Nirad C. Chaudhuri
Encyclopedia
Italic textNirad C. Chaudhuri (Bangla: নীরদ চন্দ্র চৌধুরী Nirod Chôndro Choudhuri) (23 November 1897 – 1 August 1999) was a Bengali
−English
writer and cultural commentator. He was born in 1897 in Kishoreganj
, which today is part of Bangladesh
but at that time was part of Bengal
, a region of British India.
He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award
, in 1975 for his biography on Max Müller
called Scholar Extraordinary, by the Sahitya Akademi
, India's national academy of letters. In 1992, he was honoured by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
with the title of Commander of Order of the British Empire (CBE). His 1965 work The Continent of Circe
earned him the Duff Cooper Memorial Award
, becoming the first and only Indian to be selected for the prize.
(then known as Calcutta). For his FA (school leaving) course he attended the Ripon College
in Calcutta along with the famous Bengali
writer Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay
. Following this, he attended the prestigious Scottish Church College, Calcutta
, where he studied history as his undergraduate major. He graduated with honors in history and topped the University of Calcutta
merit list. At Scottish Church College, he attended the seminars of renowned historian Professor Kalidas Nag. After graduation, he enrolled for the M.A. level course at the University of Calcutta. However, he did not attend all of his final exams of the M.A. programme, and therefore did not earn his M.A. degree.
He started his career as a clerk in the Accounting Department of the Indian Army
. At the same time, he started contributing articles to popular magazines. His first article on Bharat Chandra (a famous Bengali poet of the 18th century) appeared in the most prestigious English magazine of the time, Modern Review
.
He left the job in the Accounting Department shortly after, and started a new career as a journalist and editor. During this period he was a boarder in Mirzapur Street near College Square, Kolkata, living together with the writers Bibhuti Bhushan Banerjee and Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder. He was involved in the editing of the then well-known English and Bengali magazines Modern Review, Probasi
and Sonibarer Chithi. In addition, he also founded two short-lived but highly esteemed Bengali magazines, Samasamayik and Notun Patrika. He married Amiya Dhar, a well-known writer herself, in 1932, and the couple had three sons.
In 1938, he obtained a job as secretary to Sarat Chandra Bose
, a political leader from the freedom movement in India. As a result he was able to interact with the political leaders of India - Mahatma Gandhi
, Jawaharlal Nehru
and the more famous brother of Sarat Chandra Bose - Subhas Chandra Bose, the future Netaji. This familiarity with the workings of the inner circle of Indian politics led him to be skeptical about its eventual progress, and he became progressively disillusioned about the ability of Indian political leadership.
Apart from his career as a secretary, he continued to contribute articles in Bengali and English to newspapers and magazines. He was also appointed as a political commentator on the Kolkata branch of the All India Radio
. In 1941, he started working for the Delhi Branch of the All India Radio.
He was a prolific writer even in the very last years of his life, publishing his last work at the age of 99. His wife Amiya Chaudhuri died in 1994 in Oxford
, England
. He too died in Oxford, two months short of his 102nd birthday, in 1999.
(ISBN 0-201-15576-1), published in 1951, put him on the short list of great Anglo-Indian writers. He courted controversy in the newly independent India due to the dedication of the book, which ran thus:
The dedication, which was actually a mock-imperial rhetoric, infuriated many Indians, particularly the political and bureaucratic establishment. "The wogs took the bait and having read only dedication sent up howls of protest", commented Chaudhuri's friend, the editor, historian and novelist Khushwant Singh
. Chaudhuri was hounded out of government service, deprived of his pension
, blacklisted as a writer in India and forced to live a life of penury. Furthermore, he had to give up his job as a political commentator in All India Radio
as the Government of India
promulgated a law that prohibited employees from publishing memoirs. Chaudhuri commented later that he had been misunderstood. "The dedication was really a condemnation of the British rulers for not treating us as equals", he wrote in the Granta
article. Typically, to demonstrate what exactly he had been trying to say, he drew on a parallel with ancient Rome. The book's dedication, he said "was an imitation of what Cicero
said about the conduct of Verres
, a Roman proconsul of Sicily who oppressed Sicilian Roman citizens, who in their desperation cried out: "Civis romanus sum
".
In 1955 the British Council and the BBC jointly made arrangements to take him to England for eight weeks. He was asked to contribute lectures to the BBC. He contributed eight lectures on British life. Later these lectures are collected in the Passage to England modified and edited. E. M. Forster
reviewed it in The Times Literary Supplement
.
His 1965 work The Continent of Circe
earned him the Duff Cooper Memorial Award
, becoming the first and only Indian to be selected for the prize.
In 1972, he was the subject of a Merchant Ivory
documentary
, Adventures of a Brown Man in Search of Civilization
.
