PART TWO

PART TWO

CHAPTER XII

VISION OF MOTHER INDIA¹

THE MIND-NINETEENTH CENTURY was for Bengal a crucial period when the disruptive effects of the Western impact were at their worst, 'the intoxication of the new wine' playing its havoc even on the promising youths of Calcutta. It was in this period and in a town twenty-five miles from Calcutta that Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya had his English education to which he might have owed his rationalistic bent of mind. Happily, side by side with English, his wise father put him, even when he was a child, in the current of the Sanskrit lore of his own country. Later, as the truths of Indian culture got hold of his mind more and more, he did not hesitate to declare that much of what then passed for ancient wisdom was mere 'excrescences' only to be discarded. This attitude was certainly induced in him by the sense of rationalism that was common to all progressive Indians of the time. And the fact that the two streams of culture found their happy confluence in Bankim and his alert and synthetic mind canalised it into his country's reconstruction, when he was only in his twenties, is a landmark in the history of modern Indian renaissance. Obviously, he acted under the inspiration of the forces then at work for India's awakening.

And if this awakening spirit was to animate the masses, language and literature had to be shaped into a cultural and formative force in the nation's life. And this called for a master-creator. Who but Bankim could be this? Because he was not only a meeting-point of the two cultures, European and Indian, but also an adept in the use of the best of both for the benefit of his nation. The dominant passion of his soul was to see his people reawakened to India's high ideals and become a living nation. This passion expressed itself not only in literary marvels but also in original thinking, above all, in a dynamic idealism presaging a new age then dawning over India.

The Sanskritic Bengali of the time was too artificial and laboured to be a fit enough vehicle for the new thought that was surging in the mind of Bankim. In fact, prose worth the name hardly existed and 'Bengali verse had very little to recommend it beyond a certain fatiguing sweetness. Virility, subtlety, scope, these were wanting to it. Then came Madhusudan (Dutt) and Bankim and, like Terpander and Orpheus, added fresh strings to the lyre. In Madhusudan's hands that nerveless and feminine

¹ Unless otherwise acknowledged, the quotations in this section are from Sri Aurobindo's books : Bankim Chandra Chatterji and Bankim-Tilak-Dayananda.

dialect became the large utterance of the early Gods, a tongue epic and Titanic, a tongue for the storms and whirlwinds to speak in : he caught and studied his diction from the echo and rumour of the sea. All the stormiest passions of man's soul he expressed in gigantic language. We seem to hear Milton's Satan speaking in every line he wrote. But in Bankim's hands the Bengali language, before stammering and inarticulate, became a rich, musical and flexible organ vibrating to every human emotion and expressive of every beautiful or noble thought.' It may be noted that Madhusudan was the first to write blank verse in modern India and was the founder of the modern Bengali poetry.

Like all literary attempts of the time Bankim's maiden effort was in English and his proficiency in it was considerable. But in no time he switched over to Bengali and started translating his own English writing into his own tongue. Describing the occasion that led him to this change Bankim says : 'No book in Bengali has served Bengali literature so well as Alaler Gharer Dulal and it is doubtful if in future any other book will. It showed for the first time that the Bengali that is spoken by, and prevails among, all sections of the people can be used in writing books. Since this fact came to be known, Bengali literature has been making rapid progress. At one end of the language is Tarasankar's translation of Kadambari, at the other is Pyarichand Mitra's Alaler Gharer Dulal. Neither of the two is in its proper literary form. But after the latter the Bengali writer came to know that by a proper combination of both these forms of language and by tipping the scale sometimes in favour of the one, sometimes of the other, according as the merits of a case justified, one could attain to the ideal Bengali prose.'

This Bengali writer is Bankim himself. It was he who, by a judicious synthesis of the Vidyasagar style {Kadambari is its extreme form) and of Alal's, produced something that was exquisite—the auspicious beginning of modern Bengali language and literature. Bankim's masterly pen moulded a dialect into a mighty vehicle through which his mind and soul could communicate themselves to his people; he made it into 'a fit and satisfying medium of expression for the new self into which the nation was developing—a language which shall give permanent shape to its thoughts and feelings and carry every new impulse swiftly and triumphantly into the consciousness of all.' Sri Aurobindo sums up his estimate of Bankim's prose in a single verse : 'The sweetest voice that ever spoke in prose.'

