New Delhi, Aug. 16 -- Even in the sparsely populated gallery of 19th-century Indian business history, Dwarkanath Tagore is little more than a footnote, his reputation long eclipsed by that of his Nobel Prize-winning grandson, Rabindranath. Yet in his own time, Dwarkanath was one of Bengal's most dazzling buccaneer capitalists: a man as notable for his flamboyant top hats and tailored coats as for the handsome profits he extracted from colonial exploitation of impoverished indigo farmers.

Though he ended his gilt-edged life in debt and exile, he deserves to be remembered as someone struggling to forge an Indian capitalist identity under colonial constraints.

Born in 1794 into a zamindar family at the sprawling Jorasanko estate in north K...