Edited by Knut A. Jacobsen, ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF CONTEMPORARY INDIA, 2023
A few months ago, the writer Hansda Sowvendra Sekhar wrote an article on the wild-goose chase he ... more A few months ago, the writer Hansda Sowvendra Sekhar wrote an article on the wild-goose chase he embarked upon in order to understand a statue that he came across repeatedly on his travels across Jharkhand (Hansda 2022). This was a statue of a pair of terracotta horses, one always painted white and the other always black. He had first noticed them in the region of the once princely state of Seraikela, where the Singh Deo kings had ruled. Soon, however, he found them to be far more widely spread than he had suspected, turning up unexpectedly on the side of a highway or inside a village. Curious to know their 'origin story', he began questioning the local people at these various sites, only to find that there appeared to be not one unified story, but several possible stories or, more accurately, several possible stories that had woven themselves together. The horses reminded Hansda of the devotional rituals of his community at the Santal Baha-Mak Moy ceremonies and he had wondered if these horses had a similar significance. The first explanation he came upon was that the horse statues were a territorial strategy used by the local Singh Deo rulers to expand and mark their territory. The kings encouraged the Dalits and, in particular, the potter community, to worship the horses. Other stories followed. One was that the horses were worshipped by the Bhumij community as Ghora Baba, or Horse Hermit. But the Bhumij are Adivasis, and worship of images is not practised among the Adivasis. There followed many other possible origin stories, many partially overlapping with another, but none dovetailing so neatly with another as to indicate one common story. Following a complex trajectory of dream-inspired deities to political and territorial authority, to family isht-devtas and forest deities, Hansda finds that community traditions of the Adivasi and Dalit inhabitants had merged with the royal Singh Deo family's traditions, and with the Bengali and Odiya customs of the neighbouring states, to create a ritual that was multifaceted. As Azad Sekhar Manjhi, the local school teacher in Mirudih's Upgraded Middle School informs Hansda, 'cultures merge' (Hansda 2022). Can Dalit and Adivasi literatures be studied together? The first issue that needed to be addressed when commissioned to write this chapter on cultural changes and innovations in Dalit and Adivasi literatures was whether the two communities may at all be considered together. The two groups are studied separately by social scientists, and there are significant differences between the two. Modern Dalit written literature has traversed
The province of Bengal has been celebrated for its renaissance in terms of ideas, art and literat... more The province of Bengal has been celebrated for its renaissance in terms of ideas, art and literature during the colonial times and influenced the modernization of the rest of the sub-continent. However, despite making great strides in education, gender reforms, social and political movements, not much is known about the plight of the former untouchables in Bengal. Their stories and struggles were erased or invisibilized in the mainstream narratives of reforms and revolutions. Sekhar Bandopadhya's Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal 1872-1947 comes to mind which focused on the mobilization of one of the marginalized caste groups in the modern history of Bengal. The book also discussed the formation of a community identity and the discordant voices within the movement. The more recent autobiography of Manoranjan Byapari-Reminiscences of My Chandal Life-reveals the Dalit lifeworld in a first-person narrative. Hence, it is very appropriate that the book under review commences with a comprehensive introduction on the Dalit weltanschauung in Bengal by Debi Chatterjee. After a brief overview of the emergence of the Ambedkarite discourse, the flowering of the Dalit Panthers movement and Dalit writings in other parts of India, she contextualizes the specificities of Bengali Dalit writings. By the late nineteenth century, the Namasudras had gradually started mobilizing for social status and equal dignity in the eyes of the law. This consciousness enabled them to educate themselves and strive for upward mobility. No wonder that the bulk of writings in this anthology are from the Namasudra community. She elaborates on the role that Partition played in further marginalizing these communities as the forced migrations meant that they left all their material possessions behind and had to start their lives afresh from scratch in West Bengal. The Dalit males who crossed the border had mostly been fishermen, boatmen and peasants who had found their familiar public space transformed entirely with the crossing over. Not only had their adherence to the land and waters of East Bengal delayed the crossing of Bengali Dalits, but also the jobs they were skilled at were not ones that could be carried over (xxxiii). This trauma is still reflected in their literary works. As this is a work of translation, Sipra Mukherjee has provided a detailed analysis of the challenges that translators encounter when they have to translate texts that are deeply scored by the particularity of their spaces. She discusses at length the nuances of Bangla Dalit literature, the dissonances with the standardized Bengali and the shifts in semiotics post migration. This is more evident in poetry than prose and more so among women (xxxiii). The writings by women draw on cultures of food and household that reflects the realities of rural Bengal. When people move from one space to another, it is the vocabulary of their public world that changes first. The household domains of cooking and interpersonal relationships tend to be carried across as a whole, and retained in the new space for at least some time (xxxiii).
