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B.A English Literature
3rd Year 6th Semester
Indian Literatures in English
UNIT-2: Prose
2.1 “A Popular Literature for Bengal”
by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
About Writer:
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee was a great novelist and poet, who
gave India its national song Vande Mataram. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay was
born on 27 June 1838 in the village Kantalpara, Bengal. He was educated at the Hooghly Mohsin College and later at the
Presidency College, graduating with a degree in Arts [Law] in 1858.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee firstly started to publish his Novel
in a newspaper and sell it weekly and later he started to write his own novels
and publish it. He began his career as a writer. He had founded a journal
called ‘Vangadarshan’. ‘Anandamath’ appeared in installments in this monthly
journal. In 1882 it appeared in book form. He wrote 14 (Fourteen) Bengali Novel
and one English novel. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee passed away on 8th April 1894.
Text:
By a popular literature for Bengal I
mean a Bengali literature. Bengali literature must for a long time to come be
nothing more than merely the popular literature of Bengal. As long as the
higher education continues to have English for its medium, as long as English
literature and English science continue to maintain their present immeasurable
superiority, these will form the sources of intellectual cultivation to the
more educated classes. To Bengali literature must continue to be assigned the
subordinate function of being the literature for the people of Bengal, and it
is as yet hardly capable of occupying even that subordinate, but extremely
important, position.
I
believe that there is an impression in some quarters that Bengali literature
has as yet few readers, and that the few men in the country who do read, read
only English books. It must be admitted that there is a certain amount of truth
in this supposition, but it is by no means wholly true. It may be that there
are few systematic readers of Bengali, because there are so few Bengali books
capable of being read through. But it is not altogether correct to entertain
the idea that the absolute number of purely Bengali readers are in reality so
few. The artizan and the shopkeeper who keep their own accounts, the village
zemindar and the mofussil lawyer, the humbler official employé whose English
carries him no further than the duties of his office, and the small proprietor
who has as little to do with English as with office, all these classes read
Bengali and Bengali only; all in fact between the ignorant peasant and the
really well-educated classes. And if to these be added the vast numbers who are
likely to benefit by a system of vernacular education, extended and developed
so as to suit the requirements of the country, we may be in a position to
appreciate fully the importance of a literature for the people of Bengal; for
these classes constitute the people.
And we
Bengalis are strangely apt to forget that it is only through the Bengali that
the people can be moved. We preach in English and harangue in English and write
in English, perfectly forgetful that the great masses, whom it is absolutely
necessary to move in order to carry out any great project of social reform,
remain stone-deaf to all our eloquence. To me it seems that a single great
idea, communicated to the people of Bengal in their own language, circulated
among them in the language that alone touches their hearts, vivifying and
permeating the conceptions of all ranks, will work out grander results than all
that our English speeches and preachings will ever be able to achieve. And
therefore it is that I venture to draw the attention of this Association to a
subject of such social importance as a literature for the people of Bengal.
A
popular literature for Bengal is just blundering into existence. It is a
movement which requires to be carefully studied and wisely stimulated, for it
may exert a healthy or a pernicious influence on the national character,
according to the direction it takes. The popular literature of a nation and the
national character act and react on each other. At least in Bengal there has
been a singular harmony of character between the two since the days of
Vidyapati and Jaydeva. Jaydeva was the popular poet of his age and the age
which followed him. It may seem absurd to say so now, but it must be remembered
that all who read at that period, read in Sanskrit; and, besides, Jaydeva's
poems used to be sung, as they are even at the present day.
