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Notes
1 Rajat Kanta Ray, The Felt Community: Commonality and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp.22–5.
2 In this respect see, for example, Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)’, in his Essays on Ideology (London: Verso, 1984), pp.1–60; Raymond Williams, Culture (London: Fontana, 1986); and Lynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). For an attempt in this direction in the field of the cultural history of Bengal, see Partha Chatterjee (ed.), Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1992).
3 The obituary which appeared in The Hindoo Patriot immediately after his death only gives the approximate year of his birth, which has been adopted here. Sambhu Chandra Mukherjee gives November 1825 (18th August 1231 BS), whereas Ramgopal Sanyal says he was born in April 1824. See The Hindoo Patriot, 19 June 1861, p.195; Sambhu Chandra Mookerjee, ‘Harish Chandra Mookerjee (a fragment written in c. 1862)’, in Bengal: Past & Present, Vol.III, Pt.II, Serial No.16 (April–June, 1914), p.288; Ramgopal Sanyal, Harishchandra Mukhopadhyayer Jibani: The Life of Babu Harish Chandra Mukherjee (Anilkumar Sengupta ed.) (Kalikata: Nabajiban, 1887/Kalikata: Rama Prakashni, rpr. 1984), p.2 (the original pagination); and Ramgopal Sanyal, A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities, Both Living and Dead (Swapan Majumdar ed.) (Calcutta: Herald Printing Works, 1889/Calcutta: Rddhi, rpr. 1976), p.51. In this respect see also C.E. Buckland, Bengal under the Lieutenant-Governors, 2 vols. (Calcutta: Kedarnath Bose, 1902), vol.2, pp.1048–9. The first attempt to write Harish Chandra's biography was made by Framji Bamanji in 1863 in his The Lights and Shades of the East: Or a Study of the Life of Baboo Harrischander; and Passing Thoughts on India and its People: Their Present and Future (Bombay: Alliance Press, 1863). In this book Harish Chandra was portrayed as a champion of ‘Young India’ (ibid., pp.3–6, 22). A fairly comprehensive biographical study may be found in Dilip Majumdar, Harish Mukharji: Jiban o Bhabana (Kalikata: Nabajatak Prakashan, 1983); and Gauranga Gopal Sengupta, Sambadik Kesari Harishchandra Mukhopadhyay (Kalikata: Anandadhara, 1988).
4 Blair B. Kling, ‘The Origin of the Managing Agency in India’, in Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.26, no.1 (1966) pp.37–47.
5 Blair B. Kling, Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976) Ch.9; S.B. Singh, European Agency Houses in Bengal (1783–1833) (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1966), Ch.8; and Benoy Chowdhury, Growth of Commercial Agriculture in Bengal (1757–1900), Vol.1 (Calcutta: Indian Studies, 1964), pp.80–120.
6 Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri, ‘The Agrarian Question in Bengal and the Government 1850–1900’, in Calcutta Historical Journal, Vol.1, no.1 (1976), pp.51–66.
7 The periodisation of British colonial rule in India is still a subject of controversy among historians. Conventionally, the Mutiny and direct rule have been regarded as a watershed in colonial rule. C.A. Bayly, who took the initiative in reassessing the eighteenth century from a ‘revisionist’ point of view, considers the changes during the mid nineteenth century centring around the 1850s to be crucial. See C.A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp.200–6. However, as a by-product of the debate initiated by him, a new scheme is gradually taking shape. I mainly draw on this new research trend. See, inter alia, Ian J. Barrow and Douglas E. Haynes, ‘The Colonial Transition, 1780–1840’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol.38, no.3 (2004), pp.469–78. Other relevant literature on this topic can be read in P.J. Marshall (ed.), The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Evolution or Revolution? (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003).
8 Biman Behari Majumdar, History of Indian Social and Political Ideas (From Rammohan to Dayananda) (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 2nd ed., 1967); and Nemai Sadhan Bose, Indian Awakening and Bengal (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 3rd ed., 1976).
9 Bimanbehari Majumdar, Indian Political Associations and Reform of Legislature (1818–1917) (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1965), Ch.3.
