Brahmo Samaj

Rakhal Das Haldar

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.

Published works:

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

Date of birth:

21 Dec 1832

Connections:

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

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)

Involved in events:

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

Location

University College London WC1E 6BT

United Kingdom

51° 31' 24.5028" N, 0° 8' 3.8076" W

See map: Google Maps

Date of death:

01 Nov 1887

Precise date of death unknown:

Date of 1st arrival in Britain:

21 May 1861

Dates of time spent in Britain:

1861-2

Tags for Making Britain:

Brahmo Samaj

student

Max Muller

About:

Friedrich Max Müller was a Sanskritist at the University of Oxford in the late nineteenth century. Having spent some time in Paris, Müller travelled to London in 1846 for a short research trip. In 1848, he decided to settle in Oxford having had his edition of Rig Veda printed by the University Press. He became a naturalized British citizen in 1855.

From 1851, Müller held various positions in the University of Oxford. In 1860, he competed against Monier Monier-Williams for the position of Boden Professor of Sanskrit. Although Müller's body of scholarship exceeded Monier-Williams', the issue of Müller's Liberal Lutheranism and German ethnicity came to the fore in the campaign and he was defeated by Monier-Williams. Despite the huge disappointment, Müller continued to pursue his studies in Sanskrit and the Vedas, and was widely known and respected in India.

Müller delivered a number of lectures, and wrote many essays and books on Indian religion and spirituality. He cultivated a number of friendships with Indians through correspondence and their visits to Oxford. In particular, he became very close to Keshub Chunder Sen and interested in the Brahmo Samaj - which Müller saw as the natural sect of Christianity. He was also extremely concerned about the practice of child marriage in India, a concern he shared with Behramji Malabari and Pandita Ramabai, who both visited him in Oxford. Müller felt compelled to comment upon the case of the the child-bride, Rukhmabai, by sending a letter to The Times in 1887.

Published works:

The Languages of the Seat of War in the East: With a Survey of the Three Families of Language, Semitic, Arian and Turanian (London: Williams and Norgate, 1855)

A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature: So Far as it Illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans (London: Williams and Norgate, 1859)

Chips from a German Workshop (London: Longmans, 1867)

The Science of Thought (London: Longmans, 1887)

Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas (London: Longmans, 1888)

Buddhist Mahâyâna Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894)

Collected Works, 18 volumes (London: Longmans, 1898)

(trans. and ed.) The Sacred Books of the East, 51 volumes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879-1910)

My Autobiography: A Fragment (London: Longmans, 1901)

Date of birth:

06 Dec 1823

Connections:

R. C. Dutt, Nilakantha Goreth, Shyamaji Krishnavarma, Behramji Malabari, Monier Monier-Williams, P. C. Mozoomdar, Colonel Olcott, Pandita Ramabai, Rukhmabai, Keshub Chunder Sen, Satyendranath Tagore.

Contributions to periodicals:

Cosmopolis

Nineteenth Century

Various letters to the editor in The Times, including 24 November 1880, 22 August 1887, 6 September 1887

Secondary works:

Bosch, Lourens van den, Friedrich Max Müller: A Life Devoted to Humanities (Leiden: Brill, 2002)

Chaudhuri, Nirad C., Scholar Extraordinary: The Life of Professor the Rt Hon. Friedrich Max Muller (London: Chatto & Windus, 1974)

Fynes, R. C. C., 'Müller, Friedrich Max (1823–1900)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2007) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18394]

Müller, Georgina (ed.), The Life and Letters of the Right Honourable Friedrich Max Müller (London: Longmans, 1902)

Stone, Jon R. (ed.), The Essential Max Müller (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)

Archive source:

Letters, notebooks and family papers, Bodleian Archives, Oxford

City of birth:

Dessau

Country of birth:

Germany

Other names:

Max Müller, Max Mueller

Friedrich Max Muller

Date of death:

28 Sep 1900

Location of death:

Oxford, England

Location:

7 Norham Gardens, Oxford

Tags for Making Britain:

Sasipada Banerji

About:

Born in 1840 in Barnagar, five miles north of Kolkata, Sasipada Banerji was a reformist Hindu who married a thirteen-year-old girl, Rajkumari Devi, in 1860. However, he refused any dowry and began to teach her to read and write a year after their marriage. Banerji joined the Brahmo Samaj in 1861 and was involved in the social reform movement in West Bengal.