This was Bankim's first great service to his people. His cultural and religious idealism, his conception of the perfect man, his modern Indian mind rooted in his country's past, his heart aflame with love for it were all set upon its future resurgence. His knowledge of the West had also its due share in the growth of these ideas which he expressed in the powerful language of his own creation. And these ideas permeated the mind of

Bengal and^to a large extent, of the whole of India, because all his major works rendered into all the major Indian languages, have ever been popular throughout the country.

A chosen son. of Mother India, Bankim did his work in a way that ranks him among the immortals of the race. When Rabindranath saw Bankim for the first time he 'saw on his forehead the invisible mark of a king' by which, the Poet said, he could at once single him out in a gathering of the literary luminaries of Bengal. Indeed, both in his genius and personality, Bankim, like Rabindranath, was a star that shone apart. What then was the bearing of his genius on the progress of his country ? Here is the Poet's answer : 'He who has made of our mother-tongue an efficient instrument of expression of all forms of thought has given to this poor hapless land a priceless treasure for all time. He has laid for us the one only foundation for enduring national progress. It is he who has indeed opened to us the way to consolation in our sorrow, hope in our downfall, zeal and energy in our weariness and an imperishable source of fadeless beauty amid the destitution of our poverty.' No wonder that Bengali became, says Sri Aurobindo, 'a language unfading and indestructible which cannot die except with the death of the Bengali nation j a people spirited, bold, ingenious and imaginative, high among the most intellectual races of the world, and if it can but get perseverance and physical elasticity, one day to be high among the strongest.'

Bankimchandra's forbears belonged to the historic district of Hooghly in Bengal. Having inherited his maternal grandfather's property at Kantalpara in the district of 24 Parganas, Bankim's grandfather came over and settled there. Bankim's father, Jadavchandra Chattopadhyaya, retired from Government service as a Deputy Collector in 1838, the year of Bankim's birth in Kantalpara. The same year was born Keshubchandra Sen who gave a new turn to the Brahmo Samaj movement; and two years before had come to earth that divine soul Sri Ramakrishna.

Bankim began his education at the age of five when in a single day he mastered the alphabet of his language. His father was a lover of English education which Bankim started to have when he was very young. From a reputed Sanskrit scholar who was his neighbour Bankim had his first lessons in Sanskrit. A notable influence on him about this time was Iswar Gupta, the famous poet and litterateur of the time, whose poems Bankim learnt by heart along with Sanskrit hymns. He must have imbibed the patriotic fervour of the writings of Iswar Gupta, 'a pure Bengali mind' in that age of Western rationalism, to whom, along with some of the best literary men of the time including Dinabandhu Mitra, Bankim also acknowledged his indebtedness. In 1849 Bankim entered the Hooghly College, and in 1857 completed its course with a senior scholarship. The same year he came to Calcutta and joined Presidency College, the new name of the Hindu College, as a student of law. 1857 witnessed the foundation

of Calcutta University, and the same year it held its first Entrance Examination and Bankim passed it in the First Division and leaving law, in a few months also passed the B.A. Examination of the same University, as at that time a wide latitude was given to exceptional merit. These academic successes achieved within such an incredibly short time were beyond the capacity of even the most meritorious of students. In 1857, that historic year in Indian history, Bankim completed his education. Within a year he joined the Government Civil Service as a Deputy Magistrate.

This was how Bankim began life. And with it also began his literary career. What exactly was his reaction to the Sepoy Revolt' ? Nothing of a very exact nature is known about it. Outwardly he was busy with his studies preparing for examinations. That he held a definite view on it is evident from his conversation later with a friend that he was planning to write a book on Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, than whom, he believed, there was no woman more heroic in the history of Europe. He said that like the story of Anandamath, this too would centre round the worship of India as the Divine Mother.

