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Keshub Chunder Sen
‐
Brahmo Samaj reformer who helped found the National Indian Association
Other names
Keshab Chunder Sen
Place of birth
Date of arrival to Britain
Place of death
Calcutta, India
Date of time spent in Britain
21 March 1870 – 17 September 1870
About
Keshub Chunder Sen was a Brahmo Samaj reformer. He visited Britain for six months in 1870. During this trip Sen toured Britain to deliver sermons and met with a variety of political leaders, including W. E. Gladstone. Sen met Queen Victoria, who later presented him with two books.
On a visit to Bristol, Sen stayed at the house of Mary Carpenter. It was during this meeting that they decided to form the National Indian Association in Aid of Social Progress, which was run by Carpenter in Britain.
Upon his return to India, Sen was involved in controversy when he arranged the marriage of his daughter (Sunity Devee) to the son of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar, despite the fact that she was only 13 years old, violating the reforms that he and the Brahmo Samaj had been campaigning for.
Keshub Chunder Sen died in January 1884. His son, N. C. Sen, later moved to London just after 1907 in an appointment as educational advisor to Indian students – a post within the Government’s India Office. Keshub's grandson, Nirmalya Chunder Sen, attended Bristol's Clifton College school between 1926 and 1929.
Annette Beveridge (née Akroyd), Mary Carpenter, Frances Cobbe, Sophia Dobson Collett, Sunity Devee, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Max Müller, Hodgson Pratt, Reverend Robert Spears.
Diary in England (Calcutta: Brahmo Tract Society, 1886)
Carpenter, J. Estlin, The Life and Work of Mary Carpenter (London: Macmillan, 1881)
Kopf, David, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (New Delhi: Archives Publishers, 1988)
Mozoomdar, P. C., Life and Teachings of Keshub Chunder Sen (Calcutta: J. W. Thomas, Baptist Mission Press, 1887)
Raychaudhuri, Tapan, 'Sen, Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47672]
Stevens, John A., Keshab: Bengal's Forgotten Poet (London: Hurst, 2018)
Letter to Rev. Robert Spears, Unitarian Minister, 1872, Mss Eur A159, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Photo, National Portrait Gallery
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Image credit
Keshub Chunder Sen by London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company, albumen carte-de-visite, 1870, NPG x74570
© National Portrait Gallery, London, Creative Commons, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
