The Derozio Affair - An Annal of Early Calcutta. By Rudrangshu Mukherjee
Hindu
College was set up in Calcutta in 1817 as a pioneering institution to impart
Western learning to its students. In 1831, its most outstanding teacher, Henry
Louis Vivian Derozio, then only 22 years old, was compelled to resign. A look
at the circumstances that forced his resignation attempts to reconstruct
Derozio’s ideas and his teaching methods. The episode offers a glimpse of the
intellectual ambience of early 19th-century Calcutta.
EPW, September 9, 2017
On 25 April 1831, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio was compelled to resign from Hindu College in Calcutta. He was, in his time, without doubt the most outstanding and inspiring teacher of the college, which in 1831 was only 14 years old. His resignation and the circumstances behind it are important not only to the history of the college, but also for an understanding of the intellectual ambience of Calcutta during the embryonic period of what has come to be known as the Bengal Renaissance. Bypassing the euphemism “resignation’’ - since in most ways it was never that - I argue here that Derozio’s dismissal was rooted in the way Hindu College was founded and in the way it functioned.
EPW, September 9, 2017
On 25 April 1831, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio was compelled to resign from Hindu College in Calcutta. He was, in his time, without doubt the most outstanding and inspiring teacher of the college, which in 1831 was only 14 years old. His resignation and the circumstances behind it are important not only to the history of the college, but also for an understanding of the intellectual ambience of Calcutta during the embryonic period of what has come to be known as the Bengal Renaissance. Bypassing the euphemism “resignation’’ - since in most ways it was never that - I argue here that Derozio’s dismissal was rooted in the way Hindu College was founded and in the way it functioned.
Both in his
beliefs and in his pedagogy, Derozio was an anomaly in Hindu College. Sometime
in 1816, social reformer, journalist and educationist Raja Ram Mohan Roy called
a meeting of his friends for the purpose of creating a body of opinion that
would undermine idolatry. David Hare, a friend of his, attended the meeting
even though he was not invited. Hare had come to Calcutta from his native
Scotland in 1800 at the age of 25 and had begun trade as a watchmaker. He made
the acquaintance of leading members of Calcutta society and was a frequent
visitor to their houses, often to attend nautches and tamashas. A
philanthropist by inclination, he had at some point before 1816 handed over his
business to an E Grey.1 At the meeting in Roy’s house, Hare argued that one of
the ways in which idolatry could be eradicated was by establishing an English
school. There was general agreement, but no one acted upon it (Mitra 1877: 1–5).. read more:
