Nirad C. Chaudhuri

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Nirad C. Chaudhuri (Bangla: নীরদ চন্দ্র চৌধুরী) (23 November 1897 – 1 August 1999) was a celerated Bengali Indian writer. He was born in Kishoreganj, then in the Mymensingh district of East Bengal (now in Bangladesh). He was educated in Kishorganj and Calcutta, where he attended Scottish Church College, Calcutta with honours in History. He topped the University of Calcutta merit list standing First Class First. However in his M.A. exams, at the same university, he did not appear for all of his exam papers, and thus did not get his M.A. degree.

Throughout his life, he followed the dicta of the great English Neoclassical poet, Alexander Pope:

"This long disease, my Life"
"The Proper Study of Mankind is Man"

He was a productive and prolific writer till the very end; publishing his last work at the age of 99. His masterpiece, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (ISBN 0-201-15576-1), published in 1951, put him on the short list of great Indian English writers.

Casting a dyspeptic eye on Indian Independence in 1947, he wrote his autobiography, which spanned the height of the British Raj in India to its eventual dissolution. To his last day, he remained the quintessential Victorian English country gentleman, if not by ownership, then by knowledge, habit, refinement and taste. He lived by his genteel squirearchical standards till he breathed his last.

In 1972, he was the subject of a Merchant Ivory documentary, Adventures of a Brown Man in Search of Civilization.

In 1992, he was honoured by the Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom with the title of Commander of Order of the British Empire (CBE).

He published a sequel to his autobiography, entitled Thy Hand, Great Anarch!, in 1988. He died in Oxford, England two months short of his 102nd birthday in 1999.

Books

He wrote the following books:

The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
A Passage to England
Clive of India (biography)
To Live or Not to Live
Max Muller (biography)
The Continent of Circe
The East is East and West is West
From the Archives of a Centenarian
Thy Hand, Great Anarch!
Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse

He married Amiya Chaudhurani (nee' Dhar) in 1932 and had three sons. His second son Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri is a leading historian now teaching in London. Amiya Chaudhurani died in 1994 in Oxford.

External links

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