\n| <\/p>\n III <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n His Official Career <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n
\n
\nT<\/span>HUS<\/span><\/b>
\nequipped, thus trained Bankim began his human journey, began in the radiance of joy and strength and
\ngenius the life which was to close in suffering and mortal pain. The drudgery of existence met him in the doorway, when
\nhis youth was still young. His twenty-first year found him at Jessore, his fifty-third was the last of his long official labour.
\nHere too however his inveterate habit of success went always with him. The outward history of
\nhis manhood reads more brilliantly even than that of his youth, and if he did not climb to the highest posts, it was only because these are shut to indigenous
\ntalent. From start to finish, his ability, delicacy of judgment and careful work were recognised as something unusual: yet it would not be easy to find a more careful or cleverer set of administrators than the Hindu civilians of Bengal. At Jessore
\nhis life was chequered by a great boon and a great sorrow. It was here that he made fast his friendship with the dramatist
\nDinabandhu Mitra, which remained close-soldered to the end, and it was here that his young wife died. At Kanthi, the next
\nstage of his official wanderings, he married again and more fortunately. Khulna, the third step in the ladder, was also the
\ntheatre of his most ambitious exploits. Entangled in the Sundarban, that rude and unhealthy tract of marsh and jungle, the zillah was labouring under two morbid ailments, for which none of its official doctors had found an efficient panacea, -the
\nsmallpox of piracy and the greater pox of Indigoism. Ruffians from Europe were in hot competition with the native breed which
\nshould deserve best the Government Scholarship for lawlessness and brutality; and as they had a racial gift for these things and a
\nwider field it might have been safely awarded to them. Unluckily Bankim stept into their happy hunting-grounds and spoiled the
\ngame. But to the unhappy ryots, the battle-field for these rival<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nPage \u2013 99<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\nrascalities, he came as a champion and a deliverer. At Khulna
\nthis mild, thoughtful Bengali wears the strange appearance of a Hercules weeding out monsters, clearing augean stables, putting a term to pests. His tranquil energy quite broke the back of
\nthe Indigo tyrants. Their master-criminals and chief indigocrats fled to Anam and Brindaban, but they were overtaken by
\nBankim’s warrant and persuaded to come back. Fine and imprisonment
\nmeted out with a healthy severity, shattered their prestige and oppressed their brutal spirit.
\nKhulna then saw the last of government by organised ruffiandom. No less terse and incisive
\nwere Bankim’s dealings with the water-thieves who lurking in creek
\nand brushwood dominated to the perpetual alarm and molestation of travellers the hundred waters of the Sundarban. The
\nout-laws were hunted down and imprisoned and their principal spirits relegated where there was less room for their genius to find self-expression. The hydra of the waters had been
\ncrushed as effectually as the indigo pest; and since the era of Bankim’s
\nmagistracy one may travel the length and breadth of Khulna without peril except from malaria and ague. By a little quiet
\ndecisiveness he had broken the back of two formidable tyrannies and given an object-lesson in what a Government can do when it heartily intends the good of the
\npeople. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nBaruipur, consecrated a place in the calendar of literature, was next put into his hands. The event of his residence
\nhere was his appointment vice Mr. Justice Princep to the chair of an Official Emoluments Commission then sitting. The Government intended this to look like an extraordinary distinction, and
\nhad not the genius of the man raised him unmeasurably above any Englishman in the country, we might have regarded it as
\nsuch. Barhampur was the next step in his journey, and after Barhampur Maldeh, and after Maldeh the important Suburban
\ndistrict of Hugly. He was now nearing his high-water mark and his official existence which had been till then more than
\nordinarily smooth, began to be ploughed up by unaccustomed storms. The Government wanted to
\ngive some inadequate expression to its sense of his extraordinary merits and could
\nthink of nothing better than a place in the Secretariat. It was here <\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\nPage \u2013 100<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\nthat he came into collision with the spirit of bureaucracy. His
\nsuperior was a certain Macaulay, a hard working official, whose brains were tied together with red tape. The diligent mediocrity of this man was goaded to extra hours by flickering visions of
\na Lieutenant-Governorship, but
\nBankim, having no such high incentive, was careful to close his work at the strict office-hour.
\nFor this Macaulay took him severely to task. “It is natural enough”
\nreplied Bankim, forgetting unfortunately that he was talking to a piece of red tape “it is natural enough for you to work hard.
\nYou are of the ruling caste and may rise, who knows? to be Lieutenant-Governor. But why should I be subservient to your
\nexample? Here is the bourne and goal of my promotion. Beyond it what prospect have I? No, I have no idea of sweating myself to death over extraordinary work.” When independence
\nand red tape come into collision, it is usually independence that gets
\ntripped up. Bankim was sent back in a hurry to Magistrate’s work, this time at Alipur. But his ill-luck followed him. He was
\nshipwrecked again in a collision with Anglo-Indianism. Walking in Eden Garden he chanced across Munro, the Presidency
\nCommissioner, a farouche bureaucrat with the manners of an Englishman and the temper of a badly-educated hyena. Bankim
\nexamined the queer curiosity, as one might any queer curiosity, with a certain lazy interest, but no signal of respect. He was
\nunaware at this time that to Salaam any stray European you may meet is the highest privilege of a Hindu and the whole duty of a Deputy Magistrate. But he was soon to receive
\ninstruction: for His Hyenaship was off in a rage to the Government and by a little private roaring easily got Bankim transferred to
\nJahajpur in Orissa. Bankim was considerably taken aback and not a little
\nangry. “Have I then committed some grave fault?” he enquired of the Chief Secretary “or is it that the Government has found
\nout a new way to pay its old debts? Resolve me, for I am in doubt.” The gibe told. He had hardly set foot in Orissa, when he was gazetted back to Hugly. After a lapse of time, -Munro,
\nI believe, had in the mean time been struck by his own astonishing
\nlikeness to the founder of Christianity and was away to spread the light of the Gospel among the heathen -after a lapse of time <\/span><\/p>\n
\nPage \u2013 101<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\nBankim was allowed to come back to Alipur. But this was the
\nlast stage of that thankless drudgery in which he had wasted so much precious force. His term of service was drawing to a close,
\nand he was weary of it all: he wished to devote his remnant of life to literature. But the days that remained to him were few
\nand evil. One or two years clouded with sickness, sorrow and suffering stood between him and the end. <\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\nPage \u2013 102<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" III His Official Career THUS equipped, thus trained Bankim began his human journey, began in the radiance of joy and strength…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-01-early-cultural-writings","wpcat-49-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11847,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions\/11847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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