Dhan Gopal Mukerji
Encyclopedia
Dhan Gopal Mukerji (July 6, 1890 –July 14, 1936) was the first successful India
n man of letters in the United States
and winner of Newbery Medal
1928 . He studied at Duff School (now known as Scottish Church Collegiate School, a constituent unit of Scottish Church College, Calcutta
), the University of Calcutta
, in India, Tokyo University
in Japan
and at the University of California, Berkeley
and Stanford University
in the U.S.
's friends, he came in contact with the ideas of the Bengal resistance. Jadu Gopal was subsequently jailed without trial from 1923 to 1927. Dhan Gopal later wrote a memoir about Jadu Gopal, titled My Brother's Face.
In San Francisco he looked about for a way to support himself and pay for his college education, and soon lit upon writing. Around 1916 he wrote Sandhya, Songs of Twilight and Rajani or Songs of the Night, two books of poems, and Laila Majnu, a musical play in three acts, all published by Paul Elder and Co. of San Francisco. At this time, he was a student at the University of California at Berkeley for three years. Financial constraints and his political radicalism made him move on to Stanford University
, from where he earned a graduate degree in metaphysics
in 1914. He socialized with leftists, anarchists and freethinker
s and became aware of the plight of the underclass
, the white middle class
, Negro
es and other East Asian immigrant groups. He married Ethel Ray Dugan, an American artist and painter, in 1918, and they had a son, also called Dhan Gopal. His son popularly known as "Dan" Mukerji was one of the top officials of Pan American Airlines. (to be verified) He had also visited Calcutta.
In the 1920s, Mukerji moved to New York and began his most prolific period of writing, published mainly by E.P. Dutton. Of his many children's books, Kari the Elephant was the first to see publication, in 1922. In (1924) his book "Hari the Jungle Lad was published." The most successful such title was Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon
(1927) for which the American Library Association
presented him with the Newbery Medal
in 1928. This book is about a carrier pigeon ('Gay Neck') and his growing up with the flock owned by the narrator, then his (the pigeon's) drafting as a messenger for the Indian army in France
during World War I
and finally how the pigeon and his handler return to India and deal with the wounds and memories of war in the seclusion of a lamasery. Mukerji's other children's books include Ghond, the Hunter (1928), The Chief of the Herd (1929), Hindu Fables for Little Children (1929), Rama, the Hero of India (1930, produced for the children of Dalton School where his wife taught), and The Master Monkey (1932). Many of his works were reworkings of stories he had heard as a child. Others were inspired by his own experiences in India as a child among the jungles of Bengal, or as a yogi in various holy places.
Among Mukerji's writings for adults are A Son of Mother India Answers (1928) (partly in response to Katherine Mayo
's Mother India), Devotional Passages from the Hindu Bible and Visit India with Me (1929), Disillusioned India (1930) and My Brother's Face (1932). The Face of Silence (1926) is about the nineteenth century saint and visionary Ramakrishna Paramhansa and is said to have deeply influenced Romain Rolland
(See Swami Tathagatananda, 'Dhan Gopal Mukerji and The Face of Silence ', Prabuddha Bharati, January and February 2006 (two part article).)
The details of his later life are hazy, but there is some evidence to believe that relations with his wife entered a difficult phase at the end of his life. In spite of his many friends he felt deeply isolated and marginalized in America, as he could do very little, beyond raising funds and entertaining visiting celebrities, to further the cause of Indian liberty. The choices he had made in life prevented him from ever returning permanently to India, and it is possible to see his urge to write of the jungles and animals of his native land as a means of compensating for their absence. The unhappiness of his final years drove him further into spirituality
, fueled his interest in the spiritual heritage of his motherland and gave urgency to his desire to interpret and explain India to the West. Finally, in 1936, he hanged himself on July 14, shortly after his forty-sixth birthday, in New York City
.
by some ten or twenty years. Krupabai Satthianadhan
, the woman who wrote the novels Kamala and Saguna in the late nineteenth century, was certainly an accomplished writer, but her works did not reach a mass audience until she was rediscovered in the twentieth century. Scattered writings in English by Indians are encountered throughout the nineteenth century, such as the famous Rajmohan's Wife, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's first novel, written in English after the manner of Scott. There was also notable work by figures such as Roquia Sakhawat Hussain, writer of Sultana's Dream
(1905), the first science fiction piece in English by an Indian, comparable to Charlotte Perkins Gilman
's Herland
. But usually these are byproducts of Indian language work, and Dhan Gopal Mukerji is the first to write seriously and consistently in English.
