But why exactly is he being discussed in 2019, when he seems to have become symbolic of everything ‘we’ in Bengal stand for? The image of Vidyasagar in our minds is of a cotton dhoti-chadar-clad Brahmin of prodigious learning: a man of the soil who achieved immortality. A visiting university lecturer looking through the collection was surprised at the number of English books — “Did he know English?” he asked. Some of the most fiercely independent-minded intellectuals of 19th-century Bengal were among the least hostile to English influences; Vidyasagar was one of them. Even so, the extraordinary relationship comes alive across the pages, as the formal “My dear Sir” soon becomes “My dear Friend”, followed by the irrepressible and astonishing “My dear Vid”.

Source: The Telegraph October 20, 2019 19:52 UTC