Paper 4

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Henry Derozio and the macking of Indian modernity. Together with a discussion of “The Fkeer of Jungheera”.

Name: Raval Mital M.

Roll no: 26

Year: 2016 – 2018

M.A semester: 1

Paper no: (4) Indian Writing in English

Email Id: ravalmital5292@gmail.com

Assignment topic: Henry Derozio and the making of Indian Modernity. Together with a discussion of The Fkeer of Jungheera”.

Submitted to: Parth Bhatt

                      Smt.S.B.Gardi

                      Department of English

                      M. K. Bhavnagar University

Introduction of Henry Derozio:

The nineteenth century Indian writer Henry Louis Vivian Derozio was born on 18th April 1809 at Entally – Padmapukur in Kolkata. His Original family name was ‘De Rozario’. He inspired by the scenic beauty of the banks of the ‘River Ganges’, he started writing poetry. This was the time when Hindu society in Bengal was undergoing considerable turmoil. Derozio was appointed at Hindu collage, where he helped released the ideas for social change already in the air. He was appointed teacher in English literature and history at the new Hindu collage. His students came to be known as “Derozians”. Derozio was perhaps the first nationalist poet of modern India. Derozio wrote many wonderful poems in English. Before his Untimely death of which “The Fakeer of Jungheera” Derozio died in 1831 after a brief illness.

Bengal Renaissance:

His idea had profound influence on the social movement that came to be known as the Bengal Renaissance in early 19th century Bengal. First few decades of the nineteenth century the period was the pioneering decades that laid the foundation of Bengal Renaissance in Calcutta. It was a growing center of trade both for Muslim rules and the East India Company. The city was also emerging as the great intellectual center of global Diasporas. Bayly writes,
 
“Greece was also on the mind of young Bengal in the Hindu college Calcutta, Young Eurasian poet and democrat Henry Derozio wrote on the heroic struggle of the Greeks. Through the age and the equal greatness of ancient India”.

The Eurasian Movement:

Derozio’s influence on the Bengali society and the Eurasian community of the early nineteenth century was profound. He eloquently campaigaed for the rights of Eurasian as British subjects and spearheaded the Eurasian movement of 1829 – 30. In 1829 the East Indian committee devised an entire campaign to represent the cause and grievances of the Eurasian community.

The Modernizing of Indian Vernaculars:The middle of the nineteenth century was not only momentous for vernacular literature of India but also for Indian literature written in English. The Mughal Empire was in a general state of decline unable to deal effectively with internal rebellion or external invasions. The general weakness of the Mughal left a political and military vacuum in India, which was easily filled by a coercive trade by the East India Company.

Changing paradigms of Colonialism:

In nineteenth century we see the different theories of colonialism. And its effects on Indian thought and culture have grown. Investigations of the nineteenth century have shifted from genealogy of colonialism to archaeology of colonialism. In simple terms this implies that there is a growing interest in the way we understand colonialism than its impact on social and economic structures.

The Marxist discourse on colonialism only argues in terms of total conquest where the colonizing master tightens his control on the colonized slave by every possible representation and construction. Through this paradigm it is assumed that even the literary and textual practices are unequivocally and tragically taken over by the colonizing agent in the service of empire building.

  Background of Fakeer of Jungheera:

  Derozio wrote on all kind of themes from aesthetics, education and social emancipation to love patriotism and rationalism. Most of us remember Derozio for his long metrical poem in two cantos called “The Fakeer of Jungheera” published by ‘Samuel Smith’ and company, Hurkaru library Calcutta in 1828.

 

Edwards suggest that Derozio’s early association with Bhagalpur, where his uncle lived, shaped his image of Fakeer. On one of his visits to the city as a small by Derozio saw a Fakeer “on a rock in the middle of the river”. And this becomes the first suggestion to his fertile imagination of the longest and most sustained fight of his muse. In the character of Fakeer and his beloved Nuleeni. Derozio gives glimpse of the different stages of life and its emotion.
 

Though the poem abounds in romantic fantasizing of discrete religious categories. There seems to be an unbounded enthusiasm.

In the Fakeer of Jungheera Derozio dexterously mixes the tantric, Hindu mythological. Islamic and Christian traditions to create a composite whole that corresponds to the European tradition of the nineteenth century and the syncretistic Sufi tradition of the fifteenth century. Derozio’s marginalized Anglo-Indian background was ideally suited to the hybrid and impure tradition of the ‘tragic tale’ the world of magic resurrection and immortality that the tantric tradition provides was more suited to the Fakeer-Nuleeni tragic tale than the purist and idealized version of Hindu, Christian or Islamic thought. Derozio confessed that he found the tale quite fascinating when he first heard it forma student of Hindu college and realized that it would fit perfectly with the Jungheera story of inter-religious blighted love tale that he was narrating. Probably because of the impurity and hybridity of the poem many literary historians have rejected it from inclusion in the Indian literary canon.
 

