Birth of a Goddess: 'Vande Mataram', "Anandamath", and Hindu Nationhood

Author(s): Tanika Sarkar

Source: Economic and Political Weekly , Sep. 16-22, 2006, Vol. 41, No. 37 (Sep. 16-22,
2006), pp. 3959-3969
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly

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 I Special articles_
Birth of a Goddess
'Vande Mataram', Anandamath, and Hindu Nationhood
In the current controversy about the national song, the general assumption seems to be that
the song 'Vande Mataram' reflect nothing more than an uncomplicated love for the
motherland, and that it is unreasonable of Muslims, if not actually unpatriotic, to object to it.
The present essay looks at some of the older debates about the song and also about the novel
Anandamath which frames the song. In the light of its novelistic context, the article argues, the
song acquires different and darker meanings. Moreover, the verses that are not usually sung
compose a vision of a militaristic patriotism that gradually replaces the more nurturing
resonances of the earlier parts. The gradual movements of the song are replicated in the
design of the novel. The article explores these shifts in the song and in the novel, while it
simultaneously assesses the different readings of both - political and literary. It
concludes with an attempt to seek out hidden subtexts in the novel which sometime
disturb and deconstruct its dominant and obvious meanings.

TANIKA SARKAR

In the first short Introduction in AM, unearthly voices in a deep

and silent forest exchange words about an impending great,
H'Iistorians, these days, prefer to approach literary texts as collective sacrifice. At first, we are unsure about the nature of
neither fully beyond nor entirely subordinated to the this sacrifice. It seems to be altogether a mystical, non-mundane
compulsions of history, but as historical events in experience. Much later into the novel, however, we realise that
themselves: created by, and also creating, new textual and it refers to an actual historical event - the Sanyasi-Fakir rebellion
non-textual histories. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya's of the early 1770s. In the concluding section, the leader of armed
celebrated and controversial novel, Anandamath, illustrates this Hindu ascetics faces a sacred being who reveals the purpose of
as no other Bengali literary creation does.l The novel was of an the great war that has just been concluded. There are also dreams
annunciation of a momentous literary event, of the idea of the and visions of the sacred where the goddess speaks to other divine
Hindu nation and of an altogether new Hindu goddess.2 At thebeings.5 The novel thus composes a new divine project as well
same time, it provided a historical account of Hindu-Muslim as a politics of Hindu nationhood. It fuses the two by displaying
relationships from which both goddess and nation drew theirthe links between the sacred and the profane.
energies. The novelistic vision was destined to govern diverse Benedict Anderson has famously suggested a structural con-
and conflicted nationalist imaginaries for years to come. Its power nection between the modern novel and the imagined nation.6
- though not unchallenged - remains undimmed even today. I find a somewhat different kind of connection that is at work
The interlock, among the divine, the national and the communal, in the AM. The novel, at first glance, is constative, or descriptive.
flowed from an exchange between sacred and profane realms andIt seems to portray a historical situation. It turns out, eventually,
purposes. In the Preface to the first edition, Bankim had writtento be more of a performative speech act that causes the deed that
that the novel was meant to show "there is a link between the it names: in this case, the foundation of a Hindu nation, or of
heavens and this world".3 The link between the earthly andathe
Hindu political will that would realise the nation. AM describes
divine are, indeed, more pronounced in Anandamath (hencefor-
a nation7 that was non imagined and unimaginable in the time
ward AM) than in any of his other novels. It goes beyondthat
the the novel describes. It was still unimagined in quite that form
dreams, visions and trances through which the sacred would
in Bankim's own time. Through the elaboration of an imaginary,
sometimes burst into the profane world in some of his other
then, it eventually brought forth a politics of the present.
works.4 On other such occasions, the miraculous disclosure Predictably,
of an endeavour that attempted and accomplished so
the sacred enabled some twists and turns in the unfolding of a
much, yielded highly diverse readings and political meanings.
plot that, nonetheless, revolved round earthly happenings. In AM,
Gandhian nationalists as well as revolutionary terrorists, Muslim
in contrast, an embodied sacred presence is the dominant image,Congressmen and colonial rulers, Hindu militants and Muslim
propelling the entirety of novelistic action. League politicians, Leftists and Rightists, have conjugated their

Economic and Political Weekly September 16, 2006 3959

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own various understandings from different elements in the novel, "Where else have you seen a land where your money is not safe
or from varied interpretations of the same words, images and in the box, the sacred idol is not safe in the shrine, the unborn
events. Even though the plurality is conventionally seen as a foetus is not safe in the mothers' womb... they slash the wombs
product of misreadings, from one vantage point or another, I to expel forth the child.. Our faith is ruined, our caste and honour
would want to argue that it has an organic or necessary connectionare gone, now even our lives are in danger...unless we drive out
with the texture of the novel. With deliberation and deftness, these drunken Muslim wretches, how can we save the religion
Bankim has layered ambiguity with uncertainty: has destabilisedof Hindus?" (all translations mine).12 The Muslim ruler, who is
a concrete individual, is expanded into an entire community. A
and problematised what seem to be certainties and explicit messages
within the text. The subsequent fate of the novel added to theparticular historical contingency is translated as a timeless
imperative.
pluralised readings. It went through several editions and correc-
tions in Bankim's lifetime, Bankiin added confusing and mys- The novel departs in other ways from known historical chronicles.
terious explanations and addendum, and he also moved on fromIt eliminates the role of Muslim fakirs or holy men, from the
the novel to other representations of similar themes with quiterebellious risings, and it ascribes a patriotic purity of aspiration
different conclusions.8 and virtue to the armed Hindu ascetics that the marauders seemed
not to have actually possessed. Finally, it frames the events within
II an overarching agenda of Hindu nationhood: an idea that would
not have existed even in prototype in the late 18th century. In
AM deals with a transitional historical moment in late 18th other words, while the historical time of famines and clashes is
century in Bengal. The East India Company was then calling continued
the in the narrative, the heroes of the novel - the Santans
shots from behind the facade of a puppet Muslim Nawab. It was children: in this case, of the goddess of the Motherland)
(meaning
rackrenting peasant surplus to augment revenues from which- are not reliable historical reconstructions.
the
Company extracted a massive tribute. The drive was so relentless
The famine might have been the i mmediate pretext of violence,
but the ascetics in the novel make it perfectly clear that the full
that three successive droughts produced a famine of catastrophic
proportions in 1770. Much of the land returned to wasteagendaand is not conditioned nor caused by it. Their project is the
elimination of Muslims. As Satyananda, the fictional Hindu
approximately one-third of the population starved to death. Robbers
roamed the highways, and villagers swelled their ranks. Some- leader put it: "We do not want power for ourselves. We want
times armed mendicants - Hindu sanyasis and Muslim fakirs -
to exterminate all the Muslims on this land as they are enemies
provided leadership and organisation. Their risings against ofthe
God".13 Or, "Many had resented the end of Hindu power
Nawab's forces, which now were assisted by the East India and Hindus had been eager for the restoration of their faith". 14
Company's troops, finally forced the British to shift to a systemSo, there is a continuous inflation of meaning; from a resentment
of more direct controls over Bengal revenues, law and admin- of the alleged responsibility of the Muslim ruler for the
istration. Eventually, Warren Hastings sent in troops which famine, to the construction of a "history" of unvarying Muslim
quelled the rebellions, the Nawab was deposed and the East tyranny,
India to a defence of faith and of god Himself from His
Company assumed direct administrative control.9A colonial enemies. If the famine was the originary and immediate justi-
revenue policy was systematised, granting total powers fication over of war against Muslims, it soon recedes from that causative
status. War becomes a categorical imperative, independent
cultivating tenants to parasitic landlords in exchange for a fixed
but substantial revenue that the landlord would pay to the of the famine.
state.
The landlord was free to raise the rental or to evict tenants if In the Preface to his next novel, Debi Choudhurani, Bankim
they failed to meet his demands. Bankim had written eloquently
would write that he had not intended AM as a fully historical
novel.15 We need to reflect on why he broke free of the
about the tenant's vulnerability under the new colonial regula-
tions in some of his earlier essays.10 discipline of historical evidence in this particular novel,
especially because elsewhere Bankim had announced his fidel-
AM introduces significant shifts and departures to the estab-
ity to it often enough. This requires some thought also on the
lished histories of this moment. It holds the puppet Nawab entirely
responsible for the famine, thereby exempting the Company other
from ways in which this novel stands out from earlier ones on
blame, save that of throwing its weight behind the Nawab. It,
a similar theme. Bankim had already used historical narratives
moreover, holds the Nawab responsible not just for widespreadof Hindu resistance against Muslim rule in his previous novel,
dearth and starvation, but also for a deliberate and total destruc-
Rajsingha, where Hindu kings and princesses are united against
tion of Hindus, of their honour, faith, caste and women. InAurangzeb.16
other The compulsions and ideals that Bankim ascribed
words, it forces a split between the agents and victims of the making of that war, however, were now no longer enough.
to the
famine: the agents are Muslims and the starving and dying Now
peoplehe needed to imagine a different and more deliberately holy
are always identified as Hindus, notwithstanding references
war: to
not for the realm of a particular Hindu monarch and fought
Muslim villagers who would also have equally been victims for of
by royal armies, but a war without the imperative of power
the catastrophe. This is a remarkable departure from Bankim's and self interest, fought by ascetics who must ally with ordinary
earlier essays. The eponymous peasant, whose distress under Hindus, even to the extent of foregoing the divisions of caste
colonial governance he had evoked in the previous decade, while
wasthe war lasts.
either called Rama Kaivarta. denoting a low caste Hindu.The or elimination of the theme of power and self interest allows
Rahim Sheikh. a Muslim.11 Agrarian distress was then repre- for the entry and the sovereignty of a new commitment: of pure
sented as an effect of class and not of communal relations. The patriotism, inspired by devotion to a particular deity - Mother-
heroes of AM, however, consistently describe the famine as land.the In his earlier historical novels, a free Hindu realm had
special misfortune of Hindus which is inflicted by Muslims: certainly been an important ideal that activated Hindu heroes in

