Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer/Appendix 1

​

1. Ramtanu Babu came to Uttarpara as headmaster of the school in 1852. He was forty years of age then, though he looked older. In 1856, to recruit his health, he took leave for a year, and went with his family in a boat to the north-west.

The Mutiny breaking out he had to return earlier than he had expected. In 1858 he was appointed first assistant-master in the Russa School, whence, after a few months, he was transferred to Barisal, as headmaster. After working here for about a year he next served as second master in the Krishnagar Collegiate School. But his health again gave way, and he had to take leave for two years and go to Bhagalpur again for a change. Thence he sent in his application for pension. His great desire was to pass his life in his newly-built house at Baludanga—a suburb of Krishnagar; but fate ruled otherwise. Owing to his children's death, and the prevalence of malarious fever there, he left the neighbourhood of Krishnagar for good. Calcutta became his last home.

2. On his appointment to the headmastership of the Uttarpara School he found a very valuable assistant in Dwarkanath Bhattacharjya, who resigned a higher class scholarship simply in order to serve under him. The two in a short time came to know the boys so well that they had the names of these, their fathers' names, and the places where they lived, at their fingers' ends.

To describe his method of teaching:

​3. Ramtanu was always present in the playground, watching over the conduct of the boys, and sometimes acting as their umpire.

4. His presence among the boys signified a great deal. There were about 250 pupils, and all kept quiet when he made his appearance.

5. Hard work immediately after taking food being supposed to be injurious to the health, he made it a rule that during the first half-hour every day the boys should write copies. He being an excellent writer himself, corrected these.

6. Then came the lessons in the text-books. Each boy was made to read aloud the lesson of the day till he got the proper pronunciation of every word and minded the stops. Mr Lahiri’s custom was to read a passage to the boys so that they might catch the proper accents and sounds of words. Then, after they had read it to his satisfaction, there came an explanation, which from him was not merely a substitution of synonyms for the words in the text, but a full rendering of the passage read into plain language. Next followed a close questioning on the matter it contained, and answers were elicited from the boys in such a way as to impress on them the author’s ideas; then last of all, came such general information as each word in the text might suggest.

7. His chief object was to awaken in his pupils a love for knowledge, and to put them into the way of thinking for themselves. He took a pleasure in reading with them standard works in English poetry. He was always bright and buoyant when reciting selections from them.

8. Every pupil was made to feel that there was work for him to do, that his happiness as well as his duty lay in doing that work well. Hence an indescribable zest was communicated to a young man’s feeling about life. A strange joy came over him on discovering that he had the means of being useful, and thus of being happy; and a deep respect and ardent attachment sprang up towards the tutor who had taught him thus to value life, his own self, and his work and mission in this world.

All this was founded on the breadth and comprehensiveness of Ramtanu’s character, as well as on its striking truth and reality; ​on the unfeigned regard he had for work of all kinds, and the sense he had of its value, both for the complex aggregate of society and for the growth and perfection of the individual. It would not be exaggerating Ramtanu’s merits were we to call him the “Arnold of Bengal,” a description often applied to him.

9. He was always lenient to his pupils. He felt their weaknesses, and tried his best to render them the required help.

10. It was he who opened our eyes to the sacred relation between the teacher and the taught, and to the gravity of our position as students. It was while under his instruction that we learnt that all our future prospects depended on the way we worked during our school life.

11. There were many headmasters like him then, the foremost among whom were Babus Peari Charan Sirkar at Baraset; Ishwan Chandra Banerji in Hughli; Haragobinda Sen in Boalia, and Bhudeb Mukerji in Howrah. They were possibly of higher attainments than Ramtanu, but he was regarded as their superior in teaching capacity.

12. The great secret of this was that he studied hard to qualify himself as a teacher before he began to teach. He never came to the class unprepared. The acquisition of knowledge was his chief object in life, and as the profession of a teacher was best suited to promote it, he not only took to teaching for a time, but made it his chief and favourite work for life. Even after he had retired from the Government service he used to call boys, girls, men, and women around him, and impart to them instruction on useful topics.

13. The country then chiefly needed good teachers; and it was to supply this need that he refused to take more lucrative work, and became a schoolmaster.

14. Half-a-century ago he elaborated a system of education which, even yet, is not excelled in our Government institutions.

15. Ramtanu was of middle stature and well built. He was tolerably strong in youth. But anxiety, aided by the malaria that had given him fever, made him prematurely old. His portrait taken when he was a young man bears no resemblance to the original as seen in later life. His face as seen by us was oval, ​while in the youthful picture it was long. The difference between his appearance in youth and that in age is very striking,

16. He was very careful of his health. He was extremely moderate in eating and drinking. Abstemiousness was the rule of his life, and to it he owed his longevity and the unimpaired soundness of the senses. He lived long, but did not lose a single tooth. The power of hearing remained uninjured to the last.

