The Bengali Elite in Post-Annexation

Punjab :
An Example of Inter-Regional Influence in 19th Century India

KENNETH W. JONES,
Department of History, Kansas State University.

On March 29, 1948, the British Government of India announced

the annexation of the Sikh Kingdom of the Punjab, finishing the process
of expansion that had witnessed the gradual absorption of India into the
British Raj. The creation of a new administrative system, its success
in maintaining peace throughout the annexed territories during the
Mutiny, and the rapid development of this ’model’ province during the
last half of the 19th century are known in outline to every student off
Indian history. The social changes that accompanied this administra-
tive process are less well known. Examination of social changes in
India has focussed on a national and regional scale either concerned
primarily with the creation of new class and occupational groupings or
the alteration of traditional patterns of social and economic hierarchy.
The movement of Indians from_ one region to another is still a largely
unexplored process, a process that invites, if not necessitates, more
than one analytical approach. Total emigration to or migration from
a given region and within a specific period of time are both possible
definitions of future studies as well as the emigration, in whole or in
part, from a particular rigion to all other regions. Various levels
of analysis must be undertaken, in addition to the basic compilation of
relevant data, before an overall picture of intra-regional movement can
be established throughout the sub-continent for any given period. This
study employs a limited scope to describe not only the process of inter-
regional movement but some of its accompanying results in the social,
ideological, and political fields, with the focus on a single group: the
educated, westrnized Bengalis who travelled to one area, the Punjab.

Not only was the British ’Punjab’ different in size from it had
been previously, it soon became different in kind. The British them-

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 377

selves a new ruling elite below which was another equally

comprised
new of society, Indian but non-Punjabi. The establishment
stratum
of British rule and its administrative structure necessitated a large num-
ber of clerks, teachers, pleaders, and doctors-the human underpin-
nings of the Raj. Such men were not available within the Punjab
and so were recruited from the older British-controlled territories of
Bengal and the United Provinces. British officers assigned to the
Punjab brought with them their staffs of clerks and subordinate officials,
while missionaries encouraged Bengali converts to move to the North-
West and to accept positions in newly opened Christian institutions.
The opportunities available in the Punjab and the success of their com-
patriots drew educated Bengalis to the Punjab in an increasing stream.
Kayasthas from the United Provinces, Brahmans, Baidyas, and
Kayasthas from Bengal soon created a new social grouping between
the British and the vast number of Punjabis who as yet had no English-
educated and westernized elite of their own. This new level of ’foreign
experts’ did not arrive in the Punjab as an undifferentiated mass but
brought with them the divisions, prejudices, and hierarchial attitudes
that were in existence within Bengal. As is often the case among
emigrants, these differences were somewhat muted by their relative
isolation from the indigenous population, and by the incomplete re-
creation of their home communities’ social structure.

One of the earliest identifiable segments of the Bengali community

to appear in the North-West were the Christian converts who went
there to accept position in newly opened missionary institutions. While
the English administrators from the Gangetic Plain brought their Indian
subordinates, so did the missionaries. Bengali converts educated in
English found in the Punjab career opportunities in much the same
spheres did their Hindu compatriots in government service.
as They
became administrators and educators. Many of the missionary-spon-
sored schools and colleges were headed by Bengalis, and Bengalis were
prominent in the offices of missionary organizations. The career

patterns of the firsttwo Bengali Christians to travel to the Punjab were

typical. Pandit Golaknath Chatterji, the first Brahman convert of the
American Presbyterian Church in India, headed the Jullundur mission,’1
while Radha Raman Raha began his career as a teacher in one of the
mission schools and was later placed in charge of the Religious Books
and Tracts Society of Lahore.22 Both men had been influenced by the
famous missionary Alexander Duff and considered themselves to be
his disciples. From this small beginning a compact community of
Bengali Christians came into existence. Ties of marriage, culture,
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378

and, to some degree, of caste were typical of this community. One of

the most influential of the Bengali Christians, Kali Charan Chatterjee,
travelled to the Punjab in 1861. He had been invited and urged to
come by Golaknath Chatterji who offered him the headmastership of
the Jullundur School. Kali Charan moved to the Punjab in the same
year and in 1862 married Golaknath’s daughter, adding the bond of
matrimony to two men already tied by caste and conversion. Kali
Charan and his wife dedicated their lives to mission service in the
Punjab. He studied for the ministry, was ordained in 1868, and then
moved to Hoshiarpur to head the local mission, where he remained
until his retirement in 1915. While Kali Charan devoted his life to
proselitizing the Christian faith, lie was ably assisted by his wife and
daughter. They opened day-schools for both Muslim and Hindu girls,
in addition to an orphanage and boarding school.33 This pattern of
family participation was not unusual and in many instances these
Bengali families went on to become permanent additions to the Punjabi
scene. Kali Charan’s son is just such an example: he became a
mathematics professor at the Government College, Lahore, and for
4
many years served as a director of the Forman Christian College.4

