Sir Asutosh As I Knew
Him
By Sri Bepin B.
Banerji, Murshidabad, Bengal
As a timid young man I could not even dream of coming face to
face with a giant among men like Sir Asutosh- giant in body, giant in mind and
giant in a capacious heart. Yet the fact was accomplished at an age when my
beard and brains were yet to grow. Sir Asutosh was then not knighted, but was a
Vakil of the High Court. He was once conducting a big land acquisition case of
a Zamindar, who constituted himself as my guardian in my college life in virtue
of my father’s service under him in his Zamindary. In my several walks of life
I had occasion to come in contact with various sorts of people, but never have
I seen such a brazen-faced thick-skulled specimen of the genus homo. Though he
had made several vain attempts to cross standard VII, he used to instruct me on
the intricacies of integral calculus and the niceties of philosophical studies;
not only that, he used to send instructions to Sir Asutosh on the law points to
be raised in his law-suit and the manner of conducting it. Sir Asutosh knew
only too well how the fat purse of the man corresponded to the utter void in
his upper chambers and deeply sympathized with me for my ill luck in having
such a guardian and “tutor’’ in my college life. Day after day I had to carry
the big files of his case to Sir Asutosh like a porter carrying a heavy load,
for, I had no law in my head then, nor have had any, I must confess, ever
since. Sir Asutosh seemed to understand fully my helpless state and was one day
so moved at my piteous look as to ask me if I did anything besides carrying
files. Through frequent contacts with him, I became a little bold by that time
and freely spoke to him of my college studies and the inability of my parents
to bear all my educational expenses in Calcutta. To test my knowledge Sir Asutosh
then put a sum in Analytical Geometry to me to work out, which I could very
fortunately solve. He then asked me to give up carrying the files of his
estimable client, leave his house and go elsewhere and offered to help me with
a sum of money every month without which I would surely have been a carrier of
files all my life. For this, his generous kindness to me then and paternal
affection and deep solicitude for my welfare afterwards, I have thanks, deeply
felt which are the “only exchequer’’ of the poor to pay the debts they owe.
Besides this help, I had another very
great advantage: I could frequently come in contact with him and this enabled
me to observe the little incidents of his daily life and to know in my own
humble way how that giant mind worked. Any sub-editor of a trash journal can
fill in two big columns of an obituary notice with a plethora of adjectives. He
may very carefully select the choicest epithets from his little lexicon and
pile them on the departed great without caring to have even a glance at, far
less knowing, the subject of his notice at close quarters. It is certainly very
praiseworthy “ not to speak ill of the dead’’, but the dry catalogue of virtues
culled to fit all and sundry sickens the mind as too many sweet dishes cloy the
palate, and makes the picture so laboriously drawn quite lifeless and jejune.
It is the little acts done spontaneously in the privacy of home life and in the
midst of familiar surroundings that reveal the inward man and lay bare the
mainspring that keeps the whole being a going through life. The personal
knowledge I could in this way pick up and the deep regard I feel for the
illustrious dead are my only apology for taking up a task too high for my poor
understanding and poorer language.
“Bengalees are admittedly a race of
intellectual giants and among these giants a towering figure is rarely to be
found like Sir Asutosh Mookerjee’’- so said an eminent European. Bred in the
nursery of intellectualism this gentleman looked at the intellectual side of
Sir Asutosh and found in him an erudite scholar, a sound mathematician, an
eminent jurist and a brilliant judge; but we look at him from the emotional
side as well and find in him an ideal son, an ideal father and an ideal
husband. Out of deep regard to the wishes of his mother he trampled under his
big foot the dictatorial firman of a prancing pro-consul and refused to
go to England, left a legacy of merit in a son which very few judges or for the
matter of that, very few eminent men of the country, have been able to do and
spurned at the idea of raising his beloved wife to the status of a “lady’’ and
all that the term connotes in modern phraseology and stuck fast to the Hindu
ideal of conjugal relationship which cemented society through centuries of
foreign rule, but which is, alas, now going to be ruthlessly shaken, thanks to
the vaunted civilization of the present day. The silent but touching grief of
the sorrowful widow at the sight of the dead body of her dear husband when it
was brought home would have melted the stoniest heart of the crassest
materialist and led him to believe with the Hindus that.
