QUESTION AND ANSWERS

1. As an autobiography
Answer: Nirad C.Chaudhuri's Autobiography of An Unknown Indian was
published in 1951, and it at once catapulted him into the first rank of Indian writing
in English. He was an Unknown Indian no longer. The autobiography was
extremely well received. The editor of the Glasgow Herald writes "This is an
extraordinary book. It is written by a Hindu of East Bengal who has never
been in Europe, yet with a command of English that is not exceeded by Mr.
Nehru himself...No other Indian self-portraits can compare, for interest of
challenge, with this product of a tortured and assertive spirit."

An autobiography is the literature of personal revelation and its main interest lies
in conscious self-portrayal by the author. The write must be truthful. There should
be no concealment or shying away from one's faults and weakness, and there
should be no attempt at self-glorification. The narration should be chronological
and the account of the external life must go hand in hand with a depiction of inner
life. However, all difficulties vanish if the writer writes because of his inner
compulsions, because of an urge for self-expression which he cannot control. Nirad
C. Chaudhuri was motivated by such an urge, hence the greatness of his
autobiography.

He begins by giving an account of his early rural background which became a part
and parcel of his being and the influence of which he felt all his life. His birthplace,
Kishorganj, his ancestral village, Banagram, and his mother's village Kalikutch,
exerted the deepest influence on his boyhood and formed "the buried foundations"
of his later life. Chaudhuri's house in Kishorganj was decorated in European style
and numerous famous books English books were found in his father's library.

Thus, he was brought up in a European atmosphere, Chaudhuri had an anglicised

temperament from his boyhood and it was strengthened as he grew up. His
childhood witnessed a phenomenal fascination for England. His reading of English
poetry opened an enchanted realm before him. His father, Upendra Narayan
Chaudhuri, had a great capacity for "moral indignation" but morals were not the
central interest of his life. He left the moral and religious education of his children
to their mother and gave the impression that he was behind her in everything she
did or said. His liberal views on education and he did not want his sons to become
mere technicians and specialists but also "to acquire some ancillary qualifications
in the field of art which would lend grace to our life." Nirad C. chaudhuri learnt
English from his father. Chaudhuri's father was a humanist. He tried his best to
make humanist spirit the spiritual heritage of his children. Under their father's
guidance Chaudhuri and his brothers, attuned themselves to the spirit of the
English language and English life. He was endowed with a strong will power and
was not totally indifferent to money, power, worldly position and fame..
Chaudhuri's mother and father were the complement of each other. She disliked
falsehood, dishonesty, moral cowardice ad meanness. She taught chaudhuri that
good manners should form an integral part in human life. She was fiercely honest.
She expected much from her husband and children and when she felt they were not
coming up to her expectations, she became frustrated and embittered.
Consequently she suffered from hysteria which killed her before time. Both the
parents of Nirad C. Chaudhuri exercised great influence on him.

Chaudhuri's description of his birthplace and the ancestral village is enriched with
a vivid external description as well as his internal feelings in those respective
backgrounds. He feels as soon as they arrived at Banagram they became aware of
blood, aware not only of its power to make them feel superior to other men, but
also of its immeasurable capacity to bring men together. His honest pride to be a
part of his ancestral village where his identification was as follows:

"Nirad Chaudhuri is the son of Upendra Chaudhuri, who was the son of Lakshmi
Narayan Chaudhuri, who was the son of Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri, who was the
son of Chandra Narayan Chaudhuri," and so on, to the fourteenth generation.

Nirad C. Chaudhuri comments, Knowing the exact lineage of every old man, every
middle-aged man, every young man, every boy, every child, and every baby around
us we saw the relationships so graphically worked out that the human beings whom
we saw appeared to be no longer human beings but fruits from the tiered and
spreading branches of a tree (family tree).
These descriptions by Nirad about his life makes this story a successful specimen
of an autobiography as we reach very close to the origin of the author. Every time
he describes a person or a place or a festival, he dilutes his feelings in it without
any shying. His description helps a reader to visualise those persons or places or
festivals very vividly and in this was the "Unkown Indian" becomes known to the
reader to the core.

2. Criticism of India
Answer: One of the earliest Indians who mostly wrote in English was Sir Nirad C.
Chowdhury who was an extremely forthright person and never minced his words in
criticizing pseudo- nationalism among many Indians in his compositions. His
famous and award-winning composition The Autobiography of an Unknown
Indian deals with Choudhury’s growing up in Calcutta during the British Raj, his
observations of decadence in Indian society, the deception, his disillusionment with
the socio-political transformation of the Indian psyche after 1947.

