Anandamath (The Abbey of Bliss)/Prefatory Note
Though not exactly the originator of Bengali prose literature, Bankim Chandra, more than any other single person is entitled to the name of the Father of Bengali prose. Before him the efforts of Bengali prose literature were in the nature of experiments in style and trials of its powers and resources. It was he who for the first time struck out for himself a path in the matter of style to which Bengali literature has clung since then with the utmost profit to itself. He tapped the real source of its greatest strength and opened out a glorious vista which Bengali literature has since then gone on making its own.
The writings of Bankim Chandra Chatterji first disclosed the vast capabilities of the Bengali language. He showed that it could be simple and natural but not vulgar, and solemn and serious but not stilted, and with his complete mastery over the language he demonstrated unmistakeably how it was capable of expressing all shades of feeling and thought with force and brilliance and with a variety of expression that came from its association with the rich Sanskrit vocabulary on the one hand and the vocabulary of a quick-witted cultured and resourceful people's dialect on the other. Both these sources of strength and versatility Bankim Chandra utilised with the utmost advantage, and the result was a style of Bengali prose which by its superior charm and elegance, as well as by its facile expression, has outlived the tentative styles that flourished before him and has set the model for Bengali prose ever since.
It is likely that in the struggle for existence the Bankimese style received an additional reinforcement from the mass of very superior literature that was written, mostly by himself and by others under his editorial guidance in the pages of his monthly, Bangadarsana. That literature was one of which any single generation might well be proud—if not for its volume at any rate for its quality. For the literary works of Bankim Chandra Chatterji still tower high above the ordinary run of books and proudly claim comparison, not with the rest of Bengali prose literature, for such a comparison is very obviously to its advantage, but with the literature of the world.
In the world of letters Bankim Chandra Chatterji may fairly claim an honoured place by the side of the greatest novelists of the world. His genius for fiction was superb and his execution of his work pre-eminently in his domestic sketches presents some of the master pieces of the art. It would be too much to say however that the high level of excellence is preserved in all his works. On the contrary, it is a comparatively few of his works that can be said to belong to the highest rank and there is perhaps only one, the Krishnakanta's Will, which can be regarded as perfectly faultless. The whole plot there has been deliberately conceived, the most artistic touches aptly bestowed and all embellishments provided, without the slightest redundance or repetition,—it is in fact a perfect gem among novels and one that is fit to take its place beside the best of the world's fiction.
For his novels Bankim Chandra has often been compared with Sir Walter Scott and there is no doubt that the affinity between them was more than superficial. In style, though Bankim Chandra did not emulate the heavy tread of Sir Walter's yet the style of both share the same frank openness and want of pretensions that serves to stamp it as one eminently suited for light literature. In their treatment of men, we find that both are impressed more with the broader features of human life than with the fine shades of feeling or thought that come in for the greatest share of the attention of an Austen, a Dickens or a Thackeray. Bankim Chandra does indeed display great powers of diving deep into the hearts of men and women and invites us to witness the play of the nicest sentiments and thoughts in some of his domestic novels. But still his great bent was, like Sir Walter's, for the broader aspects of human character.
Both he and Scott were of a highly romantic temperament and had a great fancy for adventurers and desperados of the Robin Hood type. There was a sentimental sympathy with this sort of characters in both which they could ill reconcile with their common sense with which both were uncommonly endowed. In Sir Walter this accounts for his Rob Roys and his Highland raiders, no less than for the Jacobite tendencies of his fictions, though he was one of the most loyal subjects of the Georges. In Bankim Chandra we find this leading him in enthusiastic assent a long way with bandits and outlaws of the type of Bhavani Pathak in his Debi Choudhurani and the Children in his Abbey of Bliss. Even among Children we find our author doting on the tumultuous and dashing spirit of Bhavananda more than on the gentler Jivananda. He gloats on the pranks of the free lances of the Children, such as burning and ravaging villages and outraging villagers, though in his heart of hearts he thoroughly condemns such roguery. Intellectual sympathy with these he has none, and he takes good care to dissociate himself from this lawlessness; but even in seeking to expose the foolishness of Children as he professes to do, he forgets himself and almost exults in deeds which his better sense soon condemns. His mysterious physician tells us that an empire could not be founded by robbery, and no good could come out of sin. In the preface he says that Revolutions are persecutions and revolutionists are suicides. But still, till one comes to the close of it, one does not feel that the author is not in complete sympathy with the lawlessness perpetrated by his Children.
Another point in which he strongly resembles Scott is intense patriotism. There can be no gainsaying the fact that both were the very best citizens of their respective kingdoms and that both were inspired with a patriotism of the highest type. Yet the sort of patriotism that strikes their fancy most is not the patriotism which they themselves breathe. Scott was a good Britisher but in his writings he is intensely Scotch. Bankim Chandra too was a good Indian but in his writings he is most prominently a Bengali. The sort of patriotism that appeals to his fancy is the local feeling of the Rajputs for their country and of the Children for mother Bengal. Intellectually he may have been a citizen of India and member of the Indian nation but in his inmost heart was the sentiment of an intensely exclusive Bengali Hindu.
