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| Post Graduate Diploma in Translation Studies |
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| UNIT 422-1: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORIES |
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| 422.1.3.2.THE 19TH CENTURY RESPONSE: ELITISM AND ITS CONSEQUENCES |
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| In search of images the Indian literary theorists will have to go the down memory lane once again. The success and failure of the so-called nineteenth century Bengali Renaissance might have found a symbol in Iswarchandra Vidyasagar's biography. New cultural awareness, inspired by the European logic and humanism and also by the exposure through the English language and British education in Bengal in the nineteenth century gave birth to what could be termed as the Bengali Renaissance. Using a term like this indicates a desire to compare Bengal's cultural animation in the fifteenth century onwards with the European enlightenment through resurgence of Greco-Roman tradition in the fourteenth century. This comparison would finally end in drawing points of equal intellectual pursuits of Rammohan Ray, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhay, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Bipin Chandra Pal, Mohammad Mohsin, Micheal Madhusudan Dutta, Jyotrindranath Thakur and a number of others. These great minds of Bengal, along with those of many other Indians and with their European or Anglo-Indian colleagues and friends like Kery-Jones-Bethune-Derozio-Hare-Havel were definitely very intimate with the Renaissance ideal, but excitement of re-nuance could never reach the greater millions of India in the nineteenth century. On the other hand, a series of people's democratic uprisings from the barracks to the Santhal village at that time left the intellectuals of those days outside. |
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| Lack of communicativeness between the selected few and the masses is a reason behind the elitism of the nineteenth century Bengali culture. There is nothing wrong with elitism in so far as it concerns itself with the bourgeois enlightenment. What is wrong is in its alliance with the imperialist vocation, and in its lack of a relevant amount of concern for Indian people. This so-called Renaissance was suggested by some critics to mark the spirit of revolt in this new poetry and new literature in South Asia. Though the primary inspiration behind this poetry is spontaneous apathy to modernism and other social and cultural corruptions, the term 'postmodernism' has its own limits and it is only relative to a given time : one may well confuse it too with the European postmodernism. Interestingly, the elementary idea of postmodernism in the Indian context came among the indigenous young poets of Bengal who began writing in the '70s, as a reaction to the farcical surrender to Euro-American models by the decadent modernist writers of Bengal between 1950 and 1970. For a more elaborate discussion on this topic, see section 422.1.5. |
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| 422.1.3.3. REWRITING HISTORIES |
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| Under the veil of the 'nineteenth century Renaissance', the British histories advocated for a stand on the manifestation of pains and agonies, and the spirit of revolt among the Indian people in the nineteenth century when people's democratic uprisings were very frequent in districts like Midnapore (Layek revolt), Mymensingh (Pagalpanthi revolt), Barasat (Titumir's struggle). Chotonagpur (Kol-Bhil-Munda joining hands against the British), Santhal Parganas (Santhal revolt), Howrah (railway employees' strike) and Pabna (Peasants' revolt). The intellectuals' love-hate ties with the British tried to occupy the centrestage and cover the class-hatred of hungry millions of India. Notice that in the introductory note to the novel 'Anandamath' (first edition), Bankin Chandra Chatterji expresses, in clear terms, his faith in the dependence on and inevitability of the British rule. Though the novel offers a criticism of anarchy as its central theme, and is indeed to be admitted that the intellectual nationalism or patriotism could never be fostered by, nor it could ever communicate itself with, the class-hatred of the oppressed against the feudal lords and their foreign masters. |
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| We regret that we have not been able to get Madhusudhan Dutta's editorial comments (in a Madras daily) on the Great Revolt in Barracks of 1857. He may be the real translator of 'NiildarpaN', Dinabandhu Mitra's documentary play about the brutality of British indigo-planters in Bengal, but he did not appear on the court even as a witness for the prosecution when Reverend Long was fined for publishing the English rendering of 'NiildarpaN'. The editor-compiler of the Mahaabhaarata, kaliprasanna Sinha, paid the fine on behalf of Long. |
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| But at the same time, Madhusudan might have been expected to play the role of Dante, had the veil of colonial-imperialist's intellectualism not engrossed or covered the nineteenth century awakening in Bengal. Our expectation and the reality turn out to be contradictory to each other in the portraits of the nineteenth century. For some others, the portrait appears further hazy and unclear. Shibnath Shasthri, for example, is remembered as a good scholar, a social reformer and a brilliant prose-writer. Little is known about this involvement with the labor-movement at that time: we may only learn that he contributed a poem on trails and travails of labourers. The poem, published in his Journal 'Bhaarat Sramajibi ('The Indian Labour')' had the title 'Labour' and Shibnath was probably inspired by the example of his grandfather Dwarakanatha Vidyabhusan who had once raised his voice of support for the railways-employees' strike, in his journal 'Som Prakash'. We may take Shibanath Shastri as the anonymous Calcuttan writing to the First International, although we can never be sure of it. |
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