A Nation in Making/Chapter 2

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2

My First Visit to England

As I have observed, I started for England on March 3, 1868, with Romesh Chunder Dutt and Behari Lal Gupta. We were all young, in our teens, and a visit to England in those days was a more serious affair than it is now. It not only meant absence from home and those near and dear to one for a number of years, but there was the grim prospect of social ostracism, which for all practical purposes has now happily passed away. We all three had to make our arrangements in secret, as if we were engaged in some nefarious plot of which the world should know nothing. My father was helping me in every way, but the fact had to be carefully concealed from my mother, and when at last on the eve of my departure the news had to be broken to her, she fainted away under the shock of what to her was terrible news.

We received the most substantial help from the late Mr. Monomohan Ghose, who had just returned from England and had joined the Bar of the Calcutta High Court. A finer and a nobler man I have hardly ever set eyes upon. A warm patriot, he heartily desired that his countrymen should visit England in large numbers, and he was always ready with his advice and with such practical encouragement as lay in his power. So great was the interest he felt in this matter that Michael Madhu Shudan Dutt, our great national poet, nicknamed him 'Protector of Indian Emigrants Proceeding to Europe'. We passed the night preceding our departure at his house at Cossipur, where he was then staying, and before daybreak we started for the steamer at Chandpal Ghat.

Early on the morning of the third of March my father came to wish me good-bye. It was the last sight I was destined to have of him in this world; for he died while I was away in England. I went down with him to his carriage. He was dressed in simple dhoti and chudder, and, as he walked down the steps looking at me he uttered the word, 'Farewell', and turned his back, though his eyes were still fixed on me, the tears trickling down his cheeks. ​It was the last word that I heard him say. Was it uttered with a prophet's prevision, in unconscious response to a voice sounding in the depths of his soul, that he and I were to meet no more on this side of the grave? It is now over fifty years since then, but the incident remains graven on my memory as a precious treasure. Father and son, we parted for ever—I on my long journey onwards in that strenuous life beset with the strangest vicissitudes, and he back to the old home and to my sorrowing mother, to console her as best he could. We parted, never again to meet, myself retaining through life a more than filial affection and reverence for a father who more than any human being had contributed to my up-building. His disinterestedness, his sympathy for the poor, his abhorrence of sordid means, have left an abiding impression on me, and have strengthened the roots of that filial piety which is one of the cardinal virtues of the Hindu. All this may seem to be high-strung sentiment to the European reader, but to the Hindu it is natural and represents the spontaneous outflow of the soul.

In those days a trip to England seemed to our people to be even more perilous than a voyage to the North Pole. Things were much worse still in the days of Ram Mohun Roy, and his biographer tells us that Dwarakanath Tagore's house, from which the Raja started for his ship, was filled with an eager crowd of visitors who had thronged to have their last look at one whom they believed they were never again to see alive. Our attitude has now greatly changed; and it is one of many signs of the transformation that has taken place within the last fifty years.

The sea-voyage was thoroughly enjoyed by us. None of us was sea-sick, and we had a good deal to see in the various ports where the vessel touched. We arrived at Southampton after a voyage of nearly five weeks. Mr. W. C. Bonnerjea, who had been written to by Mr. Monomohan Ghose, met us at Southampton and took us to London. He put us up at a boarding-house in Barnard Street, near University College, London. After a short stay there, we settled down in our respective quarters and applied ourselves in right earnest to the work that lay before us. I lived near Hampstead Heath, as a pupil in the family of Mr. Talfourd Ely, a teacher of Latin in University Collegiate School, London. I greatly benefited by my stay in his family. It was a happy English middle-class home, and it impressed me with the clean, orderly, methodical lives of the English middle-class. There was an ​all-pervading air of discipline in the family. I was treated as one of its members, and when, eighteen months after, I left Mr. Ely's house to live in lodgings, we parted with mutual regret. I worked hard and passed the Open Competitive Examination for the Indian Civil Service in 1869.

