“Derozio’s underrated contribution to India” by Mozid Mahmud

He wasn’t a Bengali and hadn’t written any literature in the language as well. Yet during the Colonial era, he had brought about a new era of radical thinking. The intellectual maturity of Bengali thought had more or less arrived from the path he helped pave. He had laid upside-down the thousands of years of established thinking. Like the pied piper of Hamelin, he brought the children out of their old citadels, disregarding the affections of their elders and jumping into the waves of logic and reason. They had never to return the same. They were his disciples, who had molded the foundation of young Bangla’s literature and nationalist struggle. They came to be known as the Young Bengals or Derozians, after him. 

About two hundred years ago, he was born in colonial Calcutta to a Portuguese family. His father, Francis Derozio, was an office worker. Though a “Ferengi”, as the Portuguese were known in India at the time, his mother was a Christian Englishwoman who had died when Derozio was only seven years old. His father would later marry a second time. While the Portuguese had lost most of their ground in India by then, the family had a reputed standing due to their wealth. They were part of high society. Yet none of his five brothers and sisters could beat the pox, succumbing to the tragedies of the age. Even our Derozio only lived a mere 23 years. But the young man had won over time in the end. His dominant influence had transcended the wounds inflicted by two hundred years of English rule and was ever-present in the later liberation movements. 

More than a couple of hundred years after his birth, perhaps it’s time to reconsider where Derozio stacks up in our history. The Portuguese were, of course, the first Europeans to arrive in India. Trade had brought Vasco da Gama near these shores in 1498. There followed, after him, the arrival of the other Europeans bent on trade and eventual colonization. After establishing themselves at Calicut, they were a force to be reckoned with. Especially, the piracy at sea had made them unpopular with the Indians. Yet hundreds of years before Derozio’s birth, they had made themselves at home in India, with many of them marrying and living here in the subcontinent for good. The Portuguese in India had considered themselves part of the Indian land ever since the rise of the Danish and the English had taken away most of their dominance in the region. India’s reputation as a land of diversity and mixed cultures was only enhanced with their addition. They played a significant role in the development of the Bengali language. The Portuguese missionary Manuel da Assumpção was the first to write a grammar book of the language, titled, Vocabulary of Bengali Language and Portuguese. 

Though Englishmen like William Carey, Nathaniel Brassey Halhed had meaningful contributions to Bengali grammar and language, they were geared more distinctly in strengthening British rule, as evident by the formation of the Indian National Congress around the time. Moreover, they did not profess any claim of Indianness, having conserved themselves merely as either colonialists looking to rule their subject races efficiently or as missionaries bringing the Lord’s words to men and guiding them to the direction of Heaven. Derozio, however, considered himself a man of the nation he was born in. He hadn’t left this place his whole life. All his sorrows and anguish and disgust and respect were centered around his country. Born in Calcutta’s 155 Lower Circular Road, he had spent most his life within the kilometers of the city, except for a brief spell at Bhagalpur at his aunt’s. Here he had kindled fire into the minds of the young, a fire that still perhaps stays burning. 

It isn’t unnatural, then, to ask: What has he exactly done that has kept him relevant after two hundred years? The Ferengi society he had been brought up in hadn’t ever been able to assimilate within Bengali or in the greater Indian society. Moreover, the socio-political situation had obviously changed radically. During his lifetime, India was at a turning point. Even as the British had control over a large expanse of Indian lands, the Mughals were technically still seated on their throne. He had lived entirely before the great mutiny of 1857. A time when Hindus were still able to burn women in the funeral pyre of their husbands and widows were discouraged from remarrying. Ram Mohan Roy was alive at the time, but it had taken him years to establish his reforms. Derozio was born in this quagmire. This decaying, drowsy populace he had helped awaken with a jerk. He had provided the uproar Hindu society hadn’t seen since Chaitanya. Everyone had thought: perhaps this was the end of religion, the end of caste, that bigots will lay ruin to the country’s ancient religious traditions. 