Seeing minds like Bankim believed that the superhuman skill, energy and prowess with which Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi fought against the formidable odds and carried everything before her, to the surprise of British officers and of her own friends and followers, were the expression of the divine Force she received in response to her invocation of Goddess Durga, the Mother of Might. The Rishi in Bankim saw in Mother India a living form of Durga whose Sakti resides in her, protects and moulds her life into a beneficent power of service to humanity. And the fact that he was thinking of producing another book on the essential principle of Anandamath centering round the Rani of Jhansi induces the belief that he looked upon the Rani as a Vibhuti of Mother Durga or an embodiment of Bharata-Sakti, called into action to sweep off from the sacred soil of India the corroding evil of alien domination. Not to speak of British historians, some of the leading Indian historians have also unfortunately failed to see and appreciate the spiritual drive behind the great national upsurge of 1857.

Not much is known of Bankim's early life. A few facts, so far available, throw some light on what he then was in his mind and character. As geniuses often are, Bankim was a combination of apparently contradictory traits. He who would be scared by a bull would not allow his people to run away from the house when threatened by dacoits, would face on the door-steps armed British soldiers bent on loot, as they sometimes were in those days, compelling his people to remain shut within. Thus when the whole locality looked deserted this young boy, not yet ten, stood guard over his house, stick in hand, waiting for the soldiers to come and look at his fearless face and exchange words with him, handling his stick to see how strong it was. Young Bankim feared to climb a ladder, neither could he ride or swim. Yet he would enjoy a storm and greet it with laughter

as it raged over the river driving mid-stream the boat which ferried him across the river Hooghly on his way home from college.

His official life too was marked by the same spirit of independence and fearlessness. Once when the police failed to arrest an English 'Indigo-tyrant' who always carried a loaded pistol, Bankim himself as Deputy Magistrate went out and put him under arrest. These indigo-planters were then notorious for their barbarous oppressions on the peasants of Bengal. Bankim's strong action set them right. He had also the pirates of the Sunderbans hunted down and imprisoned. Once Bankim was transferred to an out-of-the-way place for not having shown respect to a white superior official. His bold stand brought him back to his former place. Not big events these, but they reflect the stuff the man was made of.

When within his teens, Bankim tried his hand at poetry. But his finished products were novels that came out of his pen almost with the start of his official career. Indeed his first offerings on the altar of the Muses were his finest works of art. Durgeshnandini, 'the first-born child of the New Prose', was followed by Kapalkundala, Mrinalini and Bishabriksha. A most important event in his literary life was his publication in 1872 of the monthly magazine Bangadarshan from Calcutta, a vehicle of Bankim's new ideas for the reorientation of national consciousness. Within four months of this Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta incarnating the light of a New Dawn for India and the world. Had this coincidence any significance for the great future of India which both Bankim and Sri Aurobindo did so much to build ? Referring to the historic appearance of the Bangadarshan, Poet Rabindranath said : 'In the firmament of Bengali literature Bankim unveiled the rising sun at dawn and with it opened the lotus of our heart....The Bangadarshan appeared like the first welcome rain of the season, a majestic voice from the heights. And through the incessant downpour of ideas all the eastward and westward streams and rivers of Bengali literature suddenly attained their fullness and flowed on with the joyous sweep of youth. Poems, plays, fictions, essays, reviews, monthlies, journals filled the air of Bengal with pleasant voices of an awakened dawn. Bengali sprang from childhood to youth.' This youth meant freshness and vitality into which Bengali grew through varied and continuous literary activities producing a well-formed literature under the inspiration of Bankim and his Bangadarshan. Bankim's aim is best expressed in his first introductory article in the Bangadarshan : 'As long as educated and scholarly sons of Bengal do not express themselves in Bengali, there is little chance of their progress. If they do so in English, how many Bengalis would understand them ? On the contrary, if they speak and write in Bengali, who would not follow them ? We will spare no pains to make this magazine worthy of their study. Let it give proof of their scholarship, their imagination, their skill in writing and the enlightenment of their mind. As a vehicle of their thoughts, let it disseminate knowledge in Bengal.' The

Bangadarshan, says Bipinchandra Pal, 'occupied in the history of the new Illumination in Bengal, a position somewhat similar to what the Encyclopaedists held in the history of the French Illumination of the eighteenth century.'