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their wars against Muslims. But that realm would denote the rule
of a Hindu dynasty. The goddess of the Motherland was not a
deity that presided over the ideal. So even if Rajsingha had
displayed the theme of Hindu heroism against a Muslim sovereign,
it had not allowed for patriotic bhakti or devotionalism, nor for
the leadership of disinterested, selfless ascetics, nor for the active
role of ordinary villagers. It is from a conjunction of these forces -
selfless purity, populism and faith - that the new Hindu nation
had to emerge in the revised nationalism of AM. The nation in
this novel was required to represent the entire Hindu people,
including low castes and peasants, albeit in differentiated capaci-
ties and firmly under the direction of brahmanical authorities.
The Hindu nation's representative and hierarchically inclusive
capacity in AM was a modern imperative.
There was a problem, however: if history was of little help
for the new imaginary, neither was the present that Bankim lived
in, more resourceful. Bankim was very critical - indeed, mocking
- of the politics of associations and petitions that his contem-
porary educated middle class politicians had formed, since he
found that to be lacking in heroic masculine qualities. A more
militant nationalist politics of violence and self sacrifice - that
of 20th century revolutionary terrorism - had not yet emerged
in his times. This reinforced the necessity of an imagined history.
A novel, then, had to carry the entire burden of a politics that
was yet to be born. AM, therefore, was not really a representation,
it was more a performance, an iteration, making something
happen with words.
It is impossible to fully explain why this nation had to be
founded on war. It is also difficult to be sure about why, in a
colonial context, so many nationalist writings would go back to
instances of Hindu triumph against medieval Muslim monarchs
in the name of patriotism. There was the British stigma about
effeminate Bengalis which resulted in the exclusion of Bengalis
from the coveted colonial military and paramilitary apparatus.
Bankim, particularly, had been anxious about Bengali non-martial
qualities, since he was half persuaded by the colonial stereotyp-
ing. In his earlier novels, he returned obsessively to histories of
shameful Bengali defeat'and cowardice in the face of invasions:
Bengali nationalists, Bankim included, had to reach out to Rajput
and Maratha histories of resistance against the Mughals when
they wanted to depict patriotic wars. The haunting presence of
so many defeats and surrenders required a redemptive historical
counterpoint: of heroism and aggressive masculinity, to procure
an honourable future. A possible recuperation of such heroism
in the present, however, remained blocked by colonial subjection
under which Bengali elite men had not yet displayed any con-
spicuous valour or resistance.
Other poets and playwrights did valorise instances of anti-
colonial resistance, even in Bengal: the Battle of Plassey, where
some of the generals of the defeated Nawab, Siraj ud Dowlah
fought to preserve his sovereignty against the troops of Robert
Clive. Or the rebellion of peasants who resisted the tyranny of
European indigo planters.17 But Bankim could not subscribe to
such sentiments, either. He had an ambivalent relationship with
colonial governance. On the one hand, the decades between the
1870s and 1880s - the peak point in Bankim's literary career
- had been years of mounting colonial repression; some of it being
directed against the freedom of public theatre and the vernacular
press. Moreover, as the AM was coming out in different editions
through the mid-1980s, the infamous European agitation against
Economic and Political Weekly September 16, 2006 3961
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the Ilbert Bill had begun. It displayed colonial racism in a manner
that was more blatant and gross than ever before. Bengali literary
and journalistic writings expressed enormous outrage in no
uncertain terms. On the other hand, however, as Bengali middle
class loyalism during the 1857 uprising had already shown, the
modern intelligentsia would not comfortably identify their
aspirations for freedom or their longing for a heroic war with
a return to the Mughal past, and with the undoing of a modernity
with which they had a complex and intimate relationship. Even
in his very hard Hindu nationalist phase, Bankim would not spurn
what he had learnt from Utilitarian and other political philoso-
phies of the west.18 So, although it is widely believed that his
transference of anger from the British to the Muslims was a
tactical compromise, I think he did believe in what the Great
Being said to Satyananda at the end of AM: The British would
teach Hindus the useful sciences. Colonialism, for Bankim, was
a historical necessity.19
The two levels of beliefs clashed, producing an impossible
aporia. Subjection meant the loss of manhood and war was the
breeding ground for heroes. At the same time, war against the
British would block moral and intellectual development. War
against Muslims, in an imaginary context, would, on the other
hand, throw up a pattern of masculinity and heroism, of Hindu
idealism, which may enhance future nationhood. We must re-
member yet another compulsion that could have contributed to
the particular form of Hindu nationalism in AM. Colonisation"
breeds among the colonised, an instinct for internal colonialism:
to step out of the receiving end of humiliation and to bring to
the heels an adversary. In the case of AM, it would be the Muslim,
now broken, but who had, in the past, ruled over Hindus. The
present powerlessness of the Muslim combined with the history
of his past power would justify the demand for revenge and also
make it plausible in novelistic imagination.
I should, however, qualify my suggestion that Bankim found
no adequate carrier for his vision of Hindu nationalism, In a very
interesting and important book, Chittaranjan Bandyopadyaya has
suggested that the Deccan famine of the mid-1870s. and the
uprising that Vasudev Balwant Phadke organised against colonial
misrule in 1879, had been widely reported in the Bengali press.
Phadke's diaries were translated into Bengali by Dakshinacharan
Chattopadhyaya in the Amritabazar Patrika in 1879.20 Bankim
started writing AM very shortly after that. He, therefore, knew
of a modern, educated, Brahman youth, who was not quite an
ascetic but who had severed his ties with his family and his
beloved wife. Phadke was a pious Hindu. fearlessly anti-British,
who went into the forests and built up an army of tribal people
and gathered arms by plunder, aiming to loot the Kheda Treasury
as a first step towards overthrowing foreign rule. I am persuaded
that this would have been a very important impetus towards the
conceptualisation of the AM, although there are several differ-
ences as well. At no stage or in no version of AM, has the anti-
colonial theme been paramount, except in an oblique reference
in the first edition: "In the deserted temple where the Santans
used to worship, the lamp continued to shine and the story of
that light may be told elsewhere."21 The reference to the lamp
whose lonely light shone on, could have indicated the continiu-
ation of armed resistance by Phadke well after the Sanyasi risings.
At the same time, the theme of Muslim villainy and the will to
anti-Muslim violence, which are pervasive in AM. are absent in
Phadke's revolt and in his writings.
 Ill
AM, as a text, has been found to be quite elusive. There is no
absolute certainty about which one of the many editions that the
author had prepared should constitute the authentic text. Uncer-
tainties are compounded by suspicions that textual changes were
not spontaneous, but were undertaken under political pressure.
The novel was first serialised in Bangadarshan, the avant garde
literary journal that Bankim ran and often edited. It appeared
between 1881 and 1882, in nine successive issues. It was then pub-
lished as a book in 1882. In Bankim's own lifetime, five different
editions were printed, the last one coming out in 1892. Scholars
have identified 259 alterations across the five versions.22
The changing texts produced several related commonsensical
as well as scholarly opinions; that the novel itself was not one
but several, that the earlier version contained a more pristine
account of authorial intentions which had to be radically modified
under colonial pressure. Usually, it is assumed that the earlier
text had been more directly patriotic, issuing forth a clarion call
to arms against British rule. In the last version, the original
intention needed to cloak itself and moderate its own true energies
by transforming the anti-colonial content into an anti-Muslim
one, the Nawab standing in as something like an alibi for the
British. It is said that Bankim, faced with official persecution
for the anti-British sentiments of the serialised edition, exercised
a form of self-censorship when the novel appeared in book form.
He transformed the specifically anti-British words of the earlier
versions into anti-Muslim pronouncements. The communal
content, therefore, was tactical, and the real message was directed
against colonialism.23
In actual fact, however, if one goes through the different
versions and variations, it is difficult to identify substantial
changes in plot structure, characterisation or in political message.
Let me identify a few significant alterations in different versions.
In the earliest serialised version, the locale is specifically the
district of Birbhum in Bengal, and concrete geographical features
are evoked from time to time: references to the local river Ajay,
for instance. In the later versions, significantly, dense local
references are dropped and the space is rendered more anonymous
and abstract as it assumes the shape of a nation. The maladmin-
istration that produced the local scarcity was earlier blamed on
the local Muslim dynasty. In the next edition, the local dynasty
disappears and the Muslim puppet Nawab of Bengal is made to
shoulder the blame. In earlier editions, ascetic heroes aspire to
uphold Aryadharma: probably an effect of Swami Dayanand's
much publicised visit to Bengal in the previous decade and his
translation of true Hinduism as Aryadharma. In the 1880s, when
the AM appeared in several editions, Krishnaprasanna Sen and
his missionaries of Aryadharmapracharani Sabha were active in
Bengal.24 In the last edition, patriots refer, instead, to
Sanatandharma, evoking the name that orthodox opponents of
Dayanand provided for Hinduism. I cannot find a very good
explanation for the shift in nomenclature, since Bankim did not
subscribe to the hard social orthodoxy that the Sanatanists propa-
gated. The altered nomenclature is still worth noting. There were
occasions when British troops alone - and not any larger British
structure of governance - were addressed abusively in the first
version whereas in the later ones, Muslims were added on to the
British as recipient of abuse from the Santans. This, however, was
not a consistent thrust, since the earliest version also contained
