Towards the end of the nineteenth century, an outbreak of plague in Bombay and the strict measures imposed by the British administration gave a fillip to nationalist agitation in Western India. In particular, it enabled Tilak and his 'garam dal' to gain at the expense of the moderates in Congress. Thus, when plague broke out in Calcutta, the Viceroy feared to use strict measures. Another consideration was that acknowledging the problem could affect exports from Calcutta which, disproportionately, were in the hands of European Managing Agencies. At that time, Calcutta was the capital of British India. The Raj looked to the comprador class of native 'zamindars'- tax-farmers turned feudal landlords- to stem native discontent and ameliorate conditions for the poor. At the same time, to reassure the European population, medical personnel were brought in from England while some Eurasian nurses were dismissed from hospitals on the grounds that their Indian upbringing had rendered them insensible to the requirements of hygiene. Unlike in Bombay, segregation was voluntary and, notionally, the State provided treatment free of cost.
The Tagore family was one of the most prominent comprador dynasties. Though internally divided on Religious issues, such families had always been staunch in their support for British rule. However, as a class, though a few of their number did get inoculated, the abhijata bhadralok Bengali failed to rise to the challenge. By contrast, rising commercial or artisanal communities established their own temporary hospitals and isolation wards. Muslims and Marwaris, in particular, showed cohesiveness and enterprise. Caste and creed were more potent in mobilizing an effective response to an existential threat than the noblesse oblige supposedly created by paideia and hereditary prestige.
Within the bhadralok, families were rent in two as some fled the city and expressed resentment of 'Western' denigration of their traditional mores while others, more or less ineffectually, supported the British policy and continued to blackguard their orthodox cousins.
It appears that the ordinary Bengali's willingness to isolate plague patients and burn down their huts after they died, inhibited the spread of the disease. It may be that the Bengali reluctance to handle dead bodies- if they had died in some unexpected catastrophe- dates from this time. Ultimately, the State does not need to be callous or racist, if the people are predisposed to be over-abundantly so.
Tagore's 'Chaturanga', published in 1916, deals with two brothers belonging to the merchant caste, which Tagore looked down on. One brother, a militant atheist, stays in Calcutta to help the Muslim tanners and dies while the other, who is 'orthodox', flees and lives. The novel concerns the fate of the son of the latter who is initially an acolyte of his uncle but who goes in the other direction, after the latter passes away, and becomes the ardent devotee of a charismatic Hindu godman who promotes an ecstatic type of worship. He is attracted to a widow, named Damini, bequeathed to his Swamy. Sadly, the lady didn't have the plague or syphilis or some other such attraction and so the silly man doesn't think he should marry her but must prose on endlessly.
The following extract shows the fool- Sachish- at his verbose worst
Furthermore, no singer starts off really really happy before commencing on some boring alaap. On the contrary, the singer and the audience both go down the same road. The raga is known to both. The singer seeks to imbue what is formulaic with living color and emotion. The audience appreciates the achievement. There is no need to 'unravel' the emotion from the raga because the 'rasika' or connoisseur knows the formula perfectly well and is alert to any virtuosity in its presentation. The singer, whether carried away by emotion or a vulgar desire to impress or else by lack of discipline or proper training, may fail to observe the raga. The connoisseur is there to keep the singer honest. I suppose, one could say that a new raga is created when an inspired singer transgresses the rules. More generally, the precise emotional coloration associated with a composition can be changed and refined. But one can't say what Sachish says unless one is as stupid as shit.
Sachish's Uncle could be said to be a 'Bazarov' type character. But, Turgenev's character is a Doctor. Bazarov has a good reason to stay to deal with an epidemic. Tagore's character is a blathershite. He dies uselessly. Still, Tagore- a Brahmo, manages to get in a dig at his sect's orthodox rivals- more particularly if, like Sachish's family, they happen to be Banias. But both Brahmin Brahmo and Bania Vaishnav were soon to be chased away from Muslim majority areas. Tagore himself predicted this. I suppose the Uncle could have cooperated with the Brits- sitting on committees and giving speeches in Bengali to 'enlighten' the common folk- without getting the plague. But, thanks to the success of the anti-partition agitation, Tagore couldn't say so. Thus he had to show that his class was useless no matter what it did. Just marry a Damini- or maintain a mistress abandoned by a relative rather than seek to 'save' her- and get on with some useful type of work, or, if you are utterly useless, at least get wifey preggers.