10 Ibid., pp.34–5.
11 A detailed discussion on the complex relationship between ‘pre-national’ identities and nationalisms in Western Europe and North America may be found in Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). A rough typology of nationalism is provided by John Plamenatz in his ‘Two Types of Nationalism’, in Eugene Kamenka (ed.), Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea (London: Edward Arnold, 1976). As to ‘proto-nationalism’, a term closely related with ‘patriotism’, see Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Ch.2. Hobsbawm discusses problems concerning patriotism in ibid., pp.86–93. For the sophisticated periodisation and typology of nationalist movements, see Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (trans. Ben Fowkes) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
12 Oxford English Dictionary Online.
13 Niraja Gopal Jayal, ‘Revisiting Nationalism’, in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.41, no.42 (2006), pp.4513–5.
14 Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p.1.
15 Ashis Nandy, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Self (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), p.3. Nandy has recently pushed his argument on this point further in his ‘Nationalism, Genuine and Spurious: Mourning Two Early Post-Nationalist Strains’, in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.41, no.32 (2006), pp.3500–4.
16 Ray, Felt Community, p.37. For a general survey of patriotic trends in India, see also C.A. Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), Chs.1–4.
17 Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986), Ch.3; and Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995).
18 Heterogeneity and homogeneity are of course relative notions. There are endless gradations between the two poles. Regarding the homogenising effects of nationalism, see Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), Ch.4. Benedict Anderson discusses the relationship between a modern idea of ‘homogeneous, empty time’ and the rise of nationalism in his Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, rev. ed., 1991) Ch.2.
19 I leave out a full discussion of Harish Chandra's role in the Indigo Disturbances, which I plan to conduct in a separate paper.
20 Sanyal, Harishchandra, p.2.
21 Nilmani Mukherjee, A Bengal Zamindar: Jaykrishna Mukherjee of Uttarpara, and His Times, 1808–1888 (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1975); and Majumdar, Harish Mukharji, pp.79–81.
22 According to Sanyal he was married at 12. See Ramgopal Sanyal, The Life of the Hon'ble Rai Kristo Das Pal Bahadur, C.I.E. (Calcutta: Ram Coomar Dey, 1886), p.19.
23 Manmathanath Ghosh, The Life of Grish Chunder Ghose: The Founder and First Editor of ‘The Hindoo Patriot’ and ‘The Bengalee’ (Calcutta: R. Cambray & Co., 1911), p.67. According to Sanyal, he obtained the clerkship in 1848 (Sanyal, Celebrities, p.54).
24 Ghosh, Life of Grish Chunder, p.66.
25 Scott and Co's Bengal Directory, and Register, with Almanac and Appendix, for 1852 (Calcutta, 1852), p.292.
26 Ghosh, Life of Grish Chunder, p.9.
27 Sanyal, Harishchandra, p.8.
28 The High Court at Calcutta: Centenary Souvenir: 1862–1962 (Calcutta: High Court Buildings, 1962), p.18.
29 Sanyal, Harishchandra, p.8.
30 Ghose, ‘Hurris Chunder’, p.103.
31 Sanyal, Harishchandra, pp.51, 53; and Sanyal, Celebrities, p.84.
32 Ghose, ‘Hurris Chunder’, p.99. See also Sanyal, Kristo Das, pp.26–7.
33 ‘The Humble Petition of the Members of the British Indian Association, etc.’, in First Report from the Select Committee on Indian Territories, with Minutes of Evidence and Appendices, 1852–53, Parliamentary Papers, session 1852–53, Vol.xxvii, pp.493–508; and Buckland, Lieutenant-Governors, vol.2, p.1049. This document is sometimes attributed to Digambar Mitra. See Majumdar, Political Ideas, p.192.
34 Sanyal, Kristo Das, p.19; Sanyal, Harishchandra, pp.10–11.
35 Ghosh, Life of Grish Chunder, pp.21–3.
36 Early biographical accounts say that the first editor was Grish Chandra Ghosh (Sanyal, Harishchandra, p.1; Ghosh, Life of Grish Chunder, p.80). However, in his letter to The Hindoo Patriot dated 10 October 1869 Madhusudan Ray, the first proprietor, states categorically that Harish Chandra edited the paper from the very beginning (Sengupta, Sambadik Kesari, pp.38–9).
