Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Beloo Mehra
Published in New Race: A Journal of Integral and Future Studies, April 2015, Volume I
(1), pp. 54-59.
First, a disclaimer. This is not a book review in the actual sense. It is rather a close
look at a book, a very special book in the annals of Indian literature in English
language, Rajmohans Wife by Bankim Chandra Chatterji.
While the plot and the main characters of the novel are quite appealing in
their own way, what is most fascinating about this novel is its history. This is the
first Indian novel written in English, published in 1864, and the first and the only
novel ever written by Bankim in English. This piece of work was considered a false
start by some commentators and critics of Bankims work and has often been
ignored by those interested in Indian writing in English. After Rajmohans Wife,
Bankim never wrote any fiction in English and wrote only in his native language,
Bangla. The rest, as they say, is history, of the gigantic literary contribution made by
this great son of Mother India.
What a delightful picture of a fresh morning after a rainy night! The clear blue
sky, the pleasing sounds of the birds, the moistened grass, and still-lingering water
drops on leaves....beauty all around, loveliness that pleases and delights. And all this
comes right after the description of a rather heavy sequence in which a gang of
dacoits is running around in the rain and feverishly hunting down the wife of one of
the gang members who might have been a spy and an informer! All traces of any
inkling of suspense, horror or anxiety that the reader might have felt when reading
the preceding passage were completely washed clean by this delightful portrayal of
after-the-rain-morning that brings with it a new hope and a new adventure in life.
This is perhaps an appropriate example of what Sri Aurobindo describes as the
novelists keen sense for life, and the artists repugnance to gloom and dreariness
(ibid., p. 96).
Did Madhav chide her? Ah, no! He covered his eyes with his palm and his
palm became wet with tears. There was a deep silence for some moments, but
their hearts beat loud. Matangini, recovering her presence of mind as speedily
as she had lost it, first broke the heart-rending silence.
The distant and reserved demeanour, the air of dejection and brokenheartedness which had marked her from the first, had disappeared; the
impetuosity and fervour of the first burst of a deep and burning love had
subsided; and Matangini now stood calm and serene, her usually melancholy
features beaming with the light of an unutterable feeling. A sweet and sober
pensiveness still mantled her tender features, but it was not the pensiveness of
deep-felt enjoyment, for the wild current of passion had hurried her to that
region where naught but the present was visible, and in which all knowledge
of right and wrong is whirled and merged in the vortex of intense present
felicity. Was not Matangini now in Madhavs presence? And had not her longpent-up tears fallen on his hands? Had he not wept with her? That was all
Matangini remembered, and for a moment the memory of duty, virtue,
principle ceased to fling its sombre shadow on the brightness of the impure
felicity in which her heart [revelled]. There was a fire in that voluptuous eye,
there was a glow on that moonbeam brow, and as she stood leaning with her
well-rounded arm on the damask-covered back of the sofa, her beautiful head
resting on the palm of her hand over which, as over the heaving bosom, stayed
the luxuriant tresses of raven hue; as thus she stood, Madhav might well
have felt sure earth had not to show a more dazzling vision of female
loveliness.
poet and saw much deeper than this. He saw what was beautiful and sweet
and gracious in Hindu life, and what was lovely and noble in Hindu woman,
her deep heart of emotion, her steadfastness, tenderness and lovableness, in
fact, her womans soul; and all this we find burning in his pages and made
diviner by the touch of a poet and an artist (ibid., p.110).
III
have changed a bit, but the need for moving toward a freer and more equitable
progress for all remains a high priority for Indias future evolution.
To answer this we need to look back, at least for the past six decades since
Indias independence from the British colonialists. Has the English-educated elite
that was created as a direct result of English education been able to lead the path of
Indias development? Answer to this is neither simple nor singular. In some ways,
yes this elite has been responsible for bringing a certain modernity into Indian
outlook for social and economic progress. In other ways, this very modernity has
been seen as an imitation of something alien by many, particularly when the socialeconomic modernising project begins to enter into the cultural realm.
Both views may be correct in their own way, and incorrect too. And there
may be possible many more intermediate views in between the two responses. The
evolution of Indian social-economic-cultural consciousness continues despite or
perhaps because of these diverse push-and-pull mechanisms. While a certain section
of Indian society may feel a greater pull toward the this is how India was in the
past type of rhetoric, another section is more dismissive of all that was good in the
past and champions for a complete break-up from the past by pushing her into a
future that is entirely based on Western materialism.
Bankims Matangani, like the outer body of India (her social-economicpolitical realm) seems to have been caught up in this discourse. She belongs with
Madhav, who at this point carries in him the seed of a truly modern outlook, thanks
to his education, but isnt ready to be with Matangani. Not just yet. Perhaps because
he hasnt yet found the grounded-ness for his modernity to flower naturally in its
context. He hasnt yet discovered the indigenous roots of his modernity and he is
still running around looking elsewhere for a confirmation of his reason, his view on
what is good for his future. And the future of his country. The Modern hasnt been
fully harmonised with the Eternal, the Reason hasnt been fully integrated with the
Faith, the progress of Mind hasnt yet fully become the growth of Spirit.
Reading Bankims Rajmohan Wife in this light of what the characters may tell
us about the nation and its future course of growth and development can be further
enabled when we recall these words of Sri Aurobindo:
I can only say that everything will have my full approval which helps to
liberate and strengthen the life of the individual in the frame of a vigorous
society and restore the freedom and energy which India had in her heroic times
of greatness and expansion. Many of our present social forms were shaped,
many of our customs originated, in a time of contraction and decline. They had
their utility for self-defence and survival within narrow limits, but are a drag
upon our progress in the present hour when we are called upon once again to
enter upon a free and courageous self-adaptation and expansion... (CWSA,
Vol. 36, p. 274)
7
Madhav in Rajmohans Wife isnt perhaps ready yet to let go of all that drags
his progress and that of his country. Thats why perhaps Matangani, the nation is
not really his at the moment.
And when will Madhav be ready to be with Matangani? When will the
English-educated elite of India find their grounded-ness in the Indian soul? That
hope rests with the youth of India. To recall again from Sri Aurobindo:
Our call is to young India. It is the young who must be the builders of the new
world,not those who accept the competitive individualism, the capitalism or
the materialistic communism of the West as Indias future ideal, not those who
are enslaved to old religious formulas and cannot believe in the acceptance and
transformation of life by the spirit, but all who are free in mind and heart to
accept a completer truth and labour for a greater ideal. They must be men who
will dedicate themselves not to the past or the present but to the future.... It is
with a confident trust in the spirit that inspires us that we take our place among
the standard-bearers of the new humanity that is struggling to be born amidst
the chaos of a world in dissolution, and of the future India, the greater India of
the rebirth that is to rejuvenate the mighty outworn body of the ancient
Mother. (CWSA, Vol. 13, p. 511)
Rajmohans Wife, when read as an allegory of modern India reminds the
reader that national consciousness when invoked through and inspired by
thoughtful and noble literature, art and music is always much more real and
uplifting than anything uttered by the so-called political leaders and workers of the
official machinery.
To appreciate the vast contribution made by this noble soul, Bankim Chandra,
to the awakening of his motherland and to the renaissance of Indian literature and
thought, and to do it through the lens of a literary criticism that is grounded in the
eternal essence of all things Indian and is not merely an imitation or regurgitation of
whatever theoretical frameworks that may be the fad of the day this is what
makes reading Bankim extra, extra special for me.