Notes On The Bengal Renaissance

INTRODUCTION

This short pamphlet gives no more than the broad
tramc-work for a study of the Bengal Renaissance from
Rammohan Roy to Rabmdranath Tagore.

The author himself an eminent Marxist intellectual-
did not desire its publication at this stage as it is in no
sense a detailed study nor is the frame-work indicated here
necessarily final or complete.

He has agreed to its publication for discussion because
at the present crisis in Indian life and thought, it is urgently
necessary to uncover the roots of the Bengal Renaissance
which moulded the modern Indian mind Much of that
heritage has been lost and forgotten. Much of it has been
repudiated and distorted. But it still remains the most
powerful influence in moulding current ideas of all schools
of social and political thought.

We are therefore publishing this pamphlet as a con-
tribution towards the efforts to bring about a correct and
common understanding of the ideas of our own past ideo-
logical heritage so that we may successfully struggle
towards new ideas that will help to liberate our land and
build a new life for our people.

Bengal was the birth-place of the modern Indian
Renaissance We look to all Bengali intellectuals irres-
pective of ideological or political differences to contribute
to the discussion.

Comments and criticism of this draft will be very
welcome and should be addressed to Amit Sen c|o the Com-
munist Party Headquarters, Raj Bhuvan, Sandhurst Road,
Bombay 4. All contributions, together with the author's
reply, will be printed in the Marxist Miscellany which is
brought out by the People's Publishing House.

P. C. JOSHI.

CONTENTS

I INTRODUCTION

II. 1814-1833

Ram Mohan Roy 1772-1833 3

The Associates of Ram Mohan Roy 11

Conservative Critics of Ram Mohan Roy 13

The Rise of New Radicalism 15

in. 1833-1857

The Derozians 17

Moderate Reformers 22

Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar 1820-1891 25

British Indian Association 1851 27

IV. 1857-1885

After the Mutiny 30

Creative Literature and Learning 32

Religious Reform and Revivalism 37

National Consciousness 41

V. 1885-1905

National Conference and National Congress 47

Literature and Culture 53

VI. 1905-1919

Partition of Bengal 56

Extremism and Terrorism 59

Literature and Culture 64

NOTES ON THE BENGAL RENAISSANCE

I

Introduction

THE impact of British rule, bourgeois economy and modern West-
ern culture was felt first in Bengal and pro*
NATURE OF THE duced an awakening known usually as 1 the
BENGAL RENAIS- Bengal Renaissance. For about a century,
SANCE Bengal's conscious awareness of the chang-

ing modern world was more developed than
and ahead of that of the rest of India. The role played by Ben-
gal in the modern awakening of India is thus comparable to the
position occupied by Italy in the story of the European Renais*

In the broad family of peoples which constitute India, the
recognition of the distinctiveness of the Bengalis has been in
modern times largely bound up with the appreciation of this
flowering of social, religious, literary and political activities in
Bengal. And today when disintegration threatens every aspect
of our life, it is more necessary than ever to recall our past heri-
tage, to go over again the struggles and achievements which had ,
built up a proud tradition, now in danger of being ;

What is being presented here is merely the sketch of a narrative
of events on the surface, culled from well-
FIYE PERIODS known books on the subject. But even a
survey based on secondary sources and con-
fined to mere external facts has its own usefulness in serving as
an introduction. For the convenience of such a preliminary study,
the period under review is here divided into five sections, with
dates chosen more or less arbitrarily, to demarcate them from
each other :

1. 1814-1833 The easiest starting point is, of course, the date
1814, when Rammohan Roy settled down in Calcutta and
took up seriously his life's work. His death in England in
1833, obviously ends the period of which he was, indisput-
ably, the central figure.

2. 1833-1857 From the death of Rammohan to the outbreak
of the Indian Mutiny.

3. 1857-1885 From the Mutiny to the foundation of the In
dian National Congress.

4. 1885-1905 From the commencement of the Congress to the
Partition of Bengal

5. 1905-1919 From the Partition and the great Swadeshi agi-
tation to the coming of Non-Co-operation and the leadei-
ship of Mahatma Gandhi.

II

1814 - 1833

RAMMOHAN ROY 1772-183$

THE central characteristics in the life and thought of Ram-
mohan Roy were his keen consciousness of the stagnant, degraded
and corrupt state into which our society had fallen, his deep love
of the people which sought their all-round regeneration, his cri-
tical appreciation of the value of modern Western culture and
the ancient wisdom of the East alike, and his untiring many-
sided efforts in fighting for improving the conditions around him.
No contemporary ever approached him in the quantity and
the quality of achievement or the range of activity. His writings
themselves are the best proof of the life-giving spirit of new
thought. Recent detractors of his deserved reputation have merely
revealed their own failure to grasp the significance of the renais-
sance in our country.

In his outlook, Rammohan worked out a synthesis of the best

thought of the East and the West. As a

A SYNTHESIS young man at Benares, he had studied the

traditional Sanskrit culture. At Patna, he

had delved deep in Persian and Arabic lore. During his travels

in distant regions, "in plains as well as in hilly lands," he had

acquainted himself with various provincial cultures and even

Tibetan Buddhism and Jainism.

Later in life, he mastered English thought and Western cul-
ture. He was quite at home with Christian religious literature
and earned the esteem of British and American Unitarians.
Western radicals like Bentham and Roscoe greeted him as an
equal ally. French savants honoured him. And all the time,
Rammohan was no thinker shut up in his own speculations, but
a champion of his people, engaged in the daily toil of advancing

4 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

their conditions with an unfaltering vision of their bright modem
destiny.

Even as a boy, Rammohan annoyed his parents by his free cri-
ticism of irrational orthodoxy. As he grew
VINDICATION OF up, he lived apart from the family because
HINDU THEISM of his altered habits of life and change of
opinion. In his thirties he wrote in Persian
his Gift to Monotheuts in which he argued that the natural ten-
dency in all religions was towards monotheism, but unfortunately
people have always emphasised their special, peculiar creeds,
forms of worship and practices which tend to separate one reli-
gion from another.

Having settled in Calcutta, Rammohan drew round him in
the Atmiya Sabha in 1815, an inner circle of aristocratic and new
nuddle-class liberals and held regular, discussion meetings in the
manner he had already introduced in his circle at Rangpur, where
he was an official for some time.

He took the field with supreme courage against the current
perversions of the ancient Hindu religion, which his learned and
thoughtful contemporaries tolerated in their contempt and pity
for the ignorant multitude. Between 1815 and 1817, he pub-
lished the Bengali translation of the authoritative text of the
Vedanta together with an abridgement and also translated five of
the principal *Upanishads, to demonstrate to the general public
that the Hindu scriptures themselves preached monotheism. He
was plunged, in consequence, in great controversy with the or-
thodox pandits like Sankar Sastri, Mrityunjoya Vidyalankar and
Subrahmanya Sastri, between 1817 and 1820, and published a
series of polemical tracts in which he very ably defended his
ground.

Rammohan pronounced a scathing criticism of priest-craft
which inculcated a vulgar religion of superstitious idol-worship
for the masses and discouraged translations of the scriptures into
the vernacular, in a manner which reminds us of the leaden of
the Protestant Revolution. He pointed out that unthinking idol-
atry had brought about a degradation in the character of the com-
; people so that he felt it his duty to "rescue them from impo-

1814-1835 5

sition and servitude, and promote their comfort and happiness. 9 '
He referred to commonsense and the practice of other peo-
ples when he advocated the rationality and the perfect feasibility
of theism and exposed the logical absurdities of idol-worship
which " destroys the texture of society " and hinders moral refor-
mation. Any particular scripture was liable to error and there
was an inherent human right to depart from tradition, especially
if tradition was "leading directly to immorality and destruction
of social comforts." Such was the memorable message of the
pioneer of the renaissance in our land.

The new Liberalism of Rammohan was not confined to a re-asser-
tion of Hindu theism, it spread also to his
LIBERAL REINTER- examination of the Christian religion and
PRETATION OF tradition which had begun to penetrate into
CHRISTIANITY our country.

In 1820, he published his Precepts of

Jesus in which he carefully separated the moral message of Christ
from the specific Christian doctrines and the reliance on the
miracle stories. The moral teaching of Christianity, he said, had
a far greater appeal than its metaphysical theology. The mis-
sionaries were at once up in arms against the daring heathen.
Between 1820 and 1823, Rammohan wrote three Appeals to the
Christian Public in defence of his position. He protested against
the missionary practice of stressing dogmas and mysteries foreign
to the people, their habit of dwelling more on the nature of
Christ than on his gospel of love which was the main strength
of their religion. He singled out for attack what he described
as Trinitarian polytheism and thus converted into Unitarianism
Adam, one of the Serampore missionaries himself.

In his Brahmanical Magazine, 1821-1823, he displayed his
deep love for the best traditions of India, and on behalf of his
country protested against "encroachment upon the rights of her
poor, timid and humble inhabitants" by proselytizing Christian
missionaries who instead of relying on reasonable arguments fell
back on ridiculing the native religions and on holding out worldly
inducements to converts.

Tenaciously defending the intellectual consistency of Hindu
theism, he proceeded to expose what he considered to be the f al-

ft NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

lacies of missionary doctrines in a manner which won him the
respect of British and American Unitarians as we see in their
correspondence with him, and in the tributes they paid him.

Rammohan was no enemy of Christianity in its best sense
which he believed to be a good influence on his countrymen. He
had assisted some of the Serampore missionaries in the Bengali
translations of the Gospel ; he set up the Unitarian Committee
in 1821 and helped it to maintain Adam as a missionary and run
its own congregational service, school and printing press ; in
1830, he even gave material support to the young Scottish mis-
sionary Duff in his crusade against "godless" education. But
his rational modern mind refused to put up with the metaphy-
sical subtleties of missionary preachings and the unfairness in
their propaganda. His deep learning and intellect made him
one of the pioneers in the modern humanistic trend within even
a foreign religious movement, Christianity.

Nor was the stand of Rammohan merely critical or negative. He
was moving towards a universal religion to
FOUNDATION OF be based on the best traditions of Hindu
THE BRAHMO theism. In his Humble Suggestions (1823),
MOVEMENT he declared that all believers in One God

were his brethren in religion, and he advo-
cated wide toleration in his tract on Different Modes of Worship,
published in 1825.

Not satisfied with the discussions of the Atmiya Sabha or the
occasional Unitarian services, he and his disciples organised a
new theistic society, the Brahma Sabha, on August 20, 1828. A
regular church was established in January 1830, as the culmina-
tion of Rammohan's religious thought, in the Trust Deed for
which were defined the first principles of the famous Brahmo move-
ment which worked like a leaven in the life of Bengal for a long
time.

But Rammohan was no mere philosopher, critic or religious re-
former. He was a stern (ighter against so-
FIGHT AGAINST cial evils and a champion of those suffer-
"SATi" ing from social oppression. This is illus-

trated by his historic campaign against the
inhuman custom of Sari burning of Hindu widows. The British

1814-lttS 7

rulers were partly apathetic and partly nervous about the outcry
which would follow the forcible suppression of the rite. Their
regulations against the " misuse" of the practice were ineffec-
tive and even a tacit approval of the monstrous custom.

A total of about 8,000 burnings were officially recorded bet-
ween 1815 and 1828. In three tracts, between 1818 and 1829,
Rammohan came out in fiery denunciation of this murderous
practice. He quoted the authority of the best religious books
against the custom of Sati, but coupled this with an appeal to
reason and good sense of the community. He combined a spirited
defence of the maligned Hindu womanhood with a tremendous
attack on the lack of compassion on the part of the menfolk.

When Bentinck at last suppressed the rite on December 4,
1829, in the teeth of orthodox protests, it was Rammohan who
strengthened the hands of the Government by organising a depu-
tation and an address signed by 300 Hindus and by publishing an
Abstract of Arguments in 1830 ; also a petition to Parliament was
arranged by him to prevent any repeal of Bentinck's order.

Rammohan was also a pioneer in educational reform. He was
connected with the talks in 1816 which
THE NEW led to the foundation of the celebrated Hindu

EDUCATION College, on January 20, 1817. But the or-

thodox rich Hindus objected to Rammohan's
inclusion in the committee on account of his "heretical" views
and close association with Muslims. Rammohan stood down at
once in order not to hamper the first substantial effort made In
the country to provide for Western education to young men eager
for the new light.

In his own way,, he also helped the cause by running an
Anglo-Hindu School, the course of instruction at which included*
we are told, mechanics and astronomy, Voltaire and Euclid. He
established a Vedanta College in 1825, where he tried to combine
the teaching of Oriental learning with Western arts and sciences.
He appealed in 1823 to the Church of Scotland Assembly to
send out competent teachers ; and when Duff came out to inau-
gurate the Scottish educational mission in Bengal in 1830, ha
received the influential backing of Rammohan.

8 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

Above all, his well-known letter to Lord Amhent on De-
cember 11, 1823, advocating an educational policy was largely
accepted as the official programme by Bentinck and Macaulay
though only as late as 1835. This was a plea for the teaching
of useful Western sciences, in the place of the classical lore of
grammatical niceties and metaphysical speculations in the true
pre-Baconian fashion, which had been forcing the students to
consume a dozen years in wrestling with imaginary learning in
dead languages.

This was harsh criticism for the prevalent system of classi-
cal education in the State colleges, which confined themselves
to Sanskrit, Arabic or Persian, dear to the heart of the Oriental-
ists among whom were included the new European scholars of
Indian classics. But Rammohan was trailing the path for the
new education from the West which was to shape the modern
epoch of our history, and give us a new orientation in life.

Rammohan was also one of the makers of Bengali prose. The
work had already started with the efforts of
BENGALI LAN- the missionary Carey who, in 1801, had been
CUACE AND placed in charge of the Bengali Department

LITERATURE at the Government Fort William College
which instructed the officials of the East In-
dia Company. Carey gathered round him a group of pandits in
his efforts to lift Bengali from an unsettled dialect to the status
of a regular language in the domain of prose expression.

Carey was responsible for a Book of Dialogues (1801), for a
Bengali Grammar (1801), and for a Dictionary between 1815 and
1825. He had also set up Bengali types for printing and started
the first Bengali newspaper, the weekly Samachar Darpan in
1818. One of his pandits, Mrityunjoya Vidyalankar, experi-
mented with prose styles during 1802-1817.