Within a few weeks after the publication of my name in the list of successful candidates my troubles began. In filling up the form required by the Calcutta University (of which I was a graduate) I had put down sixteen years as my age when I appeared for the Matriculation Examination of that University in December, 1863. The regulations for the Open Competitive Examination for the Civil Service of India then in force required that a candidate should be above nineteen, and below twenty-one, years of age. If I were sixteen in 1863, I would be above the required limit of age in 1869 and would be disqualified on that ground. The difference, however, was easily explained. Born in November, 1848, I was fifteen and not sixteen years of age when I went up for my Matriculation Examination, and if I were fifteen years at the time, I was within the limit of age prescribed by the regulations. How, then, came I to state in my Matriculation form that I was sixteen years? The truth is, that the Indian method of reckoning the age of a man is different from that followed among Englishmen. We reckon the age not from the time of one's birth, but from the time of the conception of the child in the mother's womb, and, accordingly, when the boy has completed his fifteenth year, he would be known as sixteen years old and would describe himself as such. Among Englishmen his age would be only fifteen.

It may here be mentioned that the school records fully bore out that I was only fifteen years old, according to the English method of calculation, at the time I appeared for the Matriculation Examination. These records were based upon information obtained from home. The entry in the Matriculation form was made by me and I naturally put the age down as I knew it according to our way of reckoning.

However that may be, this apparent discrepancy between my age as given in my Matriculation form and as stated in the certificate submitted to the Civil Service Commissioners was well known to my Indian friends in London (for we were a handful at the time) and nobody thought that there was anything in it or that it was likely to be used for the purpose of removing my name from the list of selected candidates. But a few weeks after the declaration ​of the result of the examination, an advertisement (supposed to be the work of an Indian) appeared in the newspapers to the effect that if the fifty-first candidate (he was the first among the unsuccessful candidates) would communicate with a person whose address was given, he would hear something to his advantage. Among the Indian colony in London at that time there was no doubt as to who had published that advertisement.

The discrepancy was brought to the notice of the Civil Service Commissioners; and it so happened that there was this difference between the University record of age and that before the Civil Service Commissioners in the case of two other successful Indian candidates, namely, Behari Lal Gupta, who rose to high office in the Indian Civil Service, and Sripad Babaji Thakur, who became a District Judge in the Bombay Presidency. We were requested to furnish explanations. Our explanations were practically the same and we reconciled the discrepancy by pointing out the difference between the English and the Indian methods of reckoning age. Our explanations were deemed unsatisfactory. My name and Thakur's were removed from the list of successful candidates. Mr. Gupta escaped the same fate, because, even if he had been sixteen according to the English method of reckoning when he went up for the Matriculation, he was still within the prescribed limit.

I was not prepared to take this decision lying down; and, what is more, the removal of our names from the list of successful candidates evoked a universal outburst of indignation throughout India, especially in Bengal. The great leaders of the Indian community, among whom I may mention Maharaja Romanath Tagore, Maharaja Jotindra Mohon Tagore, Pundit Iswar Chunder Vidyasagar, Raja Rajendra Lal Mitter and Rai Kristo Das Pal Bahadur, joined in an affidavit testifying to the Indian method of reckoning age to which I have already referred.

The Indian newspapers of the time were full of articles condemning the decision of the Civil Service Commissioners. At the head of the Commission was Sir Edward Ryan, who for many years had been Chief Justice of the High Court of Bengal; and it is curious that he should have been ignorant of the method of reckoning age usual amongst us, or, knowing it, failed to have recognized its obvious application to our case.

We decided to move the Queen's Bench for a writ of mandamus upon the Civil Service Commissioners. Our friends in England ​were unanimously of opinion that the only remedy lay in an appeal to the Law Courts. Two names occur to me in this connexion, to which I cannot refer without emotions of the deepest gratitude—those of Mr. John D. Bell, and Sir Taraknath Palit, who was then in England, having been recently called to the Bar. They took the matter up with earnestness and enthusiasm. Mr. Bell was for many years a leading barrister of the Calcutta High Court, and was now in retirement in England, practising before the Privy Council. He declined to take any fee, for, he said, it was a just cause, and he had eaten the salt of India. It is no exaggeration to say that the success of our application was largely due to his earnest and disinterested advocacy. Those who knew Sir Taraknath Palit in his later life knew the ardour of his soul, the warmth of his friendship, and his invincible tenacity of purpose in any cause that he made his own; and these qualities, which made him the distinguished citizen and the eminent advocate that he became in after life, were already conspicuously in evidence.

Sripad Babaji Thakur did not move in the matter. Wise man that he was, he rightly concluded that if I won he would win too; for the two cases stood exactly on the same footing. I engaged Mr. Mellish, who afterwards became Lord Justice of Appeal, as the leading counsel, and Mr. John D. Bell as his junior. On June 11, 1869, Mr. Mellish applied before the Queen's Bench Division for a mandamus upon the Civil Service Commissioners to show cause why my name should not be restored to the list of probationers for the Indian Civil Service.