Under My Dark Skin Flows a Red River: Translations of Dalit Writings from Bengal, 2021
'We too have our Sun', writes a woman Dalit poet, challenging the established canons of Bangla li... more 'We too have our Sun', writes a woman Dalit poet, challenging the established canons of Bangla literature that resist Dalit's entry. With translations from Bengal only begininning in the twenty-first century, Dalit writings have remained largely unrepresented in the corpus of pan-Indian Dalit Literature. Yet Bangla Dalit literature has a long history: the songs of Sufis, Bauls, Fakirs and many other grass root religious mainstream Bengal, this was a robust and popular body of oral literature from the margins. The challenges and rebellions that characterize modern Dalit literature are not unique to modernity, existing in the living tradtions. In the late twentieth century, Dalits' writings have been published by small publishers and little magazines, ushering a new vibrancy in Bangla literature. This anthology presents translations of a selection of essays, songs, poetry, short stories, extracts from autobiographies and novels as an introduction to a spirited and dynamic literature from Bengal.
This book analyses the power that religion wields upon the minds of individuals and communities a... more This book analyses the power that religion wields upon the minds of individuals and communities and explores the predominance of language in the actual practice of religion. Through an investigation of the diverse forms of religious language available – oral traditions, sacred texts, evangelical prose, and national rhetoric used by ‘faith-insiders’ such as missionaries, priests, or religious leaders who play the communicator’s role between the sacred and the secular – the chapters in the volume reveal the dependence of religion upon language, demonstrating how religion draws strength from a past that is embedded in narratives, infusing the ‘sacred’ language with political power.The book combines broad theoretical and normative reflections in contexts of original, detailed and closely examined empirical case studies. Drawing upon resources across disciplines, the book will be of interest to scholars of religion and religious studies, linguistics, politics, cultural studies, history, sociology, and social anthropology.
The province of Bengal has been celebrated for its renaissance in terms of ideas, art and literat... more The province of Bengal has been celebrated for its renaissance in terms of ideas, art and literature during the colonial times and influenced the modernization of the rest of the sub-continent. However, despite making great strides in education, gender reforms, social and political movements, not much is known about the plight of the former untouchables in Bengal. Their stories and struggles were erased or invisibilized in the mainstream narratives of reforms and revolutions. Sekhar Bandopadhya's Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal 1872-1947 comes to mind which focused on the mobilization of one of the marginalized caste groups in the modern history of Bengal. The book also discussed the formation of a community identity and the discordant voices within the movement. The more recent autobiography of Manoranjan Byapari-Reminiscences of My Chandal Life-reveals the Dalit lifeworld in a first-person narrative. Hence, it is very appropriate that the book under review commences with a comprehensive introduction on the Dalit weltanschauung in Bengal by Debi Chatterjee. After a brief overview of the emergence of the Ambedkarite discourse, the flowering of the Dalit Panthers movement and Dalit writings in other parts of India, she contextualizes the specificities of Bengali Dalit writings. By the late nineteenth century, the Namasudras had gradually started mobilizing for social status and equal dignity in the eyes of the law. This consciousness enabled them to educate themselves and strive for upward mobility. No wonder that the bulk of writings in this anthology are from the Namasudra community. She elaborates on the role that Partition played in further marginalizing these communities as the forced migrations meant that they left all their material possessions behind and had to start their lives afresh from scratch in West Bengal. The Dalit males who crossed the border had mostly been fishermen, boatmen and peasants who had found their familiar public space transformed entirely with the crossing over. Not only had their adherence to the land and waters of East Bengal delayed the crossing of Bengali Dalits, but also the jobs they were skilled at were not ones that could be carried over (xxxiii). This trauma is still reflected in their literary works. As this is a work of translation, Sipra Mukherjee has provided a detailed analysis of the challenges that translators encounter when they have to translate texts that are deeply scored by the particularity of their spaces. She discusses at length the nuances of Bangla Dalit literature, the dissonances with the standardized Bengali and the shifts in semiotics post migration. This is more evident in poetry than prose and more so among women (xxxiii). The writings by women draw on cultures of food and household that reflects the realities of rural Bengal. When people move from one space to another, it is the vocabulary of their public world that changes first. The household domains of cooking and interpersonal relationships tend to be carried across as a whole, and retained in the new space for at least some time (xxxiii).