Yet in this field too, Rammohan came forward as a major
force. From 1815, his translations, introductions and tracts, with
their clarity and vigour of expression, gave a new dignity to Be-
gali prose and established its claim as a vehicle of elegant ex-
pression in serious subjects. Rammohan's polemics in Bengali
were permeated with his care for the enlightenment of the gene-
ral public and his newspaper articles had the same educative

1814-1888 'I

He used Western punctuation and his Bengali Grammar
published in 1826, has been praised even by modern experts.

Inspired with new ideals of life, Rammohan was breaking away

from the tradition of passivity so congenial

NATIONAL CONS- to feudal times. He held that his movement

CZOUSNESS AND of reviving public interest in the Vedanta

THE FIGHT FOR was prompted by his desire to promote the

REFORM comfort of the people and to unite the dif-

ferent groups into which society had split up.
He considered the forms of direct worship as a liberation from
priestly tyranny and a means of realisation of human brotherhood.
He protested against the evil effects of idolatry on the structure
of society and against the inconveniences of the caste system
" which has been the source of want of unity among us."

He felt that his position as a reformer from within made it
necessary for him to avoid being legally branded as an "out-
caste." Yet he translated the Bajra Suchi in 1927, a text highlv
critical of the caste system, and in a letter of 1828 ho held that
caste had deprived people of patriotic feeling and that religious
reform was necessary "for the sake of their political advantage
and social comfort," because the present system of religion '* is
not well calculated to promote their political interest.* 9

Again and again, there flitted across his vision the prospect
of a free India, after a period of British tutelage, and he expressed
this view in an interview with the Frenchman Jacquemont, in a
discussion with Sandford Merton, in a letter on August 18, 1828,
to Crawford. He felt that English rule was creating a middle
class in India which would lead a popular movement of eman-
cipation.

Rammohan figured in the first constitutional agitations in oiu
country. We find him drawing up a memorial to the Supreme
Court and a petition to the King-in-Council against the Press Or-
dinance of 1823, in which he defended liberty of free expression
of opinion in such noble language that it recalls to mind Milton's
Areopagitica. He protested against the discrimination involved
in the Jury Act of 1827 and against Government attempts to tax
rent-free lands in 1830. He was connected with the agitation on
the eve of the revision of the East India Company's Charter due

10 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

for 1833 and demanded the abolition of the Company's trading
rights and the removal of heavy export duties. On behalf of
the Delhi Sultan during his dispute with the Company, he ap-
pealed to British national faith and sense of justice and also to
world opinion at large.

Rammohan conducted a Bengali and a Persian weekly to
shape public opinion, the Sambad Kaumudi from the end of 1821,
and the Mirat-ul-Akhbar from the beginning of 1822. He sus-
pended the publication of the latter in protest against the Press
Ordinance of 1823. In his papers he strove consistently to edu-
cate the people on all the topics of the day.

He was a fearless champion of a cause if he considered it to be
just. In a tract on the Ancient Rights of the Females (1822),
he denounced the contemporary legal dependence of widowed
mothers and unmarried or widow daughters on their menfolk
and demanded property rights for women. He also attacked
the practice of polygamy. As a champion of common law when
it was equitable, we find him defending free alienability of pro-
perty in another tract on Rights of Hindus over Ancestral Pro-
perty in 1830.

He also broke through the orthodox prohibition of sea-voyages
by undertaking a daring trip abroad. In England, in 1831, he
submitted to Parliament communications on the revenue and the
judicial systems, the condition of the ryots and Indian affairs in
general. We find him protesting against the miserable condi-
tion of the peasants and the misrule of the landlords, and demand-
ing a fixed rent roll, a permanent settlement for the actual culti-
vators and a peasant militia. He put forward a programme of
administrative reforms which were to become famous in Indian
constitutional agitation, and included items like Indianisation of
the services, separation of the executive from the judiciary, and
trial by jury.

One of the most remarkable things about Rammohan was his keen

interest in international affairs and his un-

INTERNATIONAL derstanding of and affinity with progressive

SYMPATHIES AND movements everywhere. As a young man in

CONTACTS Rangpur, we find him keenly interested in

European politics. According to his friend

1814-1838 11

and official superior, Digby, Rammohan started with an adula-
tion of Napoleon but changed his views when he felt that the
Emperor was suppressing liberty.

In the twenties of the last century we find his newspapers
regularly discussing current problems like the Chinese question,
the struggle in Greece, and the miseries of Ireland under the
regime of absentee landlordism and the tithe. His sorrow at the
failure of the revolution in Naples in 1821, led him to cancel his
engagements when he received the sad news ; his delight at the
revolution in Spanish America in 1823 took the form of a public
dinner in honour of the event.

His international links are shown vividly in the fact that a
book in Spanish with the new Constitution in it was dedicated
to him. "He could think and talk of nothing else" when ho
heard of the July Revolution in France in 1830. On his way to
England, at Cape Town, he insisted on visiting French frigates
flying the revolutionary tricolour flag though he had been tem-
porarily lamed by an accident. He contributed to the Univer-
sity funds in the short time he was ashore in South Africa.

His mind was filled with elation when an outward bound
ship passing his vessel gave the news of the favourable progress
of the Reform Bill in the English Parliament. He greeted the
Manchester workers with the cry "Reform for ever". He
considered the reform struggle in England as " a struggle between
right and wrong" and contemplated severing his English connec-
tions if the great Bill was thrown out.

We find him also an advocate of free intercourse between
nations and in the domain of international relations he advanced
the idea of a Franco-British Congress to settle disputes. Not
for Rammohan wa<* the narrow insularity which has often cast a
shadow on Indian national consciousness. His understanding
was too clear, his love of liberty too deep for any such vagary

THE ASSOCIATES OF RAMMOHAN ROY

We have dwelt at such length on Rammohan Roy because of
his pioneer position in relation to the Bengal Renaissance, his
comprehensive outlook, and the occasional tendency to belittle
him in modern times. But even Rammohan was largely the pro-

12 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

duct of his times. We are reminded very forcibly of this by the
fact that he found from the beginning close associates and com-
rades to rally round him. The circle at Rangpur, the Atmfya
Sabha from 1815, the Brahma Sabha of 1928, and the agitations
for social or constitutional reform did not fail to attract a cer-
tain number of enthusiasts from the upper and middle classes
which shows that the times were ripe for change.

One non-Indian figures prominently as a comrade of Rammohan

in the field of the new education where he

DAVID HARE has left an imperishable memory. This was

(1775-1842) David Hare who came out in 1800 as a

watchmaker but made it his life's mission to

spread modern education in the country where he lived on till

his death, four decades later. With the stabilisation of British

rule in Bengal, a demand for education on Western lines was

growing up in the country. A few private schools like those of

Sherburne or Drummond in Calcutta tried pitifully to cope with

the demand. The State maintained only a Sanskrit College or

a Muslim Madrasa teaching their traditional classical lore, and

even the education grant in the Charter Act of 1813 was being

diverted by the Orientalist advisors of the Government towards

the channel of indigenous classical education.

David Hare thought of organising a lead on new lines from
the Calcutta gentry. He got in touch with Rammohan and moved
the Chief Justice Sir Hyde East to initiate discussions in 1816
which led to the foundation in 1817 of the celebrated Hindu Col-
lege which under the present name of Presidency College, con-
tinues to this day. David Hare took the keenest interest in the
working of this pioneer institution for years to come and was a
daily visitor and advisor. He also organised the School Book
Society in 1817 to prepare and publish much needed text books
and the School Society in 1818 to establish schools of a new type
and grant scholarships to deserving poor boys. We hear stories
of how flocks of young hopefuls used to besiege Hare's door and
run after his palanquin to win stipends from him.

After retiring from the watch trade, Hare devoted his entire
time to his life's mission and would go on a daily round to the
network of schools he had set up in the city. He would, play

1814-1888 i;t

with the boys, feed them, tend them in sickness. An entire ge-
neration of educated Bengali young men in the metropolis came
to love and adore their great-hearted foreign friend and mourned
his tragic death when he died from cholera in 1842.

The School Society took keen interest in women's education in

the country and agitated for it. This attract-

WOMEN'S ed the attention of the British and Foreign

EDUCATION School Society which sent out Miss Cooke

in 1821, who organised ten girls' school*

with the support of the Church Missionary Society. Later on, a

Bengal Ladies' Society sponsored by philanthropic Englishwomen

started more schools and won some rich donations from Indian

sympathisers. In Adam's Report of 1834, we find functioning

19 girls' schools founded in places other than Calcutta, though

most of them were under missionary inspiration.

Of the Indian associates of Rammohan Roy, the foremost in
social eminence was Dwarkanath Tagore
DWARKANATH who was afterwards called ' the Prince ' and
TACORE (1794- was an ancestor of Rabindranath Tagore. He
1846) & OTHERS was educated in Sherburne's School and got
his instruction in law by a barrister, Fer-
guson. He amassed wealth as Dewan to the Salt Agent and
then as proprietor of Carr, Tagore and Company ; he represented
the new aristocracy linked with business.

Dwarkanath was a close ally of Rammohan, whose asso-
ciates also included other aristocrats like Prasanna Kumar Ta-
gore who founded the Reformer in 1831 and became an eminent
lawyer and middle-class men like Chandrasekhar Deb and Tara-
chand Chakravarti, the first secretary of the Brahma Sabha. The
city seethed with excitement as Rammohan cast his spell over a
large circle of friends and followers.

CONSERVATIVE CRITICS OF RAMMOHAN

Rammohan, however, could not carry the whole or even the
greater bulk of Calcutta Society with him in his daring crusade.
His heterodoxy aroused vehement protest and a sharp reaction set
in against him. In his own village home, Rammohan was ostra-

14 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

cised by neighbours and relatives turned against him so that he
found city life in Calcutta more congenial and spent most of his
time in the metropolis. Ribald songs passed current in the city
itself against him and were sung, we are told, by even the street
urchins. He was sometimes even subjected to insults in the
public streets. We have already seen how the orthodox gentlemen
forced him out of the Hindu College Committee. The vexatious
law suits which dogged Rammohan and took up much of his time
have often been attributed to the general feeling against him. He
was thus forced by public opinion to be more cautious in his
general bearing than would have been the case otherwise.

The orthodox pandits in their controversy with the "heretic"

found their great patron in Radhakanta Deb,

RADHAKANTA DEB the scion of the House of Sobhabazar and

(1784-1867) the recognised chief of orthodox society. A

famous classical scholar himself Radhakanta

began in 1819 the compilation of a Sanskrit encyclopaedia

which was a monument to his learning. He was associated with

the reactionary petition (in 1829) against the suppression of the

Sati rite. In 1830, he was the leader of the orthodox religious

society, the Dharma Sabha, which was founded as a counterblast

to the Brahmo movement. The conservative rich rallied round

him and at the meetings of the Dharma Sabha the street would be

jammed by the private carriages of such people.

Yet, Radhakanta was no out and out reactionary. He was a
great benefactor of the fountain of Western learning, the Hindu
College. He was a member of the School Book Society and
one of the secretaries of the School Society. He himself wrote a
book advocating women's education and was a steady supporter
of the movement

Even in Rangpur, Rammohan's circle aroused the hostility of or-
thodox critics who were headed by Gauri-

OTHER CRITICS OF kanta Bhattacharyya, the author of a tract,
RAMMOHAN Jnananjan, against the reformers. In Cal-
cutta, the gifted Bhabani Charan Banerji

left Rammohan's Bengali paper and conducted in opposition to

him a rival journal the Sambad Chandrika. Bhabani Charan

1814-1833 15

was a master of satire and between 1825 and 1831 castigated the
men and women who were inclining to new ways of life and
abandoning the traditional simple habits.

Ramkamal Sen, the grandfather of the famous Keshab Chan-
dra, was another orthodox leader, though like Radhakanta Deb,
he was connected with new institutions like the Hindu College.
The conservative opposition to Rammohan was not blindly reac-
tionary. Thus, Mrityunjoya Vidyalankar who polemised against
Rammohan disapproved of the practice of Sati as early as 1817.
Yet, as a whole, the conservative critics missed, as their modern
apologists do even today, the epoch-making significance of the
life-work of Rammohan.

THE RISE OF NEW RADICALISM

In Rammohan's own life-time, however, we have the genesis
of a trend of ultra-radicalism, destined to be famous unde/ the
name of the Young Bengal movement, which sprang from the
the precincts of the Hindu College and created consternation for
a period, and with which Rammohan himself was out of sym-
pathy. Arising out of the tradition of the French Revolution
and English radicalism, this movement had a distinct element of
free thought in it which offended Rammohan's sense of decency
and theistic idealism. The young men in their turn returned
the compliment and their organ the Enquirer contemptuously
dubbed his movement as " coming as far as half the way in reli-
gion and politics." The inspiration of Young Bengal came from
one of the strangest figures in the history of Bengal Renaissance
an Anglo-Indian, Derozio.

Do'ozio was something of a prodigy. He was educated at one
of the private schools of the day, in the
HENRY VIVIAN Dharamtola section of the city, run by a
DEROZIO Scotsman named Drummond who had some-

(1809-1831) thing of the reputation of a poet, scholar,

and a notorious free-thinker. From him ap-
parently, the young Derozio got steeped in the intoxicating free-
dom urge of the French Revolution and a passion for freedom
of thought and liberation from the dead-weight of all tradition
possessed his soul.

1C NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

Even while in his teens, Derozio could criticise Kantian phi-
losophy with competence and blossomed out as a minor poet, his
poem the Fakir of Jhungecra striking a fervid patriotic note
unique in one from his community. Appointed a teacher of the
Hindu College in May, 1826, he at once drew to himself like a
magnet a host of boys in the upper classes who began to adore
him and drink deep in the fountain of free thought.

Dorado encouraged them to debate freely and question aU
authority. They had a free run of his house and as a mark of
emancipation exulted in forbidden food and drink. Derooo
started an Academic Association with a monthly organ the Athe-
nuan in which a pupil, Madhav Chandra MaJlik, defiantly pro-
claimed that he and his friends hated Hinduism from the bottom
of their hearts.

Round Derozio rallied the best boys of the College who ridi-
culed old traditions, defied the social and religious rites, de-
manded education for women, and to flaunt their independence
indulged in wine-drinking and beef-eating. The College autho-
rities in great alarm removed at the instance of Ramkamal Sen
the dangerous corruptor of youth on April 25, 1831. Deroiio
died from cholera before the year was out, but his memoiy re-
mained green in the hearts of his beloved disciples.

