
particular test. The babu class, on the other hand, is differentiated
from Young Bengal not in terms of wealth or education, which
was often common to both classes, but by its lack of ‘moral fibre’.
 Chaudhuri: Derozio, Young Bengal 201

Kaliprasanna Sinha’s colloquial and pungent running commentary

usefully delineates the difference between Young Bengal and other
Westernised Bengali babus, although his satire does not allow any
quarter even for those serious about reform, as he picks on those
who were perceived to be paying no more than lip service to it. He
describes the then current breeds of ‘English-style babus’ in the city
of Calcutta as belonging to two types, the old class and the new:

These days the city’s English-style babus belong to two factions, the
first group, ‘Cow dung busts of superior model sahibs’; the second ‘Vile
reflections of the foreigner’. All those who belong to the first lot follow the
English fashion; they assemble around tables and chairs, tea in tea cups,
cheroots, water in jugs, brandy in decanters, and cork covers for glasses,
covers of red cotton cloth—the Harkara, Englishman, and the Phoenix lie
before them, Politics and Best News of the Day are the subjects of perpetual
argument. They eat on tables, defecate in commodes and wipe their bums
with paper. They are ornamented with the various virtues of compassion,
pity, benevolence, meekness; only are always prone to disease, drunkenness
and being slaves to their wives—enthusiasm, unity, desire for progress
having been entirely exiled from their hearts. These are the old class.
In the second—Bagambar Mitra, etc.—are those more dreadful than
snakes, more fierce than tigers; in other words these are a type of terrible
animal. These people, in the manner of thieves who touch alcohol to their
lips in order to impersonate drunks when they go out to steal, pretend
to care for the welfare of their country only in their own selfish interest.
‘How to become rich themselves’, ‘how to keep everybody else under
their thumb’, these are their constant efforts—riding piggyback on others’
labours while preening their own whiskers, this is their policy. Charity is
unknown amongst them—they never have more than four annas to donate.41
[Translation mine]

Bagambar Mitra here is an allusion to Digambar Mitra (1817–97),

a student of Hare School and Hindu College, and one Derozio’s
students as well.42 Digambar Mitra, who profited by his association
with the British to the extent of being designated Raja, began life a
clerk and ended it a zamindar and was also the first Bengali sheriff of
Calcutta, earning a vast fortune in the share business and in trading in
indigo and silk. His is possibly not the best example of Young Bengal
one could have picked, although Kaliprasanna is representative of
Bengali public opinion in picking him, for public opinion followed
him in picking upon the worst excesses of the group from among a
202 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

generation of progressives who, despite many attempts at defences

and vindications appearing in the press and in publications, never
really lost the stigma of scandal they were stamped with in common
estimation.
Young Bengal, therefore, is often a babu, and consequently, the
babu is sometimes a member of Young Bengal. But the babu is a
much wider term, as it encompasses the nouveau riche class that
flaunts Western appurtenances, while only a few among this class
could be labelled Young Bengal, because above all else, the latter is
serious about reform. This type of radical young man, satirized by
Parker in ‘Young India’ in the character of Hurry Mohun (Hurry was
no doubt deliberately spelt thus), was genuinely striving for change.
However, the character of the half-hearted friend, Sam Chund, the
babu whose spirit is willing but flesh is weak, who, like Kaliprasanna
said of Digambar Mitra, ‘pretend[s] to care for the welfare of their
country only in their own selfish interest’ is the one which, by the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, has become internalized in
the self-divided soul of Bengali modernity as Young Bengal. Bengal’s
leading writer of the nineteenth century, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
(1838–94), wrote an essay in English, ‘The Confession of a Young
Bengal’, in which the two distinct types, so carefully delineated and
differentiated by K, has merged into one, and the deracinated babu in
it declares, ‘We have cast away caste. We have outlived the absurdity of
a social classification based upon the accident of birth. But we are not
such ultra-radicals as to adopt for our catchword the impracticable
formula of “Equality and Fraternity”.’43 By the time Bankim Chandra
wrote the mocking ‘The Confession of a Young Bengal’ in 1872, the
tide of censure against them was at its fullest, and Young Bengal had
become synonymous with both the posturing babu as well as the
debauched drunkard of useless learning.
Yet, a defence against the general outraged opinion of civil society
had been launched as early as in 1854, when Shoshee Chunder Dutt,
in the first recorded instance of the use of the term Young Bengal
in a book, was categorical in his admiration for the finer points of
these youths, saying:
We indeed are not converts to the dogma that the Hindoo mind is entirely
deficient in the loftier sentiments of patriotism, nor are we blind to the fact,
that as in everything else, in courage and boldness also, young Bengal has
 Chaudhuri: Derozio, Young Bengal 203

attained a haughtier cast than had ever been noticed in the cowed servility
of his predecessors. The day is now gone by when a Hindu could be struck
even by an Englishman with impunity. We have ourselves more than once
seen the blow instantly returned.44
Two years later, Kristo Doss Paul published Young Bengal Vindicated,
subtitled ‘A Discourse Read at the Hare Anniversary Meeting, held
on June the 1st, 1856’, pointing out that the education, liberalism,
and patriotism of Young Bengal were beyond doubt. 45 In 1858,
Girish Chunder Ghosh, editor of the Hindu Patriot, wrote, ‘Young
Bengal is the only moving principle among a mass of dead matter’,
further using a metaphor reminiscent of Madhusudan’s language
in his 1854 essay ‘The Anglo-Saxon and the Hindu’, to illustrate its
significance: ‘Have you ever seen an old tree rotten and decayed and
from its bosom a small twig just shooting out and exhibiting signs of
vegetable life by putting forth some leaflets on each side? That’s the
emblem of Young Bengal’.46
If the 1850s witnessed these attempts at vindication, the tide
turned at the start of the 1860s, as I have shown, in the farces of
Madhusudan and Dinabandhu and the satire of Kaliprasanna.
Attempting to chronicle past times, Rajnarain Basu, in his books
Sekal Aar Ekaal (1874) and Hindu Kalejer Itibritta (1875), wrote of
the wildness of the Derozians, but somewhat offset the criticism with
praise for Derozio himself, although, factually, his information often
tended to be incorrect.47 Peary Chand’s A Biographical Sketch of David
Hare (1877) referred to Young Bengal as Young Calcutta and agreed
with K in describing the group as being animated by an aversion to
Hinduism: ‘The uppermost thought was to expose Hinduism, and
to renounce it.’48 In Peary Chand, we have confirmation that Young
Bengal was not to be equated only with the students of Derozio—he
mentions Tarachand Chakrabarty and Chandrashekhar Deb as men
(who we know belonged to the Brahmo Samaj) who, ‘though not to
be ranked as Derozio’s pupils, identified themselves with the “young
Calcutta”.’49
In 1895, two essays further attempted to rescue the legacy of
Derozio from the pit of depravity into which it had sunk; Bholanauth
Chunder and S.C. Sanyal both wrote for different issues of the
Calcutta University Magazine that year, writing fairly and objectively
of the youth of that vanished generation. In ‘Recollections of the Old
204 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Hindoo College’, there is no doubt in the writer’s mind that Young

Bengal was remarkable in its accomplishments:
Judged by the results, Derozio was the most efficient teacher the Hindoo
College ever had. Perhaps his name is the most illustrious in all the annals
of our education. It was the strenuous exertions of Derozio that produced
the new school of Natives called Young Bengal, who were all well-grounded
in principles, and who with their ‘wider ideas and sympathies’ markedly
contrasted with the old school, or men of ‘more restricted vision and
punctilious manners’. The batch of educated young men turned out by
Derozio was indeed a most remarkable one. Every one of that batch won
laurels, became distinguished in after-life for one virtue or another—for
true enlightenment, or public spirit, or philanthropy, or love of justice, or
rectitude, or moral hardihood. They all felt a generous desire to benefit
their country.50
The next major Bengali record of those years was Sibnath Sastri’s book
in 1904, titled Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Banga Samaj (Ramtanu
Lahiri and Contemporary Bengali Society), in which the central
character was one of Derozio’s youngest students and S.C. Sanyal’s
grandfather, Ramtanu Lahiri. Here, interestingly, a detailed defence
was attempted of what was by then the notorious trait of drinking
among the Derozians, and some attempt was made to analyse the
symbolic value of drinking as an act of defiance in an agenda for
reform—a far cry from the wholesale castigation of the trend in earlier
depictions.51 By now, the pendulum had swung back to some extent,
if not ever entirely and wholly, perhaps also because a new generation
was attempting to redeem the qualities of their elders from sweeping
misrepresentations of them in the popular mind.
The perception that Young Bengal was denationalized and hyper-
Westernized, however, persisted, and a subtle shift now occurs towards
the turn of the century, in the terms of criticism. While previous
attacks had focussed generally on the social aspect, mentioning food,
drink, and metaphysics in the same breath, the concern now shifted
towards their role, or lack of it, in the reconstitution of the country’s
cultural heritage—a project that was fully developed by the end of
the nineteenth century. This anxiety was expressed most eloquently
in the sentiments of the nationalist literary historian Dineshchandra
Sen, who accused these Westernized young men of forgetting their
own glorious indigenous literature:
 Chaudhuri: Derozio, Young Bengal 205

Young Bengal, as the new generation of the Bengalis were then called,
became thoroughly anglicised in spirit. They exulted in Shakespeare’s
dramas and Milton’s poetry; they read Schiller’s Robbers and Goethe’s
Faust; they could name all the English dramatists of the Elizabethan age—
Marlow, Philip Massinger, Ford, John Webster, Ben Johnson and Shirley
and reproduce from memory lines from still earlier dramatists and from
Holinshed’s chronicles which Shakespeare had improved on, in many a noble
line. They grew mad after Shelley’s Epipsychidion, Keat’s [sic] Hyperion and
even after Chatterton’s Death of Charles Bodwin. Poor Chandi Das, poor
Vidyapati and Kavi Kankana! The tears of your departed spirit fell on the big
towns of Bengal which lay under the charm of European influence—mixed
with nocturnal dews and unheeded by Young Bengal.  .  .  .52

The case made by Dineshchandra struck a chord that would continue

to resonate among those involved in the literary ethical project of
the formation of a ‘national’ literature, who would use the bogey
of ultra-Westernization to completely excise the role of English
publications in the formation of an indigenous canon. The nineteenth
century retrieval of a cultural past for the construction of nationality
was heavily invested in tropes of authenticity, denying, at every
stage, the contribution of English language texts to the formation of
Bengali or Indian modernity. The nationalist writings of the writers
in English in India, however powerful their impact, especially in the
first half of the nineteenth century, have traditionally been excluded
from the narrative of the nation, even in a purely historical sense.
The young students around Derozio were anything but forgetful of
their country’s present situation or past histories, notwithstanding
Dineshchandra’s histrionics, as is evident from their own writings. A
collection of the speeches made at the Society for the Acquisition of
General Knowledge shows that among Derozio’s students, Krishna
Mohun Banerjea wrote on the ‘Nature and Importance of Historical
Studies’, Mahesh Chundra Deb wrote ‘A Sketch on the Condition of
the Hindoo Women’, Gobinda Chunder Bysack and Peary Chand
wrote ‘State of Hindoostan under the Hindoos’ (parts one and two)
and ‘On Native Female Education’—the latter a subject dear to
Derozio and dwelt upon with passion in the notes to Fakeer of
Jungheera.53
New research into the neglected 1830s–40s shows that Young
Bengal effected serious changes in society at large at this time, not
206 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

just in the social arena, but in terms of political intervention as

well. Their contributions to the making of modern India have been
ignored by historians to date, largely, it seems, out of a sense of
embarrassment, as the position from which they argued for change
was one that did not fit into the later construction of a nationalist
history of India. These were men who believed in liberty, equality
and fraternity; men who, inspired by the radical republican ideals of
the French Revolution and the Scottish Enlightenment, attempted to
effect change upon a principle of equality premised on being equal
subjects alongside the Englishman under British law and the British
Parliament, which could always be approached as a right for change.
They spoke and wrote in English, but equally, in Bengali as well, a
fact largely ignored. They debated and argued, set up societies and
made speeches, petitioned and called meetings—to say that all of
this activity in the public sphere had no impact upon the making
of the cultural fabric that included politics and reform, litigation
and entrepreneurship, literature and drama, emancipation and rights,
is to wilfully obscure a large contribution to the making of modern
India.
The twentieth-century work that resurrected the image of the
Derozians as radicals and revolutionaries was Marxist historian
Sushobhan Sarkar’s cult manifesto, Notes on the Bengal Renaissance.
First published in 1946, this work firmly established Derozio as
a major figure at the beginning of what was labelled, akin to the
Italian renaissance, a glorious awakening or ‘renaissance’ in Bengal,
a nomenclature that would be contested by later historians. Sarkar’s
work, however, could also be said to have domesticated the Derozian
legacy in Marxist circles, spawning, from here onward, a whole host
of publications on the subject of Derozio and Derozians that were,
with the exception, in fact, of his own original pamphlet, almost
all written in Bengali. Benoy Ghosh, Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Pallab
Sengupta, Subir Raichaudhuri, and Amar Datta have all left books
of substance and stature on the subject. In 1971, one of these books
about Derozio called him ‘the most important left-wing leader’ of
his era; and a few years later, the legendary Marxist theatre/film
personality Utpal Dutt directed and acted in Jhor (The Storm, 1979),
on the life of Derozio, whom he admired.54 The trajectory of Derozio’s
memory in Bengal continues to flourish, however, with events such
 Chaudhuri: Derozio, Young Bengal 207

as the Derozio Memorial College being established in Rajarhat in

1996 and the blurb about the Derozio Memorial Debate instituted by
Presidency University in 2013 on the website of Presidency University,
declaring: ‘This year, the legatees of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio join
hands with Google’ to celebrate ‘one of Presidency’s most enduring
traditions’ through ‘the Derozio Memorial Debate’.
Sushobhan Sarkar had added a supplementary note titled ‘Derozio
and Young Bengal’ in 1979 to his famous booklet that summarized
the pendulum-like movement of public opinion, now against and
now in favour of the group called Young Bengal and Derozio:

In our younger days we were brought up in the idea that Derozio and
the Derozians were a bunch of misguided errant people steeped in blind
Anglophilism, indifferent to our own country and people, wild and
intemperate in their personal lives. This Essay [‘Notes on the Bengal
Renaissance’] was a vindication of their movement, its specific rational
idealism, their courage and personal integrity. Curiously, this vindication
has now in certain circles seems to have led to an over-reaction in their
favour, attributing them revolutionary modern qualities which would have
seemed alien to their real nature. It is difficult indeed to preserve a historical
balance as soon as one steps out of the concrete context, for indeed each
observer has his scheme of the weal or woe.55

This note of caution was in fact written at a time when the Marxist
appropriation of the legacy of Derozio and Young Bengal was just
beginning. To date, while the symbolic use of Derozio’s name has
come to signify a certain rational liberalism of thought to the public
at large, regardless of political affiliation, much work remains to be
done in excavating the records of the two score years or so after his
death in 1831. The movements in civil society in these years that led
to debates, discussions, meetings, and speeches—on colonization,
on the merits of a free press, on the abuse of coolie labour, on police
atrocities, on women’s education, and on the judicial system, apart
from the concrete establishment of institutions and establishments of
schooling and reading, the plentiful literature comprised of periodical
and newspaper publications, articles and books, as well as the many
repeated interventions made to push towards more justice and
freedom, cannot possibly be ignored for their contribution in the
making of modern India. It would perhaps not be an exaggeration to
208 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

maintain that this movement and these men were, without a doubt,
among the makers of modern India and need to be counted as such
from now on.

Notes
1. Brojendranath Bandyopadhyay, ed., Sangbadpatre Sekaler Katha, Calcutta:
Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, be 1377, pp. 32–4.
2. Ibid., p. 33. Part of this section is substantially premised on my introduction
to Rosinka Chaudhuri, ed., Derozio, Poet of India: The Definitive Edition,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008.
3. Brojendranath Bandyopadhyay, ed., Sangbadpatre Sekaler Katha, p. 196. All
the un-translated words here are of indeterminate meaning. Firingi meant
a person of mixed race or a European; dargah, curiously, is the mausoleum
of a Muslim saint; while dharma in this case could be religion, truth, or
the right way.
4. Calcutta Courier, 18 August 1840.
5. David Drummond in The Weekly Examiner, 15 August 1840, p. 280. Dugald
Stewart (1753–1828) was a spokesman for the Scottish school of Common
Sense Philosophy founded by Thomas Reid that rejected the empiricism of
Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Thomas Brown attended the classes of Dugald
Stewart at the Edinburgh University and ultimately taught Stewart’s courses
at the University as a co-teacher till his death in 1820. English philosopher
John Locke (1632–1704), one of the most influential of the Enlightenment
thinkers, preceded both and is famous as the ‘Father of Liberalism’.
6. Ibid.
7. David Drummond in The Weekly Examiner, 26 September 1840, p. 350.
8. Thomas Edwards, Henry Derozio, The Eurasian Poet, Teacher, and Journalist,
Calcutta: W. Newman & Co., 1884, p. 167.
9. R.K. Dasgupta’s foreword to Francis Bradley-Birt, ed., Poems of Henry Louis
Vivian Derozio: A Forgotten Anglo-Indian Poet, Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1980. For a detailed discussion, see my notes to the poem ‘On the
Abolition of Suttee’ (1829), in Chaudhuri, ed., Derozio, Poet of India.
10. See, Derozio’s letter to H.H. Wilson, 26 April 1831, in Chaudhuri, ed.,
Derozio, Poet of India, p. 323.
11. See, Chaudhuri, ed., Derozio, Poet of India, p. 315.
12. Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics, London: Routledge, 1998,
p. 103.
13. Ibid.
14. Chaudhuri, ed., Derozio, Poet of India, p. 316.
15. For conclusive evidence on the fact that it was Derozio publishing under
the pseudonym Leporello, see, Chaudhuri, ed., Derozio, Poet of India.
 Chaudhuri: Derozio, Young Bengal 209
16. Leporello, ‘On Drunkenness’, in Derozio, Poet of India: The Definitive
Edition, ed. Rosinka Chaudhuri, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008,
pp. 69–79.
17. Dinabandhu, however, denied the charge, saying, famously, ‘Can Madhu
(honey) ever be Nim (bitter)?’; see, Khetra Gupta, ed., Dinabandhu
Rachanabali, Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1997, p. 36.
18. Ibid., pp. 126, 136.
19. For Nimchand’s speeches, see, ibid., pp. 134, 156.
20. In conclusion, Sarkar said here of Young Bengal: ‘Its impact on Bengali
society as a whole, as distinct from its intelligentsia crust, was very nearly
nil.’ See, Sumit Sarkar, ‘Complexities of Young Bengal’, A Critique of Colo-
nial India, Calcutta: Papyrus, 1985, p. 47.
21. ‘Vindication of Young Bengal’ signed ‘K’, in Bengal Hurkaru, 4 December
1848.
22. ‘Bengali Games and Amusements’, The Calcutta Review, January–June 1851,
p. 349–50.
23. ‘Indeed the “College boy” was a synonym for truth, and it was a general
belief and saying among our countrymen, which those who remember
the time must acknowledge, that “such a boy is incapable of falsehood,
because he is a college boy”.’ Recollections of Hurro Mohan Chatterjee,
cited in Francis Bradley-Birt, ed., Poems of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio:
A Forgotten Anglo-Indian Poet, London: H. Milford, Oxford University
Press, 1923, p. xxxiv.
24. Cited in Mohini Mohan Mukhopadhyay, ‘“The Young Bengal” And
Translation-Work’, Nineteenth-Century Studies, no. 7, 1974, p. 481.
25. Henry Meredith Parker, ‘Young India: A Bengal Eclogue’, in Bole Ponjis,
vol. II, London: W. Thacker & Co., 1851, pp. 223–8. Significantly, when
the poem had originally appeared in the India Gazette on 20 October
1831, a couple of months before Derozio died, it had been called ‘A Bengal
Pastoral’; the term ‘Young India’, therefore, was only thought of at the time
of its inclusion in a volume in 1851. For the full discussion, see, Rosinka
Chaudhuri, ‘“Young India: A Bengal Eclogue”; Meat-eating, Race and
Reform in a Colonial Poem’, in Freedom and Beef Steaks: Colonial Calcutta
Culture, Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2012, pp. 17–41.
26. A. Gupta, ed., Studies in the Bengal Renaissance, Calcutta: National Council
of Education, 1958, p. 19.
27. Priyaranjan Sen, Western Influence in Bengali Literature, Calcutta: Calcutta
University Press, 1932, pp. 141–2.
28. Peary Chand Mittra, A Biographical Sketch of David Hare, Calcutta: W.
Newman & Co., 1877, p. 16.
29. Ibid., p. xxviii.
210 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
30. According to Rajnarain Basu, the Hindu College was known at this time
by three names, Hindu College, Anglo Indian College, and simply, the
College. See, Rajnarain Basu, Se Kaal Aar E Kaal: An Essay on the effects of
Western Civilisation on Hindu Society, ed. B. Banerjee and S. Das, Calcutta:
Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, 1956, p. 44.
31. Parker, ‘Young India: A Bengal Eclogue’, p. 223.
32. Ibid., pp. 224–5.
33. Edwards, Henry Derozio, p. 32.
34. Alexander Duff, India and India Missions, Edinburgh: J. Johnstone, 1839,
p. 616.
35. Ibid.
36. Cedric Dover, ‘Henry Derozio: Eurasian Poet and Preceptor’, The Poetry
Review, vol. 27, no. 2, 1936, pp. 110–11.
37. Mittra, A Biographical Sketch of David Hare, p. 32.
38. Parker, ‘Young India: A Bengal Eclogue’, p. 228.
39. Bhabani Bhattacharya, Socio-Political Currents in Bengal: A Nineteenth-
Century Perspective, Ghaziabad: Vikas, 1980, p. 9.
40. The native managers of the Hindu College were alarmed at the progress
which some of the pupils were making under Derozio, by actually cutting
their way through ham and beef, and wading to liberalism through
tumblers of beer. From this new feature of Hindu education, the praise
or blame of which must rest on the memory of Derozio, the managers
dreaded the worst consequences. To put a stop to further in the science of
Gastronomy, Derozio was dismissed in 1831. This is the plain unvarnished
story.
   See, Elliot Walter Madge, Henry Derozio: The Eurasian Poet and
Reformer, 3rd edn., Calcutta: Naya Prakash, 1982, p. 42.
41. Arun Nag, ed., Satik Hutom Pyanchar Naksa, Calcutta: Subarnarekha, 1991,
pp. 46–7.
42. Digambar Mitra rose to eminence after becoming private tutor to Kumar
Krishnanath Nandy of Kasimbazar, who gifted him a sum of one lakh
rupees. After Krishnanath’s suicide, he established his own successful silk
and indigo businesses, acquired land and estates, became the first Bengali
Sheriff of Calcutta, and was decorated with the C.S.I. and later the title of
‘Raja’. See Nag, Satik Hutom Pyanchar Naksha, p. 53.
43. Translation mine. See, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Bankim Rachanavali,
vol. III, ed. J.C. Bagal, Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1969, p. 139.
44. Shoshee Chunder Dutt, ‘Young Bengal or the Hopes of India’, in Essays on
Miscellaneous Subjects, Calcutta: Military Orphan Press, 1854, pp. 1–49.
45. Kristo Doss Paul, Young Bengal Vindicated: A Discourse read at the Hare
Anniversary Meeting, Calcutta: Stanhope Press, 1856.
 Chaudhuri: Derozio, Young Bengal 211
46. Girish Chunder Ghosh, The Calcutta Review, May 1858, n.p. In his essay,
Madhusudan had written, in 1854, ‘The Hindu, as he stands before you,
is a fallen being; Once a green, a tall, a majestical, a flowering tree—but
now—blasted by lightning!’ See Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Madhusudan
Rachanabali, Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1993, p. 630.
47. Basu described Derozio, for instance, as having an Italian father and Indian
mother. See, Rajnaraian Basu, Se Kaal Aar E Kaal: An Essay on the effects
of Western Civilisation on Hindu Society, ed. B. Banerjee and S. Das,
Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, 1998, p. 24.
48. Peary Chand Mittra, A Biographical Sketch of David Hare (1877); repr.,
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, ed., Selected English Writings Peary Chand
Mittra, Kolkata: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, 2015, p. 29.
49. Ibid., p. 31.
50. Bhola Nauth Chunder, ‘Recollections of the Old Hindoo College’, pt. II,
The Calcutta University Magazine, March 1895, pp. 32–3.
51. Sibnath Sastri, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Banga Samaj, Calcutta: New
Age Publishers, 1957, pp. 86–8.
52. D.C. Sen, History of Bengali Language and Literature, Calcutta: Calcutta
University Press, 1911, p. 883.
53. See, Gautam Chattopadhyay, Awakening in Bengal, Calcutta: Progressive,
1965.
54. Pallab Sengupta, Jharer Pakhi: Kabi Derozio, Calcutta: Pustak Bipani, 1971;
Prasanta Samanta, tr., Derozior Kichhu Kabita, Calcutta: Manna, 2005,
p. 3.
55. Susobhan Sarkar, On the Bengal Renaissance, Calcutta: Papyrus, 2002 (first
published July 1979), p. 160.
 8

Hinduism under Interpretative Stress

A View from Nineteenth-
Century Bengal

Amiya Prosad Sen

Opening Remarks

T
his essay constitutes an analytical narrative on the flow
of Hindu consciousness and thought as manifest in broadly
the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It is, in other words,
a study in Hindu hermeneutics, which, in confronting moral and
intellectual challenges thrown by Western modernity, consciously
tried to define and redefine Hinduism or what it meant to be a
‘Hindu’ under visibly altered historical circumstances. In other
words, the question of what it meant to be a Hindu was now
inextricably connected with that of how the Hindu identity itself
could best negotiate modernity. In this essay, I look at some important
conceptual and theoretical issues associated with this interpretative
process and study, at some length, representative voices that most
vitally carried this out.
To begin with, it is important to more precisely define the scope
of this essay, pointing especially to some of the important exclusions I
have been persuaded to make, both on account of limitations of space
and the relative paucity of source materials. Though aware of their
intrinsic importance, I have not been able to take up four relatively
under-researched areas within the world of Hindu religious thought
in nineteenth century Bengal: the foundations of Brahmo dharma
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 213

in Hindu religious and philosophical thought, the birth of pseudo-

scientific theories on Hinduism advanced typically by Pandit Sasadhar
Tarkachudamani (1851–1928), the advancement of Hindu missionary
organizations such as the Calcutta-based Dharma Mandali or the
more spatially expansive Bharat Arya Dharma Pracharini Sabha, and
finally, the invention of new Hindu cultural paradigms like ‘Hindutwa’
by a new crop of writers like the literary critic Chandranath Basu
(1844–1910).
It is also just as important to acknowledge that the expression
‘religious thought’ is far better applied to the social and cultural
rhetoric of the Western educated Hindu intelligentsia than on
the old–worldly, formally uneducated figures like Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa (1836–86), whom I have also included in this essay.
In essence, Ramakrishna was a sadhaka, whose spiritual praxis did
not adopt the language or analytical categories of modern discourse.
It was based instead on intense intuitive experience, which his best-
known disciple, Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), was to later call
anubhava.
I begin by advancing certain theoretical arguments related to
the paradigms of ‘reform’ and ‘revival’, which is the intellectual and
cultural framework within which much of contemporary Hindu
thought situated itself. A critical examination of such concepts also
reveals how the hermeneutic enterprise of the Hindu intelligentsia of
late-nineteenth-century Bengal was riddled with deep seated tensions.

Problematizing ‘Reform’

The following passage appears in Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s

(1838–94) Letters on Hinduism: ‘Let us revere the past, but we must,
in justice to our new life, adopt new methods of interpretation and
adapt the old, eternal and undying truths to the necessities of that
new life’.1
Quite remarkable for the way it tries to articulate the self-
conscious optimism of the Hindu Bengali intelligentsia, this
passage also flags off, as it were, a self-conscious engagement with
modernity. As a particularly gifted member of the new intelligentsia,
214 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Bankimchandra was clearly committed towards what he perceived as

a significant reordering of the indigenous society and ways of life. For
him and many others of his class, this implied a critical engagement
with both the Indian present and the past in a manner that was
hermeneutically significant and positive. In this view, evidently, the
present had to be anchored in the past and yet freed of its archaic
and socially oppressive elements. Above all, the ‘new’ life that was
expected to be in the offing was to be determined through employing
new categories of thought and not merely a refurbishing of the old
ones. Ironically though, this buoyant spirit appears also to have
been marred by the some incipient confusion. Arguably, this arose
in Bankim’s unwitting adherence to two perceptibly different views
of time and history: the evolving and the static. The need to ‘adopt’
new views or perspectives on society or culture emphatically supports
the first. On the contrary, the claim that ‘truths’, apart from being
old, were also ‘eternal’ and ‘undying’, tends to freeze culture in time.
Such ‘truths’ appear uncreated, authorless, and located outside time
and history. Bankim’s problematic attempt to somehow juxtapose
the transformative possibilities within a tradition with the idea of
an unchanging core that it is also said to possess is also to be noted.
Not surprisingly, in his writings on Hinduism, we may often read
two contrary presuppositions placed alongside: first, that all cultures,
in order to remain vibrant and meaningful, had to modernize along
a universally accepted trajectory; and second, that the ‘purity’ and
‘authenticity’ of a culture or tradition was directly proportional to its
historically established age. The first was universalizing and futuristic,
and the second, trapped in cultural nostalgia.
When attempting to redefine Hinduism, Bankimchandra, I
imagine, was clearly in need of a theory of values. Yet it somehow
escaped him that ‘truths’, when rendered ‘adaptable’, would constitute
only a relative theory of values, and an entirely relative theory of
values, one might justly argue, could not effectively be a theory
of values. There also had to be some space for absolutes. Second,
it was one thing to assume that there had to be certain core and
immutable values, and quite another to suggest that even as eternal
and unchanging, these could be suitably ‘adapted’ across time. It
would be hard to imagine that such an intellectually gifted man
as Bankimchandra was completely unaware of the self-conflicting
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 215

framework within which he had placed himself. And yet, in his

defence, it might be said that the complexities inherent both in the
contemporary political environment and in the cultural agenda
represented by his class offered no easy solution.
As the largest community (numerically) in British India that was
quick to produce a modern intelligentsia, the Hindus were suitably
prepared to respond to the significant changes occurring in their
immediate environment. The case of Bengal was, in some ways,
distinctive. As the province to first come under British occupation and
get exposure to contemporary Western thought, nineteenth-century
Bengal saw a productive efflorescence of thought and culture. This
led the Hindu Bengalis to critically review and refurbish the most
important aspects of their everyday lives: their domestic economy,
civic and political consciousness, man-woman relationships, religion,
rituals, culture, language, literary production, and speculative
thinking. Over time, the one term that was to cast an ubiquitous
influence on all of the above was ‘reform’—a term that was also
used interchangeably with ‘modern’ and ‘modernity’. The paradigm
of reform became the very moral and intellectual foundation of
modernity. However, it was widely accepted that its age or antiquity
had also considerably affected the internal strength or vitality of the
Indian civilization with its most noble and distinctive qualities marred
by archaic modes of thought and irrational practices. This called for
careful self-reflection and corrective cultural strategies.

The Modalities of Reform

Let us begin by taking note of the four distinctive features which
came to characterize efforts of social and religious reforms in Bengal.
In the first place, the prominent site for social reform itself here was
religion over society, a feature that caused some unhappiness among
non-Bengali reformers, especially those from Maharashtra.2 Second,
such reform was almost always initiated either by a Brahman or else
a member of the upper bracket castes of Baidya or Kayastha, on
occasions with the support of the colonial state. With its pronounced
dependence on textual sources and their interpreters, and inspired
no doubt by the orientalist interest in the religion of the Hindus,
the overarching nature of Hindu Bengali reformism was certainly
216 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Brahmanical, if not exclusively Brahman-dominated. Third, when

compared to the records in other provinces of British India, notably
Bombay and Madras, movements related to social reform in Bengal
were almost exclusively focused on woman-related issues, to the
palpable neglect of other matters like caste. Fourth, late-nineteenth-
century Bengal was also to witness perhaps the most intense
reactionary movement, a fact that looks paradoxical given the early
success of reform movements in this province. In 1891, Bengali
Hindus rose to a state of near-revolt against the proposed Age of
Consent Act, which attempted to only marginally increase the legal
age of consent (for marriage) from 10 to 12.

Religion as the Site of the Social

It is customary to view Raja Rammohun Roy (1774–1833) primarily
as a social crusader, especially for the way he is known to have
encouraged the colonial state to enact the law against sati. In hindsight,
however, his true radicalism lies in his extremely courageous and
innovative reading of esoteric Hindu scriptures, primarily the Brahma
Sutra and (select) Upanisads. Quite uncharacteristically and in
defiance of orthodox norms, Rammohun not only translated such
texts (comprising shruti) into Bengali and English, but also put them
in the public domain by circulating printed copies. Equally radical was
his view that rather than remaining esoteric, the shruti could be made
accessible to women and shudras—groups which had been hitherto
denied this privilege.3 By comparison, his support for the abolition
of sati has to be qualified in at least three aspects. First, Rammohun’s
opposition to sati had been anticipated even by his most orthodox
opponent, the Pandit Mritunjoy Vidyalankar (1762–1819) of Fort
William College. Second, there was the caution that Rammohun is
known to have consistently exercised in matters of social legislation,
advising Governor General Bentinck not to rush into legislation; and
third, he valorized a life of pious celibacy for the widow, for which,
incidentally, he drew copious support from the Bhagavad Gita.4 It
did not strike Rammohun that some of the women rescued from
the funeral pyre might at least be given the choice of remarriage.
Not surprisingly therefore, in the 1850s, when the educationist and
reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–91) attempted to legalize
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 217

the marriage of upper caste widows, Rammohun’s preference for

the pious and celibate life of the Hindu widows was to considerably
weaken the argument in favour of the former.
For Rammohun, the heuristic categories were not really the
‘religious’ and the ‘secular’, but rather ‘good religion’ and its ‘perverted’
forms. In truth, the purely secular voice in support of social reform
was palpably weak in Bengal. The Brahmo Samaj, after Rammohun,
increasingly acquired a theological orientation, and though its
record for social work is on the whole impressive, the will for such
work was born of the idea that social equality was most effectively
founded on acknowledging our common source in God, or that social
amelioration was contingent on tangible improvements within the
religious life of the community. Perhaps the greatest Brahmo religious
leader of his day, Keshab Chandra Sen (1838–84) believed that
a spiritual regeneration had to precede the social.5 Interestingly
enough, such ideas were strongly echoed even by Hindu mission-
aries, of whom the best known instance is Swami Vivekananda
(1863–1902).6

Regulated Reformism
It cannot simply be a matter of coincidence that in Bengal, all major
initiatives for social reform came from the Brahmans or the upper
castes. In hindsight, this appears to have imparted two qualities to
reform movements in ethnic Bengal. In the first instance, it helped
retain the status of the Brahmans as the law givers, an authority figure,
and hence, the operative source of change. Among other things, this
discouraged radical and dissenting movements from below which
could threaten to take away the initiative from the hands of the
upper castes and unleash changes which the latter was unwilling to
accept. This is precisely what happened in the Bombay and Madras
presidencies, where movements by the lower castes set radical agendas
for change and which came into immediate conflict with agendas set
by the upper caste society. Men like E.V. Ramasamy Periyar (1879–
1973) and Jyotirao Phule (1827–90) dismissed the very paradigm of
‘reform’ as a category manipulatively devised by the upper castes to
effect only cosmetic changes. Quite significantly, Periyar was also to
argue that no meaningful social change was possible unless religion
218 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

itself was taken out of the equation.7 In his understanding, all acts
of social injustice and oppression had their sanction in religion. In
so doing, he clearly rejected the model of change set in motion by
reformist figures from Bengal.

The Woman Question and Caste

Caste contestations were relatively weaker in ethnic Bengal when
compared to other places in British India, and it is no surprise
therefore that for much of the nineteenth century, there was no
organized movement against caste discrimination worth the name.
Indeed, caste privileges were at times quite dramatically renounced
by members of the Brahmo Samaj, as for instance by the Brahman
Ramtanu Lahiri (1813–98) and even by the conservative leader of
the Adi Brahmo Samaj, Maharshi Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905),
who was gracious enough to invite Baidya Keshab Chandra Sen, to
preach from the Brahmo pulpit. In substance, though, these were
isolated, individuated, and symbolic gestures that failed to provide
the momentum for a concerted and meaningful social campaign
against caste. By comparison, both among Hindus and Brahmos,
efforts to educate women and to generally improve their social and
cultural status bore more enduring results. However, this must also
be qualified by taking note of the strange exceptions that reformers
made in separating issues that were otherwise deeply related. Thus, as
in Bombay or elsewhere, the Hindu community in Bengal was more
willing to allow the remarriage of child widows over those widowed
in adulthood. For one, it was felt that a widow with children from her
first marriage could ill-adjust to her new environment. However, there
was also the perception that to be widowed at a very early age was
more traumatic than to be widowed in adulthood, a perception that
obviously did not hold true in every case. The interesting development
here is that the opponents of widow remarriage were not always
drawn from the class of orthodox Hindu scholars or ritual specialists
such as those who had vehemently opposed the reformer Vidyasagar
himself. An extremely powerful rhetoric against such marriages were
to regularly appear in the writings of Bankimchandra, and even the
Hindu monk, Vivekananda, was heard to complain that in a province
(Bengal) where it was the fate of girls to remain spinsters all their
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 219

lives, encouraging widow marriages would be a travesty of justice!8

Far fewer widow marriages were celebrated in ethnic Bengal than in
Godavari delta under the initiative of the Niyogi reformer Kandukuri
Viresalingam (1848–1919), notwithstanding the fact that unlike
what occurred in Maharashtra or in the south, Bengali reformers
did not have to face the wrath of orthodox authority figures like
the Sankaracharya.9 Similarly, while female education made some
progress in the province, thanks to the efforts of Vidyasagar himself
and the English philanthropist John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune
(1801–51), and while Bengal could boast of producing the first female
graduates from all over India, outside the community of Brahmos, the
age of marriage for girls or the issue of selecting a suitable marriage
partner remained highly contentious issues. In hindsight, reformers
like Vidyasagar, who squandered their time and personal fortune in
trying to promote widow marriages, were later to realize how the
dead weight of custom (deshachar) and old habits outweighed even
the sanction of scriptures. Bankimchandra, who was opposed to
Vidyasagar’s campaign for widow marriage and the legal abolition
of multiple marriages in Brahman males (Kulinism), nevertheless
made a point of substance. It was his argument that irrational habits
or practices among a community would cease to exist only after the
community itself had no use for these; they could never be effectively
removed through locating scriptural sanction or recourse to changes
in law.10 Here, it would be important to mention that especially in his
later days, Bankimchandra also strongly disapproved of the idea of
non-Hindus claiming to speak for the Hindus. It was on this ground
that he entered into an extended dispute with Revd William Hastie,
an episode to which we shall refer again later, and the Parsi reformer
from Gujarat, Behramji M. Malabari (1853–1912), who was keen to
bring about an upward revision in the legally permissible minimum
age for marriage among women.

The Growth of a Conservative Rhetoric

By the early 1880s, when Bankimchandra began to innovatively
reformulate his views on God and religion, there had also grown in
Bengal a conservative backlash against reform and reformers. Not
surprisingly, this was most aggressively directed at the Brahmos,
220 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

allegedly for their anglicized habits and the rejection of several

customary ideas or practices prevalent among Hindus. A new species
of vernacular writers and journalists, whose reach went beyond
urban Calcutta into the neighbouring villages and smaller towns,
produced biting satires on the ‘Brahmika’, the female Brahmo who
habitually wore shoes and stockings, spent her afternoons in reading
and reflection, to the neglect of her household chores, and ‘brazenly’
socialised with men. Contemporary literature also grew anxious
about the fate of the educated Hindu housewife, whose growing
consumerism and nagging demands taxed the meagre resources of
the husband. The extended family, allegedly, was breaking up under
stress from economic competition and tendencies in possessive
housewives, who showed little concern for people beyond their
immediate family. There was now widespread resentment against
young widows, spinsters, and girls of an impressionable age who were
enjoying romantic escapades through the pages of the increasingly
popular Bengali novel (e.g. the novels by Bankimchandra serialized
in the Bangadarshan). The Bengali daily, Bangabasi, which regularly
articulated such social concerns and anxieties, 11 enjoyed a weekly
circulation of over 20,000 copies, a sales figure that no contemporary
liberal-reformist journal in Calcutta or outside ever enjoyed. Outside
the world of popular journalism, there also emerged treatises on
how best to run the domestic economy of the Bengali Hindus and
on matters regulating their everyday social and ritual life. Two best
known examples of this genre are the Paribarik Prabandha (essays
on the family, 1882) and the Aachar Prabandha (essays on customary
rites, 1892), both produced by a gifted Brahman educationist who
otherwise befriended many Englishmen and rose fairly high in the
service of the state. As noted above, an important cultural treatise
on just what constituted ‘Hinduness’ (Hindutva) was also produced
in 1892 by the prolific Bengali literary critic, Chandranath Basu.
Quite tellingly, its appearance followed a spate of reactionary events,
whereby not merely orthodox scholars, but also women and children
were heard of taking to the streets with anxious cries of ‘religion
in danger’.12 It is something of an irony that Vidyasagar, who had
consistently considered the intervention of the colonial state to be
vital to the success of any meaningful social legislation, was among
those who opposed the idea of the Age of Consent Bill in 1891 on the
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 221

ground that this violated the sanctity of certain customs traditionally

upheld by the Hindus.13
In the 1880s, a Brahman priest, serving a temple located north
of Calcutta, attracted the attention of several young men, through
his rustic preaching and parables. Unemployed young men, anxiety
driven clerks resenting a life of poverty and persecution, students
disenchanted with schools, holy men, and religious leaders from
various faiths flocked to him during weekends so that they might
be consoled by his endearing worlds and charismatic presence. For
many, this was a welcome loss of their alienated self and a comforting
return to their nativity.

Is ‘Hindu Revivalism’ a valid Expression?

In recent historical writing, the expression ‘Hindu revivalism’ has
often been read as something culturally regressive and inherently
opposed to reform. However, this also has an older history, going
back to the controversy that occurred between Mahadev Govind
Ranade (1842–1901) and Lala Lajpat Rai (1865–1928) in the closing
years of the nineteenth century.14 At that time, the nationalist leader
from the Punjab had quite convincingly rebutted the idea suggested
by his antagonist that ‘revivalist’ postures could in every case be
associated with an archaic or a reactionary value system. Specifically,
in the context of colonial Bengal, the historian Tarasankar Banerjee
has found it to carry pejorative meanings, 15 and M.K. Haldar
has categorically denied that a Hindu nationalist could also be a
humanist.16 Against such perceptions, however, we may cite the
opinion of the veteran Brahmo leader Sibnath Sastri (1847–1919),
who once rightly argued that far from being ‘obscurantists’ or ‘arch-
medievalists’, the opponents of the Brahmo Samaj were generally
people who had been equally influenced by the new educational and
cultural environment and that in many instances, the reason for their
not joining the reformist party was not so much the lack of conviction
but simply the lack of moral courage.17 After all, even reformers of
the Brahmo camp were not known to consistently side with reform.
Ramtanu Lahiri, of whom we have spoken before, renounced the
sacred thread but chose to get his daughter married to a Brahman.
Also, Debendranath Tagore disagreed with Keshab Chandra over the
222 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

question of pacing social reform, thereby leading to a schism within

the Brahmo Samaj in 1866.
In 1987, an argument put forth by the historian Tapan Ray-
chaudhuri had asserted that the term ‘revivalism’ could not be
justly employed for Hinduism or Hindu ways of life that were ‘far
from dead’.18 Here, Raychaudhuri’s critique appears to replicate an
argument earlier used by Chandranath Basu.19 To me, however,
both Basu and Raychaudhuri appear to be in error simply because
one could possibly revive the dying, not the dead. That Hindu
civilization and culture was on its deathbed, if not actually dead, is
a nauseatingly recurring theme in contemporary Bengali literature,
and the regularity or repetitiveness with which this appears hints at
deep-rooted and widespread anxieties.
Contrary to claims made in certain quarters, most ‘revivalist’
programmes implied a degree of reformism. Prima facie, Bankim-
chandra’s choice of the Bhagavad Gita as the urtext for modern
Hindus would look suspiciously ‘revivalist’ but for the fact that he
also chose to produce a new commentary on this text, respectfully
brushing aside the readings of Acharya Sankara and investing it
instead with new and contemporaneous meanings.20 Attempts at
‘revival’ essentially implied the idea that what was once ‘pure’ and
‘authentic’ was now being returned to its original state, minus layers
and layers of false accretions that had been allowed to settle on it
through time. Arguably, the revivalist has to be separated from the
reactionary. Reform could not have been radically opposed to revival
for it was the very idiom in which its spoke.21

II

The ‘New’ Hinduism of

Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay

In a fairly persuasive essay, Nirad C. Chaudhury once rated

Bankimchandra as the ‘greatest’ Bengali.22 Such ascriptions are likely
to remain a matter of debate and yet, there can be little reason to doubt
that in the nineteenth century, the life and work of Bankimchandra
came to be identified with much that was to characterize the middle
class Bengalis: their private emotions, intellectual interests, political
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 223

ambitions, and aesthetic preferences. In his day, he was probably

the man who was not only best read in the scientific, literary, and
philosophical discourses of contemporary Europe, but equally
familiar with indigenous thought and ways of life as well. This enabled
him to intellectually navigate the meandering, at times tortuous,
course between tradition and modernity with care and creativity,
seeking meaning and relevance in both.
The religious life and thought of Bankimchandra has seldom
attracted scholarly attention, and Western scholars in particular
have, at times, been misled into believing that his semantic and
conceptual play with older terms or concepts fully emptied these
of traditionally accepted content and meaning, replacing these
with ideas that were suspiciously modern and culturally apologetic.
Bankim’s magnum opus, the Krishnacharitra (life of Krishna, 1886;
revised and enlarged edition, 1892) has been justly interpreted as
a work essentially invested with political meaning,23 and yet, there
remains ample evidence to prove that this political reading of the life
and work of the popular Hindu god Krishna, did not fully do away
with the question of the divine, and on a life founded on piety and
faith in a personal god.
It is possible to offer three related explanations about just why
the religious life and thought of Bankimchandra has attracted
relatively little attention. In the first place, this aspect of his life has
been overshadowed and overtaken by the mounting public interest
in him as a gifted novelist and the editor of a highly popular Bengali
journal, the Bangadarshan (founded 1872), that once became the
rage of middle class Bengali households. Second, Bankimchandra
also remains well known as the author of the patriotic song ‘Vande
Matram’ and for his evocative imageries of the burgeoning nation
as the Mother. Third, and no less importantly, we have to reckon
with the fact that the religious views of Bankimchandra were often
sharply at variance with those commonly held by his community.
Thus, the Krishna that he presents in his Krishnacharitra was not quite
the subject of popular awe and reverence; nor was this the Krishna
commonly worshipped in Hindu temples or homes. Again, though
a Vaishnava in his religious orientation, Bankimchandra showed no
scruples about observing ritual purity regarding food and drink, a
matter of utmost importance within Bengali Vaishnavism. Thus, in an
224 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

essay written by him in the early 1880s, we find a Vaishnava mendicant

feast on mutton and then prepare to savour fowl curry cooked by a
Muslim!24 Not surprisingly, some scholars have been persuaded to
claim that it was not Hinduism that Bankimchandra commented
upon, since his discourse seldom touched upon commonplace ideas
and practices or the belief in afterlife that were important to the
common Hindus. Critics who make such claims also argue that the
attempt to accommodate God and religion in his discourse was really
a concession that Bankimchandra reluctantly made to placate Hindu
sentiments.25 Such views call for closer scrutiny.
An analytical view of the growth of Hindu religious life and
thought in colonial Bengal clearly separates Bankimchandra from
several of his contemporaries, and invests him with certain distinctive
qualities of his own. Thus, his thoughts on the Hindu society and
religion are clearly different from the post-Enlightenment deism of
Akshay Kumar Dutta (1820–86), the somewhat functionalist views of
Rammohun Roy, the agnosticism of Vidyasagar, the pseudo-scientific
theories of Pandit Sasadhar Tarkachudamani (1851–1928), the pious
asceticism of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the obsessive urge to follow
a ritually ordered life as in case of Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay (1827–94),
the Vedantic monasticism of Swami Vivekananda, or the worship of
the formless god of the Brahmos. Some of these trends he promptly
rejected, others he treated with circumspection, while yet others he
tried to re-establish on a modified footing.
Bankimchandra carried out researches into the history, literature,
philosophy, religion, and social manners of the Hindus for about
twenty years, and while some of his views or opinions changed
over time, there is an underlying unity of thought and perception
that we must not lose sight of. For instance, though increasingly
disenchanted with a purely functionalist-utilitarian view of religion
or society, he never gave this up entirely. Also, in some respects, his
views on contemporary Hindu religious or ethical life remained just
as critical in the 1880s and 1890s as was the case some two decades
earlier. This is quite extraordinary, given the fact that in his later years,
Bankimchandra was drawn into bitter polemics with evangelists and
other critics of contemporary Hinduism, which might have easily
led him to apologetics or else to tone down critical judgements on
his own community. Broadly speaking though, we may still separate
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 225

the early Bankimchandra of the 1870s with his marked impatience

for irrational accretions that had allegedly crept into Hinduism, or
his bemoaning of the visible lack of an investigative scientific spirit,
or his urge to master the natural environment from a life that was
increasingly taken up by a religious consciousness. Somewhat in the
manner of Rammohun himself, Bankimchandra believed that in his
time, the Hindu ‘awakening’ had to be propelled by an epistemological
revolution, a Baconian concern for the transformative power that
knowledge could bring about. The Hindu mind, in his understanding,
had taken more to abstract metaphysics, primarily owing to its lack of
interest in the working of natural phenomenon. This mind excelled
in speculative thinking, but not in the powers born of inductive
reasoning and observation—the defining qualities of all scientific
thought. Over time, however, Bankimchandra also came around to
the view that while Western superiority over the material aspects of
human life was indisputable and was wholly worthy of emulation by
India, material progress in itself was vacuous and demoralizing unless
also offset by an underlying spiritual quest in man. Though Europe
had conquered the external world and the Hindus the internal, India
and Europe could still profitably exchange with one another the
distinctive and defining qualities of their own civilizations.26 After
Bankim, this was to become a popular trope for the nationalist Hindu
discourse of the nineteenth century.
In the early 1870s, Bankim’a agenda appears to have been to
disabuse the Hindu mind of a compulsive preoccupation with
religion. In a study of Hindu festivals, to cite an apt instance, his
argument was that several festivals which had acquired a religious
character had actually originated in rural life and agrarian production
cycles.27 Such views, importantly enough, appear about the same time
as empathetic studies on the plight of the poverty-stricken Bengali
peasant, radical outbursts against ‘barbaric’ restrictions with regard to
food and drink sanctioned by Hinduism, or the unjust insistence on
‘perpetual widowhood’.28 Bankim, however, was not very consistent
with most of these views, especially in later life. He declined to reprint
the essay advocating a social parity between man and woman (Samya,
1879), arguing that such views as he had articulated in the work
were impractical and misplaced. Some years later, when writing the
Dharmatattwa (1888), Bankimchandra was to speak not of gender
226 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

equality, but the respectful reverence (bhakti) that a woman was

expected to reveal towards man, all in the interest of better social
cohesion. A more radical change of opinion occurred in respect of
widow marriages. In the late-nineteenth-century Bengal, Bankim’s
was one of the consistently conservative voices opposed to the idea
of widow marriages, and in hindsight, it might even be said that such
conservatism was perhaps was more dramatically propagated through
his highly popular novels. The other important shift that took place in
the 1880s was the return to a view that treated religion as all pervasive
and ubiquitous. In his Letters on Hinduism, Bankimchandra was
constrained to make the point that for the word ‘Religion’, the Hindu
had really no equivalent since that term underlay and determined
every important aspect of the everyday life of the Hindu: ‘With other
people religion is only a part of life’, he was to observe, ‘there are
things religious and there are things lay and secular. To the Hindu,
his whole life was religion’.29
An anthropological interest in religion and religious life was to
consistently remain a part of Bankimchandra’s researches, for, even
in the 1890s, he was to undertake a fascinating study of Vedic deities
and the mythology surrounding them.30 In such works, he also reveals
an impressive knowledge of mythologies across world cultures. There
is, however, something extraordinary about Bankim’s newly found
interest in Vedic studies. In his early life, he had reason to critique
the Vedic revival of Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1825–83) as
archaic and obsolete. By the early 1880s, however, his interest in the
Vedas had been partly revived by the critical remarks made by Revd
Krishnamohan Banerjee (1813–85) who had faulted Bankimchandra
for neglecting the ‘foundational’ role that the Vedas had played in
Hindu life.31 Interestingly enough, the renewed interest in Vedic
studies also enabled Bankimchandra to strongly contest some of the
orientalist conclusions of F. Max Muller (1823–1900), a feature to
which we shall presently turn.

The Twin Faces of Krishna

The two major treatises of Bankimchandra are the Krishnacharitra
and the Dharmatattwa. Both works have been viewed critically and a
common argument made by critics is that these are somewhat fanciful
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 227

and contrived in nature, deviating sharply from popular Hindu

notions of what constituted ethics and religion. The Krishnacharitra
has been generally understood as only a thinly veiled political work,
and the Dharmatattwa, a treatise that allegedly adds untypical
meanings to the traditionally important category of Dharma.
In the Krishnacharitra, Bankimchandra attempts to establish
the historical Krishna through a rigorous scrutiny of extant sources,
impatiently weeding out texts that allegedly tarnished the moral
standing of the immensely popular god. Here, Bankim’s objections
were mainly focused on the Puranic sources, chiefly the Bhagavat
Purana, which depicted Krishna as a pastoral, amorously playful
divinity, to whom members of the opposite sex felt greatly attracted.
In Bankim’s scheme of things, this was clearly unacceptable, since
rather than uphold the moral order and reinforce established social
norms, narratives celebrating sexual escapades were brazenly anti-
structure and grossly disrespectful of conventions. For the author of
the Krishnacharitra, a morally virtuous god alone could be expected
to set the right examples for humanity and remain pivotal to a
reformed social and moral order. The rejection of the pastoral Krishna
naturally took Bankimchandra to an alternate tradition where this
figure was cast in the heroic mould of the diplomat, warrior, and
statesman. Predictably, the source for this was the Mahabharata
and to a lesser extent, the Harivamsa. The epic Krishna, as the hard-
headed, rational male figure came far closer to the image of an ideal
man and nation-builder which Bankimchandra was attempting to
locate historically and the prototypes for which he found in select
statesmen of contemporary Europe: Bismarck and Count Cavour. In
the Krishnacharitra, Krishna is a god descended on earth, but fully
human in his everyday acts or functions. On one level, this only
echoes the older Vaishnava idea that the human form was the most
exalted form that god could possibly take. But more importantly,
god’s actions as a human enabled him to set the right examples
the for ordinary mortals to follow; on the contrary, miracles and
supernatural feats ascribed to god only increased the distance between
man and god.
Rejecting the pastoral Krishna also led Bankimchandra to cast
doubt upon the figure of Radha, a cowherdess (gopi), whom folk
literature depicted as another man’s wife and in some traditions
228 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

(as in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, as also folk Vaishnavism),

as even Krishna’s maternal aunt. This made the secret, nocturnal
trysts between Radha and Krishna, both scandalous and incestuous,
copiously celebrated in both folk literature and court poetry. The
rejection of Radha as the folk heroine might have also been aided
by the fact that she did not appear by name even in the Bhagavat
Purana, the source book for Vaishnava theology and devotional
aesthetics. What Bankimchandra appears to have overlooked though
is that Radha was a far older figure in Prakrit literature, dating back
to the early years of the Christian era, and that in some Vaishnava
sub-traditions, Radha was no less sacred a name than Krishna.32 In
popular culture, the erotic dalliance between Radha and Krishna, even
when described in vivid, highly eroticized detail, had not come in the
way eulogizing the mutual love of Radha and Krishna, raising this
to the level of pious adoration. In the bhadralok-Victorian culture of
nineteenth-century-Bengal, however, the succumbing of a male god
to the temptations of the flesh militated against the idea of a virile
godhead. In the urban locale of colonial Calcutta, growing puritanism
came down heavily upon popular dramatic enactments of Krishna’s
adolescent life, whether in public spaces or in private parlours, all in
the name of containing ‘vulgarity’. The bhadralok writers now took
greater care to remind their readers that the Krishna of the Bhagavata
was implicated not simply in adulterous love but also in sheer
lechery, going by the popular legends current about his consorting
with countless gopis, most of them married, and quite ‘scandalously’
described in a sequence of five chapters from this text called the
‘Ras Panchadhyay’. For the bhadralok press, the most shocking of
all episodes was the one in which a juvenile Krishna stealthily stole
the garments belonging to the gopis bathing in a tank and thereafter
forced them to appear before him in a state of utter nakedness: an act
that theologians had interpreted as only a metaphor for a complete
self-surrender before god. After all, the most prized possession of a
woman was her sense of modesty, and by agreeing to give that up
too, the gopis had only exhibited their absolute reverence for divinity.
All the same, Bankimchandra refused to believe that such tales could
have any morally edifying effect on the Hindu mind; on the contrary,
these only sullied the good name of Hinduism. In the Krishnacharitra,
when discussing the Bhagavata as a source book, Bankimchandra
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 229

deliberately refrained from paraphrasing the ‘vastraharana’ episode

described above, for fear that it would be misconstrued by both
Europeans and such Hindus who had not the wherewithal to separate
the grain from the chaff.
The historicization of Krishna and the attempt to re-establish
him as a fully human figure was clearly inspired by the researches
of Renan and Strauss in Europe, who had claimed to have similarly
rescued the historical Jesus from Christian legend and mythology.
In the 1870s, at a time when he was seriously attracted by Comte
and Positive philosophy, Krishna also appeared to Bankimchandra
as the ideal man who interpreted religion not as dogma or theology,
but as an organizing principle in society. In hindsight, however, as
Bankimchandra was to discover himself, a theistic reading of Krishna
such as his, ill-fitted the godless religion of the Positivists. Towards the
closing years of his life, evidently, Bankimchandra also found it hard
to overlook the difficulty posed by an excessive reliance on sources
like the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa which offered no clue on the
early life of Krishna. The revised edition of Krishnacharitra, published
in 1892, reluctantly acknowledged the Bhagavata also as an authentic
source and made a passing reference to Radha.33
In a brilliantly perceptive review of the work, Tagore argued
that in the Krishnacharitra, it was not a god that Bankimchandra
had celebrated, but the face of cold reason. Religion, in this view,
appeared to be merely a moral virtuosity, only duties or discipline
and not a feeling, ignited, as it were, by the heat of religious passion
and ecstasy.34 There is considerable truth in this claim, though one
will also have to allow that the Krishnacharitra is not as visibly bereft
of religious feeling as is often made out to be. For one, it is somewhat
odd that in a work of this nature, where god acted fully in the manner
of human beings, he is also consistently projected as an avatar. Prima
facie it seems incongruous that Krishna should be simultaneously
god and man, gifted with a rare wisdom and sagacity, capable of
extraordinary superhuman feats, and yet acting in every manner like
an ordinary mortal. It would have also occurred to Bankimchandra
that for all his criticism of Puranic accretions and text-torturing, the
concept of avatar too was typically Puranic. In a sense, his position
here may have been propelled by the need to reject the idea of an
absent deity as found among deists or the ridicule that thinkers like
230 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Rammohun had heaped against the concept of the avatar.35 The

return of the avatar though, is in some ways especially intriguing.
If it was Bankim’s intention, as appears to be the case, to bring back
the idea of a God fully implicated in his creation, this could still
have been done without recourse to the scheme of avatars. After all,
the Brahmo Keshab Chandra Sen, who was equally critical of the
deistic god, had no use for such a scheme. It is also quite obvious
that Bankimchandra firmly believed in the divinity of Krishna and
in the concept of a god who fully reciprocated the love and reverence
shown by his devotees. Finally, a belief in the divinity of Krishna was
not something that came abruptly to Bankimchandra only in late
life or as a part of some political contrivance. The following passage
occurs in his Dharmatattwa:
Even in my adolescence, I used to ask myself the question, ‘What shall I do
with this life?’  .  .  .  and I have now come to the conclusion that humanity
rests upon devotion to God  .  .  .  you ask me when I found the answer to
my query! How can you attain in one day the ‘truth’ that has taken me a
lifetime to realize?36

There is evidence too that reveals his childhood reverence for the
family deity (a representation of Krishna) at Kanthalpara and how
it was to this deity that Bankimchandra turned in moments of
personal distress. ‘This deity’, he once confessed before his friend,
Chandranath Basu, ‘is behind every good fortune that has come our
way. It is He who rescues us from all forms of trouble. Whether in
illness, distress or danger, it is to him that we turn. I also know that
he loves us deeply.’37
Certain aspects about Bankimchandra’s projection of Krishna, or
of Vaishnavism more generally, elude convincing explanations. For a
man who was deeply attached to Vaishnava devotional singing (the
kirtan) Bankimchandra was strangely dismissive about both Radha—
whose intense pining for Krishna was the leitmotif for such songs—
as also the medieval Vaishnava reformer, Sri Krishna Chaitanya
(1486–1533), believed to have been an embodiment of Radha herself,
whose life inspired massive devotional literature and an amazingly
rich repertoire of devotional singing in rural Bengal. In the cultural
environment in which Bankimchandra had himself been brought up,
it would have been customary to wake up at dawn to the enchanting
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 231

voice of kirtan singers, travelling across paddy fields and the dusty
tracks of the villages, singing the praise of Chaitanya and his religious
companions. At one level though, the disapproval of Chaitanya and
the highly emotive content of Bengal Vaishnavism only reflects the
contemporary perception that Hindu states like Orissa eventually
lost their independence to Muslim invaders principally on account
of their embracing emasculating Vaishnavism preached by Chaitanya
and his companions. Following Bankim, Swami Vivekananda too
expressed strong disapproval of the ‘feminine sentimentality’ that
threatened his ‘man making mission’. Of the ‘damaging’ effects of
Vaishnava devotion, he writes: ‘.  .  .  this jumping about with the
accompaniment of the khol and kartal [musical instruments that
usually accompany kirtan] has ruined the nation.  .  .  . Do we not have
the drum and the bugle? Let our children hear their sonorous and
stirring sound  .  .  .  listening to womanish kirtan has rendered this
country into a country of women  .  .  .’. 38
In Bankim, there also remains an interesting conflation between
the Vaishnava deities Vishnu and Krishna. In the novel Anandamath
(1882), incidentally, the deity invoked by the warring santans is not
Krishna, but the mace-wielding Lord Vishnu, who is believed to
have vanquished many an asura. In the Dharmatattwa too, the boy
Prahlad, who is said to best represent selflessness and equanimity, is
a devotee of Vishnu, not Krishna.

The New Possibilities of Dharma?

The Dharmatattwa is not a conventional work on religion, nor does
it understand the term dharma in the conventional sense of the
term. In this work, dharma becomes an operative moral principle,
a regulatory social mechanism that attempts to suitably reconstitute
society and social relationships. As in the case of the Krishnacharitra,
some of the core ideas of this work appeared as far back as in the
1870s, suggesting a sense of continuous conceptual evolution.
One of the charges consistently laid against Bankimchandra
in relation to this work is that he gave the term dharma quite
uncharacteristic meanings and functions not acknowledged in
tradition. The German Indologist Paul Hacker (1913–79) found this
work rather contrived and an instructive instance of how Hindu
232 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

modernism had tendentiously altered the older semantic content

of some key concepts.39 It has been alleged that while traditionally
the term dharma was polyvocal and complex, the author of the
Dharmatattwa had reduced it to absurdly simple principles or
propositions. It was with Bankim, we are given to understand,
that dharma begins to be understood normatively and not in the
complexly differentiated forms known to tradition. There is some
merit in this contention but for the fact that Bankimchandra himself
appears to be no less aware of these nuances.40 Though often used
in a generic sense, dharma could also be specific to social groups or
communities, such as Kshatriyadharma (the duty of the Kshatriya
jati) or stridharma (the duty assigned to wife and women). We could
also refer to dharma as a moral imperative: samanyadharma, as in
practicing ahimsa or non-violence with respect to all forms of life,
or as an intrinsic quality of things such as heat in relation to fire.
The point, however, was that the multiple meanings of dharma could
come into conflict with one another. Thus, while non-violence was
a universal dharmic value, this could not be professionally followed
by, e.g. a hunter or poacher. The principles of dharma, then, had
to be determined by a particular context and hence, in accusing
Bankimchandra of flattening the possible differentiation within the
category of dharma, we lose sight of his overall rhetorical purpose:
the formulation of a sense of moral duty that would cut across divides
of age, jati, or gender. This is indeed consistent, with the concluding
note on which Bankimchandra decided to end his treatise: in his
view, patriotism surpassed every other dharma. Here, the emerging
nation-state was Bankim’s new context, and patriotism, the new value
that was expected to realize it.
The other charge brought against Bankimchandra is his
problematic rendering of the term dharma as religion. Allegedly, this
was done so as to contest the evangelist claims of Christianity alone
being the true religion (satyadharma). And yet, there is some evidence
to prove that even in premodern India, or for that matter in the days
preceding Bankim, dharma could also be used to denote religion
or a religious community. In Sanskrit lexicons of early medieval
India, to cite an apt instance, Mecca and Medina were identified as
the dharmasthanam (sites of religious worship) for Muslims.41 In
the 1820s, one of Rammohun’s chief opponents, Pandit Kashinath
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 233

Tarkapanchanan (1788–1851) called himself dharmasthapanarthi, or

one desirous of establishing dharma/religion. That Pandit Kashinath
used the term in the sense of religion and not moral duty is evident
from his accusing Rammohun of losing his Hindu identity by openly
consorting with Muslims.42 Between 1840 and 1881, there were at
least ten Bengali journals carrying the term dharma either as prefix
or suffix and also taking the term dharma to mean religion.43
Though complexly formulated, the principles of dharma, as
defined by Bankimchandra in the Dharmatattwa, could be reduced
to five related principles. First, Bankimchandra resorts to the
philosophical school of Nyaya for defining dharma as representing the
innate qualities in any substance. In man, this is called manushatya
or humanness. Second, this quality of manushatya could be achieved
only through the disciplined and integrated cultivation (anusilan) of
certain natural faculties in man, avoiding disproportionate emphasis
on any one faculty. Third, Bankimchandra postulates that the
realization of manushatya would make it possible to bring together
the love of the self and the love of humanity at large. Fourth, such
integration required the progressive sublimation of enlightened self-
interest into a universal love that entailed love for the family, the
community, the nation, and even more generally, for all forms of life.
This, in Bankim’s understanding, was fully realized only when man
turned towards the adoration of God, for He alone was the moral
exemplar, a Creator-God fully implicated in his creation, and the
source of all that was good and ennobling.
In reworking the concept of dharma, Bankimchandra was clearly
indebted to a host of European social theorists, the chief of whom
appear to be August Comte and J.R. Seeley, both of whom he quotes
quite extensively in the work.44 Importantly, however, in Bankim’s
reading, such conclusions as reached in European scholarship only
uphold the claim that Hinduism was the most exalted of religions.45 In
any case, Western formulations about the social functions of religion
are considerably refurbished and represented by the purposive use
of two concepts of Hindu origin: bhakti (literally, devotion) and
nishkam karma (selfless action in the world). In the Dharmatattwa,
however, Bankimchandra uses bhakti both in the theological sense
and the sociological. It was a virtue to be rendered not just to god
but to one’s social superiors: the student to the teacher, the son to
234 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

parents, and the wife to the husband. It is thus that Bankimchandra

cleverly integrated into an essentially moral treatise, the imprint of
a more conservative social order. The concept of nishkam karma
Bankimchandra clearly borrowed from the Bhagavad Gita but for the
fact that in the Dharmatattwa or elsewhere, his focus is more on the
qualities of selflessness and moral activism than the acknowledgement
of some cosmic play. Here, unlike the Gita, there is no insistence on
surrendering the fruits of action to God. The underlying paradox
here, and one which I suspect even Bankimchandra cannot wholly
conceal from our view or from his own, is that while selfless work
for the country could well be unmindful of immediate results, the
patriot could still entertain hopes of his objective being realized
someday. Patriotism, by common reckoning, could not have been
truly nishkam.
Unlike Rammohun, Bankimchandra had virtually no interest in
religions other than Hinduism nor did he attempt to study religions
in a comparative framework. He is not known to have befriended
Muslims and generally took Indo-Muslim rule to be unjust and
oppressive towards Hindus. Also, significant is the near total absence
of any reference to Islam. With reference to Christ and Christianity,
he was harshly critical, partly no doubt as a reaction to evangelist
attacks on Hinduism. In Bankim’s view, Christ could not match
Krishna as an ideal, for the former was a recluse and the latter a
fully domesticated man, ably discharging his duties to the self and
the world. To this may be added Bankimchandra’s strong reluctance
to admit non-Hindu opinion on either the Hindus or Hinduism.
For him, this was essentially a matter of adhikar (entitlement).
Religions, Bankimchandra argued, could be best understood only
from the inside. In 1882, he (writing under a pseudonym) and Revd
William Hastie, then the faculty of the General Assembly’s Institution,
exchanged a series of sharp letters, the latter accusing educated
Hindus of going back on their reformism and modern education,
the former suggesting that the matter had been grossly misconstrued
and misrepresented by one who had no real understanding of the
Hindu tradition.46 Similar reasons led Bankimchandra to contest the
findings of Max Muller. For one, he sounds extremely sceptical of
the ‘heliomania’ found among European scholars of the Veda, which
wrongly reduced every legend, poem, or allegory to a solar myth.47 In
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 235

retrospect, this appears to be only an extension of an earlier critique

included in the work Lokrahasya (1874) which include hilarious
pieces on how a proper understanding of Hindu cultural texts and
artefacts eluded Europeans.
In conclusion, we may identify three distinctive qualities in the
religious thought and writings of Bankimchandra. First, he appears to
have allowed private faith and public discourse to run parallel courses.
On his own beliefs and convictions he remained pretty firm, but left
his readers to judge matters for themselves. Second, his writings,
whether in English or Bengali, were essentially addressed to the class
of Hindus who had grown sceptical of contemporary Hinduism but
found no real cause for a change of faith. Third, with regard to his
religious convictions, he was more ecumenical than many of his
well-known contemporaries. Unlike the Brahmos, he did not reject
outright the validity of image worship,48 even when this may well
have been possible within the overarching framework of his thought
and writings. Though polemical at most times, Bankimchandra could
also ease a potentially troublesome situation by taking recourse to
wit and humour. His disagreements with Ramakrishna, for instance,
were firm but polite. The fact that the saint of Dakshineswar had
very different views on the Radha-Krishna tradition or that he spoke
in rustic parables did not prevent Bankimchandra from calling on
him and deliberating on the subject of God and religion at some
length.49 This could be justifiably contrasted with the puritanism of
Debendranath Tagore, who first invited Ramakrishna to a prayer
meeting of the Brahmo Samaj, only to later withdraw the invitation,
fearing that the saint would not be appropriately dressed for the
occasion! In the 1880s, though drawn into a controversy with
Rabindranath and the extended Tagore family over how best to
interpret ethical imperatives, Bankimchandra lovingly forgave his
younger but immensely talented fellow writer.50 Differences did not
come in the way of these two luminaries of colonial Bengal from
acknowledging the worth of one another.
Bankimchandra anticipates modern day scholarship in openly
acknowledging that in his day, what was commonly known as
‘Hinduism’ was actually a name given to a motley collection of
various faiths and dogmas, rather than a single or unified religious
system.51 He was honest enough to admit this, even though arguing
236 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

otherwise would have been consistent with his larger cultural and
political agendas.

III

Bhudeb Mukhopadhayay and

Buoyant Conservatism
In the context of colonial Bengal, the term ‘conservatism’ can be
difficult to define. For one, of the major writers and thinkers that
I know of from this period, none were entirely free of such instincts
and yet, the overarching nature of their thought or public appeal was
far from conservative. It is also quite significant that very few of them
could be called consistently or rabidly conservative. Arguably, there
was something selective, if not entirely arbitrary, about the issues on
which one chose to exhibit some degree of conservatism. Also, in
some cases, what prima facie appears to be conservatism, reflected
deep-seated cultural anxieties related to the self and the community
under some duress, and not an unmitigated hostility to change per
se. In this sense, conservatism reflected more indeterminacy than
settled convictions. Second, in an environment where the nature or
agency of change itself was somewhat dichotomous, it took greater
courage to be counted among the conservatives. Sudipta Kaviraj
makes the fine point that in the inverted world of colonialism, it took
greater courage or strength of conviction to reject the commonplace
and imitative trope of reform.52 In the 1880s, however, an emerging
critique of reformism categorically ruled out the possibility of reform
being founded on mere imitation; every English-knowing man, as
some were unhappy to note, had turned out to be a self-declared
‘reformer’.53
In this section, I shall speak of an individual who performed
precisely this act, to register both his disapproval of changes
going around him and an affirmation of a traditional world view.
The interesting point here is that he belonged not to the class of
traditionalist Hindu scholars living an uneventful life in the fringes
of Kolkata, and who felt increasingly marginalized by both the
colonial bureaucracy and English-educated Hindus. Rather, he was
the product of the best known institutions of his times, a successful
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 237

author, educationist, and journalist, who rose fairly high in the service
of the state and was befriended even by his English superiors.
In 1968, when editing the first standard anthology of Bhudeb’s
writings, the Bengali literary critic, Pramathanath Bishi (1901–85) put
forth the pertinent question as to why a man of Bhudeb’s stature and
accomplishments had been all forgotten by posterity.54 Some thirty
years later, the historian Ashin Dasgupta revived the question in an
essay titled ‘Bismrita Brahmin’ (the forgotten Brahman).55 Of the two,
it was really Bishi, who, in a jocular but acutely perceptive way, listed
the reasons for Bhudeb’s unpopularity. In Bishi’s understanding, this
originated in treatises like the Paribarik Probondho (Essays on the
Family) and Achar Probondho (Essays on Hindu Rites and Customs)
which, in effect, recommended that contemporary Hindu society
be reorganized in keeping with the vastly antiquated Smriti and
Grihyasutra texts. In his day though, some might have even lauded
such efforts for, in an obituary message, the political journalist Sisir
Kumar Ghosh (1840–1911) favourably compared Bhudeb to the
sixteenth century law-giver from Bengal, Raghunandan. As far as one
can tell, until the close of the nineteenth century, such comparisons,
however inept, might have been accepted with some empathy and
grace. Rabindranath Tagore appears to have completely ignored the
substance of Bhudeb’s writings, whereas he was repeatedly drawn
into controversy with Chandranath Basu (who considered himself
to be Bhudeb’s pupil), over the propriety of Hindu dietary habits
and the ideal age for marriage.56 Presumably, Bhudeb’s writings may
have even enjoyed a measure of popularity in the Swadeshi era, when
nationalism had become enmeshed with an injured Hindu pride and
offended sentiments. In post-Independence India, however, they
appear to have sharply fallen out of favour. In Bishi’s analysis, it was
not at all surprising that Bhudeb’s treatises were increasingly erased
from public memory, since these tried to bring back social customs,
rites, or duties that had either long fallen out of fashion or else
prohibited in law. Thus, in the Paribarik Probondho, Bhudeb not only
upholds the sanctity of the extended family, which had perceptibly
weakened by this time, but also offers advice on just how or wherefrom
to select a suitable daughter-in-law, the ornaments best adorned by a
new bride, the virtues of thrift and frugality, or what arrangements
to make for receiving relatives and guests at home.57 The work also
238 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

strongly disapproves of widow marriages58 and the legal separation of

couples, tacitly supports multiple marriages among upper caste men
and insists on getting daughters married early.59 Evidently, Bhudeb’s
treatises were not futuristic or written with any sense of realism,
which led Dasgupta to quip that treatises like the Paribarik Probondho
or the Achar Probondho were written in a dream.60 In trying to uphold
the superiority of the Hindu social order, Bhudeb also introduces
rather synthetic and unconvincing classifications within civilizations.
Thus, whereas in the Aryan society the woman was deemed a goddess,
in the European, she was a mere wife or companion. It was also his
allegation that more often than not, it was machinations created by
women and wives that destroyed the fabric of the Hindu extended
family. Modern wives, he alleged, thought only of their immediate
families and neglected others members of the household. The only
way to neutralize this, Bhudeb believed, was for the karta, or the
head of the family, to equally distribute ancestral property among
brothers, an arrangement he hoped would keep disgruntled wives
from hatching ‘nefarious’ schemes for partitioning of family property.
Bhudeb also sounds extremely unhappy with what he deems to be
the erosion of traditional social values or habits within the domestic
economy of the Hindus; it was simply appalling that in a household
whose collective monthly income barely exceeded Rs.100, the wives
simply stopped cooking, sweeping the floor, or attending to other
routine domestic duties.61
Both in their content and intent, such writings would now appear
quite anachronistic. This was not a case of some vision gone sour, but
the failure, simply, to gauge the measure of things to come. However,
in Bhudeb’s defence, it needs also to be said that he fully practised such
ideals and precepts in his personal life as he publicly preached. Even as
a student of the Hindu College, when his beliefs in some of the basic
postulates of Hinduism had been shaken, Bhudeb remained steadfast
in drinking water only from vessels reserved for the Brahman caste,
and unlike his Brahmo friend and contemporary, Rajanarain Basu
(1826–99), did not frequent designated spots in north Kolkata in
search of ‘forbidden’ food. Ritual conformity and a lifelong adherence
to certain samskars (social conventions) such as he advocates in the
Achar Probondho, were to be the very foundation of his ‘Hinduness’.
One wonders, for instance, how many men of his education and class
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 239

would have preferred to die on the banks of the river Ganges (or,
more technically, the Hooghly) as Bhudeb did in 1894?
Essentially, Bhudeb’s arguments are premised on the idea of
sustained Brahman ascendancy. In the Achar Probondho, he is
persuaded to argue that in his day, the decline in dharma and dharmic
ways of life have only followed from the visible decline in the status
of the Brahman. To him, this seemed natural at a time when even
the Brahman was forced to worry about personal sustenance and
livelihood, and hence failed to remain vitally connected with his
inherited tradition.62 According to Bhudeb, even casting doubt about
the competence of Brahmans was bound to only bring harm to the
Hindu society. Reverence for any social class or institution had to
be founded on trust, and it had to be this unflinching trust that
could lend meaning and substance to the working of everyday life.
Thus, it was only if a host fully believed in the efficacy of shastric
prescriptions, recommending that Brahmans be fed on propitious
occasions, that such acts of pious hospitality would bear the desired
results.63 Here, Bhudeb, perhaps anticipating objections from his
more liberal or sceptical co-religionists, reminds us that adhering
to the scriptures did not rob us of our right to private judgement.
On the contrary, it drove out mental lethargy and enhanced a spirit
of independence.64
The Achar Probondho is strongly rooted in filial loyalty, which
encouraged Bhudeb to claim that the entire corpus of Dharma Sutra
literature too was operatively based on such loyalty. It was highly
probable, he adds, that even Christ upheld this belief, or else he
would not have consistently addressed god as ‘Father’. By comparison,
both the Buddha and Chaitanya were at fault—the first for allegedly
daring to initiate his own father and demand obedience from him,
and the latter for having laid his foot on his mother’s head in a fit of
religious ecstasy.65
For Bhudeb, the importance of preserving the social order far
surpassed that of determining the nature of the ideal state or effective
governance; it was only when a social order itself endured that an
orderly political life or apparatus could effectively function. On the
other hand, with the weakening of social order and regulations,
bonding and a nationalist brotherhood itself would be hard to come
by. By this argument, political subjugation or the lack of military
240 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

prowess among a people did not necessarily affect the nature of their
polity; and here, Bhudeb cites examples from history to prove how,
at times, success in war and political conquest was inversely related
to the quality of social and cultural life.66
The Hindu social order, Bhudeb argues, had to be based on an
unflinching deference towards the Brahman, since the entire system
of differentiation based on jati was premised on such deference. The
social organism, in this view, could not be compared with the physical,
for it grew on the strength of energy and resources drawn from within
itself and not from some source lying outside. Social organisms, for
that reason, were analogous to the divine body (devsharira), which
had no beginning or end in time.67 In the Samajik Probondho, Bhudeb
deals at length with the intrinsic merits of the jati system, arguing
that without some functional importance or value integrally linked
to it, such an elaborate system of considerable antiquity could not
have survived the ravages of time. The jati system, Bhudeb tells us,
helped retain self-pride in a politically subjugated people, prevented
the growth of vanity born of sheer wealth, encouraged specialized
craft production, and helped to accommodate people or communities
lying outside the Hindu fold through a careful process of co-option.
He also disputes the claim, with some justification no doubt, that the
jati order discouraged social mobility, citing how even the profession
of the teacher and scholar had now passed on to non-Brahmans.
In his understanding, each jati constituted an autonomous social
formation within which it retained a full measure of rights and
privileges, without having to acknowledge the natural superiority of
any other jati but the Brahman.68
In his writings, Bhudeb did not devote much space to philosophy
or theological matters related to the Hindus. However, in his
philosophical orientation, he was clearly a pantheist, of the kind
derived from Vedanta.69 His conception of ‘god’ too is more abstract
than theistic, and in fact, the Samajik Probondho makes an interesting
classification of world religions into broadly two categories: the
prakritik (naturalistic) and the bhabuk (mentalist). To the first
category belong Hinduism and Buddhism (of the major Indian
religions alone, Bhudeb omits Jainism and Sikhism) and to the
second, Islam and Christianity. Whereas the first is characterised by
a nirguna (without attributes) God, the second posits a saguna God,
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 241

endowed with qualities or attributes. Their chosen paths to salvation

too are different: the first followed the path of gnosis, leading to
moksha—the liquidation of the self; the second relied on perpetual
bhakti or devotion to a personal god which, by implication, retained
a dualistic separation between god and man. By nature, the first
was demanding, hard, and rigorous, while the second was soft and
delicate. Naturalistic religions relied entirely on the chain of cause
and effect (by which Bhudeb was referring to the karmic theory and
transmigration); the mentalist variety, by comparison, was moved by
either the fear of reprisal from an irate God or else hopes of being
rewarded by divine grace for good deeds performed on earth.70 Such
sects within Islam or Christianity that chose to follow the monistic
path of the Hindus escaped emasculation and here, the Samajik
Probondho cited the Sufis and Augustinians as apt examples.71 Bhudeb
was also keen to disabuse people of their ‘naive’ belief that Buddhism
was egalitarian in spirit since the Buddha himself never made such
claims and further, as a naturalistic religion, it had to be founded
upon a hierarchically arranged society.72 In hindsight, this looks to
be an over-simplistic classification, for, historically, Hinduism itself
may be said to accommodate both saguna and nirguna conceptions
of God and the concept of grace too had been important to several
sects or cults internal to it, such as Vaishnavism and Saktaism. Such
classification was also not free of incipient prejudices, since Bhudeb
alleges that the emasculation of the Hindu social and cultural
order coincided with the philosophical and theological shifts that
occurred from the non-dualism of Acharya Sankara to the bhakti
driven movements of Ramanuja and Ramananda.73 In his view,
those Hindu sects that most resembled Christianity, for instance
dualistic Vaishnavism, had been enfeebled the most on this account.
In conclusion, Bhudeb counted upon German idealism to restore the
primacy of non-dualism in India.74
Like Bankimchandra, Bhudeb valorises the virtues of nishkam
karma. In his case though, its sources lie not in Puranic mythology,
but in Vedantic monism, which, reportedly, made no heuristic
distinction between the self and the other.75 In Bhudeb’s analysis, even
the arduous spiritual praxis of the Buddha or of his near contemporary
Rammohun Roy, had failed to yield the desired results since these
were not founded on the true spirit of selflessness.76 Their sadhana
242 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

brought them pubic acclaim, but not true spiritual realization. Christ
he faults for offering an incomplete ideal for humanity, primarily
on account of his ‘extreme’ renunciation, which could not possibly
inspire the ordinary householder.77 Not surprisingly, his ideals here
were Rama and Sita,78 a preference that departs from that expressed
by his friend and contemporary, Bankimchandra. Krishna as an
inspirational Hindu deity does not figure at all in Bhudeb’s writings,
and in all probability, Bhudeb’s leaning towards the Rama cult was
partly determined by his several years of residence in Bihar.
What would also surprise some is Bhudeb’s open support to
tantra, which is surprising on account of two reasons. First, in the
nineteenth century, tantra, like certain schools within Vaishnavism,
met with the puritanical disapproval of the Bengali bhadralok for
its open and liberal attitude towards man-woman relationships and
the recourse to ‘revolting’ sexo-yogic practices. Swami Vivekananda
and many of his generation are known to have expressed abhorrence
for tantra, particularly for the more radical vamacar (left-handed)
variety, even though his own guru, Ramakrishna, underwent a course
in tantric sadhana, albeit selectively. Second, many perceived an
incipient conflict between the conclusions of (non-dualist) Vedanta
and tantra. In the 1930s, there was an extended controversy between
monks of Ramakrishna order and certain tantric scholars on whether
or not Ramakrishna was a practising tantric.79 Bhudeb appears to have
anticipated both these objections, for some of his writings express
surprise at fellow Bengalis disowning tantra, even when that school
of thought and praxis is known to have originated in Bengal. He
also denied the possibility that the conclusions of the two schools
could not be reconciled. Bhudeb’s ancestors are known to have been
practising tantrics. Importantly though, Bhudeb’s relating to tantra
was also a part of his secular discourse that found it eminently suitable
for a nation which had lost its social and political freedom. In this
context, he does not fail to mention the eclectic nature of tantra,
which made no theological distinction between sects, also reiterating
the generally accepted notion that in the degenerate Kali age, tantra
was the ideal school to follow.80 Outside the Brahmo Samaj itself, he is
about the only contemporary author to allude to the tantric training
and praxis of Rammohun himself, a fact that then encouraged him to
argue that rather than claim Brahmo dharma to be some new-fangled
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 243

religion, its tantric roots ought to be more publicly admitted.81 On

the Brahmo community itself, Bhudeb’s opinion was divided. On
the one hand, he found fulfilling the historic task of arresting the
spread of Christianity; but he remains unhappy about the fact that
Brahmos remained far too much under the spell of the West to steer
an independent path for themselves. Thus, he had cause for complaint
against his friend and veteran Brahmo leader, Rajnarain Basu, for
‘slavishly’ imitating the ways of the English. Here, his reference
was to Basu’s greatly popular tract, Hindudharmer Shresthata (The
Superiority of Hinduism, 1873). Whereas Bankimchandra himself
had only praise for Basu’s project and especially his attempt to identify
Brahmoism as only a reformed variety of modern Hinduism, 82
Bhudeb’s allegation was that the entire thesis had been quite wrongly
premised on the claim that the reformed religion of the Brahmos was
comparable to the ‘enlightened’ religion of contemporary Europe. In
Bhudeb’s perception, Basu’s work had failed to achieve its objective
simply because it took the English people as the standard by which
to judge Hindu accomplishments.83
Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay anticipated Bankimchandra in some
important respects. For one, he took to novel writing earlier than
his better-known contemporary, even though his novels failed to
achieve the popularity that the novels of Bankimchandra did. Also,
the imagery of the country and its people corresponding to a Hindu
goddess appeared in Bhudeb’s Pushpanjali as far back in 1876, by
when neither the song ‘Vande Mataram’ nor the novel Anandamath, in
which it was subsequently inserted, had been produced. Interestingly,
whereas Bhudeb’s appeal had been to the religious sentiment of the
Hindus, Bankim’s was primarily to the political. Finally, Bhudeb
appears to have firmly rejected one of the important premises of
Bankim’s Hinduism, which was to relate dharma and a dharmic
life to the pursuit of human happiness. Whereas the Dharmatattwa
opens with this very question, Bhudeb was quick to rule out such
eudemonism.84
Posterity is apt to confer on Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay some
other distinctions as well. According to Kaviraj, he is about the only
social theorist born of the otherwise immensely productive Bengal
Renaissance, and the creator of an ‘innovative traditionalism’. 85
Rightly or wrongly, Bhudeb perceived tradition to be dynamic and
244 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

self-regenerating, which then, left ample scope for it to negotiate

the modern in its own way. However, I am less in agreement with
Kaviraj’s suggestion that the ‘reversal’ of orientalism was exclusive
to Bhudeb. In my view, Bankimchandra contributed no less to this
counter-discursive project.

IV

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: Sadhaka and

Story-teller
With Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a theistic God once again occupies
the centre stage. This was not the absent deity of the deists, or even an
abstraction with no humanly cognizable qualities. On the contrary,
this was God who could be equally saguna and nirguna, sakar and
nirakar at will, for divine omnipotence made it all possible.86 In any
case, the finite (man), as Ramakrishna was to observe, had simply
no means of truly comprehending the powers or potentialities of
the infinite.87
In Ramakrishna, we have a religious figure markedly different
from his best known contemporaries. He was not a scholar or exegete,
nor with any pretensions to learning, spoke in rustic parables, and
cared very little for upper caste sartorial manners—a quality that
sometimes embarrassed his bhadralok devotees and followers. He
wrote no books, much less study them. In fact, on the very first
day of their meeting, the school-teacher and diarist, Mahendranath
Gupta, who has left behind an extremely valuable source book in
the Ramakrishna Kathamrita (The Gospel of Ramakrishna), was
clearly surprised to hear Ramakrishna say that wisdom did not lie in
books.88 In late-nineteenth-century Bengal, he appears to have been
be a figure who quite frequently invited the scorn of ‘progressives’
and ‘reformers’, who had consistently critiqued the ‘corrupt’ and
‘self-seeking’ office of the priest and guru.89 Ramakrishna, on the
contrary, not only considered himself to be a guru (though not
without reservations) but repeatedly emphasized the importance of
the guru in spiritual life.90 In the early years of his spiritual life, many
flocked to watch him go into mystical trances (samadhi), but which
the more circumspect believed to have been cleverly feigned. And
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 245

yet, not long after his death in 1886, Ramakrishna clearly emerged as
the prototype of the urban guru, many more of whom have followed
since his time.
In his autobiography, Maharshi Debendranath Tagore notes with
considerable displeasure how some of his closest associates of the
Tattwabodhini Sabha (founded 1843), for instance, Akshay Kumar
Dutta (1820–86), wished to debate the existence of god by a show of
hands.91 In Ramakrishna’s view, even an understanding of religion
in intellectual terms was blasphemous, not to speak of debating the
very existence of god. Also, as opposed to the attempts made by
Bankimchandra and some others, it was not his intention to separate
the ‘authentic’ from the ‘inauthentic’. Here, we may think of two
important reasons. First, religion in Ramakrishna’s view constituted
an integrated amalgam of rites, beliefs, and doctrines, but more
importantly, it was created by God, not man.92 Something that had
its source in god himself could not possibly be riddled by binaries
like ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘pure’ and ‘impure’.93 Such polarized perceptions,
warned Ramakrishna, were a part of the world illusion induced by
maya. It was maya which introduced qualitative differentiation within
the world that was otherwise an organic unity filled with the presence
of the Brahman or the ‘Absolute’, and it was only after a man got past
the snare of maya that he began to approach reality.94 Rather than
attach any moral value to such categories, Ramakrishna understood
them as a part of the inscrutable and capricious play (lila) of god on
earth. Given the philosophical idealism in Ramakrishna, the good
and the bad were not absolute values. This made moral life only a
preparatory stage for the spiritual. Moral virtuosity cleansed the soul
(chittashuddhi) and prepared man for a higher life; it was never a
surrogate for that life.
The subordination of moral life to the spiritual explains two
other important features of Ramakrishna’s religious world: negating
a functional-utilitarian view of religion, and a strong distrust of
philanthropy and social work. Compassion for the fellow human
beings was in itself good, but Ramakrishna’s cynicism took this to
be almost invariably rooted in egotism, self-gratification, and the
desire for public fame. It was also a means by which men only further
embroiled themselves in worldly matters, rather than overcome
them.95 Once, in a conversation with the saint, Bankimchandra was
246 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

quite taken aback to hear him say that money was ultimately no more
valuable than a lump of earth. If that were so, he had wondered, how
could one execute charity or public service? Ramakrishna’s rejoinder
to this question was to deny the very efficacy of human will and
agency:

Helping other people is an act performed by God Himself. It is for their

benefit that He has created the sun and the moon, fruits, flowers and all
forms of edible grain. The love and affection that you see in parents are
qualities that He has instilled in them so that life on earth can be adequately
protected and sustained. The compassion that you see in the compassionate
is His compassion, created for the benefit of the weak and the helpless.
Irrespective of whether or not you practice charity, God’s work on earth goes
on. What, then, is our duty? It is to seek refuge in Him and keep praying
fervently so that we may be rewarded by God vision.96

The Creator, in Ramakrishna’s perception, had to be known

before His creation, since time, agency, and event—all flowed from
Him.97 But knowing God too was not entirely a matter of free
will, but subject to at least two qualifications. First, there was the
question of adhikarbheda, differentiated natural qualities in men
which predisposed them towards different views of God or to certain
methods of God-realization. Swami Vivekananda himself testifies
to how his guru suitably modified his teachings in keeping with
the innate qualities in his disciples: ‘Devotion as taught by Narada,
he used to preach to the masses who were incapable of any higher
learning. He used generally to teach dualism. As a rule, he never
taught Advaita. But he taught it to me. I had been a dualist before.’98
Second, man could at best come to possess only a partial view of
‘truth’ or reality, as in the ancient Jain story of andhagajanyaya where
a gathering of blind men try vainly to describe an elephant by mere
touch.99 For Ramakrishna, this was an important lesson in humility
for a man drawn to religious life. For one, this alerted him to the
limits of human knowledge and understanding, and taught him not
to make arrogant claims of truth.100 Second, the multiple forms of God
only allowed man to relate to him in various forms, again consistent
with his nature or preferences. This is precisely where Ramakrishna
believed that the theistic conceptions of God scored heavily over the
purely abstract. A personal God could be construed in very human
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 247

terms: as father, mother, child, or lover. Whereas the nirguna band

harped on the same tune quite monotonously; the saguna had enough
room for pleasing musical variations.101 However, there was also
the limitation of human language itself; in a particularly evocative
formulation of metaphysical thought, Ramakrishna tells us how
the ineffable Brahman/God/Absolute could not be ritually polluted
by the word of mouth (ucchista), since human language could not
possibly describe it.102 The underlying moral to the parable was that
God-realization was not a matter of rational interrogation or crude
sense perception, and arrived only at a stage when mental processes
themselves had ceased to work and a man had been transported to a
higher level of consciousness. Evidently, there was a strong element
of yogic praxis in Ramakrishna.
In nineteenth-century Calcutta, as we have earlier noted, the
sight of a man going into samadhi was so startlingly novel that even
members of the Brahmo Samaj rushed to catch a sight whenever this
was reported. And of course, it amused Ramakrishna to hear people
ask him about just how this state might be induced! It amused him
to think how people still believed that religion and religious life was
entirely a matter of human will or initiative, overlooking past karma
or even the munificence of divine grace. Ramakrishna was certain that
true piety and devotion never went unrewarded, even though that
reward often arrived in mysterious ways. But the first step to be taken
by man in that direction was giving up all sense of instrumentality
and authorship (kartitwa), sincerely acknowledging that such matters
belonged only to God.103 Blind faith was Ramakrishna’s panacea for
the Western educated sceptic: though seemingly irrational, this could
be the greatest source of strength in religious life.104
Ramakrishna’s justly famous religious universalism is premised
not simply on a theoretical acknowledgement of man’s common
sources in God, but also on active sadhana or spiritual praxis. It
was one thing to say that water, though called differently in various
languages, was just the same, and quite another to overlook the
different social or spiritual functions that it served in various
traditions. Ramakrishna insisted on getting to know the common
objective (God) by travelling on as diverse paths (religions) as
possible. Underneath this insistence lay the belief that though they
ultimately met at a common destination, each path was unique in
248 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

itself and enriched one’s religious experiences in ways that another

did not. Within Hinduism, Ramakrishna had close familiarity with
the Sakta and the Vaishnava traditions, selectively using religious
idioms and practices known to each. Thus, he could passionately
adopt santan bhava or the attitude of the child towards the Goddess
Kali and quite the opposite, batsalya (parental affection for the child),
borrowed from Vaishnavism to register his love and reverence for
the infant Rama. He was formally initiated into Advaita Vedanta by
the Punjabi monk Tota Puri, and in tantra by the woman commonly
known as the Bhairavi Brahmani; underwent training in Sufi-Islamic
practices under a Hindu convert called Govinda Ray; listened to
readings from the Bible in the presence of his disciple Sambhu Mallik;
and attended Sunday services in churches located in Calcutta. He
was a regular visitor to the Brahmo Samaj, particularly to the one
led by Keshab Chandra, and travelled to attend quotidian religious
congregations of the Kartabhajas and Nabarasiks, held periodically
in areas north of Calcutta. Among his disciples were Marwari
merchants from Burrabazar in central Calcutta and Sikh soldiers
from the neighbouring Dumdum Cantonment. In his early life, he
is known to have kept the company of itinerant sadhus and holy
men, from whom, reportedly, he had ‘heard a lot’.105 The important
point though is that this universalism was informed neither by the
intellectual framework of comparative religion nor a synthetic fusion
of a motley of religious beliefs or practices. If the universalism of
Keshab Chandra is comparable to a bouquet of flowers randomly
put together, Ramakrishna’s universalism represents looking upon
each stalk of flower as potentially constituting a bouquet. Keshab
adorned the building of his new Brahmo Church (Nababidhan
or New Dispensation) with religious symbols taken from varying
traditions, fusing the Islamic crescent with the Christian cross and
the Hindu trident; Ramakrishna’s penchant, on the contrary, was to
deny that such fusion was at all possible. When undergoing training in
Islam, Ramakrishna declined to visit the Kali temple to which he was
personally attached, fearing that it would amount to a transgression.
For him, apparently, the iconoclasm of Islam could not possibly be
combined with Puranic image worship. This, in itself, serves to impart
two important lessons: first, religious ideas or practices distinctive to
each religious tradition had to be accepted in toto, not selectively; and
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 249

second, each religious tradition was bound by its own perceptions

and experiences. Such boundaries were visible, if not also extremely
rigid and impenetrable. Above all, a man had to remain committed
to the tradition that he was born in, or that into which he had been
initiated.106 Eclecticism, and not a synthetic fusion of religions,
consistently characterized the universalism of Ramakrishna.107
It is important that we obtain a precise understanding of
Ramakrishna’s universalism, for this has also been misinterpreted
by some of his close followers. In 1897, one of his early biographers,
Satyacharana Mitra, was to observe the following: ‘He [Ramakrishna]
familiarised Muslims with the worship of Shiva, Christians with the
worship of Kali.  .  .  . This, in time, will strengthen the major religions
of the world; none shall be wakened or destroyed. The Muslim will
remain a Muslim and yet accept many ideas and practices connected
with the Hindu religion.’108
Far from getting the Muslim to learn about Hinduism or the
Hindu about Islam, Ramakrishna insisted that they each remain
within the bounds of their ancestral faith. Also, within a scheme
which reportedly held all religious paths to be equally valid in their
own ways and leading to a common goal, a change of faith was both
unnecessary and sacrilegious. Ramakrishna was pained upon hearing
that the Bengali poet Madhusudan Dutt (1824–73) had converted to
Christianity.109 All paths converged in God, maintained Ramakrishna,
but only on the highest integrative state of mystic realization.110 In
everyday life, it was important to adhere to one’s ancestral path.
Two other points of importance need also to be noted in this
context. First, Ramakrishna’s exposure to various religious traditions
was somewhat selective. Outside Hinduism, he had only a superficial
exposure to Buddhism and Sikhism, and practically none to Judaism
or Jainism. Second, though equally valid in principle, religious paths
according to Ramakrishna could also be qualitatively differentiated.
Thus, the more liberal gender-mixing among quotidian cults like the
Kartabhajas led him to call them ‘dirty paths’.111 Despite upholding
the worship of the formless god by Brahmos, he is also known to
have observed that ‘new-fangled’ religions like theirs could enjoy
only a temporary passage. On the other hand, Hinduism, which he
called ‘Sanatan Dharma’ was destined to be ageless and perennially
enduring.112
250 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The ecumenism of Ramakrishna set aside older debates between

the apparently competing methods of gyan (gnosis) and bhakti
(devotion). To him, this was a meaningless debate for two related
reasons. For one, men were naturally predisposed to one or the other
in keeping with their present character and past karma, and in these
matters, it was always advisable to follow one’s natural temperament
or nativity. More importantly, gyan and bhakti were intertwined with
one another in ways that were not always apparent. Admittedly, bhakti
produced an intensity of emotional feeling that the more abstract and
depersonalized gyan did not. On the other hand, as Ramakrishna
was to once warn Narendranath (Vivekananda), one could not adore
God unless they already ‘knew’ him!113 Nonetheless, Ramakrishna
was also led to qualify this argument for practical reasons and here,
he simply reiterated the older argument about bhakti being the easier
path to follow in Kali Yuga.114 In operative terms, ‘Gyan Yoga’ or the
path of ‘knowledge’ was extremely rigorous and demanding, which
then made it that much more difficult to follow for the average man,
whose powers had already been substantively diminished by the onset
of a degenerative Kali Yuga. Apart from being an easier path to follow,
bhakti was also a more responsive path wherein piety and selflessness
elicited responses from a loving god. Ramakrishna once compared
bhakti to a woman, who would be allowed access to the private
chambers of a mansion, whereas gyan, being male, was stopped at
the gates.115 All the same, for bhakti to yield the desired results, it
had to be entirely ahetuki,116 unrelated to a cause or expectation and
nishkam (selfless) and here, interestingly, Ramakrishna inverts the
entire thesis in Bankim’s Krishnacharitra by identifying the gopis of
Vrindavan as exemplary bhaktas or devotees.117
Ramakrishna’s consistent warning to his devotees and disciples
was that they take care to stay away as far as possible from the twin
dangers of kamini and kanchan—the sexually alluring woman and
the greed for amassing wealth—which quintessentially represented
the beguiling powers of maya. These were the two elements that most
effectively inhibited thoughts on religion and God, but the greater
danger, in Ramakrishna’s view, came from the woman and the wife,
who induced material bondage in men.118 It was for the sake of the
wife and family that men were driven to dependence in everyday
life—something that robbed them of character and independence.
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 251

The priests of the Govindji temple at Jaipur, he tells us by way of

illustration, could decline to meet the local ruler when invited to the
court only so long as they did not have a family to care for. All that
changed dramatically when the ruler struck upon a clever scheme to
get the priests married. Thereafter, Ramakrishna laughingly narrated,
the priests would frequently turn up at the court even uninvited, only
so that they could obtain a greater share of the ruler’s munificence!119
In recent times, scholars have attempted to interpret the
popularity of Ramakrishna in terms of his successfully playing out
the role of a guru to an anxiety-driven urban middle class in colonial
Calcutta. His religion too has been labelled as the ‘religion of urban
domesticity’.120 Prima facie, such descriptions are incontestable.
The aristocratic society of colonial Calcutta showed little interest in
Ramakrishna, nor for that matter did the working class, whether in
Calcutta or across the Ganges from Dakshineswar. A closer scrutiny,
however, will help qualify such analysis in some respects.
Undoubtedly, the bulk of devotees and disciples who gathered at
Dakshineswar were drawn from people in petty employment: mostly
low-paid clerks in government or European mercantile offices, school
teachers, part-time scribes and journalists, and the gatherings too,
we must note, almost invariably took place on Sundays and public
holidays, when people of such class could afford to be absent from
work. Had this been otherwise, the Kathamrita might have grown into
a far more bulky volume than it already is. However, the audience at
Dakshineswar was far too scattered or diverse to collectively represent
some social or political consciousness, and it could be reasonably
argued that certain classes within them turned up to seek personal
solace in the comforting presence of a guru-like figure who heard
them patiently, and at times, offered practical advice on just how to
meet their pressing anxieties. This strata included aged pensioners
with thoughts on approaching death, young men frustrated by eluding
employment or failure in love, husbands maladjusted with wives,
childless women, some of them widows who suffered neglect at home,
parents who had suffered bereavement, and even schoolchildren,
some of whom established a close relationship with the saint. This
part of the audience at Dakshineswar, as it occurs to me, may have
been driven not so much by a class consciousness as the prospect of
a part-time release from the abject burden of their everyday lives.
252 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

It is also important to acknowledge that the class that Ramakrishna

was essentially addressing was not the middle class per se, but in
Ramakrishna’s idiom, the samsari, the householder trapped in the
prison-house of samsara (worldliness). Ramakrishna also had, among
his devotees, men of some social and financial standing, who he
found to be equally afflicted by shortcomings found in men materially
poorer. Thus, the ‘henpecked husband’, Ramakrishna would complain,
was a feature found among the rich and the poor alike, and quite
symptomatic of Kaliyuga.121
There is little reason to doubt that the social and religious
constituency of Ramakrishna comprised essentially of the grihastha
or householder, not discounting the several Hindu scholars and
holy men who called on him on several occasions. However, the
preoccupation with the householder also brings out his panacea for
people troubled in various ways, for the saint otherwise took sanyas as
the superior stage compared to that of the grihastha; the former was
the sun which illuminated the whole world, the latter only a lamp that
lit up small, private spaces.122 In a sense, Ramakrishna himself laid
the foundations of the Ramakrishna Order by initiating several young
men, all but one of whom were graduates and some, already married
at the time. Importantly too, not all of them were Brahmans. In these
men he expected to find a continuing passion for God-realization,
to overcome the travails of samsaric life and set worthy examples for
ordinary men and women to follow. That the sannyasi alone was best
fitted to lead the community was an understanding demonstrated
in the life of the Vaishnava reformer Chaitanya too, who reportedly
overcame all hostility to his religious life and doctrines by transiting
from the status of the householder to that of an ascetic.
Ramakrishna, as it occurs to me, provided his followers moral
and religious convictions or courage by alluding, first of all, to the
unique privileges that human birth itself enjoyed—of all forms
of life, man alone could think of God.123 He also told them not
to be unduly oppressed or guilt-ridden by notions of sinning, for
God’s remembrance itself would, in most cases, absolve us of our
sins.124 Even when he himself belonged to that class, he was severely
critical of self-seeking priesthood.125 But above all, he appears to
have imparted or reinforced certain social and moral values in his
devotees and disciples that appealed to traditional social instincts.
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 253

For instance, he would encourage young men never to disrespect

or neglect their parents, and the eldest son in the family he forbade
from accepting sanyas. He also advised housewives on the virtues of
thrift, devoted service to husbands and family, and on how to bring up
their daughters in ways that enhanced natural feminine modesty. His
ingenious powers of storytelling could combine deep metaphysical
truths with commonplace insights that carried great edification and
entertainment. Ramakrishna’s religious life was consistently marked
by a sense of wonder and humility. ‘Babu’, he once said to his host,
Keshab Chandra, on alighting from the horse-drawn carriage, ‘I
gather you too have visions of God. I am here to hear more about it’.126
‘The character of Ramakrishna’, as J.N. Farquhar aptly observed,
‘was singularly simple. He seemed capable of only a single motive,
namely a passion for God that ruled him and filled him  .  .   .  
when we follow this clue, every detail of his character falls into
place.’127

Vivekananda: The Cyclonic Swami

Of the major thinkers of the period under discussion, Swami
Vivekananda was perhaps the only one to achieve a pan-Hindu
and pan-India popularity in his lifetime. Rammohun’s religious
experiments were forgotten soon after his death, until these
were revived in the 1840s by Debendranath Tagore; and in any
case, given their social radicalism, not many were prepared to
accept the Brahmos as only a reformed Hindu community. With
Bankimchandra, the greatly entertaining quality of his novels always
stayed ahead of the appeal carried forth in his social or religious
treatises. Also, at least in his days, Bankimchandra was largely a
provincial figure. Bhudeb’s writings on Hindu rites or domestic
economy, as we might reasonably guess, did not endear him even
to his contemporaries, not to speak of posterity. In comparison, the
life and work of Vivekananda acquired great resonance, at least for
Hindu India, in places as far apart as Khetri and Kumbhokonam. His
followers too were drawn from various classes; he not only had the
enthusiastic support of young students and educated professionals,
254 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

but also, importantly, of feudal chiefs and rulers, and still later, of a
sizeable body of Western devotees and admirers. In hindsight, this
could be explained by recourse to four related arguments. First,
there is the Swami’s persistent eagerness to acquire a first-knowledge
of people and their problems, to feel the pulse of India as it were.
In modern India, he is clearly the ideal parivrajaka, the itinerant
monk, who traversed vast distances across the country, crossing
hills, barren deserts or rainforests—hosted by princes and paupers
alike—carrying not just spiritual messages, but also social. That he
could readily eat coarse chapatis offered by a scavenger or share a
smoke with a ritually defiled cobbler, took away the sense of upper
caste privilege, substituting it by an empathy or bonding with the
poor and the marginalized, all in the name of human brotherhood.128
Second, it was Vivekananda who was the first to simultaneously
reinterpret India’s traditions to the people of the West and to the
Indians themselves. This is significantly different from the work of
Bankimchandra, who, though greatly drawn to the intellectual and
material advancements of the contemporary West, deeply mistrusted
the West’s understanding of India and Indians. Bankimchandra was
quite averse to the idea of getting his novels translated into English
for fear that their narratives or intent would be grossly misinterpreted;
he also did not think that as outsiders, Europeans had any moral
or intellectual right to judge the people of India. Whereas he was
critical of Max Muller’s scholarship, Vivekananda, who met this
scholar when in Oxford, was simply overwhelmed by his ‘rishi like’
countenance. Since it was not the quality of his scholarship that he was
judging, what struck Vivekananda was Muller’s great love for India
and for things Indian. Third, although he wrote copiously, producing
commentaries and quasi-exegetical works, it was the spontaneity of
his speech, addresses, or classroom talks that very largely accounts for
the Swami’s popularity both at home and abroad. There was a certain
directness about these, which was both impressive and engaging.
Also, rather than dwell on some speculative discourse that one might
come to expect in a religious figure, these addressed everyday human
problems with an earnestness or conviction that had rarely, if ever,
been heard from a Hindu monk. Finally, especially for the Hindus,
Vivekananda’s phenomenal success in the West produced a new pride
of race that had not been hitherto witnessed. It appeared to many
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 255

that the Swami had not only put Hinduism on the world map, taking
away much of the slander and infamy that missionaries and unkind
critics had heaped upon it, but also restored to India, as it were, her
rightful place in the scale of human civilization. That Vivekananda
had returned to India with several European and American disciples
in tow brought alive the argument that India too had as much to give
back to the West as she had taken from her.
By ‘religion’, Vivekananda appears to have meant several things. At
one level, surely, this was indicative of the mysteries surrounding man
and creation itself, but there was also a more tangible and immediate
sense in which he understood the term. The Swami once told the
nationalist figure from Maharashtra, Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar, that
as long as even a dog of his country remained hungry, to feed it and
take good care of it was his first religious duty.129 Likewise, he did not
think that a religion was simply a matter of ritual conformity, that
it could afford to be insensitive to the plight of the Hindu widow, or
that it insisted on turning juvenile girls into mothers. The humanist
in Vivekananda saw the adoration of God and the concern for human
welfare to be interchangeable, and here, his thoughts were consistently
focused on serving the poor and the marginalized: ‘Where should
we seek for God, are not all the poor, the miserable, the weak, Gods?
Why not worship them first?’130
Vivekananda anticipates Gandhi in suggesting not only that it
was the poor and the deprived that were especially dear to God,
but that this compassion could outweigh all vacuous reforms that
affected only the upper classes. Rather than side with institutionalized
attempts at reform, the Swami was one its fiercest critics, alleging
that what had hitherto been done in the name of reform had failed
to affect the daily lives of a majority of Indians. There is indeed an
undercurrent of conservatism in his remark that the issue of widow
marriage had to take a back seat since did not affect about 70 per
cent of the Indian women.131 He was, however, not off the mark in
demanding ‘root and branch reform’, work that reduced or obliterated
blind prejudice, ignorance, and a pathological refusal to come to
terms with change.132 Spreading literacy among the masses was
no less important, as compared to spreading God-consciousness,
for Vivekananda and quite uniquely, he envisioned such work to
be carried out not by professional teachers or educationists, but
256 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

by monastics, committed both to God and service to the country.

Theirs would be a more effective crusade, since such work was to be
rendered not professionally but in the spirit of service:
A hundred thousand men and women, fired with zeal of holiness, fortified
with the eternal faith of the Lord and nerved to lion’s courage by their
sympathy for the poor and the fallen and the downtrodden, will go over
the length and breadth of the land, preaching the gospel of social raising
up—the gospel of equality.133

Arguably, a self-perpetuating ethical involvement in civil society

for Hindu sannyasis was first suggested by Swami Vivekananda.
Whereas traditionally, the sannyasi was deemed to have renounced
the world, the Swami, it would appear, was prepared to renounce not
the world itself, but worldliness.
Vivekananda carried forward the religious universalism of his
guru, a feat that enabled him to defend even image worship, citing the
instance of Ramakrishna himself. Like his guru, he also took the word
‘toleration’ to be terribly condescending: it was as though one had
appropriated all excellence or superiority to oneself and was simply
tolerating errors in others out of sheer civility.134 What mattered
above all were faith, sincerity, and humble selflessness. To him, the
different religions represented different forces in the moral economy
of God, each representing a great truth, a particular excellence, and
each endowed with a mission to promote the harmony of races.135
No common standard, argued Vivekananda, could be applied to all
societies or cultures, and the gravest offence that a man would commit
was to judge other cultures by standards of his own. Compared to
Ramakrishna, however, Vivekananda also appears to place a greater
emphasis on mutual appreciation and assimilation: ‘The Christian
is not to become a Hindu or Buddhist, nor a Hindu or Buddhist to
become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the other
and yet preserve the individuality and grow according to his own
laws of growth’.136
It has been aptly argued that Vivekananda actually dealt with
religious universalism on two related levels—one, the immediate
and the practical, and the second, the futuristic and the theoretical.
This was premised on an interesting distinction that the Swami drew
between historical religions and one that was sanatan, or ageless, and
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 257

founded on eternal principles rather than personalities. The latter,

in his opinion, was exemplified by the Vedanta, by which he really
meant Advaita or philosophical non-dualism.137 This led him to
envision something of a universal religion that could be stripped of
all conflicting cultural contexts and which would promote universal
oneness, not simply universal brotherhood.138
In modern Bengal, the revival of Vedanta, and of Advaita Vedanta
in particular, began with Rammohun, but reached its excellence only
in Vivekananda. Rammohun was clearly not given to ascetic ways of
life and yet, there are parallels between him and the Swami that would
be interesting to recall. Both Rammohun and Vivekananda situated
themselves in the spiritual and philosophical lineage of Acharya
Sankara, but also differed from him in several significant matters.
For one, they were both keen to contest the view that the God of the
Vedanta was neither a creator nor a moral benefactor. Rather than
project God as some potter crafting pots out the material he had
assiduously collected,139 they took the world to be coeval with God.
This divinized the world and dispelled notions about it being a pure
illusion. Vivekananda critiqued the Buddha for his nihilism and a
‘world denying philosophy’. Whereas the Buddha had said, ‘Realise all
this as Illusion’, Vedanta had intervened to say, ‘Realise that within the
Illusion is Real’.140 Second, they both chose to interpret the teachings
of Acharya Sankara in a language that was contemporary and to
arrive at conclusions that were suspiciously modern. This has often
led scholars to claim that the religious worldview that Vivekananda
presented before the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago
(1893) was largely his own creation. He is similarly accused of both
fidelity and distortion with respect to the teachings of his own guru,
Ramakrishna.141 Quite clearly, Vivekananda differed from the position
of his adiguru, Sankaracharya, by privileging personal experience
(anubhava) over the sanctity of scriptures,142 but here, ironically,
he appears to echo other voices within the Indian tradition, namely
that of the Buddha and his own guru, Ramakrishna, both of whom
rejected shruti as the sole testimony to God-realization. It occurs to
me therefore, that here, as with most other matters, Vivekananda took
both an eclectic and composite view of tradition, not only borrowing
hermeneutic spaces left open by debates or differences, but also trying
to foist upon these a holistic unity of understanding.
258 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

As with the term ‘religion’, Vivekananda took Vedanta too, to

carry multiple meanings. Thus, he refused to regard it as simply a
school of thought unrelated to man’s existential problems. To him, it
was distressing that a philosophy, which spoke so idealistically of the
underlying unity of all life, was practically defeated in everyday social
relations. The Vedanta that he desired to propagate was not one which
encouraged men to retreat from worldly engagements to the solitude
of hills and forests. On the contrary, it had to be this worldly and its
primary task was to instil in man, a faith in his immense potentiality,
for if man truly realized himself for what he was, there could simply
be no limits to what he might achieve: ‘Never say, “no”, never say
“I cannot” for you are Infinite. Even time and space are nothing
compared with your nature, you can do anything and everything. You
are almighty.’143 Man could not be a sinner since he was potentially
God. Vedanta held man to be capable of misconception, not sin.144
His ecumenism persuaded Swami Vivekananda to comment
on all the four yogas or paths to God acknowledged in traditional
Hinduism: Raja, Gyan, Bhakti, and Karma. For a man who was
clearly partial to the gnosis oriented Gyan Yoga, Vivekananda wrote
copiously on Bhakti Yoga too, in which he ably defended the notion
of a personal god. Bhakti was important, since love and attachment
were best manifest through personalized relations, and here the
Swami could not have helped recall the intense attachment that
Ramakrishna himself had exhibited in relation to the Goddess Kali.
A personal god, constructed in the image of man himself, naturally
followed from the fact that human beings had the ability to conceive
matters only in the light of what they knew. A personal god, who
was given an anthropomorphic form, was really an idealized man,
just as for buffaloes, ‘god’ would appear as an ideal buffalo.145 So
far as one can see, the Swami was in agreement with the views of
Bankimchandra; but importantly enough, he parted company when
it came to the question of explaining the presence of evil. God could
not be the source of both the good and wicked; it made greater sense
to understand such matters as following from an incessant chain of
cause and effect perpetrated by human action alone. Heaven and hell
were not sites outside ourselves, but were states of the mind that we
ourselves created through thought and actions. Vivekananda also
rejected the idea of a magistrate god146 who arbitrated over human
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 259

life, rewarding those devoted to him and punishing the detractors. In

this view, God’s role was purely instrumental. He only helped to clean
and suitably furnish the world and was expected to respond to people
who kept asking Him for material favours: uninterrupted sensual
enjoyment, wealth, or healthy bodies. Above all, a philosophical
dualism hinging on the idea of a personal god did not explain our
ethical responsibility in the world. What explained it far better was
the idea of an impersonal god and the monistic obliteration of all
differentiation, in brief, a situation where man himself had to take
full responsibility for his thoughts and actions. It was only thus that
he could realize that hurting others would only hurt oneself, and
that by helping others, a man really helped himself.147 Unfortunately,
there is only a perilously thin line that the Swami draws here between
selfishness and a sincere desire to serve others. Vedantic idealism
also led Vivekananda to believe that the world was ultimately beyond
human intervention:
Let us give up all this foolish talk of doing good to the world. It is not waiting
for your or my help, yet we must work and constantly do good because it
is a blessing to ourselves.  .  .  . The world will go on with its happiness and
misery through eternity  .  .  .  when we know that the world is like a dog’s
curly tail that will never get straightened, we shall not become fanatics.  .  .  .148

Bankimchandra, more than Vivekananda, appears to more

acutely aware about the inconsistencies in his views. Besides, the
Swami was often a victim of enormous mood swings, partly induced
by hostility from various quarters and failing health. A man who
began his monastic career in the spirit of dedicated social service thus
ended on highly anxious statements about himself and questioning
the efficacy of work itself: ‘.  .  .  work always brings evil with it. I have
paid  .  .  .  with bad health  .  .  .  and work? What is work?  .  .  .  whom shall
I work for? I am free. I am Mother’s child. She works, she plays, why
should I plan?’149 ‘After all, I am only the boy who used to listen with
rapt wonderment to the wonderful words of Ramakrishna  .  .  .  that
is my true nature; work and activities doing good and so forth are
only superimpositions.’150
His patriotic sentiments, often reacting to allegations made
by evangelists and the Western press, could at times be grossly
insensitive. Thus, once when lecturing in Oakland, USA, Vivekananda
260 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

firmly denied that the child widow in India had to put up with any
‘particular hardship’.151 Again, though insisting on showing respect
to all views or opinions, the aggressive, polemical side to him could
sometimes be drawn into uncharitable comments. The ‘vulgarities’
of Hindu religious symbols, he alleged, had all been caused by a
‘degenerate’ Buddhism.152 It was thus that he also dismissed the
religion of the Brahmos as ‘not worth a cent’,153 and various religious
sects like the Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj as ‘useless mixtures’,
merely ‘voices of apology to our English masters’.154 This is intriguing,
given the fact that Vivekananda started his religious life as a Brahmo,
and the above comment also ill fits Swami Dayananda, who had
no knowledge of English, and the Arya Samaj, which was far more
militant in its rejection of English culture or habits than the Brahmo
Samaj.
In a sense, Swami Vivekananda may be said to have overturned
the spirit of both popular Hinduism and the general drift of neo-
Hindu thinking in nineteenth-century India. The first he performed
by somewhat unimaginatively commenting on how temples had no
hold on Hinduism.155 But the second was probably more radicalizing
in intent. Whereas hitherto every major Hindu thinker, beginning
with Rammohun, had tried to measure religion in terms of its social
functions or usefulness, it was Vivekananda’s firm feeling that this
amounted to a misreading of the issue at hand. Being transitory by
nature and constantly subject to change, society could not possibly
be the test of ‘truth’, or an ideal, that religion might justly follow.156
At this point, it might be pertinent to ask if such thoughts also made
Vivekananda’s discourse archaic, obscure, or backward-looking. In
his defence, it has to be said though that even allowing for such
idiosyncrasy, his vision, on the whole, was humane, progressive and
futuristic. ‘India that is to be’, he quips at one place, ‘must be much
greater than ancient India’.157

Notes
1. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, ‘Letters on Hinduism’, in Bankim
Rachanavali, vol. 3, ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal, Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad,
1969, p. 236.
2. Amiya P. Sen, ‘The Idea of Social Reform and its Critique among Hindus
of Nineteenth Century India’, in Development of Modern Indian Thought
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 261
and the Social Sciences, vol. X, pt. 5, ed. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 121.
3. On the religious views of Rammohun, see the following: Bruce Carlisle
Robertson, Raja Rammohan Ray: The Father of Modern India, Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1995; Dermot Killingley, Rammohun Roy in
the Hindu and Christian Traditions, The Teape Lectures, 1990, Newcastle
upon Tyne: Grevatt and Grevatt, 1993; and Amiya P. Sen, Rammohun
Roy: A Critical Biography, Delhi: Viking, 2012.
4. Arvind Sharma, ‘The Gita, Suttee and Rammohun Roy’, Indian Economic
and Social History Review, vol. 20, no. 3, 1983, pp. 341–7.
5. Keshab Chandra Sen, cited in Amiya Sen, ‘The Idea of Social Reform’,
p. 121.
6. Ibid.
7. Amiya P. Sen, ed., Social and Religious Reform: The Hindus of British India,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 10.
8. Cited in Amiya P. Sen, Swami Vivekananda, Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2000, p. 71.
9. On Viresalingam and the widow marriage campaign in coastal Andhra,
see, John Leonard and Karen, ‘Viresalingam and the Ideology of Social
Change in Andhra’, in Religious Controversies in British India: Dialogues
in South Asian Languages, ed. Kenneth W. Jones, Albany: SUNY, 1992,
pp. 151–76.
10. See his review of Vidyasagar’s tract on polygamy (‘Bahuvibaha’), in
Jogeshchandra Bagal, ed., Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 2, repr., Calcutta:
Sahitya Samsad, 2005, pp. 272–6; and the letter to Kumar Benoy Krishna
Deb, dated 27 July 1892, on the propriety of sea voyages, reproduced in
Bagal, ed., Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 2, pp. 849–51.
11. For details on the so called Bangabasi writers, chiefly, Jogendrachandra
Basu and Indranath Bandopadhyay, see, Amiya P. Sen, Hindu Revivalism
in Bengal, 1872–1905: Some Essays in Interpretation, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1993, pp. 236–84.
12. For details of this reactive movement see, ibid., pp. 363–400.
13. See his note dated 16 February 1891, cited in Subal Chandra Mitra, Isvar
Chandra Vidyasagar: A Story of his Life and Work, New Delhi: Rupa, 2008,
p. 519.
14. In 1901, Lajpat Rai strongly rebutted wat he considered to be an overly
sarcastic comment on ‘revival’ and ‘revivalists’ that Ranade offered at
the 11th Social Conference, Amraoti, 1897. The two statements, though
polemically tied, represent classic contributions to the controversy.
15. Tarasankar Banerjee, ‘Social Reform Movements in Bengal in the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries: A Study in Social Change’, in Social and
262 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Religious Reform Movements in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,
ed. S.P. Sen, Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1979, p. 36.
16. M.K. Haldar, tr. and ed., Renaissance and Reaction in Nineteenth Century
Bengal: Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay: An English translation of the
Bengali Essay ‘Samya’, Calcutta: Minerva, 1977, p. 92.
17. Sibnath Sastri, ‘Bartamansamaye Brahmo Samajer Adarsha’ (The present
ideals before the Brahmo Samaj), address of 16th Baisakh bs 1296,
included in Prafulla Kumar Das, ed., Sibnath Sastrir Aprakashita Baktrita
O Smaraklipi, Calcutta: Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, 1975, p. 46.
18. Tapan Raychaudhury, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in
Nineteenth Century Bengal, repr., Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988,
p. 8.
19. Cited in Amiya Sen, ‘The Idea of Social Reform’, p. 126.
20. See his unfinished commentary on the Gita, included in Bagal, ed., Bankim
Rachanavali, vol. 2, especially the introduction. The commentary was
posthumously published in 1902.
21. Dermot Killingley, ‘Modernity, Reform and Revival’, in The Blackwell
Companion to Hinduism, ed. Gavin Flood, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003,
p. 523.
22. Niradchandra Chaudhury, Nirbachita Probondho, Kolkata: Ananda, 1997,
p. 112f.
23. For a typical example, see, Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘The Myth of Praxis: The
Construction of the Figure of Krishna in Krishnacharitra’, Occasional
Papers on History and Society, no. 50, 1987, NMML, New Delhi.
24. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, ‘Gourdas Babajir Bhikhhar Jhuli’
(Vividha Prabandha), in Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 2, ed. Jogeshchandra
Bagal, repr., Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 2005, pp. 265–9.
25. Bhavatosh Dutta, Bangalir Manav Dharma, Calcutta: Mitra & Ghosh,
2000, p. 59.
26. See his Dharmatattwa, repr. in Bagal, ed., Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 2,
p. 633.
27. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, ‘On the Origin of Hindu Festivals’, repr.
in Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 3, ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal, Calcutta: Sahitya
Samsad, 1969, pp. 91–7.
28. See in particular Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, ‘Samya’, in Bankim
Rachanavali, vol. 2, ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal, repr., Calcutta: Sahitya
Samsad, 2005, pp. 328–51. Also see, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay,
‘The Confession of a Young Bengal’, in Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 3,
ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal, Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1969.
29. Chattopadhyay, ‘Letters on Hinduism’, p. 230.
30. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, ‘Debtattwa O Hindudharma’, in Bankim
Rachanavali, vol. 2, ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal, repr., Calcutta: Sahitya
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 263
Samsad, 2005, pp. 707–50.; also see, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay,
‘Vedic Literature’, in Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 3, ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal,
Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1969.
31. See the letter from Krishnamohan Banerjee, dated 10 November 1882,
reproduced in Bagal, ed., Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 3 pp. 218–23. This
was a part of the exchange of letters between Bankimchandra and Revd
William Hastie in 1882.
32. Perhaps the earliest literary reference to her occurs in the Prakrit poetry of
Satvahana Hala, around second century ce. Special sects have been known
to have been based on reverence to Radha, such as the Radhavallabhis of
Hita Harivamsa. In Vrindavan, the seat of various Vaishnava sampradayas,
Radha’s name is still taken with great reverence.
33. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, ‘Krishnacharitra’ (Advertisement to the
second edition), in BankimRachanavali, vol. 2, ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal,
repr., Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 2005, p. 960.
34. Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Krishnacharitra’ (1894), in ‘Adhunik Sahitya’,
Rabindra Rachanavali, vol. 5, Calcutta: Viswa-Bharati, 2004, pp. 561–71.
35. For Rammohun’s critique, see especially his polemics with the Goswami
theologians as in ‘Goswamir sahit Vichar’, in Rammohun Rachanavali,
ed. Ajitkumar Ghosh, Calcutta: Haraf Prakashan, 1973, pp. 155–68.
36. Cited in Amiya Sen, Hindu Revivalism, p. 110; translation mine.
37. Chandranath Basu, ‘Bandhubatsal Bankimchandra’, in Kacher Manush
Bankimchandra, ed. Soumendranath Basu, Calcutta: Tagore Research
Centre, 1989, p. 105.
38. Translated from Sharat Chandra Chakravarty’s ‘Swami Sisya Samvad’,
cited in Amiya Sen, Swami Vivekananda, p. 68.
39. Wilhelm Halbfass, ed., Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on
Traditional and Modern Vedanta, Albany: SUNY, 1995, pp. 237–8.
40. See Appendix A to Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Dharmatattwa,
ed. Brajendranath Bandopadhyay and Sajanikanta Das, Calcutta:
Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, 1965, pp. 142–3; also see, Bankimchandra
Chattopadhyay, ‘Letters on Hinduism’, p. 230.
41. Amiya P. Sen, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay: An Intellectual Biography,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 84.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. See Appendix B to Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Dharmatattwa,
pp. 148–9.
45. Ibid., p. 149.
46. See Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, ‘Letters in the Hastie Controversy’,
in Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 3, ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal, Calcutta: Sahitya
Samsad, 1969, pp. 170–226.
264 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
47. Sen, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, p. 82.
48. See, for instance, the passage translated from his commentary on the
Bhagavad Gita (1902) titled ‘A Pointless Debate’, included in Amiya P. Sen,
ed., Bankim’s Hinduism: An Anthology of Writings by Bankim Chandra
Chattopadhyay, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2011, pp. 196–8.
49. The debate between Bankimchandra and Sri Ramakrishna constitutes
one of the most fascinating debates in the religious history of Bengal. An
English summary, translated from the Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita
of Mahendranath Gupta appears in Amiya P. Sen, ed., His Words: The
Preachings and Parables of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Delhi: Viking,
2010, pp. 39–41.
50. For this controversy, see, ‘Adi Brahmo Samaj O Nabya Hindu Sampradaya’,
which originally appeared in the Bengali journal Prochar (1884) and
reproduced in Bagal, ed., Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 2, pp. 837–41.
51. Sen, ed., Bankim’s Hinduism, p. 40.
52. Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘The Reversal of Orientalism: Bhudev Mukhopadhyay
and the Project of Indegenist Social Theory’, in The Imaginary Institution
of India: Politics and Ideas, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2012, p. 287.
53. Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, ‘Samaj Sanskar’, in Probondho Samagra, ed.
Manaswita Sanyal and Ranjan Bandopadhyay, Kolkata: Charchapada,
2010, p. 563.
54. Pramathanath Bishi, ed., Bhudeb Rachanasambhar, Calcutta: Mitra &
Ghosh, 1968.
55. Ashin Dasgupta, ‘Bismrita Brahmin’, Bishoy Swadhinata O Anannya
Bishoy, Calcutta: Ananada, 1992.
56. See, Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Hindu Vivaha’, in Rabindra Rachanavali,
vol. 12, repr., Calcutta: Viswa-Bharati, 2004, pp. 415–49; also see,
Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Ahaar Sombondhe Chandranath Babur Mot’, in
Rabindra Rachanavali, vol. 6, repr., Calcutta: Viswa-Bharati, 2004, p. 685f.
57. See his Paribarik Probondho, reproduced in Bishi, ed., Bhudeb
Rachanasambhar, pp. 443–87.
58. Bhudeb compared Vidyasagar’s widow marriage campaign to the blemish
carried by the resplendent moon. See, Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, ‘Swadhin
Chinta’, in Probondho Samagra, ed. Manaswita Sanyal and Ranjan
Bandopadhyay, Kolkata: Charchapada, 2010, p. 554. It also worried him
that widows of ’disreputable’ character were now allowed to inherit the
property of their late husbands. Also see, Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s Samajik
Probondho, reproduced in Bishi, ed., Bhudeb Rachanasambhar, p. 217.
59. See Pramathnath Bishi’s introduction in Bishi, ed., Bhudeb Rachanasambhar.
60. Dasgupta, Bishoy Swadhinata O Anannya Bishoy.
61. Bhudeb’s Paribarik Probondho, reproduced in Bishi, ed., Bhudeb
Rachanasambhar, pp. 447, 480.
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 265
62. See, Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s Achar Probondho, reproduced in Bishi,
ed., Bhudeb Rachanasambhar, p. 491.
63. Ibid., pp. 515–16.
64. Ibid., p. 494.
65. Ibid., p. 521.
66. Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, ‘Bongo Samaje Antah Shashana’, in Probondho
Samagra, ed. Manaswita Sanyal and Ranjan Bandopadhyay, Kolkata:
Charchapada, 2010, p. 522.
67. Bhudeb’s Samajik Probondho, reproduced in Bishi, ed., Bhudeb Rachana-
sambhar, p. 47.
68 Mukhopadhyay, ‘Bongo Samaje Antah Shashana’, pp. 527–9.
69. Bhudeb’s Samajik Probondho, reproduced in Bishi, ed., Bhudeb
Rachanasambhar, pp. 154, 158. Between 1883 and 1888, Bhudeb resided
in Benares, where he is known to have accepted training in Vedanta under
Swami Bhaskarananda.
70. Ibid., p. 69.
71. Ibid., pp. 85–6.
72. Ibid., p. 89.
73. Ibid., p. 158.
74. Ibid., p. 178.
75. Ibid., p. 69.
76. Ibid., p. 25.
77. Bhudeb Mukhopadhayay, Probondho Samagra, ed. Manaswita Sanyal and
Ranjan Bandopadhyay, Kolkata: Charchapada, 2010, p. 500.
78. Bhudeb’s Samajik Probondho, reproduced in Bishi, ed., Bhudeb Rachana-
sambhar, p. 82.
79. Kalikrishnananda Giri, Sri Ramkrishner Tantric Guru Bhairabi Jogeswari,
Calcutta, 1936.
80. Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, ‘Brahmodharma O Tantrashastra’, in Prabandha
Samagra, ed. Manaswita Sanyal and Ranjan Bandopadhyay, Kolkata:
Charchapada, 2010, pp. 570–8.
81. Ibid.
82. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, ‘Hindudharmer Shresthata’ (Review),
in Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 2, ed. Jogeshchandra Bagal, repr., Calcutta:
Sahitya Samsad, 2005, pp. 799–802.
83. Ibid., p. 66.
84. Bhudeb’s, Samajik Probondho, reproduced in Bishi, ed., Bhudeb
Rachanasambhar, pp. 243–4.
85 Kaviraj, ‘The Reversal of Orientalism’, p. 287.
86. Suresh Chandra Dutta, Sri Sri Ramakrishnadeber Upadesh, Kolkata:
Pranati, 2005, p. 147.
266 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
87. Amiya Sen, ed., His Words, pp. 42–3; and Amiya P. Sen, Explorations
in Modern Bengal c.1800–1900: Essays on Religion, History and Culture,
Delhi: Primus, 2010, p. 91.
88. Sen, Explorations in Modern Bengal, p. 81.
89. This was particularly the position among the Western educated and
members of the Brahmo Samaj. For a typically cynical comment on the
self-seeking guru, see the conversation between Bankimchandra and
Ramakrishna, reproduced in Amiya Sen, ed., His Words, p. 40.
90. Ibid., pp. 63–5.
91. Cited in Amiya P. Sen, ‘Debates within Colonial Hinduism’, in Hinduism
in the Modern World, ed. Brian A. Hatcher, New York: Routledge, 2016,
p. 67.
92. Amiya P. Sen, Three Essays on Sri Ramakrishna and His Times, Shimla:
IIAS, 2001, p. 93.
93. Sen, ed., His Words, p. 181.
94. Suresh Dutta, Sri Sri Ramakrishnadeber Upadesh, p. 23.
95. Ibid., pp. 147, 198.
96. Cited in Sen, ed., His Words, pp. 147–8; translation mine.
97. See his debate with Bankimchandra on this question, ibid., pp. 39–41.
98. Cited in Sen, Explorations in Modern Bengal, p. 89.
99. Suresh Dutta, Sri Sri Ramakrishnadeber Upadesh, p. 27; Amiya Sen,
ed., His Words, p. 87.
100. Dutta, Sri Sri Ramakrishnadeber Upadesh, p. 17.
101. Sen, ed., His Words, p. 89.
102. Ibid., p. 80.
103. Dutta, Sri Sri Ramakrishnadeber Upadesh, p. 38.
104. Ibid., pp. 44–6.
105. For a general narrative on Ramakrishna’s religious training, see, Advaita
Ashrama, Life of Sri Ramakrishna: Compiled from various Authentic
Sources, Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1977.
106. Suresh Dutta, Sri Sri Ramakrishnadeber Upadesh, p. 36.
107. This summary is based on Sen, Three Essays, pp. 89–105.
108. Sri Sri Ramakrishna Deber Jeeboni O Upadesh (1897), pp. 11–12, cited in
Sen, Three Essays, p. 89; translation mine.
109. Ibid., p. 103.
110. Ibid., p. 94.
111. Ibid., p. 99.
112. Ibid., p. 104.
113. Sen, ed., His Words, p. 140.
114. Essentially a Puranic prophecy, it occurs repeatedly in Vaishnava Puranas,
like the Bhagavata Purana.
115. Sen, ed., His Words, p. 137.
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 267
116. Ibid., p. 143.
117. Dutta, Sri Sri Ramakrishnadeber Upadesh, pp. 134–5.
118. Sen, ed., His Words, pp. 188–9.
119. Ibid., pp. 139–40.
120. Partha Chatterjee, ed., ‘A Religion of Urban Domesticity: Sri Ramakrishna
and the Calcutta Middle Classes’, in Subaltern Studies, vol. VII, ed. Partha
Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993;
also see, Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1997.
121. Amiya Sen, ed., His Words, p. 187. The reference here is to Capt. Viswanath
Upadhaya, an influential employee of the Royal Nepalese Durbar, who
looked after the Nepalese government’s commercial interests in Calcutta.
122. Sen, Explorations in Modern Bengal, p. 83.
123. Sen, ed., His Words, p. 48.
124. Ibid., p. 187.
125. Ibid., pp. 193–4.
126. Amiya P. Sen, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: The Sadhaka of Dakshineswar,
Delhi: Viking, 2010, pp. 142–3.
127. John Nicol Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India, New York:
Macmillan, 1919, p. 195.
128. This is summarized from my short biography of Vivekananda. See, Amiya
Sen, Swami Vivekananda, 2000, pp. 19–43.
129. Ashrama, Life of Swami Vivekananda, p. 644.
130. Advaita Ashrama, Letters of Swami Vivekananda, Kolkata: Advaita
Ashrama, 2013, p. 170.
131. Sen, ed., Social and Religious Reform, p. 68.
132. Ibid., pp. 68–9.
133. Ibid., p. 41.
134. Amiya P. Sen, The Indispensable Vivekananda: An Anthology for our Times,
Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2006, p. 42.
135. Arvind Sharma, ‘Universal Religion in the Life and Thought of Swami
Vivekananda’, The Concept of Universal Religion in Modern Hindu Thought,
Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press, pp. 57–8.
136. Swami Vivekananda cited in ibid., p. 59.
137. Ibid., p. 72.
138. Ibid., p. 64.
139. Sen, Explorations in Modern Bengal, p. 102.
140. Ibid.
141. Makarand Paranjape, ‘Representing Swami Vivekananda: Some Issues and
Debates’, http://makarand.com/acad/RepresentingSwamiVivekananda
268 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
SomeIssuesandDebates.htm, accessed on 14 October 2014; also see
Jyotirmaya Sharma, ‘Dharma for the State?’, Outlook, 21 January 2013,
p. 53.
142. Anantanand Rambachan, The Limits of Scripture, Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press, 1994.
143. Vivekananda cited in Sen, Explorations in Modern Bengal, p. 101.
144. Ibid., p. 103.
145. Ibid., p. 102.
146. Ibid., p. 103.
147. Ibid., p. 104.
148. Vivekananda cited in Sen, The Indispensable Vivekananda, p. 207.
149. Advaita Ashrama, Letters of Swami Vivekananda, p. 321.
150. Ibid., p. 322.
151. Vivekananda cited in Sen, Hindu Revivalism in Bengal, p. 330.
152. Ibid., p. 335.
153. Ibid., p. 327.
154. Ibid.
155. Vivekananda cited in Sen, The Indispensable Vivekananda, p. 57.
156. Sen, ‘The Idea of Social Reform’, p. 130.
157. Vivekananda cited in Sen, Explorations in Modern Bengal, p. 107.

References
Bagal, Jogeshchandra, ed., Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 1, repr., Calcutta: Sahitya
Samsad, 2003.
———,  ed., Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 2, repr., Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 2005.
———,  ed., Bankim Rachanavali, vol. 3, Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1969.
Bishi, Pramathanath, ed., Bhudeb Rachanasambhar, Calcutta: Mitra & Ghosh,
1968.
Chatterjee, Partha, ‘A Religion of Urban Domesticity: Sri Ramakrishna and the
Calcutta Middle Classes’, in Subaltern Studies, ed. Partha Chatterjee and
Gyanendra Pandey Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Chaudhury, Niradchandra, Nirbachita Probondho, Kolkata: Ananda, 1997.
Dasgupta, Ashin, Bishoy Swadhinata O Ananya Bishoy, Kolkata: Ananda, 1992.
Dutta, Bhavatosh, Bangalir Manav Dharma, Calcutta: Mitra & Ghosh, 2000.
Dutta, Suresh Chandra, Sri Sri Ramakrishnadeber Upadesh, Kolkata: Pranati,
2005.
Farquhar, John Nicol, Modern Religious Movements in India, New York:
Macmillan, 1919.
Halbfass, Wilhem, ed., Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional
and Modern Vedanta, Albany: SUNY, 1995.
 Sen: Hinduism under Interpretative Stress 269
Haldar, M.K., tr. and ed., Renaissance and Reaction in Nineteenth Century Bengal:
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay: An English translation of the Bengali Essay
‘Samya’, Calcutta: Minerva, 1977.
Kaviraj, Sudipta, ‘The Myth of the Praxis: The Construction of the Figure of
Krishna in the Krishnachaitra’, Occasional Papers on History and Society,
1987, NMML, New Delhi.
Kaviraj, Sudipta, The Imaginary Institution of India: Politics and Ideas, Ranikhet:
Permanent Black, 2012.
Lahiri, Sipra, Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay O Bangla Sahitya, Calcutta: Kabi O Kabita
Prakashan, 1976.
Letters of Swami Vivekananda, Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, 2013.
Life of Swami Vivekananda: By his Eastern and Western Admirers, Calcutta:
Advaita Ashrama, 1974.
Mukhopadhyay, Bhudeb, Probondho Samagra, ed. Manaswita Sanyal and Ranjan
Bandopadhyay, Kolkata: Charchapada, 2010.
Paranjape, Makarand, ‘Representing Swami Vivekananda: Some Issues and
Debates’, http://makarand.com/acad/RepresentingSwamiVivekananda
SomeIssuesandDebates.htm, accessed on 14 October 2010.
Rambachan, Anantanand, The Limits of Scripture, Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1994.
Raychaudhuri, Tapan, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth
Century Bengal, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Sen, Amiya P., Hindu Revivalism in Bengal 1872–1905: Some Essays in
Interpretation, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993.
———,  Swami Vivekananda, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000.
———,  Three Essays on Sri Ramakrishna and His Times, Shimla: IIAS, 2001.
———,  The Indispensable Vivekananda: An Anthology for our Times, Ranikhet:
Permanent Black, 2006.
———,  Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay: An Intellectual Biography, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2008.
———,  Explorations in Modern Bengal c.1800–1900: Essays on Religion, History
and Culture, Delhi: Primus, 2010.
———,  Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: The Sadhaka of Dakshineswar, Delhi:
Viking, 2010.
Sen, Amiya P., ed., Social and Religious Reform: The Hindus of British India,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003.
———,  ed., His Words: The Preachings and Parables of Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa, Delhi: Viking, 2010.
———,  ed., Bankim’s Hinduism. An Anthology of Writings by Bankim Chandra
Chattopadhyay, Ranikhet, Permanent Black, 2011.
Sen, Amiya P., ‘The Idea of Social Reform and its Critique among Hindus of
Nineteenth Century India’, in Development of Modern Indian Thought and
270 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
the Social Sciences, vol. X, pt. 5, ed. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2007.
———,  ‘Debates within Colonial Hinduism’, in Hinduism in the Modern World,
ed. Brian A. Hatcher, New York: Routledge, 2016.
Sen, S.P., ed., Social and Religious Reform Movements in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries, Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1979.
Sharma, Arvind, ‘Universal Religion in the Life and Thought of Swami
Vivekananda’, The Concept of Universal Religion in Modern Hindu Thought,
Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan and St Martins Press, 1998.
Sharma, Jyotirmaya, ‘Dharma for the State?’, Outlook, 21 January 2013, pp. 48–54.
Tagore, Rabindranath, ‘Krishnacharitra’ (Review), in Rabindra Rachanavali,
15 vols., repr., Kolkata: Viswa-Bharati, 2004.
 9
Understanding Bengali Muslims
through Literature, 1850–1947

Amit Dey

T
he personality of Prophet Muhammad occupies a central
position as the eternally ‘beautiful model’ (Surah 33: 21) in the
lives of all those who acknowledge in the profession of faith
that he is truly ‘the messenger of God’. We aim at analysing Bengali
literature, mainly between the 1850s and 1947, relating to Muhammad
in its proper social, economic, and ideological context. Our concern
is to study the changing contexts and emphasis in telling of the
Prophet’s life in order to gain a richer sense of key issues in Muslim
lives during these years.
The Bengalis of Bangladesh and West Bengal comprise one
of the largest Muslim ethnic populations in the world. They are
outnumbered only by the Muslim populations of the Arab countries
and Indonesia. 1 Unlike the Indonesians and Persians, Bengali
Muslims retained both their language and script despite Islamization,
and they are the world’s largest body of Muslims to have done that.2
Moreover, they also constitute one of the largest Muslim communities
on earth to have an agrarian base.3 This comparison and numerical
strength of Bengali Muslims in the global context is mentioned only
to emphasize that no serious study of the nature of South Asian Islam
and prophetology is possible if it excludes Bengal.
We have chosen the period 1850 to 1947 for this study. The 1850s
were significant in many ways. In that decade, the 1857–8 rebellion
was suppressed by the colonial government and the militancy of
the Islamic revivalist movements began to subside. Soon after,
Muslims in and around Calcutta, ‘which was exposed to colonial
272 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

rule and Western influence long before Aligarh, started to realize

the importance of co-operation with the British for the uplift of
their community’.4 In the 1850s, the foundation stone of the Calcutta
University, the harbinger of new learning and ideas in South Asia, was
laid. The same decade also witnessed the introduction of the widow
remarriage act, which can be regarded as a milestone in the history of
Indian reform movement. During the same period, steamers could be
seen plying on the Ganges for the first time, adding a new dimension
to the transport system, which was also reflected in a Muhammad-
oriented folk song. Folk songs in Bengali are easily traceable from that
decade too. In short, the 1850s ushered in a new era in the history
of Bengal and South Asia. Our study ends in 1947 with the second
partition of Bengal and the first partition of India, when East Bengal,
widely known as East Pakistan (present Bangladesh), became a part
of the new state of Pakistan.
Scholars who wrote on different aspects of Islam in Bengal have
made significant contributions in their respective fields by utilizing
a variety of source materials, but they failed to make use of sirats,
mauluds,5 and folk songs. We have tried to fill this lacunae.
A historical trend that has been influential since the last several
decades is that of finding meaning and intention in the actions of
the marginalized elements, such as the peasantries, the colonized,
and the women.6 In tune with this trend, the present study puts due
emphasis on the emotions, pathos, sentiments, and responses of the
people in agrarian Bengal to the changing circumstances as reflected
in the Prophet-oriented folk songs. The gender discourses as revealed
in the sirats also receive due importance.
Scholars on Islamic studies, such as B.D. Metcalf, Richard Eaton,
Ralph W. Nicholas, Francis Robinson, Tony K. Stewart, Carl W. Ernst,
and Clinton B. Seely, have tended to disassociate themselves from a
stereotyped position which holds that vitality and creativity in Islam
is a high cultural phenomenon confined to the classical era and can
be discovered only in the Middle East.7 Indeed, the present research
would further justify the breaking of this stereotype by suggesting
that a proper understanding of Muslim minds and actions must
include the history of the Muslims of South Asia, of whom the Bengali
Muslims constitute the largest group.
The folk songs, sirats, mauluds, punthis,8 and other original
sources in Bengali have been studied to explore the different forms
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 273

of self-definition of different classes of Bengali Muslims. The analysis

of these materials, alongside the more conventional ones, has enabled
us to depict a clearer picture of the minds and actions of this group
as having been conditioned by various historical forces. One such
powerful historical force was British presence, but it is also crucial
not to overlook the influential Muslim agency at work.9 Bearing this
in mind, an attempt has been made to discuss the growth of Islamic
revivalism in the nineteenth century, the development of a Muslim
political identity from the early twentieth century, pan-Islamism, the
gendering of Muslim identity, the activist reinterpretation of religion,
and the emergence of a new sense of individualism, which often
challenged the authority of the traditional ulama and otherworldly
mysticism. We have analysed here how these developments could
be directly or indirectly related to the growth and sustenance of a
Prophet-centred piety in Bengal. While discussing the emergence
of Prophet-centred piety and Prophet-oriented literature, we shall
also address the general, problematic of the role of imagination and
creativity in South Asian Islamic cultures, with particular reference
to Bengal. In other words, we shall attempt to explore and, if possible,
explain whether, by presenting various images of the Prophet in
Bengali literature, some conscientious Muslims have tried to exercise
their imagination to the limit in order to express themselves in valid
and respectable ways within the framework of Islam.
For our convenience, we shall divide the discussion into three
parts—sirat literature and sirat writers of Bengal, the image of women
in the Prophetic mirror, and the Prophet in Bengali folk literature. The
first two parts mainly deal with urban Bengal, where the demand for
printed sirats, mauluds, and religious tracts were higher. The final part
deals with rural Bengal where, due to a higher rate of illiteracy, people
had limited access to print, or at times none at all. Oral transmission
of knowledge played a significant role under such circumstances.

Sirat Literature and Sirat Writers

of Bengal
British paramountcy was established in India by the second decade of
the nineteenth century. The last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah II,
was still reigning in Delhi, but he virtually had no power; and with
the crushing of the Rebellion of 1857–8, the British deported him
274 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

to Rangoon, where he died in 1862. Initially, the Muslims could not

interpret the factors responsible for their decline in concrete social,
economic, and political terms. A common notion was that a deviation
from the Prophetic Way (Tariqa-i-Muhammadiya) was responsible
for their decline, and hence a ‘Back to the Prophet’ movement for
their regeneration was prescribed.
During the latter half of the century, there emerged a group who
represented the new Muslim middle class in Bengal. Many of them
were educated, and were in search of a new role model who would
secure the uplift of their community in a colonial environment. In
the midst of new challenges, they discovered such a role model in
the Prophet Muhammad, whom they imagined as a saint, a patriot,
a humanitarian, an astute statesman, a lawgiver, a gifted general, an
ideal husband, a good neighbour, a just trader, a social reformer, and
a religious preacher.
The adoption of printing technology, without which the volumes
of sirats would not have swelled to sustain a Prophet-centred piety,
is an important point in the discussion of Islamic revivalism. The
transfer of the mode of transmission of knowledge from sound to
sight, which was made possible by the press along with the process
of vernacularization, gave the Bengali Muslims ample opportunity
to analyse and interpret religious literature for themselves, without
the supervision of the ulama in general, and the Urdu-based
ulama in particular. In other words, the rise of the individual as his
own interpreter diminished the monopoly of the ulama over the
transmission of knowledge. This, in turn, can be related to a greater
phenomenon, that of the growth of individualism in the middle class
Muslim society in the second half of the nineteenth century—a period
when the individual gained greater control over his life.10
Various forms of religious publications, which included sirats,
mauluds, and nasihatnamas,11 had one important implication. In a
period when the transmission of knowledge was becoming a matter
of individual responsibility, a section of the more pragmatic ulama
tried to extend their influence in the Bengali Muslim society by
patronizing religious publications. Ironically, such publications also
created conditions for the emergence of some individuals within
the community who asserted their right to interpret Islam for
themselves, as opposed to accepting the interpretations of the ulama
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 275

unquestioningly. Again, some of the educated Muslim middle class

hardly had the time to follow the instructions of shariat in their daily
lives. They were Muslims only by culture. In Gour Kishore Ghosh’s
novel Prem Nei, the main character Safikul epitomized this new type
of educated Bengali Muslims. These people were not even prepared
to accept ijma, qiyas, and fiqh12 as sources of authority on the ground
that those were not the sayings of either Allah or the Muhammad,
but merely the interpretations of the imams and maulvis.13 Further, a
section of the educated class now preferred to use the Quran, Hadith,
and sirats directly as its source of authority on Islam, instead of going
to the ulama.
It is useful to note here that unlike the Quran, one biography
of the Prophet could differ from another because in case of sirats,
the biographers could express their own views, which were, in turn,
moulded by different social, economic, and political backgrounds.
Thus, in spite of belonging to a single genre of religious literature, the
sirats provided biographers with some opportunity to demonstrate
their creativity and imagination often in tune with changing
circumstances.
Considering the new challenges posed by colonial rule, a few
sirat writers showed great flexibility in depicting the image of the
Prophet. During the early twentieth century, the Urdu versus Bengali
debate gathered new momentum, and some orthodox Muslims
stressed on the use of Urdu for the Bengali Muslims, denouncing
Bengali as the language of the heathens. However, sirat writer Madhu
Mian realized that the Bengali Muslims could not be deprived of
their rights to cultivate Bengali, their mother tongue. Moreover, to
compete in the emerging job market, knowledge of English would
also be necessary. Madhu Mian thus tried to justify his position in
favour of learning the so-called ‘heathen languages’ by mentioning
that the Muhammad himself allowed his disciples to learn Hebrew,
the language of the Jews, which implied that, if necessary, Muslims
could learn the languages of the ‘heathens’.14
Another sirat writer, Ahsanullah, who was in his mid-thirties
during the First World War, was deeply influenced by trench
warfare, which was one of the characteristic features of the war.
That its memory was still fresh in his mind can be discerned from
the sirat that he wrote a few years later. One finds that he presented
276 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Muhammad as the inventor of trench warfare, and depicting that

by virtue of such a strategy, he could inflict defeat on the invading
Quraish army.15 Also, since international peace initiatives were taking
place when Ahsanullah was writing his sirat, his Muhammad was
one not only glorious at war, but at peace too. The way in which
Muhammad tried to establish peace with his enemies led Ahsanullah
to depict him as one who had anticipated modern peace initiatives
like the Geneva Protocol (1924) or the Hague Conference (1929).16
Moulana Mohammad Akram Khan (1868–1968), one of the most
well-known sirat writers of Bengal, also presented Muhammad as
an intrepid general. Khan was a leading theologian, journalist, and
Muslim League politician. His prime goal was to secure the uplift
of his community in the colonial regime. A majority of the sirat
writers from the late nineteenth century believed that cooperation
with the British would be good for their community. But Khan had
an anti-British stance from the very beginning. Probably the Tariqa-
i-Muhammadiya17 tradition in his family was partly responsible for
this. He was even imprisoned by the British for his anti-government
writings. In his sirat, Khan focussed on the humane aspect of
Muhammad’s character as a general who was generous towards the
vanquished, as opposed to his European counterparts during the
First World War and the notorious Jallianwalabagh massacre of
1919.18
In a period when Muslims in Bengal became politically and
economically backward as a community, and when the military
might of the West reduced Ottoman Turkey, the land of Khalifa, to
insignificance, the Muslims were badly in need of inspiration, the sine
qua non for progress. The imaginative sirat writers tried to provide
that inspiration by depicting Muhammad as a military genius, who
was arguably superior to his more modern European counterparts.
The first half of the twentieth century can be regarded as the
heyday of doctrinaire politicians. Many young Muslims were
influenced by the ideals of communism during this period.
Consequently, some sirat writers, who regarded themselves as
the custodians of Islam, became alarmed. They thought that the
materialist philosophy of communism could threaten the very edifice
of Islam. They tried to convince the youths of their community that
it was not at all necessary to join the Communist Party in order
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 277

to solve the major social, economic, and political problems. The

argument that they put forth in their favour was that Muhammad,
the greatest political theorist of all time, addressed all those problems
in a more comprehensive manner than his communist counterparts.
One such sirat writer was Syed Badrudduza, a political activist, and
the last Muslim mayor of Calcutta in British India, whose zeal to
serve the interests of his own community knew no bounds. Apart
from his powerful pen, this erudite man also employed his oratorical
skill to serve his purpose. In spite of his exposure to the democratic
values of the West through British presence in India, he could not
be favourably disposed towards Western ideas. His close association
with the communist leader, Comrade Muzaffar Ahmed, also failed
to make him a communist sympathizer. According to Badrudduza,
the Western idea of democracy or communism could promote only
a one-sided progress and it was Islam that could strike a balance
between the two. He even went to the extent of declaring Muhammad
as the real founder of democratic socialism. To justify his claim, he
pointed out that Muhammad discouraged accumulation of wealth
by introducing zakat, in conformity with the shariat. But unlike the
autocratic communist states, Muhammad did not deprive the people
of their individual rights and freedoms.19
Badrudduza further reminded his readers that the Prophet had
said: ‘A person who earns his living by physical labour is the friend
of Allah’, and that ‘[all] lands belong to Allah, and a person who
cultivates the land to make it fertile, has the strongest claim over that
land.’ This way, Badrudduza argued that by recognizing the dignity of
labour, the Prophet had secured the rights of workers and peasants
fourteen hundred years before the establishment of socialist states.20
Another sirat writer, Muhammad Wajed Ali (1896–1954), also
dealt with political issues. But unlike Akram Khan or Badrudduza, he
had a liberal bent of mind, and was respectful towards Gandhi. After
coming to Calcutta, he became involved in journalism and politics,
and could not carry on with his studies. This prolific writer had active
involvements with the leading Bengali-Muslim journals of his time,
and also contributed essays to the English daily, The Musalman.21 He
also had close links with progressive politicians and intellectuals such
as Fazlul Haq, Comrade Muzaffar Ahmed, and Nazrul Islam. Besides,
he was influenced by the rationalist thinking of the Mu’tazilites. This
278 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

background was greatly responsible for his critical attitude towards

the orthodox mullahs.22
Wajed Ali was not an ashraf; so, it was easier for him to realize
that the ashraf-atraf23 problem stood like a stumbling block in the
way of promoting equality in the Muslim society. His link with
Comrade Muzaffar Ahmed probably prompted him to focus upon the
egalitarian aspect of Islam, as translated into practice by Muhammad,
who elevated the manumitted slave Belal to the status of a muezzin
(who gives the prayer call).24 However, the conservative sirat writer
and poet Gholam Mostafa did not accept this ‘Islamic socialism’ of
Ali, and pointed out that ‘the divisions between the rich and the
poor, the ashraf and the atraf, are eternal in society, and Islam can
only promote unity in the midst of inequalities’.25 Seen against this
background, it is easier to understand the extent of the difference
between Wajed Ali on the one hand and the conservatives on the
other hand.
Ali’s liberal and democratic bent of mind found expression in
his statement—‘The Medinians reserved the right to decide for
themselves that under what circumstances they would offer their
support to Muhammad. In other words, they could withdraw their
support from Muhammad if they thought it necessary.’26 By stating
this, Wajed Ali tried to prove that Muhammad’s greatest contribution
to democracy was this freedom of expression and the freedom of
choice. The way the ‘liberal humanist’ Ali focussed upon the human
elements in Muhammad’s character reminds us of Ernest Renan’s
(1826–99) La vie de Jesus, where emphasis was laid upon the human
aspects of Jesus’s character.27
Unlike Wajed Ali, the natiyya28 composer Mohammad Dad Ali
(1852–1936) was born in a landed aristocratic Muslim family of
Kushtia, which was one of the flourishing centres of the syncretistic
folk singers known as bauls.29 Like the bauls, this ashraf poet also had
a liberal bent of mind. Dad Ali started his literary career at a time
when the partition of Bengal had strained the relationship between
Hindus and Muslims. Writing against that backdrop, he realized the
importance of promoting Hindu-Muslim amity.30
While performing the hajj in Mecca, Dad Ali had fallen ill and
could not visit the grave of the holy Prophet in Medina. Not being
able to visit Medina physically, the poet tried to compensate for it
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 279

by composing poems in praise of Muhammad. Dad Ali’s Ashiqe

Rasul (volume I, 1907) is a compilation of such poems. In this, at
one place, the poet appealed to a songbird, which was in a flap over
its missing lover, to convey his (the poet’s) love to the Prophet. The
poet also asked the bird not to hate the Bengali language and to speak
in that sweet language.31 Through such a statement, the poet tried
to establish the high status of his mother tongue in a period when
many Bengali Muslims were rather confused about the actual status
of the language. In spite of his ashraf background, Dad Ali could
not, however, confine himself to the ‘idealized world’ of Persian and
Urdu. The pragmatic poet realized that the image of the Prophet
would only be popular among the Bengali Muslim masses if he was
venerated in their vernacular language. Dad Ali’s positive approach
towards Bengali could also be related to his learning of Sanskrit and
Bengali early on. Moreover, the prevalence of baul tradition in his
birthplace should be taken into consideration. Unlike the city-based
ashraf, the bauls in the Bengal countryside never had any confusion
regarding the status of their mother tongue—Bengali.
In another poem in the aforementioned book, the poet compared
Muhammad with the ‘sacred rice’ and the farmers with his lover.32 It is
significant because rice was, and still is, the staple food in Bengal, and
its cultivation plays an important role in the life of the rural people.
In that period, the majority of the farmers in Bengal were Muslims;
and just as rice was expected to satiate their appetite, the love for the
Prophet was expected to provide them with spiritual solace. Unlike
a few vainglorious ashrafs who preferred city life, the majority of
the Muslims in Bengal resided in the countryside. By praising the
language they spoke and the work they did to earn a living, Dad Ali
wanted to provide respectability to their existence, at the same time,
identifying himself with the common people. The poet’s concern for
the uplift of peasantry was also reflected in his Samajsiksha.33
Interestingly, we also find some Hindu and Brahmo sirat writers
in Bengal, who tried to promote Hindu-Muslim unity by focusing
upon the humanistic aspects of Muhammad’s character. This
approach had great social significance in a period when the Hindu-
Muslim relationship was in a low tide. The most prominent among
these writers was Bhai Girish Chandra Sen (1834–1910), a Brahmo
scholar and a close follower of the Brahmo leader Keshab Sen.
280 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Brahmoism was an eclectic religion which incorporated the kernels

of Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. Keshab Sen’s experiment with
this eclectic religion prompted him to instruct Girish Chandra to
delve deep into the study of Islamic theology. It was an important
step towards promoting the study of comparative religion. Being
well versed in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Bengali, and Urdu, Girish
Chandra was a suitable person to follow Keshab Sen’s instruction.
Under the instruction of the latter, the former wrote a biography
of Muhammad, entitled Mohapurush Muhammader Jiban Charit
(1885). It is regarded as the first historical biography of Muhammad
in Bengali. His historical approach was reflected when he mentioned
that some of the rules and regulations introduced by Muhammad,
concerning war and society, were appropriate for his time only.34
For example, Chandra criticized polygamy and the practice of
stoning an adulteress to death.35 Being a member of the Nababidhan
Brahmo Samaj, Chandra recognized Sri Chaitanya and Guru Nanak
as Prophets, and believed that other Prophets might appear in the
future as well. It was in this context that he challenged the Quranic
statement that Muhammad was the last of the Prophets. 36 Here,
as a sirat writer, Chandra radically differed from his Muslim counter­
parts.
Like Chandra, the Bengali Hindu dramatist-cum-journalist
Atul Krishna Mitra (1857–1922) also had an eclectic bent of mind.
He was perhaps the only person to write a drama on the life of
Muhammad in Bengali. This drama, written in verse and entitled
Dharmavir Muhammad, first appeared in 1885. Atul Krishna was
respectful towards Muhammad, unlike Voltaire’s disrespectful play
Mahomet, but his principal motive was to dramatize the life of the
Prophet. For example, he romanticized the love affair of Muhammad
and Khadija. On one occasion, he depicted Muhammad as kneeling
before Khadija and earnestly requesting her to give him lessons in
love. Khadija’s irresistible passion to be united with Muhammad was
also depicted in a romantic way.37 No doubt, Atul Krishna tried to
explore the human qualities of Muhammad and Khadija as partners
in love, but a romantic relationship involving the holy Prophet and
the Ummehatul Momenin (Mother of the true believers) Khadija was
uncomfortable for most Muslims.
Atul Krishna’s play was imbued with respect and sympathy
towards Muhammad. Still, when he staged it in the ‘Dacca Theatre’,
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 281

it was stopped by government intervention, because staging of the

life of Muhammad was regarded as un-Islamic. Under the order
of the Magistrate Nawab Abdul Latif, who was the leader of the
Muslim community in Calcutta, the printed copies of the play were
also burnt.38
So, it becomes clear that the rise of the individual as his own
interpreter diminished the monopoly of the ulama over transmission
of knowledge, and the sirat writers represented this new individualism
by moulding the images of the Prophet in tune with changing social,
economic, and political circumstances. Second, the publication of
sirats in vernacular Bengali not only broadened the base of the ‘sirat
movement’, it also enabled the writers to deal with the common,
everyday problems of the Muslims as well as the larger issues of
contemporary society. In other words, the ‘Bengalicization’ of this
biographical genre emancipated it from the idealized and rhetorical
world of Perso-Islamic culture, unleashing new forces of creativity
in a more ‘real’ world. This period was characterized by the de-
mythologization of the Prophet’s image. In this genre, the this-worldly
concern became more important than other-worldliness. Third, the
sirat writers did not constitute any homogeneous group—some were
conservatives, some liberals, and some were even non-Muslims. But
the common trait that they shared was that they all tried to provide
respectability to Muslim existence in the midst of challenges posed
by colonial rule, by presenting the Prophet as their role model.
Having said all these, we should not overemphasize the transition
from shariat-centred doctrinaire Muslim piety to the individualistic
imaginaire Muslim piety. Unlike their Hindu counterparts, the Muslim
sirat writers were working under constraints, and could not openly
challenge the shariat. Girish did challenge it, but Atul Krishna could
not, because the latter was planning a stage performance, and a stage
performance involving the Prophet is unthinkable even today. His
drama on Hazrat Muhammad had to be burnt, whereas Muhammad’s
Hindu counterpart, Lord Krishna, enjoyed the freedom of indulging
in a love affair, which was proved by the popularity of yatras (folk
drama), kirtans (devotional songs), and biographies devoted to the
latter. The Muslim sirat writers, especially the conservatives, often
had a narrow goal—to prove the superiority of Islam and its Prophet
in the face of colonial challenges. They wanted to secure the uplift of
their own community, the umma. They did not realize the importance
282 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

of Akbar, Dara Shukoh, Rammohun, Keshab Sen, or even Girish

Chandra, who would promote comparative religious studies to sustain
the eclectic spirit among people belonging to different communities.

The Image of Women in the

Prophetic Mirror
Consciousness about the emancipation of women in India was,
to a great extent, the result of the interaction which took place
between the Indian society and the British colonial power. In the
nineteenth century, as British paramountcy was established, it became
increasingly difficult for the Indian leaders to control economic and
political change. Under such circumstances, the newly emerging
Hindu intelligentsia in Bengal—which experienced a deeper and
much more intense political, economic, and cultural influence from
the British than any other—turned their attention to social change,
something that was regarded necessary to overcome the natural
divisions within native society, in order to counteract the effects,
if not the fact, of foreign occupation. They came to realize that to
offer any real resistance to the political and economic domination
of the British, it would be necessary to strengthen and consolidate
the Indian society through structural social change. These efforts
at change focused much on women, whose constraints during that
period included sati or widow immolation, child marriages, and lack
of widow remarriage or inheritance rights. Women’s options were
also limited by seclusion, specific domestic roles—which were mostly
subservient— and their lack of education.39
The condition of Bengali Muslim women was more or less
similar to their Hindu counterparts, except for the system of widow
immolation which was exclusively an anathema of the Hindu
reformers till its abolition in the late 1820s. The reform movement
among the Muslims, however, started a little later than that of the
Bengali Hindus. One of the factors responsible for this was that the
Bengali Muslim middle class developed somewhat later, largely due
to their initial reluctance to embrace new forms of learning, especially
English.40
Reformers of the Muslim community in Bengal noticed that
from the early half of the nineteenth century, Christian missionaries,
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 283

as well as some Western scholars, were throwing aspersions on the

character of the Prophet, especially in connection with the status
of women in Islam.41 It was the north Indian ulama, belonging to
the school of Deoband, who first started to grasp the importance of
reforming the zenana (secluded part of a house for women) for the
upliftment of their community.42 In all probability, Bengali Muslims
were aware of and inspired by this development, because the school
of Deoband exercised considerable influence on them.43 Under
such circumstances, when the ‘masculine, materialistic world was
dominated by the colonial presence’, the zenana which was still free
from external influence, was recognized by the Muslim reformers of
Bengal as the last bastion of spiritual life from where the ‘reawakening’
could be initiated in tune with the Prophetic way. So, it is quite
natural that in most of the Bengali sirats of this period, this feminine
dimension received considerable attention. What were the Prophet’s
views on women’s education, purdah, polygamy, divorce, freedom
of choice before marriage, and widow remarriage? How far did his
views fulfill the demands of reformation of the Bengali Muslims
from the end of the nineteenth century? The present section aims at
discussing all these issues.
A close scrutiny of contemporary Bengali literature would
reveal that women’s education became a dominant issue in the
early twentieth century. In those days, education was not seen as
something useful for women, but the men in the newly emerging
educated middle class expected their wives to be interactive and
suited to an educated household. Women’s education was also
regarded necessary for the upliftment of the overall society as was
shown in the novel Prem Nei, where Safikul wanted his wife Bilkis
to be properly educated.44 However, women were not expected to
go out and work. The middle class Victorian domestic ideology was
initially adopted by the Brahmos and later, the Bengali Muslims also
followed this model.45 Rabindranath Tagore’s concept of grihalakshmi
(or the goddess of the household), which was manifested in the poem
Kalyani written in 1900,46 was also reflected in Mosharraf Hossain’s
Bibi Kulsum (1910), which was the biography of his late wife, and in
Gour Kishore’s Prem Nei. The last work showed how extra-territorial
exemplars such as Ayesha, the wife of the Prophet, was brought into
play to show women how to become aurate hasina, or fair lady.47
284 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Besides, events in the northern part of India, and in other

Muslim states also encouraged the Muslims in Bengal to promote
girls’ education. For example, Begum Rokeya, the pioneer of Muslim
girls’ education in Bengal, was much inspired when the famous
Aligarh Girls’ School was founded in 1906.48 Later on, when primary
education for boys and girls was made compulsory by legislation
in countries such as Egypt or Turkey,49 Begum Rokeya remarked
that by doing so, these countries were only translating the Prophet’s
instructions into practice, since the latter had said that ‘educating
the daughter is a farz [compulsory duty]’. Despite this, most parents
remained indifferent to the cause of their daughters’ education.
Consequently, she lamented that in her school, some of the students’
guardians wrote to her that they would be satisfied just to see their
girls learning elementary Urdu and reading the Quran, and even
requested her not to impart any other knowledge, especially of the
English language. Begum Rokeya was also shocked to observe that
there were many Muslims twentieth-century Bengal, who could lay
down their lives in the name of the Prophet or even to preserve the
sanctity of a tottering mosque, but were reluctant to translate into
practise the order of the Prophet relating to girls’ education. So, it
was not surprising for her to observe that while Hindu women were
making some progress in the field of education, the thirty million
Muslims of Bengal were able to produce only one female graduate
by the beginning of the twentieth century.50
In spite of his madrassah background, eminent Muhammadi (a
Tariqa-i-Muhammadiya sympathizer) reformist and editor of the
famous Bengali journal Masik Mohammadi (monthly), Moulana
Mohammad Akram Khan was a creative man who realized the
importance of adapting to new conditions. His model of an erudite
Muslim woman was also taken from the Prophetic era. He remarked,
in the above-mentioned journal, that the imbecile ulama of the
twentieth century were not prepared to appreciate a rationalistic
interpretation of the Hadith. He stated that the situation had been
quite different during the lifetime of the Prophet or the period
immediately after his death. By virtue of the Prophets teachings, the
Arab ladies in those days used to participate in philosophical debates,
and often their views were accepted by the sahaba (the companions of
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 285

the Prophet) as being rational. Akram Khan then gave an illustration

to justify his claim:
Once Hazrat Umar, the second great Khalifa of Islam was delivering a
religious speech in a mosque and hundreds of spellbound Sahaba were
listening  .  .  .  suddenly Umar remarked that during marriage one should not
promise to give his bride more than 400 dirham (gold coins) because there
was no precedence of giving more than that amount during the lifetime
of the Prophet. Immediately after, a female voice from one comer of the
assembly silenced Umar. That lady said to Umar that ‘You have no right to
give such an order, have not you read the Quran of Allah where He says
“But if ye decide to take one wife in place of another, even if ye had given
the latter a whole treasure (Qintar) for dower, take not the least bit of it
back.  .  .  .”51 Immediately after this incident, the truthful Khalifa realized his
own mistake and publicly declared that the lady was right and that there
was no authentic reference in favour of limiting the amount of dowry that
the bride was expected to receive, to the amount of 400 dirham.52

Akram Khan argued that Hazrat Ayesha was also known for
her scriptural knowledge and philosophical argumentation, and on
numerous occasions, the sahaba had to accept her views regarding
Hadith.53 As a theologian, it was natural for Akram Khan to put
emphasis on scriptural Islam. At the same time, he was also a product
of the rapidly changing world, and hence he could not deprive an
individual of his or her right to judge, as long as that judgement
remained within the framework of Islam.
Closely related to the question of education in the Muslim society
was the debate over purdah (veil). While Muslim reformers were
unanimous about the urgent necessity of women’s education in their
society, they could not reach any consensus over the issue of purdah
or the freedom of women. At the end of the nineteenth century for
instance, the noted Bengali writer Ismail Hossain Shirazi supported
the purdah system.54 Begum Rokeya, on the other hand, was certainly
against the rigidity with which it was observed in the subcontinent,
comparing it with carbonic acid gas, which led to a slow process of
painless death. According to her, the secluded women were dying
under the strict purdah system.55 However, it must be noted that she
was not totally against the purdah; she only opposed ‘unjust purdah’,
while favouring a ‘moral purdah’, a moderate form, which should be
286 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

reconcilable with higher learning and the concept of civilization.56

The majority of contemporary reformers supported Begum Rokeya’s
stand on purdah.57
During the early twentieth century, the emergence of M.K.
Gandhi and mass politics brought new views about the relationship
between women and society. The strict purdah system of the Indian
subcontinent was meant to emphasize the domestic role of women.
But when they started to enter the public space during the Khilafat
and Non-Cooperation phase, the question whether the purdah was
relevant became important. Besides India’s colonial rulers, who held
the custom as an eloquent symbol of the low status of Indian women,
nationalist leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, and Jinnah also found it to
be painful and humiliating, and thus denounced it. Many Muslim
jurists were also opposed to the custom on the ground that it did
not exist in classical Islam. Several women’s organizations like the
All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) and the Women’s Indian
Association (WIA) also sought its abolition, complaining that the
custom made it difficult to educate girls by keeping them isolated
from the mainstream of the society. They further pointed out that
besides having no scriptural authority, it was detrimental to the
development of the girls’ minds and bodies, as it deprived them of
natural air and sunlight.58
Seen against this background, it is not difficult to explain why
the volume of vernacular literature on purdah increased in Bengal
from the early twentieth century. For example, in Sahachar, a
popular journal, one Mrs M. Rahman wrote an article entitled
‘Purdah Banam Prabanchana’ (Purdah versus Deception) in which
she launched a crusade against purdah using the Prophet as her
authority. She complained that the custom was introduced by men
to deceive women and to deprive the latter from all the benefits in
the world, which caused incalculable harm to women. She warned
the ‘satanic society’ about the awakening of the so far oppressed and
neglected women, who were prepared only to obey the orders of the
Prophet, and not to tolerate the injustice and oppression prevalent
in society.59 Owing to her aggressive opinions, and realizing the fact
that purdah was a burning topic in the 1920s, the cautious editor of
the journal did not forget to mention in a footnote that he should
not be held responsible for the views expressed in this article.60 Mrs
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 287

Rahman undoubtedly represented the newly emerging, educated

Bengali Muslim women, who were conscious of their own rights.
They had to wage their struggle against oppression by becoming an
integral part of the Muslim society, and so they tried to legitimize
their views by presenting the Prophet as an ideal liberal humanist
leader, a deliverer of women.
Heated debates also took place concerning the issue of widow
marriages. The Tariqa-i-Muhammadiyas claimed that the lack of the
practice of widow remarriage among Muslims of Bengal was due
to Hindu influence, and they were determined to promote widow
remarriage among themselves as a part of their scheme to purge
Islam of its shirk (polytheism) and bidat (innovation).61 The Widow
Remarriage Bill, proposed by Vidyasagar—the great social reformer
of Bengal—was passed almost at the same time (1856). However,
very few widow marriages were performed after that legislation.62
Vidyasagar was aware of the fact that widow remarriage is sanctioned
by Islam and he could appreciate its justification.63 Yet the reality
was not much different in the Muslim community, which prompted
many of the reformers to encourage widow remarriage through their
writings, and while doing so they again presented the Prophet as their
model. In this context, mention must be made of the indefatigable
Muslim preacher, Munshi Meherullah of Jessore, who was possibly
influenced by the Tariqa-i-Muhammadiyas64 when he vehemently
criticized both Hindus and conservative upper class Muslims in his
treatise on widow marriage, Bidhaba Ganjana O Bishad Bhandar (The
Widow’s Persecution and the Depository of Sorrow), for their apathy
towards widow remarriage. In the introductory section of this treatise,
the author pointed out that the Prophet had clearly mentioned in the
Hadith that: ‘No one in this world is as miserable as a widow.’65 Most
probably Meherullah’s inspiration behind writing Bidhaba Ganjana
was Altaf Hossain Hali’s (1837–1914) Munajat-i-Bewa (The Prayers
of a Widow) in Urdu.66 According to Shaikh Zamiruddin, who was
a co-activist and biographer of Munshi Meherullah, the latter’s book
became immensely popular among the Muslims of Bengal, which
resulted in the remarriage of a number of Muslim widows from
conservative families.67
Another writer, Fazlul Karim, wrote a biography of Hazrat
Khadija, the first wife of Muhammad in Bengali, where Khadija,
288 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

prior to her marriage with the Prophet, represented the sad and
melancholic Bengali widow. The author mentioned that at the time
of their marriage, Hazrat Khadija was forty years old, whereas the
Prophet was a young man of only twenty-five. Had he wished, he
could have married a young and virgin lady. But by marrying a widow,
the Prophet actually wanted to set an example for posterity. Fazlul
Karim expressed satisfaction in the fact that being inspired by this
example, some of the social reformers belonging to other communities
(referring to the Hindus) also accepted widow remarriages. Like the
Deobandis, the author argued that excepting Hazrat Ayesha, most of
the wives of the Prophet were widows, which implied that he wanted
to promote widow marriage.68
Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanawi, a Deobandi alim, pointed out
that one of the reasons behind the general apathy towards widow
remarriage was the groom’s greed for property.69 Probably the urge
to neutralize the effect of this stern reality prompted Fazlul Karim to
mention that the Prophet had proved, by setting an example in his
own life, that widow marriage could be auspicious from the domestic
point of view, because often it is more useful to marry a widow instead
of an young girl. A widow, who already has some experience about
household duties, can contribute to the betterment of the family
where she has been accepted as a bride, by actively participating in
domestic activities immediately after her remarriage. In contrast,
an inexperienced young bride, who is marrying for the first time
in her life, often takes a long time before getting used to household
activities.70 In this way, the debate over widow remarriage in the
Bengali Muslim community gathered a new momentum during the
first half of the twentieth century.
Debates also took place over the issue of child marriage. Hindu
social reformers started opposing child marriage from the mid-
nineteenth century. In the 1890s, there was much controversy over the
issue among the Indian leaders, but the matter could not be resolved
partly due to the fact that some Indian nationalists, such as B.G.
Tilak, protested against any government interference in a religious
matter.71 Consequently, between 1922 and 1927, the Indian Legislative
Assembly dealt with a number of bills concerned with raising the
minimum age of marriage for Indian women,72 and finally, in 1929,
the Legislative Assembly approved the Child Marriage Restraint Act,
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 289

known by the last name of its sponsor, Rai Sahib Harbilas Sarda.
The Sarda Act, which came into effect in 1930, set fourteen as the
minimum age for marriage in case of girls.73
Indian leaders like Motilal Nehru, Gandhi and Jinnah denounced
child marriage. 74 The All India Muslim Ladies Conference, or
Anjuman, also resolved that Muslim girls should not be married
before the age of sixteen, for early marriages were detrimental to a
girl’s education.75
One should approach Moulana Akram Khan’s view in this matter
against this political background. Khan pointed out that according
to many authentic Hadith, ‘Proper arrangement for a girl’s marriage
should be made as soon as she attains her puberty (balogh).’ The
author argued that there was no reference or instruction in the
Quran and Hadith about the marriage of a nabalogha (one who has
not attained her puberty) female, which implied that infant marriage
was not the ideal of Islam. He continued that Islam granted so much
freedom to women that a marriage would not be regarded as valid
without the bride’s permission.76 The author then cited the Hadith
in support of his view:
Hazrat Ayesha says that once a young lady had complained to the Prophet
that she was married to a man by her father against her will. The Prophet
summoned her father and told her that she had the right to accept or reject
such a marriage. The lady ultimately accepted her father’s decision regarding
her marriage, but said that by bringing such a case before the Prophet she
wanted to reveal a truth before the world that the fathers have no right to
arrange for their daughter’s marriage without their prior consent.77

Akram Khan thus argued that a religion which put so much impor-
tance on the consent of the bride before marriage cannot encourage
child marriage.
Another important issue of debate was that of polygamy. Western
scholars and Christian missionaries had vehemently criticized the
Prophet on this issue.78 Besides, there were other developments which
prompted Bengali sirat writers to intensify their focus on polygamy.
For example, in the decade following the First World War, the Arab
countries, notably Tunisia, Syria, and Iraq, introduced measures
to render polygamy difficult,79 while it was already discouraged in
countries like Turkey even before the First Great War. As with other
290 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

issues connected to women, the educated Muslims of Bengal were

not slow to respond to these developments.80
In the Lahore conference of March 1918, the Anjuman con-
demned polygamy as a practice against the true spirit of the Quran,
and consequently of Islam.81 An argument regarding this was started
in the nineteenth century by reformers like Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan
and Ameer Ali, who stated that the Quran allows polygamy, but the
spirit of the Quran, if not Islam, supports monogamy, because in
practice it is not possible for a man to treat multiple wives equally,
as enjoined by the Quran.82 However, Ameer Ali also reminded his
readers that under certain conditions, polygamy could be justified.83
Majority of the sirat writers in Bengal were influenced by Ali, as they
mentioned that under normal circumstances monogamy would be
preferable, but polygamy also had its advantages. Some of them also
tried to justify the multiple marriages of the Prophet by saying that his
purpose behind following the practice of polygamy was to encourage
his followers to rehabilitate widows in a dignified way by marrying
them. However, a new dimension was added to the discourse on
polygamy by Syed Abul Hossain, who argued that there are some
important instructions in Islamic scriptural literature, exclusively
meant for women, and so the Prophet did not find it decent enough
to discuss those exclusively feminine subjects himself. However,
since he had several wives, it became easier for him to convey those
instructions to the general womenfolk through them.84
A question that arises in this context is that why did some sirat
writers try to defend polygamy, when in the Arab world, attempts
were being taken to restrict this practice? The minority consciousness
of the Indian Muslims can partly be held responsible for that. They
regarded polygamy as a symbol of Islam and any effort to render it
difficult was like launching an assault on Islam itself, in a country
where non-Muslims constituted the majority population. The ‘Islam in
danger’ syndrome played a significant role under such circumstances.
So, by defending polygamy, which has Quranic sanction, some writers
tried to preserve the respectability of Islam in a creative way.
Like polygamy, the subject of divorce was, and still is, a source of
great controversy. But since we are constrained by time and space, we
shall wind up our gender discourse only by pointing out that writers
such as Akram Khan and Ahsanullah exercised their creative agency
to criticize the misuse of the right to divorce.
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 291

One thing that is clear from the above discussion is that the debate
over women’s issues was no longer being confined to the zenana,
since the women themselves were entering the public space by the
beginning of the twentieth century. This sort of discussion about
women in public life was both unique and novel in itself, within the
context of Islam. Unlike punthi literature which flourished throughout
the nineteenth century, sirat literature of modern Bengal—which was
growing along with the emergence of a Bengali Muslim middle class
during that period of ‘early capitalism’ in the South Asian context—
presented women as individuals in their own right. Fatalism, which
characterized the punthi literature was gradually being replaced by
anthropocentrism of the new era where women were in charge of
their own faith; and in that process, the Indian nationalist movement
also played an important part. But interestingly enough, many sirat
writers stayed away from the nationalist movement, which was mainly
dominated by the Hindus. They were pro-British in general, since
they believed that antagonism towards the colonial rulers would not
spell well for their community.
It is also obvious from our discussion that the Bengali sirat writers
were often influenced by various religious reform movements in
northern India and contemporary developments in other Muslim
states. But interestingly enough, while measures were being taken
in other Islamic states to impose restrictions on polygamy or divorce
or to relax the rigid purdah rule, many of the writers, who were
conscious about their minority identity in India, did not support
such moves regarding these practices, because they identified
them as the symbols of their religion. Under such circumstances
and in the aftermath of the Partition, Nehru’s government in inde-
pendent India did not think it wise to enact a common civil law
by challenging the Muslim Personal Law. The situation remained
unchanged even during the post-Nehruvian era, providing oppor-
tunities to the Hindu fundamentalists to exploit the situation by
arguing that the Congress-led pseudo-secular state urged Hindus to
follow the civil code but allowed the ‘privileged’ Muslims to retain
their personal law. Through such arguments, they tried to capture
political power.85
It is interesting to note here that though the Bengali sirat writers
did not prescribe the abolition of polygamy as it has sanction in the
Quran, they focused intensively on Khadija and the Prophet’s twenty-
292 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

one years of ideal conjugal life with her. Other wives of the Prophet
did not receive as much attention as Khadija, during whose lifetime
the Prophet did not marry a second wife. By giving so much attention
to Khadija, the Bengali sirat writers tried to prove that under normal
circumstances, monogamy should be preferable. Lastly, it should
also be mentioned that the sirat writers who were inclined towards
modernization wanted to promote it within the context of Islam,
and with the Prophet as their guide, to ensure greater acceptability
among the Muslim masses. However, the tendency of many sirat
writers to interpret contemporary developments in the light of the
past often puts the readers in a dilemma on whether the past was
more important than the present in the life of a Muslim.

The Prophet in Bengali Folk Literature

So far, we have dealt with Prophet-oriented literature available in
print, which were mainly accessible to the literate people dwelling
in the urban areas and their vicinity. It is equally important to study
the minds of the semi-literate or illiterate people in the Bengal
countryside, who also responded in their own ways to various
social, economic, and political changes. Since they had little or no
access to print at all, transmission of knowledge among these people
was predominantly oral, rhythmic folk songs—which were easy to
memorize—being the most prevalently used medium.
We have already mentioned that a section of the Bengali Muslim
community presumed that the cause for their misery under colonial
rule was primarily due to their deviation from the basic tenets of
Islam, as reflected in the life and works of the Prophet Muhammad.
The ones who shared this view often joined the ranks of the ‘Tariqa-
i-Muhammadiya’ and ‘Faraizi’ (who regarded the observance of
the basic tenets of Islam as a compulsory duty) movements, which
spearheaded Islamic revivalism in nineteenth century Bengal. They
had several strongholds in Bengal, but by the end of the nineteenth
century, they had lost their initial vigour to reform Islam largely due
to the suppression of Tariqa-i-Muhammadiya activism by the colonial
government. The deep-rooted popular culture in Bengal accounts for
the limited success of these Islamic revivalist movements in reforming
the Muslim society.
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 293

Among the different trends which reflected the growth of a

Prophet-centred consciousness in colonial Bengal, ‘popular Islam’
was very important. Unlike the Islamic revivalist movements,
popular Islam assimilated many local traditions and naturally became
invigorated. The numerous Prophet-oriented folk songs may be taken
as an illustration to point.
Among the various Bengali folk songs in which the image of the
Prophet has been portrayed, the following forms should be noted—
1. Baul songs: The bauls of Bengal belonged to a community of
mendicant singers, noted for their liberal attitude to all religions.
They were influenced both by Sufism and Vaishnavism (a sort of
Hindu mysticism). The nineteenth century was the heyday of the
bauls, when the famous exponents such as Faqir Lalan Shah, Panju
Shah, and Lalan’s disciple Duddu Shah flourished.86
2. Jari songs: Jari is a kind of dirge, which owes its origin to the
tragic events of Medina and Karbala, leading to the deaths of Hazrat
Imam Hassan and Hussain. The Shia community of South Asia
commemorate the events of Karbala in the month of Muharram by
singing marsiyas or dirges in Urdu, while jari is its Bengali version.
3. Rain songs: In the oriental world, where agriculture is the
principal occupation of the people, proper rainfall is essential for a
good harvest. During phases of drought, when the peasants find it
difficult to plough the fields or water the crops, the religious-minded
people in the countryside pray to god for rain. They often offer their
prayer in the form of songs, which can be called songs to invite rain or
simply rain songs. Unlike the baul and jari songs, much information
about the contemporary social, economic, or political conditions are
not available from the rain songs. However, religious beliefs of the
rural people are captured in these songs, which were often influenced
by Sufism.
For convenience, we shall offer a thematic treatment of the various
Prophet-oriented folksongs under review. One of the central themes of
mystical prophetology is that of the ‘nur-i-Muhammadi’ (the Light of
Muhammad). According to the Muslim rationalists, theologians, and
metaphysicians, the first thing that the Creator called into existence
was intellect, an excellent and perfect substance in which the form
of all things was contained, and from which other beings emerged in
a phased manner. The Sufi notion of creation owes its origin to the
294 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

philosophical ideas of al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, who tried to establish

a connection between the divine light (nur) and the intellect, the
former being communicated to the latter at the first instance by the
prime cause, the Creator. The nur is the light of the sun, around
which everything revolves. And around this nuclear concept of nur,
the Sufis developed the doctrine of nur-i-Muhammadi, believed to
have been created before all things.87 In Bengal, the idea has featured
widely in popular Islam, from the medieval period to the present
century. The Christian missionaries also intensified their activities
in the nineteenth-century Bengal countryside, which resulted in a
period of religious competition.88 It is significant to remember in
this context that in the same period, the bauls of Bengal were also
singing songs on the concept of nur-i-Muhammadi, presenting the
Prophet Muhammad and his mediatorship of creation as a source
of authority.89 In doing so, the bauls were probably responding in a
subconscious way to the missionary enterprise aiming at enhancing
the status of Jesus Christ and Christianity, as compared to Islam
and its Prophet. It may be mentioned here that the Muslim religious
group in north India, called the Barelwis, who also had a rural base,
responded to the missionary challenge in a similar fashion by focusing
on the Sufi doctrine of nur-i-Muhammadi as a source of authority.90
The image of the Prophet as a source of authority is expressed in
a well-known song of Lalan Shah:

My Prophet is the Pilot of the other World, All meditation is useless if the
Prophet is not remembered, he is the beginning and he is the end and he
changes shape and form according to his own pleasure. The Sky, the earth,
and the wind together with water are all born of his luminous spirit.  .  .  .
God assumed the shape of the Prophet.

The slave Lalan says,

‘Seraj became a dervish because of the
quality of his Master’.91

The last two lines are significant since they point to the importance
of depending on a spiritual guide to attain the status of a Sufi
saint. The individual who could trace back the line of his spiri-
tual succession to Muhammad himself was regarded as a perfect
spiritual guide.92 Another point worth remembering here is that
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 295

unlike in urban Bengal, intercessory and ecstatic Sufism continued

to play an important role in the countryside. Literacy rate was
comparatively higher in urban Bengal, and so people had access
to printed sirats and other forms of religious literature. Under
such circumstances, the role of middle-man in religious matters
became less and less important, and the newly emerging educated
urban middle class individual started to play an active role in religi-
ous matters. Since the semi-literate or illiterate world of the Bengal
countryside had limited access to printed sirats, or none at all,
the Sufis thus played the role of mediators between God and
men.
Contemporary social and economic issues often featured
prominently in several Prophet-oriented folk songs. For example,
the prevalence of social division among the Muslims of Bengal was
reflected in a jari entitled ‘Kulsumer Mejban’, or ‘The Hospitality of
Kulsum’, which was discovered from a folk singer by poet Jasimuddin
in the 1950s.93 As the song could not be traced in its complete form,
it is not possible to say anything about its composer or the time of
composition.94 But a close analysis of the characters and the socio-
economic issues portrayed in the song may lead us to believe that it
was composed sometime in the nineteenth century. The jari is too
long, so, for our convenience, we shall offer only its substance in
translated form. It is about the two daughters of Muhammad-Bibi
Kulsum and Bibi Fatima. Kulsum was the wife of Hazrat Usman,
who was known for his affluence, while Fatima was the wife of poor
Hazrat Ali.