The Tantric cosmology :

The tantric cosmology embodied in the tale of ‘king vikramadiyta and the beital. In the “notes” to the Fakeer of Jungheera Derozio explains how he got the idea of introducing this tale in the main narrative of the poem. He write...

             
“A student of that excellent institution, the Hindu college,
Once brought me a translation of the beital pucheesa, and
The following fragment of a tale having struck me for its
Wildness, I thought of writing a balled, the subject of
Which should be strictly Indian? The shushan is a where
The dead are conveyed to be burnt in conformity with
The practice of eastem storyteller.

O! Love is strong, and its hopes twill build
Where nothing beside would dare;
O! Love is bright, and its beam will gild
The desert dark, and bare.

Derozio sets out to narrate the tale while emphasizing the fact that “he who greatly ventures, will greatly win” to show how the two star-crossed lovers, though unable to hid, happiness in the narrow confines of traditional Bengali society, live elemally together beyond death. 

As the story goes, if king vikram remains in his love for his queen he can resurrect her and once more both can find happiness together. The dauntless fortitude and courage that the king exemplifies by passing through the horrible ordeals in the graveyard leading to his victory provide a fitting conclusion to the tragic death of the Fakeer in the arms of his beloved Nuleeni. If the tale of the beital is true, then “of the burnt out eloquence” of Nuleeni can again be resurrected in the arms of Fakeer. If she can pass through the horror and temptation of life.

The Emotional and social landscape of Te poem:

Derozio works around the story, not from within. The entire story races through imagined anxieties of the love relationship and the dreams of a happy future in limbic four-foot couplets. There is no sensuous fulfillment of love, no expressions of a strong emotional bounding as if the writer fears that their expression might result in their loss. However, the anxiety in the poem is palpable form the beginning to the end, reflecting the social ethos of mistrust and animosity of nineteenth century Bengal. Throughout the poem we see cast is major concern.

The poem can be real as story of emancipation of suppressed Bengali women and indictment of the conservative Hindu society in the nineteenth century. The pure and beautiful Nuleeni refuses to die and escapes with the bandit Fakeer to his cave in Jungheera to a life of forbidden by violent social repercussions. She believes that her lover’s courage and her unfailing love will finally make them victorious. Her fair and beautiful face brightens the dark social setting of the poem and mitigates the bold audacity of the Fakeer who snatches her from the midst of a group of mourning upper caste Hindus at the funeral. Even though the story ends in a tragedy the brave rebellion of the weaker sect draws the brave rebellion of the weaker the sexes and the social malaise rampant in Bengali society of the time. The poem marks an important stage in the use of social theme in literary texts endorsing a syncretistic tradition quite popular in nineteenth century Bengal.

  Attitudes towards colonialis and Nationalism:

  Derozio was deeply exorcised by British colonization and felt it was responsible for many ills India was facing including the throttling of the creative spirit. He gave many reasons responsible for this problem such as “uncongenial” soil and climate, paucity of talent, luck of literary publication and colonial rule was meant to “benefit India all cultivation” but was worried about its “Practicability”. By the time he was writing “The Fakeer of Jungheera” poem. Derozio had come to believe in India has a effect of the British colonial rule on Indian society.

The social malaise of sati:

     

  Instead of belaboring upon the misery of slavery, Derozio embarked upon a

 mission of resolving some of the inherent evils of Hindu society especial he 

practice of widow burning exemplifies “an act of unparalleled magnanimity and
devotion” and explains at length the problem of sati and his position on it.
 

The fact is that so from any display of enthusiastic affection a suttee is a spectacle misery, exciting in the spectator a melancholy reflection of superstition and priest craft. The poor creatures who suffer from this inhuman rite, have but little notion guides tell them to look forward. The choice of immediate death or a protracted existence, where to be only must contend their desire, is all that is offered to them; and who under such circumstances would hesitate about the preference? The most degrading and humiliating household offices be performed by a Hindu widow. She is not allowed more food than will suffice to keep her alive; she must sleep upon the bare earth.

In 1829 when William Bentinck abolish sati. Derozio wrote a poem entitled “On the Abolition of settee”. In praise of regulation in stanza XVII extolling the merits of the decree:                     

“Bentinck, be thine the everlasting mead!
The heart’s full homage still is virtue’s claim
And’ it’s good man’s ever honoured deed
Which gives an immortality to fame:
Transient and fierce, though dazzling in the flame
That glory lights upon the wastes of war:
Nations unborn shall venerate thy name.
A triumph than the conqueror’s mightier far,
Thy memory shall be blessed as is the morning star.”

   Conclusion :

The secular and universal ideas that Derozio portrait in his poem. Hear we also see the revisionist consequence of modernity. However the modes of social life emerged in the early nineteenth century in response to modernity in India. India has its own traditions and Derozio occupies a central place in it.

Reference:

Libir.soka.ac.jp/…/kj00005448762.pdf.

                         

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