Bankim was then posted at Berhampur where around him grew a literary circle consisting of most of the eminent Bengali writers of the time some of whom had been persuaded by Bankim to change their medium of expression from English to Bengali, and before long they became well-known writers in their own tongue. The years of Bankim's stay at Berhampur are regarded by literary historians as 'the golden age of Bengali literature' with Bankim as its acknowledged leader and representative.

Besides his novels which serially appeared in the Bangadarshan, Bankim regularly published in it his social, political and literary essays and criticisms, illuminating discussions on various subjects including history, antiquity, philology, music. His total literary output is a glowing testimony to his many-sided genius. 'Bankim, the greatest of novelists, had the versatility developed to its highest expression. Scholar, poet, essayist, novelist, philosopher, lawyer, critic, official, philologian and religious innovator,—the whole world seemed to be shut up in his single brain.' Kamalakanta, one of his sequences in the Bangadarshan, was his most wonderful creation. In the garb of satire Bankim gives expression here to some of his deepest experiences of life, his utter sense of shame and indignity at the abject degradation of his nation. From the poignancy of his words, Kamalakanta may easily be taken to be Bankim himself in many portions of the book. Sublime is the golden image of the Mother which Bankim's inspired vision and magnificent language hold up before his countrymen. And with tears in his eyes he called upon them to recover her from the tenebrous stream of time ! It is no creation simply of a supreme literary artist, but of a seer who saw the truth and light of the Divine Sakti incarnated in the form of his motherland enveloped in the darkness of decline and subjection. Here are the words of his soul, whose pathos, beauty and sublimity are much too high for a poor translation :

T saw the current of time abruptly overspreading the horizon and rushing away, I on my raft floating on. In the middle of those infinitely dark and shoreless sheets of water, lashed into furious waves, I found bright stars rising, sinking and rising again. I was quite alone, and being alone, felt a dread. Alone and desolate, without the Mother, I was calling 'Mother', 'Mother'. On this ocean of time I was in quest of the Mother. Where is Mother, O where, where is my Mother ? Where is India, the Mother of beauty and bloom of the lotus ? In this dreary ocean of time where art thou ? Suddenly a celestial music filled the air. The horizon was diffused with a bright-red light, as at dawn. A sweet breeze sprang up. At a far end, above the masses of the waves, I saw a golden image of the

Goddess-Mother, smiling, floating and diffusing light. Is this the Mother ? Yes, she is. I recognised this was my Mother, my Motherland, Mother in earth-form, Mother figuring the earth, adorned with innumerable jewels, now plunged in the abyss of time. Her ten hands bejewelled, stretched out in ten directions. In them were shining various weapons representing various powers; beneath her feet was the foe battered and beaten; the mighty Hon at her feet pulling the enemy down. This figure I will not see now, I will not see it today, nor tomorrow, I will not see it until it crosses over the sea of time. But one day I will see her, arms spread in different directions, using various weapons, vanquishing the enemy, riding the powerful lion, with Lakshmi, the goddess of Fortune, on the right, with Saraswati, the goddess of arts and sciences, on the left, with Kartikeya, the embodi ment of Force, with Ganesh, the giver of Success. I saw in that current of time the golden image of India.'

This vision glowing in his heart, Bankim with tearful eyes called out to his countrymen : 'Come, brothers, let us jump into this dark current of time. Let us, with our million arms, lift up this image, and carry it home on our million heads. Come, why fear in the dark ? Behold the stars rising and sinking; they will show us the way. Onward, onward, by the strokes of our countless arms let us break through the dashing waves, let us swim on and carry back the golden image on our heads.'

