Unit 5 Nirad C. Chaudhuri

UNIT 5 NIRAD C. CHAUDHURI Structure Objectives Introduction The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian Thy Hand, Great Anarch Critical Opinion Let Us Sum Up Glossary Questions Suggested Reading 5.0 OBJECTIVES In this unit, we will read selections from Nirad C. Chaudhuri's autobiography. We shall critically examine one long chapter from The Autobiography of an Unknown Indion, the book which catapulted Chaudhuri to fame, and then two selections from its sequel, Thy Hand, Great Anarch, to acquaint ourselves with Chaudhuri's distinctive prose style and his beliefs. His opinions are controversial, and critical opinion about his achievement is divided. You should aim at evaluating this leading writer of non-fiction prose yourself 5.1 INTRODUCTION Nirad C. Chnudhuri (1897-1998) ~~~-~hdprose Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897-1 998) was born on November 23 into a middle class tamily in Kishorganj, a small town in Mymensingh District of East Bengal. He was educated in Bengal, and took his B.A. (Hons.) degree from the University of Calcutta in 19 18. He studied for an M.A. degree in history, but was unsuccessful in the examination. Even as a school child, he was fascinated by books and the inteilcctuai life. The atmosphere at home was conducive to an appreciation of Western literature and music. He was very well read, and had learnt European languages li'~eFrcnch. German and Latin. Lack of a master's degree ruled out the chances of teaching in a college, and he found it difficult to get suitable employment. For some time hc tried free lance .joudism. From 1937 to 194 1 he worked as a secretary to Saratchandra Bose (Subhas Chandrals brother). Fed up with Bengali insularity, he left Calcutta tc settle down in Delhi, and took up a government job there He worked for All India Radio from 1941 to 1952. But he found that Dellii, too, was fill of Phikst~nes. He was extremely fortunate in marriage. As Anita Malik puts it (Nirod C' Chaudhun: The F~rstHundred Years, A Celebration p.58): "Nirad Chau&nuri would not have been what he is without the patience and unfailing support of his wlfc". Following tradition, he did not want to see the girl chosen by his father; as he tel!s us in the second volume of bis autobiography, he hirnseIf was not a very impressive physical specimen, being short, thin and dark-skinned. They had three sons. and his wife Amiya supported his eccentric ways in their six decades of married iife. Hc was always extravagant in his love for art objects, and acquired them even if they were beyond his means. He recounts how his wife had to settle the account 0.1 selling off the gold coins she had received as a mamags present when he bought some expensive Cashmere shawls on credit. Their financial situation did not improve even after moving to Delhi, because of Chaudhuri's penchant for buying rare wines ,and books from money which could be better spent on routine househoid expenses. His first book, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (discussed in Section 5.2. henceforth referred to as Unknown Indian) made him famous. He was deno~tnccdas an Anglophile, but his mastery of English was admired. Unknown Indian is actually not his first significant publication. "Defence of India or Nationalization of Indian Army", a seventy-three page essay, was published in 1935 by the All India Congress Committee, Allahabad. Naik has observed that "Two interesting features of this early essay are the total absence from it of both his notorious anglophilia and his Hindu- baiting. There is also not the slightest trace here of those preconceived theories and prejudices about Hindu character and culture which gradually hardened into obstinate dogmas as Chaudhuri grew older" (Naik, 1984, p. 106). In 1955 he went abroad for the first time in his life. The British Council arranged for him to visit England, where he spent five weeks at the invitation of the B.B.C. to prepare some talks for its Overseas Service. The newspaper articles he mote absnt his visit grew into his second book, A Passage to England, a very readable travelogue. A Passage 60 England received good reviews la the Znglish press. According to Yhushwant Singh, "Three editions were rapidly sold oilt and it had the distinction of becoming the first book by an Indian author to have become a bestscller in EnglandW(Dasgupta3 1). He has preconceived concepts of England Brawn from h~s reading of English literature, and he is acutely conscious of the fkt that Ecgland is very different from India. His happiness at seeing "a great many things that I had long4 to see since my boyhood" makes this the most enjoyable of his books In 1970 he moved to England, and started work on a biography of Max Miiiler. Just as he had never gone back to Kishorganj after 1927, he never came back to India. and settled down at the university town of Oxford. He was badly disappointed when hc found that contemporary English society was very different from the picture he had built up from his reading of literature. He could never accept a society which produced hippies and glorified the Beatles, and this disenchantment is expressed in his last book, Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse. (The three "horsemen" are individualism, nationalism and democracy, which he holds responsible for the . decadence which has overtaken civilization). The University of Oxford honoured him Nirad C. Chaudhuri with a D.