Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/176

 suspicion by the pandits; so that the Raja Siris Chandra, afraid of incurring their displeasure, no longer sought their help in the movement.

Another incident had happened just before the above-mentioned meeting in the college, which brought upon Babu Ramtanu and his associates the stigma of beefeaters. Babu Kartik Chandra Roy writes thus about it:

“A friend of ours, Babu Kali Krishna Mitra, came to us from Calcutta. To do honour to him, Ramtanu Babu, his brothers, myself, and about ten others had a picnic at Anandabagh, a garden about three miles from our house. On our return from there we talked about widow marriage, and every one of us signed a bond to the effect that we would be its champion. The next day some malicious characters spread the false report that a calf’s head, severed from the body, was lying hid under a stack of bricks near our house. It was then followed by the cry that So-and-so had lost his calf; and on the following day the alleged calf’s head, and the loss of the calf, were explained by the bold assertion of our enemies that we had feasted on the calf at our picnic.”

We have subsequently heard from some of our Krishnagar friends that the foundation on which the rumour was based was that the young men had killed a goat, and had left it for some time hanging from the branch of a tree. A good neighbour saw this, and hastened home to tell his friends that the Lahiris had killed a calf. His story got additions and exaggerations, till Ramtanu Babu and his companions in the picnic were branded as cow-killing beefeaters.

The events narrated above took place either at the end of 1850 or at the beginning of 1851; and they made Krishnagar too hot for Ramtanu. Unfounded public scandal, together with the grief it caused his father and friends, made him desirous of obtaining a transfer to