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TWELVE MEN OF BENGAL

found ready to contribute liberally to schools, roads and other objects of public interest, both in Calcutta and in the districts in which his estates are situated, and has helped to promote science and literature amongst his countrymen by large contributions to that end. He regularly maintains eighteen poor students in Calcutta, and he fully accepted the obligations of his position in the famine of 1866, remitting the rents of his ryots and feeding 250 paupers daily in Calcutta for a period of three months."

In consequence of this recommendation the title of Raja Bahadur was conferred upon him in March 1871. Sir George Campbell, who had succeeded Sir William Grey as Lieutenant-Governor in conferring the honour upon him in a Durbar held at Belvedere spoke of him in equally appreciative terms. "I have the honour to convey to you," he said turning to the newly-made Raja Bahadur, "the high honour which His Excellency the Viceroy, as the representative of Queen Victoria, has been pleased to confer upon you. I feel a peculiar pleasure in being thus the channel of conveying the honour to you.

"You come from a family great in the annals of Calcutta, I may say great in the annals of the British dominions in India, conspicuous for loyalty to the British Government and for acts of public beneficence.