‘A Tremendous Comet’: Positing Michael
Madhusudan Dutt in Indian Literature
Jawhar Sircar
In
Namita Gokhale & Malashri Lal: Betrayed By Hope
Harper
Collins (2020)
To appreciate a meteoric writer like Michael
Madhusudan Dutt and estimate his contribution to Indian literature and culture,
we need to first take him from the confines of Bengal, where he is stuck, quite
unwittingly. In his home ‘province’, he is remembered forever for introducing
lasting innovations that enriched a language that was struggling to move out of
its archaic mould. Dutt gave Bangla, and other Indian languages that loved
constructive experimentation, a breath of new life and blazed new paths for
generations of writers to follow, all the way up to Rabindranath Tagore and
beyond. Born into an upper-class, upper-caste Hindu family in 1824, Dutt was a
perennial rebel and iconoclast, who renounced the religion of his forefathers,
for Christianity rather effortlessly and early in life. Yet, in his early
teens, his classmate believed that he ‘was a genius (and) even his foibles and
eccentricities had a touch of romance, a taste of the attic salt that made them
savoury and sweet’ It would be interesting to see how the boy of only eleven years
who pined be in the ‘bosom (of) England’s glorious shore’ would be so dejected later on, and returned to his mother tongue—to
do it really proud. His maverick ways, however, disturbed all but they also
helped develop and foster a very forward-looking weltanschauung for modern
India.
But then,
Dutt can hardly be understood in isolation and it may be useful to recall very
briefly the contribution of two great social revolutionaries who preceded him:
Raja Rammohun Roy and Henry Louis Vivan Derozio. Though they differed in their
philosophies, both men were extremely courageous and determined to battle the
deeply-entrenched practices of their societies that they believed were blocking
progress. Derozio’s mission was to inculcate the spirit of interrogation among his
young and eager students at India’s first English college, the Hindoo College, later renamed as
Presidency. He joined at seventeen, but he died much too early, in 1831, at the
age of twenty-two. In this short span, he had managed to kindle a relentless
thirst for knowledge. His senior, and a more respected reformer, Raja Rammohun
Roy had challenged the very might and wrath of Hindu obscurantism, as he
campaigned tirelessly to end fiercely-guarded, age-old barbarities practised in
the name of religion, including the custom of burning widows alive on the pyres
of husbands.
To
posit a very anglophile Michael Madhusudan Dutt in the context of India, we
have also to appreciate that never had Indian culture and civilization been
impacted in so comprehensive a manner by a foreign way of life. Its impact was
especially palpable in the colonial capital at Calcutta and in Bengal. The
overriding hegemony of an alien culture has been summed up quite aptly by
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, who wrote: ‘The stamp of the Anglo-Saxon foreigner is
upon our houses, our furniture, our carriages, our food, our drink, our dress, our
very familiar letters and conversation … in every inch of our outward life’. The Bangla language, which had emerged
out of Sanskrit, Prakrit and Apabhransh in approximately the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, underwent its first major overhaul in the nineteenth
century thanks to the impact of European cultures. When the East India Company
set up its Fort William College in Calcutta in 1800 to train its young cadets,
little did anyone realize how its instructors would reconstruct the Bangla
language so thoroughly. The College naturally gave emphasis on the Indian link
language, ‘Hindustanee’,
but it also gave immense importance to Bangla as it was understood by a large
part of the eastern population. The immediate result of this
inter-civilizational encounter was the evolution of Bangla prose, as an
alternate and acceptable mode of communication. This prose, inspired by the
contact with English, greatly benefitted Rammohun Roy, who used it most
adroitly to speak directly with the people and to campaign against the burning
of widows and other social evils. This new language naturally became a weapon
of literary reform too and four decades later, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay
composed the first novel in an Indian language.
It was in this
context that the next two crusaders, Vidyasagar and Madhusudan Dutt arrived on
the Indian scene, some twenty years later. Movements like Derozio’s ‘Young Bengal’ and Roy’s ‘Brahmo Samaj’ had lived long after them, questioning every retrograde belief
and ritual, but the next generation picked up the baton and took the pulsating,
creative energies they had inherited to greater heights. Dutt, Vidyasagar and
their contemporaries produced a veritable flood of literature, philosophy, and
injected the scientific temper among Indians. Despite suffering the deep pain
of the backlash of tradition, Dutt and Vidyasagar held out against all
adversities. Sadly, Dutt did not live to see his fiftieth year.
