Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Centre for Advanced Research Trust, Pondicherry ISBN: 978-93-85391-10-1
About Bankim Chandra Chatterji: A Rishi
The first in a series of monographs titled Mankind on the March dedicated to personalities who have made significant contributions to human evolution, this book looks at the life of Bankim Chandra Chatterji. The monographs seek to present research based on the insights and observations of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on each of the featured personalities. The author first situates Bankim Chandra Chatterji in the context of the Bengal Renaissance and then examines his life and works as a patriot, a humanist, a novelist and a poet—in full, as a Rishi who stood for a religion of humanity.
REVIEW
Bankim Chandra Chatterji: A Rishi by Oeendrila Guha, part of a monograph series on personalities who contributed to human evolution, is a neat and compact and condensed survey of the works of Bankim Chandra Chatterji over his formative and mature years and across different literary genres. Based on Sri Aurobindo’s assessment, the author establishes Bankim Chandra as Rishi, while taking into account the roles of artist, humanist, positivist, realist, and modernist too, which help secure the idea of the Rishi. Beginning by establishing the background and milieu of Bankim Chandra’s writings, Ms Guha proceeds methodically and logically, taking up for analysis the many facets of the Rishi’s personality, studying them as part of and reflected in and through his literary works mainly. Bengal of colonial times is specifically seen as the land of Renaissance, with a big roll call of visionaries and revolutionaries who welcomed the new era of religious, social, and political reforms. The author has grouped Bankim Chandra in this as an example of one who stood for the synthesis of the old and the modern, the East and the West, as seen in the second phase of the Bengal Renaissance. According to the author, Bankim Chandra was among the chief architects of this phase and led Bengal and India towards an ‘eclectic expression’.
Appraisal of Bankim Chandra Chatterji as Rishi focuses on his three seminal contributions to India, which the author mentions as the finding of a fit medium of expression, moulding a religion of patriotism, and envisioning his country as Mother India. It is after presenting Bankim Chandra in his different roles that the author draws the conclusion that all of his works are written in a ‘spiritual conviction’, and this is mainly attributed to the ‘mantric truth’ of which he had the vision and then expressed in his works. Otherwise, there is no special attempt to bring home this point as evident in his writings, which are viewed from other perspectives as well, such as the historical, social, and political. Ms Guha’s account of Bankim Chandra’s growth as an artist includes a short survey of the poet, novelist, journalist, sometimes overlapping into the modernist, realist, feminist, and positivist. In her analysis of Bankim Chandra’s poetry, she comments on the brilliance of the early works of the poet and the heralding of the Subjective Age of evolution. It is along the lines of the poetry of Sri Aurobindo, Shakespeare, and Shelley that Bankim Chandra is viewed as a poet. The comparison with Coleridge’s theory of imagination offers an interestingly new perspective, and the author points out that Bankim Chandra fulfils the part that the English Romantics played, that of bringing in a ‘higher and alternate truth of existence’. His contribution to nation-building was by way of giving the ‘sacred mantra’ as a seer-poet. The author reads into his journalistic writings too the performance of a similar task of awakening the Bengali spirit and thus contributing to nationalism.
The lengthiest discussion here, however, is of Bankim Chandra as a novelist, which gets the best attention of the author. We have an interesting observation in the comment that being an administrator in the British government proved both to be a help and hindrance in his novel writing. Yet, it was the ‘creative agent’ in the artist that gave us some immortal characters, and with just a handful of novels Bankim Chandra successfully established himself in the ‘heart of the Bengali race’. The author does not fail to point out that his influence was not limited to Bengal and the Bengali but spilled over outside Bengal. The novels of Bankim Chandra have been categorised into three types. The romantic, psychological type deals with Bengali domestic life. The important characteristic, as pointed out by the author, is the visible European influence, and also the creation of female characters depicted as modern, independent, symbolising the new era. Later on this marital romance evolved into ‘spiritual romance’, which, the author points out, is based on the bhakti gospel of the Gita. In the ideological novel too, the dominant motif is the economically independent woman. These novels, according to the author, can also be labelled bildungsromans. Amply quoted instances from the original texts and lengthy discussions on theme, character, and motifs show the author’s keen and deep research on Bankim Chandra and his works, and leads her to comment that Bankim Chandra’s ‘sensibility is feminine’. The point is ably justified in her sustained analysis of the major novels. Ms Guha also shows how Bankim Chandra employed his own philosophy behind the role and power of the novelist in his works: an intimate experience of one’s social reality and the different classes of people, and the moral power of sympathy, that of teaching his readers to develop a critical faculty of understanding. The exercise of both power and restraint contributes also to the success of the novel.
Ms Guha’s focus, however, is on the ‘Indianness’ of the novelist, as the novels made the readers aware of what was truly Indian. Remarkably, Bankim Chandra did not translate his novels into English, an act of ‘swadharma’. The transition from externalities to ‘inner seeking’ is seen as a mark of progress for the novelist, a higher level of self-awakening at each successive stage. Bankim Chandra comes across as the humanist too in depicting the confrontation between the individual and the society. Also, he was one of the first moderns to present a psychological analysis of human nature. The positivist in him took the opposite stand from asceticism. He was a modernist in sketching reality in his fiction, a point the author emphasises by intuiting comparisons with Wordsworth and Chaucer. As stylist, Bankim Chandra advocated the use of the vernacular fanning cultural patriotism, while borrowing heavily from Sanskrit also. The stress was on simplicity, precision, and the colloquial and the pure in language. The observation on Bankim Chandra as the stylist highlighting these points is aptly substantiated by examples from the novels and essays. Ms Guha observes:
Transcending his time proved him not only exceptionally gifted but that he was conscious of his role as the stylist, the novelist, the poet because since his childhood Bankim Chandra questioned his purpose on having tak[en] birth which he sought answer to in each of his carefully written work[s].
The analysis of the multi-faceted creative personality of Bankim Chandra seems to be the result of thorough research. But one could ask for a more comprehensive analysis, which is perhaps beyond the space limitations of a monograph. However, “Bande Mataram”, the paean song, is taken up for what is a long analysis, considering the length of the monograph. This poem, inserted into Anandamath, is an exposition and example of the three elements of beauty, truth, and religion that the poet considered important. The author points out that Bankim Chandra did not live to see the message of “Bande Mataram” kindling the Indian youth to patriotic fervour. Ms Guha sees the contribution of Bankim Chandra Chatterji as the harbinger of the Subjective Age, which, however, met its limitations as the immediately following generation of Indians did not take up the mission for a long time. His success lay in having implanted the seed idea in the subtle world. The author’s observation is worth quoting here: “Bankim Chandra initiated India’s ‘new birth’ and the others ensured her growth and maturity."
In this monograph on Bankim Chandra Chatterji as Rishi, Ms Guha has touched upon all salient points, as much as the limitations of the monograph could allow. To substantiate her observations and comments, she has drawn references from many authors. Apart from Sri Aurobindo, whose writings form the basis of the present analysis, we find numerous quotations from authors such as Tagore, N. K. Gupta, R. C. Datta, and Pabitra Sarkar among a host of others. A well-defined list of citations and references at the end is a great help for those interested in pursuing this line of research.
—Madhumita Dutta
Dr Dutta, an Associate Professor of English at Vidyasagar College for Women, Kolkata, wrote her PhD thesis on Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri. She has presented papers and talks at several national and international conferences, given a series of online talks on The Future Poetry, and published articles for journals and books. Her own books include Poetry of the Future: in the Light of Sri Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry: The Many and the Harmony, Savitri: A Study in Style and Symbolism, and Sri Aurobindo: A Legend.
