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ISSN 2277-9426 Journal of Bengali Studies Vol. 3, No. 2

K o l k a t a

Jogoddhatri Pujo, 14 1421 Autumn Issue, 1 November 2014 Journal of Bengali Studies (ISSN 2277-9426) Vol.3, No.2 Published on the occasion of Jogoddhatri Pujo, 14 Kartik 1421, 1 November 2014 The theme of this issue is ISSN: 2277-9426 Journal of Bengali Studies

Vol. 3, No. 2

1 November 2014

Jogoddhatri Pujo, 14 Kartik 1421

Autumn Issue

K o l k a t a

Editor: Tamal Dasgupta

Editorial Team: Subrata Nandi (Issue Editor)

Joydeep Bhattacharyya

Sourav Gupta

Mousumi Biswas Dasgupta The commentary, article, review and workshop copyrights©individual contributors, while the Journal of Bengali Studies holds the publishing right for re-publishing the contents of the journal in future in any format, as per our terms and conditions and submission guidelines. Editorial©Tamal Dasgupta. Cover design©Tamal Dasgupta. Further, Journal of Bengali Studies is an open access, free for all e-journal and we promise to go by an Open Access Policy for readers, students, researchers and organizations as long as it remains for non-commercial purpose. However, any act of reproduction or redistribution of this journal, or any part thereof, for commercial purpose and/or paid subscription must accompany prior written permission from the Editor, Journal of Bengali Studies. For any queries, please contact: [email protected] and [email protected]

For details about our Editorial Team, policies and publication details, please see our website http://bengalistudies.blogspot.com and www.bengalistudies.com

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79.1, Gouripur Road, P.O. , Kolkata-700051, Contents

Editorial 7

Article

CoordiNation and Deferral of Bengali Nation-Consciousness: Ishwarchandra Gupta in Nineteenth Century Kolkata

Tamal Dasgupta 16

Kolkata Corporation and : Death of a Dream

Chandrachur Ghose 84

Echoes from the Past: Revisiting ‘Old Kolkata’ in Gorosthane Sabdhan

Kallol Gangopadhyay 126

A Lesson in Living Life: The Portrayal of Kolkata in ’s Short Stories

Zenith Roy 147

Demographic and Behavioral Profile of Street Children in Kolkata

Atanu Ghosh 164

Cottage and Small Scale Industries in the Slums of Kolkata: Growth and Constraints in Twentieth Century

Subrata Nandi 176

Kolkata's Intellectual Response to Shakespeare: Academia, Stage and Little Magazines

Arindam Mukherjee 191

Tracing the Historical Roots of Kolkata's North-South Divide

Madhusree Chattopadhyay 229 4|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Review

Scanning Kolkata Stage through the Eyes of Five Doyens: A Review of 's Book of Interviews

Sourav Gupta 247

Workshop

Love and Kolkata: Six Poems

Tamal Dasgupta 251

Commentary

Sister Nivedita in Kolkata: A Nation Awakens

Mousumi Bandyopadhyay 267

Living Heritage: Boats of Kolkata

Swarup Bhattacharyya 278

Traditional Learning in Kolkata

Somnath Sarkar 298 Disclaimer:

The contents, views and opinions occurring in the contributions are solely the responsibilities of the respective contributors and the editorial board of Journal of Bengali Studies does not have any responsibility in this regard.

The image/s appearing in the Journal are parts of a critical project, not for any commercial use. Image/s are either provided by the authors/designers from their personal collections and /or are copyright free to the best of knowledge & of the editorial board. For the previous issues of Journal of Bengali Studies, a peer-reviewed online journal please visit http://bengalistudies.blogspot.com and www.bengalistudies.com

We have previously published five issues on the following themes, and all of them are available online:

Ognijug (Vol.1, No.1) Bengali Cinema: and Cinema (Vol.2, No.2) : Bengalis and Theatre (Vol.2, No.1) Science and Technology in History: Modern Bengali Perspectives (Vol.2, No.2) Literature and Movements: Bengali Crossroads (Vol.3, No.2) Editorial

A sense of location is important across the entire plant and animal kingdoms. For the human animal this sense of location is even more important, because we cannot thrive in a simple state of nature, and we have to devise a culture in a collective manner; this culture is always locally rooted. Importance of location spreads from our physiology (location as a biological factor; as I write this editorial this year's Nobel prize in physiology and medicine is announced to be awarded to scientists who have worked on the biological significance of location) to our anthropology, social sciences and cultural studies (location as a social, economic and cultural construct). The significance of Kolkata for the history and culture of the modern Bengali people is nonpareil.

Numerous books on the exist which have proven it beyond doubt that Kolkata was most certainly not born in 1690, that it does not have any such date of birth, that it is most certainly older than 1690, that Kolkata goes back further in time, a point that was upheld by the in its verdict dated 16 May 2003 (following an expert report submitted by five renowned historians) where it directed to erase the name of as the founder of this city from all history books (Bhoumik iii), and yet it is customary for a host of writers to religiously repeat this myth that one Job Charnock was the father of this city of Kolkata who founded it in 1690 (completely ignoring the fact that he came to Kolkata/ twice before – once in 1686 and then in 1687; it runs like a joke: Charnock already came to Kolkata twice, but he founds Kolkata on his third visit in 1690); we are ritually reminded that where the landmarks like Museum and Victoria Memorial stand today earlier used to be dense forest ,with wild animals roaming in the woods and brigands lurking behind every bush (Joardar 14); nevertheless, while saying these, sometimes the guilt-conscious comprador's hat is tipped to the direction of the ancient Kolkata that was the abode of meditation of Chouronginath, the saint from the order, from whom modern day derives its name, or to the medieval Kolkata that finds a mention in the 1596 CE entry of Ain-i-Akbari of Abul Fazl as a constituent part of the administrative division (Sarkar) Satgaon (/Shoptogram on the Hooghly), or to the Kolkata which is mentioned in Mukundaram's Chondimongol of 1445 CE (Mukhopadhyay 15). Kolkata was a halt for Nanak (as all Sikh histories unequivocally attest) during his first udaasi between 1499 and 1506 covering entire eastern India (udaasis were journeys 8|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Nanak undertook to different corners of subcontinent and middle east), and a Sikh shrine named Gurudwara Bari Sangat stands to this day at the place where Guru Nanak lived during his stay in Kolkata; it's at Burra Bazar, situated on Kolkata's very own arterial thoroughfare known as M G Road, as I myself once found out.

Armenian Church, Kolkata

The gravestone over Reza Bibi's tomb dated 1630 in the Armenian Church of Kolkata firmly establishes that a settlement of the Armenians in Kolkata existed very much before the British came here. The fact that some of our historians doubt the veracity of this gravestone and its inscription establishes less the claim of Charnock than their own comprador status. We have been told by western hegemony that only stone and metal inscriptions and coins count as historical evidences; our punthis don't. The discovery of Gupta age gold coins at in 1783 (at display in the British Museum since then) is again somehow passed under the carpet. Ballala Sena's gift inscription (Daana Patra) that pertains to Kalikhetro (Mukhopadhyay 6), which undoubtedly relates to the region of modern day Kolkata is likewise underplayed. 9|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The ruins of Bansha Bati Raj Bari, situated at , which is a part of Adi Shoptogram

This is a historical region where Kolkata stands today, and it did not appear out of a nothingness as it is sometimes made out to be (Satyajit Ray's famous sleuth's Anglophilic speech about Kolkata being a wild swamp prior to British arrival immediately coming to mind). Henry Cotton traces the origin of the busy mercantile hub of Kolkata back to the renowned port of Saptagram/Shoptogram on the west bank of (the Portuguese called it Porto Piqueno), that after the silting of the river somehow transferred its potential to Kolkata. Shoptogram was the nucleus of Kolkata, Cotton observes (2). Cotton points out in the same breath that the migration of Setts and Bysacks from Shoptogram to Gobindopur village – they came to Kolkata in 1537 CE (Bhoumik 28) – can be considered to have formally inaugurated the business hub which was later to become the city of Kolkata. It is said that the region of Kolkata became a thriving mercantile hub and a centre of textile industry in next hundred years. The textile workshop of the Setts at Gobindopur employed a total of 2500 workers in 1632 (Bhoumik 8). Interestingly, the history of Gobindopur, which is normally considered to have begun with the Setts (with the village deriving its from the name of their family idol of Gobindo) can be traced back to tenth century CE (Bhoumik 32). Kolkata was an important outpost in the kingdom of Maharaja (ascension 1584), whose fort stood at modern day Bagbajar on the (Bhoumik 59, 55). It survived the ravages of time and was used by British at the time of Siraj's siege of Kolkata. Preceding decades already saw a burgeoning Kolkata during the time of the expedition, when Bengalis came to live here from different parts of South , as it was safely ensconced on the eastern side of Ganges, protected by the guns and canons of the Company. 10|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

This temple at Bansberia is very unlike other Bengali temples and it shows the extent of foreign influence on this busy international port

Quite importantly, Kolkata shares a glorious lineage of the civilisations which since ancient times flourished in Bengal in general and south Bengal in particular, from the days of the Gangaridai empire and the ancient port of to the glorious days of the kingdom of Jessore under the rule of Pratapaditya and the social, cultural and intellectual flourish of Nabadwip. Kolkata thus inherits the legacies of a number of illustrious cities which flourished in Bengal's south western parts, the latest of them being Nabadwip/Noboddip by Ganges and Shoptogram by Shoroshshoti. Prior to the British Company's purchase of the revenue rights of three villages of Kolkata, Sutanuti and Gobindopur (the deed is dated 10 November 1698), there was a procurement of permission from the Mughal court in . Later in 1717 another Mughal farman entitled the Company to purchase another 38 villages adjoining Kolkata. But Bengal's Murshidkuli Khan took great care to instruct the of these villages not to sell their lands/revenue rights to the British (Basu 21). Surely if this region held no strategic importance, if this was as wild, barren, 11|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 depopulated and swampy towards the end of seventeenth century as it is often meant out to be, there would not possibly be too many Zamindars looking over these lands, Nawab too would have not bothered if the British purchased them, and on the top of it, the British company too would not have bothered to purchase them at such a great cost to their treasury in the first place (the actual price of the three villages, Rs 1300 was a pittance compared to the royal sum of Rs 16000 that was paid to the emperor in Delhi for purchase rights of three villages in 1698 (Basu 14), but the question is, who gives that kind of money to buy some pieces of wilderness anyway?). As I have discussed in my article on Ishwar Gupta and nineteenth century Kolkata (which explores the deferral of nation-consciousness among the Bengali people), attempts to denigrate our own heritage, history, legacy and cultural treasures have been systematically undertaken by many of us, and we should start to problematise such simplistic positions which think of Kolkata in such ahistorical, amnesiac terms. We have to blast open the debris of colonialism in order to discover the underlying continuum of the history of Kolkata which is now covered beneath a palimpsest of colonial disruptions, discontinuities and epistemic breaks. Any discussion of Kolkata must not dispense with this cultural unconscious, that Kolkata derives its name from Kalikshetra/Kalikhetro (Mukhopadhyay 6; Mallick 1), that the region from in the south to Dokkhineshshor in the north was called Kalikhetro in Peethamala (one of the most ancient puranic chronologies of the history of Shakti Peethas all over India; we need to remember here that though its temple is new, Dokkhineshshor itself is a very old place), as Harisadhan Mukhupadhyay points out (10-11); that we Bengalis have a history of our own making written in our own blood and pus, bravery and betrayal, victories and defeats. As we resisted and appropriated and sometimes welcomed foreign influences, we made a history of our own, and that is not merely the one haughtily allotted to us by our Islamic and Western conquerors and a plethora of other colonisers like communists, and our own comprador classes. Speaking about our history, however, is not the same as espousing a nostalgia for an organic past that got lost because of colonialism. Terry Eagleton supports Raymond Williams's view that the organic society of the past is a myth, and the organic society has been always lost (Heathcliff 56). Indeed, Raymond Williams in his The Country and the City records that the complaint about the loss of an organic past is a characteristic lament of every age (10-12). The organic past is always in an infinite regress, and therefore the human subject's desire to return to that organic past remains insatiable. Terry Eagleton comments satirically: “History has been in steep decline ever since some indeterminate 12|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 golden age. The nations best days have always gone” (Across the Pond 132). Therefore, while insisting on the fact that Kolkata has a glorious, substantial pre-colonial past, we must steer clear of brooding on a past golden age. The one major purpose of looking at our past is to gather critical resources for the present and the future of Kolkata. Further, we do not think that the encounter with the west has not been fruitful in any manner for the Bengali people, the ghastly facts of colonial domination notwithstanding. There is a dialectic of influence and resistance throughout Kolkata's history, out of which the forces of transcreation have emerged during the modern period, which, just like vaccines using a microbial germ itself to produce its antidote, have striven to nurture the Bengaliness of this city by superannuating all colonising attempts. We have preferred the spelling Kolkata to that of Calcutta in this issue, for reasons obvious. Calcutta renamed as Kolkata, at a time when Bombay and Madras too went on a renaming spree, could be thought of as an expression of a deferred nation-consciousness (which my article deals with). The change in nomenclature is an important milestone in that trajectory of the delayed aspiration of the Bengali people. Instead of tracing the physical history and geography of Kolkata, this issue of Journal of Bengali Studies (JBS), Vol.3, No.2, themed on Kolkata traces the intellectual, cultural, political, social, economic and literary history and geography of this city. This issue will interest all Kolkata aficionados, academic and layperson alike, and will remain a collector's item so long as people study this city and wonder at it. My own article is on Ishwar Gupta, who is foregrounded to nineteenth century Kolkata. It argues that Ishwar Gupta's project can be best understood as a coordiNation, which however keeps on getting deflected because of the constant pressure of colonialism. Chandrachur Ghose's well-researched article on Subhas Bose's association with Kolkata (then Calcutta) Municipal Corporation deals with a topic that has not been hitherto explored: Subhas Bose as a civic administrator of the city of Kolkata. Subhas Bose the militant is well known and well researched, but it is for the first time that someone has written an academic article on Subhas Bose the of Kolkata, and Chandrachur Ghose's work is pioneering in this respect. Subhas's anti-imperial project led him to talk about municipal socialism, whereas it also involved evoking close ties with the rivals of Anglo- American axis, and as a result of that we can see that he derives lessons from developed European countries, taking inspiration from models outside Britain and its sphere of influence, while ideologically he had a curious inclination towards both socialism and fascism (as Ghose bemusedly 13|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 observes). May be we should explore the possibility that Subhas's orientation probably had a lot to do with the fact that fascism and socialism used to be the two rival (and formidable at that) doctrines which challenged Anglo-American hegemony of . Kallol Gangopadhyay's article explores Satyajit Ray's Gorosthane Shabdhan which foregrounds the colonial city of Kolkata (Ray's Charnock-consciousness led him to believe that Kolkata originated with the British, which is not historically accurate, Gangopadhyay's article mentions the historical debate in this regard, leading to the High Court verdict of 2003) whereas Zenith Roy's article focuses on the portrayal of Kolkata in the short stories of Satyajit Ray. This is indeed a striking feature of this issue that we have two articles on the depiction of Kolkata in Satyajit Ray's fictional works. They speak of the tremendous popularity of his Bengali fictions which have Kolkata as a recurrent motif. Atanu Ghosh's article is a much needed exploration of the dark side of Kolkata, an aspect that the would not be even comfortable in acknowledging: the plight of its street children, and the numerous abuses which they are subjected to in this city. Ghosh has done a neat job is data analysis. Subrata Nandi's article continues that emphasis on the poverty-stricken (and yet undefeated and indefatigable) face of Kolkata, as it surveys the cottage and small-scale industries in the slum areas of Kolkata during a twentieth century time span, and this article includes some valuable insights about the producers/artisans of some of our traditional art forms like the clay idol makers of Kumartuli and the potua painters of Kalighat. From slums to Shakespeare is quite a leap, but Kolkata had such pogars (large, canal-like open drains marking the early sewerage system of Briish Kolkata; a hygienic disaster, they give us the proverbial expression pogar-par) which one had to cross; next in line is Arindam Mukherjee's article on the relationship of Kolkata with Shakespeare, which is an interesting exploration of academic, theatrical and Ltiile Magazines' works on Shakespeare which have been produced in this city: it critically investigates the role of colonial hangover behind what the author dubs as failure of the Bengali response to Shakespeare. Mukherjee measures this failure in terms of the inability to produce any original creative or critical insight on Shakespeare, and argues that Kolkata in its dealing with Shakespeare has not been able to come out of the shadow of Anglo-American influence. Madhusree Chattopadhyay's article is a pioneering academic work on the legendary north-south divide in Kolkata, a topic that lies very close to the fundamental conflict pervading the consciousness of this city: history is on the side of north, progress on the side of south. North is north, south is south, and it seems that never the twain shall meet! 14|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Sourav Gupta's review is in continuation with his (and this journal's) continued focus on Bengali theatre (we published a theatre issue back in 2013) in general, and Bratya Basu in particular. Bratya's book that contains interviews of five legendary theatre personalities of Kolkata theatre is reviewed by Sourav Gupta. The workshop segment in this issue has six poems on Kolkata (which I authored over a period of last eight years of my exile from Kolkata) written originally in Bengali and then translated into English. Both the original and the translated versions appear in this workshop. In this issue we have three commentaries; Mousumi Bandyopadhyay has written on 's role in the nationalist awakening that was centred in Kolkata, that was Nivedita's adopted home and her sacred Karmabhumi, seat of her mission. Swarup Bhattacharyya's pictorial commentary on the boats of Kolkata, many of them extinct today, is a visual delight, and this photo-essay with a rare collection of images of Kolkata boats does justice to his scholarly reputation as the foremost living authority on Bengal boats. Somnath Sarkar in his commentary on Sanskrit studies in Kolkata illuminates an otherwise overlooked aspect of this city: the flourish of classical learning in Kolkata and, in this regard he gives an overview of the academic institutions and universities as well as the traditional catuṣpāṭhis which have been seats of Sanskrit learning since time immemorial. Journal of Bengali Studies has remained committed to the project of developing an interdisciplinary Bengali nationalist discourse in academia since we started publishing in 2012, and in this sixth issue JBS once more renews that pledge. The editorial board (and the contributors) can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected]. Readers of JBS can find updates and call for papers for the forthcoming issues, and post comments and responses at http://bengalistudies.blogspot.in/ . Also, JBS can be accessed at at www.bengalistudies.com .

Bibliography

Basu, Ajitkumar. Kolikatar Rajpoth. Kolkata: Ananda, 2008. Bhoumik, Haripada. Notun Tothther Alokey Kolkata. Kolkata: Parul, 2003. Cotton, H. E. A.. Calcutta, Old and New. Kolkata: General Printers & Publishers, 1950. Eagleton, Terry. The Rape of Clarissa. Oxford: Blackwell, 1982. 15|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

---. Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture. : Verso, 1995. Print. ---. Across the Pond. New York: W. W. Norton, 2013. Print. Joardar, Biswanath. Onno Kolkata. Kolkata: Ananda, 2003. Mallick, Pramathanath. Kolikatar Kotha (Aadikando). Kolkata: Pustok Biponi, 2001. Mukhopadhyay, Harisadhan. Kolikata Shekaler o Ekaler. Kolkata: P M Bakchi, 2002. Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. 1973. New York: , 1975. Print. CoordiNation and Deferral of Bengali Nation- Consciousness: Ishwarchandra Gupta in Nineteenth Century Kolkata

Tamal Dasgupta

Abstract: This paper argues that the course of the development of nation-consciousness in nineteenth century Kolkata as observed in the works of Ishwarchandra Gupta continues to get deflected, owing to the pressure of colonialism and the tendency of Bengali comprador classes to remain supplicant in front of imperialism. In order to describe the structure of Gupta's nationalist project, the word coordiNation is coined. This paper explores how Bengali nation-consciousness is both coordiNated and deferred in the nineteenth century Kolkata that Gupta inhabits.

Keywords: Ishwar Gupta, Nineteenth Century Kolkata, Bengali Nation-Consciousness, Nationalism, Shongbād Probhākor, Kobigān, Kobiwala/Kobiyal, Pānchāli, Toppa, Ākhrāi, half- Ākhrāi, , , Ramnidhi Gupta, Gonjla Guin, Ram Basu, Dashu Ray, Horu Thakur, Bhola Moyra, Anthony Firingi, Rupchand Pokkhi, Ishwarchandra , Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Dinabandhu Mitra, Krishnakamal Bhattacharya.

Our past is a resource that we constantly need to raid in order to illuminate our present, and this is one of the reasons why I embarked on this work. This paper positions Ishwar Gupta within the historical trajectory of nineteenth century Kolkata. While working on Ishwar Gupta – pronounced Ishshor Goopto; I use the spelling Ishwarchandra Gupta throughout this article for familiarity's sake, though Issurchunder Goopto was how he and his contemporaries spelt his name in English, while Probhakur was the standard spelling for the name of his newspaper, as we get to know from his Collected Works (2: 4) – there was an irresistible temptation to discover in Gupta a precursor/forerunner of the nationalist movement. Indeed as the mentor of Bankim and other nationalist writers like Rangalal 17|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Bandyopadhyay and Dinabandhu Mitra, and having himself pioneered in authoring a number of nationalist poems and having initiated nationalist projects, Ishwarchandra Gupta is entitled to that honour. But this article will not do that. He was not to the nationalist movement and Hindu revival in Bengal what Blake was to the Romantic movement. For one thing, revival of Bengal should be best thought of as a Long Revolution (a la Raymond Williams), which started as a resistance movement right after the Mohammedan conquest and reached its apogee at the time of Chaitanya. When Pujo was being reintroduced after the fall of Siraj, at the behest of Krishnachandra of Nadia and Nabakrishna of Kolkata, we witness another milestone in that trajectory. Ishwar Gupta is part of that same trajectory which will see the advent of Bankim afterwards. The first half of nineteenth century, which was the old nineteenth century, was culturally dominated by Ishwarchandra (died 1859), and as that former half gave way, gave birth to the later half of nineteenth century, which was to be the new nineteenth century, Bankim came to assume that role of the cultural patriarch. However, though both Ishwarchandra and Bankim worked towards building a process of nation-consciousness, the process itself remained very deeply problematic; it always presupposed a surrender of Bengal to the British. It was with the gold from the loot of Bengal that England had its industrial revolution, but Bengalis were too happy for having been free from the shackles of Islamic rule to notice that. Bengal's Hindu revival thus got inextricably, intricately entangled with Bengal's colonisation by the West. What followed was a dialectic of collaboration and confrontation with the west which earmarked the project of Ishwar Gupta and characterised the course of history in nineteenth century Kolkata. What did this collaboration entail? I suggest that it involved a hermeneutic damage. Let us take an example. In a supposedly neutral, objective description of the interiors of a house, Bankim uses the omniscient narratorial mode to take a potshot at the superstition of Bengali idolatry, decrying Durga and , in his first novel written in English, Rajmohan's Wife: “Two paintings of the largest size, from one of which glowered the grim black figure of Kali, and on the other of which was displayed the crab- like figure of Durga, faced each other” (77). Bankim later on goes for a huge course correction, to such an extent that his earlier hostility to is today almost unknown outside serious Bankim scholars. When we are compelled to view ourselves from a prism borrowed from the West, it deflects our culture, it displaces our , as it delays our nation-consciousness. But not subscribing to that discourse of western Enlightenment sometimes implies a more unfortunate regression into a forged pre- modern vision, neurotically and triumphantly obsessed with the golden Hindu past, complacently 18|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 unaware of many developments of modern history. So a denial of the western epistemology can be equally troublesome, if not more problematic. There can be a golden mean, and that can be called a synthesis, and it was precisely what Ishwarchandra himself (and still later Bankim) attempted, but this also inevitably results in a distortion, where our culture and identity get deflected and can never be identical with its pre-invasion form, as the prisms of western colonial hegemony end up besmirching our perspectives. Then we can only revisit our past as confused onlookers.

The only available image of Ishwar Gupta on the internet

Our argument is that in Ishwar Gupta's oeuvre we find an emerging Bengali nation- consciousness, where nineteenth century Kolkata is foregrounded as the space-time dimensions of that discourse. This discourse is, however, continually shredded, mutilated, violently rearranged and recast by colonial domination. Just like a black hole (or any massive object in the cosmos, for that matter) causes the space and time that it comes in contact with to curve, in a similar way, colonial subjugation has caused a curvature in Bengali identity, culture and history, and all attempts to re-assert them ends up involving further distortions owing to the gravitational pull of the massive bulk of colonial infrastructure that continually affects the dimensions of our existence to this day. Bankim once famously told Ramkrishna that he became bent (Bankim in Sanskrit means bent, curved, crooked; that which is not straight) because of the kicks of the British boots (Bhattacharya 341). It was not a mere joke; there is a prophetic truth hidden in Bankim's utterance, we shall suggest. 19|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The main proposition of this article is that at the core of the resistance movement against colonial oppression we can detect a deflection, a deferral of Bengali identity in order to accommodate the tremendous pressure of colonial domination. This statement is not a Derridean interpolation in the Bengali nationalist discourse; this is not a deconstructionist article in any particular way, and we have simply taken up the dictionary meaning of deferral. We are not particularly concerned with any Derridean differance here in this article. All we suggest here is that nation-consciousness is deferred in its very act of inception because of colonial pressure. Let us take an example. Dwijendranath Thakur reminisced about a national fair organised by Nabagopal Mitra (who was more popularly known as National Nabagopal, because he popularised the use of the word national in his various activities) where Dwijendranath to his horror discovered that a gigantic deshi painting (most likely a potchitro) depicted Indians with folded hands supplicating before Britannia (Bipin Gupta 274). For Nabagopal, this image was supposed to convey national art. Clearly that so called national fervour was not anti- colonial at all; it was submissive; very often it imitated the patriotism of the British, modelled itself on western-style nationalism, and was full of an Anglophile reverence for imperialism. National Nabagopal himself was a regular visitor to the corridors of colonial power and took pride in being close to British (Bipin Gupta 274-275). So there goes the inception of our nationalism proper.

The cover of this Sahitya Academy book in depicts the face of Ishwar Gupta quite differently 20|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

We have spoken of the hermeneutic damage caused by colonial domination (that continues to perpetrate itself in our country in spite of political independence, one may suggest). Let us take an example of what I would call interpretive violence, which happens when a western paradigm is imposed on Bengali culture. A recent critical appraisal of Ishwar Gupta done by Rosinka Chaudhuri titled “Poet of the Present” is a case in point. The main proposition of Rosinka Chaudhuri can be summed up in this statement from her article: “Iswar Gupta's oeuvre is like the gossip in Hutom's Calcutta, which is constituted, as Ranajit Guha describes it, of an 'immediacy of presence' that 'as a phenomenon', lives only for the day, literally as ephemeros or adyatana, in a state of utter transience'” (108). In the course of our article we shall see that Ishwar Gupta's poetry is deeply concerned with the past and future of his country and countrymen. In an overzealous attempt to impose the ahistoricist, amnesiac and comprador cult of the present (a comprador always lives in the present, and celebrates the transient, as a comprador shares an Oedipal relation with his past and future; a comprador kills his past and screws his future, if we are allowed a moment of levity here), the significance of Gupta's activity as a compiler of old of Kobigān is completely missed by this critic, who although is nominally aware of Ishwar Gupta's role as collector and editor of Bengali Kobigān, as the notes and bibliography at the end of her article attest. We shall also see that emboldened by this subaltern espousal (this article appears in an anthology edited by Partha Chatterjee et al), Chaudhuri enthusiastically goes on to compare Gupta with Baudelaire. In due course we shall show why there can be no comparison between Baudelaire and Ishwar Gupta. As an aside, this is indeed unfortunate that the subaltern group never questioned their own status as comprador intelligentsia. It might have made them realise their own position of utterance. But let us return to the matter at hand. Let us remember that the birth of Kolkata is smeared in the filth of comprador politics, as this region was allotted by the Mughal commander Man Singh to Lokkhikanto (whose descendants, the Saborno Roy Choudhuris later sold Kolkata along with Gobindopur and Sutanuti to the ) as a reward for their betrayal to Pratapaditya. Pramathanath Mallick points out that Kolkata in this sense was born with the zeitgeist (Kāla Dharma) of a fallen age (Kaliyuga), which means it was born in shackles of slavery, and it was somehow destined to continue in chains (16-17). More importantly, colonial domination ensured (it still does) that we suffered from an anxiety of approval, where we needed to conform to western standards. As a result, Bengali culture was about to 21|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 be brutally split into the high and the low, as per the western norm prevalent in the nineteenth century. The elitist, bhadralok disdain for our own indigenous culture remained obvious in the attitude of the Kolkata intelligentsia as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth. We shall examine this following remark by Tagore in this connection: “In Greece the plays of Sophocles and Aeschylus were written and enacted not just for the VIPs. The common people there were fortunate not to have submitted to some Grecian Dashu Ray;” Tagore thus castigates the very idea of Kobigān in the sarcastic epithet “Grisiyo Dashu Ray.” He is referring to the legendary composer-singer of Kobigān and Pānchāli, Dashorothi Ray here, in a denigrating way in his letter to Dilipkumar Roy, compiled in the latter's Collected Works (624). Dashu Ray, we may note here, was a major influence on Ishwar Gupta as he learnt the secrets of the trade of poetry from the practitioners of Kobigān and half-Ākhrāi in his adolescence, as the foreword to Gupta's Collected Works points out (1: সত). Further, Professor Asitkumar Bandyopadhyay's foreword in Bipin Gupta's Puraton Proshongo mentions the pre-Bankim era as the age of Guptokobi (this was how Ishwar Gupta was popularly known) and Dashorothi Ray (পচ), implying that the age saw a Dyarchy, where both Ishwarchandra Gupta and Dashorothi Ray ruled. Now, Tagore not only denigrates Dashu Ray; here he seems to have a haughty (and historically incorrect) view of the evolution of popular performative art forms across the world. It is sufficient to say here that Tagore displays a characteristic and Victorian disdain for Bengali indigenous art forms of Pānchāli and Kobigān (which are rustic, uncouth and indecent for colonial standards) that spoke of our day to day experience with a sturdy materialism, without taking any recourse to, say, the vague of a Lalan Fakir or sophisticated romanticism of a Tagore. Kobigān often tends to challenge the soft lyricism of Tagorean Bengali poetry. It indulges into raw human aesthetics without the invention of romantic or spiritual love. It too had its religious and devotional lyrics, but most of the times, it spoke in a straightforward and materialist manner, without any mystification. It was therefore popular among the masses, who loved its substantial entertainments. Popularity was again a matter to be suspicious of, and one reason why Dashu Ray was low was that he was popular, an artist of the masses. Popular culture, for a very long time, was low culture (prior to the upheaval staged by Raymond Williams called cultural studies, a western phenomenon that now encourages numerous Indian critics like Chaudhuri to refocus on popular culture a la the western framework that for quite some time now has been in vogue). However, our comprador intelligentsia can scarcely move out of their hegemonic, holier-than-thou, liberal-humanist piety even when they are 22|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 supposedly working on low, popular culture, and therefore Ishwar Gupta is lambasted by Chaudhuri in these terms: “It is the language he uses against the Muslims that is most offensive... Such sentiments, expressed with an appalling coarseness of language, in the context of Muslims, are repeatedly present in poems” (97). This prescriptive approach of political correctness and high-minded secularism of a necessarily elite, bhadralok perspective, when mixed with a West-inspired, newly found, neophytic zeal for the popular culture, together give birth to a mulish hybridity. There is mutilation and there is critical malformation for us. It does not occur to this critic that Gupta might simply have been reflecting the popular sentiment of his readers when he is speaking against Muslims, because such an idea would unsettle quite a number of haloed liberal humanist assumptions. The continuum between the past and the present is therefore doubly threatening for colonialism. Not just the past offers a resistance to the dominant west-influenced distortions which have become commandments for those under the spell of liberal humanist amnesia, the past is in league with the present (however out of joint that present may be) as they secretly, subversively hatch a conspiracy together to bring about their own guerrilla readings against the grain of received standards. The politically incorrect art forms can live on in an underground manner. An obituary written in poetry by Srijato (published in a magazine on 15 November, 2012, shared on his facebook.com page) after Sunil Ganguly's death not just evokes Kolkata, it (unwittingly) evokes the tradition of the birds (Pakhi), where those young poets who were close to Sunil are compared to birds. This particular piece by Kolkata's popular poet-lyricist Srijato, it seems, is affected by a historical unconscious where the Pokkhis of nineteenth century Kolkata seem to form a continuum with a group of poets of twenty-first century.

The poetic obituary for Sunil written by Srijato which compares young Kolkata poets to bird/pakhi 23|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Well, while talking of Kolkata, and Kobigān (as we shall presently explore in details Ishwar Gupta's collation of the lives and works of Kobiyals), one cannot escape the recent phenomenon of the Bengali movie named Jatishshor which is a narration of the life of Anthony Firingi, the Bengali Kobiyal per excellence who was not a Bengali by birth, but was a Bengali by choice. Here let us note that throughout this article we use the traditional word Kobiwala (as used by Ishwar Gupta himself in his pioneering studies of Kobigān) instead of Kobiyal. The word Kobi in the context of Kobigān meant a piece of song, and not what the word is conventionally taken to mean, which is poet. Bankim points out that in Kobir Lorai, it was the composition that was called Kobi (716), hence the origin of the term Kobiwala, which meant a stockist/seller/dealer of Kobi, denoting the person who composed and/or sang in Kobir Lorai. Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay affirms that Ishwar Gupta was of collecting Kobigān and observes that all anthologies of the compositions of the Kobiwalas which have appeared since the days of Gupta are indebted wholly to Gupta and all have borrowed from his collection (1: 467). Sadly, Gupta is almost never acknowledged.

A still from the movie Jatishshor The present researcher observed Suman's (the music director of the movie Jatishshor) castigation of Tagore in an interview aired on ABP Ananda on 16 April 2014, retelecast on 17 April 2014, between 10 pm and 11pm. Further, in a facebook status update dated 17 April 2014 attacked the 'landed-gentry' aspect of Tagore which arguably led the Nobel Laureate to denounce the marginal culture of Kobiyal-Kobigān. This is a confused application of Marxian notion of class war to 24|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 the economic situation of nineteenth century Bengal, because that class of landed gentry, far from showing a wholesale hostility to Kobigān, was very often its chief patron, as we shall see. Suman's is not a historically valid observation, but then liberal does not care for history, and is solely driven by an amnesiac individual's grandstanding declarations. However, we cannot deny that rediscovering the tradition of Kobigān is one major contribution generated by the phenomenal response evoked by this award winning film, Jatishshor. Let us now have a look at Kabir Suman's statement: It was not Kabir Suman who got the award. It was Bengal's music. The great texts written by the wonderful Kabiyals of Bengal, whose work and contributions have always been belittled by the Bengali gentry, their stupendous command over our language, its movement, its texture, its power, its SOUND, its abundance and over meter made me compose the melodies for the 13 songs. I wonder why not even Rabindranath Thakur tried to assess the Kabiyals' contributions. WAS IT BECAUSE THE KABIYALS REPRESENTED THE COMMON PEOPLE AND NOT THE LANDED GENTRY? In my work I was influenced by Bengal's , Ramprosad tunes, Bangla Paala tunes and movements, Bhairabi , different modes of Shyamasangeet, Hindustani raagas, Bangla "boiThoki gaan"... My own songs are a continuation of Bangla Adhunik Gaan which, again, has always used raagas, Bengali , Kirtan and European music. Out of all these different elements the IDIOMS of Modern Bengali Songs were created. I thank Srijit Mukherjee and the producers once again for giving me this opportunity to expose at least some aspects of Bengal's Music to the world. (facebook.com, 17 Apr 2014) Now, Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay's anthology attests that Kobigān was immensely popular as the chief medium of popular entertainment in early nineteenth century Kolkata with the wealthy Bengalis as its patrons; a Kobir Lorai between two troupes from Jorashnako and Bagbajar is narrated in a report of 1829: the competition was held at the house of Gurucharan Mullick at Doyehata (1: 144). Bhabatosh Dutta informs us that Ishwar Gupta was the songmaker (badhondar) of the Bagbajar troupe in this .(o ں|| competition (Ishwarchandra Gupta Rochito Kobijiboni Many other contemporary reports establish that the rich people were the patrons of Kobigān and used to organise these soirées at their residences. Kobigān was uprooted not because of the hostility pf the landed gentry (in fact we see that the patronage of the landed gentry was its lifeline and was what allowed Kobigān to survive), but because of the Western influence among the bhadralok Bengalis. Kobigān caused that anxiety of approval, as the Victorian norms gravely expressed their disapproval of 25|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 this form. This genre of songs, associated with Bengal's pre-British past, came to mean regress, and it took superhuman efforts on the part of Ishwar Gupta, as we shall soon see in this article, to rescue Kobigān and the Kobiwalas from oblivion. Gupta was never acknowledged by anyone from the team of Jatishshor in the midst of this entire fanfare, which once more establishes how past becomes suppressed, censored and distorted in the triumphant march of colonial, liberal modernity. Kobigān as an indigenous art form came to be associated with an uncouth, uneducated, rustic, un-enlightened, non- Victorian, indecent milieu which had to be forgotten and annihilated if Bengalis needed to move forward in a colonially approved telos of modenrity. When Bankim heaves a sigh, “খখখাঁট綿 বখঙখট즿 কটব

আর জনখয় নখ - জটনবখর উপখয় নখই – জটনয়খ কখজ নখই” (Pure Bengali poets are no longer born – there's no way they can be born – there's no use in having them born ) (706), we detect the trauma of an insufferable nostalgia felt by a generation mutilated and alienated by progress, looking back askance at an organic past that is now forever lost.

Chitpur, neighbouring Bagbajar. Painting by James Baillie Fraser, 1826 26|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

However, the one aspect of Tagore (that Kabir Suman completely misses out) that makes him hostile to Kobigān is that Tagore represents the enlightened western liberal universalism, and Kobigān stands for a 'regressive' Bengali parochial lowly art form. Farther, Kobigān as a collective art form (there were always teams and troupes and never singular, standalone poets in this genre) might have been injurious to Tagore's predominantly individualist sensibility. Tagore also displays a dismissive attitude to Ishwar Gupta himself when he speaks of Bankim's awkward apprenticeship of language under the tutelage of Ishwar Gupta, a suggestion which is incidentally challenged by noted Bankim scholar Amitrasudan Bhattacharya (11). Bhattacharya observes that Ishwar Gupta in his editorial comment following Bankim's published piece in Shongbād Probhākor pointed out that the writer should not burden his poetry with an excessive dependence on lexicon; Bhattacharya further that Ishwar Gupta's regime was not responsible for whatever weakness existed in Bankim's first published prose, as “Ishwar Gupta himself in his prose was ahead of his time” (13). Let us return to Kobigān. Rediscovery of Kobigān has somehow been linked to the Bengali liberal humanist fanfare over baul, but our progressive secular-liberal universal humanists (in a word, bishshomanob as we call in Bengali) rarely note that there are strong differences between these two genres. Baul was an inverted way to celebrate western liberalism, an indigenous art form moulded and reshaped and adequately sanitised to suit an individualist sensibility. Kobigān, in Suman's version however, tries to keep up with largely the same liberal-imperial motif of the market of mohamilon or the Ananda Bazar Patrika Abbey, where Indic Bengalis are required to surrender each one of their unique civilisational heritages in favour of some bogus hybridity (bogus, because the moment we stop taking it at face value, it will reveal itself as a façade behind which the systematic aggression of West, Islam and other colonising forces against the indigenous is hidden). The trajectory of Kobigān as an art form remains recalcitrant and obtuse vis-a-vis all hegemonic attempts of standardisation, and does not yield to appropriation as easily as the mystification of baul yielded to western hegemony. This new interest in the deeply parochial genre of Kobigān (the of which is captured in the message of Ishwar Gupta: embrace the native dog, forsaking foreign )1 might later embarrass those Western liberals among us who are trying to idealise the figure of the Kobiwala on the model of the approved figure of baul, if they get to know more about the indispensable association of the history of Kobigān with Ishwar Gupta. 27|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

It has been customary to underestimate Ishwar Gupta, the man who ruled in the pre-Bankim, pre-Madhusudan era. He is our major figure who curiously remains more obscure than a host of minor figures. While in his The Literature of Bengal observes Ishwar Gupta's strategic position within a society in transition, and his role as a link between the poetry of the past and the present, he does not assign any significant place to Ishwar Gupta as a poet: “As a poet Iswar Gupta does not rank very high,, as a satirist he stands first among the writers of Bengal” (151). Clearly the overt post-romantic milieu interferes with a proper evaluation of Ishwar Gupta, because he was the poet of “jaha aache” (that what is present), as Bankim put it so succinctly (717), yet mistakenly, as we shall see. As the mood of the west-inspired romantic zeitgeist favoured that which was not there, that which could only be accessed through a flight of imagination, creative writing sufficiently displaced the everyday to point where it resembled the exotic, warded off the vulgar to the point where poetry became venerable. This Romantic sensibility is also at work in Bankim, who says that there's no use in having a pure Bengali poet any more. A poet like Ishwar Gupta who can only write about those things which are here and now becomes therefore a liability. Since Bankim said this, this became an ultimate shortcut in the criticism of Ishwar Gupta. The best way to form an opinion about Gupta without reading him, it seems, is to read this particular phrase of Bankim. So it is very convenient to forget that Ishwar Gupta is the first chronicler of the lives and works 28|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 of Bengali poets and songmakers of pre-colonial and early colonial past. It is equally expedient to ignore that Gupta was deeply concerned about the future of Bengali literature, too. This ignoring attitude is evident in Rosinka Chaudhuri's article. We should observe in all fairness that as Kolkata was preparing to stage its literary and cultural renaissance, it was Gupta who did the work of masonry for that stage. In March 1853, Ishwar Gupta in his Shongbād Probhākor organised a “collegiate battle of poetry” (Kalejiyo Kobitajuddho), where Bankim (then a student of Hooghly ), Dinabandhu Mitra (then a student of Presidency College) and Dwarakanath Adhikary (then a student of Krishnanagar College) participated in what was a periodical's version of Kobir Lorai (literally, battle of poets, it meant the competition of Kobiwalas in front of an open audience) (Bhattacharya 16).

Dinabandhu Mitra Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay Dwarakanath was awarded the first prize, and his early death ensured that he remained the only unknown figure among these three. The other two entered the status of immortality in Bengali literature. Dwarakanath died very young, and Bankim later reminisced about Dwarakanath in these terms: “His writing method was somewhat simple and transparent like Ishwar Gupta – he used to express native feeling in native words. He died in tender age. If he lived, perhaps he would have become an excellent poet” (Bhattacharya 17). Bankim's poetry was first published in Gupta's Shongbād Probhākor on 25 February 1852 (Bhattacharya 24). Bhattacharya quotes Bankim in this regard: Bengali literature was then in a bad shape. Probhakor then was the most superior newspaper. Ishwar Gupta used to rule single-handedly over Bengali literature. Young men having been impressed with his poetry were eager to get introduced to him. Ishwar Gupta (too) was specially inclined to encourage young writers. Hindu Patriot rightly observed that many among the modern writers are disciples of Ishwar Gupta. … just as the excellent writers like Dinabandhu Mitra, this small writer is also indebted to Ishwar Gupta. (25) 29|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Quite interestingly, Ishwar Gupta in his editorial advice reviewing Bankim's poetry asked the latter to avoid the “dear words of the old poets” like “ এব, করব, ছন, ছন” (Bhattacharya 25-26), which not only establishes Gupta's progressiveness as an editor-advisor in discouraging archaic forms of words, but also points towards an underlying trend in Bengali poetry since then: its attempt to stay as close to the lived speech as possible. Gupta initiated this trend in Bengali literature, taking his cue from Kobigān which as a tradition definitely contravenes against all arcane literary methods and mystifications of archaicism. Ishwar Gupta champions that indigenous tradition of simple, colloquial, lively speech. The formation of nation-consciousness is initiated by a collage of different materials taken together, and which can be the better place for such a miscellany than the concatenation offered by a daily newspaper? Gupta was the editor of what was to become the first Bengali daily, Shongbād Probhākor, where he attempted a synthesis of different threads of Bengalis experience in order to forge a common network. As an editor of a daily, he certainly was not exclusively confined to matters of literary significance, and he participated in different social and cultural activities. An 1837 newspaper report stands testimony to Gupta's attachment to the Bengali nationalist cause as he participated in a meeting of Bongobhasha Prokashika Shomaj that resolved to protest against the government's new policy of extracting revenue out of lands which used to be untaxed earlier (Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay 2: 404-405). Clearly this refers to the places of worship, which traditionally have been untaxed. Gupta tried to achieve a consolidation of Bengali identity as the readership of his newspaper continued to grow: this could be thought of a centripetal movement that proposed to initiate a space and time coordination of the Bengali people which would ultimately bring forth a consolidation of nation- consciousness, and attempt a network formation in geographical, cultural and historical terms. Nation formation in modern period through the printing press is not a novel concept, it was suggested by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities (this book, by the way, is one of the most misunderstood works on nationalism; Anderson is generally sympathetic to nationalism, while anti-nationalism critics have made his concept to appear to suggest a fictitious nature of nationalism; Anderson suggests that a nation is an imagined community, not an immediate community like, say, the one constituted by members of a committee, or neighbours in a housing estate where everyone personally knows other members of one's community; the international workers' movement is also an imagined movement, or

30|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 a huge rally of a million people is also an imagined procession, because someone present there does not know everybody else). There is a poetics of coordiNation in Ishwar Gupta, as we shall see. A portmanteau of coordination and nation, this term I want to coin in order to explain the work of Ishwar Gupta. Having a meaning that it self-evidently conveys, this word captures the spirit of Gupta's project which wanted to achieve a consolidation of the Bengali people, an alignment of the past with the present, bringing together different interest groups and different strata of society; it was this project that was historically undertaken in Shongbād Probhākor. In his project of coordiNation, Gupta is critical of imperialism but is never rebellious against it, therefore his coordiNation simultaneously posits and deflects Bengali nation-consciousness. Further, it frequently undercuts various forms of the wasteful, diffusive Romantic universalism (Bhadralok-ish, Brahmo, educated, Tagorean) which is already becoming prominent in nineteenth century Kolkata and would later come to characterise and dominate Bengali society and culture. Gupta's coordiNation is decidedly urban without being cosmopolitan, as opposed to the liberal-humanist emphasis of a bhadralok ethos that wants to defer the lowliness of the real in favour of the exotic imaginary of the ideal, wants to displace history by getting confined to an amnesiac present, wants to deflect the indigenous by centring the universal, and ultimately wants to defer the community by upholding the individual. CoordiNation is notably blasé too, as it is more concerned with an arrangement of available elements of reality than with any flights of fancy. CoordiNation is also more nuanced and accommodative in its approach to the past, and is not prescriptive like the elite, bhadralok outlook. Gupta's coordiNation becomes a register of the cityscape of the nineteenth century Kolkata, delineating the dialectics of nation-consciousness that was in making. Finally, Gupta's project of coordiNation subverts colonialism at the strategic faultlines. Liberal humanist universalism remains a force of collaboration, and plays its part by rallying its bulk behind the colonial power, further facilitating the deflection and deferral of the task of weaving together different aspects and dimensions of Bengaliness. Gupta himself belonged to the urban folk tradition of Kobigān and half-Ākhrāi, but we shall see that contrary to popular perceptions, he mastered the colonial standards equally well. He participated in various literary and philosophical societies, and moved in erudite, western-educated company, yet he was an “uneducated” fellow, bereft of western- style school and college education. He was associated with the and we would see that Bankim considered that Gupta officially converted himself to Brahmoism. Gupta's God was characteristically 31|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Brahmo, as we can see in his writing (1: 280ff). Though Probhakor was supportive of traditional Hinduism at the time of its inception, during the course of its initial year of publication it slowly gravitated to Brahmoism; another contemporary periodical made this observation (Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay 2: 185). Gupta's treatise on the nature of God, also exploring the relation of human beings with the divine, written in the format of a question-answer session between a father and his son, which also included long devotional poems, came to constitute the text Probodh Probhakor that had a distinctly paternalist notion of God (1: 291ff). But interestingly, as commentator Tripurashankar Senshashtri points out in the introduction to the second volume of Gupta's Collected Works, the scheme of Gupta offers here is also highly influenced by Sankhya philosophy (2: পবনবর). There is truth in this observation, though Gupta's treatise is theist to the core (unlike Sankhya). Sankhya has remained the dominant philosophical system in Bengal, informing both Shaktoism and Boishnobism, and this was one of the core arguments in my article in the previous issue of JBS (Vol. 3 No. 1). Gupta's synthesis of Brahmo philosophy and Sankhya philosophy brings together diverse elements from different spheres of nineteenth century Kolkata, joining polytheistic idolatry with monistic worship.

Lalbajar, Kolkata. James Baillie Fraser, 1826 32|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

However, Gupta's overt submission to an idea of a singular male God subscribing to the Brahmo paradigm (which in turn not just derived its influence from Upanishada but also from the Semitic, Judeo-Christian-Islamic ) sometimes made his position askew to Shakti Worship, the most important indigenous religious tradition of Bengal, Bengal's Boishnobism remaining a distant second in terms of influence. Interestingly, in Gupta's play Bodhendu Bikash Goddess Saraswati is seen to advise a devotee to dedicate himself to the worship of the idol forms of Shri or Durga if he is unable to contemplate on the worship of the indifferent, formless ParamaBrahma (Collected Works 2: 349). This might as well be a Kolkata bhadralok's red-faced compromise with the superstitious systems of Shakto and Boishnob idolatry reeking heavily of maternal worship (be it Kali or Radha) which his paternalist bosses from Islamic or Christian or liberal-rational or communist orders have alike despised down the ages. But this invests Gupta precisely with that bhadralok respectability which is otherwise arguably lacking in some of his poems. It is interesting to note that his Collected Works exclude some of his so called obscene poems, but include those works which are respectable by bhadralok standards, even if they are boring, and carry little or no literary substance. Bodhendu Bikash is one such play which is disastrous as a work of literature but is measured high in terms of elitism, respectability and chaste language (it is an adaptation of a Sanskrit play named Prabodha Chandrodaya). Himself without an English education, Gupta remains remarkably receptive towards the colonial system of studies, and speaks of the students of the three of Kolkata, Krishnanagar and Hooghly as the exemplary ones, who are fit for emulation for the young Bengalis elsewhere (1: 289). Clearly this is an indirect praise for Dinabandhu, Dwarakanath and Bankim. More importantly, this establishes Gupta's alignment with colonial education, though he was not himself a product of it. Though Gupta continued to speak of God in distinctly Brahmo terms, yet he remained an idolatrous Hindu to the core, occasionally revelling in the Shakto worship of Durga and Kali. Gupta was a pure Bengali poet, Bankim famously states, forgetting that Ishwar Gupta was also the first major Bengali writer to have used English words in Bengali poems. These are not insurmountable contradictions: the ideal individual subject of liberal-humanist thought may be an integer, but in real social practice, a human subject is always an assemblage of diverse cultural and historical currents, which are often cross-currents. Ishwar Gupta is an exemplary proponent of this assemblage, this collage of the indigenous and the foreign. The making of the modern Bengali identity is full of contradictions which nineteenth century Kolkata embodies. Some of the indigenous components of this collage later get 33|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 suppressed, and many of the west-inspired elements get highlighted, as the colonisation of the Bengali people attain greater proportions, further deferring the making of nation-consciousness. One aspect of this colonisation is a growing elitism, another is a disregard for the local in favor of a grandiose vision of the Global. Naturally, Ishwar Gupta's famous poetic proclamation to embrace a country dog forsaking the foreign God became an anathema for the later ages steadily bred on a diet of universal humanism or bishshomanobota. A routine condemnation of Gupta's narrowness has therefore become mandatory on the part of all commentators, as the foreword to his collected works does the same (1: ন). However, such liberal critics of Gupta's narrowness rarely notice that this affection otherwise offered to the dog of native country is not (in a rather discriminatory manner) offered to the native crow! Gupta's hostility towards the leaders of 1857 great war of independence is recorded in one of his poems, where Rani Jhansi is compared to a crow with chopped lips (implying that she emits harsh sounds in a brazen manner) (qtd. in 1: পবনবর). The comprador features of Bengali intelligentsia prevailed here. In any case the rebels against the Raj were perhaps more foreign to the Bengali babus than the British rulers themselves. The nascent nation-consciousness, mortgaged to British imperialism, remains bent and deflected since inception. Nineteenth century Kolkata is exposed in all its rawness in Gupta, who is frequently criticised by later generations for the fault of obscenity and also for lack of sophistication; the introduction to his collected works does that, for instance (2: উননশ). It is true that there is no craft of concealment in his writings, and that his wiring is bare. His superstructure readily betrays its foundation, and his artistic devices remain uncovered, as if in a Brechtian theatre. What might strike an honest critic (who does not dismiss Gupta in an offhanded manner as a mere cog in the nineteenth century Calcutta wheel evoking little more than archaeological curiosity) as a plethora of contradictions is actually the organic framework of a writer's works as this writer in question is revealed to be a representative of the nationalist awakening of Bengal with all its promises and problems. Sadly, that has not been the case, and Gupta has been a victim of negligence, simplifications and sweeping generalisations. That Ishwar Gupta is a writer of triviality, temporality, tendentiousness and terrible alliterations has become a critical commonplace. He is considered to have become quickly outdated, as critics and commentators since Bankim routinely point out. Gupta is charged with obscenity by an age that wants to purge the last vestiges of any non-bhadralok sensibilities. His classicist, realist, satirist sensibility soon became out of joint in an age dominated by post-Romantic slumber of Victorian pieties, and so the lofty, high- 34|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 minded, noble-intentioned, elite poets like Nabinchandra, Madhusudan and Hemchandra soon replaced him with their turgid idealism which thoroughly smacked of Romantic sloppiness, Victorian prudery, approved colonial standards of literature and high culture, while Bengali society began its long, noble trek towards Tagore. Since then no one ever tried to rescue Ishwar Gupta from the infamy which is customarily heaped on him. Gupta as the defender of the indigenous has been largely neglected by subsequent generations who remained embarrassed not just with Gupta's lack of western-style education, but also with Gupta's brazen espousal of pre-modern, pre-British styles of Bengali poetry, thus continually postponing a proper evaluation of Ishwar Gupta. Let us examine here what Bankim said about Ishwar Gupta (rather harshly and unsympathetically, but he is being typical of this new generation of western educated intelligentsia): He was a very remarkable man. He was ignorant and uneducated. He knew no language but his own, and was singularly narrow and unenlightened in his views; yet for more than twenty years he was the most popular author among the Bengalis. As a writer of light satiric verse, he occupied the first place, and he owed his success both as a poet and as an editor to this special gift. But there his merits ended. Of the higher qualities to a poet he possessed none, and his work was extremely rude and uncultivated. His writings were generally disfigured by the grossest obscenity. His popularity was chiefly owing to his perpetual alliteration and play upon words. We have purposely noticed him here in order to give the reader an idea of the literary capacity and taste of the age in his a poetaster like Iswar Chandra Gupta obtained the highest rank in public estimation. And we cannot even say that her did not deserve to be placed in the highest rank among his Bengali contemporaries, for he was man of some literary talent, while none of the others possessed any. How much we may lament the poverty of Bengali literature, the last fifteen years have been a period of great progress and hope; within that time at least a dozen writers have arisen, everyone of whom is immensely superior in whatever is valuable as a writer, to this – the most popular of their predecessors. Strange as it may appear, this obscure end (sic) often immoral writer was one of the precursors of the modern Brahmists. The charge of obscenity and immorality mainly applies to his poetry. His prose is generally free from both vices, and often advocates the cause of and morality. (qtd. in Bhattacharya 204-205) 35|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

What we observe in Bankim's statement is a censuring: Gupta is appreciated only so far as his writing conforms to the norms and standards approved by nineteenth century colonial sensibility. Even today, as we have seen, Gupta continues to be misinterpreted and abused by the standard-bearers of the western liberal-humanist order. But it is worse when Gupta comes to be colonised and appropriated, because we tend to think that a writer like him is immune from liberal appropriation. A proud declaration adorns the foreword of the posthumous edition of Shottonarayoner Brotokotha (first published in the Bengali Year 1319, reproduced in the second volume of Gupta's Collected Works): “Madhusudan is Bengal's – Milton. Hemchandra – Pindar. Nabinchandra – Byron. Rabindranath, Shelley; … But what is Ishwar Gupta to Bengal? Ishwar Gupta is Bengal's Ishwar Gupta” (144). There used to be this assurance among Bengali nationalists that Ishwar Gupta was nonpareil, that at least he could not be tagged with a Western identity like other writers. Bankim himself gave such an impression in his essay on Gupta. Well, that is no longer the case. That assurance suffers a terminal onslaught when Ishwar Gupta is compared to Baudelaire by Rosinka Chaudhuri in her article, albeit completely disregarding the fact that Ishwar Gupta had a traumatic colonial experience to deal with, unlike Baudelaire. was already a nation per excellence, Bengalis were yet to forge their identity. Ishwar Gupta did not enjoy the luxury to become a rootless individual deliberating on the angst of urban experience, freefloating like the flaneur from Baudelaire's works, as Chaudhuri suggests (104). Chaudhuri proceeds to observe in Gupta a (Baudelaire-like) motion of popular, mass poetry in the backdrop of the giant city of Kolkata: Keeping in mind the essentially urban character of Iswar Gupta's poetry, it should be possible to see, in Benjamin's foregrounding in Baudelaire of the metropolitan masses that inhabit 'giant cities', the public as it was taking shape in mid-nineteenth century Calcutta. The verse of Iswar Gupta, so different in form from his French contemporary, was similarly inhabited by the pressure of a public made up of 'the people in the street' … For Iswar Gupta, these are the readers of a poetry which, both in its physical incarnation and its content, was essentially poetry that was designed to be sold in the streets. (Chaudhuri 92) In support of this view, Chaudhuri quotes from Shibnath Shastri: “When the Prabhākar was published, newspaper-sellers would stand at the cross-roads and read aloud from the poetry in it and in no time at all a huge number of papers would be sold” (92-93). However, as the present researcher investigated the life and works of Gupta, it became evident that Gupta did not herald a poetry movement for the 36|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 people on the urban streets in a Baudelairean fashion, in the vein of some Marxist telos that depicts the progress of bourgeoisie. Gupta was necessarily addressing the educated middle and upper class Bengalis through his newspaper. At the most, Shastri can be deduced to be claiming that Gupta wrote for the people on the cross roads, and not really for the people on the street in the manner of some Parisian poet. Literacy level and colonial circumstances of Kolkata would scorn at Chaudhuri's far- fetched attempt to compare between Baudelaire's Paris and Gupta's Kolkata. However, Chaudhuri is right to point out some of the pioneering works done by Gupta in Shongbād Probhākor: The Sambād Prabhākar was perhaps the first Indian regional language newspaper to carry a literary supplement – from the Bengali New Year of 1853 it published a monthly supplement that provided a much more substantial space than the daily newspaper for the publication of a variety of occasional verse, as well as an eclectic range of prose and imaginative writing, providing Iswar Gupta with more space in which to indulge his creative output than was available in the news-oriented daily newspaper. (Chaudhuri 93-94) Use of the term “regional language” is highly objectionable, but there is little doubt that being the first vernacular daily newspaper in the subcontinent, it was indeed the first to carry a literary supplement. The monthly literary supplement of Shongbād Probhākor that Ishwar Gupta started is very highly praised by Krishnakamal Bhattacharya, who also mentions Gupta's repute as an acclaimed badhondar or composer of kobigān in the same vein (Bipin Gupta 55). Interestingly, though Gupta could not sing himself, as he had a husky voice, but songs composed by him used to be sung in all the villages of Bengal (বসকব তহর ন ঙর পলবত পলবত ত হইত) (Bipin Gupta 55). Further, Krishnakamal reminisces that the original, pre-British method of writing Bengali, that was unspoilt by westernisation and at the same time was not burdened with undue Sanskritisation could be found in Bharatchandra, Dashorothi Ray and Ishwarchandra Gupta (Bipin Gupta 56). Ishwar Gupta commanded a folk popularity that was unparallelled, and he held a tremendous appeal for the educated upper and middle classes too. Furthering the consolidation of his people through the vehicle of literature was crucial to Gupta's project of coordiNation: “From 1851 onward, Iswar Gupta began to organize a literary festival in Calcutta on the day of the Bengali New Year on the 15th of April at his printing press” (Chaudhuri 94). This may be an example of Gupta's ingenuity to invent a new tradition (another process that is central to nationalism). The customary ritual of Halkhata of the New Year (beginning of fresh book-keeping at the business establishments) was 37|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 creatively transformed into a celebration of Bengali poetry. Renowned poet Nabinchandra Sen's account of the reception of Ishwar Gupta's poetic, journalistic and other works during his childhood and youth in in the 1850s is quite significant: “In those days, Bengal's Saraswati 's pale and poor image was to be found installed at the baṭtalā. There, whatever was birthed by the Mother on the poorest paper in illegible print – I read it all. Gradually, Iswarchandra Gupta and the god-like (deb- pratim) Iswarchandra Vidyasagar began to dawn upon the sky of Bengali literature” ( qtd. in Chaudhuri 94). Encouraged by Nabinchandra's juxtaposition of Saraswati and bot-tola, Chaudhuri goes on to trace a fusion of the high and the low in Gupta: “The self-division of Bengali modernity, at odds between the baṭtalā and Saraswati Devī, found a fusion of form and figure in the personality of Iswar Gupta in mid- nineteenth century Bengal” (95).

A Nineteenth Century Bot-tola imprint of Goddess Saraswati

However, the present researcher would maintain that it is an error to think of Ishwar Gupta in terms of fusion (of the high and the low), because he championed a culture that existed prior to that fissure (which separated the Bengali elites from the Bengali masses) brought about by colonialism. To call that culture a fusion is to seriously misinterpret it, because that culture still held its internal coherence, no matter how great the external disturbance was. Gupta himself emphasises a certain ability of the Kobiwalas to appeal to the elites and the masses alike, and recounts one anecdote where Boiragi is shown to have seamlessly pleased the elites and masses alike by singing songs from his impressive repertoire which had fast, rhythmic songs for the masses as well as slow, romantic songs for 38|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 the elites (1:167). Some may suggest that this eventual segregation owed to an increased Sanskritisation, but as Bankim points out, Hindu sages never held any prejudice against the use of so- called low languages, and even indulged in it while making a point or while venting their anger in high debates and scholarly dissensions (719). Rosinka Chaudhuri comments that Ishwar Gupta was censured by Bankim for obscenity (98); the fact of the matter is that Bankim in his essay defended Gupta on this point, since Bankim realised that the nuances of our tradition should not be collapsed and deflated in order to conform to western norms. But otherwise it is true that Bankim too was helpless in front of this tide of westernisation. An anxiety to secure respect from foreign rulers forced nineteenth century Bengalis to adhere to Victorian standards, freaking at the obscenity of their indigenous tradition. A paper titled “Bengali Poetry” that was written and read by Horochondro Dutta, an Anglophile, at the Bethune Society on 8 April 1852 very heavily criticised its subject matter, i.e. Bengali poetry for being vulgar and profligate, as Bhabatosh Dutta in his editorial commentary to Ishwarchandra Gupta Rochito Kobijiboni points out (1). in his Girish Manosh repeatedly emphasises the role of Ishwar Gupta in fostering a native, folk sensibility that also influenced the theatre of Girish Ghosh. Dutt says that Girish actually worshipped Ishwar Gupta (31), and observes that not only Girish was an admirer (gunomugdho) of Ishwar Gupta, Girish himself was a practitioner of the performative form of half-Ākhrāi, a form much favoured by Gupta himself (3). While Tagore was summarily dismissive of Kobigān, and in a rather elitist manner looked down upon it as vulgar and deviant, not conforming to proper aesthetics (jothartho shahittorosh), Vidyasagar once quite famously made a statement in favour of the Kobiwalas, when he said that in order to keep the Bengali society alive, the advent of Kobiwalas like Bhola Moyra is essential (qtd. in Utpal Dutt 35).

