What the Young Bengal Achieved and Why it is Largely Unacknowledged

The Wire

20-05-2025

Rosinka Chaudhuri's books on Bengal in the 19th century, a period of change and intellectual ferment, are absorbing and enlightening, and her latest work is no exception. Her thesis presented in six largely self-contained chapters, is a meticulously referenced study covering a vast historiography as she situates Young Bengal's activism in the context of the careers of Rammohan Roy, William Adam and Vidyasagar; the Brahmo Samaj and contemporary literature, movements and legislation in Britain, though noting that for this period 'the archive unfortunately does not…recover women's voices'.
'India's First Radicals. Young Bengal and the British Empire', Rosinka Chaudhuri, Penguin Random House, 2025.
Young Bengal was a tightly-knit circle of Henry Derozio's students at Hindu College, which at the time was 'the biggest educational institution in India with 436 boys', 100 of whom were exempt fees due to poverty. This circle embarked on a collision course against orthodoxy and authority. Focusing on its impact in 1843, Chaudhuri examines its contribution for the rights of the peasant, against corruption in the police and judiciary, caste, racial and gender discrimination, ritual, priesthood, superstition and religiosity, which culminated in what could be described as India's first political party. The inspirers of Young Bengal were Derozio, David Hare and George Thompson; its prominent members were Tarachand Chakrabarty, Krishnamohan Banerjea, Ramgopal Ghose, Rasik Krishna Mullick, Ramtanu Lahiri, Dakshinaranjan Mukherjee, Radhanath Sikdar, Pearychand Mittra; and it remained influential throughout the 19th century.
'Universalist and pan-Indian in their thinking', between 1838 and 1843 Young Bengal was 'more radical … than the nationalists who followed'. Its emphasis on bilingualism and simultaneous translation constituted a 'signal contribution' to the use of 'everyday' Bengali for literary purposes that placed Bengali on its path to modernity, including the neologism bhadralok, meaning a person of 'civility and etiquette'.
Young Bengal wished to change British policies and Hindu society for the betterment of society, was active on issues of free trade, press freedom, education without social or gender discrimination, and composed poetry, prose, novels and plays. It argued against East India Company rule, exploitative land-owners and Hindu conservatism. The author references multiple journals then sympathetic to reformist views, especially India Gazette, Hurkaru, East Indian, Jnananvesan, Enquirer and Bengal Spectator
Young Bengal supported 'the poorest and most helpless creature under the sun', the ryot, oppressed by zamindars with powers from the Permanent Settlement. The group asserted the cultivator's right to the fields he cultivated, and the concept of the people of India as an enduring entity germinated in the late 1830s/early 1840s, with Young Bengal using that rubric as an agent for change. It argued the case for the rights of lower castes, woman, coolie, peasant and small landholder, and opposition to religion, racial and other discrimination in 'the anti-absolutist spirit of reason and liberty'. Caste was identified as a problem specific to Hindu society, and for the first time in India, it was Young Bengal that 'took a position in the civil and political sphere that firmly set aside religion as immaterial to progress'.
'To call Young Bengal nationalist', writes Chaudhuri, 'would be to apply a later ascription', but by 1843, 'a way of thinking about the nation and its people was being brought into existence'. That year the Bengal British India Society, India's first political society, was formed, which included Indians of mixed race and non-official British men.
Calcutta had abundant professional classes without wealth but with education, opinion and readiness to agitate for reform. The BBIS was not seeking representative government or freedom from British rule but engaged in 'smaller battles…the removal of particular grievances' and 'fought doomed rearguard actions seeking reform… until the Sepoy Revolts changed things altogether'. It was open to 'all men without distinction of colour, creed or sect', and though short-lived over only three years, yet was 'the first essence of nationalism', and its 'language and grammar found later echoes in the Indian National Congress of 1885'.
Radhanath Sikdar. Photo: Public domain.
Starting from 1831 Young Bengal's rebellion was mainly on social matters but by 1843 had moved to political reform. Its members were not merely idealists but also 'men of work and action' and three chapters deal mainly with two Young Bengal stalwarts, Dakshinaranjan Mukherjee and Radhanath Sikdar. On freedom of speech, noteworthy was Mukherjee's 1843 speech at SAGK on the East India Company's judicial system and policing in 'the most damning indictment of British rule', calling for equal justice for all; and his disregard of conventional norms was later evidenced by marrying the relict of the Raja of Burdwan in an inter-caste, civil ceremony and widow remarriage non-conformist gesture. He assisted in establishing John Bethune's school for girls, underlining Young Bengal's policies against gender discrimination. Nearly every member of Derozio's close followers either taught in, or set up schools.
Young Bengal's views on equality are covered through the travails of Sikdar in the Survey of India. Not only was his pay far less than contemporaries but due to racism, recognition was withheld despite his technical capabilities. 'By temperament someone who refused to back down', Sikdar brought a legal suit against a British magistrate on grounds of mistreating Indian labour, thereby incurring British hostility, which led to the obscuring of his pioneering calculation of Mt Everest's height.
Young Bengal was part of the social revolution in urban Bengal in the first half of the 19th century, attacking 'the despotism of Hindu orthodoxy and Company rule… inseparable from a history of the early development of the Indian modern'. The group realized that rather than petitions to British authorities, Indian publications and gatherings would better serve to move public opinion in Britain, so the manner of presenting its case altered significantly, moving to active campaigning among 'their fellow British subjects' so that British public opinion could influence parliament and force the East India Company to change its ways. However, the British had 'absolutely no interest in the affairs of India… it would take another seventy years at least for Indians to comprehend the indifference of the British public'.
In sum, Young Bengal achieved nothing practical in terms of the problem of unrepresentative government. The tide turned against Young Bengal; the term 'grew more and more elastic in the course of the century and came to encompass almost any hypocritical pretender'; Its name 'became a term of criticism and admonition, derision and satire'. With the sharp pivot to societal convention in Victorian times, Young Bengal's non-conformity was regarded as 'scandal…and political theatre of the middle classes such as had never been witnessed before'. Outrage and mockery were expressed in orthodox and even moderate circles, alleging violation of religion and morality; 'the disapproval never ceased to grow'. In the process, the group's 'very real contributions to civil and political affairs were completely obscured and their role as pioneering modern Indians was to remain unacknowledged.' Rosinka Chaudhuri's book redresses this scholarly neglect, underlining her reputation as a peerless exponent in exhuming the salient features of that epoch.
For a non-Bengali, there are some difficulties; the use of both Bengali and English versions of names eg, Mukherjee/Mukhopadhyay; the use of only the first name and not both names, sometimes in the same paragraph, and varied spellings of a name. The text is discursive and repetitive due to the format of self-contained chapter, but this book constitutes an engaging journey through a short period of intellectual rebellion against the odds.
Krishnan Srinivasan is a former foreign secretary.