Sasipada Banerji met Mary Carpenter on her visit to India in 1866 and she subsequently invited him and his wife to visit her in England to educate British people on the cause of female education in India. Despite some hesitations about crossing the kalapani (black waters) with his wife, Banerji took up the offer and left India on 19 April 1871. He believed that his wife was the first Brahmin lady to cross the seas to visit Britain.

In Britain, Banerji was welcomed by the Secretary of State. He joined the Good Templars Body and became a member of the Order of the Day Star Lodge. He lectured on temperance, female education and working men's movements. He attended National Indian Association meetings and established branches of the NIA in other cities in Britain. His son was born at Mary Carpenter's house, Red Lodge, in Bristol on 10 October 1871, and was named Albion; Mary Carpenter wrote to Colonel Posonby, the Queen's Private Secretary, to inform her of the birth of what they believed to be the first British born Indian. Banerji returned with his family to India in 1872, his wife Rajkumari died in 1876 and he re-married in 1877.

Date of birth:

01 Jan 1840

Connections:

Albion Rajkumar Banerji (his son), Mary Carpenter, Keshub Chunder Sen.

Contributions to periodicals:

See Journal of National Indian Association

Precise DOB unknown:

Reviews:

Reports of speeches in Bristol Daily Post, Birmingham Morning News, The Templar, The Alliance News, North British Daily Mail, Edinburgh Daily Review, Leeds Mercury, The Inquirer and other British newspapers in 1871.

Secondary works:

Banerji, Albion Rajkumar, An Indian Pathfinder: Being the Memoirs of Sevabrata Sasipada Banerji, 1840-1924 (Oxford: Kemp Hall Press, 1934)

Carpenter, Mary, Six Months in India (London: Longmans, 1868)

Kopf, David, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)

City of birth:

Barnagar

Country of birth:

India

Date of 1st arrival in Britain:

01 Jan 1871

Precise 1st arrival date unknown:

Dates of time spent in Britain:

1871-2

Tags for Making Britain:

Keshub Chunder Sen

About:

Keshub Chunder Sen was a Brahmo Samaj reformer. He visited Britain for six months in 1870. During this trip, Sen toured Britain to deliver sermons and met with a variety of political leaders, including W. E. Gladstone. Sen met Queen Victoria, who later presented him with two books.

On a visit to Bristol. Sen stayed at the house of Mary Carpenter. It was during this meeting that they decided to form the National Indian Association in aid of Social Progress, which was run by Carpenter in Britain.

Upon his return to India, Sen was involved in controversy when he arranged the marriage of his daughter (Sunity Devee) to the son of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar, despite the fact that she was only thirteen years old and violated the reforms that he and the Brahmo Samaj had been campaigning for.

Published works:

Diary in England (Calcutta: Brahmo Tract Society, 1886)

Date of birth:

19 Nov 1838

Connections:

Annette Beveridge (née Akroyd), Mary Carpenter, Frances Cobbe, Sophia Dobson Collett, Sunity Devee, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Max Müller, Hodgson Pratt, Reverend Robert Spears.