Noted actor AsitBaran as Bhola Moyra; a still from UttamKumar-starrer Anthony Firingi (1967) 39|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Vidyasagar's espousal of Kobigān, who was one of the greatest Sanskrit scholars who ever lived in India, representing the best of the Brahminical scholarly tradition of Bengal, perhaps is a case in point: the fissure that is brought about in the wake of colonialism has not yet been able to segregate the high from the low, the respectable from the vulgar, the decent from the obscene, the elite from the masses in the nineteenth century Kolkata that Ishwar Gupta belongs to. Ishwar Gupta is a representative of the same sensibility which Vidyasagar seems to have shared and which by the time of Tagore came under severe assault. However, it would be wrong to assert an unproblematic stance of Vidyasagar in favour of Bengali nation-consciousness. On one hand, he stood for Sanskrit College, an institution where he studied and later became the Principal. That institution was started by Orientalists (those western scholars who had a paternalistic, patronising attitude to Indian culture), but later came under assault from the Anglicists (who wanted the imperial administration to aggressively promote English language and culture at the cost of Sanskrit and vernacular). Macaulay, the arch-Anglicist wanted to abolish Sankskrit College itself (Bipin Gupta 118), and then a Sanskrit shloka was written by Joygopal Torkalonkar (Vidyasgar's teacher) addressed to the chief patron of this college, Horace Heyman Wilson, that translates like this: his Sanskrit Pathshala is like a lake, and the pundits who have been placed by you here are like swans, but a few cruel hunters having come near this lake are now about to kill them. If you protect the swans from these hunters, your deed will be immortal (Bipin Gupta 118-119). Clearly, Vidyasagar too must have suffered from that insecurity as a scholar of Sanskrit which Sanskrit as a subject suffered under increasing momentum of cultural colonialism. Vidyasagar confided in Krishnakamal Bhattacharya, his close disciple, towards the end of his life: “Whatever else I do or not to the kids, will certainly never again teach them English. Such a path to become empty (অসর ) and over-smart (ববপ )!” (Bipin Gupta 117). But on the other hand, the same Vidyasagar ironically initiated a number of pro-English reforms in Sanskrit College when he became the Principal; he made English compulsory in the higher classes, he stopped Sanskrit as a medium of learning Mathematics as traditional Sanskrit texts for learning mathematics were also withdrawn, and in their stead English textbooks were introduced (Bipin Gupta19). We know from other sources that Vidyasagar stopped the teaching learning of a number of Indian philosophical traditions, including that of Sankhya and , on the ground that they were “false” systems of thought (Sumit Sarkar vainly defends Vidyasagar on this ground in his essay 119-120 ). Macaulay already stopped the teaching- learning of in Sanskrit college by a government order dated 28 January 1835. In 40|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 fact, there was a coordinated attempt to dissociate Sanskrit from science. Further, Marshman's , which was a deeply imperial text denigrating the Bengali people was translated by Vidyasagar and the same was introduced as a textbook of Bengali (Bipin Gupta 19). Vidyasagar was convinced of the holistic superiority of the English people,

Krishnakamal tells us (“সব টবষয়য়ই ইᶂরখজ শশ্রেষ”) (Bipin Gupta 26). Moreover, Vidyasagar was admired by Bengalis because he was close to the colonisers, as Krishnakamal, Vidyasagar's close disciple tells us; a sorry state of colonial power system is corroborated as Vidyasagar's perennial anxiety about his position is revealed by Krishnakamal who tells us that Vidyasagar was afraid of his possible competitors among his fellow natives who could outdo him in being a favorite of the British, and did not want any other Bengali to become close to the colonial administration (সময়য় সময়য়

আশঙখ হইত শয, পখয়淇 আর শকখনও বখঙখ즿지র 'সখয়হবয়駇র' কখয়淇 তখখাঁহখর শ槇য়য়ও শবশ지 প্রটতপটত্তি হয়) (Bipin Gupta 45). So, as a part of the government machinery, Vidyasagar was subjected to a colossal pressure of colonialism, and therefore, his position was far more complicated than Gupta, who was not on the pay of the government, or did not depend of the colonial system (of education, as in Vidyasagar's case) for livelihood. Interestingly, Krishnakamal Bhattacharya suggests that the common indifference shown by the modern day Bengalis about Ishwar Gupta is because he was not familiar or close to the colonial government (টতটন গভয়মর্মেয়ন্টের টনক綿 বড় এক綿খ জখটনত ট淇য়즿ন নখ), Bengalis being guided in their choice by western stamps of recognition; Krishnakamal Bhattacharya further observes that not a single image of Ishwar Gupta is available anywhere, owing to this lamentable indifference (Bipin Gupta 57). Anyway, to return to the matter at hand, Rosinka Chaudhuri's talk about Ishwar Gupta being a fusion is anachronistic, because a fission is yet to happen in the sensibility that Gupta represents. The rich and the poor are yet to have an insurmountable cultural gap between them in the Kolkata that Gupta, as one of the last of the Mohicans, represents. But if this fusion is conceived to be always already there, and the social cohesion (the lack of any other name for which tempts us to call it an organic integrity) with a seamless exchange of the high and the low which characterised pre-Anglicist sensibility of Bengali society, is to be dubbed as fusion, then some serious jeopardy is committed to lexicon as well as history. Fusion presupposes segregation. Now, Islamic subjugation and imposition of Persian as official 41|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 language in the middle ages could not achieve that segregation on such a grand scale what imposition of English language and culture later did. Compared to Islam's general epistemological and philosophical weakness, British colonisation went far deeper, its machinations had far-reaching consequences; Islam had Mohammad but did not have its Macaulay. It might have had its enraged Gazis (slayers of kafirs) and Jihadis (crusaders) but did not have its Enlightenment and its schools and colleges. Hegemony was to achieve what blatant coercion could not do for centuries: Bengalis were about to be subjected to the mild-altering experience of colonial modernity. Now, during Ishwar Gupta's time, this colonial process indeed begins, and that is why Gupta repeatedly laments for the loss of older forms of Bengali culture, but that process is yet to gain such momentum which is required to violently split the Bengali gemeinschaft (the older community, based on custom and tradition) in order to produce a contractual society of gesellschaft. Gupta therefore is still able to use an unfractured language and still has at his command an unfractured ethos which are not yet differentiated into the different lingoes and world-views of the enlightened-western-elites and the regressive-native-masses. Sadly, not only this impending split derails nation-consciousness to a very great extent, but it will also ensure tragic consequences for the nationalist movement in Bengal, which will never again be able to fill up in the gap between the elite bhadraloks and the rustic masses. We need to be aware of this historical trajectory while studying nineteenth century Kolkata, which is subjected to an anachronistic simplification if we dub Ishwar Gupta's literary and journalistic oeuvres as fusion. Chaudhuri also thinks of Gupta as the founder of 'everyday' in Bengali poetry (which hitherto was deprived of the quotidian) while uncritically and non-contextually reproducing a fragment from Bankim's commentary on Gupta in support of her claim: “Iswar Gupta brought something into the … that was not there before him, which had given the Bengali language strength. Iswar Gupta's poems in the Prabhākar showed for the first time how everyday business, political events, and social events – all this can become the subject matter of poetry'” (99). Only a complete ignorance of Kobigān can facilitate such a statement, committing a violence against our native history, culture and heritage. Was Bankim capable of doing that? Unfortunately, Rosinka Chaudhuri misquotes Bankim here in a zeal to establish the pioneering nature of Ishwar Gupta's poems in portraying the everyday life for the first time in Bengali poetry, which is really what her article's argument is all about. If we investigate what Bankim originally wrote in his essay on Gupta, we see that Bankim is actually talking about Shongbād Probhākor as the pioneer in foregrounding the quotidian, not Ishwar himself. 42|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Bankim was familiar with Kobigān and he knew very well the inspirational influence of that genre on Gupta's poetry about everyday life. Bankim actual statement is hereby quoted: “Routine matters, royal incidents, social incidents, that these can be subject of humorous poetry was shown for the first time by Probhakor. Today the Sikh war, tomorrow festival, today missionary, tomorrow sycophancy, that these matters exist under the purview of literature was exhibited by none other than Probhakor” (711). Ishwar Gupta was busy in running this newspaper establishment, he was running the very first Bengali daily, the foremost periodical of his days, where he eventually rose to become the editor proprietor of that venture. He encouraged new writers, and he rescued many deceased poets belonging to eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from oblivion, his being the first recorded attempt at chronicling the history of these renowned Bengali poets and kobiwalas, without whom modern Bengali literature would have become completely rootless. Ishwar Gupta thus intervened to impregnate his times with a nation-consciousness. As this nation-consciousness was being made in the womb of history, Ishwar Gupta became a turning point in the trajectory of the so called Hindu revival of Bengal that would flourish in the later half of nineteenth century. Gupta's identification with Baudelaire by Rosinka Chaudhuri is no silly mistake, there is a design behind that colonising statement. This is a case of imposed significance, which characterises the reading of our texts by western parameters. The comprador intelligentsia wanted to believe in an image of itself which is at par with the west, as a measure of comforting itself into the global discourse, moving above and beyond the local in that process. The trauma of being a colony, which is the local as far as the Bengali experience goes, therefore must be relegated to the point from where it can no longer be assessed. Now, Chaudhuri's proposition is that Ishwar Gupta occupies a space which is similar to Baudelaire; Baudelaire was a “painter of modern life” and “here in Calcutta in the 1850s it is unmistakably Iswar Gupta who occupies that space. Such an artist is a flaneur, a traveller, a cosmopolitan, but he has a loftier aim. Baudelaire says, 'he is looking for that quality which you must allow me to call 'modernity'” Chaudhuri declares, insisting on a rather unproblematic assertion of modernity in Gupta's writing (104). However, Chaudhuri begins her article by stating: “the further Bengal travelled the road of nationalist modernity, the further away it went from any understanding of, or sympathy for, the works of Iswarchandra” (87). Now, apart from the fact that nationalism never shares a linear, non-problematic, non-dialectical relationship with modernity, and therefore the simplistic use of a phrase like “nationalist modernity” can confuse and jar any reading of Bengal's 43|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 complex trajectory (twisting the fact that modernity in Bengal has been largely colonial, not nationalist), here we encounter a contradiction in Chaudhuri: Gupta is a modernist, a painter of modern life, Chaudhuri says; Chaudhuri also proposes that Gupta is undervalued and depreciated by the same modernity. Surely Chaudhuri fails to observe the real force behind the eclipse of Gupta: an increasingly pervasive colonialism, and comprador desperation to conform to the Macaulavian standards, that included Victorian prudery, snobbery, elitism and disregard for precolonial folk sensibility. While Ishwar Gupta is thought to possess inferior education by colonial standards (which counts as Gupta's demerit for all the successive ages), we notice that the bhadralok anxiety for colonial approval which originated in the colonial times is well carried over to the 'postcolonial' times when Gupta's “uneducated” status becomes a rallying point for hostile commentators and critics. A commentator observes that though Gupta was the first to compile poet Bharatchandra's works, “it is to be doubted whether he actually understood the real meaning of Bharatchandra's poetry. He and his contemporary song-writers did not have have the education, understanding, or imagination to have taken in Bharatchandra's refined and dense language, educated sensibility, easily-learned wit” (qtd. in Chaudhuri 88). Bankim himself probably started this onslaught on Gupta's inferior education with what was probably meant to be his rather sympathetic pronouncement on Gupta: “If there is one great truth that we imbibe from an analysis of Iswarchandra's life, then it is this – talent cannot reach its fullest apotheosis without good education” (qtd. in Chaudhuri 88). Bankim's scathing remarks against Ishwar Gupta in an English essay on Bengali literature (which was one of Bankim's earliest writings) are far more unkind than this, as we have already seen. Was Bankim, the first graduate of the Macaulavian , here oedipally rebelling against his Guru, Ishwar Gupta? Bankim indeed speaks of Ishwar Gupta as a creditor of Bengali literature who is hurriedly forgotten by his debtors who even cease to utter his name as soon as he is gone, and Bankim counts himself as one of the debtors of Gupta (711). Now, though Bankim does not acknowledge this, but his condemnation of Gupta was surely done under the pressure of colonialism. Of course Bankim would later resist that pressure. As we have observed, one who would later compose was the same person who once wrote about the crab like appearance of Durga and the disgusting appearance of Kali in Rajmohan's Wife. Ishwarchandra Gupta's family surname was Das (Dasgupta), his parents were Horinarayon Das and Srimoti Debi, as Bankim informed us (707). Ishwar might have resorted to the surname Gupta in order to blend well with his Kolkata surroundings, as Dasgupta as a surname is totally known to be a 44|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

'' (belonging to ) surname that was not held in high esteem in western Bengal. According to Brajendranath Badyopadhyay, Ishwarchandra Gupta was born on 6 March 1812 at . He died at the age of 47 on 23 January 1859. He came to his maternal home in Kolkata at a tender age. His maternal grandfather was a friend of the Thakurs of , and he thus became friends with Jogendramohan Thakur, who was of same age as Ishwarchandra and an admirer of his poetry; their friendship lies at the root of the inception of Shongbād Probhākor. Gupta's published books as recounted by Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay are: 1. Kalikirton Grontho by Late Ramprasad Sen. 1833. 2. The Life of Bharatchandra 1855. 3. Probodh Probhakor. 1858. 4. Hit Probhakor, 1861 5. Bodhendu Bikash, 1863. 6. Shottonarayoner Brotokotha 1913. (2: 738-9)

The cover of Gupta's Life of Bharatchandra, 1855 45|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

We can see here that half of these publications are posthumous; Gupta's journalistic work might have prevented him from authoring more book length texts. But undoubtedly, Shongbād Probhākor was Gupta's greatest contribution, for which alone his name deserved to be written in gold in the history of the Bengali people. Some details of this newspaper are provided by Chaudhuri: The Sambād Prabhākar was the first daily newspaper in Bengali, starting as a weekly in 1831, developing into a thrice-weekly publication from August 1836, and finally morphing into a daily from 14 June 1839. A notice at the end of the last column in the newspaper of 5 April 1849, proclaimed: 'This Prabhākar newspaper is published everyday excepting Sundays from house No. 44/3 situated in the lane on the southern end of the open road appearing on the south side of Calcutta's Simuliya Hendua pond. Yearly advance is valued at Rs 10.' After Iswar Gupta's death in 1859, it continued to be edited by his brother, Ramchandra Gupta, circulating till the 1880's (sic), after which it became irregular and finally ceased operations. (92) Probhakor published some 69 odd issues during its first phase of publication, before winding up in 1832 (Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay: 2: 173). Gupta was just 20 years old at that point of time, and he was already renowned for his poetry. The present researcher would argue that Gupta's attachment with the cultural history of his spatial domains is discernible from the fact that the three main locales of Gupta's Kobiwalas are Kanchrapara and adjoining areas (Gupta's native place), Jorashanko (Gupta's maternal home in Kolkata) and Shimuliya (the place of Probhakor's operations). The relationship between Gupta and the cultural inheritance of Kolkata was intensely intimate, personal. Gupta's nonchalance about school education and his propensity for Kobigān is quit urban, and in this he is an archetypical spoilt boy (bokhate chele) of Kolkata who cares little for studies and freely pursues his 'lowly' interests. Gupta's project to collect and collate the works of Bengali poets starting from the late medieval writers was inaugurated in Shongbād Probhākor on 15 July 1854, as he issued an open appeal to his countrymen to contribute in this process of documentation. The appeal made it a collective initiative, and it turned out to be a stepping stone of nation-consciousness, with a keen sense of history, time and location. The idea of timelessness is not exactly an invention of liberal modernity, but it has made an ample use of this idea. Certain ages are more anxious to transcend the barriers of time, and accordingly they search for that literature which is not of an age, but of all ages. The foreword to the first volume of Ishwar Gupta's collected works titled “Kobi Ishwarchandra Gupta O Bangla Shahitto” written by 46|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Tripurashankar Senshastri begins with a customary disclaimer to this effect: Ishwar Gupta did not possess a timeless genius (“kalojoyi protibha”), the foreword diligently observes in the very first sentence (সত). An age that is anxiously aspiring for the status of timelessness is generally the one that wants to erase its past. When was uprooted by Brahmanism in Bengal during the eleventh century, a similar erasure of the past was done. Twentieth century Bengal, home to the Tagorean cult of universal humanism, was enamoured with the ideas of timeless truths, eternal literature, everlasting aesthetics and as a direct endeavour to impose its very own temporal standard, now promoted to an eternal status as the trans-historical ideal, goes on dismissing any literature that palpably defends the local and temporal concerns. Such literature is narrow, outdated, archaic. The sheer ahistoricity of this 'timeless-genius' theory is an enemy of any objective, material analysis. Ishwar Gupta's series on the lives, times and works of the Bengali poets/songmakers consisted of biographical sketches, commentaries, collections of poems/lyrics of every individual author, and anecdotes (they were published in the literary supplement of Shongbād Probhākor, and this last component betrayed a journalistic style of writing). In his essay on Bharatchandra, quite significantly Gupta castigates the colonial present, and longingly, nostalgically speaks of the pre-British times, lamenting for the loss of an organic past: The times when we have been born as humans have been our undoing, our termination. These times on behalf of our British rulers (the shorthand for British used by Gupta is 'the Red coloured', রঙ) became giant wings spread out to extinguish the light of this swarthy country. Where is that freedom? Where is that happiness? Where is that ethics (dharma)? Where is that work (karma)? Where is that knowledge? Where is that driving force? Where is that scholarship? Where is that spirit of poetry? Where is that appreciation? Where is that honour? And where is that enthusiasm, that passion? With the murder of freedom, time has devoured everything. (1: 8) It is pertinent to observe here that Ishwar Gupta is not speaking of the loss of freedom of the following the Muslim conquest in the remote past. He does not displace the current trauma of colonisation in the manner of Bankim to the Islamic conquest. He categorically evokes the time of Raja Krishnachandra of Nadia as the age of freedom, thereby paradoxically portraying a time when Hindus had been 'independent', not subjugated by the British (this is paradoxical on two counts: first, Hindus really had a limited freedom because Bengal at that point of time was under the rule of a Muslim 47|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Nawab and secondly, Krishnachandra was one of the main architects of the cessation of the rule of Siraj which heralded the rule of the British; in other words, Raja Krishnachandra himself brought about the downfall of this so-called freedom which Ishwar Gupta discovers in the Raja's golden, exemplary rule prior to the advent of western domination). Gupta laments the loss of an age when Bengalis were free and wrote such poetry as befitted a free people which they now no longer can write as the present times have deprived them of that freedom which is a necessary condition for all substantial creations, according to Gupta. The collection of the poetry of his predecessors is full of his sighs for a lost age to which those poets belonged. Gupta was not having an exceptional, isolated, uncharacteristic bout of anti-colonial feeling here. Utpal Dutt in his Girish Manosh is full of praise for Gupta's anti-British satirical poetry, ostensibly commemorating the ascension of Queen Victoria to the throne of India, written from the perspective of the Bengali native subjects, who are compared to posha goru (domesticated cows), who not being able to tolerate an odd punch, kick or blow, will be happy to chew fodder (31). Gupta indeed wrote some poems celebrating British victory over India, but, that might have owed to a pressure from his subscribers, saying which of course does not absolve him of the charge of compradorship. Gupta's brazen support for the British in the aftermath of the great rebellion of 1857 in his poems has drawn many criticisms. Bengali educated classes in different parts of India unanimously sided with the British. Calcutta Babus being the rank and pillar of British civil administration were caught in the vortex of 1857, as it has entered into the folklore of mutiny, the rebel Sepoys used to attack, and often imprison Bengali Babus after they were done with the British (Joshi branchcollective.org, Husain xxx). Under such circumstances, Ishwar Gupta had to cater to the sentiments of these Calcutta Babus, many of them readers of Shongbād Probhākor: “The diasporic Bengalis living in northern and western India were subscribers of Probhakor and they regularly sent updates about local important matters. During the Sepoy Mutiny these correspondents rendered a special service to Probhakor” (Bankim 712). A celebration of Kolkata as the archetypical expression of Bengaliness is very often indistinguishable from a celebration of the empire in the literary and cultural products of the nineteenth century. Rupchand Pokkhi's renowned song about Kolkata is a case in point (fully reproduced in Patrea 9-14). It begins with a chant of 'glory to the city of Kolkata', and calls Kolkata a celestial city ('elder sibling of heaven'). Then the song rapidly degrades into a catalogue of the achievements of the British. This celebrated song comes across as a piece of sycophancy at worst, and public relation for the white 48|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 rulers at best when we read it today. But Bengali identity in making was in many respects a contribution of the newfound position of significance which Bengalis enjoyed under the British, following the successful conspiracy leading to the removal of the last Muslim sovereign of Bengal. Gupta's defence of the British must be seen in this respect. Upper and middle class Bengalis thrived as an ally of the British during this period which was yet to witness any major clash of interests between them. It is interesting to note that a general current of Anglicisation led Rupchand Pokkhi to always give his name as R. C. Bird, i.e. Roop Chund Bird as the editor's foreword in Bipin Gupta's Puraton Proshongo informs us (সবতর). The trauma over a loss of the past is integral to all major revival movements, as the history of Irish revival also attests. Ishwar Gupta attributes a want of historical sense among the Bengalis to the lack of record-keeping and unavailability of biographies of the great people born in Bengal. An elated reader's letter to Shongbād Probhākor observes that Ishwar Gupta's initiative will bring the great poet- singer Ramprasad (creator of devotional songs of Kali known as Shyamashongeet) to the purview of Nobbo Shomproday (New Society, a shorthand for the westernised Bengalis) who were hitherto ignorant of him (Collected Works 1: 25). The same letter also painstakingly and anachronistically attempts to establish Ramprasad's credentials as the worshipper of a single godhead, rather in the vein of Brahmo elitism, Kali being a mere name for that godhead (the letter writer goes on to muse: what is in a name after all, and a rose being called by any other name would smell just as sweet). Ramprasad's evocation of Kali is little more than a mere lip service to idolatry, the letter observes (1: 26-27). Ishwar Gupta himself later states: whom the non-idolatrous worships under the name of , Ramprasad worships the same God under the name of Kali (1:40).

Ramprasad Sen 49|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

A deflection of our own heritage of Shakto worship is thus consciously or unconsciously undertaken by Ishwar Gupta. But this deflection is not without benefits to the nation-making, as Gupta's attempt of consolidation is apparent in his identification of idolatrous Kali of the Hindu masses with the non-idolatrous Brahma of the Brahmo elites. As Gupta stated what Ramprasad Sen worshipped as Kali was what the Brahmos worshiped as Brahma (1: 13), he was pursuing coordiNation.

North Kolkata, near the renowned temple of Chitteshshori, from whom derived its name. James Baillie Fraser, 1826

However, Gupta's project is also marked by a sense of urgency, as the rapid erosion of the old society caused by the advancement of colonialism made it increasingly difficult to carry out the process of documenting the past. Gupta speculated that in another five years all records of the works of these poets would be lost as the ancient people who still were alive and could offer testimonies and manuscripts and transcripts from memory would be no more, and the contemporary young men coming out of western education system would have been forever deprived of this legacy (1: 56). Gupta appeals to the “Nobbo Shobhbho Shomproday” (New Civil Society, the westernised elites) to read the lives and works of the old poets in order to appreciate the wealth of Bengali language and literature (1: 56-57). While giving the details of the mechanism of patronage which helped the old poets survive and thrive in society, Ishwar Gupta clearly desired a similar mechanism in nineteenth century Kolkata. Evidently, Gupta who himself was dependent on the vagaries of market and other interest lobbies looked back longingly at the older patron-poet relationships and networks: “Oh! What pleasurable times that were lost. Now that King Krishnachandra is no more, that patron-encourager, that fortune's 50|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 favourite is no more, that Bharatchandra is no more, that Ramprasad Sen is no more, Anything of their kind is no more to be found. This age now is a false age.” (1: 76). We should ask ourselves here: is Ishwar Gupta a writer who remains obsessively confined to whatever he finds around him? Is he just a poet of jaha aache as Bankim put it so eloquently? Reading Gupta's works convinces us otherwise. Here it is important to note that Gupta's collection of lives and works of Bengali poets is not a hagiography; for example, he is fairly critical of Bharatchandra's renowned mongolkabbo Onnodamongol which, as Gupta says, lacks in most of the nine classical rasas except that of the erotic (Shirngāra rasa), with a little bit of heroic (veera rasa) thrown in to compensate; Onnodamongol is a testimony to Bharatchandra's scholarship, knowledge, diligence and care, while it also exposes a lack of what Gupta thinks as divine, creative inspirational force (1: 85-86). Ishwar Gupta's chosen dimensions of space which defined these poets-predecessors clearly reflect a larger pattern of the pre- British civilisational heritage that went into the making of Kolkata. The location of Bharatchandra is crucial here, as Gupta puts it: “The king asked: Which place under my dominion that is stretched from Nabadwip to Kolkata do you wish to inhabit?” (1: 68). The king in this sentence is Krishnachandra, and the “you” in this sentence is poet Bharatchandra, who comes to choose Mulajor as his preferred place of residence (modern day Shyamnagar on the Ganges, 25 km from Kolkata). Bharatchandra's origin is traced back to Burdwan, while he flourished in Krishnanagar in the royal court of King Krishnachandra and settled to live in Mulajor, thus moving progressively closer to Kolkata. This is not consciously suggested, but a careful reader can decipher in this trajectory the epicentre shifting slowly to Kolkata as if in a cultural-historical mapping which governs Ishwar Gupta's literary unconscious. Further, Ramprasad Sen lived at Kumarhotto, (modern day Halishahar on the Ganges, not far from Shymnagar again). This must be mentioned that these areas are not very far from Ishwar Gupta's own birth place at Kanchrapara on the Ganges. They constitute a common cluster. Ramnidhi Gupta, more popularly known as Nidhubabu, during his childhood was reared at Kumartuli, Kolkata. He is the third poet whom Ishwar Gupta discusses after Ramprasad and Bharatchandra. With Ramnidhi, Ishwar not just comes to Kolkata proper, he also delves into the subject of eighteenth century Bengali songs which included various popular and urbane forms like Kobigān. In connection with Ramnidhi, Ishwar speaks of the Pokkhis, a close-knit countercultural movement of intoxicated singers, heavy smokers of cannabis who dressed to appear like birds and spoke in a cooing manner (hence the name, Pokkhi). A place at Shobhabajar was the favourite den of the Pokkhis which 51|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 was also frequented by Ramnidhi, who as a singer was much admired by the Pokkhis (1: 89-90). Ishwar Gupta offers a very lively sketch of the Pokkhis' ways of life in connection with the biography of Ramnidhi. It is quite interesting to note that the wealthy patron of Ramnidhi as well as the Pokkhis named Ramchandra Mitra, the aatchala (arena with a typical eight-sided roof as can be seen in Bengal's temple architecture) of whose Shobhabajar residence used to host these musical soirées, amassed his riches by virtue of being an “agent of an American Captain” (1: 89-90). The comprador economy of Bengal is seen to be capable of promotion of Bengali culture, provided the latter does not clash in any immediate manner with the former. Ishwar Gupta ventures into a brief sketch of Ākhrāi songs, the main proponent-practitioner of that genre being Ramnidhi Gupta's maternal uncle Kului Chandra Sen (1: 91). Ramnidhi had his own foray into Ākhrāi music; he had organised an Ākhrāi competition between two teams, belonging to Bagbajar and Shobhabajar respectively, where he himself composed music and lyric for the Bagbajar team, the lead singer of which was Mohonchand Bose. This event took place in the Bengali year 1211 (1: 91). Later, a more popular version of Ākhrāi developed by Ramnidhi's close associate Mohonchand Bose came to be known as half-Ākhrāi (1: 92). While Ishwar Gupta was writing this article, Mohonchand was still alive, and was a living legend, albeit in frail health, a shadow of his former self. Interestingly, one of the major differences between the formats of Ākhrāi and half-Ākhrāi seems to be that in the former genre, the singer stands in the fashion of Kobigān which is also performed by standing poets (দড় কন) (though Ākhrāi did not employ an exchange of challenges and replies in the vein of Kobigān and here victory and defeat were solely determined by popular verdict on the performance of the teams), while in half-Ākhrāi the singer actually seats in the fashion of Toppa (1: 93). Toppa was the form of music pioneered by Ramnidhi Gupta which revolutionised Bengali songs and even today, after two hundred years, the genre is fondly sung and heard. Given the sad demise of Ākhrāi – it was already dead for thirty years by the time Gupta was writing his essay (1: 95) – as well as the passing away of Kobigān, Pānchāli, Pokkhi and most other forms of our indigenous music, the survival of Toppa is significant. Ishwar Gupta's choice of the first three poets in this series on the poets and songmakers of the past age is indeed significant, as the works of these three have survived the weathering of time; Ramprasad's devotional songs addressed to Ma Kali (Shyamashongeet), Bharatchandra's text Onnodamongol and Ramnidhi's Toppa have managed to interest Bengalis steadily throughout the 52|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 modern period. They still strike a chord because the creations of these three writers have gone into the making of the cultural legacy of the Bengalis of Kolkata. Otherwise, the steady loss of older forms of entertainments as time and mentality change is an inevitable fact of cultural history that Ishwar Gupta bemoans (1: 95), and in that context, we may observe that Gupta's project of coordiNation has succeeded to a certain extent. He instilled a love for some of these older forms of Bengali poetry in the mind of the increasingly westernised Bengalis as the Bengal Renaissance was about to dawn, and Gupta ensured that they would never again be lost by making their appeal discernible for the newly ascendant class of university educated Bengalis. The pre-colonial roots of a colonised people were restored, never again to be easily lost. Interestingly, Brahmo movement seems to have encouraged a seamless exchange between Ākhrāi and its own devotional repertoire. Gupta observes that a noted singer of Ākhrāi was also a regular performer of Brohmoshongeet at Rammohan Roy's meetings (1:94), whereas the formless (nirakara) unitary god of the Brahmos became a topic of the Ākhrāi songs (1: 93-94). It shows that the popularity of this medium of Ākhrāi was such that the Brahmo movement felt a need to appropriate it, whereas Ākhrāi too felt a necessity to align itself to the intellectual and philosophical currents of Brahmoism, which became prevalent in the educated society. Ākhrāi had a geographical trajectory that once more exhibited a movement towards the epicentre of Kolkata: it originated at , then it started being performed at Chinsurah; performers from Chinsurah used to come to Kolkata's (Borobajar) for Ākhrāi soirées at the floral garden () of a rich patron named Kashinath, Gupta informs (1:103). Eventually, Jorashanko of Kolkata became a centre for Ākhrāi music, with its own local breed of performers. Later, also boasted of the honour of an Ākhrāi team of its own. This Kolkata-bound movement of Ākhrāi also changed its generic format; the original version performed in Shantipur had two segments, namely Kheur (argument) and Probhati (of the morning) but Chinsurah and Kolkata teams of Ākhrāi added an introductory part which sang of the subject of Durga (Bhobani bishoy). Further, Ākhrāi was purged of those elements which were considered to be uncouth, rustic and obscene as it moved towards an urban, metropolitan sensibility, which is evident in Gupta's commentary (1: 103). This is obvious that Kolkata tended to move away from all folk rusticity, as the city strove for sophistication and a certain bhadralokisation. Ishwar Gupta appreciates that tendency, not realising that his own poetry will later fall victim to that very trend as his poetry will fall short of the suave standards of colonial urbanity, Bankim's adverse comments coming 53|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 immediately to mind. Committing the entire oral tradition of Bengali music into writing, haunted by a sense of urgency on the face of a quickly vanishing past that is becoming increasingly difficult to be accessed by the colonised Bengalis, Ishwar Gupta's oeuvre is marked by a tension, an apprehension: Gupta repeatedly says that with the possible impending demise of all the old timers, Bengal will be forever impoverished, deprived of its heritage (1: 107). Gupta is worried that the new, westernised generation will forever remain misinformed about the glorious heritage of Bengali music and poetry if this project is not carried out and past works are not retrieved: How can some young men, who, with practising western knowledge and western poetics have only learnt western connoisseurship, be appreciative towards Bengali poetry? Because they have no cultivation (অনশন), they have not heard anything. They scoff at and dislike (Bengali poems and songs) upon hearing a vulgar poem or two in marketplaces from mere actors. Therefore we cannot accuse the new lot (Nobbogon) as callous, because how they can (be expected to) appreciate unacquainted matters (1: 109). Gupta expresses his hope that once the westernised youth of his day gets a glimpse of this treasure of Bengali music, the attitude of indifference (or that of contempt) will yield to that of an appreciation of tradition. Here he is concerned about Kobigān in this particular statement. The so called lower castes played a huge role in the performance and reception of this genre, whereas the rich classes, comprising of upper and lower castes alike, patronised kobigān. Ishwar Gupta rescued Kobiwala Gonjla Guin from oblivion, who belonged to the lower stratum of society. Ishwar Gupta attempted to retrieve this tradition of Kobigān which had Guin at its origin, while this chiefly oral tradition was at a substantial risk of being forever lost. Sadly, the twentieth century Hungryalists, masquerading their westernisation in the guise of subaltern sensibility, did not even care to mention Ishwar Gupta in their revolutionary proclamations involving the name of Gonjla Guin and other Kobiwalas (Nachiketa Bandyopadhyay 190-191). Gupta informed us: “It had been 140 or 150 years since Gonjla Guin set up his professional troupe that used to sing at the soirées held at the residences of rich people;” Guin left behind three pupils: Lalunondolal who lived at Forashdanga (), Roghu and Ramji; Horu Thakur was a disciple of Roghu, Bhobane Bene of Ramji and Nitey Boishnob of Lalunondolal; further, Keshta Muchi (a cobbler by caste) was a fearsome opponent and defeated Horu Thakur (who was a ) a number of times (1:109). The origin of Kobigān is traced back to 54|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Gonjla Guin by Gupta, who offers his obeisance to Guin in these words: “O Guin, were you a mere human being? One whose expanse is like that of the cosmos, is named Gonjla (the term means a pint of alcohol)! Can one measure this pint (Gonjla) with a palm's offering (Aanjla)?” (1: 110). This work of collecting old Bengali poetry was a work more difficult that meditation on a corpse (Shob Shadhon), according to Gupta, who interviewed more than two hundred odd old-timers for this project (1: 111). It is indeed a measurement of the deflection of nation-consciousness of the Bengali people that the Hungryalists have been allowed to make a song and dance about the Kobiwalas of Bengal, lifting them straight from Gupta's works without bothering to acknowledge this man's hard labour. Surely, Gupta did not suit the temperament of the westernised intelligentsia, and he had to be assigned to oblivion. The life of Kobiwala Ram Basu once more depicts the Kolkata-bound movement. He was born in the village of Shalikha (modern day Shalkia) of district, and as a child came to Jorashanko to live with Banarasi Ghosh, his uncle (pishemoshai), Gupta tells us (1: 111). He was a lyricist and wrote for many noted Kobiwalas (including Bhobane Bene, Nilu Thakur, Mohon Sorkar, Thakurdas Singha) since his early adolescence, before coming to don the hat of Kobiwala himself, launching his own troupe of Kobigān. Later, under his tutelage, a troupe of Kobigān also came into existence at which regularly performed his songs. Ram Basu died at the premature age of forty two, while Ishwar Gupta highly praises Ram, bestowing upon him a crowning glory among all Kobiwalas: “What Kalidasa is to Sanskrit Poetry, what Bharat Chandra and Ram Prasad are to Bengali poetry, Ram Basu is to the poetry of Kobiwalas” (1: 113). Ram Basu died in the Bengali year 1235/1236, Gupta tells us; Basu returned in ill health after performing at the Durgapujo held in the residence of Raja Harinath Ray of (1: 112). This brief information probably tells us two important things. First, Kolkata was steadily emerging as a beacon for the districts which looked forward to hearing from the songmakers of Kolkata, as the districts got directly exposed to the . Kolkata artists performing in districts thus begins as a steady cultural practice, particularly during Durgapujo festivities. Secondly, while the rich people constantly patronised him, Ram Basu was probably over-exhausted owing to the demands placed on him by the lovers of Kobigān, and that such performances probably took a toll on his health. Gupta further observes that since the death of Ram Basu, no one is enamoured of hearing the songs of the Kobiwalas anymore (1:130). While discussing Ram Basu, Gupta takes good care to include the life and works of some of his renowned contemporaries: Rasu Nrishingho, Horu Thakur, Nilu Thakur, 55|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Nitaidas Boiragi (1: 130-131). He thus effectively records that milieu in which a plethora of talents flourished during a period which was the peak of the art-form of Kobigān.

Durgapujo at the residence of a wealthy Bengali. , 1840.

As Gupta was carrying out his project, he was also being engulfed in that movement of colonial urbanity which will very soon claim himself as a casualty. Colonisation was an ongoing process. This was the big crunch, here was the formation of the metropolis as its periphery broadened and the ever expanding city continued to swallow its villages. Folk sensibility continued to shrink as the colonial city enlarged. This happened in terms of space, and in terms of history and culture. Exemplifying that colonial progress, Nirad C Chaudhuri in the twentieth century ridicules the remnants of rural superstition among the people of Kolkata: In the narrow lanes of Calcutta were to be found, surviving and spinning out an unnatural existence, rituals and beliefs, practices and superstitions, … The people of Calcutta worshipped the “Goddess of No Prosperity” together with the Goddess of Prosperity; they worshipped the Goddess of Skin Disease and of Cholera; the Goddess of Smallpox was one of their major deities. Their menfolk (sic) were extremely afraid of going into the water closet with their hair let down, and they always tied its ends in a knot before going in, because they believed the W.C.s to be the favourite haunts of evil spirits who would possess them unless their hair was up. (402-403). 56|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The Enlightenment haughtiness with which Nirad C. pokes fun at Olokkhi (Goddess of No Prosperity) and Lokkhi (Goddess of Prosperity), Goddess of Cholera (OlaiChondi) and Goddess of Smallpox (Shitola), though he does not mention the original Bengali names of these goddesses, is a characteristically male and imperial denigration of one's own native Shakto heritage. Nirad C. wants to make it doubly disreputable, and therefore conjures up a separate Goddess of Skin Disease, whereas Bengalis only have a Goddess of Smallpox, Shitola, whose history by the way is more than a thousand years old and is at least traced back to the Buddhist period. Further, imposition of Western standards often resulted in dubious systems of analysis. WC of the west cannot be compared to the Indian style toilets, which were often a long walk from one's house, invariably always outside one's main residence (owing to reasons of purity), usually at the periphery of one's premises, under the open sky, very often near bushes and woods, fit places for imagining the haunting of ghosts. Nirad's imposition of the yardstick of WC on Indian style toilets only serves to condemn our cultural realities.

Another depiction of Chitpur, the typical Bengali Kolkata, with the temple on the background. Charles D'Oyly, 1830.

Kolkata, as the second city of the empire was encouraged to lose its own identity, tradition and history in a deluge of colonialism. Ishwar Gupta is fighting against that tide which is about to claim himself as its prey, but before that, he is capable of doing his bit: he resuscitates Bengal's forgotten glory of Kobigān. And he is doing this precisely at a time when Bengal's past is getting violently 57|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 uprooted owing to the machinations of colonialism: Gupta laments that even those cultural forms which were prevalent only 20 or 30 years ago are getting lost nowadays, with no hopes for retrieval, and the young Bengalis are being forever deprived of the glorious legacy of Kobigān. He reiterates that unless young people are acquainted with the nuances of these indigenous cultural forms, appreciation of these art forms is not possible (1: 131). However, at times Gupta voice resonates with the certainty and confidence of a seer; “henceforth these poets will roam immortal in the world,” he proclaims with an authority after publishing the collections of the lives and works of these pre-British Bengali poets (1:182). Further, we should note that as he recorded the chronicle of Bengali poetry of seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century, he was acting as a connoisseur, as an insider, not just as a conservationist, which is evident everywhere in his commentary on these poets. He considered it a pilgrimage, not a painstaking task. Committing oral traditions to written discourse is of singular importance as nation-consciousness begins to assume definite shapes and forms, and Gupta's contribution in this regard is Promethean. One oral song after another comes to him in incomplete and fragmentary shapes, but Gupta never gives up, and he renews his requests to all old-timers to come forward and help in this project with whatever that can be excavated from their memory. Nitai Boiragi was born in the Bengali year 1158 at Chandannagar, south of Chuchura. His main songwriter Gour Kobiraaj was an inhabitant of Shimulia (Shimla) of Kolkata, and Gour Kobiraaj was a regular writer for a number of other Kobiwalas, including Lokey Jugi (Lokkhikanto, who was a Jugi by caste) and Nilu Thakur. Nitai Boiragi was called by his ardent followers Probhu Nityananda (after the name of Nityananda, the legendary religious leader and social reformer of the Boishnob movement), and Gupta notes that his sphere of influence included Kumarhotto, , Kanchrapara, Tribeni, Bali, Forashdanga and Chuchura (1: 167). These locales (which include Gupta's own native place Kachrapara) speak of a cultural map that went into the making of Kolkata. The fact that Nitai too met the same way of death as Ram Basu did (he returned ill from a performance during Durgapujo at the house of the king of Kashimbajar and died eventually) (1: 167), speaks volumes about the predicament of a Kobiwala and the crisis of the cultural practice of Kobigān which was an absolutely exhaustive performing art, with a requirement of a tremendous amount of mental and physical labour. CoordiNation as a project in order to be carried out needed the best possible contributions from Gupta's countrymen, who once lamented that his project could succeed only if there was a synthesis of “the intellect of the Bengalis and the physical strength of the Khotta (a derogatory Bengali term for the 58|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 people from the part of upper India including modern day and UP who are considered to be physically robust), riches of the wealthy and the mindset of an enthusiast” on the part of the Bengali people (1: 181). Not to be deterred by difficulties, Gupta continued to chronicle the literary history of Kobigān. Renowned Kobiwalas Rasu and Nrishingho were brothers, who lived at a village near Forashdanga. They performed together (hence their names were always taken together as Rasu Nrishingho, as if they were one) and were contemporaneous with or slightly senior to Horu Thakur, as Gupta records (1: 183). Lokey Kana (not to be confused with Lokey Jugi) was another renowned Kobiwala based at Thonthon, Kolkata. His real name was Lokkhikanto Biswas, he was an excellent composer and singer, he specialised in Pānchāli, and according to Gupta he was renowned as a great humorist. Legendarily ready-witted, he was frequently compared with Gopal Bhanr (1: 207). His main opponent was Ganganarayan Naskar of Shobhabajar. Lokkhikanto was admired by his wealthy patrons who also feared the sharpness of his wit. He was survived by his son Boiddonath who carried on his troupe, and still later Lokkhikanto's grandson (by his daughter) Dorponarayan continued that tradition; he died some thirty five years before Gupta was recording Lokkhikanto's life and works (1: 209). Gupta refrains from reproducing Lokkhikanto's most works because of the high frequency of obscene words in them; Gupra uses the words profane (অপনত), unchaste (অসধ) to describe Lokey Kana's lyrics (1: 207-208). Ishwar Gupta while tracing a history of Kobiwalas gives us valuable insights into the cultural environment of the old, traditional Kolkata and adjoining districts of south Bengal. The fact that he himself belonged to this region which was now forming the nucleus of a consolidated Bengali identity and ushering the Bengali revival is significantly aligned with Gupta's project: he is a native inhabitant of this region which now serves as the epicentre of Bengal's nation-consciousness, and it gives him an insider's privilege in collecting the lost chronicles of these Bengali poets at the risk of being completely forgotten as colonial modernity continues it triumphant march. Consistent with Gupta's cultural mapping, Horu Thakur was a native of Kolkata's Shimulia again, and like a majority of other Kobiwalas he was neither educated in English or Sanskrit, nor he was particularly decent by the Victorian standards which was increasingly becoming the norm of the day in Ishwar Gupta's Kolkata. Gupta's collection therefore had to censor and suppress some segments of Kobigān which are not commensurate with imperial civilisational standards. Gupta says: 59|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

But the sad part is that some too debased, too hated, non-audible, unspeakable words used to fill (their poetry), therefore publishing them is not legitimate. … Earlier our most exalted noblemen, that included Maharaja Krishnachandra, Nobokrishno and others used to be very satisfied with such peculiar slangs (Sho-kar, Bo-kar, as Gupta puts it; in Bengali that means unspeakable vulgar expletives, mostly beginning with Sh and B), their entertainment having no bounds. Surrounded by cousins, relatives, kinsmen, good people, they heard with glad minds.” (1: 190). Gupta adds in the same breath that Raja Nabakrishna was an ardent admirer of Horu Thakur whereas Krishnachandra's favourite was Lochon Khorki of Shantipur. It is significant that Gupta extensively speaks on Horu, but Lochon Khirki of Shantipur finds just a cursory mention, proving that Kolkata and its surroundings are being privileged in his discourse. Further, here Ishwar Gupta is seen to be completely affected by the current standards of decency, calling those parts of Kobigān obscene which do not conform to those standards, thus purging those elements out of his chronicles which embarrass the imperial metropolitan sensibility. We have seen that the elitist cult of Victorian prudery wreaked havoc in the field of culture. Bengali Kobigān came to be consigned to the wasteland of history by stalwarts like Tagore. Further, there was manipulation, censuring and complete overhauling of lyrics in order to secure respectability and acceptance. Comprador classes were eager to conform to the standards provided by colonial masters. One interesting example of this bhadralok manipulation of texts of can be found if we compare the texts of the Kobir Lorai (Battle of Poetry, the standard competition in public between two rival Kobiwalas) between Bhola Moyra and Anthony Firingi as recorded by Kalidas Ray's Prachin Bongo Shahitto and Purna Chandra Dey's work on Anthony. With the recent republication of Purna Chandra Dey Udbhatsagar's text, Kobi Anthony Shaheb, this Kobir Lorai has been depicted in numerous stage adaptations and films which are made on the life of Anthony. Now, there is a place where Bhola responds to Anthony, saying that Anthony is confusing him with Lord Bholanath (Lord ) and Bhola says (in Purna Chandra's version): “If I am that Bholanath, then why it is so that everyone searches for the feet of Bholanath, but never searches for my feet (to pay obeisance)?” This line also featured in the lyric of -starrer Anthony Firingi. Interestingly, Kalidas Ray omits this particular line (that follows “If I am that Bholanath), saying that this part was obscene (667). It seems that Purnachandra Dey provided an altered version, because there is no obscenity there. There is 60|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 no way we can know for sure how that 'obscene' line went originally. Though, this is probable that the original version somehow went like this: If I am that Bholanath, then why it is so that everyone searches for the phallus (lingo) of Bholanath, but never searches for my phallus (to pay obeisance)? Further, the next four lines which follow are provided in Ray's work but find no mention anywhere else, as these lines, belonging to the segment of Kheur (quarrel) where the Kobiwalas attacked each other in expletives with some élan and gusto, were also indecent by the bhadralok standards. Now, this is one example where a Bhadralok sensibility is successful in deflecting an original lyric which now exists only in the manipulated version and can now only be heard within the colonially approved format of decency.

Exchange between Anthony Firingi (UttamKumar) and Bhola Moyra (AsitBaran). A still from Anthony Firingi (1967)

Owing to UttamKumar's stellar performance, Bengalis think of Anthony Firingi whenever they hear a mention of Kobigān 61|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Nineteenth century Kolkata, as the colonial city, was subjected to a “sweeping imperial sense of metropolitan enormity” (Hunt 187). It was inside this enormity of a colonial headquarter that Ishwar Gupta was producing a native cultural counterweight by running the first vernacular daily in the subcontinent, where he tried to foster a sense of native rootedness, which later acted as the strongest motif in the . Gupta's project of coordiNation is about recovering an identity that one can call one's own. Gupta wanted to rescue the traditional identity and culture of this city that was increasingly at a risk of being devoured and appropriated (which these days is suitably glorified as hybridity and fusion and cultural dialogue in liberal-humanist parlance) in a Macaulavian manner that ominously resonates throughout Hunt's book: “Kipling himself had once written of Calcutta, 'Why, this is London! This is the docks. This is Imperial. This is worth coming across India to see!'” (189). The city called Calcutta was the headquarter of British India and was in the vortex of 'modernity' which increasingly became synonymous with a steady loss of heritage: “attorney William Hickey commented on how during the 1770s the old Bengal style of mud houses was 'being replaced by well-constructed solid masonry' (Hunt 198). Further, “a fiercely Enlightenment notion of progress and improvement, crucial to European self-approbation, was evident in the development of Calcutta. Out of the dense jungle of Bengal and the thick swamps of the Hooghly there arose a glistening tribute to Western civilization protected by the might of Fort William” (Hunt 198). Now, this myth has been perpetuated ad nauseum thanks to a certain amnesia on the part of the gullible Bengalis, who would always readily come to believe that Kolkata rose out of barren lands, that it rose out of jungle and swamps. Our colonisers wanted this impression, that nothing at all existed here immediately prior to their arrival. Whatever past glories that India could boast of must be suitably pushed back to ancient times (owing to the invasion theory, the British too could bask in the glory of ancient India). Colonialism justifies itself precisely on these terms of an a priori blankness or backwardness of the colonised people. While “in Calcutta, there took place a sustained process of cultural Anglicization” (Hunt 219), the attempt to justify the violation of Bengali cultural traditions also came in a packaging of plurality and multiculturalism, cross-cultural dialogue and coexistence of communities. Liberalism never fails to serve the long-term purposes of imperialism in a colony. Sample this statement: “Calcutta was, like Cape Town, an expressly multicultural city. 'Chinese and Frenchmen, Persians and Germans, Arabs and Spaniards, Armenians and Portuguese, Jews and Dutchmen, are seen mixing with the Hindoos and 62|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

English, the original inhabitants and the actual possessors of the country,' as Maria Graham recounted it” (Hunt 202). Multicultural Kolkata is home to everybody, with no superior claim or priority of the Bengalis. As colonial standards preside over this multicultural domain, effectively the status quo of the most powerful principle of domination (that of colonial authority) remains supreme, because any indigenous power can never challenge that authority by staking its own claim to rule its own land without in fact unsettling the fundamental premises of multiculturalism. Acceptance of this multiculturalism is habitually done by a bhadralok liberal-humanist sensibility that remained one of the most potent factors behind the deferral of nation-consciousness. However, as opposed to the multicultural and cosmopolitan Kolkata, there was another Kolkata that was not embarrassed of its Bengali characteristics. Gupta was rooted in the native (and not the multicultural) Kolkata. Bankim wrote about an anecdote that relates to Ishwar Gupta's childhood years in Kolkata's Jorashanko. It consists a rhyme of two lines that later acquired a legendary status: It is said that when Ishwar Gupta was three years old, once he fell ill after coming to his maternal home in Kolkata. He was bed ridden in that illness. Kolkata in those days used to be quite unhealthy, and there was too much menace of mosquitoes and flies. A bed ridden Ishwar Gupta one day composed and recited the following Mosquitoes by night, flies by day Shooing these in Kolkata I stay (বরবত মশ নদবন মন এই তড় ব কল বকত আন) Really? Many may not believe this – we don't know whether to believe or not. But since the legend about John Stuart Mill learning Greek at the age of three has spread throughout the world of letters, then let this word have its spread too. (708). Now, Gupta's childhood composition was a typical nineteenth century celebration of native Kolkata, in the midst of all the dirt and drudgery. It could well have been a characteristic piece from the genre of Kobigān. Indeed Gupta's proficiency in this genre was noticed by people around him during his childhood. Bankim extensively quotes from a letter written by a childhood friend of Ishwar Gupta published after Gupta's death, in the Shongbād Probhākor Literary supplement of 1 1266 Bengali Year, which informs us of the following: 1. That Gupta, when he was 11/12 years old, started doing extempore composition for professional 63|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 teams of Kobiwalas when they came to perform at Kanchonpolli (original name of Kanchrapara). 2. That Gupta was always a gifted poet, and could easily compose verse since early childhood. 3. That he was a shrutidhor, which means he could remember whatever he heard just once. It is pointed out by Gupta's childhood friend that Gupta could remember all Bengali poems which he heard, and he had a pictorial memory, which used to capture words forever in its canvass. 4. That he was a good student (now, this is a curious point, given that he did not complete any formal education), and on his own initiative he mastered entire Sanskrit grammar (Mugdhobodh) in one and half month flat, at the age of seventeen (Bankim 709).

“Gentoo Pagoda and House” of Chitpur by Thomas Daniel, 1787. Contrast the cleanliness, hygiene and prosperity of this 'native' Kolkata with the ones painted by Fraser (1826) and D'Oyly (1830). It exposes the fact (otherwise carefully overlooked) that British colonisation impoverished and degraded the Bengali parts of Kolkata

It seems that Gupta was a prodigy, and that the responsibility of recovering Bengaliness from the onslaught of colonialism was in able hands. Ishwar Gupta died at a premature age of 47, as if finishing his jobs early imposed an early retirement on him. A new scene was about to begin, and it is as if Gupta went away from the stage to make way for the new actors who would now occupy centrestage and limelight in Kolkata. One of Gupta's early jobs was the founding of Shongbād Probhākor in 1831, when he was just nineteen years old. Jogendramohan Thakur of the Pathuriaghata Thakur family was of same age and was Ishwar's close friend and patron. It was Jogendramohan who funded Shongbād Probhākor as it was published for the first time in the Bengali Year 1237 (1831 CE). 64|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Bankim in his essay on Ishwar Gupta called this collaboration between Jogendramohan and Ishwar Gupta as an alliance between Lokkhi and Shoroshshoti, i.e. wealth and creativity (710). Ishwar Gupta's account of the history of Shongbād Probhākor (published in the issue of 1 Boishakh 1253) informs us that this venture as it was founded was completely dependent on Jogendramohan for finance (qtd. in Bankim 710). Prior to Probhakor's publication, there were only a handful of Bengali newspapers; their numbers totalled six, and none was a daily. Probhakor became the first vernacular daily of India, as Bankim points out (710, 712). Following Jogendramohan's death in the Bengali Year 1239, Probhakor ceased its publication, only to reappear in 1243, this time also under the patronage of the Thakurs of Pathuriaghata (Bankim 711). Clearly, the crowd-on-the-street hypothesis of Rosinka Chaudhuri does not hold much ground. Upon a close inspection of the history of Probhakor and Gupta, we can see that Gupta and his newspaper thrived on the patronage of the rich, as an extensively long list of its wealthy patrons published by Gupta and quoted by Bankim establishes beyond doubt (712). The list contains a total of twenty two names, including some of the crème de la crème of the wealthy and powerful Bengalis of Kolkata. Gupta once told his brother (who showed some indifference to work and salary, and did not take professional responsibilities seriously): “If I go on begging for one day, from this Kolkata city alone I can fetch one lakh rupees. What will befall you (when I am no more)?” (Bankim 715). This shows the extent of Gupta's influence over his rich patrons. This is not to say that Gupta or Shongbād Probhākor did not enjoy popular support of the common readers. They surely did. In fact Gupta's project of coordiNation necessarily depended on an alliance of different interests, different classes and different sensibilities. He freely moved across the boundaries which separated these different zones because here was a language at his service that was yet to be split between the high and the low, here was an indigenous ethos that was still commonly shared: “Ishwar Gupta lived at the crossroad of the old and the new. Just like the new times, he took membership of a number of societies including , and just like the old times, Gupta used to compose for Kobi troupes and half-Ākhrāi” (Bankim 713). In other words, Gupta effortlessly walked to and fro across the line between new and old sensibilities, he was open to the new while firmly rooted in his old cultural traditions. Sadly, the new would not show the same openness to the old and very soon the old would be discarded as obscure and obscene. Bankim recollects that there took place a severe Kobir Lorai (albeit one that was in printed format), between Ishwar Gupta and Gourishankar 65|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Bhattacharya, editor of Roshoraj. There was 'high obscenity' from both sides in this battle, which was finally won by Gupta. James Long campaigned for an anti-obscenity law in the aftermath of this sensational incident. Following the enactment of this law Bengali literature was purged off this sin of obscenity, as Bankim observes (713). A core concern of Gupta's project of coordiNation was to consolidate the Bengalis living in different geographical locations, in different parts of Bengal and India. He tried to accomplish this mission with his daily, where he used to publish accounts of different districts of Bengal, facilitated by his extensive travels in these districts. Gupta used to travel by boat after Durgapujo, as Bankim tells us; he tried to excavate Bengal's history as he tried to map Bengali culture through these travels. Upon touring east Bengal, he wrote a poem about Raja Rajballabh; he wrote on the ruins of Gour, the ancient capital of Bengal (Bankim 714). Thus, Gupta was turning his Kolkata daily into a worthy vehicle of Bengali nation-consciousness, as Kolkata was justifying itself as the epicentre of Bengali identity. Consolidation of the Bengali community was being spearheaded from Kolkata, the seat of Bengali revival.

Chandpal Ghat on the Ganges. James Baillie Fraser, 1814.

In Bankim this revival comes to be self-conscious of its deflection from its indigenous co- ordinates: “Obscenity is a major fault in Ishwar Gupta's poetry. By omitting that (obscenity), in order to bowdlerize (Bankim uses the word 'bowdlerize' in his Bengali essay on Gupta) Ishwar Gupta, we have made his poetry powerless. The true connoisseur of poetry will decry us.” (718-719). Bankim proceeds to observe that Ishwar Gupta's obscenity is not really obscenity after all, because his is an anger against 66|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 falsehood and sin. This point is repeatedly emphasised by Bankim throughout his essay on Gupta: that Ishwar Gupta was an enemy of falsehood: “The sages used such language. For the Bengalis of those days such a language was habitual. I have seen many such instances, where veteran, noble-souled, sober, civil, honest people have started using foul language by looking at a sinful crime. The language to express anger in those days was obscene itself.” (719). Bankim insists that Gupta does not resort to obscene language for sensual, selfish gratifications, but with the purpose to give vent to his ire. This defence by Bankim is purported to save Ishwar Gupta from being castigated by an increasingly prudish age, under the heavy influence of Victorian morality. Further, Bankim is also quick to point out that the question of taste varies across time, and across space, and varies from one country to another (719). Caution therefore had to be exercised by those educated Bengalis who were bearers of Victorian sensibility before summarily dismissing Ishwar Gupta. Thus a thorough but veiled defence of Gupta's obscenity comes from Bankim, who challenges the imperial codes penalising Gupta's obscenity. Bankim pithily comments: “Many ancient poets of our country after being caught by the law of British taste have been convicted of the crime of obscenity for no guilt of their own” (720). Nation-consciousness attempts to fight back deflection, as Bankim defends Ishwar Gupta. However as the terms of that defence also had to be colonially approved, conforming to the dominant colonial standards, the resultant circuit of forces becomes rather complex. Bankim in any case did a commendable job, he did the best he could do, given the tide of those times. Bankim spoke of Ishwar Gupta as a prophet who was ahead of his times: “Ishwar Gupta was much larger than his poetry. His real identity is not there in his poetry. Those who are specially talented very often are ahead of their times. Ishwar Gupta was ahead of his time” (723). It is interesting to note that Bankim here probably alludes to Gupta's prose, most likely his journalistic writing, as greater than his poetry. It's clear that Gupta's poetry remained decisively passé for the new sensibility of the new nineteenth century, whereas Gupta belonged to the old nineteenth century. However, Bankim cites three cases of Gupta's pioneering role. First, patriotism. Bankim is not sure whether it ever existed among the Bengalis of previous eras, but he notes that it was really rare at the time of Gupta, and here Bankim quotes from Gupta's celebrated poem Swadesh (Shodesh). Bankim begins his essay with an anecdote where a Bengali after newly acquiring the status of a Shaheb (a westernised gentleman) cannot understand what mocha (plantain flower) is, and after much trouble decides to call it kela ka phool (flower of banana, in 67|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Hindustani, which was a lingua franca of Raj administration). Bankim says that while majority of Bengalis are being westernised these days (and therefore joining the kela-ka-phool bandwagon), Ishwar Gupta sticks to the Bengali mocha (706). There is also one personal experience which Bankim shares in order to explain the importance of Gupta to Bengali nation-consciousness. Bankim recounts an experience of enjoying a moonlit night by the Ganges, when he was looking for an apt poetic expression which would correspond with the scenery. He found none in English, and he could not find any such expression in modern Bengali poets like Madhusudan, Nabinchandra and Hemchandra. Then he heard a song of a boatman from afar: “Only this desire is there in my mind, mother/ By uttering Durga, I give up this life on Ganges”. Upon hearing that, Bankim animatedly felt: “Then my got quenched, the tune of my mind was there, could hear the heart's desire of a Bengali in the Bengali language” (706). Bankim observed that here was an element of identification, here someone could identify with one's own land, one's own locale, one's own roots, which was not to be found in the recent Bengali literature which was under heavy western influence, which was 'sophisticated' (again by colonial standards), but was certainly uprooted. “That is why I have attempted to collect Ishwar Gupta's Poetry. Here everything is purely Bengali. Madhusudan, Hemchandra, Nabinchandra, Rabindranath are poets of the educated Bengalis. Ishwar Gupta is a poet of the Bengalis. Nowadays pure Bengali poets are no longer born – there is no scope for that – there is no use for that. Unless the condition of Bengal deteriorates, a pure Bengali poet cannot once more be born” (Bankim 706). The second aspect of Gupta's pioneering role was his attitude to religion. Ishwar Gupta's religious views were ahead of his times, and here Bankim shares this starling information with us that at one point of time Ishwar Gupta was a Brahmo (706). Gupta was a part of Adi Brahmo Shomaj, and was a member of Tottobodhini Shobha; he used to worship together with Brahmos and used to give speeches in Brahmo meetings. He was close to and admired by Debendranath Thakur, as Bankim informs us. The third aspect was Ishwar Gupta's politics. Bankim comments that Gupta's political view was quite generous (Bankim uses the word 'udar' which can also mean liberal), and in this too he was ahead of his time (706). Unfortunately, owing to his space constraints Bankim does not discuss this point any further. Bankim is quite correctly aware of the geocultural significance of Gupta's accounts of his travels in the districts of Bengal. What I call Gupta's project of coordiNation in this article is most strategically executed in this part of Gupta's career. Gupta travelled through the Rajshahi district of east 68|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

View of from the opposite bank of Ganges. James Baillie Fraser 1826.

Bengal on boat along the river Padma, and his travelogue is published under the heading “Bhromonkari Bondhur Potro” (A Travelling Friend's Letter) (1: 211ff). He talks about the significant people whom he personally met there, about local schools and institutions, the history of which he came to know. He is aware of amusing and idiosyncratic anecdotes and shares them. He introduces some major figures of local importance who constitute the upper echelons of Bengali society in the district. From Rajshahi Gupta travels to Pabna, as leaving the river Padma he sails on Ichamoti river (1: 217ff). His itinerary closely reflects the cultural geography of Bengalis, always a riverine people. Gupta fearlessly criticises the indigo planters who oppress farmers and the complicity of the local British administrator in that act of oppression, offers a demographical sketch of the district and tells us about its administrative structure and division into thanas, provides a thorough list of all the Jomidars of this district, briefly describes its creation in 1828 by eking out some of the areas of Rajshahi and Jessore, and expresses his grief that the high officials (all British) of the district have not learnt Bengali well enough, which acts as an impediment in governance. This should be noted here that Ishwar Gupta used Shongbād Probhākor as a vehicle of protest against the severe oppressions of the colonial indigo planters, and an otherwise hostile anthologist Swapan Basu (he is adverse to Ishwar Gupta for siding with the British against the revolutionary movement of the Santhals, instead of expressing a solidarity with the latter (1: 43); Basu is highly anachronistic in expecting an expression of revolutionary solidarity from Gupta towards the Santhals, 69|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 we might say that he is judging Ishwar Gupta by his an unfair yardstick) showers high words of praise on Gupta for fearlessly writing against this oppression on the Bengali farmers carried out by the white colonisers. Since the inception of Shongbād Probhākor in the Gupta's newspaper took up a fearless stand in favour of Bengali farmers who were oppressed by indigo planters, and Gupta did not stop writing against the colonial atrocities committed in Bengal's villages by the indigo planters till the end of his life; even after his death, Probhakor remained faithful to the editorial line set by Ishwar Gupta, and continued to give detailed coverage on the atrocities of indigo Planters, even at the risk of legal-governmental actions (Basu: 1: 50). Basu's collection also establishes that Probhakor criticised not just the white non-governmental settlers who imposed indigo planting in one village after another, but the British magistrates were also exposed in Gupta's daily (1: 330). Let us go back to Gupta's travels in districts. The next region in his itinerary was Faridpur, and Ishwar Gupta gave a detailed account of this area, including its demography, its cultural life and its institutions. An account of College follows (one notices that not a single Muslim is found among the scholarship holding students – though the community held a demographic majority in this area – the complete list of whom is given by Gupta) (1: 231ff), and then an account of the district Bhulua is given where Gupta talks at length about its natural and human geography (1: 234ff). Gupta repeatedly observes that the caste hierarchy of east Bengal (Bhulua and Chittagong in particular) is at variance with the system prevalent in (1: 237, 241, 248, 263). A description of Chittagong follows next, and then Gupta takes up Tripura, Coomilla and . He discusses about Rajnagar at length, the capital of Raja Rajballabh, and mentions the Raja's praiseworthy attempt to initiate widow marriage (1: 263ff). Next, Gupta turns to Barisal. He notices that Barisal has a total of 1 million population, out of which majority is Hindu (dosh ana, or 10/16th as he puts it) (1: 268), but he also notices that among the Muslims the Firajis (adherents of Faraizi movement, started by Haji Shariyatullah) are gaining momentum. Firajis are extremely tyrannical and aggressive, Gupta observes (1: 277). A word or two about this movement (with close links with Wahabi) may not be out of place here. Founded in 1818, this movement wanted to purge all Hindu impurities from Islam in Bengal. It insisted on adherence to proper Islamic codes, and aggressively propagated Islam, subjecting non- believers (i.e. Hindus) and deviants (who were Muslims but were not following proper Islam; for Faraizis they were deviants) to violence. Probably the Faraizi movement played a key role in changing the demographic composition of Barisal and other districts of east Bengal, by slowly making them 70|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Muslim majority areas. This is a trajectory of Bengal's modern history which needs to be explored in details. Gupta's merit was that he was able to bring the worrying feature of the Faraizi movement to the notice of Kolkata intelligentsia. But his was just a cursory glance at that phenomenon which would consequently prove fatal for the Bengali speaking Hindus in the next hundred years. Gupta did not certainly foresee that. With Barisal his travelling commentary on east Bengal districts comes to an end, in which Gupta has offered objective portraits of folk life that was vanishing fast in the wake of colonialism. His itinerant project of writing about east Bengal qualifies as our first cultural documentation. However, it is not without flaws. Gupta sometimes appears to patronise rural life which can amount to condescension. Needless to say, a big brother attitude of Kolkata does not help coordiNation. But to his credit, Gupta has an open mind, and a curiosity worthy of a cultural historian which together inform his attempt to document the socio-cultural life of the districts. Gupta consolidates Bengali nation- consciousness with Kolkata as its worthy epicentre, as the purveyor of Bengali territories, coordiNating among its peripheries. Modern day Bengalis become part of a coordinating system with Kolkata as their heart and as their nerve centre, ensuring that a network is maintained and information from different parts are duly received and processed inside a new discourse of nation-consciousness. Thus a sense of a common Bengali community is forged through Shongbād Probhākor. Probhakor became a name. So, exploiting its brand name, Gupta later authored a book named Hit Probhakor which as a text mixed poetry with prose, touching upon God and the human relationship with God, but here the focus was really on the ethical questions of existence meant for young minds, in the vein of classical Indian texts like and Hitopadesha. But this book also contained a number of banalities, like the advice for dispensing with a bad wife, an arrogant servant and a crooked friend (Collected Works 2: 34). This book has four chapters: Mitrolabh, Shuhridbhed, Bigroho and Shondhi which closely parallels the textual scheme of Panchatantra. Significantly, this book was written upon a request from Bethune, who wanted Ishwar Gupta to produce a book of Bengali verse for school going children, as Ishwar Gupta's brother Ramchandra informed in the preface to this posthumously published text, where he attached the original letter from Bethune and its translation in Bengali (Collected Works 2: 2-4). Here it is quite amusing to note that Ishwar Gupta himself lampooned Bethune in one of his satirical poems that spewed venom against female education initiated by Bethune, who alone had destroyed the traditional virtues in women (like those of keeping brotos, 71|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 which were rituals involving folk worship in different seasons of the year; there were chants in Bengali and a fast had to be maintained till the worship was over) in his zeal to impart Western education on Bengali girls, according to Gupta (1: এবর).2 Extract from that satirical piece is provided in the notes. But Shongbād Probhākor supported the demand for education for girls throughout 1840s and 1850s, it supported widow marriage, and opposed (that encouraged polygamy which in turn could be a bane for all Bengali women, not necessarily the women of the three upper castes – Brahman, Vaidya and Kayastha – alone where Kulinism was prominent), as Swapan Basu (who is otherwise very highly critical of Ishwar Gupta, as we have already noted) tells us (1: 8). Ishwar Gupta himself participated the first meeting of the governors of the first all girls' school in Kolkata founded upon the initiative of Bethune, named Victoria Balika Biddaloy (later rechristened on Bethune himself after his untimely death), as a report in Shongbād Probhākor dated 25 May 1849 tells us, extracted in Basu (2: 273-274); in another report published in the same year on 24 July, Gupta's newspaper exhorts all stakeholders to come forward for the noble cause of female education, and particularly criticises the Brahmos for their inaction in this front: this is also available in Basu's anthology (2: 277). Probhakor continued the editorial policy of Gupta and continued to support the cause of girls' education, which is evident in another report published in 1879 (Basu: 2: 329). So, is there a dichotomy in Gupta then? Does he both support and oppose female education? Having himself authored brotokotha or ritual chants for the worship of Shubochoni and Shottonarayon, Gupta as an ardent supporter of these brotos might have been offended that in the western-style education girls were encouraged to treat such indigenous rituals as little more than superstition. Importantly, his nostalgia for the vanishing culture of brotos seems to be shared by others as well. For example, a magazine named lamenting for the steady loss of the culture of broto among Kolkata women in its issue published in the Bengali Year 1294, quotes those lines of Ishwar Gupta which precisely speaks of the loss of the culture of observing broto in women; this issue of Deepika is collected in Swapan Basu's anthology of nineteenth century Bengali periodicals (2: 127). Gupta was not a misogynist, as it is sometimes made out to be, after Bankim in his essay made some adverse comments about Gupta, regarding the lack of a soothing feminine presence in his life, which, according to Bankim, suppressed Gupta's ability to sympathise with the fairer sex (710). Gupta in fact encouraged women writers and correspondents, by publishing their writings in Probhakor, this is evident in the case of Thakurani Dasi, a forgotten writer who used to publish her columns in Gupta's 72|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 newspaper (Basu 2: 701). Surely his editorial policy was not misogynist. Further, Gupta's Probhakor was a staunch supporter of Rani Rashmoni, and publicised her different welfare activities (one report dated 14 March 1853 is about the Rani's contribution towards building up civic amenities and urban infrastructure including roads, sanitation, drinking water and building of ghats), printed her appeal against rampant polygamy of Kulinism (report dated 31 July 1856), as well as her initiative for revival of Bengal's Hinduism which took a concrete embodiment in the Dokkhineshshor Kali Temple (report dated 12 April 1856, and here we must note that the Rani faced a lot of hostilities from conservative Hindus because of her lowly status in the Brahminical caste hierarchy as she was a Mahishsho/Māhiṣya by caste, and was not considered to be eligible to build a temple, and therefore the stand of Probhakor vis-a-vis the Rani is anything but a conservative, reactionary Hindu stand); Probhakor also reports in pithy details about the drunken raid of a band of armed Britishers (a hundred in number) upon the residence of Rani Rashmoni (dated 6 May 1858), a report that created a stir among the Hindus of Kolkata (Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay: 2: 743-744). Looking at Ishwar Gupta's admiration for the Rani, it is quite hard to believe that he was not able to respect women, as Bankim suggests.

