Page:Calcutta Review (1925) Vol. 16.djvu/302

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1925]
ASUTOSH AND CHITTARANJAN : A STUDY
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revolution of ideas and mental processes and outlook which, once accomplished, history may be trusted to take its course and the genius of Revolution may forge its own weapons according to stress of circumstance.

And thus it was that this lover of man wept and fought, sacrificed his all, suffered and enjoyed in the act—and was called away to the bosom of the Lover of Lovers when he had realised through his finite being a rasa-lilā, a sweet love-play, the meaning of which only He knows but the portent of which all India and Bengal are to read in the signs of the times—and to read out of all the glories and lapses, all the triumphs and failures of the movement for freedom which this political ascetic, this mighty delight-seeker in storm and thunder, this unwearied activist, and this unabashed poet of the Epic of Love on the stage of a federating, race-fusing, west-assimilating, East-reviving India led through fire and water.

This is not a political article. This is written by a man of some little culture for ‘culturists’ and cultured. I ask : is there a finer task than to bathe in this tossing stream of Love-culture which carried Deshabandhu through the eddies and whirls right into that greatest mystery which we mortals call Death and the Divine Immortals possibly hail as Life?

Bengal wants a synthesis—Asutosh’s brain and Chittaranjan’s heart—the co-ordinate play of intellect and love—the correlate flow and fructification of Sakti and Prema which alone can bridge the yawning chasm between the upper and middle classes and the ‘great unwashed.’ For will she in God’s infinite mercy long wait for such a consummation for the Hour brings the Man.

Nripendrachandra Banerji