Ramdulal Sarkar-Bengal's first millionaire

Dum Dum in north Calcutta is a thickly populated place now. It is now very difficult for the pedestrians to walk through the main road of this place. The pavements, like all the pavements of Calcutta streets, are occupied by hawkers. But the place was not so 240 years ago. The whole area was covered with dense forest. There were stray villages here and there. It was never safe to travel through this place after sunset. The place was a habitat of tigers, snakes and various wild animals. But the most dangerous were the dacoits who were very cruel and never hesitated to kill the helpless persons even for trifle things. This was a time when the Muslim rulers were fallen into degeneration and the law and order broke down. The East India Company was yet to settle with power to rule Bengal. It was also the time when Raghuji Bhonsle, the king of Nagpur (in western India) and his minister Bhaskar Pandit with their people attacked Bengal frequently to plunder and loot everything from the villagers of Bengal. They were known as borgis and the people of Bengal became very much afraid of those dreaded people.

At this time Balaram De lived in a small village named Rekjani near this place. He was a very poor man. He was a teacher in a primary school and earned so little that it was very difficult to maintain even his small family. His was not a singular case; most of the teachers in Bengal were to pass their lives in utter poverty. But the tyranny of the borgis compelled him to leave his village in 1752. He fled his village with his pregnant wife. On the way there was a vast barren land. It was like a sea of land and no living being could be traced in that lone place. It was there the wife of Balaram felt labour pain and delivered a male child. Balaram could somehow save the child and reached Calcutta.

The name of this child, who was born in such an unusually helpless condition and in acute poverty, was Ramdulal. Ramdulal lost his parents in his childhood. He had no shelter and no money. One day he with his younger sister went to his maternal grandfather Ramsundar Biswas for shelter. But his grandfather was also very poor and had to raise his family even by begging from others. Ramdulal’s grandmother was compelled to work as a cook in the family of Madanmohan Datta-a business man. Ramdulal had to live in this family. It goes without saying that all of them passed their days with single meal a day and sometimes that was also difficult to manage. So after some days his grandmother took him to Madanmohan Datta. Madanmohan gave him shelter in his house. Ramdulal worked in the house as a servant and got the opportunity to study under the private tutor who taught the children of Madanmohan. At that time the students didn’t have slate or paper to write on. They used leaves of banana and palm trees for writing. But for Ramdulal it was also difficult to buy or manage the leaves. So he took the used leaves of his master’s children, washed them in the water of holy river of Ganga and dried them to write on. With utmost sincerity and industry Ramdulal learnt to read and write Bengali in a short time. He also learnt to speak in English . He always thought of giving some comfort to his grandmother who lived in utter poverty. So after acquiring some basic education he started working as an apprentice in the office of Madanmohan. After sometime Madanmohan, finding his industriousness, and his efficiency, employed him to collect money from the bills of his business. His salary was fixed as Rs 5. It was a very difficult and laborious job. But Ramdulal worked with heart and soul for his master. Now Madanmohan became very satisfied with his performance. So he thought of giving him a greater responsibility. He asked him to collect bill money from a person of the English army in Dum Dum. I have already said that though Dum Dum was not far from Calcutta but the place was covered with forests and it was a habitat of dreaded dacoits. There was no means of transport. One had to walk all through to reach Calcutta from Dum Dum. This time Ramdulal collected Rs 5000 in cash and started for Calcutta in the evening. It was unthinkable for an individual to cross that jungle at night. After some time he thought of taking shelter in a house on the way. But after a second thought he changed his decision as he thought that it might lead him to a dacoit’s house. So he put off all his clothes and became naked to wear an appearance of a fakir. Then he hid the bag of the money in the hollow of a banyan tree hidden behind some aerial roots of the tree. Then he sat beneath the tree. After some time he heard some persons talking among them and gradually they seemed to coming towards him. Ramdulal instantaneously understood that the people were dacoits. So he closed his eyes pretending to meditating in that lonely place. Ramdulal was right. They were really dacoits. They stopped near Ramdulal and asked him who he was. Ramdulal opened his eyes and laughed loudly. The dacoits felt as Ramdulal wanted them to feel about him –an abnormal fakir. So they went off. In the morning Ramdulal started for Calcutta and reached his master’s house.

