[2]

Special Issue : Forgotten Bengalis (2)

contd. on third cover

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In the sphere of art, it is not necessary to drag in the distinction of

moral values as settled by social standard, prejudice or convention.
That which is blameworthy by social standards might inspire the artist
to create an object which will inspire thousands to rise beyond their limited
notions to a wider and purer aesthetic appreciation.
Nandalal Bose

 G .
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6, 4

Hindol
Year 6, No. 4

, 1421

Editorial Team :
Chittaranjan Pakrashi, Malabika Majumdar,
Maitrayee Sen, Ajanta Dutt, Nandan Dasgupta

January, 2015

E-46, Greater Kailash-I,

New Delhi-110048
ohetuk.sabha@gmail.com

ISSN 0976-0989

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92131344879891689053

Artists:
Bireswar Sen
Jyotirmoy Ray
Cover Feature:
Nandalal Bose

S
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7
8
10
12

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Tributes to Jasodhara Bagchi
Maitrayee Sen

Translation of Tagore Songs (7)

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35
40
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53
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Special Issue - Forgotten Bengalis

58

Partha Sarathi Gupta

Kazi Nazrul Islam

69

Subir Majumdar

Jagadish Chandra Bose

75

Nishtha Gautam

Torulata Dutt

79

Monojit Lahiri

Tapan Sinha - Tarun Mazumdar

81

Jyotirmoy Ray

Surendra Nath Sen

Read : http://www.scribd.com/collections/3537598/Hindol
Blog : ohetukadda.wordpress.com
Give : Make your cheques to Ohetuk Sabha
Call : 98110-24547

he sixth year of HINDOL draws to a close. All

good things, they say, must come to an end.
HINDOL, they tell me, is a good thing.
A couple of years ago, we had published a letter
showering compliments on the magazine in verse, no
less but also expressing serious reservations about
the lifespan of such magazines! Reading it we thought,
well, having a short life is not necessarily such a bad
thing. After all, as is often said, it is not about the
quantity but the quality. And we will say, though not
without some trepidation, that those who have come
in touch with HINDOL and OHETUK ADDA have
mostly enjoyed the experience.
What with this being the season of Nobel, Oscars
and other prizes, we thought of giving ourselves an
award too: the Breath of Fresh Air Prize. We believe
the bar has been raised, even if only slightly, in the tiny
world of Bengali little magazines in Delhi. HINDOL has
made an impact. Not, as the bard said, as deep as a
well or as wide as a church door; yet quite enough.
Although, as in the play, this may well have further
jeopardized the life expectancy of the protagonist!

, 1421

But HINDOL chose not to die, but rather, to go

from strength to strength. And it has, many fondly hope,
still a good way to go. As the Bengali poet wrote

- , -
, I will take leave of this world
only after singing a couple of more merry tunes and
only after removing a few more thorny barbs.
As the poet also said ,
O Hallowed Mother, O Goddess of Learning
and Wisdom, you know that Man cannot survive only
on food for the Gods! To get by in this world, one
needs more than just pious intentions. For such material
wants, HINDOL had reposed its faith in its readers.
And the faith has been more than amply rewarded.

n English playwright had said that all progress

in this world has been brought about by
unreasonable people. In this and in the earlier
issue on Forgotten Bengalis (July 2014), I found a
common trait among these daughters and sons of Bengal.
They did not want nor did adapt to their environment;
they preferred to change it; in fact, they were the change.
Not that they had no weaknesses, no failings, but that
did not hold them back. They were looked up to for
having made their own path and having walked on it.
Their dedication was determined. Their faith unflinching.
They were people of strong self-esteem and of vehement
disposition.None of them cared two hoots for what

, 1421

others thought of them, their work, their passion. Their

motto was, as yet another Bengali poet and playwright
wrote to a friend more than a century and a half ago
- If the world does not care for me, I do not care
for it. We are quits.
There are some who ask if the persons written about
in these two issues are 'truly' forgotten. Surely, they say,
these people live on in the minds of many. We feel this
line of discussion is fruitless. We live in times of falling
standards in human conditions and our silent
acquiescence thereto. Dangerous times, some would
say. So let us not quibble over what is the meaning of
the word Forgotten. Let us not play games in semantics
over who is forgotten and who is not. Let us help to
turn the spotlight on to those Bengalis whose lives,
whose deeds and whose thoughts ought to make us
proud. Let us look back at our heritage with respect.
And let us ask ourselves, have we not forgotten?

ix years ago, HINDOL reached out to the

common readers with something different. The
common readers welcomed it and put their faith
in it. They gave it a lot of affection. HINDOL can thrive
on this affection. It can, as the song goes, keep the
faith.
Nandan Dasgupta
January 2015

, 1421

, 1421

Jasodhara Bagchi
[Monojit Lahiri pays tribute]
Life is strange. You dont personally need to connect with a person to
in some fashion connect with her!
Confused? Let me attempt to explain
Jasodhara Bagchi was not someone I could either claim to know well
or even casually, but news of her passing on, somehow, saddened me. In a
world where dwarfs are constantly pretending to cast large shadows, her
reputation and persona as a passionately committed and dedicated
Academician scholar, teacher, writer, mentor and activist who attracted to
her fold, generations of devoted students mainly from Jadavpur University
is something that needs to be celebrated. I have no doubt that her moving
from sight to memory will be an irreparable loss for all who had the privilege
of associating with her
I didnt but my association and connect is a bit [undoubtedly] bizarre
but am penning it down for old times sake. When my parents were making
their maiden trip to UK in 1958 my father was in Hindustan Levers and
was going on work Jasodhara, a very young girl was on that same ship,
SS Strathiard! We brothers met her briefly when we went to see off our
parents at Ballad Pier, Mumbai. On return, my parents were full of this
young student going to Oxford how bright, intelligent and fun she was
and how they really got close like family. Years later when I once chanced
upon meeting her, she was overwhelmed when I told her whose son I was!
She was all emotional and told me how protective my parents were all
through the voyage and how much fun my father was. Sanat-da was
amazing what a personality! And Boudi was the definitive mother. It
was a brief one-off encounter before we parted our separate ways.
Today she is no more but the absence of her presence will continue
to shadow our lives.
RIP Jasodi. You will always live in our hearts

, 1421

Jasodhara Bagchi
(August 17, 1937 - January 9, 2015)
Jasodharadi's empathetic warmth, her acuity in probing the complexities
of individual lives, historical process and social dynamics could be felt
diffused at the memorial meeting in Delhi, in tributes dearly felt, precisely
articulated, and always relating personal experience to that of peers,
movements, institutions.
Her career with Jadavpur University's English Department (1964-1997)
spanned its formative years to its recognition as a premier English studies
centre through a UGC programme of which she was the first coordinator. A
beloved teacher of medieval and Victorian literature, she is remembered for
convening study groups and encouraging researchers, and was most
generous in her praise of students. She published steadily on European and
Indian literature in English and Bangla, unravelling entwined histories of
production and reception. In later writings on women and Partition, a vein of
literary allusion acted to crystallize arguments, while refracting Dante and
Donne anew. And the responsiveness to other voices also shaped her
involvement in the women's movement as organizer, mentor and memoirist.
Founder member of the feminist group Sachetana, in 1988 she became
founder-director of Jadavpur's School of Women's Studies, where she was
able to bring Arts and Science faculty to the same fora, and oversaw actionresearch projects on women's socio-economic condition. She initiated a series
retrieving women's writing from obscure or private sources that rewrote our
perception of the past, and guided students in setting up a centre to
countervail the communalism of the present. The latter revived the trauma of
Partition, which had 'grazed but did not batter' her family. She led a project to
record its particular violence on women, as also their resilience during
upheaval. She also re-read Bankim and Tagore to tease out parallels,
discontinuities and points of crisis in articulations of cultural nationalism.
She demonstrated many forms of feminist practice: tracing in fiction the
exposure of patriarchal complicities, revealing recognizable lives and patterns
in statistical surveys, assembling readings to chart understudied histories,
and illuminating women's circumstances and choices through legacies claimed
or disowned. In engagements with books, music, politics and people, hers
was a voice 'vibrant, thoughtful' and 'alert' (the words of student Sajni
Mukherji, and her own on Tagore). Its strength will sustain all who knew her.
Niharika Gupta

