Essay
J. C. Jack's Faridpur
People interested in Faridpur find Anandanath Roy's (1856-1926) work Faridpuere Itihash (History of Faridpur) as a most helpful book. Published in two volumes, one in 1905 and the second in 1915, the book is regarded as the most ancient resource to know about the land and life of a fertile district of the country. The recent editions of that old book have added much meat for interested literati. Two editions from Dhaka, one edited by the renowned journalist Abu Sayeed Khan, comprising the first volume only, in 2005, and the other edited by Dr Tapan Bagchi, comprising both the volumes, in 2007 drew many to the century-old historic document. In between those two editions, another one, edited by Kamal Chowdhury and comprising two volumes as well as some more old articles on Faridpur, came out from Kolkata, and drew proper praise. In respect of the research on Faridpur, the name of Prof Abdus Sobhan, an author of some anthologies on Faridpur, could be a worthy name to mention. With its many merits, the tilted arrangement and writing of Anandanath Roy's book could be surpassed by another one which is hardly mentioned. A laborious and truly researched work, The Economic Life of a Bengal District, is, to speak frankly, a great study on the district in particular, and on the whole of Bangladesh in general.
During the first decade of the twentieth century a survey was conducted by the erstwhile British government in many Bengal districts. The survey in Faridpur, comprising present-day Faridpur, Gopalgonj, Madaripur, Shariatpur and Rajbari districts, started in 1906 and came to an end after four years. A group of some two hundred university graduates were deployed in the project and eventually the result was a 4000-volume 'Record of Right' relating to the two million people of the district. The Economic Life of a Bengal District was based on facts and information available from the survey reports.
J C Jack was an officer of the British civil service. A settlement officer, Jack had to join the Royal Field Artillery afterwards on a temporary basis. But before leaving for the First World War he sent the manuscript for publication lest he failed to come back. The book was published in 1916.
The chapters of the book are: The District and its inhabitants, their homes and manner of life; The Domestic Budget; Income and Economic Condition of the People as Revealed by the Statistics; Indebtedness; and Taxation. In the appendix the author has explained how the huge data was collected and synchronised.
The most interesting feature of Jack's book is the socio-economic picture of the times. It gives minute details of the land and people and their living styles at the time. He did not miss mentioning what sort of clothes the people put on then, what furniture they used, what food they took, et cetera. And thus the book has been an enormously worthy read.
The first chapter tells of the people, households and living style of the locality. The author mentions that the district, having a population of 2,121,914 and an area of 2464 square miles, does not have any roads at all. Brick-built houses are mostly unavailable. People move to their neighbours' homes along footpaths. While making these descriptions, Jack makes a comparison of the houses of Faridpur with those of England for which it proves more interesting to people learning about life in this plainland.
The observant nature of the writer generates some more excitement for the readers as very frequently he peeps into nooks and corners to add some novel observation. He points out the living patterns of the rich as well as the poor, as also of Hindus and Muslims. He notes: 'Most of the poorer houses are thatched, a very large portion of the cultivators now roof two or three of their huts with sheets of corrugated iron, which are sold in the larger markets. In some of the parts of the country tin-roofed houses are a common feature of the landscape and almost every homestead has at least one hut roofed with tin; but communications are so bad in the interior that, away from the single line of railway or the steamer routes on the big rivers, transport is a great difficulty and tin roofs are much rarer (page 23)'.
Jack has also made his study rich through bringing in geographical as well as historical references. He says: 'Faridpur is situated in the upper part of the Ganges delta. The Ganges delta is a very particular formation. It is absolutely flat and was in remote times a shallow lagoon of great extent on the edge of the Bay of Bengal.' And thus the survey report becomes more than a survey and turns into an excellent read for common people too.
Let me finish this write-up with a comment by J C Jack alias James Charles Jack on Bengalis. He asserts: 'The Bengali is certainly the cleanest race on earth. High or low, rich and poor, old and young, men and women, people of all occupations and all conditions bathe everyday, submerging themselves even in the coldest weather from head to foot (page20).' What could be more uplifting than reading a book that includes such an appraisal of Bengalis by an Englishman in British colonial times!
We are sure The Economic Life of a Bengal District, published by The Oxford University Press, will prove educative for readers in the coming days.
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