Derorio's pupils came to be known collectively as Young Bengal.

As early as 1831, we find them coming out
Youwc BENGAL with an English and a Bengali organ the

Enquirer and the Jnananvesab. Some of
the Derodans startled the whole of Calcutta society by embracing
Christianity. Two of them, Mahesh Chandra Ghosh and Krish-
namohan Banerji, announced their conversion in 1832.

Ill

1833 - 1857

THE DEROZIANS

CONTEMPORARY society was shocked beyond measure by the
doings of the Derozians, and yet they formed more of a group
with a certain outlook than a real sustained movement with a
solid basis and growing support.

The Derozians were a band of bright young men who had
come under the spell of a striking personality and they created a
sensation and a stir. But their stand lacked much positive con-
tent and they failed to develop a definite progressing ideology.
The concept of the people and their rights which had flowered
in the great Western bourgeois-democratic revolution that had
awakened them did not take much concrete shape in their mind.

They were brilliant individuals faithful to the last to the me-
mory of their master and close-knit to each other by the bonds of
affection and friendship. Yet they did not prove to be a growing
school of thought attracting new adherents from wider circle*..
They made some mark in their day but, nonetheless, they faded
out like " a generation without fathers and children."

For several years, however, the Derozians attracted much atten-
tion. They conducted their two organs the
EARLY ACTIVITIES Enquirer and the Jnananvesan ("Search
OF THE DEROZIANS after Wisdom"). In 1834-1835, one of them,
Rasik Krishna Mallik delivered in public
meetings impressive speeches on the death of Rammohan Roy, the
revision of the Company's Charter, and the freedom of the Press.
They kept up Derozio's Academic Association upto about 1839
and supplemented it by an Epistolary Association for the ex-
change of views within their circle.

Radical activities in England seem to have exercised an in-
fluence over them for we find them setting up a Society for the
Acquisition of General Knowledge in 1838, to be followed by a

BR2

18 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

Mechanical Institute in 1839. The contempt for tradition in their
Hindu College days continued to influence their successors. On
the one hand, Christianity claimed further converts in the persons
of Madhusudan Datta (another promising student of the College
who left his ancestral faith in 1843) and Jnanendra Mohan Ta-
gore (the only son of Prasanna Kumar Tagore), on the other hand
drinking which the Derozians had introduced as a symbol of
emancipation began to spread in an alarming manner amongst
people who were untouched by the nobler marks of Derozian
free thought.

The genuine brand of the Young Bengal mind was, however,
being agitated by issues like the treatment of Indian labour in
distant Mauritius, the extension of the right of trial by jury, the
introduction of English as court language, freedom of the Press
and forced labour amongst the coolies employed by Government
departments. The Derozians were being drawn towards more
active politics though quite a number of them had moved into
Government jobs as posts were being opened to Indians under
the new Charter Act of 1833

In 1842, the Derozians started a new organ, the Bengal Spectator ,
which turned more towards economics and
POLITICS 01 politics than towards the pure pursuit of
YOUNG BENGAL culture The Society for the Acquisition of
General Knowledge tended to become a plat-
form for political discussion as welL in addition to its study of
social and general cultural subjects on a variety of which papers
were read by the Derozians. In a Society meeting in the rooms
of the Hindu College on February 8, 1843, Principal D L Ri-
chardson protested against "seditious remarks" by a speakei,
but the chairman of the meeting ruled him oul The chairman
on the occasion happened to be Tarachand Chakravarti, a slightly
older contemporary of Derozio's direct pupils, who was earlier
an associate of Kammohan but was now identifying himself with
Young Bengal. He edited the Quill and the Derozians came to
be called after him the Chakravarti Faction

Early in 1943, George Thompson of the anti-slavery agitatiom
reputation addressed several public meetings which were organ-
ised by the Derozians who were roused to enthusiasm by his gifts

1833-1857 If

as an orator. Out of this excitement arose a political associa-
tion inspired by Thompson and conducted by Young Bengal. Thk
was the Bengal British India Society founded on April 20, 1843,
with the object of concerted activity for the protection of the
legitimate rights of the subjects, and open to all

Neither the Bengal Spectator, nor the new Society lasted
long but they left a taste for politics. One of the Derozians,
Ramgopal Ghose, known as an excellent speaker from hu
student days, became now a regular orator and in 1847 waft
hailed in the press as the Indian Demosthenes. In 1849-1850, the
European community was up in arms against the so-called Black
Bills which aimed at subjecting the European residents also to
the jurisdiction of the local courts in place of the old privilege
of trial by the Calcutta Supreme Court alone. Ramgopal became
t*ven more famous by his spirited defence of the proposed legis-
lation in a tract called Remarks on the Black Acts.

In 1851. the Derozians linked up with the other groups is
the foundation of the British Indian Association. The cultural
interests of Young Bengal did not disappear in the years of poli-
tical excitement Two of them, Peaiay Chand Mitra and Radha-
nath Sikdar, founded a little later, about 1857, the Monthly Ma-
gazine in Bengali which had the distinction of carrying on a cru-
sade for a simple style in Bengali writing, intelligible even to the
average women in society. This was a protest against the pre-
valent passion for a chaste style in prose which tended to be
heavily Sanskntised

The prominent personalities of the Young Bengal group were

about ten in number. The semormost was

PROTAGONISTS OF Tarachand Chakravarti (1804-1855) who

YOUNG BENGAL was a pre-Derozian student of the Hindu

College and a former member of the Ram-

mohan circle and the first secretary of the Brahma Sabha. He

made some name as an editor, a lexicographer and a minor officer

of the Government. In 1843, he was considered to be the chief

of the Young Bengal faction.

The most imposing was Krishnamohan Banerji (1813-1885)
who was expelled from home in 1831 on account of some esca-
pades on the part of his young friends, accepted Christianity Mext

JO NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

year and taunted Hindu reaction in his organ, the Enquirer.
He became a Christian missionary in 1837 but kept up his radi-
calism. Krishnamohan was very learned and the author of an
encyclopaedia. In later life, he was universally respected and
was often the first choice as president for a society or at a
meeting.

Ramgopal Chose (1815-1868) became the most famous of the
Derozians. He made a great name as a successful businessman
but kept himself in the closest touch with his college friends
and thus formed the centre of the whole group. He was con-
nected with all the cultural and political activities of Young
Bengal and became famous all over the country by his eloquent
orations and his protest against European pretensions in the
Black Acts controversy.

Rasik Krishna Mallik (1810-1858) was noted for great eru-
dition and thoughtful speech. He had once refused to swear
in a law court by the holy Ganges water in the usual manner
and he ran away from home to escape from orthodoxy. Later
on, as an honest official, he built up a great reputation for per-
sonal integrity.

Pearay Chand Mitra (1814-1883) managed in his student
days a free school for other students. He was connected with
the Calcutta Public Library from its inception in 1835, as a de-
puty librarian, librarian, secretary and curator successively and
he made the Library an intellectual centre of his own group. He
was a frequent contributor to all periodicals, an active member
in a host of committees and a man of varied interests. His va-
ried gifts were reflected in his editing of the Agricultural Mis-
cellany in 1853.

A close friend of Pearay Chand Mitra was Radhanath Sik-
dar (1813-1870), diarist and mathematician, computator and sur-
veyor in the Government department, whose courageous stand
for the rights of the poor coolies under the department freed
them from the servitude of unpaid forced labour at the whim
of the sahib. Radhanath bluntly refused marriage with the child-
wife proposed for him in the usual manner. The two friends
Pearay Chand and Radhanath conducted, towards the end of

1833-1857 21

this period, a campaign for a simple colloquial style in Bengali
prose.

The Derozians also included the saintly Ramtanu Lahiri
(1813-1898), beloved and respected by all, even by the commcm
people, though he publicly renounced his sacred Brahmanicai
thread in 1851, kept pace with progressive thought throughout
his long life, and as a mere school master struggled against poverty
most of his days.

At the other pole in the group stood Dakshinaranjan Mu-
kherji (1812-1887) the bright rich young man of the group, donor
of the site for the Bethune College for Women in Calcutta when
it was a novel venture for higher education for girls. Dakshi-
narajan was intimate with the Derozio family, forward in defy-
ing every convention and prominent in all Young Bengal acti-
vities. But he was forced out of Calcutta society by a social
scandal and settled down in Oudh.

Sibchandra Deb (1811-1890) is remembered as a great be-
nefactor of his native town of Konnagar, as an upright official,
and as a prominent Brahmo leader in the next period. Kara-
chandra Ghosh (1808-1868) was another Derozian official with
a reputation for integrity. Lastly, we find mention of an un-
named Derozian who had turned a sanyasi, went to West India
and played a part in a struggle of the people against misgovern -
ment in Kathiawar by the local princes.

The flutter caused in Bengal society by the Derozians was, how-
ever, in the perspective of history some-
NATURE OF THE thing ephemeral and unsubstantial. They
YOUNG BENGAL failed to develop any movement outside their
PHASE own charmed circle and the circle itself

could hardly keep any significant form.
Worldly occupations and private interests inevitably claimed the
attention of the individual members of the group the majority
of whom came from middle-class homes and had a living to earn.
Radical politics of a Western type were hardly possible in Bengal
a century ago and the rich promise we see in the Derozians
never matured into anything solid.

Their only trait which was widely copied in contemporary
society was the escape from social conventions, but even here

82 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

there was no sturdy revolt or bold defiance but mere evasion. Thi
Jed to sad corruption in which there was amongst the imitators
no trace of the personal integrity and courage of the real Dero-
mns which have such a charm even today.

MODERATE REFORMERS

The moderate reformers who derived their inspiration from
Rammohan and had a contempt for the vagaries of Young Bengal,
tried meanwhile steadily to maintain their ground. Rather
eclipsed in the first decade of this period, they became more im-
portant after 1843 and finally re-asserted their hold. They found
a leader in Debendranath Tagore in 1843 and in the fifties the
dominating figure of Vidyasagar was their great ally

The Rammohan tradition was at first maintained rather feebly
by his former associates of whom the most

1833-1843 eminent was Dwarkanatli, the head of the

House of Tagore. Another Tagore, Prasan-
*a Kumar, conducted the Reformer, the moderate counterpart
of the radical Enquirer in the early thirties. The church founded
by Rammohan struggled on amidst difficulties ; the chief credit
for its preservation going lo its minister, Pandit Ramchandra
Vidyabagish who is also known as the author of Nitidarshan
(1841), a book of essays on mild patriotism and civic virtues.

The general moderate outlook, if not the reformed religious
views, was reflected by other literary men like Kasiprosad Chose,
an old Hindu College boy who was not exactly a Derozian, who
wrote English verses with patriotic sentiments and conducted
from 1846 to 1857 a weekly called the Hindu Intelligencer. An-
other ally was Iswar Chandra Cupta (1812-1859), a writer with
a distinctive individuality who has a position of his own in the
history of Bengali literature. He edited the Sambad Prabhakar
which soon became -the best known Bengali journal and was
turned in 1839 into the first Bengali daily; that Prabhakar became
such a force in educated society of the day was due mainly
to its gifted editor.

Iswar Chandra Gupta with his native poetic talent and a
genius for satire exercised an important influence on the next

1833-1857 23

generation of Bengali poets. He is also remembered for his
efforts to collect and preserve Bengal's folk poetry for which the
average educated person of the day had only contempt.

Like their ladical contemporaries, the moderates also tried
to set up societies. In 1836, they founded a Society for the Pro-
motion of the Bengali Language and Literature which was not
entirely limited to literary activities. In 1837-1838, was organ-
ised the Landholders' Association which took up the old agita-
tation against the taxation of the traditional rent-free lands. Its
membership was open to all grades of landed proprietors.

Dwaikauath Tagoie repeated Rammohan's exploit of going
abroad in 1842 and again in 1844 and on the latter occasion took
out with him the hr^t batch of Bengali medical students bound
for training in England It was he who brought George Thomp-
M>n to this country though the orator was quickly captured by
Young Bengal who organised his meetings

The feud against Rammohan gradually died out after his death
in spite of bickerings between the Dharma

SHUT IN CO^SLP- Sabha and the Brahma Sabha. The follow-

\vnvr ATTITUDI frs of Rammohan had hardly kept up his

fighting eneigy and many-sided new thought;

they were liltJe of a danger now. Times had also changed and
the centie of the stage was held often enough by Young Bengal
iv iih its fai greater irreverence. The conservative chiefs were
tiSeiefore relenting in their attitude Radhakunta Deb and Ram-
t.amal Sen joined hands with Dwarkanath and Prasanria Kumar
Tagorf in the Landlords' Association. The old scholar, Pandit
Jaigopal Tarkalankar, revised and panly re-wrote the old Bengali
versions of the epics and published them between 1830 and 1836
from the Scrampore Press

The revitalisation of the moderate reform attitude which became

apparent from 1843 was mainly the work of

DEBENURANATH Debendranath Tagore, Dwarkanath's son.

TAGORE Educated mainly at Rammohan's own foun-

(1817-1905) dalion, the Anglo-Hindu School, Debendra-

nath sharply differentiated himself from

Young Bengal and he had also temperamental differences with

24 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

that group. A deeply religious man, his mind developed a fine
balance between tradition and new thought. He had Ram-
rnohan's tenacity and seriousness of purpose, though not his va-
riety of interest and width of outlook.

Young Debendranath turned away rather abruptly from the
life of luxury which surrounded him in his princely parental
mansion. He drew around him kindred spirits who found their
spiritual home in the Tatvabodhini Sabha founded by him in
1839. This society held a very significant position in the intellec-
tual life of the mid-nineteenth century Bengal, with its serious
ideals in life, dignity of expression and character building.

The Sabha tarted a school in 1840, and in 1843 came out its
celebrated organ the Tatvabodhini Patrika. This periodical in
jts reputation lived up to its proud title which refers to the rea-
lisation and inculcation of serious thought. Here was the germ
of a new thought movement, less spectaculai but more solid than
Young Bengal.

Debendranath now proceeded to breathe a new life into the
moribund Brahmo Samaj. With about twenty faithful asso-
ciates he himself solemnly initiated into Rammohan's faith this
new spirit on the 7th of Poush, 1843 (late December) a date
the anniversary of which is still religiously kept at Santiniketan
in the institution founded by his world-famous son. Under De-
bendranath, who in later life came to be universally called the
Great Sage, the revived Brahmo Samaj took up the cause of re-
formed religion introduced by Rammohan but with a sharp em-
phasis on our traditional culture in reaction against the extreme
Anglicism of Young Bengal.

