[ ] Name : Sanjay A. Dharaiya
[ ] Course : M.A.
[ ] Sem : 1
[ ] Year : 2019-2020
[ ] Roll : 33
[ ] Enrollment : 2069108420200009
[ ] Email id : dharaiy9@gmail.com
[ ] Paper 4 : Indian Writing in English
Background to The Fakeer of Jungheera, 1828
[ ] Introduction :
During his meteoric but short-lived career, Derozio wrote on all kinds of themes-from aesthetics, education and social emancipation to love, patriotism and rationalism. Today, though some of his writings are irretrievably lost or inaccessible, Calcutta publishers have endeavored to bring out collections of his works that shed light on his literary and academic career. Most of us remember Derozio for his long metrical poem in two cantos called The Fakeer of Jungheera published by Samuel Smith and Company, Hurkaru Library Calcutta in 1828 It is rather difficult to say which influences went into the making of the personality of the fakeer. Edwards suggests that Derozio's early association with Bhagalpur, where his uncle as a small boy, Derozio lived, shaped his image of the fakeer. On one of his visits to the city saw a fakeer "on a rock in the middle of the river" and this became "the first suggestion to his fertile imagination of the longest and most sustained tlight of his muse, In the character of glimpse of the diffcrent stages of life and its the fakeer and his beloved, Derozio gives us a emotions Though the poem abounds i: romantic fantasizing of discrete religious categories, there seems to be an unbounded enthusiasm in creating a syncretistic tradition that includes the narginalized and outcast groups of lndian society. Since it was somewhat difficult for voung Derozio to understand the complexities and underpinnings of the Hindu and Islamic traditions, he approached them from a predominantly Christian and European enlightenment perspectives. In trying to find a unifying identity within the disparate religious categories of the Indian sub- continent, he discovered the eartly fecundiy of India. The rich fruitfuleess of the land repre sented in his writings later took the s'pe of matryabhuni or motherland, a category. which stood in opposition to the exclusionary politics of the British empire.
By creating a concrete image of mother India and imbuing her with Christian and enlight- original identity to the Indian freedom enment ideas of love and freedom, Derozio gave an moveinent and created an iconography that was successfully exploitéd by Bollywood in the movie Mother India (1957 ). Later writers like Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838-1894) and other Bengali writers exploited and developed the concept of mother India as a symbol and rallying point to give immediacy and power to the nationalist movement. unifying The debt nineteenth century Indian writers owe to Heny Derozio has been elided in the last century primarily due to the upper caste Hindu politics of literary histoians and the narrow tion of Derozio as a writer with a Portuguese-British background.
[ ] The Tantric Cosmology
The Tantric cosmology embodied in the tale of King Vikramaditya and the Beital, the vam- pire story in Baital Pachisi, offers hope and respite to people power of love, provided they possess the virtues of courage and perseverance when encounter- ing fear and temptation. In the "Notes" to The Fakeer of Jungheera Derozio explains how he got the idea of introducing this tale in the main narrative of the poem; he writes: even after death by invoking the A student of that excellent institution, the Hindu College, once brought me a translation of the Betal Puncheesa, and the following fragment of a tale having struck me for its wildness, I thought of writing a ballad , the subjcct of which should be strictly Indian. The Shushan is a palce where the dead are conveyed to be burnt In conformity with the praence of easten story tellers, who frequently repeat the burden of moral of the song. have i introduccd the o love is strong".wherever an opportunity offered.
As the story goes, if King Vikram remains steadfast in his love for his queen he can resur- cet he: and o;c Piore beth car trd happines together. The dauntless fortide and courace thai the King exempliñes by passing through the horrible ordeals in the graveyard leading to his tory, provides a fitting conclusion to the tragic death of the fakeer in the arms of his beloved Nuleeni. If the tale of the baital is true, then "the burnt out eloquence" of Nuleeni can again be resurrected in the arms of the fakeer if she can pass through the horrors and temptations of life However these are unstated assumptions, a part of the general ambience of the story that forces the reader to reflect upon the last scene where the fakeer lies dead in the amms of Nuleeni on the bloodied battlefield or the graveyard of death. The omniscient narrator broods over the tragic impasse, which may soon be us of all emotions, merely reflecting on an scene divesting resolved through a deus ex machina. The open-ended montage makes the reader reflect on the calm engendered by a catharsis.
