THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY
December, 16, 1961
Off the Record
IT is difficult to place D P, how
difficult, it w o u l d be apparent
when one looks at. his o b i t u a r y in
any of the Calcutta papers and, say
the National Herald of L u c k n o w ,
Calcutta papers dwelt upon his lite-
rary career tracing it f r o m his first
appearance before the public as one
of the distinguished members of
the very distinguished g r o u p of
litterateurs behind Sabuj Patra, of
w h i c h Rabindranath was one. Sabuj
Patra l i t e r a l l y means Green Perio-
d i c a l . It had a green cover and
green was its emblem, green w h i c h
stood for everything that was fresh,
u n r i p e and g r o w i n g . It b r o u g h t the
breath of spring that -changed the
whole complexion of Bengali litera-
ture and blew off all that was de-
cadent and m o r i b u n d . Sabuj Patra
established the every day speech of
the cultivated Bengali as the langu-
age of literature. Sabuj Patra also
brought the fermament of new
t h o u g h t ; this was a l i t t l e different
f r o m the earlier wave w h i c h had
swept Bengal d u r i n g the Swadeshi
days. It let in the new air that was
blowing in Europe, and not in
England alone.
T h a t was D h u r j a t i Prasad's first
appearance in Bengali literature, as
also in music c r i t i c i s m and musico-
logy. He never left either. They re-
mained his love t i l l the last; a
volume of belles-lettres in Bengali
and ' M u s i c Memories' in English
were in the press when D P passed
away.
The notices in the Calcutta papers
d i d mention his contributions in
other fields, listed his books in
English: •Personality', "Basic Con-
cepts of Sociology', 'Modern I n d i a n
C u l t u r e , and so o n ; and also, ra-
ther casually, that for 32 years he
taught in the Lucknow University
and that it was only two years ago
that he retired from the Chair in
Economics and Sociology at the
University of Aligarh.
The National Herald, Lucknow,
on the other hand, merely mention-
ed his contributions in the field of
art and literature, but stressed
D P Mukerji
mainly his impact on the intellec-
tual life of the Province of his i n -
fluence on a whole generation of
University students, and his associa-
tion w i t h the Congress Government
of V P. as Director of Public Rela-
tions, for a brief while f r o m 1938
to 1940 and again as H o n o r a r y
Economic Adviser, in 1959-60.
What a range of interests D P
h a d ! In the realm of thought there
was nothing that d i d not interest
him. A n d when he got interested
in anything, he threw himself i n t o
it and wrote up whatever he had
to say in order to get the subject
off his chest. H i s intellect was i n -
cessantly active and knew no rest;
he wrote just as easily as he spoke,
and w i t h the same style, elegance
and sharpness. A scholar who dab-
bled in so many things, who sec-
retly confessed to a weakness for
poetry, and even modern poetry,
and delighted in reading poems
aloud and read very w e l l too, who
was passionately fond of music and
got as much pleasure f r o m follow-
i n g the subtle nuances of I n d i a n
classical music, noting u n e r r i n g l y
where a dhaivat had been slurred
over, or just touched upon, to meet
the exacting requirements of cor-
rectly rendering of a p a r t i c u l a r ruga
or ragini, as he d i d f r o m wrestling
w i t h a new guess on the nature of
reality or f r o m an abstract theorem
of neo-economics.
There was another aspect of his
life — his friends. His responsive-
ness to intellectual stimulus made
his friendships an important ele-
ment in the intellectual life of Ben-
gal, if nor of I n d i a — w h a t a group
of friends they were—Satyen Bose,
D i l i p Roy. Pramatha Chaudhuri,
S u d h i n Dutt, Meghnad Saha, J C
Ghosh, P C Mahalanobis !
F r o m bis pen (lowed a continu-
ous stream of l i t e r a r y outpourings,
essays, short stories, intellectual
novels, belles-lettres memoirs in
the style of A n d r e Gide. A rare con-
noisseur of music and its l i t e r a r y
exponent, co-author of a book on
the subject with Rabindranath
1849
Tagore, who also won high academic
distinction and held many academic
positions in I n d i a and abroad, and
was the Vice-President of the Inter-
national Sociological Association at
the time of his death, - some not
ununderstandably took h i m to be
an intellectual dilettante. But what
a dilettante! A dilettante w i t h the
cultural accomplishment, w i t and
charm of o l d Lucknow aristocracy,
and w i t h the razor-sharp intellect of
his breed, the Brahrnins of Bhat-
para. There was a rare elegance
and style in D P, in the way he
dressed, put across a point, or split
a hair in the t r a d i t i o n of the Navya
Nyaya. W i t h a l his m i n d was free,
and he was equally at home and in
his elements, as much in table-talk
as scholarly discourse in internation-
al conference.
I n the academic f i e l d D P had
moved away from sociology from
w h i c h he started more and more to
economics, not the economics of
e q u i l i b r i u m and marginalism, but to
the fundamentals of g r o w t h , the
ground-swell of which economists
miss, while toying w i t h the waves
at the surface; that's how he put
it in his usual provocative manner
in this paper.
But for The Economic Weekly the
problem of placing h i m was simpli-
fied by D V himself. It was D P who
wrote the first editorial in the very
first issue of this paper of January
I. 1049. The piece he had first
thought of as a k i n d of manifesto
for The Economic weekly, the ap-
pearance of which excited h i m no
end. The title of i t , Light w i t h o u t
Heat' pleased h i m too. much to the
relief of the editor who had (eared
that he might find the title too
tame. His last piece. 'Language and
U n i t y ' w r i t t e n when his, health was
completely broken, appeared in the
issue of A p r i l 8 this year. The last
d i d not have the positive note of
the first, though it did not lack its
sharpness. Despite prolonged illness,
his m i n d was still alert In his hist
days, he saw through chinks in the
armour of I n d i a n integration. As a
sociologist and philosopher, he
 THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY
December 16, 1961