Recent studies on the articulations and silences that surround the making of a community’s histor... more Recent studies on the articulations and silences that surround the making of a community’s history have thrown up narratives earlier undiscovered and invisible. This essay will attempt an exploration of such a narrative that has been reiterated in several vernacular texts authored by writers of the Dalit Namasudra community, formerly known as the Chandal before the 1911 Census. The narrative is of a dance performed by the Matuas, a religious sect founded among the Namasudras, that chose to move away from the hegemonic religions of Hinduism and Islam. Through the dance, the Matua takes part in a ritualized breaking of the servility that usually binds the untouchable community – a practice that has remained a vibrant tradition among the community since the earliest days of the Matua faith (in the 19th century) to the present times. The dance functions as a narrative accessible to all Matuas, enabling and empowering them to break the impositions of caste and concretize their imaginary of a new past and a new future through images, rituals and processes.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Jan 22, 2013
“Silence me now, your loquacious poet”1 wrote the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore after spending ... more “Silence me now, your loquacious poet”1 wrote the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore after spending years of his life trying to grasp the immeasurability of the divine in his songs. We find in his writings repeated references to the inextricable link between language and spirituality. Laments on the inability of words to articulate the divine, and celebrations of humanity’s endeavor to capture the essence of the indefinable, crowd his lyrics. Though Tagore rues the intractability of language to express the infinite and eternal with lines like “heaps of words”, “the distant music that we try to catch with our harps tuned to a nearer music”, the inescapable dependence on words returns as a refrain. Whether religion is the form given to man’s yearning for the spiritual or whether religion is really an embodiment of man’s more material desires may be a matter for debate. But when the yearning for the divine is embodied in words, and when those words are accepted by a community of people, the basis of a religion has been laid. This issue of the IJSL seeks to better understand the dynamics between religion and language. In doing so, it hopes to add to recent scholarship which explores the interaction between these two social constructs. Two fundamental realities make the study of language and religion inseparable, the first being the importance of language for religion. Most of us, in fact, encounter religion through some form of narrative: stories, hymns, chants, myths, parables. With its powerful status as the major and most flexible instrument of communication, language is indispensable to the expression of religion or religious ideas. It dominates man’s learning, imbibing, othering, adopting and adapting of religions. It is through the various forms of language that the living vitality of a community’s religious beliefs is passed down from generation to generation. Religion, in fact, can be said to exist largely in language, and hence the overwhelming significance of sacred languages and holy books. While this first reality may be said to be a characteristic of religion, the second reality that binds the study of language and religion is a characteristic shared. Both religion and language are markers of identity that evolve and change according to the needs of society. They are expressive of the philosophies, the beliefs and the experiences
This article will look at the media coverage of the devastating fire that occurred at a Kolkata h... more This article will look at the media coverage of the devastating fire that occurred at a Kolkata hospital in December, 2011. A preventable one despite the catastrophic proportions it grew to, the fire killed over 90 people. The absolutely inept and callous way in which the fire was handled by the hospital staff shocked the city, and the media understandably gave it wide coverage. This article will focus on the city editions of the English newspapers to explore which issues received media attention and which got marginalized when this overwhelming tragedy was reported. In the painful exercise of interpreting and categorizing such extreme experiences, it is usually the media that carries out the job of disseminating information, images and ideas concerning the nature of the events. Through the coverage or non-coverage of these issues, the media reflects society’s attempts to come to terms with such horrific tragedies. Using the reporting by the newspapers, the article will seek to enquire how the concepts of duty, responsibility and accountability are redefined by circumstances.