Madanmohan became very pleased with him and promoted him for a more responsible job as a manger of the department that oversaw the job concerning shipping. His salary was doubled at Rs 10. He had been saving regularly from his salary of Rs 5 and invested the amount in a small timber business. Whatever he had earned from this investment he gave it to his grandmother. After some time Ramdulal acquired some knowledge about ships and the related business. He visited the office of Tala-sahib where there were biddings for sunken ships in auctions. He acquired sound knowledge about the values of these ships and the goods they contained. One day Madanmohan sent him with Rs 14,000 to bid for one ship. But auction was over before Ramdulal reached the place. But there was another ship which had sunk in the mouth of the river Ganga and biddings were going on the ship. Ramdulal had some idea about the ship earkier. So Ramdulal made a bid of Rs 14,000 for the ship. He won and bought it. After a short while an Englishman arrived who had had an intention to bid for that particular ship Ramdulal bought. The Englishman asked him to sell the ship to him for Rs 14,000. When Ramdulal refused he threatened Ramdulal with dire consequences if he did not sell. But Ramdulal did not budge under his threat. So the Englishman began to bargain with Ramdulal. At last after much bargaining, the Englishman agreed to offer Rs 100,000. Ramdulal went home and gave his master the entire amount of one hundred thousand and told him how he got it. Ramdulal could easily hide the affair from his master to appropriate the money for his own use. But he was a different kind of man and was honest to his core. Madanmohan was spellbound at the instance of such honesty of a young man who was a servant for Rs 10. It took him some time to come to sense to speak to him. But when he spoke he told Ramdulal “I have no right for this amount which God has given to you for your honesty and trustworthiness”. He only took Rs 14,000 and returned the balance to Ramdulal.

Ramdulal then started business with this money. He earned much money from his business and gradually spread his business in various fields. After some years he bought four ships and started business with the American business world. At that time he was known as the Rothschild of Bengal in American business circle and he was much respected by them. In recognition of his service one Salem (a port near Boston) house dealing with Ramdulal named one of their ships ‘Ramdulal De’ which made several voyages from Salem to Calcutta. With his innate acumen and instincts in business matters Ramdulal became the biggest businessman in all wholesale businesses of Bengal. He became the head of business confederation of Bengal.

In spite of all his wealth and position Ramdulal De (Sarkar) remained the same person without any pride. He was the symbol of true humility. He never forgot Madanmohan. He loved to remain as a servant of Madanmohan. Even when he was regarded the richest businessman of Bengal (perhaps of India) he visited his master every month. With his modest and most ordinary clothes as suited to a servant of Rs 10, he would enter the house of Madanmohan leaving behind his footwear outside the house as was the custom of servants at that time and prostrated before him with his deep respect. Before leaving the house he would beg his monthly salary of Rs 10 from his master. He took it as a blessing from his master.

He established a guesthouse in Belgachhia in north Calcutta for the poor. One thousand poor people ate there everyday. He donated Rs 100,000 in the famine fund of Madras. None –who came to him for help never returned empty handed. He donated Rs 70 in his office everyday. He never became a witness in any legal battle. If any person came to him to stand witness for him in the court-he settled the case by giving out all the money concerning the dispute, to the aggrieved person.

Ramdulal De (Sarkar) died at the age of 73 in 1825 on the bank of the holy Ganga. He left behind him his two sons, Ashutosh (Satubabu), and Pramathanath (Latubabu) and a property worth Rs 123, 00,000. This was 200 years ago.

Ramdulal De (Sarkar) was a rare personality. He was a true Indian and appeared to be one of those we find in the great epic- the Ramayana.

February 21, 2008

©Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry

Am I fast coming to a scheduled end? Or am I faltering to find a beginning after being disgusted of all conceivable completeness of life given to me without caring for an understood concept of mine as to what course it would take to evolve me? At this point of my age when I am supposed to have an experience of a performed life in a portion of time, I find myself left in an undefined existence. It is an existence restlessly needing a pivot to know, to feel what is all about. It is suffering to live in this amorphous meaninglessness.

I have never lived a life. I have always been driven to myriad ways by thousands of impulses of moments that have spilled over from a fullness of single time. This life has no tale as it is an aggregation of assorted moments.

But I am not for, as I feel, to be couched in some solidity either for a grasping or for a restraining contour. Solidity is always preferable to amorphousness. But solidity is something as already performed; and however complete, it is tagged with a sense of past. It is a product in the past, may even be a symbol of the existing present, but it is never in any way a help to a future. Here in my restlessness, I am affranchised from this fragmentation as well as from a built concreteness. I have been languishing being in this amorphousness and amidst this is the travails of a face to surface to find which has been covered since the beginning.

"Alone who stares at future's covered face…"

Don't exaggerate yourself

Can you remember youself in your very early childhood? A little child, as little as you had just learnt to walk a measured length and been managing to utter some words with indistinctive syllables; you were then an uncertain being. You could not think as your mind was still in its shape and its grasp was as insignificant as the measure of your walking strides. Most of the time you remained satisfied (I do not use the word 'happy') or content with you except at times of physical discomfort. You had your little world, better say, a sense-world. Can you remember what it was exactly like? It was unlike what it is now to you characteristically. Now, to you, the world and you are two different entities. But at that period of your childhood, we are discussing, you could not as yet been able to detach your surroundings off from your sense of existence. So you were comfortable with everything known, as stuck to your senses-the faces, places, sounds, and touches. Anything unknown was an adverse intrusion and it upset your balance. The centre of this tiny sense-being was your mom.

So, if for reasons, whenever you found yourself none around you in the middle of the corridor of the house –you had never been kept in before, you cried out, not out of fear but because you could not be of what you were accustomed to in your sense world. Yes, you were an ensemble of senses.

It was a justified suffering more justified than when you were afraid of a ghost in a haunted house-much later when you were enough grown-up as a boy. Unlike the child's it was a mentally constructed fear. There can be no raison d'être of such suffering. The child suffered as a part of his being was cut off, he was unshaped, reduced as less. Have you ever noticed how the tail of a domestic lizard when cut off from the body moving and fidgeting with life impulse even after the lizard has gone into hiding? It is in desperation for the body it is a part of.

You still continue to suffer. And you know it has no end. You suffer in myriad ways the types and nature of which were not known to the early Homo sapiens. It is all because you are not consciously living in unity with the real existence you are a part of. All our suffering is rooted in our ignorance in feeling us as separated from the whole. You exaggerate you when you feel alone or separated. What we require is to expand ourselves without limit.

In the last phase of her life The Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram –while doing her sadhana with the cells of her body she told once to one of her disciples that there was only one physical body in this world!

The burden of the Light

A few persons even today, fifty seven years after he left his body, are aware of what Sri Aurobindo did in his life in Pondicherry. For people of India it is not unusual. For thousands of years the sanyasins in India lived in seclusion for purpose of their sadhana. But Sri Aurobindo was not a sanyasin as he accepted life and world as real and his yoga is not for shunning this world as Maya and accepting Nirvana as the only goal. He attained Nirvana in 1908 before he left for Pondicherry in 1910. So what required him to live within the boundaries of his room for long forty years?

SRI AUROBINDO'S ROOM

His was a life of battling against ignorance of life we live in. But it is impossible to get an idea by oneself unless one believes in the possibility of a change of human nature and for that matter in oneself following the path sincerely as shown by Sri Aurobindo. His disciples wrote to him about their sadhana and sought his guidance and opinion. Sri Aurobindo, in reply, wrote hundreds of letters to them regularly. These letters are now sources of light for all who follow his path of Yoga of transformation.

The following letter is one among them and which shows partly the extent of his battle and about himself.

"I can not say that I follow very well the logic of your doubt. How does the suffering of a noble and selfless friend invalidate the hope of yoga? There are many dismal spectacles in the world, but that is after all the very reason why yoga has to be done. If the world were all happy and beautiful and ideal, who would want to change it or find it necessary to bring down a higher consciousness into this earthly Mind and Matter? Your other argument is that the work of the yoga itself is difficult, not easy, not a happy canter to the goal. Of course it is, because the world and human nature are what they are. I never said it was easy or that there are not obstinate difficulties in the way of the endeavour. Again, I do not understand your point about raising up a new race by my going on writing "trivial" letters ten hours a day. Of course not-nor by writing important letters either; even if I were to spend my time writing fine poems it would not build up a new race. Each activity is important in its own place-an electron or a molecule or a grain may be small things in themselves, but in their place they are indispensible to the building up of a world; it can not be made up only of mountains and sunsets and streaming of aurora borealis-though these have their place there. All depends on the force behind these things and the purpose in their action-and that is known to the Cosmic Spirit which is at work; and it works, I may add, not by the mind or according to human standards but by a greater consciousness which, starting from an electron, can build up a world and, using a tangle of ganglia, can make them the base here for the works of the Mind and Sprit in Matter, produce a Ramakrishna, or a Napoleon, or a Shakespeare. Is the life of a great poet either made up only of magnificent and important things? How many trivial things had to be dealt with and done before there could be produced a "King Lear" or a "Hamlet"? Again according to your own reasoning, would not people be justified in mocking at your pother-so they would call it; I do not-about metre and scansion and how many ways a syllable can be read? Why, they might say, is he wasting his time in trivial prosaic things like this when he might have been spending it in producing a beautiful lyric or fine music? But the worker knows and respects the material with which he must work and he knows why he is busy with "trifles" and small details and what is their place in the fullness of his labour.

As for faith, you write as if I never had a doubt or any difficulty. I have had worse than any human mind can think of. It is not because I have ignored difficulties, but because I have seen them more clearly, experienced them on a larger scale than anyone living now or before me that, having faced and measured them, I am sure of the results of my work. But even if I still saw the chance that it might come to nothing (which is impossible), I would go on unperturbed, because I would still have done to the best of my power the work that I had to do and what is so done always counts in the economy of the universe. But why should I feel that all this may come to nothing when I see each step and where it is leading and every week, every day-once it was every year and month and hereafter it will be every day and hour-brings me so much nearer to my goal? In the way that one treads with the greater Light above, even every difficulty gives its help and has its value and Night itself carries in it the burden of the Light that has to be."

©Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust-1970