Front matter

INDIA BOOK

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II. SESHACP fUBLISHERS

Book I Chap

I. Family . . . i

II. Early Days .10

III. Europe and Civil Service Examination

(1868-71)

IV.

Official Apprenticeship (187 i-

■82).

VI.

VII.

VIII.

Report on Tenancy Act and

OTHER Official

IX.

"Rig Veda," "The Lays of

Ancient India,"

and the Sahitya Parisad .

X. "History of Civilisation in Ancient India" . 123

XI. Travels 136

XII. Divisional Commissioner 159

XIII. Social Novels 178

XIV. Home Life and Personal Attachments . . 181

BOOK II Introductory 217

XV. 1897, Publication of "England and India" . 219 XVI. 1898 and 1899, The Bengal Municipal Act and

Book III

XXVIII. Work in Baroda (1904-7) . . . . .399 XXIX. His Cosmopolitan Home at Baroda . . .417 XXX. The New Industrial Movement . . . 439 XXXI. The Decentralisation Commission . . -445 XXXII. Later Political Work and Reform Scheme . 456

XXXIII. Last Days. . . ... . . .479

XXXIV. Appreciations 486

XXXV. General Estimate . . ... . . 494

INDEX . 505

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PHOTOGRAVURES

Romesh Chunder Dutt

Frontispiece

His Highness the Maharaja of Baroda

Facing p.

Prince Kerala Varma of Travancore . . .

HALF TONES

Members of the Royal Commission on Decentralisation of India . . . . .

Facing p.

Mr. Romesh C. Dutt at the age of Twenty .

J J

The Commissioner's House, Cuttack .

Kamala, eldest Daughter .....

) J

Bimala, second Daughter . . . .

B. L. Gupta . . ...

Ajoy C. Dutt, Son

Sarala, fourth Daughter .....

Amala, third Daughter .....

House occupied by Mr. Dutt as Revenue Minister of Baroda b

The destinies of our Indian Empire are covered with thick darkness. It is difficult to form a7iy co?ijectures as to the fate reserved for a State which resembles no other in history, and which forms by itself a separate class of political phenomena ; the laws which regulate its growth a7id its decay are still wiknown to us. It mav be that the public 7?iind of India may expand tmder our system till it has outgrown the system ; that by good government we ?nay educate our subjects into a capacity for better gov erjiment ; that having become histj-ucted in European knowledge, they may in some future age demand European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never will I attempt to avert or retard it. Whenever it cotnes, it will be the proudest day in E^iglish History. — Macaulay's speech on the Bill renewing the East India Company's Charter, House of Commons, loth July 1833.

What I seem to discern are not at all the symptoms of crisis. I do not see or hear demands for violent or startling new departures. What I do see is a stage reached in the gradual and inevitable working out of Indian policy, which makes it wise and in the natural order of things — and I do not at all despair of securing the agreement of the noble Lord opposite to this — that we should advance with a firm, courageous, and intrepid step some paces further on the path of continuous, rational improvement in the Indiati system of government. — Lord Morley's Budget speech, 1906.

Gentleme?i, I believe more in our fitiiess for self-government than iii any gifts aiid concessions which we ma.y receive from our rulers. If we are prepared by our devotion to work for self-government, no power on earth can withhold it from us. Nations shape their own destifiy, and our future is in our own hands. Let us forget those petty jealousies and differences which sometimes divide us. Let us keep the great object before us. The path of progress is thorny, but in spite of many disappoiiitments I still believe that the path is as clear before us as the noonday sun. This is Dharma; it is the duty of every nation to strive for progress, as it is the endeavour of the plant to seek for light. If we are true to ourselves in educatiofi and social reforms, in industrial and political endeavours, our future is assured. Every act of self-seekiiig and untruth holds tcs back ; every act of self-sacrijice and devotion sees us farther on our onward march. — R. C. Dutt : speech at Lucknow, February 1908.

