ICS

Oriental Club

About: 

The Oriental Club began on 24 February 1824, following a proposal by Major-General Sir John Malcolm. A committee was established with the Duke of Wellington as President. On 8 July 1824 the Club was opened to members at 16 Lower Grosvenor Street, London.

The original primary qualifications for membership of The Oriental Club ‘were to be present or previous residence, or employment present or previous either in the King’s or East India Company’s service, in any part of the East; membership of the Royal Asiatic Society; or any official connection with the administration of this country’s Eastern Governments abroad or at home. Members of the Bengal, Madras, Bombay, India, and China Clubs were invited to join the Oriental; and all persons who had travelled in the East were declared eligible.’ (Wheeler, p. vii) Indeed, the Oriental Club’s very roots were to be found in the Royal Asiatic Society’s house in Grafton Street, where Sir John Malcolm first proposed the formation of the club, and members of the Asiatic were invited to join the newer organization. Members of the Alfred Club were also invited to join the Oriental after the dissolution of the former in 1854.

The majority of members in the Club’s first decades were members of the East India Company. The Club also boasted the membership of Governors-General, Governors, Lieutenant-Governors, and later Viceroys of India. Membership was originally restricted to men; in 2009 the website states: ‘Whilst the Club has maintained its tradition as a Gentlemen's Club, associate membership is encouraged for wives, unmarried sisters and unmarried daughters of members’ (www.orientalclub.org.uk, accessed August 2009). Indeed until 1937, women were wholly excluded on Thursdays. In the early 1950s the Club faced financial ruin as membership fell; an extraordinary general meeting rejected a suggestion to go into liquidation, and the Club instead embarked on a recruitment drive. The move to Stratford House ten years later reinvigorated the club, whose primary function has been social rather than political. The Club’s symbol is an Indian elephant.

Non-British subjects could be granted honorary member status from 1831. Throughout the nineteenth century they included the likes of Oman Effendi (1831), The Prince of Oudh (1839), Dwarkanath Tagore and Mohun Lal (1842), H. H. Maharaja Duleep Singh, son of Ranjit Singh, ruler of Punjab (1854), Sir Cursetjee Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy (1860), H. E. Nazim Bey, Prime Minister of Turkey (1862), and Nawab Nazim of Bengal (1869).

Published works: 

Riches, Hugh, A History of the Oriental Club (London: The Oriental Club, 1998)

Website of Oriental Club: http://www.orientalclub.org.uk/
 

Example: 

Alexander F. Baille., The Oriental Club and Hanover Square (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1901), p. 282

 

Secondary works: 

Baille, Alexander F., The Oriental Club and Hanover Square (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1901)

Forrest, Denys, The Oriental: Life Story of a West End Club (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1968)

Wheeler, Stephen, Annals of the Oriental Club, 1824-1858 (printed for private circulation, London: Arden Press, 1925)

Content: 

From the founding prospectus on the purpose of the Club.

Date began: 
24 Feb 1824
Extract: 

The objects of the establishment are – First, to give to persons who have been long resident abroad the means of entering, on their return, into a society where they will not only associate daily with those they have known before, but have an opportunity of forming acquaintance and connections in their own country; secondly, to give to those who have resided or served abroad the easy means of meeting old friends, and of keeping up their knowledge of the actual state of our Eastern Empire, by personal intercourse and friendship with those recently returned from scenes in which they have once acted; thirdly, giving to all persons who are solicitous of information regarding the past and present condition of the East, to those who are officially connected with our Governments abroad, and to all persons who are desirous of improving their knowledge and strengthening their personal ties with that quarter, additional means of accomplishing these ends.

Key Individuals' Details: 

Lord William Bentinck (founder member), Sir John Malcolm (founder member), Duke of Wellington (first (and only) Honorary President).
 

