Brajendranath De


Brajendranath De was an early Indian member of the Indian Civil Service.

Early life and education

De studied at Hare School, Calcutta, and then Canning Collegiate School and Canning College, Lucknow. Always ranking at the top of his class in school, he was placed in the first division in all his final examinations. He emerged first in the first division in the First Arts examination of Calcutta University. A student of English Honours, he ranked sixth in the first division in his Bachelor of Arts examination. Since he was a first divisioner, he was allowed to take the Master of Arts examination of the Calcutta University soon after the completion of his B.A. Honours examination. He was ranked second in the Master of Arts examination and was awarded the silver medal of Calcutta University.
Later, he travelled to England for his higher studies, on the advice of his grand-uncle, Peary Charan Sarkar and his father's mentor, Raja Dakshinaranjan Mukherjee, the taluqdar of Shankarpore, United Provinces and for some time assistant commissioner of Lucknow. In England, he joined University College, London to appear in the Open Competitive Services examination. Having taken the examination successfully, he joined the Indian Civil Service in 1873, emerging 17th in a batch of 35 successful probationers selected from a total of 360 candidates. He was the 8th Indian member of the ICS. Subsequently, he was called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple on 7 June 1875. He was admitted to St. Mary Hall, Oxford, where he spent one year, from 1874-1875, on a Boden Sanskrit Scholarship, having attended the lectures of Professor Max Mueller and Mr. Ruslan. He was the first Indian barrister and ICS officer to have studied in a college in Oxford.
His fourth daughter was Saroj Nalini Dutt, and his fifth son-in-law was Jyotish Chandra De, who was a member of the Indian Medical Service. Two of his great-grandchildren were the singer Uma Bose and the cameraman Subrata Mitra.

Career

Administrative

He took up his first posting in the civil service as assistant magistrate and collector of Arrah, Behar in 1875. He served in districts where the rulers of erstwhile zamindari estates, such as Darbhanga and Dumrao, had a strong presence. After serving in a number of districts in Behar, he was posted in Raniganj, Bengal in 1881. He officiated as the district magistrate and collector of Bankura, Burdwan and Faridpore. He served as the full district magistrate and collector of Khulna, where he was befriended by Dr. Krishnadhan Ghosh, the civil surgeon of the district, and the father of Aurobindo Ghosh. He became the magistrate and collector of Balasore in Orissa and then of Malda and Hooghly. He was the first Indian to be elected as chairman of the Hooghly Municipal Corporation. He was an commissioner of the Burdwan Division.
As the district officer of Hooghly, he started the Duke Club there which was meant to be exclusively for Indians. One of his Commissioners once told him not to entertain the thought of wanting to join a British club in the district.
After retirement he remained actively involved in the work of the Calcutta Improvement Trust.

Academic

While still in service he translated Kalidas's 'Vikramarvasi' and 'Manichudabadana' from Sanskrit to English. He edited an English-Bengali dictionary and published an article on inter dining in the Madras Social Reformer.
In his post-retirement years he served as a vice-president of the council of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta.
He was the translator and editor, in two volumes, Nizamuddin Ahmad's Tabaqat-i-Akbari. The third volume, which he had left fully prepared, was published posthumously by Baini Prasad and also M. Hidayat Hosain.

Legacy

A road in Chinsura, Hooghly is named after him.
At the time of his centenary celebration in 1952, his second son, Basanta Kumar De, Esq., a senior officer of the BNR took the initiative to publish in three articles sections of his reminiscences in the Calcutta Review. This work was entrusted to Tapan Raychaudhuri, then of the Department of Islamic History and Culture of the University of Calcutta.
In 2001, approximately 2,000 photographs of himself and his family members were given in loan by one of his grandsons, Barun De, to the photographic archives of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Later, when the archive was shifted to the newly established Jadunath Bhavan Museum and Resource Centre, CSSSC, Calcutta, the photographs too were deposited there.

Publications