Spatial imagination in colonial Bengal

ABSTRACTThis essay traces a changing geo-politics brought about by the forces of Western colonisation. It maps the intellectual pathways two Bengalis – Raja Rammohun Roy and Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar – chalked out in their negotiations with real and mythical spaces of the East and the West. The fashioning of their own self-identities then becomes a part of this process. The evolution of Roy’s analytical frame, and Vidyasagar’s literary frame for examining and romancing the West is laid out, after the historical context is explained. Roy’s reflexive engagement with the Occident was to travel and see for himself this land of fantasy (which remained an elite practice and which Roy sets in motion). Ishwarchandra’s literary frame of translation formed a deep pool of imagination within indigenous minds – an internalised geographical space which did not need a validity check – therefore representing a deeper colonial penetration of the Bengali/Indian imagination.KEYWORDS: Bhugolcartographygeographyglobetopographygeographical neologismsliteraturetranslationembodied spacegeography of differences Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. Wallerstein, The Modern World – System II. 8.2. Rubies, Travel and Ethnology, x. Rubies points to the necessity to train the Western ‘eye’ to be prepared for strange encounters, and ‘see’ them in the right perspective.3. Fisher, The Travels of Dean Mahomet. xix. ‘The existence of such non-European perspectives on, and participation in, the imperial process exposes the multilaterality of that process.’4. Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered.5. Macaulay, Minutes.6. Marshman, The life and labours of Carey.7.7. Ramaswamy, The Conquest of the World,17.8. Fakir Mohan’s English: Global Capital and Literary Taste in Late Victorian India’, Siddharth Satpathy, Department of English, University of Hyderabad, Presentation at Conference on Mimesis and literature, July 2019, where a ‘chaos’ and ‘anarchy’ as theoretical frames have been used to explain this moment of unsettling encounter in Orissa, a frame equally applicable to Bengal.9. This article has only selected Rammohan Roy, Rajendralal Mitra, Akshay Kumar Dutt, Debendranath Tagore and Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar from a galaxy of nineteenth century luminaries. Radhakanta Deb, Kaliprasanna Sinha, Ramtanu Lahiri, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Rajnarayan Basu – the list is long.10. Dutt, Bhugol, 63–105. He cited sources in a cryptic acknowledgement for compiling ‘Bhugol’: ‘Clift’s Geography Source (Bhugol Sutra), Hamilton’s, East India Gazette, Mitchells Geography … ’. These references seem to point to Samuel Augustus Mitchell, Mitchell’s School Atlas, 1839, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mitchell%27_school_atlas, accessed 22.09.2020,and Walter, Hamilton, M.R.A.S., The East Indian Gazetteer, London, 1828, catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009360516 Accessed 22.09.2020.11. Tagore, Jeeban Smriti, 496. The Saraswat Samaj was the precursor to the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, founded in 1894.12. Ray, Rajendralal Mitra, 252–55.13. Alexander Keith Johnson (1804–1871), was geographer to Queen Victoria, and had also studied with international geographers like Alexander von Humboldt. He had constructed the first English language globe of the world incorporating its geology, hydrography in 1835. In 1841, he published his first Atlas, National Atlas of General Geography. In 1848, he published The Physical Atlas, and a better edition followed in 1861, ‘The Royal Atlas of Geography’. https://www.geographicus.com/P/ctgy&Category_Code=johnston Accessed on 25 April 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Keith_Johnston_(1804%E2%80%931871)#Biography Accessed on 25 April 2023.14. Mitra, Prakrita Bhugol, 1–2.15. Vidyasagar, Vidyasagar Rachanabali I, 240–43.16. Mitra, Prakrita Bhugol, Index, 229–30.17. Kaviraj, The Two Histories of Literary Culture, p. 542.18. Ibid., 545.19. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 268–9.20. Subrahmanyum, ‘Taking stock of the Franks’,71–2. This reflects upon some sources from South India, and from the Mughal empire’s core – northern India – and they reveal references to Europeans from the South Asian point of view. It is a vague understanding of the general direction from which the Franks come.21. Brenner and Elden, 2009, 225–9.22. Singh, Rammohun Roy, A Biographical Inquiry, 2&3, 309.23. Singh,, Rammohun Roy, A Biographical Inquiry, I, 167–8.24. Ibid., 84–85.25. Singh, Rammohun Roy, A Biographical Inquiry, 2&3,359–62.26. Ibid., 296–300.27. Roy, English Works, 2, para 25,302.28. Ibid., para 36, 308.29. Ibid., para 55,319.30. Singh, Rammohun Roy, A Biographical Inquiry, 2&3, 351–2.31. Ibid., 2&3, 314.32. Ibid, 1987, 2&3, 478.33. Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi, 14 Nov. 2008, Keynote address, International Association of Historians of Asia JNU.34. Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement, 118–27.35. Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement.36. Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement, 118–27, 168n.13,178, 181–2, 184.37. Gregory, Geographical Imaginations, 1994, 5.38. Geertz, The Interpretation of cultures, 29.39. Vidyasagar, Vidyasagar Rachanasamhar, 252.40. Ibid., 147–50.41. Ibid., 210–12.42. Ibid., 119–228.43. Ibid., 147–50.44. Shakespeare, The Riverside Shakespeare, 83.45. Vidyasagar, Vidyasagar Rachanasamhar, 250–1.Vidyasagar was not the only translator of Sanskrit classics in his period. Earlier in the century, Mritunjoy Vidyalankar had translated the Simhasan Battisi for the trainees of Fort William too. It is possible that these tales of morality and a different ‘indigenous’ rationale of ethics, honour, hard work and loyalty, and the counter images of perfidy, disloyalty, greed, did not fit Vidyasagar’s world view, though his intellectual training was steeped in it. It was all right for the English trainees who had the benefit of their cultural upbringing in the fantasy place called England, but young Bengali readers did not need this diet of indigenous fantasy. Still, Vidyasagar did not disown this space of indigenous fiction he was helping create with the Bengali language. Thus Vidyasagar aggressively claimed his sole right to the translator’s plaudits that had accompanied the publication of Vetalpanchavimshati in the Preface to the 10th edition.46. Shakespeare, The Riverside Shakespeare,1, 81.47. Ibid., 83.48. Ibid.49. Ibid., 83.50. Vidyasagar, Vidyasagar Granthabali, 4–5.51. Vidyasagar, Vidyasagar Rachanasamagra, 177–218.52. Ibid., 252–85.53. Ibid., 41–76.54. Ibid., 289–313.55. Ibid., 314–51.56. Ibid., 352–402.57. Hatcher, 2001, 143–61, 161–8.58. Hatcher, 2001, 114.59. Vidyasagar, 2001, 434–447.60. Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement, 17–81.61. Vidyasagar, Vidyasagar Rachanasamagra, 77–108.62. Vidyasagar, Vidyasagar Rachanabali, I, 375.63. Mitra, Isvarchadra Vidyasagar, 118–20.64. Tester, The Social Thought of Zygmunt Bauman, 21. Tester points towards ‘Critical thinking and Human possibility’, ‘which, … in Bauman’s understanding clearly links with literature, [and] is then critical of this world in that it attends to the processes through which this world closes down on human possibilities, and it opens up other worlds in that it shows that things do not have to be like this since what seems to be so natural is, in fact, entirely cultural. Consequently, out of the recovery of the processes of this world, there is a glimpse of the chance of an alternative’.65. Foucault, Technologies of the Self, 165.66. Geertz, The Interpretation of cultures, 30.67. Ricouer, ‘Mimesis and Representation’, 96.68. Jameson, Frederic, The Political Unconscious −50; Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society 29.69. Vidyasagar, Vidyasagar Rachanasamhar, 441–2.70. Ibid., 444–5.71. Ricoeur, ‘Mimesis and Representation’, 151. Ricouer’s statement is pertinent to Vidyasagar’s reading of biographies of Western individuals: “we must balance the autarchy of a theory of reading and understand that the operating of writing is fulfilled in the operating of reading. Indeed, it is the reader – or rather the act of reading – that is – in the final analysis, is the unceasing operation from mimesis (1) to mimesis (3) through mimesis (2). That is from a prefigured world to a transfigured world through the mediation of a configured world.72. Harvey, The Geography of Difference, 293.73. Hatcher, Idioms of Improvement, 182.74. Vidyasagar, Vidyasagar Rachanasamagra, 187.75. Ibid., 187.76. Ibid., 179.77. Ibid., 179–81.78. Ibid., 447.79. Ibid., 180.80. Ibid., 182.81. Ibid.,255–6.82. Ibid., 309.83. Ibid., 206–11.84. Ibid., 273–5.85. Ibid., 228–235.86. Ibid., 211–5.87. Vidyasagar, Vidyasagar Rachanabali, IV, 387–420.88. Ibid., 397–400.89. Ibid., 400–06.90. Ibid., 406–410.91. Ibid., 406.92. Ibid., 407.93. Ibid., 408.94. Ibid., 409.95. Ibid., 417–8.96. Subrahmaniyam, ‘Taking stock of the Franks’, 69.97. Mukherjee, Pelagic Passageways, 15–6, 65–9, 73, 86–7. Mukherjee traces the many worlds of the Bay of Bengal, showing how impossible it was to impose borders on these ever-moving frontiers of urbanisation where Bengal, China, Myanmar/Burma etc. all merged in cultural exchanges. She uses the Manasa Mangal to state that this was not oceanic trade but trade hugging the coast. By sixteenth century the Bay had faded from the Bengal merchant memory.98. Cunningham, Ancient Geography of India, 563–71, 1–8. Cunningham carefully matches the accounts by Ptolemy and travellers like Hwen Thsang (Hieun Tsang) to put together the nomenclature of ancient cities and the ancient names of rivers and oceans, thus historicising the accurate Indian understanding of space/place. There is a discussion of the measures of distance as they would translate into feet, cubits, miles.99. Swami Prameyananda, Visvachetanay Sri Ramkrishna, 166. The Swami, and two other scholars mentions a little doubtfully first the atheistic position of Vidyasagar, ‘Nirishwarvadi (?)’, but in spite of this asserts that ‘Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar’s desire to serve his community had been much lauded by Ramkrishna Paramahansa.’100. Cunningham, Ancient Geography of India, 563–71.101. de Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, xiii.102. Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali VI, 717–18.103. de Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 1, 23, 27–8; II, 86; III, 94, 137–41104. Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali, 6, 717–8.105. Massey, Space, Place and Gender, 167.106. Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali 8, p.282 (My translation).