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Secularizing the Sacred, Imagining the Nation-Space: The Himalaya in Bengali travelogues, 1856–1901*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2014

SANDEEP BANERJEE  and
SUBHO BASU
SANDEEP BANERJEE
Affiliation:
Department of English, McGill University, Canada Email: [email protected]
SUBHO BASU
Affiliation:
Department of History and Classical Studies, McGill University, Canada Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines changing conceptions of the Himalaya in nineteenth-century Bengali travelogues from that of a sacred space to a spatial metaphor of a putative nation-space. It examines sections of Devendranath Tagore's autobiography, written around 1856–58, before discussing the travelogues of Jaladhar Sen and Ramananda Bharati from the closing years of the nineteenth century. The article argues that for Tagore the mountains are the ‘holy lands of Brahma’, while Sen and Bharati depict the Himalaya with a political slant and secularize the space of Hindu sacred geography. It contends that this process of secularization posits Hinduism as the civil religion of India. The article further argues that the later writers make a distinction between the idea of a ‘homeland’ and a ‘nation’. Unlike in Europe, where the ideas of homeland and nation overlap, these writers imagined the Indian nation-space as one that encompassed diverse ethno-linguistic homelands. It contends that the putative nation-space articulates the hegemony of the Anglo-vernacular middle classes, that is, English educated, upper caste, male Hindus where women, non-Hindus, and the labouring classes are marginalized.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , May 2015 , pp. 609 - 649
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

Previous versions of this article were presented at the South Asia Center of Syracuse University, and at Syracuse University's History Department Faculty Workshop. The authors especially would like to thank Crystal Bartolovich, Craige Champion, Amlan Das Gupta, Parvathy Binoy, Tanushree Ghosh, and Auritro Majumder for their comments and suggestions.

References

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3 Ibid, p. 132.

4 While a spatial register is implicit in the conceptual category ‘structure of feeling’, this is most explicit in Williams’ deployment of the term in The Country and the City. See Williams, R., The Country and the City, New York, Oxford University Press, 1973Google Scholar, particularly Chapter 5 ‘Town and Country’.

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8 In a sign of the popularity of the genre, Mahaprasthaner Pathey was made into a Bengali film by New Theatres, Calcutta, in 1952. It was directed by Kartick Chowdhury, with Basanta Chowdhury playing the lead role and Pankaj Mullick as music director. New Theatres also produced a Hindi film called Yatrik based on Sanyal's travelogue in 1952.

9 Also see footnote 50.

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17 Tagore, D., The Autobiography of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, trans Tagore, Satyendranath and Devi, Indira, London, Macmillan & Co., 1914, p. 242Google Scholar. While both authors of this article have consulted the Bengali text, we have chosen to quote from the English translation here for reasons of practical convenience.

18 Ibid, pp. 243–244.

19 Ibid, p. 245.

20 Ibid, p. 248.

21 Ibid, p. 251.

22 Ibid, p. 251.

23 Ibid, p. 240.

24 Ibid, p. 252.

25 Ibid, pp. 252–253. (Our italics.)

26 Ibid, p. 253. Tagore here is referring to these lines from the Shvetashvatara Upanishad: ‘I know the Supreme Person of sunlike colour (lustre) beyond the darkness. Only by knowing Him does one pass over death. There is no other path for going there.’ See Shvetashvatara Upanishad in Radhakrishnan, S. (trans.), The Principal Upanishads, London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1953, p. 727Google Scholar.

27 Tagore, Autobiography, p. 237.

28 Ibid, p. 244.

29 Ibid, p. 244.

30 Ibid, p. 238.

31 Ibid, p. 265.

32 Ibid, p. 265.

33 See Sarkar, S., Writing Social History, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1997Google Scholar, especially Chapter 5 ‘The City Imagined: Calcutta of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’.

34 For a detailed discussion of the jute industry in colonial Bengal, see Basu, S., Does Class Matter?: Colonial Capital and Workers’ Resistance in Bengal 1890–1937, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2004Google Scholar.

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36 See Timberg, T., The Marwaris: From Traders to Industrialists, New Delhi, Vikas, 1978Google Scholar.