Edited by Knut A. Jacobsen, ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF CONTEMPORARY INDIA, 2023
A few months ago, the writer Hansda Sowvendra Sekhar wrote an article on the wild-goose chase he ... more A few months ago, the writer Hansda Sowvendra Sekhar wrote an article on the wild-goose chase he embarked upon in order to understand a statue that he came across repeatedly on his travels across Jharkhand (Hansda 2022). This was a statue of a pair of terracotta horses, one always painted white and the other always black. He had first noticed them in the region of the once princely state of Seraikela, where the Singh Deo kings had ruled. Soon, however, he found them to be far more widely spread than he had suspected, turning up unexpectedly on the side of a highway or inside a village. Curious to know their 'origin story', he began questioning the local people at these various sites, only to find that there appeared to be not one unified story, but several possible stories or, more accurately, several possible stories that had woven themselves together. The horses reminded Hansda of the devotional rituals of his community at the Santal Baha-Mak Moy ceremonies and he had wondered if these horses had a similar significance. The first explanation he came upon was that the horse statues were a territorial strategy used by the local Singh Deo rulers to expand and mark their territory. The kings encouraged the Dalits and, in particular, the potter community, to worship the horses. Other stories followed. One was that the horses were worshipped by the Bhumij community as Ghora Baba, or Horse Hermit. But the Bhumij are Adivasis, and worship of images is not practised among the Adivasis. There followed many other possible origin stories, many partially overlapping with another, but none dovetailing so neatly with another as to indicate one common story. Following a complex trajectory of dream-inspired deities to political and territorial authority, to family isht-devtas and forest deities, Hansda finds that community traditions of the Adivasi and Dalit inhabitants had merged with the royal Singh Deo family's traditions, and with the Bengali and Odiya customs of the neighbouring states, to create a ritual that was multifaceted. As Azad Sekhar Manjhi, the local school teacher in Mirudih's Upgraded Middle School informs Hansda, 'cultures merge' (Hansda 2022). Can Dalit and Adivasi literatures be studied together? The first issue that needed to be addressed when commissioned to write this chapter on cultural changes and innovations in Dalit and Adivasi literatures was whether the two communities may at all be considered together. The two groups are studied separately by social scientists, and there are significant differences between the two. Modern Dalit written literature has traversed
The province of Bengal has been celebrated for its renaissance in terms of ideas, art and literat... more The province of Bengal has been celebrated for its renaissance in terms of ideas, art and literature during the colonial times and influenced the modernization of the rest of the sub-continent. However, despite making great strides in education, gender reforms, social and political movements, not much is known about the plight of the former untouchables in Bengal. Their stories and struggles were erased or invisibilized in the mainstream narratives of reforms and revolutions. Sekhar Bandopadhya's Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal 1872-1947 comes to mind which focused on the mobilization of one of the marginalized caste groups in the modern history of Bengal. The book also discussed the formation of a community identity and the discordant voices within the movement. The more recent autobiography of Manoranjan Byapari-Reminiscences of My Chandal Life-reveals the Dalit lifeworld in a first-person narrative. Hence, it is very appropriate that the book under review commences with a comprehensive introduction on the Dalit weltanschauung in Bengal by Debi Chatterjee. After a brief overview of the emergence of the Ambedkarite discourse, the flowering of the Dalit Panthers movement and Dalit writings in other parts of India, she contextualizes the specificities of Bengali Dalit writings. By the late nineteenth century, the Namasudras had gradually started mobilizing for social status and equal dignity in the eyes of the law. This consciousness enabled them to educate themselves and strive for upward mobility. No wonder that the bulk of writings in this anthology are from the Namasudra community. She elaborates on the role that Partition played in further marginalizing these communities as the forced migrations meant that they left all their material possessions behind and had to start their lives afresh from scratch in West Bengal. The Dalit males who crossed the border had mostly been fishermen, boatmen and peasants who had found their familiar public space transformed entirely with the crossing over. Not only had their adherence to the land and waters of East Bengal delayed the crossing of Bengali Dalits, but also the jobs they were skilled at were not ones that could be carried over (xxxiii). This trauma is still reflected in their literary works. As this is a work of translation, Sipra Mukherjee has provided a detailed analysis of the challenges that translators encounter when they have to translate texts that are deeply scored by the particularity of their spaces. She discusses at length the nuances of Bangla Dalit literature, the dissonances with the standardized Bengali and the shifts in semiotics post migration. This is more evident in poetry than prose and more so among women (xxxiii). The writings by women draw on cultures of food and household that reflects the realities of rural Bengal. When people move from one space to another, it is the vocabulary of their public world that changes first. The household domains of cooking and interpersonal relationships tend to be carried across as a whole, and retained in the new space for at least some time (xxxiii).