Secondary works:

Mozoomdar, P. C., Life and Teachings of Keshub Chunder Sen (Calcutta: J. W. Thomas, Baptist Mission Press, 1887)

Kopf, David, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (New Delhi: Archives Publishers, 1988)

Carpenter, J. Estlin, The Life and Work of Mary Carpenter (London: Macmillan, 1881)

Raychaudhury, Tapan, 'Sen, Keshub Chunder Sen (1838-1884)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47672]

Archive source:

Photo, National Portrait Gallery

Letter to Rev. Robert Spears, Unitarian Minister, 1872, Mss Eur A159, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

City of birth:

Calcutta

Country of birth:

India

Current name city of birth:

Kolkata

Date of death:

08 Jan 1884

Location of death:

Calcutta, India

Date of 1st arrival in Britain:

21 Mar 1870

Dates of time spent in Britain:

21 March 1870 - 17 September 1870

Tags for Making Britain:

National Indian Association

About:

The National Indian Association (NIA) was founded in 1870 by Mary Carpenter in Bristol, with the assistance of Keshub Chunder Sen. The organization's full name was originally ‘National Indian Association in Aid of Social Progress in India’.

In 1871, Mrs Manning and her step-daughter Elizabeth Adelaide Manning started a London branch. Mary Carpenter died in 1877 and the London branch became the headquarters for the Association. The NIA also has branches in other cities in the UK and in India. After the death of Manning in 1905, E. J. Beck, sister of Theodore Beck, became honorary secretary until her retirement in 1932.

The initial aim of the association was to encourage female education in India. They also sought to educate and inform the British about Indian affairs. As the number of Indians in Britain grew, an increasingly important function was to facilitate social intercourse between Indian visitors and the British. The association held soirees, conversaziones, lectures and meetings and often organized guided tours of sights. The NIA produced a monthly journal from 1871, providing information about their activities. In 1880, a sub-committee, the Northbrook Indian Club, was formed, to look after a reading room for Indian students. This became a separate society in 1881, called the Northbrook Indian Society.

In 1910, the offices were moved to 21 Cromwell Road in South Kensington, to be housed alongside the Bureau of Education for Indian students. The Association began to decline after its jubilee year in 1920. Few of its original members remained alive and an increasing array of different organizations arose in London to cater for Indian interests. The Association stayed alive in a residual form after Indian independence, merged with the East India Association in 1949, and was incorporated into the Royal Society for India, Pakistan and Ceylon in 1966.

Published works:

Journal of the National Indian Association, from 1871

Handbook of Information Relating to University and Professional Studies for Indian Students (London: Archibald Constable, 1893), reprinted in 1904.

Other names:

NIA

Secondary works:

Apart from works on Mary Carpenter, Keshub Chunder Sen and E. A. Manning (see their entries), other works that give insight into the NIA include

Khalidi, Omar (ed.), An Indian Passage to Europe: The Travels of Fath Nawaj Jang (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006)

Robinson, Andrew , ‘Selected Letters of Sukumar Ray’, South Asia Research 7 (1987), pp. 169-236

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

Lahiri, Shompa, Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880-1930 (London: Frank Cass, 2000)

Date began:

01 Jan 1870

Precise date began unknown:

Key Individuals' Details:

Emma Josephine Beck (secretary), Mary Carpenter (founder), Lord Hobhouse (president), Lady Hobhouse, Elizabeth Adelaide Manning (secretary), Keshub Chunder Sen (founder)

Connections:

Syed Ameer Ali, Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Sasipada Banerji, Sarojini Naidu, Dadabhai Naoroji, Florence Nightingale, Cornelia Sorabji.

Date ended:

01 Jan 1948

Archive source:

Mss Eur 147, minute books of National Indian Association, financial papers and other miscellaneous papers, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras.

Liverpool Mercury, 22 December 1874

Pall Mall Gazette, 6 February 1888

The Times, 17 March 1886, 19 November 1886, 30 April 1891, 2 April 1892, 4 May 1897, 18 July 1898, 26 March 1901, 30 May 1903, 19 June 1906, 24 May 1907, 1 September 1908.

Western Daily Press, 10 September 1870

Precise date ended unknown:

Organization location:

Varied. Member's houses. Imperial Institute. In 1910, their offices were housed in 21 Cromwell Road, London, along with the Northbrook Society and the Bureau for Information for Indian Students.