This was not by choice, but was a product of his unfortunate situation. Dhan Gopal never lost the sense of mission which he shared with his brother, and throughout his life strove to complete the task he had set himself: to emancipate India from foreign rule and win for her culture and philosophy the respect he felt it deserved. In America he associated with fellow exiles like M.N. Roy, the founder of the Communist Party of India
, to whom he is said to have suggested the adoption of the pseudonym 'Manabendra'.
Forbidden the more satisfying outlet of activism, he poured his feelings into his writing. Consequently, his language is magical and persuasive, and his observation of animals and their ways is accurate and unsentimental. In his work the Gond
hunter and the Brahmin child are equals in their travels in the jungle, and Dhan Gopal Mukerji never (unlike Kipling
) anthropomorphises the animals or draws a facile moral from them. Although he was acutely conscious of his high caste, he saw it more as a responsibility than a privilege, and neither patronized nor denigrated the so-called 'lower' castes and communities. He was, however, less sound on the subject of women. He writes movingly of child prostitutes in America in the 1910s and 1920s, especially of their plight during the Depression, but he also romanticizes the life of Rangini, a 'tawaif
' (courtesan) encountered in Caste and Outcast. He also praises his mother's and sisters' strict asceticism, all the more so since his mother is at that time a widow, performing all the hard penances prescribed to Hindu widows of her caste.
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n man of letters in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and winner of Newbery Medal
Newbery Medal
The John Newbery Medal is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association . The award is given to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. The award has been given since 1922. ...
1928 . He studied at Duff School (now known as Scottish Church Collegiate School, a constituent unit of Scottish Church College, Calcutta
Scottish Church College, Calcutta
The Scottish Church College is the oldest continuously running Christian liberal arts and sciences college in India. It is affiliated with the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education , the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education for the awarding of baccalaureate and post baccalaureate...
), the University of Calcutta
University of Calcutta
The University of Calcutta is a public university located in the city of Kolkata , India, founded on 24 January 1857...
, in India, Tokyo University
University of Tokyo
, abbreviated as , is a major research university located in Tokyo, Japan. The University has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are foreign. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano. It is considered to be the most prestigious university...
in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
and Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in the U.S.
Early life in India
Dhan Gopal Mukerji was born on 6 July in a village near Calcutta on the edge of a jungle called Kajangal. His father, whom he describes as ‘an Olympian who was lost in the world’ was a lawyer who gave up his practice due to ill health and studied music instead, while also officiating as priest at the village temple. Dhan Gopal describes his childhood and adolescence in the first part (‘Caste’) of his autobiography Caste and Outcast (1923). 'Caste' details Dhan Gopal's induction into the Brahminical tradition of his ancestors, and his experiences wandering for a year as an ascetic, as was the custom for boys in strict priestly households. However, disillusioned with the traditional role and impatient of the backward-looking element in strict Hindu society, he left the ascetic life to study at the University of Calcutta. Here, in the circle of his brother Jadugopal MukherjeeJadugopal Mukherjee
Jadu Gopal Mukherjee was an eminent Bengali Indian revolutionary who, as the successor of Jatindranath Mukherjee or Bagha Jatin, led the Jugantar members to recognise and accept Gandhi’s movement as the culmination of their own aspiration.-Early life:Jadugopal or Jadu was born at Tamluk in the...
's friends, he came in contact with the ideas of the Bengal resistance. Jadu Gopal was subsequently jailed without trial from 1923 to 1927. Dhan Gopal later wrote a memoir about Jadu Gopal, titled My Brother's Face.