The latter aspect attracted much attention in 1845, when
Debendranath came forward to organise an intense agitation
against the missionary tactics in proselytizing. This anti-con-
version campaign of the Tatvabodhini group brought them nearer
to the old conservatives like Radhakanta Deb. On the other hand,
it roused the contempt of the Derozians. Krishnamohan Ban-
nerji in a famous article pilloried the half-way house which was
Brahmoism ; Ramgopal Ghose called the reformers hypocrites ;
Ramtanu Lahiri proclaimed that " the followers of Vedanta tem-
porise," and falter about the issue of revelation in the scriptures

1833-1837 25

so that he had a poor opinion of them ; and as for conversion he
claimed that there must be perfect equality and freedom of choice
for everyone.

The most remarkable of the close associates of Debendranath

was Akshoy Kumar Datta who was called to

AKSHOY KUMAR the editorship of the Tatvabodhini organ.

DATTA His great educative essays arouse admira-

(1820-1886) tion even today in spite of their severe intel-

lectual form. In the early fifties of the last
century he was discussing man's relationship with external nature
and was writing lessons on modern knowledge for beginner*
He was crippled in 1855 by excessive mental strain and yet we
find him dictating, twenty years later, a classic account of the
religious denominations in India !

Perhaps the most striking thing about him was hm intellec-
tual revolt against Brahmo orthodoxy Tacitly at least, the
Brahmo church still stood by the dogma of the infallibility of
the Vedas and claimed the Vcdanta as its sole theoretical basis.

This had aroused the acid comments of the Derozians. The
intellectual honesty of Akshoy Kumar Datta made him see the
point and gradually he won over Debendranath himself. By
1850, the Brahmo Samaj as a genuine theistic movement aban-
doned the faith in ancient Hindu scriptures as its exclusive theo-
retical sheet-anchor.

ISWAR CHANDRA VIDYASAGAR 1820-1891

The steady, solid, moderate reform movement could look as
an. ally upon the towering personality of Pandit Iswar Chandra
Vidyasagar, who earned for himself the respect of all Bengal
and a great place in history. In the midst of grinding poverty,
this young Brahmin boy was educated in the Sanskrit College
from 1829 to 1841. From the head-panditship of Fort William
College he rose, step by step, to the principalship of Sanskrit
College in 1851. A regular classical scholar, he educated him*
self in English and came to represent a fine blend of the best
in both cultures.

26 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

Vidyasagar had both, the originality of a genius and the ster-
ling strength of an heroic character. He thought out a new
technique of teaching Sanskrit more easily to beginners and wrote
a series of primers in the Sanskrit language and literature adapted
to modern needs. He also arranged for the collection and pre-
servation of old Sanskrit books. In Bengali prose, Vidyasagar'a
work was a landmark. He evolved an elegant, although a bit too
stately and chaste, style of writing which impressed everybody.

Between 1847 and 1863, he wrote a series of books in Bengali
which became classics to the students of literature. In these, he
drew his material impartially from Indian epics and popular
tales, as well as Western fables and biographies. His Bengali
Primer for beginners is even today in household use

But Vidyasagar was no mere scholar or man of letters. As
an educational reformer he opened the Sanskrit College to non-
Brahmin boys and provided for classical scholars some English
education as well As an administrator of vision, he rendered
splendid service in his capacity of Government Inspector and in
four districts he organised a total of 35 girls' schools and 20
model schools. He was closely associated from its early days with
the institution which now bears his name and which under his
fostering care became the outstanding example of a non-official,
secular and popular institution for higher education with a purely
Indian teaching staff. He was equally interested in women's
higher education, and was secretary to the Bethune School, for
some time.

Vidyasagar revived the splendid tradition of social reform
blunted since Rammokan's death and raised once again issues
which deeply moved society. He was intimate with the Tatva-
bodhini group though he did not become a Brahmo. Orthodox
in his personal life, austere beyond the dreams of Young Bengal,
it was left to this scholar and man of letters to take up the best
traditions of Rammohan's social crusade for the oppressed.

He raised his powerful voice against child-marriage as early
as 1850 and was campaigning against polygamy in 1871-1873.
But his most memorable stand was in 1855, when he caused a
sensation by his outspoken advocacy of widow-marriage in the

1833-1857 27

teeth of the deepest social prejudices. Like Rammohan, he made
out his case by a parade of scriptural authority to silence his
critics, but undoubtedly, as with Rammohan again, what moved
him most was a deep sympathy for the unfortunate and the ex-
ploited and his reverence for humanity. The Young Bengal or-
gan, the Bengal Spectator had advocated widow-marriage in 1842,
but it was Vidyasagar's agitation which made it a real issue. Le-
galisation was secured for the reform, though upper-class society
was hardly convinced of the need of such a reform.

Finally, Vidyasagar left a very deep impression on the pub-
lic mind of his strength of character and high moral qua^ty.
Stories still circulate about how independent he was in his rela-
tions with Government, how he threw away his post because of
undue official interference, with what generosity he helped the
needy and the unfortunate, and how close he was to the common
people, including the tribesmen of the locality where he had built
a small country ictreat to recoup his health.

Associated wilh Vidyasagar among others, we find his close

fnend. Pandit Madan Mohan Tarkalankar

ASSOCIATES 01- (1817-1858). He was, like Vidyasagar, con-

VIDYASACAR nected with the Bethune project of women's

education which took shape in 1849. He

wrote a powerful advocacy of education for women in 1850 and

one of the earlie&t primers for children in the same year.

In the same circle was Kahprasanna Smha (1840-187Q) who
was almost a prodigy. As a boy he founded and managed cre-
ditably the Society for the Piomotion of Learning in 1853. He
put up a petition with 3,000 signatures in support of widow-mar-
riage in 1856, and offered pecuniary assistance in such marriages
to fight social ostracism. He started a theatre in connection with
his society in 1856, but much of his career falls outside the period
here under discussion.

BRITISH INDIAN ASSOCIATION 1851

The " Black Acts " controversy, in which the Young Bengal
leader Ramgopal Chose figured, led to much political excitement
and the consequence was the formation, in 1851, of the British

28 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

Indian Association in which all groups joined in radicals, mode-
rates and even conservatives. The British India Society of the
radicals and the Landholders 9 Association of the moderates being
now both defunct, the new Association forged a new comprehen*
s-ive unity for the furtherance of Indian interests and defence of
Indian rights. Unlike the two older bodies again, the new institu-
tion was exclusively Indian in membership. Debendranath Ta-
gore as the Secretary of the Association sent out a circular letter
to other metropolitan towns to take up the work of organised
agitation.

In view of the approaching revision of the Company's Char-
ter in 1853, the Association decided to present a general petition
formulating Indian demands. The Petition of 1852 was drafted
by the young talented journalist Harish Chandra Mukherji, after-
wards the editor of the Hindu Patriot founded in 1853 as the or-
gan of the Association, and a well known lecturer in English on
Brahmoism. The Petition summed up the Indian grievances
destined to be, later on, the staple of many an agitation, and
demanded among other items the end of the Company's monopoly
in indigo and salt production, State aid for Indian industry, ad-
mission of Indians to higher posts, creation of an Indian legisla-
ture with Indian majority in short, the first naive political aspi-
rations of the waking bourgeoisie.

In the fifties, the British Indian Association was quite ac-
tive and was complemented by the historian Routledge as the
exact counterpart of similar English organisations. In 1856, if
supported a missionary memorial for enquiry into the condition
of the tenants. Next year, it held a protest meeting, just on the
e\e of the Mutiny, against the renewed European outcry at a fresh
attempt to bring them under the jurisdiction of the ordinary dis-
trict courts. Bengal was fast developing the new technique of
organised political agitation.

The period, 1833-1857, was marked by quite a number of big

changes introduced at the instance of the

CHANGES IN Government, but quite in response to the

OFFICIAL POLICY awakening public opinion. In 1835, we find
almost a turning point Macaulay and

Bentinck ended the long controversy over educational policy by

1833-1857 29

%

plumping for Western education as Rammohan had advocated in
1823, to the delight of Young Bengal which held that the best
learning was embodied in Western culture. Metcalfe conceded
full freedom of the Press. The year also witnessed the creation
of the first medical college and the Calcutta Public Library.

In 1849, the " Black Acts " attempted in vain equality before
the law, but the Bethune School was a success. The Charter Act
of 1853 gave concessions though they fell far short of the de-
mands formulated by the British Indian Association. The Edu-
cation Despatch, 1854, organised the basis of the education sys-
tem for the next half a century and the Department of Public
Instruction was set up in 1856. By 1857, the Mutiny year, uni-
versities were being founded in the three presidency towns.

IV
1857-1885

AFTER THE MUTINY

THE Indian Mutiny was an upheaval of a mixed character.
In regions like Oudh it had some popular basis, but almost every-
where the leadership was of a type which had no attraction for
the new middle classes growing up under British rule. The ris-
ing of the so-called Bengal Army found no echo in the minds of
educated Bengal though the latter was already voicing its criti-
cism of British rule and aspirations for the future. The Hindu,
Patriot, fast becoming a power, started a campaign of reassur-
ance, strongly supporting the middle path of Lord Canning, dis-
owning the Mutiny on the one hand, and resisting, on the other,
the panicky European clamour for vengeance. Its lead was the
lead for the new Bengal of the middle classes

The British Indian Association was a good deal frightened
and ultra-moderate counsels began to pie vail with a coming to the
fore of the landed interest^. We find the Association petitioning
in 1859 for an extension of Permanent Settlement to Upper India
as a bulwark against disturbances and sedition.

Fortunately for Bengal, the mood of uneasy alarm soon passed
away and free criticism again held sway ;
INDIGO there was even a step forward. This was

due to the tremendous indigo agitation which
swept like a tidal wave over the country in 1859-1860 and formed
a striking landmark in the growth of Bengal's consciousness. In-
digo cultivation was a monopoly in the hands of European plan-
ters for a long time.

In the days of Rammohan, the cultivation of indigo still
seemed to be a forward move away from traditional agriculture
and holding out hopes of material advancement for the peasants.

1857-1885 21

The oppressive aspect of the system was yet undeveloped and
little known. By the middle of the century however, the tyranny
of the planters reached its peak. In practising forcible production
of indigo in the mad search after bigger profits, the English plan-
ters and their native agents fell back upon coercion of the peas-
ants. The cultivators were persuaded to take advances and were
held down to their promises ; to increase output terrible pressure
was brought to bear upon the helpless cultivators ; the planters
resorted to physical force against recalcitrants. Illegal beatings,
rletention, outrages became the order of the day. Even Gov-
ernment officials felt that the planters were going too far, but
remonstrances and regulations proved equally unavailing.

The tyranny of the planter^ provoked a real mass upsurge
amongst the cultivators which even the Royal
POPULAR Institute of International Affairs has noted a
UPSURGE "a landmark in the history of nationalism. 1 '
1859-1860 The Government had announced that indigo
cultivation was to be on a voluntary basis To
assert their right of not growing indigo under the compulsion
of the planters the peasants in 1859, in hundreds of thousands,
spontaneously refused to pioduce indigo In a river tour Sir
John Peter Grant was appealed to by thousands of men and
women, all along his route for protection against compulsory
cultivation Yet in the villages the planter* backed by the physi-
cal force of their own retainer 4 - went on putting pressure on the
helpless peasants.

The struggle raged in the countryside and the ranks of the
people threw up their own leaders The Wahabi Raffique Mandal.
in North Bengal, stood forth as the champion of the oppressed
** fighting every battle to the bitter end " In Central Bengal,
the Biswas brothers, Bishnucharan and Digambar, resigned their
posts under the planters and stood out as the leaders of the
peasants, fighting law suits, at the same time organising resistance
to the retainers of the planters on the spot.

32 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

Educated Bengal responded splendidly to the mass struggle of
the peasants. The Hindu Patriot took up

BOURGEOIS their cause and the editor, Harish Chandra

INDIGNATION Mukherji, sent forth a stream of fiery

articles and worked day and night in giving
practical advice and aid to the cultivators and their representa-
tives who thronged at his doors. Two young men Manomohan
Ghose and Sisir Kumar Ghose both destined to future fame,
threw themselves into the agitation.

Dinabandhu Mitra, then a Government official, wrote anony-
mously in 1860 a drama the Neel Darpan which moved the read-
ing public as few books ever do. This depiction of the horrors
of planter lule was promptly translated into English by the
rising poet, Madhusudan Datta. The planters struck against
Rev. Long in whose name the translation was published. An
English judge fined Long a thousand rupees, but the fine was
paid off on the spot by the young Kahprasanna Sinha.

Harish Chandra Mukherji was charged with defamation and
even after his untimely death in 1861, the planters pursued his
family in the courts to financial ruin. But all this turmoil had
some effect. The Indigo Commission of 1860 could not avoid
the public exposure of planter rule in the countryside. The
worst oppression now began to fade out and gradually official
restraint became more effective A generation later the produc-
tion of synthetic dyes killed indigo cultivation itself.

CREATIVE LITERATURE AND LEARNING

The post-Mutiny era in the history of Bengal was marked
in the next place by a magnificent outburst of creative activity in
literature. The flowering of the Renaissance began with the
poetry of Madhusudan Datta, the drama of Dinabandhu Mitra
and the novels of Bankim Chandra Chatter ji. The soul of edu-
cated Bengal had started to express itself in its own chosen
medium. It turned also to modern scholarship and learning.

1857-1885 33

Madhusudan Datta was a brilliant student of the Hindu College

in the late thirties and the early forties when

MADHUSUDAN the Derozian tradition had not yet died out*

DATTA He was drawn irresistibly towards the Angli*

(1824-1873) cist current and developed a way of life

which was denationalised and outlandish.

He reminds one of a typical Italian humanist indulging in wild

free living. He fell also under the spell of D. L. Richardson

who imparted to his college pupils an adulation of Shakespeare

and romantic poetry.

Madhusudan began to write English verses and shocked
Calcutta society by embracing Christianity in 1843 which he did
more for private reasons than because of any religious conviction.
After his college days and an eight years' sojourn at Madras, he
came back to Calcutta in 1856. The educated Bengalis were then
turning to their own language for self-expression, encouraged by
the powerful writings of Akshoy Kumar Datta and Vidyasagar.
Madhusudan with the gift of genius now plunged into the new
tide with his characteristic energy.