The Bengali Christians in the Punjab found themselves separated

from the surrounding population by their regional identity and religion.
Marriages presented a major social problem. Recourse to other
Bengali converts in Bengal was possible, but, in several instances, we
have records of local marriages within the small Christian community
of the Punjabi. The marriage between Golaknath’s daughter and
Kali Charan is one such example, a Bengali Brahman Christian, both
were Radhya Brahmans, marrying another Bengali Brahman convert.
A similar case is evident from the marriage of Ram Chandra Banerjee
to the daughter of a Brahman Christian living in Gujranwala.~ Other
converts married into the Christian community of Calcutta.6 The
Bengali Christians in the Punjab were a small tightly knit community,
an extension of the larger convert community of Bengal and the
Gangetic Plain. They were a sub-section of the larger Bengali com-
munity of the Punjab, tied in various degrees of intimacy with both re-
formed and orthodox Bengalis, with reformed and educated Punjabis,
and with their missionary-associates in the European community. Both
the tightly knit nature of this social segment and its occupational ten-
dencies can be illustrated from one set of relationships. Miss Mona
Bose, head of the Government Girl’s College of Lahore, and her sister,
Mrs. Dutt, were well-known members of the Bengali Christian com-

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 379

munity. Mrs. Dutt’s’ son, Dr. S. E. Dutt, became a leading figure in

the Indian Y.M.C.A., while an assistant of Miss Bose’s at the Gov-
ernment College married Dr. Rudra, a Bengali and head of St. Stephen’s
College, Delhi. This type of intermixing of marriage, blood, and asso-
ciational ties was not unusual among Bengali converts, nor were the
occupational choices, government service and missionary activities.7

The largest, most influential and publicly active section of the

Bengali community were the Brahmos, members of the reformed Hindu
sect, the Brahmo Samaj, organized in Calcutta in 1828. While un-
doubtedly many Brahmos entered the Punjab during the 1850’s and
early 1860’s, the Lahore Brahmo Samaj was not founded until 1863.
The Lahore Samaj was established by a small group of Bengalis-
half a dozen or so-and an even smaller number of Punjabi Hindus.8
With the opening of this organization a new era of reform began in
the Punjab. While the Punjab was the home of various reform move-
ments and Protestant-like sects, the Brahmo Samaj was the first such
organization that could be linked directly to the clash of Indian and
British cultures. The Lahore Samaj founded branches in Rawalpindi
(1867), Amritsar (1873), and Multan ( 1875 ),~ and in later years at
Rupar, in Ambala District, at Dera Gazi Khan and Sij-nla.111 During
the 1870’s the Brahmo Samajes of the Punjab strove to create pro-
grams modelled after the parent body, the Bengali I3rahmo Samaj.
Mandirs were erected, schools founded, and weekly meetings for wor-
ship instituted.&dquo; The Brahmo Samaj also employed a congregational
form of religious organization in its Indianized pattern, while the
Christian missions utilized this pattern in its purely western form. Both
were imported and available for later Punjabi adaptation. Not only
did the Brahmo Samaj introduce similar methods of action as those
used by the Christian missionaries they also faced similar problems.
They too were a mission movement in a strange land. They too
found it necessary to publicize their ideas and to bridge the barrier of
language. Bengali was as little understood in the Pu:njab as was
English. In answer to this need the Brahmo Samaj had established by
1876 a society for the translation and publication of Brahmo literature,
a society that eventually produced religious and social tra.cts in Punjabi,
Hindi and Urdu. By 1877, the Lahore Brahmo Samaj possessed one
of the new Brahmo printing presses outside of Bengal. In addition,
they began to publish a monthly journal, Hari Hakikat, which, by 1877,
had a circulation of 200. As was typical of such periodicals, this
Brahmo journal had a checkered career, now appeariing under one

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380

name and now under another; however, it continued to be published

usually in two editions, one in Urdu and the other in Hindi. 12 Innova-
tive leadership in journalism, in literature, and in social and religious
reform marked the early years of the Punjab Brahmo Samaj and of the
wider Bengali community.

While several Samajas had ben founded and new ones opened
from time to time, only two remained vigorous throughout the later
19th century: the parent Samaj at Lahore and the Samaj in Simla.13
The Lahore Brahmo Samaj had the advantage of a concentration of
Bengalis in the Lahore area. The most prominent member of this
group was Babu Novin Chandra Rai who moved to the Punjab in 1869
to accept the joint positions of Vice-Principal of the Oriental College
and Registrar of the Punjab University. 14 Novin Chandra quickly be-
came the leading member of the Lahore Brahmo Samaj, the Bengali

community of Lahore, and one of the most important figures in the

new educated elite of the Punjab. He was an articulate writer and
eloquent public speaker, remaining active in the public life of the pro-
vince for over thirty years, and was an example of the type of individual
who made the Bengali community in the Punjab influential far beyond
its numerical strength.

The work of the Brahmo Samaj was successful enough to result

in both emulation and opposition. The Sat Sabha, founded in 1866,
was directly modelled after the Brahmo Samaj by its founded, Lala
Behari Lal, an ex-Brahmo. J;¡ This organization was dedicated to social
reform and education, as was the Brahmo Samaj, but with one major
difference, the Sat Sabha sought to utilize Punjabi as the sole medium
of its work. There was a close connection between the two organiza-
tions in their basic tenets, with the Sat Sabha also following a theistic
and eclectic ideology. One of the results of this similarity was that
in later years both the Sat Sabha and the Brahmo Samaj were criticized
for being too eclectic and too &dquo;tainted with foreignism&dquo;.’u

Opposition to the activities of the Brahmo Samaj within the Punjab

appeared in the 1870’s primarily from orthodox Hindu leaders who

resented the criticism levelled against traditional Hinduism by individual
Brahmo Samajists and by the Samaj as an organization. Shraddha
Phillauri led much of the orthodox response to the Brahmo Samaj .

