Dwijendranath Maitra

Dwijendranath Maitra (also spelt Dijendra Nath Moitra or shortened as Dwijen Maitra or Dwijen Moitra) (Bengali: দ্বিজেন্দ্রনাথ মৈত্র) (9 September 1878 – 26 November 1950) was son of Lokenath Maitra, who hailed from Rajshahi, now in Bangladesh. Lokenath Maitra had married Jagattarini in an inter-caste widow remarriage, a daring task in those days.

In 1902, he stood first in the M.B. (Bachelor of Medicine) examination from Medical College and was the first Indian to be appointed house surgeon in Mayo Hospital. In 1912, he went to England and America to get himself acquainted with the latest developments in medicine and surgery. There he met Rabindranath Tagore. He discussed about the poet with others.

Without mentioning his name, W. B. Yeats starts the introduction to the Gitanjali as follows:

A few days ago I said to a distinguished doctor of medicine, "I know no German, yet if a translation of German poet had moved me, I would go the British Museum and find books in English that would tell something about his life, and of the history of his thought. But though these prose translations from Rabindranath Tagore have stirred my blood as nothing has for years, I shall not know anything of his life, and of the movements of thought that have made them possible, if some Indian traveller will not tell me." It seemed natural to him that I should be moved, for he said, "I read Rabindranath everyday, to read one line of him is to forget all the troubles of the world."

He travelled to the US with Rabindranath Tagore.

He was a member of Sukumar Ray's Monday Club, which had such noted personalities as Satyendranath Dutta, Suniti Kumar Chaterjee, Atul Prasad Sen, Kalidas Nag, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis and Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay as members.

In 1915, he established the Bengal Social Service League. It was initially named Bangiya Hitasadhan Mandali. Possibly the oldest secular social welfare organisation, Rabindranath Tagore was president of this organisation for many years. Jnananjan Niyogi served as its secretary. Amongst others involved in it was Nishi Kanta Bose, a renowned social worker.

He was a pioneer in the use of audio-visual methods for the education of adults. For the training of workers engaged in the field of social welfare, he opened the School of Popular Education in 1924. He set up the Fellowship Club for the enhancement of communal harmony.

In 1930, he visited the Soviet Union to gain first hand experience about community development programmes undertaken in that country. He visited China and Japan in 1934.

He established Srinanda, in 1944, for the education of adult women. Cultural Fellowship with foreign countries is another organisation he set up. Many of his speeches were published in the form of booklets.

His son, Satyen Maitra, is a well-known educationist and social worker.