And it
would be difficult to conceive a poem more typical than the Gitagovinda of the
Bengali character as it had become after the iron heel of the Musalman tyrant
had set its mark on the shoulders of the nation. From the beginning to the end
it does not contain a single expression of manly feeling—of womanly feeling
there is a great deal—or a single elevated sentiment. The poet has not a single
new truth to teach. Generally speaking, it is the poets (religious or profane)
who teach us the great moral truths which render man's life a blessing to his
kind; but Jaydeva is a poet of another stamp, I do not deny him high poetical
merits in a certain sense, exquisite imagery, tender feeling and unrivalled
power of expression, but that does not make him less the poet of an effeminate
and sensual race. Soft and mellifluous, feelingly tender and as often grossly
sensual, his exquisitely sounding but not unfrequently meaningless verse echoed
the common sentiments of an inactive and effeminate race. And since then all
Bengalis who have ventured on original composition have followed in his
footsteps. The same words may be used to describe the writings of Madhava, the
second best of the Bengali Sanskrit poets. The writings of the poets who wrote
under the patronage of the Nuddea Raja were the same in character, and worse
perhaps, for they had all the faults of Jaydeva in an exaggerated form and but
few of his redeeming beauties. Till lately, the Bidya Sundar, the best known
production of that age, continued to be the most popular book in all Bengali
literature. After the Nuddea poets, we come to the day of the kabis, jatras and
love-songs, the only species of literary composition to which the nation confined
itself for generations. And fit intellectual food they were for a race who had
become incapable of comprehending any other class of conceptions!
Along
with this species of poetical literature, Bengal was developing within itself
two other systems which were the peculiar property of the Bengali intellect—Law
and the Nyaya Philosophy. The Bengali had lost all dignity of character and all
manliness; but he had not lost his acuteness of intellect. So from the days of
Kulluka Bhatta to those of Jagannath volume after volume and commentary after
commentary were written to interpret and expand and alter and mystify a system
of law, which already in the hands of its original framers had gone beyond the
proper limits of legislative interference, and set unbearable restraints on
individual freedom of action. And this unlimited expansion and development of
an already ponderous system of law, or rather of law and religion welded into
one solid mass, tended only to multiply ad infinitum the iron bonds under which
the Bengali already groaned—until all his pleasures and his aspirations became
restricted to his hookah and his love-songs. In weightier matters the spiritual
guide and the interpreter of law regulated, even still regulate?, his destiny.
And the
splendid Nyaya Philosophy which flourished side by side with it, and to have
matured and developed which constitutes the sole claim of Bengal to
intellectual pre-eminence in any department over the other provinces of India,
had little influence on the people, for it did not reach then?. It was to them
an unintelligible jargon with which they had no concern, which nobody cared to
interpret to them, and the inherent rationalism of which therefore remained a
secret with its exclusive professors. What a blow to the immense mass of
Bengali superstition would that philosophy have been, if it had been allowed to
see the day! But the only effect which it had on the destinies of the people
was the importation of its subtleties into the endless mazes of Hindu law, and
its endowment with a borrowed strength which it never could have commanded of
itself.
And
thus the national character and the productions of the national intellect acted
and reacted on each other. Indolent habits and a feeble moral organization gave
birth to an effeminate poetical literature; and then for ages the country fed
and nourished itself on that effeminate literature. The acute but uncreative
intellect of the Bengali delighted to lose itself in the subtle distinctions of
the law, and he indulged in the favourite pastime till he had succeeded in
making his own bonds tighter and more intimate.
And so
the Bengali stood, crushed and spiritless, insensible to his own wrongs, till a
new light dawned on him, to rouse him, if that were possible, from his state of
lethargy. And with this new dawn of life came into the country one of the
mightiest instruments of civilization, the printing-press. Gradually the change
set in, and a demand began to be made for a literature of another character
than that of the Gitagovinda school. It is not my wish to pursue the history of
the national mind any further, for the facts are known to all. It is my object
to point out to those who wish to bestow attention on the subject, first, that
there is already a certain demand for a popular literature for Bengal, and that
the demand is likely to be greater very speedily; secondly, that both the
quantity and quality of the supply is of vital importance to the community;
lastly, that, whatever the quantity is, the quality is very inferior at
present.
If you
will look over the quarterly returns published by Government, you will find
that the Bengali mind is anything but unproductive. But its productions are
remarkable for quantity alone; the quality is on an average contemptible—often
they are positively injurious. Excepting a few books of recognized excellence,
they are, when they are nothing more mischievous, either clumsy imitations of
good Bengali models, or abject copies of the silly stories of the later
Sanskrit writers, or a string of harmless commonplaces. I beg leave to point
out two causes as conducive to this state of things.
