Bhupendranath Datta (4 September 1880 – 25 December 1961)
was an Indian
revolutionary and later a noted
sociologist and
anthropologist. He associated
Rishi Aurobindo in his political works. In his youth, he was closely associated with the
Jugantar
Jugantar or Yugantar ( bn, যুগান্তর ''Jugantor''; lit. ''New Era'' or ''Transition of an Epoch'') was one of the two main secret revolutionary trends operating in Bengal for Indian independence. This association, like Anushi ...
movement, serving as the editor of ''
Jugantar Patrika
''Jugantar Patrika'' ( bn, যুগান্তর) was a Bengali revolutionary newspaper founded in 1906 in Calcutta by Barindra Kumar Ghosh, Abhinash Bhattacharya and Bhupendranath Dutt. A political weekly, it was founded in March 1906 an ...
'' until his arrest and imprisonment in 1907. In his later revolutionary career, he was privy to the
Indo-German Conspiracy German-Indian, Indian-German or Indo-German may refer to:
*Indo-German languages, alternative name for the Indo-European languages
*As an adjective, anything pertaining to Germany–India relations
*Indians in Germany
The community of Germans ...
. His elder brother was
Swami Vivekananda. The
Asiatic Society
The Asiatic Society is a government of India organisation founded during the Company rule in India to enhance and further the cause of "Oriental research", in this case, research into India and the surrounding regions. It was founded by the p ...
today holds the ''Dr. Bhupendranath Datta memorial lecture'' in his honour.
Datta was a writer too. He wrote several books on Indian culture and society. He wrote a book named "''Swami Vivekananda, Patriot-prophet".''
Early life and education
Datta was born on 4 September 1880 in the town of
Calcutta
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...
, the capital of
Bengal Presidency
The Bengal Presidency, officially the Presidency of Fort William and later Bengal Province, was a subdivision of the British Empire in India. At the height of its territorial jurisdiction, it covered large parts of what is now South Asia and ...
, the largest province of British India at that time. His parents were
Vishwanath Datta
Vishwanath Datta (1835 — 25 February 1884) was a Bengali Attorney at law, philanthropist and novelist. He was the father of Swami Vivekananda, Mahendranath Dutta and Bhupendranath Dutta.
Early life
Vishwanath was born in an aristocratic Hindu ...
and Bhuvaneshwari Datta. He had two elder brothers, Narendranath Datta (later known as
Swami Vivekananda) and Mahendranath Datta.
Vishwanath Datta
Vishwanath Datta (1835 — 25 February 1884) was a Bengali Attorney at law, philanthropist and novelist. He was the father of Swami Vivekananda, Mahendranath Dutta and Bhupendranath Dutta.
Early life
Vishwanath was born in an aristocratic Hindu ...
was an attorney of Calcutta High Court and Bhuvaneshwari Devi was a housewife.
Datta was enrolled in
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar
Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar CIE ( bn, ঈশ্বর চন্দ্র বিদ্যাসাগর; 26 September 1820 – 29 July 1891), born Ishwar Chandra Bandyopadhyay, was an Indian educator and social reformer of the nineteenth century ...
's Metropolitan Institution from where he passed entrance examination. In his youth, he joined
Brahmo Samaj
Brahmo Samaj ( bn, ব্রহ্ম সমাজ, Brahmô Sômaj, ) is the societal component of Brahmoism, which began as a monotheistic reformist movement of the Hindu religion that appeared during the Bengal Renaissance.
It was one of t ...
led by
Keshub Chandra Sen
Keshub Chandra Sen ( bn, কেশবচন্দ্র সেন; also spelled Keshab Chunder Sen; 19 November 1838 – 8 January 1884) was a Hindu philosopher and social reformer who attempted to incorporate Christian theology within ...
and
Debendranath Tagore
Debendranath Tagore (15 May 1817 – 19 January 1905) was an Indian Hindu philosopher and religious reformer, active in the Brahmo Samaj (earlier called Bhramho Sabha) ("Society of Brahma", also translated as ''Society of God''). He joined Brahm ...
. Here he met
Sivanath Sastri
Sivanath Shastri or Sibanath Sastri (31 January 1848 – 30 September 1919) was a Bengali social reformer, writer, translator, scholar, editor philoshoper and historian.সুবোধচন্দ্র সেনগুপ্ত ও অঞ্জ ...
who deeply influenced him. Datta's religious and social beliefs were shaped by Brahmo Samaj which included belief in a caste-less society, in a single God and revolts against
superstitions.
