Brajendranath De

Brajendranath Dé, esq., ICS (December 23, 1852 – September 20, 1932) was a civilian, linguist and historian.

Formative years

He was born in Bhowanipore in Calcutta to Durgadas De and Trailokyamohini Devi. His family, originally from "Uttar Rarh" in Bengal, belonged to the newly emerging business community of Calcutta. From his memoir, the only written document available on the history of his family, his forefathers, especially his grandfather, Shyamsundar De, worked for a number of mercantile houses of the city, and for sometime owned quite a few houses in Bhowanipore. His father was a student of Hare School and Hindu College, Calcutta, (1847-1849), and later worked for Raja Dakshinaranjan Mukherjee, who took him to Lucknow. On his mother's side, which by his own admission was more distinguished than his father's, one of his ancestors in the late eighteenth century was Raja Manik Ram Bose, an agent of the Nawabs of Oudh. Brajendranath De, "Reminiscences of an Indian Member of the Indian Civil Service", (Calcutta, 1929) (unpublished memoir in the possession of his descendants); the Victoria Memorial Hall in Calcutta used to display one of his portrait until 1926.] Also, on his mother's side he was a great-nephew of Peary Charan Sarkar, to whom he was close.

In the initial years he was admitted to the Hare School of which Sarkar was a headmaster. While still in Calcutta, young Brajendranath was greatly influenced by the personality of the radical journalist Harish Chandra Mukherjee who lived in the same neighbourhood as his family. [http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/stories/ Barun De, "The Call of 1857" in "Frontline", Volume 24, Issue 12, June 16-29, 2007] ] In 1863, at the age of 11, he and his younger brother, Siddheshwar, travelled to Lucknow with their parents. From his account, in his memoir, of his family's standard of living in Lucknow, it appears that the family, which stayed in Kaiserbagh was 'passing rich'. After completing his remaining few years of schooling there, he joined Canning College, Lucknow, where he completed his B.A. degree, coming first class sixth. There he learnt Arabic under the guidance of Syed Hussain Bilgrami. He completed his M.A. (Honours) degree at the University of Calcutta in 1871, ranking first class second in the university. In 1872, with funds raised by his father and more importantly by Raja Dakshinaranjan Mukherjee, and also with the encouragement of Sarkar, he went to England, and joined University College, London. There he appeared for the Open Competitive Service Examination which he successfully took in 1873, becoming the eighth Indian and sixth Bengali to join the Indian Civil Service. Ibid; the other seven members to have joined the ICS before him were Satyendranath Tagore (1863), Romesh Chandra Dutt, Behari Lal Gupta, Surendranath Banerjee and Sripad Babaji Thakur (1869), Anandaram Baruah (1870) and Sir Krishna Govinda Gupta (1871). S.N.Banerjee (1869) was disqualified on trivial grounds of being over age by a few months, but re-took the exam in 1871, after a court settlement, and cleared it again .] He was also called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. In 1875, he was one of only two students to be awarded the Boden Sanskrit Scholarship which he held at St Mary Hall, Oxford for one year, and was a student of Professor Sir Monier Monier Williams. As an Indian student in England he became friendly with the eminent nationalist leader Ananda Mohan Bose, and Bolinarayan Borah, later a successful government official, and son-in-law of Romesh Dutt.Geraldine Forbes, "Women in Modern India" (Cambridge, 1996)]

Upon return from England, as a fresh recruit in the ICS, he rented a house in Jorashanko, in North Calcutta where his family, including his parents and wife, Nagendra Nandini, stayed from 1875 to 1877. After his father passed away in 1877, he moved with his family to the districts, although his mother divided her time between her elder son's official homes and her husband's ancestral home in Bhowanipore. He served in various bureaucratic capacities in Bengal, Behar and Orissa.