through his speaking tours, writings, and public debates in which he

challenged the Brahmo reformers, especially Novin Chandra Rai.17

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 381

While counter-attacks by conservative Punjabi Hindus were a constant

and continual factor, it was not this opposition that provided a serious
challenge to the position of the Brahmo Samaj or to the dominance 6f
the Bengali elite asociated with it. Brahmo-Bengali leadership was
drastically curtailed by the emergence of a new Punjabi elite and by
the rise of a rival organization, the Arya Samaj. As more and more
Punjabi Hindus began to receive western education and to find places
in the new professions, they too became concerned with religious and
social questions within the province. This new Punjabi elite, however,
did not turn to the ideology and programs of the Brahmo Samaj, but,
instead, to the Arya Samaj. ·

This Punjabi challenge crystallizedwith the arrival of Swami

Dayanand Saraswati in 1877. While in Delhi for the great Durbar in
honor of Queen Victoria, Dayanand was invited to visit Lahore and
the Punjab by a group of local leaders, including Novin Chandra Rai.18
During his only visit to the Punjab, from April 1877 to July 1878, he
founded nine Arya Samajes and in each case the local Brahmo Samaj
chapter faced a decision-to join thc new movement, to offer friendly
cooperation, or to oppose it.’~’ The decision varied from place to
place, but more often than not, it was to oppose the Arya Samaj. The
results of either cooperation or opposition were roughty t.he same-in
both cases the Brahmo Samaj lost membership and support. General-
ly, those who left the Brahmo Samaj for the Arya Samaj were Punjabi
Hindus. Some Bengalis joined the Arya Samaj, but few remained in
it for any length of time; two exceptions to this pattern. were Babu
Becha Ram Chatterjee, president of the Suk 1‘ar Arya Samaj in Sind,
and Kali Prosanna Chatterjee of Lahore.2°

The Brahmo Samaj also faced other locally-inspired competitors

and in the case of the Dev Samaj was confronted with a rival largely
of its own creation. Pandit Shiv Narain Agnihotri was one of the most
promising young men of the Lahore Brahmo Samaj. A brilliant
speaker, a publicist of considerable note, and a Brahmo missionary,
Pandit Agnihotri was one of the few young Punjabis to dedicate him-
self to the Brahmo cause. This early promise was not fulfilled and,
in 1887, Agnihotri broke with the Brahmo Samaj to form his own
organization, the Dev Samaj or Divine Society. Agnihotri announced
himself as &dquo;Dev Guru Bhagwan&dquo;, and recruited members from the com-
munity and from his former afplliates in the Brahmo Samaj. 21 While
the Brahmos found themselves competing with organizations such as

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382

the Arya Sammaj and the Dev Samaj, they were able to stave off the
internal divisions that plagued the movement in Bengal. The split bet-
ween the followers of Keshab Chandra Sen’s New Dispensation and the
Sadharan Brahmo Samaj that divided the movement into bitter factions
in Bengal was avoided in the Punjab. The Lahore Brahmo Samaj
joined neither of the two new societies and continued to list among its
ministers members of both factions .2&dquo; The distance from Bengal serv-
ed to insulate the small Bengali community from dissension produced
in the home province, but left the movement to face local challenges.

The of which organization would dominate, the new Arya

question
Samaj or the older Brahmo Samaj, ended only in the 1880’s when the
Arya Samaj succeeded in a struggle for the allegiance of the new edu-
cated Punjabi Hindus. Brahmo influence among the students at then
Government College, Lahore, was considerable. Many of the students
attending this institution joined the Brahmo Samaj and were active in
it; however, they gradually drifted away and into the Arya Samaj.
Pandit Guru Datt, the leading ideologe of the Arya Samaj, Lala Munshi
Ram (late swami Shraddhanand), the founder of the Gurukul Kangri,
Lala Lajpat Rai, Samajist and political leader, Lala Sain Das, later a
commanding figure in the ’college’ wing of the Arya Samaj, and Bhagat
Ishwar Das were all members of the Lahore Brahmo Samaj. But by
the end of their student days they had changed their allegiance to the
Arya Samaj and there it remained. This failure of the Brahmo Samaj
to retain the support of young Punjabi Hindus limited the future in-
fluence of that organization and resulted from a rejection by Punjabi
Hindus of the Brahmo Samaj ideology and of the attitudes behind that
ideology.

The Brahmo Samaj was too eclectic, too tolerant and at the same
time too socially radical to win widespread acceptance in the Punjab.
Its eclecticism led to an appreciation of all religions, including Chris-
tianity, while its social radicalism often offended Punjabis. An exam-
ple of this was the Briti Bhojan, or love feast, held by the Lahore
Brahmo Samaj. While this communal meal was intended to bind the
membership together, many of the leading Punjabi Brahmos refused to
take part for fear of breaking caste restrictions. 23 . A new ideology
more militant and at the same time less radical, was needed, and the

Arya Samaj provided just such an ideology. Bepin Chandra Pal,

noting this failure of the Brahmo Samaj, commented that what was
wanted was &dquo;a direct message of monotheism on the authority of the

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 383

Vedas, because such a message would place the modern Hindu religion
on the same plane as Christianity or Islam, and it was this more per-
haps than any spiritual need that moved the youthful intelligentsia of
the Punjab in those days. The Brahma Samaj by its universalism and
particularly by its open appreciation of Christian ethics and piety did
not meet this need of the Punjabee mind. This is why the message of
the movement of Pandit Dayananda had such large, if not almost uni-
versal, acceptance of the intellectual classes of the Punjabee Hindu. &dquo;24
The Arya Samaj was aggressive, insistent on the superiority of Hindu-
ism and in the sphere of social reform careful never to force a break
with the caste biractaris; never in its religious reforms to leave the world
of Hinduism. With the Arya Samaj’s success in recruiting the new
Hindu elite, the Brahmo Samaj became increasingly a Bengali organi-
zation, drawing nearly all its membership from the Bengali community.

