Nirad Chandra Chaudhuri (English: Nirad Chandra Chaudhuri; Born- November 23, 1897, Kishoreganj, East Bengal[2]Died – August 1, 1999, Oxford, England) Famous Indian-born Bengali and English writer and scholar, whose last book ‘Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse’ (1997) was published just days before his hundredth birthday.
Nirad Chandra Chaudhary was born on 23 November 1897 in Kishoreganj of East Bengal (today’s Bangladesh). Nirad Chandra Chaudhary, son of a lawyer father and an illiterate mother, had equal authority over Shakespeare and Sanskrit classical texts. He was as much an admirer of Western culture as of his own culture. He was an erudite but complex and eccentric man and can best be described as a man born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The arrival of Nirad Chandra Chaudhary on the literary scene of India was surrounded by controversies. He was loyal to the British rule and dedicated his first book ‘The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian’ (1951) to the British Empire. He firmly believed that “everything that is good and alive in us has been nurtured and developed during two hundred years of colonial rule.” His work was not welcomed in a newly independent nation trying to grapple with its insecurities, where anti-colonial sentiments were at their peak. He became an unacceptable person and had to suffer intellectual torture. The system took a very harsh stance towards him and he was thrown out of All India Radio, where he was working as a broadcaster and political commentator.
Nirad Chandra Chaudhary was called ‘the last British imperialist’ and ‘the last brown sahib’. His work was continuously criticized and he was expelled from the literary world of India. As a self-exile, he left for England in the 1970s and settled in the university city of Oxford. For him it was like returning home. But this house was very different from the ideal England Chaudhary had imagined. Nirad Chaudhary was as isolated in England as he was in India. The British honored him, he received an honorary doctorate from ‘Oxford University’. He was awarded an Honorary CBE from the Queen. but they could not be convinced by his strong Indianness and his memories of the former glory of the British Empire.
Chaudhary also could not accept the radical changes that had taken place in England over the past few years and was deeply disappointed by the complete lack of commitment to the values which had once made England a great nation. These sentiments are reflected in his works and in the final volume of his autobiography, ‘The Right Hand’, ‘Great Anarch’ (1987), which he wrote at the age of 90. He wrote that- “The greatness of the British has ended forever.” His last book of essays ‘Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse’ is a commentary on the decline of Indian leadership and the nation.[3]
In later years Nirad Chandra Chaudhary gained the admiration of his countrymen, who had previously misunderstood and ignored him. A more mature, cosmopolitan and self-confident upper class praised the last volume of his autobiography. He started writing in Bengali again and was later awarded a literary award in Calcutta (present-day Kolkata). Nirad Chandra Chaudhary died on 1 August 1999 in Oxford, England.
