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The Politics of Naming: Derozio in Two Formative Moments of Literary and Political Discourse, Calcutta, 1825–31

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2009

ROSINKA CHAUDHURI
ROSINKA CHAUDHURI*
Affiliation:
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India Email: rosinkac@gmail.com
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Abstract

Henry Derozio, India's first modern poet, used the pseudonym ‘An East Indian’ for several poems he published in his lifetime, and he may have used it again in a heated controversy that played itself out in the correspondence columns of the India Gazette, Calcutta's leading newspaper, from May 26 to June 5, 1825. The occasion was an editorial comment upon a community of office-goers in the city—called, at the time, ‘sircars’—who had set up a literary association. This editorial was widely perceived to be reactionary, and civil society responded vigorously in protest at the injustice. The sequence of editorials and letters published on this issue, which seem to have been written by Englishmen, East Indians and Indians alike, demonstrate a remarkable liberalism of spirit and a free-thinking attitude to ethnicity that was soon to disappear in the stiffening boundaries of a racially divided society. 1825 was also the year that Derozio began to publish prolifically in the poetry columns of newspapers and periodicals in the city; by the time he died, in 1831, he had published two books of poems in 1827 and 1828 and had created a revolution of sorts among the radicalised youth of the Hindu College, from which he had been dismissed for his role in their alienation from tradition. In 1831, a few months before his death, Derozio addressed a mammoth meeting called to commemorate the return of John Ricketts, the East Indian representative, from his mission to the English houses of Parliament for a redressal of the community's grievances. Using these two lost occasions—the public correspondence and the meeting—both concerned with the politics of naming, this paper will attempt to present the early radical interventions of the mixed-race community in initiating a discourse of civic rights and human dignity which led, ultimately, to organised attempts at constitutional change and political reform in India, whose estimation is underrated in present-day contexts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , July 2010 , pp. 857 - 885
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 India Gazette, October 30, 1828.

2 See Chaudhuri, Rosinka, Derozio, Poet of India: The Definitive Edition (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. xxi–lxxxiGoogle Scholar.

3 Dowden, Edward, ed. The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles (Dublin, 1881) p. 52Google Scholar.

4 J.S. ‘Reminiscences of Rammohun Roy’, The Calcutta Literary Gazette, February 15, 1834.

5 Sarkar, Susobhan, Introduction to Lal, P., ed. Henry Derozio: Poems (Calcutta: Writer's Workshop, 1972) p. vGoogle Scholar.

6 Cited in Seamus Perry, ‘Self-Management’, The London Review of Books (Volume 28, No. 2, 26 January 2006) p. 18.

7 The use of the pen name ‘Leporello’ is discussed in detail in the notes to the Leporello poems in Chaudhuri, Rosinka, ed. Derozio, Poet of India: The Definitive Edition (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

8 See Parker, Henry Meredith, ‘Young India: A Bengal Eclogue’ in Bole Ponjis (London, 1851)Google Scholar. Orthodox Hindus are forbidden from eating beef, and Derozio's students had attained notoriety by not only publicly consuming and praising its qualities but also for having, in 1831, thrown some beef into a neighbouring Brahmin's house, to the consternation of society at large.

9 Report in the Calcutta Journal, December 24, 1821. Cited in Mukhopadhyay, Saktisadhan, Kolkatar Adi Acharya David Drummond (Calcutta: Punascha, 2004), pp. 39–40Google Scholar.

10 Ibid. Bose received the prize, according to this report, for ‘having acquired a pure English pronounciation [sic] and a general acquaintance with the rudiments of European literature, such as no Native of India we believe, at least of his years, has ever attained before’.

11 Cited in Lawrence, Thomas Benson, English Poetry in India, being biographical and critical notices of Anglo-Indian poets with copious extracts from their writings (Calcutta, 1869), pp. 102–3Google Scholar.

12 Examination of the Pupils of the Durromtollah Academy' in the East Indian, 21 December 1831. Reprinted in Rosinka Chaudhuri, Derozio, Poet of India, pp. 358–59.

13 Ibid. See Alexander Duff, India, and India Missions (Edinburgh, 1839), p. 615. The extraordinary impact of Burns's lines on Bengali modernity is discernible in Rabindranath Tagore's use of them when he said, in an obvious implicit reference to the legacy of Derozio, ‘When we first became acquainted with English literature, we gained from it not only a new wealth of emotion but also the will to break man's tyranny over man. . . . If, today, we challenge our rulers with demands which we would not have dreamed of presenting to the Mughal Emperor, it is because of the ideal voiced in the words of the poet: “a man's a man for a’ that”.’ (Rabindranath Tagore, ‘The Changing Age’ in Towards Universal Man, Reprint, Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1961, pp. 110–11).

14 The Calcutta Journal, December 24, 1821.

15 The India Gazette, December 23, 1822, original EMPHASES.

16 The Calcutta Literary Gazette, November 10, 1833, reprinted in the Bengal Hurkaru, November 12, 1833.

17 Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle, January 21, 1829.

18 ‘A Brief Memoir of the Late Mr David Drummond’, Oriental Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 6, June 1843.

19 Buchan, James, Capital of the Mind: How Edinburgh changed the World (Birlinn: London, 2007) p. 336Google Scholar.

20 Duff, India, and India Missions (1839), p. 614.

21 Derozio's Letter to H.H. Wilson, 26 April, 1831, in Rosinka Chaudhuri ed. Derozio, Poet of India, p.323.

22 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature: being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects (1739–40).