Rani Rashmoni However, those apparently misogynist lines of Gupta which lampooned the western-style education for girls are oft quoted by progressive critics inevitably to brandish a sword against Gupta, but indeed what we see here is a prophetic statement; education on colonial terms spelt a disaster for the indigenous culture of Bengal. One easy proof of that would be to ask those who regularly parade this piece of Gupta's poem as a specimen of conservative Hindu misogyny that how many of them know anything at all about the broto of Shanj Shenjoti (সজ ছসবজনত), which in Gupta's poem is cited as one of the lost traditions. In fact, the present writer looked up Abanindranath Thakur's Banglar Broto in search of the broto of Shanj Shenjoti, to no avail. After looking up internet, a number of sites (almost all of them 73|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 from ) told us that this broto probably originated among the Oraon tribe who still practise it, and that Shenjoti/Shejuti rituals are held in the late autumn month of Oghran/AgraHaayana,3 while a page devoted to the district of Faridpur in Bangladesh mentions this broto in a cursory manner among other brotos which, we are told, are still practised by the villagers of this district.4 Finally, a full transcript of the ritual chants of this broto of Shanj Shenjoti was found in Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar's Thandidir Thole- Banglar Brotokotha which forms a part of the first volume of his Collected Works (355-364). Gupta's support of and opposition to female education therefore form a core dilemma of nation- consciousness, that keeps on pushing its trajectory in two opposite directions: collaboration and resistance, social reform and social reaction, imperial Enlightenment and native tradition. And they were sometimes held together, albeit in a great tension. Hit Probhakor is meant for imparting a lesson in Bengali poetics as well as classical Indian ethics, but this book can also be considered as a product of the school education system introduced by British. A newsreport of 1839 collected in Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay's anthology attests Gupta's long term interest in the spread of liberal school education, while he participated in the foundation meeting of a school at (2: 71-72). Clearly, Gupta and others saw a potential in the western-style education as it was seen to be accommodative of Hindu interests, though it is equally true that clashes were also frequent. Hindu College authorities once deliberated on the option of prosecuting Gupta because of his comments against the college, we are told in Bhabatosh Dutta's introduction to Ishwar Gupta Rochito Kobijiboni, and the same source also tells us that Gupta translated Tom Paine's Age of Reason into Bengali as a counter-ballast against Christian missionaries, on behalf of a conservative Hindu association named Dhormoshobha (||o). In this period, the strange transaction between the Hindu interests and the Western interests was in its full- fledged form, and it produced some fruitful manoeuvres where the Hindu was able to produce his own ideological discourse provided that it did not immediately collide with the interests of colonialism. Kolkata of nineteenth century is all about this strategic and strange marriage of convenience between the occident and the orient. It involves a deferral of the nation-consciousness, the way the end of Bankim's Anandamath involves a deferral of Hindu self-rule in favour of immediate British colonisation. Kolkata would gladly remain a colonial city in this precise gesture of deferral, singing the praise of the , provided the empire offered the space necessary for the Bengali Babus to stage a Renaissance. This deferral of nation-consciousness is archetypically exhibited by the nineteenth 74|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 century Kolkata which was Ishwar Gupta's world, as his life and works symbolise the deferred movement of Bengali identity. Some of Gupta's poems containing praises for the British empire are produced in the notes.5 The concepts of nationalism and patriotism were undoubtedly influenced by an exposure to the west, though this is a simplification to say that notions of a coherent Bengaliness did not exist prior to the arrival of British. But it is indeed true that poems like Shodesh (Swadesh) speak of a nationalist fervour which was perhaps absent in the poetry of previous ages (translation of a part of this poem done by me is provided in the notes). Again, Gupta's poem 'Matribhasha' (2: 441) is a case in point. The very phrase of 'mother tongue' was brought about by colonialism, and Gupta's use of the phrase matribhasha is a straight translation of the phrase mother tongue. What deflected nation-consciousness also helped to produce nation-consciousness by a dialectical process, and we can think of this as a pearl-oyster model of the birth of nation-consciousness, where the trauma of imperialism produces the pearl of nation-consciousness. It was a composite phenomenon. Nineteenth century Kolkata was a composite event, and it was taking place not just right in front of Ishwar Gupta's eyes, this event was happening with Ishwar Gupta performing in it. Old was giving way to the new, but was leaving nevertheless its ineluctable imprints. The Kobiwalas of Gupta's chronicle were breathing their last as Gupta was growing up in this city. Horu Thakur of Shimulia died in 1824, and Nilu Thakur (also of Shimulia) died in 1825, as the obituaries in Shomachar Dorpon tells us, collected in Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay's anthology of early nineteenth century periodicals (1: 143). If one needed to write an obituary for Ishwar Gupta, it should have mentioned him as a collaborator of colonialism and a sad victim of the same, as a leader of the cultural resistance movement of his people against colonial aggression, as a forgotten Brahmo who remained a traditional Hindu all the way to his core, as a reformer who sometimes was trapped in reaction, as an important turn in the time-space curve of Bengali nation-consciousness which he helped to both grow courageously and grovel abominably in front of the British eyes. He was born a Boddi, considered to be the archetypically intelligent caste among Bengalis – indeed, he is referred to in one of the contemporary rival periodicals as “Ishshor Boddi” in a slightly contemptuous tone (Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay 2: 186) – and he was uneducated, and yet before he was twenty he became editor of a newspaper that was about to become the first vernacular daily in the Indian subcontinent. He became a renowned poet while still in his adolescence, he became our first cultural historian and chronicled the 75|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 lives and works of Kobiwalas. His people had a glorious history of cultural performance, which was becoming obscure very fast, and he anxiously wanted to rescue that history. He coordiNated Bengaliness in the best possible way that he could do in those circumstances and by the time he died at the premature age of 47 in 1859, he came to be seen as the grand patriarch of Bengali art and letters. In childhood he was a prodigy, in adolescence he was an uneducated poet-songmaker, in youth he was an establishment, and in death he is a misunderstood figure. He is nineteenth century Kolkata crying out to be reread.

A clipping from a youtube video which laments that Ishwar Gupta's birthplace at Kanchrapara lies neglected and forgotten. Curiously, the heading of this report in this image introduces Gupta as an “eminent journalist” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x44vbT6YCAg)

Notes: 1. Here is a translation of a part of that poem of Ishwar Gupta done by me, where he exhorts his countrymen to embrace a native dog, forsaking the foreign God: 76|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Shodesh (Swadesh/One's Own Country)

Turn to a worship of the nature And all cheerfully hail her

Bow down to the earth's loving feet

Particularly for your own land Send a congenial errand

Lives are enchanted whom she'd charm to meet

On to the abode of the supreme king You won't feel like to cling Of which the feel of heaven a mere symptom is The mountain home of Shiva Full of name of blessing-giver Your own land is the supreme abode of benevolence and bliss

False are dear pearls and gold Love of one's land dearer mould There's not a jewel that did dearer come and stand As honeybees nectar bring Nurture thirsty hungerlings So do the good missives from one's own land

Feeling fraternity among you Ye countrymen purview Let compassionate eyes open and applaud How affections manifold On to the native dogs we hold Discarding all the mighty from abroad

(Collected Works 2: 439-440)

2. It is tempting to quote from that supposedly anti-feminist poem by Gupta. 77|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

যত কবর যব ছযন সব

ইবরনজ ক ক ভব।

ছধবর গর পরত মবর জবত

নভখর নক অন পব?

আব ছমব গব ন ভব

বত ধম ছকবত সব।

এক ছথন এবস ছশষ কবরব

আর নক তবদর ছতমন পব?

যত ড়গব তড় ছমবর

ছকত হবত ননব যব।

তখন এ. ন. নশবখ নন ছসবজ

নত ছ কবই কব।।

এখন আর নক তর সনজ ননব

সজ ছসবজনতর বত ব?

স কট চমবচ ছধর ব ছশবষ

নপনড় ছপবত আর নক খব?

ও ভই, আর নকনদন ছবচ থকব,

পবই পবই ছদখবত পব।

এর আপন হবত হনকব

বড়র মব হও খব। 78|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

আব ছট কতক বড় য নদন

ত নদন নক রক পব।

ও ভই, তর হবই দফ রফ

এককব স ফনরব যব।

(Collected Works 1: এবর-বর)

In this poem Gupta laments about the loss of the traditional virtues of women and in a sudden flourish of dystopic misogyny shudders at the prospect of Bengali women becoming masters of their own fate like the white European women after being subjected to western-style education, becoming independent, themselves driving horse-drawn carriages to enjoy the evening air of . It is not necessary to translate the whole poem. As it is impossible to translate Gupta's wonderful rhymes in

Bengali, there is little use in translating his anti-feminism alone. In this connection, it may be pertinent to quote from Mousumi Dasgupta's review article from the inaugural issue of JBS:

Fakir Mohan Senapati, considered the father of Oriya nationalism, once commented that Oriya

language survived the onslaught of Turk-Afghan-Persian-Arabic influences because of the

domestic sphere that was dominated by “Gruhalakshmis” who resisted the foreign influence that

had the men under its sway (since they worked in close contact with the Islamic colonizers and

used a language and adopted a culture that celebrated this collaboration) as Esha Dey, noted

Bengali writer recently reminisced in a personal conversation with the editor of JBS. Women's

role in sustaining the indigenous culture and language within domestic spheres has every claim

to be a topic of critical study. Women were less prone to foreign influences and they played

crucial roles in celebrating cultural expressions of identity

However, the male fantasy of women's purity contributes heavily to this image. It was 79|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

certainly no glory of the Indians that women had to be confined within the boundaries of her

home (as some nationalists uncritically assumed), and yet we see that women's confinement

became a matter of glory for patriarchy, and the nationalists of the old school. Women as prized

possession of patriarchy and women as unspoilt, pure, innocent space (free from all polluting

and corrupting foreign influences) meant for the furtherance of the ancien regime are the two

fancies which come together in this celebration of women as the sustainers of lost treasures.

("Motherhood/Maidenhood in Revolutionary Nationalism", JBS 1.1, 2012, p 151-52)

3. . Accessed on 17 Sep 2014.

4. . Accessed on 17 Sep 2014.

5. Some extracts from Gupta's overtly collaborationist poems are provided here, where he sings the praise of the British empire and lampoons the rebels of 1857 war of independence.

ধনন নচফ কমণর ধনন ছদও ব

ণন বট সসননণ ধনন ছদও ত।

বর রনহ মন বর ক প।।

সদ সমরকব নভ দম।

... জ নবটবশর জ রবণ নবটবশর জ।।

ছপবট ছখব নপব স এই কন ধর।

রজর সহযনবহত রণসজ পর।। 80|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

নন পবপ পট নন ননক গবণ, ন ,ন।

অধবমর অনকবর হইব কণ।।

ভ-বদবষ ভ তনম ঘটব পমদ।

আববত ছদবখ ঘঘ, ছশবষ ছদখ ফদ।।

নপপড় ধবরব ন মনরর তবর।

হনবদ নক শনন ণ?

হনবদ নক শনন ণ ঝননর রন

ছটকট কক।।

ছমব হব ছসন ননব সনজব ননক?

নন তর ঘবরর ছঢনক

নন তর ঘবরর ছঢনক ম ছখক

ছবর দব।

এতনদবন ধবন জবন যব রসতব।। (Collected Works 1: পবনবর)

পড়ক নপকদ মবনর অনব

উড়ক নবটশ ধজ সমদ সব।।

ইরবজর পরকম রনর পকশ।

অতনচর-অনকর হই ননশ।। 81|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

নবটবশর জ জ সব ভই ছর।

এবস সব ছনবচ কবদ নভগণ ই ছর।। (Collected Works 1: ছষ)

All of these poems are written on the occasion of the victory of the British in 1857, which is divinely ordained for Gupta. Clearly Gupta reflects the dominant feeling of euphoria among the educated Bengalis who constituted the backbone of British civil administration throughout India. Gupta freely uses English words like “Lord” and “God” in his Bengali poems in order to create an atmosphere of loyalty. Again, there is no use in translating whole pieces,. Interestingly, Gupta's dyspeptic lampooning of Rani Jhansi (Gupta does not spare Nana Sahib as well) has a distinct feel of Pānchāli, as it uses refrains and metres and rhythms suitable for this genre. One can almost visualise Gupta's poems being sung by some performer of Pānchāli after British victory in 1857, before this indigenous art form finally went extinct.

Primary Bibliography Gupta, Ishwarchandra. Ishwar Gupta Rochonaboli (Collected Works) Volume 1 & Volume 2. Ed. Shantikumar Dasgupta and Haribandhu Mukhoti. Foreword (to both vols) by Tripurashankar Senshastri. Kolkata: DuttaChowdhuri and Sons, 1361 (Bengali Year). ---. Ishwarchandra Gupta Rochito Kobijoboni. Ed. Bhabatosh Dutta. Kolkata: Calcutta Book House, 1365 (Bengali Year). Note: The preliminary pages of this book use anna (erstwhile constituent of rupee) symbols as page numbers, and while citing from this book's introduction written by Dutta, closest available symbols have been used.

Secondary Bibliography Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 2006. Bandyopadhyay, Brajendranath. Shongbadpotre Shekaler Kotha, Vol. 1. Kolkata: Bongiyo Shahitto Porishot, 1415 (Bengali Year). ---. Shongbadpotre Shekaler Kotha, Vol. 2. Kolkata: Bongiyo Shahitto Porishot, 1401 (Bengali Year). 82|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Bandyopadhyay, Nachiketa. “Hungry Movement after 50 Years.” Journal of Bengali Studies 3.1 (2014). 189-204. Basu, Swapan, ed. Shongbad Shamoyikpotre Unish Shotoker BaNalishomaj (A Selection of News and Articles from 19th Century Journals), Vol 1 (2nd Edition). Kolkata: Poshchimbongo Bangla Academy, 2013. ---. Shongbad Shamoyikpotre Unish Shotoker BaNalishomaj (A Selection of News and Articles from 19th Century Journals), Vol 2. Kolkata: Poshchimbongo Bangla Academy, 2003. Bhattacharya, Amitrasudan. Probondho Ponchashot: Bishoy Bankimchandra. Kolkata: Protibhash, 2014. Chattopadhyay, Bankim Chandra. Bankim Rochonaboli, Volume 2. Kolkata: Reflect, 1999. ---. Rajmohan's Wife. : Penguin, 2009. Chaudhuri, Nirad C. Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (Vol. 1). : Jaico Publishing House, 2013. Chaudhuri, Rosinka. “Poet of the Present: The Material Object in the World of Iswar Gupta.” New Cultural Histories of India: Materiality and Practices. Eds. Partha Chatterje, Guha-Thakurta and Bodhisattva Kar. New Delhi: OUP, 2014. 87-112. Dey, Purnachandra Udbhatsagar. Kobi Anthony Shaheb. Kolkata: Shoptorshi, 2013. Dutt, Romesh Chunder. The Literature of Bengal. Calcutta: Thacker Spink, 1895. Dutt, Utpal. Girish Manosh. Kolkata: M C Sarkar, 1994. Gupta, Bipin Bihari. Puraton Proshongo. Ed. Asit Bandyopadhyay. Kolkata: Pustok Biponi, 1989. Hunt, Tristram. Ten Cities that Made an Empire. London: Allen Lane, 2014. Husain, S. Mahdi. and the War of 1857 in Delhi. Delhi: Aakar, 2006. Joshi, Priti. “1857: Or, Can the Indian 'Mutiny' Be Fixed?”. branccollective.org. Accessed on 17 Sept. 2014..Web. Mallick, Pramathanath. Kolikatar Kotha (Aadikando). Kolkata: Pustok Biponi, 2001. Mitra Majumdar, Dakshinaranjan. Dokkhinaronjon Rochonashomogro Vol.1. Kolkata: Mitra and Ghosh, 1419 (Bengali Year). Patrea, Purnendu. Purono Kolkatar Kothachitro. Kolkata: Dey's, 2005. Ray, Kalidas. Prachin Bongo Shahitto. Kolkata: Aparna, 2008. 83|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Roy, Dilipkumar. Rochonashongroho (Vol. 3). Ed. Ujjwalkumar Majumdar. Kolkata: Ananda, 2005. Sarkar, Sumit. “Vidyasagar and Brahmanical Society”. Women and Social Reform in Modern India: A Reader. Ed. Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2008. 118-145. Srijato. facebook.com page. Post dated 22 December 2012. Accessed on 17 September 2014. . Web. Suman, Kabir. facebook.com profile. Post/ status update dated 17 April 2014. Accessed on 17 April 2014. Web. Thakur, Abanindranath. Banglar Broto. Kolkata: Gangchil, 2013.

(All translations from Bengali which appear in this article, unless quoted from another critic, are done by the author. All Bengali words, apart from familiar proper nouns, are spelt according to Bengali standard of pronunciation)

Tamal Dasgupta is the founder editor of Journal of Bengali Studies and Assistant Professor of English, Bhim Rao Ambedkar College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India. Kolkata Corporation and Subhash Chandra Bose: Death of a Dream

Chandrachur Ghose

Abstract While the rest of the country struggled to obtain more concessions from the British Government, or prepared to throw out the yoke of foreign rule by revolutionary activities, Kolkata in 1923 got the opportunity to shape its own destiny. The Swarajya Party was elected to the seat of power in what could still be considered the second city of the British Empire. In the driving seat to execute the programmes for materialising the dream of transforming the city and to prove to the world that Indians were capable of self-governance was a young man of 27 – Subhas Chandra Bose. In the following two decades Subhas grew from a talented local leader to become ‘Netaji’ for millions of Indians. The dreams of urban transformation, however, never left him even in the turmoil of provincial, national and international politics. This article chronicles his involvement with the Kolkata Corporation. It is neither a history of the Corporation, nor a biography of Subhas – the only purpose is to highlight the interface between the two.

Crowning glory of a waning icon Indian politics had reached a feverish pitch in November 1921. As the end of the year came closer, the non-cooperation movement led by gathered steam around the boycott of the Prince of Wales’ visit and of foreign cloth. Expectations around the “Swarajya in the course of a year”1 promised by Gandhi in September 1920 peaked after the All India Congress Committee (AICC) authorised the provincial Congress committees to undertake civil disobedience. The Prince’s arrival was marked by riots (in Bombay) as well as relatively peaceful and complete shutdown (in Kolkata) on November 17. As the upheaval raged on in the streets, on 22 November, a seventy three year old man stood up in the Bengal Legislative Council to propose a law which would be his crowning glory. Sir , the Minister in charge of the Department of Local Self-Government, placed on 85|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 the table of the Council a Bill to amend the law regulating the Kolkata Corporation. The Bill, which Surendranath claimed to be in line with the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms scheme, broke with the past in many aspects. It increased the number of members of the Corporation from 50 to 80; the number of elected members was increased from 35 to 72; women’s suffrage was introduced and posts of Aldermen were created. Although he provided for 13 seats reserved for the Muslim community, he advocated their election through mixed electorates. The effect of communal electorates, “moral and material, are baneful,” he argued. It impeded the growth of “Indian nationhood.”2 At any other time, the Bill would probably have been hailed as a major step towards , but the mood of the country was now different. The reforms (now enacted into the Government of India Act 1919) which Surendranath extolled, was not acceptable to the Congress, and it was on this point that he had disassociated himself with the Congress and formed the Moderate party three years ago. Leading the charge against the reforms scheme was someone who Surendranath had ceremoniously presented to Bengal politics a few years ago. In the summer of 1917, Surendranath introduced as the president of the Bengal Provincial Conference with a prophecy: “If I am permitted to indulge in a bit of prophecy which is my birth-right by virtue of my Brahmanical position, I will say this that he will within a measurable distance of time become one of the most prominent leaders of public opinion in this Province. I trust that his election on the present occasion will be the royal road to that which is the coveted honour and distinction of public life in India—its highest honour and distinction viz., the Presidentship of the .”3 The bonhomie was gone; Surendranath and Chittaranjan now stood at the opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Departure from Gandhian strategy: Chittaranjan Das leads Bengal In organising the non-cooperation movement, Chittaranjan, now designated the ‘dictator’ of Bengal Congress, was being assisted by a young man who had joined him only a few months ago. On the threshold of his twenty-fifth year,Subhas Chandra Bose had spurned the offer to join the earlier in the year and returned home to find a role in the freedom struggle. Dissatisfied with what he considered lack of clarity in Gandhi’s political vision, Subhas chose Chittaranjan as his political mentor. Chittaranjan appointed him as the principal of the National College, but before he could do much the high tide of the non-cooperation movement arrived. As a leader of the volunteer corps in Kolkata, Subhas went around picketing shops which sold imported cloth, managing a 86|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 gradually increasing number of volunteers.4 While Das coordinated the volunteers’ overall activities, Subhas plunged into organising the hartal. As the secretary of the Publicity Board of the Bengal Congress, Subhas drafted detailed instructions for the hartal, of which around a million copies were printed in Bengali alone, apart from English and Hindi. Distributed in the interiors of the province, these instructions played a significant role. The extent of personal contact he had established with different groups in the city within a short span, and the respect and loyalty of the volunteers that he commanded left his colleagues in little doubt about his abilities.5 With the Government determined to break the movement, large-scale arrests took place from 10 December, 1921, when both Subhas and Chittaranjan were packed off to prison along with other Congress leaders. Subhas’s trial started almost a month after his arrest and on 7 February 1922, he was sentenced to six months imprisonment. By the time Subhas came out of the prison in August, the political situation had changed completely. Gandhi had withdrawn the non-cooperation movement in response to a violent outrage in a remote village in the United Provinces in February.As the movement waned, the Government put Gandhi in prison. Infuriated with Gandhi’s approach, Chittaranjan changed his strategy by going back to his earlier position of contesting elections rather than boycotting them, so that the Government could be opposed from within the legislature for wrecking the scheme of diarchy introduced by the reforms.Chittaranjan took his programme to the Congress for approval, but failing to muster majority in the annual session at Gaya in December 1922, he resigned the post of president and on the first day of 1923, announced the formation of the Congress Khilafat within the Congress along with leaders such as , , Vithalbhai Patel, NC Kelkar, MR Jayakar, etc.6 During the course of the year, Chittaranjan led his Swaraj party to three important victories: he succeeded in compelling the Congress to accept his programme of council entry, wrested control of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee (BPCC) which had been taken over by the Gandhian faction during his imprisonment, and leading the party to emerge as the largest one in the elections to the Bengal Legislative Council. The Swaraj party won forty seven seats out of hundred and fourteen elected seats. The most striking feature was the party’s victory in twenty one out of thirty nine seats reserved for Muslims.7 Subhas, however, could not contest the elections as his name was not on the electoral roll. 87|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

From his early days in politics, Das had been vocal about two critical components of his concept of swaraj – ensuring the involvement of the people who had been kept out of the ambit of bhadralok politics, and ridding the society of the communal problem. Being involved in the from its inception, he witnessed how dissension between the Hindus and the Muslims were exploited by the Government of the day. Bengal had seen some of the worst riots in the recent past too. It was therefore clear to him that to be able to exert pressure on the Government, it was imperative to bring the two communities together. To this end, he worked out a pact with Muslim leaders spelling out the opportunities to be provided to the Muslims on achievement of self-government to help them the gap of backwardness. The ‘Bengal Pact’ was ratified at a conference of the Swarajist and nationalist councillors on December 16, and was published two days later with Subhas’s signature as the secretary of the BPCC.8 The Pact provided that Muslims’ share of representation in the Council would be determined on the basis of their population share, with separate electorates; representation to the local bodies would be on a proportion of sixty to forty for the majority and minority communities in the districts, respectively; till the time the appointment to Government posts amongst Muslim and non- Muslim reach the proportion of fifty five to forty five, Hindus would be recruited to only twenty per cent of those posts. The Pact also stipulated that no law would be enacted on an religious matter without the consent of three-fourths of the community affected; that music in procession would not be allowed in front of mosques; that there would be no interference in cow killing for religious sacrifices and both communities, rather than enacting laws on the issue, should come to an understanding on cow killing; that representative committees would be formed in each sub-division comprising equal number of members from each community.9 The Congress, however, refused to ratify the Bengal Pact. At the Coconada annual session in December 1923, Motilal Nehru’s motion to refer the Bengal Pact to the sub-committee of the Congress which was engaged in drawing up a National Pact was defeated, despite support from some leaders such as Rajagopalachari and .10 The Pact was, however, accepted by the Khilafat Conference which too was under way in Cocanada. While Subhas held forte in Kolkata focusing on the publication of Forward– the newspaper published by Chittaranjan - and organisational work, Das busied himself in strengthening the party at the national level.11 It was in this environment that revolutionary activities, lying dormant for the past few years, erupted again with an attempt on the life of the commissioner of police in Kolkata, 88|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 forcefully marking its return to the mainstream political discourse. In doing so, it also provided an avenue to the Government, on the backfoot in the legislatures, to intensify its actions against the Swaraj party on the ground of its purported encouragement to the revolutionary acts. On January 12, young GopinathSaha shot dead Ernest Day mistaking him to be Charles Tegart, the police commissioner. The police immediately swung into action, raiding the BPCC office the next day, arresting some of the Congress workers.

Swarajya in the Corporation The next big political victory of the Swarajya party came in March 1924, when it won majority of the seats in the Kolkata Corporation elections. The extent of support commanded by Chittaranjan amongst the Muslims was evident from the fact that out of fifteen Muslim seats in the Corporation ten were won by the Swarajists. Chittaranjan was elected the first Mayor of the Corporation and appointed Hussain ShahidSuhrawardy as his deputy even in the face of opposition from the Hindu communalists. Subhas won his seat unopposed and was given the charge of the municipality administration, being appointed the Corporation’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Subhas had demonstrated his organisational and administrative capabilities consistently since the time he took the plunge into politics around three years ago, but he was still a political greenhorn, just twenty seven years old, and not the automatic choice for the post. Contemporary accounts indicate that Chittaranjan had initially assured BirendranathSasmal that he would be appointed as the chief executive, but had to step back when faced with pressure from his powerful group of supporters in Kolkata to whom an ‘outsider’ from a small town was not acceptable. Some even raised objections on the ground of Sasmal’s caste. They preferred Subhas. An insulted Sasmal left Kolkata resigning his seat in the council, resulting in the weakening of the party. Das had no option but to give in to this uncouth development in the larger interest of maintaining unity in the party, although it must have been extremely distasteful to him.12 Gopal LalSanyal, an eyewitness to these developments, however, later wrote that along with many seekers of power and patronage, it was Sasmal who demanded the post of the CEO, much to displeasure of Chittaranjan.13 There is no reliable account of how Subhas saw these developments, or whether he was exposed only to the outer manifestations of the clash in the form of Sasmal’s keenness to be elected, without being aware of the underlying politics. Although unlikely, this appears to be the case from an almost 89|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 casual recounting of the incident two decades later: “Though my appointment to this important post at the age of twenty-seven was generally approved in Swarajist circles, it did not fail to cause a certain amount of heart-burning in some circles within the party.”14 This was not all. While the Government took over a month to approve his appointment, Hemanta Sarkar, his best friend of childhood and now an emerging labour and peasant leader elected to the Council, too was not happy with Subhas accepting the appointment, especially with regard to the emoluments that went with the CEO’s office.

The greenhorn CEO Once Subhastook charge of the corporation on May 16, it was time to deliver on the promises. This was an opportunity to show that Swaraj party could not only block and bring down an administration but was equally efficient, if not better, in constructive work. And that was to be demonstrated by overcoming obvious tensions between different factions in the party, balancing unlimited expectations from patronage seekers, and neutralising the manoeuvres of a hostile provincial Government. Das laid down the deliverables in his inaugural speech in the corporation: free primary education, free medical services to the poor, supply of good quality food and milk, improvement in supply of filtered and unfiltered water, better sanitation, housing for the poor, development of suburban areas, improved transport facilities and greater efficiency in administration at a cheaper cost. The overarching objective was to be the service of the daridranarayan.15 As the chief executive, it was upon Subhas to deliver. Much was done to symbolise the transition of the corporation into a Swarajist one. Khadi was taken up as the official uniform, streets and parks were named after Indian icons, swadeshi goods received preferential treatment in case of store purchases, receptions for Government officials were stopped and instead the practice of giving civic receptions to nationalist leaders was initiated.16 As he was used to do for any assignment he took up, Subhas threw his heart and soul into executing the big plans. In order to be able to give his full attention to the work of the corporation, he gave up his involvement with Forward. It was impossible to achieve the tall order that was set for the new municipal administration without discipline, and Subhas led from the front to infuse discipline amongst the workforce. He went out taking rounds of the city almost every day to personally inspect the work, infused the habit of 90|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 punctuality amongst the staff and went through the files to clear them, often taking them home after work. His close friend Ksitish Prasad Chattapadhyay joining the Corporation as the education officer gave him a shot in the arm in implementing the education programme. Free primary schools for boys and girls sprang up all over the city, Health Associations, financed by the Corporation, were started in every ward of the city by public-spirited citizens for carrying on health propaganda among the people. Dispensaries were opened in the different districts for giving free medical treatment to the poor. Infant clinics were established in different parts of the city and to each clinic was added a milk-kitchen for supplying free milk to the poorer children. The Intelligence Branch (IB) of the Government alleged that the Swarajya Party was exploiting its position in the Corporation in giving away contracts to raise party funds. In one instance, it alleged that Subhas arranged for the Corporation to give the contract for the Palta Water Works Extension scheme to a particular engineering firm, despite its higher quotation, over another firm which had quoted a lower amount for the work. The IB noted that this was done in return for a donation of Rs 75,000 by the firm to the Swarajya party funds and for bearing an expense of Rs 3,600 for the Swarajist delegates to the Congress.17 The Bengal Pact had not been received well by the Liberals led by Surendranath,the ‘no- changer’ section of the Congress as well as communal Hindu leaders and Subhas had to face their criticism for following the Pact in recruiting Muslims for posts in the Corporationv. Amidst all the criticism, however, Gandhi came forward in his defence. Under the caption ‘Favouritism or Justice’ he wrote in Young India of July 31, 1924: I note that the chief executive officer of the Calcutta Corporation has come in for a good deal of hostile criticism because of his having given 25 out of 33 appointments to Mussalmans. I have not read the comments themselves. But I have read the statement made by the chief executive officer. In my humble opinion, it is a creditable performance. I have no doubt that appointments have not till now been made with impartiality, whether by Europeans or Indians. There is no doubt, too, that in many cases Hindus have influenced decisions in their favour. It ill-becomes them to quarrel against many posts having now gone to Mussalmans. If the charge be true that the appointments have a party purpose behind them, there is nothing immoral or reprehensible in the fact itself if they are otherwise justifiable. In England, such appointments are certainly made in party interests, though, as a rule, care is exercised not to sacrifice efficiency. Personally, 91|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

I would like appointments to go to the best men irrespective of parties, and should, therefore, be made by a permanent non-party board. But if Hindus wish to see India free, they must be ready and willing to sacrifice in favour of their Mussalman and other brethren. I can heartily endorse the remark of the chief executive officer when he says: With thousands of educated young men out of employment and on ihe verge of starvation and, with a very limited number of vacancies, it is not possible for any human being to do anything which will please all. Whatever Imay do, I am sure to leave Ihe major portion of the unemployed as discontented as before. The only solution of this problem is the provision of technical education and in this matter, the Corporation can, in my opinion, do much. We must learn to do without these appointments. Only a microscopic minority can get them. Education must cease to be merely clerical. Why may not a graduate be an artisan or a hawker of vegetables or khaddar?18 Life was however not only about administration and politics. The friends and their mentor had their share of fun as well. Indian Book Club, Hemanta’s bookshop in the market was a gathering place for the young revolutionaries, where Chittaranjan too would stop by occasionally. Subhas, on his way back from the office of Banglar Katha– another newspaper published by Chittaranjan - would invariably stop over and make tea for everyone on a stove. Since the use of a stove in the market was not allowed, the market superintendent would regularly scold Hemanta, without ever being able to see that it was actually Subhas who made the tea behind the bookshelves. Consequently, he would complain to Subhas regarding the risk of fire. Much to the mirth of the friends and embarrassment of the inspector, Hemantabroke the carefully preserved secret by taking the inspector inside his shop when CEO Subhas was making tea and his boss Das waited to be served. Needless to say, the superintendent did not know which way to look and how to escape from such a situation. But Hemanta explained to him that given his very low income from selling books, he had no alternative to using the stove in his shop.19 In the midst of all this euphoria, some of the prominent men of yesteryears were not happy. As he would later write in his autobiography, Surendranath saw doom in the victory of the Swarajists, particularly in the rise of Chittaranjan, who he had eulogised a few years ago. Selecting him as the Mayor was the “first crowning blunder of the new regime” if only because he “has not during the 92|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 whole of his public career been within miles of a municipal office.” He accused Chittaranjan of usurping both offices of the Mayor and the Chief Executive Officer and thus obliterating the distinction that the law had intended between the two offices. Moreover, the Swarajya party has, he wrote, “started by making appointments in the Corporation based on the communal principle, which all Indian nationalists condemn as fatal to the Indian nationhood.” At a more philosophical level, he believed that “Municipal affairs should not form the battle-ground of political warfare. When the civic affairs of a great city are used for political or party purposes, they are exposed to great menace. Party aggrandizement and not the public good becomes the objective of civic efforts.”20 The Bengalee, edited at that time by Bepin Chandra Pal, was not far behind. With Surendranath out of public life, Pal aimed at his erstwhile close associate who was now largely responsible for his political eclipse. “Never before have bribery, corruption, intrigue and intimidation been so rampant in Indian Nationalist politics,” it wrote in July 1924.21 Any reference to the constructive work, understandably, was not to be found in such publicity. What the residents of the city thought was another matter. As one of the citizens who lived through that period in the city would later write:“The new dispensation had begun with very high hopes for us natives in 1924, when CR Das became its first Mayor and Subhas Chandra Bose its first Executive Officer. We thought at last we should have the same amenities as the European quarters, and we did. Within a year asphalt began to be put on the streets of Bengali Calcutta, and we did not have to splatter our clothes with mud during the rainy season.”22 In the meantime, the Commissioner of Charles Tegart alerted Governor Lytton about a revival of the revolutionary activities which had been suppressed during the war years. Soon arrests started under Regulation III of 1818 after the Government linked revolutionary organisations to five murder cases in Kolkata and to preparations of overthrowing the Government by force. After the failed attempt on Tegart by GopinathSaha, Lytton issued a stern warning while inaugurating the new legislative assembly on January 23, 1924. He made it clear that his Government would not be satisfied with bringing to justice the perpetrators of violence, but would “employ emergency measures, to strike swiftly and unhesitatingly at the leaders, to stop the poison at its source.”23 In a letter to the Viceroy describing the situation in Bengal, Lytton laid the blame squarely on Das and Subhas for funding the revolutionaries. “Subhas Bose the new Chief Executive Officer, of the Corporation is subscribing Rs. 1200 a month of his official salary to the Revolutionaries (sic),” and Das 93|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 was paying them in exchange for their support to his Bengal Pact. Since the revolutionaries were getting large amounts of money from Das and Subhas, and could therefore focus on their core activities without having to bother about raising resources through robbery. Hence, although the situation was apparently peaceful, the reality was actually more alarming. It was necessary to arrest Subhas, Das and other well-known individuals, but to be able to do that, he needed more powers which could be obtained only by enacting a law in the lines of Defence of India Regulations which had helped the

Government to suppress the revolutionary movement during the war years.24 Writing to the Home Department on July 10, the Chief Secretary of Bengal went a step ahead of Lytton in calling Subhas an active revolutionary: “The revolutionaries now have active members in high places, including four or five members of the Legislative Council and the Chief Executive Officer of the Kolkata Corporation, besides supporters like C. R. Das and Chakravartti.” The Government of India agreed with the assessment, pointing out the increased clout of the revolutionaries in the political life of Bengal: For the first time the revolutionaries can command from a political party public countenance, secret subsidies and executive offices in a great corporation and can contribute in return organised support in election campaigns and at political meetings and votes in a legislature. This may clearly create a situation which it will be our duty to suppress at whatever cost and whatever risk.25 The resolution praising Gopinath Sahaat the Bengal Provincial Conference at Serajgunjin 1924 was taken as evidence that the Swaraj Party was openly inciting youth for committing murder. Moreover, revolutionaries were being recruited in the Kolkata Corporation. No arrests, however, took place immediately as exchange of views on the Ordinance proposed by the Bengal Government with the Government of India and the British Cabinet went on till late October.

The CEO in prison On October 22, Reading informed Olivier that the Bengal Government had scheduled October 25 to announce the Ordinance.26 It was announced on the midnight of October 24, and by early morning of the 25th the arrests were made. Subhas was woken up from sleep early in the morning to be told by the deputy commissioner of police that he was being arrested under Regulation III. Reflecting the preparation that had been going for their arrest, the warrants for their arrest were signed in July.27 94|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Massive searches were conducted across Kolkata and other towns in the province, but pouring water on the intelligence on the basis of which Lytton had been fuming for many months and which ultimately brought around the Viceroy and the British Government to announce the Ordinance, the police failed to unearth any of the much touted bomb factories or arms which it had claimed that the revolutionaries were accumulating.28

News of Subhas's arrest published in Amrita Bazar patrika,October 26, 1924

By his own admission, the arrest came as a surprise to Subhas, and to others as well. Even as the deputy commissioner drove him to the Central Jail in his car, no one whom he met on the way could think that he was being taken to jail. The surprise was not due to his ignorance of the Bengal Government’s moves, for it was public knowledge that the Government was looking for an opportunity to clamp down on the revolutionary groups, but because he had been away from politics since the time of taking charge of the corporation. He had resigned from the post of the secretary of the BPCC in April, disassociated from the editorial work in Forward, and “Everyone knew…that I was engaged day and night in my municipal duties and had been forced to give up politics altogether.” HemendraNath too in his biography of Subhas has pointed out the distance Subhas maintained from the work of the revolutionary groups. “I can tell for certain, that upto the year 1924, Subhas had not the least concern or connection with anarchical activities of any kind whatsoever.” It was rumoured that his arrest could have been the result of some disgruntled subordinates in the corporation feeding false information to the Government. The Forward published a letter in which an agent of the India Office claimed that Subhas was arrested on the basis of verbal testimony of some people and in fact there was no documentary evidence against him.29 95|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

A wave of protests followed, throughout the country. Das, who was convalescing in Simla, rushed back to Kolkata and called a general meeting of the Kolkata Corporation rising to his defence and condemning the arrest. As the leader of the Swaraj Party and the mayor of the corporation, why should be let alone if the chief executive officer was arrested? Subhas “is no more a revolutionary than

I am...If Subhas Chandra Bose is a criminal, I am a criminal.”30 The corporation passed a vote of confidence in favour of Subhas, with six European members opposing the motion. Nilratan Sarkar, PC Roy, Bepin Pal, ShyamSundarCharavarti and thirty other leaders from Kolkata issued a call for a nationwide hartal on November 1. The Indian Association also asked the Government to revoke the

Ordinance and hold trial of those arrested under existing laws.31 The Government, however, allowed Subhas to continue his work as the chief executive of the Corporation till December 2. He received official files and met his secretary and the deputy executive officer of the Corporation in presence of a police and a jail officer. From jail he oversaw the publication of the Calcutta Municipal Gazette, the first issue of which was published on November 15. By the end of November there was also speculation that the Government would release him, but nothing came of that. On December 3 he was transferred to the Berhampore jail, cutting off the easy access to him, and taking away the facilities provided to him as he was no more allowed to function as the chief executive. The suspense over a probable release sometime soon remained alive, as the Government did not specify for how long he would remain imprisoned.32

Prison thoughts Being disassociated from the municipal work bothered Subhas, but he kept himself occupied with study of municipal administration and making plans for the city to be executed when he was released. For this he asked Sarat to send him books from the corporation library. To whatever little extent his Government-sanctioned limit of writing two letters a week allowed him, he discussed the corporation schemes for city development with elder brother Sarat and other colleagues such as Santosh Kumar Basu. Two days after his twenty eighth birthday, Subhas was again shifted from the jail. On his way to Kolkata, he was informed that his final destination was the Mandalay prison in Burma. After spending the night at the police station in a cell infested with mosquitoes and bugs, without decent sanitary arrangement or privacy, Subhas’s journey to Mandalay began in the darkness of the morning. 96|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The four days journey by ship as a high security prisoner was as good as it could get under the circumstances, with the Assistant Inspector General of police Lowman participating freely in discussions on a wide range of topics with Subhas and his fellow prisoners. It was only a day before reaching Rangoon that he got the opportunity to write to Sarat and Janaki NathBose about his relocation. The group of prisoners were taken to Mandalay by train, escorted by a large police force.33 The hope of an early release, if any, probably died with this transfer to a land far away from home. Among the bitter reality of being confined to a cage-like jail built from wooden palisades, leaving the prisoners at the mercy of the weather, the only solace at the beginning was the association of the place with some of the most prominent freedom fighters of yesteryears. LokmanyaTilak, Singh, Lajpat Rai too had graced the Mandalay prison. There were still some people to recount anecdotes of the Lokmanya; the lemon trees planted by him still stood as a silent witness to his suffering. Thoughts on the working of the Kolkata Corporation and improvement of civic amenities in the city occupied a large part of his letters during the entire period of incarceration. The Corporation had given him the opportunity to implement his ideas to transform the city and achieve concrete results; and he preferred this over the verbiage of politics at this stage of life.34 This probably also led him to explore the possibility of getting elected the district board of the Twenty Four .35 Within the short span of six months which were available to him as the chief executive, Subhas had chalked out programmes for developing the city and improving the quality of life of its inhabitants.

Frequent enquiries, pithy observations36 and detailed notes37 and suggestions, to the extent possible, filled pages of his letters to Sarat and others associated with the Corporation. To stay updated on the affairs of the Corporation, he insisted that the Government should allow the Municipal Gazette and minutes be sent to him, permission for which was initially denied by the Intelligence Branch (IB) of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). The role of political considerations in appointments and award of contracts were undoubtedly a reality in the matters of the Corporation, but what emerges clearly from the letters is his reluctance to get involved in such matters and stay focussed on ensuring the successful execution of the projects which had been initiated and those which he wished to but could not. This is particularly clear from his reactions to the letters he received from employment- seekers requesting him to endorse their candidature. 97|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Subhas wished that there were serious debates on the various aspects of municipal governance before the ideas matured and were put into action. It was critical to keep abreast of the developments taking place on municipal governance in other countries. In the age of specialised knowledge, it was imperative for the Corporation to convince the Kolkata University to open a sub-department for teaching municipal governance, under the political science department.38 At a more specific level, while planning for the city’s development, he pointed out, it was important to keep in mind the nature of its future expansion. Certain areas needed to be developed only as residential areas and therefore facilities such as godowns for pulses and hide should be located away from them to keep the environment healthy.39 Not happy with the city roads and the working of the Roads Department of the Corporation, he planned to write a note for the committee studying the condition of the city’s roads, and asked for a competent person to be sent abroad to learn the latest road construction technologies. There was no uniform rule to make the departments efficient: while it was essential to decentralise the Health Department and delegate responsibilities to health associations in the various municipality wards, the Roads Department should be centralised under a specially trained engineer.40 The markets in Kolkata needed better organisation and any expansion of these was bound to be haphazard without a proper vision. He was reading up about food preservation and suggested that the city should have cold storages for preservation of perishable food items such as fish, meat and fruits in order to keep a steady supply of food by reducing wastage, which would also moderate the increase in food prices. He asked Santosh Kumar Basu to get in touch with the Ministry of Health in England or the London County Council to obtain more information on how this could be done. To understand better the price movements of commodities, their monthly prices in all municipal markets should be compiled so that if necessary, corrective action can be taken in subsequent years based on an analysis of the price variations and their reasons. Further, it bothered him that Kolkata was behind Delhi, Bombay and Chittagong in the matter of providing compulsory primary education. “A department which is responsible for the education of all the indigent boys and girls of Calcutta of school-going age cannot fall short of any other department in the matter of importance.” He was annoyed that in spite of his writing a note to Deputy Mayor Suhrawardy “he had not stirred his little finger yet”, but was later happy with the move of the Corporation to undertake an education survey in the city. It was critical for the Education Officer would not only take steps to make the compulsory primary education successful, but to be conversant with educational psychology and kindergarten principles. 98|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The problem of river engineering, urban drainage systems and sewage disposal interested him greatly. He was unhappy that the councillors did not pay enough attention to these problems - “Our engineers know precious little about river and our public men know still less” - and hence he took it on himself to delve into studying these to explore the best possible solutions to Kolkata’s problems. He thought that it would be helpful to bring an expert from abroad to obtain insights on Kolkata’s drainage problems. Sometimes detailed, and often brief insights on these and numerous other issues such as that of street-lighting, encouraging home industry development through the Social Service Department, exploring innovative ways to generate revenue, preventing recurrence of diseases such as malaria and small pox, proper cremation of unclaimed dead bodies, managing stray dogs etc. filled the pages of his letters. While he remained confined in the faraway jail, Chittaranjan passed away on June 16, 1925. At Gandhi’s intervention, the triple crown of Chittaranjan – leader of the party in the Council, Mayor of the Corporation, and leader of the Bengal Congress – was passed on to Jatindramohan Sengupta.

Gandhi at the funeral of C R Das 99|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

New challenges under changed circumstances With his health failing, and suspicion of him having contracted tuberculosis, Subhas was freed from prison on May 16, 1927. Before that, in November 1926, he was elected to the Bengal Legislative Council from constituency. The Calcutta Municipal Gazette claimed that it was “Calcutta's reply to the Government which has deprived Mr Bose of his liberty.”41

News report in the contemporary periodical Bangabani (Jyaishtha, 1334) after release of Subhas Chandra Bose from Mandalay prison. 100|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Quite as a coincident, his tenure of the Corporation’s CEO ended on the same day of his release. The Corporation had waited for his return, appointing the First Deputy Executive Officer JC Mukerjeaas the acting CEO. But now, with uncertainty over his health and release, the Corporation appointed Mukerjea as his successor a week before his release. When the news of his release reached the office, the Corporation celebrated by declaring it a holiday, and adopted a unanimous resolution the next day welcoming him. Subhas was shifted to a bungalow in Shillong – the Kelsall Lodge, which Sarat had rented– in mid-June. The change in climate helped, and so did the presence of Janaki Nath, Prabhabati, and Sarat and Bivabati along with their children from time to time. Dr Sunil Chandra Bose and Dr kept him under watch. Two issues which were at the top of his mind at this time were the continuing detention of political workers and the disputes within the Bengal Congress. The detentions under the Regulation III and the Criminal Law Amendment Act not only violated all forms of justice, but at the same time prevented workers of proven mettle from rejuvenating the political movement in the province. The factional feuds, on the other hand, was fast degenerating the formidable organisation that Chittaranjan had built. He looked forward to attend the proceedings in the Legislative Council, which was scheduled to sit from August 23 to 26, and obtained Bidhan Roy’s permission to travel to Kolkata.42 Sengupta was the leader chosen by Gandhi, but the feuds showed that the leadership question was far from settled. To make progress it was imperative to settle the dispute. Subhas believed that Chittaranjan’s widow, Basanti Devi’s acceptance of leadership would help to seal the differences. About his position, he wrote to her: These are critical days for Bengal. There is a serious dearth of “wholetime” workers. It will be no exaggeration to say that Mr Sengupta has nearly given up Congress work. Kiron Babu has served me a notice that in October he will pass all the burden on to me and retire. I do not now find much enthusiasm or eagerness on TulsiBabu’s part in national work. You know the Big Five – excepting TulsiBabu all of them are professional people, so they cannot devote much time to Congress work. At the moment only BidhanBabu is interested in the work of the BPCC but even he has very little time. The treasury of the Congress is absolutely empty. In private letters he could open his heart to his ‘Mother’Basanti Devi and tell her what he could not speak publicly. His letter of mid-October to her is revealing. Just before the AICC was to meet in 101|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Kolkata he was telling her that politics happened by accident; that the road to spirituality was more appealing. I have been thinking for some time why must it all be my headache, why must I alone carry this unwanted burden to my own spiritual detriment? Politics is not a suitable field of work for me. It is only by chance that I have drifted into the whirlpool of politics. Now I can…go back to my chosen field. I have no attachment to the material world, so I chose not to enter worldly life. I do not see any reason why in the present condition of the country, I should leave the path of peace, create a new worldly snare and get myself enmeshed in it. By the end of 1927, the political mood of the country was changing after a few listless years. In the Madras Congress, ’s resolution stating India’s goal as complete independence was adopted.43 The Congress also decided to boycott the Statutory Commission set up by the British Government to decide on India’s constitutional progress, and to hold demonstrations where the Commission went. Being unwell, Subhas was unable to attend the Madras Congress, but plunged into organising boycott meetings from early 1928. Through the first three months of the year, he campaigned tirelessly across Bengal for boycott of foreign clothes, Hindu-Muslim unity and rejuvenating the Bengal Congress by resolving the factional feuds. It was also the year when his political world expanded beyond Bengal. Subhas was appointed a member of the committee formed under Motilal Nehru to determine the principles for a Constitution for India. Starting in May, he toured several provinces including Maharashtra, where he was chosen as the President of the provincial conference, United Provinces and Delhi. Later in the year, he was appointed a general secretary in Independence for India League along with Jawaharlal. At the Kolkata Congress held in December, he picked up the cause of independence, apart from organising an impressive show of volunteer corps, much to the displeasure of Gandhi. The increasing involvement in provincial and national politics however did not reduce his interest in municipal politics. As his prison correspondence show, he had an unfinished agenda. There were efforts towards the end of 1927 to reinstate him as the CEO of the Corporation, but Subhas was not willing, probably because of his poor health.

Return to the Corporation Subhas returned to the Corporation through a bye-election in March 1928, winning uncontested. It was 102|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 also the time for the election of the Mayor and Deputy Mayor which were held at the first meeting of the Corporation every year. Since Chittaranjan’s death the mayoral position had been with , but in 1928 a section of Bengal Congress wanted Subhas as the mayor and he agreed.The quality of work by the Corporation had deteriorated due to factional squabbles which naturally led to lack of discipline and dereliction of duties by officers and workers. The state of affairs in the Corporation at this time has been described by the same person who lived in the city, who has been quoted above: “After that [Chittaranjan’s death and Subhas’s incarceration] there was no one to check its steady descent into inefficiency and graft. The last had reached such proportions when I went to work for it [in 1934] that the popular name for the Calcutta Corporation was the ‘Calcutta Corruption’.” 44 With his keenness in civic administration, the urge to improve the state of affairs wouldn’t be surprising. Even Sengupta, who was being played up against Subhas by a rival faction, came forward with his support.45

At the annual session of the Congress 1928. At the centre is Motilal Nehru. On his right is Jatindra Mohan Sengupta and on his left is Subhas Chandra Bose 103|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Lack of Swarajist majority in the Corporation from 1927 and an anti-Congress coalition of Muslim and Hindu councillors representing communal interests, combined with European councillors however led to his defeat at the hands of a liberal candidate BK Basu, who got 49 votes against 39 of Subhas. Only one Muslim councillor out of eighteen voted for Subhas.46 Subhas was graceful in accepting defeat, but called out the opportunistic nature of this coalition in which, he pointed out, the communal Hindu leaders who used to accuse Congress of being pro-Muslim had offered special benefits to the Muslim councillors only to isolate the Congress. This kind of alliance was possible, according to him, only because the election to the Corporation had been held immediately after the 1926 riots, thus resulting in the election of a number of communal representatives.47 Not to give up a chance to mock the Swaraj party, the conservative British newspaper The Times noted with some glee: “Since his release from detention Mr. Bose has lost his character as a martyr, and to-night’s rejection of his candidature is the first evidence of the disgust at his methods and the most telling defeat which the Swarajists have suffered in Bengal.”48 When the Swarajists also lost control of the committees in the Corporation, The Times reported that elections “for the committees took place amid scenes provoked by the disappointed supporters of the Congress who for months had been calculating on putting Mr. Subhas Bose in control of the Corporation.”49 The defeat was without doubt a setback for his wish to play a deciding role in shaping the city’s municipal affairs but it was not enough to make a dent in his interest in the subject. Even as he remained out of municipal administration,or merely as a councillor, he was frequently felicitated by other municipalities with whom he shared his philosophy. At a reception given by the Kushtea municipality at the end of March, for instance, he explained that it was important to capture institutions of local governance not only to improve the administration but also to prove through these institutions that Indians were ready for “higher responsibilities and for democracy.”50 It also opened the avenue for reviving the democratic institutions which had existed in ancient India.51 To him, capturing the local bodies in an organised manner was the only way to be able to implement a programme. Thus, those who were criticising the introduction of politics in municipalities were only trying to delude people.52 Moreover, the local bodies offered real power to serve people, in contrast to being a Minister in the Council who had no real power. This was the training ground to make people fit for Swaraj.53 Municipalities therefore must strive to improve the state of public health, education etc.54 104|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

That his brief stint as the CEO of the Kolkata Corporation was well recognised is evident from the reception given by the Poona Municipality: We may be permitted to refer here very briefly to your interest in any sympathy with the administration of Local Self-Governing institutions. Formerly as the chief officer of Corporation of Calcutta and now as a corporator of the same body, you have been devoting a large portion of your energies, otherwise more widely and intensely engaged in national work, to the service of local Self-Government. It is, indeed, highly worthy of you that you should have left the stamp of your genious [sic] on this civic work as you have raised noble hopes in the minds of the Indian people by your magnanimous sacrifice and service…55 In August, Subhas along with Sengupta successfully sponsored a move to compel the Corporation administration to refuse information sought by the education committee of the Statutory Commission. In December, he moved a motion censuring the Mayor for throwing a garden party to the visiting Viceroy, which was defeated again due to lack of support. If Subhas was finding ways to utilise the Corporation for making a political statement, he was suggesting concrete measures for the city’s improvement too. Writing in the Calcutta Municipal Gazette, he held the absence of a “full-fledged” road department in the Corporation for the lack of proper roads; road construction was left to the whims and fancy of the district engineers and there was no policy for building roads in a planned way to keep up with the growing city. While the major cities around the world constructed their roads in a scientific manner, the Kolkata Corporation did not have a laboratory to determine the nature of road surface required for different types of roads. “If we want to tackle the question of road-making scientifically, we should classify the roads according to the nature of the traffic…Moreover, all the parts of the city should receive equal attention,” he suggested. A roads department headed by a fulltime roads engineer, aided by an attached laboratory was essential. The Bombay Corporation, he noted, was doing better work on this aspect. Drawing attention to the work of the municipality, he also pointed out to the immense potential of sewage farming after removal of solid and semi-solid substances from the effluent. “The Calcutta corporation owns the Dhappa area. It can also acquire other areas if necessary. If these areas are developed with the help of the sewage which now runs to waste, the Corporation will be able to make a lot of money and, thereby, serve the best interests of the rate payers!” The Kolkata Corporation must “without delay shake off its inertia and tackle the various 105|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 municipal problems in a thoroughly up-to-date, business-like and scientific manner,” if it wanted to retain its reputation as a premier Corporation in India, was his warning.56 His growing involvement with labour movements at this time also led him to engage with the union of the Corporation employees. While he encouraged them to organise themselves, struggle for their rights and advised them on the way to take their movement forward, his first advice was regarding their behaviour with the people they served. …whether you are a clerk or an officer, you are, in either case, a servant of the public, and as long as you act and behave as honourable men and as gentlemen, I think you should be proud of yourself…You all know that here are some departments – particularly some departments of the Government – the employees of which do not behave as servants of the public. They behave as masters of the public…That is all the more reason why in a body like the Corporation you should conduct yourselves in such a way as to set a standard for all public servants.57 With his involvement in national and provincial politics with increasing intensity, Subhas’s activities regarding the affairs of the Corporation were very little in 1929. Probably the only notable development in this field was his election in June by the Corporation members as their representative to the Bengal Government’s Waterways Advisory Committee to consider the Grand Trunk Canal project.58 It was the year of Council elections, and as the president of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee Subhas led the campaign, touring the entire province. He was also elected as the president of the All India Trade Union Congress, and continued the work of organising the student and youth groups throughout Bengal as well as in other provinces. The year saw Sengupta return as the Mayor of the Corporation, but by the end of the year the factional rivalries from which both leaders had managed to largely keep themselves away had caught up with them. As the year drew to an end, the ground was being prepared for his third term of imprisonment. He was booked for sedition and unlawful procession for taking out a procession observing the All India Political Sufferers’ day on August 11. On being sentenced to one year’s rigorous imprisonment (reduced to nine months on appeal) in January, Subhas resigned from his seat in the Corporation. “I shall be doing an injustice to my electorate if I retain my seat while I shall be in jail,” he wrote to the Mayor when the Corporation passed a resolution asking him to withdraw the resignation.59 These were difficult days for Sengupta too. Suffering from poor health, he left for Singapore [and Rangoon] in late January. He was arrested on his return and sentenced to ten days’ prison in 106|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Burma, only to be re-arrested and sentenced to prison in mid-April on his return from Burma. Within a month of his release in September, he was again put in prison till January 1931.60 The Swarajists in the meanwhile regained control of the Corporation, emerging as the single largest party, by winning forty three out of the eighty five seats.61 Sengupta was re-elected as the Mayor in April 1930 while in jail. The elections to the posts of Mayor, deputy Mayor and the five Aldermen led to some bitterness as no Muslim candidate was elected to any of these posts. Fazlul Huq accused the Congress of moving away from the ideal and the practice espoused by CR Das.62 “Events in the Calcutta Corporation during the last few days have convinced us Moslems that if the Congress succeeds in capturing the administration of the country, there will be no hope for the Moslem Minority in India,” Huq announced in a meeting of the Corporation convened to pay homage to Gandhi, who was arrested on the midnight of May 4-5 after breaking the salt laws. “The Maulvi’s speech, which caused a great sensation and was cheered by the gallery packed with Moslems, is a step in the Moslem revolt against the Swarajist domination of the Corporation,” The Times noted.63 The differences were temporarily resolved when Muslim councillors were given three seats in each of the standing committees of the Corporation in June, with the right to elect two chairmen and two deputy-chairmen of these committees.64 Sengupta had to give up the mayoral post in August as he could not take oath of office for three months, being in the prison. From jail, Subhas was elected as an Alderman of the Corporation on August 18 and within the next few days, on August 22, 1930 as the next Mayor for the remaining part of 1930-31. The transition was, however, not smooth. The factions supporting Sengupta and Bose had earlier reached an agreement that Dr Bidhan Roy (who was elected as an Alderman of the Corporation for the first time this year) would be the next Mayor after Sengupta’s term expired after three months. Yet, when time came, he reneged and his supporters mounted a campaign against Roy and Subhas to get him re-elected. Annoyed with this breach of promise, Subhas came forward to neutralise the campaign of the Sengupta group.65

The Mayor Released from prison on the night of September 23, Subhas took oath of office on the next day. In a crowded Corporation office, packed with councillors, workers and visitors, Subhas outlined his programme for the coming year. He reiterated his adherence to the 1924 mayoral speech of 107|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Deshbandhu where he had promised to serve the interests of all communities “unless that interest goes against the well-being of the whole community, by which I mean the Indian people or the citizens of Calcutta in this particular respect.” The Corporation would specially focus on the ‘Daridra Narayana,’ by providing for their housing, primary education and medical relief. Improving supply and quality of water, ensuring cheaper and unadulterated food items, providing for better sanitation in slums and congested areas, developing suburban areas and assuring an efficient administration were the other priorities, which too had been promised by Deshbandhu. A lot needed to be done, but substantial work had been done since 1924 when the Swarajists captured the Corporation, especially in education. Giving an account of the achievements, Subhas pointed out that number of schools had increased from 19 to 218 and number of students in these schools (which had increased more than tenfold during these years to 25,560) accounted for a quarter of all children of school-going age in Kolkata. Planning for housing had also made some progress.Yet, not all children were going to school. Therefore, it was necessary to make primary education compulsory, Subhas suggested. It was probably on this occasion that Subhas propounded his ideological inclination towards a combination of socialism and fascism. Referring to programme for the Corporation outlined by Deshbandhu, he said: …if I may put his policy and programme in modern language, I would say that we have here in this policy and programme a synthesis of what Modern Europe calls Socialism and Fascism. We have here the justice, the equality, the love, which is the basis of Socialism, and combined with that we have the efficiency and the discipline of Fascism as it stands in Europe today. An analysis of this ideological proposition is beyond the scope of this article, but it is beyond doubt that what he was referring to was the more benign forms of the two ideologies, ignoring the their darker sides.66 Subhas was also talking about the city’s transport issues. “We have not as yet realised the gravity of the city’s traffic problems,” he told a meeting of the Bengal Syndicate, expressing the hope that the country will have a Ministry of Transport on gaining independence.67 A change in the work atmosphere in the Corporation also became visible with Subhas occupying office. As one correspondent noted in the Calcutta Municipal Gazette, the cushioned chair of the Mayor was replaced by a normal office chair which he used while working as the CEO, 108|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 attendance became more regular, all complaints from citizens were duly forwarded to the relevant department for reporting to the Mayor, and the preparation of administrative reports were accelerated.68 Till the end of the year, Subhas continued to engage regularly with various localsamitis, international delegations, interest groups, swadeshi entrepreneurial initiatives etc., and at the same time the Corporation continued to express its views on national developments; for instance, it issued condemnations on the arrest of Sengupta and Jawaharlal Nehru and against the first Round Table Conference in November.69 In December 1930, Subhas started the Bengal Swadeshi League, bringing together businessmen, industrialists, economists and Congress workers to promote Swadeshi goods in Bengal.70 The Civil Disobedience movement started by Gandhi was on the wane and this provided Subhas the opportunity to focus more on political organisation than agitation – he toured several places in the province - and to lift up the profile of the Corporation. The relative calm was broken on December 8, when three young men of – Binoy Bose, and – walked into the Writers’ Building and shot dead the Inspector General of prisons, Lieutenant Colonel NS Simpson. The Secretary of the Judicial Department and an Indian orderly were injured in the attack. The Corporation adopted a resolution condemning the “dastardly outrage” and conveyed its “profound sympathy to the family of the deceased gentleman and the injured persons. Subhas associated himself with the resolution but put the blame at the doorstep of the Congress programme and the Government repression. “I sincerely deplore the tragic incidents of Monday last,” but,“it will not do simply to brand as misguided the youths who are responsible for these incidents.” It was obvious that there were people in the country who wanted freedom, very soon, and at any cost. The incident was “a confession of the temporary failure of the Congress programme and also the temporary failure of the Congress leaders to influence cent per cent of the younger generation in the country.”71 He could not see how violence could be prevented if the people were not convinced that the Congress’ way was the only way to achieve freedom. On December 19, inaugurating Chitra, the new cinema house constructed by BN Sircar, on Cornwallis Street (now BidhanSarani), Subhas urged to develop cinema as a national industry. The first movie to be shown there was Srikanta, based on Sarat Chandra Chattapadhyay’s novel of the same name. He was happy that Bengalis were making efforts to achieve that, but noted that the Board of Censors in India were not capable of realising the needs and aspirations of the country, and hence could 109|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 not judge the standard of movies that needed to be produced. His concern was how cinemas could be utilised for educational purposes, as in Russia. “Our cinema houses have a crowded audience today. Most often the films are useless, even harmful. But the cinema habit, the cinema taste have come to stay. The point then is how to make cinemas useful, how to turn them to good account.” His personal freedom was curtailed soon enough when he went out in January 1931 to tour the districts of North Bengal. On his way from Berhampur to Maldah, he found that he was prohibited from entering the district. On refusing the offer of the district administration to drop the plan to visiting Maldah and return, he was arrested and tried in an improvised Court in the Amnurarailway station (in Bangladesh now) and sentenced to seven days’ simple imprisonment. The Corporation protested by remaining closed on January 19, and the next day a hartal was observed in the city. After being brought to Alipore Central Jail from Rajshahi Jail, Subhas was released on January 24. Speaking at a reception given by Kalighat Union, he again tried to explain the severe limitations under which the Corporation had to function. For instance, the Corporation had the financial responsibility for supplying water in the city, but the scheme under which water was supplied was designed by the provincial Government. A number of schemes designed by the Corporation had to wait for approval from the Government. Thus, the scheme of compulsory primary education was stuck since the Government had held back its approval.72 The Congress had declared its observance of January 26 as the from 1930. Anticipating trouble, the city police started taking precautionary measures. On Sunday, January 25, an inspector of Kolkata Police went up to Subhas’ house, handing him a notice prohibiting him from participating in any meeting or procession in the city the next day. Such a notice of course meant nothing to him, and his response was typical – “Tell your boss that I will break the law.” True to his words, he led a procession from the Corporation office to hoist the national flag and address a meeting at the foot of the Ochterlony monument. The police tried to stop the procession, severely injuring him and finally arrested and locked him up in Lalbazar police station without food or medical treatment. Subhas refused to take part in the court proceedings and was sentenced to six months’ rigorous imprisonment on charges of unlawful assembly, rioting and endangering public safety – his fifth prison sentence in just about ten years of public life. After raising a howl over police assault on the Mayor, the Corporation appointed a committee to enquire into the incident, which submitted its report condemning the police action in July. 110|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Subhas, released early, rushed to meet Gandhi in Bombay in the middle of March to discuss the pact the Mahatma had signed with the Viceroy on March 5. It was also the time for the annual Congress session at Karachi. After the Congress, Subhas toured extensively addressing meetings at Delhi, Sind, Punjab and the United Provinces, before returning to Kolkata around mid-April.