Under My Dark Skin Flows a Red River: Translations of Dalit Writings from Bengal, 2021
'We too have our Sun', writes a woman Dalit poet, challenging the established canons of Bangla li... more 'We too have our Sun', writes a woman Dalit poet, challenging the established canons of Bangla literature that resist Dalit's entry. With translations from Bengal only begininning in the twenty-first century, Dalit writings have remained largely unrepresented in the corpus of pan-Indian Dalit Literature. Yet Bangla Dalit literature has a long history: the songs of Sufis, Bauls, Fakirs and many other grass root religious mainstream Bengal, this was a robust and popular body of oral literature from the margins. The challenges and rebellions that characterize modern Dalit literature are not unique to modernity, existing in the living tradtions. In the late twentieth century, Dalits' writings have been published by small publishers and little magazines, ushering a new vibrancy in Bangla literature. This anthology presents translations of a selection of essays, songs, poetry, short stories, extracts from autobiographies and novels as an introduction to a spirited and dynamic literature from Bengal.
This book analyses the power that religion wields upon the minds of individuals and communities a... more This book analyses the power that religion wields upon the minds of individuals and communities and explores the predominance of language in the actual practice of religion. Through an investigation of the diverse forms of religious language available – oral traditions, sacred texts, evangelical prose, and national rhetoric used by ‘faith-insiders’ such as missionaries, priests, or religious leaders who play the communicator’s role between the sacred and the secular – the chapters in the volume reveal the dependence of religion upon language, demonstrating how religion draws strength from a past that is embedded in narratives, infusing the ‘sacred’ language with political power.The book combines broad theoretical and normative reflections in contexts of original, detailed and closely examined empirical case studies. Drawing upon resources across disciplines, the book will be of interest to scholars of religion and religious studies, linguistics, politics, cultural studies, history, sociology, and social anthropology.