37 According to Sanjay Subrahmanyam, portfolio capitalists became prominent from the second half of the sixteenth century and played a pivotal role in the economy from the first half of the seventeenth century onwards. They occupied a middle ground between the state and the productive economy, and combined a role in the fiscal framework of colonial India with participation in inland trade, currency dealing, movements of bills of exchange, and even seaborne trade on a considerable scale. See Subrahmanyam, S., The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India 1500–1650, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 For an illuminating discussion on the ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultures of colonial Calcutta, see Banerjee, S., The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta, Calcutta, Seagull, 1989Google Scholar.

39 See Sartori, A., Bengal in Global Concept History: Culturalism in the Age of Capital, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Bhattacharya, T., The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education, and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal, 1848–85, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2005Google Scholar.

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42 Sarkar, Writing, p. 169.

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45 Chatterjee, P., The Nation and its Fragments, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 35–36Google Scholar.

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48 See Goswami, Producing, Chapter 3 ‘Mobile Incarceration: Travels in Colonial State Space’, pp. 103–131, for an illuminating discussion of colonial rail travel.

49 See Chatterjee, ‘Discovering India’, pp. 192–227.

50 The Bengali travelogues of Jaladhar Sen and Ramananda Bharati have not been translated into English. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Bengali are by Sandeep Banerjee. Page numbers cited refer to the published Bengali texts.

51 Bharati's Himaranya was eventually published as a book in 1978 at the behest of the noted Bengali travel writer, Umaprasad Mukherjee (see footnote 9).

52 J. Sen, Himalay, Calcutta, Mitra & Ghosh Publishers, 1996, fourth reprint, pp. 62–64.

53 Bharati's epigraph to his travel narrative cites the opening lines of Kalidasa's Kumarasambhava: ‘asty uttarasyam disi devatatma himalayo nama nagadhirajah/ purvaparau toyanidhi vigahya sthitah prithivya iva manadandah.’ This translates as ‘In the northern quarter there is the deity-souled lord of the mountains called Himalaya, who stands like the measuring-rod of the earth spanning the Eastern and Western oceans.’

54 Bharati, R., Himaranya, Calcutta, Mitra & Ghosh Publishers, 2002, sixth reprint, p. 17Google Scholar.

55 Ibid, p. 17.

56 The ‘Great Game’ is a term used to describe the strategic rivalry and conflict between the British and Russian empires for supremacy in Central Asia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See Hopkirk, P., The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, New York, Kodansha International, 1992Google Scholar. Also see Hopkirk, P., Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Race for Lhasa, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983Google Scholar.

57 Bharati, Himaranya, p. 26.

58 The British trained a number of Indians in surveying techniques and sent them on spying missions into Tibet to collect geographical and ethnographic information. Notable among them were Pandit Nain Singh Rawat, Pandit Krishna, Ugyen Gyatso, and Sarat Chandra Das. Rawat travelled into Tibet in 1865 and reached Lhasa in January 1866, staying there until April 1867. He determined the location and altitude of Lhasa for the first time as well as mapping a large section of the River Tsangpo (Brahmaputra). Rawat visited Lhasa again in 1874, and was awarded the Patron's Medal by the Royal Geographical Society in 1877 for his achievements. Krishna reached Lhasa in 1878, and travelled around Tibet before returning to India in 1882. Gyatso and Das journeyed into Tibet for six months in 1879. Das travelled to Tibet again in 1881, when he visited the Dalai Lama in Lhasa. The British Indian government published Das's reports of his journeys but kept them strictly confidential until 1890. They were subsequently edited and published by the Royal Geographical Society in 1902. Gyatso visited Tibet and Lhasa again in 1883, before returning to India in the same year. The information collected by these spies would become useful for the British during their military expedition into Tibet led by Francis Younghusband in 1903–1904.

