20th

 European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies

Panel 9 

Bengal Studies

Convenors: William Radice and Kerstin Andersson 

List of Abstracts (total papers: 14)

1. Christina Nygren, Stockholm University Yatra – Popular Theatre Moving with the WindThe theatre life in India and Bangladesh show a great variety of examples of the significance ofperformances for a public at large, in everyday life as well as in religious or secular festivals andholidays. The popular and commercial performances play a part both as aesthetic experience andas entertainment. In Indian West Bengal and Bangladesh yatra has been the most popular andwide spread theatre form for centuries but the original yatra is now often deprived of its full value,not only by religious fundamentalists but also by intellectuals, the high educated andrepresentatives for highbrow performing arts. In my paper I shall elaborate on my experiences ofthe situation of yatra as travelling theatre, primarily looking at the context, letting the stage artcome second, and emphasize the ‘common’ rather than the ‘unique’.

2. Mark Maclean, CambridgeHindu Christmas and the Paradox of Bengali Secularism Against the oft-cited argument that secularism is an alien imposition, discordant with Indianspirituality, this paper suggests that the rhetoric of secularism is now an integral part of the religio-cultural landscape of Bhadralok Hinduism. Focusing on a case study of the Christmascelebrations at Belur Math and intensive interviews with devotees and monks, I show how SriRamakrishna is construed as a ‘secular saint’, characterizing the distinctive power and paradox ofsecularism in West Bengal. By investigating secularism in its ‘actually existing’ forms beyond theformal framework of the state, I demonstrate the complex ways in which this European concepthas been indigenised in postcolonial Bengal.

3. Afsar Ahmad, Jahangirnagar University, BangladeshThe Oraons in Bangladesh: Identity Crisis and Decaying Culture Apart from the Bangalis, diverse ethnic groups have been living in Bangladesh for a long time.These groups, generally known as ‘tribes’, are distinct from each other in ethnological, racial,religious, and cultural aspects. The Oraons are one of these groups. Scholars hold that theOraons living in Bangladesh are descendents of the Proto-Australian race. Their migration fromIndia to Bangladesh took place much later. They are animist and believers of totem. The ritualisticactivities, festivals and ceremonies of the Oraons are related to agricultural activities. KaramaFagua, Sarhul, Sohrai are their main festivals. Karama is the most prestigious and grandestfestival for the Oraons. In Bangladesh, this ethnic group has been preserving their thousand-year-old culture up to recent times. In this paper, I will focus Identity Crisis and Culture of the Oraons inthe light of the brought spectrum of the state of the ethnic minorities living in Bangladesh.

 

4. Ana Jelnikar, SOAS, LondonAt Home in the World: Rabindranath Tagore and Sre!ko Kosovel

When Tagore received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913 he became a world celebrityovernight. Slovenes too participated in the “Tagoreana” from the early days of the poet’sinternational reputation. This paper explores the impact of Tagore’s ideas on Slovenes, whoderived a strong sense of identification with the Indian poet out of their own historical predicamentof cultural and political subjugation. Tagore’s answer to the problem of colonization andimperialism resonated particularly strongly with Slovenia’s foremost modernist poet of theinterwar years, Sre!ko Kosovel (1904-1926). Kosovel integrated much of Tagore’s thinkingavailable to him in translation into his own poetic and intellectual horizon. Both poets-intellectualsto this day challenge us to think about national identity along more inclusive and dynamic lines,whereby our local and specific allegiances become a non-conflictual base for reaching out to theworld, surrendering neither, while enriching both.

5. Hanne-Ruth Thompson, SOAS, LondonIntuition versus Analysis – Tagore’s Linguistic ThinkingFrom Tagore’s two books ‘Shobdotottvo’ and ‘Bangla bhasha poricoy’ we gain a thorough insightinto his thinking about language. From a linguist’s point of view, much of what he says appears atfirst somewhat unstructured and intuitive, but on closer inspection we begin to see his point.Bengali, more so perhaps than many other languages, lends itself to a more fluid interpretation,and rigid grammatical analysis will not give us the understanding we seek. In this paper I want toshow how Tagore's thinking can point us to a broader approach and, with examples from hisbooks, how intuition and analysis can work together to open up the essence of the Bengalilanguage.

