Mother's Chronicles - Book Four

13

His Large Sympathies

Rajnarain, who had grown very fond of his son-in-law, wrote a set of four sonnets expressing his fervent hope that the latter would learn from the West without losing his own Indian identity. We quote a part of the first sonnet.

"Go, son belov'd! as pilgrim bold to lands

Beyond the stormy ocean's wide domain, —

Where Commerce, Art and Science freely rain

On freeman blessings rare with liberal hands....

Thy freedom I esteem though thy excess

I check oft. Go, but still as ours remain.

Be not like apes who change their manners, dress

And language, of their trip becoming vain.

They England for their home do shameless call,

And reckon mother-land and tongue as gall."

Rajnarain Bose was a nationalist to the core; and he was disappointed in the young Bengalis who returned from England —or even from Bombay! —fully anglicized. He was in for a rude shock.

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Krishna Dhan took his degree of Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) with honours from the Aberdeen University, Scotland. He returned to India, no later than early October 1871 by my reckoning. Because from 28 October he was the Officiating Medical Officer, Rangpur District. Very soon he was upgraded as the District's C. M. O. He was to remain at Rangpur (now in Bangladesh) for the next twelve years, holding a number of other posts.

But during those two years in England, K. D. had undergone a sea change. The young man who returned was completely anglicized, and had become 'a tremendous atheist.' The reception from the orthodoxy in his home town did not help any; the opposition he encountered from the society put his back up. It threatened to outcaste him unless he performed the expiatory ceremony for having gone overseas. The ban on crossing the oceans was that much more unacceptable to an enlightened man like Dr. Ghose, who knew that in ancient times Bengali merchant ships used to ply the oceans. They sailed to Java, Sumatra, to Bali and Siam, and nearer home, to Sinhal (Sri Lanka). They carried finery from Bengal and came back loaded with spices and gems. Was it not a Bengali prince, Bijoy Singha, who had conquered Lanka and given the island, its people and its language his name which has come down to us —Sinhala? The early Bengalis had gone even farther a field, as Swami Vivekananda observed on 11 March 1898, after his visit to the Far East. "You may easily imagine my astonishment when I saw written on the walls of many Chinese and Japanese temples some very familiar Sanskrit mantras . . . they were all

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written in old Bengali script."

Krishna Dhan refused. Honest to the core, he did not feel it a sin to cross the 'black waters,' so why should he perform a ceremony of purification? He sold his property for a song to a local Brahmin, to whom he had given his word, spurning a more tempting offer made by a relation. Thus Dr. K. D. Ghose packed up bag and baggage, and left Konnagar for good. Sri Aurobindo's father and Mother's mother were both made of stern stuff: they believed in human dignity and refused to bow to the unjust demands of society.

Rajnarain Bose sorrowed at the change in his 'son belov'd.' "Although I am pained," he writes, "still I pray to God that he remains in happiness wherever he may be. He has many exceptional qualities: he is a gentleman, he is amiable and benevolent, and he has not lost these qualities by his sojourn in England. His heart is extremely sweet. And that sweetness is reflected on his face. When I was in Kanpur, the Army Chaplain, Rev. Mill, told me, 'I have never seen such a sweet face as his.' "

Barin in his autobiography (Atmakatha), gives a pen sketch of Krishna Dhan. "I still remember my father's face. Fair-complexioned, big swimming eyes, of medium height, his body erect and muscular, his nature as sweet as new molasses, his face ever clear and bright, yet an obstinate and powerful man. His renown as a doctor was plenty; people would come to beg for their lives as though begging a divinity."