37 Sanyal, Kristo Das, pp.17–18; and Sanyal, Celebrities, p.81. Furthermore, neither the editors nor the writers were held in high esteem during the earlier years. See Mrinal Kanti Chanda, History of English Press in Bengal 1780 to 1857 (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1987), pp.380, 395–6.
38 Blair B. Kling, The Blue Mutiny: The Indigo Disturbances in Bengal 1859–1862 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966); and Ranajit Guha, ‘Neel Darpan: The Image of a Peasant Revolt in a Liberal Mirror’, in Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol.2, no.1 (1974), pp.1–46.
39 ‘Indigo Planting’, The Hindoo Patriot (hereafter HP) (29 July 1858), in Nares Chandra Sen-Gupta (ed.), Selections from the Writings of Hurrish Chunder Mookerji (Calcutta: The Cherry Press, c.1910) (hereafter HCM), pp.190–3.
40 Report of the Indigo Commission Appointed under Act XI of 1860, with the Minutes of Evidence … and Appendix, Parliamentary Papers, session 1861, Vol.xliv, pp.260–1; and Sanyal, Celebrities, pp.70–9.
41 Sanyal, Kristo Das, p.27.
42 Majumdar, Harish Mukharji, Ch.5.
43 Sanyal, Harishchandra, pp.50, 52–3.
44 Majumdar, Harish Mukharji, Ch.4. Kisori Chand, the editor of The Indian Field, launched a campaign together with The Hindoo Patriot in support of the indigo cultivators. Later, the two newspapers would merge. See Kling, Blue Mutiny, p.119.
45 Sanyal, Kristo Das, p.13.
46 Ibid.
47 Sanyal, Harishchandra, pp.47–8; and Sanyal, Celebrities, pp.84–6.
48 Sanyal, Kristo Das, pp.24–8.
49 Sanyal, Harishchandra, p.48.
50 Grish Chandra's grandfather, Kashi Nath, acquired a large fortune as an assistant banyan to Messrs. Fairlie, Fergusson & Co., one of the largest agency houses in Calcutta. See Ghosh, Life of Grish Chunder, Ch.2.
51 Ibid., p.6.
52 Ibid., pp.38, 45–6, 52–4, 61.
53 There is a probability that he entered the Association as a paid clerk. His name appeared on its membership list for the first time in 1855. See Majumdar, Harish Mukharji, p.65.
54 Chanda, English Press, p.334.
55 Rev. James Long, A Return of the Names and Writings of 515 Persons Connected with Bengali Literature … and a Catalogue of Bengali Newspapers and Periodicals, etc., (Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, No.507) (Calcutta: Thos. Jones, ‘‘Calcutta Gazette'' Office, 1855), pp.146–8.
56 HP, 6 Jan. 1859. Regarding the publishers and printers of this newspaper, see Sengupta, Sambadik Kesari, Ch.4.
57 Ibid., pp.38–9. Grish Chandra's biographer writes that the paper was named by the Ghosh brothers (Ghosh, Life of Grish Chunder, p.80). But Sengupta has established that he was wrongly informed.
58 Sanyal, Harishchandra, p.1.
59 Long, Returns Relating to Native Printing Presses and Publications in Bengal (Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, No.506), p.92.
60 Ghosh, Life of Grish Chunder, p.82.
61 For the early history of The Hindoo Patriot, see ibid., pp.79–89; Sanyal, Kristo Das, pp.20–1; and Sengupta, Sambadik Kesari, Ch.4.
62 Smarajit Chakraborti, The Bengali Press (1818–1868): A Study in the Growth of Public Opinion (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1976), pp.139–57.
63 John McGuire, The Making of a Colonial Mind: A Quantitative Study of the Bhadralok in Calcutta, 1857–1885 (Canberra: The Australian National University, 1983), p.58.
64 Sanyal, Kristo Das, pp.29–30. During the nineteenth century there were two forms of remuneration for newspaper editors; one a monthly salary, the other a fixed percentage of the profits (Chanda, English Press, pp.378–9).
65 Sanyal, Kristo Das, pp.29–31, 177–82. On the complicated transactions, see also Majumdar, Harish Mukharji, pp.54–6.
66 Long, Native Printing Presses, p.89; and Sanyal, Kristo Das, p.5.
67 Sanyal, Kristo Das, p.21.
68 Ibid., pp.6–7.
69 Amiya Kumar Bagchi, The Evolution of the State Bank of India: The Roots, 1806–1876, Part One (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1987), p.245.