The Bench that heard the application consisted of some of the greatest English judges, and was presided over by the Lord Chief Justice of England, Sir Alexander Cockburn. Mr. Mellish had no difficulty in obtaining a favourable hearing, and the following résumé of the proceedings in Court will explain the attitude of the judges in regard to the merits of the case:

Mr. Mellish said that this was the first instance in which a native of India—necessarily at very great disadvantage—had succeeded in this examination; and it would be most unfortunate if he should be unfairly defeated on such a ground as this. After a successful career at the University of Calcutta, this gentleman, in the face of immense difficulties, had come over to this country to compete with Englishmen in examinations upon English subjects conducted in the English language, and he had succeeded. It would be lamentable that it should go forth to India that he had been, after all, defeated upon such a point as this, and without the ​least foundation for it. The Commissioners, in answer to his statement clearly showing that he was within the prescribed age, had written back that he had 'admitted' that he was beyond it (a laugh), and they had declined to hear evidence upon the point.

The Lord Chief Justice: They say, in effect, 'Any evidence you may adduce we shall set at nought'.

Mr. Justice Mellor: They say, 'You are estopped by your statement at Calcutta', though it plainly appears that it is quite consistent with his present statement.

Mr. Justice Blackburn: They totally misapprehend his statement, and then they tell the applicant that upon their (mistaken) construction of it they consider it conclusive against him, whereas in reality it is not so.

Mr. Justice Hannen: They appear to represent it as imperative upon them to take the eastern mode of computation.

The Lord Chief Justice: Show us that we have jurisdiction, and I think there is no doubt we shall exercise it.

Mr. Mellish submitted that the jurisdiction was clear. The statute gave every native Indian subject a legal right to admission upon certain conditions prescribed by the Queen, all of which he contended that he had satisfied. The Commissioners proposed to deprive the applicant of this legal right upon grounds clearly untenable, and this without hearing his evidence. This was clearly contrary to those obligations of natural justice which were incumbent upon all tribunals, or upon all bodies which had legal duties to perform, however domestic the tribunal might be. Therefore the applicant was entitled to a mandamus to compel the Commissioners to hear and consider his evidence, and adjudicate or determine upon it, as to the actual truth of the matter of fact in dispute.

The rule was granted, but the Civil Service Commissioners did not wait to contest it. Their position was indefensible and their decision perhaps hasty; and before the case came on for hearing they wrote to Sripad Babaji Thakur and myself, re-instating us in our positions as selected candidates for the Indian Civil Service.

I won my case, but my father died before the news could reach him.

My father died on February 20, 1870. I was then living with my friend, Mr. K. M. Chatterjee (who afterwards became a Judge of the Calcutta Court of Small Causes) in lodgings in Gaisford Street, Kentish Town. The circumstances in which I received the news of my father's death were so peculiar and even extraordinary that they may perhaps be mentioned here. To the spiritualist, and the believer in the relations between the visible and the invisible world, they may perhaps lend countenance to their theories.

​It was about the middle of March that I first received the news of my father's death. The night before I was restive, excited and unhappy, I knew not why. But my thoughts were turned homewards. I thought of those whom I had left behind. I thought most of my father. It was a bad night for a heavy sleeper like myself. I rose early, dressed and went down to the parlour where Mr. Chatterjee and myself used to have our meals. He soon joined me, and we had our breakfast. Later on the postman's knock was heard. It was mail day. Chatterjee got his Indian letter, but there was none for me. It added to my uneasiness. My friend read my thoughts in my face; and, with the quick and responsive sensibility of his nature, he opened his letter in my presence and began to read it aloud. I followed him with the closest attention. He was seated in an easy-chair at one end of the room; I was reclining on a sofa at the other end. All of a sudden, he stopped reading, and, with a sad face and swollen eyes, struggling to conceal his emotion, he gazed affectionately at me. Years' have rolled by. I am in the evening of my life, soon perhaps to join him for whom I grieved. But I have a vivid recollection of the emotions that overwhelmed me. I said to my friend, 'Why do you stop ? Go on.' He would not answer, nor read, but grew sadder as he looked at me. The dark event which was soon to overwhelm me had already cast its shadows ahead. With a trembling voice, but with unfaltering directness of purpose, as if some voice from within was moving my heart and inspiring my tongue, I said to my friend, 'Why don't you read? Is anybody ill at home?' Still no answer. Chatterjee, so frank and communicative, was mute. But I pressed on. The voice within would give me no peace or rest. I repeated, 'Is my father ill?' Still no response. Chatterjee sat like a statue. Finally came the explosion. I asked, amid a flood of tears, 'Is my father living or dead?' Chatterjee immediately dropped the letter and ran to the sofa where I was sitting, and grasped me in his embraces, his tears commingling with mine.