On perusing his autobiography, the reader is brought to the knowledge of the

poverty of the country, and the infatuation of Indian people for England which they
thought as a symbol of prosperity as each and every educated young man of India
wanted to go and study in England. Thus, England has been a dream world for the
author also and that influenced his sensibility since the beginning as he himself
describes, “England evoked by imagination and enjoyed emotionally, has been as
great an influence on me as any of the three places sensibly experienced”. On the
contrary, his hometown, Kishoreganj, had nothing significant in comparison to
England. His home town was only a normal specimen of its class with a collection
of tin-and-mat huts or sheds, comprising courts, offices, schools, shops and
residential dwellings, which British administration had raised up in the green and
brown spaces of East Bengal for their own use. The description of his home town
explicitly presents the picture of urban India at that time, and unfortunately, it was
not different in any manner from rural India.

Among other problems of Indian society, the author describes one of the most
severe problems that prevailed throughout the Indian subcontinent i.e. the
population explosion, which is becoming more and more dangerous day by day. It
is so because population explosion also becomes the sole cause of many other
challenges in Indian society such as lack of food, hospital facilities and jobs, and
consequently the people have to live in very disappointing conditions. He observes
that the sewage system of Indian cities does not suffice the need for
overpopulation, and in the rainy season, the situation becomes worse.

Further, the author also discusses the problem of gender bias in society. His own
family does not escape the aspects of the patriarchal archetype and he illustrates
this observation through the marriage proposal his widow aunt from one of the
richest landlords of the town. Since the caste system had positioned at a lower
station than his family, his grandfather had vehemently declined: “I would sooner
cut her up and feed the fishes of the Brahmaputra with the piece. The complexion
was another measuring tool used by society to examine whether a woman is
worthy of marriage or not. In Bengal, the groom’s side of the family would stoop
as low as rubbing the face of the girl with a wet towel to ensure that the girl’s
complexion is naturally fair and is not the result of makeup.

The class consciousness is explicitly revealed by the author when he describes the
customs of his family. The author’s family always avoided having meals with those
who were considered inferior to them in status. For instance, one day, a member of
the family named Kamal Narayan had to go on a boat excursion along with the
members of another family that were considered below their rank. That day the
whole family was apprehensive of the question of whether Kamal would have
compromised his honour in taking food with that family or not. When Kamal
returned, he replied: “He had indeed been trapped into a vile conspiracy but was
not such a fool as to yield.”

In addition to this, the author deals with false moral conventions that prevailed in
contemporary society. He makes satirical comments on the false moral conventions
of people in traditional Indian society, where the moral conduct of a person is
completely regulated by the traditional norms of orthodox society irrespective of
their rationality to the current situation. The author does not hesitate to call these
conventions weird superstitions because these traditional norms do not emerge out
of true religion but are the result of blind adherence to some illogical
commandments.
The next issue that the author deals with in his autobiography is that of
Hindu-Muslim strife, which was the most heated issue during the 1950s in
contemporary Indian society. The author narrates the incidents, how they had to
leave their place in order to save themselves during this Hindu-Muslim Strife.
Then, he explains that the Britishers were not the sole reason behind this
catastrophic conflict, though as rulers of the country, they profited from this
conflict. According to the author, the seed of this conflict was hidden in the past
which was sown long ago in history when the Muslims had invaded this country
and vanquished the Hindu kings, and afterwards ruled for a long time. Therefore,
according to the author, the enmity between Hindu and Muslims was present there
since the beginning.

To conclude, it can be said that Chaudhuri presents a dark picture of contemporary

society but it is not appropriate to criticize him for the same as it is the moral
responsibility of the literary artist to present the actual image of society in which he
has observed through his own eyes. Therefore, Basavaraj S. Naicar openly supports
the critical tone of Chaudhuri’s autobiography on the basis that his criticism has
emerged from his concern for the people who have to live with all these problems
in Indian society. In Naicar's words, "The bitterness and anger are the obverse side
of Chaudhuri's love and concern for his countrymen". Thus, it can be aptly said
that Chaudhuri gives an actual portrayal of contemporary society.