To understand
Dutt, we may require to understand the role of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Dutt’s greatest patron and supporter. Many, who
are used to seeing Vidyasagar’s standard image in the very simple chador may be surprised to
know that he was well versed and fluent in the English language, it’s culture and nuances.. Like Mahatma Gandhi,
his apparel was his life’s statement. Vidyasagar re-examined the existing Bangla script
and standardized its alphabet, structure and composition. Even though he was
one of the finest Sanskrit pandits of his day, he decided to focus on Bangla, a
language which was not favoured by serious academics and scholars. As historian
R.C. Majumdar observed, ‘Isvarchandra Vidyasagar rescued the Bengali style from the
pedantry of the Pandits and the vulgarity of the realists … and may be called
the father of literary Bengali prose’.
He was a great communicator, yet he decided to court controversy and enrage
many. He took upon himself the task of completing Roy’s historic, social and religious reforms. The
public imagination was fired once again in the 1850s, when Vidyasagar battled
against Hindu obscurantism to steer the ‘Widow Remarriage Act’ with Governor General Dalhousie, who
ultimately passed it in 1856.
The
controversial and yet charismatic Dutt, was only nineteen years old when he
converted to Christianity in 1843. The Hindu society was naturally aghast at
his decision and that he reportedly took to avoid a child marriage fixed by his
parents. As an unapologetic Anglophile, however, Dutt felt that he had moved
closer to the god of Englishmen, for he described his own feelings with wonder
and hope.
‘But now, at length thy grace,
O Lord!
Birds all around me
shine;
I drink thy sweet, thy
precious word,
I kneel before thy
shrine!’
According
to Reverend Krishna Mohan Banerjee, Dutt was prompted not by conviction for
Christian ideals but by his unapologetic worship of England and things English.
Christians, therefore, accepted him with reservations.To understand the
compulsions of the times, we may turn to Ashis Nandy’s brilliant
encapsulation: “In the colonial culture, identification with
the aggressor bound the rulers and the ruled in an uunbreakable dyadic relationship. The
Raj saw Indians as crypto-barbarians who needed to further civilize themselves. Others
saw British rule as an agent of progress and as
a mission. Many Indians,
in turn, saw their salvation in becoming more like the British, in friendship or in
enmity.’ It was this spirit that lured, if one may use the term, Dutt to
think, dream and breathe as a member of the British ruling class, until both
the class and his own epiphany destroyed this mirage ever so rudely before his
death. As a Christian, he was not allowed to continue studies at Hindoo College
and was compelled to leave not only his beloved institution but also his dear
friend and supporter, Gour Das Bysack. He continued, however, to share his
deepest thoughts with Bysack. Much of our records of Dutt’s life are reconstructed based on his
correspondence with Bysack.
Dutt
continued his graduate studies at Bishop’s College but left for Madras in 1847,
without earning his degree, but after picking up quite substantial amounts of
Greek and Latin linguistics and lore. He worked for a Christian establishment
in Madras and wrote in newspapers and periodicals, but what is more interesting
is that he married Rebecca Thompson. This must have created quite a stir, for
while European men had freely married ‘native women’ till then, the reverse was not common at all.
The couple had four children but, for reasons we have not yet understood,
Madhusudan abandoned Rebecca and his children. It was, of course, quite
possible that he was thrown out by her, for we hear no more of this marriage,
nor even of any formal divorce. When he left Madras for Calcutta in February
1856, Dutt was alone and since we are on this sensitive subject, we may as well
mention that he was attached henceforth to another English lady of French
blood, Emilia Henrietta Sophie from 1858 till her death. This was, quite
tragically, just three days before his own. This ‘common law’ couple had two sons and a daughter.
What
matters most to us is the legacy he left behind in Indian literature, but we
need to note that like his role model, Derozio, he wrote profusely in English
but was hardly accepted by the colonial masters. Among his early English works
were his rambling poems, King Porus (1843) and The Captive Ladie (1849) as well
as an excessively ornate essay The Anglo-Saxon and the Hindu (1854) which he
stuffed with innumerable references and quotations from many, many European
books. Both Wordsworth and Milton deeply influenced Dutt, and he was so
obsessed with European culture that, other than English, he had learnt French,
Italian, Greek and Latin. Among the Indian languages, he knew Sanskrit and had
also picked up Tamil and Telugu. Michael Madhusudan tried writing under the
pseudonym, Timothy Penpoem, but the English world refused to acknowledge Dutt.
It was at this stage that Dutt accepted the well-meaning advice of John
Drinkwater Bethune, the President of the Council of Education, who had, in
fact, praised his dexterity with the octosyllabic verses. Bethune suggested
that he could better ‘employ the taste and talents... cultivated by the study of
English, in improving the standard, and adding to the stock of the poetry of
his own language’.
This reached the inner recesses of Dutt’s heart and the prodigal began his homeward
journey.
Dutt started
writing in Bangla with the same boundless energy and optimism, and wrote to his
friend, Rajnarain Basu in July 1861: ‘You may take my word for it, friend Raj, I shall come out like a
tremendous comet and no mistake’.