Magnificent vision, magnificently worded ! Indeed no seer has ever had a more vivid vision of the Glory and Power and Greatness that India is, and none had the language to voice the vision as he saw it. Neither has her degradation been more keenly felt by any other of her children. Bankim saw the Eternal and Infinite Mother enveloped in the darkness of subjection, and with the poignant cry of his soul moved his people to rise, overcome all opposition and re-instal the Mother. And the Mother who gives her light and strength to those who worship her with sincere devotion saw the tears of Bankim, heard the voice of his soul, and vouchsafed to him the mantra of her worship by which Indians would have from the Mother whatever they needed to strive for and win their freedom and greatness, and thereby re-enthrone the Mother in their hearts, in the heart of the nation as the Divine Sakti leading her children to the fulfilment of her Will in their life, in the life of the nation.

'Where there is no vision, the people perish.' It was the lack of this vision that hastened the decline of India. To raise his people the Mother gave Bankim this heavenly vision. It was this vision that inspired him to write his later novels—Anandamath, Devichoudhurani and Sitaram. In the first Bankim upheld the Tantrik ideal of Mother-worship attainable by a harmonious development, in the devotee, of Knowledge, Love and Power. These are the three principal aspects of the Divine Sakti in her manifestation as Mother India by whose worship the dovotee would realise them in him. It was this Mother that was hymned by

her modern seer Bankim in his inspired mantra Bande Mataram sanctifying the novel which is called by a writer 'a New Veda of National Resurgence'. The children of the Mother offered their devotion to her, some with Power, some with Love, some with Knowledge. A combination of all the three was not there. Here Bankim gave a new interpretation to the religion of Vaishnavism, generally known as that of devotion. He said that Vishnu is both world-preserver and evil-destroyer. He is not merely Love : He is also Power by which in many of his incarnations he destroyed the forces of evil. And Knowledge also must develop for Love and Power to be fully effective in building a perfect life for the service of the Mother. The other harmonisation that Bankim attempts in these novels is of heaven and earth, symbolising respectively the spiritual knowledge of ancient India and the scientific knowledge of modern Europe, the two pillars on which he would raise the structure of a new life for his country. If in this Bankim was influenced by certain Western thinkers, he was equally imbued with the deepest truths of Indian culture in which he discovered the spiritual foundation of his humanitarian idealism adapted to some extent from that of the West. Bankim's insistence on the two principles, to quote his own words, of sāmanjasya and samanwaya, synthesis and harmony, and the way in which he combined in his mind the knowledge of the West with that of his own country go to show the synthetic cast of his Indian mind.

Bankim was fully aware of the importance of history to national reconstruction. He says that a nation unconscious of its history cannot regain and be its self. The first thing therefore that a nation should do is to recover its past and then find out its bearing on the present and the future, Tor the present,' says Will Durant, 'is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for our understanding'. But Bankim was not for accepting the past after orthodox exponents or Western historians. He says : 'Let us recover the past, but we must, in justice to our new fife, adopt new methods of interpretation, and adapt the old eternal and undying truths to the necessities of our new life.' According to Bankim, the writer of history must have a perception of the inner truth, 'the inwardness' of the historical evolution of the country whose story he is going to unfold; and it should also be his aim to promote the growth of historical consciousness among his people. Bankim planned to write a history of Bengal and another of India ; his outline for the latter included studies of the maritime, commercial and military activities of ancient India, subjects which even now await their proper place in works of Indian history. He questioned many current beliefs about the history of Bengal. He did not accept the view that Bengal was conquered by Baktiyar Khilji with seventeen horsemen. His historical novels cover the whole period of Bengal's history from the so-called Muslim conquest in the twelfth century to that terrible famine in the last quarter of the

eighteenth which represents the first phase of British rule in India. His choice of the whole of this period has its own significance. Though he has taken liberties with factual accuracy, permissible to an artist, he has never failed to expose the betrayal of the country by Indians, the shame and indignity of alien domination; his principal aim in these novels was to inculcate the ideals of disciplined and selfless service through which lay the path to freedom and greatness.