70 Sanyal, Harishchandra, p.2.
71 Sanyal, Kristo Das, p.5.
72 Ibid., p.31.
73 Ibid., p.21.
74 Majumdar, Harish Mukharji, p.58.
75 The problem of the readers (or the reading public), publishers, and voluntary associations (e.g. reading circles and libraries) has constituted one of the major subjects of research in social and cultural history for the last few decades. See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Enquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1989); and Roger Chartier, The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe between the 14th and 18th Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). In this connection I would like to suggest that the emergence of a new readership was probably closely connected with the growth of such voluntary associations as the sabha where Harish Chandra, Sambhu Nath Pandit and other young intellectuals got together to discuss legal issues, and that these moves might have formed important facets of the process in which something like the ‘public sphere’ came into being under colonial conditions. For a study of modern Indian history from this angle, see Veena Naregal, Language Politics, Elites, and the Public Sphere: Western India under Colonialism (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001); Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002); and the articles collected as ‘Aspects of ‘‘the Public'' in Colonial South Asia' in South Asia, Vol.14, no.1 (1991). Partha Chatterjee's Texts of Power addresses a set of similar problems in Bengal from a Foucaultian perspective.
76 Chanda, English Press, p.395.
77 Ghosh, Life of Grish Chunder, pp.75–6.
78 Ibid., p.75.
79 Sanyal, Harishchandra, pp.9–10.
80 Pradip Sinha, Nineteenth Century Bengal: Aspects of Social History (Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1965), Ch.6. As to conservative inertia in Bengali elite society, see also Sumit Sarkar, A Critique of Colonial India (Calcutta: Papyrus, 1985); and Asok Sen, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and His Elusive Milestones (Calcutta: Riddhi-India, 1977).
81 The Phoenix (17 Jun. 1861) reproduced in Sanyal, Kristo Das, pp.22–3.
82 ‘The Sale Law and the Zemindars’, HP (12 Mar. 1857), in HCM, pp.166–71; and Majumdar, Harish Mukharji, Ch.6.
83 ‘The Army’, HP (4 Mar. 1858), and ‘The New Army’, HP (27 May 1858), in HCM, pp.iii–vii.
84 A series of articles on civil service is a case in point. See HCM, pp.247–63.
85 A brief discussion of Harish Chandra's political views will be found in Majumdar, Political Ideas, pp.146–49; and Sinha, Nineteenth Century Bengal, pp.102–9. Dilip Majumdar has also attempted to discuss Harish Chandra's political thought. See Majumdar, Harish Mukharji, Ch.14.
86 ‘The Country and the Government’, HP (21 May 1857), in HCM, p.13.
88 ‘The Conduct of the War’, HP (1 July 1858), in HCM, pp.23–4.
87 Harish Chandra threw his full support behind Canning who issued the famous ‘Clemency’ Resolution in July 1857, instructing his officers to deal leniently with those rebels not directly involved in the killing of Europeans. See Majumdar, Harish Mukharji, Ch.8.
92 ‘The Oude Proclamation’, HP (29 Apr. 1858), in HCM, pp.50–1.
89 ‘The New India Bill: Constitutional Points’, HP (13 May 1858), in HCM, p.120.
90 ‘The Causes of the Mutiny’, HP (27 May 1858), in HCM, p.16.
91 ‘Delhi Proclamation’, HP (14 Oct. 1858), in HCM, p.70.
93 ‘Our Policy on Oude’, HP (29 July 1858), in HCM, p.61
94 ‘The New India Bill: Constitutional Points’, HP (13 May 1858), in HCM, p.130.
95 The problem of legitimacy was taken up for academic discussion for the first time in 1922 by a British historian. See F.W. Buckler, ‘The Political Theory of the Indian Mutiny’, in Michael Pearson (ed.), Legitimacy and Symbols: The South Asian Writings of F.W. Buckler (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 1985). I owe this reference to Professor Barun De.
96 ‘The Sanskrit and Vernacular Languages’, HP (12 Aug. 1858), in HCM, p.341.