[ ] The Emotional and Social Landscape of the Poem
Derozio works around the story, not from within. The entire story races through imagined anxieties of the love relationship and the dreams of a happy future in iambic four-foot couplets. expressions of a strong emotional bonding, as if the writer fears that their expression might result in their loss. However, the anxicty in the poem is palpable from the beginning to the end, reflecting the social ethos of mistrust and animosity of There is no sensuous fulfillment of love, no nineteenth century Bengal. Derozio's delicate position ment caused by the criticism heaped by the elders of Hindu College of his avant garde ways, cast their shadows over the poem. This quivering hesitation not to reveal enough, this pulling as an outsider and outcast and the resent- back, creates not only an indubitable mystery, but also an understatement necessary for high art. Early in the nineteenth century Edwards wrote,
"Derozio has felt and expressed, not only the close affinity of the varying moods and the life of man with the changeful phases of nature, but also the sympathy that links together all created things, and that throws the beams of a warm human love around on all Nature."
From another perspective the unmitigated anxiety and pain broods like a dark cloud over the poem invading the characters true feelings, and making the imagery and setting opaque. The poem is more a part of the spoken tradition and had the poet thought of it as a written artifact he would have deleted some of the belabored sections and reduced the poem to half of its present length.
[ ] Attitudes Towards Colonialism and the Nation
Derozio was deeply exorcised by British colonization and felt that it was responsible for many ills India was facing including the throttling of the creative spirit. Two years before the publication of the poem, "My Country," he wrote an essay in The India Gazette called "Beginnings-Literature in India-Promises" where he inquired about the reason why literature does not "flourish" in India.. He gave many reasons responsible for this problem such as "uncon- genial" soil and climate, paucity of talent, lack of literary publications and colonization itself. At this time he still felt that colonial rule was meant to "benefit India beyond all cultivation" but was worried about its "practicability." Empire By 1929 Derozio began to be convinced that the British "empire of opinion" but an "empire of military force." He felt that the was not an moment military force was withdrawn the hitherto supportive natives would subvert the empire and dismantle its edifice. Like most Bengalis later in the century, Derozio used European enlightenment arguments Lo critique the British colonial system. In an essay, "On the Colonization of India by Europeans" he stated,
Upon the whole, then, we must draw the inference, that colonization would not be benefi- cial, unless the British Legislature interferes, and materially alters the present system of Indian policy, by admitting natives and Indo-Britons to a participation of privileges, on a similar footing, as far as practicable and expedient with the Europeans. It is only by such a Measure that discontent can be prevented from brooding into rebellion. and the arts and scenes when established. can produce benefits both to the governors and governed too Britan and to this at preseant, our oppressed neglected native country The basis of good government is as Jeremy Benteams observes. the greatest good of the greatest number and i heartly hope this principle the wisdom of the legislature will see fit or any year clapse to adopt on every measme connected with India.
The fact is, that so far from any display of enthusiastic affection, a Suttee is a spectacle of misery, exciting in the spectator a melancholy reflection upon the tyranny of superstition and priest craft. The poor creatures who suffer from this inhuman rite, have but little notion of the heaven and the million years of uninterrupted happiness to which their spiritual guides tell them to look forward. The choice of immediate death, or a protracted existence, where to be only must contend their desire, is all that is offered to them; and who under such circumstances would hesitate about the preference? The most degrading and humiliating household offices must be performed by a Hindu Widow; shc is not allowed more food than will suffice to keep her alive; she must sleep upon the bare earth; and suffer indignities from the youngest members of her family; these are lanthropic views of some individuals are directed to the abolition of widow-burning; but only a few of her sufferings. The phi- they should first ensure the comfort of these unhappy women in their widowhood-other wise, instead of conferring a boon upon them, existence will be to many a drudge, and a load."
Derozio approvingly quotes a writer from the Indian Magazine and endorses the latter's opinion that sati constitutes the most barbaric and degrading aspect of Indian society which can be overcome through education and intellectual development. Nonetheless with all his self- assurance and animosity for con-cremation, Derozio seems somewhat bewildered by cases of willful self-immolation. During the nineteenth century many upper caste Hindu women willful- ly committed sati mistakenly believing in the veracity of the-Hindu ritual, as if mesmerized into an abominable act through a long process of socialization.
[ ] To Sum up....
The issue of sati was not just a social phenomenon. Natural causes and hygienic practice also aggravated the malaise. It must however be remembered that the increase in the number of sati was also related to a large extent to the spread of cholera epidemics in the nineteenth century that originated along the banks of the Ganges River and spread to other parts of the world reaching through the Middle East and Europe up to the United States. The unhygienic conditions Calcutta vce quilc conducive to the spread of the disease. Tlie ludialn habit of delecating by the banks of the Ganga River and the warm waters of the river multiplied the cholera virus that entered human body through drinking water drawn for it. Derozio himself met an untimely death through contracting cholera. Though there were many reasons for the increase of incidents of sali in Bengal the. death rate of married Bengali males was a alv significant factor."
[ ] Topic :Background of The Fakeer of Jungheera
[ ] Total word : 1854
[ ] Submitted to : S.B. Gardi Department of English MKB University
[ ] Course : M.A.
