Nirad C. Chaudhuri

He married another well-known writer, Amiya Dhar in 1932. The couple had three sons.

He lived a very long and productive life. He was actively writing well up to the end of his life, publishing his last work at the age of 99! He died in 1999 of natural causes, just two months short of his 102nd birthday.

He was born into the family of a country lawyer; his mother didn’t even know how to read, as was common with most women of those times.

After receiving his primary education from Kishorganj and Calcutta, he went to Ripon College, Calcutta. Then he studied history as his undergraduate major at the Scottish Church College, from where he graduated with honors.

He enrolled for M.A at the University of Calcutta but did not appear for all of his exams, and thus failed to clear the course.

His first job was as a clerk in the Accounting Department of the Indian Army. It was during the same time that he also started writing articles for magazines. His first article that was published was on the Bengali poet, Bharat Chandra.

He did not find his work as a clerk to be very interesting. With his journalistic career picking up, he decided to ditch his job in the Accounting Department and became a full-time journalist.

By now he was acquainted with the writers Bibhuti Bhushan Banerjee and Dakshinaranjan Mitra with whom he was sharing accommodation. He began editing the popular English and Bengali magazines, ‘Modern Review’ and ‘Prabasi’, respectively.

Over the 1920s he also founded two Bengali magazines, ‘Samasamayik’ and ‘Notun Patrika’. These magazines did gain a reputation for their literary content, but were short-lived.

He was appointed as a secretary to Sarat Chandra Bose, a political leader in the nationalist movement in India, in 1938. Because of this position, he became acquainted with several political leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Subhas Chandra Bose.

His first book, ‘The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian’ is considered to be his magnum opus. It was a memoir detailing his life from his birth in a small town, to his growth as an individual in Calcutta. The book stirred a lot of controversy but also made him immensely popular as a writer.