Dwarkanath Tagore
Dwarakanath Tagore | |
|---|---|
Industrialist | |
| Spouse | Digambari Devi (m.1811 - 1839) |
| Children | Debendranath Tagore, Girindranath Tagore, Nagendranath Tagore |
| Parents |
|
'Prince' Dwarkanath Tagore (Dwarakanath Ţhakur; 1794–1846) was one of the first Indian industrialists to form an enterprise with British partners.[1] He was the son of Rammoni Tagore, and was given in adoption to Rammoni’s elder brother Ramlochan Tagore. He was the scion of the Tagore Family of Calcutta, father of Debendranath Tagore and grandfather of Rabindranath Tagore.
Ancestry
Dwarakanath Tagore was a descendant of Rarhiya Brahmins of the Kushari (Sandilya gotra) division. Their ancestors were called
Dwarakanath's great grandfather Jairam Tagore made a large fortune as a merchant and as Dewan to the French government at Chandannagar. He shifted from Gobindapur to Pathuriaghata, when the British constructed the new Fort William in the mid-eighteenth century. His eldest son, Nilmoni Tagore (b.1721 - d.1791), with his wife Lalita Devi and sons, settled at Jorasanko after leaving the ancestral house at Pathuriaghata following a rift with his younger brother Darpanarayan Tagore. Nilmoni Tagore built the Jorasanko Thakur Bari where the Jorasanko branch of the family dwelled, while Darpanarayan Tagore's descendants belonged to the Pathuriaghata Tagore branch.[4]
Childhood
Nilmoni's grandson, Dwarakanath Tagore, was born in 1794 to Rammoni Tagore and his wife Menaka Devi. Soon after birth, he was given in adoption to Rammoni's childless elder brother Ramlochan (b.1759 - d.1807), a rich man of his time and a patron of music. Menaka Devi was the younger sister of Dwarakanath's adoptive mother Aloka Sundari Devi.[5]
On 12 December 1807, Ramlochan died leaving all his property to Dwarakanath, who was then a minor aged 13.
Marriage
At the age of 17, Dwarakanath married the 9 years old Digambari Devi, daughter of a zamindar from near Jessore, in 1811. They had 4 sons and 1 daughter - among whom 3 survived - Debendranath Tagore (b.1817), Girindranath Tagore (b.1820 - d.1854) and Nagendranath Tagore (b.1829 - d.1858). As Dwarakanath started leading an extravagant lifestyle, his married life with his orthodox Hindu wife got strained. She consulted with Hindu Brahmins regarding his behaviour and finally decided to stop interaction with her husband. Whenever she had to speak to him regarding household matters, she used to take a bath in the holy Ganges water. It continued this way for some time. However, after taking such a bath in a cold winter night, Digambari caught fever, and died in 1839 at the age of 37.[8]
Business life
Tagore was a western-educated
Tagore's company managed large zamindari estates spread across today's West Bengal and Odisha states in India, and in Bangladesh, and held stakes in new enterprises that were tapping the rich coal seams of Bengal, running tug services between Calcutta and the mouth of the river Hooghly and transplanting Chinese tea crop to the plains of Upper Assam.[6]
Carr, Tagore and Company was one of the Indian private companies engaged in the opium trade with China. Production of opium was in India and then sold in China. When the Chinese protested, the East India Company transferred the opium trade to the proxy of certain selected Indian companies, of which this was one.[6]
In 1832 Tagore purchased the first Indian coal mine in Raniganj,[1] which eventually became the Bengal Coal Company.[10]
Death
Dwarakanath Tagore died "at the peak of his fortune"[1] on the evening of 1 August 1846 at the St. George's Hotel in London.
In his obituary, The London Mail newspaper of 7 August wrote:
- "Descended from the highest Brahmin caste of India his family can prove a long and undoubted pedigree. But it is not on account of this nobility that we now review his life but on far better grounds. However gifted, his claims rest on a higher pedestal – he was the benefactor of his country... They testified to his merits in the encouragement of every public and private undertaking likely to benefit India."[11]
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-533756-3.
- ISBN 1-4067-8927-5,
The [Tagores] are Pirili Brahmans [sic]; that is, outcastes, as having supposedly eaten with Musalmans in a former day. No strictly orthodox Brahman would eat or inter-marry with them.
- ISBN 978-0-312-14030-4.
- ^ James Wyburd Furrell (1882). The Tagore Family: A Memoir. K. Paul, Trench, & Company. p. 17. Retrieved 5 April 2017.
- ^ Chitra Deb (2018). Thakurbarir Bahirmahal. Ananda.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-520-32235-6.
- ^ "History of the Adi Brahmo Samaj (1906)"
- ^ Chitra Deb. Thakurbarir Andarmahal. Ananda Publishers.
- ISBN 0-415-32920-5. Retrieved 18 September 2011.
- ISBN 0-520-02927-5
- ^ Kripalani, Krishna (1981). Dwarkanath Tagore, A Forgotten Pioneer: A Life. New Delhi, India: National Book Trust, India. pp. 246–7.
Further reading
- Blair B Kling (1981). Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India. ISBN 0-520-02927-5.
- NK Sinha, The Economic History of Bengal 1793–1848, III, Calcutta, 1984.
- Sengupta, Subodh Chandra and Bose, Anjali (editors), 1976/1998, Sansad Bangali Charitabhidhan (Biographical dictionary) Vol I, (in Bengali), pp. 223. ISBN 81-85626-65-0
External links
- Works by or about Dwarkanath Tagore at Internet Archive
- Islam, Sirajul (2012). "Tagore, Prince Dwarkanath". In Islam, Sirajul; Jamal, Ahmed A. (eds.). Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (Second ed.). Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.