Alma maters University of Calcutta, University of California, Berkeley | ||
Girindra Mukerji was an Indian anti-British revolutionary, organizer, and agriculturist. His article "The Hindu in America" has been widely cited as an early document describing early Indian immigration to the United States.
Mukerji was born in India, and according to the San Francisco Chronicle, the son of a "Judge of one of the higher courts."
In 1901, he received an AB degree from Calcutta University. He moved to the United States and became a student at the University of California, Berkeley circa 1905. His time at UC Berkeley was widely covered by American press.
In summer 1905, according to Gopal Stavig, Mukerji represented the Vedanta Society at the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon. Mukerji was the President of the Association of Oriental Students at UC Berkeley during at least 1907-1908. In November 1907, he published a booklet on American colleges focused on an Indian audience; the release was covered in the San Francisco Chronicle. A subsequent article, "The Hindu in America," was published in the Overland Monthly in April 1908. In December 1907, Mukerji gave a scathing lecture on the British empire in India to UC Berkeley's Economics Club, which was covered in the San Francisco Chronicle, in an article titled "Hindu Arraigns Britons for the Ruin of India: Calcutta Graduate Scores England for Overtaxing of His People."
In January 1908 he led a student protest against J. Lovell Murray, a Christian evangelist who was in Berkeley to give a talk titled "Awakening the Orient" organized by the local Y.M.C.A. Just before Murray was about to enter Stiles Hall to give his lecture, 16 of the 17 Indian students at UC Berkeley, including Mukerji, requested Murray to remove from his talk any references to the immorality of Hindu priests, and its use in the justification of the occupation of India by the British. Murray refused. Once Murray was finished speaking, Mukerji was invited to respond to speaker. He spoke against the British occupation, followed by six other students from the group, until the organizers decided to shut down the event.
Mukerji was a student of Professor Eugene W. Hilgard, an expert on agricultural chemistry. In 1907-1908, he received a Master of Science from the College of Agriculture at UC Berkeley; his thesis was entitled "A Comparative Study of Soil Columns in the San Joaquin Valley." University President Wheeler, who was present at his farewell, spoke highly of his work and cited him as a role model for other Indians.
In 1907, the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported that Mukerji was to "return to his home to take the chair of agriculture at the Calcuttat (sic) University." Mukerji left for New York in March 1908. In a 1911 article, Sarangadhar Das wrote that after graduating from UC Berkeley in 1908, Mukerji "worked as the Superindending (sic) Chemist in a sugar factory in Porto Rico, Cuba, and now is employed in the Bengal National College. Mukerji was Hindustani Interpreter in the employ of the Immigration Department."