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fulsome praise for British martial valour. That was edited out
in the later version. All this does not bear out the conventional
understanding that the early version had been ardently anti-British
and later on Muslims were substituted for those references.25
Moreover, the ferocious denunciations of Muslims remain constant
across the different editions. So, the popular notion about Bankim' s
self-censorship, driven by colonial persecution that transformed
the original hatred of the British into an opportunist antagonism
against the Muslims, does not seem to be entirely valid.
The fact of colonial pressure or persecution of Bankim on
account of AM cannot be either proved or disproved firmly. True,
Bankim himself had hesitated for months before he published
the serialised novel as a book. In private conversations, he had
said that he anticipated trouble from official quarters. To guard
against that, he asked the Brahmo reformer Keshub Chandra Sen
to write a preface to the second edition, underlining its politically
inoffensive character. Eventually, Keshub's younger brother
wrote an article in a journal, parts of which were reprinted as
a preface to that edition. Keshub himself wrote to the Lt Governor,
assuring him that it was a patriotic text but not a seditious one.26
Bankim, moreover, wrote a rather uncharacteristic prdcis of intent
in the first edition which described the Sanyasi rebellion as a
"social revolution" and not as a political one. It said that the novel
intended to demonstrate that Bengali wives sometimes aided
husbands and sometimes did not - something that the novel
actually does not portray. Also, that revolutionaries are suicidal.
The message is so tame and staccato, so much resembling morals
in behavioural manuals rather than his own enterprise, and the
self description is so inept, that we may legitimately infer that
he deliberately made the novel sound aseptic to avoid trouble.
But how much trouble did actually come his way?
It is generally assumed that plenty happened to punish him
for the novel. In September 1881, a new post of Assistant
Secretary, Finance, had been created for Bengali civil servants
of excellence and Bankim was the first to be awarded the post.
AM was already being serialised, but nothing that was very critical
about British action had appeared as yet. On January 16, 1882,
strong critical language was used for the first time in the serial
by Santans to rally a crowd against British troops whose com-
mander was also mocked and reviled. On January 22, the post
was abolished and Bankim was transferred as an Undersecretary.
Subsequently, the glowing terms that his superiors had earlier
used to describe his official performance, became markedly
lukewarm. So, there is some material to support the claim that
he faced discrimination for his writing.27
On the other hand, there is some countervailing evidence as
well. In fact, there seems to be too short a gap between the first
appearance of explicitly anti-British words in the novel and his
demotion: a matter of merely six days. It is difficult to imagine
that the colonial bureaucracy moved with such alacrity, noting,
translating, deliberating on and finally taking action against a
passage within less than a week. It is by no means absolutely
certain that the government regarded the novel as predominantly
anti-colonial. In the official notification in the Calcutta Gazette
of March 31, 1883, we find the novel was described as "being
actuated by religious and patriotic feelings of a very strong
nature". The Gazette sees novelistic action as essentially a war
to drive out Muslim rule, at the end of which, the fictional patriots
" perceive the necessity and wholesomeness of the English regime
in India".28 As late as 1937, Sir Henry Craik who headed the
Home Department and was a member of the Viceroy's Executive Nationalist Muslims found it difficult to chant Vande Mataram
Council, wrote to Lord Baden Powell that the novel was a "hymn since the song personified the motherland as a goddess, thereby
of hate against Muslims".29 putting it out of reach of Muslims and Christians whose faith
When we consider the tradition of literary and performative could not acknowledge a personified divinity, embodied in a
representations of colonial misrule in nationalist plays of the specifically Hindu form.32 On the other hand, a commitment to
previous decade like Neel Darpan, Sarat Sarojini or Surendra such a representation of the country was made into a litmus test
Binodili which did face actual persecution in the previous decade, for patriotism for non-Hindu nationalists. This created a vicious
we find the exhortations against the British in AM are relatively circle. Muslim youths were kept out of revolutionary terrorist
mild, even in the first version. These, moreover, are always outfits since they could not bow before an image of the country
framed within a larger and stronger articulation against Muslim in imitation of the initiation ceremony in the AM. Muzaffar
rule and Muslim presence in Bengal. In Neel Darpan, in contrast, Ahmad, a founder of Bengali communism, described the novel
the unforgettable hero of anti-planter resistance was a young as "full of communal hatred from beginning to end".33
Muslim peasant who was supported by a Hindu upper caste young All this forced a review of the use of the song upon the Congress,
man from a landholding family. The most searing scene in the leading to considerable introspection. Gandhi had been impressed
play occurred as a white planter raped a pregnant low caste by the song's ardent patriotism in 1915. In 1947, he reread it
peasant woman.30 In AM, on the other hand, Muslims are enemies in the light of unprecedented Hindu-Muslim violence and of the
and brahmanical leaders are the heroes. The great leader of the new and terrible context in which the words were now recited.
rebels in the novel tells the Company troops who had come to He wrote: "That was no religious cry...It was a purely political
assist the Nawab to go away since the fight was not with them, cry. It should never be a chant to insult or offend the Muslims."
it was against the Muslims. Only when the British refused to Nehru went further. He had begun to read the novel in translation
withdraw, does the action get extended against them, at a some- in 1937. He, too, had accepted Vande Mataram as a religio-
what late stage in the novel. Even at the height of the battles patriotic chant. But reading it in the context of the novel, he was
with the British, anti-Muslim exhortations do not cease. disturbed. He asked Tagore if the translation was accurate: "It
We cannot, therefore, conclude that Bankim was seriouslydoes seem that the background is likely to irritate the Muslims".
targeted by a nervous or angered state machinery. Nor can we Tagore wrote back that the first two stanzas contained no of-
conclude that the novel - in any of the versions - actually invited fensive material and could be chanted in the Congress sessions.
deliberate persecution. I would argue that colonial censorship A Congress committee in 1937 deleted all but the first two stanzas
was always more alert against audio visual criticism in theatre from its sessions, and declared that any other non-controversial
or about criticism in the popular daily newspapers than againstpatriotic song could be substituted for this one in the sessions
quite erudite and entirely literary texts. The situation changedif the organisers so desired. Faced with renewed discomforts after
from the time of the anti-partition Swadeshi upsurge when the the Partition, the Constituent Assembly in 1951 announced that
patriotic hymn from the novel - or a fragment from it that was Tagore's song, 'Jana Gana Mana' should be India's national
turned into a slogan in mass demonstrations - invited spectacular anthem even though the Vande Mataram would enjoy equal
police repression. This was further heightened with the growth honour as a national song.34
of revolutionary terrorism which read AM as its inspirational text. It is relevant to mention here that the first two stanzas of the
Even then, however, it was nationalist action wherein words fromsong evoke the gentle, peaceful, tender landscape of Bengal as
the novel were embedded, that was persecuted. The novel wasthe object of devotion. The land is the earth, it is a source of life
not banned, nor was the song. and nurture, of love and beauty. In subsequent verses, the land
I must refer to another layer of controversies that surrounded is dissolved, it disappears into the body of a goddess, 10-armed,
AM after Bankim' s death. Even when he was alive, Muslim critics demon slaying, carrying weapons. At one level, such a personi-
had been deeply disturbed by the tenor of exhortations againstfication of the country, its deification in a Hindu devotional
Muslims. Nonetheless, the hymn Vande Mataram in AM had image, would put it beyond the reach of non-Hindu affective
emerged as the de facto national anthem, sung at Congressidentification: both idolatry and personification of divinity are
sessions from about 1894 when Rabindranath Tagore put it to prohibited, especially for Islam. At another level, the evocation
music and sang it.31 From the 1930s, the Muslim League - routed
of the armed goddess, ready for the kill, portended a history that
in the elections of 1937 even in Muslim majority provinces, and
Muslims could not possibly accept, given the narrative context
casting around for an issue to rally a Muslim support base -of AM: the novel leaves the reader with no doubt that the enemies
focused on the communal elements in the song and criticised itsof the Mother are Muslims, that the weapons in her hands, and
stature in Congress circles as evidence of the communal nature the strength in her children, are directed against them.
of the Congress itself. It must also be added that some of the In 1983, yet another controversy flared up in the West Bengal
provincial Congress ministries had a poor record in combating Assembly when, faced with a Congress demand that the gov-
Hindu communalism. That added to the criticism. In the Central ernment actively propagate the novel, a number of ruling Left
Provinces, the Congress ministry had made Vande Mataram a partners either abstained from voting or absented them-
Front
compulsory song in government-aided schools, even for Muslim selves. Even CPI(M) objections were couched in rather apolo-
students. Side by side, from at least the 1920s, Hindu commu- getic terms: such propagation might create communal dissensions
nalists had used the chant as a rallying cry in communal violence,
in the state, given its controversial nature. In a sense, this put
as the counterpart of the Muslim invocation of 'Allah Ho Akbar'.
the burden of unreasonableness upon Muslims: they may disrupt
Both V D Savarkar and M S Golwalkar of the Rashtriya
law and order in the state if the government encouraged a
Swayamsevak Sangh had adopted the song as the ideal valorisation of the song. Commenting on the debates, Partha
embodiment of the Hindu nation that they wanted to accomplish.
Chatterjee put forward a strong critique of Bankim's perspective