o present a critical estimate of Romesh Chunder Dutt, while standing so near in time to his life and achievements, is a task beset with many difficulties. That, at any rate, is not the sole object of the present biography. But there are stages in the history of every nation, and modern India may at least be conceded to be a nation ^*'m transition," when the life of the strong individual, the leader, forms but a chapter of the larger life of the nation itself. It is from this standpoint that the life of a representative Indian, a recognised leader of Indian thought and opinion, is of especial interest. Such a life faithfully narrated ; the sources of its intellectual and moral strength, its aspirations and ambitions, the bed-rocks of its faith clearly exposed to view ; its limitation of vision, the moments of its despair and gloom mirrored by a faithful hand ; above all, its subtler hues, the play of sentiment, the leaven of occidental culture and energy, the heritage of oriental feeling, all painted with a truthful yet sympathetic brush, cannot fail to serve a useful purpose and find an answer to many heated controversies. Would you really know what advance India under British rule has made in the path of true nationality, would you peer into the future and catch a glimpse of the far-off haven to which this ancient argosy of the East is slowly winning her way ? Then, the study of the life of a great Indian cannot fail to deepen your interest and clear your vision.

xviii Preliminary

II

The closing years of the nineteenth century and the opening decade of the present, mark perhaps the most momentous chapter in the history of modern India. For the historian of the future will have to record in these years, if not the birth of a ^^New India," yet a determined and signal advance in that long and v^eary path over which it is the appointed task of the people of India to travel, before the goal will be reached and a true political personality will emerge from the heterogeneous mass who inhabit the vast continent. The most reliable and competent observers, both amongst Englishmen and Indians, have not been slow to read the signs of the times, and to detect in the storm and stress through which we are now passing the true portents of a great national upheaval in the country, the parturial pains heralding the birth of a nation. To confine ourselves to English opinion only, what a marked revulsion there has been. Professor Seeley, who was one of the first to make a critical study of the political aspects of the British occupation of India, observed in 1883: There is no Indian nationahty, though there are germs from which we can conceive an Indian nationality developing itself." Even so late as the closing years of the last century, Meredith Townsend declared the impossibility of an Oriental nation advancing in the path of Western civilisation, and held that ^'the chasm between the brown man and the white is unfathomable." But even in those days preachers of the rival school of thought were not altogether silent. Only two years after Seeley's book appeared, in 1885, Mr. (now Sir Henry) Cotton, one of the ablest and most sympathetic English officials serving in India at the time, saw '' a New India rising before his eyes, and a nation in the real sense in actual formation."

The currents of political life in India have moved swiftly since the days of the first publication of New India," and landmarks which were then dim and xix unformed have now taken more definite shape and emerged clearly to view, till to-day, the greatest living poHtical thinker of England has himself analysed for us the sources of the present political illumination in India. In the memorable speeches delivered while he was in charge of the India Office, Lord Morley has on more than one occasion made a searching analysis of the inevitableness of the present-day ''intoxication of educated Indians with ideas of freedom, nationality, and self-government, and the irresistible and mighty influence which such great teachers and masters of England as Milton, Burke, Macaulay have exercised in India/' And it is not only the political philosopher who has seen this. The far-sighted Viceroy, who with Lord Morley has shared the high honour and lasting glory of building the foundations of real autonomy in India, and who had the amplest opportunity of gauging the potency and true character of the new forces at work, recognised the birth of a new spirit almost as soon as he assumed his high office. , From his throne in the Council Chamber, Lord Minto, in 1907, declared that '' a change was rapidly passing over the land, and new and just aspirations were springing up amongst its people." Still more forcibly, in his remarkable speech in the Council of 1909, introducing his memorable reforms, he pointed out that he '' had to deal with political forces unknown to his predecessors, which it was no longer possible for British administrators to ignore, while the trend of events in the far East had accentuated the ambitions of Eastern populations." His Excellency must have remembered the noble exhortation of the Hon. Mr. Gokhale, when, in the course of his speech on the Budget of 1906, he said : '' Moreover, my Lord, the whole East is to-day throbbing with a new impulse, vibrating with a new passion, and it is not to be expected that India alone should continue unaffected by changes that are in the very air around us. We could not remain outside this influence even if we would. We would not so remain if we could."

