what lesson did the young officer learn from iswat Chandra vidyasagar
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A young officer was travelling to another place to listen to a lecture, at a village, somewhere in Bengal, during the late 19th century. The train reached its destination and the officer was looking for a coolie to carry his luggage. A middle aged man approached him and said “Why do you need a coolie to carry such a small suitcase, can’t you carry it yourself and save the money?”. The young officer replied back haughtily “It is beneath my dignity to carry the suitcase, I am an educated person”. The middle aged man, then carried the young officer’s suitcase, and did not accept any money too. The young officer left for the venue of the lecture, and there he was stunned by what he saw. The “porter” who had carried his luggage in the railway station was none other than the person whose lecture he had come to attend to. The young officer felt remorseful and fell on the feet of the “porter”, asking for an apology. The “porter” told him smilingly “Son there is no harm in doing one’s own job, I only wanted to show you that”.
The porter here was Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, one of the icons of the Bengali renaissance. His actual surname was Bandopadhyaya, but he used his title Vidyasagar when he became a law Graduate. True to his name, he was truly an Ocean of Knowledge. There were so many facets to him, author, thinker, activist, social reformer. And above all a true humanist, one who reached out to the underprivileged, the faceless, the oppressed and downtrodden. A man who stood for the rights of the women, conducted widow remarriage and espoused the cause of women’s education. When one speaks of the Bengal Renaissance of the 19th century, this man would be one of it’s pillars and pioneers. Often it is said that circumstances shape a man’s character, and that was true about Vidyasagar.