, 1421

10

What is this deep message that reaches out to me

From beyond yonder dark clouds,
Setting the vast skies atremble with ecstasy!
Its echoes spread far and wide,
New life blossoms all around
And, -all of a sudden The earth and the skies fill with enchantment.
Who was it that played the first notes on that flute Who created the first rhythm Who sent out the call to newly-awakened life In what distant unknown past?
The dark clouds of 'Ashaar' bring back
The strains of those notes today,
And my heart begins to ache with longing
For the One who remains
Ever elusive, ever unknown.
Translation : Maitrayee Sen

, 1421

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1] Retardation of metamorphosis in tadpoles by antibiotic treatment, Science
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2] On the action of penicillin in the retardation of metamorphosis of tadpoles, Science and Culture, Vol. 21, September 1956.
3] Induced metamorphosis of tadpoles (bufo melanostictus), Science and
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, 1421

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, 1421

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, 1421

58
Partha Sarathi Gupta

Kazi Nazrul Islam

At our 18th January, 2015 Adda on Nazrul Islam's

classical-based songs an extract from an article by the
Late Parthasarathi Gupta was read out. We extract here an
edited section of the article.

Nazrul Islam was born in May 1899 in a poor Muslim home in the
village Churulia in the Asansol sub-division of Burdwan district in Bengal.
Having lost his father at the age of eight, he passed the lower primary
examination from the village maktab two years later, and taught in the
same place for a year to support himself. A restless boy, with superabundant joie de vivre, and a good singing voice, he was introduced to
local intinerant folk bands of musicians called the Leto dal, through an
uncle who belonged to it. These groups used to move from village to
village giving singing and versifying performances, often drawing on
the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and other puranic lore of the Hindus.
Nazrul, who had already been in the company of the Sufis and fakirs in
the neighbourhood, thus acquired a syncretic approach to religious
questions, an experience which enabled him, in later years, to
communicate with the people of both Hindu and Muslim communities
with perfect ease.
Leto performances were seasonal and the income from that was
dependent on the prosperity of the villagers. So this could not provide
him a steady livelihood. He was a domestic servant in the house of a

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Kazi Nazrul Islam

railway guard for a while and then worked in a bakers shop. One
Muslim police Inspector, impressed by the boys flute playing and general
intelligence, sent him to his own village in Eastern Bengal in Mymensingh
to study without having to pay tuition fees. After one year over there he
returned to his native Asansol and after some time obtained a free
studentship, a stipend of Rs. 7/- per month, and free board and lodging
at the Muslim hostel. When he wanted he could do very well in studies,
and earned a double promotion from Class VIII to Class X. While in
Class X, he left formal studies to enlist in the 49th Bengali regiment that
was created in 1917 for the war effort in West Asia. For two years
(1917 19) till the regiment was disbanded Nazrul was an army N.C.O.
rising from the ranks to be a Havildar. He had postings in Naushera
(N.W.F.P.) and Karachi, his songs made him popular in the barracks.
He learnt more Persian and Persian poetry from a Punjabi Maulvi and
was influenced by Hafiz.
His poems started appearing in a literary journal started by some
young members of the Bengali Muslim intelligentsia, among whom was
the future Communist Leader Muzaffar Ahmad, who remained a lifelong friend. One of his school friends, Sailajananda Mukhopadhyay had
started his literary career in Calcutta. With the help of these friends, he
started a career as a journalist and writer just after demobilization in
March 1920.
His poems and songs at once made him popular among readers of
both communities, the tone of rebellion fitted in with the atmosphere of
the non-cooperation and Khilafat movements, in which he himself took
part. He was gaoled for a year in January 1923 for writing an allegedly
seditious poem. Two of his earliest collection of songs (Bhangar Gan
and Visher Banshi) were banned by the government in 1924. In April
of that year he married a Hindu girl with whom he had fallen in love
while staying in Tripura district in East Bengal for two to three months
for political and journalistic work. The relatively mild opposition that this
courtship had aroused among the menfolk of his wifes family was
counterbalanced by the profound affection for him shown by her mother
and aunt.
In terms of political involvement and musical output, Nazruls life
can be divided in two phases one till 1930 when his four-year old son
Bulbul died, and the other after that. In the first phase he was intensely

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Kazi Nazrul Islam

involved in politics, first with the Non-cooperation movement, and then

with the more left wing Labour Swarajya Party of Bengal. In the second
phase a religious trend was visible, which drew on both Hindu and
Islamic traditions and such political songs that he composed were
contemplative, melancholic and more influenced by classical ragas than
the songs of the early twenties. He was widely popular as the composer
and singer of devotional hymns to the goddess Kali, and of songs about
Islam, the Muslim religious festivals and Prophet Mohammed etc. A
crippling neurological illness extinguished his creative output in 1942.
He lived on till 1976 the governments of both West Bengal and East
Pakistan (later Bangladesh) gave him a pension in these declining years.
-2Nazruls creative years spanned a complicated phase of the Bengali
speaking peoples political history. The nineteen-twenties opened with
mass movements associated with N.C.O. and Khilafat and saw the
ascendancy of C.R. Das in Bengals nationalist politics. This period had
also, unfortunately, been preceded by communal riots between Hindus
and Muslims in Calcutta in September 1918. On this occasion, the actual
pattern of conflict was between poorer sections of Calcuttas urban
populace and the rich Marwari mercantile community, although the
religious idioms and symbols were used by both sides.
Inter-community relations were not permanently embittered by this,
but it was a warning. The future was to show how far the leaders of the
political elite and their second-rung cadres would heed the warning, as
they settled down to confront the British Raj in the age of diarchy.
Among the Hindu bhadralok class there was a recrudescence of the
Hindutva sentiments of the swadeshi period, a sentiment which found
literary expression in the writings of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay.
Music could and did play the role of a morale-boosting tonic in
these difficult times. Until the nineteen thirties the wireless did not come
into vogue as a medium of disseminating songs, but in the nineteentwenties, the Gramophone Company of India had started producing
records for the mass market. Since this was a British owned monopoly
(with the trade mark HMV), it was careful about recording songs which
the government might consider seditious. In the nineteen twenties, 69
of Tagores songs were recorded. Of these the number of patriotic

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Kazi Nazrul Islam

songs must have been a very small proportion, because from another
source published by the HMV we find that between 1910 and 1938
only eight out of the fifty eight patriotic songs of Tagore were recorded.
Although Nazrul started working, on an ad hoc basis, for the Gramophone
Company from 1929, and in 1935 was appointed their exclusive
composer on a regular basis, the Company preferred to record his
love songs and devotional songs. The great political songs for which he
became famous in nineteen-twenties were not recorded then, and one
of his greatest choral song Helmsman, beware was recorded only
two months before Independence. On the other hand, indigenous
entrepreneurs in recorded music like the Hindustan Record Co. released
more patriotic songs of the swadeshi period, songs by Atul Prasad
Sen, Rabindranath Tagores Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka, Bankim
Chattopadhyays Vande Mataram. Some of these songs though not
all were saturated with the Hindu imagery of the swadeshi period,
resulting in a renewed churning of the Hindutva sentiments in a period
when Bengal politics was bedevilled by Communalism.
In the early nineteen-twenties, before the death of C.R. Das, and
even till a couple of years after that, Nazrul Islam was very much in
demand as a composer and singer for political movements of the
nationalist, peasants and industrial workers. The popularity of the songs
he composed can be guaged by the following. In February 1926 at the
second session of the All Bengal Praja (Ryots) Conference in Krishna
Nagar, Nadia, he wrote a song for industrial workers whose first stanza
reads:
Orey dhangsha pather yatridal
Dhar hathori, tol kandhey shabol
Amra hater sukhey gorechi bhai
Payer sukhey bhangbo bal
Dhar hathori, tol kandhey shabol.