Initially Kulsum refused to follow her father’s advice regarding the

distribution of her wealth among the poor and needy. But later she agreed
to arrange a huge feast and invited all the inhabitants of Mecca and Medina
excepting poor Fatima and her two sons Hassan and Hussain. This annoyed
the Prophet but Kulsum replied that the presence of shabbily clad Barkat
[Fatima] would have eroded her prestige among the refined urban guests.
In the meantime all the foods stored in Kulsum’s house disappeared in a
supernatural event and she could not feed her guests. Muhammad said that
as she tried to feed her guests by criticizing Barkat [Fatima], God punished
her. Muhammad continued that Fatima and Allah are inseparable just
like the red and blue colours who belong to the same kunji [a type of
seed].95
296 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The impact of the Vaishnava concept of the identity of Radha

and Krishna is very clear in these lines.96 One of the most complex
perceptions of the Vaishnavas is that Radha and Krishna, in the
true and basic form (svarupa), are eternally one. But they became
divided into two separate and individual forms (rupa) in order to
taste, in a more comprehensive way, the sweetness of one another.97
This Vaishnava perception not only influenced the jari singers,
but the bauls as well. According to baul philosophy, the Prophet
Muhammad, Krishna, and Chaitanya have become both man and
superman because of His sudden touch. In other words, the bauls
regard Muhammad, Krishna, and Chaitanya as God incarnate. 98
As Radha is inseparable from Krishna, who is the incarnation of
God, similarly, Fatima is also inseparable from Allah, being the
beloved daughter of Muhammad, who is the incarnation of God.
Both Radha and Fatima enjoy a loftier position in the mystical
tradition of Bengal. It is also not surprising that the bauls pose
themselves as women because they believe that true love can only be
experienced by transforming oneself into a woman. From this concept
stemmed their idea of ‘Shain’, or the ‘Man of the Heart’, who is also
the eternal beloved of the Sufi tradition.99 In the imagination of the
Muslim mystic poet, Radha (the beloved of Lord Krishna) appears
as Fatima and Krishna as Allah. The remaining part of the jari
is that:
Muhammad then told Kulsum that the only
way left open before her was to invite
Fatima to please Allah. Kulsum appeared
before Fatima accordingly and begged to
be forgiven. Under the request of Muhammad,
Fatima forgave her sister but said that
according to God’s desire she [Fatima]
was in charge of food and Ganga [river Ganges]
was in charge of water. So Ganga should
accompany them in order to make the
feast a success.100 Fatima then asked
her son Madar101 to secure the companionship
of the river Ganges. Fatima’s order was
obeyed by Madar.102 Finally Muhammad,
Hasan, Hussain, Fatima and Ali, who were
collectively venerated by the faqirs as
Pak Pabjatan or five holy persons103
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 297

started their journey towards Kulsum’s house.

Under the request of Fatima, Allah sent
Gabriel with food which could be distributed
among the numerous guests of Kulsum.104
This jari can be regarded as an important document on the social
and economic history of nineteenth-century Bengal. However, it
did not lose its relevance in the twentieth century too, as we have
shown that the song was collected from a jari singer in the 1950s.
We see in the song that being annoyed by Kulsum’s accumulation
of wealth, Muhammad advised her to spend it on the poor and
hungry people of the country. But by showing the defiant attitude of
Kulsum to her father’s advice, a reference has been made to the idea
that rural Bengal had deviated from the path of Muhammad. Allah
had said through Muhammad—‘Practise regular charity’ (zakat),105
whereas Kulsum, who represented the affluent Muslims, was showing
indifference to the said practice. Kulsum’s antagonism towards her
poverty-stricken sister Fatima is actually the antagonism of the
wealthy Muslims towards their poorer brethren. However, it has been
shown that all of the food stored in Kulsum’s godown disappears
in a supernatural event. Bengal was struck by famines during the
period under review.106 This tendency of hoarding among the rich
actually increased the sufferings of the less fortunate people during
famines. This experience probably prompted the poet to remind the
opulent Muslims about Muhammad’s advice to Kulsum regarding
her religious duty, which involved the proper distribution of her
wealth among the poor and hungry people. It goes without saying
that such a conversation between Muhammad and his daughter is
not supported by historical evidence.
When Muhammad asks Kulsum to appear before Fatima in a
repentant mood, we understand that the poet is indirectly asking
the affluent Muslims of Bengal to be apologetic to their less fortunate
brethren who were reeling under poverty, largely due to their
indifference of the former towards the latter. Muhammad used to
say ‘Alfaqr fakhri’, or ‘Poverty [rather meditation in God] is all my
pride,107 and according to the faquiri tradition, poverty and power
are juxtaposed in Fatima. The impact of the faquiri tradition is quite
clear in this jari, which is proved by the poet’s tendency to put so
much emphasis on the supernatural power of Fatima that the he
is even prepared to relegate Muhammad into the background.108
298 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

By depicting Pir Madar as the son of Fatima, the poet has done scant
justice to history, but has confirmed his adherence to the faquiri
tattva (Sufi concept). By seeking the companionship of the holy river
Ganges, Fatima actually increased the vitality and popularity of folk
Islam. Thus, in the fertile imagination of the folk poet, Fatima, the
representative of the have-nots, emerged victorious over Kulsum, the
representative of the opulent, if not oppressive, feudal lords.
Now, we can turn our attention to a rain song. In the eastern
countries where Islam prevails, rain is called rahmat, ‘mercy’, because
in the dry areas, a good harvest, as well as the well-being of the cattle,
entirely depend upon the right amount of rainfall. It is to be noted
that Muhammad was also known for his merciful nature,109 which
prompted many oriental poets to depict the image of Muhammad as
the ‘cloud of mercy’ or ‘rain of mercy’.110 Interestingly, one can draw
a parallel here with the Buddha, who is described in the Saddharma
Pundarika as the great merciful rain cloud.111 A new dimension has
been added to the genre of rain songs in the district of Chittagong (in
Bangladesh), where, under Sufi influence, people sing in the name of
Bibi Fatima, the beloved daughter of Muhammad, to secure adequate
rainfall. During droughts, the people of rural Chittagong gather in a
field under the scorching sun to offer their namaz (prayer) without
wearing the prayer cap. After completing their prayer, they sing in
a chorus:
‘Welcome the queen of clouds. Make sure that the water falls upon
earth after washing your legs and mouth. Bibi Fatima is in search of
water, oh, God, You give that water.  .  .  .’112
Singing like this was a common practice in rural Chittagong
as late as in the 1920s.113 The baul songs were also often influenced
by the syncretistic tradition. Muhammad is portrayed in this genre
as a boatman who is supposed to carry the soul peacefully and
safely from one shore of the river to the other. According to Hindu
belief, God Hari is also expected to play a similar role, i.e. to carry
the soul peacefully across the ocean of the (phenomenal) being
(bhaba sindhu). If we study the baul songs produced during the
late nineteenth or the early twentieth century, we will find that the
Muslim bauls are so much influenced by this belief that the noted
among them, like Nasaruddin, went to the extent of accepting Hari
as their helmsman. For example, Nasaruddin sings:
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 299

If the name of Hari the helmsman is chanted,

problems will disappear. Your [Hari] boat
is ready to rescue the sufferers and
sinners.114
If we study this song of Nasaruddin side by side with another song
composed by his spiritual guide Phulbasuddin, we will find that
Muhammad is playing the role of a helmsman in the second song
instead of Hari, though the appeal of this song is not different from
that of Nasaruddin’s song.115
When scholars talk about nineteenth century Bengal Renaissance,
they use lofty words for Rammohan Roy and others for their
rationalist thinking or their spirit of enquiry. These scholars seldom
shift their focus from urban to rural Bengal to explore the likes of
Lalan Shah, a contemporary of Rammohan. Lalan did not receive
Western education unlike many of his urban counterparts, but
many of his songs reveal a spirit of enquiry, which was significant
in its own way and which often went to the extent of challenging
the established order. For example, Lalan once attacked the shariati
Muslims by singing:
If shariat is the only way to salvation then
why did the Prophet spend fifteen years in
the solitary cave of Hira for meditation?
It is said that those who do not perform
the prayer and fasting are subject to
punishment on the Day of Judgement. It
should be remembered that the merciful
Prophet did not perform the prayer
during the first forty years of his life.  .  .  .116
In a previous section, we have discussed sirats which mainly
addressed the urban piety. Did we notice a single example where a
Muslim sirat writer revealed his spirit of enquiry in such a fashion?

The Changing Image

Focus has been made on the Prophet in medieval Bengali literature
too, when Islam was spreading in this region. For example, the concept
of nur-i-Muhammadi and various other aspects of the Muhammad’s
life figures prominently in medieval Bengali literature.117 A close
300 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

perusal of the literature produced in the medieval environment may

lead us to believe that a concern for the other world is predominant
there. It is hardly surprising that under such circumstances, human
qualities are, to a great extent, likely to be superseded by divine
qualities. But when significant social, economic, and political changes
were being ushered in by the colonial set up during the period under
review, the folk poets could not be fully satisfied with their concern for
the other world. This concern for the other world did not disappear
from the Bengali folk tradition, but side by side, a concern for this
world also developed, which culminated in the increase of focus on
the individual, and the model of a perfect man is undoubtedly the
Prophet, as the baul Panju Shah (b. 1851) sings:
If the human body is properly searched, it
will be discovered that the nur-i-Muhammadi
exists there to illuminate the human life.  .  .  .118

The song is a perfect blending of the traditional concept of cosmogony

(associated with the nur-i-Muhammadi) and the newly emerging
anthropocentrism.
It is an established truth that as a defence against syncretism,
the Tariqa-i-Muhammadiya played a remarkable role in nineteenth-
century Bengal. To evade persecution, the bauls now adopted a
new policy. Without changing the main theme of their songs, they
just changed a few words, for example, in place of ‘Kasi-Vrindavan’
they put ‘Mecca-Medina’, and Lord Krishna yielded his place to
Muhammad, which did not necessarily change the tunes of the
songs.119 The folk poets, who were giving much importance to the
murshid (spiritual guide) while ignoring Muhammad, now quickly
changed their position by singing:
‘No one but the Prophet will save us.  .  .  .120

Even the great Lalan, who had many queries about the shariat,
probably could not ignore the circumstances as he sings:

One who does not recognize the helmsman Prophet will

remain as a blind man. The Profession of Faith and
the performance of fasting, prayer, pilgrimage and
charity are essential for salvation.  .  .  .121
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 301

It is significant that a mystical poet like Lalan is putting so much

emphasis on the five main rituals of Islam, and it again points to the
increasing influence of revivalist Islam in rural Bengal.

Conclusion
In the colonial set up, when institutionalized religion lost its landed
patrons, focus shifted to the individual devotee, and in this field,
the sirat writers and the mystical movements both played important
roles by presenting Muhammad as the model of a perfect man.
Bengalicization of religious literature in general, and sirat literature
in particular, popularized the image of the Prophet among a large
number of Bengali Muslims who had access to print. They are the
only Muslims in the world who retained both their language and
script, in spite of being Islamized. Being a literate group, the sirat
writers of this community had access to scriptures, which, however,
imposed a constraint upon them, meaning that they did not dare to
deny anything mentioned in the scriptures. But in order to respond
to the challenges posed by colonial rule, they often tried to present
the images of the Prophet in tune with the changing circumstances.
In other words, unlike punthi literature of the earlier period, which
mainly expressed an otherworldly concern, the genre of sirat literature
clearly expressed a this-worldly concern by addressing day to day
problems in the lives of middle class Bengali Muslims. Thus, in spite
of revolving within the framework of scriptural Islam, the imaginative
sirat writers tried to unleash new forces of creativity in order to
provide respectability to Muslim existence in South Asia, where they
constituted the minority community.
However, this minority consciousness of the Indian Muslims
also put restrictions on the sirat writers, who intended to talk about
relaxation of certain Islamic practices such as polygamy, which has
scriptural sanction. They had to use their creative faculties to deal
with such sensitive issues.
It is also clear from our discussion that so far as creativity and
imagination are concerned, the folk poets in the Bengal countryside
surpassed their urban counterparts (sirat writers). In a way, the folk
poets enjoyed greater freedom than the sirat writers. The former had
to address the semi-literate or illiterate Muslim masses in the Bengal
302 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

countryside, who had little access to print or none at all. So, this
world also had very limited access to scriptural Islam, resulting in a
lack of constraints on the folk singers in a significant way. Thus, they
enjoyed greater freedom in exercising their fertile imagination while
portraying the various images of the Prophet. Consequently, we see
that unlike their urban counterparts, they even dared to challenge
the shariat. Also, the main narratives in the songs did scant justice
to history. So we see Pir Madar appearing as the son of Fatima, while
the latter is seeking the companionship of Ganga. We have also seen
how Muhammad emerged as the counterpart of Hari or Krishna, and
how some of special qualities of the Hindu deities were attributed to
Muhammad and his beloved daughter Fatima. This sort of coexistence
and companionship actually increased the vitality and popularity of
folk Islam. Indeed, the custodians of Islamic culture in modern Bengal
(including Bangladesh) have much to learn from these folk poets.
It is also useful to note that in the Bengal countryside, the belief in
a supernatural power played an important role. Ma Barkat (Fatima),
who enjoys a lofty position in Sufi tradition, and who is believed
to have possessed supernatural powers, thus features prominently
in Bengali folk tradition, whereas Ayesha, who was known for her
knowledge in Hadith and regarded as a symbol of scriptural Islam, got
prominence in sirat literature, which was mainly produced in urban
Bengal. In this way, Fatima and Ayesha represented the rural-urban
dichotomy in South Asian Islam.
Finally, while praising folk Islam for its creative potentiality, we
cannot afford to put too much emphasis on the amount of freedom
which the folk poets used to enjoy. From time to time, the forces of
Islamic revivalism used to put constraints on them, and in order to
evade persecution, the folk poets did not hesitate to change their
emphasis on the observance of shariat in their songs. But in doing
so, they again had to employ their creative potentiality.

Notes
1. Asim Roy, The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1983, p. 3; Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam
and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993, p. xxii.
2. Eaton, Rise of Islam, p. 294.
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 303
3. Ibid., p. 112.
4. Amalendu De, Roots of Separatism in Nineteenth Century Bengal, Calcutta:
Ratna Prakashan, 1974, pp. 6–22.
5. Maulid refers to the Prophet’s birth anniversary. Poetry or literature
written on this occasion is known as maulud.
6. B.D. Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982, p. 7.
7. Ibid.
8. Punthi refers to a literary genre in Arabicized Bengali, which mainly deals
with religious themes.
9. Francis Robinson, The British Empire and Muslim Identity in South Asia,
Transactions of The Royal Historical Society, 6th series, vol. 8, 1998,
p. 273.
10. Francis Robinson, Islam and Muslim History in South Asia, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 66–104.
11. Nasihatnama refers to text on Islamic ethics and ritual duties.
12. Ijma refers to consensus; qiyas refers to analogical reasoning; and fiqh
refers to Islamic jurisprudence.
13. Gour Kishore Ghosh, Prem Nei, 3rd edn., Calcutta: Ananda, 1983,
pp. 226–8.
14. Maulavi Mayejuddin Ahmad, Santikarta ba Hazrat Muhammader Jibani,
ed. Muhammad Qurban Ali, Calcutta, 1928, p. 404.
15. Maulavi Ahsanulla, Hazrat Muhammad, Calcutta, 1930, p. 213.
16. Ibid., p.237.
17. It is also known as Wahhabis in British Records.
18. Akram Khan, Mostapha Charit (1921), repr., Calcutta, 1987, p. 621.
19. Syed Badrudduza, Hazrat Muhammad, Tanhar Siksha o Abadan, vol. II,
Calcutta, 1969, pp. 136–51.
20. Ibid., p. 157.
21. Abdul Mannan Syed, Muhammad Wajed Ali, Dhaka: Bangla Academy
Press, 1994, pp. 82–3.
22. Ibid., pp. 92–111.
23. Ashraf refers to the nobility, Muslims in India enforcing foreign descent.
Atraf refers to the lower strata, the indigenous Indians converted to Islam.
24. See the introduction in Muhammad Wajed Ali, Maru-Bhaskar, Calcutta,
1941.
25. Ahmad Kabir, ‘Muhammad Wajed Alir Chintajagat in’, Journal for
Advanced Research in Humanities, vol. IX, 1996, p. 55.
26. See the introduction in Wajed Ali, Maru-Bhaskar.
27. Muhammad Majiruddin Miah, Bangla Sahitye Rasul Charit, Dhaka:
Bangla Academy Press, 1993, p. 223.
28. Poetry in praise of the Prophet Muhammad.
304 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
29. Abul Ahsan Choudhury, Mohammad Dad Ali, Dhaka, 1992, p. 64.
30. Anisuzzaman, Muslim Manas O Bangla Shatiya, 1757–1918, Calcutta,
1971, p. 337.
31. Mohammad Dad Ali, Ashiq-e–Rasul, vol. 1 (1907), 7th edn., Dacca, 1924,
pp. 86–99.
32. Ibid., pp. 36–7.
33. Ahsan Choudhury, Mohammad Dad Ali, pp. 78–80.
34. See the appendix to Girish Chandra Sen, Mohapurush Muhammader
Jiban Charit. 3rd edn., Calcutta, n.d.
35. Ibid., p. 498.
36. Ibid.
37. Atul Krishna Mitra, Dharambir Muhammad, Calcutta, 1885, pp. 11–12.
38. Satishchandra Mukherjee, ed., Atul Granthabali, vol. III, n.d. pp. 247–9.
39. Shahida Lateef, ‘The Indian Women’s Movement and National
Development: An Overview’, in The Extended Family: Women and Political
Participation in India and Pakistan, ed. Gail Minault, Delhi: Chanakya,
1981, p. 199.
40. Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims: A Quest for Identity, 2nd edn.,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 136.
41. Rafiuddin Ahmed, ‘Muslim-Christian Polemics and Religious Reform in
Nineteenth Century Bengal: Munshi Meherullah of Jessore’, in Religious
Controversy in British India: Dialogues in South Asian Languages,
ed. Kenneth W. Jones, New York: SUNY Press, 1992, p. 99; and Kanti
Prasanna Sen Gupta, The Christian Missionaries in Bengal 1793–1833,
Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1971, p. 50.
42. B.D. Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanawi’s Bihishti
Zewar, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
43. Rafiuddin Ahmed, Bengal Muslims, pp. 83–4.
44. Gaur Kishore Ghosh. Prem Nei, p. 6.
45. Sonia Nishat Ainin, The World of Muslim Women in Colonial Bengal,
1876–1939, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996, pp. 80–4.
46. Rabindranath Tagore, Sanchayita, 2nd edn., Calcutta: Viswa-Bharati,
1933, pp. 397–8.
47. Gaur Kishore Ghosh, Prem Nei, p. 190.
48. Abdul Qadir, ed., Rokeya Rachanabali, Dhaka: Bangla Academy Press,
1993, p. 254.
49. In 1925, the Egyptian government declared primary education compulsory
for both boys and girls, and the Turkish government began to establish
schools for girls from the 1860s. See Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in
Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1992, pp. 177, 189, 268.
50. Qadir, Rokeya Rachanabali, pp. 254–5.
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 305
51. See quotations of Surah 4 and Ayat 20 of the Quran in Akram Khan,
‘Echhlame Narir Marjada’, Masik Mohammadi, no. 4, Magh bs 1334
(1927–8), p. 203.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., p. 204.
54. Anisuzzaman, Muslim Banglar Samayik Patra, Dhaka: Bangla Academy
Press, 1969, p. 39.
55. Qadir, Rokeya Rachanabali, p. 257.
56. By purdah, Rokeya meant covering the body decently. See, R.S. Hussain,
‘Borqa’, Nabanur, no. 1, Baisakh bs 1311 (1903–4), pp. 15–21. Begum
Rokeya ridiculed seclusion in her Sultanas Dream (1908), which is a
fantasy in which women ran the country and men were kept in seclusion,
see, Qadir, Rokeya Rachanabali, pp. 531–42.
57. See the introduction in Anisuzzaman, Muslim Banglar Samayik Patra,
p. 39.
58. Geraldine Forbes, ‘The Indian Women’s Movement: A Struggle for
Women Rights or National Liberation?’, in The Extended Family: Women
and Political Participation in India and Pakistan, ed. Gail Minault, Delhi:
Chanakya, 1981, pp. 49–82.
59. Sahachar, No. 3, Chaitra, bs 1329/1922, cited in Anisuzzaman, Muslim
Banglar Samayik Patra, p. 351.
60. Ibid.
61. Amalendu De, Bangali Buddhijibi O Bichchinnatabad, Calcutta: Ratna,
1974, pp. 92–131.
62. Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849–1905,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, p. 49.
63. Badrudduza Hazrat Muhammad, p. 36.
64. Anisuzzaman, Muslim Manas, p. 301.
65. See the introduction to Munshi Muhammad Meherullah, Bidhaba
Ganjana O Bishad Bhandar, 6th edn., Calcutta, 1907. The book was first
published at the end of the nineteenth century, see Anisuzzaman, Muslim
Manas, p. 324.
66. Anisuzzaman, Muslim Manas, p. 303. Hali was a great poet and a near
contemporary of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–98). In his famous
Mussadas, Hali lamented the decline of Islam.
67. Rafiuddin Ahmed, ‘Muslim-Christian Polemics’, p. 114.
68. Fazlul Karim, Bibi Khadija, Dacca, 1924, pp. 8–9, 72–3.
69. Metcalf, Perfecting Women, p. 114. Marrying a widow was not regarded
as profitable by the grooms, because, due to economic and various other
reasons, a widow’s family was not generally expected to pay a huge sum
as dowry, for that miserable woman’s second marriage.
70. Karim, Khadija, pp. 73–4.
306 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
71. Barbara N. Ramusack, ‘Catalysts or Helpers? British Feminists and
Indian Women’s Rights’, in The Extended Family: Women and Political
Participation in India and Pakistan, ed. Gail Minault, Delhi: Chanakya,
1981, p. 116.
72. Forbes, ‘Indian Women’s Movement’, p. 63.
73. Ramusack, ‘Catalysts or Helpers?’, p. 116.
74. Forbes, ‘Indian Women’s Movement’, pp. 64–5.
75. Gail Minault, ed., ‘Sisterhood’, The Extended Family: Women and Political
Participation in India and Pakistan, Delhi: Chanakya, p. 91.
76. Akram Khan, ‘Echhlame Narir Marjada’, in Masik Mohammadi, Paush
bs 1334/1927, pp. 141–2.
77. Ibid., p. 143; the passage is an extract from the famous Hadith of Nasai.
78. Rafiuddin Ahmed, ‘Muslim-Christian Polemics’, p. 99.
79. Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender, p. 175.
80. Anisuzzaman, Muslim Manas, p. 346.
81. Minault, ed., Extended Family, pp. 73–4.
82. Ameer Ali, The Spirit of Islam: A History of the Evolution and Ideals of
Islam (1873), 10th impression, London: Christophers, 1974, p. 229.
83. Ibid., p. 230.
84. Syed Abul Hossain, Moslem Pataka ba Hazrat Muhammader Jibani,
Calcutta, 1908, p. 215.
85. Zoya Hassan, ed., Forging Identities: Gender, Communities and the State,
New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1994, pp. 59–73.
86. See, Edward C. Dimock Jr., The Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism
in the Vaishnava-Sahajiya Cult of Bengal, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1966.
87. Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger: The Veneration
of the Prophet in Islamic Piety, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1985, pp. 123–44; and Roy, Islamic Syncretistic Tradition, pp. 114–15,
121.
88. Abhijit Dutta, Nineteenth Century Bengal Society and the Christian
Missionaries, Calcutta: Minerva, 1992.
89. The influence of the Christian Missionaries in the Bengal countryside was
even felt by the greatest baul singer Lalan Shah, see the introduction in
Abu Rushid, Songs of Lalan Shah, Dhaka: Bangla Academy Press, 1964. It
is interesting to note that the creation of the world through Jesus Christ
is also an assertion of the New Testament, vide, Wolfhart Pannemberg,
Jesus–God and Man, First English translation by Lewis L. Wilkins,
London, 1968. It seems likely that the Christian missionaries used this
image of Jesus while preaching in the Bengal countryside, which may
have prompted many folk singers like the bauls to focus on the nur-i-
Muhammadi concept, in order to refute the claim of the previous group.
 Dey: Understanding Bengali Muslims through Literature 307
90. Metcalf, Islamic Revival, pp. 296–301.
91. Abu Rushid, Songs of Lalan Shah, p. 13.
92. See the introduction in Muhammad Abu Talib, Lalan Shah O Lalan Gitika,
vol. 1, Dhaka: Bangla Academy Press, 1968.
93. Jasimuddin, Jari Gan, Dhaka, 1968, p. 41.
94. S.M. Lutfor Rahman, Bangladeshi Jari Gan, Dhaka, 1986, p. 124.
95. Ibid., pp. 135–6.
96. Ibid., p. 126.
97. Dimock Jr, Hidden Moon, pp. 138–9.
98. Anwarul Karim, The Bauls of Bangladesh, Kushtia: Lalan Academy, 1990,
p. 116.
99. Ibid., pp. 115–16.
100. Rahman, Bangladeshi Jari Gan, p. 137.
101. According to the faquiri concept, Pir Madar was the son of Ma Barkat
(Fatima) and river Ganges was under the control of Madar; ibid., p. 126.
102. Ibid.
103. It is a Shia influence. See, Roy, Islamic Syncretistic Tradition, p. 213.
104. Jasimuddin, Jari Gan, p. 44.
105. Quran, 2:43.
106. P.A. Wadia and K.T. Merchant, Our Economic Problem, Bombay: New York
Company, 1945, p. 55; and Bhabani Sen, Nirbachita Rachana Sangraha,
vol. 2, Calcutta: CPI Publication, 1977, pp. 27–49.
107. Harendra Chandra Paul, ‘Origin of the Bauls and their Philosophy’, in
Folklore of Bangladesh, ed. S. Khan, vol. 1, Dhaka, pp. 257–93.
108. Jasimmudin, Jari Gan, p. 45.
109. Muhammad was sent ‘as a mercy for all creatures’.—Surah 21:107.
110. Schimmel, Muhammad is His Messenger, p. 81.
111. Ibid.
112. Wahidul Alam, Chattagramer Lok Sahitya, Dhaka, 1985, p. 91.
113. Ibid.
114. Ahmad Sharif, ed., Baul Kabi Phulbasuddin O Nasaruddiner Padabali,
Dhaka, 1988, p. 215.
115. Ibid., p. 108.
116. S.M. Lutfor Rahman, ed., Lalan Giti Chavan, Dhaka, 1985, p. 97.
117. See chapters 1–5 of Majiruddin Miah, Bangla Sahitye Rasul Charit.
118. K. Reazul Haq, Marami Kabi Panju Shah: Man O Kabya, Dhaka, 1990,
p. 211.
119. Abu Rushid, Songs of Lalan Shah, p. 12.
120. Ibid.
121. Ibid., pp. 14–15.
 10

The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal

Events, Anxieties, and Ambiguities

Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty

T
he year 1857, the centenary of the Battle of Plassey, it was
prophesied, will witness the fall of the British Empire. The
Bengal Hurkaru and India Gazette, dated 1 June 1857 noted,
the ‘sepoys of the Bengal army take much unnecessary pains to
procure the services of foretellers and soothsayers  .  .  .  the principal
question asked  .  .  .  by these misguided men (Hindus as well as
Mohammedans) refers to the duration of the British rule over this
country’; on 23 June, the paper noted, ‘Today is the centenary of
the battle of Plassey and according to prevalent belief the last of our
rule.  .  .  . On hearing these predictions the Hindus exclaimed: “on the
departure of the English from this land, we will offer one hundred
lac of beasts for being sacrificed at the shrine of the mighty Kale”’.1
We have contemporary evidence to suggest that this was believed by
many (from Calcutta to Delhi), irrespective of whether they acted on
it or not. Indeed, 1857–8 witnessed the most critical time for the Raj
so far, notwithstanding the fact that the Company faced resistance,
with varying degree of impact, from the moment it had established
de facto political power.
The events, however, should not have been entirely unanticipated.
An English planter wrote in 1852, ‘already is disaffection going on
with increased energy  .  .  .  against British rule and authority; we
with real concern predict that the native army can scarcely escape
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 309

the contagion, beyond the lapse of a few years more, when an

outbreak and revolt, overwhelming in consequences, will proclaim.’2
Lord Ellenborough, in his evidence before the Select Committee of
Parliament (18 June 1852), drew attention to the shameful treatment
meted out to the sepoys by the young English officers.3 In September
1856, certain missionaries in Bengal presented a memorial stating ‘the
deplorable social condition of the natives’. They even recommended a
commission of enquiry against misrule. The alleged abuses consisted
of, inter alia, the misuse of power by police and judicial institutions,
use of torture to extract confession, the zamindari system, etc. The
memorialists asserted that ‘if remedies were not speedily applied to
these abuses, the result would be disastrous, as the discontent of the
rural population is daily increasing, and a bitter feeling of hatred
towards their rulers is being engendered in their minds’.4
The extent of the disturbances was from the Burma frontier to
the north-west, though the most active centre of the mutiny as well
as the uprisings had doubtless been what was called the Gangetic
heartland. ‘The Governor General summoned troops from Burmah,
Madras, Ceylon, the Mauritius, Bombay, Persia  .  .  .  New South
Wales; dispatched ships to intercept the Chinese expedition under
the direction of Lord Elgin, and applied for speedy and considerable
reinforcements to the Home government’. 5 The impact of the
mutiny and the revolt was felt in far corners of the country under
the Company’s rule. If Punjab had been relatively unaffected, it was
not without perhaps an early shiver. Indeed, as Donald MacLeod,
the Financial Commissioner of the Punjab had said, ‘The electric
telegraph saved us’.6 The regions beyond the Gangetic heartland
have been generally neglected by the mainstream historians. Bengal
and large parts of eastern India, in particular, were considered to be
generally quiet, along with areas in the southern part of the country.
This perception of imbalance has been somewhat corrected by the
new crop of books celebrating 150 years of the uprising, some of
which have shed light on areas neglected by earlier historiography
of the mutiny and uprisings of 1857–8.7
Bengal and the Bengal Presidency had by no means been free
from the tremors of the mutiny and uprisings. The incidents in Bengal
in 1857–8 made Halliday, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, to note
in his minutes of 30 September 1858 that ‘hardly a single district
310 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

under the Government of Bengal has escaped either actual danger

or serious apprehensions of danger’.8 The months from the early
symptoms of uprising at Dumdum, up to the outbreak of the mutiny
at Meerut, were regarded by contemporary observers as the ‘opening
scenes of the first act of the Indian tragedy of 1857’.9 The disturbances
had started in Bengal, at Dumdum, Berhampore, and Barrackpore,
where Mangal Pandey revolted, but it is usually believed that Bengal
was almost unaffected otherwise. The middle class, in particular,
remained loyal to their British masters. The corpus of records in the
West Bengal State Archives and other evidences from across Bengal
reveal a wealth of evidence to suggest that the disturbances had
threatened to engulf different parts of the Presidency. The spread of
the mutiny to various regions of eastern Bengal (now Bangladesh),
has also been recorded by Kaye in his History of the Sepoy Wars in
India. A circular dated 23 May 1857 asked all commissioners to send
in ‘reports on the state of the popular feeling and condition of their
districts and also to instruct the magistrates to do so direct to the
government.’

II
The first rumblings of the thunder of mutiny were probably heard
at Dumdum, which used to be the headquarters of the Bengal
Artillery, in January 1857. Dumdum had a school of musketry for
instructing the sepoys in the use of the Enfield rifle. This provided
the context for the circulation of various stories (rumours?). As
Kaye puts it, ‘suddenly, a story of most terrific import found its way
into circulation. It was stated that Government had manufactured
cartridges, greased with animal fat, for the use of the Native Army.’
This is how Kaye narrates the incident which initiated the circulation
of the story. One day, a low caste lascar asked for a drink of water from
a high caste sepoy, who was annoyed and refused, only to be told that
‘high caste and low caste would soon be all the same as cartridges
smeared with beef-fat and hog’s lard were being made for the sepoys
at the depot.’ The story, shared with others, sent a shudder through
the cantonment. The import of the story was that the English had
deliberately greased the sepoys’ cartridges with the fats of pigs and
cows for the purpose of defiling both the Hindus and the Muslims.
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 311

On 22 January, Lieutenant Wright, Commander of the detachment

of the Seventieth at Dumdum, reported to the commanding officer
of the musketry depot, the story of the greased cartridges and the
excitement it had produced, and later Major Bontein, another officer,
reported to the commanding officer at Dumdum.10
These stories travelled to Barrackpore, about 16 miles from
Kolkata, and the headquarters of the Presidency division of the army.
Four native infantry regiments were stationed there—the Second
Grenadiers, the Thirty-fourth, the Forty-third, and the Seventieth.
The station was commanded by Brigadier Charles Grant and the
General of the division was John Hearsey. Hearsey reported to the
Adjutant-General’s office on 28 January that ill feelings existed in
the minds of the sepoys regarding the use of the rifles. He feared
that some people, probably the brahmins, were spreading stories
that the ‘sepoys are to be forced to embrace the Christian faith.’ The
story of the greased cartridges was by now repeated by everyone,
and the ‘Native soldiery at Barrackpore was boiling over with bitter
discontent’. A few days after the story of the greased cartridges
started circulating at Dumdum, the telegraph station at Barrackpore
was burnt down. It was followed by, in the account of Kaye, a series
of minor fires. Kaye mentions that there was a fire at Raniganj as
well. Here was stationed a wing of the Second Grenadiers, and Kaye
suspected that the Santals in this regiment were responsible for
spreading disaffection to Raniganj. There were also meetings in the
night, and letters were sent from Calcutta and Barrackpore urging
sepoys in ‘all the principal stations of the Bengal Army to resist the
sacrilegious encroachments of the English’.11
The suspicion spread and became a conviction, it seems, by the
time it reached Berhampore. The Nineteenth Regiment of the Native
Infantry was stationed there, along with a corps of irregular cavalry.
Two factors caused additional anxiety to the English officers here.
Berhampore was the seat of the Nawab Nazim of Bengal. It was
feared that if the sepoys rallied in his name, ‘all Bengal would soon
be in blaze’. Second, there were no European troops in the town or in
the vicinity. A detachment of the Thirty-fourth Native Infantry also
marched from Barrackpore to Berhampore to add to the excitement
of the sepoys. Kaye records that the men of the Thirty-fourth, the
first group of whom arrived on 18 February and the second on
312 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

25 February, were welcomed with ‘open arms and open mouths’ by

‘their comrades’ of the Nineteenth. Before this, Colonel Mitchell, who
was in charge of Berhampore, had written on 16 February that about
‘a fortnight before a Brahmin Pay-Havildar had asked him, “what is
this story that everyone is talking about, that Government intend to
make the Native Army use cow’s fat and pig’s fat with the ammunition
for their new rifles?”’12 Mitchell did not handle the situation well.
His reported ‘threat to send the errant sepoys to Burma exacerbated
an already volatile situation, resulting in mutiny in the Nineteenth
Native Infantry.’ Once the mutiny was stopped, the disbandment of
the regiment was decided upon. ‘This was the first recorded instance
of the mutiny of the sepoys in Bengal in 1857.’13
When the sepoys at Barrackpore came to know of the incident at
Berhampore, they were excited. But they were also anxious about a
large contingent of European forces coming down upon them now.
Major Mathews reported that a naik had come to him in early March
and told him that the sepoys believed that five thousand Europeans
had assembled at Howrah, and they were to come up to Barrackpore
by the river. Consequently, a state of ‘sullen quietude obtained there’.14
On 20 March, there was, in the words of Kaye, ‘more than
common excitement in the Lines of the Thirty-fourth’, as they
believed that the Europeans had arrived. Fifty men of the Fifty-third
had indeed come by waterways from Calcutta; and this provoked
further agitation among a section of the sepoys. On the same day, a
native officer went to the bungalow of Major Hewson to report that
a sepoy, Mangal Pandey, had come out of the lines with his musket
loaded. Soon after, Hewson sent the officer to warn the Adjutant-Lt
Baugh and walked to the parade ground.15 Mangal Pandey, it has
been described,
.  .  .  inflamed as he was by bang  .  .  .  seizing his musket, he went out from
his hut, and calling upon his comrades to follow him  .  .  .  took post in front
of the Quarter-Guard, and ordered a bugler to sound the assembly  .  .  .  the
order was not obeyed  .  .  .  [but] when the European sergeant-major went
out, [Pandey] fired his piece at him, and missed.16

Kaye gives a detailed description of what followed, but we may avoid

repeating that. Mangal Pandey was injured by a shot he had fired
himself, but the wound was not serious, and he was taken to the
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 313

hospital. After his treatment, he was tried by court martial on 6 April

and was given the death penalty. He went to the gallows on 8 April.
What followed was an uneasy quiet among the sepoys and acute
anxiety among the English. Kaye quotes from a correspondence of
the Governor-General to Lord Elphinstone on May 6:
The mutinous spirit is not quelled here, and I feel no confidence of being
able to eradicate it very speedily, although the outbreaks may be repressed
easily.  .  .  . The spirit of disaffection, or rather of mistrust, has spread further
than I thought six weeks ago.  .  .  . This feeling is played upon by others from
the outside, and, to some extent, with political object.17

It may not be out of place to mention that an Irish soldier, Daniel

O’Bern, who came to Calcutta in April 1857 to join the army, wrote
a personal account of his experience of 1857 for his family. This
was later translated into French and published with an elaborate
introduction on Indian history and geography by Arthur Mangin.
O’Bern eventually left for Lucknow to assume his duties, but the third
chapter of the book gives an account of the beginning of the unrest
and disturbances in Berhampore and Barrackpore, including the
incident involving Mangal Pandey. He believed that there was a vast
conspiracy which extended to different parts of the Presidency, and
in this, not only the sepoys, but ordinary people were also involved.
He, however, had no clue as to the authors of this conspiracy. Did he
also find some sympathy for the rebels? O’Bern noted that he was,
of course, prepared to shed his blood for England if necessary, and
clearly stated his loyalty to the sovereign. Yet, he also wrote, ‘I am
Irish and Catholic. My country had been conquered and oppressed
by England; may be some of my ancestors had been martyrs for the
cause of religion and national independence.  .  .  . These circumstances
have instilled in my heart a strong love for justice  .  .  .  and pity for all
those who suffer on this earth.’ There is no doubt that he did his duty
as a soldier of the Company, but a subterranean empathy for the rebels
might have coexisted within him. One may also recall that Justin
McCarthy, an Irish historian, novelist, and politician, compared the
mutiny of 1857 to the French Revolution. Thus, ambiguities marked
the attitude of many during the turbulent period of the revolt and
even later. Here we find the opinions of two, who also came from a
‘colony’.18
314 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

III

The Shiver in Calcutta

Calcutta was far from quiet, as the anxiety and preparations for
any possible outbreak of mutiny would tend to show there as well.
Basudeb Chattopadhyay had drawn our attention to the panic that
grew in Calcutta resulting from fear of possible disturbances. He has
elaborated how certain events led to what was known as the ‘panic
Sunday’ (14 June 1857). There was a belief in Calcutta that a general
rising of the native troops had been fixed for March 1857. Sindhia was
visiting Calcutta at the time, and was organizing a fete to entertain
the English on 10 March. Men coming from Awadh to meet Wajed
Ali Shah, the deposed Nawab of Awadh, also aroused suspicion,
and it was believed that the sepoys, encouraged by the agents of the
Nawab would rise, seize Fort William and all the chief buildings of
Calcutta, proclaiming war against the English. There is, however, no
proof of such a plan as Kaye himself had noted. Yet, Wajed Ali Shah
was finally brought to the Fort William. Hearsey had felt, as early as
in February 1857, that the English had been ‘dwelling upon a mine
ready for explosion’.
The sepoys at Barrackpore were disarmed, as it was strongly felt
that the armed sepoy was no longer a dependable man. The Nineteenth
Native Infantry, brought from Berhampore to Barrackpore, had
already been disbanded, and the sepoys were dismissed on 31 March.
The Thirty-fourth Native Infantry was disbanded on 6 May. The news
of the earlier disarming was reported on 3 April 1857 by Sambad
Prabhakar, which also noted with satisfaction that the sepoys did not
resist or apply force. However, on 6 April, Sambad Prabhakar noted
with disapproval that one sepoy, who was imprisoned in Barrackpore
for hitting a major, had managed to escape. The sepoy was, of course,
characterized as ‘evil’. A Proclamation of the Government (dated 16
May) sought to assuage the feelings of the sepoys and the people
in general by denying that the government had any intention of
interfering with the religious beliefs of the Indians. It also warned
them of ‘false guides and traitors’.19 We have already noted that the
incidents at Dumdum, Barrackpore, and Berhampore created acute
anxiety among the Europeans living in Calcutta. This was reinforced
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 315

by a suspicion that all the discharged sepoys did not return home
and continued to roam around the city, spreading disaffection and
rumours against the English. The Assistant Magistrate of Aurangabad
wrote to the officiating Magistrate of Jangipur on 23 June 1857,
reporting the arrest of a sepoy of the Nineteenth Native Infantry
at Kadamsan. He also reported the arrest of two more sepoys by
the Daroga of Suti, both of the Seventy-third Native Infantry—one
on leave and the other a deserter. It was reported that some of the
disbanded sepoys were spreading rumours of forces coming from
the north-west to attack. He reported having adopted ‘measures to
secure the Rajmahal Road’.20
Tarak Nath Sen, the additional Principal Sadar Amin, in a letter
to A.R. Young, the Secretary to the Government of Bengal, mentioned
that while collecting information about mutineers in Burrabazar,
he found ‘five or six men talking slowly about the present state of
affairs’ in a lane. They, among other things, mentioned that the
mutineers dispatched their messages ‘under the upper sooktala or
leather of their shoes knitted within it’.21 While this report shows how
rumours or news were circulated by Indians, the report in the Friend
of India noted on 29 May the kind of precautionary preparations the
Europeans were taking. It reported, ‘Men went about with revolvers
in their carriages, and trained their bearers to load quickly and
fire.  .  .  . The ships and steamers in the rivers have been crowded with
families seeking refuge from the attack, which was nightly expected,
and everywhere a sense of insecurity prevailed’. 22
John Peter Grant, a member of the Governor-General’s Executive
Council wrote to Lord Canning on 10 June, putting this anxiety on
record, ‘We have as enemies three Native Infantry regiments and
a half, of which one and a half are the very worst type we know;
one, two, three (for no one knows) thousand armed men at Garden
Reach  .  .  .; some hundred armed men of the Scinde Ameers at
Dumdum; half the Mahomedan population and all the blackguards
of all sorts of a town of six hundred thousand people’.23
In view of such perceptions of danger, a persistent demand for a
European volunteer corps was raised. In the third and fourth weeks of
May, the traders’ association, the masonic fraternity, the Armenians,
and the French residents offered their services for the protection of the
city. The government initially declined their offer.24 Canning, however,
316 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

finally consented and the Corps of Volunteer Guards of Calcutta was

formed on 13 June. The Corps ‘consisted of a battery of four guns,
five troops of cavalry and seven companies of infantry. It was placed
under the command of Lt. Colonel Orfeur Cavanagh’.25 Consequently,
there was a noticeable increase in the sale of arms, purchased mostly
by the Europeans. The Commissioner of Police stated that ‘there is
hardly a house inhabited by Christians in Calcutta, which does not
contain one or two muskets or pistols’.26
In August 1857, reports were in circulation that large bodies of
upcountry natives were coming down towards Calcutta, both in boats
and by land. The reports, it was found, were grossly exaggerated, but
many boats, nonetheless, were searched.27 In March 1858, there was
reference to another cause for panic among the English. It was said
that the guards on a routine march from Barrackpore to Calcutta
were to be armed in the city, with arms being hidden in the house
of the Nawab of Chitpore. However, no arms were found; neither
was there any basis of the rumour. But such stories confirm the deep
anxiety from which the rulers suffered.28 Calcutta, it seemed, also
witnessed frequent fights. In November 1857, a fight was reported in
Bowbazar between soldiers and sailors, and as late as in May 1858,
various disturbances occurred in the town. Assault by Europeans on
the ‘native (disarmed) sentries at the gates of the Government House
was almost nightly occurrences’.29

Control of Arms Sale

As this period of unrest continued to stretch out, a restriction on sale
of arms was imposed. Calcutta gun dealers made huge profits during
1857, but, as even the police commissioner acknowledged, these
were bought mostly by the Europeans and Eurasians. S. Wauchope,
the Commissioner of Police, Calcutta, reported to the Secretary
that he had received information that ‘several thousand muskets
were exposed for sale in Moorghyhatta in which street all the native
gun makers of Calcutta reside’. Upon inspection, he found between
900 and 1000 serviceable muskets there, and took possession of the
whole stock, taking it back to the police headquarters.30 During the
investigations, Wauchope also went to the shops of D.N. Biswas &
Company, and asked the proprietor, Dwarikanath Biswas, to prepare
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 317

a list of all his customers who had bought firearms in the past and
those who had ordered the forty-five muskets present in his shop.
Besides complying with the order, Biswas also assured Wauchope
that he would not sell any gun without the latter’s permission.31 The
dealers who surrendered the arms bought them from one Harish
Chandra Bose. The police found about 6000 old guns and barrels
in his possession, which the gentleman claimed to have purchased
as scrap metal. The police also found that some of these guns were
made reusable by native craftsmen. The Commissioner suggested
that the government direct the concerned authorities to ‘completely
incapacitate the muskets, guns and spring locks before throw-
ing them away as scrap.’32 The police also found out that a catalogue
of Ms Mackenzie Lyall & Company announced the auction of
20 lakh percussion caps. This was stopped by orders from the
police commissioner. Likewise, an advertisement of Ms Tulloh &
Company for the sale of 3.75 lakh gun caps was detected by police,
who consequently stopped all the transactions. 33 Such findings
and actions naturally found their way to the Europeans in the
city. There is evidence to suggest that the information exacerbated
the anxiety they had been suffering from and led to pre-emptive
preparations. T. Rice Holmes noted that, ‘The ferangis of Kasaitala,
Chunogalli and Chowringhee who could not even imagine touching
a trigger, were now practising how to shoot’. On 5 June 1857, a
resident of 10 Middleton Row heard sounds of explosives from the
direction of Alipur, and feared that the mutineers had broken the jail
to rescue the prisoners and were coming to attack the Europeans.34
All these would indicate that the Government of Bengal viewed
the developments with concern, and along with the police in the
city, were desirous of implementing some kind of control on the
sale of arms.
On 24 June 1857, the Officiating Commissioner of Police,
Calcutta, Mr S. Wauchope, issued instructions to the police ‘to disarm
all persons, European and native, found armed in the streets of
Calcutta with the exception of those authorized by the Government’.35
On 5 September, the Legislative Council passed an act (endorsed
by the Governor General on 12 September) imposing restriction
on owning arms. D. Mackenlay, a merchant of Calcutta and 683
others also wrote to the Government to ‘make a declaration, such
318 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

as is contemplated by the exemption of clauses of the said act for

the exemption of all Christian inhabitants of this presidency’. This
showed the desperation of the Europeans as they were seriously
considering arming themselves against possible attacks of the sepoys
and others.36

Panic Sunday
Holmes described 14 June 1857, as ‘Panic Sunday’. He wrote:

Members of council and government secretaries barricaded their doors,

or abandoned their homes in terror or to take refuge on board of the ships
in the river. Inferior officials, scampering wildly across the plain from
Chowringhee to the Fort  .  .  .  Eurasians rushed out of their houses in the
suburbs to seek refuge from an imaginary foe. The streets were thronged
with the carriages and palanquins of the fugitives.37

Basudeb Chattopadhyay has also narrated the genesis of what came

to be known as the ‘panic Sunday’ in Calcutta. General Hearsey had
information of a possible uprising by the sepoys at Barrackpore on
13 June. He sought Canning’s permission to disarm the suspected
regiments. Canning gave his consent, and on the morning of 14 June,
a general disarming of the sepoys was effected at Barrackpore. The
sepoys on guard duties in the Fort and elsewhere in Calcutta were
also disarmed. Hearsey’s information about a rising had no basis
in reality, yet the Europeans in Calcutta were panic-stricken. They
believed that the sepoys were marching from Barrackpore and, once
in the city, would be joined by the men of Wajed Ali Shah, the Nawab
of Awadh. Kaye noted, ‘From an early hour in the morning (14 June)
a great shudder ran through the capital and soon the confused activity
of panic flight was apparent’. People tried to leave the city by the river
and many took shelter inside the Fort. This led to much confusion,
which persisted for a few more days. Europeans from the suburbs
also flocked to the city for protection. The British residents in the
city rented a large house in the Chowringhee area to accommodate
them. The government also permitted the use of a part of the Bishop
College for the same purpose.38 The Special Narrative of 22 August
1857 noted that ‘at the Presidency considerable alarm prevailed in
consequence of the belief that a large number of arms had been
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 319

purchased by Natives and were concealed in the city.’39 The alarm was
seen as legitimate, for the Supreme Court had already recommended
to the government that the native population in the city and the
suburbs should be disarmed and sale of arms to the natives should
be prohibited. The commissioner of police, on enquiry, ascertained
that there had been no general arming of the native population. He
even added a tongue-in-cheek comment that a musket ‘in the hands
of a Bengallee’ would be far more dangerous to ‘the proprietor than
to the enemy’.40 Notwithstanding such bantering, the government
was serious about its business. The sense of anxiety could be seen
from the letter of Wauchope to the Secretary, Judicial Department,
Government of West Bengal, where he requested ‘two guns to be
provided for the Police office at Loll Bazar’ considering the ‘present
momentous times’.41 Indeed, as Halliday observed, two field guns
were placed in the police compound, with an adequate supply of
ammunition.42 A memorial, signed by a number of influential residents
of Calcutta, also appealed for the proclamation of martial law.43
Even the suburbs were in a state of panic. The Europeans of
Serampore in the Hooghly district sent a memorial to the government,
requesting the dispatch of ‘European soldiers to guard the town for
ten days’. They understood that ‘there are a number of disbanded
sepoys and deserters in the villages around our little town’, and they
might emulate ‘their comrades in the upper provinces’ to ‘indulge in
cruel designs’. Their apprehension was exacerbated by the fact that
the town would experience a gathering of ‘fifty to eighty thousand
people’ during the ensuing Rathyatra.44
There had been cases of desertion in the barracks at Berhampore,
but the sepoys of the Sixty-third and the greater part of the Eleventh
Irregular Cavalry at Berhampore were disarmed. Yet, it was suspected
that they were looking for arms in the local markets. As a further
precaution, all Indian residents of Berhampore were also disarmed.
On 4 August 1857, the Officiating Magistrate of Murshidabad wrote
to the Secretary, Government of Bengal, that after ‘the disarming of
the Sixty-third Native Infantry and the Eleventh Irregular Cavalry,
I received the advice of Colonel McGregor to disarm the native
population in the bazaar of Berhampore and the city of Murshidabad.
Accordingly  .  .  .  with the assistance of the Ninetieth Regiment’, he
disarmed the people of Berhampore and Murshidabad.45
320 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The White volunteers, and later the White soldiers, were virtually
on rampage in Calcutta, and there is enough contemporary evidence
to suggest that the common men, the Indians, felt a different kind
of panic as they constantly apprehended attacks by White residents
and soldiers; indeed they were frequently harassed. Even Sambad
Prabhakar, in several reports, in October and November, noted
the atrocities of the White soldiers, and reported that people, out
of fear, stayed indoors after dark. Harish Chandra Mukhopadhyay
wrote about the sense of panic among the English, with thinly veiled
sarcasm—‘The state of feeling now exhibited by the notabilities of
Chowringhee is very much akin to that which drew the laughter
of the world on the aldermen of London and their militia when
Boney was stalking horse in the imagination of the British people’.46
Contemporary newspapers are full of the sense of fear that prevailed
in Calcutta. This must have created a serious problem for the
government because a censorship soon was clamped on the activities
of the press.

The Gagging Act

The ‘Gagging Act’ was introduced on 13 June 1857 to bring the
newspapers under the control of the government. 47 The Act
required every printer to obtain a license from the government,
and empowered the executive to suppress any publication without
warning, if it was seen as necessary.48 The ‘panic Sunday’ was no
isolated incident, but was ‘sequentially connected with what happened
before and after’.49 There was protest against the act on the restriction
of the freedom of the press. Kashiprasad Ghosh, the editor of the
Hindoo Intelligencer, stopped the publication of the paper. It was
stated, ‘That restrictions upon public servants in discussing with all
freedom questions appertaining to the state, and bearing upon the
interests of the public, are unnatural, unrighteous, unreasonable and
unwholesome’.50 Commenting on this, the Hindoo Patriot wrote, on
25 June 1857, ‘The Hindoo Intelligencer is discontinued from this
week. The editor won’t work under restraint, such as the new press
law imposes on public writers’. The editor of the Hindoo Patriot also
often personified an ambivalence which was not uncommon. He
wrote against the mass hanging of the rebels after the suppression of
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 321

the revolt—‘If the present war be a war of revenge and extermination,

then Lord Canning and the members of the Council should abdicate
their functions in favour of a committee of butchers’. 51 Again,
Shyamasundar Sen, the editor of Samachar Sudhabarshan faced trial
for publishing the ‘Proclamations’ of the rebels, but was found not
guilty. These instances indicate that the Bengali middle class was not
compliant on every occasion.

IV
Dhaka/Chittagong
Disaffection, it would appear, existed in different parts of the
province. The details of what happened in Dhaka (Seventy-third
Native Infantry), Chittagong (Thirty-fourth Native Infantry), and
other places, can be found in a great body of evidence, ranging
from diaries, contemporary accounts, government records, and
judicial proceedings.52 These records reveal the tension that, at least
temporarily, had gripped the English in the eastern part of Bengal
and provide details of the measures they were obliged to take. Unrest
and apprehension were noticed in Dhaka from March 1857. Fred
Halliday’s minutes give details of the mutiny in Bengal, including
the events in the eastern parts of the province. The Dacca News
reported that a fine of Rs.100 was imposed on a sepoy for assaulting
a brahmin baker. Two sepoys of the Thirty-fourth Native Infantry
were sentenced to fourteen years’ rigorous imprisonment for trying
to provoke the guards at the mint.53 The news of the mutiny at Meerut
may also have provided further encouragement. The sepoys were
supposedly agitated on hearing that a European force could come to
Dhaka. Citing the account of A.L. Clay and the diaries of Hridaynath
Majumdar and Brenand, Mamoon writes that the missionaries faced
some resistance from the sepoys while preaching the gospel. The
Bangla Bazar Female School was also closed on account of a rumour
that the sepoys did not like female education. S.N. Sen was of the
opinion that the sepoys did not receive sympathy from the people,
and ‘the only evidence to the contrary is furnished by a letter alleged
to have emanated from two Dhaka notables, Kali Narayan Choudhury
and Agha Ghulam Ali, in which they claimed to have financed the
rebel regiments’.54
322 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Other chroniclers have noted the existence of agitation and

disaffection among the sepoys in various parts of eastern Bengal like
Jessore. There were also anxieties about the Wahabi and the Faraizi
movements in Jessore, Pabna, and Rajshahi.55 The Faraizis of north
Bengal did become a cause for concern in the minds of the British
administrators, as has been seen in the correspondences—‘The
Ferazee population have become akin to a fanatic spirit which can
any day burst to a blaze if there be only a leader to fan their inward
flame’.56 Bhawsker, a vernacular daily, published a letter on 30 October
1857, which led many to fear an imminent outbreak of mutiny in
Mymensingh.57 In Dhaka, the Faraizis joined the ‘Hindoosthanees’
to rise in insurrection, according to information received from
Gyboollah. The apprehension was that several thousand lathials could
join the group to make it challenging for the British. Dodoo Meah,
the leader of the Faraizis, who had been in jail since April 1857, had
a fairly large following in Dhaka, Mymensingh, Faridpur, Jessore,
Sylhet, and other places. For this reason, some in the administration
felt that it was advisable to keep him away from any communication
with his followers.58 On 12 June 1857, a rumour spread that the
Seventy-third Native Infantry (and Eleventh Irregular Cavalry),
which was going to Jalpaiguri, had met some of the disbanded sepoys
from Barrackpore, mutinied, and consequently returned to Dhaka
to meet the sepoys at Lalbagh. This again spread panic among the
Europeans, some of whom assembled in the residence of Jennings
to discuss ways of protecting themselves. Women were put on boats,
and the local people assembled on the embankment to watch the
activities that were being carried out. Offices, schools, and even the
Collectorate became empty. Kemp, the editor of Dacca News, sat with
a fully armed Armenian. Lt Macmahon went to Lalbagh and reported
that the sepoys were calm and there was no cause of worry, but the
general scenario showed the raw nerves of the residents of the town.
They became active to ensure the proper defence of Dhaka. The need
to have a European force was also underlined. A. Forbes appealed
to the authorities on behalf of the Christian inhabitants, suggesting
the raising of a volunteer corps and erection of a fort in Dhaka,
while using the Dhaka College as a fort for the time being. In June,
the ship Calcutta arrived in Dhaka with a hundred sailors and two
canons.59 In August two ships, Punjab and Zenobia came to Dhaka,
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 323

and this worried the sepoys.60 On 30 July, in a meeting of about sixty

Europeans, it was decided that a volunteer force, consisting of infantry
and cavalry, was to be raised. During the Eid, in early August, the
authorities kept a strict vigil, as did the volunteer force. There was
an atmosphere of anxiety, and quite a few Armenians left the city for
Calcutta. Dacca News, on 20 August, reported how Foley’s mill, a flour
mill, was virtually fortified to house the Europeans. Even the sepoys
were uncomfortable and surprised to see the exercises of the sailors,
and felt that it was intended to intimidate them. A news spread that
two deserters caught in the suburbs had been rescued by the sepoys
of Lalbagh. Earlier, when the rumour that sepoys at Chittagong had
mutinied and were on their way towards Dhaka started circulating,
it made the authorities really panicky.61
On 17 September, a steamer with a hundred sailors stopped in
Dhaka on way to Assam. They allegedly showed reluctance to go
ahead, but the Magistrate C.E. Carnac and Lt Lewis forced them to
submit with threat of force. Two of those men deserted, but others
resumed duties. Buckland notes that the Lt Governor of Bengal
had asked the Commissioner of the Dhaka division to ‘convey my
approbation to Khwaja Abdul Ghani and Abdul Ahmed Khan’ who
gave ready aid to the government.62
The actual ‘battle’ started on 22 November 1857. The Seventy-
third Native Infantry was divided in two parts, one posted to protect
the treasury and the other at Lalbagh. The news of the mutiny of
sepoys in Chittagong, the plunder of the treasury and the freeing of
the prisoners frightened the authorities at Dhaka, and they decided
to disarm the sepoys of the Seventy-third Native Infantry. It was
suspected that these sepoys were in touch with the mutineers of the
Thirty-fourth.63 The subedar was directed to ask the sepoys whether
they would like to receive pension and retire. He sought some time,
but the instruction to disarm having come from Calcutta, Carnac
decided to execute it at once. While one contemporary version says
that the sepoys at the treasury were easily disarmed,64 another view65
states that when the English officers went to the treasury and woke
the sepoys from their sleep in early morning of 22 November, they
suddenly heard gunshots from the Lalbagh area. This bewildered the
officers for some time, and the sepoys at the treasury took advantage
of this uncertainty to escape. Buckland, following Halliday, describes
324 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the incident thus: ‘They [Lt. Lewis and his party] found the sepoys
and a detail of native artillery, with 2 guns and drawn up, ready to
receive them; as the party advanced, fire was opened upon them,
and a sharp engagement lasting for half an hour ensued.’66 Ratanlal
Chakraborty is inclined to accept the latter version, given at the time
of the trial of the sepoys, to be more authentic. This was followed
by actual skirmishes between the sailors and the sepoys at Lalbagh.
‘When the sepoys were brought to bay, it became hand to hand, life
to death struggle, in which the victor only survived’.67 The navy lost
5 sailors, while 14 were seriously wounded. It was estimated that
about 100 sepoys escaped with arms. Reports suggested that 41 sepoys
died in the battle and another 3 were later drowned while escaping.
Of the 15 seriously wounded, 3 later died.68 Carnac, the officiating
Magistrate of Dhaka, in a letter to C.T. Davidson, the Commissioner
of Circuit, Dhaka, reported the incident of 22 November in details.
He wrote, ‘The loss of the enemy is variously stated. Thirty bodies
have been buried by my orders and Lt. Lewis reports having counted
eleven more. The wounded are very numerous   .  .  .  six of the latter
have been apprehended by the Nazir and will be tried this day.’ He
also commended the good work done by the Nazir, Jagabandhu
Bose, who, after the action, went out with some barkandaj to bring
back the subedar and five sepoys.69 Later that evening, three sepoys
were taken prisoners (two of them wounded). C.R. Low writes that
they were later tried, sentenced to death, and consequently hanged.
He describes the public hanging, witnessed by a ‘dense spectre-like
multitude  .  .  .  [who] had assembled from the town.’ His description
notes that the two wounded had ‘to be assisted up the drop’, while
the third ‘went up the ladder unaided, and met his doom with much
fortitude’. The Dacca News also reported on 28 November 1857 the
public hanging of four sepoys—Kafur Khan, Sk Din Ali, Hossain Bux,
and Din Dayal Mishra. They wrote, ‘three men adjusted the ropes
round their necks and died bravely  .  .  .  the fourth fainted from terror,
and had to be supported’.70 Other sepoys stood trial at courts martial
and eleven of them were hanged in public. The Dacca News of the
same date gave a story entitled ‘Our Battle’, in which the mutiny of
the Thirty-fourth Native Infantry and the fighting around the fort of
Lalbagh in Dhaka, were recorded. The report noted the major role
played by ‘our gallant little band of sailors’. The report also appended
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 325

a list of Europeans who either died or were seriously wounded.71 C.R.

Low has noted that the navy played a significant role in the skirmishes
of 22 November. He quotes from Halliday’s minute of 2 July 1859,
where it was noted that ‘the presence of the sailors prevented any
serious consequences  .  .  .  aris[ing] from the mutinous outbreak.’72 The
Dacca News also noted on 28 November that ‘We would be sorry to
think that there are disloyal persons in Dhaka; if there are not, how
was it that the collector guard passed through the most populous
part of the town with such ease and safety.’
‘In the Chittagong Division everything seemed perfectly tran-
quil’.73 However, the company’s administration became apprehensive
about the movement of the mutineers. The dense jungles, and the
remoteness of the eastern and north-eastern part of the country,
and lack of knowledge about the roadways, made it difficult for the
administration to keep track of the movement of the mutineers. There
was also an anxiety that the mutineers might enlist the support of
the local and tribal people.74
On the night of 18 November, three companies of the Thirty-
fourth Native Infantry broke into open mutiny, plundered the
treasury, broke the prison, killed a native jailor, released the prisoners,
and murdered a barkandaj who attempted to resist them. They also
burned down their own lines and marched out of the station. The
European inhabitants of the town were petrified. The Officiating
Collector of Chittagong, in a letter to the Officiating Commissioner of
Revenue, 16th Division, gave the details of the property plundered by
the rebels in Chittagong.75 The rebels did not, it would appear, have a
pre-conceived plan of action. As a result, their movement was chaotic
and appeared confusing to the administration. They were likely to
go to Comilla, but eventually went towards the hills and jungles of
Tripura. E. Chapman, the Officiating Commissioner of Revenue
and Circuit, 16th Division, wrote to the Secretary, Government of
Bengal, on 30 November that the mutineers of the Thirty-fourth
Native Infantry ‘are said to be in the jungles of Independent Tipperah
somewhere near Oodoypore which is between Comillah and
Agurutullah’. He also mentioned that the official perception is that
the Raja did not entertain any ‘disloyal views whatsoever’. He added
that the ‘Europeans as well as natives are anxious for the arrival of
some troops’. The government sought the help of the Raja of Tripura,
326 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

who helped the government to prevent the progress of the rebels.76

Later, the rebels moved into Sylhet, from where they could cross the
Meghna and go to Mymensing, and then to the Rajshahi Division
like the Seventy-third Native Infantry. Or, they could also go to
Cachar and make an attempt to enter Manipur.77 It was assumed that
using the plunder they had collected, the rebels managed to procure
necessary supplies. The administration in Chittagong, which felt the
absence of European troops, also feared that the hill tribes would take
advantage of the defenceless state.
About a hundred seamen were sent to Chittagong from Calcutta.
Buckland records that consequent to this, many freed prisoners were
captured and a small portion of the looted money was recovered.
The district authorities came to know that on 13 December, the
mutineers had entered southern Sylhet. It was decided to intercept
them on the road towards Cachar and Manipur. Major Byng started
towards Pratabghar, 80 miles away from Sylhet. The rebels had taken
another route. Byng and his forces marched through the night and
reached Latoo at daybreak and learnt that the rebels were not far
away. Indeed, very soon they appeared and a skirmish took place.
The rebels retreated, leaving 26 dead. The English forces lost five men,
including Major Byng himself. Lt Sherer took over command, and in
another encounter managed to defeat the mutineers. A havildar, who
was taken prisoner, was tried by court martial and shot immediately.
Buckland’s account (following Halliday) also notes the rewarding of
two Gurkha soldiers, Ganga Ram Bhist and Subban Khutri, and an
award of Rs.100 each to two Manipuri spies. Ganga Ram, after his
return to Sylhet, was sent with 16 men in pursuit of 10 mutineers,
and he was successful in killing 8 of them. (No wonder, he would
be rewarded!)
The main body of the rebels entered Cachar by 23 December, and
was pursued by Lt Ross. Still, they managed to retain a substantial
number and were also probably able to enlist the support of
some Manipuri princes. Allen, the Officiating Commissioner of
Cherrapunji, reported that Debendra Bijay Singh, the ex-Raja of
Manipur, was endeavouring to take advantage of the situation to
conspire against the Manipuri government.78 On 12 January, the
rebels took position near the direct road to Manipur, and opened
fire on a detachment of the Sylhet battalion under Lt Buist. The latter
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 327

took them on and Captain Stevens and Lt Ross made a simultaneous

attack. The mutineers fought for an hour and a half, and when they
retreated, 17 of their men were dead. The English lost two men. This
defeat detached the Manipuri allies from the rebels. On 22 January,
Capt. Stevens surprised a party of about 40 rebels and managed to
kill 10 of them, while the rest fled. On 26 January, a party under
jamadar Bhagatbir Singh met a small body of about 40–50 rebels
and defeated them, killing 13 of them in action. The king of Manipur
now actively supported the government by offering his force in these
encounters. In fact, it was recorded with a lot of satisfaction that of
the three companies which left Chittagong, not more than 3 or 4
men were able to avoid capture or death. ‘Nothing worthy of further
notice seems to have occurred in either the Chittagong or the Dacca
Division’, observed Buckland.79
The collective memory of this struggle of the rebel sepoys is
embedded in the folk songs of Sylhet and Cachar. These songs have
been collected by Subir Kar, who made extensive field surveys in the
area. These songs, known as Jongiyar Geet (Songs of the Combatants),
not only celebrate the struggle, but record the support that the rebels
received from the local population as well. ‘Rise! The brave children
of the rebel army as this was the time for laying down one’s life for
religion. There is no greater glory than this’ (উঠরে জঙ্গীয়া পু য়াইন কহিলাম
সবারে। দ্বীনর লাগি প্রাণ সঁ পিতাম শুভা নাহি আর ওরে।). The songs also mourned the
death of so many sepoys. It is possible to see in this collective memory
a mute support for the rebel sepoys among the civil population.
Such memories exist in other regions of Bengal as well, and these
need to be recovered for a fuller understanding of the role of the
people during 1857.80 Kar has also cited a report in the Dacca News
of 26 December1858 to suggest that official judgment was that the
‘disinclination shown by the zemindars and the ryots to give proper
information’ was the reason for Major Byng losing his life.81

V
The common people in the eastern region were more apprehensive
of the navy than the sepoys. There was considerable uneasiness
among both the official elements and common people in Comilla,
Sylhet, Mymensingh, Pabna, Rangpur, Rajshahi, and Dinajpore. The
328 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

officers of the Company often confused the activities of the Wahabis

with support of the common people for the sepoys.82 The Faraizis
were suspected to be connected with the sepoys in Dhaka and other
places. The government of India considered detaining Dodoo Meah,
the Faraizi leader, ‘till the mutiny is suppressed’.83 Maulavi Keramout
Ally, a native of Jaunpur, had a large number of followers in Dhaka,
Faridpur and Mymensingh. The Commissioner of Dhaka reported
that Ally had urged his ‘followers to rise up in defence of their faith
and to assist them in driving the Feringhees from the country’. He
also claimed to have heard enough about this man to suspect that he
was a ‘disaffected and mischievous person’.84 The Officiating Collector
of Sylhet reported on 12 August 1857, ‘the Sepoys quartered here are
beginning to speak and act in a less respectful manner than formerly.
In fact, last Saturday evening one of them was very insolent to Capt.
Stevens. We have a well-stocked jail and treasury and we cannot send
our families away for we have nobody to escort them’.85 In August
itself, there were correspondences between Government of Bengal
and district authorities on the possibility and need of raising auxiliary
forces from some local communities, especially in the eastern and
northern parts of Bengal. A.R. Young, Secretary to the Government
of Bengal, quoted from the Lt Governor’s minute of April 1856 about
the need to have a ‘well-drilled guard’ to be used in the event of an
emergency situation. He suggested that in Bakharganj, the ‘Mugs or
the descendants of Arrakanese settled in the district’ could form the
nucleus of such a force. In another correspondence, he suggested
that the Superintendent of Darjeeling should be consulted about the
‘practicability of enlisting a body of Meches for service as police militia
in the districts of the Bhootan Frontiers’. The Assistant Commissioner
of Rajshahi division proposed the recruitment of Gurkhas from the
Darjeeling hills.86 In October, C. Chapman informed the Secretary
that about 90 men had been taken as new levy, ‘about one half of
whom are Rajbunsees or Burmah Mugs’.87

Rajshahi Division
In official circles, there was no perception of uneasiness in larger
part of north Bengal. Only a few months before the mutiny, a native
regiment was stationed in Jalpaiguri in order to prevent the inroads
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 329

by the Bhutias across the border. The Seventy-third Native Infantry

and a detachment of the Eleventh Irregular Cavalry were present
in Jalpaiguri. The Seventy-third Native Infantry was one of the few
to remain armed. Three companies of the regiment were in Dhaka,
where they resisted an attempt to disarm. They broke into mutiny
and caused great alarm in Dinajpur and Rangpur. Two risalas of the
Eleventh Irregular Cavalry defected and mutinied. This desertion
happened near the Ranisankul police station in Dinajpur. The
Officiating Magistrate of Dinajpur reported, ‘I have just received
a report that the sowars in number 125 or 150 were at my thanah
in Ranisankul on the evening of 7 December  .  .  .  this was 18 miles
south west of Thakoorgunge.  .  .  . They looted the Daroga of a pony.’
The news of desertion also produced great unease in Purnea.88 These
events produced a stir in what was seen to be still waters. As a result,
the administration of Dinajpur, Rangpur, and Rajshahi was keen to
ensure the arrival of European seamen before the rebels could reach
Jalpaiguri. Mr Stuart, who owned a factory in Rajshahi division,
left his place and took shelter in Prosonno Coomar Tagore’s house
at Govindaganj. The local zamindars and other inhabitants in the
region ‘sent to the government of India resolutions expressing their
loyalty.’89 The Officiating Magistrate of Dinajpur, E. Drummond, wrote
to the Commissioner of Circuit, Rajshahi Division on 18 August
that he had consulted with Mr Grant, who suggested procuring
Gurkhas from the Hills. This, Drummond thought, was a ‘capital
plan’, as the Gurkhas had no ‘sympathy with either Mahommedans
or Hindoos’.90 The Officiating Collector of Sylhet, in a letter to the
Secretary, Government of Bengal, dated 12 August 1857, wrote that
Sylhet had two companies of the Sylhet Light Infantry Battalion,
composed chiefly of Hindustanis, but also containing a large number
of Gurkhas. He also referred to some rumours like the demolition of
the mosque in Dharmatala by Christians.91
The condition of the Jalpaiguri regiment was not perceived as
comfortable. It was reported that the regiment was stationed in a
very doubtful and uneasy state. They sought to post extra sentries
on their own, claiming that disturbance is at hand and at the point of
breaking out. Halliday noted in his minute, ‘it may be that the troops
at Jalpaiguree will remain obedient and that any precautions now
taken may in the end seem to have been supererogatory. Nevertheless,
330 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

I cannot suppress my desire that some precautionary measures should

be adopted.’92
A plot was discovered on 11 September that the sepoys intended
to murder the officers of the Seventy-third Native Infantry in their
mess. A few sepoys were arrested and sent to Calcutta for trial ‘in
handcuffs and irons’.93 Halliday also named other accomplices who
were turned out of the cantonment. The Commissioner of Circuit,
Rajshahi Division, having reported this, also expressed his fear that
the 120 Gurkha recruits expected to arrive at Jalpaiguri would be
inadequate in ‘checking the disposition to revolt on the part of the
old sepoys of the Regiment’. He wished at least 500 Gurkhas to be
recruited.94 At the same time, a sepoy of the Darjeeling Sappers was
imprisoned for ‘seditious conversations’. Further, at the end of August,
18 Muslim soldiers of the Eleventh Irregular Cavalry were disarmed
and sent to Berhampore. In September, the manager of Watson &
Company proposed the setting up of a volunteer force. His proposal
was accepted and indigo planters, civil officers, and several others
constituted a volunteer corps. Time and again, there were cases of
individual disaffection as well. In November, a sepoy loaded his
musket and threatened to shoot any European officer who might
come near him. He was overpowered, arrested, tried, and sentenced
to transportation for life.
The news of the mutiny in Dhaka, it would seem, sent ripples
of inspiration to the north as well. It was expected that the Dhaka
mutineers would come to Jalpaiguri. Captain Curzon, with
100 Europeans and 300 trained Gurkhas, reached Jalpaiguri on
6 December 1857, to face them. A force of the Seventy-third Native
Infantry and one risala of the Eleventh Irregular Cavalry were sent
to Madariganj to intercept the Dhaka party. The escaping troops,
however, made a hasty retreat out of the Rajshahi Division and
entered Purnea. Documents show that the mutineers of Dhaka
made a serious attempt to reach Jalpaiguri. Consequently, their
movements were closely monitored. On 17 December, Gouldsbury,
the Commissioner, Rajshahi Division, wrote to the Secretary,
Government of Bengal, that he had received a communication
from Mr Jackson, the Officiating Jt Magistrate, Bogra, that as per
information received from the zamindar’s cutchery at Malancha, the
sepoys ‘had got as far as that and were plundering the ryots and had
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 331

looted and burnt two Shaha’s houses.’95 The Judge of Mymensingh

noted that they had gone to Shambhuganj from Dhaka and on their
way, had plundered several bazaars and the kuthi of one Mr Wise.
The government, he wrote, must immediately post some European
troops for protection from the rebels as ‘I fear we could make but
a feeble resistance were we to be attacked’.96 The Dhaka companies
having crossed the Brahmaputra, murdered a barkandaj and entered
Rangpur. Sensing that there was little chance of entering Jalpaiguri,
they entered Bhutan on 8 December, and were given shelter there,
as noted by Sashi Bhusan Choudhury. In particular, Haruk Singh,
known as the ‘Hatiya Raja’ locally, for he was engaged in the work
of capturing elephants in Bhutan, was of great help to the rebels.97
On 9 December, two sowars, who were captured, were blown
away from guns in front of the sepoys of the Seventy-third Native
Infantry.98 Curzon and his men went to the area to confront them,
but having failed, decided to withdraw, with two of their men
wounded. However, the mutineers soon abandoned this position, and
crossing the Teesta, escaped to the Nepal Terai. Malleson writes that
in January 1858, Major Richardson came in pursuit with the Bengal
Yeomanry Cavalry, but the rebels could not be caught, as they had
probably made their way to north-east Oudh. As soon as the news
of the Dhaka mutiny reached Calcutta, the authorities lost no time
in sending a hundred European sailors with guns to Rangpur and
Dinajpur. There was some cause for concern in Pabna that the Dhaka
mutineers might cross to Sirajgunj for the purpose of plunder, and
Ravenshaw, the District Magistrate, was alerted for the same. Bijoy
Govinda Choudhury, the zamindar of Tatapara, offered to place, at
his own expense, guards on the road between Dhaka and Pabna.
The Lt Governor sent him ‘warm acknowledgements for his loyalty’.
In Rangpur, Rani Swarnamoyee, the zamindar of Baharband, gave
assistance and supplies to the sailors.99 The Daroga of the Thakurganj
police station reported in July 1857 that some Faraizis had withdrawn
their children from school, fearing that they would be converted
to Christianity.100 A report from Sylhet in July stated, ‘from the
intelligence received by this day’s dawk, it would appear that the
Muhammadan population of Bengal meditated or still meditate on
a general insurrection either on Buqr Eed, the Mohurrum or both.
In case  .  .  .  of a[n] insurrection, the Christian and other inhabitants
332 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

of Sylhet would be at a loss how to act or on whom to depend’.101 In

Pabna, Rajshahi, Sirajganj, and Dinajpur, there was an apprehension,
among the Europeans in particular and often shared by the locals,
of a Muslim rising, and there is evidence that they demanded extra
protection during religious ceremonies.

North Bengal/Terai Region and the Hills

Records, of course, do not provide evidence for any significant
uprising among the people, but the rumoured movements of the
mutinous sepoys in north Bengal in particular had serious impact.102
This was supplemented by a sense of anxiety among the English. The
agent to the Governor General, NE Frontier, wrote to the Secretary,
Government of Bengal, ‘I beg to state that should the 73rd cast off
their allegiance to the state, it is probable that the worst fears of
Mr Gordon would be realized, for it’s almost certain that a
considerable number of the men would betake themselves to the
Bhootan Dowars.  .  .  . The Dowars have been always frequented by
a great number of Oude adventurers’.103 Indeed, the Friend of India
reported on 17 December 1857 that the ‘Dacca mutineers have crossed
into Bhootan and are said to have reinforced their numbers by some
three hundred upcountry men in the service of the Kooch Behar Raja.’
Campbell, the Superintendent of Darjeeling, wrote to the Secretary,
Government of Bengal, on 26 June, ‘there was a general belief that
on the 22nd and 23rd there was to be a “rising” or “disturbance”
of a serious nature’ and a police order was issued forbidding free
movement of the natives in Darjeeling.104 Campbell also wrote a
letter on 2 July to report the meeting of sepoys, where ‘a good deal
of conversation regarding the cartridges, the present mutineers,
the downfall of the English Government, murder of Europeans etc.
etc. occurred’. A commission of enquiry was constituted and the
accused sepoys chargesheeted. Their guns and ammunitions were
entrusted to the charge of the Europeans, and ‘the night guard at the
treasury was altered from 3 sepoys of Sappers to 2 Europeans and 1
of the Sappers’.105 To intercept the deserting sowars in Jalpaiguri, one
hundred European troops and one hundred Gurkhas were sent from
Darjeeling under Captain Curzon. While the mutiny did not quite
materialize, all the rebels could not be brought under control either.
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 333

The ever-present possibility of trouble continued to tantalize the

rulers. The gap between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ could not be bridged.
But the often uncoordinated efforts of the rebels at ‘becoming’ did
give the British a memory that haunted them in future as well.

VI

Nadia, Barasat, and Hooghly

The Officiating Commissioner of Nadia Division wrote to the
Secretary to the Government of Bengal on 27 July 1857, to report
that ‘there has been a general panic in consequence of the rumours
which have originated in and around Calcutta’.106 The Hindoo Patriot
reported on 1 September 1857 that the Magistrate of Barasat had
applied for military aid to the government on hearing that a crowd
of about five thousand had assembled near the scene of Titu Mir’s
revolt. A plot was discerned amongst the men of the najib guard at
Jessore in which a jamadar and 2 sepoys were principally concerned.
The jamadar was hanged and the sepoys sentenced to transportation
for life, but both of them allegedly committed suicide.107 That some
kind of an agitation continued to exist in Jessore was seen again
in September itself, when fresh arrests were made of the reported
followers of the King of Awadh in Barasat and elsewhere. On 16 June
1857, A. Eden, the Officiating Jt Magistrate, Barasat, in a communi-
cation to the Commissioner of Circuit, Nadia Division, reported that
three deserters of the Forty-third Native Infantry had been seized
on 15 June, while they were making their way to Berhampore from
Calcutta. He felt, ‘it is probable that we shall daily have large number
of such deserters passing through the station’. This was likely to
produce a sense of panic among the inhabitants, and his suggestion
was that an ‘extraordinary police force’ should guard the town for a
month or two. ‘I think it is very necessary that the men should be
stopped here, and not allowed to go on to Berhampore or Dacca,
or to mix with the Ferazee population’. 108 In the midst of these, the
English had the solace of a letter from Prankissen Roy Chowdhury
and Juggut Chunder Roy Chowdhury to the Private Secretary to the
Governor General of India, in which they expressed their and their
subjects’ loyalty to the Raj with great rhetoric flourish and assured
334 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the Governor General, ‘in conclusion  .  .  .  we have to say that our

daily prayer is offered to Heaven for the success of the British arms.’109
In Serampore, a number of Europeans expressed a sense of
anxiety in a petition they submitted to the Deputy Magistrate of
Serampore. They were apprehensive that a fair number of disbanded
troops and deserters were present in villages around the town and
feared that on the occasion of the Rathyatra the large assembly
might be used by these people to effect a general rising. They wanted
strong and prompt action to bolster the security of the town.110 The
Officiating Magistrate of Hooghly wrote to the Secretary, Government
of Bengal, on 21 August 1857 that the police stationed near the
Grand Trunk Road had seen lately that the number of ‘upcountry
men proceeding to Calcutta’ has increased. This was confirmed by
his assistant, Crawford, as well.111 As late as in June 1858, it was
reported that three spies of Koer Singh had been arrested by the
police in Calcutta and sent to Sassaram, as desired by the Deputy
Magistrate there. Indeed, the Commissioner of police reported that
he had kept a European inspector present at the Howrah railway
station to see if any large body of upcountry men came down to
Calcutta. The police were also watching the river traffic.112 There was
an interesting incident from Serampore that needs to be mentioned.
Dr Kabeer Roy, a doctor of the jail was seen by Crawford and Ward
to have told a European during a quarrel, ‘Have you not heard of
the disturbances in the north-west, and how you people are being
turned off. This is not a time for you to abuse a native. Go away.’ This
was seen as ‘seditious language’. The Secretary to the Government of
Bengal, A.R. Young, wrote back that ‘the Lieutenant Governor directs
this man’s dismissal from the service of the Government’. Dr Roy was
also to be charged for his ‘offence’.113 Here we have another instance
of an educated Bengali giving expression to his frustrations at the
discrimination of the Company’s government and making a positive
reference to the revolt in the north.

Midnapore and the Junglemahal

We have already seen that orders were issued for the search of all
upcountry men in different parts of Bengal.114 Archival records show,
as we have also seen earlier, that there was an apprehension of attack
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 335

by sepoys in Hooghly.115 Government correspondence during this

period clearly establishes its anxiety about possible disturbances in
Midnapore, from where it could, it was feared, spread to Bankura. In
Midnapore, Brindaban Tiwary, who tried to arouse the people against
the British, was apprehended, court-martialled and executed, while
S.B. Choudhury mentions Meer Jungoo and Sheik Zumeeroodin—
two rebels—who were imprisoned.116 This area had, for a long time,
been disturbed by the rebellion of the Chuars. There is reference to
the possibility of a Chuar rebellion again by the Daroga of Raipur.
The Rani of Raipur also reported a gathering of the Chuars.117 G.N.
Oakes, the Assistant Commissioner of Manbhum, in a letter dated 6
August 1857 from Purulia, to the Secretary, Government of Bengal,
reported that the ‘sepoys of the Ramghur Battalion consisting of
93 men  .  .  .  mutinied at 8 o’clock in the morning yesterday [i.e.
5 August].  .  .  . They plundered the Bungalow, bazaar and town
and afterwards the Treasury’. Oakes himself managed to escape to
Raghunathpore, about 28 miles north-east on the Raniganj Road.118
The Officiating Magistrate of Bankura wrote to the Secretary to the
Government of Bengal on 7 August 1857, ‘I have the honour to
report for the information of His Honour the Lt Governor of Bengal
that yesterday I received intimation from the Darogah of Thanah
Raghunathpore that the troops had mutinied at Pooroolia and
destroyed the station, that the Europeans, 16 in number, had arrived
safely at this Thanah’.119 Taraknath Sen, on deputation to Raniganj,
in a letter to the Commissioner of Burdwan, suggested that the best
way, in his opinion, to control the disturbances in Manbhum was to
appoint ‘a man who may be acquainted with the bad characters of
Manbhoom and who may be a dread to them should be appointed
to the office of the Superintendent Daroga of Manbhoom with 300
armed men, a naib Daroga and a naib Jemadar.’ He feared that the
mutineers were going away from Manbhum and any delay in taking
action might result in further disturbances.120
Apart from the deserting and mutinous sepoys (of which there
is enough evidence),121 tribal chiefs, local rajas, and zamindars also
posed a threat. The instances of Nilmani Singh Deo of Pachete and
Raja Arjun Singh of Porhat are obvious indicators of the trend.
Sambad Prabhakar, on 16 October 1857, mentioned that Nilmani did
not accept the titles offered by the government and refused to carry
336 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

out its orders. On 19 November, the paper reported the contradictory

reports about Nilmani published in The Englishman and Phoenix.
In the meantime, the rebels of the Ramgarh battalion assembled at
Chatra, but were defeated by the English forces. Interestingly, Sambad
Prabhakar, in the same edition, also reported that the rebel sepoys
had looted as much as ten crores of rupees from the North-Western
Province, Awadh, and Bengal. In two letters on 14 August 1857 to
the Commissioner of Chhotonagpur and the Principal Assistant
Commissioner of Manbhum, it was reported that the zamindar of
Chaklah Pachete was collecting supplies from various directions and
‘it seems he is about to do mischief in this district’. The letters also
cited a report from the zamindar of Joypore that about ‘3000 Santhals
and other persons from Golah and Chas armed with bows, arrows,
swords have assembled at a village named Seedhe and are plundering
and burning the villages in that neighbourhood.  .  .  . I have appointed
an extra Daroga  .  .  .  and 40 burkaundajes  .  .  .  to assist the Joypore
police.’122 On 20 October 1857, Sambad Prabhakar noted that the
‘ungrateful, disobedient and evil’ sepoys were trying to spread their
rebellion to different parts of Bengal. The people in the hilly and forest
regions of Manbhum, Mallabhum, Ramgarh, and Chhotonagpur
had joined the rebels, as had the Chuars. The newspaper was of the
opinion that these people ought to have been taught a good lesson.
The Officiating Commissioner of Burdwan wrote to the Secretary,
Government of Bengal, on 29 October from Camp Raniganj to report
the activities of Nilmani Singh Deo. He refers to the examination of
a few documents from Purulia, which suggested that Nilmani Singh
was ‘refusing to assist Captain Oakes’. He was also issuing orders on
his own to the jagirdars and influential zamindars to ‘come and help
him to defend his fort and family’. In one of these orders, he had
referred to himself as ‘Maharajah Adirajah Sri Sri Nilmoney Singh
Deo Bahadur’. He sent a gomostah to troubled Purulia, who visited the
record office, collected documents for keeping them in a secure place,
and allegedly gave no help when the office was burnt that night. C.H.
Lushington, the Officiating Commissioner of Burdwan, suspected
that his purpose was to collect government documents from the
record office and then burn down the place. He sought directions
from the Secretary to the Government of Bengal, in dealing with
Nilmani, and gave an account of the forces he could muster.123 He
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 337

emphasized the need to apprehend Nilmani and suggested measures

to follow to achieve that end. Eventually, Nilmani was arrested and
tried under Act XIV of 1857 on the charge of rebellion against the
state, but was acquitted on 21 May 1858. Officials were, however,
of the opinion that it would be unsafe to let him at liberty at a time
when Singhbhum district was still in open rebellion. The request was
for the Government of India to issue a warrant for his detention in
the Alipur jail.124
E. Gray wrote to the Officiating Accountant to Government
of Bengal on 11 August that the treasury at Manbhum had been
plundered by the sepoys stationed at that place. ‘The district being at
present in a disorganized state, I have no means of obtaining a supply
of money to meet the expenditure of this office.’ He appealed for some
money to be sent to him quickly for that purpose.125 There was also
some suspicion about the disaffections among some members of the
family of the Raja of Bishnupur. The Deputy Magistrate of Garbeta
was residing in Bishnupur to exercise strict supervision, in case the
issue got aggravated. H. Rose, the Joint Magistrate of Bankura, further
reported that the zamindar of Zamcoondy, a man of disreputable
character, had gone to the Raja of Burabhum in Purulia, and the
purpose of the visit, according to Rose, was suspicious. ‘It is not
improbable that he had been deputed by the disaffected Bishenpoore
Baboos, and other suspected local zamindars, to endeavour to form a
league between them and the rajas in the Ramghur territory, and to
induce the latter to raise the coolee and create a disturbance.’126 The
officiating Jt Magistrate of Bankura wrote in a letter to the Secretary,
Government of Bengal, about the alarm the administration in
Bankura felt on learning about the troubles in Purulia. 127
The situation affected the British administration at Calcutta
greatly; they were suspecting the loyalty of the Sekhawatee Battalion
in Midnapore, and this was communicated to Col. C.B. Forster,
Commanding Officer in Midnapore, in a letter by Birch Coll,
Secretary to the Government of India.128 In reply, Young, Secretary to
the Government of Bengal, replied that ‘the safety of Midnapore must
depend on the measures which  .  .  .  the Governor General in Council
has taken as shown in the letter to Col. Foster.’ He also expressed the
anxiety that unrests at Midnapore would inevitably follow the unrest
at Bankura.129 It should be clear that in this region, the collaboration
338 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

of the mutineers with the local chiefs and the people posed a serious
threat to the government. This would also indicate the participation
of the civil population in certain areas in the activities of the sepoys.
The defiance of many local chiefs was also significant.

Birbhum and Santal Parganas

On 27 October 1857, Sambad Prabhakar copiously quoted from a
letter sent from Suri to report that the sepoys of the Thirty-second
Native Infantry had gone on a rampage in the area. It sent, according
to the letter, chills of fear down the spine of all the residents in the
area and they were trying to flee to safer places. The sepoys had
allegedly looted Rampurhat and the neighbouring villages, and
even took away the elephants and horses belonging to the East India
Company. On 19 October, the Rampurhat mutineers had plundered
‘Bhoukunda, 7 koss north of Dhoomka and left for Nonee haut that
night’.130 On 31 October, Sambad Prabhakar published a letter from
Raniganj, tracing the progress of the sepoys towards the area. They
allegedly went to Narayanpur and looted in the area, taking Rs.4 lakh
from the moneylenders and businessmen. The Englishmen fled from
Narayanpur along with their servants, and the rebels, emboldened
by this, looted their bungalows and even took two elephants from a
local raja. The letter significantly noted that the ‘Santhals in the area,
however, have remained quiet.’ Indeed, on 26 November, Sambad
Prabhakar, in an editorial, expressed deep anxiety about the spread
of the rebellion. As early as August 1857, the Officiating Magistrate
of Birbhum informed the Secretary, Government of Bengal, that Lt
Baker’s Corps had taken the money in the treasury with them for
safe-keeping. It was also reported that as a precautionary measure,
the ‘ladies have left the station’.131 It may be noted that as per a
communication of O.W. Malet on 1 July 1857 the notables of Suri,
Hindus and Muslims, in a public meeting expressed sentiments of
loyalty to the government.132

VII
Bihar and Jharkhand were seriously affected by the mutiny of the
sepoys. This part of the country was witness to a large-scale rising
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 339

of the sepoys and of the people as well. The government took

precautionary measures, like strengthening the police force in Bihar,
and carefully watching and guarding the ghats and the frontiers of
the neighbouring disaffected districts. The treasury at Arrah and
Chapra, was removed to Patna. In spite of the precautionary measures,
mutinies flared up in Danapur, Arrah, Patna, Gaya, Champaran,
Saran, Tirhut, Bhagalpur, Santal Parganas, Purnea, Singhbhum,
Manbhum, Muzaffarpur, Palamou, and Chaibasa. But the disaffected
army alone would not have been sufficient to produce a conflagration
in Bihar. They were joined and led by Kunwar Singh, the zamindar
of Jagdishpur, as well as by Amar Singh and Reeth Narayan Singh
(brothers), Nishan Singh, Jai Krishna Singh (nephews), and other
zamindars like Narhan Singh, Joohun Singh, Thakur Dayal Singh,
Bisheswar Singh, and others.133 The activities of Wahabism in Patna
went a long way in preparing Bihar for the mutinous outbreak.
Wahabi leaders like Peer Ali, Waris Ali, Ali Kureem, Luft Ali Khan,
and the three Maulavis—Muhammad Hussain, Ahmadullh, and
Waizul Haque—kept the city ready for mutiny at the slightest
provocation. Agents provocateurs, such as Khaja Hassan Ali Khan,
were at work in Patna to encourage the sepoys to mutiny, by instilling
into their minds the fear of interference with their caste and religion
by the government.134
In June 1857, Major MacDonald and Assistant Surgeon Grant
were attacked by men of the Fifth Irregular Cavalry, in the Santal
Parganas. MacDonald received ‘a blow that laid his head open and
rendered him insensible for many hours.  .  .  . Grant received sword-
wounds on hand and leg.  .  .  . Lewis was so severely wounded that he
expired within half an hour’.135 However, the men who attacked were
apprehended, and MacDonald graphically describes the punishment
meted out to them. They were put in irons, a court martial was carried,
and they were sentenced to be hanged the next morning. ‘One of the
prisoners was of very high caste and influence and I determined to
treat him with the greatest ignominy by getting the lowest caste man
to hang him  .  .  .  to tell you the truth I had to see everything done
myself, even to the adjusting of ropes’. The violence of the mutiny
was always more than matched by the English.136
The details of the movement in different parts of Bihar are well
chronicled.137 The division of Chhotonagpur was particularly affected,
340 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

as is evident from the comments of Halliday, the Lt Governor of

Bengal.138 Ramgarh, Hazaribagh, and Doranda witnessed serious
mutiny. It then spread to Chaibasa, and in early September, Sham
Karan Singh, the agent of Arjun Singh, made a formal proclamation
that ‘The people belong to the Almighty, the country belongs to the
King, and the ruler thereof is Maharaj Urjoon Singh’.139 Sambad
Prabhakar reported (on 19 December 1857) that about

4000 rebel sepoys were waiting in readiness in the hills nearby with the
intention of attacking the town of Sambalpur. They were also trying to
free the prisoners and relatives from the prison in Cuttack. The king
of Sambalpur, Sundar Shah and his brother, who were imprisoned in
Hazaribagh, and later freed by the sepoys of Ramgarh, have assumed
the leadership. They sent agents to Cuttack to make enquiries, but the
commissioner arrested them.

Further, on 24 October, Sambad Prabhakar reported that the sepoys

of two companies of the Thirty-second Infantry had rebelled and
killed the commanding major, while the paper of 28 October quoted
a letter from Bhagalpur, stating that two British officers had been
killed and their bungalows looted.
Assam, in the north-east, did not provide an immediate cause
of alarm, situated as it was at a great distance from the nerve-centre
of the Company’s power in India. But, even here, a situation arose
towards the close of 1857, which, but for the unfortunate leakage of
information regarding a well-planned and carefully organized plot to
overthrow the Company’s rule in Assam, and reinstate a scion of the
old Ahom royal family on the throne, could have assumed serious
proportions in endangering British hold in the region.140 A spirit of
restlessness was noticed among the sepoys of the First Assam Light
Infantry Battalion in upper Assam. They were persuaded to believe
the then current notion that the British rule, which was to last for
only one hundred years, had actually come to an end, that the Mughal
emperor had indeed been reinstalled in Delhi, and that the English
would soon be forced to leave Bengal and Assam. At the same time,
Nirmal Hazari and Peali Barua, representing Kandarpeswar Singha,
were active in Golaghat in Sibsagar.141 It has also been recorded
that ‘three or four of the European planters in the Sibsagar district
who had left their factories  .  .  .  had arrived here in the course of
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 341

the last week and their arrival created much apprehension  .  .  .  these

gentlemen had been perfectly aware of the state of general feelings
in the neighbourhood of their residence  .  .  .  that an outbreak of the
sepoys was likely to occur immediately’.142
The Revolt of 1857 adversely affected the work of laying railway
lines in Bengal. In the districts near Calcutta, land acquisition
did create some tension, but the landlords displayed loyalty to
the Company and some even organized guards to prevent armed
men from coming by the river. However, in the outskirts of Bengal
division, the rebels as well as the common people often targeted the
railways. Engineers were attacked and railway property was burnt
down. Men of Kunwar Singh of Jagadispur damaged the work that
had already been done on the bridge over the Sone river. The bridge
was reputedly the largest in Asia at the time. It was reported that
the value of ‘railway materials afloat on the Ganges at the period of
the outbreak was not less than half million sterling. It may be found
that a very large portion of it has been or will be lost’.143 This loss to
property was reflected even in 1879, when the West Indian Railway
Company transferred its assets and liabilities to the government and
it was calculated that nearly 13 per cent of the total expenditure was
lost owing to the damage to property and interruption of work in
1857. ‘From Monghyr upwards’, an EIR official recounted later, ‘the
effect of the mutiny was to throw back progress for nearly two years.’144

VIII
The preceding narrative seeks to insinuate that large parts of the
Bengal Presidency were affected by the Revolt of 1857. Archival
records as well as contemporary newspapers, which have been
merely sampled here, would further confirm these impressions.
What Bengal witnessed by way of a movement can be described as
having been initiated and led mainly by the sepoys. The inherent
disaffection among these people found expression in outbreaks
of rebellions, which, as we have tried to narrate, spread from one
region to the other, covering large chunks of the Presidency. We have
concentrated on present day West Bengal and Bangladesh, but made
some references to the revolt in the areas of Bihar, Jharkhand, and
Assam, contiguous to West Bengal. There is not much evidence of a
342 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

mass or popular upsurge, though the suspected or actual involvement

of the Faraizis or the Wahabis is recorded. This involvement might
have been connected by a network to other neighbouring or even
distant regions. In some areas like Bankura, Purulia, Manbhum, and
parts of Medinipur or Birbhum, bordering on the Santal Parganas,
popular involvement was significant. It would, however, seem that
these did not crystallize into a larger and powerful movement as it
did in the Gangetic heartland.
This brings us to the perception of loyalty to the Raj on the part
of the educated middle class and upper class Bengalis, and their anti-
sepoy attitudes during 1857–8. Historians have found this loyalist
image to be largely correct and have tried to understand and explain
the indifference, if not hostility, to the revolt. We have given enough
evidence of protestations of loyalty among the landholding classes like
zamindars, big and small, in different parts of the province. They and
the other upper and middle class people demonstrated their keenness
to rally round the Raj. Contemporary vernacular newspapers were
mostly, with some exceptions, full of condemnation of the activities
of the sepoys. Some criticized the killings of the sepoys, while others
brought into focus the persecution of the disaffected Santals, which
we have quoted. There were also protests against the ‘Gagging Act’
by a few vernacular newspapers.
In 1957, Benoy Ghose tried to understand the lukewarm
approach in terms of the ‘bourgeois liberal ideology’ which the
Bengali intelligentsia imbibed and which made them look towards
the future for progress of reforms, social and perhaps political, and
not return to the old feudal rule, which would be the fate, they
apprehended, if the sepoy rebels had won. Ghose explains their
mentality in political, economic, and sociological terms. Their
Weltanshauung and economic interests tied them to the British
rule, and with it were associated concerns of ‘modernity’. Indeed,
Halliday noted that, ‘I know scarcely one authentic instance of a
really educated native I will not say joining, but even sympathising
with the rebels’.145 Ghose also quotes from the Hindu Patriot, which
wrote on 4 June 1857 under the title ‘The Sepoy Mutiny and its
Action upon the People of Bengal’—‘The Bengalees never aspired
to the glory of leading armies to battle.  .  .  . Their pursuits and their
triumphs are entirely civil.  .  .  . They are in hopes that by lawful and
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 343

constitutional appeals to the good sense and justice of the English

people sitting  .  .  .  [in] Parliament  .  .  .  [they] will rise yet further in the
scale of equality with their foreign rulers.’146 The new middle classes,
says Ghose, found no hope in the 1857 revolt, and found it prudent,
in their own class interests, to follow the rulers, rather than back the
‘wrong “feudal” horse’. Gopal Haldar, in an essay on 1857 and Bengali
literature, echoes almost identical views. ‘How the rebellion of 1857
was understood by the Bengali intelligentsia has to be recognised
and its causes properly analysed even though one should not make
light of the “class character” of the intelligentsia, which was so largely
dependent for a fortune of the British Raj.’147
In 2007, historians, writing on the occasion of the sesquicentenary
celebrations, tried to understand the complexities of the mentality of
educated middle class Bengalis. Swarupa Gupta argues that ‘patterns
and trajectories of mentalities and responses in Bengal as expressed
in literature went beyond simplistic “loyalist” frames’.148 She says
the idea of social progress, which Benoy Ghose and Gopal Haldar
found to be standing on the way of the intelligentsia supporting
the sepoy, became ‘an idiom/rhetoric for articulating the Bengali
nationalist imagination’. Using the samaj as a discursive category, she
argues that the ‘idiom for expressing mentalities of dissent was not
religious/racial, but social/samajik’. Her study of the literature (fiction,
travelogues, biographies, and histories) that dealt with 1857, over the
next two decades, led her to think that ‘the regional representation of
an iconic national event in Bengali fiction  .  .  .  transcended the sense
of failure and finality which the revolt meant to many minds’.149 Uttara
Chakraborty traces the anxiety of the English, so apparent in 1857, to
earlier periods, but she also notes that the middle class intelligentsia,
on its part, shared a similar fear. They were unable to identify with the
rebels’ idea of a liberated Hindustan. They, however, soon developed
an ambivalent attitude. She detects, in many contemporary writers,
a ‘subterranean sympathy with their cause’. ‘Their emotional attitude
vacillated between the fear of losing their moorings in connection
with the English and their growing dislike of the arrogant white’. This
ambivalence was groping towards an articulation and very soon this
became apparent. For example, Harish Chandra Mukhopadhyay did
not mince his words when he talked of the plight of the farmers of
Bengal and was visceral in his condemnation of the indigo planters.
344 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

All this came in the three years that he lived after the end of the
revolt.150 The memory of the events, as recalled by novels, short
stories, poems, plays and other forms of literature, gave a boost to
the nationalist imagination. Scholars have attempted detailed analysis
of the literature to bring out how the events and people involved
were invented in the decades following the revolt (we are referring
to Bengali literature). Anuradha Roy has also detected an element of
dichotomy in the mentality of the Bengali bhadralok. She writes, ‘even
when the bhadralok showed zealous loyalty to their British masters,
they felt the ignominy of subjection and an urge for freedom irked
somewhere in their mind’.151
Even a cursory glance at some of the contemporary vernacular
and English newspapers and periodicals would probably underline
the paradoxes, the ambiguities, and the complexity of mentalities.
The Hindu Intelligencer wrote on 1 June 1857, on the press and the
public service, ‘Restrictions upon public servants in discussing with
all freedom questions appertaining to the state, and bearing upon the
interests of the public, are unnatural, unrighteous, unreasonable and
unwholesome.’ Its editor, Kashiprasad Ghosh, stopped the publication
of the paper as a protest against the Press Law. This was reported in
the Hindoo Patriot on 25 June 1857. Nilambar Mukhopadhyay of
Rangpur Bartabaha followed his example and closed shop. Ishwar
Chandra Gupta welcomed it in the Sambad Prabhakar. The editors
of three newspapers—Durbin and Sultan ul Akhbar in Persian, and
Samachar Sudhabarshan in Bengali and Hindi—were accused of
publishing the Proclaimation of the rebels after the capture of Delhi.
They were consequently arrested and tried. On the advice of their
lawyers, the two editors of the Persian papers offered apologies, but
Shyamsundar Sen of Samachar Sudhabarshan refused to express and
was tried under the Act. He was, however, not found guilty. Again,
Harish Chandra Mukhopadhyay was extremely critical of the mass
killing of rebels as acts of reprisal. ‘If the present war be a war of
revenge and extermination, then Lord Canning and members of
council should abdicate their functions in favour of a committee of
butchers’.152 Benoy Ghose has also shown that Sambad Bhaswar was
often critical of government policies. In June 1857, it reported that
the need to keep the army supplied with adequate foodgrains had led
to a scarcity of the same. The rich could buy and store food for a few
months, but, the paper wondered what would happen to the poor.
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 345

It was also reported that the Bengal Hurkaru had complained to the
police against the editor of Sambad Bhaswar. Later, Sambad Bhaswar
published in its editorial column, a letter which detailed the arrest
of the Santals in large numbers and police atrocities on them. Ghose
comments that ‘to publish such a letter in the editorial column was
indeed very courageous during the mutiny  .  .  .  it would be difficult to
find such examples in other papers.’153 Even Sambad Prabhakar, which
generally went overboard in condemning the sepoys, was occasionally
critical of the government. For example, on 20 June 1857, Sambad
Prabhakar, in no uncertain terms, condemned the sepoys and prayed
for the victory of the English. But on the other hand, they exhorted
the Governor to prevent famine, and to ensure that the high prices of
grains be brought down so that people could afford to eat. The paper
also asked for banning the export of foodgrains. In another editorial,
dated 16 Ashad bs 1263, it questioned the indiscriminate hanging of
sepoys under the Martial Law. It doubted if those who were hanged
were all really guilty. On 15 Shrabon bs 1264, it once again referred
to discrimination on part of the government by reporting that the
few white soldiers who were court-martialled for joining the rebels
were transported for life. But for the same crime, the native sepoys
were sentenced to death. The paper called it a travesty of justice.
The paper also referred to the atrocities of the White soldiers in
Calcutta and Dhaka. They printed a letter from Dhaka, giving details
of the depredations of the European soldiers, who even carried on
atrocities in the house of Rani Rasmoni at Janbazar (27 Shrabon bs
1264).154 Kishori Chand Mittra wrote a pamphlet on the events of
1857, where he noted that ‘the insurrection is essentially a military
insurrection. It is the revolt of a lac of sepoys.  .  .  . It has nothing of
the popular element in it. The proportion of those who have joined
the rebels sinks into nothingness when compared with those whose
sympathies are enlisted with the government.’ Despite this expression
of fidelity, Kishori Chand was dismissed from his position of Deputy
Magistrate on 28 October 1858. This must have been noticed by his
peer group and the blatant display of racial discrimination must have
shaken them a little.155
There is no doubt that the Revolt of 1857 marked a watershed
in Indian history. It became a point of reference for the British
rulers whenever they sensed a challenge to their rule. They saw this
mutiny as the greatest challenge to the Raj till then. As late as 1942,
346 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Lord Linlithgo feared that the occurrences of 1857 seemed to be

returning. Likewise, the educated Bengali middle class also probably
reconsidered their stance, and began articulating concerns about the
evil aspects of the Raj, focusing on the lack of equity and justice. The
Indigo Rebellion provided a context almost immediately after the
revolt, and the Hindu Patriot was visceral in its attack on the planters
and the government. This was a moment of reckoning for the British.
The Indians in general reeled under the impact of the economic
consequences of the colonial rule, but the loyalty of the middle class
must have been shaken by the cruelty with which the revolt was
suppressed. The arrogance rooting from racism and the hypocrisy
of the government were difficult to bear anymore with equanimity,
and most Indians felt uncomfortable with their dichotomy with the
British. We have been able to provide instances of such concern
from the contemporary period, when there was introspection and
reconsideration of the attitude towards the colonial government. The
decades following witnessed a great deal of association-making for
the articulation of their ideas. We end with another quotation from
the redoubtable Harish Chandra Mukhopadhyay which might have
anticipated this change in mentality. In his editorial on 31 December
1857, he wrote, ‘History will, we conceive, take a very different view of
the facts of the Great Indian revolt of 1857 from what contemporaries
have taken of them. The time will certainly come when the Historian
will be called upon to record this tremendous crash and what a subject
he shall have to write about’.156

Notes
1. Also see, Mahdi Hussain, Bahadur Shah and the War of 1857 in Delhi,
Delhi: Atmaram, 1958, p. 5; and W. Fitchett, The Tale of the Great Mutiny,
1901; repr., London: John Murray, 1924, p. 13.
2. J.S. Maclean, Exposure of Maladministration of the East India Company,
1852, quoted in Sangha Mittra, Indian Constitutional Acts: East India
Company to Independence, New Delhi: Commonwealth Publishers, 2003,
p. 65.
3. Ibid.
4. G.N. Dodd, A History of the Indian Revolt and the Expedition to Persia,
China and Japan, London: W. and R. Chambers, 1859, p. 215.
5. ‘The Indian Crisis of 1857’, Calcutta Review, vol. XXIX, July–December
1857, pp. 377–438.
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 347
6. Saul David, The Indian Mutiny: 1857, New Delhi: Penguin, 2002,
pp. xxii–xxiii.
7. S. Bhattacharya, ed., Rethinking 1857, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2007.
This volume has interesting essays on uprisings and civil rebellion in
Jharkhand by L.N. Rana, on the Hos of Singhbhum by Sanjukta Dasgupta,
and on Chhotonagpur by Shaashank Sinha. Also see, Subhas Ranjan
Chakraborty, ed., Uprisings of 1857: Perspectives and Peripheries, Kolkata:
Asiatic Society, 2009. This anthology has essays on Assam by Sabyasachi
Dasgupta, on Orissa by Ashok Pattanayak, on the ambivalence of the
middle class in Bengal by Uttara Chakraborty, and 1857 in nationalist
imagination by Benjamin Zachariah. All these contributions provide new
perspectives on aspects of the uprisings of 1857, particularly in areas not
in focus earlier. Ananda Bhattacharya, 1857-r Mahabidroha O Bangla,
Kolkata: Ashadeep, 2010; Bidisha Chakraborty, ‘Revolt and Panic: South
West Bengal in 1857’, and Ananda Bhattacharya, ‘Rumour and Reality: The
Revolt of 1857 in the Periphery of Bengal’, in The Revolt of 1857: Memory,
Identity and History, ed. Arabinda Samanta, Arup Kumar Chattopadhyay
and Tanveer Nusreen, Kolkata: Indira Prakashani, 2009. Also see,
Madhurima Sen, ‘Contested Sites’ and Sharmistha De, ‘The Disposable
Brethren’, in The Great Rebellion of 1857 in India: Exploring Transgressions,
Contests and Diversities, ed. Biswamoy Pati, New Delhi: Routledge, 2010.
Ananda Bhattacharya, The Revolt of 1857 and Bengal, Kolkata: Papyrus,
2012; it is a very useful compilation of reports in The Dacca News,
The Bengal Harkaru, The India Gazette, The Friend of India, and The
Hindoo Patriot. We have mentioned only some of the recent publications
by way of illustrations. Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery: Bengal
and North-East in 1857–58, Kolkata: Directorate of State Archives, 2013; it
is a compilation of documents housed in the West Bengal State Archives.
It has two very good introductions from Bidisha Chakraborty, ‘South
and South-West Bengal in 1857, Panic and Apprehension’ and Shar-
mishtha De, ‘Eastern Bengal and North-East India in 1857’. It also has
a brief introduction by Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty. I have used these
documents to draw much of the information incorporated in this
essay.
8. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 3, 30 September 1858, West Bengal
State Archives (hereafter referred to as WBSA).
9. ‘The Indian Crisis of 1857’, Calcutta Review, p. 386.
10. John William Kaye, A History of the Sepoy War, vol. I, repr., New Delhi:
Gyan, 1996, pp. 488–90, 510.
11. Ibid., pp. 494–8.
12. Ibid., p. 500.
348 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
13. Basudeb Chattopadhyay, ‘Panic Sunday in Calcutta: 14 June 1957’,
in Rethinking 1857, ed. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, New Delhi: Orient
Longman, 2007, pp. 168–9.
14. Kaye, History of the Sepoy War, vol. I, pp. 526–8.
15. T. Rice Holmes, A History of Indian Mutiny: And of the Disturbances
which accompanied it among the Civil Population, London: Macmillan,
1904, pp. 85–7.
16. Kaye, History of the Sepoy War, vol. I, pp. 538–9.
17. Ibid., p. 550.
18. Arthur Mangin, Revolte au Bengale, Paris: Ad MAME et Cie, Imprimeurs-
Libraires, 1862, pp. 134, 155; and Fitchett, Tale of the Great Mutiny, p. 8.
19. Chattopadhyay, ‘Panic Sunday in Calcutta’, p. 170.
20. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 634, in Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in the
Periphery, p. 18.
21. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 210, no. 5, 10 September 1857, in
Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 19.
22. The Friend of India, 28 May 1857, quoted by John William Kaye, A History
of the Sepoy War, vol. II, repr., New Delhi: Gyan, 1996, p. 114 fn.
23. Charles Rathbone Low, History of the Indian Navy, vol. II, 1877; repr.,
Delhi: Manas, 1985, pp. 431–2.
24. Holmes, History of Indian Mutiny, p. 183.
25. Basudeb Chattopadhyay, ‘Panic Sunday in Calcutta’, p. 171.
26. Ibid., p. 172.
27. C.E. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, vol. I, 2nd edn.,
Calcutta: Kedar Nath Bose, 1902, p. 136.
28. Ibid., p 137.
29. Ibid.
30. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 42, no. 538, in Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt
in the Periphery, p. 17.
31. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 40, 23 July 1857, WBSA.
32. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 46, 27 July 1857, WBSA; quoted in
Anasua Datta, ‘Mutiny, Rumour, and Gun Runners of Calcutta: A Journey
Back to 1857’, in The Uprising of 1857: Before and Beyond, ed. Kaushik
Roy, New Delhi: Manohar, 2010, p. 157.
33. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 252, 4 August 1857, WBSA.
34. Anasua Datta, ‘Mutiny, Rumour, and Gun Runners of Calcutta’, p. 148.
35. Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 31A.
36. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 4, 5 November 1857, in Simonti Sen,
ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 48.
37. Holmes, History of Indian Mutiny, pp. 170–1.
38. Datta, ‘Mutiny, Rumour, and Gun Runners of Calcutta’, p. 149, fn. 30
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 349
39. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, vol. I, p. 135.
40. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 40, no. 530, 10 August 1857, WBSA.
41. Judicial Department, Proceedings, no. 249, 10 September 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 36.
42. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, vol. I, p. 135.
43. Holmes, History of Indian Mutiny, p. 174.
44. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 775, 10 August 1857, in Simonti Sen,
ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 34.
45. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 889, 10 September 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 37.
46. Uttara Chakraborty, ‘Through a Glass Darkly: Fearful English and the
Ambivalent Bengali: Calcutta 1857–58’, in Uprisings of 1857: Perspectives
and Peripheries, ed. Subhas Ranjan Chakraborty, Kolkata: Asiatic Society,
2009, p. 178.
47. Special Narrative, 22 August 1857, WBSA.
48. Rice Holmes, History of Indian Mutiny, p. 261.
49. Basudeb Chattopadhyay, ‘Panic Sunday in Calcutta’, p. 175.
50. Cited in Swapan Basu and Indrajit Chaudhury, 1857-r Bidroha: Samakalin
Bangla O Bangali, Kolkata: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, 2007, pp. 49, 51.
51. Ibid., p. 58.
52. Ratan Lal Chakraborty, Sipahi Juddha O Bangladesh, 1984; repr., Dakha:
Bangla Akademi, 1996; also Muntassir Mamoon, Dhaka: 1857 Saler
Bidroha, Dalilpatra, Dhaka: Bangla Akademi, 1997. In these books, the
authors have used, among other materials, the diary of Mr Brennand,
the Princpal of Dhaka College, who gave a lively description of what
was happening in Dhaka in 1857; Mamoon has also used the files of the
newspaper Dacca News, the first English daily of Dhaka, for the years
1857–8.
53. Dacca News, 28 March 1857 and 18 April 1857, quoted in Mamoon,
Dhaka, pp. 7, 17.
54. S.N. Sen, Eighteen Fifty-Seven, Delhi: Publications Division, 1957,
pp. 407–8; cited by Ramakanta Chakraborty, ‘Introduction’, in The
Mutinies and the People: Or, Statements of Native Fidelity, exhibited during
the Outbreak of 1857–58 by A Hindu, repr., Kolkata: Asiatic Society,
2007, p. vi.
55. Dodd, History of the Indian Revolt, p. 150.
56. Bengal Judicial Proceedings, no. 93, 10 September 1857, in Simonti Sen,
ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 95.
57. Bengal Judicial Proceedings, no. 149, 19 November 1857, in Simonti Sen,
ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 95.
58. Bengal Judicial Proceedings, no. 782, 10 September 1857, in Simonti Sen,
ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 96.
350 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
59. Dacca News, 20 June 1857, quoted in Mamoon, Dhaka, p. 9.
60. Dodd, History of the Indian Revolt, p. 148; letter from the Commissioner of
Dhaka to the Collector of Dhaka, Bangladesh Archives, Letters Received,
vol. 120, p. 329, cited in Ratan Lal Chakraborty, Sipahi Juddha, p. 52;
Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, vol. I, p. 142.
61. Diary of Brennand, quoted in Ratan Lal Chakraborty, Sipahi Juddha,
p. 52.
62. Brennand, quoted in Mamoon, Dhaka, p. 11; Buckland, Bengal under the
Lieutenant Governors, vol. I, p. 144.
63. Low, History of the Indian Navy, vol. II, p. 438; Ratan Lal Chakraborty,
Sipahi Juddha, p. 54; and G.B. Malleson, History of the Indian Mutiny,
vol. II, London: William H. Allen & Co., 1879, pp. 420–1.
64. Brennand, quoted in Ratan Lal Chakraborty, Sipahi Juddha, p. 55.
65. Testimony of Arthur Itibeous, William McPherson, Samuel Robinson,
and John Jarcus on 28 November 1857, District Judge’s Court, Dhaka,
cited by Ratan Lal Chakraborty, Sipahi Juddha, p. 55, fn. 75.
66. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, vol. I, p. 145.
67. Low, History of the Indian Navy, vol. II, pp. 441–2, 486, 585, Appendix B.
68. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, vol. I, p. 145; Malleson,
History of the Indian Mutiny, vol. II, pp. 420–1.
69. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 99, 10 December 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 124.
70. Low, History of the Indian Navy, vol. II, p. 443; Mamoon, Dhaka, p. 51;
and Bhattacharya, 1857-r Mahabidroha O Bangla, p. 142.
71. Mamoon, Dhaka, pp. 48–51.
72. Low, History of the Indian Navy, vol. II, p. 445.
73. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, vol. I, p. 144.
74. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, 1858, File no. 4, WBSA.
75. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 150, 24 December 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 130.
76. Judicial (Judicial), Proceedings, no. 212, 17 December 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 128.
77. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, vol. I, pp. 144–51;
Malleson, History of the Indian Mutiny, vol. II, p. 419.
78. Bengal Judicial Proceedings, no. 127, 24 December 1857, WBSA.
79. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, vol. I, pp. 144–51;
Malleson, History of the Indian Mutiny, vol. II, pp. 424–5; Special
Narrative, 46, 24–30 January 1858; nos. 16, 17 quoted by Sharmishtha De,
‘Eastern Bengal and North-East India in 1857’, in Revolt in the Periphery:
Bengal and North-East in 1857–58, ed. Simonti Sen, Kolkata: Directorate
of State Archives, 2013, p. 103.
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 351
80. Subir Kar, Mahabidroher Gatha: Jongiyar Geet, Silchar: Assam University,
2000, pp. 5–48.
81. Ibid., p. 50.
82. Ratan Lal Chakraborty, Sipahi Juddha, pp. 147–9; see also the letter of
the Officiating Joint Magistrate, Barasat, to the Secretary, Government
of Bengal, on the nexus between the Faraizis and the sepoys, Judicial
(Judicial) Proceedings, 10 August 1857, File no. 610/11, no. 680, WBSA.
83. Bengal Judicial Proceedings, no. 782, 10 September 1857, WBSA.
84. Bengal Judicial Proceedings, no. 499, 10 August 1857, WBSA.
85. Bengal Judicial Proceedings, no. 807, 10 September 1857; no. 17 quoted
by Sharmishtha De, ‘Eastern Bengal and North-East India’, p. 93.
86. Judicial (Judicial), Proceedings, nos. 213, 238, and 381, 17 September
1857, in Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, pp. 142, 146, 147.
87. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 142, 5 November 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 154.
88. Bengal Judicial Proceedings, no. 109, 24 December 1857; quoted by
Sharmishtha De, ‘Eastern Bengal and North-East India’, p. 99.
89. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, pp. 129–37.
90. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 381, 17 September 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 132.
91. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 807, 10 September 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, pp. 140–1.
92. Minute of Fred Halliday, Lt Governor of Bengal, 27 October 1857; Judicial
(Judicial) Proceedings, no. 6, 3 December 1857, in Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt
in the Periphery, p. 157.
93. Letter from James D. Gordon, Jt Magistrate, Jalpaiguri, to the Secretary to
the Government of Bengal on 24 August; Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings,
no. 382, 24 September 1857, in Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery,
p. 115.
94. Letter from T. Gouldbury, the Commissioner of Circuit, Rajshahi, to
the Secretary, Government of Bengal, on 14 November, 1857; Judicial
(Judicial), Proceedings, no. 93, 26 November 1857, in Simonti Sen, ed.,
Revolt in the Periphery, p. 121.
95. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 152, no. 1167, 17 December 1857, in
Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 127.
96. Bengal Judicial Proceedings, no. 195, 17 December 1857; quoted by
Sharmishtha De, ‘Eastern Bengal and North-East India’, p. 98.
97. Sashi Bhusan Choudhury, Sipahi Bidroha O Ganabiplaber Sangkshipta
Itihas, 1857–59, Kolkata: Progressive, 1996, p. 137.
98. Special Narrative, 2 January 1858, para. 17, in Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in
the Periphery, p. 173; and Choudhury, Sipahi Bidroha, p. 137.
352 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
99. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, pp. 129–32; and
Malleson, History of the Indian Mutiny, vol. II, pp. 426–34.
100. Bengal Judicial Proceedings, no. 417, 10 August 1857; quoted by
Sharmishtha De, ‘Eastern Bengal and North-East India’, p. 98, fn. xvi.
101. Bengal Judicial Proceedings, no. 488, 10 August 1857; quoted by
Sharmishtha De, ‘Eastern Bengal and North-East India’, p. 97, fn. xviii.
102. Letter of the Commissioner of Circuit to the Secretary, Government of
Bengal, 13 August—it refers to ‘news of the Meerut mutiny and public
uneasiness on that account’. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, 13 August
1857, File no. 239, doc. no. 121, WBSA.
103. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, 17 September 1857, File no. 255/58,
no. 231, WBSA.
104. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, 10 September 1857, File no. 124/5,
no. 721, WBSA.
105. A. Campbell to Superintendent of Darjeeling to A.R. Young, letter
no. 387, 2 July 1857, Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 705, September
1857, WBSA. I thank Ananda Bhattacharya for this reference.
106. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, 10 August 1857, File no. 548/9, no. 603,
WBSA.
107. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, vol. I, p. 134.
108. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 429, 17 September 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 46.
109. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 643, 10 August 1857, in Simonti Sen,
ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p 53.
110. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 775, 10 August 1857, in Simonti Sen,
ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 34.
111. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 1035, 10 September 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 42.
112. Special Narrative, 22 June 1858, in Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery,
p. 59.
113. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, nos. 67 and 68, 1 October 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, pp. 51–2; Sashi Bhusan Choudhury, Sipahi
Bidroha, p. 137.
114. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, 17 September 1857, File no. 421, no. 444,
WBSA.
115. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, 26 June 1857, File no. 534/35, no. 92,
WBSA.
116. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, 18 June 1857, File no. 749/56, no. 316 and
file no. 751/7, no. 317, WBSA; Sashi Bhusan Choudhury, Sipahi Bidroha,
p. 137; and H.P. Chatterjee, The Sepoy Mutiny, 1857: A Social History and
Analysis, Calcutta: Bookland, 1957, p. 215, Appendix B.
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 353
117. Special Narrative, 31 August 1857; Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings,
no. 984/985, 10 September 1857, WBSA.
118. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 1138, 10 September 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 25.
119. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, 10 September 1857, File no. 299/300,
no. 486, WBSA.
120. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 508, 17 September 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 57; Sashi Bhusan Choudhury, Sipahi
Bidroha, p. 137.
121. Bidisha Chakraborty, ‘South and South-West Bengal in 1857: Panic
and Apprehension’, in Revolt in the Periphery: Bengal and North-East in
1857–58, ed. Simonti Sen, Kolkata: Directorate of State Archives, 2013,
pp. 3–14.
122. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 323, 1 October 1857, in Simonti Sen,
ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 23.
123. Judicial (Judicial) Proceeding B, no. 158, 29 October 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, pp. 27–9.
124. Special Narrative, 16 June 1858, para. 20, in Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in
the Periphery, p. 59.
125. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 15, 17 September 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 26.
126. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 744, 10 August 1857, in Simonti Sen,
ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 33.
127. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 986, 10 September 1857; letter no. 306
of 7 August 1857, in Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 40.
128. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 173, 10 September 1857; letter no. 356
of 8 August 1857, in Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 53.
129. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 174, 10 September 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, pp. 44–5.
130. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 159, 5 November 1857; letter from
Officiating Commissioner of Burdwan, no. 388 of 23 October 1857, in
Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 24.
131. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 429, 17 September 1857, in Simonti
Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 46; also Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings,
no. 1020, 10 September 1857, in Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery,
p. 41.
132. Judicial (Judicial) Proceedings, no. 1029, 10 September 1857; letter no.
119 of 1 July 1857, in Simonti Sen, ed., Revolt in the Periphery, p. 55.
133. H.P. Chatterjee, ‘Mutiny in Bihar’, Bengal Past and Present, vol. 75, 1956,
pp. 42–59.
134. Ibid.; and H.P. Chatterjee, ‘Ali Kureem: A Scholar-Soldier of Bihar during
354 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
the Movement of 1857–59’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress
(hereafter referred to as IHC Proceedings), vol. 20, 1957, p. 320.
135. Dodd, History of the Indian Revolt, p. 151.
136. Ibid., p. 151.
137. K.K. Datta, ed., Unrest against British Rule in Bihar, 1831–59, Patna: State
Central Records Office, 1957.
138. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant Governors, vol. I, p. 98.
139. Sunil Kumar Sen, Tribal Struggle for Freedom, Singhbhum, 1820–1858,
1958; repr., New Delhi: Concept, 2008, p. 85.
140. K.N. Dutt, ‘The 1857 Uprising in Assam’, IHC Proceedings, vol. 20, 1957,
pp. 318–9.
141. H.K. Barpujari, ‘The Echoes of the Mutiny in Upper Assam (1857)’, IHC
Proceedings, vol. 20, 1957, pp. 275–80; he had used the judicial proceedings
at the West Bengal State Archives and used the statements of the witnesses
during the trial. Also see, Sujit Chowdhury, The Mutiny Period in Cachar,
Silchar: Tagore Society, 1981.
142. The letter of the Agent to the Governor-General, NE Frontier, to A.R.
Young, Secretary to the Government of Bengal, 15 September 1857;
Proceedings, vol. 352, pt. I, 8 October 1857, File no. 287, WBSA.
143. Quoted in N. Mukherjee, A Bengal Zamindar: Jaykrishna Mukherjee of
Uttarpara and his Times, 1808–1888, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1975, pp. 35–6.
144. Smriti Kumar Sarkar, ‘Land Acquisition for the Railways in Bengal,
1850–62: Probing a Contemporary Problem’, Studies in History, vol. 26,
no. 2, August, 2010, pp. 103–42.
145. Speech at the distribution of diplomas to the students of Medical
College, Calcutta, on 19 April, 1859; cited by Benoy Ghose, ‘The Bengali
Intelligentsia and the Revolt’, in 1857: A Symposium, ed. P.C. Joshi, New
Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1957, p. 118.
146. Ibid., p. 117.
147. Gopal Haldar, ‘Bengali Literature Before and After 1857’, in 1857:
A Symposium, ed. P.C. Joshi, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1957,
pp. 259–60.
148. Swarupa Gupta, ‘1857 and the Bengali Imagination: The Role of Literature
in Shaping Discourses on Nationhood’, in The Uprising of 1857: Before
and Beyond, ed., Kaushik Roy, New Delhi: Manohar, 2010, p. 163.
149. Ibid., p. 178.
150. Chakraborty, ‘Through a Glass Darkly’, pp. 161–82.
151. Anuradha Roy, ‘The Shifting Attitude of the Bengali Intelligentsia to the
Revolt of 1857’ (unpublished paper), cited in Gautam Basu, ‘Mahabidroha
O Bangla Oitihasik Upanyas’, in Gautam Basu and Ananda Bhattacharya,
1857: Bidrohe O Sahitye, Kolkata: Anandam Prakashani, 2009, p. 46. Also
see, Shankar Prasad Chakraborty, Bangasahitye Mahabidroha, Kolkata:
Karuna Prakashani, 2008.
 Chakraborty: The Revolt of 1857 in Bengal 355
152. Swapan Basu and Indrajit Chaudhury, 1857-r Bidroha, pp. 50–1, 57–8.
153. Benoy Ghose, ed., Samayikpatre Banglar Samajchitra, vol. III, Kolkata:
Bengal Publishers, 1964, pp. 55, 388–9, 391.
154. Ibid., pp. 226–43.
155. Chakraborty, ‘Introduction’, p. viii.
156. Chakraborty, ‘Through a Glass Darkly’, p. 179.
 11
‘Hindu Law’
Invention of a Tradition
and Legal Modernity in India

Nandini Bhattacharyya-Panda

T
he essay posits a critical review of two fundamental issues
closely linked with the juridical tradition (pertaining to the
Hindus) in India—the genealogy of ‘Hindu law’ and notion
of legal modernity in colonial and postcolonial India. As for the
genealogy of Hindu law, this chapter argues that ‘Hindu law’—an
established category in the socio-legal terminology in colonial and
postcolonial India—was an early colonial invention. Integrally linked
with colonial Hindu law is the notion of legal modernity. The British
rulers claimed, and it is also conventionally perceived, that the
concept of legal ‘modernity’ had been introduced by them in India,
dwelling on the rhetoric of ‘equity’ and ‘rule of law’ via ‘Hindu law’.
The chapter interrogates this received notion, and presents a critical
analysis of the nature of the basis of legal modernity in colonial
‘Hindu law’, with reference to gender approach and women’s economic
rights—the rights to property.
The term ‘invention’ refers to a historical debate (dated, yet
still relevant) on the representation of indigenous knowledge in
the colonial discourses as an instrument for subordinating the
subjects. The debate was initiated in Edward Said’s Orientalism,1
and subsequently joined by Ronald Inden,2 Terence Ranger, and
a host of other scholars, especially in the context of Africa.3 Eric
Hobsbawm and Ranger, however, developed ‘invention of tradition’
as a paradigm with reference to colonial and non-colonial contexts.4
 Bhattacharyya-Panda: ‘Hindu Law’ 357

‘Invented traditions’, Hobsbawm noted, include both traditions

which are invented, constructed, and formally instituted, and also
those which emerge in a less traceable manner within a brief datable
period, establishing themselves with great rapidity.5 As for the first
category, these traditions are consciously devised or constructed to
accommodate the interests or imperatives of a given community or
group. The term ‘invention’ will be used in this chapter while referring
to the first category—‘actually invented, constructed and formally
instituted’ tradition, insofar as construction and formalization of
Hindu law is concerned.
It is believed that since the beginning of British rule in India, the
colonial rulers in the late eighteenth century Bengal/India endowed
the Hindu subjects their own law, as recorded in their shastras
(written in Sanskrit). It will be discussed in this chapter that ‘Hindu
law’, as codified and defined by the eighteenth century Englishmen
in Bengal/India, did not exist in precolonial India. Hindu law was
constructed and codified on the basis of the appropriation of selective
branches from the prescriptive, normative, and moralistic tradition of
the Dharmashastras, especially the smrtis. The body of law had been
produced—known to be Anglo-Hindu Jurisprudence—as an integral
component of the colonial governance in the Indian subcontinent,
especially in the spheres of revenue and judicial administration.6
It is also conventionally perceived that the concept of legal
‘modernity’ had been introduced by the British ruler, dwelling on the
rhetoric of ‘equity’ and ‘rule of law’, who portrayed those concepts as
coeval with the idea of progress. The validity of this received notion
would be interrogated here by examining colonial administrative
discourses and legal texts. In other words, the chapter analyses the
inexorable link between colonial ‘Hindu law’ (in the case of Hindu
women) and gender-justice issues in postcolonial India insofar as
the issues of legal modernity is concerned.
The chapter is divided in two sections. The first section analyses the
construction of ‘Hindu law’, dwelling upon the colonial codifications
by manoeuvring selected branches of the Dharmashastras and their
English renderings. This section is essentially based on my earlier
work Appropriation and Invention of Tradition.7 The second section,
however, extends the argument further, insofar as ‘Hindu Law’ vis-
à-vis legal modernity is concerned.
358 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The Passage to Hindu Law

As is well known, the English East India Company came to Bengal
first as a trader during late seventeenth/early eighteenth century and
gradually developed a vested interest in the land revenue. The victory
of the Company in the Battle of Plassey in the year 1757, by defeating
the existing ruler—the Nawab of Murshidabad—was a landmark
in the history of British imperialism in India. As a result of this
victory, among other significant aspects, the Company acquired the
command over a greater share in the land revenue of Bengal. In 1765,
the Company further acquired diwani (the responsibility of revenue
administration) through another military victory. Consequently, the
Company established a dual government. The Company became
the supreme authority in matters relating to revenue, while the civil
and criminal administration remained in the hands of the Nawabs.
This was followed by chaos and anarchy, and finally the Company
took over the direct administration of Bengal in 1772. Land revenue
remained the prime focus, as the accrual was invested in further
conquests of territories to build the Indian Empire and also in the
Far Eastern trade of the Company.
Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of Bengal assumed
the charge of overall administration in Bengal, which extended his
responsibility beyond revenue administration. Judicial administration
constituted an essential component of colonial governance.
The early colonial rulers made very little pretence to retain the
traditional criminal law for the native subjects. But primarily, being
apprehensive of popular resentment against the newly established
British government, these officials proclaimed that they would
administer traditional law relating to civil and personal matters to the
native subjects. In order to simplify their task, a binary was created
in the administrative terminology—Hindu law and Muslim law. It
is evident from contemporary documents that in the initial phase
of their rule in Bengal, the British were more concerned with the
construction of Hindu law for two reasons—the Hindus constituted
the majority among the native subjects, and also, in the early
days of the British Empire, the Muslim community was hostile
against the new conquerors for overthrowing the Muslim rulers
in Bengal.
 Bhattacharyya-Panda: ‘Hindu Law’ 359

As has been already mentioned, Hindu law was constructed on

the basis of selective appropriation of the millennium-old tradition
of the Dharmasastra literature, especially the smrti, and to some
extent, Nyaya-Mimamsa (the tradition of logic and interpretation)
as the methodological tool. It is very intriguing how the shastras
were perceived of and projected as ‘the’ law of the Hindus. It may be
explained in terms of the orientalists’ veneration for the sacerdotal
texts. Writers of the early colonial period, such as J.Z. Holwell,
William Bolts, Harry Verelst, and few others projected the shastric
tradition as the law of the Hindu community even before 1772. The
contemporary documents do not indicate whether it was a deliberate
misrepresentation or a genuine misunderstanding of the tradition,
but it is quite clear from the official records that the early rulers did
not seriously engage themselves in understanding or collecting the
customary law of the region. Therefore, officials such as Hastings,
John Shore, and Lord Cornwallis, as well as the juridical ideologues
of the early British Empire, such as William Jones, Colebrooke, and
others, took initiative to produce two colonial codes on Hindu law.
The early orientalists had legendary veneration for the sacerdotal
texts, in this instance, the shastras for the Hindu community. They
searched ‘Hindu law’ in this millennium-old, vast corpus of literature.
It is rather interesting that the Hindu law codes are deemed to be
the first ever code(s) produced by the Europeans. The Napoleonic
Code was produced in 1804 in France, and the Germanic Code came
even later.
Hastings had the dual task of ensuring the maximum amount
of land revenue as well as setting up a structure that would facilitate
the prime objective of establishing supreme hegemony over the
native subjects. It had to be ensured without hurting the prejudice
and sentiment of the people. He appointed a team of eleven pundits
to compile a code in Sanskrit, the Vivadarnavasetu (A Bridge on the
Ocean of Disputes), to attribute ‘authenticity’ to the enterprise. It dealt
with an assortment of topics related to the colonial administration,
mainly property, inheritance, succession, adoption, women’s right to
property, debt, bondage, forgery, and other issues. N.B. Halhed, an
orientalist administrator, rendered this text from a Persian abstract
under the title A Code of Gentoo Laws,8 first published in 1776. The
text was introduced as a ‘standard legal handbook’ for the colonial
360 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

jurists and lawyers. A significant transformation of the connotations

of the Sanskrit compilation in the English translation must be noted
in this context. The English text formalized the legal dimension of
the text.
However, within twenty years of this, another code was conceived
and implemented by Jones—the erudite orientalist and one of the
earliest Supreme Court judges in Calcutta—who learnt Sanskrit
and other classical Indian languages and founded the Asiatic
Society in 1784. He appointed Jagannath Tarkapanchanan, the
legendary scholar on all branches of the Dharmashastras, to compile
Vivadabhangarnava (A Breaking Wave in the Ocean of Disputes).
Jones started translating the text, but could not finish it due to
his untimely death. Colebrooke, another outstanding orientalist
scholar, translated the text under the title A Digest of Hindoo Law
and published it in 1801.9 The formalization of the legal dimension
as evident in the discrepancy between the meanings of the Sanskrit
compilation and its English translation, had also been accomplished
in the second code. Meanwhile, Jones translated Manusmrti under the
title Institutes of Hindu Law, Or, Ordination of Menu, first published
in 1794.10 Manusmrti literally means ‘memories or heard perceptions’
from Manu. But the title used by Jones metamorphosed the text into
a ‘law book’. Thus, the early rulers of the Company introduced the
concepts of ‘ordinance’, ‘code’, ‘digest’, and ‘law’, which were completely
foreign to the shastric indigenous tradition, though culturally
contextual to England and Europe. Nevertheless, such texts marked
the beginning, evolution, and also the development of Anglo-Hindu
Jurisprudence, or, in other words, the invention of Hindu law in
India. This Hindu law encompassed a vast section of the population,
including the tribal communities in various parts of India, who earlier
adhered to their own customary practices. The postcolonial Hindu
law is primarily an extension and, to some extent, modified version
of the Anglo-Hindu Jurisprudence constructed and created during
the colonial era.
The intricate links relating to rules for property, inheritance,
succession, adoption, and women’s right to property, with the matters
relating to revenue, is quite obvious. During the late eighteenth
century, Bengal witnessed a series of land revenue settlements and
a frantic search for a social group with permanent and hereditary
 Bhattacharyya-Panda: ‘Hindu Law’ 361

interest in soil, till the introduction of Permanent Settlement in

1793. The primary objective was to conclude the land revenue
settlement with the social group who, by virtue of their ownership
rights over soil, used to exercise sufficient command and control
over the cultivators. The emphasis on the ‘alienable’ quality of land
was also a matter of great concern for the colonial rulers, which was
inexorably linked with the nature of rights to be enjoyed by the new
social group. This concern was conspicuously reflected in the colonial
codes, especially the second one.
An analysis of the tradition of the Dharmashastras would
clearly explain the term ‘invention’. It is a vast corpus of literature
in the Sanskrit language—‘a strange, crisp, terse lingua franca of the
scholars which made no concessions to the beginners’—as described
by J.D.M. Derrett.11 The contents of the Dharmashastras can hardly
be described by any single category—law, religion, philosophy, or
intellectual discourse. ‘Dharmasastra’ means the ‘teaching or science
of righteousness’. The word literally means to hold, support, maintain,
or sustain. The rules expounded in the literature provided prescriptive,
normative, and moralistic guidelines for right/good conduct for the
twice-born and marginally for the Shudras. The prescriptions were
designed to regulate the entire lifecycle of a Hindu individual, male
or female. Every individual was encouraged to perform the righteous
duties appropriate to his/her sex (stripuruso dharma), status (varna)
or the caste (sreni), and stages of life (asrama). In the end, the entire
literature envisaged not only worldly happiness and a harmonious
social order, but also hopes of a blissful existence in heaven.
The origin and development of the Dharmashastras are shrouded
in uncertainty and myth. There is no definite historical explanation
as yet of the actual origin of the texts. The ultimate source, however,
is known to be the Vedas. The word ‘Veda’ did not strictly refer to
the Vedic texts, but to the totality of knowledge, the sum total of
understanding of all religious and moral truths, whether revealed
or not. Smrtis are held to be the indirect perceptions founded on
memory (a literal translation of the word smrti), on the basis of which
dharma grew into a discipline or science—Dharmasastra. A definite
date for their beginning has also not been identified. It is generally
believed that the original smrtis—Manusmrti, Yajnavalkyasmrti,
Naradasmrti, and many others, were written approximately between
362 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

500–400 bc and ad 800. Manu is popularly believed as the first among

the compilers. The text enjoyed paramount status among the early
British rulers as representing the most ‘authentic’ and ‘ancient’ laws
of the Hindus.
The process of evolution, to which this millennium-old
tradition responded so well, demonstrates that it was not a static
tradition. It may be observed that the durability and dynamicity of
this tradition gathered through the emerging traditions of tikas or
commentaries, and nibandhas or treatises, eighth or ninth century
onwards. Tika was the commentary by the authors on the original
smrtis. But the illustrations and interpretations of each author varied,
covering specific issues relevant to a certain region. For example,
Medhatithi’s Manubhasya and Kullukabhatta’s Manavarthamuktavali
did not offer same interpretation on specific issues/verses. About the
Nibandhas—dwelling upon certain texts, the authors used to make
a choice by offering a critique of others and writing a discourse. The
basic principle was to extract the rules of dharma from the vast
mass of authoritative texts and put forward an author’s independent
views.
Around the tenth or eleventh century onwards, the tradition was
bifurcated into two broad intellectual schools of thought—Mitaksara
and Dayabhaga. The original propounder was Vijnanevana, the ninth
commentator from Mithila or Benaras. Further ramifications within
this tradition emerged along geographical boundaries—Maharastra
or western India, and the Deccan and southern India—in addition to
the Benaras or Mithila tradition. In this context, mention must also
be made of Jimutavahana, the tenth/eleventh century commentator
from Bengal, who produced his discourse on Dayabhaga that marked
a cleavage from the earlier discourses on social and moral codes of
conduct.
Mitaksara and Dayabhaga differed on certain fundamental
issues. For example, regarding the appropriate time for generation
of ownership in ancestral property, the Mitaksara tradition held
that ownership is generated immediately after birth—Janamasvatva
vada, whereas Dayabhaga propounded that the right of ownership
devolved only after the death of both parents—Uparamsvatva vada.
Among other differences, a very significant difference occurred over
a widow’s rights to property. The Dayabhaga tradition held that even
 Bhattacharyya-Panda: ‘Hindu Law’ 363

in an undivided family, the widow could succeed to her husband’s

share, whereas widows were not entitled to this right in the same
situation according to the Mitaksara tradition. Again, Dayabhaga
prescribed an equal share of the unmarried daughter(s) with son(s)
over ancestral property after the father’s death. Mitaksara had no
such provision for unmarried daughters. Besides these, there were
other fundamental differences as well.
The proliferation of nibandhas and tikas indicate a buoyant
environment for the tradition to be flourished over centuries and
millennia. In fact, unabated growth of such discourses till the
beginning of colonial rule strongly suggests that Islamic power
in India accepted or accommodated the parallel existence of the
shastric tradition. The pre-eminence and dominant influence of the
brahmins, as reflected in the writings of early British ideologues and
officials, also indicate that even the Mughal rulers did not attempt
to integrate this tradition within the state hierarchy of command
and control, and instead, respected the autonomous domain of the
shastras. Colonial interest in this tradition was also reflected in their
translation enterprise of selective texts which they deemed important
and necessary. However, there was a virtual decline of this tradition
during the colonial period despite the patronage of Sanskritic
learning, and Indian participation in the enterprise of writing tika
and nibandha became either insignificant or extinct immediately
after the consolidation of British rule.
Three plausible explanations may be given for the unusual and
uninterrupted survival of the shastric tradition over millennia. First,
this tradition survived, evolved, and flourished through discussion,
debates, and interpretation, and such periodic interpretations were
necessitated by social changes. Second, the expounders enjoyed
considerable autonomy to pursue their intellectual exercises. Third, no
evidence suggestions that state could exercise dominating influence
either to reinterpret or to incorporate the ruling ideology within the
discourses. Rather, various nibandhas were produced to highlight the
essential features of dharma—concerning community, social, moral,
religious, familial, conjugal, and legal behaviour of the people. The
issues ranged from Dayabhaga (division of property), Vyavahara
(principles of jurisprudence), Prayaschitta (penance), Suddhi
(purification), Vivaha (marriage), and various others. The internal
364 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

dynamics of the tradition was reflected in the regional variation in

Dayabhaga and Mitaksara.
Extant precolonial evidences suggest that the shastras evolved as
a tradition of intellectual and philosophical knowledge, rather than
one integral to administration. Perhaps, for that reason, the pundits
were not merely concentrated around centres of administration, but
in different localities, including remote villages. There were eminent
centres of learning such as Navadvip, Kalna, Bhatpara, Kumarhatta,
and Bansberia. Navadvip produced innumerable scholars, and their
reputation reached far beyond geographical boundaries of Bengal.
Sri Chaitanya, Gadadhara, Basudev Sarbabhauma, and Raghunath
Siromoni were some of the luminaries from Navadvip.
The community of scholars ran academic institutions known
as tols and chatuspathis. Adams’s Third Report, Dines Chandra
Bhattacharya’s seminal work Vange Navya Nyaya Charcha, and
Panchanan Mondal’s Chithipatre Samajchitra provide a long list
of such institutions. There are prolific accounts on the relation
between teachers and students, which was not confined to academic
instructions only. The students were a part of their Gurus’ households.
They received titles from the preceptor, depending on their merit,
quality and originality, such as Sastri, Nyayalankar, Kavyalankar, and
Vyakarantirtha. The students opened their own academic institutions
after successfully obtaining their degree.
Extant evidences do not indicate at all that such institutions
were controlled or managed by the state. However, the tradition of
knowledge received both appreciation and, at times, material support
from local and regional authorities—zamindars and rajas. In some
instances, rent-free lands were granted to such academia, and the
authorities organized tarkasabhas, or debates and discussions, in the
court. Pundits from different parts of Bengal, Benaras, Mithila, and
other regions participated in such debates. The rajas of Burdwan and
Nadia were famous for their enthusiastic support and encouragement
towards such intellectual activities.
The legal elements, if any, of the shastras were reflected in the
treatises on Vyavahara, but these accounted for only a fraction of
smrti literature. Derrett translated the term as ‘litigation’, whereas
Halhed discussed this section under the title ‘justice’. A significantly
noticeable feature of the discourses on Vyavahara is the absence of
 Bhattacharyya-Panda: ‘Hindu Law’ 365

any Sanskrit term synonymous to the English term ‘law’. Derrett

defined the Western notion of law as follows:
Law is the body of rules (namely positive and negative injunctions,
commands and prohibitions), which can be enforced by judicial actions. A
rule which will not be observed, directly or indirectly, in a court or before a
tribunal is not law. What ought (in some people’s opinion) to be law, is not
law. Ethical injunctions are not law. That which is left to choice is not law.12

Much of what is described as ‘not law’ by Derrett is, in fact, the

central concern of smrti literature. In other words, the rules expounded
in the Dharmashastras lacked the quality of instrumentality or the
coercive element that should be the most essential component of
law. There is no evidence to suggest that the rules expounded in the
shastras were directly administered through the precolonial courts.
Moreover, the shastras defined ‘wrong’ actions as ‘sins’ rather than
crimes, and at best, they could impose strictures and penances as
symbols of repentance. The penances were, however, not equal to
punishment or conviction.
Raghunandana, a fifteenth/sixteenth century commentator and
the encyclopaedic author of twenty-eight treatises clearly stated that
Lokavyavahara, or popular customs, conventions, or the existing
social practices enjoyed a superior edge over the shastric norms.
If there was any dispute of a larger dimension, which could not
be solved locally, the parties reported to the king. The king would,
in turn, appoint an expert, a pradviveka (usually a brahmin, but
occasionally a kshatriya with exceptional ability), proficient in both
shastric norms and customary practices, who helped him in resolving
the dispute. The pradviveka questioned both parties, and after careful
consideration, was expected to offer his opinion. Finally, the king
would pronounce the final verdict as the supreme authority, though
he was expected to ratify the pradviveka’s opinion under usual
circumstances.13
Indeed, the pundits played the role of advisors or arbitrators
as emphasized in the discourses on Rajadharma (duties of a king),
included in the shastric literature. The pundit’s role as an arbitrator
was also recorded in Panchanan Mondal’s collection of letters—
collected from the rural areas of Bengal—covering the period between
1684 and 1883. Mondal had shown that the pundits were consulted
366 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

on matters relating to property, inheritance, conjugal disputes,

adultery, choosing an auspicious day for marriage or journey, or
other auspicious events, and even condemning a person as an
outcast, etc. On being consulted, the pundits would offer vyavathas
(settlement or arrangement). The written vyavathas were called bhas
or pati in Bengal. In this context, Mohammad Reza Khan, the Naib-
Nazim (revenue administrator) of Bengal, during the diwani era
1765–1772, made the following statement in response to the queries
of the British officials on precolonial forms of justice: ‘If the Hindus
would decide amongst themselves by their Brahmins, their disputes
regarding inheritance and partition of estates etc., why should they
come to the court of Magistrate complain? But when their disputes
cannot be settled by their Brahmins and the heads of their estate,
they complain to the Magistrate from whose opinion they cannot
deviate.’14 Reza Khan’s statement clearly demonstrated that neither
shastric prescriptions nor the opinions of the pundits were treated as
letters of law. Punitive justice was dispensed only by the magistrate
or the kazis.
Thus, for the Hindus, every aspect of their life was governed by
dharma. Therefore, it was wrong on the part of the colonial rulers
to assume that certain prescriptions enshrined in selective literary
discourses could be circumscribed by either religion or law and by
no means religious law. Therefore, there was a gross deviation from
tradition in the early colonial attempts to restrict and reduce dharma
to a short list of topics—codified and translated under the category
of law and made essential instruments of colonial governance.
It is difficult to ascertain whether it was genuine misperception
or deliberate misrepresentation, but Derrett offered an interesting
explanation for the metamorphosis. He argued that the young and
inexperienced officials mistook the shastras for a system akin to
‘canon law’. He emphasized that it was an ‘error on the part of the 18th
century foreign students of law sastric texts then available to them to
expect to find a complete code of law, readymade on European lines’.
He justified the mistake on the ground that the early officials and had
‘no inward knowledge of the civilization they undertook to protect,
and thus could not have applied the precepts even if recognized
them as such [sic]’. He explained that this misperception marked
the beginning of an evolutionary passage from the Dharmasastra to
Hindu law, and he believed that without such a misunderstanding,
 Bhattacharyya-Panda: ‘Hindu Law’ 367

India would have never got a uniform Hindu law, which was
eventually achieved only after 200 years of British rule.
It is quite significant that Jones considered Manu as ‘the
most ancient legislator of India’, though he assessed the text with
a condescending tone. He characterized the text as a ‘system of
despotism and priest craft’, but ‘both indeed limited by law’. Yet, he
observed: ‘It is filled with strange conceits in metaphysics and natural
philosophy, with idle superstitions, and with scheme of theology
most obscurely figurative, and consequently liable to dangerous
misconceptions; it abounds with minute and childish formalities, with
ceremonies generally absurd and often ridiculous, the punishments
are partial and fanciful.’15 It is evident from Jones’s observation that
he considered this text as anything but ‘law’; still he projected it as
law, which, in his view, was ‘actually revered, as the word of Most
High’ by the Hindus. Then he spelt out the importance of the Hindus
to the nascent colonial empire:
Nations of great importance to the political and commercial interests of
Europe, particularly by many million Hindu subjects, whose well directed
industry would add to the wealth of Britain, and who would ask for no
more in return than protection of their persons and places of abode, justice
in temporal concerns, and the benefits of these laws, believe sacred, and
which they can possibly comprehend.16

The imperial designs behind the codification of Hindu law

are coherently expressed in the above discourse of behalf of the
native subjects. The imperial motivation can possibly explain the
hiatus between misunderstanding or deliberate misrepresentation
of selective branches of the shastras as Hindu law and the blissful
ignorance of the Hindu subject about the metamorphosis of their
tradition as an instrument of command or control, as well as an
agency to implement colonial policies.
Codification almost always involves reduction of laws customarily
observed by a particular set of people to a more or less permanent,
organized and written form through a comprehensive piece of
legislation. It has been emphasized that an act of codification is
always somewhat a revolutionary step in the sense that it represents
a certain intellectual break with the past. It may be observed that
all governments have used the opportunity of codification to make
innovation and changes in old laws, using them as a channel to
368 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

perpetuate their authority. However, the colonial codes on Hindu law

were not simply an organized, written, and perhaps reformed version
of an existing set of laws. Instead, they transformed the prescriptive,
normative and moralistic codes of conduct embodied in the shastras
into legal rules to be directly administered by the court.
The ‘legitimacy’ of Hindu law had been questioned on various
grounds, even within a century of British rule in India. For example,
vehement criticisms were pronounced by some of the lawyers and
judges in the Madras Presidency—notably A.C. Burnell17 and J.H.
Nelson.18 Both Burnell and Nelson launched a campaign against the
use of the Dharmashastras or ‘Brahminical code’, as the laws for the
‘vulgarly called’ Hindu population. In their view, a large number
of such ‘Hindus’ were basically non-Muslims or non-Christians
belonging to different religious creeds, for example, Jains, Buddhists,
and the tribal communities; the followers of animistic creeds were
also included within this category of ‘Hindus’.19
Burnell emphatically argued that prior to the British rule, the
Hindu kings did not promulgate any law as expounded in the shastras.
Therefore, the rules codified and administered by the British could not
be called law per se. Further, the colonial projection of the ‘doctrine
of law’ (Dayabhaga and Mitaksara) in India was severely criticized
by Burnell on the ground that Dharmasastra was essentially literary
tradition and the notion of ‘schools of law’ was foreign to the entire
tradition, as the traditional texts did not represent any historical fact.
He further observed that the shastric rules had limited relevance
only to the brahmins, as a guiding principle to regulate their code of
conduct. The people belonging to different communities in various
geographical regions were guided by varied customary practices.20
Nelson too held similar views. He was not prepared to accept
the shastras as ‘Hindu law’. He preferred to define the shastric rules
as ‘tribal customs’ in the shape of Dharmashastras and smrtis and
compared them to the ‘fueros’ of Spain. He argued that the colonial
digests were ‘mere attempts to construct a scientific corpus juris
out of wide and inharmonious materials’. Stretching his arguments
further, Nelson emphasized that the early orientalists committed a
serious error in constructing Hindu law on a selective appropriation
of shastras. He stated that ‘an artificial law’ resulted from it, a ‘veritable
monster’ engendered by ‘Sanskritists without law and lawyers without
Sanskrit’. He observed that even after hundred years of British rule in
 Bhattacharyya-Panda: ‘Hindu Law’ 369

India, ‘Hindu law still remains for the most part a trackless dessert’.21
The postcolonial criticism of Hindu law, however, primarily
emphasizes on the brahminical bias of legal system for the Hindus.
One may cite, for example, the studies of Flavia Agnes, Janaki Nair,
and other authors in this context. Moreover, if one looks into various
judgments on a particular issue, for example women’s rights to
property and inheritance in different parts of India, the scenario of
a ‘trackless dessert’ comes into the surface.

‘Hindu Law’ vis-à-vis Legal Modernity

in India
This section analyses how colonial Hindu law entrenched duality in
the legal consciousness in colonial and postcolonial India—a duality
which created the binary of modernity versus tradition, especially
with regard to Indian women. In postcolonial India, this duality
has a double edge—the patriarchal fraternity in contemporary
India attempts to overpower the voices of women in the name of
tradition and the evils of ‘modernity’ (by modernity, they usually
imply independent status and voice—occasionally empowered
by professional jobs); and the culture of silence that still prevails
among the majority of Indian women. Gender issues in the Indian
subcontinent primarily dwell on this duality, and it is considered
as an important index of the uneven human development pattern.
Tracing back to the foundational phase of the British Indian Empire
in the late-eighteenth-century Bengal, this chapter will offer a brief
historical analysis about how this duality, which left a strong legacy
on the current approaches to gender-justice issues, was created.
Social theorists and feminist ideologues have put forward
numerous explanations behind the perpetuation of violation against
women’s entitlements and their inability to ensure justice. Mainly, it
is believed that the precolonial Indian tradition was founded on the
essence of gender injustice and that it has survived over centuries
almost in quintessential forms, in spite of the liberal intervention of
the colonial and postcolonial state. I argue that this representation
is rather simplistic and reductionist on the following grounds. First,
the precolonial tradition was not a monolith representing a single
set of ideology and attitude towards women; second, there was a
shift in the patriarchal agenda from pre-British to the British period;
370 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

and third, this notion overlooks a significant historical passage. I

foreground the argument, since the very beginning, the colonial
attitude involving ‘women’ and ‘tradition’ was more intricate and
problematic than it is popularly perceived. Both of these had diverse
functional roles in the process of establishing the British Empire in
India. First, tradition and women were projected as important indices
in the claim of cultural superiority of the rulers, and thereby, the
basic rationale behind subjection of the culturally ‘inferior’ people. At
another level, tradition had been deployed as a tool in programming
the patriarchal agenda. In the process, precolonial tradition, especially
the shastric tradition, was consecrated in relation to Indian women
and the duality was forged. For example, in the foundational project
like legal codifications, pre-colonial shastric ‘tradition’ was selectively
manoeuvred to marginalize the prevalent economic rights for
women. The ‘codes’ celebrated the introduction of ‘rule of law’—the
symbol of British liberalism in India. But since its inception and
functioning, the codes introduced a discriminatory legal framework.
That, to a large extent, contributes towards the postcolonial approach
towards gender issues. Indian women are still located between the
discursive formulations of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’, and the attitude
and ideology regarding dispensation of justice towards women in
contemporary India is essentially based on this binary. The following
sections will engage in analysing how ‘tradition’ had been moulded
and appropriated as an agent to formulate the patriarchal agenda,
specifically in view of gender entitlements.
In the following sections, I will focus on select texts and docu­
ments to explicate the argument. It will be based on the following
points: (a) colonial attitude towards women’s rights to property
as reflected in the revenue and judicial documents; (b) reading,
appropriation, and projection of select precolonial shastric texts by
the British rulers and the indigenous ideologues; and (c) the legal
codes and the tradition of sati.

Colonial Attitude towards Women’s Rights

to Property
As is well known, women in eighteenth-century England had no
subjectivity in terms of ownership of property or engagement in
 Bhattacharyya-Panda: ‘Hindu Law’ 371

professional jobs. The early British rulers framed and implemented

their policies towards women’s rights in Bengal in accordance with
this ideological stand. The contemporary colonial documents manifest
repeated attempts to redefine women’s rights and entitlements as well
as agency of Indian women. I should briefly mention that under the
Dayabhaga system in Bengal, women enjoyed residual but substantive
rights to property, especially the widows, unmarried daughters
and mothers as co-sharer of their deceased husbands’ property. In
addition, a separate category of property had been assigned to women,
called the stridhana, which literally meant women’s property. The
stridhana property devolved in the female line. (Stridhana is still the
prime source of women’s property in the postcolonial legal structure
according to the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 and its subsequent
amendments).
It is evident in the late eighteenth century revenue and judicial
documents that women could and did own moveable and immoveable
property, and had agency to exercise their rights over their
entitlements. Briefly, two representative examples are cited in this
chapter—encounter with a widow heir in the zamindari of Burdwan,
and judicial proceedings in the Supreme Court, Calcutta, regarding
the entitlement of a wife in the form of stridhana.
All of the big zamindaries in Bengal were run by female
zamindars at some points of time. The zamindari of Burdwan
was the largest estate in Bengal and yielded the highest amount of
revenue to the Company’s treasury. The colonial interaction with
the dowager rani of Burdwan may be cited as an example of the use
of hostility, intimidation, violence and also the denial of justice in
issues of women’s rights to property. While running the estate, the
rani refused to accept unwarranted interference of the British protégée
into the affairs of the estates. She dismissed that person and lodged a
complaint to the Company’s government regarding the same. Enraged
by her complaint (as her action was considered an act of defiance
against the Company’s authority), the officials imprisoned her despite
the fact that she had a minor son and coerced her to surrender the
seal (the symbol of her authority). The rani had to sign a penalty
bond for her release with an undertaking that she would never defy
the British authority in future.22 In another instance, a gentleman
called Mohanlal Buxy promised a substantial amount of moveable
372 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

and immoveable property to his first wife (Mohini Devi) in order to

seek her consent for a second marriage with an expectation of having
a son by the second wife. After marriage, Mohanlal refused to deliver
the possession of the property to his first wife, and consequently,
the lady filed a suit in the Supreme Court in 1791. There was a
prolonged hearing of the case at the court. The British advocates
initially refused to admit the case on the basis of the plea that in
contemporary England, women could not sue their close relatives like
husbands, brothers, fathers, etc. The pundits at the Supreme Court,
who had been appointed to expound the ‘Hindu law’, unanimously
declared that the case would be admissible according to the prevailing
traditions and customs of the country. They pronounced that this kind
of property should be called adhivedanikam—included within the
sub-categories of stridhana—and women would enjoy unrestricted
rights of sale, gift, and transfer over such property. However, the
British could not rely on the pundits from Bengal. They further sought
opinion from the pundits of Benaras to secure a more conservative
opinion regarding the extent of right to be enjoyed by women in such
circumstances. The judgment was finally declared on the basis of the
conservative opinion obtained from the Benaras pundits that the lady
would be entitled to enjoy the property in her lifetime without any
right to sale, gift, and transfer. After her death, it would revert to a
male successor. This implied that the British judges refused to give
cognizance to an important category of stridhana and diverted the
route of devolution from female to male line. A significant point must
be mentioned here. Justice Hyde, the first Supreme Court judge in
Calcutta during the 1790s, recorded all these cases in his manuscript
diary with a view to leave ‘precedent’ for his successors. Therefore,
the judgments pronounced during the initial years in the Supreme
Court (especially, relating to women) had immense significance in
view of the fact that those served as ‘precedents’ in the later period.23

Reading of Precolonial Texts

The early colonial/orientalists’ veneration for the precolonial shastric
tradition has been discussed in various works. The grand literary/
translation project that emerged in early colonial Bengal under
the aegis of scholar-administrators such as Jones and Colebrooke
 Bhattacharyya-Panda: ‘Hindu Law’ 373

to study Indian culture and civilization had twofold objectives:

(a) to break the monopoly of the knowledge of the pundits—the
traditional expounders of the shastras—and to ensure a command
over indigenous knowledge, and (b) to consolidate the territorial
administration by working out viable socio-cultural policies,
favourable to the nascent imperial foundation and acceptable to the
native colonial subjects.
The early rulers found Manusmrti to be the most reliable text
to understand the ancient culture, social values, authentic laws
among the Hindus, and above all, how women should behave in a
good society. Manusmrti is still popularly perceived as the epitome
of Indian patriarchy and the source of authentic Hindu law. I will
briefly explain how baneful this perception and projection of Indian
women was in the long run. An analysis of the text would reveal
that it is full of contradictions and vulgarities, especially in relation
to women. Women were placed in a binary of good and evil. A bad
woman is lustful with insatiable sexual desire, frivolous, arrogant,
jealous, and greedy with excessive fondness for jewellery, luxury, and
inclination towards men irrespective of their age. A good woman, in
turn, is obedient to her husband and elder members of the family,
and performs her household duties impeccably. As a good wife,
she should remain servile to her lord/master (husband) and ready
to comply with all his inflictions without protest. A good widow
should live on starvation diet (roots, some categories of vegetables,
without fish, meat and pulses), and carefully stay away from male
company. The text also contains repeated invocations that ‘women
should remain under the father while young, under the husband in
her youth and under son/s during old age because women can never
be independent’. At the same time, the text kept an alternative space
for women where they could inherit property as mothers, widows (in
the absence of son/grandson and great-grandson), and unmarried
daughters, along with their claim over stridhana. The text prescribed
a special category of female heir called putrika (son designate), whose
rights had been prescribed similar to a son. Simultaneously the text
also pronounced strictures for men against adultery with emphasis
on maintaining a gentle, kind, and respectful attitude towards women
in private and public spaces, though such verses are obliterated from
people’s memory.24
374 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

As has already been mentioned, Jones, the early juridical

ideologue of the British Empire, translated Manusmrti for the first
time in English in 1794. Jones translated the text under the title
Institutes of Hindu Law, Or, Ordination of Manu. This unauthorized
attribution of ‘law’ transformed the mnemonic tradition into a legal
discourse. Jones himself described this text as ‘partial and fanciful’,
as well as ‘absurd’ and ‘ridiculous’. It seems to be enigmatic why he
then perceived and projected this text as carrying ‘authentic’ laws
for the Hindus. His projection left an irreversibly negative impact on
the status and lives of Indian women over the ages. An analysis of
the original text and Jones’s Institute of Hindu Law would show that
Jones redefined women’s status, rights, and ownership of property
through the intervention of interpretative translation. After Jones’s
translation, there have been waves of translation of Manusmrti in
European, non-European, and Indian languages under the same
reductionist title of ‘law’ (take for example, Wendy Doniger’s The
Laws of Manu).25
Manusmrti was also used/appropriated as an infallible guide
to settle women’s property rights in the revenue governance. For
example, John Shore, the second Governor-General of Bengal after
Warren Hastings, in the 1780s, repeatedly questioned the agency
of native women to manage their property. He declared them as
incapable of ‘managing the important responsibility of settlement
and collection of revenue’, although his administration encountered
a large number of female proprietors both on revenue and judicial
levels. 26 He emphatically declared the ‘female proprietors’ as
‘disqualified landholders’ on the basis of the oft-quoted dictum from
Manusmrti. Shore asserted that ‘women by the laws of their religion
and custom are secluded from public society’, and thereby an easy
prey to the malevolent designs of the male relatives and proxy role
of the servants. Hence, the female proprietors should be replaced by
male owners to secure the Company’s land revenue.27 Philip Francis,
another important member of Warren Hasting’s council in the 1770s,
recommended that a Court of Wards should be established for the
estates of ‘minor’, ‘idiots’, ‘lunatics’, and ‘female’.28
In the nineteenth century, Manusmrti was made to play a versatile
role. We are aware that the century witnessed a series of ‘liberal’
legislations in favour of women, for example abolition of sati, widow
 Bhattacharyya-Panda: ‘Hindu Law’ 375

remarriage, introduction of women’s education, etc. The indigenous

reformers such as Rammohun Roy, Iswarchandra Vidyasagar et al.,
initiated reformist ventures for women by seeking state support. It is
rather interesting that the reformers attempted to improve the socio-
familial condition of women dwelling on the shastric texts. One may
cite the most glaring example in Rammohun Roy’s reformist rhetoric
for abolition of sati. He made prolific use of Manusmrti to invoke the
‘ideal widowhood’ in the Indian tradition, only because Manusmrti
did not mention sati. With all my veneration for Rammohun Roy on
account of his pledge to save the lives of the Bengali widows, I would
argue that an unprecedented austerity and strictures were imposed on
widows in Bengal, which virtually affected the Hindu belt in northern
India following the campaign and legislative ban of the practice in
1829. One may feel a strong residual impact of that even today. At
the same time, to the orthodox section within the Hindu society,
Manusmrti offered a powerful instrument to squeeze the space of
Indian women, a panacea to save ‘their’ women from the ‘evil’ impact
of the West, and create an abode in which Indian women can be
placed in the pristine glory as Hindu/Indian women—‘Bharatiya Nari’.
But why Manusmrti? The Dharmasatras (which literally means
science or teaching of righteousness) or shastric tradition constitute
a vast corpus of literature written in Sanskrit that evolved over
centuries and millennia, the source of which is known to be the Vedas.
Manusmrti is known to be oldest text within the mnemonic genre of
smrti literature and it was textualized between approximately 500 bc
and ad 500. It is still debated as to who Manu was, or whether Manu
represented an institution. Significantly enough, the later authors
attributed not human but divine origin to Manu in the text itself. From
eighth century ad onwards, the shastric tradition evolved through
new modes of literary discourses, such as tikas or commentaries (that
is illustrative comments on original smrtis) and nibandhas (which
means dwelling upon certain texts, the authors would make choice
by producing a critique of others to offer their own interpretations).
By the eleventh century, the tradition was bifurcated under two
broad systems of thought—Dayabhaga (prevailing in the then
geographical expression called Bengal) and Mitakshara (prevailing in
the rest of India)—with further regional ramifications (of the latter).
The interpretative discourses were periodically updated by several
376 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

authors with a view to accommodate customary practices on the

local/regional levels. On their arrival, the eighteenth century British
officials encountered a thriving literary tradition embodied in vast
written texts. It is an enigma why the early Company officials singled
out an ancient and a confusing/problematic text like Manusmrti as
‘the’ sacrosanct authority to project image, status, and entitlements
of Indian women.

The Colonial Codes and the Tradition

of Sati
The early British officials compiled two codes on Hindu law during
the latter half of the eighteenth century in Bengal. The codes marked
the beginning of Anglo-Hindu Jurisprudence. The postcolonial legal
system in India evolved within the framework of Anglo-Hindu
Jurisprudence, and these two codes were treated as the ‘source’ in
the colonial and postcolonial legal structures. The early codes were
first compiled in Sanskrit and then translated into English. The first
compilation in Sanskrit was Vivadarnavasetu (that literally means
a ‘bridge over the ocean of disputes’), translated in English from a
Persian rendering by N.B. Halhed, the noted orientalist in 1776, under
the title A Code of Gentoo Laws. Being defined as the ‘standard legal
handbook’ for the Hindus, the Gentoo Code had several editions
and translated in several European languages including French.
Jones initiated the compilation of the second code in Sanskrit
Vivadabhangarnava (literally means a ‘breaking wave in the ocean of
disputes’). But he could not translate text on account of his untimely
death. Colebrooke accomplished the job under the title A Digest of
Hindu Law in 1800. I would like to draw the attention to the changing
attributes both in the Sanskrit and English titles. The English titles
metamorphosed the essence of the issues from ‘dispute’ (vivada) to
‘law’. ‘Law’ has no synonym in Sanskrit as the eighteenth-century
Englishmen understood the term.
Briefly, the colonial legal codes, especially the English translations,
internalized the inhibitions and ideology of the British rulers against
property rights of women, and manifested a cautious strategy to
subvert women’s rights and promote their male heirs. For example, the
‘childless widow’ as a category of inheritor was substituted by various
 Bhattacharyya-Panda: ‘Hindu Law’ 377

categories of adopted sons in both codes. ‘Mother’ as co-sharer

with the son(s) in her deceased husband’s estates was underplayed
or trivialized in the texts (and also in the courtroom). The texts
attempted to strip off women’s unrestricted rights over stridhana as
well. One may cite multiple examples in this regard.
But the colonial legal codes contain much more than just civil and
personal rules for the Hindus. Deviating from all standards of legal
texts, the codes incorporated moral discourses about women. Those
included women’s status within the family, necessity for protecting
women, directions to the husbands about the ways of subjugating
women, portrayal of ‘evil’ and ‘good’ women, and most glaringly,
discussions on loyalty, chastity and faithfulness of the widows that
would be ultimately expressed in the act of self-immolation or sati.
The practice of sati could not be found within the mainstream
discursive genre of the shastras. In the precolonial period, the
highest incidence of sati was recorded in Bengal, when compared
to figures for the same in other parts of India. One may explain the
emergence of this phenomenon in Bengal in terms of the extant
normative guidelines according to Dayabhaga, and also the customary
practices by which women, especially the widows, were privileged to
inherit property over male heirs since the eleventh century. Around
the fifteenth or sixteenth century, Raghunandan Bhattacharya—a
legendary scholar on all branches of the Dharmashastras—who
wrote twenty-eight treatises on social, personal, moral, religious, and
ritualistic codes of conduct for both men and women—produced a
treatise called Suddhitattva that systematically dealt with the issues
of sati. This treatise may be found as the only text in Bengal on sati.
Presumably, the practice of widow-burning emerged in Bengal as a
negative (please read criminal) reaction to their rights on moveable
and immoveable property, and this discourse intended to customize/
spiritualize the practice. It is intriguing that the same author
unequivocally prescribed a widow’s property rights in another text
called Dayatattva, literally meaning theory/discourse on division of
property.
The issues of sati were addressed in the Suddhitattva as an indirect
rejoinder to a question about whether the act of self-immolation may
be amounted to an act of suicide. The literal meaning of ‘Suddhitattva’
is ‘theories or discourses on purification’. The text was based on
378 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

three basic concepts: virtue, reward, and spiritual empowerment.

Sati was cited as a virtuous act in the highest form, to be performed
by a woman/widow. By committing sati, a woman would attain the
power to exonerate her husband from sinful acts, fetch blessings for
her immediate and distant family members, and achieve the coveted
entry to heaven to live for several million years with her husband.
The issue of sati found a glorious entry in the colonial legal codes.
The Code of Gentoo Laws proclaimed: ‘It is proper for a woman,
after her husband’s death to burn herself in the fire with the corpse’
[emphasis mine]. Otherwise, she should live a life of ‘inviolable
chastity’ and that is how she can go to heaven. She would go to ‘hell’
if she violates the chastity.29
The second code contained an elaborate chapter on duties of a
faithful widow (emphasis mine).30 (Please take note of the word ‘duty’).
This text also introduced the notion of power: ‘Learn the power of that
widow, who hearing her husband has deceased, and been burned in
another region, speedily casts herself into the fire’ [emphasis mine].31
The narrative contained effervescent praise of sati, with elaborate
dictates on chaste widowhood. Therefore, the concept of ‘propriety’
in the first legal code found a new meaning in the notion of ‘duty’
and also ‘power’ in the second legal code. The glaring transformation
from the precolonial normative concept of ‘virtue’ to the colonial
pronouncement of ‘propriety’, ‘duty’, and ‘power’ should be noted.
This kind of textualization of precolonial ‘tradition’ set the spirit of
modern law and the basis of ‘justice’ for Indian women. The practice
of sati was given a legal dimension through the affirmative inclusion
of the issue in the code. In 1987, a young widow was forced to die
with her dead husband by her in-laws in Rajasthan, and this incident
attracted media attention on a national level, with intellectuals and
activists vigorously protesting against this culpable act. But a large
section rejoiced over this ‘glorious sacrifice’ of the young lady, and
saw in this episode the return of Satyayuga (the era of truth—the
imagined time when women never deviated from ‘ideal/virtuous’
path). After the initial excitement subsided, the media soon lost the
interest to inform people whether this lady obtained posthumous
justice through exemplary punishment of the perpetrators.
Colebrooke wrote a treatise on ‘The Duties of a Faithful Widow’
in 1795, published in Asiatick Researches. Here, he represented sati in
 Bhattacharyya-Panda: ‘Hindu Law’ 379

the light of Hindu religion and ritual within a broad canvas of Indian
civilization and culture. This text, for the first time, transformed
the basic morale behind the practice from suddhi or purification
to duty, which is a quasi-legal concept. This text dwelt on certain
premises. First, sati is universally practised by all Hindus. Second,
he emphasized on the religious and ritualistic dimension of the
rite—not on the customary component. Finally, he inscribed a kind
of subjectivity or selfhood on women by producing the narrative of
the ritual in normative case. This article was later published (during
his lifetime) in his collected volume entitled Essays on the Religion and
Philosophy of the Hindus.32 The other essays in this volume dealt with
the philosophical tenets in the Vedas, Jainism, Buddhism, and Islam.
The juxtaposition of sati in a volume dedicated to discuss ‘Religion’
and ‘Philosophy’ of the Hindus made significant epistemological
assertion for the Western audience to perceive and project Indian
civilization and Indian women.
Finally, the high pitch of patriarchy has been reflected in the
evocation of the concept of nirindriya in the Digest of Hindu Law.
The Sanskrit word literally means deficiency in any of the five sense
organs—eye, ear, nose, tongue, and skin. Colebrooke translated
nirindriya as deficiency in the ‘faculty enlightened by the knowledge
of law’, and which reduces women into being the supposedly ‘weaker
sex’. The text proclaimed women as ineligible to inherit and own
property on the basis of this qualitative assertion.33
This paper traced the origin of Hindu law and the essence of legal
modernity in relation to women. It is quite evident from the brief
discussion that ‘rule of law’ was hardly meant for ensuring ‘right’ and
‘justice’ to the female colonial subjects. The social right agenda, as
introduced through the series of reforms in the nineteenth century,
to a certain extent, had a twofold objective—to deflect the attention
from the gradual process of marginalization of women’s property
rights, and to locate and project ‘Indian women’ in a specific cultural
setting and to gloss over the ‘avowed’ civilizing mission.
This duality, misreading, and misrepresentation still survive in
the popular imagination, patriarchal paradigms, and the muted voices
of Indian women. Despite the globalization and rhetoric of women’s
empowerment, majority of Indian women still live in a vaguely
defined ‘modernity’, circumscribed by patriarchal commands. The
380 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

media is vocal about ‘injustice’ against women, albeit the impact is

limited. Popular Indian cinema and television situate women within
a framed ‘tradition’, except for a few experimental movies or serials.
The female characters have mostly been designated to revive and
redefine the age-old role of ‘Indian women’ like a ‘bahu’ or a ‘good
woman’, by evoking the values of domesticity, silence, and tolerance
for any kind of abuse, violence, and violation. In Bengali serials,
‘widowhood’ is a special site for the reconstitution of the female role
through their dress code and behaviour.
In the received wisdom, the colonial rule introduced legal
‘modernity’ in India by clearing the primordial mess, further
advanced by a series of liberal legislation for women during the
course of the nineteenth century. In reality, Indian women still live
in duality, in the trap of an imagined, constructed, and projected
‘tradition’. This ‘tradition’, popularly believed as the pristine tradition
of the Hindu civilization, which poses hindrance to the trajectory of
‘progress’ is, to large extent, a colonial legacy.
Notes
1. Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Pantheon, 1978.
2. Ronald Inden, Imagining India, Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2000.
3. For example, K. Mann and R. Roberts, eds., Law in Colonial Africa, Ports­
mouth and London: Heinemann and James Curry, 1991.
4. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983.
5. Ibid., p. 1.
6. I have already published a book under the title Appropriation and Invention
of Tradition: The East India Company and Hindu Law in Early Colonial
Bengal in 2008. Subsequently, electronic and paperback editions had come
out in 2012. The book, in five chapters, analyses the process of construction
of Hindu law through codifications and deliberations in the courtroom by
the British judges and documentation of legal proceedings.
7. Nandini Bhattacharyya-Panda, Appropriation and Invention of Tradition:
The East India Company and Hindu Law in Early Colonial Bengal, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008.
8. N.B. Halhed, A Code of Gentoo Laws, or Ordinations of the Pundits, London,
1776.
9. H.T. Colebrooke, A Digest of Hindoo Laws, Calcutta: Company’s Press,
1801.
 Bhattacharyya-Panda: ‘Hindu Law’ 381
10. William Jones, Institutes of Hindu Law, Or, the Ordination of Manu,
According to the Gloss of Culluca, London, 1794.
11. J.D.M. Derrett, Essays in Classical and Modern Hindu Law, 1976–78, Leiden:
Brill, 1976, p. 8.
12. Ibid., p. 175.
13. Raghunandana Bhattacharyya, Vyavaharatattva, ed. L.N. Sharma, Calcutta,
1829, p. 4.
14. N.K. Sinha, The Economic History of Bengal, vol. 2, Calcutta, 1956, p. 191.
15. Jones, Institutes of Hindu Law, p. xviii.
16. Ibid., p. xix.
17. A.C. Burnell, The Law of Partition and Succession, from the Sanskrit Text
of Varadaraja’s Vyavaharanirnay, Mangalore, 1872.
18. J.H. Nelson, Indian Usage and Judge-made Law in Madras, London: Kegan
Paul & Co., 1887.
19. Burnell, Law of Partition and Succession, p. vii.
20. Ibid., p. vi.
21. J.H. Nelson, A View of the Hindu Law as Administered by the High Court
of Judicature at Madras, Madras and Calcutta, 1877, p. iii.
22. Bengal Revenue Consultation Papers, 6 January 1775, p. 130; 14 January
1775, pp. 31–9; 11 February 1775, pp. 73–95.
23. Justice Hyde’s Manuscript Diary, vol. 30, 29 and 30 November and
1 December 1790; vol. 32, 24 January and 4 November, 1791.
24. Manusmrti, Chapters v and ix.
25. Wendy Doniger and Brian K. Smith, The Laws of Manu, London: Penguin
Classics, 1991.
26. Shore’s Minute of 18 June, cited in W.K. Firminger, ed., The Fifth Report,
vol. 2, Calcutta, p. 72.
27. Ibid., p. 78.
28. Original Minutes of the Governor-General and Council of Fort William
on the Settlement and Collection of Revenues of Bengal, with a Plan of
Settlement Recommended to the Court of Directors in January 1776,
London, 1776, p. 30.
29. Halhed, Code of Gentoo Laws, p. 253.
30. Colebrooke, Digest of Hindoo Laws, book IV, chapter, 1, pp. 153–8.
31 Ibid., p. 153.
32. H.T. Colebrooke, Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus,
London: Williams and Norgate, 1858.
33. Colebrooke, Digest of Hindoo Laws, p. 299.
 12
The Idea of Justice and Evolution
of the Calcutta High Court,
1862–1915

Mahua Sarkar

Introduction

T
he evolution of the Calcutta High Court can be examined
as an official site for the production of the various discourses
on justice and politics in contemporary Bengal. Through the
history of the High Court, one can examine the institutions, practices,
and implementation of British colonial law and justice in relation to
the making and remaking of the colonial state and society in Bengal.
The East India Company’s ideologies of rule were based on the
assertion that it respected the laws and customs of the natives, and at
the same time, its claim to legitimacy was also structured around the
idea of the rule of law. What underlay this claim was an expansion
in the claims of the state at the expense of other jurisdictions of
authority. At the initial stage, colonial rule continued to rest upon
a patchwork of legal jurisdictions, the boundaries of which were
subject to change and alteration. Through these alterations, the
system became mature and began to produce far-reaching impacts
for the colony. This is how the foundation and working of the judicial
institutions should be understood from the context of colonization
and its impact on a region like Bengal.

The Timescale
Since its foundation in 1862, the High Court has left an indelible
imprint on the contemporary society. The discussion begins from a
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 383

period when the High Court was still bearing the connotation of ‘The
High Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal’. The name itself
is important, as it reflects a time and space, attached to the earlier
era of colonialism. Fort William in Bengal was a symbol of the initial
captures. The early experience of the administration of justice, as is
evident from the trial of Nanda Kumar, could not project the image
of liberty and equity in an all-pervasive way. The early conquests
and rebellion, including the Great Revolt of 1857, were also linked
with a sense of discomfort about the nature of colonial rule. This
phase was followed by the phase of consolidation, manifested in the
Universities Act and the High Courts Act and of course, the Queen’s
Proclamation of 1858. Since 1858, there was an apparent change in
the nature of the foreign rule. The foundation of the High Court in
1862 represented a complete unification and disciplination of the
system of judiciary in Bengal. Notwithstanding the existence of an
indigenous tradition, the colonial rulers tried to justify their rule
with a distinctive Western judicial model. A sound and efficient
judicial system according to their criterion, helped them to make the
command of the gun ethically sanctioned. The mindset generated
in the High Court resembles what Jean-Paul Sartre describes as the
‘relentless reciprocity’ of the colonizer-colonized relationship. Order
out of the so-called indigenous chaos was implemented by law and
justice.
The present discussion ends in 1915, as this year was the traffic
sign for several multifaceted changes, which were to affect the
subsequent history of Bengal. The history of the High Court up to
1915 covers an interesting period of the political and social history
of Bengal. Already, by 1911, the capital of the country had been
transferred from Calcutta to Delhi. Although little research has been
done on the impact of such transfer of capital on the colonial judiciary
itself, the present author emphasizes that it had brought serious
structural changes in the administration, bringing forth, thereby, a
consequence on the judiciary. Then, though by 1911 the first Partition
of Bengal was repealed, the flow of events after 1905 and the swadeshi
and revolutionary reactions of the people of Bengal were bound to
bring subsequent changes in the policy of the bureaucracy towards
the judiciary. The Government of India Act (1915) consolidated
and re-enacted all the provisions made by Indian High Courts Acts
384 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

of 1861 and 1911. In the year 1915, the High Court of Judicature at
Fort William in Bengal was renamed as ‘The High Court at Calcutta’.
In pursuance of the Act of 1915, the jurisdiction of the court was
curtailed in many ways, and it was thenceforth limited within Bengal
only. As the High Court at Calcutta ceased to exercise its jurisdiction
over Bihar and Orissa, the Patna High Court was established in
1916. Also, the Act deprived the High Court of its original jurisdiction
in any matter concerning revenue. This was a significant modi-
fication in respect of the ordinary original civil jurisdiction of the
High Courts of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. Meanwhile, the
entire scenario had become much more complicated with the outbreak
of the First World War of 1914–18. Increasing social tensions, growing
economic pressure, the advent of political nationalism, and the
entry of personalities like M.K. Gandhi, C.R. Das, and others in
politics had gradually altered the earlier situations. Here, we can
aptly cite the arguments of Professor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya about
the redefining of the regional identity consciousness in Bengal from
the 1920s.1 But those are different stories. To understand its link
with the history of Bengal, the initial impact of the Calcutta High
Court has therefore been confined within the time capsule from
1862–1915.

Literature Survey
Within this time period, the Calcutta High Court had developed
a unique tradition in dispensing justice. It has a long entity,
commemorating its 100th, 125th, and 150th anniversaries. A
number of souvenirs and articles have been published to mark the
celebrations, but no complete history of the High Court on the basis
of primary sources has ever been written so far.2 Most of the earlier
works are basically anecdotal and often hagiographical. The earlier
work of P.T. Nair3 is a descriptive narrative, while the books of J.K.
Mittal4 and M.P. Jain5 contain textual narratives of the court and
the legal system. The researches of Sarmila Banerjee6 and Dipasree
Banerjee7 have focussed on the administrative history of the period
in general. The articles of Chittotosh Mookerjee, Debiprosad Pal, and
others are useful to know about the legal and judicial anecdotes of the
Calcutta High Court.8 The works of Nateson,9 Schmithener,10 Dillon,11
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 385

Buckee,12 and John J. Paul13 narrate the development of the Indian

bar from different and regional perspectives. The book of Abhinav
Chandrachud,14 on the history of the Bombay High Court during the
British Raj, deals singly with the judges and judicial culture of the
Bombay High Court and independence of the judiciary. Scholars like
Nandini Bhattacharyya-Panda,15 Mithi Mukherjee,16 Janaki Nair,17
Ratna Kapur and Brenda Cossman,18 Flavia Agnes,19 and others
have written profusely on issues of law and different identities. But
the formal, artificial and disciplinary divides between lawyers and
historians have caused a lacuna in the historiography of the Calcutta
High Court. The earlier historical works do also not necessarily
relate the High Court with the eventualities of Bengal. The present
effort traces whether there was any link between the structure and
the functionaries of this judicial institution, and how far the Bengali
society had been affected by both. In this sense, this is a social and
an institutional history.

The Background

Crime Law and Justice Before 1857

To start with, the year 1862 did not see the beginning of the new
order. The High Court, founded in 1862, had a long heritage behind it.
This gothic superstructure, described by some people as the ‘veritable
temple of justice’, is an alien imposition, a creation of the colonial
overlords. The concept of legal justice in modern times has been
derived from the Western legal heritage, handed down, originally by
classical Rome. In Bengal, in particular, there was no such elaborate
and formal judicial organization before. The administration of justice
was essentially personal, local and theocratic in nature. Crime, in
general, was related more with private morality than with society or
public disorder. Bengal was a plural society, which was reflected in the
judiciary of the precolonial times. The local people generally utilized
the judicial services of their immediate overlord and sometimes
there were collective decisions of the village panchayats. The fact is
that no judicial act by any party was ever discountenanced, if not
wrong. There were no fixed regulations for appeal and no case was
taken from the lower courts to the higher court for revision. This
386 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

was because the fundamental concept of judicial administration

was that everyone taking part therein was supposed to be equally
proficient in the matter. But each court’s jurisdiction was often not
strictly defined by law, and the people at times did not get a chance to
obtain a redressal of their grievances. Moreover, the criminal law of
the precolonial times was very uncertain. The judge had the liberty to
follow his own reasoning in interpreting the law, which often would
lead to denial of justice in the hands of a corrupt judge. At the same
time, administration of justice was quicker, cheaper, and closer to
moral ethics and individual response.20
However, during the rule of the later Mughals, the central
structure of justice and police was fast collapsing,21 and the British
East India Company had gradually stepped in. The British rulers
scrupulously controlled each phase before the development of the
High Court. It was not built in a day. A brief history of the Mayor’s
Court (1726), the Supreme Court, and the Company’s courts in Bengal
will show that almost from the inception of British rule in Bengal,
two parallel systems of justice, one of the Company’s and the other of
the Crown, existed in this country.22 The two essential conditions for
any sound and effective system of administration of justice are that
there must be, in the first place, a well-organized system of courts,
and in the second place, a well-developed system of law. The colonial
government tried to evolve a system of judicature in accordance with
the exigencies and demands of the Indian situation. To begin with, the
British administrators made and unmade various schemes of courts
in an endeavour to achieve a viable system of judicature. A peculiar
feature of the early British rule was that very little attempt was made
to develop a body of substantive law on a systematic basis. For long,
the whole concentration of the administration was on developing a
workable system of courts, and no conscious attempt was made to
develop a system of law to match the development of the courts. The
efforts in the direction of creating a body of law began comparatively
late in the day. Initially, the Company, which ruled parts of India in
the eighteenth century, took steps to introduce autonomous judicial
and political administration in its territories. The noted historical
anthropologist Bernard Cohn correctly tells us that the invention
of such a State (typically colonial) was without precedent in British
Constitutional history.23 The early British rulers were careful not to
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 387

introduce their own rules in the Indian soil, because that interference
would affect the conditions of trade. At the same time, the British felt
the need to create an appropriate rule of adjudication. In this effort,
India also provided a laboratory for experimenting with new models
of rule and governance emerging in Great Britain. For instance, as
proposed by the utilitarians, on the introduction of rules of law in
Indian society during the early days of colonialism, there were two
important considerations: first, to create a ‘Rule of Property’ in the
native land, and second, to create ‘Rules of Adjudication’. Laws were
formulated accordingly. Meanwhile, the English judicial system had
been greatly developed since the later Anglo-Saxon period.24 The
Company was at first interested only in the profits of trade and not
in the judicial affairs of this country. Still, long before the battle of
Plassey, Queen Elizabeth I’s Charter of 1600 had granted limited
legislative and judicial powers to the Company in the country. These
powers ‘Contain the germ out of which the Anglo-Indian codes were
ultimately developed’.25 Later charters of 1622, 1669, etc., gradually
began to give further powers to the Company to make laws and
administer justice.26 The judicial power was derived partly from
its own royal charter, and partly from the Mughal emperor. The
Company could try its own subjects by royal charters and it could try
its Indian subjects as the zamindar of the Mughal emperor in Bengal.
The original idea of founding royal courts in India was first expressed
in a letter written by the Court of Directors in London to the East
India Company on 10 April 1693.27 Ultimately, by the Letters Patent
of 24 September 1726, the three Mayor’s Courts, which derived their
power directly from the Crown, were established in the Presidency
towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. The Mayor’s Court at
Calcutta was a Court of Record, which introduced English criminal
law and common law together with the statutory law in India. The
Charter of 1726, however, did not clearly mention whether Indians
were justifiable in the Mayor’s Court.28
There is a lacuna of proper historical research on the working of
the courts. Historians have mostly concentrated on the earlier part
of the colonial administration. Also, there is a general ignorance of
the different phases and transitions in the evolution of the British
judicial system up to the establishment of the High Court. Comments
on the judicial system are only made in a holistic way in general.29 At
388 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the initial stage, the Company was cautious enough to appropriate

the indigenous system of personal laws of the Hindus and the
Muslims. The orientalist phase of the early eighteenth century saw the
translation of the indigenous legal texts. The Company, at its initial
stage, was not eager to directly intervene in the personal matters of
the colonized, and was cautious and hesitant. The exercises involving
the codification and translation of the Hindu and Islamic laws by
the Company’s government, especially the rules relating to property,
marriage, caste, and inheritance, were framed to give the subjects their
own laws. The pundits and the maulvis, associated with the British
judges, would sign the reports and help in passing the decrees.30 One
of the persons who helped Warren Hastings the most in this task was
Sir William Jones (1746–94), a classical scholar, who studied Persian
and Arabic at Oxford. Jones and his colleagues believed that there
was, historically, in India, a fixed body of laws which were inscribed
in the texts of Hindus and Muslims.
In this context, scholars like Bhattacharyya-Panda have consi-
dered the Saidian premises from the perspective of Indian legal
history. She argues in her book that the ‘Hindu law’, as administered
by the British to be the civil and personal laws of the Hindus, did
not represent any authentic indigenous tradition. It was, on the
contrary, a colonial construction designed to accommodate the
economic interests and imperial designs of the new rulers in Bengal.31
The argument says that the original tradition was appropriated and
reinvented by pundits, projected as jurists or legal theorists. She cites
from the translation of the two codes—Vivadarnavasetu (published as
The Code of Gentoo Laws in 1772) and Vivadabhangarnava (A Digest
of Hindoo Laws published in 1801)—and states that in the process of
translation, the ancient textual tradition deviated significantly from
the tradition itself.32
Nandini’s work reveals the discursive traps that orientalist writing
had laid and sought to establish the conditions within which other
forms of representation might become possible. Yet it successfully
cancels the illusion of neutrality or disinterestedness on the part of
the colonizer’s attempt to know the indigenous laws. The personal
laws of the Hindus and the Muslims naturally received the flair of the
European ‘modern’. Apart from that, the appropriation of law from the
Sanskritic or Koranic texts ignored the multiple legal systems which
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 389

were in vogue among the hundreds of tribals and marginal groups

of Bengal. Law was homogenized in the name of modernization,
and it created a block of power which exploited the masses in the
name of law.
Still, the process was not done hastily. Notwithstanding the fact
that we do not have a clear picture of how India’s indigenous legal
systems worked prior to the coming of the British, most historians
assume that Indian law was inferior to that of the British. Not
surprisingly, that assumption was nurtured by nineteenth-century
British intellectuals and jurists. In 1772, Alexander Dow, an officer
in the army of the Company, wrote that to leave the natives to their
own laws would be to consign them to anarchy and confusion. It was,
therefore, necessary for the peace and prosperity of the country that
the laws of England, insofar as they did not oppose the prejudices
and usages of the Indian, should prevail.33
Accordingly, the dual systems of diwani (revenue matters) and
faujdari (criminal matters)—existing in the indigenous judicial
system—were retained, though the plan of Hastings to establish two
superior courts of justice, the ‘Sadar Diwani Adalat’ and the ‘Sadar
Nizamat Adalat’, was actually the first British Indian Code. From the
beginning of the colonial rule, the judicial structure was gradually
formalized through the interaction of two parallel discourses—the
colonial vis-à-vis the Company rule and the other, the imperial, i.e.
the rule of the Crown. While the discourse of the Company was
represented by governance and order, the imperial was constituted
by a supranational deterritorialized discourse of justice based on
natural law.34
Radhika Singha, in her book A Despotism of Law, delineates the
emergence of a sphere of civil authority from the domain of military
governance, based on a clearer separation between criminal and civil
laws. Bound up with this was an effort to separate judicial authority
from various fiscal rights and to concentrate it in the agencies of the
state.35 This was, however, a slow and contested process. The initial
judicial system was based on the common law tradition, which
required an apparent and peaceful coexistence of the traditional and
formal laws. Meanwhile, a committee of secrecy of the English House
of Commons had been appointed in England, to enquire into the
state of affairs of the East India Company. In 1773, it had reported
390 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

unfavourably on the existing system of the Mayor’s Courts. On 26

March 1774, the charter establishing the Supreme Court was issued in
pursuance of the Regulating Act of 1773. Consequently, the Mayor’s
Court was abolished and the Supreme Court was set up by this
charter, and all cases pending in the Mayor’s Court were transferred
to the Supreme Court. The Company’s Courts remained entirely
distinct from and independent of the Crown’s Supreme Court.36

The High Courts Act of 1861:

The New Structure
The earlier situations had prepared the ground for the establishment
of the High Court. The origin of the discourse of justice became more
critical in the aftermath of the Revolt of 1857. The vulnerabilities of
the rule of the Company were dramatically exposed and it could no
longer maintain the facade that it was ruling on behalf of the Mughal
emperor. Further, it was understood that the seemingly divided
Indian populace was well capable of uniting against the colonial
rule and challenging the same. The abolition of the Company and
the assumption of direct responsibility of government by the English
Crown favoured the work of judicial amalgamation. Three codes were
passed in 1859, 1860, and 1861, which further helped to bring about
uniformity in the system of justice. It was a part of the official plan
for the reorganization of the judicial system that the creation of the
new High Court should be postponed until, in the words of Charles
Wood, ‘a code of short and simple procedure had been prepared’.37
Accordingly, the Code of Civil Procedure, the Code of Criminal
Procedure, and the Penal Code were framed. These codes opened
the way to a process of amalgamation, based on the adoption of a
common legal system. Ultimately, as a logical corollary to the Act of
1858, a bill was introduced in the British Parliament in 1861 for the
establishment of a High Court in each presidency. In pursuance of the
Act, the Letters Patent dated 14 May 1862 was issued. Accordingly, the
High Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal was established in
India. The Supreme Court and the Company’s courts ceased to exist
from 1862.38 The High Court represented a complete unification of
the system of judiciary in Bengal. It exercised the original jurisdiction
of the Supreme Court within the limits of the city of Calcutta, and
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 391

also the appellate jurisdiction of all the lower courts in civil and
criminal matters.

A Complex Scenario
The main argument of this chapter is that the evolution of the judi­
cial system in the colonial period created a complex scenario for
different categories of people of Bengal. This complexity cannot be
simply analysed in terms of binaries. The trajectory of the colonizers
themselves was not unilinear on this issue. Mithi Mukherjee refers
to the arguments of Edmund Burke against Hastings in the famous
impeachment trial.39 Burke spoke about a deterritorialized imperial
justice which would assert judicial sovereignty over the Company’s
government.40 Mithi argues that the historic conflict between the
Supreme Court and the Governor-General’s Council has been wrongly
interpreted by contemporary writers as a clash of powerful personal­-
ities in an environment of insecurity and anarchy in the early days
of the Company’s rule.41 She gives the only example of this dominant
historical interpretation from Busteed’s ‘Echoes of Old Calcutta’. 42
Contrary to that, it is found that the comments of many contemporary
scholars and officers did highlight the essence of this conflict, apart
from personal hunger for power and jealousies of the personalities
involved. Right from the foundation of the Mayor’s Court in 1726, the
European jurists were confused about the territorial jurisdiction of the
court. The Charter of 1724 did not define anything, and the problem
of undefined jurisdiction was tended to be solved by the Charter of
1753. It expressly stated that unless both the parties assented, the
Mayor’s Court should not try the cases arising between Indians.
The conflict of opinion existed from the beginning of colonization
in Bengal and was later intensified. Herbert Cowell, an eminent
legal theorist in India, commented in 1872 that the establishment
of the Supreme Court in 1773 signalled the triumph of the party in
England which desired a greater intervention by the Government
and Parliament of Britain in Indian affairs, and a greater control
of the Crown over the Company’s proceedings.43 H.E.A. Cotton, in
his ‘Calcutta Old and New’, remarked that the main purpose of the
Supreme Court was ‘to protect the natives from oppression and to
give India the benefits of English law’.44
392 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The tussle between the court and the government projected the
inner tensions of the implication of imposing a foreign system in
the name of justice, which continued in the later period as well. P.C.
Ilbert, another law member of the Legislative Council, criticized the
Regulation Act thus—‘the provisions of the Act of 1773 are obscure
and defective as to the nature and extent of the authority exercisable
by the Governor General and his Council, as to Jurisdiction of
the Supreme Court, and as to the relation between the Bengal
Government and the Court’.45 P.C. Stanhope, in his Genuine Memories
of Asiaticus commented on the feelings of the people of Calcutta in
1784—‘The inhabitants of Calcutta seem to be not a little displeased
at the new form of Government, which the Judges, or, as they call
themselves, the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal have already
begun to introduce. The Mayor’s Court is abolished and the same
legal process which is used at Westminster now prevails.’46 Two things
are worth mentioning here. The people who are remarked upon were
not the people of the country; they were the European community
in Calcutta. The original people were silenced in the discourses.
Herbert Cowell commented that the natives regarded the Supreme
Court with utmost abhorrence.47 The case of Nanda Kumar and the
famous Cossijurah case exposed the implications of the court on the
people, but no reaction was cited. The second thing to be noted is
that there was no question of the prevalence of the same legal process
which was used at Westminster. The British legal heritage was rooted
in its own common law tradition, which could never be inculcated
into the Indian soil. The Indian experiment saw a peculiar amalgam
of customary laws of some of the Sanskritic and Koranic traditions
with what the British began to term as ‘equity’. Severe criticisms were
also found as empirical evidences on the confusion regarding Indian
laws. In 1822, Charles Grey, the Chief Justice of Bengal, had pointed
out the ‘utter want of connection between the Supreme Court and
the provincial courts and the two sorts of legal process which were
employed in them’.48 Erskine Perry, the Chief Justice of Bombay, also
referred to ‘the strange anomaly’ in the judicial condition of British
India.49 The crux of the problem was never sorted out in the best
possible way, for that would go against the idea of colonialism itself.
The process of implementation of law did not improve after 1861.
Gradually therefore, the idea of justice was made into an inseparable
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 393

part of the discourse of governance. That discourse was grounded

in the ontology of India as a country of total disorder, violence, and
chaos. In 1898, J.F. Stephen, the British legal historian, wrote a letter
to The Times about his perception of British rule in India:

The British Power in India is like a vast bridge over which an enormous
multitude of human beings are passing  .  .  .  and will for ages to come continue
to pass from a dreary land, in which brute violence in its roughest from had
worked its will for centuries—a land of cruel wars, ghastly superstitions,
wasting plague and famine—on their way to a country  .  .  .  which is at least
orderly, peaceful and industrious.  .  .  . One of its piers is military power,
the other is justice, by which I mean a firm and constant determination
on the part of the English to promote impartiality and by all lawful means,
what they regard as the lasting good of the natives of India. Neither force,
nor justice, will suffice by itself. Force without justice is the old scourge of
India; wielded by a stronger hand than of old justice without force is a weak
aspiration after an unattainable end.50

Naturally, after 1857, a much greater emphasis was given on

justice as an ideal of governance. The monarch or the Queen became
the personification of justice. From being a defendant, the colonial
government in India was repositioned as the impartial judge which
would distribute justice among the warring communities it ruled. To
bring equity among subjects, the High Court was established as the
head of the administration of justice in Bengal. It inherited all the
functions of the Supreme Court and Sadar Diwani and Sadar Nizamat
Adalats which it replaced. Within the country, the High Court became
the highest court of appeal and the Privy Council in England was the
final court of appeal for the people of India after 1861.
Since then, many anomalies were retained, and the kind of equity
the High Court decided to shower upon was always hampered by
the complexities of colonial rule. In spite of many alterations, the
territorial pattern of the High Court’s jurisdiction remained the
same. Though the city had vastly expanded between 1726 and 1861,
the original side of the Calcutta High Court succeeded the territory
of the Mayor’s Court and the Supreme Court, while the mofussil
and subordinate courts throughout the province and the appellate
side of the Calcutta High Court were successors of the Company’s
courts. Mr E.C. Ormond, an advocate of the Calcutta High Court,
394 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

was once bold enough to comment sarcastically, ‘There would be a

storm of protest if it were to be suggested today in England that the
Original Civil Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of London should
be confined to the territorial limits of the City of London.’51
Mention here is to be made of a leading case of 1870, which
went against the concept of liberty, altogether, not to speak of equity.
Ameer Khan, a merchant, was arrested on 18 July 1869, at his house
in Calcutta and taken to Gaya, where he was confined to prison. On
1 August 1870, an application was made to Justice Norman, for a
writ of habeas corpus, to bring the prisoner before the court. On 25
August 1870, he was moved to the Alipore Jail. There, he was detained
till the time of his trial. The judge decided that as the change was of
a permanent character, the principles which justified the temporary
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in England also justified the
Indian legislature suspending the writ by Regulation III of 1818
and Act III of 1858.52 Therefore, no such writ was issued in the case
of Ameer Khan. This decision of the Calcutta High Court seemed
to be quite unconvincing to many members of the Bar. They felt
that in the claims involving the liberty of the subjects, the judges
showed themselves to be more executive-minded than the executive
itself.53
The Privy Council seemed to be far more alien to the people.
Even the lawyers of the provincial courts were not acquainted with
the mode of procedure in appeals to England and the great distance
from India, or the huge expenses involved in making an appeal to
England, made the Privy Council inaccessible to the litigants in India.
Thus, throughout the early years of the working of the High Court,
the conflict between the Government of Bengal and the Calcutta
High Court became so intense that the matter had to be referred to
the Secretary of State and was never resolved.

The Functionaries
The culture of the lawyers and the judges grew out of an unequal
contestation between the traditional and the colonial ideologies. The
psychological imposition of an external order and technical legitimacy
of an ‘ideal’ yet alien rule have largely restricted their activities. The
self-ideal of the Indian lawyers often became subservient to their
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 395

professional interests. In fact, all the important functionaries were

linked, in some way or other, with this process of hegemonization of
British justice through the working of the Calcutta High Court. To
speak of the lawyers, we have to note that settlement of the British in
Bengal and the birth of the professional classes were two simultaneous
developments of the nineteenth century. The most formidable of
these professional classes was the class of lawyers. The lawyers who
were first enrolled in the High Court of Judicature at Fort William
in Bengal were a matured pressure group, the successor of the early
professionals. In 1862, the Letters Patent authorized the High Court
to admit ‘so many advocates as to the said High Court shall seem
meet’ and the vakils and the attorneys were also enrolled in a similar
manner.54
For a number of reasons, the people of Bengal, especially the
three upper castes (Brahmans, Kayasthas, and Baidyas), showed a
keen interest in the study of law. It was a period of various structural
and institutional transformations in the society in Bengal. The upper
castes reacted more readily to the introduction of Western education
and new forms of occupational avenues generated by the British rule.
Soon, it was found that the lawyers were replacing the social and
intellectual dominance of the earlier elite and were becoming the
most important persons of the society. But unlike in England or the
US, a legal practitioner of nineteenth-century Bengal was an officer
of the High Court. He was subordinated to the rules of admission
and practice as prescribed by the High Court and the government.
The local government’s control of legal education, the budget and
appointment to judicial posts prevented the lawyers from raising
their own professional standard. Much later, they obtained greater
autonomy after the passing of the legislations like the Bar Councils
Act of 1926 and the Indian Advocates Act of 1961.55
Initially, the native lawyers had no access to the Supreme Court,
and the judges of the Supreme Court refused permission of practice
to any person who could not get a licence from the Company.
The High Court permitted three distinct groups of practitioners,
barristers, attorneys, and vakils. For a long period, both the barristers
and attorneys were educated in England, and almost all of them
were Europeans.56 In the beginning of 1862, there were altogether
twenty-five barristers, and all of them were British. The first Indian
396 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

barrister, Mr Jnanendra Mohan Tagore, of the famous Tagore family

of Pathuriaghata, qualified himself from the Lincoln’s Inn on 21 June
1862. The Friend of India drew the attention of the readers to this
spectacular event:
Baboo Ganendra Mohun Tagore, the son of Baboo Prosunno Coomar
Tagore and a Christian, who has for some time held the Chair of Hindoo
Law in the London University College and is a barrister, has been entered
on the rolls of the original side of the High Court. This is the first instance
of an Asiatic practising as a barrister in India.57

In spite of this enrolment, Jnanendra Mohan did not ever practise

in the High Court. He was followed by other Indians like Manomohan
Ghose (1866), W.C. Bonnerjee (1869), and Taraknath Palit (1872).58
The Indian barristers who were trained in England came from affluent
families, adopted a British style of living, developed a Westernized
legal culture and status of their own. Irrespective of success in their
profession, they also enjoyed the privilege of high matrimonial
connections and became a prestigious group in the society. The
attorneys acted as intermediaries between clients and barristers. They
gained ground in the High Court, but the posts of the law officers
of the Government of Bengal, such as the Remembrancer of Legal
Affairs, the Standing Counsel, and the Government Pleader, etc.,
were reserved only for the Britishers during the period under review.
The High Court of Calcutta itself practised a racial discrimination
against the Indian barristers in this respect. For example, the Chief
Justice, Mr Richard Garth vehemently objected to the appointment of
W.C. Bonnerjee as the Standing Counsel during the leave of absence
in England of Mr Philips.59 He wrote to Ripon, the Viceroy of India:
‘I believe that the appointment of a Native Barrister, however good
he might be, to the post of standing counsel would be generally
distasteful to the Bar.’60 But as no suitable Englishman was available
during that time, Ripon managed to get Mr Garth’s approval
and W.C. Bonnerjee was appointed as the ‘Officiating’ Standing
Counsel. Then again, to get rid of him, Philips was shortly asked
to return and resume his official duties as early as possible.61 Also,
the British solicitors managed to get all lawsuits of the government
municipalities and mercantile houses, and distributed those cases
among the British barristers, strictly excluding the Indian barristers.
So, in spite of similar qualifications, the British barristers and their
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 397

Indian counterparts belonged to two different worlds in the eyes of

the ruling class. This empirical evidence was natural for the exercise
of colonialism in Bengal.
The vakils or the non-barrister lawyers suffered the most from
this discrimination. According to the Census of 1881, there were
7,261 people employed in varying grades in the legal profession in
Bengal. The total number, within Calcutta and its suburbs, increased
to 17,743 by 1921. Of these, 16,640 persons were Hindus.62 The
comparative list of the censuses shows that the Bengali Hindus were
crowding the profession more and more, and the Muslims were
gradually receding in number. The list of the Calcutta High Court
vakils for the period under review shows that there was a superfluity
of Mukherjees, Boses, and Sens, and there were only a few Hajras
(one only), Guins (only one), and Kundus (two only).63 In spite of
this considerable increase in the number of qualified Bengali vakils,
a difference between the barristers and vakils was always maintained
in the High Court. Theoretically, the Indian High Courts Act of 1861
contemplated a single Court, composed of the lawyers and judges of
the Supreme Court and the sadar courts. But in practice, there was no
fusion of these rival systems of administration. The Supreme Court
survived as a distinct branch of the High Court, i.e. in its original
side, with its territorial jurisdiction confined to a limit within the city
of Calcutta. The English Court, with its British judges and barristers
qualified from England had always precedence over the ‘native’ court
with Indian judges and a ‘native’ bar. The vakils of the Calcutta High
Court could not practise on the original side.64 But the vakils of the
High Courts of Bombay and Madras suffered from no such limitation.
In Calcutta, the barristers were members of the Bar Library Club,
while the vakils were members of the Vakils Association. Henry
E.A. Cotton, a barrister of the Calcutta High Court, writes quite
arrogantly in this connection: ‘The inner room of the Bar Library is
strictly reserved for the use of advocates of the Court, and not even
members of the sister branch of the profession are admitted.’65 Also,
the barristers were given the right of pre-audience over the vakils of
the Court. The vakils strongly resented this discrimination and the
right of pre-audience was ultimately abolished in 1924.66
The Vakils Association often fought collectively for the right of
the vakils.67 It gave the Bengali lawyers an identity and remained as
one of the most influential professional organizations of the period.
398 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The activities of the Association show how, in these early years, the
Bengali lawyers suffered from a serious identity crisis. They suffered
from a crisis, raised in the belief that law and civil society were
almost endogamous. They exposed a contradiction in their belief in
the justice of law, ironically introduced by the colonial alien society,
and the commitments they had towards their own identity and civil
society. About a quarter of a century after the establishment of the
High Court, the government thought of conferring on some vakils
the ‘proud’ rank of ‘advocate’. In a letter dated 6 June 1887, the
suggestion was conveyed to the Vakils Association by the British
Indian Association. The vakils replied that it was very desirable that
some of the efficient vakils be enrolled as advocates, but they refused
an enrolment by selection.68 Another significant protest was lodged
by the Association on the 29 July 1904, against the ill-treatment of
the vakils at the hands of Justice Rampini. Rampini’s attitude was
described in a resolution of the Association as ‘highly unsatisfactory,
being attended with marked want of courtesy and sometimes even
with insults’.69 The Association further resolved that a copy of this
resolution would be submitted to the Hon’ble Chief Justice, but such
a step was considered by some members to be too bold.70 In reality,
the vakils could do but little against such arrogance, and suffered
from an essential frustration of their own. The agitations for the
removal of distinctions between the vakils and the barristers were very
slow and gradual. Since 1896, the question of dress reforms for the
vakils had been raised several times, but it was ignored under cover
of expediency every time. It took a long time, i.e. till 1906, for the
vakils to obtain permission from the Court to take off the cumbrous
head-dress which was looked upon as a badge of inferiority, and to
wear the gown which was then the barrister’s privilege. Even in 1906,
a colour bar was imposed on the vakil’s gown, and the latter had to
choose a blue gown instead of the barrister’s black.71 Ultimately, the
colour question in the struggle over the battle of robes was won by
the vakils, but it did not happen within fifty years of the foundation
of the Calcutta High Court.
The conflict between the bench and the bar was not unknown
before 1861, but it became more frequent after the unification of the
Supreme Court and the sadar courts. The Hindoo Patriot commented
that the arrogant attitude of the judges was mainly due to ‘the racial
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 399

prejudice of the Englishmen against the educated natives’.72 The

vakils of the Calcutta High Court were generally unanimous in
presenting their own problems and demands. The general opinion of
this profession had been expressed mainly in its own organ like The
Calcutta Weekly Notes and in other public journals and newspapers.
Apparently, the Government of India had shown respect for the
legal profession and it promoted the study of law in its own possible
way. This eagerness for promoting the legal profession was largely
guided by utilitarian motives to pacify the educated middle class in
Bengal. During the greater part of the nineteenth century, the legal
profession was quite a lucrative one for the educated youth, who
were debarred from most high-level government jobs. The decision
of the graduates to enrol themselves as lawyers was concomitant with
fluctuations in the employment market. The growing uncertainty of
finding scholarships as well as government jobs forced many graduates,
mostly from the higher castes, to choose the legal profession as the
only alternative. In spite of the growth of a few industries, Bengal
was still having a stagnant and predominantly agrarian economy.
The slow growth of industry and the literary bias given to Western
education since the days of Macaulay accounted for the overcrowding
in the legal profession. The legal profession also flourished due to the
growing complexity of the land regulations which led to an increase
of litigations. The Permanent Settlement opened the floodgates of
judicial activity in Bengal, and the Statistical Abstract of 1881 shows
that of the total value of suits for British India, nearly one-third came
from Bengal. The number of civil cases instituted in the courts of
Bengal rose from 88,684 in 1860 to 2,75,138 in 1861. The Census of
1881 shows that there were 7,261 people employed in varying grades
in the legal profession. This number, within Calcutta and its suburbs,
increased to 17,743 by 1921.73 The permanently settled areas produced
more litigations than the ryotwari system in the south. That might
have been one of the reasons why many of the Bengal zamindars
had provided legal education to at least one of the male members of
their families. The foundation of the High Court in Calcutta gave a
boost to the legal profession as a whole too. Moreover, the rise in the
status of the profession was also remarkable, along with its growth
in number. Earlier, the profession did not have such a prestige, but
the picture changed in the nineteenth century.
400 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The European judges were generally appreciative of this raised

status of the lawyers. But there were some exceptions also. In 1901,
one Justice Emden wrote an article in the Nineteenth Century, entitled
‘Is law for the people or the Lawyers?’.74 There, he commented that
lawyers were, as a class, to blame for increasing the complexity of
legal procedures and in resisting all attempts for reform.75 The vakils
expressed their protest against the article through their own organ,
The Calcutta Weekly Notes. They categorically stated, ‘We are unable
to discover in his article anything very original and practical.’76
The lawyers were gradually becoming vocal about the racial
discrimination they had to face in the court. The Hindoo Patriot thus
reminded the people in 1870 that an independent bar was essential
for proper administration of justice, and that both racial prejudice
and incompetence prevented the English judges of the mofussil from
recognizing the legitimate position and influence of the Indian bar.77
Indeed, there was a craze for the study of law in Bengal. The
remarks of Ashutosh Mukherjee, the noted lawyer-judge and Vice-
Chancellor of Calcutta University, in reply to his felicitation by the
Calcutta University Senate in 1920, are worth mentioning here:
Nothing is dearer to me  .  .  .  than my university. I began life as a research
student in Mathematics, when research was practically unknown in this
country, and the ambition of my life was to be a research professor in
my own University. Mr Justice Gooroodas Banerjee, who was then Vice-
Chancellor of this University made a desperate attempt to create a chair
for me but such were the times that he failed to collect even a sum which
would yield a modest income of Rs. 4000 a year.  .  .  . The result was that I
drifted into law.  .  .  .78

The appointment of lawyers to the bench was an experiment

to secure the court’s legitimacy in the eyes of the legal profession
itself.79 This appointment showed that the even native lawyers could
aspire to hold important positions under the British Raj as well. The
appointment of the Indian judges was thus designed to pacify and
befriend the rising new class of Western-educated lawyers, who,
belonging to one of the most politically empowered professions in
society, a potentially subversive profession, if left excluded, might
otherwise have taken to nationalism or anti-colonialism. The official
circle supported the appointment of the Indian judges in numerous
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 401

words. In 1876, Richard Temple, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal,

wrote that ‘the Calcutta Bar had enjoyed a high repute for more than
one generation’.80 In 1864–73, Bengal had 703 law graduates where
Bombay had only 33. This difference in the number of law graduates
explains why an Indian judge was appointed to the High Court at
Calcutta in the 1860s, while other High Courts got an Indian judge
much later.81 This was basically done to placate the rising aspiration
of the legal profession in Calcutta, a profession which was not yet
developed in Bombay. It was for the benefit of Calcutta’s lawyers, not
its Indian litigants, that Indian judges were appointed to the High
Court Bench. The policy was linked with the question of giving the
court a social legitimacy, and it is interesting to note that courts in
colonial India relied for their legitimacy not merely on the users of the
court’s services, but more significantly, on those who earned a living
off the court itself, i.e. the Indian lawyers.82 The motive behind this
step was to gain greater confidence of the powerful and dependable
allies within the colony. Abdul Latif, an eminent political leader of
Bengal, once remarked that the appointment of a native judge should
be regarded as a means of supplying the element of a more perfect
knowledge of the habits, laws, and usages of the various classes
of Indians.83 The reason behind this experimentation in the High
Court, instead of the lower courts, lay perhaps in the presence of
senior European judges in the High Court, along with their Indian
colleagues. Even after that, the tensions between the barrister and
civilian judges, and also between the bench and the bar, both at the
levels of the District and High Courts, continued to exist. The civilian
judge of the High Court felt that he was ignored when a British
barrister before him became ‘warm or boisterous’.84 The barrister, on
his part, thought that his freedom was restricted when the civilian
judge impatiently demanded respect for the dignity of the bench. The
Hindoo Patriot commented in this context, ‘The Civilian instinctively
believes the barrister to be a bully, and the barrister equally believes
the Civilian to be a snob.’85
In the High Court, there was always an unwritten social barrier
between the British judges and their Indian colleagues. The Indian
judges were a negligible minority during the early days of the High
Court, and they often met with aloofness and ill-treatment on the
part of their European colleagues. Though in theory, the High Court
402 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

was a single unit with two arms; in practice, there was no real unity of
these two different sections of the court. The barrister-judges alone sat
on the original side and the vakil-judges sat on the appellate benches.
Even Dwarkanath Mitra (1867–74) who was so highly esteemed for
his performance on the bench, was insulted by two British judges
who ‘spoke of him in the most condescending, patronising tone’,86
and refused to treat him as a social equal. During the period under
review, Indian judges like Chandra Madhab Ghosh and others had
to fight against all kinds of discriminations which existed between
them and the barrister-judges—regarding salary and other conditions
of employment.87
The problem, however, lay elsewhere. The working of the High
Court completed the process of hegemonization of British justice in
Bengal. Equity could never be the synonym of niti or ethics in the
Indian system of justice. The diverse, intimate, and orally transmitted
indigenous laws were excluded in the name of professionalism, order,
and modernization. The moral and social effects of such a judicial
system could never penetrate the domain of the society. Moreover,
the history of judicial proceedings in colonial Bengal shows that the
coexistence of the dual frameworks of custom and formal law was
not peaceful, but fraught with tensions and contradictions, with
adverse impacts for the society in general. The functionaries of the
High Court suffered regularly from the racial discrimination of their
white colleagues. The eagerness for promoting the legal profession
was largely guided by the consideration of providing more avenues
of employment to the educated Indians. It therefore had a limited
framework. There was no concept of developing the study of law
according to the international standard of the day, and that could
not also be expected from a colonial government either. In 1904, the
Government of India, for instance, declined the invitation from the
Universal Exposition of St Louis and the American Bar Association,
which had requested for the appointment of official representatives
to attend the Congress of Lawyers and Jurists to be held at St Louis in
September of the same year. Curzon, the Viceroy of India, expressed
with regret that he was unable to accept the invitation, as it would
involve much expenditure.88 The objects of the Congress, as set
forth by its organizers, clearly reveal that the Indian lawyers, if at
all deputed to it, might have got a chance to discuss matters like
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 403

the history and efficacy of the various systems of jurisprudence, etc.

But the Government of India showed no interest in such matters.89
Similarly, though some of the leading judgements of the Indian judges
have made them famous, no tradition of international scholarship
was developed around the profession. The Report of the University
Education Commission of 1948–9 observed, ‘In India, however, we
have many eminent practitioners and excellent judges. The law has
also given us great leaders and men consecrated to public service.
But we have no internationally known expounders of jurisprudence
and legal studies.’90 The Commission attributed this deficiency to the
colonial servitude, while the notable Indian historian, B.B. Misra, who
had quoted the aforesaid remarks of the Commission in his book,
attributed it to our problem of Westernising and over-secularizing
law, and to the difficulty of the lawyers to grasp the complexity
of legal concepts which, in the West, had developed along with
the diversification of economy and growth of liberties.91 All these
remarks have their justification. It appears therefore, that since the
legal or judicial profession in Bengal emerged during the colonial
rule, it lacked proper roots in the Indian soil. The main connection
of these professionals was with the new middle class with an interest
in ownership of land and property. The professionals at the High
Court were urban and elitist, with minimum understanding of the
basic inequalities of their society. There was no effective professional
disciplinary process to limit the general culture of opportunism
exposed through unprofessional practices like touting, overcharging,
and professional rivalry. The high cost of legal education and many
other factors led to a total monopoly of the bar and the bench by
the dominant classes. During the period under review, the strongly
‘male’ image of the legal profession was consistent with the complete
absence of women in the field. The Calcutta High Court thus became
one of the avenues of social mobility for the upper class male gentry
only.
The common people suffered the most from the working of an
alien judicial system. The High Court could not secure justice to the
common people of the land. The definition of the marginal groups,
for instance, in the colonial legal system, was basically of three kinds,
as ‘predators’, as ‘rebels’, or as ‘people’ who need to be anglicized.92
As a result of a complex dialectic of the colonial and the imperial,
404 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the judicial system of India became typically queer in its essence, it

was rooted neither in the common law or the natural law tradition of
England, nor had it any connection with the common law heritage of
India. The Montesqueian theory of separation of powers was indeed
a mockery in the colonial situation. Many historians have written
critically about this system of law and justice, and presently, a serious
emphasis was given to know the attitude of the masses towards this
system. It is very difficult to trace this attitude through any direct
empirical evidence. But the tensions and disquiet within the society,
and the stray remarks of the Europeans as well as the Indian elite,
show that the European jurisprudential practice, with its expenses,
delays, and complications, was unintelligible, alien, and beyond the
reach of the common people in India. In a society divided on the
basis of class, caste, religion, ethnicity, and gender, the High Court
became another instrument of domination of the powerful over the
powerless.
The influence of justice shaped the class relations to give a wider
dimension to the concept of control and domination. In this context,
mention should be made of the disparity of judgement between the
rich and the poor. The distance of the High Court from the villages,
the exorbitant cost of litigation, and the complicated law of evidence,
etc., made justice far-reaching to the remote corners of the country.
The courts also began to be overburdened with pending case loads.
Delays in the implementation of laws continued to increase even
in the colonial period. It was not the technical excellence of the
professionals but rather illegal connections and professional deviance
that produced favourable verdicts for the party concerned. It is
doubtful, whether a penniless person could at all reach the High
Court at Calcutta, seeking justice against an affluent opponent before
the bench of the highest court of the province. The High Court was an
expensive judicial organ, meant for the richer sections of the society.
According to historians, this tradition of a contested judicial
heritage was continued in postcolonial India. Mithi argues that the
Gandhian philosophy of justice offered an alternative to the colonial
paradigm, but it was not developed into a distinctive formal system.93
The Gandhian philosophy was ultimately merged into the bourgeois
system of Nehruvian administration. The Indian judicial system could
not develop its own character on the basis of its diverse common law
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 405

traditions.94 Taking from Mukherjee’s arguments, the present chapter

argues that the Gandhian alternative was not an exception. Throughout
the nineteenth century, notable personalities and famous writers
like Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Bhudev Mukhopadhyay
expressed their confusion and unhappiness regarding the impact
of the British system of justice. 95 Also, by introducing a unified
judicial system, the British had accommodated only the brahmanical
principles of justice with their own ideological mechanisms of a
modern judiciary. In that sense, the era of colonialism was thus
partly a continuity with the high culture of the colony. The colonial
rulers’ preference for the Sanskritized elite made them neglect the
popular, customary laws of the common people. Naturally therefore,
right from the early days of colonial rule, the people were not
unanimous about the implementation of justice. Like nationalism,
justice or bichar in colonial India was never acknowledged in the
‘homogeneous, empty, time’, but rather in the ‘heterogeneous time’ of
modernity. The common people, i.e. the peasants and the organized
or unorganized working class, did not internalize the ethos of justice,
even when they participated in the judicial procedures of the courts.
They had very different understandings of justice derived from their
dissimilar experiences. The strength of the non-official judicial
structure of caste and village panchayats further gave the people a
reason to ignore the official judicial system. Bichar was also a notion
traditionally bound with dharma or religious ethics. It was spiritually
experienced in the inner space, in spite of the external subjugation
to a foreign race. The concept of formal, institutional, justice thus
became associated with the alien, external order of the state, while the
inner domain of the person was controlled by internal ethics, family
practices and traditional customs. The distinction between the two
worlds of ‘public justice’ and ‘private virtues’ were never minimized.
Moreover, the common law traditions, on which a judicial system
can reconstitute its formal structure of law, are generally based on
customs and heritage of the land. The history of judicial proceedings
in colonial Bengal shows that the coexistence of the dual frameworks
of custom and formal law was not peaceful, but fraught with tensions
and contradictions, with adverse impacts for the society in general.
The idea of nativity, inferiority and backwardness was intrinsically
related to the ‘legal’ definition of the marginal groups. For example,
406 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

since the latter half of the eighteenth century, the Saura Pahariyas
of the Rajmahal hills of Bengal featured constantly in the judicial,
legislative, and revenue consultations of the East India Company at
Fort William.96 In this context, the epithets ‘wild’, ‘savage’, ‘bandits’,
occurred repeatedly in the official papers. Mountstuart Elphinstone
commented on the Bhills in these words:

Smarting under the broken pledges of the former native government and
rendered savage by the wholesale slaughter of their families and relations, the
Bhills were more than usually suspicious of a new government of foreigners,
and less than overinclined to submit to the bonds of order and restraint.  .  .  .
They are a wild and predatory tribe and though they live quietly in the open
country, they resume their character, whenever they are settled in a part
that is strong, either from hills or jungles.97

Later, in 1871, the Criminal Tribes Act clubbed various tribes

as ‘criminals’, ‘encroachers’, ‘dacoits’, ‘thieves’, and many such
connotations, keeping these people beyond the paradigm of civilization
itself. Reports of several cases, like the trial of Birjoo Santal vs. the
Government (1856),98 the trial of Beerul vs. the Government and
Daroo (1859), 99 the trial of Mata, Sarda, Rando and Topary vs.
the Government and Mussamut Rangree (1859),100 etc., show that
the trajectory of the judicial verdict was twofold—replacement of
‘disorder’ by ‘order’; and ‘narration’, without analysis, as a part of the
civilizing mission. In all these cases, the notion of othering the alien,
tribal world, in terms of ‘progress’ and ‘backwardness’, had hindered
the advancement of the judicial system itself. Similar references are
found from the researches of Ranjan Chakrabarti, on the encounter
between restlessness among the locals, crime, and violence on the one
hand and the colonial state’s attempt to control these on the other.
He has explored the theme with reference to historical accounts of
prisons as levers of control, and various breaches of law, including
dacoity and forest crimes.101 The cases earlier mentioned were all
related with the problem of the idea of witchcraft in Bengal, and as
a contrary picture to the court cases, David Curley has referred to a
case of the medieval times, such as Khullana’s trial by ordeals, even by
so-called divine evidence, as has been cited in Mukundaram’s poem,
Chandimangal, written in the sixteenth century.102 The present author
would not say that the latter, i.e. Khullana’s trial (where suicide was
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 407

also a sign of honour) was an ideal case establishing gender equality,

or that the two situations with different timescales can be compared
at all, but one would refer to the poem’s assumption of multiple,
ranked, and overlapping gender roles and the marginal criticism of
patriarchy. It was absolutely different from the ideological framework
of binaries, within which, the colonial judicial administration resolved
the women’s issues: material or spiritual, outer world or inner home,
and Western or Indian. The problems of otherization became much
more complicated in the case of colonial judiciary. Still, this binary is
not the only picture of the impact of the High Court on the society
of Bengal. Marc Galanter, in this context, gave a judgement as to
why post-Independence efforts to replace India’s legal and judicial
systems with indigenous institutions failed.103 He argued that this was
so because of mainly four reasons. First, the existing legal institutions
in India were supported by an influential class of lawyers who were
both dependent on the system for their survival and were confident
of its general virtue. Second, the indigenous revivalists could not
suggest a complete alternative to the existing system. Third, there
evolved no real grievance against the system, itself which could
gradually gain popular support. Fourth, the system itself had been
indigenized over the years and adapted to suit Indian conditions.104
So, the matter is not to be perceived in an over-simplified way in the
form of binaries only.

Indianization of the Judiciary

There is no doubt of the fact that the present judicial system was
a foreign transplant on Indian soil, or that it was based on alien
concepts once unintelligible to our people. But gradually, there was
an Indianization of the judiciary through the working of the High
Court. The High Court began to influence the future development of
the Constitution and the state structure. The people had become fully
accustomed to this system during the first fifty years of its existence.
The procedures, and even the technical terms used by the lawyers
and the judges, came to be widely understood by the large majority of
litigants. The judicial system in essence, pertaining to the courts and
the judges, their hierarchy and mode of functioning, were gradually
internalized by the intelligentsia and the people at large.
408 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

By its very nature, the notion of the High Court was inextricably
connected with the principles of modern justice. It told the people
as to how justice was to be administered in the land where it was in
force. Coming to the hierarchy of courts, we find that there emerged
courts at different levels: the trial courts, the courts of appeal, and
sometimes the courts of second appeal. Even among the trial courts,
there were different categories. Some cases were dealt with by the
munsifs, suits of higher value were dealt with by subordinate judges
or subordinate judges of first class who were higher than the munsifs.
In some cases, subordinate judges exercised unlimited jurisdiction
in civil suits, while other suits of higher valuation were dealt with by
district judges or city civil court judges. The court of small cases was
set up for trial of only those types of cases in which the pecuniary
claim was not very high. When it came to criminal cases, most of
them were tried by the courts of magistrates. Cases involving serious
crimes and attracting severe punishment were dealt with by the court
of sessions. Ultimately, there was the High Court to try all kinds
of appeals coming from dissatisfaction from the lower courts. This
pyramidal structure, with the implementation of a modern, codified
rational process of law, began to give the people a space of their own. It
upheld the story of ultimate independence of judges from the regular
intervention of the executive state. In the long run, the High Court
at Calcutta had come to be seen as an institution which stands apart
quite distinct from the interference of the executive. The Bengali
lawyers were gradually convinced of the virtue of the judicial system
set up during the colonial rule, not merely because the system was
internalized, but also because the institution earned legitimacy by
functioning independently of the other branches of the government
and in a manner generally untouched by discrimination in the day-
to-day affairs.105 The High Court was gradually perceived less as a
British Court, since it had become an Indian Court through the
first fifty years of its existence. Throughout the colonial period, the
court was meant for deciding ordinary cases between Indian litigants,
and in this sense, it was an Indian Court since its very inception.
Even in the 1860s, its number of Indian litigants was overwhelming,
and its appellate side bar consisted almost exclusively of Indian
lawyers.106
The people or the functionaries of the High Court were largely
influenced by the functions of the judiciary. In order to become
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 409

barristers, the Bengali bhadraloks had to ignore their Hindu caste

prohibitions of crossing the kalapani or travelling overseas, which
had a significant impact on the society. Apart from the vakils, the
Calcutta High Court accomodated a large number of other smaller
functionaries like the babus and the muhuries, and the clerks and
the writers, who were ultimately emerging as an allied social group
with an access to a living and dependence on the court. The vakils
and the Indian judges responded to the opportunities created by
the rulers in a positive way. Their interaction with the ‘preferred’
white practitioners gradually revealed their distinctive resoluteness
in creating a body with respectful professional qualifications. The
scope of activity and economic prospects of the lawyers also increased
day by day, and a number of lawyers of the Calcutta High Court
were earning by thousands and lakhs by the 1920s. Justice Chandra
Madhab Ghosh writes in his unpublished memoir, ‘between the
death of Baboo Rama Prosad Roy and his elevation to the Bench in
1863, Sambhunath Pandit enjoyed the highest practice his income
being about Rs. 15,000 a month.’107 Durges Chandra Acharya, a
near-contemporary biographer of Chittaranjan Das, observed that
the earning of barrister Chittaranjan in one month was equal to a
magistrate’s one year’s salary.108 Giving some idea about the figures,
he said that the monthly income of Chittaranjan Das was between
Rs.20,000 and Rs.50,000 and that was a huge amount in those days.109
The competent discharge of duties by the vakil-judges and their
regular appointment at the highest bench of the province proved that
they had successfully accepted the challenge of experimentation with
them. The rich and influential vakils, experienced in modern legal
studies and affairs of the world, became a prestigious social group,
second only to the big zamindars. Their handling of cases were often
cited in the contemporary media with great respect. Intellectually,
they participated in the cognitive revolution of the time and socially,
they formed a significant progressive group, spearheading numerous
social reform and educational activities. They were the patrons of
a modern literature and culture, and one of the earliest groups to
foster the growth of a national consciousness. Many of them were
also noted for their munificence, liberalism and concern for the
spread of education. Prannath Pandit (1855–92), for instance, the
famous lawyer and son of Justice Sambhu Nath Pandit, the first
Indian judge of the Calcutta High Court, was also a litterateur and the
410 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Municipal Commissioner. He published a new edition of Kalidasa’s

Sanskrit lyric Meghadutam with a Bengali translation and also wrote
a long article on the morals of Kalidasa in the Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal.110 He was invited to almost all public ceremonies
of the metropolis, and was a great patron of the Bengali theatre.111
Hemchandra Banerjee, the lawyer and Government Pleader of the
Calcutta High Court (1890), was famous in the history of Bengali
literature for his literary productions like Brittasamhar Kavya and
Bharat Sangit.112 Names of Ramesh Chandra Mitra, Taraknath Palit,
and Rasbehari Ghose are also remembered for their munificence.
Moreover, the contribution of Gurudas Banerjee and Ashutosh
Mukherjee, two eminent lawyer judges, is worth mentioning in the
field of education. They became Vice-Chancellors of the Calcutta
University in 1890 and 1906 respectively. Gurudas was the first Indian
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta and Ashutosh’s Vice-
Chancellorship, in particular, was marked by a steady and continuous
progress of the University.113
Politically, the Calcutta High Court had been the brain-trust of
Indian politics since 1861, and the lawyers regularly participated in
the Indian freedom movement. It became the mirror of the political
temper of the time. The vakils began to recover their lost identity
while fighting for their own causes, and had gradually become
conscious about the problems of lack of freedom. A good part of the
leadership of the Congress was in the hands of these lawyers, who
had been trained on legal or constitutional lines. Their experience
in implementing legal means for gaining of power began to reap
political dividends for the country.114 The Swadeshi movement and
anti-Partition agitation of 1905 received active support from the
Calcutta Bar. Swadeshi cases were tried in the High Court and the
Indian lawyers intervened in disputes arising from them, in favour
of the revolutionaries, and even in cases of labour disputes, in
favour of the working class.115 Names of criminal lawyers like Aswini
Kumar Banerjee, Pramatha Nath Mitra, Bijoy Chattopadhyay, and
Pravat Kusum Roy Chowdhury are significant in this context. 116
Moreover, important cases of the High Court became linked with
the anti-colonial sentiments of the people. The cases, like that of the
Englishman Ltd. vs. Lala Lajpat Rai of 1909, give an idea about the
political situation of the country and the extent to which nationalist
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 411

sentiments affected the people.117 The court papers relating to the

Alipore bomb case of 1908–9 exposed the strong resentment of
the people of Bengal over the issue of Partition.118 The trials and
the judicial processes were cited as symbols of colonial antipathy
and the ambivalence of the lawyers themselves was expressed
in their own organs like The Calcutta Weekly Notes and other
contemporary journals and newspapers. In this connection, one can
refer to an article of Rabindranath Tagore, written in 1904, named
‘Dharmabodher Drishtanto’ [the instance of the perception of dharma
(Justice), translation mine]. He stated that no British murderer had
ever been sentenced to capital punishment by an English judge or
jury and added that such a judgement was a two-pronged attack on
the Indians, as it affected both their life and prestige.119
Thus, the Calcutta High Court had a stimulating effect on the
people of Bengal. It can be argued that by the early twentieth century,
the functioning of the Court had been responsible for the awakening
of a regional identity in Bengal, which was more vocally expressed
with the arrival of lawyers like Chittaranjan Das and others. To sum
up, it can be said that the impact of the High Court of Judicature
at Fort William in Bengal was felt in every aspect of the life of the
province. During the period under review, the High Court had
existed with strength and honour. The evolution of a scheme of
administration of justice was a slow and gradual process made on
the basis of trials and experiments. The Government of India Act
1915 affirmed this scheme in essence. In spite of later changes, the
basic scheme envisaged in 1861 was substantially approved by the
Constitution of free India in 1950.
The jurisdiction of the Calcutta High Court at its commencement
was very large, and extended to the North-Western Provinces,
including present day Uttar Pradesh, Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Chhota
Nagpur, and Assam. For some time, it had even jurisdiction over
Rangoon (present Yangon). By 1950, this jurisdiction had gradually
been curtailed, yet the work of the High Court had steadily increased.
India was still a British dominion between 1947 and 1950, and within
this time, the High Courts were regulated by the Government of
India Act 1935, a law enacted by the British Parliament. The Privy
Council in England still had final appellate jurisdiction over Indian
courts up to 1949, and partially even up to 1950. However, the court’s
412 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

administration was not summarily dismissed after the drafting of

the Constitution. Rather, the articles of the Constitution provided a
smooth transition of the colonial judicial institutions from the British
Raj to independent India.
The process of Indianization in the Calcutta High Court was
gradual and not revolutionary in nature. While in the beginning,
the bench was the close preserve of English barristers, it had become
exclusively Indian by the twentieth century, and the High Court
was gradually being considered as the bastion of the liberty of the
citizens. It became the last recourse against all kinds of oppression
and highhandedness on part of the colonizers. Naturally, the court
was not at all concerned with the making of the law, but it expressed
its concern with the applicability of law. During 1862–1950, it began
to administer laws wisely and without compromise. It had dispensed
even-handed justice to all, but tempered with mercy. The judges,
assisted by an independent bar, had done their duty fearlessly and
well. A great tradition had been built up. This, in a nutshell, is the
distinguished story of this High Court and its life through the first
hundred years of its existence. It is now getting mellow with age,
rich with experience, and deeply respected by all to whom the cause
of justice is precious. The type and pattern of justice that the courts
had to administer in the past had also experienced rapid changes
with Independence and the struggle for freedom that was taking
place in its wake. There was a growing readiness to accept law as a
process of social engineering, and as an instrument of social control,
concerned intimately with the socioeconomic dynamics. With the
increasing activities of the modern state and the expansion of the
executive functions of the government in diverse fields of urban, rural,
and industrial development, the horizons of law have expanded in
new and different dimensions. The functions of the High Court are
becoming more matured and complicated, being intertwined with
the history and politics of Bengal.

Notes
1. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, The Defining Moments in Bengal, 1920–1947,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014.
2. For details, see, Mahua Sarkar, Justice in a Gothic Edifice, Calcutta: Firma
KLM, 1997.
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 413
3. P.T. Nair, Early History of the Calcutta High Court, Calcutta: Banerjee
Book Company, 1987.
4.. J.K. Mittal, Indian Legal History, Allahabad: Allahabad Central Law
Agency, 1985.
5. M.P. Jain, Outlines of Indian Legal History, Bombay: N.M. Tripathi, 1966.
6. Sarmila Banerjee, Studies in Administrative History of Bengal 1880–1898,
New Delhi: Rajesh, 1978.
7. Dipasree Banerjee, Aspects of Administration in Bengal, 1898–1912, New
Delhi: Rajesh, 1980.
8. Chittatosh Mookerjee, ‘Three Generations in the High Court’, in The
High Court at Calcutta, 150 years: An Overview, Kolkata: The Indian Law
Institute, West Bengal State Unit, 2012, pp. 101–7; and Debiprosad Pal,
‘The High Court at Calcutta’, in The High Court at Calcutta, 150 Years:
An Overview, Kolkata: The Indian Law Institute, West Bengal State Unit,
2012, pp. 90–4.
9. Indian Judges, Madras: G.A. Nateson & Co., 1932.
10. Samuel Schmitthener, ‘A Sketch of the Development of the Legal
Profession in India’, Law and Society Review, no. 3, 1968–9, pp. 337–82.
11. F.W. Dillon, From an Indian Bar Room: Sketches Talks & Tales, Calcutta:
Butterworth & Co., 1920.
12. Gillian Frances Mary Buckee, ‘An Examination of the Development and
Structure of the Legal Profession at Allahabad, 1866–1935’, unpublished
PhD thesis, University of London, 1972.
13. John J. Paul, The Legal Profession in Colonial South India, Bombay: Oxford
University Press, 1991.
14. Abhinav Chandrachud, An Independent Colonial Judiciary: A History of
the Bombay High Court during the British Raj, 1862–1947, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2015.
15. Nandini Bhattacharyya-Panda, Appropriation and Invention of Tradition:
The East India Company and Hindu Law in Early Colonial Bengal, Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2008.
16. Mithi Mukherjee, India in the Shadows of Empire: A Legal and Political
History, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010 .
17. Janaki Nair, Women and Law in Colonial India: A Social History, New
Delhi: Kali for Women, 1996.
18. Ratna Kapur and Brenda Cossman, Subversive Sites: Feminist Engagements
with Law in India, New Delhi: Sage, 1996.
19. Flavia Agnes, Law and Gender Inequality: The Politics of Women’s Rights
in India, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
20. I.H. Qureshi, The Administration of the Mughal Empire, Karachi: Atlantic
Publishers and Distributors, 1998, pp. 180–206. Also see, Aniruddha
414 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Ray, Some Aspects of Mughal Administration, Delhi: Kalyani, 1984,
pp. 136–49.
21. Nihar Majumdar, Justice and Police in Bengal, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1960,
p.307.
22. Mahua Sarkar, ‘Justice, Politics and the Contemporary Time: The Courts
as a Site of Coloniality in Bengal’, in The High Court at Calcutta, 150 Years:
An Overview, Kolkata: The Indian Law Institute, West Bengal State Unit,
2012, pp. 13–22.
23. Bernard S. Cohn, An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other
Essays, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 463–5.
24. G.R.Y. Radcliffe and Geoffrey Cross, The English Legal System, London:
Butterworth & Co., 1971, pp. 95–6.
25. Anil Chandra Banerjee, ‘English Law in India’, Journal of History, vol. II,
1981, p. 156.
26. See chapter 1 (‘In Search of Territorial Roots and Military Power’) in Ranjit
Sen, Metamorphosis of the Bengal Polity, 1700–1793, Calcutta: Rabindra
Bharati University, 1987.
27. Quoted in W.K. Firminger, ‘Mayor’s Court’, Bengal Past and Present,
vol. VIII, no. 15, 1914, p. 1.
28. A.M. Mukherjee, ‘The Mayor’s Courts at Calcutta’, in The High Court at
Calcutta: Centenary Souvenir, 1862–1962, Calcutta: High Court Buildings,
1963, pp. 125–6.
29. Mahua Sarkar, Justice in a Gothic Edifice, pp. 1–34.
30. Basudeb Chattopadhyay, ‘The Initial Impact of the Introduction of the
English Law in Bengal 1773–1792’, Calcutta Historical Journal, vol. 5,
January–June 1981.
31. See the introduction in Nandini Bhattacharya-Panda, Appropriation and
Invention of Tradition.
32. Ibid.
33. Mentioned in the preface of Anil Chandra Banerjee, Indian Constitutional
Documents, vol. 2, Calcutta: A. Mukherjee and Co., 1961.
34. See the introduction in Mithi Mukherjee, India in the Shadows of Empire,.
35. See the preface of Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law, Crime and Justice
in Early Colonial India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
36. See the introduction in E.C. Ormond et al., The Rules of the High Court
of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal (1914) on the Original Side with
the Relevant Charters and Acts, 4th edn., Bombay: Butterworth & Co.,
1940, p. 92.
37. Ibid.
38. P.D. Mukherjee, Indian Constitutional Documents, vol. I, Calcutta: Thacker,
Spink and Co. Ltd., 1918, p. 390.
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 415
39. See the introduction in Mithi Mukherjee, India in the Shadows of Empire.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., p. 55.
43. Herbert Cowell, The History and Constitution of the Courts and Legislative
Authorities in India, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co. Ltd., 1872, p. 45.
44. H.E.A. Cotton, Calcutta, Old and New, Calcutta: Newman, 1907, p. 698.
45. P.C. Ilbert, Supplement to the Government of India, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1916, p. 51.
46. Quoted in P.T. Nair, Early History of the Calcutta High Court, p. 4.
47. Cowell, History and Constitution of the Courts, p. 47.
48. Quoted in H.H. Dodwell, The Cambridge History of India, vol. VI, Calcutta:
H.H. Publications, 1932, p. 379.
49. Ibid.
50. Quoted in Mithi Mukherjee, India in the Shadows of Empire.
51. Ormond, Rules of the Calcutta High Court, p. 16.
52. Home Department (Political) Proceedings, May 1913, Deposit no. 24.
53. Ibid.
54. Parliamentary Papers, vol. 40, Paper 372, 1862, p. 267.
55. Nirmalendu Dutt-Majumdar, Conduct of Advocates and Legal Profession:
Short History, Calcutta: Eastern Law House, 1974, pp. 1–25.
56. Paul, Legal Profession, pp. 1–14.
57. The Friend of India, Calcutta, 16 November 1865.
58. Mofussil Law List for the Lower Provinces of Bengal and Assam, Calcutta,
1878; and The Administration of the Lower Provinces of Bengal from
1852-B13 to 1880–87, A Supplement to the Annual General Administra-
tion Report for 1885, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1887.
59. Home Department (Judicial) Proceedings, June 1875, no. 45.
60. Home Department (Judicial) Proceedings, June 1875, no. 44.
61. Ibid.
62. Census of India, 1921, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing,
1921–4.
63. List of the High Court Vakils, corrected upto 1st January, 1915, Calcutta,
1915.
64. S.N. Bhattacharjee, Administration of Law and Justice in India, Calcutta:
University of Burdwan, 1982, pp. 143–4.
65. Cotton, Calcutta, Old and New, p. 725.
66. Rathindra Nath Das, ‘A Tribute to Calcutta High Court and Bar
Association, High Court, Calcutta on the 125th year of their Existence’,
in The 125th Anniversary Souvenir of the Bar Association, High Court,
Calcutta: Calcutta High Court, 1987, pp. 50–1.
416 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
67. Balai Lal Pal, ‘History of the Bar Association’, in The High Court at
Calcutta, Centenary Souvenir, 1862–1962, Calcutta: High Court Buildings,
1963, pp. 79–86.
68. Ibid., p. 80.
69. Ibid., p. 82.
70. Ibid., pp. 83–4.
71. Ibid., pp. 83–6.
72. The Hindoo Patriot, Calcutta, 19 December 1870.
73. Annual Report on the Administration of the Bengal Presidency during
1861–62, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1868, p. 270. Also see the
Census of India, 1921.
74. The Calcutta Weekly Notes, 3 June 1901, no. 28. p. 205.
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. The Hindoo Patriot, Calcutta, 19 December 1870.
78. Quoted in the Asutosh Mukherjee Centenary Exhibition Copy, Calcutta:
Asutosh Mukherjee Centenary Committee, 1965, pp. 2–3.
79. Mahua Sarkar, Justice in a Gothic Edifice, pp. 94–121.
80. Quoted in Amit Roy, ‘The Rise and Progress of the Appellate side Bar in
Nineteenth Century Calcutta’, in The 125th Anniversary Souvenir of the
Bar Association, High Court, Calcutta: Calcutta High Court, 1987, p. 16.
81. Chandrachud, Independent Colonial Judiciary, p. 110.
82. Ibid.
83. Full Report of the Public Meeting in Honour of the Late Justice Shumbhoo­
nath Pandit, Calcutta, 1867, p. 13.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid.
86. Quoted in Anil Chandra Banerjee, The Constitutional History of India,
vol. II, Calcutta: A. Mukherjee and Co., 1978, p. 146.
87. Prabodh Gopal Basu, Sir Chandra Madhab Ghose Mahashayer Jibani (in
Bengali), Calcutta: Karnyalish Street, 1931, pp. 90–3, 142.
88. Home Department (Judicial) Proceedings, February, 1904, nos. 225–226A.
89. Ibid.
90. Quoted from B.B. Misra, The Indian Middle Classes, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1960, p. 257.
91. Ibid., p. 332.
92. For details, see, David Washbrooke, ‘Law, State and Agrarian Society in
Colonial India’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 15, 1981, pp. 649–721.
93. See the introduction in Mithi Mukherjee, India in the Shadows of Empire.
94. Ibid.
95. See the details in Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions
of the West in Nineteenth Century Bengal, Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1988. One can cite ‘Kamalakanter Daptar’ of Bankim Chandra
 Sarkar: The Idea of Justice and Evolution 417
Chattopadhyay or ‘Samajik Prabandha’ of Bhudev Mukhopadhyay to get
a critique of the Western legal system.
96. Mountstuart Elphinstone, Report on the Territories Conquered from the
Peshwa, submitted to the Supreme Government of British India, Calcutta,
1821; repr., Bombay: Bombay Govt. Press, 1838, p. 2.
97. Ibid.
98. Judicial Proceedings, Government of Bengal, 6 November 1856, nos. 292–4,
‘Trial of Birjoo Santal vs. Government’, West Bengal State Archives.
99. Judicial Proceedings, Government of Bengal, 3 November 1859, nos. 30–1,
‘Trial of Beerul vs. Government and Daroo’, West Bengal State Archives.
100. Judicial Proceedings, Government of Bengal, 6 October 1859, nos. 57–8,
‘Trial of Mata, Sarda, Rando and Topary vs. Government and Mussamut
Rangree’, West Bengal State Archives.
101. Ranjan Chakrabarti, Terror, Crime and Punishment: Order and Disorder
in Early Colonial Bengal 1800–1860, Kolkata: Readers Service, 2009.
102. David L. Curley, ‘Marriage, Honor, Agency and Trials by Ordeal: Women’s
Gender Roles in Candimangal’, Poetry and History: Bengali Mangal-kabya
and Social Change in Precolonial Bengal, New Delhi: Chronicle Books,
2008, pp. 75–105.
103. Marc Galanter, ‘The Aborted Restoration of “Indigenous” Law in India’,
Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 14, no. 1, 1972, pp. 53–70.
104. Ibid.
105. Abhinav Chandrachud has argued about decolonization in the Bombay
High Court in a similar way. In his reply to Elizabeth Kolsky’s critical
analysis of criminal justice in India, he has remarked that the case of
Bombay was different from the Calcutta High Court, as Bombay was more
heterogenous than Bengal. The present work gives a detailed reference
to the Calcutta High Court. It agrees with Abhinav regarding the main
argument about the impact of the Ilbert Bill Controversy, decolonization,
and continuity of British legal heritage, but regards the situations in
Bombay and Calcutta as similar in the matter of Indianization. In Bengal,
the process of internalization started earlier and empirical evidences prove
that. Kolsky’s arguments are important, but can be reviewed in a wider,
complex orbit. See, Elizabeth Kolsky, Colonial Justice in British India,
New York: Cambrige University Press, 2010. Also see, Chandrachud,
Independent Colonial Judiciary, pp. 306–7.
106. Chandrachud, Independent Colonial Judiciary, p. 302. He writes on the
Bombay High Court, and the situation is the same in the Calcutta High
Court.
107. Chandra Madhab Ghose, ‘Unpublished Memoir of Chunder Madhab
Ghose’, in The 125th Anniversary Souvenir of the Bar Association, High
Court, Calcutta: Calcutta High Court, 1987, p. 22.
418 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
108. Durges Chandra Acharya, Deshbandhu Chittaranjaner Jiban Katha (in
Bengali), 2nd edn., Calcutta, 1922, p. 9.
109. Ibid.
110. Sreenath Banerjee, A Brief Sketch of the Life of Pandit Prannath Saraswati,
Calcutta: R. Cambray & Company, 1894, p. 6.
111. Ibid., pp. 1–11.
112. Anil Chandra Ganguly, ‘The Bar Library Club’, The High Court at Calcutta:
Centenary Souvenir, 1862–1962, Calcutta: High Court Buildings, 1963,
p.75.
113. Mahua Sarkar, Justice in a Gothic Edifice , p. 82.
114. Ibid., pp. 185–207.
115. Amales Tripathi, The Extremist Challenge, Bombay: Orient Longmans,
1967, p. 118.
116. Ibid.
117. Home Department (Political) Proceedings, October 1909, nos. 24–27B.
118. Home Department (Political) Proceedings, April 1910, nos. 81–114A.
119. Rabindra Rachanabali, Centenary Edition, Calcutta: Govt. of West Bengal,
1961, vol. XII, p. 1095.
 13

The Nineteenth-Century Bengali

Middle Class

Prasanta Ray

T
he formation of the Bengali middle class in the nineteenth
century is related to the onset of modernity in Bengal. The
emergence of the class had three axial references to printing,
publishing, and education. Both the processes were complex, as were
their relationships. A few obvious observations may be made here.
First, this universal modernity-middle class dialectic had a specific
context of colonialism both as a variant of capitalism, a politico-
administrative order distinguished by the English positivist discourse
on law and justice, and a modernist cultural frame. Second, this
modernity was both a historical condition and a discourse. Third,
there were continuities, at least from the immediate past—as if
continuity became ‘the new change’.1 Fourth, this nineteenth-century
Bengali middle class was complex and changing, because after all, a
century was no small time, and the contingencies were numerous.
Some historians claim that the bhadralok middle class emerged after
1857, when the colonial administration decided to utilize the Bengali
intelligentsia for governance.2 This was following:
.  .  .  a number of fundamental changes [in bhadralok society], so that the
social, political and ideological relationships which defined this society
had shifted in both a quantitative and qualitative sense. In this process,
relationships which revolved around the notion of respectability and which
were based on the concept of hierarchy were subordinated to relationships
based on capitalist development. As a consequence of this situation, two
classes emerged among the bhadralok: a rentier aristocratic class and a
middle class.3
420 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Fifth, its response to colonialism and modernity was neither uniform

nor static. More provoking are a couple of questions—what made the
middle class possible and what the middle class made possible. With
regard to the British middle class, historians are taking a deep look
at ‘seductively coherent account[s]’ like: ‘The middle class was the
major engine and beneficiary of these upheavals [late eighteenth and
nineteenth century industrialisation in Britain], and consequently
emerged as the new focus of social and economic power.’4 It is well
known that the colonial middle class here, despite its curiosity
about its English counterpart, could not have the same trajectory of
development. It is fair to argue that it was simultaneously constitutive
of and constituted with conditions in which it was embedded. But,
lacking in methodology, we are unable to find out the ratio between
the two. However, going by the miniscule size5 and the fact that
it was in its formative moments, it is amazing that it was actively
present in all the conceivable intersections of biography and history.
Sixth, the rudimentary middle class was alert to the fact that it must
simultaneously change the individual self and the collective self, both
in thinking and practice, and the larger institutional framework of
culture, society, economy, and politics. This was in order to make
changes at either of the levels endure.
Throughout such engagement, the educated and agitated middle
class had to think simultaneously about the past, present, and future
of their social time. The dearth of autobiography of the leading men
denies us clues to write an intimate history of their everyday travails
and rare successes, as they negotiated with alternative perceptions
of their individual selves as they suddenly saw themselves in a new
‘mirror’ and heard about their multiple deficiencies in orientalist
discourses, with the constraints of the institutional framework in
which they were born, with an economy which condemned them
to dignified discontent, and a colonial state which confounded
them both with its ‘rule of coercion’ and ‘rule of reason’. Individuals
and families moving into the open middle class space must have
experienced a wide range of constraining emotional stresses like,
anxiety, moral panic, and frustrations, and, of emotional gratification
in securing whatever anybody considered to be worthwhile, like
spearheading social reform or interrogating colonial interventions in
the social fabric, or simply moving up the social ladder. At the back
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 421

of it all must have been the deep agony flowing from what W.E.B. Du
Bois quintessentially conceived as ‘double-consciousness’.6 In the case
of the nineteenth century jati-marked and region-marked Bengalis, it
must have been more than ‘double’—unless we take it in a figurative
sense—because they were split along more than the axis of race. May
be they were not torn asunder because many of them could work out
the stratagem of using coins from two different moral economies.
Could it be Bengali cunning rather than American (Blacks’) ‘dogged
strength’? But, looked at another way, were not the contingencies of
this class in formation far more complex because the people therein
had to cope with modernism as a Weltanschauung which had inner
contradictions signified in the presence of the absence of multiple
pasts and in the imaginings of possible futures?7 May be we need an
ideographic rather than a specific historiography-driven account to
locate the aspirations and anxieties, haste and hesitations, and the
readiness to be hegemonized rather than the will to argue. Formation
of a class as elusive as middle class involves both shifts in socialized
sensibilities and material pursuits like earnings and artifacts which
carry status tags.
Locating the agency of a class while in formation is a methodo-
logical challenge. It was not a simple case of contradictory location
between capital and labour only. The middle class itself was a
space where premodern non-class ascriptive contradictions were
reproduced and sought to be accommodated: a clear case of
triangulation between feudal contradictions and contradictions
inherent in emergent modernity. There were shifting alliances
between otherwise dissimilar, even contradictory class factions.
These were prompted by considerations of what was of immediate
interest to each one of the factions. This makes a firm assessment of
middle class agency difficult.8 Obviously, its agency was revealed in
the endeavour of a small group of mainly men, who belonged to the
middle stratum by some real or imagined commonality of interest,
like respectable employment opportunity. But it is difficult to dismiss
the possibility of the poor aspiring for the same demand. Further, the
middle class evidently had other interests which connected it to the
other classes. On a large number of contemporary issues, the middle
class showed its inner dissensions in the face of the daunting task of
negotiating the encounter of the two cultures.
422 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

One approach to the question of how to figure out the middle

class agency is to take the biography of such key individuals whose
middle classness is reasonably beyond contestation. An early attempt
to identify them was by F.B. Bradley-Birt of the Indian Civil Service in
his book Twelve Men of Bengal in the Nineteenth Century.9 The twelve
‘.  .  .  most prominent men of Bengal in the Nineteenth Century’—‘the
six Hindus and the six Muhammadans’—were chosen because their
‘lives may be regarded as typical of the varied conditions of Bengal
during that momentous period in its history.’10 Their biographies
provide ‘a comprehensive though brief sketch of the wonderful revival,
social, moral and intellectual, which came to the Province during
the period.’ Admittedly, in terms of their identities, competencies,
and professions, all of them did not belong to the middle class.
Another way was to reconstruct the story of the nineteenth century
Bengali social issues and the prominent middle class protagonists
contending with each other. Bipinbihari Gupta (1875–1936) uses
the style of reminiscing and storytelling, in which real characters
like Krishnakamal Bhattacharya (1843–1932) is the reminiscer.11 A
focus on individuals and their families returns in the survey by John
McGuire in his The Making of the Colonial Mind: A Quantitative Study
of the Bhadralok in Calcutta, 1857–1885. But important personalities
are named in the larger corpus of writing on the nineteenth-century
Bengal. In view of the late development of voluntary associations
in the century, it was groups of individuals—in some cases, not all
of them belonging to the middle class by conventional standards—
who showed enterprise. There was certain informality about it. One
problem, however, with the biographical approach is that many
leading intellectuals were ambivalent in their attitude to contested
social issues. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay was bilingual in
two senses: using the vernacular in satirical writings on ‘the rigid
categories of colonial governance and Indian social life’ that he wanted
to undermine, and the ‘language of colonial governance’ in English
in texts that approved of the colonial government’s practices.12
Interestingly, the fact that a set of exogenous interventions in
nineteenth century Bengal led to the formation of a middle class
(‘below the aristocracy’ and ‘above the lesser folk’ engaged in menial
work13) inevitable, was grasped by the contemporary educated
Bengalis.14 The creation of a middle class was a colonial project in the
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 423

sense that, at a functional level, the colonial state drafted educated

Bengalis who knew English as clerks to help both work with whom
it considered strange people, and, at a more fundamental level, to
be the cultural intermediaries between the British and their Indian
subjects.15 They were not termed as a ‘middle class’, though a mediator
could be looked inferentially as holding a middle position. The
Englishmen, of course, knew the critical importance of their own
middle class.16 But the fledging nineteenth century Bengali middle
class had a more difficult task of mediating between the two cultures
engaged in a game of hegemony and ‘countervailing hegemony’.

Announcing Itself
The emergence of a social formation, which the middle class is, can be
best indicated in circulation of a nomenclature—basically a word—in
the public domain. By this measure, the early half of the nineteenth
century would be just about the time when the Bengali middle class
became a cognizable stratum.17 It also seems that this middle class
conceptualized itself, because it had to ‘announce’ its coming into
being. The 13 June 1829 issue of Bangadut probably made the first
mention of madhyabitta, the middle class—comprising those people
in between the excellent (utkristo) and the atrocious (nikristo).18
The madhyashreni/madhyabitta were between the aristocracy and
the lesser people: ‘not rich but comfortable’. This was when the
readers of the Bengali newspapers came to read about the terms as
categoric representations—or about themselves—because then the
production, circulation, and readership newspaper was basically
an urban middle class Bengali affair.19 To point out the obvious, the
materiality of the class as a structural location with real, claimed or
imagined exclusive cultural practices and entitlements, must have
preceded the appearance in print of the linguistic locator, middle
class; so must have had the verbal use of the term in everyday social
conversations. While print is a record which can be easily dated,
orality cannot be. So locating the person(s) who started it all and
in what form—a claim or an attribution—might be impossible. To
locate the middle between the excellent and the atrocious was to use a
popular evaluative scale for imaging a social hierarchy and its strata,
and institutionalizing the social distance between them. However, the
424 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

notion of the middle was not new to the Bengali way of cognizing
relative social locations of groups. Permanent Settlement (1793) led
to tenure-holders occupying the space between the revenue-payer and
the raiyat—the madhyaswatwa shreni.20 This madhya (middle) was
closer to the relations of production than the madhya between the
utkristo and the nikristo—it was more materialist. Both in popular and
political usage, a reference to the middle caste was also noticeable.21
As if one linguistic tag was not sufficient, the middle class
people began calling themselves the bhadralok—the middle class
bhadralok—by situating themselves into the larger multi-class
bhadralok community, thereby accrediting themselves with gentility,
and engaging with civilizing individuals and institutions. The
bhadralok contained ‘different sets of class ties’, all generated by
colonial conditions.22 According to Bhabani Charan Bandyopadhyay’s
(1787–1848) account of contemporary social hierarchy, the banias
(dewans) constituted, by virtue of their incumbency of high colonial
offices, the upper layer of the bhadralok community, followed by
the middle class, and thereafter by the ‘poor but bhadra’ sub-class.23
It was obviously not exclusive to Bengal, because the word bhadra,
connoting a set of dispositional attributes, is etymologically related
to a Sanskrit root verb bhad meaning ‘happy’. Nobody can claim—
and the nineteenth century Bengali bhadralok did not as well—that
bhadrata is exclusive to a particular social location or to a specific
period. Though written especially for the students of the College of
Fort William, the Bengali middle class could easily find what being
bhadra entailed by consulting A Dictionary of the Bengali Language
(Bengali-English) (1826) by William Carey (1761–1834). In his
translation, the word meant: ‘good, excellent, happy, prosperous,
lucky, propitious, pure, pious, virtuous, beneficent, [and] doing
good’.24 The necessity of many synonyms to comprehend the idea of
bhadrata continued even nearly a hundred years later. It meant: shishta
(cultured and of restrained manners), sabhya (civilized), mangal
(auspicious), uttam (of superior quality), marjitaruchibishishta (of
cultivated taste), binoyee (modest), priyabadee (gentle in speech),
shanta (composed), and satbangshajata (born of good lineage).25 The
attributions were evidently culturalist.26 So was that of the bhadralok,
with its many nuances, like grihastha (middle class) bhadralok and
abhijata (high born/aristocratic) bhadralok.27
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 425

How many of these behavioural dispositions an individual needed

to consistently display for signifying his bhadrata and to make a
successful claim of belonging to the middle class bhadralok category
remains an unanswerable question. ‘They were distinguished by many
aspects of their behaviour—their deportment, their speech, their
dress, their style of housing, their eating habits, their occupations,
and their associations—and quite as fundamentally by their cultural
values and theirs sense of social propriety.’28 A more crucial material
marker that set them apart from labouring classes like the peasants
was land ownership yielding rent, an opportunity created by British
experiments with new norms of land revenue settlement and land
tenure, at least till colonial state policy dried up that resource.
At the turn of the century there were in fact few bhadralok families (for
these parvenus were the bhadralok) without an interest in landed rents,
and the group as a whole regarded itself as ‘landed’. No matter how small
their holdings or how unproductive their share of rent, the bhadralok still
drew a hard and fast line between themselves and those who tilted the soil.29

But bhadrata did become a part of cultural capital that the

nineteenth century Bengali middle class cherished. Its acknowledged
possession became a resource for social climbing in local hierarchy.
Because the bhadralok became a reference group for many aspiring
after a slice of honour, it was even worthy of faking. In fact, becoming
well-mannered and being recognized as such, was a vital resource for
the ‘banias, mutsuddis and dalals or agents of East India Company’s
merchants and “interlopers” and as munshis, dewunn, or sarkars of
English administrators’—‘most of the ancestors of the old Bengali
genteel families’—for evolving into the bhadralok middle class.30
Interestingly, the claim that there are ‘bhadra English men of good
character’ (Tattwabodhini Patrika) was useful to argue in favour of
the collaboration between the imperial bhadra and its subaltern
Bengali counterpart.31
One way, the bhadraloks can be considered as ‘a coherent social
whole’, despite being ‘a composite of varying class positions’, in terms
of their ideologies as expressions of ‘social consciousness’.32 At its
core was the ‘education ideology’. ‘The association of the bhadralok
with education and intellectual labour had become generalized to a
common sense by the end of the century.’33 He had qualities ‘which
426 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

constitute a good man’ that brought him universal respect. These

were the qualities listed in semantic ideal type mentioned above.
But the behaviour which defamed him were unambiguously
stated: ‘not  .  .  .  guilty of leading a sorry matrimonial life and
running away with another man’s wife’; ‘neither talks flippantly nor
impudently, has not the air of bravo or a beau, does not swagger or
bully, or unnecessarily offer his gold snuff box with a looking glass
under the lid, nor bows to the company before he takes his seat’.34 This
was a shift from the semantic mode to the sociological in defining
the middle class bhadralok; a shift from the ideal type to real time.
This yielded moralist self-criticism of one faction of the middle class
by another—as if the self-image the educated bhadralok sought to
create through an array of adulatory words was under serious threat.
The critics were the perceptive educated and upper caste intellectuals.
Shibnath Shastri’s (1847–1919) account of the babus in Kolkata in
the 1830s, as he discussed the moral health of the city, was equally
vivid:
category of people called ‘babu’ appeared. Losing faith in their age-old
religion under the [liberating] influence of Parsee and moderate English
education, they spent their time in indulging in conspicuous consumption.
Should I describe a bit their appearance? Dark lines on the face, on the
sides of eye-brows, and in the folds of the eyes as marks of nightly strains; a
mass of long and curling hair on the head, dentifrice of roasted tobacco and
copperas pasted on the teeth, dressed in black-bordered super-fine dhoti,
banyan made of excellent muslin or camrick, well-frilled scarf around the
neck, Chinese-make thick shoe with buckles. During the day, the babus slept,
flew kites, watched fights between bulbuls, played on sitar, esraj [dilruba]
and been [wind instrument] and listened to kavigan [folk poets singing and
performing], half akhrai, panchali, etc.; spent time listening to vocal and
instrumental music in whore houses.35
The derogatory remarks excerpted above has a specific reference
to the ‘babu’ culture which recurs in Bankim Chandra Chatto-
padhyay’s (1838–94) satirical account in his ‘Babu’ in Lok Rahasya
(Mystery about People) (1874), though it did not focus on the
scandalous. Common between the two, the self-adulatory and
the self-critical, is the use of tailored terms, so to say. These were
different from each other, too: the former set was composed of
Sanskritic words with evident ambiguity; the latter, a set of compound
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 427

words—mainly, closed compounds,36 and sometimes a mixture of

tatsama and tadbhava words. The latter is sociological in the sense
that it rests on his actual observations of people in course of his
work as a government official for thrity-three years in different
districts in Bengal. What is exceptional in his very short essay is the
variety of dispositions and behaviour he locates as being typical of
babus, the nouveau riche, as an emergent stratum in nineteenth-
century Bengali society. According to this satirical exposition, they
are men of strange discernment (bichitrabuddhi), and proficient in
dining and sleeping (aaharnidrakushali). The objects which define
their deportment are spectacles (chasmaalangkrito—adorned by
spectacles), dresses (chitrabasonabrito—draped in beautiful dress),
a cane like a guard (betrohasto), dyed hair (ranjitokuntal), and a pair
of boots (mohapaduk). They are indomitable in use of words (bakkye
ajeyo), well-conversant in other languages (parobhasa parodorshi),
adverse in use of their mother tongue (matribhasabirodhee) and
unable to converse in it. Without any direction, they save without a
purpose, earn in order to save, become educated to be in a position
to earn, and adopt unfair means to pass tests. As to who would
belong to this category as defined by these traits and a few more,
he mentioned clerks, teachers, station masters, Brahmos, mutsaddis
(English), doctors, lawyers, judges, zamindar, newspaper editors,
and the lazy. Each exercised damaging power over his respective
other (the departmental record-keeper, the students, the ticketless
traveller, the gratification-seeking priest, the English merchant, the
sick, the clients, the person waiting for justice, the ryot, the middle
class readers, the fishes in ponds, etc.). In fact, they nursed a belief that
they would retrieve India from the colonial stranglehold.37 This was
like alerting his educated middle class readers about their perverse
predispositions. But the term babu, in reckonable usage, referred to a
wider category to which the indulgent nouveau riche was only a part.
In fact, it was an everyday form of address showing formal respect,
even signposting imperative social distance.
Those who claimed to be bhadra, had to set up its ‘other’; and
to give them a name: chhotolok or eetorlok. This signalled ‘fit for
discrimination’ and was put to circulation to secure an uneven
distribution of honour and other scarce resources in favour of the
bhadralok. The chhotolok became a victim of stigma of indulgence
428 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

in chhotolokmi/abhadrata (manners of lowly people/low caste/

those who live by manual labour), which was imprecisely defined;
but it was a prerogative of the bhadralok to locate some people as
chhotolok/eetorlok and their conduct chhotolokmi or eetorami. On the
question of who they were, there were fairly objective indicators in
the quality of their labour (menial/manual) in securing a livelihood,
their (lowly) caste status and meager or insecure income. But the
negative portrayal of their disposition and behaviour, as chhotolokmi/
eetorami/abhadrata, bhadralok assumptions of chhotolok’s criminality,
lack of morals, and dialect played a critical role.38 The empirical
behavioural referents for both—which manner would be placed
under which category—were subject to local consensus; sometimes
to contestation. For both the identities (bhadralok and chhotolok)
and entitlements, to the extent these related to high caste/low caste
distinction, birth continued to have some relevance. Though birth
from whom (parentage/genealogy) lost its earlier determining power,
but where and when of one’s birth continued to count. Even birth
from whom counted for the early cohorts of the fledging Bengali
middle class who inherited resources like money or identity (based,
for example, on their ancestors’ location in the jati hierarchy), which
helped them enter into and stay, both materially as a network of
practices and with feelings of belonging, in the new social space of
middle class. This was not simply the work of the lingering anterior
attributes—but intelligent use of old bricks for a new façade.
As the urban, educated, usually high caste middle class made a
strategic, negative use of the word babu in intra-class differentiation,
so did the English colonialists and their public intellectuals as a
semantic slur. Semantic shifts were engineered as per the demands
of racial politics in the colony. The term began its political career in
English usage as a signifier of respect. Alerted by the possibility of
stigmatization by the Bengali satirists, the meaning was nuanced for
connoting a haste for social climbing by the display of an Anglicized
lifestyle on the part of hatyat barolok (suddenly rich). To sharpen
the Englishmen’s power of denigration and denial, Macaulay’s
adjectival prefix ‘effeminate’ was drafted to create a new and fairly
inclusive stereotype, the effeminate babu.39 Since it was in the public
domain, the middle class bhadralok and the Bengali people were
aware about the stigma which they could not escape.40 Apart from
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 429

vehement protestations in newspapers, a turn to bodybuilding was

evident in the Hindu Mela initiative for ‘reclaiming valour’. By 1869,
gymnastic schools were set up in Calcutta itself.41 But at a deeper
level, the circulation of a satirical poem of 1886–which combines
the image of a marital lion-riding Durga and that of a servile male
devotee—could have unwittingly contributed to de-subjectification
of the colonial subject by motivating him to forge countervailing
hegemony.42
But hegemonic groups situated in a privileged social space do not
stop with labelling their other. To the extent, the nikristo/chhotolok/
eetorlok category represented the nineteenth century working class,
they were subject to the bhadralok moralist perception about them.
‘This moralism had two expressions, one kind and concerned,
the other cruel and indifferent toward the working people. More
often than not, the workers experienced only the latter version of
middle class morality.’43 True, there was the ‘kind and concerned’
as represented by Sasipada Banerjee. But he wanted the workers to
emulate the bhadralok ideal: to develop ‘the habits of thrift, industry,
and temperance’, to become a ‘complete gentlemen’. ‘With the arrival
of migrants from Bihar, bhadralok contempt for the merua reinforced
their negative perception’.44 The degenerate image of the workers
among their bhadralok observers continued in early twentieth
century, except, they made ‘the modern industrial system’ and ‘the
greed of the capitalist’ responsible for their moral degradation.45 Only
Kangal Harinath Majumder (1833–96) stood out. Pained by inhuman
exploitation of workers by both zamindars and the Englishmen, he
left his job at a British-owned indigo production factory, became a
school master at a school he set up, and started writing against these
atrocities in the Gram Barta Prokashika (1863), a weekly Bangla
publication that he founded. However, it is not improbable that the
‘bhadralok-chhotolok’ divide, with the former apprehensive about the
latter, underlay the bhadralok predisposition to the working people.
The Renaissance leaders ‘preferred the path of the “bhadroloks” and
avoided one which could open the gate for the subalterns in their
struggle against any authority.’46
The educated middle class was careful to set up distances from the
labuoring poor, and that manifested in the urban spaces they resided
in. The middle class, comprising the functionaries trained by the
430 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

colonial administration—the babus as their employers called them—

lived in houses in ‘the lanes and by-lanes behind the main roads in
the Black town’. They shared the Black town space with the migrant
labourers living in slums. An unhappy lot, because of the appalling
conditions of civic existence, they organized protests too. But they
lived in well-constructed houses rather than in straw huts, which in
1822 were more than half of the 67,519 premises in the city.47 By 1856,
with a significant increase in the size of the middle class population
in Calcutta, the class ‘created physical changes in the urban fabric
and invented new spatial rules to navigate the increasingly populous
city. Soon the middle class mode of living would set the pattern of the
design of elite residences and not vice versa.’48 But the poor labourers,
who eked out a miserable living, stayed in huts or lived outside of the
city. Usually invisible to the middle class bhadralok, their presence
was noted only when ‘they posed a threat to the economic and social
comforts of the bhadralok’. And, ‘the issues that stirred the bhadralok
were virtually meaningless for them’.49
However, the social distancing was far more pronounced than the
living apart in the same limited urban space. The reason the middle
class renaissance leaders were disinclined to take the labouring poor
as their partners in struggle could be because of an apprehension of
loss of the spoils of colonialism. Akshay Kumar Dutta observed in
late nineteenth century: ‘whether I enter a village or walk along a high
road I seldom hear anything except noises arising from selfishness,
conflict and pleasures of vice. Can the ultimate aim of human life
be only money and wealth, rates and prices, shortages and profits,
legal documents, proofs and witnesses, pleaders and counsels, courts
and lawsuits, forgeries and forgerers?’50 Based on the administrative
reports on jails (1871–8), he reported an increase in the number of
persons sent to jail or custody from 57.9 thousand in 1871 to 78.0
thousand in 1878. In 1871 itself—after a sudden spurt in prices—the
number reached 82.2 thousand.51 Short of criminality, many in the
so-called bhadralok middle class had an opportunistic mentality:
success-oriented, cunning, and as manipulative, as portrayed in
Basntak (a satirical magazine from 1874) in its poem, Yakhan Yeman
Takhan Teman: ‘Cunning in talk, sly in mind/Cunning in action, sly
in behaviour’.52 A similar censure came from economist Radhakamal
Mukhopadhayay (1890–1968):
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 431

Where is the fellow-feeling and compassion roused in us by Bankim

Chandra’s Bangadesher Krishak (Peasants in Bengal) (1892), Dinabandhu
Mitra’s Nildarpan [1860] and Lal Behary Dey’s Gobindo Samanta [1874,
later re-named as Bengal Peasant Life], why has it discontinued?  .  .  .  We
are becoming heartless.  .  .  . The fervent wailing of the poor is summoning
new streams of literature.53
He was afraid: ‘Unless we get back an active, autonomous and
prosperous rural life, the republic will be controlled by the rich and
the middle class. This is not a republic; this is a perversion of it. There
is no scope for peasantry’s well-being in this.’54
Interestingly, the rich people in Bengal were also subject to the
middle class bhadralok censure because of their ‘opulent decadence’.55
Entry into the middle class social space was denied to the Setts and
Basaks—merchants of cotton goods in the late eighteenth century,
who became predominantly money lenders in the city in nineteenth-
century Bengal.56 To mark the landed elite off, the middle class
created a vernacular nomenclature, as they did for themselves and the
working people. They were called vishayi (propertied), dhani/dhanilok
(wealthy), abhijata (aristocrats), baramanush (the ‘big’ people).57
What kind of attitude the labouring poor had towards the well-
placed middle class, or the rich towards bhadralok middle class, is
unrecorded. However, an underdevelopment of relations of trust
between the bhadralok trade union leaders and the rank and file was
probable.58 Within the middle class spectrum, class factions in the
lower threshold were dismayed at the lack of empathy of the financially
well-off middle class towards them. The nineteenth century Bengali
poet Krishna Chandra Mujumdar’s (1834–1907) proverbial first line
of a poem, ‘Can they (who are happy forever) even unconsciously
understand the feelings of pain of the distressed?’ (Chirosukhijan
bhrome ki kakhon byathito bedon bujhite pare?), brought this out.59
These are examples of the expressions of social distance—through
defining terms locating the collective self and its collective others,
and the corresponding attitudes and behaviour—typical of an order
of differentiations resting, in this case, on levels of earnings. To be
consciously in a class involves a group to have judgments about its
out-groups. Discriminating attitude towards the other classes is vital
for collective self-conception and diverse claims-making. This is also
true about differences within a class, which in some cases are based on
432 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

ascriptive identities like jati, gender, and place of birth. The very locus
of the middle and the sense of belonging to it had to refer to a larger
structure—both experienced and imagined—of classes with complex
rules of proximity and distance among the constituting classes.
Hence, the use of bhadralok to distinguish the nineteenth century
Bengali middle class would signify conflation of cultural disposition
and behaviour and some level of material possession represented by
income and wealth, often through excessive acquisitiveness—each
being a variable attribute within unbounded middle class social space.
Daridra athacha bhadra (poor but well-mannered) is an illustration
from the far end of the spectrum.

Transformative Interventions
A product of transformation, the nineteenth century Bengali middle
class, particularly the Calcutta residents with bhadralok identity, had
to ponder over exogenously stimulated/dictated new opportunities/
compulsions. Consensus eluded them, best represented in tussle
between the reformers/modernizers and the conservatives, both
at individual level and that of daladali (factionalism). But the
conservative reaction was an outcome of projects on change initiated
by charismatic individuals and groups, who sought to change cultural
practices. Culture and power were the spaces chosen by them to
institutionalize new practices. Once set in place, these two became the
resources the middle class used in their transformative interventions.
Knowledge acquired through formal education, personal enterprise
and exposure to Western cultural practices created for them an
opportunity to hegemonize the civilizing process. The fact that
the bhadralok component of the middle class held 83 per cent of
bureaucratic posts by 1885 was a great enabler.60 Evidently, the
transformative interventions were at the initiative of men, mainly
Hindu, with some resources like knowledge of alternatives—usually
identified as ‘progressive’, quality of life, contentiousness, power of
articulation, some place in dissemination of knowledge, support of the
existing social network, the capacity of mobilizing new support, etc.;
the same was true of the ‘conservatives’ in intense contentious cultural
politics. To figure out how they could sensitize or agitate the thinking
minds in Bengal, maybe we need to turn to the literature of the
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 433

period. That the nineteenth-century Bengali newspapers represented

a plurality of ideological positions, particularly concerning Bengal’s
encounter with modernity and the issue of social reform, would
suggest that men and women could not remain insulated from the
debates within the cultural elite.61
There is reason to believe that the middle class chose culture as
the site where only there was space from them to leave their mark.
Willingness to take risks and appropriate technical education were not
equipment enough for lasting success in business in a colonial economy
where the government for a long time refused to patronize large-scale
industry under Indian control. Only prowess in finance and marketing could
have allowed any businessman to ride out trade cycles in such an economy.
The weakness of the Bengalis in business had already been evident to
discerning onlookers in the 1870s, when the ‘young hopefuls’ were advised
by the editor of The Statesman to buy land and combine landholding with
the calling of a bania.62

This was because land, rather than trade and industry, were the basis
of the bhadralok’s prosperity. The class was a product of property
relations set up by Permanent Settlement (1793).63 It was typically
a rentier class, at least its well-placed part. Culture was the realm
where battle of minds could take place; and, language was a vital
cultural arsenal.

Language
Rationalization of language is one necessity peculiar to societies
confronting the prospect of social transformation. This is because,
knowledge-based intervention is a requisite in transformative
endeavours, and the quality of language is vital in such enterprise. In
colonial Bengal, those who took the initiative in linguistic reform had
to be well-versed in Sanskrit. The English men and the Europeans,
who played a very critical initial role, did learn the language. The
three foci of the agenda of linguistic reform were: phonemes; words,
sentences, and text; and grammar that frames them.64 At the centre
was a compilation of bilingual and monolingual dictionaries.65
Ramchandra Vidyavagish (1786–1845), a lexicographer, Sanskrit
scholar, close associate of Rammohun Roy (1772–1833), and one
of the initiators of the Brahmo Samaj, compiled the first Bengali
434 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

monolingual dictionary, Bangabhasabhidhan (1817). Rameshwar

Tarkalankar’s Bangabhasabhidhan (1839) was the next. Muktaram
Vidyavagish, a Sanskrit scholar who was in the same class in college
as Vidyasagar, wrote Shabdambudhi (1853). Ramkamal Vidyalankar’s
Prakrtivad Abhidhan (1866) was the last in the genre of monolingual
dictionary by a Bengali in the century. A number of interests
converged, to make the use of language more efficient: imperial
interest in firmer administration and control, financial transactors’
interest in intelligible accounting, legal practitioners’ interest in
vernacular terminology, and learners’ (particularly, those in Fort
William College) interest in ease of learning and use. Language
thus became a vital cultural capital, and hence, a space for both
collaboration and contestation.
Illustratively, one issue was the hegemony of Sanskrit in Bengali
grammar as in William Carey’s A Grammar of the Bengali Language
(1801).66 Rammohun Roy’s Grammar of the Bengali Language (in
English, 1826) drew on essential Bengali elements and on the
contemporary colloquial forms of speech, rather than the stiff
Sanskritic pure forms. The ‘tyranny of Sanskrit’ was duly engaged.67
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay was critical of Bengali writing and
publishing being an exclusive preserve of the fnotakata anurswarbadi
(men with the sectarian mark on their forehead, who speak in a nasal
tone) Sanskritic pundits and businessmen.68 Contestations between
linguistic styles are always fundamentally between the established and
the emergent groups: between those who gain from continuity and
those who want to move into the centre of an emergent cultural field.
The conservative Brahmins felt threatened by the rise of aparbhasa
(colloquial, the ‘other’ language).69 Bankim Chandra noted that the
Sanskritist Bhattacharya70 group, who did business (in writing and
publishing) in Sanskrit, became terribly annoyed when books were
written in the colloquial language—the Tekchandee language—with
the publication of Alaler Gharer Dulal (1858) by Peary Chand Mitra,
who used the pseudo name Tekchand Thakur.
The rise of the prose style, stimulated by the advent of Western
learning as much as by the growth of the printing press, was
a significant development, because till the third decade of the
nineteenth century, poetry was the predominant instrument of
intellection—be it legends, story, history, memoirs, songs, medicine,
and even grammar.71 The prose style set up a space for contestation
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 435

between sadhubhasa (pure/chaste/genteel/compound words of the

Sanskrit origin), based on the sixteen century Middle Bengali, and
chalitbhasa (colloquial/ quotidian/everyday language/aparbhasa,
the other language), which was put to significant circulation in the
twentieth century. The two developed simultaneously, invigorated
by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–91) and Bankim Chandra
Chattopadhyay who did the ground work for the former, and the
latter by Kaliprasanna Singha (1840–70), and Peary Chand Mitra
(1814–83). In the hands of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), the
use of sadhubhasa was restricted to verb forms, and chalitbhasa given
dignity in his early writings.72 In fact, it issue became more than that.

In poetry, the colloquial shares honours with the literary, both forms
being used in the same poem, nay, in the same line, side by side; it has
become a serious challenge of the ‘high’ language of prose as well; and, by
observing the fact that the colloquial of Calcutta has become the speech of
the educated classes everywhere in Bengal, it may be predicted that in about
another half a century the disuse to the largest scale imaginable, if not the
entire suppression, of the literary language will be in the course of things.73

The time line is evident: Bhavani Charan Bandyopadhyay’s (1787–

1848) Kalikata Kamalalay (1823), Nabababubilas (Amusements
of the Modern Baboo) (1825) in highly Sanskritized sadhubhasa;
Peary Chand Mitra’s Alaler Gharer Dulal (1858) in sadhubhasa, but
with large passages in chalitbhasa; and Kaliprasanna Singha’s Hutom
Pyanchar Naksha (Sketches of the Hooting Owl) (1863) entirely in
chalitbhasa.74
As a part of chalitbhasa, slangs made an entry through the
‘first éclatant advent’ in Hutom Pyanchar Naksha; along with it,
‘unconventional expressions such as a man about the town would
use’.75 It became a part of the contemporary debate about Bengali
language. One might even think that it was designed to provoke
debates in the community. For obvious reasons, the colonial
administration became a stakeholder. Men like Ramgati Nyayaratna
(1831–94) resented advice of John Beams (1837–1902) that a
programme of improving Bengali literature with the help of the
English and Sanskrit literature be undertaken.76 Nyayaratna (1873)
was critical of the apparently well-meaning intervention when Bengali
writers themselves were coming to a consensus. But he appreciated
John Beams’s advice that ‘rude, local [colloquial rural dialect] and
436 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

obscene words’ must be denied entry into Bengali language.77 About

the use of obscene words in the language of Alaler Gharer Dulal,
Hutom Pyanchar Naksha, and Mrinalini (1869, Bankim Chandra
Chattopadhyay), his complaint was that father and the son would
feel ashamed to read these portions together. It was unease about the
language, but not about what was thereby described.78
The challenge to the middle class bhadralok sensibility and taste
was in fact larger because of the advent of some kind of cheap erotic/
semi-erotic books. Gangakishore Bhattacharya (–1831) of Battala, the
publisher of hugely popular Adirasa (Sexual Passion), Rati Manjari
(Blooming Sexuality), Ratibilas (Sexual Pleasure), and Rasamanjari
(Blossomed Sexuality), all published in 1820, and Bhabani Charan
Bandyopadhyay, the editor of Samachar-Chandrika, paved the way
for a spate of erotic publications.79 In fact, Gangakishor Bhattacharya,
the compositor at Serampore Press, was ‘the first who conceived
the idea of printing works in the current language as a means of
acquiring wealth’.80 Being a journalist, the founder-editor of Bengal
Gazette (1818), editor and publisher of A Grammar in English and
Bengali Language (1816), Dayebhag (A Treatise on Law of Inheritence,
1816), Chkitsarnab (Ocean of Therapy, 1820), and Drabyagun
(Quality of Substance, 1824), he certainly belonged to the middle
class; and so did Bhabani Charan for similar reasons and more.
The babus of north Calcutta immersed themselves in amusement
of reading the erotic publications day and night, every time a new
book would be published.81 The books carried the exact location
of the shops wherefrom these could be obtained, along with bright
advertisements. Not content with these, peddlers—feriwalas—were
hired to move all over the city with these books on their heads and
shoulders, reaching out to readers in their homes; even up to the
rural fringes. As a result, within about four months of publication,
the books would reach their intended readers.82 Besides, low price
facilitated percolation of the publications. Obviously, the readers were
mainly the middle class men and women, and being bhadra was not
an imperative for restraint. With a more inclusive estimate of the area
of Black town covered by Battala, it was not confined to khasbattala
(original Battala) in north Calcutta only. Battala-type books were
being published from printing presses spread over entire Bengal,
including Dhaka—brihattarbattala (larger Battala).83 This obviously
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 437

meant a large middle class readership. Additionally, as if the desi

productions were not sufficient, orders for ‘sexology’ books from
England were placed. ‘Bengal  .  .  .  sent along a catalogue of popular
sexology books from the Calcutta Phrenological Institute’s Book
Depot with titles such as Amativeness—Or the Evils and Remedies
of Excessive and Perverted Sexuality and Home Treatment for Sexual
Abuses.’84 In fact, the book bazaar was flooded by obscene literature
from France and England—in some cases, their translation, and was
lapped by educated and respected people. As to the identity of the
writers, the use of pseudonyms by many of the writers suggests that
some educated bhadralok also wrote a piece or two. A few of the
writers of Guptakatha (Secret Tales) were conversant with Western
literature.85
It was a section of the same middle class which joined the anti-
obscenity campaign triggered by James Long.86 The Obscenity Law,
which banned, along with obscene publications, indecent dance
in public places, songs and narrative poems (pnachali) in praise of
deities, jatras, and kobi contests, was enacted in 1856. It was a part
of a larger bio-political project ‘to instruct Indians in the regulation
of individual conduct and to generate a confluence of interests
between the rulers and ruled—in the words of the Oriental Herald,
‘insensibly wean their affections from the Persian muse, teach them
to despise the barbarous splendour of their ancient princes, and
totally supplanting the tastes which flourished under the Mogul
reign, make them look to this country with veneration’.87 But neither
the law nor some incidences of persecution in 1880s and 1890s were
sufficient deterrents. The Bengal civil society initiative leading to
the establishment of The Society for the Suppression of Obscenity
in India (1873) through a congregation of distinguished Hindu,
Brahmo, and Muslim reformers, along with Christian clergy men,
must be understood in this context.88 Those who joined the imperial
project belonged mainly to the Calcutta-based intelligentsia. From the
1860s, they were the newly educated middle class moralist writers and
intellectuals, inculcated with colonial aesthetics,89 those coveting the
ruler’s favours, and the subservient. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay
invigorated the anti-obscenity movement by writing an article on
obscenity in Bangadarshan (December 1873). But the anti-obscenity
movement was seriously contested by another segment of the middle
438 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

class bhadralok, who also took to writing and drawing cartoons in

magazines, like Prananath Datta90 (who edited the Basantak, 1874–5).
They were apprehensive that this would lead to greater surveillance
over both traditional forms of popular culture91 and contemporary
creative writing. Among the former was the ‘bawdy satirical wit, the
frank sensuality, the hearty unashamed appetite expressed in kheurs
in the language and idiom of women’ of ‘the lower caste and lower
class self-employed women of the marketplace’, but which reached ‘the
wives and daughters of the bhadralok in the sheltered andarmahal or
zenana (secluded quarters for women)’.92 The bhadra-abhadra divide
led to an uneasy, and sometimes untenable, linguistic hierarchy.

Scientific Temper
A far greater challenge was to reform the self and it’s significant
others—thinking and bodily practices—within the personal-
familial-societal frame. Between the body and mind, the middle class
intellectuals accorded greater significance to knowledge, thus to mind,
over to health of the body.93 The rationalist Akshay Kumar Dutta
(1820–86), or Okkhoy Coomar Dutt as spelt by himself, argued that
the first duty of man was acquisition of knowledge, while the second
was preservation of good health.94 ‘Without knowledge, one cannot
know the rules relating to health and so cannot observe them’.95
For him, that essential knowledge was knowledge of nature as well
as human nature. Observation, rigorous analysis, and empiricism
were the only way of cognizing the real and its laws. That necessarily
stipulated that men should be unhooked from irrational religious
modes of thinking.

‘Yes, God is a good idea [jinis/bisoy]; well, it is a duty to remember him

always; but to believe that, if a palmyra falls [from a tree], it is [actually]
God who falls; that, if a leaf stirs, it is [actually] God who yawns; if bird
flies, it is [actually] God suddenly flying away [is an error]. To advice people
that every action and thought is due to God is not always effective. God is
a subject of profound thinking, not of games and pastime.96

He thought that the necessary transformation of thinking about

the phenomenal world with man at its centre needed a positivist
turn.97 Being the editor of the Tattwabodhini Patrika (1843–55), he
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 439

could give a wider circulation to his thought. The Patrika had ‘as
many as 700 subscribers’.98 They belonged mostly to the educated
middle class in Calcutta,99 particularly from chātrasamāj (student
community). ‘People all over Bengal awaited every issue of that paper
with eagerness, and the silent, sick but indefatigable worker at the
desk swayed for a number of years the thoughts and opinions of the
thinking portion of the people of Bengal.’100 Pursuit of reason became
a worthy value and practice among the educated class in modern
Bengal, unlike those in premodern times. Secular reason alone
could secure a free mind. Akshay Kumar’s writings disseminated his
conviction, which reflected post-enlightenment rationalism, that:
‘Pure intelligence [‘untrammelled by superstition’] is the only road
to knowledge. To enquire into truth without intellect and conscience
is like trying to hear and see without the help of eyes and ears.’101
The seedbed of its institutionalization was already laid through the
establishment of the Hindu College (1817) and other institutions of
learning in its model, including the Calcutta Medical College (1835).
Evidently, he was not alone.102 In fact, it was the prominent
vernacular journals as well as English language journals, which
from the sixties of the nineteenth century became the site of debate
over epistemological position of positivism and fundamentally over-
scientific temper.103 Akshay Kumar took the drive towards positivism
to young minds. A self-taught man in the natural sciences, he wrote
Charupath in three volumes, containing extremely popular scientific
articles on astronomy, mathematics, physics, geography, geology,
etc., in Bengali for the youth (1853, 1854, and 1859);104 and for the
elders, Bahyabastur Sahit Manabprakritir Sambandha Bichar in two
volumes, which was a transcreation of George Comb’s (1788–1858)
The Constitution of Man: The Constitution of Man considered in
Relation to External Objects (1828) towards an atheist, materialist,
and determinist understanding of human character. In the true spirit
of positivism, he dwelt on the laws for inanimate objects. He was
not an agonist, but he reviled the belief that God was the ultimate
cause. However, he drifted to atheism eventually. As was typical of
his times, his satirical wit provoked many conservatives. When he
left the Tattwabodhini community in 1855, a new series of scientific
articles was started in the Patrika: Iswarer Mahima (The Glory and
Majesty of God).105 Even when Akshay Kumar was at the helm of the
440 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Patrika, Rajnarayan Bose (1826–99) insinuated that he was ‘a mere

quadruped bearing loads of books’ and an ‘intellectual sinner’, only
because he questioned the utility of prayer.106
Akshay Kumar’s advocacy and practice of observation, rigorous
analysis, and empiricism needs to be seen as a part a struggle to
take understanding of man’s relationship with nature out of both
intuitive understanding and scriptures. But within the same Brahmo
community of the ‘ideal type’ of bhadralok,107 Debendranath Tagore
(1817–1905) had a different project: to understand ‘man’s relationship
with the Divine’, and to invigorate the movement towards theism.108
As a result, ‘there was a visible slant towards spiritualizing what
otherwise might have been purely social concern.’109 Thus, the issue
of scientific temper became embroiled in a complex struggle over
God’s agency. The issue of appropriate epistemology became a part of
a larger negotiation between homo-centric ‘architectonic’ conception,
distinctive of modern Europe, and the ‘organic’ conception of
brahminical Hinduism.110 Debendranath’s 1864 exhortation that the
Brahmo fraternity must ‘deliberate upon ways and means  .  .  .  [of] a
deeper understanding of god and religion’ was earnestly ‘received by
the emerging middle class’.111 It was also true that Ishwar Chandra
Vidyasagar was persuaded ‘to introduce a few lines about God in
the second edition of Bodhodoy [Enlightenment] (1860)’.112 But the
same middle class responded positively to Akshay Kumar’s public
appeal that the Hindus needed to develop ‘an avid interest in modern
scientific knowledge’, ‘to balance an enhanced moral and spiritual
life’.113 But despite his natural science books for the young, the new
outlook on the universe did not transform the world view ‘even of
most Bengalis’. The majority of rural Muslims and the low caste
Hindus held on to the pre-scientific conceptions. This provoked
the Bengali bhadralok.114 Though it did not involve epistemology as
an issue, another way of conceptualizing the tension of the middle
class intelligentsia is in terms of the problem of tension between
‘the indigenous and the acquired elements’ in the Bengali cultural
identity.115
A conflict between the ‘inherited matrix’ and ‘imported impulse’
is inevitable in all cases of cultural encounters.116 For the sensitive
individuals in the nineteenth century Bengali middle class, a profound
identity crisis ensued as they tried to resolve the problem of how
to integrate in his torn psyche: ‘a pathetic and slavish imitation
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 441

of everything Western from attire to mannerisms accompanied

alternated with an irrational rejection of it, and a chauvinistic
glorification of India’s past.’117 The gentlemen intellectuals, who made
creative efforts to manage the crisis—which meant engaging with
individuals, institutions, and issues—were wise enough to fall back
on Sanskrit and the shastras, though not with a revivalist agenda,
to use tradition as a resource in modernization.118 That lent Bengali
renaissance vitality and a character of its own. Rabindranath Tagore
was the best representation of endeavour to modernize with the
help of tradition; in fine arts, it was Abanindranath, who drew on
ancient and Mughal styles, even the Japanese.119 At the level of moral
instructions, select aspects of Hindu Nitishastra, ‘which accords a
“fundamental importance [to] learning, or vidya”’, were ‘reinvented
to fit modern bourgeois parameters’.120 The manifestation of quest for
knowledge, led by the middle class bhadralok intellectuals, was the
creation of a large number of academic and cultural institutions.121
As the middle class intellectuals were engaged in debates over
the tradition-modernity contradiction, what were the responses
of the mediocre segments of the middle class? A clamour for
learning English and for knowledge and skills accessible thereby
was pronounced:

An eagerness to educate their boys increased to an extent that it was difficult

for David Hare [who imparted free education in English at his home] to
come out of his home. Once he would, flocks of boys would run along the
two sides of his palki (palanquin) begging him ‘me poor boy, have pity on
me, me take in your school’.122

So did young Ramtanu Lahiri (1813–98). Even the elders made

similar earnest requests. That was in the late 1820s. The popularity
of Akshay Kumar’s scientific articles in Tattwabodhini Patrika in the
1850s has already been noted.

Intimacies
As they negotiated the tension between positivist epistemology and
the demands of religious faith, the nineteenth century middle class
men and women had to cope with the strain between attraction
of man-woman relationship based on mutual respect, love and
consent, and patriarchal imperatives. Love as a civilizing emotion
442 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

creates new rules and practices for domestic life, which privilege
individual needs more than imperatives of traditional hierarchies.123
‘A persistent complaint in the nineteenth century was the lack of
mutual love in the relation between the husband and the wife.’124
Akshay Kumar regretted in 1842 that men and women could not
marry of their own free choice. For him it was a social evil.125 As far
as women were concerned, conjugality robbed of its intimacy and
respect has been widely researched.126 So long as everybody fell in the
line set by patriarchy, there was no tension; ‘for husbands, conjugal
life was marked by rights; for wives, daily chores, nightly sexuality
and comprehensive subservience.’ Women, protesting against angry
and violent husbands, were expectedly an exception. Haimabati Sen
(1866–1933), one of the early lady doctors in Bengal, was one of
them. She wrote:
My husband was furious and began to scream abuses meant for me  .  .  .  ‘You
bastard woman, am I your husband’s servant? You want me to take care of
your daughter! I shall not allow this [her medical practice].’ I was exhausted
and found it difficult to put up with such behaviour, so I blurted out, ‘If you
wish to live off your wife’s income, then you have to look after the children.
I was not born with ten hands’. I had hardly said these words when he fell
upon me like a bandit and thrashed me mercilessly.127

But between her two marriages when she was nine and twenty-three
years old respectively, and during her two spells of widowhood, she
had to silently suffer perverse male sexuality everywhere. This was
her second husband (referred to in the quotation), who had a taste
of her otherwise repressed anger. Incidentally, she was persuaded to
remarry by her Brahmo male benefactors.
Constrained by patriarchy, some of the middle class men could
and did also enjoy romantic love with a courtesan, or with another
woman at home.128 However, women were under close and continuous
surveillance. Ksetramani Das was convicted (1878) for an adulterous
relationship with her maternal uncle. Women could seldom claim
their rights as individuals. Her husband’s conservativism, leading
to conjugal friction, led Dayamayi Sen (1855–91) to stay separately
when her children had grown up, despite his pleadings.129 This would
have been be a rare case of a dissenting woman creating spatial dis-
tance from her husband and in-laws home. Only Kailashbashini
Debi (1829–95), in her Atmakatha (her diary, written between the
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 443

age of 17 and 44), described her relationship with her husband,

which among other things, was characterized by a strong sense of
companionship and mutual respect. This kind of a relationship was
definitely quite rare among the women of the nineteenth century.130
By the middle of the nineteenth century, men, mainly Brahmo
men, were drawn by the ethos of chivalry, romantic love, and
companionate marriage through English literature. Also, ‘Free love
became part of the stereotype of the emancipated woman.’131 In both
cases, the larger necessity of coping with imperatives of modernity
played the critical part in initiating changes in the man-woman
relationship. Also, men were the agents of a variety of reforms of
beliefs and practices that women were to comply with. However,
despite the efforts, only slow change could ensue. The Bengali
bhadramahila continued her reverence towards her husband, and
the bhadralok conceded only that much of change in his spouse as
would make her complementary to but not competitive with him, and
add to his self-esteem as an enlightened person. ‘By the end of the
century the “enlightened partner” was a fait accompli, but the notion
of “possession” still remained.’132 In the patriarchy renovated133 under
‘a hegemonic transnational nineteenth century domestic discourse’,
‘young wives saw compelling advantages to the more intimate, dyadic
husband-wife relationships proposed by their reforming husbands.’134
In fact, in good measure, they resisted and evaded reformist male
control over their readings and writings.135 However, the Bengali
bhadramahila was largely absent in the public debate over the Age of
Consent Bill (1891).136 The familial intimate relationships obviously
included relationship with children and other categories, if household
would be the point of reference. Desher mukh ujjwal korbe (will be
the nation’s pride)—such was the wish which demanded a right
combination of shason (disciple) and sohag (affection) from parents
and their surrogates towards their children.137 Shibnath Shastri’s
Grihadharma (Domestic Duties) (c.1889) was by way of reformist
engagement with the critical institution.138

Fine Arts
The tension between the inherited and the new arrivals in course of
colonization of Bengali life in the forms of aesthetic discourses and
practices touched the sphere of fine arts, too. It became complicated
444 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

by distinction between ‘artisan’ (draughtsman, copyist) and ‘artist’, by

hierarchization of fine arts and applied or industrial arts, by notions
of high art and low art, by real or imagined difference between
bhadralok and chhotolok aesthetic capabilities and entitlements, or
lack of them, and above all, by issues in nationalism. The bhadralok
identity became implicated in the dynamics of contestation and
convergence between these overlapping binaries. At a still more
fundamental level, the issues in creation of new Bengali self-hood,
cultural sensibility, and cultural nationalism defined the frame of
Bengali thinking in the nineteenth century.
In the co-presence of diverse discursive practices in the art
universe, the ‘new gentlemen artists straddled all three worlds of art
activity’: the ‘exclusive world of “high art” centered around the fine
arts exhibitions, the perfected practice of Western-style oil painting,
and the patronage of the European and Indian rich’; ‘a spectrum of
second-tier art professions, those of small-time portrait painters,
drawing masters, engravers and lithographers’; and, ‘the popular
commercial art of the city, replacing traditional forms by a different
variety of Indian pictures.’139 The bhadralok became the connector
of these layers. However, they did not command the character or
capacity to patronize like Cosimo and Lorenzo Medici (1449–92),
who belonged to the very rich and powerful banking family in the
Republic of Florence. They could not appreciate the artistic talent
of Brunelleschi (1377–1446), Botticelli (1445–1510), Donatello
(1386–1466), and Michelangelo (1475–1564).140
The artisan-artist distinction represented the distinction between
‘acquired skill’ (drawing and print-making, engraving/the Company
painters) and ‘talent and creativity’ (realistic and illusionist oil
painting)141 and evidently, a hierarchy by the middle of the century
with the latter carrying the imprint of the imperial pedigree. The
bhadraloks created spaces for themselves—muting the racial divide—
in the category of artist. Thereby, they successfully claimed some
social respect over the Company painters (1860s), the Kalighat patuas
(c.1809 till 1920s), and old Calcutta woodcut experts like Ramdhan
Swarnakar and Nritylal Dutta—the wood and metal engravers of
Battala—the so-called bazaar artists. Many among them were rural
migrants drawn to the city, some suffering from social sinking due to
diminished court patronage. But all of them were in search of income
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 445

and some social appreciation, and for that they had to incorporate
elements of colonialism-mediated Western art.142 However, most of
them lost out to lithographers and photographers, and the artisan as
a category withered away; or re-invented themselves after training
in ‘drawing, painting and modelling’ in the Calcutta School of Art
(1854).143
Gradually, the ‘gentlemen’ artists became the sole art practitioners.
Take the case of Kalighat pat painting. In its initial creative moments,
it was looked down upon by the bhadralok as ‘inferior’ art. The
litterateur and art scholar Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyaya (1847–
1919), in his The Art and Industries of Bengal (1886), belittled this
art form as being of low standard.144 The necessity of bazaar painting
first diminished, then disappeared with the appearance of large litho
prints of ‘realistic mythological pictures [that] provided a middle-class
public with its first modernized alternatives, both to the traditional
“bazzar” iconography of the Kalighat and Battala pictures and to the
alien iconography of Western neoclassical paintings’.145
This new category of middle class Bengalis turned to vocational
training, thereby distancing themselves from bazaar art, and aspiring
to be eventually part of ‘high art’ (exhibitions, commissions, private
collection). But the urge to take from the West remained, as in
the case of the artisans, due to both art’s sake and the demands of
an expanding art market. Akin to the materiality of the Western
techniques was finding in the ‘new’ art the prospect of earning an
income as well as social esteem. Dinanath Sen’s A Proposal for School
of Industry or Practical Science (1876) was an example of meticulous
planning towards this end.146 With the avowed purpose of equipping
the Bengali youth at the middle and lower strata with skills that
could earn them a livelihood easily, and with some respect absent
in clerkship in government establishments, the Calcutta School of
Art (1854) was established at the initiative of the Society for the
Promotion of Industrial Art (1854),147 with members like Rajendra
Lal Mitra, Jotindra Mohan Tagore, Ramgopal Ghosh, and Peary
Chand Mitra, where the labouring class people like blacksmiths,
potters, and carpenters, not the children of gentlemen, could get
themsleves enrolled.148 The promise of aesthetic education was no less
a point of bhadralok attraction. In fact, it was of greater attraction
for its capacity of bestowing social esteem. Without reckonability in
446 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

terms of either (industrial) capital or labour power of the working

class, the emergent middle class had to acquire social esteem as its
mainstay in hierarchy in colonial Bengal. However, it took almost
three decades for the bhadralok youth to join courses on industrial
art taught through scientific methods.149 For the upper stratum of the
middle class, the so-called abhijata bhadralok—men like Gopimohan
Tagore and Dwarkanath Tagore—the inclination was towards Western
fine arts and its styles. They were the men who had become rich as
dewans, banians, commercial agents, or by trading with different
English companies. Financially secure, they could afford to pursue
their abstract taste in fine arts, in some cases as wealthy amateur
painters, collectors, and patrons.
Enabling the Bengali youth to access employment opportunities
on the strength of their skills of ‘drawing, painting, sculpting, and
printmaking’ was high on the pedagogic agenda of Shyamacharan
Sreemani (?–1875).150 He ‘exemplified the new Bengali middle class
professional in the realm of art teaching and practice, as yet a small,
limited group.’151 But his engagement with ‘the  .  .  .  mundane drill
of geometrical drawing’,152 was only a part of a larger project. In his
Shuksha Shilper Utpatti O Arya Jatir Shilpa Chaturi (Origin of Fine
Art and Artistic Acumen of the Aryans) (1874), he urged Indian
artists to abstain from the blind imitation of Western art and to
explore Indian art.153 However, it was much more than an exhortation;
it was ‘the earliest art historical venture’.154 His use of Bengali insured
wider dissemination of ‘refined knowledge’ of art and ‘artistic
sensibility’. His efforts must be judged in the context of the fact that
‘the minor part [was] assigned to visual arts by bhadralok society
as opposed to the place given to literature and music’.155 Unlike this
cultural nationalist position at the discursive level, Annada Prasad
Bagchi (1849–1905) followed the European style in oil painting and
portraiture. However, even he could not set aside the prospect of
money-making by artists as irrelevant for the pursuit of fine arts. The
Calcutta Art Studio (1878), formed at his initiative, worked towards
making art a profession. It opened up the possibility of collective effort
to do business in art objects like portraiture and book illustrations.
Colourful lithographs of deities and illustrious Bengalis like Ishwar
Chandra Vidyasagar became very popular. At the same time, it created
a taste for European realistic representations.156 He responded to the
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 447

contemporary need for organizing for art and disseminating thoughts

on artistic sensibility as an integral part of the bhadralok self-hood.
The first-ever fine arts organization for Bengali artists, the Indian
Association for the Promotion of Fine Arts and National Gallery
(1892), and the first monthly journal of fine arts, Shilpa Puspanjali
(1885–6), were inspired by him.
As typical of the times, two contrary points of view and practice
engaged each other on the issue of development of art in India. The
tension between the two responses to the possibilities—between
applied art and fine arts, and whatever these entailed—found a
resolution in Abanindranath Tagore’s ‘new hierarchy of values in art,
placing shakh (fancy/hobby) above shiksha (education), inspiration
above training, self-expression above technical perfection, feeling
above form.’157 His style of painting signified ‘the new Orientalist
discourse’ that had place for ‘a deep religiosity’ as well as ‘a new spirit
of nationalism’. He inculcated new aesthetic values in the middle
class.158 The Bengal School movement, which he spearheaded, had a
formative influence on middle class self-identity.
Parallel to the aesthetic engagements in the field of fine arts
was the development of the genre of caricature drawings by middle
class artists against incivilities of its own class faction, the nouveau
riches.159 In fact, it developed a larger agenda of self-criticism, may be
because it flaunted civility as its class mark. ‘But caricature, parody,
satire and travesty as modern weapons of social comment began in
earnest in colonial Calcutta, strikingly in the “low art” of Kalighat’
(1840/50 to late-1920/30s, peaking in 1880 to 1890)160—a genre
which was indigenous in style and technique, with least influence of
Western aesthetics, and deep intertextual connection with writings
of Bhabani Charan Bandyopadhay (Nab Babu Bilas, 1825), Tekchand
Thakur (Aalaler Gharer Dulal, 1858), Kaliprasanna Sinha (Hutam
Penchar Naksha, 1862), and Michael Madhusudan Dutt (Ekei ki Baley
Sabhyata, 1859). A categorical answer to the question whether the
babus belonged to the middle class is difficult. But they did try to be
different in their everyday lifestyle. Some argue that they ‘consciously
distanced [themselves] from the middle class  .  .  .’. 161 As far as the
babus were at the centre of this genre, the portrayals were focused
on ‘a particular type of young man who belonged to the class of the
nouveaux riche, foppish dandies whose half-baked Anglicization
448 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

and Sanskritisation had earned him the sarcastic title of “ejuraj”,

diminutive of “educated raja” and “phul-babu” or the “flower-delicate
fop” who spent most of his time and wealth on courtesans’.162 The
genre lost its space to woodcuts and engravings and eventually
to cheap lithographic and oleographic prints. But babus were not
reckonably one of the significant themes in Battala woodcuts. Only
four concerned them.163
The deeper significance of such banter paintings and engravings
either in the Kalighat paintings of babus or in the woodcuts for the
city’s aspiring middle class factions lay in their articulation of lifestyles
to be morally censured, envied but also to be cherished as a mark
of arrival at some imagined higher spot in urban hierarchy. ‘The
possession of these pictures, in a way, brought the owner closer to the
hallowed circle of the fashionable upper class gentry, providing him a
means of annexing himself to the “ideal”.’164 The woodcut print makers
were part of the city’s dissatisfied neo-urban, petty bourgeoisie. They
also developed an animosity towards the native aristocracy and
the mercantile bourgeoisie. They felt that ‘the relatively mute petty
bourgeoisie would love to see their aspirations and apprehensions,
likes and dislikes, envies and appreciations articulated and expressed
coherently and succinctly.’165

Economic Enterprise
The intense and complex engagement with issues in cultural
transformation of the middle class self and the framework of
institutions could be because it was the only space where the nineteenth
century Bengali middle class, particularly its bhadralok segment,
could constitute and reconstitute itself. If it was not playing any
significant role in economy, it was not because of its aversion towards
trade and industry. Motilal Seal, Ram Gopal Ghosh, Digambar Mitra,
Surya Kumar Tagore, Raghunath Goswami, Bholanath Chandra, etc.,
testify that there was no dearth of entrepreneurial ability among
the Bengali people in the first half of nineteenth century. Ramdulal
Dey, the millionaire Bengal merchant of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth century, Asutosh Dey and Promathanath Dey,
Rajindra Datta, Kalidas Datta, Rajkrishna and Radhakrishana Mitra,
Ramchandra Banarjee, and Kalisankar and Durgaprasad Ghose were
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 449

the prominent early banias who carried on large-scale businesses in

Calcutta with the Americans. It was not that money-making was not
in the middle class agenda. But their enterprise, even in cases of joint
Bengali-British partnerships between 1830 and 1847, was confined
to the middleman role. ‘[T]ill the 1840s there had been considerable
upper caste Bengali involvement in business, while throughout the
nineteenth century newspapers and periodicals in Bengal repeatedly
urged upon their readers the benefits and virtues of independent
enterprise.’166 Between 1830 and 1850, men like Dwarkanath Tagore,
Motilal Seal, and Ramgopal Ghosh, ‘tried to make a break-through
in Western-style business and banking and even industry’. In the
second half of nineteenth century, many such Bengali enterprises were
using their own technology based on rigorous research, rather than
borrowing from the West. The enterprising individuals belonged to
the ‘small and middle bourgeoisie, [who] unlike the big bourgeoisie,
were neither brokers nor intermediaries of foreign capital. They
were self-reliant in capital, management, and marketing.’167 They
included men like Kishori Mohan Bagchi (ink, 1883), P.C. Ray
(drugs from indigenous materials, 1892), Ananda Prasad Roy and
Dhanakrishna Basu (Bengal Provincial Railway Company, 1895), and
Hemendramohan Bose (perfume, hair oil, phonography, 1905).168
In the banking sector, some of the important personalities were
Dwarkanath Tagore (Union Bank, 1829–47) and Durga Charan Laha,
Hiralak Sil, Patit Paban Sen (Calcutta Banking Corporation, 1863,
renamed National Bank of India, 1864). Such initiative followed the
third phase of agency houses in Bengal between 1830 and 1847, that
is, until the commercial crisis.169 Their resolve was firm. According
to P.C. Ray, ‘When I founded the BCPW (Bengal Chemical and
Pharmaceutical Works Ltd in 1892) I had not only the idea of
wiping out the reproach that the Bengalees were good for nothing in
business affairs, but also of making it a model institution.’170 But the
middle class bhadralok remained confined to small scale commodity
production, and Bengali merchants and financial capital had already
lost out to English private capital.171 Also, the economic depressions
of 1830–3 and 1847–8 had badly affected its prospects.
The upper caste segments (Brahmins and Kayasthas) of the
middle class found in power over land—and not in mercantile and
industry—the mainstay of social repute.172 But they were taken over
450 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

by the idea that becoming professionals through necessary training

would be a more secure base for social prestige and financial security.
Many exploited the opportunity to accumulate wealth. A far more
potent cause of preference of salaried income and prestige due to
colonial employment evidently lay in the structure of the colonial
economy and pre-eminence of capital inflow from England, which
diminished the importance of indigenous capital, particularly with
the onset of a secure classical colonial relationship between England
and India forged between 1860 and 1900, and not in the bhadralok
value system.173 Unable to match with the power of the British capital,
they exited the process of capital accumulation.174 The middle class
learnt the hard way the rapacious predisposition of metropolitan
capital.
A sign of their integration into the capitalist frame of thinking
was a significant effort to vernacularize economics. Two kinds of
books were published. The first was intended for schools for primary
teachers’ training and Bengali-medium schools, primary schools,
and the common people. These were inspired by, even modelled
on, ‘texts of Whately, Mill, Fawcett, Adam Smith, and other famous
English and French authors’.175 These included Gopaul Chunder
Dutt’s Dhanabidhan (1862), a translation of an English primer called
Easy Lessons on Money Matters and Elements of Political Economy
and Money Matters in Bengal by Nrisingha Chandra Mukhurji.176
It propagated the economic ‘wisdom’ that only an increase in
the number of the rich individuals would probably diminish
the misery of the poor people.177 The author wanted readers to
believe that, depending on the measure of labour and intelligence
used, some would be rich and some poor. Knowing economics
was an imperative for earning money—the principal purpose of
living. The other books of the same genre were Artha Byabohar by
Rajkrishna Raychowdhury,178 Naba Arthaniti (New Economics) by
Satyacharan Bidyabinod,179 Arthaniti: Elements of Political Economy
by Jogindranath Samaddar,180 and Daridder Krandan (Tears of the
Poor) by Radhakamal Mukhopadhyay.181 Rajkrishna, in a brief
preface written in English to his Artha Byabahar (1875, 12th edition)
presented his work as a translation of Dr Whately’s Money Matters.
In Arthaniti O Arthabyabahar, Jogindranath Samaddar provided an
elementary exposition on the Ricardoian ideas which shaped colonial
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 451

economic policy in Bengal. David Ricardo’s Principles of Political

Economy and Taxation (1817) was translated by Sudha Kanta Dey
which was published in serial form in Arthic Unnati between 1928
and 1930.182 These probably made up for the deficiency of ‘the rarity
of proper elementary books in Oriental languages’.183 The other
kind of books on economics was represented by writings of Amrita
Lal De (1846–1911).184 His advised the illiterates in economics on
wealth-making in his two treatises—How to be Wealthy (1879), which
emphasized on ethic of hard work and discipline, and The Path to
Wealth (1883)—and in the story How a Rupee became a Hundred
Thousand (1884). Typical of the new middle class was the learning
of new economics. (What about the lower middle class, clerks for
example?)

Political Turn
A middle class’s turn to politics in a colonial setting was inevitable,
as was moving away from reform to national liberation. Their
frustrations played an important role in this change. The nineteenth
century Bengali middle class became the critical medium of political
articulation in the absence of an indigenous bourgeoisie and
labour aristocracy,185 and that it did variously through voluntary
associations, but mainly through the Indian Association (1876).
The other associations were: the British India Association (1851)
and the Indian League (1875). Though the British India Association
(Radha Kanta Deb, Prasanna Kumar Tagore) sought to create an
impression that it was open to all classes, being a pressure group
for the rentier aristocrats (landlords and merchants), it carefully
maintained its distance from the middle class and unambiguously
opposed colonial administration’s initiative ‘to rationalise the lot of
the emerging labour force in and around Calcutta in 1870s’.186 In their
support for the indigo ryots in the early 1860s and the tea plantation
coolies in the late 1860s and early 1870s, they were prompted by
political expediency, rather than by empathy with the oppressed.
With clearly defined rentier aristocratic class interest, it became ‘the
strongest supporter’ of the colonial system to secure its position.
Its support for the nationalist cause was not beyond its primary
concern with their class interest. The formation of the Indian League
452 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

and the Indian Association were, in a way, a reaction to that. The

first (formed by Vidyasagar, Dwarkanath Mitra, Akshay Chandra
Sircar, Shishir Kumar Mitra, and Krishna Mohan Banerjee) was the
result of an urban middle class initiative from lawyers, teachers in
schools or colleges, government officials, editors, doctors, merchants,
and private clerks—from Calcutta as well from the districts.187
Compared to the Indian Association, the Indian League represented
a different slice of the bhadralok community: predominantly
Brahmos or Christians, and without close ties to Hindu College,
which was an important status marker. However, with increased
entry of the rentier aristocrats, its initial middle class character was
compromised. In fact, its early social composition reversed within
two years of its foundation. Many members, including the majority
of the Brahmos and the last President, exited the League and formed/
joined the Indian Association, which was more middle class in
orientation and in terms of membership from the professions. In
fact, the Association became a stronghold of the Brahmos. Under
some kind of collective leadership, it had stronger commonalities
like rejection of ‘the orthodoxy of their past’, involvement with
development of colonial institutions such as English education, the
press, and voluntary associations. It indicated ‘the real beginning of
a middle-class political movement in India.’188 Some of the leading
members (Ananda Mohan Bose, Kali Charan Banerjee, Krishna
Mohan Banerjee, Surendranath Banerjee, Jogendranath Vidyabhusan)
mobilized their students in their articulation of demands. It even
connected with the Bengal peasantry. It brought the peasant issues to
the core of the city (‘organising public demonstrations of peasants in
Calcutta and in the mufassal’ in connection with the Bengal Tenancy
Act, 1885, organizing ‘mass meetings’ in the city and in the districts
on the Rent Bill in 1881 and ‘massive demonstrations of peasants’ in
support of the Bill). But the Association made no attempt to secure
the rights of ‘peasants  .  .  .  without occupancy claims, sharecroppers
or agricultural labourers’.189
Setting of numerous branch offices throughout India, holding
the National Conference (1882), and connecting (1879–84) with
the British Liberal Party signalled qualitative change in the political
art of mobilization by the Association. Despite trying to forge a
wider class alliance, it ‘had some difficulty in developing a policy
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 453

which went beyond the interests of the middle classes.’190 It became

exclusionary, despite its postures and practices, and made virtually
impossible for the peasants to join the Association at the stipulated
special membership fee. Indeed, ‘its interest was not so much in
the peasant as a cultivator whose surplus [was] confiscated by the
zamindar, but in rather in the cultivable land as a profitable area of
interest.’191 The richer sections of the middle class, unable to invest
in industry, could invest money in land along with urban property.
That was why the Bengali intelligentsia did not encourage ‘a direct
settlement with the cultivating classes  .  .  .  in zamindary settlement
areas.’192 In fact, a calculated passivity had been the typical middle
class response to communitarian peasant rebellions (periodic Chuar
protests, 1799–1832; Barasat rebellion, 1831; Farazi movement,
1837–48; Pagalpanthi movements, 1825–7, 1832–3; Santal-Hool,
1855–6) and their coercive termination by the colonial authority
in the first half of the nineteenth century;193 and even a complicity
is detectable through a close reading of the period. The defence of
Neel-darpan by the the literati of Bengal was a

.  .  .  pretext—for the fabrication of a nice little middle-class myth about

a liberal Government, a kind-hearted Christian priest, a great but
impoverished poet and a rich intellectual who was also a pillar of society—a
veritable league of Power and Piety and Poetry—standing up in defence
of the poor ryot. Coming when it did, this myth did more than all else to
comfort a bhadralok conscience unable to reconcile a borrowed ideal of
liberty with a sense of its own helplessness and cowardice in the face of a
peasant revolt.194

The poor ryot could be at most the object of pity of the educated
bhadralok, which further reinforced his subjectivity. They were a
part of the socially superior, ‘who made [them] aware of his place in
society as a measure of [their] distance from themselves—a distance
expressed in differentials of wealth, status and culture.’195
At the same time, the bhadralok was unwilling to take up any
of the issues of a fledging labouring class. For example, they were
against the Mehter’s strike (1877) and the Factory Act (1881).196 A few
men from the intelligentsia, like Dwarkanath Ganguli (1844–98) did
initiate a reckonable campaign in the 1880s against the slave labour
conditions in the tea plantations, but none towards organizing the
454 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

coolies themselves.197 But the issue of entry into Covenanted Service,

so dear to the educated bhadralok, was the Association’s first issue
to engage the colonial state with.198
Despite their proclivities and limitations, these pressure groups
secured the idea of interest representation within the colonial state
framework.199 But it is also true that all the sectional/class interests
were not conceded by the authorities; only ‘the loyalist stakeholders’,
‘the ciphers’, were accommodated through nomination between
1862 and 1892. 200 Prasanna Kumar Tagore of the British India
Association was nominated to the Indian Legislative Council to
represent the landed aristocracy. This bias was resented by ‘the literati
or the intelligentsia, the representatives of the urban, educated and
professional classes.’201 But the situation of a place and only a voice
without power, in the legislature, was common to all the classes. This
coincidence was certainly a result of colonial inattention to ‘competing
aspirations’ of the various classes and their factions as far as legislative
representation was concerned. Their aspirations concerned a broad
range of objective interests whose meanings nuanced according to
their subjectivities, like emotional commitment.
The nineteenth century multi-layered Bengali middle class,
specially its intelligentsia component in the educated bhadralok
seeking positions in the new power structure and status regime, could
not by itself secure anything beyond what the colonial state conceded
in its own interest. Denial of promotion to Bhudev Mukhopadhyay
(1827–94) in the Bengal Education Service and humiliations that
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay had to face during his service,
were well known.202 Similar was the impotency of the independent
(non-intermediary) indigenous capitalist either to find its free space
in the colonial economy or to secure a singular leading position in
terms of already articulated claims to be heard. So, in the formation
of ‘a countervailing hegemony’—‘an alliance of diverse interests’,
the best partners that national capital could find were the rural rich
and the urban middle classes.203 Among the cluster of incompletely
formed classes, almost all of them being ‘circumscribed by localness
and [unable] to act as a class’, the urban middle class provided the
‘surrogate spokesmen’ of an array of classes in formation, from the
business classes to the labouring poor in cities and villages. In a ‘a
multi-structural economy’ comprising different regimes of relations
of production, such had to be the character of the countervailing
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 455

hegemony. In a way, the middle class, with its command over

language and argumentativeness, became the articulator, mobilizer,
and agitator signifying the ‘emergence of a public opinion and a
general will’. It was not merely the ‘unemployed malcontents’ of those
segments of the middle class, who did not find employment in either
higher or lower colonial bureaucracy, which drove the middle class
into contentious politics. Even those who were employed as clerks
in colonial administration, were being ‘prepared’ by their experience
of deprivation and domination by the racist administration, for a
plunge.204 In fact, by the 1880s, they were held in suspicion by their
employer.

Conclusion
Language played a critical part in colonial commands, in colla­
borationist arguments, and in contestations of both. In their invasion
of epistemological spaces in the colony, the first step the colonizers
took—beginning from 1770—was learning the local languages,205
in good measure, in ‘an anxious search for semantic coherence’.206
The middle class Bengalis had a lesser problem mastering English
only while trying to read the colonizer’s mind. That they did well, as
indicated in their English literary output, and more, when they used
their local language in vernacular prints to disseminate among people
their contestation of the imperial language of command, typical of
‘governance by modern, impersonal bureaucratic regimes based on
abstract categories and positive rules rather than familiar political
relationships’,207 and its practice of ‘government house utilitarianism’
(Bernard Williams).208 In both cases, the mastery over use of words
counted. For the Bengali middle class elite, the use of the vernacular
was gainful to send the message to both the contemporary political
society and the civil society that samaj and sarkar should be kept
separate. This was distinctive of Bengali nationalism, which no longer
wanted their samaj to be reformed by the colonial state rooted in
an orientalist representation of India.209 That was the way ‘Bengali
liberalism  .  .  .  challenge[d]  .  .  .  the colonial utilitarian claim that
Indian social relations were chaotic and disordered, unknowable and
ungovernable without the intrusion of the colonial state’s classifying
mind.’210 The Bengali liberals preferred the samaj to regenerate on its
own. This was a different liberal thought—as against ‘the arrogance
456 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

of imperial liberalism’—that built on the separation between samaj

and sarkar, or between society and the state. Rammohun Roy, the
founder of the Brahmo Sabha movement (1828), was its principal
spokesperson. In keeping with its premise, Bengali liberalism fell
back on classical Indian texts. Rammohun’s ‘argumentation is strongly
reminiscent of his training in Indian philosophy and logic’ when he
developed the Bengali liberal counterpoint to the British discourse
of coercion.211
En route to nationalism, the middle class Bengalis’ initial response
was patriotism. In this, the print media played an important role.
In between Bengali awakening— Rammohun Roy and ‘Young
Bengal’—in times of high imperialism (late eighteenth century to
the 1830s/40s) and the age of nationalism (late nineteenth century
and early twentieth century), Bengali patriotism found expression
in the writings and activities of Harish Chandra Mukherjee, a clerk
in a colonial office, and also the editor of The Hindoo Patriot, an
English newspaper published in Calcutta from the mid-nineteenth
to the early twentieth century, which was linked with the British
Indian Association. This sense of patriotism, though marked by
ambivalence, articulated ‘the embryonic nationalist ideas current
during the pre-nationalist era from Indian “nationalism” per se’.212 It
was ‘pre-nationalist’ in the sense that the idea of the nation-state was
not widely shared by the Indian people of Harish Chandra’s time—
the mid-nineteenth century. The beginning of the dissolution of the
colonial mind, which had received liberal-bourgeois values through
inter-organizational links among educational bodies, newspapers
and magazines, and voluntary associations, and which provided the
ideological base of the colonial state, was a significant development.
Similar was looking out for a broader class alliance with the emerging
rural bourgeoisie and even the rudimentary urban working class.213
But ‘feelings of mingled contempt and fear of the “lower orders”’214
were noticeable even among the leadership of the moderate Congress
(1885). Surendranath Banerjee, one of the intelligentsia, found in
course of a temperance campaign in 1887 ‘the lower classes utterly
alien’.215 Close to a century of turmoil was not enough for the Bengali
middle class, particularly its bhadralok component, to lower the
semantic boundary it set around itself by an array of self-adulating
words in the early nineteenth century.
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 457

Notes
1. Simon Gunn and James Vernon, eds., ‘Introduction: What was Liberal
Modernity and Why was it Peculiar in Imperial Britain?’, The Peculiarities
of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain, California: University of
California Press, 2011, p. 5.
2. John McGuire, The Making of the Colonial Mind: A Quantitative Study
of the Bhadralok in Calcutta, 1857–1885, Canberra: Australian National
University, 1983.
3. Ibid., p. 122.
4. Dror Wahrman, Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation
of Class in Britain: c.1780–1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995, p. 2. He comments: ‘This is exactly what became of the category of
“middle class”: it was rendered a natural and self-evidently visible part of
social reality; it was seen as an uncontested and unproblematic statement
of fact; it was provided with a cogent storyline that explained its origins
and justified its existence; it was given the simplicity and the power of
an essence (and, one may add, it was then bequeathed as such to future
generations of historians).’ See ibid., p. 18.
5. By the 1880s, the total number of English-educated Indians was
approaching the 50,000 mark, if the number of matriculates may be taken
as a rough indicator (only 5000 as yet had BA degrees). The number of
those studying English went up fairly rapidly from 298,000 in 1887 to
505,000 in 1907, while the circulation of English language newspapers
climbed from 90,000 in 1885 to 276,000 in 1905. A ‘microscopic
minority’, as the British never got tired of pointing out (the literacy
figures even in 1911 were only 1 per cent for English and 6 per cent for
the vernaculars).  .  .  .
   See, Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, 1885-1947, Delhi: Macmillan India
Limited, 1983, pp. 65–6. The numerical strength of the middle class
bhadralok in the late 1930s was estimated to be 6 per cent of Bengal’s
population. Amit Kumar Gupta, Crisis and Creativities: Middle-Class
Bhadralok in Bengal c.1939–52, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2009,
p. 13.
6. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always
looking at one’s self through the through the eyes of others, of measuring
one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and
pity. One even feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two
thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body,
whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
   See, W.E.B. Du Bois, ‘Of our Spiritual Strivings’ (1897), The Soul of the
Black Folk, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 8.
458 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
7. ‘“Weltanschauung”  .  .  .  [is] understood as a phenomenon mediating
between the facts of society and individual intellectual production
and reception: it is seen as being conditioned by sociological facts and
therefore as a historical and sociological category through which, and
therefore indirectly, society enters into intellectual production.’ For
modernism as a weltanschauung, see, Tamás Demeter, ‘Weltanschauung
as a Priori: Sociology of Knowledge from a “Romantic” Stance’, Studies
in East European Thought, vol. 64, no. 1–2, 2012, pp. 39–40.
8. Rajat Kanta Ray, Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875–1927,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 89–95, 125–7. The author
points out an alliance between the powerful and orthodox landed
magnates of the British Indian Association and the lower middle class
and smaller gentry in rural Bengal in contending with the reformist elite
with regard to the Consent Bill. This could not have been the only such
case.
9. F.B. Bradley-Birt, Twelve Men of Bengal in the Nineteenth Century with
Twelve Illustrations, 4th edn., Calcutta: S.K. Lahiri and Co., c.1927. See
http://www.archive.org/details/twelvemenofbenga00bradiala, accessed on
9 March 2017. Individual-centric analysis has been the standard practice
for all academic and popular writings on nineteenth century Bengal. For
example: Bipinbihari Gupta, Puratan Prasanga, Calcutta: Paragon Press,
1912; Amiya P. Sen, Explorations in Modern Bengal c.1800–1900: Essays
on Religion, History and Culture, Delhi: Primus Books, 2010.
10. See, Bradley-Birt, Twelve Men of Bengal, Preface, p. 3. The men are:
Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833), Hazi Mahomed Mohsin (1730–1812),
Ramtanu Lahiri (1813–98), Nawab Amir Ali Khan Bahadur (1810–89),
Maharajadhiraj Mahtab Chand Rai Bahadur of Burdwan (1820–89),
Nawab Abdul Latif Khan Bahadur (1828–93), Keshub Chandra Sen
(1838–84), Nawab Sir Khawja Abdul Ghani Mia (1830–96), Maharaja
Durga Charan Law (1822–1902), Nawab Bahadur Syed Walayet Ali
Khan (1818–99), Maharaja Sir Jotindra Mohan Tagore (1831–1908),
Nawab Sir Syed Hassan Ali Mirza Khan Bahadub, Amir-ul-Omrah
(1846–1906). The men were ‘the social reformer and the merchant prince,
the religious revivalist and the philanthropist, the government official and
the educationalist, the descendant of a long line of ruling chiefs and the
self-made man who won his own way to wealth and influence.’
11. Gupta, Puratan Prasanga.
12. Jon E. Wilson, The Domination of Strangers: Modern Governance in Eastern
India, 1780–1835, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 184–5.
13. Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1998, p. 169.
14. People’s perception remained the same even in early twentieth century
as acknowledged in administrative reports. ‘The term bhadralok is
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 459
locally used to include all who by birth, education or occupation consider
themselves above the manual lot, but is almost exclusively confined to
Hindus of the Brahman, Kayasth and Baidya castes  .  .  .’. J.C. Jack, Final
Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Bakarganj
1900–1908, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1915; quoted in
Rajat Kanta Ray, ‘Evolution of the Professional Structure in Modern India:
Older and New Professions in a Changing Society’, The Indian Historical
Review, vol. IX, nos. 1–2, 1982–3, p. 156.
15. Macaulay’s famous Minute of 1835 advocated creation of such a class of
anglicized Indians: We must at present do our best to form a class who
may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class
of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions,
in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the
vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms
of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature  .  .  .  and to render;
them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass
of the population.
16. Lawrence James, writing on the British middle class, observes: ‘The middle
class created modern Britain, some might say in its own image.’ See, James
Lawrence, The Middle Class: A History, London: Little Brown, 2006, p. 1.
17. According to Subaltern Studies, ‘in the absence of an uninhibited growth
of productive forces under colonialism, the bourgeoisie, and consequently
the lower orders, lacked adequate degree of “classness”’. See, Tithi
Bhattacharya, The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education, and the Colonial
Intellectual in Bengal, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 22,
30. See, Asok Sen, ‘Subaltern Studies: Capital, Class and Community’, in
Subaltern Studies, vol. V, ed. Ranajit Guha, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1987, pp. 203–35.
18. Benoy Ghosh, Banglar Samajik Itihaser Dhara, 1800–1900, Calcutta:
Sukumar Bhandari, 1960, p. 169. Incidentally, it was the second issue of
the paper.
19 Apart from Bangadut, Samachar Darpan (1818–52), and Sambad Kaumadi
(1821, short-lived).
20. Sugata Bose, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal since
1770, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 71–2.
21. It is acknowledged that ‘the professional groups formed a key middle
element in the medieval social structure. Rajat Kanta Ray, ‘Evolution of
the Professional Structure’, p. 133.
22. McGuire, Making of the Colonial Mind, p. 11.
23. Bhabani Charan Bandyopadhyay, Kalikata Kamlalaya (Calcutta, the
House of Fortune), 1823; Calcutta: Pratibhash, 1986. See also, Tithi
Bhattacharya, Sentinels of Culture. The author included clerks in this
category. But clerks in government employment who, however, considered
460 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
themselves as middle class, had ambivalence to the labouring people. See,
Dalia Chakrabarti, Colonial Clerks: A Social History of Deprivation and
Domination, Kolkata: K.P. Bagchi and Co., 2005, pp. 38–9. By the late
nineteenth century, ‘clerk’ became a census category.
24. William Carey, A Dictionary of the Bengali Language (Bengali-English),
vol. 2, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1993, p. 1006. Gopi Kissen
Mitter’s ‘revised and improved’ version (1868) of James Sykes’ English
and Bengali Dictionary: For the use in Schools (1858) had ‘Gentility’,
‘Gentle’, ‘Gentleman’, and ‘Gentry’ as entries with corresponding Bengali
translations. See, Gopi Kissen Mitter, ed., English and Bengali Dictionary:
For the use in Schools, Calcutta: School Book Society, 1868, p. 109.
25. Mitter, English and Bengali Dictionary, p. 50. See also, J.M. Das, Bangla
Bhashar Abhidhan, 1917; repr. Calcutta and Allahabad: Indian Publishing
House and Indian Press, 1930, p. 1169. Among its entries is ‘Bhadralok’
(somebody whose conduct is in keeping with the standards of gentlemanly
society).
26. James Lawrence also refers to representations of the English middle class
in terms of cultural attributes: ‘ingenuity, enterprise and perseverance’;
‘supreme self-confidence born of the knowledge of past achievements’;
‘conviction that reason and scientific empiricism offered the best solution
for human problems’; ‘educated, enlightened and forward-looking’;
nothing  .  .  .  beneath their attention and nothing beyond their capabilities’;
‘a pragmatic spirit of compromise’; a religious conviction that ‘the indus­
trious’ is rewarded; a social role to use ‘their wealth and power to rescue
others from ignorance and vice’. See, Lawrence, Middle Class, p. 1.
27. Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal 1849–1905,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, pp. 47–8.
28. J.H. Broomfield, Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth Century
Bengal, Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1958, pp. 5–6.
29. Ibid., p. 6.
30. Benoy Ghose, ‘The Crisis of Bengali Gentility’, The Economic Weekly, vol. 9,
no. 26–8, 1957, p. 821. See also Suprakash Roy, Bharater Krishak Bridoho
O Ganatantrik Sangram, vol. 1, Calcutta: D.N.B.A. Brothers, 1966, p. 175.
31. Ranajit Guha, ‘Neel‐darpan: The Image of a Peasant Revolt in a Liberal
Mirror’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 1974, pp. 1–46.
32. Bhattacharya, Sentinels of Culture, p. 70.
33. Ibid., p. 74.
34. Kailashchandra Dutta, ‘What is a Gentleman?’, Hindu Pioneer, vol. 5,
1836, pp. 69–71, quoted in Bhattacharya, Sentinels of Culture, p. 81.
35. Shibnath Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangosamaj, 2nd revised and
enlarged edn., Calcutta: S.K. Lahiri and Co., 1909, p. 56. See, Bhattacharya,
Sentinels of Culture, p. 80.
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 461
36. More than thirty closed compound words composed by Bankim Chandra
in ‘Babu’, in Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Lok Rahasya, essays in
Bangadarshan (founded in 1872); see, Jogesh Chandra Bagal, ed., Bankim
Rachanabalee, vol. 2, Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1954, pp. 10–12. A very
brief article, it is packed with satirical words.
37. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay offered more details: Their sayings are
one when they think, ten when they speak, a hundred when they write, a
thousand when they quarrel. Their strength in their arm is little, ten times
when they speak, twenty times on their back and vanishing in times of
work. Their guardian angels are the English, their mentors, the Brahmos;
local/indigenous newspaper, their sacred text; National Theatre, their
holy place. They are Christians to the Missionaries, Brahmmo to Keshab
Chandra Sen, Hindu to their fathers, and atheist to the Brahmin beggar.
They are careful only about their dress; active only in soliciting; devoted
only to their wives and concubines; and they are angry only about good
books on virtue.
   See, Bankim Chandra’s ‘Babu’, first published in Bangadarshan
(Perceptions of Bengal) in January 1872, reproduced in Bagal, ed., Bankim
Rachanabalee, vol. 2, p. 12.
38. Anindita Mukhopadhyaya, Behind the Mask: The Cultural Definition of
the Legal Subject in Colonial Bengal (1715–1911), New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2006, p. 14.
39. Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the
‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century, Calcutta: Kali for
Women, 1997.
40. This was the practice of racist imperial powers. See, Syed Hussein Alatas,
The Myth of the Lazy Native: A Study of the Image of the Malays, Filipinos
and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th Century and its Function in the
Ideology of Colonial Capitalism, London: Frank Cass and Company,
1977.
41. Goutam Basu, ‘Self-assertion through Physical Culture Movement in
Bengal during the later part of 19th Century and early Twentieth Century’,
Proceeding of the International Conference on Social Science Research,
ICSSR, 2013, pp. 65–6. See https://worldconferences.net/.../032%20-%20
Goutam%20Basu%20-%20Self%20Asser, accessed on 12 January 2018.
42. Indira Chowdhury, The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the
Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal, New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1998.
43. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History: Bengal: 1890–1940,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989, pp. 146–7.
44. Ibid., p. 147.
45. Ibid., p. 149.
462 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
46. Pulak Naranyan Dhar, ‘Bengal Renaissance: A Study in Social Contra-
dictions’, Social Scientist, vol. 15, no. 1, 1987, p. 43.
47. Sumanta Banerjee, Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbaniz-
ation to Global Modernization, New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2016.
48. Swati Chattopadhyaya, Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism,
and the Colonial Uncanny, London and New York: Routledge, 2006,
p. 194.
49. Sumanta Banerjee, ‘The World of Ramjan Ostagar: The Common Man
of Old Calcutta’, in Calcutta: The Living City, Vol. 1: The Past, ed. Sukanta
Chaudhuri, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 77, 79, 80.
50. Akshay Kumar Dutta, Bharatbharshiya Upasak Sampradaya, vol. 2,
Calcutta: Sanskrit Press Depository, 1883, p. 158; quoted in Asit Kumar
Bhattacharya, Akshoykumar Dutta, New Delhi: Sahitya Academy
Publications, 1994, p. 69.
51. Ibid.
52. Chaiti Basu, ‘The Punch Tradition in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal:
From Pulcinella to Basantak and Pòacu’ in Asian Punches: A Transcultural
Affair, ed. Hans Harder and Barbara Mittler, Heidelberg: Springer, 2013,
pp. 133–5.
53. Radhakamal Mukhopadhaya, ‘Preface to First Edition’, Daridrer Krandan,
1915; 2nd edn., Calcutta: Book Company, 1927.
54. Mukhopadhaya, ‘Preface to Second Edition’, in ibid.
55. For satires on ‘opulent decadence’, see, Tithi Bhattacharya, Sentinels of
Culture, p. 40.
56. Ibid., pp. 38–9.
57. Chattopadhyaya, Representing Calcutta, p. 80.
58. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History.
59. Krishna Chandra Majumdar, ‘Sukhi Dukhkhir Dukkho Bojhena’ (‘The
happy man does not understand the grief of the miserable person’),
Sadbhaba Shatak (1861), repr., Calcutta: Kamini Kumar Guha, 1907.
He wrote the first autobiography in Bengali in the nineteenth century.
See http://hdl.handle.net/10689/4370, accessed on 17 July 2017. He was
contemptuous about those with financial wherewithal and proneness to
mindless luxury. By all brief biographical accounts, Krishna Chandra
suffered poverty in his early years, though was never a part of the menial
class; and in terms of his profession as a school teacher and an editor, he
definitely moved into the well-placed faction within the middle class.
60. McGuire, Making of the Colonial Mind, p. 19.
61. A.F. Salahuddin Ahmed, Social Ideas and Social Change in Bengal:
1818–1835, Kolkata: Papyrus, 2003.
62 Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ‘Wealth and Work in Calcutta, 1860–1921’, in
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 463
Calcutta: The Living City, Vol. 1: The Past, ed. Sukanta Chaudhuri,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 221.
63. Joya Chatterji: Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition,
1932–1947, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 4–5
64. For a review of works on grammar, see Mrinal Nath, ‘Unish Shitake
Bangalir Bhasacharcha: Oupnibeshiktar Byakron Ebong  .  .  .’ (Bengalees’
Studies on Bengali Language in Nineteenth Century: Colonial Grammar
and  .  .  .), Unish ShatakerBangali Jiban O Sanskriti, ed. Swapan Basu
and Indrajit Choudhuri, Kolkata: Pustak Bipani, 2003, pp. 452–73. For
a complete list of books on Bengali grammar, see Aliva Dakhi, ‘Unish
Shatak: Bangali Byakroner Gorar Katha’, in Balaka: Books in Bengali
and the Printing Press: 1778–1900, ed. Dhanajoy Ghosal, year 17, no. 27,
Barasat: Sheuli Ghosal, 2008, pp. 97–108.
65. See en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Abhidhan, accessed on 26
September 2017. Also, Saraswati Misra, ‘Astadash Ebong Unobingsho
Shatabdite Bangla Abhidhan Charcha’, in Balaka: Books in Bengali and the
Printing Press: 1778–1900, ed. Dhanajoy Ghosal, year 17, no. 27, Barasat:
Sheuli Ghosal, 2008, pp. 109–23.
66. Mrityunjay Vidyalankar’s (c.1762–1819) Prabodhachandrika, which
contained a chapter on Bengali grammar, is considered to be the first
Bengali dictionary by a Bengali (written in 1813, printed in 1833). He was
the head pundit in the Bengali and Sanskrit departments in Fort William
College, and later as judge-pundit to the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court. There is a strong line of thinking that his assistance was vital for
William Carey who compiled A Grammar of the Bengali Language (1801).
67. Suniti Kumar Chatterji, The Origin and Development of the Bengali
Language, vol. 1, 1926; repr. Calcutta: Rupa & Co., 1985, p. 134.
68. Bagal, Bankim Rachanabalee, p. 369.
69 The coinage aparbhasa (the other language) is by Bankim Chandra
Chattopadhyay. Ibid.
70. The Bhattacharya Brahmins constitute the highest tier of the Bengali caste
system. Etymologically, they are priests and preceptors.
71. Sukumar Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihas, Vol. 3: 1801–1880, 7th edn., Calcutta:
Ananda, 1978, p. 40.
72. Suniti Chatterji, Origin and Development of the Bengali Language, vol. 1,
p. 135.
73. Ibid.
74. Hans Harder, ‘The Modern Babu and the Metropolis: Reassessing
Early Bengali Narrative Prose’, in India’s Literary History: Essays on the
Nineteenth Century, ed. Stuart H. Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia, New
Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004, pp. 358–402.
464 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
75. Suniti Chatterji, Origin and Development of the Bengali Language, vol. 1,
p. 135.
76. A grammarian, John Beams set up the Bengali Academy of Literature in
1893 for the task. But serious objections were made with regard to use of
English as a standard. The Academy was later transformed into Bangiya
Sahitya Parisad (1894). He also wrote Grammar of the Bengali Language:
Literary and Colloquial, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891.
77. Ramgati Nyayaratna, Bangala Bhasha O Bangala Sahitya Bishayak Prastab:
Bikhyato Bangla Granthakarganer Sankhipto Jibani Britto O Tahader
Rachito Granthasakaler Kinchit Samalochanasamet, 1873; Hooghly:
Kashinath Bhattacharya (printer, published probably by the author
himself), 1930, pp. 321–2.
78. Ibid., p. 319.
79. Sukumar Sen, Battalar Chhapa O Chhobi, Calcutta: Ananda, 1989,
pp. 43–4 for a list of such publications. See also, SreePantha, Battala,
Calcutta: Ananda, 1997.
80. ‘On the Effect of Native Press in India’, Friend of India, Quarterly Series,
vol. 1, 1820, pp. 123; quoted in Bhattacharya, Sentinels of Culture, p. 39,
fn. 13.
81. Sen, Battalar Chhapa O Chhobi, p. 44.
82. Ibid., pp. 58–9.
83. Ibid., pp. 47–8. Also, SreePantha, Battala, pp. 11–15. It also provides an
illustrative list of ‘battala’ type books printed in ketabpatti at Chakbazar,
Dakha.
84. J. Murdoch to C.U. Aitchison, 2 October 1888, 384/July 1888, Public
Deposit, Home Department, NAI; Referred in Deana Heath, Purifying
Empire: Obscenity and the Politics of Moral Regulation in Britain, India
and Australia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 152,
fn. 18.
85. SreePantha, Battala, pp. 35–6. For reflections on the European
Renaissance, see, Alexander Lee, The Ugly Renaissance: Sex, Disease and
Excess in an Age of Beauty, London: Doubleday, 2003.
86. James Long identified in 1920 four among nineteen verses in Bengali as
erotic; about a dozen among 1400 books and magazines in 1855; and, a
similar number in 1857. SreePantha, Battala, pp. 39–40.
87. Heath, Purifying Empire, p. 154.
88. Its office-bearers included Keshab Chandra Sen, Raja Kalikrishna Bahadur,
Nabagopal Mitra, Syed Amir Ali and Maulavi Abdul Latif Khan.
89. See, Heath, Purifying Empire.
90. He was also an activist of the Municipal Movement in Calcutta.
91. Sumanta Bandyopadhyay, Unis Sataker Kolkata O Saraswatir Itar Santan,
Kolkata: Anustup, 2008.
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 465
92. Sumanta Banerjee, ‘Marginalization of Women’s Popular Culture in
Nineteenth Century Bengal’, Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History,
ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989,
pp. 128, 139.
93. Recent additions on medicine and health care in nineteenth century
include Sujata Mukherjee, Gender, Medicine, and Society in Colonial India:
Women’s Health Care in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Bengal,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017.
94. Health understandably was another site of multiple debates. See, Srirupa
Prasad, Cultural Politics of Hygiene in India, 1890–1940: Contagions of
Feeling, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015; Shinjini Das, ‘Debating
Scientific Medicine: Homoeopathy and Allopathy in Late Nineteenth-
century Medical Print in Bengal’, Medical History, vol. 56, no. 4, 2012,
pp. 463–80, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3483755/,
accessed on 7 January 2018; Shinjini Das, ‘Biography and Homoeopathy
in Bengal: Colonial lives of a European heterodoxy’, Modern Asian
Studies, vol. 49, no. 6, 2015, pp. 1732–71, https://www.cambridge.org/co
re/.../0363E176CB6A5CA5C72AE636872810C0, accessed on 7 January
2018; Deepak Kumar, ‘Unequal Contenders, Uneven Ground: Medical
Encounters in British India, 1820–1920’, in Western Medicine as Contested
Knowledge, ed. B. Andrews and A. Cunningham, Manchester, Manchester
University Press, 1997, pp. 172–90; and David Arnold, Colonizing the
Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth Century India,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
95. Akshay Kumar Dutta, quoted in Asit Bhattacharya, Akshoykumar Dutta,
p. 30. See also, Amiya Sen, Explorations in Modern Bengal, pp. 37–42.
96. Nyayaratna, Bangala Bhasha O Bangala Sahitya, pp. 259–60.
97. We need to remember that the encounter with the positivist epistemology
began in eighteenth century Calcutta, though the debate over the
paradigm shift was more peculiar to the nineteenth century. See, Michael
J. Franklin, ‘“The Hastings Circle”: Writers and Writing in Calcutta in the
Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century’, in Authorship, Commerce and the
Public: Scenes of Writing, 1750–1850, ed. E.J. Clery, Caroline Franklin and
Peter Garside, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, pp. 186–202. Also
see, Kapil Raj, ‘The Historical Anatomy of a Contact Zone: Calcutta in
the Eighteenth Century’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review,
vol. 48, no. 1, 2011, pp. 55–82. The paper discusses how Calcutta, in the
eighteenth century, ‘emerged as a world-renowned centre of scientific
knowledge-making in botany, geology, geodesy, map-making, geography,
history, linguistics and ethnology, to name but a few, and a world pioneer
in modern public education’. This observation is in keeping with his
analysis in his earlier paper, ‘Colonial Encounters and the Forging
466 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
of New Knowledge and National Identities: Great Britain and India,
1760–1850’, Osiris, vol. 15, Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial
Enterprise, ed. Roy MacLeod, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2000, pp. 119–34. The Indian historians of sciences have documented
production and circulation of scientific knowledge in eighteenth century
Calcutta. See, Deepak Kumar, ‘Calcutta: The Emergence of a Science City
(1784–1856)’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 29, no. 1, 1994,
pp. 1–7; Debiprasad Chattopadhyay, ‘Four Calcuttans in Defence of
Scientific Temper’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 29, no. 1, 1994,
pp. 111–19; and S.N. Sen, ‘The Pioneering Role of Calcutta in Scientific
and Technical Education in India’, Indian Journal of History of Science,
vol. 29, no. 1, 1994, pp. 41–7. See also, Uma Das Gupta, ed., Science and
Modern India: An Institutional History, c.1784–1947, Delhi: Pearson, 2011.
98. Sen, Explorations in Modern Bengal, p. 40.
99 According to the 1881 Education Commission report, 1,800 out of 2,200
students, the majority mainly male, belonged to the Hindu Bengali upper
caste middle class. By Director of Public Instruction estimate, 78 per
cent of 2,800 students came from middle class families. John Berwick,
‘Chātra Samāj: The Significance of the Student Community in Bengal
c.1870–1922’, in Mind, Body and Society: Life and Mentality in Colonial
Bengal, ed. Rajat Kanta Ray, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995,
pp. 233–4. In 1883/84, the number college students in Bengal was 3,263.
100. Rameshchandra Datta, The Literature of Bengal: A Biographical and
Critical History from the Earliest Times closing with a Review of Intellectual
Progress under British Rule in India, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1877,
pp. 163–4, quoted in Arun Kumar Biswas, ‘The Era of Science Enthusiasts
in Bengal (1841–1891): Akshayakumar, Vidyasagar and Rajendralal’,
Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 47, no. 3, 2012, p. 380.
101. Akshaykumar Dutta, quoted in Tapan Raychaudhuri, ‘The Pursuit of
Reason in Nineteenth Century Bengal’, in Mind, Body and Society: Life
and Mentality in Colonial Bengal, ed. Rajat Kanta Ray, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1995, p. 55.
102. The largest number of references—fourteen—in the Index of Bipinbihari
Gupta, Puratan Prasanga, is to August Comte (1798–1857). The story
was that Dwarkanath Mitra, a committed positivist engaged in studies
on Comte in the second half of the nineteenth century, could not rest
unless he could study at least one of Comte’s chapters, even after working
on his legal cases till 2–3 o’ clock every night. See, ibid. p. 58. In Puratan
Prasanga, Krisnakamal Bhattacharya, one of the founding members of
the Positivist Club (1870 or 1882) in Calcutta, reminisces with the author
about his times. It indicates that discussions on Comte were a collective
affair, some of its members being simultaneously members of a similar
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 467
club in England. See, Bela Dutta Gupta, Bange Dhrubabad, Kolkata:
Paschim Bangla Academy, 2009, pp. 19–20. Cultivation of the natural
sciences attained a high level as is indicated in Sanku Bilas Roy and
Subir Kumar Sen, ‘Scientific Research Papers by Native Bengali Authors
during the Nineteenth Century’, Current Science, vol. 99, no. 12, 2010,
pp. 1849–57. See also, N.C. Mondal, ‘Popular Science Writings in Bengali:
Past and Present’, Science Reporter, March 2012, pp. 43–5. Hemlal Dutta’s
Rahashya (‘The Mystery’) is the first science fiction written in Bengali,
published in 1882 in the pictorial magazine Bigyan Darpan, brought out
by Jogendra Sadhu. See, Amardeep Singh, ‘Early Bengali Science Fiction’,
2006, at www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2006/05/early-bengali-science-fiction.
htm, accessed on 31 October 2017.
103. For a few representative instances of debate, see Appendix in Bela
Dutta Gupta, Bange Dhrubabad, pp. 58–200. See also, Geraldine Forbes,
Positivism in Bengal: A Case Study in the Transmission and Assimilation
of an Ideology, rev. edn., Calcutta: Papyrus, 1999.
104. Nyayaratna, Bangala Bhasha O Bangala Sahitya, p. 254.
105. Arun Biswas, ‘The Era of Science Enthusiasts in Bengal’, pp. 375–425.
106. Ibid., p. 382.
107. Broomfield, Elite Conflict in a Plural Society, Preface.
108. Sen, Explorations in Modern Bengal, pp. 42–55.
109. Ibid., p. 5.
110. Ibid., pp. 3–6.
111. Ibid., p. 21.
112. Vidyasagar, with whom Akshay Kumar Dutta was in close touch, wrote
about the senses in this children’s read: ‘The above five senses are the
avenues of our knowledge, by which we can get all sorts of knowledge,
and without which we should be ignorant of everything. By the exercise
of those senses we gain experience, and experience produces the power of
judgment of what is right and wrong, of what is good and bad. Therefore,
the senses are very advantageous to us.’ This is the translation by John
Murdoch who, in 1872, complained against Vidyasagar’s materialism. See,
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, ‘Rationalism in Bengal: An Overview’, Psyche
and Society, vol. 10, no. 1, May 2012, pp. 43–51.
113. A wide acceptability of the Gita—as indicated in large number of
commentaries and also vernacular translations in nineteenth-century
Bengal—is to be examined in the light of the fact that the ‘problem of
somehow reconciling radically new ways of organizing society with
some kind of moral and philosophical monism’ was important for the
Western-educated mind. Sen, Explorations in Modern Bengal, p. 12. See
also, Appendix B on ‘Printing History of the Gita in Bengali Translation:
1800–1904’, in ibid., pp. 225–32.
468 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
114. Ray, Mind, Body and Society, pp. 12–13.
115. Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in
Nineteenth Century Bengal, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 22.
116. Amalesh Tripathy, Italir Renaissance, Bengali Culture, Calcutta: Ananda,
1994, p. 33.
117. Lakshmi Subramanian, ‘Rabindranath Tagore and the Problem of Self-
esteem in Colonial India’, in Mind, Body and Society: Life and Mentality
in Colonial Bengal, ed. Rajat Kanta Ray, Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1995, p. 449.
118. They did not really belong to the bourgeoisie. About their professional
identities, see Tripathy, Italir Renaissance, pp. 42–3.
119. For a brief masterly review, see ibid., p. 45.
120. A. Brian Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement: Vidyasagar and the Cultural
Encounter in Bengal, Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1996.
121. Fort William College (1800), Dhurrumtala Academy (1810), Town
Hall (1814), Atmiya Sabha (1815), Serampore College (1817), Calcutta
School-Book Society(1817), Hindu School (1817), Hindu College (1817)
turned Presidency College (1855), Hare School (1818), Agricultural and
Horticultural Society (1822), Sanskrit College(1824), Central Female
School (1828), Oriental Seminary (1829), General Assembly Institution
(1830), Duff School (1830), Calcutta Medical College (1835), Calcutta
Public Library (1836), Metcalfe Hall (1840), Mutty Lall Seal’s Free School
& College (1842), Loreto School (1842), Seal’s Free School (1843), Brahmo
Samaj (1843), Bethune School (1849), Geological Survey of India (1851),
Industrial Art Society turned Art School or Government School of Arts
turned Government Art College (1854), Association of Friends for the
Promotion of Social Improvement (1854), Bengal Engineering College
(1856), Senate Hall (1857), University of Calcutta (1857), Archaeological
Survey (1859), Xavier’s College (1860), Indian Brahmo Samaj (1866),
Bengal Social Science Association (1867), Vidyasagar College (1872),
Hindu Mahila Vidyalaya (1873), Indian Museum (1875), Banga Mahila
Vidyalaya (1876), Bharatbarseeo Bigyan Sabha or Indian Association for
the Cultivation of Science (1876), Albert Hall or Albert Institute (1877),
Sadharan Brahmo Samaj (1878), Bethune College (1879), Ripon College
(1884), Society for the Training of Young Men (1891) renamed Calcutta
University Institute (1896), and Bengal Academy of Literature (1893)
renamed Bangya Sahitya Parisad (1894). Important journals—dailies and
weeklies—came up: Hicky’s Bengal Gazette (1780), The Calcutta Journal
(1819), Meerut-ul-Akhbar (1822), Oodunt Martland (1826), Jnananveshan
(1831), Som Prakash (1858), and Bangadarshan (1872). Remarkable
books published were: Rammoun Roy’s Tuhfat-ul-Muwahiddin (Gift to
Monotheists) (1804), Pearychand Mitra’s Alaler Gharer Dulal (1858),
Dinabandhu Mitra’s Nil Darpan (1860), Michael Madhusudan Dutta’s
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 469
Meghnadbadh Kavya (1861), and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s
Wife (1864), Durgeshnandini (1865), and Anandamath (1882). For details
see Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Kalikatar Sangskiti-Kendra (Calcutta’s Cultural
Centres), Calcutta: Sreeguru Library, 1958.
122. Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri, p. 45.
123. Margrit Pernau and Helge Jordheim, Civilizing Emotions: Concepts in
Nineteenth-Century Asia and Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2015, p. 10.
124. Sambuddha Chakrabarti, ‘Changing Notions of Conjugal Relations in
Nineteenth Century Bengal’, in Mind, Body and Society: Life and Mentality
in Colonial Bengal, ed. Rajat Kanta Ray, Delhi: Oxford University Press
1995, p. 302.
125. Ibid., p. 309.
126. In none of the autobiographies do women talk about their sexual
lives. Rukmini Sen, in ‘Gendered Construction on Culture of Silence/
Insignificant Articulation’ (unpublished PhD thesis, 2008) has examined
intensively the life and times of twenty women autobiography writers.
They came from a wide social background. From among those born in
the nineteenth century, the earliest was born in 1809 and the last, 1899.
However, only Rashsundari Debi’s Amar Jiban was published in the
nineteenth century, in 1876. For the lives of nineteenth century Bengali
bhadramahila, see, Sambuddha Chakraborty, Andare Antare, Calcutta:
Stree, 1995.
127. Haimabati Sen, The Memoirs of Dr Haimabati Sen: From Child Widow to
Lady Doctor, tr. Tapan Raychaudhuri, New Delhi: Roli, 2000, p. 209.
128. Rachel Fell McDermott, Revelry, Rivalry, and Longings for the Goddesses
of Bengal: The Fortunes of Hindu Festivals, New York: Columbia
University Press, 2011. For courtesans’ songs, see, Debjit Bandyopadhyay,
Beshyasangeet Baijisangeet, Kolkata: Subarnarekha, 2001.
129. Borthwick, Changing Role of Women, pp. 140–1.
130. Malavika Karlekar, Voices from Within—Early Personal Narratives of
Bengali Women, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 129.
131. Borthwick, Changing Role of Women, pp. 141–2, fn. 115.
132. Borthwick, Changing Role of Women, p. 150.
133. Judith E. Walsh, Domesticity in Colonial India: What Women learned when
Men gave their Advice, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004. See also,
Himani Bannerji, Inventing Subjects: Studies in Hegemony, Patriarchy and
Colonialism, New Delhi: Tulika, 2001.
134. Walsh, Domesticity in Colonial India, p. 5. Between 1860 and 1900, more
than forty domestic manuals were in circulation, which were mostly out
of print by 1900. The Bengali middle class turned to nationalism away
from social reform. Ibid., pp. 3, 8.
470 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
135. Anindita Ghosh, Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics
of Language and Culture in a Colonial Society, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2006. Manuals written mainly by men for women were
in considerable circulation. Four are usually cited: Dhirendranath Pal,
Streer Sahit Kathpakathan (1883); Girijaprasanna Raychaudhuri, Griha
Lakshmi (1884); Satyacaran Mitra, Streerprati Swamir Upadesh (1884);
and Jaykrishna Mitra and Giribala Mitra, Ramaneer Kartavya (1888).
One by an only woman writer was Nagendrabala Dasi, Naaree Dharma
(1900). See, Walsh, Domesticity in Colonial India. As against these, there
was only one woman’s autobiography, the one by Rashsundari Debi, Amar
Jiban (1876).
136. Sinha, Colonial Masculinity, 1997.
137. For an analysis of Satischandra Chakravarti’s Santaner Charitra Gathan
(1912), see, Pradip Kumar Bose, ‘Sons of the Nation: Child Rearing in the
New Family’, in Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal,
ed. Partha Chatterjee, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995,
pp. 118–44.
138. Shibnath Shastri, Grihadharma, Kolkata: Nabapatra, 2005. In fact, the
normative stipulations concerned all familial and household relationships
and relationship with society as well. For a larger reading of the basic
texts see, Pradip Basu, Samayki: Purono Samayik Patrer Prabandho
Sangkalan, vol. 2, Kolkata: Ananda, 2009. For texts on children’s reads,
see, Ashis Khastagir, ed., Bangla Primer Sangraha, 1816–1855, Kolkata:
Paschimbanga Bangla Akademy, 2006.
139. Tapati Guha-Thakurta, The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art: Artists, Aesthetics
and Nationalism in Bengal, 1850–1920, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992, p. 6.
140. Tripathy, Italir Renaissance, p. 43.
141. Guha-Thakurta, Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art, p. 11.
142. For the Company painters, European tutelage through Thomas and
William Daniell, and Balthazar Solvyns in late eighteenth century; for
the patuas and portrait painters in oil, Western technicalities of image
making; for the book and magazine illustrators, Western templates.
143. Guha-Thakurta, Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art, p. 42.
144. Ashoke Bhattacharya, Banglar Chitrakala, Calcutta: Paschimbanga Bangla
Akademy, 1994, p. 97.
145. Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art
in Colonial and Postcolonial India, New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004,
p. 154.
146. Krishna Sen, in collaboration with Ramkrishna Bhattacharya,
ed., Inscribing Identity: Essays from Nineteenth Century Bengal, Kolkata:
K.P. Bagchi and Co., 2009.
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 471
147. Guha-Thakurta, Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art, p. 11.
148. The earlier attempt was to set up a Mechanical Institute (1839) by, among
others, Tarachand Chakrabarty, the first Secretary of Brahmo Samaj.
149. Ashoke Bhattacharya, Banglar Chitrakala, p. 112. For a rich analysis of
the Calcutta School of Industrial Art and profession of art, see, Guha-
Thakurta, Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art, pp. 68–77.
150. Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories, p. 143.
151. Ibid.
152. Ibid.
153. A.K.M. Khademul Haque, ‘Decolonizing in the Age of Globalization: The
Experience of a Bangladeshi Art Historian’, https://www.collegeart.org/
pdf/programs/international/haque.pdf, accessed on 24 November 2017.
154. Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories, p. 141.
155. Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 224. See also, Guha-
Thakurta, Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art, p. 68. This cultural lag between
literature and visual arts diminished in art journals—Sadhana (1891–5),
Pradip (1897–1900), and Prabasi (1901)—in which art criticism
increasingly ‘assumed an overtly literary quality’. ‘The aesthetics of
painting and literature were brought to merge within a common ground
of middle class culture  .  .  .  ’. Guha-Thakurta, Making of a New ‘Indian’
Art, p. 136.
156. Guha-Thakurta, Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art, p. 127.
157. Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories, p. 157–8.
158. Ibid., Histories, p. 156.
159 Asit Paul, ed., Woodcut Prints of Nineteenth Century Calcutta, Calcutta:
Seagull, 1983; and Sumit Ghosh, Bharate Rajnaitik Cartoon Charcha,
Kolkata: Ananda, 2013.
160. Partha Mitter, ‘Punch and Indian Cartoons: The Reception of a
Transnational Phenomenon’, in Asian Punches: A Transcultural Affair,
ed. Hans Harder and Barbara Mittler, Heidelberg: Springer, 2013,
p. 57. For an exhaustive analysis of the Kalighat genre, see, Jyotindra
Jain, Kalighat Painting: Images from a Changing World, Ahmedabad:
Mapin, 1999.
161. Jain, Kalighat Painting, p. 139.
162. Ibid., p. 142.
163. Paul, ed., Woodcut Prints, p. 36.
164. Jain, Kalighat Painting, p. 138.
165. Paul, ed., Woodcut Prints, p. 101.
166. Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, p. 39. Also Suvobrata Sarkar, ‘Bengali
Entrepreneurs and Western Technology in the Nineteenth Century:
472 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
A Social Perspective’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 48, no. 3,
2013, pp. 456–7.
167. Sarkar, ‘Bengali Entrepreneurs and Western Technology’, p. 461.
168. Ibid., p. 462–3.
169. For an excellent analysis of agency houses in colonial economy, see, Maria
Misra, Business, Race, and Politics in British India: 1850–1960, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1999.
170. P.C. Ray to a colleague at BCPW (1897?), quoted in Sarkar, ‘Bengali
Entrepreneurs and Western Technology’, p. 448.
171. Ranajit Das Gupta, ‘Industrial Change in Colonial Bengal’, in Aspects of
Socio-Economic Changes and Political Awakening in Bengal, ed. Adhir
Chakravarti, Calcutta: Director of Archives, Government of West Bengal,
1989, pp. 64–7.
172. Sarkar, ‘Bengali Entrepreneurs and Western Technology’, pp. 455–6.
173. The E.W. Collin report—The Existing Arts and Industries in Bengal
(1890)—castigating the Bengali capitalists for not introducing ‘new
manufactures’ was not fair. Economic enterprise was out of their reach
mainly because of colonial policy that imposed indirect taxes on entry
into the industrial sector.
174. Pratik Chakrabarti, ‘Science and Swadeshi: The Establishment and Growth
of Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works, 1893–1947’, in Science
and Modern India: An Institutional History, c.1784–1947, ed. Uma Das
Gupta, Delhi: Pearson, 2011, p. 124.
175. Iman Mitra, ‘Exchanging Words and Things: Vernacularisation of Political
Economy in Nineteenth-century Bengal’, The Indian Economic and Social
History Review, vol. 53, no. 4, 2016, p. 515.
176. Nrisingha Chandra Mukhurji, Arthaniti O Arthabyabahar or Elements
of Political Economy and Money matters in Bengal, Calcutta: New School
Book Press, 1875.
177. Ibid., p. 53.
178. Rajkrishna Raychowdhury, Artha Byabohar, Calcutta: Sanskrit Press
Directory, 1875.
179. Satyacharan Bidyabinod, Naba Arthaniti, Calcutta: Vedanta Press, 1885.
180. Jogindranath Samaddar, Arthaniti: Elements of Political Economy, Howrah:
Dhirendranath Lahiri, 1912.
181. Mukhopadhyay, Daridrer Krandan.
182. For a detailed and analysis, see, Iman Mitra, ‘Exchanging Words and
Things’, pp. 501–31.
183. The remark was made in Report from the Select Committee on the Affairs
of the East India Company, 1832, referred to in Mitra, ‘Exchanging Words
and Things’, p. 509.
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 473
184. Narendranath Laha, Subarnabanik: Katha O Keerti, Calcutta: Oriental
Press, 1941, pp. 56–7.
185. McGuire, Making of the Colonial Mind, p. 84 and chap. 6.
186. Ibid., p. 89.
187. Ibid., p. 89–90.
188. Ibid., p. 96.
189. Sarkar, Modern India, p. 53.
190. Ibid., p. 98. This was in keeping with the fact that the educated Bengali
middle class remained passive to ‘everyday resistance to inequities and
periodic surges of effective resistance in the first half of the nineteenth
century’. See, Sugata Bose, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital, 1993.
191. Sarkar, Modern India, p. 99. But Akshaykumar Dutta had already written
about exploitation of peasants in his ‘A Description of the Miserable State
of the Subjects Living in Villages’ in Bengali in the Tattwabodhini Patrika
(1853).
192. Ratan Khasnabis, ‘Evolution of Economic Thinking in Modern India’,
in Development of Modern Indian Thought and the Social Sciences,
ed. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007,
p. 10.
193. Sugata Bose, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital; Suprakash Roy,
Bharater Krishak Bridoho, pp. 187–9.
194. Guha, ‘Neel‐darpan’, pp. 2–3.
195. Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 18.
196. The Bengali middle class’s exposure to European socialist ideas was
insignificant. Reportedly, in August 1871, a letter was sent (by an
individual, or a group) from Calcutta to the International Working
Men’s Association (headed by Karl Marx) seeking its permission to open
a branch in India. Sumanta Banerjee, review of Bengal Marxism: Early
Discourses and Debates by Anuradha Roy, History and Sociology of South
Asia, vol. 10, no. 1, 2016, p. 97.
197. Sarkar, Modern India, p. 62.
198. McGuire, Making of the Colonial Mind, pp. 98–9.
199. For the delineation of the critical attributes of the colonial state, see
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, The Colonial State: Theory and Practice, Delhi:
Primus, 2016, p. 139.
200. Ibid., p. 115.
201. Ibid., 2016, p. 119. The intelligentsia might have found a recognition
in their inclusion in the category ‘political class’ in the Indian Statuary
Commission Report (1930).
They consist of professional classes, in particular lawyers, journalists, and
those connected with education; an appreciable portion of the trading
474 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
classes; those engaged in clerical occupations; the large number of students
at the universities and colleges; the melancholy army of those who having
sacrificed much to go through the scholastic curriculum find at the end
that their country offers them no employment: and, lastly, the small but
growing body of educated women who are throwing themselves with
enthusiasm into the new world of political affairs. These are perhaps the
chief elements that go to make up what we may call political classes. Their
thought is profoundly influenced and unified by the writings of the press.
See, ibid., p. 123.
202. For a detailed analysis of such cases in nineteenth century Bengal, see
Kamala Sarkar, ‘Middle Class Bengali Flaunts and Despairs his Colonial
Self: A Dilemma in Nineteenth Century Bengali Mind’, Indian Literature,
vol. 56, no. 6 (272), 2012, pp. 206–17.
203. See chapter 6 in Bhattacharya, Colonial State, p. 154.
204. Chakrabarti, Colonial Clerks.
205. Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its forms of Knowledge, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 4.
206. Wilson, Domination of Strangers, p. 7.
207. Ibid., pp. 182–3.
208. Ibid., p. 3. It denoted ‘the practical political philosophy of an elite with
an abstract and idealised definition of public welfare not shared by the
population at large.’
209. Ibid., pp. 164–5.
210. Ibid., pp. 164.
211. Bhattacharya, Colonial State, p. 20. The same return to their philosophical
and linguistic roots on the part of Madhusudan, Debendrananth,
Vidyasagar, Rabindranath, and Vivekananda brought back the classical
spirit. See, Tripathy, Italir Renaissance, pp. 42–3.
212. Nariaki Nakazato, ‘Harish Chandra Mukherjee: Profile of a “Patriotic”
Journalist in an Age of Social Transition’, Journal of South Asian Studies,
n.s., vol. XXXI, no. 2, 2008, pp. 241–70. For a distinction between
patriotism and nationalism, see, ibid., pp. 245–6.
213. McGuire, Making of the Colonial Mind, pp. 116–21.
214. Sarkar, Modern India, p. 92.
215. Ibid. For a fuller exposition on temperance movement, see, Lucy Carroll,
‘The Temperance Movement in India: Politics and Social Reform’, Modern
Asian Studies, vol. 10, no. 3, 1976, pp. 417–47.

References
Ahmed, A.F. Salahuddin, Social Ideas and Social Change in Bengal: 1818–1835,
Kolkata: Papyrus, 2003.
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 475
Alatas, Syed Hussein, The Myth of the Lazy Native: A Study of the Image of the
Malays, Filipinos and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th Century and its
Function in the Ideology of Colonial Capitalism, London: Frank Cass and
Company, 1977.
Arnold, David, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in
Nineteenth Century India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Bagal, Jogesh Chandra, Kalikatar Sangskiti-Kendra (Calcutta’s Cultural Centres),
Calcutta: Sreeguru Library, 1958.
Bagchi, Amiya Kumar, ‘Wealth and Work in Calcutta, 1860–1921’, Calcutta: The
Living City, Vol. 1: The Past, ed. Sukanta Chaudhuri, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1990, pp. 212–23.
Bandyopadhyay, Bhabani Charan, Kalikata Kamlalaya, Calcutta: Pratibhash,
1986.
Bandyopadhyay, Debjit, Beshyasangeet Baijisangeet, Kolkata: Subarnarekha, 2001.
Bandyopadhyay, Sumanta, Unis Sataker Kolkata O Saraswatir Itar Santan,
Kolkata: Anustup, 2008.
Bannerji, Himani, Inventing Subjects: Studies in Hegemony, Patriarchy and
Colonialism, New Delhi: Tulika, 2001.
Banerjee, Sumanta, Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to
Global Modernization, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Banerjee, Sumanta, ‘Marginalization of Women’s Popular Culture in Nineteenth
Century Bengal’, in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History,
ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989.
———,  ‘The World of Ramjan Ostagar: The Common Man of Old Calcutta’, in
Calcutta: The Living City, Vol. 1: The Past, ed. Sukanta Chaudhuri, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 76–84.
———,  review of Bengal Marxism: Early Discourses and Debates by Anuradha
Roy, History and Sociology of South Asia, vol. 10, no. 1, 2016, pp. 95–113.
Basu, Chaiti, ‘The Punch Tradition in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal: From
Pulcinella to Basantak and Pòacu’, in Asian Punches: A Transcultural Affair,
ed. Hans Harder and Barbara Mittler, Heidelberg: Springer, 2013.
Basu, Pradip, Samayki: Purono Samayik Patrer Prabandho Sangkalan, 2 vols.,
Kolkata: Ananda, 2009.
Berwick, John, ‘Chātra Samāj: The Significance of the Student Community
in Bengal c.1870–1922’, in Mind, Body and Society: Life and Mentality in
Colonial Bengal, ed. Rajat Kanta Ray, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995,
pp. 232–86.
Bhattacharya, Ashoke, Banglar Chitrakala, Calcutta: Paschimbanga Bangla
Akademy, 1994.
Bhattacharya, Asit Kumar, Akshoykumar Dutta, New Delhi: Sahitya Academy,
1994.
476 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Bhattacharya, Ramkrishna, ‘Rationalism in Bengal: An Overview’, Psyche and
Society, vol. 10, no. 1, 2012, pp. 43–51.
Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi, The Colonial State: Theory and Practice, Delhi: Primus,
2016.
Bhattacharya, Tithi, The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education, and the Colonial
Intellectual in Bengal, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Bidyabinod, Satyacharan, Naba Arthaniti, Calcutta: Vedanta Press, 1885; see
dspace.wbpublibnet.gov.in:8080/jspui/handle/10689/7033, accessed 4 May
2019.
Biswas, Arun Kumar, ‘The Era of Science Enthusiasts in Bengal (1841–1891):
Akshayakumar, Vidyasagar and Rajendralal’, Indian Journal of History of
Science, vol. 47, no. 3, 2012, pp. 375–425.
Borthwick, Meredith, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal 1849–1905,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Bose, Sugata, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal since 1770,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Bradley-Birt, F.B., Twelve Men of Bengal in the Nineteenth Century with Twelve
Illustrations, 4th edn., Calcutta: S.K. Lahiri and Co., 1927.
Broomfield, J.H., Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth Century Bengal,
Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1958.
Carey, William, A Dictionary of the Bengali Language (Bengali-English), vol. 2,
New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1993.
Chakrabarti, Dalia, Colonial Clerks: A Social History of Deprivation and
Domination, Kolkata: K.P. Bagchi and Co., 2005.
Chakrabarti, Pratik, ‘Science and Swadeshi: The Establishment and Growth of
Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works, 1893–1947, in Science and
Modern India: An Institutional History, c.1784–1947, ed. Uma Das Gupta,
Delhi: Pearson, 2011.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Rethinking Working Class History: Bengal: 1890–1940,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Chakraborty, Sambuddha, Andare Antare, Calcutta: Stree, 1995.
———,  ‘Changing Notions of Conjugal Relations in Nineteenth Century Bengal’,
in Mind, Body and Society: Life and Mentality in Colonial Bengal, ed. Rajat
Kanta Ray, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 297–330.
Chatterji, Joya, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Chatterji, Suniti Kumar, The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language,
vol. 1, Calcutta: Rupa, 1985.
Chattopadhyay, Bankim Chandra, ‘Bangadesher Krishak’, in Bankim
Rachanabalee, vol. 2, ed. Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad,
1954, pp. 287–314.
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 477
———,  ‘Bangla Bhasa’, in Bankim Rachanabalee, vol. 2, ed. Jogesh Chandra Bagal,
Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1954, pp. 368–74.
———,  ‘Lok Rahasya’, in Bankim Rachanabalee, vol. 2, ed. Jogesh Chandra Bagal,
Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1954, pp. 1–48.
Chattopadhyay, Debiprasad ‘Four Calcuttans in Defence of Scientific Temper’,
Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 29, no. 1, 1994, pp. 111–19.
Chattopadhyaya, Swati, Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the
Colonial Uncanny, London: Routledge, 2006.
Cohn, Bernard S., Colonialism and its forms of Knowledge, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996.
Chowdhury, Indira, The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics
of Culture in Colonial Bengal, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Dakhi, Aliva, ‘Unish Shatak: Bangali Byakroner Gorar Katha’, in Balaka: Books
in Bengali and the Printing Press: 1778–1900, ed. Dhanajoy Ghosal, year 17,
no. 27, Barasat: Sheuli Ghosal, 2008.
Das Gupta, Ranajit, ‘Industrial Change in Colonial Bengal’, in Aspects of Socio-
Economic Changes and Political Awakening in Bengal, ed. Adhir Chakravarti,
Calcutta: Director of Archives, Government of West Bengal, 1989.
Das, J.M., Bangla Bhashar Abhidhan, 1917; repr., Calcutta and Allahabad: Indian
Publishing House and Indian Press, 1930.
Das, Shinjini, ‘Biography and Homoeopathy in Bengal: Colonial Lives of a
European Heterodoxy’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 49, no. 6, 2015, see
https://www.cambridge.org/core/.../0363E176CB6A5CA5C72AE6368728
10C0, accessed on 7 January 2018.
———,  ‘Debating Scientific Medicine: Homoeopathy and Allopathy in Late
Nineteenth-century Medical Print in Bengal’, Medical History, vol. 56,
no. 4, 2012, pp. 463–80; see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/
PMC3483755/, accessed on 7 January 2018.
Das Gupta, Uma, ed., Science and Modern India: An Institutional History,
c.1784–1947, Delhi: Pearson, 2011.
Datta, Rameshchandra, The Literature of Bengal: A Biographical and Critical
History from the Earliest Times closing with a Review of Intellectual Progress
under British Rule in India, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1877, cited in
Arun Kumar Biswas, ‘The Era of Science Enthusiasts in Bengal (1841–1891):
Akshayakumar, Vidyasagar and Rajendralal’, Indian Journal of History of
Science, vol. 47, no. 3, 2012, pp. 163–4.
Dhar, Pulak Naranyan, ‘Bengal Renaissance: A Study in Social Contradictions’,
Social Scientist, vol. 15, no. 1, 1987, pp. 26–45.
Du Bois, W.E.B., ‘Of our Spiritual Strivings’ (1897), The Soul of the Black Folk,
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Dutta Gupta, Bela, Bange Dhrubabad, Kolkata: Paschim Bangla Academy, 2009.
478 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Forbes, Geraldine, Positivism in Bengal: A Case Study in the Transmission and
Assimilation of an Ideology, rev. edn., Calcutta: Papyrus, 1999.
Franklin, Michael J., ‘“The Hastings Circle”: Writers and Writing in Calcutta in
the Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century’, in Authorship, Commerce and
the Public: Scenes of Writing, 1750–1850, ed. E.J. Clery, Caroline Franklin
and Peter Garside, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Ghosh, Anindita, Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of Language
and Culture in a Colonial Society, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Ghose, Benoy, ‘The Crisis of Bengali Gentility’, The Economic Weekly, vol. 9,
no. 26–8, 1957, pp. 821–6.
———,  Banglar Samajik Itihaser Dhara, 1800–1900, Calcutta: Sukumar Bhandari,
1960.
Ghosh, Sumit, Bharate Rajnaitik Cartoon Charcha, Kolkata: Ananda, 2013.
Guha, Ranajit, ‘Neel‐darpan: The image of a Peasant Revolt in a Liberal Mirror’,
The Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 1974, pp. 1–46.
Guha-Thakurta, Tapati, The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art: Artists, Aesthetics
and Nationalism in Bengal, 1850–1920, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992.
———,  Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and
Postcolonial India, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004.
Gupta, Amit Kumar, Crisis and Creativities: Middle-Class Bhadralok in Bengal
c.1939–52, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2009.
Gupta, Bipinbihari, Puratan Prasanga, Calcutta: Paragon Press, 1912.
Gunn, Simon and James Vernon, ed., ‘Introduction: What was Liberal Modernity
and why was it Peculiar in Imperial Britain?’, The Peculiarities of Liberal
Modernity in Imperial Britain, California: University of California Press,
2011, pp. 1–18.
Haque, A.K.M Khademul, ‘Decolonizing in the Age of Globalization: The
Experience of a Bangladeshi Art Historian’, see https://www.collegeart.org/
pdf/programs/international/haque.pdf, accessed on 24 November 2017.
Hatcher, A. Brian, Idioms of Improvement: Vidyasagar and the Cultural Encounter
in Bengal, Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Heath, Deana, Purifying Empire: Obscenity and the Politics of Moral Regulation in
Britain, India and Australia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Harder, Hans, ‘The Modern Babu and the Metropolis: Reassessing Early Bengali
Narrative Prose’, in India’s Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century,
ed. Stuart H. Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia, New Delhi: Permanent
Black, 2004.
Jain, Jyotindra, Kalighat Painting: Images from a Changing World, Ahmedabad:
Mapin, 1999.
Karlekar, Malavika, Voices from Within—Early Personal Narratives of Bengali
Women, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995.
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 479
Khasnabis, Ratan, ‘Evolution of Economic Thinking in Modern India’,
in Development of Modern Indian Thought and the Social Sciences,
ed. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007,
pp. 3–18.
Khastagir, Ashis, ed., Bangla Primer Sangraha, 1816–1855, Kolkata:
Paschimbanga Bangla Akademy, 2006.
Kumar, Deepak, ‘Calcutta: The Emergence of a Science City (1784–1856)’, Indian
Journal of History of Science, vol. 29, no. 1, 1994, pp. 1–7.
———,  ‘Unequal Contenders, Uneven Ground: Medical Encounters in British
India, 1820–1920’, in Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge, ed. B.
Andrews and A. Cunningham, Manchester, Manchester University Press,
1997, pp. 172–90.
Laha, Narendranath, Subarnabanik: Katha O Keerti, Calcutta: Oriental Press,
1941.
Lawrence, James, The Middle Class: A History, London: Little Brown, 2006.
Lee, Alexander, The Ugly Renaissance: Sex, Disease and Excess in an Age of Beauty,
London: Doubleday, 2003.
Majumdar, Krishna Chandra, ‘Sukhi Dukhkhir Dukkho Bojhena’, Sadbhaba
Shatak, 1861; repr., Calcutta: Kamini Kumar Guha, 1907; see http://hdl.
handle.net/10689/4370, accessed on 17 July 2017.
McDermott, Rachel Fell, Revelry, Rivalry, and Longings for the Goddesses of
Bengal: The Fortunes of Hindu Festivals, New York: Columbia University
Press, 2011.
McGuire, John, The Making of the Colonial Mind: A Quantitative Study of the
Bhadralok in Calcutta, 1857–1885, Canberra: Australian National University,
1983.
Misra, Maria, Business, Race, and Politics in British India: 1850–1960, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1999.
Misra, Saraswati, ‘Astadash Ebong Unobingsho Shatabdite Bangla Abhidhan
Charcha’, in Balaka: Books in Bengali and the Printing Press: 1778–1900,
ed. Dhanajoy Ghosal, year 17, no. 27, Barasat: Sheuli Ghosal, 2008,
pp. 109–23.
Mitra, Iman, ‘Exchanging Words and Things: Vernacularisation of Political
Economy in Nineteenth-century Bengal’, The Indian Economic and Social
History Review, vol. 53, no. 4, 2016, pp. 501–31.
Mitter, Gopi Kissen, ed., English and Bengali Dictionary: For the use in Schools,
Calcutta: School Book Society, 1868.
Mitter, Partha, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Mitter, Partha, ‘Punch and Indian Cartoons: The Reception of a Transnational
Phenomenon’ in Asian Punches: A Transcultural Affair, ed. Hans Harder
and Barbara Mittler, Heidelberg: Springer, 2013, pp. 47–64.
480 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Mondal, N.C., ‘Popular Science Writings in Bengali: Past and Present’, Science
Reporter, March 2012, pp. 43–5.
Mukhopadhyaya, Anindita, Behind the Mask: The Cultural Definition of the
Legal Subject in Colonial Bengal (1715–1911), New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2006.
Mukhopadhaya, Radhakamal, Daridrer Krandan, Calcutta: Book Company,
1927.
Mukherjee, Sujata, Gender, Medicine, and Society in Colonial India: Women’s
Health Care in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Bengal, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2017.
Mukhurji, Nrisingha Chandra, Arthaniti O Arthabyabahar or Elements of
Political Economy and Money Matters in Bengal, Calcutta: New School
Book Press, 1875.
Nakazato, Nariaki, ‘Harish Chandra Mukherjee: Profile of a “Patriotic”
Journalist in an Age of Social Transition’, Journal of South Asian Studies, n.s.,
vol. XXXI, no. 2, 2008, pp. 241–70.
Nath, Mrinal, ‘Unish Shatake Bangalir Bhasacharcha: Oupnibeshiktar Byakron
Ebong  .  .  .’, in Unish Shataker Bangali Jiban O Sanskriti, ed. Swapan Basu
and Indrajit Choudhuri, Kolkata: Pustak Bipani, 2003.
Nyayaratna, Ramgati, Bangala Bhasha O Bangala Sahitya Bishayak Prastab:
Bikhyato Bangla Granthakarganer Sankhipto Jibani Britto O Tahader
Rachito Granthasakalerkinchit Samalochanasamet (1873), Hooghly:
Kashinath Bhattacharya (printer, published probably by the author himself),
1930.
Paul, Asit, ed., Woodcut Prints of Nineteenth Century Calcutta, Calcutta: Seagull,
1983.
Pernau, Margrit and Helge Jordheim, Civilizing Emotions: Concepts in Nineteenth-
Century Asia and Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Prasad, Srirupa, Cultural Politics of Hygiene in India, 1890–1940: Contagions of
Feeling, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Raj, Kapil, ‘Colonial Encounters and the Forging of New Knowledge and National
Identities: Great Britain and India, 1760–1850’, in Nature and Empire: Science
and the Colonial Enterprise, ed. Roy MacLeod, vol. 15 of Osiris, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp. 119–34.
———,  ‘The Historical Anatomy of a Contact Zone: Calcutta in the Eighteenth
Century’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 48, no. 1,
2011, pp. 55–82.
Ray, Rajat Kanta, Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875–1927, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984.
———,  ‘Evolution of the Professional Structure in Modern India: Older and
New Professions in a Changing Society, The Indian Historical Review,
vol. IX, no. 1–2, 1982–3, pp. 121–92.
 Ray: The Nineteenth Century Bengali Middle Class 481
———,  ed., ‘Introduction’, Mind, Body and Society: Life and Mentality in Colonial
Bengal, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Raychaudhuri, Tapan, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth
Century Bengal, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Raychaudhuri, Tapan ‘The Pursuit of Reason in Nineteenth Century Bengal’,
in Mind, Body and Society: Life and Mentality in Colonial Bengal, ed. Rajat
Kanta Ray, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Raychowdhury, Rajkrishna, Artha Byabohar, Calcutta: Sanskrit Press Directory,
1875.
Roy, Sanku Bilas and Subir Kumar Sen, ‘Scientific Research Papers by Native
Bengali Authors during the Nineteenth Century’, Current Science, vol. 99,
no. 12, 2010, pp. 1849–58.
Roy, Suprakash, Bharater Krishak Bridoho O Ganatantrik Sangram, vol. 1,
Calcutta: D.N.B.A. Brothers, 1966.
Samaddar, Jogindranath, Arthaniti: Elements of Political Economy, Howrah:
Dhirendranath Lahiri, 1912.
Sarkar, Kamala, ‘Middle Class Bengali Flaunts and Despairs his Colonial Self:
A Dilemma in Nineteenth Century Bengali Mind’, Indian Literature,
vol. 56, no. 6 (272), 2012, pp. 206–17.
Sarkar, Sumit, Modern India, 1885–1947, Delhi: Macmillan, 1983.
———,  Writing Social History, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Sarkar, Suvobrata, ‘Bengali Entrepreneurs and Western Technology in the
Nineteenth Century: A Social Perspective’, Indian Journal of History of
Science, vol. 48, no. 3, 2013, pp. 447–75.
Sen, Amiya P, Explorations in Modern Bengal c.1800–1900: Essays on Religion,
History and Culture, Delhi: Primus, 2010.
Sen, Asok, ‘Subaltern Studies: Capital, Class and Community’, in Subaltern
Studies, vol. V, ed. Ranajit Guha, New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1987, pp. 203–35.
Sen, Haimabati, The Memoirs of Dr Haimabati Sen: From Child Widow to Lady
Doctor, tr. Tapan Raychaudhuri, New Delhi: Roli, 2000.
Sen, Rukmini, ‘Gendered Construction on Culture of Silence/Insignificant
Articulation’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Calcutta, 2008.
Sen, S.N., ‘The Pioneering Role of Calcutta in Scientific and Technical Education
in India’, Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 29, no. 1, 1994, pp. 41–7.
Sen, Sukumar, Bangla Sahityer Itihas, Vol. 3: 1801–1880, 7th edn., Calcutta:
Ananda, 1978.
———,  Battalar Chhapa O Chhobi, Calcutta: Ananda, 1989.
Shastri, Shibnath, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangosamaj, 2nd rev. and enlarged
edn., Calcutta: S.K. Lahiri and Co., 1909.
———,  Grihadharma, Kolkata: Nabapatra, 2005.
Singh, Amardeep, ‘Early Bengali Science Fiction’, 2006, see www.lehigh.
482 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
edu/~amsp/2006/05/early-bengali-science-fiction.htm, accessed on 31
October 2017.
Sinha, Mrinalini, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the
‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the late Nineteenth Century, Calcutta: Kali for
Women, 1997.
SreePantha, Battala, Calcutta: Ananda, 1997.
Subramanian, Lakshmi, ‘Rabindranath Tagore and the Problem of Self-esteem
in Colonial India’, in Mind, Body and Society: Life and Mentality in
Colonial Bengal, ed. Rajat Kanta Ray, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995,
pp. 449–86.
Tripathy, Amalesh, Italir Renaissance, Bengali Culture, Calcutta: Ananda, 1994.
Wahrman, Dror, Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class
in Britain: c.1780–1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Walsh, Judith E., Domesticity in Colonial India: What Women learned when Men
gave their Advice, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Wilson, Jon E., The Domination of Strangers: Modern Governance in Eastern
India, 1780–1835, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
 14
The Evolution of Bengali
Language and Literature in the
Nineteenth Century

Pabitra Sarkar

To Begin With

A
lthough the title of my chapter places ‘language’ before
‘literature’ alphabetically, following a time-honoured
tradition, we will discuss the literature of the period first.
For good reasons too, as one of our areas of focus will be the ‘language
of literature’. The spoken language will also be brought into focus,
but as a factor that led to the rise of a debate on what the language
of literature should be. It is interesting to note that like many other
languages in India, Bengali literary prose began with a denial of the
colloquial, which had yet to be standardized. Its gradual progress
towards its emergence as the sole medium demands another look.
With this brief glimpse about how our discussions will be designed,
we may go into the business at hand.
History is basically hindsight; so when Jadu-Nath Sarkar1 refers
to the Bengali poet Nabin Chandra Sen’s (1847–1909) comments on
his poem Palashir Yuddha that the Battle of Plassey ended in utter
gloom for Bengal and the rest of India, the historian could see beyond
and conclude that ‘it was the beginning, slow and unperceived, of
a glorious dawn, the like of which the history of the world has not
seen elsewhere’. We may contend with the last, somewhat ebullient,
conclusion. But 1757 is a good location to begin a chronicle of
Bengali language and literature over the last 250 years. The last great
work bearing the distinct stamp of medieval Bengal, a mangal kavya,
484 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

was written in 1760 titled Annadamangal, by Bharat Chandra Roy

(1712–60). The battle and the poem both terminated a historical
space and a literary genre reminiscent of the space.
Did anything begin right away after the war? While it does not
happen that way all the time, there was a break, a radical change, and
what Kuhn has termed a ‘paradigm shift’, something like that took
place in the political as well as cultural history of Bengal. The changes
in language and literature were not, however, abrupt. They seldom
are so. There was a period of what S.K. De has called ‘interrognum’,
in which signals of change, even without British intervention, were
slowly becoming visible.2 We will attempt to trace the way this
unpredictable and even unimaginable change slowly took shape in
the Bengali milieu.

A Transitional Space: The Signals

Late in the sixteenth century, the Mughals occupied Bengal, and
Persian became the court or the state language. The earlier Muslims
(mainly Turks, Abyssinians, and later Afghans) did not tamper with
the language of their subjects in Bengal. What the Afghans had
done, in contrast, was to support and encourage Bengali as a vehicle
of literature, and this helped, as Dinesh Chandra Sen emphasizes,
to enable Bengali to become the major language of expression in
literature. Epics and Puranas were translated, ignoring the prohibition
imposed by the Brahmin shastric authorities (who declared that
whoever dared to do that would risk suffering through 11,000 years
in the Raurava hell). The translators invented two excuses to offer in
their defence. One, the mighty rulers of the land or the locality wanted
to hear the fascinating tales contained in the Puranas and the epics,
which was often true as an excuse. The other excuse was, however,
fictitious—they claimed that the god/goddess himself/herself had
appeared in their dreams or even came alive before him, and ordered
him to write about his/her exploits. New narrative genres like the
mangala kavyas, depicting the exploits of a couple of female deities
(Chandi and Manasa), and a new male deity (Dharma) sprang up,
and the Chaitanya movement lead to an explosion of Vaishnava lyrics.
Chaitanya hagiographies were also added to this bountiful literary
crop. Even Muslims began to write freely in Bengali, overruling their
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 485

religious sanction on the language, as they had first thought it was

written in a ‘hinduyani’ script. Persian, as a court language, however,
made Bengali Hindus aspiring for court jobs learn Persian, as they
would later go for English, and this resulted in a lot of Persian words
entering into Bengali. Suniti Kumar Chatterji puts this figure at 3.30
per cent of the total number Bengali words,3 although this was from
a dictionary count, which does not reflect actual use in the language.
We do not know if the signals of the oncoming changes (see the
next section) that were detected by the historians of literature like
Sukumar Sen4 and others were self-conscious attempts to deviate
and differ, or whether they were retrospective impositions. Still,
there were these signs of impending change in the seventeenth and
eighteenth century. A few of such signs have been discussed in the
following sections.
A Poet Criticizing an Earlier Poet
Priyaranjan Sen notes the particular trait of pre-modern Bangla
5

literature that it was not ‘self-reflecting or critical’, because of the

predominating influence of religion. Poet after poet were following
a former model, the practice that Dinesh Chandra Sen has jokingly
called ‘tail-holding’ (pucchagrahita), pointing to the fact that a
predecessor was held in high esteem. However, later in the eighteenth
century, some pronouncements of poets are evident, which can be
called feeble attempts of criticism of a predecessor. Sukumar Sen6
cites two eighteenth-century poets, who he assumes could be one
and the same, doing this. One was Ramananda Jati, who, besides
writing a Ramayana, also wrote a Chandimangal (1760), in which he
criticized his sixteenth century predecessor Mukunda Chakraborty
by claiming that the latter was wrong in writing that there was a
thorny bush in the heavenly garden of Indra where Indra’s son used
to pluck flowers. Nor was he right (and was presumptive) in claiming
that Goddess Chandi herself had appeared before him. According to
Ramananda, it was not so easy to see a goddess. So, Mukunda was
a gabor, still in mother’s womb. All these ‘follies’ of Mukunda made
Ramananda write a new Chandimangal, correcting the mistakes of
his predecessor.
We do not know if this can be an indicator of an emerging
sense of realism about the life and the world. The other(!) poet was
486 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Ramananda Ghosh, who claimed to have been an incarnation of

none other than the Buddha himself. He was sad that his land had
been occupied by Mlecchas, or the Muslims. In his Ramayana, he
seems to feel bitter that in spite of his toils and tribulations (and he
being the Buddha himself), no God had ever appeared before his
eyes. The rich became richer as water mixed with water, but the poor
(among whom he included himself) always remained poor. He spent
his whole life worshipping a wooden deity (darubrahma, ‘an wooden
effigy of Rama’), and he feels that all his devotional efforts have gone
to naught. So, he advises, making sacrifices and suffering for a god
were futile exercises. Here again, a hard realist seems to make his
voice heard. These were something new.
One can also quote Bharat Chandra Roy, who talks about his
selection of the style of language that has Persian words in abundance.
In order to make his poem pleasing and attractive, he says that he has
adopted a language mixed with javana (i.e. Arabic and Persian) words.
This, it should be added, is also a sign of self-conscious creation, i.e.
choosing a style of one’s own.

Gods being Ridiculed

Bharat Chandra Roy, in his Annadamangal Kavya, makes fun of the
Hindu deity Siva, who is described as an old street entertainer and
a snake-charmer. His pet snakes were used to tie his tiger-skin dress
like a sarong around his waist. While his marriage with Uma was in
progress and the womenfolk were there to felicitate the groom, the
gods asked Garura (Indra’s charioteer and a bane to the snakes) to
appear at the scene so that the snakes, threatened by their perennial
destroyer, run away. This duly happened, and Siva stood stark naked
among the assembly of women. Caricature was also made of venerable
poet of the Mahabharata, Vedavyasa. Ramprasad, another poet of the
eighteenth century (1718–75), famous for songs on Goddess Kali,
often addresses her irreverently, in his frequently switching roles of
the son and the father of the deity.
Another sign of irreverence to the Hindu deities was visible
in an eighteenth century narrative poem Shunyapuran by Ramai
Pandit. The ‘Niranjaner Rushma’ (Niranjan’s Wrath) section of the
poem contains the elaborate information that the gods were happy
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 487

to dress in pantaloons (izer), as various transformations took place

in them. Brahma became Muhammad, Vishnu a payghambar, and
Siva turned into Adam. Apart from them, Ganesha appeared as a
Ghazi, and Kartika was a Qazi. Moreover, all the munis were fakirs
now. Narada was a sheikh, Indra a maulana. The female deities too,
underwent a similar fate, with Chandi, Manasa, etc., changing into
‘bibis’ of various denominations.

Leaving Out the Gods Altogether

Expectedly, the Muslim poets of the seventeenth-century Bengal
have to be credited with this. They took some traditional tales, for
example that of Vidya and Sundar’s love, and left out the intervention
of Hindu goddess Annada or Kalika, while their Hindu brethren
adhered to it. Saribid Khan was a pioneer in this. But it was Daulat
Kazi and Syed Alaol, who, in their Lor Chandrani O Sati Moyna and
Padumavat (a translation of an Aodhi romance) respectively, created
a base for secular poems in Bangla. Alaol also introduced tales from
the Arabian Nights (Saiful Mul Badiujjamal, for example) in Bengali
literature, thereby bringing what has been called ‘matters of Arabia
and Persia’ into it. Later, in the middle of the eighteenth century, the
Hindu poet and singer Ramnidhi Gupta or Nidhubabu (1741–1839)
sang about the glory of the mother tongue (‘No hope is fulfilled
without the language of one’s own country’), and his love songs, as
those of the contemporary Kavi poets or Kabiwallahs, came out of
the conventional Radha-Krishna frame and expressed the passions of
real men and women in love, often ‘illicit’. The major departure was
evident in folk literature, in the ballads of Mymensingh, where only
joys and sorrows (sorrows more than joys), were depicted and gods
or goddesses were given a wide berth. It would also be worthwhile to
mention Gangaram Dutta, who wrote Maharashtra Puran (1751)—a
narrative poem about the attack of the Barghis from Maharashtra.

A New Syncretism Makes an Inroad to

Bengali Culture
Alongside the secular themes, many Muslim poets began writing
Vaishnava lyrics, as they found Vaishnavism somewhat akin to the
488 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Sufi belief. Some new deities like Satyapir (a conflation of Vishnu

and a Pir, see the reference to Ramai Pandit’s Shunyapuran earlier),
Bonbibi (protecting deity of the tigers in the Sundarbans) arose, and
their exploits were duly chronicled in the panchali-type poems.

Emergence of Rudimentary Prose Texts

Prose had been used in writing letters since long, and the first
documented letter dates back to 1555. Wills and other legal
documents (e.g. those of gift of land or selling human beings as
slaves) were also drafted in prose. Its use in literature was, however,
discouraged till late as poetry was the only vehicle considered
proper for it. From the seventeenth century onwards, marginal use
of the medium of prose of a very simple nature began in the karchas
or notes of Vaishnava monks, as in those of the Portuguese monks
of the eighteenth century. One of them, Dom Antonio (originally
a Bengali), belonging to the late seventeenth century, wrote the
Brahman-Roman Catholic Sangbad in short, mostly simple sentences,
reminiscent of lines of poetry. This prose was slightly more elaborated
in Manoel de Assumpsam’s Krepar Shastrer Orth, Bhed (1743), which
paved the way for its later use in literature. Acceptance of Bengali
as a legal language around 1843 must have further encouraged
its widespread use. The next section will show that these hesitant
tendencies developed into major streams of change in Bengali
language and literature.

Nineteenth Century: The Broad Spectrum

of Changes
Let us, at the outset, take a look at the changes that came to the fore
in the sphere of language and literature in Bengal.

Content of Literature: Exploding

the Boundaries
The earlier literature had an overwhelmingly, if not altogether,
religious content, while the new literature was only partly, if
marginally, religious. Creative literature of the period withdrew
its preference for religious themes and tonality. There was, at the
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 489

ideational level, religious debates and discourse from the early

decades of the nineteenth century, and contrasting discussions of
faith and reason; but that, with the exception of Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee (1838–94) and Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), did
not spill over to creative literature to any major extent. The terms
that are frequently used to describe this new outlook are ‘secular’
and ‘this-worldly’. The mystic prayer songs of tantric Budhism
had already been obliterated from the region’s memory, and the
translations of the Bhagabata and the epics, the mangal kavyas (or
poems privileging one god or goddess over the less active Siva), the
hagiographies of Chaitanya, the Vaishnava songs on the love of Radha
and Krishna, the Sakta songs eulogizing, humanizing, and making
mundane demands to the Goddess Kali were mostly things of the
past. Some of them were written after Plassey, but they could not
enter into the new, mainstream Bengali literature. Even in Ishwar
Chandra Gupta (1812–59), the first poet of the new times, we find
the poetical lampooning and satires more prominently focused than
the devotional poems, in which the poet’s love for wordplay has often
marred the spirit of submission.
The new literature got down to depict life on this world, of the
past and the present, of Bengal and elsewhere. Bengal did not confine
itself to the Bengali-speaking region alone, but looked at other parts of
India (Rajasthan, Delhi, etc.) for creating narratives of the time. One
should add that in the pre-modern period too, most of the themes had
been adopted from outside of the Bengal region. A number of them
had drawn on a national, Hindu memory, as the creators of literature
were mostly Hindus. There were of course side-streams, a literature
with themes falling back on Middle Eastern memories—‘matters
of Arabia and Persia’ as S.K. Chatterji named them. That remained
rather a minor stream, and the new literature accepted, in the main
stream of writing, the ‘present’, the life of the contemporary urban
and rural Bengal, which was a new development. As has already
been noted, the literature of the pre-modern period had contained
mostly a mythical or narrative memory of the communities. To this
literature, the present, the life as lived then, was no issue at all. It
had been largely ignored, although it made unsure inroads here and
there. Also, there have been attempts to dig out ‘realistic’ patches in
various categories of pre-modern literature.
490 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Contemporary Reality Takes the

Centre Stage
Earlier, it was mostly a mythological memory that was accommodated
in poems. Something took place in heaven first, which made the gods
and goddesses incarnate on the earth. There they came into contact
with human beings, whom they tried to influence to become their
devotees. In case of Radha and Krishna, their love was enacted in
a Vrindavana that was an imagined memory. Contemporary life
often seeped into the narratives, but it was never emphasized or
foregrounded. The new literature opened its doors for what was
happening in this world.

Change of Modality: (Musical) Performance

to Print
The earlier, pre-modern literature had an element of performance in
it, and was usually sung with an audience present, although it was also
read, and read aloud to an attentive audience (performance again)
by a few persons who had the rare acquisition, i.e. that of literacy.
As writing and reading skills were available to a miniscule portion
of people, the performance (and musical) aspect of literature had
to be maintained for long. And it continued expectedly even after
print came to the region, as most of the people remained illiterate (a
large number of them still are in this country). So, songs were sung,
and narratives were sung as well as performed, often with a major
singer presenting the whole text, and a small group which lent him
choral support. Sukumar Sen has indicated that the dramatic texts
like Shrikrishnakirtan might have been accompanied by puppetry. 7
The coming of print changed all that. Literature now came to
be read, and the audience, which it really was, was reincarnated as
readers. The ear as a receiving vehicle of literature lost its role, and
the literate eye became the major mediator of literature to the reading
person. There was no direct interaction between the reader and the
author or performer, and both became somewhat vague and distant
entities to each other. The author of course had a name, but the reader
had none. The reader thus became a passive ‘receiver’ of what was
given to him in print. Most of the readers were alone in his (it was
mostly ‘his’ for several decades) act of reading, and he read out texts
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 491

like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata to others. Professional,

paid, Brahmin readers had been there before, but when printed texts
appeared (mostly religious), boys of the house read to the female
members of the family, or often of the neighborhood.
Although the East India Company began to support the new
school system from 1813, and the first Bengali primer was published
in 1818, for almost half a century, for a long time, a Bengali reader
meant an adult male. Only in the fifties of the nineteenth century
would one witness an attempt to include women and children among
the new readers. The publication of Masik Patrika (1854) specifically
had the latter audience in mind. Periodicals for children appeared in
the seventies of the century. The literacy rate in Bengal was 10.4 per
cent for males and 0.5 per cent for females during this time, which
revealed a cultural poverty behind the glory of literature that was
being created. The ‘educated’ middle class had a way of inflating its
own achievement against the huge area of illiteracy.
Theatre, of course, assumed a new kind of distance between the
performance and the audience, elaborating on which will, we are
afraid, be out of place here.

Changed Directionality: Shift in the Intentions

of the Authors
The new literature distinguished itself in what it wanted to do for
its new readers. The ‘new readers’ were basically readers of printed
matter, as books and journals began to be published widely, school
texts included, from the second decade of the nineteenth century.
Gone were the early intention of proselytism, attempts to prove the
supremacy of one sectarian god over others. These were replaced
by an outlook of spreading knowledge about life and the world,
educating, entertaining (often with a moral overtone), fostering
patriotism, sacrifice for others, and other such noble feelings.

New Forms and Genres: Adopting

and Creating
The new literature eagerly adopted many forms and genres from
the West. In poetry, the lyric, the narrative, the descriptive, the
epic were the major imports. In prose the novel, short story, essays,
492 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

personal essays, biographies, autobiographies, annals, research

articles—all found ample scope. Drama, with its genres like comedy,
satire, tragedy, melodrama, farce, etc., of the Western kind also was
enthusiastically accepted, and the Western model of public theatre
followed in due sequence.
In both poetic and prose narratives, as in drama—reality,
romance, and fantasy appeared, separately as well as intermixed,
for a while. But later, from the nineteenth century, realism seemed
to have gotten preponderance over other approaches. Unlike in the
pre-modern period, prose-translations and adaptations of Western
and ancient Indian texts grew as a separate genre.
Even in a single form, experimentations in details were widely
attempted. In poetry, only one metre, what is now called mishravrtta,
in its two varieties—payar and tripadi, were used in most of the
poems. In these poems, the formation of stanzas was almost
unknown. Rhyming was simple and often predictable, as it somewhat
lacked polished, except of course the writings of Bharat Chandra Roy
in the eighteenth century, who was a fine craftsman. He boldly and
successfully experimented with metres, rhyming patterns, and used
a hybrid vocabulary that made his poetry saucy and vibrant. Earlier,
the vocabulary of poetry was not huge in size, as the subject matter
was somewhat restricted.
The new poetry used all the three metres (dalavritta [syllabic],
saralvritta [simple moraic], and mishravritta [mixed moraic, or more
familiarly, Payar]) with abandon, as the subjects became limitless,
exploding all their boundaries. Also, the concept of stanza was now
introduced, and diverse experiments were undertaken in the lengths
of lines, rhyming patterns (alternate rhyming, distant rhyming, etc.,
were unknown before), sizes of poems, variation of metres and other
patterning within a single poem were now freely attempted. The
sonnet, both Petrarchan and Shakespearian, found a ready acceptance
by major nineteenth-century poets, and further experiments were
made with it. Even patterns like terza rima, limerick, triolet, etc.,
were attempted by poets from time to time. The epic would be a
favourite medium in the second half of the nineteenth century, to
be replaced by lyric (more congenial, they say, for the Bengali spirit)
later. A couple of mock-epics also showed up in the wake of epics.
Moreover, odes, elegies, ballads, etc., were adopted. Print helped
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 493

the use of blank verse and devices like enjambement, which were
unknown before.
This discussion should not, however, give an impression that the
Bengali authors worked on borrowed forms and genres alone. There
were quite a few instances of the mixing of Western and traditional
Indian forms, or even rejecting the Western models. One such poet
was Biharilal Chakraborty (1835–94), who was somewhat averse
to Western norms in poetry. In theatre, for example, the Bengali
jatra tradition was behind the surfeit of songs in some plays, and
Rabindranath Tagore created a totally new form of drama around
1908 in his Sharodotsab, rejecting the Western model. So did Sambhu
Mitra (1919–97) in his Chand Baniker Pala (1969), which of course
falls beyond our chosen timespan.
Along with these, translation as a conscious activity also gained
popularity, and poems and prose works began to be translated in
profusion, mostly from English.

The New ‘Receivers’: The Reading Public

As has been stated earlier, the audience of the new literature were
the ‘readers’, who were literate and could read printed material as
school texts or that collected for reading at home. Their number was
very small to begin with (in 1872, literacy in India was a little above
3 per cent), but it slowly expanded. Literature for these readers was
something that they could collect and stack at home—in the shape
of newspapers, periodicals, books, etc. The author or the ‘sender’ was
no longer visible to them, he did not ‘perform’ literature before his
audience; and there arose a row of mediators in between—the printer,
the publisher, the seller, or the distributor of the literary material. The
exchange between the creator and his audience, if any, was carried
mostly through letters to the editors. The litterateur thus gradually
became a figure somewhat removed from the reader.
Of course, different genres demanded different distances between
them. The writer of the scientific essay had one kind of distance, while
that of the personal and moral essays had another kind. Children’s
authors often wanted to have a steady interaction with their young
readers. In general, however, the author of the printed literature was
a nebulous entity.
494 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Change in Production Centres: Calcutta becomes

Pre-eminent
There was one other change that had taken place. Earlier, Bengali
literature was produced all over Bengal, scripted in and sung or
performed in various locales where the authors lived. If a Ramayana
was being translated by a poet at a village of Nadia, so was another
being done by one in Mymensingh, East Bengal. A Manasamangal
(exploits of goddess Manasa, mistress of the serpents) written by a
poet from West Bengal was matched by another from Barisal, in the
east. There was also the development of several small or big centres
of literary production, where poets were patronized by potentates
of various proportions. Gaud (now in the district of Malda) was
one, while Arakan (in Eastern Myanmar) was another such centre.
Nabadwip in Nadia was the centre of the Chaitanya movement
that offered a new kind of fillip to writers of Vaishnava songs. Even
locations beyond Bengal, e.g. Vrindavana in UP, became a centre
where poets flourished. Folk patronage made the Mymensingh
ballads thrive in that region. In spite of the multi-regional sources
of production and diffusion, some poet/singers travelled widely over
Bengal, performing their poems. Apart from the authors, itinerant
performing troupes also presented their work to a wide audience.
All this was pushed in the background by the founding of printing
press in Calcutta and its vicinities—Hooghly, Serampore, etc. Calcutta
became the major, if not the only, centre for production of literature,
although books were also published from Dacca (Dinabandhu Mitra’s
Nil Darpan was published in 1960). Though periodicals were issued
from other mufassil towns, as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Banga
Darshan (1872) was published from Berhampore (Murshidabad), yet
Calcutta’s supremacy in this area cannot be questioned.

Language of Literature: Prose—From the

‘High’ to the ‘Familiar’
In the early nineteenth century, there arose a new language of
literature—prose. The language of poetry also changed in unexpected
ways, mainly because of the individual styles of a section of poets.
Prose had been there for centuries, as the first sample of prose
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 495

available to the historians of Bengali literature is that of a letter

written by the King of Ahom to the ruler of Cooch Behar in 1655,
but middle Bengali literature (c.1500–1800) avoided this—poetry
was its only vehicle. Prose of course was being used in the registers
of letters, business deeds, legal deals, and other documents during
this time. But it was promoted as a medium of literature only in the
early nineteenth century, prominently with the translation of the New
Testament of the Bible (1801) by the Serampore Mission. The general
prose medium was what is called the sadhu bhasha, or ‘high’ or chaste
Bengali. Much later, in 1914, a transfer from this ‘high style’ of prose
to the colloquial style was theoretically proposed, but the Bengali
authors put that to effect only in the late thirties of the last century.
A total replacement came much later. The progress of Bengali literary
prose has been charted in more detail in the following sections.
The language of poetry was also variously expanded into a
multitude of styles and dictions. As has been said already, new
genres like secular lyric, satirical and fun poems, literary epics, and
historical narratives arose, although lyric became the major mode of
Bengali expression gradually, thanks to the over-arching presence of
Rabindranath Tagore. Like that of prose, the language of poetry also
underwent some changes, from the traditionally literary diction to
the colloquial, by the 1940s.

The Narratives

Poetry
Strangely enough, for a literature replete with poetry for about
800 years, during which literature meant what was presented in poetic
form—metred and rhymed, the history of new literature begins with
prose. Translated, created for various purposes, and unsure of its
nature and direction, it is with prose that the new Bengali literature
takes the first steps and attracts the readership away from the earlier
literature. We will, however, come to prose, discursive prose, later
and begin our narrative with poetry.
Poetry, as has been said, was largely secularized in the period
under discussion, although devotional poetry continued to exist in
the margins. Sukumar Sen lists names like Kashi Prasad Ghosh and
496 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Radhamohan Sen as poets of the new era, but they did not come
much into public notice.8 The first poet to attract public attention
during this period, who, like his two predecessors, could not be
quite ‘into’ it, but placed himself between the new and the old, was
Ishwar Chandra Gupta. He wrote some devotional lyrics, but had his
mind set on lighter topics—fun and satire were his preferred modes.
His poetry presented a fun-loving mind, with a flair for puns and
alliterations that reminded one of Bharat Chandra Roy. He also wrote
some humorous and journalistic poems about trifling things like
cauliflowers, pineapples and events like the English New Year’s Day
and Christmas. The Bengali newspaper that he started in 1831 and
edited for quite some time, the Sambad Prabhakar, made his poems
widely circulated and popular. But the one who became the first
major poet in Bengali was Michael Madhusudan Dutta (1824–73). He
was something of a rebel and being well-versed in several European
languages, both classical and modern, he introduced quite a few
Western forms into Bengali poetry. His literary epic Meghnadbadh
Kavya (1861), created a new ‘grand diction’ in Bengali, hitherto
unknown in the language, by using a profusion of Sanskrit words.
This diction, however, will die a natural death later, remembered
by only a few poets. ‘As a jolly Christian youth’, he said ‘I care two
pins’ head for Hinduism’, but he loved ‘the grand mythology of [his]
ancestors’. So his poems are based on the Ramayana and Mahabharata
legends, and he did not eschew the Vaishnava themes either. Apart
from the literary epic, he brought forms like the sonnet and epistolary
poems in Bengali literature and wrote a few fine lyrics. A poet, a little
younger than Dutta, Rangalal Bandyopadhyay (1827–87) wrote a
narrative poem Padmini Upakhyan (1858), which sang the glory of
freedom, but which, we feel, also represented a communalization of
Indian nationalism by depicting Muslim rulers as enemies of India’s
freedom. Rangalal was a historian, and his other poems, Kanchikaberi
(1879) for example, uses an episode for Odissan’s history. Dutta’s epic
models were followed by Hem Chandra Bandyopadhyay (1818–1903),
and Nabin Chandra Sen, who also used Puranic and Mahabharata
references, besides using materials from history, to write ‘epics’ for the
age, but the expected ‘grandness’ of their diction became gradually
feebler, compared to that of Dutta. Kaykobad (1857–1951) and Mir
Musharraf Hossain (1847–1911) followed the tradition using Islamic
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 497

historical themes, the former in poetry, and the latter in prose.

Hossain’s Bishad Sindhu, based on the Karbala story, became popular
across communities.
As we will see in the evolution of Bengali fiction later, there arose a
kind of conflict in attitude in the views about which was the right and
more congenial form for Bengali poetry—epic or lyric—and which
of them is more suited for the Bengali temperament. Madhusudan
himself, in spite of his preference for the epic mode, had a lyrical
strain in him that ran as an undercurrent in his epic compositions.
A contemporary of Dutta, Biharilal Chakraborty, strongly protested
against this tendency to jump onto the epic bandwagon. To him,
epical bombasts were destroying poetry and the epic was like ‘a
foreign nurse (ayah) with a tattooed face. Biharilal himself became the
pioneer for future Bengali poetry along the lyrical way, with disciples
like Akshay Kumar Baral, Debendra Nath Sen, Kamini Roy, and above
all, Rabindranath Tagore. The lyric finally won in the Bengali poetry.
There were a few minor poets who remained outside the
mainstream and received less public attention. Madan Mohan
Tarkalankar (1817–58) was one such poet, whose poem ‘Pakhi sab
kare rab, rati pohailo’ (‘The birds are calling and the night is gone’) is
the only one from his primer that we now remember him by.
The nineteenth century was also a time for the proliferation
of different themes and topics in Bengali poetry. Love, nature,
patriotism, devotion, morals, nostalgia, etc., became predominate
in poetry, and the epic strand was lost along the way, leaving the
ground to the swelling lyric exuberance. Bengali poetry will not come
back to epic ever again, although a long narrative poem on Lenin’s
life (1924) will be written in the middle of the twentieth century by
a minor poet, Jatindra Prasad Bhattacharya.
For Renaissance or whatever other reason, poets seemed to have
been sprouting in Bengal, with a number of new periodicals springing
up, and books were being published by the hundreds. The list of the
minor poets of the nineteenth century was as huge as that of any time
afterwards. But some of them were actually able to catch the fancy of
readers. Krishna Chandra Majumdar (1837–1906) became famous
for his ‘moral’ poems like Sadbhabshatak (1861), the metaphors of
which became quite popular. Bhuban Mohan Roychowdhury used
Sanskrit metres in his poems in Bengali, but could not reach the
498 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

popularity of Bharat Chandra Roy. Another such experimenter was

Baladeva Palit (1835–1900), who also faced failure in this exercise.
Jagabandhu Bhadra (1842–1900) distinguished himself as the writer
of a short parody piece of Madhusudan Dutta’s Meghnadbadh Kavya.
As has been noted before, Biharilal was slowly replacing
Madhusudan Dutta as a ‘guru’ of poetry. Tagore was of course the
former’s greatest disciple. But before and contemporarily with him
were others too. Akshaychandra Chowdhury (1850–1898) was one
of them, whose Udasini (1874) is reminiscent of Parnell’s The Hermit.
Ishanchandra Bandyopadhyay (1856–97), Hem Chandra’s youngest
brother, was another such poet whose lyrics had received popular and
critical appreciation. Rajkrishna Ray (1852–94), basically a playwright,
also wrote diverse kinds of prose and poetry. We note here some of the
other names who had gained some popularity—Govindachandra Roy
(1837–1917), Harimohan Mukhopadhyay (1860–?), Nabinchandra
Mukhopadhyay (1853–1922), Dineshchandra Basu (1851–98), and
Prasannamayee Debi (1857–1939) was perhaps the first notable
female voice in Bengali poetry.
The eighties of the nineteenth century witnessed the increasing
predominance of Rabindranath Tagore as a poet and a creative genius,
and by the end of the century, his supremacy will have a galling effect
on others, some of whom would later attack him on various grounds,
in order to find a leeway. Dwijendra Lal Ray (1863–1913) was such
a poet. But he was more successful as a playwright (see later), and
his songs, would have a distinctive flavour of their own, both in the
lyrics and in their tunes.
Tagore lived till 1941, and almost three generations of poets came
to be regarded as his contemporaries at various points of time. Among
the poets of roughly his own age, Akshay Kumar Baral (1860–1919),
was admired for his nature poetry and poems of domestic felicity;
another poet, Debendra Nath Sen (1858–192), who was adept at
writing sonnets, had a fascination for flowers which, besides his
adoration for his wife, found expression in many poems.
The next group of the middle-period contemporaries, younger
in age, would follow Tagore in many respects, but they cannot be
branded as mere followers, as all of them had some individual
distinctions. Karunanidhan Bandhyopadhyay (1877–1955) had an
eye for beauty in nature and humanity, and had a good command
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 499

on poetic diction. Jatindramohan Bagchi (1878–1948) wrote lovingly

about rural views and people of low social standing, who were usually
ignored as subjects of poetry. Satyendranath Dutta (1882–1922) was
the most popular of them all, who experimented with Bengali metres,
and explored numerous possibilities of play with lines, rhyming,
stanza-shapes, and sound arrangements. His romantic vision, easy
depiction of the beauty that strikes the eyes, and alertness about what
was happening around him distinguished him from others. He would
also be one who would begin using Perso-Arabic words extensively
in Bengali poetry. Kumudranjan Mallik (1883–1970) would, among
other things, mark himself as a poet of rural Bengal, but his eyes were
not closed to what was happening in India or elsewhere in the world.
Kalidas Roy (1889–1975) was another poet who wrote on various
subjects, and often experimented with metre. He took up mediaeval
themes but gave them a modern, humanistic turn.
Another set of contemporaries of Tagore, some writing
simultaneously with the afore-mentioned, wanted, it seems, to create
a distance from him in their own personal ways. The eldest among
them, Jatindranath Sengupta (1880–1954), revolted against Tagore’s
assumption of ‘joy’ as the pervading energy of existence and said it
was actually the reverse—it was ‘sorrow’ that forms its base. Often,
a slight satirical tone enhances the appeal of his technically perfect
poems. Mohitlal Majumdar (1888–1952), opts for the physicality of
love in a well-structured, somewhat classical diction, reminiscent
of that of Madhusudan Dutta. Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976), was
the first one to burst onto the literary scene with his Bidrohi—‘the
Rebel’—glorifying selfhood, putting himself above everything, even
God. This egoistical romanticism soon turned into a burning emotion
for freeing the country in chains, as it also did for the oppressed
human beings. This phase gives him the name by which most
Bengalis refer to him even today—the Bidrohi kabi (‘Rebel poet’).
He wrote passionately about patriotism and the oppressed human
beings, and his command over metre and diction was not matched
by anyone else of his time. He, however, later moved into a phase of
love with all its sentimentality, and gradually became composer of
the highest number of Bengali songs on various themes, not to say
of love. What is strange is that Jibanananda Das (1899–1954), born
in the same year as Nazrul, went to take his place among the next
500 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

generation, the ‘moderns’, who moved into the limelight after 1923.
Nazrul missed being a ‘modern’, but his popularity, in spite of the
changing ‘intellectual’ reception, still ranks next to Tagore among
the common Bengali readers.
These ‘moderns’ formed a third group of poets, Tagore’s late
contemporaries, who made their entry with the publication of
Kallol, Kali Kalam, and Pragati from Dacca, which presented poets
like Premendra Mitra (1904–1988), Buddhadeb Basu (1908–74),
Achintya Kumar Sengupta (1903–76), Ajit Dutta (1907–79), etc., who
were avowedly, if not anti-Tagore, desirous of charting new paths for
Bengali poetry. Premendra Mitra was highly romantic—all of them in
fact, were. Buddhadeb Basu first opted for physical love, but later came
round to espouse the familiar romantic themes. Achintya Sengupta
had, in fact, in one of his poems, claimed that Rabindranath Tagore
was a kind of roadblock to them, but they would proceed undaunted,
outshining his genius. All of them, however, came round to become
devotees of Tagore in one way or the other.
If the Kallol poets seem a little dated now, three poets appearing
in the thirties moved closer to the contemporary sensibility, and they
can be traced as the sources from which recent Bengali poetry derived
its life, both noetic and stylistic. It is of course a commonplace that a
poet has in him the whole inheritance of poetry of all times and places
when he sets out to write a poem, and Bengali poets are no exception.
But still, one somehow feels that the continuum touching the poets
of the thirties one the one hand, and the present day poets on the
other, is more pronounced than that between others. Some of them
were exposed to English and Western literature, and their poetry is
replete with allusions to Western myths. Jibanananda Das, whose first
book Jhara Palak did not distinguish him visibly from Satyendranath
Dutta or Nazrul Islam, discovered a highly original, personal idiom
in his next book Satti Tarar Timir and came to be regarded as one
of the most original poets of Bengal. His was the greatest influence
on the next, post-Independence generation of poets. His ‘Banalata
Sen’ has become a classic poem in modern Bengali poetry. He was
also romantically nostalgic about the beauty of the nature and flora
and fauna of Bengal. Bishnu Dey (1909–82) began from a romantic
base, using European allusions and difficult words, but a couple of
books later, people’s struggle against oppression came to occupy his
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 501

mind more, and he ended up as a Marxist poet, not to the liking

of many of his friends. Sudhindranath Dutta (1901–60), was a
highly sophisticated poet and had a predilection for Sanskrit words
which suited his immaculate craft. The latter two used mythological
references of classical Europe as symbols and metaphors, which
often put off the uninitiated Bengali readers. Jasim Uddin (1904–76)
curved a different, rather contrasting, path from the others by writing
ballad-like poems on rural themes, focusing on Muslim inhabitants,
poems of simple love and death. Other poets of note from this period
were Sanjay Bhattacharya (1909–69), Ashokbijay Raha (1910–90),
Chanchal Kumar Chattopadhyay (1914–2004), etc.
While these poets were active, there arose, in the 1940s, another
group of poets who would embrace the left ideology, and some
of them, like Subhash Mukhopadhyay (1919–2003) and Sukanta
Bhattacharya (1926–47), were also members of the Communist
Party of India. Among those who were not, Arun Mitra (1909–2000)
wrote in what may be called free verse, and his poetry is rich in
metaphor and imagery. Dinesh Das (1913–85), another poet inspired
by his sympathy for the proletariat and hope of revolution, is still
remembered by his line ‘e juger chand holo kaste’—‘the sickle is the
moon of this age’. Although Manindra Roy’s (1919–2000) poetry was
more somber, they could not win popularity as those of Subhash.
Sukanta, who died young from tuberculosis, was a protégé of Subhash,
and his bold, inspiring, and straightforward poems, with a deep
faith and hope for a better world, still appeal to the young readers.
His first collection, Chharpatra (1947) was published posthumously.
Subhash was strikingly original in his colloquial diction, pungent
satire, and deep humanism, with faultless poetical craft. His Padatik
(1940), therefore created a sensation on its first appearance. Although
his revolutionary zeal mellowed down later, and he became more
‘humanistic’, his poems never lost their charm. Bimal Chandra
Ghosh (1910–81), Jyotirindra Maitra (1911–77), Mangalacharan
Chattopadhyay (1920–93), Birendra Chattopadhyay (1920–85), and
Kiranshankar Sengupta (1918–98), all began writing in the forties,
but all of them would have to wait for the second half of the twentieth
century for achieving their full glory. Samar Sen (1916–87) wrote
tersely and somewhat cynically, and scrupulously avoiding metre
and rhymes, as he avoided the traditional poetical language. He
502 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

published five collections of his poems, from Kayekti Kabita (1937)

to Tin Purush (1944), which were later placed in a single volume. His
poetical career was not long, mostly restricted between his twenty-
first and twenty-fourth years.
Other poets of the period under study will also see the advent of
a foremost lyric poet, Nirendranath Chakraborty (1924–2019), but
his mature evolution came in the ensuing decades. Sankha Ghosh
(b. 1932) had his first book published in 1953.

language of poetry
By ‘language’ here, we do not mean the ‘diction’ of poetry, which may
be as diverse as there are personal preferences. Rather, we mean the
general language of poetry, controlled by the metres and rhymes,
and also that when the latter two are not used by the poets out of
their own choice.
In general terms, the traditional poetical language of Bengal
before, say 1942, when Buddhadeb Basu made a manifesto against
it, was what can be called a ‘mixed’ dialect of poetry, where extended
verb forms of Bengali sadhu bhasha were used, including various
modifications of these. For example, shudhaiteche (‘is/are asking’) was
there, alongside sudhateche, shudhaiche, shudhacche, and shudhucche.
Word-alternates with different syllabic measures had to be used. So
shuniya (‘having heard’) was used side by side with shuni and shune,
the last being the colloquial form. Apart from these, the pronouns
also displayed parallel forms: tahar tar (‘his/her’), ihake ® eke (‘to
him/her’), the former literary, the latter colloquial. There were also
‘poetical’ words such as momo (‘mine’) instead of the familiar amar,
and tobo instead of tomar (‘yours’).
As a prelude to Buddhadeb Basu’s proposal, one should of course
honorably mention Tagore’s crusade for ‘prose poems’ that began ten
years earlier, in which he recommended only the colloquial word
forms to be used in poetry. He, however, did not stick to it himself,
and continued to write his songs in the traditional (‘mixed’) dialect;
but in poetry, he came back to the traditional dialect in his last phase.
While Buddhadeb Basu proposed a change of the dialect, it was
not affected overnight. Jibanananda Das pursued his own diction,
which accommodated a mixed language, but others gradually veered
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 503

to the spoken style. This was reinforced by the practice of the left-
oriented poets like Subhash Mukhopadhyay. One can say that after
the fifties, the general language of the Bengali poetry was closer to
the dialect that was spoken in daily life, i.e. the verbs, pronouns, and
postpositions were taken from the standard colloquial speech. As a
result, there were less tatsama or loanwords from Sanskrit, which
were used to construct compounds. Exceptions were of course there,
but those came few and far between.

Drama
In India and Bengal, as it happens in every colonized country, there
arose a debate about the continuity of literary and other cultural
traditions. A debate arises—had there been drama in the literary
scene before the foreigners (in this case the British) introduced it?
There were performances of course, dramatic in form, with songs
being used for dialogues mostly; but drama in the Western sense,
mostly using prosaic dialogues and depicting life, was not there in
Bengal before the end of the eighteenth century. A loose dramatic
form, jatra, and other folk plays were in existence, but there was no
drama or theatre in the modern sense of the terms. So, Sukumar Sen
and others acknowledge a break and say that modern Bengali drama
has not arisen for the traditional jatra.9 This is true in the sense that
while a jatra was performed in open air, a modern drama is played on
raised proscenium stage. Jatra was basically a singing theatre, while
modern drama resorts to prose dialogues. In course of time, both
have influenced each other in many spheres, but an evolutionary link
between jatra and modern drama will not simply hold.
Drama as a literary and performing art form appeared before
prose began to be extensively used for literary or instructional texts.
Theatres had begun staging English plays in Calcutta from 1752,
and although the ‘natives’ were not a prominent part of its audience,
the few of the elite that could enter them came back with a sense of
vacuum in their own language and culture. A Russian adventurer,
Gerasim Stepanovitch Lebedef (1749–1817), judging the eager
predilections of the Bengali nouveau riche of the day, produced
two farcical plays in Calcutta in Bengali, in 1795 and 1796—both
localized adaptations of English plays. The novelty of this aroused a
504 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

desire in the Bengali elite of the day to produce plays of their own.
The teaching of Shakespeare in the Hindu College (1817 onwards)
by D.L. Richardson (1801–65) also made his Bengali students deeply
interested in theatre. One of these students, Prasanna Coomar Tagore
(1801–86), founded the first amateur Bengali group of theatrical
performance—the Hindu Theatre, in 1831. His example was soon
followed by other members of the rich Calcutta gentry. These were
variously known by the names ‘Rich Peoples’ Theatre’, ‘Gardenhouse
Theatre’, ‘Patron’s Theatre’, etc. These were, however, exclusive and
private theatres, open to invited guests only. The emerging Bengali
middle class had not yet found its own theatre.
The common problem that these outfits faced was the absence
of plays written in Bengali. So, in the natural course of things,
translations and adaptations began to be made, from the two other
languages, both rich in dramatic literature and immediately available
to the educated Bengali—English and Sanskrit. Shakespeare from
English and Kalidasa from Sanskrit were the major suppliers (Julius
Caesar, Vikramorvashi, Shakuntala). Shakespeare’s plays, in addition,
were later Indianized, and continued to influence original Bengali
drama, in which scenes and dialogues were reminiscent of those of
Shakespeare. Original Bengali plays, appeared in 1852, with G.C.
Ghosh’s Kirtibilas and Tarini Charan Sikdar’s Bhadrarjuna. The hero
of the first play had a touch of Hamlet. The author, in fact, claimed
to write the first ‘tragedy’ in Bengali, and drew the attention of the
readers/audience to the special pleasure that can be gained out of
‘churning in mind of the happenings that are pathetic.’
These two were first plays on record only, and were never put
on stage. If we look back to the 1850s, we can see that only plays
about contemporary issues, social problems at that, which caught the
fascination of the new Bengali middle class, were performed. These
included issues like the remarriage of the young widow (enacted as
a law in 1856, as a result of the movement initiated and spearheaded
by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar [1820–91]), the Kulin system of
polygamy in which even baby girls were offered as brides, the
waywardness of the sons of the nouveau riche (drinking, debauchery,
and other avenues of extravagance), later to be followed by political
issues like the exploitation of the indigo planters, India’s economic
drainage due to imperialist trade policy, etc. Such issues brought
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 505

the middle class out to the theatre, who formed amateur troupes.
One of these troupes, the Baghbazar Theatre, finally established a
professional theatre in 1872—a proscenium stage where tickets were
sold, and anyone could view a play for a price. This spelled the end
of the private theatres of the rich.
There were four major playwrights in the two decades between
1852 and 1872. Ramnarayan Tarkaratna (1822–86), Michael
Madhusudan Dutta, Dinabandhu Mitra (1830–73), and Manomohan
Basu (1831–1912). The staging of Ramnarayan’s Kulinakulasarvaswa
(1854) in 1857 created an interest in staged reality in the Calcutta
middle class audience, and plays (historical or fictive) that depicted
other places and other times lost their attraction. Tarkaratna also
wrote plays based on Hindu mythology, Rukminiharan (1871)
for example, and translated Shakuntala (1860) from Sanskrit, but
their popularity could not match that of Kulinakulasarvaswa. His
Nabanatak (‘The New Play’, 1866) was also acclaimed as a play and
it dealt with the theme of polygamy, another name for the Kulin
system. In fact, the three major issues of the contemporary plays—
Kulinism, polygamy, and child marriage and the miserable condition
of the high caste widows—were all gruesome aspects of the same
despicable social practice.
Madhusudan Dutta, as we have seen, was a major poet of
the time—in fact the first Indian poet with an exposure to the
international literary scene. He also wrote some six plays, three based
on Indian mythology, one on the Rajput annals as presented by Tod,
and two farces which have not lost their freshness till today. What
distinguished his mythological plays like Sharmistha (1859) and
Padmabati (1860, in which he adopted the Greek ‘Apple of Discord’
tale and gave it a Hindu shape) from those of his contemporaries was
his lack of interest in moralizing and the treatment of his characters
as human beings of flesh and blood. Shakespeare influences him
here and there, as he would, in turn, continue to do the same to the
Bengali playwrights of the nineteenth century. His farces Ekei ki
Bole Sabhyata (‘Is this called Civilized Practice?’), and Buro Shaliker
Ghare Rom (figuratively, ‘An Old Debauch’), both written in 1859,
were hard-hitting pieces on the wayward sons of the rich and the
debauching adventures (and punishment) of a village headman,
showing off his religiosity.
506 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Dinabandhu Mitra was, however, the most successful playwright

of the four, as it was his play Nil Darpan (‘The Indigo Mirror’, 1860)
that created political as well as theatrical history, as this was the play
that was used as a prop to found the National Theatre in 1872. He
also had a flair for farce and comedy, and his Sadhabar Ekadashi
(‘The Grass Widows’, 1866) mixes pathos with farce. The other major
playwright of the day, Manomohan Basu, continued the jatra tradition
on stage and sprinkled his mythological plays like Ramabhishek
(1867) with songs. He wrote a few ‘social’ plays too, but all of the four,
except Dinabandhu, helped to bring back the Hindu mythological
memory in drama, and this became a major component in the plays
that are to follow.
This was a time when the emerging patriotism of the Indian and
the Bengali did not express itself directly against the British, who
were the rulers then, but showed its fervor by camouflaging itself as
being against the Muslim rulers of the country, who were regarded
as foreigners and aggressors. Jyotirindranath Tagore (1849–1925),
Rabindranath’s elder brother, resorted to fictionalized history for
propagating this spirit, while a firebrand playwright, Upendranath
Das (1848–95) made his contemporary heroes and heroines attack
the British authority. Plays of both invited the empire’s wrath and
were forbidden under the Dramatic Performances Act of 1876.
As has been said earlier, the ‘National’ Theatre began appropriately
with a political play, Nil Darpan. The marriage could not however
last for long, as in 1876, this play and a few others were prohibited
by the British rulers, under the plea that they contained ‘seditious’
material. The ‘Dramatic Performances Act’ restricted the options
of the Bengali playwrights, and patriotic or nationalistic plays were
almost out of the Bengali stage for about three decades. This, however,
turned Girish Chandra Ghosh, earlier an actor and a director, into
a playwright. He had begun with adaptations of Bengali classics like
Meghnadbadh Kavya, but soon gathered enough confidence to write
plays of his own.
In the meantime, a sort of small revolution was accomplished by
the Bengal Theatre, which introduced the first actresses on stage—
four of them in fact—in 1873. Earlier, female roles were played out
by males, and Madhusudan Dutta, whose play Mayakanan was
undertaken by the theatre for staging, induced them to do this. In
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 507

protest to this, however, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar resigned from

the governing committee of the theatre. The next important event
was the change of the theatre economy. Till 1881, the major Bengali
theatre troupe, the National Theatre, was run on a cooperative basis,
members contributing to the fund and having the earnings distributed
among themselves. This did not work out well, and the troupe soon
broke, as some of them left it to form another troupe, and this way
the ‘National’ became the ‘Great National’, the ‘Grand National’, etc.
There were also groups patronized by rich men. However, in 1881,
an entrepreneur named Pratap Chand Jahuri came by and gave the
Bengali theatre a ‘professional’ structure, in which the troupe would
be corporate-owned, and the others, i.e. the actor-manager, the actors,
etc., would be the employees. This is how the Bengali professional
stage would carry on till the 1960s, achieving a last flash of glory for
a decade, in which some plays ran for 600–700 nights.
Girish Chandra Ghosh, an actor-manager of the Star Theatre (a
playhouse, not a troupe; in Bengal, as in other places, there arose
an ambiguity in the word ‘theatre’—meaning both—a ‘company’ or
troupe, and a playhouse) under Jahuri, took the onus upon himself
to provide plays for the theatre and consequently became the most
productive playwright of the end-century. Sukumar Sen makes an
unkind remark about his forty-five odd plays, stating that only four
or five of them would have been good enough.10 Unfortunately, he
did not appreciate the fact that the driving force of the ‘professional’
theatre was then profit, and Girish Chandra had to earn that for
his employer both as an actor-manager and a playwright. He had
to follow and repeat successes, either of himself, or those of others.
So he wrote and produced devotional plays like Chaitanya-lila
(1883) and Vilvamanga (1884), as such plays were very popular with
contemporary audience, with what is called a Hindu Revivalism
of the period. It was also a safe theme, as patriotic plays, although
assured successes, were not safe to be written or produced after the
Dramatic Performances Act of 1876. Moreover, the same subject does
not guarantee perennial success. Spurts of such enthusiasm did not
last long, and so, when a household tragedy (breakdown of a joint
family where brothers conspired against each other) was made into
a success by Amritalal Basu, a former associate of Girish Chandra,
but later a rival, he had to produce a domestic tragedy himself, which
508 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

was titled Praphulla (1889)—a mushy melodrama and a tear-jerker.

Again, when in 1903, in the ambience of the imminent Partition of
Bengal, another playwright Kshirod Prasad Vidyabinod’s Banger
Bir Pratapaditya, a drama about a highly fictionalized Bengali hero
was a success, Girish Chandra and the others had to write historical
plays to celebrate re-emerging patriotism. It of course goes to the
credit of Girish Chandra that, in spite of his unintended choice of
seeking commercial success, he, for one thing, did not compromise
his high moral values, nor did he fail to write a few actually ‘good’
plays like Jana (1894), Pandab Gaurab (1899), Balidan (1905), etc.
He, in addition, translated Shakespeare’s Macbeth and gallantly put
it on stage. The contemporary audience did not, however, reward his
gallantry, and the play folded up after three nights.
The period (c.1880–90), steeped in the Hindu revivalist spirit,
looked for national or moral greatness, as in the Puranas and epics
like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and drama, unlike the
pre-National Theatre stage, was mostly based on Hindu memory.
Patriotic plays like Nil Darpan, or those written by Upendranath Das
like Surendra-Binodini, took a back seat. The mythological memory
was later replaced by historical memory during the early twentieth
century, when patriotism made a comeback with the first Partition
of Bengal looming on the horizon.
Some of the other notable playwrights of the time were Amritlal
Basu, Rajkrishna Roy, Biharilal Chattopadhyay(1840–1901),
Dwijendra Lal Ray, Kshirod Prasad Vidyabinod (1863–1927), and
Amarendra Nath Dutta (1876–1916). Rajkrishna and Vidyabinod
were the first ‘professional’ playwrights of the Bengali stage, who
only ‘wrote’ for it, and were not ‘actor-managers’ like the others. All
of them used Hindu epics and mythologies as source materials for
their plays, and they also wrote farces, to react to the time. Amritalal’s
farces were somewhat misogynic, as most of the farces of the time
were, and they made fun of the newly educated Bengali women,
who they thought to live in a wold of romances, anglicized and
dominating over their husbands and others. Vidyabinod followed
Girish Chandra’s tradition of deep humanism in his Puranic plays,
as he, following the latter again, used Perso-Arabic themes for his
plays. He, however, avoided Girish Chandra’s devotional overtone.
His opera Alibaba (be 1304) was one of the most popular plays of
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 509

the time. Rajkrishna is famous for his historical plays—Mebar Patan

(1908), Sajahan (1910), etc.—with their gushing patriotism, expressed
in songs and highly emotional outbursts of his characters. Amarendra
Nath Dutta was not much of a playwright, but made his mark as an
innovator in his stagecraft as he placed a whole pond on stage in the
play Krishnakanter Uil, an adaption from Bankim Chatterjee’s novel
of the same name. He is also reputed to have used the first electrical
devices on stage, to create magic effects.
The time between 1903 and 1905 was rife with the agitation
against the first Partition of Bengal, and it was the period that
saw a rise of another installment of patriotic plays, authored this
time by Kshirod Prasad (Banger Bir Pratapaditya—1906, Palashir
Prayaschitta—1906, Nanda Kumar—1907, etc.). Girish Ghosh, an
old man by then, also responded appropriately to this new spirit
of patriotic protest by writing Sirajuddaula (1905), Mirkashim
(1906), and Chhatrapati (1907). A firebrand patriot, Mukunda Das
(1878–1934) avoided the city stages and aroused nationalistic spirit
in the rural audience by his inspiring songs and itinerant jatras or
folk plays. Bankim Chandra’s localized, Bengal-centred patriotism,
first seen in his novel Mrinalini (1866) and later developed in Ananda
Math (1882) and other novels, came a full circle to influence the
Bengali theatre. This time, the empire thought it wise not to strike
back with the Dramatic Performances Act, although Mukunda Das
was jailed for a term.
Rabindranath Tagore, who led the biggest procession against
Bengal Partition in Calcutta on 16 October 1905, with the marching
crowd mouthing his patriotic songs in chorus, strangely remained,
as a dramatist, outside this turmoil. He had begun writing in his
own individual way, with verse plays and musicals, which treaded a
different path in the contemporary devotional environment. It was
not ethics, but aesthetics, that was the motivation behind his plays
like Valmiki Pratibha (1881), Kal Mrigaya (1882), Mayar Khela
(1888), etc.—all of them being musicals. They were enacted with
simple dance gestures, but it was not dance, but songs, which was
the focused component. During the 1890s, he began writing verse
plays in the Shakespearean mould, and added a few comedies on
contemporary life. In the first category, his Raja O Rani (1889),
Visarjan (1890), and Malini (1896) became quite popular, with
510 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Visarjan or The Sacrifice coming to the fore. But it all changed in

1908, when he wrote Sharadotsab for the students of his school at
Santiniketan, which had no definite plot or structured scheme of
progression, and was but a loose sequence of events. These events,
in turn, slowly unfolded an idea, often symbolically or allegorically,
or both, through a few characters, who spoke and sang their way
towards the conclusion. Tagore, in such plays, created a new mythic-
historical space in which his characters, far from the present reality,
dealt with problems that had contemporary implications though.
Dakghar (1912) is an exception to this, as it confronts death, the
perennial reality of human life; but his Muktadhara (1922) deals with
narrow nationalism, and Achalayatan (1912) carries a message about
breaking crusty and meaningless faiths and traditions. Again, his
Raktakarabi (‘The Red Oleanders’, 1926) depicts the dehumanizing
effects of the capitalist production system. Even his late ‘dance
dramas’ (in these, dance was pre-eminent), which were conversions
from some of his earlier plays and poems, do not avoid social issues.
For example, his Chandalika (1938) depicts the unrequited love of a
Dalit girl for a Buddhist monk, but leads her to the realization that
she is also a human being like any other. His musicals and dance
dramas were quite popular, and were (and still are) performed
widely by members of the public; but his prose plays took a long
time to have their dramatic potential realized, as they were not
considered ‘proper’ or ‘legitimate’ drama by critics or theatre people.
Some thought them to be too ‘arty-arty’. A breakthrough came by the
efforts of Sambhu Mitra, whose production of Raktakarabi (1954)
on stage convinced everyone about the power and relevance of
these plays.
Coming back to the professional Bengali stage, we find that the
period between 1910 and 1920 was somewhat of an interregnum,
when no major playwright or producer would be evident in the
Bengal theatre. The educated Bengalis had been somewhat reluctant
to patronize it for years, and contemporary fiction did not present
a reputable picture of it. After 1920, however, an extremely talented
and eminent professor of English left ‘professing’ and joined theatre,
which gave the professional theatre a fresh lease of life. This was Sisir
Kumar Bhaduri (1889–1959), who revolutionized the presentation
of a play on stage and came to be regarded as the first ‘director’ in
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 511

Bengal theatre, worth the name. His first major production, Sita, by
a new playwright Jogesh Chowdhury (1889–1948), was a rousing
success and it attracted the elite Bengali audience to the professional
stage once again. It was, however, his rival group at Star Theatre,
who brought in two new playwrights, Sachindranath Sengupta
(1891–1961) and Manmatha Roy (1900–88). Apart from Jogesh
Chowdhury and these two, Bidhyayak Bhattacharya (1907–86) and
Mahendra Gupta (1910–84) were two other notable playwrights of
the time. A third was Jaladhar Chattopadhyay (?1896–1968), whose
Ahimsa (1931) and some other plays became popular. Bidhyayak
Bhattacharya showed his mettle in depicting middle class household
melodrama, while Manmatha Roy, Sachindranath Sengupta, and
Mahendra Gupta depended on mythology and history for their
own brand of somewhat traditional melodrama, often with a tinge
of patriotism, this time inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s (1868–1948)
popular movements. Sachindranath’s Surajuddaulah was a hugely
popular play, and so was his family melodrama Tatinir Bichar.
Manmatha’s Karagar and Mahendra’s Gayatirtha (1937), both refer
back to the myths, but Manmatha makes his play an allegory of the
nationalistic movement in India, while Mahendra could seldom
come out of the Puranic and historical fold. Manmatha has been
arguably claimed to be the first author of a one-act play in Bengali.
His other plays of note are Muktir Dak (1924) and Chand Sadagar
(1928). Jogesh Chowdhury wrote several other plays besides Sita, of
which the historical Digbijayi (1929), Shrishri Bishnupriya (1931),
Banglar Myeye (1934), Nandaranir Samsar (1936), etc., would find
favour with Bengali theatregoers. During these decades, some fiction
writers like Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, Banaphul, and Sharadindu
Bandyopadhyay also wrote plays which were popular on the public
stage. Tarasankar’s Kalindi and Dui Purush became success stories
on stage and in amateur productions, and Banaphul’s bio-plays
Shrimadhusudan and Vidyasagar proved his power as a playwright.
Sharadindu’s plays mostly are romantic comedies, with a flavour of
mystery added to them. Bandhu (1937), Detective (1937), Lal Panja
(1938), etc., are some examples. Rabindranath Maitra (1896–1932),
who had begun with fiction, surprised the readers with an excellent
comedy, Manmayi Girls’ School (1932), which became an immediate
success.
512 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

On 24 October 1944, a troupe called Indian People’s Theatrical

Association (IPTA, alias Bharatiya Gananatya Sangha) presented a
play in Calcutta, written by a new playwright Bijan Bhattacharya
(1917–78), who was also a member of the troupe. The play was
directed by him and Sambhu Mitra, whose career on the professional
stage was not so brilliant, although his dreams about a new theatre
was such. The IPTA provided him with a vehicle to put his ideas
into practice, and the result was Nabanna—a truly epoch-making
production that changed the direction of Bengali theatre almost
overnight. From then on, the history of Bengali drama and theatre
had not been about what was being played on professional stage,
but what the so-called outsiders would create. Sambhu Mitra did
not become associated with the IPTA for long, but founded his own
troupe called ‘Bohurupee’ in 1948, and a new entity called Bangla
‘group theatre’ or amateur theatre troupes began their journey from
that year. Bijan also formed his own troupe, the Calcutta Theatre
in the same year. He continued writing plays, some based on ‘class
struggle’ and some with an operatic fervor, as his Kalanka and Mara
Chand (both 1946) would go on to show. Another famous director,
playwright, and actor, Utpal Dutta (1929–93), earlier a member of
IPTA, formed his own troupe about the same time. The 1950s and
1960s saw the appearance of highly gifted directors and actors in the
Bengali ‘group theatre’, but the professional stage withered away in
these two decades, after a brief flash of commercial glory.
Besides Bijan Bhattacharya, two playwrights associated
themselves with the IPTA, of which the main and local branches
used their plays quite frequently. One was Tulsi Lahiri (1897–1959),
a senior playwright who wrote plays for the professional stage, but
later came close to Bohurupee and IPTA. His Duhkhir Iman (1947)
was performed on stage by the celebrated Sisir Kumar Bhaduri,
and Chenra Tar (1950) was staged by Sambhu Mitra himself. The
other was Digindra Chandra Bandyopadhyay (1908–92), a prolific
playwright, whose plays like Antara (1942), Dipshikha (1943), and
Taranga (1947), responded well to the gloomy realities of war, famine,
and distress of the peasants of Bengal. Four famous playwrights,
who would support the group theatre later—Utpal Dutta, Badal
Sircar, Mohit Chattopadhyay, and Manoj Mitra—do not come into
the period we are concerned with. All of them experimented with
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 513

dramaturgy, but it was Badal Sircar who charted a new territory for
theatre to move into and act.

Fiction
Fiction in Bengal had its first attempts in narratives, historical or
otherwise, written in the least formal sense of the genre. Books
published by the Fort William College (1801–5) had quite a number
of narratives, both in translated and original forms. It was, however,
the ‘sketches’ or nakshas of the early nineteenth century, which took a
look at the volatile urban life of Calcutta that, it is thought, ultimately
lead to the creation of the first realistic novel in Bengali—Alaler
Gharer Dulal (1858), by Pyarichand Mitra, in the pseudonym of Tek
Chand Thakur.
The next year, 1859, saw the publication of a better-structured
novel. It was titled Chandramukhir Upakhyan, which presented
graphic details of the life and rituals in a Bengal village, although
ethical intentions spoil its possible excellence. It was written by
the famous folklorist Lal Behari Day (1824–94). However, Bankim
Chandra Chatterjee, fourteen years his younger, became the over-
arching figure in fiction in the second half of the nineteenth century.
He started out with a tale of contemporary life in his English novel
Rajmohan’s Wife, but then snatched Bengali fiction out of its realistic
moorings and began writing historical romances one after another,
which became extremely popular with the new readers. Bankim
Chandra had a predecessor in this, which was Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay
(1825–94), who wrote Oitihasik Upanyas, adapting two tales from
Joseph Caunter’s Romances of History. The second tale, Anguriya
Binimay (‘Exchange of Rings’), was a tale of love between Shivaji
and Roshenara, a daughter of Aurangzeb. But his novels soon began
to have a component of patriotism, which made them even more
popular. His Durgeshnandini (1865) was a pure historical romance,
as would most of his novels be. But it opened up a whole area of
colourful imagination for the Bengali mind, which had so far been
somewhat suffocated by the realistic fare of the satirical sketches and
many contemporary plays, some of which were but the stage versions
of those sketches. Most of Bankim Chandra’s novels contained a love
motif, in which two young adults came close to each other, unfolding
514 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

a passion that had hitherto been unexplored in the new Bengali

literature. This took place in a social ambience of marriage of the
minor daughter to a young male, which led to, as sociologists would
tell us, widespread and socially accepted prostitution, and the practice
of indulging in rakshitas or ‘kept’ women, and the institution of the
bagan bari (‘a garden house’) where such women were usually kept.
But mutual love between two adult male and female, whether that
led to matrimony or not, was rather unknown in Bengali literature.
Bengalis at that time had just begun to read about them in English
novels, and Bankim Chandra superimposed this borrowed reality
on his tales, which became, with the spectacle of history added
often, enormously popular. However, this passion, as depicted in
Bengali novels, was mostly that of the heart, torn between the do’s
and don’ts that tormented it. Physicality of love would still take a
long time, at least half of a century, to appear in this literature, and
would still remain feebly in the margins. It would never assume the
pornographic proportion of that exemplified in Bharat Chandra
Roy’s Annadamangal.
Durgeshnandini was quickly followed by Kapalkundala (1866),
which although contained a component of history, was basically a
tale of two non-historical persons, Kapalkundala and Nabakumar.
Kapalkundala was somewhat of an experiment, as this girl was
placed outside a family, in a forest where a hermit brought her up.
Bankim Chandra wanted to see how love and domesticity would
affect her—one who knew nothing of the ways of men. Next came
Mrinalini (1869), which touched upon the theme of the loss of India’s
independence. From this novel, Bankim Chandra’s patriotism, often
interpreted as particularistic, as he thought that the simple fact
of the defeat of a Hindu ruler amounted to the loss of a ‘people’s’
independence, came to be established as a regular theme. This
theme became very pronounced in his Ananda Math (1882), in
which his song ‘Vande Mataram’ proved to be a strong inspirational
source for the Indian freedom movement, both ‘constitutional’ and
revolutionary.
Bankim Chandra, however, wrote other tales of love and
suffering, often in a contemporary upper middle class households.
In some, history intruded to provide a more colourful ambience. In
Chandrashekhar (1875), one of his favourite themes—love beyond
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 515

the domestic bonds of husbands and wives—is depicted with an

ambiguous sympathy, where Bankim Chandra makes us sad for
Shaibalini, yet condemns her for her ‘infidelity’ to her husband.
Bishabriksha (‘The Poison Tree’, 1873) and Krishnakanter Will (‘The
Will of Krishnakanta’, 1878)—both reminisce Rajmohan’s Wife,
Bankim Chandra’s first and only novel in English, and both show
the tragedy of the married hero’s love for a widow. Apart from his
loathing for ‘illicit’ extra-marital love, that he was also staunchly
against widow remarriage, and even in their right to love a person, is
clearly evident in them. These acts of mental indiscretion, mixed with
the developments of his personal life, perhaps finally lead him to a
philosophy of anushilan or self-culture, in which regulation of desire
and passion holds a central place. This moral approach underlies his
three later novels, Ananda Math, Debi Choudhurani, and Sitaram.
But his other novels and tales, like Indira (1873, developed further
in 1973), Rajani, and Radharani, show various aspects of human
relationship, and mixes mirth and tragedy in the characters. The
role of history is mostly dispensed with in these narratives. He also
wrote a truly historical novel, Rajshinha, a revised edition (1893) of
which made it one of his best.
When Bankim Chandra’s art and popularity were at its peak, an
author, who in fact revolted against him and his ideology of the novel,
gained popularity. This new author was Tarak Nath Gangopadhyay
(1843–91) whose first novel Swarnalata (1874) began telling the story
of a rural middle-class household, with the wife of the elder brother
discouraging her husband to support the no-good and idler younger
brother, driving him out of the house in search of a job, and leaving
his ailing wife behind. In the second chapter of the book Tarak Nath
made caustic remarks against Bankim Chandra’s fibbing about the
zenana of Muslim rulers, without ever being present there. Bankim
Chandra’s novels about contemporary Bengal never looked below
the upper crust of the society. His younger contemporary, Ramesh
Chandra Dutta (1848–1909), an early ICS, wrote four historical novels
himself—Bangabijeta (1874), Madhabi-Kankan (1877), Maharastra
Jiban Prabhat (1878), and Rajput Jiban Sandhya (1879). However,
his style lacked the grandeur of that of Bankim Chandra, and he has
left no memorable character(s) like some of the latter. He also wrote
two novels on contemporary Bengal life—Sansar (1886) and Samaj
516 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

(1890)—which were about ordinary middle class people, who were

more familiar to the readers. One of these novels even supported
widow remarriage, ignoring Bankim’s dig about Vidyasagar on the
issue in his novel Bishabriksha (1875). Pratap Chandra Ghosh (1845–
1921), whose fame rests mostly on his epic historical novel Bangadhip
Parajay (vol. 1, 1869; vol. 2, 1884), could not produce much beyond.
Sanjib Chandra Chattopadhyay (1834–89), Bankim’s elder brother,
and Damodar Mukhopadhyay (1853-1907), Bankim’s brother-in-law
(his daughter’s father-in-law), both treaded Bankim’s path, and wrote
within the fold of real or fictive history. Sanjib Chandra had a more
familiar style of prose.
As has been said earlier, there was a divide of fictional ideologies
and styles, which was first pronounced by Tarak Nath Gangopadhyay.
It was a conflict between realism and romance. The earlier nakshas or
sketches that mixed humour with satire, sometimes with lampooning,
from Kalikata Kamalalay (1823) by Bhabani Charan Bandyodpadhyay
(1787–1848) to Hutom Pyanchar Naksha (1864) by Kali Prasanna
Sinha (1841–70)—a tradition that we think was directly responsible
for the birth of the first Bengali novel, i.e. Tek Chand Thakur or
Pyari Chand Mitra’s (1814–83) Alaler Gharer Dulal—were pushed
into background by Bankim Chandra’s over-arching presence and his
fictionalized history and romances, which had much higher literary
skill and excellence. The reading public, as well as writers of fiction,
were overwhelmed by Bankim’s art and its success, but there was a
dissenting voice in Tarak Nath. It was almost like a battle between
Walter Scott and Charles Dickens. We will find that some years later
Rabindranath Tagore took a stand in supporting Tarak Nath and
repudiating Bankim’s idea of fiction. He contrasts the two styles,
realistic and highly romanticized, in many of his stories. In a letter
to his friend Srish Chandra Majumdar, he praised the latter’s writing
because there was no trace of novelly mithya (‘novelistic falsehood’)
in them, and advices him not to go into any oitihasik ba oupadeshik
birambana (‘historical or pontificatory catastrophe’).11
This ideology of fiction tended to avoid following the lines of
Bankim Chandra. Among other writers out of the Bankim fold, mention
might be made of Indranath Bandyopadhyay (1849–1911), who
wrote Kalpataru (1874)—which was the first Bengali satirical novel,
as Sukumar Sen observes.12 Jogendra Chandra Basu (1854–1905)
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 517

also had a pungent pen, as his Model Bhagini (1886–9) and other
novels show. Both Indranath and Jogendra Chandra were against
the Brahmos, particularly against the freedom that the women of
this faith enjoyed. But the most distinctive among the contemporary
fiction writers was Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay (1847–1919), who,
in his novels and short stories, mixed realism, nonsense, and fantasy
in such a manner that they created altogether a new taste for the
Bengali readers. His novel Kankabati (1892) makes its heroine move
from reality to fantasy, and she meets characters of animals like an
anglicized Bengali frog, a mosquito girl as a friend, and such others—
thus creating a chiaroscuro of an absurd universe. His short stories
also have ghosts as heroes and heroines, and there is also a village
headman who talks about his unbelievable exploits (for example,
entering into the belly of a huge crocodile and finding a whole village
market in action there, or a tiger scooting away, leaving his skin
behind, etc.). There were quite a few minor, but popular novelists.
One of them was Bhuban Chandra Mukhopadhyay, who wrote about
scandals in high families in his Ei Ek Nutan, but popularly known
as Haridaser Guptakatha (vol. I, 1870; vol. II, 1873), following the
model of G.M. Reynold’s similar tales in English. This was almost an
underground literature, but highly popular with the city readership
that had a taste for such writing. It follows Kali Prasanna Sinha in
using the saucy colloquial Bengali, as we find in his satirical sketches
Hutom Pyanchar Naksha. Bhuban Chandra lived the life of a hack
writer for affluent patrons, but his colloquial style was lively. Shibnath
Sastri (1847–1919), the Brahmo leader, was another author whose
novels on contemporary life, like Mejo Bau (1880) and Jugantar
(1895), particularly the latter, faithfully depict changes that were
taking place in the Bengali life during the turn of the century. They
are also enlivened by his fidelity to real life experiences. His other
novels are Nayantara (1899) and Bidhabar Chhele (1915).
During the Bankim era, Rabindranath Tagore’s elder sister
Swarnakumari Debi (1855–1932), who was one of the earliest Bengali
women to write fiction (the first one was one Srimati Hamangini,
whose Manorama was out in 187413), wrote novels, some of which,
e.g. Dipanirban (1876), Hughlir Imambari (1888), Phuler Mala (1895),
Mibar Raj (1897), and Bidroha (1890) carry the imprint of Bankim
Chandra as historical novels. Once again, her style, and in fact all of
518 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

those who wrote historical novels or romances even in the twentieth

century, could not capture the loftiness of Bankim Chandra’s diction.
But she also moved out of history and focused on the contemporary
society in novels like Chinna Mukul (1879), Snehalata (in two
volumes, 1892–3), and Kahake (1898). Srikumar Bandyopadhyay
complains about her love of social debate that has a negative effect on
her characterization and plots.14 She also wrote a number of stories,
some of which have not lost their appeal even today.
Meanwhile, Rabindranath Tagore, somewhat unobtrusively, was
trying his hand in short stories, and his first story ‘Bhikharini’ (‘The
Beggar Girl’) was published in 1877. A procession of more than
a hundred stories would thus begin, making him one of the first,
and best, short story writers of the world. His last story would be
published in the year of his death, 1941. Many of his first stories have
a rural ambience, as he was then living in the Tagore family’s landed
estates in east Bengal, the sojourn that witnessed an explosion of his
creative genius. After 1914, Calcutta became the major locale. His
novels were a little late to appear, the first two (Bau Thakuranir Hat,
1883 and Rajarshi, 1887) of which would show Bankim Chandra’s
influence, while from his third, Chokher Bali (‘The Eyesore’, 1903), he
was on his own. This novel, for the first time in Bengal, acknowledges
the desires and wrath of a spurned young girl, who, after becoming
a widow, proceeds to destroy the married life of the boy who had
refused to marry her. Tagore makes no moral judgment on her,
unlike his predecessor Bankim Chandra, whose Rohini—a widow
in Krishnakanter Uil (1875)—was blamed by the author as a ‘sinner’.
Rabindranath wrote about twelve novels, big and small—all
important in their own way, but his Gora (1910) has an epical
dimension, and perhaps states more fully his concern for a balance
between nationalism and universal humanism—something that
found a more elaborate expression in his articles in Nationalism
(1917). His Ghare Baire (1916) also questions the negative politics
of boycotting foreign goods. His last major novel was Jogajog (1929),
which explores a marriage across class and culture, with a focus on
the heroine’s sufferings from her marriage with a crude, social upstart.
In a more light-hearted vein, his Shesher Kabita (1929) examines the
complex relationship between love and matrimony. He also made
some experiments with the form of novel, not only in size, but also
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 519

in the manner of narration, using major characters for controlling an

episode, or telling their own stories which formed separate segments
of the novel. His shorter novels explore human relationships more
than the national or social backgrounds. Tagore’s personal friend,
and a lesser contemporary novelist, was Srish Chandra Majumdar
(1860–1908), whose Shaktikanan (1877) attempts to recreate the
social history of Bengal of the pre-Plassey period, and may be of
some interest to the historians of Bengal. His Phuljani (1894) is
distinguished by a review of Tagore himself, in which he cautioned
Majumdar about that ‘novelistic falsehood’. He has other novels—
Kritajnata (1896) and Bishwanath (1896), the latter of which is based
on the life of a famous Bengali dacoit. Another friend of Tagore,
Nagendranath Gupta (1861–1940), wrote historical fiction along
Bankim Chandra’s lines, e.g. Parbatbasini (1883) and Amar Singh
(1889). He also wrote social novels, among which mention might
be made of Lila (1892) and Tamaswini (1900). The latter depicted
a kind of ‘stark realism’ about which Tagore commented that the
author forced himself into it and was not quite comfortable with it.
That Bankim Chandra’s legacy could not be easily wiped out, was
evident in the novels of Chandi Charan Sen (1845–1906), Haraprasad
Shastri (1851–1931), Surendra Mohan Bhattacharya, and others, who
are obliterated from the reading memory. However, Shastri’s two
novels, Kanchanmala (1915) and Bener Meye (1918), are still quite
readable for his elegant narrative style. It was perhaps Sarat Chandra
Chatterjee, who helped this fictional hobnobbing with history to
come to an end.
The major Bengali novelist after Rabindranath, who appeared
in the early decades of the twentieth century was Sarat Chandra
Chatterjee (1876–1938). He wrote about twenty-five novels and
quite a number of short stories, which stole the heart of the Bengali
reading public, and, translated later, that of the Indian readership at
large, so much so that many provinces of India, which know him
as Sarat Chandra (shorn of the Bengali surname), thought that he
was an author in their own language. He spoke mainly of the rural
Bengali middle class, his tales saturated with milk of human kindness
that bring tears to the eyes of the reader. Therefore, his stories and
novels like Baradidi (1913), Biraj Bau (1914), Bindur Chhele (1914),
Parinita (1914), Pandit Mashai (1914), Ramer Sumati (1914), Mejdidi
520 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

(1915), Palli Samaj (1915), Chandranath (1916), and Debdas (1917)

in particular, have been made into films over and over again, and
in several languages in India. His autobiographical novel Srikanta,
published in four parts (1917–1933), has also been highly popular. His
Charitrahin (1917), Datta (1918), and Denapaona (1923) also enjoyed
such popularity. Only some of his later, city-based novels like Shesh
Prashna (1931) and Bipradas (1935), etc., could not touch the mass
appeal of his earlier fictions. The sorrows and sufferings of women
was Sarat Chandra’s focal area, and this made his fiction regular ‘tear-
jerkers’, not to be condemned as mushy though. Also, a spontaneous
humour made his prose highly readable. The tension which the
joint families were undergoing at a time when rural economy was
giving way to mercantile, job-providing economy is evident in Sarat
Chandra’s novels. His popularity was, in fact, unmatched by his
contemporaries, even by that of Rabindranath Tagore.
Between Rabindranath and Sarat Chandra, Prabhat Kumar
Mukhopadhyay (1873–1932) was an author who gained popularity
for his short stories tinged with both pathos and humour, and a
few novels, the best of which was Ratnadip (1915). Others were
Ramasundari (1908), Nabin Sannyasi (1912), etc., some of which
contained an element of thrill, with moral tensions. Prabhat Kumar
had no serious message to deliver, but there were of course exceptions.
One of his serious short stories, ‘Debi’, the rough plot of which was
gifted to him by Rabindranath, was made into a film by Satyajit Ray
later. Sarat Chandra’s rise, in fact, was the cause of decline in Prabhat
Kumar’s popularity. Sarat Chandra himself was responsible for
beginning a ‘school’ of his own. Two of his followers were women—
Anurupa Debi (1882–1958) and Nirupama Debi (1883–1951).
Mantrashakti and Ma by the former and Annapurnar Mandir and Didi
by the latter were widely received by Bengali readership for a time.
Pramatha Chaudhuri (1868–1946), the editor of Sabuj Patra,
had a sharp pen, and his depiction of the upper middle class society,
though lacking in human interest, was appealing for its smart, slightly
sardonic, and incisive style. He seems to have been writing essays
in the garb of fiction. While he shunned romance in his stories like
Char Iari Katha (1916), his contemporary, Manindra Lala Basu
(1897–1968), went on creating it with young people of Bengali
upper middle class, as we find in his Ramala (1923) and Sahajatrini
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 521

(1941). Manindra Lala belonged to the group of authors identified

with Bharati, a periodical published from the house of the Tagores.
Other authors of this group were Saurindra Mohan Mukhopadhyay,
Charu Chandra Bandyopadhyay, and Upendranath Gangopadhyay,
who also made romance a basis of their novels.
Reaction, however, against both Rabindranath and Sarat
Chandra’s fictional universe was brewing much before they would
cease to write. This would come in the early twenties from the Kallol
authors, a group of young men who would try to shun Rabindranath
and all that he meant, both in poetry and fiction.
Sarat Chandra was drastically criticized by a later contemporary,
Jagadish Gupta (1886–1957) for the former’s insincerity of depiction
of life. Although the latter’s observation was based on only one novel,
Sesher Parichay, with an urban theme, the feeling was growing that
Sarat Chandra’s sentimental tales, while exposing sufferings of women
and exploitations of a caste-ridden society, left much out, which cried
to have a voice of their own. Jagadish Gupta, an author of the Kallol,
was bent on doing just that, i.e. bringing out the complex, if somewhat
Freudian, mind processes that influenced middle class urban and
semi-urban human relationships. His novels Laghuguru, Romanthan,
Asadhu Siddhartha, and quite a few short stories not only delve
deep into the complex mind processes that lead to complex social
relationships, but often disturb the reader with a sharp, analytical
language, purged of all emotions. Manik Bandyopadhyay and later
Jyotirindra Nandi must have been close readers of Jagadish Gupta.
Premankur Atarthi (1890–1964) belonged to the Bharati group,
and his four-volume autobiographical and somewhat picaresque
novel Mahasthabir Jatak, made him one of the most-and-must-read
novelists of the day. Naresh Chandra Sengupta (1882–1964) located
himself somewhere between the Narayan and the Kallol groups, as
he was both conventional in a way, and unconventional for being
complained against for ‘obscenity’ in his fiction. There was also an
anti-Tagore school of fiction, supported by the monthly Narayan,
edited by Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925), the politician and poet, in
which Satyendra Krishna Gupta vituperated against Tagore’s stories
advocating women’s causes. Another periodical that was not very
favourable to Tagore’s idea of fiction was Sahitya, edited by Suresh
Chandra Samajpati, a grandson of Vidyasagar. Jatindramohan Sinha
522 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

wrote a series of articles in it, which was later published as a book

called Sahityer Swasthyaraksha (‘Keeping Literature in Good Health’,
1922), in which he said that ‘modern’ literature was taking four evil
themes to the extreme, and he did not spare even Bankim Chandra,
who he thought was at the root of the malady. These themes were—
widows in love, married women who loved somebody else before
being married, married women falling in love with someone else
other than her husband, and a prostitute loving someone from the
bhadralok society.15 There were quite a few who made it a point to
accuse Rabindranath of his display of ‘obscenity’ in several of his
poems, plays, and fiction, beginning from Dwijendra Lal Ray, Bipin
Chandra Pal, Radhakamal Mukhopadhyay, etc., but their own success,
if any, was short-lived. One should probably try to put things in
perspective by commenting that while Bankim Chandra considered
the love of a widow ‘sin’, Tagore looked at it as a valid and natural
feeling, and Sarat Chandra often sentimentalized it.
Although Jatindramohan Sinha did not exclude Bankim Chandra,
Rabindranath, and Sarat Chandra from his list of evildoers, his
immediate targets would more suitably have been the writers of Kallol,
who would burst into the scene the following year (1923). His mantle
was taken up by Sajani Kanta Das, himself a writer of fiction, but
more ‘famous’ for the journal Shanibarer Chithi, which he published
and edited. He accused the Kallol of obscenity, but printed in his
own magazine lurid quotes from their works. Also, he complained
to Rabindranath about their literary malfeasance. The latter called
a meeting of the two belligerent groups, but no compromise could
be reached. Naresh Chandra Sengupta, mentioned earlier, later
identified with the Kallol group and was duly accused of obscenity
in his novels. He also proclaimed that the ‘Tagore Era’ was over, and
now it was the ati adhuniks or ‘ultra-moderns’ who had taken over.
Again, one of Buddhadeb Basu’s short stories in Kallol was found
highly objectionable by the conservative audience. He, however, did
not continue long in his exercises in shocking the reader and became
more psychological, often romantically so, in his later fiction. His
Tithidor (1949) is probably his best novel, and has not even an iota
of what can be considered ‘obscene’. His flowing, poetic language is
both his strength and weakness, as, though highly readable, it often
ends up in mannerism. Premendra Mitra was more successful as a
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 523

writer of short stories than novels, as his first novel Pank (‘Mud’) could
not lead him to write better novels. The technique of his short stories
was impeccable, and as a writer of them, he ranks as one of the best
among Bengali authors. His approach was also more psychological
than event-oriented. He would, however, gain some popularity with
the young readers with his science fiction and stories of ‘Ghanada’,
also a variety of science fiction camouflaged in adventure. Manish
Ghatak (1902–79) in his first novel Pataldangar Panchali, brought a
bohemian youth living in a slum, and this bohemianism was also the
hallmark of Achintya Kumar Sengupta’s novel Bede, or of Prabodh
Kumar Sanyal’s hero and heroine in Anka-Banka. The Kallol authors
were, in fact, blamed for the imitation of authors like Knut Hamsun
and other ‘naturalistic’, ‘continental’ authors, which was reflected in
their preference for bohemianism, slum life, and sex. We add, once
again, that it was more the foreplay than the real sex act to which these
authors limited themselves. Along with their exploration of middle-
class urban life, they also looked vertically down the social ladder,
and so a glimpse of subaltern life in the cities made its appearance
in their fiction.
The sympathy for the subaltern also showed up from another,
somewhat distant area—the life of the tribal hewers of coal in
the coal mines of western Bengal, first presented by Sailajananda
Mukhopadhyay (1900–75). His series of Kaylakuthir Galpa has
stories not all of which were published in Kallol, and these have made
Sailajananda a kind of path-breaker in Bengali fiction, although he
was later lured away by films like his younger friend Premenda Mitra,
and that made them both suffer as authors of novels, which became
more and more screenplay oriented. Achintya Kumar Sengupta was
another Kallol author who would write prolifically, but apart from his
short stories on the life of the rural poor in Bengal, particularly in the
Muslim community, none of his novels have survived the change of
time and taste. His narrative style was somewhat dramatic, and that
has served him well in his biographical narratives of Ramakrishna
and others.
This chronicle should not give an impression that Bengali fiction
was totally controlled by periodicals and their particular group of
authors. There were, in fact quite a few authors, unattached or loosely
attached to a periodical. They were women in particular, as in the
524 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

social ambience of the time, it was somewhat unusual for a woman

author to attend the addas or chat sessions of the group of authors
formed around a periodical. There of course were quite a few male
authors too, who for various reasons, could not be claimed by any
particular periodical as its product. We will list some such women
authors first. Later, we will also delve into the point that some very
important fiction writers of Bengal were not attached to any particular
periodical group (although they have been claimed by several of
them) and were without such an affiliation.
Anurupa Debi wrote more than twenty-five novels, of which Ma,
Mantrashakti, etc., are remembered, but hardly read. Her novels have
a somewhat superior, grand style, and a highly moralistic approach.
Nirupama Debi was (I think), a better storyteller, with a simple and
agreeable style, focusing on the woes of women—widows included.
Her Didi, Annpurnar Mandir, Shyamali, etc., have also gained
popularity as plays and films. Shailabala Ghoshajaya (1894–1974)
created a kind of social furor in her novel Sekh Andu, by accepting
a Muslim youth, who was the driver of a Hindu girl’s father’s car, as
the girl’s beloved. This going across both community and class was
something new in Bengali literature, and has seldom been repeated
in the works of other Hindu authors. She seems to have some
intimate knowledge of Muslim households, as some other works of
her show. Sukumar Sen marks the second and third decade of the
twentieth century as a ‘golden age’ for women fiction writers.16 Santa
and Sita Debi, two sisters who often wrote jointly as ‘Sanjukta Debi’,
wrote a few novels, and other names in this area are Giribala Debi,
Purnashashi Debi, Jyotirmoyee Debi, etc. Prabhabati Debi Saraswati
(1905–72) was probably the most prolific of them all, whose novels
were sentimental, romantic tales of simple love and relationships, and
were quite popular as gifts in marriages, but are now all but forgotten.
Male authors who worked generally outside the periodical circles
include some most prominent names of Bengali literature, but they
will be dealt with later. Sukumar Sen lists some names, who were
more or less pushed in the background by the popularity of Sarat
Chandra. Among such authors were Nagendranath Gupta, Surendra
Mohan Bhattacharya, Jadunath Bhattacharya, Haran Chandra
Rakshit, etc., of whom Surendra Mohan was probably more popular
than the others. Kedarnath Bandyopadhyay (1863–1949), almost a
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 525

contemporary of Rabindranath Tagore, took up writing late in life

with some seriousness, although his forte was humour. His Koshthir
Phalaphal (1929), Bhaduri Mashai (1931), and Ai has (1935) offer
delightful reading experiences. Rajsekhar Basu (1880–1960), who
only wrote short stories, still remains the most humorous author in
the language, with his Gaddalika (1924), Kajjali (1927), Hanumaner
Swapna (1937) and other titles. Authors of pure humour are always
hard to come by in a literature, and Basu was a great sample. Shibram
Chakraborty (1903–80), who wrote one novel and a number of
short stories, punctuated his humour with puns, which have become
somewhat stale now, because of repetition due to over-production.
He was with the Kallol group.
Among the most prominent authors working outside a periodical
group were the three famous Bandyopadhyays—Bibhuti Bhusan,
Tarasankar, and Manik. Bibhuti Bhusan Bandyopadhyay (1894–1950),
the author of Pather Panchali (1929) and Aparajito (1931), a sequel
to the former, brought a much sought relief to the readers, by taking
them back to an idyllic village, where life was not so idyllic, but the
author could depict it with a somewhat epical detachment. He of
course also had a romantic eye for the sylvan scene, as he was intimate
with the plants and flowers of rural Bengal, and a simple diction—
and all of that made his novels and stories deeply engaging. He was
a believer in the occult and the ‘other’ life; hence some of his novels,
like Drishtipradip (1935) and Debajan (1944), deal with such themes.
Another of his finest works is Aranyak (1938) in which he describes,
with deep sympathy, the exquisite beauty of the forests of south Bihar,
the extreme poverty of people living there, and the destruction of
the forest area in which he took part as an agent of the landlord. His
last major novel was Ichhamati (1956). He was also a quite powerful
writer of short stories, of which he has several collections.
Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay (1898–1971), followed Shailajananada
in bringing the lives of the tribals and people of the lower echelons of
the society in Birbhum, a westernmost and somewhat arid district of
West Bengal, but the transition from a feudal society to an emerging
mercantile, if not industrial, society is also evident in his novels and
short stories. The nationalist movement also appears as a theme in
some. He had a powerful, if somewhat rugged, pen. His major works
are Dhatridebata (1939), Kalindi (1941), Kabi (1941), Ganadebata
526 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

(1948), Panchagram (1943), and Hansuli Banker Upakatha (1947),

and he continued to be productive even after, when he wrote several
important novels. Some of his short stories also figure among the best
ones in Bengali literature.
Manik (1908–56), the youngest of the Bandyopadhyays, honed his
sharp style with an analytical approach towards reality, as if he was
dissecting reality in a laboratory. He was first influenced by Freud, and
explored the sexual complexes of his characters, but later, he became
a member of the Communist Party of India and became a writer for
the oppressed. In both phases, he has left some excellent work. He
first attracted notice in short stories, which he would continue to
write and engage the readers, but soon his novels would also become
objects of a reader’s interest. If in Padma Nadir Majhi (1935) he took
up the life of a boatman of the Padma River, in his next novel Putul
Nacher Itikatha (1936), it was that of a middle class youth, a doctor,
whose dream of going into the wider world is shattered by a father’s
machinations, and he is trapped into a narrow, rural existence. Yet his
Dibaratrir Kabya (1935) charts a completely new path of narrating
middle class emotional relationships, which was both allegorical and
at the same time, poetic. His other novels are important for depiction
of the city life of the lower middle class and poor people, even slum
dwellers, just after the Partition, when the refugees from the then East
Pakistan were making the life of the city and its vicinities complex
and problematic. His other major novels that fall into our period are
Sahartali (two volumes, 1946) and Ahimsa (1948), and he continued
to write with a firm grip till his death.
Balaichand Mukhopadhyay, or ‘Banaphul’ (1899–1979), by
profession a doctor, was somewhat unusual as an author. His hallmark
seems to be his very short stories, ranging from one hundred to five
hundred words, in which he used a whip-crack ending, a flash of
a punch line, in which his deep penetration into the ironies of life
would be revealed. He wrote more than four hundred of these. He also
wrote novels, some of which had unusual content. His Dana (1948)
adopts ornithology as an anchor, and his Sthabar (1951) and Jangam
(1943–5) use the human evolution as a theme. He has also written
longer short stories with skill and competence. His view is ironic.
Annada Sankar Ray (1904–2002) had already been a quite
successful essayist belonging to the Sabuj Patra group before he took
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 527

to writing fiction, in which his entry was comparatively late. His

travelogue of Europe, Pathe Prabase (1931) was a bestseller. His novels
and short stories, although written in a simple and analytical style,
did not attract wide readership, as there was more of intellection than
emotion in his characters. His concern was somewhat philosophical
in his six-novel Satyasaty series, consisting of Jar Jetha Desh (1932),
Ajnatabas (1933), Kalankabati (1934), Duhkhamochan (1936), Marter
Swarga (1940), and Apasaran (1942). Dhurjati Prasad Mukhopadhyay
(1894–1969) wrote three novels—Antahshila (1935), Abarta (1937),
and Mohana (1943)—which have given him a permanent place in the
annals of Bengali fiction. He had adopted the ‘stream of consciousness’
mode of narration in his novels. Along the same lines worked Gopal
Haldar (1902–97), whose Tridiba, earlier three separate novels Ekada
(1939), Anya Din (1950), and Arek Din (1951), represents the thought
processes of a leftist, reflective youth. He wrote several other novels.
Others authors of note were Bibhuti Bhusan Mukhopadhyay
(1899–1987) wrote some excellent short stories, of which the Ranu
stories are quite touching. After writing Nilanguriya (1942), a
sentimental novel of unrequited love, he took to humour, in which
he had a natural flair, and his Barjatri (1949), a hilarious comedy,
and Kanchan Mulya (1956) were loved by the readers. Sharadindu
Bandyopadhyay (1899–1970) was an author of historical romances,
and wrote crime novels and short stories, and his detective Byomkesh
became a favourite among the readers. He also had a flair for the
occult. Manoj Basu (1901–87) was another popular author with
his novel Bhuli Nai (1942), a tale of the patriotic efforts of the
Bengal revolutionaries. His Sainik (1945) and August 1942 (1947)
move around the patriotic sentiment. But his major works like
Nishikutumba (1963) fall beyond our period. His short stories are
also quite good.
It might be noticed that some of the afore-mentioned authors
had begun publishing before 1950, and continued to contribute,
often their best, after our borderline. There was another generation
of fiction writers who would do so even more. Their pre-1950 works
only show some glimpses of their possibilities. Ashapurna Debi
(1909–95) was one such author, whose first novels like Mittir Bari
(1946) showed her interest in the structure and the tensions of a
joint family, and Shashibabur Samsar (1956) also showed how such
528 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

tensions were resolved, usually by the over-arching presence of a

patriarch. But such a solution would not last, as her later works would
show. Ashapurna, as an author, assumed the persona of a male author,
and did not write like a woman, while Pratibha Basu (1915–2006)
did write as a woman, and thus her novels and short stories portray
women better than men.
Bimal Mitra’s (1912–92) first novel Chhai (serialized during
1946–7) did not exactly tell his audience what he had in store for
them. His magnum opus (rather, the first of his magnum opuses),
Saheb Bibi Golam, would be a later phenomenon. Another author,
one should say a subtler and less glamorized one, was Narendranath
Mitra (1916–75), whose first novel Dwippunja (1946) and a collection
of short stories, Asamatal (1944), fall within our period of discussion.
His stories reflect his time, that of the famine and war-threatened
Calcutta, more than his novel about a village community, looked at
nostalgically. Narayan Gangopadhyay (1918–70) was more emotional
and dramatic. The first of his novels, Bhanga Bandar (1945), Mandra
Mukhar (1946), and Surya Sarathi (1946) show his acumen in
structuring a story and his interest in extending the geographical and
human domain of Bengali literature. However, although his Upanibesh
(in three volumes), crosses our timeline, has to be taken into account
as it proves that he has the power to grip the mind of the reader. His
short stories also, among other things, show his preference for the
dramatic. Jyotirindra Nandi (1912–82), on the other hand, would, as
has been said earlier, limit himself mostly to the urban middle class
and lower middle class life of the newly established refugee colonies,
and the workings of the libidinous minds of men and women. Once
again, his major works would take us beyond our time restriction.
Subodh Ghosh (1909–80) would, however, attract notice with his first
collection of short stories, Fossil (1940); and his Tilanjali (1944), a
novel, depicts the political tension of the day, between the nationalist
Indian National Congress and the internationalist Marxists, whom he
did not favour. His Gangotri (1947) takes leave of politics, and goes
for a change to the village, although politics lurks in the background.
He, among his contemporaries, was the most exposed to diverse
experiences. Consequently, in his later works, he would also look for
diversity. Gajendra Kumar Mitra (1908–94) is another author of this
generation who achieved his full eminence after 1950, before which
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 529

only one of his novels, Ratrir Tapasya (1948) was published. Satinath
Bhaduri (1906–65) would make us sit up and take notice with his
first novel, Jagari (1945), and his best work, Dhonrai Charit Manas,
with its two volumes, present us with an epic depiction of how
Gandhi’s movement inspired the ‘subalterns’ of Indian society, who
did not often get what they deserved from the leaders. His stories
are deeply rooted in the contemporary reality. Samaresh Basu
(1924–88) had begun writing as a portrayer of lowly and struggling
life, that of the deprived, as his early stories and novel like Nayanpurer
Hat (written 1945) would show. But he would change directions
and look at the complex and ironical existence of the middle class
later.
This was also the time when Muslim authors were coming up
with their fare, and they were seen as groups, not just individuals. It
should be noted that the ‘rebel’ poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam, also wrote
a few novels, of which Bandhan Hara (1927) uses the epistolary
mode, and tells of love and its sorrows in an effusive language. His
Mrityukshudha (1930) brings in the Muslim proletariat of a Bengal
town in a lively portrayal, but its hero, a political and social worker,
finds no love. Similar fate falls on the hero of Kuhelika (1931), his
third novel, which once again has a political hero of the revolutionary
kind. Humayun Kabir (1906–69) was a highly educated man, and
like Nazrul, was basically a poet. His only novel Nadi O Nari offers
a faithful depiction of a rural, middle class Muslim society.
There was also a concerted effort among the Muslims of Bengal
to build their own literary tradition, and to this end they established
the Muslim Sahitya Samiti in Dacca (present Dhaka) in 1926. The
time is significant, as the year before, a movement called ‘Buddhir
Mukti’ or the Liberation of Thought was begun by a group of Muslim
intellectuals. Most of them were essayists and polemical writers, but
some attempted fiction. One of them was Nurunnesa (1894–1975),
whose Swapnadrista (1923) was a romantic tale with a tinge of
patriotism, while Janki Bai (1924) goes back to history. She wrote
a few more novels, with love as a theme, in which her liberal mind
expressed itself in a pleasant style. Her daughter Kamrunnesa Khatun
wrote a detective novel, Ganguli Mashayer Samsar (1929), probably
the only crime story written by a Muslim lady. Kazi Imdadul Haq’s
(1882–1926) Abdullah (1931) found wide readership at that time.
530 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The authors who were primarily known as essayists, also tried their
hands at fiction. One such author was S. Wajed Ali (1890–1951),
and the other was Kazi Abdul Odud (1894–1970), whose short
stories and novels like Nadibakshe (1919) received appreciation
from Rabindranath Tagore himself. His Azad (1948), modeled after
Rolland’s Jean Christophe, has Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation movement
as a theme.
It has to be acknowledged that the formation of the new state
of East Bengal, later renamed East Pakistan, provided a sense of
confidence in Muslim Bengali authors, and many powerful fiction
writers appeared there before the advent of Bangladesh, which
provided a new fillip to the creative inspiration of Bengalis there.
But that should wait for another project.
We do not know what socio-aesthetic reasons dictate change of
fictional taste faster than that of poetry. The change of the immediate,
living reality, and the readers’ response to it, are, perhaps, the major
reasons. Plays are often revived on stage, and the occasion of an
author’s centenary of birth often creates a new interest in his/her
fiction, but that is also short-lived. Jibanananda Das has of course
been ‘discovered’ as a novelist rather recently, and his novels, though
not blessed by popular appreciation, have attracted the interest of the
discerning reader. Classics in fiction are hard to come by in every
literature, so the literature of our chosen period can boast of only a
few of them, although the actual number is not negligible.

Other Genres of Prose

Prose has been widely used in literature besides in fiction and as
scientific or journalistic prose. We do not go so far as to claim that
whatever is written in language is literature, but we believe that
whatever is written in language with an intention of entertaining the
reader along with instructing him/her, should be regarded as such.
Some authors use narratives, as the Fort William authors did, but
humour, satire, emotional statements, and some stylistic devices are
used, individually or together, to make these prose pieces lively. Of
course, polemical prose with to and fro arguments also has an appeal,
and so it is often difficult for us to decide which text to include in
literature and which not to. Such prose, in fact, can be traced to the
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 531

Vaishnava notes and diaries, but the first printed samples of it were,
perhaps, Kirpar Shastrer Ortho, Bhed (written Crepar Sastrer Orth,
Bhed, 1743), and Brahmin Roman Catholic Sambad (1720s).17
The naksha literature of the nineteenth century, it is thought,
lead to the production of the first Bengali social novel, Alaler Gharer
Dulal, and so we place them in the category of fiction. But narratives,
both fiction and non-fiction, were written by the teacher-authors of
Fort William College textbooks, whose publications between 1801
and 1835 were both originals and translations. The translations were
mostly fiction, like Mrityunjay Vidyalankar’s Batris Singhasan (1802)
and Hitopadesh (1808). But polemic literature, particularly those
of Raja Rammohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, should
be regarded as a different genre—neither fiction nor pragmatic—
but discursive prose. Rammohan’s discourses were analytical and
argumentative, and not meant for what is called ‘the common reader’.
But he did an immense service to the new reader of his prose—riddled
with long, complex sentences full of technical, Sanskritic words. In
the preface of his Vedanta Grantha, he provided a cue for the reader
for handling such sentences. He said, ‘Look for the verb first’, which
he thought was somewhat easier, as the verb is presumably the most
familiar word in a sentence, and added, ‘then find out what was
its “subject” in the sentence’. Once the ‘subject-verb correlations’
are discovered, breaking a complex sentence into its component
would then be simple. This was an excellent advice from an astute
grammarian.
We have mentioned the Fort William College publications
already, the subject of which consisted mostly of the retelling of
history, and the translation of Sanskrit narrative and didactic texts like
Hitopadesha, with exercises on conversation and letter-writing. But,
beyond that, we also find a very important pamphlet on the necessity
of female education, Strishikshabidhayak (1822) by Gaurmohan
Bidyalankar, who had a facile command on Bengali prose. Various
styles were being tried, and above all, the newspapers were paving the
way for the ‘prose-of-all-work’. In these melee of styles, Debandranath
Tagore (1817–1905) wrote in a very simple and emotional style,
in his Brahmadharmer Byakhyan (1861), Swarachita Jibancharit
(1898), and other works. On the other hand, Akshay Kumar Dutta
(1820–86) presented a contrast, with his Sanskritic vocabulary and
532 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

a complex and dispassionate diction, as evident in his treatise on

Indian (Hindu) religious sects Bharatbarshiya Upasak Sampraday
(1870, 1883) in two volumes. Next, and more important in the line,
comes Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–91), who, although often a
translator and an adaptor of stories from Sanskrit and other sources,
was the creator of a grand style, which slowly became simpler. His
pamphlets on the need of the remarriage of widows and abolition
of polygamy are written in a saucy style that we feel uncomfortable
to identify with him. But his short history of Sanskrit literature, his
brief autobiography, and a prose elegy called Prabhabati Sambhashan
clearly show how varied he could be in his handling of subjects and
styles. He was also the author of the most successful Bengali primer
of the century, called Barna Parichay (1855, 1856), which became a
model for such books in other Indian languages.
As has been said elsewhere in this chapter, there was a search
for simpler prose, which could be easily understood by persons
with less education. However, our emphasis in this section is on
content, that is, what objectives the authors wanted to fulfill with
their prose writings. Vidyasagar took up a social mission, as his
contemporaries, mostly playwrights, also did. Ramgati Nayratna
(1831–94) wrote Bangabhasha O Sahitya Bishayak Prastab (1872–3),
the first full-sized history of Bengali literature. Rajnarayan Basu
(1826–99) wrote attractively on his time in Sekal ar Ekal (1875),
Gramya Upakhyan (1873), Atmacharit (1901), and other tracts.
But Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay (1825–94), his friend and also of the
poet Madhusudan Dutta, was more interested in social issues; so
his Paribarik Prabandha (1881), Samajik Prabandha (1992), and
Achar Prabandha (1894) focus on the family, social and behavioral
norms and values, mostly traditional, and also acceptable for a male-
dominated society. The concern of the bhadraloks that was felt in the
second half of the nineteenth century about the social waywardness
of Bengali youth, was shared also by Mukhopadhyay.
Rajendra Lal Mitra (1822–91), was, in contrast, of a scholarly
bent. He edited and published Vividharthasamgraha (1851), a
scholarly journal, six years before a university was established
in India. Apart from various articles about the history and culture
of the land, literary criticism had also found a place in it. Kali
Prasanna Sinha had the Mahabharata translated in prose, and, his
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 533

Hutom Pyanchar Naksha is, apart from being a bold exercise in the
Calcutta colloquial, an excellent example of personal prose of the
time.
Personal prose, however, was lifted to a higher level of expression
in the hands of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. He published his famous
journal Bangadarshan in 1872 which not only provided him a vehicle
for various expressive modes, but also created a wide readership
for such journals. Bankim Chandra began publishing humorous or
satirical sketches in Lokrahasya (1874) and Kamalakanter Daptar
(1875), and his more serious essays on science, history, economy,
philosophy, Hinduism, and a philosophical tract on Krishna is
found in his books Bibidh Prabanda (I and II), Krishnacharitra,
Dharmatattwa, Bangadeshiya Krishak (1872), and Samya (1875,
1876). As is widely acknowledged, besides being highly creative in
fiction, Bankim Chandra was a man of varied interests with many
accomplishments, and his head rose much above those of other the
authors of his time. Review of books by contemporary authors was
also given some priority in Bangadarshan, for which its editor himself
was often criticized by others. His journal created a powerful group
of authors who wrote on various subjects. For example, Rajkrishna
Mukhopadhyay wrote serious articles on history; Akshay Chandra
Sarkar (1846–1917) wrote in a lighter vein, simply and agreeably,
somewhat along the line of Bankim Chandra’s Kamalakanta; Ramdas
Sen was a researcher of Indian antiquity; and Haraprasad Shastri
(1855–1931), a Sanskrit scholar, wrote pleasantly on the history
of pre-Muslim India and Bengal, as on literature, both in Sanskrit
and mediaeval Bengali. The prose of these writers, outwardly sadhu
bhasha, records a progress to the simpler approach, quite close to
the colloquial norm.
Durgadas Bandyopadhyay wrote (or had Jogendra Chandra Basu
write for him) about his experiences in the Sepoy Mutiny in Bidrohe
Bangali, published much later. Rajani Kanta Gupta (1849–1900),
on the other hand, wrote a whole history of the Mutiny. A book
written by an unknown author, Suraloke Banger Parichay (1876,
1877) provides a survey of contemporary literature and society, in a
somewhat satirical vein. As periodicals were being published by the
dozen, many other authors were also trying their hands in prose,
outside that of narratives. Jogendranath Vidyabhushan (1845–1904),
534 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

editor of Aryadarshan (1974), wrote on the lives of Mazzini, Garibaldi,

and Wallace, among those of others. Lives of Bengali celebrities were
not ignored either, and Nagendranath Chattopadhyay, Mahendranath
Roy, Jogindranath Basu, and Biharilal Sarkar wrote on Rammohan
Ray, Akshay Kumar Dutta, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, and Ishwar
Chandra Vidyasagar respectively.
Quite a few of the prose writers were associated with the Brahmo
movement. Keshab Chandra Sen (1838–84), a leader and preacher
of the faith had his addresses collected in volumes like Brahmotsab
(1868), Acharyer Upadesh (1872 onwards), and others. Shibnath
Shastri also wrote similar tracts such as Baktrita Stabak (1888),
Dharmajiban (1901), and Maghotsaber Upadesh (1901), etc. His
Ramtanu Lihiri o Tatkalin Bangasamaj was, however, a very valuable
record of the early days of the ‘Bengal Renaissance’. Girish Chandra
Sen (1835–1910) was a disciple of Keshab Chandra, and, unusually for
his time, translated the Quran from the Arabic, and also wrote on the
life of the Prophet. Keshab Chandra’s brother Kunjabihari (1847–95)
wrote a biographical sketch of Emperor Asoka, and Chandra Sekhar
Basu (1833–1913) wrote mostly on philosophical subjects.
As there were the Brahmos, so were the Hindu authors, on the
other side of the fence, who often wrote against the Brahmos and
contested their views. One such author was Chandra Nath Basu
(1844–1910), who wrote Shakuntalatattwa (1881), Hindubibaha
(1887), Hindutwa (1892), etc., taking up the cudgel for the Hindus.
Shashadhar Tarkachuramani did the same. They both were followers
of Bankim Chandra, the champion of a ‘revived’ Hinduism at
that time. Kaliprasanna Ghosh (1841–1910) of Dacca, who edited
Bandhab, wrote on philosophico-ethical topics, and his three books
on chinta or ‘contemplations’—Prabhat Chinta, Nibhrita Chinta, and
Nishith Chinta, were quite popular in those days.
As in other areas, Rabindranath Tagore once again deserves
a separate section on his non-narrative prose, the writing of
which he began quite early in his life, in the late seventies of the
nineteenth century, and continued till the last year of his life. His
prose writings, as plentiful as they are diverse, can be divided into
several segments. His contemplative writings, in which Alochana
(1885), Chithipatra (1886), Panchabhut (1897), Bichitra Prabandha
(1907), Pathe o Pather Prante, Santiniketan (1909–16), etc., can
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 535

be placed and to which many of his letters, for example those of

Chinnapatra and Chinnapatrabali belong. Close in character come
his philosophical writings—Atmaparichay, Manusher Dharma, etc.
Next are his historical, political, and social writings, which represent
a large and durable area of his attention. Foremost among these
are Atmashakti (1905), Rajapraja (1908), Samuha (1908), Swadesh
(1908), Samaj (1908), Sanchay (1916), Parichay (1916), Rashiar
Chithi (1931), Kalantar (1937), and Sabhyatar Samkat (1941). Next
come his deliberations on education, developmental and that of
the university—Shiksha (1909)—which has been enlarged with the
inclusion of articles published later, Bishwabidyalayer Rup (1933),
and Ashramer Rup o Bikash (1941). Then there are his musings on
literature and art, including some criticism—Prachin Sahitya (1907),
Loksahitya (1907), Sahitya (1907), Adhunik Sahitya (1907), and
Sahityer Pathe (1936). His books on Bengali linguistics and metre
should be listed with them—Shabdatattwa, later enlarged as Bangla
Shabdatattwa (1909/1985), and Banglabhasha Parichay (1937), where
the latter is perhaps the first attempt to write ‘descriptive’ Bengali
grammar. He also wrote two autobiographical pieces—Jibansmriti
(1912) and Chhelebela (1939)—neither of which, however, gives
us any information beyond his twenty-fifth year. His diaries and
travelogues, (often written as letters) constitute the next lot—Yurop
Prabasir Patra (1881), Yurop Jatrir Diary (1883), Jatri (1929), and
Japane Parasye (1936). He wrote extensively on the great personalities
of the nineteenth century, such as on Mahatma Gandhi in his books
Charitra Puja and Mahatma Gandhi. He also wrote extensively on
music, as we find from a posthumous collection, Sangit Chinta. And
last, but not the least, was his book Bishwa-Parichay (1937), written
for the ordinary reader to make him understand the scientific secrets
of this universe and how it keeps going. We still continue to wonder
at his amazing range of interests and involvements.
In the next generation, his nephew Balendranath Tagore (1870–
99) was an excellent writer of prose, but his early death did not
allow him to publish more than one book of essays, Chitra o Kabya
(1894). He had a keen eye for beauty in literature or in other arts.
Abanindranath (1871–1951), another nephew of the poet, besides
being the leader of the Bengal School of art, wrote mostly for children,
but his collection of somewhat grotesque stories like Pathe-Bipathe
536 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

(1919), lectures on art in Bageshwari (1941), and memoires in Gharoa

(1941) and Jorasankor Dhare (1944, the last two were dictated to Rani
Chanda) give ample evidence of how distinctive a prose stylist he
was. He was, in fact, one of the best practitioners of the early phase
of chalit bhasha. Outside of the Tagore precincts, Ramendrasundar
Tribedi (1864–1919) was one of the major prose writers of the time,
who continued the Bankim Chandra’s tradition of writing serious
scientific and philosophical topics in simple, agreeable language. His
Prakriti (1894), Jijnasa (1903), Karmakatha (1913), Charitakatha
(1913), Shabdakatha (1917), Bichitra Jagat, etc., speak volumes about
his wide and deep erudition, as of his natural power of presenting
them to the ordinary reader. Jogeshchandra Ray Vidhyanidhi (1859–
1956) was older than Tagore, and was a polymath like Tribedi. But his
books are few and were more appreciated by the scholarly readers.
His notable books are Kshudra o Brihat (1922), Amader Jyotishi o
Jyotish (1903), Bangla Bhasha (1905), Bangla Shabdatattwa (1913),
etc. Jagadananda Roy (1869–1933), a teacher of the Tagore school
at Santiniketan, presented scientific topics in a simple language, and
Prakritiki (1914), Grahanakshatra (1915), Pokamakar, Alo (1919), and
Machh Byang Sap (1923) are titles that tell us of his areas of interest.
There were quite a few essayists who were interested in the
history and society of the time. These names include those of
Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (1861–1910), a monk, and paradoxically,
a revolutionary who died in jail, Akshay Kumar Maitreya (1862–
1930), Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar (1869–1912), and Bijay Chandra
Majumdar (1861–1942). The knowledge-base of Bengali literature
was both being widened and deepened in their hands, to be further
enriched by those who came later.
A few of the essayists stand apart because they mixed humour
and satire in their style, although they wrote on serious subjects.
Lalit Kumar Bandyopadhyay (1868–1929) was one such author. His
Byakaroan Bibhishika (‘The Spectre of Grammar’, 1911), Sadhubhasha
Banam Chalita Bhasha (1912), Banan Samasya (1920), etc., present
serious topics in a pleasant manner. Another was Panchkari
Bandhyopadhyay (1866–1923), whose style was a little pungent, and
who criticized both Rabindranath Tagore and the Sabuj Patra group.
Sabuj Patra brought around itself quite a few powerful writers
of prose. Apart from the editor, Pramatha Chaudhuri, who wrote
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 537

in a smart, epigrammatic, and colloquial style on sundry topics,

including aesthetics and language, there were others like Atul
Chandra Gupta, Nalini Kanta Gupta, Dhurjati Prasad Mukherjee,
Suniti Kumar Chatterji, etc. Atul Chandra Gupta’s (1884–1960)
Kavya-jijnasa (1928) has been quite popular as a text on Sanskrit
poetics, and his Itihaser Mukti (1957) contains some excellent essays
on civilization and culture. Nadipathe (1937), on the other hand, was
a travelogue in letters. Nalini Kanta Gupta (1889–1984) was well
versed in French, and his erudition as well as critical mind are fully
reflected in his books Sahityika (1920), Rup o Ras (1928), Adhuniki
(1932), and Shilpakatha (1948). Suniti Kumar Chatterji (1890–1976),
another polymath, who, besides doing his major work on the history
of Bengali language, demonstrated an insatiable spirit of enquiry
about human civilization and culture. He wrote extensively on the
countries he travelled, delving into their history and culture. His
books Dwipamay Bharat (1940), Iurop (vol. I, 1938; vol. II, 1845),
Jati, Sahitya Samskriti (1938), etc., bear witness to his keenness of
observation. Durjati Prasad Mukhopadhyay, who also wrote fiction
in the stream of consciousness mode, was a thinker with a wide
range, and an ear for classical Indian music. His Amra o Tahara
(1931), Chintayasi (1933), and Katha o Sur (1938) are books that fall
within our period of study. Annada Sankar Ray, although not a part
of the Sabuj Patra group, carried the legacy in his essays, which were
short and numerous, and mostly reflective about life, literature, and
society. He had an intimate and incisive style, as if he were arguing
with himself. His books are Tarunya (1928), Amra (1937), Jibanshilpi
(1941), Deshkalpatra (1949), and several others.
The Shikha group of Dacca, who began the ‘Buddhir Mukti
Andolan’ or ‘Liberation of Thought Movement’ in 1926 had some
ideological closeness to the Sabuj Patra group. This movement
also showcased some brilliant essayists from the Bengali Muslim
community. Before that, Dr Muhammad Shahidullah, almost a
patriarch to the newly born East Bengal, did excellent work on the
Bengali language, and wrote thoughtful articles in his Bhasha o
Sahitya (1931) and Iqbal (1945). S. Wajed Ali (1890–1951) wrote in
Sabuj Patra, and his essays in Bhabishyater Bangali (1943) still need
to be attentively read. Kazi Abdul Odud (1894–1970), associated
himself with the Sikha group, and, apart from fiction, which he
538 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

abandoned writing at one stage, excelled in writing about society

with a detached rationality that was not liked by the conservatives.
His essays in Nabaparya I and Nabaparyay II (1926, 1928), Samaj o
Sahitya (1934), and more elaborate treatments in Hindu Musalmaner
Birodh (1936) and Kabiguru Rabindranath (1946) are supported by
clear and dispassionate reasoning and judgment.
Ajit Kumar Chakraborty (1886–1918), was more famous
as a Tagore expositor, and his books Rabindranath (1912) and
Kabyaparikrama (1914) are two of the earliest books of mature Tagore
appreciation. Dilip Kumar Ray (1890–1980) wrote fiction quite a
lot, but his travelogues and interviews with great men make for an
interesting reading. Bhramyamaner Dinapanjika (1926), Tirthankar,
Abar Bhramyaman (1944) are some of such books. Other authors who
wrote on diverse subjects are Manmatha Nath Ghosh, Bipin Bihari
Gupta, Bhupendra Nath Dutta (1880–1961), etc.
There also was a group of ‘academic’ critics, whose work
strengthened the small stream of literary criticism in Bengali.
Charu Chandra Bandyopadhyay (1877–1938) dealt with Tagore in
his two volumes Rabi-Rashmi (1938); Mohitlal Majumdar, the poet
(1888–1952) wrote on Bankim Chandra, Sarat Chandra, and Tagore,
a bit critically about the last. Subodh Chandra Sengupta (1903–1998)
also stuck to these stalwarts. For Pramatha Nath Bishi, however,
Tagore was central, though he has also written on Bankim Chandra.
Although Srikumar Banerjee’s (1892–1970) book Bangasahitye
Upanyaser Dhara was published first in 1938, but all of the other
author’s other major works would come out after 1950. Niharranjan
Ray’s (1903–81) major work Bangalir Itihas would, however, come
out in 1949.
But the Kallol authors also wrote a copious amount of prose.
Prabodh Kumar Sanyal first wrote a travelogue to the Himalayas—
Mahaprasthaner Pathe (1933), and became better appreciated as an
author of this genre. Achintya Kumar Sengupta was more popular as
a hagiographer of sorts. Buddhadeb Basu wrote excellent, if somewhat
effusive prose, and Premendra Mitra contributed by writing personal
prose. Jibanananda wrote serious articles on education and on the
nature of poetry. Bishnu Dey and Sudhindranath Dutta would both
write incisively on literary topics, the latter less intelligibly for the
common reader. But most of it is beyond our scope.
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 539

The Change of Style and Diction in Prose

The use of the medium of prose was there in the Middle Age, but it
was restricted to the ‘registers’ of personal and ceremonial letters, legal
documents, contracts of trade, personal notes, etc., But nobody had
thought that it could be used in literature, be it creative or discursive.
Murshid has rightly said that no precolonial Bengali prose could enter
into the process of standardization, and the reason was not far to seek.
The use of prose was sporadic, restricted within a small elite circle,
and as there were no newspapers or journals, there was no interaction
between readers on the one hand and the writers themselves on the
other. So, a common usable-by-all prose could not evolve then.
The change came from two sources, though not independent of
each other. William Carey (1761–1834) had a hand in both. First,
a Bengali translation of the New Testament was published from
Serampore Mission in 1801, and then Bengali textbooks began to
be published from the Fort William College (1800) in a steady flow
till 1834—original works, translations, etc. These were made as study
materials for young English, civilians who had to learn Bengali, the
local language.
The prose presented in these texts lacked direction. If a book used
a profusion of Persian and Arabic words, Raja Pratapaditya Charitra
(1802) for example, another, say Rajiblochan Mukhopadhyay’s
Maharaja Krishnachandra Rayasya Charitram carried a highly
Sanskritized style. Colloquial speech of the ordinary people was also
collected in Carey’s Kathopakathan and Mrityunjay Vidyalankar’s
Prabodhchandrika. In these medley of first attempts, the Sanskritists,
then considered to be the academic guides towards ‘good’ Bengali,
came to dominate the literary style. The publication of the first Bengali
newspapers and journals from 1815 created yet another strand
of Bengali prose that had to stress on communication, as literacy
beyond the primary stage was still new in Bengal. So newspapers and
periodicals went on to develop an all-purpose prose and a middle
style that could be used and understood by the literates of the time.
This eventually would become the mainstream prose.
There were, however, two styles that ran parallel. One was that of
the saucy, colloquial idiom of the nakshas or satirical sketches of the
urban life of Calcutta, written by Bhabani Charan Bandyopadhyay,
540 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

which created another, much lighter, version of the sadhu form. There
was a galore of such sketches in the first half of the nineteenth century,
continuing till the seventies. These satires and caricatures formed
a basis of the first (literally may not be so) novel in Bengali, Alaler
Gharer Dulal. The style of these works were used as a regular foil to
the over-Sanskritized Bengali diction pursued by a section of writers
and followed even by the textbooks published by the School Book
Society (1818) and other such organizations. The advent of Ishwar
Chandra Vidyasagar encouraged a group of writers from among the
Calcutta Sanskrit College teachers successfully to turn literary Bengali
into a highly Sanskritic vehicle. Vidyasagar, however, cannot be held
responsible for that, as Bankim Chandra had done. The former’s style
was not monolithic, but possessed a variety of forms and directions,
from the grandiloquent to the pedestrian. The author of Alaler Gharer
Dulal, Pyari Chand Mitra, along with his friend Radhanath Sikdar
(the man who measured the height of the Everest and proposed it
to be the highest mountain peak in the world), looked, in fact, for a
literary Bengali that would be understood by schoolboys and women
taught at home. Consequently, they published a journal, Masik
Patrika, taking them as target readers of the same.
The saucy, mostly colloquial, naksha style also received a new
boost with the publication of Kali Prasanna Sinha’s (Hutom Pyancha
in alias) Hutom Pyanchar Naksha, the language of which was
irreverent, and colloquial to the extreme, full of mirth and bantering
joviality.
This, however, brought the issue of ideal literary language for
Bengali to the fore once again. There was, on the one hand, the
highly Sanskritized diction of the Sanskrit College pundits, and one
the other hand, there was the earthy sadhu form of Alaler Gharer
Dulal, to which was added the fully colloquial and slangy patois of
Hutom Pyancha. As if these were not enough, to them was added
a plea by Syama Charan Ganguli, an English professor, for using
standard colloquial Bengali in school textbooks in an article in The
Calcutta Review (1878).
This brought Bankim Chandra, the ‘Emperor of Literature’ as he
was called then, to the scene, and he uttered a kind of final verdict on
the matter in his article ‘Bangala Bhasha’ (Bangadarshan), a portion
of which follows:
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 541

It is the subject that should decide the grandness or lightness of the writing.
The first and foremost quality of a written piece is simplicity and clarity.
First see, which style fits your requirements of clearly presenting your point
best.  .  .  . If your purpose is served by simple and widely used words, why
should you opt for a grand style? If the language of Tek Chand or Hutom is
best suited for your purpose, then adopt that by all means. If, on the other
hand, the Sanskritized diction of Vidyasagar and Bhudebbabu [Mukherjee]
makes your theme clearer and more attractive, then leave the colloquial and
go for that style. If that also fails to suit your needs, then move even higher;
if that is necessary, we won’t raise any objection. Objection will be for the
unnecessary alone. You have to state clearly what you have to state, say all
what you have to say, and for that, English, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, rustic,
sylvan—leave no word out, except those which are obscene.18

Bengali prose that was written later, obeyed this arbitration

more or less, although individual styles also arose within the limits
or freedom suggested by Bankim Chandra, his own not excluded.
The next change came by 1914, when Pramatha Chaudhuri
published the monthly Sabuj Patra, with a campaign for using
standard colloquial Bengali (SCB) for writing fiction and discursive
literature. SCB had been used before, but in letters (Tagore’s
Chinnapatra [written during 1885–95, but published in 1912] was
an exquisite example), and in some fiction as well as in children’s
books, but serious literature written for mature readers still clung to
the sadhu bhasha. Rabindranath Tagore himself switched over to the
SCB, and he would return to the old diction only on rare occasions.
The change, however, did not come overnight, and in tracing
its history, we will have to cross the 1950 limit prescribed for this
book, but we deem it necessary for the sake of completeness of the
story. As I have shown elsewhere, Bengali authors in general began
switching over to SCB after 1935. The Independence/Partition of
the country seems to have acted as a divide, and newspapers also
began using SCB in features. Textbooks for children began to be
written from 1953 in this new literary dialect, and on 22 March
1965, an influential newspaper—the Anandabazar Patrika—adopted
the SCB as its medium. Other newspapers soon followed suite. So,
the transformation of the literary language was now complete, as
after this, there were few people who would venture to write in the
old sadhu bhasha, unless one had a special reason—satirizing, for
542 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

example. The daily Anandabazar Patrika still writes its editorials in

the sadhu bhasha.

Reforms in Spelling and Typography

It is necessary to add a conclusive note on the changes that took
place in the area of Bengali spelling and typography, as it concerns
the written language. Like the narrative of Bengali written prose, this
exceeds the period limit suggested by the planners of the book, and
once again, the same argument about completeness comes to play.
The Bengali alphabet is an alpha-syllabic (as its consonant
symbols alternate between a phoneme and a syllable in specified
contexts) script, with its distinctive shape, which closely resembles
the Assamese script, and is, beyond Bengali, used or earlier used in
writing Manipuri, Santali, Kokborok, Bodo, etc. The arrangement
of the letters follows the Sanskrit-Brahmi pattern, but was given a
final shape by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar in the second edition of
his Varnaparichaya.
The Bengali type was first cut by an Englishman, Charles Wilkins
(1749–1836), with assistance from a Bengali blacksmith Panchanan
Karmakar (d. 1804) and his son-in-law Manohar. These moveable
types were first used in Nathaniel Brassy Halhed’s A Grammar of the
Bengal Language (1778). These types resembled the earlier punthi
or manuscript types quite closely, but later evolved to gradually
assume the present linear and curvical shapes. Its next reform came
in 1935, when a major Bengali newspaper, Anandabazar Patrika,
adopted the lino-type technology, in which many conjunct letters
and consonant vowel combinations were simplified. Monotype with
similar characteristics was also introduced in Bengali printing, but it
played a rather minor and marginal role in publications. Then the ‘hot
types’ of the lino technology was replace by the cold types in the early
eighties of the last century. The computer replaced the compositor.
Spelling reform in Bengali was undertaken as the change of the
literary medium from the sadhu bhasha (Chaste Bengali) to chalit
bhasa (Standard Colloquial Bengali) begun to be attempted by the
new literary journal Sabuj Patra (1914), under the editorship of
Pramatha Chaudhuri, a Tagore nephew-in-law, and a prose stylist.
Earlier, the traditional arrangement was that the spelling of words
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 543

derived from Sanskrit are to be written in the Sanskrit way, while

the other words (foreign loans, partly changed Sanskrit words
[ardhatatsama], radically changed Sanskrit words [tadbhava], words
of unknown origin) were to closely follow the Sanskrit pattern, i.e.
their spellings should be reminiscent of Sanskrit words, even if they
were not connected to the language. As the first set of proofreaders
of Bengali texts were Sanskrit scholars (pundits), they determined it
that way. That, no doubt, created a standard of spellings.
This was called to question by Pramatha Chaudhuri, and Sabuj
Patra, from its very first issue, adopted new spellings, principles of
which were probably formulated by none other than Suniti Kumar
Chatterji. The suggested spellings were rather cumbersome for
various reasons. So, on Rabindranath Tagore’s request, the University
of Calcutta instituted a Spelling Reforms Committee in 1936, with
Suniti Kumar as its Chairman, which prescribed wide reforms. The
basic proposals were that the spellings of the tatsama (borrowed
words from Sanskrit that followed the original Sanskrit spelling)
should remain as they were, but for two areas. The double consonant
under a ‘reph’ sign may be written single, and where the morph or
word ends in an ‘m’, and followed by a non-nasal consonant of the ‘Ka’
series, it can be replaced with an ‘anuswar’. There was option for either.
For non-tatsama words (words more or less changed in shape from
the original Sanskrit, foreign loans, and those of unknown origin),
freedom was to be taken to abandon long vowel signs (only short
signs, consonant with Bengali pronunciation to be used for them) and
retroflex ‘n’ (to be replaced by alveolar or ‘dental’ ‘n’). These proposals
were slowly accepted in Bengali printing, and newspapers reached
them to Bengal households. The next major step in Bengali spelling
reform was attempted by Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi (1986) in
the nineties of the last century. It did away with the options that the
Calcutta University proposals accommodated, and suggested that if
Sanskrit itself had alternative spellings of a word, which it had, then
the spelling with the short vowel sign, instead of the familiar long,
has to be adopted. These principles have also been accepted by the
Dhaka Bangla Academy, with slight modifications here and there.
What Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi did, in addition, was
reform the symbols of the orthography by simplifying the consonant-
vowel combinations as well as consonant-consonant(-consonant)
544 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

combinations. The principles, first suggested by me, were to make

the combinations ‘transparent’, so that letters that combined could be
automatically identified by the children learning to read and write.19
So, clusters like গ্ধ, ন্ধ, ঞ্চ, ঞ্জ, ষ্ণ, হ্ম, etc., were changed, and
the consonant-vowel signs গু, শু, রু, হু, রূ, হৃ made more legible,
with one secondary symbol for each of the vowels.
These reforms have been accepted in school textbooks of both
the governments of West Bengal and Bangladesh, and also in many
publications in the Bangla-speaking regions. However, its general
acceptability, reflected in popular newspapers for example, is still to
come, if it will ever.

Children’s Literature20
Children’s Literature before Print and the
Emergence of ‘Primers’
When we talk about literature for children or juveniles, we probably
have in mind an age-range of four to fifteen years, plus or minus
a year or two. As is popularly known, the literature for pre-school
children has to be oral, received from the tradition that a society
inherits in its language. So, children’s literature is almost as old as
language itself, and it is not surprising that Bengali, like any other
language, should possess a rich legacy of ‘oral’ literature for children.
The advent of printed literature cannot ever ‘obliterate’ it, because a
child cannot read or write during the first four or five years (now
eager and nervous parents are keen on lowering the threshold) of his/
her life. So, (s)he has to be fed on oral literature, those traditionally
available like lullabies, rhymes, fairy tales and folktales, proverbs, etc.,
and these constitute the first literature that a child is exposed to. (S)
he takes in the joy of this literature as a ‘listener’, not as a reader. I
feel that this is no place to discuss in any detail Bengali oral literature
for children, and so the brief mention here will do as a preamble to
the topic in hand. A further note is, however, necessary. It has to
be remembered that this oral literature, the only literature avail-
able to the pre-school child, continues to be used side by side with
printed literature—as our thirst for listening poems and stories,
including songs, do not disappear with aging. Human beings also
appreciate ‘printed’ literature when recited or read out, so the aspect
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 545

of orality is also a constant feature of printed literature, that of ‘power’

at least.
With the invention or adoption of print in a culture, however,
its children have a new kind of literature that has to be ‘read’, taken
in through the eyes. This literature has to be mediated through
letters, and therefore they have to be taught the script first, in which
their language is written and printed. So, the first ‘literature’ meant
for children in any culture is the ‘primers’ through which a child is
taught to read and write. I will, therefore, begin with the Bengali
primers and look at their evolution over the decades, since 1816,
when the first primer was published, till recent times, summarizing
and modifying along the way my own observations.21 But it will be
a mistake to think that Bengali children’s literature began with the
primers. Apart from the oral literature, there were also the traditional
lessons of literacy and numeracy, and children were taught to read
some ‘written’ literature in their pathshalas, where they read from
handwritten punthis written on palm leaves or handmade paper. It
will therefore be foolish to think that printing brought in ‘education’
to the Indian child.
The first primers, published by Christian missionaries, had a
religious overtone, and were not widely received in the middle-
class Bengali households. But a component of religion, ethics, was
continued in the later primers, written by the Bengalis themselves.
Books for children also began to be published as soon as the printers
began printing them. The earliest bunch of books published by the
Fort William College (1800) had content for children. For example,
tales from the Panchatantra and the Hitopadesha, as well as those of
Persian Tuti-namah were there in Bengali, but they were primarily
meant for young English civilian learners of Bengali, and were thus
priced too high to be readily received in a common Bengali home. The
School Society and The School Book Society began printing school
textbooks right from 1818, but one doubts if their publications could
be counted as literature. We can detect complaints being raised about
the stiffness and abnormality of their language in newspapers as late
as in 1860.22 It has to be acknowledged, however, that the texts till
the 90s of the nineteenth century had an eye on the school syllabus.
Let us now deal with the primers first. The school run by
the Hindu College (est. 1817), published its own Bengali primer,
546 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Shishusevadhi in 1835, which included texts on the necessity of

‘Indriya-samyama and Satakathana’ (the necessity of controlling
desires and speaking the truth).23 Also, the first primers, including the
perennially influential ones written by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar,
did not have any illustrations to begin with, although stories had
begun to be told, according to Ashis Khastagir’s collection, as
lessons, from 1850 onward, with the first widely circulated primer,
Madan Mohan Tarkalankar’s Shishushiksha. Vidyasagar continued
the practice in his Varnaparichaya (1855–6) series, and in his texts
meant for children. His two model boys of positive and negative social
virtues, the former approvable and the latter looked down upon, were
Gopal and Rakhal. Girls were mentioned, but they did not figure as
characters yet in such stories. These two models were readily accepted
by the Bengali society as what a boy should be and what he would
scrupulously avoid being. This opposition of virtue and ‘vice’ has been
alleged by Shibaji Bandyopadhyay as a colonial imposition, to which
we do not quite agree.24 Folklores of all countries are full of moral
tales and Aesop of olden times had no colonialism to breathe down
his neck. More immediate concerns for such ‘character-building’ were
motivated by the contemporary low moral life led by the wayward
sons of the rich in Calcutta, spoilt by excess of wealth and freedom
to act as they wanted.
There was a break in 1897, when a primer, Hasikhusi, written by
Jogindranath Sarkar (1866–1937), appeared. This was something new
at the time. Magazines for children had begun to be published earlier,
chiefly through the efforts of Brahmo leaders like Keshab Chandra
Sen. The first such magazine, Balakbandhu, was published in 1938.
There were several others, one even from the house of the Tagores.
But a much more popular and longer-surviving magazine, Mukul,
edited by another Brahmo leader Shibnath Shastri, was probably the
more immediate motivation for such a primer. Jogindranath’s success
prompted Rabindranath Tagore to take to writing a primer of sorts,
his Sahaj Path, which began in 1900 but finally got published in 1930,
after undergoing drastic revisions and additions. It is still the best
‘primer’ to invite the Bengali children to the world of poetry and
imagined experience. The moral intention had by then taken a back
seat. Others primers followed, but none could surpass the reception
of Hasikhusi and Sahaj Path.
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 547

Magazines
I do not know what dialectics hold between children’s magazines
and independent books for them, but both are well received in a
household that is keen on giving their children instructions and
entertainment through printed means. Magazines expose children
to an enormous variety of experiences and forms within two
covers, while books mostly restrict themselves to one genre alone.
But the two reinforce the demand for each other, I should hope.
Children’s magazines were also first published by the missionaries.
The Digdarshan (1818), their first news-magazine, and Pashwavali
(‘Animals’, 1822) were magazines which the young could enjoy. But
Balakbandhu (1878) was probably the first magazine that wanted to
go beyond the religious fold. Sakha (1883) of Pramadacharan Sen
(1859–1885) later combined with another magazine Sathi and became
more stable. The Tagores published Balak, often combined with their
Bharati, a magazine intended for mature readers.
There are ample records in old autobiographies how people, as
children, impatiently waited every month for the new issue of their
favourite magazine, Sandesh for example, to arrive. After Mukul,
Sandesh (1913), edited by Upendrakishor Raychaudhury (1863–
1915), and later by his son Sukumar Ray (1887–1923), was the best,
taking into consideration the former and the later ones. It opened up
an infinite world of fun and enjoyment for children, and the serious
intention of their education, was not at all lost. Upendrakishor
wrote about the mythologies in simple language, as Sukumar did
about science. Besides solid sense, nonsensical imagination began
to play a big role in Sukumar’s writings. Poems, stories, plays,
folk and fairy tales, puzzles, graphic tales (stories as an illustrated
series)—both linguistic and pictorial, riddles, word games, and what
not filled up the pages to make a huge feast both for the eyes and
the mind. Illustrations were often pre-given and poems or stories on
their basis were invited to be written, to which many responded.
Cousins and brothers of both Upendrakishor and Sukumar
participated in making Sandesh the best-loved children’s magazine in
Bengal. The magazines that followed—Mouchak (1920), Rangmashal
(1920), Maspayla (1921), Shishusathi (1922), Khokakhuku (1923),
Ramdhanu (1927), Pathshala (1936), Shuktara (1947), Sandesh
548 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

revived by Satyajit Ray (1961), and Anandamela (1975), adhered to

this model.
Huge changes, meanwhile, took place in print technology,
and magazines became more colourful and attractive. Children’s
magazines now are unimaginable without illustrations, and Sandesh,
with illustrations by Upendrakishor and Sukumar Ray, along with
others, created a marvelous legacy. After Sukumar, a number of
illustrators for children came into the scene, and names like Pratul
Banerjee, Purna Chakraborty, Samar De, etc., still linger in the fond
memory of people who inherited and grew, with some of these
magazines. Satyajit Ray also made marvelous illustrations both of his
own, and other’s stories. Most of the popular dailies in Bengal also had
a weekly children’s page, which were avidly read by young readers.
(I myself had begun our apprenticeship in writing for children in
these pages.)
Puja collections, published on the occasion of the Durga Puja,
were a huge success. The first one, Parbani, was published by
Nagendranath Ganguli, Rabindranath Tagore’s youngest son-in-law,
in the late twenties of the last century. But it was the publisher Dev
Sahitya Kutir, which began bringing them out regularly as an annual
event, followed by other publishers like Asutosh Library and Sarat
Sahitya Bhavan. The trend still continues, joined by new members in
the publishing community, although the latter two mentioned here
have downed their shutters long since.

Diversified Forms and Genres

Poems of various forms, themes, and moods, of course, make the
most popular and the most widely contributed genre from the Bengali
authors who wrote for children. Beginning from Ishwar Chandra
Gupta, the list is almost interminable. Still honorable mention is due
to Madan Mohan Tarkalankar, whose poem ‘Pakhi sab kare rab’ in one
of his primers was a favourite with children for decades. Nabakrishna
Bhattacharya (1859–1939) wrote some in didactic vein, which were
quite popular. The poet Kamini Roy (1864–1933) also wrote along
the same line, as did Kusum Kumari Das (1875–1948), mother of
Jibanananda Das. How a boy should grow up (how girls did was
not a matter of concern then) was a fond subject for poetry in the
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 549

second half of the nineteenth century, when the idea of patriotism

was also taking shape. So, there were hundreds of poetic narratives
of heroism and sacrifice, several written by Rabindranath himself.
As has been said earlier, reading for pure fun and entertainment
made an inroad only at the end of the century, in the magazines
like Mukul and the primer written by Jogindranath Sarkar, who
also wrote poems for children. Rabindranath took up the cue and
he became a child himself, entering the child’s world in his Shishu
poem. His disciples, Pramatha Chaudhuri and Satyendranath Dutta,
the latter more familiarly, wrote poems for children, picturesque with
fascinating metrical patterns. Sukumar Ray then opened up a whole
new world of funny and nonsensical imagination, experimenting
with metre, rhymes, and sound resources of the language, including
onomatopoeia. His Abol Tabol, Khai Khai, etc., have since been
among the most beloved texts of Bengali children. Kazi Nazrul Islam
(1899–1976) added to this poetic repository of fun that continued
to grow with the participation of Sunirmal Basu (1902–57), Annada
Sankar Rayr, Haren Ghatak (1904–93), Upendrachandra Mallik
(1909–97), Nirendranath Chakraborty (1924–2018), Sukanta
Bhattacharya, Gauri Dharmapal (1931–2014), Sankha Ghosh, Apurba
Dutta (1951–2016), Bhabani Prasad Mazumdar (b. 1953), Amarendra
Chakraborty (b. 1941), Deep Mukhopadhyay (b. 1956), and many
others, including ourselves.
Authors of stories and tales in the nineteenth century pose a
problem for the modern child, as their work is written in sadhu
bhasha or the so-called ‘chaste’ Bengali, now somewhat remote from
the standard Bengali that is used. The standard colloquial Bengali
began to be used, in children’s texts at least, from the end of the
nineteenth century, gradually gaining wider circulation in the texts
of Sandesh. Still, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar translated fables of
Aesop as Kathamala, and presented the lives of eminent inventors
and other great men. As has been said earlier, Sanskrit classics like
Panchatantra and Hitopadesha were also translated several times
over. From the very beginning, translations were being done with
zeal, it being a highly effective way of exposing children to the
wider world and its people, in both space and time. Jogindranath
Sarkar and Upendrakishor Raychaudhury retold the Mahabharata
and Ramayana, Upendrakishor in verse. Folk and fairy tales were
550 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

collected and presented to children in a familiar language by

Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar (1877–1957) in his Thakurmar
Jhuli and Dadamoshayer Thole, and by Upendrakishor in his Tuntunir
Boi, which had animal stories with the jackal as the trickster. Kartik
Chandra Dasgupta (1884–1965), followed Dakshinaranjan in his
preference for presenting fairy tales. The present-day practitioners
of this genre happen to be Saral De (1935–2015), Sailen Ghosh
(1931–2016), Amarendra Chakraborty and Nabanita Deb Sen
(b. 1938), to name the most prominent ones. Both Dakshinaranjan
and Sukumar wrote school stories, the first with a didactic intention.
Sukumar’s sisters, Punyalata Chakraborty (1890–1974) and Lila
Majumdar (1908–2007), wrote fascinatingly about the funny fantasies
of children. Abanindranath Tagore, the poet’s nephew, presented
history and folktales, as he also translated Kalidasa’s Shakuntala
for children, Vidyasagar’s earlier version (1854) being meant for
adults. Translations from Western folktales have also been done
by many, and quite a few of them have been dressed up in Indian
garb.
Tales of adventure and crime were first made popular to the
young by Hemendra Kumar Ray (1888–1963). Following his success,
almost all post-Tagore fiction writers tried their hand in it, but only
Nihar Ranjan Gupta (1911–86), could come near it. Later, Satyajit
Ray (1921–92) with his Feluda series almost overshadowed both of
his predecessors, as he is now the most-read author on crime stories
for the young. Other notable names in this genre are Manoranjan
Bhattacharya (1903–39), Samaresh Basu (1924–88) and Syed
Mustapha Siraj (1930–2012).
Tales of adventure have a classic in Bibhuti Bhusan Bandyopadhyay’s
Chander Pahar, and his other such tales are also notable. Dinesh
Chandra Chattopadhyay (1917–95) had some excellent books of
adventure—Duranta Igal, for example. Premendra Mitra has some
excellent adventure tales too, along with some interesting science
fiction—adventure tales located mostly in the future. His character
Ghanada, whose skill of fabricating a story about the enormous
consequences of an insignificant event provides him with an
opportunity of parading his own leading role as a problem-solver
of the world, is dear to the Bengali boys and girls. However, in the
field of science fiction too, Satyajit Ray, with his Professor Shanku,
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 551

is now the most popular author. Other writers like Adrish Bardhan
could not, however, come out of the margins.
Ghost stories have their appeal to all ages and at all times, so
much so that children’s magazines in Bengali at present bring out
two or more ‘ghost issues’ in a year. Almost all great (and otherwise)
authors have written ghost stories for children, believers and non-
believers alike.
Short stories based on contemporary life began with Rabindranath,
and his some of his stories like ‘Chhuti’ (‘The Leave’) are quite heart-
rending. He is followed by a long line of authors—who wrote both
serious and funny tales. Shibram Chakraborty (1903–80) specialized
in tales of fun, and his amazing ability to use puns made his stories
particularly attractive to the young. He also has a novel Bari Theke
Paliye (‘Playing Truant from Home’). Ashapurna Debi (1909–95), who
had begun her career by writing for children, is also a haloed name.
Her stories are both humorous and sad. Narayan Gangopadhyay is
another author whose stories about the hectoring Tenida are still
eagerly read by juniors. Besides them, Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay
(b. 1935) deserves special mention, as his stories that mix fantasy
and rural life, are immensely popular.
As animals and stories on them are perpetual favourites as
subjects of stories for children, the Bengali authors did not neglect
them. Jogindranath Sarkar wrote a highly interesting book Bone
Jangale (1929), which was a collection of his earlier anecdotes about
animals. Pramadaranjan Ray of the illustrious Ray family wrote Baner
Khabar in Sandesh (1917–18?) a series that children loved to read.
Later, Sukumar De Sarkar wrote specially about animals, with them
as characters of his stories.
Stories about sports also hold deep interest of children. In this
genre, Moti Nandi (1931–2010) has several popular tales, both
humorous and inspirational. Other authors in this sparsely populated
genre are Rupak Saha and Gautam Bhattacharya.
Plays for children, mostly short ones, were written in profusion.
Rabindranath Tagore, Sukumar Ray (Jhalapala), Sunirmal Basu
(Shohura Mama, Kipte Thakurda)—all wrote humorous skits,
with Tagore having written one or two serious ones (like Mukut)
also. Another playwright, Bidhyayak Bhattacharya, also wrote his
‘Amaresh’ series, popular with young readers. Other names in this
552 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

area are those of Sailen Ghosh, Dinanath Sen and Manoj Mitra, the
last being a successful Bengali playwright.
What may called ‘knowledge literature’ for children and the
young has been served side by side with creative literature in the
magazines, as well as in book form. After Vidyasagar, Upendrakishor
and Sukumar Ray have made major contributions in this mission,
with the latter writing on scientific topics mostly. The scientist
Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) also wrote on similar topics
in a lighter vein. Gopal Chandra Bhattacharya (1895–1981) wrote
on ants, insects, plants, and other such beings. Bimal Chandra
Ghosh, alias Moumachi also wrote highly popular books such as
Jnan-Bijnaner Madhubhanda. Sandesh had a section called ‘Prakriti
Poruyar Daptar’ (the file of the nature-reader), in which hundreds
of items in the environment were discussed in an agreeable style.
Of course, many books that are published nowadays veer close to
school texts; still, there has arisen a demand for such books which
cater to the need of what is called general knowledge. In spite of
this, Sankha Ghosh’s book on poetic figures, Bhashar Khela, and my
book on Bengali phonology/pronunciation, Bangla Bolo, have been
received with interest.

Publishers
With the onset of print and the rise of mass circulation, production of
books, including children’s books, became a commercial proposition,
and some publishers began to specialize in the publication of
children’s literature only. Of them, the two most successful are Dev
Sahitya Kutir, which has moved beyond a century, and Shishu Sahitya
Samsad, which is more than sixty years old, and both still thriving.
A few publishers have declined or died down for various reasons.
Other big publishers, however, do not naturally neglect to publish
children’s books, as, apart from individual purchases, there is a steady
demand for them for the so-called ‘rapid reader’ texts, as items of
school prizes, and other such occasions. Bookfairs in West Bengal
have a large attendance of young seekers of new books.

Conclusion
My coverage of children’s literature in Bengali is incomplete in many
ways, mostly for reasons of space. But it is so in a major way as it
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 553

leaves out the thriving literature that is being created in Bangladesh.

As the two areas are divided by the ‘same language’—to quote George
Barnard Shaw about England and the USA, a chronicle of Bengali
children’s literature cannot be complete without information about
the other side. There are authors like Humayun Ahmed and his
brother Mohammad Jafar Iqbal, whose stories and science fiction are
very popular with Bangladeshi children and young adults, but that
is about all I know. Nor can I write knowledgeably about literature
that is being created in other Bengali speaking areas of our country,
or by the Bengali diaspora. However, classics in any literature appear
few and far between, and if there were any, the news and circulation
must have reached Kolkata too, which is still arguably regarded as
the capital of Bengali literature.
Bangladesh, however, has stolen a march ahead of West Bengal
in presenting children’s literature in digitized format, as CDs and
DVDs. The contents are mostly nursery rhymes and the folk as well
as fairy tales. At the moment, West Bengal is trying to catch up. So,
it is back to square one, with oral literature coming back to children
with double the original force, as many children are now eating their
meals with a laptop or mobile blaring out children’s stories or songs.
Songs for children have mostly been nursery rhymes in their tune. But
some of them have been popular for decades—a few made by Salil
Chaudhury, and a couple or two tuned by Hemanta Mukhopadhyay
(more popularly known as Hemant Kumar outside Bengal). A few
songs sung by Sanat Sinha and Sandhya Mukhopadhyay are also
quite popular. Some of Rabindranath’s songs can also be listed as
favourites of Bengali children.

Remarks
It has to be remembered that most of the modern Bengali literature
before 1950 was produced under colonial rule, and in spite of that, or
perhaps because of that, the height of excellence it reached in so short
a time can hardly be found elsewhere. It may now sound redundant
that a Nobel Prize came its way during this time, but a genius like
Tagore often defies strict sociological conditions. However, the so-
called ‘Renaissance’ of Bengal stood as a supporting force till late in
the period under study.
There were of course, forces—imperial, if you wish, and often
554 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

national too—working to undercut Bengal’s influence. The first

Partition of Bengal in 1905 and the resulting communal divide
made Bengal weaker, and the Great Wars and a man-made famine,
and another Partition to boot, with lakhs of people uprooted from
their homes—turned the Bengali speaking people into a pitiable
and directionless lot, at least for a time. It took some time to collect
itself after the fifties of the last century, but its literature did not lose
its vigour.
Still, 1947 did not prove the ‘end of history’ for Bengal; nor did it,
fortunately, for the country. The post-Independence Bengali literature
was equally productive and vigorous, with many early stalwarts
working till the seventies, and new stalwarts like Mahasweta Debi
coming up, or one like Ashapurna Debi attaining ‘stalwarthood’ later.
A generation of powerful poets like Sankha Ghosh, Alokranjan Das
Gupta, Aloke Sarkar, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Shakti Chattopadhyay,
etc., made their appearance, and dramatists like Utpal Dutta, Badal
Sircar, Manoj Mitra, Mohit Chattopadhyay, and Sambhu Mitra also
illuminated the literary as well as the theatrical scene. Talented
essayists were not wanting either. We do not find any cause of despair
yet, and can therefore end with a note of hope. Although the alarming
prophecy—‘vernaculars are doomed’—has been making its rounds
for some time, as far as Bengali literature is concerned, the cause of
worry seems to be misplaced.

Notes
1. Jadu-Nath Sarkar, ed., The History of Bengal, Muslim Period: 1200–1757,
Patna: Academica Asiatica, 1973, p. 407.
2. S.K. De, Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century (1757–1857), Calcutta:
Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1962.
3. Suniti Kumar Chatterji, The Origin and Development of the Bengali
Language, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1926, p. 218.
4. Sukumar Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihas, vol. II, Calcutta: Ananda, be 1398
(1991), pp. 438–44.
5. Priyaranjan Sen, Western Influence in Bengali Literature, Calcutta:
Academic, 1965, p. 11.
6. Sukumar Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihas, vol. II, pp. 439–45.
7. Ibid., p. 128.
8. Sukumar Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihas, vol. II, 6th edn., Calcutta: Eastern,
1970.
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 555
9. Ibid., p. 36.
10. Ibid., p. 351.
11. Rabindranath Tagore, Chhinnapatra (1912), in Rabindra Rachanabali, vol.
XI, ed. Rabindra Kumar Dasgupta et al., Calcutta: Government of West
Bengal, 1989.
12. Sukumar Sen, Bangla Sahityer Itihas, vol. II, 6th edn., p. 261.
13. Ibid., p. 258.
14. Srikumar Bandyopadhyay, Bangasahitye Upanyaser Dhara, Calcutta: The
Modern Book Agency, 1962.
15. Sukumar Sen, Bangala Sahityer Itihas, vol. III, Calcutta: Ananda, 1999,
p. 266.
16. Ibid., p. 234.
17. Asitkumar Bandyopadhyay, Puratan Bangla Gadyagrantha Samkalan,
Kolkata: Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi, 2003.
18. Article ‘Bangala Bhasha’ in Vividha Prabandha, see, Sajanikanta Das
and Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay, eds., Bankim Rachanavali, Calcutta:
Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, 1938, pp. 359–60; translation mine.
19. Pabitra Sarkar, Bangla Banan Samskar: Samasya O Sambhavana, Calcutta:
Chirayata, 1987, pp. 21–53.
20. This section is beyond the scope of the volume, since it discusses works and
personalities beyond 1950. However, it has been included since it provides
valuable information relating to the topic of discussion in this chapter.
21. Pabitra Sarkar, ‘Bengali Drama: The First Phase’, in Comparative Indian
Literature, ed. K.M. George, 1984, pp. 484–9.
22. Pabitra Sarkar, ‘Bangla Sadhu Gadyer Adarshayan’ (Standardization of
Bengali Chaste Prose), Chomsky, Byakaron O Bangla Banan, Kolkata:
Punascha, 2013, pp. 213.
23. See, Ashis Khastagir, ed., Bangla Primer Samgraha, Kolkata: Paschimbanga
Bangla Akademi, 2006, pp. 55–9.
24. Shibaji Bandyopadhyay, Gopal-Rakhal Dvandva Samas, 2nd edn., Calcutta:
Karigar, 2013.

References
Anisujjaman, Purano Bangla Gadya, Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 1984.
Bagal, Jogesh Chandra, ed., Bankim Rachanavali, vol. III, Calcutta: Sahitya
Samsad, 1969.
Bandyopadhyay, Asitkumar, Puratan Bangla Gadyagrantha Samkalan, Kolkata:
Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi, 2003.
Bandopadhyay, Chittaranjan, ed., Dui Shataker Bangla Mudran O Prakashan,
Calcutta: Ananda, 1981.
Bandyopadhyay, Shibaji, Gopal-Rakhal Dvandva Samas, 2nd edn., Calcutta:
Karigar, 2013.
556 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Bandyopadhyay, Srikumar, Bangasahitye Upanyaser Dhara, Calcutta: The
Modern Book Agency, 1962.
Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra, ‘Bangla Bhasha’, 1878, in Bankim Rachanabali,
ed. Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay and Sajanikanta Das, Calcutta: Bangiya
Sahitya Parishad, 1938, pp. 359–60.
———,  ed., Bharatchandra Granthabali, Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, be
1350 (1943).
Chatterji, Suniti Kumar, The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language,
Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1926.
Chowdhury, Bhudeb, Bangla Sahityer Itikatha, pt. IV, 2nd edn., Calcutta: Dey’s,
1994.
Das, Asitabha, ed., Sab Sera Mukul, Kolkata: Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, 2018.
Das, Sajanikanta, Bangla Gadyasahityer Itihas, vol. I, Calcutta: Chirayata, 1975.
Das, Sajanikanta and Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay, eds., Bankim Rachanavali,
Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, 1938.
Das, Sisir Kumar, Early Bengali Prose, Calcutta: Bookland, 1966.
———,  Sahibs and Munshis, Calcutta: Papyrus, 2000.
Dasgupta, Rabindra Kumar et al., eds., Rabindra Rachanabali, vol. XI, Calcutta:
Government of West Bengal, 1989.
De, S.K., Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century (1757–1857), Calcutta:
Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1962.
Deb, Chitra, ‘Bangla Shishusahitya’, in Dui Shataker Bangla Mudran O
Prakashan, ed. Chittaranjan Bandyopadhyay, Calcutta: Ananda, 1981,
pp. 252–68.
George, K.M., ed., Comparative Indian Literature, Delhi: Macmillan, 1984.
Haq, Ansarul, 200 Bachharer Bangla Shishu Sahityer Itihas, Kolkata: Parul
Prakashani, 2016.
Khastagir, Ashis, ed., Bangla Primer Samgraha, Kolkata: Paschimbanga Bangla
Akademi, 2006.
Majumdar, Lila, ‘Chhotoder Janya Boi’, in Dui Shataker Bangla Mudran O
Prakashan, ed. Chittaranjan Bandyopadhyay, Calcutta: Ananda, 1981,
pp. 240–51.
Murshid, Golam, Kalantare Bangla Gadya, Calcutta: Ananda, 1992.
Roy, Bharat Chandra, Bharat Chandrer Granthabali, Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya
Parishad, be 1530.
Sarkar, Jadu-Nath, ed., The History of Bengal, Muslim Period: 1200–1757, Patna:
Academica Asiatica, 1973.
Sarkar, Pabitra, ‘Bengali Drama: The First Phase’, in Comparative Indian
Literature, ed., K.M. George, 1984, pp. 484–9.
———,  Bangla Banan Samskar: Samasya O Sambhavana, Calcutta: Chirayata,
1987
 Sarkar: The Evolution of Bengali Language and Literature 557
———,  Bhasha, Desh Kal, Kolkata: Mitra O Ghosh, 2005.
———,  ‘Barnaparichay theke Kishalay: Bangla Primerer Nana Dik’, Bhasha, Desh
Kal, Kolkata: Mitra O Ghosh, 2005, pp. 101–27.
———,  Natmancha Natyarup, Kolkata: Dey’s, 2008.
———,  ‘Bangla Natak: Unish Shatak’, Natmancha Natyarup, Kolkata: Dey’s,
2008, pp. 239–58.
———,  ‘Bangla Natak: Bish Shatak’, Natmancha Natyarup, Kolkata: Dey’s, 2008,
pp. 259–87.
———,  Chomsky, Byakaron O Bangla Banan, Kolkata: Punascha, 2013.
———,  ‘Bangla Sadhu Gadyer Adarshayan’, Chomsky, Byakaron O Bangla Banan,
Kolkata: Punascha, 2013, pp. 204–28.
———,  Bhashamanan: Bangali Manisha, 2nd edn., Kolkata: Punascha, 2018.
———,  ‘Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’, Bhashamanan: Bangali Manisha,
2nd edn., Kolkata: Punascha, 2018, pp. 19–36.
Sen, Priyaranjan, Western Influence in Bengali Literature, Calcutta: Academic,
1965.
Sen, Sukumar, Bangla Sahityer Itihas, vol. I, Calcutta: Ananda, be 1398 (1991).
———,  Bangla Sahityer Itihas, vol. II, Calcutta: Ananda, be 1398 (1991).
———,  Bangla Sahityer Itihas, vol. II, 6th edn., Calcutta: Eastern, 1970.
———,  Bangala Sahityer Itihas, vol. III, new edn., Calcutta: Ananda, 1999.
Tagore, Rabindranath, Chhinnapatra (1912), in Rabindra Rachanabali,
ed. Rabindra Kumar Dasgupta, vol. XI, Calcutta: Government of West
Bengal, 1989.
 15
Asiatic Society and its Project of
the ‘Science’ of ‘Man’ in the Late
Nineteenth-early Twentieth Century
An Ambivalent Space

Bishnupriya Basak

T
he establishment of the Asiatic Society in 1784 had a
duality of vision in its search for truth, knowledge, and en-
lightenment, which became the hallmarks of European
enlightenment thought in the eighteenth century. One was its
‘scientific’ project—the pursuit of geological researches in an
unknown, remote land which, inspired by Baconian ideals, formed
the European imaginings in colonial India, and continued to be
a part of the Society’s agenda at least till the first four decades of
the nineteenth century.1 The second was its ‘cultural’ project—the
study of texts, scriptures, religion, philology, and laws of the Orient
critiquing Euro-centrism and the European epistemology.2 This too
underwent change in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Contemporary postcolonial discourse has emphasized on breaking
down binaries between opposed categories—the colonizer and the
colonized. It has been argued that these binary oppositions suppress
ambiguous or interstitial spaces. Instead, the concept of ‘ambivalence’
has been invoked to understand the relationship between these
opposed categories. The colonial authority also becomes hybridized
in a colonial context.3 Gyan Prakash4 has shown how the colonial
establishment’s drive to set up a new form of scientific knowledge
in the late nineteenth century was beset with contradictions
and ambivalence. He examines this in the pedagogic practice of
 Basak: Asiatic Society and its Project 559

establishing museums and holding exhibitions in different parts of

the subcontinent. As colonial discourse
staged India as an object of the sciences of naming and function, it also
created a place for what it sought to appropriate; indigenous artifacts and
‘tribes and races’ emerged in their native particularity as objects of scientific
discourse. Forcing scientific knowledge to inhabit and emerge from the
subordinated native objects, this was a process rife with ambivalence.

I seek to understand how an ambivalent, hybrid space was

created in the pursuit of the antiquity of man in the subcontinent
in the second half of the nineteenth century through the writings of
scholar-administrators. Appearing in the Journals and Proceedings
of the Asiatic Society of Bengal from the 1860s—the first half of the
twentieth century—these moulded the later ‘Orientalist’ epistemology
of culture, race, and language. The new disciplinary networks and
alliances of prehistoric archaeology, ethnology, geology, and philology
invented an imagining of early man in the subcontinent, when often
the latter was considered as the cradle of human civilization. Notes
on stray findings of stone tools were fused with ideas of race and
language. For the purpose of the chapter, I have confined myself to
writings relating to the Bengal presidency.
In Victorian Britain, ‘Antiquity of man’ (the phrase taken from
Charles Lyell’s presidential address to one of the learned societies and
referred to in the following sections) was the pivot centring which
debates and theories circulated, the evidentiary sources being derived
from multiple disciplines like geology, palaeontology, prehistoric
archaeology, and ethnology. I will show, through minutes and select
notes of the Royal Anthropological Society of Great Britain and
Ireland5—which formed the ‘organizational focus’ of the new science
of ‘man’—and select texts of John Lubbock and Edward B. Tylor, how
these developments in the metropolis remained in the backdrop.
The chapter is divided into four sections. In the first, I look at the
historicizing process(es) of human antiquity in Victorian Britain. In
the second, I discuss briefly two texts which were the turning points
in the historiography of human antiquity—Lubbock’s Prehistoric
Times and Tylor’s Researches into the Early History of Mankind. The
third section, which forms the core of the chapter, concentrates on
writings appearing in the publications of the Asiatic Society during
560 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

that time. The concluding section adopts a wider perspective of

human antiquity in the subcontinent.

Of Tools, Drifts, and Savages—The Antiquity

of Man
The Windmill Hill Cavern in Devonshire, also known as Brixham
Cave, was excavated between 1858 and 1859 by a committee of
the Geological Society, assisted by the local subcommittee. The
discovery of flint knives and fossils of extinct animals in the Somme
valley, France, impressed palaeontologist Hugh Falconer sufficiently
enough to impress upon his fellow geologists Joseph Prestwich and
Charles Lyell, and archaeologists Lubbock and John Evans, to visit
the new site. There, stone tools, along with fossils of extinct species
of cattle, elephant, and horse were being discovered since the 1840s
by Boucher de Perthes, a customs officer from Abbeville in north
France. The discoveries so far, however, had been unable to convince
the Diluvians, who believed in the Biblical genesis of the earth going
back to a mere 6,000 years, and were therefore unwilling to accept
anything older than that. Evans and Prestwich were convinced
that humans indeed lived at the time of drift and the now extinct
mammals. The case for human antiquity was argued upon, on their
return to Britain, by members of two learned societies. Prestwich
read his paper before the Royal Society in April 1859, and soon
after, Evans presented before the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Based on these, Lyell gave his address on the ‘Antiquity of man’ to
the British Association for the Advancement of Science. His book,
published later in 1863, titled The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity
of Man, argued for archaeological and geological studies to form a
continuum, foreshadowing a similar synthesis that was to appear in
John Lubbock’s classic study titled Prehistoric Times. Human antiquity
had more or less been established, ringing a death knell to the Biblical
theory of Genesis.6
Steven Shapin,7 in his analysis of ‘the Scientific Revolution’ of the
seventeenth century, observes:

.  .  .  that science is a historically situated and social activity and that it is to

be understood in relation to the contexts in which it occurs  .  .  .  if science
is to be understood as historically situated and in its collective aspect (i.e.,
 Basak: Asiatic Society and its Project 561

sociologically), then that understanding should encompass all aspects

of science, its ideas and practices no less than its institutional forms and
social uses.

Two centuries later, the scientific pursuit of the antiquity of

man may likewise be situated in Victorian Britain. A recent volume
explores the process(es) of historicizing humans in Britain and its
empire in the nineteenth century.8 In the introductory chapter, Efram
Shera-Shriar argues how human history provided an ‘important
historiographical focal point’ when both science and religion offered
competing explanations for human origins. In the same volume,
Mark Bevir discusses three broad forms of historicism—the Whig
historiography, Romanticism, and Positivism. A fourth form, as
pointed out by Shera-Shriar, is Evolutionism, which, as this chapter
will show, took the centre stage as more and more discoveries of
ancient tools and fossils continued to be made throughout the last
decades of the nineteenth century.
The years 1859–63 were a period of tumultuous change. Darwin’s
Origin of the Species, published in 1859 threatened further to overturn
the age-old ideas. The growth of Palaeolithic archaeology cannot
be divorced from evolutionary ideas prevalent in geology and
palaeontology. B.G. Trigger9 argues that Lyell’s evolutionary ideas
in geology were received favourably by the English intellectuals as
well the general public in their eagerness to embrace evolutionism.
By the mid-nineteenth century, Britain had become an industrially
prosperous nation, which, in turn, strengthened the intellectual and
political powers of the middle classes, who felt empowered to be a
major force in shaping history. The philosophical thrust to this set
of ideas was given by Herbert Spencer, who from the 1850s, had
begun to champion a general evolutionary approach to scientific and
political issues. Trigger believes that Spencer had a substantial role to
play in shaping the ideology of British middle classes, who were still
looked upon as trustworthy sources for truth about mankind, like
their seventeenth century predecessors.10 This explains the general
inclination for Palaeolithic researches.
Large-scale transformations in print culture made the new
forms of knowledge systems available to wider audiences. Voyages
of exploration to distant and remote lands led to the juxtaposition
of European perceptions of race, language, and traditions with those
562 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

encountered among indigenous ‘native’ populations. Thus emerged

different types of explanatory models for human history and racial
variation.
It would be interesting to see how the case for human antiquity
touched the core areas of Victorian thought. Two of these are especially
indicative for us to draw comparison with the scenario emerging
in the subcontinent: specific theories about the origin of human
species and its constituent races—the question of monogenesis or
polygenesis; and deliberations on ‘man’s place in nature’. Archaeology
in Britain, so far one of Roman and Saxon sites, was now surpassed by
the new sub-discipline of prehistoric archaeology, wherein the main
plank of support came from geology. To this was added ethnology.
The acceptance of human antiquity also fed a desire to know
more about the context of the chipped tools. This resulted in debates
and counter-debates about the chronology of these tools and the
drift in which they were found.11 Geologists and palaeontologists
like Dawkins, Falconer, and Geikie deliberated on questions of
stratigraphy of river drifts, cave deposits, and past climatic features,
belonging to the Quaternary era. Theories of seasonal migrations of
extinct species also circulated in this group of scholars.
Armed with such knowledge, societies and journals became
rife with announcements of stone tool discovery. The Royal
Anthropological Institute was set up in 1869. But several local
societies and field clubs, chiefly around London, also mushroomed,
welcoming a combination of geology, archaeology, and natural history.
The individuals involved were not only gentlemen practitioners of
science, but also non-practitioners like draughtsmen and diamond
merchants. The resolutions from the council meeting of the Royal
Anthropological Institute (hereafter referred to as RAI), held in 1869,
are particularly revealing of the animated ambience of the time12—

1. Amalgamation of the Anthropological Society with the

Ethnological Society—‘the Council considers the time has
arrived when such an arrangement can be completed with
benefit to science.’
2. (A) That it is advisable for the Anthropological Society to join
the Ethnological Society and to form a Society for the study
of the Science of man in its wider interpretation.
 Basak: Asiatic Society and its Project 563

Select items of the minutes of ordinary meetings of the RAI

reflect the combined initiative of the time13—flint implements were
exhibited by John Lubbock and John Evans; human remains (jaws, for
example) were exhibited from a cave in Borneo by Prof Busk; a paper
was read on the races of Patagonia (29 May 1871); Major Godwin-
Austin read on ‘The stone monuments of the Khasi Hill Tribes and
on some peculiar rites and customs of the people’ (1 May 1871) and
‘On the Garo Hill Tribes’ (17 December 1872).
On 12 June 1883 the director read a letter from W. Rivett Carnac
on some stone implements found in the Banda district, North-
West Province, India, found by himself and W.J. Cockburn, and
presented by the former to the Institute. General Pitt-Rivers made
a few remarks on the collection. Spanning the years 1884–97, the
minutes reveal a diverse array of items—descriptions of agricultural
implements brought from the Naga Hills; observations on osteology
of the natives of the Andaman Islands; notes on prehistoric finds
from south India sent by Robert Bruce Foote; a paper on Palaeolithic
implements from the drift gravels of the Singrauli Basin, south
Mirzapur; a paper on the aboriginal races of Manipur and the Naga
Hills; a paper on the osteology of the Veddahs, accompanied by the
exhibit of an articulated skeleton and several skulls of the people of
that community; and notes on the rock-cut sepulchral chambers of
the Malabar.
The writings of W.B. Crooke,14 an official employed with the
colonial government, reflect how ethnography, ethnology, and
Palaeolithic archaeology are enmeshed, a discussion of which,
however, goes beyond the purview of this chapter.
The periphery, thus, was omnipresent in the metropolis. It needs
to be probed how the relations between the two were negotiated. In
the next section, I turn to two works which are considered turning
points in ways in which the ‘new science’ of ‘man’ was shaping up.

The Prehistoric Times and Researches into

the Early History of Mankind and the
Development of Civilization
I am engaging with these two works principally to illustrate how the
disciplinary negotiations were taking place and a template was being
564 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

invented to assess the antiquity of man. There were fractures in the

apparent homogeneity; even then, diverse ideas cohered to tackle the
most challenging issue of the time. This forms the backdrop against
which I take up the writings focusing on the subcontinent, Bengal
in particular, in the following section.
In the preface to his monumental work, Lubbock15 states his
principal objective:
to elucidate the principles of pre-historic archaeology; laying special stress
upon the indications which it affords of the prehistoric times  .  .  .  to the
strictly archaeological work I have added a chapter on the manners and
customs of Modern Savages, confining myself to those tribes which are still,
or were, when first visited by travellers ignorant of the use of metal.  .  .  .

Lubbock, a banker, represented the ‘gentlemen’ bourgeoisie

of nineteenth century Britain, who, bolstered by the economic
prosperity, was also a great advocate of progress. Situated in
Darwinian evolutionism, Prehistoric Times argued for a naturalistic
explanation for creation, connecting human races to a shared organic
origin with the plant and animal world.16 Lubbock’s work was a clear
espousal for establishing prehistoric archaeology (now divided into
four stages) on a firm footing. Ethnology, the relatively new branch
science, was to be relied upon, with the methodology built on
geology. The intervention of ethnology was essential to know about
the tool-makers, as in Europe, there was ‘no tradition of the Stone
Age’.17 Just as the fossiliferous remains of extinct mammalian were
reconstructed on the basis of their modern counterparts, similarly,
the stone tools, derived from the drift gravels and cave deposits,
could be compared with ‘rude implements and weapons’ still used by
the ‘savage races’ in other parts of the world. Developmentalism, an
integral part of evolution, was a prominent thread running through
out this work. Types of artefacts were classified in an evolutionary
scheme, a common practice of the times. Specific racial groups were
appended to specific forms of material culture.
Lubbock’s belief in the unity of races and the ultimate improvement
of our species and the civilization is, however, fraught with
contradictions. ‘The true savage’ continues to live a life of misery,
succumbing to baser emotions like an animal, and given to much
unhappiness. They are not naturally selected, which ‘leads to increase
 Basak: Asiatic Society and its Project 565

in happiness’. Although not stated anywhere, the improvement that he

imagined for ‘our species’ implied triumph of the superior European/
Briton.
Tylor’s Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the
Development of Civilization 18 is another classic study rooted in
developmentalism and progress—‘Wide differences in the civilization
and the mental state of the various races of mankind are rather
differences of development than of origin, rather of degree than of
kind.’19
In his enumeration of gestures, languages, myths, customs, and
prehistoric remains Tylor remained a firm believer in uniformity
among mankind, as ‘similar stages of development recur in different
times and places’. Therefore, a stone age may exist among ‘savages’
as well in ‘civilized nations’. Independent invention in two different
places was also taken to be a reflection of ‘similarity of mind’.
Civilizations of different races grew under one another’s influence
or ‘derived common material from a common source’.20
Tylor’s study, unlike Lubbock’s, was not one of archaeological
stratigraphy and geological descriptions of the context. If Lubbock set
the agenda in prehistoric archaeology, Tylor triggered ethnographic
and ethnological studies of mankind. These studies were crucial in
inventing a template for human origins in Britain.

Asiatic Society and its Vision of

Human Antiquity in the Second Half of
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century

The First Forays in Ethnology

The Orientalist project of the initial period of the Asiatic Society,
possessing a rich historiography, has been worked upon extensively
and needs no elaboration here.21 Prakash has shown how the collection
of human crania, under the Asiatic Society’s directive in 1866 for its
ethnological museum, was liminal in the way in which it unfolded,
where the native’s many prejudices could not be overlooked—‘.  .  .  the
science of man was inevitably contaminated by the objects in
which it inhered and the mode of its staging’.22 In another paper,
Peter Pels23 has argued how orientalist imagery was reinvented by
566 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the new discipline of ethnology. In the new power configurations

of the post-mutiny scenario, major policy changes were setting
the discursive space, producing new representations. Specifically
from the 1850s, ethnological investigations were conducted into a
wide array of questions on society and conduct in the colony, where
administrative and scientific interests coincided. The theories of
liberal governance aimed to provide an intellectual justification of
the hegemonic rule and also served as a backdrop to the ensuing
scientific inquiry.24
Although not within the direct purview of this chapter, I use a
few papers on ethnology as the focal points of entry. These follow
Brian Hodgeson’s study appearing in 184925 and George Campbell’s
magnum opus on the ethnology of India,26 which, as Pels argues,
shifted the emphasis of ethnological studies in India from the trope
of aboriginality to a more pan-Indian perspective. Neither of the
papers I discuss deal with the Bengal presidency per se, but show the
ambivalent space that was being invented to imagine the colonized. A
letter from Dr Ross, a residency surgeon at Cape Comorin, was read
by Dr J. Anderson in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society (hereafter
referred to as PASB) of 1866: ‘I have undertaken, at the desire of the
British resident, to collect information regarding the Ethnology of
this country and of Cochin, and to illustrate it by photographs of
typical examples of the people, public and religious buildings, and
monuments, private dwellings, arms, musical instruments.’ And
‘the account of the Ethnological condition of the two countries will
include a full account of the religious and superstitious beliefs and
practices, of the moral condition, the employments, and amusements,
the physical conformation (with accurate measurements), the
language, history and traditions of each race.’27
The second paper, by J.B. Davis,28 begins by stating that ethnology
of India was no new subject, and relates it to the ‘earliest advent
of Western science to the shores of the Ganges’. A comprehensive
hypothesis of the subject had been built, embracing ‘nearly as many
races of man as the ancients were acquainted with’. He also gives
more credence to the craniological parameters than to the linguistic.
Liminality is seen in the invention of a space where affinities
are imagined between the ‘Tamulian tribes’ of peninsular India
and those of certain European races by the size of their skulls. This
 Basak: Asiatic Society and its Project 567

was not quite the ethnology of races and tribes as it evolved in the
metropolis, where it came to be situated in the evolutionary ladder
of progress and accommodated within distinct stages of civilization.
Colonial ethnology, meant as a tool of surveillance in the colony, was
a mimicry29 of the Western mode, and evolved its own style—laced
with customs, beliefs, practices, and traditions—conforming, yet
not-conforming, to the metropolitan model.

Tools, Race and Culture: The Ambivalent

‘Antiquity of Man’
The scholar-administrators often straddled both the worlds of
‘science’ and ‘culture’. Valentine Ball, an Irishman employed with
the Geological Survey, discovered the first stone tools in eastern
India, as part of the mining surveys of the Survey.30 To Ball, who
surveyed the coalfields of Chota Nagpur in the 1880s, ‘a great deal of
indescribable pleasure’31 came from taking up geological explorations
in unknown and remote parts of the country. We also come across
a series of his writings, deliberating on the origin of races and their
relations with stone tools and languages. James Wood-Mason, a
zoologist, worked in the Indian Museum from 1877 to 1893. He
made many collections of marine animals and Lepidoptera, being
best known for his research on mantids and phasmids. During this
period, he also made discoveries of stone tools from Jashpur and
Ranchi.32 Sir Arthur Purves Phayre was the first commissioner (1862)
of British Burma (present Myanmar), beginning his career as a cadet
in the Bengal army in 1828. As a commissioner of Arakan in 1849,
he acquired an intimate knowledge of the Burmese language.33 He
acquainted himself with the country, the people, and the government
during his tenure, seeing linkages between antiquities, races, and
languages. We also come across geologists like William Blanford,
who wrote on discoveries of ancient tools while engaged in the
examination of coalfields, particularly the Ranigunj fields.34 There
were missionary-scholars like the Norwegian Paul Olaf Bodding, who
spent a substantial part of his time in India in the Santal Parganas,
being a superintendent of the Santal Mission (1911–23). He was an
outstanding author, translator, and the editor of a Santal-English
dictionary.35 I discuss below his notes on stone tools and myths.
568 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

These individuals, and some others, inhabited a contiguous world

of Western idiom and indigenous imagery, which eluded determinacy.
There were a few common threads running through these writings,
the most dominant being that of race, associated with stone
tools and linguistic groups. Ball’s researches are outstanding in this
sphere.
In 1865,36 Ball mentions the first discovery of a quartzite tool near
the village of Kunkune, eleven miles south-west of Govindapoor on
the Grand Trunk Road. On the basis of its morphological features,
he surmised that the specimen resembled some of the ‘Madras’
specimens, and may have been used in the manufacture of other
tools. He described two other specimens, one of which was found in
the Bokaro coalfield, also examining various heaps of natural pebbles
in the Jharia coalfield, in order to gain expertise in distinguishing
artefacts and pebbles of natural origin. In this very paper, he stated
an idea that he came to believe firmly by the end of his career, that
implements were indices of a race. Two years after this he reported the
discovery of a specimen of better workmanship, bearing more striking
resemblance to the Madras specimens. This was found near the
village of Gopinathpur, close to the Beharinath Hill in Manbhum.
He pointed out the importance of his discovery in no uncertain
terms, ‘.  .  .  the locality is the most eastern in India, in which any
trace of the ancient races who manufactured these implements
has been found  .  .  .’. 37 He also expressed the hope that ‘.  .  .  in the
examination of the lower portions of Manbhoom, of Singhbhoom
and Dhalbhoom districts, formerly known as the jungle mehals, and
at present inhabited in parts by rude and almost savage races, I may
be sufficiently fortunate to make some discovery, which will throw
more light on this very interesting and important subject.’
In 1868,38 while commenting on chert flakes and knives found
by Captain Beeching, he reminded the audience of the society about
his prediction made in the previous year regarding the potential
of this region in yielding prehistoric implements. The contextual
details of the finds were noted, along with the nature of the raw
material and of its possible geological sources. In 1875, he informed
the audience of the resemblance between hammerstones found in a
part of Pennsylvania and his specimen from Mopani.39 In 1878, Ball
made similar connections between two polished stone celts found
 Basak: Asiatic Society and its Project 569

from Paresnath Hill, Hazaribagh, to those found from most parts of

Europe and elsewhere.40
In 1875, he put forth the idea of an Asiatic origin for the North
American Indians, on the basis of the morphological similarities
between his Mopani specimens and those from Pennsylvania. He
proceeded to talk of two other specimens. These were distinct from
the others so far discovered, which he now classified as Palaeolithic.
The two specimens—two adzes and a wedge-shaped stone—were
considered to be thunderbolts in the popular notion. As to their
origin, Ball presented two alternative theories. Either they were
manufactured locally in Singhbhum. Or, they originated in Burma
(Ball based this on the supposed similarities between these specimens
and those found in Burma). Here, his conclusive remarks are most
interesting:
It would be of course useless to attempt any speculation, on the strength of
such data alone, as to an incursion or immigration of Burmese races into
that part of Bengal in prehistoric times; but the fact now recorded may
hereafter be of importance should evidence of another character tending
in the same direction be by any means established.41

In 1876,42 in a discussion on chipped quartzite axes found from

different parts of Orissa (present Odisha), he mentioned that it is
possible to trace ‘the geographical distribution in India of these early
races’. Here he referred to the comments by Phayre,43 who showed that
the part of Burma where Ball’s specimens (of 1875) had been found
was inhabited by a race called Mun, whose language was similar to
that of the Mundas of Singhbhum. Hence, Ball was excited to remark
that an identity of origin between these widely separated races could
be a possibility. Phayre mentioned in this letter that the Mun race
belonged to Pegu. The racial affinities were established on the basis
of similarities between tools. He even quotes the ‘supposed origin of
these weapons’—they were ‘thrown to earth in the lightning flash, is as
remarked by Mr Theobald, the same among both the peoples.’ A later
paper44 extends the racial argument further by relating shouldered
stone implements, found from Tezpur and Konarpara in Cachar—
both places in Assam—to a wave of Khasi migration.
But perhaps the most explicit expounding of Ball’s racial
theory occurs not in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society, but in
570 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy.45 He divided

the country into three regions, the geological structure of each
having a pronounced influence on the form and character of the
implements. He believed the central part of the country (by which
he meant western Bengal and the Central Provinces) to have formed
a point of convergence for the immigrants from the north-east
and the north-west, who brought in their superior knowledge of
workmanship. Ball believed that as one receded from these central
lands, the respective forms of implements became more abundant
and displayed greater skill (in their making) as far as in Sind in the
north-west and Madras in the extreme south. The makers of these
implements converged in the central lands and ‘became the parents
of the widely-distinct races’. He followed Robert Caldwell in giving
an account of the waves of immigration: the Kols, Santals, Bhils,
and a few others were the earliest, entering from the north-east; the
Dravidians were next, entering from the north-west; followed by the
Scythians or non-Aryan immigrants from the north-west; and finally
ending with the Aryans. He considered the Kolarian tribes to have
been the manufacturers of the polished celts, while the Dravidians
were the makers of flakes.
Divergent opinions existed on migration of races, as seen in Ball’s
bitter conflicts with Foote,46 a pioneer in prehistoric archaeology of
the subcontinent, mostly in the south, west, and central parts of the
country. Reading carefully through their arguments and counter-
arguments, one becomes aware of the divergent opinions existing
during the second half of the nineteenth century on early origins of
humanity and their possible implications for understanding cultural
evolution in the subcontinent
The nature of discovery of these specimens is also interesting.
While Ball, who evidently had an interest in the stone tools and
their possible associations, found them mostly in the course of his
geological surveys, the discovery of others was chanced upon, perhaps
unknowingly, by local people in agricultural fields or by officials in
the course of quelling political unrest in these marginal lands or
clearing of forestlands for industrial purposes.
This ‘science’ of ‘man’ had its own trajectory. Not classified into any
developmental stage or linked to any universal history of mankind,
this was a curious amalgam of imagined racial groups, languages,
and prehistoric remains. Here was a split between ‘universal science’,
 Basak: Asiatic Society and its Project 571

the subject of representation and the colonial ‘process’ ‘by which it

was signified’. ‘Scientific knowledge and institutions emerged pursued
by the stigma of their colonial birth’.47 I illustrate this with more
instances below.

