Rakhal Das Haldar

Location

University College London WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom
51° 31' 24.5028" N, 0° 8' 3.8076" W
See map: Google Maps
1
Date of birth: 
21 Dec 1832
Date of death: 
01 Nov 1887
Precise date of death unknown: 
Y
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
21 May 1861
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1861-2

2
About: 

Rakhal Das Haldar was a member of the Brahmo Samaj who studied at University College London 1861-2. His father had worked for the East India Company. He joined the Bengal Civil Service upon his return to India and was manager of the Chota Nagpore Estate upon his death in 1887.

Das Haldar wrote a diary about his time in Britain that was published in 1903. He recounts the people he met and the sites he visited. The people he met included Ganendra Mohun Tagore who was teaching at UCL, Max Müller in Oxford, and Mary Carpenter in Bristol when he visited Ram Mohun Roy's tomb. He addressed the Social Science Association in August 1861 at Dublin on 'Education in Bengal'. At the UCL prize day on 1 July 1862, Das Haldar received a certificate in Jurisprudence. He returned to India two days later.

Connections: 

Mary Carpenter, Max Müller, Keshub Chunder Sen, Satyendranath Tagore.

Organizations: 
Brahmo Samaj
Involved in events: 

Congress of the Social Science Association, Dublin, August 1861 (see The York Herald, 24 August 1861)

3
Published works: 

The English Diary of an Indian Student 1861-2 (Dacca: Ashutosh Press, 1903)

Secondary works: 

Burton, Antoinette, At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late Victorian Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)

Haldar, Sukumar, A Mid-Victorian Hindu: A Sketch of the Life and Times of Rakhal Das Haldar (Ranchi: S. Haldar, 1921)