Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

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Part 1 of 3

The Tribune (Chandigarh)
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/10/20

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To eke out a living, both Freda and Bedi wrote school and college textbooks. Freda recalled that she wrote one about the art of precis writing. Bedi took on some more ambitious commissions, the most successful being his biography of the Sikh civil engineer, architect and philanthropist, Sir Ganga Ram. This remains the work for which he is best known in Punjab.17 There was another new publishing project, a new political paper, which engaged much of Bedi's energies and Freda's too -- and which added to their reputation in Lahore. Contemporary India had been highbrow; his new title Monday Morning was determinedly popular. As the name suggests, it was a weekly. They had spotted a gap in the market. The Lahore daily papers did not at that time work on Sundays and so did not publish a Monday edition. So a weekly hitting the newsstands first thing on Monday didn't have much in the way of direct competition.

No copies of Monday Morning have been located so it's difficult to judge its style and political agenda but for a while, at least, it sold well. 'Some English friends at the time called it laughingly a rag -- I suppose it was a bit of a rag,' Freda said, 'but it was a very outspoken, interesting weekly paper which came out on Monday morning and successfully deprived us of every bit of rest that we might have had on Saturday and Sunday as a result .... I learned a tremendous amount ... about how to bring out papers and press schedules and proof reading and a number of other things and we got a lot of fun out of it. And this helped the family finances somewhat because advertisements began to come in.'18

Monday Morning became a serious irritant to the authorities. 'This magazine had a very profound effect, because it was very militant,' Bedi recalled, 'totally anti-fascist in character, because anti-fascism was the wave of the times, and naturally it had to be anti-British, and it became one of the big exposure magazines. Any exposure which nobody would publish, we would publish.' Bedi claimed, with perhaps a measure of exaggeration, that the weekly achieved a circulation of 40,000 after six months, and so alarmed Lahore's main nationalist daily, the Tribune, that the paper tried to coerce newsagents into not selling their weekly rival. Bedi's main collaborator on the paper was Jag Parvesh Chandra, later a prominent Congress politician in Delhi. He recalled gathering with others at the Bedis' huts to work out how to start the paper, and the excitement of its early impact:

'the paper became a mouthpiece of the nationalist movement and was a success from the start.'19 Another of the Monday Morning team was the actor Balraj Sahni, then in his mid-twenties and something of a political innocent. Bedi insisted that he warned Sahni against getting involved in the messy world of political journalism. 'I said, "My Dear Balraj, look here. This is politics. If it were a literary magazine, I would say gladly come. Running a political weekly without any funds is a dog's job and we are dogs, we are out to be whipped by our own choice. You are an artist."'20 Balraj duly bailed out after three months. His younger brother, the novelist Bhisham Sahni, gave a somewhat jaundiced account of the hand-to-mouth launch of the paper:

the editors had neither the resources nor the know-how of a weekly journal. Their enthusiasm and youthful energy were their only assets. It was planned that the paper would cover, besides news, cultural events and contain stories and poems, as also articles projecting socialist thought and ideology.

We waited eagerly for the first issue of the paper, but when at last it came, my heart sank. It was a two-sheet paper, full of printing mistakes .... The second issue, a week later, was even worse, so far as printing mistakes were concerned and we feared that such a paper was not destined to last long. ... Meanwhile we received a letter from a relative living in Lahore, saying that he had met Balraj inside a printing press, where he sat on the floor, unshaven, in high fever, correcting proofs and that Balraj looked tired and exhausted.21

The family was greatly relieved when they learned that Balraj had walked out on Monday Morning. 'The experience had left him sad, but a good deal wiser.'

As the international situation became more tense, and the prospect of war loomed, the left in Punjab organised against military recruitment. This deeply alarmed the Imperial authorities who were in any event finding the enlistment of new soldiers more difficult, in part because of the growth of nationalist sentiment. Recruits from Punjab constituted fully half of the soldiers in the British Indian army.22 They had proved their worth in France and Flanders in the First World War and were again to be conspicuous on battlefields far from India in the Second World War. In September 1938, Bedi's involvement in anti-recruitment activity prompted his most serious clash with the authorities -- as Freda explained in a letter to her old friend Olive Chandler:

Bedi got arrested on a political charge ... Some hirelings of the Punjab Government broke up an Anti-Recruitment meeting at which Bedi was presiding (also breaking his head from behind, quite a nasty cut!). Later they had the audacity to arrest him, along with twenty-seven others, for rioting!! Just a ruse to prevent Anti-Recruitment propaganda, at a time when it was quite legal ... To cut a long story short, Bedi + the others were finally allowed bail + the case has been dribbling on (without coming to any conclusions) for the last nine months. It is what is known as a 'harassment case', trying to put everyone to the maximum amount of trouble. When it will end, + with what result we don't know -- they have only a very rocky concocted case again[st] them all, but the Government has got away with worse.23

The saga ended eighteen months later, when Bedi was convicted by a magistrate in Lahore of 'delivering an alleged anti-war speech in a public meeting outside the Railway Station' and was sentenced to two years rigorous imprisonment -- though by then he was already behind bars.24

By the time Freda wrote that letter to her old Oxford friend in the summer of 1939, Monday Morning had folded: 'after terrific hard work, sometimes from eight in the morning to eight in the evening, with scarcely a day's break, it has had to stop. Journalism in India is a tragic struggle against advertisers + newsagents who sit on bills + never pay up + it's practically impossible to carry on without strong financial backing which, as all over the world, a "left" newspaper can rarely get!'25 It had survived for about eighteen months.

***

Freda Bedi's wartime incarceration in Lahore Female Jail is the act of valour which forged her reputation as a nationalist icon. Thousands of Indian nationalists and leftists were detained for opposing India's participation in the Second Wodd War. Vanishingly few of these were English and white skinned and so identified in the public mind with the coloniser rather than the colonised. Freda was, of course, both undeniably English and unequivocally on India's side. She was jailed as a deliberate act of protest and renunciation -- offering herself up for arrest under an initiative launched and overseen by Mahatma Gandhi, who personally approved all those who were to be his satyagrahis, or disciples of truth. She was the first, and perhaps the only, European woman to be part of this phase of Gandhi's nonviolent protest against the Imperial power. For her, as for so many others, jail strengthened political resolve and extended the network of nationalist sympathisers. It also provided a window on the lives and tribulations of those so often beyond the view of middle-class India -- the women who shared the prison grounds with her not out of political commitment but because of the desperate acts they had been pushed to by a profoundly unequal and patriarchal society. That, as much as the informal political meetings and study classes, was a part of Freda's education in jail.

War was declared in September 1939. The tensions within the Congress Socialist Party between communists and others were by now acute. But all agreed, initially at least, on the need to oppose the war -- the Congress because Britain's Viceroy in New Delhi had declared that India was at war with Germany without the agreement (or indeed seeking the agreement) of India's political leaders, and the communists because Moscow, in the wake of the Nazi-Soviet pact, had declared that this was an imperialist war. By the end of October 1939 more than 150 Punjabi politicians were in jail, and by the end of the following year that number had swelled to many hundreds. Punjab led the rest of India in the number of communists and socialists detained -- generally on the grounds of their anti-war and anti-recruitment activities.1

B.P.L. Bedi was, by his own account, publishing anti-war literature and using his contacts in the rail unions to help get the leaflets circulated around the country. He was not among the early wave of arrests, but he knew that he was likely to be detained before long. That knock on the door came in early December 1940. 'I had just come from Lahore and the British Superintendent of police had arrived,' Bedi recalled. 'Soon after my servant told me that there seemed to be some peculiar movement of people round the bushes so I immediately sensed that the moment of my arrest had come. Within ten minutes of his announcing this, he arrived and in a very British way said, "I am afraid I have to arrest you.'''2 In an even more British manner, Bedi asked the police officer to sit down and have a cup of tea while he packed a blanket, some clothes and a few books. Bedi was at this time on the national executive of the Congress Socialist Party and his arrest under the Defence of India Act was front page news in the Tribune. It reported that as he was being driven away in the police car, 'Mrs Bedi raised loud shouts of "Inquilab Zindabad"' -- a communist slogan which best translates as 'Long Live the Revolution'.3

Bedi was held briefly in the jail in the town of Montgomery (now Sahiwal), still in Punjab but some distance from Lahore, and then was sent more than 400 miles away to Deoli, a remote spot on the edge of the Thar desert in what is now Rajasthan. A Victorianera military base there had been turned into a detention camp -- a concentration camp, the communists complained -- for political detainees from across India. It had a long history of being used to lock-up 'undesirables', and continued to fulfil that role in later years. From 1942, the camp housed prisoners of war -- and in 1962, it was used to intern Indians of Chinese origin during a brief India -China border conflict. As soon as he reached Deoli, Bedi began to protest against his detention -- refusing to carry his bags into the camp as a statement, in his own words, that the 'revolutionaries' had arrived. 'At Deoli were nearly four-hundred persons, who were all Leftists ... From the moment we arrived we started planning to create more trouble and a hunger strike was on the agenda.'4

Freda can hardly have been surprised by her husband's arrest, but she was certainly angered by it. 'On December 4th, 1940, the lights in the huts went out,' she recalled:

Bedi was taken away for indefinite detention for being a Socialist, for hating Fascism, for hating the Imperialist exploitation of India. There was no oil in the lamps when the police came, and we groped around in the dark getting a few clothes together. Pug drooped his tail dejectedly when he said goodbye.5

A couple of days later, she announced that she too intended to flout the wartime emergency regulations and was happy to take the consequences. The Tribune reported that she had sought Gandhi's permission to give herself up for arrest. 'Should Mahatma Gandhi's permission be secured, Mrs Bedi will be the first English lady to offer satyagraha in the civil disobedience campaign.'6 Freda regarded Gandhi's campaign as 'halting and incomplete' -- but it was at least action on a nationwide scale. 'There should have been a great, a magnificent up-surge of the nation. Gandhiji decreed otherwise, and chose his men with the greatest care. Only the few were to go to jail to protest for the many. It was to be a demonstration to the world of India's national right.'7

At the end of January, Freda heard that Gandhi had agreed to her request -- she believed she was the fifty-seventh volunteer to be chosen as a satyagrahi in this stage of the civil disobedience campaign. This was Freda's boldest political act -- she was putting herself forward for arrest and imprisonment to protest against her native country's treatment of her adopted country. 'She said that she was born in England but had adopted India as her mother country,' the Tribune reported, 'and would wish to be known as an Indian woman.'8 It was also an impetuous move. She had a six-year-old son whose father had just been detained indefinitely, and rather than be around to offer support and reassurance, she decided that the political imperative was what mattered most. She admitted being torn about what to do. 'It was a terrible blow to lose B.P.L. and his cheery daily support in life's problems. And his mother, my son, the adopted boy Binder and myself were left alone in the huts. I didn't want to make things worse on the domestic side but on the other hand I felt that I should back up the nationalist movement in whatever humble way I could, even if it meant suffering some months in prison. I felt I could trust my mother-in-law to look after the boy and my brother-in- law to see that the family did not lack support at that time.'9 So the family arranged to move from the huts to Bedi's home village where they would be able to live comfortably with many members of the extended family there to help. In the carefully choreographed way of these protests, Freda wrote to the district magistrate in the town of Gurdaspur to tell him exactly when and where she intended to stage her act of civil disobedience. 'Mrs Freda Bedi left for Dera Baba Nanak,' the Tribune announced on its front page, 'where she will offer satyagraha on 21st [February] at 11 a.m.'10

'So I packed up my little household, put that furniture with this friend, that with another, here my crockery and there my few loved possessions,' Freda wrote. 'I left Lahore station, in a welter of photographs and flower garlands. The women in the women's compartment were inquisitive ... "It is degrading that Indians should be treated like this," I said. "Somebody had to do something: we can't just all sit down and keep quiet about it." "But what does your husband say about it?" one matron asked. "He is in jail himself," I replied. "Ah ... " her eyes were turned in pity towards me, "now I understand." It was the wife following her husband. That was as it should be.'11 Freda was following in her husband's footsteps not out of blind loyalty; rather in a marriage which was based on intellectual and political camaraderie, she saw it as the natural course of action. Bedi of course did not offer himself for arrest; he was detained as an anti -war activist. It's not at all clear whether they had discussed what the family should do in his absence, but Freda never suggested that he had endorsed her intention to become a satyagrahi.

In writing about the eve of her arrest, Freda lapsed into a reflective mode which points to the complexity of her political commitment and the awareness that she was about to make an act that would come to define her. In the Bedi household in Dera Baba Nanak, she slept alongside Bhabooji, Ranga and Binder in a room lit by a spluttering oil lamp -- but she felt lonely and vulnerable:

Little bodies and one big round body were lumped under the fluffy cotton-stuffed quilts. There was somebody still banging pots and pans in the kitchen. I could hear Pug and Snug barking somewhere in the garden. Suddenly, I felt alone, agonisingly alone. I could have wept for my sheer aloneness. I wanted to talk to Bedi, to have his cheery voice near me. What I wanted to say I could not say in my limited Punjabi. I doubt if I could have said it in English, or even mentally told myself what I felt. I suppose in all crises of our life we get that feeling of isolation as though we are treading a path into the future and are treading it, for all the love that surrounds us, quite alone. When we first leave home, when we marry. When we have a choice to make at some cross-roads of our life and endeavour .... And on the borders of that aloneness, of that feeling of smallness in the face of the immensity of the unknown, there comes another feeling, which is interwoven with it and part of it and yet not part of it, of being given the strength to carry on, of not being alone any more. Of being a part of something greater than the mere individual human body.12

This was written within a couple of years of Freda's imprisonment and a decade before she became interested in Buddhism, but there is a pronounced spiritual aspect to her account. Freda became comfortable with the feeling of isolation she describes -- it was another border she chose to cross -- and instinct, or faith, guided her at what she calls the crossroads of her life, which gave her a sense of comfort that she was on the right track.

We wrote a letter to the district magistrate,' Freda recalled, 'saying that we would break the law by asking the people not to support the military effort until India became democratic and that India must get her elected government first. But since we sent the letter, we effectively prevented ourselves from speaking because on the day we were supposed to speak we were naturally arrested before this happened.' Exactly what happened in the village that February morning is difficult to establish beyond doubt through the layers of valorous nationalist narrative and family folklore.13 Freda's own account is both the most straightforward and most credible. Her intention was to shout anti-war slogans in Punjabi in the village streets. She heard that the local inspector had summoned an English officer from Amritsar, thinking it best to have an Englishman to hand when an Englishwoman was placed under arrest. 'At eight-thirty they arrived. In the centre was the local Inspector with a beard. He came forward politely, "regretting that it is my duty but I must arrest you." The turbanned police-officer on his left had a half-smile. To the right was the European Inspector from Amritsar in an unwieldy topee [hat]. He was surprisingly small and had a walrus moustache. He looked like Old Bill: I wanted to laugh, and the corners of my mouth twitched. "Yes, I am quite ready. Take me along with you.'"

The little procession started towards the Police Station winding its way back through narrow brick-paved gulleys of the village. The shopkeepers came to the door of their shops, with their hands folded in greeting. The women crowded on the flat roofs to see us go, and sighed in the doorways. A few young men and boys began to attach themselves to the little group and shouted wildly 'Freedom for India. Long live Gandhiji. Long live Jawaharlal Nehru. Long live Comrade Bedi. Release the detenues.' We reached the elegant grey Amritsar car parked under the peepul tree near the only pucca road. Garlands were thrown over the radiator of the car, through the windows. They were removed immediately: 'garlands not allowed'.14

At the village police station, Freda was questioned by the police officer she had nicknamed Old Bill, who she later discovered had 'Irish blood and a kind heart' -- though the interrogation was limited to questions along the lines of 'What colour would you call your hair?' Under the wartime regulations, trials under the Defence of India Act could be held straightaway and without any legal formality or indeed representation. Freda was taken from the police station to the dak bungalow, the guest house where visiting officials stayed, and that's where her trial took place that same morning:

It was finished in fifteen minutes. The man on the other side of the table was quite young still, and looked as though he had been to Oxford. His face was red.

'I find this as unpleasant as you do,' he murmured.

'Don't worry. I don't find it unpleasant at all.'

'Do you want the privileges granted to an Englishwoman?'

'Treat me as an Indian woman and I shall be quite content.'

... The room was deserted but there was a noise, and two Congressmen walked in. They had been allowed at the last minute to attend the 'public trial'. They carried a round shining brass tray filled with flowers and sweetmeats.

Wait until you have heard my judgment, perhaps you will not want to give them then.'

Six months Rigorous Imprisonment.

'She cannot have the garlands. Give her one or two of the sweets.'15

Freda had expected the jail sentence, but not the specification of rigorous imprisonment. 'Hard labour was the point,' she said many years later, 'and none of the Indians arrested got hard labour in the Punjab except myself None of the women at least. Whether it was the ignorance of the young civil servant, Englishman, who gave the sentence, very regretfully and with many apologies .... Or whether it was that they wanted to make an example of me because I was the first, maybe, western woman to offer satyagraha at that time.' Once the sentence was pronounced, Freda was put back in the car which was mobbed by well-wishers, many of them members of the Bedi clan, as it set off to Lahore jail.

News of Freda Bedi's arrest and sentence once again made the front page of the Tribune, complete with a posed portrait photograph. The following day's paper offered a fuller account of her arrest and sentence- - which emphasised the level of local interest in and support for her action, reporting that she was 'profusely garlanded by the public' after sentence was passed in a trial in which she had refused to participate. The Reuters news agency eventually picked up the story -- and a few weeks after the event, the jailing of 'the first Englishwoman to join Mr Gandhi's passive resistance movement' made front page news back in Freda's home city [Derby Telegraph] with the headline: 'Derby Wife of Indian Sentenced'.16 Freda of course regarded herself as Indian but her act of protest gained attention and achieved impact precisely because she was not Indian. It's a paradox which didn't greatly perturb her. She seems to have managed to negotiate these conflicts of identity without a lot of soul-searching. However much she might seek to forsake the special status accorded in colonial India to those with white skins, it was an indelible aspect of her life there. Inspector Price, the moustachioed Irishman, had been sent from Amritsar to Dera Baba Nanak to be present at Freda's arrest because it felt inappropriate for a white woman to be detained simply by Indian policemen. It was another example of the awkwardness of the British authorities in India in the face of a British woman who had sided with India. They had dealt with British men who had allied with and supported Indian leftist and nationalist movements -- indeed there were three British communists among the defendants in the long-running Meerut conspiracy case which was widely discussed in both India and Britain in the early 1930s and for which Oxford's October Club had collected money -- but a white woman directly challenging Imperial rule was a much rarer phenomenon.

Freda wrote luminously about her time behind the mud walls of Lahore's female jail (after her release, she and a fellow prisoner persuaded the authorities to rename it, with greater verbal precision, as Lahore women's jail). Within days of her release, she began a short series 'From a Jail Diary' in the Tribune, concerned particularly with the 'criminal' prisoners -- she was a 'political' -- she met there. This developed into a much more ambitious account of her time behind bars -- a day-by-day jail diary which is the spine of her book Behind the Mud Walls, and is the most resonant and affecting of her writings. She weaves into her account of imprisonment the personal, the political, the observational, with reflections of the temper of Indian nationalism and more so about the inequity, the gender injustice, which consigned so many of the non-political inmates to long terms of confinement. It is one of the most remarkable and readable accounts of Indian nationalist endeavour at this time. The jail diary is a well-established literary form and as the struggle against colonialism led to the detention of intellectuals who would otherwise be unlikely to land in jail, there are many nationalist narratives of imprisonment. Few are quite as compelling, as simple and unadorned, as the account Freda Bedi published as 'Convict No. 3613'.17

'The mud road to the "Female Jail" was long and dusty,' Freda wrote. 'The gates looked like the Lion House at the Zoo.'

The gates opened. We went in. They shut. It was cool like a cellar in the entrance room. Beyond was a second door: a sheet of solid iron like a safe. To the right the Deputy Superintendent's room. I was motioned towards the door. It was bare and depressing. A cold stare came from the aging woman in a drab frock on the other side of the table.

'What is her crime?'

'Political ... Six Months Rigorous Imprisonment,' said 'Old Bill'. After a few minutes, he turned and left.

The world beyond the barred gate seemed a long way away.

'Give over all your jewellery and money,' said the Deputy Superintendent.

'I haven't got any jewellery.'

She pointed to my left hand.

'That is my wedding ring.'

'It is also counted as jewellery,' she replied.

I looked at my wedding ring. It had never left my hand since that day in Oxford when Bedi put it on. Reluctantly, I used my last weapon.

'I am an A Class prisoner. Are you within your rights in taking it away?'

... There was a shuffling sound, a sort of subdued commotion, on the other side of the inner iron door. I could see an eye glittering through the peep-hole. Shouts of 'Gandhiji ki Jai' [Long live Gandhi] and lots of 'Zindabads'. It seems the 'politicals' had found out that I had arrived.18

The small group of political prisoners in the women's jail banded together: on Freda's first evening 'behind the mud walls', they spun together, 'our common badge and discipline as satyagrahis'. On one occasion they staged a twenty-hour spinning relay -- Freda declared herself 'not very thrilled at the idea, but doing something has got its moral exhilarations ... I took my turn at 4.30 a.m.' There was also collective reading of Hindu scriptures and talks, meetings and education sessions. The camaraderie among these women activists was intense and nourishing. They were responsible for their own cooking, and the jail regime was sufficiently relaxed to allow them to meet fairly freely, staging informal political gatherings and on one occasion having a picnic and dance in the prison grounds.

Freda practised yoga in the mornings. 'I am doing them with no "spiritual" intent, only to keep healthy in the roasting months ahead of me. Find they are simple, rhythmical, and invigorating.' She read alone from Hindu religious writings and from novels by Aldous Huxley and John Steinbeck -- 'feel the lack of political books,' she noted, 'we forget how dependent we are on them.' She described herself on entering the jail as a professor of English and college connections sometimes resurfaced in surprising ways. 'The new Deputy Superintendent came to-day,' Freda wrote in her diary. 'It seems she was one of my old B.A. pupils. She is touched that 1 am here. 1 feel amused.'

Alongside the fairly unexacting routine, for the political prisoners at least, was the hardship of the raging summer heat which turned the very basic sanitary facilities into a 'horrible' ordeal. 'I was trying to decide the other day what annoyed me most, physically, here, and I decided it was the dilemma of sitting in the latrine with (1) either my face in a dirty sacking curtain; or (2) throwing up the curtain and being frightened of somebody arriving quietly and catching me. The latrines are uncovered to sun and rain and we are exposed to the elements .... One can get used to anything, and one has to shut one's eyes and ears and brain to it, but if I give way to what I really felt, I could be sick every time I go near the place.'19

Freda made two strong political friendships -- with the peasant leader Bibi Raghbir Kaur, described by Freda as 'my political mother-in-law', and with the renowned Arona Asaf Ali, who was about Freda's age and had form as a political prisoner (after her release from Lahore jail she famously went underground as a pro-independence activist). Aruna was from Delhi, and housed in a different block, but they arranged to meet regularly. 'Aruna came for tea,' Freda wrote in her account of jail life a month into her imprisonment. 'She is a comfort, and I am happy with her. With her I can exchange thoughts -- she's the only one who can give me that satisfaction. Although I manage in Hindustani, I know so few words that it is a continual frustration to try and express myself. Besides which, quite apart from speaking to her, or any question of language, I am fond of her.' As a team they worked well, all were leftists as well as admirers of Gandhi, and they managed to hold a May Day meeting inside the prison:

A few words from me on its significance. Attari Devi sang 'Inquilab Zindabad'; Raghbir Kaur spoke in Punjabi on the peasant and the worker; Aruna a little on Lenin and the significance of the Russian revolution. A funny rambling affair, but we did manage to celebrate it. Had a gnawing feeling inside me because of newspaper reports on Deoli, couldn't eat properly, felt like vomiting. The temperature has gone to 116. Mentally, it doesn't worry me.20

Concern about the plight of her husband was a constant preoccupation -- she was anxious about reports of a hunger strike at the much more spartan and remote Deoli camp and worried when she didn't hear from him for weeks on end. 'In his confinement, he must be thinking of me, and indeed I have felt him almost physically with me these last stirring days,' she wrote on the second day of her detention. The occasional telegram from Bedi gave her a big boost. One came on Ranga's seventh birthday -- 'Congrats for Bunny Heart'. 'Such a silly telegram and so nice to get it.' Freda missed her son too and was delighted when permission was given for him to spend a few days with her, sharing her bed. Ranga too -- who still has notes he sent as a child to his parents in their separate jails, one in Punjabi and the other in English -- was thrilled to spend time with his mother. But he wasn't allowed to accompany her during the day as she worked, and some children of the non-political detainees jeered and mocked him, so it was a short stay.