Myths, Superstitions: Archaeology and Aboriginal

Race—More Ambivalence
Myths and legends, existing among the ethnic groups, often found
their way in the narrative of human antiquity. In parts of Singhbhum
known as ‘Kolahan’, Ball48 observed the modern practice of erecting
monuments to the memory of the deceased. Megalithic menhirs and
dolmens were reported by E.T. Dalton49 from Chota Nagpur. The Hos,
belonging to the family of the Kols, were the main practitioners of
this custom. Ball believed Kolahan to be the ultimate ‘resting place’ of
this race, the geological formation of slates and schists, influencing its
choice. Although the contemporary practice of erecting monuments
to the dead only existed in Kolahan, Ball mentioned the occurrence of
similar monuments throughout the Chota Nagpur, which was distant
from the residence of the Kols. On the basis of common belief, he
attributed these ancient monuments to the Kols.
Such historicizing of antiquarian remains continued in his
narratives on ancient copper mining, and on idols, temples, and
other structures discovered in the course of his geological surveys.50
Ancient copper mines were discovered while examining copper-
bearing rocks in Singhbhum, Asunbani in Mayurbhanj, and remote
tracts of Manbhum with heaps of copper slag, several tanks, and a
ridge or moat of clay, believed to have enclosed a garh. According
to local belief, the region was occupied by the Seraks in the past,
and the relics could be attributed to them. A place called Ruam
was associated with the legend of a two-tongued rajah, who, Dalton
interpreted, belonged to the Nag or serpent race, who were actually
the Kols. Holding Dalton’s opinion as authentic, Ball concluded that
this place was occupied by the Kols since the time of the Seraks,
and the ancient remains found here could be decisively attributed to
either of the two, or both. At a place called Karra-Mounda, Ball found
sections of small furnaces, lying covered by the surrounding clay and
rubbish. He concluded this was possibly a depot to which rudely
smelted copper, brought from the hills, was refined and prepared for
572 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the market. The local villagers assigned an age of 700 years or more
to the tanks found here. Since ancient mining was associated with the
‘Aryan’ settlements in Spain, England, and Arabia, Ball considered
the Seraks to be one of the Aryan races.51
Ball also observed several Jain temples and Buddhist ‘emblems’
in ‘Hinduized temples’ in Manbhum. He again relied on Dalton, who
interpreted these shrines as dotting the course taken by the ancient
saint Vira. Vira represented the clerical Jains who, it was believed,
did not visit Singhbhum due to the presence of the lay Jains, or the
more ‘adventurous Seraks’. According to Dalton, these people were
driven out by the Hos more than 2,000 years ago.
In other writings, ethnography became central and archaeological
artefacts receded to the background. Bodding reported more than
fifty stone implements from the Santal Parganas in the course of his
missionary works in the province.52 He mostly bought them from
the local population, who had found the implements in the course
of digging or ploughing a field, and at other times on the surface,
in a river bed, in the forest or in ‘cleft rocks’. A few of them were
also heirlooms, although the places where they had been found
remained enshrouded in mystery. These were not associated with
any burial ground, but the possibility of finding such was not ruled
out. The reason Bodding furnished for this was the nature of form
and the material of a few, which gave them the appearance of ‘votive
stones’. These were made of flint, porphyry, basalt, or ‘other hard
kinds’ available in the district. They were of varying sizes. Some
were too small to be used in any capacity, and hence were classified
as votive stones. Others were of the size of a hatchet. Some were
of a ‘beautiful form and polish’, others had ‘only the edge polished’.
Most of them were used in the functional capacity of weapons, axes,
hammer, arrowheads, or agricultural implements. However, no other
information was forthcoming from the author on the archaeological
significance, apart from ascribing an unknown antiquity to them.
Even the descriptions lack precision, which is the hallmark of any
archaeological classification. The author confessed that he was not
an archaeologist.
On the other hand, he quotes myths and anecdotes extensively
from his encounters with the Santal population of the region. These
stones, especially the ‘axe-shaped’ ones, were named ceter dhiri or
 Basak: Asiatic Society and its Project 573

‘thunderbolts’. ‘When a Santal sees a tree split, animals or people

wounded, holes dug in the earth, etc., all done by lightning, he draws
the conclusion, that to effect this the lightning must have a special
implement  .  .  .’. 53
When such notions were countered by more plausible
explanations—that these belonged to ancient groups who used them
for work—they were dispelled by a counter-reason—‘the Sahibs are
very wise, and the thing may not seem altogether impossible; but we
have had so many proofs of their excellent qualities that all things
considered, it is safer to keep to the old belief.’54
If sour, stale rice water is poured over a place struck by the
lightning, it was believed that further penetration of the bolt into the
ground was halted. The ‘bolt’ served medicinal purposes for women
in labour and for other ailments.
Such instances of alternative ‘reason’ have been mentioned by
J. Coggin Brown in his description of similar stone implements
found in a Yunnanese town bordering Upper Burma.55 E.H.C. Walsh
reported celts from the Kalimpong and Kurseong subdivisions in the
Darjeeling district.56 His report is resonant with the same idea which
he believed to have had a wide geographical expanse—over China,
Japan, Java, Burma, and Assam. The curative and protective qualities
of the stones were further elaborated upon with accompanying myths
prevailing among the Tibetan and Bhutea races:
According to the common belief of the ignorant people the cause and origin
of the thunderbolt is that Rahu has his furnace, forge, and workshop on the
crown of Khy-ale-juk (Ketu’s head), and that all the flint implements are
forged by Thamchhen Dorje Legpa (the Tibetan Vulcan), using Khy-ale-juk
(Ketu’s head) as his anvil. Thamchhen is said to be ever busy forging the
arms of the powerful deities presiding over the elements, who throw them
down on the evil spirits of the lower world.57

These writings were not necessarily connected with the antiquity

of man. The natives had to be known to be controlled. Yet what
emerged was an indigenous agency of the subordinated native objects.
If ethnology and ethnography were designed as tools of surveillance,
they were contaminated by superstitions and myths of the colonized
subaltern. ‘At once completely known (stubbornly irrational) and
entirely unknowable (who can understand the ways of unreason?),
574 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the figure of the subaltern occupies a disturbing presence in dominant

discourses; it represents the limit of those discourses, a marginal
position against which they defined themselves.’58
The Hill Kheriyas and the Pahareas living in the hill tracts
of Manbhum thus appear as ‘very dirty, seldom if ever washing
themselves. Their features are decidedly of a low character not unlike
the Bhumij  .  .  .  they undoubtedly belong, however, to the races
who excited so much disgust on the part of the Hindus, when they
first came into the country.’ They are ‘the black-skinned, human-
sacrificing, flesh-eating forest tribes.’59
Yet they had to be codified for establishing some linkage, however
tenuous, with the prehistoric implements. They were living museum
‘objects’ who were brought into camps and questioned on their
customs and language, to enrich the vocabulary of the colonizer.

Fashioning Typology—Stone tools and

Cross-cultural Comparisons
In the course of our study, we come across another genre of
writings which principally contained descriptive notes on stone
tools, accompanied with cross-cultural comparisons. Wood-Mason
discussed, at length, artefact groups like polishers, flakes, cores, and
different types of arrowheads discovered from Ranchi by W.H.P.
Driver from an alleged Neolithic settlement.60 The descriptions
were not geologically precise, and were lacking in details of context.
Measurements were given with photographs. The descriptions were, at
best, amateurish. For example—‘Pl.II represents a curious implement
of olive-green grey unctuous clayey stone which readily absorbs
moisture from the hand and gives an ashy-grey streak when grazed,
however lightly, by a harder substance such as chert.’61
Inferences are rampant about their use and origin.
I infer that this implement was used as a polisher, though this may not have
been its original use, for it is possible that it may once have been one of the
‘legs’ of a two-legged instrument similar to one of unknown origin and use
preserved in the Indian Museum, in which case the two examples of it, being
of the same side, must necessarily be parts of two similar instruments.62

Inferences were also made about chronology without citing any

specific reason. For instance, Wood-Mason considered the beads
 Basak: Asiatic Society and its Project 575

found here to be of a later age than the celt, ringstone, and the
arrowheads. It was pointed out that the beads belonged to all stages
of manufacture. They were placed in ‘grades of civilization’ on the
basis of their ‘rude’ or ‘artistic’ ‘shape and ornamentation’.
The arrowheads in the collection were considered to be the most
interesting, as it was believed till then that Neolithic settlements in
India were devoid of this tool. Arrowheads formed an integral part of
the Neolithic cultural repertoire—so it was believed, as the population
had not yet given up hunting. Wood-Mason described these in
detail, comparing them with ‘European flint spearheads of Neolithic
age’ or with one from California. These were manufactured out of
different stones like chert, chalcedony, milky quartz, and rock crystal
among others. As they occurred in profusion with flakes, cores,
and the raw materials, he believed they were manufactured on
the spot.
The occurrence of red lumps of ‘earthy haemetite’ attracted his
attention, as this was used by all ‘savages’ from the earliest times of
civilization. He quoted Evans, who had commented on this pigment
to have been used in personal decorations by the Neolithic inhabitants
of Great Britain. The use, of course, dated back to even earlier times,
as its evidence had been found in the ‘French and Belgian caves of
the Reindeer period’. It was observed in contemporary times among
the North American Indians, the ‘savages of Andaman islands’, and
the Bhutea women of Darjeeling.
Instances of cross-cultural comparisons continue to occur in a
few writings. Grooved stone hammers were regarded as the ‘rarest
of the numerous Neolithic stone implements recorded from Eastern
Asia’.63 Five specimens from Assam were described in detail. They
were considered to be very rare, as none of the kind were found
anywhere in East Asia, excepting one recorded from the Chinese
empire. They were common in North America, being very generally
distributed in the United States.
The notion of cultural borrowing between cultures was
commented upon. Although there was little evidence to directly
relate these specimens to those of North America, the borrowing of
the latter from eastern Asia in the case of other archaeological types
could not be ruled out.
Other notes lack in elaboration, but are rich in variety and
diversity of the specimens. The magistrate of Manipur donated a
576 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

copper spearhead, two copper axes, and a few copper bangles to

the Society,64 requesting any information on them. The president
of the Society compared these with the specimens of north Europe.
Greater importance was attached to these specimens, as they were the
earliest instances of metal known from the region. There were also
instances of reports of ‘vessels’ (from Bersip village in north Cachar)
made of sandstone, which became subjects of controversy.65 While
their discoverer believed they were made by some ‘former race of
hill-men’ to store grains in, geological opinion cited otherwise—‘It
seemed probable that the spheres in question were concretions, and
therefore of natural origin.’
What we have, thus, are loose classifications, eluding the
meticulous and almost obsessive classificatory schemes appearing
in several works in the metropolis. Slightly hazy allusions are also
made to a ‘North American’ or ‘European’ framework.

An Ambivalent Space
The staging of Western science was thus punctuated by paradoxes and
distortions leading to a pervasive ambivalence and hybridity. While
this has been well-researched for the larger projects of museums and
exhibitions in late nineteenth century, the networks and alliances of
ethnology, prehistoric archaeology, and geology in the quest of human
antiquity are overlooked in the historiography of colonial science. No
single theory of human origins emerged from these studies. There
were many paths traversing the mixed terrain of race, language, and
culture, where divergent ideas coalesced. In this interstitial zone of
chaos and discordance, there also featured sympathy for the dark-
skinned savages, a passion for the chipped stone implements and
a sense of wonder for the unknowable. Colonial science could not
dislodge this liminality created in its performance.
A paper by Thomas Simpson assesses the project of human
antiquity in the subcontinent from a slightly different perspective.66
Simpson shows through his studies of William Jones, Caldwell,
Neufville (a soldier employed with the East India Company in the
Brahmaputra valley), and Bengali nationalists like Bankim Chandra
Chattopadhyay, Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghosh, and others, how
divergent images of human antiquity jostled for space among this
 Basak: Asiatic Society and its Project 577

disparate group. He considers Jones’s work not as foundational to

the discipline of ethnology, but primarily as a comprehensive theory
of human origin, which had a huge impact throughout and beyond
the English-speaking world. Debates and counter-debates with
native scholars and between European/British individuals, chiefly
ethnologists, produced an intellectually fervent ambiance marked
by collisions of texts and materials. Simpson also states that the
exchange of information was not smooth, there were raging battles
over epistemic authority. Influenced by dynamics of colonial India,
these wranglings were not restricted to the peripheral space. They
were not territorially bound. There was transmission, circulation,
and considerable commensurability across and beyond borders,
to create a picture of human antiquity that was both diverse and
fractured, yet influential. Here, he draws upon a recent historiography
of science that considers both connections and disconnections in a
global history, synthesizing ‘narrowly’ regional, national, or imperial
studies of science, emphasizing more on circulations and movement
of ideas across imagined geographies.67 ‘Global’ here is used as a label
of historical methodology, indicating the analysis of broad patterns
and connections across space.
Not disregarding circulation and commensurability, I would like
to argue that in its practice and staging, science could not be uprooted
from its colonial and imperial context in the periphery. Ideas may
have moved, but they could not escape contamination.
The contradictions and paradoxes persisted and continued,
making space in Herbert Risley’s The People of India, published in
1908. Intended to be a tool of surveillance and codification, this was
far from a neat classificatory scheme of India’s pristine humanity. With
this began another discourse of colonial science and governance.

Notes
1. This engaging enterprise has been dealt with very effectively in Pratik
Chakrabarti, ‘The Asiatic Society and its Vision of Science: Metropolitan
Knowledge in a Colonial World’, The Calcutta Historical Journal, vols. XXI
and XXII, 1999, pp. 1–32; and later in Pratik Chakrabarti, Western Science
in Modern India: Metropolitan Methods, Colonial Practices, Ranikhet:
Permanent Black, 2004.
578 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
2. Although uncovering different sets of data, these two projects were not
totally disjunctive. Chakrabarti explores the linkages between the cultural
and social aspects of scientific research and Orientalist knowledge,
particularly when both the projects ran parallel in the late-eighteenth
to early-nineteenth century. These were crucial, particularly when such
researches were carried out under the same institution and often by the
same individuals. Chakrabarti goes on to argue that both these forms of
knowledge had strong implications for the exercise of imperial power. For
the ‘cultural’ project, see, O.P. Kejariwal, The Asiatic Society of Bengal and
the Discovery of India’s Past, 1784–1838, Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1988; Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, eds., Orientalism and
the Post-Colonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993; Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans
and British India, New Delhi: Vistaar, 1997; and Thomas R. Trautmann,
ed., The Madras School of Orientalism: Producing Knowledge in Colonial
South India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009.
3. Homi K. Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial
Discourse’, The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994, pp. 85–92.
4. Gyan Prakash, ‘Staging Science’, Another Reason: Science and the
Imagination of Modern India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000,
p. 26.
5. Some of these references, consulted at the Institute itself, were referred
to in my paper. See, B. Basak, ‘Collecting Objects: Situating the Indian
Collection (1884–1945) in Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford’, Studies in History,
vol. 27, no. 1, 2011, pp. 85–109.
6. There are many works on the history of archaeology dealing with these
issues. I refer particularly to three of these: A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Men
among the Mammoths: Victorian Science and the Discovery of Human
Prehistory, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993;
C. Cohen, ‘Charles Lyell and the evidence of the Antiquity of Man’,
Geological Society, London, Special Publications, vol. 143, 1998, pp. 83–93;
A. O’Connor, Finding time for the Old Stone Age: A History of Palaeolithic
Archaeology and Quaternary Geology in Britain, 1860–1960, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007.
7. Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution, Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1996.
8. Efram Shera-Shriar, ‘Introduction: From the Beginning’, Historicizing
Humans: Deep time, Evolution and the Race in Nineteenth Century,
Pittsburg: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018, pp. 1–13.
9. B.G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought, 2nd edn., New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2008.
 Basak: Asiatic Society and its Project 579
10. In his enlightening work on the gentlemanly pursuit of science in
seventeenth-century England, Shapin has shown how gentlemen were
looked upon as trustworthy sources for truth about mankind and the
natural order. Assessments of credibility were calibrated to the social ranks
of the informant. See, Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility
and Science in Seventeenth Century England, Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1994.
11. See O’Connor, Finding Time for the Old Stone Age, for a detailed discussion
on this.
12. A3, ASL Council minutes document of the 1 June meeting, kept in the
record room of the RAI archive.
13. A12, Minutes of the ordinary meetings, 14 February 1871–11, July 1882
and 24 April 1883–23 February 1897.
14. Crooke manuscripts housed in the RAI.
15. John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times: As illustrated by Ancient Remains and the
Manners and Customs of Modern Savages, London: Williams and Norgate,
1913.
16. Shera-Shriar, ‘Introduction’.
17. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, p. 336.
18. Edward B. Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the
Development of Civilization, Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1878.
19. Ibid., p. 372.
20. Ibid., p. 379.
21. Kejariwal, Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India’s Past;
R. Inden, ‘Orientalist Construction of India’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 20,
no. 3, 1986, pp. 401–46. Also see, Gyan Prakash, ‘Writing Post-Orientalist
Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography’,
Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 32, no. 2, 1990, pp. 383–408.
22. Prakash, ‘Staging Science’, p. 29.
23. Peter Pels, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Indian Aborigenes: Orientalism,
Anglicism and the Emergence of Ethnology in India, 1833–69’, in Colonial
Subjects: Essays on the Practical History of Anthropology, ed. Peter Pels and
O. Salemik, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999, pp. 82–116.
24. There are several studies of colonial ethnology. I mention two for their
reflexive analysis of the colonial ‘gaze’: C. Bates, ‘Race, Caste and Tribe in
Central India: The Early Origins of Indian Anthropometry’, in The Concept
of Race in South Asia, ed. P. Robb, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995,
pp. 219–59; and M. Brown, ‘Ethnology and Colonial Administration in
Nineteenth-Century British India: The Question of Native Crime and
Criminality’, The British Journal for the History of Science, vol. 36, no. 2,
2003, pp. 201–19.
580 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
25. B. Hodgson, ‘A Brief Note on Indian Ethnology’, JASB, 1849, pp. 238–46.
26. G. Campbell, ‘Ethnology of India’, JASB, vol. 35, pt. 2, 1866, pp. 1–152.
27. Letter from Dr Ross, PASB, 1866, pp. 242–3.
28. J.B. Davis’s paper on the Ethnology of India, PASB, 1867, pp. 121–6.
29. Bhabha uses ‘mimicry’ to discuss the ambivalent relationship between the
colonizer and the colonized in his ‘Of Mimicry and Man’.
30. B. Basak, ‘Valentine Ball and the Beginnings of Prehistory in India,’ in
Archaeology in India: Individuals, Ideas and Institutions, ed. Gautam
Sengupta and Kaushik Gangopadhyay, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal
in association with Centre for Archaeological Studies and Training
(Kolkata), 2009, pp. 45–59.
31. Valentine Ball, Tribal and Peasant Life in Nineteenth Century India (a reprint
of Jungle Life in India), New Delhi: Usha, 1985.
32. J. Wood-Mason, ‘Notice of a Neolithic Celt from Jashpur in the Chota
Nagpur District’, JASB, vol. XVIII, no. II, 1888, p. 254; and J. Wood-Mason,
‘Notes on some Objects from a Neolithic Settlement recently discovered
by Mr W.H.P. Driver at Ranchi in the Chota-Nagpore District’, JASB,
vol. XVIII, no. IV, 1888, pp. 387–96.
33. See the entry by W. Broadfoot in Sidney Lee, ed., Dictionary of National
Biography, vol. 45, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1896; see https://
en.wikisource.org/wiki/Phayre,_Arthur_Purves_(DNB00), accessed on
7 May 2019.
34. See the entry by Thomas George Bonney in Sidney Lee, ed., Dictionary of
National Biography, 1912 supplement, vol. 1, London: Smith, Elder, & Co.,
1912; see https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Blanford,_Henry_
Francis_(DNB01)&oldid=7342187, accessed on 7 May 2019.
35. G.H. Anderson, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Christian Mission, Grand
Rapids, MI: William and Eerdmans, 1999.
36 Valentine Ball, ‘Stone Implements found in Bengal’, PASB, 1865, pp. 127–8.
37. Valentine Ball, ‘Notes on Stone Implements found in Bengal’, PASB, 1867,
p. 143.
38. Valentine Ball, ‘Notes on some Stone Implements found in the District of
Singbhoom by Captain Beeching’, PASB, 1868, p. 177.
39. Valentine Ball, ‘On some Stone Implements of the Burmese type, found in
Pargana Dhalbhum, District of Singhbhum, Chotanagpur Division’, PASB,
1875, p. 118–20.
40. Valentine Ball, ‘Two Stone Implements from Parasnath Hill (district
Hazaribagh)’, PASB, 1878, p. 125.
41. Ball, ‘On some Stone Implements of the Burmese type’, p. 120.
42. Valentine Ball, ‘On Stone implements Found in the Tributary States of
Orissa’, PASB, 1876, pp. 122–3.
 Basak: Asiatic Society and its Project 581
43. Letter from Major-General Sir A.P. Phayre to Blochmann, dated
10 November 1875, was read. See PASB, 1876, p. 3.
44. H.C. Dasgupta, ‘On Two-shouldered Stone Implements from Assam’, JASB,
vol. IX, no. 7, n.s., 1913, pp. 291–3.
45. Valentine Ball, ‘On the Forms and Geographical distribution of Ancient
Stone Implements in India’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy,
2nd series, vol. 1, 1879, pp. 388–414.
46. R.B. Foote, ‘Ancient Stone Implements in India’, PASB, 1888, pp. 192–4;
R.B. Foote, ‘Remarks on Mr Ball’s Note’, PASB, 1888, pp. 194–9.
47. Prakash, ‘Staging Science’, p. 20.
48. Valentine Ball, ‘Stone Monuments in the District of Singhbhum—Chota
Nagpur’, Indian Antiquary, vol. I, 1872, pp. 291–2.
49. E.T. Dalton, ‘Rude Stone Monuments in Chutia Nagpur and other places’,
PASB, pp. 130–2.
50. Ball, Tribal and Peasant Life.
51. Valentine Ball, ‘On the Ancient Copper Miners of Singhbhum’, PASB,
vol. V, 1869, pp. 170–5.
52. P.O. Bodding, ‘Stone Implements in the Santal Parganas’, PASB, 1901,
pp. 17–22; P.O. Bodding, ‘Shoulder-headed and other forms of Stone
Implements in the Santal Parganas’, PASB, 1904, pp. 38–9.
53. Bodding, ‘Stone Implements in the Santal Parganas’, p. 18.
54. Ibid.
55. J. Coggin Brown, ‘Stone Implements from the Têngyüeh District, Yünnan
Province, Western China’, JASB, 1909, pp. 299–303.
56. E.H.C. Walsh, ‘A Note on Stone Implements found in the Darjeeling
District’, PASB, 1904, pp. 20–4.
57. Ibid., p. 22.
58. Prakash, ‘Staging Science’, p. 41
59. Valentine Ball, ‘Notes on the Kheriahs, an Aboriginal Race living in the
Hill tracts of Manbhum’, PASB, 1868, pp. 190–3.
60. J. Wood-Mason, ‘The Prehistoric Antiquities of Ranchi’, JASB, 1888,
pp. 387–96.
61. Ibid., p. 387.
62. Ibid., p. 388.
63. J. Coggin Brown, ‘Grooved Stone Hammers from Assam and the
Distribution of similar forms in Eastern Asia’, JASB, vol. X. no. 4, n.s., 1914,
pp. 107–9.
64. PASB, 1868, p. 251–2.
65. See notes of Lieutenant Sale with comments of Mr Blanford in PASB, 1868,
pp. 90–1.
66. Thomas Simpson, ‘Historicizing Humans in Colonial India’, in Historicizing
582 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Humans: Deep time, Evolution and the Race in Nineteenth Century,
ed. Efram Sera-Shriar, Pittsburg: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018,
pp. 113–37.
67. Sujit Sivasundaram, ‘Introduction: Focus Global Histories of Science’, Isis,
2010, vol. 101, pp. 95–7.
 16

Demographic Trends in
Western Bengal, 1881–1951

Saswata Ghosh and Gorky Chakraborty

Introduction

I
n india, historical demography as a branch of academics
is sufficiently rich. The works of eminent demographers, e.g.
Kingsley Davis,1 Pravin and Leela Visaria,2 and Tim Dyson,3 to
mention a few, are significant. However, a study on historical
demography related to Western Bengal is rather scant and sketchy.
Moreover, it is largely confined to studying the demography of
famine, where the works of Amartya Sen,4 P.R. Greengough,5 and
Arup Maharatna,6 are noteworthy. In this regard, it must be also
mentioned that literature on historical demography in western Bengal
has not been analysed adequately at the district level, and thereby it
has fallen short in establishing the linkages with fertility, mortality,
and migration during 1881–1951. In hindsight, it can of course be
mentioned that both an incomplete registration system as well as lack
of reliable demographic and socio-economic data at the district level
have been the biggest debilitating factors in this direction.7
The present chapter is a modest attempt to establish trends
and patterns of population growth and its characteristics between

We acknowledge the untiring support of Ms Pallavi Mondal, PhD Research

Fellow, IDSK, Kolkata, during the course of writing this chapter.
Table data and graphs have been calculated (from census reports for
successive years) and drawn by authors, unless mentioned otherwise.
584 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

1881 and 1951 in western Bengal in general and their district-level

variations in particular. Trends and patterns of vital statistics such as
population growth, sex-ratio, proportion married, fertility, mortality,
and migration at the aggregative level would be undertaken in this
analysis. Additionally, inter-district variations of these parameters
will be explored to the extent possible. An attempt would also be
made to ascertain the relationship between the aforesaid population
parameters and certain socio-economic characteristics such as
literacy, occupation and workforce participation, religious affiliation,
etc. The study primarily uses census data for the successive decades
from 1881 to 1951. Moreover, information from the Annual Sanitary
Commission’s Reports and Public Health Reports of the colonial
government for successive years, in addition to other secondary
literature including computation of various vital rates made in
these studies, are also analysed. The findings of this study have been
presented in four sections. Section 1 deals with selected trends of
population statistics, while section 2 focuses on trends in fertility
indicators and associated proximate determinants at the aggregative
level and their inter-district variations. In sections 3 and 4, we have
tried to find out trends in mortality indicators, and urbanization and
migration, respectively along with factors responsible for such trends.
Here, it is important to mention three major limitations of the
present study. Although western Bengal has undergone territorial
reconfiguration during the colonial and early postcolonial periods,
the present chapter considers only the core areas, which continued to
be a part of western Bengal in the post-Partition (1947) period. Thus,
small territorial changes have not been accounted for in the present
study. Second, Dyson8 argued that the two major problems with
using Indian census data, particularly, census age distributions,
which are gross age distortions and information on infant and child
mortality, are unreliable. As noted by Arjun Adlakha and Dudley
Kirk,9 the Indian censuses generally under-record children up to
five years of age, and over-report those at ages five to nine. In our
calculations, it was assumed that the levels of under- and over-count
of age-specific groups were similar in successive censuses, and we did
not apply any indirect method to adjust the census age distributions.
Finally, in the initial periods, census data for some districts were not
available. For example, the total population for Calcutta and Coach
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 585

Behar were not available during 1881 and 1891. So, our analyses and
interpretation could be, at best, indicative but not conclusive.

Trends in Selected Population Statistics and

their Inter-District Variations

Decadal Population Growth Rate

Decadal population growth rate, sex ratio, percentage of rural
population, and population density at the aggregative level of western
Bengal is represented in Table 16.1, while inter-district variations
of these indicators are discussed in Tables 16.2–16.5 and Figures
16.1–16.5.
At the aggregate level, although population growth rate was
low and fluctuating for western Bengal from 1881 to 1911, at the
district level, substantial variations are observed. Hardly any trend
of population growth at the district level can be established up
to 1901, which possibly implies the problems associated with the
collection of census data during the initial days of census operations.
Between 1901 and 1911, southern districts such as Howrah, Calcutta,
and 24 Parganas exhibited significantly higher population growth
rate compared to the aggregative level. A similar pattern has been
observed for some of the northern districts as well, namely, Malda,
West Dinajpur, and Jalpaiguri. Since population growth rate is a
function of fertility, mortality, and migration, it seems that in-
migration played an important role in population growth in the
districts of Howrah, Calcutta, and 24 Parganas, because these areas
were prime industrial centres in colonial Bengal. On the contrary,
reasons of high population growth rate in the districts of northern
western Bengal could be high fertility, because of dominant presence
of minority communities accompanied with a high rate of illiteracy
in females. We will substantiate these issues in the latter part of the
chapter.
During 1911–21, population growth rate became negative at the
aggregative level and for a number of districts as well. Earlier studies
have shown that around 1918–19, an epidemic of influenza had taken
a heavy toll in western Bengal,10 while environmental and other
ecological factors contributed to relative unhealthiness of western
586 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Table 16.1: Selected Population Statistics of

Western Bengal between 1891 and 1951

Year Population Percentage Population Percentage of Population density

increase sex ratio rural (per square
population kilometres)

1881 14193277 – 996 NA NA

1891 15031890 5.9 975 89.35 446
1901 15834010 5.3 975 NA 472
1911 16792800 6.1 925 87.49 510
1921 16400837 –2.3 905 86.36 541
1931 17663427 7.7 889 85.36 563
1941 21837295 23.6 852 80.58 703
1951 24810308 13.6 859 74.72 799

Note: Total population for West Bengal for the years 1881 and 1891 excludes Calcutta
and Coach Behar because of non-availability of data on these districts. Thus, the
calculated growth rates and other characteristics are affected by the missing data.

fig . 16.1: Inter-district variation of selected population statistics

in western Bengal

Bengal, where malaria was endemic.11 Other studies12 found that the
Bengal province (including eastern Bengal) accounted for as much as
40 per cent of the total malaria infections and related deaths in the
country. According to our assessment, although most of the districts
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 587

Table 16.2: Inter-District Variation of Percentage Increase

in Population

Districts 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951

Burdwan – 0.05 9.8 0.4 –6.5 9.8 20 15.9

Birbhum – 0.8 13.6 3.7 –9.4 11.3 10.6 1.8
Bankura – 2.7 4.4 2 -10.4 9 16 2.3
Midnapore – 4.6 6 1.2 –5.5 5 14 5.3
Hooghly – 1.9 1.4 3.9 –0.9 3.2 23.6 12.8
Howrah – 20.2 11.4 10.9 5.7 10.2 35.6 8.1
24 Parganas – 11.7 –16.2 15 16.4 9.6 27 25.6
Calcutta – – – 8.4 3.4 10.6 84.9 20.9
Nadia – –1.1 –5.3 0.4 –8.3 1.4 16.4 36.3
Murshidabad – 2 5.7 1.7 –9 12 19.7 4.6
Malda – 14.5 –25.9 15.7 –1.8 5 17.2 11
West Dinajpur – 2.9 192.9 11.6 –3.8 6.8 11.4 23.5
Jalpaiguri – 17.1 –20 21.4 5 6.5 14.4 8.1
Darjeeling – 34.8 11.6 6.6 6.5 13 17.7 18.3
Coach Bihar – – – 4.7 8.5 –0.3 –0.1 4.7

Fig. 16.2: District-wise sex ratio (female population per 1000 male population)—
1881, 1921, and 1951, Western Bengal

have experienced negative population growth rate during the said

period, positive growth rate was noticed in the industrial districts of
Howrah, Calcutta, and 24 Parganas, along with the districts located
at higher altitudes (Darjeeling) and other ecological zones (Jalpaiguri
and Coach Behar).
A steady and significant population growth rate was observed
between 1921 and 1951, which was the highest between 1931
and 1941 in all the districts except Coach Behar. Apart from the
588 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Table 16.3: Inter-District Variation of Population Sex Ratio

(female per 1000 male population)

Districts 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951

Burdwan 1083 1038 1004 997 965 934 893 888

Birbhum 1082 1048 1029 1017 1004 1005 999 974
Bankura 1054 1034 1032 1024 1002 996 978 981
Midnapore 1023 1012 1006 1000 991 975 955 955
Hooghly 1071 1035 986 961 924 882 865 886
Howrah 1008 977 935 892 901 834 788 810
24 Parganas 822 961 902 864 837 853 820 844
Calcutta – 526 – 475 470 468 452 570
Nadia 1054 1050 1015 991 929 939 936 937
Murshidabad 1092 1065 1041 1023 1008 1005 990 973
Malda 1047 1038 1020 1014 1000 998 990 966
West Dinajpur 936 916 902 897 902 900 892 877
Jalpaiguri 904 868 862 841 860 842 843 825
Darjeeling 764 815 873 869 896 879 883 863

fig . 16.3: Inter-district variation of percentage of rural and urban population.

industrial zones and centres of trade and allied activities, such as

Calcutta, Howrah, and 24 Parganas, other districts also experienced
substantial population growth rate possibly due to an increase in
natural growth because of improvement in mortality conditions.13
Population growth rate declined during 1941–51 compared to the
previous decade, possibly due to the impending stress of Partition,
which was accompanied by delayed marriages because of uncertainty
regarding job and future settlement. Additionally, the famine during
 Table 16.4: Inter-District Variation of Percentage of Rural and
Urban Population

Districts 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951

Rural Urban

87.49 86.36 85.36 80.58 74.72 12.51 13.64 14.64 19.42 25.28
Burdwan 93.88 93.35 91.76 88.2 85.22 6.12 6.65 8.24 11.80 14.78
Birbhum 99.02 97.26 97.8 94.24 93.53 0.98 2.74 2.20 5.76 6.47
Bankura 94.98 94.03 93.95 92.87 92.83 5.02 5.97 6.05 7.13 7.17
Midnapore 96.39 96.37 95.05 94.11 92.47 3.61 3.63 4.95 5.89 7.53
Hooghly 86.1 83.4 81.74 82.46 77.81 13.90 16.60 18.26 17.54 22.19
Howrah 78.65 78.09 76.77 70.97 67.59 21.35 21.91 23.23 29.03 32.41
24 Parganas 77.47 76.03 80.15 75.59 70.36 22.53 23.97 19.85 24.41 29.64
Calcutta – – – – – 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Nadia 94.07 93.49 93.15 91.85 81.82 5.93 6.51 6.85 8.15 18.18
Murshidabad 93.92 93.04 93.3 92.66 92.14 6.08 6.96 6.70 7.34 7.86
Malda 95.87 96.97 96.63 95.92 96.25 4.13 3.03 3.37 4.08 3.75
West Dinajpur 99.06 98.94 98.91 97.84 94.18 0.94 1.06 1.09 2.16 5.82
Jalpaiguri 98.7 98.42 98.07 97.45 92.77 1.30 1.58 1.93 2.55 7.23
Darjeeling 90.75 89.85 86.4 84.55 78.78 9.25 10.15 13.60 15.45 21.22
590 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Fig . 16.4: District-wise variation of population density, 1881–1951

urban population

1943–4 in the Bengal province was also responsible for the declining
growth rate during the period. However, population growth rate was
significantly higher in some of the districts situated in the bordering
areas of eastern Bengal such as Nadia and West Dinajpur, implying
a huge population inflow from eastern Bengal to these areas during
the Partition of Bengal.

Population Sex Ratio

The overall sex ratio of a population is the combined effects of sex
ratio at birth and sex differentials in mortality (when the technology
of sex-selective abortion is unavailable), under-enumeration of
females in censuses, and migration pattern. A balanced sex ratio is
considered to be 952 females per 1000 males, because biologically,
males are more likely to be born as compared to females, though
survival probability of females is more as compared to males.
Although earlier studies argued that masculine sex ratio as observed
in western Bengal, particularly from 1900, may be explained by both
female infanticide and under-count of female births,14 these studies
have ignored the factor that a higher maternal mortality in the
reproductive age group can also result in masculine sex ratio. Later
researches carried out at the all-India level by Griffiths and others15
have argued that excess female mortality at young and reproductive
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 591

Table 16.5: Inter-District Variation of Population Density,

1881–1951

Districts 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951

Burdwan 514 514 565 567 530 582 699 810

Birbhum 456 458 520 539 489 544 601 612
Bankura 394 404 422 430 385 420 487 498
Midnapore 479 501 531 537 508 533 607 639
Hooghly 838 856 868 902 894 922 1140 1286
Howrah 1134 1363 1519 1680 1781 1962 2661 2877
24 Parganas 321 353 382 439 468 512 651 817
Calcutta 20065 22954 28494 30879 31921 35299 65250 78858
Nadia 536 512 512 514 472 478 557 759
Murshidabad 592 604 638 649 591 661 792 828
Malda 338 393 434 502 493 518 607 674
West Dinajpur 294 306 329 368 354 378 421 520
Jalpaiguri 133 183 229 279 292 311 356 385
Darjeeling 129 186 208 221 236 266 314 371

Fig . 16.5: District-wise population density, 1881–1951, except Calcutta

ages is the most important factor contributing to a masculine sex

ratio. The study further demonstrated that the persistent prevalence
of even small differences in childhood mortality against females can
result in masculine population sex ratio for a long period.16 We would
be able to highlight this issue while discussing the age-sex structure
of western Bengal.
592 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

District-level variations in the population sex ratio can also be

observed. Industrial centres and zone of economic activity, such as
Calcutta, Howrah, 24 Parganas, and Hooghly, continued to show
progressive masculine sex ratio as compared to the other districts
in the southern parts of western Bengal. This is largely explained by
a higher proportion of male migration to these areas and, could be
to some extent, by under-enumeration of females, as this was pan-
Indian phenomenon.17 Progressive masculinity in sex ratio in the
districts of West Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri, and Darjeeling could plausibly
be attributed to excess female mortality and under-enumeration of
females, as these regions were comparatively inaccessible. According
to P.N. Maribhat,18 West Bengal seemed to have followed the classical
pattern of progressive masculine sex ratios. Better sex ratio in 1951
census in the industrial zones of western Bengal plausibly indicates
family migration to these areas in the post-Partition period.

Urban Population Growth

Western Bengal did not observe considerable growth of urban
population between 1881 and 1951. Proportion of urban population
was just more than 10 per cent in 1881, which increased to more
than 25 per cent during the span of seventy odd years. However,
substantial variations across the districts can be observed during
the period under study. Even during 1881, the proportion of urban
population was nearly 20 per cent in the industrial hub of Howrah
and 24 Parganas. In addition to Hooghly, the proportion of urban
population steadily increased in these districts over the period.
However, increase in the urban population has remained nearly
constant and at a very low level in the districts of Birbhum, Bankura,
and Midnapore in the southern part and Murshidabad, Malda, West
Dinajpur, and Jaipaiguri in the northern part.

Population Density
At the aggregative level, population density in western Bengal
increased substantially from 446 persons per square miles during
1881, to 799 persons per square miles during 1951, i.e. an increase of
79 per cent during seventy years. It may be noted that the population
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 593

density declined a bit during 1911–21 when western Bengal had

observed a negative population growth. It has been suggested in
Table 16.5 (or Figure 16.4) that western Bengal had two areas of high
population density—the urban hub comprising Calcutta, Howrah,
Hooghly, and 24 Parganas, and the rice-producing agricultural region
of the lower Gangetic basin comprising Murshidabad, Nadia, and
Burdwan. Relatively higher density in the urban hub compared to
agricultural region could be due to the high in-migration to these
areas in search of livelihood on account of the higher availability
of different vocations, improved mortality conditions due to better
access to health services, and finally due to Partition.19 Population
density was found to be the lowest in the high altitude areas of
Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri.

Age-Sex Structure
The age-sex structure (or age-sex pyramid) represents the proportion
of population in each group by sex. This provides with a vivid
representation of levels of fertility, mortality, and migration prevalent
in a particular population.20 Changes in the trends in age-sex
structure points out the direction of change in vital indicators over
a period. For example, a declining death rate results in more people
surviving from birth to older ages and simultaneously indicating that
the younger cohorts are relatively larger in size.21 On the contrary,
declining birth rate results in ‘ageing’ of the population as younger
cohorts progressively become smaller in size.
Analysing the trend in age-sex composition of western Bengal,
we can find that the proportion of girls was usually higher compared
to boys in the childhood period throughout 1881–1951 (Figure
16.6), while the proportion of population up to ten years of age to
the total population declined marginally during the same period.
These plausibly indicate that gender differentials in mortality during
childhood was not so prominent in western Bengal as mentioned in
some of the earlier studies,22 and that demographic transition has
started in western Bengal even before independence (Figure 16.6).
Although the proportions of females were lesser than that of males
in the age group of 20–40 years, indicating death of considerable
number of females in the reproductive age mainly due to obstetric
594 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Fig . 16.6: Age-sex pyramids of western Bengal, 1901–51

complications, females outnumbered males in the age group of 10–20

years from 1931 onwards, indicating better probability of survival of
girls, possibly because of higher access to healthcare services after
the period of influenza epidemic. Consequently, young as well as old
age dependency ratios declined up to the 1920s, and then started
increasing (Figure 16.7).
An inter-district variation of the age-sex structure has been
represented in Figure 16.8. Although the inter-district variation
remained small, the proportion of working population was more in
some industrial districts such as Howrah and Hooghly.
The proportion of women in the reproductive age group,
proportion of total population below fifteen years, and that below
five years of age has been shown in Table 16.6 to provide an idea
of population age structure. It may be noted that the percentage
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 595

Fig . 16.7: Dependency ratio of western Bengal, 1901–51

Table 16.6: Percentage of Women in the Reproductive

Age Group and Children in Western Bengal

Year
Female Percent of female Percent of total Percent of total
population population aged population aged population aged
15–40 below 15 below 5

1901 15845064 41.3 37.23 12.77

1911 16718413 42.3 36.93 12.71
1921 16330847 44.2 35.85 11.10
1931 17579136 44.5 36.80 13.94
1941 21743576 43.3 36.20 12.64
1951 24438336 41.1 37.86 14.61

of women between fifteen and forty years of age in West Bengal

increased by two percentage-points following the influenza epidemic
during 1918–19. According to Kamal,23 it either indicates that female
mortality improved faster than males during the 1920s, ‘or that the
male population bore the brunt of this epidemic’.24 The table also
suggests that the proportion of young population declined slowly
up to 1941, then increased somewhat in the aftermath of Partition,
indicating high proportion of marriages and childbearing once the
trauma of Partition had subsided after settlement of families.

Trends in Fertility, Inter-District Variations

and Determinants
Proportion married, use of contraceptives, post-partum infecund-
ability, and abortion are known to have significant bearings on
levels and trends of fertility in any population, and are thus referred
596 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Fig. 16.8: Inter-district variation of age-sex composition, 1901–51

 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 597

to as ‘proximate’ determinants of fertility.25 Other socio-economic

factors, such as literacy rate, particularly that of females, household
economic status (level of poverty per se), infant and under-five
mortality rates, religious and caste affiliation, etc., can be termed as
‘distal’ determinants of fertility.26 Although information on proximate
determinants is limited for the study period, data pertaining to some
of the distal determinants are available during the same period. We
will discuss the trends of different fertility indicators with the help of
the proximate as well as distal determinants of fertility. With limited
data, we will first focus on change in proportion married between
1901 and 1941, which could have had profound implication on the
changing scenario with reference to fertility in western Bengal. The
proportion of unmarried, married, and widowed during the same
period has been depicted in Table 16.7. From the table, it may be
ascertained that the custom of childhood marriage among both boys
and girls diminished substantially between 1901 and 1941. Among
boys, the proportion married in the age group of 5–10 years declined
from 5.7 per cent to 0.8 per cent during 1901–41, while among girls,
the reduction was more than ten percentage points (15.7 per cent
to 4.9 per cent) during the same period. It may be noted that such
a decline would not have much bearing on fertility, since girls are
incapable of childbearing before menarche. It is also important to
note that a considerable reduction of proportion married among girls

Table 16.7: Percentage of Married Individuals by Age Group

in Western Bengal

Age 1901 1911 1941

Male Female Male Female Male Female

0–5 1.0 2.2 0.1 0.5 0.2 0.4

5–10 5.7 15.7 1.1 9.9 0.8 4.9
10–15 15.7 57.2 5.9 59.9 3.1 37.1
15–20 38.0 86.8 27.5 89.6 18.6 80.6
20–30 76.3 85.4 73.4 86.0 67.3 89.9
30–40 90.2 64.9 91.5 68.8 91.8 84.9
40–50 88.7 36.1 89.9 42.8 94.0 75.5
50–60 83.6 23.3 84.9 21.6 93.3 64.1
60 and above 73.9 33.4 75.3 9.3 91.4 50.7
598 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

of 10–15 years of age from about 60 per cent to nearly 37 per cent
between 1911 and 1941 could have an important bearing on reduced
birth rate during this period. Some reduction of proportion married
was also observed among girls of 15–20 years of age during 1911–41
(89.6 per cent to 80.6 per cent). However, one can argue that the age
of marriage among girls was historically low in western Bengal.
Crude Birth Rate (CBR) from 1911 indicates that fertility was
high and fluctuating during the beginning of twentieth century
(Table 16.8). CBR dropped by 8 per cent between 1911 and 1921,
when overall population growth was negative, largely due to the
influenza epidemic during 1918–19 mentioned earlier. This era was
also marked by the malaria epidemic.27 It remained almost stable for
the next two decades and again declined to 36 per 1,000 population
(by 14 per cent) between 1941 and 1951, plausibly because of
uncertainty regarding settlement due to the impending Partition.
Trends in Child-Woman Ratio (CWR) is an important indicator to
understand the level of fertility in a population. It has been defined
as a ratio between the number of children below five years of age to
the total female population of the reproductive age group of 15–40
years, multiplied by 1,000. Western Bengal as a whole has recorded
a higher CWR from 1931 in relation to 1921, reflecting the mortality
gains, particularly among women in the reproductive group, of the
1920s. A downward trend in the CBR and CWR over time reflected
a changing age structure because of the improvement in mortality
situation and also due to a decline in proportion married in the
Table 16.8: Age-specific Fertility Indicator: Decadal Crude
Birth Rate (CBR) and Child-Woman Ratio (CWR)
in Western Bengal, 1901–51
Year CBR Percentage Children Women in the CWR
change below 5 years age group of
of age 15–39 years

1901 – – 4046659 6541958 619

1911 47 – 4257603 7097094 600
1921 43 –8 3633262 7255178 501
1931 42 –2 4913663 7858964 625
1941 42 0 5506642 9465083 582
1951 36 –14 7194146 10291011 699
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 599

early age of childbearing. The CWR figure for the 1951 census does
not match with the trend in CBR, and thus seems inflated due to
migratory movement during Partition.
Spatial variations in fertility can be observed during the first
half of the twentieth century, as indicated by the variations in CWR
(Table 16.9, Figure 16.9). Calcutta and its surrounding districts had
low fertility rates throughout the study period, the least being in
Calcutta. Fertility rates were relatively higher in other districts of
southern Bengal, which were located at a distance from Calcutta. It

Table 16.9: Inter-district Variation of CWR

Districts 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951

Burdwan 583 532 401 572 527 756

Birbhum 679 580 426 682 598 631
Bankura 696 604 487 635 597 822
Midnapore 562 555 464 579 561 626
Hooghly 517 555 456 540 544 711
Howrah 605 585 513 587 594 632
24 Parganas 672 616 522 640 609 730
Calcutta 353 347 340 409 371 569
Nadia 712 686 539 658 693 664
Murshidabad 746 731 585 775 740 808
Maldah 752 836 693 798 763 863
W Dinajpur 702 734 634 736 635 773
Jalpaiguri 649 664 607 695 584 724
Darjeeling 520 623 562 703 661 694
Coach Bihar 665 675 646 714 607 707

Fig . 16.9: Inter-district variation of CWR

600 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

is also found to be higher in the districts of northern Bengal, except

Darjeeling.
Trends in literacy rate by gender are represented in Table 16.10
and Figure 16.10, while Table 16.11 and Figure 16.11 depict their
inter-district variations. A considerable body of literature have
demonstrated that literacy rate, particularly that of females, has an
important bearing in bringing down birth rate in the developing
countries, by increasing use of contraception, among other things.28
Literacy rate in western Bengal had increased from 18.2 per cent

Table 16.10: Literacy Rate by Gender in

Western Bengal, 1901–51

Year Literacy rate Female literacy rate Male literacy rate

1901 11.7 1.0 18.2

1911 14.7 2.1 22.1
1921 16.4 3.0 23.3
1931 17.7 4.6 22.4
1941 28.1 11.4 34.5
1951 34.2 23.2 56.4

Fig . 16.10: Literacy rate by gender in western Bengal, 1901–51

 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 601

16.11: District-wise Percentage of Female and

Table
Male Literacy Rates, 1901–51, Western Bengal

1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951

Burdwan
Female 1.1 1.7 2.2 3.5 9.5 14.6
Male 21 23.9 22.4 24.2 33.4 39.7
Birbhum
Female 0.6 0.8 1.3 1.5 6.8 10.3
Male 20.9 22.4 24.2 18.1 28.9 37.8
Bankura
Female 0.7 0.9 1.3 1.5 5.4 9.8
Male 25.4 24.4 26.8 22 32.8 38.8
Midnapore
Female 1 0.9 1.4 4 7.2 12.8
Male 26.8 23.6 24.6 36.5 39.9 48.1
Hooghly
Female 1.9 2.7 3.7 1.4 15.8 19
Male 25 25.7 27.5 29.1 42.1 47.6
Howrah
Female 1.6 3.2 4.1 10.9 24.4 25.3
Male 27.3 31.7 31.2 34.1 47.1 48.1
24 Parganas
Female 1.9 2.5 3 4.1 11 20.9
Male 26.7 27.7 27.9 24.2 38.3 52.5
Calcutta
Female 25.8 38.8 46.8 69.4 78.3
Male 43.3 55.1 48.9 63.8 67.9
Nadia
Female 1 1.6 2.3 3.8 6 18.3
Male 11.9 11.3 11.9 10.6 17.2 40.8
Murshidabad
Female 0.8 1.2 2.1 2.2 5.4 4.7
Male 15 15.2 16.3 13.2 21.4 28.8
Malda
Female 0.4 0.4 0.8 0.8 2.9 5.7
Male 9.3 11.5 11 7.4 14.6 23

Table 16.11 (Contd.)

602 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Tabke 16.11 (contd.)

1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951

West Dinajpur
Female 0.4 0.4 0.6 1 3.9 10.7
Male 10.7 11.7 15.1 12 16.5 31.1
Jalpaiguri
Female 0.5 0.6 0.9 1.5 5.8 10.2
Male 8.3 12 11.9 9.8 17.4 28.5
Darjeeling
Female 1.7 2.7 3.1 4 7.2 14.2
Male 15.7 21.9 23.8 24.6 30 42.3

to 56.4 per cent among males between 1901 and 1941, and from 1
per cent to 23.2 per cent among females during the same period.
Such a spectacular increase in literacy rate among the females of
Calcutta could have contributed to a decline in fertility. Literacy rate,
particularly that in case of females, was also found to be relatively
higher in the districts of southern Bengal, where fertility rate was
found to be lower than that of the other districts of western Bengal.
Studies conducted during 1947–9 in western Bengal observed that
more than one-third of married women of childbearing age belonging
to socio-economically advantaged sections in Calcutta had used some
contraceptive method,29 indicating the high correlation between
female literacy and usage of contraceptives. The study also pointed
that the practice of family limitation among older women of such
background was not infrequent at that time.30 This indicates that the
willingness to limit childbearing appears to have taken root among
the urbane and advantaged socio-economic groups and got diffused
among the masses through social imitation.31
The importance of socio-demographic, economic, and cultural
factors, according to religious affiliation, in determining fertility,
has been demonstrated by several studies, which were conducted
during last three decades.32 S. Ghosh and A. Chattopadhyay33 have
argued that the behaviour of a religious group depends heavily on
socio-cultural assimilation across space. Religious group per se does
not determine status; rather, it is the geopolitical space (development
policy and program implementation) that plays a more significant
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 603

Fig . 16.11: District-wise percentage of female and male literacy rates,

1901–51, West Bengal
604 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

role in shaping the position of a particular group. Yet, the effect of

religion in terms of its practices and preaching cannot be ignored
with regard to fertility behaviour.34 Although we do not have sufficient
data to substantiate these issues, Table 16.12 and Figure 16.12 depict
that in the Bengal province (including eastern Bengal as well), at the
aggregative level, the proportion of literacy rate was substantially
higher among the Hindus as compared to the Muslims, and as
Table 16.12: Proportion of Major Religious Groups,
Literacy Rates and Occupation in Agricultural Activities
in Bengal, 1901–51

Year Hindu Muslim

Proportion Literacy Proportion Proportion Literacy Proportion

rate engaged in rate engaged in
agriculture agriculture

1901 70.9  6.6 72.0 26.0 3.5 81.0

1911 69.6 11.8 64.7 26.3 4.1 86.0
1921 68.5 14.0 67.5 26.1 4.8 70.4
1931 69.9 13.7 NA 26.7 5.7 NA
1941 67.1 17.4 NA 26.2 8.9 NA

Source: Nahid Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal
during the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Study’, unpublished PhD
diss., London School of Economics and Political Science, 2009; UMI number:
U615290.

Figure 16.12: Proportion of major religious groups, literacy rates and occupation in
agricultural activities in western Bengal, 1901–51
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 605

a consequence, the proportion engaged in agricultural activities

among the Muslims was found to be significantly higher than the
Hindus. This could be one of the reasons for higher fertility among
Muslims, as a number of studies documented the positive correlation
between agriculture as an occupation and large family size, since, in
agrarian societies, children are considered to be assets contributing
in enhancing family income by engaging in agricultural work from
an early age.35 Presumably, a similar situation would have persisted
in western Bengal as well.
Davis, in his phenomenal work on population of India and
Pakistan,36 found that between 1891 and 1941, there has been a
consistently higher CWR for Muslims as compared to Hindus. He
argued that the higher observed fertility rate among Indian Muslims
could be attributable to both religious—conversion from Hinduism
to Islam—as well as to socio-economic factors. David Mandelbaum37
maintained that more Muslims than Hindus tended to be in low
socio-economic status and educational levels, at which people of all
faiths tend to have higher fertility. In the present study, we found that
CWR are reasonably higher in the districts of Murshidabad, Malda,
Nadia, and West Dinajpur, compared to other districts throughout
1901 to 1941 partly because of presence of higher number of Muslims
in those districts. P. Sinha38 pointed out that English education in
Bengal was monopolized by the Hindu upper class, while education
was not a priority among either the ashraf (noble-born) or the atraf
(low-born) Muslims because plausibly the Muslims were either
sceptical or resentful about embracing anything introduced by the
British.39 Moreover, it is interesting to note that in undivided Bengal,
between 1891 and 1921, although Hindu women had a lower age
of marriage vis-à-vis their Muslim counterparts, Hindu women
had lower fertility.40 It is could be due to the fact that Muslims were
economically more backward compared to the Hindus in the whole
of undivided Bengal; and poverty is known to push up the age of
marriage in some circumstances.41
Trends in Economic Activities and
Workforce Participation
It is needless to mention that economic activities and workforce
participation are important socio-economic indicators in determining
606 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the demographic outcomes of a population. Although the Indian

census has been collecting data on economic activity of an individual
and later of households, concepts and definitions have undergone
enormous changes over the years, making comparability difficult.
During 1872 and 1881, only one question was asked relating to
‘occupation’ of individuals, and the persons were classified according
to various occupations; but in 1891, the concept of ‘means of
subsistence’ was introduced and recorded for every individual.
However, in both these cases, the data was collected in sketchy form
and thus remained unsuitable for substantive analysis. Information
on principal and subsidiary occupation or means of subsistence of
actual workers was recorded from 1901 to 1921, while the term ‘actual
worker’ was replaced by ‘earner’ in the 1931 census. In addition to
principal and subsidiary occupation, the population was categorized
as earners, working dependents, and non-working dependents. In
the 1941 census, ‘means of livelihood, in order of importance’ was
recorded in respect of each worker. A trial was also made to collect
information regarding seasonality of work and employers’ details
in this census. For the ‘dependent’ the ‘dependency status (wholly/
partly)’ was also collected in this census. It may be noted that due to
the impending war, the tabulation of 1941 census was greatly curtailed
and retained only 2 per cent of the randomly selected samples. Two
interrelated economic characteristics of an individual—economic
status and means of livelihood—were ascertained in 1951 census.
Thus, comparing economic activity or occupational status
over the census period seems to be a difficult issue. With such
complexities, in Table 16.13, we have tried to summarize different
economic activities by gender. From the table, it may be ascertained
that although western Bengal remained predominantly as an agrarian
society throughout the first half of twentieth century, activities
related to mining, transport, and trade in services started gaining
importance as well. Among males, the workforce participation rate
in agriculture and allied activities was 63.7 per cent in 1911, which
declined to 42.6 percent in 1951. On the other hand, the share of
male workforce increased in trade, commerce, and services from
15.3 per cent to 26.3 per cent during the same period. At the same
time, female workforce participation in western Bengal remained
negligible in every sector, except in the services sector during 1911.
 Table 16.13: Sex-wise Percentage of Workforce in the Total Workforce

Occupation 1911 1921 1931 1941** 1951

Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female

Agriculture and 63.7 5.7 64.4 7.5 39.3 10.7 59.7 4.6 42.6 7.4
   allied activities
Manufacturing NA NA 7.5 2.5 14.0  5.2 17.6 2.0 16.3 3.9
  activities
Other activities* 15.3 15.3 14.6 3.5 25.3   5.5 13.5 2.6 26.3 3.5
   and miscellaneous

* Including mining, transport and trade in services.

** In the 1941 Census, separate data is not available between agricultural activities and mineral extraction, and between industry and
commerce
608 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

As mentioned earlier, since the data on economic activities has its

own limitation, it is very hard to find out the reasons for such low
rate of female workforce participation among women.

Trends in Mortality, Inter-District Variations

and Determinants
Kamal42 has noted that ‘the last two decades of the nineteenth century
were exceptionally unhealthy for Bengal’.43 Besides a series of famines
during the second half of nineteenth century, the famine of 1896–7
was the most devastating of its kind in eastern India as a whole.44 It
is further argued that not only crop failure or crop deficiency, but
also failure of the supply chain in the grain market made food
inaccessible to a large section of population. As a consequence, average
life expectancy in the Bengal province decreased from 24.5 years
to 22.8 years, i.e. by 1.7 years, between 1881 and 1891, while in
other Indian provinces, there was an increase in life expectancy by
2–5 years.45
Trends in decadal crude death rate (CDR) and infant mortality
rate (IMR) from 1901–10 to 1941–50 as calculated by Kamal46 by
employing indirect estimation of registration and census data has
been represented in Table 16.14 and Figure 16.13. As observed in
the last two decades of nineteenth century, mortality as indicated by
decadal CDR was high and it fluctuated during the first two decades
of the twentieth century. Some improvement of mortality conditions
was noticed only after the 1920s, when decadal CDR declined by
15–20 per cent. IMR was also found to be very high in western
Bengal during the same period. It increased by 44 per cent during
1911–21 and then declined gradually. It was noted by Davis47 and
later by David Arnold48 that death rate was high in western Bengal,
up to the 1940s, because malaria remained endemic to the region. We
will discuss the malarial mortality in the following sections. Apart
from malaria, the influenza epidemic during 1918–19 and a series
of crop failures that resulted in famine in the western part of Bengal,
Bankura in particular, could have had a significant bearing on high
death rate before the 1920s. Table 16.14 describes the proportion
of excess deaths compared to 1917 and excess death rate per 1,000
population as calculated by Kamal.49 It was observed that on an
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 609

Table 16.14: Decadal CDR and IMR between 1901 and 1951

Year CDR Percentage change IMR Percentage change

1901–10 48 213
1911–20 46  –4% 307 44%
1921–30 37 –19% 271 –12%
1931–40 31 –16% 238 –12%
1941–50 27 –13% 220  –8%

Source: Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.

Fig. 16.13: Decadal CDR and IMR between 1901 and 1951

Table 16.15: Registered Excess Deaths during 1918–19

Influenza Epidemic in Western Bengal

Year
Registered Excess deaths Excess deaths Excess death
deaths by taking 1917 as percentage of rate per 100
as base year deaths in 1917 population

1917 453905
1918 693221 239316 52.72 14.83
1919 670728 216823 47.76 13.44

Source: Government of India, 1919, as calculated in Kamal, ‘The Population

Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
610 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

average more than 13–14 persons per 1,000 died during this period
largely due to influenza.
The changing pattern of mortality and morbidity over the first
four decades of the twentieth century in western Bengal has been
depicted in Table 16.16. The ‘Others’ category mentioned in the table
includes small pox, dysentery and diarrhoea, plague, injuries, etc. It
may be noted that diseases like cholera were declining throughout
the study period, particularly from 1921, as several interventions
were introduced following the 1919 Act of Self-government. Kabita
Ray50 argued that free mass inoculation and disinfecting water sources
helped in lowering mortality from cholera to a considerable extent.
Kamal51 found that cholera mortality was higher in Hooghly and
Howrah in southern Bengal and in Jalpaiguri in northern Bengal.
Arnold52 has also noted that mortality due to cholera declined to
large extent in the Bengal province.
In the table, we have also observed a decline in mortality due to
‘fever’ to a considerable extent. According to Kamal53 almost 70–80
per cent of the registered deaths occurred due to fever during the
beginning of the last century. It is believed that a majority of such
deaths due to fever was attributable to malaria, because other killer
diseases, particularly small pox, declined significantly during that
period. Multiplicity of different processes and factors, for example,

Table 16.16: Registered Cause-specific death rate in

Western Bengal, 1901–1941

Year Cholera Fever Respiratory diseases Others Total

1901 2.23 24.25 NA 8.65 35.03

1911 1.80 22.43 0.47 4.70 29.40
1921 1.26 25.03 1.96 7.63 35.41
1931 0.74 15.70 2.37 4.34 23.15
1941 0.56 13.53 3.00 1.75 18.82

Source: All rates were calculated for western Bengal using registration data available
in the ‘Annual Sanitary Commissioners’ reports for undivided Bengal by
Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal.
Notes: All figures refer to three-year averages and thus 1901 relates to 1900–2, with
the exception of 1941, which relates to 1938–40. The rates refer to deaths
per thousand of the population. The ‘Total’ column is the sum of the four
other columns—cholera, fever, respiratory diseases, and others.
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 611

stagnation of rivers including the Bhagirathi, developmental work

such as construction of railway tracks by the colonial government,
increase in cultivation and production of water-intensive cash
crops such as sugarcane and cotton, were found to be responsible
for endemicity of malaria in western Bengal.54 In western Bengal,
malaria was traditionally hyper-endemic in the districts of Nadia,
Burdwan, Hooghly, and 24 Parganas, but changed course over time
towards West Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, and Birbhum. Sandeep
Sinha55 argued that railway track was built first in the western
province and then in the central, thus explaining the direction of
the endemicity. It is worth noting that the scenario could have been
more perilous unless better health services were made available
and sanitary interventions were carried out in western Bengal.
David Arnold and Sumit Sarkar56 noted that homoeopathy and
Ayurveda, which were used to treat malaria and cholera, gained a
strong foothold in western Bengal during that period. Significant
improvements in malaria mortality can be noticed after 1930 because
of the increased use of modern drugs, particularly quinine, and anti-
malarial measures undertaken by the British administration as well
as by Bengali intelligentsia.
The same Table (16.16) also depicts that death rate due to
respiratory ailments was on the rise during the period under study.
This category included tuberculosis (commonly known as TB) and
other respiratory infections caused due to environmental pollution,
particularly, air pollution. Kamal57 has argued that Calcutta had
the highest mortality from respiratory diseases in history, part of
which can be explained by a better reporting system. According to
Public Health Report, Bengal (1931), death rate in Calcutta due to
respiratory infections was nearly four times compared to overall
western Bengal. Such a high prevalence of respiratory diseases in
Calcutta can plausibly be attributed to smoke emitted from the jute
mills, textile factories and other industrial activities in and around
Calcutta.58 Ray also found notable gender differentials in respiratory
infections—females of 15–30 years of age were more likely to die from
respiratory infections and tuberculosis as compared to males.59 Such a
phenomenon can be attributed to attack of malaria during pregnancy,
which might have had a fatal outcome and such repeated attacks
made them vulnerable to other diseases as well. Moreover, cooking
612 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

practices may have also contributed to a higher rate of respiratory

ailments in females compared to males.
The discussion on mortality in western Bengal would have
remained incomplete without the mention of the great famine of
Bengal in 1943–4, which had wiped out one-third of the population of
the province.60 Much has already been written by several researchers,
as mentioned in the beginning of the chapter. Apart from an
estimation of excess deaths, the researchers adequately discussed
the causes and consequence of the famine. We are deliberately
not going into the details of it. The researchers, however, did not
concur anything regarding the magnitude of excess deaths due to
the famine. For example, Amartya Sen61 estimated 1.5 million famine
mortality based on the Famine Inquiry Committee report, while
Greenough62 found the figure somewhere between 3.5–3.8 million.
Based on public health reports of undivided Bengal, Dyson and
Maharatna63 arrived at a figure of 2.1 million deaths. However, the
researchers had consensus on the issue that the famine was ‘more
man-made than an act of God’. Further, Maharatna64 found that
except respiratory infections and injuries, deaths due to all other
causes increased substantially, particularly in 1943. Analysing
the district-level mortality during the famine, he found that the
heaviest mortality districts in western Bengal were Murshidabad,
Midnapore, and Howrah, while the lowest mortality districts were
Hooghly, West Dinajpur, and Jalpaiguri.65 However, our analysis on
CDR and causes of death for the year 1945, as depicted in Table 16.17,
suggests that CDR was highest in Dinajpur (combined), followed
by Nadia and Jalpaiguri, while these figures were the lowest in 24
Parganas, followed by Midnapore and Hooghly. ‘Fever’ accompanied
by ‘malaria’ was found to have had the largest contribution in
total deaths in these districts. This possibly reiterates the massive
movement of population across bordering districts due to impending
Partition.
Amartya Sen66 as well as Greenough67 argued that famine resulted
in two waves of deaths: the first was caused by starvation; and second
by the epidemic diseases. Due to acute shortage of food in the rural
areas resulted mass migration in cities and started living in unhygienic
environment, and increased population density in the urban areas
paved the way for spreading epidemics.
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 613

Table 16.17: CDR and Cause-specific Death Rate

during 1945

Districts CDR Cause-specific death rate

Fevers Malaria Cholera Small pox

Burdwan 19.2 11.8 7.1 0.2 1

Birbhum 28.6 23.4 17.5 0.08 0.8
Bankura 20.1 11.7 3.7 0.1 1.6
Midnapore 18.0 10.9 5.1 0.2 0.4
Hooghly 18.9 7.3 3.8 0.4 1.7
Howrah 19.3 4.7 1.9 1.6 2.8
24 Parganas 14.9 7.4 2.3 0.5 1.2
Calcutta 19.9 2.9 0.9 0.9 2.1
Nadia 58.9 22 18.4 0.3 0.3
Murshidabad 29.7 22 17.2 0.1 1.3
Malda 33.1 16.8 11.1 0.09 0.2
Dinajpur 93.1 18.1 13.3 0.06 0.1
Jalpaiguri 40.9 17.5 7.9 0.09 0.1
Darjeeling 29.1 18.7 11.6 0.2 0.5

Source: Calculated from Bengal Public Health Report, 1945.

Trends in Urbanization and Migration

Urban population growth in western Bengal increased unidirectionally
in every decade as revealed by Figure 16.14. Kamal68 noted that
population density in the urban Western Bengal, which comprised
of Calcutta, Hooghly, and Howrah, was more than twenty times the
rest of Western Bengal in 1872, which increased phenomenally to
more than forty times in 1941 (Table 16.18 and Figure 16.14). Such a
dramatic rise could be explained by a decline in mortality, industrial
growth in the urban areas, and also improving quality of census
operations over time.69 The further rise in the proportion of urban
population and population density in the urban areas were largely
attributed to Partition-related influx in large volumes, in which case,
the displaced people mostly settled in urban areas as livelihood
opportunities were obviously better in those places, as compared to
the rural areas.
The net migration rate in the period under study in western
Bengal has been given in Table 16.19 and Figure 16.15. Net migration
614 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Table 16.18: High Density Urban Hubs of Western Bengal

(in square kilometres), 1872–1951

Location 1872 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951

Urban western 9673 8495 9682 10257 10412 14163 23328 28038
  Bengal
Rest of western 436 411 442 464 446 477 559 631
  Bengal

Source: Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.

Note: Urban West Bengal comprises Calcutta, Hooghly, and Howrah

fig . 16.14: High density urban hubs of western Bengal

(in square kilometres), 1872–1951

rate is calculated by subtracting number of emigrants from number

of immigrants, and divided the figure by the total population. In the
table, one can notice that net migration rate nearly doubled between
1891 and 1931 (from nearly 39 per cent to about 75 per cent). This
implies a huge inflow of population to western Bengal from different
parts of country. Industrial growth in western Bengal can be said to
have ‘pulled’ migrants from Bihar, Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh.70 This
has happened particularly during 1920s, when improved mortality
situation in western Bengal resulted into greater supply of labours
(ibid.).71
From Table 16.20, it can be ascertained that from the beginning
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 615

Table 16.19: Net Migration (In-migration—Out-migration)

Rate in Western Bengal, 1891–1951

Census year Total Number of Number of Net migration

. population immigrants emigrants rate

1891 15031890 681659 100057 38.69

1901 15834010 1045312 76969 61.16
1911 16792800 1428075 258545 69.64
1921 16400837 1460054 191200 77.37
1931 17663427 1477905 159246 74.65
1941 21837295 2075304 174875 87.03
1951 24810308 4600672 309364 172.96

fig . 16.15: Net migration (in-migration – out-migration) rate in

western Bengal, 1891–1951

of the twentieth century, the districts of Calcutta, followed by

Howrah, 24 Parganas, and Hooghly were the areas which attracted
the most migrants due to greater availability of livelihood options.
Net migration rate increased after the 1920s in Burdwan as well. On
the other hand, traditionally, Birbhum was the supplier of labour to
other parts of the country. In the northern parts of western Bengal,
Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling observed a high inflow of population
over the study period, possibly indicating workforce participation
in plantation activity, which was very high during the colonial era.
 Table 16.20: Inter-District Variation in Net Migration Rate

Burdwan Birbhum Bankura Midnapore Hooghly Howrah 24 Parganas Calcutta

1891 10.48 –10.25 1.86 –5.74 –4.79 51.53 33.59

1901 45.04 –12.04 24.14 3.14 29.82 102.11 61.52 349.18
1911 34.87 –44.75 15.59 1.27 53.52 107.36 95.02 364
1921 54.15 –20.24 19.86 4.14 76.99 126.51 109.11 315.57
1931 63.67 –15.85 19.74 11.91 86.58 122.34 90.97 312.46
1941 86.71 –13.85 16.49 12.52 96.11 136 100.73 314.84
1951 143.72 –27.08 23.34 18.49 104.62 121.5 208.66 527.52

Nadia Murshidabad Malda West Dinajpur Jalpaiguri Darjeeling Coach Bihar

1891 2.21 12.24 22.7 70.31 63.24 531.57

1901 5.18 20.43 27.55 62.7 175.8 452.74 30.89
1911 7.18 9.48 60.74 81.04 226.64 396.42 35.73
1921 6.17 8.37 52.33 61.8 224.8 338.84 36.78
1931 4.33 9.18 34.85 39.55 211.15 304.24 22.12
1941 8.49 7.89 19.62 39.56 181.59 243.46 25.27
1951 400.64 34.32 76.59 206.96 299.04 209.79 211.91
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 617

The net migration rate was low and fluctuating in other districts—
indicating that agricultural output was on the decline. From the
Annual Reports of Bengal Agricultural Statistics, Kamal72 has shown
that per capita acreage of rice output in western Bengal (eastern
Bengal as well) declined from 0.499 during 1900 to 0.353 during 1940.
Such a decline in rice production could be attributed to repeated
cropping and nitrogen depletion of the soil, substitution of rice by
the cash crops, and a decaying river system.73 Myron Weiner also
noted that Bengali immigration to Assam, which started during the
early twentieth century, coincided with the decline in the agricultural
sector in the province.74 Quantum jump in net migration rate (more
than double compared to the 1941 census) in 1951 in the bordering
districts of West Bengal and West Bengal as a whole, could be
explained by Partition-related in-migration in western Bengal from
eastern Bengal.

Summary and Conclusions

From the early decades of the twentieth century, two major regions
in western Bengal have exhibited a higher rate of population growth.
The first one comprises Calcutta, Howrah, and 24 Parganas—the
industrial districts—where there has been substantial in-migration
from Uttar Pradesh and Odisha due to an increase in livelihood
options in the industries. The second region comprises Malda,
Jalpaiguri, and West Dinajpur, where growth rates of population are
also high due to higher rates of fertility among the Muslims, who form
the majority in these districts. However, during 1911–21 there was
a negative growth in population in western Bengal due to influenza
and malaria, which took an epidemic proportion, and in spite of
positive interventions in health care influencing population growth
during 1931–51, two major events, namely famine and Partition, had
a significantly negative influence on growth rates.
At the aggregate level, population density in the districts of
western Bengal increased by 79 per cent over a period of seventy
years (1881–1951). Two spatial continuums were in existence, which
had substantially higher density but, interestingly, for different
reasons. One comprised of Calcutta, Howrah, and Hooghly districts,
where population density increased rapidly due to industry-led
618 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

urbanization. The other was the lower Gangetic basin comprising

Murshidabad, Nadia, and Burdwan, where agriculture, particularly
the cultivation of rice, flourished.
From the 1900s, the sex ratio has continued to be in favour of
males in western Bengal due to higher female mortality at birth and
during the reproductive age and male migration in the industrial
districts of undivided Bengal. This trend of masculine sex ratio
continued during 1941 and 1951 as well. There are of course inter-
district variations, with the tribal- and Muslim-dominated districts
having consistently exhibited lesser difference between the female
and the male population.
During 1881, nearly 10 per cent of the total population in western
Bengal resided in urban areas, which increased to 25 per cent in
the next 70 years. Rapid urbanization occurred in the industrial
districts, while in other districts it remained stagnant. Similarly,
industrial districts were densely populated, the highest being in
the metropolitan centre of Calcutta, while in other non-industrial
districts, change in density was far from significant. Here, it may
be mentioned that during 1881, population density in the urban
industrial hub in and around Calcutta was twenty times higher
compared to other districts in western Bengal, which further rose
to forty times in 1941.
The age-sex structure of western Bengal, as analysed in our study,
indicates that proportion of girls in the population has been usually
higher in the childhood period during 1881–1951. This indicates
that a gender differential in mortality during childhood was not
prominent, and demographic transition had already started in these
districts during the reference period.
Fertility was high and fluctuating in western Bengal. Fluctuations
have been influenced mainly due to epidemics during 1911–21 and
later due to famine. There has also been a spatial variation in fertility
among the districts and it was found that fertility rates increased
with a relative increase in distance from Calcutta, where it was the
lowest. A correlation is observed between a decline in fertility rates
and an increase in female literacy in the districts of western Bengal.
The study also significantly underlines that although religion, in
terms of its practice and preaching, have some bearing on population
groups, yet it is geopolitical space (in terms of development policy
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 619

and implementation of programmes) that influences significantly

the fertility behaviour of population groups belonging to different
religious backgrounds. The study also indicates that the proportion
of a population group engaged in agricultural activities on the other
hand, significantly influenced fertility behaviour compared to those
groups engaged in non-agricultural occupations.
Districts of western Bengal showed a decline in average life
expectancy during 1881–91 from 24.5 years to 22.8 years, which has
not been so in case of other provinces of British India. But thereafter,
there has been a decline in mortality conditions and subsequent fall
in CBR too. Epidemics like cholera, influenza, malaria, and later
famines, have been the major contributing factors in enhancing
mortality in the districts of western Bengal. Our analysis reveals that
deaths due to cholera declined at a faster rate, but malaria continued
to be endemic in the districts of western Bengal. On the other hand,
mortality due to respiratory infections increased significantly in and
around Calcutta, largely due to pollution.
Western Bengal was not only less rural but also less dependent on
agriculture compared to its eastern counterpart. It was found that in
1951, more than 58 per cent of the male workforce in western Bengal
was outside agriculture and its allied activities.
To sum up, this chapter has therefore been a modest attempt to
understand and analyse the demographic trends in western Bengal,
both at aggregate as well as district levels, despite data limitations. It
not only provides a picture about the detailed demographic scenario
during the late colonial period to the dawn of independence, but also
prenominates the effects of Partition on the western front which, in
other words, was the biggest disjuncture for erstwhile united Bengal
in the twentieth century.

Notes
1. Kingsley Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1951.
2. Pravin Visaria, ‘The Sex Ratio of the Population of India and Pakistan
and Regional Variations during 1901-61’, in Patterns of Population Change
in India 1951–61, ed. A. Bose, Bombay: Allied, 1967; Pravin Visaria,
‘Migration between India and Pakistan, 1951–1961’, Demography, vol. 6,
no. 3, 1969, pp. 323–34; Pravin Visaria, ‘Mortality and Fertility in India,
620 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
1951–61’, The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 1, 1969, pp.
91–116; and Leela Visaria and Pravin Visaria, ‘Population (1757–1947)’,
in Cambridge Economic History of India: 1757–1970, ed. D. Kumar, and
M. Desai, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
3. Tim Dyson, ed., ‘The Historical Demography of Berar, 1881–1980’, India’s
Historical Demography: Studies in Famine, Disease and Society, London:
Curzon Press, The Riverdale Company, 1989; Tim Dyson, ‘Infant and Child
Mortality in the Indian Subcontinent, 1881–1947’, in Infant and Child
Mortality in the Past, ed. A. Bideau, B. Desjardins and H.P. Brignoli, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1997; Tim Dyson, ‘Birth Rate Trends in India, Sri Lanka,
Bangladesh, and Pakistan: A Long Comparative View’, in Fertility Transition
in South Asia, ed. Z. Sathar and J. Phillips, New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001; Tim Dyson, ‘A Partial Theory of World Development: The
Neglected Role of the Demographic Transition in the Shaping of Modern
Society’, International Journal of Population Geography, vol. I, no. 2, 2001,
pp. 69–90; and Tim Dyson, ‘India’s Population—The Past’, in Twenty-
First Century India: Economy, Human Development and the Environment,
ed. T. Dyson, R. Cassen and L. Visaria, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004.
4. Amartya Sen, ‘The Great Bengal Famine’, An Essay on Entitlement and
Deprivation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
5. Paul Robert Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The
Famine of 1943–44, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
6. Tim Dyson and Arup Maharatna, ‘Excess Mortality During the Bengal
Famine: A Re-evaluation’, Indian Economic and Social History Review,
vol. 28, no. 3, 1991, pp. 281–97; Arup Maharatna, ‘Malaria Ecology, Relief
Provision and Regional Variation in Mortality during the Bengal Famine
of 1943–44’, South Asia Research, vol. 13, no. 1, 1993, pp. 1–26; Arup
Maharatna, ‘The Demography of Bengal Famine of 1943–44: A Detailed
Study’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 31, no. 2, 1994,
pp. 169–215; and Arup Maharatna, The Demography of Famines: An Indian
Historical Perspective, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.
7. Dyson, ‘The Historical Demography of Berar’; and Visaria and Visaria,
‘Population (1757–1947)’.
8. Dyson, ‘The Historical Demography of Berar’.
9. Arjun Adlakha and Dudley Kirk, ‘Vital Rates in India 1961–71, estimated
from 1971 Census Data’, Population Studies, vol. 28, no. 3, 1974,
pp. 381–400.
10. Nahid Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal
during the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Study’, unpublished PhD
diss., London School of Economics and Political Science, 2009; UMI
number: U615290.
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 621
11. A.T.A. Learmonth, ‘Some contrasts in the Regional Geography of Malaria
in India and Pakistan’, Institute of British Geographers, vol. 23, 1957,
pp. 37–59.
12. For example, Kabita Ray, History of Public Health: Colonial Bengal 1921–47,
Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1998.
13. In demography, natural growth is defined by the difference between crude
birth rate (CBR) and crude death rate (CDR). It does not take migration
into account.
14. L.S. Vishwanath, ‘Efforts of Colonial State to Suppress Female Infanticide:
Use of Sacred Texts, Generation of Knowledge’, Economic and Political
Weekly, vol. 33, no. 19, 1998, pp. 1104–12; and Lalita Panigrahi, British
Social Policy and Female Infanticide in India, New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, 1972.
15. Paula Griffiths et al., ‘Understanding the Sex Ratio in India: A Simulation
Approach’, Demography, vol. 37, no. 4, 2000, pp. 477–88.
16. Ibid.
17. Pravin Visaria, ‘The Sex Ratio of the Population of India and Pakistan’.
18. P.N. Maribhat, ‘On the Trail of “Missing” Indian Females’, Economic and
Political Weekly, vol. 37, 2002, pp. 5105–19.
19. Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
20. Ansley J. Coale, ‘The Effects of Changes in Mortality and Fertility on Age
Composition’, The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 1, 1956,
pp. 79–114; and Ansley J. Coale, Growth and Structure of Human Populations:
A Mathematical Investigation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972.
21. Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
22. Vishwanath, ‘Efforts of Colonial State to Suppress Female Infanticide’;
Panigrahi, British Social Policy and Female Infanticide.
23. Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
24. Ibid., p. 76.
25. J. Bongaarts and R. Potter, Fertility, Biology, and Behavior: An Analysis of
the Proximate Determinants, New York: Academic Press, 1983, doi:10.1016/
B978-0-08-091698-9.50006-3; and John Bongaarts, ‘A Framework for
Analyzing the Proximate Determinants of Fertility’, Population and
Development Review, vol. 4, no. 1, 1978, pp. 105–32, doi:10.2307/1972149.
26. S.K. Mohanty et al., ‘Distal Determinants of Fertility Decline: Evidence
from 640 Indian Districts’, Demographic Research, vol. 34, no. 13, 2016,
pp. 1–36.
27. Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
28. For an excellent review, see, Rodolfo A. Bulatao and Ronald D. Lee,
eds., Determinants of Fertility in Developing Countries, 2 vols., New York:
Academic Press, 1983.
622 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
29. C. Chandrasekaran and M.V. George, ‘Mechanisms Underlying the Differ-
ences in Fertility Patterns of Bengalee Women from three Socio-economic
Groups’, The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 1, 1962,
pp. 59–89.
30. Ibid.
31. Alaka Malwade Basu and Sajeda Amin, ‘Conditioning Factors for
Fertility Decline in Bengal: History, Language, Identity and Openness to
Innovations’, Population and Development Review, vol. 26, vol. 4, 2000,
pp. 761–94.
32. M. Alagarajan and P.M. Kulkarni, ‘Religious Differentials in Fertility in
India: Is there a Convergence’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 43,
no. 48, 2008, pp. 44–53; P.N.M. Bhat and A.J.F. Zavier, ‘Fertility Decline
and Gender Bias in Northern India’, Demography, vol. 40, no. 4, 2003,
pp. 637–57; P.M. Kulkarni and M. Alagarajan, ‘Population Growth, Fertility
and Religion in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 40, no. 5, 2005,
pp. 403–11; M. Alagarajan, ‘An Analysis of Fertility Differentials by Religion
in Kerala State: A Test of the Interaction Hypothesis’, Population Research
and Policy Review, vol. 22, 2003, pp. 557–74; R. Jeffery and P. Jeffery,
‘Religion and Fertility in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 35, 2000,
pp. 3253–9; A. Dharmalingam et al., ‘Hindu-Muslim Fertility Differences:
Evidence from National Family Health Survey – II’, Economic and Political
Weekly, vol. 40, no. 5, 2005, pp. 429–36; A. Dharmalingam and S.P. Morgan,
‘Pervasive Muslim-Hindu Fertility Differences in India’, Demography,
vol. 41, no. 3, 2004, pp. 529–45; K.S. James and S.N. Nair, ‘Accelerated
Decline in Fertility in India since the 1980s: Trends among Hindus and
Muslims’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 40, no. 5, 2005, pp. 375–83;
P.N.M. Bhat, ‘Contours of Fertility Decline in India: A District Level Study
Based on the 1991 Census’, in Population Policy and Reproductive Health,
ed. K. Srinivasan, Delhi: Hindustan, 1996; P.N.M. Bhat and S.I. Rajan,
‘Demographic Transition in Kerala Revisited’, Economic and Political
Weekly, vol. 25, nos. 35–6, 1990, pp. 957–80; and A. Shariff, ‘Socio-
economic and Demographic Differentials between Hindus and Muslims
in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 30, no. 46, 1995, pp. 2947–53.
33. S. Ghosh and A. Chattopadhyay, ‘Religion, Contraceptive Method Mix
and Son Preference among Bengali Speaking Community of Indian
Subcontinent’, Population Research and Policy Review, vol. 36, no. 6, 2017,
pp. 929–59.
34. S. Iyer, ‘Understanding Religion and the Economics of Fertility in India’,
Occasional Paper 2, Centre of South Asia Studies, Cambridge, 2002;
A. Chattopadhyay, ‘Why Space matters in explaining Women’s Status
in Greater Bengal? Some Thoughts and Arguments’, Demography India,
vol. 38, no. 1, 2009, pp. 35–52; A. Das and A. Chattopadhyay, ‘Women’s
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 623
Status in Bengal and Bangladesh: A Cross Country Analysis’, Demography
India, vol. 41, nos. 1 and 2, 2012, pp. 83–102; and Ghosh and Chattopadhyay,
‘Religion, Contraceptive Method Mix and Son Preference’.
35. Mead Cain, ‘The Economic Activities of Children in a Bangladesh Village’,
Population and Development Review, vol. 3, no. 3, 1977, pp. 201–27;
W.B. Arthur, and G. McNicoll, ‘An Analytical Survey of Population and
Development in Bangladesh’, Population and Development Review, vol. 4,
no. 1, 1978, pp. 23–80; and Shapan Adnan, ‘Fertility Decline under Absolute
Poverty: Paradoxical Aspects of Demographic Change in Bangladesh’,
Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 33, no. 22, 1998, pp. 305–59.
36. Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan.
37. David Mandelbaum, Human Fertility in India: Social Components and
Policy Perspectives, Berkeley: University of California, 1974.
38. P. Sinha, Nineteenth Century Bengal—Aspects of Social History, Calcutta:
Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1965.
39. Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
40. S.N. Agarwala, Age at Marriage in India, Allahabad: Kitab Mahal,
1962.
41. Shirley Lindenbaum, ‘Implications for Women of Changing Marriage
Transactions in Bangladesh’, Studies in Family Planning, vol. 12, no. 11,
1981, pp. 394–401; and Ramkrishna Mukherjee, ‘The Economic Structure
and Social Life in Six Villages of Bengal’, American Sociological Review,
vol. 14, no. 3, 1949, pp. 415–35.
42. Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
43. Ibid., p. 83.
44. Malabika Chakrabarti, The Famine of 1896–1897 in Bengal: Availability or
Entitlement Crisis?, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2004.
45. Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
46. Ibid.
47. Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan.
48. David Arnold, ‘Disease, Resistance and India’s Ecological Frontier, 1770–
1947’, in Agrarian Studies: Synthetic Work at the Cutting Edge, ed. J. Scott
and N. Bhat, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
49. Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
50. Kabita Ray, History of Public Health.
51. Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
52. David Arnold, ‘Cholera and Colonialism in British India’, Past and Present,
vol. 113, 1986, pp. 118–51.
53. Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
54. J.N. Uppal, Bengal Famine of 1943: A Man-made Tragedy, Delhi: Atma Ram
and Sons, 1984; Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: The Anglo-
Indian Preventive Medicine 1859–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University
624 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Press, 1994; Ira Klein, ‘Malaria and Mortality in Bengal, 1840–1921’, Indian
Economic and Social History Review, vol. 9, 1972, pp. 132–60; Ira Klein,
‘Development and Death: Reinterpreting Malaria, Economics, and Ecology
in British India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 38, no.
2, 2001; and Malabika Chakrabarti, The Famine of 1896–1897 in Bengal;
Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
55. Sandeep Sinha, Public Health Policy and the Indian Public: Bengal 1850–
1920, Calcutta: Vision, 1998.
56. David Arnold, and Sumit Sarkar, ‘In Search of Rational Remedies:
Homeopathy in Nineteenth Century Bengal’, in Plural Medicine, Tradition
and Modernity, 1800–2000, ed. W. Ernst, London: Routledge, 2002.
57. Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
58. Ibid.
59. Ray, History of Public Health.
60. Visaria and Visaria, ‘Population (1757–1947)’.
61. Sen, ‘The Great Bengal Famine’.
62. Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal.
63. Dyson and Maharatna, ‘Excess Mortality during the Bengal Famine’.
64. Maharatna, ‘Malaria Ecology, Relief Provision and Regional Variation in
Mortality’.
65. Ibid.
66. Sen, ‘The Great Bengal Famine’.
67. Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal.
68. Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
69. Ibid.
70. Aijan De Haan, ‘Migration in Eastern India: A Segmented Labour Market’,
Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 32, no. l, 1995, pp. 51–93.
71. Ibid.
72. Kamal, ‘The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal’.
73. Ibid.
74. Myron Weiner, Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.

References
Adlakha, Arjun, and Dudley Kirk, ‘Vital Rates in India 1961–71, Estimated from
1971 Census Data’, Population Studies, vol. 28, no. 3, 1974, pp. 381–400.
Adnan, Shapan, ‘Fertility Decline under Absolute Poverty: Paradoxical Aspects
of Demographic Change in Bangladesh’, Economic and Political Weekly,
vol. 33, no. 22, 1998, pp. 305–59.
Agarwala, S.N., Age at Marriage in India, Allahabad: Kitab Mahal, 1962.
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 625
Alagarajan, M., ‘An Analysis of Fertility Differentials by Religion in Kerala State:
A Test of the Interaction Hypothesis’, Population Research and Policy Review,
vol. 22, 2003, pp. 557–74.
Alagarajan, M., and P.M. Kulkarni, ‘Religious Differentials in Fertility in India:
Is there a Convergence’, Economic and Political Weekly, 2008, vol. 43,
no. 48, pp. 44–53.
Arnold, David, ‘Cholera and Colonialism in British India’, Past and Present,
vol. 113, 1986, pp. 118–51.
———,  ‘Disease, Resistance and India’s Ecological Frontier, 1770–1947’, in
Agrarian Studies: Synthetic Work at the Cutting Edge, ed. J. Scott and
N. Bhat, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Arnold, David, and Sumit Sarkar, ‘In Search of Rational Remedies: Homeopathy
in Nineteenth Century Bengal’, in Plural Medicine, Tradition and Modernity,
1800–2000, ed. W. Ernst, London: Routledge, 2002.
Arthur, W.B., and G. McNicoll, ‘An Analytical Survey of Population and
Development in Bangladesh’, Population and Development Review, vol. 4,
no. 1, 1978, pp. 23–80.
Basu, Alaka Malwade, and Sajeda Amin, ‘Conditioning Factors for Fertility
Decline in Bengal: History, Language, Identity and Openness to Innovations’,
Population and Development Review, vol. 26, no. 4, 2000, pp. 761–94.
Bhat, P.N.M., and A.J.F. Zavier, ‘Fertility Decline and Gender Bias in Northern
India’, Demography, vol. 40, no. 4, 2003, pp. 637–57.
Bhat, P.N.M., ‘Contours of Fertility Decline in India: A District Level Study
Based on the 1991 Census’, in Population Policy and Reproductive Health,
ed. K. Srinivasan, Delhi: Hindustan, 1996.
Bhat, P.N.M., and S.I. Rajan, ‘Demographic Transition in Kerala Revisited’,
Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 25, nos. 35–6, 1990, pp. 957–80.
Bongaarts, John, ‘A Framework for Analyzing the Proximate Determinants of
Fertility’, Population and Development Review, vol. 4, no. 1, 1978, pp. 105–32,
doi:10.2307/1972149.
Bongaarts, J., and R. Potter, Fertility, Biology, and Behavior: An Analysis of the
Proximate Determinants, New York: Academic Press, 1983, doi:10.1016/
B978-0-08-091698-9.50006-3.
Bulatao, Rodolfo A., and Ronald D. Lee, eds., Determinants of Fertility in
Developing Countries, 2 vols., New York: Academic Press, 1983.
Cain, Mead, ‘The Economic Activities of Children in a Bangladesh Village’,
Population and Development Review, vol. 3, no. 3, 1977, pp. 201–27.
Chakrabarti, Malabika, The Famine of 1896–1897 in Bengal: Availability or
Entitlement Crisis?, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2004.
Chandrasekaran, C., and M.V. George, ‘Mechanisms underlying the Differences
in Fertility Patterns of Bengalee Women from three Socio-economic Groups’,
The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 1, 1962, pp. 59–89.
626 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Chattopadhyay, A., ‘Why Space Matters in Explaining Women’s Status in Greater
Bengal? Some Thoughts and Arguments’, Demography India, vol. 38,
no. 1, 2009, pp. 35–52.
Coale, Ansley J., ‘The Effects of Changes in Mortality and Fertility on Age
Composition’, The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 1, 1956,
pp. 79–114.
———,  Growth and Structure of Human Populations: A Mathematical
Investigation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972.
———,  ‘The Demographic Transition Reconsidered’, paper read at International
Union for the Scientific Study of Population, Liege, Belgium, 1973.
Das, A., and A. Chattopadhyay, ‘Women’s Status in Bengal and Bangladesh:
A Cross Country Analysis’, Demography India, vol. 41, nos. 1 and 2, 2012,
pp. 83–102.
Davis, Kingsley, The Population of India and Pakistan, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1951.
Dharmalingam, A., and S.P. Morgan, ‘Pervasive Muslim-Hindu Fertility
Differences in India’, Demography, vol. 41, no. 3, 2004, pp. 529–45.
Dharmalingam, A., K. Navaneetham, and P. Morgan, ‘Hindu-Muslim Fertility
Differences: Evidence from National Family Health Survey – II’, Economic
and Political Weekly, vol. 40, no. 5, 2005, pp. 429–36.
Dyson, Tim, ‘Infant and Child Mortality in the Indian Subcontinent, 1881–1947’,
in Infant and Child Mortality in the Past, ed. A. Bideau, B. Desjardins, and
H.P. Brignoli, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
———,  ‘Birth Rate Trends in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Pakistan: A Long
Comparative View’, in Fertility Transition in South Asia, ed. Z. Sathar and
J. Phillips, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
———,  ‘A Partial Theory of World Development: The Neglected Role of the
Demographic Transition in the Shaping of Modem Society’, International
Journal of Population Geography, vol. I, no. 2, 2001, pp. 69–90.
———,  ‘India’s Population—The Past’, in Twenty-First Century India: Economy,
Human Development and the Environment, ed. T. Dyson, R. Cassen, and
L. Visaria, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
———,  ed., ‘The Historical Demography of Berar, 1881–1980’, India’s Historical
Demography: Studies in Famine, Disease and Society, London: Curzon Press,
The Riverdale Company, 1989.
Dyson, Tim, and Arup Maharatna, ‘Excess Mortality during the Bengal Famine:
A Re-evaluation’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 28,
no. 3, 1991, pp. 281–97.
Ghosh, S., and A. Chattopadhyay, ‘Religion, Contraceptive Method Mix and Son
Preference among Bengali Speaking Community of Indian Subcontinent’,
Population Research and Policy Review, vol. 36, no. 6, 2017, pp. 929–59.
 Ghosh and Chakraborty: Demographic Trends 627
Greenough, Paul Robert, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine
of 1943–44, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Griffiths, Paula, Matthews Zoe and Hinde Andrew, ‘Understanding the Sex
Ratio in India: A Simulation Approach’, Demography, vol. 37, no. 4, 2000,
pp. 477–88.
Haan, Aijan De, ‘Migration in Eastern India: A Segmented Labour Market’,
Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 32, no. l, 1995, pp. 51–93.
Harrison, Mark, Public Health in British India: The Anglo-Indian Preventive
Medicine 1859–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Iyer, S., ‘Understanding Religion and the Economics of Fertility in India’,
Occasional Paper 2, Centre of South Asia Studies, Cambridge, 2002.
James, K.S., and S.N. Nair, ‘Accelerated Decline in Fertility in India since the
1980s: Trends among Hindus and Muslims’, Economic and Political Weekly,
vol. 40, no. 5, 2005, pp. 375–83.
Jeffery, R., and P. Jeffery, ‘Religion and Fertility in India’, Economic and Political
Weekly, vol. 35, 2000, pp. 3253–9.
Kamal, Nahid, The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal during
the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Study, unpublished PhD diss.,
London School of Economics and Political Science, 2009, UMI number:
U615290.
Klein, Ira, ‘Malaria and Mortality in Bengal, 1840–1921’, Indian Economic and
Social History Review, vol. 9, 1972, pp. 132–60.
———,  ‘Development and Death: Reinterpreting Malaria, Economics, and
Ecology in British India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review,
vol. 38, no. 2, 2001, pp. 147–79.
Kulkarni, P.M., and M. Alagarajan, ‘Population Growth, Fertility and Religion
in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 40, no. 5, 2005, pp. 403–11.
Learmonth, A.T.A., ‘Some Contrasts in the Regional Geography of Malaria in
India and Pakistan’, Institute of British Geographers, vol. 23, 1957, pp. 37–59.
Lindenbaum, Shirley, ‘Implications for Women of Changing Marriage
Transactions in Bangladesh’, Studies in Family Planning, vol. 12, no. 11,
1981, pp. 394–401.
Maharatna, Arup, The Demography of Famines: An Indian Historical Perspective,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Maharatna, Arup, ‘Malaria Ecology, Relief Provision and Regional Variation
in Mortality during the Bengal Famine of 1943–44’, South Asia Research,
vol. 13, no. 1, 1993, pp. 1–26.
———,  ‘The Demography of Bengal Famine of 1943–44: A Detailed Study’, The
Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 31, no. 2, 1994, pp. 169–215.
Mandelbaum, David, Human Fertility in India: Social Components and Policy
Perspectives, Berkeley: University of California, 1974.
628 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Maribhat, P.N., ‘On the Trail of “Missing” Indian Females’, Economic and Political
Weekly, vol. 37, 2002, pp. 5105–19.
Mohanty, S.K., Fink Gunther, R.K. Chauhan, and David Canning, ‘Distal
Determinants of Fertility Decline: Evidence from 640 Indian Districts’,
Demographic Research, vol. 34, no. 13, 2016, pp. 1–36.
Mukherjee, Ramkrishna, ‘The Economic Structure and Social Life in Six
Villages of Bengal’, American Sociological Review, vol. 14, no. 3, 1949,
pp. 415–35.
Panigrahi, Lalita, British Social Policy and Female Infanticide in India, New Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal, 1972.
Ray, Kabita, History of Public Health: Colonial Bengal 1921–47, Calcutta:
K.P. Bagchi, 1998.
Sen, Amartya, ‘The Great Bengal Famine’, An Essay on Entitlement and
Deprivation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
Shariff, A., ‘Socio-economic and demographic differentials between Hindus
and Muslims in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 30, no. 46, 1995,
pp. 2947–53.
Sinha, P., Nineteenth Century Bengal—Aspects of Social History, Calcutta: Firma
KL Mukhopadhyay, 1965.
Sinha, Sandeep, Public Health Policy and the Indian Public: Bengal 1850–1920,
Calcutta: Vision, 1998.
Uppal, J.N., Bengal Famine of 1943: A Man-made Tragedy, Delhi: Atma Ram
and Sons, 1984.
Visaria, Leela, and Pravin Visaria, ‘Population (1757–1947)’, Cambridge Economic
History of India: 1757–1970, ed. D. Kumar, and M. Desai, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 463–532.
Visaria, Pravin, ‘The Sex Ratio of the Population of India and Pakistan and
Regional Variations During 1901–61’, in Patterns of Population Change in
India 1951–61, ed. A. Bose, Bombay: Allied, 1967, pp. 334–71.
———,  ‘Migration between India and Pakistan, 1951–1961’, Demography,
vol. 6, no. 3, 1969, pp. 323–34.
———,  ‘Mortality and Fertility in India, 1951–61’, The Milbank Memorial Fund
Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 1, 1969, pp. 91–116.
Vishwanath, L.S., ‘Efforts of Colonial State to Suppress Female Infanticide: Use
of Sacred Texts, Generation of Knowledge’, Economic and Political Weekly,
vol. 33, no. 19, 1998, pp. 1104–12.
Weiner, Myron, Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1978.
 17

Development of Calcutta as a
Commercial Metropolis in the
Nineteenth Century

Kaustubh Mani Sengupta

T
his chapter looks at the ways through which Calcutta
emerged as the leading business centre in eastern India during
the nineteenth century. The consolidation of British power in
Bengal in the latter half of the eighteenth century brought in its
wake free merchants, ‘adventurers’, and entrepreneurs who wanted to
facilitate their own private trade, outside the purview of the English
East India Company. This led to the establishment of the agency
houses, which controlled much of the triangular trade between
eastern India, Britain, and China. Indian merchants also joined the
fray, often as intermediaries to these houses. But they were able to
make a fortune for themselves as well, at least in the first half of the
nineteenth century. The frenetic commercial activity in the initial
decades of the century—with the establishment of numerous agency
houses, trade in opium and indigo among others, inauguration of
banking facilities—helped in establishing Calcutta as the chief city
in the Bengal Presidency. Enhanced trading activities ensured that
the port of Calcutta became a bustling complex with dockyards,
warehouses and shipbuilding projects. However, the mid-century
commercial crisis with the failure of the Union Bank led to a change
in the business environment of the city. Henceforth, the exclusively
European managing agencies came to dominate the modern
industrial sector, with the Indians relegated to the inland trade in raw
630 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

materials and distribution of imported goods. The city witnessed the

proliferation of foreign merchant offices, and Marwari gaddis, with
the Bengalis pushed almost exclusively to the service sectors. This
racial division of the commercial space also had an impact on the
morphology of the town. In this chapter, I will chart the ebbs and
flows of commercial enterprises in Calcutta, starting from the end of
the eighteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War. I will
look at the various institutions prevalent at different points of time, as
well as the business practices of the diverse groups who participated
in the commercial world of colonial Calcutta.

The Era of the Agency Houses

The agency houses were a group of firms originally facilitating
private trade for the Europeans in Asia. Private European enterprises
were established in various sectors in the post-Plassey period. The
Company encouraged these as long as they did not compete in the
exclusive Company sectors like piece goods, salt, saltpetre, and
opium.1 In the 1780s, the first agency houses were established in
Calcutta when a group of enterprising British left the service of the
Company to try their luck in private trade. Blair Kling elaborates,
‘As agents for the investment and remittance of private savings of
civilian and military servants of the East India Company, the agency
houses used the money of their constituents to finance the import
and export trade, especially the country trade, and the production
of indigo and other country products.’2 The agency house played the
role of an agent on behalf of others from whom it charged a fee for
its services. They were also an ‘agent’ of a firm back in London. The
merchants often did not bring their own capital to start a venture.
Their main source of finance was the deposits from the Company
servants. A contemporary account, written in 1832, described the
functions of the agency houses in these words:
A large mercantile house is established at Calcutta, with a branch in London;
the partnership formed of various individuals—one a retired civil servant
of the Company—another a military man—a third a doctor and a fourth
a London merchant. They possess no real capital, but establish an agency
and banking business, receive as deposits the accumulating fortunes of the
East India Company’s servants and trade on these deposits.3
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 631

Dwijendra Tripathi and Jyoti Jumani mention that, ‘Agency

relationship with the firms back home helped the free merchants
to act, in the absence of any other exchange facility between Britain
and India, as a safe medium of remittance of funds by the Company
servants to their families back home. It was something akin to the
hundi system operating at an international level.’4 Soon the agency
houses started to diversify and venture out in other activities apart
from trading. They got engaged in shipbuilding, banking, insurance
companies, mining, manufacturing, and plantation industries. The
number also steadily increased—from 15 in 1790 to 27 in 1828; then
in 1835, there were 61 houses, and by 1846, the number stood at 93.
However, as Kling writes, ‘of these, only a half-dozen at any one time
were “great” houses; the majority were limited in their activities and
operated with small sums of capital.’5 Amales Tripathi in his classic
study of trading and financial operations in the Bengal Presidency
during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century pointed out
the interwoven nature of economic and political affairs of the East
India Company and private British dealings. He notes that the agency
houses paved the way for the Company government to expand and
consolidate its hold over various parts of India through war and
conquest: ‘Financial exigency, born of imperial expansion, brought
the government into close connection with the agency houses, who
were the representatives of [British] capitalists and were, like the
government itself, dependent on their capital in a narrow money
market.  .  .  . The mutual interests of the two forced them to work
out a modus operandi.’6 Thus, what should have been a logically
hostile relation, was actually ambivalent—‘contradictory and yet
complementary.’7 The government helped the agency houses with
loans in times of depression while the latter aided the government
by providing money for war. Tripathi links the change in imperial
policies to the material considerations of expansion—‘It was the
exigency of imperial expansion, more than any doctrinaire philosophy
of free trade, which forced Cornwallis to introduce “privilege trade”,
Wellesley to espouse the cause of India-built ships, Minto to transfer
India debt and Bentinck to shore up the falling agency houses and
grant indigo-planters ownership of land.’8
Kling distinguishes three phases in the history of the agency
houses. From 1783 to 1813, there were only a few houses and the
632 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

partners were closely associated with Company officials. The trade

was mostly conducted in opium with China, purchased at the
government auction in Calcutta. In this early period, the houses
hold ‘a smaller monopoly within the larger monopoly of the East
India Company, free to range the Indian Ocean between the Cape
of Good Hope and the South China Sea.’9 From 1813, the second
phase began with the abolition of the monopoly of the Company.
Many new houses were established by adventurers from Britain.
Fierce competition forced these houses to look for newer avenues
of trade, and the best prospect was offered by indigo. Demand for it
was increasing in Britain, and the Bengal countryside was absolutely
suitable to cultivate the crop. But soon a problem cropped up with
market fluctuation which was depended on European trade cycle. In
1825, a commercial depression in England decreased the demand for
indigo. Production of the crop was also hampered by heavy monsoon.
By the 1820s, with much of their capital tied in indigo enterprises,
the agency houses faced major difficulties. Many firms could not
overcome this crisis and a number of partners sold off their assets and
went back to England. Between 1830 and 1833, the whole structure
crumbled and most of the old houses, dating back to the beginning
of the century, had to shut down.10 From 1834, a third phase can be
located for these agency houses, which lasted till the commercial
crisis of 1847. According to Kling:

The new houses fell into two separate groups, those that emphasized
exporting and those whose main business was importing. The exporting
houses  .  .  .  were involved principally in the production and export of
country products such as indigo, sugar and silk.  .  .  . The importing houses
were formed by British manufacturers to serve as agents for the sale and
distribution of yarn and textiles sent on consignment from Britain.11

An excellent example of the former was the Carr, Tagore and

Company, the history of which I will discuss in detail later on in the
chapter.
A crucial feature of these agency houses was the involvement of
Indian businessmen with their commercial enterprises. The operations
initiated by these firms in the third decade of the nineteenth century
would provide the basis for the latter half of the century when the
managing agencies would take over the business scene with the rise
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 633

of powerful intermediaries connecting the rural world of production

with the exporting and manufacturing sectors of foreign capitalists.
Before going into a discussion of the managing agency system, let
us first briefly look at the ‘banians’, the intermediaries who sustained
the new commercial system. Banians were important figures from
the early days of the East India Company. Banians, in the late-
eighteenth-century Bengal, were immensely powerful persons,
establishing crucial links between the indigenous merchant groups
and the Company, providing credit to their masters’ venture as well as
looking after their daily comforts. One can look at the Ghosal family
of Kidderpore. Gokul Ghosal was the banian of Harry Verelst and
was one of the most powerful ‘natives’ of Calcutta at that period.12
Apart from being the banian, Gokul and the Ghosal family had been
an influential collaborator of the Company-state in Bengal in matters
of revenue farming. They had extensive landed properties in parts
of Bengal, and were an extremely important cog in the machine.13
Later on, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, these people
became important for the agency houses for their knowledge of the
internal markets and sources of supply. They also provided capital to
the new set of people coming from Britain who had little money of
their own to start with. As Rajat Kanta Ray writes, ‘The basic function
of these Indian associates was to bring in and guarantee contracts
for supply of exportable produce from the inland merchants.’14 In
this period, some of the important Bengali intermediaries were
Ramdulal Dey, Motilal Seal, and Ram Gopal Ghosh. However, with
the crisis in their operations, insolvent agency houses often passed on
their debts to the banians. Between 1830 and 1833, six great agency
houses got shut due to unbridled risks and speculation in indigo. Ray
says, ‘In the process many Bengali fortunes were destroyed. Much
of the debts of agency houses were realized by law courts and the
semi-official Bank of Bengal through the attachment and sale of the
properties of their unwary Bengali Banias.’15 N.K. Sinha mentions
two major weaknesses of Bengali merchants of this era. First, their
absence from the inland trade and feeble link with the upcountry
markets; and second, unlike the Parsis, they did not develop any
business in cotton or opium with Canton, which ultimately left them
vulnerable to the dealings of the European businessmen only.16 Kling
opines that, ‘The agency houses were responsible for the financing and
634 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

promotion of Calcutta’s industrialization, but they fell short of their

entrepreneurial potential.’17 While no doubt capital was short, with
rudimentary banking facilities, Kling believes that there were major
flaws in the way these houses operated which ultimately brought
their demise: ‘They spread their limited resources, both capital and
managerial, too thin; their partners drained off too much capital for
personal consumption and remittance home; and they set their sights
on unrealistic and overly ambitious undertakings.’18

Partnership Gone Awry

Carr, Tagore and Company started its operation on 1 August 1834
with William Carr and Dwarkanath Tagore as partners. Tagore was
a foresighted man. He resigned from the lucrative post of the dewan
of the Board of Customs, Salt, and Opium to float his own company.
He already gained immense knowledge of the commercial circles of
Calcutta by his association with the agency house, Mackintosh and
Company. He was neither a partner nor an employee of the company,
but more of a dewan, who was more adept at matters of finance rather
than trade. In the commercial crisis of 1830–3, most of the agency
houses had to shut shop. Even the largest of them all, Palmer and Co.
could not avert the downfall.19 Dwarkanath emerged from this crisis
as the prime figure of the business world of Calcutta. His wealth,
mostly secured through his vast zamindari estates throughout Bengal,
was untouched by the crisis. After the crisis, he changed the rules of
the game, and though his enterprise died within a couple of decades,
the business model survived in its new avatar of the managing agency
system. Carr, Tagore and Company can be viewed as embodying the
transition from the era of the agency house to that of the managing
agency. From the beginning, Dwarkanath was convinced about the
potential of his new venture. He wrote to the then Governor-General
Lord Bentinck that he was quite certain of the great achievements of
his firm in future. The new partnership was ‘calculated to introduce
the natives of India generally to more immediate participation in
the objects of European enterprises.’ The period was ripe to expand
commercial enterprises, as
by 1834 the city had grown from an enclave port on the edge of a vast,
relatively inaccessible subcontinent to become the nerve centre of an
empire stretching from the Arakan in Burma to the Sutlej River in the
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 635

Punjab. Calcutta was young, vital city full of incongruities, partly Indian,
partly European, no longer a frontier town, not yet a metropolis.  .  .  . As the
terminal port of the sea routes between Europe and the Ganges Valley, the
most productive and populous area of the subcontinent, Calcutta handled
roughly half the international trade of British India.20

Dwarkanath’s solvency, on account of his estates, provided

him with a unique position to command power in the mid-1830s.
He was credit-worthy, and could establish himself as a ‘merchant’
rather than only being a ‘banian’ in the new company. He sought to
breach the racial gap by becoming a partner and dealing with the
Europeans on equal terms. He proclaimed that, ‘Twenty years ago,
the Company treated us as slaves. Who first raised us from this state,
but the merchant of Calcutta? And the first among them was the late
much lamented John Palmer.  .  .  . It was to the merchants, agents and
other independent English settlers, that the natives of Calcutta were
indebted for the superiority they possess over their countrymen in the
Mofussil.’21 Tagore controlled almost every aspect of the firm, so much
so that Kling sees this more as a ‘patriarchy than a partnership’.22 The
‘bread and butter’ of the company was its export trade in raw silk, silk
piece goods, indigo, sugar, rum, saltpetre, hides, timber, and rice.23 But
Tagore was keen to enter into manufacturing as well. One by one, he
entered into silk works, indigo plantation, sugar manufacture, ocean
shipping and coal mining operations at Ranigunj, 130 miles away to
the north-west of Calcutta. In all these, Tagore could successfully
muster his role as a zamindar to obtain the land or factories. It is
known that the fortune of Calcutta was shaped by wealthy men from
the interiors, seating comfortably on the back of their income from
the permanently-settled land. One must also note that a large section
of the commercial operations in Calcutta in the early decades of the
nineteenth century was supplemented by the estates in the interior.
Tagore successfully developed ‘his zamindaris as an adjunct of his
export trade. Thus, his zamindari holdings served a dual purpose—
to enable his firm to obtain superior financial credit and to give it
a control over the production and supply of goods exported.’24 On
the other hand, between 1836 and 1846, Tagore’s firm started six
joint-stock companies: the Calcutta Steam Tug Association (1836),
the Bengal Salt Company (1838), the Calcutta Steam Ferry Bridge
Company (1839), the Bengal Tea Association (1839), the Bengal Coal
636 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Company (1844), and the India General Steam Navigation Company

(1844).25 Of these, coal and steam tugs were spectacular successes,
while salt and the Steam Ferry Bridge Company proved to be a failure.
But Dwarkanath’s biggest challenge came in the form of the Union
Bank, which ultimately proved to be his—and in extension, to several
other firms of the period—nadir.
Calcutta’s largest business institution post 1830–3 crisis was the
Union Bank. A joint-stock enterprise with hundreds of shareholders,
both Europeans and Indians, ‘the bank reflected the commercial
life of the city in all its strengths and weaknesses.’26 The bank was
inaugurated in 1829 by Mackintosh and Company and Dwarkanath,
with an authorized capital of Rs.5 million, comprising 2,000 ordinary
shares of Rs.2,500 each. It was an important institution for the
mercantile community of the city. The bank handled out credit,
engaged in exchange banking, helped in mobilizing capital. At that
time, the only bank in the city was the Bank of Bengal, but it was
more interested in dealings with the government. The earlier three
agency-house banks, which catered to the private merchants, had
closed during the onset of the crisis of 1830–3. The need for a new
source of credit, independent of both government and any single
house, was sorely felt. Dwarkanath, with a large number of shares of
his own and managing those of his friends, relatives, partners, and
clients, was the main actor in the business of the bank. He and his
European partners invested a lot of capital to finance his innovative
business ventures of the time. But the critical flaw in the operation
of the bank laid in the fact that it did not diversify its risk across a
spread of different sectors and types of loans, instead relying almost
exclusively on financing of a single exportable item, indigo. Over-
riding the initial hiccups, the bank managed to stay afloat and declare
modest dividends from 1833. Problems started from 1840 when
indigo prices started to fall. The bank did not pay heed to this trend
and continued with its policy; bad loans were not written down but
supported by further amount, accounts were forged, mortgages on
unsustainable indigo plantations were refinanced. The bank was
losing money heavily, but still kept on declaring that it was making a
profit. With the massive commercial crisis in Britain, indigo exports
were forced to shut in 1845. The Union Bank became insolvent and
finally in January 1846 it had to suspend all its business. The next
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 637

year it was liquidated. Dwarkanth, before his death in 1846, realized

the condition of the bank and pulled out most of his shares and
invested the money in landed properties. In fact, this would become
the way forward for Bengali investors in years to come when the
commercial arena would be dominated by the British and Marwari
businessmen. The Bengal Hurkaru found the management of the
bank unreasonable and could foresee that Indians would be wary of
associating themselves with joint-stock ventures in futures:
As to the natives, who is so desirable to see becoming members of Joint Stock
Companies, the Union Bank affair has given a death blow to their confidence
in any such associations. We have heard several highly respectable natives
declare that nothing would induce them to take shares in any of them and
that such was the general feeling among their countrymen. Who can be
surprised at such a result? No power of logic will ever persuade a native
that there is any justice in a law, which, as if the loss of the capital vested by
him in a Bank were not sufficient, makes him liable also for an enormous
amount of debts contracted without his knowledge and in violation of every
principle and role of association.27
This suspicion on part of the Bengalis gradually moved them away
from commercial enterprises. The failure of the agency houses and
the Union Bank also points toward the close relationship between
trade and finance in these early years. Tirthankar Roy writes that,
‘Calcutta trading firms invariably turned into banks; the bigger the
firm, the closer the relationship. Two episodes of crash, 1833 and
1846–47, both illustrate how dangerous the integration of trade and
finance was.’28 Dwarkanath’s success was ‘a false dawn  .  .  .  followed
by sharp division between the European and Indian commercial
communities.’29 The new managing agencies shifted from inter-racial
partnership to exclusive British control. The material conditions of the
mid-century also favoured the foreign firms. As Rajat Ray elaborates:
Between 1850 and 1880 a series of technological and organizational
changes—the completion of the railways reaching far into the interior, the
development of the steamship services through the Suez Canal, and the
linking up of the inland telegraph and the overseas cables into one gigantic
world-wide system of information at electrical speed—decisively shifted
the business balance of power away from smaller Indian firms to bigger
European firms in India, and from India itself to the world centre of trade
and finance located in the City of London.30
638 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Modern Industries
and Managing Agencies
The changes in the commercial sector in the 1850s had a decisive
impact on the morphology of colonial Calcutta. The Company-era
City of Palaces gained new confidence with facades of brilliant
business houses and ‘mysterious’ indigenous quarters. The teeming
metropolis provided shelter to a variety of people from different parts
of India as well as the globe. Omkar Goswami evocatively describes
the Calcutta business scene during the first decades of the twentieth
century. He notes:

On the foundations of the city house of Robert Clive and Philip Francis
loomed the Royal Exchange, which housed the Bengal Chamber of
Commerce, the most powerful European business federation in the country.
Opposite it stood the Chartered Bank Building, from where operated Bird
and Heilgers which, along with Andrew Yule, was one of the two biggest
managing agencies in the region. Duncan Brothers had moved into its
impressive Victorian styled headquarters in 1915; cheek-by-jowl stood the
Balmer Lawrie House while a little further down, near the General Post
Office, was the McLeod House. Architects had been commissioned to build
two huge offices at Fairlie Place, one for Mackinnon Mackenzie and the
other for Kilburn and Company. And all these offices nestled together in
and around Dalhousie Square under the protective umbrella of the Writers’
Building, the seat of the Government of the Presidency of Bengal.

The indigenous business quarter was not far off:

North of Dalhousie Square, the area delineated by Brabourne Road, Central

Avenue and Harrison Road was, and is, called Burrabazar. This was the
domain of the Marwaris, whose forefathers had migrated from Rajasthan
to do commerce and money-lending in the prosperous eastern region of
India. No European sahib or memsahib entered this area and, in almost all
aspects, Burrabazar was the antithesis of Dalhousie Square. In the place of
well laid-out road were filthy, crooked by-lanes and alleys; instead of palatial
offices there were small, holes-in-the-wall gaddis where the Marwaris
conducted business worth millions of rupees in hard cash or against bills
of exchanges (hundis) taken out from strong boxes; instead of maintaining
audited accounts, the Marwaris made single entries in huge red cloth-bound
ledgers which were undecipherable by anyone other than the family.31
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 639

Goswami believes that the growth of the managing agencies in

India was quite fortuitous, and it did not follow any premeditated
grand design. They emerged and prospered ‘in response to a
remarkably rapid and sustained growth in hitherto unknown business
opportunities such as manufacture and export of gunny bags and
cloth, creation of plantations for burgeoning tea-drinking population
in Britain and the rest of Europe, and mining coal for railways,
factories and the new steam-based world of shipping.’32 Under this
new system, one managing agency firm (a partnership or closely
held private limited company) with its headquarters in Calcutta (or
Bombay, Madras or London) would hold a contract for managing
several companies simultaneously, leveraging ‘its connections and
entrepreneurial reputation to float different businesses across India—
jute, coal, cotton, railway, banking, insurance, sugar, engineering
and other companies.’33 Goswami makes the distinction between an
agency house and a managing agency in these words:

The former ran sundry businesses as partnerships purely based on agency

commissions. The latter went far beyond that by becoming the venture
capitalists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, starting a slew
of relatively modern enterprises that often required sizeable fixed capital
outlays, offering shares in these enterprises to a wide body of native Indian
and expatriate investors, securing profitable contracts to manage these
businesses and creating appropriate organizational structures to oversee a
wide horizontal portfolio of both interlocking and dissimilar businesses.34

The British managing agencies focused mainly on business

opportunities within eastern India and less on the traditional export-
import trade of the agency houses of the previous decades. The crisis
of 1830–3 and the Charter Act of 1833 paved the way for the gradual
transition from the agency houses to the managing agency system.
Amales Tripathi has argued that:

The Charter of 1833  .  .  .  is important not for its direct but for its indirect
consequences. By ending the remittance trade and the China monopoly of
the Company, it opened India to the full impact of the Industrial Revolution.
The free traders, now more sure of obtaining profitable returns either from
India or circuitously through China, could import more and more of British
manufactures.35
640 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The new managing agencies did not depend on the savings of the
Company’s servants, loans from indigenous bankers, or the limited
scope offered by a single chartered bank. They could prosper on
the back of the free import of surplus capital from England and on
larger banking facilities. The managing agencies grew in leaps and
bounds with the boom in jute manufacturing, tea plantations, and
collieries from the mid-1870s, which lasted almost till the end of
1929. The distinctive feature of these managing agencies was that
‘all of them focused on horizontal control of many enterprises across
different, often unrelated, industries and trades. Horizontal control
sharply contrasts with growth through vertical integration, where a
firm incorporates, lists, controls and runs the businesses of a major
industry through forward and backward linkages across the entire
production and value chain.’36 Goswami cites two plausible reasons
for this emphasis on horizontal control. First, with numerous options
of making a profit from diverse industries which did not require
significant technical or managerial skills, the companies simply
wanted to make as much as possible from a variety of business
lines. Secondly, a lateral spread reduces the risk associated with any
particular venture.37
From the second half of the nineteenth century, Calcutta slowly
became a European city, in terms of commercial enterprises and
legally registered firms. The indigo crisis of 1846–7 was a watershed
for the expatriate enterprises in Bengal. The ‘Blue Mutiny’ of 1859–60
revealed that foreign merchants had little hold over the peasants in
the countryside. Also, since English laws were mainly restricted to
the port cities, it was difficult to follow the legal route to get a reprisal
for absconding cultivators, and the use of political power only ended
up embarrassing the state.38 The events of the mid-century convinced
the Europeans that it was not prudent to venture into the interiors. As
Tirthankar Roy mentions, ‘there were no commercial lex loci outside
the port city. The message was clear—leave inland trade to Indians.’39
The foreign firms that started operating in Calcutta from the 1850s
have been described by Roy as ‘born-industrial’, with few becoming
industrial after a short life in trade. He identifies Andrew Yule (tea,
jute, and coal), McLeod Russell (tea), Balmer Lawrie (engineering and
coal), Octavius Steel (tea, coal, railways, and limestone), Williamson
Magor (tea and inland navigation), Macneill and Barry (tea and
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 641

jute) as examples of these new firms.40 These firms had no roots

in Asian trade. Whereas, agency houses like Gillanders Arbuthnot
and Company and Jardine Skinner could successfully transform
themselves into managing agencies by expanding in scale and areas
of business. One of the famous firms turning from a trading career
to industrial one was exemplified by the Bird Brothers. They started
out as contractors for various government and private projects, like
supplying indentured labour and loading and unloading of goods
between boats and trains. In the 1870s, they moved to change their
operations by acquiring Oriental Jute Company’s assets, and taking
over the McAllister managing agency.41
An interesting group of traders who did not join the industry,
but was extremely important were the produce brokers (two other
such groups were the commodity exporters and the manufactured
goods exporters). The produce brokers of Calcutta were not agents of
a principal—whether buyers or the planters. They were not traders.
Rather, as Roy mentions:

[t]hey were organizers of produce auctions on behalf of the planters and a

guarantor of quality and fair packaging to the buyers. They were a spoke
in the wheel of commerce. The auction trade, first in indigo and then in
tea, continued until the mid-twentieth century.  .  .  . The indigo trading
season started in November when planters sent samples to the Calcutta
warehouse of the firm. Warehouses then filled up, and between December
and mid-January several auctions were held every week. The auction process
started at 6 a.m. (best time for ascertaining color) when the buyers would
follow the auctioneer from one warehouse to another, stopping on the way
for breakfast with brandy on the firm’s account. Buyers were the agents of
foreign import firms. By February, the season was over.42

In Calcutta, the rise of the jute industry in the second half of

the nineteenth century directly aided the managing agencies to
establish themselves on strong footing. Calcutta had a good port and
adequate barge facilities could be provided for the mills opened along
the Hooghly. Availability of cheap labour and rich Indians wanting
to invest money in ‘safe’ managing agencies fostered the industry
rapidly. In 1855, the first mill was set up at Rishra, on the right bank
of the river. Within twenty years, the number stood at 18, which
further rose to 35 by the turn of the century.43 As Goswami mentions,
642 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

‘Within twenty-five years, the industry had grown to become the

second largest modern factory-based sector in colonial India, the
country’s most significant hard currency earner, and an essential to
the economics of the Presidency of Bengal.’44
The dominance of the British managing agencies meant an end
to the era of partnership. There was a ‘clear-cut racial division of
economic space’ now.45 Indian businessmen had to leave the export
trade and focus inland. They provided the crucial link between the
inland producers and markets, and the foreign firms based in the
port cities.
They had formed wider connections in the inland trade and banking in the
course of feeding the long-distance import-export lines.  .  .  . While firms like
those of Tagore and Jeejeebhoy declined, the Gujarati and Marwari bankers
and merchants operating inland survived by virtue of their wide-ranging
credit and marketing operations along the routes running from the inland
produce marts to the ports, and between the inland market towns.46

This segregation also meant creation of two distinct spaces of

economic activities—the modern industry-based space dominated
by the European corporations and banks, and the sprawling world
of the bazaar. However, operations in this bazaar economy enabled
the merchants to accumulate capital and forge important connections
which would prove extremely crucial when they entered the modern
industrial sector during the second decade of the twentieth century.
In case of Calcutta, the Marwaris played this role by carving a niche
for themselves, not only in the economic sector, but also in the
morphology of the city, with their mansions and offices in the district
of Burrabazar.
Community and Capital:
The Marwaris in Calcutta
In Calcutta, the Marwaris started off as intermediaries for the
agency houses. They slowly created a space of their own as banians
in these houses, alongside the Bengalis. They also participated in
the trade of raw jute. Thomas Timberg identifies three types of
Marwari firms: ‘First, the Great Firms, the large state bankers and
long-distance traders who had all along been active in long-distance
trade  .  .  .  second, formal banians or guaranteed brokers to the
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 643

large foreign firms. Third, firms which participated in and finally

dominated the dynamic wholesale and higher level futures and ready
markets for shares and commodities, as traders and speculators.’47
The networks of the Great Firms facilitated the migration of the
community to different parts of India. These firms, by the first half of
the nineteenth century, had already established branches in Calcutta,
and by the second half, they (especially the Shekhawati Marwaris)
became the primary banians for the foreign firms, controlling their
supply chains and playing a crucial role in developing the stock,
commodity and other speculative markets. The branches of the firms
helped in fostering a community of individuals who could be relied on
for banking, insurance and, most importantly, business intelligence.
Timberg writes, ‘Community banks provided accommodation
for goods in transit and remittance facilities. Communal customs
provided for apprenticeships in which youngsters could learn the
techniques of business, and profit-sharing schemes by which they
could accumulate enough capital to start their own enterprises.’48
In the early twentieth century, there were two charitable messes for
Marwaris working in Calcutta, run by Nathuram Saraf of Mandwa
(the first Marwari banian of Calcutta) and Surajmal Jhunjhunwala
of Chirawa, two towns of Shekhawati region, from where many
successful businessmen originally hailed. Besides providing food and
accommodation, the messes acted as informal training schools and
networking opportunities for newly-arrived Marwari businessmen
in the city.49
Apart from the Great Firms, the Marwaris were also the local
collaborators—the banians—for the foreign firms. By the First World
War, the Calcutta business scene ‘was dominated by a number of
“big banians”.  .  .  . Some of the Great Firms also became banians,
like Tarachand Ghanshyamdas for Shaw Wallace and Burmah
Oil.’50 But there were others who did not descend from the Great
Firms. Ramdutt Goenka was initially the chief clerk for Sevaram
Ramrikhdas, the banian to Kinsell and Ghose, before starting his
own banian firm, Ramdutt Ramkissendas, and becoming the broker
to Kettlewell Bullen in 1848. However, as Timberg notes, ‘The newer
banian firm and the old firms were closely linked by commercial and
marital ties.’51 The third group was represented by people and firms
who directly participated in trading. They played a crucial role in
644 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

obtaining raw jute for the foreign mills around Calcutta. They had
the adequate upcountry trading network, with areas of Assam and
northern Bengal, which fed into Calcutta. The famous hessian traders
in Calcutta included the figures of Lakshmi Narain Kanoria, M.D.
Somani, and G.D. Birla.
The area of Burrabazar in Calcutta is traditionally associated with
the Marwari businessmen. A persistent concern of the colonial urban
authorities, the area was antithetical to metropolitan urban vision
in almost every respect. In 1899, Frank G. Clemow and William
C. Hossack completed a health report on Burrabazar titled Report
upon the Sanitary Condition of Ward VII (Burra Bazaar), Calcutta.
They categorically pointed out the unsanitary condition of the place,
with buildings and people jostling with each other. The Calcutta
Improvement Trust (from 1911) also found it difficult to align the
area with modern planning rules. But in these dense surroundings,
the Marwari firms transacted their business with a vast network
stretching the length and breadth of the subcontinent. As Ritu Birla
describes:

Geographically, Burrabazar was a classic South Asian bazaar area,

approximately two square kilometers in size, and structured by narrow
lanes, alleyways crowded market spaces, and roads bustling with people
transporting goods. Architecturally, houses were most often built around
courtyards, with doorways and front rooms leading onto streets. Marwari
homes and places of business overlapped. The agents of the firm would
conduct their business in their offices or gaddis located in front rooms facing
streets, where the firms’ munims or accountants would be found. Shops and
showrooms would also be located at the front, and godowns were situated
either on the other side of the entry way or at a back entrance.52

Thomas Timberg discusses in some detail the physical features

of the base of operation for these firms. He mentions that the room
of business would typically be ‘decked with gaddis, white cotton
cloth-covered mattresses stuffed with cotton or straw and strewn with
business paraphernalia like traditional red cloth-covered ledgers and
cash boxes. “Gaddi” referred both to the mattresses and the rooms
in which they were located, and could be comparable to a king’s
throne.  .  .  . The gaddi was also used for sleeping. Keeping guard of
the gaddi were watchmen or “durwans”.’53
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 645

These dense surroundings also held the speculation markets.

The crucial element that played a significant role in pushing the
Marwaris into industry was speculation or ‘risk management’ during
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Timberg elaborates
the meaning of speculation in these words: ‘Most of the speculation
is constrained both by the narrow limits within which prices are
expected to move and the limited financial capacity of speculators.
Many participants in speculative markets hedge, which means that
they take a position that reduces their risks and uncertainties as
well as their potential profits.  .  .  . A part of the impulse that leads
to speculation is undoubtedly a desire to gamble  .  .  .  but economic
speculation is also pursued as a strategy for risk management for
normal business.  .  .  .’54 In colonial India, the Marwaris were active in
these speculative markets from early on. The authorities were wary
of this practice and tried to put an end to it at various points of time.
Speculation in opium, cotton, jute, or silver was pursued vigorously
in these decades.
One element which gained immense notoriety and public
opprobrium was satta/fatka on rain-gambling. Ritu Birla shows
that from the 1880s to 1920s, a series of regulations were passed in
different provinces of colonial India to curb speculation unrelated
with proper business practices, which was seen as unethical, and, at
times, as a criminal offence. The anxiety of the state was enhanced
by the flourishing of recreational gambling which was not directly
related to market activities. These were mainly ‘associated with
either wagering on chance or with the games that were fixed and
manipulated.’ At the same time, the ‘vernacular capitalists’55 voiced
their opinion ‘to validate their practices and perform respectability.’56
Birla argues that the discussion on rain-gambling in Calcutta centred
round three issues: ‘the question of gambling and public disorder,
the relationship between wagering and market speculation in
general, and the relationship between wagering and indigenous
speculative practices in particular.’57 The first official report of rain-
gambling in Bengal was lodged in 1894, which was also the period
of accelerated Marwari migration to Calcutta. The police found the
activity mostly concentrated in the Burrabazar area with the Marwaris
playing the dominant role. In his report, the Police Commissioner
noted:
646 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Rain gambling was first introduced by the Marwaris about 20 years ago.
They are born gamblers, and are certain to have play and wagering of some
kind or another. It has always been confined to one part of the town, viz.,
to Cotton Street. Up to 1882 or thereabouts, Marwaris who engaged in
rain gambling used to assemble on the street.  .  .  . This led to obstruction
of one of the crowded thoroughfares; so the leading Marwari opened out
premises in that street, No 67, containing a large courtyard, where the
gamblers could assemble.  .  .  .
In former years betting was chiefly confined to Marwaris. Gradually
others have been attracted, and now crowds of all races collect: Europeans,
Arabs, East Indians, West Indians, Native Christians, Jews, Hindus,
Muhammadans, Arabs, native females, and even children.58

The report put much emphasis on the organized nature of the

enterprise. It was also found to be replicating indigenous commercial
practice. The issue soon became a matter of public debate, with
leading newspapers taking sides and questioning government
action as well as the ethical position of the Marwaris. Questions of
respectability, moral degradation and public nuisance triumphed over
business practice. The conclusion was reached easily that there was
little distinction between gambling, wagering, and everyday market
practices for the Marwaris. Reporters went undercover to the dens
of gambling to provide eye-witness account of the whole procedure.
The rules of Marwari business were found to be flowing smoothly
into gambling conventions. Custom, shared (and prior) knowledge
of known faces, access to credit reserves underlined how community
ties might influence the outcome. The investigation easily slid from
unearthing betting practices to a discussion of the community. As
Birla says, ‘In Bombay, the discourse on rain betting had provoked
a discussion primarily about the relationship between gamble and
the just trade; in Calcutta, however, this debate was supplemented
by a concern over community as the mechanism of business.’59 In
fact, this anthropology of the business community left a trace in the
archive to help the latter-day historian to portray a vivid description
of the setting of the practice:

In Calcutta and elsewhere, speculation markets were held in places called

baras. These were closed courtyards or alleyways, which could be entered
through guarded doorways that opened onto streets. Inside, the baras
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 647

were lined with small stalls and could be as rowdy as the floor of any
officially organized commodities exchange. Marwari agents sat cross-
legged on cushions negotiating deals, while chaprasis (runners) carried
sales information between them. The center of Burrabazar was without
doubt the Aphin Chowrasta, or the “Opium Crossing”: at the intersection of
Cotton and Mullick streets, which by the late 1890s had become the center
of speculation in cotton and opium particularly but which also included
baras for all other major commodities.60

The Bengal Legislative Council introduced the anti-rain-gambling

bill on 20 March 1897. Its focus was solely on curbing a public
disorder, stopping a private recreation from becoming a public
nuisance. The government carefully side-stepped the contentious
issues regarding the definition of gaming and wagering, thus evading
a moral debate. The proposed ‘bill deployed the categories of public
and private to enforce security.’ The Marwari community did not
take this nicely and organized public meetings to uphold community
status as respectable businessmen. However, on 3 April, the Bengal
Rain-Gambling Act was passed before the onset of the next monsoon.
Protest letters from leading Marwari people of the city did not have
any effect to revert the bill. The controversy, in the end, helped to
strengthen a sense of community among the migrant traders.
But more than rain-gambling, fatka in jute proved to be a game-
changer for Marwari businessmen of the city. Speculation and hedging
in raw jute and gunny started in 1905–6 and became wildly popular
within a few years because the minimum unit of transaction was
kept quite low at 5 bales, or 25 maunds. The British mill owners were
almost clueless in this new world of transactions while the Marwaris
accumulated a huge fortune by dominating the speculation market,
‘which became a permanent feature of both jute and gunny trade.’61
The ‘whites only’ enclave of industry suddenly had new entrants
waiting at the door. The first major change occurred after the First
World War with G.D. Birla’s foray into manufacturing jute, rather than
being content with issues of supply and distribution only. The huge
war-time profit gave him the necessary fillip to establish his jute mill.
Notwithstanding fierce opposition from the British firm he stood his
ground, and by 1920, he set up Birla Jute with 392 looms under the
managing agency of Birla Brothers at 7, Royal Exchange, Calcutta.62
Sarupchand Hukumchand followed suit with his mill at Halisahar,
648 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

north of Calcutta. The breach in the racial barrier of industrial sector

of eastern India was thus accomplished. The story of consolidation
of Indian industrialists, however, is beyond the scope of this chapter.

Infrastructure for Commerce:

The Calcutta Port Complex
The growth of trade and industry around Calcutta was facilitated
by certain crucial infrastructural development.63 The Calcutta port
played a huge role in aiding the commercial sector of the city. From
the latter part of the nineteenth century, as noted, industrial growth
in India and a massive increase in import/export trade necessitated
rapid development of port facilities in Calcutta. While sharing the
major percentage of export trade in India during the early half of
the twentieth century, the Calcutta port also emerged as a crucial
entry-point for goods destined for the eastern and northern provinces
of the subcontinent. Excellent transport routes, especially railways,
acted as a catalyst for trading activities and, despite its unfavourable
geographical features, the Calcutta port became the leading centre of
trade and commerce for the colonial state in India. After the Calcutta
Port Trust was officially established in 1870, it made rapid progress in
building additional jetties, and streamlining dock logistics and cargo
handling. These were essential to sustain the commercial metropolis.
The capacity of the docks was stretched to twenty-seven berths by the
end of the nineteenth century, of which seventeen were devoted to
export trade. Many additions to the existing facilities were proposed
during the turn of the century, but they were stalled at the onset of
the First World War. In the post-war era, ‘[i]mprovement in trade
conditions was painfully slow but the growth of trade was undisputed.
In 1924–25 it was officially noted that the port was slowly regaining
the old pre-war figures of general import traffic while it exceeded
these figures in the case of general export.’64 This ebb and flow of
trading activities, connected with the general political and economic
condition of India as a colony of the British Empire, shaped the ways
in which the port complex developed in Calcutta.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the massive increase in trade
indicated that more storage space or warehouses were required
in the port area of Calcutta. The building of the warehouses and
the negotiations around them reveal crucial issues regarding the
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 649

contestations among the business community and the government.

Between the 1850s and 1880s, the trade in jute, cotton and tea
increased rapidly and Calcutta became the main entry point for
imports of cotton piece goods. From the port, these were distributed
throughout the provinces of Assam, Bengal, parts of northern and
central India.65 Due to the increase in tea exports during the 1870s,
the Port Commissioners decided to build a tea warehouse on Strand
Bank. Initially, the Bengal Chamber of Commerce criticized the step
as it believed that the taking up of land on the Strand would interfere
with private enterprises. Even so, while debate regarding the location
of the warehouse ensued, the Commissioners went ahead with other
issues associated with the building of the warehouse. In 1876, they
asked all the mercantile firms who were involved in the tea trade to
get back to them about designs for a suitable building and twenty-two
firms responded positively to the entire scheme. A sub-committee,
which was formed to oversee construction of the warehouse, met
three times to discuss the building-plans, the mode of working and
the scale of charges. A circular was issued with the proposed scale
of charges, and the Commissioners asked the firms whether they
would still be interested in the trade if the charges were levied in
the warehouse. While the tea-brokers remained adverse to the entire
scheme from the outset, the firms were more or less in favour of the
project going ahead.66 The tea warehouse at the Armenian Ghat,
situated at the north of the Fort William along the Strand Road, was
ultimately made available from 1887.
The Port Trust from its inception had to deal with the issue of
private property and its acquisition. The facilitation of maritime
activities involved taking up extensive swathes of land along the
river banks and, with this, the port story slowly moves into the larger
narrative of urban governance. With the formation of the Port Trust,
many new warehouses were proposed. A jute warehouse was planned
on a portion of Strand Bank land between Ahiritolla Ghat and the
Mint in 1872. The advantages of this particular site were eloquently
articulated by the Commissioners of the Trust to the justices of the
town and the government. The port authorities wrote:
The lands are separated from the town by the Strand Road, and are thus so
isolated as to ensure comparative safety to the town buildings in the event of
fire originating in the proposed warehouses. Having a river frontage, and on
the land side the tramway, when [it] is to be constructed in connection with
650 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the whole municipal system and with the Eastern Bengal Railway, there is
every facility for the easy conveyance to the site of all raw material brought
to Calcutta either by the Eastern Bengal Railway or by river steamers and
flats, and for removal of exports when prepared and ready for shipment
by the tramway, which will be in direct communication with the jetties.67

The reasons were compelling enough and the plan was

sanctioned by the government. A loan of Rs.2 lakh was granted
to the Commissioners to construct the warehouse. One finds here
a description of a complex system of communication with water,
roadways, tramlines, and the railways. While the road would cordon
off the site from causing damage to the town in case of an accident,
the place was also situated favourably to connect with ‘the whole
municipal system’ and beyond. The Strand occupied a crucial location
in the city, connecting as well as separating the river and the city, the
worldwide business of empire, and the everyday rituals of the pious
population in the holy river.
However, it was not just accommodation at the port that
caused a problem; rather, the dues charged on merchandise also
became a crucial factor for trading activities of a port. In 1885,
various merchants, mill owners, and jute balers wrote a letter to the
Lt. Governor of Bengal regarding the bill in the Bengal Council
that gave the charge to the Port Commissioners to build docks at
Kidderpore and to raise loans for that purpose. They thought that
at present it was not necessary and they pointed out that ‘the export
trade of Calcutta has lately shown unmistakable signs of falling off,
and that what is required at present is not so much additional docks
and jetties, as that the charges of the Port should be decreased to
enable Calcutta to hold its own against Bombay and Sindh’.68 The
merchants noted that considerable additions were made at the Howrah
terminus of the East Indian Railway which enhanced the prospects
of export trade enormously and that increased accommodation in
the port would only be needed if export trade grew. But with the
proposed dues to be levied in the new dock, the merchants believed
that, instead of facilitating the growth of trade, the dues would in
effect render useless any additional space as the cost of export would
increase enormously. The chief items of export at that point of time
were jute, wheat, rice, gunny bags, and oilseeds. In the case of jute,
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 651

the merchants mentioned that ‘the present practice [was] for the raw
fibre to be pressed into bales, at different press houses on the river
bank, and for it then to be loaded into cargo boats, and sent alongside
the export ship, at a cost of from 10 annas to Re. 1 per ton.’69 They
feared that this system would be under threat when the new dock with
increased dues started functioning and argued that, ‘As the dock dues
proposed to be levied on this article are Re. 1 per ton, it is obvious
that so far from being a boon, the docks will increase the charges on
this fibre.’ Trade in gunnies and rice would also face similar problem.
For these merchants and jute-balers, a reduction in the charges was
more desirable than any increase in facilities. In their opinion, the
trade handled at the port did not warrant any extension at that point
of time, rather ‘the building of a dock at an enormous expense will
be a great burden on the trade of Calcutta, because it has never been
shown that a dock will be the means of either reducing charges or
facilitating dispatch.’
Notwithstanding such objections from a section of the trading
community, the port authorities always looked to acquire more space
for various activities. In 1881, the Port Commissioners proposed to
purchase the property belonging to the Calcutta Docking Company,
which was situated on the Howrah foreshore, north of the Hooghly
Bridge. The Government of India was also keen on the project as
it needed a space to store materials for the railways. The project
did not materialize as the company directors, on behalf of the
shareholders, did not accept the amount of Rs.450,000 offered by
the Commissioners. The government also did not pursue the matter.
But the Commissioners decided to take the matter up again due to
the great inconvenience in carrying out the docking and repairs of
several vessels belonging to the Port Trust. Apart from ships and
vessels, there were large quantities of materials belonging to several
departments that lay scattered in various locations of the port. The
Calcutta Docking Company quoted a price of Rs.575,000 for the land.
The Port Trust made an offer of Rs.500,000 and the parties ultimately
settled for Rs.525,000.70
In 1912, the government approved the building of a two-storey
warehouse on the foreshore of river Hooghly, north of the Howrah
Bridge, for the convenience of the inland vessels companies. A
revision of the earlier plan was done and soon it was found that,
652 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

with minor alteration in the alignment of the proposed warehouse,

it could be built on a larger area. While the changed location would
facilitate better connectivity with the railway lines, it would also mean
an increase in the budget. By this time, however, the port of Calcutta
had gained immense importance in the imperial trade network and
so the government did not hesitate to sanction the extra amount
required for building the larger warehouse on the other side of the
bank in Howrah.71
Along with storage facilities, one other major area of interest
was to create a proper channel of transport to move goods to and
from the dock area. The railways played a crucial role in connecting
Calcutta with other parts of the province and country and Calcutta
was served by the East India Railway, the Bengal-Nagpur Railways,
and the Eastern Bengal Railways. The development of the railways
facilitated the port’s activities and the major terminals were at Sealdah
(Eastern Bengal Railway) on the east of the river on Calcutta side,
and the other was on the west at Howrah. In the 1880s, a bridge was
proposed to be constructed over the Hooghly. The Lt. Governor of
Bengal in 1883 noted that:
The future developments of trade which the continual progress of railways
encourages are incalculable; and when the bridge over the Hooghly is
finished, and direct communications with Calcutta have been established
from the producing districts of the North-Western Provinces, and the
tracts of country served by the Northern Bengal, the Central Bengal, and
the contemplated line from Seetarampore to the Central Provinces, with
their connected branches, the space at present at the disposal of the Port
Commissioners seems to me to be utterly inadequate.72

While major items like rice, coal, and jute were transported
to other parts of the subcontinent from the port via the railways,
in the immediate vicinity of the port, the roads and carriers were
unsuitable for the handling of a large bulk of cargo. To address this,
the Port Trust began constructing a tramway along the Strand. The
tramway work progressed rapidly with materials being imported
from England. Various new plans were proposed; some were followed
while negotiations on ground forced a few changes and alterations.
For instance, the Commissioners noted in 1877 that ‘the [port] traffic
passes over the municipal line of railway from Sealdah to Bagh
Bazar; but this is only a temporary arrangement, the Commissioners
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 653

having  .  .  .  undertaken to construct a bridge across the entrance to

the Chitpore Canal, and so carry their line of tramway direct into
the Eastern Bengal Railway goods terminus at Chitpore.’73 To use the
municipal line the port authorities had to enter into an agreement
with the Town Commissioners and the terms of the agreement
included the following:
1. That the Port Commissioners shall pay eight annas per wagon for
every wagon that passes over the municipal line, either way, full
or empty;
2. That the Port Commissioners shall have free use of the line for six
hours daily, from 7 to 10 a.m. in the morning and 3 to 6 p.m. in
the afternoon;
3. That the Port Commissioners shall pay the cost of keeping that
portion of the municipal line over which the trains run in repair;
4. That either the Town or Port Commissioners shall have the option
of terminating the arrangement by giving one month’s notice at the
end of each year after the second year;
5. That this arrangement shall be binding on both parties for two
years certain.74

After chalking out this arrangement with the railways and the
town authorities, the port tramway was inaugurated on 22 November
1876. The tram lines soon became profitable. Between 1880–1 and
1882–3, there was an increase of almost Rs.15,000 in tramway
receipts.75 Also, the increase in traffic necessitated opening up a
third line (with already two lines for up and down traffic inaugurated
in 1881) between Nimtollah Ghat and Ruthghat within a year of
its functioning. The ways in which the roads and tramways were
created give us a glimpse of the manner in which the port area was
extended and integrated with the rest of the city, the difficulties that
arose regarding land or finance, the negotiations that ensued between
various branches of the government, and the general implications
of ongoing expansion for the trading activities of the Calcutta port.

Conclusion
In an interesting article, Stephen Hornsby shows the gradual
formation of the mercantile city in Calcutta from the late eighteenth
century, with specialized land-use for business, retail and service
sectors, starting from the edge of the river to the Central Business
654 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

District.76 Specific ethnic zones—as articulated by Pradip Sinha in

his model of white-grey-black towns—with different mercantile
communities jostling in the intermediate zone between the northern
indigenous quarter and the southern white enclave were present in
Calcutta from the eighteenth century.77 These patterns changed over
time with modern industrial sector and the large presence of Marwari
trading community from the latter half of the nineteenth century.
During the course of the century, the business scene in Calcutta
changed with gradual consolidation of foreign power and the eclipse
of Bengali entrepreneurs. The mid-century commercial crisis has also
been seen as a ‘crisis of Bengali liberalism’, whereby the reformist zeal
of the initial decades got a rude shock with the advent of free trade
imperialism.78 Bengali capital sought the relative safety of landed
estates leaving the field to the British and Marwaris. The Bengali
middle-class veered towards service giving much import to education,
knowledge, and genteel culture as the vehicle of respectability.79 In
the commercial sector, the British-controlled firms established a
monopoly in industrial production leaving the inland trading to
the Marwaris. The latter consolidated themselves in the world of
the bazaar economy with their own methods and ways of business
transactions and community rules. These ‘vernacular capitalists’
posed serious challenge to the modern industrial organization as
was evidenced with the episodes of fatka or future trading in various
sectors. The racial division in the industrial sector of eastern India
slowly started to change in the post-First World War period with
Marwari inroads in jute industry as mill-owners.

Notes
1. P.J. Marshall, ‘Private British Investment in Eighteenth-Century Bengal’,
first published in Bengal Past and Present, vol. LXXXVI, 1967, pp. 52–67;
reprinted in P.J. Marshall, Trade and Conquest: Studies on the Rise of
British Dominance in India, Variorum, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1993. Marshall
views in this policy of encouraging private investments, a mix of motives
characteristic of Hastings’ administration, where ‘indulgence to favoured
individuals was combined with a genuine desire to diversify the economy
of Bengal as widely as possible’, p. 56.
2. Blair B. Kling, Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age
of Enterprise in Eastern India, 1980; repr., Calcutta: Firma KLM, 2002,
p. 54.
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 655
3. Quoted in Rajat Kanta Ray, ed., ‘Introduction’, in Entrepreneurship and
Industry in India: 1800–1947, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992,
p. 19.
4. Dwijendra Tripathi and Jyoti Jumani, The Concise Oxford History of Indian
Business, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 22.
5. Kling, Partner in Empire, p. 54.
6. Amales Tripathi, Trade and Finance in the Bengal Presidency, 1793–1833,
Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1979, p. vii.
7. Ibid., p. vi.
8. Ibid., p. viii.
9. Kling, Partner in Empire, p. 55.
10. Tripathi, Trade and Finance, chap. 5; also, for an excellent study of one of the
great agency houses, John Palmer and Co., and its spectacular demise, see,
Anthony Webster, The Richest East India Merchant: The Life and Business
of John Palmer of Calcutta, 1767–1836, New Delhi: Viva, 2009.
11. Kling, Partner in Empire, p. 56.
12. On Ghosal and ‘banian’, see, P.J. Marshall, ‘Masters and Banians in
Eighteenth-Century Calcutta’, first published in Blair B. Kling and M.N.
Pearson, eds., The Age of Partnership: Europeans in Asia before Dominion,
Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1979, pp. 191–213; reprinted in P.J.
Marshall, Trade and Conquest: Studies on the Rise of British Dominance
in India, Variorum, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1993; and Shubhra Chakrabarti,
‘Collaboration and Resistance: Bengal Merchants and English East India
Company, 1757–1833’, Studies in History, vol. 10, no. 1, 1994.
13. For a brief history of the Ghosal family, see, Ujjayan Bhattacharya, ‘Worthies
and the Worth of their Land: Revenue Farmers and the Company’s State in
Early Colonial Bengal’, in Rethinking a Millennium: Perspectives on Indian
History from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Century: Essays for Harbans
Mukhia, ed. Rajat Datta, New Delhi: Aakar, 2008, pp. 315–41. The Ghosals
were collaborators and rural estate managers for the Company. They started
out as salt contractors under the monopoly of the Nizamat, but then
diversified their business as banians of important Company officials and
by acquisition of vast landed properties, ‘which they secured not through
mere investment, but through their operation as revenue managers.’; ibid.,
p. 325. Pradip Sinha marks families like the Ghosals as the ‘fortune-makers
and family-founders’ in early Calcutta; see, Pradip Sinha, Calcutta in Urban
History, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1978.
14. Ray, ‘Introduction’, p. 20.
15. Ibid., p. 22.
16. Narendra Krishna Sinha, ‘Indian Business Enterprise: Its Failure in Calcutta
(1800–1848)’, in Entrepreneurship and Industry in India: 1800–1947, ed.
Rajat Kanta Ray, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 70–82.
656 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
17. Kling, Partner in Empire, p. 68.
18. Ibid.
19. Webster, Richest East India Merchant.
20. Kling, Partner in Empire, p. 50.
21. Kissory Chand Mittra, Memoirs of Dwarkanath Tagore, Calcutta, 1870,
pp. 53–4; cited in Kling, Partner in Empire, p. 76.
22. Kling, Partner in Empire, p. 77.
23. Ibid., p. 82.
24. Ibid., p. 89.
25. Ray, ‘Introduction’, p. 22.
26. Kling, Partner in Empire, p. 198.
27. Quoted in Ibid., p. 223.
28. Tirthankar Roy, ‘Trading Firms in Colonial India’, Business History Review,
vol. 88, Spring 2014, p. 27.
29. Webster, Richest East India Merchant, p. 2.
30. Ray, ‘Introduction’, pp. 25–6.
31. Omkar Goswami, ‘Then Came the Marwaris: Some aspects of the changes
in the pattern of industrial control in Eastern India’, The Indian Economic
and Social History Review, vol. 22, no. 3, 1985, pp. 225–6.
32. Omkar Goswami, Goras and Desis: Managing Agencies and the Making of
Corporate India, New Delhi: Penguin, 2016, p. 59.
33. Ibid., p. 9.
34. Ibid., p. 14.
35. Tripathi, Trade and Finance, p. 204.
36. Goswami, Goras and Desis, p. 63.
37. Ibid., p. 64.
38. Roy, ‘Trading Firms in Colonial India’, p. 28.
39. Ibid., p. 29.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., p. 30.
42. Ibid., p. 34.
43. Goswami, Goras and Desis, p. 72.
44. Ibid., p. 73.
45. Ray, ‘Introduction’, p. 29.
46. Ibid.
47. Thomas A. Timberg, The Marwaris: From Jagat Seth to the Birlas, New
Delhi: Penguin, 2014, p. 31. Also, see Thomas A. Timberg, ‘Three Types
of Marwari Firms’, in Entrepreneurship and Industry in India: 1800–1947,
ed. Rajat Kanta Ray, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992.
48. Timberg, The Marwaris, p. 33.
49. Ibid., p. 33.
50. Ibid., p. 54.
 Sengupta: Development of Calcutta 657
51. Ibid., p. 54.
52. Ritu Birla, Stages of Capital: Law, Culture, and Market Governance in Late
Colonial India, New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2011, p. 160.
53. Timberg, The Marwaris, pp. 41–2.
54. Ibid., p. 62.
55. Ritu Birla describes the group as ‘insiders in the colonial economy but
outsiders to modern market ethics’; see, Birla, Stages of Capital, p. 3.
56. Ibid., p. 145.
57. Ibid., p. 160. Anne Hardgrove gives a succinct summary of the process.
She writes,
The basics of rain gambling at the turn of the century were as follows.
Bets on the rainfall were registered during three periods during the day,
from 5 A.M. to 9 A.M. or noon; from noon to 9 P.M., and sometimes
until midnight. During the rain gambling season, corresponding with the
monsoon rains, the courtyard at No. 67 Cotton Street was full of dozens
of people all negotiating with the Marwari financed brokers who handled
bets on how much rain would fall during a certain period of time and
when.  .  .  . The broker only managed the placing of bets, and the Marwari
financier was personally responsible for paying them off if the bets were
won. The person financially guaranteeing the operation and responsible
for paying off the bets, again through the broker, was generally a Marwari
trader who operated on a system of credit offered by the broker.
See, Anne Hardgrove, Community and Public Culture: The Marwaris in
Calcutta, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 127–8.
58. Quoted in Birla, Stages of Capital, p. 161.
59. Ibid., p. 166.
60. Ibid., pp. 160–1.
61. Goswami, Goras and Desis, p. 81.
62. Ibid., p. 83.
63. This section is based on Kaustubh Mani Sengupta, ‘The Port of Calcutta
in the Imperial Network of South and South-East Asia, 1870s–1950s’, in
Logistical Asia: The Labour of Making a World Region, ed. Brett Neilson et
al., Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 23–46.
64. Nilmani Mukherjee, The Port of Calcutta: A Short History, Calcutta:
Commissioners for the Port of Calcutta, 1968, p. 125.
65. Arun Bandyopadhyay, ‘Realms of Imperialism’, in Port of Calcutta:
125 Years, 1870–1995, Commemorative Volume, ed. S.C. Chakraborty,
Calcutta: Calcutta Port Trust, 1995, p. 20.
66. Administration Report of Port Commissioners 1877, Calcutta, p. 31.
67. National Archives of India [NAI] 1873, Financial Dept, File Nos. 55–57.
68. NAI 1885, Public Works Dept, File Nos. 1–4.
658 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
69. NAI 1885, Public Works Dept, File Nos. 1–4.
70. NAI 1882, Dept of Commerce and Industry, File Nos. 1516–18.
71. NAI 1912, Dept of Commerce and Industry, File Nos. 8–9.
72. Report Connected with the Project for the Construction of Docks at Calcutta,
1885, p. 158.
73. Administration Report of Port Commissioners for 1876–77, 1877, p. 3.
74. Ibid.
75. P. Banerjee, Calcutta and Its Hinterland, Calcutta: Progressive, 1975, p. 41.
76. Stephen Hornsby, ‘Discovering the Mercantile City in South Asia: The
Example of Early Nineteenth-century Calcutta’, Journal of Historical
Geography, vol. 23, no. 2, 1997, pp. 135–50.
77. Sinha, Calcutta in Urban History.
78. Andrew Sartori, Bengal in Global Concept History: Culturalism in the Age
of Capital, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
79. Tithi Bhattacharya, The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education, and the
Colonial Intellectual in Bengal (1848–1885), New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2005.
 18
Human-Tiger Conflict in the
Forests of Bengal
A Case Study of the Sundarbans

Ranjan Chakrabarti

T
he aim of the present chapter is simple. It gives a rounded,
historicized account of the human-tiger conflict in the
Sundarbans, the mangrove tiger land in the Bengal delta,
and thereby focuses on a hitherto neglected environmental aspect of
the history of Bengal in general and the history of forests and wildlife
of Bengal in particular.
The Sundarbans in Bengal had all the plus points to make it
the most ideal setting for the risk-loving, ‘super-masculine’ White
hunter. This drowned land, full of tigers, could offer the right sport
to the White shikari, who had a rifle on his shoulder, and a compass
in his pocket. The imperial hunting map of India included the great
dry sal forests of the Central Provinces, the Dooars, the foothills of
the Himalayas, and the wooded terrain of the Nilgiris in the south.
In Bengal, apart from the Sundarbans (which, in the present day,
includes areas scattered over both West Bengal and Eastern Bengal
or Bangladesh), extensive, thickly forested tracks with wildlife were
located in the south-western and northern regions, which roughly
correspond to areas within present day West Midnapore, Bankura,

*For a map showing colonial Sundarbans, please refer to Proceedings of the

Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, New Monthly
Series, vol. 13, no. 5, 1891, p. 274; and for a map showing Sundarbans in the
present times, please see http://encarta.msn.com/mapof_10216125/sundarbans.
html, accessed on 25 March 2009.
660 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Purulia, Burdwan, Birbhum, Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Cochbehar, and

a few northern areas of present day Bangladesh.
Colonial intervention in the forests of Bengal was primarily
intended to maximize resource use and thus increase profit. Rational
forest management was then emerging as a trend worldwide, and the
colonial state followed this trend, as it facilitated extraction of revenue
and thus paved the way for the sole exploitation of the same. The
introduction of modern forestry in India was thus primarily aimed
at serving the interest of the ‘self ’, and the intervention in woodland
Bengal needs to be assessed in the light of this quest to exploit and
use the rich treasure trove of the floral and faunal resources of the
country. The appointment of T. Anderson, Superintendent of the
Royal Botanical Garden, Calcutta, as the first Conservator of Forests
in Bengal in August 1864, marked the formal beginning of forest
conservancy in Bengal. To portray the colonial state as legitimate, it
became imperative to introduce a system of direct supervision and
stricter surveillance of both the settled and the wild landscapes. It
has been shown by K. Sivaramakrishnan how sal (Shorea robusta)
came to be introduced, to enhance and ensure the availability of
timber resources, over a vast area of colonial India—stretching
from the eastern end of Assam to the western-most foothills of the
Himalayas; from the lower reaches of Nepal and the Sikkim mountain
regions to the upper elevations of the Gangetic valley; and all over
the undulating landscape of the Chotanagpur plateau, extending
into the central Indian plateau region.1 Sal plantations also came up
in the Kurseong Terai, the largest plantation being at Bamanpokhri,
and other important sal producing blocks were Dalka Jhar, the Sivoke
forest, and the Marjha forest.2 Sal grew best in the Tista and the
Rangit valleys. Besides, teak plantations were also introduced in
the valleys of the Bengal Terai and in Chittagong, as early as 1868,
replacing the existing flora with a commercially valuable species.3
Cinchona and tea plantations came up in the Darjeeling Himalayas,
and tea was also successfully cultivated in the Dooars region. The
natural consequence of the introduction of new plantation was not
only the destruction of the existing flora but also loss of habitat
for the wild animals of this place. For example, the clearing of the
grasslands in Lower Bengal, to extend agricultural land, resulted in
the loss of habitat of the once ubiquitous Bengal tiger. Forced out
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 661

of its abode, it transgressed into the domain of humans, and this,

in turn, intensified the human-tiger conflict. The tiger was not the
only animal to be hounded out of its natural abode; all other animals
suffered a similar fate. It was indeed a peculiar predicament: grass and
bushes needed to be cleared not only to make way for agriculture or
plantation of economically viable trees like the sal, but also to protect
men and their livestock, as well as crops, from the depredations of
tigers, elephants, wild buffaloes, and deer; but this clearance resulted
in habitat loss for the animals who lived in these grasslands, resulting
them to stray into human settlements. The wild frontier was thus
increasingly getting pushed back, and the animals uprooted from
their homes often encroached upon nearby towns and villages, only
to be targeted and slaughtered. This wild frontier was also the colonial
frontier,4 and it was imperative to extend imperial control over this
vast site, a very challenging proposition indeed, but without which
the enterprise of ‘empire building’ would be incomplete. It was here
that the rulers encountered the toughest of all challenges, because
wild India did not conform to the authority of the colonial state.
What ensued thus was a battle for superiority, and though both sides
suffered casualties, the greater loss was incurred by the wild animals
of the country.
Exerting control and establishing command over the flora of
the woodlands were much easier than establishing the same over
the fauna. The wild beasts encountered in this country were so very
different from the ones found in the temperate lands, in terms of
power, ferocity, and deadly demeanour, that they defied the White
man’s perception of the ‘self ’ as invincible, and so was inaugurated
a regime of assault on wild animals, unprecedented in the history of
the country. Not only were the animals sought to be exterminated
by use of sheer force, they were also condemned as vermin, thereby
justifying and legalizing the mayhem unleashed on them. The battle
royal was, however, fought with the Royal Bengal tiger, and it was
as if the White man and the tiger were locked in a conflict to assert
mastery over the wild.5 The imperial power was bent on capturing
the lands by driving out the ‘vermin’ and also extending its control
over the noxious beasts; and the most effective mechanism to achieve
the same was by slaughtering them indiscriminately. In the ensuing
battle, the animal was decimated in such great numbers that voices
662 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

began to be raised by a section of the White men themselves about

the need for its protection.
In the Sundarbans, the tiger had always been at the centre of
economic, social, cultural, and even religious life of the people. This
was the case in the past, and it still is. The people of the Sundarbans
had been considering the tiger as a vermin since times immemorial.
Here, the local jungle deities like Dakshin Roy, the tiger god, and
Banbibi are worshipped by both the Hindus and the Muslims.6 Such
deities had their origin in the ferocity of the big cat. But the policy
of conservation has created the impression among the local people
that there is greater official concern for tigers than for them. During
the Raj, the colonial motive to maximize revenue had pushed the
indigenous people in the face of the tigers. In postcolonial India,
the introduction of Project Tiger has not only transformed the
Sundarbans into a local theatre of a larger global campaign, but has,
in fact, also intensified the tiger-human conflict. Over time, the tiger
became central to the debate on conservation, and thus this local
space changed into a global space under the international campaign
for their protection.
The present chapter is divided into seven separate sections.
The opening section focuses on the problem of human-wildlife
conflict with reference to its historical origins. The second section
presents a brief history of the Sundarbans. In the third section, an
attempt has been made to contextualize the tiger-human conflict in
the Sundarbans by referring to the British perceptions about this
magnificent animal. The fourth section throws some light on the
various historical references to the Bengal tiger in the precolonial
times. The primary thread of the fifth section is the tiger-human
conflict in the Sundarbans in the colonial period. The sixth
section highlights the tiger-human clash in the Sundarbans in the
postcolonial era, with special reference to the consequences of the
Project Tiger. Finally, the closing section has endeavoured to offer
certain concluding observations about the tiger-human conflict in
the Sundarbans.

Human-Wildlife Conflict
Human-wildlife conflict is widespread in today’s South Asia and
the wider world, and is a major conservation issue that is becoming
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 663

increasingly difficult to resolve. A wide array of wildlife species, from

elephants to predatory birds, threatens human lives and livelihood
when they enter human settlements, and are killed by people every
month for this reason. Some of these species are common pests;
but others, which are not, are unfortunately being threatened with
extinction.7 As more and more people crowd into a smaller area of
land, incidences of human-wildlife conflicts continue to increase. For
example, in the forests of northern Bengal, 27 elephants, 3 bisons,
4 leopards, and 1 tiger have been killed in the twelve months between
October 2006 and October 2007.8 Of these, the deaths of elephants
were caused in most cases by speeding trains.
The problem of human-animal conflict is increasingly featuring
in the media and in political as well as academic discussions.
Interestingly, this conflict has a rich history which dates back to the
ancient times. This conflict was an inevitable part of the story of
expansion and development of human civilization, and the invention
of superior technology. Hunting of wild animals was common in the
human society of the past, and it represented a direct conflict between
the human and the non-human world in recorded periods of human
history.9 If we look at the development of the human society, we find
three different typologies in hunting—subsistence hunting, hunting
for defence, and hunting as sport or pleasure. Subsistence hunting
was an important economic activity among primitive men, who
lived primarily on a hunting and gathering economy. Even among
those communities who were peasantized and developed enough for
settled agriculture, hunting offered a subsidiary economic activity.
Even today, many primitive or tribal communities in India still
rest on hunting to a considerable extent. Again, hunting for meat
interestingly coexisted with relatively advanced stages of production,
and to a limited extent, the practice survives even today. Hunting
for defence refers to the killing or trapping of animals (deer, wild
boar, monkey, elephant, bison, tiger, etc.) for the protection of crops
and human lives. This type of hunting, understandably, occupied a
greater part of human activity when larger areas were under forest
cover, and technology, particularly weaponry, was at a primitive
stage. Even in the present times, protection of crops or human lives
against wild animals remains one of the major problems for the
local people and forest officials in parts of India and elsewhere in
South Asia. Hunting as a pleasure or sport acquired importance
664 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

with the advent of relatively advanced stages of civilization (ancient

Greeks and Romans) and continues in some form or other to the
present day, despite the fact that legislators in recent times have been
continuously expanding the frontier of law to ensure conservation
and scientific management of forests and wildlife all over the world.
The idea of hunting as a sport had always served to uphold the status
of the superior classes of the society. In England, for instance, with
the exception of the Cromwellian period, subsistence hunting was
frowned upon, and hunting was viewed as an appropriate activity for
the lower orders, except as auxiliaries in the hunts of the nobility.
The nobles were expected to hunt down animals like wolves, which
attacked the poor villagers’ livestock; and the urge to protect the
lower orders from the beasts characterized the hunting patterns of
the superior classes. European hunters in colonial India too, followed
this metropolitan trend and thus combined hunting for pleasure
and the primitive tradition of hunting in defence. In reality, all the
three types—subsistence hunting, hunting for defence, and hunting
as sport—may overlap or coexist with each other, irrespective of the
various stages of development of productive forces or technology.
In other words, the traditions of subsistence hunting and defence
hunting have survived in some form or the other in the modern
times.10
The structure of human-wildlife conflict has undergone a
qualitative change in the post-Second World War era. Modern
conservationist ideas have done away with (at least theoretically)
subsistence and defence hunting, or hunting for sport, in most
parts of South Asia. Indiscriminate slaughter or lethal control of
animals does not take place in modern times.11 What bothers us
now, however, is not so much the direct killing or lethal control
of animals by humans, but the continuous expansion of human
settlements, industry, and agriculture with the support of ever-
developing technology. This is continuously eating up the habitat of
wild animals, causing food shortage for them or threatening their
lives in various ways. Collisions between elephants and trains, birds
and aircrafts, and deer and automobiles symbolize this fundamental
human-wildlife clash. Large carnivores require large habitats for
their survival, and with the shrinkage of forest areas, their roads
are now crossing with humans more frequently.12 It is against this
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 665

backdrop that the history of the problem of human-tiger conflict in

the Sundarbans has to be understood. Besides this, there are certain
other unique bio-geographic factors behind the human-tiger conflict
in the Sundarbans.

A Brief History of the Sundarbans

The Sundarbans has a unique history, nature, and landscape.13 It is a
marshy region, a terrain where the land–making process has not yet
come to an end. It is a place that had been alternately inhabited and
deserted. It is perhaps the only place on earth that is threatened by
cyclones, tidal waves, lack of fresh water, unfriendly terrain, tigers,
crocodiles, and poisonous snakes—all together. It is a unique tiger
land, where tigers are usually described as confirmed man-eaters.
The Sundarbans is the largest mangrove forest and the only
mangrove tiger land in the world, where the tigers occupy the
pinnacle of both aquatic and terrestrial food web. The area lies to
the south-east of the city of Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta)14 in the
24 Parganas district of West Bengal, and forms part of the Gangetic
delta, which borders the Bay of Bengal. Shared between two
neighbouring countries, Bangladesh and India, the larger part (62 per
cent) of the mangrove ecosystem is situated in the south-west corner
of Bangladesh. The western boundary of the Bangladesh Sundarbans
follows the Harinbhanga–Raimangal–Kalindi river system and joins
the Indian Sundarbans.15 The total land area of the region is 4,143
sq. km. and the remaining area of 1,874 sq. km. is covered in water.16
The Indian Sundarbans is one of the tiger reserves under Project
Tiger, which was launched in 1973 to save tigers from extinction.17
In terms of biodiversity, the Sundarbans differ from the other large
mangrove forests for its extraordinarily diverse wildlife, and has been
recognized as a part of UNESCO’s World Network of International
Biosphere Reserves since 2001. The core area of the Sundarban
National Park has also been designated as a World Heritage site.
The biosphere reserve programme in the Sundarbans originally
started in the early 1970s, and it was set up with the basic objective
of conserving and developing a new knowledge base about the
biodiversity of the region to emphasize that humans are an integral
part of the ecosystem and that local communities should actually
666 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

be integrated with and brought into the orbit of the conservation

programme. This is more necessary in view of the fact that some three
million people live in this biosphere reserve. They depend directly or
indirectly on forest and forest-based resources, since agriculture is not
productive enough due to the saline water of the region. Besides the
production functions of the forest, it also provides natural protection
to life and property of the coastal population in the cyclone–prone
regions of Bangladesh and southern West Bengal.18
Various explanations have been offered about the origin of the
name ‘Sundarbans’ which means beautiful forests.19 It is presumed
that the name has been derived from the sundari trees (Heritiera
littoralis) which grow in this region. The name Sundarbans is of
relatively recent origin. There are number of references to the region
in the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas, and in Hiuen-
Tsang’s (the Chinese traveller who visited India in the seventh century
ad) travel account. In the seventh century, the area probably formed
a part of the land of ‘Samatata’ which is described by Chinese pilgrim
Hiuen-Tsang as a low lying country bordering the sea and rich in
crops.20
In medieval texts, Lower Bengal has been repeatedly described
as Bati or Bhati. In the oral traditions and folk songs too, the entire
landmass spreading from the eastern shores of the Bhagirathi in the
west to Chittagong in the east was referred to as Bangala or Bhati.
‘Bhati haite aila bangal, lamba lamba dari’21 (The Bangal, a resident of
eastern Bengal, with a long beard has arrived from Bhati)—is a folk
song that refers to the area that later came to be called the Sundarbans.
Abul Fazl, in his Akbarnamah, calls this coastline of the Bay of Bengal
bhati, which means a ‘low land overflowed with tide’. It, however, does
not indicate that this tract was originally covered with dense forests.22
Niharranjan Roy, on the other hand, has shown enough evidence to
suggest that many parts of Sundarbans were actually inhabited and
cultivated in medieval Bengal.23 Ralph Fitch, who toured this tract of
the country in 1586, describes it as being fertile, and the houses very
firm and lofty, able to withstand cyclones and storm-tides.24 In his
influential essay on the Sundarbans published in 1875, W.W. Hunter
too opined that there were once widespread human settlements in
different areas of the Sundarbans.25
It is said that the actual ruler of the Sundarbans, towards the end
of the sixteenth century, was Pratapaditya—one of a group of chiefs
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 667

known as Barah Bhuiyas (12 chiefs), who were vassals of the Mughal
emperors. He defied the authority of Emperor Akbar and set up an
independent stronghold in the swampy areas of southern Bengal. The
name of Pratapaditya is associated with one of the myths on which
the Bengali subnationalism rests. However, much of it may simply
be a myth, rather than actual history.26 It appears that at some point
in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, many areas of the lower tract
of the 24 Parganas facing the sea were abandoned and gradually
overrun with forests owing to some disorder, not clearly known to
historians. The disorder may be political or environmental in nature.
For example, the flood of 1584 dislocated thousands of villages in
this area, and further misfortune was inflicted on these settlements
by the Portuguese and Mag incursions. In Rennell’s map (1761), the
whole tract to the south of Bakharganj has been described as ‘country
depopulated by the Maghs’.27 The depopulation of this tract may also
have been due to the incursion of pirates, shifting of settlements,
and devastations from cyclones and storm-waves. The Portuguese,
who occupied Tardaha on the Bidyadhari towards the end of the
sixteenth century, combined piracy with trade. The Channel Creek,
one of the important channels in the Sundarbans, came to be known
as the Rogues’ River.28 Francois Bernier, the French traveller, who
journeyed through the Sundarbans in 1665, confirms the presence
of the Portuguese merchants in these islands.29 The decline of human
settlements in the Sundarbans may also have been due to certain
changes in the natural environment, like shifts in the course of
rivers, the lack of flow of enough freshwater and the corresponding
increase of saltwater that made the land unsuitable for cultivation.
The Sundarbans remained enmeshed in disorder for the next
300 years, and things did not improve even in the nineteenth
century.