Successful competition from other elites did not end Bengali in-
fluence within the province. Instead it indicated a shift in the areas
of such influence and leadership. During the 1860’s and 1870’s
Bengalis primarily concerned themselves with social reform and edu-
cation ; in the next two decades, leadership in these areas came from
the Arya Samaj and from numerous other new organizations existent
in all three religious communities of the Punjab. Nevertheless, Bengalis
still led in policies and in the linguistic controversies, while they parti-
cipated as followers in other new social and educational movements.

One of the most surprising areas of interest and public action on

the part of Bengalis was the promotion of Hindi. Efforts to press for
the acceptance of Hindi instruction and in government service parallel-
ed and did not conflict with the attempt to have English declared the
medium of higher education. The years 1881 and 1882 witnessed
two controversies over language. The establishment of the Hunter
Commission on educational policy initiated a debate between Muslims
who wanted to retain Urdu as both the language of the lower educa-
tional levels and of administration, and the Hindu who wanted to re-
place it with Hindi. In this controversy, the Bengalis sided with their
co-religionists. Lajpat Rai, speaking of this Brahmo support for
Hindi, stated that &dquo;Although Brahmo literature did not very much
glorify Hinduism, its atmosphere was not free from Hindu nationalism.
The Brahmos were much enamoured of the English people and English
culture, but as compared with Islam they respected pristine Hinduism.
They were votaries of Sanskrit and Hindi, and in the Urdu-Hindi con-
I
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384

troversy they advocated the cause of Hindi.&dquo;25 A second controversy-

erupted between the ’orientalists,’ led by Dr. G. W. Leitner who called
for the establishment of an Oriental University which would teach pri-
marily in the Indian language, and the educated Indian community, led
by Bengali Brahmos who wanted to have higher education taught in
English. They feared, as did many of the Punjabi intelligentsia, that
an ’oriental’ education would be useless in preparing for government

service or for the new professions of law, medicine, and journalism .21,

From their institutional bases, the Brahmo Samaj and the Indian
.

Association, the Bengalis mounted their attack on ’oriental learning ;12T

however, their most effective weapon was the Tribune. Founded in
1881 by Sardar Dayal Singh Majithia, an English-language newspaper,
the Tribune, was the most singly effective voice of the Bengalis and
of the educated Hindus of the Punjab. Dayal Singh Majithia, a Sikh
aristocrat, a philanthropist and life-time supporter of the Brahmo Samaj
founded the Tribune partially in response to Surendranath Banerjee’s
urging. The two men became close associates after Banerjee’s first
tour of the Punjab in 1877.2k Throughout the 19th and into the 20th
centuries, the Tribune was in attitude and personnel largely Bengali
and Brahmo. Seetal Chandra Mukherjee served as the first editor of
the Tribune, although he remained in Allahabad where he also edited
the People. Sitala Kanta Chatterjee, who went to Lahore as sub-editor
of the Tribune, assumed the editorship after Seetal Chandra stepped
down in 1887, while B. C. Pal moved into the vacant post of sub-
editor.211 Not only was the staff heavily Bengali, but the trustees and
close associates of Dayal Singh were also Bengalis. One of the few
exceptions to the Bengali-Brahmo nature of the Tribune staff was Kali
Prosanna Chatterjee, a sub-editor and a prominent Arya who taught
science at the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic schools, managed and supported
by the Arya Samaj.31’
The Bengalis most vocal in the demand for Hindi were Babu
Novin Chandra Rai, Sitala Kanta Chatterjee, and Kali Prosanna Chat-
terjee. All three wrote and spoke in support of the adoption of the
Dev Nagri script, for the promotion of Hindi literature and, particular-
ly, for its acceptance as the medium. of instruction in government
schools. Novin Chandra Rai was the most persuasive of the three.
He wrote in Hindi, advocated its use, and encouraged Punjabi pandits
to adopt Hindi. As an educator and outstanding puglic figure, he
commanded widespread public attention. Novin Chandra participated
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 385

in the Brahmo Samaj experience in translating their literature from

Bengali or English into one of the languages current in the Punjab3l
and became convinced that Hindi should be the language of communi-
cation throughout the province. This advocacy of Hindi was on two
levels: the desire to use the Dev Nagri script and the hope of having
Hindi, the language, accepted by the schools, and as a general commu-
nicative medium. While Hindi as a language was discussed and thanks
to Novin Chandra increasingly used, it was the controversy over a
script that received the most public attention. The issue was clearly
defined and was, in its implications, directly anti-Muslim. In later
years, this agitation largely against the Perso-Arabic script evolved into
a movement against the Urdu language, a movement supported by
Bengalis and Arya Samajists, as well as orthodox Hindus. In this, as
in other fields, the Brahmo Samaj and the Bengalis had pioneered. It
seems rather ironic, though, that it was Bengalis who had such a strong

leadership role in the drive for Hindi, a language that was for them
even more foreign than it was for many Punjabis.

