Of Derozio, Rationalism and Contemporary Thoughts

The viewless winds are wandering!

Now o’er the flower-bells fair they creep

Waking sweet odours out of sleep;

Now stealing softly through the grass

That rustles as the breezes pass,

Just breathing such a gentle sigh

As love would live for ever by!”

With these lines have been captivated, nearly two centuries of scholars; lines that poured from the pen of one of modern India’s most endearing symbols of intellectualism, a poet ingenium cui sit, cui mens divinor, a rousing spirit of the Bengal Renaissance – Henry Louis Vivian Derozio.

The mere fact that two centuries after his birth, we come together to celebrate the life of this young poet, bears testimony to the impact that Derozio’s short yet eventful life had on intellectual awakening in 19^th century Bengal. Derozio remains the guiding spirit of Presidency College, the forerunner of which was the Hindu College where Derozio taught, and planted the seeds of rational thought in the minds of his fellow countrymen.