Connections: 

Lord Curzon, Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, Mohun Lal (Secretary to Sir Alexander Burnes, honorary member, 1842), Lord Metcalfe (member), Prince of Oudh (honorary member, 1839), H. H. Prince Ranjitsinhji (honorary member), H. H. Maharaja Duleep Singh (honorary member, 1854 and subscriber from 1858), Dwarkanath Tagore (honorary member, 1842).

Archive source: 

LMA/4452, London Metropolitan Archives

Location

18 Hanover Square
London, W1S 1HP
United Kingdom

Indian Institute

About: 

In 1875, the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford, Monier Monier-Williams, put to Congregation the proposal to found an Indian Institute in Oxford. This Institute would provide a centre for study for Indian Civil Service (ICS) probationers and Indian students with a comprehensive collection of books and newspapers, and house a museum of Indian objects. In 1875 and 1876, Monier-Williams travelled to India to secure support, items and money for the Indian Institute. Benjamin Jowett was particularly supportive of the Indian Institute. Though there had been plans to house the Institute as part of Balliol College, it was deemed prudent to make it a University institution. With debates over where to house the Institute, it was initially housed in rooms on Broad Street, opposite to Balliol College, until the foundation stone was laid by the Prince of Wales on 2 May 1883. The site for the Institute was on the corner of Broad Street and Holywell Street, next to Hertford College on Catte Street. An opening ceremony took place on 14 October 1884. Subscriptions for the Institute had come from Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales and a number of Indian Princes.

The building work took a further thirteen years to complete and the Institute was opened in 1896 by Lord George Hamilton, Secretary of State for India. The museum component of the Institute was perhaps the most difficult to incorporate into the vision of the building, with a number of stuffed animals that decayed and were destroyed. The Ashmolean Museum took the various fine art objects in the collection, and then the library came under the control of the Bodleian in 1927. The Institute was beset by financial difficulties and a lack of continuity in its librarians in its early years. The academic programme became stagnated, with a strong focus on the ICS and a decline in interest in Sanskrit. Indian students began to see it as an ICS enclave. In 1909, Lord Curzon, Chancellor of the University, observed how the Institute was in decline and disuse; by the 1930s, the decline was more apparent despite the efforts of Lord Lothian, Secratary of the Rhodes Trust, to revive the Institute. Lord Lothian suggested that Edward Thompson use the Indian Institute as a base to revitalize Indian studies at Oxford and initiate prizes and fellowships for Indians, but Thompson believed the Indian Institute was beyond redemption. Although the library was popular and extremely well-stocked, there were not enough students enrolled in Indian studies to give the Institute a sense of purpose.

ICS probationers ceased to go to Oxford from 1939. ICS courses ended just before India's independence of 1947. In 1965, the University Council proposed to house their administrative offices in the building and move the Indian Institute's holdings to the Bodleian. These proposals caused a great deal of controversy and vocal opposition from those within the University and from India. However, eventually, the Indian Institute Library was rehoused in the roof of the New Bodleian Library in 1968. The University took over the building of the Indian Institute to house their administrative offices, but then decided to house them elsewhere. The building was then used to house the Modern History Faculty and its library. It has since become the Centre for Twenty-First Century Studies.

Published works: 

A Record of the Establishment of the Indian Institute in the University of Oxford: Being an Account of the Circumstances which led to its Foundation (Oxford: Compiled for the Subscribers to the Indian Institute Fund, 1897)

Secondary works: 

Symonds, Richard, Oxford and Empire: The Last Lost Cause? (New York: St Martins Press, 1986)

Date began: 
02 May 1883
Connections: 

Benjamin Jowett, Shyamaji Krishnavarma (Monier-Williams' assistant at the time of the foundation of the Institute), Max Müller (Monier-Williams' rival and opposer to the Institute), Sir Bhagvat Sinhjee, Thakur of Gondal (helped finance the renewal of the lease in 1892), Edward Thompson (Bengali lecturer at Oxford in the 1930s who believed the Institute was too rundown to save).