Bankim's conception of nationality was not based on religion or race. Citing Bengal as an instance, he said that it would not be correct to characterise the Bengali race as Aryan or Hindu, since it comprises many ethnic types and various religious communities, such as, the Muslims. Bankim's Bengal or India was the Mother not solely of the Hindus or Muslims but of the composite Bengali race or the composite Indian nation. There is no doubt that these ideas of Bankim were a most powerful factor in the growth of a new national consciousness.

The strength that was Bankim in his inner being, his constant concern for the all-round well-being of his countrymen, the profundity of his thought, the vastness of his erudition, the versatility of his genius and, added to these, his strenuous official life were too much for a single frame to bear and the great soul left his body on 8 April 1898, before being able to carry out many of his plans which included a study of the Vedas and the writing of his country's history.

Appraising Bankim's services to his country, particularly his dynamic political philosophy, Sri Aurobindo says that Bankim's first service to to the nation was that 'he gave us a means by which the soul of a people could express itself to itself. As he had divined the linguistic need of his country's future, so he divined also its political need. He, first of our great publicists, understood the hollowness and inutility of the method of political agitation which prevailed in his time and exposed it with merciless satire in his Lokarahasya and Kamalakanter Daptar.... He bade us leave the canine method of agitation for the leonine. The Mother of his vision held trenchant steel in her twice seventy million hands and not the bowl of the mendicant. It was the gospel of fearless strength and force which he preached under a veil and in images in Anandamath and Devichoudhurani. And he had an inspired unerring vision of the moral strength which must be at the back of the outer force. He perceived that the first element of the moral strength must be tyāga, complete self-sacrifice for the country and complete self-devotion to the work of liberation— Again, he perceived that the second element of the moral strength needed must be self-discipline and organisation— Lastly, he perceived that the third element of the moral strength must be the infusion of religious feeling into patriotic work. The religion of patriotism,—this is the mater-idea of Bankim's writings. In Anandamath this idea is the keynote of the whole book and received its perfect lyrical expression in

the great song which has become the national anthem of United India. This is the second service of Bankim to this country that he pointed out to it the way of salvation and gave it the religion of patriotism. Of the new spirit which is leading the nation to resurgence and independence, he is the inspirer and political guru.

'The third and supreme service of Bankim to his nation was that he gave us the vision of our Mother. The bare intellectual idea of the motherland is not in itself a great driving force; the mere recognition of the desirability of freedom is not an inspiring motive.... It is not till the Motherland reveals herself to the eye of the mind as something more than a stretch of earth or a mass of individuals, it is not till she takes shape as a great Divine and Maternal Power in a form of beauty that can dominate the mind and seize the heart that these petty fears and hopes vanish in the all-absorbing passion for the Mother and her service, and the patriotism that works miracles and saves a doomed nation is born. To some men it is given to have that vision and reveal it to others. It was thirty years ago that Bankim wrote his great song and few listened; but in a sudden moment of awakening from long delusions the people of Bengal looked round for the truth and in a fated moment somebody sang Bande Mataram. The mantra had been given and in a single day a whole people had been converted to the religion of patriotism. The Mother had revealed herself. Once that vision has come to a people, there can be no rest, no peace, no farther slumber till the temple has been made ready, the image installed and the sacrifice offered. A great nation which has had that vision can never again bend its neck in subjection to the yoke of a conqueror.'

In these prophetic words uttered by Sri Aurobindo in 1907, lies the deepest truth of Indian nationalism and freedom. How Bankim saw the wonderful vision that worked as a most powerful spiritual lever in the movement for his country's liberation, how he immortalised that vision in the hymn are not fully known. It is said that once when he was travelling from Calcutta to his native place the hymn came to him all of a sudden and he only wrote it down as he saw and heard it. That is why Sri Aurobindo called Bankim a Rishi, a Seer. Bankim knew what a power was hidden in that song, what a miracle it would work. As he himself gave out to his daughter : 'A day will come, twenty or thirty years hence, a day will come when Bengal will go mad over this song—Bengal will be beside herself with it.' But, as mentioned before, his vision of the Mother as India herself had come to him years before the hymn of her worship. There Bankim saw the golden image of Durga in the form of India, whereas in Bande Mataram he saw India in the celestial form of Durga. Here is Sri Aurobindo's translation of the hymn :

Mother, I bow to thee !