Tiger and the Raj

It is not difficult to reconstruct a rough sketch of the general history of
the Sundarbans during the precolonial period, but a detailed history
of the human-tiger conflict in that region is available only after the
advent of British rule. This limitation is applicable to the history of
the human-tiger conflict in the entire South Asian subcontinent. The
English had a special relationship with the tiger, and this is precisely
668 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

why there is no dearth of information about the animal in their

writings. Interestingly, the tiger in general, and the Bengal tiger of
the Sundarbans in particular, turned into a site for the demonstration
of colonial power. It is impossible for the historian to recover the
whole of the past; but had it been recoverable, or even better, if we
could transmit ourselves to the past, we could see the Indiaman at its
mooring, which the young British civilian was about to board, and
hear his near and dear ones in London wishing him a safe voyage,
urging him to be on his guard against the attack of malaria or cholera,
and, last but not the least, to enjoy whenever possible, the romance of
big game in the Indian jungles, packed with the magnificent animal—
the tiger. The Englishmen had a remarkable fascination for the tiger,
and it inspired a great range of both negative and positive responses.
The tiger was not simply a big game for hunting, it was something
more important. It became the object of thoughts and acts with which
the ‘we’ of European scholarship and officialdom engaged itself. This
ongoing objectification of the animal found manifestation in the
huge literature on tiger in this period. From the earliest days of the

Plate 18.1: The Royal Bengal Tiger

Source: https://assets.change.org/photos/0/vy/ox/iAvYOxDUhhuZcqN-800x450-
noPad.jpg?1516137431, accessed 27 April 2019.
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 669

empire, the danger that it posed had also been apparent. Travellers’
accounts and memoirs are packed with tales of deaths of Europeans,
when people were seized by tigers during journeys, on picnics,
or when out for hunting, and many graves in European cemeteries
would testify to this. Blake’s ‘Tyger Tyger burning bright/ In the
forests of the night’, with its repeated use of the word ‘dread’, was
known to most nineteenth-century school children in England as
well as India.30
While encountering the Orient, the Europeans developed certain
stereotypes in their own perceptions of the Indian subcontinent that
had an enduring legacy. The image of the tiger is one such stereotype.
The essential elements of the tiger’s image are cruelty, furtiveness,
fiercenes, and treacherous elegance. The British response to the tiger
is a strange compound of fear, hatred, and admiration. They saw the
tiger as a magnificent animal which establishes its overlordship in
the Indian jungles. Over time, the craze for tiger-skin and skins of
other big cats spread far beyond India, and the art of taxidermy31
developed to amazing proportions because of this. The lifelike
taxidermized tiger heads in the drawing room wall of the sahib
was made to look alive, scary, and fearful. Gradually, the practice
of displaying shikar-souvenirs as showpieces came to be intimately
associated with the culture of the ruling race or class and with the
memories of the Raj. The cost of a medium-sized shikar expedition
in the nineteenth century would be around Rs.500.32 The amount
also included the cost of sending the skin via the railway to Vaningen
and Vaningen of Mysore, for the final dressing up of the tiger for the
sahib’s drawing room.33
As British power in India expanded, information as to the
deaths caused by tigers began to pour in. By the second half of the
nineteenth century, it was estimated that about 1,600 people were
killed by tigers each year.34 Again, it was estimated that each tiger
was capable of killing cattle worth between 300 and 600 pounds in a
single year.35 This was precisely why the tiger was defined as a vermin.
This status, shared with the other big cats, was emphasized by the
fact that they were such successful and prolific hunters, inhabiting a
great variety of habitats, from the coastal regions in the deep south
to the mountains of the north. It thus became imperative from the
point of view of the British colonial rulers to bring into order the
670 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

‘bad tiger’ in particular. This resolution was actually an integral part

of a much broader strategy of power, which sprang from the spirit
of European enlightenment and the urge of the colonial rulers to
superimpose new cultural patterns and sensibilities on the dominated
society. The tiger, therefore, had to be done away with to ensure the
security of individual life and property, which was one of the most
publicized aspects of the ideologies of Raj.36

The Royal Bengal Tiger of

the Sundarbans
Hundreds of Europeans on board Calcutta bound vessels, cruising
through the waters of Hooghly, keeping the Sagar Island on their
right, hardly noticed the Sundarbans—they were mere passengers
who looked yet did not observe. Those who attempted to describe
the landscape did so carelessly and rather indifferently, as the site
appeared to be discouraging and grim. The passengers, who arrived
in the eighteenth century, unenthusiastically recorded the mudbanks,
flooded low-lying jungles, sandbanks, and the reddish-brown waters
of the surroundings through which they passed.37 By the beginning
of the nineteenth century, however, colonial knowledge about the
Indian landscape had advanced and generated a new curiosity among
the Britons.38 There are two major threads that run through the
texts relating to the landscape of the Sundarbans, penned by these
voyagers—it was viewed as a dangerous terrain, a place of deadly
fevers, of ferocious tigers and crocodiles, and the region became
identified with the ‘barbaric’ practice of infanticide, followed by the
Hindu devotees in the Sagar Island.39
References to tigers of the Sundarbans in the precolonial period
are too many to list here. It is known from the Pala inscriptions that
there was a place called Vyaghratatimandala in southern Bengal
facing the sea. Niharranjan Roy pointed out that its literary meaning
indicates a forested seashore infested with tigers.40 It reminds us of
the Sundarbans. Ralph Fitch, who visited the area in the 1580s, has
described south-eastern Bengal as a dense forest infested by ferocious
wild animals like tigers and wild buffaloes. The earliest concrete
reference to the notoriety of the tigers of the Sundarbans is to be
found in the writing of Francois Bernier, who visited the Sundarbans
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 671

in 1665. Here is a passage about the beasts from the Travels in the
Mogul Empire:

Among these islands, it is in many places dangerous to land and great care
must be had that the boat, which during the night is fastened to a tree, be
kept at some distance from the shore, for it constantly happens that some
person or another falls prey to tigers. These ferocious animals are very apt,
it is said, to enter into the boat itself while people are asleep, and to carry
away some victim who, if we are to believe the boatmen of the country,
generally happen to be the stoutest and fattest of the party.41

Records of the colonial period are in fact replete with anecdotes of

Europeans deaths caused by tiger-attacks. The most famous of such
incidents was the death of Sir Hector Munro’s son in the Sundarbans
in 1792. 42 Munro’s seizure by a tiger was commemorated in
Staffordshire ornaments and may well be the origin of the remarkable
mechanical toy ‘Tipu’s tiger’, taken at the capture of Seringapatnam in
1799 and displayed in turn at the East India Companies offices, the
Indian Office, and since 1879, at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
There are certain marked differences between the Sundarban tiger
or the Bengal tiger, and its cousin, the Indian tiger. The unique
mangrove swamp and the ecological effects of the tidal waters of the
sea, undeterred by any flow of freshwater, have turned the Bengal
tiger a born fighter and survivor. A special feature of the mangrove
habitat is that its entire landmass gets submerged during a cyclone
and the land animals have to take up an amphibious character. Thus,
the tigers here can swim very well. It is in the Sundarbans alone that
the food and drink of the tigers include pig, deer, monkey, monitor
lizard, bird, crab, fish, honey, and saline water. They have the ability
to fight the largest crocodiles too.43 We are told that in case of an
encounter between the Bengal tiger and the African lion, the latter
will not survive more than eight minutes.44 There is no wonder
therefore, that encountering the Bengal tiger45 (Panthera tigris, not
Royal Bengal; the Royal Bengal may have originated from the fact
that a tiger was actually shot by the Duke of Windsor when he was
Prince of Wales)46 in this ‘mystic drowned land’ was not an easy job.
The Sundarban tigers were invariably stereotyped as ‘man-eaters’
in colonial literature, and stories of man-eaters developed into
myths and legends of startling proportions. Superstitions were in
672 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

circulation among Europeans and Indians alike, and the image of

the man-eating tiger often approached the status of the werewolf of
the European lore. There was one great ‘man-eater’, whom the whole
of the Khulna district was perpetually hearing about in 1868. One
day he came on board an Englishman’s boat and walked off casually
with one of the persons. The sahib fired at him, but the gun burst
and injured the shooter instead, while the tiger disappeared unhurt.47
Hunter recorded that this particular ‘pest’ was finally killed by one
Mr Morrell. 48 To cite yet another example, when in 1782 the
Henckelganj market was established, Mr Henckell’s native agent
named the place after Mr Henckell in the hope that the local tigers,
out of respect and fear of the name of the first English Magistrate
of Jessore, would no more attack people. However, reports of the
notoriety of tigers continued to reach the district headquarter as
usual.49
The chief method followed by the shikaris in the Sundarbans
for killing tigers was by sitting in a machan over kills or baits.
This mode of hunting put the shikari at a very minimal chance of
getting hurt. It appears from a survey of the vast colonial literature
on shikar that while modes of hunting which were risk-taking were
privileged and treated as masculine, the modes where risk was
minimal were considered effeminate.50 It would be pertinent to take
note here that there were three major methods of hunting tigers in
colonial India—hunting on foot, practiced mainly in the foothills of
the Himalayas, the famous Corbett style hunting; elephant-borne
hunting, which picked up in the heydays of the Raj—from the 1870s,
the British appropriated the Mughal tradition and it became their
own; and shooting tigers from the machan—but as it was a minimal
risk venture, it was not much appreciated and considered to be fit
only for the natives. The colonial project to construct and affirm
the difference between its ‘superior self ’ and the inferiorized ‘native
other’, however, faced much rough weather in the actual terrain of
practice. In the face of the tigers of the Sundarbans, in particular, the
colonizer’s masculinity appeared to be fragile and unsure.
As mentioned earlier, in spite of having all the congenial setup,
the Sunderbans never found its place in the imperial hunting map of
India. This exciting drowned and marshy land could otherwise have
served as the most suitable space for the White shikari to explore
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 673

their sport. Only the fringes of the forest were sometimes used by
them for shooting birds, where geese, ducks, and a variety of others
gathered during winter.
There are certain reasons why the Sundarbans did not feature in
the imperial hunting map of India:

(i) The opening up of the Sundarbans to the colonizers

coincided with the urge for game preservation. The clearing
of some parts of the forest and the creation of a rudimentary
communication infrastructure was complete by the second
or third decade of the twentieth century, but by then the
imperial hunting craze had declined.
(ii) Elephants could not be used there, as the soil was soft and
full of wild cane.
(iii) It was impossible for the beaters to do their job due to the
density of the forest.
(iv) The Sundarbans remained too desolate when the drive for
hunting was at its peak; it did not have the infrastructure
to host imperial hunting expeditions, since its location was
peripheral.
(v) Hunting tigers on foot was considered to be too risky, as
walking in this jungle was very difficult due to the marshy
land.51

Human-Tiger Conflict in the Sundarbans

in the Colonial Period
The British colonial authorities were quick to grasp the point that
the Sundarbans, if reclaimed, could be transformed into a revenue-
yielding area. We shall now turn to see how this motive to maximize
revenue triggered off a period of human-tiger conflict in the region.
The history of reclaiming the Sundarbans forest is fascinating. At
the time of the British East India Company’s acquisition of political
power in India, the forests of the Sundarbans extended to the
vicinity of Calcutta. Initial attempts at reclamation of the area in the
eighteenth century were unsuccessful, but it took off in full swing
from the second decade of the nineteenth century. It was indeed a
very difficult task, and the land reclamation project achieved very little
674 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

success due to the depredation of tigers, which posed to be a major

challenge. The coolies had to be accompanied by shikaris who fired
their guns occasionally to frighten away the tigers that abounded in
the forest. These tigers often attacked the forest clearers and wrecked
such havoc that work had to be temporarily postponed at times. In
this context, L.S.S. O’Malley recorded in the Bengal District Gazetteer:
‘The writer has come across a well authenticated instance where such
a man-eater charged into a line of some 6 or 8 men, working along
a bund, at about 8 or 9 am [and] carried off a man in their midst’.52
On many occasions, the project had to be completely given up in
the face of the hostile tigers, and the land already reclaimed would
eventually again turn into jungle.53
W.W. Hunter’s representation of the Sundarbans as a fearful
place—‘a sort of drowned land, covered with jungle, smitten by
malaria, and infested by wild beasts’—brought the earlier emergent
descriptions of the area to its culmination. In his sixty page seminal
essay, published in 1875, Hunter endorsed the earlier accounts and
portrayed the Sundarbans as being broken up by swamps, intersected
by a thousand river channels and maritime backwaters, but gradually
dotted, as the traveller recedes from the seaboard, with clearings
and patches of rice land.54 The tract is one vast alluvial plain, where
the process of land-formation has not yet ceased, he noted, also
commenting on the fact that the forest in the Sundarbans is very dense
and walking in the jungle is difficult due to the swampy land. For a
visitor, every moment of his journey through the vast wilderness, with
the tigers and crocodiles lurking here and there, was an exploration
of the mystic tropical jungle. Further, some parts in the interior of
the Sundarbans, in the past, were impenetrable (e.g. the southern
interior). With trees and brushwood intertwined and dangerous
creeks running into the darkness in all directions, the shimmering
tidal waters bordered by the mangrove trees, the place appeared to
be a world of fantasy to Englishmen like Hunter.55
The Sundarbans was yet another space where the European ‘selves’
and the Indian ‘other’ started interacting as entities that remained
fundamentally the same at the end of the road.56 They have dialectically
constituted one another’s understanding or ideas of a given space.
Thus, the colonial constructions of the Sundarbans were hybrids that
were partly colonial and partly indigenous, and often, neither of the
two. The Raj in nature was neither wholly empire nor entirely native,
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 675

it was partly foreign and partly vernacular, and a complex fusion of

both. The inhabitants of the Sundarbans too considered the terrain
as difficult and dangerous, a place full of banda (bushes) and kada
(mud), and infested with tigers and crocodiles.57 Thus, there were
occasions when the indigenous and foreign perceptions were in
tune with each other. This similarity in perceptions often resulted
in the creation of new ecological or environmental ideas relating to
management and exploitation of the then little known natural world.
Steps were taken to conserve the forests of Bengal from 1862
under the instructions of Brandis, then the Conservator of Forests in
Burma. In course of time, the Sundarbans became the main source
from where the dense population of Calcutta, Hooghly, Jessore, and
Dhaka received their supply of wood for domestic and agricultural
purposes. As early as 1867, the forest administrators took note of the
revenue value of the Sundarbans; the Forest Department recorded
in its report in that year: ‘this woodlands should be a permanent
source of revenue of several lakhs [of rupees] to the state, and an
unfailing supply of wood at a fair price to the public’.58 After the
end of Port Canning Company’s control over the Sundarbans, a
Deputy Conservator of Forest was sent there in 1873. Thereafter,
a rudimentary structure of forest administration started to unfold
in that area. Toll stations and offices for issuing licences which
authorized entry for hunting and collection of forest resources,
both for domestic and commercial purposes, were also set up.59 By
a notification dated 10 August 1875, published in page 1031 of the
Calcutta Gazette, a part of the Sundarbans, comprising 885 sq. mi. was
gazetted as a reserve. In 1878–9, 1,884 sq. mi. of the Sundarbans were
declared protected, but leasing out for cultivation continued. Between
1928 and 1943, the forest was declared as Reserve Forest.60 The area of
Sundarbans reserve continued to increase, though in the beginning,
the main thrust of the policy was on the maintenance of an adequate
fuel reserve under efficient management and thereby contribute to
the revenues of the state.61 Considering that the Forest Department
charged only one anna per maund (or cubic foot) for sundari timber,
and one-fourth of an anna per maund of any timber or firewood,
the result was highly satisfactory. By 1897, the Sundarbans division
recorded the largest surplus in the province, Rs.409,389.62
To ensure smooth collection of forest revenue from the
Sundarbans, protection of the lives of woodcutters became something
676 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

of utmost importance. The woodcutters and honey gatherers entered

the forest at a particular time of the year. A party of woodcutters
usually consisted of 15–20 men and 1–2 fakirs. 63 None of the
woodcutters would go into the forest to cut wood unless accompanied
by the fakir, who was supposed to protect them from the tigers.64 They
would start their work only after making an offering to the jungle
deities like Banbibi or Dakshin Roy.65 The forest revenue from the area
continued to rise, though at a cost—the baramiyan was taking a heavy
toll. Between 1881 and 1912, more than 2,500 people were killed by
the tigers in the Sundarbans.66 The actual number of deaths was much
higher, as only about 50 per cent of such cases were reported to the
authorities. Moreover, the figure does not include the cases which
were brought to the notice of the district administration alone, and
not subsequently reported to the Forest Department. In 1885 alone,
116 woodcutters were carried away from a single para or station,
and the work came to a standstill.67 The matter had reached such an
alarming proportion, that the Secretary to the Government of India,
Department of Revenue and Agriculture, wrote to the Secretary to
the Government of Bengal (No. 430 F, Dt. Simla, 1913): ‘Apart from
the loss of life, this state of affairs interferes greatly with the proper
working of the valuable Sundarbans forest and the Government of
India trusts that no efforts will be spared to reduce the number of
these pests’.68
The government was convinced that all or most of the tigers of
the Sundarbans were man-eaters, and the killing of as many tigers
as possible appeared to be the only way of lessening the number of
casualties. But the encounter with the beast was mostly left to the
indigenous shikaris, who were generally looked upon as incompetent,
unskilled, and effeminate. The government adopted a policy of
rewards to induce these indigenous shikaris to eliminate the tigers.
Under the sanction of the government, in the notification dated
16 November 1883, published in the Calcutta Gazette, the rangers
and foresters in charge of the eight chief revenue stations in the
Sundarbans reserved forest were authorized to pay rewards for killing
tigers. In 1883, the reward amount was Rs.50 for each full grown tiger
and Rs.10 for each tiger cub. The shikaris were required to produce
the skin and skull of the animal to the forest officials to receive the
reward.69 The value of the reward was raised from time to time, and
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 677

any such increase in the value of the reward was intimately associated
with fresh depredation by tigers in the jungle. In 1906, the amount of
the reward was raised to Rs.100 for each full grown tiger and Rs.20
for each tiger cub. Again, in 1909, the amount was further raised to
Rs.200 (for the full grown tiger). This was done in view of the fact
that more than 500 people lost their lives between 1906 and 1909.70
There took place a large scale slaughter of this magnificent
animal in the Sundarbans. This researcher has compiled a figure to
demonstrate the magnitude of this massacre of the tiger population
with the direct patronage of the colonial government. Between 1881
and 1912 more than 2,400 full grown tigers were killed in the said
region.71 This figure however, is based on the Annual Reports of the
Forest Department, which did not take note of those killings which
took place outside the forest area, or which were not reported to the
department. The authorities left no stone unturned to control the
number of the tigers. Interestingly, in the case of the Sundarbans,
the Europeans did not even mind to resort to precisely those means
which they had themselves disparaged elsewhere as ‘effeminate’,
‘risk-avoiding’ or ‘unsportsmanlike’. Efforts were made, for example,
to kill the animal by setting plain traps or traps with spring bows
and poisoned arrows. Such traps could be successfully used only in
winter, as the land was flooded by tidal waters at other times of the
year. In 1918, a revenue station officer in the Sundarbans trapped a
tiger and received Rs.100 as reward. Most of the tigers thus trapped
were shot then and there, irrespective of their sex and age. Even small
cubs were not spared. After 1910, however, with the countrywide
growing concern for game preservation, some of the tigers, and tiger
cubs in particular, were sold to different zoological gardens. In 1915,
one such captive tiger, and in 1930, one such cub were sold to the
Calcutta Zoo.72 As a part of the flat out attempt to wipeout the man-
eaters of the Sundarbans, free tiger shooting passes were distributed
to almost everyone who applied for it, without paying any heed to the
ability, skill, experience, or even identity of those self-styled shikaris.
According to one available estimate, between 1918 and 1926, as many
as 298 free tiger shooting permits were issued to native shikaris.73
This policy of mass slaughter of tigers had only a moderate effect
on the number of human casualties. In fact, annual statistics of
casualties at times even showed an upward trend, though there can be
678 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

little doubt that the tiger population in the Sundarbans continued to

dwindle. By 1928, the Forest Department itself came to acknowledge
that ‘tigers have become comparatively scarce in the Sundarbans
Division’74 and consequently decided to reduce the number of free
tiger shooting permits. The authorities did not realize, however, that
what was at the crux of issue was not the number of tigers in the
jungle but the prey-predator gap, which accounted for the attack on
the woodcutters. The man-eating behaviour of the animal could be
attributed to the frequent disruptions in the natural food chain in the
forest. The shikaris ostensibly bent on shooting tigers for the reward
were unable to resist the temptation of shooting deer whenever they
got a favourable opportunity. Official reports testify to the fact that
deer poaching in the Sundarbans reached an alarming proportion
between 1915 and 1940. In 1919, when there was a remarkable
decrease in the number of persons killed by tigers, the Conservator of
Forest acknowledged this point in his annual report, and emphasized
on the necessity of keeping down deer poaching in the Sundarbans.75
Consequently, the Annual Report on Game Preservation for 1939
informs us that the permit holders were allowed to shoot one deer
per trip, and that the number of deer killed in that year was 448. It
was, however, discovered later that the shooters had wounded about
896 deers, the majority of which most probably died in agony from
maggot infested wounds.76 Instances of such poaching of deer can
be multiplied. Thus, even the permit holders did shoot for meat or
profit in the Sundarbans. The forest officials acknowledged in their
reports that the number of guns licenced in the village bordering the
forest was considerable, and that it was one of the root causes of deer
poaching. One forest official lamented in 1919: ‘It is now certain that
had guns never been allowed so freely in former years, there would
have been sufficient game to ensure that the tigers did not take to
man-eating and all loss of human life and revenue of previous years
would never have occurred’.77
This partly explains how the White ruling classes in colonial
Calcutta kept their dining tables decorated with game meat and
the source of the perennial supply of such meat in New Market,
Calcutta. To make matters worse, unlike northern Bengal, where
game associations like the Darjeeling Shooting and Fishing Club
or the Tista Toorsa Game Association78 were gradually sprouting
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 679

up early in the twentieth century as manifestation of the growing

concern for game preservation, in the Sundarbans, the attitude of the
colonial rulers was solely motivated by revenue considerations. It was
only after 1935 that the forest authorities decided to do something in
collaboration with the local administration to tighten up control over
firearms in the areas adjoining the reserved forests. Again, measures
like restriction on shooting, issue of shooting permits to reliable and
responsible persons only, and closure of certain blocks for a whole
year—were adopted under the influence of the Shooting Clubs and the
Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire. The Society
for the Protection of Wild Life was also in the pipeline by 1937.
Another factor which frequently contributed to the periodic
enlargement of the prey-predator gap was tropical cyclonic storms,
which brought in tidal waves and resultant floods in the Sundarbans.
Monsoon in this part of Bengal consists of a series of cyclonic
depressions, which follow each other, in more or less close succession,
up the Bay of Bengal. The October cyclones are examples of the most
intense tropical storms. Such cyclonic storms occasionally resulted
in the flooding of the Sundarbans, thereby dwindling the deer
population.79 For instance, these floods occurred in the Sundarbans in
1909 and again in 1919. The cyclone of 1919 features prominently in
the forest department records, and authorities attributed the increase
in the number of men killed by tigers in the same year to this cyclone,
which made natural food for the tigers scarce.80 The report also states
two incidents in which tigers climbed into sleeping shelters built on
machans and carried away one of the occupants on each occasion.
This aggressiveness, the report recorded, is attributed to the fact that
enormous number of deer was killed or drowned in the storm wave
which accompanied the cyclone of October last, which upset the
balance between tigers and their natural prey, and induced them to
attack men.81

Tiger-Human Conflict in the Sundarbans

in the Postcolonial Era
Today the Sundarbans is primarily known as a tiger reserve.
Interestingly, the setting up of a tiger reserve and its maintenance
in this unique mangrove swamp involved the handling of a whole
680 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

range of unknowns and the gaining of knowledge. It was imperative

to find answers to a series of questions, like how many square
kilometers would be assigned per tiger, what kind of plants would
be preferred, how to ensure the availability of tigers’ natural food
without causing any harm to the biodiversity of this unique zone, and
so on. The Sundarbans Project Tiger itself was a project of managing
an uncharted territory, but this endeavour, in turn, triggered off new
problems, which were not anticipated.
Politics, capitalism, and science—all function on global
connections. Each enlarges its sweep to satisfy universal aspirations.
But as they move on, they change and reshape themselves in the
face of the on-ground local encounters.82 In this section, I will try to
demonstrate how the postcolonial Sundarbans reserve can offer an
excellent opportunity to test this encounter between the global and
local, and how the unpredictable effects of the global encounter across
difference lead to the construction of new objects of knowledge,
which, in its turn again, call for management and investigation.83
Environmental awareness and environmental politics would be
an ideal space to draw up a balance sheet of the achievements of the
universal. It is in this particular domain that a rudimentary structure
of globalization first started to surface in the post-Second World War
era. The concept of ecology originated in the nineteenth century,
and was intended to cover the study of the supposed equilibrium
between organisms and the external world. Ecology, however, was
not considered as a very important branch of science until after the
Second World War. The emergence of the post-war North American
urban industrial complex brought forth the large-scale development
of ecological and environmental knowledge. In the 1950s and 1960s,
environmentalism had primarily remained as a social movement of
the Euro-American world, i.e. North. It made the Westerners aware
of the ongoing degradation of global environment, and of the fact
that the United States manufactures and sells across the globe a
pesticide like the DDT, which can eventually end up in the bodies
of penguins living near the South Pole. Environmentalism gradually
adopted trans-boundary approaches in the 1970s and the 1980s,
drawing recognition to problems like pollution, climate change, and
species loss—that could not be contained in a single country. One
of the earliest global manifestations of this environmental concern
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 681

was the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in

Stockholm (Sweden) in 1972, and the subsequent launching of the
United Nation’s Environment Programme.84 When this campaign
reached the South, the Northern conservation priorities like
saving tigers, rescuing elephants, or protecting biodiversities were
superimposed on its environmental agenda.
It was strongly urged by the European wildlife biologists that
it was only in the forests of India and the mangrove swamps of
Bangladesh that there were tigers in sufficient numbers, or just
enough, to warrant an effort to save this endangered species. At
its tenth general meeting in New Delhi in 1969, the International
Union for Conservation of Nature resolved that the estimated 2,000
members of the South Asian subspecies (Panthera tigris) in India, East
Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan were a viable breeding population. The
Indian political and scientific opinion too proved to be favourable.
Consequently, India imposed a ban on hunting tigers in 1970, the
Wildlife Protection Act was passed and the Indian Board for Wildlife
was set up in 1972 and the Project Tiger was launched in 1973 in
nine reserve forests. The Project Tiger initially started as a task force
set up within the Indian Board of Wildlife, chaired by Karan Singh,
Minister for Health and Family Planning.85 It was precisely at this
time that global voluntary groups made their way into the Indian
environmental scene. The most important among them was the World
Wildlife Fund or WWF.86 The tiger proved to be a good choice for
conservation because of its existence in different regions across India,
and it helped to broaden the ecological scheme in various ways. Its
protection also involved the protection of tiger’s natural habitat and
food supply, and it thereby helped to broaden the project in multiple
directions in the future. Preserving India’s wildlife was integral to
a nationalist project to save its emblem. Project Tiger was clearly
a single-species scheme to start with, but the position accorded to
the tiger in the food chains of which it were a part generated a logic
that took the scheme further and started flashing new light on other
species like deer, lion, monkey, rhino, and on water resources and
vegetation as well.
The Sundarbans was one of the nine initial tiger reserves of
the world.87 It had been a reserved forest since colonial days. From
the early 1970s, it was also included in UNESCO’s global chain of
682 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

biosphere reserves. The Project Tiger task force began in 1972 by

taking a nationwide tiger census, which recorded a total population
of 1827 animals. The task force initiated a conservation programme
called the ecosystem approach. The premise of this approach was the
need to provide an extensive area (territory) for adult tigers—each
requiring a minimum of 10 sq. km. of undisturbed territory. A further
premise was that the minimum tiger population required for sustained
reproduction was 300. This suggested the need for reserves of at least
3,000 sq. km. Thus, it turned a larger universal campaign under
international capitalism, science, and politics, into a local theatre.
The chain of reactions that the global interconnections generated
in the Sundarbans, however, went in multiple directions and often
much beyond the original aspirations of these projects. According
to the scheme of Project Tiger, the Sundarbans was given an interior
and a core for undisturbed reproduction and a surrounding forest
or ‘buffer zone’, where villagers would be allowed limited access for
the collection of forest products.88 In accordance with the ecosystem
approach, the core areas were to be carefully bounded and all roads
closed, stock grazing and commercial timbering to be suspended, the
habitats of depleted prey species (mostly deer) to be restored, and
silted watercourses to be restored. The existing forest landscapes were
also to be re-engineered. The implementation of the Project Tiger
involved human displacement, as many villages were removed from
the buffer zone and people were allowed to remain only in a few
buffer areas. Hundreds of people were removed for each tiger being
protected. The ideal size of the reserves, as suggested by international
wildlife biologists, would have to be 3,000 sq. km.; but India, with an
ever increasing population, had no other option but to opt for less
than 1,500 sq. km. for each of these reserves on an average. In case
of the Sundarbans, this size is even smaller. The task force predicted
that with the increase of the number of tigers, they would eventually
start roaming outside the core and the buffer zone,89 and in the case
of the Sundarbans and several other reserves, the prediction has
come true. Clashes between the Forest Department staff and the
local villagers in the Sundarbans are very common. The root of these
clashes range from poaching and fishing to human deaths caused by
the intrusion of tigers.
The conflict between humans and tigers in the Sundarbans also
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 683

originates as a result of the socio-economic condition of the local

people, and the man-eating tendency90 of the tigers. The per capita
income in the Sundarbans is estimated to be less than half of that
of the state average. In the struggle for survival, hundreds of people
enter the forest, braving the crocodiles, sharks, and tigers in order
to gather honey, cut wood, and catch fish. This brings them face to
face with the tigers. Sometimes, the tigers enter the villages near the
buffer zones and take away men, women, children, or cattle. It is a
place where tigers kill hundreds of people a year, but since they are
a protected species, killing a tiger that has been preying on a village
results in the government authorities meting out punishment to the
poor villagers. Getting killed by a tiger is a terrifying prospect for the
near and dear ones of the victim. The new widow and the victim’s
children are forbidden to cry and taught to say their father had died
of diarrhea, because if exposed, the family members are forced to pay
for the dead trespasser and are treated like criminals.
Amitav Ghosh, in his remarkable prize-winning book Hungry
Tide, gives a graphic account of this conflict between the indigenous
people of the Sundarbans on the one hand and the tiger on the
other hand. He describes how a tiger was accidentally trapped in a
livestock pen while trying to take away a calf. An angry mob quickly
gathered and the incapacitated animal was attacked with sharpened
staves. At first, one of the boys thrust a sharpened bamboo pole
through a window and blinded it. Piya, an American cetologist, the
central character of the novel, tried her best to save the animal—but
in vain. She was helpless in the face of a hostile crowd. Even her
associates, Horen and Fokir, sided with the mob and participated in
the killing. Such occurrences are very common in the Sundarbans.
The incident described in the novel is illustrative of a fundamental
and yet delicate issue that continues to surface prominently in the
global debates relating to management of nature. The setting up of
the tiger reserve has led to the advent of a host of new unknowns,
besides the human-tiger conflict. The conversation between Kanai
(another character in Ghosh’s book) and Piya regarding the killing
of the tiger that followed later, brings out the essence of the several
flashpoints of this complex problem.91
The issue of the human-tiger conflict in the Sundarbans, depicted
in the above story, has its roots in the policy pursued by both the
684 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

colonial and the postcolonial government in India. The colonial

forest policy, geared by global capitalism, led to the dislocation and
degradation of the local people, and the postcolonial projects of tiger
conservation further contributed to their misery. The forest policy of
the postcolonial state has excluded the indigenous people from the
Sundarbans tiger reserve. They have been deprived of the right to use
the forest, and it has been preserved only for the animals. However,
to avoid hostilities of the local people towards the state policy of
conservation, the involvement of the residents in the management of
resources has been recommended by global agencies. The biosphere
reserve programme and the conservation of tigers in the Sundarbans
are based rhetorically on a highly participative approach of the local
communities. But the on-ground implementation of the conservation
programme had neglected the enormous local knowledge about
the ecosystem and wildlife that the people of Sundarbans have.
Thus, the gap between the universal official rhetoric of conservation
and the actual formulation of policies aimed at empowering local
communities has widened. The forest officials congratulate themselves
on the rapid increase of tiger population, but all is still not well in
the Sundarbans. Smugglers and poachers, supported by political
and business interests, and sheltered by local communities, raid the
protected forests for valuable exports.92 As the local people are hostile
to the official conservators, the poachers operate here with ease.
Besides, state surveillance in the protected forest is mainly carried out
through the Forest Department, whose officials are known to exploit
their position for private gain. They play a pivotal role in poaching
timber, deer meat, and tiger skin. The Sundarbans also provide shelter
for those who live off river robbery and who exploit the existence
of the border to develop two new specializations: kidnapping and
piracy.93

Conclusion
In the Sundarbans, the tiger has always been at the centre of the
problem of managing this unique natural region, and the problem of
ordering the frictions between the local and the global has essentially
been a problem of managing human-tiger conflicts. I have tried to
demonstrate in this chapter that this project of managing human-tiger
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 685

conflict has a long history. The structure of human-tiger conflict in

the Sundarbans has undergone a qualitative transformation in the
postcolonial era. In early British India, the Sundarbans remained as a
‘mystic drowned land’, which was ‘dangerous’, ‘unknown’, and difficult
to manage or order. In course of time, however, the Europeans
realized its potential as a hidden natural resource and took necessary
measures to transform it into a revenue-yielding forest. This job
led them to embark upon the project of taming the tigers. But in
the context of Sundarbans, this task was left in the hands of the
indigenous shikaris (hunters). Here, the British rulers were convinced
that the local people, armed with sound indigenous knowledge,
would be better able to combat the man-eaters in this dangerous
terrain. The postcolonial state, on the other hand, excluded the local
inhabitants and their knowledge in the tiger conservation projects. To
the locals, managing the tiger threat by themselves could have been
simpler than facing intrusions of the colonial or the modern state at
different points of history.
The shortsightedness of official conservation policy in independent
India has reflected the disrespect for the enormous indigenous
knowledge of the local communities in managing the tiger threat.
This knowledge is used by the officials when convenient and then
discarded, but never stored for use in the future. The relevance
of traditional knowledge on biological resources needs to be
understood in the context of the social and cultural milieu of an
entire community, including the surrounding habitats. Unfortunately,
the local communities have never been asked to be a part of the
decision-making process. The universal rhetoric of conservation
and its implementation created new complexities which, in their
turn, have alienated the local communities. This alienation of
the indigenous people from the official project of conservation
has made the new unanticipated crises more unmanageable in the
Sundarbans.
Professional foresters, wildlife biologists, and other experts
who were involved in the policy-making that led to the final
implementation of the Project Tiger, had failed to foresee the
pervasiveness of the human-tiger conflict in the Sundarbans in the
long run. The general impression that can be gathered from the official
literature relating to the size and extent of the reserve may appear
 Map 18.1: Historical map showing colonial Sundarbans
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, New Monthly Series, vol. 13, no. 5, 1891.
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 687

Map 18.2: The Sundarbans today (the bold dotted line dividing the land area is the international
border between West Bengal [Indian] and Bangladesh Sundarbans)
Source: http://encarta.msn.com/mapof_10216125/sundarbans html, accessed on 25 March 2009.

to be comprehensive in terms of classification or quantification. But

the ground realities are different. The forces of industrialization in
a globalized world have been continuously threatening this reserve
in recent times. Ever-increasing human settlements have occupied a
large space in the buffer zones of the Sundarban National Park. The
decrease of the flow of freshwater has increased the salinity of water,
and this has seriously disturbed the ecosystem of the region. The
continuous increase in the flow of city effluents from the nearby city
of Kolkata is contributing to the problem further. Its magnitude has
become alarming, as a large number of waterbodies in nearby urban
areas that previously acted as natural filters have disappeared, as real
estate promoters are converting them into housing estates. As a result,
the city effluents are now directly received by the biosphere reserve
688 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

and are causing great harm to the mangrove forest and the natural
food chains. This is exerting some impact on the already existing
man-eating tendency of the Sundarban tigers and consequentially
intensifying the human-tiger conflict in this mangrove forest. Besides,
as a result of this, several species of fishes and other marine organisms
may soon disappear in both Indian and Bangladesh Sundarbans. Even
150 years ago, the Sundarbans was the home to the one-horned Indian
rhino, the Javan rhino, wild buffaloes, and river dolphins. None of
these are now found in the region. Interestingly enough, problems
of human-tiger conflict, species loss, or the general degradation of
the unique biogeographic environment of the Sundarbans took place
under the ideological umbrella of the global projects like ‘biosphere
reserve’, ‘project tiger’, or ‘eco-tourism’.
Thus, the interior of the Sundarbans and the ongoing changes
therein, still remain unmanaged. The intrusion of the colonial state,
the implementation of the Project Tiger by the postcolonial state, or
the introduction of the biosphere reserve programme under forceful
international pressure, inflicted fresh misery on the local people of
the Sundarbans and further aggravated the problem of human-tiger
conflict. As far as the state responses to the issue of forest use were
and are concerned, there seems to be little fundamental difference
between the colonial and postcolonial state. During the Raj, the
slogan was ‘kill the tiger’—but with the coming of the Project Tiger,
the slogan had changed into ‘save the tiger’. However, this saving of
the tiger was to be carried out again at the cost of a renewed human-
tiger conflict in a far greater magnitude than ever before.
Notes
1. K. Sivaramkrishnan, Modern Forests: Statemaking and Environmental
Change in Colonial Eastern India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1999, Preface.
2. Kakoli Sinha Roy, ‘Ordering the Wild: Shikar, Wildlife and Conservation
in Colonial Bengal (1850–1947)’, unpublished PhD thesis, Jadavpur
University, Kolkata, 2016.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. The local people of the Sundarbans always give the tiger a very reverential
treatment. They never utter the word bagh (the Bengali word for
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 689
tiger); instead, they call the tiger baramiyan (senior headman) and the
crocodile chhotamiyan (junior headman); see, Sutapa Chatterjee Sarkar,
The Sundarbans: Folk Deities, Monsters and Mortals, New Delhi: Orient
Blackswan, 2010; also Annu Jalais, Forest of Tigers: People, Politics and
Environment in the Sundarbans, New Delhi: Routledge, 2010.
7. See R. Woodroffe, S.J. Thirgood and A. Rabinowitz, eds., People and Wildlife:
Conflict or Coexistence?, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
The literature on human-animal conflict is fast expanding.
8. The Telegraph, Calcutta, 6 November 2007 (front page news item).
9. In both Indian and Western texts and pictorial art, there are innumerable
references to hunting or killing of animals. An amulet discovered from
Mohenjodaro depicts a hunting scene that occurred more than 2,500
years before the birth of Christ. It shows three men bending their bows
to shoot a large antelope, whose long horns extended straight back over
its body. Two heavily feathered arrows have already penetrated into the
four-quarters of the animal; see, E.J.H. Mackay, Further Excavations at
Mohenjo-daro: Being an Official Account of Archaeological Excavations at
Mohenjo-daro carried out by the Government of India between the years
1927 and 1931, 2 vols., Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1938, p. 356,
pl. XCI 23–4. Again, more than three hundred years before the Trojan War,
and more than eight centuries before the composition of the Greek epics
(Iliad and Odyssey), the grave of a Mycenean prince of the early sixteenth
century bc was marked with a tombstone that described a battle between
human beings and lions; see, J.K. Anderson, Hunting in the Ancient World,
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985, p. 5.
10. J.M. MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature, Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1988, pp. 168–99.
11. The animal rights activists and the animal liberation movements have
played a significant role in this context. Peter Singer, a leading spokesman
for animal rights, bears the dubious honour of having made popular
the term ‘speciesism’ as an epithet to describe those of us who, he says,
believe the differences are in kind, not just degree. The evocation of and
comparison to racism is explicit; see, Peter Singer, Animal Liberation:
A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, New York: Harper Collins,
1975. In the opening sentence of the volume, Singer writes: ‘This book
is about the tyranny of the human over non-human animals’, ibid., p. ix.
12. See M.R. Conover, Resolving Human-Wildlife Conflicts: The Science of
Wildlife Damage Management, New York: Lewis, 2002.
13. The nearest equivalent of the Sundarbans, in more ways than one, is the
Everglades National Park in Florida (USA); see, Michael Grunwald, The
Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise, New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2007.
690 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
14. The Indian city of Calcutta gave up its colonial name with effect from
January 2001 and came to be known by its original name Kolkata, see
The Telegraph, Kolkata, 2 January 2001, page 1, also see https://www.isical.
ac.in/~theophys-07/calcutta.html, accessed on 26 April 2019.
15. India was partitioned in 1947, which resulted in the creation of two
independent nation states—India and Pakistan. The colonial province of
Bengal was divided into East Pakistan and the Indian province of West
Bengal. East Pakistan broke away from Pakistan in 1971, and became
another independent nation—Bangladesh. See, Willem van Schendel,
The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia, London:
Anthem, 2005.
16. See, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/798, accessed on 26 April 2019.
17. Mahesh Rangarajan, India’s Wildlife History, Delhi: Permanent Black, 1998,
pp. 95–107. The Project Tiger initially started as a task force set up within
the Indian Board of Wildlife chaired by Karan Singh, Minister for Health
and Family Planning. It was precisely at this time that global voluntary
groups made their way into the Indian environmental scene. The most
important among them was the World Wildlife Fund or WWF.
18. Rathindranath De, The Sundarbans, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990,
pp. 1–4. Recent experience of cyclones and storms shows how important
such natural protections are in neutralizing the impact of storms or
cyclones. Haiti was hit by deadly tropical storms in May and September
2004, in which nearly 5,000 Haitians lost their lives and homes. The cleaning
of trees in the Haitian highlands had aggravated the tragedy that shook
Haiti. Destitute and lacking alternative sources of fuel, Haiti’s poor have cut
down most of their trees for fuelwood and charcoal. In doing so, they have
lost a valuable service provided by forested watersheds—the moderation of
local flood runoff and the prevention of massive mudslides. Interestingly,
the same storms that devastated Haiti had less impact on neighboring
Puerto Rico, where highland watersheds are mostly forested. For further
details, see, Sandra Postel, ‘Safeguarding Freshwater Ecosystems’, in State
of the World 2006: A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress toward a
Sustainable Society, ed. Danielle Nierenberg, Linda Starke, New York and
London: W.W. Norton, 2006, pp. 41–60.
19. See also, John Rudd Rainney, ‘The Sundarban: Its Physical Features and
Ruins’, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record
of Geography, New Monthly Series, vol. 13, no. 5, 1891, pp. 273–87 (I am
indebted to Md Sohrabuddin for searching out this article for my use).
20. Thomas Watters, On Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India, ad 629–645, Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal, 1961, pp. 187–9.
21. Manikchandra Rajar Gan or folksong of Bengal (Bhatiali), see, Niharranjan
Roy, Bangalir Itihas, Kolkata: Book Emporium, bs 1356, p. 104.
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 691
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., pp. 105–6.
24. Rainney, ‘The Sundarban: Its Physical Features and Ruins’, p. 279.
25. W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. 1, District of 24 Parganas
and Sundarbans, London: Truebner & Company, 1875, pp. 285–346.
26. Rathindranath De, Sundarbans, pp. 10–12.
27. Quoted in Niharranjan Roy, Bangalir Itihas, p. 105.
28. Ibid., p. 12.
29. Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, London: Oxford University
Press, 1914, p. 41.
30. Mackenzie, Empire of Nature, p. 179.
31. Taxidermy is the technology associated with processing of animal skin. It is
the art of preparing, stuffing, and mounting animal skin for decoration in
the homes of the richer classes. Contemporary newspapers and handbooks
on shikar featured regular advertisements by the taxidermists. Cuthbertson
and Harper were well-known taxidermists of Calcutta. They ran their
regular office at 10, Government Place, Calcutta.
32. Y.D. Gundevia, In the Districts of the Raj, Bombay: Orient Longman, 1992,
pp. 205–6.
33. Ibid., p. 206.
34. Mackenzie, Empire of Nature, pp. 168–98.
35. Ibid., p. 180.
36. Any number of documents can be cited to substantiate the statement. In
the colonial accounts, we find the image of the ‘man-eater’ or the ‘bad
tiger’. The contemporary literature on hunting, authored mostly by white
shikaris, the Forest Department Proceedings, the government gazette
notifications—all seemed to be somewhat obsessed with the image of the
man-eating tiger and the probable causes of the changeover from animal
to human flesh. The tiger, if it was a man-eater, had to be ordered, the wild
Orient had to be disciplined and brought under reason. This is the voice
of enlightenment, and this voice comes in very clearly in Kipling’s Jungle
Book:
   The law of the jungle, which never orders anything without a reason,
forbids every beast to eat man except when he is killing to show his children
how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack
or tribe, the real reason for this is that man-killing means, sooner or later,
the arrival of white men on elephants, with guns.  .  .  . The reason the beasts
give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and most defenseless of
all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him.
   It deserves mention here that Shere Khan, the villainous character
in the Jungle Book, was lame or physically crippled and inclined to man-
eating. Thus, the tiger to be shot by the White shikaris would have to be
692 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
preferably a ‘man-eater’ to justify the killing. The tiger, whose behaviour
does not conform to reason or to the supposed ‘Law of the Jungle’, may
well also be the target of the shikari; see Rudyard Kipling, Jungle Book,
Mahwah, NJ: Aerie Books, 1985, pp. 4–5. See also, Ranjan Chakrabarti, ed.,
‘Reading the Government’s Reports and the European Memoirs: Glimpses
of Hunting or Shikar in Colonial India’, in Does Environmental History
matter? Shikar, Subsistence, Sustenance and the Sciences, Kolkata: Readers
Services, 2006, pp. 183–221. If man-eaters could not be found, they could
be manufactured! For example, even when a tiger, which was not a man-
eater, was killed by the shikari by mistake, it could be given the tag of a
man-eater! If shikar-texts are minutely examined, we find that many of the
shikar expeditions against the man-eaters clearly conform to a recognizable
paradigm—the white shikari responding to the call of the helpless native
villagers and taking charge of the ‘bad tiger’. Percy Wyndham, who was
the Collector of Mirzapur, the district with the reputation of being a first-
rate shikar district, and later the Commissioner of the Kumaon Division,
was more popularly known in the district as Bagmaroo Sahib. He was
ever ready with his rifle when the villagers complained to him about a
tiger harassing them or playing havoc with their cattle in the village; see,
Gundevia, Districts of the Raj, p. 167.
37. Thomas Bacon, First Impression and Studies from Nature in Hindostan
Embracing an Outline of the Voyage to Calcutta and Five Years’ Residence
in Bengal and the Doab from MDCCCXXXI to MDCCCXXXVI, vol. I,
London: W.H. Allen and Co., 1837, pp. 120–1. Bishop Heber arrived at
the mouth of river Hooghly in 1823. Thomas Bacon reached the fringes
of the Sundarbans on his way to Calcutta in 1831. Bacon’s account too
confirms this trend. He noticed that though the adventurers had cleared
small spaces and erected a few shabby houses, but tigers, more than once,
had driven out the enterprising settlers. He too found a flat and swampy
shore with scattered tall trees and thick jungle, and with a large glass,
spotted something like deer grazing there. He was told of instances of
tigers swimming off from the coast to a considerable distance.
38. Some of the earliest observers like Buchanan Hamilton, who had travelled
and botanized on the eastern shores of the Bay of Bengal, however, found
the area full of luxuriant vegetation; see David Arnold, The Tropics and
the Travelling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800–1856, Delhi:
Permanent Black, 2005, p. 84; and W. Higgins, Sketches in India, London:
John Letts, 1824, p. 2.
39. Hunter, Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. I, pp. 287–90.
40. Roy, Bangalir Itihas, p. 105.
41. Bernier, Travels, p. 24.
42. Mackenzie, Empire of Nature, p. 179.
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 693
43. De, Sundarbans, pp. 21–8.
44. Ranjan Chakrabarti, ed., ‘Tiger and the Raj: Ordering the Maneater of the
Sundarbans 1880–1947’, in Space and Power in History: Images, Ideologies,
Myths, and Moralities, vol. 1, Jadavpur Area Studies in History, Kolkata:
Penman, 2001, p. 71.
45. Out of the 8 recognized subspecies of tigers, 4 are already extinct,
2 others are close to extinction, and the status of another subspecies—the
Indochinese tiger—falls under the ‘Endangered’ category as per the WWF.
The Bengal tiger is the only sub-species at present that is found in the wild.
Seven of the eight subspecies were included in the first edition of IUCN
Red Data Book (1964). The Bengal tiger was added to the list during 1971.
46. There is confusion as to the word ‘royal’. It may have originated from the
royal or majestic appearance of the tiger, who was looked upon as the lord
or the ‘maharaja’ of the jungle. The European perception of the Indian
maharaja may well have contributed to it.
47. Hunter, Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. 1, p. 315.
48. Ibid., p. 327.
49. Ibid.
50. Any number of documents can be cited to show this. See, Chakrabarti,
‘Reading the Government’s Reports and the European Memoirs: Glimpses
of Hunting or Shikar in Colonial India’.
51. Chakrabarti, ‘Tiger and the Raj: Ordering the Man-eater of the Sundarbans,
1880–1947’.
52. L.S.S. O’Malley, Bengal District Gazetteer, 24 Parganas, Calcutta: The Bengal
Secretariat Book Depot, 1914, pp. 19–20.
53. Ibid.
54. Hunter, Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. I, pp. 287–90.
55. Ibid.
56. Examples for other such spaces include the jungle in general, the tropical
rainforests, and even caste and community. See, Ranjan Chakrabarti, ‘The
Jungle, the Imperial Hunt and British Imperialism (1800–1947)’, in Science,
Technology, Medicine and Environment in India: Historical Perspectives,
ed. Chittabrata Palit and Amit Bhattacharyya, Calcutta: Bibhasa, 1998,
pp. 204–21.
57. Sibsankar Mitra, Sundarbane Arjan Sardar (in Bengali), Kolkata: Dipayan,
1955, pp. 3–5.
58. Annual Progress Report of Forest Administration (hereafter cited as PRF)
for 1868–69, Calcutta, 1869.
59. Ibid., p. 12.
60. In reserved forests all rights were recorded and settled, but in protected
forests, user rights were not always set aside. However, there was a whole
range of local or regional variations in the matter. In the Sundarbans, the
694 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
local people were periodically allowed to use the protected forest under
licences from the Forest Department; see, Mahesh Rangarajan, Fencing
the Forest: Conservation and Ecological Change in India’s Central Provinces,
1860–1914, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 32–3.
61. PRF for 1875–76, p. 29.
62. PRF for 1896–97.
63. It is widely believed in the Sundarbans that the fakirs have the power to
tame tigers and thereby protect the people whom they would accompany.
64. Hunter, Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. 1, pp. 311–12.
65. Ibid.
66. PRF, 1868–1921.
67. PRF for 1884–85, p. 57.
68. PRF for 1911–12, p. 9.
69. PRF for 1883–84, p. 92.
70. PRF from 1881–82 to 1912–13.
71. Ibid.
72. PRF for 1918–19, 1926–27
73. Ibid.
74. PRF for 1928–29.
75. PRF for 1916–17.
76. Annual Report on Game Preservation in Bengal for the year ending 31st
March 1939, Calcutta, 1940, p. 9.
77. PRF for 1918–19.
78. Such shooting clubs, besides enjoying the privileges of shooting and fishing,
exerted a sobering influence on the Forest Department to undertake game
preservation, prohibit poaching, and to keep down the number of firearms
in the areas surrounding the reserved or protected forests.
79. O’Malley, Bengal District Gazetteer, 24 Parganas, p. 133.
80. Annual Report on Game Preservation in Bengal for 1909–10, Calcutta, 1911,
p. 20.
81. Ibid., p. 1.
82. Anna L. Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 1–2.
83. This issue of engagement of the universal with the local has been approached
by a number of scholars from various standpoints. In Michael Adams,
‘Beyond Yellowstone? Conservation and Indigenous Rights in Australia
and Sweden’, in Discourses and Silences: Indigenous Peoples, Risks, and
Resistance, ed. Garth Cant et al., Christchurch: University of Canterbury,
2005, the problem has been seen in terms of an interplay between the two
fundamental aspects: human-nature relationship and Western-indigenous
relationship. He shows the two are linked. Other works like Gunnel
Cederlof and K. Sivaramakrishnan, eds., Ecological Nationalisms: Nation,
 Chakrabarti: Human-Tiger Conflict in the Forests 695
Livelihoods and Identities in South Asia, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2006,
too saw the problem as a contest between issues and spaces within and
beyond the nation. Tsing, Friction saw it in terms of a friction resulting in
dialogues across the differences between the local and the universal.
84. Donald Worster, ed., The Ends of the Earth, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988, Introduction.
85. Paul Greenough, ‘Pathogens, Pugmarks, and Political “Emergency”: The
1970s South Asian Debate on Nature’, in Nature in the Global South:
Environmental Projects in South and South-East Asia, ed. Paul Greenough
and Anna L. Tsing, New Delhi: Orient Longman., 2004, pp. 201–30; also
see Rangarajan, India’s Wildlife History, pp. 94–107.
86. Rangarajan, India’s Wildlife History, pp. 94–107. The WWF pledged over a
million dollars to help save the tigers in Asia. Established in the early 1960s,
the society was a major catalyst for governmental action in India, where
the Prime Minister readily agreed to personally supervise the project.
87. India became a custodian of more than 60 per cent of the world’s tigers.
A chain of twenty-five reserves was created, which cover an area of 33,000
sq. km. The Project Tiger reserves are administered by the states under
the supervision of the federal government. They are the components of
75 national parks and 425 wildlife sanctuaries, many of which are also
included in the global chain of biodiversity reserves. They occupy 140,000
sq. km. or about 4 per cent of India’s land surface; see, Greenough,
‘Pathogens, Pugmarks, and Political “Emergency”’, p. 209.
88. Ibid., pp. 201–30.
89. Ibid., p. 211.
90. The man-eating tendency is usually evoked by the periodic shortage of
natural food in the food chain. This tendency among the tigers in the
Sundarbans, therefore, can be attributed to the unique biogeographic
environment.
91. Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide, Delhi: Harper Collins, 2004, pp. 289–95.
The issue of human-tiger conflict in the Sundarbans is well known, and
an important issue in the debate relating to conservation. Amitav Ghosh,
though a fiction writer, has undertaken extensive field-trips to the core
area of the Sundarbans, and there is ample evidence to show that it is an
accurate depiction of the reality. The present researcher has verified this
during his field trips to the Sundarbans.
92. Contemporary Indian newspapers like the Anandabazar (Kolkata), The
Statesman (Kolkata), The Telegraph (Kolkata), and The Times of India
(Kolkata) are packed with relevant information regarding the lawlessness
and tiger poaching in the Sundarbans. In the 1990s, the trade in the skin
of Royal Bengal tigers was extremely lucrative, as the Bangladeshi and
Indian elites were prepared to pay large sums of money for this exclusive
696 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
item of interior decoration. The situation in the Indian and Bangladesh
Sundarbans is more or less identical. Big cats provided the opportunity
for big business. China functions as the manufacturing hub for medicines
made from the body parts of tigers. After adequate processing in China,
they are exported to UK, USA, Australia, and Japan, and this international
medicine trade can be considered as one of the primary incentives for tiger
poaching. According to one report, it may be possible to kill a tiger with
the help of poachers by spending only as much as 5,000 Indian rupees,
which would fetch $50,000 from the international market; see https://
www.nkrealtors.com/blog/royal-bengal-tigers-might-vanish-planet-earth/#.
XMM394GUkHE, accessed on 27 April 2019.
93. Willem van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in
South Asia, London: Anthem Press, 2005, p. 274.
 19

Medicine and Public Health in

Modern Bengal, 1850–1950

Sujata Mukherjee

Introduction

T
he province of Bengal underwent many important
socio-economic, cultural, and political transformations in
late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which formed
part of the history of colonial modernity in transition. These included
changes in the realm of science, technology, and medicine, like growth
of new ideas and institutions, opening of new professions, adoption
of new policies, etc., which affected the lives of the people of Bengal
in numerous ways.
My purpose here is to analyse these varied aspects of changes in
the field of medicine and public health in Bengal from 1850 to 1950
(on the basis of available research) in order to understand how far
and in what ways these processes of change led to the shaping of
modern Bengal. What types of institution were established in Bengal
for dissemination of Western medicine and health care? How did the
patronage provided by the colonizers towards Western medicine affect
the sphere of Indian medicine? What were the impacts of the spread
of Western medicine, and how far did public health measures control
the spread of diseases? These are some of the relevant queries, and
an attempt has been made here to revisit researches done earlier to
understand the nature of changes taking place in my period of study.
Scholars have explored the theoretical, professional, and
administrative aspects of the development of public health in British
698 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

India, thereby privileging the colonial medical administration.1 In

Radhika Ramasubban’s publications, the medical establishment of
British India is characterized as being overridingly concerned with
maintaining the health of Europeans in their colonial enclaves, and
particularly with preserving the health of the army.2 One major
significance of Western medicine, however, lay in the role it played
in the process of colonization—acting as an ideological as well as
empirical ‘tool of empire’.3
Since the early 1980s, discussions focusing on the question that
what is colonial about colonial medicine—originally analysed by Roy
Porter and later rearticulated by Shula Marks—became important.4
The following decades saw a great deal of path-breaking studies
attempting to expose the complex history of Western medicine in
colonial settings, including India and Africa.5 David Arnold points
out that the case of India demonstrates, ‘in a manner unparalleled
in western societies, the exceptional importance of medicine in the
cultural and political constitution of its subjects.’6
British Bengal—which witnessed the beginning of many of the
experiments in the broader fields of medicine and public health,
including institution-making, socio-cultural transition as well as
administrative measures—demonstrates the extent of political and
socio-cultural impact of these changes. The following account aims to
explicate and bring out the significance of these changes by situating
them at the then colonial and early postcolonial contexts.

Origin and Growth of Medical Institutions

Establishment of the Calcutta Medical College (CMC) in 1835 was
definitely a watershed in the annals of growth of Western medicine
in India.7 The Bengali vernacular class was started from the academic
session of 1852–3. Thirty students were enrolled at a stipend of Rs.5
per month, and ten were admitted as free students. Among these
students, 39 were Hindus, and 1 was Christian. In 1859–60, out
of a total of 43 students, 42 were Hindus, and 1 was Muslim. The
government took several measures for encouraging the teachers,
including the conferring of the titles of Rai Bahadur upon Babu Ram
Narain Dass, teacher of surgery (1868), and that of Khan Bahadur
on Tameez Khan, teacher of medicine. In 1872, Kanny Lal Dey, a
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 699

teacher and researcher on indigenous drugs, received the title of Rai

Bahadur. He was a man of great scientific attainments who judiciously
combined medical teaching with research.8
By the mid-1850s, the Calcutta Medical College became one of
the largest institutions in the world in the field of medical teaching. It
had also acquired an anatomical museum, a chemical laboratory, an
expanding library, as well as a sprawling hospital. The management
of the Medical College and Hospital was entrusted with the principal
and the College council. The latter consisted of all the professors and
was placed under the control of the Director of Public Instruction
(DPI).9 Around the mid-1870s, out of the 200 graduates of the English
classes, 99 were employed in government services. The remaining
graduates had been retained by some of the native princes and
nobility as special medical attendants, and some were employed in
steam vessels and in other lucrative positions.
After the establishment of three universities in 1857, the Calcutta
University, in August 1858, instituted two degrees for the students
of the English class, Licentiate of Medicine (LMS) and Doctor of
Medicine (MD). LMS would be conferred on any candidate who, after
having passed the university entrance examination in arts, had been
engaged for five years in the study of his profession in a recognized
school of medicine, and had passed the examination prescribed for
the degree of LMS. The LMS degree holders, who had previously
acquired the Bachelor of Arts degree and had two years’ experience as
practicing doctors, were eligible for admission for MD.10 For Bachelor
of Medicine (MB), the qualifications for admission and duration
of study was same as for the LMS, but it had a larger curriculum.
In August 1873, the minimum admission qualification was raised
for both LMS and MB. Further, the curriculum of MB was made
tougher.11 During the period of fifty years post its institution, the
number of successful candidates hardly crossed twelve.12
The first student to receive the MD in 1862 was Baboo Chander
Kumar Dey. In 1863, it was secured by two students—Juggobundo
Bose and Mahendra Lal Sarkar.13 The requirements for MD underwent
a change in 1894, when more emphasis was placed on research and
hospital apprenticeship. In 1906, the Calcutta University decided to
discontinue the examination for the LMS, held since 1861, and to
restrict the function of the University to examinations for the degrees
700 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

of MB and MD. The general courses of study—as they were changed

over the years—reflected the shift in priorities of the government as
well as the latest developments in the world of medicine. In the face of
the ravaging epidemics of the second half of the nineteenth century,
sanitary science assumed great importance, and accordingly, in
1890–1, hygiene was added to the list of subjects in Calcutta Medical
College.14 Similarly, in view of the breakthroughs in the fields of
bacteriology and parasitology, a need was felt to introduce a diploma
on the ‘subject of tropical medicine’ in the Medical College. In 1909,
it was decided that a Diploma of Tropical Medicine (DTM) would
be given by the Calcutta University. As a corollary to this decision, a
plan for the establishment of a school of tropical medicine was also
put forward. The new school was to form a part of the Calcutta
Medical College, from which its staff were to be drawn. After
much efforts, the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine (CSTM)
was established by Leonard Rogers (1868–1962) of the Indian
Medical Service, who was the Professor of Pathology at the Calcutta
Medical College. Eminent researchers like Sir R. Knowels, Sir U.N.
Bramhachari, Sir Ronald Ross, and Professor R.N. Chopra did
fundamental research in this institution on various tropical diseases.15
However, it has been argued that the CSTM, originally intended as
an all-India research centre, was reduced to provincial status when it
was opened in 1921.16 The All India Institute of Hygiene and Public
Health (AIIH&PH), another significant organization, was established
on 30 December 1932, with assistance from the Rockefeller
Foundation.
Late nineteenth century witnessed a proliferation of medical
schools. The Bengali licentiate class of the Calcutta Medical College
was transferred in 1872 to the newly opened Campbell Medical
School at Sealdah, then a suburb of Calcutta. The College of
Physicians and Surgeons of India was established by Dr Fernandez
and his colleague Dr N. Das in 1897. Apart from teaching, medical
research also continued to flourish with the establishment of different
institutions.
Hospitals devoted to indoor and outdoor care grew apace.17 The
Calcutta Medical College got a new hospital with a capacity of 500
patients in 1853. It had twenty-four wards, of which one was devoted
exclusively to women and children. It also absorbed the old Eye
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 701

Infirmary and Lying-in Hospital. Since 1853, many new additions

were made to the College Hospital, and there was the construction
of other hospitals too—including the Eden Hospital in 1881–2, the
Ezra Hospital in 1887, the Shama Charan Laha Eye Hospital in 1891,
and the Prince of Wales Surgical Block opened in March 1911 at a
cost of over Rs.10,000.
Other prominent hospitals at Calcutta included the Campbell
Hospital at Sealdah, opened in 1867, which was transferred in 1873
to the government as the hospital attached to the Campbell Medical
School. The hospital was almost entirely rebuilt in 1908–10. Another
major hospital, the Shambhu Nath Pandit Hospital, was opened in
1897 at Bhowanipur. The Mitford Hospital was constructed in Dacca
in 1854, largely as an effort of Justice Mitford of Dacca, who left a
legacy of Rs.175,000 for the hospital. However, the admission to
hospitals itself did not guarantee proper treatment and cure for the
patients. For a long time, mortality in hospitals continued to be quite
high. People often died from primary and secondary haemorrhage,
tetanus, erysipelas, gangrene, septicaemia, and exhaustion.18 Reasons
for hospitalization, which apparently included ‘sloughing, gangrene,
erysipelas, pleuresy, pericarditis, empyema, peritonitis and all cases
of septicaemia’, were responsible for 31.06 per cent of mortality in
the Medical College Hospitals between 1864 and 1869.19
The advent of listerism in Great Britain in the 1870s aroused
tremendous interest among practitioners in Calcutta.20 Effectiveness
of the application of Lister’s method of anti-sepsis in controlling
hospitalization, however, remained a debatable issue. The report of
the Calcutta Medical College Hospital for the year 1880 contained
two communications of Dr Kenneth McLeod, the first surgeon,
and of Dr D. O’C. Raye, second surgeon, who expressed divergent
opinions about the value of listerism. Surgeon General Dr A.J. Payne
came to the conclusion that ‘Listerism has not yet established its
claim to infallibility or the precise degree of its superiority over other
treatments’.21
Dr Kenneth McLeod went to Edinburgh in 1876, saw Lister’s
work, and after returning to India in 1879, attempted to introduce it
in an improved form. He also published an annual précis of operations
in the Indian Medical Gazette (IMG) to record the diminishing
incidences of sepsis. Due to his constant efforts and advocacy of
702 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

‘strict’ listerism, the use of antiseptic seemed to have become an

established fact by 1885.22
The Court of Directors of the East India Company decreed in
1802 that lunatic asylums for the reception of both criminals and
freely wandering insane Indians ought to be established in Bengal,
and by 1820, a number of lunatic asylums for the Indians (and of
the lowest strata of Eurasians) had been established. In the Bengal
Presidency, provision for care of mad persons were made in Calcutta,
Bareilly, Benares, Dacca, Murshidabad, and Patna. The racial
prejudices formed the nucleus of British health policy regarding the
establishment of ‘mental asylums’ (and ‘lock-hospitals’—discussed in
a later section) in India. By the late 1850s, the number of asylums for
the mentally ill multiplied.23 Each of the presidency towns could boast
of its own ‘asylum for the European insane’. One aspect of asylum
management which was criticized was the inadequate segregation
of patients in general, and the improper mixing of men and women
in particular. Official records of the 1850s designated many inmates
as ‘paupers’, consisting of ‘nearly 2/3 of the admissions of religious
mendicants, outcastes and prostitutes’.24

Indian Medical Systems

At the time of the British conquest, India’s medical system had
a vibrant, pluralistic structure. Therapeutic needs of the Indian
population were met by a variety of practitioners of Ayurvedic,
Unani, Siddha, as well as folk medicines. Nineteenth century India
witnessed the growing patronage of Western medicine and gradual
undermining of indigenous medical systems by the colonial state.25
The British colonizers (despite the inclination of the government
to make use of effective Indian drugs) gradually developed a sense
of ideological and medical superiority in the aftermath of new
discoveries made by science in the West. 26 Western science and
medicine were regarded as superior, enlightened, and rational, ‘while
India’s many medical traditions and folk healing practices became
increasingly denigrated as that which was inferior, traditional and
backward, irrational and “other”.’27 The DPI, in his annual report
of 1859–60, observed that he was satisfied from enquiry in various
quarters that the Bengali class of the Calcutta Medical College was
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 703

becoming more and more useful to the masses, and would eventually
supersede those ‘legal homicides’, the village kavirajas. 28
The practitioners of India’s traditional medicine responded to
this challenge by trying to reform their systems. Different methods,
like use of print media (to publish journals and books for spread
of knowledge and awareness), establishment of clinics and new
consumer-friendly products to utilize market opportunities, founding
of educational institutions, national conferences and associations
aimed at bringing kavirajas (as also other practitioners of therapeutic
systems like Unani) together, were extensively adopted.
Through systematic collection and publication of texts, the
protagonists of indigenous medicine tried to transform the
hitherto relatively inaccessible knowledge into a shared system of
social knowledge. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century,
translations of Sanskrit texts were undertaken and these were
published in Bengali. As has been pointed out, ‘These books not only
attempted to present ayurveda as a systematic and organized form,
they were also part of an effort to recognize ayurveda through the
techniques of modern education.’29 Gangadhara Ray (1789–1885) a
renowned Kaviraja, wrote Sanskrit commentaries on 34 books, and
himself composed 41 books. He made significant contributions to
Ayurvedic scholarship by writing a commentary on the classic text
of Caraka. Gangaprasad Sen (1824–1896), another eminent kaviraja,
published the first Ayurvedic magazine in the Bengali language,
Ayurveda Sanjivani,30 and Bijoyratna Sen, a student of Gangaprasad
Sen, translated the Astangahrdaya of Vagbhata into Bengali. This is
one of the three primary classics of Ayurveda. Bijoyratna supported
the idea of cooperation between allopathy and Ayurveda, and inspired
his favourite student, Jaminibhusan Ray, to establish a college where
these were studied side by side.
Many practitioners took the initiative to prepare medicines on
a large scale, fix price lists, and publish advertisements for them. It
was understood that the popularity and effectiveness of Western
medicine was largely dependent on its ready availability in the
market. So, if Ayurveda wished to offer an effective alternative to
biomedicine, it had to develop a similar infrastructure. This led to
the growth of Ayurvedic pharmaceuticals. Gangaprasad Sen also
took steps to export Ayurvedic medicines to Europe and America.31
704 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Chandra Kishore Sen opened a dispensary in 1878 in Calcutta for

selling Ayurvedic medicines at a cheap rate. His firm, C.K. Sen and
Company, started large-scale production in 1898. So did N.N. Sen and
Company in 1884, and Shakti Aushadalaya of Dacca in 1901. Around
1884, a company called Kalpataru Ayurvedic Works, established by
Gananath Sen, aimed to produce ayurvedic medicines on a large scale
for sale at moderate prices by preparing them with the aid of modern
machinery in the form of pills, tablets, and powders. In the early years
of the twentieth century, particularly in the days of anti-Partition
or Swadeshi movement, many entrepreneurs sought to substitute
colonial products with swadeshi products. During this time, many
small industrial units were opened by professional Bengalis.32
In 1907, the All India Ayurvedic Congress was formed, which
became the leading organization of the Ayurvedic practitioners in
India. The All India Vedic and Unani Tibbi Conference (AIVUTC),
first convened in 1910, was a prominent organization for Unani
and, to a lesser extent, Ayurvedic practitioners. The Conference had
three main aims: first, to develop further the institutionalization of
Unani and Ayurveda; second, to challenge the order of knowledge
of indigenous medicines by breaking down traditional lines of
transmission through families and encouraging the ‘horizontal’
dissemination of expertise among practitioners; and third, to provide
a forum to lobby the government for the support of indigenous
medicines. The Conference wished to transform and project Unani
and Ayurveda as modern bodies of knowledge and professions. An
urgent necessity was felt to distinguish learned practice from irregular
forms, denigrated as quackery, which were deemed to threaten
the authority of the actual practitioners. In the 1920s, however, its
influence began to wane.33
The teaching institution represented a powerful mechanism in the
modernization of the profession, providing new forms of knowledge
transmission. The Calcutta Ayurvedic Institution was established
in 1915 by Kaviraja Surrendra Nath Goswami, who was a licentiate
in allopathic medicine. In 1916, the Astanga Ayurveda College and
Hospital was founded by Kaviraja Jaminibhusan Ray. He was a scholar
in both ayurvedic and allopathic medicine. Since the only medical
topic taught in the traditional tols was internal medicine (kayacikitsa),
Jaminibhusan tried to revive the other branches of Ayurvedic learning
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 705

by supplementing them with instruction in Western anatomy,

physiology, surgery, and midwifery, along with physics, chemistry,
and botany. Jaminibhusan was a new thinker of the period, who
particularly wanted to train Ayurvedic physicians to make them
knowledgeable in surgery and midwifery. The Gobinda Sundari
Ayurvedic College was started in 1922 by Kaviraja Ramchandra
Mallick, with the patronage of Sir Manindra Chandra Nandy, the
Maharaja of Cossimbazar. The course of study offered integrated
Ayurvedic and allopathic medicine. The Viswanatha Ayurveda
Mahavidyalaya was founded in 1932 by Kaviraja Gananath Sen, with
the idea of restoring Ayurveda to a fully scientific basis by educating
physicians trained in all branches of medicine. In this institution, too,
Ayurveda was taught side by side with allopathy. In 1921 a national
university of Bengal, Gaudiya Sarvavidyayatana, was founded as part
of the Non-Cooperation Movement, and the ‘Vaidya Sastra Pitha’
was established as the Ayurvedic medical wing of this university.
Kaviraja Shyamadas Vacaspati was the founder-principal of this
institution. The students in his private tol shifted to this institution,
which was initiated by a donation of Rs.6,000 from the Tilak Swaraj
Fund. Shyamadas contributed to the monthly expenditures of the
college. After his death in 1934, a building was constructed for the
college with the help of his son, Bimalananda Tarkatirtha, and the
institution was renamed the ‘Syamadasa Vaidya Sastra Pitha’. This
school was a protest against the foreign-oriented education of the
day and represented the views of the purists or those who favoured
the suddha system of traditional education and opposed integrating
Western medical science with Ayurveda.
Thus, there developed a confrontation between the purists and
the integrationists regarding the question of reform and adaptation.
Curiously enough, despite the epistemological confrontation, both the
purists as well as those who advocated an integration of Western and
Ayurvedic systems, had to address and shape their behaviour not by
ignoring, but taking into account the mechanism of the market. It was
assumed that in the parameters of the market, suddha and integrated
products, i.e. those made according to traditional formulae and those
that were adapted from the pharmacology to make new medicines
respectively, could coexist without debate. None of the advocates of
either school could ignore the fact that they had to grapple with new
706 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

problems and pressures faced by the profession and had to aim at

reconfiguring the authority and rework its relation with the public.
The practitioners were most concerned to present the credibility of
their profession, to demonstrate to the public their authority, their
capacities, and their trustworthiness.
The new modes of reforming indigenous medicine in colonial
India has often been interpreted primarily as a move to challenge the
power of and seek equivalence with Western medicine through the
emulation of its professional models.34 The practitioners of Ayurveda,
who sought to recast their profession, were no doubt in many cases
inspired by colonial-derived models—organizational, educational,
conceptual, and technological. But it is important to recognize that
their adoption of these models was not a straightforward process.
The evolving profession was engaged in various forms of dialogue:
with itself (evident in the articulation of the competing interests of
its own practitioners) and with a variety of other medical practices
and traditions–folk, Unani, and private and state-sponsored Western.
The inner dynamics of reform, and the tensions within the profession
motivated the will to reform. Most importantly, as the public were its
patrons, the practitioners sought to reach out to them.
There were tensions within the professional elite, whose sphere
of authority, until the colonial time, was rooted in localized, familial,
and personal contexts. But through the late nineteenth century and
into the twentieth, the professional elite woke up to the need to
compete on a more global scale—through print, the mass production
of medicines, and professional organization. In this quest for recasting
their identity and authority, the role played by the marketplace and
public perception was of profound importance for the practitioners
of indigenous medicine. It may be asked whether the colonial era
marked a radical and immediate disjuncture in the orientation of
Ayurveda through the supplanting of pre-existing forms of instruction
and legitimation. The precolonial era was marked by the importance
of transmission of knowledge from person to person, the power of
family-based remedies, etc. In the colonial period, although family or
teacher-pupil relations remained important, the authoritative practice
of Ayurveda gradually ceased to be merely a local, family affair.
Thus, the system underwent many transformations. Some notable
aspects of this transformation were: medicines were not solely being
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 707

dispensed to individual patients, but were becoming available off the

shelf. Moreover, instead of being made by a vaidya (practitioner of
Ayurveda) in a small pharmacy, medicines were being mass-produced
by manufacturing companies. Ayurveda was no longer a knowledge
system accessible only to the elite, but was becoming disseminated to
many through print media, etc. All these developments undoubtedly
transformed the character of the Ayurvedic profession to a large
extent. Personal relation was less important, and reaching out to the
public sphere became more important than before. This remarkable
transformation become more and more prominent as years went
by, and ultimately reached a point when the Ayurveda was not the
least the same as that of pre-British times, since ‘it has experienced
a dramatic transformation in the last hundred years or so’.35

Women, Health, and Medicine

As argued by different scholars, in the case of women’s health care,
the colonial state showed initial apathy.36 Yet it needs to be admitted
that with the growth of medical intervention through hospitals, a
space was created, albeit very small, for providing Western healthcare
to women patients specifically. It is not surprising that the earliest
institutions devoted to women’s health were lock hospitals—since
keeping the soldiers fit received topmost priority and these hospitals
offered treatment to prostitutes who were suspected of spreading
diseases through physical contact with soldiers. These hospitals
were established for the confinement and treatment of prostitutes—
suspected of suffering from venereal diseases—in different
presidencies from around 1805. Throughout the nineteenth century,
venereal diseases remained one of the most important causes of
British soldiers’ admissions to hospitals in India. Lock hospitals were
officially suppressed in 1833, only to be revived in 1868 under the
Contagious Diseases Act. Women officially registered as prostitutes
(under the Contagious Diseases Act of 1868) were required to
attend the lock hospitals for regular genital exams conducted by
the presiding medical officer, and police were empowered to bring
women who were suspected of prostitution to the lock hospitals.37
In 1840, a large lying-in hospital was constructed in the grounds
of the Calcutta Medical College through public subscriptions,
708 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

followed in 1852 by the opening of another hospital where 116 beds

out of a total of 350 accommodated women and children. Female
patients belonging to different communities, including Europeans,
Eurasians, Muslims, and Hindus were treated in different medical
establishments in Calcutta, among whom Hindus formed the largest
single group. But the number of female patients attending medical
institutions remained very low, and it was argued by both the British
and the Indians that the women were averse to treatment by male
physicians. The supposed need to organize healthcare for reclusive
Indian women made it easiest to find a moral consensus on women’s
medical education. Efforts of the missionaries, support provided by
the government, and elite Indians’ zeal for reform led to the opening
up of medical education for women.
The Christian missions’ attempts at penetrating the zenana
involved providing Westernized medical care to the Indian women.
In 1869, Dr Clara Swain, an American and the first fully qualified
female medical missionary to get employment in India, was sent by
the American Methodist Episcopal Mission to Bareilly. Fanny Butler,
qualified from the London School of Medicine for Women arrived in
India in 1880 on behalf of the Church of England Zenana Missionary
Society.38 In Bengal, many Brahmo reformers expressed enthusiastic
support for spreading medical education among women.39 In 1875,
a member of the progressive Brahmo community, Neel Kamal
Mitra, petitioned to have his granddaughter, Biraj, admitted to the
Hospital Assistant course at the CMC. Mitra, however, insisted that
there should be separate sitting arrangements for her granddaughter
and that her husband should be allowed to accompany her to the
dissection room. Ultimately, nothing came out of this proposal.40
The growth of public opinion in favour of women’s medical
education also became visible in print media. A number of newspapers
and journals—particularly those in tune with the opinions of the
progressive Brahmos—emphasized the need for women doctors
trained in Western medicine for treating female patients. Apparently,
one prevalent conservative practice in Hindu society, which seemed
to obstruct delivery of proper medical care to women, was that of
the avoidance of any contact between women patients and doctors.
There existed an indirect method of treating women patients by
male doctors particularly among the upper classes. This practice was
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 709

narrated by Koilash Chunder Bose, assistant surgeon, who testified

in the Bose versus Bose adultery case (1878) thus:
The custom for Hindu ladies is to instruct others [male members] about
their ailments. The rule is to communicate through a maidservant, her
mother, or guardian. It did not strike me at all as strange that Upendro
should instruct me. The disease is very common among women.  .  .  . I never
spoke to Khettermoney, about that sort of thing. I did not treat her. I asked
her about it through the maidservant and she denied.41

The Brahmo Public Opinion, which favoured women’s medical

education printed the following:
We know of several instances in orthodox Hindu families, where the female
members suffer from the most complicated diseases, but yet would not allow
male doctors to visit and treat them. The consequence is, they are treated
second-hand through the assistance of uneducated quack native midwives,
and in ninety-nine out of a hundred, they are never radically cured.42

The Indian reformers (just like the colonizers) pointed towards

Indian women’s disinclination to male doctors when they argued
in favour of the proposal to train female doctors. The admission of
women into medical education meant an acceptance that women
would be employed as doctors, or would practise as doctors. The
logic of gender segregation paved the way for a strong argument in
favour of women service providers, not only in healthcare, but also
in a few other professions such as teaching. Many Indian reformers—
particularly those arguing for women’s equal opportunities in
education—were convinced about the usefulness of scientific
education for women learners. Dwarakanath Ganguly, a radical
Brahmo and the teacher, mentor, and husband of Kadambini, pointed
out in 1879: ‘Rather than learning the fine geographic details of
various countries, it would be worthwhile to examine whether or
not it is more relevant to have a basic knowledge of Physiology.’43
In 1875, a new chapter in the history of medical education
opened when four female students—all of European or Anglo-Indian
origin—entered the Madras Medical College as students of the
three-year certificate course. At that time, there was no choice but to
induct women into the general medical colleges, where instructions
were given by male teachers and attended by male students. It is
710 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

noteworthy that the London School of Medicine for Women was

established in the same year that Madras admitted women to its
medical institution. The credit for introducing medical education
to women goes to a doctor, a government official, and also to Mary
Scharlieb—wife of an English barrister in Madras (later to become
a London gynecologist).44
Around 1876 in Bengal, Lieutenant Governor Sir Richard Temple
expressed support of the demand for the admission of female students
to CMC classes. In 1879, the matter was again discussed; but there
was no positive outcome.45
Soon, there was another development. A.W. Croft, DPI, Bengal,
wrote to the principal of the Calcutta Medical College, in a letter dated
5 May 1882: ‘The parents of two or three young ladies, European and
native, who have passed the Entrance Exam of the University, have
expressed to me their strong desire that their daughters should join
the medical College.’46
In January 1882, Ellen Barbara d’Abreu (born in Dhaka to
an Anglo-Indian family from Patna and Nagpur) and Abala Das
(daughter of the renowned Brahmo reformer Durga Mohun Das,
who later married the scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose) passed
the First Arts and Entrance Examinations respectively, from the
Bethune School. D’Abreu and Das approached Croft in Bengal to
get admission at the CMC. Croft, in turn, asked for the opinion of
the principal and the council of the Medical College. He urged that
they should be admitted on the grounds that this would probably
result in great alleviation of sufferings of the secluded Indian
women, since this might lead to the gradual emergence of a body of
qualified practitioners who could be admitted to zenanas without any
objection. It was also argued that if the Medical College classes were
thrown open to females, a career of usefulness would be provided for
those ladies who were passing the university examinations. According
to Croft, ‘conditions of social life in this country, required a body of
thoroughly trained and qualified female practitioners’ in order to
rescue ‘large numbers of the women of India, either from a life of
suffering or from premature death’.47
Croft proposed to recommend to the university the admission
of female candidates if they passed the entrance examination. His
suggestion was laid before the council of the CMC, and at a meeting
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 711

of the council, in which five members were present, resolutions were

passed by a majority of four adverse to the proposition. It was pointed
out that no general demand for female physicians existed among the
native community. The two applicants then moved to the Medical
College of Madras. D’Abreu entered the BM class (five years) and
Abala Das the LMS class (four years). These two students were later
granted scholarships by the DPI.48
The majority in the council of the CMC maintained that ‘mixed
classes’ of men and women were ‘objectionable’ and ‘likely to exercise
a demoralizing influence upon students of both sexes’.49 In their
opinion, separate schools had to be opened if women were to be
trained in medicine. On one point, that of lowering the qualification
for entrance to the CMC, the whole council was unanimously
adverse.50
Dr Coats, Principal of the CMC, was one of the most liberal
advocates of women’s admission into medical classes. He quoted
authorities in Switzerland and France, who believed that the presence
of women in medical classes had a ‘refining influence’.51 Dr Harvey,
Professor of Midwifery, was also a strong advocate of women’s medical
education. As the teacher of midwifery, he was the only member of
the council with experience of lecturing to mixed classes, and argued
in favour of such teaching arrangements. He pointed out that he had
not experienced any unbecoming incident or behaviour on the part
of the male students. The Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, Rivers
Thompson, was also sympathetic to the cause of female medical
education. He felt that Bengal’s reputation as a leader in educational
progress in British India was at stake, since Madras and Bombay had
already begun to admit women to medical classes, and Bengal was
lagging behind. It was unacceptable to him that Bengal, a progressive
province in other respects, should be illiberal and retrograde in this.
He argued that ‘legitimate private interests’ were being hindered by
the attitude which the Medical College council assumed. He further
pointed out that the members of the council, in denying women
entry into medical education, were encouraging social conservatism,
and therefore zenana prejudices. It was subsequently decided by
Thompson in 1883 that women should be admitted to the classes in
the CMC on the same footing as male students.52 Separate admission
criteria for women, even though it was shown to be prevalent in
712 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

other parts of India, were not accepted in Bengal.53 He ‘would open

the college doors wide to students of both sexes’, but he would not
specially favour either sex because of two reasons: first, liberal training
and training in powers of observations were especially required in
the medical profession, and second, it would be conferring a ‘fatal
gift’ on the cause of women’s medical education to start them off on
a weaker foot.54 He also dismissed the opposition with the hope that
he could count on the loyalty and zeal of the professors to bring his
policy on this question to a successful issue, despite their objections.55
According to Thompson, the fact that ‘some Bengali ladies, fully
qualified by educational attainments’ had to go to ‘the more liberal
Presidency of Madras’ to study medicine was ‘clearly opposed to
the public good’.56 He accepted the view that Indian women in
general would prefer death to treatment by a male physician, and
the extension of medical education to women seemed to be the only
solution in this scenario.57 He dismissed the view that mixed classes
were undesirable and pointed out that in Madras there was no sign
of demoralization due to mixed classes.58
Many criticized the step of facilitating women’s entry in medical
colleges. Some of the contemporary journals and anonymous letters
to the editors of these journals criticized the government for having
acted in haste, without scrutinizing the matter intensively as what was
being experimented with were precious human lives. The decision to
facilitate women’s entry into the medical profession was even frowned
upon in the Indian Medical Service (IMS) circles. However, despite all
social discriminations and discouragement, female medical education
continued to spread and flourish. The first beneficiary of the new rule
was Kadambini Basu, one of the first female graduates in India, who
later married the Brahmo reformer Dwarakanath Ganguly. In 1883,
Kadambini entered the Calcutta Medical College and was awarded
the GBMC degree in 1886.59 To facilitate women’s entry into the
medical college, a scholarship of Rs.20 per month was provided to all
female medical students without restriction of number for a period
of five years. Kadambini received this scholarship with provision
for retrospective effect from July 1883. In 1884, Croft extended the
scholarships of Ellen d’Abreu and Abala Das to continue their study
at the Medical College of Madras, since they had moved prior to the
opening of classes to women in Calcutta.60
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 713

In 1885, Maharani Swarnamayi of Cossimbazar granted one

and a half lakh rupees to build a hostel for female students at
the CMC, which ‘removed a great obstacle in the way of female
students studying medicine in Calcutta’.61 Also, the Nawab Begum of
Murshidabad donated Rs.25,000 for the construction of a hostel for
the female students of Campbell Medical School, Sealdah.
In 1888, the Campbell Medical School opened its door to the
first batch of fifteen female trainees. The school was established in
1872 to accommodate the students of the Bengali vernacular class of
the Calcutta Medical College, opened in 1853. Croft wrote in favour
of opening the Campbell school to women.62 Dr S.C. Mackenzie,
the Superintendent of Campbell Medical School, received fifteen
applications from female candidates. He pointed out that these
candidates were ‘ladies belonging to the most respectable Brahmo
families of Bengal—one of them is a relative of a pleader, another—a
relative of a Government inspector of schools, another—a relative
of the superintendent of a Zoological Garden, and two others are
relatives of a teacher of a medical school’.63
The majority of medical men were, however, opposed to women’s
entry to Campbell.64 Surgeon Major C.J.W. Meadows, the officiating
civil surgeon of Patna, wrote to the Secretary to the Government of
Bengal: ‘I am  .  .  .  of opinion that no special demand or need exists for
this inferior class of Female Hospital Assistants in the villages, and
their employment would tend rather to discredit the western system
of medicine and so defeat the object in view.’65 Some even pointed
out that Indian women were too steeped in ignorance and tradition
to want Western medical care.66
Eventually, however, all obstacles were overcome, and in 1888, the
Campbell Medical School finally opened its door to female students.
The first batch of fifteen female trainees admitted at Campbell
included Hindus, Brahmos, native Christians, and Eurasians. Unlike
the CMC, Campbell’s instructors were Indians, who had received their
medical training in India. Textbooks were written either in Bengali
or were translations of English books. Different scholarship schemes
were introduced by the Dufferin Fund from 1885 onwards.
The British considered themselves to be the ‘enlightened outsiders’
whose moral responsibility lay in upgrading the colonized. From the
point of view of the colonizers, the imperative of women doctors was
714 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

articulated as part of the ‘white man’s burden’.67 Western opinion was

also thus largely convinced that only female agents could hope to
make metropolitan medical care more palatable to Indian women.
Several scholars have pointed out, quite rightly, that compared to
England, women in India entered medical colleges and the medical
profession quite easily.68
Qualified female physicians gained employment in zenana
hospitals opened by the Dufferin Fund or the National Association
for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India, which
was organized in 1885 at the personal initiative of Queen Victoria.69
Women like Kadambini Ganguli and Haimabati Sen received medical
education from new institutions but faced gender discrimination as
well as racial disadvantage.70 Nevertheless, this created new identities
for women medics. Progress of medical education was rather slow—
most upper class and upper caste Muslim and Hindu women were not
able to leave the seclusion of the home to become medical students.
Patriarchal social norms ensured that, at least during the initial days
of female medical education, very few Hindu and Muslim females
joined the profession. According to the Calcutta Census of 1901, 124
women were registered as qualified medical practitioners.71 According
to one estimate of 1907, 17 students out of a total of 425 studying at
the CMC were female.72 In 1912, medical colleges all over India had
female students mainly from the European, Eurasian, and Indian
Christian communities. There were very few Hindus.73 In Campbell,
in the first two years (1888–90), there were more Hindu women,
mostly Brahmins and Kayasthas. In 1890, there were 8 Brahmos,
8 Christians, and 12 Hindu women entrants. Hindu girls included,
apart from Brahmins and Kayasthas, one Vaidya and one Vaishnav.74
In 1891, the first Muslim woman was admitted, followed by the
second one in 1893. Around 1893–4, there was a total of 31 female
students, which included 3 Europeans, 7 Hindus, 7 Brahmos, 2
Muslims, and 10 native Christians. From 1890, all candidates were
required to pass a special elementary examination in English.
After 1896, medical education became a four-year programme.
Examinations became more difficult and a greater understanding of
English was required. According to Geraldine Forbes, the number
of Bengali women among the student community began to decline
gradually after 1896 due to stringent admission rules. More native
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 715

Christian, European, and Eurasian women entered the school.75

Outside Calcutta, the Dacca Medical School also admitted female
students. Their number was, however, very small. During 1916–17,
there were only two students. In the next year, the number rose to
seven, and further to ten in 1919–20.76
Women medical students disproportionately consisted of women
belonging to European, Eurasian, and Indian Christian communities,
which placed fewer restrictions on the employment and education
of women. Wherever Hindu and Muslim females appeared, they
were very few in number. This pattern continued until the 1930s.77
Between 1935 and 1940, however, the number of Anglo-Indian
students declined while the number of Hindu and Muslim students
started to rise.
It has to be admitted that the new medical knowledge was not
really affordable to the majority of the population, and they had to
depend on the services of traditional care-givers, who were gradually
discredited by the British civilizing discourse of science and progress.
As discussed elsewhere, there existed a vigorous female domain of
healing in early nineteenth-century Calcutta.78 Medical knowledge
existed both within the household and among certain recognized
women specialists who had commendable skills as practitioners. This
domain was neglected and deprived of official patronage.
Long before the organization of female medical care by branches
of the Dufferin Fund, maternal care and infant care were sought to be
reformed by institutionalization of midwifery training. In Bengal (as
in other parts of India) childbirth, which was regarded as a polluted
task, was attended by indigenous dhais (colloquially known as dais) or
traditional birth-attendants, who were mostly members of the lower
castes in the hierarchy of the Hindu society, or were poor Muslim
women. In some accounts, they have been described as ‘experienced
and courageous women of advanced age and with clean clothes before
whom she [the birthing mother] may not feel shy, who have cut their
nails and who cheer her with friendly words’.79
In Bengal, she could be a Hadi or Dom,80 in north India she
was generally a Chamar or of the sweeper caste,81 and in the south,
she was of the barber caste. There was little incentive for the dhai to
hone her skills or for midwifery to develop any professional traits
as it had in Europe, even before the coming of medical men. It had
716 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the classic traits of a traditional occupational grouping devoid of

professionalism. The recruits were a caste-based, restricted hereditary
group, and often the calling was handed within a family, from mother
to daughter.
The duties of the dhai could extend from cutting the umbilical
cord, washing the puerperal garments and burying the placenta, to
living in the home of the parturient mother and giving her and the
infant regular massages and warm fomentations. Thus, they had to
perform menial tasks and received meagre pay. Among the Calcutta
elites, we find a mixed attitude towards these midwives. People like Lal
Behari Day portrayed a kindly and well-intentioned village midwife.82
On the other hand, many accounts blamed the ignorance of the dhai
for jeopardizing the health of both mother and child by interfering
with the process of natural labour. In fact, throughout the nineteenth
century, the traditional Indian birthing practices were under scrutiny
of both Bengali and British reformers. In the course of the nineteenth
century, the dhais became the symbols of ‘superstition and dogged
resistance to change’.83
The conditions in the zenana became focus of critical attention
and it was considered to be a place of dirt, darkness, and disease.84
It has been pointed out by a missionary author, who was not a
doctor herself, but who described the practices of Bengali village
midwives in the mid-nineteenth century, that ‘unscientific’ and
‘unchristian’ customs seem to have been indistinguishable.85 Another
important target of attack was the unhygienic condition under
which women gave birth in India. Childbirth took place in a special
room called the aturghar or sutikagriha. Dr Stewart, a professor of
the Calcutta Medical College, was horror-stricken to see the ‘filthy,
smoky, and crowded hovels, to the straw of which the unfortunate
Bengalee females are condemned by native usage in the hour of
suffering’.86 In 1876, the health officer for Calcutta presented a detailed
picture of the unhealthy and unhygienic practices of the aturghar,
and the same kind of portrayal was available in the census reports
of 1911.87
The medicalization of childbirth became part of distinct, pro-
fessionalized fields of medical expertise and practice. Quite early
in the nineteenth century, Madhusudan Gupta had drawn atten-
tion to the need to train traditional birth attendants.88 In Bengal,
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 717

institutionalized training programmes for midwives were finally

introduced in the 1870s. One obvious limitation of these programmes
was that because of the necessity of some degree of knowledge of
English and regular attendance, there were very few respondents
to these from among the economically impoverished section of the
dhais belonging to lower castes. Sometimes, however, training in
these programmes opened up avenues of lucrative employment for
those belonging to urban and semi-urban groups.
Attempts to medicalize childbirth cannot be understood as simply
an effect of improved clinical outcomes. We need to investigate how
new practices were imbued with positive social, political, and cultural
values. Modernization of traditional midwifery was part of self-
perceptions and the desire for self-improvement and formulation of
middle class identity for the colonized people. For the upper castes,
sanitized cleanliness became an ideology for asserting its own identity,
as it worked in tandem with notions of caste purity and pollution. The
emphasis on unsanitary practices of the traditional birth attendants
made them more and more marginalized in the emerging discourse
on science and modernity.
Apart from institutionalization of midwifery training, another
important method to modernize reproductive health was to spread
new knowledge of pre- and post-natal care through guidebooks and
essays addressed to expectant mothers. Jadunath Mukhopadhyaya,
LMS of Calcutta Medical College, wrote Dhatrisiksha ebong
Prasutisiksha: A Guide to Native Midwives & Mothers in two volumes
(first published in 1867). Saral Dhatrisiksha written by Sundarimohan
Das (MB, Professor of Midwifery of Physician and Surgeon College)
was published in 1901. These manuals were written in simple and
homely Bengali. In 1867, the Bamabodhini Patrika published a series
of detailed and informative articles on midwifery, covering pregnancy,
its symptoms and care, and delivery.
The nineteenth century also saw the publication of a large number
of writings of physicians as well as social reformers addressing
the subject of degeneration of health of the Bengalis, including
discussions about the causes and remedies of this situation. Health
advices mostly intended for women readers formed part of a new
discourse of domesticity. This new discourse was rooted in the felt
need to formulate indigenous ideal of modernity, which would be
718 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

imbued by the precepts of Western science and medicine and was

perceived to be the foundation for the restructuring of the nation.89
Women were expected to know a bit of all available forms of
treatment, including folk medicine, allopathy, homeopathy, kaviraji,
and hakimi. Parents, particularly mothers were advised to educate
themselves to be able to understand and execute the medical experts’
instructions.
It is interesting to note that since the second half of the nineteenth
century, social reformers invoked physiological issues in debates
regarding raising of the age of marriage. During the child marriage
controversies of the 1860s and 1870s, ultimately resulting in the
Native Marriage Act of 1872, Keshub Chandra Sen, the leader of
the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, solicited the opinions of the doctors
practising in Bengal on the effect of different influences, including
climate, on tropical bodies, in a quest for determining what should be
the earliest age of marriage—from the point of view of the well-being
of the mother, the child, and the society at large. It was the earliest
example of an appeal to physiology for rationalizing social reform.
During the controversy regarding the age of consent in the 1890s
following the death of Phulmoni Dasi (11 years old), who died of
injuries inflicted on her wedding night by her husband Hari Mohan
Maiti (who was much older than her), the discussions of both the
supporters of increasing the age of consent from 10 to 12, as well as
those of the orthodox opposition, were rendered in the language of
physiology and medicine.
In the twentieth century, the Marriage Reform Act or Sarada Act
(like the Act of 1891) of 1929 was also partly debated on medical
grounds. There was comparatively less opposition to the matter of
raising the age of permissible sexual intercourse in marriage. This can
be explained at least partially by the entry of women’s organizations
into the public sphere, particularly in the early twentieth century.
Nature of healthcare practices changed in the late colonial era, when
greater emphasis was put on disseminating and popularizing health
education. There was a growth of voluntary associations devoted
to maternal as well as child healthcare. The government offered
financial help to the local bodies and voluntary organizations for
establishment and maintenance of maternity and child welfare centres
and organization of maternity services. Following the example of
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 719

Dufferin Fund, different voluntary organizations set up by imperial

women like Lady Reading Fund, Lady Chelmsford Fund became
involved in arranging health care activities for women and children.
Organization of baby shows and welfare exhibitions, sale of medical
literature, public health education, and child welfare centres were
patterned on a Westernized model, which would supposedly provide
better health and longer life span for both women and children.
All these efforts, however, could not bring much welfare to
mothers and children. Available statistics show that the benefits
derived from efforts of spreading Western medicine in British Bengal
were not very noteworthy. In fact, in twentieth-century Bengal,
maternal as well as infant death rate continued to show upward
trends, belying any expectation that promotion of Western medicine
would lead to comparatively better health status for women.90

Chief Diseases and

Public Health Administration
British Bengal (not unlike other areas), suffered from periodic
outbreaks of cholera, small pox, malaria, and plague epidemics,
resulting in high mortality. Other diseases like influenza, kala-azar,
leprosy, tuberculosis, etc., also took their toll. The epidemic of small
pox (also known as basanta rog), which broke out during 1849–50
claimed a death toll of about 6,100. The years between 1851 and 1869
witnessed 9,549 additional deaths due to different diseases.91
Jennerian vaccination was introduced in 1802, but it had to
struggle with the deeply entrenched method of variolation for wider
acceptance. Among the villagers, smallpox was also identified with
the Goddess Sitala (the cool one)—originally a folk deity—who was
worshipped when the smallpox season commenced. Defective system
of vaccination and the absence of compulsory vaccination seemed to
obstruct the success of mitigation of smallpox. Ralph Nicholas points
out that there were many communities and localities ‘that refused
to have anything to do with what appeared to be interference in the
domain of Sitala’.92 In Calcutta, between 2,500 and 7,000 people died
each year from cholera from 1841 to 1865. Following the opening
of a new sewage system (1865) and filtered water supply (1869), the
mortality from cholera dropped temporarily.93 Establishment of the
720 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Palta pumping station and the Tala Tank Reservoir (1909) also aimed
at providing safe drinking water.
Cholera mortality in Bengal, however, was the highest among
the British Indian provinces in 1928.94 Anti-cholera measures,
including free anti-cholera inoculation, inoculation of pilgrims who
went to different religious festivals, were adopted from time to time.
Voluntary agencies like the Ramakrishna Mission, cholera brigade of
the Central Cooperative Anti-Malaria Society, and the Bengal Health
Association made noteworthy contributions in organizing preventive
measures against cholera in different areas of Bengal.
Since the mid-nineteenth century, there was the outbreak of
‘Burdwan fever’, also referred to as notun jwar by the Bengalis. This
was identified with malaria in several areas of Bengal.95 Raja Digamber
Mitra, the only Indian member of the official inquiry committee
formed in 1863 to ascertain the causes of the extraordinary outbreak
of virulent fever, emphasized the link between the transmission of
malaria and the expansion of the railways and the road network.96
C.A. Bentley, who served as the Sanitary Commissioner and Director
of Public Health in Bengal, however, believed that the problem of
malaria was linked to the problems of agricultural and environmental
decline.97 Around 1935, no less than 60,000 of the 86,618 villages
in Bengal were reportedly affected by the disease, ‘which levies an
annual toll of 35,000’.98
It may be asked what steps were taken to control diseases and
deliver healthcare in British Bengal. The English East India Company
had established the IMS in 1764 to look after European health in
British India. With the assumption of control by the Crown from the
Company in 1857, the army in India came to constitute the largest
single concentration of British troops outside the United Kingdom,
one-third of all British forces. Of the total number of British deaths
in the army in the first half of the nineteenth century, only 6 per
cent were due to military conflict. The rest were caused by four
major diseases—fevers, causing 40 per cent of all deaths and three-
quarters of all hospital admissions; dysentery and diarrhoea; liver
diseases; and cholera. The diseases which killed the British soldiers
were endemic to the country. Florence Nightingale’s campaign for
a sanitary commission for bringing medical reforms among the
European troops in India was rewarded in May 1859 when a Royal
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 721

Commission was appointed to investigate the sanitary state of the

army in India.
The report submitted to Parliament by the Commission in 1863
criticized the sanitary condition of the three presidency towns. The
commission also led to the creation of a sanitary branch within the
Home Department of the Government of India under a Sanitary
Commissioner. The establishment of charitable dispensaries from
the 1830s has been regarded as one of the earliest attempts to
extend Western medical care to the Indians. They became centres
for vaccination against smallpox and for spreading Western ideas
about hygiene and sanitation. From 1870 onwards, the colonial
administration distanced itself from the financial responsibility of
running these dispensaries, and they were left to raise their own
resources. In Bengal, the total number of dispensaries rose from 61
in 1867 to over 500 in 1900. The Government of Bengal, from time
to time, drew up schemes for employing the native, male kaviraja
to popularize Western medicine (alongside the use of indigenous
drugs) at the village level. There were about ten to fifteen tikadars
(inoculators) who practised in 1830. Their number rose to 30 in 1844
and to 68 by 1850. In 1907, the Director General of the IMS agreed
to the proposals of giving the commissioners of different districts
all over India a free hand to permit municipal and local boards to
choose and employ vaidyas and hakims.
The Compulsory Vaccination Act of 1880 empowered provincial
governments to introduce compulsory vaccination for children over
six months old. Apart from this kind of feeble medical intervention
on the part of the imperial government the actual responsibility for
public health was left to the initiative of the local administrative
units like municipalities in the larger towns (set up between 1871
and 1874) and the district boards, which were being set up in the
rural and semi-urban areas since 1881. They were required to raise
their own resources and provide for drainage, water supply, general
sanitation, maintenance of hospitals and dispensaries, etc., in
addition to other developmental activities. Municipalities generally
employed untrained sanitary inspectors and the district local boards
employed ill-paid and poorly educated vaccinators. Between 1888
and 1893, a Sanitary Board was set up in each province, composed
of administrative and public works officers apart from the Sanitary
722 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Commissioner and the Inspector General of Civil Hospitals. It was

supposed to give technical advice to the local bodies on sanitary
works, which would be backed by financial contributions of the
provincial government.
This public health machinery remained structurally weak in
both the investigative and executive aspects. In the districts, the Civil
Surgeon, an IMS officer, was expected to advise the municipalities
on sanitation in addition to performing regular medical duties.
He lacked experience or formal training in sanitation. In 1881,
the Superintendent of Vaccination was made the Deputy Sanitary
Commissioner of each province, who had to supervise general
sanitation as well as vaccination and vital statistics of several districts.
Epidemics were handled by the district subordinate officials. The
agency employed to collect the vital statistics at the village level were
the village chowkidars.
The Bengal Births and Deaths Registration Act, passed in 1873,
was at first in force in a few towns. In 1897, it was extended to all
municipal towns. The Epidemic Diseases Act passed in 1897 to control
plague empowered the provincial governments to make provisions
for the inspection of corpses and the compulsory notification of all
cases of deaths from plague. The outbreak of plague in 1896 revealed
the defects of the existing health organization, and consequently, the
Plague Commission Report (1904) recommended improvement of
the sanitary department.
The Bengal Local Self-Government Act (1885) had set up three
categories of local authorities in Bengal—the district boards (which
looked after a whole district), the local boards (in each subdivision),
and the union committees (for areas within a subdivision)—with
the last two working under the district boards and being financially
dependent on mainly district board funds. The Act empowered a
district board to provide for dispensaries, hospitals, and water supply
and mentioned that each district board was to provide so far as may
be possible for the proper sanitation of each district. Under section
91 of this Act, the district boards could employ sanitary inspectors
who looked after rural public health works. They were placed under
the supervision of the civil surgeon of the district.
By the Government of India Act 1919 (brought into operation
in 1921), public health was made a transferred subject. Central
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 723

Legislature became responsible only for legislation relating to

infectious and contagious diseases, for census and statistics, sanitary
control of ports and India’s international health relations. Thereafter,
reorganization of public health departments became a marked feature
in different provinces.
The public health and hospital administration system in colonial
Bengal was placed under dual control. The department of public
health and local self-government, under the charge of a minister, was
responsible for public health of the entire province. The minister had
two technical advisers who were responsible for the administration
of the medical and public health departments. The person in charge
of the medical department was called surgeon general and the officer
in charge of public health was the director of public health. The
department of public health consisted of two branches, namely the
statistical (a preventive and epidemiological side) under the director
of public health and the sanitary engineering branch under the chief
engineer.
The functions of the director of public health were mainly
advisory and not executive. It was the business of the department to
collect information as to the actual sanitary condition of the country,
to investigate the incidences and causes of diseases, and to advise
the government and local authorities in matters concerning the
improvement of public health. It was the responsibility of the local
bodies to carry out these measures. There were four assistant directors
of public health in each of the four divisions—Burdwan, Presidency,
Rajshahi, and the combined divisions of Dacca and Chittagong. In
the malaria section, there were an engineer, an entomologist, and a
qualified assistant. Other officers in the provincial health department
included the director of the Public Health Laboratory (for cholera
vaccine), officers of the Bengal Vaccine Institute (for smallpox
vaccine), maternity and child welfare, and vital statistics, and an
inspector of septic tank installations.
The supervision of the assistant directors of public health was very
ineffective; one of the biggest snags being that they were supposed to
supervise district health officers who were employees of the district
boards. Public health work in the districts was the responsibility of
the district boards. Each of the twenty-six districts had a full-time
district health officer. In each health circle in the district, there were
724 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

three subordinate health workers—a sanitary inspector, a health

assistant, and a medicine carrier. In addition, some 100 vaccinators
were appointed by the local body temporarily for about six months in
a year. Public health services, water supply, hospitals, and dispensaries
in the districts were financed by the local bodies.
In 1925, a scheme for public health organization was formulated
for rural areas. This scheme was introduced in 1927. Under it, the
district boards opened public health centres, one in each rural thana
of a district, under supervision of a sanitary inspector or assistant
health officer. The cost of the scheme was borne by the government,
while the units were under the control of the district board through
the agency of the district health officer. The function of these units
was to obtain information regarding the health conditions in the areas
and to take measures of prevention against the spread of epidemic
diseases. By 1930, 517 units were opened in 517 rural thanas, out of
a total of 574 in the whole province. Public Health Committees were
also formed in many thanas. It was thought that these committees
would operate for the decentralization of public health work in
matters of local interests and also serve as a coordinating agency for
the work of Union Boards in measures extending over a large area.
In 1930, a Rural Public Health Committee was appointed by
the government to consider what measures were necessary to
improve local public health organization. It pointed out that the
status of the health committee of the district board as a quasi-
independent authority should be emphasized and the committee
should be strengthened by the co-option of members interested in
public health. The committee also recommended the amendment
of the Local Self-Government Act, so as to give the rural sanitary
inspector a quasi-statutory position. It stated that the district boards
should be authorized to employ more than one assistant to each
sanitary inspector, and the union board on the other hand should
be authorized to employ a health officer as assistant to the sanitary
inspector. It further recommended that the Village Self-Government
Act should be amended so as to make the president of a union board
legally responsible for notification of epidemic diseases.
This Public Health Organization, which existed in Bengal in
the 1940s, suffered from a number of limitations which impaired
the efficiency of the public health services. The income of district
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 725

boards had not increased to cope with the increasing demand for
expenditure on roads, water supply, public health services, hospitals,
etc. Their power of taxation was limited and, they had to depend on
grants from the provincial revenues. The provincial government itself
suffered severely from financial stringency and was not able to provide
adequate funds. The surgeon general, civil surgeons in the districts,
and assistant surgeons in charge of subdivisional hospitals were in
the provincial cadre, and had little control over the subordinate
medical staff in rural areas, who were employees of local bodies.
Lack of funds and control undoubtedly impaired the efficiency of
the public health services.
When Bengal witnessed a catastrophic famine during 1943–4,
the public health administration failed to control the severe outbreak
of epidemics which accompanied the famine.99 Lack of coordination
and contact among different agencies of provincial and local health
organizations meant that no satisfactory attempt could be made
during the early months after the outbreak of the famine to deal
with the situation. In fact, it was noted by the Famine Enquiry
Commission, ‘The general organization of the medical services and
hospitals was in fact such as to render mobilization and development
to meet the emergency extremely difficult.’100 Many contemporaries
vehemently criticized the public health administration for its
inefficiency. Brigadier Fraser was in charge of the military medical
service during the famine. According to him, what was found in
Bengal could be described as ‘either light hearted or misguided local
administration’.101 E.W. Holland, Secretary to the Government of
Bengal, public health and local self-government department, reported
some specific problems. For example, the district health officers did
not do as much touring as they probably ought to do. It seemed that
the district board chairman used them for his own purposes and also
did not report to the director of public health.102
Epidemics of cholera, malaria, and small pox affected all districts
of Bengal in various degrees. The reported total deaths from the
cholera epidemic between July 1943 and June 1944 was 218,269,
which was 309.7 per cent in excess of the quinquennial average for
1938–42. Malaria epidemic broke out in famine-stricken Bengal in
June 1943, peaked in December, and continued to 1944. A small pox
epidemic also broke out in severe form in December 1943, and peaked
726 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

in March and April 1944. The famine of Bengal and the resultant
epidemics exposed the vulnerability of the poor rural population, as
well as the inefficiencies of the public health organization in Bengal.
While like earlier famines of the colonial period it magnified the
forces of death already present in the region, its uniqueness lay in the
fact that it exposed the defects of the public health organization of
colonial Bengal as well as the limitations of imperial medical policy.103
Various estimates of famine mortality—including death from
starvation and diseases—present conflicting figures. The lowest
estimate of the Famine Enquiry Commission, which put the total
mortality figure at about 1.5 million, is no longer accepted as valid.
Paul Greenough has proposed that the excess mortality due to the
famine during 1943–6 was somewhere between 3.5 and 3.8 million.104
Amartya Sen has presented a revised estimate of 3 million famine
deaths over the period of 1943–6.105 The view that female mortality
was lesser than male mortality, as propounded by officials, has been
challenged too.106 It has been pointed out that death rate per unit of
population was higher for women in every year during the decade
of 1941–50, through the famine.107

Reflections
In its final report, the Famine Enquiry Commission pointed out
that dietary deficiency among Indians, particularly among women
and children, was responsible for much of the ill health. In 1944, the
Government of India set up the Health Survey and Development
Committee, also known as the Bhore Committee after its chairman,
Sir Joseph Bhore. In its report (1946) the Committee declared that
‘any plan for improving the health of the community must pay
special attention to the development of measures for adequate health
protection to mothers and children’.108
It is noteworthy that despite the changes which occurred in the
field of medicine in colonial Bengal as delineated above, they could
not accomplish the task of replacing indigenous medicine. Neither
did the colonizers, despite their vehement criticism of Indian medical
systems and practitioners, aim to replace them in any fruitful
manner. In 1900, Calcutta, the second city of the British Empire
and a colonial metropolis of a million people, could barely support
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 727

a hundred practitioners of Western medicine.109 Western medicine

however, remains as one of the most important legacies bequeathed
by British rule in India and it has played a crucial role in the history of
modernizing Bengal. Significant transformations which did occur in
the field of medicine and public health, like growth of new institutions,
rise of new professions, medical research, growth of a structure of
public health administration (however feeble), reproductive health
intervention, as well as status of Indian medicines—all these
contributed cumulatively in inaugurating a new era in the field of
healthcare and medicine which became irreversible. As has been
argued convincingly by scholars, pluralization of the knowledge of
Western medicine would entail ‘a parallel pluralisation of modernity
itself ’ because ‘Western’ medicine was a crucial component of the
project of colonial modernity.110
In immediate post-Independence period, health policies aimed
at expanding medical education, control of diseases and epidemics,
reproductive health intervention for ensuring birth-control, and
so on. The newly independent country wished to adopt measures
in the domain of health and medicine keeping these objectives in
mind. Many of these measures were, in some ways, continuation of
older policies. However, they aimed at delivering healthcare for the
citizens of India within the context of a broader and more holistic
approach, including providing economic welfare as well as ensuring
of social well-being.

Notes
1. Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive
Medicine, 1859–1914, Cambridge and Delhi: Cambridge University Press
and Foundation Books, 1994.
2. Radhika Ramasubban, Public Health and Medical Research in India: Their
Origins under the Impact of British Colonial Policy, Stockholm: SAREC,
1982; and Radhika Ramasubban, ‘Imperial Health in British India,
1857–1900’, in Disease, Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Western
Medicine and the Experience of European Expansion, ed. Roy Macleod
and Milton Lewis, London: Routledge, 1988, pp. 38–60.
3. See, Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of the Empire: Technology and European
Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century, New York: Oxford University Press,
1981; Philip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action,
728 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
1780–1850, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964; and Philip D.
Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter with the Tropical World in
the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
4. Waltraud Ernst, ‘Beyond East and West: From the History of Colonial
Medicine to a Social History of Medicine(s) in South Asia’, Social History
of Medicine, vol. 20, no. 3, 2007, pp. 505–24. Also cited in Prajit Bihari
Mukharji, Nationalizing the Body: The Medical Market, Print and Daktari
Medicine, London: Anthem Press, 2009, p. 8, n. 32.
5. For example, Waltraud Ernst in her book has discussed about the ‘politics
of control’. See, Waltraud Ernst, Mad Tales from the Raj: European Insane
in British India, London: Routledge, 1991. Also cited in Bihari Mukharji,
Nationalizing the Body, p. 17, n. 84.
6. David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease
in Nineteenth Century India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 9.
7. Anil Kumar, Medicine and the Raj: British Medical Policy in India, 1835–
1911, New Delhi: Sage, 1998. Poonam Bala, Imperialism and Medicine
in Bengal: A Socio-Historical Perspective. New Delhi: Sage, 1991; Mel
Gorman, ‘Introduction of Western Science into Colonial India: Role of
the Calcutta Medical College’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society, vol. 132, no. 3, 1988, pp. 276–98; and Samita Sen, and Anirban Das,
‘A History of the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital, 1835–1936’, in
Science and Modern India: An Institutional History, c.1784–1947, ed. Uma
Das Gupta, vol. 15, pt. IV, Project of History of Science, Philosophy and
Culture in Indian Civilization, New Delhi: Pearson, 2011, pp. 477–522.
8. DPI Report, Bengal, 1868–69, 1872–73, Calcutta, 1869, 1872, pp. 456, 700.
9. DPI Report, Bengal,1855–56, Calcutta, 1856, p. 125
10. DPI Report, Bengal, 1858–59, Calcutta, 1859, p. 7.
11. DPI Report, Bengal, 1874–75, Calcutta, 1875, p. 87. Succeeding at MD
was even tougher and very few could earn it.
12. Progress of Education in India, 1887–88 to 1891–92, Second Quinquennial
Review, Calcutta, 1892, p. 229.
13. Later on, M.L. Sarkar became very famous as the founder of ‘The Indian
Association for the Cultivation of Science’ in Calcutta. The Association
aimed at creating an Indian centre for original investigations in natural
phenomena as well as popularizing science in India. He played an
equally remarkable role in championing the cause of homeopathy. See,
Chittabrata Palit, ‘Mahendralal Sircar, 1833–1904: The Quest for National
Science’ in Science and Empire Essays in Indian Context 1700–1947,
ed. Deepak Kumar, Delhi: Anamika Prakashan, 1991, pp. 152–160;
and Pratik Chakrabarti, Western Science in Modern India: Metropolitan
Methods, Colonial Practices, New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004; J.
Lourdusamy, Science and National Consciousness in Bengal (1870–1930),
New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2004.
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 729
14. Progress of Education in India, 1887–88 to 1891–92, Second Quinquennial
Review, p. 224.
15. Upendranath Brahmachari (1875–1946) found a cure for the dreadful
disease kala-azar (black fever). Its etiology was first discovered by
Leishman and Donovan in 1903. But a cure was not in sight. A decade
later, Rogers introduced antimony treatment (tarter emetic) but it had
serious toxic effects. After years of research, in 1921, Brahmachari
produced the first organic antimony—stibalinic acid with urea. See,
Achintya Kumar Dutta, ‘Upendranath Brahmachari in Pursuit of
Kala-azar’, in History of Medicine in India: The Medical Encounter, ed.
Chittabrata Palit and Achintya Kumar Dutta, Delhi: Kalpaz, 2005,
pp. 139–55.
16. See, David Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India,
vol. 3, pt. 5, The New Cambridge History of India, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000, p. 186.
17. See Srilata Chatterjee, Western Medicine and Colonial Society Hospitals
of Calcutta, c.1757–1860, Delhi: Primus Books, 2017.
18. See, Centenary Volume of Calcutta Medical College, p. 51. It was
stated: ‘Among 38 deaths out of 199 operations performed in 1879,
the following causes of death were noted: Primary Haemorrhage—4;
Secondary Haemorrhage—5; Tetanus—6; Erysepelas—5; Gangrene—4;
Septicaemia—6; and Exhaustion—8.’
19. Ibid., p. 52.
20. Joseph Lister introduced effective techniques for antisepsis. See, Roy
Porter, The Cambridge History of Medicine, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006, p. 199.
21. Centenary Volume of Calcutta Medical College, p. 54.
22. Ibid.
23. For a discussion about asylums in Bengal, see, Debjani Das, Houses of
Madness: Insanity and Asylums of Bengal in Nineteenth-century India,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015.
24. Waltraud Ernst, ‘The Establishment of “Native Lunatic Asylums” in Early
Nineteenth-Century British India’, in Studies in Indian Medical History, ed.
G.J. Meulenbeld and D. Wujastyk, rev. edn., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,
2001, pp. 169–204.
25. See, Charles Leslie, ed., ‘Ambiguities of Revivalism in Modern India’,
Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study, Berkley: University of
California Press, 1976, pp. 356–67; and David Arnold, ed., Warm Climates
and Western Medicine: The Emergence of Tropical Medicine, 1500–1900,
Clio Medica, The Wellcome Institute Series in the History of Medicine,
vol. 35, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. Also see, Deepak Kumar, ‘Unequal
Contenders, Uneven Ground: Medical Encounters in British India,
1820–1920’, in Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge, ed. Andrew
730 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Cunningham and Bridie Andrews, Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1997, pp. 172–90.
26. See, Mark Harrison, ‘Medicine and Orientalism: Perspectives on Europe’s
Encounter with Indian Medical Systems’, in Health, Medicine and Empire:
Perspectives on Colonial India, ed. Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison,
New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2001, pp. 37–87.
27. Waltraud Ernst, ‘Colonial Psychiatry, Magic and Religion: The Case of
Mesmerism in British India’, History of Psychiatry, vol. 15, no. 1, 2004,
p. 61.
28. The name for Ayurvedic practitioners in Bengal; literally, the king of
poets, from their mastery over the texts, which were in verse. DPI Report,
Bengal, 1859–60, Calcutta, 1860, p. 144.
29. Pradip Kumar Bose, ed., Health and Society in Bengal: A Selection from
Late 19th Century Bengali Periodicals, New Delhi: Sage, 2006, p. 22. Also
see, Benoybhusan Roy, Unish Satake Deshiyo Bhasay Chikitsavigyan
Charcha (in Bengali), Calcutta: Ananda Publishers, 1995.
30. See, Brahmananda Gupta, ‘Indigenous Medicine in Nineteenth and
Twentieth-Century Bengal’, in Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative
Study, ed. Charles Leslie, Berkley: University of California Press, 1976,
pp. 368–77.
31. Ibid., p. 372.
32. Rajat Kanta Ray, Entrepreneurship and Industry in India, 1800–1947, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992.
33. See, Guy Attewell, Refiguring Unani Tibb: Plural Healing in Late Colonial
India, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2005.
34. Poonam Bala, Imperialism and Medicine in Bengal: A Socio-Historical
Perspective, New Delhi: Sage, 1991.
35. Madhulika Banerjee, Power, Knowledge, Medicine: Ayurvedic
Pharmaceuticals at Home and in the World, Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan,
2009, p. 1.
36. David Arnold, for example, writes: ‘The primary areas of state medicine
in the first half of the nineteenth century—the army, the jails, even the
hospitals—were primarily male domains in which women played little
part’. See, David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic
Disease in Nineteenth Century India, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993, p. 254.
37. For a discussion regarding lock hospitals, venereal disease, Contagious
Diseases Acts and other related topics see, Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race,
Sex and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and Their
Critics, 1793–1905, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980; Sabyasachi
R. Mishra, ‘An Empire “De-Masculinized”: The British Colonial State
and the Problem of Syphilis in Nineteenth-Century India’, in Disease and
Medicine in India: A Historical Overview, ed. Deepak Kumar, New Delhi:
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 731
Tulika, 2001, pp. 166–79; Mridula Ramanna, ‘Control and Resistance: The
Working of the Contagious Diseases Acts in Bombay City’, Economic and
Political Weekly, vol. XXXV, no. 17, 2000, pp. 1470–6; Sujata Mukherjee,
‘Imperialism, Medicine and Women’s health in Nineteenth Century India’,
in Science and Society in India, c.1750–2000, ed. Arun Bandopadhyay,
New Delhi: Manohar, 2010, pp. 95–120; Philippa Levine, ‘Venereal
Disease, Prostitution, and the Politics of Empire: The Case of British India’,
Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 4, 1993–4, pp. 579–602; Philippa
Levine, ‘Rereading the 1890s: Venereal Disease as “Constitutional Crisis”
in Britain and British India’, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 55, no. 3,
1996, pp. 585–612; Miles Ogborn, ‘Law and Discipline in Nineteenth
Century English State Formation: The Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864,
1866, and 1869’, Journal of Historical Sociology, vol. 6, no. 1, 1993, pp.
28–55; Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian
Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915, Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1994; Arnold P. Kaminsky, ‘Morality, Legislation
and British Troops in Late Nineteenth-century India’, Military Affairs,
vol. 43, no. 2, 1979, pp. 78–83; Douglas M. Peers, ‘Soldiers, Surgeons and
the Campaigns to Combat Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Colonial
India, 1805–1860’, Medical History, vol. 42, no. 2, 1998, pp. 137–60; Judy
Whitehead, ‘Bodies Clean and Unclean: Prostitution, Sanitary Legislation
and Respectable Femininity in Colonial North India’, Gender and History,
vol. 7, no. 1, 1995, pp. 41–63; David Arnold, ‘Sexually Transmitted Diseases
in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century India’, Genitourinary Medicine,
vol. 69, February 1993, pp. 3–8; Stephen Legg, ‘Governing Prostitution
in Colonial Delhi: From Cantonment Regulations to International
Hygiene (1864–1939), Social History, vol. 34, no. 4, 2009, pp. 447–67;
M. Sundara Raj, Prostitution in Madras: A Study in Historical Perspective,
Delhi: Konarak, 1993; Ratnabali Chatterjee, ‘The Indian Prostitute
as a Colonial Subject, Bengal 1864–1883’, Canadian Woman Studies/
Les Cahiers de la Femme, vol. 13, no. 1, 1992, pp. 51–5; and Sumanta
Banerjee, ‘The “Beshya” and the “Babu”: Prostitute and Her Clientele in
Nineteenth-Century Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 28, no.
45, 1993, pp. 2461–72.
38. Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine, p. 87.
39. See, Malavika Karlekar, ‘Kadambini and the Bhadralok’, Economic and
Political Weekly, vol. 21, no. 19, 1986, WS25–WS31.
40. Finance Department, Education Branch, file no. 42, Proceedings 2–5,
1875, pp. 103–5, West Bengal State Archives (hereafter referred to as
WBSA).
41. Evidence of Koilash Chunder Bose, Indian Mirror, 13 August 1878, cited
in Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984, pp. 321–2.
732 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
42. ‘Female Doctors in Bengal’, Brahmo Public Opinion, 27 June 1878.
43. Translated from Brajendranath Bandopadhyay, Dwarakanath
Gangopadhyay, Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, 1952, p. 16; cited
in Malavika Karlekar, Voices from Within: Early Personal Narratives of
Bengali Women, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 170.
44. Mary Scharlieb, Reminiscences, London: Williams and Norgate, 1924,
pp. 29–30.
45. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, General Department,
Education Branch, July 1883 (WBSA).
46. Ibid.
47. Letter from the DPI to the Principal, Medical College, Calcutta, proposing
the admission of women, 5 May 1882, General Education, March 1886,
Proceedings A 5–7 (WBSA). Also cited in Samita Sen and Anirban Das,
‘A History of the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital, 1835–1936’,
p. 498.
48. Letter no. 884 from A.W. Croft, Esq., DPI, to the Secretary to the
Government of Bengal, 7 February 1884, Education and Medical, June
1884, A 1–3, file no. 89–1 (WBSA).
49. 10 June 1882, General Department, Education Branch, March 1886,
Proceedings A 5–7 (WBSA).
50. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, General Department,
Education Branch, July 1883, ‘Admission of Female Students into the
Medical College’, file no. 88–1/8 (WBSA).
51. Letter no. 472 from J.M. Coates, MD, Principal, Medical College, to the
DPI, 31 October 1882, General Department, Education Branch, March
1886, A 5–7 (WBSA).
52. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, General Department,
Education Branch, March 1886, file no. 31–8/9 (WBSA).
53. R. Harvey, General Department, Education Branch, July 1883, A 9–10,
file no. 88 (WBSA).
54. Note 84, A.P. MacDonnell, General Department, Education Branch, July
1883, A 11, file no. 88 (WBSA).
55. Ibid.
56. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, General Department,
Education Branch, July 1883 (WBSA).
57. MacDonnell, General Department, Education Branch, A 11, file no. 88
(WBSA).
58. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, General Department,
Education Branch, file no. 31–8/9 (WBSA).
59. Karlekar, ‘Kadambini and the Bhadralok’, pp. WS25–WS21.
60. Letter no. 884 from A.W. Croft to the Secretary to Government of Bengal,
A 1–3, file no. 89–1.
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 733
61. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, General Department,
Education Branch, file no. 31–8 (WBSA).
62. Ibid., 6 April 1887, file no. 21–7 (WBSA).
63. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, General Department,
Education Branch, November 1887, file no. 21–6; cited in Geraldine
Forbes and Tapan Raychaudhuri, ed., The Memoirs of Dr Haimabati Sen:
From Child Widow to Lady Doctor, New Delhi: Roli, 2000, p. 23.
64. According to R.L. Dutt, Officiating Civil Surgeon of Rungpore, there
was no need for medical women of the hospital assistant class in the
mofussil. He also pointed out that Indian women who wanted to become
doctors should attend the medical college and those with less education
should take the midwife courses. ‘Female Medical Education (Campbell
Medical College)’, Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal,
General Department, Education Branch, November 1887, file nos. 21–6
(WBSA); also cited in Sujata Mukherjee, ‘Patronage, Philanthropy,
Western Medicine: Gender and Health in Nineteenth century India’, in
History of Medicine in India: The Medical Encounter, ed. Chittabrata Palit
and Achintya Kumar Dutta, Delhi: Kalpaz, 2005, pp. 265–78.
65. Proceedings of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, November 1887,
General Department (WBSA).
66. From Surgeon Major A. Crombie, Superintendent, Medical School,
Dacca, to Secretary of Government of Bengal, July 1887, Proceedings
of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, General Department, Education
Branch (WBSA).
67. Explicitly stated in Margaret I. Balfour, and Ruth Young, The Work of
Medical Women in India, London: Oxford University Press, 1929.
68. Geraldine Forbes, Women in Colonial India: Essays on Politics, Medicine,
and Historiography, New Delhi: Chronicle Books, 2005, p. 110.
69. Apparently the Queen was informed by Mary Scharlieb (wife of an English
Barrister who received midwifery training in Madras and later became
a London gynaecologist) and Elizabeth Bielby (missionary doctor at
Lahore) about lack of medical care for Indian women, following which the
Queen asked Lady Harriot Dufferin, the new Vicereine, to investigate the
scope of providing medical help to Indian women. On her initiative, the
Fund was established in August, 1885 with three aims: to provide medical
teaching and training to women, to organize medical relief, and to supply
female nurses and midwives in hospitals and private houses. Zenana
hospitals instituted by the Fund, however, were not above criticism for
practising racial discrimination in giving appointments to white-skinned
doctors in preference to experienced and qualified Indian doctors. See,
Maneesha Lal, ‘The Politics of Gender and Medicine in Colonial India:
The Countess of Dufferin’s Fund, 1885–1888’, Bulletin of the History of
734 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Medicine, vol. 68, no. 1, 1994, pp. 29–66; Samikhsha Sehrawat, Colonial
Medical Care in North India: Gender, State, and Society, c.1840–1920,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013.
70. See, Geraldine Forbes, ‘Colonial Imperatives and Women’s Emancipation:
Western Medical Education for Indian Women in Nineteenth Century
Bengal’, Modern Historical Studies, vol. 2, 2001, pp. 83–102; Geraldine
Forbes, ‘Medical Careers and Health Care for Indian Women: Patterns of
Control’, Women’s History Review, vol. 3, no. 4, 1994, pp. 515–30; Sujata
Mukherjee, ‘Medical Education and the Emergence of Women Medics in
Colonial Bengal’, Occasional Paper 37, Institute of Development Studies
Kolkata, 2012; and Sujata Mukherjee, ‘Women and Medicine in Colonial
India: A Case Study of three Women Doctors’, Proceedings of the Indian
History Congress, vol. 66, 2005–6, pp. 1184–91.
71. 1901, Calcutta: Towns and Suburbs Census, cited in Borthwick, Changing
Role of Women in Bengal, p. 310, n. 4.
72. H. Sharp, ed., Progress of Education in India: 1907–1912, Sixth Quin-
quennial Review, vol. 1, Calcutta, 1914, pp. 151–2.
73. Government of India, Home Department, Medical Branch, Deposit, July
1912, National Archives of India.
74. Forbes and Raychaudhuri, The Memoirs of Dr Haimabati Sen, p. 24.
75. Forbes, ‘Colonial Imperatives and Women’s Emancipation’, pp. 83–102,
especially 94.
76. Annual Report of the Medical Schools in Bengal 1914–1919, Calcutta:
Bengal Secretariat Press.
77. See, Roger Jeffrey, The Politics of Health in India, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1988.
78. Sujata Mukherjee, ‘Women, Medicine and Empire: Female Practitioners
and Patterns of Health Care in Colonial Bengal, Modern Historical Studies,
vol. 2, 2001, pp. 187–204.
79. J. Jolly, Indian Medicine, tr. C.G. Kashikar, New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, 2012, p. 69.
80. See, Borthwick, Changing Role of Women, p. 155.
81. G.W. Briggs, The Chamars, Calcutta: Association Press, 1920, pp. 24–6,
53–4, quoted in Charu Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women,
Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India, Delhi: Permanent Black,
2001, p. 177.
82. G. Forbes, ‘Managing Midwifery in India’, in Contesting Colonial
Hegemony: State and Society in Africa and India, ed. Dagmar Engels and
Shula Marks, London: British Academic Press, 1994, p. 156.
83. Ibid., p. 171.
84. Janaki Nair, ‘Uncovering the Zenana: Visions of Indian Womanhood
in Englishwomen’s Writings, 1813–1940’, Journal of Women’s History,
vol. 2, no. 11, 1990, pp. 8–34.
 Mukherjee: Medicine and Public Health in Modern Bengal 735
85. Editors’ introduction to excerpts from Hannah Catherine Mullens,
‘Phulmani O Karunar Bibaran’, in Women Writing in India, Vol. 1: 600
BC to the Present, ed. Susie Tharu and K. Lalitha, New York: Feminist
Press, 1991, p. 205.
86. Dr Stewart, Report on the Statistical History of the Female Hospital, GRPI
for 1846–47, Appendix E, No. 10, p. clxxv.
87. See, Dagmar Engels, Beyond Purdah? Women in Bengal: 1890–1939,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.
88. See, Sujata Mukherjee, Gender, Medicine, and Society in Colonial India:
Women’s Health Care in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Bengal,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 70–1.
89. See, Sujata Mukherjee, ‘Family Health and Dissemination of Medical
Knowledge in Nineteenth Century India’, in Mapping the Path to Maturity:
A Connected History of Bengal and the North-East, ed. Bipasha Raha and
Subhayu Chattopadhyay, Delhi: Manohar, 2018, pp. 207–16.
90. Sujata Mukherjee, ‘Disciplining the Body? Health Care for Women and
Children in Early Twentieth Century Bengal’, in Disease and Medicine
in India: A Historical Overview, ed. Deepak Kumar, New Delhi: Tulika,
2001, pp. 198–214.
91. Arnold, Colonizing the Body, p. 117. ‘Variolation’ was practiced in Bengal
for a long time by tikadars using the pustules of the smallpox patients. This
was referred to as the Bangla Tika, as opposed to Jennerian vaccination
using the pustules of ‘Cow-pox’ which came to be referred to as the
‘English Tika’. I am indebted to Dr Indranil Sen for drawing my attention
to this piece of information.
92. Ralph W. Nicholas, ‘Sitala and Epidemic Smallpox in Bengal’, Journal of
Asian Studies, vol. XLI, no.1, 1981, p. 36.
93. Arnold, Colonizing the Body, p. 167.
94. Kabita Ray, History of Public Health: Colonial Bengal 1921–1947, Calcutta:
K.P. Bagchi & Company, 1998, pp. 62–3.
95. For discussions regarding malaria, see Arabinda Samanta, Malarial
Fever in Colonial Bengal, 1820–1939: Social History of an Epidemic,
Kolkata: Firma KLM, 2002; Arnold, Colonizing the Body; Arnold,
Science, Technology and Medicine; Kabita Ray, History of Public Health;
Harrison, Public Health in British India; Ihtesham Kazi, ‘Environmental
Factors Contributing to Malaria in Colonial Bengal’, in Disease and
Medicine in India: A Historical Overview, ed. Deepak Kumar, New
Delhi: Tulika, 2001; Ira Klein, ‘Malaria and Mortality in Bengal,
1840–1921’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. IX,
no. 2, 1972; and Rohan Deb Roy, Malarial Subjects: Empire, Medicine
and Nonhumans in British India, 1820–1909, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2017.
736 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
96. Digamber Mitter, The Epidemic Fever in Bengal, Calcutta: Hindoo Patriot
Press, 1876.
97. For a discussion of his works, see, Sujata Mukherjee, ‘Malaria and
Morbidity in Colonial Bengal’, in The Imperial Embrace: Society and Polity
under the Raj: Essays in Honour of Sunil Kumar Sen, ed. Ranjit Kumar
Roy, Calcutta: Rabindra Bharati University, 1993.
98. For details, see Radhakamal Mukherjee, The Changing Face of Bengal:
A Study in the Riverine Economy, with an introduction by Arun
Bandopadhyay, repr., Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 2008–9.
99. See chapter 6 in Sujata Mukherjee, Gender, Medicine, and Society in
Colonial Bengal.
100. John Woodhead, Famine Inquiry Commission: Report on Bengal, Delhi:
Manager of Publications, 1945, p. 135.
101. Nanavati Papers, Memoranda and Oral Proceedings of the Famine
Commission, 1944–1945, vol. 2, unpublished manuscript source, National
Archives of India, p. 496.
102. Nanavati Papers, Memoranda and Oral Proceedings of the Famine
Commission, 1944–1945, vol. 3, unpublished manuscript source, National
Archives of India, p. 703.
103. Mukherjee, Gender, Medicine and Society in Colonial Bengal.
104. Paul R. Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine
of 1943–1944, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982, pp. 299–315.
105. Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and
Deprivation, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 202.
106. Famine Enquiry Commission, India, 1945, pp. 110–11.
107. Census of India, 1951, vol. 6, pt. IB, tables 7 and 8, pp. 29–30; cited in
Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines, p. 211.
108. David Arnold, ‘Official Attitudes to Population, Birth Control and
Reproductive Health in India, 1921–1946’, in Reproductive Health in
India: History, Politics, Controversies, ed. Sara Hodges, New Delhi: Orient
Longman, 2006.
109. Arnold, Colonizing the Body, p. 3.
110. Mukharji, Nationalizing the Body.
 20
The Development of Journalism
and Public Opinion in Bengal
1818–1910

Swapan Basu

The Origin and Growth of Journalism

in Bengal

I
t was early nineteenth century, and Calcutta was the capital
of India. Schools and printing presses were cropping up in
and around the city. People were crowding here from far and
near for education, jobs, trade and commerce, and to seek justice
or settlements in the courts. As the number of people grew, so did
house-rent and the price of land. In 1817, the city had a ‘college’
on its soil, modelled after similar Western institutions—the Hindu
College. This was the first place where Western knowledge began
to be imparted. Quite a few journals and newspapers were also
being issued—monthlies, weeklies, even dailies—in this new city of
the new age. All of them were, however, in English. Not too many
Bengalis commanded enough English to read and understand The
India Gazette or The Bengal Hurkaru. But the urge for knowing what
was happening in the country and abroad was growing fast, and the
Bengalis wanted to know that in their own language. Responding to
this urge, two Bengali newspapers came out in 1818—one initiated
by the Serampore missionaries—The Sumachar Durpun (23 May
1818, edited by John Clerk Marshman), and the other, which took
only fifteen days to follow—The Bangal Gazette (June 1818, edited by

*I am grateful to my teacher Dr Pabitra Sarkar for his valuable suggestions

and able guidance.
738 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Gangakishor Bhattacharya). The first received governmental support

and had a long life. The second was not so fortunate, as neither the
government nor the public offered it much support. Still, journalism
began to thrive and spread its base.
More than 1,200 periodicals and newspapers made their appear-
ance in the period in question. Journals dealt with diverse topics—
literature, science, religion, education, health—there was no fixed
boundary. There were also journals for lighter reading, those of
humour and satire. Some of them have been mentioned, in order to
understand the predilections of the Bengali psyche.
A majority of them had the focus on news, of course. The Sumachar
Durpun, in its very first issue, informs us that it will carry the news of
appointments by the government, acts of the government, commercial
news, births, marriages, death, and in addition, news of India as
well as that of England and such other countries.1 Bhattacharya
did not bother about foreign news, but concentrated his attention
on local matters and the news of birth, wedding, and deaths of
only Hindus. Bhabani Charan Bandyopadhyay, in his Samachar
Chandrika, wanted to publish the news of different countries.
Bangadut (1829) too, had its eyes fixed on news coming from India
and other lands.
What was the nature of such news? Following is the list of
the headlines from an issue of Bangadut—advertisements, Lord
Bishop, the new Chief Justice of Bombay, the new ordinance of the
government, new courts, how a shark pulled out an anchor, Scotland,
earthquake in England, earthquake in India, about Turk-Russian war,
Prussia, General Bank.2
It was apparent that the world of the Bengali was gradually
widening. The editor of the Amritabazar Patrika was aware that
news was the mainstay of a newspaper. His paper wanted to present
‘different news of this land and of Europe, the summery of the new
acts, the administrations of Britain and various states of this country
with their merits and demerits’.3 Apart from that, it also wanted to
satisfy its readers with ‘fresh news’ of the home and the world. The
Sangsar (1 January 1898), published at the end of the nineteenth
century, had as its objective, ‘spreading of general news’.
Alongside with publication of news, the good of the subjects was
also a major objective of these newspapers. The Sambad Kaumudi
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 739

(1821) was the pioneer in this. This paper, published under the aegis
of Rammohan Roy, the first modern Indian, commits in its very first
issue:
.  .  .  the object of the publication is the PUBLIC GOOD  .  .  .  the paper in
question be conducted by us, and may consequently be considered our
property, yet virtually it is the ‘PAPER OF THE PUBLIC’, since in it they can
at all times have inserted that tends to the public good, and by a respectable
expression of their grievances, be enabled to get them redressed if our
countrymen have not already been able to effect that desirable object by
publishing them in English.4

The aim of the Vishwadut (1870) was ‘the good of the country’,
and that of the Bangasuhrid (1872) was the ‘actual good of our own
country’. Akshay Chandra Sarkar brought out his Sadharani for public
good, and the Bharatbhumi, published from Santipur, looked for
the ‘good of the country’. Besides this, some journals showed their
interest in the upliftment of women, as their place had been long
marginalized by the Bengali social authorities. They were deprived
of education, inheritance of paternal property, the right to remarry
even as a young widow, and their right to step outside the home.
And when from the early nineteenth century the reformers took a
resolve for the betterment of the life of women, and they received
support from some newspapers. The Bamabodhini Patrika (1863)
was published for the ‘overall uplift of women, and the Bangamahila
(1870), the first journal to be edited by a Bengali woman, vouched
support for women’s rights’.5
It was not just the Hindus who wanted welfare of the people and
the improvement of women’s lives. Bengali Muslims, who began to
publish journals from 1831, the year Sheikh Alimullah of Calcutta
published the Samachar Sabharajendra, a bilingual (Bengali/Persian)
newspaper. Sayad Abdul Rahim’s Balaranjika (1873) came out forty
years later, whose ‘only desire was the advancement of Bengali
women’. The Sudhakar of Reyazuddin Ahmed had its sight fixed
on the good of the community, which made it a mouthpiece of the
Bengali Muslims. Mir Mosharraf Hossein, instead opted for ‘general
good’, which is why his journal was named the Hitakari.
There was, of course, no agreement on how the betterment of
the society was to be accomplished. A group thought, reforming
740 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the evil customs of the society, was enough. The Sangbad Prabhakar
wanted this, alongside discussions on ‘morals, history, science,
farming, trade and commerce, art, medical science, physical science
and religion etc.’ The Sarvashubhakari Patrika (1850) wanted to
abolish the ‘ugly customs of Kulinism and child-bride system, as it
supported the remarriage of widows’. The Bangabandhu (1870), a
Brahmo journal, wanted to show ways of purging out ‘all kinds of
all false and superstitious social rights’ and ‘offer all sorts of help and
cooperation to the society’.
Some journals and newspapers, again, wanted to protect the
countrymen from various acts of oppression. Kaliprasanna Sinha
assumed the responsibility of the Paridarshak (1861) a year later, and
he announced forthwith that though the eradication of superstitions,
development of the country, etc., were his objectives, but, at the same
time, ‘Our major objective is to resist the oppression of the subjects
by the heinous and cruel authorities’. Krishnakumar Mitra’s Sanjibani
(1883) also declared that it wanted to ‘stop the oppression of the
oppressed, and offer support to the weak’. The Chattal Gazette (1887)
raised its voice against all kinds of injustice and malfeasance. Some
periodicals claimed that their major mission was to ‘suppress the
wicked and to help the innocent’. A few decades earlier, Gaurishankar
Bhattacharya used his Sambad Rasaraj (1839) to ‘punish sin and
encourage religious pursuits’. The Durjjandaman Mahanavami (1847)
avowedly made its appearance ‘to punish the evildoers, the vehicles of
all sins’. The last two were, however, not exactly true to their words,
and they did not hesitate to hit their rivals below the belt.
Some of these journals and periodicals laid emphasis on the
improvement of the lot of the villagers. Harinath Majumdar’s
celebrated Grambartaprakashika (1863) wanted ‘to inform the
Government of the oppression that the rural people are being
subjected to, and to stop this practice’. The Gramavasi (1870)
also wanted ‘to ventilate the grievances of the Moffussil’. Quite a
large number of these publications did of course make public the
complaints of the people and attract the notice of the authorities.
The Bengal Spectator (1842), the mouthpiece of the Young Bengal,
wanted, among many other things, ‘to place the sorrows [of the
subjects] at the feet of the Government, pray for the development of
the country, to pray to the English so that they help us in getting our
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 741

desired objects, to encourage our people to consider what is good and

what is bad for them and move towards their own improvement’—
and these they considered their ‘essential duties’. The Nababibhakar
(1879) also decided to present the ‘needs, desires and complaints of
the countrymen to the rulers’. One or two of them had their focus
on the poor, as the Sulabh Samachar (1870). The editorial statement
in its first issue said:

The people that have little time to spare, who work all the time and cannot
feel how days and nights pass, and do not have the means to spend their
lives in comfort and happiness—these are the people that we want to relate
to, we have decided that they would be our readers. If we can make them
happy even for a moment, if they can listen to good words and derive joy
out of them, and increase their knowledge by having the news of all corners
of the country, only then we will think our intention of publishing of our
paper fulfilled.6

The Chandannagar Patrika (1873) had the same mission. ‘The poor
cannot usually get to read a newspaper’—it was published to reach
them.
The importance that political discussions were getting at the time
also indicated the widening of interests of the Bengali reading public.
A paper that came out from Mymensingh in 1875, Bharat Mihir,
states—‘discussing political matters is the main objective of this paper’.
Political and social matters were also the mainstay of Andolan (1883),
published by Atulkrishna Mitra. Saptahik Basumati (1896), promised
to voice the ‘needs and complaints of the country’, besides political
issues. Many of the editors were quite eager to spread knowledge and
useful information among the people. Bangabasi (1881), the widely
circulated paper of the nineteenth century, was the foremost among
them. Jogendra Chandra Basu, the editor of Bangabasi, dreamed of
making it a ‘people’s paper’. Another publication, Surabhi (1882),
clearly states, ‘deliberations on political and social conditions, and,
along with that, the spread of Western knowledge in Bengal is the
motto of the Surabhi’.
Some of these periodicals and newspapers did not shy away from
what is called nationalism. The Bharatbasi (1885), edited by Haridas
Gargari, expressed its mission in these words—‘Our objective is to
make our society an ideal for all societies, to forge a bonding between
742 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Bengalis, Hindustanis, Punjabis, Maharastrians, Telugus, Hindus,

Muslims, Brahmos, Christians—all Indian castes and communities,
by wiping away jealousy, hatred and violence among them and bring
them together so that peace and harmony prevail, and all the Indians
become one nation.’7
Though periodicals were coming out one after another, there
were no dailies till the end of the thirties of the nineteenth century.
Ishwarchandra Gupta’s Sangbad Prabhakar was transformed into
a daily in 1839. The Friend of India expressed satisfaction on the
event:
We take shame to ourselves for having omitted to mention at the time, that
the day on which the foundation stone was laid of the first seminary for
the cultivation of the Bengalee language, witnessed also the publication of
the first Native Daily Paper, just twenty-one years and sixteen days after
the first newspaper had been published in that language. Eeshur Chunder
Goopt has the merit of having sent forth the first daily paper among his
countrymen; having on that day commenced the daily publication of his
journal, the Prubhakur. We wish him the most ample success in his laborious
enterprise. He has long laboured in the Editorial vocation, and is familiar
with the difficulties and its prospects.  .  .  . Esshur Chunder, however, in his
own line, has few equals. His style is vigorous and laconic, his arguments
are keen, and his satire is tremendous.8
The Friend of India stressed the role of the newspapers in effecting
the progress of Indians and remarked that a paper like the Sangbad
Prabhakar had raised a sense of quest in the minds of Bengalis,
which would help the nation to move ahead. They were discussing
the national problems and seeking to realize their place among the
nations of the world, and were also becoming aware of their rights.
They were becoming intellectually stronger by shaking off the sloth
and indolence of ages.9
At the end of the thirties of the nineteenth century, there was
an explosion in the number of newspapers and periodicals. The
Friend of India therefore commented: Calcutta was not just the ‘city
of palaces’, it was, in addition, becoming a ‘city of newspapers’. The
question that arises now is, why did the Bengalis become so eager
to publish them at that time? It was probably a fallout of Macaulay’s
policy of education: a new English-educated class of Bengalis had
emerged, and they wanted to express themselves through the vehicle
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 743

of print, a part of which were the newspapers. But it has to be kept

in mind at the same time that Bengali journals and newspapers were
not restricted to Calcutta alone, and the early years of the forties
saw publications springing from the mofussils also. The district of
Murshidabad, with its Murshidabad Sambadpatri (1840) showed the
way, followed by Rangpur Vartabaha (1847) from Rangpur, which
was the first newspaper coming out in eastern Bengal. Burdwan
brought out three of them by 1850—Barddhaman Chandrday (1849),
Jnan Pradayini (1849), and Sambad Barddhaman (1850). The sixties
witnessed a regular craze for publishing newspapers in rural Bengal.
Their chief objective was to let the rest of India know about the
history, the needs and demands of the local people. Scores of such
journals came out of Dacca, Rajshahi, Pabna, Chittagong, Faridpur,
Noakhali, Barishal, Mymensingh, Jessore, Kumillah, Kustiya,
Khulna, Sylhet, Midnapur, Howrah, Chandernagore, Chinsura,
Bankura, 24 Parganas, Maldah, Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Purulia,
etc. Some of these distinguished themselves on their merit—Dacca
Prakash, Bharat Mihir (Mymensingh), Hitakari (Kustyia), Sanjay
(Faridpur), Pabna Durpan, Chattal Gazette (Chittagong), Khulna,
Prajabandhu (Chandernagore), Barddhaman Sanjibani, Murshidabad
Patrika, Kangal (Cooch Behar), Medini (Midnapur), Habra Hitakari
(Howrah), Gaurvarta (Maldah), Bankura Durpan, and Manbhum of
Purulia. Some of such publications had their base outside Bengal—
Assam and the United Province in particular. Of these, the notables
are Kashivarta Prakashika, Prayagdut (Allahabad), Assammihir, and
Paridarshak (also from Assam). Not only the towns, but the villages
also came forward to publish such newspapers—Amritabazar, Boral,
Chatmohar, Sonakur, Bhangamora, Mazilpur, Jashara, Jayrampur,
Andulbariya, Bera, Mollabeliya, Jangalbari, Bali, Bayera, Kalipahari,
Kukutiya, Haripur, Uluberiya, Chhoto Jaguliya, Kashipur—the list of
villages seems to be unending. Among these papers, the ones that
amply proved that first class newspapers could be published from rural
Bengal include Somprakash (Changripota), Grambartaprakashika
(Kumarkhali), and Amritabazar (Amritabazar). As for the location
of the village of Amritabazar in Jessor, a source says, ‘from the place
of the publication of this newspaper you have to walk three days in
the north and the west, one and half year in the east, and three years
to the south to reach a single printing press, or a newspaper’.
744 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The Government and the Press

The path of journalism was, of course, not a bed of roses. The
‘Regulation for the Public Press’ was in vogue, and hence the
missionaries of Serampore were in two minds about publishing a
newspaper. William Carey was staunchly against their publication,
all along. Some three months prior to the date of publication of the
first Bengali newspaper, Lord Hastings relaxed the Regulation, but
retained some conditions. The Bengalis thought that the government
has become somewhat more accommodating, and proceeded to
publish newspapers and periodicals. Hastings received thanks for
removing the fetters of the media from Sambad Kaumudi (1821) in
these word ‘.  .  .  the state of the press in India is considered that it was
hitherto shackled, and that owing to the liberal and comprehensive
mind of the present liberal and magnanimous Ruler, the most noble
the Marquis of Hastings, these shackles have been removed, and the
press declared free.’10
The honeymoon, however, was short. The editor of the Calcutta
Journal (1818), James Silk Buckingham, was a plain and sharp
speaker of truth, and that made the authorities uncomfortable. He
was informed of the gubernatorial dissatisfaction, and was finally
cautioned two times, in July 1821 and September 1822—that his
plain-speaking might cost him his license to stay back in India. But
Buckingham, a believer in liberty of speech, continued his usual
practice. Lord Hastings left his post in January 1823, to be replaced
by John Adam. The latter was severely criticized by Buckingham for
favouritism, as he had inducted a close associate in a government
job, a few days after his own appointment. On the publication of that
issue, Buckingham’s license was withdrawn, and he was instructed to
leave India before 15 July 1823. Adam was in favour of keeping the
colonial newspapers in tight reins. Right after this measure, a new
Press Rule was formulated and was sent to the Supreme Court for its
enactment. A barrister, Turton, stood to fight it at court on behalf of
Ferguson of the Calcutta Journal, and others like Rammohan Roy,
Dwarkanath Tagore, Harachandra Ghosh, Gauri Charan Banerjee,
Chandra Kumar Tagore, and Prassanna Kumar Tagore. Their
objections, however, did not hold, and the Act was promulgated. It
made a license mandatory before founding a press and publishing
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 745

a newspaper, in the absence of which a fine of one thousand rupees

would be imposed, and failure in the payment of which a magistrate
or a joint magistrate could confiscate all the properties of the press.
One has to be present before a magistrate and take oaths on his name,
address, profession, nationality, caste, religion and intentions, before
starting a press or a newspaper. Then, the appeal would be sent to the
Governor General and his Council. If approved by them, he would
be called by the Council and would be told, orally and in writing, the
conditions of the government. In all books and newspapers, printing
the name address of the printer was a must, and a copy of each issue
was to be sent to the government, which held the right to revoke the
license at any time and on any pretext.
It is not possible to guess how the Bengali newspapers reacted to
these provisions, as no copy of the contemporary papers is available.
However, in protest against this undemocratic act, Rammohan Roy
stopped publication of his Persian newspaper Mirat-ul-Akhbar (1822)
on 4 April 1823. He did not stop there, and prayed to the Emperor’s
Council in order that the liberty of expression of the Indian subjects is
not withdrawn or restricted. The Emperor’s Council did not respond,
and the liberty of Bengali newspapers remained withdrawn.
The liberal William Bentinck was appointed the Governor
General of India in July 1828. He was against interfering with the
freedom of expression of the newspapers for no good reason. That
encouraged the native journalism, and newspapers began to speak out
once again, though the Act was there. The Bengali newspapers thus
got a new lease of life from the thirties of the nineteenth century. No
less than seven newspapers came out in 1831. Bengalis joined others
in demanding the revocation of the Press Act, and a group met the
Governor General with the demand. He, however, did not agree.
His tenure in this country soon ended, and Charles Metcalf took his
seat temporarily. He was a believer in the freedom of the press and
decided to revoke the 1823 Press Act. Supported by Macaulay, he
entrusted the latter with the drafting of a new Act. After some public
discussion, the new Act was proclaimed on 15 September 1835, to
give back freedom to the press, a freedom withheld for twelve years.
The freedom of the press was again snatched away in 1857
during the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’. The government was keenly watching if
the newspapers instigated the Mutiny in any manner. During this
746 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

time, the Declaration of the Rebels proclaimed at Delhi was printed

in three newspapers, two in Urdu—Durbin and Sultan ul-Akhbar,
and one in a Bengali-Hindi bilingual, Samachar Sudhavarshan. Some
other remarks in other issues of the last were found objectionable to
the government.11
The government thus became wary and placed a draft press
control act for approval of the Council. The same day, at midnight,
Shyamsundar Sen, the editor of Samachar Sudhavarshan, was arrested
when the police raided his house under the leadership of Waqaf, the
Police Commissioner. Consequently, Sen was brought to Lalbazar.
On being produced in court the next day, he claimed innocence. He
was released on a bail of rupees 20,000, but, after a long trial, Justice
Arthur Buller had to declare him not guilty. However, on the day
Sen was produced in court, the Council passed the new Suppression
of the Press Act No. 14 of 1857. Once again, an appeal was made
mandatory before publishing a newspaper, with the following
conditions attached:

1. No news should be printed that is intended to create hatred

against the government or to agitate the mind of the public.
Nothing is to be printed that encourages the subjects to
disregard government orders.
2. No item should create dissatisfaction in the minds of the
people about governmental work, nor can it be said that
the government was interfering with the religious faith and
rituals of the subjects.
3. No comments are to be made that may affect a rupture
between the native rulers and landlords and the government.

A copy of the newspaper must also be deposited to the concerned

office of the government, and the government will have the right to
confiscate anything objectionable found in it.
The reaction to this Act was mixed. The Education Gazette and
Saptahik Vartavaha (1856), held the Bengali press responsible for
the Act, while Sangbad Prabhakar supported the measure. On the
other hand, Kashi Prasad Ghosh stopped publishing of his Hindu
Intellegencer. In this context, mention might be made of Nilambar
Mukhopadhyay, the owner and editor of the Rangpur Vartavaha, who
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 747

got into trouble by printing some news that the government did not
like. On 16 June 1858, he printed a ‘fake’ news: he had information
that the Rangpur Magistrate has learnt from the Officer-in-Charge in
Jalpaiguri that three hundred sepoys have started from there to come
and loot the Rangpur treasury. He further stated that the offices and
courts had been closed, the Whites were ready with their arsenal, and
that the Magistrate had directed his officers to send their families to
villages. On reading the news, the Magistrate told the editor that it
was false, and must be recanted in the next issue of the paper. The
editor obliged, and also presented himself in the magistrate’s court
to take an oath that the newspaper would not be published further.12
Some English newspapers also faced trouble for the 1857 Act.
Some were cautioned against, some had to close temporarily, while
the owners of some was forced to change the editors. In some cases,
even the license of the newspaper was revoked. The Act made the
Bengali press somewhat careful and they minded their steps. At this
time, however, the majority of the Bengali editors were loyal to the
throne, so they had no reason to provoke the government.
The Sepoy Mutiny soon came to an end, and after a year, the
government withdrew the Act. Several years passed after the press
regained freedom, but after an interval of fourteen or fifteen years,
the government grew suspicious of the intentions of the Bengali press
once again. Consequently, a Vernacular Press Act was again clamped
on 14 March 1878. There was nothing new in it, but this time it was
unusual in the sense that no untoward news or action on the part
of the newspapers prompted it. Moreover, the English Press was not
covered in it; so, it became clear who were the rulers and who the
ruled. Lord Lytton spent no time in imposing the Act on Indians.
The reasons for these were not far to seek. From the beginning
of the nineteenth century, till the sixties, the Bengalis had been a
loyal race. J. Robinson, the government translator, in his report of 13
February 1866 on the vernacular newspapers could therefore write,
‘The Bengalee periodicals are conducted by men of education and
ability. They have hitherto manifested in all their writings the most
devoted loyalty to the British Government.’
Soon after, however, the ‘natives’ began to nurture grievances
against the rulers. There was a lot of difference between the latter’s
words and actions. Also, misuse of the country’s revenue, shameless
748 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

exploitation, and utter neglect of India’s development made the

papers more and more vocal. In the year 1876, there was a famine
in which Indians were dying; while at the same time, the rulers were
organizing a ‘Durbar’ spending millions of rupees. The Indians did
not take kindly to such actions. When things were thus heating up,
the government lowered the age of sitting for the Indian Civil Service
examination from twenty-one to nineteen. The Indian Association
began a protest movement against this, and the newspapers also
became vociferous.
The government translator was active in bringing these discordant
statements to the administration’s notice. The new ruler of Bengal,
Eden considered these as patent acts of disloyalty, and he resolved
to punish the offenders. He began uttering threats and reproaches,
and an exasperated Somprakash said, ‘this was the time when the
editors of Bengali newspapers should unit’. He also advised that
the Governor General Lord Lytton be informed about this attitude
of Eden. The Amritabazar Patrika strongly contested Eden’s claim
that the Bengali editors were ‘ungrateful’, and that there editorial
statements were ‘seditious’.
Eden, however, ignored all this and proceeded to curb the native
newspapers. The Vernacular Press Act (known as the Act 9 of 1878)
was promulgated by Lord Lytton on the advice of Eden and Stratchy.
Along with that, an ‘Arms Act’ was also passed to deprive the natives
of their right to self-protection. The Amritabazar Patrika transformed
itself overnight into an English newspaper to escape the axe of the
Law. The newspaper explained the change in this way—‘It is with
deep regret that we part with our vernacular columns. The step has
been forced by our friends and patrons upon whose judgements we
have confidence  .  .  .  whether this change will benefit our country or
not, heaven alone knows, but we think, an absolutely independent
paper conducted in the English language, is now a necessity.’13
The newspapers run by Englishmen became elated at this distress
of their native counterparts. Amritabazar, however, reminded them
of the Bengali adage ‘ghunte pore, gobor hase’ (‘the cow-dung is full of
mirth to see the cow-dung cake burn’), and cautioned the Englishmen
that they too would meet the same fate soon. Also, it was impossible
for a foreign ruler to rule an alien country by gagging the popular
opinion.
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 749

It was only natural that such an Act would intimidate the editors.
Harinath Majumdar, the editor of the Grambartaprakashika, termed
this act as ‘the death-arrow of the native newspapers’, and wrote on
26 March 1878—
Newspaper is not our trade. The subject weeps, and we weep in turn before
the king. We think, if the rulers listen to it, the subjects will weep no longer,
the cause of their weeping will be removed. That is why we have borne
[financial] loss every year, shortened our life by anxiety and are suffering
from incurable disease. The person who we weep for, the subjects of whom
we weep for, has given us an excellent award. So we will weep no more.
[translation mine]

Security deposits were also demanded from the editors to ensure

their loyalty. Besides, papers like Dacca Prakash, Bharat Mihir,
Sahachar, Sadharani, Somprakash, Vishwadut, Sulabh Samachar,
Bharat Samskarak, and Hindu Hitaishini were told to sign bonds.
These bonds were signed by many to keep their papers alive. But
Bipradas Bandyopadhyay, the editor of Sahachar, was made of a
different mettle. He was a pleader at the Alipore Court, and he
avoided the ignominy by stopping the publication of his paper.
Sadharani wrote about this—‘It looks as though that the Government
is demanding bonds from the Bengali newspapers. Dacca Prakash,
Hindu Hitaishini, Bharat Mihir, Sadharani—such notices have reached
all of us. In Calcutta, Sahachar was the first to receive such a notice.
Its printer has refused to sign the bond and discontinued his paper’
[translation mine].
The Brahmo Public Opinion wrote words of condemnation for
the Act:
As a result of the Vernacular Press Act, the Sahachar has ceased to exist. We
cannot but too deeply lament the event that Sahachar was one of the first
class [Bengali] journals and was doing signal services in spreading education
and enlightenment among thousands of our benighted countrymen. If the
result of this injudicious act be the gagging out of all the first class vernacular
weeklies, the whole of India should go for mourning.14

Anath Bandhu Guha, editor of the Bharat Mihir, followed

the example of Sahachar and stopped circulation. Dwarakanath
Vidyabhushan, editor of Somprakash also decided to close his journal,
750 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

as he thought signing a bond would be infra dig. He wrote on 22 April

1878 in his paper—‘We bow down our head to the Lord, our clients
and authors and take leave of them. If the present Government ever
changes his mind, or we get a better Government, and the Lord keeps
us in good health, we will again proceed to bring Somprakash back’
[translation mine].
Eden, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, could hardly
imagine that the condition of bond would make the Bengali society
so aggrieved. Lord Lytton also thought the measure to be too
strong. Consequently, the latter directed that the bond condition
be withdrawn. Vidyabhushan heard of it after he had decided to close
Someprakash, so he did not have to take the final step. Consequently, he
wrote an editorial on 29 April 1878 entitled ‘Rebirth of Someprakash’,
where he stated—‘Dear Readers. Last week Somprakash served
the news of its own death and made you sad. It came back to life this
week to be in your hands. One week sees it to burn in the lightning
of the Governments strict dictum, the next week finds it alive
because of the Indian Government’s new proclamation’ [translation
mine].
With the bond issue buried, the Sahachar and the Bharat
Mihir resumed their publication. But fresh trouble began with the
publication of a certain item in the Someprakash, on reading which
the administration became quite agitated. Commenting on the
imperialistic attitude of the British, it had printed a letter from its
Lahore correspondent, which contained these remarks—

The English are taking care to enslave not just us, but are planning to make
all nations of Asia to make slaves of slaves. Napoleon Bonaparte called
Englishmen ‘shop-keepers’ or a race of traders. We now realize that the
English are not just traders of goods, but they are also traders of speech,
and no other nation can sell words as skillfully as the English do. By words,
they push one to the high heaven, but in work, drown him in the depth
of hell. Glory to you, Englishmen! We cannot quite fathom you. In your
Kaliyug incarnation, you have descended as a chameleon. We have not
been able to see your true colours. You took no sides in the Russo-Turk
war, but grabbed the island of Cyprus from the middle of it. The Ameer did
not allow your emissary to enter his state with soldiers, and you entered it
with fifty thousand of them, and harassed not only Kabul, but the whole
of India [translation mine].15
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 751

The government decided that by publishing this letter, the

Somprakash had instigated the subjects against the government and
the English people in general. On a direction from the government,
the District Magistrate of 24 Parganas demanded a signed bond
and a security deposit of one thousand rupees from Somprakash,
quoting Article 3 of the Act 9 of 1878. The editor signed the bond,
but it was not possible for him to make the deposit and continue
to publish the paper. So, Somprakash closed, much to the dismay
of its contemporaries. The Indian Association raised a hue and cry
about the matter. About a year later, the Hooghly correspondent of
the paper, Durgaprasanna Ghosh, appealed to Lieutenant Governor
Ashley Eden for its republication, without bond and deposit. The
government communicated that—‘No application such as this can
be considered unless submitted by the “Someprokash” and that if
the Editor desires to make any representation on the subject of the
republication of his newspaper he can do so verbally to the Lieutenant
Governor or to the Secretary of the Government.’
Vidyabhushan found that the government had changed its
mind about Someprakash, and so, in the first week of April 1880
(20 Chaitra be 1286), he, along with Krishnadas Pal, the editor of the
Hindu Patriot, met Eden. He made a fresh appeal to the government
and promised that no item will be published in future which would
create any adverse feeling among the subjects against the government.
Further, he stated that ‘his endeavour will always be to foster loyalty
among his countrymen’. He expressed his sorrow for what had gone
before and prayed for permission of republication of the paper
without bond and deposit. The permission was duly granted to him,
and the Somprakash reappeared on 19 April 1880.
Not many among the Bengalis could accept the capitulation of
Somprakash to the government for its republication. The Nababi-
bhakar expressed its disappointment by saying that the paper could
have waited for the Liberal Party to come to power a few months
hence, when they would have abolished the law. The Brahmo Public
Opinion was rather harsh in its comments—
We extremely regret that Pandit Dwarka Nath Vidyabhusan has not
only compromised himself but his countrymen too, by the humiliating
admissions he has made, and completely surrendered his independence as a
journalist by the conditions he has imposed upon himself for being allowed
752 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

to re-issue his paper. According to our contemporary of the Hindu Patriot

the pandit not only regretted his insertion of the obnoxious ‘letter which
brought him under the act, but promised the Lieutenant Governor that the
paper shall not again be made the medium for the publication of disloyal
sentiment, and that he will keep the conduct of the journal entirely in his
own hands’. This is a fatal admission that the Shome Prokash did formerly
insert disloyal letters. Why did then Mr Gladstone fight so hard for him
in Parliament. Now that the Liberals are coming into power, and the fate
of the Shome Prokash would have been made the basis of a ringing cry
against the odious Vernacular Press Act, but the pandit has injudiciously
compromised the whole cause by his humiliating confessions. Could not
he have waited for three or four months, more, when he could have started
his paper without any conditions being imposed upon him. We have yet
to learn that it is a martyr’s blood which smooths the way to his country’s
regeneration.16

In some months, Lord Lytton’s tenure came to an end, and Lord

Ripon came to take his place. Preparations now began to abolish the
Vernacular Press Act. Lord Gibbs presented a draft at the Viceroy’s
Council in the first week of December 1881, and stated that the Indian
Penal Code was sufficient to deal with seditious publications, and
hence no separate act was necessary. Consequently, on 19 January
1882, the native newspapers regained their freedom. The Education
Gazette carried the good tiding:

19 January or 7 Magh was an auspicious day for the native newspapers. On

that day the Press Act has been annulled in India. Because of this annulment,
all the native newspapers as well as the people of this country will remain
ever grateful to Lord Ripon. For this we are all singing the glory of Lord
Ripon’s Government. For this one single act of beneficence, the name of
Lord Ripon will remain inscribed in gold in the history of India.17

Though the Act was abolished, the English were in no mood to

tolerate the criticism of their policies and activities. One can take
the rueful example of the owner of the Prajabandhu to cite what
sordid fate can befall a newspaper if one decided to harshly criticize
the government. This paper was first published in October 1882,
from Chandernagore, a French territory. Its owner was Tinkari
Bandyopadhyay, and editor, Ashutosh Sen. The Education Gazette of
23 July 1886 commented that ‘the bold articles of the Prajabandhu
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 753

have attracted the notice of all educated readers’. The ‘educated readers’
loved them, but these highly critical pieces became a headache for
the English rulers. The government took particular note of some
items published between 12 July and 20 September 1889. These were:
1. that of 12 July on ‘The Englishman’s crooked policy’;
2. that of 23 August on the Famine Fund;
3. those of 30 August, one titled ‘Brother why seek to have the
Raj to see any more?’ and the other on Kashmir affairs;
4. that of 6 September on Kashmir;
5. that of 18 September, also on Kashmir;
6. that of 20 September 1889 on ‘Englishmen the benefactors
of India’.18
The Government demanded explanations from Tinkari
Bandyopadhyay on these. On 6 September 1889, Tinkari wrote back
that he had no connection with the Prajabandhu, and so, in no way
was he responsible for the disputed articles. The government could
understand that Tinkari had severed his connections with the paper
to avoid trouble. It also noticed that he was not at all repentant for
what he had done. However, since he lived in Chandernagore (French
territory), and the paper was published from there, the government
was unable to take any steps against him or the paper, in spite of
the fact that he was a government employee. But nor was it ready
to ignore it, because the government thought that Tinkari ‘has been
guilty of gross misconduct and disloyalty to the Government whose
pay he enjoys, and he cannot be permitted to escape altogether with
impunity.’
According to the Act of 8 July 1875, for a government employee
to own a newspaper without written permission was prohibited.
Quoting this, the government informed Tinkari that he had violated
its order in spite of being a government employee. The Bengalee
strongly criticized the government’s stand on this issue and wrote:
We say that the orders are uncalled for and undignified in the extreme. It
is making mountain of a mole-hill. What could be more ridiculous than
that the great machinery of the Government of India should be used for
the purpose of ruining a poor clerk in the Director’s office? As we read
the words—‘The Governor-General directs that Tincowri Banerjea be
dismissed from the service of Government’, we felt the ridiculousness of the
754 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

situation—how great a power was wasted upon how small a purpose! Far
more dignified, and as shall probably sane, far wiser would it have been for
the Government, to have left Praja Bundhu alone and to have trusted to its
own measures for the refutation of calumnies which might be propagated.19

The government at the time was not, in fact, ready to stand any
criticism. That is why the voice of the Prajabandhu, of Tinkari
Bandyopadhyay, was so cruelly throttled.
Besides this, Article 124A of the 1897 Sedition Act was also
modified so that the editors of newspapers were discouraged from
criticizing the government’s acts of injustice and discrimination.
Sedition was defined afresh in 1898. The Anusandhan termed this
measure ‘extremely painful’, and from then on, the editors began
to watch their steps. Consequently, the editor of the Sahachar
decided that publishing a paper was well-nigh impossible in such
an asphyxiating environment, so he stopped publishing it. He wrote
about his decision:

The Government forms its opinion by studying the translations of news

items published in the native papers. But translating from one language
to another is quite difficult a task. There are quite a few unique uses in
languages like Bengali, Hindi, Oriya, Marathi and other such language,
whose translation in English is almost impossible. Apart from this, it has
also to be noted that often a whole piece is not translated. Considering all
this, we have decided to stop publication of our paper in the context of the
new Law. If we are at fault for this, we hope our kind Government and the
public will forgive us [translation mine].20

The editor of the Sahachar, in fact, stopped the publication of

his paper twice, in protest against a punitive law. He realized that
the government was in no mood to let the native newspapers voice
their opinion freely, and so he decided not to be a mere spectator in
this game of suppression.

Circulation of Newspapers
To understand how the Bengali newspapers developed, it is necessary
to look at their circulation figures. These will let us know how they
spread and to what extent the people received them. In the first half
of the nineteenth century, the circulation of these papers was nothing
to boast about. For example, in 1834, the Sumachar Durpun had a
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 755

circulation of 250, and that of the Jnananweshan was merely 100

hundred, and the Calcutta Christian Observer tells us that in 1839,
the circulation of Bengali newspapers was mostly limited to the city
of Calcutta. It continued to be so for some years, which we come
to know from another source—‘Their circulation and influence are
almost exclusively confined to the metropolis.’21
Why could the papers not reach beyond the boundaries of
Calcutta at the time? The most possible reason for this was that the
literacy rate outside the city was poor, and people of rural Bengal
could hardly read or write. So, the size of the ‘reading public’ in
these areas was small, besides communications being poor and the
price of the papers being beyond their reach. The arousal of new
consciousness that was taking place was also exclusively Calcutta-
centric. All these reasons combined to make the papers out of bounds
for the people of rural Bengal.
Things began to change slowly by the late forties. Literacy was
spreading outside Calcutta and printing presses were set up at
various places of rural Bengal. As a result, journals and newspapers
also began to be published from these places. The people there took
steps to use them as vehicles for pressing forth their demands and
moulding public opinion in their favour. Consequently, the number
of papers increased and the eagerness for reading them spread in
the minds of the rural people. From Dampier’s Report, we can have
a glimpse of the demand, in 1852, for the four papers that came out
from outside Calcutta (see Table 20.1).
In comparison to these, the papers published from Calcutta were
much greater in number. An idea of how popular these papers were
can be had from the annual return submitted by Chief Magistrate
W.H. Eliott (see Table 20.2).
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the number of
mofussil papers, including those published from outside of Bengal,
vied with the number of Calcutta publications, and that indicates
how Bengalis of these areas were getting more and more enthusiastic
about reading them (see Table 20.3).
Keeping pace with the spread of literacy, the nineteenth century
Bengali papers kept increasing in both number and circulation,
during the seventies. There was a tendency in the decade and the
next to cut down the prices and make papers available to more and
more people. Consequently, papers appeared which cost one pice, or
756 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Table 20.1: Demand of Papers Published

outside Calcutta, 1852

Name of the Place of Periodicity of Editor Number of

paper publication publication subscribers

Rangpur Rangpur Weekly Neelmani 100

Vartabaha Mukhopadhyay
Jnanarunoday Serampore Monthly Keshavchandra 300
Karmakar
Sangbad Burdwan Weekly Madhavchandra 60
Bardhaman Ghosh
Jnanpradayini Burdwan Twice a week Bisweswar 70
Bandopadhyay

Source: Returns of Native Newspapers and other periodical publications in the districts
of the Lower Provinces during the year 1852, General Department Proceedings,
nos. 55–6, 15 September 1853.

Table 20.2: Demand of Papers Published

in Calcutta, 1852

Name of the Periodicity of Editor Number of

periodical publication Subscribers

Samachar Chandrika Twice a week Bhagabaticharan 200

Chattopadhyay
Sambad Bhaskar Thrice a week Gourishankar 230
Tarkabagish
Sangbad Prabhakar Daily Ishwarchandra 270
Gupta
Sambad Rasaraj Twice a week Gangadhar 100
Bhattacharya
Bibhakar Twice a week Monomohan 110
Basu
Tattvabodhini Patrika Monthly Akshaykumar 750
Dutta
Nityadharmanuranjika Fortnightly Nandakumar 150
Kabiratna
Bibidhartha Sangraha Monthly Rajrndralal Mitra 1100
Biswa Bilokan Weekly Gourmohan Das 50

Table 20.2 (Contd.)

 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 757

Table 20.2 (contd.)

Name of the Periodicity of Editor Number of

periodical publication Subscribers

Jnanoday Twice a week Chandra Chatterjee 100

Sangbad Daily Udaychandra
Purnachandroday Adhya 250
Sangvad Sadhuranjan Weekly Ishwarchandra 90
Gupta
Satyarnab Monthly James Long 450
Vedanta Darshan Monthly Anandachandra 117
Vedantavagish
Dharmaraj Monthly Taraknath Dutta 50

Source: Statement of Native Newspapers and the periodical publication printed in the
town of Calcutta in the year 1852, General Department Proceedings, no. 61,
15 September 1853.

Table 20.3: Demand of Bengali Papers in

India and Abroad
Name of the Place of Editor/ Periodicity of Number of Number of
periodical publication Proprietor publication subscribers copies sent
outside

Samachar Calcutta Bamacharan Twice a week 400 73 copies sent

Chandrika Chattopadhyay to Assam,
Uttar-paschim
Pradesh, New
York, Frankfurt
Sangbad Calcutta Ramchandra Daily 500 100 copies sent
Prabhakar Gupta to different
parts of the
mofussils
Samvad Calcutta Khetramohan Thrice a week 400 Sent a few
Bhaskar Bhattacharya copies to five
places of
Uttar-paschim
Pradesh and
England
Sangbad Calcutta Adwaitacharan Daily More than More than
Purnachan- Adhya 300 100 copies sent
droday outside Kolkata

Table 20.3 (Contd.)

758 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Table 20.3 (contd.)

Name of the Place of Editor/ Periodicity of Number of Number of

periodical publication Proprietor publication subscribers copies sent
outside

Somprakash Changripota Dwarakanath Weekly Near about 22 copies sent

Vidyabhushan 400 in different
parts of India,
1 copy to
Ireland
Rangpur Rangpur Tarashankar Weekly 180 3 copies sent to
Dikprakash Moitro Assam and
Uttar-paschim
Pradesh
Dacca Dacca Gobindaprasad Weekly 269 15 copies sent
Prakash Roy to Assam,
Madhya
Pradesh and
Orissa
Bharatranjan Berhampur Narayanprasad Weekly 250 2 copies sent to
Chakravarti Uttar-paschim
Pradesh
Grambarta- Kumarkhali Harinath Monthly 200 3 copies sen t to
prakashika Majumdar Uttar-paschim
Pradesh
Hindu Dacca Harishchandra Weekly 400 6 copies sent to
Hitaishini Mitra Uttar-paschim
(earlier Pradesh
Dhaka
Darpan)
Bamabodhini Calcutta Khetramohan Monthly About 500 60 copies sent to
Patrika Dutta Uttar-paschim
and Madhya
Pradesh
Shikkhadarpan Hooghly Kashinath Monthly 700 –
Bhattacharya
Bigyapani Mymensingh Gopimohan Weekly 150 Some copies sent
Basu to Assam
Bidyonnati- Mymensingh Gobindachandra Monthly 300 5 copies sent to
sadhini Guha Uttar-paschim
Pradesh and
Bombay
Education Calcutta Pyaricharan Weekly 394 327 copies sent
Gazzette Sarkar to mofussils,
5 among them
sent to Assam

Source: Half-yearly Report on the Native Papers to 31 May 1866, General Department Proceedings,
no. 32, June 1866.
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 759

Table 20.4: Number of Subscribers of

Three Daily Papers, 1877–86

Name of the papers 1877 1879 1880 1884 1885 1886

Sangbad Prabhakar 550 550 700 245 225 200

Sangbad Purnachandroday – – 300 300 300 300
Samachar Chandrika 625 625 625 625 625 625

Source: Compiled from figures taken from the Report on Native Papers of the
respective years.

even half a pice. Some of them (the Sulabh Samachar for example),
received unprecedented public reception. One can select a few Bengali
newspapers of the second half of the nineteenth century to find
out the extent of their circulation. Let us take the daily newspapers
first. Three of these daily papers of the century had long lives. These
were the Sangbad Prabhakar, Samachar Chandrika, and Sangbad
Purnachandroday. Their numbers of subscribers during 1877 to 1886
has been given in Table 20.4.
Among the nineteenth century newspapers, the Dainik had the
largest circulation. In 1885, it reached a figure of 7,000. Kshetra Mohan
Sengupta, the editor, had published another daily, the Prabhati, earlier,
which had closed after a run of six years. Its circulation never crossed
the mark of 1,000. In the same century, there was only one daily paper
published from outside of Calcutta that deserves mention. It was
the Dainik Varta of Hooghly. Its circulation was, however, limited
to 450.
In the second half of the century, quite a few weekly newspapers
appeared in rural Bengal. Some of these had a long life, and some, for
their excellence of presentation, earned respect of the readers. The
circulation figures of some of the notable mofussil weeklies, during
the decade of 1877–86 is given in Table 20.5.
However, the circulation of Calcutta weeklies surpassed that of
the mofussil ones, as a rule. One thing was notable—the weeklies
had larger circulations than that of the dailies. As a result, they had
more influence on the public, and their importance on formation of
public opinion cannot be underestimated. The data of circulation of
some weeklies published from Calcutta, collected between 1879 and
1900, has been given in Table 20.6.
760 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Table 20.5: Circulation Figures of some

Mofussil Weeklies, 1877–86

Name of papers and 1877 1879 1880 1884 1885 1886

places of publication

Dacca Prakash, Dacca 400 400 350 425 425 450

Sadharani, Chinsurah 516 516 500 500 500 –
Sangshodhani, Chittagong – 500 600 700 700 800
Barishal Bartabaha, Barishal 300 300 – – – –
Pratikar, Berhampur 235 235 275 600 600 600
Grambartaprakashika, 200 200 500 247 500 500
  Kumarkhali
Somprakash, Changripota 700 700 1000 1000 1000 1000
Rangpur Dikprakash, 250 250 250 220 220 205
  Kakiniya
Bharatmihir, Mymensingh 658 658 671 625 625 2500
Prajabandhu, Chandernagore – – – 900 900 995
Medini, Midnapur – 250 250 500 500 –
Education Gazzette, Hooghly – 1145 745 800 800 825
Bardhaman Sanjibani, Burdwan – – 296 296 296 302

Source: Compiled from figures taken from the Report on Native Papers of the respective
years.

A Few Words on the Editors

Hundreds of papers and journals have been published in the period
in question. A question arises as to how well equipped the editors
of these papers were for their job. John Robinson, the translator
for the government, had in 1866 that they were quite competent.
But later the Charubarta of Sherpur, patronized by the local land-
lord Hara Chandra Chowdhury, questioned this in its very first
issue:

It is those who do not have higher education, are unable to enter the
professions of a pleader or a doctor, cannot make their both ends meet for
want of patrons or property, take up the heavy responsibility of an editor.
It is a matter of shame and sorrow that most of the Bengali newspapers are
edited by such men.22

This observation of the Charubarta was, however, strongly

contested by the Dacca Prakash, which said that the editors of the
Somprakash, Nababibhakar, Sahachar, Bharat Mihir, Sadharani,
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 761

Table  20.6: Circulation Figures of some Weeklies

from Calcutta, 1879–1900
Name of the papers 1879 1884 1885 1886 1894 1897 1898 1900

Bangabasi – 12,000 12,000 20,000 20,000 20,000 20,000 26,000

Sanjibani – 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 3,000 3,000 3,000
Basumati – – – – – – – 15,000
Sulabh Samachar 5,500 3,000 3,000 3,000 – – – –
Samay – 1,500 2,350 4,000 4,000 3,000 3,000 3,000
Hitabadi – – – – 3,000 4,000 6,000 35,000
Mihir o Sudhakar – – – – – 1,250 2,500 2,500
Anandabazar Patrika 700 700 700 700 – – – –
Surabhi o Pataka – – – 3,000 – – – –
Nababibhakar 900 850 850 1,000 – – – –
Sahachar 500 500 500 500 1,000 500 – –

Source: Compiled from figures taken from the Report on Native Papers of the respective
years.

Education Gazette, etc., were quite qualified for their job. Such
statements and counter-statements went on for a while. However,
it is to be noted that not all editors could be given a certificate of
merit. There were those who sullied the name of their paper by
unchecked obscenity, despicable personal slandering, retrograde and
superstitious ideas, irrational and unscientific attitude, communal
hatred, and religious fundamentalism.
However, the number of highly qualified editors were far greater
in number. They played a memorable role in fighting the oppressor,
inculcating nationalism in the minds of the Bengalis, eradicating
superstitious practices in society, supporting various progressive
movements, maintaining communal harmony, and developing
literature in Bengal. For this, they often embraced poverty and risked
the ire of the government and the powerful individuals of the society,
but that did not stop their battle for creating a society that was free
from evil, injustice, and exploitation. For all this, we are ever grateful
to them. One cannot forget their work in support of the hapless and
exploited farmers of Bengal. Nor it can be denied that it was they who
made the nation aware of the ignominy of imperial subjection. One
of the editors of this period, in fact, gave out the call for boycotting
foreign goods. Here, mention might be made of Nagendranath Gupta,
the editor of the Prabhat, who asked, ‘What is it to us if English won?
Why should we rejoice about it?’
762 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Growth of Public Opinion

Popular opinion being extremely important in the then modern
society, there were three major instruments of forming and
influencing popular opinion—meetings and assemblies, theatres,
and newspapers and journals. Meetings and assemblies at this period
were, however, held within the four walls. A public meeting, properly
so called, began probably in protest of the Vernacular Press Act. We
hear of many public meetings in support of the Ilbert Bill and arguing
about the Bengal Tenancy Bill. Nor is it unknown that there were
angry protests against the Consent Bill and the Partition of Bengal.
The theatre also exerted some influence on popular opinion. But the
influence of the newspapers and periodicals was far greater. We have
seen earlier that newspapers and periodicals were being published
widely, beyond the boundaries of Calcutta. Literacy was growing, and
the urge for knowing about what was happening at home and abroad
was growing apace. With that, the importance of the print media
was also growing, as was its influence in moulding popular opinion.

Social Reform Movements and the Role

of the Press

All these began within a short time after the first Bengali newspaper
had been published. The ‘Suttee’ system of the Hindus was still in
vogue. Only a few months after the Sumachar Durpun and Bengal
Gazette were published, Rammohan Roy brought out his remarkable
pamphlet ‘Sahamaran Bishaye Pravarttak O Nivarttaker Samvad’.
Once it was out, the Bengali society found itself split into two on the
sati issue. Bengali newspapers could not remain untouched by the
turmoil as well. The Sumachar Durpun of the British Missionaries
and the Bangal Gazette of Gangakishor Bhattacharya took a strong
stand against the system. Bhabani Charan Bandyopadhyay found
that the Kaumudi, with which he had so far been associated, did not
support his line on sati. So he left it, and published his own paper—the
Samachar Chandrika. From 1822, the Chandrika went on supporting
the system of sati, while the Durpan and Kaumudi tried to wield
public sentiment against it. It was rumoured that the government was
going to intervene, which the voice of the newspapers made shriller.
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 763

The Samachar Chandrika of 19 November 1829 declared: ‘We are

shaking from top to bottom. We are distressed, afraid, surprised. Even
the oppressive Muslim rulers had not interfered with our religion, so
if it takes place in the reign of a just government, our unhappiness
will be limitless. We think, Hinduism is going to breathe its last.’ Till
then, of course, Bhabani Charan had some hope that the government
would not ban the sati practice, as it was avowedly against interfering
with the country’s religion.
The Samachar Chandrika was in no mood to hear that no earlier
ruler had touched this sensitive area, and many Hindus were against
it, and no Hindu scripture had ever prescribed it. If, it thought, this
sacred practice is stopped on account of listening to the abuses of
Hinduism from a few fake Hindus and sycophants of the Englishmen,
that would certainly be a disaster. The Bengal Herald commented
that many Hindus of Calcutta were in favour of the abolition of this
custom. Bhabani Charan asked with sarcasm: ‘Which fool had told it
about that? The Calcutta elite had, instead, resolved to appeal to the
Government for its continuation, and a petition would be filed soon.
That would be a proper reply to the aspersion on the Calcutta elite.’23
He could not be silenced soon, and took up the pen again on
26 November 1829. as According to the Bengal Herald, many of the
Hindus of Calcutta were against this practice, and the Sumachar
Durpun added that although a few Bengalis of the city did not want
to part with it, most of them thought it inhuman; besides these, the
papers of the Englishmen—Bengal Hurkaru, India Gazette, etc.—all
noted that most of the people of the country did not support it either.
Bhabani Charan challenged the statement of the Sumachar Durpun
and dared it to publish the names of those who did not support the
sati. He further said that no educated British would be happy to see
the abolition of a native custom, because, he declared, ‘to a Hindu,
of all disasters, the loss of religion was the worst, as once it was lost,
it was not recoverable; and the abolition of the Suttee would hurt
Hinduism in such a way.24
The Sumachar Durpun tried to argue (on the 29 November)
that Manu had never mentioned sati, and even according to other
Hindu scriptures, willful death was nothing to be cherished. If this
cruel and inhuman custom was stopped, no harm would be done to
Hinduism, nor would anybody think of it as a conspiracy to destroy
764 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Hinduism.25 Bhabani Charan was back to the track the very next
day (30 November 1829), saying that neither did Manu prohibit the
system, nor did he mention festivals like Durga Puja or Dol (spring
festival). So, are the people who observed the latter be blamed for
violating Manu? Manu’s silence on sati was, for Bhabani Charan, a
sign of his approval of it. He also quoted from a south Indian edition
of Manusanhita to support sati. Since this was a religious ‘rite’,
Bhabani Charan was not ready to call it inhuman.26
The Sumachar Durpun again rebutted all these arguments. By
showing the vacuity of Bhabani Charan’s stand, the paper said they did
not want to fill up their pages by printing the names of the citizens of
Calcutta who were against the practice of sati, but Bhabani Charan,
instead, could easily print the names of those who supported it, as he
has promised. Then, he would readily know that the names which did
not figure in his list were of those who did not support the practice.27
Bhabani Charan kept his hope alive till the last moment. On
3 December 1829, he wrote that the governor would never decide
before consulting the Hindu scriptures, he would not listen to the
noise created so far. But the very next day proved that the words
supporting the abolition were not merely ‘noise’. On that very day,
the governor’s council unanimously resolved that the sati practice was
‘illegal and punishable by the criminal courts’. The official declaration
was made on 7 December 1829.
One thing has to be noted in this context. At that time, the
circulation of the native newspapers was rather limited. Still, a section
of the educated people, however small, was influenced by the stand
of the newspapers and opposed the practice of sati.
Sometime after the abolition, discussions in newspapers and
public meetings began on whether widow remarriage should be
allowed in Bengali Hindu families. It was perhaps the Bengal Spectator
which can claim the credit of supporting it first. In its very first issue
of April 1842, it published an article in the form of a letter, ‘If the
husband can marry again after the death of the wife, why cannot a
wife can do so after her husband’s death?’ However, a profusion of
arguments and counter-arguments, and even the enactment of the
law of widow remarriage prompted by a powerful movement by
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, could not make it win popular favour.
But the newspapers were successful in making the Bengali society
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 765

aware of, before the century ended, how harmful to itself were the
practices of Kulinism, polygamy, and child bride. However, debate
continued on how these evil customs could be stopped. Most of the
Bengali editors held the opinion that polygamy and Kulinism were
detrimental to the society, but neither the Hindus nor the Muslims of
the nineteenth century were ready to accept that there should be legal
intervention to get rid of these. The Samachar Chandrika admitted
of the harm they did, still it contested any legal action against them
and wrote on 28 January 1864:
.  .  .  though by this rite families are broken and wickedness increases, facts
which in themselves should lead to its abolition, yet then we are to be the
Judges, our opinion is that Government should not interfere. The rite is
allowed by the Shastras, and if the Government interfere they break the
engagement into which they entered when they took the country. We
would not uphold the custom, all that we say is let not the Government act
injudiciously by interfering, but let the more enlightened of our countrymen
rise and determine to put a stop to this pernicious habit. We hope
Mr Boulnois, Member of Council, who is anxious to introduce a Bill to put
a stop to it, will take our hint and drop the matter.28

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in the Bangadarshan, Dwaraka Nath

Vidyabhusan in the Somprakash, and Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay in the
Education Gazette expressed their objection to legal intervention
for stoppage of these practices. According to them, these oppressive
systems had now lost their base. As men would become enlightened,
these systems would naturally die out. The government, sensing
the feeling of a section of the society, did not deem it necessary to
intervene in these matters. We however, cite two incidents to show
how powerful the Kulin system was even in the latter part of the
nineteenth century:
(a) ‘A Kulin Brahmin of 50 years, belonging to Khamargachhi,
Hooghli, has so far married only 112 times. About 40/50 of his wives
have died so far. Almost all of the rest are now residing in their
parents’ home. Only one or two have been allowed to live with the
husband’.29
(b) ‘Recently, on a single day, 14 unmarried girls have been given
to marriage to a 60 year old Kulin groom. This has taken place in the
village Amgram, of Faridpur district. The groom is Sarvveshwar, who
766 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

was from Burdwan. An eyewitness states, when the fourteen girls,

with their faces veiled, stood around the groom forming a crescent,
it was quite a sight! The age of the brides ranged from 4/5 years to
22/24 years. One can think it a fiction when one suddenly hears it,
but there is no need to mistake it as such. Time will come when this
barbarous and evil system will be fully extirpated.’ [translation mine]30
It was Krishnakumar Mitra’s Sanjibani, which led other
newspapers to rid the society of this curse. The propaganda was
that polygamy was not so rampant in Bengal, and Mitra, in order to
prove the falsity of this canard, published a list of ninety-six Kulins
who married many times from the six districts of Jessore, Khulna,
Dacca, Faridpur, Barishal, and Burdwan. The newspapers, with their
relentless effort, could create an aversion to the practice in the mind
of the urban educated. But the villages that remained beyond the pall
of literacy, continued with the bane.
Child marriage was very common in the early part of the
nineteenth century. Nobody found anything unnatural in the
marriage of a six- or seven-year-old boy with a two- or three-year-old
girl. The Bengali newspapers in the first half of the century began to
discuss that an early marriage hinders education of the boy, and the
children that are born of girls who undergo early maternity become
weak and sickly. Those who sought to build up public opinion against
this evil practice by giving it wide airing in their newspapers were
Ishwarchandra Gupta of the Sangbad Prabhakar, Rajendra Lal Mitra
in his Vividartha Sangraha, Tarak Nath Dutta in the Dharmmaraj,
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar in the Sarvashubhakari, Kaliprasanna
Sinha in his Vidyotsahini Patrika, Shyamsundar Sen in the Samachar
Sudhavarshan, Nabin Chandra Adhya in the Vangavidyaprakashika,
Dwarakanath Vidyabhusan in his Somprakash. But their success was
dubious. In 1873, a few youths, inspired by Keshab Chandra Sen,
founded an Association for Preventing Child Marriage in Dacca.
The members of this Association took an oath that none of them
would marry before a certain age—twenty-one years for the boys and
fourteen years for the girls. In 1873, Mahapap Valyavivaha (‘Child
Marriage, the Great Sin’) was published under the editorship of
Nabakanta Chattopadhyay, for encouraging public sentiments against
the custom. From this time, a section of the Bengali society became
deeply averse to it. In July 1873, the Bharat Samskarak ruefully
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 767

commented—‘One cannot count how every family suffers from the

poisonous effects of child marriage’ (translated).
Some years later, Behramji Malabari took a powerful initiative
to create a countrywide movement against child marriage. He
demanded government intervention for stopping it. Lord Ripon
advised him to circulate his proposal all over the country in order
to seek public support. His proposal (published in the Somprakash)
was—‘Let the Department of Education advertise that it would not
allow any married male to sit for the university examination.’ He also
requested all the authorities in different departments that if there
were two equally qualified candidates for a job, the bachelor would
get the preference of selection.
Malabari’s proposal created an uproar in Bengal. Newspapers
jumped on the issue. A group, represented by Chandranath Basu,
began singing praise of child marriage. Some of course looked for
legal intervention to stop it, and in a meeting held at Alipore in 1886,
a resolution was taken to seek government help for that. However,
the Education Gazette and some other papers were firmly against it.
The majority of Bengali society did not want governmental
meddling with the custom. On the other hand, there was of course
an impact of the newspaper debates on the society. I quote from the
Surabhi and Pataka to show that those who raised their voices against
child marriage, did not do that in vain:

The movement against child marriage has been going on for the last 25 years.
Has anyone noticed in which direction the Hindu society has been moving
in these years? Is the age in which boys and girls were married earlier still
the same now? Let alone the boys, but earlier the parents were crazy about
‘Gauridan’, are they still so? Now do you not see unmarried girls of 11/12
years in the homes of devout Hindus and those of 13/14 years in educated
Babu households? Seeing this, we can confidently say that the Hindu society
is moving against child marriage step by step and adopting the notion (of
not marrying a child). If this can happen in 25 years, can we not expect a
little more in another 25? [translation mine]31

Initiative for women’s education was taken in this country early

in the nineteenth century. The major impediment to this was the
deep-rooted superstitions prevalent in the society. Once educated,
a girl was destined to become a widow or one of ill-repute—such
768 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

was the belief. The Bengali newspapers and journals took up their
pens in the thirties to erase such bigotry from the people’s minds.
In the forties, papers like the Vidyadarshan, Tattvabodhini Patrika,
Samvad Bhaskar, Rangpur Varttavaha, Sangbad Purnachandroday,
Sangbad Prabhakar, Samvad Rasaraj, etc., seriously attempted to
form public opinion in favour of educating women. In this time
also, the propaganda countering the move continued unabated. In
such a context, the efforts of Kalikrishna Mitra and Pyari Charan
Sarkar were successful in opening a girls’ school at Barasat, and
Bethune founded one in Calcutta. This gave fresh encouragement to
the newspapers to raise their voice for women’s education. In 1849,
Ishwarchandra Gupta wrote in his Sangbad Prabhakar about the
benefits of educating the girl child—‘One cannot say enough of the
good that takes place in the country if a girl is educated. Our religion
is enriched, our everyday work is done with much better skill and
there is no end of it.  .  .  . So women’s education is a great duty, and
my countrymen, please put your mind to it. Our Lord, give us the
real knowledge’ [translation mine].
In the year 1849, a school was started in Calcutta for girls of
gentlefolk, and the Samvad Rasaraj not only welcomed it, but went
one step forward to threaten those who would refuse to send their
girls to it:

Oh our Lord of infinite glory, we have been waiting for the auspicious day
when our girls would go to school and learn, and the good Sun of the day
has risen, our dearest daughters have begun to take lessons in a school from
the last Monday.  .  .  . All of you must send your girls to that school, and if
you do not, we will not spare you. You do not have to pay anything, the
Government will meet the expenses of their education, it will be a great
help if you just send your daughters to the school. Those who will ignore
will be deemed as enemies of the girls, and the Almighty is there to deal
with these enemies. [translation mine]32

The Bengali society experienced a storm when the Bethune School

(Calcutta Female School) was established. Those who sent their girls
to the school was ostracized, and many parents refused to accept
school-going girls as brides for their sons. The Bengali papers came
forward to contend these tendencies. Dwarakanath Roy, a teacher
of the Hindu School, countered every argument of the opposition
point by point, and Pyarichand Mitra and Radhanath Sikdar used
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 769

their Masik Patrika to dispel all age-old superstitions that engulfed

the minds of Bengali women. Madan Mohan Tarkalankar in the
Sarvashubhakari and Kaliprasanna Sinha in his Vidyotsahini Patrika,
put up a powerful defence for female education. In addition, there
was a non-stop campaign by the Sangbad Prabhakar, Samvad Bhaskar,
Sangbad Purnachandroday, Sangvad Sadhuranjan, etc. As a result of
this, a large section of the Bengal society realized the importance
of women’s education. Girls’ schools gradually began to crop up
here and there, and the villages did not lag behind this time. The
women of the house began to be actively involved in girls’ education.
Among women who dedicated their lives for female education were
Radhikasundari and Ranga Debi of Bankura; Karunamayee, wife of
Ramapati Mukhopadhyay of Burdwan; and Bamasundari Debi of
Pabna. Prasanna Kumar Sinha of Khoksa went so far as to write a
letter on 14 December 1863, to the editor of the Somprakash, stating
that ‘Bamasundari was a jewel of a woman of the age’.
Girls soon crossed the boundary of primary education, and had
the opportunity to reach the higher stages of formal education, thanks
to the efforts of some large-hearted men and women, and schools like
Rambagan Valika Vidyalay, Hindu Mahila Vidyalay, Banga Mahila
Vidyalay, and of course, Bethune School. In 1863 itself, the girls of
the Rambagan Valika Vidyalay could read as far as the textbooks of
the entrance examination of the University of Calcutta.33 Soon after, a
debate began whether girls should be allowed to sit for the university
entrance exam. The Bangamahila pleaded that girls too be given the
chance, in its Chaitra 1283 (March 1877) issue:

In the days gone by, the girls received a smattering of education and left
school early. Therefore there was no need for their higher education. But
now the Hindu girls are staying in school much longer, and some of them
are wishing that they would go further and receive higher education.
Unfortunately, there is no opportunity for them to fulfill their ambition. As
the members of the University have been liberal enough to allow the girls to
sit for the entrance examinations, we therefore hope that the Government
would also come forward to provide higher education to the girls who
qualify, which will enhance the status of female education.

But opinions differed whether girls would be allowed to receive

the same kind of education as that of men. In spite of the social
adversity, girls went on successfully clearing the entrance, F.A., B.A.,
770 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

M.A., and M.B. examinations. Often, they even occupied the first or
second positions in these, beating the boys. However, even when girls
had stepped out of their homes for education, the conservative papers
still went on with their slandering campaign against their education.
This was a time of the revival of Hinduism. The papers adhering
to this ideology—the Dharmmapracharak, Subodhini, Dainik,
Bangabasi, Hindu Patrika, Savitri—went on opposing education for
girls. The effect of that was, however, uncertain. As days went by,
more and more girls’ schools came into existence, and the number
of female learners increased every year.
There was, of course, continuous debate on how social
reforms should be undertaken. A group thought that these can
be accomplished only by legal measures. Another believed in the
raising of awareness in men, upon which they themselves would
come forward to eradicate the evil practices of society. A law cannot
often force out the stolid darkness of the mind, and that has been
amply proved by the failure of the Widow Remarriage Act. While
the success of the movement for women’s education had made it
evident that if one could convince an individual about the utility of
something by cogent arguments, that individual will proceed to help
the cause further. The guardians of the society during the first half
of the nineteenth century, who shivered at the sight of books in the
hands of girls, without any qualms, themselves began sending their
girls to school at the end of it. Boys with education also began to
voice their objection in marrying illiterate girls. Gradually, it became
a compulsion for many to send their girls to schools.
But how did this social attitude changed in such a small time?
It can be said that the credit goes to the Bengali newspapers, which,
early in the century, began supporting the cause of female education
and effected the change of the social mind. In the phase under
discussion, there were just a few newspapers which did not support
it, whereas hundreds of obscure and even non-descript papers
had stood by it. Their contribution towards the spread of female
education must be acknowledged. That the movement was a success,
is mostly due to the efforts of the nineteenth century editors and
journalists.
There were two other issues that needed to be dealt with—the
dowry system and alcoholism. Both got a lot of attention from the
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 771

journalists, but that failed to lead to a powerful movement at this time.