Bengalis participated and were innovators in the political and pre-

political groups formed in the 1870’s and 1880’s. Here again organi-
zations created elsewhere and transported to the Punjab by Bengalis
were initially dominated by them. Bengalis acted as innovators, intro-
ducing new attitudes and ideas into the Punjab which they received
from the home province of Bengal. They were aided in this innova-
tive role by their continual association with Bengal. Leaders of the
stature of Surendranath Banerjee, Keshab Chandra Sen, and Swami
Vivakananda traveled repeatedly to Punjab to win support for their
programs and causes. Bengalis went to visit friends or relatives, to
conduct business, or to proselitize for various social, political, or reli-
gious movements of Bengal. In his autobiography, Nagendranath Gupta
mentioned meeting many Bengalis in Lahore, including Sivanath Shastri
and Pratap Chandra Majumdar who went to deliver lectures on the
Brahmo Samaj, and Dr. Kali Gupta and Anand Mohan Bose who went
to visit friends .32 This was a two-way exchange, with Bengalis
travelling from the Punjab back to Bengal for visits or to retire. A
continuous pattern of interaction and communication was maintained.
For the public figures who went to the North-West, the Bengali com-
munities of the United Provinces and the Punjab were ready-made
audiences, while for the Bengalis in these communities the speakers
were living links with Bengal.

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386

In 1877, Surendranath Banerjea made his first tour of the North-

West, including the Punjab. This tour, sparked by the lowering of
the age limit in the Civil Service Examinations, resulted in the founding
of the Lahore Indian Association, in Banerjea’s own words, &dquo;the first
political organization in the Punjab that provided a common platform
for all sections of the Indian community. ,,33 Jogendra Chandra Bose
and Kali Prosanna Roy scon became recognized leaders of the Indian
Association,.&dquo;,4 while Bengali participation in and support for the Asso-
ciation was greater than for any other provincial organization, with
the possible exception of the Punjab Brahmo Samaj. Bengali-Brahmo
efforts in the political sphere were undergirded mainly by Sardar Dayal
Singh, who financially underwrote the Indian Association, so much
so that after his death in 1898 the organization suffered an almost

total eclipse,&dquo;5 A similar pattern of participation is found in the Indian

National Congress. Again, both Kali Prossana Roy and Jogendra
Bose led and again both were allied with Sardar Dayal Singh. For
the Bengali community, however, membership in the Congress was some-
what dangerous. Their position as government servants made over

support of the Congress unadvisable and so they tended to let Dayal

Singh and the Tribune publicly back the Congress, while the majority
of the Bengali community restricted its politics to the somewhat safer
and less controversial Indian Association.;)(¡ In addition to the Indian
Association and the Indian National Congress, a third organization,
the Lahore Students Association, was founded in 1881 on the pattern
of the Students’ Association of Bengal. Once again. Novin Chandra Rai
provided the main leadership and, as usual with Bengali-sponsored orga-
nizations and campaigns, the Tribune gave its approval.&dquo;17 The Tribune,
with its strong Bengali element, was an important factor in projects
sponsored by the Bengali community. Considerable coverage was given
to Brahmo Samaj events, information of general interest to the Bengali
community, and to news of the home province.
Surendranath Banerjea’s imprisonment in 1883 was widely reported
in the Tribune, as were the resulting meetings of sympathy and protest.
Expressions of encouragement for Banerjea were many but, of even
more interest, were expressions of solidarity with Bengal as a province

and with Bengalis as a people. One writer in the Tribune stated that
&dquo;The Punjab feels for Bengal and Bengal feels for the Punjab because
the cause of the Punjab is identical with that of Bengal. The Punjab
feels for Surendranath Banerjee because that Bengalee patriot has worked
much and unselfishly in the interest and for welfare of India-Punjab
not excepted. The Punjab feels for Bengal because she full well knows
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 387

that her legitimate rights cannot be secured without the co-operation of

Bengal, because she knows that without the aid of Bengal as those -

of Bombay and Madras she cannot save the gifts of the benign English
-

government from the constant attempts of rampant Anglo-Indians to

snatch them away.... ,,;;~ This still early conceptualization of nation-
alism and of supra-regional identity was furthered by continual inter-
action between Bengalis and Punjabis, an interaction largely made pos-
sible by the link community of Bengalis. On the negative side of Ben-
gali public and political life was a continuing conflict with Punjabi
Aryas. This competition between Aryas and Brahmos had its roots in
the early struggles of the Arya Samaj to establish itself in the Punjab.
Competition between an Arya-led faction in the Congress Party and
another group composed mainly of Brahmos, both Bengali and Punjabi,
weakened the development of the National Congress throughout the late
19th century. The landed aristocratic outlook of the Bengali intellectual
clashed with that of the more enterprising, money and business-oriented
Punjabi. Significantly, Sardar Dayal Singh, the chief supporter of the
Bengali Brahmos, was himself an old landed aristocrat. This competition
appeared not only in the Congress but also in the new industrial and
commercial enterprises founded in Lahore.

