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To Babu, the most avid reader that I have ever come across.
To Maa, for making me what I am.
TABLES AND FIGURES
TABLES
1.1 Mortality (per 1,000) in Bengal: 1882–91
1.2 Hindu Widows amongst Women Aged 0–39 (in Percentage) in Bengal: 1881–91
1.3 Education amongst Selected Castes in Bengal: 1901
1.4 Occupation of Hindu Women (in Percentage) in Bengal: 1891 61
AI.1 Hindu and Brahmo Women Authors (1850–1900) 322
AII.1 Information of Presses in Calcutta (1857) 379
FIGURES
1.1 Mortality (per 1,000) in Bengal: 1882–91
1.2 Hindu Widows amongst Women Aged 0–39 (in Percentage) in Bengal: 1881–91
1.3 Education amongst Selected Castes in Bengal: 1901 57
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
is labour of love is owed directly to Professor Tanika Sarkar, my supervisor, whose work on gender history opened up the world of the engaging history of women authors of nineteenth-century Bengal. Without her patient guidance and critical comments, my doctoral dissertation submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, most certainly would not have come through.
I thank the sta of various libraries—JNU, Sahitya Akademi, and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in Delhi; the National Library, Bangiya Sahitya Parishat Library, Burdwan University Library, Hitesranjan Sanyal Memorial Archives of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Jadavpur University, and School of Women’s Studies of Jadavpur University, West Bengal—for their patient assistance. I remain indebted to Ashim Mukhopadhyay, Swati Bose, and Samit Paik of the National Library for helping me locate the books that were many a times reported to be ‘not found’ and ‘too brittle’.
Parts of Chapters 4 and 5 and the Conclusion saw earlier appearances in journals and edited books. I am grateful to Journal of History and Purbasha Ekhon for allowing me to reproduce material from the following articles respectively: ‘Prasannamayee Devi: Imagining and
Acknowledgements
Imaging Aryavarta’, Journal of History, vol. 27 (2009–10) and ‘Politics of Reception: Women Writers in “Renaissance” Bengal’, Purbasha Ekhon, vol. 6, nos 1 and 2 (January–February 2016). e article ‘Kahake?: Her Novel Life’ appeared in Religion and Culture in India across Ages: Historical Re ections, edited by Santanu Dey (Belur: Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandir, 2013) and ‘Kahake?: Swarnakumari Debi’s Literary Resistance?’ got published in Gender and Modernity, edited by Amitava Chatterjee (Kolkata: Setu Prakashani, 2015). I am thankful to both the editors for giving me permission to reuse the material in this book.
Without intellectual, emotional, and institutional support, this book would never have seen the light of the day. I take this opportunity to express sincere gratitude to Professor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Professor K.N. Panikkar, and Professor Neeladri Bhattacharya of the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU, for helping me evolve as a researcher. Special thanks are due to Professor Kunal Chakrabarti for his words of encouragement regarding my research and my singing. Words seem inadequate for expressing my appreciation for the suggestions and incisive comments from Professor Arabinda Samanta, who went through my early dra s. Camaraderie and eagerness to see the completion of this work from my colleagues Dr Samarpita Mitra, Dr Utsa Ray, and Dr Suchetana Chattopadhyay elicit special mention. e care and concern of Professor Amit Bhattacharyya, Professor Nupur Dasgupta, and Professor Kunal Chattopadhyay towards their junior colleague has been heartening. I am deeply indebted to Professor Anuradha Roy for her rare scholarly insight, stimulating discussions on society in general, and immeasurable warmth. Dr Sudeshna Banerjee has not only showered her a ection but has also kindly allowed me to go through her unpublished PhD dissertation. Dr Tilottama Mukherjee’s friendship sustains me and I do not have words enough to thank her. I extend my heartfelt gratitude to Dr Biswamoy Pati for prodding me to submit the book proposal. His unfortunate departure has been a personal loss. Dr Srirupa Prasad’s company made the gruelling library work seem less arduous and she has remained unhesitant in her appreciation.
is project would not have been possible without my well-wishers. I thank Atanu Ghosh for thought-provoking chats on diverse issues, which have nudged me to think anew. Special thanks belong to Gautam Dasgupta for being such an understanding friend. I owe him more than words can express. I appreciate the contribution of Shankha Subhra Chakrabarty and Sidhhartha Gupta in moments of medical crises. I would like to thank Ambarnath and Anindita Ghosh for their a ection. anks to Nazes Afroz for teaching me to cook dishes that allowed delightful breaks from writing. Abhee Dutt-Mazumder’s death has indeed been an irreparable loss. It was he who motivated me to work for the underprivileged. I convey my love to Mala Mitra and Todi Dutt-Mazumder for adda sessions that rejuvenate me. Exchanges with Ayesha Khatun, who runs schools for the minorities and Adivasis in Birbhum, and Dalit writer Kalyani akur enrich me each time. All of them unfailingly stayed by me whenever I needed them—in moments of happiness and periods of crises.