6. William Radice, SOAS, LondonPainting the Dust and the Sunlight: Rabindranath Tagore and the Two Git !njalisWas Tagore essentially dvaitav !di (dualist) or advaitav !di (non-dualist)? The paper comparesTagore’s own repeated claims that he was a dualist with the capacity that he also had for mysticalor non-dualist religious experience. It then considers the poems and songs of Git !njali ,distinguishing between the English Gitanjali   for which he won the Nobel Prize from the songsfrom which many of its poems were derived. In these songs, the melody is as important as thewords. A proposal is made for a new method of translating Tagore’s songs: one which preservesthe repetitions when the songs are sung and brings out the four-part musical structure. Thewords of the songs are generally dualist in mood and content, but the music reaches out for thetranscendental in a way that is distinctly non-dualist. By combining dualism with non-dualism, hissongs paint both ‘the dust and the sunlight’.

7. Soumyajit Samanta, North Bengal UniversityThe Bengal Renaissance: an East-West Cultural SymbiosisNineteenth century Bengal witnessed an intellectual & cultural revival called Renaissance.Western critical & historical thinking, European knowledge (esp. philosophy, history, science &literature), British empiricism, rationalism & education in English language affected an importantsegment of Bengali Hindu society & under the impact of British rule the Bengali intellectuallearned to raise questions about life & beliefs. Renaissance minds included Raja RammohunRoy, Henry Luies Vivian Derozio & his radical disciples, Debendranath Tagore, Akshay KumarDatta, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyayand Swami Vivekananda. The Bengal Renaissance led to the proliferation of modern Bengaliliterature, fervent & diverse intellectual enquiry & ultimately fostered an engagement withrationalism & nationalism & alternately questioned the foreign subjugation of the country. The aimof this paper will be to illustrate how the Bengal Renaissance can be interpreted as a culturalsymbiosis between the East & the West.

8. Rosinka Chaudhuri, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, KolkataLiterary Language and the Figuration of Modernity in Bengal (1822-1858)

 

 The formation of a modern literature in Bengal in the first half of the nineteenth century sawEnglish literary conventions supplant the indigenous inheritance in native literature that is bestepitomised by Bharatchandra. The tradition of Bharatchandra was located in the popular, theurban, the folk, and the local; a native heritage, often conceived of as immoral, it constituted asubterranean presence in the high-minded literary/ethical formation of a national culture in thenineteenth century. This paper explores the tension between English literary practices and‘authentic’ Bengali convention located in the work of Bharatchandra, whose legacy was the mostcontested legacy in literary critical terms, right through to the early twentieth century.

9. Srilata Chatterjee, Rabindra Bharati University, KolkataSatyagraha and the Ethics of Political Protest in Bengal Anti colonial popular protest and resistance in India took various forms ranging from pre moderntraditional forms of conflicts to the more modern forms of opposition marked by boycott andpassive resistance. But the brutal state repression of these resistances proved the need for a newconcept of ethical activism, which would remain rooted to the traditions of non-violent politicalvirtue. Gandhi gave this kind of protest the name Satyagraha. Bengal, a province, where sincethe days of Aurobindo the nationalist agitation was rooted to the concept of Passive Resistanceand the ideologies of revolution and boycott, was perhaps rather sceptic about the accepting thisnew concept. But as the all India mass Satyagraha movements were launched, Bengal becameone of the storm centres of political action.

10. Parimal Ghosh, University of Calcutta Laughing Out Loud: Sibram Chakraborty (1905-80) and a Critique of the BhadralokThe paper considers three works of the noted Bengali writer Sibram Chakraborti, his two-volumeautobiography, Iswar Prithivi Bhalobasa and Bhalobasa Prithivi Iswar, and a lesser known workwritten in the early 1920s, - Chheleboyeshay, and argues that behind his flippant style Sibramcomposed a critique of his contemporary Bhadralok society.For more than a hundred years Bengali politics, culture and social norms have been determinedby a certain understanding of bhadrolokiana. The socially established and the upwardly mobiledecided the code by which life should be lived by this understanding of bhadrolokiana. A certainimage of the Bhadralok helped them to take life’s decisions, an image which is now, of late,increasingly coming under pressure as a consequence of the assertion of the chhotolok, thepeople down under, the historical counterpart of the Bhadralok.

