The narrow Brojo Dutta Lane in the middle of the congested Shaheb Bagan neighbourhood in Serampore, is quite difficult to locate. Even if you happen to walk into it, you would find nothing except numerous houses on either side. Then suddenly, you would encounter a seemingly endless wall on the left, with a locked gate in the middle. Peeping through it, you would find centuries’ old graves, not in very good state & an unkempt yard with dense undergrowth, keeping most other graves out of sight. The guard lives with his family in a small outhouse beside the gate & after a bit of cajoling he would amble along & open the lock & perhaps show you the grave of William Carey. As for the other graves, you would have to fend for yourself. After sometime, you would find the graves of the three wives of Carey, his infant son Felix & of course of Marshman & Ward, who along with Carey, were the luminaries forming the famed Serampore Trio.

William Carey was among the earlier generation of Europeans who arrived in India & made it their permanent home. He was born on 17 August, 1761 in Paulerspury, England. Carey eventually metamorphosed into a Baptist Missionary, who made India his call, much to the chagrin & firm opposition of his first wife Dorothy, who refused to leave home & hearth for an uncertain life in a foreign land. However, Carey managed to convince her & hence arrived in Kolkata in 1793, with his wife & three infant sons. But, he was forced to leave British territory for his different religious views & eventually settled in Danish ‘Frederiksnagar’ or Serampore as we know it today. Carey came to be known as the ‘Father of Modern Missions’. Initially he was only a preacher of Christianity, whose aim was to spread the religion in this alien land. He wrote the essay ‘An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens’ which led to the foundation of the Baptist Missionary Society. But the perspective eventually changed a lot & Carey became an educationist, who was also a social reformer. It can be said that the most valuable gift that Serampore has gifted to the world is education coupled with social reform. The Serampore Trio – Carey, Marshman & Ward, were the real architects of the Serampore renaissance. They established schools (including schools for girls’), campaigned against the practice of Sati, established the Serampore College (1818), opened the first Theological University in Serampore which offered degrees in divinity. For the poor, they established more than a hundred ‘monitorial schools’.

Carey founded the Serampore Mission Press in 1800, where wooden Bengali typeface was installed by Panchanan Karmakar of Tribeni in 1801, for translating the New Testament into Bengali. Carey later translated the Bible into Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Marathi, Hindi & Sanskrit. He also translated the Ramayana into English. The first issue of the second Bengali daily ‘Samachar Darpan’ came out in 1818, edited by Carey. It also brought out ‘A Friend of India’, precursor to ‘The Statesman’. Carey, along with Marshman & Ward, left a legacy of initiating changes in a conservative world & gradually opening its doors for knowledge to filter in. After Carey’s death on 9 June, 1834, in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal on 2 July, 1834, they eulogized him in the following terms:
His Bengalee, Marhatta, Telinga, & Punjabi dictionaries & grammars, his translation of a portion of the Ramayana, & other works, were on our shelves, to testify the extent of his learning as an oriental scholar. It was well known that he had prepared some time ago an elaborate dictionary of the Sanskrit language, the manuscripts of which, & a considerable portion of the work already printed off, the result of many years’ intense labour & study, has been destroyed by the fire which burnt down the Serampore premises. He had also been of great assistance, as the author testified, in the editing of Baboo Ram Comul Sen’s Anglo Bengali Dictionary.

These days people often visit Serampore for a meal at the Denmark Tavern. Though it a wonder of reconstruction brick by brick, one cannot deny its historical perspective & its connection to Carey. The Calcutta Gazette of March 16, 1786, reported that an Englishman named Mr. Parr had taken up the ownership of the Denmark Tavern. When Carey had arrived in 1799, it had been his initial place of stay, along with Marshman & Ward & their families. The place fell into ruins from the end of the nineteenth century. It was only in 2010, that it was discovered after an exhaustive archival research that this was indeed the Denmark Tavern where the Danes kept their flagstaff & salutation cannons & a place of immense importance to the Serampore Trio. The restoration project was funded by Realdania, Denmark’s Ministry of Culture, NDM, WBHC & The Association to Preserve Serampore’s Heritage. Its doors were finally thrown open, as a lodge, restaurant & café, on 28 February, 2018. Maybe it is now as Carey found it then. But, the next time we step into the Denmark Tavern, we must not forget to pay our respects to the man who lies in a neglected grave in a dark corner of the town which he made his own.