Tagore himself had a vocation- he was a poet. He got a Nobel and then tried to write a poetic 'novel of ideas' reflecting on the horrible conditions of the world in 1915. But his ideas were shit because his Brahmo brain had been fed on nothing but shite sectarian polemics. Still, his Bengali was probably quite good. Later, Tagore with the help of WW Pearson translated this shitty novella- whose purpose was to show that the only Great War the bhadralok were interested in waging was against their brothers or cousins, which was published by the Calcutta Modern Review in 1922 under the title 'Broken Ties'.
I suppose the novella is a bit 'Freudian'. Three of the main characters sleep in a cave. Damini touches the feet of the blathershite hoping to gain some jizz from him so she can have a nice cutesy baby. I should explain, women are quite prepared to marry and keep house for a useless blathershite because such creatures quickly come under the spell of His or Her Highness the Baby and thus become quite useful members of the household though their place tends to fall below the puppy dog or kitten over the course of time. This is wholly salutary. When baby sleeps on your chest- Mum being otherwise occupied- the formless creator approaches you upon every name and form of chariot or scent or color of delivered Pizza.
Tagore himself said, to Kalidas Nag- a Francophile-apropos of this novella
To the authors of yesteryears life meant desire and frustration, union and separation, birth and death, and certain other similarly imprecise events. Therefore, the play called life had to end either in a cherished and revered union, or with a scene devoted to death’s vast graveyard.
I suppose Victor Hugo's La Légende des siècles was the turning point. The trouble was, French self-importance was receiving its come-uppance at about this time. As for the bhadralok- they were being displaced from their own history which Blighty could no longer be bothered to write.
Since a few days now, our impression of our life has been changing—it seems we were so long loitering about the entrance—after a long time we seem to have discovered the way to the inner chambers for the first time.
There were no 'inner chambers'. There was a zenana and there were vaginas in which blathershites were welcome to jizz so babies might occur.
We are awake at the outer side of our consciousness—there we are consciously fighting battles, striking others and are being struck by others.
The bhadralok were shit at fighting. The Brits were anxious to recruit Jats and Coorgis and Gurkhas and so forth.
But within these strikes and counter strikes, these ups and downs, something is being created in our ignorance of it.
What was being created was the suspicion that bhadralok blathershites were ignorant, stupid and utterly useless.
The arena for that gigantic game of creation is our submerged consciousness [magnachaitanyalok]. It is a new world, as if gradually coming into existence before us
By 1922, the attempt was being made in Calcutta to find a Freudian Tagore- though the latter, being himself a charlatan, had met Freud and rightly dismissed him as a fraudster.
In any case, how could there be an Oedipus complex- or even an Ajatashatru complex- when the Mother is always already dead and the father hasn't remarried but, instead, has one foot in Sanyaas? Moreover, the Uranian Muse- cunt that she is- wants a baby from the blathershite and will kill herself if denied jizz. Truly, the unconscious of the bhadralok- unlike that of the Viennese literati's collective Egregore of Moosbrugger or the Kaiser's War- was utterly shite unless, it accepted initiation from the photo of a 'low caste' Vaishnav Guru and thus could put ISKCON (whose founder was about 20 years old when Chaturanga was published) on a global trajectory in the manner of Lord Chaitanya who night and day, merged in love's ocean, appeared sometimes submerged, sometimes afloat.
ei-mata mahaprabhu ratri-divaseWhatever supreme things we know or do not know,
We don't know supreme things.
there is one supreme thing I have understood from my own inner experience: only through love can all conflicts be resolved.
Nonsense! Conflicts are resolved by one side beating the shit out of the other side unless the matter is more profitably resolved by the payment of money or the alteration of the terms of a contract. Love doesn't resolve shit.
Those who cut themselves to pieces in arguments,
don't exist. Blathershites can't cut shit.
or who fight over actions,
but stop fighting if beaten or sodomized
those who don’t want to agree at all, can reach agreement only through love.
why agree to stupid shit? Just have a wank already and go your own way
Those who, whether in the fields of debate or activity, are always ready to destroy each other like gods and demons, become brothers to each other through love.’
Love of wanking- maybe. Tagore lived to see two world wars. Britain- the country which had raised up the bhadralok- prevailed in both not by tenderly sucking off the Kaiser or giving Hitler a titty-wank but by killing lots of Germans.
Tagore was the hereditary pontiff of a religious sect which spent its time slagging off orthodox Hinduism though the family had once had to subsist as priests of the Kali temple. Then another such priest- Ramakrishna- decided to become God and Vivekananda gained world wide fame as a Swamy. Aurobindo- a revolutionary- too set up as a great Sage. Meanwhile, Tagore- who had been born into that racket- was eclipsed by a Bania Mahatma as bhadralok Bengal sank into squalor and irrelevance.
No comments:
Post a Comment