Revolutionary activities
In India
Datta decided to join Indian independence movement, and joined Bengal Revolutionary Society formed by Pramathanath Mitra in 1902. In 1906, he became the editor of the newspaper ''
Jugantar Patrika
''Jugantar Patrika'' ( bn, যুগান্তর) was a Bengali revolutionary newspaper founded in 1906 in Calcutta by Barindra Kumar Ghosh, Abhinash Bhattacharya and Bhupendranath Dutt. A political weekly, it was founded in March 1906 an ...
''. This
newspaper
A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as p ...
was the mouthpiece of the Revolutionary Party of
Bengal
Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...
. In this period he became a close associate of
Sri Aurobindo and
Barindra Ghosh
Barindra Kumar Ghosh or Barindra Ghosh, or, popularly, Barin Ghosh (5 January 1880 – 18 April 1959) was an Indian revolutionary and journalist. He was one of the founding members of Jugantar Bengali weekly, a revolutionary outfit in Bengal. ...
.
In 1907, Datta was arrested by British police with the charge of sedition and was sentenced to one year's imprisonment.
In USA
After release in 1908 he left India for the United States. After his arrival, he stayed at the "India House" for a while.
He finished his post-graduate studies and obtained an M.A. degree from
Brown University.
In Germany
Datta joined
Ghadar Party
The Ghadar Movement was an early 20th century, international political movement founded by expatriate Indians to overthrow British rule in India. The early movement was created by conspirators who lived and worked on the West Coast of the Unite ...
of California and there he studied about socialism and communism.
During
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, he went to Germany and started revolutionary and political activities there. In 1916, he became the secretary of
Indian Independence Committee
The Berlin Committee, later known as the Indian Independence Committee (german: Indisches Unabhängigkeitskomitee) after 1915, was an organisation formed in Germany in 1914 during World War I by Indian students and political activists residing in ...
in Berlin.
He remained the secretary of this organisation until 1918. He took memberships of German Anthropological Society in 1920 and German Asiatic Society in 1924.
In 1921 Datta went to Moscow to join
Comintern.
Manabendra Nath Roy
Manabendra Nath Roy (born Narendra Nath Bhattacharya, better known as M. N. Roy; 21 March 1887 – 25 January 1954) was an Indian revolutionary, radical activist and political theorist, as well as a noted philosopher in the 20th century. Roy ...
and Birendranath Dasgupta also attended this year's Comintern. During the visit Datta presented
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
a research paper on political condition of contemporary India. He obtained a doctorate degree in
Anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
from the
University of Hamburg
The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vo ...
in 1923.
Back in India
Then he returned to India and decided to join
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British E ...
.
He became members of Bengal Regional Congress in 1927—28 and All India Congress Committee in 1929. In the annual conference of Indian National Congress organised in Karachi in 1930, he proposed a fundamental right for Indian
farmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer m ...
s and had it accepted by the Congress Committee led by
Jawaharlal Nehru
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (; ; ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat—
*
*
*
* and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20t ...
. He chaired two All India Trade Union Congress' annual conference. He was arrested for his political activities.
Bhupendranath returned to a much-changed India after 16 long years, in April 1925. He fully cooperated with the newly formed
Communist Party of India, established in Kanpur, and took part in the
Workers’ and Peasants’
Party (WPP). His first political
activity was participation in Political Sufferers’ Conference in Gauhati in December 1926, presiding over it. Bhupen said
that not only the Indian
bourgeoisie but also the
common masses had
joined the struggle for
freedom.
Bhupendranath at-
tended the annual
conference of WPP in
1927, where he met
Nalini Gupta. He spread
ideas of socialism and
Marxism among youth,
speaking about Russian
revolution. Veteran
Communist and TU
leader Dr Ranen Sen re-
called that Dr
Bhupendranath used to
take political classes
among young revolu-
tionaries on Marxism.
Many of them later
joined the CPI under his
influence.
Famous Communist historian Chinmohan
Sehanavis recalls his indebtedness to Bhupendranath for his training in Marxism thus:
“I came in contact with
Shri Bhupendranath
Dutta during 1933-34.
When I expressed my
desire to study socialism
and Marxism from him”,
he asked whether it was
for becoming a scholar or
a mass worker.
Sehanavis told him he
wanted to work among
workers and peasants.
Organizer of Students, Youth
Bhupendranath was a much sought after leader. He delivered presidential address at DaccaDistrict Youngmen's
Conference in 1927. In a
letter to SA Dange, on
November 12, 1927, on
the proposed first all In-
dia Socialist Youth
Congress,
Bhupendranath wrote:
“This Congress is in-
tended for those young
men and women of India
who hold Marxist world-
view, and they only are
welcome to be the del-
egates of the Congress.”
