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Shawn Holliday
Mukerji, Dhan Gopal (1890–1936)
Dhan Gopal Mukerji was born into a high-class
Brahmin family on July 6, 1890, in the village of
Tamluk, near Calcutta in East India. His mother, a
deeply religious woman, influenced him to seek a
spiritual life that was later reflected in his writings.
His older brother, Jadu Gopal, a freedom fighter,
initially persuaded Dhan to join India’s struggle for
freedom, but Jadu’s imprisonment caused Dhan to
flee from India and British control. He escaped to
Japan and then moved to California, working at
menial jobs during the daytime and reading vora-
ciously at night. He attended Berkeley and Stan-
ford and earned a graduate degree in comparative
literature from Stanford. Sensitive, moral, and
intellectual, Dhan worshipped Mohandas Gan-
dhi and had a close relationship with Jawaharlal
Nehru. He categorically abhorred violence but
throughout his life was suspected of being a radi-
cal political activist, causing great humiliation and
moral outrage in him.
While at Stanford, Mukerji was recognized as a
scholar and interpreter of Indian culture and was
highly sought after as a public speaker by American
and European audiences. At Stanford he launched
a prodigious literary career by publishing two
volumes of poetry, Rajani: Songs of Night (1916),
Sandhya: Songs of Twilight (1917), and a musical
play, Layla Majnu (1917). In the following years
he published 25 volumes of poetry, drama, fiction,
social commentary, and children’s literature, only
to commit suicide at the age of 46.
Mukerji was torn between the commercial suc-
cess of writing children’s literature and his per-
sonal desire to write about intellectual, ethical, and
spiritual issues. The latter was buoyed by his belief
that the West could learn spiritual morality from
the East while the East could learn scientific ratio-
nalism from the West. His need to define a moral
code for meaningful human existence enabled him
to excel in children’s literature because the naive,
uncorrupted voice of children provided the per-
fect medium for such unambiguous expression.
His most popular juvenile works are Gayneck: The
Story of a Pigeon, which won the Newberry Medal
in 1927, and Ghond: the Hunter (1928), which was
his personal favorite. With a naturalist’s eye for de-
tail, Mukerji gives vivid descriptions of the majes-
tic landscape and jungle life in the pristine forests
of India. Gayneck is a marvelous book about the
life of a carrier pigeon, but like Benjamin Hoff ’s
Tao of Pooh it is ultimately a simple moral code for
people of all ages to practice.
His most famous adult books are Caste and
Outcast (1923), My Brother’s Face (1924), and The
Face of Silence (1926). Caste and Outcast is semi-
autobiographical, cataloguing the spiritual and in-
tellectual influences on the author and describing
his discovery that his purpose in life was to act as
India’s literary missionary. My Brother’s Face re-
cords the highlights of Mukerji’s experiences on
his return to India after 14 years of living abroad.
The Face of Silence expounds Ramakrishna’s life
and the message of the Vedas about the unity of all
religions with one divine spirit behind all creation.
Mukerji also dispelled many misunderstandings
about India spread through a myopic Western
gaze, the most notorious being Katherine Mayo’s
Mother India (1927). In his A Son of Mother India
Answers (1928), Mukerji carefully exposes Mayo’s
superficial observations and skewed conclusions.
Sukanya B. SenapatiMukherjee, Bharati (1940– )
Bharati Mukherjee, daughter of Sudhir Lal and
Bina Bharrejee Mukherjee, Bengali Hindus of the
Brahmin caste, was born in Calcutta on July 27,- Raised in a Bengali household, Mukherjee
spoke Bengali at home but also began learning
English at a bilingual Protestant school before the
end of British rule in India and subsequent parti-
tion in 1947. She studied English at the University
of Calcutta, receiving her bachelor’s degree with
honors in 1959. After graduation, she attended
graduate school at the University of Baroda,
Mukherjee, Bharati 201