It is hardly necessary to repeat that the central motive

XX power of this unifying process, this fusion of many races, is the soHdifying principle which underHes the British domination of India. " There is no determination more fixed and immovable in the will of England/' to quote the words of another great Viceroy, than eventually to evolve from its present intricate and imperfectly adjusted mechanism^a homogeneous community so well-balanced and co-ordinated, so united in its material interests and its moral convictions as to form a loyal, patriotic, and compacted whole." ^ And the heart and core of this movement, the real solvent which is working this miracle, is unquestionably the introduction of English education in India, which, according to Seeley, ^' remains the great landmark in the history of the Indian Empire, considered as an institution of civilisation."

And the representative Indians of to-day, the children of this Western civilisation, trained in Western education," are striving to win for their country Western institutions," and thus fulfil that mission which Macaulay pictured for them in 1833, and which, according to that wise and beneficent prophet, would herald the proudest day in the annals of England." And a study of the career and achievements of the great Indians who, since the days of Raja Ram Mohan Ray, have devoted their lives to the service of India, abundantly proves that their labours have contributed in no small measure to the uplifting of their motherland. The last half-century has seen the erection of a mighty edifice in India. Englishmen have placed the bricks, but Indians themselves have supplied the mortar." ^

Nor are the leaders of Indian thought, the pioneers of the Indian national movement, unaware of the complexities of the present situation, or oblivious of the claims of England and of those noble-hearted Englishmen who have made the regeneration of India the primary duty of their lives.

1 Speech of Lord Dufferin, Feb. 1887.

^ " Glimpses of Hidden India," by " John Law," p. 231.

XXI

How to reconcile the claims of racial nationalism with the claims of that imperial and composite patriotism, which, according to Lord Curzon, the Indian may share with the Englishman," is a problem which will have to be grappled with not only by all genuine Indian patriots, but also by all those noble Englishmen who set the good of India above the mere perpetuation of their own national predominance. And the key-note of the life and labours of Romesh Ghunder Dutt, the driving energy which impelled him to such unremitting and ceaseless toil, is to be found in his unswerving devotion to the cause of his motherland— not in subordination to, nor at the sacrifice of, his loyalty to the British Crown, but in a harmonious and reasoned coordination of the two sentiments. On the one hand; io lead India in the path which will end one day in her taking her place among the nations of the modern world, and; on the other, to bring home to the rulers of the country the wisdom of associating educated Indians more and more in the task of the administration of their own country, and thus effectually deepening and broadening the foundations of the Empire, were the twin inspirations of his life.

Amongst the band of noble and strenuous workers who have laid the foundations of true nationalism in India, there is hardly a more commanding figure or a more unremitting worker than he ; and from few Indians has the motherland received such high, unselfish, silent, and enduring service as was offered at her shrine by that gifted son. To the Government, whose servant he was, he rendered equally lasting service. Through him, more than through the medium of any other Indian, has India learnt the value of the rarer gifts of the English character— the love of independence, truth, patriotism, and an unflagging devotion to duty ; and his whole life was a living demonstration of that true intermingling of the East and West," the attainment of which is perhaps the highest mission of England in India.