[Cont'd below]

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Part 2 of 3

Freda shared a cell with 'two very lovely women of the old type', as she described them -- both were brahmins and vegetarians as well as political campaigners. She gave them English lessons, and in return was helped in her Hindi. 'Both Lakshmi and Savitri remain for me an example of beautiful Indian womanhood: self-sacrificing, simple, cheerful. Naturally pure. And it was a great privilege to spend three months sharing a room with them. I shall never forget it. They both excelled in simple Indian cookery, making maize cakes and vegetables, and insisted on doing this little service for me. And I found time in the early mornings to meditate, at dawn under the trees in the jail compound, before my labour started -- which took the form of gardening.'

She was fortunate that her hard labour consisted of running the prison gardens -- a much more congenial option than the laundry or picking ropes or other punishment labour. 'It's still delirious with young leaves and the scent of orange blossom, the cooing of doves, the screech of parrots, an early owl hooting,' she wrote in mid-March. In a replication inside jail of the class hierarchy outside, she was put in charge of a group of ,criminal' prisoners in tending to the flowers and vegetables in the small prison grounds. Freda liked the work, which brought to mind the huts in Model Town, and she relished the opportunity to get to know the other inmates and something of the circumstances that led to their jailing. Repeatedly in her jail diary, she relates life stories which were stacked against the women. 'Find our fellow prisoners in the "criminal" barracks most interesting. Seems a good many of the better-looking are young wives in jail for killing old husbands. Consensus of opinion seems to be that jail is preferable to an old husband.'

Among these prisoners, one in particular stood out -- by her appearance, and the curious and exceptional story that surrounded her:

Met one beautiful woman -- yes, really beautiful, of a beauty that pulled strings inside you. Lallo is a Pathani, from the wild frontier, cream of skin and undarkened by the sun of the plains.

She wore the brilliant yellow basanti [spring-like] clothes of those who have been in jail a very long time, and her veil was thrown twice over her head, as if to suggest purdah, and some sweet modesty. Her long-lashed eyes had the mystery of beauty in them, and every movement of her slim erect body had a grace that cried to the prison walls. 'She has been thirteen years in prison, since her early teens, when she killed an old husband' I was told.

There were even more unusual stories about the Pathani. The young lover who had put the poison into her mind and her hands had not been convicted: to shield him, she had named another, and that man, innocent as he was, had suffered with her fourteen years of exile and disgrace. But in the court-room he had fallen in love with the girl who had wronged him, and taken his life in her hands. He had applied for interviews with her every year, and told her that he was suffering for her, and she must reward him at the end of his long penance by becoming his wife. And his devotion was not in vain, because she too fell in love with him.

In another six months, he will leave the prison and its routine. Six months after that, she too will leave the mud walls, and put her life in his hands, as once he put his in hers.21

There is an innocence about the story and the manner in which it is told that reflects an aspect of Freda's personality: accepting, trusting, caring. It's difficult to imagine that the young prisoner's tale is quite as Shakespearean as is related here, but Freda clearly wants this story to be true, and wants the woman to find redemption.

On other occasions she was simply angry at the blatant gender injustice. 'Saw an Arab girl in the garden,' she wrote. 'Sixteen, married to a 78 year-old husband who had sent her and other "wives" on the streets to beg and for prostitution. He bit off the top of her ear when she ran away with another man, who has since joined the army. Now he has framed this abduction case against her. I really wonder if European jails would be big enough if every woman who ran away with a man was prosecuted and jailed for a few years.... A stranger in a foreign land. Nothing to go back to; nothing to look forward to. We told her to demand divorce through her lawyers. Anything better anyhow than that old satyr.' This spell in jail, and the insight it gave her into the lives and difficulties of the most marginalised women in Indian society, pushed her towards a feminist emphasis on the need to tackle the built-in power bias towards men and to encourage women to challenge male authority and take control of their own destiny. 'The dread of having daughters is so real, the financial burden of marrying them so great. The social system is Sinner No.1.' As so often for nationalist and left-wing detainees, jail proved to be part of her political education: 'reactionary' Indian Civil Service rule, she wrote, 'is worse than the most reactionary popular government.'22 She also, perhaps for the first time, got to know well women from underprivileged backgrounds, and was moved by their plight and on occasion sought to advocate on their behalf. Her time in jail set her on course to the social work she took up in Kashmir and, more determinedly, in Delhi.

In mid-May 1941, word began to circulate in the jail that some of the women were to be released, because of a ruling that an intention to challenge the wartime regulations was not a sufficient basis for conviction. If activists had not publicly challenged India's involvement in the war, then they had not broken the law. The rumours turned out to be true. In her entry for 24 May 1941, Freda wrote:

My last day in jail. Got up and went into the garden very early; did my exercises. Packed, with some difficulty, my little household. All went and had a breakfast of pooris and vegetables and halwa with the Delhi people in Aruna's tiny courtyard opposite the cell. We sat on mats on a white sheet with the thalis [plates] in front of us. The Superintendent arrived half way and sat talking to us. There was an atmosphere of regret: we were parting, after so long together, in an intimacy that only jail life gives. Who knows which of us will meet again, have the same talks.23

After a little over three months in detention, Freda emerged from behind the mud walls. A large number of male political detainees were being released in Lahore on the same day, and for the same reason: in all, fifty-three satyagrahis emerged from Lahore jails, thirteen of them women.24 The local Congress party wanted Freda and other women set free to go to the men's borstal and journey with them to a big rally at the Bradlaugh Hall. She didn't feel like a big fuss, so she made her excuses, phoned and sent telegrams to give word of her release, and then went to Fateh Chand College: 'the girls crowded round me like bees: we were so happy to see each other again.'

A few days later, Freda travelled to Dera Baba Nanak, where Bhabooji had been presiding over the family. The local Congress committee, led by one of her husband's relatives, organised a grand procession which welcomed Freda at the railway station and paraded her across the village.25 'A terrific fuss, including a brass band and innumerable garlands to welcome me,' Freda recorded.

They did it out of love, but I felt embarrassed, with so much motia Uasmine] round my neck, walking through the almost unbreathable dust in a procession back to the village. All the village seemed to be there, making a deafening noise. They carried Ranga shoulder high and took us first to the Darbar Sahib [Sikh temple] to offer a rupee and get the sugar in return. We went on to uncle Ram Das's house and still the crush continued, the women and children flooding the rooms and refusing to go, although I folded my hands in entreaty, longing to be left alone. They called it darshan but after an hour or two it [felt] like being in a zoo.26

During the procession, Freda addressed the crowd: she urged them to wear homespun cloth, join the Congress and appealed to Hindus and Muslims to join together to achieve India's freedom. Immediately on her release, Freda rang Mian Iftikharuddin, a friend, fellow leftist and president of the Punjab Provincial Congress Committee. She was seeking political instructions. She told him that she was 'ready to do whatever the Congress wanted me to do. He said I should first go and interview Bedi, and see him on my return.' So Freda planned a journey to visit her husband at the Deoli camp, and decided to take seven-year-old Ranga with her.

Ranga's recollection is that Freda had to fight for permission to make a family visit to Deoli, and that they made the trip 'in the blistering heat of June' by third-class train, buses and then a lengthy walk.

The camp was run and administered by the army, not the police, and they had no information regarding our visit or the permissions granted. There was perceptible discomfort among the British junior officers in the guardroom, caused by Ooggee being British. They were certainly overawed by her being in a khadi [homespun] salwar kameez and the fact that she was the wife of a dangerous political criminal. They were polite, made us comfortable under a fan, and got some tea and nice biscuits. A short while later, we were escorted to the office of the commandant, a strapping British colonial. The commandant's discomfiture was greater than that of his juniors, he could not permit the visit without confirmation from the local headquarters.

Freda's skin colour worked to her advantage. She and Ranga were put up in a room set aside for senior officers on inspection visits; she declined an invitation to dine in the officers' mess. The visit to Bedi the following day didn't happen -- Ranga's memory is that his father and other political detainees were on hunger strike, and an attempt to force feed Bedi ended with him grabbing the medical officer and dislocating his shoulder. '"Didn't you know he holds the all-India hammer throw record and was a wrestler in his college days?'" Ranga recalls his mother telling the camp commandant when she was informed why the visit wouldn't be possible.

The following day, a compromise was reached -- Bedi agreed to call off his hunger strike, and Freda and Ranga were given exceptional permission to visit the detainee, still weak but adamant that he would not use a wheelchair, in his room.

Two junior British officers were assigned to escort us to ensure that we did not communicate with any other prisoners or political detenues. Papa's barrack was quite a distance ... He was in the last corner room, right next to the security fence and a watchtower, the sole occupant of a ten-by-ten foot room with a mattress on the floor, no furniture of any description, no curtain on the solitary window, no attached bathroom. Papa received us with hugs and kisses. Two rickety collapsible steel chairs were brought for us to sit on. One could see why the M.O. had refused permission for him to walk to the visitors' room. He was positively unstable on his feet.

They had ninety minutes with Bedi. All their books and gifts were seized for inspection. The camp provided a truck to drop Freda and Ranga at the main road, where they could catch a bus. She thanked the commandant, and left a small packet of raisins -- a welcome gift in wartime -- for the injured medical officer.

Freda went back to teaching at Fateh Chand College. She was allowed to live in at the college and -- an even bigger concession -- to bring Ranga to live with her. He was bored by the absence of playmates, but fussed over and spoiled by the other staff and the students. He remembers with particular affection Teji Suri, another lecturer and close friend of Freda's who lived close to the college. 'Aunty Teji was a commanding personality, young, vibrant, beautiful and always immaculately turned out. The girls idolized her. Even at that age, I thought she was God's gift to man.' Teji Suri had visited the Bedi family in the village when both parents were detained, and had looked after Ranga in Lahore on his visit to his mother. When Freda was working late at college or going out, Ranga would go home with Teji Suri, and often served as a young chaperone when suitors came to call. He always imagined that the dashing, smartly dressed army captain would win out over the soft-spoken poet in a crushed kurta pyjama and well-worn open sandals. He was wrong. In 1941, Teji Suri married Harivansh Rai Bachchan and left Lahore. In October of the following year, their son Amitabh was born; he became the biggest Bollywood star of his era.

The notoriety that Freda had attained, both by her own activism and time in jail and her marriage to a prominent communist, made her a target for police surveillance. Ranga's recollection is that plainclothes police officers came regularly to the college and questioned staff about what his mother was up to.

Administration staff members were called to the police station to check whether Ooggee was preaching sedition. Friends and relatives were not permitted to visit us in college, and our room was subjected to surprise searches to monitor her writings. At the college gate, a book was maintained in which Ooggee would have to log where she was going and for what and who she would be meeting. On one occasion, a hostel sweeper was manhandled in the local police station. She marched off, with me in tow, to take the police inspector to task. She also forcibly made an entry in the complaint book. That evening, a British police officer visited college and threatened to arrest her for defiance.

This pattern of intimidation did not prevent her recommencing writing for the papers. Within days of her release, she resumed writing for the Tribune, for which she once more became a regular contributor. She commented, in a more nuanced manner than a card-carrying communist would, about the Soviet Union. 'Let us not think of Russia as a paradise,' she wrote as part of a 'Spotlight on Russia' feature in the Tribune. 'It had the debris of the past to clear away. It worked with ordinary human beings, and human beings make mistakes. Russia has made mistakes. Some she has admitted to and some she has not. To name a few of the most publicised, she collectivised agriculture too rapidly and too tactlessly, she invaded Finland, she antagonised world opinion with her "man hunting" purges.'27

There was no such ambivalence a few weeks later when she expressed her sorrow at the death of the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, who had helped to arouse her interest in India and its culture and beliefs. 'I first saw him at Oxford lecturing on the highest philosophy before some of the greatest savants and philosophers of the West. He sat on a low platform with the rare light of the late evening falling on his face and making an aureole round his white head. I was very moved by his understanding, his dignity, the way in which he seemed to distil the essence of India into the small hall and with it the essence of all that is highest and universal in man.' And she made a political point of out Tagore's passing. 'It was a pity ... that a country which could produce such a great man and a genius could still be denied the right of freedom.'28

Her main political concern, however, was Deoli, and the fate of her husband and hundreds of other leftists who remained locked up there. She became a member of a Central Aid Committee, set up amid reports of another hunger strike. At a regional gathering of the All-Indian Women's Conference she 'drew a sorrowful picture of the difficulties encountered during the journey to such a distant place ... under dust and burning sun and held that the expenses incurred in going to Deoli and coming back to the Punjab were such which were beyond the means of the wives of the prisoners. If anything, the Government should at least open a separate camp in the Punjab so that the miseries of the poor wives of the hunger-strikers were not augmented.'29

A few weeks after Freda emerged from Lahore jail, the war took a turn which had direct repercussions for both her and her husband. Hider launched Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 and attacked the Soviet Union, his erstwhile ally. Communist parties which had already carried out one contortion when the Molotov- Ribbentrop pact became public knowledge and changed overnight from describing the conflict as a war against fascism to an imperialist war were again wrong-footed. The British party quickly fell in line with Moscow and came to hail a people's war which needed to be prosecuted zealously, not least to protect Soviet communism from the Nazi aggressor. The Indian party was slower to respond to the changing contours of the conflict -- in part because of a reluctance to make common cause with the Imperial power, and in part because the detention of so many leading left-wingers hampered debate and decision making. By the close of 1941, Indian communists were coming to accept the need to support the allied war effort against Germany and Japan. In April 1942, the communists confirmed their change of strategy, and so decided to support the war and all it entailed. Three months later, the Communist Party of India was legalised.30 This support for the prosecution of the war was not a popular move in India. 'It alienated us completely from the national movement ... ' Bedi recalled, 'but at the same time the conviction was so deep that anti-fascism struggle had to be carried on.'31 It also sharpened the distinction between communists and other progressive strands of nationalism. In August 1942, Congress launched the Quit India agitation which placed achieving independence ahead of fighting Germany and Japan, and which also entailed the detention of most Congress leaders for the remainder of the war; in that same month, the more radical nationalists led by Subhas Bose established the Indian National Army to fight alongside the Japanese in an attempt to evict Britain from India. The communists stood aloof from both endeavours.

Towards the close of 1941, a Friends of the Soviet Union association was established in Calcutta. Freda Bedi promptly took to the platform to endorse the campaign; her earlier misgivings about aspects of Soviet policy were set aside. 'The spirit that animates Russia in her magnificent resistance to Nazi barbarism will never die,' she told a students' conference at Lahore's Bradlaugh Hall at the end of November. She read a telegram from Bedi sent from Deoli, and passed by the censors there so in a sense approved by the British authorities: "'Convey students glowing greetings towards peace and progress through vigorously functioning Punjab Friends of Soviet.'''32 Within weeks, the new association had established a regional organisation in Punjab and Freda became the provincial organiser. It was the most prominent position she took in Indian politics, and her profile was eminently suitable for a communist front organisation of this period. She was not publicly associated with the party and she had a standing and reputation which helped the pro- Soviet, anti-Nazi, message percolate beyond the immediate ranks of the still underground CPI and its supporters. She had another considerable advantage -- she was an exceptional organiser as well as an accomplished orator. The British communist intellectual Victor Kiernan was in Lahore at this time and regarded Freda highly, considering that she was 'emerging as one of the most effective of a new generation of Party leaders'.33

Victor Kiernan's comment prompts the question of whether Freda Bedi ever held a party card. If she did, that was more out of deference to her husband than devotion to the party. To judge from Bedi's own comments, it seems she was a member of the CPI, though briefly:

No meeting was held in Lahore those days where Bedi did not speak or Freda Bedi did not speak. She joined the communist party just out of loyalty to me, because I had joined the communist party. The party did not utilize her even to this extent. I do not think Freda Bedi addressed more than two/three meetings in the big city of Lahore after her association with the party which lasted for a limited time because they did not want her name to be more and more popular among the people. That was their small heartedness.34

'Our platform is non-party,' Freda insisted, not entirely convincingly, when seeking support for the initial conference of the Punjab section of the Friends of the Soviet Union, 'and the object of the organisation is to draw together all those who sympathise with the Soviets in their epic struggle against the Nazi hordes, whether on cultural, political or humanitarian ground.'35 On another occasion she spoke of the Second World War as an 'international civil war' and asserted that 'it is to Russia that the poor and neglected of the world look'.36 She spoke widely, warning that India would have 'greater troubles' if Japan triumphed while also raising money for medical supplies for the Soviet Union and -- as a civil liberties activist -- continuing to campaign for the release of political detainees.

The detention camp in Deoli served, as Imperial jails and detention camps so often did, as a recruiting ground for communism. The factionalising on the left evident before the war was played out behind the barbed wire too. But the communists were the best organised and intellectually the most confident, and the bulk of the detainees rallied to their standard. The communists had already made a determined attempt to take control of the Congress Socialist Party at its conference in Lahore in April 1938. Bedi's own account was that, in Punjab at least, there was no real need for the party to capture the provincial CSP, because most of its members had been won over to communism. He also details, however, how the CPI acted as a caucus within the wider party -- establishing its own line on issues of policy and organisation and distributing secret circulars not to be shared with those with non-communists in the CSP.37

It was at Deoli that Bedi's allegiance to the CPI deepened. He entered the camp as a party sympathiser; he left it as a party apparatchik. By his own account, he was an important figure in the excited debates about communist strategy which helped wile away the long hours in the barracks. And he aligned himself with the hardliners in the party, such as B.T. Ranadive, and urged loyalty to Stalin and active support for the defence of the Soviet Union.

With communists now one of the few organised political groups in India to support the allied war effort, there was little purpose in keeping so many of their leading cadres locked up. A handful of Punjabi communist leaders were released in April 1942 -- even before the ban on the CPI was lifted. Bedi appears to have been part of the group. There were extenuating personal circumstance. Ranga was ill with a prolonged bout of typhoid which led to unsightly abscesses, and Freda strenuously sought her husband's release on compassionate parole.

By early May 1942, B.P.L. was back in Lahore. He was guest of honour at a function arranged by 'prominent citizens' where he thanked the people of Lahore and all those 'who had helped detenus [sic] by keeping up the agitation for release and rendered other help.'38 Far from being chastened by his sixteen months in detention, he was back on the podium and even more militant than before. He presided over an 'anti-Japanese Day' meeting in Lahore and stormed that 'guerilla bands should be formed in the Punjab, especially among the rural area for the protection of their hearths and homes. Mr Bedi declared that he would enrol ten lakhs of guerillas in the Punjab.'39 This was more rhetorical than practical, and perhaps not the wisest of declarations from a former political prisoner released just days earlier. Although the Japanese threat to British India was real, and an invasion was attempted from Burma, Japanese troops never got within a thousand miles of Lahore. But it was a declaration of militancy, or political fervour in repulsing the Axis powers and so defending Soviet communism.

On a personal level, Freda and Bedi had overcome a long period of enforced separation. They now had to re-establish their household in Lahore and offer their son and Binder a sense of security and stability after a couple of turbulent years. Bedi had come out of detention still more committed to political activity and to communism. Freda now had an opportunity to gather breath and reassess her priorities, and to spend more time on an activity she found still more rewarding than organising and addressing meetings -- her writing.

***

When early in 1947 Freda Bedi applied in Lahore for a British passport, she described herself as a journalist. She had spent years teaching English at a girls' college, and was to resume that line of work in Kashmir, but in the mid-1940s, writing and reporting was her main occupation. The family circumstances changed for the better. Bedi's writing and publishing, ranging from textbooks to ghost writing, started delivering an income and that, Freda said, 'enabled me to take a rest from the rather hard routine of lecturing in the college and travelling backwards and forwards so many miles a day. So the years '42 to '46 were years when I was more at home and writing.'! She relished the chance to have a calmer, more settled domestic life. Indeed she commented of the political activity in Lahore which now became a less prominent part of her life: 'I didn't particularly enjoy doing all this. I would have preferred, frankly, to sit at home and have a more peaceful family life. But it was the way life was, and there was no choice.' Whether this was a downplaying of the political expressed later in life when the spiritual aspect was foremost, or reflected a disdain for the rough-and-tumble of a political existence which was born more of duty than conviction, it's difficult to say -- probably a bit of both. She also faced another political difficulty -- as the Communist Party, and so her husband, fell out of step with the rest of the nationalist movement, husband and wife were also increasingly at odds about how best to achieve an independent India committed to social justice.

As a writer, Freda achieved a prominence to match her political reputation -- and it was the work she most relished. In her student days, when her friends were talking excitedly of their personal ambitions, Freda's goal was to write. She published two books, largely collections of her writing for newspapers and magazines. As a columnist, she addressed women's issues with a directness which was startling. Throughout 1943, she had a weekly column in the Tribune entitled 'From a Woman's Window which tackled issues -- such as childbirth and breast-feeding -- which rarely surfaced in the mainstream media at that time. But her focus on gender, and the unfair and unequal burden on India's women, was evident much earlier. Throughout her adult life, she sought to extend the bounds for women in public life. It would be difficult to describe Freda as a feminist. In her marriage, she willingly embraced a subservience to her husband and his personal and political ambitions. When she argued for women's interests, it was not on the basis of a principled demand for equality but of a measure more equity and respect. As a Tibetan Buddhist, she eventually found a comfortable niche with a distinctly patriarchal spiritual tradition which -- as with most major religions -- limited and confined women's role. Yet her championing of women, and her campaigning for the redress of women's grievances, was a consistent aspect of her life, and first became evident as an activist and writer in pre-independence Lahore.

In the spring of 1936, eighteen months after arriving in India and just a few weeks before Tilak's death, Freda was prominent in a public debate on the desirability of birth control clinics. The event was organised by the medical college students' union, and addressed a pressing issue in an era of large families and high infant and maternal mortality. 'Mrs Freda Bedi said that birth control did not mean no babies, it meant better babies; it did not mean no motherhood, but sensible motherhood. Birth control clinics should really be called "sensible motherhood clinics". Motherhood should be a glorious fulfilment of all that is best in woman and a source of vitality and joy and woman should not be condemned through relentless and machine-like production of children. The way to ensure this was to have efficient birth control clinics established in the Punjab where the service should be absolutely free.'2 There was lively opposition to her argument, with speakers expressing concern about birth control being sinful, leading to sterility and frustrating India's need for a large army, but the chair of the meeting declared that the general sentiment was in support of the clinics.

A couple of months later, Freda wrote for the Tribune's magazine section as part of a debate about the segregation of the sexes. 'All healthy minded people must agree,' she declared, 'that it is best if girls and boys can mix freely socially, while keeping a good attitude towards one another .... To my mind, co-education from childhood upwards is the only solution.' But swayed by her experience as a college teacher, she was also concerned that women students were ignoring skills such as cooking and sewing.

The trouble with the present system is that a young man is usually faced with the alternative of a young modern educated wife, who has no idea of running a home intelligently or of bringing up children well, or on the other hand of a pretty girl, very uneducated, who can cook, sew and manage and bring up children but will live a life very apart from him, and be quite unable either to act as a hostess to his friends or to educate his children in the way he would like. I believe that in modern India, a wife, if she is to be useful must be educated, but I am shocked at the way girls in college here neglect learning household affairs. After all, the majority of girls are going to be married and it is only kindness to their husbands to be and their children that they should know something of the more practical things of life.3

In comments that must have upset some of her students, Freda went on to say that the 'trouble is that, because higher education is something of a rarity here still, girls become swelled-headed and think that they are sure to marry rich husbands and that it is below their dignity to work in the house.' This combination of progressive and traditional outlooks was a hallmark of Freda's take on life, and evident in it is how she saw her own role in the household, as her husband's companion and collaborator, but also as the homemaker.

As for the role of women outside the household -- and particularly whether in such a conservative society, where purdah was still common, educated girls should pursue careers -- Freda encouraged young women to seek out occupations which did not excite 'undue opposition from the family and society'. When asked which avenues were open to women, she replied: 'All avenues, ultimately. They have to be fought for, or even just recognised. At present teaching, medicine and nursing hold the field. Journalism is also beginning to attract writers .... Journalism for women, the development of a women's angle in a daily newspaper is a work of which any woman might be proud. It is a national service.'4

That drew a sharp riposte from a student at Fateh Chand in an article provocatively headlined 'The Amazon, grave danger to womanliness':

It is significant that in its most loathsome and unacceptable form the suggestion for feminine careers has come from Mrs Freda Bedi, a Western-bred lady. Though, happily, she has united herself to an Indian, and she may be thinking she has 'naturalised' herself to Indian sentiments of life and living, yet the Western influences that moulded her in her childhood and adolescent years have indelibly determined the make-up of her mind and by the very laws of her being she cannot but look upon things with a vision that must needs have a taint of Westernism in it. Mrs Freda Bedi, let us not forget, has a good deal of selfless socio-political public service in Indian interests to her credit, and we revere her on that account. But we should be wary of accepting her views that may tend to disturb our accepted notions of social propriety that are peculiar to our native genius.5

That must have stung. A student at her own college insisting that Freda was not Indian, could never be Indian, and dismissing her arguments not simply on their merits but because they were tainted by her roots in an alien and uncomprehending West.

