Essay
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
Nirad C. Chaudhuri · 1951
Synopsis
The author describes the places that formed him: Kishoreganj, the small town of East Bengal where he lived until the age of twelve, Bangram, the village of his ancestors, and Kalikutch, that of his mother; then England as he pictured it without ever having seen it. He then follows his years as a student in Calcutta, the city of the Bengali renaissance and of the beginnings of the nationalist movement, until 1921, when his studies come to an end.
Context
Begun around the age of fifty and written in English, the book was published in London by Macmillan in 1951, running to more than five hundred pages; it was its author's first. Its dedication, addressed to the memory of British rule in India, which was said to have conferred subjection on Indians by denying them citizenship, was read as an allegiance. Chaudhuri left All India Radio shortly afterwards: Britannica sees this as a consequence of the book, Edward Shils as a retirement at the statutory age, without extension. A sequel, Thy Hand, Great Anarch!, appeared in 1987.
Who it is for
A substantial volume, in a learned English sprinkled with untranslated quotations in French, Latin and German.
Prizes and reception
Naipaul saw in it the only great book born of the meeting between India and England; it made its author known to English-speaking readers and alienated him from Indian men of letters.