If one is permitted to exaggerate, we could say that Derozio had the same effects on the young that Socrates had in his time in Greece. The world-famous philosopher we know of in Socrates is really an accumulation of tracts provided by his students. Socrates was accused of misleading the youth, of slandering their Gods. He was to be blamed for the moral degradation of the youth. A threat, even, to their civilized society. The Authorities of his time had forbidden him of teaching the young, but the great philosopher could not turn his back to the truth and had to sacrifice his own life for the crime. Yet he was alive among the students he was accused of misguiding and the world had forever forgotten those who had taken his life. 

Like Socrates, Derozio, too, was mainly a teacher. He had shown that it was possible for a teacher to bring radical change in society within a few years. The authorities of Hindu College, too, had brought charges against him of leading the students to moral degradation, that the students of upper-class families were seen to be changing their conduct and engaging in anti-Hindu propaganda. Though he wasn’t forced to give up his life, Derozio was forced to leave the college due to these allegations. But the five years he had spent in teaching, he had managed to create a new generation, who had left a profound effect on Bengali thought and literature. Before we begin that discussion, let’s know a bit more about this great teacher. 

He was born in April of either 1808 or 1809. The Historian R. C. Majumdar had it on 1808, though most Derozio researchers agree on 1809. Though his Portuguese and English ancestry is well-known, one is hard pressed to find reliable information on how his ancestors had begun to live permanently in Calcutta. He had studied under David Drummond, who was not that older than him either. He had arrived a little after Derozio’s birth and established a school. He, too, was a born, poet, teacher and journalist – unlike the teachers of his time. He gave Derozio his first taste of friendship. It was from him that the young Derozio understood how man should not have to be chained, from whom he had learned about philosophy and literature, and read various European newspapers and periodicals. Drummond had survived his student, dying at the age of fifty-six in 1843. His grave is still at Kolkata’s circular road. One couldn’t deny his contribution in Derozio’s later teachings, which were motivated by a strong sense of free-thinking. Derozio, too, had been able to guide his students in areas of logic, truth, equality and friendship.   

He had been born in a society degraded by Hindu superstition and British colonial misrule and discrimination. Chained to the four-caste system, the country was ripe for a thriving colonial slave trade, as was apparent by the Derozio usage of the Campbell line: As the Slave Departs, the Man Returns as an epigraph in his poem. We can learn from Binoy Ghosh’s description about the brutalities of English rule around that time. In 1806, men named Moore, James and Boyer were sentenced to merely one year in prison for committing murder. Some whites were even granted a week’s prison. All the while many of the common folk had their hands cut off or burned for the crime of theft. There was a time when English whipped their colonial subjects publicly, and if that wasn’t enough, push them into a cannon and fire them off. 

It was against this colonial barbarism and indigenous superstition that Derozio’s youth had stood up. He had questioned whether the English could prolong their rule in these lands only with the power of their superior military, surmising that they’d have to bring in morality, justice, good governance and education if they wanted their rule to have any staying power. One could also find a rather vivid picture of Kolkata around that time in Bhabani Charan’s Kalikata Kamalalay or in Amusements of the Modern Baboo. 

After finishing his education, the fourteen-year-old Derozio took a job as a clerk at a mercantile office.  But the monotony of the job discouraged Derozio from continuing with it for more than two years. Before he entered the teaching profession, he decided to stay a few days at his aunt’s place in Bhagalpur. His Bhagalpur period is important to note because the leisurely, unemployed youthful life must’ve brought out the poetic inclinations present in the young Derozio, who managed to write quite a lot of poetry there and published a few in the India Gazette under the pseudonym of “Juvenis”. He had probably stayed there for a year or so, returning to join the Hindu College as its fourth teacher in 1826, according to the Samachar Darpan.  