Packed off to exile, again This time around, Subhas did not take up the mayoral post again. On April 15, BC Roy was elected the new Mayor of the city. Subhas occupied himself with tour of Bengal’s districts, organisation of the labour movement and subsequent elections to the BPCC, which were marred by acrimony between him and Sengupta’s supporters. In October and November, he was arrested twice when he disobeyed Government orders prohibiting him from entering and Dacca. However, when two revolutionaries in the Hijli prison camp were killed by the guards’ firing, Subhas declared that it was high time for unity in the Bengal Congress, and resigned from his posts of the president of BPCC and alderman of the Corporation. He egged on the Congress leadership to start a campaign against Government repression, receiving Gandhi at Bombay on his return from the unfruitful talks at the Round Table Conference in London. As the Congress prepared for another round of civil disobedience, the Government cracked whip. Subhas was arrested on his way back from Bombay on train at Kalyan under Regulation III of 1818 on January 3, 1932. Gandhi, Ballabhbhai Patel, Jawaharlal, and other leaders were arrested the next day, and the Congress was declared as an unlawful organisation. This was the beginning of a five year long break from his political life in the country. Locked away, first in Seoni, then in Jubbulpore, Madras and in Bhowali sanatorium in Nainital, Subhas’ health broke down and in February 1933 he sailed for Euorpe. Even as he worked tirelessly in his exile in Europe to campaign for India’s independence, he kept in touch with domestic politics. The larger issue of generating international support for India’s freedom remained the prime mover, but he never lost interest in development of cities and municipal administration.

The European models One of his first meetings on reaching Vienna was with the Mayor of the City. The public welfare undertaken by the socialist city administration (most notably in providing housing to two hundred 111|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 thousand people in the past twelve years) impressed Subhas. He went around to see the city with the municipal officials, and was so impressed with the civic amenities, construction plan of the city and the municipality-run power utilities that he thought of writing a book on the subject for the benefit of municipal councillors in Kolkata. He particularly took note of the fact that all this work had been accomplished by the municipality only through its revenues generated by taxing “amusements, luxuries, etc., with the object of making the rich pay so that the poor could be looked after better…” 73 The Mayor of Vienna, in his letter to new Santosh Kumar Basu, noted that Subhas “has been studying very carefully our municipal institutions and all the social welfare work for the poor and for children, and I hope that he found many things which will prove to be useful to your city also.”74 Throughout his visits to the major European cities - he was received by the of Prague, Warsaw, and Berlin - he noted their work with a keen eye of an administrator and kept writing about them to the new Mayor of Kolkata, Santosh Kumar Basu.75 Transmitting the information was important, but he must have tempered his expectations with the knowledge of the situation at the ground. The Mayoral elections to the Kolkata Corporation had turned especially nasty. In the elections held in April 1934, FazlulHaq was elected Mayor, with the support of the Muslim councillors and the Sengupta faction of Congress over NaliniRanjan Sarkar (who was supported by the Congress Municipal Association and by European members) as the nominated and European members of the Corporation were not allowed to vote.76 Based on the complaint of the nominated members, the Government, however, annulled the election77 and after two more attempts at election, Sarkar was elected as the Mayor.78

The debilitating fight for crumbs In July 1934, his frustrated question to Satyendra Nath Majumdar, then the editor of Ananda Bazar Patrika, was “How much further will the quarrels in the Corporation go?”79 “I am content to serve my country in my own way…There is nothing to choose between the two parties in Calcutta that are now fighting for crumbs,” he wrote bitterly to Satyendra Chandra Mitra. “I do not want to have anything to do with the wretched party-politics of Calcutta.”80 He was extremely upset with the way NaliniRanjan Sarkar’s victory as Mayor was obtained – “I am ashamed to have anything to do with a party that sets up Sj. Nalini Sarkar as the Mayor of Calcutta on the strength of European support,” he wrote to Mitra 112|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 in October.81 When Fazlul Haq was elected the Mayor in 1935, Subhas congratulated him.82 The period from 1934 to 1937 is marked by a decline in his commentary on municipal affairs in Kolkata. In fact, his two letters to Fazlul Huq congratulating him on his election as the new Mayor, and condoling the death of Huq’s wife are the only communications to any Corporation official. Primarily it was because of his detention from April 1936, when he returned home from exile against the wishes of the Government and was promptly arrested, for the next one year. Even when he was given a public reception in April 1937, on the occasion of his release, he spoke mainly about national problems, with only a passing reference to the Kolkata Corporation. In fact, he made it clear that he was going to devote his time to national politics in the near future. “While I am not in a position to announce my future plan of work today, I should, nevertheless, make it quite clear to you that in future I intend to devote a good portion of my time and energy to All-India problems and activities.”83 National politics was the priority now, but municipal affairs could not be completely out his mind. However, there no sign of revival of active interest yet probably because he was appalled by the state of affairs in the Corporation disgusted him. He had remained silent for nearly three years, and was still not making public statements, but did not mince words on what he thought regarding the Corporation politics when an employee of the Corporation wrote to him asking for his intervention to improve the pay and emoluments of the “poorer” employees. In a scathing response, which the Calcutta Municipal Gazette published in August 1937, Subhas wrote: You have an exaggerated notion of my influence. If I have any influence with the public – it certainly does not exist within the Corporation walls. Otherwise many things would not have happened which have actually happened during the last few years…Nepotism has been so rampant during the last few years that it makes me hang my head down in shame…The arguments that are usually trotted out for resisting the claims of the poorer employees to an increase in their pay and emoluments would do credit to the most deep-dyed bureaucrat. My sense of fairness as a human being and my conscience as a Congressman revolts at it – but for the time being I am helpless. As a Congressman, I have a certain responsibility for what is happening within the Corporation, and I am fully alive to it…I cannot tell you to-day how I shall act when I am back to my work. I can only tell you this that if I have anything to do with Bengal politics – the Augean stables of the Calcutta Corporation will have to be swept clean, or, in the alternative, the Congress Party 113|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

will have to wash its hands of any responsibility for what the Calcutta Corporation does. Although he had not definitely made up his mind to return to the Corporation, he was certainly considering the option. “Can you let me have your opinion as to what should be done to cleanse the Augean stables?” he asked Santosh Kumar Basu in a letter.85 Subhas was formally back to the Corporation in September, being unanimously elected as an Alderman. The ex-mayor FazlulHuq was now at the helm of the Bengal Government, and when the news of the Government’s plans to overhaul the constitution of the Corporation emerged, Subhas issued a warning, ironically, invoking the memory of SurendraNath Banerjee, whom he had not hesitated to trivialise in his youth. “If Mr Fazlul Huq takes a step in the direction of further democratisation, or attempts to recast the constitution on Socialistic principles, we shall welcome it… The citizens of Calcutta have not won their constitution without a fight…But that fight was a backyard scrap compared to what Mr Fazlul Huq will have to face, if his rump of reactionaries attempts to trample under foot the legacy of the late Sir Surendra Nath Banerjee,” he told the United Press.86 His reference was to the efforts to bring back the system of separate electorate for Muslims, which Banjerjee’s Act had stipulated only for the first nine years.

Rashtrapati’s city The return to Corporation was temporary. Subhas left for Europe again in November, and when he returned in late January 1938, his selection as the Congress President kept him occupied. At one of the civic receptions, arranged by the Bombay Municipal Corporation, he again outlined his thoughts regarding municipal administration. Appreciating the work done by the Bombay Corporation, he described the achievements of the municipality in Vienna and referred to the programme laid down by CR Das for the Kolkata Corporation. The world was moving towards what he termed as “Municipal Socialism,” – “a collective effort for the service of the entire community.” “Today a modern municipality has to furnish not merely pure drinking water, roads, lighting, etc., but it has to provide primary education and it has to look after the health of the population and to tackle problems of infant mortality, maternity, drainage and the like – problems which the municipalities did not think of a few years ago. It is difficult to say where you are going to draw a line in future.”87 114|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

At the podium of the Haripura Congress, 1938

The Kolkata Corporation, however, was still plagued with internecine quarrels. Drawn into such a quarrel over the dismissal of the Corporation’s education officer, Subhas first tried to work out an honourable compromise, but failing to achieve that resigned from the post of Alderman as well as the leader of the Congress Municipal Association in June. When the Municipal Association pressed him to withdraw the resignation, he demanded greater discipline amongst the Congress members and re- consideration of the dismissal of the Education Officer, which he thought had been done unfairly. With the efforts of Subhas for reforming the working of the Corporation gaining wide support, the Municipal Association acquiesced to his demands and Subhas withdrew his resignation around mid-July.88 In an effort to induce greater efficiency and transparency in the Corporation, the Municipal Association under Subhas appointed a sub-committee to frame rules for recruitment in the Corporation through competitive examinations. The Calcutta Municipal Gazette announced that Subhas would be 115|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 preparing a comprehensive scheme for the “general welfare of the city.” At the same time, Subhas applied for lease of a plot on the east of for ninety nine years at a nominal rate for erection of a building, which later came to be known as the .89

The break with Congress, and search for alternatives The efforts driven by Subhas soon ran into the ground with the acrimonious contest between him and the Gandhian faction over his re-election as the Congress President and Congress policy in the wake of the Second World War. As an Alderman, his association with the Corporation continued, dotted withwith numerous receptions and felicitations, but was perforce tenuous, except during his opposition to amendments to the Municipal Bill proposed by the Fazlul Huq Ministry, which was in turn an extension of the development in national politics. According to the original Act of 1923, the provision of separate electorates for Muslims came to an end in 1932. Elections to the Corporation were henceforth to be held by mixed electorates; but by the same amendment, the Government increased by the number of seats reserved for Muslims by six(its support to an amendment to the Act sponsored by MaulaviAbulKasem seeking re-introduction of separate electorate system was defeated in the Legislative Council).90 Calling the proposed amendment to re-introduce communal electorate in Corporation elections “a crime against democracy and progress,”Subhas reminded the Huq Government in April 1939 of his earlier promise to fight its attempt to “pamper with the Calcutta Municipal Act,” but said that he had not made up his mind over the form of opposition.91 Despite his intentionshe failed to build up an opposition, mainly because of his preoccupation with national politics since the Tripuri Congress. The Bill was passed and the next elections to the Corporation held in March 1940 were held under the new law. Under the new arrangement, 47 out of 98 seats were reserved for Hindus (of which four were for Scheduled castes), 22 for Muslims, 12 for special constituencies such as Bengal Chamber of Commerce, etc., eight for nominated members (of which three were for Scheduled castes), five for elected Aldermen, two for labour and two for Anglo-Indians.92 In the meantime, Subhas had been banned from Congress for three years from August 1939 and the BPCC headed by him was dismissed by the Congress Working Committee (CWC). While he toured the country to organise his ‘Forward Bloc’ the CWC appointed an ad hoc BPCC first headed by MaulanaAbulKalam Azad and later by Surendra Mohan Ghose, as the dismissed BPCC continued with 116|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Subhas at its head. In an atmosphere of communal polarisation Subhas reached out to all parties in an attempt to forge a broad coalition as far as the Corporation was concerned. Stating that the Corporation dealt with civic affairs, and the political and communal questions did not hold a prominent position, he invited all parties to work together for the interest of the city’s development. He followed up his appeal by striking an alliance with the Hindu Mahasabhain February-March for contesting the elections and thereafter running the Corporation. But the understanding soon broke down over the selection of candidates. He made another attempt at reaching an understandingafter the elections, but that effort too failed to materialise due to differences over selection of Aldermen. Subhas then took a step which was unthinkable to the Congress or the Mahasabha: he entered an agreement with the Muslim League. By this arrangement AR Siddiqi of Muslim League was elected the new Mayor. Expectedly, the decision came in for strong criticism from various quarters. What the MasikBasumati wrote probably reflected the views of a large section of people: We have agreed with Subhasbabu’s programme many a times, and at times have disagreed with him too. We are however infinitely surprised and saddened by his recent act…Whatever else Subhasbabu’s Forward Bloc does, it at least stands for a united India; Muslim League on the other hand wants to weaken India by dividing her into India and Pakistan…When Subhasbabu was the Congress President, he knocked on Jinnah’s door more than once to unite Congress and Muslim League. If could not succeed then, what is the secret of his success now? We are not only saddened to see Subhasbabu plunge into the filth of politics, we are shocked!”93 Prabasi (edited by Chattapadhyay, a Hindu Mahasabha sympathiser), one of the most prominent Bengali literary magazines, had its own interest in decrying the development. It had heartily supported the initial agreement between Subhas and the Hindu Mahasabha, warning that if they failed to work together, the influence of the Hindus in the Corporation would decline, leading to waste of money and undertaking welfare work will be difficult.94 With the Subhas-Mahasabha agreement breaking down, Subhas became the target of the magazine’s ire. Modern Review, the other magazine edited by Chattapadhyay also kept writing in the same tone. Presiding over a Mahasabha meeting at the Town Hall to oppose the Subhas-League agreement, he claimed that Subhas was indirectly supporting the Pakistan demand of the League, and insinuated that Subhas’s opposition to the amended Municipality Act and his pronouncements at the Anti-Compromise Conference at Ramgarh were only 117|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 empty words.95 Within the Corporation, NC Chatterjee,96 leader of the Hindu Mahasabha party, took up the fight against the coalition, accusing it of discrimination and party prejudices. The All India Hindu Mahasabha Working Committee meeting held in May in Bombay adopted a resolution condemning the pact for being “highly detrimental to Hindu solidarity and interests in Bengal.”97 While the Ananda Bazar Patrika and the Standard were supportive of Subhas, amongst the contemporary magazines the one which came out in support of Subhas most prominently at this time was Jayasree, edited by Leela Roy. Roy, in her editorial observed that the Mahasabha’s victory in a number of seats indicated the increasing interest in a sizeable section of middle class Hindus to protect their interests in reaction to Bengal Government’s policies; but sannyasis dressed in saffron and carrying tridents, and jumping up and down to canvass for votes for lawyers and barristers was neither a pleasant sight nor did it bode well for the Hindu Society. Roy welcomed the understanding between Subhas and the Mahasabha as a step towards preventing the European bloc from taking over the Corporation.98 A month later, she argued that amongst other reasons, the pact between Subhas and the Muslim League could be beneficial as it restricted the space for any third party (the British) to make mischief and aggravate the communal polarisation and gave a chance to national integration.99 Subhas responded to his critics defended his approach of building coalitions with ‘communal’ organisations in his party organ Forward Bloc. Referring to the ban imposed by the Congress on members of Hindu Mahasabha or the Muslim League joining any elective committee of the Congress, he wrote, “While trying to discard social untouchability, we are, as it were, encouraging political untouchability.” Accusing the Congress to be prejudiced against him, he claimed that this alliance with the Muslim League actually held out hope that Hindu-Muslim question could be solved on a permanent basis. We, on our part, do not regard the communal organisations as untouchable. On the contrary, we hold that the Congress should try continuously to woo them over to its side. During the last three years, repeated attempts have been made to bring about a rapprochement between the Congress and the Muslim League…At that time, the attempt failed, though the writer had been blessed by the Congress Working Committee and by Mahatma Gandhi. Those who had not objected to that attempt which failed ultimately, now strongly object to the present attempt, 118|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

because it has succeeded. Can prejudice go any further? …This time we have broken through the wall and through the fissure, a ray of light has poured in. there is now some hope that we may ultimately succeed in solving a problem which has proved well nigh insoluble to many. Great achievements are often born out of small beginnings.100 Trying to build up from this agreement, Subhas issued an appeal to Gandhi and Jinnah to make an attempt for the settlement of the Hind-Muslim question so that a joint demand for transfer of full powers to the Indian people through a provisional national Government could be made.101 In June he met Gandhi, Jinnah and Savarkar to find a way to unified struggle against the British. 102 But before he could take this initiative any further, he was arrested under the Defence of India Act on July 2, for his announced plan of agitation for the removal of the Holwell Monument. Thus the curtain fell on his involvement with the administration of the city which he had learnt to love and had adopted as his own.

The broken dream and an unanswered question Tragically, between 1924 and January 1941, a journey that started with great hopes ended in petty squabbling. The desire to set an example before the world of the administrative prowess of Indians gave way to patronage seeking, promotion of sectarian interests, and plain corruption. Two aspects of Subhas’s involvement during these years that stand out are (a) his clear conception of what needed to be done to improve the city, and (b) his willingness and capability to provide leadership to reach the goal. The achievements in the first few months, and the return of the original spirit when he became Mayor show that the city could have progressed as planned. But the external environment was anything but favourable. The death of Chittaranjan Das in 1925 was a watershed in Bengal politics. With the power to hold together the various interest groups gone with him, and Subhas away in jail, the influence of the central Congress increased steadily, the effect of which were not completely beneficial. Out of these seventeen years in question, Subhas spent more than eight years in exile, and over a year in prison. This was time enough for factional feuds amongst the Congress workers as amongst the revolutionary groups and between leaders to take firm roots; a development whose direction was also determined by the influence of national politics. He was learning from the world about municipal Governance and trying to pass the knowledge on to the institution, but realised very quickly that unless he took the lead himself, these would remain 119|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 just ideas. Tragically, even his sporadic involvement was not enough to stem the rot. Along with the squabbles, his own increasing involvement in the national politics would not allow Subhas to be able to successfully implement his thoughts. The natural question that therefore arises is: could he have prevented the decline in any way? Clearly he did not have the command which Chittaranjan enjoyed over the political players in the province. Additionally, the opponents (within and outside Congress) were more virulent and the stakes were far higher. But undoubtedly, he was the tallest leader and had the boldness and resourcefulness to try out the implementation of new strategies demanded by the time. Probably, if he had more time to devote, the Corporation would be different. Yet, this shall remain a hypothetical question. What is more important is the fact that his involvement – not too long and sporadic – shows Subhas in a different light, as a modern thinker on civic administration, quite different from the image of the militant leader that has been traditionally associated with him.

Notes 1. Gandhi’s speech at the special session of the Congress at Kolkata in September 1920; Swaraj in One Year, Young India, 22 September, 1920, Swaraj in Nine Months, Young India, 29 December 1920, in Swaraj in One Year, pp. 1-26 2. Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings, 1921, Fifth Session, Vol. V, pp. 121-128 3. Bengal Provincial Congress 1917 4. Congress Politics in Bengal, p 52; Subhas Chandra, p 40 5. Subhas Chandra O Netaji Subhas Chandra, Sabitri Prasanna Chattapadhyay, pp. 33-35; Sroter Trina, BirendranathSasmal, p 29 6. Indian Annual Register, 1922-23, Vol. 1, pp. 813-872 (n) 7. Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, p 317 8. Elite Conflict in a Plural Society, p 245 9. Indian Annual Register 1923 Volume II Supplement, pp. 127-128 10. Indian Annual Register 1923 Volume II Supplement, pp. 121-127, 134-145 11. The crucial role which Forward went on to play can be gauged from its assessment by the bitterest critic and opponent of the Swaraj Party – the Governor of Bengal Lord Lytton. Referring to the publicity campaign of the party, he wrote, “their official organ The Forward – a 120|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

most excellent newspaper, well printed, well edited and cleverly written – is their most effective weapon.”Memorandum by the Governor of Bengal, August 31, 1924, Cabinet Records, CAB/24/168/0060 12. Elite Conflict in a Plural Society, pp. 330-331; Subhas Chandra, pp. 68-69; DeshapranSasmal, pp. 106-113 13. Je Kathar Shesh Nei, p 54 14. , p 136 15. Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, pp. 96-97 16. The Indian Struggle, p 137 17. IB 1924, ‘Non-Cooperation – the Swarajya Party’, cited in Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, p 320 18. Young India, July 31, 1924, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 28, pp. 391-392 19. Subhaser Songe Baro Bochhor, pp. 140-1 20. A Nation in Making, pp. 360-364. Subhas’s position on this point was completely opposite. In numerous speeches he reiterated his own view that life should be considered as one whole, and cannot be compartmentalized between the political and the non-political. 21. Lord Olivier and Mr Das, The Times, July 29, 1924, p 11. The Times regularly quoted from the Bengalee to show the Swarajya party and Das in poor light. 22. Autobiography of an Unknown Indian: Part II, p 379 23. Lytton’s address to the Bengal Legislative Assembly on January 23, 1924, The Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings, 1924, Volume XIV, No. 1, pp.6-7 24. Letter from Lytton to the Viceroy, June 26, 1924, Cabinet Records, CAB/24/168/0025 25. Letter from the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal to the Government of India, July 10, 1924; Dispatch No. 2 of 1924 from Government of India to India Office, August 9, 1924, Cabinet Records, CAB/24/168/0048 26. Telegram from Viceroy to the Secretary of State, October 22, 1924, Records of the Cabinet Office, CAB/24/168/0079 27. The Indian Struggle, p 151 28. The Indian Quarterly Register, July-December 1924, p 160; Prabasi, Agrahayan, 1331, p 264 29. The Indian Struggle, p 153; Subhas Chandra, p 74 121|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

30. Subhas Chandra, p 75 31. The Indian Quarterly Register, 1924, July-December, pp. 176, 180-181 32. The Indian Struggle, pp. 181-182; My Uncle Netaji, p 16 33. The Indian Struggle, p 184 34. Expressing initial reluctance to contest elections to the Bengal Council in 1926, he wrote to Sarat, “if I have to choose between civic work and politics – I am not sure that I shall feel inclined to give up a less humble but more tangible programme in favour of a more wordy one.” Letter to Sarat Chandra Bose, March 17, 1926, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 3, p 259 35. Letter to Sarat Chandra Bose, January 24, 1925, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 3, p 35 36. Letter to Sarat Chandra Bose, May 22, 1925, p 64; Letter to Sarat Chandra Bose, June 6, 1925, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 3 p 69 37. Letter to Sarat Chandra Bose, August 18, 1925, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 3, p 105 38. Letter to Santosh Kumar Basu, April 26, 1926, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 279-83 39. Letter to Sarat Chandra Bose, July 2, 1925, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 72-3 40. Letter to AC Ukil, June 1926, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 3, p 305 41. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, November 27, 1926, p 69 42. From his letters written to Sarat from Mandalay, it can be seen that Subhas was as serious about learning the ropes of Council politics as he was in any other work he took up. From Shillong, he advised Sarat, who had been elected from the Calcutta University constituency, that in each session he should do something to nurse his constituency. It was not possible, he knew, to do anything substantial, “but one has to make a show – by means of questions and resolutions.” Letter to Sarat Chandra Bose, August 11, 1927, NetajiCollected Works, Vol. 4, pp 250-251 43. Gandhi was extremely unhappy with this development and sternly rebuked Jawaharlal for what he considered to be a hasty decision. 44. Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, Part II, p 379 45. Subhas Chandra, p 96 46. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, April 14, 1928, pp. 919-928 47. Subhas Rachanabali, Vol. 1, pp. 166-167 48. Independent Mayor of Calcutta: A Swarajist Defeat, The Times, April 3, 1928 49. Swarajists Defeated in Calcutta, The Times, April 5, 1928 122|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

50. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, March 31, 1928, p 50 51. Subhas Rachanabali, Vol 1. p 96 52. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, February 25, 1928, p 49 53. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, June 9, 1928, p 61 54. Subhas Rachanabali, Vol. 1, p 200 55. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, May 19, 1928, p 60 56. Two of our Problems, Calcutta Municipal Gazette, November 17, 1928, pp. 62-63 57. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, December 15, 1928, pp. 246-250; Subhas Rachanabali, Vol. 1, pp. 289-291 58. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, June 29, 1929, p 983 59. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, January 25, 1930, pp. 454-455 60. Brothers against the Raj, p 224 61. Swarajist Control in Kolkata, The Times, March 20, 1930 62. Brothers against the Raj, pp. 226-7 63. Revolt against Congress, The Times, May 16, 1930 64. Hindu Concession to Kolkata Moslems, The Times, June 12, 1930 65. Interaction at a reception organised by Bangiya Jana Sangha at Albert Hall, Kolkata, November 9, 1930, Subhas Rachanabali, Vol. 3, pp 35-39 66. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, September 27, 1930 67. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, October 25, 1930, pp. 989-990 68. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, October 18, 1930, p 925 69. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, November 8, 1930, p 1069; November 15, 1113-1115 70. Subhas Chandra, p 130 71. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, December 13, 1930, pp. 213-215 72. Speech at a reception by the Kalighat Union, January 25, 1931, Subhas Rachanabli, Vol. 3, pp. 60-62 73. Letters to Santosh Kumar Basu, Mayor of Calutta, May 11 and May 23, 1933, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 10-11, 13-14. 74. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, November 17, 1933 75. Letters to Santosh Kumar Basu, June 18, 1933, March 14, 1934, April 7, 1934, Netaji Collected 123|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Works, Vol. 8, pp. 16-17, 57-60, 64-66 76. First Moslem Mayor of Kolkata, The Times, April 11, 1934 77. Kolkata Election Annulled, The Courier and Advertiser, May 14, 1934. 78. New Mayor of Kolkata Elected, The Times, July 5, 1934. 79. Letter to Satyendra Nath Majumdar, July 5, 1934, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 8, p 72 80. Letter to Satyendra Chandra Mitra, July 25, 1934, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 8, p 75 81. Letter to Satyendra Chandra Mitra, October 18, 1934, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 8, p 83 82. Letter to Fazlul Huq, May 10, 1935, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 8, p 96 83. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, April 10, 1937, pp. 659-660 84. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, August 14, 1937, p 496 85. Letter to Santosh Kumar Basu, August 17, 1937, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 8, p 220 86. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, October 9, p 810 87. Address to the Bombay Corporation, May 10, 1938, Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 9, pp. 31-35. He spoke in similar terms at a reception given by the Lucknow Municipality in November and Karachi Municipality in December (Calcutta Municipal Gazette, November 26, 1938, p ix; December 10, p 130) 88. Brothers against the Raj, p 368 89. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, July 30, 1938, p 310 90. Kolkata: Story of its Government, pp. 246-247 91. Statement to Associated Press, Calcutta Municipal Gazette, April 22, p 848 92. Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, pp. 107-108 93. Bosu-League Jogajog, Masik Basumati, Baishakh 1347, p 166 94. Prabasi, Baishakh (April-May), 1347, pp. 113, 126. 95. Prabasi, Jyaishtha (May-June), 1347, pp. 241-244, 247-249; Ashadh (June-July), pp. 382-384, 397-398 96. Father of Communist leader and later Speaker Somnath Chatterjee 97. The Modern Review, June 1940, pp. 617-618, 625 98. Jayasree, Baisakh (April-May), 1347, pp. 1156-1157 99. Jayasree, Jyaishtha (May-June), 1347, p 1229 100. Signed editorial in Forward Bloc, May 4, 1940, in Netaji Collected Works, Vol. 10, pp. 124|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

98-100 101. Calcutta Municipal Gazette, June 15, 1940, p 141 102. Subhas Chandra O Netaji Subhas Chandra, p 107

Bibliography

Books A Nation in Making, Sir SurendranathBanerjea, 1931, Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press Autobiography of an Unknown Indian: Part II, Nirad C Chaudhuri, Jaico Publishing House Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, JoyaChatterji Bengal Provincial Congress 1917, Yatindra Kumar Ghosh (compiled), Firma KL Mukhopadhyay Brothers against the Raj: A Biography of Sarat& Subhas Chandra Bose, Leonard A Gordon, Viking Kolkata: Story of its Government Congress Politics in Bengal: 1919-1939, Srilata Chatterjee, Anthem Press DeshapranSasmal, PramathaNath Pal, The Central Book Agency Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, HemendranathDasgupta, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Elite Conflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth Century Bengal, JH Broomfield, University of California Press Je KatharSheshNei, GopalLalSanyal, JayasreePrakashan My Uncle Netaji, AsokeNath Bose, BharatiyaVidyaBhavan. Swaraj in One Year, Mahatma Gandhi, Ganesh & Co, Madras, May 1921 The Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings, 1921, Fifth Session, Vol. V The Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings, 1924, Volume XIV, No. 1 Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal: 1875-1927, RajatKanta Ray, Oxford University Press Sroter Trina, BirendranathSasmal, GopinathBharati Subhas Chandra, HemendraNathDasgupta, JyotiProkasalaya Subhas Chandra O Netaji Subhas Chandra, SabitriPrasannaChattapadhyay, JayasreePrakashan Subhas Rachanabali,JayasreePrakashan 125|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

SubhaserSongeBaroBochhor: 1912-24, Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, Sarkar & Co. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publications Division Government of India, 1999 The Indian Annual Register, 1922-23, Volume 1, HN Mitra (ed), Gian Publishing House The Indian Annual Register, 1923, Volume II Supplement, Gian Publishing House The Indian Quarterly Register, July-December 1924, HN Mitra (ed) The Annual Register Office The Indian Struggle: 1920-34, Subhas Chandra Bose, Thacker, Spink& Co. Ltd

Newspapers and Magazines Jayasree, Baisakh, Jyaishtha, 1347 Masik Basumati, Baishakh 1347 Prabasi, Agrahayan, 1331; Baishakh, Jyaishtha, Ashadh, 1347 The Courier and Advertiser The Modern Review, June 1940 The Times

Official Records British Cabinet Records, accessed from the British National Archives

Chandrachur Ghose is a business strategy consultant by profession based in Gurgaon, National Capital Region (NCR), India. He is a founder member of MissionNetaji, a group that conducts research on various aspects of the life, work and the mysterious disappearance of Subhas Chandra Bose, and runs the website www.subhaschandrabose.org. Echoes from the Past: Revisiting ‘Old Kolkata’ in Gorosthane Sabdhan

Kallol Gangopadhyay

Abstract

Ace Bengali Filmmaker and writer, Satyajit Ray created the character of ‘’, a detective who earned a niche in the minds of readers both young and old. One such text being Gorosthane Sabdhan set in the backdrop of Kolkata.

The paper attempts to understand the links and co-relate the anecdotes on incidents and objects surrounding the text "Gorosthane Sabdhan" and literature available on the history of old Kolkata. It tries to present the foundation of the fiction (story) along with the parallel information available from primary and secondary literature on Kolkata, tracing the influential trajectory.

Keywords

Cemetery, church, adventure, mystery, British, native.

Introduction

After continually writing for six days (27 August – 1 September) in 1977 Satyajit Ray completed his 15th narrative on Feluda. It was published that very year in the festival (Durga ) issue of Desh (magazine) by the name "Gorosthane Sabdhan" (The Secret of the Cemetery), which had the name "Sabdhan Gorosthan" in the first draft. The book "Gorosthane Sabdhan" was published in 1979. Sleuth Feluda’s own city Kolkata1 had featured in couple of stories earlier, yet this is the first full length novel from the author to his readers which features Kolkata as the heartland of all adventures. As Topshe 127|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 narrates, ‘Feluda and I had travelled to so many different places trying to solve mysteries – Sikkim, Lucknow, Rajasthan, Simla, – and had had plenty of adventures everywhere. But I had no idea that this time; we would get involved in such a bloodcurdling experience without even stepping out of Kolkata’ (Ray 2004: 89).

Feluda’s Passion meets Profession

It was impossible for Feluda alias Pradosh Chandra Mitra to get involved in the mystery surrounding the cemetery in Kolkata if the history of old Kolkata did not interest him. In Topshe’s opinion Sidhu jeytha2 is partly responsible for Feluda’s interest in old Kolkata. ‘In the last three months, he had read endless books on the subject, looked at scores of pictures and studied dozens of maps’ (Ray 2004: 3) as a result.

In "Gorosthane Sabdhan", Feluda talks about the initial years of this city’s history and in the very opening sequences of the novel, we encounter a real character who lived 325 years back in this city. He is Job Charnock. Feluda’s interest in old Kolkata drew him to visit Job Charnock’s tomb in St. John’s Churchyard with Topshe and Lalmohan Babu.

As Topshe states, ‘After seeing Job Charnock’s grave Feluda was keen to make us visit the old cemetery at Park Street’ (Ray 2004: 6) but the sudden bad weather played spoilsport that day as the novel narrates.

But that evening in South Park Street cemetery a strange incident took place. The fierce storm blew off a large branch of a mango tree and seriously injured a middle-aged man named Narendra Nath Biswas. The very next day Feluda along with Topshe and Lalmohan Babu discovers a recently dug pit at the site of the accident. Someone had dug a pit beside the grave of a Britisher, named Thomas Godwin. This triggered a suspicion in Feluda’s mind which gave rise to a power packed mystery – central to which is a peculiar crime – grave digging. ‘It was clear that we had got embroiled in a bizarre mystery’ Topshe thinks, ‘It was like being lost in a maze ... something perhaps even more complex than the Bhoolbhulaia in lucknow’ (Ray 2004; 51). 128|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Calcutta within Kolkata

To resolve the mystery in the seventies the three musketeers boarded in Lalmohan Babu’s newly purchased second-hand Mark II Ambassador and travelled through the heart of Kolkata from to Chowringhee. At the same time they also stealthily adventured through the unknown historical alleys and by the lanes of old Kolkata. As a reason we see another Kolkata unravelling which was embedded within. This is more exhilarating than fiction.

The paper tries to thread into a timeline the information and clues available on old Kolkata based on the novel Gorosthane Sabdhan and look back on the days and times once lived in the city.

In an attempt to construct the city of memories, the topics which we have identified as markers appear in the story line as per the following sequence:

• Fancy lane and the hanging of Nanda Kumar

• Kolkata – from a trading factory to the City of Palaces

• St. John’s Churchyard and Charnock’s Mausoleum

• South Park Street cemetery

• Ochterlony Monument

• Lower Circular road cemetery

• Adjutant (Hargila) birds

• The White Town and the Black Town

• Bourne and Shepherd

• Charnock’s grave and its opening in 1892

But if we want to arrange the incidents chronologically the sequence will change to form a new order:

• Kolkata – From a trading factory to the City of Palaces

• St. John’s Churchyard and Charnock’s Mausoleum 129|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

• The White Town and the Black Town

• Adjutant (Hargila) birds

• Fancy Lane and the hanging of Nanda Kumar

• South Park Street cemetery Fancy lane and the hanging of Nanda Kumar

• Ochterlony Monument

• Lower Circular road cemetery

• Bourne and Shepherd

• Charnock’s grave and its opening in 1892

Travelling against the tide of time, our virtual tour of old Kolkata will begin with the new order listed above – with Job Charnock as guided by chronology.

Kolkata – from a trading factory to the City of Palaces

According to Feluda, although Kolkata was a ‘young’ city compared to Delhi and , its importance could not be undermined. It was true that Kolkata did not have a Taj Mahal, or a Qutab Minar, or the kind of forts one might see in Jodhpur and , or even a famous alley like Vishwanath ki gali in Benaras (Ray 2004: 3-4).

‘But just think,’ Feluda had said to Topshe, ‘one day, an Englishman was sitting by the Ganges in a place that was really a jungle, packed with flies, mosquitoes and snakes, and this man thought he’d build a factory in the same place. And then, in no time, the jungle was cleared, buildings were built, roads were made, rows of gas lights appeared, horses galloped down those roads, palkis ran, and in a hundred years, the place came to be known as the city of palaces’. (Ray 2004: 4)

It is believed that Job Charnock stepped out gingerly from his merchant boat onto the banks of the river Ganga near the village on 24 August 1690.This brought to the world the news of a tiny Bengal 130|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 village, Kalikata. Though the history of the city is generally dated from Charnock’s entry, but the High Court of Kolkata on 16 May 2003 ruled that neither could ‘Charnock be regarded as the founder of Kolkata, nor (could) the claim that Kolkata was born on 24 August, 1690’3 be substantiated historically. The judgement was almost entirely based on the finding that the history of Kolkata stretched way into the centuries past before Charnock had even set foot on the Indian soil.

There exists at the India Office a series of eleven volumes, extending to 1706, the first of which is entitled ‘Diary and Consultation Book for affairs of the Rt. Hon’ble English East India Company kept by the Rt. Worshipfull the Agent and Council, beginning July 16, 1690.’ Here may be read, in the words of Charnock, the story of how on the 24th August, 1690, the English occupied the deserted village of Suttanuttee for the third and final time:

Extracts from Chutanutte Diary and Consultation, August 24, 1960. Factory Records, Calcutta, No. 1.

The arrival.

August 24th, 1690. – We arrived about noon but found the place in a deplorable condition nothing being left for our present accommodation, and the Rains falling day & night, We are forced to betake ourselves to boats, which considering the Season of the years is very unhealthy. (Wilson 1906: 6)

Calcutta was then full of jungle, and might not inaptly be termed a part of the Sunderbunds. It was a swamp. [...] The jungle, the dampness of the soil, the impure air blowing from the Sunderbunds and the Salt-water Lake standing in its vicinity were all insanitary factors, and Calcutta, in consequence, was the picture of unhealthiness. [...] Wild boars, crocodiles, alligators, reptiles and leopards infested the place, [...]. It seems wonderful today that, in spite of these disadvantages, Job Charnock selected the site - ‘this very small spot of raising ground on the east side of the river’- as the trading centre. It would scarcely be reasonable to credit him with a calculating prescience of the glory of the town, and one can only regard him as the unconscious instrument of a Divine purpose. Whatever the reasons of his choice, it has been justified by the event, and to-day it is possible to describe him as ‘the illustrious Job Charnock the first conspicuous Englishman on this side of the world’. (Deb 1905: 8) 131|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Calcutta, as it is to-day, may truly be called a great and magnificent city. [...] The various institutions of public utility, the structural improvements and improved sanitation, the rapid increase of population, and the growing progress of arts and commerce, have transformed this once unhealthy cluster of villages into a town of conspicuous prosperity and grandeur. One is almost staggered and awed at the unprecedented increase of luxury and magnificence that have attended the change when he looks at the innumerable, broad and well paved roads running symmetrically, and the many houses that have sprung up, whose splendour and the beauty have deservedly won for Calcutta the appellation of ‘The City of Palaces’, […]. (Deb 1905: 1-2)

St. John’s Churchyard and Charnock’s Mausoleum

Topshe writes, ‘Job Charnock’s tomb- said to be the first brick structure built in Kolkata- was in the compound of the two-hundred-year-old St. John’s Church BBD Bagh’ (Ray 2004: 4). There is also a mention of the Latin inscription in Gorosthane Sabdhan. Feluda explains the meaning to Topshe and Lalmohan Babu.

The Charnock Mausoleum in St. John’s Churchyard is a massive structure, octagonal in form with a double dome. In each face there is a low and narrow archway. The date of its erection, says Archdeacon Hyde, who has discussed the question with much thoroughness, cannot be dated many months earlier or later than the year 1695. We may certainly therefore claim it to be the oldest example of British masonry now existing in Kolkata. The original Fort William itself was not begun till 1696 and was 3 years in building (Hyde 78, 81).

Governor Charnock, [...] worn by thirty-six years of hard work and considerable suffering in Bengal, broke down: his mind gave way, and, [...] he died on the 10th of January, 1692, and was buried in the burial-ground of the settlement, adjoining the Creek. This burial-ground now forms St. John’s Churchyard, where the mausoleum erected over Charnock’s remains by his son-in-law, Eyre stands to this day in excellent preservation, the lettering of its inscription almost as sharp and clear as when first raised (1695) (Blechynden 1905: 9-10) 132|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The Latin epitaph:

D.O.M. Jobus Charnock, Armiger Anglus et nup. in hoc regno. Bengalensi dignissimum Anglorum Agens Mortalitatis suae exuvias sub hoc marmore deposuit, ut in spe beatae resurrectionis ad Christi judicis adventum obdormirent. Qui postquam in solo non-suo peregrinatus esset diu reversus est domum suae aeternitatis decimo die 10th Januarii 1692.4

Translation:

In the hands of God Almighty, Job Charnock, English knight and recently the most worthy agent of the English in this Kingdom of Bengal left his mortal remains under this marble so that he might sleep in the hope of a blessed resurrection at the coming of Christ the Judge. After he had journeyed onto foreign soil he returned after a little while to his eternal home on the 10th day of January 1692.5

From the time of Charnock until the opening in 1767 of the South Park Street Cemetery, St. John’s Churchyard was the sole burying-place of the settlement. [...] The graves of only a few remain to-day. The excavation of the foundations of the Church was the cause of the disappearance of many obelisks and pyramids which our fore-fathers in Calcutta loved to place over their dead and which form so prominent a feature of every view of the old Burying-place prior to 1780. Others were removed in 1802, when they are stated by Asiaticus6 to have fallen into such a condition of irreparable decay that it was deemed necessary to pull down most of them ‘in order to prevent any dangerous accidents which the tottering ruins threatened to such as approached them’ (Cotton 1909:424). The only graves to have been left undisturbed were those of Job Charnock and Admiral Watson. Surviving headstones from the old burial ground are arranged around the Charnock Mausoleum. The mausoleum also houses the remains of Charnock’s wife, who was a native, and probably a Hindu widow. She did not convert to , though Charnock buried her in the Christian manner, and by some accounts sacrificed a cock on her grave at each anniversary of her death.

The White town and the Black Town

Sitting at Blue fox restaurant Feluda informs Lalmohan Babu about Kolkata two hundred years ago: ‘[…] there was the house of the Governor-General, St. John’s church, The Park Street Cemetery, 133|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 theatres in Theatre Road, and lot of other buildings where the British lived. That area was known as White Town. Native Indians were not allowed to live there. North Kolkata was known as Black Town’ (Ray 2004: 36).

By the early eighteenth century, the Kolkata had come to be divided into fairly well-defined European and Native quarters, known as the White and the Black Town. The communities from the many parts of undivided India who arrived and settled in Kolkata, peopled that area which came to be called the Black Town. In his notes to the illustration ‘The Black Town of Calcutta’, Balthazard Solvyns writes:

Each nation at Calcutta has its particular quarter: so we have the English quarter, the Portuguese quarter […] That which is inhabited by the natives, who, whether they are originally Hindoos or Mussulmans, differ from all the others by their complexion which is as dark as the Caffries, is called the Black Town. No European is to be seen there, and the construction of the houses is entirely different from ours […]’ (Hardgrave 1990:31-46)

While the White Town lay to the north of the old fort, the Black Town spread over Sutanuti, Chitpur and Gobindapur. The gradual movement of the whites away from the area of Sutanuti where Charnock had first landed accentuated the division between the White and the Black Towns (Lahiri Chaudhury 1990: 156-7). The deep trench, 16-18 feet wide, that was dug in 1710 ostensibly to drain the White Town was also a way of separating the White Town from the Black (Nair 1990: 227). The difference in the lifestyles of the two towns was vast.

In1758, the construction of Fort William and the demolition of Gobindapur required the inhabitants of the area to move to , Kumartuli and , where they were given land as compensation. In the 1790s, the area around Chowringhee was still considered ‘out of town’, but affluent Europeans had begun to build ‘garden houses’ in the area (Hardgrave 1990: 31-46). Between the White and the Black Towns of Kolkata lay those areas in which lived Portuguese, Armenians and Jews. This was the area between and Park Street which had earlier attracted some 40 Europeans to build their residences there (Cotton 1909:106). Gradually, though, the areas around Writer’s Building, Baubazar, Dharamtala and Janbazar declined in worth and were taken over by ‘the rest’, which included Anglo-Indians, Portuguese, Armenians, and the growing community of the Jews, 134|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

‘to become grey areas between Black and White Towns of Kolkata’ (Lahiri Chaudhury 1990: 159-60).

Adjutant (Hargila) Birds

Feluda informs Lalmohan Babu about adjutant birds seen two hundred years ago in Kolkata. He notes: ‘They were as common in those days as crows and sparrows are today. They were big birds, about four and a half feet high. They went about peeking at all the rubbish they could find in the streets. If they saw a corpse floating down the Ganges, they would perch themselves on it and get a free ride down the river (Ray 2004: 36). […] they […] used to sit on compound walls and railings. There is enough evidence of that in old pictures drawn at that time.’ When Lalmohan Babu queried about the look of it Feluda informs, ‘The municipal building has a crest on the front wall. There’s a picture of an adjutant bird in it. I can show it to you’(Ray 2004:67).

In the 19th century, they were especially common in the city of Kolkata, where they were referred to as the ‘Calcutta adjutant’. Known locally as hargila (derived from the Sanskrit word for ‘bone-swallower’) and considered to be unclean birds, they were largely left undisturbed but sometimes hunted for the use of their meat in folk medicine. Valued as scavengers, they were once used in the logo of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation.

The first emblem of the Corporation of Kolkata came into existence in 1896. It represented two adjutant birds holding serpents in their beaks and carrying a crown on their shoulders. On 22 February, 1961, the old emblem was changed and a new design was adopted.

Cotton notes: ‘[…] we shall look in vain for the adjutant birds, once a familiar feature of the Calcutta landscape and bold enough to annex even the lion and unicorn on the stately facade’ (Cotton 1909: Introduction i-ii).

South Park Street cemetery

In the novel Gorosthane Sabdhan, on 25 th of June, the trio visited the South Park Street cemetery. At the entrance Feluda assured visibly subdued Lalmohan Babu , ‘In the last one hundred and twenty- five 135|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 years, no one has been buried in this cemetery.’ Topshe gave us graphic description of the place as they went down the paved path through rows of tombs –

‘They were all twelve or fourteen feet high. At some distance, to our right, was a tomb as high as a three-storeyed house. Feluda said it was probably the tomb of the scholar, William Jones. It was the tallest tomb in Kolkata. Each tomb had either a white or a black marble plaque, with the dead person’s date of birth, the date on which he died and some other facts. Some large plaques had brief details of the person’s entire life. Most tombstones rose like columns. Their bases were broad, but they tapered off as they rose higher’. (Ray 2004: 9)

Feluda told Topshe that these columns are called obelisk in English. Topshe further added, ‘Some tombs bore the same family name – obviously the people were related to one another. The earliest date I had noticed so far was 28 July 1779, twelve years before the French Revolution’ (Ray 2004: 10). Feluda informed Topshe later that there were more than two thousand graves in that cemetery.

Once known as the ‘Great Cemetery’, the Park Street cemetery was one of the earliest non- church cemeteries in the world and probably the largest Christian cemetery outside Europe and America in the 19th century. It houses more than 1600 dead – buried over a period of more than 150 years when the colonial power was at its zenith in India (BACSA 1992). ‘It was opened on August 25th, 1767, for the reception of the body of Mr. John Wood, a writer in the Custom House, whose tomb was subsequently levelled to make way for the western cross road’ (Cotton 1909:568). The earliest grave dates to 1767 and the last memorial was erected in 1895 (BACSA 1992).

Park Street cemetery was a burial ground that housed not only the dead remains of the colonial bureaucracy, military officials, mercantile elite and their families but also the common and sundry citizenry. These were among the earliest Europeans who came to Kolkata from a different world, thousands of miles away, leaving their families and homes in search of money, fame and power (see Dutta 1994).

The average life expectancy of Europeans in India during the early colonial period, excluding infant and child mortality was well under 30 for men and 25 for women. Most of the deaths occurred during the monsoon months. Wilkinson notes: ‘In Calcutta in one year, out of the total 1200, over a third died between August and end of December. It was a regular annual occurrence: the survivors used 136|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 to hold thanksgiving banquets towards the end of October to celebrate the deliverance’ (Wilkinson 1976: 7).

These dead are commemorated with monumental tombs, some enormous in their size and sheer volume – huge canopies, supported by giant pillars, structures raised to about 100 ft above ground – providing a grandiose effect. Others are more humble and consist of obelisks set on square podia, or mere marble slabs covering family burials with intimate histories of the deceased clan. The most monumental memorials imitate the pyramids of Egypt; others are imposing cenotaphs faithful to the designs found in Victorian England and are examples of neoclassical influence (Davis 1985:61). Some tombs are like small brick houses while some mausoleums are in the form of temples coated with stucco and then painted. The architectural feature of each tomb in the cemetery imitates the glory of the – its power, its ideological ubiquity. As Rudyard Kipling sardonically notes in the chapter on the Park Street cemetery in his City of Dreadful Night – a scathing commentary on colonial Kolkata: “The tombs are small houses. It is as though we walked down the streets of a town, so tall are they and so closely do they stand – a town shrivelled by fire, and scarred by frost and siege. Men must have been afraid of their friends rising up before the due time that they weighted them with such cruel mounds of masonry” (Kipling 1891).

Until the middle of the 19th century, this area was a dense tropical bamboo forest frequented by the colonial elite on tiger hunts. Today, it is a jungle of colonial, modern and postmodern buildings, jostling for space in a city of more than 13 million people.

Fancy Lane and the hanging of Nanda Kumar

Topshe informs: ‘Feluda’s latest passion was old Kolkata. It started with a visit to Fancy Lane, where he had to go to investigate a murder. When he learnt that the word fancy had come from the Indian word phansi meaning death by hanging, and that two hundred years ago, Nanda Kumar had been hung in the same area, Feluda became deeply interested in the history of Kolkata’ (Ray 2004: 3).

Cotton notes: ‘Many of the lanes about Bentinck Street and Dalhousie Square had the same names a century ago as at the present day, such as [...] Fancy Lane (251). [...] Archdeacon Hyde traces the derivation of Fancy Lane to phansi or gallows which he places in this locality in the early days when Calcutta was surrounded by palisades and the southern boundary was shut in by the creek which 137|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

flowed along the course of what is now Hastings Street’ (258).

The trial and execution of Maharaja Nanda Kumar (referred to in contemporary documents as Nuncomar) was one of the most infamous episodes of the early days of the East India Company’s rule in India. Nanda Kumar was an Indian tax official, appointed collector of Burdwan and given the title ‘Maharaja’ by Emperor Shah Alam II in 1764. A bitter enemy of , Nanda Kumar accused him, through a letter, of accepting a bribe from ’s widow, Munny Begum for securing for her the guardianship of the Nawab Mubarak-ud-Daulah, then a minor. The case was taken up in the Supreme Council of Bengal by Hastings’ rival, Philip Francis. But Hastings was able to overrule the Council, and even though he admitted to have accepted bribe, he could not be brought to justice.

Nanda Kumar was however, prosecuted, first on the charge of compelling a certain native by the name of Kamal-ud-Din to falsely accuse Hastings, and second, the more serious charge, of defrauding a certain Indian banker, by the name of Bolaqi Das , of the sum of Rs. 70,000. Nanda Kumar was tried under , India’s first Chief Justice, and friend of Warren Hastings. He was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed. Whether or not this constituted ‘judicial murder’ is a subject that is still debated.

But Indian documents from the time, do not point out the exact spot where he was executed. Multiple British records however point to a spot near Cooly Bazar, which would roughly correspond to today’s Hastings, close to ‘Hastings Bridge’ which would be what we call the Kidderpore Bridge today.

Cotton notes: ‘[...] after crossing the bridge (Kidderpore bridge), we find ourselves in Hastings, a Government colony, [...]. It was here that Nunda Kumar, Dewan to the Nawab of Moorshedabad, was executed, August 5th, 1775, the first Brahman hanged by the English in India. The old name of the place was Cooly Bazar, and it is said that it owes its origin to the numerous workmen and coolies employed in building the Fort who are said to have formed a regular village to the south’ (226).

Busteed notes: ‘We are indebted to an old number of the Calcutta Review for the identification of several modern localities in this city with old ones. [...] It is there stated that Nuncomar was hanged near the river between Cooly bazaar and Hastings Bridge, a platform being erected for the purpose’ (Busteed 1897: 59-60). 138|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Ochterlony Monument

From Topshe’s description we come to know about how Lalmohan Babu found an important clue for Feluda – a wallet at Park Street cemetery. Inside the wallet there was a hundred and fifty year’s old paper cutting from a newspaper which reported about the construction of the Ochterlony monument. Lalmohan Babu informed that he read an article on the Monument written by Narendra Nath Biswas, the owner of the wallet, in the magazine Vichitrapatra.

For decades Ochterlony Monument has been amongst the most prominent landmarks in the city. It was erected on the north-eastern quadrant of the Maidan in honour of a distinguished soldier, Major General Sir David Ochterlony, the hero of the Nepalese War (1814-1816). He joined the East India Company's army as a cadet in 1777 and rose to the rank of Major General. He died in Meerut in the year 1825. In the year 1828, the monument was built under the expert supervision of architect J.P. Parker who executed the design of Charles Knowles Robinson at a cost of about Rs. 35,000 which was met by public subscription. Cotton notes: ‘The design of the structure was taken from Moslem architecture. The upper part of the column is the reproduction of one in Syria, to which is added a base which is pure Egyptian and the dome which has a metallic cupola is Turkish. The column itself is a brickwork, and the circular staircase within (by which access is had to the two galleries which encircle the column from outside) is constructed of Chunar stone. It rests on a massive pedestal of brickwork and stone, and bears a circular disc of white marble with the following inscription:

‘Sir David Ochterlony, Baronet, Grand Cross of the Bath, Major-General in the Army of Bengal, died at Meerut on the 15th July, 1825. The people of Bengal, natives and European, to commemorate his services as a statesman and a soldier, have in grateful admiration raised this column’ (330).

In 1969, however, it was renamed Sahid Minar or Martyrs' Column in memory of the Indian freedom fighters who had laid down their lives for freedom of this nation. The city's skyline and identity will not be complete without this Monument, which despite the changing times is still standing tall and proud. 139|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Lower Circular road cemetery

In the novel before going to Sidhu jeytha’s house for consultation Feluda and Topshe ‘had spent an hour and a half that morning in another cemetery in Lower Circular Road. It had been built later than the one in Park Street, and was still in use’ (Ray 2004:24). Feluda’s meticulous investigation in the story revealed that Thomas Godwin’s next three generations including his daughter Charlotte were buried in this cemetery.

Cotton notes: ‘From North Park Street the visitor should pass on to the Lower Circular Road Cemetery. Crossing the boulevard which covers the site of the old Mahratta Ditch, he will find himself in a short space of time before the portals of another great Campo Santo, opened in 1840 for the remains of a little child: it has been ever since the repository of the Calcutta dead’ (580). It is still in use and houses more than 12000 dead.

Bourne and Shepherd

Feluda got a copy of the wedding photograph of Charan Biswas (Great- grandfather of Michael Narendranath and William Girindranath Biswas) and Thomas Godwin’s granddaughter Victoria from Bourne and Shepherd. The trio had visited the store at 141 S.N. Banerjee Street and came to know that the studio had ‘got all the negatives of photos taken since 1854’ (Ray 2004: 68).

The oldest surviving photographic studio of the world Bourne & Shepherd at Esplanade was set up in 1840, a year after the introduction of the daguerreotype and calotype processes of photography (the first commercial photography) in France and England. Kolkata-based photographer William Howard founded the studio in 1840. During his photographic assignment in Shimla, he came across Samuel Bourne in 1863. They set up a new studio Howard and Bourne in Shimla. Around the same time, Charles Shepherd established a studio with Arthur Robertson, called Shepherd and Robertson, in Agra. Subsequently, Robertson left the business and joined Bourne, came to Kolkata in 1963 and together, they upgraded Howard's studio into Howard, Bourne and Shepherd. In 1866, after the departure of Howard, the studio became ‘Bourne & Shepherd’. 140|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

In the heyday of the studio, photographs were widely retailed throughout the subcontinent by agents and in Britain through wholesale distributors, and were patronized by the upper echelons of the British Raj as well as Indian royalty. So much so that at one point no official engagement, investiture or local durbar was considered complete without being first captured by Bourne & Shepherd photographers. A B&S photographer used to accompany the governor general at each and every of his meetings.

A widely travelled person, Bourne, used to move with a large retinue of 42 coolies who carried his cameras, darkroom tent and chests of chemicals and glass plates. He went on to become one of India's greatest photographers of that era. Charles, on the other hand, became known as a master printer. He stayed back in Kolkata and Shimla and managed the commercial distribution and printing aspects of the business. In 1870, Bourne went back to England. He sold off his shares in studios, and left commercial photography all together; also left behind his archive of more than 2,200 glass plate negatives with the studio, which were constantly re-printed and sold, over the following 140 years. After Bourne's departure, new photographic work was undertaken by Colin Murray till 1884 (see Falconer 2001).

The last European owner was Arthur Musselwhite. Musselwhite took over the studio in 1930s, later after a major business slump following the independence, and exodus of European community and the end of princely states, he held an auction in 1955, in which it was bought over by William Walker, Varjivan Jaitha and S J Suraiya. From them, the studio went to Qimat Rai Jindal in 1957. Finally, in 1964, the studio was taken over by current owners K J Ajmer and Jayant Gandhi.

According to heritage activist and state convener of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage G M Kapur, Bourne and Shepherd being the world's oldest functioning studio is undoubtedly a heritage address in the city.

Charnock’s grave and its opening in1892

Initially though Sidhu jeytha remarks about the incident of grave digging as pure nonsense, yet a similar incident had taken place in this very city. The first incident of grave digging in Kolkata 141|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

happened on a Monday, 21 November, 1892. Then, a two hundred year old grave had been dug – it was of Job Charnock.

We find a mention of this incident in chapter 8 of the novel: ‘Do you know that a skeleton can remain intact even two hundred years after the body is buried?’ Lalmohan Babu asked Topshe. His question reminded Topshe of the story Feluda had told him about Job Charnock’s tomb. Topshe repeated it to Lalmoha Babu:

‘Two hundred years after Charnock’s death, a priest at St. John’s Church suddenly grew suspicious about what lay underground. Had Charnock really buried there, or had someone simply erected a tombstone? His doubts began to worry him so much that the priest had the grave dug up. At first, his men dug four feet, and found nothing. Then they dug deeper, and another couple of feet lower, the arm of a skeleton slipped out. The priest quickly had the grave refilled’. (Ray 2004: 70)

Blechyaden notes:

In November, 1892, two hundred years after the death of Job Charnock, the mausoleum was repaired by the Public Works Department, when advantage was taken of the opportunity to ascertain whether it contained a vault. The Rev. H.B. Hyde, at that time chaplain of St. John’s, in a note7 read at the meeting of of Bengal in February, 1893, after stating that no trace of a vault was found, describes the result of the investigation as follows:

‘On visiting the mausoleum next morning, the 22nd of November, I found that the grave had been opened to a depth of fully six feet, at which depth the diggers had stopped, having met with a trace of human remains. The excavation was somewhat smaller than an ordinary grave, and lay east and west in the centre of the floor. At the bottom of it the workmen had cleared a level, at the western end of which they were beginning to dig a little deeper when a bone became visible. This bone was left in situ undisturbed, and the digging had ceased on its discovery. On seeing this bone, I felt sure it could be no other than one of the bones of the left fore-arm of the person buried, which must have lain crossed upon the breast. A little beyond it I observed a small object in the earth, which I took at first for a large coffin nail, but, on this being handed to me, it was very apparent that it was the largest joint of, probably, a middle 142|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

finger, and that, judging from its relative position, of the left hand. This bone I replaced. I permitted no more earth to be removed save only a little above and to the east of the remains, sufficient to reveal a black stratum in the soil which might have been the decayed coffin-lid. It was quite evident that a few more strokes of the spade would discover the rest of the skeleton, perhaps perfect, after just two hundred years of burial. There can be no reasonable doubt, arguing from the position of the body and the depth at which it lay, that it was the very one to enshrine which only the mausoleum was originally built – the mortal part of the Father of Calcutta himself.

Having seen what I did, I had the grave filled in, for I feared to leave it open lest the coolies might ransack its contents in search of rings or other valuables, and further I felt it improper, in view of the interest which must attach to such investigation, to permit myself to continue it alone. If it were to be prosecuted at all, it should at least be in presence of a representative company of Englishmen. For my own part, with the bones of the famous pioneer’s hand accidentally discovered before me, and the strange and solemn statement of his epitaph just above them, that he had laid his mortal remains there himself ut in spe beatae resurrectionis ad Christi Judicis adventum obdormirent, I felt strongly restrained from examining them further’ (Blechynden 1905: 11-13).

The last paragraph of Rev. Hyde’s note was most important. Hence it is not unlikely that in a two hundred year old grave we might find embedded a valuable possession of the deceased or expensive jewellery. So this could be a reason for which Thomas Godwin’s grave was dug up. As Feluda enlightens us that according to Godwin’s daughter Charlotte it was ‘Father’s precious Perigal repeater’ (Ray 2004: 53). Nawab Sadat Ali had gifted this as his first reward to Thomas Godwin in recognition of his culinary skills – a pocket watch created by one of England’s greatest craftsman Francis Perigal. On the one hand a gift from Nawab of Lucknow, on the other it was two hundred years old – the two put together makes the watch priceless. All crime, adventure and mystery in "Gorosthane Sabdhan" surround this Perigal repeater.

Feluda’s role-play in Gorosthane Sabdhan is akin to that of Rev. Hyde. The entire incident is like a recap of digging Job Charnock’s grave in St. John’s churchyard. This similarity could not be overlooked by someone like Feluda who was aware of Kolkata’s history. And his intuition was correct. 143|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Thomas Godwin’s grave was dug for the precious Perigal repeater and there was no other reason.

Conclusion

Just as Feluda warns Topshe that lengthy descriptive adulation is the purpose of a Tourist guide not an adventure writer – similarly this paper refrains from praise of the city referred as the ‘City of Joy’. However in attempting to read past the historic connections to the primary text "Gorosthane Sabdhan", we find interesting links and at the same time we discover the references to the past rhetoric regarding Kolkata.

So, we can echo the very remarks of Feluda: ‘Unless you learned something about a place before you went to visit it, you could never know it fully. As a person can be identified not just by his name, appearance and character, but also by his personal history – so can a city.'

Notes

1. The first mention of the name ‘Calcutta’ was possibly in 1688, in a letter to Job Charnock by two East India Company servants from Dhaka. Calcutta was respelled as Kolkata by legislation in 2001.

