Chang says there are two versions, one heroic and another more practical, and both seem to have been encouraged by Dhan Gopal himself. Although Jadu seems to have played a crucial role in the immigration of his younger brother, what Dhan Gopal did exactly to make his way to American academia remains ambiguous. The memories of his serene childhood would serve him well in his later turbulent years.ĭhan Gopal greatly admired his elder brother Jadu Gopal, who was part of the militant nationalist movement in British India. His early education was in schools set up by Scottish missionaries eventually he went to the University of Calcutta, where he displayed a special flair for English.
Chang describes Mukerji as a person who “holds the distinction of being the first author of Asian-Indian ancestry who successfully wrote for American audiences about Indian life”.ĭhan Gopal was born on July 6, 1890, in a village on the outskirts of Calcutta.
He was Dhan Gopal Mukerji (1890-1936), a writer largely forgotten today. But there was one man in the 1920s writing children’s books in America with clearly Indian themes and settings. Indian-American authors might be all the rage today but they were a rarity at the beginning of the 20th century.
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