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on Muslims, arguing that in refusing to engage with this, the Left rest of the essay, I will first dwell on the more obvious aspects
was moving away from its "historic right to criticise our own of the text and then try to show how there are simultaneous,
heritage...".35 parallel texts or self-deconstructive moves that traverse the surface
Arguments and searing controversies have haunted the heritage images and messages.
of AM across an entire century or more. Such a range of contended
opinions adds to the image of a fluid, elusive text. Let me point IV
out a few peculiarities in the terms of the debates. We find a
series of rescensions in the arguments about the novel. Rarely In AM, the story unfolds in the Padachinha village in Birbhum.
has it been seen or discussed as a whole, a single text. Most It was once a prosperous village but now a deathly silence engulfs
usually, the hymn has been separated out and debated, without it as it lies scorched in the midday heat and as the famine rages.
any reference to the novel. It had, indeed, been composed in- All production has ceased, all social intimacies have evaporated,
dependently of the novel sometime in the 1870s, and then inserted the village is so bereft of humanity that it already resembles the
within AM when it appeared. As a result, debaters had felt free forests that lie outside it. Large, abandoned mansions emphasise
to restore it to its free standing status, denying any accretions the current uselessness of wealth which can no longer procure
of meaning that occurred through its relocation within AM. I food. Mahendra, a brahman landlord, leaves the village with his
would argue that its reinscription within the novel did create a wife, Kalyani and his baby daughter, Sukumari, in search of
new organic relationship with the larger literary and political sustenance in the city: the perennial theme of famine narratives.
meanings that the novel carried. The family gets separated and wife and daughter are waylaid
Vande Mataram apart, controversies have also swirled around by marauding robbers. They are rescued by a band of dedicated
the changes in different editions. The availability of multiple ascetics who call themselves Santans and who now engaged in
versions has been read to imply that AM was an open and fluid skirmishes with the forces of the Nawab of Bengal. Mahendra
novel, never achieving a formal closure as a bounded and coherent is arrested by the royal troops who think he is one of the Santans.
text.36 That the variations were relatively minor, or that despite He, then, is rescued by the Santans. Initially, Mahendra spurns
changes, in each edition we have a definitive and bounded text them as criminals. He is then introduced to the doctrine of patriotic
in each case - however plural or ambivalent its internal impli- insurrection through the revelation of a temple which houses three
cations may be - was something that did not impress readers sequentialised images of a deity he had never come across: this
and critics overmuch. Yet another reading strategy has been to is the deity of the Motherland. He is told that she is the greatest
deduce a single, essential nature for the novel from its effects. of all divinities, that her lustre is presently dimmed by Muslim
Most Congress nationalists honed in on the novel's anti-British tyranny, and that she is to be worshipped by the elimination of
exhortations, and dismissed other novelistic elements as minor, Muslim rule and of Muslim presence. The Santans explain their
irrelevant, as tactical compromises or as masks, hiding authentic mission to him: they are engaged in a battle unto finish with the
authorial intentions. On the other hand, Hindutva ideologues have forces of the evil nawab. For the duration of the war, they
seized upon the words of hatred for Muslims and the call for renounce all earthly ties, and any union with women must be
the foundation of a Hindu nation asAM's true and sacred core.37 paid for with death. They must also renounce all caste privileges
In a significant irony, the opening words of the hymn - Vande since the war imposes a liminality outside the rules of everyday
Mataram - have been the chant or the slogan both for highly life. After the victory is won, however, normalcy in personal and
secular Congress anti-colonial public agitations and for Hindu caste relations would be restored.
communalists in moments of violence. Santans describe themselves as Vaisnavs or worshippers of
Finally, an attempt is made to read it through strategies of the Lord who preserves Creation. But they are Vaisnavs
Vishnu,
overlay and obliteration. Very different sentiments are culled with
out a difference, Vaisnavs who worship Krishna as a demon
of earlier and later novels and essays and are pulled across the and not as an erotic or as a child figure, those being the
slayer
text of AM to obliterate uncomfortable elements within it. For common tropes of Bengali Vaisnav imaginary. At the same time,
instance, Bankim's earlier portrayals of good Muslims as well they also worship a female figure of the Motherland as Mother
as his later critiques of Hindu patriots who degenerate, are scoured
Goddess, a deity who calls out for war. In this sense, their devotion
out of his larger literary corpus to cancel out the force of the comes close to Shakta worship, directed towards the figure of
image of the Hindu nation and the power of the words of anti- the bloodthirsty goddess, Kali. Indeed, at the temple, Kali con-
Muslim violence and denunciation within AM. It is as if the novel tains the image of the Motherland in the present moment. In the
cannot be granted an autonomous existence even for a moment, late 19th and early 20th century, colonial officials were not quite
it cannot be allowed to stand on its own without being corrected sure if the novel depicted devotion to Kali or to the goddess of
by the rest of Bankim.38 I would agree that Bankim moved on Motherland. By superimposing a Mother Goddess on a reinflected
from the thrust of the AM in several ways and that his earlier Krishnabhakti, Bankim unifies the two great sectarian traditions
of Bengali devotionalism, Shakta and Vaisnav.
writings, too, would say very different things about Hindu society
and power relations. AM was an experimental moment withinIt is during Mahendra's encounter with the divine images in
a wide and complex literary history that Bankim encompassed. the temple that the hymn is first sung and explained. Subse-
Yet, the novel, I think, must be regarded as an entire moment, quently, it is sung in battles against Muslims and the British,
possessed of a fateful power, all of its own. Or, rather, of many
alternating with a verse from a medieval Vaisnav hymn - taken
different kinds of power. The words and images that form the from Jayadeva's Geeta Govindam, that celebrates Krishna as the
slayer of two demons. Mahendra joins up with the holy warriors
dominant motifs in the text have a powerful resonance that cannot
be wished away or cancelled out by others. At the same time,and he and the Santans fight hard against the temptations of love,
they do not entirely exhaust the potential of the novel. In thenot always very successfully. Shanti, the forsaken wife of a