2. A character in Feluda novels who serve as the living encyclopedia.

3. The division bench comprising Chief Justice A K Mathur and Justice J K Biswas accepted the report by five-member committee headed by eminent historian Nemai Sadhan Bose. The order came after Advocate General Balai Roy informed the court about acceptance of the contents of the expert committee report by the West Bengal Government.

4. The Bengal Obituary: or, A Record to Perpetuate the Memory of Departed Worth to Which Is Added Biographical Sketches and Memoirs of History of British India, since the Formation of the European Settlement to the Present Time (1848), ed. P. Thankappan Nair (Kolkata: 1991), p. 2. 144|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

5. Robert Travers, Death and the Nabob; Imperialism and commemoration in Eighteenth-Century India,Past and Present,No.196 (August 2007) pp.89-90, fn.18

6. The Asiaticus was compiled by John Hawkesworth who had also penned a couple of earlier books on the colonial history of the English in Bengal. The first part of the book was primarily a chronological and historical account of the English expansion, and the latter consisted of epitaphs.

7. It was published in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, No. III. March, 1893 as titled Note on the Mausoleum of Job Charnock and the Bones recently discovered within it – By the Rev. H. B. Hyde, M.A.

References

Primary texts

Ray, Satyajit (1997) Gorosthane Sabdhan. Kolkata: Ananda.

Ray, Satyajit (tr.) Majumder, Gopa (2004) The Secret of the Cemetery. New

Delhi: Puffin.

Secondary texts

BACSA (1992) South Park Street Cemetery, Calcutta: Register of graves and

standing tombs from 1767. London: British Association for Cemeteries in

South Asia.

Blechyndess, Kathleen (1978 [1905]) Calcutta Past and Present: Kolkata;

General Publishers. 145|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Busteed, H.E. (1897) Echoes from old Calcutta. Kolkata: Thacker, Spink &

Co.

Chaudhuri, Sukanta, ed. (1990) Calcutta: The Living City, Vols 1 and 2. Delhi:

Oxford University Press.

Cotton, H.E.A. (1980 [1909]) Calcutta Old and New: A Historical and

Descriptive Handbook to the City (ed. N.R. Ray). Kolkata: General

Publishers.

Davis, Philip (1985) Splendours of the Raj: British Architecture in India 1660-

1947. New Delhi: Das Media.

Deb, Raja Binaya (1905) The Early History and Growth of Calcutta

(ed. Subir Roy Choudhuri) Kolkata: Riddhi.

Dutta, Abhijit (1994) European Social Life in 19th Century Calcutta. Kolkata:

Minerva Associates.

Falconer, John (2001) India: Pioneering Photographers 1850-1900.London:

The .

Hardgrave, Robert L. Jr. (1990) A Portrait of Black Town: Balthazard Solvyns

In Calcutta, 1791-1804. In. Pal, Pratapaditya. ed. Changing Visions, Lasting

Images: Kolkata Through 300 Years. Bombay: Marg.

Kipling, Rudyard (1891) The City of Dreadful Night. Allahabad: A.H.

Wheeler.

Lahiri Choudhury, Dhriti Kanta (1990) Treands in Calcutta Architecture. In 146|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Chaudhuri, S. Calcutta: The Living city, Vol. 1. Delhi: Oxford University

Press.

Nair, P.T. (1990) Civic and Public services in Old Calcutta. In Chaudhuri,

S. Calcutta: The Living city, Vol. 1. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Wilkinson, Theon (1976) Two Monsoons. London: Duckworth.

Wilson, C.R. ed. (1906) Old Fort William in Bengal. In Indian Records Series,

Vol. 1. London: Murray.

Kallol Gangopadhyay, after completing his Masters in Bengali from University, went on to do a post graduate diploma from Satyajit Ray film and Television Institute of India. He currently teaches in the Bengali department of Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri College as an Assistant Professor, under University of Calcutta. He had edited and co-scripted documentaries and shorts, and written on comics, theatre, film and literature. He has lectured and presented papers at seminars in various interest areas like the- Early Bengali cinema, literary influences in Bengali cinema, History and formal aspects of bangla comics, Imprint of Cinematic images in letters from Tagore, etc. His current writings include –The graphic novels on Vivekananda and Illustrations in Children’s literature written on life of Vivekananda and Memoirs of Partition, Himalayan travel writings. A Lesson in Living Life: The Portrayal of Kolkata in

Satyajit Ray’s Short Stories

Zenith Roy

Abstract

The current write-up attempts to briefly study the presentation of the city of Kolkata in the short stories written by Satyajit Ray, an area hardly highlighted till date. Ray, born and brought up in Kolkata, remained lifelong a fervent admirer of the city despite all its drawbacks. Being a keen observer, he minutely espies things, including the idiosyncrasies of people, elements that generally escape our cursory glances. In his stories he projects Kolkata and some of the quintessential traits of her identity which is the prime focus of the article that follows.

Keywords: admiration, unique, love, losers, degenerate, drawbacks

Kolkata may not have a Taj Mahal, a Kutub Minar, the grand forts of Jodhpur-Jaisalmer, or the lanes of

Bishwanath to boast of, ‘yet, Topshe, just think of it ― a foreigner, standing amidst an alien wilderness infested with snakes, flies, mosquitoes, and frogs on one of the banks of the Ganges, dreams that he would establish a colony there, and overnight the wilds are scythed off, houses are built, roads are constructed, gaslights are installed along them, horses and palanquins start to ply on them, and within a century’s time, comes up this unique city called the City of Palaces.’1 148|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

This is how Topshe, cousin and companion of Feluda, Satyajit Ray’s iconic , conveys to us the awe and wonder with which Feluda looks up to Kolkata2 and her phenomenally rapid rise to eminence from a savage wasteland swarming with wild animals and other perils to a civilized city dotted by grand architectures. This awestruck admiration and veneration for Kolkata expressed by

Ray’s most popular fictional character is undoubtedly Ray’s own. Mementoes of Ray’s love and admiration which underline his deep attachment to this city of his birth lie scattered all over the vast body of his literary work. In the present article, I attempt to figure out and analyze the various shades of Ray’s treatment of Kolkata in the massive body of short stories he has written.

‘Ray’, this formidable name invokes the awe-inspiring image of a towering figure with sharp eyes intently engaged behind the movie camera, the film-maker par excellence. To the world at large,

Ray’s primary identity is that of a maverick moviemaker who has endowed the medium of cinema with a new meaning and expanded its dimensions by bringing the apparently trivial ― elements that were largely considered un-cinematic ― within the purview of the movie camera. Unfortunately, Ray’s humongous personality of a filmmaker and his momentous contribution to cinema tend to overshadow the same broadening of horizons he brought about in the region of the Bengali also.

Arriving on Bengal’s literary horizon in the 1960s, Satyajit Ray embarked on his literary odyssey prompted by the necessity to helm Sandesh, the magazine for young readers. The result of this literary expedition has been massive, prominent among which are his novels, conforming to the genres of crime fiction, science fiction, and the supernatural, and a large number of stories dealing with themes that are unique and unusual.

The era in which Ray started writing his stories was a time when the Bengali short story had started to plumb new lows of mediocrity following the end of the halcyon days it had seen under eminent writers like Parashuram, Tarashankar, and . Ray took up the pen at such 149|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

a point of time, but instead of following the trajectory of his mighty predecessors or his able contemporaries, he deviated from topical issues and crises that appealed to the adult mind, and aimed his pen primarily at the mind of the young reader. To quote Ray:

I never thought my stories would be considered worthy of critical study, I had told

myself that I would be content if all those for whom I wrote my stories were happy. I

never thought of myself as a writer. All that I knew was that interesting plots came to my

head, and when I came to write them out, a kind of tight order came naturally. There was

nothing more to it.3

Ray devised his unique thoughts and themes with the sole ambition of providing the reader with pure and unadulterated pleasure of reading by bringing them face to face with the terrors of the shadowy frontiers that lie beyond the periphery of the sensory world, by taking them on an interesting exploration of the ingenuous mind of a private investigator, and by introducing them to the miraculous wonders of science. The appeal of these themes was further intensified by a straightforward storytelling and the usage of an easy and everyday language. Ray thus ushered in a new lease of youth into the senescent body of the Bengali short story and set it free on an unbridled flight of fancy.

Interestingly, these tales that targeted the tender mind appealed equally to the adult reader as well, by providing them with something refreshingly new and different from the monotonous and cheaply sentimental yarns of the day that involved a generation’s moral deterioration, marital discord, familial disputes, and mushy romance. One of the prime factors behind the perpetual popularity of

Ray’s stories is that just like his multi-layered films, especially Goopi Gaayen Bagha Baayen or

Heerak Rajar Deshe, which are interpreted so differently by the young and the adult viewer, they hold different sets of appeal for readers of different age groups. While the adolescent reader derived pleasure from Ray’s stories, the mature mind found in them both pleasure and fodder for thought as well as a 150|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 welcome escape to the salad days of blessed adolescence, unsullied by worries and anxieties and the gamut of other existential maladies. The everlasting appeal of Ray’s stories consists of this much- coveted relief they grant to the reader, young and aged alike, from the tedious grind of a routine-bound existence.

Each of the myriad of remarkable elements and lines of thought we come across in Ray’s stories merits extensive study and analysis, the treatment of the city of Kolkata being one of them. Right from the early stories like Barnandha (Colour Blind, 1942) or Anathbabur Bhoy (Anathbabu's Fear, 1962) to late stories like Sahajatri (The Co-passenger, 1989) or Dui Bandhu (Two Friends, 1989), the city of

Kolkata is the backdrop in most of them. Manifestly or by implication, the city proclaims its mighty presence in these stories, often visibly or implicitly impacting and influencing the lives and / or actions of the characters.

Steeped in the spirit and ambience of the city of Kolkata, Ray's stories offer a comprehensive idea of the city’s uniqueness, underpinning the pride of its people in its rich and glorious past and the anguish articulated by the same people at their beloved city’s decline into a decadent present. Although

Ray remains politically correct by avoiding all possible references and allusions to Kolkata’s political scene for the sake of his purported target circle of impressionable young readers, it does not restrict him from giving us an idea of the dismal declension of a once distinguished city through other things. The stories, vis-à-vis their picturization of Kolkata, constitute a virtually chronological graph imaging the changing contours of the face of the city. An interesting point in this regard is that Ray achieves this mostly by implicit hints, not by explicit comments.

As we know, Ray had a lifelong love-affair with this exclusive city called Kolkata. It was in the northern part (Garhpar) of the city where he was born. Kolkata was a companion to the young Satyajit who had a rather lonely boyhood with no friend for company. In the lazy summer noons in the 151|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Bhowanipur house of his uncles, to which he had shifted with his mother from Garhpar, the young Ray, a boy uncommonly sensitive to sounds and lighting, would identify the brands of passing cars by the sound of their horn and watch, lying alone, the projections of the inverted images of the traffic outside on the wall of the bedroom, probably one of the factors that subsequently goaded him into adopting cinema as his calling. Barring the time he spent in as a student (of fine arts) and the occasional stints abroad to attend film fests or to accept awards, most of Ray’s life was spent in

Kolkata. To quote Ray himself, recalling his years of youthful exuberance in Kolkata:

As one born and bred in Calcutta, I loved to mingle with the crowd in Chowringhee, to

hunt for bargains in the teeming profusion of second-hand books on the pavements of

College Street, to explore the grimy depths of the Chor Bazaar for symphonies at

throwaway prices, to relax in the coolness of a cinema, and lose myself in the make-

believe world of Hollywood.4

The same well-versed acquaintance with the city and its nook and crannies, its lifestyle, and its myriad idiosyncrasies are found in the protagonists of his stories, who, without being explicit, imply, through what they say and do, a love and attachment for the city that has been their habitat for many years.

Their grief at the degenerate condition of the city is a case in point.

In spite of the difficulty of existence in this city with its squalor and chaos and lackadaisical pace of life, exacerbated by various ills and impediments, like 'load shedding' (the popular Kolkatan name for 'power cut'), and in spite of his exposure to some of the topmost cities across the world,

Kolkata remained Ray’s first love as well as the epicentre and the nucleus of his existence as an individual, a filmmaker and an author, till the last day of his life.

Self-admittedly, he never felt the urge for work until he sat in his special chair in the congested study, choc-a-bloc with books and papers, amidst the din and cacophony of the world outside. ‘I don’t 152|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 feel very creative when I’m abroad somehow. I need to be in my chair in Calcutta!’5 And probably working in such an unfriendly atmosphere was for Ray a challenge and a way of realizing the validity of his belief that ‘[T]here is something about creating beauty in the circumstances of shoddiness and privation that is really exciting.’6 Andrew Robinson recalls watching Ray at work in his unbelievably crammed study:

He struck me immediately as more animated than in London ― thoroughly at ease with

his surroundings . . . This is the atmosphere he finds congenial and creative . . . Often he

spends a whole day at a stretch in the chair . . . Much of this time he is deaf to the world,

absorbed in his thoughts, an ability cultivated by him in the several houses and flats he

has passed through in south Calcutta, so as to exclude the increasing blare of car horns,

amplified film songs and festivals from the teeming city, the chatter of visitors talking

among themselves and, sometimes, unwelcome attempts at conversation.7

Ray makes us see Kolkata through a new lens that focuses on the abundance and predominance of loners in his stories. This seems to point at the irony that despite being a populous city of chaos and clamour, this is essentially a city of loners. Kolkata thus becomes a microcosm, representing the reality of the world at large where every city, notwithstanding the abundance of gregarious masses, is a city of loners.

To be acquainted with these reclusive humans portrayed by Ray is to travel across Kolkata, from Bhowanipur to Shobhabazaar, from Garhpar to Kalighat. Asamanjababu, a bachelor with a meagre number of friends and relations, lives in a one-and-a-half-room apartment on Mohinimohan

Road at Bhowanipur; Tulsibabu, in Brihachchanchu (1979), an employee with Arbuthnot Co. and a bachelor, resides with his servant in a first-floor apartment on Masjidbari Street at Shobhabazaar;

Surapati, the celebrity magician in Dui Magician (Two Magicians, 1962) lives at his uncle’s house on 153|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Bipradas Street at Garhpar (where Ray’s early years were spent) while Tripuracharan Mallick,

Surapati’s teacher of magic, lives in a Mirzapur Street apartment; Aniruddha Bose, the 29-year-old protagonist of Neel Aatanka (Indigo is the Colour of Fear, 1968) is still a bachelor living in a flat on

Sardar Shankar Road at Kalighat. We go back to Bhawanipur to meet the chiroptophobic narrator of the story, Baadurh Bibhishika (The Bat Phobia, 1963) and Nitaibabu, an unmarried employee of the accounts section of National Insurance Co. in Nitaibabur Moyna (Nitaibabu’s Bird, 1989); in Load-

Shedding (1979) Phanibabu, another of Ray’s bachelor protagonists, lives alone in a second-floor apartment which is a 35-minute bus ride from Dalhousie, Kolkata’s business district.

With this fascinating arraignment of losers across its expanse, Kolkata seems to appear with a distinctive demographic dimension. Ray seems to subtly invest the various precincts of Kolkata with traits unique to them. The southern side of the city, comprising locales like Bhowanipur, Kalighat, and

Kasba, with their well-maintained and plush residences, forms a posh and mainly upper-class ambience. It is an area for the well-off and the affluent. On the other hand, the northern regions of the city, including Shovabazaar and Mirzapur Street (now Street), the abode of the comparatively less affluent, consist of a relatively pedestrian and predominantly middle-class population. However, Garhpar, although largely considered a part of north Kolkata, is relatively upmarket with the population chiefly comprising younger generations of aristocratic families. In Dui

Magician, the established magician, Surapati has earned himself a celebrity status by the clever marketing of his wizardry, and lives in the relatively posh Bipradas Street at Garhpar, while the person from whom he has learnt all his tricks has failed to utilize his talent and has remained poor as ever, living in the middle-class or lower middle-class locality of Mirzapur Street.

In the story, Class Friend (1979), which is about two friends, Mohit and Joy, Kolkata’s demographic divide is perhaps at its most obvious. Mohit Sarkar, now one of the well-established 154|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 officers at the helm of a reputed concern, lives in his own decent and well-decorated house on Lee

Road at Bhowanipur. On the other hand, his closest companion of his school days, Joydeb Bose, who has failed to do anything worthwhile, lives on Mirzapur Street, probably in a rented flat, located in an ambience of filth and clamour and marked with tell-tale signs of penury and the lack of care. The dismal interiors of his residence can easily be imagined from Joydeb’s shabby cloths and dishevelled looks.

Nitaibabu, a clerk in the accounts department of National Insurance Co., a reasonably well- heeled man, lives in an apartment on Beninandan Street at Bhowanipur. Sudhin Sarkar in Gagan

Choudhuryr Studio (Gagan Choudhury’s Studio, 1983), not actually a loner (as he intends to marry), is affluent enough to own an adequately spacious flat at Bhawanipur.

In stark contrast to these, Kolkata contains loners of a different sort too. For example,

Badanbabu, the protagonist of the story, Pterodactyl-er Dim (The Pterodactyl Egg, 1961), is one of those typical office goers who constitute a huge mass of the city's population and one of the several clerk-status individuals who people Ray’s stories. However, unlike the other members of this community, Badanbabu possesses a poetic bend of mind that craves for a creative unwinding at the end of a day in unperturbed tranquillity amidst nature’s bliss, before starting for the self-same confines of his home on Shibthakur Lane in north Kolkata. Although Badanbabu is a family man, he is a loner in a league of his own, as his is almost a dysfunctional family with a physically challenged son and a wife who merits minimal mention. That Badanbabu lives in north Kolkata implies his dreary and bleak existence.

Badanbabu’s situation is reminiscent of what Ray portrays in his ‘City Stories,’ namely the films, , , and , which ‘legitimately belong to the present. They talk about the incompatibility of old values with the practicable attitudes and postures in a changing 155|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 world visibly different and indifferent to finer sensitivities.’8

One of the prime aspects of these lonesome entities is their love and deep attachment to Kolkata which has long been their habitat. Their anguish at the transformations they find their beloved city undergoing is an indicator of their love and concern for the city. Interestingly, most of these isolates prefer the good, old Kolkata and it is through them that Ray projects some of the old, extinct or near- extinct features of life and prominent landmarks that were once synonymous with the entity of Kolkata, or were so at least during the ideation of these stories.

The average Kolkatan’s love of books is one of the salient elements of Kolkata life projected in

Ray’s stories. In Barnandha, one of Ray's early stories, we see the protagonist emerging from inside a shop of old books, proudly clutching a rare book in the safe haven of his underarm. The book, a gem of a find, written in French on Chinese clay art, is bought at a measly price and is nothing less than an invaluable piece of diamond for the one who has acquired it. He is a representative of that clan of avid seekers of knowledge which is seen scouring stalls on College Street, that sell antique and rare books, undeterred by the excruciating torture such an arduous activity involves in the humid and suffocating interiors of a bookstall on a sweltering August afternoon. Asamanjababu, the protagonist of the story,

Asamanjababu-r Kukur (Asamanjababu’s Dog, 1978), procures a book on the care and maintenance of dogs from a shop of old books on Free School Street while in Mrigankababu-r Ghatana

(Mrigankababu’s Incident, 1987), Mrigankababu finds a book on evolution at a book shop on College

Street.

Ranjan, the narrator-protagonist of Brown Saaheber Bari (The Lodge of Mr. Brown, 1971) is a self-admitted buff of old books who spends at least half of his monthly salary in buying old books, his

‘sole addiction’9: 156|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

I have amassed a huge collection of books on what not ― travel literature, hunting

stories, historical writings, autobiographies, diaries ― in the last five years. Pages

dented by worms, pages brittle with age, pages rendered colourless by damp atmosphere

― all these are my most familiar and most favourite things. And the odour of old books

is unique. The combined fragrances of aguru, kasturi, golaap, hasnuhana and even the

fragrance of French perfumes are no match for these two smells.10

The love for old books and the hobby of book-surfing is not merely a popular pastime of

Kolkatans but a means for them to clutch on to the old and rich cultural past of the city in a desperate bid to sustain its essential identity against the invasion of new developments. Sahadebbabu, the protagonist in Sahdebbabur Portrait (Sahadebbabu’s Portrait, 1978) who frequents an auction shop on

Mirza Ghalib Street on Sunday mornings in quest of valuable curios, is one such admirer of Kolkata’s illustrious past. The bibliophiles and the aficionados of other old things represent the refinement of the

Kolkatan population. In spite of the blitz of cheap and superficially gaudy things, the commoner in

Kolkata holds on to his attachment to his elegant likings that make him an indubitable connoisseur. One of such enthusiasts is Bipin Choudhury who must compulsively buy a number of books on Mondays from Kalicharan’s bookshop at New Market to sustain his existence for the entire week. He has to buy at least five books at a time which comprise detective thrillers, mysteries, and ghost stories. Regardless of his choice of books, he is doubtlessly one of that fast disappearing species who love to read.

At the same time, these steadfast adherents to the things of the past evince a streak of madness in their readiness to go the extra mile, even at the cost of personal well-being, when it comes to sustaining their devotion to those special personal likes.

However, despite the earnestness of their attempts to hold on to the past and the rapidly receding glory of Kolkata these characters know that the past cannot be revived. This is a realization 157|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 that pains these ardent lovers of Kolkata deeply. A case in point is Ranjanbabu’s expression of anguish at the sorry state of the city in the story, First Class Kaamra (The First-Class Compartment, 1981):

It seems that the thing called comfort has been vanishing fast from the city of Calcutta.

Although he [Ranjanbabu] has never had the ill-luck of commuting by and trams,

travelling by motor car has not been any less nightmarish. The traffic snarls are

suffocating and the limbs seem to be disintegrating from the body when the car falls into

a crater.11

Ranjanbabu is a pure-bred Anglophile who firmly believes that all the ills that have plagued

Kolkata are the results of independence. Kolkata was never in such a shoddy state during British rule.

In those days Kolkata seemed to be a civilized city of a civilized country. Ranjanbabu steadfastly believes that whatever little charm or beauty Kolkata has, e.g. the Maidan, is courtesy the British.

Contrasting the disciplined and restrained lifestyle of London with Kolkata’s unruly multitudes, he observes that ‘In spite of having a sizeable population, there’s no stampede-like rush at bus stops, no deafening yells, no howling bus conductor, or any crashing blows on the buses in London. The buses there do not run tilted to one side, as if they would overturn any moment.’12

Although not a vociferous admirer of things British, Badanbabu rues the fact that Curzon Park, his favourite city haunt for having brief relaxations at the day’s end, has changed drastically with the tramlines snaking in. The bounties of nature and the poetry-inspiring bliss, that had made him fall in love with the place, have been ruthlessly usurped by the clamour of the machines and the cacophony of the commuters.

One of the focal reflections of Kolkata and her miserable degradation is the sorry condition of the cinema houses that once were proud landmarks of the city’s cultural sophistication with their throbbing business.13 158|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Among the Kolkata cinema houses, the Lighthouse (which no longer exists), New Empire, and

Metro (which has stopped operation very recently and is expected to have a makeover) find repeated references in Ray’s stories. New Empire is referred to as the venue for hosting prestigious magic shows, as we see in the story, Dui Magician. For an aspiring wizard, it was a privilege to perform at

New Empire before its elite audience. Tridib Banerjee and Sanjoy Lahiri, the two characters in

Sahajatri (The Co-passenger, 1989) lament the miserable condition of the cinema houses of the city. As they inform us, cinema houses like Lighthouse and Metro, where watching cinema used to be such a soothing experience (courtesy the air-conditioned luxury), have turned into filthy places, uncomfortably hot (due to the non-functioning air-conditioners) and infested by rats. Both lament that the habit of going to the movies has become an obsolete thing because of the easy availability of video cassette players.

Mahim Chatterjee, while waiting for his friend Pratul in the lobby of Lighthouse Cinema in the story, Dui Bandhu (Two Friends, 1989), glances at the cheap oil-painted posters of the pot- boiler playing at the theatre and regrets the fact that the prestigious cinema house, which was once famous for the Hollywood movies it used to show, has to thrive on brainless Hindi masala movies now.

‘Movie-watching has nowadays become a domestic affair with the arrival of the video player. What a pathetic condition the movie halls are in! Mahim had heard from his father that the Lighthouse used to be Kolkata’s pride. And now? One just feels like crying.’14

One cannot help wondering at Ray’s inimitable style and the sheer effortlessness with which he makes a global phenomenon (the rampant spread of the home video culture) affecting the film industries worldwide a major pointer to the moral, cultural as well social degradation of his beloved city. The downward journey of these cinema halls allegorically pictures Kolkata’s descent from the ecstatic zenith of intellectual advancement and cultural richness to the depressing nadir of mediocrity 159|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 and moral as well as cultural bankruptcy. No comment on the political scenario, no direct criticism, no attempt to even remotely court controversy, yet the truth is driven home.

Of course, Ray’s sensibilities as a film-maker were at work to a great extent influencing his distress at such a sorry state of affairs vis-à-vis the cinema houses. Ray, both as a film-maker and an average denizen of this city, was at agony to witness the ruining of Kolkata which is so subtly stated with such nonchalant brevity in some of his stories. A rather serious comment on the miserable disarray of Kolkata’s roads caused by the excavations for the Metro Railway and the ordeal of travelling on them is wrapped in a witty word-play in the story, Bhuto (1981) as Nabin, the ventriloquist, in course of one of his performances on the stage, converses with his puppet, Bhuto:

‘Bhuto, do you know that Calcutta is going to have underground (‘paatal’) railway?’

Bhuto, nodding ignorance, replies, ‘No, but I have heard of the hospital (‘haaspaatal’)

rail. A massive surgical operation, the entire city is being dissected by the scalpel; the

city seems to be on the verge of collapse. What else can you call it but a hospital

(‘haaspaatal’)?’15

Immediately after, Ray includes an oblique indictment of the people of Kolkata who are excited and entertained by such funny but sarcastic comments on the problems faced by them. Nabin, having sensed the pulse of his audience, writes dialogues on Kolkata’s topical tragedies, e.g. load-shedding, the escalation of the price of essential commodities, the maddening rush in the public vehicles, etc. The maladies are critical, but the irony is alarming, and the satirical denunciation stinging.

One of the major drawbacks of Kolkata that often left Ray irritated was the problem of load- shedding. He devotes an entire story, named Load Shedding (as mentioned earlier) to show the terrible consequences to which this major impediment to the city’s development may lead, as we see in the case of Phanibabu, the protagonist. 160|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

However, despite the various drawbacks of life in the city of Kolkata, Satyajit Ray never abandoned this city. With all its flaws and lack of amenities, Kolkata remained the ideal place for Ray to work and to lead his creative impulses to their complete fruition. In the early 1970s, the situation in

Kolkata was increasingly becoming difficult and uncertain to go on making films in that climate of violent anarchy. Andrew Robinson states that Ray had termed the Kolkata of 1970-71 as ‘a nightmare city’16 and had even written to Marie Seton, one of his biographers, of his decision to leave the city, although he later on said that it was never a serious decision.

For me Calcutta is the place to work, the place to live, so you take what comes – you

accept the fact of change.17

Despite being subjected to some serious obstacles, particularly in making movies, Ray held on to his indomitable spirit and went on working, taking all impediments and limitations imposed by the Kolkata situation in his stride. And it is here that he reached the apex of his career both as a film-maker and an author.

The protagonists of Ray’s stories reflect the same invincible spirit in their everyday existence as well as transactions with this Kolkata. They may grieve over the loss of the green spaces, or the closure of their favourite cinema halls, or the steadily deteriorating standards of life, yet, just like their creator, they never bid adieu to this city for greener pastures. With their humble dreams, ordinary aspirations, and simple desires they go on being a part of this city in the midst of all the filth, clamour, and inadequacies. What Ray’s own and his protagonists’ loyalty to the city suggests is a symbiotic relationship. For them, Kolkata is the only abode that could have given them sanctuary while Kolkata would not have been Kolkata without the existence of these ordinary individuals with extraordinary attributes. It is the inherent magnetism of Kolkata that inspires the people of this city to stick on to it with the optimum utilization of their inexorable determination. 161|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Life in Kolkata, as sampled by Satyajit Ray in his stories, thus reaffirms our in humanity and in the ultimate triumph of humanity.

Notes and References

1. Satyajit Ray, Gorosthane Saabdhaan (Kolkata: Ananda, 1979), p. 2.

2. In Ray’s lifetime, this city was known by its colonial name Calcutta.

3. Ray, quoted in Saroj Bandyopadhyay: The Literary Works of Satyajit Ray, Satyajit Ray: An

Intimate Master, ed. Santi Das (Kolkata: Allied, 1998), p. 84.

4. Satyajit Ray, quoted in Andrew Robinson, : Satyajit Ray and the Making of

an Epic (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), p. 10). Ray said this in his Kolkata lecture in the

context of his initial doubts about liking the Shantiniketan ambience being a thorough-bred

Kolkatan.

5. Ray, quoted in Andrew Robinson, Satyajit Ray: : The Biography of a Master

Film-Maker (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), p. 4.

6. Ray, quoted in Robinson, p. 4.

7. Robinson, pp. 4 – 6.

8. Adoor Gopalakrishnan, In the beginning there was , Satyajit Ray: An

Intimate Master, ed. Santi Das (Kolkata: Allied, 1998), p. 58.

9. Satyajit Ray, Brown Saaheber Bari, Galpo 101 (Kolkata: Ananda, 2001), p. 125.

10. Ray, Brown Saaheber Bari, p. 125.

11. Ray, First Class Kaamra, Galpo 101 (Kolkata: Ananda, 2001), p. 310.

12. Ray, First Class Kaamra, p. 310. 162|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

13. In Tollywood-e Tarinikhudo (Tarinikhudo in Tollywood, 1985), Tarinikhudo, one of Ray’s

iconic fictional characters, recalls the halcyon days of the cinema houses in 1942 when all

shows used to run to packed houses.

14. Ray, Dui Bandhu, Galpo 101 (Kolkata: Ananda, 2001), p. 629.

15. Ray, Bhuto, Galpo 101 (Kolkata: Ananda, 2001), p. 288.

16. Robinson, p. 204.

17. Robinson, p. 204.

Bibliography

Das, Santi, ed. Satyajit Ray: An Intimate Master (Kolkata: Allied, 1998)

Gupta, Kshetra, Satyajiter Galpo (Kolkata: Pustak Bipani, 2003)

Ray, Satyajit, Bisay Chalachchitra, Kolkata: Ananda, 1982

Ray, Satyajit, Ekei Boley Shooting, Kolkata: Newscript, 1979

Ray, Satyajit, Jakhon Chhoto Chhilam, Kolkata: Ananda, 1982

Ray, Satyajit, My Years with Apu, Delhi: Penguin, 1994; London: Faber and Faber, 1997

Ray, Satyajit, Our Films Their Films, Delhi: Orient Longman, 1976

Ray, Satyajit, Pratikriti, Soumyen Pal, ed., Kolkata: Ananda, 1997

Robinson, Andrew, The Apu Trilogy: Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic (London: I. B.

Tauris, 2011)

Robinson, Andrew, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye: The Biography of a Master Film-Maker, André

Deutsch, 1989; London: I. B. Tauris, 2004

Seton, Marie. Portrait of a Director: Satyajit Ray. Bloomington, Indiana University Press

[1971] 163|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Zenith Roy is an assistant professor and the head of the department of English at Dinabandhu

Mahavidyalaya, Bongaon, 24 PGS (N), West Bengal, India. He has authored and edited school-level grammar and composition books for secondary and higher secondary students. He has also authored a few papers, of which one has been published in the Calcutta University Journal of the Department of

English. Mr. Roy has performed his Ph.D research in the Department of English, University of Calcutta and recently submitted his doctoral thesis. Demographic and Behavioral Profile of Street Children in Kolkata

Atanu Ghosh

Abstract: Street children are highly mobile population and difficult to reach. Yet there are few empirical data available about the nature of this “hidden” population. Available studies reflect that street children are vulnerable to substance abuse, physical and sexual abuse and they also involve in risky sexual behavior. Data for this study was collected from 43 Time Location Clusters of Kolkata. Among 408 participants 76% were boys and 24% were girls. Girls tended to be younger than boys. The study aimed to find out the vulnerability pattern of the street children in Kolkata. Of the total sample, 276 (67.6%) were substance abusers; 159 (39%) had been sexually abused and 227 (67%) had been physically abused. Nearly one in every four children (23.3%) reported ever having engaging in penetrative sex. This study will help the policy makers in formulating program plan for this “hidden” population and thereby to reduce their vulnerabilities.

Keywords: Street children, Kolkata, vulnerabilities

Introduction There are 18 million street children in India, who are living in different urban centers in deplorable situation (UNICEF, 2005). There are major difficulties in trying to estimate the number of street children and the magnitude of difficulties they experience. In their marginalized state they constitute a truly "hidden" population that are not covered by or find place in the national census, educational or health data, largely because they have no fixed address. The existing body of literature established that street children are prone to different vulnerabilities; like mental health disorders or depression (Nayar, U.S., 2002), delinquent activities (Wanger et al., 2001; Mundy et al., 1990), feelings of emptiness (Deb, S., and Mitra. K., 2002), emotional, physical and sexual abuse history (Pagare et al., 2005; Ahmadkhaniha et al., 2007; Poornima, T., 2007), unprotected sex, transmission of STDs and HIV/AIDS (Aral et al., 2005; Tyler et al., 2000; Cates, 1991; Sonenstein, 1989). The lack of any social 165|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 control, easy availability of different substances and involvement with deviant peers pushes them to early initiation of substance abuse (Ghosh A., 2009; Pagare et al., 2004; Auerswald C.L., 2002). In a study conducted among street children aged 6-16 years in Delhi (Pagare et al., 2004), it was found that nearly six in every ten children (57.4%) had indulged in substance abuse before coming to the observation home. The age of initiation of substance abuse was as low as 5.5 years. The constellation of risk behaviors results in exceptional vulnerability to poor health outcomes, particularly sexually transmitted diseases, hepatitis, unplanned pregnancies, HIV infection, and accelerated immune dysfunction associated with AIDS (Stricof et al. 1991; Yates et al. 1988). There is limited empirical information available about the nature of this complex and "hidden" population or the distribution of risk behaviors within it and hence, little empirical basis for the development of critical prevention strategies and policies. This paper aims to find out the vulnerability pattern of the street children in Kolkata. The aim of this study is to explore the reasons that children live on the streets of Kolkata, their livelihood strategies in the street economy, different vulnerabilities those are associated with them and coping up strategies.

Background and Methods Street children are neither usually counted nor they are subjected to any national census, so their exact numbers are unknown. Representative data on street children are more difficult to obtain because their lifestyle excludes them from sampling usually used to obtain probability samples (Anderson, 1994). Most of the available information about this population is derived from quasi-institutional samples recruited in homeless shelters, foster care, drug treatment programs and at the criminal justice system. The inferences that can be drawn from such data are limited. Many on the streets do not utilize shelter and treatment services and hence, are not represented in these samples. An additional limitation stems from the fact that these children in all of these institutional settings often conceal their involvement in high risk behaviors because of fear of stigma and of being denied of services. In order to overcome these limitations, a Time Location Cluster (TLC) sampling approach was adopted for this study. TLC refers to those geographical locations where street children use to congregate at different slots. It is important to mention that based on congregation of street children at different time slots, a single area 166|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 can be considered as different TLC for different time slots. A total number of 408 street children (311 boys and 97 girls) aged between 13-19 years were interviewed directly on the streets of Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) area. Local NGOs who are working with Street Children have been found to be a great help to develop the sampling frame and to reach the target group. Another challenge lies while working with such population is the process of taking informed consent from the target population. As most of the children were living by their own without the parents so, informed consent from the individuals and assent from the respective NGOs were taken, who were rendering services to them. Relevant information in detail about the substance abuse (like age of first initiation, current and ever use of substance etc.), socio-demographic details, family attachment, experiences in street etc. was collected in a pre-designed and pre tested questionnaire. Street adolescents were interviewed though semi structured interview schedule. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 17 version. Bi-variate frequency distribution, correlation tables, and multiple logistic regressions have been used to interpret the findings. Chi-square test was also computed to assess the association between different explanatory variables with the outcome variables.

Demographic Characteristics and Behavioral Profile Socio-Demographic Characteristics The data presented in Table 1 shows age-sex distribution of street adolescents. It is noted that out of 408 street adolescents interviewed, 311(76 percent) were males and 97 (24 percent) were females. This finding is in agreement to other Indian studies on street adolescents where they have found comparatively less adolescent girls than boys (Behura et al., 2005). Girls tended to be younger than boys: About three-quarters (73 percent) of the girls and little more than half (52 percent) of the boys were in the age group 13-15 years. The median age for boys and girls were 15 and 14 years respectively with an overall median of 15 years. None of the street adolescents were attending to school during the survey period. Therefore, this study has collected information on whether the respondent had ever been to school and, if so, the grade he/she had successfully completed. Educational attainment among adolescents was very poor; only a quarter had completed grade 4-6. Illiteracy among girls was higher than boys. Twenty-nine percent girls reported to be illiterate against 22 percent boys. 167|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Homelessness At the time of the interview, more than half (56.6%) of the sample were chronically homeless, defined as living in street alone or with their friends (42.2%) or living in NGO run shelters (14.5%). The families of most of the adolescents, who reported sleeping with their parents, took shelter on footpaths and the spaces below flyovers and . In some cases, such families took shelter in abandoned houses, particularly belonging to the railway department. A majority of the adolescents, who were living alone or with their friends, were sleeping in some corner of the railway platform, market places, Thela (hand cart) stand, car sheds and footpaths. Only 15 percent of the respondents reported sleeping in NGO run night shelters. More than three fourth of the girls (76 percent) reported sleeping on the streets with their family members whereas, half of the boys reported sleeping on the streets either with their friends or by themselves. On an average, the boys had been living on the streets longer than the girls; 33 percent of boys and 21 percent of girls had been living on the streets (in the widest sense of the word, including unoccupied dwellings, footpaths, railway platforms, under flyovers, wastelands, etc.) for more than four years prior to the survey. Higher proportion of street adolescents living without parents and longer duration of living on the streets is certainly a matter of concern considering the need for their rehabilitation. At the same time, it is found that a sizeable proportion of adolescents (37 percent) had been living on the streets for less than two and a half years. As reported by NGO professionals it is easier to rehabilitate such street children who have left their home very recently than those who are living in street for longer duration. According to the NGOs who are working with the street children, 3 to 4 children arrive (runaway) on trains from some part of the country every day.

Street Occupation, Income, Expenditure and Saving Education attainment among these street children was poor as we can see only 25 percent of sample studied class 4 or more. Thus, with limited education and few marketable job skills, these children have very limited access to stable sources of legal income. Moreover, the kinds of activities available to them within the illegal street economy are situational and unstable; often only generate small amounts of cash at a time, and vary in productivity according to both short-term and long-term cycles in the street economy. Consequently, they rely upon multiple "hustles" within both the formal and informal economy. Street children do not bother about the social sanctity of the jobs they adopted and minded less for their social prestige in the public. Most of the jobs did not require any capital investment. Many 168|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 of them were involved in more than one earning activities. In this study, all respondents reported to work either for cash or both cash and kinds. Seventy three percent of street children reported to work for cash and 27 percent reported to work for both cash and kinds. Street children reported to engage in as many as 16 different occupations including sex work and begging. Details presented in Table 2 show that driving pedal rickshaw/hand cart (Thela), helper in street based hotels (dhabas), helpers to hawkers/vendors and rag picking were among the major economic activities in which street children were engaged. Some children reported that they were engaged in helping cooks, searching left outs in Trains (6 percent), loading and unloading of goods from one place to another (5 percent) and doing other miscellaneous occupations. Four percent of girls reported sex sale for their livelihood. Nine percent of girls were engaged in drug pedaling. Six percent of respondents reported begging and 5 percent reported to clean cars at the traffic signals. It is also found from the qualitative study that many of these children were engaged in illegal survival activities like shoe lifting, bag lifting, pick pocketing, petty theft, drug pedaling and selling sex for money. Informants said that youngsters were drawn into illegal activities because of the low and unpredictable income generated by street based jobs and because they learn from more experienced street youth. Six percent of respondents were involved in selling tobacco products in trains/buses/traffic signals. They bought these items from local traders near the railway station through part payment for those items. The profit margin varied from one item to another. The adolescents developed good relations with those traders and were able to keep their unsold stock with them and take it for selling again. But since selling of these items was banned in railways, it was a risky business because of the fear of being caught by the railway police and harassed. Many of them had been caught and beaten by the police several times for doing so. But, they would still continue the same because they found it more profitable than others job. Working hours of street adolescents varied from 4 hours to 12 hours in a day. It was found that the working hours for the street adolescents who were engaged in footpath based hotels (Dhabas) and garage work were comparatively higher than others. All of the respondents reported having rest during their total working hours. The earning, expenditure and saving pattern of the target population reveals an interesting finding. In this study, it was found that some of the adolescents were engaged in some wage earning activities whereas, some others were involved in self earning activities like rag picking, collection and selling of semi burnt coal etc. where their per day earnings were not fixed. In such cases, the average 169|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 was taken from the last seven days’ earnings. Such an average was also taken for calculating the per day expenditure on different items. For example, expenditure on recreational activities and gambling was not regular. Therefore, weekly expenditure on those items was taken and daily average was calculated. Whereas regarding saving money, adolescents were asked about their monthly savings. For the purpose of analysis, per day average of saving was calculated. The average per day earning of adolescents boys was Rs.36 and for girls Rs.32. There were variations in average earnings by occupational categories. The income was minimum for those who were involved in collection and selling of semi burnt coal. Adolescents who were involved in pulling pedal rickshaw/hand cart (Thela) or in shifting goods from one place to another were earning better than others.

Abuse The overlap of substance, sexual and physical abuse among street children have been found in this study. Two third (67%) of the respondents reported to be a victim of physical abuse and 39% were the victims of sexual abuse. Incidents of sexual abuse found to be higher among girls (53.6%) than boys (34.4%). It is often believed that in case of sexual abuse the abuser is usually a stranger. This popular perception is found to be false in this study, as only in about 9 percent of cases of sexual abuse recorded in this research was a stranger involved. In most of the cases the abusers were persons who were very close to them and well known to them.

Sexual Activity In this study an attempt was made to understand the sexual behavior of the street children. Nearly of the sample (47%) reported ever engaging in sexual intercourse either homo or hetero sexual. It is found that higher proportion of boys (49%) reported to have experienced penetrative sex than their female counterparts (40%). An attempt was made to understand whether the first acts of heterosexual and homosexual intercourse were consensual or not. It was seen that all the boys who reported to have been involved in homosexual intercourse were forced into it. For boys the main partner of heterosexual intercourse found to be commercial sex workers. Many boys in the older cohort reported to have multiple sexual partners. Nearly one-half (44 percent) had had unprotected sex in last 30 days, including vaginal sex (70 percent), anal sex (59 percent). 170|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Knowledge of RTI/STI Unsafe sexual behavior increases the risk of having Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). As the study population was very unhygienic and frequently involved in unprotected sexual activities, they were at high risk of getting infected with Reproductive Track Infection (RTI) and STI. An attempt in this study was made to understand the knowledge level of this target group whether they have heard about it, or they are aware about different symptoms of RTI/STI. The knowledge about these terms as well as about the symptoms of RTI/STI were very low both among boys (27%) and girls (31%).

Drugs abuse behavior Street children use a wide variety of illegal drugs. Table 6 shows distribution of street children by use of different substances. It also gives the value of ‘p’ to measure whether any significant differences lie in substance use behavior between boys and girls. Chewing tobacco products (e.g. Gutka) was prevalent among 91% of the children followed by cigarettes/bidis (75%) and inhalants like glue, paint thinner etc. (62%). Twenty eight percent of adolescents reported to have ever drunk alcohol. Smoking of marijuana was also reported by one fourth (26%) of the respondents. Fifteen percent of the children had ever had medicinal drugs like sleeping pills or cough syrup etc. No injecting drug user was found in this study. Multiple usages of substances were observed among both boys and girls. Significantly more boys (71%) had ever used any non tobacco substances than their female (58%) counterparts (χ2 = 5.716, d.f = 1, p = 0.017). For most of the substances, a significantly higher proportion of boys reported to have had them as compared to the girls. Only in the case of medicinal drugs, a significantly higher proportion of girls (26%) reported to use them as compared to boys (12%).

Conclusion This report has provided a demographic and behavioral profile of street children in Kolkata City. Data shows that street children are involved in multiple risk behaviors, including chronic, high-risk drug abuse, as well as high-risk sexual behavior. This is but one local example of the emerging "class" of adolescents and young adults, one that is notably overrepresented among ethnic and sexual minority groups, who are "coming of age" in the burgeoning drug and sex economies now flourishing in all Metro and million plus cities in India. The confluence of drug and sex risk among street children worldwide is of particular concern in relation to HIV infection because several segments within this 171|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 population interact behaviorally with two other high-exposure populations: adult gay men, in the context of commercial sex work, and adult intravenous drug injectors, in the context of high-risk drug injection practices-both populations with high background seroprevalence. Situated at a behavioral "crossroads," street youths form an epidemiological bridge between these high-exposure populations because the youths' drug and sexual risk behaviors frequently include individuals from one or both groups. Although street outreach services have been shown to be an effective means of educating street children about risk for HIV infection, and the use of the Harm Reduction Model has proven to be an especially powerful tool in attracting them to social and public health services, retaining them in services, and promoting health seeking behaviors (Clatts et al. 1999), existing resources for prevention services targeted to this population are woefully inadequate relative to the scope of the population and the complexity of these youths' needs. In particular, there is an urgent need to expand and integrate street outreach, shelter, drug treatment, and primary health care services, and to do so within a unified service-delivery model (Clatts et al. 1999) that is responsive to the individual needs and capacities of youths within this complex and growing high-risk population.

References

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runaway and non-runaway youth”. American Journal Public Health, 78, 820–821.

Table 1: Percentage distribution of street adolescents by selected characteristics (n=408) Background characteristics Street Adolescents Boys Girls Total % n % n % n Age category 13-15 Years 52.1 162 73.2 71 57.1 233 16-19 Years 47.9 149 26.8 26 42.9 175 Median Age (in Years) 15 14 15 Place of living during night NGO run night shelter 16.4 51 8.2 8 14.5 59 On the street with family members 33.1 103 76.3 74 43.4 177 On the street with friends or alone 50.5 157 15.5 15 42.2 172 Number of years living in street Less than two and half years 34.7 108 42.3 41 36.5 149 1 2 ⁄2 - 4 years 32.2 100 37.1 36 33.3 136 More than 4 years 33.1 103 20.6 20 30.1 123 Educational status Illiterate or class one 35.4 110 48.5 47 38.5 157 class 2-3 35.4 110 39.2 38 36.3 148 class 4 or more 29.3 91 12.4 12 25.2 103 Total 100. 100.0 311 100.0 97 408 0 Percentages are taken for Column; Table 2: Distribution of street adolescents by types of occupation (n=408) Type of work Street Adolescents Boys Girls Total % n % n % n Helper of hawkers/vendors 12.2 38 6.2 6 10.8 44 Helper in footpath based hotel 16.4 51 11.3 11 15.2 62 Helper in garage 7.7 24 0.0 0 5.9 24 Helper in matador 3.2 10 0.0 0 2.5 10 Shoe polish 4.5 14 0.0 0 3.4 14 Car wash at traffic signal 4.5 14 6.2 6 4.9 20 Begging 3.9 12 12.4 12 5.9 24 Rag picker 6.4 20 17.5 17 9.1 37 Searching for left outs in trains 5.8 18 6.2 6 5.9 24 Driving pedal rickshaw /hand cart (Thela) 17.4 54 0.0 0 13.2 54 Collection of semi burnt coal 5.1 16 8.2 8 5.9 24 Potter 6.1 19 0.0 0 4.7 19 Collecting and selling vegetables 1.6 5 10.3 10 3.7 15 Selling Tobacco Product in Train/Bus/Traffic signals 5.1 16 8.2 8 5.9 24 Sex Work 0.0 0 4.1 4 1.0 4 Drug Paddling 0.0 0 9.3 9 2.2 9 Total 100. 100.0 311 100.0 97 408 0 Percentages are taken for Column; 174|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Table 3: Distribution of adolescents by per day per capita earning, expenditure and saving Mean per day earning, expenditure on different items and Boys Girls saving Mea Mean Min Max S.D. Min Max S.D. n Earning 35.87 7.0 170.0 31.43 31.86 10.0 180.0 29.94 Median Earning 25.00 25.00 Expenditure Buy food 11.75 0.0 60.0 12.08 8.47 0.0 50.0 10.14 Buy tobacco or other substances 13.14 0.0 100.0 12.62 9.93 0.0 80.0 12.36 Recreational activities like watching movie etc. 6.34 0.0 80.0 10.90 6.18 0.0 20.0 4.99 Rent for shelter 0.16 0.0 10.0 1.26 0.21 0.0 20.0 2.03 Gambling (playing cards) 2.59 0.0 60.0 7.59 0.00 0.0 0.0 0.00 Giving to parents 3.16 0.0 30.0 6.59 7.89 0.0 40.0 8.00 Others 0.00 0.0 0.0 0.00 2.94 0.0 100.0 14.75 Saving 2.87 0.0 23.33 5.25 1.43 0.0 20.0 4.21 Note: The addition to different expenditure and saving may not match with average income

Table 4: Distribution of adolescents by the type of sexual behavior Sexual behavior Adolescents Boys Girls Total % n % n % n Ever engaged in penetrative sex 49.2 153 40.2 39 47.1 192 Ever engaged in hetero sexual activity# 77.8 119 100.0 39 82.3 158 Consensual 100.0 119 15.4 6 79.1 125 Non consensual 0.0 0 84.6 33 20.9 33 Ever engaged in homo sexual activity# 40.5 62 NA NA 40.5 62 Consensual 0.0 0 NA NA 0.0 0 Non consensual 62 NA NA 100. 100.0 62 0 # out of respondents who ever engaged in penetrative sex (n=192) 175|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Table 5: Distribution of adolescents who have heard about RTI/STI and reporting knowing specific symptoms Background characteristics Street adolescents Boys Girls Total % n % n % n Have heard about RTI/STI 26.7 83 30.9 30 27.7 113 Those who have heard about RTI/STI their knowledge on specific morbidities Genital Ulcer 48.2 40 56.7 17 50.4 57 Lower abdominal pain 0.0 0 20.0 6 5.3 6 Scrotal Swelling 39.8 33 0.0 0 29.2 33 Burning sensation during urination 2.4 2 20.0 6 7.1 8 Vaginal discharge 0.0 0 13.3 4 3.5 4 Involuntary passing of semen 31.3 26 0.0 0 23.0 26 Involuntary urination while sneezing or others 0.0 0 16.7 5 4.4 5 Percentages are taken for column. Responses are not mutually exclusive

Table 6: Substance abuse behaviors of street children by sex (n=408) Ever used substances Street Adolescents Boys Girls Total % n % n % n 91.1 Ever used chewing tobacco product*** 96.78 301 73.20 71 8 372 74.7 Ever smoked bidi/Cigarettee*** 91.64 285 20.62 20 5 305 28.1 Ever used alcohol*** 35.69 111 4.12 4 9 115 25.9 Ever smoked Ganja*** 34.08 106 0.0 0 8 106 62.0 Ever sniffed Glue* 63.99 199 55.67 54 1 253 15.4 Ever used medicinal drug*** 12.22 38 25.77 25 4 63 Ever used alcohol or any substance*** 97.4 303 75.3 73 92.2 376 Ever used of any non tobacco substance ** 70.7 220 57.7 56 67.6 276 Percentages are taken for Column; Responses are not mutually exclusive; Significant levels for χ2 test *p<0.10; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01;

Atanu Ghosh, PhD, is a development economist, presently working as an Assistant Professor of Economics in Bankura Christian College, Bankura, West Bengal, India. His research interest is on Population, Reproductive Health and Development Studies. He had been associated with Tata Institute for Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, Georgetown University’s Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) and Department of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of West Bengal at different capacities. Cottage and Small Scale Industries in the Slums of Kolkata: Growth and Constraints in Twentieth Century

Subrata Nandi

Abstract

Slums of Kolkata are generally known for over congestation, birth place of various diseases and filthy atmosphere. But there is another aspect of slums i.e. these are centres of various types of Cottage and small-scale industries .The aim of the paper is to highlight the growths, problems and future prospects of such industries.

Introduction

Kolkata being the centre of trade and commerce it attracts large number of immigrants from different parts of India throughout the 20th century. The census of 1911 gives us a clear picture of the extent of nature of immigration. Most of them are forced to take shelter in overcrowded slums. Similar picture of overcrowding can also be seen in the tenements of London where about 17.8 per cent of the total population actually lived at that time 1. The hereditary profession of the immigrants were agriculture and production of different kinds of goods. The major problem before the immigrants is accommodation as during the early decades of the century suburbs of the city were not developed and the civic authority did have hardly any plan to provide shelter to this category of people .At that time the Development Department of Bombay embarked on the project of construction of houses for this category of people. 2

Most of the immigrants both male and female livings in slums were employed in factories .A portion of slum dwellers are engaged in small scale and cottage industries. References of early such industries are very scanty as the colonial govt. did not have any interest in these ventures. So no survey report or any other direct official record is available. After 1947 the department of Small scale and 177|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 cottage industries was established in every state for the development of these industries. The Civic authorities and Nationalised banks also come forward to encourage these industries. Such initiatives are preceded by number of surveys which are also used as sources for this paper.

There are different types of industries in the slums of Kolkata .Some of which still exist and some went into oblivion.

Extinct cottage and small scale industries

Glass-Bangle Making —The bangle made of glass is one of the most popular jewellery favoured by Indian women because of its beauty and cheapness. This cottage industry actually flourished in Ghoshbagan slum, goods mostly produced by Muslim artisans. The artisans used traditional techniques for bangle making which were to be sold by their women from door to door. The production of this industry declined due to the uneven competition with the goods manufactured at the factories of Agra. The industry existed to a very limited extent till 1960s. At that time the raw material for bangle making glass was to be collected from the rag pickers.3

Soap –making – Soap is an item of common need of people. At the outset of the century common people preferred to utilise soaps, produced mostly by cottage industries in slums. People of affluent classes prefer foreign soaps for their daily use. This industry was also dominated by people of Muslim Community. The market of the products was diminished due to emergence of soap factories such as

Bengal Soap Company, the Oriental Soap Factory and boolbool soap factory etc.4

Match Manufacturing industry – This industry developed in Kolkata immediately after the imposition of duty on the import of matches though a few attempts had been taken by Indian entrepreneurs to set up a number of match making company but they failed. In Kolkata a number of such factories were set up. It was estimated by Tariff Board in 1928 that there were 27 such factories in Kolkata. This industry was linked up with a number of cottage industries for production of a number of goods, such as box making. The labourers use their hands widely in handling explosives while making matches without any precaution.5 178|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Generally all processes of manufacture were not carried out by the members of a single family in their own house.Some of which were done in the houses of hired labourers. This might be due to the fact that the factories were situated in congested areas where space was a major problem. The IBT report on match reveals the fact that outbreak of fire and loss of lives were common phenomena as the

Kolkata Corporation had no proper regulation.6

The cost of production of matches manufactured in cottage industries was higher in comparison with that of mechanised ones.The market of the goods produced in this industry was restricted to small towns as Rajat Kanta Ray considerd that matches produced by big factories like Wimco flooded in the market.7

Paintings of Kalighat – The patua community resided in the slum area of kalighat due to situated in the vicinity of the famous Kali temple which drew a large number of pilgrims there.Their hand paintings were to be sold at the bazaars of Kolkata.In 19th century artists used cloth as canvas for painting. Later cloth was replaced by paper to make the paintings cheap.They use mainly simple techniques of paintings.The painters of kalighat lost their importance as cheap German paintings became available in the market.8

There were references of a number of industries which were mostly dominated by women e.g. rice pounding ,rice husking, weaving of cloths etc. In these industries women engaged in production along with marketing of products.9

Images of painters of Kalighat Source- google.co.in accessed on 10th September 2014 179|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Existing industries

The existing industries can be categorised under two heads viz slums specialised in manufacturing a particular kind of product and slums having different types of industries. Slums of Metiabruz and belonged to the first category and dominated by a particular community whereas other city slums come under the different category and mostly dominated by people of heterogeneous linguistic and religious groups. There are numerous industries come under the latter category.

Industries:

Group Items 1. Light Engineering : Lathe machine, steel Almirah& Trunk making Dice manufacturing, Sanitary fittings,Tubewell pipe fittings,Electrical goods etc. 2. Plastic works : Toys ,Polythene bottles and goods. 3. Chemical Industry : Soap,Paint,Acid grease etc. 4. Glass & glass ware : Ampule. 5. Rubber Products : Pipes,tubes,tyres etc. 6. Carpenters(woodwork) : Furniture ,sport goods and others. 7. Pottery : Ceramic & others 8. Clay modelling : Images & Doll making 9. Miscellaneous : Paper packets ,baskets, Jute bag, cloth printing, Bead garland, Couch, Bungles,Bakery,’biri’ making,bi-cycle &tri-cycle etc.

Source- An approach to economic renewal and promotion programme, informal industry sector, Economic and social support programme cell, Directorate of Planning,CMDA,1977

Slum dwellers are disproportionately engaged in different industries. This will be clear from the survey conducted by the CMDA over 1341 families living in different slums of the city .The following outcome has been found. 180|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Slum dwelling families by major industrial pursuit

SL No. Type of industries Number of families P.C.

1 Garment making 599 44.67

2 Light engineering workers 227 16.93

3 Leather goods makers 114 8.50

4 Carpenters 82 6.11

5 Others 319 23.29

Total 1341 100

This is not possible to provide glimpse of all the existing industries in this paper.A number of such a category have been highlighted to make one understand the nature and extent of industrial development in slums.

Clay –Model making

This kind of cottage industry is found in the slums situated in the northern part of the city.Artisans are mostly Hindus belonging to kumor community. They actually make images of different Hindu deties required for different festivals. The raw materials for clay modelling is alluvial soil which they mostly procured from the Ganges and other materials are collected locally. Normally the artisans still today do not get any formal training. They could learn the technique form their families themselves. Over the years their mode of business has changed. Previously the artisans used to go to the clients house in order to make clay images as in those days Barawari puja or Puja organised by a group of people was unfamiliar.10 Small deities for daily worshiping were mostly produced by the artists of Kumartuli. Besides idol making the potters of Kumartoli produce different types of clay utensils for daily use of common people of the city. 181|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The study conducted by the CMDA in June 1977 on the clay modellers of Kumortuli reveals the following informations.11

In the clay modelling operation 587 workers are deployed, of which 269 members belong to the resident clay modellers families. And the rest, 308 are hired workers hired by these families. The female participants in such clay modelling and doll making are few. It also divulges the fact that a number of families under study run the making of sola craft and trading with it. There is no specified market to sell out the products of Kumortuli.Generally the customers purchase those products from the location. To attract the customers producers displayed their products on road side.

Clay idol maker, Kumartuli. Source- google.co.in accessed on 10th September 2014

Nowadays the demand for utensils made of clay has come down as cheap plastic goods has flooded the market. With the decreasing demand a number of artisans have shifted to another profession and they are in a better off condition than the artisans who still stick to their hereditary professions. Most of the artisans now a days take up the occupation of pulling rickshaw or different kinds of jobs other than the months preceding the . This industry actually is in a sharp competition with the idols imported from .12 182|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The image making of involved a number of artisans of specialising in making different kinds of artefacts for decoration ,previously produced by Muslim artisans ,living in the surrounding bustees.13 With the passing of time these types of cottage industries have been wiped out as different kinds of materials are available.

Garment-making

This industry developed in different slum pockets of the city over the years, mostly dominated by Muslims. The centre of this industry is Metiabruz and surrounding slums. The root of the industry goes back to mid 19th century when a group of follower of the exiled Nawab Wazad Ali Shah of Oudh came to that region, took up tailoring as profession. This is still one of the thriving small scale industry emerged in slum areas of the city. This tailors are locally known as dorjis and the owner of the karkhan or workshop is named as Ostakar. At the outset of the century this industry is dominated by the Muslims of Upper India .Later the job opportunity attracted large number of immigrant from different parts of Bengal.Women of this community are also employed in various activities of this industry.14

Earlier this small scale industry used to function in a limited extent as most of the artisans of this region serve as artisans on daily wage basis in the tailoring shops of the city or would sell their small number of manufactured goods in streets and door –to –door basis. Now a days the scenario has been changed. The reason behind the enormous growth of the industry is the rising demand of ready made garments due to change of fashion of people. Marwari community is now a days is running business of cloths and other items in that area which make easy supply of raw materials to the workshops on credit basis.

The govt. a number of times took initiatives to set up training centre to train up the artisans in a proper way but all of the attempts did not materialise. Generally children of this locality get trained up in workshops as apprentice.

Paper and allied crafts

This type of industries actually develop in the Parsi bagan slum ,situated outside the Business District of the city. This industry includes manufacturing of envelop , book binding, card-board box, files, kites 183|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 etc. The manufactured goods has the market in College Street, very close to the slum. Besides men,women and children are employed in making those products.15

Timber and allied crafts

This category of industries concentrate in the slums of and along the canal which was previously used to transport the timber blogs . Timber is actually used to manufacture a number of products such as plywood, packing box, etc. This business is seasonal in nature. During the rainy season the production gets hampered as open space is required to dry up raw materials.

For marketing of their manufactured goods wealthier entrepreneurs have to depend on middle men whereas the weaker ones mostly rely on themselves. The reason behind the fact is that the former group of entrepreneurs sell their products to middle men on whole sale basis, keeping a limited margin of profit. 16

Table No-16 Group Marketing

SS MM

A 97 % 3%

B 75% 25%

C 72% 28%

D 50% 50%

NB:MM=Middle men, SS=Self Selling

Source-A study report on small scale timber and plywood industries at Ultadanga and Beleghata in Kolkata, CMDA, 1977 p733

NB-Group A (having total capital less than Rs 5000) 184|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Group B(having capital between 5001 and Rs 40,000)

Group C (having capital between Rs.40001 –Rs. 1, 00,000)

Group D (having capital 1, 00,001 above)

Finance

During the colonial days there was hardly any state run institution to finance these small scale and cottage industries. The banks which emerged during the Swadeshi days were mostly invested by big zaminders or indigenous rich persons aimed at yielding high dividend to their shareholders. Scanty capital required for investment was mainly supplied by local money lenders. After independence the scenario has been changed to some extent. The Govt. established the Department of Small Scale and cottage industries in order to provide training and finance to develop the industries. The Nationalised Banks have come forward to provide loan to these type of people .

The banks had selected four categories of industries to provide financial assistance for their adequate growth. These were-

I)Tailoring and garment making at Metiabruz. ii) Image making and clay modelling industries at Kumartuly. iii) Timber & Plywood industries at Ultadanga & Beliaghata Road Areas

IV)Tannery industries at of East Kolkata18

The first three industries were properly surveyed by various Nationalised banks in 1977. The Terms and conditions for a borrower was also framed by the banks. They were – i)Educated unemployed people. ii) Persons having little general education but some technical knowledge and experience. iii) For uneducated and new labour –force seeking employment opportunities. 185|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The loan facilities extended to the artisans engaged with various categories of industries seem to have limited success. This is quite clear from the following table available from UBI, Kumartuli 19

Table No-11 20

Information on Bank Loans Extended to the clay Modellers and realisation.

Year/Seasons No.of borrowers Loan sanctioned

1974 37

Durga Season 37 1,11,625

Saraswati ------

1975 114 3,92,400

Durga Season 70 2,95,200

Saraswati ‘’ 44 97,200

1976 131 4,64,700

Durga Season 77 3,34,500

Saraswati “ 54 1,30,200

1977

Durga Season*

Saraswati ‘’ 59 1,46,500

*The season is yet to come .Source: UBI office at Kumartuli

Generally it is found that the poor artisans hardly arrange to get any opportunity of loan from banks due to non proper maintenance of accounts and inability to fulfil the criteria framed by the banks.The loan facility could only secure those artisans who have some amount of wealth. The non- banking financial institutions mainly lend money to this weaker section of the artisans.21 186|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Swadeshi Enterprise vs petty enterprises in slums

The Swadeshi movement encouraged the setting up of a number of industries in Kolkata as well as different parts of Bengal. These enterprises included the setting up of textile factories, chemical industry, tannery and leather works, banking, insurance etc. Most of the industries were financed by indigenous capitalist class, especially Zamindars. The bourgeois participation in these kinds of enterprises is the most remarkable feature 22. The machines which were utilised for industrial production were both made of traditional techniques and in many cases were imported from foreign countries. Foreign technicians were sometimes recruited to supervise the manufacture of different types of goods. Some times youths financed by indigenous rich were sent to foreign land to learn different modern techniques for manufacturing of varieties of goods 23Sumit Sarkar considers that Swadeshi movement actually brought more money in the hands of the mercantile class and they invested that capital in Swadeshi manufacture 24.A number of shops to sell Swadeshi products were established in different parts of Kolkata as well as Bengal e.g Swadwshi bazaar on Cornwaliis Street ,Swadeshi Bastralaya on Chitpur Road etc. Sumit Sarkar shows that these shops were earning handsome profit by raising the fact that these stores earned a profit of Rs.14737-1-0 and a dividend was declared in August 1906. 25So most of the Swadeshi enterprises were financed by share holders .Sumit Sarkar considers that major propaganda of the Swadeshi movement was industrialisation as unemployment was a major problem 26.