Bengali Hindus came to realize how horrible the dowry system could
be, after the suicide of Snehalata in 1914. Snehalata, who was about
fourteen years old, came off a poor family. Her father was a petty
clerk, and in order to arrange the dowry for Snehalata’s marriage with
a suitable groom, he had to mortgage their residential house. This
was unbearable to Snehalata, who committed suicide in the month
of January 1914.34 A few papers also were mildly vocal against the
caste system, but that did not create any impact.
Gradually, the question about the legitimacy of sea voyage came
up. The person who first took up the pen on the issue of sea voyage
was Ishwarchandra Gupta:
The English and other nations suffer no prohibition against sea voyage
and so they can easily go for gold-mining. But what a pity! There is no
such permission for the Indians, so they are deprived of the opportunity
of mining gold in Australia. When you think deeply, this custom does not
seem a good one at all. The only reason behind it must be the caste prejudice,
because as long as this system has been in force, people of this country have
been debarred from going to foreign lands by travelling overseas. In the
Puranas and other shastras, as also in history, there is a lot of evidence that
early kings and merchants went to many countries without any problem
crossing the sea on ships and they did not have to face ostracism or any other
ignominy. Now however, we notice the totally opposite of that. Persons in
Government service who, accompanied by soldiers, have gone to Rangoon,
will cause a commotion when they come back to the country—the Goddess
of group conflict will show her immense strength. When the people remain
in the country and do hundreds of business, they are seldom noticed. But
they are ruined if they go abroad. It is quite likely that, if a convenient way
is found to redress the hindrances for Hindus for boarding a ship and going
abroad for business, the country would have its knowledge and fortune
enhanced. [translation mine]35

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Bengali youths

began going abroad for higher education or for posting in special
services. When they returned after their sojourn, the social guardians
ostracized them. Two newspapers, the Sangbad Prabhakar and
Education Gazette put all their efforts in forming public opinion in
favour of sea travel, from the sixties of the century. On 6 February
1874, the Education Gazette published the feature ‘Bangaliger
772 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Bilatgaman’ (Bengalis’ travels to England), in which they stated,

‘It is our sacred duty to respectfully receive the persons who come
back from England.’ After some time, Damodar Mukhopadhyay,
editor of the Pravaha, wrote several articles to declare that, ‘Going
to England  .  .  .  is a must for Indians’. The paper lamented:
We cannot even think how the Hindu can remain calm after ostracizing
the two brothers, Surendranath and Lalmohan. If they are received back in
society, the society itself will be much richer.  .  .  . So we say, O the leaders
of the Hindu society, leave the useless caste pride, and see that the two
brothers are united again. That will immensely benefit the country and the
society. [translation mine]36

A few distinguished persons came forward to receive back in the

society the youths who returned from England, after a nominal act
of penance; but the conservative papers did not like that. The major
two among them, Bangabasi and Dainik, attacked these liberals
mercilessly. The Somprakash also accused them of ‘sullying the taste’.
When Haraprasad Shastri took an initiative to welcome back the
England returnees, the Dainik of the ‘Bangabasi group’, called him
a ‘monkey, a shameless one with two ears cut off ’ (26 July 1886).
Sometime later, the Janmabhumi joined the troupe of the papers
against seafaring.
As the conservatives were protesting against going to England,
the movement for welcoming back the homeward bounds was on
at the same time, and this movement gathered force day by day.
The Sangbad Prabhakar published a sizeable list of persons who
supported Hindus going abroad by sea. The Sanskrit scholars who
dealt with scriptures were against it, but in its favour were famous
persons like Rajendranarayan Deb Bahadur, Narendrakrishna Deb
Bahadur, Gurudas Bandyopadhyay, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee,
Ramesh Chandra Mitra, Hem Chandra Bandyopadhyay, Kali Prasad
Ghosh, Kali Prasanna Dutta, Nilambar Mukhopadhyay, Priya Nath
Palit, Narendranath Sen, Girindra Kumar Dutta, Mati Lal Ghosh,
Jatindra Nath Chowdhury (Taki), Ramanath Dutta, Naba Gopal
Mitra, Umesh Chandra Mitra, Surya Kumar Sarbadhikari, Ambika
Charan Bandyopadhyay, Kumar Rameshwar Malia, Mahesh Chandra
Nyayratna (Principal, Sanskrit College), and others.
Binay Krishna Deb wrote a letter to the great Indian writer
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, seeking his opinion about going abroad
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 773

by sea. Chatterjee’s answer was published in the Sanjibani, in which he

clearly stated, ‘As sea voyage is beneficial, so it is approved by religion.
So whatever one may find in scriptures, sea voyage is permitted
by Hinduism’ [translation mine]. Panchanan Tarkaratna criticized
it severely in the Janmabhumi, under the title ‘The Sea-voyage of
Bankimbabu’.
However, it was not just Bankim Chandra alone; Surendranath
Banerjee (editor, the Bengalee), Narendranath Sen (editor, the Indian
Mirror), Naba Gopal Mitra (editor, the National Paper)—all took
up their pens in support of sea voyage. The editor of the Indian
Mirror minced no words, and said that the sanction on sea voyage is
hindering our economic progress, national regeneration, and search
for knowledge.
As this debate was going on, the receiving back of the England
returnees one after another in the society, after due penance, was also
under progress. In such a social context, Rabindranath Tagore wrote
in his famous article ‘Samudrajatra’ in the Sadhana—‘Whoever may
argue however much, whatever is proposed in the scripture and a
dead language, Bengalis will cross the ocean, will try its utmost to
accompany all the travelers of progress in the world.’ [translation
mine]
The debate did not end here, of course. From the end of the
nineteenth century, it continued till the beginning years of the next.
Magazines like the Bharati, Sahitya, etc., joined the fray. The papers
and journals carried on an incessant campaign in favour of sea voyage,
and it goes without saying that, due to this, popular support for it
had also gathered enormous strength.
The Benares Sanskrit scholars (the ‘Pundits’), anxious at the
role of newspapers against various harmful social practices, took
a resolution in November 1890. In their opinion, the periodicals
and newspapers in which irreligious opinions supporting widow
remarriage, marriage of mature girls, abolition of child marriage and
caste division, lead people reading them to harmful education and sin.
It is a heinous sin to help the publisher of such anti-religious papers
by money or other means. [translation mine] But these Benares
pundits had no power to stop the change that was taking place in
the Bengali society. On the contrary, the papers kept on lighting up
various new and novel aspects of life, and encouraged the Bengalis
to new thinking day after day.
774 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Attitude towards the British Rule

Take for example, the British rule. It is in the second half of the
nineteenth century that the honeymoon of the Bengalis with the
British rule came to an end. They did not think of its termination,
yet, the papers realized that the rulers did not want the good of
this country. Their objective, instead, was to continue exploitation,
self-seeking, expanding the empire at the expense of impoverished
subjects, and shameless apartheid. Another motive was to destroy the
native manufacturing industry, and set up monopolistic companies.
The Bengali journalists took it upon themselves to make the
countrymen aware of this ungainly side of the British rule. Noticing
this role, the ruling power became wary and began clamping one
after another oppressive acts. But that could not stop the raising of
uncomfortable questions. Not only that, the way some journalists
risked their lives in order to bring to people’s notice the miserable
conditions of the farmers, the life and battle of the indigo cultivators,
the pathetic tale of the coolies of tea gardens under White oppression,
are talked about even today. These editors and journalists realized
one fact very early that the Hindus and the Muslims were both
the offspring of this country, and their united effort would be need-
ed for its progress, and that was why, communal harmony was a must.
We may begin with the role of the Bengali newspapers in
unmasking the British rule. ‘The Government does not consider the
good or bad of its numerous subjects, but is engrossed in satisfying
its own greed for money.’37 The Bengali journalists began, since the
late years of the nineteenth century, telling that the government was
‘sucking the blood’ of the unhappy subjects in order to ‘collect money’.
What their attitude was towards the government, can be gauged from
this quotation from the Sangbad Prabhakar:
The Government has not yet been at all able to decide on the rules that
are needed for the uplift of their subjects’ life and its proper maintenance.
They instead stealing  .  .  .  and by that, the bellies of their kith and kin are
being filled. How the people live, how they meet the cost of farming, why
their crops are flooded by swelling rivers in the monsoon, what are the
impediments of the flourishing of trade, why the subjects become more and
more ignorant, what are the reasons behind their early death—the rulers
do not attend to these at all, while they regularly come to collect land tax,
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 775

stamp duty, narcotic tax etc.  .  .  . They assume enormous power and suck
the blood of the subjects’ bodies. Can peace and happiness reside in such
a kingdom? [translation mine]38

Not just extortion of money, the Bharat Samskarak also worried

that ‘all traces of native crafts will vanish by the affliction of the English
products’. The Bengali newspapers could not accept the possibility
that the British would have monopoly of trade and commerce. The
Bharat Samskarak complained in 1873—‘Manufacture of salt has
been banned here in the interest of England, and we are now forced
to import it from England.’ [translation mine]39
Everyone knows how garments manufactured in Manchester
flooded the Indian markets, while the native producers were reeling
under stiff tariff. In 1896, an excise duty was imposed on clothes
produced in India in order to help the Manchester producers. This
made the educated Bengalis angry, and they decided to boycott
Manchester goods. The editor of the Sanjibani supported the decision,
and the Odia paper Utkal Dipika also expressed its agreement with it.40
About ten years ago even before this, Chandrakishor Roy, a
journalist, gave out a call to his countrymen to boycott foreign goods.
The Srimanta Saodagar, the paper he edited, wrote on 21 June 1886
that as long as the English would be able to sell their merchandise
in this country, they were not going to leave it. But if the people of
this country refuse to buy their products, they would be compelled
to leave.41
Not only the imposition of monopolistic trade, the Bengali
papers did not also hesitate to sharply criticize the expansion of the
empire at India’s expense. The Sangbad Prabhakar could not digest
the snatching of the states of Sindh and Gwalior by acts of aggression.
Questions were also on why poor Indians had to meet the cost of
the Afghan War.
But what aggrieved the Bengalis more than the aggressive
occupation of states by the British was their colour prejudice. All the
newspapers, irrespective of creed and belief, therefore, proceeded to
build public opinion against this prejudice. It was there, of course,
from the very beginning of the British rule. The Sarvashubhakari
wrote in its Bhadra (August) issue of 1855 on the conduct of the
Englishmen towards Indians—‘The white masters ill-treat and insult
776 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

their Indian servants as if they were baser than dogs and foxes. They
have to toil twice or thrice, otherwise the masters would not agree to
pay them once. This is one of the major reasons behind the misfortune
of our country.’42
Looking down on the natives became a major feature of the British
rule. What increased the distance between the two communities were
the over-activeness of the English to resist the ‘Black Act’, and their
attitude of contempt towards the Indians. The Dacca Prakash marked
jingoism as the main reason behind the unfriendliness between the
Europeans and the natives. That the Bengalis had become severely
cornered under the severe apartheid of the English rule was observed
by the Bharat Paridarshak, while discussing the inhuman conduct
of the Whites. A report of the government translator John Robinson
revealed the status of the relationship between the English and the
Bengalis in the sixties of the nineteenth century:

Much has been said regarding the strong prejudices of the Natives of Bengal
against Europeans, and their unwillingness to convey any information of
their affairs lest it should be misused and turned to their disadvantage.
That there is a great deal of such prejudice there can be no doubt; and
most probably, between the races, there will be vast gulf for many years
to come. Education may help to produce those generous sympathies that
shall result in unity of purpose and action. Many among them having
enjoyed the advantages of a liberal education, consider themselves equal
to almost any position in the Government of the country; and are very
jealous of Europeans alone being appointed to the higher and more lucrative
situations, while they themselves are confined to subordinate posts. They are
naturally and justly hurt when they hear of Europeans abusing or treating
their countrymen with disrespect and now more than ever do they seem
to feel pointedly anything like a condemnation of the whole race for the
failings of a few.43

Robinson, in another report on Bengali newspapers, mentioned

how acutely conscious the native editors were on the issue of colour
prejudice:

In all matters, political and social, the Native Editors assert and claim a
right to equality of privileges with Europeans; and it has not been a little
gratifying to them to find that of late some of their fellow-countrymen have
had the courage to return a European blow for blow. Though timidity is still
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 777

a prevailing characteristic, is to be hoped that it will give place to boldness

in action as well as in speech. There are certain points on which they appear
to be peculiarly sensitive, as where a European criminal was not meted out
a new punishment similar to that which would have expected to attend a
Native guilty of a like crime, any such apparent leniency is attributed to
national feeling.44

It was from the sixties that the Bengali editors began to discuss
the racism of the Europeans in the context of national honour or
dishonour. At this time, being heckled and insulted by the Whites
was a daily occurrence for a Bengali everywhere—on the streets, in
courts and offices, on trains, etc. Let alone the commoners, the way
the Whites treated persons like Rammohan Ray, Ishwarchandra
Vidyasagar, and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee cannot be called
‘respectful’ in any way. There were criticisms of such conducts,
but the English ignored them and continued their ways. A contemp-
orary paper, ridiculing this uncivil conduct of the Englishmen,
wrote:

We are Bengalis, so we are luckless. We are black, hence we are luckless. The
English come from England, so they have luck. They are white, hence they
have luck. The Englishmen are gods. We are human beings, so the English
can treat us as they wish. The Englishmen have, in their kindness, given us
life, hence we are alive. So the English are our Lord, who creates, protects
and destroys. Oh many-faced Indians! Why are you unhappy about the ways
of the Lord?  .  .  .  How dare you blame the gods, being mere humans?  .  .  .  You
think yourselves their equals just because they have thrown a few high posts
for you? What an illusion, what a high hope! You are the beasts that you
have been all along. [translation mine]45

When such was the relation between the two communities (1882),
the Ilbert Bill was proposed to eradicate racial prejudice in law courts.
It was intended to empower native judges for trying English criminals.
Bengali editors took no time in supporting the Bill. In order to build
up popular support for the Bill, they went on explaining its positive
aspects. But once the Bill was placed for ratification, the English in
India lost all sense of proportion in the reaction they displayed. They
appealed to the government for bringing back the law of Eden’s time
in order to silence the native editors. Further, a meeting was called
in the Town Hall on 28 February 1882 to register protest against the
778 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Bill. Branson, a barrister who presided over the meeting packed full
by European and Eurasian audience, attacked the Bengalis in the
basest of terms. The Calcutta correspondence of the Dundee Adviser
reported how vicious this attack was and how shameful the conduct
was in the gathering—‘The speeches made in the Town Hall were
chiefly in very bad taste. The native was a greasy Babu, a perjured
rascal, in fact everything that was vile; and the more abusive the
speaker became, the louder was the cheering, especially from the
Eurasians  .  .  .’. 46
Branson’s speech hurt the self-esteem of Bengalis deeply. Strong
protests came from the Sahachar, Sadharani, Prajabandhu, Surabhi,
Bharatmihir, Sangbad Prabhakar, Samachar Chandrika, Somprakash,
Education Gazette, and other papers. This popular pressure compelled
Branson to apologize in writing on 2 March 1883. Also, due to his act
of reviling, the lawyers of the Calcutta High Court stopped offering
cases to him. The people of Bengal even stopped speaking to him.
Branson found the situation becoming too complicated for him,
and had to go back to his country. The Somprakash described the
conditions under which Branson had to leave:

No reader of not only the Somprakash, but all newspapers, need to know
who Branson Sahib is. He is totally devoid of a conscience that feels what
is right or wrong, a staunch opposer of the Ilbert Bill, and his heart is as
black as the night of a new moon by prejudice. It is he, who, forgetting all
decorum, entertained his kiths and compatriots at the Town Hall by vilifying
the Indians. He stood in defence of injustice and opposed the Ilbert Bill,
taking the side of the English, and became so hated by the Indians that
he has now boarded a fast ship travelling overseas, in order to survive.
[translation mine]47

Apart from the Calcuttans, the educated middle class of the

mofussil also came forward to support the Ilbert Bill. Even the women
did not remain silent, as we learn from the Somprakash of 14 May
1883—‘The Indian females of Bethune School have appealed to the
Governor General so that the law enabling the native judges to try
European criminals is passed’. Not just the women of Bethune School,
but some other respectable and highly educated women also appealed
to Lord Ripon that the Bill be cleared. The signatories included names
of Binodini, Bhabani, Sundari, Sulochana, Manorama, Thakomani,
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 779

Chapala, Hara, and others.48 The Statesman called this appeal of the
ladies ‘too successful a hoax’.
Whatever The Statesman said, one cannot deny that much popular
support had been created in support of the Ilbert Bill. The few of
Indians who opposed the Bill became a pitiable lot. Raja Shibaprasad,
for example, opposed the Bill in the Council and was mercilessly
criticized by the papers. We can fathom the level where the Bengali’s
anger reached from the following—‘.  .  .  Some of our countrymen
have burnt poor Rajah Siva Prosad in the same way in Baraset and
Nimtollah Ghaut.  .  .  At Baraset, we are told a garland of shoes was
thrown round the neck of the figure, and before burning it they had
it beaten by a broom stick.’49
Lord Ripon was caught between the Indians’ expectation around
the Ilbert Bill and the resistance of his own countrymen. So, finally he
chose a middle path. The Bill that was submitted and approved was
much modified, which disappointed the Indians. This was reflected
in the comments of the Somprakash—‘The shape in which the Ilbert
Bill is going to be submitted, will make no difference whether it is
accepted or rejected.’ The Pakshik Samalochak clearly explained to
the Indians what shape the Ilbert Bill was finally going to take,50
and the Sadharani reminded afresh the countrymen of how big the
distance was between the ruler and the ruled, and how baseless were
the highly inflated promises of the Queen.51
The popular sentiment about the fate of the Ilbert Bill was
ignored, but the Bengali editors did not desist from their fight against
racial prejudice. The Garib of Kunja Bihari Bhattacharya attempted
to point out that under the Islamic rule there was only the division
of religion, but now there were further divides between humans
during the British rule—‘But at the present besides distinction based
on religious grounds there is also distinction made as ground of
difference of race and colour.’52
The affair of Shyamchand will give an indication of the extent
of discrimination in justice that was there. A railway engineer, Mr
Plover, had kicked (with his boots on) at the belly of a hapless porter
named Shyamchand, who died on account of it. Plover was brought
to the Court, but was released after paying only a fine of Rs.200. The
Musalmanbandhu of 23 February 1885 wrote on this travesty of the
judicial process—‘This is the civilization of the West, the sample of
780 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

justice of a civilized nation. No such travesty of justice takes place

even among the naked barbarians.’ [translation mine]53
The height that the arrogance of the English reached is evident
from the conduct of Hume, the Superintendent of Police of Jalpaiguri
district. It was recorded that if someone passed before him with an
umbrella on his head, Hume used to ‘box and kick him like a demon’.
Once a bullock cart driver was going with an umbrella, covering his
head from the rains, which made Hume furious, and he broke the
umbrella as he severely beat up the driver. This brought out a caustic
remark from the Somprakash—‘Where was the stick of the driver
with which he used to beat the bullocks?’
The Ilbert Bill misfired, but later it was not just a one-sided affair.
In the late eighties, the natives also began paying the English in their
own coin. A sahib pushed a Bengali gentleman at the Sealdah railway
station in April 1887, and the babu retaliated with his umbrella.
The sahib boxed him in return, but the babu beat him back once
again. In the scuffle, the Englishman’s coat got torn, and his glasses
broke. He finally saved himself by apologizing to the babu.54 Such
contretemps kept on recurring, which invited this comment from
the Anusandhan—‘These days we hear quite often that the sahibs are
being heckled by the hands—the black hands of the black natives.  .  .  .
Is it not a fact that this urge for retribution has been prompted by
ceaseless oppression?’ [translation mine]55

Oppression of Indigo and Tea Planters

Not only the building up popular opinion against racial prejudice, the
editors and journalists of Bengali newspapers should also be credited
with bringing to the notice of the educated class the miseries of the
farmers. The roles played in this regard by Pyari Chand Mitra in the
Bengal Spectator, Akshay Kumar Dutta in the Tattvabodhini Patrika,
Keshab Chandra Sen in the Sulabh Samachar, Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee in the Bangadarshan, and Umesh Chandra Dutta in the
Bharat Sangskarak, deserve to be respectfully remembered. The
journalists did not stop with the landlords’ acts of oppression on the
tillers, but they had been much vocal since the thirties against the
abominable treatment on the indigo farmers by the planters. One
Nilmani Das wrote a letter in the Samachar Chandrika on 7 July 1831,
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 781

about the torture of the farmers by the indigo planters—‘All the

subjects are poor and all the sahibs are rich, and every sahib keeps
200/300 servants ready with sticks. So how can the subjects keep
their honour and lives?’
If, unable to bear the oppression of the indigo planters, one
moved the court, he was certain to lose the case and had to leave
his home and hearth. ‘If any of the ruling sahibs can hear of this
tyranny, the hapless subjects of the whole land can be saved’. In
other issues of the Chandrika too, Bhabani Charan Bandyopadhyay
focused on the oppression of the indigo planters for the knowledge
of his countrymen. Simultaneously with this, a rural correspondent
wrote in the Bangadut about the tyranny of the planters and stated
that none of the poor subjects had the power to protest against the
terrorizing practice of the planters. In the first place, lives of those
who proceeded to protest were threatened. Second, a poor land-
tiller could not afford the huge expense needed for legal action. The
Jnananweshan, the mouthpiece of the Young Bengal, observed that
the ryots never got justice if they complained against the planters.
So, they had no choice but to stomach the torment. Akshay Kumar
Dutta, in the Tattvabodhihi Patrika, remarked that the exploitation
of the landlords were nothing compared to that of the planters. The
planters had only one objective, to profit by tyrannizing the farmers.
Their employees were their loyal servants, and could go to any length
to please their masters. They were apparently gentlemen, but greed
and cruelty was writ large on their faces, and they had no truck
with knowledge or morals. An honest and polished Englishman
never took the profession of an Indigo-planter. Only the heartless,
ruffian lot chose to be one. However, the farmers could not even go
to the court against these cruel rowdies. They were, on the one hand,
privileged citizens, while on the other, they were on intimate terms
with the magistrates. They themselves often took the pre-emptive step
of bringing false charges against the farmers and driving them away
from their homes. So the ‘naturally timid subjects deem the planters
as mighty and all-powerful, and live in terror of them; so they shrink
at the possibility of confrontation with them, and go on suffering
deeply the tyranny of them.’ Gauri Shankar Bhattacharya, editor of the
Samvad Bhaskar, was fully aware of the issue, and in an article in 1843,
he described the conduct of the planters as ‘ferocious barbarism’. His
782 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

paper regularly published the acts of torture by the planters and their
men. The editor of the Sangbad Prabhakar, Ishwarchandra Gupta,
had been against the planters’ offences from the very beginning of
his long journalistic career, and kept his opposition alive till the end.
He said—‘The people know quite well the way the indigo planters
terrorize the farmers. One who takes an advance for planting indigo
is in for immense trouble. His hecklers are innumerable and so are his
human objects of worship. The ways the planters torment innocent
people are beyond count.’ [translation mine]56
A correspondent wrote a letter to the Sangbad Prabhakar in this
context—‘If a man with a heart of stone hears the tales of tyranny of
a planter, he cannot check tears. They do seldom consider the lives
of the subjects, while they take care to fill their own chest of greed.’
[translation mine]57
There was no way these tyrants could be stopped, as the planters
and the judges were ‘friends of the same plate’. Ishwarchandra
Gupta, the Prabhakar’s editor, wrote against the planters all his life.
His last article on this was published on 1 Magh be 1265, and the
Prabhakar continued its stand against the planters even after his
death. Ramchandra Gupta, his heir, went on publishing the details
of the torture of the planters, those of the Nadia district in particular,
in issue after issue of the paper. ‘As they belong to the King’s race,
they have, in arrogance, become capricious.’ He also gave information
of resistance among the farmers against the planters. Even after
oppressive measures, the planters were not succeeding to make the
farmers cultivate indigo. They were uniting and striking work by
refusing to plant indigo on low wage. Sporadic riots were also taking
place. As the farmers were united, sending forces armed with sticks
yielded no result for the planters. That The Hindu Patriot ignored
the threats of the planters day by day, and did not veer from the
path of what it thought was its duty, attracted words of praise from
Ramchandra, who said that the Prabhakar had written a lot on the
cruel measures of the planters, but the rulers have taken no notice of
it, but on noticing what The Hindu Patriot had written, the Lieutenant
Governor had sat up and begun an enquiry.
It was of course a fact that the government had learned about the
planters’ atrocious practices from the Patriot, but it was the Bengali
newspapers which brought the facts to popular notice. Reverend
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 783

James Long acknowledged this role of the Bengali newspapers while

he was deposing before the Indigo Commission and said that the
Bengali newspapers had been ceaselessly protesting against indigo
cultivation and people had become acutely aware of the problem
only because of them.58
When Revd Long was jailed for his involvement in the translation
of Nil Durpan, the Bengali newspapers stood by him. Though the
government declared later that indigo farming was not obligatory
for the farmers, that did not put a complete stop to it. But wherever
there was a vicious planter, there was a Bengali newspaper focusing on
him. Even after the indigo revolt (1859–60), papers like the Sangbad
Prabhakar, Samachar Chandrika, Somprakash, Dacca Prakash, Bharat
Samskarak, Anusandhan, etc., kept arousing popular opinion against
the planters’ misdeeds.
One tale of atrocities had barely ended when another, that of the
tea planters, began. When the crisis of indigo cultivation deepened,
tea attracted the attention of foreign investors. They were no longer
interested in indigo, and tea cultivation looked a much promising
field now. As a result, the total tea producing area (in Assam) in 1880
turned out to be 370,247 acres. Thousands of ‘coolies’ were needed to
prepare and cultivate this huge area of land. Of the many that were
needed, only a fraction could be obtained from Assam, and the major
part was supplied by ‘agents’. Their snare was spread from Calcutta
to the remotest village. The plantation owners painted a rosy picture
of working in a tea garden before these poverty-stricken people, and
allured by the portrait of a golden future, many of these hapless men
fell into their trap. They of course realized their mistake as soon as
they stepped into the tea plantation, but then it was too late, and
there was no way they could go back. So, they became virtual slaves
of the tea planters. The men spent the rest of their days in starvation
and utter humiliation, under inhuman oppression. The tea gardens
were located in quite remote areas, surrounded by thick forests; so, it
was almost impossible for them to run away. The few that attempted
escape, were either caught and brought back by the guards, or lost
their lives in wilderness. Their wives and daughters, who had some
beauty and youth, could not escape the attention of the planters and
their cohorts. There was no redressal for these criminal acts, and nor
did complaints yield any result.
784 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

It was, once again, the journalists who came forward to protest

against these cruelties of the planters on the helpless workers.
The Hindu Patriot published the first news of the ruthlessness of
the planters in May 1861. After a few days from this, the Cachar
correspondent of the Dacca Prakash wrote—‘The atrocities
committed by the tea planters is increasing day by day. The coolies
they are alluring from various places to prepare fallow lands for tea
cultivation, they treat them miserably.  .  .  . The kind of cruel treatment
the bullock drivers mete out to the cattle, the coolies receive the same
kind of treatment from their planter masters.’ [translation mine]59
When the translation of this letter was published in The Hindu
Patriot and Indian Reformer, the planters sat up. They began enquiring
about the whereabouts of this correspondent, and once they traced
him, they began to threaten him. He was consequently forced to
move to Sylhet, but informed about his helpless state in two letters
written to the Dacca Prakash and Somprakash. He also appealed that
he be allowed to go back to Cachar and begin once again to report
the atrocities of the tea planters—‘My prayer to you is that, if you
have assumed the editorial responsibility truly for the welfare of the
country, if the cries of the oppressed really sadden you, then please
try to send me back to Cachar, and see that when back to Cachar, I
can live without harassment.’ [translation mine]60
This appeal did not yield any result, but the journalists stood by
the distressed people. Not only the Dacca Prakash and Somprakash,
but the Grambartaprakashika, Samachar Chandrika, Sangbad
Prabhakar, Habra Hitakari, Hindu Hitaishini, Banga Hitaishi,
Education Gazette, Anandabazar Patrika, Musalman, Prabhati—all
began to bring to their readers’ notice the oppressions of the tea
planters on labourers. Dakshina Charan Chattopadhyay, the author
of Cha-Kar Durpan, became the editor of the Samachar Chandrika
in the seventies. At his encouragement, one after another article on
this issue began to be published in the Chandrika. Of these, ‘Banger
Kuli na Unabingsha Shatabdir Kritadas?’ (‘A Coolie of Bengal or a
Slave of the Nineteenth Century?’, 29 September 1877), ‘Kulir Janya
Ke Kandibe?’ (‘Who will Weep for the Coolie?’, 1 October 1877),
‘Cha-Kar Saheb O Tahader Kuli’ (‘The Sahib Tea-planters and their
Coolies’, 10 January 1878) attracted the notice of many. At this time,
the death of a coolie at the hands of a planter resulted in a court
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 785

punishment of a mere fine of two hundred rupees for the offender.

On 22 September 1879, the Prabhati condemned this travesty of
justice by writing ‘Kala Admir Jibaner Dam Dusho Taka’ (The Price
of a Native’s Life is Rupees Two Hundred). The Sadharan Brahmo
Samaj sent Ramkumar Vidyaratna to Assam in order to get eyewitness
accounts from the tea gardens. These reports began being published in
the Sanjibani, which made the educated society shudder. Ramkumar
wrote in the Sanjibani of June 1882 on the conditions under which
he had to collect information—‘The enemies were all around. And
it was not just the Sahibs who were enemies; enemies also were the
judge, pleader, mokhtier, sirkar, clerk, gumastah all of whom were
active in driving me out. The Sahibs have said it since long that, ‘The
contributor of the Sanjibani shall be the first victim of the planter’s
gun.’ [translation mine]
Near the end 1882, an incident from a tea plantation in Assam
attracted much attention of the newspapers. Umesh, a boy of fifteen
years, did not report for duty one day, and the planter called him
to his bungalow. The sahib did not give him an opportunity to
speak, but kicked so hard in his belly that the poor boy fell down
from the varanda and died. A complaint was filed against the sahib
and the case began. An English doctor appeared as a witness, and
declared that the spleen of the boy, who had chronic malaria, had
burst and therefore he had died. In his words, the planter had
nothing to do with it. So, the planter, Gordon, was fully exonerated
in the court. The newspapers however, did not allow the matter to
rest. In a separate case of the rape and murder of a coolie woman,
the judge had fined Mr Web, the man charged with the crime, only
two hundred rupees and let him go. In the case of Umesh, the judge
did not even think of imposing a fine. Such occurrences became
frequent in the tea plantations, and this prompted the members of the
Indian Association to take a hard look at them. They decided to send
Dwaraka Nath Ganguli to Assam as their representative, in order to
get more information about the coolies. In July 1886 Dwaraka Nath
set out for Assam. Following is a description from Shibnath Shastri
on how the conditions were then:

It was the season of rains. The Brahmaputra was full of water and flooding its
two sides. Communication was extremely hard. We requested him to desist
786 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

from the journey, but he did not heed our words. In rain, storm and flood
he stuck to his duty. Once he was almost drowned as he was moving, and
saved himself with difficulty. In spite of these his enthusiasm and attention
continued unabated. [translation mine]61

With little care for his life, Dwarka Nath toured from garden to
garden, and collecting information about the atrocities, he went on
sending them to the Bengalee and Sanjibani. He wrote thirteen articles
in the Bengalee on the evildoings of the planters between September
1886 and April 1887. The people of the country were shaken by them,
and discussions began on how the workers can be protected from
the cruel acts of violence of the planters. Several Bengali political
leaders also put their mind into it. They tried to raise the matter in
the 1886–7 conference of the Indian National Congress, but it was
sidetracked, marking it as a local issue.
While on the one hand these political moves were going on, on
the other, the journalists stuck to their track with determination.
The Garib, published from Dacca, proposed that a committee be
formed for resisting the misdeeds of the tea planters. Apart from the
planters, the Bengali journalists were also alert to the harassment of
the agents. The famous Ramananda Chattopadhyay, condemning
the callous attitude of the countrymen about the activities of the
plantation agents, wrote:

Had we not been a nation of cowards, then someday, those who are bringing
disaster to so many families of the country, those coolie suppliers and their
depots would have been fully destroyed. It seems that the sin that one
accrues by killing a poisonous snake, is much lesser than that of killing
these demons in the form of men. [translation mine]62

However, the protests and writings on the issue could not abate
and end the affliction of the planters and their agents during the
nineteenth century. The Anusandhan therefore wrote ruefully that:

We have heard that slavery, the gravest shame, has been abolished under the
English rule, and, to the English, the rich, the poor, the kind, the subject,
whites and blacks are all equal. Why then do we find slavery coming back to
Bengal in the form of procurement of coolies by the tea-planters of Assam?
Why then can we not check tears when we hear about the distress of the
coolies? Why then we feel distressed when we hear the disconsolate cries
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 787

of parents, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters being separated from
each other and the family? When will all this end? [translation mine]63

This pestilence did not end easily and it continued unabated

till the first decade of the twentieth century. At this time, much
was written on the conduct of Fuller, the Chief Commissioner of
Assam. He was another British who was eager to serve the interest
of the plantation owners, so the Sanjibani dubbed him ‘another Lord
Curzon full of affection for the tea planters’. It was at his time that the
infamous Sixth Act (Act 6 of 1901) was enforced, and so the Sanjibani
regretfully wrote—‘We cannot understand how the Government, just
to help the planters, can allow the illegal practice of arresting coolies
by guards without warrant.’ It is a fact that no immediate result was
achieved out of these writings in the newspapers, but one cannot
deny that a very strong popular opinion was built up against the tea
planters through these.

Hindu-Muslim Unity and the Press

Apart from supporting those who were oppressed, the journalists also
played an active role in upholding communal harmony. They, right
at the second half of the nineteenth century, began to realize how
important a harmonious relationship between Hindus and Muslims
was for the progress of this country. Hindus and Muslims had been
living in the country for ages and in spite of some problems here and
there, there arose no serious threat to their living as good neighbours.
But during the British rule, their relationship was strained from many
directions. As there arose bitterness between the communities, the
newspapers strived to dispel the misunderstandings. The following
section deals with the reasons that led to communal problems in the
nineteenth century.
The Durga Puja of the Hindus and Muharram of the Muslims
often coincided when it came to dates and that lead to a set of
problems. The Hindus moved in processions, beating drums and
blowing conch shells when they took the Durga idols for immersion,
and while passing by a masjid, at times it caused tension between the
communities. In such cases, directions of the government (for not
beating drums, etc.), were often ignored. Again, a section of Bengali
788 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Muslims, though Bengali in most respects, had their allegiance to

the language and culture of a far away country, which made the
Hindus uneasy. In addition, some Muslims born and brought up in
Bengal for generations, fancied themselves to be non-Bengalis, as one
stated to the Census enumerators, ‘Huzur, there are only Muslims in
this village, not a single Bengali here.’64 For several such reasons, a
section of the Bengali Hindus felt annoyed. The Sadharani therefore
commented—‘We have noticed that whether a highly educated
youth or an intelligent teacher of logic, all flare up at the name of
“Mussalman”. But if the Mussalmans are left out of the nation, half
of our nation will be gone.’ [translation mine]65
The kind of treatment that the Muslims received from the Hindus
at this time, made the former aggrieved. This letter from Mir Ershad
Ali, published in the Education Gazette, will bear witness to that:

I have visited many Hindu homes, but except for those who are close
and friendly with us, none has given us their seat for sitting, lest the seat
becomes impure. The gentleman who has welcomed us highly, has been
able to offer nothing except a chair, stool or a mora. And these had to be
brought from another room, we had to keep standing all the time spent in
the process. If a dog enters their kitchen, that would not matter. But if we
merely approach its door all the earthen wares of the house are deemed
impure and are thrown out.  .  .  . This seems to be too much. Since you
know that if Hindus and Muslims unite it will be good for the country, so
you must stop doing these, otherwise there will be no scope for coming
together. [translation mine]66

During the British rule, the Hindus took several steps ahead of
the Muslims (in fields of education, medical profession, etc.) often
aided by the rulers, and often on their own. In the first half of the
nineteenth century, of the privileges that the Hindus received from
the rulers, the Muslims could claim only a few of them, due to various
factors (especially due to their aversion to English education). So they
kept lagging behind in all spheres of achievement. They also fell in
the grasp of illiteracy and poverty. There was a section of Muslim
rich, but the gap between them and the poor Muslim labouring class
kept on widening. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the
attitude of the Muslims towards the ruling class underwent a change.
As they received some preferences from the government in the areas
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 789

of jobs and education, the relation between the two communities

became bitter. Complaints and counter-complaints began being
bandied about. There were also complaints in the newspapers that the
government was partial to one community, abandoning the principle
of equal treatment. The Mihir o Sudhakar retorted with the allegation
that the Muslims were being deprived of government jobs because
of the unhelpful attitude of the Hindu bureaucrats.
The educated Muslims could not accept the way Muslim
characters were portrayed in the Bengali poems, plays, and fiction
of the second half of the nineteenth century. The Sudhakar held the
Hindu authors responsible for the deterioration in Hindu-Muslim
relations. Seeing that the situation was taking a grave turn, the
Education Gazette stated that the Hindu authors should be cautious
when they write about the Muslims. The Sadhana had this to say
about Hindu-Muslim relations:

We have a big task, and that is to solidify the Hindu-Muslim bond of

friendship.  .  .  . In Bengal, Muslims live in a larger number than the Hindus
and their neighbourly relationship is quite close. But these days the bond
seems to be loosening.  .  .  . These days the new Hinduyani [Hinduism
overdone] of the educated Hindus seems to have descended from heaven on
Narada’s dhenki [country husking machine]. They have adorned themselves
with pride of ‘Aryanism’, like the thorns of the porcupine, and do not
allow anyone else to touch them. Like the foppishness of an upstart, their
Hinduyani is expressing itself with unnatural arrogance. The novels, plays
and papers are full of snide remarks about the other community. Nowadays
many Muslims are learning Bengali, as they are writing it. So naturally
brickbats are being thrown at each other. [translation mine]67

In the Mihir o Sudhakar of 26 Ashwin be 1302 (October 1895) an

article entitled ‘Hindu Lekhak o Mussalman Jati’ (Hindu Authors and
the Muslim Community) was published, the content of which was
contested by the Samay of Jnanendra Nath Das. In its reply, the Mihir
o Sudhakar stated that the article was not meant to hurt anybody,
but was an appeal to the Hindus to desist from writing slanderous
things about Muslims. The paper added with regret that all major
authors, from Ishwarchandra Gupta to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee,
have insulted the Muslims on all occasions. They mouth words of
unity, although they do not want it from the heart.
790 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

In spite of such schism and fissures, over the century, a group

of journalists and editors was active in their attempt to forge unity
between the two communities. These attempts did not end with
forming associations or writing in newspapers alone; they also
came forward in tense situations, to meet and make both of the
communities understand that the country will progress not through
conflicts, but through unity. The nineteenth century newspapers and
journals took a quite positive step to consolidate the friendly relations
of the communities. In 1885, the Ahmadi appeared with the objective
of making Hindus and Muslims unite. The Somprakash proceeded
to make the countrymen aware of this, and commented—‘In India,
Hindus are one hand, and the Muslims are the other. If the two hands
do not meet in action, no good will ever come to India.’ [translation
mine]68
One loses count in how many ways and how many papers
pleaded for Hindu-Muslim unity. The Education Gazette, in issue
after issue, kept pointing out how necessary the united efforts of the
two communities was for the country’s progress. From 6 Kartik be
1282 (October 1875), it began serializing Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s
Swapnalabdha Bharatbarsher Itihas (‘India’s History found in a
Dream’). Pleading for communal harmony, he stated:

Although India was the natural motherland of the Hindus, and although
the Hindus have been born out her womb, still the Muslims are no longer
alien to her, she has been nurturing them for long in her bosom. So the
Muslims are her foster children.
Is brotherhood not possible for two sons of a mother, one born and
another nursed? It is certainly possible—so is said in all scriptures. And
there has certainly arisen a brotherly love between the Hindus and Muslims
living in India. That love would be lost if they quarrel. And should we go
on quarreling with each other like earlier days? Should we always turn
ourselves into paupers and fill the belly of others by conflicts in the family?
[translation mine]69

The Kalpana proposed that Hindu-Muslim associations be

formed in major cities of India. In 1887, a journal called the Hindu
Musalman Sammilani was published, with Munshi Gholam Kader as
the editor. The reason as to why this was published is available in the
Bengal Library Catalogue—‘Published with the view of bringing about
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 791

cordiality of feeling between the Hindus and Musalmans who have

been living for centuries together and who for the last two centuries
have been equally distrusted by their English conquerors.’70 The Siksha
Parichay, in its issue of Phalgun be 1297 (March 1891) published an
article ‘Hindu-Musalman’, in which it said—‘In these benighted times
a few Hindus and Muslims are needed who can stake their lives by
earnestly pleading for Hindu-Muslim unity, in order to save India.’
[translation mine]
The Binapani of Ramgopal Sengupta, Nabya Bharat of
Debiprasanna Roy Chowdhury, and Charumihir of Janaki Nath
Ghatak took up their pens to bring about the bonding between
Hindus and Muslims. Mohammed Raosan Ali published the Kohinoor
in 1898, whose major objective also was to bring the two communities
closer. The journal therefore stated about its objective:

Both are neighbours. They live on the crops of the same field, use the water
of the same tank, travel on the same path.  .  .  . Now the Musalman comes
running when the Hindu is in crisis, as the Hindu does in that of the other,
the Musalman shares the joy of the Hindu, as the latter does the same of the
other—they are together in everything. If a Hindu starves, the Musalman is
ready with help, and a Musalman in distress gets support from the Hindu.
There is nothing better than this. But often we hear of grave confrontations
and conflicts of the Hindus and Muslims, which is in no way beneficial for
the country and the society. Our chief objective is to deepen the bonding
between the two communities. [translation mine]71

An article, ‘Hindu-Musalman’, also published in this journal, made

an appeal to both the communities:
Brothers Hindus and Musalmans, the motherland in which we have been
born and living (together), by whose crops and riches we have been living
in comfort and happiness, and the mother tongue in which we have in
expressing everything and doing all work, is it not proper that we all strive
and work for the prosperity of that motherland and tongue? [translation
mine]72

At the very end of the century, when Akshay Kumar Maitreya

exonerated the last independent Nawab of Bengal in his book
Sirajuddaulah, the Mihir o Sudhakar, which was the mouthpiece of
the Bengali Muslims, stated effusively:
792 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

[This book] leads up to hope that a day will come when Hindus and
Musalmans will forget their quarrels and animosities, unite as brothers
under the standard of the benign British Government and work incessantly
for their common welfare. May there be more writers like Akshay Kumar!
We thank him for his unselfish research, and shall ever be grateful to
him  .  .  .  it is a rare fortune to have a writer like Akshay Kumar. We cannot
respect him enough.73

Mir Mussharraf Hossen, on behalf of the Muslim community, viewed

the work of Akshay Kumar with favour and wrote:
The Hindu who has, by endless labour, limitless expenses, straining his brain,
has collected incontrovertible proofs to mercilessly cut to pieces (we say it
emotionally, but it is not exaggerated) and show the falsity of the traditional
opinions of the scholars of history of this land and those of abroad, and
who thus has, by the light of truth, driven away the perennial black patch
on the forehead of Bengal Musalmans, and freed the last great reigning
Nawab Sirajuddaula from of his grave calumny, who has forcefully proven
the honesty, intelligence and competence of the Nawab by his immortal
[akshay in the original] pen, he, this Hindu Akshaybabu, should have been
worshipped like a god, if at all our society knew what gratitude was, knew
how to reward a beneficiary, if our people properly knew what Sirajuddaula
was to us, if human worship was allowed in Islam.  .  .  . There are quite a
few educated and large-hearted persons in the Musalman society, but alas,
none of them has ever turned back and looked at this during the last one
hundred and fifty years.  .  .  . Glory to you, Akshaybabu, glory to your love
for the country. Glory to your devotion! A thousand glory to your power
of restoring the Truth. The Musalman community will be ever grateful to
you. After one hundred and fifty years of injustice to a Musalman ruler, a
Hindu heart melted in compassion. Woe to us, we still go on harping on
‘the animosity between the Hindus and Muslims’!74

The Partition of Bengal and the Press

When the Bengali journalists were active in forging unity between
Hindus and Muslims, the British Government was busying itself in
creating a fissure between them. That the government was attempting
to make the two communities confront each other in the interest of
the stability of the empire, was pointed out clearly by the Charumihir
of 27 November 1894. Events of early twentieth century further
proved that what the Charumihir had said was not baseless.
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 793

The Bengalis stepped into the new century after going through
a lot of ups and downs, harassments, and humiliations. But right
at the inception of the new century, there came a sharp blow from
the imperialists, which stunned the people of Bengal. The word had
been on for some time that Bengal had to be divided, reportedly
for administrative convenience. In 1903, a government bureaucrat
submitted an outline of the Partition of Bengal proposal to the
authorities concerned. Lord Curzon’s East Bengal tour took place
next in 1904, and the final proposal for partition was submitted for
approval in February 1905. On 16 October of the same year, Bengal
was broken into two pieces. The following discusses the shape it
took after the partition—‘Bengal lost fifteen districts, its population
became 5 crores 40 lakhs (Hindus 4 crores 2 lakhs, and Muslims 90
lakhs). The population of the (newly created province) East Bengal
and Assam became 3 crore 10 lakhs (1 crore 80 lakh Muslims, and
1 crore 10 lakh Hindus).’ [translation mine]75
But what was this Partition for? What did it want to achieve? In
the opinion of The Statesman, the Englishmen’s newspaper—‘The
objects of the scheme are briefly, first to destroy the collective
power of the Bengal people, secondly to overthrow the political
ascendency of Calcutta and thereby to foster in East Bengal the
growth of Mohamedan power which, it is hoped, will have the effect
of keeping in check the rapidly growing strength of the educated
Hindu community.’76
Most of the Bengalis did not accept this scheme of keeping the
empire stable by creating a break in the unity of the Bengalis, making
the communities fall apart, or by diminishing the dominance of
Calcutta. The following extract gives an idea of what happened in
Calcutta on the day the proposal was enforced:
From three o’clock at the dawn to seven in the morning, out of thousand
alleys of Calcutta, came out thousands of singing parties singing national
songs and proceeded to the direction of the Hooghly. After seven o’clock,
one cannot say how many lakhs of people collected between the Howrah
Bridge and the Nimtala Ghat.  .  .  . Hindus, Muslims tied rakhis in each
other’s hands, shouted Vande Mataram, and the sound filled the earth and
the skies.  .  .  . All the markets of the great city of Calcutta were closed, except
the Municipal Market.  .  .  . There are a number of jute, cotton, flour and oil
mills in the Calcutta suburbs. The labourers of these mills took leave from
794 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

their work on the day and came out chanting Vande Mataram.  .  .  . Almost all
the offices of Calcutta had to be closed within two o’clock.  .  .  . In the Hindu
families of the city, there was no cooking on that day. [translation mine]77

Agitations began in protest of Bengal Partition, and attempts

were made to use country-made goods by renouncing the ones
imported from England. Along with this, efforts were made to bring
to the government’s notice the grievance of the Bengalis, expressed
in newspapers and public meetings. Vande Mataram became the
primary chant of the Bengali Hindu nationalists. The movement
became uncontrollable by the participation of the youth, of the
students in particular.
The English failed to confront it politically, so they resorted to
coercion and oppression. Chanting Vande Mataram was prohibited.
The Carlyle circular was proclaimed, banning public meetings. Also,
police atrocity became unbridled. The measures taken by the English
to suppress a peaceful movement—making highly placed persons
‘special constable’, merciless whipping of young boys, humiliating
teachers, setting Gorkha soldiers against the agitators, etc., made the
Bengalis deeply aggrieved. A contemporary newspaper observes the
situation in the following manner—‘The Governor of East Bengal,
Mr Fuller, is oppressing the nationalist agitators in any manner he
can. He would not allow the people to utter Vande Mataram, so he is
tyrannizing the subjects by the special police and the barbarous and
cruel Gorkha soldiers. He does not find it shameful, calling native
gentlemen and insulting them.’ [translation mine]78
Some of the nationalist leaders of the time began to think
how these acts of coercion can be given a proper reply. They
kept in mind what the Chapekar brothers of Maharashtra did for
retribution, because the humiliation and jail of Bal Gangadhar
Tilak had hurt them deeply. In Bengal, secret societies began to be
formed from the early twentieth century. In a short time after the
Partition of Bengal, the Indian National Congress was divided into
the moderates and the extremists in Surat. Papers like the Sandhya,
Yugantar, Nabashakti, New India, Vandemataram, etc., began to say
that it was only extremism that could give the proper reply to the
English. The Yugantar wrote on 2 November 1907—‘Aurobindo and
Bhupendranath are now spreading the great lesson of sacrificing
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 795

self-interest to Maharashtra, Punjab and Gujarat. It may take a few

days yet, but it is possible that the blood of the Chapekar brothers
will wet the green fields of Bengal.’ [translation mine]
The situation became graver day by day. The government, in order
to control the situation, clamped punitive tax on three villages of
Barishal (Jhalokati, Banaphul, Uzirpur). The newspapers also began
to be sternly controlled. But no result yielded by sending the editors
and printers of the Yugantar, Sandhya, and Nabashakti to jail. Their
popularity kept on growing. The Swaraj tells us—‘At this time of the
climax of the movement, the Sandhya has to be printed so many
that our machine is running for 24 hours’ [translation mine].79 The
government raided the Yugantar office six times, but its popularity
continued unabated. By the end of 1908, its circulation reached
15,000.80
As an answer to the British barbarism, a group of educated
youth selected extremism. It found expression on 30 April 1908
at Muzaffarpur, Bihar. The repercussion of this event had scarcely
ended, when the police raided, in early May, at the Maniktala garden
house and elsewhere. Aurobindo Ghosh was arrested, along with
Upendranath Bandyopadhyay, Barindra Kumar, and Hemchandra
Ghosh. A case was instituted against them according to Article 111
of Indian Penal Code (Waging war against the king).
It is beyond our scope here to discuss the change of direction
that took place in 1908 in the nationalist movement. Let us, instead,
have a look at what the sentiment of the Bengali newspapers was on
these events.
After about four months of the enforcement of the Partition of
Bengal, the newspapers in Bengali numbered seventy-seven. 81 If
we add periodicals to them, the number would come to more
than a hundred. Of these, the most notable ones, edited by Brahmos
and Hindus, were—Bangabhumi (1,400), Bangabasi (9,000),
Basumati (13,000), Hitabadi (20,000), Hindusthan (1,000), Pratijna
(700), Samay (800), Sanjibani (3,500), Srisri Bishnupriya o Ananda-
bazar Patrika (2,000), Swadesh (1,000), Bankura Durpan (1,156),
Birbhum Vartta (1,000), Chunchura Varttavaha (1,000), Education
Gazette (2,000), Howra Hitaishi (500), Medinibandhab (600),
Jashohar (1,500), Murshidabad Hitaishi (800), Faridpur Hitaishi
(937), Charumihir (1,000), Dacca Prakash (670), Kashipur Nibasi
796 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

(1,000), Rangpur Varttavaha (700), Rangpur Dikprakash (7,480),

and Yugantar (15,000).
When it came to the daily newspapers, there were five worth
mentioning—Daiik Chandrika (500), Sangbad Purnachandroday
(400), Sangbad Prabhakar (1,200), Sandhya (7,000), and Hitavadi
(English and Bengali, 2,000). No one could touch the Sandhya in its
popularity count.
In case of periodicals, the names of Bharati, Nabyabharat, Sahitya,
Pradip, Janmabhumi, Nabaparyay Bangadarshan, Prabasi, Bhandar,
Bharatmahila, Mahila, Bamabodhini, Usha, Mukul, etc., are widely
known.
Besides these, at this time, there were four weeklies edited by
Bengali Muslims—the Islam, Mohammadi, Mihir o Sudhakar, and
Sultan. There were also three monthlies—Islam Pracharak, Kohinoor,
and Nabanoor.
There were quite a few English papers edited by Bengalis as well.
Among them, The Bengalee was the most popular. Apart from these,
The Indian Mirror, Amritabazar Patrika, Hindu Patriot, Indian Nation,
etc., deserve mention. At this point of time, Bipin Chandra Pal’s The
New India, and Aurobindo Ghosh’s The Vandemataram, played a
very important role too.
Most of the papers run by the Bengali Hindus and Brahmos
harshly criticized this decision of the government. The Bengalee of
Surendranath Banerjee dubbed the decision as ‘a grave blunder’. The
Vandemataram marked the day of Partition as a day of national grief.
The Amritabazar Patrika gave a call for protest and appealed to the
people to hold meetings in every village and collect signatures of
one hundred thousand persons to petition to the government. The
Dacca Prakash called the Partition the ‘ruination of Bengal’. The
Hitavadi, Sanjibani, Charumihir, Prabasi, Nabaparyay Bangadarshan,
Bhandar, Bharatmahila, etc., advised the countrymen to challenge the
government’s stand and boycott foreign goods. Some of the papers,
however, sang another tune. The Education Gazette, for example,
argued, ‘The English King is not a stranger to us. Goods from other
nations may be called “foreign”, but not what is produced in London’
[translation mine].82 The Rangpur Dikprakash advocated, ‘if the
English flares up by hearing Vande Mataram, it is better for us not
to chant it’. The Basumati did not have a clear stand on the Swadeshi
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 797

movement, to which the Mahajanbandhu remarked, Basumati keeps

on kissing both the snake and the frog!
We should not take it for granted that the Bengali society, as a
whole, stood united against the Bengal Partition. A section of Bengali
Muslims joined the movement alongside the Hindus and Brahmos,
went to the meetings, and faced oppressive measures. They, in
addition, took up their pens in support of the movement and call for
boycott.83 The editor of the Soltan, published from Kareya, Calcutta,
had ‘worked in unison with the Hindus in the Swadeshi movement,
and [had] himself lectured on many occasions.’84
The Kohinoor of Mohammad Raoshan Ali (be 1312–13) followed
another track—it avoided the topic of Partition, but worked for
consolidating communal harmony. However, a large section of
the Bengali Muslim society did not participate in the Swadeshi
movement. The Mohammedan Literary Society and the Muslim
League supported the Partition. A major segment of the influential
Muslims, the Namashudras of East Bengal, and the Brahmos of the
Nababidhan dispensation85 supported the proposal of creating a new
province with Dacca as the capital. On the question of the Bengal
Partition and boycott of foreign goods, the distance between the
Hindus and Muslims kept on widening. The veneer of harmony fell
off, and confrontations began to take place at various places. Hindu
religious associations, the observation of the Shivaji festival under
the sponsorship of the swadeshi leaders, and the picture of Shivaji
on the mastheads of some newspapers widened the gap between the
two communities further. Consquently, the question of how Hindus
look at Muslims was raised. The Islam Pracharak began to serialize an
article called ‘Bangabhanga o Swadeshi Andolan’ (Bengal Partition
and the Swadeshi Movement) in this context. I quote a portion from
it to show where the matter reached:
The persons who are fiercely agitating against the Partition of Bengal
thinking that the Muslims will benefit a little form it, they will get a couple
of jobs, and unhappy about the decision, playing havoc with the boycott
of English goods and using native goods instead, in what consideration are
they calling the Muslims ‘O brothers of us’ and inviting to join the fray? Did
they not feel even a little shame and contrition before such cheating? The
perverted Swadeshi movement has, on one side, turned the Muslim traders
paupers, and on the other, helped a new animosity raise its head between
798 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Hindus and Muslims. The Hindu landlords and usurers have found a new
way of oppressing the Muslims, the Hindu pleaders, mokhtiers and the
Hindu police have found a new way of swindling the Muslims. The poor
Muslim farmer has been forced to buy rough salt and homemade clothes
at a higher cost. [translation mine]86

The Mihir o Sudhakar thought that creating a new province was a

highly admirable step of the government, and that would benefit the
Muslims immensely. And Lord Curzon deserved all praise for that.87

The Extremist Challenge and Reaction

of the Press
It has already been said that from 1908, the movement took a new
turn. The result of this turn was the bomb blast at Muzaffarpur, and
the searching as well as finding of weapons from various spots in
Calcutta. In the former case, Kshudiram Bose was arrested, while
Praphulla Chaki chose to take his own life. The Hitabadi highly
condemned the Muzaffarpur incident and wrote—‘The paper cannot
believe that there can be in the whole of Bengal, and Orissa one such
villain who would shed the blood of two such innocent ladies merely
to gratify his villainous hatred of the white-skinned race and asks the
Government to detect the blood thirsty criminals and punish them
adequately.’88 This reaction of The Hitabadi hurts us even today. The
Prabasi also condemned the event and wrote—‘Secret killing can
never be considered a pious or chivalrous act.  .  .  . All such killings
are cowardly and sinful’ [translation mine].89 The Mihir o Sudhakar
censured the incident, yet made the Government’s liberal principles
responsible for them.90 The Samay of Jnanendranath Das commented
that the limitless oppression and atrocities of the government were
actually responsible:

Instead of a mild policy, violent measures have been, and are still being,
adopted one after another. Ever since the day on which Bengal was
partitioned by the impetuosity of the late Viceroy, Lord Curzon, a feeling
of aversion to British rule seems to have arisen to the minds, not of the
Bengalis alone, but of every Indian  .  .  .  an attempt has been going on to bring
us under a rule of brute force by adopting harder and harder measures.  .  .  .
To speak the truth, the present unrest has resulted from the sixteen annas
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 799

[i.e the fullest measure] of impetuosity and rashness on the part of the
authorities, the existence of bombs in the country has become possible only
in consequence of the above.91

At least two papers of this time, the Sandhya and the Yugantar,
stood by the revolutionaries. The Yugantar supported the act of
Kshudiram, and raised the question: who was the actual killer?

Srijukta Khudiram Basu, and the late Dinesh Chandra Roy alias Prafulla
Chaki, went only to punish Mr Kingsford. The Indian advocates of
salvation judged that it was well that Mr Kingsford should die. Hence
it was that Khudiram tried to kill him. Why should they be [called]
murderers?  .  .  .  Khudiram is not a murderer. He is under providential
dispensation the punisher of Kingsford  .  .  .  he may perhaps be hanged. But
let Indians remember that [though] one Khudiram may die and [though]
Dinesh is dead, crores and crores of Khudiram and Dinesh Chandra are
[standing] with uplifted arms in order to punish the oppressor.92

This paper did not also hesitate to support Aurobindo Ghosh and
his associates, who were arrested for declaring war against the
British King. In its issue of 9 May 1908, the paper asked, who was
a seditionist?

Inhuman oppression is being committed on Aravinda Ghosh and other

prisoners. Are they rebels, or conspirators? None of them are rebels. They
are entitled according to the very canons of justice to rise against English.
The English are strong and they are weak, that is why they are entitled to
collect arms in secrecy. It is with secrecy that arms have to be collected in
order to kill an enemy. For this reason these men are not rebels, and cannot
be arrested as conspirators either. They are enemies of the English, it is true;
but the English are not the rulers of India, they are India’s foemen. Anything
that may be done to kill such a foeman is consistent with dharma.93

The paper further confessed that it does not accept the judgement of
the Englishmen. Its clear admission was:

Barindra, Upendranath and others are spending their days in the Alipore
Jail. The case is being conducted at the Alipore Court. Every day, the
prisoners are brought to the Court by soldiers, and are sent back to the
Jail. We do not know how long this will continue. The Yugantar does not
accept the justice of the English, so it is not its business to consider what
800 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

will result from the process. We can only say that every day a farce is being
enacted. [translation mine]94

That the efforts made by the Sandhya-Yugantar-Nabashakti

for building up popular support for the Bengalis’ advance towards
extremism were successful to a great extent, is evident in the gradual
increase in their demand. The people of the country had grown a
deep love and respect for the youth who came to sacrifice their lives
in order to free the country of foreign domination, which is why, the
Prabasi, in spite of its aversion to extremism, was compelled to print
the pictures of Kshudiram Basu, Kanailal Dutta, Satyendranath Basu,
and Aurobindo Ghosh.

Notes
1. Sumachar Durpun, 23 May 1818.
2. Bangadut, 30 May 1829.
3. Amritabazar Patrika, 21 Phalgun be 1276 (March 1870).
4. Calcutta Journal, 20 December 1821.
5. ‘Women’s Rights’, Amritabazar Patrika, 21 Phalgun be 1276 (March 1870).
6. Sulava Samachar, 1 Agrahayan be 1277 (November 1870).
7. Published in an advertisement in the Sanjibani, 18 April 1885.
8. ‘Improvements in Native Society’, The Friend of India, 11 July 1839.
9. ‘The Native Press’, The Friend of India, 26 March 1840.
10. Calcutta Journal, 20 September 1821.
11. For these comments, see Parliamentary Papers, House of Commons,
vol. 43, no. XLIII, Great Britain, 1858.
12. General (General) Department Proceedings, no. 96, 9 July 1857.
13. Amritabazar Patrika, 21 March 1878.
14. Bramho Public Opinion, 18 April 1878.
15. Somprakash, 24 February 1879.
16. Brahmo Public Opinion, 22 April 1880.
17. ‘Aainer tirodhan’, Education Gazette, 7 January 1882.
18. ‘The Government and the Praja Bandhu’, Bengalee, 2 November 1889.
19. Bengalee, 2 November 1889.
20. Sahachar, repr., Anusandhan, 3 Chaitra be 1304 (March 1898).
21. The Friend of India, 9 January 1845.
22. Charubarta, repr., 8 May 1883.
23. ‘Abolition of Suttees’, Samachar Chandrika, 19 November 1829; repr., John
Bull, 2 December 1829.
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 801
24. ‘Burning of Widows’, Samachar Chandrika, 26 November 1829; repr., Bengal
Hurkaru, 7 December 1829.
25. ‘Burning of Widows’, Sumachar Durpun, 29 November 1829, repr., John
Bull, 2 December 1829.
26. ‘Abolition of Suttees’, Samachar Chandrika, 30 November 1829; repr., Bengal
Hurkaru, 8 December 1829.
27. ‘Abolition of Suttees’, Sumachar Durpun, 5 December 1829; repr., Bengal
Hurkaru, 8 December 1829.
28. General Department Proceedings, no. 1, March 1864.
29. Sanjibani, 15 August 1885.
30. Paricharika, Agrahayan be 1297 (November 1890).
31. Surabhi o Pataka, 8 September 1887.
32. Sambad Rasaraj, 11 May 1849.
33. Somprakash, 21 December 1863.
34. For details see Prabasi, Phalgun be 1320 (March 1914); Bharatmahila,
Magh be 1320 (February 1914); The Modern Review, April 1914.
35. Sangbad Prabhakar, 8 December 1852.
36. ‘Bilat pratyagata Hindu’, Prabaha, Pous be 1290 (December 1883).
37. Sangbad Prabhakar, 29 January 1853.
38. Ibid.
39. Bharat Sangskarak, 4 Aswin be 1280 (September 1873).
40. Report on Native Papers (hereafter referred to as RNP), 4 April 1896.
41. Ibid., 26 June 1886.
42. ‘Bijatita rajar adhine prajagan sampurna sukhi haite pare na’, Sarvashubhakari,
Bhadra be 1262 (August 1855).
43. Half-yearly Report on the Native Papers to 31 May 1866, General
Department Proceedings, no. 32, June 1866.
44. Report on the Vernacular Papers, General (General) Department
Proceedings, no. 85, March 1866.
45. ‘Ingraj o Bangali’, Bharatdarpan, 8 June1880.
46. The Liberal and the New Dispensation, 16 December 1883.
47. ‘Branson saheber swadesh jatra’, Somprakash, 7 May 1883.
48. ‘The Native Ladies Committee and the Jurisdiction Bill’, The Liberal and
the New Dispensation, 22 April 1883.
49. The Liberal and the New Dispensation, 1 April 1883.
50. Pakshik Samalochak, first half of Phalgun be 1290 (February 1884).
51. Sadharani, 27 January 1884.
52. RNP, 18 December 1886.
53. Ibid., 28 February 1885.
54. Surabhi o Pataka, 21 April 1887.
55. Anusandhan, 32 Shraban be 1306 (August 1899).
56. Sangbad Prabhakar, 8 January 1853.
802 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
57. Ibid.
58. ‘.  .  .  indigo planting has been for the last 16 years the subject of incessant
attacks in those native newspapers and the opinion of those papers filter
down to the mass  .  .  .’, Report of the Indigo Commission (Calcutta 1860).
59. Dacca Prakash, n.d.
60. Ibid., n.d.
61. Shibnath Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri o tatkalin Bangasamaj, Calcutta, 1957,
p. 305.
62. ‘Bibidha Prasanga’, Dasi, November 1893.
63. Anusandhan, 14 Ashar be 1306 (June 1899).
64. Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1981, p. 222.
65. Sadharani, 18 Shravan 1281 (August 1874).
66. Education Gazette, 25 December 1878.
67. ‘Hindu o Musalman’, Sadhana, Chaitra be 1301 (April 1895).
68. Somprakash, 29 March 1886.
69. Bhudev Mukhopadhyay, Swapnalabdha Bharatbarsher Itihas, Hooghly,
be 1302 (August 1895), pp. 6–7.
70. ‘Bengal Library Catalogue’, 30 September 1887.
71. Kohinoor, Aswar be 1305 (July 188).
72. ‘Hindu Musalman’, Kohinoor, Ashwin 1305 (October 1898).
73. RNP, 7 April 1900.
74. ‘Sat Prasanga’, Mir Mosarraf Hossain, Kohinoor, Bhadra 1305 (August 1898).
75. Amalesh Tripathi, Bharater Muktisangrame Charampanthi Parba, Calcutta:
Ananda Publishers, 1987, p. 107.
76. Quoted from Kohinoor, Falgun be 1313 (February 1907).
77. Pradip, Ashwin be 1312 (October 1905).
78. ‘Swadesi o Government’, Swadesi, Baishakh be 1313 (April 1906).
79. Swaraj, 5 Jaistha be 1313 (May 1906).
80. Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903–1908, New Delhi:
People’s Publishing House, 1977, p. 261.
81. ‘List of News Papers, week ending 07.04.1906’ (the number of circulation
of the papers are in brackets).
82. Mahajanbandhu, Chaitra 1312 (March 1906).
83. See, ‘Banger Angachhed’, Ekinuddin Ahmed and ‘Swadesanurag’,
Khairannesa, Nabanoor, Ashwin be 1312 (September 1905).
84. Mahajanbandhu, Chaitra be 1312 (March 1906).
85. ‘Bartaman Samaye bangamahilader ki kartabya?’ Mahila, December 1905.
86. ‘Bangabibhag o swadesi andolan’, Islam Pracharak, Bhadra be 1312
(September 1905).
87. RNP, 28 April 1906.
88. Ibid., 9 May 1908.
 Basu: The Development of Journalism and Public Opinion 803
89. ‘Bibidha Prasanga’, Prabasi, pt. 8, issue no. 2.
90. ‘The Anarchist Plot’, Mihir-O-Sudhakar, 15 May 1908; RNP, 23 May 1908.
91. Government’s duty in the present affairs, Samay, 22 May 1905; RNP,
30 May 1908.
92. ‘Who is the Murderer?’, Yugantar, 09 May 1908; RNP, 30 May 1908.
93. ‘Who is the Rebel?’, Yugantar, 09 May 1908, RNP, 16 May 1908.
94. ‘Bandiganer bartaman abastha’, Yugantar, 30 May 1908.
 21

Changing Hindu Women

Bengal in the Long Nineteenth Century

Tanika Sarkar

G
ender became a matter of intense public debates in our
long nineteenth century and beyond, bringing in startling
changes in domestic habits and ritual practices, as well as
significant legal and discursive innovations. As agrarian relations
were reconfigured, new sites of work appeared, displacing older
ones, and property relations were also re-gendered. More than actual
changes, however, widespread debates on Hindu women captured
the complications in our modernity.
Subalterns rarely leave written records, and it is difficult to know
how they fared in new times. But the bhadralok wrote profusely:
empowered by the new print culture, the press, and the growth of
vernacular prose. New literary genres also made gender a vibrant
public issue, since they articulated the problems in everyday lives.
A modern public sphere grew out of these resources, which came to
include a few women.
Gender thus acquired a public life. Its centrality did not decline
with the growth of nationalism, which, Partha Chatterjee argues,
gave the women’s question a particular kind of resolution: reserving
the home for women, and the world for men, as well as displacing
its importance with nationalist concerns in the next century.1 As
women’s organizations became prominent in politics, they continued
to indent public and political spheres in new ways.
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 805

Lives and Deaths

First undertaken in 1871, decennial censuses acquired a relatively
serious form from 1881. Till 1901, each census registered the strong
son-preference among Bengali Hindus. The 1881 census cited the
prevalence of female infanticide, and attributed the skewed male-
female sex ratio to it. The 1891 census stated: ‘If a girl dies  .  .  .  before
she arrives at the age when caste custom demands that she should
be betrothed, so much the better for the family resources. Many
a girl is allowed to die unattended where medical aid would be at
once called in if the son were attacked.’ The 1901 census reiterated
the ‘universal desire amongst natives of India  .  .  .  for male offspring,
and when the desire is fulfilled, the child is treated with much more
care than it would be if it proved to be a girl, boys are better fed and
better clothed  .  .  .’. 2
The borderline between infanticide and fatal neglect of the
girl-child was thin. The birth of a daughter was, by and large, a
curse for the family: especially for castes which paid dowries—now
in increasing quantities of cash—rather than receive bride price.3
Predictably, Bengali Hindus had a skewed sex ratio and a deficit of
women.
High caste women were rarely allowed to move or work
outside homes, and were mandatorily subjected to non-consensual,
monogamous, indissoluble, patrilocal infant marriages to husbands
who could have as many wives as they pleased. Among the ‘purest’
Kulin brahmans, the husbands occasionally had innumerable wives,
marriage being a most lucrative ‘profession’. With accelerating
claims to higher ritual status and social respectability among solvent
fractions of ‘lower castes’, more or less all castes adopted brahmanical
gender norms.
Yet, the nineteenth century threw up repeated challenges to the
reigning norms and practices. It was a deeply fraught and self-divided
century, and therefore, an extremely interesting one.

Educated Women
In 1818, Rammohun Roy wrote to the orthodox Kashinath: ‘When
did you ever test the intelligence of women that you can so easily
designate them as foolish creatures?’4
806 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

An inflexible customary belief was pervasive among Bengali

Hindus, at least till the late nineteenth century—widowhood befalls
a woman if she learns to read and write. Gourmohan Vidyalankar’s
Streeshikshabidhayak—the first Bengali primer for women—referred
to this in 1822.5 William Adam confirmed this in 1836: ‘A superstitious
feeling is alleged to exist in the majority of Hindu families  .  .  .  that a
girl taught to write and read will soon become a widow.  .  .  .’6
Given the choice between an illiterate wife and an educated
widow, the Hindus enforced the injunction scrupulously and
ruthlessly. Even though literacy was fairly widespread in village
schools, William Ward’s report on the state of education in Bengal
in 1803 does not mention a single pathshala for girls.7
Adam also referred to the fear of adulterous intrigues; women, if
literate, would write letters to arrange secret assignations with lovers.8
Brahmo reformer Shibnath Shastri narrated a strange event from his
school days. Learning that his mother tutored him at home, a teacher
immediately assumed the worst. He sent a love letter to this perfect
stranger with the unsuspecting child.9
Desperate to acquire the written word, an early nineteenth
century young wife in a conservative household stole pages from
her son’s book, hid them in the kitchen, listened to her son reciting
the letters, and matched each letter with that on the page—till she
found that she had, indeed, won the word and become jitakshara.
Later, as an elderly widow, and the mother of several supportive
sons, Rashsundari published Amar Jiban, the first-ever full length
autobiography in Bengali.10 It is remarkable that a self-taught
housewife inaugurated a whole new literary genre.11 That she thought
her life was worth writing, and that publishers found it worthwhile
to bring it out, maps the extent of social change.
We find such intertwined fear and desire almost everywhere.
Sarada Debi, wife of the nineteenth century sage Ramakrishna
Paramhansa, recalled how she had loved to read as a child. But her
book was snatched away by a male relative and thrown into a pond.12
Innumerable women were hungry for the word, despite the
prohibition on them. What then, explains their forbidden love?
Once she heard rumours that modern girls were learning to read,
Rashsundari too, ached to do so. But the spread of female literacy
opened up yet another can of worms, and by mid-century, new
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 807

visceral fears emerged: educated women would rule over husbands,

neglect households and children to read novels, their reproductive
organs would shrivel—turning them into men, and their hen-
pecked husbands into women.13 Thus, the idea of female education
began to be considered as the prelude to social, moral, and even
biological anarchy. The threat of widowhood was both a warning and
punishment, and women knew this well. Rashsundari compared her
desire for the word with Radha’s illicit love for Krishna.
A few rich landlord families occasionally called in Vashnavis to
teach their daughters, who might have to manage the estates in the
absence of male heirs. Female ascetics did read, as their vocation
took them beyond the pale of social injunctions.14 The usefulness of
this can be found in Adam’s mention of ‘Ranees’ Suryamani Dasi and
Kamalmani Dasi—widows of two Natore estate-holders in Rajshahi—
who excelled at accounts-keeping.15
Women’s learning began at home, husbands acting as their first
teachers. Increasingly, the emerging group of modern liberal men
wanted a marriage of minds with their wives. They taught them in
fearful secrecy in closed bedrooms, initiating a novel kind of conjugal
intimacy at night.16 Others, like Rashsundari, taught themselves.
The notion of the companionate wife has been dismissed by
leading feminists as a mere mimicry of Victorian domestic norms, a
recasting of patriarchy on borrowed Western lines.17 I think otherwise.
Education was never forbidden for Victorian gentlewomen; whereas,
Indian women invited tremendous struggles against hegemonic
beliefs and against their own selves, to gain mere literacy. Education,
moreover, was a dangerous gift. Even when imparted by supportive
husbands, it would never stop exactly where the husbands drew
the line. It took on a life of its own, eventually making women
intellectually independent. As Rashsundari put it, had she failed to
acquire a modicum of learning, she would have been dependent on
men all her life.
The orthodoxy was particularly incensed when the Young Bengal
group of bohemian iconoclasts linked female education to a broader
critique of gender inequality.18 Rashsundari overheard male elders
cursing the foreign government for the outlandish craze: a queen
now ruled the world, and the dreaded Kali Yug—the last and most
degenerate age in the Hindu cycle of time—had turned the world
808 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

upside down.19 Rashsundari, on her part, wrote—‘Blessed, blessed be

this Kali Yug’—precisely because it had brought the word to women.
She also celebrated the advent of printed books, which made reading
easier.
Rather than the British, it was Baptist missionaries of Serampore
who initiated streeshiksha with home-based zenana education.
Mission women of the Ladies’ Society went out to teach leisured ladies
in rich and modern households. They taught modern deportment,
embroidery, music, as well as vernacular reading and writing. The
scheme was coordinated by Reverend Fordyce and Mrs Hanna
Mullens. Mullens wrote the first-ever Bengali novel Phulmoni O
Karunar Bibaran.20 It described an educated but poor Christian
woman who guides her village Christian community. To tempt her
guardians to educate her, Streeshikshabidhayak, likewise, represented
the educated woman as an ideal household manager-cum-moral
guardian.
The zenana mission, however, stoked fears of conversion, and
Prasannakumar Tagore, a prominent Calcutta estate-holder, warned
in 1831 against the infiltration of Hindu homes by missionary
women.21 Other ways of teaching women at home developed from
1863, when Umeshchandra Datta, an associate of Keshub Chandra
Sen, began to edit the Bamabodhini Patrika—written for, and
sometimes by, women, and also advocating education for them. It
was a virtual school in print, providing reading matter, publishing
essays on women’s education, as well as creating a space for women’s
own writings. It carried letters from women, many from the districts,
expressing anger against men who had kept them blind and caged by
depriving them of education and imprisoning them in the kitchen.
An implacable critique of domesticity, they were published in 1872
as Bama Rachanabali.22 Kailashbashini Debi, author of the first full-
length book by an Indian woman, had earlier compared the Hindu
household to a dangerous forest, inhabited by ferocious beasts.23
In 1869, the Bamabodhini presented a graded course-structure.
Beginning with vernacular literacy, simple poems and tales, basic
arithmetic, geography and history, as well as embroidery and moral
lessons, its pages introduced, over the next four grades, world
geography, Bengali literature, hygiene, advanced arithmetic, and
science. Obviously gendered, the syllabus, nevertheless, brought
something of the word and the world to women.24
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 809

Baptist missionaries founded the first schools under the Female

Juvenile Society in the early 1820s. The Church Missionary Society
sent Mrs Cooke to Calcutta in 1821, and by 1828, she managed
about thirty schools, visited by 600 students. In 1836, however,
Adam found them much depleted. The fear of commingling with
‘low castes’ made them repugnant to the high-born. Subaltern
girls, however, were very keen to learn. The first primary schools
were meant only for boys. But one day Mrs Cooke found a little
girl weeping on her doorstep, because the teacher had turned her
away from school, and she now began to admit girls.25 Dire poverty,
however, often blocked their education—as it continues to do so
even now.
If an increasing number of families gradually allowed home-based
education, schooling was quite another matter. It breached the family’s
absolute control over women, it brought them out of homes, along
public roads, to a non-familial space. Here, girls met a peer group
and teachers outside the kin network. They became individuated
students, evaluated according to their educational abilities, and
known by their proper names. As a compromise, Radhakanta Deb
opened up his Shovabazar palace to students, who were examined
there after being taught at home.26
The government stepped in to address this issue rather belatedly.
Law Member J.E.D. Bethune foreswore religious education to allay
fears of conversion at school, and promised to recruit students only
from ‘high’ caste families, to reassure parents that their daughters
would not be exposed to ‘pollution’. The Calcutta Female School was
thus opened in 1849. Later renamed as Bethune School, it was the
first school for girls in our history. In 1882, Nababidhan Brahmo
Samaj, reacting against its non-denominational education, founded
the Native Ladies’ Institution: ‘specially adapted to the requirements
of the female mind and calculated to fit women for her position in
society’.27 In 1883, it merged with the Metropolitan Female School
to form the Victoria College for Girls.
An old pandit—non-threatening because of his age—and a
European lady were the first teachers, teaching Bengali and Sanskrit,
and embroidery, respectively. The school bus displayed a verse from
Mahanirvanatantra: ‘nurture and teach your daughters, too, with great
care’. The first batch of students was recruited from the creamy layer
of Calcutta’s modern elite, to set an example for their likes: daughters
810 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

of Raja Dakshinaranjan Pandit, Pandit Madanmohan Tarkalankar,

Shambhunath Pandit, and Ramgopal Ghosh. The orthodoxy was,
however, unappeased. The bus faced street attacks, the parents were
outcasted, and the fathers expelled from political associations. The
Dharma Sabha did a house-to-house campaign against schools.
Obscene lampooning in Bengali newspapers predicted joyfully
that these girls would be raped in the streets.28 Their social limits
notwithstanding, early schooling was, indeed, a heroic effort against
tremendous social and moral roadblocks.
After Bethune’s death in 1851, Lt Governor Halliday asked
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, a member of the Education Council,
to set up girls’ schools. Dalhousie spared some funds and Wood’s
1854 Despatch on Education also stressed on the importance of
these schools. Vidyasagar had already set up a free school with a
girls’ wing at his Birsingha home in Midnapore. He founded more
in district towns, beyond metropolitan elite reformist enclaves. The
stress on vernacular education—infinitely more accessible to women,
being their spoken language—departed from Macaulay’s diktat that
education should be conveyed through the English medium. It also
departed from precolonial Sanskrit learning, which was equally
inaccessible. Between November 1857 and May 1858, Vidyasagar
founded thirty-five girls’ schools in the Hooghly, Burdwan, and
Nadia districts.29
His success was, however short-lived. A parsimonious government
did not see much point in educating girls, and the orthodox backlash
was taken seriously after the 1857 uprising. Consequently, officials
refused to fund new schools after 1858. Vidyasagar soon retired,
a bitter and disillusioned reformer, who refused to join Mary
Carpenter’s efforts towards teachers’ training schools for Hindu
women in the 1860s.30
Vidyasagar’s own vision was restricted to a horizontal spread of
education—covering districts and villages—rather than the vertical
one of going down to the ‘lower’ castes and classes. Girls’ schools
were founded in upper caste neighbourhoods, such as the one in
Kulingram village in Burdwan. This could have been a strategic move.
Already, upwardly mobile segments of untouchable Namashudras/
Chandalas were restricting their women’s mobility and work in
pursuit of social respectability. By encouraging education among
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 811

upper caste girls, Vidyasagar had, perhaps, hoped to provide an

alternative bhadralok model of respectability.31
Limpingly, schools continued to spread, especially in large cities
and district towns. By the end of the century, even the orthodoxy
opened a school in north Calcutta—Mahakali Pathshala—to train
girls in rituals, worship, and domestic skills. Pious domesticity, they
now thought, was best learnt at school.32
Among solvent upper castes, schooling became irreversible.33 By
1892, about 5 English-medium high schools and 3 primary schools
had come up, and there were 24 middle Bengali schools, 273 upper
primary ones, and 1932 lower primary ones. They were largely
funded by reformist associations—the Uttarpara Hitakari Sabha or
the Faridpur Suhrid Sabha. The government paid only Rs.2,876 for
training teachers at Normal Schools which, at the end of the century,
covered 5,662 students.34
Another major breakthrough occurred when Bengali women
applied for admission at graduate and postgraduate levels. In 1876,
Keshub Sen founded the Banga Mahila Bidyalay to train women for
university entrance examinations: in English medium, so that the
aspirants could compete better. In 1878, it merged with the Bethune
School to form the Bethune English School. A similar school was
founded in Dacca.
In 1878, taking a giant stride, Kadambini Bose and Chandramukhi
Bose—a Brahmo and a Christian girl—became eligible for courses
at the university level. That they were allowed to acquire degrees
was an astonishing concession, won without strenuous struggles;
contemporary English women, in contrast, attended universities but
were not yet given degrees. From 1888, the Bethune School started
a college wing as well.
Conflicts occurred when Abala Das, a Brahmo woman, and
Ellen d’Abreu, an Anglo-Indian Christian, were refused admission
at the Calcutta Medical College—medical training being regarded as
the most unfeminine, and most polluting, of educational activities.
Denied admission, they joined the Madras Medical College. But
this provoked considerable agitation, and the government finally
conceded to admit women to that stream. Kadambini Bose, married
to reformer Dwarakanath Ganguly, was the first Bengali woman
to receive a full medical degree in 1888. Using the Lady Dufferin
812 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Fund, the Calcutta Medical College also offered certificate courses

in midwifery. This proved very popular among students with a low
income.35
Poverty, caste avoidance rules—observed even in government
schools—and social stigma continued to cripple higher education.
Between 1883 and 1900, all women graduate degree holders in
Bengal came mainly from Brahmo and Christian families, where
the prohibition against educating women did not apply.36 In case of
other castes, early marriages were, probably, the biggest obstacle.
Rabindranath wrote a poignant short story in 1892: a little girl,
married off to a conservative family, has her precious exercise-book
confiscated, and her beloved scribbles forbidden, by her husband.37
Nevertheless, in Rashsundari’s lifetime, her autobiography went
through two editions—Jyotirindranath Tagore, a leading literary
figure, writing the preface for the second one.38 There was clearly a
market for women’s writing, and some even were reviewed in major
literary journals. Women wrote poetry, drama, novels, polemical
essays, and early in the next century, they began to edit journals. A
conservative woman warned others not to be tempted by new-fangled
values, and to worship husbands rather than go to school. But she
herself was educated, and she wrote and published her work.39
Swarnakumari Debi, the elder sister of Rabindranath, wrote
her first novel, Deepnirban, in 1870. Another novel, Kahake (1898),
boldly exploring unruly desires, was translated into English and was
published and reviewed in England. Between 1850 and 1910, Bengali
women published nearly 400 books, covering all the genres that
male writings encompassed. Twenty-one periodicals focused
on gender issues.40 Much of the writing was autobiographical or
biographical,41 and most authors were not formally educated. They
derived their knowledge of the world from their own lives.

Occupations
In the second part of her autobiography, which she finished in 1897,
Rashsundari left instructions about how to invest her earnings from
her book. Obviously, women writers enjoyed a market that exceeded
women readers—given the pathetic general state of female literacy
in the century. But what explains their male readership?42 Whatever
their views on women’s education, men tended to be worried and
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 813

intrigued by women’s lives and experiences—the ‘wild zone’, made

opaque to them by gender-segregation.43 They were torn between the
fear of sharing learning, and the desire to penetrate into, and master,
that unknown territory. Women’s writings gave them an access to
that hidden space. Though overwhelming scorn shaped the image
of educated women, their writings therefore, did sell. Most authors,
though, were upper caste, and going by the few self-introductions
we have, they came from privileged families.
By end-century, several educated women were employed in senior
administrative positions as ‘Inspectresses’ in government schools.
The census counted them as government employees. It bracketed
them with unspecified ‘Professions, learned, artistic, and minor’. The
‘minor’ category included sex workers, since most nineteenth century
women cultural performers came from their ranks. Other professions
opened up too, as technology advanced. In 1875, the Hindu Patriot
carried an advertisement seeking a ‘Hindu Lady’ photographer.
The Maharani of Cooch Behar employed a governess in 1878 on a
monthly salary of fifty rupees. In the Calcutta Census of 1901, 725
women were registered under ‘professional occupations’: principals
at schools, professors and teachers; administrative and inspecting
officials; qualified medical practitioners and photographers; authors,
editors, and journalists.44
Modernity slowly reshaped traditional childbirth practices. The
Dufferin Fund tried to counter what European doctors perceived
as mismanaged births at the hands of hereditary midwives. The
prolonged lying-in period, considered ritually unclean, was framed
within numerous unhygienic practices: solitary confinement in
dark, damp, cramped and insanitary rooms, excessive heating and
hot foods, the kneeling position during childbirth, and so on—
described by the 1901 census to explain the worryingly high rates of
mortality among mothers and newborns. That this was not entirely an
unfounded imperial sneer is borne out by Rabindranath’s memorable
short story of 1914: Streer Patra. Climate further aggravated matters.
Despite the crushing workload and poverty of women workers in
Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri tea estates, their birth rate was higher and
mortality lower, than in the mines and mills.45
Rich and educated families came to prefer home visits by lady
doctors, which was also because the traditional midwives were
untouchables, whereas these doctors were of high caste. Also, in
814 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

1883, the Campbell Medical College was set up and modernized

midwifery courses were put up on offer. Women like Kadambini
Ganguly worked at the Lady Dufferin Women’s Hospital and at the
Eden Female Hospital. She went abroad to earn a higher degree, and
her husband took care of the children. Thus, what women did clearly
changed male habits as well.
But there was huge opposition to the Dufferin Fund and to their
doctors. In 1890, a Bengali newspaper abused them as ‘half educated
good-for-nothings’ who expected to profit from medical court cases
that the Age of Consent Bill Act would generate from 1891. They
were also seen as missionaries in disguise, bent on destroying Hindu
families and values. Consequently, Bengalis largely avoided maternity
hospitals as polluted places.
The women doctors were also faced with a number of serious
risks. In 1902, a lady doctor in Malda was called out at night on a
false pretext, and was then sexually assaulted at a landlord’s palace.
Kadambini was fortunate in her exceptionally supportive husband.
Another doctor, Jamini Sen, never married. The stigma that lady
doctors carried—of ignorance of cultural values, of intruding into
religious norms, as purveyors of alien practices, and as women
unfit for marriage—restricted women’s entry into the profession. At
the same time, since they also offered an alternative to dangerous
childbirths, they kept the door open for eventual hospitalization (for
deliveries), and the medicalization of women’s health. Continued
gender-segregation actually encouraged new forms of work by
ensuring that only women catered to women: from doctors to even
photograhers.46
The emergence of professional women and of school and college
students necessitated new dress codes to cover the female bodies
adequately in public spaces. Some now wore saris with voluminous
blouses, jackets, and undergarments to conceal their shape as far as
possible, as well as shoes, socks, and veils; doggerels mocked the new
woman in her hybrid dress. Eventually, in the late nineteenth century,
Gyanadanandini, wife of the first Indian ICS officer Satyendranath
Tagore, improvised a form that lent greater ease and mobility,
following the Gujarati style: the sari-end pulled across the chest, and
the cloth folded and pleated in the front.
Ratnabali Chatterjee is of the opinion that a many-layered
world of cultural practices which were, sometimes, entwined with
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 815

sex work, gradually contracted into a single debased profession of

‘prostitutes’.47 Sumanta Bannerjee agrees that several cultural genres
that used to employ women—public singing and folk theatres—
were stigmatized in the nineteenth century as the sphere of sex
workers. Their devaluation obliterated important modes of female
earning.48 Modernity, however, also provided new forms of popular
entertainment which transformed sex workers into talented and
celebrated professionals.
In 1873, the Bengal Theatre employed four sex workers as
actresses, thus starting a new tradition. Though this made the public
theatre an anathema to a number of puritanical reformers, soon all
companies replaced male actors playing female roles with women.
Some were highly educated and accomplished, earning independent
incomes and enjoying considerable power over male theatre-persons.
However, the director—the controlling figure—was always a man.
Binodini Dasi, sometimes compared with Ellen Terry, the great
English actress, completely captivated public theatre. However, she
was forced by the renowned playwright-director Girishchandra
Ghose to abandon the stage and become the mistress of a rich
businessman who offered to fund a new theatre company for Ghose.
Binodini was promised that the company would bear her name, but
Ghose soon dropped the idea, depriving Bengali theatre of a brilliant
actress, and Binodini of her hopes and ambitions.49
Another leading actress, Golap—later renamed Sukumari Dutta—
wrote a play in 1875, and her Apurba Sati Natak was soon staged.
Born to a prostitute, she married a high caste actor under the Special
Marriages Act of 1872. Widowed early, with an infant daughter, and
abandoned by their families, she wrote this autobiographical play
to earn an income.50 Early gramophone recordings by the London
Gramophone Company from 1902 were marked by the great
prominence of women singers, coming from traditional performing
castes and professions, and from talented concubines.51

Labouring Women
Censuses failed to calculate the Hindu female labour force with
any accuracy. The 1872 census included family women of labourers
within the profession of their male relatives: thereby hugely inflating
numbers of working women. The next census went too far in the
816 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

opposite direction. Counting only the independent earners, it

somehow excluded domestic servants, as well as women who were
engaged in finishing processes within homes: threshing, storage,
livestock maintenance.52 In the 1891 census, women outstripped men
as field labourers, but Adivasis were counted as Hindus. ‘Low caste’
and Adivasi women had a considerable presence in some small-scale
manufacturing and trade: grinding flour, silkworm rearing, making
ropes and nets, and selling vegetables and fruits. They were just a
little behind men in making of sacred threads, coal mining, and as
labourers in tea gardens.53
Censuses ignored women’s domestic work, which went through
interesting changes. Even though their traditional skills—quilting,
weaving on looms, small handicrafts—survived, new fashions like
embroidery entered affluent homes. As cookbooks appeared from
1880s, middle and upper class eating habits turned cosmopolitan.
Women learnt new tricks of their trade and, in the next century, they
inundated this popular genre of publications.54
Before slavery was abolished, caste decided the price of domestic
slaves. A young Kayet woman—considered generally to be of high
caste—fetched Rs.40–100, but the untouchable Chandal woman was
bought for as little as Rs.10–20.55 After abolition, domestic service
expanded rapidly in cities. In middle class urban households, the
single mistress needed paid help to cope with clock-bound schedules
of office-going husbands and school-going sons, housework, and
childcare. But we do not have a clear idea of the number of women
who worked as domestic servants.56
In 1818, Calcutta mill-owners brought over a batch of women
workers from Lancashire cotton mills to teach Indian women the
methods of factory work. Tragically, they soon succumbed to an
epidemic. The aborted effort shows that there was a demand for
women workers in the early mills. North Bengal tea gardens preferred
women to pluck tea leaves because of their soft and nimble fingers.
Mines continued to employ a female workforce till well into the
twentieth century, as did jute mills. When Factory Commissioners
debated shorter hours for women, jute mill-owners objected. They
said that because of the multiple-shift system in mills, their actual
working time was quite manageable.57
From the 1880s, starting with Dwarakanath Ganguly and
Ramkumar Vidyaratna’s investigative journalism, the miserable
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 817

fate of women workers in factories and tea gardens was extensively

evoked by critics. Sexual exploitation, rather than unfair exploitation
of their labour, was the pervasive trope. Even earlier, Dinabandhu
Mitra’s famous exposure of indigo planters in his play Neel Darpan
(1860)—sections of whose stage performance were censored—and
of tea-garden managers in Cha Kar Darpan (1875)—which led to
the Dramatic Performances Act—revolved round the same theme.58
The charges were largely true, but Samita Sen argues that such
moral panic about women workers concealed aspects of their agency.
Reformers were disturbed more by the spectre of women escaping
domestic discipline: to earn their living with their own labour, to
become single earners in an unruly urban setting where familial, caste
and community controls were weak, and where they could contract
illicit relationships in defiance of social norms.59

Tying up Legal and Social Reforms

with Faith
A colonial Judicial Plan announced in 1772 that all matters of
caste, marriage, divorce, succession, adoption, and inheritance
would, henceforward, be governed by Hindu and Muslim religious
scripture and custom: each community possessing a separate set of
Personal Laws. New laws would be enacted, and old practices de-
legalized, only if pandits, and maulvis proved that the latter violated
authentic scriptural conditions. A royal edict of 1797, and an imperial
declaration of 1858 reaffirmed the promise, and courts appointed
religious experts till the mid-1860s: replaced, later, by established
precedents. The state was merely the referee, choosing the most
convincing interpretation if conflicts arose.60 Personal Laws, therefore,
constituted a rare arena of sovereignty where Indians could reinvent
themselves on their own terms.

Widow Burnings
Gender threw up the first-ever public debates in Indian history.
They began in the early nineteenth century, over the ritual of sati or
widow immolation, alerting a wide spectrum of people to scripture,
custom, ritual, and lawmaking—matters so far left to state and
pandits. Both Rammohun Roy and his orthodox opponent Kashinath
818 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Tarkabagish published their arguments on this issue in Bengali,

though Rammohun also wrote in English. Modern associations were
formed to influence officials: the orthodox Dharma Sabha challenged
the Sati Act in the Privy Council, while Brahmos ran campaigns for
socio-legal reform.
The first colonial law on Hindu gender was ‘Regulation XVII
of 1829: A Regulation Declaring the Practice of Suttee or Burning/
Burying Alive of Hindoo Widows Illegal and Punishable by Criminal
Courts.’61 Abolition was preceded by a complicated historical process
which historians have generally overlooked.
Scripture valourized the immolation of widows on the funeral
pyres of their husbands, though never as a compulsory sacrifice. It
promised that the sati, together with her husband, attains heaven
for three million years. She also apparently releases her matrimonial
and natal families from all sins. Few holy texts have ever questioned
the practice.
Generations of Bengali Hindus continued to venerate the ritual
long after its abolition, and debates, if anything, strengthened its
hold as a measure of unique Hindu greatness. As if through a ‘glass
darkly’, their violent self-destruction made Hindu women heroic
cultural icons.
Bengal officials began to maintain a thick set of documentary
evidence on burnings: on their numbers, family circumstances, and
names of the satis and their husbands. Going by annual police reports
sent to the House of Commons since 1815, 500 to 900 widows were
burnt every year in the Lower Provinces of Bengal alone, while many
more went unnoticed, according to missionaries and officials. Though
brahmans provided the single largest category of satis, Shudra castes
came fairly close. Immolations, therefore, could well have been a path
to upward ritual mobility for the ‘lower’ castes.62 Although scripture
prescribed death by burning, Jugis buried their widows alive. The
satis’ recorded age ranged between four and hundred, though elderly
widows constituted the largest group. They came from all classes—
from substantial landowners to beggars. Since polygamy was widely
practiced by Hindus, sometimes dozens of wives were burnt together
on the same pyre.63
For the sahamarana or concremation ritual, the widow burnt with
her husband’s corpse. If he died elsewhere, she could burn by herself,
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 819

according to anumarana rules, even though this was not permitted to

brahman widows. Early colonial court records, however, reveal many
instances of highly inappropriate immolations—by a Muslim widow,
by a sister, by concubines and even, in one case, by a woman who
insisted on burning herself since she had dreamt that her husband
was dead. Brahman widows also performed anumarana.64 It seems
that Hindus neither noticed nor objected to these inappropriate satis.
It was as if the immolations happened all anyhow, without anyone
checking, or even knowing, the scriptural procedure.
All European settlements in Bengal had abolished immolations
as soon as they were established, but the British took sixty years to
do so, showing a remarkable reluctance to interfere in what had
been identified as a ritual of great sanctity by scholar-official H.T.
Colebrooke in 1797.65 Though Baptist missionaries of Serampore
carried on an energetic campaign for its abolition, the state stayed
aloof. In 1789, a local magistrate from Shahabad, Bihar, asked for
advice on how to deal with ‘suttees’. In 1805, another magistrate
stopped the immolation of a girl of nine who was unwilling to die.
He also asked if the state must remain a passive witness.66
The state finally began to collect information on the ritual. It also
asked brahman pandits to spell out the conditions for a scripturally
correct sati performance. The pandits’ responses arrived from 1812–
13. They endorsed burnings as a prized sacred practice but, at the
same time, enunciated some restrictions. The widow should pledge
(sankalp) to burn willingly and not be drugged or intoxicated. She
should have attained puberty. She could retract the pledge, but then
she would lose her caste and the family would be ostracized—unless
she does a severe penance to atone for her ‘lapse’. In 1817, Mrityunjoy
Vidyalankar, Chief Pandit, Fort William College, said that ostracizing
was not required.
Subsequently, pandits added other conditions. The widow in
question should not be less than sixteen, should not leave behind her
an orphan below the age of three, and the ritual should not happen if
she was menstruating or had just given birth. Satis must come from
the four main varnas—Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra. The
state circulated these provisions to magistrates and asked them to
have each immolation in their jurisdiction supervised by the police.
Annual police reports were sent up to the House of Commons.
820 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Court cases show, however, that despite the age limit, widows of
even four could be burnt. In many cases, the police were simply not
informed. The consent clause was frequently violated and, strangely,
when these came up to the court, European judges often exonerated
the perpetrators.
A particularly haunting case came up before the Gorruckpore
court in 1825. Houmulia, a fourteen year-old, underage widow, was
forced by her uncle to burn. Her consent was not verified, but was
‘presumed’ by the court, and we are not told why they presumed so.
When the flames began to blaze, she somehow leapt out of the pyre,
but was caught by her uncle and pushed back into the fire. ‘.  .  .  Much
burnt, her clothes quite consumed, she again sprang from the pile
and running to a well hard by, laid herself down on the watercourse,
weeping bitterly. Sheolal [the uncle] now took up a sheet and
spreading it upon the ground, desired her to seat herself upon it. No,
she said, she would not do this: she would quit her family and live
by beggary.’ Her uncle swore he would take her home. Reassured,
she came back, but was immediately bundled up and thrown back
into the fire. ‘.  .  .  The wretched victim once more made an effort to
save herself.  .  .  .’67 Again she was thrown into the fire. Eventually a
Muslim was urged by the crowd to behead her, in contravention of
all ritual norms.
An European judge declared that her uncle was innocent of
blame, since she had sworn the ritual pledge—or so he believed. After
that, he had to do what he did, and he was much to be pitied, said
the judge. Magistrates and judges were often unsure if the woman
became a sati when she swore the pledge, or if she became one only
when the burning was completed; in the former case, they could not
interrupt the burning without short-circuiting the ritual process.
Some officials were more impatient, and several helped unwilling
widows to escape. Walter Ewer, a senior police official, scoured Hindu
scripture to argue—as did Baptist missionaries—that immolations
violated scripture. Some of them even stopped legal immolations,
while others argued that it was probably better to ban immolations
altogether. That would be less offensive to Hindus than the prevention
of legalized burnings. Others complained that by enumerating
scriptural conditions in its circulars, the state had added legal sanction
to burnings, in addition to the existing religious one.68
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 821

Police reports and court cases gave satis’ names, identities, and
short histories of their deaths; the families had kept no such records.
They simply commemorated the numbers of agunkhaaki (fire-eater)
in the family.69 Moreover, as reformers and orthodoxy argued, and as
the police monitored her last moments, her consent became a matter
of ritual as well as of state importance. Reformers claimed that the sati
was misinformed about scripture and her consent was meaningless.
The orthodox claimed to represent her genuine ‘will and pleasure’.
Earlier, the circumstances under which she first expressed her wish
to die, or under which the family forced her to do so, were invisible
to outsiders. Now, every burning became a public drama.
Several governors-general had argued that though the ritual
outraged their Christian sensibilities, they were committed to
preserving Indian beliefs and rituals. Lord William Bentinck asked
his civilian and military officers in 1828 if they thought that abolition
would lead to a rebellion or a mutiny. Most said it was unlikely, and
in 1829, Bentinck announced his decision to abolish immolations.70
Bentinck’s Minute referred to yet another crucial impetus:
‘enlightened Hindu opinion’. This came from a brahman with a
legendary reputation for Sanskrit learning. In 1818, the orthodoxy
had sent a petition to the government, asking it to remove all existing
restrictions on the ritual. Immediately, Rammohun Roy wrote
counter-petitions to dispute the dominant interpretation of the Rg
Veda as an endorsement of immolations. He also insisted that the
ancient lawgiver Manu was the highest legal authority, and since
Manu was silent about immolations and praised chaste widows,
Rammohun interpreted his words as a verdict against immolations.
But his trump card—one which convinced the state—was the way
in which he described the ritual practice. According to scripture, the
widow walks into the flames. In reality, she is first trussed up, then
tied to her husband’s body, then placed under a huge pile of logs, and
finally set on fire. Her cries for help and her struggles to escape are
unseen and unheard behind dense smoke and loud noise. This is not
the true immolation, he said, but ‘woman murder’.71
No historian has focused on the revealing debate between Roy
and Kashinath Tarkabagish. Kashinath admitted that the customary
form diverged from scripture. But he argued that, if not explicitly
forbidden by scripture, custom enjoyed equal validity. This was weak
822 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

logic, since Rammohun had abundantly revealed the contradiction

between the two forms of burning. Kashinath further added a rather
curious argument: while burning, her limbs may fall off, and trussing
her up enables her to ascend heaven with limbs intact.72
Lata Mani has accused Rammohun of attending to religious
reform rather than to gender, since he focused on scriptural citations.
She overlooks the iron cage of Personal Laws that obliged him to do so.
Gender, moreover, is always caught up in a wider matrix of cultural-
social-ideological compulsions; it is never a stand-alone category. If
he wanted to convince the state as well as his contemporaries why
Hindus should dispense with the ritual, he had to invoke scriptural
reasoning.
But Rammohun did not stop there. Kashinath had argued that
living widows would lapse into immorality, so it was better that
they burn. Rammohun said they could live moral lives with access
to sacred knowledge. Kashinath replied that they were biologically
disabled from receiving knowledge, and, in return, Roy asked when
they had tested her intelligence that they now called her ‘foolish’.73
In another tract, he argued for inheritance rights for the widow.
He, therefore, went beyond preventing death; he demanded a more
meaningful life with definite entitlements.
His arguments, nevertheless, did valourize brahmanical texts,
giving them a human face. He also created great problems for future
reformers who tried to introduce widow remarriage, since Manu,
cited copiously by Rammohun, was entirely opposed to that. At the
same time, Rammohun certainly fashioned a new male sensibility
that focused on what men had done to women. Let me quote at some
length from his Second Treatise, a modern critical ethnography of
everyday female experiences:
At marriage, the wife is recognized as half of her husband, but, in after
conduct, they are treated worse than animals. For the woman is employed
to do the work of a slave in the house  .  .  .  to clear the place very early in
the morning, whether cold or wet, to scour the dishes, to wash the floor, to
cook night and day, to prepare and serve food for her husband, her father
and mother-in-law, her brothers-in-law  .  .  .  friends and connections  .  .  .  if
they commit the smallest fault, what insults.  .  .  . After the male part of the
family have satisfied themselves, the women content themselves with what
may be left, whether sufficient in quantity or not.  .  .  . Should the husband
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 823

acquire wealth, he indulges in criminal amours  .  .  .  almost under her

eyes.  .  .  . As long the husband is poor she suffers every kind of trouble and
when he becomes rich,  .  .  .  a husband takes two or three wives  .  .  .  they are
subjected to mental miseries  .  .  .  lower class women are branded falsely as
thieves  .  .  .  he sometimes even puts her privately to death.  .  .  . What I lament
is that seeing the woman thus dependent and exposed to every misery, you
feel for her no compassion that might exempt her from being tied down
and burnt to death.  .  .  .74

Widow Remarriage
The fast-growing public sphere soon created new sites for debates:
novels, drama, poetry, women’s writings, theatre, autobiographies.
Many of them vividly described—or staged—widowed lives. Multiple
representations of widowhood began to problematize Hindu
widowhood norms.
Hindu scripture classified the wife as half of her husband’s body
(ardhangini)—he lives on in her as long she lives. So, even if she was
married off at infancy,75 and had never consummated the marriage,
or lived with him at all, any subsequent relationship was normatively
adulterous. The widower, however, could remarry as often as he
wished.
A few Bengali Hindus had occasionally suggested remarriage
for infant virgin widows since the eighteenth century, but pandits
ruthlessly countermanded it. In the 1840s, the Young Bengal group
took up the issue. But their reputation for iconoclasm further
stiffened opposition. Remarriage was, indeed, anathema to Manu,
who prescribed a life of perpetual self-abnegation for widows. The
Bengal Dayabhaga school of law granted her usufruct rights to
her husband’s property-share—but only if she remains faithful to
his memory and performs penance. In practice, the entitlements
were rarely allowed and widows were repugnant burdens to their
families. Abandoned and destitute young widows swelled the ranks
of prostitutes. Sometimes, even family members sexually exploited
them. If they became pregnant, they were often killed. Dwarakanath
Ganguly, a prominent reformer, became a staunch warrior for
widow remarriage when he discovered scores of ‘immoral’ young
widows who had been secretly poisoned by their families in his
own village.76
824 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Even though remarriage was proscribed largely for ‘upper’ castes,

upwardly mobile ‘lower’ castes also adhered to it in the interests of
ritual and social respectability.77 A ‘low caste’ Bagdi widow in the
1840s, for instance, died of a messy and agonizing secret abortion,
even though remarriage was permitted under her caste rules.78
Manu had prescribed a regime of harsh and continuous self-
mortification for the widow.79 She being ritually inauspicious, Bengali
Hindus imposed an enormous bundle of sexual, dietary, sartorial, and
festive deprivations on her: including a twenty-four hour fast without
a drink of water once every fortnight. Even if they were ill or dying,
no medicine could pass their lips on the ekadashi day.80
Advocates of remarriage criticized these disciplinary measures,
though neither the law, nor the reformers tried to abolish or lighten
the ritual burden for widows who would not or could not remarry.
Occasionally, strange compromises were suggested. An embarrassed
conservative advised that the widow could consume life-saving
medicine on ekadashi day, on condition that she shaved her head
thereafter.81
The state briefly considered remarriage when the Law Commission
met in 1837. In order to stamp out infanticide, Shore proposed
criminalizing concealed pregnancies, and the Sudder Diwani Adalat
of the North-Western Provinces added that the concealment of dead
infants, or their secret disposal, should be classified as ‘misdemeanor’.
The Commission objected, since this would make a suspected offence
of possible infanticide into a ‘positive offence’ without definite proof.
Instead, it suggested that since most cases of infanticide emanated
from illicit pregnancies among widows, it would be kinder if a law
enabled them to remarry. Provincial courts, however, strongly advised
against it, since it flouted caste rules and the promise of religious
non-interference.82
In 1855, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, an eminent brahman
scriptural scholar and modern educationist, approached Grant
and Colville with a plea for legalizing remarriage and a supportive
scriptural citation. A bill was, consequently, brought to the Council
in November 1855. Legislators thought that since, unlike the Sati
Act, it would not force any decision on those who disagreed with its
terms, the bill would not annoy many Hindus. As a ‘permissive law’,
it would simply make remarriage possible for those who believed
that their faith allowed it.
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 825

Vidyasagar had identified a verse in the ancient text Parashara-

samhita which, he insisted, recommended a second marriage for
the woman under a set of five conditions, including the husband’s
death. He wrote two successive Bengali tracts to prove that in
Kali Yuga, Parashara was the greatest authority, higher even than
Manu.
Vidyasagar persuaded the government to table a bill which
closely followed his own draft bill—‘Act No. XV, July 1856: An Act
to Remove all Legal Obstacles to Marriage of Hindoo Widows’.83 It
endorsed the inheritance rights of sons born of remarriage. This was
a big step, since such sons, seen as illegitimate, and hence, polluting
creatures, were so far deprived of any share in their biological father’s
property. Remarried widows, however, did not get custody over their
children from the first marriage, nor any share of the first husband’s
property.
In his tract,84 Vidyasagar often evoked the pain of the child widow,
condemned to a lifetime of social and sexual death for no fault of
her own, as justification for remarriage. In his draft bill, however,
he suggested no age limit, leaving the possibility of remarriage open
to widows of all age—even to those who had already experienced a
sexual relationship with husbands. This scandalized the orthodoxy
even more, a few of whom would have reluctantly accepted the
remarriage of infant virgin widows.85
The bill was received with incredulous horror. While its supporters
mobilized 5,191 signatures on their petition to the legislature, their
opponents gathered more than 55,746. Petitions from renowned
pandits excoriated it as a route to the ruin of Hindu female chastity,
of family, and of faith itself.86
Vidyasagar won the legal battle but lost the social one. The image
of the chaste widow, lovingly embracing her deprivations and ever-
faithful to the husband’s memory, continued to dominate Bengali
Hindu imagination. Remarriages were ruthlessly disrupted, the
couple disinherited and ostracized. They also faced obscene mockery
in press.87 Weddings in Calcutta were performed under elaborate
police protection which was lacking in villages. Peasants supporting
remarriage were evicted from their land, beaten up, and expelled
from the village by their upper caste landlords and their ‘low caste’
musclemen. Reformist appeals for help were ignored by Hindu deputy
magistrates and the police. Vidyasagar was threatened with death,
826 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

which he managed to avert only with huge gifts to local brahmans.

He had to fund most of the early remarriages himself, and also set
up the new couple in the world. Sometimes, the husband abandoned
the wife under unbearable family pressure.88 Widows willing to marry
were abducted and kept under severe vigilance by outraged families,
till their lovers could arrange counter-abductions.89
By the early 1860s, remarriages totalled to about sixty. Interestingly,
most happened in upper caste families where the prohibition was
absolute. After a new civil law was enacted permitting remarriages,
many widows probably married under it. Gurucharan Mahalanobis,
who married a widow, wrote that the presence of two permissive
laws confused him.90
Most orthodox petitioners argued vociferously against the
inheritance rights of sons of remarriage. The law, however, created
some new difficulties for a certain category of ‘low caste’ widows who
had the customary right to remarry and yet retain their share of the
first husband’s property. The new law now cancelled that entitlement.
Calcutta and Bombay High Courts followed a combination of Hindu
Law and the statutory one to overrule their inheritance: going by the
former, widows could not marry at all, and according to the latter,
they forfeited their first husband’s share if they did so.91
Disputes abounded about whether unchaste widows were entitled
to a share in their husbands’ property. According to scripture, her
entitlement derived from her chastity as a widow. Some litigants
argued that if unchastity commenced after widowhood, she should
still retain it since she was chaste when she inherited. Afterwards, the
entitlement became absolute, no matter what she did. A bourgeois
notion of absolute property rights probably prompted judges to agree
with this. Otherwise, they abided by Hindu normative sensibilities.
A particular ‘Great Unchastity Case’ acquired much notoriety in
1873. Even though the Hindu press burst into outraged objections
and pandits testified to its inadmissibility in shastric norms,92 judges
ruled: ‘Under the Hindu Law, as administered in the Bengal School,
a widow who has once inherited the estate of her husband, is not
liable to forfeit that estate by reason of her subsequent unchastity.’93
Despite the failure of efforts at remarriage, some real changes did
occur, in and through, public debates. Certain words—equality, for
instance—challenged the very foundations of Hindu gender. And
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 827

words, once uttered, gather an afterlife, they force people to examine

inherited notions that had so far seemed natural.
With seeming innocence, Vidyasagar mischievously used the
logic of natural justice when he questioned the unjust asymmetry
between the widower and the widow. Religious injunctions, however,
do not rely on natural justice. But once the contrast is made, a new
idea is seeded. It may, eventually, change the gender equation, or, at
least, denaturalize it.
You think their bodies turn to stone as soon as they are widowed  .  .  .  that
they become immune to desire  .   .   .   a las, in this land men have no
compassion, no virtue, they do not know what is right or wrong  .  .  .  they
only know what is custom. Let no woman be born in such a land any more.
Alas, our women! For what sin in your past births are you sent to be born
in Bharatbarsha?94

Civil Marriage
Marriages had to be entirely conducted within Personal Laws,
inescapably embedding an individual within their community
regulations. This ruled out inter-community and inter-caste alliances.
Personal choice, too, was buried under family and community
dictates.
A few petitions on remarriage had boldly suggested taking
marriage out of religious regulations and making it a civil matter.
Later, the radical-reformist wing of the Brahmo Samaj, led by Keshub
Chandra Sen, wanted a separate set of marriage regulations, different
from Hindu marriage rules, thereby asserting their independence
from Hinduism.95 On the other hand, Brahmos of the older Adi
Samaj under Debendranath Tagore regarded their sect as a part of the
Hindu community. This led to a schism in the Brahmo Samaj in 1866.
In 1868, Sen’s group petitioned the government for a separate
marriage law for Brahmos alone: to marry according to their ‘rites
of conscience’ and avoid the idolatrous and non-egalitarian Hindu
marriage ritual. They suggested that chief commissioners should
appoint Brahmo marriage registrars in districts to record the
marriages. The minimum age for marriage should not be less than 14
for the woman and 18 for the man. Only if either one was younger,
would the father’s consent be necessary. Neither should have a living
828 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

husband or wife at the time of marriage. The petition also asked for
adult and consensual or love marriage, and widow marriage. This
implied inter-caste marriage, though not inter-community ones,
since the package was for the Brahmos alone.
Law Member Henry Maine expanded its scope beyond Brahmos
in a draft bill: ‘A Bill to Legalise Marriages between Certain Natives
in India Not Professing the Christian Religion’. The last provision
distinguished it from marriages of Indian Christians who had not yet
received a full set of separate Personal Laws. It threw civil marriage
open to all who ‘objected to be married under Hindu, Muslim, Parsi
or Jaina religions’. He formulated a separate domain of civil marriages
that lay beyond religiously divided Personal Laws. Civil marriage
could be followed by a religious ceremony, its form improvised by
the partners themselves. He called it a permissive law, since only
those who wanted to opt out of the religious marriage systems would
marry under it.
The bill raised a storm of protests. James Fitzjames Stephen, who
succeeded Maine as Law Member, drafted a second bill—Brahmo
Marriage Bill—in 1871, specifically for Brahmos, and repeating
almost verbatim the provisions that the Keshub’s group had asked for
1868. But the Adi Brahmo faction objected to it, fearing their separate
marriage laws made Brahmos a distinct religious community. They,
therefore, organized a signature campaign opposing the bill, which
was redrafted yet again. Maine’s suggestions were now reinserted
with several changes.
The third version allowed dissenters from Christianity to marry
under it. The couple had to announce that they were not Hindus,
Muslims, Jainas, Parsis, Sikhs, or Buddhists, whereas in Maine’s
original draft, they had to say that they objected to marrying under
the laws of specified religious communities. The new version, thus,
amounted to a renunciation of faith, inhibiting, considerably, many
who otherwise wished to marry under it.
In some ways, it was harsher than Maine’s original bill, largely
as a result of furious Hindu criticism. It specified the rules of
consanguinity under which marriage would be forbidden, and it made
bigamy of either partner a punishable offence. Couples marrying in
a particular district needed a residence qualification of two weeks,
and a notice had to be sent to the registrar fourteen days before the
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 829

due date of the marriage. It would, from then on, be open to public
scrutiny, presumably to avoid bigamous and fraudulent marriages.
But it also left the door open for parental pressure to cancel the notice.
Maine’s bill, in contrast, had specified five days as the notice period.
The third bill was published to seek Indian responses. Predictably,
it aroused enormous anxieties about abdication of religious affiliation.
It was feared that it would lead to moral anarchy by legalizing
marriages of dissolute people, who, driven by sheer lust, would debase
the sacred institution of marriage. Worst of all, inter-caste marriages
would mix the ‘pure’ upper caste blood with ‘impure’ ones.
Act III of 1872 opened up at least the possibility of love marriages.
For a very limited circle, it took the institution of marriage out of the
hands of the community and placed it with a state which was neutral
in religious terms. At the same time, it did so for far too few.

Child Wives and the Age of Consent96

The first three laws we have examined were initiated by Bengali
reformism. Although as early as in 1850, Vidyasagar wrote a tract
called Balyabibaher Dosh (Problems with Child Marriage), castigating
Hindu child marriages,97 he did not expand this into a plea for legal
change, knowing how entrenched the mandate was in sacred texts.
Manu had specified that eight was the ideal age for a girl’s marriage.
It is gauridaan, or the gift of a goddess—and not simply kanyadaan,
or the gift of a virgin daughter. It bestows untold merit on the natal
family. Nineteenth-century Bengali discourses sternly warned that
post-pubertal marriages pollute the family, since the moment she
reaches puberty, a girl begins to desire men, and even thinking of a
man she is not married to amounts to loss of honour and chastity.
That, in turn, entails that fourteen generations of ancestors and
successors are condemned to eternal hell.98
The British accepted the logic. During a court case that acted
as the trigger to the Age of Consent Act in 1891, W.J. Simmons,
Secretary, Public Health Society of Calcutta, wrote to the Government
of Bengal that child marriage was an institution that the government
could never tamper with, even if it leads to serious health hazards.99
Parsi reformer Bairamji Malabari began a campaign against child
marriage from 1884. Scriptural sanction for the practice, however, was
830 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

so strong that legal change was impossible within the framework of

Personal Laws. The Indian government thus decided to ignore him.
A violent event, however, happened in Calcutta in 1889, which
forced the hands of the government to some extent. Phulmonee, a
deaf little child-wife, just above ten, died most horribly of marital
rape in Calcutta. The state now had to look for safeguards against
such deaths and Viceroy Lansdowne admitted in 1890, ‘Having had
our hands to some extent forced, owing to the Phulmonee case  .  .  .’. 100
Phulmonee had died after suffering acute agony for more than ten
hours. Her mother, grandmother, and aunt testified in court that she
was raped. Since she was above ten, the husband—a man of twenty-
nine—was charged with inadvertent manslaughter and was let off
with a light sentence. He, however, was not charged with rape, since
Phulmonee had just crossed the statutory age-limit of ten, and under
the Penal Code provisions, all intercourse with a girl under ten was
classified as rape.101
Legislators prevaricated about raising the female age of marriage.
They eventually displaced the problem of child marriage onto the
register as the minimum age of conjugal cohabitation, within and
outside marriage. The government revised Section 375 of the Penal
Code of 1860, and the Criminal Law Amendment Act (10) was
enacted by the Legislative Council in 1891, raising the age of consent
from ten to twelve within and outside marriage, and for all religious
communities. Even in this muted form, the Bill provoked visceral
Hindu outrage: especially in Bengal where, by the late nineteenth
century, the reformist voice had weakened and an aggressive cultural
nationalism held powerful sway. Anti-bill agitations swept the city
of Calcutta and constituted a significant resource for the nascent
extremist or radical nationalism, something which historians have so
far failed to note. The bill was different from the established pattern of
Personal Laws in two ways. It covered all colonial subjects, irrespective
of faith. It exceeded the realm of marriage since it applied to all girls
below twelve. However, in Bengal, protests erupted specifically over
the issue of Hindu wives. The incidence of Hindu infant marriages was
the highest in Bengal—according to the 1881 Census, 14 per cent of
Bengali Hindu girls were married off before they were ten, and they
encompassed all castes except Adivasis. In Bombay, they amounted
to 10 per cent and, in Madras, only 4.5 per cent.102
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 831

Bengali newspapers raised the alarm that Hinduism faced a

terminal crisis. They organized the first ever media-driven campaign
against government intervention. Mammoth processions—calling
themselves ‘monster processions’—gathered in Calcutta to protest
the bill, and cultural nationalists introduced the art of organized
collective action in public spaces.
As the anti-law agitation built up, nervous British legislators
pleaded that the amendments did not touch Hindu marriage. They
merely revised the age of cohabitation within marriage. But Bengali
nationalists argued that the bill violated the garbhadhan ritual, the
first of the ten fundamental Hindu lifecycle rites. Garbhadhan enjoins
mandatory conjugal cohabitation between husband and wife within
sixteen days of her first period. Many wives attain puberty before they
are twelve, and unless they cohabit with their husbands immediately,
the consequences will be truly dreadful: they would have committed
the sin of foeticide. Liberal Hindus tried to reinterpret the ritual as a
symbolic and not a real sexual cohabitation. The state based its law
upon this reading.
Cultural nationalists used a highly charged rhetoric—demotic,
exhortative, and very compelling: ‘Terror of the world, English­
men  .  .  .  do you gnash your teeth, frown with your red eyes, laugh and
yell,  .  .  .  keeping time to the clang of the sword and the bayonet.  .  .  .
And, we  .  .  .  the twenty crores of Indians, shall lose our fears and
open our forty crores of eyes  .  .  .’. 103
Medical court-testimonies and hospital records, both Hindu
and European, cited instances of the killing of wives when rape was
resisted, or of death through violent intercourse. They added another
category of indirect killings; premature intercourse results in early
childbearing which leads to infant mortality as well as to maternal
deaths among child-mothers, and to lingering post-puerperal illnesses
that leads to their early death. More than fifty women doctors signed
a petition against the practice, citing their unfortunate experiences
in treating child victims.
Startling observations came from iconic reformer Vidyasagar,
who had campaigned against child marriage since 1850. Now he
said that the ritual was, indeed, sanctioned by scripture. He cited
Parashara, the sacred authority whom he had elevated as the most
authoritative lawgiver for the present Kali age. Since Parashara
832 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

explicitly endorsed garbhadhan, the reformer was caught in his own

trap.104 Having upheld a particular authority, he could not go back
upon it.
The state tried to redefine Hindu marriage: the wedding
sacrament, some Hindu legislators said, was but a formal engagement,
and real marriage happened after dwiragaman, when the bride came
back from her natal home once she had reached puberty. The time of
‘real’ marriage was thus delinked from the sacrament, and transposed
to puberty, assumed to occur only after twelve. The orthodoxy said
that puberty can happen well before twelve and the law therefore
violated garbhadhan. We should note that the concept of her consent
had nothing at all to do with her mental state or real will. For the state,
it was simply another name for her physical capability for sustaining
intercourse without grave damage to herself. For the orthodoxy, it
meant puberty.
When the bill was introduced in the Legislative Council in 1891,
Law Member Andrew Scoble argued that it made no new departure:
the earlier Penal Code provision had already prohibited cohabitation
with wives under ten. The present law merely extended it a bit.
He thus wanted to make the law appear innocuous. He then tried
to detach it from the controversial conjugal domain by pointing
out that it also applied to prostitutes. He went on to say that it
would cover Europeans in India as well, invoking thereby, racial
equality. He promised that it would be enforced with the greatest
leniency, thus almost guaranteeing its ineffectuality in advance. He
cited the scripture which forbade cohabitation with pre-pubertal
wives as being sinful, suggesting an exact synchrony between law
and faith. Finally, he said that he had been advised by Hindus of
impeccable status. He thus shifted the onus of responsibility on to
Hindu opinion.105
But no segment of Hindu public opinion—not even liberals—
could swallow the concept of marital rape, in however a diluted
form. Scoble entirely failed to convince the Indian legal expert in the
Council, Sir Romesh Mitter, who retorted that child-wives do not
need legal protection from their Hindu husbands. He further added
that in any case, rape cannot occur within a conjugal situation, since
rape by definition is loss of chastity, and posed the question of how
a wife can lose it through intercourse with her husband.106
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 833

I conclude here with a few paradoxes. Hindu and Brahmo women-

achievers and public figures were relatively numerous in nineteenth
century Bengal. Even more striking was the number of women
writers. Gender debates, too, began here, and Bengal remained a busy
and raucous concourse of ideas for the entire century. On the other
hand, high-achieving women relied on a male support-base. Apart
from emerging as exemplars for women aspirants, they themselves
did not reflect critically on gender issues. Women writers did that,
though most remained confined within the household.
As the century grew older, Maharashtrian women overtook
Bengali Hindu ones in terms of their bold articulations, and in the
strength of their defiance—Rakhmabai and Pandita Ramabai being
excellent examples. It was a Bengali Muslim women in the next
century—Rokeya Sakhawat Hussein—who, at last, took up both
mantles.
Finally, even though the century began in Bengal with an upsurge
in liberal reformism, Bengal later transmuted into a political hotbed
of cultural nationalism and of hardcore orthodoxy. But the orthodox
nationalists coexisted with growing education and mobility, even
among conservative women.
Out of such profoundly contradictory pulls and drives was our
modernity born.

Notes
1. Partha Chatterjee, ‘The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question’,
in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and
Sudesh Vaid, Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989.
2. J.A. Bourdillon, Report on the Census of Bengal 1881, Calcutta: Bengal
Secretariat Press, 1883, pp. 122–4; J.A. Baines, General Report on the
Census of India, 1891, London: HMSO, 1893, p. 247; and E.A. Gait,
Report on the Census of Lower Provinces of Bengal and their Feudatories,
1901, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, p. 238. For an analysis of the
census figures, see, chapter 1 in Maroona Murmu, Words of Her Own:
Women Writers in Nineteenth Century Bengal, forthcoming from Oxford
University Press, Delhi.
3. See, Rochona Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in
Colonial Bengal, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009,
pp. 54–92.
834 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
4. Rammohun Roy, ‘A Second Conference between an Advocate for, and
an Opponent of, the Practice of Burning Widows Alive’, in Rammohun
Granthabali, vol 3, ed. Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay and Sajanikanta
Das, n.d., p. 45.
5. Gourmohan Vidyalankar, Streeshikshabidhayak: Arthat Puratan O
Idanintan O Bideshiya Streeloker Drishtanta, Calcutta, 1822, p. 3.
6. William Adam, Female Instruction in Second Report on the State of
Education in Bengal, ed. Ananthnath Basu, Calcutta: Calcutta University
Press, 1961, pp. 187–8.
7. Cited in Ramesh Chandra Mitra, ‘Education: 1833–1903’, in History of
Bengal, 1757–1905, ed. N.K. Sinha, Calcutta: Calcutta University Press,
1967, p. 419.
8. Adam, Female Instruction.
9. Shibnath Shastri, Atmacharit, Calcutta: Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, 1952,
p. 22.
10. See, chapter 4 in Tanika Sarkar, Words to Win: Amar Jiban–The Making
of a Modern Autobiography, Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998.
11. The first edition was published in 1875.
12. Sarada Debi, Atmakatha, complied by Abhaya Dasgupta, Calcutta:
Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, 1979, p. 4.
13. See, for instance, Kedarnath Mandal, Behadda Behaya, Calcutta: Mahesh
Chandra Paul, 1894; for farces on this theme of sexual inversion, see,
Jayanta Goswami, Samajchitre Unabingsha Shatabdir Bangla Prahashan,
Calcutta: Sahityashree, 1974. Also see, Sumit Sarkar, ‘Kaliyug, Chakri and
Bhakti’, Writing Social History, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.
14. They were hired by the Jorasanko Tagore family, for instance. See,
Debendranath Tagore, Swarachita Jiban Charit, 1989; repr. in N. Jana
et al., eds., Atmakatha (series), Calcutta: Ananya, 1981, p. 5.
15. Adam, Female Instruction. Also, Debendranath Tagore, Swarachita Jiban
Charit; repr. Atmakatha, p. 5.
16. See, for instance, Kailashbashini Debi, Hindu Mahilaganer Heenabastha,
Calcutta: Gupta Press, 1863.
17. See, the introduction in Sangari and Vaid, eds., Recasting Women.
18. Mahesh Chandra Deb, A Sketch of the Condition of the Hindoo Women,
Calcutta, 1839; cited in Sumit Sarkar, ‘The Complexities of Young Bengal’,
A Critique of Colonial India, Calcutta: Papyrus, 1985, p. 27.
19. Rashsundari, Amar Jiban.
20. Phulmoni O Karunar Bibaran: Streelokder Shiksharthe Birachita, Calcutta:
Calcutta Christian Tract and Book Society, 1852.
21. Sumit Sarkar, ‘Vidyasagar and Brahmanical Society’, Writing Social History,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 835
22. See, Subodhchandra Sengupta, ed., Samsad Bangali Charitabhidhan,
Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, 1976, p. 4.
23. Debi, Hindu Mahilaganer Heenabastha.
24. Bharati Ray, ed., Sekaler Narishiksha: Bamabodhini Patrika, 1270–1329,
Calcutta: Calcutta University Press, 1994, p. 7.
25. Shibnath Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bango Samaj, repr., Calcutta:
New Age, 1956.
26. Mitra, ‘Education’.
27. Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849–1904,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, p. 98.
28. Shibnath Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri, p. 172; Chandicharan Bandyopadhyay,
Vidyasagar, 3rd edn., Allahabad: Indian Press, 1909, p. 195; and Reports in
Sambad Prabhakar, 10 February 1856, in Benoy Ghosh, ed., Samayikpatre
Banglar Samajchitra, Calcutta: Bengal Publishers, 1978, p. 34.
29. Chandicharan Bandyopadhyay, Vidyasagar, p. 196; see also, Sumit Sarkar,
‘Vidyasagar and Brahmanical Society’, Essays of a Lifetime, Ranikhet:
Permanent Black, 2018.
30. Sarkar, ‘Vidyasagar and Brahmanical Society’.
31. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, ‘Caste, Widow Remarriage and the Reform of
Popular Culture in Colonial Bengal’, in From the Seams of History: Essays
on Indian Women, ed. Bharati Ray, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995;
and Sarkar, ‘Vidyasagar and Brahmanical Society’.
32. See, chapter 2 in Geraldine Forbes, Women in Modern India, The New
Cambridge History of Modern India, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996.
33. See, Dagmar Engels, Beyond the Purdah: Women in Bengal, 1890–1939,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996; Borthwick, Changing Role of Women
in Bengal; and Usha Chakravarty, Condition of Bengali Women around the
Second Half of the Nineteenth Century, Calcutta: Self-published, 1963.
34. ‘Bangadesh e Streeshiksha’, Bamabodhini Patrika, Baisakh 1892; in Bharati
Ray, Sekaler Narishiksha: Bamabodhini Patrika, 1270–1329, Calcutta:
Calcutta University Press, 1996, pp. 227–9.
35. Usha Chakravarty, Condition of Bengali Women, pp. 49–54.
36. Ghulam Murshid, Reluctant Debutantes: Response of Bengali Women to
Modernization, 1849–1905, Rajshahi: Sahitya Samsad, Rajshahi University,
1983, p. 71.
37. Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Khata’, Galpaguchha, Calcutta: Visva-Bharati,
1994.
38. Sarkar, Words to Win, p. 245.
39. Dasi, Patibrata Dharma, Calcutta, 1870.
40. Chakravarty, Condition of Bengali Women, pp. 143–60.
836 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
41. Malavika Karlekar, Voices from Within: Early Personal Narratives of Bengali
Women, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991.
42. Anindita Ghosh, Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of
Language and Culture in a Colonial Society, Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2006.
43. Edwin and Shirley Ardener, ‘Belief and the Problem of Women’, and
S. Ardener, ‘Women, Culture and Society: A Theoretical Overview’, in
Women, Culture and Society, ed. M.Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1974.
44. Murmu, Words of their Own.
45. Dagmar Engels, Beyond the Purdah, p. 132.
46. Ibid., p. 140.
47. Ratnabali Chatterjee, ‘Prostitutes in Nineteenth Century Bengal: Cons­
truction of Class and Gender’, Social Scientist, vol. 2, no. 9/11, 1993,
pp. 159–72.
48. Sumanta Bannerjee, The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture
in Colonial Calcutta, Calcutta: Seagull, 1989.
49. Rimli Bhattacharya, ed. and tr., Binodini Dasi: My Story and My Life as
an Actress, Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998.
50. Tanika Sarkar, ‘Performing Power’, Rebels, Wives, Saints: Designing Selves
and Nations in Colonial Times, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2009.
51. Sumit Sarkar, Modern Times: India 1880s–1950s, Ranikhet: Permanent
Black, 2014, p. 379.
52. On the importance of threshing as a traditional household industry, see,
Mukul Mukherjee, ‘Impact of Modernisation on Women’s Occupations: A
Case-study of the Rice Husking Industry of Bengal’, in Women in Colonial
India: Essays on Survival, Work and the State, ed. J. Krishnamurty, Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1989.
53. See, chapter 1 in Murmu, Words of Her Own.
54. Utsa Ray, Culinary Culture in Colonial India: A Cosmopolitan Platter and
the Middle Class, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
55. Tanika Sarkar, ‘Bondage in the Colonial Context’, in Chains of Servitude:
Bondage and Slavery in India, ed. Utsa Patnaik and Manjari Dingwaney,
Madras: Sangam, 1985.
56. Swapna M. Banerjee, Men, Women, Doemstics: Articulating Middle Class
Identity in Colonial Bengal, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.
57. Samita Sen, ‘Gender and Class: Women in Indian Industry, 1890–1990’,
Modern Asian Studies, vol. 42, no. 1, 2008, pp. 75–116.
58. Sarkar, ‘Performing Power’.
59. Sen, ‘Gender and Class’.
60. J.D.M Derrett, Religion, Law and the State in India, London: Faber and
Faber, 1968.
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 837
61. Regulation XVII of 1829: The Bengal Code, 4 December, 1829. The
literature on sati is vast. See, in particular, V.N. Datta, Sati: A Historical,
Social and Philosophical Enquiry into the Hindu Rite of Widow Burning,
New Delhi: Manohar, 1988; Anand Yang, ‘Whose Sati? Widow Burning
in Early Nineteenth Century India’, Journal of Women’s History, vol. 1, no.
2, 1989, pp. 8–33; Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati
in Colonial India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998; Andrea
Major, Burning Women, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2006; Tanika Sarkar,
‘Something Like Rights? Faith, Law and Widow Immolation Debates in
Colonial Bengal’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 49, no. 3,
2012, pp. 295–320; Tanika Sarkar, ‘A Just Measure of Death? Hindu Ritual
and Colonial Law in the Sphere of Widow Immolations’, Comparative
Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 33, no. 2, 2013,
pp. 159–76; and Tanika Sarkar, ‘Holy Fire Eaters’, Rebels, Wives, Saints:
Designing Selves and Nations in Colonial Times, Ranikhet: Permanent
Black, 2009.
62. S.N. Mukherjee, ‘Raja Rammohun Roy and the Status of Women in
Nineteenth Century Bengal’, in Women in India and Nepal, ed. Michael
Allen and S.N. Mukherjee, Canberra: Australian National University,
1982.
63. Sarkar, ‘Holy Fire Eaters’.
64. ‘Cases Before the Nizamaut Adawlutt between the Years 1821 and 1824,
Arising out of Illegal Suttees’, 25 March 1830, Parliamentary Papers, House
of Commons, 1830. See also, Sarkar, ‘Something Like Rights?’.
65. H.T. Colebrooke, ‘On the Duties of the Faithful Hindoo Widow’, Asiatick
Researches, vol. IV, Calcutta, 1795, pp. 209–19.
66. Extract, Bengal Judicial Consultations, 7 February 1805, Parliamentary
Papers, House of Commons, 1823.
67. Parliamentary Papers, East Indian Affairs, House of Commons, 1830;
Proceedings of the Nizamutt Adawlutt.
68. Correspondence between European officials and Governor General
Lord William Bentinck, between 1828 and 1829, Bentinck Papers,
Box 2, MSS Eur 424.
69. Kalyani Dutta, Pinjare Bashia, Calcutta: Stree, 1996.
70. Lord William Bentinck’s Minute on Suttee, 8 November 1829, in
C. Phillips, ed., The Correspondence of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck,
1828–1831, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 354–5.
71. Rammohun Roy, ‘A Second Conference between an Advocate for, and
an Opponent of, the Practice of Burning Widows Alive’, in The English
Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, ed. Kalidas Nag and Debajyoti Burman,
Calcutta: Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, 1947.
838 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
72. Kashinath Tarkabagish, Bidhyak-Nishedhak Sambad, 1819; repr. in Ajit
Kumar Ghosh, ed., Rammohun Rachanabali, Calcutta: Haraf Prakashani,
1973.
73. Ibid.
74. Roy, ‘A Second Conference between an Advocate for, and an Opponent
of, the Practice of Burning Widows Alive’, in English Works of Raja
Rammohun Roy.
75. According to the census of 1891, Hindu widows under the age of ten
formed 6 per cent of the total population of married women (The Census
of India, Lower Provinces).
76. Shibnath Shastri, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangasamaj, Calcutta: New
Age, 1903, p 126. See also, Tanika Sarkar, ‘Wicked Widows: Law and Faith
in the Nineteenth Century Public Sphere Debates’, Rebels, Wives, Saints:
Designing Selves and Nations in Colonial Times, Ranikhet: Permanent
Black, 2009.
77. Bandyopadhyay, ‘Caste, Widow Remarriage and the Reform of Popular
Culture’, p. 181.
78. Ranajit Guha, ed., ‘Chandra’s Death’, in Subaltern Studies, vol. V, Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1987.
79. For shastric injunctions, see, Krishna Datta, ‘A Controversy over a Verse
on the Remarriage of Hindu Women’, in Faces of the Feminine in Ancient,
Medieval and Modern India, ed. Mandakranta Bose, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
80. Bhubaneshwar Mishra, Bidhaba Bibaha Samalochan, Calcutta, 1875,
p. 87.
81. Ishan Chandra Bidyabagish, Ekadashi Byabastha, Calcutta, 1868, p. 2.
82. Abstract of the letter from J.P. Grant, Officitating Secretary, Indian Law
Commission, to W.H. Macnaghten, Secretary, Government of India,
4 July 1937, Papers Relating to Act XV of 1856, pt. 1.
83. Act No. XV, July 1856: An Act to Remove All Legal Obstacles to Marriage
of Hindoo Widows, Record Office, India Acts, 1854–57.
84. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, ‘Balyabidhababibaha Prachalita Howa Uchit
Ki Na Etadbishayak Prastab’, 5th edn., 1872, in Vidyasagar Rachana
Samgraha, vol. 2, Calcutta: Vidyasagar Smarak Jatiya Samiti, 1972.
85. Tanika Sarkar, ‘Wicked Widows’.
86. Out of a total of 51 petitions sent to the Legislative Council, 23 supported
the bill, and 28 were opposed to it. The latter, however, had a far bulkier
list of signatories. Legislative Department, Government of India, Papers
Relating to Act XV of 1856, pt. 2.
87. See, for instance, Rajnarain Bose, Atmacharit, Calcutta: Kuntalin, 1909;
cited in Barid Baran Ghose, ed., Nirbachita Bangla Rachana Sangraha,
Calcutta: Dey Book Store, 1995, pp. 50–1.
 Sarkar: Changing Hindu Women 839
88. Shambhucharan Vidyaratna, Vidyasagar Jibancharit, Calcutta: Siddheswar
Press Depository, bs 1321; repr., 1992, pp. 42–3.
89. Bose, Atmacharit.
90. Gurucharan Mahalanobis, Atmacharit, Calcutta: Sadharan Brahmo Samaj
Press, n.d.
91. Lucy Carroll, ‘Law, Custom and Statutory Reform: The Hindu Widows’
Remarriage Act of 1856’, in Women in Colonial India: Essays on Survival,
Work and the State, ed. J. Krishnamurty, Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1989. Carroll assumes that customary rights were violated, but if we go by
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay’s findings, avoidance of remarriage, in practice,
had significantly waned among ‘low caste’ widows.
92. Sarkar, ‘Wicked Widows’.
93. Kerry Kolitani vs. Moneeram Kalita, XIII.I, in D.E. Cranenburgh,
ed., Digest of the Cases Reported in the Bengal Law Reports, Vols 1 to XV,
Calcutta: Law Publishing House, 1885, p. 374. See also, Matangini Debi
vs. Jaykali Deb, V, p. 466; or Bhagabati Dasi vs. Kanailal Mitter, VIII,
p. 225, among others.
94. Vidyasagar, ‘Balyabidhababibaha Prachalita Howa Uchit Ki Na’, p. 21.
95. Pervez Mody, ‘Love and the Law: Love Marriage in Delhi’, Modern Asian
Studies, vol. 36, no. 1, 2002, pp. 223–56; and Nandini Chatterjee, ‘English
Law, Brahmo Marriage and the Problem of Religious Difference: Civil
Marriage laws in Britain and India’, Comparative Studies in Society and
History, vol. 52, no. 3, 2010, pp. 10–52.
96. On this, see, Charles Heimsath, Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social
Reform, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977; Mrinalini Sinha,
Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate
Bengali’, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995; Tanika Sarkar,
‘Conjugality and Hindu Nationalism: Resisting Colonial Reason and
the Death of a Child Wife’, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community,
Religion and Cultural Nationalism, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001; Tanika
Sarkar, ‘Enfranchised Selves: Women, Culture and Rights’, Gender and
History, vol. 13, no. 3, 2001, pp. 546–65; Ishita Pande, Medicine, Race and
Liberalism in British Bengal: Symptoms of Empire, London and New York:
Routledge, 2010; and Ishita Pande, ‘Coming of Age: Law, Sex and Childhood
in Late Colonial Bengal’, Gender and History, 26 March, 2010, pp. 272–96.
97. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, ‘Balyabibaher Dosh’, in Vidyasagar
Rachanabali, ed. Ishwar Chandra Sharma, vol. 2, repr., Calcutta: Sahityam,
2006.
98. Chandra Nath Basu, Hindutva: Hindur Prakrita Itihas, Calcutta: Calcutta
University Press, 1892, pp. 210–11.
99. Proceedings File nos. 105–6, File J C/172, Government of Bengal, Judicial
Department, June 1893.
840 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
100. Lansdowne Papers, Home Confidential, 1890, Correspondence with
Persons in England, Letter No. 52, Reay, 25 August 1890.
101. For evidence by doctors, husband Hari Maiti, and Phulmonee’s mother,
grandmother, and aunt, see Government of Bengal, Judicial Department,
File J C/17 1, Progs. 96–102, 1890; Case of Empress vs. Hari Maiti,
Nos. 101–2, File J C/17 5.
102. Government of Bengal, Report of the Age of Consent Committee, 1928–29,
Calcutta: Government of India Press, 1929, pp. 65–6.
103. Bangabashi, Calcutta, 28 March 1891.
104. Judicial Department File J 7A/2 75, No. 200, Empress vs Hari Maiti.
105. File J 7A/285, nos. 207–8; from Alfred Croft, Director, Public Instructions,
Bengal, to Chief Secretary, Government of Bengal, Calcutta, dated
24 February 1891, Government of Bengal, Judicial Department, 1893.
106. Ibid.
 22

Some Aspects of Popular Culture

in Colonial Bengal

Sumanta Banerjee

Introduction

T
he bengali popular psyche went through a tortuous
odyssey during the eighteenth–nineteenth century period—
from the early years of a painful submission to the colonial
rule and its new administrative measures, to the last decades of the
nineteenth century when an assertive nationalism began to challenge
that rule. Historical research has mainly concentrated on the role of
the upper and middle class Bengali educated gentry in presiding over
that transition in the political field. But there was a parallel current
of dissent which flowed out from the underbelly of Bengali society.
It was a current where twin streams met: first, the poetry and folk
songs composed by the rural poor and ‘raiyat’s or tenants in the
villages, who were affected by the changes in the agrarian system,
and second, a new genre of urban popular culture created in the
colonial fledgling city of Calcutta, by a generation of poor migrants
from rural Bengal and their descendants. They threw up an exciting
cornucopia of street songs and plays (called `jatra’s), and a literature
of protestors and farce-writers published by the newly established
cheap printing presses in the Battala area of north Calcutta. The
nineteenth century was also a period when the Bengali populace
had to contend with tensions between their old regional identity and
the newly emerging pan-Indian nationalist identity. The latter was
often shaped by the Bengali Hindu upper caste gentry through the
842 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

revival of Hindu religious myths and practices, and re-inforcement of

an anti-Muslim bias in historical narratives. Both these trends were
imported by these Bengali gentry from the north Indian heartland,
eulogized in Hindu scriptures as ‘Aryavarta’, (the kingdom of the
Aryans), in order to identify themselves with what they conceived
as a superior race.1
Such efforts by the Bengali higher caste and upper class gentry
for upward mobility in the socio-religious ladder of pan-Aryan
Indian nationalism, threatened to fracture the indigenous Bengali
linguistic cultural identity (which was cemented to a large extent by
a rural tradition of syncretistic religious beliefs and practices, and
local festivities which drew both Muslims and Hindus). How did the
rural poor—and later in Calcutta, the Bengali migrant labourers—
cope with these tensions between their traditional culture and the
new challenges they faced in a colonized environment? They found
avenues of comic relief (by lampooning both the foreign British
rulers and the indigenous Bengali upper class), as well as protest (by
breaking out in songs, and lending their voices to the authors of the
cheap booklets of the Battala Press). These records of their literary
output and musical performances constitute what we today describe
as ‘popular culture’.

The Contested Terrain of ‘Popular Culture’

But before entering this domain of the past, it is necessary to have
a clear understanding of what we mean by ‘popular culture’. It is
often used loosely in academic and journalistic discourse. There
are multiple competing definitions of ‘popular culture’. There is a
tendency among certain sections in the academia to expand this
nomenclature to include commercially produced films, TV soap
operas, and advertisements among other similar media channels.
Their argument is that since they are watched by large sections of the
masses, they should be considered ‘popular’.2 But this over-simplified
definition of the term has been challenged by other sections in the
academia. They have come out with an alternative concept which
harks back to the origins of ‘popular culture’, that derive from ancient
rural folk traditions. They also include in this nomenclature, the new
cultural forms invented by the urban poor in the cities that came
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 843

up in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. They lay stress on the

subaltern origins of ‘popular culture’—a culture created by the rural
poor and the urban proletariat themselves, unlike the mass media
promoted culture created by business houses.3
This is where the difference lies between a ‘popular culture’
created by the people themselves to satisfy their cultural needs, and a
‘popular culture’ invented by outsider commercial interests to satisfy
their financial needs, through the technological mass media. To recall
the old definition of democracy, ‘popular culture’ can be described as
a culture ‘by the people, of the people and for the people’.
Bengali popular culture in the colonial period represented this
spirit of what we call democracy today. It was a confluence of both
the traditional rural folk culture and the newly emerging urban folk
media. But at the same time, we should not glamourize the popular
culture that manifested itself in various forms in both the country-
side and Calcutta during those years. There was a flip side to it. Some
of these subaltern poets, singers, writers representing this genre,
often stuck to the conservative socio-religious values and norms with
which they grew up in the precolonial social environment. Thus, in
some of their compositions we find them opposing social reforms
(that were being introduced by the Western-educated Bengali elite)
like widow-remarriage, education for women among other changes,
that threatened the traditional status-quo in rural society.
In order to do justice to their cultural output, social historians of
today should try to put themselves in the shoes (the deshi chappals)
of these folk poets, or even go back under their bare feet, to share
the experiences of the surroundings in which these rural and urban
folk poets composed those rhymes and songs.

Historical Background of Popular Culture

in Rural Bengal: Dissent, Protest,
and Ambivalence
Bengal went through a dramatic change during the years of the
eighteenth century, with the increasing domination of the British
East India Company over its commerce and administration. The
devious methods of the Company’s agents in consolidating power,
and the rise of rich Bengali banians (brokers to the British traders)
844 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

and dewans (intermediaries in judicial and revenue administration)

through collaboration with these corrupt British agents, formed the
staple of popular poetry and folk ballads. One such poem describes
the adventures of Warren Hastings and his accomplice, Kanto Babu.
Composed by a contemporary folk poet from Krishna nagar named
Krishnakanta Bhaduri, it is a comic account of their relationship
against the backdrop of a major historical event. Hastings had been
working since 1752 as a clerk of the East India Company’s office in
Kashimbazar, a trading centre near Murshidabad, the capital of the
then Sultanate ruled Bengal. He picked up friendship with a local
trader called Ramakan to Nundy who ran a grocery in the town and
was known as ‘Kanto Mudi’ (mudi in Bengali meaning as mallshop-
keeper). Their underhand dealings however came under the scanner
of the then Nawab of Bengal Siraj-ud-dowllah, who irritated by
allegations of misdemeanor by the Company’s agents, attacked its
office in Kashimbazar on 3 June 1756, and took prisoner Hastings
and other British employees. Legend has it that Hastings managed
to escape and took shelter in the house of Kanto Mudi. The event is
described in the following verses by Krishnakanta Bhaduri:
Hastings Sir aj bhoye hoye maha bheeta  .  .  .  . /Konsthanegiyaaajloiboasray/
Hastingser moneeinidarunbhoy/Kanto Mudichhilotarpoorbeporichito
/Taharidokaneygiyahonupaneeta/Nababerbhoye Kantonijerbhabaney/
Sahebkerekhedeyeparomgoponey/Sirajerloktar korilosandhan/Dekhitenapeye-
sheshekoriloprosthan.
(Hastings, greatly alarmed by Siraj  .  .  .  wondered where to take shelter. He
knew Kanto Modi, and went to his shop. Kanto was himself scared of the
Nawab. But he hid the white man in extreme secrecy. When Siraj’s troops
came in search of him, they failed to find him and left.)
The poet then describes Kanto’s dilemma—how to feed Hastings
and save his life? Finally, he found:
Ghare chhilo pantabhaat aar chingrimachh/Kanchalanka, bori-pora, kachhey-
kalagaach
(There was some boiled rice kept in cold water from the previous day, some
shrimps, green chillies, fried balls of pasted pulses, and bananas from the
nearby trees)
Krishnakanta then mocks at the plight of Hastings:
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 845

Surjyodoy holo aajipashchimgagone/Hastings dinner khan Kantor bhabone.4

(Has the sun risen today in the west? Hastings is having dinner at Kanto’s
house!)

Krishnakanta followed up this comic narration of a contemporary

event with another similar poem a few years later—lampooning the
alliance between the British rulers and their Bengali collaborators.
In 1772, Warren Hastings became the governor general of Bengal,
and was prompt in rewarding Kanto Mudi for saving his life. As the
old Bengali feudal vassals of the Sultanate were forced to quit their
zamindaries (landed estates) under the new colonial regime, Hastings
offered Kanto Mudi the estate of Kashimbazar—where Kanto in the
past had been a small-time trader. He soon turned himself into a
Raja—the founder of the Kashimbazar Raj family. In this upward
mobility of his, he was helped by Hastings. Hastings attacked Benaras
in 1781 (after its Raja Chait Singh refused to pay him the exorbitant
levy imposed on him) and seized his property. Parts of this property
found their way into the mansion of the newly promoted Raja of
Kashimbazar. This is how Krishnakanta described it:
Maharaj Chet Singh Kashidhamey chhilo, Hastings-er shone tar bibad ghotilo/
Majhthekey Kanto Babul utey maja nilo, mahamulyadhano-ratna ghare niye
elo/Rajar Thakur aar sundar dalan, niye eshey boshaye chhey koriya apon.5
(Maharaj Chait Singh was in Benaras. There was a tiff between him and
Hastings. Kanto Babu took advantage of it and made a fortune. He brought
home precious riches and wealth-carrying away the images of the Raja’s
family divinities and the beautiful edifice of his building, establishing them
as their own.)

The Battle of Palashi in 1757 and

its Aftermath
The decisive factor that changed the fortunes of both Hastings and
Kanto Babu was the battle of Palashi (described by English historians
as Plassey) in 1757, which ended with the defeat of Nawab Siraj-ud-
dowlah by the forces of the British East India Company, and their
eventual taking over of the administration. How did Bengali rural
society respond to this event? There is a contemporary folk—song
which mournfully expresses mixed feelings, treading cautiously a
846 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

political arena which they considered grey, not sure whom to support
in the conflict between their erstwhile rulers and the colonial invaders
who were aspiring to be the new rulers. The song describes Siraj’s
defeat in Palashi:

Kiholoreyjaan,/Palashimaidane Nababharaloparan/Teerporeyjhankejhanke,
guliporeyroye/Ekla Meermadanbalokatonebeshoye?.  .  .  . Kiholoreyjaan/
Palashimaidaneurey Company’rnishan/Mirjafarerdagabaji Nababbujhlomone/
Sainyasametmaragelo Palashimaidane.6
(Alas my soul! The Nawab lost his life in the fields of Palashi. Arrows were
shot in thousands, but the bullets were shot at intervals. How long can
you expect Mirmadan alone to fight?.  .  .  . Alas my soul! The East India
Company’s flag is now flying in the fields of Palashi. The Nawab realized
too late Mirzaffar’s treachery. He lost out with his soldiers in the fields of
Palashi).

The verses reflect the popular perception of an unequal fight

between the arrows of the Nawab’s forces and the bullets of the British
troops. Although Siraj’s soldiers also used cannons and rifles, the
village bard who composed the song, still followed the traditional
narrative style of describing battles in terms of exchange of one set
of bows and arrows with another. But at the same time, the bard
reveals his awareness of the surrounding new political reality when
he talks about Mirmadan, who was the commander of Siraj’s troops,
and Mirzaffar who betrayed Siraj. His attitude towards the Nawab-
Siraj-ud-dowlah—is however tinged with some ambivalence and
reservation. Towards the end, he says:
Nabab bari sohda chhilo, aar lampotey
(The Nawab was very fond of good things, and a letch also.)7

A similar mood of ambivalence and shifting attitudes is evident

from the contemporary folk poems that were composed in the
post-Palashi scenario, around the rise and fall of another eighteenth
century Bengali grandee, Maharaja Nandakumar (1704–75). Nanda-
kumar was once appointed a dewan by Nawab Siraj-ud-dowllah of
Bengal, but after Palashi, he shifted his loyalty to Robert Clive (who
defeated Siraj) who employed him as his clerk. He later became
collector of Nadia and Hooghly districts of Bengal. But he fell foul
of Warren Hastings, when he accused him of taking bribe from
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 847

him (Nandakumar) to procure a job for his son Gurudas Ray. An

infuriated Hastings brought a charge of forgery against Nandakumar,
and the then Supreme Court judge Elijah Impey (a friend of Hastings’)
in 1775 sentenced Nandakumar to be hanged.8
The entire episode—beginning from Nandakumar’s rise under
the blessings of Clive and his end due to his enmity with Hastings-
was watched with both humour and sorrow by the folk poets of the
period. During his heyday, Nandakumar (whose ancestral home
was Bhadrapur, known as Bhadur in Birbhum) invited one hundred
thousand Brahmins to a grand feast at his house to fulfill some
religious obligation. An anonymous folk poet, in the following verse,
ridiculed the scramble among the gluttonous Brahmins and how the
less fortunate among them were shown the door by Nandakumar’s
musket-wielding guards:
Bhadurer Nandakumar laksha Brahmaner kolley sumar/Keu khele machher
muro, keu khele bonduker huro.9
(Nandakumar of Bhadur selected one lakh Brahmins. Some were treated to
the delicacy of curry topped with fish-heads, while others faced the thrust
of the musket-butt.)

But the popular mood in Bengal changed when Nandakumar

was hanged in 1775. There was a sense of shock followed by waves of
sympathy for a person who, the people felt, was a victim of injustice.
The judicial system of the colonial administrators in particular—
which was perceived as discriminatory—was the main target of attack
in the popular songs and verses. Nandakumar’s Brahmin antecedents
also played an important role in swaying popular mood in his favour
when he was hanged. The earlier tendency to ridicule Nandakumar’s
lavish feast for the one lakh Brahmins during his days of power and
prosperity, was replaced by a mood of defending his credentials as a
pious Brahmin who was now being victimized by the foreign rulers.
The following verses by an anonymous contemporary poet reflects
the changed mood:

Banglaegaroshoto birashirshaley, ekushe Sraban Sanibarshakale/Brahmona-

shhoyegelo Alipurermathe, Hasting-serhritkampohotojardapote/Lokaranye-
mathghatlagilokanditey, phanhsihobeshuneloklagilochhutitey/Laksha
Brahmonerpadadhulije niloshirey, eiporinamtarlok chintakore/Loghupape-
gurudandahoiloihar, kejane Hastings-Impey’rkemonbichar.”10
848 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

(In the Bengali year of 1182, on the Saturday of 21st day of the month of
Sraban, in the grounds of Alipura Brahmin was killed, whose power and
authority made Hastings tremble. The fields and roads were filled with
people who rushed to watch the hanging. They wondered how this could
be the fate of one who once enjoyed the blessings of 100,000 Brahmins. He
received a severe punishment for a minor offence. What sort of justice has
been meted out by Hastings and Impey?)
The verses recapture the feelings of the people who gathered
to watch the hanging of Nandakumar in the grounds of Alipur
in Calcutta, where the gallows were setup. They elevated him to the
status of a martyr. The story of his feeding of 100,000 Brahmins—
the same event which provoked popular raillery some years ago—
was now being invoked in admiration to prove the piety of a man
who was perceived to be unjustly punished by a foreign colonial
power.
This reconstruction of Nandakumar’s image in the popular
psyche, as an expression of protest against colonial rule, was to be a
model for similar revival and renovation of past historical events and
characters, all through the nineteenth century—by both the Bengali
folk-poets and the middle class nationalist writers, in the irrespective
areas of protest and self-assertion.11

Folk Poets and Peasant Unrest

Folk poets of that period did not confine their attention only to
the high profile characters like Siraj, Nandakumar or Hastings.
There is a vast repertoire of songs, ballads and poems which were
of a descriptive nature listing the woes of the people caused by the
depredations of the East India Company, which had taken over
Bengal’s administration after its victory in Palashi.
During the later years of the eighteenth century, the Company’s
officials introduced a ruthless system of collection of revenue from
Bengali farmers, through Indian agents appointed by Warren Hastings
(the most notorious among them being Reza Khan). This affected
most of the poor farmers and agricultural labourers. Their plight was
aggravated by a severe drought that hit agricultural production in
the late 1760s. The confluence of these two developments—the newly
introduced colonial system of revenue collection and the natural
disaster, resulted in a widespread famine in Bengal in 1769–70, which
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 849

wiped out about one-third of its population. It was commemorated

as a symbol of mourning by later Bengali historians and litterateurs
(including Bankim Chattopadhyay) as ‘Chhiattarer Manwantar’—
meaning the famine of 1276 (according to the Bengali calendar,
corresponding to 1769). A folk poem describes the plight of the rural
people in those times:

Nada-nadikhal-bilsabshukailo, annabhabeloksab jomaloyegelo/Desher

somostochalkinia bajare, deshchharkharholo Reja Khan-ertore/Ekcheteybyabo-
sayedamkharatoro, chhiattorermanwantarholo bhaonkar/Pati-patniputrach-
harepeterlagiye, moreylokanahare, akhhad yakhaiye12
(The rivers and canals dried up; hunger drove people to Hell. Because of Reza
Khan, the country was ruined, with all its rice bought up by the commercial
agents. The monopoly business (over rice) caused a hike in prices, and the
result was the terrible famine of 1276. In search of food, parents abandoned
their children, people died eating inedible stuff.)

Here in a few simple words, the anonymous poet hit the nail on
the head by explaining the causes for the disaster. Ironically enough,
after more than two hundred years since that poem was composed,
the rural poor in Indian villages still continue to undergo the same
plight as described above.
But apart from the continued relevance of such poems in today’s
circumstances, what is important for our present discourse is an
examination of the tradition of Bengali folk culture, and its role in
reflecting the popular perceptions of the complexities of contemporary
events through its poets, singers, actors, and performers among
others, during the nineteenth-early twentieth century period when
Bengali society went through a political turmoil.

Peasant Rebels in Bengali Popular Culture:

Titu Meer and His Followers
The economic distress (described earlier) led to the outbreak of
peasant rebellions in different parts of Bengal at frequent intervals all
through the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Popular responses to
these events in contemporary songs, ballads, and poems range from
sympathy to hostility. For instance, the armed uprising of peasants
under the leadership of the Titumeer in south 24-Parganas, Nadia
and Jessore in 1831, evoked such mixed responses from folk poets.
850 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The nature of the rebellion itself was fraught with a variety of complex
impulses-Titumeer’s opposition to the exploitative British indigo
planters and the Bengali feudal zemindars (which earned him support
from the down trodden rural poor of both the Hindu and Muslim
communities), as well as his determination to restore orthodox
Islamic norms (derived from the contemporary Wahabi ideology of
the Arab world) which often antagonized not only Hindus but also
Bengali Muslims who had been used to a liberal and syncretistic
lifestyle, influenced by a Sufi tradition.
A ballad composed by Titumeer’s comrade-in-arms, Sajan, has
come down to us through oral recitations over successive years in
the south 24-Parganas area. They were recorded in a manuscript by
one such performer called Sahar Ali Mandal, in the early twentieth
century. The manuscript, as found, is however incomplete. But
one can build up the sequence of the events and the battles fought
between Titumeer’s followers on the one hand, and the sepoys of the
East India Company, and the Hindu zemindars who supported them
on the other. According to the narrator, the conflict started with the
decision of a Hindu zemindar, Krishnadeb Ray, to impose a tax of
Rs.2.50 on every Muslim for sporting beard:
Nabujhejey Keshtodeb (Krishnadeb) koirlobahana  .  .  .  / Phidariaraitak-
ajorimanahoy/Sheijonyo Shara-oalabarokhapahoy.13
(Without understanding the situation, Krishnadeb made an importunate
demand.  .  .  . He imposed a fine of Rs.2.50 on every beard. Because of this,
the followers of Shariat—‘Shara-oalas’ became infuriated).
In retaliation, the Muslim ‘Shara-oalas’ caught hold of the Brahmins
and shaved their heads and forced them to grow beard. The wife
of one such Brahmin taunted her husband, and blamed the Hindu
zemindar for creating the trouble:
Namajporeydibarati/Kitomarkorilokheti?/Kenokolleydarirjoripana?14
(They—Muslims—say their prayers every day and night. What harm have
they done to you ? Why do you have to impose a fine on their beard?)

To continue with Sajan’s narrative, a Hindu zemindar Kali Babu

(later identified as Kaliprasanna Mukhopadhya of Gobardanga)
paid the local British magistrate Alexander Rs.1,000, and thus
arranged for the deployment of the East India Company’s troops
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 851

against Titumeer. Sajan describes a fierce battle between Titumeer’s

followers and the Company’s sepoys. Interestingly, his narrative
mentions also some Muslims who earned the wrath of Titumeer’s
followers-Jamaat Ali Jamadar (a head constable), and Hanif Dafadar
(an officer in-charge of ‘chowkidars’), who apparently joined the
Company’s sepoys, and were therefore beaten up.
Sahar Ali Mandal’s manuscript, being incomplete and imperfect,
cannot provide us with a record of the rest of the story. But official
documents and contemporary songs and narratives confirm that
Titu and his followers fought their last heroic battle from within a
bamboo fortress in a village called Narikelbaria, and were finally
overwhelmed by the militarily superior forces of the British.15 But
however incomplete it might be, the manuscript can be taken as an
authentic record of the popular mood, since the poet Sajan himself
was a participant in Titumeer’s movement and the insurrection that he
led. Introducing himself in the course of the narrative, Sajan informs
us that during one of the battle she was captured, and sentenced to a
sevenyear term in prison, where he composed his verse-narrative.16
Following Titumeer’s defeat, new types of songs cropped up
among the rural folks. One such song (attributed to an anonymous
composer) which gained currency ran as follows:
Jolaniuthiyaboleyuthreyjolajhat/Hajombarigiyasheeghragomphdaarikat  .  .  .  /
Titumeerergaldhorey Nasaroddikoy/ Tomarbuddhitemamutheklamebardaye/
Eshecheyrangagora, urdipora, byatertopormathaye/Erachharcheyguli,
bhangchheykhuli, Hajratgulimanlena/Sarley Engrajeymamu! Ebaraar-
janeyrakhlena.
(The wife of the ‘jola’—a Muslim weaver—wakes up the husband and asks
him to rush to the barber, and get his moustache and beard shaved off.  .  .  .
Meanwhile, Nasoroddi weeps on Titumeer’s shoulders and complains—
‘because of Your advice, dear uncle, we are in this scrape. The white men
have come, dressed in military uniform, with straw hats on their heads.
They are firing bullets, smashing heads, and defying our Hajrat’s bullets. The
English are finishing us off, dear uncle! They won’t leave us alive this time’)

The composer—probably a Hindu, ora Muslim who was

disillusioned with Titumir’s project—seems to enjoy a sense of
schadenfreude. There is the funny description of the Muslim ‘jola’
tailor (incidentally, the ‘jolas’ happened to belong to the lower castes,
and along with their comrades among the Hindu lower castes and
852 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

other sections of the Bengali rural poor, joined Titu’s insurrection),

who is being forced to shave off his beard and moustache to escape
identification with Titumeer’s followers. The composer also seems
to get a kick-out from the humiliation suffered by Nasoroddi
(Nasiruddin, who was Titumeer’s nephew, and fought along with him,
to be captured and executed by the British with more than hundred
followers of his). Several such folk-narratives and songs came up,
deriding Titumeer after his defeat. 18
How can one explain the motivations of folk poets who at one
stage sang in praise of Titumeer, and then some among them shifted
to the other pole? Looking back, we can hazard several guesses.
First, the age old rule of ‘nothing succeeds like success’ could have
motivated Titumeer’s earlier followers to change overnight into
his detractors, out of fear of persecution by the administrators.
Committed participants in the insurrection, like Sajan who remained
loyal to Titumeer, were few and far between. Second, it is also possible
that due to the ruthless suppression of Titumeer’s followers, songs
in his favour were forced to retreat into oblivion (barring a few like
Sajan’s), and the anti-Titumeer songs thrived under the patronage
of the triumphant feudal gentry and the colonial administration.
Third, we should also remember the religious fanatical streak in
Titumeer’s ideology—his imposition of orthodox Islamic norms
(borrowed from Arabian-Wahabi sources) on both Bengali Muslims
and Hindus. This could have introduced divisive elements into what
was initially an uprising of the rural downtrodden. These people,
irrespective of the irreligious beliefs, rose up in revolt against the
oppression of the Bengali feudal gentry, the English indigo planters,
and the English officials who supported them. But the intrusion of
the Wahabi religious message fragmented the consolidation of the
Bengali peasantry.

The Messiainic Character of

Peasants’ Uprisings
It is important to note this religious component of the strategy that
Titumeer adopted in his war against the British colonial commercial
powers, as well as the Hindu feudal zamindari interests. Similar
trends were to appear repeatedly in the anti-colonial and anti-feudal
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 853

peasants’ uprisings that were to follow. During the period between

1830 and 1850, in the countryside of Bengal, leaders of the major
peasants’ rebellions needed some traditional icons (which recalled
their ancestors), in order to rally the peasant masses, reinvigorating
the history of their past militancy and reassuring them of victory at
the end. They sought ideological moorings in some sort of Messianic
or revivalist religious or ethnic traditions, like the Feraizi rebellion
in Faridpur during 1838–48 (which sought inspiration from Islamic
history), the tribal insurgencies of the Garos in Mymensingh in
1837 and 1848, of the Kukis in Tripurain 1844, and the more famous
Santhal rebellion of 1855–7.19 Revival of sentiments based purely on
religious or ethnic loyalties, was no doubt successful in rallying the
respective communities against the new manifestations of economic
and social oppression under a colonial administration—the rack-
renting habits of the Hindu zamindars (appointed by the East India
Company to collect rents), the brutal oppression by the British
indigo-planter and their Hindu agents, the exploitation of the tribal
population by the Hindu money-lenders. In such a situation, the
Bengali Hindu upper classes were quite often targeted by the rural
poor (the majority of whom belonging to Muslim, downtrodden
castes, and tribal communities), who hated them as collaborators
with the foreign oppressive rulers.
This historical fact however does not eschew the incidence of
other peasants’ rebellions that exploded in Bengal during the same
period, and later also, that displayed united political actions by both
Hindu and Muslim peasants, and created a new genre of popular
culture.

Popular Songs around the

‘Indigo Rebellion’
During 1859–61, large parts of the Bengali countryside were swept
by what came to be known as ‘Neel Bidroha’ or ‘Indigo Rebellion’.
Peasants opposed the cultivation of the commercial crop indigo, that
was forced upon them by British planters who derived profit from it,
but left the cultivators deprived of their share. They rose in rebellion,
and significantly enough, they were supported by a section of Bengali
intellectuals. Prominent among them was Harish Mukherjee (1824–61),
854 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

editor of the Hindoo Patriot. His articles exposing the oppression of

the British indigo planters, and praising the courage of the peasant
rebels, drew the ire of the colonial administration which persecuted
him endlessly, driving him to death. The other Bengali who came out
in support of the rebellion was the famous playwright Dinabandhu
Mitra (1830–73), whose play ‘Neeldarpan’ created a stir in Bengali
society in those days. The support was not confined to Bengali writers
only. It also came from an unexpected corner—the corridors of the
English church in Bengal. Reverend James Long (1814–87) who
was an English Christian missionary in Calcutta and learnt Bengali,
translated ‘Neeldarpan’ into English in 1861, with an introduction
that assailed the English indigo planters for their oppression
over the Bengali peasants. The indigo planters slapped a case on
him for defamation, and the court imposed a fine of Rs.1,000 on
him, and sentenced him to prison. Quick to support him was
another young Bengali intellectual, Kaliprasanna Sinha (1840–70),
who immediately paid the amount in the court, to help get Long
released.
This interesting assemblage of a peasant rebellion in rural Bengal,
and its supporters from among the urban Bengali intelligentsia in
Calcutta—to be joined by an English Christian missionary at that—
threw up a fascinating repertoire of Bengali popular songs. One
such song, celebrating Mukherjee and Long, travelled from village
to village:

Neelb andorey sonar Bangla korley ebar chharkar/ Ashomoye Harish molo,
Longer holo karagar/ Prajar aar praan banchano bhaar.20
(The indigo-planter monkeys have laid waste golden Bengal. Harish died
an untimely death. Long has been sentenced to prison. How can the people
save themselves now?)

We come across another folk-ballad which records the mood

of the peasant cultivators who suffered at the hands of the English
indigo planters. In August 1860, faced by wide-spread allegations of
atrocities by the planters, the then Lieutenant Governor of Bengal,
Sir J.P. Grant visited the affected villages. He travelled by a steamer
along the river, on both sides of which thousands of peasants gathered
to demonstrate their protest and submit their grievances to the British
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 855

official. The ballad begins by narrating the woes of the cultivators at

the hands of a notorious indigo planter called Kenny:

Shunokuthalersamachar, Kalidaheykuthijar/Kanisaheb  .  .  .  Sheyau-
sherjomiteyboneyneel/Shabrayeterholomushkil/Shabrayetermon-yabistar/
Diletepaiyabyatha, Kolikata.
(Listen to the story of the white factory-owner Kenny in the village
Kalidaha.  .  .  . He makes people sow indigo in the paddy fields in autumn. All
the cultivators facing problems because of this, felt hurt and complained
to Calcutta.  .  .  .)

Calcutta was then the headquarters of the British government.

So, according to the next part of the narrative:

Latsahibholobyasto/Banglate pathalo Garnal

(The Governor became anxious, and sent ‘Garnal’ to Bengal).

The term ‘Garnal’ could be the Bengalized pronunciation of

the English term ‘Governor-General.’ The Bengali balladeer, started
with the first alphabet G, and then jumped over to ‘r’ and ‘neral’, to
abbreviate the term, and describe Lieutenant Governor J.P. Grant
as ‘Garnal,’—with his surname echoing the Bengali sound ‘ga.’ The
verses following that, describe the arrival of Grant in the villages:

Garnalelo Banglaporey/dhoomakaleynoukacholey/Bolbokisheynoukas-
hajerkatha/Tarduipasheyduichakaghorey/Chaleykebolagunjorey/.  .  .  .
(The Lieutenant Governor came to Bengal in a boat driven by a steam
engine. How can I describe that boat? There are two wheels which revolve
on both sides. It can be driven only by fire  .  .  .).

Following his arrival, according to the ballad:

Dohaidharmabatar, tumikarosubichar/Jhampdiloshab Icchamatijaley.21
(We appeal to you, your Honour, do full justice to us! And then they jumped
into the waters of the river Ichhamati.)

This ballad reveals another aspect of the peasant psyche. The

might and infallibility of the supreme authority (‘dharmabatar’)—
represented by the Governor General and the Lieutenant General—
856 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

were reinforced in the rural mind by the awesome spectacle of

the steam engine driven steamer. This could have dissuaded some
of the leaders of the ‘Indigo Rebellion’ (who were mainly tenant
cultivators) from entering into an open-armed confrontation with
the colonial rulers, and opt instead for negotiations with an appeal
to the ‘dharmavatar.’
But at the same time we find another contemporary song which
was popular during the ‘Indigo Rebellion’, that describes how the
peasants drove away the club-wielding goons of a British indigo-
planter of Mollahati in east Bengal:

Mollahatirlambalathi/Roiloshabhudoranthi/Kolkatarbabubheyeeloshab-
bajrachepe/Laraidekhbebole.22
(All the long clubs wielded by the Mollahati indigo planter were reduced
to a bundle of faggots. The ‘babu’s came clubs wielded by Mollahati indigo-
planter were reduced to a bundle of faggots. The ‘babus’ came from Calcutta
in pleasure boats to watch our battle).

The last lines about the Bengali ‘babus’, reveal another strand of the
rural psyche. The folk-poets, in their attitude towards contemporary
Bengali ‘bhadralok’ society, made a distinction between those who
actively supported them (as reflected in their songs about Harish
Mukherjee), and those who merely watched the peasant rebellions
from a safe distance. For instance,when in 1783, in Rangpur in
east Bengal, peasants rose in revolt against the notorious landlord
Devi Singh, a contemporary Bengali folk poet Ratiram Das, while
describing the event, took a snipe at the Bengali bhadraloks:

Charibhitihoiteyailo Rangpurerpraja/Bhadroguloailo keboldekhibaremaja.23

(From all the four corners came the peasants of Rangpur. But the
‘bhadralogs’ came only to watch the fun).

Continuity of Traditional Folk Culture

in Colonial Bengal
Parallel to the stream of new ballads, songs and poems that directly
flowed from the peasants’ rebellions during the colonial rule, there
ran the traditional stream of folk songs and festivities that remained
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 857

an important component of the cultural milieu of Bengali rural

society of that period. In this particular repertoire, we can discover
a host of songs, rituals, poetry, verse-plays which follow a tradition
of Bengali folk culture that had developed during hundreds of years
(preceding British colonial intervention).
This cultural repertoire emerged from social and occupational
customs of the labouring classes, as well as through popular religious
beliefs and practices. It comprised songs like the ‘Bhatiali’ (sung by
both Muslim and Hindu boatmen along the rivers of the eastern
part of Bengal); ‘Bhadu’ and ‘Tushu’ (associated with sowing and
harvesting rituals by the cultivators in the western part of Bengal);
‘Gambhira’ (similar seasonal songs and performances popular in
northern Bengal). Apart from these occupation-based songs, there
were folk-songs which recalled religious themes, or romantic tales
based on such themes. We thus come across ‘kirtans’, (celebrating
the pastoral romance of Krishna and Radha); ‘Gajir Gan’ (praising
Muslim warriors); ‘Peer Kabya’ (ballads in praise of Muslim saints).
An interesting feature of Bengali rural culture of this period was
the domestication of deities, or religious occasions, into a Bengali
mould. In the ‘kirtans’ celebrating god Krishna for instance, the
Vrindavan that they described exudes the strong smell of mangoes
and jackfruit so typical of a Bengali village; the river Jamuna becomes
the local rivulet; and Krishna is turned into a cow-herd who seduces
the milk-maid Radha, by playing on his flute. Similarly, when the
rural Bengali Muslims observed Muharrum, they invented their
own Bengali folk form—the ‘Jari’ songs and dances—to narrate the
tragedy at Karbala.
There was another parallel stream of songs composed by
numerous syncretistic cults like the Bauls, Murshidas, Sahebdhanis,
Balaramis, and similar other sects that proliferated in Bengal during
the eighteenth-nineteenth century period.24 Unlike the folk songs
composed by those inspired by their respective religious beliefs, the
songs of these various syncretistic groups demonstrate two important
signs of departure from the traditional norm: (i) crossing the religious
and caste boundaries; and (ii) trenchant criticism of orthodox socio-
religious beliefs and norms of behavior in both Hindu and Muslim
societies. The most outspoken representative of this trend was Lalan
Shah (1772–1889), who true to the Baul tradition, refused to reveal
858 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

the religion of his parents, giving rise to speculations and legends that
haunted him all through his life—that spanned more than a century!
In one of his songs, he expressed his dilemma in humorous common
sense terms, using the term ‘jaat’ (usually used for caste, but also for
differentiating Hindus and Muslims):

Shablokeykoy, Lalankijaatsangsarey?/Lalanboley, jaterkiroop, dekhlam-

naeinajorey.  .  .  . / Chhunatdileyhoy Musalman/Narirtobeykihoybidhan?/
Bamunchinipoite-ypraman/Bamnichinikiprokarey?25
(Everyone asks—what is Lalan’s religion? Lalan says—I haven’t yet been
able to understand the face of religion.  .  .  . If you make out a Muslim male
from the sign of his circumcision, how will you identify a Muslim woman?
I can know a Brahmin male by his sacred thread, but how can I make out
a Brahmin woman ?)

In such Baul songs, there was a strong streak of hostility towards

the established religious orthodox clergy—both Hindu and Muslim.
Thus, Madan (a late nineteenth century Baul singer), in one of his
songs, complained that this road to reach God was being blocked by
temples and mosques, and their masters and teachers.26
A sense of anguish at the disruption of the traditional bonds
that united Hindus and Muslims in their socio-cultural existence,
permeates the songs of these folk poets of late nineteenth century
Bengal. One of them known as Pagla Kanai (1809–89) lamented in
the following verse:

Ekbaperduibetataja, marakehonoy/Sakaleriekrakto, ekghareyashroy.  .  .  . /

Duibhai-erdekhteybharifit  .  .  . /Keuboley Durga-Hari/ Keuboley Bismillah
Akheri  .  .  .  /Mala, paiteekjondharey/Keu basunnatkarey/Tobey bhaye-
bhayemaramarikorey/Jachhishkenogollaye?27
(Two sons born from the same father, who are still alive and not yet dead.
The same blood flows through both, the same home shelters them.  .  .  . Both
the brothers look quite fit.  .  .  . One wears a necklace and a sacred thread,
and the other practices circumcision. Why then do the two brothers fight
each other and ruin themselves?)

The Contemporary Background

It is necessary to recall the historical backdrop against which these
popular poets were voicing their anguish at the fracturing of the
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 859

Bengali community on religious lines in those days of the last

quarter of the nineteenth century. This was the period which saw
the emergence and consolidation of a new Bengali middle class
political leadership (reared upon English education), consisting of
both Hindus and Muslims—who were trying to conceptualize and
assert their identity as a nation in the terms of the contemporary
Western discourse.
Unfortunately, these Bengali Hindu and Muslim intellectuals
and politicians drifted into two different directions in their search
for national identity. Curiously enough, they derived their respective
inspirations from sources outside Bengal. The Hindu middle class
nationalists supported by the Hindu zamindars in the villages, tried
to construct a concept of pan-Aryan nationalism that was heavily
weighted in favour of Brahminic rituals and practices that were
followed in north India. They took up the issue of cow-slaughter,
demanding a ban on it on the ground that it hurt the Hindu religious
sentiments. Yet, this issue had never been a bone of contention, or
provocations for communal riots in the Bengal countryside during
the past. It was only during the end of the nineteenth century that this
issue was brought to the forefront by the Bengali Hindu nationalist
politicians, who sought to identify themselves with their Hindu
counterparts in north India. They responded wholeheartedly to the
north Indian Hindu evangelist Swami Dayanand’s campaign against
cow-slaughter, and setup ‘Gorakshni Sabha’s in different parts of
Bengal, and encouraged Hindu landlords to impose penalties on their
Muslim subjects for ‘korbani’(cow-sacrifice). The Anjuman-i-Islam
(formed by the Bengali Muslim educated gentry) of Faridpur in east
Bengal, at that time issued a statement which was perceptive in its
analysis of the differences in popular perceptions in the north and
the east, and was acute in its prediction of the dangers inherent in the
import of the cow issue from the north to the east: ‘.  .  .  the cow killing
question has been the source of constant disputes between the Hindus
and the Muhammadans of Behar and other provinces of upper India.
But fortunately the Eastern Bengal was quite free from those riots up
to this time.  .  .  . Recently placards are being circulated  .  .  .  inciting the
people to exert their best to stop cow-killing any how they can. The
result  .  .  .  has been that the powerful Hindu Zamindars are combining
themselves to prevent the sale of cows to butchers and the killing of
them in their Zamindari Mohallas. If the Hindus combine to prevent
860 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

cow-killing, Muhammadans are not likely to yield; thus the result

will be a constant dispute and ill-feeling between two communities
so long living in peace and amity in Eastern Bengal.’ 28
As predicted, in reaction to the pan-Aryan Hindu revivalist
trend, sections of the nineteenth-century Bengali Muslim gentry
comprising both the descendants of the old landed aristocracy, and
the new middle class professionals like lawyers, teachers, civil servants
among others, sought to reconstruct their identity on the basis of a
pan-Arabic tradition (borrowed from the Middle East and heavily
weighted again in favour of orthodox Islamic practices).29
It may be interesting in this context to examine the Bengali
popular perception of the animal that was at the root of the
controversy—the cow. In the countryside, both the Hindus and
Muslims took loving care of the cow, for its utilitarian value. Once
its utility was over, the Hindu villager did not have any qualms in
selling off the disabled animal to the local butcher (who was usually
a Muslim) who again could earn some money by offering it to his
co-religionists for sacrifice during Muslim religious ceremonies. The
cow was never an object of worship in Bengali Hindu rural society.
In Bengali conversation, the cow is frequently used as a term of abuse
to describe stupid persons, as found in the following couplet, which
plays on the alliteration of ‘goru’ (cow) with ‘guru’ (preceptor):

Desheydesheyberalam/Sakolbeta-goru/Jejareybhulateyparey/She-targuru.30
(I’ve wandered all over countries, and found everyone is a ‘goru’, a cow.
Whoever can deceive a person can become his ‘guru’,a preceptor).

During the nineteenth century, the Bengali poet Ishwar Gupta,

in one of his satirical verses, chose the image of the cow to represent
the Bengali subservient people paying homage to Queen Victoria:

Tumi Ma, Kalpa-toru/Amrashabposhagoru/Shikhi-nishingbankano/Kebol-

khabokholbichalighash  .  .  ./Amrabhushipele-ykhushihabo.31

(You are a generous mother, and we are your tame cattle. We haven’t even
learnt to raise our horns. We’ll only eat oil-cake, straw and grass.)

The conflict between competing religio-political interests of

Bengali Hindu and Muslim politicians led to violent riots during the
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 861

last decade of the nineteenth century over issues of cow-slaughter (by

Muslims) and music before mosques (by Hindus)—practices which
had never hitherto disturbed the coexistence of the two religious
communities.

Rural Popular Response

When these two divisive issues of cow slaughter and music before
mosques were hogging the headlines of newspapers that were being
brought out by the politicians from the two competing religious
communities in Calcutta and Dhaka, back in the Bengali rural society,
both the Muslim and Hindu folk poets showed an insouciance to
such debates among the political leaders, and instead preferred to
share common concerns about their immediate problems, caused by
famines, high prices of essential goods, and administrative measures
that adversely affected them.
We thus come across a long narrative inverse by Arkum Ullah, a
Muslim poet of Sylhet in northeast Bengal, called ‘Niranabboi Saner
Girayer Kobita ’, describing the woes due to rising prices in the Bengali
year 1299 ( corresponding to 1892):

Sona, rupa, jaga, jominbechialokeykhaye/Sona, rupa, jaga, jomin shatek

takarhoiley/Bandhakdiyakonorupepanchishtakamiley/Aarjarajara-
poisha-alapurba Chhiletermajhey/Takayeloycharipoishasud, goreebke-
moneybanchey?”32

(People are surviving by selling gold, silver, property and land. Even if they
are valued at one hundred rupees, by mortgaging them they manage to get
somehow twenty five rupees only. As for the moneyed people who live in
the east of Sylhet, they lend a rupee and demand an interest of four paise.
How can the poor survive?)

Arkum Ullah then describes how the rich, with the help of
musclemen, grabbed the land of the poor, and by producing false
witnesses before the court, legalized their possession. At the end, he
advises the poor:

Khodareynadiodosh, na dilo Khodaye/Aponara akoleyaponeharilaye/

Michhasakshi, jhutbaat, chharoeishab.33
862 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

(Do not blame God for all this. It is because of your own folly that you lost
everything. Stop giving false evidence, and uttering lies—give up these
habits).

Similarly, the Bengali Hindu folk poets and popular authors,

living cheek by jowl with their Muslim neighbours, were equally
indifferent to the pan-Aryan Hindu nationalist messages that were
being propagated by the Hindu political leaders. They were more
concerned about their local problems, caused by famines, high
prices, and administrative measures that adversely affected them. A
typical example is this satirical poem addressed to Queen Victoria
(by an anonymous poet, presumably a Hindu, judging by the terms
of adoration used by him/her):
Tomarrajatwenamoshkar!/Ma Victoria, Debi, tumidayaradhar !/  .  .  .  Dugdha
binamareyshishu, rogee,briddhoaar  .  .  ./Bichar-banijyaphandeporey,
shabprojarakandey/Takarpuntulibandhey, ukil-moktar/Gode-eruporbish-
phorabarrister.  .  .  ./Bolihariboliharirajatwatomar!34

(I pay my respects to your regime, Mother Victoria, goddess, you are mercy
incarnate!.  .  .  . All your subjects are weeping, being trapped in commercial
deals and litigations, while the laywers and attorneys are reaping money.
To make matters worse there is the barrister to boot.  .  .  .  Bravo! All honour
to your regime!)

These sarcastic barbs, in both the two folk narratives quoted

above, were shot at the contemporary colonial judicial system with
its complex paraphernalia of district judges, lawyers, their clerks, and
their brokers, who bribed witnesses. We again need to remember the
socio-historical background against which these songs were being
composed in rural Bengal. During the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, junior Bengali bureaucrats trained in Calcutta, were posted
there as district magistrates, who had to preside over civil suites on
land disputes (caused by the complicated land taxation system by the
British rulers).They required Bengali lawyers who were well-versed
in the rules of colonial legal system, who were also imported from
Calcutta where they had undergone training. They thronged these
district headquarters, and thrived on the fees from the rural litigants
over cases of land disputes. This leads us to the contemporary scene
in colonial Calcutta—the source of these extraneous forces which
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 863

disrupted rural life in Bengal. It also created a parallel urban folk

culture.

Confluence of Rural and

Urban Folk Culture in Calcutta
By the late eighteenth–early nineteenth century period, Calcutta
had developed into a thriving commercial centre and administrative
headquarters of the East India Company. It drew artisans, craftsmen,
as well as folk singers and performers from the countryside—in search
of greener pastures in the new metropolis.
These migrants from the villages brought with the marich
repertoire of entertainments which they had inherited from the
traditional rural folk culture. They not only kept alive this culture
in the squalor of the growing metropolis, but also enriched it with
new motifs borrowed from the surrounding socio-economic, and
later political, environment.
The earliest specimens of urban popular culture in Calcutta can
be found in the humorous doggerels and proverbs, jokes and rhymes
about contemporary society that used to make the rounds of the city’s
streets. The rat race among eighteenth century Calcutta’s English
traders and their Indian banians and dewans to make fortunes by
every conceivable means was a target of raillery for the city’s lower
orders. The following couplet popular in mid-eighteenth century
Calcutta sums up their social mores:

Jal, juochuri, mithye katha/Ei tin niye Kolkata.35

(Forgery, swindling and falsehood. These three make up Calcutta).

The city’s prominent Indians who made money by such dubious

means were listed, according to their respective distinct qualities, by
the Bengali popular poets in the following verse which provides us
with an interesting who’s who of the period: ‘Banamali Sarkarerbari/
Gobindaram Mitrerchhori/Amirchanderdari/Hajuri Mallerkori.’36
Banamali Sarkar, whose ‘bari’ (house) is mentioned in the first
line, was the East India Company’s Deputy Trader of Calcutta. He
constructed a palatial building in north Calcutta. Gobindaram Mitra
who was dewan to the Company’s English zamindar John Zephania
864 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Holwell, was notorious for his ‘chhori’ (thick heavy stick) which he
wielded over the poor to collect and swell the Company’s revenue.
Amirchand (also known as Omichand in contemporary records) was
a Sikh contractor who transported the Company’s merchandise—and
must have impressed the citizens with his ‘dari’ (flowing beard). But
more important than his beard was his ‘kori’ (money) which he left
to be inherited by his brother-in-law Hajuri Mall (Hoozuri Mull),
whose name appears at the end of the verse.
Apart from well-known individuals of the city, certain localities
became targets of sarcastic barbs in the popular rhymes, like the
following composed in the form of a mock street guide directing
pilgrims to religious spots:

Bagbajareganjaradda, gulir Konnagare/Battala-emaderadda, chondur

Bowbajare/Eisabmahatirthajenachokheyherey/Tarmatomahapapinaitri-
sangsarey.”37
(Bag bajar is the centre of hemp-smoking, Konnagar—a suburb near
Calcutta—is the centre of opium pills. Battala is the den of drinking,
and Bow bajar of opium-smoking. If anyone fails to visit these places of
pilgrimage, there can’t be a worse sinner than him in heaven, earth and hell).

Such style of identifying certain localities with habits or occu-

pations, was again in continuity of the Bengali rural folk cultural
tradition, as evident from the following old proverbs:

Dhan, khoon, khal/Teen niye Barisal.

(Paddy, murders and canals—these three makeup Barisal).

Tanti, Gonsai, pacha goor/Teen niye Shantipur.38

(Weavers,Vaishnavites and rotten molasses—these three makeup
Shantipur).

Gradually over the years, from the end of the eighteenth century
onwards, Calcutta’s folk culture assumed a more institutionalized
form, with the city’s popular poets transforming the musical and
literary styles of rural folk tradition into innovative urban styles.
A typical example of such innovation was the transformation of
the Bengali rural entertainment called tarja (where the singers
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 865

exchanged repartees around mythological characters) into the urban

kobi-gan—which became very popular among the citizens during the
eighteenth-nineteenth century period. Most of these urban poets/
composers (known as kobis) came from Calcutta’s lower orders. We
come across the names of Gonjla Guin (from a caste of cow-owners),
Keshta Muchi (a cobbler), Raghunath Das (variously described as
a blacksmith or a weaver), and Bhola Moira (a sweet meat-maker)
among others.39
The genre of kobi-gan provided a wide space for popular dialogue
and debate over contemporary religious and political issues, in the
socio-cultural melting pot in the metropolitan environment of Bengal
in those days. An illuminating instance is the poetic duel between
two famous contemporary kobis—Ram Bosu and Antony Firingi.
Ram Bosu (1787–1829) came from a well-to-do upper caste Kayastha
Hindu family, had his education in Calcutta, and worked as a clerk in
the city for some time, before deciding to become a professional kobi.
Antony Firingi (originally born as Hensman Antony of Portuguese
parents, who came to Bengal) fell in love with a Brahmin woman who
left her home to live with him. Under her influence, Antony adopted
the manners of Bengali Hindus, discarded his European clothes, wore
dhoti and chadar, learnt Bengali and composed kobi songs.40
During the verbal duel between the two, Ram Bosu made fun
of Antony’s demonstrative manner of showing respect to the Hindu
god Krishna, by reminding him of his white skin and telling him
that it was all in vain, since his Christian clergy would besmear him.
Antony hit back with these wonderful lines:

Chrishta-eaar Krishna-eprabhed nairey bhai/Shudhu name-r pherey manush-

pherey  .  .  .?/Amar Khoda jey, Hindur Hari shey.41
(Dear brother, there is no difference between Christ and Krishna. Are
human beings running after mere names? The One who is my God is the
same Hari of the Hindus.)

Antony was familiar with the Hindu deities, and could make
ingenious use of their names in the verbal duels between the
contending kobis in public performances. Thus, once in a contest
with the famous kobi Bhola Moira, Antony in a mock—devotional
mood turned Bhola into Bholanath (a Bengali pet-name for the god
866 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Shiva) and sang a hymn in his praise. This prompted Bhola Moira
to rebuff him with a song which gives an excellent description of his
profession and beliefs:

Orey, amishei Bholanathnoi  .  .  .  /Ami Moira Bhola, bhiayinkhola/  .  .  .  Bagbajar-

ekoribash/Puja-elepurimithaibhaji  .  .  .  /Jahakichhuhateashe, kobirnesha-
ediyidhali.”42
(I am not the same Bholanath.  .  .  . I am Moira Bhola, and cook sweetmeat
on my frying pan.  .  .  . I live in Bag bajar. During the Durga Puja festival, I
fry pancakes and sweets.  .  .  . Whatever I earn I spend on my addiction to
‘`kobi-duels’.)

Conclusion
Popular culture in colonial Bengal represented a confluence of
traditional rural folk culture, and the new urban folk culture that
was emerging in the streets and bazaars of the city of Calcutta in the
eighteenth century—nineteenth century period. It brought together
the voices of the rural and the urban poor in a multi-vocal orchestra-
sometimes sharing a rebellious mood against the oppressive colonial
order, sometimes resorting to the comic (their only verbal weapon to
laugh at the ruling powers), and quite often challenging the religious
shibboleths of contemporary Bengali society. Their songs and poems
cannot be discarded as mere oddities (as was often treated by the
then Bengali educated gentry), and must be honoured, and restored
to day to their due position as registers of contemporary popular
mood—which are relevant for us today too.

Notes
1. An interesting anecdote reveals the Bengali elite’s desire to join the so-called
Aryan mainstream. The Bengali writer Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay (1827–94)
was one of the ideologues of Indian nationalism. Once, he along with his
friend Rajnarayan Basu (1826–99), another Bengali litterateur who was
equally inspired by the ideal of nationalism, visited Allahabad. Both felt that
having come there, they should visit Kanauj and take the dust of its earth
to smear it across their foreheads, since Kanauj was their ‘fatherland’—
from where according to legends, their ancestors (five Brahmins and five
Kayasthas) were supposed to have been brought to Bengal some time
around 700 ad by the then ruler known as Adi-Sur, founder of the Sen
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 867
dynasty of rulers. See, Pramatha Nath Bishi, ‘Introduction’, in Bhudeb
Rachanasambhar, by Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, Calcutta: Mitra O. Ghosh,
1375 bs (1962).
2. Tom Hayes, The Birth of Popular Culture, Pittsburg: Duquesne University
Press, 1991.
3. John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, London: Pearson, 2001.
4. Quoted in Ranajit Kumar Samaddar, Bangla Sahitye O Sanskrititey Sthaniyo
Bidroher Prabhab, Calcutta: Banamali Biswanth Prakashan, 1982, p. 189.
5. Quoted in Pramatha Mullick, Kolikatar Katha, Madhya Kanda, Calcutta:
Juno, 1935, p. 14.
6. Quoted in Ashutosh Bhattacharya, Bangiya Loksangeet Ratnakar, Calcutta:
A. Mukherjee and Co., 1960, pp. 460–1.
7. Ibid.
8. For British official accounts, see, H.E. Busteed, Echoes from Old Calcutta,
1908; repr. New Delhi: Rupa, 2000. The alternative nationalist version
defending Nandakumar’s career and mourning his end can be available
from Chandicharan Sen, Maharaj Nandakumar, 1885.
9. Quoted in Mullick, Kolikatar Katha-Madhya Kanda, p. 13.
10. Ibid., p. 11.
11. A typical illustration is the transformation that Siraj-ud-dowllah’s image
underwent in the Bengali nationalist psyche—from that of a selfish and
dissolute nawab (as recorded in contemporary indigenous accounts and
reinforced by British historians) to that of a patriot fighting colonial
invasion (as described by the late nineteenth century author Akshay Kumar
Maitreya in his biography of the controversial nawab, entitled Sirajuddoula,
and also exemplified by the famous nineteenth century Bengali thespian
Girish Ghosh who staged a play glorifying Sirajasananti—colonial icon.
12. Quoted in Mullick, Kolikatar Katha-Adi Kanda, p. 199.
13. Quoted in Girindranath Das, Bangla Pir Sahityer Katha, Baraset: Shehid
Library, 1976, p. 189.
14. Ibid.
15. Suprakash Ray, Bharater Krishak Bidroho O Ganatantrik Sangram, 2nd
edn., Calcutta: DNBA, 1972.
16. Das, Bangla Pir Sahityer Katha, p. 184.
17. Quoted in Kumudnath Mullick, Nadia Kahini, 1910; repr., Calcutta:
Granthakar, Sahitya Sabha, 1986, p. 43.
18. Biharilal Sarkar, Titumir, 1897, Pustak Bipani; quoted in Samaddar, Bangla
Sahitya O Sanskriti, pp. 264–74.
19. Ray, Bharater Krishak Bidroho O Ganatantrik Sangram.
20. Quoted in Swapan Basu, Gano—Ashontosh O Unish Shatoker Bangali
Samaj, Calcutta: Pustak Biponi, 1984, p. 145.
868 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
21. The ballad has been reproduced by Mesbaul Huq, Palashi Judhhottor
Muslim Samaj O Neel Bidroha, and excerpted in ibid., pp. 139–40.
22. Quoted in Ray, Bharater Krishak Bidroho O Ganatantrik Sangram, p. 335.
23. Quoted in Samaddar, Bangla Sahitya O Sanskriti, p. 60.
24. For an exhaustive and excellent account of these sects and their cultural
output, see, Sudhir Chakravarty, Bala-Harhi Samproday O Tader Gan,
Calcutta: Pustak Bipani, 1986; and Chakravarty, Bratya Lokayata Lalan,
Calcutta: Pustak Bipani, 1992.
25. Quoted in Dhanapati Haldar, ed., Baul Samrat Lalan Fakir, Calcutta,
1385 bs (1978), p. 48.
26. Translated from Bengali and quoted by Deben Bhattacharya, The Mirror of
the Sky: Songs of the Bauls from Bengal, London: George Allen and Unwin,
1969, p. 37.
27. Quoted in Musa Kalim, Madhya Juger Bangla Sahitye Hindu-Muslim
Samparka, Calcutta, 1988, pp. 100–1.
28. Muslim Chronicle, 14 April 1895, quoted in Wakil Ahmed, Unish Shatoke
Bangali Musalmaner Chinta Chetonar Dhara, vol. I, Dhaka: Bangla
Akademi, 1983, p. 231.
29 Anisujjaaman, Muslim Manash O Bangla Sahitya, Dhaka: Muktadhara,
1983; and Ahmad, Unish Shatoke Bangali Muslmaner Chinta Chetonar
Dhara.
30. Quoted in Sushil Kumar De, Bangla Prabad, Calcutta: A Mukherjee &
Co., 1952, p. 114.
31. Quoted in Shanti Kumar Das Gupta and Haribandhu Mukhoti, eds., Ishwar
Gupta Rachanaboli, vol. 1, Calcutta, 1381 bs (1974), p. 11.
32. Gurusaday Dutta and Nirmalendu Bhowmik, eds., Srihatter Lok Sangeet,
Calcutta, 1966, p. 406.
33. Ibid., p. 407.
34. Apurba Sangeet Bilash, Calcutta, 1302 bs (1895).
35. Harihar Seth, Pracheen Kolikata Parichoy, Calcutta: Orient, 1312 bs (1934),
p. 314.
36. Ibid., p. 323. There were other versions of this verse, replacing the last
two lines with the following: ‘Noku Dhar-erkori/MothurSen-erbari.’ Noku
was the pet name of Lakshmikanta Dhar, who according to contemporary
popular legends, saved an English sailor in distress in the Hooghly river,
and through his help, succeeded in obtaining a village called Post a in the
Sutanuti area (which was at that time under the jurisdiction of the East
India Company, and later came to constitute the northern part of the
city of Calcutta). Here he established his zemindari, entitling it as the Raj
family of Posta, and amassed enough kori (money). The other character
in the verse described as Mothur Sen, was Mothurmohan Sen, a Bengali
shroff who built a large house in north Calcutta.
 Banerjee: Some Aspects of Popular Culture 869
37. Seth, Pracheen Kolikata Parichoy, p. 322. In Bagbajar in north Calcutta, at
the beginning of the nineteenth century, a Bengali grandee Shibchandra
Mukhopadhyay, setup in his ancestral house a hemp-smoking club.
38. Quoted in Dey, Bangla Prabad, p. 101, 117.
39. O. Mukthi Haribandhu, Ishwar Gupta Rachanabali, vols. 1–2, Calcutta:
Basumati Sahitya Mandir, 1919, p. 110.
40. Durgadas Lahiri, ed., Bangalir Gan, Calcutta: Natabar Chakraborty,
1312 bs (1905), p. 194.
41. Quoted in Prafulla Chandra Pal, Pracheen Kobiwalar Gan, Calcutta:
University of Calcutta, 1958, p. 5.
42. Ibid. An exhaustive and analytical examination of Calcutta’s kobi-gan
culture, where women poets and singers also played a major role, is
available from Sumanta Banerjee, The Parlour And The Streets: Elite and
Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta, Calcutta: Seagull, 1989.
 23

Banking and the Credit System

in Bengal in the Nineteenth
Century

Abhik R. Ray

Early Government Banks in India

T
he bank of england was born in 1694 when England
was at war with France towards the end of the seventeenth
century. The bankrupt government of William III offered
a favourable charter to a corporation which promised to lend it
money. A capital of £1.2 million was subscribed in twelve days and
half of it used to rebuild the British navy following a crushing defeat
at the hands of the French.1
About a century later, the East India Company’s Government
in Bengal too faced a grim situation. The wars unleashed by the
Marquis of Wellesley, Governor General of India between 1798 and
1805, against Tipu Sultan and the Marathas and the continuous
demand of the Court of Directors for a regular tribute from Indian
tax revenues left the government impoverished. Raising loans from
private sources had not only become increasingly onerous for the
government but also costly. Large-scale borrowings by then had led
to heavy discounts on government treasury bills, a sharp rise in rates
of interest and an acute scarcity of specie.2
At the beginning of this century the European mercantile community was
small, and consequently when the Government wished to raise large sums
of money for the wars in which they were constantly engaged, they were
 Ray: Banking and the Credit System in Bengal 871

obliged to look chiefly to the native mercantile community for the money
required. The mode of raising money in those days was by the issue of what
were called Treasury Bills, and these bills, in consequence sometimes of a
scarcity of coin and more frequently of a combination among the native
bankers, could not be cashed, except at a heavy discount.3
A plan for a semi-government bank for Bengal was thus mooted
and the Bank of Calcutta was set up in 1806.
It was, however, not the first attempt by the government to set
up a bank in India. The earliest such bank was founded in Madras
in 1693 by the officers of the East India Company. Managed by the
government council, the bank discounted bills, paid interest on
deposits and perhaps also issued notes. Not much however is known
about how long it survived.
In 1806, William Bentinck, Governor of Madras, set up the
Government Bank of Madras to curb the monopolistic practices
of private banks owned by the agency houses to raise the rates of
interest. The bank under Bentinck’s superintendence with a capital
of 8 pagodas4 issued notes subject to the condition that the ratio of
notes to specie held by the bank did not exceed 3:1. It continued till
its supersession by the Bank of Madras, the third presidency bank
in British India, which came into existence in 1843.5
The first bank in Bombay, the Bombay Bank, was set up in
1720 by the Company’s government in Bombay with the objective
of increasing the trade carried on from the island and thereby
the revenues of the Company. It had a capital of Rs.1 lakh and its
management was vested in the governor of the presidency and his
council. Money was lent on the security of goods and usually at
9 per cent interest. The bank, however, got into difficulties concerning
lending against property and wound up before the turn of the century.
It was at the initiative of Governor General Warren Hastings that
the first government-backed bank in Bengal was founded in 1773
as the General Bank for Bengal and Bihar. Although it enjoyed the
patronage of the Company’s government, it did not unfortunately
survive beyond two years as the council members opposed to
Hastings having influenced the Court of Directors to close down
the bank. Soon thereafter the Court of Directors prohibited the
Bengal Government from extending support to banking institutions
in Calcutta.
872 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Bank of Bengal:
India’s First Chartered Bank
The plan for a semi-government bank for Bengal with a strong
mercantile element was first formulated by the then Accountant
General of Bengal, Henry St. George Tucker in 1801.6 The objective
was to stabilize rates of interest and mobilize credit so as to support
both the public credit of the Company’s Government in Bengal and
the private credit of the merchants of Calcutta. The proposed bank,
according to Tucker, besides securing many commercial advantages,
would prevent depreciation of government bills, by introducing a
new customer into the market, who would always be provided with
a store of specie.
The government recommended the scheme to the Court of
Directors notwithstanding their directive not to patronize any
banking institution. The latter gave its approval with the latitude to
subscribe up to Rs.10 lakh to its capital.
The government-sponsored bank in Bengal was thus born as the
Bank of Calcutta (the earliest progenitor of the State Bank of India).7
As British or British Indian law did not then permit the granting of
limited liability to shareholders of joint-stock companies, the British
Parliament favoured the Bank of Calcutta with a charter in 1808. The
Bank of Calcutta was redesignated as the Bank of Bengal and the
first semi-government joint-stock chartered bank of India opened
for business on 2 January 1809.
Two similar banks were set up a few decades later in the other two
presidencies of British India—Bank of Bombay (1840) and Bank of
Madras (1843).8 The three banks were governed by separate charters
till the Government of India decided in 1876 to bring them under
a common statute.9

Issue of Notes
The establishment of the Bank of Bengal marked the advent of
modern, limited liability, joint-stock banking in India. Neither joint-
stock banking nor deposit banking combined with note issue, the
latter for effecting public revenue payments in government treasuries
throughout Bengal and Bihar, had been known in India till then.
 Ray: Banking and the Credit System in Bengal 873

The notes in denominations ranging from Sicca Rs.10 to Rs.10,000

generally circulated within the environs of Calcutta and were mainly
used for effecting large transactions.10
Among the important precautionary measures were the
maintenance of a cash reserve of at least one-third of the outstanding
liabilities payable on demand and limiting total liabilities of the bank
of all kinds to the amount of the bank’s capital. Thus, issuing of notes
was restricted to Rs.50 lakh, or even less, as deposits and all other
liabilities were included in applying the limit.
The right of note-issue granted to the Bank of Bengal was
valuable, as it meant an accretion to the capital of the bank on which
the proprietors did not have to pay any interest. Till the abolition of
this right by the Paper Currency Act of 1861, these notes together
with its capital formed the main investible resources of the bank.

