Rebel with Too Many Causes

Ghulam Murshid has written what is arguably the first full biography of Michael Madhusudan Dutt, ably translated from the Bengali by Gopa Majumdar. A lot is known of the age and milieu in which Dutt lived. Less is known about Dutt himself — but this little has been added to by Murshid. Murshid has combined the two to write a book which makes clear to us not only Dutt’s importance in his time, but his pioneering role in Bengali literature.

Madhusudan Dutt, the son of a well-to-do lawyer and a budding poet, became notorious when he converted to Christianity while a student at Calcutta’s Hindu College, to avoid marriage. Barred from Hindu College, he went to Bishop’s College and to Madras, where he taught at a school, married Rebecca Mactavys, worked for various papers and began to write in Bengali. Abandoning Rebecca, he returned to Calcutta with Henrietta, and later moved with their children to England and Versailles. He was saved from poverty by Vidyasagar, who sent him money. Returning to India, he practiced at the bar, but found that his lifestyle was not suited to his income. He died in 1873.

Dutt’s fame rests on the revolution that he wrought in Bengali literature. Sharmistha, based on the Mahabharata and modeled on Sanskrit drama, was the first to speak of humanism. Padmavati was an Indianised version of an episode from the Illiad. Krishnakumari was the first historical drama in Bengali, and modeled on Shakespeare. He wrote Tilottamma Sambhava Kavya in blank verse — the first of its kind in India. Meghnadbad Kavya was the first modern epic in Bengali, and infused with the spirit of the Renaissance. He also wrote the first sonnets in Bengali.

Dutt’s was clearly not a happy life, though a very colourful and productive one. The reason for this lay in his inability to make outflow and inflow of income equal. His irregular lifestyle and drinking were also hostile targets of his enemies — homegrown and foreign. It also lay in his singular inability to abide the orthodoxies of the day — he was a lifelong supporter of women’s emancipation; as well as the radicalism of the Young Bengal movement for its ineffectiveness. A lifelong rebel, he appears to have rebelled against the rebels too. Therein lies his tragedy — and his greatness.