I was dazed, overpowered and lay half stunned. Lalmohan Ghose, Taraknath Palit (afterwards Sir Taraknath Palit), Woomesh Chunder Mazumdar, who died three years later as the result of a riding accident, Keshub Chunder Sen, who was then in England, and other friends saw me soon after. Mazumdar stayed with me the night, as my friends would not allow me to be alone in my room. The incidents of that day I can never forget, and associated with them now are the hallowed memories of departed friends ​who grieved with me and consoled me in one of the saddest moments of my life.

We had lost nearly a year in fighting the case, and we were given the option of going up for the final examination with the men of our year (1869) or with the candidates who would be selected in 1870. I decided in favour of the former course; Sripad Babaji Thakur preferred to join the batch for 1870.

Of Sripad Babaji it may not be out of place to say a word or two. In every way he was a remarkable man. His genius for the mastery of languages was phenomenal. Constitutionally he was averse to hard work; but he found ample compensation in the bountiful gifts of a beneficent nature, which made good his lack of steady industry.

A little story occurs to my mind in connexion with him, which shows the man and the large part which the chapter of accidents sometimes plays in human life. On the eve of our examination we were of course all very busy, but not so Sripad Babaji Thakur. Chess was his favourite diversion and he was an expert chess player, able to direct the moves from a different room from where the game was being played. As usual he had finished a game; and then perhaps a qualm of conscience seized him and he felt that he must do something for the examination at which he was to appear on the following morning. He took up Webster's Dictionary, which happened to be near him, and read the chapter on the requisites of a good dictionary. His memory was marvellous, and every idea that was in the chapter was imprinted on his mind. As luck would have it, we were asked in the paper on English Composition to write an essay on the requisites of a good dictionary, and, as might have been expected, Thakur, who had read the subject up the previous night, acquitted himself well.

With his great intellectual gifts Thakur was one of the most amiable of men. Sir Taraknath Palit was his guide, philosopher and friend. When he arrived in London Thakur was a vegetarian and used to wear his hair like the rest of his orthodox countrymen. Sir Taraknath soon made him a meat-eater and induced him to dress and wear his hair like an Englishman; and Thakur was never happier than with his new habits and in his new habiliments. We used to chaff him about them, and his loud laughter 'that spoke the vacant mind', the echoes of which I still remember, added to our hilarity and enjoyment.

Among the Indian candidates who competed with us for the Indian Civil Service in 1869 was another remarkable man whose ​early death deprived the world of a Sanskrit scholar of great promise—I mean Anandaram Barua. In regard to him also there was the difficulty about the age to which I have referred; but, the point having been settled in my case, it was no longer raised in his. He came from Assam and distinguished himself at the examinations of the Calcutta University. Having obtained a State scholarship, he went to England to compete for the Indian Civil Service. He secured a place for himself among the successful candidates in 1870. As a member of the Indian Civil Service he combined the duties of an administrator with extraordinary devotion to literature, and at the time of his death, I understand, he was engaged in preparing a dictionary of the Sanskrit language which, alas, never saw the light. His was a case of blighted promise which in its fruition would have enriched the world of letters.

