Nirad C. Chaudhuri

About Nirad C. Chaudhuri

Who is it?: Indian writer
Birth Day: November 23, 1897
Birth Place: Kishoreganj, Mymensingh, British India (now Bangladesh), Indian
Died On: 1 August 1999(1999-08-01) (aged 101)\nLathbury Road, Oxford, England
Birth Sign: Sagittarius
Native name: Bengali: নীরদ চন্দ্র চৌধুরী
Pen name: Balahak Nandi, Sonibarer Cithi Outsider, Now
Occupation: writer and commentator on culture
Period: 1930s–1999
Genre: literature, culture, politics, war strategy, winery

Nirad C. Chaudhuri Net Worth

Nirad C. Chaudhuri was born on November 23, 1897 in Kishoreganj, Mymensingh, British India (now Bangladesh), Indian, is Indian writer. The only Indian ever to be awarded the prestigious Duff Cooper memorial Award, Nirad C. Chaudhuri was one of the best known Indian fiction authors of 20th century. Born in British India, his writings reflect the history of India in the context of British colonialism. He was a writer par excellence who over his long and productive career had produced several novels and biographies which earned him numerous awards and accolades. A fiercely independent man, he never feared to court controversy and in the very first book he wrote, he worded the dedication in such a way that was sure to infuriate the Indian official class. But here was a man who didn’t care a damn about what others thought of him. That was what set him apart from many a writer of his time. He was good friends with the equally fiery writer and novelist Khushwant Singh. Chaudhuri was deeply distressed by the hypocrisy he observed in the Bengali society, in particular that which stemmed from caste and social distinctions, and was fierce in his writings about them. He had several political connections that not only made him disillusioned with Indian politics, but also led him to be involved in controversies.
Nirad C. Chaudhuri is a member of Writers

💰Nirad C. Chaudhuri Net worth: $16 Million

Some Nirad C. Chaudhuri images

Famous Quotes:

Why was he always in love with England, though he had never visited the land before the age of 57? These questions perplexed me and the only answer I could decipher is that perhaps Nirad Chaudhuri was in search of a home that he could call his own.

And perhaps this street in 1980s took him closer to the novels of Hardy and Austen. Lovers of literature not only see texts through their lives but also sculpt live through the texts they read. His textual affinity was coupled with the colonial aura he grew up with- we must remember that he spent his first 50 years in an empire where the sun never set.

His England was a realisation of certain dominant sensibilities and visions he idealised but they were far from reality. Places like 20, Lathbury road makes me wonder why people choose to migrate and why certain places receive more sanctity than others. For Nirad Chaudhuri, England was sacred and for some America is. The solution to this onerous puzzle cannot be found in better living standard or socio-economic conditions of higher wages.

Furthermore, certain places celebrate certain people. Nirad Chaudhuri would have been immensely happy if he knew about the blue plaque as it would fit his sensibilities perfectly. Even Oxford County Council was happy enough to remember this “an original thinker, forthright in his opinions and an internationalist, in the sense of one who embraces the best of all cultures but never loses his own.

Biography/Timeline

1557

His masterpiece, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (ISBN 0-201-15576-1), published in 1951, put him on the long list of great Indian Writers. He courted controversy in the newly independent India due to the dedication of the book, which ran thus:

1897

Nirad Chandra Chaudhuri (23 November 1897 – 1 August 1999) was an Indian Bengali−English Writer and man of letters. He was born in a Hindu family in 1897 in Kishoreganj, then part of Bengal, British India.

1932

In 1932, he married Amiya Dhar, a well-known Writer herself; the couple had three sons.

1938

In 1938, Chaudhuri obtained a job as secretary to Sarat Chandra Bose, a political leader in the freedom movement in India. As a result, he was able to interact with political Leaders of India: Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the brother of Sarat Chandra Bose, Subhas Chandra Bose (also known as Netaji). A growing familiarity with the workings of the inner circle of Indian politics led him to be skeptical about its eventual progress, and he became progressively disillusioned about the ability of Indian political leadership.

1941

Nirad C Chaudhuri is accused of being in secret connivance with the British and leaked information about the whereabouts of Sarat Chandra Bose. This may have led to arrest of Sarat Bose in 1941. Dr. Radha Nag showed the conflict of the 'writer' Nirad C with the 'person' Niradbabu in her Bengali book আত্মঘাতী নীরদ চৌধুরী 'Atmaghati Nirad Choudhuri'(Suicidal Nirad Choudhuri).

1951

Chaudhuri authored numerous works in English and Bengali. His oeuvre provides a magisterial appraisal of the histories and cultures of India, especially in the context of British colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Chaudhuri is best known for The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, published in 1951. Over the course of his literary career, he received numerous accolades for his writing. In 1966, The Continent of Circe was awarded the Duff Cooper Memorial Award, making Chaudhuri the first and only Indian to date to be given the prize. The Sahitya Akademi, India's national Academy of Letters, awarded Chaudhuri the Sahitya Akademi Award for his biography on Max Müller, Scholar Extraordinary.

1955

In 1955, the British Council and the BBC jointly made arrangements to take Chaudhuri to England for eight weeks. He was asked to contribute lectures to the BBC, and wrote eight of these. His impressions of England and Europe were later collected in A Passage to England. The Continent of Circe, published in 1965, traces Chaudhuri's doggedly independent-minded ideas on the social, geo-political, and historical aspects of sub-continental India across millennia. An extended sequel to his famous autobiography, titled Thy Hand, Great Anarch! was published in 1988. His last book Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse, published in 1997, coincided with his hundredth year.

1990

In 1990, Oxford University awarded Chaudhuri, by then a long-time resident of the city of Oxford, an Honorary Degree in Letters. In 1992, he was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

1994

Chaudhuri was a prolific Writer even in the very last years of his life, publishing his last work at the age of 99. His wife Amiya Chaudhuri died in 1994 in Oxford, England. He too died in Oxford, three months short of his 102nd birthday, in 1999. He lived at 20 Lathbury Road from 1982 until his death and a blue plaque was installed by the Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board in 2008.

1997

The dedication, which was actually a mock-imperial rhetoric, infuriated many Indians, particularly the political and bureaucratic establishment. "The wogs took the bait and having read only dedication sent up howls of protest", commented Chaudhuri's friend, Editor, Historian and Novelist, Khushwant Singh. Chaudhuri was hounded out of government Service, deprived of his pension, blacklisted as a Writer in India and forced to live a life of penury. Furthermore, he had to give up his job as a political commentator in All India Radio as the Government of India promulgated a law that prohibited employees from publishing memoirs. Chaudhuri argued that his critics were not careful-enough readers; "the dedication was really a condemnation of the British rulers for not treating us as equals", he wrote in a 1997 special edition of Granta. Typically, to demonstrate what exactly he had been trying to say, he drew on a parallel with Ancient Rome. The book's dedication, Chaudhuri observed, "was an imitation of what Cicero said about the conduct of Verres, a Roman proconsul of Sicily who oppressed Sicilian Roman citizens, who in their desperation cried out: "Civis romanus sum".

2016

Student Historian Dipayan Pal wrote of Nirad C. Chaudhuri in The Statesman in 2016:

2018

After his studies, he took a position as a clerk in the Accounting Department of the Indian Army. At the same time, he started contributing articles to popular magazines. His first article on Bharat Chandra (a famous Bengali poet of the 18th century) appeared in the most prestigious English magazine of the time, Modern Review.