Sir Asutosh was, in short, an embodiment of
the best culture of both the head and the heart. He built up, in fact, an
edifice of refined sentiments on the granite of pure reason which the founder
of a noble religion preached and practiced six centuries ago.
Though he had not the symbolic marks over
his body he was a Vaishnava under the long robe, for, nowhere do we find the
fundamental tenet of that noble faith- “stern
as thunder and soft as flower’’- better illustrated than in his life. “Freedom
first, freedom second, freedom for all time to come’’, he thundered forth from
the Vice- Chancellor’s chair and doggedly followed it till the last moment of
his life. But the lion in him would soften down into the lamb and the stern
look would melt into a beaming smile whenever his feet were touched. He was a
Brahmin of Brahmins and his anger was, as the saying goes, in his ‘’feet’’.
Touch them and everything was all right. How often had I observed this in my
own case and many others! I give here only one instance. Having now become
bold, or I should say, very bold indeed to approach him as often as I liked, I
went to see him once, heavily coated and booted at about 10 A.M. in a cold
winter morning. He was then bathing under the tap on the ground floor with his
body almost uncovered. At the sight of a thick coated dandy such I was then
ashamed to think myself to be in his presence, he accosted me- “Is this the
time to see a Justice of the High Court?’’ Being not a bit daunted at the stern
look, my coat and boot notwithstanding. I fell back on the magic to which I
grew accustomed by that time, touched his feet, and down came that familiar pat
and the bewitching smile. Anger, indeed never found a lasting abode in that
generous heart….
…Though he could, as the poet said, “shake the
midriff of despair with laughter”, he could not on the stern side of his
character brook even the shadow of a lie or any calumnious attack, never mind
from what quarter it came. Once Sir Surendranath Bannerji wrote in The
Bengalee that Sir Asutosh knew the electioneering art so well that he could
write a volume on the subject. This roused the ire of Sir Asutosh to such a
pitch that even to a little fry like myself he unloosed the strings of his
whole mind, quoted chapter and verse in torrents to repudiate the charge and
poured forth the vials of his honest wrath on the heads of all lying journals
here and elsewhere. His robust manly nature rose against any dirty kick,
thought he knew full well how newspapers all over the world do, as a rule,
fatten on gossips carefully distilled to intoxicate interested people.
How a tough fighter like Sir
Surendra Nath (nicknamed “Surrender Not” by a Britisher) could write or suffer
writing such stuff in his paper against Sir Asutosh in whose nature there was
not the faintest trace of flattery is not quite understood, unless it was the
end for which he wanted to hang Sir Asutosh. Not to speak of flattery, he
hardly consented to give even to the best men he knew any letter of
introduction to persons in authority. He provided hundreds of men in the
various offices under his direct
control, but in very rare cases recommended anybody to any official- “however
high he might hold his head.’’ I had occasion to find actual proof of this
noble trait in his character in a remark of Sir P.C Lyons, then Chief Secretary
to the Government of Bengal. A candidate for a berth in the executive service
was exceptionally fortunate in getting a line from Sir Asutosh by way of
recommendation to Sir P.C. Lyons….
How many people did he, on the other
hand, help! But in doing he never lost his keen sense if self-respect; he
helped them from his own purse and by his own power. His bounties were
showered, “like the gentle rain form heaven,” upon all without any distinction
of caste or creed, the high or the low. While working in the Department of Land
Records, I deputed one of my amins to do a little job in connection with
his house at Madhupur. The man did the work to his entire satisfaction and was
offered a ten- rupee note by him for his labours. The amin, however
fearing the consequences of taking a gratification (as he thought it to be)
from a Justice of the High Court, excused himself at first and took the money
when he was made to feel the depth of that capacious heart, which gave because it could not help and was
relieved by giving.
From
numerous little incidents like these of his everyday life, I could, so far as
my poor understanding permitted me, have only a glimpse of the machinery of
that mighty mind which forged such a rare combination of intellectual
attainments, robust manliness and sturdy independence with sweetness of temper,
refinement of sentiments and tenderness of heart as to make him really “a
towering figure among the giants of Bengal” – in body, mind and soul. Of him it
may be truly said, as Lord Rosebery said of Pitt, “there may have been men both
abler and greater, though it is not easy to cite them; but there is no more
patriotic spirit, none more intrepid, and none more pure.”
Source: Asutosh Mookerjee Papers, MSS, NMML