xxii

IV

Of John Stuart Mill, Lord Morley has written : From the beginning to the end of his career he was forced into the polemical attitude over the whole field ; into an incessant and manful wrestle for what he thought true and right against what he regarded as false or wrong." The same polemical attitude obtrudes itself in most of Mr. Dutt's political writings. In all the important questions of administrative reform for which he waged such ceaseless war, he was far too anxious to uphold the Indian position to aim -at the speculative calmness of a political philosopher. He was far too deeply engrossed in the interests at stake to rise to the clear vision of an impersonal critic. His impatience to secure a hearing for his side of a case not seldom obliterated a true sense of proportion, and he returned to the charge time after time over the same field, but always with unexhausted and inexhaustible vigour. Style and literary brilliancy were sacrificed in the allabsorbing desire to drive home a point, or vindicate a just grievance of the Indian people. Yet he was never blind to the claims of an opposing view, and there was no publicist of his age engaged in the discussion of Indian problems, who took such infinite trouble to study and master details, and to gather first-hand information from the people themselves, whose cause he fought. At the time when Mr. Dutt died, there was hardly another man who excelled him in the knowledge of the real needs and aspirations of the people of India as a whole, and who was so thoroughly at home with the different aspects and vicissitudes of all the great Indian administrative questions which have agitated the public mind during the last half-century. Nor was his view of Indian subjects parochial or dwarfed by a regard for considerations of the hour only. He was a ripe scholar, and was as familiar with the social and political institutions of ancient and modern India as with the political literature and institutions of modern and mediaeval Europe.

xxiii

A man is but the product of his age. It is not in every country and during every age that truly great achievements are possible. What type of a great man is India during this transition stage capable of producing ? Has the Indian citizen of to-day a better chance of shining in the sphere of action or of thought ? Is true statesmanship, the worship of the goddess of political wisdom, within the reach of the sons of a subject nation ? In the field of literature, too, are the doors of the shrine of true literature really open to him ? In what language is he to clothe his thoughts, if his productions are not to share the fate of ephemeral exotics ? What language is destined to be the national language of India of the future ? A critic must weigh these and similar questions before he seeks to assign a place for Mr. Dutt.

What, after all, is the true essence of greatness in a man ? Is he to be judged by his achievements alone ? Or is it the power of his will, his character, the loftiness of his purpose, his resistance to the tyranny of self, and an unswerving devotion to duty against many odds and difficulties, that deserve our truest admiration ?

The inspiring beacon-light of Romesh Chunder Dutt's life cannot be better described than in his own language, when, standing on the top of the North Cape in July 1886, *'and gazing over the sublime and limitless ocean beyond the last frontier of human habitation," his imagination raised before his mental vision the picture of the India to come : —

I will not conceal the pain and humiliation which I felt in my inmost soul," he wrote, '^as I stood on that memorable night among representatives of the free and advancing nations of the earth rejoicing in their national greatness. Champagne was drunk on the top of the hill, and Germans and Frenchmen, Englishmen and Americans, pressed us to share their hospitality. I accepted their offer with thanks on my lips, but I felt within me that I had no place beside them. May we, in the course xxiv of years, progress in civilisation and in self-government, in mercantile enterprise and in representative institutions, even as the young English Colonies in Australia are doing year by year. And may our sons' sons, when they come to Europe, feel that India can take her place among the great advancing countries of the earth. Let us trust tOf the future, but trust still more to our honest work and hard endeavour. There is not a race in Europe, or in the whole world, but has gained its place by hard, severe, unremitted struggle and toil. And if we too, each individual among us, learn to work honestly and truly for our country, we cannot fail."

And nobly did Romesh Dutt play his part. Along nearly every avenue of intellectual and material progress did he seek to show the way to his countrymen. And in order to awaken a true spirit of nationalism amongst them, and to stimulate their highest and noblest aspirations, there was no labour, however arduous and exacting, which he did not manfully and cheerfully undertake. Nor must we jiidge him only by the results as we see them to-day. In many spheres he and the noble band of workers, English and Indian, with whom he worked, have only sown the seeds. Who can foretell what the tree will be ?

