Ghana da was Postcolonial: Reworkings of the Robinson Crusoe trope in Bengali literature
The title of my paper is a vague attempt at resonance, lost in translation, with the title of the short story that caught my attention some time back: “Robinson Crusoe meye chhilen”, or “Robinson Crusoe was female”. And of course Ghana da was not postcolonial – not overtly. Consciously at least, nor was his creator Premendra Mitra. For those of us who are not altogether familiar with the institution of Ghana da, a bit of an introduction would not altogether be amiss.
Ghana da appeared on the Bengali literary scene in 1945 in a short story titled “Mosha” or “Mosquito”. It was published in Alpana, a Puja barshiki. Four comrades, so to speak, feature in his stories. They are Shibu, Sisir, Gour and Sudhir. Shibu, as has been pointed out, is based on the great humourist and satirist, Shibram Chakrabarty. And Sudhir, a narrator in whose voice we hear the first few stories, fades in gradually. Sudhir was also Premendra Mitra’s own pet-name. Ghana da is a middle- aged man, tall, lanky, with a voracious appetite. Leela Mazumdar would write (quoted in the introduction to Ananda’s Complete Ghana da) “I have known many gastrophiles who have brought ruin upon their happy homes doing exactly this: Even if they are not cooking themselves, they will supply those who are with descriptions of food preparation from Riga, Mikiu, the Congo, or Bodrum, in torturous detail.” This brings together succinctly the two principle preoccupations of Ghana da: eating and story- telling – especially with an eye on the far off and fantastic. As the saying goes, long have readers and skeptics resigned themselves to the fact that there has not been a single significant incident in the world over the last century or so in which Ghana da has not played a role.
Ghana da lives for the most part – lives on the edge, one might say – in a mess-bari. As Amlan da points out in the introduction to the collection of his translations, a mess-bari does not quite translate into a boarding house. The mess-bari would be an assemblage where individuals would stay paying reluctant rents. Many of the favourite characters in Bengali fiction of the early and mid 20th century are based in mess-bari-s. Shibram Chakrabarty, mentioned earlier, set most of his stories in the 2 mess-bari. Most of these, as Amlan da notes, would be located either in Central or in North Kolkata. The setting itself would dictate a kind of all- male cast – or perhaps in rare cases all-female – but I’m not sure how popular these are. The all male cast is again something that is characteristic of a fairly prominent body of literature for children in Bengali. One thinks of the similar Teni da of Pataldanga, and his gang, or indeed of Felu da.
Ghana da lives on the edge even beyond his mess-bari arrangement. He lives on the edge of credulity and always running the risk of getting caught. But he won’t get caught. We are never sure if we are happy when he wriggles out of a tight corner, or if our sympathies lay with those who were trying to catch him out. He has a sense of entitlement that is annoying and endearing at the same time. The author too keeps an accurate tab on the number of cigarettes Ghana da has claimed. While in the first few stories Ghana da distributes evenly the privilege of offering him cigarettes, by the time we get to “Nuri”, we find that Sisir is the consistent supplier, and that Ghana da has till then borrowed 2357 cigarettes from him.
Premendra Mitra was a remarkable man himself. The writer of several novels, he worked in the film industry when it was in its formative stages here. He wrote short stories, and won fame as a poet. He wrote in 1944 in “Why I write” that for him, “Writing is not merely a recreational pastime, or a personal luxury. It is a great responsibility to express in human terms the enormous impenetrability of valuable knowledge that surrounds the human experience.” One of the reasons behind writing Ghana da – perhaps ‘reason’ is too strong a word – let’s say one of Premendra Mitra’s own interests that informs Ghana da, is science. He was a student of the sciences, though he did not become a scientist himself. Surajit Dasgupta, editor of the Ananda Complete Ghana da writes that in conversation Premendra Mitra has once revealed that shortly after the death of Chittaranjan Das, when Calcutta was gripped by communal riots, he went off to his birthplace, Varanasi, and there met Manoranjan and Kshitindranarayan Bhattacharya, two brothers from Calcutta. The three of them discussed many a scheme to develop a strand of children’s literature in Bengali that would feature the scientific developments of the world. 3
Mitra quickly penned a novella, which was published shortly afterwards. His Ghana da stories are extremely well-researched, but that never gets in the way of a fertile imagination – neither of creator, nor of character.