The province of Bengal has been celebrated for its renaissance in terms of ideas, art and literat... more The province of Bengal has been celebrated for its renaissance in terms of ideas, art and literature during the colonial times and influenced the modernization of the rest of the sub-continent. However, despite making great strides in education, gender reforms, social and political movements, not much is known about the plight of the former untouchables in Bengal. Their stories and struggles were erased or invisibilized in the mainstream narratives of reforms and revolutions. Sekhar Bandopadhya's Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal 1872-1947 comes to mind which focused on the mobilization of one of the marginalized caste groups in the modern history of Bengal. The book also discussed the formation of a community identity and the discordant voices within the movement. The more recent autobiography of Manoranjan Byapari-Reminiscences of My Chandal Life-reveals the Dalit lifeworld in a first-person narrative. Hence, it is very appropriate that the book under review commences with a comprehensive introduction on the Dalit weltanschauung in Bengal by Debi Chatterjee. After a brief overview of the emergence of the Ambedkarite discourse, the flowering of the Dalit Panthers movement and Dalit writings in other parts of India, she contextualizes the specificities of Bengali Dalit writings. By the late nineteenth century, the Namasudras had gradually started mobilizing for social status and equal dignity in the eyes of the law. This consciousness enabled them to educate themselves and strive for upward mobility. No wonder that the bulk of writings in this anthology are from the Namasudra community. She elaborates on the role that Partition played in further marginalizing these communities as the forced migrations meant that they left all their material possessions behind and had to start their lives afresh from scratch in West Bengal. The Dalit males who crossed the border had mostly been fishermen, boatmen and peasants who had found their familiar public space transformed entirely with the crossing over. Not only had their adherence to the land and waters of East Bengal delayed the crossing of Bengali Dalits, but also the jobs they were skilled at were not ones that could be carried over (xxxiii). This trauma is still reflected in their literary works. As this is a work of translation, Sipra Mukherjee has provided a detailed analysis of the challenges that translators encounter when they have to translate texts that are deeply scored by the particularity of their spaces. She discusses at length the nuances of Bangla Dalit literature, the dissonances with the standardized Bengali and the shifts in semiotics post migration. This is more evident in poetry than prose and more so among women (xxxiii). The writings by women draw on cultures of food and household that reflects the realities of rural Bengal. When people move from one space to another, it is the vocabulary of their public world that changes first. The household domains of cooking and interpersonal relationships tend to be carried across as a whole, and retained in the new space for at least some time (xxxiii).
Recent studies on the articulations and silences that surround the making of a community’s histor... more Recent studies on the articulations and silences that surround the making of a community’s history have thrown up narratives earlier undiscovered and invisible. This essay will attempt an exploration of such a narrative that has been reiterated in several vernacular texts authored by writers of the Dalit Namasudra community, formerly known as the Chandal before the 1911 Census. The narrative is of a dance performed by the Matuas, a religious sect founded among the Namasudras, that chose to move away from the hegemonic religions of Hinduism and Islam. Through the dance, the Matua takes part in a ritualized breaking of the servility that usually binds the untouchable community – a practice that has remained a vibrant tradition among the community since the earliest days of the Matua faith (in the 19th century) to the present times. The dance functions as a narrative accessible to all Matuas, enabling and empowering them to break the impositions of caste and concretize their imaginary of a new past and a new future through images, rituals and processes.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Jan 22, 2013
“Silence me now, your loquacious poet”1 wrote the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore after spending ... more “Silence me now, your loquacious poet”1 wrote the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore after spending years of his life trying to grasp the immeasurability of the divine in his songs. We find in his writings repeated references to the inextricable link between language and spirituality. Laments on the inability of words to articulate the divine, and celebrations of humanity’s endeavor to capture the essence of the indefinable, crowd his lyrics. Though Tagore rues the intractability of language to express the infinite and eternal with lines like “heaps of words”, “the distant music that we try to catch with our harps tuned to a nearer music”, the inescapable dependence on words returns as a refrain. Whether religion is the form given to man’s yearning for the spiritual or whether religion is really an embodiment of man’s more material desires may be a matter for debate. But when the yearning for the divine is embodied in words, and when those words are accepted by a community of people, the basis of a religion has been laid. This issue of the IJSL seeks to better understand the dynamics between religion and language. In doing so, it hopes to add to recent scholarship which explores the interaction between these two social constructs. Two fundamental realities make the study of language and religion inseparable, the first being the importance of language for religion. Most of us, in fact, encounter religion through some form of narrative: stories, hymns, chants, myths, parables. With its powerful status as the major and most flexible instrument of communication, language is indispensable to the expression of religion or religious ideas. It dominates man’s learning, imbibing, othering, adopting and adapting of religions. It is through the various forms of language that the living vitality of a community’s religious beliefs is passed down from generation to generation. Religion, in fact, can be said to exist largely in language, and hence the overwhelming significance of sacred languages and holy books. While this first reality may be said to be a characteristic of religion, the second reality that binds the study of language and religion is a characteristic shared. Both religion and language are markers of identity that evolve and change according to the needs of society. They are expressive of the philosophies, the beliefs and the experiences
This article will look at the media coverage of the devastating fire that occurred at a Kolkata h... more This article will look at the media coverage of the devastating fire that occurred at a Kolkata hospital in December, 2011. A preventable one despite the catastrophic proportions it grew to, the fire killed over 90 people. The absolutely inept and callous way in which the fire was handled by the hospital staff shocked the city, and the media understandably gave it wide coverage. This article will focus on the city editions of the English newspapers to explore which issues received media attention and which got marginalized when this overwhelming tragedy was reported. In the painful exercise of interpreting and categorizing such extreme experiences, it is usually the media that carries out the job of disseminating information, images and ideas concerning the nature of the events. Through the coverage or non-coverage of these issues, the media reflects society’s attempts to come to terms with such horrific tragedies. Using the reporting by the newspapers, the article will seek to enquire how the concepts of duty, responsibility and accountability are redefined by circumstances.