I remain immensely grateful to Sumantra for his rm persuasion during my dissertation years. anks are due to Sudipa for her loving companionship that has seen me sailing through adversity. My special thanks to Bijoya and Jiten for their unequivocal emotional support. e completion of this project has been dependent upon the heartwarming presence of Anindita, Maloshree, Swati, Aparajita, Indrani, and Gargi. Santanu da, Amit da, Manas, Sabyasachi, Binayak, and Suvojit patiently lent their ears whenever I turned to them. ank you Subhro for nding me a room of my own. I wish to convey my gratefulness to Pulak for driving me to sing again and for being an inspiration. I thank each of the individuals mentioned above for their compassion all along this journey. anks are due to Rohith Vemula for motivating me to stand up and speak against caste-based humiliation. It is unfortunate that I never got an opportunity to meet the great mind who shook our conscience and brought to light institutionalized caste prejudice.
My deepest gratitude goes to Debabrata Bandyopadhyay who taught me to dream big and ght odds in my growing-up years and be humane when I grew up.
is work would not have been the same without the love and support of Mira Mukhopadhyay and Swati Gupta. ank you Ashim Mukhopadhyay for your intellectual inputs as you read through my nal dra and for constantly assuring me that this work too would come to an end soon. I refrain from thanking you on endless other accounts.
I am especially grateful to my family for their un agging encouragement. e constant encouragement of my Babu, Gurucharan Murmu, in the eternal search for knowledge makes this project consequential and worthwhile. I know how happy he would have been today reading this work. ank you Maa, Shelley Murmu, for adjusting with this ‘unconventional’ daughter of yours. A very special thanks to my brother, Geetin Murmu, for bravely taking care of the medical emergencies of my father. I thank my sister-in-law, Swagata Murmu, for moments of unadulterated laughter magic.
Suggestions from anonymous reviewers of Oxford University Press have helped me sharpen my arguments. I owe thanks to the team at Oxford University Press, New Delhi, for keeping this lazy and reluctant soul under strict deadlines. e responsibility for errors, omissions in facts, and arguments remain mine.
A NOTE ON TRANSLATION AND CITATION
e English translations in this thesis are not very literal because of linguistic and structural di erences between the Bengali and English languages. Bengali, with its vast array of synonymous nouns and adjectives, loose language rules, and open-ended sentence structure, cannot be precisely translated into English. e preference for a certain translated expression is merely because of it being closer in meaning to the original. While an attempt has been made to maintain the sentence structure of Bengali prose in its English translation, one would notice the failure to keep intact the original rhyming or metrical patterns in the case of verses.
Authors, intellectuals, and individuals discussed in this work have been referred to either by their full names or rst names, following the Bengali convention. e surnames of important personalities of the period as well as those of authors of primary sources in Bengali have been given in their pre-colonial form (Chattopadhyay) and also in the Anglo-Indian adaptation (Tagore). Where Bengali authors have been cited exclusively in relation to their English writings, the work has retained the form in which they themselves spelt their names (such as Romesh Chunder Dutt and Shivnath Shastri).
In keeping with the usual standards, the titles of books written in Bengali have been translated in English. However, the titles of journals, articles in journals, and newspapers have not been translated. In addition, Bengali terms and phrases when cited in English are indicated in italics. eir meanings are provided in the glossary.
In Bengali tradition of the nineteenth century, women belonging to the Brahmo Samaj of India and the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj used their surnames as well as titles such as Kumari (Miss) and Shrimati (Mrs) as a mark of distinction from Hindu women. However, most of the upper-caste Hindu bhadramahila women used the generic title of Debi a er their name and those of the lower caste used Dasi. e surname of the husband has been used at times but women authors have generally been referred to by their rst names, followed by Debi/Dasi. e colonial naming of Calcutta has been used rather than the contemporary use of Kolkata.
In the use of non-English words, a transcription closer to the Sanskrit pronunciation of consonants has been used only in relation to Brahmanical–scriptural concepts. In case of Bengali words that do not denote such concepts, an attempt has been made to transcribe as closely to Bengali consonants as possible. e vowel system, however, follows the standard Sanskrit transcription. us, while varnadharma (and not barnadharma) is the spelling used here because of the Brahmanical association of this term, spellings such as patibrata (and not pativrata) and Lakshmi (and not Laxmi) have been used. is has been done because despite their Sanskrit origin they have no Brahmanical–shastric signi cance.
