Frames per Second: Remember Derozio, enfant terrible of Bengali Renaissance

An almost forgotten Bengali film casts light on the current turmoil on campuses

Almost halfway through Utpal Dutt-directed Bengali film Jhor (1979), poet and teacher Henry Louise Vivian Derozio (Ujjwal Sengupta) — the enfant terrible of the 19th century “Bengali Renaissance” — surveys his students, their arms in slings and their heads bandaged, after a fight with a mob of orthodox Hindus. He reprimands his students for their provocative actions: “So how did it help social welfare by throwing cow bones at Brahmin houses?” The incident he refers to took place on 23 August 1831, when Derozio’s students from Hindu College, now Presidency University, perpetrated yet another outrage in the tumultuous social sphere