This chapter begins with the birth of Candramukhi, who grows up and gets married. The person she ... more This chapter begins with the birth of Candramukhi, who grows up and gets married. The person she marries is Hemchandra, who was educated in the city of Calcutta and was liberal in his views. They lead a happily married life. Towards the end of the story, the author reveals the existence of Nabakumar, a brother of Hemchandra who converts to Christianity, leaves his home, and becomes a missionary in rural Bengal. It is a predictable story on the face of it, ending as it does with the conversion to Christianity of Nabakumar, an enlightened youth. Ostensibly the story of Candramukhi's life, the story introduces themes that were relevant in contemporary Bengal, and which are debated in the novel by characters other than the heroine herself. Keywords:Calcutta; Candramukhī; Candramukhir Upakhyan ; Christianity; Hemchandra; Nabakumar; contemporary Bengal
Papers are invited for the 14th and 15th issues of the peer-reviewed journal of biannual frequenc... more Papers are invited for the 14th and 15th issues of the peer-reviewed journal of biannual frequency: Trivium A Multi disciplinary Journal of Humanities of Chandernagore College. The scope of the journal includes humanities and social sciences, commerce and management without mathematical application.
The chapter discusses the cultural changes and innovations that have occurred in Dalit and Adivas... more The chapter discusses the cultural changes and innovations that have occurred in Dalit and Adivasi literatures of eastern India in the past few decades. It discusses the positioning of their publishing houses and the politics of language and dialect that the writers negotiate as they enter the world of letters. The very distinctive approach of the two groups to religion and progress is explored, along with the relationship they have with the rising forces of Far-Right Hindutva, explored through the rewriting of the myths and epics.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2013
“Silence me now, your loquacious poet”1 wrote the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore after spending ... more “Silence me now, your loquacious poet”1 wrote the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore after spending years of his life trying to grasp the immeasurability of the divine in his songs. We find in his writings repeated references to the inextricable link between language and spirituality. Laments on the inability of words to articulate the divine, and celebrations of humanity’s endeavor to capture the essence of the indefinable, crowd his lyrics. Though Tagore rues the intractability of language to express the infinite and eternal with lines like “heaps of words”, “the distant music that we try to catch with our harps tuned to a nearer music”, the inescapable dependence on words returns as a refrain. Whether religion is the form given to man’s yearning for the spiritual or whether religion is really an embodiment of man’s more material desires may be a matter for debate. But when the yearning for the divine is embodied in words, and when those words are accepted by a community of people, the basis of a religion has been laid. This issue of the IJSL seeks to better understand the dynamics between religion and language. In doing so, it hopes to add to recent scholarship which explores the interaction between these two social constructs. Two fundamental realities make the study of language and religion inseparable, the first being the importance of language for religion. Most of us, in fact, encounter religion through some form of narrative: stories, hymns, chants, myths, parables. With its powerful status as the major and most flexible instrument of communication, language is indispensable to the expression of religion or religious ideas. It dominates man’s learning, imbibing, othering, adopting and adapting of religions. It is through the various forms of language that the living vitality of a community’s religious beliefs is passed down from generation to generation. Religion, in fact, can be said to exist largely in language, and hence the overwhelming significance of sacred languages and holy books. While this first reality may be said to be a characteristic of religion, the second reality that binds the study of language and religion is a characteristic shared. Both religion and language are markers of identity that evolve and change according to the needs of society. They are expressive of the philosophies, the beliefs and the experiences
Manohar Mouli Biswas, An Interpretation of Dalit Literature Aesthetic Theory and Movements: Throu... more Manohar Mouli Biswas, An Interpretation of Dalit Literature Aesthetic Theory and Movements: Through the lens of Ambedkarism. Kolkata: Chaturtha Duniya, 2017, ₹500, 296 pp. ISBN 978-81-926702-7-0.