Patterns of organizational participation by the Bengali community

of the Punjab shifted during the last two decades of the 19th century.
They continued to support causes they were already involved in, held
leading roles in the political and linguistic spheres, and became followers
in several organizations which arose during this period. The Arya
Samaj, the Sanatan Dharm Sabhas, which defended orthodox Hinduism,
the Hindu Orphan Relief Movement of the 1890’s, and the Punjab
Science Institute all received backing from the Bengali community. The
latter, the Science Institute, was popular with Bengalis partly because of
the leadership of Ruchi Ram Sahni, one of the few Punjabis who had
remained in the Lahore Brahmo Samaj. Bengalis continued to found
their own organizations, such as the Bingiya Sahitya Sabha which was
established in 1885 with the goal of &dquo;creating a taste for Bengali language
and literature in the Punjab.... &dquo;3~ The temperance movement was
popular with Bengalis and attracted Bengali participation, particularly
the Lahore Purity Association, a close ally of the Lahore Brahmo Samaj.
The issues that moved Bengalis during the latter half of the 19th century
are illustrated in part by the career of Protul Chandra Chatterji, a subs-
criber to the Punjab Science Institute and to the Hindu Orphan Relief
Movement, a member of the Indian Association, and a strong supporter
of the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic schools.4<’ By and large, by the end of
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388

the 19th century Bengalis in the Punjab found themselves supporters and
followers in movements led by and dominated by a new aggressive
-

Hindu elite.

The Bengali community was always small, but it had been in the
1860’s and 1870’s the most educated and most westernized group in
the Punjab. Economically they were not in competition with Punjabis,
at least not initially, but after 1880, the number of educated Punjabis
began to increase rapidly and, in the years following, there were indi-
cations of resentment against the professional and occupational position
of the Bengalis. In 1881, a letter appeared in the Tribune criticizing
Bengalis as being idolatrous-this , in reference to the celebrations of
Durga Puja;41 another letter claimed that the students of Calcutta Uni-
versity were &dquo;disloyal&dquo;42 and, in the same year, a controversy arose over
the possible appointment of a Bengali as Director of Public Instruction
in Patiala.~3 A similar controversy erupted in 1886 over the supposed
dominance of Bengalis in the government services of the Maharaja of
Kashmir. 44 These data do not provide a clear indication of what was
happening, but they do point to the possibility of competition for govern-
ment posts between the older Bengali elite and the new rising Punjabi
elite which began to search for jobs within and beyond the province.

The Bengali community of the Punjab had never been large. Taking
the figures for the number of Bengali speakers in the Punjab the follow-
ing patterns emerges:

Number of Bengali SpeakerS45

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 389

The most outstanding feature of this community was its apparent stability
with the only significant increase occurring in the 1911-1921 period.
This increase was almost solely limited to the Delhi area and resulted
from the transfer of the Central Government from Calcutta to Delhi.
During the previous decades the number had actually decreased from
a high in 1881 to a low in 1911. E. D. Maclagan noted in the census
of 1891 a drop in the number of clerks from Bengal and also from
.

the United Provinces.4E The figures would indicate that over a period
of 30 years the process of replacement of non-Punjabi clerks by Punjabis
was well under way and was responsible for the steadily shrinking

Bengali community. The data for Kayasthas, the only other major
non-Punjabi element among the educated Indians, also show relative
stability, with a very slight decline over the first three census periods,
1881 through 1911, and then a sharp drop of nearly 50 per cent in
the last decade, from 1911-1921.

Number of Kayasthas47

While the number of Bengalis remained relatively stable the pattern

of distribution was also unchanged. Bengalis were centred in the major
towns with the greatest number in Lahore followed by Delhi, Simla,
Rawalpindi and Ambala. Delhi only surpassed Lahore in the number
of Bengalis after the capital was moved in 1911.

Distribution of Bengalis by Major Centres48

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 390

Along with the figures for native speakers of Bengali two other sets of
statistics are given in the census reports, one under the title &dquo;Bangalis&dquo;
and the other for the number of individuals born in Bengal and living.
in the Punjab. Both sets of figures are extremely unreliable and demon-
strate some of the difficulties inherent in utilizing census data. The
Banglia designation in the 1881 census is confused with Bengalis and a
criminal tribe which also goes by the name of Banglia. The figure given
by Ibbetson is obviously that of the criminal tribe in spite of his insistance
that it covers only Bengal, the geographic designation. -10 In addition
many Bengalis were entered under their caste and thus remained un-
differentiated from the general Punjabi groupings. The figures for
emigrants from Bengal are also unreliable. There was considerable
confusion among the enumerators as to the location of towns and birth
places outside of the Punjab with the result that arbitrary designations
were given as either the United Provinces or Bengal. The latter could
.
as well include Orissa, Bihar, or even Assam. Maclagan himself comments
on the inconsistency of these figures in the Census Report of 1891, and
for this reason the language designation has been used, with the full
knowledge that it too is subject to errors and inaccuracies
While this picture of the Bengali elite in the Punjab is only roughly
drawn, the attempt to delineate it did raise several questions concerning
the historical situation and also some problems inherent in this type of
study. The most obvious and immediate task of this examination was
to identify the Bengalis who were in the Punjab. Such an identification
must inevitably come before all else. Yet with this apparently simple
task difficulties immediately appeared. How to recognize a Bengali,
how to accurately tell if an individual was from Bengal? The most
obvious answer, and in many cases the only conceivable possible answer,
was from his name, but this proved to be far more difficult than might
be assumed. If the full name was given, and if it was characteristically
Bengali name, such as Novin Chandra Rai or Kali Prosanna Chatterjee,
then identification was possible. It was also possible with certain dis-
tinctive last names: Banerjee, Bhattacharya, Chatterjee, Bose or Mukho-
padyaya, but other last names are found throughout a broader area than
Bengal, for instance, Das or Gupta. Also it was quite common to omit
the last name when discussing an individual, creating greater problems
of identification. In some instances, first and middle name patterns ap-
peared to be distinctive enough to belong to a given province. Pandit
Bishambharnath, Diwan Narendranath. and Pandit Badrinath would appear
to belong to the Bengali group of names utilizing Nath, such as
Debendranath, Rabindranath, Dwarkanath, and Gopinath. Yet this

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 391

pattern is found elsewhere, including the Punjab.

