Historians and Historiography of Modern India Paper Code
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B.A. VI SEMESTER PAPER NAME- HISTORIANS AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF MODERN INDIA PAPER CODE-(HISKB 606) UNIT- IV DR DEEPTI JAISWAL GUEST FACULTY DEPT OF HISTORY K.M.C. LANGUAGE UNIVERSITY Romesh Chunder Dutt Romesh Chunder Dutt, CIE was an Indian civil servant, economic historian, writer, and translator of Ramayana and Mahabharata. Formative years Dutt was born into a distinguished Bengali Kayastha caste family well known for its members' literary and academic achievements. His parents were Thakamani and Isam Chunder Dutt. His father, Isam Dutt, was a Deputy Collector of Bengal, whom Romesh often accompanied on official duties. Romesh was educated in various Bengali District schools, then at Hare School, Calcutta, founded by the philanthropist, David Hare. After his father's untimely death in a boat accident in eastern Bengal, Romesh's uncle, Shoshee Chunder Dutt, an accomplished writer, became his guardian in 1861. Romesh wrote about his uncle, "He used to sit at night with us and our favorite study used to be pieces from the works of the English poets. He was a relative of Toru Dutt, one of nineteenth century Bengal's most prominent poets. He entered the University of Calcutta, Presidency College in 1864, then passed the First Arts examination in 1866, second in order of merit, and won a scholarship. While still a student in the B.A. class, without his family's permission, he and two friends, Beharilal Gupta and Surendranath Banerjee, left for England in 1868. Only one other Indian, Satyendra Nath Tagore, had ever before qualified for the Indian Civil Service. Romesh aimed to emulate Satyendranath Tagore's feat. For a long time, before and after 1853, the year the ICS examination was introduced in England, only British officers were appointed to covenanted posts. The 1860s saw the first attempts, largely successful, on the part of the Indians, and especially members of the Bengali intelligentsia, to occupy the superior official posts in India, until then completely dominated by the British. At University College London, Dutt continued to study British writers. He studied law at Middle Temple, London, was called to the bar, and qualified for the Indian Civil Service in the open examination in 1869, taking third place. Civil service Dutt entered the Indian Civil Service, or ICS, as an Assistant Magistrate of Alipur in 1871. His official career was a test and a proof of the liberal promise of equality to all her Majesty's subjects "irrespective of color and creed" in Queen Victoria's Proclamation of November 1, 1858, which often contrasted with an implicit distrust of Indians, especially from those in positions of authority within the elite colonial administrative system. A famine in Meherpur, District of Nadia in 1874 and another in Dakhin Shahbazpur (Bhola District) in 1876, followed by a disastrous cyclone, required emergency relief and economic recovery operations, which Dutt managed successfully. By December, 1882, Dutt achieved his appointment to the executive branch of the Service, the first Indian to achieve executive rank. He served as administrator for Backerganj, Mymensingh, Burdwan, Donapur, and Midnapore. He became Burdwan's District Officer in 1893, Commissioner of Burdwan Division in 1894, and Divisional Commissioner for Orissa in 1895. Dutt was the first Indian to attain the rank of divisional commissioner. As Dutt's biographer commented, "In the absence of even the rudiments of representative institutions entry into the higher Civil Services presented the only opportunity to an Indian to influence the government of his own country." He sat for a time in the Bengal Legislative Council. Although he won high praise for his administrative work, and the Companionship of the Indian Empire was awarded him in 1892, Dutt did not always agree with official views on the causes of poverty in India or on the problems of administration. As his official recommendations and reports reflected, Dutt was especially troubled by the lack of assured tenants' rights or rights of transfer for those who tilled the land. He considered the land taxes to be ruinous, a block to savings, and the source of famines. He also felt the effectiveness of administrators was limited by the absence of representative channels for the concerns of the population being governed. Dutt retired from the ICS as the Commissioner of Orissa in 1897 while only 49 years of age. Retirement freed him to enter public life and pursue writing. After retirement in 1898 he returned to England as a Lecturer in Indian History at University College, London where he completed his famous thesis on economic nationalism. He spent the next six years in London before returning once again to India as Dewan of Baroda state, a post he had been offered before he left for Britain. He was extremely popular in Baroda where the Maharaja, Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III and his family members and all other staff used to call him the Babu Dewan, as a mark of personal respect. He also became a