It travelled by word of mouth, and three years later, during the first
general strike in Calcutta of the jute mill workers, the pickets were
singing this song, recalled one participant in the strike.
His involvement in song writing for the nationalist movement started
with the following, written for the N.C.O. and Khilafat movement. In a
period of Hindu-Muslim fraternization, the simultaneous use of words

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Kazi Nazrul Islam

like Vidhi (which in Bengali also means God) and Khuda in the first
two lines are to be noted. That humanism was the guiding principle of
his nationalism and not what different religious books stated comes out
in the last two stanzas where Gandhi is put in the same tradition as
Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna, and Rama:
Punthir Vidhan jak purey jak,
Vidhir vidhan satya hok
Khudar upar khudkari tor
Manbey ne ar sarbalok

Chinechhilen Khrista, Buddha
Krishna, Mohammad o Ram
Tai Manush jader korto ghrina
Tader bukey dilen sthan
Gandhi abar gan shey gan

In the context of Hindu-Muslim relations, this song, written by a

Muslim poet, had a special message for that strata of Bengali Muslim
population which had moved away from the syncretic tradition to
embrace the Tariq - i - Muhammadi movement. The very first line, with
its disparaging reference to the laws in the holy books, and the general
affirmation of humanism bear testimony to this. Later on, Nazrul had
repeatedly to take a stand against the narrow-mindedness of the
communal ideologies of both communities.
When C. R. Das was in prison in December 1921, at the personal
request of his wife Basanti Devi, Nazrul wrote the following song whose
rapid tempo and frequent movement from low notes to high notes was
in keeping with the theme of the song that all prison doors will be
broken open, in the same way that things come crashing down when in
Hindu mythology, the Lord Shiva dances his wardance when one yuga
ends and another is about to begin. The familiarity with which this young
Muslim poet could use imageries from Hindu mythology, was
characteristic of him no Hindu poet of Bengal in this period was
equally at home in Islamic tradition. Hindu political detenus remained
immersed in their Hindu nationalism perhaps they sang the above
mentioned song with great gusto because it had a Hindu mythological
allusion. Their hostile reaction to C.R. Das statesmanlike political gesture
of the Bengal Pact brought out the narrowness of their social and political

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Kazi Nazrul Islam

horizon. Nazrul sensed that, and in a comic song portrayed the fragility
of elite-level political pacts as solutions of the communal problem.
The sense of the first few stanzas is given below, which is followed by
the profoundly tragic statement in the last stanza.
The shikha (of the Hindu pandit) is tied firmly to the beard of the
Maulvi. Is the knot firm enough? Never mind. As one pulls forward, the
other pulls behind. The pulling both ways would tie the knot.
Sa-rara-rar shahrasha uthilo adurey horir horra,
Shambhu chhutilo bamboo tuliya, chhoku mian nilo chhorra

Masjid paney chhutilen Mian, Mandir paney Hindu

Akashey uthilo chira-jijnasa, karun Chandra bindu.

(The last stanza translated):

Suddenly nearby noises of Holi playing,
Shambhu ran with his stick, Chhoku Mian brandished his dagger
The Mian ran to the Masjid, the Hindu ran to the temple
And like a sorrowful eternal question mark,
The crescent moon rose in the sky

The answer to this question, in Nazrul Islams mind, lay in the cross
communal solidarity of workers and peasants. The Labour Swaraj Party
brought out a peasants and workers magazine called Langol (The
Plough). In December 1925 he wrote a sequence of poems called
Samyavadi, on themes like equality, God, Man, Sin, Women, Thieves
and Robbers, the Prostitute, Rajah and Praja, Samya, Coolie-Mazdoor.
All of them attacked the conventional notions of right and wrong in a
society with class differences and private property. In the same spirit
he wrote the opening songs for the labour conference the following
February, which we have already referred to. He also wrote, for a
peasants conference just afterwards, an opening song where he used
imagery which would be understood by peasants of both communities.
In one stanza he referred to Ram and Sita (the latter being symbolic of
the plough, which yields harvest of corn, which Ravana, the imperialist
predator, is snatching away). In the very next stanza, he wrote:
O brothers, we are martyrs in the Mecca of the fields,
We sacrifice our lives and Satan robs the crop born of that blood

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Kazi Nazrul Islam

In the original Bengali he used the phrase Korbani dei jann to

mean sacrifice our lives a Persianized style of Bengali, which he
knew would be understood by the Muslim peasant audience.
Such messages about the need for a united stand against imperialism
on the issue of economic exploitation take time to percolate down to the
consciousness of the masses. Hardly had this peasants conference
ended, when from April onwards, the political scene in Calcutta and the
lower Hooghly basin was clouded by bitter communal riots and a backlash
of Hindu Bhadralok reaction.
The Bengal Provincial Conference (i.e. the annual meeting of the
Bengal Provincial Congress Committee) was scheduled to take place
in Krishnanagar at the end of May 1926, and as usual, especially because
he was locally available, Nazrul Islam was asked to compose and sing
the opening song. Thus came about helmsman, beware (Kandari,
hoshiar). Of its six stanzas of four lines each, preceded by a two line
opening stanza to be sung in chorus, some are quoted with the translation
by Basudha Chakrabarti
Durgama giri, Kantar maru, dustara parabar
Langhitey hobey ratri nishithey, yatrira hoshiar
Asahay jati dubichhey moria, janeyana santaran
Kandari, aji dekhibo tomar matri mukti pan
Hindu na ora Muslim? Oi jiggashey kon jan
Kandari, balo dubichhey manush, santan mor mar
..
Fansheer monchey geye galo jara jeebaner jayagan
Ashi alakhye daraeychhe tara dibey kon balidan
Aji pariksha jatir othoba jaterey koribe tran
Dulitechhey tori, Phulitechhey jal, Kandari Hoshiar.
(Translation)
Pilgrims, beware! You have to cross at dead of night,
Mountains hard to climb, dense wilderness
And boundless, difficult seas!
....
The helpless nation is about to drown, knowing not to swim
Captain! Now is the hour of test for your vow to free the Mother
Who is he that asks, What are they, Hindu or Muslim
Captain, say its man who drowns my Mothers offspring

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Kazi Nazrul Islam

Those who on the gallows floor sang the song of triumph of life
Are here unseen and stand by
What sacrifice will you make unto them?
The test today is, whom shall you deliver
The Nation, or a Community?
The boat lurches, the ocean swells
Helmsman, beware!

