A Fair and Gracious Dream, 1 - Understanding the Bangla Dream (বাঙালির কল্পতরু)

The Bangla Dream

If you have read Aurobindo Ghosh’s ode to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in his journal Bande Mataram, you will have come across this beautiful line:

“What is it for which we worship the name of Bankim today? What was his message to us or what the vision which he saw and has helped us to see? He was a great poet, a master of beautiful language and a creator of a fair and gracious dream - figures in the world of imagination; but it is not as a poet, stylist or novelist that Bengal does honor to him today. It is probable that the literary critic of the future will reckon “Kopal Kundala”, “Bishabriksha” and “Krishna Kant’s Will” as his artistic masterpieces, and speak with qualified praise of “Devi Chaudhurani”, “Anandamath”, “Krishna Charit” or “Dharmatattva”. Yet it is the Bankim of these latter works and not the Bankim of the great creative masterpieces who will rank among the Makers of Modern India. The earlier Bankim was only a poet and stylist – the later Bankim was a seer and nation-builder.”

If it wasn’t clear already, Aurobindo Ghosh was something of a fan of Rishi Bankim Chandra. Of course, this should’ve been clear to us from the very name of Bande Mataram itself, as well as the revolutionary organization Aurobindo helped create - the Anushilan Samiti - which was directly inspired by Bankim’s idea of Anushilan Tattva.

Aurobindo the revolutionary is an often forgotten figure. He was a unique success story of the societal storm that I like to call “The Bangla Dream” (or the বাঙালির কল্পতরু, “Bengali Kalpataru”), a sweeping movement that breathed life back into Hindu Bengal in the 19th century. More than any other Indic renaissance movement, the কল্পতরু aimed to establish a path forward for the Hindu tradition in the rocky rushing river of modernity. In its transformation of Bengali Hindu society, the কল্পতরু was comprehensive and all-consuming. It affected and placed itself in the mind of every single part and strata of the society - from the elite Bhadralok to the common person on the street. And more than any other person, Aurobindo was the river raftsman who embodied this cultural renaissance. দেশবন্ধু Chittaranjan Das said it most eloquently in the closing arguments in the Emperor vs. Aurobindo Ghosh and others case, which was related to the Alipore Bombing conspiracy:

“My appeal to you is this, that long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil, the agitation will have ceased, long after he is dead and gone, he (Aurobindo) will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and the lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-echoed, not only in India but across distant seas and lands. Therefore, I say that the man in his position is not only standing before the bar of this Court, but before the bar of the High Court of History. The time has come for you, sir, to consider your judgment and for you, gentlemen, to consider your verdict…”

Aurobindo’s story is that of a young child who was stolen away to the U.K. by his father (who was disillusioned with India and a close associate of Christian missionaries), and placed in an environment where he was supposed to become “British” and to work towards giving up his “Indianness”. For most of his childhood, the brilliant Aurobindo did just that, reading his way to becoming deeply versed in western  philosophies. But curiously, all this effort by his father to drag him away from his “Dharmic-ness”, only dragged Aurobindo right back to the love of his motherland. And this love was fueled, in large part, by a Dream he himself came into contact with. Because Aurobindo’s transformation didn’t come about in a vacuum. It came about because of the writings and intellectual revolution brought about by those who came before him - those who Aurobindo himself read as he was “gathering energy”, hiding his soul in patience and waiting for opportunities to send currents of the greatest strengths into the nation’s system (Young India, Lala Lajpat Rai).

It was this “fair and gracious dream” that Bankim showed the young elites of Bengal that gave us Aurobindo Ghosh, and it is this কল্পতরু that is the topic of my article today.

For what was the “Bangla Dream”? It was nothing less than the adventure of a lifetime. It was a unique opportunity for a generation of young Bengali elites, fresh from their contact with western ideas and modernity, to attempt to renew the splendor and magnificence of their own society. And this কল্পতরু was all-consuming - it dominated the minds of the people in Bengal in the realm of literature, art, music, and of course, politics. In fact, it is so impactful and impossible to erase, that even when the embers of the emergent Bangla revolution died out in the late 1910s, getting eventually swallowed up by Communism and Congress politics, even these latter two had to wear the symbols and memory of the কল্পতরু as an external garb to show to the rest of the world.