The
first is the disinclination of the more educated classes to write for their
country in their own language. Authorship is with us still the vocation of the
needy and fawning Pundit, or the ambitious school-boy, or the idle scribbler
who must needs be an author simply because he cannot be anything else. Those
who can teach their country, consider it beneath their social position to do
so. It is degrading for the dashing young Bengali who writes and talks English
like an Englishman, to be caught writing a Bengali book. And if anything
induces him to stoop to this vulgar course, the book comes out stealthily,
without the great man's name on the title-page, and hence many of our best
books are anonymous. There are a few honourable exceptions, and these men have
done an immense good to Bengali literature. It is a fact that the best Bengali
books are the productions of Bengalis who are highly cultivated English scholars.
The matter for regret is how few these books are, and how few the scholars who
have written them.
The
second cause is the absence of sound and intelligent criticism. Intelligent
criticism may be said to be a thing unknown to the Native Press. There is some
inherent defect in the Bengali character which renders the task of
distinguishing the beautiful and the true from the gaudy and the false a task
of even greater difficulty than the higher effort of creation. This deficiency
in the culture of the cultivated Bengali reacts on the literature. The
blundering critic often passes a verdict, which, if he happen to be an
authority accustomed to command respect on literary matters, misleads by its
error and strikes at the root of all excellence. Those who have seen, as I
have, an audience of Bengali gentlemen sitting patiently to listen for hours to
the flash and froth and rant which is poured forth in native theatres, and
calling the whole thing a good drama, will doubtless understand why the Bengali
drama is so inferior in its character. And the same sort of criticism keeps
down other branches of literature to the same low level.
Another
great impediment to the formation of a respectable and readable popular
literature for Bengal is the extremely low idea some people entertain of the
capacities of the Bengali-reading public. It is assumed that books intended for
them must contain childish stories and information suited to children only and
treated in a childish style, or they will not suit the understanding of the
adult reading population of Bengal. No kind of literary excellence—no
sentiments of a manly and elevating character must be permitted to creep into
such books; no glimpse of that wondrous world of scientific knowledge which
European research has revealed; nothing but its dry details and naked skeleton
can be allowed to the Bengali reader. He will not understand them, he will not
read books which contain such things. This idea is a great mistake. The fact is
that the Bengali will read only such books as contain anything worth reading;
and books manufactured on a principle which ignores him as an intellectual
being he will not read, and he does not read. Our most popular authors have
succeeded by following precisely an opposite course. It is by following the
principle of so-called simple publications, that so respectable a body as the
Vernacular Literature Society have failed to make any contributions to the
popular Bengali literature worth the name. It is, however, due to that body to
say that the Bengali periodical published under their auspices offers a
remarkable exception to this criticism, and that it is the most useful
publication of the kind in all Bengali periodical literature.
I have to suggest only another topic in connection with the subject for discussion—the creation of some suitable agencies for the circulation of readable books in the mofussil. Books will doubtless reach the most remote village in the interior when it will pay tradesmen to carry them there, but that day is distant yet. The mofussil mainly depends at present on supplies brought by itinerant hawkers. Their visits are always few and far between; their stock scanty and ill-selected. I mention the subject because I have often heard complaints from residents in the mofussil. The Vernacular Literature Society has special agencies of its own at many places; and these agencies are, I believe, available on certain conditions to the general public for the sale of books not published by the Society, but I am not aware that the public make use of them to any considerable extent. Cannot the system be utilized to a greater extent?
To me it seems that all that can be done at present is the establishment of village Public Libraries. I know that a few such institutions have been already called into existence by public-spirited residents in the mofussil. It is desirable that they should become more general. A beginning may be made in every village where there is a Vernacular or Anglo-Vernacular School. One of the teachers of the school under the supervision of the School-Committee may keep charge of the books, and in the school-house room may be found for the book-shelves. Thus village libraries may be formed at once without more cost than the price of the books and the shelves. Educational officers who travel so much, and officers in the executive and administrative departments who command so much influence, may do much in this direction if they think fit. I do not think the suggestion is one difficult to carry out—it has been already carried out in several places.
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