In contrast to the features of the Swadeshi enterprises, the petty enterprises of the early decades of the twentieth century grew spontaneously to satisfy the needs of common people based on small tools made themselves or procured locally. The scanty finance required for these types of industries was mostly provided on loan basis by money lenders of different categories. The Swadeshi banks which emerged as an outcome of the Swadeshi Movement to finance the industries in Bengal were not successful enough to meet the financial needs of the industries .The attempts were failed. 27

Big industries versus cottage and small scale industries

The impact of big industries on cottage and small scale industries is two sided. In some cases the rise factories diminished the market of a number of similar products manufactured in slums e.g. 187|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 manufacturing of matches.On the other hand a number of products manufactured in certain slums are high demand in various big factories e.g. small machineries produced in city slums are used in the Jute Mills.28 In certain slums of Bombay ,there are existence of ancillary units of big industries. For example a number of components of Godrej Refrigerator are manufactured at the slum of Indiranagar.29 In Kolkata such a relationship can hardly be traced due to sorry state of industrial growth.

Problems

The slums of the city still today have different types of cottage and small-scale industries producing different types of goods. The reasons causing hindrance for the growth of the industries have been stated below.

I) Most of the slum dwellers are not aware of the facilities provided by the Small scale and cottage industry deptt. of govt as well as the banks to promote their ventures as the level of literacy among them is very low. Besides they cannot fulfil the criteria set up by the banks.31

2) In most of the cases such industries are mostly located in the huts of the artisans. So space problem is one of the major problems. Due to paucity of space the artisans have to use in many cases the footpaths adjacent to their huts avoiding all kinds of problems. 32

3)The artisans and entrepreneurs in most of the cases do not get any kind of formal training rather they acquire their skills through apprenticeship whereas training in govt. sponsored training centres is not very lucrative to these kind of people. 33

4) For marketing these products the entrepreneurs mostly rely on middle men as proper market for these goods have properly not developed.34

Prospects

The census of India of 2011 brings into focus that a vast majority of the city population is living in 188|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 slums. Some of the people within the population have been inheriting traditional skills of manufacturing different types of goods. If the human resource of this category of population can be utilised in a systematic manner through providing easy loan from banks as well as encouragement from govt. and NGOs different kind of industrial development could be achieved

References

1.J.A Yelling, Slums and Development:Policy and Practice in England ,1918-1945(London:UCL Press:2004)14

2.Sandip Hazareesingh,The Colonial City and the Challenge of Modernity:Urban Hegemonies and Civic Contestations in Bombay 1900-1925 (Hydrabad:Orient BlackSwan:2005)48

3.M.K.A.Siddiqui,Muslims of Kolkata:A Study in Aspects of Their Social Organisation(Kolkata:Anthropological Survey of India:2005)106-107

4. ibid

5.Report of the Indian Tariff Board Regarding the Grant of Protection to the Match Industry (1928) p.155(Kolkata)

6.ibid

7.Rajat K. Ray,Industrialisation in India :Growth and Conflict in the Private Corporate Sector 1914- 47(Delhi:Oxford University Press:1982)156

8 Gerorge William Archer,Bazaar Paintings of Kolkata: the Style of Kalighat( London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1953)

9.Census of India India,1911

10.www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumortuli(accessed 10 September 2014) 189|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

11.A Study Report on Clay Modellers’ Community at Kumartuli in Kolkata(1977)p 665(Kolkata,CMDA)

12.Sonali Biswas,Acute Shelter and Space Crisis of Kumartuli Potters of Kolkata-A Case Study Conducted Recently in December 2012,08-SHL-SONALI BISWAS (accessed on 10 September 2014)

13. M.K.A.Siddiqui,Muslims of Kolkata:A Study in Aspects of Their Social Organisation(Kolkata:Anthropological Survey of India:2005)118

14.Field survey in the slum of Metiabruz done by author himself.

15. M.K.A.Siddiqui and Y.Hossain,Life in the Slums of Kolkata:A study of Parsi Bagan Bustee(New Delhi:Institute of Objective Studies)69-86

16.A Study Report on Small Scale Timber and Plywood industries at Ultadanga and Beleghata ( June 1977)p717-742(Kolkata,CMDA)

17.ibid.718

18.An pproach to Economic Renewal and Promotion Programme-Informal Industry sector(1977)p597(Kolkata,CMDA)

19.ibid,596

20.A Study Report on Clay Modellers Community at Kumartuli in Kolkata(1977)p 666(Kolkata,CMDA)

21 A Study Report on Small Scale Timber and Plywood industries at Ultadanga and Beleghata ( June 1977) 733(Kolkata,CMDA)

22.Amit Bhattacharyya ,Swadeshi Enterprise in Bengal 1900-1920(Kolkata:INA Press),

23.ibid

24.Sumit Sarkar,The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903-1908(New Delhi:People’s Publishing House)98-99

25.ibid,117 190|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

26.ibid, 99

27. Amit Bhattacharyya ,Swadeshi Enterprise in Bengal 1900-1920(Kolkata:INA Press)236

28. A Study Report on Small Scale Light Engineering Industries of Belilious Road Belt in Howrah(1977)694

29.Jeremy Seabrook ,Life and Labour in a Bombay Slum(London:Quartet Books)

Subrata Nandi received M.A in History from , Kolkata. He is currently working as Assistant Professor in the Onda Thana Mahavidyalaya, Bankura, West Bengal, India. Professor Nandi is also pursuing Ph.D at the department of History, University of Burdwan. The title of his dissertation is ‘Changing profile of Kolkata slums’.He is regular in writing articles in different scholarly journals. Kolkata's Intellectual Response to Shakespeare: Academia, Stage and Little Magazines

Arindam Mukherjee

This study focuses on the ways in which Bengali writers and academics of pre-and post-independent periods in Kolkata responded to Shakespeare in order to show how much of this response is derivative and how much of it is truly Bengali.

Shakespeare came to be used as one of the planks of the edifice of English education in India. Shakespeare gave the study of English literature a kind of respectability that set the native students and scholars competing for recognition by the colonial rulers over their mastery of English language and literature. It was because of the centrality of Shakespeare in the colonial agenda of cultural hegemony that his works were translated and adapted for the Bengali stage and included in the academic curricula at schools and colleges. In Calcutta (now Kolkata), Presidency College, a premier institution of academic excellence, built up a solid tradition of Shakespeare studies addressed to the needs of the students. H. M. Percival edited a number of Shakespeare’s plays with a scholarly competence, which was rivalled even by the British editors. Calcutta University and later Jadavpur University contributed in their own ways to the rising interest in Shakespeare, as the greatest literary gift of the Raj.

One important consequence of this extensive exposure to Shakespeare was the growth of Bengali drama modelled on Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare criticism in England not only helped the Bengali academics to understand Shakespeare better, but also provided a whole set of criterion for judging the native dramatic practice. In fact, Shakespeare studies by Bengali academics had no alternative but to grow and maintain its credentials only in the shadow of Shakespeare studies in England. This made most of Shakespeare studies in Bengal very much derivative, which were rather inevitable in a British colony. Unlike the French and Russian, Bengali scholars could not be expected to evolve their own ways of looking at Shakespeare. As a result, Bengal could not produce a Shakespeare critic like Voltaire or Tolstoy. 192|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

In the post-independent phase of Shakespeare criticism one still notices profound erudition operating very cautiously within the critical tradition of received ideas. All the approaches, biographical, historical, psychological, practical and textual, which were popularized in England, came to be adopted liberally.

It is interesting to note that when the sanctified image of the Bard was challenged by his own countrymen, it found its echo in certain quarters of Bengali scholarship. An independent critical outlook displayed by Bankim Chandra and Rabindranath in their comments on Shakespeare’s plays, had little chance of being developed by Bengali academia. What happened in the 50s, 60s and 70s of the last century, before the advent of recent theories in the field of Shakespeare studies in West Bengal, is only repeating itself in the 21st century, a new phase of derivativeness in a deceptive guise.

After the advent of East India Company on the shores of Bengal, British Colonialism not only established its political power but also took steps for a cultural conquest of the colonized Bengalis in and around Calcutta. The missionaries continued to use various indigenous means to arrive at the banks of the Ganga and work for dissemination of western education. They learned Bengali so that the Bengalis could be taught English. Possibly, they believed that such a venture would fulfil their purpose of proselytization. It was the ‘Charter Act’ of 1813, which encouraged the learned Bengalis for improving their literary excellences and knowledge of science through western education.(S.C.Ghosh, The History of Education in Modern India, 1757-1986, Hyderabad, Orient Longman; 1995.) Raja Rammohan Roy was the first Bengali who advocated that modernization of India would come through English Education and proper inculcation of the knowledge acquired by western sciences. In between 1813 and 1835, when the government was not so eager to spend money in this field, public missionary institutions like ‘Church Missionary Society’, ‘London Missionary Society’, Robert May’s school in Dutch Chinsurah played a significant part. ‘ Baptist Mission’ and its trio Carey, Marshman and Ward, was the pioneer in imparting of Western education. Thomas Babington Macaulay’s ‘Minute on Indian Education’ (1835) became the blue print for the introduction of English education in India. He argued, “Such an education would create a class of persons between us and the millions we govern, a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and intellect.”(Ibid. pg.32) 193|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The Days of the British Raj: Discussing a Time Frame

Gradually a new education system was introduced in India, especially in Bengal, in which the task of producing knowledge was assigned to the colonial country, while in reproduction; replication was left for the colonial people. This was the beginning of the western type of modernization project in which English language and literature was introduced in the academic curriculum. R.C. Majumder writes, “English education was made the only passport to higher appointments available to the Indians, and hence its popularity and rapid progress were assured.” (R. C. Majumder, H. C. Raychaudhuri and Kalikinkar Dutta: An Advanced , Macmillan, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1965, pg. 819)

On the contrary, Gauri Viswanathan in her book, Mask of Conquest: Literary Study of British Rule in India. (New York, Colombia University Press, 1989. pg. 38) has argued that English education was present in India in various forms before 1835. However, while previously English was studied in a classical fashion primarily as a language, the new shift was towards the study of literature as a medium of modern knowledge. English literature, particularly Shakespeare and other Renaissance authors were ideal representations of English identity, sanctioned and abstracted from the immediate history of exploitation and oppression. Moreover, it would incorporate a group of natives into the structure of colonial rule, which remained the main political agenda of Anglicism. In a way, the whole indigenous society was benefitted from western authors, particularly Shakespeare and imbibing his superior moral and ethical ideals. Even in 1854 when Charles Wood’s ‘Educational Dispatch’ of recommending the extension of Vernacular was introduced, it did not affect at all the Western writers like Shakespeare because by then he had become a colonial icon and the Bengali ‘BhadrolokBabus’ started translating, adapting and critically evaluating his works.

Higher education thus received further boost as in 1857 the three Universities namely Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were established on the model of the University of London, which was found to be more suited to colonial conditions. In some secondary schools where the medium of instruction was English, Shakespeare was compulsory in the academic curriculum. In the intermediate and degree courses, Shakespeare was taught with great emphasis and the best teachers were given the task to teach his plays (SwapanChakravorty, “This Sad Interim: Shakespeare in the Indian Classroom.” Published in “Re-presenting Shakespeare: Text, Performance and Analysis” ed. Sarbani Chaudhuri.pg. 40). 194|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Mostly middle class Hindus of Calcutta reaped the advantages of English education while the Hindu aristocrats and Muslim community kept aloof from it. The middle class Hindus not only had started the movement but also had instilled the spirit of unity in the minds of the masses. So teaching Shakespeare to the common masses in Calcutta and its peripheral areas was well taken upby the middle class intellectuals and thus Shakespeare made a permanent place in colonial education. Therefore, the matrix of Shakespeare studies in Bengal goes back to around the third decade of the nineteenth century through translations, adaptations, stage performances and a little later through the classroom studies, primarily at Hindu College (now Presidency University), Calcutta University, Dacca University, St. Xaviers’ College (Kolkata) and , Calcutta . Therefore, Calcutta became the cultural hub for Shakespeare study in eastern India and scholars, translators and actors came to Calcutta from all parts of Bengal.

The Matrix of Shakespeare Study in Kolkata: Historically Determined

The main objective here is to focus on the various ways in which Bengali writers and academics in both the pre and post-independence periods responded to Shakespeare. With the introduction of English education in Bengal, Shakespeare came to be used as one of the planks of edifice of English education in India. The Bengali bhadroloks since the first quarter of the nineteenth century opted for English education to appease their colonial masters and many of them vied with each other to show their reverence for Shakespeare’s works by translating, adapting and producing them on the stage. The colonial rule of one hundred and ninety years not only cemented English Language and Literature in the academic curriculum but also made the sanctified image of the bard an epitome of cultural glory especially in Kolkata, the capital city of India. This had been made possible by the British teachers who came all the way from England to teach in Kolkata, and by the greatest master and mentor of ‘the young Bengal,’ Henry Louis Vivian Derozio.

The prime focus is to show that the Bengali response to Shakespeare was derivative for a long time and then it became self-reliant. The basic intention in dealing with the ‘Translation and Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Plays,’ highlights how faithful translations, which appealed to the masses and inspired others to take up this venture. The art of translating a Shakespearean play in Bengali was done first not by any native Indian but by an Englishman of Fort William College, named Claude Moncton. The next 195|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Bengali translation was not a full-fledged play but of a play’s prose rendering of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (Tales from Shakespeare) and Gurudas Hazra was the pioneer, naming it ‘Romeo Juliet er Monohar Upakhyan’ (1848). By the middle of nineteenth century, ordinary Indians had learnt English well enough to attempt translating most of Charles Lamb’s tales. Even Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar made a prose rendering of ‘The Comedy of Errors’ with the title ‘BhrantiBilas.’ (1867) Soon the Bengali writers felt the necessity for translating the complete plays and they followed three distinctive patterns: (1) Literal or word for word translation. (2) Rendering of and adapting to the storyline of the original plays.(3) Amalgamating the literal translation and adaptation in terms of contemporary socio-economic and political conditions; this has been categorized as ‘cultural translation’. In the second half of nineteenth century, at least thirty–five renderings were either adapted or culturally translated of just sixteen plays. Literal translations suffered as it appeared unpleasant to the ear and failed to please the Bengali readers because of the diversity in local customs and religious beliefs.

The first adaptation of Shakespeare in Bengali was, probably, of ‘A Most Pleasant and Excellent Conceited Comedy, of Sir John Falstaff, and the merry Wives of Windsor’. The adaptation is found in dramatist Dinabandhu Mitra’s play ‘Nabin Tapaswini’ (1863), not as the main plot but as a sub-plot. The sub-plot revolved around Jaladhar, an Indian minister who is a spitting image of Falstaff, the British knight. Jaladhar makes amorous advances towards two married women, Malati and Mallika, just as Falstaff did towards Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. Jaladhar sneaks into Malati’s house quite as Falstaff went into Mistress Ford’s house. Then the women scare Jaladhar into masking himself, much as Falstaff was tricked to hide in a laundry basket. The consequent humiliation of Jaladhar is also similar to that of Falstaff. However, in spite of such similarities, there are some differences between Shakespeare's original and Mitra's adaptation. As writer AjitkumarGhosh notes, “In Shakespeare's comedy the cleverly contrived intriguing situation is the source of laughter, but here in the 'Jaladhardhar episode' … the witty dialogues of Mallika and Malati are the sources of laughter.” (Makers of Indian Literature, 28)

On 28 January 1893, a Bengali translation of 'The Tragedy of Macbeth' was staged at Kolkata's Minerva Theatre. It was by the pioneering dramatist who had declared, “I have got the piece mounted by European artists and Dressed (sic) it under European supervision and 'make up' by Mr. J. Pimm.” (Amrita Bazar Patrika, 28 January 1893) Ironically, Ghosh's fidelity towards the original resulted in the failure of the translation. His ‘Macbeth’ was too European for Indians to warm 196|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 up to, and consequently, could not run beyond a few shows. Literary historians PoonamTrivedi and Dennis Bartholomeusz write:

“This was the quite un-Shakespearean spectacular pictorial realism following Charles Kean, the Victorian imperial standard long questioned in London but relentlessly carried throughout the empire by traveling players like George C. Miln and Alan Wilkie. . . . The well-intentioned Victorian “supervision in the European tradition was the source of the problem. The localization of Macbeth had stopped at translation. It had not gone far enough.” (India's Shakespeare: Translation, Interpretation and Performance, 205)

Around November 1880, ’s translation of ‘Macbeth’ appeared in the Bengali journal ‘Bharati’. This was followed by Girish Chandra Ghosh’s faithful literal translation of ‘Macbeth’ in 1897. While the former was only a fragmentary translation, the latter appeared obscure, as it did not suit the taste of traditional Bengali audience. Despite being popular among theatregoers and lovers of drama, neither Michael Madhusudan nor DinabandhuMitra translated a single play, though in their original plays there were Shakespearean echoes. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, the greatest novelist and the editor of the eminent literary journal ‘Bangadarsan’, was never involved with any translation of Shakespeare, though he had the greatest admiration for Shakespeare. Possibly the tendency for the translation of Shakespeare’s plays gradually diminished in the last decade of the 19th century because of several socio-cultural and political reasons.

In the first quarter of the 20th century, only twenty-two translations and adaptations were made of twelve popular comedies and tragedies. Most of these plays were translated or adapted before, barring ‘Measure for Measure.’ This is possibly because of the uprising of the national movement in which the middle class Bengalis in Kolkata and its adjoining places took the maximum initiative to dethrone the British Raj. Another reason might be that Shakespeare study in the classroom was at its pinnacle by the greatest of the English teachers, and translation or adaptation was considered inferior. Distinguished teachers of both European and Indian origin put the art of translation, adaptation and stage performance at the back seat. For the next twenty-six years (1926-1952), not a single play was translated or adapted for the stage. There was immense political unrest from all corners of Bengal and particularly in the main cultural centre, Kolkata. Only the poet Nirendranath Roy made a successful cultural translation of ‘Macbeth’ in 1952 and Sisir Kumar Bhaduri directed it while young Utpal Dutt 197|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 acted the role of Macbeth. After independence, no Bengali dared to attempt adapting any play of Shakespeare but Sunil Kumar Chattopadhyay, KalyanbrotoDutta, Ashok Guha and Sudhidranath Raha made cultural translations of the romantic comedies, the last plays, the love tragedies and the four great tragedies. No doubt, these plays were chosen for translation as they were prescribed for the undergraduate and postgraduate academic syllabi in all the universities of West Bengal. Students succumbed to short cut methods and gradually the desire to probe into the deeper level of the text was lost. It is really striking that in the long history of translation - adaptation in Bengali, which spans more than one-hundred sixty years, no one thought of either translating or adapting any history play. It might be that these writers felt that such a theme might be too alien for the common Bengali audience. The beginning of the new millennium started looking afresh on the art of translation and adaptation. The English Department of the , organized a seminar entitled ‘Re-presenting Shakespeare: Interpretations and Translations’, where scholars pointed out the problems of translating Shakespeare’s plays. New evaluations were made on GirishGhosh and Jatindranath Sen Gupta’s ‘Macbeth’ and Utpal Dutt’s adaptation ‘Chaitali Rater Swapna’ from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’

Thus, we see that though Shakespeare was translated and adapted in various ways by Bengali writers, their primary aim was to present Shakespeare before the Bengali audience. Therefore, Bengalisation of the bard was not only historically inevitable but also desirable.

The second phase consists of the Bengali ‘Bhadralok Babus’ in Kolkata responding indigenously to Shakespeare. Again, it was the initiative of the English teachers like D. L. Richardson, H. L. V. Derozio of Hindu College, Charles Tawney and J. W. Holme and the greatest of them H. M. V. Percival of Presidency College, who had instilled in the Indian students a true love for literature and admiration for the great writer. Derozio with his followers known as ‘Young Bengal’ brought about a cultural revolution, which erased many prejudices of the society. His scholarly yet lucid representation of Shakespeare’s plays, and the sonnet on Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ acted as an enthusing spirit among his followers. Most of the Bengali Babus showed their interest either in academic pursuits of Shakespeare or in translating, adapting, and staging of his plays in Bengali in the second half of 19th century till the first quarter of the 20th century. Even persons like Banquo Behari Dutta, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Toru Duttta, Haraprasad Shastri, D. L. Roy, Balendranath Tagore and the saint and seer of India Swami 198|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Vivekananda had taken up their pen to write articles in appreciation of the bard’s multifarious creativity. However, most of these sketches are sincere and originally conceived, at times comparing Shakespeare’s works to the oriental Classical writer Kalidasa. Bankim Chandra’s assessment of Shakespeare in his article ‘Sakuntala, Miranda ebon Desdemona’, where he conceives “Kalidasa’s Sakuntala as half Miranda and the other half as Desdemona”, shows his versatile genius who wielded his magic wand in many branches of literature besides prose fiction. He is at his best when he takes us back to Shakespeare, who also exercised the greatest influence on his own creative works. The most brilliant of these occurs in the course of his analysis of Bhababhuti’s drama ‘Uttar Ramcharit’. Departing from the original story, Bhababhuti makes come back to see Ramchandra in the woodland, though as a spirit she is herself invisible. Quoting this observation, Bankimchandra comments:

“In point of literary excellence this episode is comparable to all that is beautiful in any drama in any language…..Such sentences are to be found in Shakespeare.”

This astute comment shows a profound understanding of Shakespeare. Banquo Behari Dutta assessed that “both Homer and Shakespeare are praised to a degree almost bordering on idolatry.” Haraprasd Shastri places Shakespeare above Kalidasa, as Shakespearean characters are more diverse and stimulating but praises the Indian Kalidasa above everyone as he depicts wonderfully “the inner beauty of the soul”. In a letter to his friend Gour Basak, Michael Madhusudan justifies why the Indians are more romantic than their colonial masters. On the contrary, the plays of Shakespeare presetn to him, “stern realities of life, lofty passion and heroism of sentiment.”

The study of Shakespeare in the first half of 20th century continued with the same enthusiasm and the struggle for freedom did not deter the serious learners. Schools, colleges and universities like Calcutta and Dacca laid special emphasis on Shakespeare study and a full paper comprising about twelve plays and all the sonnets were meant for compulsory study. Presidency College had a set of brilliant teachers like H. M. Percival, Manmohan Ghosh, legendary P. C. Ghosh, Srikumar Banerjee to name only a few. They taught with so much of competence that interested students even from semi urban colleges would flock to attend their classes. Rajsahi College also had a rich legacy of Shakespeare teaching as teachers from Presidency College and other government colleges like Hooghly Mohsin College, Chinsurah and Chandannagore Government College (formerly known as ‘Dupleix 199|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

College’ as it was once a French colony) would be transferred on routine basis over there. Some of the missionary colleges like Scottish Church College, St. Xaviers’ College and even had put in efforts to teach Shakespeare with élan. Therefore, Shakespeare came to rule the classrooms but in stage productions, he trailed behind.

Like the previous century, the 20th century also had a galaxy of creative writers and thinkers who had special interest in Shakespeare. The historians had rightly called the period the epitome of the ‘Bengal’s Renaissance’. Rabindranath Tagore was greatly influenced by Shakespeare’s multifarious creativity and humanism. His sonnet written as a tribute to Shakespeare in 1916 (the Bengali version written a year before in ‘Balaka’) is still recognized as a brilliant homage, which appears in Shakespeare’s birthplace inscribed on the bust of Rabindranath. Apart from the penal task imposed by his tutor of translating ‘Macbeth’, he later on made some fine comments on Shakespeare’s plays in his literary essay ‘Sahitya’. The expression “jivanerjvar” in “Mrityur Pare” is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s “life’s fitful fever”. There are other Shakespearean reminiscences and echoes, direct or indirect, in the literary writings of Tagore, which have been identified.

Aurobindo Ghosh whom the world knows as a and a philosopher is still a recognized Shakespearean scholar and critic. He was the first Bengali who identified Shakespeare’s poetic greatness. He compared Shakespeare’s fecundity to that of Racine and Goethe’s literary excellence. He even pointed out the roles of accent, stress and quantity in Shakespeare’s poetry. He even showed why Shakespeare is better than other writers like Chaucer, Marlowe, Milton, Donne, Blake and Browning. He even compares Kalidasa’s prose to Shakespeare’s verse. Rightly has he called Shakespeare the “Elizabethan Viswamitra.” His ‘Future Poetry’ has Shakespearean reminiscences from objective to the subjective approach and from subjective to spirituality.

Men from all occupations showed interest in Shakespeare and by this time, he had become a colonial icon. Men like Ramendrasundar Trivedi, Brojendranath Seal, Purna Chandra Basu, Priyanath Sen, Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, and even one of the greatest scientists of Bengal, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy contributed articles on the bard’s profound acceptance in “the palm groves of the Indian Sea.” Some like Purna Chandra and Priyanath Sen were Shakespeare’s detractors while the Bengali scientist Acharya P. C. Ray raised tantalizing questions whether Shakespeare was a papist or not. 200|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Academic response to Shakespeare during the pre-independence period was, however, not beyond the confines of classroom studies, though only a few discussions were organized in the ‘Calcutta University Institute Hall’. Occasionally literary journals would come out either from Presidency College or Calcutta University that had articles of merit. Srikumar Banerjee, J. L. Banerjee and D. N. Ghosh brought out their own editions of ‘Macbeth’, which could have rivalled many recognized foreign editions both in penetrating analysis and in stimulating annotations. Srikumar Banerjee’s article ‘Hamlet and Ophelia’, published in ‘Presidency College Magazine’ (1945) is undoubtedly the first thought provoking article that compelled his eminent pupil Taraknath Sen to write on a congruous theme ‘Hamlet’s Treatment of Ophelia in the Nunnery Scene.’ Research works published, were scanty, except “Courtesy in Shakespeare” by Mohini Mohan Bhattacharyya from Calcutta University in 1940. After eight years, he wrote another book on ‘Elizabethan Stage and the Audience of Shakespeare.’ (Calcutta University) None of these books achieved high acclaim in the academic sphere of Kolkata though both the books had accuracy of erudition coupled with exact scholarship. The reason probably was that in the heart of hearts, the Bengali academics had developed an anglophile nature and books published in Britain were easily accessible in Kolkata. Their love for Shakespeare was so intense that the teachers referred to books written by authors from Shakespeare’s own motherland.

Shakespeare studies by academics during the post-independence period were so ingenious and diverse that it can be divided into three phases. The first published works of the authors of the the first phase, were four in number. Here critics like Subodh Chandra Sen Gupta, Taraknath Sen, Sailendra Kumar Sen and D. N. Ghosh should engage us. S. C. Sen Gupta’s seven books on Shakespeare namely ‘Shakespearian Comedy’, ‘The Whirligig of Time: The problem of duration in Shakespeare’s Plays’, ‘Shakespeare’s Historical Plays’,‘Aspects of Shakespearian Tragedy’, ‘A Manual on Shakespeare’, the two monographs ‘Shakespeare and Keats’ and ‘Hamlet Once More’ are all thought provoking surveys of different areas of Shakespearian study. The first of these discusses in detail the nature of the comic characters, the comic situation and the comic elements in tragedy. It has been reviewed in ‘Shakespeare Survey V’, and the critic Allardyce Nicoll appreciated the book.

‘The Whirligig of Time: The Problem of Duration in Shakespeare’s Plays’, discusses the concept of ‘time’ as used in the plays. He discusses in a subtle manner the differences between chronological ‘time’ and the dramatic ‘time’ and touches upon the theme of ‘Double time’, thereby 201|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 propounding a theory, which reconciles the rudimentary differences between temporal time and the seamlessness of dramatic time recurrent in Shakespeare’s tragedies and comedies. He shows how ‘duration’ takes an active part in developing the characters.

The third book ‘Shakespeare’s Historical Plays’ proves that the ten history plays are not political or didactic treatises but they possess aesthetic appeal through the life-like characters in the plays. He has shown that these plays altogether form a different category and they reflect certain history but they are neither ‘moral homilies nor political treatise.’ Selected excerpts from the book were included in the memorable book entitled ‘Shakespeare’s Critics: From Jonson to Auden', edited by A. M. Eastman and G. B. Harrison”. He is the only Asian to be included amongst 122 critics of Shakespeare. Eminent critic Irving Ribner wrote an essay on: ‘Professor Subodh Chandra Sen Gupta as a Shakespeare Critic’ (1965), in which he appreciates the style the author takes up in discussing the drama of the ‘Henriad’.

The fourth book ‘Aspects of Shakespearian Tragedy’, (O.U.P.; Calcutta 1971), comprising six chapters, examines the various aspects of Shakespearian tragedy. In the initial chapter, he assesses the contribution of A. C. Bradley for the book ‘Shakespearian Tragedy’ (1904) and he argues why Bradley is better than the more learned scholars like Saintsbury, Chambers or Stoll. He admits that despite having certain limitations like the adoption of Hegelian theory to arrive at a synthesis, A. C. Bradley’s contribution to ‘Shakespearean Tragedy’, makes him feel that it is “the greatest work of Shakespearean criticism”. In the chapters that follow on ‘Happy Valiancy of Style in Antony and Cleopatra’, ‘Macbeth: A Tragedy of Imagination’ ‘Symbolism in Othello’ ‘Nature in King Lear’ and ‘Hamlet in the Light of Indian Poetics,’ Sen Gupta presents delectable variety and freedom of Shakespeare criticism which has been made possible by close reading of the text. He has a kind of analytical approach, not easily found in Shakespearean criticism in India.

The fifth book ‘A Manual on Shakespeare’ (1977) contains eight independent yet linked essays that touch on all areas of Shakespeare’s life and work. The book opens with a brief survey of Shakespeare criticism and this is followed by an attempt to understand the nature of Shakespeare the man. He then discusses Shakespeare’s use of source materials and the fourth chapter deals with the ambivalence of different attitudes in ‘As You Like It.’ The fifth chapter ‘Tragedy and Comedy: Barabas and Shylock’, compares Shakespeare and Marlowe and interfuses the tragic and the comic. The next two chapters discuss the textual problems and Shakespeare’s theatre while the ultimate chapter assesses 202|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 the varied themes in the sonnets.

The monograph ‘Shakespeare and Keats’ (1986) deals with Keats’ criticism of Shakespeare and he out - rightly differs from critics like Arnold, Bradley, Middleton Murray and Caroline Spurgeon who have been inclined to discover kinship between the two though there is none. Sen Gupta traces the evolution of Shakespeare’s ideas leading to ‘Imagination and Art’ that is also pertinent in Keats.

‘Hamlet Once More’ (1988) deals with the problem of Hamlet by examining the texts and the source in order to trace the theme of revenge in Hamlet. However, the author did not deal much with the dilemma and moral questions of the play. The next two articles ‘Hamlet: The Mona Lisa of Literature’ and ‘Hamlet: A Reassessment’ present his own assessment of the play through a detailed analysis of the plot structure and character presentation of the play though later Bengali scholars JagannathChakravorty and SukantaChaudhuri have made much intensive analysis of the play in their books.

Taraknath Sen’s book ‘Three Essays On Shakespeare’ (1978, posthumous publication), contains three essays namely ‘Presidency College and Shakespeare’, ‘Hamlet’s Treatment of Ophelia in the Nunnery Scene’ and ‘Shakespeare’s Short Lines’. The first gives a vivid account of the great tradition of Shakespeare teaching at Presidency College from D. L. Richardson down to P. C. Ghosh. The Englishmen had started the great legacy of teaching Shakespeare to the native Indian students at Hindu College (later Presidency College) and the baton was passed on to the Indian teachers like P. C. Ghosh, “whose teaching of Shakespeare brought to the learner an opulence of satisfaction” (Taraknath Sen (Ed.) Shakespeare Commemoration Volume, p. 9)

‘Hamlet’s Treatment of Ophelia in the Nunnery Scene’, is the second essay in which Taraknath Sen refers to the leading critics like Helen Gardner and John Dover Wilson in relation to the Nunnery scene. This he does to refute their views and he opines that Hamlet’s mind was in extreme trauma at that time when his personal problems become for him the problems of life. ‘Shakespeare’s Short Lines,’ the essay he wrote as a tribute to his teacher P. C. Ghosh is a gem. He suggests the critics to think thrice before commenting on them as the blemishes of Shakespeare’s verses.

Sailendra Kumar Sen’s two books ‘Capell and Malone and Modern Critical Biography’ (1965) and ‘English literary Criticism in the Second Half of Eighteenth Century: A Reconsideration’ (1965) and the articles: ‘What Happens in Coriolanus’ and ‘And Therefore Look You Call Me Ganymede’ are 203|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 significant. No critic in India before him had dealt with the textual problems, critical evaluation and editorial theory so astutely.

A little later, it is seen that Shakespeare Studies after Independence were toeing the footsteps of the British critics and a survey of the contemporary academics from almost all the universities in West Bengal who contributed during the quatercentenary year will establish this point. They may be less eminent than either their predecessors or their successors but they wrote copiously on diverse themes in Shakespeare’s plays. Sitansu Maitra, professor of RabindraBharati University wrote the book ‘Shakespeare’s Comic Ideas’ in which he had dealt with the comprehensive study of psychological realism in Shakespeare’s plays. The book is more a compilation of ideas fostered by some of the great authors like T. M. Parrot, H. B. Charlton and Maitra’s mentor S. C. Sen Gupta who all wrote books on similar themes. D. N. Ghosh’s treatment of ‘Shakespeare’s Text and Textual Problem’ is a mediocre work but his editions of twelve major plays and the sonnets, are still popular even today. Probodh Chandra Ghosh and Krishna Chandra Lahiri taught at Calcutta University and their works ‘Shakespeare’s Mingled Drama’ and ‘Pedagogues in Shakespeare’ respectively created lesser impact, though the former has a comparative study of Kalidasa and Shakespeare. Lahiri’s book deals with six pedagogues in Shakespeare’s plays that are elusive and resourceful like other characters. N. K. Pandey of Kalyani University in his book ‘An Introduction to Shakespeare Criticism—A Study in Changing Pattern’ has discussed all leading critics of Shakespeare from Ben Jonson to T. S. Eliot. S. P. Sen Gupta of North Bengal University had written two books entitled ‘Trends in Shakespearean Criticism’ and ‘Some Aspects of Shakespeare’s Sonnets’ which have been very popular with the students of Shakespeare criticism in Bengal. Geoffrey Tillotson had written the ‘foreword’ to the former book, while Harold. F. Brooks wrote the latter. Both the critics had taught Sen Gupta at London University but they have been ambivalent in their appraisal. Pandey and Sen Gupta have echoed what F. E. Halliday and A.Ralli (A History of Shakespeare Criticism, 2 Volumes, New York, and Humanities Press, 1965,) have already said in their study of Shakespeare criticism.

Shakespeare Studies in Kolkata after Independence

Here we have five contemporary scholars of Shakespeare namely Chakravorty and Dinesh Chandra Biswas of Jadavpur University, Jyoti Bhattacharyya and Arun Kumar Das Gupta of Calcutta 204|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

University and the two contemporary (living) scholars namely Sukanta Chaudhuri and Swapan . Jagannath Chakravorti’s two books ‘The Idea of Revenge in Shakespeare - with a special reference to Hamlet’ and ‘King Lear-Shakespeare’s Existential Hero’ are wonderful study of the two greatest tragedies in terms of two pertinent themes and allied perspectives. In the first, the author hints at the rise and development of ‘revenge’ in two pre-Shakespearian tragedies like ‘Gorboduce’ and ‘The Spanish Tragedy’. He then discusses the revenge motif in the un-Shakespearean play ‘Titus Andronicus’, and then proceeds with his discussion on ‘Hamlet’ from chapters VI to XIII. The penultimate and ultimate chapters ‘Revenge in Tragedies’ and ‘Revenge in Comedies and Transmutation of Revenge in the Final Plays’ respectively show how revenge tradition pervades the other plays. It also shows that ‘Hamlet’ is not an isolated case. The Gandhian ‘’ and Sartre’s ‘’ have been wonderfully amalgamated in treating the ontological theme of ‘Being and Nothingness’ in ‘King Lear.’ After a series of discussion on the ‘Existential Freedom’ of the storm, ‘Existentialist Bad Faith’ of the fool and ‘Reason in Madness’—the writer synthesizes his view that “King Lear is an Existential Drama on the universal situation of Man.”

Dinesh Chandra Biswas’ three books -- ‘Shakespeare’s Treatment of His Sources in the Comedies’, ‘Shakespeare in His Own Time’ and ‘Scepticism in Shakespeare and Other Essays’ show the author’s commendable skill in the entire Shakespearean canon. In the first book, the author takes up seventeen comedies and deals with the enormous bulk of comic matter in Johnsonian pattern. The other two books are collection of essays ranging from ‘Shakespeare’s Prince Hall’ to ‘Troilus and Cressida and the Renaissance Concept of Value’. In the ultimate book the essays range from ‘Shakespeare’s Conception of a Courtier’ to ‘Politics in Julius Caesar’, thereby hinting that Shakespeare is more inculcated in “the farthest step of India,” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream- II, i, L69.)

Gouri Prasad Ghosh contributed considerably to the development of Shakespeare study in Kolkata. An ardent teacher and a clever scholar, Shakespearean tragedy was his forte which is clear from the diversity of his articles: (1) ‘Shakespeare’s Problem Plays: Alternation of a Negative Vision’, (2) ‘Othello and the Problem Plays: A World of Chrysolite Embedded in Chaos’ (3) ‘King Lear: A Dark Synthesis Leading No Where,’ (4) ‘Macbeth: Struggle and Defeat of the Moral Will.’ All these articles published between 1980-1984 in different issues of the ‘Journal of the Department of English,’ characterize a continuation of the author’s studies seeking to offer a new interpretation of the development of Shakespeare’s life vision through the tragedies and problem plays. 205|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Among the four articles of Jyoti Bhattacharya, two are of international repute--(1) ‘Kenneth Muir’s Edition of King Lear: A Few Questions’ and (2) ‘King Lear: The Last Four Lines.’ In the former, he points out subtle editorial slips in successive publications -1952 and 1972. In the latter, he openly challenges the leading critics like Maynard Mack, John F. Danby and R. B. Heilman for their views on ascribing the lines to Edgar.

Arun Kumar Das Gupta wrote five articles on Shakespeare and Renaissance intellectualism coupled with humanism, and most of them are of great merit. They are: -(1) ‘The Interplay of Fortune and Freedom: A Shakespearean Theme’, (2) ‘Divided Love: An Approach to Shakespeare’s Sonnets’, (3) The Intellectual Foundation of the Renaissance, (4) A note on ‘Macbeth’ (II, ii, 61-63, Shakespeare Quarterly; Notes and Queries, 1960) (5) ‘A note on Titus Andronicus’ (II, i, 1-11 ‘Shakespeare Quarterly’, 1961). (6) ‘The Phantom of Melancholy: An Essay on Hamlet’. (Taraknath Sen (Ed.) Shakespeare Commemoration Volume, p. 125—137)

The continuation of the third phase includes scholars after 1980 and also brings in its fold the writers of today. The list, however, is considerably large, encompassing both the pedagogues and the pupils alike in all the eight universities of West Bengal. One of the greatest of Shakespearean scholars in the world today, Sukanta Chaudhuri feels that Shakespeare will never appear to be over--explored in the land of Tagore. His two books: (1) ‘Infirm Glory-Shakespeare and the Renaissance Image of Man’ and (2) 'Renaissance Pastoral and its English Development’, are notable ventures in the history of Shakespearean criticism in Bengal. Beside the numerous articles like ‘The Tragic Libertines: Self – Expressions in the tragedies of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, ‘The New Machiavelli: Shakespeare in the Henriad’, ‘King, Villain, Sacrifice: Macbeth as Tragic Hero,’‘Internet Shakespeare Edition: Shakespeare in India’ he has edited a number of volumes on Renaissance themes and particularly Shakespeare. His recently published edition of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ for the ‘New Arden Series’ is as scholarly as it is illuminating.

Another notable Renaissance scholar who has considerably contributed to the study of Shakespeare is Swapan Chakravorty whose essay in the journal ‘Shakespeare in the Mediterranean’, edited by Tom Playton, has had tremendous impact in the academic world in the West. His edition of ‘As You like It’, published by Orient Longman can be placed alongside any authentic editions. His short biographical sketch on Shakespeare in Bengali will enable any Bengali reader to know many 206|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 obscure facts not only about the dramatist’s life but also about Elizabethan England. The catholicity of his mind is revealed in his book written in arduous Bengali ‘Bangaleer Engreji Sahitya Charcha’ (‘The Study of English Literature by the Bengalis.’) There are three essays on Shakespeare’s varied themes like teaching of Shakespeare in the classroom, re-evaluating Renaissance culture and studying Shakespeare in the modern age, lastly a comparative study of Faust and Hamlet. These essays may seem obscure for common readers but their critical merit is unquestionable. His articles in English on Renaissance literature and particularly on Shakespeare attract common readers as well as scholars.

Subha Mukherji who teaches English at Downing College, Cambridge University also contributed amply to the development of Shakespeare Criticism. Much younger yet her erudite scholarship in Renaissance Literature and particularly Shakespeare has enabled her to publish an article on “‘Lawful Deed’: Consummation, Custom and Law in All’s Well That Ends Well.” (Shakespeare Survey: 49, 1996). Her doctoral thesis ‘Issues of Evidence-Interpretation and Judgement in Renaissance English Drama, 1580-1640’, contains two chapters---the first and the sixth devoted entirely to Shakespeare’s plays which analyze critically and exhaustively on matters of law, judgement, justice and juridical themes in his plays. Until date, she has published the maximum number of articles among the living Bengali scholars on Shakespeare in international journals, besides ten critical books on varied issues on Renaissance with primary focus on Shakespeare.

The Kolkata connection of 'Shakespeare in Academic Journals and Special Issues on Shakespeare’ shows how the Bengali academics at the time of quatercentenary celebration of Shakespeare have regularly published papers on him. Not only had the Universities of Calcutta, Jadavpur, Burdwan and Presidency College published special issues on Shakespeare’s dramatic art, some indigenous institutions like ‘Indian National Library’, ‘Indian Oxygen News’ and ‘Shakespeare Quater- Centenary birth Celebration Committee’ had also contributed immensely to reevaluate the sanctified image of the bard. Thus, seminars and conferences on Shakespeare have become an annual event for teachers, students and researchers in West Bengal. When Prof. ‘Mohinimohan Bhattacharya Memorial Lecture’ was inaugurated in Calcutta University in1978, for the first three consecutive years the topic was ‘Shakespeare’ and the speakers were S. C. Sen Gupta, Sen, and A. G Stock. In 1986, Jadavpur University published a special issue on Shakespeare, edited by Debabrata Mukherjee. Very recently, volumes of books like ‘Renaissance Essays for Kitty Scoular Datta’, ‘Renaissance Theme’ (both edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri) and ‘Renaissance Text and Context’ (Edited: Amlan Das 207|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Gupta) have added a new dimension to Bengali response to Shakespeare. ‘Shakespeare Society of Eastern India’ has brought out special issues on Shakespeare by eminent academics through the bi-- annual event: “The World Shakespeare Conference” since 2002.

Response to Shakespeare outside Academia: Kolkata Stage

We also need to record mainly the contributions of two doyens of ‘People’s Little Theatre’ Utpal Dutt and his successor cum companion SatyaBandopadhyay. Dutt’s book ‘ Shakespeare - er Samaj Chetanna’ is based on Marxist doctrines where he deals with mercantile classes, history of the Tudor Age, religion, Christianity and Jesus, bourgeois monarchy and warriors. His article, ‘Shakespeare and the Modern Stage’ and his interview given to Samik Bandopadhyay give only a partial estimate of the man and artist. Bandopadhyay’s book ‘Shakespeare O’ Tanr Theatre’ provides a unique background of Elizabethan dramatists, the Shakespearean Stage and dramaturgy, Shakespearean audience, legal acts on theatre during Queen Elizabeth’s reign, Shakespeare in the eyes of his contemporary and successive dramatists, Shakespeare production in various European countries and ultimately Shakespeare on the various stages in Kolkata.

As colonial education flourished, Bengali students of the early schools of Kolkata were eager enough to show their talents in reciting Shakespeare, presenting short scenes of significance and ultimately the learned bhadraloks took the venture to stage full-scale productions in between 1820 and 1920.It was Henry Derozio who as a student of Drummond’s Dhurrumtollah Academy started this process. Later on this art of reciting Shakespearean passages was taken up mostly by the pupils of Hindu College, as well as by the students of St. Xavier’s College, David Hare and Metropolitan academies. Apart from the houses of the aristocratic and distinguished Bengali ‘babus’,the Hindu College, Town Hall, Oriental Theatre and Theatre were other places where the excerpts or full plays were staged.

By the 1870s the focus had shifted to vernacular as the medium to exhibit original dramatic creativity. With the acceleration of the nationalistic movements since the second decade of the twentieth century, the desire to enact the plays of Shakespeare in English came to a halt. Now, amateurism led to professionalism in the theatres of Kolkata because of social, political and cultural reasons. 208|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The actors for the original English plays of Shakespeare in the initial stages were Derozio and his followers who left a lasting legacy. The first President of independent India, Rajendra Prasad, and Sisir Kumar Bhaduri, (one of the greatest thespians of Bengal after Girish Chandra Ghosh), the famous Bengali linguist and national professor, Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay and Srikumar Bandopadhyay, the renowned scholar of British Poetry were the distinguished luminaries of Calcutta University who acted in various Shakespearean plays.

Some of the travelling English companies had enduring effect on the future theatre workers in Kolkata. The famous actor- manager - director-dramatist Matheson Lang, who had the privilege to work with Granville-Barker in London, performed in Kolkata in 1911-1912, influenced many, particularly Sisir Kumar Bhaduri, who became a legendary theatre director immediately after this impact. Even Geoffrey Kendal’s ‘Shakespeareana’ which toured around India since the second World War onwards, had admirers like Utpal Dutt, Satya Bandopadhyay and innumerable others. Immediately after independence, the local production of the plays in English suddenly stimulated as if the intention was to show that the Bengalis no longer harbour any ill feeling for the language. Henceforth college and university students, English educational institutions and organizations like British Council frequently performed in Shakespeare’s plays in English. Shakespeare once again came to the Bengalis more as a colonial icon.

Kolkata theatre was primarily commercial in between 1872 and 1947. When the translated and adapted versions were not well accepted at the box office, the directors then felt the necessity to “experiment and interpret Shakespeare indigenously.” The birth of the “group theatre” movement around 1947 advocated innovative ideas to stage plays that would be received rather enthusiastically by more faithful translations as the directors had great respect for the venerable bard. Notable actors from Girish Chandra Ghosh to AhindraChaudhuri acted in several characters of Shakespeare’s plays in translation but that did not appeal to the Bengali audience, however authentic they might be in approach. Utpal Dutt with his group theatre dominated the Bengali stage with most of Shakespeare’s plays in English and Bengali. He apprenticed himself in English, performing Richard III, Othello, Bottom, Mercutio, Brutus and Malvolio and then did all of them in Bengali except Richard III and Brutus and then did Shylock, Macbeth and Julius Caesar. Dutt’s ‘Little Theatre Group’ produced some brilliant actors. 209|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Surprisingly, after a long absence Shakespeare has again appeared on the Bengali stage. has directed ‘Raja Lear’, with the gifted actor Soumitra Chattopadhyay as Lear, and the production has been highly popular. Koushik Sen unlike Suman has tried to offer a new interpretation of ‘Macbeth’ in the recent political context in Bengal. ‘Othello’, has been staged and directed by Goutom Halder, who is famous for his unique but controversial style of acting. The stage enactment of ‘Hamlet’ in Bengali produced by where the role of the protagonist has been played by the well-known actor Surojit Bandopadhyay had also become popular on the Bengali stage. ‘Kasba Argha’ has presented a dramatic pageant ‘Shakespeare’s Heroes’ which is yet to get a good response. The director Manish Mitra has upset many critics for showing a nude scene of Othello and Desdemona. Let us hope, this revival of interest in Shakespeare, the man of the theatre would gradually lead to a theatrical approach in our classroom lectures.

Shakespeare in Little Magazines

A survey of Shakespeare in the Bengali Little Magazines will show how various scholars, academics, thespians, lawyers and schoolmasters contributed articles on Shakespeare in Bengali. Often these little publishing houses are on the verge of extinction owing to financial constraints but are never deterred from publishing innovative and thought-provoking articles on a wide range of subjects. Shakespeare features among them. There are more than two hundred articles published on Shakespeare but unfortunately, most of the publishing houses have perished, keeping only a little trace of their literary legacy.

‘Little magazines’, often called "small magazines", are literary magazines that publish experimental and non-conformist writings of relatively unknown writers. They are usually noncommercial in their outlook. They are often very irregular in their publications. The earliest significant examples are the transcendentalist publication The Dial(1840–44), edited by Ralph Waldo Emersonand Margaret Fullerin Boston, and The Savoy(1896), edited by Arthur Symonsin London, which had a revolt against the VictorianMaterialism as its agenda. Little magazines played a significant role for the poets who shaped the Avant-garde movements like ‘Modernism’ and ‘Post-modernism’ across the world in the twentieth century. 210|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The originated in the fifties and the sixties in many Indian languageslike Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Hindi, Malayalamand Gujarati, as it did in the West, in the early part of the 20th century. Kolkata has a prominent place in the history of Little Magazine Movementin India, which was largely dominated by Bengali language magazines. This goes back to the foundation of ‘SabujPatra’ in 1914 and Kallol in 1923. The tradition continued with the advent of ‘Post- Modernist’ writing in Bengali Literature. With the arrival of ‘Krittibash’, ‘Hungry Generation’ and periodicals like ‘Kourab’, many little magazines started to flourish.

In Bengali literature, it started with Kallol, mouthpiece of a modernist movement, established in 1923. The most popular among the group were (1899–1976), Mohitlal Majumder(1888–1952), Achintyakumar Sen Gupta(1903–1976), (1882–1922), and (1904–1988). Then Bengali poetry got into the brightest light of modernism in the 1930s, through the movement of a few other little magazines, such as BuddhadebBasu's ‘Kabita’and SudhindranathDatta's ‘Parichay’. Most of the little Magazines are pro-left and anti-establishment.

Krittibas first appeared in Kolkatain 1953. It played a highly influential role in the Kolkata literary scene in the decades after Indian independence, and provided a platform for young, experimental poets, many of whom went on to become luminaries of modern Bengali poetry. The editors of the inaugural issue in July 1953 were , AnandaBagchi and DipakMazumdar. Gangopadhyay later became sole editor. Indeed,he was most closely associated with the magazine. Others who also edited the magazine at one point or another included Shakti Chattopadhyay, Sarat Kumar Mukhopadhyay and SamarendraSengupta. During 1961-65, several poets left the magazine and joined the ‘Hungry Movement’. Most of these Little Magazines were pro-left and anti-establishment and Shakespeare study did not get enough significance in these issues. On the contrary, writers like T. S. Eliot and Bertolt Brecht featured frequently in these magazines as some of these poets and writers were more influenced by the form and the content of the modernist approach to literature and art.

Hungry Generation and Anti-establishment Movements

The little magazine explosion in Kolkata took place after 1961 when the ‘ Hungry Generation 211|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Movement’ took the cultural establishment by storm. In fact, it changed not only the types of publication but also the naming of magazines. The ‘Hungry Generation Movement’ aimed at waging a war against the literary establishment and the decadent society in general. Prominent figures included Shakti Chattopadhyay, , SubimalBasak, TridibMitra, Samir Roychoudhury, Falguni Roy, SubonAcharjo, PradipChoudhuri, SubhasGhosh, and BasudebDasgupta. There are other Bengali writers who raised their voice against the establishment but did not join the ‘Hungry generation’ Movement. Most notable among them is the maverick writer Subimal Mishra. Other experimental writers who mostly wrote in little magazines include Kamal Kumar Majumdar, Amiyabhushan Majumdarand Udayan Ghosh. However, there was never a comprehensive preservation attempt made for these immensely valuable cultural items either in the academic or in public libraries until SandipDutta founded a library in 1979 and it was officially registered in 1996 with the name ‘Kolkata Little Magazine Library and Research Centre.’

Rise and Development of Bengali Little Magazines

Little magazines in ‘Bengali’ are creative, being enriched with well-informed essays. These magazines do not have any definite timeline. From the beginning of the twentieth century when full-fledged or commercially successful magazines came up, the distinctions became more prominent. Readers started accepting such magazines early in the last century when they found that most of them were both creative and informative. The main motive of these magazines was also that they acted as a platform where budding writers got in touch with the readers through their compositions. Little magazines today take pride in publishing them provided they are readable. That is why they have an appeal even in the age of electronic media. In Bengal it is striking how ‘little magazines’ are increasing everyday, as they do not have professional or profit motive. Nowadays poems, stories, essays and autobiographical renderings or biographical sketches are not the only contents but it includes political debates, sociological evolutions, economic theories, philosophical thoughts, historical accounts, even modern cinema, and popular songs. The approximate number of ‘little magazine’ in Bengali throughout the world is “seven hundred” (Sandip Dutta: ‘Little Magazine Bhabna’: articles and interviews on little magazine,Kolkata, 2002, p. 37) 212|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Beginning of Shakespeare Study in the Bengali Little Magazines

Shakespeare appeared in the ‘little magazine’ in Bengali about 1964, the quater-centenary year of his birth. However, much earlier in the late nineteenth century several translations and creative articles were published in magazines like ‘Bharati’ and ‘Bharatbarsha’. Like special editions for special occasions, ‘Shakespeare’ issues were immensely on demand whenever any publishing house took the initiative. Sometimes ‘little magazines’ are more like an obsession for those who think they are journeying towards a new goal of triumph. Nowadays articles on western authors and comparative study of writers have become a recurrent theme for these magazines. Shakespeare perhaps is the most discussed of all foreign authors, he is most acceptable to the Bengalis even in this post-colonial age, and special issues come out from time to time but the number is meagre. Not only academic scholars who contribute generously to the bard’s multifarious talents but also thespians, lawyers, creative writers, school masters and even students contributed copiously in every field of Shakespeare studies. However today there are more than ‘two hundred articles on Shakespeare in Bengali.’ (ibid.p.48)

Early Issues of Little Magazines on Shakespeare

It was Srikumar Bandopadhyay who pioneered this journey after independence with his article entitled “Shakespeare Pratibha” (‘Talents of Shakespeare’) in 1964 in which he shows the enigma of the poet and dramatist and how successful he has been in creating an unrealized beauty to the known world and life and thus brought before us an unworldly riddle. For Bandopadhyay Shakespeare was the only dramatist in the world who would occupy pure and all-pervading insight of a composer to whom any fact would get the shape of a drama. This assessment appears hyperbolic as he fails to show any shortcoming in Shakespeare’s dramatic style. He cites instances like Macbeth’s imagination and philosophical aptitude and Lear’s burning curses and how these are enriched with poetic faculty and dramatic skills to show the realistic world of Shakespeare- where man dominates with his weaknesses and strengths and the illusory world of the witches, fairies, ghosts appear.

Bandopadhyay then shows how ‘The Merchant of Venice’ is a depiction of the features of the contemporary Renaissance but the characters possess liberal mentality of modernism and the value of life. He further points out how Portia’s marriage is bounded with some peculiar conditions, as she independently cannot select her husband. If the role of fate is taken into consideration, we can admit 213|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 with the writer that the characters of Portia and Bassanio have excelled with beauty and their conjugal life gets newness amidst hindrances.The writer sees another feature of an ideal dramatist in Shakespeare and that is called ‘self-absorbability’ in creation. He notices the difference between the poet and the dramatist. In a subtle manner, Bandopadhyay tells how a poet reflects himself in his creations while a dramatist hides himself in that position. He even notes that Shakespeare never imposes like Bacon the moral or didactic views in his plays and this short essay in Bengali is more a tribute to the bard on his acceptability in post-colonial Bengal where students and scholars read and research on him every day. Nirendranath Roy wrote two articles virtually on the same theme with different titles: ‘Banglai Shakespeare Charcha’ (DeshPatrika; 28 March, 1953.) and ‘ Bangalir Shakespeare Prem’ (Parichai, May, 1964). While the first rendering records, how the Bengali writers and academics since the time of Capt. D. L. Richardson responded to Shakespeare studies, the latter reflects how intense the response was that it resulted in deep love and emotional attachment. The two articles of Roy are repetitive and they fall far short of the normal standard.

Another notable academic Amalendu Bose wrote three articles for the Bengali little magazines: 1) Shakespeare -er- Comedy Bhumikai; (‘Uttarsuri, 322-329) (The Introduction of Shakespeare’s Comedy); (2) Shakespeare O’ Bangali; (Uttaran, 1964; 323-331) (Shakespeare and the Bengalis) (3 ) Sphatiker Rang: Shakespeare-erSamadarsita: (R. B. U .academic journal, 71 - 79) (The Crystal’s Colour: Shakespeare’s Sense of Equality).

The first of these articles gives a historical account on the rise and development of Shakespeare’s comedy since its first publication in 1623 though initially they were not called so. ‘Cymbeline’ at first was regarded as a tragedy but Bose agrees with modern scholars to term it as a ‘comedy’ with tragic traits. He then discusses Shakespearean comedy in detail about the characters and incidents and mentions that the number goes up to twenty, which is higher than the tragedies and historical plays taken together. For him the comedies unravel self-expressions and they are never tending towards propaganda. This way, Shakespearean comedy is different from the Restoration “comedy of manners”, feels Bose. He also cites reasons why Shakespeare started his literary career with the comedy and ended with the same. He even feels that the direct value of Shakespeare’s comedy is the philosophy of life which is very much post-colonial by nature. Shakespeare is in favour of natural love in his comedy and to the author these comedies express positive approach to life’s expectations and supportive by nature. He also shows how in the last plays despite all psychological 214|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 adversities, sweet youths win over in the end. Finally, Bose pointed out there is no difference between the value of life both in the tragedies and in the comedies. However, he utterly dwindles in differentiating between the two types of comedy or point out the essential differences between them. Nevertheless, he has been original in interpreting and differentiating Shakespeare’s romantic comedies and the comedy of manners in vernacular.

The second article of Amalendu Bose: ‘Shakespeare O’ Bangali’ (‘Shakespeare and the Bengalis’) reflects simple appreciation where he feels that the Bengalis have considered Shakespeare as a colonial icon and he has crossed all boundaries and barriers to be read, performed and adored in Bengal. It is Shakespeare’s humanism, which have been appreciated through the ages. Bose sees that in the play ‘King Lear’ which is not confined in the ambit of a country’s time frame, dramatis personae or Christian connections but has a universal appeal. Bose opines at length in his discussion about poetic skills of Shakespeare which has appealed to the intellectual Bengalis who he feels possesses romantic bent of mind. He even points out how Shakespeare has occupied a place in the history of Bengali literature and cites four reasons for it: (i) the love for Shakespeare is not a new feature but it has got immuned in the colonial and cultural community of Bengali hegemony. (ii) Secondly he feels that Shakespeare’s plays and poems represent the realistic life-- that the sensuous sentiments of the Bengalis and sing the songs of triumph. (iii) Bose tells that Shakespearean literature is the successful representation of the animated life. Shakespearean heroes speak and act as the readers or audience would prefer to do in that situation. (iv) He further cites that sentiment and intellect are the two rudimentary traits of the Bengalis. That is why ‘Metaphysical Poetry’ appealed to the Bengalis since the early twentieth century and Tagore himself had quoted Donne in his novel ‘SeserKabita’ (The Final Poetry). Shakespeare’s works having the finest sensibilities became so acceptable.

The next article by Amalendu Bose ‘Sphatiker Rong: Shakespeare-er Samadarsita’ (‘The Colour of Crystal: Shakespeare’s Sense of Equality’) is a symbolic sketch on the potential creativity of Shakespeare. He points out how the characters in the plays have been created with a keen insight and a sense of tolerance that looks like a crystal. He calls this Shakespearean profundity and feels this to be the atomic power of Shakespeare’s genius. He further asserts that Bankim Chandra and Rabimdranath Tagore despite possessing great talents and patches of Shakespearean philosophy could never come in comparison with the bard of Avon. It is the author’s conviction that if one reads Shakespeare for the entire life then also he would be mentally satisfied with the power of reasoning, ethics and practical 215|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 approach to life. This may appear hyperbolical but Bose feels that these qualities of the bard beams in his plays like a crystal. Shakespeare possesses equality but he is far away from partiality in his writings for portraying his characters. In the end, he sums up in Tagorean appreciation:

“He is present in all the characters but never lost in any character. He is nobler than all the characters as the creator is greater than his creation and God is brighter than all his creations”.

( ‘ Shakespeare O’ Bangali’) (‘Shakespeare and the Bengalis’, p.9).

Bhabotosh Dutta makes a fine comparative study of the literary contributions of Rabindranath and

Shakespeare in his article ‘RabindraSahitye Shakespeare’ (‘Uttarsuri’ 4th issue, 1964, p.323-25.) He points out how Tagore was influenced by Shakespeare’s dramatic style. Shakespeare’s characters and situations attracted Tagore, which possess psychological sharpness and internal conflicts. Rabindranath was keen on using allegory and he had done it brilliantly while Shakespeare was far away from using though Tagore initially had adopted the Shakespearean style, after ‘Prayaschitto’ (1909) (Expiation Penance). Tagore excels in creating eternal human characters, which has made him reach the zenith. Dutta cites instances from ‘Galpoguccho’ (The Collection of Short Stories) to show Tagore’s independent approach to life, different from Shakespeare’s own. He even shows why Tagore has discarded Shakespeare’s dark mystery. However, Tagore had been greatly influenced by Shakespeare and his poems in ‘Balaka’ are the finest example. However, in this study Dutta proclaims with applause Tagore’s inventive powers though he had conceived Shakespearean pattern quite early in his life.

SitangsuMaitra’s article ‘Banglai Shakespeare Charcha’ (Parichay, May 1964; p.311-23) (The Study of Shakespeare in Bengali) discusses that Shakespeare study among the Bengalis has been insufficient, as none of the critics have discussed his plays from scholastic point of view. Most of the academic scholars have confined themselves to classrooms and they feel elated when they are recognized as ‘authority’ on Shakespeare. This might appear ironical but nevertheless it is true. He cites an instance when ideas were corroborated to popularize Shakespeare among the masses in 1954 through the establishment of ‘Bangiya Shakespeare Parishad’. This attempt was futile as there was always a dichotomy between academic pursuit by scholars and staging Shakespeare in original or through adequate translations about supremacy in the structural pattern. In a way, Shakespeare study by Bankim Chandra and Madhusudan Dutta differed from that of Rabindranath Tagore regarding the 216|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 earthy love and life’s philosophy. Despite some of the best efforts made by GirishGhosh and others, Shakespeare could not be popular as the academics showed skeptical and fastidious attitude for the stage. The article possesses enough matter but the manner of presentation lacks organization and elegance since the writer deviates unconsciously from his focus and fails to maintain uniformity.

The greatest thespian of Bengal after Girish Chandra Ghosh is Sisir Kumar Bhaduri and despite being a professor of English Literature and an ardent follower of Western theatre, he wrote little on Shakespeare. His essay entitled ‘Shakespeare’ (SaradiyaYugantar, 1939; p. 9-13) is readable, as he has compared Shakespeare’s works and characters to the epic characters of . He even pointed out Shakespeare’s universality even during the tyrannical rule of Hitler and Mussolini. He showed how Shakespeare’s appeal is beyond all barriers and his genius is illuminated with the instincts of human minds. Bhaduri shows by instances that Shakespeare was neither for the aristocrats nor for the feudalists but the themes and characters possess and symbolize manifold attributes. Even in the modern age when Ibsen had tremendous impact on playwrights like Shaw, Shakespeare’s universality never diminished. Being a noted thespian,Bhaduri could better have dealt with the technical problems and emendations of Shakespeare’s stage performance in Bengal than idolize the dramatist.

Much younger than Bhaduri and one of the leading thespians of recent times Rudraprasad Sen Gupta wrote an informative article titled ‘ Bangla Natake Shakespeare-er Probabh.’ (Parichay 1964, p. Shakespeare’s 354-371) (‘The Influence of Shakespeare on Bengali Drama.’) He emphasized how Shakespeare study in Bengal gradually crept from classroom to stage performance. In doing so, the Englishmen must be applauded. They not only acquainted the Bengalis with western plays but also enthuse the Bengali playwrights like Michael Madhusudan Dutta, Dinabandhu Mitra, Jyotindranath Tagore, D. L. Roy, Khirod Prasad Vidyabinod et al to write Bengali plays based on Shakespeare’s prototype. Some of them also amalgamated the strict rules of Sanskrit plays and the liberal tradition of Shakespeare’s plays to compose the Bengali plays on Shakespearean model. Sen Gupta shows how Madhusudan was obliged to Shakespeare to introduce ‘character based tragedy’, ‘the use of Shakespearean blank verse’ and ‘the comic in tragedy’ in his Bengali plays like‘Padmabati’and‘Krishnakumari’. The latter however is the first tragedy in Bengali literature and ‘BhimSingha’ is more a tragic protagonist like ‘King Lear’, being estranged from his daughters. He notes that like Shakespeare, Madhusudan never ended any act in sheer lamentation or bewilderment. 217|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

In Rudraprasad’s evaluation, Dinabandhu Mitra was another talented dramatist who was so much devoted to Shakespeare that he used Shakespeare’s quotations in his plays. These were used either in situation, in dialogues or in theatrical conventions. The play ‘NabinTapaswini’had the image of Shakespeare’s ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’, where the character of ‘Jalandhar’ had the shadow of Falstaff. Mallika and Malati are witty and jolly as Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page. In another play like ‘KamaleKamini’, Dinabandhu used some lines of ‘Macbeth’ in the epigraph. Sen Gupta notices that the theme of disguise has been wonderfully dealt in the play ‘Lilabati’ when he painted ‘Champa’ as a nun.

Jyotindranath Tagore is another significant name in the history of translation studies on Shakespeare’s plays. Being well acquainted with western literature, his original plays had immense impact of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan playwrights, opines Sen Gupta. The play like ‘Ashrumati’ had also Shakespearean echoes as the character of Selim reminded the audience of Othello. Selim like Othello suspected his wife’s credibility and fidelity and out of this envy, he killed her and laments intensely like the Shakespearean hero. Even ‘PunarBasanta’ had resemblance with ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in episodic organization and structural pattern.