11. W. L. Smith, Uppsala University, SwedenTunnel of Love, The Origins of the Kalika MangalThemes in the genre of Mangal Kavya or Mangal Literature are usually based on the myths ofregional deities like Manasa or Dharma. The Kalika Mangal, in contrast, is a love story which tellsthe story of prince Sundar who falls in love with the princess Vidya, digs a tunnel to her quarters,and enjoys an illicit love affair with her. The goddess Kali herself plays only an offstage role in thestory. Odder still is the fact that this story is based upon a Sanskrit biography of the Kashmiri poetBilhana. The paper will discuss the origins of the Kalika Mangal and the remarkabletransformation of a poet’s biography into a eulogy of the goddess Kali.

12. Monjita Palit, SOAS, LondonAmar Apon Ghorer Chabi Porer Hathey: Criminality, Colonialism and the Home in Early-Colonial Rural BengalIn the Baul songs of early colonial rural Bengal, the metaphor of the bhanga ghor emerges as oneof the most frequently deployed metaphors of the human body. Baul scholars have long sought tounderstand the metaphor in terms of the complex religious beliefs and rituals of the Bauls, andhave thus located the Bauls' notion of physical and/or spiritual immortality as the point ofsimilitude in the metaphor. However, this paper argues that the same metaphor could also beread as being socio-culturally produced and deployed in a crucial phase of the social history ofBengal. A closer look at the image of the threat implicit in the metaphor would enable us to readthe metaphor of the bhanga ghor as shaped by the Bauls' specific perceptions of and responses

 

to the hazardous impacts of the changing social, economic and political forces in late 18th—early19

th century Bengal.

13. Abu Musa Mohammad Arif Billah, SOAS, LondonSyncretism, Mysticism and Artistry in Alaol’s and Jayasi’s Padm"vat # : a ComparativeStudy Alaol contributed a lot in the promotion of the late medieval Bengali literature. His narrative Sufiromance Padm"vat #  written in Bengali is, originally, a transformation of a Hindi poem of the sametitle by Malik Muhammad Jayasi. As a Sufi, Jayasi embellishes his Padm"vat #   by Persian Sufi

tradition, especially by Attar’s -Tair   !Mantiq u’t, the speech of birds. Alaol’s transfigures thestructure, symbolism, metaphor and exemplification of the poem immensely by his creativeimagination and by, to some extend, his own way of Sufi interpretations – well reflected in thefinal part of his poem. He demonstrates his prolific Sufi idea, extending Jayasi’s fan", i.e.annihilation, to his baq", i.e. subsistence, concept by illustrating an imaginary relationshipbetween the two child princesses of Ratan Sen and Sultan Alauddin of Delhi. This paper attemptsto draw the quality, significance, syncretism, and mysticism of Alaol’s Padm"vat #  with necessarycitations and textual evaluation.

14. Kerstin Andersson, University of Gothenburg, SwedenNavya Nyaya and its Social Implications in BengalThis paper will deal with the Navya-Nyaya philosophy, one of the orthodox Indian philosophicalsystems. The Navya-Nyaya proliferated in Bengal in the 11

th  century with the reintroduction

orthodox Hinduism by the Sena kings. The Navya-Nyaya is an elaboration of the Nyaya-Vaisesika system, related to the Upanishads, and focused on epistemology and the pramanatheory. Logical argumentation and rational thinking comprise the correct device to obtain trueknowledge and moksha. This paper concerns the position of the Navya-Nyaya philosophy in thewider context of Bengali history, tradition, culture and its possible expressions in contemporarysociety. I will suggest that the doctrine don’t constitute a hermetically closed system separatedfrom the wider society. It is formed in the society and in interaction with social, cultural, politicaland economic factors. I will take use of the concept of tradition put forward in anthropologicaltheories to frame the problem.