The opportunities particularly for educated young women, and the need to balance the desire for a career with domestic and household skills, was becoming an increasing focus of Freda's writing. In the summer of 1938, she published a 150-page book entitled the Modern Girl's Guide to Home-Making -- an advert declared that this 'profusely illustrated and practical book should be given to every bride in her dowry and to every growing girl for her birthday'. She also became chief advisory editor to a new Lahore-based monthly journal, Modern Girl.6 No copies of either have been located, so their contents have to be gauged on the basis of reviews. The market for English books and journals was necessarily restricted to Lahore's educated elite. This was not an attempt to address village India, or even the emerging lower middle class, but more the graduates of Fateh Chand and their families.

The reviewer in the Tribune was unconvinced by Freda's Guide. The book addressed the problems of home-making and how they could be surmounted; included recipes, 'exclusively English'; and dealt with home decorating, furnishing and colour schemes in a manner which suggested that 'only a large house and a lot of furniture of different kinds can make a home'. That wasn't the only aspect of the book that jarred. 'She has given an illustration of a typical English kitchen which is rare in India, as also the bath-room and the lavatory. It is submitted that such things are not suited to this country where the poor constitute an overwhelming majority. Besides it is not possible, except for the very rich, to have a sitting-room, dining-room or a bed-room of the type illustrated.' When Freda herself lived so simply in the Model Town huts, it's surprising that she chose to commend a vastly more expensive lifestyle -- this was perhaps the brief that the publisher had insisted upon. The book also offered advice about diet and menus, though the food recommended was expensive and made no provision for vegetarians; there was a 'slimming without tears' section; and a guide for domestic staff about 'how to wait at tables'.7

The monthly magazine appears to have had a similar style and agenda -- though it was received more warmly by the Tribune, which said it filled 'a long-felt want in Lahore society circles and should be eagerly read by educated women all over India. As Mrs Freda Bedi has put it, the "Modern Girl" aims at pointing the way to the true modern girl, the Indian wife and young mother, who has the future of the nation in her pretty hands.' The articles in the first issue covered fashion, the 'place of art in Indian homes', and a topic 'dear to every young girl ... "How to become a Modern Venus"'.8 The journal didn't prosper. A year after its launch, Freda wrote on 'Modern Girl' headed paper to tell Olive Chandler that the magazine had closed.

I had no financial interest, being in an advisory capacity only, but it had a lot of me in it, + really fulfilled a long felt need -- practical home-keeping, child-upbringing, modern news + views, for that rather pathetic creature the 'educated' Indian girl, who is brought up on books + examinations + is often unable to create a new + satisfactory home life for herself in the midst of old prejudices + antiquated methods. It was widely appreciated + quite unique but alas! However, I don't despair. They are seeds, + somewhere, somehow, they will bear some kind of fruit.9

Freda had identified a need, and a way of addressing it, but the readership simply wasn't there in sufficient numbers. It was another twenty years before Femina found a way of making a women's magazine work in the Indian market.

She was on safer ground with the broader agenda that she addressed in the Tribune, and a range of other publications, including film magazines and short broadcasts on All India Radio. Book reviews were initially her staple contributions, along with the very occasional short story. Factual writing, though, was her forte, and particularly the personal reportage that constitutes the finest of her published work. In the summer of 1941 she wrote a series of articles 'From My Village Window' for the Tribune which were quite the opposite of the 'Modern Girl' approach. These were not about how the Anglophone elite should mould their lifestyle, but vivid, compassionate pieces about the lives of the rural poor, and of women in particular -- often based on first-hand experience which would be unfamiliar to many of her readers, such as travelling in what she described as the 'poor man's club' of third-class train carriages:

The little one and myself had to sleep in the women's compartment, as the mixed compartments were overcrowded with men returning from a big fair on the banks of the Ganges at Hardwar. As usual we had a very jolly time.

When I first got in and spread our beds on the seat, there was nobody there. Soon two 'burquas' came in, 'walking tents.' From the young-looking shoes and the fashionable bordered sa/war peeping out at the bottom, I guessed they were young women. Soon afterwards came a happy party of hill women, also returning from Hardwar. They were two young wives, very smiling and peaceful, with a son and a daughter each.

Their menfolk invaded even the sacred precincts of the women's compartment to give the last rupees to the children, the last glass of water, the last treasured words before an unfeeling ticket collector with an eye on the rules shuffled them out.

Back in the village they would have so many tales to tell of Lahore, and the children would wear their shining rubber slippers until the last shred had come off their feet.

When the train started, there was yet another surprise. From inside the 'burquas' emerged two very lively young persons who made the whole compartment ring with their laughter. The children responded, and soon the whole train was like a fairground.10

In her writing as in her life, Freda displayed compassion and humanity. There is at times a sentimentality, a reluctance to address the rougher, ruder, uglier side of life, but as a columnist she helped the urban Indian elite to see another vantage point on the village and on villagers, with whom she had such an evident affinity.

The personal turbulence surrounding Freda's and her husband's detention forced a pause to her writing. With B.P.L.'s release from Deoli in April 1942, the Bedis were together as a family for the first time in eighteen months. The priority was to re-establish a domestic routine. Freda had moved out of the Model Town huts shortly after Bedi was arrested. They now decided to move back there, and retrieve something of the arcadian style of life which they both treasured. And that meant -- Ranga Bedi recalls -- building new huts. 'After two years "in the wilderness", we moved into our real home the other day,' Freda wrote in the Tribune. We lit the kitchen fire in the huts again on Basant, the first day of Spring. It was a beautiful day, lyrical. All around us the young corn was making the countryside green, and we took a handful of the surson [mustard] and placed it in the hut where its living colour lit up the neutral reed walls. It was, quite simply, home.' And the lyrical turn of phrase also extended to her 'reckless marriage' -- as she imagined the world might see it -- 'because the only thing I or my husband cared about was that we loved one another.'11

It was not an easy time. In recordings made towards the end of her life, Freda recalled that the period when the family 'went back to our huts in the green belt of Model Town and tried to pick up the threads of life again' was also 'the gloomiest time of all really -- the time when the national movement went into the 1942 stage and when the movement within the Indian states became acute.'12The gloom was above all political. The Congress launched the 'Quit India' movement that summer and most of its leadership was put behind bars. Communists kept their distance -- their priority was to defend the Soviet Union from Germany's invasion and so to support the allied war effort. It was a dramatic political about-turn. The political force which regarded itself as the most militant was now making common purpose with India's rulers and criticising those who were detained for putting the national issue ahead of prosecuting the war. Freda remained active in the Friends of the Soviet Union -- though much less vigorously so after her husband's release from Deoli -- but this acute tension between communists and Congress must have caused some domestic friction. Bedi was now publicly and firmly allied to the communist cause; Freda's foremost concern was freeing India of British rule and she must have had an instinctive sympathy with the Quit India campaign. It was just the sort of mass mobilisation that she had wanted to see in the early stages of the war. The family's recollection is that she was uncomfortable with the CPI's repudiation of Congress and of Gandhi, and distanced herself from it. 'He was the more radical Marxist,' Ranga says, 'whereas she was supporting him by being a member of the party.'

Once Bedi was back in Lahore, he resumed his publishing work and had some success in securing writing commissions. There were other ventures; the Bedis' advertised a writing service in the Tribune: 'HAVE YOU WRITTEN A BOOK? Is it on your table or at the bottom of an old trunk? Are you press shy? If so, we can help you. We can prune, polish and publish it for you.'13 Away from the routine of teaching English to college students, Freda had the time and space to take on more ambitious writing assignments. The first of her weekly columns under the title 'From a Woman's Window' appeared in the Tribune in January 1943. As with so much of her most effective writing, the tone was often personal and reflective. 'For me, the Old Year was a strange patchwork. I sat a good part of it away by the side of a sick-bed. But it brought the blessing of a completed family again. That is saying a good deal, when half of it is submerged in the dangerous whirlpool of the West, and the other wove into the tempestuous East.'14

'From a Woman's Window' continued for much of that year. It was unusual for a woman journalist to have a weekly column devoted to women's issues. Freda used it well. Her style was gentle and persuasive. Her range of topics included a fierce denunciation of dowry, Punjabi women's dress and her own adoption of Indian garments and the striving for greater space for women in public and professional life. Some of the sentiments expressed were almost apologetic about women and their shortcomings. In an article entitled 'Our Sillier Qualities', she accepted that 'the majority [of women] can be depended upon to behave in an illogical way, and mix argument with emotion' -- but then went on to pose a wider question of why women were that way, and what potential could be realised if bars to their development were removed.

Freda's column repeatedly addressed personal issues about women's lives and choices (or the absence of choices) in a manner that was arrestingly direct. Women's education was a particular concern. 'My own mother, who was very wise in such matters ... used to say "The time comes for every bird to flyaway from its nest". If all mothers could understand things as she did, a good many of the tragedies of daily life could be avoided,' she declared in advocating access to higher education. 'I know a good deal about the kind of education that is given in the average college, not only in the Punjab but all over India, and I have my very serious doubts about the worth of the very mechanical book-knowledge imparted to the girls who throng there. But if I had a daughter, I would never hesitate for a moment to send her to college because, as I see it, girls who go there do get the very atmosphere of freedom about them. And freedom I mean in a good sense. It is as though some stillness leaves their bones.'15 In writing that, Freda must surely have had her in mind her own years at St Hugh's and the manner in which that exposed to her a different world, and to the people and causes that brought her to India.

The column touched on still more personal issues, delving deep into her own experiences of motherhood and its joys and discomforts. It was almost nine years since she had given birth in Berlin to Ranga and the memory remained potent.

I remember my own feelings when I saw the face of my baby for the first time, when I was giving it milk and my body was racked with pain. It was a symbol to me not only of the beauty of life, but its cruelty, its mystery, its fierce struggle. Here was this little being scarcely conscious that it was yet alive or separate, feeding itself avidly, careless of the pain that was shooting through my body. Eager to live. To breathe. To move. To kick. To survive. And as a mother, there was no resentment in the pain I suffered. It was full of pity and longing and an almost unbearable tenderness for the little atom that was so much part of me, and yet starting on its own stony path, alone, as every human being is alone.16

She returned to this issue of the pain of childbirth in an article with the unsettling title 'Going to Bed with a Coffin'. 'I remember lying in child birth with waves of pain seizing my body, and as the crest of the wave went down, and the other was gathering strength, turning the world over in my mind. . .. It darted through my mind that all the girl child grows to, and blossoms for is just this, this lying in torment.'17 She believed that in these 'moments of great love or great agony' a sensitivity develops which means that 'many things in life which were hidden to us we see in a blinding flash of understanding.' There was a searching aspect to some of her columns in the Tribune which points to her turn to a spiritual path a decade later.

'The Edge of a Naked Sword' was the title of a column devoted to marriage -- and Freda wrote in a manner which must have carried some echo of her own experience.

Marriage is such an intimate affair that, ultimately speaking, it is impossible for two normally constituted human beings to get on together unless they have a very strong physical attraction for one another to begin with, and some other bond of the spirit that will hold them together whatever ill or catastrophe may befall them. Common interests are a good deal. But they are not always essential, as a wife can and does often grow into her husband's life and ways of thought.18

Freda had certainly adapted to Bedi's 'life and ways of thought' -- without all that much sign of a commensurate adaptation by her husband. She once commented that 'nearly seven years of rubbing about in what is known as "the outer world" has worn off some of my sharper corners. But the process was not a painless one.'19 And the 'passive demeanour' of the wife could turn into a powerful force once galvanised into action, 'whether it demands simple things like grain for a hungry family or whether it demands great and difficult things like the expulsion of an enemy from a native soiL'20

She also reflected on the difficult political situation of a country unwillingly at war. She wrote powerfully of the emotions aroused by one of Gandhi's fasts in support of political demands, reflecting that the response demonstrated the distinction between what might loosely be called a political leader and a truly national figure. 'In every town and village of India the menace of losing Gandhiji, with India a threatened island in a world at war, had shaken people, more than they ever dreamed they could be shaken. During the worst days of the fast I happened to be at Sialkot. There, in spite of efforts to stop it, women and children gathered night and morning in their dozens to pray for the precious life. I also went one night, and leaving aside the quibble of whether or not prayer is any help, the very passionate urge of the heart of those who went shook the air around us. Gandhiji's suffering united India in those twenty-one days.'21 She understood the political importance of moral authority -- indeed, her political outlook was more moral and ethical than ideological.

Towards the close of 1943, Freda assembled a selection of her journalism and writings; it was published by her husband's imprint in Lahore, Unity Publishers. Behind the Mud Walls consists of more than twenty articles, mainly written for the Tribune and other papers -- though the greater part of her jail diary, the centrepiece of the volume, appears to have been previously unpublished. The more personal of her pieces -- coming to India, getting to know her husband's family, and then the perils of arrest and jail -- are a powerful and elegant account of defining chapters of her life. The book was dedicated 'to the two who have mothered me in England and India', her mother and her mother-in-law. The exigencies of wartime publishing limited the reach and impact of Behind the Mud Walls, and (to date) it has never been republished. It is without question the most impressive and revealing of Freda's books and pamphlets. 'Freda Bedi, though an Englishwoman, is one of us,' commented the reviewer in the Tribune, 'sharing with us our joys and sorrows in our march to freedom .... Under the veil of her simple and touching descriptions runs the enthusiasm of the socialist and the reformer.'22 Once again, the dominant element, besides the personal, was the plight of Indian womanhood, and the often inspirational manner they responded to the challenges they faced. The 'national service' that Freda had identified as an option for her students -- journalism by women, about women and for women -- was one that she herself undertook with determination.

[Cont'd. below]

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Part 3 of 3

Freda Bedi's increasing profile as a writer opened new opportunities, the most challenging of which was an assignment to report at first hand on the most terrible of India's wartime tragedies. From the summer of 1943 onwards, newspapers carried accounts of famine in Bengal, where crop failures and cyclone damage were exacerbated by official indifference, a preoccupation with the war effort, and a determination to ensure that if the Japanese army -- already well established in Burma -- managed to invade they would be denied stockpiles of rice and the boats so essential for local transport. A huge number of Bengalis -- perhaps as many as four million, Freda believed -- died of starvation or succumbed to diseases which if well-fed they would have resisted.1 The Communist Party was particularly active in drawing attention to the famine and demanding relief. In December 1943, both Bedi and Freda addressed meetings in and around Lahore on behalf of the Bengal Central Relief Committee.2 By the end of the month, she was on the spot, sent by the Tribune to give a sense of the human consequences of the disaster. Freda didn't speak Bengali and she was almost certainly accompanied when travelling from village to village. Her job was 'to make the famine a reality' for newspaper readers in Punjab rather than 'a bundle of figures' by writing reflective and descriptive columns from the areas worst affected.

In a letter to her old Oxford friend Olive Chandler, Freda recounted that she spent a month 'tramping the villages and seeing the worst spots, something so horrible that an Airgram can't hold it.'3 She had seen plenty of human suffering, but nothing remotely like this. The paper carried Freda's articles as a series under the title 'Bengal Today' and within a matter of months these were compiled as a slim book. Bengal Lamenting was published not by the Bedis' own imprint but by the much larger Lion Press in Lahore. Accompanying the articles were deeply unsettling images. The cover was designed by the progressive artist Sobha Singh whom the Bedis would have known from Andretta. It was a stark and arresting drawing, depicting a naked and emaciated woman with the wasted body of her son on her lap. Pinned in to the book were five photographic images of the famine, one of which showed a dog gnawing on human remains.

In her travels across Bengal and Orissa (now Odisha), Freda made a point of venturing off the beaten path. At times, she travelled by bicycle, 'a perilous affair with inactive brakes. It was in addition a man's cycle and I couldn't get off easily. So I quietly fell off whenever the crowd got too great.' This allowed her to see something of life and suffering in the villages, 'always the barometer of Indian life. There, in one of the hundreds and thousands of huddles of mud huts away from the main road, barely reachable by a muddy path, lies India's destiny, her life, her death, her intolerable longings, her inertia, the remnants of her joy of living, and her last and most bleeding despair.' Her account of the individual stories of loss and destitution gave particular force to her writing.

At every door I stopped to hear the same pitiful theme, with its hundred variations. 'Here the men have gone away to work in Assam: the women have nothing. They make a bare occasional living working at marriages and festivals. In between they starve' ... 'Here they have all run away: the men to the town, the women to beggary and destitution and the gruel kitchens.' I shuddered. There was a lot behind that inadequate word, destitution. Humiliation, demoralisation, casual prostitution, disease. And behind it the face of abandoned children.

We came across a hut without its corrugated roof. It had been casually torn off, the room gaped dully to the sky. In reply to my half-formed question they pointed out a dried up husk of a woman cowering in the next hut. 'Her husband died a few days ago,' they said. 'Her children died before that. She sold the roof, her last possession, to buy him a coffin.'4

As so often, her particular focus was village women: those who had seen their menfolk head out to 'get food' and had no idea whether they were alive or dead; those forced by despair and the plight of their children to sell themselves. She reported on the manner by which young girls, some of them infants, were sold for sex. 'The need to take people from beggary to self-supporting work is a real one. In the case of women, it is the only road open to them if they are not to become mere cattle in the markets of human flesh.'

Freda was more an essayist and columnist than a reporter and she was not used to disaster journalism. Her writing from Bengal was vivid, compassionate and resolutely non-sensational. Her challenge was to break through with her prose the barrier that she herself identified -- that middle-class readers on the other flank of India had become 'famine weary', She spoke warmly of the Friends' Ambulance Unit, the People's Relief Committees and all the other local efforts -- religious, secular and military -- to provide food and medical relief to those in gravest need. There is also a pervasive anger running through Bengal Lamenting at the greed and hypocrisy she witnessed amid the many generous and selfless initiatives. 'Doctors who profiteer on patients, and traders who profiteer on foodstuffs and medicines, deserve no mercy at the hands of the people. Peaceful as I am by temperament, by the time I had been round a few villages and heard [the] same stories I felt even transportation for life would be too mild a sentence for them.'5 In Calcutta, Bengal's capital, the poor and emaciated had been pushed out of the city to harvest the next rice crop -- and also, she surmised, to be hidden from the view of the urban middle class. 'Calcutta is a lady with a painted face,' Freda wrote. 'She is hiding her ugliness and her sores under a coating of powder and the red on her lips is die red of the people's blood.' And even as one famine was starting to ease, everyone was talking about the next one round the corner.

In the foreword to Bengal Lamenting, Freda declared that her book 'is more than a cry of pain, a call to pity, a picture of another tidal wave of tears that has wrenched itself up from the ocean of human misery. It is a demand for a reconsideration on a national scale of that problem that cannot be localised, a plea for unity in the face of chaos, one more thrust of the pen for the right of every Bengali and every Indian to see his destiny guided by patriots in a National Government of the People.'6 This was reportage with a political purpose. She dismissed conspiracy theories that the British had allowed Bengal to slip into famine to punish the home province of Subhas Chandra Bose, whose supporters were fighting alongside the Japanese. But she argued that the official response to the Japanese invasion of the rice-exporting regions of Burma, and the policy of 'denial' to ensure that advancing Japanese troops would not be able simply to commandeer river transport and grain, 'meant the sealing up of Bengal from the world rice market.'

Actually what happened was that artificial scarcity in Denial and cyclone areas ... combined with dislocated transport, overburdened with war responsibilities, created local panics that translated themselves into, on the one hand, exaggerated private-hoarding by the middle classes and, in particular by the big rice-growing landlords who are the king of Bengal's rice, and on the other, profiteering and hoarding by local trades people, backed up by the big commercial rice firms. Add to this inflation, and you have chaos complete. Money flowed into the Stock Exchange; rice became a commodity of scarcity value; and the sharks of Big Business made their daily thousands by trading in the people's life-blood -- their staple food.

From this she made the obvious argument that if India was governed by those whose first concern was the welfare of India's citizens, the tragedy would not have been on anything like the same scale. 'There is no argument left for the status quo when it has failed so miserably, and there is no doubt about it that any patriotic team of Indians could have averted such a terrible loss of life. The Indian demand for a National Government at the Centre has become not only insistent, but a matter of life and death.'7

Freda ended the book with a quote, unacknowledged, from one of the great political poems to come out of the Spanish Civil War. Cecil Day-Lewis's 'Nabara', published six years earlier, was an account of a fascist-aligned warship intercepting and destroying a convoy carrying relief supplies to the Republican-controlled Basque country.

Freedom is more than a word, more than the base coinage
Of statesmen, the tyrant's dishonoured cheque, or the dreamer's mad
Inflated currency. She is mortal, we know, and made
In the image of simple men who have no taste for carnage
But sooner kill and are killed than see that image betrayed.

She implied some moral equivalence between the brutality of the supporters of Franco in Spain and of the misery British imperialism forced on Bengal.

Freda also began to spend more time in another of India's troubled regions, Kashmir. The family travelled to Kashmir occasionally from the late 1930s, in part as a summer retreat from the scorching Lahore summer but also to support the nascent progressive nationalist movement in this princely state. After Bedi's release from Deoli, Kashmir loomed increasingly large in their lives-and their engagement with the Kashmir Valley merits separate attention. It was while in Kashmir Valley in the summer of 1945 that Freda discovered she was pregnant. Ranga was by then eleven. The family's more settled life near Model Town made this a propitious moment to have another child. 'I got to know I was having a child when I was up in Haji Brar beyond Pahlgam ... where we often used to pitch our tents during the summer months,' Freda wrote nineteen years later in a 'coming of age' letter to the son she bore:

... when the signs came on my body and I knew that a child was really coming ... I also knew that it would be another son -- a third, because little Tilak had died that cruel summer of 1936. Everyone said you must be wanting a girl and I smiled, because I knew the time for the coming of a daughter had not yet arrived. We were still in the straw huts and tents, and girls don't like that sort of thing.

Later in the summer I came down to Srinagar to Nishat Bagh, a little garden cottage full of cherry trees. I could feel you inside me, kicking quite hard. It was a beautiful autumn. I had not had a baby in my arms for so long, that you were more than welcome. Sometimes I would meditate + a stream of bliss would run through my body ... I read the lives of the mystics, Gita, Koran, the conversations of Sri Rama Krishna. There was something warm and peaceful and beautiful.8

Back in Lahore a few weeks before the birth, another newcomer joined the family -- a Great Dane pup called Rufus. 'Papa said "That's the baby's chowkidar'. He was such a huge good-natured bumbling creature, and when he tried to be puppy-like and sit on people's laps he looked like an elephant on a stool.' Kabir Bedi was born in a Lahore nursing home on the 16th January 1946. His name came from a book by Rabindranath Tagore -- the Songs of Kabir was his translation of the poems of Kabir, a fifteenth-century poet and mystic, whose writings influenced or reflected Hinduism, Sikhism and Sufism.

In the final stages of Freda's pregnancy, Bedi was once again preoccupied by politics. The end of the Second World War, and the return of a Labour government in Britain, heralded India's independence. The Bedi family were 'all hoping that the New World will have something for India,' Freda wrote to Olive Chandler. 'She has suffered enough.'9 Few expected, however, that the pace of change would be so rapid and overwhelming. In January 1946, provincial elections were held across India. The communists decided to contest and hoped to poll well in Punjab with Bedi among their candidates. This was unduly optimistic. The party had very limited strength in the province -- the British communist Rajani Palme Dutt, in private notes made during his visit to India later that year, suggested that out of a total CPI membership of 53,700, just 1,600 were in Punjab.10 'I hope Bedi is successful in the elections,' Freda's brother Jack wrote from on board ship in Australia, 'there is a worldwide swing to labour and about time to[o]'.11 He wasn't successful. The outcome was humbling for the communists. Across India, they took less than three per cent of the vote and won only eight seats -- none of them in Punjab.12 It was widely seen as a punishment for their support of the war effort and repudiation of mainstream nationalism. In Punjab, the Muslim League emerged as the largest party in the assembly, a result which enormously strengthened Jinnah's hand in his pursuit of a separate Pakistan.