[ ] Sem : 1
[ ] Year : 2019-2020
[ ] Roll : 33
[ ] Enrollment : 2069108420200009
[ ] Email id : dharaiy9@gmail.com
[ ] Paper 4 : Indian Writing in English
Background to The Fakeer of Jungheera, 1828
[ ] Introduction :
During his meteoric but short-lived career, Derozio wrote on all kinds of themes-from aesthetics, education and social emancipation to love, patriotism and rationalism. Today, though some of his writings are irretrievably lost or inaccessible, Calcutta publishers have endeavored to bring out collections of his works that shed light on his literary and academic career. Most of us remember Derozio for his long metrical poem in two cantos called The Fakeer of Jungheera published by Samuel Smith and Company, Hurkaru Library Calcutta in 1828 It is rather difficult to say which influences went into the making of the personality of the fakeer. Edwards suggests that Derozio's early association with Bhagalpur, where his uncle as a small boy, Derozio lived, shaped his image of the fakeer. On one of his visits to the city saw a fakeer "on a rock in the middle of the river" and this became "the first suggestion to his fertile imagination of the longest and most sustained tlight of his muse, In the character of glimpse of the diffcrent stages of life and its the fakeer and his beloved, Derozio gives us a emotions Though the poem abounds i: romantic fantasizing of discrete religious categories, there seems to be an unbounded enthusiasm in creating a syncretistic tradition that includes the narginalized and outcast groups of lndian society. Since it was somewhat difficult for voung Derozio to understand the complexities and underpinnings of the Hindu and Islamic traditions, he approached them from a predominantly Christian and European enlightenment perspectives. In trying to find a unifying identity within the disparate religious categories of the Indian sub- continent, he discovered the eartly fecundiy of India. The rich fruitfuleess of the land repre sented in his writings later took the s'pe of matryabhuni or motherland, a category. which stood in opposition to the exclusionary politics of the British empire.
By creating a concrete image of mother India and imbuing her with Christian and enlight- original identity to the Indian freedom enment ideas of love and freedom, Derozio gave an moveinent and created an iconography that was successfully exploitéd by Bollywood in the movie Mother India (1957 ). Later writers like Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838-1894) and other Bengali writers exploited and developed the concept of mother India as a symbol and rallying point to give immediacy and power to the nationalist movement. unifying The debt nineteenth century Indian writers owe to Heny Derozio has been elided in the last century primarily due to the upper caste Hindu politics of literary histoians and the narrow tion of Derozio as a writer with a Portuguese-British background.
[ ] The Tantric Cosmology
The Tantric cosmology embodied in the tale of King Vikramaditya and the Beital, the vam- pire story in Baital Pachisi, offers hope and respite to people power of love, provided they possess the virtues of courage and perseverance when encounter- ing fear and temptation. In the "Notes" to The Fakeer of Jungheera Derozio explains how he got the idea of introducing this tale in the main narrative of the poem; he writes: even after death by invoking the A student of that excellent institution, the Hindu College, once brought me a translation of the Betal Puncheesa, and the following fragment of a tale having struck me for its wildness, I thought of writing a ballad , the subjcct of which should be strictly Indian. The Shushan is a palce where the dead are conveyed to be burnt In conformity with the praence of easten story tellers, who frequently repeat the burden of moral of the song. have i introduccd the o love is strong".wherever an opportunity offered.
As the story goes, if King Vikram remains steadfast in his love for his queen he can resur- cet he: and o;c Piore beth car trd happines together. The dauntless fortide and courace thai the King exempliñes by passing through the horrible ordeals in the graveyard leading to his tory, provides a fitting conclusion to the tragic death of the fakeer in the arms of his beloved Nuleeni. If the tale of the baital is true, then "the burnt out eloquence" of Nuleeni can again be resurrected in the arms of the fakeer if she can pass through the horrors and temptations of life However these are unstated assumptions, a part of the general ambience of the story that forces the reader to reflect upon the last scene where the fakeer lies dead in the amms of Nuleeni on the bloodied battlefield or the graveyard of death. The omniscient narrator broods over the tragic impasse, which may soon be us of all emotions, merely reflecting on an scene divesting resolved through a deus ex machina. The open-ended montage makes the reader reflect on the calm engendered by a catharsis.