Archive source: 

The Oxford Chronicle and Berks and Bucks Gazette, 5 May 1883

The Times

Indian Institute Archives, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Monier Monier Williams, 'Notes of a long life's journey', unpublished memoir, Indian Institute Library, Oxford

Pictures, Oxfordshire County Council

Evison, Gillian, 'The Orientalist, his Institute and the Empire: the rise and subsequent decline of Oxford University's Indian Institute', unpublished paper, December 2004.

Oxfordshire History Page: http://www.headington.org.uk/oxon/broad/buildings/east/old_indian_institute/index.htm

Location

OX1 3BD
United Kingdom
Tags for Making Britain: 

Benjamin Jowett

About: 

Benjamin Jowett was Master of Balliol College, Oxford, from 1870 to 1893. He had been Regius Professor of Greek from 1855 and was made Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1882. While Jowett was Master of Balliol, forty-nine Indians were at the university, and twenty-two of those at Balliol. Jowett had the reputation of attracting students from all over the world. He was particularly concerned with university reform and was consulted on reforms to the Indian Civil Service. Jowett saw three successive viceroys of India come through Balliol (Lansdowne, Elgin, Curzon), and many young men undertook their probationary training for the ICS at Balliol. As Vice-Chancellor, Jowett opened the Indian Institute in Oxford on 14 October 1884.

Jowett notably befriended Cornelia Sorabji, sister of Richard Sorabji who was at Balliol 1890-3. Cornelia Sorabji studed law at Somerville College, 1889-93, and was the first woman to study law at Oxford. Jowett introduced Sorabji to leading contemporary figures in politics, law, social service, and literature while she was at Oxford. 

Date of birth: 
15 Apr 1817
Secondary works: 

Abbott, Evelyn and Campbell, Lewis, Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett (London: John Murray, 1897)

Brown, Judith M., Windows into the Past: Life Histories and the Historian of South Asia (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009)

Faber, G. C., Jowett: A Portrait with a Background (London: Faber, 1958)

Hinchliff, Peter, Benjamin Jowett and the Christian Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987)

Hinchliff, Peter and Prest, John, ‘Jowett, Benjamin (1817–1893)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2006) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15143]

Jones, John, Balliol College: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, 2nd edition 1997)

Quinn, Vincent and Prest, John, Dear Miss Nightingale: A Selection of Benjamin Jowett's Letters to Florence Nightingale 1860-1893 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987)

Sorabji, Cornelia, India Calling (London: Nisbet & Co., 1934)

Symonds, Richard, Oxford and Empire: The Last Lost Cause? (New York: St Martins Press, 1986)

Archive source: 

Letters regarding Indians, the ICS and Sorabji, Balliol College Archives, Oxford

Mss Eur F165, letters to Cornelia Sorabji, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Mss Eur F111-112, letters to Curzon, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Other letters, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Other letters, British Library Manuscript Collection, St Pancras

City of birth: 
Camberwell, London
Country of birth: 
England
Date of death: 
01 Oct 1893
Location of death: 
Hampshire, England
Tags for Making Britain: 

Subhas Chandra Bose

About: 

Having been schooled in Cuttack, Orissa, where his father worked as a lawyer, Subhas Chandra Bose went to Calcutta in 1913 and joined Presidency College. In 1916, Bose was expelled for his complicity in beating a college tutor, Professor Oaten, whom he had heard had manhandled some Indian students. Bose had been involved in student political groups in Calcutta and received much sympathy for his expulsion. He joined Scottish Church College and graduated in 1919 with a degree in philosophy.