Socialist Youth Con-
gress was held on
December 27, 1927, in
Calcutta.
Bhupendranath as chair-
man of reception
committee drew atten-
tion of youth to Marxism
and suggested formation
of study circles.
Jawaharlal Nehru presided over. All Bengal Youth Association was
formed at the beginning
of 1928, with
Bhupendranath as the
president of the organization and as the main
speaker at its conference.
Bhupendranath also
spoke at the conference
of Young Comrades’ League at Rajshahi in
April 1930. His speech
helped many young men
to give up anarchism
and come over to communism.
Bhupen presided over
Khulna district students’
conference on May 5,
1929, Burdwan district
students’ conference on
August 17, 1929,
Faridpur students’ con-
ference in June 1931, and
others. He urged upon
the students to follow
Marx. Famous Communist leader Benoy
Krishna Choudhury remembers that his acquaintance with
Bhupenda began in
Hooghly district students’ conference in 1928.
He along with
Hiren Mukherjee
Hirendranath Mukhopadhyay (23 November 1907 – 30 July 2004), also known as Hiren Mukerjee, was an Indian politician, lawyer and academic. He was a member of the Communist Party of India having joined in 1936 when it was still illegal. He was ...
and
Humayun Kabir attended BPSF conference on October 12, 1936.
WPP and TU Movement
During
Meerut Conspiracy Case
The Meerut Conspiracy Case was a controversial court case that was initiated in British Raj in March 1929 and decided in 1933. Several trade unionists, including three Englishmen, were arrested for organizing an Indian railway strike. The Bri ...
(1929–33),
the Communists outside
were in disarray. In
Calcutta, an ‘Indian Pro-
letarian Revolutionary
Party’ was formed, with
Panchu Gopal Bhaduri,
Kali Ghosh, Bankim
Mukherjee and others.
Bhupenda was closely
associated. This party
worked with Workers’
Party, which it recog-
nized as a branch of CPI.
It got in touch with
Bombay Group of
Sardesai, Ranadive and
Kulkarni, and helped
Meerut prisoners. It expressed desire to join
Calcutta Committee of
CPI and were given
membership individually.
Bishwanath Mukherjee also belonged to this group.
Bhupendranath was
active in almost all the
major movements: of
Kharagpur railways
workers, BNR railway
workers, TISCO in
Jamshedpur, May Day
rallies in Calcutta in
1928, etc. He attended
Jharia session of AITUC
(1928) and was elected its
vice-president. He orga-
nized a number of trade
unions at local and all
India levels.
Other Mass Organizations
Bhupendranath Dutta
was the first president of
Friends of Soviet Union (FSU), formed in 1941 at the initiative of Prof
Hiren Mukherjee and
others. Bhupesh Gupta,
Chinmohan, Gopal
Haldar, Jyoti Basu and
others were also present.
Bhupenda also took part
in the PWA.
Not a Member, But with CPI
Dr Bhupen Dutta was
never a formal member
of CPI, but for all practi-
cal purposes he
functioned as one. He
encouraged and re-
cruited members to the
party, among them
Somnath Lahiri. He
translated important
Marxist classics. Among
his famous works is the
‘Aprakashita Rajnitik
Itihas’ (unpublished po-
litical history). He was an
active propagandist of
Marxism.
He was a great scholar
in various fields, with
many books and articles
to his credit. He brought
to light the social and
mass aspects of Swami
Vivekanand and
Ramakrishna Mission,
who advocated and
worked for the well-be-
ing of people.
Literary works
Datta wrote books on different subjects like sociology, history, politics etc. He was a linguist and wrote books in
Bengali
Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to:
*something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia
* Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region
* Bengali language, the language they speak
** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
,
Hindi
Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
, English,
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
,
Iranian
Iranian may refer to:
* Iran, a sovereign state
* Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran
* Iranian lan ...
. Few of his notable books are—
*
*
*
*
*
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dutta, Bhupendranath
Anushilan Samiti
Bengali Hindus
Dutta,Bhupendranath
Dutta,Bhupendranath
Indian sociologists
Dutta,Bhupendranath
Dutta,Bhupendranath
Dutta,Bhupendranath
Dutta,Bhupendranath
Indian National Congress politicians
Hindi-language writers
Bengali-language writers
English-language writers from India
Indian independence activists from Bengal
Prisoners and detainees of British India
Swami Vivekananda
Indian male writers
Writers from Kolkata
19th-century Indian non-fiction writers
20th-century Indian non-fiction writers
University of Hamburg alumni