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Nirad Chandra Chaudhuri
CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
(23 November 1897 – 1 August 1999) was an Indian writer. In 1990,
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awarded Chaudhuri, by then a long-time resident of the city of
Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
, an Honorary Degree in Letters. In 1992, he was made an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).


Biography

Chaudhuri was born in Kishoregunj,
Mymensingh Mymensingh ( bn, ময়মনসিংহ) is the capital of Mymensingh Division, Bangladesh. Located on the bank of Brahmaputra River, about north of the national capital Dhaka, it is a major financial center and educational hub of north- ...
, East Bengal, British India (now Bangladesh), the second of eight children of Upendra Narayan Chaudhuri, a lawyer, and of Sushila Sundarani Chaudhurani. His parents were liberal middle-class Hindus who belonged to the
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 ...
movement. Chaudhuri was a prolific writer even in the last years of his life, publishing his last work at the age of 99. His wife Amiya Chaudhuri died in 1994 in
Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
, England. He too died in Oxford, three months short of his 102nd birthday, in 1999. He lived at 20 Lathbury Road from 1982 until his death and a
blue plaque A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker. The term i ...
was installed by the
Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board The Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board established in 1999 was the brainchild of Sir Hugo Brunner, then Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, and Edwin Townsend-Coles, Chairman of the Oxford Civic Society. The Board is an autonomous voluntary body whose ...
in 2008. Dr. Sumantra Maitra named him the forgotten visionary of British India, in a review essay for ''The Spectator''.


Major works

His masterpiece, ''
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian ''The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian'' is the 1951 autobiography of Indian writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Written when he was around 50, it records his life from his birth in 1897 in Kishoreganj, a small town in present-day Bangladesh. The book ...
'', published in 1951, put him on the long list of great Indian writers. Chaudhari had said that ''
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian ''The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian'' is the 1951 autobiography of Indian writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Written when he was around 50, it records his life from his birth in 1897 in Kishoreganj, a small town in present-day Bangladesh. The book ...
'' is 'more of an exercise in descriptive ethnology than autobiography'. He is concerned with describing the conditions in which an Indian grew to manhood in the early decades of the century, and as he feels that the basic principle of book is that environment shall have precedence over its product; he describes its affectionate and sensuous detail the three places that had the greatest influence on him: Kishoreganj,the country town in which he lived till he was twelve; Bangram; his ancestral village; and Kalikutch, his mother's village. A fourth chapter is devoted to England, which occupied a large place in his imagination. Later in the book he talks about Calcutta, the Bengali Renaissance, the beginnings of the nationalist Movement, and his experience of Englishmen in India as opposed to the idyllic pictures of a civilization he consider perhaps the greatest in the world. These themes remains preoccupations in most of Chaudhari's work, as does his deterministic view of culture and politics. He courted controversy in the newly independent India due to the dedication of the book, which ran thus:
To the memory of the British Empire in India, Which conferred subjecthood upon us, But withheld citizenship. To which yet every one of us threw out the challenge: "Civis Britannicus sum" Because all that was good and living within us Was made, shaped and quickened By the same British rule.
It is sometimes stated that 'Chaudhuri was hounded out of government service, deprived of his pension, blacklisted as a writer in India and forced to live a life of penury'. However, as Sociologist Edward Shils, who helped Chaudhuri immigrate to the UK, stated in his article 'Citizen of the World' (American Scholar, 1988), Chaudhuri retired at the compulsory age of 55 but was not eligible for a pension because he had not completed sufficient years of service. It is also stated that-'Furthermore, he had to give up his job as a political commentator in All India Radio as the
Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...
promulgated a law that prohibited employees from publishing memoirs.' This is not the case. There was a pre-existing rule that employees must get clearance before publishing anything. Chadhuri was refused an extension of service. He was not asked to prepare any more talks on a free-lance basis because of severe criticism directed at him by senior figures- like Krishna Menon. However, he did publish in non-Government magazines. Chaudhuri argued that his critics were not careful-enough readers; "the dedication was really a condemnation of the British rulers for not treating us as equals", he wrote in a 1997 special edition of ''
Granta ''Granta'' is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centres on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and ma ...
''. Typically, to demonstrate his perceptions he drew on a parallel with Ancient Rome. The book's dedication, Chaudhuri observed, "was an imitation of what
Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
said about the conduct of
Verres Gaius Verres (c. 120–43 BC) was a Roman magistrate, notorious for his misgovernment of Sicily. His extortion of local farmers and plundering of temples led to his prosecution by Cicero, whose accusations were so devastating that his defence ad ...
, a Roman proconsul of
Sicily Sicily ( it, Sicilia , ) is the list of islands in the Mediterranean, largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. The Strait of Messina divides it from the region of Calabria in Southern Italy. I ...
who oppressed Sicilian Roman citizens, who in their desperation cried out: "'' Civis romanus sum''". At the age of 57, in 1955 for the first time Chaudhuri went abroad. After coming back he wrote ''A Passage to England'' (1959). In this book he talked about his visit of five weeks to England, and more briefly about his two weeks in Paris and one week in Rome. During this time away from his home in Delhi, he visited museums, galleries, cathedrals, country houses, and attended plays and concerts. Chaudhuri reflects on his experiences from the perspective of a man who had grown up in the British Empire and was now the citizen of an independent India. His later works include personal essays, biographies and historical studies.


Honours

* Duff Cooper Memorial Award in 1967 *
Ananda Purashkar The Ananda Puraskar () is an award for Bengali literature awarded annually by the ABP Group to writers using Bengali, usually from West Bengal, India. History The award can be traced to a comment by Annada Shankar Ray ruing the absence of lit ...
in 1988 *
DLitt Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., Litt.D., Latin: ' or ') is a terminal degree in the humanities that, depending on the country, is a higher doctorate after the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree or equivalent to a higher doctorate, such as the Doct ...
from
Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the Un ...
in 1990. * Vidyasagar Purashkar in 1997 by the Govt of West Bengal * Desikottama in 1997 by Viswabharati


Books

* ''
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian ''The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian'' is the 1951 autobiography of Indian writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Written when he was around 50, it records his life from his birth in 1897 in Kishoreganj, a small town in present-day Bangladesh. The book ...
'' (1951) * ''A Passage to England'' (1959) * '' The Continent of Circe'' (1965) * ''The Intellectual in India'' (1967) * ''To Live or Not to Live'' (1971) * ''Scholar Extraordinary, The Life of Professor the Right Honourable Friedrich Max Muller, P.C.'' (1974) * ''Culture in the Vanity Bag'' (1976) * ''Clive of India'' (1975) * ''Hinduism: A Religion to Live by'' (1979) * '' Thy Hand, Great Anarch!'' (1987) * ''Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse'' (1997) * ''The East is East and West is West'' (collection of pre-published essays) * ''From the Archives of a Centenarian'' (collection of pre-published essays) * ''Why I Mourn for England'' (collection of pre-published essays)


References


External links

* * *
Nirad C. Chaudhuri
at the West Bengal Public Library Network

at Lathbury Road in North Oxford
Naras page


{{DEFAULTSORT:Chaudhuri, Nirad C. 1897 births 1999 deaths Bengali historians Bengali writers Writers from Kolkata Honorary Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Historians of South Asia Indian autobiographers Indian centenarians Indian male essayists Indian literary critics Indian memoirists Indian political writers Surendranath College alumni Scottish Church College alumni University of Calcutta alumni Recipients of the Sahitya Akademi Award in English Critics of Islam 20th-century Indian biographers 20th-century Indian historians 20th-century Indian essayists 20th-century Indian male writers 20th-century memoirists Men centenarians People associated with Shillong