Background

My interest in India and Indian culture probably began in the elementary school, when two Indian boys and an Indian girl were admitted to our class as new students.

As I began my Indological studies at Leiden University in 1975; I soon got involved with Surinamese Hindustani people; who flocked to the Institute Kern to do courses in Sanskrit and above all in Hindi. It was through Mrs. Marianne Oort, who studied and worked at the Leiden Indology Dept. that I was introduced to the Netherlands India Association of which I became a student-member.

What I am immensely happy about is the fact that, in 1992 I was blessed to become the son-in-law of Bengal. A few years earlier, I had met my wife to be, Bhaswati Bhattacharya, in Leiden when she had come for archival research on the Dutch East India Company (the VOC). In 1992 our bond was solemnised in India.

Association with the Netherlands India Association and the Indian Diaspora community

I have been a member of NIA for decades. Since we came back from India in 2003; my wife and I again attended activities of NIA. In January 2016, I was elected as a member of the board of NIA, first as Joint Secretary and later as Secretary.

Even though I was trained as a classical Indologist with Sanskrit and classical philosophy, I was always interested in contemporary Indian culture as well. In the 1980s; the Surinamese Hindustanis (about 80% of them Hindu) started in right earnest, to create institutions and organisations, to further their cultural and religious causes. From the mid-1980s onwards, I was engaged with a Surinamese Hindu Foundation (Foundation Ganesh); which started various social and educational projects addressing the needs of Surinamese Hindus in the Netherlands.

In those days the relations between Surinamese Hindustanis and the Indian residents in the Netherlands were only beginning to be fostered. I assume the two communities had to get used to each other. Nowadays the relations are very cordial.

Achievements

I made a Dutch translation from Bengali of Rabindranath Tagore’s volume Gitali. What was elating was the presentation of the book in Leiden in 1996 at which the famous British translator of Tagore’s writings was present: William Radice. He had taken the trouble to learn some Dutch to be able to better judge my translations and praised the work.

I was selected as a research scholar for some time at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen.

I have taught for some years; Indian values, at the Indian Institute of Management and the National Institute of Human Development, both in Calcutta (now Kolkata).

For many years; I am teaching and researching Indian religions and Sanskrit at the Faculty of Religion and Theology of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

I have published articles and book chapters on various subjects related to Indian culture, history, religion and philosophy, both in English and in Dutch. Among the latest are an English monograph that came in 2021: ‘Vedantic Hinduism in Colonial Bengal’ with Routledge. This work also contains my translations of Tagore’s poetry from Bengali into English. In 2021, I also contributed a chapter on Tagore’s and Swami Vivekananda’s views on the Buddha in the edited volume ‘Culture as Power’, also published with Routledge.

Advice for the Indian diaspora living in this country

I believe Dutch society has been enriched by the many different cultures that have found a new home here. Multiculturalism is not only a distant ideal; it is a fact. Let us hope that the humanist values that inspire it, remain alive. Keeping it alive is something that we can accomplish ourselves individually and collectively as members of the Indo-Dutch community.