His first drama, the Sarmistha, staged in 1859, was a sensa-
tion, for it broke away from the classical conventions, and was
followed by two others in the same style. In 1860 came two
satirical plays which lashed out with equal vehemence against
the vices of Westernised young men and orthodox old rogues.
In 1860, he introduced blank verse in Bengali and next year
came his masterpiece, the Maghnadbadh in the same style.

Madhusudan revealed not merely the potential powers of the
new poetry in Bengali which gave him the status of one of its
makers and greatest exponents, he also treated the epic theme* '
he took up in the most daring and unconventional way, revaluated
old traditional values and glorified the spirit of revolt Within
three years he brought about something of a literary revolution.
Later on, he followed this up in 1865-1866 by introducing the
sonnet in Bengali poetry. His life followed a tragic path btft
genius secured for him a permanent place in the history of
Bengali literature.

34 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

Dinabandhu Mitra presented a totally different picture with his
never-failing fund of humour, his respectable
DINABANDHU life spent in Government service and his

MITRA more conventional outlook on life. But he

(1828-1873) too left his mark when he turned from minor

poetry to major drama. In 1860, he soared
to great heights in his Neel Darpan which as a drama of social
protest and exposure at the peak of the indigo crisis is still un-
surpassed in Bengali. He also excelled Madhusudan in the
drama of social satire and carved out for himself an honoured
place in literary history of Bengal through sheer talent.

One of his intimate friends was Bankim Chandra Chatter ji who
moulded Bengali prose into a fine literary

BANKIM CHANDRA form which achieved great renown. ID-
CHATTER ji deed, Bankim was one of the giants of
(1838-1894) Bengali writing and exercised tremen-
dous influence In 1865 came out his

first historical romance, Durgeshnandmi, which was a revelation
to the reading public and started the vogue for romantic novels.
In Bishabriksha (1873) he made popular the social novel in
Bengali.

He founded and edited the Bangadarshan for four years from
1872. This was the first great cultural periodical in Bengali and
diew to it a group of writers to whom and to the reading public
Bankim was now the acknowledged leader.

In his Kamalakanta, printed in book form in 1875 he created
an unforgettable character and preached his own cherished
values of humanity and patriotism. In his Samya essays, reprint-
ed collectively m 1879, he showed his sympathy for the common
people and the peasantry, leaned towards egalitarianism and be-
trayed traces of the influence on him of Utopian socialism. Then
the wave of patriotic revivalism caught him up and in Anandamath
published in book form in 1882 he gave a classic expression to
such sentiments. The famous Bande Malar am hymn was included
in this novel. Late in life, he turned to religious thought and
endeavoured to vindicate the character of Krishna as depicted
in our ancient books.

1857-1885 35

Bankim was the prophet of nationalism in literature and yet
Hindu revivalism with an excessive stress on the Hindu character
and tradition seemed to speak out through him. His greatest
achievement lay, however, in evolving a prose style which chalked
out a middle path between the heavy chaste form of Vidyasagar
and the vulgar colloquial idiom of Tek Chand Thakur.

The latter was the pen-name of the Derozian Pearay Chand Mitra
who along with his friend Radhanath Sikdar
EXPERIMENTS IN introduced a monthly magazine in the popu-
POPULAR STYLE lar style of the spoken language in sharp
distinction from its literary form. In 1858,
Pearay Chand Mitra wrote his Alal in the new medium. He was
seconded by the Hutum in 1862, written by Kaliprasanna Sinha.
But the crusade for the popular style fizzled out in the glory of
Bankings language ; its own adherents at best were half-hearted
innovators, who did not stick to this path.

Kaliprasanna Sinha himself was quite at home in the medium

of heavier styles His masterpiece was the

KALIPRASANNA translation of the Mahabharata in bulky

SINHA tomes between 1860 and 1866. He was a

(1840-1870) man of varied interests but died when he was

only thirty years old. He paid Long's fine im

1851 and also saved the Hindu Patriot on the death of its unlucky

editor.

Kaliprasanna was a public benefactor \fre find him sub-
sciibing to the North West Famine Fund in 1861 when Debendra-
nath Tagore made a memorable appeal for relief. He sent
Rs. 3,000 in aid of the Lancashire cotton operatives in 1862, when
they were hard hit during the American Civil War. He erected
at his own cost fountains for the city of Calcutta. As a Justice
of the Peace, he was a terror alike to native villains and foreign
rogues. His Society for the Promotion of Learning gave public
receptions to Madhusudan Datta (1861) and to Rev. James Long
(1862).

36 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

Apart from Madhusudan, Bengali poetry shone in a subdued
manner in this period. Rangalal Banerji
MINOR POETS (1827-1887) published his Padmini with its
display of patriotic pride even before Ma-
dhusudan blazed out in all his glory. Patriotic verse became in-
deed an order of the day and inspired Hem Chandra Banerji
(18384903) and Nabin Chandra Sen (1847-1909) who also wrote
epics which had a certain vogue of popularity. Important for
the future was Biharilal Chakravarti (1835-1894) who went in
for romantic lyricism, which attracted little attention at the time
but later inspired the youthful muse of Rabindranath Tagore.

Another remarkable figure of this epoch was Dwarkanath Vidya-
bhushan, professor at Sanskrit College and an
DWARKANATH eminent journalist. In reaction against the
VIDYABHTJSHAN vulgarities of the Bengali Press, he founded
(1820-1886) the weekly Somprakas (1858) and for two

decades wielded his powerful pen in a fear-
less fight against every injustice, upholding every noble cause,
toning up the whole of educated society.

Bengali historical scholarship was inaugurated by Rajendralal
Mitra in a parallel line to the creative lite-
RAJENDRALAL rary forms. Already in the last decade be-
MITRA fore the Mutiny, he was assistant secretary

(1822-1891) and librarian to the famous Asiatic Society

founded and fostered by a succession of the
great Orientalist scholars from the West who first unearthed an-
cient Indian history. After the Mutiny, he became its secretary
and ultimately its president in 1885. This was worthy recogni-
tion of a man who knew a dozen languages and wrote about 50
learned books.

Rajendralal was our first eminent historical research scholar
and was recognised as such by international societies and foreign
scholars. He was also deeply attached to the Bengali language
and culture. He coined technical terms and drew up maps in
Bengali. He wrote patriotic text-books and learned essays. The
Saraswat Samaj, organised in 1882 as a Bengali academy, had him
as its president but it failed to take root In 1851 and in 1863, he

1857-1885 37

founded two illustrated learned periodicals in Bengali. He took
eome part in public activities and agitation as well, in his owm
day, as one of the prominent citizens.

Two other minor efforts may be noted in passing. The Bengal
Social Science Association was founded in
OTHER INTELLEC- 1867 to discuss papers on various topics and
TUAL ACTIVITIES in 1876, Dr. Mahendralal Sarkar, a famous
homeopath, established the Indian Asso-
ciation for the Cultivation of Science in the first effort to stimu-
late scientific research. It may be added that the Calcutta Uni-
versity, started during the Mutiny days, was catering to higher
education and turning out, year by year, distinguished alumni
and ministered to the needs of the whole of Upper India. la
the wake of British rule, cultivated Bengalis were carrying the
torch of their renaissance to other parts.

RELIGIOUS REFORM AND REVIVALISM

Next to literature and learning, the period saw the flowering
of religious and social reform. Religious revivalism also began
to lift up its head and protested against the impact from the West.
This was the age of Keshab Chandra Sen and the Young Brahmos
on the one hand, and on the other, of the Wahabi unrest, begin-
nings of Neo-Hinduism, and Ramkrishna Paramhansa.

Keshab Chandra Sen came from a famous family and even as a

student showed his deep interest in social

KESHAB CHANDRA service and religious thought. He ran a night

SEN (1838-1884) school for the needy in 1856, a Goodwill

Fraternity in 1857, and became known for

his talent as a speaker.

In the year after the Mutiny, Keshab Chandra joined the
Brahmo Samaj and within the next few years proceeded to stir it
up from the stagnation into which it had fallen after the great
days of the Tatvabodhini movement. He put such fire into
Brahmoism that it became a real power in the land as an orga-
nisation, and young men flocked into the church as never before
or since. He started a Brahmo Vidyalaya or school in 1859, ram

38 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

a Sangat Sabha for religious discourses from I860, took up the
editorship of the Indian Mirror founded in 1861.

In the service of Brahmoism he turned a whole-timer
in 1861 and next year the Maharshi himself greeted this dyna-
mic young man as Brahmananda. A religious Bengali journal
the Dharmatatva came out in 1864 and a Brahmo Friends 9 Society
was organised next year.

Keshab Chandra was not content with the passive inculca-
tion of the new faith by its old leaders. In 1864-1865, he launched
out in mission tours, breaking new ground and appearing as an
all-India figure. In East Bengal, he aroused enthusiasm and
alarm and in district towns Brahmo groups and individuals lifted
their heads, went ahead and faced persecution.

With Keshab as the centre, radicalism within the Brahmo
Samaj began to take shape and directed its criticism against the
old leaders. Debendranath Tagore had abandoned under the
influence of Akshoy Kumar Datta the belief in the Vedic infalli-
bility. But in ritual and practice he clung to old ways, always
afraid of widening the gulf between his movement and the
parent Hindu community. Under Keshab, the younger Brahmos
demanded that Brahmo preachers who had not discarded the Brah-
min Symbol of the sacred thread should be denied access to the
pnlpit, that in the church services women should join the con-
gregation, that inter-caste marriages should be promoted.

Keshab organised the Brahmo youth in a Council, the Brahma
women in a Society. A split became unavoidable and in 1866,
Keshab broke away from the original church and founded the
Brahmo Samaj of India. His fame as an orator spread and he
was honoured and acclaimed in England in 1870.

In 1822* we find him running a commune with his band of co-
wOrkers. All-roun4 reform endeavour attracted him still. A
* 'Civil ftJirjia|5<fe 'AteVXyas secured in 1872 to legalise unorthodox
marrfe^es. l /\A pice daily came out and Keshab issued
to wfaterno wake up and assert their rights. Night,
for" ^ofkin|irfeh\Were run by his associates.

1857-1885 39

Keshab Chandra Sen drew round him fiery young men who soon
began to outstrip him in forward thinking.

THE YOUNG They included the scholar and man of let-
BRA HMOS ters, Sivanath Sastri ; the social reformer,
Durgamohan Das from Barisal ; Dwarka-
nath Ganguli from Dacca, the ardent champion of women's eman-
cipation and downtrodden people ; the gentle but daring Ananda
Mohan Bose from Mymensingh.

The Young Brahmos grew more and more critical of Keshab's
leadership and his alleged high-handedness in running the church.
Their demociatic sense was offended by the adulation of Keshab
by his devoted disciples, by the trend of mystic sentimenl uhich
was growing up in his outlook. The break came when Keshab
allowed his own minor daughter to marry the Chief of Cooch-
Behar under the old rites defying the new marriage conventions
growing up within the church at his own instance. Keshab'b de-
fence of the Cooch-Behar marriage as a special case angered
them even more.

The Young Bralimos revolted and set up the Sadharan
Brahmo Samaj in 1878. This was given a democratic constitu-
tion and its Bengali organ solemnly declared in 1882 that the
Brahmo ideals included not merely religious radicalism but also
the universal liberation of all peoples under the banner of demo-
i ratic republicanism.

The Young Brahmos thiew themselves whole-heartedly into
the political movements of the day ; national leaders like Surendra-
nath Banerji were their close associates. As earJy as 1876, a
band of them under Sivanath ** leadership proclaimed their faith
in independence, forswore seivice under the alien Government,
but promised to work in a peaceful way in view of the circum-
stances of the country. Their organ, the Brahmo Public Opinion,
took its full share in the political agitation of the day.

It is interesting to note that this uncompromising consistent
radicalism of the Young Brahmos attracted to them the last repre-
sentatives of Young Bengal, Sibchandra Deb and Ramtanu Lahiri.
But after the Cooch-Behar split, die followers of Keshab leaned
more heavily towards emotionalism and his church took on the

40 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

mantle of what was called the New Dispensation or a synthesis
of all religions.

A minor issue in social reform was focussed by the untiring zeal

of Pearay Charan Sarkar who founded the

TEMPERANCE Temperance Association in 1863 with two

monthly organs. The drink evil was fought

back with success and society was largely rescued from the legacy

of Young Bengal the curse which had sent to their death brilliant

young men like Hansh Chandra Mukherji and Kaliprasanna

Sinha, the scandal which was pilloried in the satiric plays of

Dinabandhu Mitra and Madhusudan Datta.

The offensive under Keshab Chandra Sen and the Young Brahmos
came up in due course against a volume of
HINDU oithodox resistance. There was of course

REVIVALISM an amount of shocked conservative senti-

ment roused to anger by the encroachment
in practice, and not merely in theory, on the cherished customs
of respectable society. The Brahmo intransigance was a collec-
tive movement, and therefore moie dangerous than the individual
waywardness of Young Bengal.

Orthodoxy retaliated by social persecution which made many
young men drawn to the new faith leave their ancestral homes.
In the ranks of the old society there was also some uneasiness
at the moral stature of the protestant movement, and this took
the form of scoffing at Brahmo puritanism. Orthodox society
al<o tried to rationalise its instinctive resistance, and even Bank : m
Chandra Chatter ji reacted in this manner.

The political awakening was rousing intense pride and self-
confidence and in view of the backwardness of the Muslim people
it naturally tended to take on a Hindu garb more decisively than
before. Patriotic writers invariably glorified not merely the
ancient Indian culture with its predominantly Hindu structure,
they also began to dwell upon the struggles of the Rajputs, the
Marathas, the Sikhs as instances of the freedom urge. As k
happened all these peoples had as their adversaries the Muslims,
and the Hindu trend in the national sentiment was intensified
with a not very happy consequence.

1857-1885 41

In Hindu revivalism however, there was one element of great
charm, sweetness and grace. This emanated
RAMKRISHNA from the Saint of Dakshineswar, Ramkrishna
PARAMHANSA Paramhansa who cast a spell over a myriad
(1836-1886) of votaries. He was an illiterate Brahmin
who by sheer character, personal magnetism
and homely wisdom stormed the hearts of thousands and earned
the respect of even those who could not agree with his preachings.
By teaching the sanctity of all faith, he undermined protestant
militancy and reassured the shaken spirit of the traditionalists.
A great organisation of social service later on drew its inspira-
tion from him and countless Hindus gave him homage for years
to come.