Bengali books which have provided their date of publication only in terms of the Bengali Hindu calendar have been mentioned a er their conversion to the Gregorian equivalent of the Bengali year by adding 593/594 to the Bengali year. us, 1307 be would be 1900 ad.
All translation from Bengali to English being mine, all errors in this regard remain my responsibility.
Introduction
is book traces the growth of the social category of Bengali middleclass women authors in the second half of nineteenth-century Bengal. Since middle-classness a ected caste, language, religion, culture, and also gender identities and relations in colonial Bengal, it examines the intersections of these dynamics in women-authored texts. e texts produced by Hindu and Brahmo women have been read within a speci c social, cultural, and ideological milieu to explore how women varied from one another in their literary representation within and across genres. Such a literary analysis would help us understand the signi cance of these works in literary history and might aid one in re-con guring conventional history.1 rough
1 For an understanding of the history of Bengali literature written in English, see Asit Kumar Bandyopadhyay, History of Modern Bengali Literature: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Calcutta, 1986; Sushil Kumar De, Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century (1757–1857), Calcutta, 1919 (reprint,
Words of Her Own. Maroona Murmu, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Oxford University Press 2020. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199498000.001.0001.
symptomatic reading2 an attempt is made to listen to voices that the dominant literary discourses and aesthetics tried to marginalize or silence. Such reading speaks about the suppressed, the submerged, and the unspeakable leading one to interrogate silences, withdrawals, ‘aberrations’, and occasional ‘irrationalities in women’s writings.’3 Being against the narratives of repression and omission, this study probes the stratagems of survival that enabled women authors to negotiate with the male-dominated literary arena. ese writings by women can be read as ways of their self-understanding and empowerment in contrast to their male counterparts who were endowed with authoritative and history-making agency.
e study focuses on a mixed spectrum of women’s writings, selected from the genres of discursive tracts, autobiographies, diaries, novels, and travel writings which are perceived as archives that reveal broader outlines of social, political, and cultural milieu of nineteenth-century Bengal.4 rough a close scrutiny of these genres,
1962); J.C. Ghosh, Bengali Literature, Calcutta, 1948; Dinesh Chandra Sen, History of Bengali Language and Literature, Calcutta, 1911; Sukumar Sen, History of Bengali Literature, New Delhi, 1960. To get a comprehensive view of the literary history of India, see Stuart Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia, eds, India’s Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century, Delhi, 2004; Sisir Kumar Das, A History of Indian Literature 1800–1910 Western Impact: Indian Response, Delhi, 1991; Sheldon Pollock, Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, Delhi, 2003.
2 To understand symptomatic reading, see Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus, ‘Surface Reading: An Introduction’, Representations, vol. 108, no. 1, 2009, pp. 1–21.
3 To see how their struggle for survival brought about powerful eruptions in the otherwise homogenous literary discourse, see Partha Chatterjee, e Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, Delhi, 1993, pp. 135–57.
4 For an understanding of how writings of women, even about home, can be utilized as an archive and claim a place in history at the intersection of the private and the public, the personal and the political, the national and the postcolonial, see Antoinette Burton, Dwelling in the Archive Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India, New York, 2003.
the study unmasks varied emotions and feelings—longings, pleasures, disappointments—as also priorities, modes of living, literary tastes, attitudes, and opinions of women authors who were either secluded in the antahpur or had access to the outer world. Exploring emotional lives through women’s narratives, this book situates diverse feminine experiences and its articulations, not unmediated though, in the wider endeavour to understand the larger context of historical changes in nineteenth-century Bengal.5 It is, however, accepted that mapping comprehensible changes in the realm of feelings through the medium of literature within a chronological framework is not an easy task. e personal–emotional that emanate out of these writings are not timebound and one here is dealing with a society divided emotionally in a tumultuous time.
I question the ascription of the di erence in writings of men and women to sexual/biological distinction and argue that it depends on individual perception of writers. e book, thus, puts forth certain questions: is it not an unwarranted essentialization to claim that all that women wrote were distinctive? Is it proper to celebrate essentialist conceptions of women’s writings and of the female self based on di erentiated nature of women’s body, style, language form, and mode? Can one speak of a monolithic body of ‘women’s writings’ with a rmly gendered style, form, and content? Did men and women authors always di er in modes of argument and representation and never converge?