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Santan, Jibananda, joins her husband, disguised as a man, and a fictional realisation of a political necessity that later nationalists
she fights valiantly, protecting herself and her husband resolutely embraced.
against the pulls of mutual desire. Most important for emergent nationalism was the simultaneous
Santans win great victories. The novel resounds with battle construction and elevation of the new goddess 'as the highest
cries and battle scenes, somewhat repetitively described. Santans treasure in individual and collective life. AM was not the first
also initiate and train ordinary villagers who celebrate each embodiment of the Motherland. In a play of 1873, called
victory against the Nawab with mob attacks on Muslim villagers, Bharatmata that was enacted before packed theatre halls, the
killing them, routing their homes and desecrating their faith. Motherland speaks and weeps. She is a wan, pale figure of
"Kill, kill the Muslim wretches", they scream, as they ask each absolute abjection, she has been stripped of all possessions by
other with longing: "Brother, will that day ever come when we white men who appear on the stage to kick and abuse her while
will demolish their mosques to build temples for Radhamadhav?"39 her children slumber on. At the end, a good sahib comes and
Their ascetic leaders train them to attack Muslims, they exhort promises her that another Mother, the British Queen, would bring
them with rallying cries like "Squeeze the Muslims from front her woes to an end.44 What AM does is to dramatise and trans-
and behind and kill them" and "Let us throw their birds' nests figure the image of abjection into a lustrous, powerful deity.
to the four winds, let us throw the city of the unclean people There are, however, occasional hints of her subordination to
a male divinity or to a still greater power. In the temple, she is
into the river, let us set fire to these pigsties and purify Mother
held on the lap of Vishnu. Kalyani, in a dream, saw her as a
Earth... Let us raze their buildings to dust, let us burn and drown
these pigsties..."40 When British troops join up with the forcesmournful figure, standing before a being of such radiance that
of the Nawab. the leaders of the Santans try to dissuade them: its gender could not be ascertained; however, she thought that
the form had a female shape. The Motherland stood before this
"We have no quarrel with you.. let the English triumph..."41 When
British troops continue with their attacks, the war broadens on being and complained that Mahendra would not come to
higher
two fronts and Santans kill English troops with determination her because of his love for Kalyani. The higher being then
and resolve. commanded Kalyani to give up her husband to a greater cause.
At the end, the Nawab is thoroughly routed, even with British This does place the Motherland in a somewhat lower place in
help, but the battlefield is spattered with dead Santans whose the divine hierarchy. At the same time, the song proclaims that
armies are exhausted. Satyananda is told by an unnamed divine the Motherland was the highest object of devotion: "It is your
presence, called both the Great Being and the Healer, that his that we worship in every temple".45
image
mission is accomplished with the overthrow of the Muslims.The The narrative proceeds by establishing correspondences among
English would henceforth rule Bengal under divine providence, three levels: in the novelistic time-space, in the song, among the
three images in the temple. That is, what happens to the history
since the aim of the war was to force them to assume direct power,
dislodging the Muslims. Satyananda is unreconciled, since of he
the country is reenacted in the succession of images in the
has failed to install Hindu power. The Great Being explains temple,
divine and is also encapsulated in the sequence within the song.
providence to him: The English will respect the faith of Hindus,Famine constitutes the narrative time, the frame of experience,
and they will augment Eternal Faith or Sanatan Dharma of Hindus it stalks the landscape. Settled landholders are driven out on the
by teaching them the knowledge of external, material things streets, upper caste women flee into forests, the land is devastated.
which will be added to Hindu spirituality. Hindus neededIndeed. this famine and forest merge together to provide the central
period of tutelage to complete the scope of their faith. chronotope or unity of time and space in the novel. A large part
Satyananda desists from the war, but his sorrow is undimin- of Bengal's agricultural land had, indeed, returned to dense
ished. He begs forgiveness from the Mother goddess, he laments jungles in the course of the famine. Villagers are spectral figures
that he should have died fighting since he failed to install Hindu
of terror: they emerge as ghostly shadows, as naked, cadaverous
power and he let another breed of Yavanas or unclean aliens to They are ready to devour htuman flesh, to tear each other
figures.
apart. The tone of unrelieved, barbaric darkness is highlighted
claim her. This sorrow had been interpreted by secular nationalists
as a call for continuing struggle against foreign rule. Moreover,
by its counterpoints; some occasions are scooped out of the time
the battle scenes against the British troops pulsate with passion,
of hunger and are filled with nurture, nourishment, hot food and
no less strident than those where Santans engage with Muslims. warm milk, images of love and fulfilment. They recall the bounty
and
That, too, lent credibility to the secular nationalist reading of thethe safety that are now lost.
novel as a covert anti-British text from which the anti-Muslim The hymn, too, begins with an evocation of the goddess as
sections can be weeded out without structural damage to its unity
Land: land as it used to be, green and ripe with overflowing crops.
or dominant thrust. What was more powerful as nationalist In the temple, the first image of the goddess resembles the past
figure of plenitude. Famine is thus a double loss: starvation is
inspiration was the death defying ideal of patriotism. The first
short passage with which the novel opens, depicted a primevalmore than the absence of food in the present moment, it denotes
and silent forest where two disembodied voices are heard. One
the absence of the green land of the past, of the bounteous,
promises all in the service of the cause. When asked what benevolent
that goddess. That is why, in the hymn, the image of a
meant, the reply in the serialised version had been: "Lives of land is succeeded by the angry, clamour and slash of
serene
the dearest ones".42 In the first edition of the book, thatswords,
was just as, within the novel, the land fills up with canni-
changed into "Life". A new reply was added "Life is unimportant, balistic villagers. In the temple, the splendid goddesss transforms
anyone can sacrifice it". A question follows "What more is there herself into a vindictive, bloodthirsty one. The first divine
to give away?" The answer comes Bhakti.43 A vision of patriotism image in the tripartite sequence was that of Jagadhhatri, the
goddess of agriculture who cleared the forests and tamed wild
that holds life as trivial, that holds devotion to the Mother goddess
beasts. Kali, the second goddess, denoted the lapse from
to be the highest thing in life acted as a beacon of faith and resolve,