This problem was examined mainly for Hindus and Christians,

and it is presumed that among Bengali Muslims further ambiguities
would be encountered. When working in a particular region the re-
searcher becomes familiar in a rough way with the most prevalent
names within that region, but when attempting to examine a group

from another region, the problem of identification becomes crucial. For

this study, the problem was only partially solved, and a partial solution
can produce a significant distortion of the results. For instance, one
approach would be to take only those names that were clearly Bengali
or individuals who could be identified as Bengalis, analyze them and
exclude all questionable cases. With this approach the Bengali elite
would be almost totally Brahman, since the names of Bengali Brahmans
are often easily recognizable, but from evidence in the census reports and

in other sources, the Bengali community was described as being a com-

bination of both Brahmans and Kayasthas.--,’ There seems to be no
ready answer to this question of identifying social groups. Yet until a
solution can be found, through cooperation of regionalists from the
various areas or through the creation of a human geography a listing -

of typical name patterns by region -any work done with social groups
will suffer from imprecision.

In spite of the limitations of data and methodology, the process

of inter-regional development that carried Bengalis into the North-West
is clearly evident. The expansion of the British state produced a series
of Bengali communities stretching from Calcutta to the Punjab and
beyond. A Bengali elite came into existence in the areas up river from
Bengal, an elite that functioned as a link between the British and their
Indian subjects, between these subjects and the British, and between
Bengal and the North-West. The chain of Bengali communities, once
in existence, acted as a communication system transferring new ideas
and attitudes, new institutions and causes created in Bengal to the
non-Bengali areas. As possessors of new concepts, superior bureaucratic
and linguistic skills, they gained considerable social status which aided them
in finding an audience for their ideas.

The creation of new regional elites which challenged their social

and economic position did not mean an end to this pattern of communica-
tions. It continued to exist. As long as Bengal remained an innovator,
a rqgion in advance socially or politically of other regions in India, the

Bengali communities in such areas as the Punjab continued to act as

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392

transmitters of the new ideological products of Bengal. While the pre-

sence of Bengali elites in non-Bengali areas produced some anti-Bengali

feeling, it also facilitated the development of supra-regional conscious-

ness, the necessary prerequisite for later nationalist conceptualization.
Intra-regional migration, set off by the establishment of the British-
Indian Government, became in time one of the many factors contributing
to the destruction of that same government.

A Prince of the Church in India, Being a Record

J. C. R. Ewing,
1. of
Life of the Rev. Kali Charan Chatterjee, D. D., for Forty-eight Years a

Missionary at Hoshyarpur, Punjab, India (London, 1918), p. 42.

2. Nagendra Nath Gupta, Reflections and Reminiscences (Bombay, 1947),
pp. 171-172.

3. Ewing, Prince of the Church, pp. 67-68.

4. Ibid., pp. 42-43, 68.
5. B. C. Pal, Memories of My Life and Times, Vol. II (Calcutta, 1951),
pp. 32-33.

6. Ibid., pp. 25-26.

7. Ibid., pp. 25-26 and Ewing, Prince of the Church, pp. 42-43, 68.
8. S. D. Collet, ed., The Brahmo Year-book for 1880. Brief Records of
Work and Life in the Theistic Church of India (London, 1880), p. 72 and
Ruchi Ram Sahni, Self Revelations of an Octogenarian (Unpublished manuscript
in the Punjab State Archives of Patiala, Punjab), pp. 228, 238-239.

9. S. D. Collet, ed., The Brahmo Year-Book for 1976, p. 18.

10. Ibid., The Brahmo Year-book for 1876, p. 73-74.
11. Ibid., The Brahmo Year-book for 1876, p. 36 and The Brahmo Year-
book for 1877, p. 15.
12. Ibid., The Bramho Year-book for 1876, p. 36, The Brahmo Year-
book for 1877, pp. 15, 38, and Punjab Government, Gazetteer of the Lahore
District, 1893-94 (Lahore, 1894), p. 92.
13. G. S. Chabra, The Advanced History of the Punjab, Vol. II (Ludhiana,
1962), p. 348.

14. Sahni, Self Revelations, pp. 228, 238-239.

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 393

15. Tribune, March 23, 1887, p. 5.

16. Bawa Chajju Singh, The Life and Teachings of Swami Dayanand
Saraswati (Lahore, 1903), p. 337.

17. Sadhu Tulsi Dev, Shraddlia Prakash, Sri Shraddlza Ram ji ka Jivan
(Lahore, 1896), p. 55 and Tribune, August 13, 1881, p. 10.

