NB: Those who bang on about Macaulay’s Minute on education (1835) should acquaint themselves with this early Indian patriot, whose work in education inspired a generation and who preceded Macaulay by many years. DS
The men of Young Bengal emerge not as pale imitations of British liberals, but as creative political thinkers who addressed India’s colonial predicaments.
Rosinka Chaudhuri’s India’s First Radicals: Young Bengal and the British Empire attempts to rescue from historical obscurity a group of 19th-century Bengali intellectuals whose contributions to Indian modernity have been systematically undervalued. The book charts the activities of the students and followers of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio at Hindu College between 1830 and 1850, arguing that these men, collectively known as Young Bengal, laid the conceptual and practical foundations for democratic politics, civil liberties, and social reform in colonial India.
Chaudhuri’s central thesis rests on a bold claim that Young Bengal anticipated many of the political and social positions that would later be associated with Indian nationalism, liberal democracy, and leftist politics. Through meticulous archival research, she traces how this cohort of college-educated Bengalis developed what she terms “a language of left politics” decades before organised nationalist movements emerged. The book’s structure follows the revolutionary trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity, examining how Young Bengal articulated demands for freedom of speech, equal justice under law, and social reform that transcended caste and religious boundaries.
Addressing Indian grievances
The historical context Chaudhuri establishes proves crucial to understanding her argument. Writing in the immediate aftermath of the Charter Act of 1833 that ended the East India Company’s commercial monopoly while retaining its governmental functions, Young Bengal found itself navigating a moment of imperial transition. The author demonstrates how this group, rather than being passive recipients of Western liberal ideas, actively appropriated and transformed European political concepts to address specifically Indian grievances. Their bilingual newspapers, public meetings, and political societies created what Chaudhuri identifies as the “first genuinely Indian public sphere,” a space where political critique could be articulated in both English and Bengali.
One of the book’s most compelling chapters examines the dramatic confrontation of February 8, 1843, when Dakshinaranjan Mukherjee delivered a scathing critique of British judicial corruption at a meeting of the Society for the Acquisition of General Knowledge. When DL Richardson, principal of Hindu College, interrupted the proceedings to denounce the gathering as “a den of treason,” the assembled Indians refused to be cowed down. Instead, they forced Richardson to apologise and relocated their meetings to independent premises. This incident, Chaudhuri argues, represents a watershed moment in the assertion of Indian civil liberties, a demand for “absolute liberty under responsibility” that preceded by 16 years John Stuart Mill’s theoretical elaboration of similar principles in On Liberty.
The author’s treatment of agrarian politics reveals another dimension of Young Bengal’s prescience. Through a detailed analysis of Pearychand Mittra’s essays on the plight of Bengal ryots, Chaudhuri shows how these urban intellectuals developed a sophisticated critique of the effects of the Permanent Settlement on rural society. Their use of terms like “the people of India” and “the great body of the people” signals what she identifies as the first articulation of a genuinely national political consciousness.
Young Bengal’s concern with peasant suffering, expressed through both analytical essays and narrative fiction, anticipates the social democratic rhetoric that would characterise Bengali leftist politics well into the 20th century. Chaudhuri’s discussion of the Bengal British India Society, founded in April 1843, provides evidence for her claim that Young Bengal created India’s first modern political party.
Unlike the wealthy Landholders’ Society, which represented narrow zamindari interests, the BBIS explicitly committed itself to “the welfare, extend[ing] the just rights and advance[ing] the interest of all classes of our fellow subjects” without distinction of “Caste, Creed, Place of Birth, or Rank in Society.” The society’s methods, public meetings, petitions, press campaigns, and international networking established the template for constitutional agitation that would define Indian political movements throughout the colonial period.
The book’s analysis of Young Bengal’s relationship with British radicals like George Thompson complicates conventional narratives of colonial intellectual influence. Rather than depicting Indians as passive recipients of metropolitan ideas, Chaudhuri demonstrates how Young Bengal actively sought out British allies whose political positions aligned with their own preexisting concerns. Thompson’s thirteen-month sojourn in Calcutta emerges not as a moment of Western enlightenment descending upon colonial minds, but as a collaborative effort between Indian and British radicals to challenge imperial governance through coordinated public pressure.