In Japan
In 1910, hoping to save the younger brother from police action, Dhan Gopal's family sent him to Japan to study industrial machinery. Although he was initially fascinated with the positivistic spirit of industrialization, later he became deeply disillusioned by the assembly line method of production and proclivity towards sheer efficiency which he viewed as dehumanizing, degrading and debasing. He was particularly shocked by how assembly line workers who had suffered serious accidents were quickly replaced by other workers, without consideration by the factory owners or employers for either their medical recovery, health benefits or adequate compensation. After a short stay in Japan, he boarded a ship for San Francisco.Experiences in America
Barely out of his teens, Dhan Gopal had absorbed enough revolutionary ideology from his peers to have been well on the way to following in his brother's footsteps, and may not have left India entirely willingly. Dhan Gopal took his ideology with him to America where he fell in with a number of dirt-poor 'anarchists' like himself. His experiences among them, in San Francisco and New York, are detailed in ‘Outcast’, the second section of his autobiography.In San Francisco he looked about for a way to support himself and pay for his college education, and soon lit upon writing. Around 1916 he wrote Sandhya, Songs of Twilight and Rajani or Songs of the Night, two books of poems, and Laila Majnu, a musical play in three acts, all published by Paul Elder and Co. of San Francisco. At this time, he was a student at the University of California at Berkeley for three years. Financial constraints and his political radicalism made him move on to Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, from where he earned a graduate degree in metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
in 1914. He socialized with leftists, anarchists and freethinker
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
s and became aware of the plight of the underclass
Underclass
The term underclass refers to a segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a class hierarchy, below the core body of the working class. The general idea that a class system includes a population under the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences...
, the white middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
, Negro
Negro
The word Negro is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not...
es and other East Asian immigrant groups. He married Ethel Ray Dugan, an American artist and painter, in 1918, and they had a son, also called Dhan Gopal. His son popularly known as "Dan" Mukerji was one of the top officials of Pan American Airlines. (to be verified) He had also visited Calcutta.
In the 1920s, Mukerji moved to New York and began his most prolific period of writing, published mainly by E.P. Dutton. Of his many children's books, Kari the Elephant was the first to see publication, in 1922. In (1924) his book "Hari the Jungle Lad was published." The most successful such title was Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon
Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon
Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon is a 1928 children's novel by Dhan Gopal Mukerji that won the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1928. It deals with the life of Gay Neck, a prized Indian pigeon...
(1927) for which the American Library Association
American Library Association
The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....
presented him with the Newbery Medal
Newbery Medal
The John Newbery Medal is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association . The award is given to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. The award has been given since 1922. ...
in 1928. This book is about a carrier pigeon ('Gay Neck') and his growing up with the flock owned by the narrator, then his (the pigeon's) drafting as a messenger for the Indian army in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and finally how the pigeon and his handler return to India and deal with the wounds and memories of war in the seclusion of a lamasery. Mukerji's other children's books include Ghond, the Hunter (1928), The Chief of the Herd (1929), Hindu Fables for Little Children (1929), Rama, the Hero of India (1930, produced for the children of Dalton School where his wife taught), and The Master Monkey (1932). Many of his works were reworkings of stories he had heard as a child. Others were inspired by his own experiences in India as a child among the jungles of Bengal, or as a yogi in various holy places.
Among Mukerji's writings for adults are A Son of Mother India Answers (1928) (partly in response to Katherine Mayo
Katherine Mayo
Katherine Mayo was an American writer notorious for her polemical book Mother India , in which she attacked the Hindu society, religion and culture of the country....
's Mother India), Devotional Passages from the Hindu Bible and Visit India with Me (1929), Disillusioned India (1930) and My Brother's Face (1932). The Face of Silence (1926) is about the nineteenth century saint and visionary Ramakrishna Paramhansa and is said to have deeply influenced Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...
(See Swami Tathagatananda, 'Dhan Gopal Mukerji and The Face of Silence ', Prabuddha Bharati, January and February 2006 (two part article).)
