It Began in Bengal

Subrata Dasgupta on how the road to R.K. Narayan8217;s Malgudi runs through the east

An interesting aspect of any study of Indian history in the last two years is the fact that there are no fixed ideas about events and personalities. A century and a half after the events of 1857 took place, there are heated historical discussions over its nature. Was it a mutiny? An uprising? A revolt? A war of independence? A peasant revolt? Or the last hurrah of a played out aristocracy? The lack of consensus is fortunate, for it keeps history alive, and historians busy. Similar debates have also taken place over the phenomenon usually described as the Renaissance in India.

Was it an 8220;awakening8221;? Was it a Renaissance, a renaissance, or renaissances? Did it take place in Bengal alone, or in other parts too? When did it begin? And end? Was there such an event at all? This debate has, however, become somewhat sterile, with the same information being trotted out with monotonous regularity, and little attempt to shed any new light. Now, Subrata Dasgupta of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, known for his 1999 book on Jagdish Chandra Bose, has broken the mould. He treads the same well-worn path, but with a new spring in his step. He takes the same well-known information, the same cast of astonishing individuals ranging from Rammohun Roy to the young Rabindranath Tagore, and examines them in an altogether different light. This is, by any yardstick, the single-most important account in recent years and raises the bar for the future. Diligently researched, thoughtful and lucid in its exposition, it is rich with surprises.

Rather than quibble about nomenclature, Dasgupta uses the traditional geographical and historical indicators of the Bengal Renaissance to situate his exploration. He examines it in terms of a cognitive revolution 8212; whether there was a distinctive and decisive difference between the intellectual worldview as it prevailed at the beginning of the 19th century, and at its end in Bengal. He emphasises both words 8212; cognitive and revolution. Thus, he concentrates on the intellectual trends of the time. By revolution, of course, he means whether there was a decisive break or not with past thinking. He shows that those who participated in this endeavour assimilated the 8220;positivist8221; views of India from British Orientalists like William Jones, and repudiated the 8220;negative8221; views of the Anglicists, represented by Mill.

This cognitive revolution, according to Dasgupta, was a four-level process, none of which was exclusive in time or in terms of the people involved. At Level 1 lay a reexamination of traditional Indian sciences and philosophy; at Level 2 lay a desire for creativity, which expressed itself in the setting up of Indian institutions; at Level 3 was the emergence of a mature nationalist, scientific, and historical consciousness; and at Level 4, according to Dasgupta, was the surfacing of a cross-cultural, universalist mentality. Fascinatingly, Tagore falls into all four levels. Rammohun Roy falls in the first and second levels, Vivekanand falls in the third and fourth levels. And so on.

Dasgupta says that in the 20th century, this creativity spread beyond the boundaries of Bengal and influenced many others 8212; he names C.V. Raman, Jawaharlal Nehru, R.K. Narayan. S. Chandrasekhar, even Gandhi. But that, he teasingly says, is another story. It is a story that we hope Dasgupta will tell us, and soon.