From this, let me abruptly shift to a brief discussion of Crusoe in Bengal. In the 1719 novel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe written by Daniel Defoe himself, Crusoe does come to Bengal. I have not finished reading the novel in its entirety, but from the chapters that I did get to read while preparing for this paper, it appears that there was a mutiny on his ship when they had reached Bengal, and he found himself stranded here. He clarifies that his main difficulty resulted from the fact that he had arrived “without any concern with the East Indian Company”, and it would, therefore, be difficult to find a ship out. He writes, “I then took a good lodging in the house of an Englishwoman, where several merchants lodged, some French, two Italians, or rather Jews, and one Englishman. Here I stayed for nine months, considering what course to take.” But this is taking Crusoe in Bengal trope too literally.
As I suppose is the case in most parts of the English-speaking world, Robinson Crusoe features in some form – abridged, fragmented – in school syllabi. In an essay titled “Household Words: an account of the Bengal Family Library”, Abhijit Gupta draws our attention to the work of the Vernacular Literary Society of Bengal that was founded in 1851. It was responsible for the first publishers’ series in the Bengali language – the Bengal Family Library. The first book that the Society decided to translate was none other than Robinson Crusoe. The translation done by J. Robinson, here I agree with Abhijit da, is a good read. A copy of possibly the fourth edition (or subsequent) is available at the National Library, but earlier editions can perhaps be located in Uttarpara Library. Abhijit da quotes from a note to the first edition of Paul and Virginie, where Hodgson Pratt writes,
Mere Translation would not meet the great objects which this Society intends to keep in view. There is not only a difference of language between the people of India and of England. We must recognize the far greater difficulty of a difference of ideas, associations, and literature. The instruction [italics mine] communicated to the masses require somewhat more than mere 4
employment of the vehicle of native language – the form in which it is conveyed must appeal to ideas and feelings already existing…
In accordance with this view two of our number undertook to adopt the text of Robinson Crusoe…we did not hesitate to change the scene, to make Robinson Crusoe the son of an Armenian merchant in Calcutta, and to wreck him on one of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago.
Over the next few years, however, the Society’s views underwent change, and they considered the adaptation in “bad taste”. The fourth edition has the original names restored and is a more literal, direct translation.
The 1857 report showing the sale of the Society’s titles in the first five years (1851-86) Abhijit da cites in his article records that barring the Almanac for Bengali Year 1262, which sold 1427 copies, the highest selling title was Robinson Crusoe, which sold a thousand copies – remarkably of the thousand that were printed. Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare sold only 317 out of the 1500 that were printed. The sales of Robinson Crusoe did take a hit around three years later, when, as the Friend of India commented, that they wished fiction was sold even more, “but all classes are interested in Robinson Crusoe and can comprehend the ‘Ugly Duckling’.”
Ashutosh Mukherjee’s library included a copy of The New Robinson Crusoe: An Instructive and Entertaining History for the Use of Children of Both Sexes, written by J.H. Campe. Campe took issue with Rousseau’s views on the roles of culture and nature in the growth of the child. He felt that Rousseau “allows Nature too much; and where he thought he found her defective, he has not always been able to find the best means of supplying her defects.” The preface goes on to discuss a passage from Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education (1762). Rousseau writes,
Might there not be found means to bring together so many lessons of instruction that lie scattered in so many books; to apply them through a single object of a familiar and not uncommon nature, capable of engaging the imitation, as well as rousing and fixing the attention even at so tender an age?...