Another accessory of a romantic temperament is its fascination for the preternatural; and both Scott and Bankim Chandra had it to the fullest extent. To Scott however, it was a mere thing of love and an useful toy, to Bankim Chandra on the contrary it was a matter of deep seated conviction.
So far there is agreement between the two, but, in one important respect they differ. It has been said of Scott that he never had an idea that he was bound to leave the world better than he found it, yet this was the rooted conviction of Bamkim Chandra, and it was the one with which he set to work. The aspect of a novelist's function which struck him most was that of a teacher and never in his writings does he forget his avocation of a born teacher of his people.
He was well fitted to fill the place. With nature's liberal endowment was joined in him a sound education in the literature of the past as well as in the ideas of the new civilisation which was yet only skimming the surface of Indian life. At this time English culture was knocking at India's gate and the vast wealth of India's ancient civilisation was waiting to be unearthed. The man who would seek to lead the people at such a time was one who knew how to manage both and could find a proper scope for the functions of each. Bankim Chandra was by his education well fitted for the task, for which nature did not gruge him a generous endowment of genius.
He was one of the earliest and best fruits of English education in India and his life-work was a sustained endeavour to bring about a synthesis of the ideals of the East and the West in the life of the Indian on lines so eloquently set forth in the concluding chapter of the present work. It was this ideal he consistently had in view and it was this lesson which he has sought to impart in a great many of his novels.
A novelist is always a teacher, but the teacher should not overshadow the story-teller. This golden rule Bankim Chandra fairly follows in most of his works. But in his Abbey of Bliss the teacher is much too evident. The result is assuredly a great take-off from its merit as a novel per se and, taken as such, this work is certainly defecient. But it is everywhere too evident that the author does not care to be taken as a story teller at all. The story is only the setting. The whole interest is concentrated in the message that he seeks to impart and though the story is beautiful enough and its execution on the whole well worthy of a master's hand, yet it bears patent signs of haste and careless manipulation, and, in spite of the cobbling and tinkering that it had during its subsequent editions there are plenty of oversights that are surprising in the careful author of Krishna Kanta's Will. Redundance too, is not one of the vices from which our author has taken special care to defend himself in this work; situations again are introduced which want explanation and which are inconsistent with previous statements. The absurd idea of Santi riding a horse with sari on is perhaps the crowning point of that epidemic of slips which seems to have taken hold of our author in this work.
The fact is that in this work our author was overwhelmed with the teaching he sought to impart and had very little attention to spare for the perfection of the details. The story therefore has very much the appearance of a noble figure, rough-hewn. All through the narration we notice the breathless haste of the author.—They story runs and with it tuns our author's language, and he is in a desperate hurry to rush it on and finish. The work therefore partakes very largely of the nature of a parable, and as a parable of patriotism it has to be read in order to appreciate its depth of observation and intensity of feeling.
Even as a parable it has to be viewed from the point of view of feeling rather than of conception. For the type of patriotism which our author has here depicted is certainly not the richest in conception nor well worthy of emulation. It is its intensity in feeling and its richness in self-sacrifice that ought to commend it to all right-thinking people. The reader must however be warned against taking the parable too literally. Our author's patriotism is not to be identified with the revolutionary propaganda of his adventurers in the present work. There is no place for revolution or aggressive warfare in his scheme of patrotism. Bloodshed and war Bankim Chandra looked upon as the detestable remnants of a barbarian age which were bound to pass away. If therefore he seems to have so much sympathy with revolutionaries of the type of his Children, it is not because his common sense would endorse similar proceedure but because his natural instincts were largely in sympathy with them. And if there is one lesson more than any other that he seeks to impart by his Children it is that revolutionists though foolish are very often estimable men, inspired with lofty sentiments, and perfectly honourable in their conduct. They may fail, but their failure does not justify the world in branding them as infamous brigands. On the contrary, we have a great deal to learn from them. Their earnestness and singleness of purpose, their tenacity and resourcefulness, their courage in facing the immense odds that are arrayed against them, not only on the battle-field but everywhere in the existing order of things and above all their supreme indifference to their own interests,—these are traits of character which every reformer, every patriot and every fighter in a noble cause should lay to heart if he wants to succeed. Our modus operandi must needs be different from the suicidal path of revolution, our conception of national welfare and of the goal of national life may be altogether different, but let us all he inspired with the same sense of the nobility of our mission and the selfless zeal in serving the interests of our 'Mother' as the Children.
