Lal Behari Dey

The Reverend Lal Behari Dey (Bengali: লাল বিহারী দে - also transliterated as Lal Behari Day) (18 December 1824 – 28 October 1892) was a Bengali Indian journalist, who converted to Christianity, and became a Christian missionary himself.

Biography

Lal Behari Dey was born on 18 December 1824 to a poor banker caste family at Sonapalasi near Bardhaman. After primary education in the village school he came to Calcutta with his father and was admitted to Reverend Alexander Duff’s General Assembly' Institution (now [The Scottish Church Collegiate School], as one of the first five boys admitted by Duff/Scottish Church College), where he studied from 1834 to 1844. Under the tutelage of Alexander Duff he formally embraced Christianity on 2 July 1843. In 1842, a year before his baptism he had published a tract, The falsity of the Hindu Religion, which had won a prize for the best essay from a local Christian society.

From 1855 to 1867 Dey was a missionary and minister of the Free Church of Scotland.

From 1867 to 1889 he worked as professor of English in Government-administered colleges at Berhampore and Hooghly. After having served in several churches in the prime of his career, he joined the Berhampore Collegiate School as Principal in 1867. Later he became Professor of English and Mental and Moral Philosophy in Hooghly Mohsin College of the University of Calcutta and stayed with it from 1872 to 1888. Being a devout Christian but pro-British Raj, he protested against any discrimination practised by the ruling class against the natives.

Known for his profound knowledge of the English language and literature, he wrote two books in English, Govinda Samanta (1874, later renamed Bengal Peasant Life) and Folk-Tales of Bengal (1883) both of which were widely acclaimed.^[1] Like Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Peary Chand Mitra and Dinabandhu Mitra, Lal Behari also felt very passionately for the poor and oppressed peasantry of Bengal. In 1874 his Govinda Samanta won the prize of Rs 500 offered by Baboo Joy Kissen Mookerjea of Uttarpara, one of the most enlightened zamindars in Bengal, for the best novel, written either in Bengali or in English, illustrating the "Social and Domestic Life of the Rural Population and Working Classes of Bengal". Charles Darwin wrote a letter on 18 April 1881 to the publishers saying,

I see that the Reverend Lal Behari Day is Editor of the Bengal Magazine and I shall be glad if you would tell him with my compliments how much pleasure and instruction I derived from reading a few years ago, this novel, Govinda Samanta.

Though Lal Behari’s writings were mostly in English, he edited a Bengali monthly magazine, Arunaday (1857) and penned a Bengali narrative, Chandramukhee. He was also the editor of three English magazines, Indian Reformer (1861), Friday Review (1866) and Bengal Magazine (1872). Apart from writing in these magazines, Lal Behari also contributed articles to Calcutta Review and Hindu Patriot. He was a member of many associations like the Bethune Society and the Bengal Social Science Association.

He was made a Fellow of the University of Calcutta from 1877.

He died on 28 October 1892, at Calcutta.

References

↑ "Fairy Tales - Banglapedia". en.banglapedia.org. Retrieved 2016-03-25.

External links

Works by Lal Behari Day at Project Gutenberg
Works by Lal Behari Dey at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Bengal Renaissance

People	Sri Aurobindo Rajnarayan Basu Jagadish Chandra Bose Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Satyendra Nath Bose Bethune Upendranath Brahmachari Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay Akshay Kumar Datta Henry Derozio Alexander Duff Michael Madhusudan Dutt Romesh Chunder Dutt Dwarkanath Ganguly Kadambini Ganguly Monomohun Ghose Ramgopal Ghosh Aghore Nath Gupta David Hare Kazi Nazrul Islam Eugène Lafont Ashutosh Mukherjee Harish Chandra Mukherjee Ramakrishna Paramahamsa Gour Govinda Ray Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury Raja Ram Mohan Roy Meghnad Saha Akshay Chandra Sarkar Mahendralal Sarkar Brajendra Nath Seal Girish Chandra Sen Keshub Chandra Sen Haraprasad Shastri Debendranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore Satyendranath Tagore Jnanadanandini Devi Sitanath Tattwabhushan Brahmabandhav Upadhyay Ram Chandra Vidyabagish Dwarkanath Vidyabhusan Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar Swami Vivekananda Paramahansa Yogananda Begum Rokeya

Culture	Adi Dharm Bengali literature Bengali poetry Bengali music Brahmo Samaj British Raj British Indian Association History of Bengal Nazrul geeti Rabindra Nritya Natya Rabindra Sangeet Sambad Prabhakar Socialism in Bengal Swadeshi Satyagraha Tattwabodhini Patrika Tagore family Bangiya Sahitya Parishad Young Bengal

Institutions	Anandamohan College Asiatic Society Banga Mahila Vidyalaya Bangabasi College Bethune College Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur Calcutta Madrasah College Calcutta Medical College Fort William College General Assembly's Institution Hindu Mahila Vidyalaya Hindu Theatre Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science Midnapore College National Council of Education, Bengal Oriental Seminary Presidency College Ripon College Sanskrit College Scottish Church College Serampore College St. Xavier's College, Kolkata Vidyasagar College Visva-Bharati University University of Calcutta University of Dhaka

Other renaissance and revolutionary movements	Bhakti movement Gaudiya Vaishnavism Brahmoism Sannyasi Rebellion Indian independence movement Kalighat painting Jugantar movement Bengal School of Art Hindu–German Conspiracy Kallol Gananatya Andolan Bratachari movement Bengali Little Magazine Movement Parallel Cinema Indian Communism Naxalism Hungryalism Prakalpana Movement

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