Although communists had lost out at the ballot box, the temper of political activity was intense. The Bedis were part of a lively left-minded social circle in Lahore which included poets, writers and academics. It was an exciting time. Pran Chopra, then a journalist in his mid-twenties, recalled B.P.L. Bedi as 'a florid individual, physically as well as mentally. You never had a dull moment in a half-hour sitting with others where he was present too.' He was not at all sure how well Bedi fitted in with the disciplined structures of a highly centralised party. 'B.P.L. would not be a cadre person for any organisation; he was too much his own man'. He knew Freda better and was impressed by her. 'One knew that she was a very serious person -- serious in pursuit of her interests. ... She was in fact a force behind B.P.L. ... She was quieter. She was the disciplining force behind B.P.L. ... '13 London-born Rajni Kumar met the Bedis in Lahore in 1946 and recalled Freda as a very intelligent and determined woman with 'very deep, penetrating eyes and soft expression'. But she found B.P.L. more fun:

Bedi, her husband, was delightful. I loved Bedi. He was huge -- absolutely huge. He was a scream. I remember going to some of these big rallies, kisan [peasant] rallies, in Jalandhar and Ambala and Ludhiana. And there was a big communist movement in the villages and politicising the rural peasantry and I used to go with the girls, the Communist group ... Oh, they were so exciting for me, when I saw those big peasants going round, you know, 'Inquilab Zindabad', and the shouts and the excitement and the feeling of revolution, it was really very exciting.14

She also heard of another side to Bedi -- his reputation with women. 'It was inevitable in a way because he was that kind of person, he was that kind of personality .... Freda was much more, you know what I mean, controlled. She was a controlled person. She did not give vent much to her emotions outwardly as Bedi [did]. Bedi was outgoing. So he could also indulge.'

Bedi's reputation as a communist activist was considerable. He wasn't a national figure but in Punjab he was well known and widely respected. Som Anand, who as a youngster used to sell the communist paper People's Age in Model Town, considered Bedi to be 'an orator of some standing'.15 With his prominence as a leftist came the renewed attention of the authorities. 'The residence of Mr B.P.L. Bedi, organiser of the provincial Communist Party, was searched by the police last night,' the Tribune reported in January 1947. 'A contingent of women police was also present. The search lasted nine and a half hours. Nothing incriminatory is reported to have been recovered, but the police removed certain books and papers.'16 Such a protracted search was clearly a warning to the Bedis -- that they were being watched and had better tread carefully.

Early in 1947, shortly after Kabir's first birthday, Freda chose to make a journey back home to Derby. It was fourteen years since she had left England, and a decade since she last saw her mother. Nellie had endured some difficult years during the war -- Freda had at one point told a friend that her mother was 'very very ill' -- and there was no prospect of her coming out again to Lahore. The end of the war made international travel feasible once more, and Freda wanted to show off her new child. Leaving Bedi, Binder and thirteen-year-old Ranga behind, Freda and her baby set off for London. Travelling that huge distance with a year-old infant was a daunting prospect -- but nothing like as difficult as the ship journey out had been with a still younger Ranga. Many years later, Freda set down for Kabir how that journey came about:

It was at that time that stories came of Independence being given to India in 1948, + Papa felt I should go home + see Mother who had not met me since her visit to India in 1936-7. 'There might be trouble during the transfer of power' he said, 'and we should be together. So go now.'

I remember giving you your last little drop of Mother's milk in the hut. You were looking up to me with a very sweet expression in your eyes. And I thought: 'He does not know he is not going to get any more.' You were one year old: I could imagine the horror if I arrived in England feeding a year old baby. Out of the jungle! All English babies are weaned on to bottles at nine months. But I really hadn't the heart to stop the milk before. You liked it too much!

So still in your wicker Moses basket we boarded the Boat Plane in Karachi, February 1947. We landed in England in the middle of a terrible snowstorm + you celebrated your first fortnight in Derby, near your adoring Grandma + Grandpa, by getting measles, which you had caught from a child with the snuffles on the Lahore-Karachi train.17

Before boarding the plane, Freda dropped a line to a friend asking for advice about what to do in London. Jawaharlal Nehru, who by the end of the year was to become the first prime minister of independent India, sent a brief reply to her at The Huts. 'I hope you will enjoy your visit to England after 14 years,' he wrote. 'You should certainly meet Krishna Menon, I cannot suggest what you might do there, but Krishna Menon will, no doubt, be able to do so.'18

Having made the arduous journey back to Britain for the first time, Freda planned to stay in England for several months. Kabir was clearly feted by his Derby family, as the surviving photos from the visit demonstrate. Freda had occasional reporting assignments. Derby's evening paper noted that she was covering the British Labour Party's annual conference for an Indian newspaper and included a photograph of her in Punjabi-style salwar kameez. In her absence, the pace of political developments in India picked up furiously. Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, set a much earlier date than expected for independence. Freda must have been anguished to be out ofI ndia when its national aspirations were finally realised on 15th August 1947; and anguished also that India was to be partitioned and that her home city of Lahore was to be in Pakistan. Communal tension and killings erupted in Punjab in March 1947, and became much more intense in the weeks after Partition as huge caravans of refugees made their way in both directions across the new international border. It's now believed that in Punjab alone more than two-million people may have been killed amid the mayhem which accompanied Partition. Somewhere approaching fifteen-million Punjabis became refugees.19 Lahore, the provincial capital, was in flames. It had been a lively and diverse city with a Muslim majority, but where the large Hindu and Sikh minorities had made a conspicuous contribution to culture and commerce. It became almost exclusively Muslim.

For the return leg, Freda and Kabir were on the passenger list of a P&O liner which had served during the war as a troop ship, the 'Strathmore', departing Southampton for Bombay on 26th September 1947. But they didn't make the journey. The turmoil in Punjab was so severe, with Lahore suffering such acute upheaval, that returning there with a baby would have been reckless. Freda stayed in England a few weeks longer -- no doubt anxiously reading the reports of communal violence in Punjab and waiting for word from her husband. She took advantage of the extra time to meet old Oxford friends. At the beginning of December, she sent Olive Chandler a postcard -- the picture was of their old college -- thanking her for a memorable visit: 'Had lunch with Barbara [Castle] today + fly tomorrow.'20 She had been away for nine months.

Freda's visit had a charming codicil. A year later, her mother received a last minute invitation to meet India's new prime minister. 'Summoned to a reception at India House, London, to meet Jawaharlal Pandit Nehru, Mrs. F.N. Swan ... cooked a meal for four, prepared the next day's food and then found time to go out and buy herself a new dress and a new hat for the occasion before catching a train to London less than seven hours after receiving the invitation,' reported the Derby Daily Telegraph. Mrs Swan told the paper that her daughter was 'well known to Pandit Nehru' and she said her proudest moment came when Nehru stopped at her table and shook her hand.21

Bedi's firm intention was to stay in Lahore after Partition. He was in Simla on independence day, in what was to become the Indian part of Punjab, but was determined to return to Lahore and resume his political activity. 'There was grave danger to my life, I realised it, but I felt my duty was there.'22 Amid the spiralling violence, Ranga, Binder and Bhabooji were sent to stay with Bedi's brother, then a sessions judge in Jalandhar, on the Indian side of the Partition line. Bedi on several occasions helped families to safety. Anela, the European wife of his friend Hafeez Jullundhri, found herself on the wrong side of the new border along with her seven-year-old daughter Zia. Her husband was a Muslim, and indeed a proponent of Pakistan, and they were at acute risk in Indian Punjab. Anela abandoned her salwar kameez for European dress. Both Bedi and his brother came to their aid. Zia recalls a shot through the window of the house in which they took refuge. They were brought to Jalandhar and put on a train, but even then they were still in peril:

I remember my mother was wearing a dress then which I thought very odd, and we were in a carriage in Jalandhar, we were going somewhere, and a door opened and a Sikh was there with a sword, and he said: 'Voh Musalmaan --' [You Muslim]. And Baba [Bedi] lent his dog to my mother-he was called Rufus, he was a Great Dane -- to be our helper and security guard. ... I was under my mother's skirt, underneath, and I could see. And he was looking for Musulmaan [Muslims]. And my mother said: 'Jao, jao, idher koi Musulmaan nahii hain. Dafar ho jao.' [Go away, there are no Muslims here. Get out.] And Rufus barked ... and he went away.23

On another occasion, Bedi travelled to Kapurthala to help a Muslim family make a safe return to Lahore, and required all his powers of oratory and persuasion -- and of Punjabi idiom -- to quell a restive crowd.24 Som Anand, who related that story of Bedi's bravery, was also the beneficiary of his help. A few weeks after Partition, the family's home in Lahore was targeted by a group of Pathans, and Bedi along with Hafeez Jullundhri ensured that everyone was moved out. 'Hafeez Sahib made a hurried trip to our house to see the situation. He came back with the news that it was still dangerous for us to go back. Someone in the neighbourhood had told him that the Pathans were still keeping a watch on the area. What then was to be done? Mr Bedi suggested that we should go to Delhi by air, leaving everything in Hafeez Sahib's charge. There seemed to be no other way, and father agreed to it. By the afternoon of that day, we were in Delhi telling my brother the story of our narrow escape.'25

Partition ruptured some longstanding allegiances. Hafeez Jullundhri not only embraced Pakistan; he became the country's unofficial poet laureate and author of its national anthem. The friendship was strained almost beyond repair. Even a month or two after Independence, with by far the greater number of non- Muslims forced out of Lahore, Bedi was still minded to stay. He said later that it was Pakistan's decision in October 1947 to fight in Kashmir, to repulse not only India but also the progressive strand within Kashmiri nationalism which Bedi championed, that finally persuaded him to leave. A few weeks later, he managed to make the hazardous journey across the new border to Jalandhar. When Freda and Kabir finally managed to get a flight back to India, they also went straight to Jalandhar. The Bedis never lived again in Lahore. B.P.L. made one visit back years later26 but Freda never returned. She never saw the Model Town huts again. The independence she had so eagerly and enthusiastically sought had brought down the curtain on the family home where she and Bedi were happiest. It must have been a sour-sweet moment. But they quickly had a new mission -- personal and political. Within days of assembling together in Jalandhar, the Bedis flew to Kashmir, the former princely state which was being fought over by India and Pakistan. It was to be their home for the next five years.

-- The Lives of Freda: The Political, Spiritual and Personal Journeys of Freda Bedi, by Andrew Whitehead

The Tribune
Front page of a historic 1931 edition
Type Daily newspaper[1]
Format Broadsheet
Owner(s) Tribune Trust
Publisher Tribune Trust
Editor Rajesh Ramachandran
Founded 2 February 1881
Political alignment Center Left
Language English
Headquarters Chandigarh, India (previously Ambala)
Website Tribuneindia.com

The Tribune is an Indian English-language daily newspaper published from Amritsar, Bathinda, Chandigarh, New Delhi, Jalandhar and Ludhiana. It was founded on 2 February 1881, in Lahore (now in Pakistan), by Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia, a philanthropist, and is run by a trust comprising five persons as trustees.[2] It is a major Indian newspaper with a worldwide circulation.[3][4][5][6] In India, it is among the leading English daily for Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and the Union Territory of Chandigarh.[7] The present editor of The Tribune is Rajesh Ramachandran. He was appointed on 14 May 2018. Previously he was editor-in-chief of Outlook magazine. Ramachandran succeeded Harish Khare, who was appointed editor-in-chief of the Tribune Group of newspapers on 1 June 2015,[8] serving until 15 March 2018. [9]

The Tribune has two sister publications: Dainik Tribune (in Hindi) and Punjabi Tribune (in Punjabi). R. K. Singh is the Editor of Dainik Tribune and Sahitya Akademi Award winner and prominent Punjabi playwright Swaraj Bir Singh is the editor of the Punjabi Tribune. The online edition of The Tribune was launched in July 1998, and the online editions of the Punjabi Tribune and Dainik Tribune were launched on 16 August 2010.[10]

All three newspapers are published by the Tribune Trust. Narinder Nath Vohra is the president of the Tribune Trust, which comprises S. S. Sodhi, S. S. Mehta, Naresh Mohan, and Gurbachan Jagat as trustees.

The Tribune has had Kali Nath Roy, Prem Bhatia, Hari Jai Singh, H.K. Dua, and Raj Chengappa among others, as its editors-in-chief in the past.

Similar to most Indian newspapers, The Tribune receives the majority of its revenue from advertisements over subscriptions.[11]

See also

• Yog Joy

References

1. "Chandigarh Tribune - daily newspaper in Chandigarh, India with local news and events". Mondo Times. Retrieved 30 July 2011.
2. Chhina, Rajinder Mohan S. (2 February 2016). "The Tribune Founder's Day: Visionary who helped shape modern Punjab". The Tribune. Retrieved 20 April 2016.
3. "India national news media". Mondo Times. Retrieved 13 May 2018.
4. "India Tribune available". Amazon.com. Archived from the original on 15 December 2013. Retrieved 13 May 2018.
5. Katoch, Avnish (15 March 2007). "Himachal Tribune launched". Himachal.us. Archived from the original on 9 February 2008. Retrieved 13 May 2018.
6. Bains, Satinder (18 November 2007). "Tribune Trust Chairman Justice R.S. Pathak passes away". Punjab Newsline. Archived from the original on 19 November 2007. Retrieved 13 May2018.
7. "The Tribune Trust places another order with QI Press Controls". Indian Printer and Publisher. 8 February 2010. Archived from the original on 27 December 2010. Retrieved 22 August 2011.
8. "Harish Khare is new Editor-in-Chief". The Tribune. 1 May 2015. Retrieved 13 May 2018.
9. Guruswamy, Mohan (18 March 2018). "Harish Khare Forced Out Again: Exit Casts Shadow Over The Tribune's Independence". The Citizen. Retrieved 13 May 2018.
10. Dua, Rohan (13 August 1978). "Varinder Walia made Editor of Punjabi Tribune". Exchange4media.com. Archived from the original on 20 July 2011. Retrieved 30 July 2011.
11. "Newspapers in India: Will subscription revenue overtake ad revenue?". Campaign India. Retrieved 19 November 2018.

External links

• Official website
• Facebook - The Tribune
• Twitter - The Tribune
• Instagram - The Tribune
• YouTube Channel - The Tribune

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Debendranath Tagore
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/11/20

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Debendranath Tagore
Portrait of Debendranath Tagore
Born: 15 May 1817, Calcutta, Bengal, Bengal Presidency[1]
Died: 19 January 1905 (aged 87), Calcutta, Bengal, British India
Nationality: British Indian
Occupation: Religious reformer
Movement: Bengal Renaissance
Children: Dwijendranath Tagore, Satyendranath Tagore, Hemendranath Tagore, Jyotirindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, Birendranath Tagore, Somendranath Tagore, Punyendranath Tagore, Budhendranath Tagore, Soudamini Tagore, Sukumari Tagore, Saratkumari Tagore, Swarnakumari Tagore and Barnakumari Tagore.

Debendranath Tagore (15 May 1817 – 19 January 1905) was a Bengali philosopher and religious savant, active in the Brahmo Samaj ("Society of Brahman"). He was the founder in 1848 of the Brahmo religion, which today is synonymous with Brahmoism. Born in Shilaidaha, his father was the industrialist Dwarkanath Tagore.

Debendranath was a deeply religious man. His movement, the Brahmo Samaj, was formed in 1843 by merging his Tattwabodhini Sabha with the Brahmo Sabha, ten years after the death of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, founder of the Brahmo Sabha. The Brahmo Sabha had fallen away from its original aims and practices, as stated in its Trust deed of Brahmo Sabha. However, Tagore aimed to revive the importance of this deed.

Although Debendranath was deeply spiritual, he managed to continue to maintain his worldly affairs – he did not renounce his material possessions, as some Hindu traditions prescribed, but instead continued to enjoy them in a spirit of detachment. His considerable material property included estates spread over several districts of Bengal; most famously, the Santiniketan estate near Bolpur in the Birbhum district, a later acquisition, where his eldest son Dwijendranath Tagore set up his school.

Debendranath was a master of the Upanishads and played no small role in the education and cultivation of the faculties of his sons.

Family History

The original surname of the Tagores were Kushari. They were Rarhi Brahmins and originally belonged to a village named Kush in the district named Burdwan in West Bengal. Rabindra-Biographer Shri Prabhat Kumar Mukherjee wrote in page no.2 of the first volume of his book named Rabindrajibani O Rabindra Sahitya Prabeshika that, "The Kusharis were the descendants of Deen Kushari, the son of Bhatta Narayana; Deen was granted a village named Kush (in Burdwan zilla) by Maharaja Kshitisura, he became its chief and came to be known as Kushari."[2]

Thakur Bari (House of Tagores)

Debendranath Tagore was born to the Tagore family in Jorasanko, popularly known as Jorasanko Thakur Bari in North-western Kolkata, which was later converted into a campus of the Rabindra Bharati University. The Tagore family, with over three hundred years of history,[3] has been one of the leading families of Calcutta, and is regarded as a key influence during the Bengal Renaissance.[3] The family has produced several persons who have contributed substantially in the fields of business, social and religious reformation, literature, art and music.[3][4]

Children

Debendranath married Sarada Devi (died 1875) and they together had 15 children.[5] They included:

Dwijendranath (1840–1926) was an accomplished scholar, poet and music composer. He initiated shorthand and musical notations in Bengali. He wrote extensively and translated Kalidasa's Meghdoot into Bengali.

Satyendranath (1842–1923) was the first Indian to join the Indian Civil Service. At the same time he was a scholar.

Hemendranath (1844–1884) was the scientist and organiser of the family. He was a spiritual seer and Yogi and he was responsible for development of modern Brahmoism which is now the Adi Dharm religion. He was a "doer" of his Tagore generation and worthy successor to his grandfather Dwarkanath and father. He sided with his "conservative" siblings Dwijendranath and Birendranath in the family disputes against "modern" Satyendranath, Jyotindranath and Rabindranath.

Jyotirindranath (1849–1925) was a scholar, artist, music composer and theatre personality.

Rabindranath (1861–1941) was his youngest son. A Nobel laureate in Literature, his poems have been adopted as national anthems of India and Bangladesh. Rabindranath founded the Vishwabharathi University in the Shantiniketan Estate acquired by his father.

His other sons were Birendranath (1845–1915), Punyendranath, Budhendranath and Somendranath.

His daughters were Soudamini, Sukumari, Saratkumari, Swarnakumari (1855–1932) and Barnakumari. Soudamini was one of the first students of Bethune School and a gifted writer. Swarnakumari was a gifted writer, editor, song-composer and social worker. All of them were famous for their beauty and education. His part in creating the legacy of Thakurbari – the House of Tagore – in the cultural heritage of Bengal, centred in Kolkata, was not negligible. It was largely through the influence of the Tagore family, following that of the writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, that Bengal took a leading role on the cultural front as well as on the nationalistic one, in the Renaissance in India during the nineteenth century.

Religion

As son of Dwarkanath Tagore, a close friend of Ram Mohan Roy, Debendranath came early into the influence of Brahmoism through the Brahmo Sabha, a reformist movement in Hinduism formulating as Adi Dharma (Original Dharma) what it considered as the original pristine principles of Hinduism corrupted over time.


Upasana Griha, Prayer Hall, built by Debendranath Tagore in 1863, Santiniketan.

But even earlier, deeply affected in childhood by the death of his grandmother to whom he was greatly attached, Debendranath was drawn to religion and began contemplating the meaning and nature of life. He commenced a deep study of religious literature, particularly the Upanishads. In 1839, with tutelage from Pandit Ram Chandra Vidyabageesh, a leader of the Brahmo Sabha, he formed his own active Tattwabodhini Sabha (Truthseekers' Association) to spread his new experiences and knowledge.

In 1843, Debendranath started the Tattwabodhini Patrika as mouthpiece of the Tattwabodhini Sabha. In the same year, he revived the Brahma Sabha, fallen in vigour and following since the death of Ram Mohan Roy in 1833. The Brahmo Sabha was formally absorbed into the Tattwabodhini Sabha and renamed as Calcutta Brahma Samaj. The day Pous 7 of the Bengali calendar is commemorated as the foundation day of the Samaj. The Patrika became the organ of the Samaj and continued publication till 1883.

In 1848, Debendranath codified the Adi Dharma Doctrine as Brahmo Dharma Beej (Seed of the Brahmo Dharma). In 1850, he published a book titled Brahmo Dharma enshrining the fundamental principles. These principles emphasise monotheism, rationality and reject scriptural infallibility, the necessity of mediation between man and God, caste distinctions and idolatry.

With the influence of Brahmoism under Debendranath spreading far and wide throughout India, he gathered reputation as a person of particular spiritual accomplishment and came to be known as Maharshi.

Tributes

Sivanath Sastri has paid glowing tributes to Debendranath Tagore in History of the Brahmo Samaj:

Maharshi Debendranath Tagore was one of the greatest religious geniuses this country ever produced. He was truly a successor of the great rishis of old. His nature was essentially spiritual. ... He was a devout follower of the Upanishadic rishis, but was no pantheist on that account. Debendranath in spite of his real sainthood never put on the grab or habits of sadhu or saint. His piety was natural, habitual and modest. He hated or shunned all display of saintliness...

He was a true and living embodiment of that teaching of the Gita where it is said: “A truly wise man is never buffeted by his trials and tribulations, does not covet pleasure, and is free from attachment, fear and anger; the same is a muni.” Maharshi Debendranath was a true muni in that respect. He calmly bore all; even the greatest griefs of life. After having done his duty, he quietly rested, regardless of consequences.

Though personally not much in favour of the idea of female emancipation, he was one of the first men in Bengal to open the door of higher education to women. Valuing conscience in himself, he valued it in all about him. Religious life was growth to him; not an intellectual assent but a spiritual influence that pervaded and permeated life; consequently, he had not much sympathy with merely reformatory proceedings.

From the west he took only two ideas: first, the idea of fidelity to God; secondly the idea of public worship; in all other things he was oriental. His idea was to plant the Samaj in India, as the Hindu mode of realising universal theism, leaving the other races to realise that universal faith according to their traditional methods.

Bibliography

Bengali

• Bangla Bhashay Sanskrita Vyakaran (1838, now lost)
• Brahmodharma (1st & 2nd parts, 1849)
• Atmatattvavidya (1852)
• Brahmodharmer Mat O Biswas (1860)
• Paschim Pradesher Durbhiksha Upashame Sahajya Sangraharthe Brahmo Samajer Baktrita (1861)
• Brahmodharmer Byakhyan, Part I (1861)
• Kalikata Brahmosamajer Baktrita (1862)
• Brahmo Bibaha Pranali (1864)
• Brahmo Samajer Panchabingshati Batsarer Parikshita Brittanta (1864)
• Brahmodharmer Anusthan-Paddhati (1865)
• Bhowanipur Brahmavidyalayer Upadesh (1865–66)
• Brahmodharmer Byakhyan, Part II (1866)
• Masik Brahmo Samajer Upadesh (A collection of eighteen lectures delivered during 1860–67)
• Brahmodharmer Byakhyan, Epilogue (1885)
• Gyan O Dharmer Unnati (1893)
• Paralok O Mukti (1895)
• Atyojivani (1898)
• Patravali (A collection of letters written during 1850–87)

English

• Vedantic Doctrines Vindicated (1845)
• Autobiography (Translated from the original Bengali work, Atmajivani, by Satyendranath Tagore, 1914)

References

1. Chaudhuri, Narayan (2010) [1973]. Maharshi Debendranath Tagore. Makers of Indian Literature (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. p. 11. ISBN 978-81-260-3010-1.
2. "https://ia801600.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/5/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.339410/2015.339410.Rabindrajibani-O_jp2.zip&file=2015.339410.Rabindrajibani-O_jp2/2015.339410.Rabindrajibani-O_0041.jp2&scale=13.50599520383693&rotate=0"
3. Deb, Chitra, pp 64–65.
4. "The Tagores and Society". Rabindra Baharati University. Archived from the original on 26 June 2009. Retrieved 24 April 2007.
5. [1]

External links

• Works by or about Debendranath Tagore at Internet Archive
• Debendranath Tagore at Encyclopædia Britannica

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Dwarkanath Tagore
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/11/20

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Dwarkanath Tagore
Born: 1794, Calcutta, Bengal, British India (Now in West Bengal)
Died: 1 August 1846, London, England
Nationality: British Indian
Occupation: Entrepreneur
Parent(s): Rammoni Tagore (father) Menoka Devi (biological mother) Alokasundari Devi adopted Dwarakanath as son. Alokasundari was elder sister of Menoka Devi.

Dwarkanath Tagore (Bengali: দ্বারকানাথ ঠাকুর, Darokanath Ţhakur) (1794–1846), one of the first Indian industrialists[1] and entrepreneurs, was the founder of the Jorasanko branch of the Tagore family, and is notable for making substantial contributions to the Bengal Renaissance.

