Michael Madhusudan Dutt, one of the early Indo-Anglian writers from Bengal and the founder of modern Bengali poetry, lived in Madras, between 1848 and 1856, pursuing a career as a journalist and teacher. It was in Madras that he wrote The Captive Ladie, a poem of two cantos, based on the character of Rajput warrior Prithviraj Chauhan, and established his remarkable talent as a poet.
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“You know that when I came here I had no friends; but now, many a barbarous villain, born and bred here, would be glad to be in my shoes,” he wrote to his friend Gourdas.
Teaching position
The reputation also won him a teaching position at Madras High School, a precursor to the Presidency College, and thereafter at the University of Madras. He was a polyglot. Tamil was one of the languages that he mastered while he was in Madras. It is believed that his reading of Kambaramayanam became an inspiration for his epic poem, Meghnad Badh Kavya, on the killing of Meghnad or Indrajit, the son of Ravana.
In Madras, he married an English woman, probably the first registered marriage between an Indian and a European woman. “I have a fine English wife and four children,” he later wrote to Gourdas, who informed him about the death of his father Raj Narain, a well-known lawyer, many months after it took place.
A plea to inherit property
Ghulam Murshid, the author of Lured by Hope: A Biography of Michael Madhusudan Dutt, has recalled Gourdas’s letter pleading with Madhusudan Dutt to come back to Calcutta (Kolkata) with his whole family and inherit his father’s property.
“He said that it might not be difficult to find a job in Calcutta — particularly that of a teacher or school inspector — which would be better paid than what Madhu was earning as the sub-editor of the Madras Spectator,” writes Ghulam Murshid.
He sailed to Calcutta, turning his back on Madras that earned him a name and his wife Rebecca, who filled the vacuum of his heart in a city where he felt alien. “Neither the bonds of love, nor a sense of duty towards his children, could make him go back [to Madras],” writes Ghulam Murshid.
Writer and translator V. B. Ganesan, who is writing a biography of Madhusudan Dutt to mark his 200th birth anniversary in January next year, says he is not able to find out what befell his family after Madhusudan Dutt left for Calcutta in January 1856.
Conversion to Christianity
Madhusudan Dutt came to Madras because of financial constraints. He converted to Christianity to avoid a marriage arranged by his father while he was still a student.
“But he had to withdraw from the Hindu College, a consequence not anticipated. In 1843, however, the Hindu College did not abide a convert,” Clinton B. Seely writes in his introduction to his translation of Meghnad Badh Kavya as The Slaying of Meghanada: A Ramayana from Colonial Bengal.
Though his father was upset, he did not disown him. After a gap of two years, he joined the Bishop College in Calcutta in 1844 and continued his studies for three years. However, due to non-payment of fees by his father, as assured earlier, he could not sit for his final examination in December 1847.
“On December 29, 1847, Datta, half mad with vexation and anxiety, had boarded a ship for Madras, fleeing the city of his father, fleeing a father, who quite possibly stood in need of financial help or for emotional support or both,” Seely writes.
Finding a job as an usher
He arrived in Madras on January 18, 1848. He knew no one in the city and it was with the help of Charles Kennet, a friend from his Bishop College days, that he found a job as an usher (an assistant teacher) at the Madras Male Orphan Asylum’s Free Day School in Black Town.
It was while working in the Asylum that he married Rebecca Thompson. According to Seely, there had not been a single recorded marriage between an Indian man and a European woman until the marriage between Madhusudan Dutt and Rebecca Thompson McTavish on July 31, 1848.
Mr. Ganesan said it was only at the time of marriage did he start using the name Michael. The marriage held was conducted by Robert Posnett.
Though Madhusudan Dutt claimed that Rebecca’s father was an indigo planter, according to the church records, he was Robert Thompson, a gunner in the Horse Artillery Brigade. Her mother Catherine Thompson was Indo-Briton.
The newly married lived at Royapuram from 1848 to 1852. Subsequently, they shifted to Vepery Castle.
“It is clear from Madhu’s poetry how deeply he loved Rebecca. Soon after their wedding, when Madhu’s heart was still overwhelmed with love and new-found happiness, four of his poems were published in the Madras Circulator,” writes Ghulam Murshid.
They had two daughters and two sons. The elder daughter was Bertha Blanche Kennet and the younger daughter was Phoebe Rebecca Salfelt Dutt. The elder son was George John McTavish Dutt and the younger son was Michael James Dutt.
Writing poems in Eurasian
In Madras, Madhusudan Dutt also worked as the editor of a weekly newspaper called Eurasian, in which he wrote many poems. He was also the editor of The Madras Hindu Chronicle. When he was offered a job at the Madras School, it was with one condition: he had to resign his editorship of The Madras Hindu Chronicle.
His standing as editor was explained by the argument placed by The Athenaeum, a rival newspaper, which said the only Indian periodical that could boast of a high standard was The Madras Hindu Chronicle and it was in danger of folding up because its most able editor, Madhusudan Dutt, was forced by circumstances to take a job at the Madras School. Madhusudan Dutt, who was under financial stress, had to quit journalism and became a full-time tutor at the Madras School for a salary of ₹150 a month. He continued in the job till 1855.
Return to Calcutta
Subsequently, he worked as a sub-editor in The Madras Spectator, which became a daily from March 1855. On December 19, 1855, he received the message about the death of his father and was asked to visit Calcutta, where he married Henrietta White, a woman of French origin, and they had four children. He even studied law and became a barrister, but never bothered to visit his wife and children in Madras.