97 ‘Delhi Proclamation’, HP (14 Oct. 1858), in HCM, p.70
98 ‘The Future of Indian Government’, HP (14 Jan. 1858), in HCM, p.124.
99 ‘The Proclamation’, HP (23 Sept. 1858), in HCM, p.142
101 ‘Federalization’, HP (26 Aug. 1858), in HCM, p.234.
100 ‘Federalization’, HP (n.d.), in HCM, p.226.
102 Partha Chatterjee draws our attention to a few cases of history having been written in the late nineteenth century on an assumption that the Indian polity was ‘confederal’. See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp.113–5.
103 Rajat Kanta Ray, ‘Race, Religion and Realm: The Political Theory of “The Reigning Indian Crusade”’, in Mushirul Hasan and Narayani Gupta (eds), India's Colonial Encounter: Essays in Memory of Eric Stokes (New Delhi: Manohar, 1993), p.133. See also Ray, Felt Community, Pt.2.
104 Tanika Sarkar, ‘Imagining Hindu Rashtra: The Hindu and the Muslim in Bankimchandra's Writings’, in Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), p.183.
105 See ‘Mr. Townsend's Lecture’, HP (n.d.), in HCM, p.303.
106 Regarding the elaborate ideological apparatus built up by the British to circumscribe this dilemma, see T.R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), Chs.3–5.
107 ‘English and Hindoo Civilisation: A Contrast’, HP (13 Apr. 1857), and ‘The Christianity in India’, HP (18 Feb. 1858), in HCM, pp.322–31. ‘The Christianity in India’ is also included in Writings of Grish Chunder, pp.319–22. It seems to be one of Harish Chandra's pieces because of its style, as well as its content, which is clearly consistent with his argument in ‘English and Hindoo Civilisation: A Contrast’.
108 ‘English and Hindoo Civilisation: A Contrast’, HP (13 Apr. 1857), in HCM, pp.322–8.
109 Regarding the dichotomous social outlook of this sort in nineteenth-century Bengal, see Partha Chatterjee, ‘The Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question’, in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds), Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989), pp.233–53. The question of femininity and masculinity in colonial society is discussed by Ashis Nandy in his The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), Pt.1, Ch.2.
110 ‘The Mission of the Mutinies’, HP (18 Nov. 1858), in HCM, pp.xii–xiii.
111 ‘The Necessity of a Language for India’, HP (n.d.), in HCM, p.xviii.
112 ‘The Permanent Settlement’, HP (22 Apr. 1858), in HCM, pp.183–5.
113 ‘The New Sale Law Bill’, HP (n.d.); ‘The Sale Law and the Zemindars’, HP (12 Mar. 1857); ‘The Sale Law Bill’, HP (n.d.), and ‘The Rent Bill’, HP (14 Nov. 1857), in HCM, pp.160–78.
114 Benoy Ghose, ‘Editorial: The Myth of “Clemency Canning”’, in Benoy Ghose (ed.), Selections from English Periodicals of 19th Century Bengal, Vol. 4 (Calcutta: Papyrus, 1979), pp.ix–xiii. See also Guha, ‘Neel Darpan’.
115 ‘English Strikes and Bengallee Dhurmghut’, HP (29 June 1854), in Ghose (ed.), English Periodicals, Vol.3, pp.150–4.
116 He seems to have read some socialist literature. For example, he refers to Alexandre-Auguste Ledru-Rollin (1807–1874), a French lawyer and revolutionary, in this article.
117 See also ‘A Plea for Caste’, HP (4 June 1857); ‘Caste: Its Attributes and History’, HP (11 June 1857); ‘The Social Progress of India’, HP (n.d.), in HCM, pp.314–22. He gave his full support to the caste system.
118 Kalyan Kumar Sen Gupta, Pabna Disturbances and the Politics of Rent, 1873–1885 (New Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1965).
119 ‘Capital and Enterprise’, HP (19 Apr. 1857), in HCM, p.206.
121 HCM, p.208.
120 ‘Merchant and Banian’, HP (11 Feb. 1858), in HCM, pp.208–9.
122 ‘Workmen and Servants’, HP (22 July 1858), in HCM, pp.210–12
123 In Bengal, it was in 1873–74 that Bholanath Chandra pleaded for the legislative protection of the infant industries of India. See Majumdar, Political Ideas, pp.176–8.