Life and Letters of Toru Dutt (1921) is a biography of Toru Dutt. Comprising biographical sections by scholar Harihar Das, selections from her many letters, and commentary on her novels and translations, Life and Letters of Toru Dutt is an invaluable resource for information on a pioneering figure in Indian history and Bengali literature. Born in Calcutta to a family of Bengali Christians, Toru Dutt was raised at the crossroads of English and Indian cultures. In addition to her native Bengali, she became fluent in English, French, and Sanskrit as a young girl, eventually writing novels and poems in each language. Harihar Das’ biography is an exhaustive record of her life from youth to young adulthood, granting particular attention to her travels in England and Europe, which Dutt herself describes in beautiful prose in letters to friends and family. Despite her limited body of work, Dutt’s legacy as a groundbreaking writer remains firm in India and around the world. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Harihar Das and Toru Dutt’s Life and Letters of Toru Dutt is a classic work of Bengali literature reimagined for modern readers.
This rich biography, coinciding with his death centenary, illuminates the remarkable journey of Romesh Chunder Dutt (1848-“1909) situated at the cusp of two centuries and two world views. It traces Dutt's eventful life-from his running away to England at the age of twenty, and being an exemplary ICS officer (the second Indian in the service), to his early retirement and entry into politics, and becoming president of the Indian National Congress in 1899. Dutt's contribution as an economic historian, a translator of Sanskrit epics into English, and a novelist in Bengali, are elaborately discussed and the contradictions in his attitudes to language, to colonialism, and to religion acknowledged. Featuring Curzon, Naoroji, Vidyasagar, Bankimchandra, Gokhale, Sayaji Rao Gaekwad and other luminaries of the national movement, this meticulously researched and elegantly written book captures an extraordinary moment in modern Indian history and will be enjoyed by a wide range of readers.
This book examines the role western-education and social standing played in the development of Indian nationalism in the early twentieth century. It highlights the influences that education abroad had on a significant proportion of the Indian population. A large number of Indian students - including key figures such as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Jawaharlal Nehru - took up prominent positions in government service, industry or political movements after having spent their student years in Britain before the Second World War. Having reaped the benefits of the British educational system, they spearheaded movements in India that sought to gain independence from British rule. The author analyses the long-term impact of this short-term migration on Britain, South Asia and Empire and deals with issues of migrant identities and the ways in which travel shaped ideas about the 'Self' and 'Home'. Through this study of the England-Returned, attention is drawn to contemporary concerns about the politicisation of foreign students and the antecedents of the growing South Asian student population in the USA and Europe today, as well as of Britain's growing South Asian diaspora.