Bose's father proposed to send him to England to study for the Indian Civil Service (ICS). Despite Bose's misgivings about accepting a job under the British Government, he set sail for England in September 1919. Upon arriving in Britain, Bose went up to Cambridge to gain admission. He managed to gain entry to Fitzwilliam Hall, a body for non-collegiate members of the University. Bose took the Mental and Moral Sciences Tripos and studied for the Civil Service exams. He attended the Cambridge Union Society debates and was a member of the Cambridge Majlis. He gave evidence to the Lytton Committee investigating Indian students in the UK, and appealed to the India Office to allow Indians to join the University Officers' Training Corps (without success).

In July 1920, Bose took the ICS exams in London and came fourth. Bose then faced a dilemma as to whether to take up this opportunity and sought advice from his family through correspondence to India. Finally in April 1921, Bose withdrew from taking up this post with the ICS and returned to India in the summer of 1921.

In Calcutta, Bose joined the Indian National Congress and worked with the Bengali leader C. R. Das. Bose was in and out of jail in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s for his political action (often violent) against the British. In the meantime, he rose through the Congress ranks, working with Nehru, and became president of Congress in 1938. Successful again in 1939 against Gandhi's candidate, Bose then resigned over the selection of the working committee.

In 1941, Bose managed to leave India through Afghanistan. In 1943, Bose was in Japan and supported the Prime Minister's efforts to reconstitute the Indian National Army (INA) and set up the 'Azad Hind' or Free India provisional government. In 1944, the INA and Japanese invaded India but suffered a heavy defeat. Bose fled and was killed in a plane crash over Taiwan in August 1945 - although many of his followers remain(ed) doubtful as to the cause of his death, wondering if he had managed to escape the crash.

Published works: 

The Indian Struggle, 1920-1934 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1935)

Other works, unpublished in his lifetime, can be found in the Collected Works published by the Netaji Research Bureau (see below)

Example: 

Subhas Chandra Bose, An Indian Pilgrim (1937), ed. by Sisir K. Bose and Sugata Bose (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 207.

Date of birth: 
23 Jan 1897
Content: 

Letter to his brother, Sarat Chandra Bose, on 22 September 1920, from Leigh-on-Sea when on holiday.

Connections: 

Amiya Nath Bose (nephew), Sarat Chandra Bose (brother), K. L. Gauba (contemporary at Cambridge), George Lansbury, Dilip Kumar Roy (contemporary at Cambridge).

Indian National Army

Reviews: 

Daily Herald (The Indian Struggle, 1935)

Manchester Guardian (The Indian Struggle, 1935)

News Chronicle (The Indian Struggle, 1935)

Spectator (The Indian Struggle, 1935)

The Sunday Times (The Indian Struggle, 1935)

Extract: 

I am here as a paying guest of Mr Bates's family. Mr Bates represents English character at its very best. He is cultured and liberal in his views and cosmopolitan in his sentiments. He is altogether unlike the ordinary run of Englishmen - who are proud, haughty and conceited and to whom everything that is non-English is bad. Mr Bates counts among his friends Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Irishmen and members of other nationalities. He takes a great interest in Russian, Irish and Indian literature and admires the writings of Romesh Dutt and Tagore.

Secondary works: 

Bose, Sisir K., and Bose, Sugata (eds), Netaji: Collected Works (Calcutta: Netaji Research Bureau, 1980-2007)

Gordon, Leonard A., Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990)

Gordon, Leonard A., ‘Bose, Subhas Chandra (1897–1945)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47756]

Roy, Dilip Kumar, The Subhas I Knew (Bombay: Nalanda, 1946)

Toye, Hugh, The Springing Tiger: A Study of a Revolutionary (London: Cassell, 1959)

Relevance: 

In this letter Bose is referring to the different types of Englishmen he has met in his time in Britain. He is particularly appreciative of Mr Bates's character. The references to Dutt and Tagore also reveal how Indian literature had been taken into the homes of many English households.

Archive source: 

Netaji Research Bureau, Kolkata

Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi

City of birth: 
Cuttack, Orissa
Country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Netaji

Location

Fitzwilliam Hall,
Turpington Street
Cambridge, CB2 1RB
United Kingdom
52° 12' 1.6632" N, 0° 7' 10.6284" E
Date of death: 
18 Aug 1945
Precise date of death unknown: 
Y
Location of death: 
Taiwan
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
25 Oct 1919
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1919-21

Location: 

Fitzwilliam Hall, Trumpington Street, Cambridge

Tags for Making Britain: 

Surendranath Banerjea

About: 

Surendranath Banerjea was born in 1848 in Calcutta. From childhood, his father had planned to send Banerjea to England to complete his education, and on 3 March 1868, Banerjea set sail for England with Romesh Chunder Dutt and Behari Lal Gupta. All three had made the arrangements in secret - Banerjea's mother was not aware of his trip until the day before. At Southampton they were met by W. C. Bonnnerjee and taken to London.

All three competed in the Indian Civil Service open exams. Banerjea passed in 1869, but was disqualified over a mix-up over his age. Although Banerjea was 21 (the maximum age to compete for the ICS exam), his matriculation certificate has used the Indian measure of age (where someone is aged 1 from birth) and so the examiners believed he was 22. Banerjea took the matter to court and eventually won his case in 1870. During his time in London, Banerjea also attended classes at University College, London. He took his final exams in 1871 and returned to India in August 1871.

Banerjea was posted to Sylhet as an Assistant Magistrate but, not long after, was sacked over a clerical error. In 1874, Banerjea returned to London and became a student at the Middle Temple. However, because of his dismissal from the Civil Service, the benchers declined to call him to the Bar and he returned again to India in 1875. Banerjea took up a number of posts teaching English and became more politically active. In 1875, he formed the British Indian Association, which was seen as a prototype nationalist organization. He campaigned against the Ilbert Bill and became a member of the Indian National Congress soon after its formation in 1885. He was vocal in opposition to the partition of Bengal in 1905. In 1879, he became the proprieter and editor of The Bengalee.

In 1909, Banerjea visited London again to attend the Imperial Press Conference. He was in the city when Madan Lal Dhingra assassinated Curzon-Wyllie. Banerjea sent an open letter condemning Dhingra's actions to the press. Banerjea became more moderate in his political sensibilities as time progressed. He left Congress following the 1919 Montagu-Chelmsford reforms because he supported the reforms as opposed to Gandhi's non-cooperation. He accepted a knighthood from the British in 1919.

Published works: 

A Nation in the Making: Being the Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Public Life (London: Oxford University Press, 1925)

Speeches and Writings of Hon. Surendranath Banerjea (selected by himself) (Madras: G. A. Natesan & Co., 1918)

Date of birth: 
10 Nov 1848
Connections: 

W. C. Bonnerjee, Ananda Mohun Bose, Romesh Chunder Dutt, Dr Theodore Goldstrucker (Professor of Sanskrit at UCL), Bihari Lal Gupta, Henry Morley (Professor of English Literature at UCL), Keshub Chunder Sen, Marquess of Zetland.

 

Contributions to periodicals: 

The Bengalee

Secondary works: 

Bagchee, M., Rashtraguru Surendranatha (Calcutta, [1963])

Bakshi, S. R., Surendranath Banerjea (New Delhi: Anmol, 1997)

Banerjee, Bani, Surendranath Banerjea and the History of Modern India, 1848-1925 (New Delhi: Metropolitan, 1979)

Bose, S. K., Surendranath Banerjea (Delhi: Government of India, 1968)

Kedourie, Elie, Nationalism in Asia and Africa (New York: World Publishing Co., 1970)

Raychaudhuri, Tapan, ‘Banerjea [Bandyopadhyay], Sir Surendranath (1848–1925)’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47669]

Sengupta, S and Basu, A., (eds), Samsada Banali caritabhidhana (Calcutta, 1976)

Archive source: 

National Archives of India, Delhi

Home Department Records, Government of Bengal, West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata

L/PJ/6/100, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

City of birth: 
Calcutta
Country of birth: 
India
Current name city of birth: 
Kolkata
Current name country of birth: 
India

Location

Kentish Town NW5 1PR
United Kingdom
51° 33' 1.5084" N, 0° 8' 12.2244" W
Date of death: 
06 Aug 1925
Location of death: 
Calcutta, India
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1868
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1868-71, 1874-5, 1909

Location: 

Hampstead (with family of Talfourd Ely, Latin teacher at UCL)

Barnard Street, London (boarding house)

Kentish Town (1874-5)

Tags for Making Britain: 

K. P. S. Menon

About: 

K. P. S. Menon joined Oxford after the end of the First World War. He was President of the Oxford Majlis for a term in 1920. 

Menon served in the Madras ICS until 1924 when he was transferred to the Foreign and Political Department as Under-Secretary to the Resident of Hyderabad. In 1939, he was appointed as Chief Minister of Bharatpur, then Ambassador to China after independence, Foreign Secretary from 1948 to 1952 and then Ambassador to Moscow.

Published works: 

Many Worlds: An Autobiography (London: Oxford University Press, 1965)

Connections: 
Archive source: 

Papers, Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi

L/P&J/12/115 (secret files on Menon and Kirpalani), Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Location

OX2 6QD
United Kingdom
51° 47' 13.6464" N, 1° 17' 24.6012" W
Tags for Making Britain: 

N. B. Bonarjee

About: 

N. B. Bonarjee was born in 1901 in Lucknow. His grandfather had converted to Christianity in 1847, and his father had travelled to London in 1885 to compete unsuccessfully for the Indian Civil Service. In 1904, Bonarjee's family went to England. His father entered Lincoln's Inn and his mother became honorary secretary of the Indian Women's Education Association in London. In 1910, Bonarjee joined Dulwich Prepatory School and his parents returned to India leaving their children in the care of guardians. His elder brother and sister attended the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, but Bonarjee joined Hertford College, Oxford in 1919. He was a member of the college Rugby XV and took up ballroom dancing. He obtained his history degree in 1922 and then became a temporary schoolmaster at Dulwich for a year.

In 1924, he took the ICS exams and returned to India in 1924 (after twenty years in England) as an ICS man. He was initially posted in U.P. and rose through the ranks to become District Magistrate in Meerut in the 1940s. He took up a number of key government posts and was Chief Minister of UP at Indian independence. After independence, he was Chief Commissioner of Bhopal, the last of the princely states, for a year.

In his autobiography, Under Two Masters, published in 1970, Bonarjee talks about the prejudices he faced as a child, and his experiences upon returning to India after so many years in Britain.

Published works: 

Under Two Masters (London: Oxford University Press, 1970)

Example: 

From Mss Eur T81/2, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library

Date of birth: 
10 Mar 1901
Content: 

In an interview in the 1970s, Bonarjee remembers the prejudices he faced at Oxford where Indian students were known as WOGs - Westernized Oriental Gentlemen.

Connections: 

W. C. Bonnerjee (father's first cousin), Liaquat Ali Khan (contemporaries at Oxford), K. P. S. Menon.

Extract: 

I know we were known as WOGs. Nobody said 'you're a bloody WOG' or anything... well they might have... but we were known as WOGs.

Secondary works: 

Lahiri, Shompa, Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880-1939 (London: Frank Cass, 2000)

Mukherjee, Sumita, Nationalism, Education and Migrant Identities; The England-Returned (London: Routledge, 2010)

Wainwright, A. Martin, The 'Better Class' of Indians: Social Rank, Imperial Identity, and South Asians in Britain, 1858-1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008)

Archive source: 

Mss Eur T81/2, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Papers, Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi

Photo, Dulwich College Archive, London

City of birth: 
Lucknow
Country of birth: 
India

Locations

Dulwich Prep School SE21 7AA
United Kingdom
51° 26' 38.6052" N, 0° 4' 44.5512" W
Hertford College OX1 3BW
United Kingdom
51° 43' 26.2992" N, 1° 16' 30.414" W
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1904
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Tags for Making Britain: 