17. During his waking hours he never remained unemployed. From his diary we see that he spent his leisure hours in talking with friends, playing with little boys and girls, or feeding crows or sparrows with crumbs of bread. When ill-health prevented him from seeking these recreations he meditated on the happiness of those who had gone before him to a better world. Ram Gopal Ghosh was a beloved friend of his; and at Ram Gopal’s death-bed he wept like a child. Rupik Krishna was another whose early death he bitterly lamented; and last, but not least, was Mr Derozio, whose memory he devoutly cherished till he drew his last breath.

18. Mr Lahiri was remarkably gifted with the power of recognising men and remembering their names. At one time two of his old pupils came to see him. He recognised their faces, but their names had slipped out of his memory. But when they had said that they were inhabitants of Barisal, and had read in the school there about twenty-seven years ago, his memory came to his help, and he could at once tell who they were, and all the particulars of their school life during his headmastership.

19. His countenance was always tranquil and cheerful. Many were his troubles, but none ever found his equanimity ruffled. Grief often upsets a man, but it was powerless in the case of Ramtanu. He wrote to me of the loss of Navakumar as if he had been giving me some intelligence in which he was not concerned. He simply said, “Poor Navakumar died yesterday.”

20. English literature was his favourite study. When age and infirmity had deprived him of the power of reading he had the works he liked best read by one of his children or friends; and then if any passage especially caught his fancy he would have it reread several times, and admire it with childlike rapture, so great was his love for the grand and sublime.

​21. One day, some months before his death, I found him rather melancholy. He did not give me that hearty reception which was his wont. Evidently weakness had got the better of him; so, to divert his mind, I repeated the first sentences of a famous speech on Liberty. It had the intended effect. It was a spark to set his thoughts on fire; and, repeating one or two sentences following, he again felt the natural ardour of his soul, and went on expatiating on the speaker's ideas. Thus the meeting ended, on that occasion, happily both for him and me.

22. I used often to call on Ramtanu Babu at his house at Baladanga, and was pleased to meet there with him also his brother, Dr Kali Charan Lahiri, and his cousin, Kartik Chandra Rai. They were both men of great talents and winning manners. The latter was a good musician.

23. Ramtanu belonged to no religious sect; but he was none the less a pious servant of God, glorifying Him in thought, word, and deed. He had no particular place or hour fixed for his devotional exercises. He, like the poet, said: “I lose myself in Him.”

24. He had cast off the Paita (Brahmanical thread) before he came to Uttarpara, and had had to put up with much persecution. It was a great trial for him. On the one hand, there were the natural ties of affection and friendship, while on the other there was the sense of duty. The latter was victorious. Conscience got the better of his affections. It falls to the lot of few to fight a battle like this. “Do what is right, and leave the rest to God” was his favourite motto through life; and people first saw its effect in this bold step he took against priestcraft.

25. His life, to the superficial observer, was apparently a smooth current, silently and calmly moving towards its end; but who fully knows what agitations there were beneath the surface? This we can say, that, in spite of his many and great calamities, under the pressure of which many an ordinary mind might have given way, he maintained the peaceful tenor of his course, with a heart full of hope and joy, centred in his God.

26. This is but a poor sketch of his life. It is a matter of regret to me that I have been unable fully to realise how great he was, and that I cannot find language adequate to express a thousandth part even of that little which I have realised.

​27. When our dear country shall be free from its superstitions and prejudices, when educated men here will be organised in a strong body to fight for what is right in religion and morals, we shall turn our eyes again, and to more purpose, upon this zealous and dauntless soldier of a forlorn hope, who waged against the conservatism of the old impossible world so fiery a battle waged it till he fell waged it with such sincerity and strength!

We remember to have read that the Rishis of old used to hold fraternal meetings in some shade where congenial spirits happily interchanged their thoughts to mutual edification. We ever longed to witness a meeting of the kind in our days, though we feared that a thing such as this would never come to pass. At length it so happened that two of God's saints met before our eyes. They were Ramtanu Lahiri and Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, the former lying on his sick-bed, at the age of eighty-five, and the latter, five years his junior, seated by his side.

