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THREE
His Official Career
THUS
equipped, thus trained Bankim began his human journey, began in the radiance of joy and strength
and genius the life which was to close in suffering and mortal
pain. The drudgery of existence met him in the doorway, when
his youth was still young. His twenty-first year found him at
Jessore, his fifty-third was the last of his long official labour.
Here too however his inveterate habit of success went always with
him. The outward history of his 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 talent.
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 his life was chequered
by a great boon and a great sorrow. It was here that he made
fast his friendship with the dramatist Dinabandhu Mitra, which
remained close-soldered to the end, and it was here that his young
wife died. At Kanthi, the next stage of his official wanderings,
he married again and more fortunately. Khulna, the third
step in the ladder, was also the theatre of his most ambitious
exploits. Entangled in the Sunderban, 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 smallpox of piracy and the
greater pox of Indigoism. Ruffians from Europe were in hot
competition with the native breed which should deserve best the
Government Scholarship for lawlessness and brutality; and as
they had a racial gift for these things and a wider field it might
have been safely awarded to them. Unluckily Bankim stept into
their happy hunting-grounds and spoiled the game. But to the
unhappy ryots, the battle-field for these rival rascalities, he came
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as a champion and a deliverer. At Khulna this 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 the Indigo tyrants.
Their master-criminals and chief indigocrats fled to Anam and
Brindaban, but they were overtaken by Bankim's warrant and
persuaded to come back. Fine and imprisonment meted out with
a healthy severity shattered their prestige and oppressed their
brutal spirits. Khulna then saw the last of government by organised ruffiandom. No less terse and incisive were Bankim's
dealings with the water-thieves who lurking in creek and brushwood
dominated to the perpetual alarm and molestation of travellers
the hundred waters of the Sunderban. The outlaws 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 crushed as effectually as the indigo
pest; and since the era of Bankim's magistracy one may travel
the length and breadth of Khulna without peril except from
malaria and ague. By a little quiet decisiveness 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 people.
Baruipur, a place consecrated in the calendar of literature,
was next put into his hands. The event of his residence here 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 had
not the genius of the man raised him immeasurably above any
Englishman in the country, we might have regarded it as such. Berhampur was the next step in his journey, and after Berhampur
Maldeh, and after Maldeh the important Suburban district of
Hugly. He was now nearing his high-water mark and his official
existence, which had been till then more than ordinarily smooth, began to be
ploughed up by unaccustomed storms. The Government wanted to give some inadequate expression to its sense of
his extraordinary merits and could think of nothing better than
a place in the Secretariat. It was here that he came into collision
with the spirit of bureaucracy. His superior was a certain
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Macaulay, 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 a Lieutenant-Governorship, but Bankim, having no such high incentive, was careful to
close his work at the strict office-hour. For this Macaulay took
him severely to task. "It is natural enough," replied Bankim,
forgetting unfortunately that he was talking to a piece of red
tape, "it is natural enough for you to work hard. You are of the
ruling caste and may rise, who knows ? to be Lieutenant-Governor. But why should I be subservient to your example ? 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 and red tape come
into collision, it is usually independence that gets tripped up. Bankim was sent back in a hurry to Magistrate's work, this time
at Alipur. But his ill-luck followed him. He was shipwrecked
again in a collision with Anglo-Indianism. Walking in Eden
Garden he chanced across Munro, the Presidency Commissioner,
a farouche bureaucrat with the manners of an Englishman and
the temper of a badly-educated hyena. Bankim examined the
queer curiosity, as one might any queer curiosity, with a certain
lazy interest, but no signal of respect. He was unaware 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 instruction: for His
Hyenaship was off in a rage to the Government and by a little
private roaring easily got Bankim transferred to Jahajpur in
Orissa. Bankim was considerably taken aback and not a little
angry. "Have I then committed some grave fault ?" he enquired
of the Chief Secretary, "or is it that the Government has found
out 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, I believe, had in
the meantime been struck by his own astonishing likeness to the founder of Christianity and was away to spread
the light of the Gospel among the heathen — after a lapse of time
Bankim was allowed to come back to Alipur. But this was the
last stage of that thankless drudgery in which he had wasted so
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much precious force. His term of service was drawing to a close
and 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 and evil. One or
two years clouded with sickness, sorrow and suffering stood between him and the end.
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