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Rakhal Das Haldar
‐
Indian civil servant who published a diary about his time in Britain as a student
Date of arrival to Britain
Location(s)
WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom
Date of time spent in Britain
1861–2
About
Rakhal Das Haldar was a member of the Brahmo Samaj who studied at University College, London in 1861–2. His father had worked for the East India Company. He joined the Bengal Civil Service upon his return to India and was manager of the Chota Nagpore Estate at his death in 1887.
Das Haldar wrote a diary about his time in Britain, which was published in 1903. He recounts the people he met and the sites he visited. The people he met included Ganendra Mohun Tagore, who was teaching at UCL, Max Müller in Oxford and Mary Carpenter in Bristol when he visited Rammohun Roy's tomb. He addressed the Social Science Association in August 1861 at Dublin on 'Education in Bengal'. At the UCL prize day on 1 July 1862, Das Haldar received a certificate in jurisprudence. He returned to India two days later.
Congress of the Social Science Association, Dublin, August 1861 (see The York Herald, 24 August 1861)
The English Diary of an Indian Student 1861–2 (Dacca: Ashutosh Press, 1903)
Burton, Antoinette, At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late Victorian Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)
Haldar, Sukumar, A Mid-Victorian Hindu: A Sketch of the Life and Times of Rakhal Das Haldar (Ranchi: S. Haldar, 1921)
Image credit
© Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1930s – present