Of my two friends, Romesh Chunder Dutt and Behari Lal Gupta, what shall I say? They were to me more than brothers. Throughout life, though our activities lay in different spheres, we were linked by the closest ties of friendship and affection, the memory of which death has only served to sanctify. They were pioneers in the hitherto untrodden path of Indians entering the Bengal Civil Service. Their position was difficult; and their anxieties great. But they excelled in those high qualities which should distinguish all pioneers; and when, as in their careers it sometimes happened, there was a conflict between the claims of the Service and those of the nation, they preferred the latter and exalted the interests of the motherland above the sectional concerns of the class to which they belonged. An illustration of this was found in the Ilbert Bill controversy, of which Behari Lal Gupta, in his capacity of Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta, might be said to have been the originator. As for Romesh Chunder Dutt, he was a man amongst men, a prince among his peers (primus inter pares). His superiority was observable in every gathering that he adorned with his presence. Yet this distinguished Civil Servant, such was the reactionary tendency in those days, never rose beyond the position of an officiating Commissioner of a Division, though an Indian Prince, one of the greatest in the Empire, the Maharaja of Baroda, subsequently, when Dutt was no longer in the Indian Civil Service, appointed him his Prime Minister. When he was appointed a member of the Bengal Legislative Council, his presence was immediately felt. I was a member, and we all noticed it. He would not move in the usual official groove. There was a flutter in the official benches; and Sir ​Charles Elliot, who, as Lieutenant-Governor, was President of the Council, put the best appearance he could upon this somewhat novel feature in the Council atmosphere by declaring that he welcomed an independent outlook, such as Mr. Dutt had shown, amongst official members.

Before I leave this part of my Reminiscences I should like to say a word or two about our English professors and tutors. Soon after our arrival we joined some of the classes in University College, London, and we took private lessons from some of them. We were treated by them all with the utmost kindness, and by some of them, Professors Goldstucker and Henry Morley in particular, with what I may call an affectionate solicitude. They perhaps realized that we were strangers in a strange land, far away from those near and dear to us. Mr. Morley treated us more or less as members of his household, and Dr. Goldstucker, who was a bachelor, with no household except a dog that barked whenever we came, and an old maid-servant with one tooth in her head, greeted us with the affectionate but stern authority of a Hindu guru. On one occasion I was late in arriving, and the first thing he said to me after the dog had done its barking was, 'Well, Banerjea, your ancestors lived without time, and you are keeping up their traditions. That will not do in London. Here time means money.' I put in the best excuse I could, but definitely made up my mind to sin no more, and ever since I have tried to practise the precept that punctuality is the virtue of princes and even of men who are not, and never can be, princes.

Dr. Goldstucker was Professor of Sanskrit in University College, and he was my Sanskrit tutor. He was a veritable pundit of the old type, straight, stern, irritable, but with a large fund of the milk of human kindness. He was lame and had a wooden leg. In the course of a conversation I mentioned that one wasted time in coming up by tram. He said, 'Oh, yes. I walk all the way and I don't stop to take people in as the tram does.' He had many fine qualities; but his weak point, as it seemed to me, was his uneasy feeling about the fame of Max Müller, a brother German.

Bred in the atmosphere of Sanskrit learning, he was, like our own pundits, apt to be irritable. On one occasion we were all walking along Charing Cross when Professor Goldstucker flew into a temper about some trifling matter. Professor Morley, who was one of our party, whispered into my ear, 'Banerjea, don't you ​mind it. The heel of one of his boots is off, and he has become fidgetty.' We all laughed.

In striking contrast with the irritability of the Sanskrit professor was the sweet serenity, the real love of life and the work of life which Professor Henry Morley displayed in all his dealings with us. Life was to him a pleasant sunshine, brightened by the cheeriness of his own home. He was always working and always smiling. In my troubles with the Civil Service Commissioners he gave me all the help that he could, and enlisted the sympathies of Charles Dickens, the great novelist, who wrote a strong article in Good Words, a journal that he edited. From him there was always a cheery look and an encouraging word to hearten me in the hour of my troubles. Once he said to me, 'Banerjea, they will yet raise a statue for you for the fight you are putting up.' An Englishman, no matter what his station or calling may be, has a soft corner in his heart for a good fighter; and this quality does not leave him even when he is abroad, separated from those influences which largely determine his character and conduct.

We have heard complaints in these days about the treatment of Indian students in England and the prejudice that is supposed to exist against them. In our time there was no such feeling and no such complaint. We were welcomed wherever we went, and everywhere there was a disposition to treat us with the kindness due to strangers. We were of course few in number and thrown largely in the company of Englishmen. We thus had an opportunity of studying English life and English institutions at close quarters, to the mutual advantage of both Englishmen and ourselves. For, I fear, ignorance is too often the mother of prejudice, and closer knowledge hardly ever fails to dissipate misunderstanding and establish good relations. An Englishman once publicly declared that I was more English than most Englishmen. I freely confess that I have a genuine admiration for those great institutions which have helped to build up English life and the fabric of British constitutional freedom.