Family History

The original surname of the Tagores was Kushari. They were Rarhi Brahmins and originally belonged to a village named Kush in the district named Burdwan in West Bengal. Rabindra-Biographer Shri Prabhat Kumar Mukherjee wrote in page no.2 of the first volume of his book named "Rabindrajibani O Rabindra Sahitya Prabeshika" that, "The Kusharis were the descendants of Deen Kushari, the son of Bhatta Narayana; Deen was granted a village named Kush (in Burdwan zilla) by Maharaja Kshitisura, he became its chief and came to be known as Kushari."[2]

Childhood

Dwarakanath Tagore was a descendant of Rarhiya Brahmins of the Kushari (Sandilya gotra) division. Their ancestors were called Pirali Brahmin, as they were connected to a Brahmin family which had converted to Islam.[3][4]

He was the biological son of Rammani Tagore, son of Nilmoni Tagore, through Menoka Devi. But with the death of his mother, early in his birth, he was adopted by Rammani's brother Ramlochan Tagore and his wife Alokasundari Devi, who was incidentally the sister of Menoka Devi. Dwarakanth was the half brother of Radhanath and Ramanath Tagore, sons of Rammoni Tagore through Menoka Devi and Durga Devi respectively.

He was named so, because the Tagores were Baishnavites and Alokasundari, Devi considered him as a boon of their "kuladevata" i.e. home deity -- Radhagobinda, hence named the child as a name of Lord Krishna.

Dwarakanth's mother [aunt], Alokasundari Devi was a woman of strong personality, which greatly influenced him in his childhood.

His early education and upbringing was within the family home (Thakur Bari) by Gayanth Bhattacharya "Tarkalankar", a pandit from Agradwip. He and his half-elder brother, Radhanath also studied Arbi and Farsi under a "maulavi" at home. At age 10 in 1804, realising the importance of English education, he was admitted to Sherbourne's school on the Chitpur Road by Ramlochan Tagore. Mr. Sherbourne, a self-confessed half Brahmin (because of his Bengali Brahmin mother and English father) influenced Dwarakanath deeply with his liberal thoughts and eventually, he became one of Mr. Sherbourne's favourite pupils.

On 12 December 1807, Ramlochan died leaving all his property to his adopted son Dwarkanath, who was then a minor. This property consisted of zamindari estates governed by the complicated Regulations of Permanent Settlement introduced by Lord Cornwallis in 1792. The Zamindars were the ruling authority of a certain sub-division or region under The British ruling authority in India and they (the Zamindars) had the authority to collect tax or to rule their fellow residents inside the territory of their Zamindaris on behalf of the British Government in India. Therefore, to participate in the Zamindari left by his adopted father Ramlochan Thakur as the forthcoming Zamindar, Dwarkanath left school in 1810 at the age of 16 and apprenticed himself under a renowned barrister at Calcutta Robert Cutlar Fergusson and shuttled between Calcutta and his estates at Behrampore and Cuttack.[5]

His tryst with district magistrate William Willsby, while setting a dispute in Birahimpur, was a testimony to the courage and personality of a 16-year-old standing up to a tyrannical and hot-headed magistrate.

On 7 February 1811 Dwarkanath was married to Digambaridevi (then 9 years old) from Jessore.

Dwarkanath and Zamindari

Dwarkanath attained the rare quality of being well versed in languages like English, Bengali, Arabic, Farsi, etc. & also in the legal matters, which he studied under Robert Cutlar Fergusson. He quickly realised the opportunity of enormous income to increase the family wealth (which was not much, compared to the other big zamindars) through translation jobs of property wills & other official documents.

He took upon his first assignment from the wealthy zamindar of Jessore, Baradakanta Roy, who promised him 2 guineas per line to translate a firman by Murshid Quli Khan from Arabic to English.

"As a zamindar Dwarkanath was mercilessly efficient and businesslike, but not generous".[6] Dwarkanath looked upon his investment in land as investment in any other business or enterprise and claimed what he deemed a fair return. In later years Dwarkanath would appoint European managers for his estates at Sahajadpur and Behrampore. In time Dwarkanath would convert his estates to integrated commercial-industrial complexes with indigo, silk and sugar factories. In the cut-throat world of zamindari politics Dwarkanath took no nonsense and gave no quarter to either European or native. His knowledge of the tenancy laws stood him in good stead. Unlike his good friend Rammohan Roy, who pleaded for the rights of the poor ryots, Dwarkanath Tagore was the best corporate-minded entrepreneur of his contemporary age. His innovative ideas, sharp intelligence, disciplined approaches and dedication established his greatness in the history of Indian entrepreneurs of all time.

Service with the company

In 1822 Dwarkanath, while carrying on his private ventures, took additional service in the British East India Company as Shestidar to Trevor Plowden, Collector for the 24 Parganas. Although the pay was meagre at under Rs.500 per year, the prestige and avenues for additional income were considerable and gave Dwarkanath an intimate insight into the functioning of the government. Trevor Plowden formed a lifelong friendship with Dwarkanath. In 1827 there arose a great scandal in the Salt Revenue department, centred on a dishonest Dewan. Because of Dwarkanath's own personal integrity and character, he was requested to take over as Dewan of the Board. He did not take long to rend asunder the network of corruption which resulted in a counter-petition against him to the Board accusing him of defalcation. To clear his name an enquiry was ordered which at each stage of enquiry — by the Board, by the Governor General and finally by the India Office at London — cleared him unreservedly. By then Dwarkanath had had enough of Government service and resigned in June 1834 to launch into his spectacular career as a full-time entrepreneur.


Bust of Dwarkanath Tagore at the National Library, Kolkata

Business life

Tagore was a western-educated Bengali Brahmin and an acknowledged civic leader of Kolkata who played a pioneering role in setting up a string of commercial ventures—banking, insurance and shipping companies— in partnership with British traders. In 1828, he became the first Indian bank director. In 1829, he founded Union Bank in Calcutta.

While empire figured in metropolitan consciousness in London to an uneven degree, Calcutta was undoubtedly first and foremost an imperial city. The 'second city of the empire' and the British capital in India until 1911, Calcutta constituted the most important political and administrative centre of British power in India. Calcutta was also the most important commercial centre of the East India Company, acting as the trading hub for the opium, textile and jute industries. By 1856-7, Bengal contributed 44 per cent of the total British Indian revenue; in 1884-5 the figure remained as high as 25 per cent.35 The degree of revenue generated by the region has led Pradip Sinha to characterise Bengal as 'the most exploited region in colonial India, with Calcutta as the nodal point of this process of exploitation'.36 In the early nineteenth century, joint commercial enterprises between Europeans and the emergent Bengali bhadralok elite -- who has prospered as monied purchasers of estates following the Permanent Settlement of 1793 -- led to the creation of business networks which brought colonisers and colonised into mutual collaboration.37 The 1830s and 1840s have been characterised by Blair Kling as a 'Age of Enterprise', symbolised by Calcutta's largest business enterprise of the period, the Union Bank, which operated under joint European and Indian management with both European and Indian stockholders, and whose policy, until 1844, was essentially controlled by the zamindar (landowner), businessman and social leader Dwarkanath Tagore.38 Commercial collaborations of this kind were, of course, restricted in general to Calcutta's rich and powered elite.

When the trade and business connections between British and elite Bengali businessmen continued throughout the nineteenth century, the global financial crisis of 1848, which led to the collapse of the Union Bank and, ultimately, to the end of Calcutta as an independent centre of capital accumulation and investment, profoundly altered the nature of commercial relations between Britons and Bengali elites in the city. Post 1848, collaboration between Bengali and British businessmen became less common, capital investment came increasingly from Britain, and the economy of Eastern India was divided increasingly into an agrarian social order and a Calcutta-centred commercial world.39 As Andrew Sartori has observed, 'The Calcutta-centred commercial world would be marked as constitutively white and Western by the marked exclusivity of European control and management of capital-based enterprise -- in the sense of the profound subordination of the regional economy to the metropolitan capital market and in the sense of the racial exclusivity of the locally based business interests that were no longer dependent on native investment'.40 By the 1870s, the commercial collaboration evident in the 1830s and 1840s had been fractured irrevocably along racial lines.

The racial divisions which became increasingly apparent in the commercial sphere from the mid-nineteenth century were evident earlier in the spatial division of Calcutta into a 'White Town', based around Chowringhee, and a 'Black Town', located in the north of the city. Sinha has contended that the 'White Town' and the 'Black Town' were separated to such a degree that the former exerted little impact, at a 'cognitive level', on the latter.41 However, other historians have stressed the extent to which a variety of 'contact zones', facilitating interaction between Europeans and Calcuttans of all classes, emerged in the city in spite of the divisions between the two 'towns'.42 Such contact, however, always took place within the context of fundamental inequalities of power immanent in the imperial relationship.

The economy and topography of Calcutta, along with its status as the centre of British administrative power in India, lent the city an overtly imperial character in comparison to other Indian urban centres. The impact of Western culture was also particularly pronounced. The Calcutta bhadralok elite came to prominent not only as a result of economic opportunities generated by the Permanent Settlement, but also due to their access to English education, which facilitated their employment in a variety of lower-level Company and government positions. Calcutta was affected more than any other Indian city by the proliferation of institutions offering English education, which resulted from the triumph of the Anglicist camp in the Orientalist/Anglicist debates of the 1830s.43 A vast literature exists exploring the effects of English education in Bengal, and the role which Indian exposure to 'Western' knowledge played in engendering the 'Bengal renaissance'.

-- Keshab: Bengal's Forgotten Prophet, by John A. Stevens

He helped found the first[1] Anglo-Indian Managing Agency (industrial organizations that ran jute mills, coal mines, tea plantations, etc.,[7]) Carr, Tagore and Company. Even earlier, Rustomjee Cowasjee, a Parsi in Calcutta, had formed an inter-racial firm but in the early 19th century, Parsis were classified as a Near Eastern community as opposed to South Asian. Tagore's company managed huge zamindari estates spread across today's West Bengal and Odisha states in India, and in Bangladesh, besides holding large stakes in new enterprises that were tapping the rich coal seams of Bengal, running tug services between Calcutta and the mouth of the river Hooghly and transplanting Chinese tea crop to the plains of Upper Assam. Carr, Tagore and Company was one of those Indian private companies engaged in the opium trade with China. Production of opium was in India and it was sold in China. When the Chinese protested, the East India Company transferred the opium trade to the proxy of certain selected Indian companies, of which this was one. In 1832 Tagore purchased the first Indian coal mine in Raniganj,[1] which eventually became the Bengal Coal Company. Very large schooners were engaged in shipments. This made Dwarkanath extremely rich, and there are legends about the extent of his wealth.

Dabbling in politics

Dwarkanath Tagore was of the firm conviction that at those times "the happiness of India is best secured by her connection with England". Dwarkanath was no doubt a loyalist, and a sincere one at that, but he was by no means a toady. Servility was as far from his character as was lack of generosity from his nature. He was also firm in defending the interest and sentiments of his people against European prejudices. With this in view, he established on 21 March 1838 an Association for Landholders (later known as the Landholder's Society). The association was overtly a self-serving political association, founded on a large and liberal basis, to admit landholders of all descriptions, Englishmen, Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. What is interesting is that it cut across racial and religious divides being founded along with his old rival Raja Radhakanta Deb with whom he had earlier founded the Gaudiya Sabha. It was the first political association in India to ventilate in a constitutional manner the grievances of the people or a section of them that were outspoken. From this grew the British Indian Association, the precursor to the Indian National Congress.

Death


Monument of Dwarkanath Tagore at Kensal Green Cemetery London clicked on 11 August 2018.


A commemoration to Dwarkanath Tagore at Kensal Green Cemetery on 11 August 2018 was organised by Bengal Heritage Foundation.

Dwarkanath Tagore died "at the peak of his fortune"[1] on the evening of 1 August 1846 at the St. George's Hotel in London during a tremendous thunderstorm with hail the size of walnuts.

He was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery on 5 August 1846 in a private ceremony without any religious observances. His heart, which had been previously extracted, was sent to Calcutta to conduct the Brahmo rites amidst great controversy. After his death, a Death mask was made. However, the remains of the death mask and his heart have not yet been found in England or India and are presumably lost.

In his obituary, The London Mail newspaper of 7 August wrote:

"Descended from the highest Brahmin caste of India his family can prove a long and undoubted pedigree. But it is not on account of this nobility that we now review his life but on far better grounds. However gifted, his claims rest on a higher pedestal — he was the benefactor of his country... [T]hey testified to his merits in the encouragement of every public and private undertaking likely to benefit India."[8]

A commemoration, organised by Bengal Heritage Foundation, was held on 11 August 2018 at Kensal Green Cemetery to celebrate Dwarkanath's life and completion of phase 1 of conservation of his monument. Scores of people joined in the commemoration and with eulogies reflecting on business, social and philanthropic contributions. Jnanadanandini Devi, wife of India's first Civil Servant Satyendranath Tagore, elder brother of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, claimed in her book that while she was in London in 1878, she gave birth to a still-born baby and the baby was buried in Dwarkanath Tagore's grave area. Another two-year-old son of Jnanadanandini Devi, named 'Chobi' died in England during that tour. But it is not clear whether he was also buried in this grave or not.

References

1. Wolpert, Stanley (2009). A New History of India (8th ed.). New York, NY: Oxford UP. p. 221. ISBN 978-0-19-533756-3.
2. "https://ia801600.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/5/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.339410/2015.339410.Rabindrajibani-O_jp2.zip&file=2015.339410.Rabindrajibani-O_jp2/2015.339410.Rabindrajibani-O_0041.jp2&scale=13.50599520383693&rotate=0"
3. Thompson, Jr., E (1926), Rabindranath Tagore: Poet and Dramatist, Read, p. 12, ISBN 1-4067-8927-5, The [Tagores] are Pirili Brahmans [sic]; that is, outcastes, as having supposedly eaten with Musalmans in a former day. No strictly orthodox Brahman would eat or inter-marry with them.
4. (Dutta & Robinson 1995, pp. 17–18).
5. "History of the Adi Brahmo Samaj (1906)"
6. Kling, Blair B., Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India, p. 32. University of California Press, 1976; Calcutta, 1981. ISBN 0-520-02927-5
7. Kulke, Hermann; Rothermund, Dietmar (2004). A History of India (4th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. p. 265. ISBN 0-415-32920-5. Retrieved 18 September 2011.
8. Kripalani, Krishna (1981). Dwarkanath Tagore, A Forgotten Pioneer: A Life. New Delhi, India: National Book Trust, India. pp. 246–7. Retrieved 18 September 2011.

Further reading

• Blair B Kling, Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India, University of California Press, 1976; Calcutta, 1981. ISBN 0-520-02927-5
• NK Sinha, The Economic History of Bengal 1793–1848, III, Calcutta, 1984.
• Sengupta, Subodh Chandra and Bose, Anjali (editors), 1976/1998, Sansad Bangali Charitabhidhan (Biographical dictionary) Vol I, (in Bengali), p223. ISBN 81-85626-65-0

External links

• Islam, Sirajul (2012). "Tagore, Prince Dwarkanath". In Islam, Sirajul; Jamal, Ahmed A. (eds.). Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (Second ed.). Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.

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Robert Cutlar Fergusson
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Robert Cutlar Fergusson, 1768 - 1838. Judge; advocate-general, by Alexander Hay, 1836, National Galleries Scotland

Robert Cutlar Fergusson (1768–1838) was a Scottish lawyer and politician. He was 17th Laird of the Dumfriesshire Fergussons, seated at Craigdarroch (Moniaive, Dumfriesshire).

Life

Robert Fergusson was born in Dumfries, the eldest son of Alexander Fergusson, Esq., of Craigdarroch and Orraland House, Kirkcudbrightshire, who was an eminent advocate. His great-grandfather was Alexander Fergusson, the husband of Annie Laurie of folksong fame. He was educated at Edinburgh and studied law at Lincoln's Inn, being called to the bar in 1797.[1]

He was gaoled for a year in the King's Bench prison in the late 1790s for being associated with Arthur O'Connor and Father James Coigly, two United Irishmen who were trying to organise an Irish revolution.

Arthur O'Connor (4 July 1763 – 25 April 1852), was a United Irishman and later a general in Napoleon's army.

Born near Bandon, County Cork, O'Connor embraced the Republican movement early on as he was encouraged by the American Revolution overseas. From 1790 to 1795 he was a Member of Parliament in the Irish House of Commons for Philipstown...

In 1796 he became a member of the Society of United Irishmen. He and Lord Edward Fitzgerald petitioned France for aid in support of an Irish revolution. While traveling to France he was arrested alongside Father James Coigly, a Catholic priest, and three other United Irishmen. Coigly, who found to be carrying an incriminating letter, was hanged, whereas O'Connor was acquitted. He was re-arrested immediately and imprisoned at Fort George in Scotland along with his brother Roger...

O'Connor was released in 1802 under the condition of "banishment".[5] He travelled to Paris, where he was regarded as the accredited representative of the United Irishmen by Napoleon who, in February 1804, appointed him General of Division in the French army. General Berthier, Minister of War, directed that O'Connor was to join the expeditionary army intended for the invasion of Ireland at Brest.

When the plan fell through, O'Connor retired from the army. He offered his services to Napoleon during the Hundred Days. After Napoleon's defeat he was allowed to retire, becoming a naturalised French citizen in 1818. He supported the 1830 revolution which created the July Monarchy, publishing a defence of events in the form of an open letter to General Lafayette. After the revolution he became mayor of Le Bignon-Mirabeau. The rest of his life was spent composing literary works on political and social topics.[6]

-- Arthur O'Connor (United Irishman), by Wikipedia

Father James Coigly (Rev. James Quigley) born in Kilmore, Co. Armagh (c.1761 – 7 June 1798) was a Roman Catholic priest and United Irishmen leader who was executed in Kent, England...

A United Irishmen, he worked at improving Catholic and Presbyterian relations. Coigly travelled to England and Paris, where he was involved with the United Britons and with James Napper Tandy.[2] While travelling to France, he was arrested alongside four other United Irishmen, one being Arthur O'Connor, a leader of the Rebels of Leinster. Upon his arrest, English authorities discovered a letter by the United Britons addressed to the French Revolutionary Government calling for an invasion of England, hidden in Coigly's garments...

He was hanged at Penenden Heath, Maidstone on 7 June 1798.

-- James Coigly, by Wikipedia

On his release he decided it would be wise to leave the country and therefore moved to India[2] where he worked as a barrister for some 30 years in the Supreme Court of Judicature at Calcutta. He was made acting Advocate-General of Bengal in 1817 when Edward Strettell left for England due to ill-health, holding the post until Robert Spankie arrived as Strettell's successor. When Spankie returned to England in 1823, Fergusson succeeded him as Advocate-General.

On his return to Britain he was elected MP for the Stewardtry of Kirkcudbright in 1826, sitting until 1838. He was appointed a Privy Councillor in 1834 and Judge Advocate General from 1835 to 1838.

Dwarkanath Tagore, the great Bengal entrepreneur, was apprenticed under him in 1810, and Fergusson was one of the two leading influences in his life.[3]

References

1. "FERGUSSON, Robert Cutlar (?1770-1838), of Orroland, Kirkcudbright and Craigdarroch, Dumfries". History of Parliament Online. Retrieved 26 October 2015.
2. Public Characters of All Nations: Consisting of Biographical ..., Volume 1. p. 90.
3. "History of the Adi Brahmo Samaj (1906)" p 27.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Robert Cutlar Fergusson

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Brahmo
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/11/20

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

A Bengali Brahmo or the traditional Bengali elites are Bengal's upper class. They form the bulk of the historical colonial establishment of eastern India. Educated mostly in a select few schools and colleges, they were one of the wealthiest and most anglicised communities of colonial India. Presidency College's control over the development of and continued influence on the Brahmos and vice versa was complete in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Presidency University, Kolkata, formerly known as Hindoo College and Presidency College,[2] is a public state university located in College Street, Kolkata.[3] It is probably the oldest institution in the world to have no religious connection, having being established in 1817...

With the creation of the Supreme Court of Calcutta in 1773 many Hindus of Bengal showed an eager interest in learning the English language. David Hare, in collaboration with Raja Radhakanta Deb had already taken steps to introduce English language education in Bengal. Babu Buddinath Mukherjee advanced the introduction of English as a medium of instruction further by enlisting the support of Sir Edward Hyde East, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Fort William, who called a meeting of 'European and Hindu Gentlemen' at his house in May 1816.[9] The purpose of the meeting was to "discuss the proposal to establish an institution for giving a liberal education to the children of the members of the Hindu Community". The proposal was received with unanimous approbation and a donation of over Rs. 100, 000 was promised for setting up the new college. Raja Ram Mohan Roy showed full support for the scheme, but chose not to come out in support of the proposal publicly for fear of "alarming the prejudices of his orthodox countrymen and thus marring the whole idea".[10]

The College was formally opened on Monday, 20 January 1817 with 20 'scholars'. The foundation committee of the college, which oversaw its establishment, was headed by Raja Rammohan Roy. The control of the institution was vested in a body of two Governors and four Directors. The first Governors of the college were Maharaja Tejchandra Bahadur of Burdwan and Gopee Mohan Thakoor. The first Directors were Gopi Mohun Deb of Sobhabazar, Joykissen Sinha, Radha Madhab Banerjee, and Gunganarain Doss. Buddinath Mukherjee was appointed as the first Secretary of the college. The newly established college mostly admitted Hindu students from affluent and progressive families, but also admitted non-Hindu students such as Muslims, Jews, Christians and Buddhists.

At first, the classes were held in a house belonging to Gorachand Bysack of Garanhatta (later renamed 304, Chitpore Road), which was rented by the college. In January 1818 the college moved to 'Feringhi Kamal Bose's house' which was located nearby in Chitpore.[11] From Chitpore, the college moved to Bowbazar and later to the building that now houses the Sanskrit College on College Street.[12]

-- Presidency University, Kolkata, by Wikipedia

Drawn from the ranks of the newly emerging colonial ruling class, considered to be junior partners in the enterprise of the British Empire, the Brahmos were typically employed as Bengal Presidency governors, high court judges, commissioners, collectors, magistrates, railway managers, university vice chancellors, Presidency College and Calcutta Medical College principals and professors, research think tank directors as well as those who made their major profits in big business. Politically, they were considered to be moderates in nationalist politics, with the aim of joining council politics for the furtherance of the constitutional question within the framework of the Empire. Influenced by the teachings of the Upanishads.

Brahmo

Definition

A Brahmo (Bengali: ব্রাহ্ম) is either an adherent, with or without a diksha, of Brahmoism to the exclusion of all other sects, castes and even religions, except Hinduism, or a person with at least one Brahmo parent or guardian and who has never denied his faith. This definition has evolved from legal acts and juristic decree since previously "the word Brahmo did not admit of a clear definition."[1]

Spread

The 2001 Census of India [2] counted only 177 Brahmos in India, but the number of followers (Brahmo Samajists) who constitute the wider community of Brahmo Samaj (assembly for Brahmo worship) is significantly higher, and reliably estimated at about 20, 000 Sadharan Brahmo Samajists, 10, 000 other Brahmo denominations and 8, 000,000 declared Adi Dharmists.[3] Since the Brahmo Samaj does not sanction caste, many low caste Brahmo converts in Upper India, benefiting under India's social development policies, prefer to declare themselves as followers of Adi Dharm, a practice fostered by the Brahmo Samaj of North India since the 1931 census. A state-wise study by the Brahmo Conference Organisation has tabulated 7. 83 million Adi Dharm declarants in the 2001 Census.

Influence

A recent publication describes the disproportionate influence of Brahmos on India's development post-19th Century as unparalleled in recent times,[4] It states that the "... Brahmos are amongst the elite groups of modern India, along with the Parsis of Bombay, the Chitpavans of Pune, the Iyers, Nairs and Ayyangars of the South, the Kashmiri Pandits of Uttar Pradesh and the Kayasthas of the Punjab and Bihar..." This publication further states that the Brahmos are "... the most cosmopolitan, having been overwhelmingly drawn from three castes – Brahmins, Vaidyas and Kayasthas – while the others were from a single caste..." It was the Brahmos who played an important role in organizing the Indian Political Association, which was the forerunner to the Indian National Congress.

Brahmo Samaj

The Brahmo Samaj refers to the wider socio-religious community either following the principles for Brahmo worship or subscribing to membership of a Brahmo Samaj, which is an association established for maintaining premises for assembly and worship of Brahma. A follower or subscriber member of this community is referred to as Brahmo Samajist.

When is a Brahmo not a Brahmo Samajist?

One aspect of Brahmoism is recognition that not only explicit faith and worship makes for a Brahmo, but also genealogy, which is implicit. People with even a single Brahmo parent or a Brahmo guardian are treated as Brahmos until they absolutely renounce the Brahmo faith. This often causes tension within the Samaj, for example, when an offspring of a Brahmo follows communism or atheism or another religious belief without renouncing Brahmoism formally. There are differing views between the Theist and Deist streams of Brahmoism on the retention of such people within the fold. Additionally, a Brahmo who opts not to subscribe to membership of a Brahmo Samaj remains a Brahmo but ceases to be a Brahmo Samajist.[5]

Co-faith and conversion

Brahmoism does not forbid its followers from retaining other faiths like Islam or Christianity. Neither is formal conversion to Brahmoism required nowadays, thereby affirming a very well settled legal controversy between Sir J.C. Bose and Rani Bhagwwan Koer[6] which states that a non-Brahmo Brahmo Samajist does not cease to be (say) a Hindu or Sikh by following the Samaj.