%itt. in 1990. The Queen conferred the CBE on him. He was a Fellow of the Royal Literary Society. He died in July 1998. Chaudhuti's third book, The Continent of Circe :An Essay on the Peoples of lndin(1966) provoked fierce controversy. He proposed the thesis that Hindus are actually a race alien to India and are arrivals from Europe. Modern Hindus are descended from the fair-haired, blue-eyed Aryans who inhabited the region between the Volga and the Danubc. Circe was a sorceress in Greek mythology. Anyone who dnnk from her cup was turned into a pig, and this was the fate of the companions of Odysseus (Ulysses)in The Odyssey. India is a sorceress; due to the climatic conditions;yeople who make it their home, in the course of time, become dehumanized and turn into swine. The Continent of Circe reveals Chaudhuri's detestation of India at its pathological extreme; the influence of this "Circe" has made "insanity" and "inertia" the principal attributes of present Bay Hindus. He reveals a perPectly "Onentalist" attitude to India (in the sense in which Said uses the term). He glorifies ancient Vedic India, but finds nothing good in the present. His attempt to trace a European lineage for himself (and all Hindus) has been called "an in5tance of acute anglophilia" (Kaul, p.54). His later books of intellectual exposition, like the Intellectual in India (1967) and To Live or Not to Live (1970) are slightly more objective in their comments on India and Indians, though he consistently criticises the anglicized Indian. His essays have appeared in journals like The Illustrated Weekly of India md London Magazine. A collection, East is East and West is West, edited by his son, was published in 1996, His biography of Clive, Robert Clive ofIda, is overwhelmingly favourable to this Nabob, who enriched himself through loot. Chaudhuri attempts to justify Clive's rapacity on the grounds that "The acceptance of gifh was not contrary to the regulations then in force" (Clive, pp.260-61). Scholar Extraordinaary The Life of l'rqfewor the Ht. Hon Friedrich Mrax Miiller (1974) is generally considered Chaudhuri's best book, and won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1975. 5.2 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OFAN UNKNOWN INDIAN In Thy Hand, Great Anarch, Chaudhuri says about his first book that, "In spite of its title, the book was not truly an autobiography. It was a picture of the society in which I was born and grew up." Chaudhuri is quite clear about his purpose in writing llnknown Indian: The story I ~vantto tell is the story of the struggle of a civilization with a hostile environment, in which the destiny of the British Empire in India became necessarily involved. My main intention is thus historical, and since I have written the account with the utmost honesty and accuracy of which I am capable, the intention in my mind has become mingled with the hope that the book may be regarded as a contribution to contemporary history. (pix) He states his target audience: "I have written this book with the conscious object of reaching the English-speaking world" (pix). Perhaps this intended readership is responsible for Chaudhuri always using similes from European art, liteiature and history. Both the preface and the prefatory note to the first section are in the style typical of the book: there are long, involved sentences, and a liberal sprinkling of words from European languages. There are many situations where only the French or Latin quotatiowuv'ould do. But Chaudhuri seems to use foreign phrases even if English equivalents exist. The conpnon reader may not be fblly conversant with these phrases, and pausing to find out the meaning provides a needless break in the reading experience. Here are two sentences from the second paragraph of Unknown Indian: Non-Fictional ease "These recollections of mine are in no sense des memoires d'outre-tomhe. If anyone so chooses he may call them memoires d'outre-Manche in a figurative sense, in the sense that, retreating before the panzers of the cncmy who has seized my past life, I have decided to put between him anu mc.

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