Tales of Bengal (Sita and Santa Chattopadhyay)/Introduction
INTRODUCTION.
The two sisters from whose work a selection is now translated and offered to the English-reading public are daughters of Babu Ramananda Chatterjee, the well-known publicist. He edits Prabasi, a Bengali monthly, and The Modern Review, an English one. Both are very influential, the latter being the most widely read of all Indian monthlies. This influence has come to him after a long struggle, in which he has shown uncompromising independence. Sprung from a family of Sanskrit professors and priests, his own generation, his cousins and brothers, first broke through their tradition of aloofness, and learned English. Ramananda Babu himself discarded the brahminical thread more than thirty years ago, when he joined the Brahmo Samaj. For many years he was a College professor, first in Calcutta, then in Allahabad. But he was restive under the educational system of Indian universities and his relations with governing bodies were often strained. He has continued to have strained relations with all governing bodies. Calcutta University has found in him a sleepless critic, who has been largely responsible for the public's loss of confidence in that learned body. Nor can Government have faced any more watchful foe. Without any of the elaborate machinery for collecting news which our great Western journals have at their disposal, he has managed, year after year, to gather in, month by month, often from the most inaccessible sources, items which have served him in his warfare. One never knows what is going to find its way next into the pages of The Modern Review. Yet he cannot be dismissed as an extremist. He has the cross-bench type of mind; and, if the political party that is in the ascendency today in India should win their aims, it is hard to see how they could use Ramananda Chatterjee. But whether they used him or not, he would remain a force to be reckoned with—the most resourceful, the most unresting of critics. Englishmen must have often found him bitter and unfair, but I for one have been compelled, sometimes almost against my will, to recognise his courage and his steadfast principle. He has repeatedly stood against a popular clamour from his own countrymen as stiffly as against any Government action, refusing to bow to the storm.
The father's whole life has been one of battle and political journalism. Yet the reader of his daughters' stories will be struck by the way they avoid politics. The centre of interest has shifted inward, to Hindu social life. This change of interest is a natural development from the father's effort, and completes it. Ramananda Babu is one of those Indians who cherish the name of Rammohan Ray, and, amid the insolent abuse recently flung at that name, as standing for the introduction of a denationalising foreign influence, he has proclaimed its outstanding greatness. Like Rammohan Ray, he has especially made the cause of women his own, and has never let pass any reasonable opportunity of protest againt wrongs inflicted by society. No man living has a more flaming anger at cruelty than Ramananda Chatterjee. The latest negro-burning in Georgia and the latest instance of a child-wife in Bengal committing suicide appear in his magazines, no less than the treatment of Indians in East Africa or Fiji, and go out into the bazaars and homes of all India. He carried his convictions into action in his own family. His daughters were educated at home in the usual subjects, including English, and then sent to Bethune College, Calcutta. From the earliest days their father gave them the fullest intellectual freedom, never seeking to censor their reading. Both passed the B. A. with great credit, at Calcutta University. In 1912, while still students, they published a volume of stories translated from English, which were immediately popular. They introduced Brer Rabbit to Bengali nurseries. They trained themselves by study and translation of George Eliot's work, and of a few stories from the French; they kept in close touch with their own land and its life. Their literary careers have advanced together. In 1917, Sita Devi's first original short story—Light of the Eyes—appeared in Prabasi, her sister's first one—Sunanda—appearing in the same magazine a month later. In 1918, they wrote in collaboration a novel, Udyanlata—The Garden Creeper—, a serial for Prabasi. This was given over a column in the Times Literary Supplement, from the pen of the late Mr. J. D. Anderson, who knew Bengali literature as no other European did. He speaks of the book's 'keen observation, sometimes girlishly amused, sometimes tenderly pitying, never harsh or bitter,' which was rendered in 'a style which is in itself a delight to any competent student of Indian letters.' They had excellent material, as he points out, in the contrast afforded between 'the varied life of the great cosmopolitan city of Calcutta, and also of the pleasant old-world existence led by rustic dwellers in the teeming villages of rural Bengal.' The same writer gave equal praise to Sita Devi's Cage of Gold, which appeared first as a Prabasi serial in 1919. It was followed by Santa Devi's serial, The Eternal, in 1920. Both sisters have written reviews and other articles. Santa Devi has painted in water colour. She is a disciple of the well-known artists, Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose. Sita Devi has published in The Modern Review translations by herself of her own and her sister's stories.
The two sisters thus present a wide culture, and their writings proceed from lives of unfettered freedom of thought. Other circumstances have helped to give them their detached view of Hindu society. Though born in Calcutta, they lived in Allahabad from 1895 to 1908, and most of their dearest memories cluster about that place. They have also lived for a considerable period at Shantiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore's 'Home of Peace', a place where thought is as liberal as the wide spaces that surround it. Here they found their fullest powers of expression, as nowhere else.
The English reader will now be in a position to understand something of the experience which lies behind these stories. He may be left to make his own comparisons, to see the resemblances and differences in their respective contributions. Bengali opinion discriminates between them by finding in Sita Devi's stories a touch of playful malice. Santa Devi's often show a delightful humour, with lifelike pictures of manners and persons. Both may be expected to improve greatly in technique, as they are still at the beginning of their careers. To the foreign reader, perhaps the most interesting thing in their writings will be the intellectual and personal element—their keen, scornful vision and the angry contempt which blazes out. We feel, as in the case of Toru Dutt, what force is in these Bengali ladies. Feel, too, as we do not feel with Toru Dutt, that they are exceedingly stirred against things close to their daily lives. Effective criticism of a society comes best from those who are members of it. Indian society has been portrayed in the writings of Bankim Chatterjee, of Rabindranath Tagore, of Sarat Chatterjee, and many others. But it is an immense gain to any nation that its society should be seen through the eyes of its own intellectual countrywomen; and Indian society, in its public aspects and activities, means Indian men. This fire of personality and personal feeling gives the sisters' work significance beyond itself, and will make it a matter of deep interest to watch the development and widening of their powers. For the present, there is in their work the added interest of seeing Indian life as Indians themselves see it, and of noting how Indian society deals with the problems which are occupying society everywhere, the readjustment of the relations of different classes, and above all, the readjustment of the relations in which the sexes stand to each other.