Like his father, who used to visit the Brahmo Samaj, he too adhered to the Brahmo faith. Slightly later in his life, he joined the Sammilani Samaj, a branch of the Brahmo Samaj, which is still based in Bhowanipore, Calcutta. There is, however, a pleasant description in his fourth son-in-law, Gurusaday Dutt's book entitled "A Woman of India: Being the Life of Saroj Nalini Dutt", of his family members, especially his mother, who was a devout Hindu, and also his wife and children performing their daily prayers in the evening by the river Hooghly at his garden-house in Bandel.

Career

His first posting in the civil service was as Assistant Magistrate of Arrah in Behar. The Ilbert Bill Controversy of 1883 took place when he was a Joint Magistrate of Hooghly. When asked to comment on the nature of the bill, he supported the recommendations for increase in the Indian magistrates' powers. [http://books.google.com/books?id=nFO5xEvghmwC&pg=PA431&lpg=PA431&dq=brajendranath+de&source=web&ots=CaS2Yw-wuF&sig=QAc76dfM9CoIONYYWm1yJefIdZ0/ Reina Lewis and Sara Mills, "Feminist Post-Colonial Theory", (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 431] ; see also Barun De, 'Brajendranath De and John Beames - A Study in the Reactions of Patriotism and Paternalism in the ICS at the Time of the Ilbert Bill', "Bengal Past and Present", 81, (January 1962), p. 1-31] This gained him the contempt of his then Divisional Commissioner, John Beames, esq., who in the Aitchison Committee suggested that persons of Brajendranath's nationality, not calibre, should neither be allowed to draw a salary equal to that of the British civilians, nor should they be allowed to sit in the presence of their British counterparts in the same room. The members of the committee showed disrgard for Beames' views and asked the latter to leave the room while Brajendranath was asked to make his deposition before the committee.

He was elected the first Indian Chairman of the Hooghly Municipal Corporation at the end of the nineteenth century and contributed to its civic upliftment, such as the improvement of the water works there. He also contributed significantly to the development of Uttarpara, and became a friend of its "zamindar", Raja Peary Chand Mukherjee. In British official circles he was known to have taken the side of the moderate nationalists. He was Magistrate and Collector of a number of districts in Bengal and Orissa, namely Faridpore, Khulna, Hooghly, and Balasore. As the District Officer of Balasore, he worked closely with his Commissioner, Romesh Dutt, esq., ICS, one of the stalwarts of moderate nationalism.

As Magistrate and Collector of Balasore, he was appointed as Assistant Superintendent of the Tributary Mahals of [http://www.uq.net.au/~zzhsoszy/ips/m/mayurbhanj.html Mayurbhanj] , [http://www.uq.net.au/~zzhsoszy/ips/k/keonjhar.html Keonjhar] and [http://www.uq.net.au/~zzhsoszy/ips/n/nilgiri.html Nilgiri] . He was particularly involved in the administration of Mayurbhanj, where both he and Dutt had to deal with the Dowager Maharani and her minor grandson, Maharaja Sri Ram Chandra Bhanj Deo's marriage alliance. He was also in close contact with the "zamindars" Dharbhanga and Bhabua in Behar. He writes that the chief of the "zamindars" of Bhabua was not half as wealthy as the other landlords of the region, but was still considered the first amongst equals and was held in very high esteem. He was one of the principal functionaries in the Court of Wards, when Maharaja Bijoy Chand Mehtab of Burdwan, then a minor was placed under its supervision. During this period he worked in close association with the Maharaja's father, the Dewan of Burdwan, Raja Banbehari Kapoor.

