Dear Listers, The Bhawal Sanyasi case has been one of the strangest among judicial cases in British India. (In the Hindu way of life, a Sanyasi is a person who has taken 'Sanyas', or entered the final stage of his life in which he is to seek the Truth and turn his back upon the material word. In more popular parlance, any garden-variety sadhu or mendicant may be called a sanyasi.) Bhawal was a large zamindari near Dacca. It was, as with the case of many similar Zamindaries, closely supervised by the British bureaucracy. It had an Englishman as a manager. After the Zamindar died, it passed to his three sons. All led lives of ease. The second son, Ramendra, died in Darjeeling in 1905, apparently due to syphilis, and was believed to have been cremated. He left his widow, Bibhavati, behind him. Several years later, in 1921, a Sadhu appeared in Dacca. Soon people noticed many resemblances between him and the supposedly dead Ramendra. Jyotirmayee, one of his sisters was convinced that the sadhu was indeed her brother. Several educated Indians too were convinced of his identity. The British official world, on the other hand, looked upon him as a pretender. Bibhavati refused to accept him as her husband. The claimant claimed his 1/3rd share from the revenues of the zamindari. The Court of Wards which was administering the zamindari refused the claim and the matter went to the court. From the very beginning there was a clear division between the British officialdom and the Bengali elite, the latter siding with the claimant. The claimant filed a suit in 1930. The judgment in the first trial went in favor of the claimant. The Curt of Wards appealed to the Calcutta High Wards. After some delay caused by the Second World War, which kept one of assigned judges stranded in London, the High Court too found in favor of the claimant in 1940. Bibhavati appealed to the Privy Council in London. The Privy Council ruled in favor of the claimant on July 30, 1946. The judgment was telegraphed to Calcutta the next day. That very day the winner/claimant went to the Kali temple to offer prayers upon his victory and suffered a stroke there. He died two days later, which, according to Bibhavti, was the divinely ordained punishment for the imposter. More details about this strange case may be seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhawal_case. For a more detailed treatment, see the limited view book by Partha Chatterjee - A Princely Impostor? - The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of Bhawal (2002), available at http://books.google.ca/books?id=qjv-pyCt-T4C&pg=PA174&dq=%22Calcutta+to+Darjeeling%22&lr=&as_brr=3&ei=RdRPSNqtCYXuswP0n4RE&sig=KLFtM3XnSo5Ms_rQBmTAw_0BixM#PPA178,M1 or http://tinyurl.com/6ox5zv. The Privy Council's judgment may be read at http://www.privy-council.org.uk/files/other/DEVIVR-rtf.rtf Arvind Kolhatkar, Toronto, June 11, 2008.