The song remains a favourite in the repertoire of Bengali patriotic

songs. However it fell on the deaf ears of the ex-revolutionaries who
had come to the conference determined to annul the Bengal Pact.
They made it impossible for the President, Birendra Nath Shashmal,
who was uneasy about the cult of physical exercise and violence
practiced by these people, to conduct the meeting. The meeting took
the fatal decision under the effete chairmanship of J.M. Sen Gupta.
Bengal politics now started getting polarized more sharply along
communal lines a polarization which was noticed throughout the next
two decades, culminating in the partitions of the state in August 1947.
In August 1976, the renowned Bengali novelist Sarat Chandra
Chatterji wrote apropos of the communal problem, Hindusthan is the
country of the Hindus, and so the responsibility of liberating it from
bondage is for Hindus alone. The Muslims have turned their faces
towards Turkey and Arab their minds are not focused on this country
.. there is no need to worry about the number of Muslims in the
population. In this world numbers do not indicate the ultimate truth.
There is a greater truth which dismiss any calculation based on a head
count. At the same time as this fifty-year old popular writer wrote this
offensive, anti-democratic piece, twenty-seven year old Nazrul Islam
published a song in the left wing newspaper Ganavani, whose words
and tune blended beautifully with each other, and was deeply moving. It
runs as follows:
We are two flowers on the same stalk Hindus and Muslims
The Muslim is the apple of her eyes, the Hindu is her soul.
The same sun and moon swing in the lap of the same mother-sky
The same blood flows beneath the heart,
The same is the bond of affection for both:

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Kazi Nazrul Islam

We are two flowers on the same stalk Hindus and Muslims

We breathe the air, drink the water of the same country.
The same flowers and fruits blossom in the heart of the same mother
We get final rest in the soil of the same country
some of us in graves, others in the burning ghat.
We call the mother in the same language, we sing to the same tune:
We are two flowers in the same stalk Hindus and Muslim.
In the darkness of night
We fail to recognize each other and strike at each other,
When it is morning again,
We shall know each other as brothers,
Then we shall embrace each others necks and shed tears,
We shall seek pardon of each other,
And then this our Hindustan will smile out of pride:
We are two flowers on the same stalk Hindus and Muslims

Sarat Chandra Chatterjis remarks about the extra-Indian

consciousness of the Muslim community was a reference to the effects
of the Fairazi movement on Bengali Muslim consciousness, which we
have referred to already. Nazrul Islams song, quoted above affirmed
that the Bengali Muslims were rooted in the soil of Bengal. To wean the
student community away from a futile nostalgia for the days of Mughal
glory, in one of his songs, composed specially as the opening song at the
Muslim literary conference in March 1928, he inserted certain stanzas,
which are quoted below. This song, meant to be a marching song for
youth, has been widely popular.
March on, march!
The drum resounds in the sky above,
The earth below is all agog,
You the corps of youth of the scarlet dawn
March on, March on!
We shall knock at the door of dawn
And usher in the bright red morning.
We shall put an end to the murky night
And to obstacles as big as the mountains.
We shall sing the song of the ever new
And shall liven up the cremation ground of thousands.
We shall impart new life and fresh strength in the arms.

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Kazi Nazrul Islam

Above, thunder rolls out the command:

You soldiers pledged to martyrdom
Muster, march out in all directions
And open up the chamber of sleep!
Long ago you lost the royal status,
Yet the wanderer still longs for the past
And sings and sheds tears.
Let the fabulous throne of by-gone empire
Be by-gone.
Awake, you insensible ones!
Note how countries like Persia, Rome,
Greece, Russia and so many of them went under.
Yet they have all awakened again:
You weaklings, awake, arise!
We shall build up a new Taj Mahal out of dust and soil!
March on, march on, march on!

The Muslim literary conference was part of a progressive intellectual

movement among a section of the Muslim intelligentsia in Dhaka
University, called Buddhir Mukti (emancipation of the intellect). It is
in their journal Shikha that this song was first published. Unfortunately,
the early years of the nineteen thirties during which the slow-moving
machinery of the imperial administration eventually produced a
constitution (the Act of 1935) for Provincial autonomy, also saw
communal riots in Dhaka and its neighbouring districts, and again in
Calcutta. Against this background the secular approach of the Buddhir
Mukti group did not make much headway. Instead the political space
came to be dominated by the Krishak-Praja Party of A.K.Fazlul Haq,
which became the dominant party in the first two Cabinets under
provincial autonomy after 1937. The old songs of Nazrul about the
peasantry were sung in the rallies of this party, and so were songs on
purely Islamic themes. The old taboo against music imposed by the
mullahs had been broken, but music had emerged for the Muslim masses
not in its old syncretic role, but in the role of a medium emphasizing the
communitys separate identity. The coming of provincial autonomy with
separate electorates and a statutory majority for Muslims in the provincial
legislature created a favourable background for the simultaneous
affirmation of Bengali patriotism and the glorification of Bengals last

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Kazi Nazrul Islam

independent Nawab, Siraj-ud-daullah.

Attempts to bridge the communal divide through music occurred as
crisis-management exercises. In the context of riots in Dhaka in 1941,
the government enlisted the services of Abbas-ud-din, whom it had
appointed as recording expert to the government of Bengal, in the
department of Information. Abbas-ud-din sang a duet on communal
amity with Mrinal Kanti Ghosh which was recorded, with a statement
by Nazrul Islam on the other side of the disc. However, except for a
song written for a play on the Bengal famine of 1943 (Navanna, by
Bijon Bhattacharya) by the I.P.T.A., we do not see any evidence of
songs which remind the people, in the spirit of Nazruls Helmsman,
beware
Who is it who asks, What are they, Hindu or Muslim?
Captain, say it is man who drowns my mothers offspring.

And they all drowned in the bloody twelve months from August
1946 to August 1947.

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69
Subir Majumdar
Calcutta

Acharya Jagadish Chandra

Bose Genius par excellence

Sir J.C. Bose, or Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose as he is better

known, was a man of extraordinary talent. Incidentally, he was a cousin
of Ms. Supriya Roys (our friend and neighbour in New Alipore)
grandfather. I have learnt from Supriya that her family house in Giridih,
Shantinivas, has been preserved as Sir J C Bose Memorial. I am also
told that one of the bedrooms in the sprawling house, where Bose - a
celebrity and a pride of the family - had breathed his last, was never
used again as a mark of respect to him.
As we all know, Jagadish Chandra Bose was a multi-faceted genius.
He was a frontiersman in Radio and Microwave Optics and is considered
one of the fathers of Radio Science by the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) headquartered in New York. He was the
first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio signals. His
contribution to microwave devices is acknowledged by the famous
mathematical physicist Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) and Lord
Rayleigh (John Strutt) of Cambridge. Bose obtained a Tripos in Natural
Sciences (Physics, Chemistry and Botany). He also obtained a degree
from London University before he returned to India in 1885.
In 1895 Sir J C gave his first public demonstration of electromagnetic
waves, using them to ring a remote bell and to explode some gunpowder.
Popov in Russia was doing similar experiments, but had written in
December 1895 that he was still entertaining the hope of remote signalling
with radio waves. The first successful wireless signalling experiment
by Marconi on Salisbury Plain in England was not done until May 1897.

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Jagadish Chandra Bose

The nineties of the nineteenth century must have been a golden

decade for Bengal when Swami Vivekanandas electric personality and
booming voice took the Chicago Parliament of Religions by storm. The
greeting Sisters and Brothers of America! proved no less passionate
than Friends, Romans and Countrymen! of Shakespearean fame. But
let me not stray from the subject on hand.
In 1897, Sir J C described to the Royal Institution in London his
research carried out in Kolkata on millimetre wavelengths. He used
waveguides, horn antennas, dielectric lenses, various polarizers and even
semiconductors at frequencies as high as 60 GHz; much of his original
equipment is still in existence at the Bose Institute in Kolkata.
In 1954, Pearson and Brattain accorded recognition to Sir J C for
the use of a semi-conducting crystal as a detector of radio waves. Sir
Neville Mott, who was Nobel Laureate in 1977 for his contributions to
solid-state electronics, remarked, J.C. Bose was at least 60 years ahead
of his time and In fact, he had anticipated the existence of P-type and
N-type semiconductors.
The coherer / auto-coherer were a primitive form of radio signal
detector used in the first radio receivers during the wireless telegraphy
era at the beginning of the twentieth century. The coherer was developed
at about the same point in time independently by Marconi and Sir J C,
though the engineering differed.
Varun Agarwal, in his book Jagadish Chandra Bose provides insight
into the fact that the receiving device for which the credit has gone to
Marconi, was indeed Boses discovery. He claims that Marconi
acknowledged the contribution of Sir J C. The book by Dunlap, which
Marconi himself edited personally, devotes one and a half pages to a
tribute to Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose for providing crucial support to
Marconi at a critical juncture when Marconi needed it most. Marconi
shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun in
recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless
telegraphy. Varun Agarwal also claims, Interestingly, J. C. Bose invented
a more accurate coherer, called the Spiral Spring Receiver.
By about the end of the 19th century, Sir J Cs focus had already
shifted from electromagnetic waves to response phenomena in plants;
this included studies of the effects of electromagnetic radiation on plants,
a topical subject today.