3. How does the poet draw a comparison between

the Indian social system vs English social system?
Answer: In the Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1951), Nirad C.
Chaudhuri’s (1897-1999) analysis of what he perceived to be the negative elements
of Indian nationalism in the decades preceding India’s independence is worth an
exploration. Chaudhuri’s lifelong interest in the historical, cultural and ideological
ramifications of the Indo-British encounter led him to write his Autobiography
when he was nearly 50 years of Autobiography covers the period from 1897 to
1921, the years when Indian nationalist movement was gathering pace to ensure
eventually the departure of the British from India in 1947. Thus, the autobiography
is not only the record of certain historical events but also has listed consciously the
educatin of the sensitive youngman, and the frustration of his scholarly ambitions
by hostile environment.

As an artist of autobiographer the account of his emotional growth and maturity

must go hand in hand with the narration of the story of his external life with all its
transmutation, vacillation and metamorphosis. Book I is entitled as “Early
Environment”, and it is divided into four parts. Chaudhuri gives account of four
different places his birthplace Kishorganj, his ancestral village Banagram, and his
mother’s village Kalikutch and in the fourth chapter of the book provides his
imaginary world of England and also describes how these places and there impacts
are interlaced with his life. Yet England had casted major influence in his growth
because a preciously early interest in English poetry had opened a realm of
enchantment to him. Shakespeare’s ‘Full fathom five…..’ and Webster’s ‘Call for
the robin-red breast and the wren’ vividly presented to his mind the juxtaposition
of land and sea and the celestial beauty of English kingdom. To him, as to the
culturally uprighted society of Bengal of that contemporary period Shakespeare
was the “epitome , test, and symbol of literary culture.” Chaudhuri’s interest in
warfare can be traced through his admirable and monumental account of Napoleon
as a military figure. Burke, for the championship of the down trodden, as one
famous for the impeachment of Warren Hastings, received his profound reverence.

The first way of reading Chaudhuri’s work would be the most obvious: the
imperial native tool, the pro-British observer of indigenous fallibility, the
authorized recorder of Indian backwardness and unproductive, irrational
idiosyncrasy.Grew up in with the perspective of rationalism and liberalism the
narrator provides detail account of his parents who complement each other.
Whereas, his father was robust his mother constitutes fragility. Descriptions such
as “She was not an intellectual …”, “My mother was not handsome”, even
application of the word such as ‘hysteric” enable the readers consciousness to
approve this autobiography as as a subaltern study too, where the narrator perhaps
observes the robustness and individualism of his father as the epitome of Western
Culture and enlists his mother’s emotional and mental depression as the outcome
of eastern environment .
The deep influence and metamorphosed understanding of religious education of the
narrator secures a special place of discussion in his Autobiography he was
influenced by polytheism,both anthropomorphic and pantheistic and the Bramho
monotheism. Influenced by liberal European thought and liberal Hindu reformers
he admired the epoch –making struggles in the West: the Reformation, the Puritan
Rebellion in England, the American war of independence and the French
revolution. Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s inner urge and self expression on the other hand
showcase his position as that of the mythological character like Karna from
Mahabharata, which influenced and shaped his sensitive temperament. Like Karna
the author belongs to the land but can no longer consider himself to be the
indigenous part of the same cultural, social or political tradition of the country.
Hence, his chief purpose is not only to address the English speaking society but to
correct the distortions of which they are guilty , for they do not have full
knowledge of authenticity of Indian life, people, religion and rural background.

Colour consciousness is another important aspect which deepens the psychological

and spiritual arrogance amongst both eastern and western civilization. Chaudhuri’s
intellect liberates him in the same way as the sudden discovery of his European
identity liberates Gora—both of them ‘becomes’ India only after realising that they
are themselves racially ‘white’. Unlike Gora, who is born to Irish parents and has
an “excessively white complexion”. Chaudhuri was born to Bengali parents and
had a complexion sufficiently dark for him to be teased as an ‘African’ during his
first visit to Europe. Yet Chaudhuri forged for himself a ‘white’ identity by
interpreting in his own unique way the ambiguous attitude towards whiteness that
existed within the Hindu nationalist discourse in particular and the Hindu society in
general during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Chaudhary in his novel reveals the greatest short-coming in our modern society. He
warns us against cynicism in old age, where he says to be cynical in age is living
death. But then without self-contradictions of this sort there is no Chaudhuri, for
Chaudhuri is an Indian who is an anti-Indian, an Anglicized Hindu who is critical
of other Anglicized Hindus, and Indian writer in English who sees no virtues in
Indian novels in English, a historian who believes in objectivity but leans heavily
on subjective dogmas, a radical non-conformist who supports the caste system and
cow worship; a cynical individualist who cares very much for social relations and
human happiness.
 4. Anglophilia
Answer: One of the earliest Indians who mostly wrote in English was Sir Nirad C.
Chowdhury who was an extremely forthright person and never minced his words in
criticizing pseudo- nationalism among many Indians in his compositions. His
famous and award-winning composition The Autobiography of an Unknown
Indian deals with Choudhury’s growing up in Calcutta during the British Raj, his
observations of decadence in Indian society, the deception, his disillusionment with
the socio-political transformation of the Indian psyche after 1947.