59 See Embree, A., ‘Frontiers into Boundaries: From the Traditional to the Modern State’, in Fox, R. (ed.), Realm and Region in Traditional India, Durham, Duke University Press, 1977, Vol. 2, pp. 255–270Google Scholar. For a critique of Embree, see Barrow, Making History. The post-colonial cartographic anxiety in South Asia regarding the border is discussed in Krishna, S., ‘Cartographic Anxiety: Mapping the Body Politic in India’, in Shapiro, M. and Alker, H. (eds), Challenging Boundaries: Global Flows, Territorial Identities, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp. 193–214Google Scholar. For an examination of the theoretical salience of territoriality in South Asia through a discussion of the comparative histories of the Durand, McMahon, and Radcliff lines, see Mishra, A., ‘Boundaries and Territoriality in South Asia: From Historical Comparisons to Theoretical Considerations’, International Studies, Volume 45, 2008, pp. 105–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Winichakul, T., Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation, Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994, p. 79Google Scholar.

61 Ibid, p. 75.

62 Bharati, Himaranya, p. 42.

63 A similar sense in conveyed in the usage of the Latin word ‘regina’ in the ‘Salve Regina’ hymn to describe the Virgin Mary. In the first line ‘Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiae’ [Hail Queen, the Mother of Mercy], Mary is referred to as the queen (of heaven) since she is the mother of the incarnated God, Christ. In this case, Bharati's usage invests Victoria with divinity.

64 According to Christopher Bayly, ‘Patriotism implies . . . a historically understood community of laws and institutions fortified by a dense network of social communication generally expressing itself through a common language. It is an active force capable of being articulated in both a popular and a theoretical form, capable of rousing people of different classes, clans and interests to protect it.’ Through this definition of patriotism, Bayly provides us with a clear and well-defined notion of patria which generates patriotism. See Bayly, Origins, p. 11.

65 See Deshpande, P., Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700–1960, New York, Columbia University Press, 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rai, M., Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the History of Kashmir, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004Google Scholar; Zutsi, C., Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir, New York, Oxford University Press, 2004Google Scholar; Irschick, E., Dialogue and History: Constructing South India 1795–1895, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994Google Scholar.

66 Depending on the context of its use, the word desh could refer to a nation-state (for instance, India or Bangladesh), to the idea of the homeland of Bengal (the region comprising the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura, and the Republic of Bangladesh) or to a more localised sense of belonging, as conveyed in a statement such as ‘amaar desh birbhumey’ [my home is in Birbhum].

67 Sen, Himalay, p. 151.

68 Bharati, Himaranya, p. 101.

69 Sen, Himalay, p. 149. (Our italics.)

70 There exists a small body of scholarship on British hill stations in colonial India. For engagements with the hill station as a colonial spatial category, see Kennedy, Magic Mountains, and King, A. D., ‘Culture, Social Power and Environment: The Hill Station in Colonial Urban Development’, Social Action, Volume 26, 1976, pp. 195–213Google Scholar. For a discussion on Kodaikanal, a hill station in South India, see Mitchell, N., The Indian Hill-Station: Kodaikanal, Chicago, University of Chicago Department of Geography, 1972Google Scholar; for Shimla, see Kanwar, P., Imperial Simla: The Political Culture of the Raj, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1990Google Scholar; for Darjeeling, see Chatterji, A., Contested Landscapes: The Story of Darjeeling, Calcutta, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, 2007Google Scholar; for Ootacamund (Ooty), see J. Kenny, ‘Constructing an Imperial Hill Station: The Representation of British Authority in Ootacamund’, PhD thesis, Department of Geography, Syracuse University, 1990.

71 Ibid, p. 85. (Our italics.)

72 For another discussion on the transformation of Hinduism into the civil religion of India, see Bhattacharya, T., ‘Tracking the Goddess: Religion, Community, and Identity in the Durga Puja Ceremonies of Nineteenth-Century Calcutta’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 66, 2007, pp. 919–962CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see , JuliusLipner's discussion of ‘Vande Mataram’ in his ‘“Icon and Mother”: An Inquiry into India's National Song’, Journal of Hindu Studies, Volume 1, Issue 1–2, 2008, pp. 26–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 See Rousseau, J., The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, Book IV, ed. and trans. Gourevitch, V., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 121–152Google Scholar.

74 See Skinner, Q., The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Volume I: The Renaissance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978Google Scholar.

