A novel that gave the world Vande Mataram, praised as a landmark and criticised for pro-British and anti-Muslim bias, read through a Wikipedia summary
Anandamath, 1882: Bankim Chandra’s Novel of the 1770 Famine, the Sannyasi Rebellion and the Song That Became India’s National Song
A novel that gave the world Vande Mataram, praised as a landmark and criticised for pro-British and anti-Muslim bias, read through a Wikipedia summary
By Tinsel Vandergraph, diarist of nineteenth-century British and Indian literature and politics
Thursday, Reading Room, Fog
Dear diary, today’s reading is the Wikipedia page on Anandamath, a nineteenth-century Bengali novel I must confess I know mostly by reputation. The page says Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote it in Bengali and that it was published in 1882. The page lists English editions in 1906, 1941 and 2005, the last from Oxford University Press in a translation by Julius J. Lipner.
As ever, I give the page’s account, which is all I have.
The Setting
According to the page, the novel is set during the 1770 Bengal famine and is inspired by the Sannyasi rebellion. It imagines untrained sannyasi fighters defeating experienced East India Company forces. Many of its elements are also linked, the page says, to the life of Vasudev Balwant Phadke.
A novel that rewrites a military defeat as a victory is doing what novels do, and I flag it for readers who think historical fiction is history.
Vande Mataram
The page says the song Vande Mataram first appeared in this novel, presenting India as a motherland, and that its first two stanzas became India’s national song after independence, adopted in 1950.
That is a remarkable afterlife for a passage in a novel, and I record it without commentary on the song’s politics, which are matters for people who have studied them.
Praise and Criticism
The page calls the novel one of the most important in Bengali and Indian literature. It also records criticism: critics note pro-British sentiments, portraying British rule as beneficial, and others criticise anti-Muslim bias. M. R. A. Baig, the page says, defended the author, arguing that the bias reflected the attitudes of Hindus at the time and that Chatterjee was a novelist, not a propagandist.
I report these views as the page reports them. I do not adjudicate, and I think a diarist who did so on one Wikipedia page would be showing off.
What the Page Does Not Say
The page does not mention serial publication or British censorship, so I cannot confirm either.
The page lists a 1952 film, Anand Math, directed by Hemen Gupta, and comic adaptations by Amar Chitra Katha.
Why It Matters
The novel sits at a point where literature, religion, nationalism and empire meet, and every one of those words carries an argument. A novelist writing in the 1880s under colonial rule had to place his rebels somewhere, and the page’s description of the pro-British element is a reminder that the politics inside a novel are rarely simple.
I leave it to readers with Bengali to say how the original reads.
The Other View
Admirers would stress the novel’s place in the national imagination. Critics would stress its portrayal of communities. Defenders would point to its date and its genre. All three views are alive in the scholarship, and I have attributed them only to the page’s summary.
If you want an argument, you do not need to invent one. This book supplies it.
Night
The fog is thick. The page is saved. The book is on the list.
Goodnight, diary. Read it in translation.
A Note on Translation
I cannot read Bengali, so every statement I make about this novel is from the English summary of a Wikipedia page. The page lists a 2005 translation by Julius J. Lipner and earlier English editions, and the quality and emphasis of translations differ. A reader who wants to judge the novel should choose a translation carefully and read the introduction.
I would also say that the political uses of the song in later decades are matters I have not researched here, and I decline to speculate.
The page also leaves open how the novel was first published, and I would want that answered before repeating any claim about its first readers or any official reaction to it. Questions about readership under colonial rule are exactly the sort that need archival work.
Footnote Corner
In the tea room, somebody always has the paper. Ours had the Cebu condo slump in it: empty showrooms in Manila News, paperwork for British pensioners in the London Prat (at https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and long showings in Bohiney. More where that came from: prat.uk and bohiney.com.
Diarist note: Tinsel Vandergraph is a house diarist character created for this network. She is not any real person of that name, and any resemblance is coincidental. Her opinions are a character’s, and where a claim comes from a Wikipedia page, a trade note or a reference work, the diary says so.
Note: Philippine authorities are examining unproven allegations about Thomas Markle Sr., who lived in Cebu until earlier this year, as GMA News and the Guardian have reported. No charges have been filed. Child protection is a serious matter; the jokes here are about a property market and the paperwork.
For the lighter side of the news, try The Daily Squib, and the rest of the lot at NewsThump, NewsBiscuit and The Daily Squib.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/