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Jagadish Chandra Bose

Sir J Cs contributions to biophysics and plant physiology are well

known. At that time, mankind had not still been able to demonstrate that
plants were indeed swayed by external stimuli (for instance, today we
know that a plant grows faster and healthier on hearing music). He
used his own invention, the crescograph, to measure plant response to
various stimuli, and thereby scientifically proved parallelism between
animal and plant tissues. This invention alone deserves the highest
accolade.
J.C. Bose was the first physicist who began an examination of
inorganic matter (metals and certain rocks) in the same way as a biologist
examines a muscle or a nerve. He subjected metals to various kinds of
stimulimechanical, thermal, chemical, and electrical. He found that
all sorts of stimuli produce an excitatory change in them. Finding that a
universal reaction brought together metals, plants and animals under a
common law, he next proceeded to a study of modifications in response,
which occur under various conditions. He found that they are all (metals
and living tissues) benumbed by cold, intoxicated by alcohol, wearied
by excessive work, stupefied by anaesthetics, excited by electric currents,
stung by physical blows and killed by poisonthey all exhibit essentially
the same phenomena of fatigue and depression, together with possibilities
of recovery and of exaltation, yet also that of permanent irresponsiveness
which is associated with deaththey all are responsive or irresponsive
under the same conditions and in the same manner. The investigations
showed that, in the entire range of response phenomena (inclusive of
metals, plants and animals) there is no breach of continuity; that the
living response in all its diverse modifications is only a repetition of
responses seen in the inorganic and that the phenomena of response
are determined, not by the play of an unknowable and arbitrary vital
force, but by the working of laws that know no change, acting equally
and uniformly throughout the organic and inorganic matter. This
particular subject seems to transcend the realms of science and knock
on the doors of philosophy, a fact corroborated by Rabindranath Tagore.[
Talented as he was, Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose had the
potential to earn tonnes of money. But, despite his resounding success
in several spheres of science, Jagadish Chandra Bose was never lured
by profiteering. Instead of trying to gain commercial benefit from his
work, he made his inventions public in order to allow others to further

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Jagadish Chandra Bose

develop his research.

The strength of Sir J Cs character is revealed in his career at
Presidency College of Kolkata, which he joined in 1885 on return from
the U.K. One of the umpteen thoughtless and discriminatory British
norms those days was that the Indian teachers were paid one-third of
what the British teachers were. Bose refused his salary for three years.
In the fourth year, he was paid in full. Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray,
reputed chemist and founder of Bengal Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals,
was his companion in Presidency College. Bose continued to work for
Presidency College till 1915.
Following is a letter written by him to Rabindranath Tagore in the
context of his 1901 lecture at the Royal Society on May 17, 1901:
A short time before my lecture, a multi-millionaire proprietor of a
very famous telegraph company telegraphed me with an urgent
request to meet me. I replied that I had no time. In response he
said that he is coming to meet me in person and within a short time
he himself arrived with patent forms in hand. He made an earnest
request to me not to divulge all valuable research results in todays
lecture: There is money in it let me take out patent for you.
You do not know what money you are throwing away etc. Of
course, I will only take half share in the profit I will finance it
etc. This multi-millionaire has come to me like a beggar for making
some more profits. Friend, you would have seen the greed and
hankering after money in this country, - money, money - what a
terrible all pervasive greed! If I once get sucked into this terrible
trap, there wont be any escape! See, the research that I have
been dedicated to doing, is above commercial profits. I am getting
older - I am not getting enough time to do what I had set out to do
I refused him.

Despite their age difference, Sir J C and Tagore were close. In

November, 1937, Rabindranath wrote:
Years ago, when Jagadish Chandra, in his militant exuberance of
youthfulness, was contemptuously defying all obstacles to the
progress of his endeavour, I came into intimate contact with him,
and became infected with his vigorous hopefulness. There was
every chance of his frightening me away into a respectful distance,
making me aware of the airy nothingness of my own imaginings.
But to my relief, I found in him a dreamer, and it seemed to me,
what surely was a half-truth, that it was more his magical instinct

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Jagadish Chandra Bose

than the probing of his reason which startled out secrets of nature
before sudden flashes of his imagination.

Rabindranath Tagore saw in Bose an individual who was more

than a scientist. Tagore, who had always been an avid admirer of Sir
J Cs researches and discoveries, found in his works an essence of
Indian scientific spirit, a reflection of Indian national culture, its national
pride, heritage and philosophy. In his poem on Bose, published in Kalpana
Tagore was effusive in Boses praise:
From the Temple of Science in the West,
Far across the Indus,
Oh, my friend, you have brought
The garland of victory,
Decorated the humbled head
Of the poor Mother
Today, the Mother has sent her blessings
In words of tears,
To this unknown poet.
Amidst the great scholars
Of the West, Brother,
These words will reach only your ears

Sir J C also wrote science fiction in Bengali. In 1896, He wrote

Niruddesher Kahini, the first major work in Bangla science fiction.
Later, he added the story in the volume Abyakta as Palatak Tuphan.
He was the first science fiction writer in the Bengali language.
Bose was knighted in 1917. Soon thereafter he was elected Fellow
of the Royal Society, London both as a physicist and a biologist.
Lady Abala Bose, Jagadishs wife, was an emancipated Brahmo
activist and educationist who took up the cause of women - well over a
hundred years ago. She became the Secretary of the Brahmo Girls
School in 1910, and served in that position till 1936 with utmost efficiency,
the school going on to become one of the best in Kolkata. She studied
the state of female education in Europe and Japan, which she toured
with her husband and drew inspiration from what she observed. She set
up eleven girls schools besides setting up a committee for womens
education. In 1926, she founded schools for vocational training for women.
Sir J C was a constant source of inspiration for her.
The celebrated Satyen Bose, another genius who missed the Nobel,
was Sir J Cs student. Given the opportunity, I shall jot down on another

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Jagadish Chandra Bose

occasion the reasons why I hold him, too, in the highest regard.
Lastly, I cannot help visualising my father Late Biresh Chandra
Majumdar in Acharya Jagadish Chandra in a small way. Biresh
Majumdar was also a polymath in the sense that he was a Leather
Technologist by profession (who was posthumously honoured in the
LEXPO Silver Jubilee functions organised by Indian Leather
Technologists Association in Kolkata in 2001), a philosopher by choice
who has written a comprehensive treatise on comparative religious
perceptions the world over, an entrepreneur, an able administrator, a
writer, a champion player of Bridge and Chess and above all an
outstanding human being.