Book I Life And Work Of , Romesh Chunder Dutt

BOOK I

Chapter I Family I

On the night of the 3rd of January 1757, following the day on which Clive retook Calcutta and thus laid the foundation-stone of the British Empire in India, was born Nilmoni Dutt, the first reputed ancestor of the well-known family of the Dutts of Rambagan. The coincidence was one of some significance, for of all the distinguished families of Bengal which have made the attainment of Western culture and illumination the chief object of their ambition and endeavour, the Dutts of Rambagan are without question the foremost. The genealogy of the family goes back to at least four generations before Clive, and Kamalakanta, the great-grandfather of Nilmoni, must have lived about the time when Bengal was under the sway of the Moghal Emperors and the English were establishing their first factories in the country.

The original home of the family was at Ajapur, three miles south of the railway station of Memari, on the East Indian Railway, in the Burdwan district. There is a curious tradition connected with this village and its Buddhistic-looking temple. Tradition has it that one of the ancestors of the Dutt family built seven temples at

Ajapur in order to pay off the debt which a man owes his mother. No sooner, however, had he expressed this desire than the temples began to tumble down, one after another, for the s/iastras say that it is not for man to pay the debt he owes his mother. When six had already fallen and the seventh was about to crumble down, the unlucky m^n repented and retracted his words, on which the last temple relented and remained in the oblique position to which it had got. There is no authentic information to show when the Dutts left Ajapur for Calcutta, but it seems that a branch of the family migrated to Burdwan, whilst Nilmoni's father settled down in Calcutta.

Nilmoni had three sons ; the youngest, Pitamber, born in 1799, was the grandfather of Romesh Chunder Dutt.

But before we go on to speak of Pitamber's talented sons — Isan, the father of Romesh Chunder, and Shoshee Dutt, his uncle — it will be well if we let Mr. Dutt himself speak of his ancestor Nilmoni and Nilmoni's well-known son, Rasamoy. With Rasamoy's still more famous family, who were Mr. Dutt's contemporaries, he would seem to have been on terms of intimacy, and he entertained for them feelings of lively admiration.

Nilmoni Dutt, better known as Niloo Dutt, was a well-known resident of Calcutta in the latter half of the eighteenth century, i.e. in the days of Clive and Warren Hastings. I have often heard my grandfather (a younger son of Niloo Dutt) say, that Nilmoni kept an open house, and was known for his hospitality. Brahmans and pious men who went every morning for their bath in the HughH River assembled at Niloo Dutt's house on their return, and were welcomed and entertained with refreshments. The foremost men of Calcutta reckoned Niloo Dutt among their friends; Maharaja Nava Kissen of Sobhabazar esteemed him ; and Maharaja Nand Kumar visited him in his house. Liberal and catholic in his ideas, he was equally well known to many prominent Englishmen of the day, and was a friend of Christian missionaries. The preaching of Christianity

Family was prohibited at that time; and the missionary Carey, when pursued by the agents of the East India Company, found shelter with Niloo Dutt, who concealed him for a time. A well-known, well-beloved, hospitable, and charitable man, Niloo Dutt lived the life of the highest class Hindu of the eighteenth century, and passed away in the early years of the nineteenth century, leaving his property much involved.

His eldest son, Rasamoy Dutt, was a stern economist; he cleared the debts left by his father, and reared a fortune and a reputation as one of the foremost men of his day. The British Government sought the co-operation of able Indian gentlemen in spreading English education and in other liberal measures, and soon recognised the splendid abilities of Rasamoy Dutt. Rasamoy was appointed Secretary to the Sanskrit College of Calcutta ; he was afterwards appointed a Judge of the Small Cause Court of Calcutta, then a position of highest trust, and honour; and he took a leading part in all the great public movements during the first half of the nineteenth century. He had a splendid collection of English books in his house, and infused in his sons that strong partiality for English literature which distinguishes the family to this day. Liberal in his ideas, and also in his expenses, he set his face, however, against that extravagance in the matter of Hindu pujas and ceremonials which had involved his father in debt; and this gave him a bad 'name with many Brahmans and orthodox men. Rasamoy Dutt's life marks a transition in Hindu society, under English influences. He died shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century.