The details of his later life are hazy, but there is some evidence to believe that relations with his wife entered a difficult phase at the end of his life. In spite of his many friends he felt deeply isolated and marginalized in America, as he could do very little, beyond raising funds and entertaining visiting celebrities, to further the cause of Indian liberty. The choices he had made in life prevented him from ever returning permanently to India, and it is possible to see his urge to write of the jungles and animals of his native land as a means of compensating for their absence. The unhappiness of his final years drove him further into spirituality
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
, fueled his interest in the spiritual heritage of his motherland and gave urgency to his desire to interpret and explain India to the West. Finally, in 1936, he hanged himself on July 14, shortly after his forty-sixth birthday, in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Legacy
Dhan Gopal Mukerji is probably the first popular Indian writer in English. He pre-dates G.V. Desani and Mulk Raj AnandMulk Raj Anand
Mulk Raj Anand was an Indian writer in English, notable for his depiction of the lives of the poorer castes in traditional Indian society. One of the pioneers of Indo-Anglian fiction, he, together with R.K...
by some ten or twenty years. Krupabai Satthianadhan
Krupabai Satthianadhan
Krupabai Satthianadhan was one of the first Indian women to write in English, and certainly the first woman novelist in English from India.-Biography:...
, the woman who wrote the novels Kamala and Saguna in the late nineteenth century, was certainly an accomplished writer, but her works did not reach a mass audience until she was rediscovered in the twentieth century. Scattered writings in English by Indians are encountered throughout the nineteenth century, such as the famous Rajmohan's Wife, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's first novel, written in English after the manner of Scott. There was also notable work by figures such as Roquia Sakhawat Hussain, writer of Sultana's Dream
Sultana's dream
"Sultana's Dream" is a classic work of Bengali science fiction and one of the first examples of feminist science fiction. This short story was written in 1905 by Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain, a Muslim feminist, writer and social reformer who lived in British India, in what is now Bangladesh. The word...
(1905), the first science fiction piece in English by an Indian, comparable to Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform...
's Herland
Herland (novel)
Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of women who reproduce via parthenogenesis . The result is an ideal social order, free of war, conflict and domination...
. But usually these are byproducts of Indian language work, and Dhan Gopal Mukerji is the first to write seriously and consistently in English.
This was not by choice, but was a product of his unfortunate situation. Dhan Gopal never lost the sense of mission which he shared with his brother, and throughout his life strove to complete the task he had set himself: to emancipate India from foreign rule and win for her culture and philosophy the respect he felt it deserved. In America he associated with fellow exiles like M.N. Roy, the founder of the Communist Party of India
Communist Party of India
The Communist Party of India is a national political party in India. In the Indian communist movement, there are different views on exactly when the Indian communist party was founded. The date maintained as the foundation day by CPI is 26 December 1925...
, to whom he is said to have suggested the adoption of the pseudonym 'Manabendra'.
Forbidden the more satisfying outlet of activism, he poured his feelings into his writing. Consequently, his language is magical and persuasive, and his observation of animals and their ways is accurate and unsentimental. In his work the Gond
Gondi people
The Gondi, Goindi or Gond people are people in central India, spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh, eastern Maharashtra , Chhattisgarh, northern Andhra Pradesh, and Western Orissa. With over four million people, they are the largest tribe in Central India.The Gondi language is related to...
hunter and the Brahmin child are equals in their travels in the jungle, and Dhan Gopal Mukerji never (unlike Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
) anthropomorphises the animals or draws a facile moral from them. Although he was acutely conscious of his high caste, he saw it more as a responsibility than a privilege, and neither patronized nor denigrated the so-called 'lower' castes and communities. He was, however, less sound on the subject of women. He writes movingly of child prostitutes in America in the 1910s and 1920s, especially of their plight during the Depression, but he also romanticizes the life of Rangini, a 'tawaif
Tawaif
A tawaif was a courtesan who catered to the nobility of South Asia, particularly during the era of the Mughal Empire.The tawaifs contributed to music, dance, theatre, film, and the Urdu literary tradition.-History:...
' (courtesan) encountered in Caste and Outcast. He also praises his mother's and sisters' strict asceticism, all the more so since his mother is at that time a widow, performing all the hard penances prescribed to Hindu widows of her caste.