He published a sequel to his autobiography entitled Thy Hand, Great Anarch!
in 1988.
In 1992, he was honoured by Queen Elizabeth II
of the United Kingdom
with the title of Commander of Order of the British Empire
(CBE).
In 1997, at 100 years of age, he published his last book Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse.
He wrote the following valuable books in Bengali also
Bengali people
The Bengali people are an ethnic community native to the historic region of Bengal in South Asia. They speak Bengali , which is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. In their native language, they are referred to as বাঙালী...
−English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
writer and cultural commentator. He was born in 1897 in Kishoreganj
Kishoreganj District
-Place of Interest:Kishorganj is a place of the creed of respectively Sanatana and Loukik Islam. Both Meghna and Brahmaputra river have contributed to its existence. Many traditional rituals are observed every year in Kishoreganj. Among them Kurikhai Mela is one of the most celebrated fair. It is a...
, which today is part of Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
but at that time was part of Bengal
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
, a region of British India.
He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award
Sahitya Akademi Award
Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honor in India which Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of outstanding works in one of the following twenty-four major Indian languagesAssamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri,...
, in 1975 for his biography on Max Müller
Max Müller
Friedrich Max Müller , more regularly known as Max Müller, was a German philologist and Orientalist, one of the founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of comparative religion...
called Scholar Extraordinary, by the Sahitya Akademi
Sahitya Akademi
The Sahitya Akademi ', India's National Academy of Letters, is an organisation dedicated to the promotion of literature in the languages of India...
, India's national academy of letters. In 1992, he was honoured by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
with the title of Commander of Order of the British Empire (CBE). His 1965 work The Continent of Circe
The Continent of Circe
The Continent of Circe was a 1965 book of essays written by Indian author Nirad C. Chaudhuri. It won the Duff Cooper Prize. In this book, Chaudhuri discusses Indian society from a socio-psychological perspective...
earned him the Duff Cooper Memorial Award
Duff Cooper Prize
The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, Cabinet member and acclaimed author. The prize was first awarded...
, becoming the first and only Indian to be selected for the prize.
Biography
He was educated in Kishorganj and KolkataKolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
(then known as Calcutta). For his FA (school leaving) course he attended the Ripon College
Surendranath College
Surendranath College is an undergraduate college affiliated to the University of Calcutta, in Kolkata, India. It was founded in 1884 by the nationalist leader Surendranath Banerjea....
in Calcutta along with the famous Bengali
Bengali language
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
writer Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay
Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay was one of the most famous Bengali novelist and writer of modern Bengali literature...
. Following this, he attended the prestigious 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...
, where he studied history as his undergraduate major. He graduated with honors in history and topped 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...
merit list. At Scottish Church College, he attended the seminars of renowned historian Professor Kalidas Nag. After graduation, he enrolled for the M.A. level course at the University of Calcutta. However, he did not attend all of his final exams of the M.A. programme, and therefore did not earn his M.A. degree.
He started his career as a clerk in the Accounting Department of the Indian Army
British Indian Army
The British Indian Army, officially simply the Indian Army, was the principal army of the British Raj in India before the partition of India in 1947...
. At the same time, he started contributing articles to popular magazines. His first article on Bharat Chandra (a famous Bengali poet of the 18th century) appeared in the most prestigious English magazine of the time, Modern Review
Modern Review (Calcutta)
Modern Review was the name of a monthly magazine published in Calcutta since 1907.Founded by Ramananda Chatterjee, the Modern Review soon emerged as an important forum for the Indian Nationalist intelligentsia. It carried essays on politics, economics, sociology, as well as poems, stories,...
.
He left the job in the Accounting Department shortly after, and started a new career as a journalist and editor. During this period he was a boarder in Mirzapur Street near College Square, Kolkata, living together with the writers Bibhuti Bhushan Banerjee and Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder. He was involved in the editing of the then well-known English and Bengali magazines Modern Review, Probasi
Probasi
Probasi [প্রবাসী] is a magazine for Bengali literature. It is a monthly periodical, but is now out of print. Many authors wrote regularly in this magazine....
and Sonibarer Chithi. In addition, he also founded two short-lived but highly esteemed Bengali magazines, Samasamayik and Notun Patrika. He married Amiya Dhar, a well-known writer herself, in 1932, and the couple had three sons.
In 1938, he obtained a job as secretary to Sarat Chandra Bose
Sarat Chandra Bose
Sarat Chandra Bose was a barrister and Indian freedom fighter. He was the elder brother of Subhash Chandra Bose.-Early life:His forefathers had served the Afghan rulers of pre-Mughal Bengal with great distinction....
