Romesh Chunder Dutt (1848-1909)

Romesh Chunder Dutt, CIE (Calcutta August 13, 1848 — Baroda November 30, 1909), or R. C. Dutt, was a Bengali writer, civil servant, economic historian, and translator of Ramayana and Mahabharata. He was president of the Indian National Congress in 1899. The Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire is an order of chivalry founded by Victoria in 1877. ... This article is on Calcutta/Kolkata, the city. ... Year 1848 (MDCCCXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a leap year starting on Monday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... Vadodara, also known as Baroda, is the third-most populated town in Gujarat after Ahmedabad and Surat (the three towns with a population of over 1 million in Gujarat). ... Year 1909 (MCMIX) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... The Bengali people are the ethnic community from Bengal (divided between India and Bangladesh) on the Indian subcontinent with a history dating back four millennia. ... The term writer can apply to anyone who creates a written work, but the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Economic history is the study of economic change, and of economic phenomena in the past. ... For the television series by Ramanand Sagar, see Ramayan (TV series). ... Mahabharat redirects here. ... Indian National Congress (also known as the Congress Party or Congress (I), abbreviated INC) is a major political party in India. ... Year 1899 (MDCCCXCIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar). ...

Early career

Dutt was born August 13, 1848 into a Kayasth Bengali family distinguished for literary and academic achievements. His parents were Thakamani and Isam Chunder Dutt. His father, Isam, was a Deputy Collector of Bengal, whom Romesh accompanied on official duties. He was educated in Bengali District schools, then at Hare School, founded by the philanthropist, David Hare, in Kolkata. Romesh's uncle, Shoshee Chunde Dutt, an accomplished writer, became his guardian in 1861. "He used to sit at night with us and our favorite study used to be pieces from the works of the English poets."^[1] He entered perhaps the best school in Bengal, 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 left for England in 1868. Only one Indian, Satyendra Nath Tagore, had ever before qualified for the Indian Civil Service, but that was Romesh's objective. Kayastha or Kayasth is a caste in South Asia, they are placed outside the four Varnas or main castes. ... The District Collector is a Central Indian Government appointee who is in charge of the governance of a district in a state. ... Bengali or Bangla (বাংলা, IPA: ) is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from Prakrit, Pāli and Sanskrit. ... 2006 Saraswati Puja at Hare School Hare School is the oldest existing school in Kolkata, currently teaching grades 1 to 12 under the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education and the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education. ... A statue of David Hare kept at Hare School David Hare (1775-1842) was a Scottish watchmaker and philanthropist in Bengal. ...   (IPA: [] Bengali: কলকাতা) (formerly  ) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. ... Formally established on the 24 January 1857, the University of Calcutta (also known as Calcutta University) (Bengali: কলকাতা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়), located in the city of Kolkata (previously Calcutta), India, is the first modern university in the Indian subcontinent. ... Presidency College, Kolkata is one of the leading Indian institutions for undergraduate studies in the liberal arts. ... Satyendranath Tagore was the first Indian to join the Indian Civil Service. ... Indian Civil Service, popularly known by its acronym ICS, was the elite civil service of the Indian Government. ...

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.^[2] The Front Quad University College London, commonly known as UCL, is one of the colleges that make up the University of London. ... Part of Middle Temple c. ...

Civil Service

In 1871 Dutt entered the Indian Civil Service, or ICS, as an Assistant Magistrate of Alipur. 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^[3], 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. Meherpur (Bangla: ????????) is a district in Western Bangladesh. ... Year 1874 (MDCCCLXXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link with display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... Bhola is a district in south-western Bangladesh. ... 1876 (MDCCCLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ... Year 1882 (MDCCCLXXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar. ... Mymensingh is one of the districts of Dhaka division, Bangladesh, and is bordered on the north by Meghalaya state of India and Garo Hills, on the south by Gazipur district, on the east by districts of Netrokona and Kishoreganj, and on the west by districts of Sherpur, Jamalpur and Tangail. ... Bardhaman is a district town in West Bengal. ... Danapur is a satellite town of Patna in Bihar province of India on the right bank of the Ganges. ... Midnapore (also written as Medinipur and Midnapur. ... Orissa   (Devanagari: उड़ीसा) is a state situated in the east coast of India. ...

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."^[4] 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,^[5] Dutt did not always agree with official views on the causes of poverty in India or on the problems of administration. The Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire is an order of chivalry founded by Victoria in 1877. ...

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. He 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.

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.^[6]

Radhakamal Mukherjee 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.^[7] A famine is a social and economic crisis that is commonly accompanied by widespread malnutrition, starvation, epidemic and increased mortality. ...

Dutt was appointed a Lecturer in Indian History in the University of London in 1898, shortly after his retirement from the Civil Service. However, he returned to India in 1904 to become Revenue Minister for the state of Baroda for three years. He came back to India again in 1908 as a member of the Decentralisation Commission.^[8] The University of London is a university based primarily in London. ... Vadodara, also known as Baroda, is the third-most populated town in Gujarat after Ahmedabad and Surat (the three towns with a population of over 1 million in Gujarat). ...