In striking contrast we have the Muslim revivalism in the Wahabi
movement which had repercussions on Bengal

MUSLIM still obscurely known. Wahabism started

REVIVALISM from Arabia as a puritan upsurge and has

been aptly described as Anabaptist in faith,
Red republican in politics. A contemporary of Rammohan im-
ported it into India, and Patna became a leading centre of the
new cult. It agitated the downtrodden Bengal Muslim peasantry
in certain areas.

A Wahabi was the most important peasant leader during
the Indigo Strike. His son, Amiruddin, was imprisoned for sedi-
tion in 1871. The Wahabi? supplied the first political convicU
for transportation. They were the first terrorists. The Chief
Justice in Calcutta was murdered on September 20, 1871. When
the assassin, Abdullah, was executed, the authorities in a panic
w6uld not allow the burial of the corpse but had it cremated. A
booklet on the Wahabi Trials issued by the movement had a large
circulation in Bengal. On February 8, 1872, the Wahabi con-
vict Sher Ali killed Viceroy Mayo while he was visiting the penal
settlement in the Andamans.

NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The flowering of the Renaissance in the realms of literature
and religion is naturally in full evidence in the field of natioma!

42 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

political consciousness. We see here a vehement assertion of
national sentiment with the emphasis on its Hindu tone. There is
also the first faint glimmering of a Muslim national consciousness.
Noticeable also is the beginning of sustained political agitation.
We are at last approaching the Congiess era.

On the morrow of the Mutiny, Hindu national consciousness in
itself crystallised round the figure of Raj-
KAJNARAYAN narayan Bose who was linked up with the
BOSE AND HIS conserv ative Brahmos. In 1861, he founded
ASSOCIATES at Mldnapur a Society for the Promotion of

National Glory and issued a prospectus for a Society for Stimu-
lating National Sentiment.

In a famous lecture Rajnarayan asserted Hindu superiority
as the key-note of his movement. One of his allies was BhudeV
Mukherji who for half a century after the Mutiny wrote essays
and historical piece?, and even advocated Hindi as the language
of Indian unity.

The word " national " acquired sach charm in those days
that an associate of Rajnarayan. Nabagopal Mitra, started a
national school, a national press, a national paper and a national
gymnasium till his countrymen came to refer to him as " National
Mitra." He along with Rajnarayan and Jyotirindranath, a son
of Debendranath Tagore, founded the Patriots 9 Association in 1865.
But their greatest achievement was the organisation of an annual
fair the Hindu Mela, which for several years was an event of
great activity.

It began in 1867 and was organised by Rajnaiayan, Nabagopal
and the young Tagores. The popularity of
THE HINDU MELA the indigenous form of the mela or the fair
was utilised by the organisers to attract
attention and support and succeeded in gathering and stimulating
vast crowds of people in annual gatherings. Its main
objects were defined by Ganendranath Tagore to be the cultiva-
tion of national sentiment and the promotion of the spirit of, self-
help and it rallied to it a great volume of enthusiastic support.

1857-1885 43

At the annual sessions, prizes were offered to writers, artists
and athletes and big exhibitions were organised to display the
varied products of Indian arts and crafts, to encourage Indian
producers, to educate the geneial public about their own country.
The patriotic Bengali orations of Manomohan Bose became a
feature of such gatherings. Singing of patriotic songs began at
the sessions, the first hymn being composed by a son of the
Maharshi, Satyendranath Tagore, who had become the first Indian
I.C.S. in 1863.

There was a burst of patriotic poetry also, and indeed in the
entire range of contemporary literature, including Bankim Chandra
Chatter ji, the impress of the Hindu Mela movement is very clear.
For about a decade these annual meetings stirred up all Calcutta.

In contradistinction to the Hindu national sentiment the awaken*
ing amongst the Muslims was still very
MUSLIM feeble, if we leave out the Wahabi unrest.

CONSCIOUSNESS The Calcutta gentry included only a hand-
ful of Muslims. A National Mohammedan
Association was in existance and its principal figure was Nawab
Abdul Latif. These were aristocratic Muslims, but the bourgeoisie
growing up under British rule was as yet singularly devoid of a
Muslim element.

Wherever we turn, we see no Muslim at all prominent.
Characteristically enough, there was no uneasiness on that score
m Hindu ranks waking up to national consciousness. Syed
Ahmad, however, founded the Aligarh University in 1874 and
the repercussion of his movement was bound to be felt later on.

The rather militant Hinduism of the Hindu Mela was a little

softened in the seventies and the national

USTAINED consciousness took on a wider form to in-

POLITICAL clude Qther elements like the m iiitant

AGITATION firahmos and their associates. The result

was sustained political agitation of a modern type and free use of

Western ideas and technique which tended to eclipse the methods

of the Hindu Mela and were more political. This in its turn led

on directly to the emergence of the Congress.

44 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

One of the leaders in the transition was Sisir Kumar Chose, who

with his brothers had founded the Amrita

SISIR KUMAR Bazar Patrika in 1868 to carry on sustained

CHOSE political criticism of the Government. In

1870, he put forward a clear demand for

Western parliamentary institutions for India. Later, he agitated

for popular representation in the Calcutta Corporation. He tried

to link up the people's associations founded in the district towns

and campaigned for the democratisation of the membership of

the British Indian Association founded in 1851. The other young

nationalists, however, disagreed with him in his management of

the association and broke away from him.

A new leader was at hand and was destined to rise to great

heights in leadership and to be acclaimed

SURENDRANATH later on as the ' Uncrowned King ' of Bengal

BANERJEE His tenacity in political agitation earned him

from the Englishmen the sobriquet of " Sur-
render Not " in a pun on his personal name. Surendranath had
gone into the Indian Civil Service but was discharged on trivial
grounds from the " heaven-born service " by official superiors who
were not yet accustomed to have Indians within their close
preserve.

By 1875, Surendranath turned to politics. He was very
close to the Young Brahmos, one of whom, Anandamohan Bose,
had founded a Students' Association. Under the auspices of the
Association, Surendranath started his public speaking. His great
addresses on the rise of the Sikh Power and Mazzini created a
sensation and made him the idol of the youth. He held up before
them not merely the freedom struggles in India but the great
episodes in the liberation of the West as well, and made his
audience thrill in sympathy with the Italy of the Risorgimento or
Ireland of the Home Rule movement.

Surendranath Banerjee was not merely the unquestioned chief
of Bengal for a generation, he became also an all-India leader of
the first magnitude. From 1879, he had his organ the Bengalee.

1857-1885 45

Surendranath and his friends broke away from Sisir Kumar
Ghose and founded the Indian Association
INDIAN in July, 1876. The group included Ananda-

ASSOCIATION mohan Bose, the first Indian wrangler in
1876 Cambridge and a barrister, Sivanath Sastri

who had resigned from Government service
and was an established man of letters ; Dwarkanath Ganguli, the
fiery agitator for human rights all of whom were leaders in the
Young Brahmo movement. The eminent veteran chief of Young
Bengal, Reverend Krishnamohan Banerji, was chosen as the presi-
dent of the Association in fitting recognition of the services of a
bygone generation.

The Indian Association took up consciously the role of organ-
ising Indian public opinion. The membership dues were deli-
berately fixed at a much lower level than the ordinary rate for
the lower classes. Branches were opened in the districts and
links established with organisations outside Bengal.

An agitation for the reform of Civil Service regulations which
were capriciously barring the access of
A SERIES OF Indians to higher appointments led Surendra-
CAMPAIGNS nath Banerjee to undertake tours in different

provinces in 1877-1878. The diversion of
the famine fund to the Afghan War led to a great outcry in 1878,
Government responded with repression ; the Press Act, 1878
gagged the vernacular newspapers and the Arms Act of 1878
prohibited the keeping of arms by Indians. The Association cam-
paigned for the rights of the tenants, encouraged the formation
of ryots' unions and its orators addressed huge mass meetings in
the districts attended by, we are told, from ten to twenty thousand
people at some places.

Finally, there was the Ilbert Bill issue. When in 1882, legis-
lation was proposed authorising the trial of Europeans by Indian
officers, there was a European outcry against it as during the
Black Act days, and the Indians counter-campaigned with energy.
In 1883, Surendranath was imprisoned for contempt of court
amidst popular indignation. The tempo of national agitation

46 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

mounted up steadily. Sustained political pressure combined with
the Gladstonian liberalism of Viceroy Ripon led to the Local
Self-Government and Tenancy Acts of 1885 and the repeal of the
Press Act of Lord Lytton. Ripon earned a deep gratitude from
the Indian public thereby.

Out of the turmoil of early eighties arose the idea of starting a

National Fund to furnish the sinews of poli-

STABILISED tical warfare. A public meeting on July

POLITICS 17, 1883, was addressed by Surendranath

on this matter and he toured again in 1884,

in this connection.

Then, the Indiah Association called an All-India National
Conference which met in Calcutta in December, 1883, and pasesd
resolutions on representative government, repeal of the Arms Act,
civil service reform, technical education. The veteran Derozian,
Ramtanu Lahiri, presided at the opening. The second session of
the Conference met in Calcutta in December, 1885, and unwit-
tingly coincided with the gathering of the National Congress in
Bombay.

V
1885 - 1905

NATIONAL CONFERENCE AND NATIONAL CONGRESS

TEN years of campaigning by the Indian Association under
leaders like Surendranath Banerjee following a decade of growing
consciousness promoted by the annual sessions of the Hindu Mela
had formed the prelude to the emergence of an all-India plat-
lorm for national consciousness. The first National Conference
of 1883 was the logical outcome of this process. Yet the first
steps in the formation of the Indian National Congress were
taken by other circles to the exclusion of popular leaders in
Bengal. The Congress came as a surprise to the Bengal
nationalists.

Political consciousness had also awakened in other regions in

India, notably in Bombay. But the leaders

GENESIS OF THE elsewhere were in general more moderate

CONGRESS 1885 and less vocal. Allan Oclavian Hume, a

Scottish Civilian, had, after retirement from

service, settled at Simla in 1882, and was taking a great deal of
interest in politics. He had a sincere love for India and in 1883
urged the graduates of Calcutta University in a famous letter to
dedicate themselves to the service of their country

In the same year, he formed an Indian National Union with
local Committees in the principal cities. He got in touch with
moderate Indian leaders and assembled them in a session at Bom-
bay in December, 1885, which constituted itself as the National
Congress.

This move had the approval of Viceroy Dufferin who thought
that the role of the Congress would be the respectful ventilation
of public grievances, that the Congress should be something like
*' His Majesty's Opposition " in England but, of course, with no
chance of getting into power. The prospect of another Mutiny
flitted across the Government's imagination now and again, and
here was the chance of laying the ghost

4S NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

The popular leaders of Bengal were arranging for their
second National Conference, when Hume and his friends sum-
moned the Bombay meeting. Surendranath and the "sedition-
mongers" were not even invited though the presidentship went
to a respectable Bengali lawyer, W. C. BanerjL

The second session of the National Congress was to meet in Cal-
cutta. It was no longer possible to keep out
FUSION, 1886 the famous Bengal agitators. Thus in 1886
there was virtually a fusion between the older
National Conference and the newer but wider National Congress.
As the Report put it " the leading characteristic of the Congress
of 1886 was that it was the whole country's Congress." Unlike
the first session, elected delegates representing diverse organisa-
tions and groups of people came to this meeting. Another feature
was the local Reception Committee presided over by the veteran
scholar, Rajendralal Mitra.

The widening of the range of the Congress was unpalatable
to Government and as early as the Fourth Allahabad Session,
1888, there were signs of official displeasure and obstruction.
But the popularity of the Congress was already assured. In the
Third Madras Session, 1887, we find small subscriptions from
ordinary people swell up the funds of the Reception Committee
and a few artisan delegates participate in the meeting.

Bengal naturally took a leading share in the work of the early
Congress the way to which had been paved
BENGALI PARTICI- by the growth of Bengali political conscious-
PATION IN THE ness in the preceding generation. In the
CONGRESS first twenty-one annual sessions of the Con-

gress (1885-1905), the presidential chair
went to Bengalis on no less than seven occasions to W. C
Banerji (1885, 1892), Surendranath Banerjee (1895, 1902) 9
Anandamohan Bose (1898), Ramesh Chandra Datta (1899), and
Lalmohan Ghose (1903).

At every session except the very first, Bengal delegates had
their due share in the proceedings. They led the protest, for
example, against imprisonment without trial and criminal law

1885-1905 49

amendments (1897), against Viceroy Cunxm's University Com*
mission (1902), against official extravagance at the Delhi Durbar
(1903). They had their full share in the Congress Committees,
for instance in the Industrial and Educational Committees
appointed in 1900.

More remarkable and fitting was the part played by Bengal Con*

gressmen in pressing for the liberalisation of

BENGALI PRESSURE Congress. Some of them protested in the

TOWARDS Second Session against the drafting of the

FORWARD MARCH resolutions by one or two leaders ; and in

the Third Session, 1887, Dwarkanath Ganguli

and Bepin Chandra Pal a Young Brahmo from Sylhet forced

the institution of an elected Subjects Committee for discussing

and drafting resolutions to be placed before the Open Session.

The Congress at first shelved the plantation labour problem in

Assam as a provincial issue when Dwarkanath Ganguli raised the

question in 1887 ; by the Twelfth Session (1896), it was forced

to take the matter up due to the pressure from Bengal.

Another forward demand was for women's representation and
the first women delegates in 1889 and 1890 included Kadambini
Ganguli, the wife of Dwarkanath and the first lady graduate of
Calcutta University. She was the first woman to speak from the
Congress platform (1890), as "a symbol that Indian freedom
would uplift India's womanhood."

The founders of Congress believed in the periodic presentation

of the national grievances in a solemn

GENESIS OF CON- fashion to the British Government which was

CRESS EXTREMISM expected to yield step by step before public

opinion. More and more, Surendranath

Banerji and the official Bengal leadership also inclined to the

same view and felt instinctively that mere oratory would confuse

and confound the rulers. Congress spent a large sum of money

year after year in England to publicise its propaganda.

All this formed the famous Moderate trend which dominated
the Congress and against this there was a definite opposition which
developed into the Extremism of the next period. Along with
the Maharashtra and the Punjab, Bengal was a good soil for the

50 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

genesis of Extremism. Internal consolidation rather than mere
demonstration, self-help rather than petitions, going deeper
amongst the people rather than following the routine of the beaten
track such was the mentality, of Extremism. One of the earliest
Bengali exponents of the new move was Aswini Kumar Datta,
the celebrated local leader in Barisal who had a unique hold on
his own district and was venerated by an entire generation. As
early as 1887, he presented to the Congres a memorial for repre-
sentative government bearing 45,000 signatures from Barisal.