, a political leader from the freedom movement in India. As a result he was able to interact with the political leaders of India - Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...
, Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru , often referred to with the epithet of Panditji, was an Indian statesman who became the first Prime Minister of independent India and became noted for his “neutralist” policies in foreign affairs. He was also one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the...
and the more famous brother of Sarat Chandra Bose - Subhas Chandra Bose, the future Netaji. This familiarity with the workings of the inner circle of Indian politics led him to be skeptical about its eventual progress, and he became progressively disillusioned about the ability of Indian political leadership.
Apart from his career as a secretary, he continued to contribute articles in Bengali and English to newspapers and magazines. He was also appointed as a political commentator on the Kolkata branch of the All India Radio
All India Radio
All India Radio , officially known since 1956 as Akashvani , is the radio broadcaster of India and a division of Prasar Bharati. Established in 1936, it is the sister service of Prasar Bharati's Doordarshan, the national television broadcaster. All India Radio is one of the largest radio networks...
. In 1941, he started working for the Delhi Branch of the All India Radio.
He was a prolific writer even in the very last years of his life, publishing his last work at the age of 99. His wife Amiya Chaudhuri died in 1994 in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. He too died in Oxford, two months short of his 102nd birthday, in 1999.
Major works
His masterpiece, The Autobiography of an Unknown IndianThe Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is the autobiographical work of one of India's most controversial writers -- Nirad C. Chaudhuri. He wrote this when he was around fifty and records his life from his birth at 1897 in Kishorganj, a small town in present Bangladesh...
(ISBN 0-201-15576-1), published in 1951, put him on the short list of great Anglo-Indian writers. He courted controversy in the newly independent India due to the dedication of the book, which ran thus:
The dedication, which was actually a mock-imperial rhetoric, infuriated many Indians, particularly the political and bureaucratic establishment. "The wogs took the bait and having read only dedication sent up howls of protest", commented Chaudhuri's friend, the editor, historian and novelist Khushwant Singh
Khushwant Singh
Khushwant Singh is a prominent Indian novelist and journalist. Singh's weekly column, "With Malice towards One and All", carried by several Indian newspapers, is among the most widely-read columns in the country....
. Chaudhuri was hounded out of government service, deprived of his pension
Pension
In general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.The terms retirement...
, blacklisted as a writer in India and forced to live a life of penury. Furthermore, he had to give up his job as a political commentator in All India Radio
All India Radio
All India Radio , officially known since 1956 as Akashvani , is the radio broadcaster of India and a division of Prasar Bharati. Established in 1936, it is the sister service of Prasar Bharati's Doordarshan, the national television broadcaster. All India Radio is one of the largest radio networks...
as the Government of India
Government of India
The Government of India, officially known as the Union Government, and also known as the Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of the union of 28 states and seven union territories, collectively called the Republic of India...
promulgated a law that prohibited employees from publishing memoirs. Chaudhuri commented later that he had been misunderstood. "The dedication was really a condemnation of the British rulers for not treating us as equals", he wrote in the Granta
Granta
Granta is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centers on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real." In 2007, The Observer stated, "In its blend of...
article. Typically, to demonstrate what exactly he had been trying to say, he drew on a parallel with ancient Rome. The book's dedication, he said "was an imitation of what Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
said about the conduct of Verres
Verres
Gaius Verres was a Roman magistrate, notorious for his misgovernment of Sicily. It is not known what gens he belonged to, though some give him the nomen Licinius.-As governor:...
, a Roman proconsul of Sicily who oppressed Sicilian Roman citizens, who in their desperation cried out: "Civis romanus sum
Civis romanus sum
Civis Romanus sum implied, in a wide sense, all the rights and duties associated with the status of Roman citizenship.The Christian New Testament states that Paul of Tarsus, imprisoned and on trial, claimed his right as a Roman citizen to be tried before Caesar, and the judicial process had to be...
".
In 1955 the British Council and the BBC jointly made arrangements to take him to England for eight weeks. He was asked to contribute lectures to the BBC. He contributed eight lectures on British life. Later these lectures are collected in the Passage to England modified and edited. E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
reviewed it in The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
.
His 1965 work The Continent of Circe
The Continent of Circe
The Continent of Circe was a 1965 book of essays written by Indian author Nirad C. Chaudhuri. It won the Duff Cooper Prize. In this book, Chaudhuri discusses Indian society from a socio-psychological perspective...
earned him the Duff Cooper Memorial Award
Duff Cooper Prize
The Duff Cooper Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of history, biography, political science or poetry, published in English or French. The prize was established in honour of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat, Cabinet member and acclaimed author. The prize was first awarded...
, becoming the first and only Indian to be selected for the prize.