75 For a discussion of secular time in the European context, see Thomas, K., Religion and the Decline of Magic, New York, Scribner, 1971Google Scholar. Walter Benjamin's idea of ‘homogenous empty time’ in taken up by Benedict Anderson in his influential conceptualization of nationalism. See Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London, Verso, 1991, pp. 9–36Google Scholar; Benjamin, W., Illuminations, trans. Zohn, H., New York, Schocken Books, 1969, pp. 253–264Google Scholar.

76 Williams, R., ‘Culture is Ordinary’ in Higgins, J. (ed.), The Raymond Williams Reader, Oxford, Blackwell, 2001, pp. 10–24Google Scholar.

77 Sen, Himalay, p. 135.

78 The position of these Shankaracharyas and the muths in modern Hinduism is nothing like that of the pope and the Vatican in Roman Catholicism. The four Shankaracharyas do not issue catechisms for all Hindus, nor do they claim the sole right to decide on doctrinal issues. Srimukhams (advisories) issued by the muths are very different in nature from papal bulls or encyclicals. Further, unlike the Vatican City, the four muths do not enjoy sovereign status. They are governed by Indian federal and state laws on religious and charitable trusts and endowments. Moreover, they are answerable to governmental bodies.

79 Sen, Himalay, p. 139.

80 Bharati, Himaranya, p. 17.

81 Chatterjee, Nation, p. 5. Also see Anderson, Imagined Communities.

82 Chatterjee, Nation, p. 6.

83 Goswami, Producing, pp. 23–25.

84 Ibid, p. 26.

85 Lefebvre, Space, p. 281; Poulantzas, N., State, Power, and Socialism, trans. Camiller, P., London, Verso, 2000, p. 97Google Scholar.

86 Goswami, Producing, pp. 154–158.

87 Ibid, p. 10.

88 For an exposition of the idea of Hindu sacred geography, see Eck, Diane L., ‘The Imagined Landscape: Patterns in the Construction of Hindu Sacred Geography’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, Volume 32, 1998, pp. 165–188CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Lefebvre, Space, pp. 33–38.

90 See Van der Veer, P., Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994Google Scholar, particularly the chapter entitled ‘Peregrinations’ where he discusses migration and pilgrimage as producing the conception of a larger space in the context of India. For a discussion of how pilgrimage to the shrines of the Garhwal Himalaya has evolved in post-colonial India, see Pinkney, A., ‘An Ever-Present History in the Land of the Gods: Modern Mahatmya Writing on Uttarakhand’, International Journal of Hindu Studies, Volume 17, Issue 3, 2013, pp. 229–260CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 Lefebvre, Space, p. 34.

92 Sen, Himalay, p. 63. (Original in English.)

93 Ibid, p. 63.

94 Ibid, p. 141.

95 Ibid, p. 63.

96 Ibid, p. 63.

97 This process of ‘Englishing’ India began at the dawn of British rule in India and continued in the debates between the Anglicists and the Orientalists within the colonial dispensation until the English Education Act of 1835 settled the issue by establishing English as the official medium of instruction in British India.

98 Roy, ‘“Englishing”’ India’, pp. 92–97.

99 Ahmad, In Theory, p. 74.

100 Sen, Himalay, p. 14.

101 For a discussion on the ideology of the colonial picturesque in visual and textual representations of the Himalaya, see S. Banerjee, ‘“Not Altogether Unpicturesque”: Samuel Bourne and the Landscaping of the Victorian Himalaya’, Victorian Literature and Culture, Volume 42, 2014, pp. 351–368.

102 Bharati, Himaranya, pp. 18–19.

103 Ibid, p. 30.

104 For a discussion on the colonial stereotype of the cunning, non-martial, and effeminate Bengali, see Sinha, M., Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1995Google Scholar; and Chowdhury, I., The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1998Google Scholar. Also see Metcalf, Thomas, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994Google Scholar, Chapter 3 ‘The Creation of Difference’ and Chapter 4 ‘The Ordering of Difference’.

105 Sen, Himalay, p. 9.

106 Ibid, p. 143. (Our italics.)