He campaigned amongst his own people against the Govern-
ment policy of encouraging unrestricted production of intoxicants
in the countryside. In 1897, he protested against the role of the
Congress being confined to the annual three days 9 "tomasha"
Even more vocal and effective as a critic was Bepin Chandra Pal
round whom gathered the nascent Extremist sentiment. He
founded an organ, the New India in 1902, and had already made
his mark in the struggle on behalf of the Assam plantation
labourers.

This campaign had been initiated by the indefatigable Dwar-

kanath Ganguli who had heard about the

FIGHT FOR THE miserable plight of the coolies in Assam

ASSAM COOLIES tea-gardens from a Brahmo, missionary and

proceeded there, in 1886, to collect facts on

behalf of the Indian Association. He toured the plantations at

the risk of his own life and embodied his findings in a series of

articles on the "slave trade in Assam" in the English journal

Bengalee and the vernacular Sanjibani which was conducted by

a Young Brahmo, Krishnakumar Mitra. As Congress treated

the question as a provincial issue, the matter was taken up by the

Bengal Provincial Conference in 1888 when Bepin Chandra Pal

was the main speaker.

The ignorant and illiterate labourers from different provinces
were being enticed to the tea-gardens and persuaded to enter into
agreements or indentures under which they were held down to ser-
vitude for years, though such " agreements " were strictly illegal.
Conditions in the plantations were a scandal and cases occurred
in which recalcitrant coolies were flogged to death. Ordinary

1885-1905 51

law and justice ceased to operate in the tea-gardens where plan*
ters reigned supreme. The agitation, thus unleashed, was like
another Indigo Campaign. By 1896, Congress was finally per-
suaded to take up the problem till Sir Henry Cotton, Chief Cora*
missioner of Assam, was moved to action and the worst evils were
eradicated.

Meanwhile political life in Bengal was forging ahead. The
Bengal Provincial Conference was organised
PATRIOTIC CONS- in 1888 to activise the people of the pro-
CIOUSNESS IN vincJe, Dr. Mahendralal Sarkar presiding
BENGAL over the first session. It was Bengal's lead

which got together, in 1896, the first Indus-
trial Exhibition as an adjunct to the Congress session which in
the words of Surendranath heralded "the industrial upheaval
that was soon to find expression in the Swadeshi movement."

The economic endeavours of the Hindu Mela a generation
before were now finding their fulfilment and men and women
connected with the House of Tagore were prominent again in
this direction. Thus the Industrial Exhibition was sponsored by
J. Chowdhuri and early in the present century, Sarala Devi open-
ed the Lakshmir Bhandar, to popularise country-made products.
This Swadeshi stores ran a journal the Bhandar.

In 1903 was founded the Dawn Society with its organ in the
Dawn an association of patriotic young men led by Satish
Chandra Mukherjee. An Association for the Advancement of
Industrial and Scientific Education was organised by Jenendranatk
Chose to secure scholarships for the technical training of young
students to be sent abroad for the purpose. Agitation flared up
from time to time provoked by every encroachment on rights or
sentiments.

In 1899, there was a great outcry against the ominous reduc-
tion of representation in the Calcutta Corporation ; the majority
of the elected members led by Surendranath resigned in protest
There was fierce anger at Viceroy Curzon's slandering of the
Bengali national character in his Convocation Address in 1905 ;
Rashbehari Ghose, the eminent lawyer presided over the public
meeting which answered Curzon.

IS NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

Bengal was indeed steadily approaching the great Swadethi
upheaval. It was equally clear that Bengal's individual national
consciousness was far developed and was ready to take up any
challenge.

The general national resurgence was, of course, not limited to
political consciousness and agitation.
SWAMI National strength, self-confidence, energy and

VIVEKANANDA pride seemed embodied in the figure of *
(1862-1902) Swami Vivekananda, a young Bengali dis-

ciple of Ramkrishna Paramhansa.

Vivekananda had turned away from the beaten track of ordi-
nary life and was fired with a burning idealism. He dramatically
leaped into fame by his participation in the World Religions Con-
ference at Chicago, 1893, and this was followed by a triumphant
mission tour of the West for four years. On his return home in
1897, he was acclaimed as a national hero. At home and abroad,
he produced a deep impression.

Like Rammohan Roy and Keshab Chandra Sen he had added
to the stature of his country in the estimation of foreigners ; but
unlike them, he was no protestant but an orthodox Hindu and
thus stimulated the Hindu revivalist sentiment. Indian self-respect
felt reassured when Vivekananda was hailed abroad as the cultural
ambassador of an ancient land. To his own countrymen, his
message was the cult of self-help ; he told them that they them-
selves were largely responsible for their own evil plight and the
remedy was in their own hands.

Vivekananda was a fiery patriot though politics was not his
line. He turned to humanitarian monasticism and proceeded to
organise the famous Ramkrishna Mission with its centre at Belur,
near Calcutta. Countless young men forsook the world and began
to flock into the Mission which emphasised the role of social
service and recalled the self-sacrificing ardour of the mediaeval
Friars.

188S-190S 5*

And yet weaknesses persisted. Among these was the continued
absence of active Muslim support on any
MUSLIM considerable scale. Eminent Muslim indi-

CONSCIOUSNESS viduals were with the Congress, but already
had begun a distinct turning away of Mus-
lim opinion towards an independent path.

Syed Ahmad was a patriot as his Urdu book on the Causes
<*/ the Mutiny on the morrow of the upheaval indicates. He also
felt deeply the national humiliation and racial discrimination.
But more and more he leaned on the view that the uneven deve-
lopment between the two communities involved Hindu domina-
tion if political emancipation was unaccompanied by safeguards
for the weak. When Congress arose, he tried to counter it with
his Patriotic Association. In the Civil Service Commission,
1888, he took his stand against holding simultaneous examina-
tions in India for recruitment to the I.C.S. which Congress was
demanding ; his argument was that the Hindus would thereby
swamp the Service.

Even before this in 1883, Mahommed Yusuf had demand-
ed in the Bengal Council the reservation of seats for Muslims.
The Congress Nationalists universally condemned the Muslim
moves as reactionary ; they were strengthened in their belief by
the fact that there were Muslims with the Congress also. Muslim
demands were dismissed as religious 01 communal and the point
was missed that while the Muslim divines on the whole were
friendly to the Congress, the Muslim slogans expressed the self-
interest of those sections of the middle classes which were back-
ward and happened to be Muslim.

As for the masses, the stock argument in Hindu circles was
that there was no separatist feeling. Poet Tagore answered the
point in 1911 : "The lack of separatist feeling is merely nega-
tive ; it has no positive content. That is to say, it was not because
of our genuine unity that we were insensible of our differences
it was only because of a lack of virility in ourselves that we were
-overwhelmed by a certain insensibility."

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

In literature and the life of culture, Bengal's position had
already been secured by the previous generation. The flowering

*4 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

f the Renaissance persisted. The Bengali theatre reached its
classic form under playwright-actors like Girish Chandra Ghose.
Ramesh Chandra' Datta followed the tradition of Bankim and
wrote historical romances and social novels, though he earned
more enduring fame as an economic historian who analysed the
material evils of British domination in India.

The first note worthy woman writer was Swarnakumari Debi
(1855-1932), a daughter of Debendranath Tagore, who capably
edited for a decade (from 1884) the cultural magazine Bharati
founded in 1877 by her philosopher-brother Dwijendranath.

One Muslim poet and novelist, Meer Mosharaf Husain (1848-
1912), wrote his best work in this period.

Another achievement began with the first efforts of Jagadi&h
Chandra Bose and Profulla Chandra Roy who sent a thrill through
the Indian mind by unlocking the closed door of scientific research.
But everything was overshadowed by the emergence of the genius
f Rabindranath Tagore in the field of Bengali culture.

As a boy, young Rabindranath had attracted attention by reciting

his own poems at the Hindu Mela (1875,

RABINDRANATH 1877) on patriotic themes, and by lyric poems

TAGORE in the Vaishnava style and critical reviews.

(1861-1941) In the early eighties, he wrote and acted in

plays, attacked in an article the opium trade

in China, and was hailed as a talented young poet.

In 1884, he denounced the prevalent practice in political agi-
tation of petitioning to the British, in very strong language. In
the next few years, his poems, songs, plays, stories, novels and
essays gave him the position of a master writer and added to the
glories of Bengali literature. He conducted a high class monthly,
the Sadhana, and in 1901 revived the famous Bangadarshan perio-
dical of Bankim Chandra. ,

In 1895, Rabindranath tried to collect the nursery rhymes
of Bengal ; in the previous year he had been elected the Founda-
tion Vice-President of the Academy of Bengali Letters the
Sahitya Parishad. His breadth of view was revealed in his sharp
polemic against the absurdities of extreme nee-Hinduism and in
us essays on woman labour and unemployment

In 1892, he advocated the introduction of Bengali as the
medium of instruction in higher educational institutions. He
wrote and delivered remarkable political addresses at regular
intervals voicing the wounded national sentiment and urging
internal consolidation of the national movement In 1898, we
find him assisting the great-hearted Sister Nivedita in the organ-
isation of plague relief in the city.

In 1901, Rabindranath founded his famous school at Santi-
niketan. In 1904, he stressed the need for constructive national-
ism and pleaded for the reorganisation of social life on the basis
of self-help with the village as the unit, the fostering of cottage
industries, peasant co-operation and Hindu-Muslim amity. He
inclined towards the growing extremist trend in national politics
and in 1904, he supported the move to celebrate the Sivaji Festi-
val which was to bring together the two most advanced peoples
in India ; and yet in the midst of this enthusiasm, he had th<>
good sense to point out that the public worship of the goddess
Bhowani as part of the festival was sure to alienate non-Hindu
sentiment.

By 1905, Rabindranath Tagore was universally recognised
not merely as our greatest poet but also a worthy representative
of our culture with his catholicity, sympathy, strength and sanity.

VI
1905-1919

PARTITION OF BENGAL

BENGAL'S growing national consciousness had alarmed the
authorities who now fell back upon a plan to break the back
of , the movement by partitioning the province into two separate
entities. The Muslim people who had not been drawn into the
general awakening formed the big majority in the eastern dis-
tricts. It was presumed that they would welcome the creation
of a province which they would dominate. The Hindus, it waa
expected, would be split up and beaten by this stroke of policy.
On July 20, 1905, the Partition of Bengal was announced as an
administrative measure to take effect from October 16.

It was a challenge to the national movement and the freedom

urge of the Bengali people thrown out by

REPLY TO THE Imperialism and the challenge was picked

CHALLENGE up at once. Krishna Kumar Mitra gave a

call on the same day in his Sanjibani which

carried as its motto the famous slogan of the French Revolution,

" Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," a call for the boycott of foreign

goods with a vow to use Swadeshi goods only.

His lead met with immediate response from the people in
Calcutta and outside and huge meetings demonstratively abjured
the use of foreign cloth. Rabindranath Tagore in his Banga-
darshan proclaimed the determination of the Bengali people to
stand united and rely on their own inherent strength to defy the
attack on Bengal's unity. A mammoth demonstration in and
round the Calcutta Town Hall on August 7 re-affirmed the national
stand. The battle was now in full swing.

The wave of agitation mounted up as never before. The country

was flooded with patriotic songs by Rabindra-

WAVE OF nath Tagore, Rajani Kanta Sen and others*

AGITATION with the fiery orations of Bepin Chandra Pal

and a host of 'agitators,* with determined

articles which covered every news-sheet.

190B-191B I?

Anglicised gentlemen abandoned their rich foreign dress,
women came out of their seclusion to demonstrate, students
inarched out in processions and as pickets, countless homes dis-
continued foreign luxuries. Famous landlords, big businessmen,
leading professional people went with the popular tide, though
significantly enough we see no special effort to organise and
arouse workers or peasants.

Prominent Muslims, however, joined the struggle including
Abdul Rasul, the barrister, Guznavi, the businessman and Liaquat
Husain, the popular agitator. The excitement affected Calcutta
end the districts equally. New organisations sprang up every-
where to carry on the struggle the Brati-Samiti of Manoranjan
Cuba Thakurta, the Bande Mataratn group of Sures Chandra
Samajpati and the Santan Sampraday of South Calcutta young
men. Volunteers hawked the coarse country-cloth from door to
door.

On the date the Partition took effect, there took place a unique
and memorable demonstration of protest
THE CEREMONY The leaders adapted the popular practice,
OF OCTOBER 16, of tying the Rakhi thread on the wrists
1905 of every friend followed on the Rakhi Pur-

nima day, for a new use with special pur-
pose. October 16, 1905, was observed with this ceremony and
subsequent anniversaries were similarly marked till the Partition
was annulled. The tying of the thread was to symbolise the
brotherly unity of the Bengali people which nobody can tear
asunder. To mark the day as an occasion for mourning, people
were called upon to abstain from cooked food. Huge crowds
paraded the streets singing a song of Rabindranath specially
composed for the occasion.

In the afternoon, the veteran leader Anandamohan Bose was
taken to lay the foundation stone of a building which was to
commemorate Indivisible Bengal and to be called Federation Hall
in memory perhaps of the Federation celebrations during the
great days of the French Revolution.

A solemn vow was taken by the multitude which had gathered
at the meeting. A huge mass demonstration followed in the
evening in North Calcutta where an appeal was made for funds

58 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

to run weaving schools and help the handloom industry. Fifty
thousand rupees were subscribed on the spot.

The dominant bourgeois trend in the Bengal movement found a

natural and useful outlet in the endeavour

CONSTRUCTIVE to build up home industries on the slogan :

ACTIVITY "Buy Swadeshi." Textile mills, national

banks, insurance companies, soap factories.

tanneries and so forth blossomed out with not much success in

many cases, however, Profulla Chandra Roy, the scientist,

organised his famous concern the Bengal Chemical Swadeshi

Stores and similar stores of consumers' goods sprang up in large

numbers. Another constructive activity developed out of the

Government repression of the patriotic students.

Circulars rained down upon the students to force them out
of the national agitation. The police clashed with student pickets.
Even the veteran Sivanath Sastri issued a call to the students to
leave the existing institutions.