23 Derozio's Letter to H.H. Wilson, 26 April, 1831, in Rosinka Chaudhuri ed. Derozio, Poet of India, p. 323.

24 Ibid.

25 Aratoon, A., ed., ‘A Biographical Sketch,’ The Poetical Works of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (Calcutta, 1871), p. 2Google Scholar. The paper itself has never been traced.

26 Duff, Alexander, India and India missions (Edinburgh, 1839) p. 616Google Scholar.

27 Ibid.

28 Duff, India, and India Missions (1839) p. 616.

29 Dowden, ed. Robert Southey, (1881), p. 52.

30 Original emphasis. India Gazette, 26 May 1825.

31 Col. Henry Yule and A.C. Burnell, eds. Hobson Jobson, 1903. New edition, William Crooke (Delhi: Manoharlal, 1968) pp. 840–41.

32 A brief note on this institution, well-known in its time, might be illuminating in itself. The Parental Academic Institution was set up in 1823 by a group of people of mixed descent to solve the problem of, as a later account had it, ‘the East Indians, or descendants of Europeans by intermarriages with natives of this country, [who] were fast increasing in numbers, and becoming in some respects an important community. They soon began to feel the want of a public seminary for the education of their children. Hitherto, the only schools in Calcutta were either charitable institutions or academies kept by private individuals. Mr Ricketts . . . convened a meeting of “parents, guardians and friends” at his residence on the evening of Saturday, the 1st March, 1823. Among those present on the occasion were Messrs. Wale Byrn, Willoughby Dacosta, Sutherland, Kellner, Kerr, Sturmer, Lindstedt, Brightman, Firth and Kyd. The outcome of their conference was the Parental Academic Institution.’ Herbert A. Stark and Walter E. Madge, East Indian Worthies, Being Memoirs of Distinguished Indo-Europeans (Calcutta: Printed at the Cambridge Steam Printing Works, 3 Fairlie Place, 1892) p. 2.

33 India Gazette, May 30, 1825.

34 Ibid.

35 East Indian Worthies, p. 36.

36 India Gazette, May 30, 1825.

37 Thomas Edwards, ‘The Press of Calcutta’, in Calcutta Review, p. 61.

38 India Gazette, May 30, 1825.

39 India Gazette, May 30, 1825.

40 Ibid.

41 That Indians had been engaged in the capacity of sarkar/sirkar/sircars in European households for some time now is attested to also by the fact that the heroine of one of the earliest accounts of British life in eighteenth-century Calcutta, Hartley House (1789), Sophia, is attracted, in the book, to a young Bengali Brahmin who is the nephew of her father's sarkar.

42 Letter signed ‘An East Indian’, dated ‘May 27, 1825’ in the India Gazette, May 30, 1825.

43 Ibid.

44 Letter signed ‘An East Indian’ in the India Gazette, May 30, 1825.

45 Editorial, India Gazette, June 2, 1825.

46 Letter signed ‘An East Indian’, dated ‘May 27, 1825’ in the India Gazette, May 30, 1825.

47 Letter signed ‘An East Indian’ in the India Gazette, June 3, 1825.

48 Ibid.

49 For the poem, see Chaudhuri, Rosinka, ed. Derozio, Poet of India: A Definitive Edition (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 21Google Scholar.

50 Henry Derozio, ‘Thoughts on Various Subjects’ in the Calcutta Literary Gazette, 3 January, 1835.

51 East Indian Meeting, 28 March, 1831. The Calcutta Magazine and Monthly Register, 1831, Vol. 3 (Calcutta: Samuel Smith & Co., 1831), p. 84. The anomalies in the punctuation in this passage are reproduced as they were printed; evidently, the question mark and the semicolon after ‘. . . I love justice, and therefore I ought to be here . . .’ has exchanged places; the semicolon should follow ‘here’, while the question mark should follow ‘acknowledge it’.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid.

54 Thomas Benson Laurence, English Poetry in India, being Biographical and Critical Notices of Anglo-Indian Poets with Copious Extracts from their Writings. (Calcutta, 1869), pp. 102–3.

55 Madge, E.W., Henry Derozio: The Eurasian Poet and Reformer (Calcutta, 1905), p. 3Google Scholar. Michael Derozio's Protestantism was unusual, as the Portuguese community in India was almost entirely Roman Catholic. The church records of the Derozio family indicate a closeness between the family of Michael Derozio and the Serampore Baptist missionaries, William Carey, Joshua Marshman and William Ward; possibly, Michael Derozio converted to Protestantism under their direct influence.

56 Letter signed ‘A.H.’, in The Calcutta Journal, November 6, 1821.

57 Letter signed ‘An Indian’, in the Calcutta Journal on November 7, 1821.

58 Rammohun Roy, letter to Prince Talleyrand, French Foreign Minister, London, in Robertson, Bruce, ed. The Essential Writings of Raja Rammohan Ray (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 281Google Scholar.

59 Ibid.

60 Letter signed ‘An Indian’, in the Calcutta Journal on November 7, 1821.

61 Reported in The Calcutta Magazine and Monthly Register, 28th March, 1831.

62 Ibid.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.