In 1972, he was the subject of a Merchant Ivory
Merchant Ivory Productions
Merchant Ivory Productions is a film company founded in 1961 by producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory. Their films were for the most part produced by the former, directed by the latter, and scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, with the noted exception of a few films. The films were often...
documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
, Adventures of a Brown Man in Search of Civilization
Adventures of a Brown Man in Search of Civilization
Adventures of a Brown Man in Search of Civilization is a 54 minute color documentary based on the life and thoughts of Nirad C. Chaudhuri. It was made in 1972 and was directed by James Ivory...
.
He published a sequel to his autobiography entitled Thy Hand, Great Anarch!
Thy Hand, Great Anarch!
Thy Hand, Great Anarch! is a 1987 autobiographical sequel to Indian essayist Nirad C. Chaudhuri's The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian...
in 1988.
In 1992, he was honoured by Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
with the title of Commander of Order of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(CBE).
In 1997, at 100 years of age, he published his last book Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse.
Social Views and Writing Style
- Although he was highly critical of the post-independence Congress party establishment, he was more sympathetic to the right-wing Hindu nationalist movement in India. He refused to criticise the destruction of mosques: "“Muslims do not have the slightest right to complain about the desecration of one mosque in Ayodhya. From 1000 AD every temple from Kathiawar to Bihar, from the Himalayas to the Vindhyas has been sacked and ruined. Not one temple was left standing all over northern India. They escaped destruction only where Muslim power did not gain access to them for reasons such as dense forests. Otherwise, it was a continuous spell of vandalism. No nation with any self-respect will forgive this. What happened in Ayodhya would not have happened had the Muslims acknowledged this historical argument even once.”"
- He was also deeply distressed by what he saw as the deep hypocrisy in Bengali social life and in particular those that resulted from classSocial classSocial classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
and casteCasteCaste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...
distinctions. His historical research revealed to him that the rigid Victorianesque morality of middle class Bengali women was a socially enforced construct, that had less to do with religionReligionReligion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
, choiceChoiceChoice consists of the mental process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one of them. While a choice can be made between imagined options , often a choice is made between real options, and followed by the corresponding action...
and judgmentJudgmentA judgment , in a legal context, is synonymous with the formal decision made by a court following a lawsuit. At the same time the court may also make a range of court orders, such as imposing a sentence upon a guilty defendant in a criminal matter, or providing a remedy for the plaintiff in a civil...
, but more to do with upbringing, social acceptance and intergenerational transference of values. - His prose was highly influenced by SanskritSanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
and the older version of the Bengali languageBengali languageBengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
, the Shadhubhasha (সাধুভাষা). He had little respect for the proletarian language, Choltibhasha (চলতিভাষা ) or Cholitobhasha (চলিতভাষা), which he regarded as being common in taste and scope. He avoided the use of words and expressions originating from Arabic, UrduUrduUrdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
and PersianPersian languagePersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
that are very common in modern Bengali (though not as common as in Hindi).
Books
He wrote the following books in English:- The Autobiography of an Unknown IndianThe Autobiography of an Unknown IndianThe Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is the autobiographical work of one of India's most controversial writers -- Nirad C. Chaudhuri. He wrote this when he was around fifty and records his life from his birth at 1897 in Kishorganj, a small town in present Bangladesh...
(1951) - A Passage to England (1959)
- The Continent of CirceThe Continent of CirceThe Continent of Circe was a 1965 book of essays written by Indian author Nirad C. Chaudhuri. It won the Duff Cooper Prize. In this book, Chaudhuri discusses Indian society from a socio-psychological perspective...
(1965) - The Intellectual in India (1967)
- To Live or Not to Live (1971)
- Scholar Extraordinary, The Life of Professor the Right Honourable Friedrich Max Muller, P.C. (1974)
- Culture in the Vanity Bag (1976)
- Clive of India (1975)
- Hinduism: A Religion to Live by (1979)
- Thy Hand, Great Anarch!Thy Hand, Great Anarch!Thy Hand, Great Anarch! is a 1987 autobiographical sequel to Indian essayist Nirad C. Chaudhuri's The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian...
(1987) - Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse (1997)
- The East is East and West is West (collection of pre-published essays)
- From the Archives of a Centenarian (collection of pre-published essays)
- Why I Mourn for England (collection of pre-published essays)
He wrote the following valuable books in Bengali also
- Bangali Jibane Ramani (Role of Woman in Bengali Life)
- Atmaghati Bangali (Suicidal Bengalee)
- Atmaghati Rabindranath (Suicidal Rabindranath)
- Amar Debottar Sampatti (My Bequeathed Property)
- Nirbachita Prabandha (Selected Essays)
- Aji Hote Satabarsha Age (Before a Hundred Years) (A Hundred years ago)