Ramtanu Lahiri - First Job

First Job

Ramtanu Lahiri passed out in 1833 and joined Hindu College as a teacher. It may be recalled that the system of graduation had not been introduced till then. With a salary of Rs. 30 per month. he started living a life surrounded by relatives, many of whom came to Kolkata for education or other work.

Ramtanu Lahiri had already come under the influence of David Hare and Henry Vivian Derozio. Now it was his turn to be influenced by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Initially the English had sponsored classical education in India, based on Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit, but as new ideas came from England, it was felt essential to introduce Indians to western education, particularly the sciences. There were strong protagonists on both sides. Indeed, the setting up of Hindu College in 1817 was a big step forward in the direction of western education.

Former students of Hindu College were strongly in favour of Thomas Babington Macaulay’s move for western education. They even went to the extent of supporting his theory, expounded in 1835, “I am quite ready to take oriental learning at the valuation of orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them, who could deny that that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.” That was an age when India’s past was still to be fully realised.

Entire society was then in turmoil and Ramtanu Lahiri was going through all that. However, certain events in his personal life affected him seriously. First was the death of two of his brothers, one younger and the other elder. His elder brother had by then risen to the position of a sheristadar, a remarkable achievement in those days. The death of his elder brother brought on the entire responsibility of the family on to his shoulders. Second, two of his wives had died and he married a third time. Third, the death of David Hare in 1842. It was a tremendous shock for Ramtanu Lahiri. He revered him as his own father. Throughout his life, he never failed to gather his friends and pay respect to him at his grave on his death anniversary every year.