Page:Bengal Celebrities.djvu/194



Mr. Lal Mohon Ghosh, the younger brother of Monmohon, was born in Krishnanagar in the district of Nadia. He was sent to England in 1879 for the study of law. In due time he was called to the bar and came back to India and was admitted on the Rolls of the High Court. Lal Mohon's bent was literary from the very beginning. He did not take so much interest in his profession as in his literary studies. He was an active contributor to several magazines and the essays and articles he wrote even at that early age command the admiration of the severest critic. He had early made a name also for public speaking and it would be no disrespect to any body to say that in Lal Mohon Ghosh we had then the best public speaker of our country. Domestic calamities and ill-health have of late compelled Mr. Ghosh to retire from the platform of which he was once the choicest ornament. A few years after his call to the bar, he was sent to England by the British Indian Association to agitate for the holding in India simultaneous examination for the Civil Service. Lal Mohon's efforts in this respect were not altogether without effect. He stayed in England for a short time, and came back in 1880, About this time the storm of the famous Ilbert Bill agitation was sweeping over the whole country. Every one knows about the scandalous meeting of Eurasians and Americans held at the lime in the Calcutta Town Hall in which the poor natives of this country were held up to brutal scorn and jest. Lal Mohon replied to these cowardly attacks in his celebrated 'Dacca speech' a performance that would have done honour to any great orator of the world. Mr. Ghosh again sailed for England and this time he tried to enter Parliament. He stood up for Deptford and so great was the enthusiasm that prevailed in his favour that he would have been surely returned