Acknowledgements:
1. Supriya Roy, New Alipore for valuable inputs
2. Wikipedia (Jagadish Chandra Bose)
3. D.T. Emerson: The Work of Jagadis Chandra Bose: 100 Years of mm-wave Research
4. Varun Aggarwal: Jagadish Chandra Bose: The Real Inventor of Marconis Wireless
Receiver
Translations from Bengali are by the author

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75

Nishtha Gautam
Delhi

Toru Dutt:
The Pioneer in Oblivion

Despite being a pioneer of western aesthetics in literature in India,

Toru Dutt remains a forgotten heroine. In the canon of Indian English
writings, her younger contemporary Sarojini Naidu has assumed a more
imposing stature compared to her. Living in colonial India, the two women
chose to write in English and made it their own language. Meenakshi
Mukherji has rightly observed that writings of Dutt and Naidu are ripe
for discussing the issues of gender, language, identity and nation. It is
unfortunate therefore that there is precious little mention of Dutts
contribution to Indian Writing in English in literary discourses.
Torulata Dutt, the youngest child of Govin Chunder Dutt, was born
in 1856 in Calcutta and spent the first twelve years of her life there. A
little after the death of his son, Govin Chunder moved his family to
Europe in 1869 and his daughters attended a formal school for the first
and last time in France. The Dutts later travelled to England where the
sisters attended lectures for women at Cambridge. They returned to
Calcutta in 1873 and immediately Toru immersed herself in mastering
the Sanskrit language within the confines of the garden house of her
childhood.
In her brief albeit brilliant career, Dutt seems to have exercised her
aesthetic choices with much deliberation and conviction. The trajectory
of Dutts literary feats indicates that her works were an outcome of her
preoccupations at the time of writing and the immediate influence of
her milieu. Soon after the Dutt familys comeback from Europe, the
Dutt sisters, Toru and Aru, devoted their time to translate the works of
French poets into English. The outcome was A Sheaf Gleaned in French

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Torulata Dutt

Fields, a collection of 165 poems, which earned an international reputation

for Toru Dutt.
Dutts private life has contributed significantly in the making of her
public image. She inhabited a conservative social space in colonial India
and the conversion of her family to Christianity further ensured a very
limited social interaction. The Dutt family may be deemed to be the
Indian counterparts of the Brontes, given the talent of the Dutt siblings,
their isolation and their untimely deaths. Young Torus photographs, in
Victorian outfits- buttoned and collared, with unmistakably non-European
dark eyes and tresses, indicate the in-between status of the writer. Her
letters to her closest English friend Mary Martin, the daughter of Revered
John Martin of Sidney Sussex College, indicate her discomfort with
such an identity. After having a tryst with freedom in Europe, Dutt saw
her return to India as regressive and failed to connect with the place
which was after all [her] patrie. Interestingly and yet quite predictably,
despite her anglophile mannerisms and tastes, she was not seen as a
worthy companion by the British residents in India. She writes to Mary
Martin, Europeans are supercilious and look down on Bengalis. The
photographs and the letters not only bestow an identity upon Dutt, they
also indicate ruptures in the same.
Dutt embarked upon her literary career armed with western
education. Her initial works bear a strong mark of diligent research in
the writings of the European masters. She translated Victor Hugo, du
Bellay, Lamartine, Baudelaire and Pierre Corneille among others before
moving to fiction writing. She became the first Indian author of novels
in French and English. Edmund Gosse notes in his introductory memoir
for her posthumously published Ancient Ballads and Legends of
Hindustan, She brought with her from Europe a store of knowledge
that would have sufficed to make an English or French girl seem learned,
but which in her case was simply miraculous.
Studying the life and works of Dutt one becomes conscious of the
co-existence of two extremes: self-constructed modernity and inherited
myths. The study of Sanskrit rekindled in Dutt the memories of the
traditional lays sung by her mother, and coming face to face with the
inherited culture she made the most out of it. Dutt transcreated the
puranic myths and imbued them with her ideas concerning emancipation
of women, caste-conflicts and marginalization.

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Torulata Dutt

Dutts translations and novels, along with her letters and photographs
give a glimpse of the former, while her puranic poems show her
engagement with the latter. Myth and modernity constantly overlap in
her later works. Her collection of Sanskrit translations Ancient Ballads
and Legends of Hindustan exists on the crossroads of myth and
modernity. In poems like Savitri and Lakshman she represented the
characters not in that haloed state handed down to her, but decided to
bestow her own reading upon them. Savitri and Sita do not appear as
damsels in distress. On the contrary, they are the initiators of action.
Savitri almost commands her husband to collect himself after his rebirth:
Arise! Be strong! Gird up thy loins!
Think of our parents, dearest friend!

Sita goes a step further and chides Lakshman for his complacence:
What makes thee loth to leave this spot?
Is there a motive thou wouldst hide?

She goes on to insult Lakhman by saying that he would rejoice at

his elder brothers death.
He perishes well let him die!
His wife henceforth shall be my own!...
And wouldst thou at his death rejoice?
I know thou wouldst

In these lines Sita does not remain epitome of gentleness and

forgiveness. Dutt makes the transformation conspicuous by inserting a
question, Was this the gentle Sita? No.
Myths also become a vehicle to carry Dutts indictment of the
contemporary Indian society, which was responsible for the plight of
women.
In those far off primeval days
Fair Indias daughters were not pent
In closed zenanas.

In these lines Dutts pain of being forced within the confines of her
houses after returning to India can also be discerned.
Dutt lent herself as a subject to be explored in her works. As
Malashri Lal has pointed out in her The Law of The Threshold (Women
Writers in Indian English), Bianca is a thinly veiled autobiography of the
author. The father-daughter relationship is particularly drawn from Dutts
own life. A close study of Dutts works reveals that she often wrote
about those real or imaginary persons, who, she believed, had a lot in

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Torulata Dutt

common with herself. Dutts first published works were two essays on
Leconte de Lisle and Henry Vivian Derozio. The interesting thing about
these is Dutts choice of the literary figures. She saw herself closely
linked to these two poets, who shared her in-between identity. The
characters in Dutts novels and poetry and the literary figures she chose
to work on draw ones attention towards the authors personal life and
experiences. Like Amrita Shergil, another woman pioneer of western
aesthetics in India, Dutt reached the indigenous subject through the
gates of western learning. Shergils Self Portrait as Tahitian can be
compared with Dutts Our Casurina Tree. Local exuberance is fused
with Keatsian sensuousness and Wordsworthian spiritual intensity in
this poem.
Dutts works and letters show that she could never be comfortable
with the cross-cultural exchange in her life. She actively disliked her
life in Calcutta and yearned to go back to England. However, her later
letters show a growing understanding of her identity. During the last
months of her life she became disillusioned with the British Imperial
government of India and made attempts to come to terms with her
patrie. This growing acceptance is the central theme of A Mon
Pere. The poem is a sustained metaphor for the poets own life. Like
the Dutt sisters found it difficult to adapt to the socio-cultural milieu of
Bengal after their return from Europe, the flowers in this sonnet find it
difficult to sustain themselves in the foreign soil.
Dutts literary works are unmistakably local. The forced isolation
restricted the author to reach beyond the immediate local context. Even
if we choose to call her puranic poems Indian, the indelible marks of
the Bengali culture can be clearly discerned. Her use of typically Bengali
words like Joystee and Dronacharjya in lieu of their Sanskritic, and
thus more widely known, counterparts indicates that Dutt receives and
responds to the puranic tales as something local.
Though dead at the tender age of twenty one, Toru Dutt left an
enviable legacy which needs to be dusted and gloriously installed in the
gallery of Indian literature. The blend of Indo-western sensibilities, the
question of identity, and linkages of religion with social interaction of
individuals are subjects that contemporary critics are still seen debating
on. Yet, Toru Dutt remains a neglected figure and rarely finds a place in
literary conversations and curricula.

