Brajendranath De

Brajendranath De
Born 1852
Calcutta
Died 1932
Calcutta
Occupation Civilian, orientalist
Spouse(s) Nagendranandini De (nee Bose)

Brajendranath De (1852-1932), was an early Indian member of the Indian Civil Service.[1]

Education

In Lucknow he studied at Canning College, Lucknow, and later travelled to England, where he was called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple.[2] He was also admitted to St. Mary Hall, Oxford, where he spent one year on a Boden Sanskrit Scholarship.[3] He then joined the ICS,[4] of which he was one of the earliest Indian entrants.[5][6] His grandson was the historian, Barun De.[5][7]

Career

He was Assistant Magistrate and Collector of Shahabad, Bengal in 1881.[8] He served as the district magistrate and collector of Khulna.[9][10] He became the magistrate and collector of Balasore in Orissa and then of Malda and Hooghly. He was an acting commissioner of the Burdwan Division.[11]

While the district officer of Hooghly, he started the Duke Club there which was meant to be exclusively for Indians.[12] One of his Commissioners once told him not to entertain the thought of wanting to join a British club in the district.[13]

After retirement he 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.[14] He was also appointed as a Member of the Calcutta Improvement Trust.[15]

Legacy

In 2001, approximately 2,000 photographs of himself and his family members were given in loan to the photographic archives of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Later, the archive was shifted to the newly established Jadunath Sarkar Centre for Historical Research, CSSSC, Calcutta, and the photographs too were deposited at 'Jadunath Bhavan', where the new Centre is located.[16]

Publications

De translated Kālidāsa's play Vikramorvasi which was published in the Calcutta Review.[17]

His other works include:

References

  1. ↑ Indiasaga Who's Who
  2. ↑ University of Wisconsin Law Library
  3. ↑ Oxford University Calendar, 1875, p. 366
  4. ↑ Greta Britain India Office The India List & Indian Office List 1905 (India Office, Great Britain, Published by Harrison, 1905), p. 447
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Situating an Eminent Historian Eminently" - Sabyasachi Bhattacharya Retrieved 2015-03-21.
  6. ↑ Geraldine Forbes, Women in Modern India (Cambridge, 1996)
  7. ↑ "Comment on Remembering Barun De" - Ranabir Chaudhuri Retrieved 2015-03-06.
  8. ↑ Military and ICS Manual
  9. ↑ Peter Heehs,The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), pp.33–4
  10. ↑ The Liberal and New Dispension, Volume 12, Harvard Divinity School
  11. ↑ Gupta, Tapati Dutta (1993). Social Thought of Rabindranath Tagore: A Historical Analysis. Abhinav Publications. p. 122.
  12. ↑ Sinha, Mrinalini (October 2001). "Britishness, Clubbability, and the Colonial Public Sphere: The Genealogy of an Imperial Institution in Colonial India". The Journal of British Studies 4 (44): 489–521. JSTOR 3070745. (subscription required (help)).
  13. ↑ Ballantyne, Tony; Burton, Antoinette M. (2005). Bodies in Contact. Duke University Press. p. 193. ISBN 0-8223-3467-4.
  14. ↑ "Mr.B.De Dead Retired Member of the Civil Service" in The Statesman, 30 September 1932
  15. ↑ "Late Mr. B. De, Calcutta Corporation Tributes", in Liberty, Saturday, 1 October 1932
  16. ↑ Jadunath Sarkar Resource Centre for Historical Research, (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, 2009), p. 7
  17. ↑ Schuyler, Jr., Montgomery (1902). "Bibliography of Kālidāsa's Mālavikāgnimitra and Vikramorvaçī". Journal of the American Oriental Society 23: 93–101. JSTOR 592384.
  18. ↑ Reminiscences of an Indian Member of the Indian Civil Service' in the Calcutta Review
  19. ↑ Tabaqat-i-Akbari by Khwaja Nizamuddin Ahmed

External links