The Great Indian Editors | Harish Chandra Mukherjee

The Great Indian Editors 3 | Dr. Mrinal Chatterjee

Harish Chandra Mukherjee: Brief Life, Big Impact

Harish Chandra Mukherjee, remembered for being one of the first intellectuals to usher in liberal democratic ideas in British India and for being a fearless and crusading editor through the newspaper (Hindoo Patriot) he steered to glory died early, at the age of just 37. He left a legacy that was hard to match, and a paper, which had made a reputation of supporting social causes and fighting for the masses.

Harish Chandra Mukherjee was born on April 1824 at Bhowanipur in Kolkata. His ancestors belonged to Sridharpur in the Baradhaman District. His father Ramdhan Mukherjee had three wives and Harish was born to his third wife Rukhmini Devi. Ramdhan Mukherjee was a man of modest means. Harish Chandra studied as a ‘free student’ at Union school. Financial   problems forced him to give up his studies and sought out to earn his livelihood. Mukherjee got a clerical post in the office of Military Auditor General through competitive examination and started working there. Through his education was discontinued in early days, he learnt history, politics, law and English by himself.

He started writing columns in newspapers like the Hindu Intelligencer edited by Kasi Prasad Ghosh and the Bengal Recorder edited by Ramgopal Ghosh while he was serving the office of Military Auditor General. His writings were critical of the policies of the government. It attracted attention of the intelligentsia. 

In 1852, he became a member of the British Indian Association, one of the first political associations in British India and was active in social and political dialogues and discourses.

The Hindoo Patriot, a weekly in English language was first published on January 6, 1853 by Madhusudan Ray, under the editorship of Girish Chandra Ghosh. It began to be published every Thursday from Kalakar Street where Madhusudan Ray's press was located. Harish Chandra Mukherjee was involved with the paper from the beginning. Gradually his involvement became more intense and he began to take keen interest in the editorial matter. Around June 1855, he bought the newspaper from Girish Chandra Ghosh in the name of his elder brother Haran Chandra Mukherjee as he was still serving at the office of Military Auditor General he could not have bought it.

Harish Chandra however took charge of Hindoo Patriot in 1856-57 and soon through his remarkable journalism imbibed with a keen sense of national sentiment, not only made the paper the voice of the oppressed peasants but also made it as the first national newspaper of India.

The Hindoo Patriot under Harish Chandra played a vital role against the tyranny of the Indigo Planters, particularly during the post-Sepoy Mutiny period. In mid-19th century the British traders aided by the officers tried to increase the cultivation of Indigo. The farmers were forced to cultivate Indigo, even though it was not remunerative for them. The coercion reached to a barbaric level. When the farmers revolted and refused to grow indigo, a reign of terror was unleashed to suppress them forcibly.  Mukherjee through the Hindoo Patriot, wrote about this movement and thus played a key role in arousing public sentiments against the alien rulers. Regular editorials against such tyranny on the poor hapless indigo farmers attracted public attention and evoked universal condemnation from a large cross-section of educated Indians.

Other social issues highlighted by the Hindoo Patriot in its columns were Women’s Education and Hindu Widow Remarriage. As regards women’s education, the paper advised everybody to follow the lead given by John Drinkwater Bethune and on the question of widow remarriage it sided with the reformists and supported the cause of legalising such marriages. The paper, however, opposed the implementation of divorce laws in Hindu society.

Although the principal objective of the Hindoo Patriot was to focus anomalies in British Government in India, it pinned very high hopes on the liberalism of the British public and parliament. Thus, it always advised Indians to look for the redressal of their grievances to the British public and parliament whenever the British Indian administration failed to redress their complaints. Again, the focusing of multiple anomalies relative to British rule was never intended to tarnish the image of the British Indian government. Rather, criticism of anomalies was intended to make the administration aware of public grievances and their causes so as to enable the government to effect their speedy rectification. To the Hindoo Patriot, British rule in India was not blind folded imperialism but something highly noble to be supported for public welfare. Indians had still much to learn from the English and English rule was accordingly to be endured.

Thus, when during the Sepoy Revolt, the government imposed press restriction in India, by Act XV of 1857, and papers like the Hindu Intelligencer suspended publication in protest, the Hindoo Patriot made no particular grievance of it.

Many contemporary historians have lambasted Harish Chandra for being ‘soft to the alien rulers’. However, many hailed him as one of the first intellectuals to usher in liberal democratic thoughts in British India. In his paper titled Harish Chandra Mukherjee and the Hindu Patriot: the Diffusion of Liberal Democratic Ideas in Bengal in the Mid-nineteenth Century, (published in International Research Journal of Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Studies (IRJIMS), Volume-III, Issue-V, June 2017, Page No. 314-320)  Abhishek Karmakar writes:

A staunch journalist as well as liberal modernist Harish Chandra bore almost all the indispensable features of modern liberal democracy such as, raising questions and criticizing freely against a despotic authority, arguing for the defense of equality and most of all acknowledging and ascribing most importance on public opinion in governance. He fearlessly raised questions against various arbitrary policies of Lord Dalhousie. Harish Chandra opposed Dalhousie‘s policy of annexation and confiscation of different provinces of India like Nagpur and Jhansi. Considering the policy as ‘foolish‘,  he attributed it as ‘the source of discontent in the country’, which prepared the ground for the Great Revolt of 1857.

The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 provided him with a platform to raise the issue of being Indian and solving all our problems by ourselves. The political discourse during this time was not properly defined in Bengal, and hence through his writings in the Hindu Patriot he tried to inculcate a patriotic feeling.  He wrote “The time is nearly come when all Indian questions must be solved by Indians. The mutinies have made patent to the English public what must be the effects of politics in which the native is allowed no voice.

Besides ascribing most importance on the public opinion of the governed Harish Chandra, unlike contemporary newspapers, both the vernaculars and the English as well as contemporary political modernizers who even attributed the Queen‘s Proclamation (1858) as the Magna Carta of India magniloquently raised question, ‘where is the guarantee that the promises, though coming out of the Queen, will be honoured?’

Though Hindoo Patriot was an influential paper, but it did not do well financially. And as it was writing against the Indigo planters there were several litigations, which drained Mukherjee’s resources.

Harish Chandra died on June 16, 1861 at the age of 37. At the time of his death as material property he only had his house and Hindoo Patriot paper. Mukherjee’s widow was targeted with different court cases by the Indigo merchants. His house went on auction and Hindoo Patriot was almost on the verge of closure.

It was Kaliprasanna Singha who bought the paper and saved it from extinction. Kaliprasanna initially handed over managemnet of the magazine to Shambhu Chandra Mookerjee. Girish Chandra Ghosh who had severed all ties with Hindoo Patriot three years ago, was moved by the plight of Harish Chandra Mukherjee's bereaved mother and helpless widow and took up the editorship again. After he left Hindoo Patriot again in November that year, the paper was bought over by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. Kristodas (in Bengali the pronunciation is Krishnadas) Pal became its new editor, who edited the paper 23 years and took it to greater glory.

Harish Chandra Mukherjee was one of the first editors of British India, who brought in liberal democratic thoughts without bowing down to the authorities or towing the official line. He was one of the first editors who showed what a sensible pen and meaningful discourse can do.

Long after his death a large public park in Bhowanipur, Kolkata and a road has been named after Harish Chandra Mukherjee.

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Edited version of this article has been published in Vidura Oct-Dec. 2017 issue.

 This series  is being published in Vidura.