Tagore today

Rabindranath Tagore lived a long and extremely fruitful life. His literary output is simply colossal. What is more, it is of amazing variety and consistently of a high order. True, Tagore himself had his doubts about much of his writings, and he admitted perhaps it would have been better had he been a little less prolific. But at the same time he knew it was in his nature to be prolific, and he could not deny his nature.

Tagore appeared in the literary scene at an opportune moment a moment in the history of our literature when foundation of modernism, due primarily to Bengal's contact with the West, had been truly laid. This was true, both of poetry and prose.

The founding fathers included such stalwarts as Michael Madhusudan and Bankim Chandra. There were others, too. They all shared one thing among themselves: they had learnt their English well. This was undoubtedly the strong point about the Bengal Renaissance. Tagore was born at a time when Bengal Renaissance was in full bloom. Bengali creativity had found its hour of fruition.

The Tagore house at Jorasanko, Kolkata, was the nursery of many talents represented by the members of the Tagore family. The poet's own schooling was mainly done in his family place, only intermittently in schools. But he was a beneficiary of an elaborate private teaching system, made possible by the affluence of his family. He was also fortunate to receive early recognition of his talent by his family, especially by his father, Maharshi Debendranath.

Full report here Daily Star

Hinduism and modernity

The contemporary Indian novel might be said to have two strains. The first is the Indian novel in English, and its best-known representatives are household names: Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Chandra, Kiran Desai and Aravind Adiga. The second is the Indian novel in languages other than English, and who the great names are in this space depends very much on the language and geographical location of the reader. The English-speaking reader, relying solely on translations and looking down again from a pan-Indian perspective, might say that currently these are the Bengali novelists Sankar and Mahasweta Devi, the Tamil writer Salma, the Hindi writer Alka Saraogi, the Oriya writer Chandrasekhar Rath, and the Rajasthani folklorist Vijay Dan Detha.

One remarkable aspect of the Indian novel is that both these strains trace their origins in the work of one man, Bankimchandra Chatterji (1838-1894). The first Indian to take a BA under the new English-medium educational system set up by the British, Chatterji thereby came under the influence of the novel, then a prose form unknown in India. Chatterji’s first novel, Rajmohan’s Wife (1865), written while he was a young deputy magistrate in the newly established Indian civil service, was composed in English.

Full report here Mint

Tagore tales on talkies

The works of Rabindranath Tagore have always fascinated filmmakers, as these are universal — in time, space, emotions and human relationships, writes Shoma A. Chatterji

Rabindranath Tagore’s writings bring up images of lyricism and romance. Many filmmakers feel that the horizon of a Tagore creation — be it poetry, fiction, essay or drama — is too large, all-encompassing, complex and alien to Indian masses, conditioned to ‘popular’ literary figures like Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Their creations, it is felt, are more cinema-friendly. The 14 remakes of Devdas in different Indian languages is an example.

The homespun philosophy of Sarat Chandra and the romantic spirit of Bankim Chandra had more appeal than the non-conformist and feminist themes, which Tagore dealt with. Yet, Tagore has been recognised as a rich literary source for very good cinema. Satyajit Ray’s films based on Tagore’s works offer the best example. In 1961, Ray made Teen Kanya (Three Daughters), on three Tagore short stories — Postmaster, Monihara and Samapti. The other Tagore works he filmed are Charulata and Ghare Baire.

Tagore’s works are universal — in time, space, emotions and human relationships. They offer filmmakers a challenge to make the film as powerful, credible and appealing on celluloid as it is in print. A film based on, adapted from, interpreted from Tagore’s oeuvre offers scope for argument, discussion, analysis, debate and questions among the audience, critics and scholars. A massive volume of scholarly treatises came out after Satyajit Ray’s Charulata, leading to a new genre — writing on films based on Tagore’s works.

Full report here Tribune

REVIEW: Essays and Letters

REVIEW
Essays & Letters 
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
Edited by Brajendra Nath Banerji and Sajani Kanta Das
Rupa & Co
Rs 295
ISBN: 8129115697

An important book as it brings together Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s miscellaneous writings in English that have been published before but largely forgotten over time. Apart from letters and articles on religion and philosophy, there is a translation of a few chapters of Chatterjee’s novel, Devi Chaudhurani. His views as expressed in his articles — for instance, on the origin of Hindu festivals or on popular literature in Bengal — are instructive because they reveal the workings of an immensely intelligent mind bent upon proving the superiority of certain values and principles.

In “A Popular Literature for Bengal” he writes, “And it would be difficult to conceive a poem more typical than the Gitagovinda of the Bengali character…. 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.” Chatterjee’s English is terse, devoid of the sentimental flourishes that often marked Victorian prose.

Full review here Telegraph

Different faces of courage

A Tale of Two Revolts — India 1857 and the American Civil War, by Rajmohan Gandhi, provides an interesting perspective on these two contemporaneous events in history that occurred in widely separated parts of the world. The author says: “One links nineteenth century India with India today, the other links the India of the 1850s-60s with the America of that time”. The American Civil War and the Indian revolt were both cataclysmic events. The civil war had major consequences for society and politics in America. Although the revolt of the sepoys may have had major long-term consequences, its immediate effect on society and politics in India was somewhat limited.

What is telling about this volume is how the author binds these two events through the reportage of William Howard Russell, a correspondent with The Times in London. Known for his riveting accounts of serious issues, Russell had previously covered the Crimean War for The Times.

The first three chapters focus primarily on the Indian revolt as well as reactions to it in the American newspapers. There is mention of four significant Indians, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Jyotiba Phule, and of the Scotsman, Allan Octavian Hume who left an indelible mark in the annals of history, but whose work had little to do with the mutinous sepoys, other than the fact that they lived during that time. In fact, the Indian revolt was hardly discussed by the intelligentsia in Calcutta, which was the premier intellectual centre in the country at that time.

Full report here Telegraph

Undiminished influence of Bankimchandra

Bankimchandra Chatterji is credited with the first novel in an Indian language. He wrote Durgesh Nandini in Bengali in 1865. As though waiting for the event, the first novels in several other Indian languages came to be written in the next 20 years. But, of all the first novelists, Bankimchandra was the only one to pursue his writing; he went on to write 13 novels. He edited a journal for some time and wrote a number of stirring essays.

His literary career was closely watched by no less a person than Rabindranath Tagore, who said that the day a Bankimchandra chapter appeared, the whole of Bengal lost its afternoon sleep. When his Poison Tree appeared in 1873, Tagore hailed it as a great Indian novel.

More than the Indian readers, the English officers waited eagerly for Indian novels and they took the trouble of getting them translated and published in England. But that was not for literary enjoyment. They found the Indian mind inscrutable and an Indian novel took them directly to the kitchen. Bankimchandra experimented with subjects and plots and whatever he wrote testified to his skill. His ‘social' novels were the better and more challenging ones, but in his final phase he switched back to period novels. Anand Math, Debi Chaudhurani, and Sitaram form a trilogy, propounding his interpretation of the Bhagvad Gita to men, women and the society.

Full report here Hindu