Rudraprasad Sen Gupta then shows how Girish Chandra towards the end of nineteenth century had translated and enacted Shakespeare’s plays with enormous impetus, declaring, “Shakespeare is my idol. I am following his footstep”.The play ‘Siraj-ud-Daulla’ had reminiscences of Shakespeare’s ‘Richard II’ in both structural pattern and thematic sequence. Nevertheless, his translation of Macbeth was too chaste to appeal the common Bengali audience.

Dwijendralal Roy, popularly known as D. L. Roy, was inclined to Shakespeare so much that his play ‘Shah Jahan’ (Act V, Scene iii) possesses free translation of the famous ‘Storm Scene’ of ‘King Lear’. His creation of the historical character of NurJahanbears great resemblance to Shakespeare’s creation of the character of Lady Macbeth, feels Sen Gupta. He further points out how D. L. Roy was influenced by Shakespeare’s concept of tragedy. Khirod Prasad Vidyabinode, a contemporary of D. L. Roy, was even no less influenced by Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ as the heroine Sarbani of his play ‘RakshaRamani’ bears plentiful similarity in spirit to Miranda. Another play ‘Nara Narayan’ followed the style of Shakespearean tragedy.

Sen Gupta concludes his article with a detailed analysis on the impact of Shakespeare’s plays on Rabindranath. He pointed out by instances how Tagore’s play ‘SheshRaksha’ (‘The Last Save’) is an 218|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 echo of Shakespeare’s early play ‘The Comedy of Errors’. However, such comparisons are forced than genuine. Rudraprasad has even noticed Shakespearean style reflected in the play ‘Raja O Rani’ that was written in the early phase of Tagore’s literary career.Towards the end of Tagore’s literary career, he shed off Shakespearean influence and adopted his own style because he realized that the Bengali audience or readers would not accept the lofty Elizabethan style. In Rudraprasad’s view, these factors made Tagore more a naturalist, an allegorical or a symbolic dramatist than a mere Shakespearean devotee. Sen Gupta at least for once did not admit that the prime intention of all the versatile writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had been to idolize Shakespeare as a colonial icon.

Modern Bengali poet Bishnu Dey’s article ‘Shakespeare O’ Bangla’ (Parichay, 1964, p414-19) (Shakespeare and Bengali) contains some rare information about Shakespeare study. He suggests that Vidyasagar’s‘BhrantiBilas’ and Michael Madhusudan’s‘Hector Badh’ are the two eventful works that tell us about Shakespeare’s adaptations. He points out how the dialogues are very relevant in making Shakespeare the greatest dramatist in world literature. Dey compares Tolstoy with Shakespeare and shows how the two writers have excelled in the two genres of literature. He takes up two Bengali translators of Shakespeare like Nirendranath Roy and Sunil Kumar Chattopadhyay and shows how they had different modes of approach relating to the art of translation. While the former follows the classical pattern, the latter gives a popular rendering, which becomes not only lucid but also more applicable to the stage. Dey’s article possesses merit as he covers an enormous periphery from Rabindranath to UtpalDutt and he suggests that actors like Dutta and Bijan Bhattacharyya must have enacted and directed Shakespeare more on the stage to popularize him to the common Bengalis.

Ajit Kumar Ghosh’s article ‘Bangla Natake Shakespeare-er Probabh’ (Rabindra Bharati Patrika, 1965; p. 39-53) (The Impact of Shakespeare on Bengali Drama) is based on Sanat Kumar Mitra’s book ‘Shakespeare O’ Bangla Natak’.Ghosh gives two reasons for the popularity of Shakespeare in post-colonial Bengal. In the first place, the study of Shakespeare in the academic curriculum had a lucrative impact and secondly, the performances of the plays in both English and vernacular brought him much closer to the people. Above all the intermingling or amalgamation started since the days of Girish Ghosh when he met Mrs. Lewis of ‘Lewis theatre’. He further gives instances of the staging of Shakespeare in David Hare Academy and Circular Seminary and response to it. 219|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Moreover, he gives reasons why early translations and adaptations influenced the writers of vernacular plays that had a mixed form of Indian and Western style. Michael Madhusudan’s plays ‘Sarmistha’ and ‘Padmabati’ started with Shakespearean pattern but became more Indianised in approach. Nevertheless, sometime later when he wrote ‘Krishna Kumari’, it had more Shakespearean resemblances. Ghosh mentions in his study why Rabindranath shed off Shakespearean influences in his symbolic plays except in ‘Raja O Rani’, ‘ChirakumarSabha’ and ‘’. The article is packed with interesting finds and presents a chronological account of the various writers and scholars, their response to Shakespeare in their own way and re-presenting him to the common Bengali mass.

In 2002 ‘Ebon Musaera’, (8th year,4th issue, Jan- March), a tri- monthly Bengali magazine that deals with literature and popular culture had published a special issue on ‘Hamlet’ under the editorship of SubolSamanta, in which the academics and the intelligentsia have expressed their views on the play in a new dimension. There are altogether forty-three articles and seven fragmentary translations of the play ‘Hamlet’ in Bengali made at different phases since the second half of the eighteenth century. The basic intention here is to show how they have adapted to the changing interpretation of the play and tried to prove the validity of our beliefs with regard to the tragic hero. There are even excerpts from the past like ‘Muriel Morgan Gibbon’s’ report on the visit of the Prince of Wales at Copenhagen for the inauguration of the Anglo-Danish exhibition.

Jagannath Chakrabarty has justified with reasons why ‘Hamlet’ is the most widely read and critically evaluated work in the world literature but he has at times been repetitive in his approach and failed in clarifying his proposition. He cites T. S. Eliot’s statement on Hamlet being the “Mona-Lisa” of literature as it holds a variety of complications--delay, inaction, revenge-play and above all a great tragedy. Hamlet’s inaction has caused the birth of the drama’s actions and gradual progression. Chakrabarty agrees with critics who had viewed that the reasons for this delay is not external but purely internal and he feels that Hamlet’s mentality is purely responsible for such a delay. However internal is this delay, it is long-termed. Chakrabarty however, feels that Hamlet’s plans and applications show us a higher process of action, which is interlinked with his idealism. Shakespeare portrays an ideal person in his mind that he regards for his reasoning, action and belief. He never believes in the theory that malice has its revenge, as Polonius possesses such an attitude. The conflicting behaviour of Hamlet is a striking feature that creates an oscillation in him. Ultimately, Chakrabarty opines that Hamlet is at war with himself to destroy the compromising attitude of his character but does not 220|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 succeed at all. Audiences are enthralled by his soliloquy and he struggles against his mind but surrenders finally to lower mentality at the end by uttering:

“I’ll not be juggled with

To hell, allegiance, vows to the blackest devil!

…Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit! I dare damnation.”

Shibnarayan Roy’s essay entitled ‘Hamlet - Rahasya: Nayak, Natak O’ Upanyaser-Upakramanika’ (The Hamlet Riddle: Hero, Drama and Introduction to Fiction) is an innovative study highlighting why Goethe has identified Hamlet as a handsome, pure and a person who is capable of shouldering great responsibility. Roy feels that Goethe studied Shakespeare with keen attention and felt how a personal tragedy turns into a universal one. He further quotes Robertson and T. S. Eliot and concludes, “So far from being Shakespeare’s masterpiece, the play is certainly an artistic failure” (Ebon Musaera pg.36).

Roy cites Ernest Jones, the biographer of Freud, who had viewed that Hamlet is a youth of strong personality but he is inclined to his mother from his childhood through the ideology of “Oedipus Complex”. Roy has noticed the presence of this complex in Hamlet’s character in every aspect of his actions. Judging Hamlet’s mental set-up and his assertions the thinkers of Spain like S. de. Madariaga has called Hamlet both selfish and rude who values his own interest above everything and tries to hide his mental conflict by sheer verbal power. The German scholars like Otto Rank and Kuno Fischer also bear the same view. Roy ends his compact article of twelve pages by mentioning that most critics have noted the incompleteness of the play ‘Hamlet’ in terms of Aristotelian dictum. The source materials have been reshuffled by Shakespeare not merely to present a story for mere entertainment but to depict the spirit of Renaissance humanism by portraying characters in his own tantalizing perspective for aesthetic reasons, which made him the greatest dramatist.

Alokeranjan Das Gupta’s study of ‘Goethe’s Hamlet’ shows Shakespeare’s advent in Germany started with Lessing who first staged the play ‘Hamlet’ successfully thirty-times. From this performance, Goethe has expressed his own view on ‘Hamlet’ by mentioning that Shakespeare’s openness enabled him to raise the strength of freedom and reasoning. He was successful enough in uniting the Renaissance and the modern worlds. Biswanath Chattopadhyay’s essay ‘Mukhar Nayaker Birambana’ (The Predicament of the Garrulous Hero) shows that in literature few characters have had 221|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 so much attention as ‘Hamlet’ had. In Chattopadhyay’s view, Hamlet is not a character who lived four hundred years back. On the contrary, he is very much a contemporary of today, full of life and vitality. Considering the greatest tragic heroes, the author feels that Macbeth is a poet, Othello is imaginative, and Lear is an orator but none of them is as thoughtful as ‘Hamlet’. In fact, the admixture of several responses in his character is so engrossing that he becomes typically a baffling character for whom we feel pity and pain. He points out to the feminine traits in Hamlet’s character and that Hamlet lacks the masculine power to perform. For this, he vacillates in taking revenge of his father’s murder. He is eager to advise others but reluctant to accept it because of his egoistical nature.

Dipendu Chakrabarti’s stimulating article ‘Amrai Hamlet’ (We Are All Hamlet) shows that to understand the present day situation we need to read Shakespeare. Universality is not a rigid affair; it changes its identity in various ways. The problem of Hamlet is that of an intellectual. Being a university student, he is an avid reader, but he finds it difficult to link himself with the content of the book. Chakrabarti also hints at Hamlet's Oedipal relationship with his mother, yet he regards his father to the utmost. His cynical and rude attitude towards women has distanced him from his mother. Chakrabarti compares Hamlet with those intellectuals of our time who fight against injustice and become tired. In spite of all these, Hamlet takes revenge of his father’s death at the cost of his own life. Chakrabarti’s innovative ideas deserve appreciation.

A series of articles both in theme and content have been written in this issue. ParthaPratimBandopadhyay mentions in ‘Amader Hamlet’ (Our Hamlet) the poet Bishnu Dey’s two poems like ‘Ophelia’ and ‘Elsinore’ have reawakened the interest of the common Bengalis’ response on this tragedy. He further feels that this Hamlet is more a Bengali writer’s work than Shakespeare’s, as when he is at a loss after his father’s death and his mother’s frailty, he wants to live in Ophelia’s love. However, Bandopadhyay justifies the reasons for Hamlet’s procrastination in taking the revenge. Such situations appear like household affairs in today’s Bengal and we are all but Hamlets with our pains and sufferings. Though this essay lacks proper focus, it possesses fragments of brilliance. The study also fails to show Hamlet’s reason in his madness.

Sudeshna Chakrabarty’s article ‘Denmark-er Jubaraj Banglai: Hamlet-er-Bangiya Rup’ (The Prince of Denmark in Bengal-The Bengalisation of Hamlet) is a study of the various translations and adaptations of the plays since the days of the British rule. This shows the fondness of the Bengalis for 222|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Shakespeare and that in no other Indian language had Shakespeare been worked upon so much till date. Chakravorty feels that adaptations appealed more to the audience than cultural translations, as they loved to see the characters in Indian costumes and local names. So, Girish Ghosh’s translation became less popular with the masses though critics have acclaimed it highly.Even it is true with Vidyasagar’s adaptation of ‘Bhrantibilas’. Her article on ‘Bange Macbeth’ is more comprehensive than this

Abhijit Sen in his essay ‘Shakespeare-er Mancha Nirdesh O’ Hamlet’ (Shakespeare’s Stage Direction and Hamlet) gives an account of the stage direction during the early modern period in England. He compares the stage set-up of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and shows why the latter was better though Shakespeare had his audience in his mind while writing the plays. Being an actor, playwright and partner of the production, Sen confirms that Shakespeare’s advice made the productions more acceptable and directions more effective.

Amitabha Roy in ‘ Shakespeare-er Hamlet na Amader?’(Is it Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ or ours?), admits candidly that all theatre producers across the world believe that theatrical efforts remain incomplete if they do not stage Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ at least once in their career. If this appears hyperbolic, Roy cites instances of twentieth century leading directors in the whole of Europe. Modern directors do not limit Hamlet simply as a product of “Renaissance humanist” but more as a humanist who fosters the philosophy of our life, time and society. Even today, we visualize the agony as well as exhilaration of the tragic protagonist in our society as if the play has been a product of the recent time. The play has not been restricted to a definite period but his voice echoes through generations. Roy tries to contemporize Hamlet in the post-colonial perspective.

Manjubhash Mitra’s article ‘Freud-er Aloke Hamlet’ (Hamlet in the light of Freudian Interpretation) is a study which mainly highlights how the tragedy of ‘Hamlet’ has enormously helped Freud to establish his psychoanalytical doctrine of the “Oedipus Complex”. Mitra in his study cites the example of Kenneth Muir who opined in one critical essay in an antithetical tone, to say that, “Oedipus Complex” is the key to Hamlet’s character is to undervalue the complexity of the play. On the contrary, Muir suggests that super-ego seems to be more important factor in analyzing the character of ‘Hamlet’ but Freud believed that super-ego is the result of “Oedipus Complex.” Mitra feels that according to Freud’s interpretation, he regarded Hamlet as a new incarnation of King Oedipus. He could not shed off his childhood “Oedipus Complex” as his father was his model. Moreover, had he been more 223|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 engrossed in his world of love rather than egoistically envying his mother’s conjugal life, much of the tragedy could have been averted. However, Mitra seems to be abrupt in his treatment of Freud and Shakespeare.

There are other articles like ‘Hamlet: O’ Sanbitti’ (Thoughts and Consciousness) by Satya Bandopadhyay, ‘Hamlet: Kichu Katha: Bangla Natak O’ Manche Hamlet’ (Hamlet: Some Observations: Bengali Drama and the Staging of Hamlet) by Ajit Kumar Ghosh, ‘ElsinorerJishu’ (The Jesus of Elsinore) by Tapati Gupta, ‘Picasso, Aargau, Hamlet’ by Samik Bandopadhyay and ‘Hamlet baBangaliBhadrolok’ (Hamlet or the Bengali Gentleman).Ketaki Kusari Dyson, one of the distinguished contemporary Bengali scholars living in England translated a few songs of Ophelia. A few significant translations of the play’s selected passages like Jatindranath Sen Gupta’s ‘Hamlet’ (I, i- iii), Ajit Gangopadhyay’s (I,iv), Tarun Sanyal’s (I, ii,) Sova Sen et al have been included in the list to mark quatercentenary year of the play. Another notable observation is that some distinguished criticisms on the play by eminent critics like T. S. Eliot, Boris Pasternak, and Ian Kotthave been translated for the Bengali readers, though they are not of high merit. However, the endeavour to bring out such a book deserves appreciation from the readers to scholars. Prior to this publication, Bengali little magazines brought out articles, which had arbitrary topics and revolved round the periphery of appreciation for Shakespeare and his relevance in today’s world rather than any critical or analytical evaluations.

The Bengalis have made Shakespeare their own writer in the last two centuries not only by mere translations or by adaptations of the plays and poems but also by their stage performances and pedagogical studies. However, the academics failed in most cases in bringing out innovative interpretations and evaluations of the plays in keeping with the taste of the average Bengalis. Comparatively, the little magazines had evoked a better response for the Bengalisation of the bard of Avon.

Conclusion

But, all said all done; certain unpalatable thoughts inevitably haunt our mind with a regretful note which is expressed in brief as follows: Bengal had witnessed its cultural heydays during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century with an aura of Bengal Renaissance, the splendour of the legendary stalwarts in the field of art, 224|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 literature, fine arts etc. Kolkata in the British period had an edge over other cities in India as it was the capital of the country till 1911. Rightly enough is Kolkata called the cultural capital of India. The aphorism “what Bengal thinks today, India will think tomorrow,” still reverberates in the Bengal air. Enjoying such pride of place in so far as cultural excellence is concerned, Kolkata is very logically expected to have reaped the most plentiful and brilliant harvest in Shakespeare studies or staging of his plays in the country. This expected phenomenon, however, remained unattained. Shakespeare criticism both in terms of quality and in quantity evinced its high and low with flashes of brilliance at times and paling into mediocrity very often. Besides, it has been pointed out, Shakespeare criticism most frequently remained under the long shadow of the Anglo-American critics. A shade more of innovative brilliance was indeed expected than toeing the West's line in most parts in the whole gamut of the criticism. Shakespeare studies too in the academic spheres were characterised by very irregular radiance. Both criticism and standard of academic studies could rarely soar up to the heights of international glory. When it comes to staging of Shakespeare’s plays Bengal had of course a few productions, which, apart from being popular, deserved to be ranked high, though most of the rest may be considered as most commonplace. Even film making in Bengal which has catapulted Kolkata to the special porch in world film in terms of quality with the geniuses like Satyajit Ray, and a few others, almost shows a vacuum in producing films with the storyline or themes of Shakespeare’s plays. This vacuum is indeed very surprising and defies explanation.

Until date, we have not found anything like Ian Kott’s perception of Shakespeare in the contemporary context. Perhaps our colonial hangover is responsible for our lack of courage to see Shakespeare through our own eyes. The Bengali Shakespeare scholars have failed in making a mark and that is why Anglo- American Shakespeare studies hardly refer to Bengali Shakespeare scholars.

At the end, it must be admitted that in spite of the Bengali academics’ extensive exposure to the British studies, there has not been a Bengali critic counterpart of Ian Kott who can offer a new perspective on Shakespeare studies in terms of our Indian culture and society. In the ultimate analysis, our Shakespearean studies are largely Anglo-centric and have to go a long way before we can assert an independent voice. 225|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Books Referred

Ahsan, Nazmul. Translation in 19th Century Bengali Theatre.Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 1995. Banerjee, Srikumar (Ed.) and others.Shakespeare Caturtha Janma Satavarsa Smaraka Grantha. Calcutta :SatavarsikSamity, 1964.(Shakespeare Quater Centenary Celebration Committee, Calcutta, 1964). Bandopadhyay, Satya. Shakespeare O’Tanr Theatre (Shakespeare and His Theatre.)--A Collection of Essays on Shakespeare.Kolkata: Prathibhas, 2002. Bhattacharya, Mohini Mohan. Elizabethan Stage, the Audience, and Shakespeare’s Play, Kolkata: Calcutta University, 1953 Biswas, Dinesh Chandra. Scepticism in Shakespeare and other Essays (With a foreword by Prof. S.C. Sen Gupta) Calcutta, Rabindra Bharati University, 1987. Shakespeare in his Own Time, New Delhi: Macmillan, 1979. Shakespeare’s Treatment of his Sources in the Comedies.Calcutta: Jadavpur University, 1971. Bose, Amalendu (Ed.) Calcutta Essays on Shakespeare, Calcutta: Calcutta University, 1966. Chakravorty, Jagannath. The Idea of Revenge in Shakespeare with special references to Hamlet.Calcutta:Jadavpur University, 1969. --- King Lear: Shakespeare’s Existential Hero.Calcutta; The Shakespeare Society and Avat-Garde Press, 1990.

Chakravorty, Swapan. ‘Shakespeare’ 2, GanendraMitra Lane, Kolkata – 4. --- “BangalirIngrejiSahityaCharcha” (Essays on Literature, Shakespeare, History and Aesthetics) Kolkata -9, Anustoop, 2006. Chaudhuri, Sarbani. Shakespeare and the Discourse of Protest. Calcutta, Sarat Book House, 1998. --- (Ed.) Re-Presenting Shakespeare. (Interpretations and Translations) Dept. of English, University of Kalyani, Kalyani, 2002. --- (Ed.) Re-Presenting Shakespeare.(Text, Performance and Analysis) Dept. of English, University of Kalyani, Kalyani,2002. Chaudhuri, Sukanta.Infirm Glory–Shakespeare and the Renaissance Image of Man, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981. --- Renaissance Pastoral and its English Developments, Oxford, (Oxford University Press) 1989. 226|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

--- Shakespeare without English: The Reception of Shakespeare in Non- Anglophone Countries. Edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri, Chee Seng Lim; (Pearson Education, New Delhi, 2006).

--- An Anthology of Elizabethan Poetry; (Oxford University Press), 2008. --- The Metaphysics of Text; (Published by Cambridge University Press on January 1, 2013). --- Renaissance Themes: Essays Presented to Arun Kumar Das Gupta (Edited –by SukantaChaudhuri: Anthem Press, 2009). Chatterjee, Bhabotosh (Ed.) Essay on Shakespeare; BurdwanUniversity.Bombay, Orient Longman 1965. Chatterjee, Kalyan Kumar (Ed.) Studies in Shakespeare; (with an Introducing by Kalyan Kumar Chatterjee.The University of Burdwan, West Bengal.)

Lahri, Krishna Chandra.Pedagogues in Shakespeare; Calcutta, Sri Vijay Krishna Prakashani, 1967. LalAnanda and SukantaChaudhuri (Ed).Shakespeare On the Calcutta Stage – A Check List. Calcutta 700 004;‘Papyrus’, 2 Ganendra Mitra Lane, 2001. Maitra, Sitangsu. Shakespeare’s Comic Idea.Calcutta, Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1960.

Mitra, Sanat Kumar. Shakespeare ’O’ Bangla Natak, (Bengali) (Shakespeare and Bengali Drama) Lecture delivered in Memory of Sir , (1978); Kolkata – 9, PustakBipani, 1983. Indian National Library, Calcutta.Shakespeare in India; (An exhibition of books and illustration to celebrate the Fourth Birth Centenary of ), Calcutta, 1964.

Pandey, N. K. An Introduction to the Study of Shakespeare Criticism-‘A Study in Changing Patterns’, Calcutta, Modern Book Agency, 1967.

Ray. P. C. The Shakespearian Puzzle EndeavoursAfter its Solution, Calcutta, The University of Calcutta, 1941.

Samanta, Subol (Ed.). Hamlet, (A Collection of Critical Essays), (Bengali).38/A/a Nabindas Road, Kolkata – 90.Ebon Musaira, Jan-Mar, 2002.

Sen, Taraknath, (Ed.) Shakespeare Commemoration Volume. Calcutta, Presidency College, Calcutta, 1965. 227|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

--- Three Essays on Shakespeare (Introduction by S. C. Sen Gupta).Calcutta, Rupa, 1978.

Sen Gupta, Satyaprasad. ‘Shakespeare’ (Bengali), Kolkata, Puthipatra, 1974.

--- Some Aspects of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; with a forward by Harold F. Brooks,

2nd Ed.New Delhi, 1981.

--- Trends in Shakespearean Criticism; (with a forward by Geoffrey Tillotson.) Calcutta, Vidyodaya Library, 1965.

Sen Gupta, Subodh Chandra Shakespeare; A Book of Homage. Calcutta, Jadavpur University, 1965.

--- Shakespearian Comedy. Calcutta Geoffrey Cumberlege, O. U. P. London, 1950.

--- Aspects of Shakespearian Tragedy, Calcutta, O.U.P. 1972.

--- Shakespeare’s Historical Plays.London, O.U.P. 1950.

--- A Shakespearian Manual.Calcutta, O.U.P. 1977.

--- ‘Shakespeare and Keats’ – (A Monograph.)Calcutta, Shakespeare Society and Avant-garde Press, 1986.

--- The Whirligig of Time: ‘The Problem of Duration of Shakespeare’s Plays, Calcutta, Orient Longman 1961.

Shakespeare Through the Ages. Shakespeare Quarter Century Volume. Bombay, Orient Longman 1965.

Sen, Taraknath, (Ed.) Shakespeare Commemoration Volume. Calcutta, Presidency College, Calcutta, 1965.

--- Three Essays on Shakespeare (Introduction by S. C. Sen Gupta).Calcutta, Rupa, 1978.

Sen Gupta, Satyaprasad. ‘Shakespeare’ (Bengali), Kolkata, Puthipatra, 1974.

--- Some Aspects of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; with a forward by Harold F. Brooks,

2nd Ed.New Delhi, 1981. 228|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

--- Trends in Shakespearean Criticism; (with a forward by Geoffrey Tillotson.) Calcutta, Vidyodaya Library, 1965.

Sen Gupta, Subodh Chandra Shakespeare; A Book of Homage. Calcutta, Jadavpur University, 1965.

--- Shakespearian Comedy. Calcutta Geoffrey Cumberlege, O. U. P. London, 1950.

--- Aspects of Shakespearian Tragedy, Calcutta, O.U.P. 1972.

--- Shakespeare’s Historical Plays.London, O.U.P. 1950.

--- A Shakespearian Manual.Calcutta, O.U.P. 1977.

--- ‘Shakespeare and Keats’ – (A Monograph.)Calcutta, Shakespeare Society and Avant-garde Press, 1986.

--- The Whirligig of Time: ‘The Problem of Duration of Shakespeare’s Plays, Calcutta, Orient Longman 1961.

Shakespeare Through the Ages. Shakespeare Quarter Century Volume. Bombay, Orient Longman 1965.

Sikdar, Lipika. Shakespeare in the Media. Calcutta, The Shakespeare Society and Avant-grade Press; 1999.

Arindam Mukherjee is an M.A, M.Phil, in English Literature from University of Calcutta where he has recently submitted his doctoral thesis on ‘The Changing Bengali Response to Shakespeare: A Critical Study of Shakespeare Criticism by Bengali Writers & Academics.’ He has also published an article on ‘Narratology& its Developmentsin Biblical Samson, Miltonic Samson & Hollywood Samson.’ He wrote some articles in Bengali for various Bengali Little Magazines published from Kolkata. He also participated actively and presented papers in the ‘World Shakespeare Conference, 2000.’ At present, he teaches English at GhutiaBazar MallickBati Pathsala(H.S) in Hooghly, West Bengal, India. Tracing the Historical Roots of Kolkata's North-South Divide

Madhusree Chattopadhyay

Abstract: Kolkata experienced a process of a new pattern of urbanism in the first half of the twentieth century mainly in the southern part of the city. This paper seeks to trace the development of both north and south Kolkata in the colonial times and tries to find why the physical appearance of the city differed in the two parts of the city, how from the late eighteenth century the two Kolkata, namely the ‘Sahebpara’ or the European quarter and the native portion also labelled as the ‘black town’ grew up, that vast areas of the southern locations were rural areas with swamps and marshland even in the first half of the twentieth century and how the activities of the Kolkata Improvement Trust led to the emergence of a fashionable, well-ordered “south” while the failure of the Trust to reshape the north led to the continuance of the historic north –south divide of the city.

I

In the study of the process of the urbanization of Kolkata we can put forth two simplified categories, the urbanism of the -landlord-merchant class going back to the eighteenth century on the northern part of Kolkata and the new urbanism of middle and upper middle class, mostly in the south from the early decades of the twentieth century. In the early nineteenth century a new style of living developed and the ‘Wellington Square-College Street-Cornwallis Street axis with lanes and by-lanes radiating from it or meeting it was eagerly sought after as an alternative to the far older Chitpur Road- Burrabazar axis’.1 Later in the second half of the nineteenth century, Kolkata began to grow fast with a concerted plan of governance along with a cohesive town plan being laid out, outlining improved sanitary and municipal infrastructure. As time rolled on, the process, nature and extent of the urban development of the city of colonial Kolkata in the last decade of nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century saw rapid strides. The period around 1911 can be seen as an important watershed. 230|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

This particular year saw two significant events -namely the transfer of capital from Kolkata to Delhi and setting up of the Kolkata Improvement Trust, both the events that remarkably affected Kolkata’s urban destiny. It can be suggested how conscious city building projects, especially the activities of Kolkata Improvement Trust which came into existence in 1911 in the footsteps of Bombay Improvement Trust, left its impact on the city’s urban history. The Trust emphasized more on the demolition of old , dilapidated buildings rather than remodelling and restoring old structures as “a permanent and effective solution over other less drastic measures’’ leading to a steady loss of prominence of the northern section of the city. Under the axe of Trust the glorious days of north Kolkata waned away fast and the erstwhile ‘babus’ vanished in the air. Simultaneously it came up with plans for development by road building, improved sewerage and similar beautification plans that led to extension of the city towards the southern part like in Bhowanipur and later towards Ballygaunge and other southern localities, along with movement of people towards these newly developing areas.

II

In most of the literature of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century there is mention of the two Kolkata, namely the ‘Sahebpara’ or the European quarter and the native portion also labelled as the ‘black town’.2 The period from 1690-1850 saw the pattern of English settlement in Kolkata, resulting in a process of urbanization and extension of town-limits and the growth of the city with a “white town” and a black town” where the native population resided. These were surrounded by peripheral hamlet (Dihi), forming a varied range of agricultural and fishing settlements, sacred spots, trading halts, and other nodal point. The English town clustered round the old fort, which occupied the site of present Customs House and Post Offices. As time rolled on the European quarter began to spread behind the Chowringhee, connected by three main routes running nearly east and west. – the Park-Street, Theatre Road, and Lower Circular Road. Skirting the European quarters on the north and the east were the native quarters. Kolkata was interspersed with bastis or native hamlets of mud hut. Eastwards from Chitpore Road these bastis became numerous. During the period 1757 to 1800, the reclamation of the waste and jungle-lands became rapid. After the , a greater sense of security enabled the English to built houses away from the fort. House building activities began on a large scale. Earlier there were very few ‘pucca’ dwellings, particularly in the native quarter, and most 231|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 houses were built with straw and mud. Henceforth, the construction of pucca dwellings swelled up .This marked the beginning of rapid phase of urbanization in early Kolkata. During this period the native residents were removed from the village of Govindapur to Sutanuti and the new Fort William began to be erected. Simultaneously the old river front was gradually abandoned and new buildings came to be erected towards the south face of the Esplanade. The southerly location of the new fort reinforced a southward thrust to the European quarter.

Unlike the native quarter on the north that generated an impression of utter disgust and contempt, the European part had semblance and order, and appeared pleasing to the spectator. The European quarter was far better, with well laid out road. In fact the European town stood in dark contrast to the native quarter with its huts and other ruinous dwellings. The European quarter was long beien celebrated for well stocked gardens, long lines of casurinas, tall bushes of tamarind and banyan trees. It lay in the south end of the city. The beautiful plain called the Maidan stretched a mile and half long, extending towards the river. “The maidan spreads over a spacious area, intersected by very broad roads, and on two sides of this superb quadrangle a part of the city and the fashionable suburb of Chowringhee extend themselves.”3 Fort William stood on the centre of the river bank. The plain was always green, and contained several old trees, along with large water bodies. The residence of the English bordered inner side of the plain. The houses were adorned with white walls, broad verandas, and green Venetian windows. George Johnson4 writes “in the best streets there are chimneyless forms of the house, with their coloumned verandahs, and spacious windows’’ that reminded him of the hey days of Athens, justifying the title ‘the city of palaces “to Kolkata. All the important government buildings faced the plain to the north. On the East, were the finely built houses of the suburb of Chowringhee.

At the cross-road opposite the Fort, a fine panoramic view of Kolkata in the right could be seen, with Chowringhee on the left and Fort William, river and shipping in the front white pillared building and a sunlit atmosphere – a grassy plain with coconut, clumps of bamboos rearing thin feathery sprays in the air. A drive, along the Circular Road brought the visitor into more immediate contact with the morasses and wilderness which surround the habitations of the Europeans in the outskirts of the city. This part of Kolkata is chiefly the residence of shopkeepers, clerks etc, both Britons and Indo-Britons, especially the latter, and seldom men from the fashionable portion of the city visit this place. The native town occupied nearly six square miles of the entire city. It was also called the Black Town, and 232|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 extended along the river in the North. It filled all the northern end, and ran to the South along the back of the English quarter. This part of the city is little to boast of, and was much low in standard than those of the old localities found in Delhi, Benaras or Upper India. Except a few trunk roads built by the British, the streets, roads and lanes were too narrow .Emma Roberts writes “a more wretched looking place can scarcely be imagined, dirty, crowded, ill-built and abounding with beggars and bad smells.”5 Monkland writes as every city in the face of the earth has some labyrinth in the care, so also the city of palaces is not without lanes, alleys, and ditch, black as style rat-infested. There were numerous bazaars in the locality, that were always in a crowded state. The Barabazar was almost in a ruinous state. There were numerous shops, selling items of myriad varieties, and the roads were littered with dust. The native bazaar was full of unsightly articles of every description. Few of the houses, except those exclusively owned by the Europeans were kept in good shape and repair The courtyard of the houses were full of litter and there was an air of squalor spread over the whole area. The streets in native quarter were remarkably narrow and in a crowded state, dotted with stagnant and consequently offensive drain, that seem prophetic of miasma and pestilence. However scattered over the city, though on narrow streets, were the family mansions of native gentlemen, with their broad central courtyard, pillared verandahs and numerous rooms. Some were palaces in appearance, but were surrounded by filthy drains, many were out of repair, The walls were eaten by saltpetre, the courtyards were full of heaps of rubbish, overgrowth of weeds and threatening to tumble into ruin, signifying the rise and fall of the fortune of the native gentry. To most European eyes what was striking was that palatial structure and miserable mud huts of natives stood side by side. The town was built without any care to beauty or regularity. Emma Roberts writes that amidst mud hut and small dingy brick tenements and the dilapidated bazaars of the middling and lower classes of natives, there are good-looking houses enclosed in court-yards, belonging to the Armenians merchants, Parsees and the Bengali gentlemen of great wealth and respectability. The avenues which lead to these mansions are exceedingly narrow, but most buildings had beautiful garden, where flowers of many variety blossomed. A mud hut, or rows of native hovels, constructed of mats, thatch and bamboo often rest against the outer wall of palaces.

III James Long in an article published in the “Calcutta Review” titled “Calcutta in the Olden Times: Its Localities”6 gives description of many old localities of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. 233|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

He begins with Khidirpur. The localities that are described in succession are Chauringhi, thence to Tank Square and its vicinity and then Chitpore. The description ends with the Circular Road. Interestingly, only three places are described on the south of Fort William in details, namely Khidirpur, and Alipore indicating that the rest of the areas were almost uninhabited and had no proper means of communication. Khidirpur could be approached from inland by the Hastings’ Bridge, which stood near the much famed Surman’s Garden. South of the garden was the limit of Company’s colony called Govindapur. Close to it was the Watson’s Dock. The Diamond Harbour Road terminated at Khidirpur. The way from Khidirpur to Bursea was lined with trees, extending thirty nine miles to Diamond Harbour. The next locality of importance was Garden Reach, mentioned even in the map of General Martine (1760). It was a favourite place of residence “out of the town”, and contained many fine bunglows. Long informs us that William Jones who lived in Garden Reach travelled via Khidirpur, as then there were no direct route from Garden Reach to Kolkata in those days. In those days the neighbourhood of the old fort was too stuffy, and the only open spot for fresh air was the Respondentia walk, lying beyond Chandpal Ghat, for most the outlying land was full of jungle infested with wild animals. People returned to Kolkata in the cold season from their country villas, many of which were in Garden Reach. Similarly Alipore, with Belvedere, was a favourite spot of Hastings. It was the country- house in those days, as was in the time of Wellesley. The General Hospital was previously a garden house of an individual and later purchased house of an individual and later purchased by the government. North of Alipore flowed the “Tolly’s Nullah”, its old name being Govindapur creek, where the famous native merchants named Seths resided.

The next important locality was Chourongi, a favourite spot of retreat from the hot and unhealthy town. Chowringhee originated from the “rage for country house”. In the eighteenth century it was a far-away place and for fear of dacoity and robbery, palki-bearers charged double fare. 7 Later it developed into a locality full of garden houses. Emma Roberts writes” (1837) “the Suburb of Chowringhee had lately extended over a large tract of country”. It was the favourite residence of the European community. Most houses here stood separate, standing in the midst of garden. No particular plan was followed while they were erected, but most of these are pleasant, and the trees and flowering shrubs adorned the place. From the roofs of these houses the river with different kinds of vessels, and the towers and pinnacles of majestic buildings can be seen , and nearer at hand, swamps and patches of unreclaimed jungles.8 234|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, more houses come to be erected. Upjoin’s map shows twenty four houses in Chourongi, between and Birjitalao, the Circular Road and the Plain. Park Street in Upjoin’s map (1794) is called Burial Ground road, being out of town in the eighteenth century and a route for burials from northern part of Tank Square.

Perhaps the most important and famous locality in the south was Kalighat, frequented both by the Europeans and the natives. Monkland9 recollects his visit to “Callia Ghat”. The latter was situated on the banks of a small “nullah”, or channel of communication “between the Sunderbans and Hooghly. The temple appeared in his eyes to be an imposing structure and a “substantial mason work”, standing in the midst of series of common straw thatched native hut. A great number of natives came to this place. Monkland writes that even ‘” was performed here. Mary Carpenter also recollects her visit to Kalighat. James Long accompanied her to the visit of the temple of Kali.She said that the temple was situated on a “thickly populated suburb”, with narrow lanes and small shops on its both sides.10

Further south, thickets of trees, weeds, pools, small stagnant tanks, jheels, and forests abounded everywhere on each side of the road from Chowringhee, Brejeeltullah, to the end of Russapuglah, on each side of the Kalighat Road, on to Tolly’s Bridge, on each side of the Tolly’s Nullah. In the mid nineteenth century the Alipore jail was the healthiest part of the southern localities. The whole of Alipore was higher, and better drained, the soil is sandy, and hardy. Alipore jail was an open space, clear of jungle, and the prisoners could breadth pure air, for there was absence of jangal, filth, bad water and other nuisances which normally affected the other localities in the outskirts. The air was clear, and the jail tank was probably the best, of any, either in or near Kolkata. Also in , the soil condition was less harmful for health. The soil of Ballygunge being sandy, could absorb water and “lands to the south-east as far as Gurriah-haut, and very far beyond that place are an open plain, occasionally with the exception of garden cultivation, cultivated with rice or tobacco to the extent of many miles, say twenty, and it is only here and there that villages are to be seen, and these at a great distance from each other…”.11 The inundation of 1833 caused sickness in every house of Garden Reach, and other parts of suburbs, except Ballygunge and Alipore jail. Great mortality affected the native population. The flooding even affected the health of the city, rate of mortality nearly doubled in 1833 . F.P. Strong refers to Prince Sooroodeen, who allowed jungles to grow up to his very doors at Russapuglah. Strong also refers to residence of a native doctor, whose family house was at 235|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Bhowanipur. It was a place of jungle with an old piggery, inhabited by chamars and their pigs. The native died of diseases caused by this extremely unhealthy atmospheric surroundings. In Garden Reach, scarcely a house escaped the epidemic fever. Martin observes that in all these places, not six square acres of soil occupied by the natives were there which did not contain marsh, and other concentrated source of periodic fever , leading to disease of spleen and fatal diarrhoea. Nearly two third of the poor who mainly lived in this locality died of these diseases. Kidderpore, which was less populous, had greatly surpassed Bhowaneepore in its unhealthiness. No part of Bengal or Orissa, had a locality so generally bad . Fever was general throughout, even in the healthiest season, along with want of good water. There was not a square foot that was not in a surprising state of neglect and portions between the Bridge end and Kyd’s dock was one entire jheel (shallow lake). Both Bhowaneepore and Khidderpore were peculiarity exposed to the effects of inundation.

IV The south contained a flavour of rurality even in the early parts of the twentieth century. Recollections of these places in several autobiographies and memoirs of this time amply describes the cityscape . Ahindra Choudhury recollects that on the Shambhunath Pandit Street, where later Calcutta Club was built, stood the house of the agent of the Tram Company. Behind it was the tram depot and also a stable for horses, for carriage was the principal means of transport in those days. It had beautiful ivy creeper on all sides. Victoria Memorial was yet to be completed. On the east of this land stood the ‘Habildar Tank’, used by common people for bathing. There were two big banyan trees, and in front of the church stood a huge field called ‘church- field’. In part of this ground the garden of the Victoria Memorial was laid out later. On its western side of it was the Race Course.12 Even Ballygaunge of this time exhibited an air of rurality. The bazaar of Haji Qasim stood at the site of the present crossing of Rashbehari Avenue. On the south-east of this crossing stood the haunted house of . Huge banyan trees grew on its rooftop. The place generated an eerie sensation. One would feel scared to go there even during daytime.13 The tram ran up to the Gariahat crossing. Then one had to walk to move ahead. Very few houses stood here and there. Ballygaunge was sparsely populated. There were few vehicles on the road, but only the slow-moving tram that ran lazily over the Rashbehari Avenue. Houses were few in number. Most of it was open field with greenery on all sides. Many walked their way through the bye lanes to catch the tram. The jungles were not yet cleared. Bullock carts moved in a row on the road. 236|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The way ahead was almost dark. There were some small grocery shops. The land was marshy and swampy. Dense growth of water hyacinth floated on numerous waterbodies that dotted this locality.. Ballygaunge was not a favoured choice of residence even in the early decades of the twentieth century. Those who had built houses near Ballygaunge station- on the Station Road lamented that there were no tenants who would like to compromise the advantage of the city and come to live in a place full of jungle, with the howl of the jackal that could be heard in the back yard of the house. Of the total eight square miles of area, the native Kolkata occupying the northern half of the whole was about four square miles. This part of the town lying on the North was a “scattered and confused chaos of houses, sheds, huts, streets, lanes, alleys, windings, gulleys, sinks and tanks, jumbled together into an undistinguished mass of filth and corruption.”14 Later when the commercial profile of the city improved, “kutcha” houses were replaced by masonry buildings erected on the same site. Palatial houses came to be erected on the narrowest windings. In north Kolkata there were large areas where at least half the masonry buildings were unapproachable by any wheeled vehicle . It was mostly courtyard type houses because of the “purdah –system”. This type of house disallowed infiltration of sunrays or free flow of air. Further there was innate unwillingness of some people to leave the area of their ancestor. The Bengali families had an extraordinary affection for their ancestral house and were apathetic to shift even if the house was in the worst dilapidated condition. Further the “inadequate buildings laws and the inclination to evade even those which existed , produced an extraordinary number of buildings upon lands which under modern conditions would not be available for building at all. It was a common feature of the town to find an expensive and well constructed building having its frontage upon a lane a few feet in width, and the ground floor and even some of the upper floors both lightless and airless. Interspersed with these brick-built houses were blocks of mud and bamboo huts. The most striking feature of the architectural pattern of Kolkata was the number of bustee dwellings of a more or less insanitary character in almost every part of the town. The juxtaposition of good and bad buildings was equally noticeable. These were extremely unhealthy because their foundations were damp and they harbored rats, the transporters of plague. The irregular winding lanes, covered ditches, sewers were in many cases the ventilation channels for properties which were themselves insanitary. Dr Crake’s Report on the sanitary condition of the town showed that almost 18.7% of houses were “hopelessly insanitary” mostly because of inadequate street system.15 237|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

There was extreme congestion in the northern quarter of the city and an increase of population in already densely populated areas by the beginning of the twentieth century. This was because the up- country immigrant labourers preferred to live with their friends in areas already congested, leading to an unchecked growth of slums. Congestion in the bastis were on the bursting point. It appeared as if the “Curse of Midas” fell on the city. The concentration of trade in Burrabazar was the most important factor that caused street congestion. Because the trade of the city centered so largely on this area, it followed that a large portion of the goods traffic either originated or terminated in this area, within which there was not one good road. With the single exception of Harrison Road; the remaining connections were nothing but narrow lanes, in the greater number of which it was impossible for two bullock or buffalo carts to cross-in fact, the position was so bad that that the replacement of bullock and buffalo carts by motor transport would result in no improvement. There was no doubt that the roads, with the single exception named, were disgracefully narrow and are totally inadequate for the traffic. (transported almost entirely by means of bullock and buffalo carts) which they are called on to carry. The very poor road facilities and the primitive methods of transport accentuated the difficulties arising from the concentration of trade within an insufficiently large area. The result was an area which was hopelessly overcrowded, both indoors and in the streets, which was dingy and insanitary and which had no means of ventilation - a most unsatisfactory state of affairs considered in the light of the value to the city of the trade carried on in the area. Along with this streetlessness and extensive slum bore its inevitable consequences the plague. A survey of the area bounded by the Chitpore Road and Halliday Street on the east, where stood Ward Number 8. ie Kolutola area showed extremely narrow streets and close and bad arrangements of buildings . This area was at the very centre of Kolkata. Of the 256 masonry buildings 33% were unfit for human habitation, 54% partially insanitary and only 12.5% fit for living. It was a densely populated ward with 258 persons per acre. It was one of the five worst plague –ridden wards, with a majority of immigrant male population.16 Apart from that the worst plague areas were Wards V( ), VI( Jorasanko), VII(Barabazar), VIII(Kalutola).Also the coolie classes who migrated to Wards XIX() and XX() were the carriers of plague.

V Towards the second and third decade of the twentieth century south Kolkata was gradually developing , exhibiting a complete contrast with the northern part. Metropolitan Kolkata was emerging fast in this 238|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 part of the city. New roads were laid out and new houses appeared on newly reclaimed land. While northern part of Kolkata was declining , newer localities as Bhowanipur was coming into prominence during the first part of the twentieth century. It appeared as if a new city was coming up in this part .The roads were all new. The city has given birth to a new civilization here. It was the newborn child of the twentieth century. The aristocracy of was missing here, but there was a kind of sophistication. Like the houses of this locality which were of a different pattern, so also the residents who looked different. There is no aristocracy of north Kolkatan type, but there was a kind of refinement and culture. Here the guard at the main gate addressed the owner of the house ‘saheb’, the Bengali counterpart of white gentleman and not the ‘babu’, who lived in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century as a native with his own separate identity beside the white town of the Europeans. This was a time at the dawn of the twentieth century, which saw the growth of a new market economy and similar economic possibilities. This led to the emergence of a new class of entrepreneurs, who shed off not only the earlier feudalistic pretentions but also their choice of residence by moving mostly towards this southern part of the city. A graphic description of the new south comes from the pen of Bimal Mitra in his “Kori Diye Kinlam”. The garden of Haji Qasim was razed to the ground and new houses were built there. The gurudwara of the Sikhs was set up on the broad road on the leftern side of the park. 17 With Russa Road being widened and extended, localities as Ballygaunge, Southern Avenue and the like were developing rapidly. The houses in Ballygaunge were of latest fashion (‘hal fashioner’). The main entrance of such houses were an intricately decorated (with designed entrance gate, tall tower and glass-fitted windows) – all aesthetically designed, following the modern concepts of architectural knowledge. Manik Bandopadhyay’s novel “Shahartali” gives a detailed description of the fast changing landscape of the suburban localities. Broad roads were laid out. Many new houses of fasionable design were being built. Older shops were decorated and given a facelift. Many others of an unimpressive style gave way to new type of shopping destinations. Streets were well lit.18 Even insignificant areas (as Iswar Ganguly Lane in Kalighat bore evidence of an ‘improving Kolkata’. Great changes have taken place there. Everything looked different. The oil pressing machine of Ahsoo, the locality of the charcoal sellers was no more. Earlier bus or car could not reach the narrow Ishwar Ganguly Lane. Now that the roads were widened, any vehicle can move upto the house named “Aghor Shaudh” that stood on this lane. Author Pratibha Basu recalls how Russa Road looked around 1930s. The wide street 239|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 glittered like a polished mirror. Trees stood in neat rows on two sides of the road. Beautifully designed houses stood separated from each other on this road. The process of urbanization gathering momentum, along with improved transport and communication of roads and railways, towards the second decade of the twentieth century, a burgeoning group of middle class- lawyers, doctors, teachers, clerks, authors and intellectuals showed an increasing preference to built their residence in the newer areas south of Bhowanipur where the Improvement Trust was building new roads and extending municipal facilities. A new urban culture and mentality was coming up. Several localities of Kolkata, indicated how these small areas within the city situated in close geographical proximity, had their respective urban experience and each acquiring individual and distinctive characteristics in the last thirty years preceding independence and partition. While some localities as Kalighat grew up as a middle class locality (‘madhyabitta para’), Ballygaunge gradually became the residential hub of the upper middle class. The first Chairman of the Calcutta Improvement Trust E. P Richards wrote “It is only south- wards and south –eastwards that Calcutta can develop freely and largely in a suburban way” because she is hemmed in by the river on the west, by comparative narrowness of habitable land on the Howrah side, and by swamps to the north, north-east, and near-east.19 The direction of suburban development was naturally on the north and south-east. It was Ballygaunge, , and round about Diamond Harbour Road where expansion was possible. It was thought that Russa Road and Lansdowne Road improvements would give ready access to Ballygaunge and Tollygaunge suburb and would materially facilitate rapid transit to the southern areas. The Trust also outlined direct routes from the suburbs to the commercial centres of the city. Tollygaunge, Bhawanipore, and the neighbouring districts could have direct and ample approach to the city via the Russa Road when widened. Ballygaunge will have direct access to the city via Lower Circular Road and Camac Street, or Park Street when widened; Loudon Street, Amherst Street South, Ripon Street diagonal, Wellesley Street, Princep Street and Mangoe Lane or Bentinct Street were also to be widened. The traffic of Wards XIX(Entally) and XX(Beniapukur) can be provided by Park Street or Ripon Street diagonal route. Similarly Manicktala can be served by diagonal, Central Avenue and Harrison Road while people from and Chitpore could reach city via Cornwallis Street, Maniktala diagonal and Central Avenue. The latter was of immence importance for it afforded easy and direct route between north and south of the city, relieve the congestion of the Chitpore Road and help to open up large insanitary areas of the northern outskirts. 240|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

The importance of the suburb of Manicktola and a direct access from here to the centre of Kolkata is highlighted, along with a shift of population here to solve the problem of congestion.20 Mr. Bompas and his Board of Trustees turned attention at the very inception of the Trust towards Manicktola in affording an obvious solution to the congestion of Kolkata. It was clearly outlined that the day was not far away when the low-lying swamps of Manicktola drained by large sewers and intersected by a complete system of broad, well-lighted roads, will attract people in thousands from the airless and congested area of northern Kolkata. This was not a dream, but an inevitable stage in the movements of the population of a great city like Kolkata. The suburb of Howrah also got special attention of Richards.21 After thorough study of its growth as an industrial centre, its advantageous position opposite Kolkata's business area, the existence of bridge connection, and the rail terminus, he laid special emphasis for a wider and tramlines on it to bring commuters straight to Kolkata and develop Howrah as a future residential and working class suburb. Howrah can be not only be developed admirably to a very good residential site with all modern comforts and facilities of conveyance attending suitable home to business men who are huddling in the garrets of Kolkata but also presented an excellent opportunities for both working class and second class suburban development. It represented the open land along 40 per cent, of the north Kolkata borders. With but one insufficient bridge, and the city tram service cut in two by the same, dwellings at Howrah would eagerly be occupied by Kolkata people. The bridge will be of great importance to the future operation of the Trust. A survey of Howrah was partially undertaken by Trust soon to be intimately connected to city by a double service of electric tram cars, carried by the New Howrah bridge. The unbroken tram service will accentuate development of Howrah as a big manufacturing and residential suburb of Kolkata. There were men in nearly every big Kolkata Office, who resided in Howrah, and the villages near by. In the report published in 1913, titled “General Main Road Report, Part-I, Chiefly on the width of New Howrah Bridge and its importance to the Trust E. P, Richards suggested that a “ bridge of nearly 112 feet width is required to the traffic of the next few decades, it is absolutely essential…A wider bridge is required in view of the growth and expansion of population, trade, railway passenger and goods traffic and tram car traffic in Calcutta and Howrah.” The development of Kolkata towards south demanded for building sites in the area which Improvement Trust was then developing in Russa Road and the Excavation Area. In 1915 a sanction was obtained for a scheme for development of suburban areas of about 150 acres in the south of the 241|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 city to accommodate persons displaced due to operation of the Trust. During the year 1915-16, the bulk of the acquisition of the Improvement Trust was in the Area Improvement Scheme in Bhowanipore where land was cheap, for acquisition in more expensive quarter of the town, the Trust feared that expenditure would go high. It was also felt that no loss would be incurred in acquiring certain portions of the Russa Road area for connecting the same with the Gariahat Road. The Government approved the Trust to obtain earth for filling tanks and raising the areas under Improvement schemes for villages of Mudiali , Baroj, Govindapur, , and Gariahat in Dihi Panchannagram, , Khaspur, in district Twenty- Four Parganas.22 At one time it was thought that though development of the south may be inevitable, but it could not be feasible to initiate expansion towards the east and north of the city. However in the absence of any clearly defined drainage policy, the work of Improvement Trust in Manicktola was held up. At Maniktola there was unlimited room for expansion in a low- lying area. It was thought that the Maniktola harbor would enable a large area of low-lying land to be raises to a level at which it can be properly drained and would confer a vast benefit to Kolkata by improving this insanitary area. It could create a new industrial area and possibly a new residential suburb along the canal. But the project was not pursued seriously in the later years. The problem of congestion of the northern part of the city could not be remedied. On the contrary the operation of the Improvement Trust mainly led to large-scale demolition in northern part of the city. Most importantly cleaning of slum areas was not taken up seriously. The Barabazar scheme was not taken up as it would have locked up the lion’s share of the fund of the Trust. The developments in the later years have been laid out almost wholly in the south and the south west neglecting the most congested areas, for it was found to be a Himalayan task to improve the congested north. Until the Grand Trunk Canal scheme could be executed, plans of drainage or road lay- out for the northern suburbs could not be taken in hand. Though by 1919 some of the problems to the developments of the north were cleared, the problem of finance appeared as a stumbling block. Thus prospect of developing the northern suburb was thwarted for the time. The outbreak of the First World War (1914-1918) gave a break to the execution of the plans. Prices of building materials soared high - tram lines could not be re- laid , bridges could not be built or drainage work be executed. After the war there was a boom followed by slump in Kolkata that affected land prices. – the assets of the Trust was frozen . In 1919 cost of building became so high that it became extremely difficult for men of ordinary means to build a new 242|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 house. The city of Kolkata and the northern quarters sank into a phase of horrible difficulty and mess. The city was desperately in need of building land for development; but, for that, a city plan was necessary and Improvement Trust had no powers to produce a city plan or to produce streets. An impression of North Kolkata in the pre- independence days can be obtained from Bimal Kar’s novel “Dewal”. There is a description of one Fatik Dey Lane in one of the most prominent locations of North Kolkata, namely Bahubazar. Unlike the south there was no grandeur in this locality. The lane was extremely narrow. During monsoon months flooding was inevitable and dirt and filth of every kind found easy way inside the houses of the locality, causing utmost suffering to the residents of the place. (Bahubazarer Fatik Dey Laner cheharae chatak nei. Latae patae jatata baro, gaye gatare tatata khato. Har jirjire. krisha- karun, garanta parjanta adbhut. Kachhaper pither moto anekta; dudik dhalu, majkhane unchu. Golite jal jamle du pash thai, thai. Kharkuta, nongra, ento-kanta, mal – mayela bhaste bhaste anyer sadare dhuke jaye.) A similar picture of North Kolkata of the same time can be obtained from a recent publication of the recollections of the eminent economist of the time Pranab Bardhan, titled “Smritikundayan”. He tells us how the “methars” or the sweepers used to clean every day the locality where he spent his childhood and how within just half an hour the place gained back its original unclean state, being a receptacle of all sorts of nuisance and objects that were offensive to the visual as well as the olfactory nerves. (“ Roj ora amader goli o tar nardamaguli jhant diye parishkar korto………….tarpar adh ghantar moto samay golitake ektu dekha jeto. Kintu alpa samayer madhyei janaprabahr jabatiya abarjana, thonga, ar paner pik-e goli tar purba rup dharan korto...... ”.)23 A completely contrary picture was exhibited by Ballygaunge of 1933. “What a difference between the heart of the city and Ballygaunge! Here green soothes the tired eye and a gentle sense of peace secured, satisfies the stifled spirit. One could go into ecstasies over the respectabilities generated here by good living……………...... ”24 Thus by the mid- nineteenth century South Kolkata began to develop into a fashionable , sophisticated and refined locality while the North with its narrow lanes and crooked alleys led to the continuance of Kolkata's historic “north- south divide. 243|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Notes 1. Pradip Sinha, (1978), Calcutta in Urban History (Calcutta : Firma KLM) .

2. See Nair’s collections of Calcutta in the 17th , 18th , and 19th century.

3. Emma Roberts, (1837) -Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan with Sketches of Anglo-Indian Society (in Two Volumes)Second Edition, Lindon, Wm. H.Allen and Co, Leadenhall Street.

4. George. W. , (1843), The Stranger in India ;Or Three Years in Calcutta ,Volume-I, London, Henry Colburn, Publisher .

5. Emma Roberts, (1837) -Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan with Sketches of Anglo-Indian Society (in Two Volumes)Second Edition, Lindon, Wm. H.Allen and Co, Leadenhall Street.

6. Rev. James Long ([1852, 1860] 1974), ‘Calcutta in the Olden Time : Its Localities/ People’, Calcutta Review, XVIII and XXXV, December 1852 and September 1860 (reprint, Calcutta : Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar).

7. Emma Roberts, (1837) -Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan with Sketches of Anglo-Indian Society (in Two Volumes)Second Edition, Lindon, Wm. H.Allen and Co, Leadenhall Street.

8. ibid

9. Monkland (1828), Life in India or the English at Calcutta , Volume –I, II, London , Henry Colburn , New Burlington Street.

10. Mary Carpenter , (1868)- Six Months in India, Volume-I, Longman’s, Green, and Company, London .

11. F.P. Strong, ([1849]/1978), Extracts from the topography and vital statistics of Calcutta; reprinted in Alok Ray, ed., Calcutta Keepsake (Kolkata: Riddhi India).

12. Ahindra Chowdhury,- Nijeke Haraye Khunji (Part- I and II) ,Saptarshi Prakashan, August, 2011. This autobiography gives details on Bhowanipore of late 18th and 19th century.

13. Bimal Mitra, (1952, 1970), Sahib Bibi Golam (Calcutta : )- For the literary impression of Kolkata during time.

14. Emma Roberts, (1837),Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan with Sketches of Anglo-Indian Society.

15. See E. P, Richards, Report by Request of the Trust on the Condition, Improvement and Town Planning of the city of 244|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Calcutta and Contiguous Areas , Chapter XIV ( Origin of Calcutta slums) and XV ( Some evil results of streetless areas and slums) .

16. Annual Report of the Calcutta Improvement Trust. (1912-1913).

17.Bimal Mitra, -Kari diye Kinlam(Part –I and II)

18.Manik Bandopadhyay, ( 1379) -Sahartali, (First and Second Part) , Mondal Book House, New Edition, Kolkata.

19. E. P, Richards, Report by Request of the Trust on the Condition, Improvement and Town Planning of the city of Calcutta and Contiguous Areas.

20. Calcutta Improvement Trust, (1923) Note on the Improvement of Manicktola by M. R. Atkins, Calcutta: CIT.

21. E. P, Richards, (1913) CIT, General Main Road Report, Part-I, Chiefly on the width of New Howrah Bridge and its importance to the Trust.

22. Annual Report 1915-1916, also see the same for schemes regarding road and bridges sanctioned in this year by the government.

23. Pranab Bardhan -Smritikundayan, Desh, 17 Jan,2012.

24. “Suburbania” , By Suburban Ballygungite Calcutta Municipal Gazette, 1st. July, 1933.

Bibliography Books: 1. Carpenter , Mary (1868)- Six Months in India, Volume-I, Longman’s, Green, and Company, London.

2. Chaudhuri, Sukanta, ed. (1995), Calcutta, The Living City, Volume I, II. (Calcutta, Oriental University Press).

3. Johnson, George. W. (1843), The Stranger in India; Or Three Years in Calcutta,Volume-I, London, Henry Colburn, Publisher.

4. Long, Rev. James ([1852, 1860] 1974), ‘Calcutta in the Olden Time: Its Localities/ People’, Calcutta Review, XVIII and XXXV, December 1852 and September 1860 (reprint, Kolkata : Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar). 245|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

5. Monkland, (1828), Life in India or the English at Calcutta , Volume –I, II, London , Henry Colburn , New Burlington Street.

6. Nair, P. Thankappan, complied (1984), Calcutta in the 18th Century [Impressions of Travellers] (Calcutta: Firma KLM Private Limited).

7. Nair, P. Thankappan, ed. (1989), Calcutta in the 19th Century [Company’s Days] ( Calcutta : Firma KLM).

8. Roberts, Emma (1837), Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan with Sketches of Anglo-Indian Society.

9. Strong, F.P. ([1849]/1978), Extracts from the topography and vital statistics of Calcutta; reprinted in Alok Ray, ed., Calcutta Keepsake (Kolkata: Riddhi India).

Calcutta Improvement Trust Reports:

1.Calcutta Improvement Trust, City and Suburban Main Road Projects, Joint Report by James Maden and Albert De Bois Shrosbree (Calcutta: Trust Engineer and Chief Valuer’s Office, 1913).

2. E.P. Richards, Calcutta Improvement Trust: Report by Request of the Trust on the Condition, Improvement and Town Planning of the city of Calcutta and Contiguous Areas (Hertfordshire : Jennings and Bewley, 1914).

3. M. R. Atkins ,Calcutta Improvement Trust, (1923) Note on the Improvement of Manicktola, Calcutta: CIT.

4. E. P, Richards, (1913) CIT, General Main Road Report, Part-I, Chiefly on the width of New Howrah Bridge and its importance to the Trust.

5. Calcutta Improvement Trust , Annual Report 1915-1916, 246|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Calcutta Municipal Gazettee:

1. “Suburbania” , By Suburban Ballygungite Calcutta Municipal Gazette, 1st. July, 1933

Literature:

1.Bandopadhyay, Manik ( Bhadra 1379) -Sahartali, (First and Second Part) , Mondal Book House, New Edition, Kolkata.

2. Bardhan Pranab , 17 Jan,2012, Smritikundayan, Desh . 3. Chowdhury, Ahindra , August, 2011, Nijeke Haraye Khunji (Part- I and II) ,Saptarshi Prakashan. 4. Kar, Bimal (1993), – Dewal, Ananda Publisher Pvt. Limites , Kolkata.

5 .Mitra, Bimal (1952, 1970), Sahib Bibi Golam (Kolkata : New Age)

-Kori Diye Kinlam.

Madhusree Chattopadhyay is Assistant Professor of History, Serampore College, Hooghly, West Bengal, India. She is currently pursuing doctoral research on a topic related to colonial Kolkata. Scanning Kolkata Stage through the Eyes of Five Doyens: A Review of Bratya Basu's Book of Interviews

Sourav Gupta

Je Kotha Boloni Age, E Bochor Sei Kotha Bolo- A Collection of Five Interviews of Theatre Persons taken by Bratya Basu. (Publisher: Kalindi Bratyajan/Kolkata/2014/Hardbound)

In a television interview taken a few years ago on the eve of the birthday of the legendary theatrician Sambhu Mitra, Bratya Basu had pensively remarked: “I think he (Mitra) is arguably the greatest among the fathers of our theatre.” Basu evidently reflected the deep respect he possessed for his predecessors in theatre. In his speeches, writings and also informal discussions, he seems to be very passionate and well informed about his seniors in Kolkata Theatre. Their knowledge, hard work and activities over the years have found place in Basu’s photographic memory. Though Basu is known for challenging the existing norms in both playwriting and theatre philosophy and bringing an altogether fresh air in these paradigms, he has been a proud legacy-bearer of Kolkata Theatre. Even after he took a partisan political stand and the Kolkata theatre fraternity getting sharply divided on the basis of political ideology in recent times, Basu has personally maintained a good relationship even with the so called “others” like Rudraprasad Sen Gupta and Ashok Mukhopadhyay. In an effort to introspect deep into the thetrical journey of the contemporary stalwarts, Basu interviewed five of them each year for “Bratya jan Natyapatra”, the theatre journal of his outfit ‘Kalindi Bratyajan’. The book “Je Kotha boloni Age….”, titled aptly after a poem by the late Shakti Chattopodhyay, showcases five interviews taken by Basu in his signature style-informal but brooding. The interviewees have also been benefitted by the sharp, razor edged questions of Basu as it helped them to vent out their feelings to the truest.

The series starts with Rudraprasad Sen Gupta , who had a disturbed solitary childhood, a turbulent, wayward youth which ultimately found discipline in theatre where he was introduced by 248|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 theatre great Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay. He went on to transform Bandyopadhyay’s group ‘’ into one of the most disciplined theatre group in India. His interview traces his life as well as the changes that took place in post colonial Kolkata and the lives of the people in the city. It is really an intriguing description of the development of the communist movement in Bengal and its fallacies from an insider’s point of view. Sen Gupta very candidly explains his relationship, differences of opinion with contemporaries like the colossus Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay and Keya Chakarbarty. His expressions reaffirms his capabilities as a Man of Theatre, an organizer par excellence, who at 74 is equally energetic to guide 'Nandikar' to newer avenues. At the same time, largely due to Basu’s adept querying, the dilemma of a father and husband, torn between personal relations and theatre also reflects and one has to applaude Sen Gupta that he prevailed over everything to make Theatre his priority. One actually feels inspired at the end when he concludes, “ theatre has given me a share, a share in bridge with life.”

