Hamilton’s Utopian Society
The word ‘Sundarban’ brings to mind Royal Bengal Tigers, deltas and of late eco-tourism. However, do you know about a charismatic Scotsman, who sought to bring about rural upliftment in the Sundarban by setting up a Utopian society?
Sir Daniel Hamilton was born in Glasgow, Scotland but moved to Calcutta in 1880 to join the firm of MacKinnon & MacKenzie- a shipping firm based in Glasgow. Through his hard work, he rose to be the head of the company and master of immense fortune. In 1903, he bought 10,000 acres of land and this increased to 150,000 acres in subsequent years. These acres were a part of the Sundarban delta. He selected the village of Gosaba to experiment his ideas of rural reconstruction by establishing a co-operative society as well as a school, desalinization plant and rice mill. He wished for the peasants to co-operate and work together without exploiting one another. The concept of untouchability was abolished by him and there were no moneylenders or middlemen to manipulate peasants.
The economy of Gosaba was run as a small co-operative society in which work and reward were linked. He set up a Consumers Co-operative Society in 1918. A central model farm to experiment with paddy, vegetables and fruits was set up by him in 1919. A Cooperative Paddy Sales Society was established in 1923. In 1924, he established the Gosaba Central Cooperative Bank, and in 1927, the Jamini Rice Mill. The main aim of developing a co-operative society was to make the residents self-reliant in every aspect. He hoped this model would spread to other parts of India. In 1934, he started the Rural Reconstruction Institute. Proponents of the Indian freedom struggle like Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore were admirers of his co-operative model and were close to him as well. He even introduced a Gosabian sovereign currency to increase the purchasing power of the peasants.
He was a visionary and a social reformer who felt the need to do something constructive for the rural population. Sadly, after his death his initiatives were discarded. Today, one can still visit Hamilton bungalow in Gosaba, as it is a popular tourist stop in Sundarban.
