Rajnarayan, religion and colonial modernity in Nineteenth Century Bengal

Rajnarayan Basu’s enunciation of Hinduism in complex engagement with the project of Enlightenment modernity can only be understood when placed within the debilitating context of colonial subjugation. The Christian West had critically challenged the Hindu mind in unprecedented intellectual and moral ways, thereby subjecting the native culture to an acute interpretative stress for much of the nineteenth century. Under the overwhelming threat of cultural swamping, Indian modernity in the nineteenth century was constituted through a reformist focus on the major Indic creedal faiths. Modernity’s complex engagement with religion is evident in Rajnarayan, who, like Rammohun before him, was deeply invested in the act of pruning, systematizing and recasting Hinduism as the dharma of the modern, one that has to be validated within a new textual basis rather than on an acquiescence to received faith or tradition. The birth of a lingualized culture based on the technology of print ushered in a new textual discipline in the nineteenth century that conspicuously brought to the fore modernity’s potential of reconstituting identities, both individual and collective.

Notwithstanding its inherent contradictions, Rajnarayan has avidly explored the self-fashioning potential of modernity. The frequent changes in Rajnarayan’s religious affiliations while he was still a student of liberal and useful Western curriculum at Hindoo College are primarily consequences of his varied intellectual forays (obviously not restricted to the syllabi of the college, but certainly shaped by it) and are well documented in his Atma Charit. By his own admission, Ramsay’s Cyrus’s Travels had shaken Rajnarayan’s faith in Hindu idolatry; Rammohun’s Precepts of Jesus convinced him to embrace Unitarian Christianity, while Sale’s Koran and Gibbon’s take on Muhammad and his followers in Roman Empire influenced him to practise Islam for a brief period. Finally, just before leaving the college, the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, the avowed empiricist David Hume, turned him into a sceptic. Rajnarayan’s frequent religious conversions are consequences of intellectual conversations initiated by the exposure provided by the secular curriculum of the Hindoo College between 1840 and 1844, when he was forced to leave the institution on account of his alcoholism. After the death of his father and his first wife in quick succession, Rajnarayan, hitherto a sceptic, turned towards religion for succour and, under the sway of the persuasive Brahmo preacher Lala Hajarilal, converted to Brahmoism in early 1846 and marked the occasion by drinking cherry and eating biscuits to flout caste distinctions. This instance of drinking, however, separates the Brahmo Rajnarayan, a moderate drinker and later an avid alcohol de-addiction campaigner who founded the first of its kind, Surapan Nibaroni Sabha in Medinipore, from the erstwhile young sceptic who considered consumption of meat and neat brandy as the hallmark of civilization and social reform. The changing contours of Rajnarayan’s religious affiliations were, however, not confined to cosmetic alterations of quotidian habits and ritualistic observances but were rather marked by a genuine intellectual engagement. Immediately after his conversion, he wrote a letter to the revered Brahmo leader Debendranath Tagore, requesting him to compile a book for the Brahmos consisting of shlokas from the Vedas, Smritis, Puranas and Tantras, a composite of the best principles drawn from the various Hindu traditions. In the same year, Rajnarayan was appointed by the Tattwabodhini Sabha to translate the Upanishads into English, and the entire project, although well received by later translators like Dr. Row, was summarily rejected by the Bengali satirical poet and journalist, Ishwar Gupta, who dismissively remarked that Rajnarayan’s reading of Bacon had equipped him to interpret the Vedas. However, what cannot be dismissed is Rajnarayan’s unwavering commitment to critical enquiry—through all his religious conversions, intellectual curiosity has defined and regulated Rajnarayan’s quest for the appropriate dharma of the modern, one that has to be situated within the burgeoning domain of the textualization of culture.

In his immensely popular lecture Hindu Dharmer Shresthota, which ends with the vision of an imagined community based exclusively on Hindu fraternity, Rajnarayan extols Brahmoism as the quintessence not only of the core principles of Hinduism but also of Christianity and Islam, thereby rendering religion so invisible that it appears areligious, like some universally valid ethico-cultural codes that are permeated interstitially. Such was the impact of the apologia that, on a preaching tour to Tribeni, Rajnarayan was cordially received and favourably introduced to the large gathering as a Hindu Brahmo by the orthodox Hindu, Durga Prasad Ghosh. It is pertinent to underline that the deliberate masking of sectarian religious identity as Hindu expands to circumscribe every creedal affiliation. Religion’s negotiation/s with modernity and how it begets the latter is therefore characterized by a subsuming potential, which renders religion inscrutable, thereby keeping afloat modernity’s religious pretence.