The story of how the seeds of this কল্পতরু were sown, however, is a rocky one. When Bengal came into contact with the British, becoming the first Indian group to do so, its elites went through a crash-course in Western modernity - the good and the bad. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Keshab Chandra Sen, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, etc. are great examples of the early contact of Hindu Bengal with western modernity. They represent the shock that the society must have felt at the contrast between the dynamism of western liberalism, and the defensive conservatism of the Indian and especially Hindu mind. As much as I can criticize them today, it is important to remember this trajectory when understanding their actions and confusion.

The first generation of post-British Hindu Bengali elites wanted the entire westernization and modernization software to be run on Indian society. They wanted a continuation of British rule and a transformation of Indian society in the image of the British elite they had been conquered by, because they had to come to believe that it was only the dynamic and forward-looking British rule that could transform the stagnant Hindu society. This was a transitional generation - their role was to act as the bridge between dead-end Hindu provincialism (which for example hadn’t exercised political power in Bengal for nearly 600 years by the early 1800s), and the uncompromising world of western rational thinking, that would mercilessly take a hammer to any traditional view, whether you liked it or not. But of course, these changes were not taking place in a vacuum. There was a British liberal and missionary thumb on this process throughout the entire first half of the 19th century. It is perhaps best summed up by this excerpt from a letter by Thomas Babbington Macaulay to his father in 1836:

“No Hindu, who has received an English education, ever remains sincerely attached to his religion. Some continue to profess it as a matter of policy; but many profess themselves pure Deists, and some embrace Christianity. It is my firm belief that, if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes of Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytize; without the smallest interference with religious liberty; merely by the natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the prospect.”

While this can be mistaken for giddy Christian evangelism, it is important to remember that Macaulay was a prominent British Liberal, more concerned with “civilizing” the savage natives in the great Liberal ideas of his time, than perhaps even to convert them to Christianity (even though he probably wouldn’t say no the Michael Madhusudan Dutts of the world). But despite all of this, this first generation of the Bangla elite is important because it began the process of churn that would eventually culminate in blossoming of the বাঙালির কল্পতরু.

The real substance of this কল্পতরু was eventually laid down by the generation that came after the likes of Ram Mohan Roy (RMR). This was the generation of Debendranath Thakur, Ishwar Chandra Bidyasagar, and of course, a little later on, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.

This was the generation that found Aristotle’s golden mean when it came to modernization - their approach was to welcome modernization, but also to try and bring about this transformation on the terms and conditions of Hindu society. Hindu society was to grow, and transform into a modern society, but it had to be transformed at the right pace, and with the right attitude. They were not ready to throw out Dharma completely to achieve modernization. This is perhaps best summed up by the approach of Debendranath Thakur’s time as the head of the Brahmo Samaj:

Within Hinduism, the Brahmo Samaj was a reformist movement.

Outside, it resolutely opposed the Christian missionaries for their criticisms of Hinduism and attempts at conversions.

This was the big change that we saw in the second generation of the বাঙালির কল্পতরু. There was an urgent need for reform of course, as the erstwhile stagnant Hindu society would otherwise not survive the maelstrom of modernity - there was no going back to the past, and the only way was through. But there was also the need to not go to the other end of the horseshoe - if the RMR definition of “reform” was adopted, there would be nothing left of Dharma to save.

And of course, in doing so, they led a transformation of Hindu Bengal to create the society that in many ways, still remains with us today. They Sanskritized the Bengali language (seen so clearly in Vande Mataram, India’s national song), fought to bring about modernity while not giving up the Dharmic identity, and of course, laid down the foundations for the বাঙালির কল্পতরু, culturally and artistically.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, writing in the 1870s and 1880s in magazines and journals like Bangadarshan, was perfectly placed to take these subtle embers and turn them into a conflagration. His works, alongside the peerless কবিগুরুর Rabindranath Thakur, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, and Ishwar Chandra Bidyasagar, cracked open the creative instincts of the Bengali Hindu people - leading to an explosion of cultural production in the arts, literature and music.