Refuting gendered distinction in writing as a pre-given, this study intends to show how in their chosen style and form, the writings of women authors were not essentially feminine. Marking a departure from the analytic frames used by certain strands of western feminist literary criticism,6 this book claims that one cannot identify a
5 For tracing the history of emotions in colonial Bengal, see Rajat K. Ray, Exploring Emotional History: Gender, Mentality and Literature in the Indian Awakening, Delhi, 2001, and Rajat K. Ray, ed., Mind, Body and Society: Life and Mentality in Colonial Bengal, Delhi, 1995.
6 For initial writings on western feminist literary criticism, see Elizabeth Abel, ed., Writing and Sexual Di erence, Chicago, 1982; Mary Ellman,
fundamental feminine viewpoint of experience, an inherent feminine voice in writings by women, solely based on the authorship of women. One ought not to forget that subjectivity is refashioned through writing. Women do not express ‘feminine’ feelings alone in their writings, and that too in a similar manner, simply because of their female subjectivity. One of the chief arguments of this book is that there are a number of issues on which men and women writers spoke in unison erasing gender di erence. It is, nonetheless, equally true that while describing the speci cally female life world of domestic experiences, women authors might have made conscious divergences from male projected stereotypes.
BIRTH OF WOMEN
AUTHORS
In historically analysing the birth of the social category of women authors in nineteenth-century Bengal, one is confronted with a host of questions: What impeded the development of women’s writings earlier and what enabled the unshackling of their creativity in the second half of the nineteenth century? What led to the emergence of women authors as a distinct, continuous, and ever-growing category for the rst time during this time? What were the socio-cultural incentives behind the production and circulation of their texts? A look at some of the major processes of change that took place in Bengal would provide answers to some of these enquiries.
e recorded history demonstrates that the socio-economic and political restructuring of society by British colonizers led to the growth of the socio-economic category of bhadralok (a social group whose gentility was de ned by their upper-caste status and abstention from
inking about Women, New York, 1968; Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, e Madwoman in the Attic: e Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven, 1979; Gayle Green and Coppelia Kahn, Making a Di erence: Feminist Literary Criticism, London and New York, 1985; Mary Jacobus, ed., Women Writing and Writing about Women, New York, 1979; Elaine Showalter, ed., e New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and eory, New York, 1985.
manual labour, respectable people and culturally re ned gentlemen) in the rst four decades of the nineteenth century. Bhadralok is difcult to de ne for it includes signi cant heterogeneity with respect to social location, caste position, relationship to commercial enterprise and bureaucracy, and intellectual and cultural values.7 Membership to the class of the social elite of bhadralok was primarily dependant on acquisition of Western and Sanskritic education and the maintenance of a distinct lifestyle.8 With time the social group did not remain restricted to the upper caste Brahmins, Baidyas, and Kayasthas, and
7 For an interpretation of the bhadralok as a homogenous Hindu ‘elite’ group de ned primarily by caste status, see John H. Broom eld, Elite Con ict in a Plural Society: Twentieth-Century Bengal, Berkley, 1968, pp. 13–14; Anil Seal, e Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, 1968. For a view that this was a new social group, produced by a new political economy created by the colonial administrative apparatus, see B.B. Misra, e Indian Middle Classes: eir Growth in Modern Times, Delhi, 1961. Others such as Rajat K. Ray de ne the bhadralok as consisting of those who formed the ‘respectable society’ (see Rajat K. Ray, ‘ ree Interpretations of Indian Nationalism’, in Essays in Modern Indian History, ed. B.R. Nanda, Delhi, 1980, pp. 1–39; Rajat K. Ray, Social Con ict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875–1927, Delhi, 1984, p. 30).
8 Sumit Sarkar, ‘Rammohun Roy and the Break with the Past’, in Rammohun Roy and the Process of Modernization in India, ed. V.C. Joshi, Delhi, 1975, pp. 46–68. For a view that they consciously tried to be distinctive in their education and attitude from the ‘chhotolok’ (lower-caste labouring people) and manual labours, see John McGuire, e Making of the Colonial Mind: A Quantitative Study of the Bhadralok in Calcutta, 1857–1885, Canberra, 1983; Malavika Karlekar, ‘Kadambini and the Bhadralok: Early Debates over Women’s Education in Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 21, no. 17, April 26, 1986, pp. WS 2531. Tithi Bhattacharya shows that it was a heterogeneous category uni ed in social codes of comportment, styles, and morals as a result of objective social and economic relations: birth, schooling, and other formalized social networks (see Tithi Bhattacharya, Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education, and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal, New Delhi, 2005).