R. C. Dutt

About: 

Romesh Chunder Dutt was the son of Ishanchandra and Thakamani Dutt. They were part of one of the Calcutta families who had prospered through their commercial associations with the British East India Company. In 1868, he left for Britain in secret in the company of two friends, Bihari Lal Gupta and Surendranath Banerjea. In London, Dutt secured admission to University College and sat for the Indian Civil Service examination in 1871. Dutt was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in the same year. He joined the Indian Civil Service as assistant magistrate and collector. In 1883 he was the first Indian to be appointed district magistrate and, after serving in many districts of Bengal, was appointed divisional commissioner, first in Burdwan and later in Orissa (1894–5).

When the premier literary association of Bengal, Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, was set up in 1894, Dutt was elected its first President. In 1899 Dutt was invited to preside over the fifteenth session of the Indian National Congress held at Lucknow, and in 1905 he presided over the industrial exhibition held in Benares in connection with the twenty-first session of the Congress. Dutt shared his time between London and India. In 1897, he was appointed Professor of Indian History at University College, London. From 1898, Dutt regularly wrote letters to the Editor of The Manchester Guardian on Indian matters, particularly famine and tariffs. A collection of these letters was published in 1900. Dutt also wrote a number of works on history, economics and translations of Indian Classics for the 'Temple Classics' series.

With Major B. D. Basu and Dadabhai Naoroji, Dutt formulated what is now recognized as the classic diagnosis of the Indian economic problem under colonial rule. It emphasized the ‘drainage of wealth’ from India through home charges payable to Britain and unrequited exports, the absence of protection for India's infant industries, and the negative implications of even constructive efforts like the railways, which deprived many providers of traditional transport services and facilitated the import of British manufactured goods.

Published works: 

Three Years in Europe, Being Extracts from Letters Sent from Europe. By a Hindu. Second Edition (Calcutta [printed], London, 1873)

Bangabijeta (1874)

Madhabikankan (1877)

Jibanprabhat (1878)

Jibansandhya (1879)

England and India (London: Chatto & Windus, 1897)

Maha-Bharata: The Epic of Ancient India, Condensed into English Verse by Romesh Dutt, C.I.E. With an Introduction by the Right Hon. F. Max Muller. Twelve Photogravures from Original Illustrations Designed from Indian Sources by E. S. Hardy (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1899)

The Civilization of India (London: Dent, 1900)

Famines and Land Assesments in India (London: Kegan Paul, 1900)

A School History of Modern and Ancient India (London: Macmillan, 1900)

Ramayana ... Condensed into English Verse by Romesh Dutt ... Illustrations Designed from Indian Sources by E. Stuart Hardy (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1900)

Land Problems in India. Papers by Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt, C.I.E., Dewan Bahadur R. Ragoonath Rao ... Also the Resolution of the Government of India and Summaries of the Views of Various Local Governments and Other Important Official Papers (Madras: G. A. Natesan & Co., 1903)

Civilisation in the Buddhist Age, B.C. 320 to A.D. 500 (Calcutta: Elm Press, 1908)

The Slave Girl of Agra: An Indian Historical Romance (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1909)

A History of Civilization in Ancient India, Based on Sanscrit Literature (Calcutta: Thacker, Vol. 1889-90), p.3

The Economic History of British India : A Record of Agriculture and Land Settlements, Trade and Manufacturing Industries, Finance and Administration, from the Rise of the British Power in 1757 to the Accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 (London: K. Paul, Trench, 1902)

The Literature of Bengal (Calcutta: Bose, 1877)

Lays of Ancient India: Selections from Indian Poetry Rendered into English Verse, Trubner's Oriental Series (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1894)