The Hindu college was only established a few years before. This was the first college in Bengal (and in India) where English was taught. Before this, most administrative and office work was done in Persian. Though the importance of learning the Masters’ language was becoming apparent, the Indian population was still reticent in adopting it. The English had trouble even with the Royals and elites, who failed to be enthusiastic in this matter at first. The name “Hindu” reflected Hindustan, as in India, more so than people of Hindu faith, as most of its founders were Englishmen. However, it was true that Muslims were not allowed to study there. Later, of course, the name was changed to Presidency College, which still stands. The college was established mainly for the education of boys of upper-class families so they could earn a good living and create a docile class of people loyal to the British. Within a few days, the College went on to receive government patronage and were able to provide intellectually important knowledge on science and reason to the people of the subcontinent. This was in line with Derozio’s thinking. Around the time of his joining, there was about three hundred students there and the number was on the rise only to come down before Derozio’s departure. A reason for this is that he had come under fire in Hindu society due to his beliefs and actions.  

There were many teachers before and after Derozio at Hindu College. Perhaps they were of better credentials than him as well. But there aren’t many we know of. Ironically, it is Derozio and his rebel students who’ve had become a part of the College’s shining history. One of his students, Lal Bihari Dey, had said, “the young students of Hindu college were intimately acquainted with the works of Bacon, Locke, Hume, etc.” Their familiarity with the European enlightenment had brought a revolutionary upheaval to the otherwise conventional thinking. They would question every statement and debate them, coming away from the old generalities that restricted them from thinking alternatively. Derozio was the guru of this new form of teaching in the subcontinent. His main goal was to awaken the curiosity of his fellow students. In 1834, the reverent Lal Bihari Dey had said, “Derozio’s classes could only be compared with Plato and Aristotle’s Academy.”

He was only a few years older than his students; therefore, they saw him as one of their own – a part of their youth. The antiquated methods of imparting knowledge were breaking down. The students were swayed and transfixed by the personality of the teacher. They weren’t there only to learn but also to speak.

There was a novelty in Derozio’s teaching style that his students hadn’t seen before. There was no guardianship in play. If the class was too big, they’d take it outside or at his residence. There was nothing the students did not discuss or argue with their mentor. Within a few years, Derozio had side-stepped the college to have his own center for debate. A symposium was established at Shrikrishna Singh’s garden called “Academic Association”. The Association began to leave its mark on the Calcutta of its day quite instantly. Even the elderly could not resist joining. Debates and discussion were held on matters such as religious orthodoxy, moral hypocrisy, arbitrary ritual, racism, paganism, economic and psychological inertia, even against the existence of the Gods. 

Who were these students of Derozio? The Association was attended by many outside of the college, too. But the students we know most about are Krishna Mohan Bannerjee, Ram Gopal Ghosh, Dakshinaranjan Mukherjee, Rasik Krishna Mallick, Radhanath Sikdar, among others. Many of the students would bring up Robertson and Gibbons in the case of history, Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham in politics, Newton and Dewey in science, Hume and Thomas Paine in religion, and Locke, Reed and Stuart in transcendentalism to serve their speech in debate. It is true, that in modern day Dhaka and Kolkata, capitals of the two Bengal, one wouldn’t find a conversation of this caliber. The teachers and students of today cannot free themselves out of the rat-race. Derozio’s youth did not confine their talents in radical discussions. They brought pen and paper to their reason. A journal named Parthenon was published. The Hindu society of the time was horrified by this sudden change. They began to obstruct the publication of the journal and prevent their sons from attending the college. Their main allegations were that Derozio had interfered in matters of their faith. This led to a shortfall of students at the College. Though the White Christians and the progressive Hindu teachers did not have any problems with Derozio teaching at the college, the Hindu student-body and local Hindu dissatisfaction led to the college authorities deciding to remove him from the faculty. A decision regarding this was finalized at a meeting on 1831. In a reply to Derozio’s letter asking if the decisions made against him by the college were true, the professor Wilson had put forward the three charges: “1. Do you believe in God? 2. Do you believe one should be obedient to their parents? 3. Do you consider the marriage of siblings a crime?”

