James Long (priest)

He also published the English translation of the play Nil Darpan by Dinabandhu Mitra, an act for which he was subsequently prosecuted for libel, fined, and briefly jailed.

At the age of twelve he was enrolled at the newly opened Bandon Endowed School, where he learnt "Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French and English languages; Euclid, Algebra, Logic; Arithmetic, Book-keeping, Reading, Writing, History and Geography".

[4] Returning to India a married man in 1848, he was placed in charge of the CMS mission in Thakurpukur, at the time a hamlet a day's journey out of Calcutta in the Bengal Presidency.

Unknown to the Lieutenant Governor, Long began sending out copies in official Government envelopes to prominent Europeans both in India and abroad that had the heading: "on her Majesty’s Service.

[14] The Lieutenant Governor replied that some officials had caused the offence; the planters, unsatisfied with the answer, decided to institute legal proceedings with a view to ascertain the authors and publishers of the Nil Durpan.

Wells found Long guilty of libel,[15] fined him one thousand rupees and sentenced him to one month’s imprisonment, which he served in the period of July–August 1861.

Together the two men hosted joint Indo-British soirees—rare events during the colonial era—and generally sought to foster a rapprochement between the Anglo-Indian community and Indians.

[citation needed] As Long continued his educational work, he developed a keen interest in Russia, which he visited for the first time in 1863, and twice after his retirement in 1872.

In a paper written by Long titled Russia, Central Asia, and British India and published in London in 1865, he wrote of his optimism about the prospects of serf emancipation, and criticized prevailing attitudes of paranoia towards Russia in light of (from Long's point of view) the valuable role carried out by Russian government and of the Eastern Orthodox Church in propagating Christianity in Central Asia to serve as a bulwark against Islam.

[citation needed] In 1872, Reverend James Long retired from the Church Missionary Society and left India for good.