Chaudhuri’s treatment of caste and social reform reveals Young Bengal’s most radical dimensions. Their rejection of Hindu orthodoxy went beyond the rational critique of superstition to embrace what she terms “a-religious modernity” – a secular worldview that anticipated the constitutional secularism adopted by independent India. The notorious case of Dakshinaranjan’s marriage to the widowed Rani of Burdwan illustrates how personal choices became political statements, challenging both colonial legal frameworks and indigenous social hierarchies. The book’s discussion of Radhanath Sikdar’s legal case against a British magistrate for mistreating Indian labourers provides a concrete example of Young Bengal’s commitment to racial equality.
Reform and revolution
Chaudhuri shows how this case, fought on explicitly constitutional grounds, asserted the principle that British subjects in India deserved equal protection under law regardless of race or social position. The systematic suppression of Sikdar’s later scientific contributions to the measurement of Mount Everest becomes, in this context, emblematic of the colonial state’s inability to acknowledge Indian intellectual equality even when confronted with undeniable evidence.
However, the book’s argument occasionally strains under the weight of its revisionist ambitions. Chaudhuri’s determination to establish Young Bengal’s historical priority sometimes leads to overclaims about their originality. While their bilingual publications and inclusive political rhetoric were indeed innovative, similar developments were talking place elsewhere in colonial India too during the same period. The author’s focus on Calcutta’s English-educated elite also limits her ability to assess Young Bengal’s actual influence on broader Indian society.
The work’s theoretical framework, heavily influenced by Gramscian concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony, sometimes imposes anachronistic categories on 19th-century materials. Chaudhuri’s reading of Young Bengal as proto-socialists projects subsequent political developments backwards in ways that may obscure the specific historical context within which these figures operated. Their critique of British rule, however sharp, remained fundamentally oriented toward reform rather than revolution, and their vision of Indian society, despite its progressive elements, was shaped by distinctly 19th-century assumptions about civilisation and progress.
The prose, while generally clear and well-researched, occasionally succumbs to academic jargon that distances readers from its subjects’ lived experiences. Chaudhuri’s extensive quotation from primary sources effectively demonstrates Young Bengal’s intellectual sophistication, but her analytical framework sometimes overwhelms the human drama of political awakening that she seeks to recover.
Despite these limitations, India’s First Radicals succeeds in its primary objective of rehabilitating Young Bengal’s historical reputation. By demonstrating the sophistication of their political analysis, the breadth of their social concerns, and the influence of their organisational methods, Chaudhuri establishes their legitimate claim to be considered the founders of modern Indian political culture. Her work effectively challenges both colonial-era dismissals of Young Bengal as derivative “mimic men” and postcolonial critiques that reduce them to compradors of Western imperialism.
The book’s broader significance lies in its contribution to our understanding of intellectual modernity in colonial contexts. By showing how Young Bengal developed distinctly Indian responses to universal political questions, Chaudhuri participates in the larger scholarly project of provincialising European political thought. Her subjects emerge not as pale imitations of British liberals but as creative political thinkers who synthesised diverse intellectual traditions to address specifically colonial predicaments.
India’s First Radicals ultimately argues for a more generous assessment of 19th-century Indian intellectual life. Rather than viewing the period between Rammohun Roy and the rise of organised nationalism as a historical lacuna, Chaudhuri demonstrates how Young Bengal’s experiments in democratic politics, social reform, and cultural criticism laid essential groundwork for later political developments. Their story, she suggests, reveals the deeper roots of Indian democracy and secularism, showing how these institutions emerged not from post-independence political engineering but from 19th-century struggles for human dignity and political equality.
The book stands as both a scholarly achievement and a political intervention, rescuing Young Bengal from historical oblivion while contributing to contemporary debates about Indian modernity’s indigenous origins. In our current moment of democratic crisis and religious nationalism, their vision of inclusive, secular, and egalitarian politics offers not nostalgic comfort but urgent inspiration.
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