Muslims in the Eyes of Saratchandra Chattopadhyay
mwz...@aol.com
Commentary
Muslims In The Eyes Of Saratchandra Chattopadhyay
By M. Rashiduzzaman
This article is prompted by the lively debate that followed my observation
about Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay in my recent NFB Commentary ["The Crystal
Gazer and Website Bullies," NFB 4/4/99]. That comment was not intended to
deny the literary genius of Sarat, the legendary novelist in Bengali
literature. I have known his classics from my high school years; even now I
have a reasonably good collection of Sarat Chandra's writings.
However, I am not a literary essayist, and my objective is not so much to
join the clamor of literary praise for Sarat and other Bengali writers whom I
often pursue for political, historical and sociological analysis. I also feel
that, in the name of literary liberty but more as an intellectual
acquiescence, the poets and novelists should not be deified and exonerated
from any palpable bias that they might demonstrate in their works. Both Sarat
and Bankim, his predecessor, sought a new historical vision, a new sense of
identity, and they underscored the need for social reforms. But their
national envisioning was focused on the powerful Hindu bhadralok, and
relegated the Muslims into the dump of disparagement. In the political world
of the Hindu middle class, the Muslims were the disrupters to their
domination; they were a bunch of misfits and rioters, a legacy of the ominous
conquerors and looters. My premise here is pretty clear: By the cultural
landscape that they crafted and the literary imagination that they unrolled,
both Sarat and Bankim, escalated the prevailing Hindu-Muslim dispute and
eventually became a contributing factor to the 1947 religious partition of
Bengal.
Much of Sarat's political thought goes back to the 1920's when he was at his
intellectual prime, and outside the literary sphere, Bengal was coming out of
the Khilafat and Non-cooperation movement against the British. Sarat was
among the prominent Bengali Hindus who opposed the so-called Communal Award
(1932) that gave the Muslims a statutory legislative majority and a new
political voice in Bengal. Along with Rabindara Nath Tagore and several other
well-known Bengali intellectuals, Sarat signed a petition of protest to the
government against the Communal Award. Sarat was less than convinced about
the prospect of Hindu-Muslim unity that Gandhi and the Nehrus wanted to
accomplish in cooperation with a number of prominent Muslim leaders. I am
appalled by Sarat's views of the Muslims in general, well beyond the
fictional characters. Presently, I have couple of Sarat's essays, which I'll
analyze in the paragraphs that follow. But Sarat was not alone, the
indifference and hostility to the Muslims was not his exclusive forte; and I
am not blaming him exclusively. However, this article is not intended to go
beyond Sarat as much as possible. Joya Chatterjee in her book (Bengal
Divided: Hindu Communalism and partition, 1932-47, Cambridge, 1994) not only
cited Sarat to prove her charges of Hindu communalism, but she quoted from
several other contemporary sources, identifying similar anti-Muslim
convolutions.
With some exceptions, that intellectual trend has not changed much in more
recent times. I take the liberty to add that the Calcutta-made Bengali movies
rarely showed Muslim characters although there were some examples of its
variation in the Bombay made Hindi films. Sarat Chandra' speech at the Bengal
Provincial Conference (1926), later published in the Hindu Sangha ( Ashwin,
1333) is perhaps the most compelling evidence of his antipathy towards the
Muslims. Joya Chatterjee's book (Bengal Divided ) has an English translation
(Appendix 1) and numerous quotations from that particular piece, but I have
the full Bengali text in Sarat Shahitya Sangraha, Vol. VIII, Calcutta,
Bengali year 1368, pp. 394-400. Its title is Bartaman Hindu-Musalman Samashya
(Present Hindu- Musalman Problems), and I'll bring up some issues from what
the novelist had asserted there. To say that the article had only some
anti-Muslim bias would be an understatement, his language is not only acrid
and insulting to the Muslims, but he is also an embarrassment to those Hindus
who were (and still are) committed to improve the Hindu-Muslim relations.
Those who will read it or who have already read it; they better re-read it!
What seems to be a distant past can explain numerous unanswered questions of
the present. In the same volume of Sarat Shahitya Sangraha, there is another
article entitled Shahittayar Ar Akta Dhik (Another aspect of Literature)
addressed to one Ms. Jahanara (published in Barsha Bani, 1342) which adds a
little more about Sarat's views on the Hindu- Muslim relations.
In his Bartaman Hindu-Musalman . essay (ref. Sarat Shahitya Sangraha, Ibid),
Sarat was deeply pessimistic about the peace and unity between the Hindu and
Muslim communities. In that essay Sarat says that unity is possible only among
the equals implying that the Hindus and Muslims were unequal; to him, the
Muslims were the riffraff, put it bluntly. After the collapse of the Khilafat
and non-cooperation movement Gandhi's influence, for a while, waned. But in
Bengal there was a fresh initiative to improve political understanding between
the Hindus and Muslims. Nothing was more significant than the Bengal Pact
initiated by Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das, which was liked by many Muslim
leaders but still opposed by many among the Hindus who felt that Deshabandhu
made too many concessions to the Muslims. It seems Sarat was among those Hindu
intellectuals who opposed the Bengal Pact that he derided in his Hindu Sangha
essay. Coming in the wake of the Khilafat and Non-cooperation movement, Sarat
said that the "Desbandhu Pact" was all but hollow. Without getting into the
details, there were also some Muslim leaders (including Jinnah) who had
reservations about the Khilafat and Non-cooperation agitation, and all the
Muslim leaders and groups were not excited about the Bengal Pact either. As a
personal reflection, I have always felt that C.R. Das was at the top of those
leaders who sincerely believed in the Hindu-Muslim amity, and launched his
Bengal Pact at the cost of defying important National Congress leaders
including Gandhi.
