THE NATION AND THE COMMUNITY: HINDUS AND MUSLIMS IN THE NOVELS OF BANKIM CHANDRA CHATTERJEE Author(s): Ranjana Das and Ranjan Das Source: Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 73 (2012), pp. 578-587 Published by: Indian History Congress Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44156251 Accessed: 06-04-2020 06:42 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Indian History Congress is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Proceedings of the Indian History Congress This content downloaded from 27.61.123.5 on Mon, 06 Apr 2020 06:42:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE NATION AND THE COMMUNITY: HINDUS AND MUSLIMS IN THE NOVELS OF BANKIM CHANDRA CHATTERJEE Ranjana Das Cultural encounter with the colonial state gave rise to reconstructive processes that allowed the subject intellectual class in nineteenth century Bengal to engage in discourses of 'self' representation. These discourses were inherently complex as they strove for an autonomous understanding of their past but largely remained within the colonial paradigm. From reform to revival, from liberal to conservative movements the debate according to David Kopf was between 'two Orientalist derived re-interpretations of the Indian heritage'.1 Partha Chatterjee however, provides them a degree of autonomy and argues that the first efforts of nationalist imaginations were made in the spiritual-cultural domain which inhered the essence of an indigenous cultural identity and which had to be preserved and protected from Western encroachments. 'It was in this inner, spiritual domain that nationalism launched its most powerful, creative and historically significant project, namely to fashion a modern national culture that is nevertheless not Western.2 An important intervention was made by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, one of the luminaries of Bengal Renaissance, when he unequivocally declared the necessity of an autonomous Indian historiography distinct from the Anglophone version that would reclaim the Indian past from colonial appropriation and provide its own autonomous interpretation, a stimulating narrative, a common welding history.3 This is where the nation was born and a community welded. Novels had a deep internal relation to historical work, for they tried to spell, as much as serious history sought to do, a self-respecting relation with the community's past.4 Perhaps for the first time in Bengali literature Bankim converted a neutral territory, a profane space into a sacred ground of a community. Again this sacred ground turns into the feminine symbol of sustenance, the Mother, the virulent goddess from the Hindu tradition. With all her feminine qualities and maternal instincts, she is also extremely violent and stimulating, invincible yet vulnerable when it comes to inspire a battle against the enemies. It is a powerful imagery that evokes national consciousness, where land itself is sanctified. However, this nation is largely understood in cultural terms by Bankim. There is a significant preoccupation with representing Hindus and Muslims in his 'novels.. This paper would attempt to discuss Baftkim's preoccupation witlvthe This content downloaded from 27.61.123.5 on Mon, 06 Apr 2020 06:42:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Modem India 579 cultural power relations between Hindus and Muslims and within this paradigm locate his understandings of the nation and the community. The primary sources of this study are the five fundamental novels on the theme, namely, Durgeshnandini, Mrirtalini, Rajsingh, Anandamath and Sitar am. According to Tapan Raychaudhuri and Tanika Sarkar, Bankim had taken to more compulsive writings on Hindu knowledge and identity, at a much later stage, following his exchanges with Reverend Hastie of the General Assembly who had been rather vicious in discussing Hinduism. Bankim reacted by repudiating his earlier dealings with general and universal social issues and became exclusively preoccupied with the theme of a reconstructed Hindu form of knowledge and leadership. Thus after 1882, the novels, Rajsingh, Anandamath and Sitar am became totally concerned with issues of Hindu empowerment through defeating the Muslim, although Sarkar says that his earlier writings were not totally free from such concerns but remained in there with 'locked horns'.5 1 intend to argue that Bankim certainly became more dogmatic in his later phase and in response to Reverend Hastie 's brutal criticisms he became more defensive and preoccupied with Hinduism. But his engagement with the issue was definitely not limited to this period. In fact a reading of his novels from Durgeshnandini , his first novel onwards, one does notice a trend in his writings, in constructions of the Hindu as the 'self' and the Muslim as the 'other' mediated and defined by notions of 'cultural differences'. Studies of medieval social and cultural movements reveal cultural conceptions of the community as early as fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was cultural because a wide spectrum of religious beliefs agglomerated within the Muslim and non-Muslim enclosures respectively.6 The cultural cannot be interchanged with the religious as the latter cannot encompass the features embedded in the former. Culture may include religion but it is more a way of life, an identity of a community and the people within it which essentially differentiates it from the non- practising others. It, more importantly, involves notions of power and relations mediated by it regulate or disrupt relations between cultural communities. Bankim in his novels critically engages with these cultural power relations between Hindus and Muslims. His novels suggest a pattern; from an implicit expression of uncrossable boundaries between the two communities the novels subsequently assume forms of absolute dichotomy. And through these cultural power relations Bankim also seeks to define nationalism. Durgeshnandini , Bankim's first novel in Bengali written in 1865 is not much considered in the context of discussing his representations This content downloaded from 27.61.123.5 on Mon, 06 Apr 2020 06:42:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 580 IHC : Proceedings, 73rd Session , 2012 of Hindu-Muslim differences. The main thematic preoccupation of the novel is love and emotion; yet, contours of cultural differences exist largely at a passive and implicit level. Sudipto Kaviraj discusses transgression of emotions and considers the moral-personal aspect of the plot as remarkably daring. Jagat Singh, the protagonist, is seen at the intersection of two evolving relationships: his own love for Tilottama and Ayesha's love for him. Kaviraj considers it particularly interesting in the way in which love is inscrutable, and the possibility that it can arise unbidden between people who are separated by an uncrossable social distance.7 According to Kaviraj the feeling left in us at the end of the story is not one of moral horror at the presumption of Ayesha's transgressive love for Jagat Singh, but a stealthy fundamental sympathy.8 This contention may appear significantly problematic if one takes note of the trend in his later novels based on transgressive emotions and also those based on Hindu-Muslim themes. While Bankim addresses the 'idea' of transgression in his first novel, nevertheless, in his later novels he does attempt 'real' transgressive acts. Ayesha does not enter into an actual transgression but his subsequent heroines do: Kundanandini in Bishabriksha , Rohini in Krishnakanter Will , Sree in Sitaram , Indira in Indira , all enter into real transgressive acts. But this does not happen with Ayesha. If one may look into the Hindu-Muslim plots in his subsequent novels, it may be more logical to deduce that such transgression could not have materialized for Ayesha. The socio- cultural barriers and constraints were perhaps more overpowering, so much so that the author, despite bringing about a transgressive edge to the love story, would not attempt to overcome the boundaries and materialize such transgression. Durgeshnandini does not attempt any overt expression of antagonism between the two communities but the general background is of a war between the Hindu Rajputs and Muslim Pathans. The novel essentially stands for significant cultural differences expressed at an 'implicit' level. From Durgeshnandini , the discourse of cultural difference widens onto Mrinalini, Rajsingh, Anandamath and finally Sitaram . Representations of cultural dichotomies begin from here, when descriptions no longer deal with subtle and passive connotations but become overt and aggressive. Mrinalini stands as Bankim's literary attempt to counter and reject the historical claims of the medieval Muslim chronicler, Minhasuddin, which belittles Hindu capabilities of self-defense.9 In the novel, he seeks to explain and simultaneously reason the historical conquest of Bengal through his concoction of the literary character, 'Pashupati'. The latter's treachery to Lakshman Sena and defection to the Yavan10 side indicates that the problem inhered in Hindu solidarity