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My Boyhood and Early Days
My parentage — early influences — school and college life — evils of child-marriage — the Brahmo-Samaj movement; Keshub Chunder Sen — the temperance movement; Peary Churn Sircar — re-marriage of Hindu widows; Pundit Iswar Chunder Vidyasagar.
I belong to a Kulin Brahmin family which, since the creation of Kulinism by King Ballal Sen, had maintained their purity with proud and inflexible consistency. Neither the allurements of wealth nor the prospects of an easy and comfortable living diverted them from their firm and traditional resolve to uphold the integrity of their status. The rich Brahminical possession of plain living and high thinking gave them a dignity that no wealth could confer.
My grandfather was a Brahmin of the old school, rigid in his orthodoxy. His regular and methodical life, with its old-world sense of ease and contentment, the round of his daily duties, chiefly religious, performed with an exactitude not always associated with the life of the East, gave one a vivid and fascinating picture of what an orthodox home was in the early sixties of the last century. He had, however, given his eldest son, my father, the best kind of English education available at that time.
My father was brought up in the Hindu College, where he greatly distinguished himself, and was a favourite pupil of David Hare, one of the pioneers of English education in Bengal. The memory of David Hare is still adored, though more than two generations have elapsed since his death; and on the first of June every year, the anniversary of his death, the unpretentious monument standing on unconsecrated ground (for orthodox Christianity in those days would not permit his burial within consecrated precincts) is covered with flowers and wreaths by those who never saw him in the flesh, but who enshrine his memory in their grateful hearts. He came out to India as a watch-maker and died as a prince among philanthropists, loved in Hindu homes by their inmates, with whom his relations were friendly, and even cordial. The story is told (and it is a tradition in our family) that he came to see my grandmother, to comfort her in her sorrow, when my father ran away from home to avoid the displeasure of my grandfather for an outrage upon Hindu orthodoxy.