The Disinherited: Christianity and Conversion in Calcutta
Channel: British Library
Date: 2021-04-01

A history of the 'Great Tagore Will Case' and legal battles of inheritance, with Mou Banerjee.

Mou Banerjee traces the evolution of the Lex Loci Act in India, taking as her case study the “Great Tagore Will Case”, a legal dispute regarding inheritance between two of the most influential members of colonial Bengali aristocracy from the Pathuriaghata Tagore. Prosonnocoomar Tagore, the first Indian member of the Viceregal Legislative Council, disinherited his son and heir Gyanendramohan Tagore, the first Indian barrister, because of his conversion to Christianity and subsequent (second) marriage to Rev Krishnamohan Banerjee’s daughter in 1851.

Prosonnocoomar left his property to his nephew Maharaja Jatindramohan Tagore. This was contested by his son, and the case went from the civil court in Calcutta to the Privy Council in London, from 1861 to 1880. It resulted in a tangled web of family lore that included tales of betrayal, generational curses and reincarnation.

Banerjee analyses this case as a microhistory of the loss of social and moral capital on the part of Indian converts, through the life of Gyanendramohan Tagore. The legal battles over inheritance fought by Christian converts like Tagore highlight how converts were excised from their social and economic inheritances legally, materially and rhetorically.

Dr Mou Banerjee is Assistant Professor of history at UW-Madison. She holds an MA and PhD in History from Harvard University, and is a historian of modern South Asia, specialising in the period from the 18th-20th centuries. Her research interests include religion and politics in India, especially on the evolution of the concepts of private faith and public political identity during the 19th and early 20th centuries.