Hindu, as Rajnarayan articulates it, is therefore no longer synonymous with a sectarian religious identity, but is to be regarded as a jati, a culture, a capacious space where every sectarian dissent may be staged without, however, attaining a distinctive identity outside the Hindu fold. Hence, despite the enormous public scandal centring on Gyanendramohan Tagore’s conversion to Christianity and the ensuing litigation, the Great Tagore Will Case, Rajnarayan informs us in his Atma Charit that Gyanendramohan continued to call himself a ‘Brahmin Christian’ and that he thought that ‘Rajnarayan is dying of religious dyspepsia’. Was Rajnarayan consuming too many religious dogmas? Was he plagued by a feeling of being overburdened by rules rather than liberated by active charity? His pamphlet Old Hindu’s Hope (1888), which calls for the establishment of a Maha Hindu Samiti to advocate and uphold the religious rights and privileges of the Hindus and create Hindu national unity, gives us a cue. Presided over preferably by a Sanskrit-knowing professional Bhattacharyya or Shastri, the Samiti was expected to strictly adhere to the vast array of rules and regulations so meticulously drafted by Rajnarayan, which included the lighting of the lamp, the burning of dhup and dhuna, the blowing of a conch shell and marking the forehead of every member with sandalwood paste before formally beginning the proceedings of any meeting of the Hindu National Congress. The members were also expected to recite the Aryanamavali, consisting of the names of exceptional Hindu kings, heroes, heroines, poets, philosophers, historians and mathematicians (both mythical and historical), which would be followed by an inspirational song urging the Hindus to fight for reclaiming their glorious past. Rajnarayan had also designed a national banner for the Samiti with the words Iswara o Matribhumi inscribed over the likeness of a lotus, beneath which Triumph be to Sanatan Dharma would be written. He had also conceived of a ring to be worn by every member of the Maha Hindu Samiti bearing the same inscription. The overwhelming presence of Hindu religious symbols and ritual practices in Rajnarayan’s conception of the Samiti, convened for the nationalist project of nation-making, cannot be overlooked.

In this regard, one might also profitably refer to the Hindu Mela instituted in 1867 by Nabagopal Mitra, who was inspired by Rajnarayan’s idea of the Jatiya Gourobechha Sancharini Sabha. Due to his illness, Rajnarayan could not attend the first Hindu Mela, though he had approvingly responded to it by composing a poem on the lost glories of Bengal, where he had ruefully lamented the rapidly deteriorating health of the Bengali youth, completely engrossed in his studies to the utter neglect of his physical well-being. The Hindu Mela sought to address this lack among the Hindus by cultivating a vogue for athletic training and physical exercise, by organizing games and sports events where various athletic accomplishments would be encouraged and richly awarded. In 1875, when Rajnarayan served as the President of the Hindu Mela, the landlord Raicharan Ray was awarded a gold medal for his exceptional tiger-hunting prowess. The famous singer Maulabaksh too had earned great praise at the said Hindu Mela for his mellifluous renditions. The Hindu Mela, which sought to address the feeble Hindu bodies through regular physical activity and exercise, also had ample scope for singing, poetry, rhetoric and other cultural engagements for the likes of Maulabaksh.

In Se Kal ar E Kal, too, Rajnarayan had dealt at length with the failing health of the native bhadraloks, who have become sickly and feeble and live shorter lives. Through the memorable figures of the vernacular old man and the anglicized old man, Rajnarayan had brought to the fore how, by imitating uncritically the forms of English modernity, the anglophile mimic men have brought upon themselves environmental degradation, food shortages, illnesses caused by excessive labour and an uncoordinated and undisciplined way of life. Largely sceptical of the processes of colonial modernity, in which he cannot help but participate, Rajnarayan, acutely aware of the irony of seeking a liberating modernity within the debilitating colonial context, makes a compelling case for subverting the universal logic of modernity and clearing a space where non-Western societies can become creators of their own modernities. However, even when roles are reversed (albeit in a dream narrative), Rajnarayan depicts a colonized England in Aschorjya Swapno, on the verge of being culturally swamped through the imposition of Hindu socio-cultural practices, political norms and epistemic domination. Under a Bengali viceroy, the tasar-clad professors at Oxford, sporting a tuft of hair, engage with Sanskrit philosophy and aesthetics, ransack the eighteen Puranas for unearthing scientific theories, utter Vidyapati and Kavikankan, while English episteme is completely neglected. The deracinated English colony has now embraced Hinduism (unreformed?); the saree-clad white women stay indoors, and distinctive changes in food habits are discernible—they relish fish, mutton and mustard sauce, smoke hookah, while liquor and beef are completely shunned. Rajnarayan would have painted an even grimmer picture of colonial subjugation had not the commotion surrounding the visit of BangyaRaj in London broken his sleep. The liberty of choosing distinctive processes of being modern, Rajnarayan seems to argue, is significantly hindered within the hegemonic structures of colonial domination. This humorous piece is particularly interesting in reminding us what could have happened had an intellectual engagement with reconstituting the Hindu identity, framing it as a universal ethico-cultural code by masking its sectarian religious position, not been set in motion by the likes of Rajnarayan.