Among the cultured sons of Rasamoy Dutt, Covin Chunder was the most distinguished. He held a high appointment under the India Government in the Accounts Department^ but soon resigned service, and devoted his leisure, in retirement, to literature and to religious studies. Early in life he had published a volume of English verses; and these productions, together with some poems written by his cousin Shoshee Chunder Dutt, received the deserved compliment of a favourable review in Blackwood' s Magazine in England. After his retirement he embraced the Christian religion with his wife and children, his brothers and nephews ; and his wife and two daughters accompanied him to England in 1869. There he brought out his maturer poems, with those of his two brothers and a nephew, in a handsome little volume under the title of the " Dutt P^amily Album." And his talented daughter, Toru Dutt, won a still higher distinction by her own English verses and her translations from French poetry. But the climate of Europe had told on the young poetess and her sister ; and both the girls died within a few years after their return to India. Govin Chunder himself followed them not long after.

I have vivid recollections of the visits which I used to pay, as a boy, to Govin Chunder, then living with his wife and children in retirement, in their garden-house at Bagmari, in the suburbs of Calcutta.^ It was an extensive garden covering many acres of land, and shaded by fruit-trees ; and there was a rustic bridge over a canal, which was the delight of our boyhood. We had the run of the whole garden, and Govin Chunder's only son, Abju, showed us his favourite secluded places. Poor boy, he died early, and his loss was an abiding grief to his parents. In the midst of this forest of fruit-trees rose the comfortable and spacious one-storeyed bungalow-house — a perfect picture of repose ! There was a good collection of choice books in the house, for study was Govin Chunder's only recreation.

I have recollections also of the time when we met in England. I was a young man then, and had passed the Open Competition for the Civil Service of India in 1869; and shortly after, Govin Chunder arrived in England with his wife and his two accomplished daughters. I secured rooms for them at the Grosvenor Hotel, and shortly after they took a furnished house at Brompton. It is needless to say that I often visited them there, and spent many pleasant hours with my young cousins. Literary work and religious studies were still the sole occupation of Govin Chunder and his family, and they made the acquaintance of many pious Christians. When the " Dutt Family Album " came out, Govin Chunder presented me with a copy, marked out the poems which were his own, and read, almost with tears in his eyes, the verses he had written on his deceased son.

I saw him also, pretty often, after we had all returned to India. I think it was the state of his daughters' health which had cut short his stay in England. They had now left the Bagmari garden-house and lived in a newly-built house in the town, close to their ancestral residence. They were as kind, as gracious, as courteous towards me as ever, and their hearts were full of piety. But the fatal illness of which the germs were brought from Europe declared itself. P'irst the eldest daughter, Aru, and then the talented Toru, fell ill and died. Toru's verses were praised in England by Edmund Gosse, and admired by a select circle of readers ; had she lived to a maturer age, she might have left a name in English literature. Govin Chunder survived them a few years, and his widow followed him after some more years.

Family

Of Torn Dutt, Mr. Dutt's cousin and the author of '^A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields," ''Ancient Ballads of Hindusthan/' and other poemS; who died at the early age of twenty-onC; before her splendid gifts had time to mature, no less a critic than Mr. Gosse has said : —

It is difficult to exaggerate when we try to estimate what we have lost in the premature death of Toru Dutt. Literature has no honours which need have been beyond the grasp of a girl who, at the age of twenty-one, and in languages separated from her own by so deep a chasm, had produced so much of lasting worth.

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Life and work of Romesh Chunder Dutt

About this book

Front matter

Book I Chap

BOOK II Introductory 217

Book III

II

IV

Chapter I Family I

The end

Life and work of Romesh Chunder Dutt

About this book

Front matter

Book I Chap

BOOK II Introductory 217

Book III

II

IV

Chapter I Family I

The end

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