In April 1964, Sri Priya Ranjan Sen informed me, on behalf of Asutosh Mookerjee Centenary Committee, that the Committee had entrusted me with the work of writing the biography of Sir Asutosh. I had my doubts about my competence. But for a teacher and research worker, who is to some extent a beneficiary of some of the most cherished reforms of Sir Asutosh, this offer was a great honour. I agreed with some hesitation.
I could not possibly be an ideal biographer of Asutosh Mookerjee. I never came into personal contact with him. I was an undergraduate student when he died. But I know how much space he occupied in the eyes of his contemporaries. I retain a vivid impression of the atmosphere of those days which can not be imbibed from documents. When I became a teacher under the Council of Post-graduate Teaching in Arts in the University of Calcutta I could see for myself that many of the academic traditions I admired owed their existence to him. This is the store of direct knowledge I possess. For the rest, as in all historical investigations, I had to collect available data from contemporary and near contemporary documents as also from some dependable secondary sources. I suffered from one sense of inferiority. I have no knowledge of law and I was, therefore, not in a position to read his judicial decisions of twenty years with a view to forming an adequate impression of his great work in the Calcutta High Court. For Chapter III I, therefore, decided to depend upon secondary sources to a considerable extent. But from what he wrote and what he said on law and legal studies, I could see how his mind worked. From the point of view of history the jurist and judge is less important than the educationist and patriot.
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