Michael Madhusudan Dutt ((Bengali: মাইকেল মধুসূদন দত্ত); (25 January 1824 – 29 June 1873) was a Bengali poet and playwright. He is considered one of the pioneers of Bengali literature. Early life Dutt was born in Sagardari, a village in Keshabpur Upazila, Jessore District of Bengal, to a Hindu family. His family being reasonably well-off, Dutt received an education in the English language and additional tutorship in English at home. Rajnarayan had intended for this Western education to open the doors for a government position for his son. College and religious conversion After he finished his education in Sagordari at roughly the age of fifteen, Rajnarayan sent Madhusudhan to Calcutta to attend Hindu College with the eventual aim of becoming a barrister. At Hindu College, Michael studied under a westernized curriculum in a university which had been expressly founded for the "uplift of the natives". The university stipulated that all students had to dress in Western clothing, eat European cuisine using cutlery, learn British songs and speak only English with the aim of creating an anglicized middle class of Indians which would serve as officials in the colonial administration. During his time at Hindu College, Madhusudhan developed an aversion to Indian culture and a deep yearning to become accepted into European culture. He expressed these sentiments in one of his poems: "Where man in all his truest glory lives, And nature's face is exquisitely sweet; For those fair climes I heave impatient sigh, There let me live and there let me die". An early and formative influence on Dutta was his teacher at Hindu College, David Lester Richardson. Richardson was a poet and inspired in Dutta a love of English poetry, particularly Byron. Dutta began writing English poetry aged around 17 years, sending his works to publications in England, including Blackwood's Magazine and Bentley's Miscellany. They were, however, never accepted for publication. This was also the time when he began a correspondence with his friend, Gour Das Bysack, which today forms the bulk of sources on his life. Madhusudan embraced Christianity at the Old Mission Church, in spite of the objections of his parents and relatives, on 9 February 1843. He did not take the name Michael until his marriage in 1848. He describes the day as: Long sunk in superstition's night, By Sin and Satan driven, I saw not, cared not for the light That leads the blind to