Without any quibbling, Sarat declared that Hindustan (India) was for the
Hindus, and they should lead the movement for India's political emancipation
(See Bartaman Ibid). I cannot help feeling that Sarat demonstrated his lack
of historical awareness and ignored political realism by claiming that India
belonged only to the Hindus, and implied that the Muslims were incapable of
fighting for Indian independence. The reality was quite the opposite- for the
larger unity of Bengal, and India at large, the Hindu-Muslim amity was
absolutely necessary. As a matter of historical record, the Muslims played a
significant part in the anti-Colonial movement, not only during the anti-
British protests while Sarat was alive, but well into the 1857 uprising and
beyond. The first burst of anti-British terrorism and non-cooperation
movement was launched by the Muslims (Faraizi movement in the eastern
districts of Bengal that fought both against the British and the Zaminders)
while the Hindus generally cooperated with the British Raj, and the British,
for sometime, pretended to be the savior of the Hindus from the long Muslim
rule. The Muslims refused to take jobs under the British and declined to go
for English education as a part of their anti-British non-cooperation that
led to the Muslim backwardness compared to the Hindus. In the same article,
Sarat alleged that the Muslims came as the conquerors and plunderers, and
they never merged with the Hindus. This is not entirely true! Historically
speaking, the Muslims also plundered the fellow Muslims (Nadir Shah was a
Muslim!), and the Hindus also plundered the Hindus.
We have to remember that Sarat wrote primarily for a Hindu audience that was
not generally interested in Muslims as the heroes and heroines of his
contemporary novels. At that time, the educated Muslim middle class was
limited indeed, and possibly Muslim novel readers were even fewer. The fact
that Sarat neglected the Muslims in his novels was noticed even during his
lifetime. In a letter to Ms. Jahanara ( Shahitayyare Ar Ek Dik in the same
Sarat volume), Sarat mentions a young Muslim friend who urged him not to
write exclusively for the Hindu readers. However, the predominant religious
composition of his readers remained Hindu, but many Muslims also enjoyed
Sarat's novels. He was a critic of the Hindu social system, and his criticism
was directed against the anachronistic rituals and customs including the
pitiable condition of the Hindu widows and early childhood marriages that the
Hindu priests connived at. He inspired the educated elite to remove the
stumbling blocks that hindered the Hindu community's progress. Sarat
Chandra's fictional tapestry embellished those goals. But, evidently, he had
no such lofty vision for the Bengali Muslims. In Pather Dabi, Sarat imagined
Sabbyasachi, a Hindu revolutionary character who would be surging a
revolution through the (anti-British) terrorist activities that was on the
fringe of Indian politics those days. By his idioms and religious
orientations, Sabbyaschi was directing his attention primarily towards the
Hindu community.
Saleem, the character in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, grew up
"handcuffed to history", perhaps Sarat was "handcuffed" to the social
structure where the Hindus and Muslims lived side by side, but their social
interactions outside business, schools and jobs were few and far between.
Barely an hour's drive from Dhaka City, I grew up in a community where the
Hindus were prominent in business, profession and education. Except during
Puja, and special occasions, the Hindus and Muslims rarely socialized with
each other. During the weddings, I remember, the Muslims and Hindus had
separate eating arrangements. Yes, the Muslims were far behind in education;
my father was the first Muslim College graduate in our village and also in
the neighboring ones. As I can recollect in 1944-45, I was one of 4 or 5
Muslim students in a class of 35 students. My school itself founded in 1889
was a charitable contribution of the Maharaja of Bhawal. What I would call
the Hindu bhadralok para was at least two miles away from what might be
called the Muslim neighborhood buffered by the lower caste Hindus. Muslims
normally were not taken inside the Hindu houses, nor did my Hindu class
friends show enthusiasm to come to my house for playing with me. I remember
that my Hindu math (private) tutor never allowed his students (myself and two
others) to step inside his house; rain or shine, we studied in the verandah.
It took me some time to understand why we were not allowed inside his house;
it was because two of us were Muslims and one was a Hindu of lower caste. I
believe such social barriers were among the important reasons for a
continuing Hindu-Muslim distrust. The two main religious communities stood on
the opposite ends of the gulf that had already existed, and Sarat Chandra's
literary genius (and numerous other writers) did not bridge that abyss.
Inter-communal separatism does not necessarily prevent people, with different
religious identities, from sharing a single political entity. But I detect a
protective enclosure in Sarat's political thinking, and his disdain for the
Muslims had a distinctive Orientalist flavor that has come under fire as a
serious intellectual issue in recent years. Like the Western Orientalist
intellectuals who usually legitimized the British Colonialists in India,
Sarat, implicitly or explicitly, gave a snide portrayal about the Muslims-
they were plunderers, killers and rapists (see his essay, Ibid)! He went to
the extent of a implying that the Hindus were scared of the Muslims (letter
to Ms.Jahanara)! That s a slander, if not a racism, against the Muslims, a
fairly common characteristic among the Orientalists, Western or their native
validators. Sarat's Muslim envisioning fits well into the demeaning Muslim
profile at the hands of the Orientalists that Edward Said incisively examined
in his masterpiece Orientalism, (Vintage, 1979), and showed an entirely new
way of intellectual criticism. ____________ M. Rashiduzzaman writes from
Glassboro, New Jersey, USA. His e-mail number is <fa...@voicenet.com>
[Reprinted from NEW FROM BANGLADESH, April 20, 1999 for wider
dissemination.W.Zaman].
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own