Brahmo families

Banerjee

• Sasipada Banerji (1840–1924), Social reformer.
o Sir Albion Rajkumar Banerjee, CSI, CIE (1871–1950), Diwan of Cochin.
• Amiya Charan Banerjee (1891–1968), Vice Chancellor of Allahabad University.
• Probha Banerji, first lady magistrate of India.
o Kalyan Banerji, Deputy Managing Director of the State Bank of India.
o Milon K. Banerji (1928–2010), Attorney General of India.
 Gourab Banerji, Additional Solicitor General of India.

Chakrabarty

• Nikhil Chakravarty, Founder-Editor, Mainstream Weekly.[7]
o Sumit Chakravarty, Editor, Mainstream Weekly.
• Uma Shehanobis (née Chakrabarty), Principal, Patha Bhavan, Calcutta.

Chattopadhayay

• Aghorenath Chattopadhyaya, Principal, Nizam's College, Hyderabad.
o Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949), Politician.
 Padmaja Naidu (1900–1975), Governor of West Bengal.
 Leela Naidu (1940–2009), Artist.
o Suhasini Chattopadhyay, Indian freedom fighter.
o Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (1880–1937), Indian nationalist.
o Harindranath Chattopadhyaya (1898–1990), Padma Bhushan, Member of Parliament, Vijayawada.
o Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, Padma Vibhushan, Social reformer.
 Krishna Chattopadhyay (1935–2009), Singer.

Bose

• Rajnarayan Basu, Writer and intellectual of the Bengal Renaissance.
o Krishnadhan Ghosh (son-in-law of Rajnarayan Basu), Civil Surgeon, Pabna, Bengal.
 Sri Aurobindo, Indian nationalist; vice principal of Baroda College.
• Girindrasekhar Bose, Psychoanalyst.


Jagadish Chandra Bose

• Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937), Polymath who was Professor of Physics, Presidency College, Calcutta.
• Lady Abala Bose (1864–1951), Social reformer who founded the Nari Sikhshya Samities.
o Debendra Mohan Bose (1887–1975) (Sir J.C. Bose was his maternal uncle), Director, Bose Institute, Calcutta
• Anandamohan Bose (1847–1906) (brother-in-law of Sir J.C. Bose and paternal uncle of D.M. Bose), Co-founder of Indian National Association; first Indian Wrangler at Cambridge University.
• Rajsekhar Bose (1880–1960), Author
• Girindrasekhar Bose (1887–1953), Psychiatrist.

Das


Chittaranjan Das

• Bhuban Mohan Das
o Chittaranjan Das, Mayor of Calcutta.
o Basanti Devi, Padma Vibhushan, Social reformer.
 Siddhartha Shankar Ray (grandson), Chief Minister of West Bengal.
 Justice Manjula Bose (granddaughter), Judge of the High Court of Calcutta.
 Jaidip Mukherjea (grandson) (1942-), Sportsman.
• Durga Mohan Das (1841–1897), Social reformer.
o Satish Ranjan Das (1870–1928), Law Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council; founder of Doon School.
 Shomie Ranjan Das (1935-), Headmaster of Doon School, Mayo College and Lawrence School, Sanawar.
• Rakhal Chandra Das
o Sudhi Ranjan Das, 5th Chief Justice of India.
 Group Captain Suranjan Das
 Anjana Sen (née Das)
 Ashoke Kumar Sen, Law Minister of India.


Jibanananda Das

• Kusumkumari Das, Social Worker.
o Jibanananda Das, Poet.
 Chidananda Dasgupta, Filmmaker.
• Beni Madhab Das (1866–1952), Social reformer.
o Bina Das (1911–1986), Member, West Bengal Legislative Assembly, 1947–51.
• Arun Kumar Das, FRCS (Eng. & Edin.) (1924–2015), Orthopedist; Professor, NRS Medical College and Hospital, Calcutta.
• Nandita Dutta (1935–2007), Founder-Principal, Patha Bhavan, Calcutta.

Dey


Saroj Nalini Dutt

• Brajendranath Dey, Esq., ICS (1852–1932), Bar-at-Law, Commissioner (Actg.) of Burdwan.
o Saroj Nalini Dutt (née Dey), M.B.E., (1887–1925), Social reformer.
o Hemanta Kumar Dey, Esq., Bar-at-Law, Presidency Magistrate, Calcutta.
o Lieutenant Colonel Jyotish Chandra Dey, (son-in-law), I.M.S., 2nd Indian Principal of Calcutta Medical College.
o Major (Hon.) Basanta Kumar Dey (1897–1975), 2nd Indian Commercial Traffic Manager, Bengal Nagpur Railway.
 Professor Barun Dey (1932–2013), Chairman, West Bengal Heritage Commission.

Dutta


Romesh Chunder Dutt

• Romesh Chandra Dutta (1848–1908), C.I.E., Dewan of Baroda.
o Jnanendranath Gupta, Esq., ICS (son-in-law of R.C. Dutt), Commissioner of Chittagong.
 Sudhindranath Gupta, Esq., 1st Indian Commercial Traffic Manager, Bengal Nagpur Railway.
• Akshay Kumar Datta (1820–1886), Poet.
o Satyendranath Dutta (1882–1922), Poet.

Ganguly

• Dwarkanath Ganguly (1844–1898), Social reformer.
• Kadambini Ganguly (1861–1923), First female medical graduate in South Asia.

Gupta

• Behari Lal Gupta, ICS, (1849–1916), Dewan of Baroda.
o Satish Gupta, IAAS.
 Ranajit Gupta, ICS, Chief Secretary, West Bengal.
 Indrajit Gupta (1919–2001), Home Minister of India (1996–98).
 Sunanda K. Datta-Ray (1937-), Journalist.
• Sir Krishna Govinda Gupta, ICS, Member of the Secretary of States Council in London.
o Atul Prasad Sen, Barrister-at-Law, Lawyer, composer and singer.

Mahalanobis

• Gurucharan Mahalanobis, President and Treasurer of Brahmo Samaj.
• Subodh Chandra Mahalanobis, Founder of the Physiology Department of Presidency College, Calcutta; 1st Indian Head of Department of Physiology, University of Cardiff.
• Prabodh Chandra Mahalanobis.
o Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, F.R.S., pioneer statistician and teacher of statistics, Member, 1st Planning Commission of India.

Mitra

• Braja Sundar Mitra, Excise Collector, Calcutta.
o
 Deba Prasad Mitra (1902–1978), Pathologist.
• Peary Chand Mitra (1814–1883), Deputy Librarian, Calcutta Public Library.
• Kishori Chand Mitra (1822–1873), Police Magistrate.

Mukherjee


Subroto Mukherjee

• Nibaran Chandra Mukherjee, Social reformer.
o Satish Chandra Mukherjee (1865–1948), Educationist.
 Renuka Ray (née Mukherjee) (1904–1997), Politician.
 Subroto Mukerjee (1911–1960), First Chief of Air Staff of the Indian Air Force.
 Prasanta Mukherjee, Chairman, Railway Board.

Nag Chaudhuri

• Basanti Dulal Nag Chaudhuri, Physicist; Vice Chancellor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Pal

• Bipin Chandra Pal (1858–1932), Indian nationalist leader.
o Niranjan Pal (1889–1959), Playwright, screenwriter and director.
 Colin Pal (1923–2005), Film director.
 Deep Pal (1953-), Cinematographer.
o S. K. Dey (son-in-law), ICS, Union Minister for Panchayati Raj.

Palchaudhuri

• Ila Palchaudhuri, Member of Parliament, Nabadwip, 1957.
o Amitabha Palchaudhuri, Treasurer, Bengal Congress.

Ray


Satyajit Ray

• Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury (1863–1915), Scholar and entrepreneur.
o Sukumar Ray (1887–1923), Writer.
 Satyajit Ray (1921–1992), Film-maker
 Bijoya Ray (1917–2015),
 Sandip Ray (1953-), Film-maker.
 Leela Majumdar (1908–2007), Author.

Roy

• Bidhan Chandra Roy, 2nd Chief Minister of West Bengal.
o Subimal Roy, Judge of the Supreme Court of India.
• Prasanna Kumar Roy (1849–1932), Educationist.
• Sarala Roy (1859–1946), Educationist.
o Charulata Mukherjee (née Roy), Social reformer.

Sanyal

• Trailokyanath Sanyal (1848–1950), Social reformer.
o Aruna Asaf Ali (née Ganguly), Indian freedom fighter and prominent leader of the Quit India Movement.
o Purmina Banerjee (née Ganguly), Member, Indian Constituent Assembly.

Sarkar

• Susobhan Sarkar (1900–1982), Professor of History, Presidency College, Calcutta.
o Sumit Sarkar (1939-), Professor of History, Delhi University.

Sen

• Bhupati Mohan Sen, Wrangler, 2nd Indian Principal of Presidency College, Calcutta, (son-in-law of Sir Nilratan Sircar)
o Monishi Mohan Sen (1920-2019), ICS Officer
o Subrata Kumar Sen (1924–2016), MIT Graduate, Electrical Engineering
o Abhijit Sen (son-in-law), Proprietor, Sen and Pandit Co. Ltd.

Sen family[8]


Keshab Chandra Sen

• Keshub Chandra Sen (1838–1884), Religious reformer & founder of the Nababidhan Brahmo Samaj.
o Suniti Devi (1864–1932), Maharani of Coochbehar & founder of Sammilan Brahmo Samaj.
o Sucharu Devi (1874–1961), Maharani of Mayurbhanj.
o Saral Chandra Sen, Bar-at-Law
 Sunit Chandra Sen, Collector, Calcutta Municipal Corporation.
 Benita Roy, Politician.
 Sadhana Bose, Artist.
 Nilina Singh, Singer.
 Pradip Chandra Sen, Deputy Managing Director, Mackinnon Mackenzie.
o Pramathalal Sen (1866–1930) (nephew of Keshub Chandra Sen), Social reformer.
o Benoyendranath Sen (1868–1913) (nephew of Keshub Chandra Sen), Social reformer and leader of the New Dispensation.


Amartya Kumar Sen

• Kshitimohan Sen (1880–1960), 2nd Vice Chancellor of Visva Bharati, Santiniketan.
o Ashutosh Sen (son-in-law), Chairman, West Bengal Public Service Commission.
 Amartya Sen (1933-), 1st Asian Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; Nobel Laureate in Economics.
• Barrister Kumud Nath Sen
o P.K. Sengupta, Income Tax Commissioner.
o K.P. Sen, Post-Master General, Eastern India.
o Malati Choudhury (née Sen), Social Worker.
• Nitish Chandra Sen, Mayor of Calcutta.
• Kamini Roy (née Sen) (1864–1933), Social reformer and poet.

Sinha

Baron Sinha family
• Satyendra Prasanno Sinha, 1st Baron Sinha (1863–1923), Politician.
o Rt. Honourable Sushil Kumar Sinha, ICS.
o Romola Sinha (1913–2010), Social reformer.
o Major N.P. Sen, IMS.
 Mohit Sen (grandson) (1929–2003), Politician.

Tagore

Tagore family[9]


Rabindranath Tagore

• Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905), Social reformer.
o Satyendranath Tagore (1842–1923), First Indian ICS officer, (1863).
o Jnanadanandini Devi (1850–1941), Social reformer.
 Indira Devi Chaudhurani, Upacharya, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan.
 Surendranath Tagore, Author.
 Subirendranath Tagore
 Supriyo Tagore, Principal, Patha Bhavana, Santiniketan.
o Hemendranath Tagore (1844–1884), Religious savant, founder of Adi Dharm development of Brahmoism.
o Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), Bengali poet and Nobel laureate in Literature
• Swarnakumari Devi (1855–1932), Noted Bengali poet, novelist, musician and social worker.

Others

• Sir Nilratan Sircar(1861–1943), famous doctor, swadeshi entrepreneur, educationist, philanthropist, Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University
• Heramba Chandra Maitra, famous educationist after whom Heramba Chandra College is named
• Sir Nalini Ranjan Chatterjee, Judge of the High Court of Calcutta.
• Kalinath Bose, first Indian Superintendent of Police.
• Uma Bose (1921–1942), Singer.
• Kiran Chandra De, ICS, Commissioner, Chittagong.
• Sib Chandra Deb, Deputy Collector in Bengal.
• Umesh Chandra Dutta, Founder of the Harinavi Brahmo Samaj.
• Sucheta Kriplani, First woman Chief Minister of an Indian State.
• Subrata Mitra (1931–2001), Padma Shri, Cameraman; Emeritus Professor, Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Calcutta.
• Sir Brojendra Lal Mitter, Advocate General of Bengal.
• Harish Chandra Mukherjee, Journalist.
• Girish Chandra Sen, Translated the Quran into Bengali.
• Sir Nripendra Nath Sircar, Advocate General of Bengal.
• Shree Suresh Chandra Roy, Padma Bhushan, Sheriff of Calcutta (1957, 1958).

See also

• Brahmo Dharma
• History of Bengal
• Indian National Congress
• Kayastha
• Prarthana Samaj
• Tattwabodhini Patrika
• Trust deed of Brahmo Sabha
• Vaishya

References & notes

1. finding of the Legal member of Viceregal Council Sir Henry Maine cited in Pt. Sivanath Sastri's History of the Brahmo Samaj 1911/1912 1st edn. p.229
2. Minor religious groups Census of India data dissemination publication of 2006, limited circulation.
3. "Brahmo Samaj FAQ Frequently asked Questions". brahmo.org. Archived from the original on 2010-01-24. Retrieved 2019-09-23.[dubious – discuss]
4. Roy, Samaren (2005). Calcutta: Society and Change 1690–1990. iUniverse. ISBN 978-0-595-79000-5: Fair use of extract vide section 52(1)(f) of Indian Copyright Act, 1957
5. "DELHI BRAHMO SAMAJ". brahmo.org. Archived from the original on 2010-12-29. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
6. Rani Bhagwan Koer & Ors v. J.C.Bose & Ors 1903, 31 Cal 11 in the Privy Council of British Empire upholding the decision of the High Court of the Punjab 1897.
7. "Mainstream Weekly". http://www.mainstreamweekly.net.
8. "SEN FAMILY". members.iinet.net.au.
9. "Tagore Family".

External links

• brahmo.org
• brahmosamaj.org

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Brahmoism
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Accessed: 2/11/20

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Brahmoism is a religious movement from the mid 19th century Bengal originating the Bengali Renaissance, the nascent Indian independence movement[1][2]. Adherents, known as Brahmos (singular Brahmo), are mainly of Indian or Bangladeshi origin or nationality. The Brahmo Samaj, literally the "Society of Brahma", was founded as a movement by Ram Mohan Roy[3]. In 1850 Roy's successor Debendranath Tagore broke from Hinduism and created the new religion of Brahmoism which was recognised as a religion distinct from Hinduism by the Privy Council in 1901, and by the Law Commission of Bangladesh in 2001[4].

Fundamental principles

The Brahmo articles of faith derive from the Fundamental (Adi) Principles of the Adi Brahmo Samaj religion.

• On God: There is always Infinite (limitless, undefinable, imperceivable, indivisible) Singularity - immanent and transcendent Singular Author and Preserver of Existence - "He" whose Love is manifest everywhere and in everything, in the fire and in the water, in the smallest plant to the mightiest oak.
• On Being: Being is created from Singularity. Being is renewed to Singularity. Being exists to be one (again) with Loving Singularity. (See Tat Tvam Asi.)
• On Intelligent Existence: Righteous (worshipful, intelligent, moral) actions alone rule (regulate [preserve]) Existence against Chaos (loss [decay, return, pervading emptiness]). Knowledge (Intelligence [reason, sentience, intuition]) of pure Conscience (light within) is the One (Supreme) ruler (authority [law, dharma]) of Existence with no symbol (creation [scripture, book, object]) or intermediary (being [teacher, messiah, ruler]).
• On Love: Respect all creations and beings but never venerate (worship) them for only Singularity can be loved (adored, worshipped).[5]

Articles of faith

The Articles of faith for Brahmos are:[6]

• Brahmos embrace righteousness as the only way of life.
• Brahmos embrace truth, knowledge, reason, free will and virtuous intuition (observation) as guides.
• Brahmos embrace secular principles but oppose sectarianism and imposition of religious belief into governance (especially propagation of religious belief by government).
• Brahmos embrace the co-existence of Brahmo principles with governance, but oppose all governance in conflict with Brahmo principles.
• Brahmos reject narrow theism (especially polytheism), idolatry and symbolism.
• Brahmos reject the need for formal rituals, priests or places (church, temple, mosque) for worship.
• Brahmos reject dogma and superstition.
• Brahmos reject scriptures as authority.
• Brahmos reject revelations, prophets, gurus, messiahs, or avatars as authority.
• Brahmos reject bigotry and irrational distinctions like caste, creed, colour, race, religion which divide beings.
• Brahmos reject all forms of totalitarianism.
• Brahmos examine the prevalent notion of "sin".
• Brahmos examine the prevalent notions of "heaven" or "hell".
• Brahmos examine the prevalent notion of "salvation".

Adherence to these articles are required only of Adi Brahmos or such Sadharan Brahmos who accept Adi-ism i.e. Trust deed of Brahmo Sabha (1830).

History

While Ram Mohan Roy aimed at reforming Hinduism from within, his successor Maharshi Debendranath Tagore in 1850 rejected the authority of the Vedas and thus broke with orthodox Hinduism. Tagore tried to retain some Hindu customs, but a series of schisms eventually resulted in the formation of the breakaway Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in 1878 based on Christian practices and dogmas.

So, in 1901, a decision of the Privy Council of British India found that "the vast majority of Brahmo religionists are not Hindus and have their own religion".[7]

The Brahma Dharma was first codified by Debendranath Tagore with the formulation of the Brahmo Dharma Beej and publication of the Brahma Dharma, a book of 1848 or 1850 in two parts. The Brahma Dharma is the source of every Brahmo's spiritual faith and reflects Brahmo repudiation of the Hindu Vedas as authority and the shift away from Ram Mohan Roy's Vedantic Unitary God per the Adi Shankara Advaita school. The traditional seed principles and Debendranath's Brahmo Dharma (or religious and moral law) now stand evolved as the "Fundamental Principles of Brahmoism" and are supplemented by precise evolving rules for adherents, akin to "Articles of Faith" which regulate the Brahmo way of life. In addition the assembly of Brahmos (and also Brahmo Samajists) for meeting or worship is always consonant with the Trust Principles of 1830 or its derivatives.

Brief history and timeline

• 1828 : Raja Ram Mohun Roy establishes Brahma Sabha (assembly of Brahmins).[8]
• 1829 : Asiatic Society admits the first Indians to its membership, the first of whom are Ramkamal Sen, Dwarkanath Tagore and Prasanna Coomar Tagore.[9]
• 1830 : Dwarkanath Tagore, Prasanna Coomar Tagore and Ors. establish the first Brahmo Place for Worship through a legal Trust Deed[10] at Chitpur (Jorasanko Kolkata India). Ram Mohun departs for Britain.
• 1833 : Ram Mohun dies in Bristol.
• 1839 : Debendranath Tagore forms Tattwabodhini (@Tattvaranjini) Sabha, the "Truth & Life Purpose Seekers" association on October 6, 1839.[11]
• 1843 : Tattwabodini Sabha merged with Brahmo Sabha [12] and Calcutta Brahmo Samaj established. Dwarkanath Tagore founds the Great Western Bengal Railway Co. in conflict with the State.[13]
• 1850: Publication of Brahma Dharma book in 2 parts by Debendranath. Repudiation of Vedic infallibility, separation from Hinduism, establishment of the new religion.
• 1855: Keshub Chunder Sen founds "The British India Society" later associated with Christian missionaries James Long and Charles Dall.[14] Dall, a roving Unitarian missionary, is in a troubled marriage in Boston with female emancipator Caroline Wells Healey Dall, suffering a series of mental depressions, and is sufficiently persuaded to grant his wife a Boston divorce by sailing to India forever as the first foreign Unitarian missionary.[15]
• 1856 : Devendranath Thakur proceeds to hills of Simla.
• 1857 : Debendranath informs Unitarian preacher Charles Dall that he is no longer welcome at Calcutta Brahmo Samaj, and that "he would not hear the name of Jesus spoken in the Samaj". Dall then forms the Rammohun Roy Society to wean away the liberal Brahmos from Debendranath.[16] Keshub Sen then subscribes to Calcutta Brahmo Samaj while Devendranath is away in Simla. The Indian Mutiny erupts, almost every Trustee of Brahma Samaj supports the Crown while seeking exemplary punishment for the mutineers.
• 1860 : Charles Dall now openly attacks Debendranath and affiliates to liberal Brahmo neo-Christian group by promoting Theodore Parker and William Channing's methods to convert Hindus to Christianity.[16]
• 1866 : The First Brahmo Schism and Calcutta Brahmo Samaj is renamed as Adi (First) Brahmo Samaj to distinguish it from progressive breakaway group.
• 1871 : Adi Brahmo Samaj leaders publicly oppose the progressive faction over the divisive Brahmo Marriage Bill, 1871 with Debendranath stating "We are Brahmos first, and Indians or Hindus second."
• 1872 : The Marriage Bill is ostensibly not limited to Brahmos and enacted as the Special Marriages Act (Act III) of 1872. A declaration is required stating "I am not a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Jew" to marry under this law which is used almost exclusively by Brahmos.
• 1878 : The breakaway faction splits again, the majority form the middle-path Sadharan (General) Brahmo Samaj and are formally welcomed back to Brahmoism by Debendranath Tagore and Rajnarayan Basu of the Adi Samaj. The eminent leaders of Sadharan Brahmo Samaj at the time include Sivanath Sastri, Ananda Mohan Bose and Sib Chandra Deb.[17]

See also

• Adi Dharm
• Brahmo Samaj
• Hindu reform movements
• History of Bengal
• Prarthana Samaj
• Sadharan Brahmo Samaj
• Tattwabodhini Patrika

Notes and references

1. The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind - David Kopf, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x0tkz
2. " The Brahmo Samaj became the first organized vehicle for the expression of national awakening in India" https://www.nios.ac.in/media/documents/ ... /CH.05.pdf
3. Chambers Dictionary Of World History. Editor BP Lenman. Chambers. 2000.
4. http://www.lawcommissionbangladesh.org/reports/36.pdf
5. Brahmo Samaj Website
6. brahmosamaj.in - BRAHMO SAMAJ
7. Official website http://www.brahmosamaj.in/ "In 1901 (Bhagwan Koer & Ors v J.C.Bose & Ors, 31 Cal 11, 30 ELR IA 249) the Privy Council (Britain's highest judicial authority) upholds the finding of the High Court of the Punjab that the vast majority of Brahmo religionists are not Hindus and have their own religion"
8. 403 Forbidden
9. Heritage Institute of India - article by Dr. Gautam Chatterjee
10. brahmosamaj.org - Banian "Trust" Deed Chitpore Road Brahmo Sabha
11. Mohanta, Sambaru Chandra (2003). "Tattvabodhini Sabha". In Islam, Sirajul; Jamal, Ahmed A. (eds.). Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (First ed.). Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Archived from the original on 4 October 2006.
12. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-05-30. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
13. http://www.ccsindia.org/lssreader/14lssreader.pdf[permanent dead link]
14. Shivanath Shastri's Brahmo History (1911) p.114
15. "Daughter of Boston: The Extraordinary Diary of Caroline Dall", by Helen Deese. p.xv"
16. Jump up to:a b " Charles Dall Archived March 14, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
17. Primary Source: History of Brahmo Samaj by Sivanath Sastri 1911, Secondary Source: Official website brahmosamaj.org

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Brahmo Samaj
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/11/20

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Brahmoism
Scripture: Brahmo Dharma
Theology: Monotheism
Pradhanacharya-1: Ram Mohan Roy
Pradhanacharya-2: Dwarkanath Tagore
Pradhanacharya-3: Debendranath Tagore
Founder: Ram Mohan Roy
Origin: 28 August 1828, Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Separated from Sanātanī Hinduism
Other name(s): Adi Dharm
Official website http://true.brahmosamaj.in

Brahmo Samaj (Bengali: ব্রাহ্ম সমাজ Bramho Shômaj) is the societal component of Brahmoism, which began as a monotheistic reformist movement of the Hindu religion that appeared during the Bengal Renaissance. It is practised today mainly as the Adi Dharm after its eclipse in Bengal consequent to the exit of the Tattwabodini Sabha from its ranks in 1839. After the publication of Hemendranath Tagore's Brahmo Anusthan (code of practice) in 1860 which formally divorced Brahmoism from Hinduism, the first Brahmo Samaj was founded in 1861 at Lahore by Pandit Nobin Chandra Roy.