Economic and Political Weekly September 16, 2006 3965

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production and civilisation, she marked the time of reversion to subjects of the goddess, they no longer constitute the country,
the jungles. The past and present of the goddess are finally nor does the country exist to nurture them. The Mother has
overlaid by the most glorious image of the Mother of the future, purposes of her own that the people must fulfil, they must rid
the time of becoming; the image of demon slaying Durga who her of her enemies. The land recedes, as do figures of nurture
encompasses might and glory, learning and wealth, who triumphs and welfare.
over the demons. In this reconstituted 'bhakti', the deity has a tripartite narrative,
The goddess of the future, of Mother in becoming, is she notisasplit into three forms, each corresponding partially to three
known Hindu goddesses: Jagaddhatri. the food giver, Kali, the
mere recovery of the pre lapsarian state. The third and final figure
naked Shakti of destructive force and Durga, the demon slayer.
is no clearer of forests, she is not the food giver, nor the embodiment
of nurture. She is an imperial figure, trampling over enemies, In sharp contrast to Hindu devotionalism, the composite, unified
her might and glory are her more remarkable features. In thegoddess
song, herself-the goddess of the motherland-has no mythology,
at the very end, there is a return to the theme of the greenno and
life events of her own. No concrete stories adhere to her. She
benign land, but more as a necessary refrain, a throwback carries
to the with her three historical phases, abstractly conveyed, not
first segment with which a song must end. The dominant vision
through mythological events, but through static, iconic represen-
that remains with us is that of Dashapraharanadharini Durga:
tations. The narrative moves through an immediate cluster of
Durga whose 10 arms hold lethal weapons. events that concerns the Santans and their enemies.
"The central preoccupation of the Bengal Puranas", writesIn conventional Vaisnav bhakti forms, the devotee meditates
Kunal Chakrabarti, "is with the goddess cult". He traceson
thethe life events of the deity, identifies with his or her
pervasiveness of the female divinity to tribal cults which,companions
over and immerses herself in the contemplation of divin
sport or 'leela'.48 The act of absorbed contemplation can brea
centuries, were assimilated into a brahmanical tradition, finding
a fullness of form in the Devi Mahatmyva and the Markandeya down boundaries of gender, as male devotees may identify wit
Purana around the sixth century AD. The reinstalled goddess,
a female figure associated with the deity and vice versa. In th
neither wholly non-Vedic, nor fully brahmanical, was a product
novel, that contemplation of events and sport is replaced with
of interacting traditions.46 The process of cultic constructiona that
contemplation of three phases in the divine history. Then occur
had stretched over thousands of years, is repeated and accom-
a startling break with all given conventions of bhakti. The devot
plished instantaneously in AM. Divinities from the established
assumes charge of divine activity. In imitation of the arme
demon-slaying
mythic tradition are pulled out from their separate contexts and activity of the deity, he becomes the saviour
are realigned to produce a new deity. They interact in arecuperating
new divine glory from the clutches of the demon. Fro
contemplation,
context to finally merge into a new and higher divine form. The the devotee is plunged into action, from a
novel is transparent about its construction. At the same time,immersion
the in the divine life, he intervenes in the history of th
very power of the construction and of the constructed product life. The usual relationship between deity and devotee is trans
obscures the process of goddess making, allowing her to formed,blend as divine activism is frozen into certain iconic posture
and as the devotee assumes action on behalf of divinity. Th
into and eventually dominate a divine landscape. Just as Mahendra
is astonished at the mention of the new goddess but is persuaded
warrior Krishna of the epics had proclaimed that he will delive
of her reality by the very grandeur of the images, so would thethe
Earth from evildoers: in AM, the activist devotee recovers
reader eventually accept the new goddess and her proclaimed divine glory, becoming the saviour hero. The song counts the
status even as the novel makes transparent the human initiative
crores of sons (Santans) that the Mother possesses, all of them
behind goddess formation. armed and ready to kill; "With such might, why should you be
It is interesting that if Bankim invented a goddess, thenpowerless?"49
the Strength here flows from the human to the divine.
reversing
material that he used for her construction, included relatively new the trajectory of bhakti. Divinity is poured back and
fixed into an image, an icon. Human devotees alone are active.
elements. The annual worship of Jagaddhatri had been introduced
Mythology disappears and the static divine visage provides
in Bengal as late as the 18th century by the leading conservative
Hindu king Krishnachandra Raya of Krishnagore.47 Bankim's inspiration.
invention, therefore, followed an established tradition of expand-
Worship is separated from ritualism and from ecstatic contem-
plation of 'leela'. It is relocated on a new register: that of war.
ing the sacred pantheon, of increasing the occasions of collective
worship. At the same time, worship of the Country didHoly takewar retains all the features of ecstatic, ardent devotion, the
"animism" to new heights. In the sacred epic, Ramayana of
throbbing passions and the peaks and climaxes of feeling that
Valmiki, mother and birthplace ('jananeejanmabhoomischa') arein moments of mystical ritual or through ecstatic religious
occur
valorised above even heaven. Both, however, had immediate, music and dance. War is also religious obligation, enjoined upon
bounded, concretely personal connotations, referring to an actual, by the goddess, in imitation of her own warlike aspect. If in the
human mother and a specific piece of land where the ancestral first phase of the hymn, the land, the rivers, the green crops and
homestead belonged. The new goddess made abstractions out golden fruits, the mellow light and the sweet words of Bengal
of both and unified the two, non sacred elements to make a had evoked the country, from the third verse we have the clash
divine figure. of swords, naked, unsheathed weapons lusting for blood. The
Patriotism is given a visualisation, an embodiment, a glowing elongated, lush sounds of the first two verses disappear, and harsh,
object of worship in the novel. In the same measure, the country staccato syllables take their place. In the final verse, the goddess
is reified. It begins as a green land, as nurture for the people stabilises in a figure of magnificence and plenty, shedding her
who constitute the country. It then assumes the form of a goddess, dreadful aspects. But she retains her weapons, she tramples on
separated and held above the people and the land, a higher being the demons. In the temple, too, the figure of pure nurture,
who commands the people. People of the land are located as tenderness and love, the goddess who sowed crops and

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transformed the wilderness, is not recovered. We have, instead, the burden of locating a suitable social level of leadership that
a figure of radiance and magnificence, retaining her arms and overturned Bankim's earlier historical understanding and social
displaying her might. The traces of the history of war, of revenge, criticism. Acutely aware of the peasant problem, and seeing it
of death-dealing triumph, mark the new divine form. as equally a burden for Hindu, low caste and Muslim peasants
The tripartite narrative of the goddess of the nation is initially who are oppressed by landlords and by middle classes and upper
held together by the explanatory frame of the famine. Beginning castes, Bankim had written with great compassion about class.
with basic life-giving food and its deprivation, famine, however, gender and caste injustice, about exploitation. When he leaves
dissolves as a presence, and war becomes an end in itself, without the realm of social power and inaugurates the agenda of Hindu
requiring its legitimising memory. In the same measure, Hindu nationhood, the priorities are turned askew. He needs heroes, he
power is declared to be an end in itself, and not merely the needs leaders in wars, he needs figures of glory rather than social
replacement of a particular tyrant or of foreign rule, not as justice. Peasants become ignoble auxiliaries, upper caste ascetics
palliative for famine, but as an act of eternal revenge. and landlords become leaders and heroes, class and caste divides
If famine is the condition, the explanation and the inspiration are now constituted not by exploitation but by characterological
for the call for total revenge, the first explicit message in our differences. At the same time, leadership is earned through an
literary history for ethnic cleansing, the ravages of famine are act of sacrifice; the initation of the Santan is preceded by a pledge
not embodied in peasant suffering: they are, rather, configured which requires him to abdicate caste privileges for the duration
in the uprooted family of a brahman landlord. The marauding of the war. The old Bankim thus returns fleetingly as a trace:
villagers, reduced to cannibals, evoke horror. Faced with leadership must be earned by a suspension of privilege, however
identical circumstances, the brahman couple does not losetemporary.
its
humanity: both man and woman possess an innate capacity for
The other instance of the pattern of significant departure-cum-
heroic action. retention from his own earlier corpus lies in the complete absence
The contrast between the two sets of Hindus, their alliance of a single Muslim character in the novel. In almost all of his
earlier historical novels, Bankim had crafted an intricate range
based on unequal functions and conditions, finds a precise analogue
in the images of the goddess which represents her present state,
of Hindu-Muslim relations, he created Muslim figures in delicate,
on the one hand, and her past and future forms, on the other: multiple and complex ways. Hindus and Muslims love, they
Naked Kali, shameless and ravenous, wearing human skulls and abuse, they fight one another, and they also fight together. The
worst of adversaries wear human faces, negotiate with difficult,
trampling the prostrate body of her divine consort, resembles the
peasant turned robber, while the benign Mother is a more
complicated emotions, exceed stereotypes, conventionalised
expectations.51 In AM, a novel made out of wars with Muslims,
brahmanical, pure divine form, whose progeny is ideally embod-
ied in the upper caste Santans. They organise peasants into
not a single live Muslim appears. Is it because a finality and
militant bands and teach them to harass Muslims which they totality
do of hate that promises total extermination of the enemy,
with a will: "They steal weapons from their dead enemies, they cannot afford to confront the enemy in concrete human form?
stamp upon their dead faces, some looted travellers and Must the desire for extermination be powered by abstract hatred?
shopkeepers...some demanded women...all sang Vande Mataram,Does it, nonetheless, weaken the impulse to hate, since the cause
Glory to the Mother Goddess...everyone said, the Muslims arefor hatred is Iot located in concrete vivid events and people, but
routed, the country has returned to Hindus...they formed bands in abstract historical judgments?.
at night and set fire to Muslim houses, and began to loot all... Finally, the dominant and stirring cry for war and for Hindu
Many Muslims were killed...some shaved off their beard and glory is obliquely undercut in another instance.
began to call themselves by Hindu names..."50Even when organised Let us go back to the short Introductory chapter. An unearthly
for a holy purpose, ordinary villagers behave like a mob. The voice asks the devotee what he can bring to the act of sacrifice.
core Santans, on the other hand, charge fearlessly into battle in The devotee offers his own life. The reply is that life is a
classic heroic stances. with gestures and words of undying small matter. The devotee asks: What else is there? The answer
patriotism and heroism. is: bhakti.
Yet the contrast does not suggest a dichotomy but a necessary Note the first response: Life is a small matter, anyone can part
stratification of functions and competences: peasants need to joinwith it. The unspoken sequel is, whoever can give away his own
the band out of sheer greed and instinct for violence to swelllife, is entitled to take a life in exchange. Patriotism,in this version,
the army whose true purpose is concealed from them even asis basically a matter of dying and killing, the goddess needs human
they carry out commands to kill. Unlike the landlord Mahendra. sacrifice. Death emerges, as the novel begins, as the keyword:
they do not have a glimpse of the divine figure, nor is the song the death of the enemy, the death of the self. If selfhood acqui-
explained to them. While they belong to the holy army, to the sition is a matter of self-narration, then the collective self of Hindu
Hindu nation, even with their base instincts, the sanctioned nationalism is founded on this inaugural transaction in Death.
baseness of the rank and file may be read simultaneously as aIt is the condition for the nation, death made easy, natural,
lack of conviction in the foundational act in the formation of instinctual.
a Hindu nation. Does the novel put an interrogation mark againstWhat must the Hindu nationalist text kill, repress, obliterate
out of its own past, its own history? The concern for peasant
its own vision by underlining the brutalisation that it must bring
it forth? Does it narrativise the sacred war as a sequence built
poverty, the love for all life-affirming emotions. the concern for
up of a chain of inhumanities? the life of the beloved. They all go into the great sacrifice. The
lovers, the wives, the friends in the novel, celebrate the death
IfBankim had changed elements of received and known histories
to narrate the nation. what had been suppressed out of his of
ownthe loved ones, for it is easy to die. The ability to relate to
the Other as an enriching, pluralising of one's own human
earlier conventions and themes? It seems that the nation imposes