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79
Monojit Lahiri
Delhi

Forgotten Bengalis
Tapan Sinha Tarun Mazumdar

We live in a time when memory and remembrance are under siege

a time when rampaging consumerism has reduced every experience
into the here & now forcing them to being hostages of immediacy an
environment that passionately encourages its constituency to know the
price of everything & the value of nothing! It is, hence, neither strange
nor unusual only sad and unfortunate that talents & personalities
that once graced our lives & gave us so much joy with memorable
cinematic tales are today consigned, abruptly & ruthlessly, to the dusty
alcoves of a forgotten past, rarely discussed or contexted.
Film makers Tapan Sinha and Tarun Mazumdar are two such tragic
heroes who must fall into the list of Forgotten Bengalis.
Why? Analysts believe that it could be because their mandate did
not focus on complex, ambiguous, intellectual or heavy-duty metaphysical
themes the god that failed; the predicament of the modern man
whoring after seductive and dangerous angels; the loss of meaning,
alienation, self-estrangement, futility, inner emptiness No. Their goal
was to tell simple stories without frills or frippery, dealing with everyday
people, living in the real world, relating to joys and sorrows, quirks,
eccentricities, aspirations, desires & failings celluloid narratives that
commemorated the human condition in a way that engaged while it
entertained, enriched while it empowered.
My personal belief is that there is another reason too: The towering
and overwhelming shadow of Ray-Sen-Ghatak! These three titans so
powerfully and totally captured the imagination of the Bhadralok

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Tapan Sinha - Tarun Mazumdar

component of the viewing constituency that these two despite their

wonderful work seemed tsunamid! Rays international aura and
artistic, subtle storytelling, Sens strident fashionably political cinema,
Ghataks raw & lacerating Partition tales their combination seemed
to leave a searing impression on the psyche of the Bengali audience in
a way that completely soft-focused all others
Looking back, it seems both very unfair and unjustified, because
both Sinha & Mazumdars ouvre did offer material that connected
gloriously with the audiences. Tapan Sinhas cinema was one of universal
appeal and offered a spectacular bandwidth that embraced both literary
sources & contemporary concerns. A science student who studied
film-making in London and started out with Ankush [in the early fifties],
a story about an elephant, his amazing range included comedy Golpo
Holo Sotti, Apon Jon, Ekhonee, Barjatri & Tonsil, Tagores Kabuliwala,
Khudito Pashan, Khoniker Atithi, Jhinder Bondi, Haate Bajare, Nirjan
Saikate, Jatugriha, Arohi, Harmonium & Sagina Mahato. Later, he did
the magnificent Ek Doctor Ki Maut, Adalat o Ekti Meye, Atanka, Safed
Haathi Tarun Mazumdar too has a body of work that is commendable
- Balika Bodhu, Shriman Prithviraj, Palatak, Bhalobasha Bhalobasha
being only some classic examples. Nobody before or since focused
with such humaneness on gram bangla as Tarun-da did, bringing that
flavour with such endearing charm to life in film after film after film.
If they created such wonderful cinematic material, how and why
have they moved from sight to memory? My belief is that it has primarily
to do with the compulsions of the times we live in which decrees jo
dikhta hai, woh bikta hai! Barring exceptions, yesterdays heroes
appear to be, for most, nothing more than great fodder for seminars and
drawing room conversation with like-minded oldies, but is seldom
deemed relevant to the new generation defining Youngistan.
In all truth, barring niche viewers, even the masters in the area of
art & culture, are unlikely to get too many likes today among the Social
Media junkies comprising Gen X! Why? Simply because we live in a
time when the past is history and the future mystery its the present
that mattersSo who are these guys you named, Tapan something and
Tarun something ? Vaguely remember having heard these names
from my father or uncle or!

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Jyotirmoy Ray
Delhi

Surendra Nath Sen:

the complete man

It was the autumn of 1958. As I walked back into Forbes House, a

student dormitory of the Carnegie Mellon University, the concierge
handed over a slip of paper to me. My hand was shaking with excitement
as I read it. In it was written in flowing letters a few words to this
effect
Dear Gopal,
I came to Philadelphia University to attend a conference. It is so close to
Pittsburgh I could not but help coming to meet you even if for a short
time before I go back to Madison. Please call me at this number tomorrow
evening.

Dr. Surendra Nath Sen, my wifes uncle, was then Visiting Professor
at Wisconsin University - Madison. I had known him from his days in
Delhi, when he was at the Vice-Chancellors Lodge, and then again in
Calcutta when I was wooing his niece and was a regular visitor to their
house in Ballygunge. In Delhi, where I had gone in 1951 after completing
my Intermediate (one of his daughters was my aunt mamima) I had
known him as the Vice Chancellor S.N. Sen while tending to a fairly
large rose garden alongside the University gardeners. And then I had
seen him in Calcutta as the historian Dr. S.N. Sen who was writing a
book on the sepoy uprising of 1857. But 57 years ago, in 1958 the
person I got to know intimately was the bird-watcher and botanist Dr.
Sen - friend of Dr. Salim Ali, closely involved with the Zoological Society
at Calcutta, member of the Society of Natural History, Bombay and of
the Ornithological Society.

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Surendra Nath Sen

We spent many an enjoyable morning and afternoon walking by the

side of the lake within the University campus. Hundreds of migratory
shore and water birds were feeding on those lakes. Many attractive
species like Mallards and Spotbills etc. were quietly floating on the lake
with occasional calls. Dr Sen started identifying the different species
and explaining to me the characteristics of each one of them, and the
kind of plants in which they like to build nests. He showed me how to
identify the birds and appreciate natural surroundings required for their
nesting. Since then I acquired from him my interest in birds and plants.
That is what I most remember him for, even today.
* * *
Born on 29th July 1890 in Mahilara, a village in District Barisal of
Bangladesh, Dr. Sen completed his basic education in his village and
home district. He was encouraged by Aswini Kumar Dutta, founder,
and by Acharya Jagadish Mukhopadhyay, Principal of Brojomohan
College of Barisal (where Dr. Sen taught for some time too) to move to
Dhaka to do his graduation and post-graduation in history, which he

ARTIST : JYOTIRMOY RAY

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Surendra Nath Sen

completed in 1915. I believe he did not have the requisite marks to meet
the cut-off of the Dhaka University and got admission on the
recommendation of Prof. Ramsbotham who saw great potential in the
young man.
While he was teaching thereafter at a Jabalpur college, Dr. Sen
was discovered by Ashutosh Mookherjee and brought to Calcutta
University. In 1922 he got his Ph.D. In 1926 he won a Premchand
Roychand scholarship, which used to be called PRS at that time, putting
him in the company of Ashutosh Mookherjee, Jadunath Sarkar and
Ramesh Chandra Majumdar. I have heard from his family members
that Dr. Sens father was not very keen to send him to Oxford as he
feared that his son may migrate, or start eating beef. Eventually Ashutosh
Mookherjee came to meet the family (such were the people of those
times) to give a personal guarantee that the familys brightest star would
return! And so he did, with a B. Litt degree and proficiency in French.
He also became fluent in Portuguese later. While in England, Dr. Sen
boarded with Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan and Shyamaprasad Mukherji,
both of whom remained his good friends.
After teaching for many years at the Calcutta University, where he
became Ashutosh Professor in 1931, Dr. Sen moved to Delhi in 1939 as
the Keeper of the Imperial Records. This post is now known as the
Director General of the National Archives. After completing two terms
of five years each, he went back to teaching, this time at the Delhi
University. In 1950 he became the first Indian and the first salaried
Vice Chancellor of the Delhi University. I am told that he could not get
along with someone in the administration, which led to his resignation in
1953, and so he returned to Calcutta. He was Sheriff of Calcutta and
Justice of Peace during this period, both titular positions. Also, in 1956
he was elected President of the Asiatic Society. This is also when he
wrote India through Chinese Eyes.
In 1955, the then Education Minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
offered him the assignment to write a book for the centenary celebrations
of the sepoy uprising. The result was his best known work Eighteen
Fifty-Seven on the strength of which he got a D.Litt. from Oxford
University.
In this book - one of the two books of his that I have access to (the
other is Delhi and its Monuments), he examined the events of the