It is indeed extraordinary what the Bangla elite managed to accomplish without having any political power (as that rested with the British). It is a most fascinating renaissance in this regard, as it almost completely lacked the patronage of the state. But despite that, the revolution captured the hearts of generations of Hindu Bengalis, and still continues to do so today.

This was only possible because the বাঙালির কল্পতরু became the unimpeachable project of the Bengali Hindu elite. It was in the air they breathed, the waters they swam through - the কল্পতরু became inescapable. One couldn’t be a member of the Bengali Hindu elite in the last 100 years and not be drenched in this milieu from the first days of their life. And, as I will get into later, it was the elite participation and adoption of this Dream that gave the কল্পতরু its longevity, even among the masses.

The Dream’s Imperfections

Now of course, the বাঙালির কল্পতরু was a success by any metric, especially for a movement and revolution whose elite exercised very little political power. But, as many people point out, it had its shortcomings and myopia as well. And these are worth understanding in brief.

The first, and perhaps most glaring problem with this dream was its complete failure to reach the majority population of Bengal - the recently-Wahhabized Bengali Muslim. It is important for us to remember that in the same century where the Bengali Renaissance was taking place among Bengali Hindus, there were also fundamental transformations in Bengali Islam that would go on to manifest itself in the next century through the Partition of Bengal on religious lines, twice. It is important to remember that Titu Mir, Dudu Miyan (whose movement’s legacy is still seen in Assam today) and artists like Kazi Nazrul Islam can lay just as much claim to the title of the Bangla legacy as luminaries like Bankim and Rabindranath Thakur can. How the বাঙাির কল্পতরু reacted with the Bengali Muslim mind is something for us to study and learn from, especially in the context that any Bengali consciousness they must have shared (Bangladesh’s national anthem famously is Tagore’s আমার সোনার বাংলা, after all) was incapable of stopping the inevitable partition of one of India’s great provinces on the grounds of religion, twice.

The second problem with the বাঙালির কল্পতরু was that it fizzled out as a mainstream political force by the 1920s. One can argue that this was due to historical reasons - Aurobindo’s retirement from active politics, the untimely death of Swami Vivekananda - but I also think a deeper study will reveal that the energy and dynamism produced by the Bangla Dream was actually co-opted by other movements of the period - most prominently Communism. This is very visible in what I call the “Anushilan to Communism/Socialism pipeline” - a phenomenon where many young revolutionaries involved with the Anushilan Samiti in the 1910s become Communists in the 1920s. Virendranath Chattopadhyay (brother of Sarojini Naidu) and Bhupendranath Dutta (brother of Swami Vivekananda) are both great examples of this pipeline in action.

Now, I believe that this was mostly a function of the era itself. In the 1910s, Indian Revolutionaries took inspiration from the Japanese Nationalists, Russian Nihilists and Irish Nationalists, so it made sense for these very Revolutionaries to take inspiration from the Bolsheviks in the 1920s. It was the most appealing idea of its time after all, and it consumed almost the entire global elite in this decade. But it is still worth noting just how easily Communism was able to sweep in and swallow the emergent energy of an indigenous revolutionary movement in Bengal. And as we know, Communism planted deep roots in Bengal. The dance of the Bengali elite with Communism is in many ways still with us today, and it has left the parts of Bengal still remaining in India in a status of perpetual stagnation.

These are two main criticisms of the Bangla Dream that I can think of, but I am sure there can be more if one digs further. However, in many ways, the extraordinary thing about this কল্পতরু has been its longevity despite its shortcomings. And in this next and final section, I will try and explore this resilience.

