Glimpses of our ancestral home at Rifaitpur, Kushtea—now in Bangladesh. The house is more than five hundred years old, while some parts of the present building were reconstructed in the early decades of the eighteenth century. All major portions of the bahir mahal are now in ruins, though remains of the old structure could still be seen. Owing to changing tastes and need, the current occupants have also customised certain parts of the andar mahal and the kachhari bari, without altering the basic framework of the building. The chandimandap, the private zoo and other marvels are no more existent today; only a few traces of old sculptures, here and there, could be spotted. As far as I know, the house witnessed two very gory upheavals during the early 20s and the 50s, which eventually rang the death knell of the zemindary. Historian Venkoba Rao, nephew to the illustrious Raja Rao, writes: At the beginning of 1921, when the non-cooperation movement was started, tenants being fomented by some notorious persons demanded from him (Surendramohan Acharya, the then zemindar and my great grandfather) several illegal things which he denied and a very great troublesome agitation followed. The tenants at this time stopped payment of rents and ... besieged Suren baboo and his family for fifteen days. He had to pass that period without food and outside help. It resembled the French Revolution in its atrocities though not in motive. Consequently he had ... to leave the locality for several months together until peace and order was restored. Although Surendramohan championed progressive ideas like appointing British tutors for his children, establishing schools for mass education, etc., he, despite his willingness to oust the alien rulers, was not bold enough to face the imperial administration and its army or annoy them for patriotic purposes. This centrist attitude led to the formation of an opposition coterie that actually wanted to grab the zemindary by agitating the poor tenants, who were then under tremendous stress due to an increase in rent—as for supporting imperialist Britain in the great imperialist war a considerable portion from the treasury had to be donated. Anyway, this agitation gave some communal heads the courage to devise plots for ousting the Hindu landlord from his property, and, after three decades, when Manindramohan Acharya, my grandfather’s elder brother, was acting as the head of the estate, massive communal riots broke out and he was compelled to flee that place and take shelter at Krishnanagar, where his immediate sibling, that is my grandfather, was working as a professor. Manindramohan was unable to bear the shock and died after a few years of the incident.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 05:44:51 +0000