thus was not one of caste aristocracy.9 ere were fractures in conceptions of respectability and propriety amongst the bhadralok society.10 Sumit Sarkar writes that the bhadralok perceived itself as the educated middle class or sikhhita madhyabitta shreni, as it was lower than the prosperous feudal aristocracy, or abhijatas, but above manual labourers in social location. e aristocratic or abhijata families were almost invariably merchants, business agents of the British, banias, diwans, bankers, and landowners from high-caste groups who served as dalapatis (leaders of local social factions called dals)11 From the 1860s onwards, the middling ranks of urban society came to be known as grihastha bhadralok or householders. ey consisted of a spectrum of highly placed lawyers, impoverished pundits, shopkeepers, small merchants, landholders, and salaried service professionals who were mostly employed as clerks and junior administrators in the revenue and judicial departments of the East India Company. ey maintained a self-de ned and self-conscious distance from abhijata bhadralok, being belittled as ‘petty bhadralok’. e liberal segment of the bhadralok aspired to ‘emancipate’ its women, the bhadramahila, through reforms in women’s education and with new notions of domestic space/household.12 is work considers
9 S.N. Mukherjee, ‘Bhadralok in Bengali Language and Literature: An Essay on the Language of Caste and Status’, Bengal Past and Present, vol. 95, no. 2, 1976, p. 227.
10 See Anindita Ghosh, Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of Language and Culture in a Colonial Society 1778–1905, Delhi, 2006, p. 306.
11 S.N. Mukherjee, ‘Class, Caste and Politics in Calcutta, 1815–38’, in his Calcutta: Myths and History, Calcutta, 1977, pp. 1–59; S.N. Mukherjee, ‘Daladali in Calcutta in the Nineteenth Century’, in his Calcutta: Myths and History, Calcutta, 1977, pp. 60–85; S.N. Mukherjee, ‘Bhadralok and eir Dals—Politics of Social Factions in Calcutta (c.1820–56)’, in e Urban Experience, Calcutta: Essays in Honour of Professor Nisith R. Ray, ed. Pradip Sinha, Calcutta, 1987, pp. 39–58.
12 Partha Chatterjee, ‘ e Nationalist Resolution of Women’s Question’, in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, eds. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, New Delhi, 1989, pp. 233–53.
those women as bhadramahila who, by virtue of their belonging to the bhadralok household, were reformed and re ned to participate in the new socio-cultural setting. I, however, do not seek to homogenize the Bengali Hindu/Brahmo bhadramahila women authors. One should acknowledge the fact that the bhadramahila, like their male counterparts, belonged to various layers of a strati ed society. ey di ered in lifestyles and were granted divergent opportunities and liberties depending on the type of families—orthodox or liberal—they belonged to. In fact, even the di erence in location—urban or rural— produced di erent lifeworlds. But conceived as paragons of culture and morality and as upholders of the much cherished respectability of the bhadralok, they had the added responsibility of maintaining suitable conduct and cultural identity. e claim of cultural and civilizational superiority by the British made it crucial for the bhadramahila to carry the burden of demonstrating an Indian standard of respectability.13
Notably, transformation in the material world saw concomitant alteration in the mental universe as language and literature became central to the creation of the socio-cultural identity and respectability of the bhadraloks and the bhadramahilas alike.14 e attempt at re nement of the Bengali literary language and aesthetic sensibility in the early nineteenth century by the abhijata bhadralok serving the colonial state led to series of purging of ‘undesirable’ elements such as the Mochhalmani Bangla (Islamic-Bengali), of colloquial speech of the itarjan (lower order), and of meyeli bhasa (women’s dialect).15 e ‘new’ language was closely modelled on the rules of Sanskrit and its literary taste and style. us, it drove a wedge through a syncretic plurality and perpetuated polarities between the Hindu and the
13 Meredith Brothwick, e Changing Role of Women in Bengal: 1849–1905, Princeton, 1984, p. 83.
14 Francesca Orsini shows how language was linked to community identity (see Francesca Orsini, e Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism, Delhi, 2002).
15 Sukumar Sen, Women’s Dialect in Bengali, Calcutta, 1979.
Islamic; the written and the spoken; and the male and the female linguistic varieties.
In the ensuing cultural clash, competing social groups tried to consolidate power by forging contesting cultural identities, fashioning nationalistic selves, reordering social hierarchies and self-representation. A formal language emerged, as also an ‘enlightened’ culture that was distinct from the supposedly coarse, vulgar ones of the marginal others—the ‘petty’ or ‘lesser’ bhadralok, poor Muslims and women. e ordering of power relations in the cultural space by a conscious separation of the ‘standard’, ‘polite’ Bengali prose from the polluting language of the ‘others’ with alternative literary cultures resulted in the legitimization of social exclusion and strati cation based on social location, gender con guration, cultural status, and community identity.16 As a corollary, even the gentility of the bhadramahila was constructed out of an essentialized di erence with her ‘lowly,’ unre ned counterpart—the supposedly coarse, loud-mouthed, superstitious, sexually promiscuous, and uneducated woman of low caste and class.17
Bengal being the rst seat of the vernacular press, proliferation of printing and publishing industry and print culture played a historical role in the construction of the bhadralok identity.18 Sumit Sarkar categorizes three variables that aided the formation of the ideology of the bhadralok during the mid-nineteenth century—education, chakri, and print culture.19 Tithi Bhattacharya, too, argues that most of the prominent nineteenth-century gures were connected with education, printing, and publishing.20