c o u l d not a l l o w his voice to be

d r o w n e d by pep-talk or evocation.
W h e n the f e l l news came that
cancer had affected his throat, he
w r o t e to say that he had talked so
m u c h a l l his life that there w o u l d
be poetic justice in i t . should he
not be able lo t a l k any more. He
was flown to Z u r i c h and operated
o n . T h o u g h his w i n d - p i p e was p a r t i -
a l l y restored, he never got back his
h e a l t h a n d the last few years, it was
sheer w i l l - p o w e r w h i c h seemed to
have k e p t h i m alive a n d . in spite
of ailments, k i c k i n g .

So w i d e was the sweep of his

m i n d and so diverse the fields of
intellectual a c t i v i t y that he had tra-
versed that it is not possible to pack
h i m w i t h i n a couple of columns.
T h e assessment of D h u r j a t i Prasad
as a l i t t e r a t e u r or that of D P as
a scholar has to be left to those who
are competent to undertake the j o b .
But the j o b is going to be a diffi-
cult one. It was on the insistence of
A K Das Gupta, the economist, that
D P's address at the first I n d i a n
Sociological Conference was pub-
lished in The Economic Weekly in
v i o l a t i o n of the safely first rule of
not r e p r o d u c i n g addresses delivered
on such occasions, a rule w h i c h tins
paper has generaIly f o l l o w e d . It is
not impossible that had D P been
elected President of the I n d i a n Eco
nomic Conference also he j u s t
missed it because of some i n t e r n a l
politics and had delivered his
address, M N S h r i n i v a s , the social
authoropologist. might perhaps have
insisted as strongly that the address
be also r e p r o d u c e d . This may be
cited as an instance of one of the
many difficulties o f p l a c i n g h i m .
lint those ON w h o m he had show-
ered his affection almost to the
point o f spoiling them w i t h i n d u l g -
ence w i l l remember h i m p r i m a r i l y
as a great, i n s p i r i n g teacher. He
s t i m u l a t e d and encouraged a l l those
who he thought, had the spark in
them, injected them w i t h his enthu-
siasm and infused in them some of
his intellectual passion.

T h a t is perhaps how he w o u l d
have l i k e d to be remembered, if all
all.
1850