The Philosopher’s Stone || Alapan Bandyopadhaya And Anup Matilal

Description

Sir Daniel Hamilton (1860-1939) lived a life that would excite the imagination of moviemakers in Hollywood today. He was an aristocrat of Scotland who chose India as his second home. While in India, he was a celebrity in the metropolitan Calcutta, then the capital of British India, but he felt dissatisfied, and took a few thousand acres of land in the islands and jungles of the Sundarbans on lease from the Government to become the zamindar of Gosaba. When he died, he was the most famous landlord in the largest delta of the world. Sir Daniel was a benevolent patriarch and he had opted to be a zamindar only to prove a point. He was disgusted with the Raj bureaucracy, and his island estate was an alternative thesis on comprehensive rural reconstruction. He had a utopia to offer, and Gosaba was his laboratory, his brave new world. For four decades, he experimented with co-operatives, rural banks, institutional lending, dharmagolas, one rupee notes, model farms and self-government. He sold dreams that actually changed the lives of people. Hamilton was in regular touch with Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore visited Gosaba and was involved in some joint initiatives with Hamilton. Mahatma sent his secretary and agreed to work together on occasions. On the other hand, the Bengal Governor also called on the new Prospero at Gosaba. Sir Daniel evidently excited his contemporaries. Did he present a third model, distinguished from the Raj, as well as from the new nationalist project? Or, was it only a re-defined venture of the empire, another civilizing mission of the white man, old wine in a new bottle?