It was one of the most influential religious movements in India[1] and made a significant contribution to the making of modern India.[2] It was started at Calcutta on 20 August 1828 by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Debendranath Tagore as reformation of the prevailing Brahmanism of the time (specifically Kulin practices) and began the Bengal Renaissance of the 19th century pioneering all religious, social and educational advance of the Hindu community in the 19th century. Its Trust Deed was made in 1830 formalising its inception and it was duly and publicly inaugurated in January 1830 by the consecration of the first house of prayer, now known as the Adi Brahmo Samaj.[3] From the Brahmo Samaj springs Brahmoism, the most recent of legally recognised religions in India and Bangladesh, reflecting its foundation on reformed spiritual Hinduism with vital elements of Judeo-Islamic faith and practice.[4][5]

Meaning of the name

The Brahmo Samaj literally denotes community (Sanskrit: 'samaj') of men who worship Brahman the highest reality.[6] In reality Brahmo Samaj does not discriminate between caste, creed or religion and is an assembly of all sorts and descriptions of people without distinction, meeting publicly for the sober, orderly, religious and devout adoration of "the (nameless) unsearchable Eternal, Immutable Being who is the Author and Preserver of the Universe."[7]

Doctrine

The following doctrines, as noted in Renaissance of Hinduism, are common to all varieties and offshoots of the Brahmo Samaj:[8]

• Brahmo Samajists have no faith in any scripture as an authority.
• Brahmo Samajists have no faith in Avatars
• Brahmo Samajists denounce polytheism and idol-worship.
• Brahmo Samajists are against caste restrictions.
• Brahmo Samajists make faith in the doctrines of Karma and Rebirth optional.

Divisions of Brahmo Samaj

• Adi Brahmo Samaj
• Sadharan Brahmo Samaj

Anusthanic versus Ananusthanic Brahmos

To understand the differences between the two streams of Brahmo Samaj it is essential to understand that these implicit distinctions are based on caste. The Anusthanic Brahmos are exclusively either Brahmins or casteless, and exclusively adhere to Brahmoism and have no other faith. The Ananusthanic Brahmo Samajists, however, are from the remaining main caste divisions of Hinduism like Kayastha, Baidya etc. and hence within the Karmic / Rebirth wheel to eternally progress (i.e. Sanatana Dharm) to God by moving up caste hierarchies, unlike anusthanic Brahmos for whom the next step after death is reintegration and renewal with 'God'.[9]

History and timeline

Brahmo Sabha

On 20 August 1828 the first assembly of the Brahmo Sabha (progenitor of the Brahmo Samaj) was held at the North Calcutta house of Feringhee Kamal Bose. This day was celebrated by Brahmos as Bhadrotsab (ভাদ্রোৎসব Bhadrotshôb "Bhadro celebration"). These meetings were open to all Brahmins and there was no formal organisation or theology as such.[10][11]

On 8 January 1830 influential progressive members of the closely related Kulin Brahmin clan[12] scurrilously[13] described as Pirali Brahmin ie. ostracised for service in the Mughal Nizaamat of Bengal) of Tagore (Thakur) and Roy (Vandopādhyāya) zumeendar family mutually executed the Trust deed of Brahmo Sabha for the first Adi Brahmo Samaj (place of worship) on Chitpore Road (now Rabindra Sarani), Kolkata, India with Ram Chandra Vidyabagish as first resident superintendent.[14]

On 23 January 1830 or 11th Magh, the Adi Brahmo premises were publicly inaugurated (with about 500 Brahmins and 1 Englishman present). This day is celebrated by Brahmos as Maghotsab (মাঘোৎসব Maghotshôb "Magh celebration").

In November 1830 Rammohun Roy left for England. Akbar II had conferred the title of 'Raja' to Rammohun Roy.[15]

Brief Eclipse of Brahmo Sabha

With Rammohun's departure for England in 1830, the affairs of Brahmo Sabha were effectively managed by Trustees Dwarkanath Tagore and Pandit Ram Chandra Vidyabagish, with Dwarkanath instructing his diwan to manage affairs.

By the time of Rammohun's death in 1833 near Bristol (UK), attendance at the Sabha dwindled and the Telugu Brahmins revived idolatry. The zameendars, being preoccupied in business, had little time for affairs of Sabha, and flame of Sabha was almost extinguished.[16]

Tattwabodhini period

On 6 October 1839, Debendranath Tagore, son of Dwarkanath Tagore, established Tattvaranjini Sabha which was shortly thereafter renamed the Tattwabodhini ("Truth-seekers") Sabha. Initially confined to immediate members of the Tagore family, in two years it mustered over 500 members. In 1840, Debendranath published a Bangla translation of Katha Upanishad. A modern researcher describes the Sabha's philosophy as modern middle-class (bourgeois) Vedanta.[17]. Among its first members were the "two giants of Hindu reformation and Bengal Renaissance", Akshay Kumar Datta, who in 1839 emerged from the life of an "anonymous squalor-beset individual", and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, the "indigenous modernizer".[18]

First Covenant and merger with the Tattwabodhini Sabha

On 7th Pous 1765 Shaka (1843) Debendranath Tagore and twenty other Tattwabodhini stalwarts were formally invited by Pt. Vidyabagish into the Trust of Brahmo Sabha. The Pous Mela at Santiniketan starts on this day.[19] From this day forth, the Tattwabodhini Sabha dedicated itself to promoting Ram Mohan Roy's creed.[20] The other Brahmins who swore the First Covenant of Brahmoism are:-

• Shridhar Bhattacharya
• Shyamacharan Bhattacharya
• Brajendranath Tagore
• Girindranath Tagore, brother of Debendranath Tagore & father of Ganendranath Tagore
• Anandachandra Bhattacharya
• Taraknath Bhattacharya
• Haradev Chattopadhyaya, the future father-in-law to MahaAcharya Hemendranath Tagore[21]
• Shyamacharan Mukhopadhyaya
• Ramnarayan Chattopadhyaya
• Sashibhushan Mukhopadhyaya

Disagreement with the Tattwabodhini

In Nov 1855 the Rev. Charles Dall (a Unitarian minister of Boston) arrived in Calcutta to start his mission, and immediately established contact with Debendranath and other Brahmos. Debendranath's suspicion of foreigners alienated Dall, and in 1857 Debendranath Tagore barred him from the Sabha premises for using them to preach "the name of Christ who some people worship as God".[22][23] Debendranath then proceeded on spiritual retreat to Simla. Dall immediately formed a rival group, the "Friends of Rammohun Roy Society", and arranged for a protégé, Keshub Chandra Sen, to be admitted to Sabha. The presence of Sen (a non-Brahmin) while Debendranath was away in 1857 caused considerable stress in the movement, with many longstanding Tattvabodhini Brahmin members publicly leaving the Brahmo Sabha and institutions in protest against his high-handed ways. In September 1858, Debendranath returned to Calcutta to resolve the simmering disputes, but his natural caution prevented him from taking decisive steps. He proceeded on a sea voyage to Ceylon accompanied by Sen and his second son Satyendranath (a firm admirer of Sen), but no settlement was achieved. In 1859, the venerable and beloved Secretary of the Tattwabodhini Sabha Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar resigned from the Brahmo Sabha in the face of Debendranath's vacillation. A meeting of the Tatwabodhini was promptly summoned, and Debendranath resigned from the group he had founded. His third son Hemendranath Tagore, then a boy barely 15 years of age, and the favorite pupil of Vidyasgar, was commonly acclaimed as Debendranath's successor to head the Tattwabodhini. He would eventually become known as the MahaAcharya (or Great Teacher).

Expansion of the Tattwabodhini Sabha

Disgusted by politics within the Tagore family and the support to K. C. Sen's faction by his own brother Satyendranath Tagore, Hemendranath took the bold decisions to expand his Sabha out from Calcutta. His close associate Pandit Nobin Chandra Roy who had joined the new institution of "Railways" in 1860 as its "Paymaster" for Upper India was tasked to spread Brahmoism there. With a predominantly monotheistic populace following Islam and Sikhism it was perceived as fertile soil for Rammohun's message. The Tattwabodhini decreed that the uncorrupted faith of the original 1830 Trust Deed would be known there as the Adi Dharm to distinguish it from the distorted versions of the squabbling factions of Calcutta. The steps taken by Hemendranath Tagore, with the blessing of his father, was to institute in 1860 a suit before the Supreme Court to restore the title "Brahmo Samaj" to his faction. After losing in this suit in 1861, Keshub Sen's faction altered the name of their Samaj from "The Brahmo Samaj of India" to "Navabidhan (or the New Dispensation)". With victory in this suit and the promulgation of his Brahmo Anusthan (Code of Brahmaic doctrine and practice) in 1861, Hemendranath's Samaj-ists are henceforth known as the "Anusthanic" Brahmos (or Brahmos who follow the Code). The other factions were designated as "Ananusthanic" Brahmos (or those who do not follow the Code) (this distinction was again to be legally examined before the Privy Council of Great Britain in 1901 and in 1902 the Privy Council upheld the 1897 finding of the Chief Court of the Punjab that the Adi Dharm (anusthanic Brahmos) were definitely not Hindus whereas the Ananusthanics Brahmos of Calcutta fall within Hinduism).

Foundation of the Brahmo Samaj

In 1861 the Brahmo Somaj (as it was spelled then) was founded at Lahore by Nobin Roy.[24] It included many Bengalis from the Lahore Bar Association. Many branches were opened in the Punjab, at Quetta, Rawalpindi, Amritsar etc.

First Secession

Disagreement with the Tattvabodhini came to a head publicly between the period of 1 August 1865 till November 1866 with many tiny splinter groups styling themselves as Brahmo. The most notable of these groups styled itself "Brahmo Samaj of India". This period is also referred to in the histories of the secessionists as the "First Schism".[25]

Brahmo Samaj and Swami Narendranath Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda was influenced by the Brahmo Samaj of India, and visited the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in his youth.[26]

Brahmo Samaj of South of India

The faith and Principles of Brahmo Samaj had spread to South Indian states like Andrapradesh, Tamilnadu, Karnataka, and Kerala with a large number of followers.

In Kerala the faith and principles of Brahmosamaj and Raja Ram Mohun Roy had been propagated by Ayyathan Gopalan, and reform activities had been led by establishing Brahmosamaj in 1898 in the Calicut (now Kozhikode) region. Gopalan was a doctor by profession, but dedicated his life to Brahmosamaj, and was an active executive member of the Calcutta Sadharan Brahmosamaj until his death.

The Calicut (Kerala) branch of Brahmomandir (Hall for conducting prayer meetings) was opened to public in the year 1900 (Now Ayathan School which runs under the patronage of Brahmosamaj at Jail road, Calicut). Second Branch of Brahmosamaj at Kerala was established at Alappuzha (South Kerala) in the year 1924 with a Brahmomandir(Hall for conducting prayer meeting's) established at Poonthoppu ,Kommady (now Grihalakshmi Gandhi Smaraka seva sangam).

DR.Ayyathan Gopalan was a great social reformer of Kerala and was also the founder of Sugunavardhini movement which was established in order to foster human values in children and to protect the rights of women, children, and the downtrodden sections such as the Harijan communities (Dalits) and to educate them. He established the Lady Chandawarkar Elementary School with the aim of educating girls and the underprivileged.

Ayyathan Gopalan translated the "Bible of Brahmosamaj" or "Brahmodarma[27] written by Maharshi Debendranath Tagore into Malayalam in 1910.

Current status and number of adherents

While the various Calcutta sponsored movements declined after 1920 and faded into obscurity after the Partition of India, the Adi Dharm creed has expanded and is now the 9th largest of India's enumerated religions with 7.83 million adherents, heavily concentrated between the states of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. In the Indian census of 2001 only 177 persons declared themselves a "Brahmo", but the number of subscriber members to Brahmo Samaj is somewhat larger at around 20,000 members.[28][29]

Social and religious reform

In all fields of social reform, including abolition of the caste system and of the dowry system, emancipation of women, and improving the educational system, the Brahmo Samaj reflected the ideologies of the Bengal Renaissance. Brahmoism, as a means of discussing the dowry system, was a central theme of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's noted 1914 Bengali language novella, Parineeta.

In 1866, Keshub Chandra Sen organised the more radical "Bharatvarshiya Brahmo Samaj" with overtones of Christianity. He campaigned for the education of women and against child marriages. But he nonetheless arranged a marriage for his own underage daughter Suniti with the prince of Coochbehar. The Brahmo Samaj of India split after this act of underage marriage generated a controversy and his pro-British utterances and leaning towards Christian rites generated more controversies. A third group, "Sadharan (ordinary) Brahmo Samaj", was formed in 1878. It gradually reverted to the teaching of the Upanishads but continued the work of social reform. The movement, always an elite group without significant popular following, lost force in the 20th century.

After the controversy of underage marriage of Keshub Chunder Sen's daughter, the Special Marriages Act of 1872 was enacted to set the minimum age of 14 years for marriage of girls.[30] All Brahmo marriages were thereafter solemnised under this law. Many Indians resented the requirement of the affirmation "I am not Hindu, nor a Mussalman, nor a Christian" for solemnising a marriage under this Act. The requirement of this declaration was imposed by Henry James Sumner Maine, legal member of Governor General's Council appointed by Britain. The 1872 Act was repealed by the Special Marriage Act, 1954 under which any person of any religion could marry. The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 applies to all Hindus (including "followers" of the Brahmo Samaj) but not to the adherents of the Brahmo religion.

It also supported social reform movements of people not directly attached to the Samaj, such as Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar’s movement which promoted widow remarriage.

See also

• Hinduism portal
• India portal
• Society portal
• History portal
• History of Bengal
• Arya Samaj
• Brahmo
• Prarthana Samaj
• Tattwabodhini Patrika
• Brahmosamaj Kerala and Dr. Ayyathan Gopalan

References and notes

1. J. N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements of India (1915), p. 29
2. "Brahmo Samaj and the making of modern India, David Kopf, publ. 1979 Princeton University Press (USA)."
3. "Modern Religious movements in India, J.N.Farquhar (1915)" page 29 etc.
4. "Official Brahmo website". Brahmosamaj.in. Retrieved 15 October 2012.
5. "Bangladesh Law Commission" (PDF). Retrieved 15 October 2012.
6. page 1 Chapter 1 Volume 1 History of the Brahmo Samaj by Sivanath Sastri, 1911, 1st edn. publisher R.Chatterji, Cornwallis St. Calcutta. Brahmo (ব্রাহ্ম bramho) literally means "one who worships Brahman", and Samaj (সমাজ shômaj) mean "community of men".
7. Trust deed of Brahmo Sabha 1830
8. Source: The Gazetteer of India, Volume 1: Country and people. Delhi, Publications Division, Government of India, 1965. CHAPTER VIII – Religion. HINDUISM by Dr. C.P.Ramaswami Aiyar, Dr. Nalinaksha Dutt, Prof. A.R.Wadia, Prof. M.Mujeeb, Dr.Dharm Pal and Fr. Jerome D'Souza, S.J.
9. "Anusthanic Brahmos, Ananusthnic Brahmo Samaj". World Brahmo Council.
10. "Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India" By Kenneth W. Jones page 33-34, publ. 1989 Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN 0-521-24986-4 This Sabha was convened at Calcutta by religious reformer Raja Rammohun Roy for his family and friends settled there. The Sabha regularly gathered on Saturday between seven o'clock to nine o'clock. These were informal meetings of Bengali Brahmins (the "twice born"), accompanied by Upanishadic recitations in Sanskrit followed by Bengalitranslations of the Sanskrit recitation and singing of Brahmo hymns composed by Rammohun.
11. "Modern Religious movements in India, J.N.Farquhar (1915)"
12. "A History of Brahmin Clans" (Brāhmaṇa Vaṃshõ kā Itihāsa) in Hindi, by Dorilāl Śarmā, published by Rāśtriya Brāmhamana Mahāsabhā, Vimal Building, Jamirābād, Mitranagar, Masūdābād, Aligarh-1, 2nd edn. 1998. and also footnotes to Bengali Brahmin
13. "Tagore, (Prince) Dwarkanath". Banglapedia. 22 April 2009. Archived from the original on 3 July 2015. Retrieved 23 July 2015.
14. "Online copy of 1830 Trust Deed". brahmosamaj.in. Retrieved 15 October 2012.
15. Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India By Kenneth W. Jones page 34, publ. 1989 Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN 0-521-24986-4
16. H.C.Sarkar-History of the Brahmo Religion (1906)
17. <2007: Brian Hatcher "Journal of American Academy of Religion"
18. "Brahmo Samaj and the making of modern India, David Kopf, Princeton University press", pp 43–57
19. "Rabindra Bharati Museum Kolkata, The Tagores & Society". Rabindrabharatiuniversity.net. Archived from the original on 7 March 2005. Retrieved 15 October 2012.
20. "Bourgeois Hinduism", Brian Allison Hatcher. pg 57–58.
21. "History of the Brahmo Samaj", S. Sastri. 2nd ed. p.81
22. "The Brahmo Samaj and making of Modern India", David Kopf, publ. Princeton Univ.
23. "Brahmoism, or a history of reformed Hinduism" (1884), R. C. Dutt
24. page.4 "Pakistan journal of history and culture, Volume 11", by National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research (Pakistan)
25. Pt.Shivnath Shastri: Brahmo History- 1911.Page 106-107, 2nd edn.
26. Chattopadhyaya, Rajagopal (31 December 1999). "Book: "Swami Vivekananda in India: A Corrective Biography"". Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited. Retrieved 23 March 2017.
27. "Brāhmo Samāj". Religion Past and Present. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
28. "Brahmo Samaj FAQ Frequently asked Questions". Brahmo.org. 25 July 2011. Archived from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 15 October 2012.
29. Statewise census computation Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine by the Brahmo Conference Organisation
30. "Brahma Sabha". Banglapedia. Retrieved 23 July 2015.

External links

• The Brahmo Samaj
• Brahmo Samaj.net
• Brahmo Samaj in the Encyclopædia Britannica

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Adi Dharm
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Accessed: 2/11/20

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Adi Dharm refers to the religion of Adi Brahmo Samaj (Bengali: আদি ব্রাহ্ম সমাজ, Adi Brahmô Shômaj) the first development of Brahmoism and includes those Sadharan Brahmo Samajists who were reintegrated into Brahmoism after the 2nd schism of 1878 at the instance of Hemendranath Tagore.[1] This was the first organised casteless movement in British India and reverberated from its heart of Bengal to Assam, Bombay State (modern Sindh, Maharashtra and Gujarat), Punjab and Madras, Hyderabad, and Bangalore.

Tenets

It was never conceived as an "anti-caste" movement, but stood for repudiation of all "distinctions between people" and foundation of a modern educated secular Indian nation under the timeless and formless One God, and its adherents as Adi-Dharmis (or worshipers of the ancient formless indivisible One god Brahma or the Parambrahma "The One without a Second" or EkAdavaitam). Although the doctrine of Adi Dharma is superficially similar to other reformatory "sects" of Hinduism which speak of "different paths to One God", the core beliefs of Adi Dharm irrevocably place Adi Dharm and Brahmoism as the youngest of India's nine religions beyond the pale of "Hinduism's catholicism and elasticity".[2]

The core Adi-Dharma doctrinal beliefs differing from Brahmanical Hinduism include:

1. There is only One "Supreme Spirit", Author and Preserver of Existence. (... Beyond description, immanent, transcendent, eternal, formless, infinite, powerful, radiant, loving, light in the darkness, ruling principle of existence .... Polytheism is denounced. Idolatry i.e. worship of images is opposed.)
2. There is no salvation and no way to achieve it. ("Works will win". Worshipful work is the way of existence. Work is for both body and soul. All life exists to be consumed. The soul is immortal and does not return to this World. There is neither Heaven nor Hell nor rebirth)
3. There is no scripture, revelation, creation, prophet, priest or teacher to be revered. (Only the Supreme Spirit of Existence can be revered – not the Vedas, Granths, Bibles or Quran etc. Worship consist of revering the "inner light within" i.e. enlightened conscience)
4. There is no distinction. (All men are equal. Distinctions like caste, race, creed, colour, gender, nationality etc. are artificial. There is no need for priests, places of worship, long sermons[3] etc. "Man-worship" or "God-men" are abhorrent to the faith and denounced since there is no mediator between man and God).

Founders of Adi Dharma

The Adi Dharma religion was started by Ram Mohan Roy, Debendranath Tagore and Prasanna Coomar Tagore.

This Adi Brahma religion Adi Dharma was originally propounded by these Brahmins of Bengal who were excommunicated from Hindu faith for opposing social and priestly evils of the time (18th and 19th centuries). Previously the original ancestors (5 legendary Brahmin scholars of Kannauj Kanyakubja school deputed to the King of Bengal) of all these Bengali Brahmins had been excommunicated from Kannauj (Uttar Pradesh) in the 10th/11th century AD after their return from Bengal.

Mobility

"Mobility" i.e. leaving the home and being exposed to external influence meant loss of caste for Brahmins (a social device to conserve meagre land holdings and priestly incomes).

Mobile scholars of priestly Brahmin clans such as these in contact with (or in the service of) foreign rulers – like the Mughals or European companies or Indian princelings – were deliberately ostracised by their "fixed" priestly Hindu clan peers (relatives) ensconced within the numerous temples of Bengal and denied their shares of ancestral undivided properties and incomes. As a consequence ghastly social evils like Sati (or the burning alive of Hindu widows) were encouraged, primarily by the fixed priestly class. The mobile clan members banded into associations (Sabhas) to oppose these un-Brahmic practices colliding head on with orthodox ("fixed") Hindu society in Bengal.

The Mughal 'Raja' Rammohun was the first Indian to cross the seas to Britain in 1833, followed by 'Prince' Dwarkanath in 1842. Rajah was so exhausted by work that he became seriously ill and died at Bristol.

Genesis of Adi Dharma


Rabindranath Tagore with wife Mrinalini Devi from a Pirali Brahmin clan which some Tagores regularly married into

The Adi Dharma founders were regularly tainted and scandalised by orthodoxy as Pirali Brahmin and defamed as being officially banned from entering temples like Jaganath Temple (Puri) by Govt regulations of 1807.[4]

The term "Pirali" historically carried a stigmatized and pejorative connotation amongst Brahmins; its eponym is the vizier Mohammad Tahir Pir Ali, who served under a governor of Jessore. Pir Ali was a Brahmin Hindu convert to Islam; his example resulted in the additional conversion of two Brahmins brothers. As a result, Brahmin Hindu society shunned the brothers' relatives (who had not converted),[19] and the descendants of these Hindu relatives became known as the Pirali Brahmins — among whom numbered the Tagores.[20]

-- Bengali Brahmins, by Wikipedia

Subsequently, their families also faced great difficulty in arranging marriages for some of their children such as India's poet-laureate Rabindranath Tagore who could only manage a Pirali Brahmin bride unlike his brothers who married high caste Brahmin brides. This ultimate exclusionary weapon of Hindu orthodoxy resulted in endogamous (i.e. casteist) tendencies in Adi-Dharm marriage practice between these 2 branches of Adi Dharma in the Tagore family, placing Satyendranath Tagore and Rabindranath Tagore and their families against their exogamous brothers. The noted Adi Brahmo historian Kshitindranath Tagore (son of Hemendranath Tagore) who succeeded Rabindranath Tagore as Editor of the Adi Dharma organ, has written that it was Rabindranath who destroyed many family documents.[5]

"In those days the practice of having Gharjamai was in vogue in our family, mainly because we were Piralis and then became Brahmos; therefore, there was no possibility of somebody from a good Hindu family marrying into our (ie. the endogamous branch) family .. the system of marriages amongst relatives was started. .. it became almost impossible to get our children married. Our being ostracised by the Hindu society provided us with a certain freedom in absorbing western influences, and at the same time the Adi Brahmo Samaj was a branch of Hindu society in all respects except the practice of idolatry. Maharshi always expressed a hearty desire to establish this, and as such all the rituals and customs of Hindu society were followed in his family, and that environment prevailed at least till he was alive," wrote Indira Devi Choudhurani (Smritisamput Vol I (1997/2000), in Bengali, Rabindra Bhaban, Viswa Bharati, p. 18-19). Indira Devi Choudhurani was daughter of Satyendranath Tagore and very close to Rabindranath. "The Autobiography of Debendranath Tagore" is also "attributed" to Satyendranath Tagore and this daughter.