Making inquiries about Mr Lahiri's health, Debendranath said, "Dear Ramtanu, virtue protects the virtuous. You have so long fought for virtue that she has always been your friend." Now a little daughter of my friend Sharat Kumar Lahiri made her appearance, and her grandfather thus spoke to her, "Bow down to this friend of mine. We all honour him, for he holds his God in great honour." Both the gentlemen were old and infirm, and so their conversation ended here. At the time of bidding farewell, Maharshi Debendranath said, "One thought is uppermost in my mind and I cannot help giving expression to it. The saints are waiting for you in heaven, and as soon as you join them they will take you to the Supreme God." Ramtanu, whose feelings must have been overwrought at the time, with his usual simplicity said, "What can I say to this? I cannot find words to express my feelings." He then made an attempt to touch his ​friend’s feet, by way of honouring him, but the latter, stopping him, took his hands between his own. At the time of the Maharshi’s departure the ladies of the house made the due reverential obeisance to him, and thought themselves thrice blessed when he pronounced his parting benediction. If these two great hearts had thus met when in the vigour of manhood, and the flow of their thoughts and speech had not been interrupted by age and weakness, how much more material should we have had for our edification! The meeting of the two holy men had made Sharat’s house a place of sanctity.

Calcutta, 1310 (B.S.). 3rd Magh.

The late Professor Max Müller thus wrote of Ramtanu Lahiri in his “Auld Lang Syne” (second series):

“Ramtanu was born in 1813, and therefore must have been older than Debendranath Tagore, who is generally considered as the Nestor of the Brahmo Samaj. He was a pupil of David Hare, who had undertaken the philanthropic work of educating native youths; and after spending a few years at Hare’s School he was admitted into the Hindu College at Calcutta, which was established in Calcutta in 1817 as the first fruit of the annual vote of £10,000 for educational purposes insisted on by the English Parliament. The teacher who chiefly influenced the young men was Mr Derozio, who, though branded by the clergy as an infidel, and as a devil of the Thomas Paine school, was worshipped by his pupils as the incarnation of goodness and kindness. It was Christian morality, as preached by Derozio, that appealed most strongly to the heart of Ramtanu and his fellow-pupils, many of whom, distinguished in later life, were the fathers and grandfathers of the present generation of Indian reformers. Ramtanu became a model among his friends in all matters relating to morality and conscience; penitence and sincerity being the watchwords of his early career, vice and hypocrisy the constant objects of his denunciation both among his equals and among those of higher rank and authority. Even the founder of the Brahmo Samaj did not escape his reproof, on ​account of what he considered want of moral courage to act up to his convictions. As to himself, he denounced caste as a great social and moral evil, and silent submission to superstitious customs as reprehensible weakness. In order to show those who denounced beef-eating as sinful, he and his friends would actually parade the streets with beef in their hands, inviting the people to take and eat it. The Brahmanical thread, which was retained by all the members of the Brahmo Samaj at late as 1861, was openly disregarded by him in 1851. And we must remember that, in those days, such open apostasy was almost a question of life or death; and that Rammohan Roy was in danger of assassination in the very streets of Calcutta. It is true that European officials respected and supported Ramtanu; but among his own countrymen he was despised and shunned. However, he continued his career undisturbed by friend or foe, and guided by his own conscience only. Poor as he was, he desired no more than to earn a small pittance as a teacher in public and private schools. Later in life he was attracted to the new Brahmo Samaj, and became a close friend of Keshub Chandra Sen. When he saw others who spent much time in prayer he considered them the most favoured of mortals, for, pure and conscientious as he was, he felt himself so sinful that he could but seldom utter a word or two in the spirit of what he considered true prayer before the eyes of the Lord. While cultivating his little garden he was found lost in devotion at the sight of a full-blown rose, and when singing a hymn in adoration of God his whole countenance seemed to beam with a heavenly light. One of his friends tells us that one morning early he rushed into his room like a madman, and dragged him out of bed, saying that when the whole of nature was ablaze with the light and fire of God's glory it was a shame to lie in bed. He took the sleeper to the next field, and, pointing to the rising sun and the beautiful trees and foliage, he recited with great rapture—what? Not a hymn from the Vedas, but some verses from Wordsworth. When his end approached, his friend, Debendranath Tagore, went to take leave of him, and when he left him he cried, 'Now the gates of heaven are open to you; and the gods are waiting with outstretched arms to receive you to the glorious regions.' Did the old Vedantist ​really say ‘the gods’? I doubt it, unless he used the language of Maya, as we also do sometimes, knowing that his friend would interpret it in the right sense.”

The remaining sentences of Professor Max Müller’s Note, about half-a-dozen in number, do not refer to Ramtanu or his times, but are merely certain criticisms on the Vedantist’s belief in the gods: and so we omit them here.