R. C.DUTT

An Indian for All Seasons R.C. Dutt by Meenakshi Mukherjee; Published by Penguin Books ;Pages 385; Price Rs. 399/-.

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Meenakshi Mukherjee was Professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies.

She was member of the University Grants Commission’s National Panel for English and Western Languages. Most significantly, she was Chairperson of the Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (IACLALS) .

Among her books are The Twice Born Fiction: Themes and Techniques of the Indian Novel in English, Realism and Reality: The Novel and Society in India and Jane Austen. She received the Sahitya Akademi award for her book ‘The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English’. Mukherjee’s clarity of voice,passion, commitment and intelligence are exceptional.

The book under review is a comprehensive biography of Romesh Chandra Dutt --one of the stalwarts in Indian history . He was born in 1848 and died in 1909.Barely 20 years old, without informing his family, Dutt went on a slow boat from Calcutta to Diamond Harbour and thence caught a steamer to London. To study and compete for the ICS, “the heaven-born service.” Sailing with him were Behari Lal Gupta and Surendranath Banerjee. All the three cleared I C S.

Dutt was among the first Indians to clear the I. C. S examination (in 1869) and worked for the Indianisation of the Civil Services. After retiring from service, he became actively involved in the nationalist movement. In 1899, he was made the President of the Indian National Congress and as such, presided over the Lucknow session.

As a scholar, Dutt conducted pioneering research in the field of economy, particularly on issues such as poverty of cultivators, famines, indigenous industries and impact of high taxes His famous works include. The Economic History of British India, India in the Victorian age, and History of Civilisation in Ancient India.

Influenced by the Pabna agitation of the peasants, the inequities imposed on them by Indigo planters, and the unspoken complicity and nexus between the landlords and the colonial administration Dutt wrote the tract “The Peasantry of Bengal” which was published in 1874. That was also the year of the famine and two years later came the terrible cyclone that hit the deltaic region of Bengal.

When Dutt was deeply involved in organising relief, he was called away to Barisal to assist in the festivities on January 1, 1877 to mark Queen Victoria assuming the title “Empress of India”.

Considering the plight of the cyclone victims, the administration could not have been more insensitive. Other postings followed and he served as the District Officer in Pabna and Mymensing. In 1894, he was appointed Commissioner of the Burdwan Division, probably the first Indian native to officiate in that capacity though only for a year. In 1897, he took early retirement from the ICS.

Dutt's 26 years of government service was also marked by furloughs to England for extended periods when he did a fair amount of study and writing. By then, he had also become acquainted with the leading figures of the London Indian Society formed by Dadabhai Naoroji in 1865.

Post-retirement, he plunged into writing and public speaking, quite often in support of the members of the London Indian Society or the East Indian Association contesting elections to the House of Commons. He also served as the London Correspondent for a Calcutta journal--The Indian Mirror. In 1899, he became the President of the Indian National Congress--Lucknow.

As Finance Minister and Dewan of Baroda State, Dutt struck a constructive relationship with the ruler, Sayaji Rao Gaekwad, and this facilitated the ushering in of administrative reforms and welfare measures — for instance, compulsory education, the library movement, prevention of child marriage, local-self-government, and separation of the judiciary from the executive.

His tenure as the Dewan of Baroda, however, was not to last long. At an official banquet in honour of the visiting Lord Minto, he suffered a heart attack and died soon thereafter.

He was the first of his race to attain the rank of divisional commissioner, and long before his retirement, at the end of twenty-five years' service, had made a high reputation as an administrator. He sat for a time in the Bengal Legislative Council, and, in recognition of his official work, received the Companionship of the Indian Empire.

Dutt is remembered for his monumental work, The Economic History of India, and his translation of the Rig Veda in Bengali. He sought to strike a balance between liberalism and the Hindu traditions. Some of his acclaimed works are 'Three Years In Europe', ' Literature'. Four authentic books in Bengali were 'Banga Bijeta', 'Madhabi Kankan', 'Rajput Jiban Sandha' and 'Maharastra Prabhat'. He wrote two social books 'Samaj' and 'Sangsar'.

He wrote in Bengali poems and plays, historical and social novels, and aroused a storm of protest within the orthodox community of his Province by publishing a Bengali translation of the Rig Veda. In English, of which he had complete mastery, his first complete essay was a History of Civilisation in Ancient India, which fulfilled a useful purpose in its day. Freedom from Government service gave him the opportunity he set himself to writing the Economic History of India and India in the Victorian Age. Apart from this, the work of Dutt is valuable mainly in that it has helped to reveal to his own people the spiritual riches of ancient India. Social scientists remember Dutt for his two-volume Economic History of India, and Mukherjee quotes the economist, D.R. Gadgil, who described these volumes as “in essence, a preview of what later came to be called the economics of colonialism”. For readers of Bengali, Dutt is the author of four historical novels. There are those who know him through his writings in English — through his abridged verse-translation versions of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

This rich biography, which coincided with his death centenary, illuminates the remarkable journey of Romesh Chunder Dutt situated at the cusp of two centuries and two world views. Featuring Curzon, Naoroji, Vidyasagar, Bankimchandra, Gokhale, Sayaji Rao Gaekwad and other luminaries of the national movement, this meticulously researched and elegantly written book captures an extraordinary moment in modern Indian history and will be enjoyed by a wide range of readers.

The fact that Dutt had such a dizzying range of interests, and led so many lives in one life attracted Mukherjee who sees Dutt’s life as “a prism which refracts the relationships between the West and India, colonialism and nationalism, elite and subaltern Indians, literature and history and much else”. But, above all, this is a biography that portrays a remarkable individual and it succeeds in weaving together the different lives Dutt led.

P.P.Ramachandran.

17/05/2020.