Adi Brahma Dharm timeline

Adi Brahma Sabha

Consequently, the Adi Brahmos then set up their own faith called Adi Brahma Sabha in 1828/1830 by Trust deed of Brahmo Sabha and codified their religion as Adi Brahma Dharma published from 1848. The founders of this Brahmo religion were foremost reformers for nationalism, equality, secularism and education which now stand enshrined in the Constitution of India as Fundamental Rights. These founding fathers of Adi Dharma believed then that Hinduism was thoroughly corrupted and debased and that strong Law (i.e. Dharma) of first Moslems and then English Rulers could cleanse India from these evils. For their associations with the Rulers of the times, they were ostracised and barred from orthodox Hindu society but were amply compensated by "being so weighed down in honours by the British that they forgot all the radicalism of their youth." It was Dwarkanath Tagore alone who could publicly lambast an English Magistrate Abercrombie Dick on the emergence of servile mai-baap (great lord) ruling culture of 19th-century Bengal as follows:

... If Mr.Dick wishes me to specify what I deem the present characteristic failings of the natives I answer that they are – a want of truth, a want of integrity, a want of independence. .. arising from being subjected to misrule of an igorant, intolerant and licentious soldiery .. falling into abject submission, deceit and fraud.[6]

Previously in 1829 Dwarkanath and Prasanna Coomar had founded the Landholders (Zamindars) Association which in its variants went on to play such role in modern India's development. The first major success of this Zamindari Sabha was arraigning the East India Company forces against Titumir a Muslim extortionist of Zamindar's (landlords who perpetuated a system of feudalism with the support of the British), at Nadia in November 1831.

Trust deed Principles (1830)

By the 1830 Trust deed of Brahmo Sabha principles it was held that all men are equal and without distinction and there is no need for priests or formal places for worship etc.

Adi Dharma doctrine (1848/1850)

By the 1848 Adi Brahma Dharma published doctrine of Debendranath Tagore, it was held that present Hinduism doctrine is corrupted, but that the original Vedas of pre-Aryan times (being relatively pure, though still fallible and not Scripture to be relied on) as reflected by 11 judiciously chosen Upanishads also speak of a single formless God who requires no temple or priest or idol for worship, only a rational and pure conscience of an intelligent mind. That there is no caste – high or low – all people are equal, in this World and before God. The doctrine of reincarnation is rejected. The doctrine of God being incarnate is also rejected.

Caste Disability Removal Act (1850)

This publication resulted in the famous "Removal of Caste Disabilities Act" of August 1850, and Brahmos were free to establish their own religion and marry amongst themselves without fear of disinheritance from ancestral property. At the 23 December 1850 annual meeting of Calcutta Brahmo Samaj, Debendranath formally announced the Brahma Dharma as doctrine of the new religion. This announcement resolving certain aspects of Hinduism in Rammohun's doctrine also served to effectively separate Brahmoism from Hinduism.[7]

Lala Hazarilal's Shudra controversy (1851)

Krishnanagar in Nadia district of West Bengal has always had special place in Brahmoism. Many old Brahmo families came from here including that of Ramtanu Lahiri who was the first Adi Dharmi to renounce his Brahmanical caste thread in 1851 (even before Debendra Nath who removed his in 1862). The gesture by Debendranath of sending Lala Hazarilal of Indore (an untouchable from the lowest Shudra caste by birth) as Adi Dharma's first preacher to Krishnagar instead of a Brahmin preacher well versed in Sankskrit literature was, however, not too well appreciated and gave great offence to the Nadia royal family.[8]

Christian missionaries banned (1856)

In 1856, Christian preachers attempting to convert Adi Dharma adherents were banned entry into Brahmo premises by Debendranath Tagore.

Adi Dharma mission to Punjab (1861)

In 1861 the famous Adi Brahmo preacher Pundit Navin Chandra Rai ("Roy") went to Punjab and spread this new faith and opened many Adi Brahmo houses of worship all over Punjab (West and East) at Jullundur, Lyallpur, Lahore, Amritsar etc. People of all faiths and castes without distinction flocked to the new creed, and over 580 Pandit families were enrolled till 1870. Subsequently, the Oriental College was established at Lahore by Pundit N.C. Rai.

Adi Dharma mission to Andhra & Telangana

In 1861 another Adi Brahmo preacher Atmuri Lakshminarasimham returned to Madras Presidency and devoted much time in the Telugu speaking areas. Many publications of Adi Samaj in Bengali were translated into Telugu language and published by him from the printing presses of Madras. In 1862, he came in contact with and converted Kandukuri Viresalingam who was to become father of Telugu language and notable Brahmo nationalist of the era. Later the two fell out over religious differences

First schism in Brahmo Samaj (1866)

In 1865/1866 there was a dispute in the Brahmo Samaj over caste distinctions, and many younger members of the Samaj who were influenced by Christian missionaries were expelled from the Adi Samaj by Hemendranath Tagore – which religion was henceforth known as the Adi Brahmo Samaj.

Character of Adi Dharma changes (1867–)

From 1867 after the First Schism, the Adi Dharam movement became stridently nationalistic. A Hindu Mela was regularly organised which became the precursor to the Swadeshi movement and then the Indian National Congress. In the meanwhile the expelled Christian factions from Adi Samaj launched a sustained and bitter campaign to wean away the Adi Dharma missions outside Bengal. A great deal of propaganda was hurled from both sides.

Brahmo marriage (bill) controversy (1871)

In 1871 the expelled group petitioned the Government to recognise them and their inter-faith marriages claiming that Brahmos are not Hindu, not Christian, Moslem, Jew or Parsi etc. The Adi Brahmo group opposed this stating, We are Brahmos first, and Hindus second and finally a compromise Law was passed as Act III of 1872 to enable marriages between Brahmos and thereby recognising the Brahmo religion by State.

Adi Dharma's Maharshi and Gurudev visit Punjab (1872)

In 1872/1873 Debendranath Tagore (the Maharshi) and his son Rabindranath Tagore (Gurudev) visited Punjab and spent much time in worship at the Golden Temple at Amritsar. A famous Sikh gentleman Sirdar Dayal Singh Majithia from the priestly family of this temple joined the Adi Dharma and subsequently contributed much money to the faith and also became a founder Trustee of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in 1880.

Emergence of Arya Samaj in Punjab (1875)

In the meantime (1872–1875) in Punjab due to Schisms in Adi Brahmo Samaj at Calcutta, a new variant of Adi Brahmoism called Arya Samaj began to take root. While travelling its founder Swami Dayanand came into close and extended contact with Raj Narayan Bose, Debendranath Tagore etc. Swami Dayanand closely studied Tagore's book Brahmo Dharma, a comprehensive manual of religion and ethics for Adi Dharma, while in Calcutta. The bone of contention between these two Samaj's was over the authority of the Vedas – whose authority the Adi Dharma reject and hold to be inferior works, whereas Arya Samaj hold Vedas to be divine revelation. Despite this difference of opinion, however, it seems that the members of the Brahmo Samaj and Swami Dayanand parted on good terms, the former having publicly praised the latter's visit to Calcutta in several journals and the latter having taken inspiration from the former's activity in the social sphere.

Lala Hardayal pracharok in Northern India (1876)

Another close associate of Debendranath Tagore, Lala Hardayal volunteered to promote the Adi Dharma cause in the Central Provinces and Punjab. He linked up with Sirdar Dayal Singh Majithia and the pure Adi Dharma message of One God without Caste or Priests took great root in this Province. Many low caste Sikhs, low caste Hindu converts to Christianity etc. joined the Adi Brahma Dharma to be eventually absorbed back after education into their respective faiths. It is pertinent that Debendranath was greatly influenced by works of Kabir and Baba Guru Nanak and always kept their books at his side.

Developments of Adi Dharma in Telangana (1870–1880)

By 1871 Kandukuri Veeresalingam (father of Telugu nation) was heavily influenced by Brahmoism. A movement was covertly established by him to seek independence of the Telugu speaking provinces of Madras Presidency and the Nizamate of Hyderabad. A secret society for this was organised in 1878 in Rajahmundry under the cover of Prarthana Samaj of Andhra Pradesh. He bitterly opposed immoral (i.e. polygamy and child marriage) practices of the upper classes of Telangana starting a new phase of reform for Adi Dharma in Telugu speaking regions.

"He contributed to the political sphere by his activist journalism of writing about issues such as corruption in the local administration. The presidency government kept a close tab on the Indian language press and sometimes responded to investigate such allegations. Viresalingam also intervened more directly by conducting widow remarriages and popularising new forms of voluntary association."[9]

Kandukuri vacillated between Adi Dharm nationalism and Keshab Sen's dictum of "Loyalty to Sovereign" being rewarded with Rao Bahadur title in 1893 by British. But by clinging to Keshab Sen philosophy of "Loyalty to Sovereign" till 1907, Viresalingam found himself increasingly isolated from the militant ideology of Adi Dharma's new stridently nationalistic adherents in the region.[10]

2nd phase of formation of Provincial Samajes (1878–)

In 1862 and again in 1864 the Adi Dharma stalwarts from Calcutta visited Bombay, Madras Presidencies. They also visited Hyderabad (Deccan). As a result, many anti-caste, One Formless God Adi-Dharma affiliates were started including the Prarthana Samaj in Mumbai. The Veda Samaj in Madras, and the Brahma Samajam in what is now Andhra Pradesh.

Many Christian members reabsorbed in Adi Dharma (1878–1880)

In 1878 these expelled neo-Christian members split again, but almost all of them recanted (by getting executed a Trust deed of Sadharan Brahmo Samaj in 1880 virtually identical in Principles to the 1830 Adi Trust deed) and were reabsorbed into Brahmoism by Maharshi Debendranath and Raj Narayan Bose the founders of Hindutva (i.e. Brahmoism's nationalistic religion of Adi Dharma of pre-Aryan uncorrupt times means All Indians are One without distinction, regionalism and caste) as Sadharan Brahmo Samaj. The small remainder of Adi heretics formed a Christian / Baha'i new world religion called Navabidhan or New Dispensation and are not considered part of Adi Dharma and in 1891 formed another Samaj in Bangladesh and are called Sammilani's (or Universal Brahmo Religionists) organising annual Conference of Theists.

Tragedies in Tagore family of 1884

In 1884 there were two demises in Debendranath's family. The deaths of his third son Hemendranath at the young age of 40 and the unexplained suicide of his daughter-in-law Kadambari Devi (wife of his fifth son Jyotirindranath the then Secretary of the Adi Brahmo Samaj) in April were to have significant implications for Adi Dharm.

Legal victories for Adi Dharma (1897–1903)

In 1897 a landmark decision of the High Court of the Punjab in Sirdar Dayal Singh's case after his demise, upholds that Brahmoism is a separate religion from Hinduism (except for the Adi Brahmos – Adi Dharma'ites who remain within Hinduism), whereas simultaneously affirming such gems as " .. Sikhs are Hindoos and nothing but Hindoos .." and " A Sikh (Sardar Dyal Singh) who follows Brahmoism without actually converting to it continues to remain a Hindoo". This decision is confirmed by the Privy Council in 1903 (Rani Bhagwan Koer & Anr. vs. Acharya J.C.Bose and Ors) and is the leading Judgement even today on the vexed question of "who is a Hindu?".

Adi Dharma in N.India, Pandit Nabin Chandra Ray

The heart of Adi Dharma in Punjab Province was Bengal's Adi Brahmo Samaj legend Pundit Nabin Chandra Ray. The Punjab Brahmo Samaj under his influence favoured Hindi language as against Punjabi actuated by nationalistic considerations. He looked upon Hindi as the national language of India and wanted it to be the foundation for the edifice of Indian nationality. He was the founder of Oriental College Lahore and also its principal. He was the first Asst. Registrar of Punjab University, and one of its Fellows. He was Secretary of the Stri Siksha Sabha fighting against heavy odds to establish girls schools. He was one of the most active members of the Anjumani Punjab, afterwards becoming its Secretary and renamed it as Jnan Vistarini Sabha engaging 8 Pundits to translate various works. To spread reform among the backward people of Punjab he published various newspapers in Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi and the highly controversial "Widow Remarriage Advertiser" in English. For the depressed classes he started a night school and the Chamar Sabha. His doors were open to all helpless and the poor.[11] After N.C.Rai left the Punjab in course of his service, initiation into Adi Dharm was given to castes other than Brahmin or Pandit by his successors – a few of whom were Sikh. As a result, many Sikhs also joined Adi Dharm in large numbers relying on the Mulmantra of Sikhism i.e. Japuji Sahib which begins as Ik Onkar Sat Naam Karta Purakh .. translated as "There is only one God His name is Truth He is the creator.."

Provocation in the Punjab (1900 -)

In 1900 the Government passed the Land Alienation Act. In 1907 other taxing laws were promulgated and finally in 1919 the Government of India Act was amended. As a result, the lower castes of North India were effectively deprived from land ownership. At the same time the Government divided the electorate on communal lines, resulting in sharp polarisation between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. To counter this the leadership of Adi Dharma (at its 1916 conference at Kanpur) resolved to propagate Adi Brahmoism as a distinct religion for the Punjab. In 1917 this resolution was also seconded by the Indian National Congress which was then closely associated with Adi Dharm.

Adi Dharma expands to Bodo people (1906)

In 1906 another preacher from Assam by name Kalicharan Brahma was initiated into Brahmoism. His reform work among the Bodo people established the Bodo Brahma Dharma among the Bathow religionists of Assam and reformed that religion of Adivasi Tribal people considerably. The followers of Adi Dharam in that region are known as Brahmas.

Schisms in Punjab branches (1922–)

From 1922 onwards, dissension in Arya Samaj factions of Punjab between the Vasant Rai and Mangoo Ram groups again split the regional Adi Dharma movement. Both groups approached the Lahore Headquarters of Adi Brahmo Samaj for recognition which was denied to both. This led to rivalry and inducements from all sides including Arya Samaj, Christian missionaries, Sikhism etc. causing considerable confusion in the Northern Provinces as to who represents Adi Dharma here. The major controversy at this time concerned many depressed caste Sikhs of Chamar grade in a supposedly casteless Sikhism rediscovered Ravidass's teachings of the 14th century (claimed by them to be incorporated in Guru Granth Sahib) and got themselves registered as Adi-Dharmi's in the 1921 and 1931 Census of Punjab after the legal decision in Bhagwan Koer's case and the Pirali precedent. This action by a section in the Punjab once again revived the Pirali controversy which echoed in Calcutta. Concerted action and representation by Adi Dharma and all sections of Brahmo Samaj ensured that after 1931 no further caste based Census took place in India. Thereafter the Congress Party revived casteism again with M.K. Gandhi asserting on 7 September 1936 ".. Sikhism is part of Hinduism and if becoming a Sikh is conversion then this kind of conversion on the part of Harijans is dangerous"

Adi Dharma leaders from the Punjab

• Lala Kashi Ramji – a widely respected person who travelled all over Northern India spreading message of the Samaj.
• Prof. Ruchi Ram Sahni – Secretary of Lahore Samaj and Secretary of Dayal Singh Educational Trust.
• Baboo Abinash Chandra Mazommdar – Set up many T.B. Sanitoria in Punjab and Simla.
• Bhai Prakash Devji – joined Adi Dharma after leaving Dev Samaj. Instrumental in drawing many adherents to Adi Dharm. Also Editor of Brahma Pracharak from 1903 till 1908.
• Bhai Sitaramji – Pillar of Punjab Samajes from Sialkot. After Partition settled in Delhi at Delhi Brahmo Samaj.
• Lala Basant Lalji – From orthodox Punjabi Kayastha family converted to Adi Dharm (Brahmo Samaj) on returning from England. Become Commissioner of Income Tax Delhi and pillar of Delhi Brahmo Samaj. His elder son was Air Chief Marshal Pratap Chandra Lal (Chief of Air Staff – India).

Marriage validity controversies (1938–)


Indira Gandhi's controversial ".. neither conventional nor legal.. " Vedic wedding image. Guardian.co.uk

A considerable controversy also erupted at this time over validity of Arya Samaj marriages. With low caste converts to Christianity being reinducted into Hindu ranks after shuddhikaran or purification, orthodox Hindu society was not prepared to accept these reconverts or marry with them. With a few deaths of such converts often from very rich families or landed gentry, property disputes began reaching the Courts and the existing laws proved inadequate. With neither side willing to budge, a Marriage Law for Arya Samajis was deferred for almost 25 years. Luckily a fortituous occurrence took place. Krishna Hutheesing (a sister of Jawaharlal Nehru) wanted to marry a Prince – a Jain by religion. Such a marriage between parties of different castes although then allowed in law (by further amendment in the Brahmo law in 1923) was frowned upon and meant separation from the family and community. They arranged to be married under the Adi Brahmo Law of 1872 and gave false declarations (as was done in B.K.Nehru's case also). When these facts came out, the Adi Brahmo's fiercely objected to misuse of their Act and began to watch the banns.

In 1938 Jawaharal Nehru's daughter Indira insisted on getting married to her sweetheart Feroze. Once again being of different faiths they could not be legally married under any law of the time except the Adi Dharma Law. The elders (incl. Rabindranath Tagore) of Brahmo Samaj at Shantiniketan, Delhi and Allahabad were consulted (incl. by M.K.Gandhi) and who after considerable disagreement advised instead that the long pending Marriage Validity law for converted low caste Arya Samajis be enacted, which was speedily done in 1939 by an obliging British Government, enabling the loving couple to be wed in early 1942 by secret pre-Vedic Adi Dharm reformed Brahmic rites taught to Nehru's priest by Adi Dharma elders at Allahabad in the presence of Brahmos like Sarojini Naidu with the groom wearing a sacred Brahmic thread in secret.[12][13] Ever since, these Adi Dharma rites have been used by the Gandhi-Nehru family for their marriages – such as for Rajiv Gandhi to Sonia Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi to Maneka Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi to Robert Vadra etc. and the Vedic law of Adi Dharma has never been repealed despite passage of the Hindu Code in 1955 which repealed all such similar marriage validity laws for other faiths.

Post Independence developments (1947–)

After Partition of India in 1947, the Adi Brahmo Dharma Headquarters for the region shifted from Lahore to New Delhi to Adi Brahmo Brahmin descendants of Babu Raj Chandra Chaudhuri's (who married daughter of Babu N.C. Rai) family settled here.

Ambedkar and Adi Dharma (1949–)

In 1949–1950 B.R. Ambedkar approached the Adi Dharm leaders at Delhi to get absorbed his followers into Adi Dharma. Due to bitter debates in the Constituent Assembly with Brahmo members and over the Hindu Validity Marriages Validity Act 1949, he could not be accommodated within the Adi Dharma principles. This was chiefly due to his insistence on denouncing Manu – paradoxically respected by Adi Dharma's founding father's as a great Law Giver. Thereafter in about 1955 Ambedkar and his followers instead chose to join Buddhism.

Legal Status of the Brahmo (Adi Dharma) Religion

In 1901 (Bhagwan Koer & Ors v J.C.Bose & Ors, 31 Cal 11, 30 ELR IA 249) the Privy Council (Britain's highest judicial authority) upholds the finding of the High Court of the Punjab that the vast majority of Brahmo religionists are not Hindus and have their own religion unlike Sikhs ("who are Hindu and nothing but Hindus"). Debendranath Tagore was held to be the founder of the Brahmo religion. The Court distinguished Brahmo "religionists" from "followers" of the Brahmo Samaj who continue to retain their Hinduism.

In 1916 the Indian Civil Services Ethnography Administration Surveyor R.V. Russell examines in detail and publishes that Brahmo Samaj is indeed a Religion (and differentiates it from "sects").[14]

In 1949 the Government of India passes the "Hindu Marriages Validity Act". Despite discussion in Parliament Brahmos are not brought within the scope of this Law.

In 1955 the Government of India passes the "Hindu Code" (a comprehensive set of laws for Hindus). Again despite discussion in Parliament, Brahmo religionists are not brought within the scope of these laws which, however, now become applicable to Hindus who are also followers of the Brahmo Samaj .

In 2002, Bangladesh enacted a law recognising Brahmo religionists and Brahmo marriages to Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists.

On 05.May.2004 the Supreme Court of India by order of the Chief Justice dismissed the Government of West Bengal's 30-year litigation to get Brahmos classified as Hindus. The matter had previously been heard by an 11 Judge Constitution Bench of the Court (the second largest bench in the Court's history).[15]

Future of Adi Dharma

The Adi Dharma movement of the Brahmo religion is today the largest of the Brahmo developments with over 8 million adherents. Adi Dharma has spawned not only the Indian National Congress party but also the Hindutva agenda of their opposition. Its radical contribution to India's polity was summed up by a President of India,

"It is ironic that a small dedicated group of outcaste twice born Brahmins of the highest caste of Bengal setting out to rid India of caste and prejudice have instead engendered a national Constitution which perpetuates a divisively violent Casteism in Hindu religion which tears the social fabric of India apart especially in the field of education."[16]

Brahmo Samaj of South India:

The faith and Principles of Brahmo Samaj had spread to South Indian states like Andrapradesh, Tamilnadu, Karnataka, and Kerala with a large number of followers.

In Kerala the faith and principles of Brahmosamaj and Raja Ram Mohun Roy had been propagated by Rao Sahib Dr. Ayyathan Gopalan in the year 1898 January 17th at Calicut (Now Kozhikode) region. He was a doctor by profession but dedicated his entire life towards Brahmosamaj and was an active executive member of Calcutta Sadharan Brahmosamaj till his death.

The Calicut (Kerala) branch of Brahmomandir was opened to public in the year 1900 (Now Ayathan School which runs under the patronage of Brahmosamaj at Jail road, Calicut). Second Branch of Brahmosamaj at Kerala was established at Alappuzha (South Kerala) in the year 1924 with a Brahmomandir established at Poonthoppu ,Kommady (now Grihalakshmi Gandhi Smaraka seva sangam).

DR. Ayyathan Gopalan was a great social reformer of Kerala and was also the founder of Sugunavardhini movement which was established in order to foster human values in children and to protect the rights of women, children, and the downtrodden sections such as the Harijan communities (Dalit's) of the society and educate them. He established the Lady Chandawarkar Elementary School with the aim to educate girls and the underprivileged section of society.

Dr. Ayyathan Gopalan was the one who translated the "Bible of Brahmosamaj"- "Brahmodarma" written by Maharshi Debendranath Tagore to Malayalam in the year 1910.

See also

• Adi Brahmo Samaj
• Arya Samaj
• Bodo Brahma Dharma
• Brahmo
• Brahmo Samaj
• Gayatri Mantra
• Hindutva
• History of Bengal
• Tattwabodhini Patrika
• Rao Sahib Dr.Ayyathan Gopalan

References

1. Particularly those Sadharan Brahmos who accept the core 1830 Adi Dharma Trust Principles
2. "31 Cal 11" Indian legal citation Rani Bhagwan Koer and Ors v. J.C.Bose and Ors.
3. Dwarkanath Tagore was most astounded in his First Voyage to England by the long lectures delivered as sermons at the Episcopal Kirk in Scotland. Little did he know that back home his son Debendranath was plotting a similar tradition of long sermons for Brahmos. Source: Dwarkanath tagore:A Life – Krisha Kriplani. p191.
4. Note By Dr. B. R. Ambedkar To The Indian Franchise Committee, (Lothian Committee) on the Depressed Classes, Submitted on 1 May 1932. "IV. Depressed Classes in Bengal", ".. (10) Rajbansi, (II) Pirali, (12) Chamar, (13) Dom, .."
5. Dwarkanath Thakurer Jibani publ. Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta
6. The Englishman – 6 December 1838.
7. J. N. Farquhar, Modern Indian Religions, 1915.
8. Sivanath Sastri "History of Brahmo Samaj" 1911//1912 2nd edn.pg. 377 publ. "Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, Calcutta 1993"
9. "Fashioning Modernity in Telugu: Viresalingam and His Interventionist Strategy" Vakulabharanam Rajagopal University of Hyderabad, Sage Publications (2005) page 66
10. Rajagopal (2005) page 69
11. The Bombay Chronicle of Sunday 13 May 1929
12. Meena Agarwal (2005). Indira Gandhi. New Delhi: Diamond Pocket Books. p. 31. ISBN 978-81-288-0901-9. The pheras took place at night. The marriage ceremony was performed according to the Vedic tradition.
13. Katherine Frank (2002). Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi. pp. 177–178. ISBN 978-0-395-73097-3. The ceremony uniting Indira and Feroze was neither conventional nor legal ... They were both reluctant to sign a declaration that they did not belong to any religion. .. Hence the illegality of ... Indira's marriage.
14. "Tribes and Castes of C.Provinces of India, R.V.Russel and Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, Vol 1 of 4 Volumes, Macmillan, London, 1916 "
15. Official Brahmo Samaj website http://www.brahmosamaj.org/
16. From the commemorative speech by N Sanjeeva Reddy, 27 Jan. 1981 at Kanpur for centenary celebrations of the Brahmo Conference Organisation.

External links

• http://brahmosamaj.org
• http://www.thebrahmosamaj.net