16 Ghosh, Power in Print, pp. 4–5, 22, 59, 238.
17 Sumanta Banerjee, ‘Marginalization of Women’s Popular Culture in Nineteenth-century Bengal’, in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, eds Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, New Delhi, 1989, pp. 127–79.
18 To know the socio-historical dynamics of the Bengali print market and the cultural identity of the bhadralok, see Bhattacharya, e Sentinels of Culture; Ghosh, Power in Print.
19 See Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, Delhi, 1986, p. 232.
20 Bhattacharya, Sentinels of Culture, p. 24.
e appearance of provincial presses in the 1850s gave rise to the need for the creation of a new formalized speech and literary norms for standardization of print-language.21 During the 1860s, the ‘linguistic puri cation’ and standardization of Bengali prose through print involved socializing the language by distancing it from its Sanskritic bias. ere was an insistence upon simplifying the language in order to make it intelligible to a wider readership. Ideas about literary worth, literary taste, linguistic styles, ‘good’ literature, and language became crucially linked to internal struggles between the di erent elements of the bhadralok society—the English educated sikkhita bhadralok, abhijata bhadralok, and the middle-class nabya sampraday or the new generation of urban literati located lower down in the social ladder.22 e latter populated the clerical ranks in the numerous rms and government o ces of Calcutta utilizing the exible job opportunities for all castes in the urban areas.23
e large corpus of the newly literate petty bhadralok was highly critical of the more prosperous and western educated ‘enlightened’ bhadralok ranks. ey, with their essentialized coarseness and vulgarity, possessed alternative reading, writing, and print cultures, and questioned the social respectability and literary aesthetics of the bhadralok ‘others’ through literary productions from Battala presses.24 Scholars, thus, argue that mass literacy and production through print
21 e enforcement of a set of normative literary practices to determine the form and content of the Bengali language has been seen by the historians as an e ort to discipline the world of printed text from within (see Tapti Roy, ‘Disciplining the Printed Text: Colonial and Nationalist Surveillance of Bengali Literature’, in Texts of Power, Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal , ed. Partha Chatterjee, Calcutta, 1996, p. 54).
22 Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay in Kalikata Kamalalaya (Calcutta: Abode of the Goddess Lakshmi) had distinguished three types of bhadralok (see Rasrachanasamagra: Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay (Collection of Witty Writings by Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay) (1787–1848), Calcutta, 1987, pp. 7–8).
23 Ghosh, Power in Print, pp. 43–65, 169–71.
24 For an insightful study on the Battala production written in Bengali, see Nikhil Sarkar, Jakhan Chhapa Khana Elo (When Printing Press Appeared), Calcutta, 1977; Sukumar Sen, Battalar Chhapa O Chhobi (Printing and
Words
technology—instead of xing format genres and languages—o ered opportunities for the interplay of many forms.25 e petty bhadralok were as active as their de ning ‘others’ in the print cultures of nineteenthcentury Bengal and both participated in the formulation of all major discursive formations of the period.
An estimate of indigenous printing and publication of vernacular books began with Reverend James Long, a missionary scholar and one of the founders of the Vernacular Literature Society in Calcutta. He compiled Granthavali: An Alphabetical List of Works Published in Bengali in 1852 that contained a total of 1,084 titles classi ed according to subjects, without the mention of their authors or publisher.26
In 1855, he produced A Descriptive Catalogue of Bengali Works. What began as an estimate of healthy literary taste, ‘a guide to those who wish to procure Bengali Books, either for educational purposes, or for gaining an acquaintance with the Hindu manners, customs, or modes of thought’27 became the means of tracing sedition and anticolonial agitation. In 1859, supported by the Lieutenant-Governor and the director of public instruction in Bengal, Long attempted to survey everything printed in Bengali between April 1857 and April 1858. It was an e ort to procure a general picture of the vernacular literature during the year of the sepoy ‘mutiny’ or the ‘great revolt’.28 His third and nal catalogue was Returns Relating to Publications in
Pictures of Battala), Calcutta, 1984; Gautam Bhadra, Nyara Battalay Jay K’bar? (How Many Times Does Nyara Visit Battala?), Calcutta, 2011.