Derozio was shocked by such attitude. But his answers to his predicament was as significant as Socrates’ defense of himself and Nazrul’s response to political prison. It isn’t of course possible to lay down his response in full in this essay. But from his speech we can know that he had never told his students whether he believed in God or not. That there were all sorts of people in this world who believed in various things. But he didn’t think that one shouldn’t be having a conversation on whether God exists or not. As a teacher, he was merely bringing light to all the perspectives available in society. 

As for the question of being obedient to one’s parents, Derozio was downright perplexed. He expressed concern at how someone could enjoy spreading such distorted and baseless propaganda. He said that if his father were alive, he himself would have answered the question. Moreover, reading about him, one could see that he was quite responsible toward his brothers and his step-mother. He had obeyed his father’s will to the word. 

In the case of the last charge, he described the marriages of siblings as ugly and wondered how one could think that he would talk of this with his students. He added that one could very well call a man “Godless” for not believing in God but to make up such falsehoods to ruin him is something he never thought was possible. He ended with the words: 

I’m not a greater monster than most people. 

Eight months after being let go from the college, he died of cholera at the age of twenty. The fire he created still flamed on. And perhaps this fire was his biggest achievement. The fire that provided light to the revolutionaries and literary figures of the nineteenth century. The modern Hindu society had benefited directly from his teachings. In this rally of language, literature and thought, even the Muslims would be benefited, if only a little later. It is noteworthy that Derozio did not look differently at Hindus or Muslim. He was the darling child of a world free from religion and sectarianism. We can notice this truth in his poetry. Derozio was a young poet, publishing his book of poetry at the age of only eighteen. But in this warring world, we do not put much import on poetry. Moreover, he wrote in English and wasn’t considered a poet of the country for many years because of it. Still, perhaps the first patriotic song of the nation was written by him. His poem To India – My Native Land was translated by Dwijendranath Tagore, Rabindranath’s older brother. Later on, many others such as Pallab Sengupta and Ramaprasad had translated his works as well. His The Fakeer of Jhungeera tried to unite the Hindu and Muslims of his days. It seemed like he did not know much about Muslim society. Back then, the Muslims hadn’t yet been able to break free into the intellectual sphere controlled by the Colonialists. Still he had written as much about dispelling sectarianism as about patriotic values. 

After Derozio’s expulsion from the college, his students Krishna Mohan and Dakshinaranjan were doubly motivated to bring upheaval to their old society. They began to do a lot of arbitrary things as well, which turned out to be embarrassing. Such as they would lose control talking against caste and the gods and begin to consume beef and alcohol, even going as far as to throw bones of cows at the homes of Brahmins. One of his students was brought to a Puja by his Brahmin father and he had addressed the Goddess Kali as “Good morning, Madam.” But the biggest strength of these students were their honesty. They could never be made to lie. They would like to test everything through reason. 

The people who had thrown Derozio out of the college are now nobodies. We only remember them because of this incident. Such an unchristian boy was taken away from the cruel world just like Christ. What remained were the rationalism, truth, love of literature and the nation that Derozio had instilled in his students. This had surely come to fruition generations later in the rebellions of Bangladesh. Peary Chand Mitra and Michael Madhushudan Dutta were among those who were brought up in that mode of thinking. 

Even in this age of indiscretion, many a teacher dream of becoming a teacher. Yet to break out of the deadlock of conventional thought, bound against the multifaceted interests of society, religion and state, one still wonders if there is any other way out of our social predicaments without endless renditions of free-spirited teachers just like Derozio. 

About the Author:
Mozid Mahmud is a poet, novelist, and essayist based in Bangladesh. Some of his notable works include In Praise of Mahfuza (1989), and Rabindranath’s Travelogues (2010). He has been awarded the Rabindra-Nazrul Literary Prize and the country’s National Press Club Award, among others.