When I was young a stranger from Europe came to Bengal. He chose his
lodging among the people of the country, shared with them their frugal
diet, and freely offered them his service. He found employment in the
houses of the rich, teaching them French and German, and the money
thus earned he spent to help poor students in buying books. This meant
for him hours of walking in the mid-day heat of a tropical summer;
for, intent upon exercising the utmost economy, he refused to hire
conveyances. He was pitiless in his exaction from himself of his
resources, in money, time, and strength, to the point of privation;
and all this for the sake of a people who were obscure, to whom he was
not born, yet whom he dearly loved. He did not come to us with a
professional mission of teaching sectarian creeds; he had not in his
nature the least trace of that self-sufficiency of goodness, which
humiliates by gifts the victims of its insolent benevolence. Though he
did not know our language, he took every occasion to frequent our
meetings and ceremonies; yet he was always afraid of intrusion, and
tenderly anxious lest he might offend us by his ignorance of our
customs. At last, under the continual strain of work in an alien
climate and surroundings, his health broke down. He died, and was
cremated at our burning-ground, according to his express desire.
The attitude of his mind, the manner of his living, the object of his
life, his modesty, his unstinted self-sacrifice for a people who had
not even the power to give publicity to any benefaction bestowed upon
them, were so utterly unlike anything we were accustomed to associate
with the Europeans in India, that it gave rise in our mind to a
feeling of love bordering upon awe.
We all have a realm, a private paradise, in our mind, where dwell
deathless memories of persons who brought some divine light to our
life's experience, who may not be known to others, and whose names
have no place in the pages of history. Let me confess to you that this
man lives as one of those immortals in the paradise of my individual
life.
He came from Sweden, his name was Hammargren. What was most remarkable
in the event of his coming to us in Bengal was the fact that in his
own country he had chanced to read some works of my great countryman,
Ram Mohan Roy, and felt an immense veneration for his genius and his
character. Ram Mohan Roy lived in the beginning of the last century,
and it is no exaggeration when I describe him as one of the immortal
personalities of modern time. This young Swede had the unusual gift of
a far-sighted intellect and sympathy, which enabled him even from his
distance of space and time, and in spite of racial differences, to
realise the greatness of Ram Mohan Roy. It moved him so deeply that he
resolved to go to the country which produced this great man, and offer
her his service. He was poor, and he had to wait some time in England
before he could earn his passage money to India. There he came at
last, and in reckless generosity of love utterly spent himself to the
last breath of his life, away from home and kindred and all the
inheritances of his motherland. His stay among us was too short to
produce any outward result. He failed even to achieve during his life
what he had in his mind, which was to found by the help of his scanty
earnings a library as a memorial to Ram Mohan Roy, and thus to leave
behind him a visible symbol of his devotion. But what I prize most in
this European youth, who left no record of his life behind him, is not
the memory of any service of goodwill, but the precious gift of
respect which he offered to a people who are fallen upon evil times,
and whom it is so easy to ignore or to humiliate. For the first time
in the modern days this obscure individual from Sweden brought to our
country the chivalrous courtesy of the West, a greeting of human
fellowship.
The coincidence came to me with a great and delightful surprise when
the Nobel Prize was offered to me from Sweden. As a recognition of
individual merit it was of great value to me, no doubt; but it was the
acknowledgment of the East as a collaborator with the Western
continents, in contributing its riches to the common stock of
civilisation, which had the chief significance for the present age. It
meant joining hands in comradeship by the two great hemispheres of the
human world across the sea.