He kept his word even as he grappled to master and seek recognition in a
language he had spurned and neglected, and wrestled with his lifelong
companion, poverty. This unknown writer earned his living in Calcutta, first,
as a head clerk in a police court, and then became its chief interpreter. By
1858, after the British had successfully crushed the First War of Indian
Independence with unspeakable brutality, the Crown unseated the Company and
decided to rule its huge empire on the subcontinent directly from Calcutta. For
some reason, these momentous happenings do not appear to have stirred Dutt, who
was busy translating Ramnarayan Tarkaratna’s play Ratnavali (1858) into English. It was
then that he realized that Bangla and other Indian languages direly lacked good
plays of European standards. ‘The genius of Drama has not yet received even a moderate degree
of development in this country.’
Dutt then got involved with the Belgachhia
Theatre set up in northern Calcutta by the Rajas of Paikpara. Dutt produced his
first dramatic composition, Sermistha (Sharmistha) in 1859, based on the story
of Yayati. It was not a great success, but he brought in both fresh air and
controversy. Dutt wrote four more plays in quick succession, two of which were
impressive ‘histories’,
Padmavati (1859) and Krishna Kumari (1860), while Ekei Ki Boley Sabhyata (1860) and Buro Shaliker Ghare Ron
(1860) were scathing satires on contemporary society. These started bringing in
recognition, but the restless Madhusudan had by then moved on to composing
narrative and balladic poems: Tilottama Sambhava Kavya (1861), Meghnad Badh
Kavya (1861), Brajagana Kavya (1861) and Veerangana Kavya (1861).
It was, however with Meghnad
Badh Kavya or The Slaying of Meghnad, that Dutt finally gained recognition. He
was then seen as a distinguished composer of a completely new breed of heroic
poetry that had strong shades of Homer and Dante but was intrinsically Indian.
Dutt has aptly been acknowledged as the first great genius who infused a new
life into Bangla dramatic literature. He introduced a new form of drama that
was more European in its literary structure — quite different from the Sanskrit
tradition of verse and, of course, had little to do with the rustic poetic performance style of the Mangal Kavyas. Michael also
composed sonnets in an Indian language for the first time, proving quite
convincingly that these languages could be experimented with and ornamented
well beyond the confines of orthodoxy. He went on to unshackle poetry further and
started writing in his free form of non-rhyming ‘blank verse’.
Both these innovations were taken up later by Hindi and several other languages and it was Dutt
who inspired fresh
poetic protocols.
Before we end, we
must narrate how he was bitterly disappointed by the country that he had held
in highest esteem all his life. In 1862, he reached the land of his dreams,
ostensibly to secure a degree in law. This was so typical of Dutt and he was
not practical enough to appreciate that he was close to the peak of his
literary career, with an ever growing following, and also that he had finally
started making his presence felt in Bangla literature. In England, on the other
hand, he appeared to be severely hurt by the land its people. As expected, he
had not made firm arrangements to finance his overseas stay, and soon found
London to be expensive. In 1863, he moved to France, along with Henrietta. They
stayed in Versailles for about two years and within this time Dutt became
throughly disillusioned with England and Europe. The couple took to excessive
drinking to tide over the deep regret and bitterness. His friends and admirers
in India appeared to have either forgotten him or given up on his mercurial, intemperate
spending habits. He fell gravely into debt and, had it not been for Vidyasagar,
who ensured that he received his dues from his father’s estate, he would have been wrecked
altogether.
Dutt returned to England in 1865, was accorded the honour of a
Barrister, but was no more enamoured with the land of his dreams. He returned
to Calcutta in January 1867, when Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s early romantic novels had appeared and as a
language, Bangla, was now poised to fly even higher. Michael Madhusudan Dutt
did utilize his degree to practice law in Calcutta for about three years, but
with little success. He obviously spent more than he earned and soon gave up
practice and opted for a lower paid but secure clerical job. He kept on
writing, however, and in 1871, he published Hectar-Badh or The Killing of Hector based on an episode
in after Homer’s Iliad. His last composition was Mayakanan that
came out in 1873. His final days were, indeed, very painful and he died in a
charity hospital. His extravagant lifestyle and uncontrolled spending combined
with chronic alcoholism to destroy him, his health and his partner, Henrietta.
She died, sick and alcoholic, on the 26June 1873 and he died, in abject poverty
and in terrible health, just three days later.
But, the
Renaissance in Bangla literature and the arts was back in full form and dozens
of luminaries had arrived on the stage in the years that followed. Language and
literature changed forever in Bengal. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Sarat
Chandra Chattopadhyay, Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo
followed this trail that had been lit up brightly with those like Madhusudan
who fought to establish reason above the mandates of religion and tradition.
Yet, like him, they never abjured or forsook the rich heritage of India’s ageless civilization, that had endless
treasures to offer.