member of the Royal Commission on Indian Decentralisation in 1907. While still in office, he died in Baroda at the age of 61 on November 30, 1909. Politics He was active in moderate nationalist politics and was an active Congressman in that party's initial phase.He was president of the Indian National Congress in 1899. Literature Bengali culture Dutt served as the first president of Bangiya Sahitya Parishad in 1894, while Rabindranath Tagore and Navinchandra Sen were the vice-presidents of the society. This was the society founded by L. Leotard and Kshetrapal Chakraborty in 1893 to cultivate Bengali literature. Enriched by contributions from Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and others, its collections include over 150,000 books and important Bengali and Sanskrit manuscripts and cultural artifacts, including the only manuscript of Shrikrsnakirtana. Dutt's The Literature of Bengal presented "a connected story of literary and intellectual progress in Bengal" over eight centuries, commencing with the early Sanskrit poetry of Jayadeva. It traced Chaitanya's religious reforms of the sixteenth century, Raghunatha Siromani's school of formal logic, and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar's brilliance, coming down to the intellectual progress of the nineteenth century. This was presented by Thacker, Spink & Co. in Calcutta and Archibald Constable in London in 1895, but it had formed in Dutt's mind while he managed famine relief and economic recovery operations in Dakhin Shahbazpur and originally appeared under the disguise of an assumed name in 1877. It was dedicated to his esteemed uncle, Rai Shashi Chandra Dutt Bahadur. Dutt considered Ram Mohan Roy, the religious reformer of Bengal, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and Akshay Kumar Datta to be the founders of Bengali prose literature. History Poverty and low wages were among the indirect products of colonial rule. Romesh Dutt traced a decline in standards of living to the nineteenth-century deindustrialization of the subcontinent and the narrowing of sources of wealth which followed: India in the eighteenth century was a great manufacturing as well as great agricultural country, and the products of the Indian loom supplied the markets of Asia and of Europe. It is, unfortunately, true that the East Indian Company and the British Parliament ... discouraged Indian manufactures in the early years of British rule in order to encourage the rising manufactures of England . millions of Indian artisans lost their earnings; the population of India lost one great source of their wealth. Radhakamal Mukerjee and Romesh Dutt directed attention to the deepening internal differentiation of Indian society appearing in the abrupt articulation of local economies with the world market, accelerated urban-rural polarization, the division between intellectual and manual labor, and the toll of recurrent devastating famines. Ramesh Chandra Majumdar Ramesh Chandra Majumdar (December 4, 1888 – February 12, 1980) was an Indian historian of great repute. He is sometimes called "the dean of Indian historians" for his colossal contribution to the study of Indian history. Early life and education Born at Khandapara, in Faridpur District (now in Bangladesh) on 4 December 1888, to Haladhar Majumdar and Vidhumukhi , Majumdar passed his childhood in poverty. In 1905, he passed his Entrance Examination from Ravenshaw College, Cuttack. In 1907, he passed F.A. with first class scholarship from Ripon College (now Surendranath College) and joined Presidency College, Calcutta. Graduating in B.A.(Honours) in 1909 and MA from Calcutta University in 1911, he won the Premchand-Roychand scholarship from the University of Calcutta for his research work in 1913. Career He started his teaching career as a Lecturer at Dacca Government Training College. Since 1914, he spent seven years as a professor of history at the University of Calcutta. He got his doctorate for his thesis "Corporate Life in Ancient India". In 1921 he joined the newly established Dacca University as Professor of History. He also served, until he became its Vice Chancellor, as the Head of the Department of History as well as as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts. Between 1924 and 1936 he was Provost of Jagannath Hall. Then he became the Vice Chancellor of that University, for five years from 1937 to 1942. From 1950, he was Principal of the College of Indology, Benares Hindu University. He was elected the General President of the Indian History Congress and also became the Vice President of the International Commission set up by the UNESCO for the history of mankind. Works He started his research on ancient India. After extensive travels to Southeast Asia and research, he wrote detailed histories of Champa (1927), Suvarnadvipa (1929) and Kambuja Desa. On the initiative of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, he took up the mantle of editing a multi- volume tome on Indian History. Starting in 1951, he toiled for twenty six long years to describe the history of the Indian people from the Vedic Period to the present day in eleven volumes.