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Surendra Nath Sen

period and came to certain conclusions about why the uprising took
place. As the Statesman had said (by the pen of Shri Mulgaonkar)
while reviewing the book Objective history is something of an
oxymoron. History cannot be totally objective. I fear I have not gone
through the whole book and cannot pretend to have understood his
exposition, particularly since I have mostly read only the concluding
chapter. As far as I have understood, he opined that the event was
something in between a military mutiny and a full blown war of
independence. The concluding chapter seems to say that
a. there was no concerted effort by the princely states; there was
no organized rebellion,
b. about half of the Indian sepoys mutinied at different times, about
a quarter deserted or were disbanded, the remaining quarter
was loyal to the last,
c. all communities were well represented among the mutineers,
d. the Madras Presidency was unaffected; in Bengal, there was
slight unrest but no popular support; in the Bombay Presidency,
there were sporadic risings,
e. it is debatable whether the uprising acquired any political
character because of the rebels of Meerut placing the king of
Delhi at their head; the nobles of Oudh did however rally their
forces in the name of their king.
While researching for this book, Dr. Sen had picked up a lot of fun
facts. My wife, a history student at that time, had told me he wanted to
later collate them into a book. For example, there was an incident where
a British army officer asked his Indian sepoys to hurl their choicest
abuses at the scores of women rushing at his unit with brooms, sticks,
axes, etc. Apparently the ploy succeeded, the women were discomfited
and dispersed, and the situation was controlled without a shot being
fired.
After completing the book, in 1957 he went to the Wisconsin
University for two years as a Visiting Professor. The D.Litt. had been
announced by Oxford University in the meanwhile and he came to
New York on his way back to India in 1959, en route to London and
Oxford. Unfortunately, here he suffered a cerebral stroke leading to
semi-paralysis. I went to New York upon hearing of this. Dr. Sen had
been admitted to a hospital and Mrs. Sen, who had come from India,

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Surendra Nath Sen

was looking after him from a rented flat. The hospital was within walking
distance of that flat and I accompanied Mrs. Sen to the hospital on foot.
Since she could not speak English she had been provided with a chit.
On it was written (perhaps by the New York Ramakrishna Mission
Maharaj who was looking after both Mrs. Sen and also Dr. Sen)
that "Please show me the road to the hospital" in case she lost her way
or Please show me my house at so and so. Dr. Sen left for England
when he was fit enough to fly. He was received by one of his students
Pratul Chandra Gupta, who was then working for his Ph.D. from Oxford.
He took care of Dr. Sen (who stayed at a hospital) and Mrs. Sen (who
stayed with Dr. Gupta) all the time they were there till they left London
for Calcutta after Dr. Sen received the D.Litt. degree.
He passed away at home on 30th October 1962 after a long
debilitating illness.
* * *
I could not find a comprehensive list of Dr. Sens professional works,
which I gather are more than two dozen in number. I have been told
that they can be found at the National Library in Calcutta where his
personal library was donated and his own works are also preserved. A
newspaper report has it that 2736 titles comprising 3620 volumes were
donated.
But Dr. Sens talents went well beyond his vocation. I am told that
one of his earliest books was on animals. After the birth of his elder son,
who was the fourth child, he wrote a book of verses introducing the
Bengali alphabet. A sample recited to me by one of his daughters:

`
There were other Bengali books for children, such as Pakhir Kotha
(About Birds) and Menir Kutum (Kittys Relatives). Again, an extract
from Menir Kutum, recited to me by his daughter from memory:

-
,

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Surendra Nath Sen

,
,
Dr. Sen wrote in Bengali on other matters as well. While in England,
he translated Fitzgeralds Omar Khayyam into Bengali but the
manuscript was misplaced. I am told he wrote Bengali plays, which
were held to be seditious and were proscribed. I believe these may still
be available in the National Library, alongwith another collection of
patriotic poems called Minoti. While in school at his village Mahilara,
he had formed a secret resistance group and in 1951 was the President
of the committee formed to write the Bengali book Swadhinata
Shongrame Barisal (Barisal in the Freedom Struggle) brought out by
Hiralal Dasgupta.
At least two other Bengali books by him attracted acclaim - one
was on Emperor Ashok and the other on Aswini Kumar Dutta. Of the
latter it was said in a newspaper report that although a slim volume, it
was unique both in style and content among the half a dozen biographies
then available. For the Bengali reader, I quote from the report:
f
i
f - , 5
= , ,

Among history books, other than Eighteen Fifty-Seven, the better
known ones are of course on his Maratha specialization Siva
Chatrapati, Naval History of the Marathas and Administrative
System of the Marathas. It goes without saying that he could speak,
read and write fluently in Marathi.
Dr. Sen had the reputation of going out of his way to find placements
for his ex-students. He is also said to have had a weakness for people
of his caste, the Baidyas. Like many other Barisal Bangals that I have
known, Dr. Sen was open, bluff, transparent and generous to the core.
Anyone from the village could find shelter at his home while making
more permanent arrangements. This was of course true for many
Bengalis of Calcutta at that time. But even when he was at Ashoka
Road or at the Vice Chancellors Lodge in Delhi, his home was always
full of guests. Someone had come for a job interview. Another had
already got a job in Delhi and needed a place to stay while looking for a

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Surendra Nath Sen

house. Someone was passing through as a tourist, or was just in transit.

And then there were visiting dignitaries that included people like Prafulla
Chandra Ghosh and Shyamaprasad Mukherjee. During the partition
riots, Dr. Sen had arranged for many Muslims to be sheltered and fed at
the National Archives and at other safe places, later also arranging for
their transfer to camps. A young struggling Chintamoni Kar was hired
to teach his daughter art and to make a fresco in the sitting room of the
Ballygunge home. Pramod Kumar Chatterjee, then in financial difficulties,
was hired at the same Ballygunge home to make family portraits. Much
later he was engaged as a priest at the New Delhi Kalibari while he
lived for a year at Dr. Sens Ashoka Road residence teaching my wife
and Dr. Sens younger son to draw. Dr. Sen was a member of the
Kalibari Managing Committee and his photograph still hangs on its library
wall.
He had an excellent relationship with Abul Kalam Azad. The Vice
Chancellor and the Minister would meet almost daily in the evening at
the Ministers house after office hours. I believe the Maulana wanted
to converse in Farsi and the Vice Chancellor needed his budgets to be
sanctioned! Another good friend was Humayun Kabir who had helped
with finances and logistic support when Dr. Sen fell ill in New York in
1959.
He was a family man. So long as he was in Calcutta or in Delhi, he
and his younger brother (my father-in-law) lived together, except when
my father-in-law was posted out of Delhi. He was very respectful
towards his parents and very caring of his mother, always spending
some time with her every day. He had a close relationship with the
children at home. They were in awe of him and he often used his authority
to get first reading rights of the childrens periodicals! And from the
advertisements in these periodicals the children would choose books,
which he would then buy for them.
I have heard several times of his pastoral side from my wife. Every
plant, flower and tree was familiar to every child in his house because
of him. He would go around their large Ashoka Road estate, introducing
the children to every leaf, every fruit, the insects, the birds, their habitats
and their calls. Holding on to his niece's (my wife) little hand, who was
the youngest at home and who he called Buri affectionately, he would
tell her how the white Arjun tree was actually a sanyasi who stood

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Surendra Nath Sen

straight with ash smeared on his body. He would show how the Kanchan
tree leaf was just like a butterfly with its wings open, and how the
Chhatim tree had seven leaves in a bunch like the petals of a flower.
Frankly, these stories struck a chord in me because this was the Dr.
Sen whom I too had known.
There is one more thing I remember. This was perhaps in the year
1946. The freedom fighter and Congressman Rasaranjan Sen had a
school Bani Pith in the city of Barisal where I studied till matriculation.
Dr. Sen had been invited to our school as the Chief Guest for distributing
prizes. The tall and fair guest from the distant metropolis of Delhi and
Calcutta was the centre of everyones attention. I was one of the award
recipients, one of the proud youngsters who went up to the stage to
receive the prize from him. Barisal was a very active centre of our
Freedom Movement, education and Bengali cultural activities. In his
speech, Dr. Sen movingly referred to Banglar Nosu, Subhash Bosu.
Nosu was the affectionate form of address in East Bengal for any
dear young boy. Though it has been a long time now, yet it remains one
of my indelibly treasured memories.
- with inputs from Hashi Dasgupta and Nandan Dasgupta. I
am also indebted to a compilation of articles by Dr. Sens relatives
in the book (Memories).

, 1421

from second cover

contd. on back cover