18. Har Bilas Sarda, The Life of Dayanand Saraswati, World Teacher
(Ajmer, 1946), p. 163.

19. Kenneth W. Jones, The Arya Samaj in the Punjab: A Strcdy of Social
Reform and Religious Revivalism, 1877-1902 (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of California, Department of History, 1966). pp. 65-73.
20. For the of Kali Prosanna Chatterjee, see the following: Tribune,
career

April 19, 1890, 5; December 3, 1890, p. 4; October 4, 1893, p. 4; February

p.
27, 1897, p. 4; November 2, 1899, p. 4; November 23, 1899, p. 5; February
27, 1902, p. 4; Bharat Sewak, March :10, 1893, p. 5; Government of India,
Selections from the Vernacular Newspapers Published in the Punjab, Received
up to 7th Janrrary 1899, Vol. XII, p. 746, Arya Gazette, November 17, 1898;
Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College Society, First Annual Report of the Dayanand
Anglo-Vedic College Society for the Year 1886-87 (Lahore, n.d.), pp. 8, 14;
Gupta, Reflections, p. 145, plus a reference to the career of Becha Ram Chatter-
jee in the Tribune, January 17, 1894, p. 4.
21. J. N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India (New York,
1915), p. 173 and P. V. Kanal, Blragwara Dev Atma (Lahore, 1942), pp. 312-
372.

22. Pal, Memories, Vol. II. pp. 33-34.

23. Sahni, Self f Revclations, p. 238.

24. Pal Memories, Vol. II, pp. 80-81.

25. Lala Lajpat Rai, Autobiographical Writings edited by V. C. Joshi

(Delhi, 1965), p. 79 and G. W. Leitner, History of Indigenous Education in
the Punjab Since Annexation and in 1882 (Calcutta, 1882), p. 45.
26.
Norman G. Barrier, Punjab Politics and the Disturbances of 1907
(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History. Duke University, 1966),
pp. 27-28.
.

27. Ibid., pp. 7, 22-23.

28. Surendranath Banerjea, A Nation in the Making (Bombay, 1963), pp.
42-43. Dayal Singh left his entire estate to the Brahmo Samaj, a gift responsible
for the creation of the Dayal Singh College. Government of India, Census of
India, 1911, Vol. XIV, Punjab, Part 1, Report by Pandit Harikishen Kaul
(Lahore, 1912), p. 138.
29. Pal, Memories, Vol. II, pp. 20-22.

30. Bharat Sewak, March 10, p. 5 a.nd the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College

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394

Report, 1886-87, p. 14. For full references to the career of K. P. Chatterjee, see

footnote 20.

31. Tribune, February 22, 1897, p. 4, June 5, 1900, p. 3, and Sahni, Selff
Revelations, pp. 238-239, Collet, The Bralrnto Year-book for 1877, p. 15.
32. Gupta, Reflections, pp. 122-123.
33. Banerjea, Natiort, p. 43.

34. Lajpat Rai, Autobiographical Writings, p. 95.

35. Barrier, Punjab Politics, pp. 79-80.

36. Ibid., p. 49.

37. Tribune, February 2, 1881, p. 7.

38. Tribune, June 16, 1883, p. 5.

39. Tribune, August 28, 1897, p. 4.

40. Tribune, January 23, 1886, p. 8; March 6, 1886, p. 7; November 30,

1892, p. 4; May 15, 1895, p. 4; December 1, 1897, p. March 22, 1900, p. 4;
Gupta Reflections, pp. 147, 172-174, and Pal, Memories, Vol. II, p. 20.
41. Tribune, October 15, 1881, p. 8.
’

42. Tribune, April 16, 1881, p. 8.

43. Tribune, August 13, 1881, p. 8.

44. Triburte, May 29, 1886, p. 8.

45. Denzil lbbetson, Outlirtes of Punjab Ethnography, Being Extracts from

the Pax Census Report of 1881 treating of Religion, Language, and Caste
Calcutta, 1883), p. 157; Government of India, Census of Irtdia 1891, the Punjab
’and its Feudatories, Part 1, The Report of the Census, Vol. XIX, by E. D.
Maclagan (Calcutta, 1892), p. Ixiii; Government of India, Census of India, 1901,
Imperial Tables I-VIII, X-XV, XVII and XVIII for tlte Punjab with the Native
States under the Political Control of the Punjab Government, and for the North-
West Frontier Province, Table I, Language, Part II, Government of India, Census
of India, 1911, Punjab, Part I, Report, Vol. XIV, by Pandit Harikishen Kaul
(Lahore, 1912), p. 354; and, Government of India, Census of India, 1921, Volume
XV, and Delhi, Part I, Report by L. Middleton and S. M. Jacob (Lahore, 1923),
p. 310.

46. Maclagan, Census of India, 1891, Punjab Report, p. 279.

47. Maclagan, Census of India&dquo; 1891, Ptcnjab Report, p. lxxxvii; Census of

Indian, 1901, Imperial Tables, Table XIII, p. xiii-xiv; Kaul, Census of India, 1911,
p. 462; Middleton, Census of India, 1921, p. 227.

48. Census of India, 1901, Imperial Tables, Table X, Language, Part II;
and, Kaul, Census of India, 1911, Punjab Report p. 354.

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 395

59. Denzil Ibbetson, Punjab Castes (Lahore, 1916), p. 263.

50. Maclagan, Census of India, 1891, Punjab Report, pp. 49, 253, 291, 328.

51. Ibbetson, Punjab Castes, p. 263.

.

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