Kensal Green Cemetery, by the Grand Union Canal in north-west London, is one of Britain’s oldest garden cemeteries and home to the graves of notable figures of all faiths, including the world-renowned engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the father of modern computing Charles Babbage, and novelists Wilkie Collins and Anthony Trollope. For many years, the simple tomb marking the resting place of Dwarkanath Tagore, the prominent merchant entrepreneur — and grandfather of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath — who died in London on August 1, 1846, went largely unnoticed. A commemoration ceremony took place 28 years ago, but in the years that followed few visited his grave, save for Henry Vivian Neal, of the Friends of Kensal Green, who places a wreath on it once a year.

 

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The lack of attention didn’t go unnoticed — some contrasted it with the elaborate tomb of the social reformer and friend to Dwarkanath Tagore, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, in the western English city of Bristol, that Tagore himself organised and funded. However, earlier this year the Bengal Heritage Foundation, London Sharad Utsav (LSU), a charity promoting Bengali cultural heritage, the British Council and Friends of Kensal Green joined to restore the tomb using the latest techniques. Last weekend they held a commemoration at the graveside, marked with hymns, Rabindrasangeet and speeches. Nearly a hundred people attended, including some from Britain’s Bengali diaspora. A new plaque and bust of Tagore were unveiled.

The wide range of contributions Tagore made to India and Bengal, as also UK-India relations, both in industry and social reform, were highlighted. “From coal to banking to trading, he successfully set the foundation of an industrial Bengal and the internationalisation of India,” said Sourav Niyogi, of the Bengal Heritage Foundation, who travelled to London for the event. Also present were Pradeep Chopra of the Institute of Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Development (iLead) and Saikat Maitra, vice-chancellor of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology, West Bengal. India had largely overlooked the contribution of Tagore, said Anirban Mukhopadhyay, President of LSU, pointing to the commercial ventures he had promoted that involved partnerships with British traders in areas ranging from coal to tea, jute, shipping and banking. Well-educated Tagore was also multilingual, boasting proficiency in English, Arabic and Bengali.

In a 2015 lecture on Tagore in London, journalist Sumit Mitra had observed that within the Tagore family it was Dwarkanath, and not Rabindranath, who was the “first internationalist”, who significantly managed to get his voice heard at the European level. “In Dwarkanath’s time, there was hardly any Indian voice in the European narrative. Dwarkanath Tagore was a curious exception,” he said, noting how Tagore had befriended the post-Napoleonic War generation of Europeans who “flooded” into British India, upending the traditional British establishment and disrupting the way commerce was done in the country. “The bureaucrats of East India Company had to grin and bear the incursion of these free traders... Dwarkanath became their friend, philosopher and guide.”

Alongside his commercial activities, his fortune (his family was able to live on it for generations) and his grand lifestyle earned him the unofficial prefix of the ‘Prince’.

Tagore was a vocal social reformer who supported press freedom and pushed for changes such as the abolition of Sati. He saw Britain as key to helping India achieve social reforms, and his strong links with Britain saw his work being acknowledged well beyond Indian shores. In 1845 he was awarded the “Freedom of the City of Edinburgh” for his “anxious desire to promote the happiness and prosperity of his fellow countrymen.”

His visits to the UK gave him the opportunity to meet the country’s elite including Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who, after Tagore’s death at a hotel in London, sent several carriages to his funeral. Others who met him include the writer Charles Dickens, who rather disparagingly said of his name: “I have spelt it backwards but it makes no less tremendous nonsense that way.”

Now those behind the campaign to revive his memory plan to hold annual commemoration ceremonies by his grave. Chopra hoped this would help “break the fallacy” that entrepreneurship was not for Bengalis and spur younger people to follow suit. “Entrepreneurship has been in the roots of Bengal since Dwarkanath Tagore’s era, and some of the best entrepreneurs in the country can be from Bengal.”

Maitra said the international collaborative work Tagore pursued also had lessons for modern India, as it sought to build business partnerships abroad.

Tagore’s work as a social reformer, and someone who believed in diversity, as well as his belief in the empowerment of women, are important legacies to be cherished, said Mukhopadhyay. “He was a progressive and open-minded person who stood up for tolerance and respect for religious differences… he was a voice of modernity at that time.”

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