He was appointed as (Acting) Commissioner of Burdwan thrice in 1905. "Late Mr.B.De, Passing Away of an Old Civilian" in "Liberty", Friday, 30 September, 1932 ] Due to his pro-nationalist sentiments and decision to visit a number of Swadeshi "Bazaars" in the division in that year, he was severely criticised by his British colleagues in the civil service. This act of patriotism, however, won him high praise in nationalist circles, especially from Congress leaders, such as Surendranath Banerjee, and also from his Indian colleagues in the civil service.Sumit Sarkar, "The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903-08", (Delhi, 1973) ] The "Bengalee", the nationalist daily edited by S.N.Banerjee wrote:

Even the "Pioneer", which was a pro-British newspaper, supported the view that De was an exceptionally able and patriotic administrator, committed to the maintenance of law and order in his district. It wrote: "If it had been possible to multiply Mr.De sufficiently, there would have been no trouble in Bengal". "The Bengal Government" in "Bengalee", 8 September 1910] "The Indian Opnion" added: "... but these are men who glide out of the service unnoticed while the person who is chiefly responsible for the mischief probably makes his exit under salutes, in a coat covered with ribbons and stars." "The Indian Nation", 12 September, 1910]

As the Collector of Hooghly, he started a club, called the Duke Club in the district exclusively for Indians. [http://links.jstor.org/ Mrinalini Sinha, "Britishness, Clubbability, and the Colonial Public Sphere: The Genealogy of an Imperial Institution in Colonial India", "The Journal of British Studies", Vol. 4, No. 4, Oct. 2001, pp.489-521] ] His decision to start a club only for the Indians was promted by the British refusal to allow any Indian entry into any one of their clubs. Once his commissioner reportedly told him not to even entertain any thought of wanting to join one of the British clubs in his district.cite book
title=Bodies in Contact
author=Tony Ballantyne, Antoinette M. Burton
year=2005
publisher=Duke University Press
isbn=0822334674
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=YEWulnOX_TgC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=brajendranath+de&source=web&ots=x7X13I2btB&sig=s7Xr7vlJZJYiN4ESBM1tKXy14Kg/] Social prejudices of his British colleagues towards the Indian members of the covenanted civil services were responsible for his steadfast support for the other Indians of his district, which won him many friends and rich accolades throughout his career, especially at the time of his retirement. "The Indian Daily News" reported that:

He retired from the civil service in 1910. After retirement he became a Vice President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and translated and edited in two volumes Nizamuddin Ahmad's "Tabaqat-i-Akbari". The third volume, which he had left fully prepared, was published posthumously by Dr.Hidayat Hosain. "Mr.B.De Dead Retired Member of the Civil Service" in "The Statesman", 30 September, 1932 ] This book gives a general history of India from the Mohammadan conquest up to 1594. For citations see Gordon Johnson, Christopher Alan Bayly and J.F.Richards, "New Cambridge History of India: Rajput and Mughal", (Cambridge, 1988), p. 11, and Stephen Frederic Dale, "Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600-1750", (Cambridge, 1994), p. 15. For more references see Shail Mayaram, "Against History, Against State: Counterperspectives from the Margins", (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003) and Mary A. Procida, "Married to the Empire: Gender, Politics and Imperialism in India, 1883-1947, (Machester: Manchester University Press, 2002)] In retirement, he was also appointed as a Member of the Calcutta Improvement Trust. "Late Mr. B. De, Calcutta Corporation Tributes", in "Liberty", Saturday, 1 October, 1932 ]

Publications

*"Reminiscences of an Indian Member of the Indian Civil Service", "The Calcutta Review", (1953-5)

*"The Tabaqat-i-Akbari" of Khwaja Nizamuddin Ahmad, translated into English by Brajendranath Dé, Vol. 1, Calcutta Reprint, 1973

*"Vikramorvaçi", Translated into English lyrical verse by Brajendranath Dé, Canto I. (In Calcutta Review, October 1884, pp. 440-442) (See also under Text Editions Nos. 16, 18, 19), Malavikaagnimitram & Vikramorvaci, Montgomery Schyuler Jr., C.H.Tawney, Kalidasa, "Journal of American Oriental Society", Vol. 23, 1902

References

External links

* [http://www.asiaticsocietycal.com/ The Asiatic Society, Calcutta]