Unlike Sen Gupta, who fell into Theatre by accident, Bivas Chakrabarty, his contemporary was drawn to the act early in life, at Srihatta in undivided East Bengal. Post partition problems taught him to be accommodative and unlike many who cannot forget the trauma of the partition and rehabilitation, he took it into his strides. Even after establishing himself as an important director in the 1970s, Chakrabarty states that he has never been carried away with success. He admits his desire to become a leader but also claims to be unambitious inside. The interview unfolds Chakrabarty’s creative thoughts behind his masterpiece productions. It also traces the underlying reasons of his departure from theatre groups like Nandikar &Theatre Workshop and his ideological differences with the CPI(M). He appears satisfied with the coming up of the ‘Anya Theatre Bhawan’ as a tangible contribution to Theatre and at the same time expresses frustration over the standard of theatre workers he has to work with. That he is an artist to the core becomes evident when Chakrabarty wishes to become an artist in his next birth also.

The book becomes a real treat when Basu interviews . Mitra and Basu both being acclaimed playwrights turn the conversation to a coaching manual for aspiring dramatists. Added to that is Mitra’s intrinsic sense of humour which makes the piece a delectable reading. It reveals how Mitra has blended his knowledge of philosophy with his personal experiences, manifested real life characters into his plays. The and its pangs are portrayed with empathy through the initial lines of the interview as Mitra comments about 16th August 1947, “Chhatrahara seidin thekei” 249|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

(from that day I became devoid of shelter). The two master playwrights dwell into the depth of literary issues like plot making and realism. Basu through his questions and interpretations actually opens up a new world of seeing Mitra’s plays the most significant of which is an allegation that the latter has not posed faith in characters belonging to the young generation. Mitra, witty that he is, takes it as an interesting anecdote to know his self. Inevitably, cinema also forms a vital part of the conversation.

Basu’s one on one with veteran director Arun Mukhopadhyay a starts off with the latter asserting that politics or political alignment should not affect the solitarity of artist fraternity-something which West Bengal has noticed in the recent times. The interview traces the upbringing of Mukhopadhyay in Howrah, adjacent to Kolkata, as a naughty, innocent boy who once fled from home as a passionate movie buff. Infact, his stint as a director started with the enactment of the scripts he adapted from these films in his residential stage during Durga Puja. He was inclined to communism from his early theatre days in IPTA which finally culminated into forming his own theatre group ‘’ following a successful stint at Coordination Committee of government employees. Throughout his journey in theatre, Arun Mukhopadhyay has been torn between progressiveness and reactionary, theatre and cinema, actor and director, success and failure, son and self. But amidst all these opposites he has believed in his penchant for directing plays that has enabled him to prevail over all kinds of crisis. Basu has also beautifully brought out the musical aspect that is so integral to Arun Mukhopadhyay.

The last interview was of Ashok Mukhopadhyay, once again depicting the turbulence of partition , independence as the backdrop of his upbringing in Kolkata. Nurturing the dream of a bright career in Academics, Mukhopadhyay was struck by a thunder in the form of Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay and he could not resist himself from joining theatre actively. His frequent changes in job locations couldn’t hinder his passion for theatre. After a brief and irregular apprenticeship under Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay in ‘Nandikar’, he grew into an eminent actor under the direction of Bivas Chakrabarty in ‘Theatre Workshop’, the group which would be later led by him as the chief playwright-actor- director. Basu with his sharp, razor like questions bring out the theatrician in Mukhopadhyay in full spectrum- starting from his relations with comtemporaries, socio political situation, politics in theatre, the changing paradigm of Group Theatre in Bengal. The conversation smoothly strolled along different quarters like theatre, politics, society, literature and makes a palatable reading. 250|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Basu has done a great favour to the upcoming young generation of theatre workers in Bengal as this collection has become a great document of the paradigm of theatre practice prevalent in Bengal between the 1960s to the present. He has set up the interviews so wittily that it no longer remains a personal view but becomes a reflector of time, philosophy and throws up debatable areas of what was right and what went wrong in the period. Basu has dissected personal lives, philosophical and ideological orientation of his seniors in a way that can teach the next generation of theatrician. It indeed is a commendable job by Basu and special mention should also be made of his assistants Shobhan Gupta and Rajarshi Dey too. One feels an eeriness in Basu’s questions at times as one cannot forget that it was he who at the turn of the century started questioning and challenging the set norms of the then status quo of Kolkata Theatre Scenario and this collection is just a cross check of what he has been advocating.

Sourav Gupta Assistant Professor, Assistant Professor at Centre for Journalism & Mass Communication in Central University of Orissa, Koraput, India. He is one of the Assistant Editors in Journal of Bengali Studies. He has been a noted dramatist and is founder of Theatre Spandan, Kolkata and has currently set up Koraput's first theatre group. Workshop

Love and Kolkata: Six Poems

Tamal Dasgupta

Preface Urban poems can capture the fleeting moments, fragmentary strolling of an alienated cityscape along a lane, an alley, or a street. Kolkata since the days of Kobigaan to Chandrabindoo has been represented in various ways in poems.

City poems speak of a fascination with the peripatetic, chaotic life of the flaneur, as opposed to the organic serenity of nature. City defines itself as culture, that which is made by humans, as opposed to nature.

Further, a poem that identifies itself with certain locations in a city act out against any grand design or big narrative and profound ideas; in other words, such poems have defined the post-Tagorean sensibility in Bengali poetry. City poems come into that category of the narrowly specific, as opposed to the broadly universal. They speak for the momentary and the local, even when they speak of the transcendental, they have a sense of history, change and rootedness as an integral part of that which appear to transcend.

The following poems foreground Kolkata. Some of them are written with an exile's longing for one's city of origin, so then they speak of a displacement. They are sometimes about a privileged insider's careless existence in Kolkata, and the memory attachments of a cultural geography speak forth.

First the Bengali poems, and then the English translations follow.

------252|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

পপ্রেম ও কলক喾ত喾: পচ槌রঙঙ্গী সনꇇট

নষ্টির মত আচমক আর প꧂ননধনরত, আম নভনজব তনম ছনবম এবসনব কনমক নস্ট্রিবট, নশ এর ছমব। এখনও ছতমর ছসই

তক ষবণর কত শনকব যনন। ছসই ছশ ভব,আনম খন -সদ পরত, অধন রক্তমস খবড় ছতমর সরক তব

আন যক...

শহর এখনও ছম만ন রবব, ছতমর ন ছব এখনও পবকর ছনঞ্চিবত

ভন, এই ছত কবক ঘন...পথম চমর পবর

আসব অবনক য ছকবটব, মবধন এবসব কবকট মহবদশ

ওন ওবর ছসন জন, মঝরস ছকবত্থেবক এ ছতমর চবর ন...

আনম এই রত নচনন, আর এই আব আনম আবও ছদবখনম।

আনম জনন এই ছচ만রঙর ফটপবথ আজও তনম আনম ছহবট যনচ

ছতমর ছকমবর হত ছরবখ, এই শহবরর কপ ঈষর উপবভন

হল শবতর কশ, ছসন এখনও তনম কবধ ননশস ছফব।

একট আঙ নশপস হউবস, অনন আঙ ছসন পবসর শবষ

ছফ্রেমনন হব আ তনম রনতর ছফরবত, আনম ছসই কনবমরর সক

এও জনন আনম এক নন যনদ পবকট হতড়ই, ছকনট ক ন, দ-আঙব শধ ছতর ন উব আসব

膿ক ছযমনট হত স্বণন, ছতর ছ আজও আমর জমর ছভতবর 253|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

ছসই অধন শবটর স্বরননপ দনখ দ নন

ককত আর ভবস আজও এবক অননবক ছবড় য নন

Love and Kolkata: Chowringhee Sonnet

As sudden and predetermined as rain, you came down on Camac Street drenching me, girl from the land of clouds. Still the wounds given from your sharp rainfalls are not dry. Well then, let me open up the red and white bandage, and dig up your memento of defiant blood and flesh.

The city's still silent, your smell still sticks to the Park benches I was thinking, it's just a few hours... after the first kiss Actually many eras passed, a few continents came between you and me Clever life of one way traffic, where from the smell of your hair comes in the middle of the road...

I know this night, and I saw this light earlier too. I know that on this Chowringhee pavement me and you are walking even today Shivering envies of this city are enjoyable with my hands around your waist In the mist of this mild winter, dear, you are still breathing on my shoulders

One finger is on Bishop's House, another is on the top of St Paul's Cathedral You are filmed in the frame of the fountain of night, I am a witness to that camera I know this too, if I look into my pockets right now, not a credit card, fingertips will fetch your photo Like it used to be, girl, your touch is still inside my shirt

Notations of that unruly shirt haven't changed; look, Kolkata and love still have not left each other's nook. 254|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

পপ্রেম ও কলক喾ত喾 -২

ও ছকন আমবক ছরদবর ছফব জব নদবত যব?

নদন পবর মবন পড়, , কনতর মত,শরবরর মত, সদকব বপ, ছকন আমবকই এক নবক আজ নব খব 膿ক

নব খব পন্তর আর ছনক সদবন ছচসব আর ননবন নফবক ছ চ আর দ-একট চম কড়ব ...

নবক নব আমবক, এনদবক তনম পকস্ট্রিবট যব

এখবন শকবন অথচ ছদবখ, ও ছচবখ ছদখব ঝনর ফঝনর

ছকথকর এক উটবক জবর ছতড় এবস ছধ ওর ছদহ ছথবক আমর ছদবহর নচহ, আনম নহস নণ, আনম দপবরর

উনদ, আনম শযনর মরভ꧂নমবত শবনন দ꧂বর শওবরর শব, আনম ছতবক নদব ননসব

আনম এও জনন আজ সনন এই রকস ছকন জ ছকনও অনন পরষ খজব...

আনম রন স্ট্রিবটর চক, আনম ছরজ ধর কবর ছতর শরবরর মখন চটবত এবসন,

আনম কস ফইবভর ড্রপআউট, আনম ড় তড়তনড় শরবর আগন, আগবন আবমজ, আবমবজ মরবত নশবখন

আনম নশপ হউবস ভ꧂ত হব পবশ উনক ছমবর এক রবত ছদনখ ছকনও নট ছমম নব করব,

তই কননথড্রবর আব আহ ছস নপর ঝণধর ধবচ রবতর রসজবড় রখ এক গচ টরফ, আর ছসই ফগন শকবন

নক ষ ক ষচন, যর খননক আবই নসরজ সনরব কইভ নটবক আনবন, আর দপবজর শর আর এই শহবরর হ পত্তন

আর মরকনশবমর চকবন্ত ব মর যন রজলভ, আর ননকমর ফনসবত ছঝবন ইবম এ ছহনসস এর ব, আনম এ-স

সনতর সক, এ ছমববক আনম সকবশর ছথবক ছরজ ঝনড় ছমবর এবসন

এই ছমব তই আমবক নভবক ছদ ন 255|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

এই সনন তনম অবননর গ, তনম ঘসজনম চবর খচ, তব ছফরর পথ ছখ ছরবখ, রত খননক ভর হব স্বণন ছতম

আর খজব, আনম এই নম্ববর দশটর পবর ছফন কবর ছফর , ছমব আজও আনম হজর র আবকর কম꧂নতর নবম

শপথ কবরই নছ শধ ব নদও একর। ছকনন, ছতমর স্পশ ড় এ শ্মশন আমবক ছন ন

মঝরত এব উড়বত ছনড়ও, ইনন

নভবকনরর বন ছয-স চবদর ফবর আগন জবমব এতনদন, আর মধ বন মইবক, ছসই ননড়র নদনন রইব, তনম তর

ছথবক ধনন জনও, আর এর ছনশ ছপম ছকনওনদনও আনম ছতমর কব ছত চইনন

Love and Kolkata -2

Why would she leave me in the sun and take a dip in water?

Coming to mind after ages, hell, like a poem, like a body, in black and white impressions, why the lone afternoon will have to devour me today the horizon will surely do and the chessboards of Gorky Sadan and the mild lemon tea at and will steal away a few kisses

This afternoon devours me, when you'll be a Park Streeter

It's dry here, but see, she is tasting fireworks of waterfalls

Where the hell this upstart flow of water comes from, to wash my signs off her body, I am envy blue and shoddy, I am madcap of Indian summer noon, I have heard the sounds of shower's doom, from the desert of bed, having given you I am silent and dead

I also know where this lamia will search for other men in this evening... 256|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

I am carpe diem of Rowden Street, I took loans everyday to come to lick up your body's butter I am a drop-out of class five, I knew too early of body's fire, joy in fire, and death in joy's flutter

Becoming a ghost at Bishop's House I peep sideways one night to see a brash whitewoman's wedding

So in the Cathedral lights oh those comprador fountains flood a bunch of jasmine across the roads of night, and those flowers are smelled by Nobokrishno Krishnochondro, who just a little ago removed Siraj to bring that Clive bloke, and the start of Durgapujo and this city is set up and Rajballabh is drowned by Mirkasim's plotting, and Nuncoomer is hanged by Impey and Hastings, I am witness to these memories, I have espied on this girl since her teenage

So this girl does not give alms to me

In this evening you are in the arms of someone else, you are grazing on grasslands, but keep your way back open, when this night grows deeper I shall again search for you dear, After ten o'clock in the night I shall call up this number, to say again, girl, I swear even today in the name of the thousand year old Kali idol, just touch me once. Because, without your touch this cremation ground does not take me.

Take to flying, witch, when it's midnight

The fires of the moon flower which gathered so far in the garden of Victoria, and the mead touched by Michael, for those pebbles' sake, you flame up your bonfire from them, and I have never demanded from you any more light 257|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

পপ্রেম ও কলক喾ত喾 -৩

অবধক ক করণন আর নক অশর রবতর শহর

রক কবর চব আজও সবক সনতর তনপহর

ণসঙবত নক সর ছমনচ নশবজজ বফ্রেননক

রবতর ধমত জনম নব আম ক ষনর

দ'বক ছত মনবনজ কর আবমজ আমর ধবরই চব

আনম আর নতন করণনম কবনবস আউটরবম

এ ওর জনড়ব ধবর ভন এই ছয নথ মবস্কেটস

রত ছপহবই যদ হব শ ভস ঙজব

ড করণ, ড করণ, আহ ছঝর ছচষ্টি করন

ড করণ, ড চর, ড ছ-স দননদনর

চরবট মনষ, নতনবট ছননড়, এ নক ছহনব আগন

ছকরস ইন, ছদখন দদ সবয ছপব আনমও পনর 258|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Love and Kolkata 3

A half bosomful of pity and the rest is the night's city blocks Still keep on guarding my past memories and drowsy clocks Choral singer in mass songs, keeping in tune schizophrenic Black holes devour me at this Esplanade of night hawks

A bottle or two managed, joys I always borrow At Outram me and three constables full of sorrow Hugging one another, here are three Musketeers Will make corpses float on Ganga when night's over; there will be a war tomorrow

It's full of pity, try to grasp this ditty It's pathetic, it's disabled, it's a rudderless perspicacity Four men, and three street dogs and some stunning fire Sing together: given a chance we too can dance in this city.

পপ্রেম ও কলক喾ত喾 - ৪

এমন সন্ত নদবন...ব喾ড়ড় প귇র মস নকবন...

এই স সন্ত সনন প꧂সনত নফবর আবস, আর তনমও আমর কব ছফরর ছচষ্টি কবরনব, যখন মবন হবন সম꧂ণ মনষজন

ছকবট যব শধ অততকথবন, আর আঙ ইব পরনমত ছকবট পড় অথচ ঘনড়বত ছমবট সবড় ট, আনম ছসরকম সননর শপথ

ননব ন, ইবম মদন ছথবক সবর যওর দছখ আমর এখনও দই ভরর মবঝ জনমব রনখ, আর খ সম্ভত আনম এই

জননন ছশষ হওর আবই ককত ছবড় চব য, তই ব তনম উড়প নদব নভবকনর ছথবক পক সকবস যওর

সম কনমক নস্ট্রিবটর নদবক অপবঙ তকবন ন ছকবর ন, করণ ওখবন নভন ইবমনশবন আমবদর দ একট পনতচন এখনও

উত্তর অনভমবখ ছহবট চবব, ছযমন দহজর এক সব আমর ছহবট চতম, আনম আর আমর পরষন অনভনজত, সমন্তরব

ছসই কনহন একই ছযখবন আমর প꧂পরষর একট সওদনর আনপবস শপরমর চকনর করবতন, এও দরকর ছয 259|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

হজর ছথবক ছক মবকট পযন্ত পববর হত ধবর হটবত ছব তখন ছকনও পনবরবর আবদন করবত হত ন, আজ ছযরকম

পস ছথবক নফরবত ছব কর ধনতম꧂ক, এ নক বণন প꧂ণ পণ ইবত ছব আজ এই স পবরবন পপচর ড় মবন পড়ব,

করণ আজ ছমনন রকবমর পনত পবফশবন চব এবসন, অথচ এখবন আসর কথ ন ন, ঘ যতবন ছপন ছস হব

থকবত থকবত নক কবর ছযন আনম ছদড় হজর নকবনমটর দ꧂বর চব এবসন, নকন ককতই ছত কব পড়ত, এনদবক কস

ন র চরতর ফনবট দপবজ অষ্টিমর রবত এক মত মনষবক ন দরজ করঘত করবত ছশনর পবরও আনম শ

মকবদ নশস হরম ন, তব ভবল্টের ছনননমবনর চন হব যও স্বভনক ন, অশন একসম এই আনমই

এসএফআই এর নমট এ বস সনবসর নসনরত পনরকন অশ ননব ছভবনম, নপ্ল এভবই দঘজন হব...

পবহন র...মহবত নক হন...আখনর র...মহবত নক হন

আমবদর পট টর নসট পবড়ন ছসন ছজজ নভবস, আর নতন বরর কবজ জন ছশষ হব এ ছযনদন, আমর অবনবকই ঝবত

পনরনন এরপর ছকথ যও দরকর, ছমবর পরক নদবন আচয জদশ স কববজ, রন সদবন গতনন করর জনন

একনতত হব ছদখ ছ খ ফক ফক ছকব, তই আমর ছঘবষ জবড় হব সম, অবনবকই ভযনণ কবক ব ঝবত

পরন, করণ তমবনর ভ ছথবক ভনষনত এর জন ননবত চইব, ছযমন আহমন ক ধবর চব আসব, আমর রন

সদন ছথবক ননজতও নফবর ছদখম, তরপর ছহনস আনপনরর আসন ছবভনর হব উৎসভ꧂নমবত নফবরন, হজর ছমবড়

তখন রত সবড় নটর ককত উত্তর-আবশ্লেষ ত নপ ননব শব আব, এ ছসই ড়নড়র পবর আমর সই আর কখবন

একসবঙ ছদখ করবত পনরনন, এনট পবক দহজর ন সব ছচষ্টি হবন অশন, করণ পনরজবতর ক膿 ছর এখনও

আবচনর ছসর সঙত, যনদও যমন, ছগ আর ইট হউস এখন ন হব যওর ফব আমর পক স্ট্রিবটর উত্তবর ছযবত

ছকনও উৎসহ ছপম ন, ননউ এমবর নহনন ন, যবত সই একমত হ ছয ছঘর কনক চব ককত...

জদ হন নশ হন, তঝবক ভবক অ যউ কহ

হট ছদবখ পচর ঘনম ছখব পবরবন ককতবক ছপম ননবদন করম কবজ নস্ট্রিবট, অথচ ছস মনট চব ছ ধপর মব

নমনবম (আনম আজক হনরননভ নশখন ছসজনন নক রকত চব আসবত পবর), ছধহ নথ ছপনমবকর মত আনম

আজন ককতবক ফননসইজজ কবর য, তব এও ছত 膿ক ছয আনম অক নদবন্ত ছস্পশন এজবকশন ছজজ বন নব একপ

ছমবষর তড় ছখব ওর আবই যদপবর ছনস ছহবসবর ইবর ছতমর সবঙ পনরর পনরকন কবর ছরবখনম, এ

এভব মনষ গনজবট ছথবক ছপস গনজবট হব ওব, তব আরনন এই ছয মকইনড়র চ খওর জনন আমবক ককত 260|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

ছবড় নদনল আসবত হ...

দনষ্টিবত ঝরও আগন, ইনতহস ছসবক ছনব রট

ওফ নক জঘনন আগন ছজবব এই সনর স্বণন সনন, আর আমবক সক ছরবখ তনম ননশন ইববনর কমপউবন ছতমর

ছপবজক ছপবপজজ হও উনড়ব নদব একট ছট কত্তনবক ননব আদর কবর ছয ঙন ছরমনননকত ছদখব, ত শধ এই

করবণ ন ছয তখন সনতন ঙর নদক ছথবক খ হও ইন, আসব আনপবরর খচ থক ঘ নসহর মবঝ মবঝ ইবর

ছনরব এবস বদ বদ পবফসরবদর একট থপ্পড় ছমবর ছযবতই পবর, যর কবজ সনভস কনমশবন নসনপএম এর এবটকট ছচবট

ছচবট নর হব ছব, আর আনম ভ ব শধবর নদও, আনম ককত ছবড় আসর রবত ছতমর অরনন ন যতদ꧂র মবন

পবড়, ছতমর হতশ ঘটব আনম দছনখত, নম কইপ, তব আনম যদবকত ছবড় প ভননন কখনও, এ আনম আজ এ যবদ

নতন ফ্রেন খন পনশ্চিমপবন্ত, তনম প꧂নদবক আমর অবপক ছথক, আমবদর ছদখ হওর সম্ভন ইনতহস উনড়ব নদবচ ন...

Love and Kolkata 4

Such a Spring day's treat, go home after buying meat...

On such spring evenings past memories come back, and you also tried to return to me, when it seemed like this entire human life will be spent in talking about the past, and Pamela escaped right after making a contact with her fingertips though it was just six thirty on the clock, I swear in the name of such an evening, we still nurture between our eyebrows the sorrow of the book fair's removal from the Maidan, and most likely I shall leave Kolkata before this confession is even complete, but despite that you please do not stop taking a sidelong glance at Camac Street while travelling on the flyover from Victoria to , because there, in a different dimension a few reflections of us are still walking northwards, like we used to walk in the year two thousand and one, me and my boyfriend Obhijit, on the parallel that very goalless Exide where my forefathers used to work at a mercantile farm for generations, and it too is necessary to be said that one did not need to appeal for a parole to walk from Hazra to Lake Market holding the hands of Payel, like it is mandatory today in order to return from 261|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 sojourn, these old vices throng my mind too well if I try to sing a Tagore song today, because I have arrived at an unsuitably pious profession, but hell, I was not supposed to come here, while staying as a paying guest at Bagha Jatin I somehow traversed a distance of a thousand and half, but Kolkata would have been nearer, and still at Kasba at a friend's third floor apartment even after having heard a dead human knocking on the window during the night of Oshtomi of Durgapujo I did not lose faith in Marxism, but it was natural to have become a follower of Walter Benjamin, though it was me only who once thought that revolution would thus live long having participated in detailed plannings of red terror in SFI meetings

Loved for the first time, loved for the last time...

The seat of our graduation final exam was at St Xavier's, and the day when the three years of college life came to an end, many among us could not understand where to go next, the girls gave exam at AJC Bose college, and when we came together afterwards at we felt a vacuum around us, so we became dense and sat down touching each other, as many among us could understand what labour pain is, because now future wanted to be born of the present, like it is happening since eternity, we retrospected Birjitalao from Rabindra Sadan, then walking across Belvedier, the den of Hastie Alipuri we returned to the land of origin for one last time, the Kolkata of 9.30 pm was then lying at Hazra More with post-jouissance satisfaction, and after that separation we never were able to see ourselves together, though there was an attempt at Elliot's Park in two thousand nine, because the Kati wraps of Parijat are still the best accompaniments of gossip, although we did not feel enthusiastic to go further north past Park Street owing to the closure of Jamuna, Globe and Light House, and as a Hindi movie was going on at New Empire, everyone agreed that Kolkata was now seeing its end of days

There's magic and there's craving for more, how can I forget and where can I go...

I was swollen after watching Herbert and proposed to old Kolkata, but that bitch went to the disposal ground of Dhapa on EM Bypass (I am learning Hariyanvi these days so a bit of roughness may come to 262|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 the speech), perhaps like a failed lover I'll keep on fantasising Kolkata all my life, but this is also true that before being chased by a herd of buffaloes at the special education zone by unreal horizons I already did a family planning with you outside the Ladies Hostel at Jadavpur, and this is how a man goes from graduate to being a postgraduate, though the irony is that in order to taste Mokaibari tea I had to leave Kolkata and come to Delhi...

Let fires rain from your eyes, so that history may cook its rice...

Oh what a bloody fire is raised by this pleasant evening of burning gold, and your Bengali romanticism in blowing off the torn pieces of your project proposal in the wind while cuddling a puppy in the National Library compound with me as its witness was not only just owing to a lot of breeze coming from the riverside, but actually the tigers and lions living inside the cages of the Alipur zoo can sometimes come out and slap the heavyweight professors who turned into Rhinos after licking the leftovers of CPM at college service commission, and correct me if I am wrong, the far I remember you kept a fast the night I left Kolkata, I am sorry if I've caused despair in you, mea culpa, but I never thought that I would leave to escape the battlefield, and today in this war I open a new western front, you wait for me on the east, history is not ruling out the possibility of you and me meeting again...

পপ্রেম ও কলক喾ত喾 - ৫

নয় 淇য় হয়য় যখওয়খর 駁পরপ আনয়ত শনই

শসখনখ, এমন আখাঁ槇 শপয়즿 আর বখখাঁ槇য়বখ নখ 263|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

নষ্ট 駁-হখত, শঠখখাঁ綿 বখড়খয়즿ই অঅখয়ন্টেনখ

শকখয়藇র ভখষখ, অনঅ শ즿খয়ক জখনয়淇 নখ

সব ভখষখ, সব শয়ব্দের মখয়ন জখনয়ত শনই

শতখর শ淇খখাঁয়খ, তখই আর এ 쇁মখ즿 কখ槇য়বখ নখ

ভর সয়ন্ধেয় শ槇খখ শময়র শ駇য় ফপ 즿ঝপ টর

槇ল শসখনখ, কখ즿 অটফস শকয়綿 শপ্রম কটর

ক즿কখতখ, 槇ল অটফস শকয়綿 শপ্রম কটর ...

Love and Kolkata 5

Do not bring such afternoons of ransacking breadth Girl, I won't be able to live after such warmth

Two spoiled hands and lips, if go on turn into aerials This is cipher and others are not in the know.

Not all languages and sounds are for decoding Your touch is here, will never again wash this kerchief. 264|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Firesticks blinked in the middle of this evening Hey, let's bunk office and have a date tomorrow

Kolkata, let's bunk office, let's go on a date tomorrow.

শপ্রম ও ক즿কখতখ ৬

বড় অব즿지즿খক্রয়ম 槇পম প শখয়즿, শসখনখ।

ময়খপ শয আ巁ন ট淇즿। পয়ড়য়淇প স지মখনখ।

আয়গ্নেয়ট駇ন যখরখ শয়ব্দে টভয়জয়淇

প্রটতকখর শভয়ব যখরখ পয়闇 駇খখাঁটড়য়য়য়淇

শযখখয়ন অনঅ স্বর শফয়র টখমট藇য়পখ

বখট즿গঞ। রখয়ত নখক槇খটব হখটরয়য়য়淇।

শকননখ শস সময়য়রখ খবপ এয়즿খয়ময়즿খ

শঠখখাঁয়綿 শময়শ শঠখখাঁ綿। আর শখয়স শখস শময়শ।

প্র槇ণ্ড কম্পয়ন শতখর অ즿ঙখর

খয়স শগয়즿, ফপ 綿টব্রিজও শতখয়ক ভখয়즿খবখয়স।

শশষ টখম 槇য়즿 যখয়ব। শশষ বখসও যখয়ব।

রখটত্রির ক즿কখতখ, আমখয়ক জড়খয়ব? 265|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Love and Kolkata 6

You kissed with so much ease dear. My boundaries got burnt. Your lips had fire.

Those fiery days that got drenched in sounds Those who thought it a remedy and took to street fight Like the other voice returning to Tram depot At Ballygunge. The nose ring was lost at night.

Because those moments were too unruly Lips in lips and breaths in breaths ensue When sheer vibes made your jewel Fall, this footbridge too fell in love with you.

Last bus will go away. Last tram too will lug. Kolkata of night, what about giving me another hug?

------

Coda

Urban existence is about a sharply defined aesthetic of locations (includes every street, every landmark, every alley; each has a distinct feel of its own; urban locales are uniquely distinguishable from each other). They supply an impressive arsenal of objective correlatives for any poet, and for any poet who is in love with Kolkata, this city is an indispensable repertoire: its horizons of skyscrapers and flyovers, its histories of banishment and betrayal, its neighbourhoods of a Shaare Chuattor like community and Herbert like alienation, its nights of flourish and futility, its magnesium of a moribund Coffee House, 266|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 its sulphur of protest rallies, its landmarks bearing colonial imprint as well as the suppressed footsteps of the martyrs, its neon lights of dread and dust and mist composing urban fairy tales where lovers unite: they all provide space-time coordinates for a poet's language. These translations have attempted to transcreate Kolkata, the quintessential Bengali city into a globally understood medium of English. There will always be a gap between the Bengali original and English translation. I cannot expect them to coincide. In English translations, rhymes have sometimes been abandoned and sometimes reproduced, metrical schemes of Bengali originals have almost always been dispensed with, and this has been done with no fixed planning, as the project was undertaken in an automatic, spontaneous flow of transcreation, just like this unplanned colonial city flourished in a spontaneous manner.

Do these poems translate Kolkata back into Calcutta? They don't, because history cannot be reversed, and this writer-translator, being involved in a Bengali nationalist project, is keenly aware of the trajectory of history of Kolkata. Why translate and preserve these poems into a language of global communication? Because we in this workshop are in transit, we are passing from one territory to another, we are coming into contact with a wider audience who are interested in the works done by us at JBS and might not have immediate access to Bengali language. When we know that we are traversing through a no-man's land where we need to emit some signals and receive some others, we need to resort to a semantic pool that is commonly shared. Kolkata is a complete linguistic universe for me, when I first wrote the original poems in Bengali, in a sense they too translated the time and space of that city, and now I have tried to transact that language called Kolkata in these original and translated poems across the window of JBS. Cheers!

Tamal Dasgupta is editor of Journal of Bengali Studies, a teacher of English literature and a creative writer. He is a Kolkata aficionado. Sister Nivedita in Kolkata: A Nation Awakens

Mousumi Bandyopadhyay

While paying homage to the memory of Sister Nivedita, Nevinson, a Western critic says that he remembers her as a soldier in the War of Liberation – a soldier with a flaming sword. We remember her today as an epitome of Nationalism – as a passionate fighter for India’s freedom. However, few of us remember her social ideas which were strikingly original and her role as a relentless fighter against social evils, oppression, injustice and corruption in her chosen karmabhumi, place of work, which was Kolkata. Sister Nivedita adopted Kolkata as her home and till her death toiled ceaselessly to mitigate sufferings of her fellow Kolkatans. Her life is a profile of courage and devotion – a tribute to patrioitism. Nivedita played a stellar role in the awakening of Bengal and of India at a crucial juncture of history. She nurtured the cultural and political movements of the time. The most important of all, she had studied with meticulous care Hindu ways of life, thoughts, legends, arts and architecture and thus she had become thoroughly ‘Bengalicised’ in outlook and she loved and understood India better than many enlightened Indians. In fact, she, with her perceptiveness, gave Bengali life a new meaning and purpose that sophisticated, westernised Kolkata fellows would fail to recognise.

The nineteenth century can be earmarked as a period of spiritual and intellectual regeneration of Bengal. In the nineteenth century the wave of creativity permeated into the cultural life of Bengal and the effect was an unprecedented spiritual and intellectual regeneration. The national awakening in the nineteenth century, known as the Bengal Renaissance, was the forerunner of the Indian Renaissance. was not only a premium product of the Renaissance, but its ‘moulder and fashioner as well’.1 Nineteenth century Bengal absorbed the impact of West and this absorption helped to bring to the forefront people like Raja Rammohan Roy, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Iswarchandra Vidyasagar, and Swami Vivekananda. In Swami Vivekananda, the Patriotic and spiritual impulses mingled in a supreme desire to uplift the humanity in India, with a view of restoring her, to her proper place among the nations of the world. He believed that the present 268|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 warring world might be saved by spiritual teachings which Hinduism could impart, but before India would do this, she must enjoy the respect of other nations by raising her own status. It was Vivekananda who for the first time in the modern age boldly proclaimed before the world the superiority of Hindu culture and civilization, the greatness of her past and the hope of her future. This combined with his patriotic zeal, made him an embodiment of the highest ideals of the renascent Indian nation.2 Sister Nivedita, who was among the most ardent disciples of Swami Vivekananda, was not a product of the Bengal Renaissance, but it formed the background against which her entire life was dedicated to the upliftment of India, Bengal and most importantly, Kolkata.

Margaret Elizabeth Nobel was the original name of Sister Nivedita and she was born at Dungannon in the County Tyron in Ireland on 28th. October 1867. She breathed her last in on 13th October 1911 with life span of little less than forty four years. Her family was originally from and had settled in Ireland in the fourteenth century. Born in Ireland, “trained and educated as English girls are”, Margaret was the product of the European civilization which was then at the very ‘zenith of its powers’ in every sense of the word. Her mind had the privilege of being nurtured in its intellectual ambience. The Englishmen of the nineteenth century were prepared to reconstruct their society. This period was a testimony to the discovery and flourishing of the inventive genius of the European people. Their supremacy may largely be attributed to the new skills and machines born during the Industrial revolution and to the extraordinary and parallel growth in their numbers. Ireland, however was not blessed with the benefits of the Industrial revolution and the Irish people were left with Hobson’s choice of either emigrating or simply starving. Margaret’s grandparents had a large contribution to the Ireland’s struggle for independence from the clutches of British rule. Samuel Richmond Nobel, the father of Margaret was inspired by the same idealism to lead men to salvation and set Ireland free. Nivedita was profoundly influenced by these ideals of attaining salvation of the people and the freedom from foreign yoke from her childhood. She could relate the situation prevailing in India with that of her own country and dedicate herself to the cause of our people when she came to our country. Nivedita met Swami Vivekananda in London in 1895, who was looking for a woman who could help in the amelioration of Indian women without whose upliftment , no real regeneration of India could be achieved. Vivekananda had occasion to write to Nivedita as follows: “Let me tell you frankly that I’m now convinced that you have a great future in the work for India. What was wanted was not a man, but a woman; a real lioness, to work for the Indians, women especially”. 3 269|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Nivedita responded whole-heartedly to this call of Vivekananda and came to India in 1898 and devoted the remaining fourteen years of her life to ‘Jana desha dharma’, the people, the land and the religion of the country of her adoption. Her arrival in the city of Kolkata, the political and cultural capital of , marked the beginning of an era of relationship with the soul with the city as Kolkata was the city of Vivekananda, her mentor. She could feel the pulse of Kolkata and relate with its situation as it was very similar to the place which she hailed from, a Colonial Construct of the British. Kolkata was at the epicenter of all the major activities. At that time, culturally and politically Bengal was way ahead of the other states of the country. Nivedita involved herself totally in driving the nationalist and revolutionary movements based in Kolkata. She felt an imperative need for a national awakening of Indian masses as a precondition of the nationalist movement, and she felt that Kolkata was just about the right place to initiate that. Her relationship with the city was intact till the time of her death. Though she had to go back to England for some dire needs, she returned back to the city with renewed vigour and a stronger bonding emerged with the city, which was her home in mind and spirit.

Occidental notions of patriotism and nationalism, hitherto unknown in nineteenth century India, gradually percolated into the igniting Indian minds and the concept of British democratic system of governance inspired the thought process of Indians. Consequently, the Indian National Congress was born at the end of the century, which gave impetus to the political awakening and sowing the seeds of patriotism and nationalism and unified the approach as that of a nation, despite the diversity in the languages and communities. Then came the life and times of Sister Nivedita, “These were the years of fiery speeches and fierce writings and of bomb throwing; of mass rallies and secret societies; of fearless demands and brutal repressions; of bold aspirations and agonising sufferings; of the mendicants and the militants.”4 These years were a testimony to the partition of Bengal, boycott and Swadeshi – when Nationalism as a sentiment combined with Nationalism as a movement to overthrow the British suzerainty. Aurobindo could infer some similarities between the Bengal Renaissance and that of the Celtic movement in Ireland where a rising nationalism was in quest for a new impulse of self expression to give spiritual force to a spectacular re-awakening. He writes “...in Ireland this was discovered by a return to the Celtic spirit and culture after a long period of eclipsing English influences, and in India something of the same kind of movement is appearing and has especially taken a pronounced turn since the political outburst of 1905.”5 These were the formative years for India’s struggle for independence. Nivedita not only lived during these years but was one of the creators of 270|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 history for this period. She delved into India’s glorious past while giving the revitalizing force on the edifice of which she enunciated the future. To give impetus to the latent nationalism she interpreted India’s art and culture, the socio-religious customs as well as the traditions in the light of Vedanta as taught by Swami Vivekananda. Her mission was the liberation of the Indians from an alien culture and from colonial servitude. She carved the path towards the creation of Indian Nationality. As a matter of fact, Sister Nivedita left her imprint as a single individual, in guiding and inspiring a number of leading movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s that ultimately culminated into Indian independence.

Sister Nivedita came to Kolkata in 1898 and made it her home except for two interruptions till breathing her last in 1911. When she first landed here she was a British subject in mind and spirit and though she developed a fondness for India, her loyalty to the English throne remained undiminished for long. But within a fortnight of the demise of Swamiji, when the mission authorities asked her to chose either the mission or politics, she chose the latter as with her prudence she could realize that the need of the hour was a political struggle virtually leading to the liquidation of the British Empire. The entire focus of Vivekananda’s teachings was aimed at bringing about a resurgence in Hindu society and a national reawakening through the regeneration of the masses. Vivekananda was instrumental in instilling a spirit of nationalism and a national consciousness in the minds of the people. Albeit without any political affiliations, Swamiji’s teachings could not steer clear of political repercussions. Nationalism in Bengal, more specifically militant nationalism under the leadership of and Aurobindo Ghose were profoundly influenced by the Neo-Vedantic movement of Swami Vivekananda. It was his disciple Sister Nivedita, who “took the fire and blew it among the young Nationalists who were seeking a new Path.”6

On entering the Indian political arena, Sister Nivedita met with a number of diverse political opinions and activities all over India. A new era in the political life of India began with the foundation of the Indian National Congress towards the end of the year 1885. It was the first organised expression of the Indian National movement on a Pan-Indian scale. The period from 1858 to 1905 is referred to as the time of gestation of Nationalism in India. Till 1905 the National Movement was dominated by the moderates, whose method was prayer, petitions and pleading to the government for reforms. However this method did not become very popular and ultimately the Indian National Congress failed to secure 271|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 from an unsympathetic government any significant political reforms which it had been demanding for over two decades since its inception. It could not keep pace with the changing political ideals and failed to cope up with the enhancing sense of nationality and patriotism which grew in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. There was a rising disenchantment amongst a section of the Nationalists and inevitably the situation gave birth to a set of new leaders who were more radical in their demands and believed in a more militant form of nationalism. These leaders came to be known as the extremists and the chief exponents of this school were Lokmanya Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Arabindo Ghosh and . While the moderate leaders could garner their support from the enlightened elite class, the new leaders were accepted by a wider circle of lower middle classes, students and some sections of workers and peasants. Taking recourse to the means of passive resistance through non-cooperation and boycott of foreign goods with Swadeshi as the solution, they set their objective as Swaraj or complete independence. The extremists were at the height of their power during Nivedita’s active years in politics. Yet another movement of the militant nationalists was also running at the same time. The revolutionary nationalist movement was a fallout of the suppressions and repressions of the British government and the resulting political discontent. The young militants tried to achieve political freedom by creating terror in the hearts of the rulers. Nivedita played the role of harmonising with all the three streams of political opinion and activities, though she was particularly well connected with the militants and nationalists. During the active years of Nivedita the Extremists were at the pinnacle of their influence and power.

Among the moderates, Nivedita was particularly close to leaders like G.K. Gokhale, R.C. Dutt and Anandamohan Bose. Time and again they came to her house at 17 Bosepara lane, . When Nivedita after her strenuous work in East Bengal in 1906 during the natural calamities of flood and famine there, had fallen ill and had been recuperating at in the house of Shri A.M. Bose, she was also visited by the leaders regularly. It is said that Gokhale spent several nights at her bedside crushing and applying ice on her head. Mr. Gokhale came to her house regularly during the Kolkata session of the Indian National Congress to discuss various burning issues of National Interest. Mr. Gokhale invited Nivedita at the annual convention of The Indian National Congress held in Benaras in December 1905 which was attended by her. She not only attended all the sessions but also gave the vote of thanks. R.C. Dutt, another close friend of Nivedita, gave an insight of the Indian economy and its blatant abuse by the British government to her. 272|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Even after having close ties with the moderates, Nivedita developed an inclination towards the Nationalists and militants. During the period of revolutionary nationalism, several secret societies were developed among which the most important were the Anushilan Samities of Kolkata, the of Kolkata and Mitra Mela founded by the Savarkar brothers of Maharashtra. Nivedita was associated closely with the right from the time of its inception. Mr. Satish Chandra Basu, one of the leading lights of the Anushilan Samity, tells us that when he went to Nivedita before the formation of the Samity and she had said “You know the teachings of Swamiji; so you should improve your health and do all kinds of physical exercise including the use of lathi and other things”.7 But the role played by Nivedita in the revolutionary movement apart from giving advice is difficult to ascertain. But what can be proclaimed with certainty is the fact that she devoted herself to the cultural regeneration of India and her writings and speeches had a profound influence among the youth of Bengal. Bramhachari Arup Chaitanya writes,

She never took any active part in the revolutionary movement but keeping herself in the background she gave encouragement to the revolutionaries. She was Irish by birth. Ireland had fought for her freedom. She often expressed views in favour of Ireland’s independence. Later, coming to India, she, while not taking any direct part in the freedom struggle of India, indirectly exhorted the youth to plunge into the freedom movement. She thought that Indians were weak in heart and soul, but she felt if the gospel of freedom and nationality was dipped into the ears of the Indians they would wake up and make self sacrifices for the independence of the country.8

In fact Nivedita frequently visited the secret societies and gave them books on Irish revolution, history of mutiny, the American war of independence, the lives of Mazzini and Garibaldi as she thought that would inspire and motivate them.

There is lot of speculation regarding the role of Nivedita in the political movement of India at that time. There are many who think that she helped in making bombs in Muraripukur Road laboratory. It is also stated that there was a close tie between Aurobindo's revolutionary party and Nivedita to such an extent that Aurobindo’s party came to be known as Nivedita’s party. It is also common knowledge that Sister Nivedita was closely associated with the working and training of its members. Lizelle Reymonds, the biographer of Sister Nivedita writes “Nivedita did not hesitate to help this amateur 273|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 chemists as best as she could. Daringly, she smuggled them into the laboratories of Presidency College as assistants of J.C. Bose and P.C. Ray who were Professors of Chemistry”.9 However Prabrajika Atmaprana, in her famous work on her, strongly refutes Sister Nivedita’s active participation in such activities. But paying due respect to Atmaprana, it would be pertinent to mention, as opined by the eminent historian Dr. R.C. Majumdar, that the role played by Nivedita in the formation of secret societies in Bengal leaves no doubt that she did not altogether discard terrorism as a method of political warfare. The revolutionaries were solely inspired by the idea of overthrowing the British rule in India. The revolutionaries had lofty ideals, exemplary courage and nobility of , so much so that any nation in the world would feel proud of them. We are fortunate enough that Sister Nivedita understood the true significance of this movement and ceaselessly kept on inspiring the young revolutionaries. Nivedita wanted the real awakening of India and she thought that young people must arise and assume a death-defying attitude. Above all she thought that India’s destiny should be left to be worked out by the Mother-the mother being none else than Goddess Kali. Nivedita had the blazing, burning faith in mother Kali, the maker as well as the destroyer of the universe. Vivekananda imbibed his respect for Kali from his master and Kali worship was turned by Vivekananda to a political purpose. It was considered by him as a means of reviving the degenerated Indian strength. Nivedita was also converted to this cult of Kali worship and as Kali was a subject which roused the strongest of emotions in those days, Nivedita decided to speak on the subject. Accordingly she spoke at the Albert hall, Kolkata on 13th February 1899 before a learned audience which included among others Dr. Mahendra Lal Sarkar, Shri Satyendra Mohan Tagore and Dr, Nishikanta Chatterjee. Here in her speech Nivedita explained the real meaning of Kali and so impressive was her speech on Kali at this meeting that shortly after this another invitation came from the trustees of the Kali temple of Kalighat inviting her to speak on the same subject. She accepted and on May 28 1899, she spoke at Kalighat before an audience of three thousand including some Europeans. Kali as well as Kalighat is also a hallmark of the city of Kolkata hence Nivedita’s lecture had an added significance and Nivedita became inseparable from the spirit of Kolkata. To the revolutionaries and in the secret societies worship of goddess Kali was customary. Nivedita being profoundly influenced by the cult of Kali came even closer to the revolutionaries and the nationalists .

There might be some difference of opinion in the involvement of Nivedita in the “cult of bomb”, but there is absolutely no doubt of her association with the “cult of Nationalism”. The partition 274|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 of Bengal gave an impetus to the Nationalists to further strengthen themselves and their policies of boycott and Swadeshi became national issues overnight. Sister Nivedita was in total agreement with their policies and whole-heartedly patronised the Swadeshi. She used Swadeshi commodities and abandoned all foreign goods and was extremely hopeful about the success of the Swadeshi movement. In her own words,

It is necessary to say, and I feel that it cannot be said too strongly that in the Swadeshi movement the Indian people have found an opportunity to make themselves respected by the whole world. For the world respects that which shows that it is to be feared, and the one thing that is feared by all is strong, intelligent and united action. We conquer a single elephant with ease. But where is the man who would attack a herd? The note of manliness and self help is sounded throughout the Swadeshi movement. There is here no begging for help, no cringing for concessions. What India can do for herself that she will do. What she cannot at present do for herself will be considered hereafter.10

On national education also her views were equally noteworthy. On the appointment of the University’s Commission by Lord Curzon in 1902, she said: “We have had a University Commission lately, which had its very best to kill all education and especially all Science education. This is the point in India’s wrongs that fires me, the right of India to be India, the right of India to think for herself, the right of India to knowledge..”.11

She was an ardent Nationalist to the core of her being and there cannot be a deeper feeling and better expression than this. Nationalism for Nivedita was much more than a political movement. Amongst other aspects of Nationalism, one significant part was to motivate people to work in the spirit of intense devotion to the country. Regarding education, she had a very specific approach when she says.

Education in India today has to be not only national but NATION-MAKING. We have seen what a national education is, a training which has a strong colour of its own and begins by relating the child to his home and country through all that is familiar but ends by making him free of all that is true, cosmopolitan and universal. This is the necessary condition, in all countries, whatever their political position or stage of development. These general statements are as true of England and France as of India, as true in happiness as in adversity.12 275|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

She wanted the revival of art, the creation of great literatures in diverse provincial languages to bring about a cultural renaissance in the country. She strongly believed that the rebirth of art was essential for the remaking of the nation. , the Vice-Principal of the Kolkata School of Art who was imbibed with foreign ideas initially, later was to a great extent, due to Nivedita’s inspiration, switched over to the Indian style. When Abanindranath painted the ‘Bharat Mata’, Nivedita wrote “We see in this drawing something for which has long been waiting, the birth of the idea of those new combinations which are to make the modern age in India.”13 In this context it would be pertinent to refer to her lecture on goddess Kali at Kalighat where while giving answer to a question that whether European sculpture was superior or not she expressed her views with a clear nationalist fervour. In her words,

With regard to their own mythology, and their own works, the Indian people ught to take their eyes off the West and cease to compare. Let the go on putting more and more idealism and reverence in their own way into the portrayal of the mother; and they would at last produce something national and great. Otherwise they would be misled by the mere superficial prettiness of foreign execution without understanding its deep inspirations and ideals, and so would still further vulgarise and degrade their own by Europeanising it.14

From the entire discussion it is evident that Nivedita had been involved deeply in the revolutionary movement of Bengal that had its centre in Kolkata. At the same time Nivedita was much greater than a mere worker in the secret revolutionary field. She was a woman of high intellectual stature and she acquainted herself deeply with the spiritual and cultural treasures of India accumulated from the earliest period to the modern period.

Nationalism is actually based upon a common heritage of memories of the past whether of suffering and sacrifice or of achievement and glory. Nivedita revived the memories of the history of India and with this history as the background , she gave a new and broad based interpretation of . In doing so, she endeared herself to the common people on one hand and on the other hand she became very close to the eminent and renowned Kolkatans. Dr. likened her to the ‘lady of the lamp’ and shri Aurobindo thought she was fire (Sikhamoyee). She was philosopher and guide to Gokhale and Tilak, and ‘Mahasweta’ to Abanindranath. Rabindranath hailed Nivedita as ‘Lokmata’ or ‘Mother of the People’ as she was the quintessential embodiment of spiritual 276|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 motherhood with her span spread beyond the family borders to the entire nation. Her single point agenda was the upliftment of the nation and she was personally responsible for facilitating the national awakening. Many years prior to that Swami Vivekananda had already presented her in a poem in which he had converged all the hopes, aspirations and good wishes of the master for his disciple. Swamiji wrote “Be thou to India’s future son, the mistress, servant, friend in one..”. And Swamiji’s prophecy was absolutely on the dot as Nivedita did exactly what Swamiji wanted while laying the foundation pillars of a reawakened India. The contribution of Sister Nivedita is immense but much of what she did is not widely known. The extent and nature of her selfless services is yet to be appreciated by the present Indian society cutting across the borders of Bengal.

References:

1. Santana Mukherjee; Sister Nivedita in Search of Humanity, Kolkata, 1997,p.21

2. R.C. Majumdar, H.C. Roychaudhuri, K.K. Datta; An Advanced History of India, London, 1963, p.886

3. Letters of Swami Vivekananda, Kolkata, 1970, p.363

4. Rakhohari Chatterjee; Sister Nivedita in the background of contemporary Indian politics in Sankari Prasad Basu & Sunil Behari Ghosh Ed., Bhagini Nivedita, Janmasatabarshiki Smarak Grantha Vol-I, Kolkata, 1966, p.75

5. Santana Mukherjee: op.cit.,p,23

6. Ibid

7. Rakhohari Chatterjee; op.cit.,p,88

8. Quoted in Dr. Biplab Ranjan Ghosh, Sister Nivedita and the Indian Renaissance, Kolkata, 2001, p.13

9. Lizelle Reymond; The dedicated: A Biography of Nivedita, India, 1985, p.337

10. The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita Vol-IV, Kolkata, 2010, p.276 277|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

11. Rakhohari Chatterjee; op.cit.,p.91

12. The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita Vol-IV, Kolkata, 2010, p.347

13. Rakhohari Chatterjee; op.cit.,p.91

14. The Complete works of Sister Nivedita, Vol-II, Kolkata, 2012, p.436

Mousumi Bandyopadhyay is Associate Professor of History, Sivanath Sastri College, Kolkata, India. After doing Postgraduation from Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, she went on to do her MPhil and PhD from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She has published a monograph titled : The Archetypal Woman of Nineteenth Century Bengal. Living Heritage: Boats of Kolkata

Swarup Bhattacharyya

Kolkata has retains its old character through some wooden traditional boats. There are a great variety of distinctive boats visible in Kolkata and its vicinity and many variations of the same type, reflecting local traditions, adaptations to navigational requirements and user demands. Old photographs, painting, etching and sketches gives us clue about the water transport in 18th, 19th and 20th century. In this pictorial depiction three typological boat varieties have been emphasized.

THE PANSI

Figure 1: River Ganges near Autram Ghat in late 19th century

Wooden sailing ships anchored near Autram Ghat of Kolkata. Calcutta High Court which was built in 1872 is visible in rear side. Strikingly though we have lost these gigantic sailing ships but the smaller boats which are visible are still very much in existence in this area till now. These smaller boats are called Pansi. Spoon shaped round hulled shell built such boats are used for pleasure trip to River Ganges. In older records it has mentioned that the Pansi is a passage boat very convenient for inland navigation. Pansi is convenient only for short passage. Mainly a rowing boat, it can act as water taxi. 279|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Semicircular shed is not convenient for a longer journey. There was no provision for cooking. Stern portion of the boat is placed in higher position than the stem.

Solvyns mentioned “there are others which carry six oars, and are better equipped: those go down the river to take passengers to and from the ships”. According to Admiral Paris’s Native Boats, “There are a great variety in the line and size of this name; they have no keel , are longer and less flat than ‘dinghis’, and are easier to sail… Almost all carry a cabin made of planks and matting, with a thatched roof.

Figure 2: Kolkata Pansi (Old Photograph)

Figure 3: Present day Pansi with semi-circular shed 280|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 4: Kolkata Pansi with semi-circular cabin supported by two vertical beams

Figure 5: Pansi, F. B. Solvyns, 1799

Figure 6: Punsoee, Coleswarthy Grant, Rural Life in Bengal, 1866 281|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 7: Calcutta Panswai, G. A. Princep, 1830

THE BHOULIYA

Figure 8: of River Ganges(Old Photograph)

A pontoon bridge is a bridge made of several boats keeping side by side are especially useful in river crossings. To connect Howrah and Kolkata this bridge was opened in October 17, 1874 in the exact place of todays Howrah Bridge (Rabindra Setu). 1528 ft long, 62 ft wide bridge was later replaced by the present bridge. Interestingly the above photographs is showing a boat with a cabin at the aft. Small and narrow such boats were used on that time to carry passenger is no more visible in the visinity of Kolkata. The typological name of this small and narrow boat is Bauleah/Bhaule. F. B. Solvyns in his Calcutta edition of A Collection of Two Hundred and Fifty Coloured Etchings : Sec. VIII, No. 5. Calcutta, 1799 mentioned Baawalee-a, a large narrow boat for expedition. Colesworthy Grant in Rural Life of Bengal, 1866 has also indicated the presence of a mast. 282|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 9: Baawalee-a (Etching of F. B. Solvyns, Paris Edition 1808-1812

Figure 10: Bhouliya, Coleswarthy Grant, Rural Life in Bengal, 1866

Bahuliya/Bauleah/Bhaule is a long and narrow river boat with four to eight oars. Hobson-jobson refers to as a kind of light accomodation boat with a cabin, in use on the Bengal rivers. Buchanan Hamilton writing about 1820, says: “The bhauliya is intended for the same purpose, (conveyance of passengers), and is about the same size as the Pansi. It is sharp at both ends, rises at the ends less than the Pansi. 283|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 11: Bhauleah, G. A. Princep, An Accounts of Steam Vessel... 1830

Figure 12: Bhauliya on River Ganges in 20th Century (Old Photograph) 284|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 13: Bhauliya on in 19th Century (boat located centrally)

O’Malley in District Gazetteers of (1911) referred the boat variety. Hunter in Statistical Account of Bengal: in Vol I (24 Parganas) (1875-77) has mentioned Bhaulia as a rowing boat of generally 4 to 6 oars and with one small cabin. In present time Bhauliya boat type is no more in existence in Kolkata. But people of Benaras still recognized the boat type and referred to a boat type which is not akin to the older boat type.

THE SALTI

Rectangular shaped long and narrow such boats used to carry grains and other objects from Kolkata to South Twenty Four Parganas. Older photos have shown that their presence in Adi Ganga River. These boat varieties are not common in other parts of Bengal. Still those kind of boats are found in parts of Sonarpur, area. Author has identified similar kind of boat in Karanjali of South Twenty Four 285|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Parganas District which is meant to carry straw. James Hornell in his Water Transport (1946) mentioned the Salti is a dugout made of sal tree (Shorea robusta). O’Malley referred the boat with dimension of 20 feet or more with 2 feet in width. Usually the boat is propelled by bamboo poles. Such kinds of boats are equipped for small passengers as well as small burdens. Present day salti is not of that kind. It is essentially a planked boat but having the similar rectangular shape.

Figure 14: Salti on Adi Ganga (Old Photograph) 286|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 15: Salti on Adi Ganga (Old Photograph)

Figure 16: Salti on Adi Ganga (Old Photograph) 287|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 17: Salti on Kalighat (Old Photograph)

Figure 18: Salti in Karanjali

James Hornell in his Water Transport mentioned the Salti as a dugout. F. B. Solvyns in his etching has also referred similar kind of structure but termed it as Ekgachee. Ekgachee in Bengali denotes a boat with a single log. From the diagram it is also clear that this type of boat is made up of a single trunk of a tree. Closer view of Ekgachee also suggests that the stem and stern portion of the figure 18 are identical. It characterized that though the method of building of such boats have changed but its appearance remains same. 288|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 19: Ekgachee: Solvyns

NOUKO/NOUKA

Spoon shaped long and wide boats which carry greater amount of commodities are popularly known as Nouko/Nouka. Nouka is a generic term denotes all kind of boats. In cognition Nouko is bigger in dimension than the Dingi. Sometimes these boats are called as Mahajani Nouka/Mahajani as these boats supply goods to their respected clients. Their capacity ranges from 1000 to 5000 mounds. Various old photographs revealed that they were concentrated mainly in two regions. One is in and around Posta region of Kolkata and other is in the /Kalighat region on River Adi Ganga. Chetla was famous for trade on grains. Boats from different parts of Bangladesh used to unload their paddy in Chetla. Photographs have shown that various types of boats were unloaded in Chetla. Balam a typological boat used to come in Chetla from Bakharganj and Barisal of present Bangladesh. Rice they carry in those boats termed as Balam. 289|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 20: Grain boats of Kolkata near Chetla on River Adi Ganga. Boat structures suggests Balam boat variety (Old Photograph)

Figure 21: Pilgrim boats on February 8, 1891 290|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 22: Chhot: A boat of in Kalighat. ‘V’ shaped such boats are no more visible in Kolkata. But one can find it in Junput, Soula, Khejuri as fishing boat. (Old Photograph)

Figure 23: Chhot of Ghatal 291|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 24: Pilgrim boats along with other boat variety in Kalighat. Two bigger boats of the right side thatched with gol pata (Nipa frutican) (Old Photograph)

Figure 25: Mahajani Nouka (Old Photograph) 292|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 26: The Pansi (Cargo) carrying sand. Old photograph of figure 25 and this boat are practically unchanged over the century.

Figure 27: Mahajani Nouka with 10 rowers (Old Photograph) 293|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 28: Mahajani Nouka unloading grains. The boat variety has extinct (Old Photograph)

Figure 29: Straw carrier, no more available in Bengal. (Old Photograph) 294|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 30: Khoro Kisti another typological variety replaced the round hulled variety of straw carrier depicted in figure 29.

Figure 31: Bhanr: a cargo with 3000-5000 mounds capacity. Such boats are now extinct (Old Photograph) 295|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 32: Mahajani Nouka carrying timbers (Old Photograph)

Figure 33: unloading banana in Jagannath Ghat (Old Photograph) 296|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 34: Mahajani Nouka equipped with sail unloading vegetables (Old Photograph)

Figure 35: Mahajani Nouka carrying bricks (Old Photographs) 297|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Figure 36: Mahajani Nouka carrying all sorts of household items

The Sangor, Khoro Kisti, Chhot, Balam, Salti, Bhaulia, Bhanr, and many other variety of boat we have lost. But still we have Mahajani Nouka, Pansi (pleasure boat), Pansi (cargo), Talai, various variety of fishing Dingi which can illuminate us about the past glorious history, heritage and craftsmanship.

Swarup Bhattacharya, Curator, Maulana Azad Museum, Kolkata, India is a renowned specialist on Bengali boats and the ancient naval and maritime history of Bengal. He has worked for the Anthropological Survey of India. His expertise in ancient marine and naval technology is highly valued by the central government as well as different state governments of India. Traditional Sanskrit Learning in Kolkata

Somnath Sarkar

When a retrospective journey is done through the corridors of history to refresh our memories of the origin, evolution and development of Sanskrit studies in Bengal, specially in Kolkata, then we come across vicissitudes of Images. References about Bengal are drawn from various ancient sources. Baudhāyanadharmasūtra (1.1.25), the epics (Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata), Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī (6.2.100) etc. In course of time, especially during Gupta and Pāla period, concrete literary sources came into existence. The Gupta period also saw the emergence of certain new dimension of technical like the Elephantlore called Hastyāyurveda. Chandragomin developed the Gondea school of non- pāṇinian Sanskrit grammar. During the pāla period, Nyāya and Vedānta developed new degrees of maturity. Dharmaśāstra of Bengal, especially with its proposition of Dāyabhāga of Jīmūtavāhana, was a new milestone and became a treatise par excellence. The evolution and development of Sanskrit studies in Bengal, especially in Kolkata in British and post-British period witnessed the parallel currents of University system as well as the traditional system represented by ṭols also known as catuṣpāṭhis : On one hand the University of Calcutta, with a rich department of Sanskrit, established by Sir Asutosh Mookherjee, who was the first Vice-chancellor of the University, fondled the saplings of Sanskrit, and on the other hand, Government Sanskrit College, Calcutta, developed on the fertile ground prepared by the great academician and philosopher Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. At this juncture it becomes pertinent to acknowledge the efforts made by Bangiya Sanskrit Parishat and various voluntary Sanskrit institutions running on traditional lines. Bangiya Sanskrit Shiksha Parishat, as we know, was established by Government of West Bengal as a department under the directorate of education. The role assigned to Bangiya Sanskrit Shiksha Parishat was to supervise the activities of the ṭols also called catuṣpāṭhis, to conduct examination in traditional Sanskrit and award degrees of ādya, madhya and upādhī also called tīrtha. There are more than 600 catuṣpāṭhis or the centers of traditional Sanskrit learning in the state. Amongst them there are certain catuṣpāṭhis which have grown in terms of activities. The activities of 299|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 some of the ṭols are divergent enough like publications, holding international seminars, taking up and completing the academic projects of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Govt. of India and identifying, catalogueing their manuscript holdings. Example could be given of the Sanskrit Sahitya Parishat, Kolkata, an organization which is more than 100 years old and can boast of a very rich library and large number of manuscripts. Another example—Sri Sitaramdas Omkarnath Sanskrita Siksha Samsad and Sri Sitaramdas Vaidik Adarsh Sanskrit Mahavidyalaya and many others are equally involved in promotion of Sanskrit. These institutions publishes books, journals and also undertake the tasks of free traditional Sanskrit teachings. It holds seminars and Sanskrit dramas also. When we talk of traditional Sanskrit learning and catuṣpāṭhis system, we cannot afford to forget the contribution of scholars, like Pandit Nityananda Smrititiratha, Mahamahopadhyaya Vidhusekhar Shastri, Kalipda Tarkacharya, Siddheswar Chattopadhyay, Pandit Dinanath Tripathi and so many others. Traditional learning of Sanskrit language was based on Manuscript-traditions. The collection of manuscripts in Kolkata includes various media like handmade paper, Palm leaf, palmyra leaf, parchment, Assamese paper, different languages such as Sanskrit, Prakrit, Mediaeval Bengali, Arabic, Persian, Oriya and addresses more than eighty four subjects. The range of subjects is very wide and includes medicine, astronomy, astrology, music, history, philosophy, literature, Dramaturgy, prosody, Grammar, cosmology, ethics, Purāṇa, Geography, cosmography, lexicon etc. These manuscripts are well preserved in the different repositories of Kolkata till date. Such as— Government Sanskrit College library, The Asiatic Society, Indian Museum, Sanskrit Sahitya Parishat, Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, Howrah Sanskrit Sahitya Samaj, Path Bari library, Rabindra Bharati University central library, School of Vedic Studies, Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta Unicrsity Manuscript library etc. Heads of all ṭola and catuṣpāṭhis taught their disciples with the help of those manuscripts. The learned scholars transcribed each and every letters or graphs from the manuscript and collated with other source materials. In this very way the traditional learning was procseding. Now, I would like to furnish same important manuscripts in the repositories of Kolkata— 300|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

Name of the No. of Manuscripts Important Manuscripts repository in possession Calcutta University More than Śivāgamatantra ; Manuscript library 80,00 (Eighty Aṣṭasāhasrikā- Thousand) Prajñāpāramitā ; Rāmāyaṇa of Kŗttivāsa ; Jaimīyabhārata ; Some Buddhist- Sanskrit texts. The Asiatic Society More than Maitreyavyākaraṇa ; one lakh Ṣaṇmukhakalpa ; Illustrated Śrīmadbhāgavata ; Prayogaratnamālā ; Bhāṣāratna ; Kubjikāmata; Kālacakrāvatāra, Samputaṭikā etc. Sansjrut Sahitya More than Śunyapurāṇa, Parishat 50,000 (Fifty Saubhāgyaratnākara, thousand) Cikitsāmañjarī, Arṣarāmāyaṇa ; Śaiva-āgama, Government More than Kālacakratantra, Sanskrit College 30,00 (Thirty Subodhikāṭīkā of thousand) Mugdhabodhavyākaraṇa. 301|Journal of Bengali Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2

All above those manuscripts are hitherto unpublished. Learned scholars of Kolkata and other areas may edit these texts critically. In this very way the traditional Sanskrit learning and also the Manuscript studies are flourished day by day in Kolkata.

References: 1. Indian Grammars, ed. George Kardona and Deshpande, Motilal banarsidass, Delhi; 2006. 2. Kriti Rakshana (vol.7, no. 3)-A bi monthly publication of the National Mission for Manuscripts. Gen. ed. Mrinmoy Chakraborty, National Mission for Manuscripts ; New Delhi, 2012. 3. Sanskrit for Human Survival, ed. kalian Kumar Chakravarty, Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan ; New Delhi, 2012. 4. Sixty Years of Sanskrit Studies (vol.1), ed. Radhavallab Tripathi, Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan ; New Delhi, 2012.

Somnath Sarkar, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Sanskrit at Kanchrapara College, 24 PGS(N), West Bengal, India. He has published many scholarly articles and previously held a fellowship of Asiatic Society, Kolkata. Read us, reach us, post your comments and find the

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