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.
***
Edited version of this article has been published in Vidura Oct-Dec. 2017 issue.
This series is being published in Vidura.
