Brajendranath De

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Brajendranath Dé, Esq., ICS (December 23, 1852 – September 20, 1932) was a civil servant, linguist and historian.

Contents

[edit] Formative years

He was born in Bhowanipore in Calcutta. Like his father, a student of Hindu College, Calcutta, he used to visit the Brahmo Samaj. Later, he became a member of Sammilani Samaj, a branch of the Brahmo Samaj, based in Bhowanipore, Calcutta.[1]

One of his ancestors in the late eighteenth century was Raja Manik Ram Bose, an agent of the Nawabs of Oudh.[2] On his mother's side he was a great nephew of Peary Charan Sarkar. When still young, he was taken to Lucknow by his parents. He studied at Canning College, Lucknow, where he completed his B.A. degree in the first class. There he learnt Arabic under 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 he went to England, and joined University College, London. 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.[3] 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.[4]

[edit] 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.[5] 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. 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, ICS, one of the stalwarts of moderate nationalism. As Magistrate and Collector of Balasore, he was appointed as Assistant Superintendent of the Tributary Mahals ofMayurbhanj,Keonjhar and Nilgiri.

He was appointed as (Acting) Commissioner of Burdwan thrice in 1905.[6] 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.[7] The Bengalee, the nationalist daily edited by S.N.Banerjee wrote:

“ What are the sovereign recipes for the unrest that Mr.De had? A little intuitive sympathy with his countrymen, born of first-hand knowledge of their desires, their requirements, their character and their temperament, and as the Pioneer says there was no trouble in Hughli. The Pioneer's testimony to the efficacy of sympathy in the governance of men is complete. ”

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".[8] 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."[9]

As the Collector of Hooghly, he started a club, called the Duke Club in the district exclusively for Indians.[10] 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.[11] 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:

“ Both Hindus and Mohammadans, headed by Raja Peary Mohon Mukherjee, C.S.I. and by Nawabzada Sayid Ashrafuddin Ahmed Khan Bahadur are going to give Mr. and Mrs. De two farewells... It must be noted that with the exception of Messrs. Faulder, Inglis, Duke and Maddox, no civilian was more popular in Hooghly District than Mr.B.De.[12] ”

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. [13] This book gives a general history of India from the Mohammadan conquest up to 1594. [14] In retirement, he was also appointed as a Member of the Calcutta Improvement Trust.[15]

[edit] 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

[edit] References

  1. ^ Barun De, "The Call of 1857" in Frontline, Volume 24, Issue 12, June 16-29, 2007
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ 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 1971, after a court settlement, and cleared it again .
  4. ^ Geraldine Forbes, Women in Modern India (Cambridge, 1996)
  5. ^ 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
  6. ^ "Late Mr.B.De, Passing Away of an Old Civilian" in Liberty, Friday, 30 September, 1932
  7. ^ Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903-08, (Delhi, 1973)
  8. ^ "The Bengal Government" in Bengalee, 8 September 1910
  9. ^ The Indian Nation, 12 September, 1910
  10. ^ 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
  11. ^ Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, "Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounter in World History", (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), p. 193
  12. ^ Indian Daily News, 3 September 1910
  13. ^ "Mr.B.De Dead Retired Member of the Civil Service" in The Statesman, 30 September, 1932
  14. ^ 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)
  15. ^ "Late Mr. B. De, Calcutta Corporation Tributes", in Liberty, Saturday, 1 October, 1932

[edit] External links