Gurusaday Dutta
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Gurusaday Dutt (1882-1941) was a writer, folklorist and founder of the 'Bratachari' movement in Bengal, India.
Background
He was born at Birshri village under Karimganj sub-division in the district of Sylhet on 10 May 1882. He was very accomplished in his studies. After graduating from Presidency College, Kolkata[1]. In 1902 he passed the Indian Civil Service (ICS) Examination. In 1903 he went to England for higher studies. After a brief period of teaching at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he returned to India in 1905 as an ICS officer. After some years as an ICS officer Gurusaday Dutt started revealing a strong sense of nationalism and patriotism. In 1930, he was transferred to Birbhum district for disobeying the authorities who ordered that an unruly crowd protesting the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi for violating the Salt Act should be fired upon. Gurusaday Dutt recognised that there was an acute need to make the people of India aware of virtues such as cleanliness and dignity of labour and he became involved in many social welfare activities. In 1929, while working as magistrate and Collector in Mymensingh, he started a village development movement. In 1931, he started the Rural Preservation Society of Bengal.
Contributions
Gurusaday Dutt was mostly known for his interest and contribution to folk dance, folk music and other folk institutions. He started a number of organisations and societies aimed at preserving the elements of folk literature. He spent a lifetime collecting and studying art objects and handiwork from the remotest recesses of undivided rural Bengal collecting items of folk art such as Kalighat paintings, patuas’ scrolls, embroidered kanthas, terracotta panels, stone sculptures, wooden carvings, dolls and toys, moulds used for making patterns on sweets or mango-paste etc. Most of the several thousand specimens of folk art and craft he collected, along with other folk artefacts, are on display at the Gurusaday Museum in Thakurpur in the suburbs of Kolkata. Gurusaday Dutt also wrote extensively on folk culture. Rabindranath Tagore and C.F. Andrews wrote in the foreword of the biography of his wife, Saroj Nalini Dutt, which he wrote. Gurusaday Dutt also wrote much about the bratachari movement and village development. In 1936 he started publishing a monthly magazine named Banglar Shakti (The Force of Bengal).
Organisations founded
Mymensingh Folk Dance and Folk Music Society (1929)
Pallisampad Raksha Samiti (1931)
Bratachari Lokanritya Samiti (1932)
South India Bratachari Society (1932)
Sarbabharatiya Bratachari Society etc.
In 1941 he set up a Bratachari village near Kolkata, along with a university called Bratachari Janashiksha Pratishthan. The Bratachari Movement founded by Gurusaday Dutt (from vrata, vow) was a movement for spiritual and social improvement. The movement aimed at creating a sense of world citizenship as well as national awareness among people, irrespective of caste, religion, sex and age. The movement aimed to nurture the mind and the body and to encourage people to work for national and individual improvement through encouraging traditional and folk culture, especially folk dance and folk song. The bratacharis, or followers of the movement, pledged themselves to build their moral fibre and serve the country on the five principles of knowledge, labour, truth, unity and joy. They aimed at developing the mind and body through dance as well as by undertaking to perform good deeds. The bratachari movement did not catch on all over India and slowly died away after the death of Gurusaday Dutt on 25 May 1941.
Writings
Palli Sangskar (1925)
Village Reconstruction (1925)
Ganer Saji (1932)
Indian Folk Dance and Folklore Movement (1933)
Bratachari Synthesis (1937)
Patuya Sangit (1939)
A Woman of India (1941)
Bratacharir Marmakatha (1940)
A book of rhymes for children: Bhajar Banshi (1922)
Writings published posthumously in The Folk Dance of Bengal (1954)
Shrihatter Lokasangit (1966)
Folk Arts and Crafts of Bengal (1990) [2]
External links
Banglapedia biography [[3]]
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