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potential, so evident in earlier novels even when enmity is the same time, they are fractured by the alternative realm of love
depicted, is abdicated. The final Other is, of course, the Muslim. and desire.

The Muslim must figure as a condensation , a focus of absolute In the Gramscian conception of contradictory consciousness,
hate: faceless, anonymous, abstract, beyond histories, beyond occasional subaltern experiences of struggles and solidarities
human contact. There are, at the same time, intimate Others, disrupt, without overturning, the dominant ideology of class
Others who constitute the real core of the Self. The novel insists hegemony.54 The organic intellectual has to gather together such
that they, too, must be given up, be renounced with ease. Shanti fragmentary and fleeting glimpses into an alternative lifeworld,
and Jibananda repress their erotic love for each other, they taken from subaltern experiences, and return it to them as a
renounce their sexuality. Mahendra and Kalyani pledge them- counter-hegemonic politics. AM, in a strange way, accomplishes
selves to celibacy. Families are separated, parents give up their both the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic functions within an
children. Death. and sacrifice, renunciations and abandonment, overarching frame of nationalism. Or, to put it in different words,
fill up the novelistic space, they create the stuff of heroism. the text creates a strong margin to deconstruct its own dominant
In the first edition. Bankim wrote that one of the purposes of meaning.55
the novel had been to establish that "Rebels are suicidal".52 The chronotope of famine-ridden forests, the time of violence
This is usually taken to be a tactical statement, meant to assure and danger, are very occasionally punctuated, interrupted, by
the colonial rulers that the novelist did not identify with the deviant, incommensurable events. In the middle of famine and
fictional heroes. But I would like to take it more seriously. It forest, of war and plunder, there is a village, a grove, an oasis
introduces the element of alienation, a self distancing from the of humanity that has miraculously escaped the catastrophe.
dominant thrust, tone, and message of the novel. What I find Jibananda takes the lost baby Sukumari to his sister there, an
more significant is the passage that he cites from Kalidas' classical ordinary, non-heroic woman who has lost a baby of her own.
poetry in Kumarasambhavam, from the chapter on Rativilap, She feeds the little girl with warm milk and she feeds her hungry
where Rati. the consort of the god of Love, mourns her lover, brother with rice and fish and vegetables. She finds motherhood,
killed by an enraged Shiva for daring to break into his meditation the baby is safe, and the hungry brother is satiated. Images
and for tempting him with Parvati's beauty.53 The passage is a of ordinariness, of innocent, uncomplicated and low keyed
curious insertion, not very obviously related to the dominant contentment, whose infinite preciousness is underlined by the
concerns or messages of the novel. It elaborates the pain of a framing bleakness of war and famine. The episode is literally
love that is broken by death, for death that is divine purpose. snatched out of the dominant chronotope, it is a time of honey,
It does not approximate the tone of Santans who hold life entirely as Bakhtin would put it,56 that escapes both famine and war,
lightly, or of Shanti who finds it entirely possible to live with inhumanity and heroism. It recuperates the gentle and green land
her husband without desire. Bankim explained in the dedication of plenty and love, of welfare and nurture for the people. The
that the citation was written in the memory of Dinabandhu Mitra affirmation of the ordinariness of life, of love, of care, returns
whose death he mourned as he dedicated the novel to him. The in a brief refrain as Kalyani and Mahendra play with their baby
daughter in the midst of devastation, as the baby laughs and as
theme of viraha or the pain of separation finds an added resonance
the parents watch her joyfully.
here: a death is mourned, a lost friendship is evoked. The mood
of the dedication is flung against the message of the opening
passage where human lives are held as trivial. The dedication V
is marginal to the novel. The passage forms its core, its dominant
thrust. Yet the margin unravels the text. The sombre, weighty and hypercharged language of AM is
I would place great emphasis on the signifying function of the fractured with words of tenderness, with the evocation of the
cited passage. The novel proclaims the triviality of life andgentle of peace of a tranquil land, with rare but vivid humour and
wit. It is capable of representing the ugliness of revenge, it vividly
all that gives it value, except for the urge for war and for the glory
of the Hindu nation. At the same time, an ache for lost love invokes the death of the self with all its capacity for love and
animates certain encounters. When Shanti and Jibananda meet nurture that this nation worship demands.
after a long separation, they embrace and kiss, they utter wordsIn his novel Ghare Baire, Rabindranath Tagore had carried
of mutual passion, they reaffirm their undying love. The threat out a dialogue with AM and its hymn, even though he loved the
first two verses of the song. The protagonist of Tagore's novel,
of the ultimate penance for this act of transgression - an embrace
to be paid for by death - cannot deter them, for they will not Nikhilesh, refuses to worship the Country as a divine being. He
does love it, but he will worship God alone and no other being.
resist their tempestuous love at this moment. Bankim was a superb
craftsman of scenes and words of mutual desire and he was at Above all, in a remarkable allusion to Bankim's two peasants
his most powerful here. It is only after establishing the beauty in " Bangadesher Krishak", Nikhilesh does not see the resplendent
and the strength of their desire, the potency of their sexuality, visage of a goddess when he thinks of his country, but he sees
that he moves on to the places where they hold firm to their a low caste peasant, exploited, ignorant, anti-heroes. The Country,
resolve of celibacy. The sense of waste and loss that are involvedfor him, is no more and no less than these starving and deluded
in the ascetic-heroic undertaking cannot be obliterated, nor can people.57 Patriotism entails social justice for such people, it
cannot be waived in the name of any larger national interest.
a sense of what is meant by the killing of the self. The lighthearted
dismissal of life in the Introduction is counterpointed strongly. Rabindranath challenged a great deal in the nationalistic
I would not suggest that the overarching theme of heroic self commonsense and his novel turned out to be deeply unpopular.
sacrifice and revenge are, thereby, irrevocably undercut,Malicious and entirely unfounded rumours were later syste-
minimised or overturned. The words and images that convey matically
the circulated that he had composed the song, 'Jana Gana
latter, retain their power, their resonance, their effectivity. Mana'
At to celebrate the Indian visit of George V: he was so pained