Rambles in India: During Twenty-Four Years, 1871 to 1895 (Calcutta: Lahiri, 1895)

Reminiscences of a Workman's Life (Calcutta: Elm Press, 1896)

India in the Victorian Age ([S.l.]: Kegan Paul, 1904)

Open Letters to Lord Curzon & Speeches and Papers (Delhi: Gian, 1986) [1904]

A Brief History of Ancient and Modern Bengal ... Sixth Edition, Revised (Calcutta: Elm Press, 1904)

Indian Poetry, Temple Classics ([S.l.]: [s.n.], 1905)

Economic History of India under Early English Rule ([S.l.]: K. Paul, 1906)

Peasantry of Bengal (Calcutta: Manisha Granthalaya, 1980) [1874]

Date of birth: 
13 Aug 1848
Connections: 

Surendranath Banerjea, Toru DuttAravinda Ackroyd Ghose, Dr Theodore Goldstrucker (Professor of Sanskrit at UCL), Bihari Lal Gupta, Henry Morley (English Literature Professor at UCL), Max Müller, Dadabhai Naoroji, Rabindranath Tagore (vice-president of Bangiya Sahitya Parishad while Dutt was president).

Contributions to periodicals: 

Asiatic Quarterly Review

Bengal Magazine

Mukherjee's Magazine

Letters to the Editor published in The Manchester Guardian

Secondary works: 

Bagchi, M., Rameshchandra (1962) [in Bengali]

Bandyopadhya, B., Rameshchandra Datta (1947) [in Bengali]

Banerjea, Surendranath, A Nation in Making, Being the Reminiscences of Fifty Years of Public Life ([S.l.]: Oxford University Press, 1925)

Gupta, J. N. B., and Maharaja of Baroda Sayaji Rao Gaekwar III, Life and Work of Romesh Chunder Dutt, C.I.E. ... With an Introduction by His Highness the Maharaja of Baroda. Four Photogravure Plates and Ten Other Illustrations (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1911)

Mukherjee, Meenakshi, An Indian for all Seasons: The Many Lives of R. C. Dutt (Delhi: Penguin, 2009)

Raychaudhuri, Tapan, 'Dutt, Romesh Chunder [Rameshchandra Datta] (1848–1909)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32943]

Rule, Pauline, The Pursuit of Progress: A Study of the Intellectual Development of Romesh Chunder Dutt, 1848-1888 (Calcutta: Editions Indian, 1977)

Archive source: 

Correspondence, National Archives of India, New Delhi

Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi

City of birth: 
Calcutta
Country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Romesh Chunder Dutt

Rameshchandra Dutt

Arcydae

Location

University College, London
Gower Street
London, WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom
51° 31' 29.856" N, 0° 8' 3.84" W
Date of death: 
30 Nov 1909
Location of death: 
Baroda, India
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1868
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1868-71, 1897-, 1906, 1908-9

Tags for Making Britain: 

Satyendranath Tagore

About: 

First Indian to enter the Indian Civil Service (ICS) through the competitive exams in London. Elder brother of Rabindranath Tagore (second son of Debendranath Tagore). Posted to the Bombay ICS, where he served his entire career from 1864 to 1897. His wife is said to have introduced/adapted the use of wearing a blouse with a sari for Bengali women.

Published works: 

The Autobiography of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, trans. by Satyendranath Tagore and Indira Devi (Calcutta: S. K. Lahiri, 1909)

Date of birth: 
01 Jun 1842
Connections: 

Mary Carpenter, Michael Madhusudan Dutt (lived together in London for a short while), Manomohun Ghose (barrister), Rabindranath Tagore.

Archive source: 

Rabindra Bhavan, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan

City of birth: 
Calcutta
Country of birth: 
India
Current name city of birth: 
Kolkata
Current name country of birth: 
India
Date of death: 
09 Jan 1923
Location of death: 
Calcutta, India
Tags for Making Britain: 
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