The General Preface of Autobiography of An Unknown Indian, Nirad C.Chaudhuri

writes: “To the memory of the British empire in India which conferred
subjecthood on us but withheld citizenship; to which yet every one of us threw
out the challenge: "Civis Britannicus Sum" because all that was good and
living with us was made, shaped, and quickened by the same British rule.”

Chaudhuri is always very conscious of the fact that his knowledge of English and
Nirad C. Chaudhuri England is secondhand, yet he persists in describing things
only in English metaphors. This acceptance of England and things English as the
norm for judging India is, no doubt, the effect of colonization. The passage from
Unknown Indian continues:

“Kishorganj was only a normal specimen of its class-one among a score of

collections of tin-and-mat huts or sheds, comprising courts, offices, schools,
shops and residential dwellings, which British administration had raised up in
the green and brown spaces of East Bengal.”

One notices immediately that Chaudhuri's tone is quite detached - there is no sense
of closeness to his native village. The tone throughout tends to denigrate the
village, it is one "among a score", and he is dismissive of all the buildings, whether
"residential dwellings" or offices, schools or courts. From a height of five hundred
feet, the buildings would have looked like "a patch of white and brown
mushrooms." The comparison with "mushrooms" has pejorative implications, with
the suggestions of unplanned, untidy, short-lived growth. There is no attempt to
individualise the buildings: surely, the court would not have been a hut or a shed, it
would have had a permanent brick building.

The Autobiography is divided into four books and each book into four chapters.
The first is entitled "Early Environment" and its four chapters are (a) My Birth
Place, (b) My Ancestral Place. (c) My Mother's Place, and (d) England.

The siblings in the author's family were taught very carefully the names and views
of the English Prime Ministers including Lord Salisbury, Mr Balfour, Lord
Rosebery, and Mr. Gladstone but they thought that Lord Rosebery was the last
Prime Minister and Disraeli the coming Prime Minister. For this reason, they felt
so interested in Lord Rosebery when they looked at the picture of the coronation of
Edward VII at Banagram. But after the return of Liberals in 1906, they were easily
reconciled to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, as the Prime Minister. His tragic
death was impressed on their minds by the early return of their father from the
court that day. The author asked him why he had returned so early. He replied that
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Prime Minister, was dead and the courts had
closed as a mark of respect.

Everything they read about the British Isles or English life evoked pictures of the
external appearance of the country even when not openly descriptive. But they had
plenty of verbal descriptions and in addition to this, they had pictures of England to
look upon. From there they formed the impression that England was a country of
great beauty, a country which possessed not only beautiful spots but also
place-names that sounded beautiful. For example, there were names like Isle of
Wight, Osborne House, Windsor, Grasmere, Holyrood Palace, Arthur's Seat, Firth
of Forth, Belfast etc. Personally speaking, the author liked Osborne House and
Holyrood Palace best. Their appearance and beauty seen in pictures produced a
vivid effect on him.

To coloured pictures seen in a school textbook printed in England made a very

deep impression on the author. One of them depicted a cricket match. Cricket was
their favourite game but the siblings also loved football. They played football also
but they always thought cricket had a touch of aristocracy and refinement. An extra
reason which inclined them to cricket was that one of its early pioneers in Bengal
was a man from the author's district, who came of a wealthy family whose seat was
a village only six or seven miles from Banagram.

Although England of his imagination was a land of beauty and poetry, about
Englishmen actually residing in India he came to acquire many queer notions
which were current among Indians. Once he heard from his teacher that the English
race was born of a she-monkey by a demon, and like monkeys, they were very
fond of bananas. Because of this notion he and his brother once hid from an
Englishman coming up the road from the opposite direction. This attitude of
Indians towards the Englishmen could be explained only in terms of the hostility of
the ruler and the ruled then existed between the two races. The first three chapters
thus give an account of his rural background in East Bengal, and the fourth of the
intellectual background which made him an anglophile.