3968 Economic and Political Weekly September 16, 2006

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and humiliated by this charge that he found it to be beneath his
dignity to reply to it. There exists enough documentary evidence,
however, that the charge was completely wrong.58 Nationalists
preferred a deified nation whose land and people are mere
instruments for revenge. The Hindu Right, which had stayed away
from all anti-colonial movements, adored, nonetheless, this reified
19 AM, pp 786-788.
20 Chittaranjan Bandyopadhya, Anandamath, Calcutta, 1993.
21 AM, first edition, Calcutta, 1882, p 191.
22 See Aparna Bhattacharya and Chittaranjan Bandyopadhya, op cit. Also,
Amitrasudan Bhattacharya, Bankim Bidya, Calcutta, 1986.
23 See Sureshchandra Maitra, Anandamath: Itihashe 0 Sahitye, Calcutta.
1983.

nation, and the worship through violence that the Santans visualised. 24 Amiya Kumar Sen. Hindu Revivalism in Bengal, Delhi, 1993, p 221.
25 For an exact computation of each alteration, see Apama Bhattacharya,
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh insists that Vande Mataram
op cit.
is the authentic national anthem, they sing every word of it in 26 Bagal, Introduction, Bankim Rachanabali, Vol 1, p 43.
their daily training centres, they consider that any alteration or 27 Amitrasudan Bhattacharya, Bankimjibani, op cit.
abbreviation would be a mutilation of the sacred body of the 28 Cited in Amitrasudan Bhattacharya, ibid, p 596.
Motherland. The song symbolises the nation itself. 29 Cited in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Vande Mataram: The Biography of
I have tried to suggest what the Sangh would find appropriable a Song, Delhi, 2004, p 10.
30 Dinabandhu Mitra, Neel Darpan, first published, Calcutta, 1861. Its
in the novel which it reveres. I have also tried to suggest subtexts
English translation provoked a suit of slander from European
in the novel that exceed that usability. The Sangh's exaltation planters and the translator, Reverend James Long, was imprisoned.
of the text and the hymn evacuates them of all the other possiblities Upendranath Das, Sarat Sarojini Natak, (1874) and Surendra Binodini
that have been fleetingly but intensely evoked in the novel even Natak (1875), led to persecution, and the publication of Dakshinaranjan
as they are overlaid by more strident and violent messages. The Chattopadhyaya's Cha Kar Darpanled to the Dramatic Performances
Act in 1876.
possibilities relate to being just human. [Z3
31 Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, op cit, pp 33-35.
32 Ibid, pp 39-43.
Email: sumitsarkar_2001 @yahoo.co.uk 33 Ibid, p 28.
34 Ibid, pp 33-34.
Notes 35 Chatterjee, 'The Heritage We Dare Not Renounce' in The Present History
of West Bengal: Essays in Political Criticism, Delhi, 1997.
36 See Amitrasudan Bhattacharya, Bankim Bidya, op cit.
[I am deeply grateful to Asok Sen for his valuable suggestions on an earlier draft.]
37 Both Savarkar and Golwalkar admired the novel and the hymn. The hymn
1 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (1838-1894), was the creator of the Bengali is sung daily at all RSS shakhas.
novel, as well as a master of polemical essays, satirical skits and serious38
See, for instance, Sureshchandra Maitra or Chittaranjan Bandyopadhya,
discursive writings on social and religious themes. As the founder-editor op cit. Very often it is assumed that if there was a hidden anti-British
of Bangadarshan, he also initiated literary journalism. With so many transcrip that was more evident in the early editions, there could not be
innovations in prose writings, he was also one of the most important and a communal content at all, as if there could not be a form of anti-colonial
influential makers of modern Bengali prose. In his professional life, he nationalism that would be equally anti-Muslim.
was a senior government official. For a recent biography, see Amitrasudan 39 AM, p 768.
Bhattacharya. Bankimchandrajibani, Calcutta, 1991. 40 Ibid, p 742.
2 In the previous decade, a number of leading Bengali intellectuals had, 41 Ibid, p 771.
indeed, tried to create cultural products and processes that would be named42 Aparna Bhattacharya and Amitrasudan Bhattacharya, op cit.
Hindu and National, often interchangeably. Bankim. however, provided43 AM, p 715.
a compelling icon which unified the two concepts in a single vision. He44 Kiranchandra Ray, Bharatmata, Calcutta, 1873.
also added a new imperative: both Hindu and Nation were imagined45 This occurs in the hymn. AM, p 726.
through acts of opposition against the Muslim. 46 Kunal Chakrabarti, Religious Process: The Puranas and the Making of
3 'Samya', published in three issues in Bangadarshan, between 1873 and a Regional Tradition, Delhi, 2001, pp 2. 169-70.
1882. 47 Diwan Kartikeyachandra Ray, Khitish Bansabali Charit in Kanchan Basu
4 See, for instance, his Bishabriksha (1873) or Chandrashekhar (1875) or (ed), Dushprapya Sahitya Sangraha, Vol 3, Calcutta, 1992, p 31.
Krishnakanter Will (1878), among others, where supernatural presences48 S K De, The Early History ofthe Vaisnava Faith and Movements in Bengal,
speak or dreams foretell the future. See Jogeshchandra Bagal (ed), Bankim Calcutta, 1959.
Rachanabali, Volume 1, Sahitya Sansad, Calcutta, 1953. 49 As is well known. Bankim, ironically, counted the entire population of
5 Anandamath, ibid, p 715. Bengal as computed by the colonial census, which would include a very
6 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin substantial number of Muslims. AM, p726.
and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, London, 1983. 50 AM, p 768.
7 J L Austin, How to Do Things With Words, Harvard University Press, 51 On this see my 'Imagining Hindurashtra: The Hindu and the Muslim in
1962. Bankimchandra's W ritings' in Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community,
8 For the changes and alterations in various editions, see Apara Bhattacharya, Religion, Cultural Nationalism, Delhi, 2001.
Bankim Upanyasher Mool Roop 0 Roopantar, Calcutta, 1999. 52 Bagal, Introduction, Bankim Rachanabali, p 43.
9 See N K Sinha (ed), The History of Bengal, Calcutta, 1967. 53 Cited in ibid, p 42. On the surface, he meant it to denote his mourning
10 'Bangadesher Krishak' in Vividha Prabandha, Part 2, Bankim for his departed friend, Dinabandhu Mitra, the great playwright.
Rachanabali, Vol 2. 54 Antonio Gramsci, Selectionsfrom the Prison Notebooks, 1929-35, London,
11 'Bangadesher Krishak'. See also 'Samya' ibid. 1971, pp 97, 263.
12 AM, p 727. 55 On the deconstructive exercise in Derrida which involves the
13 Ibid, p 750. forefronting of the margin within the text, see Michael Ryan, Marx
14 Ibid, p 757. and Deconstruction: A Critical Articulation, Baltimore and Lond
15 Bagal, Introduction, Bankim Rachanabali, Vol 1, op cit. 1982.
16 Rajsingha, 1882, in Bankim Rachanabali, Vol 1. 56 Mikhail Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, Texas, 1981, p 103.
17 Nabin Chandra Sen, 'Palashir Yuddha'; Dinabandhu Mitra, Neel Darpan,
57 Rabindranath Tagore, Ghare Baire, Calcutta, 1915, Rabindra Rachana
and several other plays and poems. Vol 11, Calcutta, 1961, p 715.
18 See, for instance, the frequent use of modern European philosophy
58 in
There is a lot on this in Bengali writings. For a recapitulation and
a discursive text that purported to teach methods of authentic Hindu faith citations from documentary evidence, see Ashis Nandy, The Illegitim
in 'Dharmatattva', (1888) in Bankim Rachanabali, Vol 11. of Nationalism, Delhi. 1995.

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