Romesh Chunder DuttCIE (
Bengali: রমেশচন্দ্র দত্ত; 13 August 1848 – 30 November 1909) was an Indian civil servant,
economic historian, translator of Ramayana and Mahabharata. He was one of the prominent proponents of Indian economic nationalism.[1]
Early life and education
Dutt was born into a distinguished Bengali Maulika Kayastha family. His parents were Thakamani and Isan Chunder Dutt, a Deputy Collector in Bengal, whom Romesh often accompanied on official duties. He was educated in various
Bengali District schools, then at
Hare School, Calcutta. After his father's untimely death in a boat accident in eastern Bengal, his uncle, Shoshee Chunder Dutt, an accomplished writer, became his guardian in 1861. He 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."[2] He was a relative of
Toru Dutt, one of
nineteenth century Bengal's most prominent poets.[citation needed]
He entered the
University of Calcutta,
Presidency College in 1864. He passed the First Arts examination in 1866, ranking 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 other friends,
Behari Lal Gupta and
Surendranath Banerjee, left for England in 1868.[3]
At that time, only one other Indian,
Satyendra Nath Tagore, had qualified for the
Indian Civil Service. Dutt aimed to emulate 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.[4]
At
University College London, Dutt continued to study British writers. He qualified for the Indian Civil Service in the open examination in 1869,[5] taking the third place.[6]
He was called to the bar by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple on 6 June 1871.[7]
His wife was Manomohini Dutt and his children were Bimala Dutt, married to Bolinarayan Bora, the first civil engineer from Assam, Kamala Dutt, married to
Pramatha Nath Bose, Sarala Dutt, married to Jnanendranath Gupta, ICS, and Ajoy Chandra Dutt, an Oxonian, who was a Professor of Law at Calcutta University and later a Member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1921. His grandsons were Indranarayan Bora,
Modhu Bose and Major Sudhindranath Gupta, who retired as the first Indian Commercial Traffic Manager of the
BNR.
Career
Civil service
Pre-retirement
He entered the
Indian Civil Service as an assistant magistrate of
Alipur in 1871. 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. He served as administrator for
Backerganj,
Mymensingh,
Burdwan,
Donapur, and
Midnapore. He became Burdwan's District Officer in 1893, Commissioner (offtg.) of
Burdwan Division in 1894, and Divisional Commissioner (offtg.) for
Orissa in 1895. Dutt was the first Indian to attain the rank of
divisional commissioner.[6]
Post-retirement
Dutt retired from the ICS in 1897. 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 returned 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 king,
Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III, along with his family members and all other staff members used to call him ‘Babu Dewan’, as a mark of personal respect. In 1907, he also became a member of the
Royal Commission on Indian Decentralisation.[8][5]
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.[11]
He also 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 polarisation, the division between
intellectual and
manual labour, and the toll of recurrent devastating
famines.[12]
According to
Tirthankar Roy, while Dutt’s ideas influenced Marxist and “left-nationalist” thinking into the 1980s, their salience declined as historians studying Indian economic history established that these were at odds with empirical evidence and data.[13]
Romesh Chunder Dutt (1874).
The Peasantry of Bengal. Thacker, Spink & Co. the peasantry of bengal.; ed. Narahari Kaviraj, Calcutta, Manisha (1980)
Romesh Chunder Dutt (1895).
The Literature of Bengal. T. Spink & co. the literature of bengal.; 3rd ed., Cultural Heritage of Bengal Calcutta, Punthi Pustak (1962).
Mādhabī kaṅkaṇa in Bengali (1879)
Rajput jivan sandhya (1879); Pratap Singh: The Last of the Rajputs, A Tale of Rajput Courage and Chivalry, tr. Ajoy Chandra Dutt. Calcutta: Elm Press (1943); Allahabad, Kitabistan, (1963)
Rig Veda translation into Bengali (1885): R̥gveda saṃhitā / Rameśacandra Dattera anubāda abalambane ; bhūmikā, Hiraṇmaẏa Bandyopādhyāẏa, Kalakātā, Harapha (1976).
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).
The
Ramayana: the epic of Rama rendered into English verse, London: J.M. Dent and Co., 1899.
The Ramayana and the Mahabharata: the great epics of ancient India condensed into English verse, London: J.M. Dent and Co., 1900.
Everyman's Library reprint (London: J.M. Dent and Sons; New York: E.P. Dutton, 1910). xii, 335p.
Internet Sacred Texts Archive.
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 lake of palms. A story of Indian domestic life, translated by the author. London, T.F. Unwin (1902); abridged by P.V. Kulkarni, Bombay, n.p. (1931).
^R. C. Dutt (1968)
Romesh Chunder Dutt, Internet Archive, Million Books Project. p. 10.
^Jnanendranath Gupta, Life and Works of Romesh Chandra Dutt, CIE, (London: J.M.Dent and Sons Ltd., 1911); while young Romesh came out unnoticed, Beharilal, possibly his closest friend ever, was chased all the way down to the Calcutta docks by his "poor" father, who could not, however, successfully persuade his son to return to the safety of his parental home. Later, in England, both the friends took the civil service examination successfully, becoming the 2nd and 3rd Indians to join the ICS. The third person in the group, Surendranath Banerjee, also cleared the test, but was incorrectly disqualified, as being over-age.
^Nitish Sengupta (2002) History of the Bengali-speaking People, UBS Publishers' Distributors Pvt. Ltd. p. 275.
ISBN81-7476-355-4.
^Romesh Chunder Dutt (1895).
The Literature of Bengal. T. Spink & Co. (London); Constable (Calcutta). the literature of bengal.; 3rd ed., Cultural Heritage of Bengal Calcutta, Punthi Pustak (1962).