[ ] The Emotional and Social Landscape of the Poem
Derozio works around the story, not from within. The entire story races through imagined anxieties of the love relationship and the dreams of a happy future in iambic four-foot couplets. expressions of a strong emotional bonding, as if the writer fears that their expression might result in their loss. However, the anxicty in the poem is palpable from the beginning to the end, reflecting the social ethos of mistrust and animosity of There is no sensuous fulfillment of love, no nineteenth century Bengal. Derozio's delicate position ment caused by the criticism heaped by the elders of Hindu College of his avant garde ways, cast their shadows over the poem. This quivering hesitation not to reveal enough, this pulling as an outsider and outcast and the resent- back, creates not only an indubitable mystery, but also an understatement necessary for high art. Early in the nineteenth century Edwards wrote,
"Derozio has felt and expressed, not only the close affinity of the varying moods and the life of man with the changeful phases of nature, but also the sympathy that links together all created things, and that throws the beams of a warm human love around on all Nature."
From another perspective the unmitigated anxiety and pain broods like a dark cloud over the poem invading the characters true feelings, and making the imagery and setting opaque. The poem is more a part of the spoken tradition and had the poet thought of it as a written artifact he would have deleted some of the belabored sections and reduced the poem to half of its present length.
[ ] Attitudes Towards Colonialism and the Nation
Derozio was deeply exorcised by British colonization and felt that it was responsible for many ills India was facing including the throttling of the creative spirit. Two years before the publication of the poem, "My Country," he wrote an essay in The India Gazette called "Beginnings-Literature in India-Promises" where he inquired about the reason why literature does not "flourish" in India.. He gave many reasons responsible for this problem such as "uncon- genial" soil and climate, paucity of talent, lack of literary publications and colonization itself. At this time he still felt that colonial rule was meant to "benefit India beyond all cultivation" but was worried about its "practicability." Empire By 1929 Derozio began to be convinced that the British "empire of opinion" but an "empire of military force." He felt that the was not an moment military force was withdrawn the hitherto supportive natives would subvert the empire and dismantle its edifice. Like most Bengalis later in the century, Derozio used European enlightenment arguments Lo critique the British colonial system. In an essay, "On the Colonization of India by Europeans" he stated,
Upon the whole, then, we must draw the inference, that colonization would not be benefi- cial, unless the British Legislature interferes, and materially alters the present system of Indian policy, by admitting natives and Indo-Britons to a participation of privileges, on a similar footing, as far as practicable and expedient with the Europeans. It is only by such a Measure that discontent can be prevented from brooding into rebellion. and the arts and scenes when established. can produce benefits both to the governors and governed too Britan and to this at preseant, our oppressed neglected native country The basis of good government is as Jeremy Benteams observes. the greatest good of the greatest number and i heartly hope this principle the wisdom of the legislature will see fit or any year clapse to adopt on every measme connected with India.
The fact is, that so far from any display of enthusiastic affection, a Suttee is a spectacle of misery, exciting in the spectator a melancholy reflection upon the tyranny of superstition and priest craft. The poor creatures who suffer from this inhuman rite, have but little notion of the heaven and the million years of uninterrupted happiness to which their spiritual guides tell them to look forward. The choice of immediate death, or a protracted existence, where to be only must contend their desire, is all that is offered to them; and who under such circumstances would hesitate about the preference? The most degrading and humiliating household offices must be performed by a Hindu Widow; shc is not allowed more food than will suffice to keep her alive; she must sleep upon the bare earth; and suffer indignities from the youngest members of her family; these are lanthropic views of some individuals are directed to the abolition of widow-burning; but only a few of her sufferings. The phi- they should first ensure the comfort of these unhappy women in their widowhood-other wise, instead of conferring a boon upon them, existence will be to many a drudge, and a load."
Derozio approvingly quotes a writer from the Indian Magazine and endorses the latter's opinion that sati constitutes the most barbaric and degrading aspect of Indian society which can be overcome through education and intellectual development. Nonetheless with all his self- assurance and animosity for con-cremation, Derozio seems somewhat bewildered by cases of willful self-immolation. During the nineteenth century many upper caste Hindu women willful- ly committed sati mistakenly believing in the veracity of the-Hindu ritual, as if mesmerized into an abominable act through a long process of socialization.
[ ] To Sum up....
The issue of sati was not just a social phenomenon. Natural causes and hygienic practice also aggravated the malaise. It must however be remembered that the increase in the number of sati was also related to a large extent to the spread of cholera epidemics in the nineteenth century that originated along the banks of the Ganges River and spread to other parts of the world reaching through the Middle East and Europe up to the United States. The unhygienic conditions Calcutta vce quilc conducive to the spread of the disease. Tlie ludialn habit of delecating by the banks of the Ganga River and the warm waters of the river multiplied the cholera virus that entered human body through drinking water drawn for it. Derozio himself met an untimely death through contracting cholera. Though there were many reasons for the increase of incidents of sali in Bengal the. death rate of married Bengali males was a alv significant factor."
[ ] Topic :Background of The Fakeer of Jungheera
[ ] Total word : 1854
[ ] Submitted to : S.B. Gardi Department of English MKB University
No comments:
Post a Comment