25 Ghosh, Power in Print, p. 298.
26 Reprinted in Jatindramohan Bhattacharya, Bangla Mudrita Granther Talika (A List of Printed Books in Bengali), 1743–1852, vol. 1, Calcutta, 1990, pp. 1–4.
27 James Long, ‘Preface’ to A Descriptive Catalogue of Bengali Works, Containing a Classi ed List of Fourteen Hundred Bengali Books and Pamphlets Which Have Issued from Press during the Last Sixty Years with Occasional Notices of the Subjects, the Prices and Where Printed, Calcutta, 1855.
28 For an extensive discussion on the surveillance on ‘Native Press’, and the intervention of the state in judging the qualitative content of books, see Roy, ‘Disciplining the Printed Text’, pp. 30–62. Also see Priya Joshi, ‘Literary
the Bengalee Language in 1857. 29 J. Wenger came out with Catalogue of Sanskrit and Bengalee Publications in 1865 ‘to continue the catalogue which had been thus commenced’.30
From 1868 onwards, provincial educational departments started compiling lists of publications, in English and vernacular languages, under the Indian Press and Registration of Books Act 1867 or the Act XXV of 1867. is Act was enacted for the regulation of printing presses and newspapers and for the preservation and registration of books printed in British India. Publishers had to supply the o cials with three copies of every book they brought out. Information was provided on a standard set of subject matter: the title of the work, its author, language, subject, place of printing, names of printer and publisher, date of publication, number of pages, size, format, press run, whether printed or lithographed, and price. By paying two rupees, publishers received a copyright. If they failed to register the book, it was treated as illegal and publishers were punishable with a ne of up to 5,000 rupees, imprisonment of up to two years, or both. e registration of books in the presidency of Bengal, despite its aws, is generally regarded as the most reliable index of the publishing activity.31
While most of the nineteenth-century printing presses in Calcutta run by the Europeans were situated around the Tank Square in the
Surveillance in the British Raj: e Contradictions of Liberal Imperialism’, Book History, vol. 4, 2001, pp. 133–76.
29 James Long, Returns Relating to Publications in the Bengali Language, in 1857, to Which is Added, a List of the Native Presses, with the Books Printed at Each, their Price and Character, with a Notice of the Past Condition and Future Prospects of the Vernacular Press of Bengal, and the Statistics of the Bombay and Madras Vernacular Presses, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, vol. 32, Calcutta, 1859.
30 J. Wenger, Catalogue of Sanskrit and Bengalee Publications, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government, vol. 61, Calcutta, 1865, p. ii.
31 Priya Joshi, ‘Culture and Consumption: Fiction, the Reading Public, and the British Novel in Colonial India’, Book History, vol. 1, 1998, pp. 196–220; Priya Joshi, ‘Book Production in British India, 1850–1900’, Book History, vol. 5, 2002, pp. 242–5.
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‘White Town’, of the forty-six presses listed by Long in 1857, thirtyve were concentrated in the teeming ‘Native’ or ‘Black’ Town in north Calcutta along Garanhata, Ahiritola, Chitpur, Barabazar, Kumortuli, Simuliya, Mirzapur, and Baghbazar. ese Battala presses turning out cheap popular literature represented lesser print cultures. e more ‘respectable’ ones were located further south. e location as well as the type and the quality of production of books from these presses marked the emergence of specialized hierarchies among the printers of Bengali books producing ‘good’ and ‘bad’ literature.32
Despite a broadly shared cultural ethos, one nds a striking variety of practices, tastes, expressions, and genres within the nineteenth century literary sphere. e subjects under which Long’s Returns entered the printed books (1857) were as follows: educational (145,300); almanacs (136,000); mythology and Hinduism (961,500); moral tales and epics (39,700); ction (33,050); Musulman-Bengali (24,600); biography and history (20,150); miscellaneous (18,370); SanskritBengali (15,000); erotic (14,250); natural sciences (12,250); Christian (9,550); periodicals (8,000); law (4,000); dramatic (5,250); newspapers (2,950). Long shows that the number of printed books for sale rose from 303,275 to 600,000 between 1853 and 1857.33 Long allowed each book an average of ten ‘hearers’ and/or readers, which would mean that there was an impressive two million book reading/ listening public.34
e average annual production of the presses in Battala ranged variously between 8,000 and 47,000 copies, depending on the size of
32 See Bhattacharya, e Sentinels of Culture, pp. 140–3; Ghosh, Power in Print, pp. 22, 131.
33 Long, Returns Relating to Publications in the Bengali Language in 1857, Calcutta, 1859, pp. viii–ix; Long, Descriptive Catalogue of Bengali Works, Calcutta, 1855, pp. 10–11. Lack of accurate records and fear of taxation o en made booksellers supply wrong information, and Long, therefore, thought that the total sales for that year could well have been over 600,000.