In a protest meeting on November 5, 1905. Subodh Chandra
Mallik gave a princely donation of a lakh to start National Edu-
cation and was promptly hailed as a Raja by his grateful country-
men. The Mymensingh zemindars followed suit with rich be-
quests. Next year, on August 15, a Town Hall meeting set up a
National Council of Education. One permanent memento of thit
upheaval stands till today in the Jadavpur Engineering College.

The campaign went on with unabated fury. The students forged
an Anti-Circular Society to fight the official
STRUGGLE decrees and repression which had even in-

AGAINST dulged in floggings. Districts vied with the

REPRESSION metropolis in assertipg their defiance. Fore-
most was Barisal under Aswini Kumar
Datta and his band of helpers which was 'proclaimed' as a
notorious district and where the countryside was enthralled by
the popular patriotic songs of Mukunda Das, a poet of the masses.
In Calcutta, on February 27, 1906, there was a bonfire of
foreign cloth in College Square, to be followed by similar demon-
strations elsewhere.

1906-1919 69

In April, the Provincial Conference met in Barisal town. The
East Bengal Government had prohibited the Bande Mataram
slogan. In the Conference procession, the young enthusiasts
broke the ban and received in consequence a police lathi charge.
The Conference dispersed next day without functioning rather
than submit to the ban, though it shrank from the suggestion of
Krishna Kumar Mitra to continue proceedings and defy the
official order.

EXTREMISM AND TERRORISM

The Swadeshi movement naturally fanned the embers of
Extremism into a blazing flame. In June, 1906, Tilak came to
Calcutta and the Sivaji Festival was celebrated with great pomp.
Sarala Devi organised the Beerastami celebrations as the festival
of youth.

The trend of Extremism rapidly crystallised round the figure
of Brahmobandhav Upadhyaya who crowned a chequered career
as a prophet of militant nationalism. He cast a spell over young
minds and drew them towards the gospel of direct action. His
organ the Sandha became a power in the land and intoxicated
his readers. Charged with sedition, the intrepid monk agitator
declined to plead in a court the jurisdiction of which he refused
to acknowledge. He died on October 27, 1907, in the midst of
his trial.

Others seconded his crusade, like Bepin Chandra Pal
already famous as politician and orator. He started the Bande
Mataram newspaper, with the motto 'India for the Indians*, as
the editor of which Arabindo Ghosh appeared like a stormy
petrel in Bengal politics.

Arabindo had been educated in England, and had almost
gone into the Indian Civil Service. Saved by an accident from
this career, he emerged as a powerful writer who preached that
nationalism was a divine religion with true poetic fervour.

Other radical papers included the Nabasakti and the Yugan-
tar, the latter edited by Bhupendranath Datta who is a venerated
scholar and progressive thinker even today. Extremist groups of
action sprang up amongst the radical youths, for example, the,
Anushttan Samity.

NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

The Congress sessions in 1906 and 1907, in spite of their
acceptance of the goal of Swaraj in 1906, became the battle
ground between Extremists and Moderates. At the Snrat Con-
gress, 1907, the tension culminated in a split after which the
machine was captured by the Moderates and remained in their
hands till the reunion in 1916 and the Moderate withdrawal from
the Congress itself in 1918.

In 1907-1908, Government repression was in full swing and mainly

directed against the Extremists. The editors

REPRESSION & of the radical organs were charged with

TERRORISM sedition in 1907. Bhupendranath Datta was

sentenced, Brahmobandhav Upadhyaya died
during trial, Arabindo Ghosh was acquitted. Bepin Chandra Pal
was imprisoned for contempt of court. An ordinance gagged
'seditious 1 meetings. Another dealt with the Press and the
Extremist organs were smashed. Punitive police forces realised
collective fines from the Swadeshi centres and some of the dis-
trict leaders were jailed.

Furious with this repression, radical young men began to
tread the path of violence. An attempt was made to blow
up the train of Lieut-Governor Sir Andrew Eraser ; on April 30,
1908, the Muzaffarpur incident took place when two terrorists
tracking Kingsford, who had been the judge in the sedition trials,
killed by mistake two English ladies. One of the assailants took
his own life, the other was caught and hanged.

On June 2, the police unearthed a bomb factory in Manik-
tala, Calcutta, hauled in a group of terrorists and arrested
Arabindo Ghosh as well. The Alipur Bomb Case followed in
consequence and during the trial the terrorists murdered an
approver, the Public Prosecutor, and one of the Police Inspectors
while a second attack was staged on Sir Andrew Eraser. Arabindo
Ghosh was acquitted again thanks to his able counsel, C R. Das,
who became famous in this case. But the Maniktala group was
convicted and the leaders transported for life.

Terrorism intensified Government repression. The Central
Legislature enacted a series of sweeping coercion acts which sup*
pressed all freedom of the Press, provided for conspiracy trials
under special procedure and banned the youth organisations*

1905-1918 91

Nine Bengal leaden including Aswini Kumar Datta and Krishna
Kumar Mitra were deported in December, 1908.

anti-Partition agitation had drawn many Muslims to its fold,
but they were pure nationalist indivi-
MUSUM duals with hardly a solid following of their

REACTION own people behind them. The Muslim

masses were largely neutral during the
struggle as befitted their lack of political consciousness.

The specifically Muslim leadership was pleased with the Parti-
tion which held out hopes of preferment in the new province but
the intensity of the national agitation and the ferocity of repres-
sion took it by surprise. This is reflected for example in the
Mussalmans, the organ Mujibar Rahman founded in 1905. The
eminent Muslims led by the Nawab of Dacca gave their approval
to the Partition at the Education Conference held in December
1906. Already on October 1, 1906, the Aga Khan had led a Mus-
lim deputation to Viceroy Minto and pressed successfully upon
him the safeguard of separate Muslim electorates in the coming
constitutional reforms.

The general argument in support of the new move was that in

the unavoidable circumstance in which the

SEPARATE Indian franchise would depend on educa-

ELECTORATE tional or property qualifications, the Muslim

voters would be swamped in general electo-

rates.

The Education Conference developed in 1908 in the Muslim
League. In 1907, communal riots took place here and there.
Still, it is by no means certain that the Muslim masses were
enthusiastic for the Partition. They were not developed enough
even for that. That the Swadeshi agitation on the other hand
failed to rouse the predominantly Muslim peasant masses in East
Bengal was candidly admitted by Rabindranath Tagore in his
presidential address to the Provincial Conference at Pabna
(January 1908) when he said that the fault lay with the Hindu
'bhadralog class 9 , the gentlefolk who had never cared to be at
one with either their Muslim fellow countrymen or the mnnsro of
our own common people.

62 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

Muslim apathy either way is also illustrated by the absence
of any strong opposition to the repeal of the Partition announced
by George V in his Coronation Durbar at Delhi, December 1%
1911. The Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909, however, conceded
the principle of separate representation to soothe Muslim feeling.

The new Constitution came into operation by the end of 1910 but

taking advantage of a new terrorist action*

THE EVE ft THE the murder of a Deputy Superintendent of

MORROW OF Police, Government renewed its repressive

REPEAL OP legislation. Under a new Press Law, for

PARTITION example, the next decade saw the

forfeiture of several hundred presess,

newspapers and books.

The leaders deported in 1908 were released, but one of them,
Pulinbehari Das, the Anushilan chief was transported to the
Andamans for seven years on a new charge. Terroristic activi-
ties continued steadily and in the context of the grim struggle
which had opened in 1908 between terrorism and repression, even
the repeal of the Partition in 1911, failed to restore normalcy.
The removal of the Imperial Capital from Calcutta to Delhi
also offended Bengali sensibility. Bengal was raised to the status
of a Governor's Province on the re-union of its two parts.

An uneasy situation continued to haunt the Indian scene. IB
1912 December, Viceroy Hardinge had a
THE WAR YEARS narrow escape from a bomb and amongst the
accused was Rashbehari Bose who managed
to flee from India. This was an indication of how Bengal terror-
ism had now its ramifications in other provinces. In 1914, the
Komagata Maru affair provided a passing sensation and then
came the first World War.

The Moderates who dominated Congress loyally co-operated
with the Government in the war. The Extremists under Tilak
were now anxious for the re-establishment of Congress unity and
the Lucknow Congress, 1916, saw the re-union made necessary
by the possibility of an early end of the war.

The terrorists clung to their chosen path throughout the war
years, tried to smuggle arms from abroad, and in a skirmish near

1905-1919 IS

Balasore, lost one of their chiefs, Jatindranath Mukherji, die
" Tiger " who was killed in action. In the Muslim ranks, we find
the Muslim League moving closer to Congress. In 1912, the
League accepted the Congress ideal of Self-Government as its goal
and there was a Congress-League Pact in 1916.

On the other hand, the years after 1911 saw an upsurge of
Muslim intransigeance which may be taken to represent the pene-
tration of political consciousness deeper down in the Muslim
people. The weekly Comrade founded in 1911 by Mahomed AH
indicated the new trend of militancy and mass agitation. The
plight of Turkey during the Turco-Italian and the Balkan Wan
attracted the sympathy of Indian Mussalmans who felt annoyed
with Britain's dubious policy in the Near East.

In 1912, Dr. Ansari led his Medical Mission to the relief of
Turkey and the Red Crescent collected funds to mitigate Turkish
Bufferings. In 1914, Britain and Turkey found themselves on
opposite sides in the War. The Indian Muslim, if he thought
about it at all, was in a dilemma and his resentment against the
British increased.

All this helped the growth of an anti-imperialist feeling which
led on to the great Khilafat Agitation after the end of the War.
Mahomed All and his friends were in detention during the War.

Even before the end of the War, Secretary of State Montague

and Viceroy Chelmsford held an enquiry and

THE POST-WAR recommended constitutional reforms (July,

SITUATION 1918). The Congress Extremists were firmly

opposed to the meagre concessions offered

In the Calcutta Congress of December 1917, a split with the

Moderates was narrowly averted, but Bengal nationalism rallied

decisively round the Extremist banner, under the new leadership

of C. R. Das, and isolated Surendranath Banerjee and the old

uard of politicians. At the Special Congress in Bombay, August,

1918, the long impending final breach at last took place. The

Moderates hopelessly outnumbered withdrew from the Congress,

formed the Liberal League and supported the reform scheme.

The Congress was now entirely in the hands of the Extremists.
Meanwhile the World War had stimulated Indian labour aid

04 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

its end marked the beginning of a trade onion upsurge. The
Rowalt Act which tried to perpetuate the war-time coercion laws
provoked the post-war issue which rapidly developed into the new
crisis of 1919. That was the year when M. K. Gandhi stepped
forward and assumed the leadership of the national movement

LITERATURE AND CULTURE

The hectic days of the Swadeshi movement followed by the
uncertainties of the war period formed a framework within which
Bengal's cultural life had its own ups and downs which cannot
be traced in detail here. Unlike the previous periods, however,
politics absorbed a great deal of attention and the situation was
often tense. < '"'

Rabindranath Tagore was now the unquestioned leader in the

literary field. In 1905, he threw himself

TAGORE AT HOME heart and soul into the Swadeshi agitation

AND ABROAD and was the poet and the prophet of its early

phase. His patriotic songs, speeches and

essays lit up the whole movement with a peculiar beauty.

But as bitterness mounted up, Rabindranath's sensitive soul
shrank from the ugly trends. He felt that his people needed a
change of heart and that a radical social programme was abso-
lutely necessary for the attainment of real independence. Dis-
agreeing with the tactics of the movement, he withdrew into the
solitude of his school and plunged into literary work which was
now extraordinarily creative.

Tagore was also aiming at a mutual understanding between
the East and the West and began his famous tours abroad. In 1913,
he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but two years before, on
the completion of his fiftieth year, his countrymen had already
greeted him as the prince of literary men. In 1914, a high class
Bengali periodical the Sabuj Patra appeared, and issue after
issue was filled with the mature writings of Tagore.

In 1916, his lectures on nationalism delivered in Japan and
the U.S.A. revealed him as a sharp critic of domineering aggres-
sion. His internationalism came in for some adverse criticism
from his countrymen, but in reality he had never lost his sympathy

1905-1919

for forward thought, though he was now politically inactive.

In 1917, Rabindranath intervened in the Bengal Congress on
the side of Extremism and in 1919, his celebrated letter to the
Viceroy on Jalianwala Bagh massacre gave a lead to the whole
country before any other leader had spoken out.

He had encouraged the formation of a significant movement in
Bengal's cultural history the Oriental

His VARIED School of Art of which the central figure
ACTIVITY was his cousin, Abanindranath Tagorc.

Abanindra and his pupils consciously culti-
vated a new style of art which recalled the ancient past and
stressed national individuality in ^elf-expression. The stage was
enriched by an avalanche of patnotic drama of which the high-
lights were the plays of Dwijendralal Ray whose songs enjoyed
tremendous popularity

On most poets however. Tagore's genius had a baneful effect
which discouraged individuality and produced a depressing atmos-
phere of cheap imitation In proM>. we have the new move of
Pramotba Chaudhuri to break decisively with the established con-
vention and to introduce into writing the spoken form* of words,
especially the verbs which occia in Bengali speech His journal
the Sabuj Patra was intended to ^ymbolise ateo the revolt of
the spint of youth against the shackles of tradition

Earlier had come the Bengali magazine, the Prabasi which
the personality of its editor, Ramananda Chattel ji, made into an
expression of high class periodical literature
terji's famous Monthly Notes established
patriot leaning heavily on the Extremist

Dignity and thoughtfulness marke
men like Ramendra Sundar Trivedi
essayists of distinction ; and of the IiH

prasad Sastri. A new form of literaffliBI Jateriwi f .tfieijieedlTjft
of children, was introduced by men If 1 * "*
Abanindranath Tagore shone in this

In philosophy Brajendranath Seal el
paedic knowledge and the power to inspH
Jagadish Chandra Bose added to his internal;

66 NOTES ON BENGAL RENAISSANCE

Profulla Chandra Ray began to build up a school of research
scholars round him who looked up to him as their Gum.

In the field of higher education there was the outstanding
figure of Ashutosh Mukherji who by his devoted service and per-
sonality minimised the Government control over Calcutta Uni-
versity, converted the institution from a pure examining body to
a partly teaching one, opened the Post-Graduate Teaching Depart-
ments, organised the University College of Science and launched
the Bengali scholars into sustained research work in science and
ancient history.

The Bengal we know today was emerging in these years in
all its familial outline.