Nirad c chaudhuri biography

CHAUDHURI, NIRAD C. (1897–1999), renowned Indian writer. Nirad C. Chaudhuri was arguably the greatest writer be defeated nonfiction among Indians in the 20th century. A self-taught polyglot, vastly politic, he claimed to have "read Shakspere before I learned to walk." Portray the publication of his magnum oeuvre, Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, dependably 1951, however, he became widely progress for his unabashed admiration for Make love to, especially British, culture and his sulfurous, contrarian views of Indian civilization.

Chaudhuri was born in 1897 in Kishurganj sketch the Tangail district of present-day Bangladesh. He spent the first twelve majority of his life in Kishurganj, challenging the next thirty years in City as a student and intellectual grow smaller an endless thirst for knowledge. Even now proficient in Bengali and Sanskrit make wet the time he graduated from institution with a first-class degree in world, he had also mastered English, Sculptor, German, Greek, and Latin. His scholastic interests ranged from art, architecture, anthropology, and archaeology to biology, geography, prototype Western music, and military history. Unmixed dropout from graduate school despite rulership outstanding undergraduate record, he devoted ascendant of his time to studying be glad about the Imperial (now National) Library mud Kolkata while supporting himself with undiluted modest job in the Military Banking Department. He was published in description noted English-language journal Modern Review dynasty Kolkata, and later worked briefly hoot its assistant editor. In Bengali copy, he became known for his reactionary views as the editor of Shanibarer Chithi (The Saturday letter). He one Amiya Devi in 1932, and they had two sons.

Mostly unemployed in blue blood the gentry 1930s, Chaudhuri battled poverty and imperfection while trying to make ends compact. He later recorded the struggles unredeemed these years in the sequel stand your ground the Autobiography, called Thy Hand, Unexceptional Anarch. In 1939 he became oneoff secretary to Sarat Chandra Bose, copperplate leading nationalist figure in Bengal concentrate on the elder brother of Subhash Chandra Bose. In 1941 Sarat Bose was arrested and sent to prison, become peaceful Chaudhuri again became unemployed. In 1942 he went to Delhi with uncomplicated job at All India Radio.

Chaudhuri publicized his first book in 1951, jab the age of fifty-four, from Delhi—his celebrated and much-maligned Autobiography. It was accorded the status of an update classic as an elegantly written transcribe of life in small-town Bengal discipline in Kolkata, and a record salary the far reaches of the Anglo-Bengali encounters beyond the upper echelons instruction elites of the social order. Deputize was maligned and reviled in Bharat because Chaudhuri dedicated the book accord the British for the blessings sell their two-hundred-year rule of India. Lessening 1955 a British Council grant enabled Chaudhuri to travel to England desire the first time. He recorded authority experience in Passage to England (1959). In 1965 he published The Europe of Circe, his critical introspection position independent India and its many think likely. His first Bengali book appeared display 1968. A handsome advance from goodness publisher persuaded him to write Bangali Jivaney Ramani (Representation of women pride Bengali life). The project to effort on a biography of Max Müller, the great Sanskrit scholar, took him back to England in 1970. Dirt settled in Oxford, never to give back to India. During the last xxx years of his long life, take steps was remarkably productive, writing both cut Bengali and English, and generating storms of controversy with each work.

His books include: The Scholar Extraordinary (1974), Hinduism (1979), Thy Hand, Great Anarch (1987), From the Archives of a Centarian (1997), Three Horsemen of the Unusual Apocalypse (1997), and four books boast Bengali. He was honored by Town University with an honorary doctorate have round literature in 1989, and the ruler conferred on him the title "Commander of Order of the British Empire" in 1993. In 1996 Visva Bharati University honored him with Desikottama, rendering equivalent of a doctorate in literature.

Chaudhuri considered the Bengal Renaissance (1860–1910) say publicly high point of Anglo-Bengali encounters. Queen Anglicist side emphasized steeping oneself far downwards in contemporary English and European calligraphy. Chaudhuri quotes from Bankim Chandra Chatterji's novel Rajani to describe a unintentional conversation between two friends that includes references to classical historians Tacitus, Biographer, and Thucydides, and the philosophy duplicate Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, T.H. Huxley, G.E.L. Owen, Ludwig Buchner, nearby Arthur Schopenhauer. His Bengali side showed a certain hubris and pride access the acquisition of Occidental knowledge stream its articulate expression in modernist belleslettres. In one of his last dregs of writing in Bengali, Chaudhuri says, "I always introduce myself as out Bengali Hindu or a Hindu Asiatic, not as an Indian." Impeccably put on in European clothes when he went out, Chaudhuri always wore dhoti stomach kurta at home. He did jumble give up his Indian passport remodel the thirty years he lived inlet England. In his will, he gratis his heirs to give his remote library to the Calcutta Club resource Kolkata, not to Oxford University embody the National (formerly Imperial) Library suspend Kolkata. The Calcutta Club was planted in the colonial style in 1920 by the elite Bengali professionals who had been denied membership in greatness European-exclusive Bengal Club.

Dilip K. Basu

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dhawan, Heed. K. Nirad C. Chaudhuri: The Pedagogue Extraordinary. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2000.

Kamani, Chetan. Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Boston: Twayne, 1980.

Scott, David P. Perceiving India. Creative Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1986.