See also

• Bengal Renaissance

The Bengal Renaissance refers to a social reform movement during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the region of Bengal in undivided India during the period of British rule. ...

Works

• Three Years in Europe (1872)
• The Peasantry of Bangal, being a View of their Condition under the Hindu, the Mahomedan, and the English Rule, and a Consideration of the Means Calculated to Improve their Future Prospects, Calcutta, Thacker, Spink; London: Trübner (1874); ed. Narahari Kaviraj, Calcutta, Manisha (1980)
• The Literature of Bengal: a Biographical and Critical History from the Earliest Times, Closing with a Review of Intellectual Progress under British Rule in India. (1877); Calcutta, T. Spink (1895); 3rd ed., Cultural Heritage of Bengal Calcutta, Punthi Pustak (1962).
• Mādhabī kaṅkaṇa in Bengali (1879)
• Rajput jivan sandhya (1879); The Last of the Rajputs: A Tale of Rajput Courage and Chivalry, tr. Ajoy C. Dutt. Allahabad, Kitabistan [1943] The story of Maharana Pratap Singh.
• Rig Veda translation into Bengali (1885): R̥gveda saṃhitā / Rameśacandra Dattera anubāda abalambane ; bhūmikā, Hiraṇmaẏa Bandyopādhyāẏa, Kalakātā , Harapha (1976).
• Hinduśāstra : naẏa khaṇḍa ekatre eka khaṇḍe / Rameśacandra Datta sampādita, Kalikātā, Satyayantre Mudrita, 1300; Niu Lāiṭa, 1401 [1994].
• A History of Civilization in Ancient India, Based on Sanscrit Literature. 3 vols. Thacker, Spink and Co.; Trübner and Co., Calcutta-London (1890) Reprinted, Elibron Classics (2001).
• A Brief History of Bengal, S.K. Lahiri (1893).
• Lays of Ancient India: Selections from Indian Poetry Rendered into English Verse. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner (1894); Rupa (2002). ISBN 8171678882
• Reminiscences of a Workman's Life: verses Calcutta, Elen Press, for private circulation only (1896); Calcutta: n.p. (1956).
• England and India: a record of progress during a hundred years, 1785-1885 (1897); New Delhi, India : Mudgal Publications, 1985.
• Shivaji; or the morning of Maratha life, tr. by Krishnalal Mohanlal Jhaveri. Ahmedabad, M. N. Banavatty (1899). Also: tr. by Ajoy C. Dutt. Allahabad, Kitabistan (1944).
• The Ramayana and the Mahabharata condensed into English Verse (1899) at Internet Sacred Texts Archive. Also, Everyman’s Library, New York, Dutton (1929).
• Open Letters to Lord Curzon on Famines and Land Assessments in India, London, Trübner (1900) 2005 ed. Adamant Media Corporation, Elibron Classics Series, ISBN 1-4021-5115-2.
• The lake of palms. A story of Indian domestic life (1902).
• The Economic History of India Under Early British Rule. From the Rise of the British Power in 1757 to the Accession of Queen Victoria in 1837. Vol. I. London, Kegan Paul, Trench Trübner (1902) 2001 edition by Routledge, ISBN 0-415-24493-5. On line, McMaster ISBN 8185418012
• The Economic History of India in the Victorian Age. From the Accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the Commencement of the Twentieth Century, Vol.II. London, Kegan Paul, Trench Trübner (1904) On line. McMaster ISBN 8185418012
• Indian poetry. Selected and Rendered into English by R.C. Dutt London: J. M. Dent (1905).
• The Slave Girl of Agra: An Indian Historical Romance, Based on Madhavikankan. London: T.F. Unwin (1909); Calcutta, Dasgupta (1922).
• Maha-bharata, The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse Project Gutenberg, on line.
• Pratap Singh: the Last of the Rajputs, tr. by Ajoy Chandra Dutt. Calcutta: Elm Press (1943); Allahabad, Kitabistan, [1963]
• Sachitra Guljarnagar, tr. by Satyabrata Dutta. Calcutta, Firma KLM (1990)

Maharana Pratap (1542-1597) was a ruler of Mewar, a state in north-western India. ...

References

External Links

• J. K. Ratcliffe "A Note on the Late Romesh C. Dutt", The Ramayana and the Mahabharata condensed into English Verse (1899) at Internet Sacred Texts Archive
• J. N. Gupta, Life and Works of Romesh Chunder Dutt", (1911) Digital Library of India, Bangalore, barcode 2990100070832 On line.
• R. C. [Rabindra Chandra Dutt, Romesh Chunder Dutt, (1968) Internet Archive, Million Books Project]
• "Selected Poetry of Romesh Chunder Dutt (1848-1909)," Representative Poetry Online, University of Toronto (2002) On line.
• M Mofakharul Islam, "Dutt, Romesh Chunder", Banglapedia.com
• Bhabatosh Datta, "Romesh Chunder Dutt", Congress Sandesh, n.d.
• Shanti S. Tangri, "Intellectuals and Society in Nineteenth-Century India", Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Jul., 1961), pp. 368-394.
• Pauline Rule, The Pursuit of Progress: A Study of the Intellectual Development of Romesh Chunder Dutt, 1848-1888 Editions Indian (1977)