Critical Discourse in Bangla. Edited BySubha Chakraborty Dasgupta, Subrata Sinha
The essay by the noted novelist, Debes Ray, recounts the experience of the postcolonial writer co... more The essay by the noted novelist, Debes Ray, recounts the experience of the postcolonial writer conscious of his ambivalent position. Ray not only notes that the novelist chooses a troubled time for his context, but also remembers that which was a possibility, a desire, and a purpose. The postcolonial novelist stopped telling his own stories in forms that existed for centuries such as bratakatha, panchali, kirtan, and kathakatha with the intervention of an imperial power. The acceptance of the European model of the novel led to a gap between the form and the postcolonial writer’s experience and wisdom, and between the word and its meaning. Earlier forms could not be retrieved. Nevertheless, drawing upon Alejo Carpentier’s The Lost Steps, the author underscores the necessity to rediscover and then to lose again what has been discovered. Without the rediscovery, writers would continue to remain ‘parasites of a metropolitan culture’, and, without the renewed loss, they would remain bound to eternal nostalgia and alienated from the contemporaneity of existence. The novelist’s task, the author feels, is to reclaim a language in which his words ‘will seem true and not fabricated’. Between the words and the meaning which he wants to embed in them, it is only the writer ‘who will be present as its author and narrator’. Only then the writer and his writing will be free.
If you insist that you do not know me, let me explain myself … you will feel, why, yes, I do know... more If you insist that you do not know me, let me explain myself … you will feel, why, yes, I do know this person. I’ve seen this man.
With these words, Manoranjan Byapari points to the inescapable roles all of us play in an unequal society. Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalilt is the translation of his remarkable memoir Itibritte Chandal Jivan. It talks about his traumatic life as a child in the refugee camps of West Bengal and Dandakaranya, facing persistent want—an experience that would dominate his life. The book charts his futile flight from home to escape hunger, in search of work as a teenager around the country, only to face further exploitation. In Calcutta in the 1970s, as a young man, he got caught up in the Naxalite movement and took part in gang warfare. His world changed dramatically when he was taught the alphabet in prison at the age of 24—it drew him into a new, enticing world of books. After prison, he worked as a rickshaw-wallah and one day the writer Mahasweta Devi happened to be his passenger. It was she who led him to his first publication.
Manoranjan Byapari is a writer who has never been to school. In
2013, he won the television channel 24 Ghanta’s Ananya Samman
and in 2014, the Suprabha Majumdar Smarak Puraskar, awarded
by the Paschim Banga Bangla Akademi.
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With these words, Manoranjan Byapari points to the inescapable roles all of us play in an unequal society. Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalilt is the translation of his remarkable memoir Itibritte Chandal Jivan. It talks about his traumatic life as a child in the refugee camps of West Bengal and Dandakaranya, facing persistent want—an experience that would dominate his life. The book charts his futile flight from home to escape hunger, in search of work as a teenager around the country, only to face further exploitation. In Calcutta in the 1970s, as a young man, he got caught up in the Naxalite movement and took part in gang warfare. His world changed dramatically when he was taught the alphabet in prison at the age of 24—it drew him into a new, enticing world of books. After prison, he worked as a rickshaw-wallah and one day the writer Mahasweta Devi happened to be his passenger. It was she who led him to his first publication.
Manoranjan Byapari is a writer who has never been to school. In
2013, he won the television channel 24 Ghanta’s Ananya Samman
and in 2014, the Suprabha Majumdar Smarak Puraskar, awarded
by the Paschim Banga Bangla Akademi.