Two outstanding features of our author's conception of patriotism are its provincialism and its religious tone. As for the provincialism in his patriotism, it is difficult to believe that Bamkim Chandra was a stranger to the idea of greater nationality which is the goal of cultured Indians of to day. The explanation is rather to be sought in his romantic temperament which was deeply stirred by it, as much as was that of Sir Walter Scott by the parochial patriotism of his Highlanders and by the Scottish patriotism which even now makes itself felt in after-dinner orations in the St. Andrews Dinner.
As to the religious tone of his patriotism he perceived that the strongest sentiment of the Indian, as well as the most pronounced element in the Eastern civilisation, is the religious sentiment. To acclamatise Western culture in the Eastern soil then, we have to dip it full in the well of spiritualism. Nothing in Western culture can take root in the East unless it is inspired with the religious sentiment. The attempt to bring about this synthesis led him, not only to imbue patriotic sentiments with religion but also conceive nationality itself under the category of religion. He evidently thought that the only nationality India was capable of was a religious nationality;—the sentiment probably which inspires people who talk about a Hindu Nation and a Mussulman Nation in the same Indian soil. To say the least, such an idea is absurd. We must have one Indian nation or no nation at all. Sectarian sentiments are ill dignified by being named in the lofty vocabulary of patriotism.
Two very sinister consequences are seen to flow from this conception of a religious basis of nationality in the present work. The first is the attempt to rehabilitate the Hindu Pantheon with new-fangled patriotic gods and goddesses, and the second is the morbid dislike of Mussulmans that seems to be indicated in this work. Neither would seem to be the least profitable. As for the first, it sets a premium upon superstition and suggests a proceedure which has been unhappily followed by some of our public men of to-day. If it is sought by this means to instil patriotism into the superstitious mind through superstitions, it fails sadly; for patriotism thus distorted can never develop into genuine patriotism and must remain a superstition for ever. It is a matter of common knowledge that superstitions, once rooted, are far more difficult to uproot than mere ignorance, and if permitted to remain, they may promote particular ends, but must be a dead block to all progress. Thus patriotism gains nothing by this distortion and it only helps to hinder the growth of true Indian Nationality by preventing the participation of Hindus and Mussulmans and other religious communities in a common patriotic work. The experiment therefore of degrading patriotism by basing it on superstition is not only fruitless but positively harmful.
The other is a more serious matter still. Now one thing that would be patent to every reader of this novel is that its heroes are frankly hostile to Mussulmans. This has led me to think thrice before placing the work before a larger public by translation. Our Mussulman friends have no doubt a good right to get offended at the way in which the anti-Mussulman sentiment has been developed in this novel. But several facts have got to be taken into consideration. Firstly, as I have already observed, our author is not to be too much identified with the sayings and doings of his adventurers in this book. Then again, the impression left by a study of the whole book is that the feeling was not so much against Mussulmans quá Mussulmans, as against the anarchy and misrule under the Mussulman kings of the age and particularly under Mir Jaffer who ruled at the time. It is notorious that that the times were bad beyond mention. Between themselves the East India Company and the Nawab had contrived to plunge the country into a state of distress which is looked upon, even by Englishmen as a tale of their disgrace. If they were so harassed, the people might well be angry with Mussulmans for their misdeeds and persecute them as they persecuted the people and even put to the credit of the community the misdeeds of its rulers. This is really all that the author seeks to depict. It would appear that in narrating the pranks of the free lances of his Children the author gives us only what would be natural in a body of uncultured men elated with victory and excited by activity. He does not justify them nor is he in sympathy with them. It would therefore not be quite fair to him to hold him responsible for these sayings and doings of the rabble which are so obviously wrong.
But with all this, one cannot but regret the anti-Mussulman sentiments that our author has so freely introduced in the present work. Whatever poetic justice there might be for those expressions considering the situation of the people whose careers are depicted in the novel, every true son of India to-day would sincerely wish that they had not existed in the work. I would willingly have expunged those passages from the translation were it not for a desire that the author should be presented in the translation as no better or worse than he is. The mischief is in fact past undoing, but may we not, Hindus and Mussulmans, agree to forgive our author's aberrations in the respect in view of the noble lessons in patriotism that he has given us. In justification of my attempt to present the work to a larger circle of readers, I may say, that it is this consideration which has prompted me to translate the work in spite of its defects.
The work of translation has been by no means a plain sailing. Yet with all its difficulties the work has been one of love and a joy to me. I do not therefore feel entitled to claim any indulgence from the reader or quarter from the critic on that score. The work, however, has been rushed through the press for the importunity of my publisher and I shall not be the least surprised if faults are found to have been permitted to remain.
In conclusion, I have to convey my best thanks to my esteemed friend Mr. Prithwis Chandra Ray, the Editor of the Indian World for his constant encouragement and support, in placing every facility at my disposal, in looking over the proofs, and in making several very important suggestions. To the management of the Cherry Press too I am thankful for the expedition and promptness with which the work has been done.