34 Long, Returns Relating to Publications in Bengali Language, p.15.
the press. J. Wenger’s Catalogue shows that in 1865, 1,100 books were available for sale as compared to 322 in 1857.35 e quantitative study conducted by Jatindramohan Bhattacharya shows that between 1853 and 1867, books on social sciences, natural sciences, technology, history and geography, and language formed 35 per cent of all books, excluding ‘original compositions’ which, under the head of literature, formed 30 per cent of the total.36
While formal and institutional education since the mid-1850s had widened the scope of the print audience, the decade also saw the utilization of print culture as a potent medium of expression for women. It is true that writing was overwhelmingly a male-dominated tradition, but certain historical circumstances did allow the growth of women authors and led to the rise of heterogeneous literary tastes and trends of writing amongst gender. As early as 1868 Hindoo Patriot observes:
If literary activity is a test of educational activity in a country, Female Education is progressing more surely, though slowly in Bengal, than in any other province of British India. We have not heard the name of one lady author existing at the present time in any other Indian province than Bengal. We have here no less than eight lady authors.37
Usha Chakraborty, in her pioneering work, provides an index of Bengali women authors who published between 1856 and 1910.38
e list provides the names of ninety-three women authors (Hindus, Brahmos, Muslims, and Christians) who produced 199 Bengali texts in the period 1856–1900. During the same period een fortnightly,
35 Wenger, Catalogue of Sanskrit and Bengalee Publications, p. iii.
36 Jatindramohan Bhattacharya, Mudrita Bangala Grantha Panji (A Compendium of Published Books) 1853–1867, Calcutta, 1993.
37 Cited in Swapan Basu, ed., Sambad—Samayik Patre Unish Shatake Bangali Samaj (Bengali Society of Nineteenth Century in Newspapers and Periodicals), vol. 2, Calcutta, 2003, p. 425.
38 Usha Chakraborty, Condition of Bengali Women around the Second Half of Nineteenth Century, Calcutta, 1963, pp. 147–93.
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weekly, and monthly periodicals were devoted to women’s issues and were edited by women themselves.39 Women appeared as literary critics in journals such as Sahitya, Nabyabharat, Utsaha, and Bharati between 1890–1900.40 Six women, namely, Swarnakumari Debi, Prasannamayee Debi, Girindramohini Dasi, Sarala Debi, Krishnabhabini Das, and ‘a Bengali Woman’ reviewed a total of thirtytwo books, of which the sole woman-authored text was Tatini (River) by Pramila Nag.
Between 1850 and 1900, more than 300 books were authored by women writers. ese have been o cially listed under the categories of art, biography, drama, ction, history, language, miscellaneous, poetry, philosophy, religion, science, and travel in the Bengal Library Catalogue of Books. 41 e list reveals that there was a predominant tendency in women to write poetry. In fact, the rst Bengali book written by a Hindu woman, Krishnakamini Dasi,42 was predominantly a book of poems titled Chittabilasini (A Woman Given to the Pleasures of the Heart, 1856). e reason why women took to
39 Brajendranath Bandyopadhyay, Samayik Patrika Sampadane Banganari (Bengali Women as Editors of Periodicals), Calcutta, 1968, p. 1.
40 Sanghamitra Choudhury, Adhunik Bangla Sahitye Mahila Rochita Rachanar Kramabikash (Evolution of Women’s Writings in Modern Bengali Literature) (1850–1900), Calcutta, 2002, pp. 101, 800–2.
41 Bengal Library Catalogue of Books, Quarterly Appendix to the Calcutta Gazette, Calcutta, 1867–1901.
42 Krishnakamini Dasi was married to Sashibhusan Mitra of Allahabad whom she praises profusely in the book as ‘Pranballabh’, without whose support the book could not have been written or published. Sashibhusan himself authored Tattwachuramani (Expert on eories), Bhabarog Mahaoushodhi (Remedy of the Disease at Is Earthly Life), and Mahabaktabyatattwamritarash (Taste of Nectar Composed of eories Embedded in Great Speeches), and edited the weekly journal Prayagdoot ough a non-resident Bengali, she was learned enough to quote and translate Sanskrit hymns (Chitrarekha Gupta, Pratham Alor Charandhwani: Unish Shataker Lekhikader Katha [ e Footsteps of Dawn: Tales of Women Writers of Nineteenth Century], Calcutta, 2009, pp. 12–13).