Why the বাঙালির কল্পতরু Matters

The বাঙালির কল্পতরু worked because it gave the young, ambitious, forward-looking Bengali Hindu something to strive towards - a higher culture and higher purpose for them to lose themselves into, and to contribute their lives and efforts towards. It allowed them to be able to look beyond immediate self-interest, and become a part of a once-in-a-lifetime revolution. It was the all consuming dance, the animating spirit of the Bengali Hindu people in the late 1800s, and it expressed itself in every nook and cranny of the society. Imagine what a seductive prospect it must have been for the young and ambitious to be allowed to express themselves! All through a project in which they could be a small part of something that was more important than they were. For every elite needs to be shown a dream which they can aspire towards, especially the young among them.

Again, Aurobindo points this out more eloquently than I ever will be able to, in his essay “Rishi Bankim Chandra”:

He (Bankim), first of our great publicists, understood the hollowness and inutility of the methods of political agitation which prevailed in his time and exposed it with merciless satire in his “Lokarahasya” and “Kamala Kanta’s Daftar”. But he was not satisfied merely with destructive criticism – he had a positive vision of what was needed for the salvation of the country. He saw that the force from above must be met by a mightier reacting force from below – the strength of repression by an insurgent national strength. He bade us leave the canine method of agitation for the leonine. The Mother of his vision held trenchant steel in her twice seventy million hands and not the bowl of the mendicant. It was the stern gospel of force which he preached under a veil and in images in “Anandamath” and “Devi Chaudhurani”. And he had an inspired unerring vision of the moral strength which must be at the back of the physical force. He perceived that the first element of the moral strength must be tyaga, complete self-sacrifice for the country and complete self-devotion to the work of liberation.

And finally, he concludes with:

It was thirty-two years ago that Bankim wrote his great song (Vande Mataram) and few listened; but in a sudden moment of awakening from long delusions the people of Bengal looked round for the truth and in a fated moment, somebody sang Bande Mataram. The mantra had been given and in a single day a whole people had been converted to the religion of patriotism. The Mother had revealed herself. Once that vision has come to a people, there can be no rest, no peace, no further slumber till the temple has been made ready, the image installed and the sacrifice offered. A great nation which has had that vision can never again be placed under the feet of the conqueror.

Stirring stuff, of course. But herein lies the actual reason for my desire to write this article. For I must be honest with you, that while telling the story of the বাঙালির কল্পতরু is undoubtedly my goal with this article, the exploration of this revolution was a part of higher question that I have trying to work towards. And that question is:

What guides elites in their politics? Why do they believe the things they do, and how does one go about changing this? Is it even possible to change the minds of the elite? If so, what dream can we show them?

This is of course, a burning and relevant question in India. Indian politics today is largely defined by the asymmetry of the changing beliefs of the larger population (as reflected by the current dispensation ruling India) and the atrophied resistance offered by India’s legacy institutions - the English-media, the universities, the Judiciary, other legacy institutions i.e., India’s old elite. The gist of my queries is this: Can India’s current deracinated and demoralized Legacy Nehruvian elite, so far-gone currently in their mindless opposition, ever be brought on-board with the Dharmic movement?

This is in many ways, the defining question of Indian politics today. And therefore, it deserves honest scrutiny.

And this is also why I have undertaken this exploration of the বাঙালির কল্পতরু. It is an example of how a Hindu elite was made a part of a Dharmic movement in the recent past, and in an era that came after the arrival of the British, and western modernity. Understanding how and why this happened can perhaps help us understand how and why the current Legacy Indian elite thinks the way it does. Because make no mistake about it - the Dharmic movement needs them, or at least a section of them, to defect from their creaking old ideological forts and to strengthen the indigenous idea of India. Many of the elite are among the brightest people that our country produces (on an individual level), but their energies and efforts have been tragically co-opted by wasteful foreign ideologies. And we have to reach out to them, especially the young and impressionable among them, and push them towards a fair and gracious dream.

And this is going to be the topic of Part II of this series that I have labeled “A Fair and Gracious Dream”. In this next part, I will be exploring the intellectual genealogy of the Legacy Indian elite - that is, how and why they hold the beliefs they do, and where these views come from - a phenomenon I have termed “The Old Dream”.

Thank you so much for reading! And বন্দে মাতরম্‌!