Bepin Chandra Pal, one of the pioneers of India's freedom struggle, writing on Sri Aurobindo and his background, waxed eloquent when he dwelt on Sri Aurobindo's

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father.¹ "SREEJUT ARAVINDA GHOSE. If his maternal grandfather represented the ancient spiritual forces of his nation, Aravinda's father, Dr. Krishnadhan Ghose, represented to a very large extent the spirit of the new illumination in his country. Dr. Ghose was essentially a product of English education and European culture. A man of exceptional parts, he finished his education in England, and taking his degree in medicine, entered the medical service of the Indian Government. He was one of the most successful Civil Surgeons of his day, and, had his life been spared, he would have assuredly risen to the highest position in his service open to any native of India. Like the general body of Indian young men who came to finish their education in England in his time, Krishnadhan Ghose was steeped in the prevailing spirit of Anglicism. But unlike many of them, underneath his foreign clothing and ways he had a genuine Hindu heart and soul. Anglicism distorts Hindu character, cripples, where it cannot kill, the inherited altruism of the man, and makes him more or less neglectful of the numerous family and social obligations under which every Hindu is born. But Krishnadhan Ghose was an exception. Though he affected the European's way of living, he never neglected the social obligations of the Hindu. His purse was always open for his needy relations. The poor of the town, where he served and lived, had in him a true friend and a ready help. In fact, his regard for the poor frequently led him to sacrifice to their

1. Reprinted in The Karmayogin (7 and 14 August 1909, N°7 & 8) from Swaraj.

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present needs the future prospects of his own family and children. . . . Keen of intellect, tender of heart, impulsive and generous almost to recklessness, regardless of his own wants, but sensitive to the suffering of others —this was the inventory of the character of Dr. Krishnadhan Ghose. The rich blamed him for his recklessness, the man of the world condemned him for his absolute lack of prudence, the highest virtue in his estimation. But the poor, the widow and the orphan loved him for his selfless pity, and his soulful benevolence.

"When death overtook him, in the very prime of life, there was desolation in many a poor home in his district. It not only left his own children in absolute poverty, but destroyed the source of ready relief to many helpless families among his relations and neighbours. His quick intellectual perceptions, his large sympathies, his selflessness . . . these are Aravinda's inheritance in his father's line."

This anglicized Indian's umbilical cord had remained attached to the land of his birth and its culture. While he was the Civil Surgeon at Rangpur, he helped a Sanskrit scholar¹ to set up a Sanskrit school —which was still doing well when last heard of (1932-33).

Dr. K. D. Ghose was also a patron of arts. As a patron of the Star Theatre he bore the expenses of bringing the company every year from Calcutta to Khulna. The Star Theatre was one

1. Jadabeshwar Tarkaratna, who had expressed to Dr. Ghose the wish to found a chatuspathi, where Sanskrit grammar, poetry, laws and philosophy are specially taught.

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of the best in its day. On 20 September 1884 Ramakrishna Paramahansa went there to see a play on Sri Chaitanya, and blessed the actress who played the leading role. He also blessed the author-cum-director, Girish Chandra Ghose (1844-1912), who then became his disciple.

Every year a fair was held at Khulna. Once a week there would be a magic lantern show, and the doctor himself would speak on the subject ... in English; till a young Bengali patient of his said that he could understand nothing. "Yes, of course!" exclaimed the good doctor, and from then on he always spoke in Bengali.

A cultured man, Dr. Krishna Dhan Ghose was profoundly interested in Bengali literature. Bankim's youngest brother, Purna Chandra Chatterjee, gives a personal account of Dr. Ghose. "Every evening," he wrote in Narayan, a Bengali magazine edited by C. R. Das, "we would meet at Dr. Krishna Dhan's house. I was a deputy magistrate in Rangpur at that time. Dr. Krishna Dhan was an exceptional person, I have rarely met with one so highly educated, so spirited and with such a strong personality. He had not met Bankim so far, but through reading his books the Doctor had become a fan of his."

Being equally welcome to the European and the Bengali societies, Dr. K. D. Ghose served as a link between the two. His house became a meeting ground for both communities, and people nicknamed him the 'Suez Canal.'

His beautiful and charming wife, Swarnalata, was, of course, a great asset to him in his social life. She really was so beautiful that she became known as the 'Rose of Rangpur.'

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