Romesh Chunder Dutt was born in Calcutta on 13 August 1848, in a family already famous for academic and literary attainments. His uncle Rasamay Dutt was the first Principal of the Sanskrit College in Calcutta. Another uncle, Shoshee Chandra Dutt, was well-known for his writings in English, and a cousin, Miss Toru Dutt, achieved considered fame as a writer of verse in English and in French. His father, Ishan Chandra Dutt, was a Deputy Collector under the Revenue Department of the Government.

Romesh Dutt had his early education in Bengali schools in Calcutta and in the districts. He joined the Hare School in Calcutta in 1861 and passed the Entrance examination of the University of Calcutta with a scholarship in 1864. In the same year, at the age of 16, he married Matangini Bose, daughter of Nabagopal Bose of Calcutta. He passed the First Arts examination of the University of Calcutta from the Presidency College in 1866, standing second I order of merit and winning a scholarship.

While still a student in the B. A. class, he left for England in 1868 and qualified for the Indian Civil Service in the open competition in the following year. Among the other Indians who passed the Civil Service examination with him were. Suredranath Banerjea and Bihari Lal Gupta. He was also called to the Bar before returning to India.

Dutt began in 1871 an outstanding career in the Indian Civil Service and in Indian public life. Starting as a probationer Assistant Magistrate at Alipore, he became within ten years the first Indian to hold charge of a district. In 1894 he became the first Indian Divisional Commissioner holding charge of the Burdwan Division. He retired from the Indian Civil Service in 1897 at the relatively young age of 49 while serving as the Commissioner of Orissa.

His work as a civil servant evoked praise from all quarters, including Lieutunant Governor and Governors-General. A more fruitful part of his career began after his retirement, when he became free to devote his time fully to public activities and writing. Even when he was in the Civil Service, he earned a reputation as a first rate orator and as a man who was not afraid to express independent views. His views on the causes of poverty in India or on the problems of administration, including those relating to the controversial Ilbert Bill, were not always in line with official thinking. He became the President of the Indian National Congress in 1899 and was regarded by the growing politically-conscious educated public as one of their most effective spokesmen.

Dutt was appointed a Lecturer in Indian History in the University of London shortly after his retirement from the Civil Service. He, however, returned to India in 1904 to serve the State of Boroda as Revenue Minister for three years; and he came back to India again in 1908 as a member of the Decentralisation Commission. All this time, he was producing valuable books on economics and economic history and on ancient Indian civilisation, and was also writing some of the best Bengali novels of those days.

His first book on the economic problems of the cultivators was his ‘Peasantry of Bengal’, written in 1875; the ideas developed in this book were expanded fully in his

‘Famines in India’, published in 1900, containing his strongly-argued thesis about the overassessment of land revenue and containing a plea for the extension of the Permanent Settlement to the Ryotwari areas and also for a permanent fixation of rents payable by the ryots to the intermediaries. His greatest works in the field followed soon after, with the publication of ‘India under Early British Rule, 1757-1837’ in 1901, and the ‘Economic History of India in the Victorian Age’ in 1902.

These two volumes were based on extensive research into parliamentary papers and other documents, and they stand out even up till now as the most valuable studies of the economic problems of nineteenth century India. The poverty of the cultivators, the recurrent famines, the burdens of the land tax, the decline of indigenous industries, the impact of foreign capital, the excessive costs of administration, the burden of the “home charges” and many other allied problems found their first scientific and factual analysis in the two volumes of Romesh Dutt’s pioneering work. The thesis on land revenue was reiterated in the famour ‘Open Letters’, to which Lord reiterated in the famous ‘Open Letters’, to which Lord Curzon’s Government gave an official reply in the form of the Resolution of 1902.

Romesh Dutt’s other interest was in Indian history and culture. White still in service, he had written text books on India history, but his really great work in the field was his three volume ‘History of Civilization in Ancient India’, published in 1899. He also translated the ‘Mahabharata’, the ‘Ramayana’ and some other Sanskrit texts into English.

At the same time he translated the two great epics, the ‘Rigveda’ and other old texts into Bengali. His positions a writer in Bengali, however, rests more firmly on historical novels-like those on the closing years of Rajput glory or on the rise of the Maratha power-reflected not only supreme ability as a creative writer but also a large measure of patriotic fervour. Similarly, his social novels brought out the tensions which the conflict between the tradition up. In all this, the influence of his friend Bankim Chandra Chatterjee can be easily discerned.

This does not in any way give a complete idea of Romesh Dutt’s work and contributions. A student of currency history will find Dutt’s evidence before the Fowler Committee on Indian Currency (1898) extremely valuable. One interested in Indian administrative problems in the nineteenth century will find an excellent analysis in Dutt’s England and India’ published in 1897. There are many other indications of his fertile mind in the many papers, articles, presidential addresses and pamphlets written by him.

He died at the age of 61 in 1909, when a further period of fruitful work seemed to lie ahead. As a civil servant, as a spokesman of the new generation of educated Indians, as a political leader of economic problems, as a scholarly historian and as a creative writer, Romesh Dutt was all that the rising Indian intelligentsia aspired to be. Nineteenth century Bengal produced a number of stalwarts, but there were very few who could, like Romesh Dutt, reach the front rank in so many different fields.