Rich with thy hurrying streams,

Bright with thy orchard gleams,

Cool with thy winds of delight,

Dark fields waving, Mother of might,

Mother free.

Glory of moonlight dreams

Over thy branches and lordly streams,—

Clad in thy blossoming trees,

Mother, giver of ease,

Laughing low and sweet !

Mother, I kiss thy feet,

Speaker sweet and low !

Mother, to thee I bow.

Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands,

When the swords flash out in seventy million hands

And seventy million voices roar

Thy dreadful name from shore to shore ?

With many strengths who art mighty and stored,

To thee I call, Mother and Lord !

Thou who savest, arise and save !

To her I cry who ever her foemen drave

Back from plain and sea

And shook herself free.

Thou art wisdom, thou art law,

Thou our heart, our soul, our breath

Thou the love divine, the awe

In our hearts that conquers death.

Thine the strength that nerves the arm,

Thine the beauty, thine the charm.

Every image made divine

In our temples is but thine.

Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,

With her hands that strike and her swords of sheen,

Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned

And the Muse a hundred-toned.

Pure and perfect without peer,

Mother, lend thine ear.

Rich with thy hurrying streams,

Bright with thy orchard gleams,

Dark of hue, O candid-fair

In thy soul, with jewelled hair

And thy glorious smile divine,

Loveliest of all earthly lands, ,

Showering wealth from well-stored hands !

Mother, mother mine !

Mother sweet, I bow to thee

Mother great and free !

The most striking idea in this song is that India with all her earthly and heavenly riches is shown here as the Mother, the Divine Sakti, who sustains and nourishes her children both materially and spiritually. This hymn, sung and sanctified by hundreds of martyrs, is the true national anthem of India. In it the country is not merely the temple of the Mother but the Mother herself whom her children worship with all the passion of their heart. And when they do so, they worship the Power that shapes the destiny of India and guides her development through the ages, and this unending development and ever-expanding process forms the chequered story of India's unique achievements in the inner as in the outer court of her life. This is how India's history becomes indissolubly bound up with her geography. When an objection was taken to Bande Mataram being made the national anthem of India on the ground of its being associated with image-worship, Sri Aurobindo remarked that by Durga was meant Mother India herself with all her light and strength, her greatness and glory.

The concept of the Indian mind in which the homeland is adored as the Mother is rooted in the truth perceived by the ancients that all creation is the manifestation of the supreme Energy and India, at least in the present cycle of evolution, is a special manifestation inasmuch as she is not only a bountiful Mother lavishing upon her children all that they need for their material well-being and aesthetic, intellectual and spiritual growth, but bestowing upon all mankind, since the dawn of human culture, the inestimable treasures of the Spirit, which have nourished the souls of many a nation and are still the only hope and haven of this distracted world. Moreover, the Tantrik 'mystics saw in the shapely form of India, so markedly singular', 'a conscious formation of the Divine Shakti', presiding over the destiny of her children.

The physical form of India robed in matchless beauty has therefore in it a meaning for those who contemplate her as the embodiment of the Mother-Force. Sri Aurobindo once said that India had never been to him what was merely suggested by her outer vestures, attractive and gorgeous though they were. She was to him the Mother, the Eternal and Infinite Mother. It is this secret truth of India that Bankim revealed to his countrymen whose acceptance of it meant the awakening of a nation to its right to freedom and greatness.

While by worshipping the Mother with the mantra that Bankim gave, the people grew in the ardour of their heart, in the strength of their soul,

his other waiting's energised their mind and opened it to its high possibilities. They began thinking, feeling, acting as a nation. And that was what Nature intended at that moment of India's historic evolution. