Nagendranath Basu

Nagendranath Basu ( 6 July 1866 – 11 October 1938) was a Bengali encyclopedist, archaeologist, nationalist social historian and Kayastha activist.

Early life Nagendranath was born in the village of Mahesh located in Hooghly district, Bengal Presidency.

Kayastha Sabha In 1902, Basu founded the Kayastha Sabha. Basu wrote for the Kayastha Patrika, the mouthpiece of the organisation where he used the term Kayastha to mean a diverse jati consisting of four smaller units with distinctive practices. Most of these expeditions were self-funded and the collections were donated to Bangiya Sahitya Parishad.

Literature Basu started his literary career with poems and novels, but soon became extensively involved in editing. The first volume of Bangla Bishwakosh was compiled by Troilokyanath Mukhopadhyay (and his brother, Rangalal) in 1887; however all the subsequent volumes were compiled and published by Nagendranath, who held the reins from 1888 till the publication of the 22nd (and last) volume in 1911. It was sequentially published from 1911 to 1933. Basu gathered these kulapanjikas from ghataks (matchmakers) across the country, who used to hold high acclaim in the Bengali society as professional genealogists (to the extent of arbitrating disputes of societal status) and effectively served as tools of social memory. Not only the tales were emotionally charged verses with distinct impressions of caste-chauvinism but also they oft-contradicted each other, suffered from dating inaccuracies and failed to be corroborated by archaeological evidence. However Basu and others followed a romantic nativist school and considered them as a treasure trove of indigenous social history, wherein history did not merely mean a linear chronology of dynastic rulers and the state but rather the entirety of local caste-societies (samaja) with its own mythologies, traditions and material achievements, as experienced by the masses and reflected in kulapanjikas.

Other samaja histories Basu also wrote Uttarrarhiya Kayastha Kanda (1910), a sub-regional history of Uttar Rarh (a geographical region in North Bengal) by integrating the genealogical histories of various local caste-samajs—Kandi, Jemo, Rashra, Joyjan et al.

Reception Basu's historical methods have been challenged. His interpretations are now deemed to be of questionable reliability, courtesy his strong antipathy towards the Muslim rule in India and a rigid acceptance of the-then prevalent caste hierarchy as a social order. Projit Bihari Mukherjee also has accused him of being a dedicated Kayastha propagandist.