The dragon slayer

As a family we’ve in the past been bold wayfarers and finders of opportunities in distant lands with no hesitation in leaving behind complete lives if there happened to be such an event. Like every good story mine too begins in the days of yore. I love that word, yore. Conjures up images of bearded tough men wearing armour and slaying dragons. My family’s dragon slayer was Nityananda Chakrabarti and he was not so much slaying a dragon but fleeing one, the Bengal famine of the 1770s. The district of Birbhum where he lived was caught in it and leaving his home seemed the only solution. The famine which left a scar on the history of Bengal, was the reason why even generations later we continue to call ourselves East Bengal folk.

Nityananda was a rebel. In those days rebels wore the traditional dhoti and their attitude on the lapel of their crisp, white kurtas. His father Pandit Rajeshwar was an orthodox Brahmin who taught Sanskrit in a school. For him it was a calling, not a profession and he wanted his children to follow in his footsteps. And he was both vocal and unequivocal about it. Nityananda respectfully declined and in a show of how strongly he felt against it, learned Persian and some English so that he could converse with the masters – the British East India Company. The result was almost instantaneous, he was appointed Revenue Collector in the hill districts of Chittagong (now in Bangladesh), a British protectorate. It was a position that commanded unquestioned loyalty and tremendous respect, attributes that are extinct in many parts of the world, today.

Chattogram, the Bengali name for Chittagong has been flowing through our veins since then. There is general misty-eyed look that my father and uncles adopt each time the name is mentioned. Considering that they have never lived there, I wonder why. I suppose the answer lies in the many stories told over generations of the rich soil, the ponds full of silvery fish and the clean air of the town of Rangamati where Nityananda had settled.

The benevolent Raja Harish Chandra Roy was Nityananda’s employer and he took notice of the young Revenue Collector’s extraordinary intelligence and capabilities. The Raja was credited with moving his permanent residence to Rangamati from the plains of Chattogram. But for him, Rangamati would not even have found a footnote in the Chakrabarti annals. The young rebel was promoted to the position of Dewan, i.e. Chief Minister by the Raja. These appointments could not be done arbitrarily, the permission of the British administrator was essential and so my illustrious ancestor became an officer of the court.

The British administrator who was responsible for this was Captain Thomas Herbert Lewin, a man of, I’m guessing, excellent intellect since he has published books on the hill tracts and its people.  However, Nityananda did not think so since there were regular clashes between the two men which even resulted in the latter filing a lawsuit against the administrator in the Calcutta High Court. A truly audacious move by a brown man.