Capital
The charter of the Bank of Bengal provided for a share capital of Sicca
Rs.50 lakh in which the Government was also part owners having
contributed one-fifth of the capital. European merchants including
partners of agency houses, government servants as well as rich Indians
were owners of the bank’s share which was priced at Rs.10,000 then.
However, the amount of stock, as designed by Tucker, to be held
by individual proprietors was limited to Rs.1 lakh to prevent an
establishment founded for ‘the general advantage from falling into
the hands of a few monopolists’.
Among the early Indian shareholders of the Bank of Bengal were
rich merchants and indigenous bankers/banians like Gopal Doss,
Manohar Doss, Muthoor Mohan Sen, Pran Kishen Bysakh, Radha
Krishnoo Bysakh, Ramdoolal Dey, Ram Lochun Ghosh, Ram Lochun
Law, Maharaja Sookmoy Roy, etc. (original spelling as appearing in
the bank’s records retained).

Board of Directors
A board of directors was constituted in terms of the charter for
running the affairs of the bank and the Government took particular
care to reserve for itself ample powers of control. The presence of
three government directors on the board, one of whom was also its
874 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

president, ensured that the board was constantly under pressure to

carry out the wishes of the government. Three commercial directors
representing the large managing agency houses of Bengal and three
proprietary directors made up the rest of the board.

Business of the Bank

Besides providing for a share capital of Rs.50 lakh, the charter among
other matters stipulated the business which the bank could do and
also imposed certain restrictions on it. Business was initially confined
to discounting bills of exchange or other negotiable private securities,
keeping cash accounts, receiving deposits, and issuing and circulating
cash notes. Deposits initially were in the nature of current accounts
only, on which the banks did not have to pay any interest. It was only
in 1884 that the bank for the first time introduced the interest-bearing
deposit scheme, viz., fixed deposits and followed it up by the savings
bank scheme in 1902.11
Its advances consisted mainly of giving loans against approved
securities, extending cash credit advances against pledged or
hypothecated non-perishable commodities and discounting bills of
exchange. Restrictions were, however, laid down in the charter for
advances. The quantum of loans, for instance, was restricted to Rs.1
lakh to an individual or a firm to ensure not only the use of the capital
for a larger mass of borrowers but also for the bank’s own safety.
Loans to the Government similarly were restricted to Rs.5 lakh.12 Its
holding of Company’s paper was also restricted to Rs.25 lakh. The
period of accommodation was confined to three months and its rate
of interest was limited to a maximum of 12 per cent so as to adhere
to the Government’s objective of bringing about a reduction in the
prevailing rates of interest. The charter also prohibited the bank from
engaging in trade or in any kind of agency for the buying and selling
of public securities or of goods so that it did not interfere with any
established business.
The security for loans was public securities, commonly called
Company’s paper, bullion, treasure, plate, jewels, or goods that were
‘not of a perishable nature’. Loans against goods like opium, indigo,
salt, woollens, cotton, cotton piece goods, mule twist, silk goods, and
later tea, sugar, coal, jute, etc., were granted as cash credits and were
 Ray: Banking and the Credit System in Bengal 875

either pledged or hypothecated to the bank. Advances against the

security of illiquid assets such as land or buildings as well as shares
and debentures were, however, forbidden. Loans could be granted
so long as the cash in possession of the bank was at least one-third
the value of notes and other claims payable on demand.
The business of discounts on private as well as salary bills was
almost the exclusive monopoly of European merchants and their
partnership firms. The bank mostly lent to Indians against deposit of
Company’s papers or discounted first-class bills of exchange or hundis
tendered by leading shroffs. Many of these Indians were banians of
European or American firms who sought accommodation to finance
the business operations of their principals.
Rules were framed in such a manner that it kept the bank well
beyond the reach of the common man. A minimum initial deposit of
Rs.500 was insisted upon to open and maintain a current account. In
1841, a minimum limit of Rs.500 was specified for both cash credit
loans and loans on deposit. Within four years, the limit was raised
to Rs.10,000 and reduced to Rs.600 only in 1906.
The principal function of the Bank of Bengal, as far as the
Government was concerned, was to help the latter raise loans from
time to time, lend money directly to finance wars, famines, etc.,
and also provide a degree of stability to the prices of government
securities.
Investment in government securities was the chosen preference of
the bank at least initially. As loans to trade and industry grew over the
years, the huge difference between loans and investments came down.

The Local Imprint

The bank, though European in character, bore the imprint of its
place of birth. Apart from a sizeable number of affluent Indians
(mostly Bengalis) being shareholders of the bank, one amongst
them, Maharaja Sookmoy Roy, the founder of the Posta Raj family,
was appointed as a director of the bank’s first board of directors in
1809. Following his death in 1811, no other Indian was appointed
on the board until 1920.
The most exalted position among the bank’s Indian employees
was of course that of the Khazanchee or cash keeper, the highest-paid
876 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Indian.13 He not only held charge of the bank’s cash department, but
was also the crucial link between the bank and the money market.14
He invariably hailed from a wealthy family as like the bank’s secretary
and treasurer, the senior-most European officer, he too had to tender
a security deposit of Rs.50,000 to secure the appointment.
Maharaja Sookmoy’s son, Ramchandra, was the bank’s first
Khazanchee. Ram Comul (Kamal) Sen, Bullion Keeper, Cashier
and Native Accountant of the Calcutta Mint assumed the office as a
Khazanchee of the bank in 1832.15 A man who was connected with
most of the Anglo-Indian institutions seeking to improve the health,
education, culture and even agriculture of Bengal and was personally
known to many of the leading Europeans and Indians then, however,
fell out with the then bank’s secretary, George Udny, who was envious
of his subordinate’s eminence. When the matter came up before the
bank’s board, the directors did not take long to recognize the value
of the Khazanchee as the chief source of information on the status of
the bank’s constituents and the necessity of keeping his departmental
autonomy unimpaired.16
Europeans apart, 17 wealthy Indians too were borrowers of
the bank. The Basaks (Tantis), the Panis, Pynes and Adhias
(Subarnabaniks), Muthoor Mohan Sen, Russomoy Dutt (ancestor of
economic historian, Romesh Chunder Dutt) and innumerable others
were among the early borrowers of the bank. Dwarkanath Tagore,
the Prince among Indian merchants, appeared in the bank’s books
for the first time in 1817 when he borrowed Rs.60,000 on deposit of
Company’s paper at 9 per cent annual interest.18 He continued to be
a borrower of the bank till the founding of the Union Bank of which
he was a key promoter.
Most of the banians who served as business associates of
Europeans were Bengalis in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Among them were Connyloll (Kanailal) and Kissenmohun
(Krishnamohun) Burral (Baral), banians of Alexander & Co.,
Ruggooram Gossain, Comlacaunth Doss and Gunganarian Doss,
banians of Palmer & Co., Ramdulal Dey, banian of Fairlie Fergusson
& Co. and Radhakrishna Mitter, banian of Fergusson & Co. Many
of them too were borrowers of the bank.
By about the 1860s, however, the number of banians serving
Europeans had reduced considerably. Only a handful like Prawn
 Ray: Banking and the Credit System in Bengal 877

Kissen Law & Co., Tariney Churn Bose & Co., Nolit Mohun Doss
and Gopee Mohun Doss, Dwarkanath Dutt, Rajkissen Mitter and Co.,
etc., served as banians then. Most of the others, who had survived the
commercial crises of the early 1830s and the late 1840s and had not
lost all their wealth, chose to invest their funds in less risky ventures
like real estate and zamindaris.

The Bank and Bazaar Rates

The Bank of Bengal stood at the apex of the money market, like its
immediate successor, the Imperial Bank of India.19 It had to deal
with Indian constituents who were traders and with Indian shroffs
or bankers who carried on their traditional business of discounting
hundis and financing trade, manufactures (mainly artisanal) and
even agriculture. It had also to finance the European agency houses
and merchants against approved securities and lend to other Indian
banks, which lent mostly to traders.
A predominant part of its business at centres both in Calcutta and
the mofussil, consisted of discounting of hundis. This business was in
fact so popular in Calcutta that the bank opened its first branch in
the city at Burrabazaar in 1904.20 Shroffs with ample resources and a
wide network of kothees or branches were always looked upon with
favour. To facilitate this business, the bank drew up a complete list
of Shroffs in India with their estimated means determined by the
Khazanchees at various branches and circulated it to all its branches
across the presidency.
As mentioned earlier, the rate of interest of the Bank of Bengal
was assigned a maximum limit by the charter so as to adhere to the
Government’s objective of bringing about a reduction in the rates of
interest in the presidency. In less than a decade of its setting up, the
bank, however, discovered that by maintaining a rate of interest of
only 6 to 8 per cent and that too when money was scarce, it was in
fact playing into the hands of the Shroffs, who borrowed at this rate
from the bank and lent at an enhanced rate to others. It was only then
that the directors decided that the rate would be allowed to fluctuate
according to the demand for money.
The Government connection was valuable for the Bank of Bengal
in that it not only gained access to government (public) deposits on
878 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

which it did not have to pay any interest but also because it could use
government treasuries to remit money at cheaper rates than the rate
prevalent in the bazaar. In December 1878, for instance, while the
prevailing bazaar rate for sending money from Calcutta to Allahabad
was three annas per cent, the bank could remit at 2 annas per cent
through the government treasury.
The bazaar rates or the rates charged by Shroffs for discounting
bills of small traders were generally higher than the hundi discount
rate of the Bank of Bengal. This could perhaps be explained by the
latter’s easy accessibility to cheap deposits as it did not have to pay
any interest on the funds lodged with it either as public or private
deposits till the introduction of the fixed deposit scheme in 1884.
During the lean season, the bazaar rate often fell below the hundi
rate of the bank.21 When shroffs or banians supplied capital to the
European merchants the rates usually shot up. This could be attributed
to the element of risk the shroff felt he was exposing himself to in
lending to a sahib.
The moneylender usually charged high rates of interest from
peasants and artisans, as was the practice since ancient times. In the
district of Dacca, for instance, pawning of articles such as ornaments
or household vessels equal to the sum lent, the nominal rate of interest
in the nineteenth century was one shilling and three pence in the
pound per mensem or 75 per cent per annum.22 Petty agricultural
advances to cultivators on personal security were rarely made,
reported W.W. Hunter, in the districts of Dacca and Mymensingh;
but when they were, interest was charged at the rate of 25 per cent
per annum, payable in kind.23 In 24 Parganas at about the same time,
for petty advances to cultivators, the moneylender exacted from 37.5
to 75 per cent.24 A.F. Tytler thus observed, ‘Those who are compelled
to borrow are generally improvident, and, as the lender runs a great
risk in lending his money, it seems but fair that he should exact a
rate calculated to cover his rate.’25 The practice sadly obtains even to
this day in rural India.

Fraud
One of the early frauds committed in the bank was that of Rajkishore
Dutt, a petty businessman of Calcutta, in 1829. The bank advanced
 Ray: Banking and the Credit System in Bengal 879

money to Dutt on Company’s paper which, though fraudulently

obtained, carried the signature of the Financial Secretary to the
government and certified as genuine by the Treasury. When it later
transpired that the paper was forged, the government declined to
make good the loss of Rs.3.5 lakh, which the bank had suffered. The
case was referred to the Court of Directors and the Privy Council,
but without success. The bank had no other alternative but to write
off the whole amount in 1834. No dividend was declared by the bank
that year and the bank’s shares fell from 60 per cent premium to par,
though only temporarily.
Infringements of the Charter
Rarely did the Bank of Bengal depart from the tenets of sound
banking. Without entering into rate-cutting wars, it did everything
possible to expand business connections particularly after it entered
into branch banking in 1862. The strict adherence to rules at times
did not spare the high and mighty like Governor General William
Bentinck.26
The bank, however, found it difficult to adhere strictly to the spirit
of the charter at all times. Restrictions on the quantum of loans, the
period of accommodation and the prohibition to engage in trade were
at times contravened. Even as early as in 1810, the bank granted a
loan of Rs.3 lakh to Barretto & Co., when the ceiling was Rs.1 lakh.
The compelling factors were, for instance, the holding of surplus
funds in the face of limited opportunities of safe deployment, the
comfort of holding assured security against the funds lent, the fear
of a likely depreciation in the value of Company’s paper owing to
forced sale by bank’s borrowers to ensure timely repayment of loans
thereby jeopardizing the lending operations of the Government, etc.
Perhaps the most striking example of the bank’s infringements
occurred in its entanglement with the agency houses in the late 1820s
and early 1830s.These agency houses had begun to appear on the
Indian scene from about the 1770s and were principally engaged in
the trade of opium, coal, indigo and later, mill-made products from
the Lancashire mills. Within a few decades their number grew from
15 in 1790 to 27 in 1828 and then to 93 in 1846.27
The abolition of the East India Company’s monopoly on trade
with India in 1813 gave a boost to the operations of these houses.
880 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

An unprecedented expansion in their business saw exports grow

several fold and indigo emerge as the preferred mode of remittance
to Britain. Agency houses became intimately involved at every stage
of its production, viz., cultivation of the plant, manufacture into
saleable indigo and its export. As many of the partners of these agency
houses were commercial directors of the Bank of Bengal, the bank
showed leniency by exceeding the limits contained in the charter in
its loans to them.
A sudden tightness in the money market in Calcutta, fall in the
price of indigo in the London market in 1825–6, failure of indigo
crops in Bengal a year later and a precipitous fall in its price in 1829
led to a severe commercial crisis resulting in the bankruptcy of several
leading agency houses like Palmer & Co., Cruttenden Mackillop &
Co., Fergusson & Co., Mackintosh & Co., and Alexander & Co.,
between 1829 and 1833.28 Unusually heavy withdrawals by retiring
partners also added to their woes.29
The failure of these agency houses also saw the Western-style
banks set up by them in Calcutta in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth century also become bankrupt. Among them were the
Calcutta Bank of Palmer & Co., Bank of Hindostan of Alexander &
Co., Commercial Bank of Mackintosh & Co., Fergusson & Co. and
Joseph Barretto & Co., etc.
The Bank of Bengal stepped in to protect the agency houses and
particularly the largest of them, Alexander & Co. and in so doing
infringed its charter. To this firm, the board directly or indirectly
advanced more than Rs.23 lakh. When Alexander & Co. failed in
December 1832, the bank was saddled with indigo factories and other
assets which had been the property of that house. The bank worked
the factories themselves, being unable at the time to sell them to
advantage. This again was contrary to the provisions of the charter,
which expressly prohibited the bank from engaging in trade.
The bank, however, at the end of it all, emerged unscathed. Its
losses would almost certainly have been large but for the realization
of the assets of the Indian banians of the insolvent houses.30 Palmer
& Co., for instance, borrowed, amongst other loans from the Bank
of Bengal, Rs.15 lakh by depositing securities belonging mainly to
one of their banians, Ruggoram Gossain, but endorsed to Palmer &
Co. The bank not only managed to get back the loan by selling these
 Ray: Banking and the Credit System in Bengal 881

securities, but also set off a surplus of Rs.2.35 lakh from that sale
against another loan of the agency house.
While the bank moved with great alacrity in recovering its
dues from the Indian collaborators, the European principals took
refuge under the Insolvent Debtors’ Relief Act passed by the British
Parliament in 1828 and returned to Britain without repaying their
debts. A few among them later returned to India to set up new
businesses.
Barring one or two, no banian who had acted as long-term
business associate of such defaulting firms would take up such
collaborative ventures in future.

Post-1860
Branch Banking Begins
The passing of the Paper Currency Act in 1861 and the decision
to abolish the right of the presidency banks to issue notes led to a
major change in the conditions of operation. With the Government
of India assuming the sole power of issuing paper currency in British
India from 1 March 1862, the three banks were made bankers to
the government in 186631 and initially entrusted with the task of
management and circulation of the new currency. Moreover, the
government undertook to lodge its treasury balances at all mofussil
centres with the banks at places where it would open branches. The
banks embarked on frantic expansion and by 1876 covered most
of the ports and many of the inland trade centres in British India.
Among the early branches of the Bank of Bengal in the Bengal
Presidency (which then included British Burma) were Rangoon,
Benares, Dacca,32 Patna, Mirzapur, Agra, Allahabad, Delhi, Cawnpore,
Lahore, Serajgunge, Chittagong, Akyab, Moulmein, Hingunghat,
Hyderabad, Nagpore, Amritsar and Jubbulpore.
The first branch was opened at Jalpaiguri in the Dooars, present-
day Bengal, in 1894 principally to finance the tea industry. Remittance
of specie to the distant tea gardens of the district and that too on
elephant back formed a key activity of the branch.
The three banks enjoyed the use, in some form, of the whole
of the Government balances at the Presidency towns, and at their
branches, free of interest until 1876.
882 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

The Presidency Banks’ Act, 1876

In May 1876, the Banks of Bengal, Bombay and Madras were brought
under a common statute—the Presidency Banks’ Act—to have them
governed by similar rules, subject the custody of government balances
to stringent limits and strictly define the securities admissible and
the terms on which loans and discounts could be granted. The
government ceased to be proprietors, but held the right of supervision.
Reserve Treasuries of the government were created in which sums
beyond a minimum assured balance at places where branches of
the bank were to be opened were held. This was occasioned by the
failure of the Bank of Bombay in 1867, when ‘corrupt mercantile
directors and secretaries, gullible or negligent government directors
and a complaisant government ensured the bank’s entanglement in
unfortunate speculations during the American Civil War’.33 A new
Bank of Bombay emerged in its place immediately thereafter.
The three banks at that time had forty-four branches across the
subcontinent covering major inland trade centres and ports.

Arrival of Exchange Banks

While the Bank of Bengal was accorded a privileged status by virtue
of its exclusive relationship with the government, it was at the same
time compelled to accept certain restrictions on its activities. Principal
among these was its rigid exclusion from engaging in any foreign
exchange business. Not only was such business considered risky for
the bank holding as it did government funds, it was also feared that
enjoying government patronage would offer unfair competition to
the exchange banks mostly registered in the UK, which had arrived
in India by about the 1860s.34 The British exchange banks were to
eventually monopolize, until well into the twentieth century, the
foreign exchange business connected with the subcontinent’s overseas
trade and the remittance of large sums of money as tribute to London
to cover the so-called ‘Home Charges’.35 The opening of the Suez
Canal transformed Indian trade as never before.
The exchange banks not only enjoyed an advantage over the
Banks of Bengal, Bombay and Madras in being able to deal in foreign
exchange, they also had greater manoeuvrability in the functioning of
internal trade, much of it linked to overseas trade. Unlike the three
 Ray: Banking and the Credit System in Bengal 883

banks, the exchange banks were not bound by limits imposed on

advances granted by them or the types of securities against which
loans could be given.
With the arrival of the exchange banks, the three banks, which
had till then been presiding over the banking system at its apex in the
presidency towns of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, were relegated
to the role of intermediaries. In extending working capital finance
to the exchange banks, the three banks of course indirectly financed
overseas trade.

Commercialization of India
India witnessed rapid commercialization in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century with the rapid expansion of the Indian railways,
conversion of subsistence crops into cash crops following the opening
of new irrigation networks and the transformation of large areas of
tea and coffee plantations in the eastern Terais, hills of Assam and the
Nilgiris into regions of estate agriculture par excellence. A six-fold
increase in India’s overseas trade occurred.
The Bank of Bengal like its two siblings was both the promoter
and beneficiary of this commercialization process involved as it was
in the financing of trading, manufacturing and mining activities of
the subcontinent like cotton, jute, rice, sugar, tea, paper, coal, etc.
About two decades later, in 1920, the Government of India
amalgamated the three presidency banks with their seventy-three
offices to create an all India bank, Imperial Bank of India, for
extending banking facilities and render the money resources of India
more accessible to the country’s trade and commerce.

Emergence of Private Joint-Stock Banks

Apart from the Bank of Bengal, several private joint-stock banks
were set up in India during the nineteenth century. Some were set
up without limited liability up to 1860 and some with limited liability
after the passing of the requisite legislation.
I shall briefly discuss a few of them which operated in Bengal.

The Union Bank

The Union Bank was set up in 1829 largely due to the initiative of
Mackintosh & Co., the agency house of Calcutta, which already had a
884 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

bank of its own, the Commercial Bank. The move to set up the bank
was supported by most of the leading European merchants of Calcutta
as well as Indians like Dwarkanath Tagore,36 who felt the need for a
bank that would ‘fill up the space in the money market, left vacant
as it were, by the restrictions imposed on the Bank of Bengal by its
charter’.37 Besides being a promoter, Dwarkanath soon became the
moving spirit behind the bank.
As a joint-stock commercial bank backed by no charter, its capital
of Rs.15 lakh was wholly furnished by individuals and was made up
of 600 shares of Sicca Rs.2500 each. Leading European merchants
apart, a few Indians including Dwarkanath, Rustomjee Cowasjee,
and Radhamadhab Banerjee were shareholders of the bank. The bank
was governed by a board of directors made up of leading European
merchants and Indians.38 Dwarkanath’s step brother, Ramanath, was
appointed as the bank’s treasurer.
The bank issued notes up to a limit of Rs.6 lakh and its circulation
was confined to Calcutta and its immediate vicinity. The Government,
however, declined to receive these notes at the Treasury.
After a brief period of cooperation between the Bank of Bengal
and the Union Bank, the two banks fell apart in 1834 when the former
refused to receive notes of the Union Bank except as short credits.
This action elicited protests from many firms in Calcutta and a strong
protest from Union Bank, who complained of the aggressive action of
the Bank of Bengal, which was detrimental to their credit. The Bank
of Bengal held its ground and the matter was eventually dropped. The
Union Bank thereafter made several overtures to the bank so that its
notes could be received as cash but the Bank of Bengal did not relent.
Between 1835 and 1840, the Union Bank raised its capital more
than six times (from Rs.15 lakh to Rs.100 lakh) with the expectation
that it would take the place of the old agency houses ‘as suppliers
and mobilizers of capital and as a means of financing, directly or
indirectly’, a large number of schemes in which Dwarkanath and his
friends (some of whom were also directors of the Union Bank) were
interested.39 Once the capital was expanded and the new enterprises
became unmanageable, the bank was forced to adopt ‘questionable
lending policies’ so as to ensure good dividends to its shareholders. 40
At the end of 1839, the bank took up the ‘pernicious system
of advances upon indigo factories, other blocks, and the personal
 Ray: Banking and the Credit System in Bengal 885

security of the borrower, which so deeply preyed upon the vitals of

the Bank  .  .  .’,41 as it went on financing the indigo houses of Calcutta
against deposit of title deeds of their factories and extending its
presence in bill discounting.
A decline in indigo prices followed by a severe commercial crisis
in Britain forcing an embargo on indigo imports eventually saw the
bank suspend its operations in January 1846. A year later the bank
was in liquidation.
Dwarkanath, in the meantime, quickly got rid of his shares once
he became wary of the bank’s operations which he found were ‘at
variance with the proper practice of banking’.42
The ruin of the Union Bank was attributed to dealing in Bills of
Exchange and to indigo engagements entered into as far back as 1840,
and not to subsequent mismanagement: but the former Secretary, Mr
James Calder Stewart, asserted that it was owing to excessive credit
given to a few particular houses in the form of indigo advances, and
to the purchase of their Bills in 1847, and to other accommodation
to them long after they were insolvent, that the Bank’s ruin is truly
to be attributed. According to C.N. Cooke, ‘The banking principle
should not have been departed from, and, we should not have had
to chronicle such disgraceful proceedings.’43

Other Private Joint-Stock Banks

The failure of the Union Bank left the Bank of Bengal in a practically
monopolistic position as far as banking in eastern and northern India
was concerned with the exception of the Agra and United Services
Bank and smaller loan agencies glorified as banks.
In 1833, the Agra and United Services Bank was set up at Agra.
Founded by Europeans soon after the collapse of the major agency
houses, the bank was expected to meet the credit needs of the
Europeans in the vast hinterland. By 1847, it had become the largest
bank in the region, with a capital of Rs.60 lakh and practically did
monopoly business till the Agra branch of the Bank of Bengal was
opened in 1863. In November 1838, the bank’s first agency was
opened in Calcutta at 2, Council House St.44 In 1857, the bank was
incorporated in London and was soon after amalgamated with the
Masterman Banking Concern in London to assume the new name
886 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

of Agra and Masterman’s Bank Ltd. The alliance with Masterman’s

unfortunately proved to be shortlived and the London concern soon
dropped out and the bank assumed the title of Agra Bank Ltd. With
declining business, the bank eventually went into liquidation in 1900.
In 1865, British and Indian promoters jointly founded the
Allahabad Bank, but the bank was managed exclusively by British
managers. Nearly four decades later, well-established business
communities (mostly belonging to the Khattri, Aggarwal or Arora
castes) ensured that constructive swadeshi found its roots in the field
of banking, by setting up the Punjab National Bank in 1894. Both
these banks opened branches in Calcutta and one of them moved its
head office to Calcutta in 1923.
A formidable British Bank, the Alliance Bank of Simla registered
on 14 May 1874, in the meantime, commenced operations in Simla
and soon built up a flourishing business. Branches were opened
at many of the important trading marts, hill stations and military
cantonments in northern India. A branch was also opened in Calcutta
in the late 1890s. Though it became a strong rival of the Bank of
Bengal, it eventually collapsed in the 1920s because of financial
irregularities committed by its British management in England.
When the bank went into liquidation in 1923, it was absorbed by
the Imperial Bank of India.

A Central Bank for India

The proposal for creating a central bank or of amalgamating the
Bank of Bengal and its two siblings into a large all-India commercial
bank was voiced many a time from about the late 1860s. The Fowler
Committee (1898) and John Maynard Keynes in 1913 recommended
the creation of a central bank and the latter worked out a detailed
proposal.45
The Imperial Bank of India created by an Act in 1920 was not,
however, what Keynes had planned. What eventually emerged was a
‘half-way house’ combining the functions of a commercial bank and
a central bank (the latter though only to a limited extent). It was in
fact no different from the Presidency Banks as they too were bankers
to the Government, bankers’ bank as well as commercial banks. The
only striking departures were the all-India character of the Imperial
Bank and the mandate given to it (the first such occasion for a bank
in India) to open 100 branches within five years.
 Ray: Banking and the Credit System in Bengal 887

It was only with the creation of the Reserve Bank of India in

1934 that the quasi-central banking role of the Imperial Bank ended
and the latter became a purely commercial bank. The rigid exclusion
from engaging in foreign exchange business was also removed then.
Within two decades, the Imperial Bank, as the foremost
commercial bank of the country, was to be picked up by the
Government of India and constituted as the State Bank of India as an
instrument of public policy to lead Indian banking into the exciting
field of national development.46 Within a century and a half, the Bank
had witnessed the rise and fall of an empire and the birth of a mighty
nation. The Bank which had been founded primarily as an instrument
for furthering imperialistic designs had by then metamorphosed into
a vital organ for developing the national economy.

Notes
1. Sir John Clapham, ‘The Antecedents and the First Three Years of the Bank’,
The Bank of England: A History, Vol. I, 1694–1797, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970, p. 1.
2. In the spring of 1801, 12 per cent treasury notes were being sold at a
discount of 3/4 per cent and silver coins had become extremely scarce.
Moreover, since much of the revenue was paid in gold coin, which was
then at a discount of 6–7 per cent, the government lost in the conversion
from gold to silver. See, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ‘The Precursor: The Bank
of Calcutta, 1806–1808’, in The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. 1:
The Roots 1806–1876, Part 1: The Early Years, 1806–1860, Bombay: Oxford
University Press, 1987, p. 74.
3. Report of the Bombay Bank Commission, London, 1869.
4. A coin, both in silver and gold, was long current in South India. Accounts
at Madras till 1818 were maintained in pagodas, fanams and kas; 8 kas
being equal to 1 fanam and 42 fanams being equal to 1 pagoda. In 1818,
when the rupee was made the standard coin, the pagoda was reckoned as
equivalent to 3½ rupees and weighed about 52 grains.
5. See, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ‘The Political and Social Setting, 1806–1848’,
in The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. 1: The Roots 1806–1876,
Part 1: The Early Years, 1806–1860, Bombay: Oxford University Press,
1987, pp. 37–8.
6. For details on Henry St. George Tucker, who rose to be the chairman of
the East India Company, see Bagchi, ‘The Precursor’, pp. 60–1.
7. Though it was announced that the bank would open for business on 2 June
1806, it began granting loans from 14 May 1806 as its board had started
meeting from early April 1806.
888 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
8. For the histories of the three chartered banks (later referred to as the
Presidency Banks), see, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, The Evolution of the State
Bank of India, Vol. 1: The Roots 1806–1876, Part 1: The Early Years,
1806–1860, Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1987; Amiya Kumar Bagchi,
The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. 2: The Era of the Presidency
Banks, 1876–1920, New Delhi: Sage, 1997; and Amiya Kumar Bagchi, The
Presidency Banks and the Indian Economy, 1876–1914, Calcutta: Oxford
University Press, 1989.
9. As this essay covers the histories of banks in Bengal including the Bank of
Bengal in the nineteenth century, the Banks of Bombay and Madras who
shared common features with the Bank of Bengal, the biggest of the three,
have not been dealt with beyond occasional references.
10. So great was the public confidence in the Bank of Bengal that its notes,
according to Holt Mackenzie, Secretary to the Government, bore a small
premium. See, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ‘The Bank of Bengal, 1835–1855’,
in The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. 1: The Roots 1806–1876,
Part 1: The Early Years, 1806–1860, Bombay: Oxford University Press,
1987, p. 182.
11. Within three years of the introduction of the fixed deposit scheme (paying
4 per cent on a one-year deposit and 3½ per cent on a six-month deposit),
private deposits overtook public (government) deposits, moving further
ahead with the introduction of the savings bank scheme with annual
interest of 3 per cent. See, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ‘The Presidency Banks,
the Government and the Exchange Banks: The Long Haul and the Eddies’,
The Presidency Banks and the Indian Economy, 1876–1914, Calcutta: Oxford
University Press, 1989.
12. This was perhaps borrowed from one of the clauses of the charter of the
Bank of England ‘forbidding the bank to lend to the Crown or buy Crown
lands without parliamentary consent’. The provision was eventually set
aside after persistent demands of the British PM William Pitt only to land
the bank in considerable trouble. See, Clapham, ‘The Antecedents and the
First Three Years of the Bank’, p. 17.
13. In 1809, while the European secretary and treasurer of the bank drew
a princely monthly salary of Rs.800 and his deputy, the bookkeeper
(accountant) Rs.300, the Khazanchee, who bore the brunt of the workload,
too was paid Rs.300. Podars or cashiers drew Rs.120, Bengali writers or
clerks Rs.80 and coolies, darwans, Rs.20.The salaries of the two European
officers in 1809 alone—the secretary and treasurer, and the bookkeeper—
made up more than half the total salary bill of the establishment.
14. In later years, many of the leading shroffs of north and central India became
Khazanchees of the bank at its branches as they valued the connection of the
bank. The nominal salary paid by the bank against a hefty security deposit
 Ray: Banking and the Credit System in Bengal 889
was evidently an insignificant part of their earnings. Thus, Bunseelall
Abeerchand, Gokuldas Gopaldas, Lala Sheopershad, etc., wealthy bankers
in their own right were Khazanchees of the bank at its branches in north
India with each of them holding charge of the cash department at several
branches at the same time.
15. Ram Comul’s grandson, Keshab Chandra Sen, the Brahmo Samaj reformer,
was an employee of the Bank of Bengal till about the 1850s.
16. On the conflict between Ram Comul Sen and his secretary, see, Amiya
Kumar Bagchi, ‘The Organizational Set-up, 1809–1859’, in The Evolution
of the State Bank of India, Vol. 1: The Roots 1806–1876, Part 1: The Early
Years, 1806–1860, Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 304–15.
17. Leading agency houses such as Alexander & Co., Fairlie Fergusson & Co.,
Cruttenden Mackillop & Co., Palmer & Co., Colvins Bazett & Co., etc.,
were all borrowers of the bank.
18. In later years, many eminent personalities of Bengal like Iswar Chandra
Vidyasagar, Rabindranath Tagore, Bipin Chandra Pal, Ashutosh Mukherjee,
Jagadish Chandra Bose, Abanindranath Tagore, Basanti Devi, Nilratan
Sircar and Romesh Chunder Dutt were also customers of the bank.
19. When the Imperial Bank of India was created by merging the three
presidency banks of Bengal, Bombay and Madras, it took on a triple role:
banker to the Government, bankers’ bank, and a commercial bank. For the
history of the Imperial Bank of India, see, Abhik Ray et al., The Evolution
of the State Bank of India, Vol. 3: The Era of the Imperial Bank of India,
1921–1955, New Delhi: Sage, 2003.
20. Till then, the entire business of discounting hundis in Calcutta and its
immediate environs was handled by the bank’s main office at Strand Road,
Calcutta, which became the head office of the bank once the bank began
opening branches.
21. For a discussion on bazaar rates, see, Rajat Kanta Ray, ‘Indigenous Banking
and Commission Agency in India’s Colonial Economy’, in Money and Credit
in Indian History: From Early Medieval Times, ed. Amiya Kumar Bagchi,
New Delhi: Tulika, 2002, pp. 118–30.
22. W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. V: Districts of Dacca,
Bakarganj, Faridpur and Maimansinh, London: Trübner & Co., 1877,
p. 115.
23. Ibid., p. 462.
24. W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. I: Districts of the
24 Parganas and Sundarbans, London: Trübner & Co., 1877, p. 173.
25. Charles Northcote Cooke, The Rise, Progress, and Present Condition of
Banking in India, Calcutta: P.M. Cranenburgh, Bengal Print Co., 1863,
p. 27.
890 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
26. The Bank of Bengal dared to return a cheque of Bentinck because his
account was four annas (quarter of a rupee) short (Rupees-annas-pies
was the standard currency of India before the introduction of the decimal
system in 1957). Bentinck on being informed of this remarked ‘This was the
bank to do business with which would not violate its rules in the smallest
particular for the Governor General himself ’. See, Allen’s Indian Mail,
and Register of Intelligence for British and Foreign, India, China and
All Parts of the East, vol. VIII, 17 June 1850, London: W.H. Allen & Co.,
p. 350.
27. Blair B. Kling, Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of
Enterprise in Eastern India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976,
p. 54.
28. The total amount of loss including debts written off incurred by the Bank
of Bengal on account of the collapse of the agency houses was of the order
of Rs.15 lakh.
29. J.S. Brownrigg, one of the partners of Palmer & Co. and a director of the
Bank of Bengal in 1821, retired from India with Rs.8 lakh leaving an already
insolvent house in a state of desperation.
30. For details on the expeditiousness with which assets of Indian banians
were realized, please see, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ‘The Bank and the Agency
House Crisis’, in The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. 1: The Roots
1806–1876, Part 1: The Early Years, 1806–1860, Bombay: Oxford University
Press, 1987, pp. 192–4.
31. The Banks of Bengal, Bombay and Madras and their successor, the Imperial
Bank of India created in 1921, continued to be bankers to the Government
of India till the establishment of the country’s central bank, the Reserve
Bank of India, in 1935.
32. The Dacca branch was opened in 1862 with the absorption of the Dacca
Bank established in 1846 by local zamindars and planters in collaboration
with officers in the Company’s service.
33. For details, see, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ‘The Collapse of the Bank of Bombay:
Mining the Foundations’, and ‘The Collapse of the Bank of Bombay: The
Explosion and the Aftermath’, The Evolution of the State Bank of India,
Vol. 1: The Roots 1806–1876, Part II: Diversity and regrouping, 1860–1876,
Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1987.
34. Among the early exchange banks to arrive in India were the British banks
of Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, the Hong Kong and
Shanghai Banking Corporation and the National and Grindlays Bank.
The non-British banks included the Comptoir D’Escompte de Paris
and Yokohama Specie Bank. See in this regard C. Mackenzie, Realms of
Silver: One Hundred Years of Banking in the East, London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1954; and F.H.H. King, The Hongkong Bank in Late Imperial
 Ray: Banking and the Credit System in Bengal 891
China, 1864–1902: On an Even Keel, vol. 1 of The History of the Hongkong
and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987. The National and Grindlays Bank, also an exchange bank,
was founded as the Calcutta City Banking Corporation in 1863 and
incorporated in London as the National Bank of India in 1866. See,
G. Tyson, 100 years of Banking in Asia and Africa, London: National and
Grindlays Bank, 1963.
35. Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ed., ‘Introduction: Money, Banking and Finance in
India since Early Medieval Time’, in Money and Credit in Indian History:
From Early Medieval Times, New Delhi: Tulika, 2002, pp. ix–xii. While
the annual surplus extracted from India and Burma was between £21.4
million and £28.9 million in 1870s, it rose to between £52.9 million and
£65.3 million on the eve of World War I. See also, Amiya Kumar Bagchi,
‘Colonial Tribute and Profits, 1870s Onward’, Perilous Passage: Mankind
and the Global Ascendancy of Capital, New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2006, p. 241. Only for a brief while in 1923 was the Imperial Bank of India
employed to remit funds to London by purchasing bills from the exchange
banks in India, which could be either discounted or held until maturity at
the disposal of the Secretary of State, see, Abhik Ray, ‘The Imperial Bank:
The Years of Consolidation, 1926–1935’, The Evolution of the State Bank of
India, Vol. 3: The Era of the Imperial Bank of India, 1921–1955, New Delhi:
Sage, 2003, pp. 108–9.
36. A successful zamindar, moneylender, indigo and opium trader, and a
partner of Carr, Tagore & Co., Dwarkanath also founded or fostered major
businesses like collieries, steam tugs, salt production, tea, etc., in eastern
India. For details, see, Kling, Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and
the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India; and Goswami, Omkar, Goras and
Desis: Managing Agencies and the Making of Corporate India, Gurgaon:
Penguin Random House, 2016.
37. Cooke, Rise, Progress, and Present Condition of Banking, p. 177.
38. Among Indian directors were Rustomjee Cowasjee, the Parsee merchant
and Radhamadhab Banerjee who together with prominent Europeans and
Indians set up several enterprises in Bengal. See, Scott’s Bengal Directory
and Register, 1839.
39. The Calcutta Steam Tug Association, The Steam Ferry Bridge Company,
Bengal Tea Association, etc., were all floated then with Carr, Tagore & Co.,
as managing agents. See, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ‘The Rivals: The Bank of
Bengal and the Union Bank’, in The Evolution of the State Bank of India,
Vol. 1: The Roots 1806–1876, Part 1: The Early Years, 1806–1860, Bombay:
Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 280–1.
40. The rate of half-yearly dividend of the Union Bank which was between
10 and 14 per cent between July 1835 and January 1839 fell to 7 per cent
892 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
between July 1840 and July 1847 barring 2 1/2 years between January 1841
to July 1843 when it swung between 8 and 10 per cent.
41. Cooke, Rise, Progress, and Present Condition of Banking, pp. 179–80.
42. Bagchi, ‘The Rivals’, p. 284.
43. Cooke, Rise, Progress, and Present Condition of Banking, p. 200.
44. The Calcutta agency was opened at 2, Council House St. As the Agra
and Masterman’s Bank, it later secured the site at the south-east corner
of Dalhousie Square and a handsome three-storied building designed in
Italian style emerged by 1867. When the Government of India purchased
the building in 1868 for its Currency Office, the Agra Bank withdrew to
the rear part of the building at 26 Mission Row. Today the ASI has taken
over this building though much remains to be done to bring the building
back to its past glory!
45. Keynes had put forward the detailed scheme for the formation of a state
bank of India; see, John Maynard Keynes, Indian Currency and Finance,
London: Macmillan, 1913. He elaborated this further which was published
as Annexe to Report of the Chamberlain Commission (1914).
46. Abhik Ray et al., The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. 4: The Era
from 1955 to 1980, New Delhi: Penguin Portfolio, 2009.

References
Allen’s Indian Mail, and Register of Intelligence for British and Foreign,
India, China and All Parts of the East, vol. VIII, 17 June 1850, London:
W.H. Allen & Co.
Bagchi, Amiya Kumar, The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. 1: The Roots
1806–1876, Part 1: The Early Years, 1806–1860, Bombay: Oxford University
Press, 1987.
———,  The Presidency Banks and the Indian Economy, 1876–1914, Calcutta:
Oxford University Press, 1989.
———,  The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. 2: The Era of the Presidency
Banks, 1876–1920, New Delhi: Sage, 1997.
———,  Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Bagchi, Amiya Kumar, ed., Money and Credit in Indian History: From Early
Medieval Times, New Delhi: Tulika, 2002.
Clapham, Sir John, The Bank of England: A History, Vol. I, 1694–1797, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Cooke, Charles Northcote, The Rise, Progress, and Present Condition of Banking
in India, Calcutta: P.M. Cranenburgh, Bengal Print Co., 1863.
Goswami, Omkar, Goras and Desis: Managing Agencies and the Making of
Corporate India, Gurgaon: Penguin Random House, 2016.
 Ray: Banking and the Credit System in Bengal 893
Hunter, W.W., A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. I: Districts of the 24 Parganas
and Sundarbans, London: Trübner & Co., 1877.
Hunter, W.W., A Statistical Account of Bengal, Vol. V: Districts of Dacca,
Bakarganj, Faridpur and Maimansinh, London: Trübner & Co., 1877.
Keynes, John Maynard, Indian Currency and Finance, London: Macmillan, 1913.
King, F.H.H., The Hongkong Bank in Late Imperial China, 1864–1902: On an
Even Keel, vol. 1 of The History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking
Corporation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Kling, Blair B., Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise
in Eastern India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
Mackenzie, C., Realms of Silver: One Hundred Years of Banking in the East,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954.
Ray, Abhik et al., The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. 3: The Era of the
Imperial Bank of India, 1921–1955, New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2003.
Ray, Abhik et al., The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. 4: The Era from
1955 to 1980, New Delhi: Penguin Portfolio, 2009.
Report of the Bombay Bank Commission, London, 1869.
Scott’s Bengal Directory and Register, 1839.
Tyson, G., 100 years of Banking in Asia and Africa, London: National and
Grindlays Bank, 1963.
 Brief Bibliographic References on
Bengal History, 1967–2017

Amiya Kumar Baul

I
n these three volumes, individual contributors have provided
appropriate bibliographic references; however, there remained
the need for collectively mentioning and acknowledging the
major secondary works which formed the basis of the narrative for
almost all who wrote for these volumes on history of Bengal (who
might or might not have cited all primary and secondary sources).
I have compiled a general bibliography which will serve to supple-
ment the bibliographic references given by individual authors in
their chapters. The last publication on the lines of the present work
entitled History of Bengal, 1757–1905 edited by Professor Narendra
Krishna Sinha of Calcutta University, published in 1967 contained up
to date bibliographic coverage, so the general bibliography compiled
by me will commence with publications from after 1967. As regards
the terminal date, this bibliography will cover publications in book
form up to 2017, i.e. the date of commencement of the present project
and exactly 50 years from 1967 to 2017.
Finally, the following principles were borne in mind while com-
piling the present bibliography. First, since publication in languages
other than English and Bengali on the history of Bengal is negligible,
and we do not have at the Asiatic Society facilities for accessing
books in many languages, this bibliography will be limited to books
published in English and Bengali. Second, we have excluded from
this bibliography sources other than those in the printed form. We
are aware that the internet has sources like Wikipedia, Banglapedia,
etc., but it was not found practicable to include these online sources.

*Amiya Kumar Baul is a Ph.D. Scholar (Department of History, Jadavpur

University) and is associated as a Research Assistant in this project.
896 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

We may note that there is a method of transliteration in the publi­-

cation of the Asiatic Society and this method was invented by the
founder of the Asiatic Society—Sir William Jones. The authors in
the present volumes were allowed freedom to use the key method
reproduced from time to time in the journal of the Asiatic Society
(see Plates B.1 and B.2).

plate B.1: Transliteration method, Journal of the Asiatic Society,

 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 897

plate B.2: Transliteration method, Journal of the Asiatic Society,

In conclusion, I would like to record my indebtedness to the fol-

lowing for their help in compiling the bibliography of this prestigious
project: The Librarian of the National Library of India, Calcutta;
Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture Library, Golpark; Centre
for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta; The Asiatic Society, Kolkata;
Institute of Development Studies Kolkata; Paschimbanga Itihas
898 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal

Samsad; Netaji Institute for Asian Studies; and those who personally
helped me to complete this work. I would like to express my profound
gratitude to Professor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya for this opportunity
to associate myself with this important national endeavour.

English Books
Abulfazal M. Fazle, Kabir, The Libraries of Bengal, 1700–1947, London: Mansell,
1987.
Acharya, Srikumar, The Changing Pattern of Education in Early Nineteenth
Century Bengal, Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1992.
Adhikari, Santosh Kumar, Vidyasagar and the New National Consciousness,
Calcutta: Vidyasagar Research Centre, 1990.
Ahmad, Kamruddin, A Socio Political History of Bengal and the Birth of
Bangladesh, Dacca: Zahiruddin Mahmud Inside Library, 1975.
———,  A Social History of Bengal, Dhaka: Progoti, 1970.
Ahmad, Rafiuddin, The Bengal Muslims, 1871–1906: A Quest for Identity, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Ahmed, Salahuddin, Social Ideas and Social Change in Bengal, 1818–1835,
Calcutta: Papyrus, 2003.
———,  Bengali Nationalism and the Emergence of Bangladesh: An Introductory
Outline, Dhaka: International Centre for Bengal Studies, 1994.
———,  Social Ideas and Social Change in Bengal, 1818–1835, Calcutta: Rddhi-
India, 1976.
Ahmed, Sufiya, Muslim Community in Bengal, 1884–1912, Dhaka: Oxford
University Press, 1974.
Akhtar, Shirin, The Role of the Zamindars of Bengal, 1707–1772, Dhaka: The
Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1982.
Amin, Sonia Nishat, The World of Muslim Women in Colonial Bengal, 1876–1939,
Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996.
Anam, Md. Khairul, Indian Freedom Movement and Murshidabad District
1905–1947, Kolkata: K.P. Bagchi, 2008.
Anne, Hardgrove, Community and Public Culture: The Marwaris in Calcutta,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Ayyar, Chandrika, Education and Intellectual Pursuits: With Special Reference to
Bengal, 1817–1857, Kanpur: Prajna Prakashan, 1987.
Azmi, Awwal, The Industrial Development of Bengal, 1900–1939, New Delhi:
Vikas, 1982.
Bag, Sailendra Kumar, The Changing Fortunes of the Bengal Silk Industry,
1757–1833, Howrah: S.K. Bag, 1989.
Bagchi, A.K., Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital,
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 899
Bala, Poonam, Imperialism and Medicine in Bengal: A Socio-Historical Perspective,
New Delhi: Sage, 1991.
Ballantyne, Tony, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire, New
York: Palgrave, 2002.
Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar, Caste, Protest and Identity: The Namasudras of Bengal,
1872–1947, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011.
———,  Decolonization in South Asia: Meanings of Freedom in Post-independence
West Bengal, 1947–1952, London: Routledge, 2009.
———,  Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal,
New Delhi: Sage, 2004.
———,  From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India, New Delhi: Orient
Longman, 2004.
———,  Bengal: Rethinking History, Essays in Historiography, Delhi: Manohar,
2001.
———,  Bengal: Communities, Development and States, Delhi: Manohar, 1994.
———,  Caste, Politics and the Raj, Bengal: 1872–1937, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1990.
Banerjee, Debashish, The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore, New Delhi:
Sage, 2009.
Banerjee, Prajnananda, Calcutta and Its Hinterland, Calcutta: Progressive, 1975.
Banerjee, Sarmila, Studies in Administrative History of Bengal, 1880–1898, New
Delhi: Rajesh, 1978.
Banerjee, Sumanta, The Wicked City: Crime and Punishment in Colonial Calcutta,
New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2009.
———,  Dangerous Outcast: The Prostitute in Nineteenth Century Bengal,
Calcutta: Seagull, 2000.
———,  The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth
Century Calcutta, Calcutta: Seagull, 1998.
Banerjee, Tarasankar, Various Bengal: Aspects of Modern History, Calcutta: Ratna
Prakashan, 1985.
Banerji, Anil Chandra, The Agrarian System of Bengal, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi,
1980.
Banerji, S.C., Tantra in Bengal: A Study in its Origin, Development and Influence,
Kolkata: Naya Prakash, 1978.
Barman, Rup Kumar, Partition of India and its Impact on the Scheduled Castes
of Bengal, New Delhi: Abhijeet, 2012.
Barui, Balai, The Salt Industry of Bengal, 1757–1800: A Study in the Interaction of
British Monopoly Control and Indigenous Enterprise, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi,
1985.
Basu, Deepika, The Working Class in Bengal: Formative Years, Calcutta:
K.P. Bagchi, 1993.
Basu, Nirban, Politics and Protest 1937–1947: A Comparative Study of Four Major
Industries in Bengal, Calcutta: Progressive, 2002.
900 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
———,  The Working Class Movement: A Study of the Jute Mills of Bengal, 1937–
1947, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1994.
———,  The Political Parties and the Labour Politics 1937–1947 with Special
Reference to Bengal, Calcutta: Minerva, 1992.
Basu, Sakti Kali, Development of Icongraphy in Pre-Gupta Vanga, Calcutta:
Punthi Pustak, 2004.
Basu, Shamita, Religious Revivalism as Nationalist Discourse: Swami Vivekananda
and New Hinduism in Nineteenth Century Bengal, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2002.
Basu, Subho, Does Class Matter? Colonial Capital and Workers’ Resistance in
Bengal, 1890–1937, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Basu, Swaraj, Dynamics of a Caste Movement: The Rajbansis of North Bengal
1910–1947, New Delhi: Manohar, 2003.
Batabyal, Rakesh, Communalism in Bengal: From Famine to Noakhali, New
Delhi: Sage, 2005.
Bhaduri, Reena, Social Formation in Medieval Bengal, Calcutta: Bibhasa, 2001.
Bhatia, Varuni, Unforgetting Chaitanya: Vaishnavism and Cultures of Devotion
in Bengal, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Bhattacharyya, Amit, Swadeshi Enterprise in Bengal: 1880–1920, Calcutta:
Readers Service, 2008.
———,  Swadeshi Enterprise in Bengal, 1921–1947, Calcutta: Setu Prakashani,
2007.
———,  The Profile of a National Enterprise in Bengal P.M. Bagchi & Co., 1883–
1947, Calcutta: Readers Service, 2003.
———,  Swadeshi Enterprise in Bengal: 1900–1920, Calcutta: Mita Bhattacharya,
1986.
Bhattacharyya, Dipankar, Peasant Movements in Bengal and Bihar, 1936–1947,
Calcutta: Rabindra Bharati University, 1992.
Bhattacharyya, Harihar, Micro Foundations of Bengal Communism, Delhi:
Ajanta, 1998.
Bhattacharya, Bhabani, Socio-political Currents in Bengal: A Nineteenth Century
Perspective, Ghaziabad: Vikas, 1980.
Bhattacharya, Buddhadeb, ed., Freedom Struggle and the Anushilan Samiti,
Calcutta: Anushilan Samiti, 1979.
———,  ed., Satyagraha in Bengal 1921–1939, Calcutta: Minerva, 1977.
Bhattacharya, Deben, The Mirror of the Sky Songs of the Bauls from Bengal,
London: Allen & Unwin, 1969.
Bhattacharya, Ranjit Kumar, The Moslems of Rural Bengal, Calcutta:
Subarnarekha, 1991.
Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi and Rana P. Behal, eds., The Vernacularization of the
Labour Politics, Delhi: Tulika, 2016.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 901
Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi, The Colonial State: Theory and Practice, New Delhi:
Primus, 2016.
———,  ed., Rethinking the Cultural Unity of India, Calcutta: Ramakrishna Mission
Institute of Culture, 2015.
———,  The Defining Moments in Bengal, 1920–1947, Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2014.
———,  ed., Indian Cultural Unity: A Reappraisal, Calcutta: Ramakrishna Mission
Institute of Culture, 2014.
———,  The End-game of the Raj and Subhas Bose’s Political Strategy, 1943–1945,
Calcutta: Netaji Subhas Open University, 2013.
———,  Rabindranath Tagore: An Interpretation, New Delhi: Viking/Penguin,
2011.
———,  Talking Back: The Idea of Civilization in the Nationalist Discourse, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011.
———,  ed., Rethinking 1857, New Delhi: ICHR, 2007.
———,  ed., The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates between Gandhi and
Tagore 1915–1941, Delhi: National Book Trust, 1997.
Bhattacharya, Sukumar, The East India Company and Economy of Bengal,
1704–1740, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1969.
Bhattacharya, Tithi, The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education, and the Colonial
Intellectual in Bengal (1848–1885), New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2005.
Bhowmick, P.K., Occupational Mobility and Caste Structure in Bengal: Study of
Rural Market, Calcutta: Indian Publications, 1969.
Bhowmick, Shyamapada, History of the Bengal Nagpur Railway Working Class
Movements. 1906–1947. with Special Reference to Kharagpur, Calcutta:
Krantik Prakashani, 1998.
Biswas, Dilip Kumar, The Correspondence of Rammohun Roy, vol. I (1809–1831),
Calcutta: Saraswat Library, 1992.
Biswas, Oneil, Calcutta and Calcuttans, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1992.
Biswas, S.S., Terracotta Art of Bengal, Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan, 1981.
Blochmann, H., Contributions to the Geography and History of Bengal:
Muhammedan Period, Kolkata: Asiatic Society, 2003.
Borthwick, Meredith, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849–1904,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
———,  Keshab Chunder Sen: A Search for Cultural Synthesis, Calcutta: Minerva,
1977.
Bose, N.K., Calcutta: 1964, A Social Survey, Calcutta: Anthropological Survey
of India, 1968.
Bose, Pradip Kumar, Classes in Rural Society: A Sociological Study of Bengal
Villages, Delhi: Ajanta, 1984.
902 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Boyce, James K., Agrarian Impasse in Bengal: Institutional Constraints to
Technological Change, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Bose, Sugata, The Nation as Mother and Other Visions of Nationhood, New Delhi,
Peguin Random House, 2017.
———,  His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against
Empire, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2011.
———,  Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal since 1770, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
———,  The New Cambridge History of India, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital:
Rural Bengal since 1770, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
———,  Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure and Politics, 1919–1947,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Bose, Sugata and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political
Economy, New York and London: Routledge, 2001.
Bose, Pradip Kumar, ed., Health and Society in Bengal: A Selection from Late
Nineteenth Century Bengali Periodicals, New Delhi: Sage, 2006.
Broomfield, J.H., Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth Century Bengal,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.
Campos, J.J.A., History of the Portuguese in Bengal, Patna: Janaki Prakashan, 1979.
Cardew, F.G., A Sketch of the Services of the Bengal Native Army to the Year 1895,
New Delhi: Today & Tomorrow’s Printers & Publishers, 1971.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Rethinking Working-class History: Bengal 1890–1940, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Chakrabarti, Hiren, Political Protest in Bengal: Boycott and Terrorism,
1905–1918, Calcutta: Papyrus, 1992.
Chakrabarti, Kunal, Religious Process: The Puranas and the Making of a Regional
Tradition, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Chakrabarti, Prafulla K., The Marginal Men: The Refugees and the Left Political
Syndrome in West Bengal, Calcutta: Lumiere, 1990.
Chakrabarti, Ranjan, Terror, Crime and Punishment: Order and Disorder in Early
Colonial Bengal, 1800–1860, Kolkata: Readers Service, 2009.
Chakrabarty, Bidyut, The Partititon of Bengal and Assam, 1932–1947: Contour
of Freedom, London: Routledge Curzon, 2004.
———,  ed., Biplabi: A Journal of Open Rebellion, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 2002.
———,  Local Politics and Indian Nationalism: Midnapur, 1919–1944, New Delhi:
Manohar, 1997.
———,  Subhas Chandra Bose and Middle–class Radicalism: A Study in Indian
Radicalism, 1928–1940, London: I.B.Tauris, 1990.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire
of Truth, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
———,  Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 903
———,  Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890–1940, Princeton, Delhi:
Princeton University Press, 1989.
Chakraborti, Smarajit, The Bengali Press, 1818–1868: A Study in the Growth of
Public Opinion, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1976.
Chakraborty, Rachana, Higher Education in Bengal, 1919–1947: A Study of its
Administration and Management, Calcutta: Minerva, 1997.
Chakravarti-Banerjee, Sonali, Social Background of Panchayat Leaders in West
Bengal, Kolkata: Dasgupta, 2002.
Chanda, Anuradha, Public Administration and Public Opinion in Bengal,
1854–1885, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1986.
Chakraborty, Subhas Ranjan, ed., The Eighteenth Century in South Asia: New
Terrains, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 2012.
———,  ed., Uprisings of 1857: Perspectives and Peripheries, Calcutta: The Asiatic
Society, 2009.
Chakravarti, Ramakanta, Vaishnabism in Bengal, 1486–1900, Kolkata: Sanskrit
Pustak Bhandar, 1985.
Chakravarty, Gargi, ed., Peoples Warrior: Words and Writings of P.C. Joshi, Delhi:
Tulika, 2014.
———,  Coming out of Partition: Refugee Women of Bengal, New Delhi: Bluejay
Books, Shrishti, 2005.
Chakravarty, Papiya, Hindu Response to Nationalist Ferment, Calcutta:
Subarnarekha, 1992.
Chakraborty, Uttara and Banimanjari Das, In the Footsteps of Chandramukhi,
Kolkata: Principal Bethune College, 2004.
———,  Women’s Education and Politics of Gender, Kolkata: Principal Bethune
College, 2004.
Chanda, Mrinal Kanti, History of English Press in Bengal, 1858–1880, Kolkata:
K.P. Bagchi, 2008.
———,  History of the English Press in Bengal, 1780–1857, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi,
1987.
Chatterjee, Partha and Gynanendra Pandey, eds., Subaltern Studies, Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1997.
Chatterjee, Partha, The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of
Power, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.
———,  A Religion of Urban Domesticity: Sri Ramakrishna and the Calcutta Middle
Classes, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.
———,  The Present History of West Bengal: Essays in Political Criticism, Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1997.
———,  ed., Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal, Minnesota:
University of Minnesota Press, 1995.
———,  The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
904 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
———,  Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse,
London: Zed, 1986.
———,  Bengal (1920–1947): The Land Question, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1984.
Chatterjee, Ruma, Cotton Handloom Manufactures of Bengal, 1870–1981,
Calcutta: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, 1985.
Chatterjee, Ratnabali, From the Karkhana to the Studio: Changing Social Roles of
Patron and Artists in Bengal, New Delhi: Books and Books, 1990.
Chatterjee, Srilata, Western Medicine and Colonial Society Hospitals of Calcutta,
c.1757–1860, Delhi: Primus, 2017.
Chatterji, Aditi, Ethnicity, Migration and the Urban Landscape of Kolkata,
Kolkata: K.P. Bagchi, 2009.
Chatterji, Bhola, Indo-British Cultural Confrontation: Gooroodass Banerjee and
his Times, Calcutta: Minerva, 1979.
Chatterji, Joya, The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007.
———,  Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Politics, 1932–1947,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Chatterjee, Kumkum, The Cultures of History in Early Modern Indian:
Persianization and Mughal Culture in Bengal, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2009.
Chatterjee, Partha, Empire and the Nation: Selected Essays, New York: Columbia
University Press, 2010.
Chattopadhyay, Basudeb, Crime and Control in Early Colonial Bengal, Calcutta:
K.P. Bagchi, 2000.
Chattopadhyay, Dilip Kumar, Dynamics of Social Change in Bengal (1817–1851),
Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1990.
Chattopadhyay, Gautam, ed., Awakening in Bengal in Early Nineteenth Century:
Select Documents, Calcutta: Paschim Banga Itihas Samsad and Progressive,
2016.
———,  Bengal Electoral Politics and Freedom Struggle, 1862–1947, Delhi: ICHR,
1984.
———,  Communism and Bengal’s Freedom Movement, 1917–1929, New Delhi:
People’s Publishing House, 1974.
Chattopadhyay, Kanailal, Brahmo Reform Movement: Some Social and Economic
Aspects, Calcutta: Papyrus, 1983.
Chattopadhyay, Manju, Petition to Agitation, Bengal: 1857–1885, Calcutta: K.P.
Bagchi, 1985.
Chattopadhyay, Suchetana, An Early Communist: Muzaffar Ahmed in Calcutta,
1913–1929, New Delhi: Tulika, 2011.
Chattopadhyay, Swati, Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism and the
Uncanny, London, New York: Rutledge, 2005.
Chattopadhyay, Tapan, The Story of Lalbazar: Its Origin and Growth, Calcutta:
Firma KLM, 1982.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 905
Chattopadhyaya, Haraprasad, Internal Migration in India: A Case Study of Bengal,
Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1987.
Chaudhuri, B.B., Peasant History of Late Pre-colonial and Colonial India, New
Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 2008.
Chaudhuri, Nani Gopal, Cartier: Governor of Bengal, 1769–1772, Calcutta:
Firma KLM, 1970.
Chaudhuri, Rosinka, ed., Derozio, Poet of India: The Definitive Edition, Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2008.
Chaudhuri, Sukanta, ed., Calcutta: The Living City, vols. I and II, Calcutta:
Oxford University Press, 1990, 1995.
Chaudhury, Sushil, From Prosperity to Decline: Eighteenth-Century Bengal, New
Delhi: Manohar, 1995.
———,  Trade and Commercial Organization in Bengal, 1650–1720, Calcutta:
Firma KLM, 1975.
Choudhury, Pratap Chandra, Assam-Bengal Relations from the Earliest Times to
the Twelfth Century ad, Guwahati: Spectrum, 1988.
Chowdhury, Indira, The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of
Culture in Colonial Bengal, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Cooper, Adrienne, Sharecropping and Sharecroppers Struggles in Bengali,
1930–1950, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1988.
Curley, David L., Poetry and History, Bengali Mangalkabya and Social Change
in Pre-colonial Bengal, New Delhi: Chronicle, 2008.
Daly, F.C., First Rebels: Strictly Confidential Note on the Growth of the
Revolutionary Movement in Bengal, Calcutta: Riddhi-India, 1981.
Das, Amal, Urban Politics in an Industrial Area: Aspects of Municipal and Labour
Politics in Howrah, 1850–1928, Calcutta: Chandan Das, 1994.
Das, Suranjan and Jayanta Kumar Ray, eds., The Goondas: Towards a
Reconstruction of the Calcutta Under World, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1996.
Das, Suranjan and Premansu Kumar Bandyopadhyay, eds., Food Movement of
1959: Documenting a Turning Point in the History of West Bengal, Kolkata:
K.P. Bagchi, 2004.
Das, Suranjan, Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905–1947, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1991.
Dasgupta, Ranjit, Economy, Society and Politics in Bengal: Jalpaiguri, 1869–1947,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Dasgupta, Atis, Groundswell in Bengal in the 1940s, Calcutta: National Book
Agency, 1995.
———,  The Fakir and Sannyasi Uprisings, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1992.
Dasgupta, Satadal, Caste, Kinship and Community: Social System of a Bengal
Caste, Madras: Madras University Press, 1986.
Dasgupta, Subrata, The Bengal Renaissance: Identity and Creativity from
Rammohun Roy to Rabindranath Tagore, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007.
906 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
———,  Jagadish Chandra Bose and the Indian Response to Western Science, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Dasgupta, Tapati, Social Thought of Rabindranath Tagore: A Historical Analysis,
New Delhi: Abhinav, 1993.
Dasgupta, Uma, ed., Rabindranath Tagore: My Life in My Words, New Delhi:
Penguin, 2006.
Datta, Asok, Neolithic Culture in West Bengal, Delhi: Agam Kala, 1992.
Datta, Kalikinkar, Economic Condition of the Bengal Subah: In Years of Transition,
1740–1772, Calcutta: Saraswat Library, 1984.
———,  The Dutch in Bengal and Bihar: ad 1740–1825, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,
1968.
Datta, Syamaprasad, Interaction, Confrontation, Resolution: The Economic Issues
in Bengal Legislature, 1921–1951, Calcutta: Bibhasa, 1998.
Datta, Partho, Planning the City: Urbanization and Reform in Calcutta
c.1800–c.1940, New Delhi: Tulika, 2012.
Datta, Pradip Kumar, Carving Blocs: Communal Ideology in Early Twentieth
Century Bengal, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Datta, Rajat, Society, Economy and the Market Commercialization in Rural Bengal,
c.1760–1800, Delhi: Manohar, 2000.
Dutta, Achintya Kumar, Economy and Ecology in a Bengal District, Calcutta:
Firma KLM, 2002.
De, Amalendu, Independent Bengal: The Design and its Fate, Calcutta: Parul
Prakashani, 1975.
———,  Roots of Separatism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal, Calcutta: Ratna
Prakashan, 1974.
De, Dhurjati Prasad, Bengal Muslims in Search of Social Identity, Dhaka: UPL,
1998.
De, Gourishankar, Vanga Down the Ages: Cults, Icons and Temples, Kolkata:
Sagnik, 2008.
———,  Chandraketugarh: A Lost Civilization, Barasat, Kolkata: Sagnik, 2004.
De, Sushil Kumar, Bengal’s Contribution to Sanskrit Literature and Studies in
Bengal Vaisnavism, New Delhi: Today & Tomorrow, 1974.
Delwar Hussain, M., A Study of Nineteenth Century Historical Works on Muslim
Rule in Bengal: Charles Stewart to Henry Beveridge, Dhaka: Asiatic Society
of Bangladesh, 1987.
Derrett, J. Duncan M., Essays in Classical and Modern Hindu Law, Leiden:
E.J. Brill, 1976.
———,  Dharmasastra and Juridical Literature, Weisbaden: Otto Harrassowitz,
1973.
Desai, A.R., ed., The Peasant Struggle in India, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1979.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 907
Dey, Prabhash Ranjan, Children’s Literature of Bengal, Calcutta: Academy for
Documentation & Research on Children’s Literature, 1978.
D’Souza, Austin Anthony, Anglo-Indian Education: A Study of its Origins and
Growth in Bengal up to 1960, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Dirks, Nicholas B., Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India,
Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002.
———,  The Hollow Crown: The Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Dutta Gupta, Sarmishta, Identities and Histories: Women’s Writings and Politics
in Bengal, Kolkata: Stree, 2010.
Dutta, Abhijit, Nineteenth Century Bengal Society and the Christian Missionaries,
Calcutta: Minerva, 1992.
———,  Christian Missionaries on the Indigo-question in Bengal, 1855–1861,
Calcutta: Minerva, 1989.
Dutta, Bimal Chandra, Jokser Danga: A Landmark of Ancient Culture of Joksas
of West Bengal, Calcutta: Hindustan, 1990.
Dutta, Sachin, Deshapriya J.M. Sengupta, Delhi: National Book Trust, 1983.
Eaton, Richard M., The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760, Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1997.
Engels, Dagmar, Beyond Purdah? Women in Bengal, 1893–1939, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1996.
Forbes, Geraldine Hancock, Positivism in Bengal: A Case Study in the Transmis-
sion and Assimilation of an Ideology, Calcutta: Minerva, 1975.
Fraser, Bashabi, ed., Bengal Partition Stories: An Unclosed Chapter, UK & USA:
Anthem Asian, 2008.
Ghatak, Kamal Kumar, Hindu Revivalism in Bengal: Rammohan to Ramakrishna,
Calcutta: Minerva, 1991.
Ghosh, Parimal, What Happened to the Bhadralok, Delhi: Primus, 2016.
———,  Colonialism, Class and a History of the Calcutta Jute Mill hands, 1880–
1930, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2000.
Ghosh, A. and K. Dutta, Development of Capitalist Relations in Agriculture—
A Case Study of West Bengal, 1793–1971, New Delhi: People’s Publishing
House, 1977.
Ghosh, Anindita, Claiming the City: Protest, Crime and Scandals in Colonial
Calcutta, c.1860–1920, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016.
———,  Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of Language and Culture
in a Colonial Society, 1778–1905, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Ghosh, Anjali, Peaceful Transition to Power: A Study of Marxist Political Strategies
in West Bengal, 1967–1977, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1981.
Ghosh, Suresh Chandra, The Social Condition of the British Community in Bengal,
1757–1800, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970.
908 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Ghosh, Semanti, Different Nationalisms: Bengal, 1905–1947, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2016.
Gooptu, Sharmistha, Bengali Cinema: An Other Nation, USA: Routledge, 2011.
Gordon, Leonard, Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists
Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose, New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
———,  Bengal: The Nationalist Movement, 1876–1940, New Delhi: People’s
Publishing House, 1982.
Gossaman, Patricia A., Riots and Victims: Violence and the Construction of
Communal Identity among Bengali Muslims, 1905–1947, Colorado: Westview
Press, 1999.
Greenough, Paul, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of
1943–1944, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Guha-Thakurta, Tapati, The Making of A New Indian Art: Artists, Aesthetics and
Nationalism in Bengal, c.1850–1920, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992.
Guha, Ranajit, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial
India, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998.
———,  ed., Subaltern Studies, vol. III, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984.
———,  A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent
Settlement, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1982.
Gupta, Swarupa, Notions and Nationhood in Bengal: Perspectives on Samaj,
1867–1905, Leiden: Brill, 2009.
Gupta, Amit Kumar, Crises and Creativities: Middle Class Bhadralok in Bengal,
c.1939–1952, Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2009.
———,  The Agrarian Drama: The Leftists and the Rural Poor in India, 1934–1951,
Delhi: Manohar, 1996.
Gupta, Bishan Kumar, Political Movements in Murhsidabad, 1920–1947, Calcutta:
Manisha, 1992.
Gupta, Gautam, Electricity, Calcutta Vs. West Bengal, Calcutta: Samatat
Prakashan, 1984.
Gupta, Ranjan, The Economic Life of a Bengal District, Birbhum, 1770–1857,
Burdwan: University of Burdwan, 1984.
Haan, De Arjan and Samita Sen, eds., A Case for Labour History: the Jute Industry
in Eastern India, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1999.
Hasan, Mushirul, Nationalism and Communal Politics in India, 1885–1930,
Delhi: Manohar, 1991.
Haq, Muhammad Enamul, A History of Sufism in Bengal, Dhaka: Asiatic Society
of Bangladesh, 1973.
Hardgrove, Anne, Community and Public Culture: Marwaris in Calcutta, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Harun-or-Rashid, The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh: Bengal Muslim League and
Muslim Politics, 1906–1947, Dhaka: Dhaka University Press, 2003.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 909
———,  Inside Bengal Politics 1936–1947: Unpublished Correspondence of Partition
Leaders, Dhaka: Dhaka University Press, 2003.
Hashmi, Taj ul-Islam, Peasant Utopia: The Communalization of Class Politics in
East Bengal, 1920–1947, Dhaka: Dhaka University Press, 1994.
Hatcher, Brian A., Vidyasagar: The Life and After-life of an Eminent Indian,
Delhi: Routledge, 2014.
———,  Idioms of Improvement: Vidyasagar and Cultural Encounter in Bengal,
Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Heehs, Peter, Nationalism, Terrorism, Communalism, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1998.
———,  The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India
1900–1910, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Hoda, Noorul, The Alipore Bomb Case: A Historic Pre-independence Trial, New
Delhi: Niyogi, 2008.
Hore, Somnath, An Artists Diary and Sketchbook, Calcutta: Seagull, 1989.
Hossain, Hameeda, The Company Weavers of Bengal: The East India Company
and the Organization of Textile Production in Bengal, 1750–1813, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1988.
Husain, Shahanara, The Social Life of Women in Early Medieval Bengal, Dhaka:
Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1985.
Iftekhar, Iqbal, The Bengal Delta: Ecology, State and Social Change, 1840–1943,
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Inden, Ronald B. and R.W. Nicholas, Kinship in Bengali Culture, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Islam, M. Mufakharul, Bengal Agriculture, 1920–1946: A Quantitative Study,
Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Islam, Mustafa N., Bengali Muslim Public Opinion as Reflected in the Bengali
Press, 1901–1930, Dhaka: Bangla Akademi, 1973.
Islam, Sirajul, ed., History of Bangladesh 1704–1971, 3 vols., Dhaka: Asiatic
Society of Bangladesh, 1992.
———,  Bengal Land Tenure: The Origin and Growth of Intermediate Interests in
the Nineteenth Century, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1988.
———,  The Permanent Settlement in Bengal: A Study of its Operations, 1790–1819,
Dacca: Bangla Academy, 1979.
Jain, Jyotindra, Kalighat Painting: Images from a Changing World, Ahmedabad:
Mapin, 1999.
Jalal, Ayesha, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand
for Pakistan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Jayawardena, K., The White Women’s Other Burden: Western Women and South
Asia During British Colonial Rule, New York: Routledge, 1995.
Jha, Shaktinath, Fakir Lalan Sain: Desh Kaal ebong Shilpo, Kolkata: Sangbad
Prakashak, 1995.
910 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Kabir, Humayun, Muslim Politics, 1906–1947 and Other Essays, Calcutta:
Rupabani Press, 1969.
Kamal, Abu Hena Mustafa, The Bengali Press and Literary Writing, 1818–1831,
Dacca: Dacca University Press, 1977.
Karlekar, Malavika, Re-visioning the Past: Early Photography in Bengal, 1875–
1915, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005.
———,  Voices from Within: Early Personal Narratives of Bengali Women, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Kaviraj, Narahari, Wahabi and Farazi Rebels of Bengal, New Delhi: People’s
Publishing House, 1982.
Kaviraj, Sudipta, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay
and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1998.
Kejariwal, O.P., The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India’s Past,
1784–1838, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Khaled, Mortuza, A Study in Leadership: Muzaffar Ahmad and the Communist
Movement in Bengal, Calcutta: Progressive, 2001.
Khan, Abdul Majed, The Transition in Bengal, 1756–1775: A Study of Seiyid
Muhammad Reza Khan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Khan, Muhammad Mojlum, The Muslim Heritage of Bengal: The Lives, Thoughts
and Achievements of the Great Muslim Scholars, Writers and Reformers of
Bangladesh and West Bengal, Leicestershire: Kube, 2013.
Kling, Blair B., The Blue Mutiny: The Indigo Disturbances in Bengal, 1859–1862,
Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1977.
———,  Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern
India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
Kopf, David, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind,
New Delhi: Archives, 1979.
———,  British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of India
Modernization, 1773–1835, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1969.
Laird, Michael Andrew, Missionaries and Education in Bengal, 1793–1837,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
Lawford, James P., Britain’s Army in India: From its Origins to the Conquest of
Bengal, London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1978.
Lourdusamy, J., Science and National Consciousness in Bengal, 1870–1930, New
Delhi: Orient Longman, 2004.
MacPherson, Kenneth, The Muslim Microcosm: Calcutta, 1918–1936, Wiesbaden:
Steiner, 1974.
Mahajan, Sucheta, Independence and Partition: The Erosion of Colonial Power
in India, Delhi: Sage, 2000.
Majumdar, Mohini Lal, Calcutta General Post Office: Earlier Postal History of
Bengal Presidency, Calcutta: Parijat, 1998.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 911
———,  The Postal History of Zemindari Dawk, 1707–1906, Calcutta: Rddhi-
India, 1984.
Majumdar, Nanigopal, Inscriptions of Bengal, Kolkata: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar,
2003.
Majumdar, Rochona, Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal,
Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009.
Mandal, Tirtha, The Women Revolutionaries of Bengal, 1905–1939, Calcutta:
Minerva, 1991.
Mansergh, N., ed., Transfer of Power, 1942–1947, London: HMSO, 1981.
Mansuruddin, Muhammad, Bangla Sahitye Muslim Sadhana, Dhaka: Ratan,
1981.
Marriott, Mackim, Caste Ranking and Community Structure in Five Regions of
India and Pakistan, Pune: Deccan College, 1960.
Marshall, P.J., Bengal: The British Bridgehead: Eastern India, 1740–1828,
Cambridge: The University Press, 1987.
———,  East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1976.
McCutchion, David J., Late Medieval Temples of Bengal: Origins and Classi-
fications, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1972.
McDermott, Rachel, Revelry, Rivalry and Longing for the Goddesses of Bengal,
New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
———,  Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2001.
McGuire, John, The Making of a Colonial Mind: A Quantitative Study of the
Bhadralok in Calcutta, 1857–1885, Canberra: Australian National University
Press, 1983.
McLane, John R., Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth Bengal, Cambrige:
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Mitra, Debendra Bijoy, Monetary System in the Bengal Presidency, 1757–1835,
Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1991.
———,  Cotton Weavers of Bengal, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1978.
Mitra, Subal Chandra, Isvar Chandra Vidyasagar: A Story of his Life and Work,
New Delhi: Rupa, 2008.
Momen, Humaira, Muslim Politics in Bengal: A Study of KPP and the Election
of 1937, Dhaka: Oxford University Press, 1972.
Monahan, F.J., The Early History of Bengal, Guwahati: Spectrum, 1974.
Mondal, Swadeshranjan, The Cracked Portait of a Patriot: Deshpran Birendranath
Sasmal, 1881–1934, Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 2012.
Mookerjee, S.P., Selected Speeches in Bengal Legislative Assembly, 1937–1947,
Calcutta: Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Institute, 2005.
Mukherjee, Amitabha, Fifty Years of National Education, Calcutta: National
Council of Education, Bengal, 1992.
912 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Mukherjee, A.M., Vaishnavism in Assam and Bengal: A Comparative Study,
Bardhaman: Granthana, 1986.
Mukherjee, Amitabha, Reform and Regeneration in Bengal, 1774–1823, Calcutta:
Rabindra Bharati University, 1968.
Mukherjee, Arun, Crime and Public Disorder in Colonial Bengal, 1861–1912,
Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1995.
Mukherjee, Bratindranath, Coins and Currency Systems of Post-Gupta Bengal,
c. ad 550–700, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1993.
Mukherjee, Nilangshu, ed., History of Agricultural Education in Bengal,
Mohanpur: Faculty of Agriculture, 1998.
Mukherjee, Nilmani, Jaykrishna Mukherjee of Uttarpara and His Times, Calcutta:
Firma KLM, 1976.
———,  A Bengal Zamindar: Joykrishna Mukherjee of Uttarpara and His Times
(1808–1888), Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1975.
———,  The Port of Calcutta: A Short History, Calcutta: The Commissioners for
the Port of Calcutta, 1968.
Mukherjee, Prithwindranath, Bagha Jatin: Life and Times of Jatindranath
Mukherjee, New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2010.
Mukherjee, Rila, Merchants and Companies in Bengal: Kasimbazar and Jugdia
in the Eighteenth Century, Delhi: Pragati, 2006.
———,  Strange Riches: Bengal in the Mercantile Map of South Asia, Delhi:
Foundation, 2006.
Mukherjee, S.N., Calcutta: Essays in Urban History, Calcutta: Subarnarekha,
1993.
———,  Calcutta: Myths and History, Calcutta: Subarnarekha, 1977.
Mukherjee, S.N. and Sir William Jones, A Study in Eighteenth Century British
Attitudes to India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Mukherjee, Sujata, Gender, Medicine, and Society in Colonial India Women’s
Health Care in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Bengal, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2017.
Mukherjee, Sushil Kumar, The Story of the Calcutta Theatres, 1753–1980,
Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1982.
Mukhopadhyay, Durgadas, Religion, Philosophy and Literature of Bengal
Vaishnavism, Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 1990.
Mukhopadhyay, Gopal, Mass Education in Bengal, 1882–1914, Calcutta: National
Publishers, 1984.
Mukhopadhyay, Kuntal, Theatre and Politics: A Study of Group Theatre Movement
of Bengal (1948–1987), Calcutta: Bibhasa, 1999.
Mukhopadhyay, Subhas Chandra, The Agrarian Policy of the British in Bengal:
The Formative Period, 1698–1772, Allahabad: Chugh, 1987.
———,  The Career of Rajah Durlabhram Mahindra (Rai-Durlabh), Diwan of
Bengal, 1710–1770, Varanasi: Manisha Prakashan, 1974.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 913
Mukhopadhyay, Tarun Kumar, Hicky’s Bengal Gazette: Contemporary Life and
Events, Calcutta: Subarnarekha, 1988.
Murshid, Ghulam, Bengali Culture Over a Thousand Years, Delhi: Niyogi, 2006.
———,  Reluctant Debutantes: Response of Bengali Women to Modernization,
1849–1905, Rajshahi: Sahitya Samsad, 1983.
Murshid, Tazeen M., The Sacred and the Secular Bengal Muslim Discourses
1871–1977, Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Nag Chaudhuri-Zilly, Aditee, The Vagrant Peasant: Agrarian Distress and
Desertion in Bengal, 1770 to 1830, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982.
Nair, P. Thankappan, Hijili in History, Kharagpur: Nehru Museum of Science
& Technology, 2008.
———,  Origin of the Calcutta Police, Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 2007.
———,  A Tercentary History of Calcutta: A History of Calcutta Streets, vol. 2,
Calcutta: Firma, KLM, 1987.
———,  Early History of the Calcutta High Court, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1987.
———,  Calcutta: Origin of the Name, Calcutta: Subarnarekha, 1985.
Nakazato, Nariaki, Agrarian System in Eastern Bengal, c. 1870–1910, Calcutta:
K.P. Bagchi, 1994.
Nath, D., History of the Koch Kingdom, 1515–1615, New Delhi: Mittal, 1989.
Niyogi, Puspa, Buddhism in Ancient Bengal, Calcutta: Jijnasa, 1980.
Oddie, Geoffrey A., Missionaries, Rebellion and Protonationalism: James Long of
Bengal, 1814–1887, Richmond Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999.
Openshaw, Jeanne, Seeking Bauls of Bengal, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002.
Palit, Chittabrata, Social History of Colonial Bengal, Kolkata: Avenal Press, 2007.
———,  Mahendralal Sircar and National Science, Kolkata: Ratna Prakashan, 2001.
———,  Perspectives on Agrarian Bengal, Calcutta: Papyrus, 1982.
———,  New Viewpoints on Nineteenth-Century Bengal, Calcutta: Progressive,
1980.
———,  Tensions in Bengal Rural Society: Landlords, Planters and Colonial Rule
(1830–1860), Calcutta: Progressive, 1975.
Panda, Chitta, The Decline of Bengal Zamindars, Midnapore, 1870–1920, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Panda, Nandini Bhattacharyya, Appropriation and Invention of Tradition, the
East India Company, and Hindu Law in Early Colonial Bengal, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2008.
Pande, Ishita, Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal: Symptoms of
Empire, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2010.
Pandey, Gyanendra, Remembering Partition: Nationalism and History in India,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
———,  ed., The Indian Nation in 1942, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1988.
914 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Pandit, Byomkesh, The Story of the Kishan Agrarian Labour in Bengal (1885–
1952), Kolkata: Corpus Research Institute, 2003.
Partington, Norman, Master of Bengal: A Novel of Robert Clive of India, New
York: St Martin’s Press, 1974.
Panigrahi, D.N., ed., Economy, Society and Politics in Modern India, New Delhi:
Vikas, 1985.
Parimoo, Ratan, Art of the Three Tagores: From Revival to Modernity, New Delhi:
Pratikshan, 2011.
Park, Richard L., ed., Patterns of Change in Modern Bengal, East Lansing:
Michigan State University Press, 1979.
Patra, Chittranjan, Present Buddhist Tribals and Vihars in West Bengal, Calcutta:
Sarkar, 1991.
Poddar, Arabinda, Renaissance in Bengal: Quests and Confrontations, 1800–1860,
Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1970.
Purkait, Biswa Ranjan, Administration of Primary Education under Mont-Ford
Reforms and its Impact in West Bengal, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1984.
Prakash, Om, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal,
1630–1720, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Raha, Kironmoy, Bengali Cinema, Calcutta: Nandan West Bengal Film Centre,
1991.
Rahim, Muhammad Abdur, The Muslim Society and Politics in Bengal, ad
1757–1947, Dacca: University of Dacca Press, 1978.
Rahman, Hossainur, Hindu-Muslim Relations in Bengal, 1905–1947, Bombay:
People’s Publishing House, 1974.
Rahman, Shah Noorur, Muhammad, Hindu-Muslim Relations in Mughal Bengal,
Calcutta: Progressive, 2001.
Ray, Aniruddha, Towns and Cities of Medieval India, New Dehli: Manohar, 2015.
———,  The Merchant and the State: The French in India, 1666–1739, New Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal, 2004.
———,  Adventurers, Landowners and Rebels, Bengal, c.1575–c.1715, New Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal, 1998.
Ray, Asok Kumar, Party of Firebrand Revolutionaries: The Dacca Anushilan
Samiti, 1906–1918, Calcutta: Minerva, 1999.
Ray, Bharati, Early Feminists in Colonial India: Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Ray, Dalia, The Jewish Heritage of Calcutta, Kolkata: Minerva, 2001.
Ray, Indrajit, Bengal Industries and the British Industrial Revolution, 1757–1857,
London: Routledge, 2011.
Ray, Kabita, Revolutionary Propaganda in Bengal Extremist and Militant Press,
1905–1918: Excerpts from Newspapers, Journals, Leaflets and Pamphlets,
Kolkata: Papyrus, 2008.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 915
———,  History of Public Health: Colonial Bengal, 1921–1947, Calcutta: K.P.
Bagchi, 1998.
Ray, Rajat Kanta, Mind, Body and Society: Life and Mentality in Colonial Bengal,
Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1995.
———,  Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875–1927, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1984.
———,  Urban Roots of Indian Nationalism: Pressure Groups and Conflict of
Interests in Calcutta City Politics, 1875–1939, New Delhi: Vikas, 1979.
Ray, Ratnalekha, Change in Bengal Agrarian Society, 1760–1850, New Delhi:
Manohar, 1979.
Ray, Samaren, The Twice-born Heretic: M.N. Roy and Comintern, Calcutta:
Firma KLM, 1986.
Ray, Subhajyoti, Transformations on the Bengal Frontier: Jalpaiguri, 1765–1948,
London: Routledge Curzon, 2002.
Raychaudhuri, Tapan Kumar, The World in Our Times: A Memoir, New Delhi:
Harper Collins, 2011.
———,  Perceptions, Emotions, Sensibilities: Essays on India’s Colonial and Post-
colonial Experiences, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005.
———,  Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth-Century
Bengal, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988.
———,  Bengal under Akbar and Jahangir: An Introductory Study in Social History,
Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1969.
Robb, Peter, Useful Friendship: Europeans and Indians in Early Calcutta, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014.
———,  Ancient Rights and Future Comfort: Bihar, the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885
and British Rule in India, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1997.
Robertson, Bruce Carlisle, The Essential Writings of Raja Rammohan Ray, New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.
———,  Raja Rammohan Ray, the Father of Modern India, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
Robinson, Betty Sue, The Ramakrishna Sarada Math: A Study of a Women’s
Movement in Bengal, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International,
1978.
Roy, Anuradha, Bengal Marxism: Early Discourses and Debates, Kolkata: Samya,
2014.
———,  Cultural Communism in Bengal, 1936–1952, Delhi: Primus, 2014.
———,  Nationalism as Poetic Discourse in Nineteenth-Century Bengal, Kolkata:
Papyrus, 2003.
Roy, Asim, The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal, New Delhi: Sterling, 1983.
Roy, Atul Chandra, History of Bengal: Turko-Afghan Period, New Delhi: Kalyani,
1986.
916 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
———,  History of Bengal: Mughal Period (ad 1526–1765), Calcutta: Nababharat,
1968.
Roy, Benoy Bhusan, Socio-economic Impact of Sati in Bengal and the Role of Raja
Rammohun Roy, Calcutta: Naya Prakosh, 1987.
Roy, Samaren, The Bengalees: Glimpses of History and Culture, New Delhi:
Allied, 1999.
Sinha, Mirinalini, Manlinees—A Victorian Ideal and Colonial Policy in Late
Nineteenth-Century Bengal, Michigan: University Microfils International,
1988.
Saha, Kalyani, Police and Development: Case Study of West Bengal, 1951–1971,
Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1990.
Saha, Panchanan, History of the Working Class Movement in Bengal, New Delhi:
People’s Publishing House, 1978.
Samaddar, Ranabir, Memory, Identity, Power: Politics in the Jungle Mahals (West
Bengal), 1890–1950, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1998.
Samanta, Amiya Kumar, Alipore Bomb Trial, 1908–1910: A Compilation of
Unpublished Documents, vol. 1, Kolkata: Frontpage, 2017.
———,  Gorkhaland Movement: A Study in Ethnic Separatism, Calcutta: APH,
2000.
———,  Terrorism in Bengal (A Collection of Documents on Terrorists Activities
from 1905–1939), vols. I–VI, Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1995.
———,  Left Extremist Movement in West Bengal: An Experiment in Armed
Agrarian Struggle, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1984.
Samanta, Arabinda, Living with Epidemics in Colonial Bengal, 1818–1945, New
Delhi: Serials, 2016.
———,  Malarial Fever in Colonial Bengal, 1820–1939: Social History of An
Epidemic, Kolkata: Firma KLM, 2002.
Sanyal, Hitesh Ranjan, Social Mobility in Bengal, Calcutta: Papyrus, 1981.
Sanyal, Rajat, Voluntary Associations and the Urban Public Life in Bengal,
1815–1876: An Aspect of Social History, Calcutta: Riddhi-India, 1980.
Sarkar, Chandi Prasad, The Bengali Muslims: A Study in their Politicization
(1912–1929), Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1991.
Sarkar, Kamala, Bengal Politics, 1937–1947, Calcutta: A. Mukherjee & Co., 1990.
Sarkar, Mahua, Visible Histories, Disappearing Women: Producing Muslim
Womanhood in Late Colonial Bengal, New Delhi: Zubaan, 2008.
Sarkar, Smritikumar, Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India: 1830–1980,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Sarkar, Sumit, Essays of a Lifetime, Reformers, Nationalists, Subalterns, New
Delhi: Permanent Black, 2017.
———,  Modern Times, India, 1880s–1950s (Environment, Economy, Culture),
New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2015.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 917
———,  Writing Social History, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
———,  Modern India, 1885–1947, Madras: Macmillan, 1983.
———,  The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908, Delhi: People’s Publishing
House, 1973.
Sarkar, Susobhan, Bengal Renaissance and Other Essays, New Delhi: People’s
Publishing House, 1981.
———,  On the Bengal Renaissance, Calcutta: Papyrus, 1979.
Sarkar, Suvobrata, The Quest for Technical Knowledge: Bengal in the Nineteenth
Century, Delhi: Manohar, 2012.
Sarkar, Tanika and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, eds., Calcutta the Stormy Decades,
Delhi: Social Science Press, 2015.
Sarkar, Tanika, Rebels, Wives, Saints, Designing Selves and Nations in Colonial
Times, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2009.
———,  Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural
Nationalism, Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001.
———,  Words to Win: Amar Jiban—The Making of A Modern Autobiography,
Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998.
———,  Bengal 1928–1934: The Politics of Protest, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1987.
Sarma, Jyotirmoyee, Caste Dynamics among the Bengali Hindus, Calcutta: Firma
KLM, 1980.
Sarup, Leela Gujadhur, Colonial Emigration, 19th, 20th Centuries: Annual Reports
from the Port of Calcutta to the British and Foreign Colonies, Kolkata:
Aldrich, 2006.
Sartori, Andrew, Bengal in Global Concept History: Culturalism in the Age of
Capital, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Sastri, Pandit Sibnath, A History of the Renaissance in Bengal, Calcutta: Editions
Indian, 1972.
Schendel, Wilhelm van, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in
South Asia, London: Anthem, 2005.
Seal, Anil, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration
in the Late Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1971.
Sengupta, Kalyan Kumar, Pabna Disturbances and the Politics of Rent, 1873–1885,
New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1974.
Sengupta, Kanti Prasanna, The Christian Missionaries in Bengal, 1793–1833,
Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1971.
Sen, Amartya, ‘The Great Bengal Famine’, An Essay on Entitlement and
Deprivation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
Sen, Amiya P., ed., His Words: The Preachings and Parables of Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa, Delhi: Penguin Viking, 2010.
918 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
———,  Explorations in Modern Bengal, c.1800–1900: Essays on Religion History
and Culture, Delhi: Primus, 2010.
———,  Ramakrishna Paramahamsa: The Sadhaka of Dakshineswar, Delhi:
Penguin Viking, 2010.
———,  Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay: An Intellectual Biography, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2008.
———,  The Indispensable Vivekananda: An Anthology for our Times, Ranikhet:
Permanent Black, 2006.
———,  ed., Social and Religious Reform: The Hindus of British India, USA: Oxford
University Press, 2005.
———,  Three Essays on Sri Ramakrishna and His Times, Shimla: Indian Institute
of Advanced Study, 2001.
———,  Hindu Revivalism in Bengal, 1872–1905: Some Essays in Interpretation,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Sen, Amiya P. and Narayani Gupta, eds., Swami Vivekananda, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2003.
Sen, Asok, Vidyasagar and his Elusive Milestones, Calcutta: Riddhi-India, 1977.
Sen, Dinesh Chandra, The Ballads of Bengal, vol. 1, Delhi: Mittal, 1988.
Sen, Jyotirmoy, Land Utilization and Population Distribution: A Case Study of
West Bengal, 1850–1985, Delhi: Daya, 1988.
Sen, Madhurima, Prisons in Colonial Bengal, 1838–1919, Kolkata: Thema, 2007.
Sen, Prabodh Chandra, Bengal: A Historiographical Quest, Calcutta: International
Centre for Bengal Studies, 1995.
Sen, Ranjit, A Stagnating City: Calcutta in the Eighteenth Century, Calcutta:
Institute of Historical Studies, 2000.
———,  Economics of Revenue Maximization in Bengal, 1757–1793, Calcutta:
Nalanda, 1988.
———,  Social Banditry in Bengal: A Study in Primary Resistance, 1757–1793,
Calcutta: Ratna Prakashan, 1988.
———,  Metamorphosis of the Bengal Polity, 1700–1793, Calcutta: Rabindra
Bharati University, 1987.
Sen, S.P., ed., Social and Religious Reform Movements in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries, Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1979.
Sen, Samita, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Sen, Shila, Muslim Politics in Bengal, New Delhi: Impex India, 1976.
Sen, Simanti, Travels to Europe: Self and Other Bengali Travel Narratives,
1870–1910, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2005.
Sen, Suchibrata, The Santals of Jungle Mahals: An Agrarian History, 1793–1861,
Calcutta: Ratna Prakashan, 1984.
Sen, Sukomal, Working Class in India: History of Emergence and Movement
1830–1990, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1997.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 919
Sen, Sukumar, History of Bengali Literature, Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1979.
Sen, Sunil, Agrarian Struggle in Bengal, 1946–1947, Calcutta: People’s Publishing
House, 1972.
Sengupta, Debjani, ed., Mapmaking: Partition Stories of Two Bengals, New Delhi:
Srishti, 2003.
Sengupta, Nitish, Land of Two Rivers: A History of Bengal from the Mahabharata
to Mujib, New Delhi: Penguin, 2011.
———,  Bengal Divided: The Unmaking of a Nation, 1905–1971, Delhi: Penguin
Viking, 2007.
Sengupta, Parna, Pedagogy for Religion: Missionary Education and the Fashioning
of Hindus and Muslims in Bengal, Berkeley: University of California, 2011.
Sensarma, P., The Military History of Bengal, Calcutta: Darbari Udyog, 1977.
Serajuddin, A.M., The Revenue Administration of the East India Company in
Chittagong, 1761–1785, Chittagong: University of Chittagong, 1971.
Shahidullah, Kazi, Pathshalas into Schools: The Developments of Indigenous
Elementary Education in Bengal, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1987.
Sharma, Arvind, The Concept of Universal Religion in Modern Hindu Thought,
Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan and St Martins Press, 1998.
Sheikh, Abdul Latif, The Muslim Mystic Movement in Bengal, 1301–1550,
Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1993.
Singh, Anita Inder, Origins of the Partition of India, 1936–1947, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1987.
Singh, Lata, Popular Translations of Nationalism, Bihar, 1920–1922, Delhi:
Primus, 2012.
Sinha, Pradip, ed., The Urban Experience: Calcutta, Essays in Honor of Professor
Nisith R. Ray, Calcutta: Riddhi-India, 1987.
———,  Calcutta in Urban History, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1978.
Sinha, Sandeep, Public Health Policy and the Indian Public: Bengal, 1850–1920,
Calcutta: Vision, 1998.
Sinha, Soumitra, The Quest for Modernity and the Bengali Muslim, 1921–1947,
Calcutta: Minerva, 1995.
Sircar, Jawahar, The Construction of the Hindu Identity in Medival Western
Bengal?: The Role of Popular Cult, Kolkata: Institute of Development Studies,
2005.
Siva Kumar, R., Paintings of Abanindranath Tagore, Calcutta: Pratikshan, 2008.
Spear, Percival, Master of Bengal: Clive and his India, London: Thames and
Hudson, 1975.
Sreemani, Soumitra, Anatomy of a Colonial Town: Calcutta, 1756–1794, Calcutta:
Firma KLM, 1994.
Sri, Manjari, Through War and Famine: Bengal, 1939–1945, Delhi: Orient
BlackSwan, 2009
920 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, Improvising Empire: Portuguese Trade and Settlement in
the Bay of Bengal, 1500–1700, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Sur, A.K., History and Culture of Bengal, Calcutta: Best Book, 1992.
Travers, Robert, Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth-Century India: The British
in Bengal, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Tripathi, Amalesh, Trade and Finance in the Bengal Presidency, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1979.
———,  Vidyasagar: The Traditional Modernizer, Bombay: Orient Longman, 1974.
Webster, Anthony, The Richest East India Merchant: The Life and Business of John
Palmer of Calcutta, 1767–1836, New Delhi: Viva, 2009.
Zbavitel, Dusan, The Beginnings of Modern Bengali Drama, 1852–1880, vol. 36,
Archiv Orientalni, 1968.
Zaidi, Z.H., ed., Jinnah-Ispahani Correspondance: 1936–1948, Karachi: Forward
Publication Trust, 1976.

Bengali Books
Ahmad, Abul Mansur, Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchas Bachhar, Dhaka: Prothoma
Prokashan, 1969.
Ahmad, Muzaffar, Amar Jiban O Bharater Communist Party, Kolkata: National
Book Agency, 1971.
Ahmed, Wakil, Unish Shatoke Bangali Musalmaner Chinta Chetonar Dhara,
Dhaka: Bangla Akademi, 1983.
Anisuzzaman, Muslim-Manas O Bangla Sahitya, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1971.
Badaruddin, Umar, Chirosthaee Bandobaste Bangladesher Krishak, Kolkata:
Chirayata, 1983.
———,  Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar O Unish Sataker Bangali Samaj, Kolkata:
Chirayata, 1980.
Bandyopadhayay, Asit Kumar, ed., Banglar Sahitya Itivritta, vol. 8, Kolkata:
Modern Book Agency, 1998.
Bandyopadhyay, Devajit, Bai-Barangana Gatha, Kolkata: Ananda, 2016.
———,  Banglar Manchagaan (1795–1872), Kolkata: Patrabharati, 2016.
———,  Nirbachita Bangla Jatra, 4 vols., New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2008.
Bandyopadhyay, Hemendra, Panchsho Bacharer Howrah, Salkiya: Bhaswati, 1992.
Bandyopadhyay, Partha Sarathi, Ajaker Pascimbanga: Ksamatar Rajniti Janatar
Rajniti, Kolkata: Anik, 2009.
Bandyopadhyay, Ranjit, Unish Satake Narimukti Andolan o Bangla Sahitya,
Kolkata: Pustak Bipani, 1999.
Bandyopadhyay, Sandip, Daliter Purankatha, Kolkata: Anustup, 2017.
———,  Agniyuger Banglay Biplabimanas, Kolkata: Progressive, 1993.
Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar, Palashi Theke Partition, Kolkata: Orient Longman,
2006.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 921
Bandyopadhyay, Sunil Kumar, Banglay Unabingsa Satabdir Manabatabad o
Nabajagaran, Kolkata: Piramid Prakashani, 1986.
Basu, Swapan, Banglay Nabachetanar Itihas, Kolkata: Anupkumar Mahindar,
1985.
———,  Gana Asontosh o Unis Sataker Bangali Samaj, Kolkata: Pustak Bipani,
1984.
Basu, Syamaprasad, Mursidkuli Khar Amole Bangla, Kolkata: Deys, 2004.
Bhadra, Gautam, Nyara Battalay Jay Kawbar?, Kolkata: Chhatim, 2011.
Bhadra, Gautam and P. Chattopadhyay, eds., Nimna Borger Itihas, Kolkata:
Ananda, 1998.
Bhattacharya, Ashok, Banglar Chitrakala, Kolkata: Paschimbanga Bangla
Akademi, 1994.
Bhattacharya, Hangsanarayan, Bardhisnu Bardhaman: Jelabhittik Itihas, Kolkata:
Firma KLM, 1998.
Bhattacharya, Nirmalchandra, Bismrita Bangla, Kolkata: Deys, 2007.
Bhattacharya, Ananda, 1857’r Mahabidroha O Bangla, Kolkata: Ashadeep, 2010.
Bhattacharya, Asitkumar, Akshaykumar Datta Ebong Unish Sataker Banglay
Dharma o Samajchinta, Kolkata: K.P. Bagchi, 2007.
Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi, Oupanibeshik Bharater Arthaniti, Kolkata: Ananda,
1989.
Bhattacharyya, Amit, Bignapan O Swadeshi Shilpa, Kolkata: Setu Prakashani,
2005.
Bhattacharyya, Jayanta, Pascimbanga: Jamir Andolan o Bhumi Samskar, Kolkata:
National Book Agency, 2003.
———,  Banglar Tebhaga—Tebhaga Sangram, Kolkata: National Book Agency,
1996.
———,  Paschimbange Krishak Andoloner Dhara, Kolkata: National Book Agency,
1991.
Biswas, Anil, Bangla o Bangalir Itihas, Kolkata: Loikhi Sahitya Akademi, 1996.
Biswas, Krishnakali, Unish Sataker Bama Lekhani, Kolkata: Firma KLM, 2002.
Biswas, Manoshanto, Banglar Matua Andolan: Samaj, Sanskriti, Rajneeti, Kolkata:
Setu Prakashani, 2016.
Biswas, Ushapati, Musalman Samaj o Bangla Natak, Kolkata: Mukherjee, 2004.
Bose, N.K., Hindu Samajer Garan, Santiniketan: Visva Bharati, 1949.
Bose, Nimai Sadhan, Desh Kal Manush, Kolkata: Punascha, 2003.
Cakrabarti, Suprbhat, Dwitiya Bisvayuddhakalin Bamla Natak o Natyasala,
Kolkata: Dipanjan Chakraborty, 2000.
Caudhuri, Kamal, ed., Bangalar itihas: prachin yug theke Engrej amol, Kolkata:
Deys, 2006.
Chakrabarti, Rathin, Mahabiplab o Bangla Sambadpatrer Janmantar, Kolkata:
Natyachinta Foundation Trust, 2009.
922 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Itihaser Janajibon Ebong Ananyo Prabandha, Kolkata:
Ananda, 2011.
Chakrabarty, Sambuddha, Andore Antore Unish Satoke Bangali Bhadramahila,
Kolkata: Stree, 1998.
Chakrabarty, Sudhir, Banglar Gouna Dharma Saheb Dhoni O Balahari, Kolkata:
Pustak Biponi, 2003.
———,  Bratya Lokayata Lalan, Kolkata: Pustak Bipani, 1992.
———,  Bala-Harhi Samproday O Tader Gan, Kolkata: Pustak Bipani, 1986.
Chakravarti, Ramakanta, Chaitanyer Dharmandolan: Mulyan, Kolkata: Paschim-
banga Itihas Samsad, 2005.
———,  Bangalir Dharma, Samaj O Sanskriti, Kolkata: Subarnarekha, 2002.
———,  Bange Baishnab Dharma, Kolkata: Ananda, 1996.
Chandra, Amitabha, Abibhakta Banglaye Communist Andolan, Kolkata: Pustak
Bipani, 1992.
Chatterji, Joya, Bangla Bhag Holo: Hindu Samprodayikota O Deshbhag, 1932–
1947, Kolkata: L. Alma, 2003.
Chattopadhya, Jatindra, Bangalir Dharma o Samaj: Adi-madhyayug (1200–1500),
Kolkata: New Age, 1999.
Chattopadhyay, Arunkumar, Unabingsa Satabdir Sabha Samiti o Bangla Sahitya,
Kolkata: Dey’s, 1985.
Chattopadhyay, Basudeb, Bangabhanger Purbapar, Kolkata: National Book
Agency, 2006.
———,  Banglay Biplabbader Palabadal, Kolkata: Progressive, 2002.
Chattopadhyay, Bhaskar, Gaur Banger Itihas o Sanskriti, Kolkata: Progressive,
2003.
Chattopadhyay, Himangsu, Sardha Satabarshe Daksineswar o Sarada Maa,
Kolkata: Raktakarabi, 2004.
Chattopadhyay, Partha, Janapratinidhi, Kolkata: Anustup, 2013.
———,  Praja O Tantra, Kolkata: Anustup, 2008.
———,  Itihaser Uttoradhikar, Kolkata: Ananda, 2000.
Chattopadhyay, Ratnabali and Susnata Das, eds., Itihaser Pathe Pathe: Professor
Aniruddha Ray Felicitation Volume, Kolkata: Progressive, 2016.
Chattopadhyay, Suniti, Bangali Sanskriti, Kolkata: Paschimbanga Bangla
Akademi, 2004.
Chaudhuri, Binayabhusan, Aupanibesik amale banglar krishi itihas, Kolkata:
K.P. Bagchi, 2001.
Chaudhuri, Jajneswar, Anchalik Itihas Charcha O Granthapanji, Nadia: Nabadwip
Puratatta Parishad, 2008.
———,  Anchalik Itihas Sadhana, Nadia: Nabadwip Puratatta Parishad, 2005.
Chaudhuri, Rathindramohan, Bankurajaner Itihas-samaskriti: Khristiya
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 923
Chaturtha Satabdi theke 1947 Khristabda, Bankura Natunchati: Granthakar,
2000.
Chaudhury, Darshan, Bangla Theatarer Itihas, Kolkata: Pustak Biponi, 1995.
Chaudhury, Nirad Chandra, Atmaghati Bangali, Kolkata: Mitra and Ghosh, 1988.
Das, Asim, Banglar Loukik Krirar Samajik Utso, Kolkata: Pustok Biponi, 1991.
Das, Bani, Muktisangramer agradut, Kolkata: Mahabodhi Book Agency, 1997.
Das, Bibekananda, Kalna mahakumar pratnatatva o dharmiya samaj samaskritir
itibrittva, Kolkata: Firma KLM, 1999.
Das, Girindranath, Bangla Pir Sahityer Katha, Kolkata: Subarnarekha, 1976.
Das, Kanailal, Bangabhanga sangarame akhanda Medinipur, Kolkata: Arunima,
2005.
———,  Debdebir pithasthan mandirmay nandigram, Kolkata: Jayanta Shee, 2005.
Das, Khudiram, Kabikankan Chandi, Kolkata: Pustak Biponi, 1987.
Das, Naresh Chandra, Namoshudro Samproday O Bangladesh, Kolkata: Dipali
Book House, 1997.
Das, Susnata, Swadhhinota Sangram O Abibhokto Banglar Communist Andolan,
Kolkata: Protibhas, 2004.
———,  Abibhokto Banglar Krishok Sangram, Kolkata: Nakshatra Prakashan, 2002.
———,  Facibad Birodhi Sangrame Abibhokto Bangla, Kolkata: Prima, 1989.
Dasgupta, Ashin, Bishoy Swadhinata O Ananya Bishoy, Kolkata: Ananda, 1992.
Dasgupta, Satyajit, ed., Mukher Kathar Itihas, Kolkata: Paschimbanga Itihas
Samsad, 1997.
Datta, Satyabrata, Banglar bidhansabha o samsadiya rajniti: 1862–1951: Adhinata,
sahayogita samghat, Kolkata: Book Syndicate, 1995.
De, Amalendu, Bharater swadhinata samgrame bangla saptahik `Yugantar`
(1906–1908) patrikar Abadan, Kolkata: Readers Service, 2002.
———,  Bangali Buddhijibee O Bicchinnatabad, Kolkata: Ananda, 1991.
———,  Swadhin Bangabhumi Gathoner Parikalpona: Proyas O Parinoti, Kolkata:
Parul Prakashani, 1985.
———,  Chirasthayi Bandyobasto O Bangali Buddhijibi, Kolkata: Ratna Prakashan,
1981.
———,  Pakistan Prastab O Fazlul Huq, Kolkata: Ratna Prakashan, 1972.
De, Barun, ed., Mukti Sangrame Banglar Chhatra Samaj, Kolkata: Paschimbanga
Itihas Samsad, 1992.
De, Gautam Kumar, Hugli jelar gana andolan (1930–1947), Kolkata: Progressive,
2004.
Deb, Chitra, Antahpurer atmakatha, Kolkata: Ananda, 1984.
———,  Thakurbarir andar mahal, Kolkata: Ananda, 1984.
Deb, Susanta Krishna, Tin satabdir sobhabajar rajbari, Kolkata: Sharat Book
House, 2000.
Dey, Rakhal Chandra, Bandir Jiban Smaranika, Jalpaiguri: Bidyasram, 1974.
Dutta, Bhavatosh, Bangalir Manav Dharma, Kolkata: Mitra & Ghosh, 2000.
924 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Dutta, Bhupendra Kumar, Bharater Dwitiya Swadhinata Sangram, Kolkata:
Nababharat, 1983.
Dutta, Suresh Chandra, Sri Ramakrishnadeber Upadesh, Kolkata: Pranati, 2005.
Ghosh, Ajit, Bangla Nataker Itihas, Kolkata: General Printers and Publishers,
1969.
Ghosh, Binay, Banglar Nabajagriti, Kolkata: Orient BlakSwan, 2007.
———,  Samayikpatre Banglar Samaj Chitra, vol. 4, Kolkata: Papyrus, 1983.
———,  Vidyasagar O Bangali Samaj, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1978.
———,  Paschimbanger Sanskriti, Kolkata: Pustak Prakashak, 1978.
———,  Banglar Biddyotsamaj, Kolkata: Ayan, 1973.
Ghosh, Debiprasad, Bangiya Chalachhitradhara, Kolkata: Ajker Kadambari,
1998.
Ghosh, Siddhartha, Koler Shohor Kolkata, Kolkata: Ananda, 1991.
———,  Karigari Kalpana O Bangali Udyog, Kolkata: Deys, 1988.
Ghosh, Sunil Bihari, ed., Banglabhashay Itihas Charcha Granthapanji, Kolkata,
1998.
Ghosh, Suniti Kumar, Bangla bibhajaner arthaniti rajniti, Kolkata: New Horizon
Book Stall, 2001.
Golam, Mursid, Samaj samaskar andolan o bamla natak, 1854–1876, Dhaka:
Bangla Akademi, 1984.
Goswami, Jayanta, Samajchitre Unabingsha Shatabdir bangle Prahasan, Kolkata:
Inexpensive, 1974.
Guha, Nalini Kishore, Banglar Biplobbad, Kolkata: Mitram, 2002.
Guha, Ranajit, Chirasthayee Bandobaster Sutrapat, Kolkata: Talpata, 2010.
Guha, Ranajit, Rammohan Ray O Amader Adhunikata, Kolkata: Talpata, 2010.
———,  Kabir Nam O Sarbanam, Kolkata: Talpata, 2009.
Gupta, Ranjan, Rarh Banger Jibonjapon: Samaj, Arthaniti O Gana-abhyuthan,
Kolkata: Neo Radical, 2017.
Gupta, Sumudra, Banga bhanga, Kolkata: Anandadhara, 1968.
Haldar, Gopal, Rupnarayaner Kule, Kolkata: Parichay, 1982.
Hashim, Abul, Amar Jiban o bibhag-purva Bangladesher rajniti, Dhaka, 1978.
Hore, Somnath, Tebhagar Dairy, Kolkata: Subarnarekha, 1991.
Islam, M. Nurul, Samayik patre jiban a janamat 1901–1930, Dhaka, Bangla
Akademi, 1977.
Jha, Saktinath, Bastubadi Baul, Kolkata: Department of Information and
Culture, Government of West Bengal, 1999.
Kabiraj, Narahari, Swadhinatar samgrame Bangla, Kolkata: Manisha Granthalaya,
1999.
———,  Unish sataker Banglar Nabajagaron, Tarko O Bitorko, Kolkata:
K.P. Bagchi, 1984.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 925
Kalim, Musa, Madhya Juger Bangla Sahitye Hindu-Muslim Samparka, Kolkata:
Bangla Academi, 1988.
Kanungo, Hemchandra, Banglay Biplab Prachesta, Kolkata: Chirayata, 1984.
Kundu, Kamal Kumar, Jila Medinipur: swadhinatar andolan, Tamluk: Deepasri,
2001.
Lahiri, Abani, Tirish Challisher Bangla, Kolkata: Serriban, 1999.
Lahiri, Sipra, Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay O Bangla Sahitya, Kolkata: Kabi O Kabita
Prakashan, 1976.
Maitra, Amit, Rangalaye banganati, Kolkata: Ananda, 2004.
Majumdar, Kamal, Bangalir Itihas, Kolkata: The Author, 1976.
Mamun, Muntasir, Unis satake bangladesher thiyetar, Dhaka: Subarna, 1985.
Mandal, Krishnakali, Daksin chabbispargana ancalik itihaser upakaran, Kolkata:
Nabachalantika, 2001.
———,  Daksin chabbisparganar bismrita adhyay, Kolkata: Nabachalantika, 1999.
Mandal, Manan Kumar, Partition Sahitya: Desh-Kal-Smriti, Kolkata: Gangchil,
2014.
Mandal, Sasanka, Banglar laban silpa, Kolkata: Punascha, 2003.
Mitra, Asok, Paschimbanger Utsab O Mela, Kolkata: Anu Press, 1968.
Mitra, Bhairab Candra, Jaynagar majilpurer itihas, Dakshin Chabbis Pargana:
Sridhar Narayan Debottar Trust Committee, 2008.
Mitra, Manjusri, Rabidranath o banglar biplabi samaj, Kolkata: Tagore Research
Institute, 2009.
Mitra, Sukumar, Gandhiji, Subhaschandra O Banglar Biplabira, Kolkata: Firma
KLM, 1998.
Mukherjee, Jadugopal, Biplabi Jiboner Smriti, Kolkata: Academic, 1982.
Mukhopadhyay, Amal Kumar, Bangali Rajnitir Panchas Bachar, 1947–1997,
Kolkata: A. Mukherjee & Co., 1999.
Mukhopadhyay, Amitabha, Jatibhedpratha O Unish Sataker Bangali Samaj,
Kolkata: K.P. Bagchi, 1981.
———,  Unish Sataker Samaj O Sanskriti, Kolkata, 1971.
Mukhopadhyay, Anima, Satero Sataker Radh Benglar Samaj Sahitya, Kolkata:
Bangiya Sahitya Samsad, 1990.
Mukhopadhyay, Asimkumar, Banglar nabajagarane bijnan chetana, Kolkata:
Bangiya Bijnan Parishad, 2006.
Mukhopadhyay, Barun Kumar, Bangla mudrita granther itihas, Kolkata: Press
Superintendent, 1985.
Mukhopadhyay, Bratindranath, Banga, bangala o bharat, Kolkata: Progressive,
2000.
Mukhopadhyay, Gorachand, Bangadesher kahini, Kolkata: Modern Book Agency,
1976.
926 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Mukhopadhyay, Jadugopal, Biblabi jibaner smriti, Kolkata: Academic, 1982.
Mukhopadhyay, Saktisadhan, Italio Renaissancer Aloke Banglar Renaissance,
Kolkata: Progressive, 2000.
Murshid, Golam, Nari Progoti Adhunikatar Abhighate Bangoramani, Kolkata:
Naya Uddyog, 2007.
Nandi, Ajaykumar, Agnihotri: bangali swadhinata sangrami charitakatha,
Kolkata: Ashok Bhattacharya, 1997.
Nasiruddin, Muhammad, Bangla Sahitye Saugat Jug, Dhaka: Bangla Academy,
1985.
Nath, Sanjib, Banglar Loknatya: Swarup O Boisistya, Kolkata: Aparna, 2003.
Pahari, Subrata, Unish Sataker Banglay Sanatani Chikitsa Byabosthar Swarup,
Kolkata: Progressive, 1997.
Pakrashi, Satish, Agnijuger katha (About the Fiery Era), Kolkata: Nabajatak
Prakashan, 1971.
Palit, Cittabrata, Aupanibesik banglar samajchitra, Kolkata: Deys, 2007.
———,  Bijnaner Aloke Ouponibeshik Bangla, Kolkata: Deys, 2005.
Paschimbanga Itihas Samsad, Gautam Chattopadhyay Sammanana Grantha,
Itihas Charchar Dhara, Kolkata: PIS, 2005.
Ranadibhe, B.T., Jaat, Barno, Shreni ebong Sampattigato Samporko, Kolkata:
NBA, 1992.
Ray, Anuradha, Chhalis Dashaker Banglai Ganasangeet Andolan, Kolkata:
Papyrus, 1992.
Ray, Niharranjan, Bangalir Itihas, Adi Porbo, Kolkata: Deys, 1993.
Ray, Rakshit and Bhupendra Kishore, Bharate Shasastra biplab, Kolkata:
Rabindranath Biswas, 1970.
Ray, Satyajit, Atiter Bangla Chobi, Bisoy Chalachitra, Kolkata: Ananda, 1976.
Ray, Shibnarayan, Bangalittver Khnoje Ebong Anyanya Alochona, Kolkata: Dey’s,
2004.
Ray, Suprakash, Barater Krishak Bidroho O Ganatantrik Sangram, Kolkata:
Radical Impression, 1972.
Raychaudhuri, Samir, Sabek kolkatar rastar itihas, Kolkata: Uttam Ganguly, 1997.
Raychaudhuri, Tapan, Bangalanama, Kolkata: Ananda, 2007.
Roy, Anuradha, ed., Swadeshprem o Sajatyabodher Gaan o Kaabita: Unish Shatak,
Kolkata: Paschim Banga Bangla Academy, 2012.
———,  ed., Swadhinata Sangramer Gaan o Kabita: Bingsha Shatabdi, Delhi:
Sahitya Akademi, 1999.
Roy, Binay Bhushan, Chikitsa Bijnaner Itihas, Unish Satoker Banglay Paschatya
Shikshar Probhab, Kolkata: Sahityalok Prokashani, 2005.
———,  Unish Satake Deshiyo Bhasay Chikitsavigyan Charcha, Kolkata: Ananda,
1995.
———,  Unish Satoker Banglay Bijnan Sadhana, Kolkata: Subarnarekha, 1987.
 Baul: Brief Bibliographic References on Bengal History 927
Saha, Kamal, Bangla Theater Abhidhan, Kolkata: Proyag Prokashani, 2007.
Saha, Prabhatkumar, Madyajuger itihaser sandhane, Kolkata: Pustak Bipani, 1998.
Saharay, Rabidas, Bamlar bara bhumuiya, Kolkata: Shibrani Prakashani, 1998.
Samaddar, Ranjeet Kumar, Banglar ganasamgramer patabhumika, Kolkata:
B.B. Prakashan, 1991.
———,  Bangla Sahitya O Sanskrititey Sthaniya Bidroher Prabhav, Kolkata:
Manudi, 1982.
Samaddar, Sekhar, Bangla Natya Sanskritir Itihas, Kolkata: Proyag Prakasani,
2010.
Samanta, Amiya Kumar, Vidyasagar: oupanibeshik samaje Vidyasagarer abasthan
samparke alochana, Kolkata: Progressive, 2004.
Samanta, Arabinda, Roug, Rougi, Unish Sataker Bangla, Kolkata: Progressive,
2004.
Sanyal, Hiran Kumar, Parichayer Kuri Bachhar o Anyanya Smritichitra, Kolkata:
Papyrus, 1978.
Sanyal, Hitesranjan, Bangla Kirtaner Itihas, Kolkata: K.P. Bagchi, 1989.
Sarkar, Chandi Prasad, Bangali Musalman, 1863–1947, Kolkata: Mitra & Ghosh,
2007.
Sarkar, Sipra and Anamitra Das, eds., Bangalir Samyavad Charcha, Kolkata:
ABP, 1998.
Sarkar, Sudhir Chandra, Amar Kal Amar Desh, Kolkata: M.C. Sarkar & Sons,
1994.
Sarkar, Tarak, Bangla upanyase deshbhag o destyag, Kolkata: Aruna Prakashani,
2009.
Sasmal, Bimalananda, SwadhinatarFhanki, Kolkata: Puthi, 1969.
Sehanobis, Chinmohan, Rabindranath o Biplabi Samaj, Kolkata: Visva Bharati,
1985.
Sen, Gopinath, Swadhinata Andolone Adibasir Bhumika, Kolkata: Adibasi Kalyan
Samiti, 1975.
Sen, Manikuntala, Sediner Katha, Kolkata: Nabapatra, 1982.
Sen, Prabodhchandra, Banglar itihas-sadhana, Kolkata: Paschimbanga Bangla
Akademi, 1997.
———,  Banglar Itihas Sadhana, Kolkata: Deys, 1992.
Sen, Ranajit, ed., Banglar Sramashakti: Atharo Theke Bish Shatak, Kolkata:
Aruna, 2008.
———,  Bangladesher rajaswa sasan: Aatharo satak, Kolkata: Aruna Prakashani,
2006.
Sen, Samar, Babu Brittanta, Kolkata: Deys, 1978.
Sen, Sunil, Banglar Krishak Sangram, Kolkata: Chatterjee, 1975.
Sengupta, Amalendu, Uttal Challish: Asamapta Biplab, Kolkata: Pearl, 1989.
Sengupta, Amiyakumar, Amader puruliya, Bankura: Lubdhak Prakashani, 1999.
928 A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal
Sengupta, Subodh Chandra, ed., Sansad Bangla Charitabhidhan, Kolkata: Shishu
Sahitya Samsad, 1994.
Sharif Ahmed, Bangali O Bangali Sahityo, Dhaka: Barnamichil, 1971.
Sikdar, Sukumar, Hotobhagar Kolkata, Kolkata: Anustup, 2016.
Singh, Sukumar, Daksin 24 pargana jelar itihas: Jiban o jibika, Kolkata: Multi
Book Agency, 1995.
Sinha, Dines Chandra, Syamaprasad: banga bibhag o pascimbanga, Kolkata:
Grantharashmi, 2000.
Sur, Atul, Banglar samajik itihas, Kolkata: Jijnasa, 1976.
Sur, Shyamali, Itihas Chintar Suchana o Jatiatabader Unmesh: Bengal, 1870–1912,
Kolkata: Progressive, 2002.
Thakur, Sumitendranath, Thakurbarir jana ajana, Kolkata: Mitra & Ghosh, 1998.
Tripathi, Amalesh, Bharater Mukti Sangrame Charam Panthi Parbo, Kolkata:
Ananda, 2015.
———,  Swadhinatar Mukh, Kolkata: Ananda, 2013.
———,  Swadhinata Sangrame Bharater Jatiya Congress, Kolkata: Ananda, 2012.
———,  Italir Renaissance Bangalir Sanskriti, Kolkata: Ananda, 1996.
———,  Itihas O Aitihasik, Kolkata: West Bengal State Book Board, 1995.
 Editor and Contributors

sabyasachi bhattacharya was Professor of Indian Economic

History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the Vice Chancellor of
Visva-Bharati University. He has been the Chairman, Indian Council
of Historical Research, and was Founder President, Association of
Indian Labour Historians. He has also presided over the 65th session
of the Indian History Congress as its General President. Some of his
notable publications are Archiving the British Raj, 1858-1947 (2019),
The Colonial State: Theory and Practice (2016), and The Defining
Moments in Bengal 1920-1947 (2014). He was the general editor
of the Towards Freedom series (ICHR, 2006–16). The prestigious
Rabindra Puraskar Award was conferred upon him in 2011 by the
Government of West Bengal.

amiya kumar bagchi is Emeritus Professor, Institute of

Development Studies Kolkata and Adjunct Professor, Monash
University, Australia. Some of the books that he has authored include
Colonialism and Indian Economy (2010), Perilous Passage: Mankind
and the Global Ascendancy of Capital (2005), and Capital and Labour
Redefined: India and the Third World (2002). He has also co-edited
Marxism With and Beyond Marx (2014). He was the lead consultant
for Asia and the Pacific: A Story of Transformation and Resurgence:
Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 1947-2014 (2014).
a ru n ba n d o pa d h yay is currently the Historical and
Archaeological Secretary of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata. He was
formerly a Nurul Hasan Professor of History at the University of
Calcutta. His research interests cover a wide range of areas: agrarian
history, business history, and history of science and environment.
He is the author of a number of monographs and editor of several
volumes on these subjects.
bishnupriya basak is the Head and Assistant Professor,
Department of Archaeology, University of Calcutta. She was an
930 Notes on Editor and Contributors

Honorary Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, University College

London. She has written on historiography, archaeological theory,
and prehistory. She is the author of New Dimensions in Hunter-
gatherer Studies: The Prehistory of the Tarafeni Valley (2018), and
has two edited volumes and more than thirty research papers to her
credit.
s wa pa n basu is former Professor, Burdwan University and
Former Secretary, Bangiya Sahitya Parisad. He is the author of
Unish Shataker Bangla Sangbad-Samayik Patra (2018) and Banglay
Nabachetanar Itihas (6th edn, 2016), and has edited two volumes of
Sangbad-Samaik Patre Unish Shataker Bangalisamaj (2000 and 2003).
amiya kumar baul is a PhD scholar, Department of History,
Jadavpur University. He is a life member of the Asiatic Society and
Paschimbanga Itihas Samsad. He is also the Secretary of social
organizations Kaikhali Jibandisha and Sishushree. His research
focuses on caste history in colonial and postcolonial Bengal, and
socio-cultural history in nineteenth-century Bengal. He has published
several articles in Itihas Anusandhan and has edited a new edition
of Sabyasachi Bhattacharya’s British Rajyer Arthabyabosthar Bhitti
(forthcoming).
nandini bhattacharyya-panda is a Senior Fellow at the
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. She has also lectured on
Hindu Law, northeast India and other subjects at leading national and
international universities, such as University of Cambridge, Penn Law
School, and Dhaka University. She is the author of Appropriation and
Invention of Tradition: The English East India Company and Hindu
Law in Early Colonial Bengal (2008), and the editor of ‘Margins’
and ‘Marginal Communities’ in the Asian Perspective: Identity and
Resistance (forthcoming). She has also made a documentary film
on the Lepcha community of the Eastern Himalayas under the title
The Lepcha Community of the Darjeeling and Kalimpong Hills: Quest
for the Roots.
ranjan chakrabarti is the Vice Chancellor of Vidyasagar
University, West Bengal. His key interests lie in environmental history
and related areas. His major publications include A History of the
Modern World: An Outline (2012); Terror, Crime and Punishment
 Notes on Editor and Contributors 931

(2010); Situating Environmental History (2007); and a co-edited

volume Natural Resources, Sustainability and Humanity (2012).
gorky chakraborty is an Associate Professor of Economics
at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata and works on
development-related issues in northeast India. He has authored
Assam’s Hinterland: Society and Economy in the Char Areas (2009)
and co-edited Accumulation and Dispossession: Communal Land
in Northeast India (2017) and Water Conflicts in Northeast India
(2017).
subhas ranjan chakraborty was a member of the West
Bengal Education Service and retired from Presidency College, where
he taught European History. He had also taught at the University of
Calcutta and the Jadavpur University as Guest Faculty. He is presently
a Vice President of the Asiatic Society. He edited two volumes of
collected essays published by the Asiatic Society including Uprisings
of 1857: Perspectives and Peripheries (2009).
rosinka chaudhuri is Director and Professor of Cultural
Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. She
was also the first Mellon Professor of the Global South at Oxford
University. She has authored books like The Literary Thing: History,
Poetry and the Making of a Modern Literary Culture (2013) and
Freedom and Beef-Steaks: Colonial Calcutta Culture (2012); edited An
Acre of Green Grass: English Writings of Buddhadeva Bose (2018) and
A History of Indian Poetry in English (2016); and co-edited The Indian
Postcolonial: A Critical Reader (2011). Her translation of Tagore’s
Chhinnapatrabali has appeared as Letters from a Young Poet (1887-
94) (2014). Her current research is tentatively titled ‘Young Bengal
and the Making of Modern India: The Road Not Taken’.
ajit k. danda is the Chairman of the Indian National Confe-
deration and Academy of Anthropologists and Chief Editor of
The Journal of Indian Anthropology. He was formerly the Director
of the Anthropological Survey of India, and Professor and Head,
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, North Bengal
University, Darjeeling. He also served as a Professor of the Asiatic
Society, Kolkata. A recipient of the Life-Time Achievement Award of
IGRMS, Ministry of Culture, Government of India, he is the Founder
932 Notes on Editor and Contributors

Member of the World Council of Anthropological Associations. He

has 48 books and 233 research articles to his credit.
amit dey is Professor of History, Centre for Advanced Studies,
University of Calcutta. He completed his doctoral research as a
Commonwealth Scholar being affiliated to the Department of History,
Royal Holloway, University of London. He has authored Islam in
South Asia (2016), The Image of the Prophet in Bengali Muslim Piety:
1850-1947 (2005), and Sufism in India (1996). He has co-edited
Between Tradition and Modernity: Aspects of Islam in South Asia
(2011).
saswata ghosh is Demographic and Population Health Expert
in Centre for Health Policy, Asian Development Research Institute
(Patna) and currently on lien from the Institute of Development
Studies Kolkata, where he works as an Associate Professor. His
research focuses on socio-demographic processes in Indian
subcontinent and their relationship with economic, cultural, and
health aspects of population. He is the co-editor of Population
Dynamics in Eastern India and Bangladesh: Demography, Health and
Development Issues (forthcoming).
brian a. hatcher is Professor and Packard Chair of Theology in
the Department of Religion at Tufts University. His research focuses
on socio-religious transformations in nineteenth-century Bengal.
Among his well-known books are Vidyasagar: The Life and After-life
of an Eminent Indian (2014), Bourgeois Hinduism (2008), Eclecticism
and Modern Hindu Discourse (1999), and Idioms of Improvement:
Vidyasagar and Cultural Encounter in Bengal (1996).
sujata mukherjee is Professor of History and former Dean, Arts
Faculty, Rabindra Bharati University. Her current research focuses on
history of science, technology, environment, and medicine in modern
and contemporary India. She is the author of Gender, Medicine, and
Society in Colonial India (2017).
abhik r. ray, f ormerly Deputy General Manager (History), State
Bank of India, has remained intimately associated with the writing
of the bank’s monumental history. His books include Banking beyond
Boundaries, SBI’s Living Heritage (2016) and Bank of India: 100 Years
of Prudential Banking (2015).
 Notes on Editor and Contributors 933

prasanta ray is Emeritus Professor in Sociology, Presidency

University. He was formerly Professor and Head, Department of
Political Science, and Professor-in-charge, Department of Sociology,
Presidency College. He was also an Honorary Visiting Professor,
Institute of Development Studies Kolkata. He is the author of The
Sociology of Greed: Runs and Ruins in Banking Crises (2018) and
Conflict and the State: Exploration in the Behaviour of the Post-colonial
State in India (1991), and is the co-editor of Pratyaha: Everyday
Lifeworlds: Dilemmas, Contestations and Negotiations (2016).
bruce carlisle robertson teaches in the Master of Liberal Arts
Program at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and was Chair of
Advanced South Asia Area Studies at the Foreign Service Institute of
the US Department of State. He is the author of The Essential Writings
of Raja Rammohan Ray (1999) and Raja Rammohan Ray, the Father
of Modern India (1995). He has also contributed chapters to several
edited volumes. His lecture at a conference at the Nehru Memorial
Museum and Library, New Delhi, titled ‘Swami Vivekananda
and Rajarshi Rammohan Ray: Two Views on Sacred Authority,
Two Visions of Modern India’, was published by the NMML in
2013.
mahua sarkar is the Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of
Burdwan. She has also served as the Dean, Faculty of Arts, Jadavpur
University, and has chaired the Department of History twice. As
Professor of History, Jadavpur University, she taught a course on ‘Life
and Thought in Nineteenth Century Bengal’. She is the author of
Justice in a Gothic Edifice (1997). As Coordinator of UGCSAP of the
Department of History, Jadavpur University, she has also edited three
volumes on Environmental History and has contributed articles on
the theme.
pabitra sarkar was the former Vice Chancellor of Rabindra
Bharati University, Kolkata, and Vice Chairman of West Bengal
State Council of Higher Education. He has taught mostly at Jadavpur
University, and on shorter assignments, at the universities of Chicago
and Minnesota. He has about eighty books on grammar and
linguistics, lexicography, folklore, belles-lettres, theatre, etc., including
books for children. He has also edited about 50 publications. His
934 Notes on Editor and Contributors

books in English are mostly reports as heads of Commissions or

Committees, such as the Tripura Upajati Bhasha Commission.
tanika sarkar was the Chair of Modern History at the Centre
for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has authored
Rebels, Wives and Saints: Designing Selves and Nations in Colonial
Times (2009), and has co-edited Tolerance, Secularisation and
Democratic Politics in South Asia (2018) and Calcutta: The Stormy
Decades (2015). Her forthcoming book is entitled Essays on Hindu
Cultural Nationalism.
amiya prosad sen, formerly Professor of Modern Indian History
at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, is engaged with the study of
intellectual and cultural history of colonial Bengal. To date, he has
authored a number of books such as Chaitanya: A Life and Legacy
(2019), Religion and Rabindranath Tagore: Select Discourses, Addresses
and Letters in Translation (2014), and Rammohun Roy: A Critical
Biography (2012); and edited Bankim’s Hinduism. An Anthology of
Writings by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (2011).
kaustubh mani sengupta is Assistant Professor at the
Department of History, Bankura University, West Bengal. In 2014, he
obtained his PhD from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal
Nehru University. His research focuses on urban history, early
colonial state in India, and history of infrastructure and space. He
has published essays in journals like IESHR, Studies in History, EPW,
and South Asia Research.
 Index

Aachar Prabandha 220 alienation 655

aaharnidrakushali 427 Ali, Muhammad Wajed 277
abhijata 431, 446 Alipore bomb case 411
abwabs 92 Ali, Wajed 278
Achar Probondho 237–9 Allah 297
A Code of Gentoo Laws 359, 376 All India Ayurvedic Congress 704
A Comprehensive History of Modern All India Institute of Hygiene and Public
Bengal (1700–1950) xxxvii Health (AIIH&PH) 700
Adam, John 744 All India Vedic and Unani Tibbi
adhikar 234 Conference (AIVUTC) 704
adhikarbheda 246 All India Women’s Conference
Adi Brahmo Samaj 119, 120, 133, 136, (AIWC) 286
140, 155, 159, 171, 194, 203, 217, ambivalent space 576–7
218, 221, 222, 235, 242, 247, 248, American Bar Association 402
260, 433, 718, 785, 809, 827 American Methodist Episcopal Mission
adiguru 257 to Bareilly 708
Adivasis 816 Amrita Bazar Patrika 85
aesthetic education 445 Anandabazar Patrika 541, 542
age at marriage for females 597 Anandamath 117, 174, 231, 243, 515
age dependency ratio 594 An Anthropologist Among the Historians
Age of Consent Bill 175, 220, 443, 814 and Other Essays 2
Age of Enlightenment 4 ancient copper mines 571
Age of Reason 197 andarmahal 438
age-sex structure 593–5, 618 andhagajanyaya 246
agricultural revolution 3 Anglo-Indian College 196
agriculturist population 103 Anguriya Binimay 513
agunkhaaki 821 Annadamangal 484
ahar 100 Annadamangal Kavya 486
ahetuki 250 Annual Report on Game Preservation for
Ahmed, Reyazuddin 739 1939 648
AIIH&PH. See All India Institute Annual Sanitary Commission’s
of Hygiene and Public Health Reports 584
(AIIH&PH) antiquarian, historicizing of 571
AIVUTC. See All India Vedic and Antiquity of man 559
Unani Tibbi Conference anti-rain-gambling bill 685
(AIVUTC) anti-Tagore school of fiction 521
Akbarnamah 636 anubhava 257
Alaler Gharer Dulal 200, 434, 531, 540 anumarana 819
Alibaba 508 anxieties 220
936 Index
disturbances in Midnapore 335 Bachelor of Medicine (MB) 699
historiography-driven 421 Back to the Prophet 274
Apurba Sati Natak 815 Badrudduza 277
Arabian Nights 487 Bagchi, Jatindramohan 499
archivization process xxvi–xxvii Baghbazar Theatre 505
ardhangini 823 Baidya 215
Arms Act 317, 748 Bakarganj 21, 99
arms sale, control of 316–18 bakkye ajeyo 427
Arthaniti O Arthabyabahar 450 Balakbandhu 546
Arthashastra 870 balogh 289
artisan-artist distinction 444 Balyabibaher Dosh 829
artistic sensibility 446 Bamabodhini Patrika 808
artists, gentlemen 445 Banaphul 526
A Rule of Property for Bengal 72 Bande Mataram 174
Aryadarshan 534 Bandhan Hara 529
Arya Samaj 17, 260 Bandhyopadhyay, Karunanidhan 498
Aryavarta 123, 141, 842 Bandyodpadhyay, Bhabani Charan 516
Asadhu Siddhartha 521 Bandyopadhyay, Bhavani Charan 199,
Ashiqe Rasul 279 435
ashraf 278 Bandyopadhyay, Bibhuti Bhusan 525
ashraf-atraf 278 Bandyopadhyay, Charu Chandra 521
Asiatic Journal 134 Bandyopadhyay, Kedarnath 524
Asiatic origin for the North American Bandyopadhyay, Tarasankar 525
Indians 569 Banerjea, Krishna Mohan 158, 452
Asiatic Society 559, 569 Banerjee, Tarasankar 221
in 1784 558 banga xv
ethnological investigations 566 Bangabasi 220, 741, 770, 772, 795
historiography 565 Bangabhasabhidhan 434
post-mutiny scenario 566 Bangabhasha O Sahitya Bishayak
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Prastab 532
570 Banga Darshan 494
associations, voluntary 155, 158, 422, Bangadarshan 223, 437, 533
451, 452, 456, 718 Bangadesher Krishak 431
Atmakatha 442 Bangadut 423
Atmaparichay, Manusher Dharma 535 Bangala Bhasha 540
Atmiya Sabha 121, 133–5, 159 Banga Mahila Bidyalay 811
aturghar 716 Bangasahitye Upanyaser Dhara 538
auction, in fictitious names 57 Banger Bir Pratapaditya 508
Aurangzeb-Mughal Emperor xxviii, 121, Bangladesh 70
513, 874 banians 446, 449, 671, 680, 681, 843, 863,
aurate hasina 283 876–7, 879–82
authenticity 214 banking/credit system, in Bengal
Avadhutas 145, 146 ancient and medieval India 870–1
Ayurveda 707 Bengal Bank 885–7
Ayurveda Sanjivani 703 European style 881–2
General Bank for Bengal and Bihar
babus 199–208, 409, 426–8, 436, 447, 884–5
448, 780, 856 General Bank of India 887–90
 Index 937
Hindostan 882–4 Bengal
merchant communities peasant economy, landlords, and
banians 876–7, 879–80 agrarian improvement 94–101
Dhar, Lakshmikanta 879 revenues settlement plan 72
early Europeans 874–5 Bengal Births and Deaths Registration
intermediaries 880–1 Act 722
non-Europeans 875–6 Bengal Chamber of Commerce 687
Seths, Jagat 877–9 Bengal civil society 437
modern banking 890–1 Bengal Coal Company 674
usurious rates 871–4 Bengal District Gazetteer 644
Bank of Bengal 674, 891 Bengal Education Service 454
Bank of Bombay 891 Bengal famine 297, 608, 612, 618
Bank of Hindostan 882 Bengal Hurkaru 345, 675, 737, 763
Bank of Madras 891 Bengali-British partnerships 449
Bankura 97, 335, 337, 342, 608, 743 Bengalicization 281
Bannerejee, Surendranath 176, 456, 772, Bengali gentry 842
773, 796 Bengali Hindus, generations of 818
Barah Bhuiyas 636 Bengali identity xxi–xxvi
baramanush 431 Bengali intelligentsia 453
baras 684 Bengali-medium schools 450
Barasat 333–4 Bengali middle class 428
Bar Association 397n67, 402 Bengali Muslims 271
Bar Councils Act of 1926 395 journals 277
Bardhaman/Burdwan Raj 118, 121 Bengalis of Bangladesh 271
Bari Theke Paliye 551 Bengali-speaking region 489
barkandaj 324, 325 Bengali subnationalism 637
Bar Library Club 397 Bengal Legislative Council 685
Barna Parichay 532 Bengal Local Self-Government Act
basanta rog 719 (1885) 722
Basu, Chandranath 222, 237 Bengal Peasant Life 431
Basu, Jogendra Chandra 516 Bengal Presidency 309
Basu, Manindra Lala 520 Bengal Public Consultations 68–76
Basu, Manoj 527 Bengal Rent Act 54, 61–3
Basu, Pratibha 528 Bengal Road Cess Act, 1871 91
Basu, Rajanarain 238 Bengal Salt Company 673
Basu, Rajnarayan 532, 842n1 Bengal Tea Association 673
Bati/Bhati 636 Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 85
Batris Singhasan 531 Bengal Theatre 815
Battle of Plassey 308, 845–8 Bengal Vaishnavism 231
bauls 278, 296 Bengal Wards’ Manual 53
Bau Thakuranir Hat 518 Bentham, Jeremy 132, 133, 138
bazaar 48 Bentinck, William (Lord) 189, 745, 821
BCPW (Bengal Chemical and Bethune, J.E.D. 152, 219, 809
Pharmaceutical Works Ltd) 449 bhaba sindhu 298
Beef and Burgundy 186 bhabuk 240
begar 49 bhadra 427
benami 57 bhadralok 424, 446
Benaras 362, 364, 372, 845, 880 bhadralok 432
938 Index
bhadramahila 443 Bishad Sindhu 497
bhadrata 425 Bishi, Pramathanath 237
bhadroloks 429 Bismrita Brahmin 237
Bhadu 857 Blacks dogged strength 421
Bhaduri Mashai 525 Bodhodoy 440
Bhaduri, Sisir Kumar 510 Bogra 27, 330
Bhagabata 489 Bohurupee 512
Bhagalpur, British officers 340 Bombay Presidency xvi
Bhagavad Gita 216, 222 Bonâ-fide leases 60
Bhagavata 228, 229 Bonnerjee, W.C. 396
Bhagavat Purana 127, 227, 228 Bose, Kshudiram 798
Bhakti Yoga 258 Bose, Rajnarayan 440
bhangakulin 118, 122, 127 Bostom 17
Bharat Arya Dharma Pracharini Sabha Bosu, Ram 865
213 bourgeois liberal ideology 342
Bharatbarsha xix Brahmadharmer Byakhyan 531
Bharatbarshiya Upasak Sampraday 532 Brahman/God/Absolute 247
Bharatiya Gananatya Sangha 512 Brahman-Roman Catholic Sangbad 488
Bharatvarsha 123, 141 Brahma Samaj Movement 17
Bhatiali 857 Brahma Sutra 216
Bhati haite aila bangal, lamba lamba Brahmika 220
dari 636 Brahmin shastric authorities 484
Bhattacharya, Gangakishor 436, 737, Brahmo dharma 212
738, 762 Brahmoism 280
Bhattacharya, Gopal Chandra 552 Brahmos 219, 224, 452
Bhattacharya, Jatindra Prasad 497 Brahmo Samaj 119, 120, 133, 136, 140,
Bhattacharya, Krishnakamal 422 155, 159, 171, 194, 203, 217, 218,
Bhattacharya, Raghunandana 365 221, 222, 235, 247, 248, 260, 280,
Bhattacharya, Sukanta 501 433, 718, 785, 827
Bhawsker 322 brides permission 289
Bhootan Dowars 332 brihattarbattala 436
Bhore Committee 726 British colonizers 702
Bibidh Prabanda 533 British Empire 193
Bibi Kulsum 283 British-owned indigo production
bichitrabuddhi 427 factory 429
bidat 287 British system of education 3
Bidhaba Ganjana 287 Brixham Cave 560
Bidhaba Ganjana O Bishad Bhandar 287 Brown, J. Coggin 573
Bidrohi 499 Buckingham, James Silk 132, 744
Bihar 338–9 Buddha 298, 486
Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 100 Buddhism 249
peasant economy, landlords, and Buddhist monk 510
agrarian improvement 94–101 Burdwan/Bardwan/Bardhaman 58, 59,
revenues settlement plan 72 76, 77, 80, 89, 91, 121, 134, 335, 336,
Bill, Ilbert 170, 175, 762, 777–80 364, 371, 611, 720, 723, 743, 766,
Birbhum 338 769, 881
birth from whom 428 Burdwan, Rani 371
Bishabriksha 515 burkaundajes 336
 Index 939
Burma frontier 309 Chaitanya hagiographies 484
Burmese language 567 Chaitanya-lila 507
Burnell, A.C. 368 Chaitanya, Sri Krishna 230
Buro Shaliker Ghare Rom 505 Cha Kar Darpan 817
Byaghratatimandal 640 Chaki, Praphulla 798
Chakrabarti, Mukundaram xiv
Calcutta Art Studio 446 Chakraborty, Ajit Kumar 538
Calcutta Ayurvedic Institution 704 Chakraborty, Biharilal 493
Calcutta Census of 1901 714, 813 Chakraborty, Nirendranath 502
Calcutta Courier 186 Chakraborty, Punyalata 550
Calcutta Docking Company 689 Chakraborty, Shibram 525
Calcutta Female School 809 Champaran 28, 29, 96, 339
Calcutta Gazette 646, 886, 889 Chandalika 510
Calcutta High Court xxxi, 143, 382, 384, Chand Baniker Pala 493
385, 393–5, 397–9, 403, 409–12 Chandi 18
Calcutta Improvement Trust 682 Chandi Mangal xiv
Calcutta Journal 132, 133, 135, 744 Chandimangal 485
Calcutta Medical College (CMC) Chandra, Keshab 253
698–700, 716 Chandramukhir Upakhyan 513
Calcutta Port Trust 686 Chandra, Sarat 520, 521
Calcutta Sanskrit College 540 Chandrashekhar 514
Calcutta School Book Society 159 Chardham Yatra 127
Calcutta School of Art 445 chars 99
Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine Charter Act of 1833 677
(CSTM) 700 Chartered Bank Building 676
Calcutta School Society 159 Charupath 439
Calcutta Steam Ferry Bridge chasmaalangkrito 427
Company 673 chaste Bengali 549
Calcutta Steam Tug Association 673 chãtrasamãj 439
Calcutta University xxii, 272, 400, 410, Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra xiii, xiv,
543, 699, 700 xxxiv, 3, 102, 103, 173, 202, 489, 494,
Calcutta University Magazine 203 513, 533, 765, 772, 773, 777, 780,
Calcutta Weekly Notes 399, 400, 411 789
Calcutta Zoo 647 Chatterjee, Sarat Chandra 519
Caldwell, Robert 570 Chatterji, Suniti Kumar 537
Campbell Medical College 814 Chattopadhyaya, Bankim Chandra
Campbell Medical School 713 (Chatterjee) xxiii, xxiv, xxxiv, 3,
Carey, William 539 102, 103, 117, 173, 202, 222–6, 405,
caste 218–19 422, 426, 431, 434–7, 454, 489, 509,
causes of death 612 513–19, 522, 533, 534, 540, 765, 773
Census of India 4, 7, 10, 12, 13, 18 Chattopadhyay, Basudeb 318
Census Questionnaire 6 Chattopadhyay, Sanjib Chandra 102
census reports 583, 716 Chaudhuri, B.B. 69
Census Schedule 5, 8 Chaudhuri, Pramatha 520, 543, 549
Central Cooperative Anti-Malaria Society Chaudhury, Nirad C. 222
720 Chharpatra 501
ceter dhiri 572 chhotolok/eetorlok 427, 428, 444
Chaitanya 494 criminality 428
940 Index
child marriage 156, 282, 288, 289, 505, modern industries/managing
718, 766, 767, 773, 829, 831 agencies 676–80
Child Marriage Restraint Act 288 partnership gone awry 672–5
child mortality 584 Commissioners of the Trust 687
children’s authors 493 communal customs 681
child-woman ratio (CWR) 598 Communist Party 276, 526
Chinna Mukul 518 Community banks 681
chitrabasonabrito 427 Company painters 444
Chittagong 321–7 Company’s rule in Assam 340
chittashuddhi 245 Compulsory Vaccination Act of 1880 721
Chokher Bali 518 conflicts, Calcutta Medical College 811
cholera 719, 720, 725 conglomerated entity 11
Chowdhury, Juggut Chunder Roy 333 Congress, in pre-Independence
Christianity 243 period xvii
Christians 256, 452 Congress of Lawyers and Jurists 402
faith 311 conservatism, Bhudeb Mukhopadhayay
missionaries 294, 545 and Buoyant 236–44
Chund, Sam 196 Contagious Diseases Act of 1868 707
Church Missionary Society 809 contemporary reality 490
civic existence 430 Cooke, C.N. 872
clear-cut racial division economic Corbett style hunting 642
space 680 Cornwallis reforms 55
coal mining 28–30, 673 Cornwallis system 47
code of regulations 7 cotton spinning industry 31–3
cognitive revolution 3, 409 cotton textile industryv23, 33
Colebrooke, H.T. 121, 130, 359, 360, 373, Court of Wards 51
376, 378, 819, 871 Court of Wards system 52
collapses of civilizations 3 Cowell, Herbert 391, 392
College of Physicians and Surgeons of Criminal Law Amendment Act 830
India 700 Criminal Tribes Act 406
colonial administration 47 Crooke, W.B. 563
colonial discourse 559 cross-cultural comparisons 574, 575
Colonial ethnology 567 crude birth rate (CBR) 598
colonial India 683 crude death rate (CDR) 608
Colonial intervention, in forests of CSTM. See Calcutta School of Tropical
Bengal 629 Medicine (CSTM)
colonial Judicial Plan 817 cultivation 99–100
Colonial Masculinity 198 cultural borrowing 575
colonial science 576 cultural nationalists 831
colonial tentacles 4 Curzon, Lord 787, 793, 798
colour bar 398
Comilla 327 Dacca 33, 35, 53, 77, 89, 332, 333, 529,
commercial metropolis, in Calcutta 743, 749, 766, 776, 874–7
agency houses 668–72 Dacca News 321, 323
British power in Bengal 667 Dacca Theatre 280
community/capital, Marwaris 680–6 Dadamoshayer Thole 550
infrastructure, Calcutta port complex Dakshinaranjan 193
686–91 Dakshineswar 251
 Index 941
daksinacara tantrics 120 Dhaka 321–7
daladali 432 Dhaka Bangla Academy 543
dance dramas 510 dhani/dhanilok 431
Darbhanga 28, 96, 99 dharma 186
Daridra athacha bhadra 432 dharma 136, 231–6, 361–3, 366, 405, 484
Darjeeling Shooting and Fishing Club Dharmabodher Drishtanto 411
648 dharma, possibilities of 231–6
darpatni 58 Dharma Sabha 121, 140, 155, 160, 161,
darubrahma 486 810, 818
Das, Chittaranjan xxi, 409, 411, 521 Dharmasastra 375
Das, Ksetramani 442 Dharmasastra 120, 126, 359, 361, 366,
Datta, A.K. 161, 224, 245, 430, 438, 531, 368
534, 780, 781 dharmasthanam 232
Datta, Kedarnath 173 dharmasthapanarthi 233
Datta, Nimchand 191 Dharmatattwa 225, 226, 230–3, 243
Datta, N N aka Vivekananda 171 Dharmavir Muhammad 280
Dayabhaga 125, 126, 130–32, 139, 362–4, Dhatridebata 525
368, 371, 375, 377, 823 Dhatrisiksha ebong Prasutisiksha: A Guide
Dayananda, Swami 260 to Native Midwives & Mothers 717
Deasi 18 Dhonrai Charit Manas 529
Death of Charles Bodwin 205 Dibaratrir Kabya 526
Debi, Anurupa 524 A Digest of Hindu Law 376
Debi Choudhurani 515 dik-bandana xiv
Debi, Swarnakumari 812 Dinajpore 74, 76, 77, 80, 91, 97, 98, 327,
Deb, Nabakrishna 880 329, 331, 332, 585, 612
Deb, Radhakanta 121, 122, 161, 809 Diploma of Tropical Medicine
decennial censuses 805 (DTM) 700
Decennial Settlement 71 Director of Public Instruction (DPI) 699
Deepnirban 812 discrete identity 11
de-industrialization 36n1 discriminating attitude 431
demographic trends xxxi, 583–619 distal determinants of fertility 597
Deoband 283 Diwani 81
Deobandis 288 Doctor of Medicine (MD) 699
departmental record-keeper 427 Dooars region 630
Depressed Class 9 double-consciousness 421
Derozio, Henry Louis Vivian xxv, 133, dowry system 131, 770, 771
207 DPI. See Director of Public Instruction
Derozio’s Academic Association 198 (DPI)
Derrett, J.D.M. 361, 364, 365 drama 492, 503–13
deshachar 219 Dramatic Performances Act 506
Desher mukh ujjwal korbe 443 DTM. See Diploma of Tropical Medicine
Despatch on Education 810 (DTM)
Devi, Rammoni 118 Dufferin Fund 713, 714
Devi, Tarini 117, 118, 125 Duhkhir Iman 512
devsharira 240 duni 873
dewans 844 Duranta Igal 550
Dey, Bishnu 500 Durbin 344
dhais 716, 717 Durgeshnandini 513, 514
942 Index
durwans 682 European-style bank 882
Dutta, Akshay Kumar 224, 245, 430, 438, exchange, for transferring funds 885
531, 534, 780, 781
Dutta, Sudhindranath 501 fait accompli 443
Dutt, Madhusudan 249, 505 Fakeer of Jungheera 189, 205n53
Dutt, Michael Madhusudan 158, 191, family size 605
447, 496, 505, 534 Famine Enquiry Commission 725, 726
Dutt, Romesh 72 Faraizi 292, 322, 328, 331, 342
dwiragaman 832 Farquhar, J.N. 253
farz 284
Eastern Bengal Railway 688 fashioning typology 574–6
goods terminus at Chitpore 691 female infanticide 590, 805
East India Company xxix, xxv, xxviii, Female Juvenile Society 809
102, 118, 123, 127, 131, 138, 140–42, female literacy rate 600
150, 154, 338, 358, 382, 386, 387, feminine sentimentality 231
389, 406, 425, 491, 576, 643, 667, feriwalas 436
669–71, 702, 720, 843–6, 848, 850, fertility indicator 584, 598
853, 863, 874–9, 881, 882, 884–6, Festival, Shivaji 797
888, 890 fiction 513–30
Banians 671 Field, C.D. 54
civilian and military servants 668 financial crisis 71
mofussil 889 fiqh 275
policy of revenue maximization 71 Firingi, Antony 865
school system 491 flower-delicate fop 448
Easy Lessons on Money Matters and fnotakata anurswarbadi 434
Elements of Political Economy and folk patronage 494
Money Matters in Bengal 450 folk songs
economic activities and workforce baul songs 293
participation 605–8 in Bengali 272
economic enterprise 448–51 jari songs 293
eco-tourism 658 rain songs 293
educated raja 448 Francis, Phillip 51
education ideology 425 French East India Company 874
eetorlok 427 Friend of India 315, 332, 396, 742
Ei Ek Nutan 517 Functional Castes 7
e juger chand holo kaste 501 functionaries 394–407
Emperor of Literature 540
employment 21, 25, 31–3 gaddi 682
English East India Company 875 Gagging Act 320–1, 342
English-speaking world 577 Gajir Gan 857
English-style babus 201 Gambhira 857
enlightened partner 443 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand xx
environmental and ecological factors Gangetic basin 593, 618
585 Gangopadhyay, Narayan 528, 551
epics 484 Gangopadhyay, Tarak Nath 515
Epidemic Diseases Act 722 Gangopadhyay, Upendranath 521
Equality and Fraternity 202 Ganguli Mashayer Samsar 529
European epistemology 558 Ganguly, Dwarakanath 709, 712, 811
 Index 943
ganj 48 Gupta, Nalini Kanta 537
garbhadhan ritual 831 Gupta, Nihar Ranjan 550
garh 571 Gyananneshan 200
Garth, Richard 396
gauridaan 829 Habeas Corpus Act 394
Gaya xiv, 28, 98, 339, 394 Hacker, Paul 231
gender 356–7, 369, 370, 404, 407 Hadith 275
gender differential in mortality 618 hajj, in Mecca 278
gender-segregation 813 Haldar, M.K. 221
gentlemen artists 445 Halhed, N.B. 359, 364, 376, 542
Geological Survey 567 Hamilton, Buchanan 33
Ghose, Benoy 342 ‘Haptam’ and ‘Panjam’ laws 61
Ghosh, Amitav 653 haptam-panjam 80
Ghosh, Aurobindo 576, 795, 796, 799, Haq, Kazi Imdadul 529
800 Hare, David 145, 152, 441
Ghosh, Chandra Madhab 402, 409 Harinbhanga–Raimangal–Kalindi river
Ghosh, Girish Chandra 507, 509 system 635
Ghosh, Kashi Prasad 495 Harington, J.H. 79
Ghosh, Manmatha Nath 538 Harivamsa 227, 229
Ghosh, Ramananda 486 Hasikhusi 546
Gita 234 Hastings, Lord 744
global forces of history 4 Hastings, Warren 87, 118, 167, 358, 359,
gomostah 336 374, 391, 844, 845, 847, 848, 879–81,
gopi 227 884
Government of India Act, 1915 383 hat 48
Government of India Act 1919 722 hatyat barolok 428
government revenue assurance 72 haunting case 820
Governor-General-in-Council trusts 70 Health Survey and Development
Grambartaprakashika 740, 743, 749, 760, Committee 726
784 Helter Skelter 191
Gram Barta Prokashika 429 henpecked husband 252
Grammar of the Bengali Language 434 Hicks, Elias 133, 138
Great Unchastity Case 826 The High Court of Judicature at Fort
Gregoire, Abbe 133 William in Bengal 383, 384, 411
Grey, Charles 392 Hindoo Intelligencer 320
Grihadharma 443 Hindoo Patriot 320, 333, 344, 347, 398,
grihalakshmi 283 400, 401, 456, 854
grihastha 252, 424 Hindoosthanees 322
Grihyasutra 237 Hindu, ‘awakening’ 225
gross rental 92 Hindu Bengali reformism 215
group theatre 512 Hindu College 190, 439
Gupta, Atul Chandra 537 Hindudharmer Shresthata 243
Gupta, Bipinbihari 422 Hindu Intelligencer 344
Gupta, Ishwar Chandra 344, 489, 496, Hinduisation 8
548, 860 Hinduism 197, 222–6
Gupta, Jagadish 521 definition of 214
Guptakatha 437 Hinduized temples 572
Gupta, Nagendranath 519, 524, 761 Hindu Kalejer Itibritta 203
944 Index
Hindu Mela 429 human-wildlife conflicts 633, 634
Hindu missionary 213 hundi 871
Hindu monk 218 Hungry Tide 653
hindu-muslim fertility differentials 602 Hunter, W.W. xxiii, 21, 26, 35
Hindu-Muslim unity 279 hunting, of wild animals 633
Hinduness 220 Hurkaru 193
Hindu Patriot 342, 346, 813 Hurry Mohun Bhose 196
Hindu reformers 102 Hussain, Gulam xiii
Hindu religious 212 Hussain, Mir Musarraf 103
Hindu Revivalism 221–2, 507 Hutom Pyanchar Naksha 435, 517, 533,
Hindu social system 6 540
Hindu society 715
Hindu women, changing ijaradars 98
age of consent 829–33 ijma 275
child wives 829–33 Ilbert Bill 170, 175, 762, 777–80
civil marriage 827–9 Iliad 196
domestic habits and ritual practices IMG. See Indian Medical Gazette (IMG)
804 IMS. See Indian Medical Service (IMS)
educated women 805–12 India Gazette 134, 136, 188, 189, 191,
labouring 815–17 308, 737, 763
legal and social reforms with faith 817 India General Steam Navigation
lives and deaths 805 Company 674
occupations 812–15 Indiaman 638
widow burnings 817–23 Indian Advocates Act of 1961 395
widow remarriage 823–7 Indian Association for the Promotion of
historical demography 583 Fine Arts and National Gallery 447
History of the Sepoy Wars in India 310 Indian barristers 396
Hitopadesha 531, 549 Indian Board of Wildlife 651
Hobsbawm, Eric 356, 357 Indian colonial economy 78
Hooghly 333–4 Indian High Courts Act of 1861 384, 397
hoondian 885 Indian League 451
horizontal segmentation 6 Indian Legislative Council 454
Hossein, Mir Mosharraf 739 Indian Medical Gazette (IMG) 701
How to be Wealthy 451 Indian Medical Service (IMS) 712
Hughlir Imambari 517 Indian Museum 567
Hugli 117, 123, 874–9 Indian Muslims 290
human antiquity 559, 560 Indian National Congress 528, 794
in subcontinent 576 Indian People’s Theatrical Association
humankind, history of 3 (IPTA) 512
human-tiger conflict 629, 643 Indian reformers 709
Royal Botanical Garden 630 Indigo Commission 783
Sundarbans 629, 631, 632 indigo industry 28–30
brief history of 635–7 indigo plantation 673
colonial period 643–9 Indigo rebellion 853–6
postcolonial era 649–54 Indo-Muslim rule 234
Royal Bengal tiger 638, 640–3 Indriya-samyama and Satakathana 546
tiger and raj 637–40 infant mortality 608, 831
wildlife 632–5 in-migration 593, 615, 617
 Index 945
inter-district variation of demographic Kabiwallahs 487
indicators 589, 591 Kalanka 512
interlopers 425 Kalighat paintings, of babus 447
interrognum 484 Kalighat pat 199
intimacies 441–3 Kalikata Kamalalay 199, 435
invention 356, 357, 361, 386, 545 Kaliyuga 250, 252, 807
iron-smelting industry 31–3 Kallol, Kali Kalam 500
Islam 277 Kalpataru Ayurvedic Works 704
Islam, Kazi Nazrul 499, 549 Kamalakanta 533
Islam, Sirajul 70 kamini 250
Istimrari/mukarrari tenures 61 kanchan 250
Kankabati 517
Jack, J.C. 21 Kanto Babu 844, 845
jagirdars 336 kanyadaan 829
jalpai 99 karfa 85
Jalpaiguri 322, 328–32, 585, 592–2, 610, Karim, Fazlul 287
612, 617, 747 Karra-Mounda 571
James Long 437, 783, 854 karta 238
jari 295, 297 kartitwa 247
Jati, Sahitya Samskriti 537 Kathamala 549
jati system 14, 232, 240 Kathamrita 251
jatra 437, 493, 503, 506, 509, 890 kavigan 426
javana 486 Kaviraj, Sudipta 236
Jean Christophe 530 Kaviwallas 194
Jennerian vaccination 719 kayacikitsa 704
Jessore xxvi, 47, 61, 78, 287, 322, 333, Kayastha 215
642, 645, 766, 849 Kayekti Kabita 502
Jhara Palak 500 Kaylakuthir Galpa 523
Jharkhand 338–9 Khadija, Hazrat 288, 291, 292
Jhor 206 Khamar land 62
jingoism 776 Khan, Akram 289
jinis/bisoy 438 Khan, Alivardi 121–3, 875
jitakshara 806 Khan, Ameer 394
Jnan-Bijnaner Madhubhanda 552 Khan, Ghulam Hussain 117, 121–3
Jnyãnataranginã Sabhã 191 Khan, Mohammad Akram 276
John Bull 136 Khan, Murshid Quli 878
Jones, William 29, 167, 359, 360, 372, Khan, Reza 366, 848, 849
374, 376, 388, 576, 902 Khansamanidiwan 118, 121
jotedars 73, 95 Khan, Saribid 487
Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Kheriyas, Hill 574
410 khudkasht/kadimi raiyats 60, 61
Journals and Proceedings of the Asiatic Khy-ale-juk 573
Society of Bengal from the 1860s 559 kirtan 230, 231, 281, 857
Junglemahal 334–8 knowledge literature 552
Justice Hyde 372 Kobi-gan 865
jute processing industry 31–3 kothees 876, 877
Krepar Shastrer Orth, Bhed 488
Kabir, Humayun 529 Krishnacharitra 223, 226–9, 231, 250
946 Index
Krishna, epic 227 diction in prose 539–42
Krishnakanter Uil 509, 518 distinguish 491
Kshatriyadharma 232 diversified forms and genres 548–52
kudeemeeryot 60 genres from 491–3
kula 118, 126 genres of prose 530–8
Kularnava Tantra 119 print and ‘primers’ 544–6
Kulinakulasarvaswa 505 LMS. See Licentiate of Medicine (LMS)
Kulinism 219 Local Self-Government Act 724
Kulsum 297 Lochan, Ram 118
Kulsumer Mejbmii 295 Lok Rahasya 235, 426
Kusamskara 152 London School of Medicine for Women
kusida 871 708, 710
Long, James (Reverend) 437, 783, 854
Lady Chelmsford Fund 719 Lor Chandrani O Sati Moyna 487
Lady Dufferin Women’s Hospital Lord William Cavendish Bentinck
814 139
Lady Reading Fund 719
Laghuguru 521 Macaulay, T.B. 152, 198, 399, 428, 742,
Lahiri, Brahman Ramtanu 218 745, 810
Lahore conference 290 madhyabitta 423
landed proprietorship, in colonial Bengal madhyashreni/madhyabitta 423
49 madhyasvatva 84
land, entrepreneurs leased 99 madhyaswatwa shreni 424
landlords 74–8 Madras Medical College 709
land prices in Bengal 88 magazines 547–8
land purchases, market prices 87, 88 Magna Charta 83
land revenue-collection 50, 53 Ma Guptamoni 18
Land-Revenue Sales Acts 60, 61 Mahabharata 486
land-revenue sales regulation 58 Mahabharata 227, 229, 491, 532
language mahajuns 872, 873
of literature 483, 494–5 Mahanirvana Tantra 119, 809
of poetry 495, 502–3 Mahaprasthaner Pathe 538
rationalization of 433–8 Maharaja Krishnachandra Rayasya
Sanskrit 433 Charitram 539
last controversy 95 Maharaja Nandakumar 846
lathials 322 Maharashtra Puran 487
La vie de Jesus 278 Mahasthabir Jatak 521
Lebedef, Gerasim Stepanovitch 503 Maitra, Jyotirindra 501
legal homicides 703 Maitreya, Akshay Kumar xiii, xxii, 536,
Letters of Junius 73 791
Letters on Hinduism 226 Majumdar, Harinath 740, 749
lexicographer 433 Majumdar, Hridaynath 321
Licentiate of Medicine (LMS) 699 Malabari, Behramji 767, 829
linguistic heritage 17 Malabari, Behramji M. 219
literature malaria 719, 725
change of style 539–42 Maldah 98, 743
children 544 Mallik, Kumudranjan 499
content of 488–9 Manasamangal 494
 Index 947
Manbhum 335–7, 339, 342, 568, 571, Midnapore 334–8
572, 574 midwifery training, institutionalization
man-eating tiger 642 of 717
mangal kavya 484, 489 mishravritta 492
Manjari, Rati 436 Missionary Register 134
manushatya 233 Mitaksara 124, 126, 130, 131, 362–4, 368,
Manusmrti 360, 361, 373–6 375
Marriage Reform Act or Sarada Act of Mitra, Bimal 528
1929 718 Mitra, Dinabandhu 103
martial races 14 Mitra, Gajendra Kumar 528
Marwaris 680, 681, 684 Mitra, Narendranath 528
gaddis 668 Mitra, Rajendra Lal 532
Marxists 528 Mittra, Kishori Chand 345
Marxist theatre/film 206 Mittra, Peary Chand 200
Masik Mohammadi 284 modality, change of
Masik Patrika 200, 491 performance to print 490–1
mass media 843 Model Bhagini 517
maternal mortality 590 modern industrial system 429
matribhasabirodhee 427 modernity 215
matrimonial life 426 middle class 419
mauluds 272, 274 mofussil 882
Mayakanan 506 mohapaduk 427
Mayor’s Court 386, 387, 390–3 Mohapurush Muhammader Jiban
McCarthy, Justin 313 Charit 280
Mebar Patan 509 Mondal, Panchanan 364, 365
Medical College of Madras 712 Monghyr 22, 27
medicine/public health, in Bengal monster processions 831
chief diseases/public health moral purdah 285
administration 719–26 mortality trends 608–13
colonial medicine 698 mortgage of land 88
Indian medical systems 702–7 Mrigaya, Kal 509
medical institutions, origin/growth Mrityukshudha 529
of 698–702 mufassal 452
reflections 726–7 Mughal Emperor 273
socioeconomic, cultural, and political Muhammad 278
transformations 697 muhuries 409
women 707–19 mukarari 72
Meer, Titu 849–52 Mukherjee, Ashutosh 400, 410
Meghnadbadh Kavya 496, 498 Mukherjee, Harish 853–4, 856
mental asylums 702 Mukhopadhayay, Radhakamal 430
Messianic 853 Mukhopadhyaya, Jadunath 717
Metcalf, B.D. 272 Mukhopadhyay, Balaichand 526
Metcalf, Charles 745 Mukhopadhyay, Bhudeb xiii, 173, 224,
Metropolitan Institution 171, 176 243, 513, 532, 765, 790
middle class 423 Mukhopadhyay, Bibhuti Bhusan 527
Bengali affair 423 Mukhopadhyay, Harimohan 498
in nineteenth century 419 Mukhopadhyay, Prabhat Kumar 520
political turn 451–5 Muller, F. Max 226
948 Index
Muller, Max 234 new readers 491
multi-structural economy 454 nibandhas 362, 363, 375
multi-tiered tenurial system 59 nijjot land 62
Mun 569 nikristo/chhotolok/eetorlok category 423,
Murshidabad xxviii, 27, 76, 77, 319, 358, 424, 429
494, 618, 702, 743, 844 Nilanguriya 527
Muslim community Nil Darpan 506, 508
reawakening 283 Nildarpan 200
reformers 282–3 nirakar 244
women’s education 283 Niranjaner Rushma 486
Muslim Personal Law 291 nirguna God 240, 244, 247
Muslim rulers 506 nirindriya 379
Muslim Sahitya Samiti in Dacca 529 nishkam 250
Muzaffarpur 99, 339, 795, 798 nishkam karma 233, 234, 241
Mymensingh 327 Nitishastra 441
Mysterious intercourse 190 non-Aryan immigrants 570
myths 571–4 Non-Cooperation Movement 705
non-European merchant communities
Nabababubilas 199 875
Nababibibilas 199 non-Western model 3
Nabanatak 505 North Bengal/terai region and the hills
Nabanna 512 332–3
Nadia/Nadiya 76, 84, 91, 99, 333–4, 364, novelly mithya 516
494, 593, 605, 611, 612, 618 nur-i-Muhammadi 293, 294, 299
Nadibakshe 530 Nyayaratna, Ramgati 435
najib 333
nakshas 531, 539 obstetric complications 593–4
Nandi, Jyotirindra 528 occupation 584, 604, 606, 607
Nandi, Moti 551 Oitihasik Upanyas 513
narrative of dynasties 2 O’Malley, L.S.S. 21, 27, 35
narratives Opium Crossing 685
poetry 495–502 Oriental Heraldv 437
nasihatnamas 274 Oriental Seminary 162
National Castes 7 Orissa, revenues settlement plan 72
National Conference 452 Oudh xvi
national history xviii–xxi out-migration 615
Nationalism 518
nationality 6 Pabna 27, 84, 322, 327, 332
National Theatre 506 Padatik 501
natiyya 278n28 Padma Nadir Majhi 526
Nawab 358, 713, 791 Padmini Upakhyan 496
nawabi administration 49 Padumavat 487
Nawab of Awadh 314 Pakhi sab kare rab, rati pohailo 497
Neel-darpan 453, 817 Palashir Yuddha 483
Nehru, Jawaharlal xx palki 441
Nelson, J.H. 368 pancamakara 119
Neo-Buddhist Movement 17 Panchatantra 549
Neolithic settlement 574 Pandab Gaurab 508
 Index 949
Pandey, Mangal 310, 312, 313 landed proprietorship 53
panic, of rumours 333 proprietary rights 46
pan-Indian nationalism 566, 592, 841 Perry, Erskine 392
Panjam law 56 Phoenix 336
Pank 523 phul-babu 448
Panthera tigris 651 Phulmoni O Karunar Bibaran 808
paradigm shift 484 plague 719
Paramahamsa, Ramakrishna 171, 172, Plague Commission Report (1904) 722
213, 224, 235, 242, 244–53, 256–9, pnachali 437
523, 806 Poet after poet 485
Parbani 548 Polygamy/Bahuvivaha 130, 131, 153, 168,
Parbatbasini 519 175, 280, 283, 289–91, 301, 504, 505,
24 Parganas xvii, 34, 71, 585, 587, 588, 532, 765, 766, 818
592, 593, 611, 612, 615, 635, 743 poor but bhadra 424
Paribarik Probondho 220, 237, 238 popular culture
parivrajaka 254 contested terrain of 842–3
parobhasa parodorshi 427 folk culture, in colonial Bengal 856–8
Partition of Bengal xxxii, 509, 794, 797 peasant rebels in Bengali 849–52
Partition of Bengal xxviii, xxxii, 272, rural Bengal, historical background
278, 383, 508, 509, 554, 590, 762, 843–5
792–8 songs 853–6
Pataldangar Panchali 523 population age-sex structure 593–5,
Pathe Prabase 527 618
Pather Panchali 525 population density 585, 586, 590–3, 612,
Patna 26, 28, 117, 339, 702, 710, 713, 613, 617, 618
874, 875, 877, 878 population growth 92, 98, 99, 583–90,
patni 58 592, 593, 598, 613, 617
Patni Regulation 59 population sex-ratio 584
patni taluks regulation 58–9 Port Canning Company 645
Patrika: Iswarer Mahima 439 pottah 47
pattas 47, 57 Prabhabati Sambhashan 532
payghambar 487 Prabhakar 186
Peer Kabya 857 Prabhat Chinta, Nibhrita Chinta 534
Permanent Settlement 44, 424, 433 pradviveka 365
Court policy 52 Prajabandhu 743, 752–4, 778
fixed for ever 70 prakritik 240
historical background 102–4 Prakriti Poruyar Daptar 552
Islam, Sirajul 71 Praphulla 508
marketplaces 48 Prehistoric Times 560, 564
mini 59 Prem Nei 275
property rights 93 Presidency 723
raiyat’s customary right 46 Press Law 344
right of proprietorship 46 privilege trade 669
in rural Bengal 45 Privy Council 140, 393, 394, 411, 818
self-regulating market mechanism 53 priyabadee 424
zamindar 45–6 (See also zamindars) Proceedings of the Asiatic Society 566
effacing 46 production centres 494
fishery 48 professional occupations 813
950 Index
property 89, 93, 94, 98, 100, 341, 359, Rai, Lala Lajpat 221
360, 362, 370–2, 374, 376, 377 raiyati rights 58
property rights, in land 93 Rajmohan’s Wife 513
property tax 49 Rajput Jiban Sandhya 515
Prophet 290 Rajshahi 26, 322, 327–32, 723, 807
Prophet-centred piety 273 rakshitas 514
Prophetic mirror Ramabhishek 506
Bengali folk literature 292–9 Ramakrishna 213
changing image 299–300 Ramakrishna Kathamrita 244
image of women 282–92 Ramakrishna Paramahamsa 224
Prophetic Way (Tariqa-i-Muhammadiya) Ramayana 485, 491, 494
274 Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Banga Samaj
Prophet-oriented folk songs 272 204, 534
Prophet-oriented literature 273 Ranade, Mahadev Govind 221
protest 101–2 Ranger, Terence 356
proximate determinants of fertility 597 Rangpur 76, 77, 99, 131, 141, 327–32,
public health. See also medicine/public 344, 743, 747, 856
health, in Bengal Rani Bishnukmari 118
reports 584, 612 rarha xv
services 724 Rathyatra 319, 334
Public Health Committees 724 Ratibilas 436
public revenue, future security of 80 Ratrir Tapasya 529
publishers 552 Ray, Annada Sankar 526
pucchagrahita 485 Ray, Dwijendra Lal 498
pundits 16, 364–6, 372, 373, 388, 773 Ray, Gangadhara 703
punthis 272, 291 Ray, Hemendra Kumar 550
Puranas 484 Ray, Indrajit 21, 25
Purdah Banam Prabanchana 286 Ray, Jagmohan 118, 125
Purnea/Purniah 22, 329, 330, 339 Ray, Rajat Kanta 671
Purulia 342 Ray, Ramkanta 117, 118, 125
purwanas 874 receivers, reading public 493
Pushpanjali 243 records, archival 334
Putul Nacher Itikatha 526 refining influence 711
pyne 100 reform 213, 215, 217–18
regionalism xvi
qiyas 275 history xviii–xxi
Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 383 regionalizations, types of xvi
Quit India Movement in 1942 104 religions 226
Quran 275, 284, 290, 291 in danger 220
translation from Arabic 534 synthetic fusion of 249
Quran of Allah 284 religious thought 213
remarriage 824
race 6 Remarriage of Hindu Widows Act (Act
racial classification 7 XV) 152
sentiment 16 Rent Act of 1859 84
racism 19, 170 Rent Bill 452
Radha-Krishna tradition 235 Republic of Florence 444
rahmat 298 respiratory infections 611, 612, 619
 Index 951
revival 213 Sahachar 286, 749, 750, 754, 761, 778
revivalist 222 sahamarana 818
Revolt of 1857 341 Saheb Bibi Golam 528
rhyming 492 Sahityer Swasthyaraksha 522
Richardson, D.L. 504 Said, Edward 356
ridiculing the Hindu religion 196 Sajahan 509
Rights of Man 197 sakar 244
Ripon, Lord 396, 752, 767, 778, 779 Sakta 248, 489
risk management 683 salami system 58, 86
Robinson, John 760, 776 sale laws
Rogues’ River 637 amendment 59–60
Romanthan 521 land 50
Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) zamindar 50
562 salt industry 33–4n56
Royal Anthropological Society of Great Samacar Kaumudi 140
Britain and Ireland 559 Samachar Chandrika 436
Royal Bengal tiger 631 Samachar Chandrika 165, 436, 738, 759,
Royal Botanical Garden, Calcutta 630 762, 763, 765, 778, 780, 783, 784
Royal Company of Denmark 874 Samachar Darpan 160
Roy, Bharat Chandra 117, 484, 486, 492, Samachar Sudhabarshan 321, 344
496, 498, 514 samadhi 244, 247
Roy, Kamini 548 samaj 343
Roy, Manmatha 511 Samajik Probondho 240
Roy, Raja Rammohun 216 Samajsiksha 279
Roy, Rammohan 102, 299, 531, 739, 745, samanyadharma 232
762 Sambad Bhaswar 345
Roy, Rammohun xxviii, xxx, 117–46, Sambad Kaumudi 738, 744
140, 151, 157, 189, 194, 216, 224, Sambad Prabhakar 314, 320, 335, 336,
241, 375, 433, 434, 456, 805, 817, 338, 345, 496
821 Sambad Ratnakar 185
Rukminiharan 505 samskars 238
rule of coercion 420 Samya 225
rule of reason 420 sanatan 256
ruling powers 2, 170, 774 Sandesh 552
rural folk culture 843, 863 Sandhya 794–6, 799, 800
Rural Public Health Committee 724 Sangbad Prabhakar 739, 742, 746, 759,
rural-urban growth differentials 588, 589 766, 768, 769, 771, 772, 774, 775,
778, 782–4
Sabuj Patra 526 Sangskara 145
Sadbhabshatak 497 Sanitary Commissioner and the Inspector
Saddharma Pundarika 298 General of Civil Hospitals 722
sadhaka 244–53 Sanjibani 740, 743, 766, 773, 775, 785–7,
sadhaka 120, 213, 244–53 795, 796
Sadhana 120, 241, 242, 773, 789 Sankaracharya 120, 133, 257
Sadharan Brahmo Samaj 718 sannyasi 117, 118, 252, 256
sadhu bhasha 435, 495, 502, 541 Sanskrit 441
saguna God 240, 244, 247 Sanskrit-Brahmi pattern 542
sahaba 284 Santal Parganas 338, 339, 342, 567, 572
952 Index
santan bhava 248 Shahabad 26, 28, 819
Santhal 336, 338, 853 Shah, Wajed Ali 314
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind 3 shakh 447
Saran 95, 96, 99, 339 Shakuntala 505
Saraswati, Swami Dayananda 226 Shambhu Nath Pandit Hospital 701
Sarkar, Sushobhan 206 Shanibarer Chithi 522
sastra 175, 359, 705 shariati 299
Sastri, Sibnath 221 Sharmistha 505
satanic society 286 Sharodotsab 493
satbangshajata 424 Shashibabur Samsar 527
satta/fatka 683, 685 Shastric Modernity 155–8, 165, 168, 169
Satti Tarar Timir 500 Shastri, Shibnath 426
satyadharma 232 Shesher Kabita 518
savage races 564 Shikha group of Dacca 537
SCB. See standard colloquial Bengali shiksha 447
(SCB) ship-building industry 33–6n62
Scheduled Areas 9 shiver, in Calcutta 314–16
Scheduled Castes 8–10 Shorea robusta 630
Scheduled Tribes 9, 10 Shraddha 145
scholar-administrators 567 shresthi 870
scientific revolution 3, 560 Shrikrishnakirtan 490
scientific temper 438–41 shruti 216
Sectarian Castes 7 Shuksha Shilper Utpatti O Arya Jatir
security to persons 61 Shilpa Chaturi 446
segmental approach 4 Shunyapuran 486
Sekal Aar Ekaal 203 Sicca 888
Sekh Andu 524 signals 484–5
Select Committee of Parliament 309 Sikdar, Radhanath 198
self-conscious 485 Sikhism 249
self-expression 447 silk industry 31–3n44
Sen, Chandi Charan 519 silk traders 876
Sen, Debendra Nath 498 silk works 673
Sen, Girish Chandra 279 Singh, Kunwar (Jagadispur) 341
Sengupta, Achintya Kumar 523 Sinha, Jatindramohan 522
Sengupta, Jatindranath 499 Sirajganj 332
Sen, Keshub Chunder 171, 172, 217, 534 Siraj-ud-dowllah 844, 846
Sen, Nabin Chandra 483 sirats 272–82
Sen, Priyaranjan 485 sir land 62
Sen, Ram Prasad 117 Sitala 719
Sen, Shyamsundar 344, 746, 766 Sitaram 515
sepoys 310–11, 314, 321, 327, 338 Siva 486
Serampore Baptist Mission 137 slaughter of tigers 647
Serampore Mission 495 small pox 719, 725
Sesher Parichay 521 smrti 237, 357, 359, 361, 362, 364, 365,
settlement. See Permanent Settlement 368
sexo-yogic practices 242 Snehalata 518, 771
sexual exploitation 817 social consciousness 425
Shabdambudhi 434 social distancing 430
 Index 953
social equality 217 brief history of 635–7
social formation 423 colonial period 643–9
social network 432 historical map 656
social precedence 16 imperial hunting map of India 643
social prestige 450 international border 657
social radicalism 253 mangrove forest 658
social scientists, professional xv postcolonial era 649–54
Society for the Acquisition of General Royal Bengal tiger 638, 640–3
Knowledge xxv, 161, 205 shikaris 642
Society for the Protection of Wild tiger and raj 637–40
Life 649 Sundarbans Project Tiger 650
socio-cultural transition 698 superstitions 571–4
sociological keys 14 Supreme Court 124, 132, 319, 360, 371,
Somprakash 743, 748–51, 761, 765–9, 372, 386, 390–5, 397, 398, 744, 847,
772, 778–80, 783, 784, 790 880
sowars, in Jalpaiguri 332 Surajuddaulah 511
Spanish Constitution of 1812 133, 138 Suraloke Banger Parichay 533
Sparks, Revd Jared 133, 137, 138 Surendra-Binodini 508
spatial variations 599 Survey and Settlement Operations 47
spelling reforms 542–4 sutikagriha 716
Spelling Reforms Committee 543 Suttee/sati 118, 125, 126, 128–33,
Spencer, Herbert 561 138–40, 149, 151, 189, 216, 282, 370,
sruti 129 376–80, 762–4, 817–21, 824
standard colloquial Bengali (SCB) 541 svarupa 296
Stanhope, P.C. 392 Swapnadrista 529
stark realism 519 Swarachita Jibancharit 531
Star Theatre 507 Syamadasa Vaidya Sastra Pitha 705
Steam Ferry Bridge Company 674 Sylhet 326, 327
Stephen, James Fitzjames 828 syncretistic cults 857
story-teller 244–53
Streer Patra 813 tadbhava 427
streeshiksha 808 Tagore, Balendranath 535
Streeshikshabidhayak 806, 808 Tagore, Debendranath 161, 162, 171,
stridhana 371–3, 377 218, 221, 235, 245, 253, 440, 827
stridharma 232 Tagore, Dwarkanath 30, 88, 159, 446,
Strishikshabidhayak 531 449, 672, 675, 744
subaltern xxx, 193, 425, 429, 523, 529, Tagore Era 522
573, 574, 804, 809, 843, 887 Tagore, Jnanendra Mohan 396, 445, 446
Sudder Dewani Adawlat 81n52 Tagore, Jyotirindranath 506, 812
suddha 705 Tagore, Maharshi Debendranath 218, 245
Suddhitattva 377 Tagore, Prasanna Coomar 504
Sufi 293 Tagore, Rabindranath xiii, xix, 3, 146,
sugarcane 35, 611 174, 237, 283, 411, 435, 441, 489,
sugar manufacture 673 493, 495, 497, 498, 500, 509, 516–18,
Sulabh Samachar 741, 749, 759, 780 520, 525, 530, 534, 536, 541, 543,
Sultan ul Akhbar 344 546, 548, 551, 773
Sumachar Durpun 737, 738, 755, 762–4 tail-holding 485
Sundarbans 629, 631, 632 talent and creativity 444
954 Index
Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de 132, 133, Tirhut 339
138 Tirthaswami, Hariharanandanath 118,
talukdars 70 145
Tamulian tribes 566 Tista Toorsa Game Association 648
Tariqai-Muhammadiya 292 total fertility rate 599, 602, 605, 618
Tariqa-i-Muhammadiyas 276, 284, 287, traders 679
292, 300 Gujaratis 876
tarja 864 industry 679
Tarkachudamani, Pandit Sasadhar 224 shop-keepers 750
Tarkapanchanan, Pandit Kashinath transformative interventions 432–3
232–3 transitional space 484–5
Tarkaratna, Ramnarayan 505 trial of Nanda Kumar 383
Tarkavacaspati, Taranath 168 tribal-and Muslim-dominated
tatsama 427 districts 618
tattva 298 Tribal Castes 7
Tattvabodhini Patrika 163, 768, 780 Tribal History of India 2
Tattvabodhini Sabha 162–4 tribal religions 8, 9
Tattwabodhini Patrika 425, 438, 439 Tribes and Castes of Bengal 7, 16
tea-brokers 687 tribes and races 559
teachers’ training 450 Trigonometrical Survey of India 198
Tekchandee 434 Tushu 857
Thackeray, Richmond 131 Tuti-namah 545
Thakur, Bhaktivinod 173 Twelve Men of Bengal in the Nineteenth
Thakurmar Jhuli 550 Century 422
Thanawi, Ashraf Ali 288 typography, reforms 542–4
The Art and Industries of Bengal 445
The Digdarshan 547 Uddin, Jasim 501
The Englishman 336 ulama 273, 274, 281
The Fundamental Unity of India xx Ummehatul Momenin 280
The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity unemployed malcontents 455
of Man 560 unemployment 24, 29
The Hermit 498 UNESCO’s World Network of
The Musalman 277 International Biosphere
The People of India 7, 577 Reserves 635
The Statesman 433 Union Bank 88, 152, 163, 449, 667, 674,
The Tribes and Castes of Bengal 16 675
The Weekly Examiner 186 the unity in diversity xix
thikadars 98 unity of races 564
Thompson, George 152 untouchability 9
thunderbolts 573 Upanisads 120, 133, 134, 162, 163, 216
ticketless traveller 427 upper caste 449
tiger-human conflict 632 urban folk culture 863–6
tiger reserve 649 urbanization xxix, xxx, 584, 613–18
tiger-skin 639 Urdu for Bengali Muslims 275
tika 362, 363, 375 utkristo 423
tikadars 721 Uttarpara Hitakari Sabha 811
Tilak, Bal Gangadhar 794
Tin Purush 502 Vaidya Sastra Pitha 705
 Index 955
Vaishnava 17, 116, 174, 223, 224, 227, 374, 391, 844, 845, 847, 848, 879–81,
228, 230, 231, 248, 252, 295, 296, 884
484, 487–9, 494, 496, 531 well-drilled guard 328
lyrics 484 Western Bengal xxxi, 78
monks 488 demographic trends 583–619
reformer 230 malaria epidemic 98
vakils 395, 397–400, 409, 410 Western medicine 698, 727
Vakils Association 397, 398 Western-style oil painting 444
vamacar 242 White volunteers 320
vamacari tantrics 119 WIA. See Women’s Indian Association
Vande Mataram 243 (WIA)
varna 14, 121, 819 widow burnings 817–23
Varnaparichaya 546 widows 125, 126, 129, 130, 152, 167, 175,
Vashnavis 807 217, 220, 363, 371, 373, 375, 377,
Vedanta Grantha 531 505, 506, 522, 524, 532, 740, 818–26
Vedavyasa 486 immolation 282
Vedic revival 226 marriage 288
venereal diseases 707 remarriage 155, 157, 166, 168, 169,
Vernacular Press Act 747–9, 752, 762 218, 272, 282, 283, 287, 288, 515,
vertical segmentation 17 516, 764, 770, 773, 822–7, 843
Vidhavavivahavada 157n26 Wollstonecraft, Mary 131, 132
Vidhyanidhi, Jogeshchandra Ray 536 women 24, 27, 29, 125, 129, 131–3, 138,
Vidyabhushan, Dwarakanath 749, 766 175, 216, 282–92, 369–80, 441–3,
Vidyabhushan, Jogendranath 533 595, 598, 707–19, 768–70
Vidyalankar, Gourmohan 806 civil marriage 827–9
Vidyalankar, Mrityunjay 132 education 207, 283, 285, 375, 767–70,
Vidyalankar, Pandit Mritunjoy 216 805–12
Vidyasagar, Ishvarchandra 165n52, 216, labouring 815–17
375, 435, 504, 531, 824 question 218–19
Vidyavagish, Ramchandra 162, 163, 433 widow remarriage 823–7
Vijnanevana 362 writings 813
village economy 74 Women’s Indian Association (WIA)
Vilvamanga 507 286
Viresalingam, Kandukuri 219
vishayi 431 Young Bengal 25, 132, 158, 170, 189,
Vivadabhangarnava 360, 376, 388 192–7, 199–208, 456, 740, 781, 807,
Vivadarnavasetu 359, 376, 388 823
Vivekananda, Swami 213, 217, 218, babu 198–208
253–60 Young Bengal Movement 132, 133
Vividharthasamgraha 532 Young Bengal Vindicated 203
votive stones 572 Yugantar 794, 795, 799, 800
vulgarity 228
Vyavahara 363, 364 Zaidpuri, Ghulam Hussain 122
zamindari-raiyat relationship 101
wages 21–6 zamindar-ryot relations 103
Wahabis 322, 328, 339, 342, 850, 852 zamindars 45–6
Walsh, E.H.C. 573 British authorities 49
Warren Hastings 87, 118, 167, 358, 359, disqualified’ proprietors 52
956 Index
dreadful legislation 79 Permanent Settlement 53
effacing 46 land tax 81
fear of raiyats 79 property rights 93
fishery 48 proprietary rights 46
immediate public sale 56 sale laws 50
landed property 50 and state 50
landed proprietorship, under zenana mission 808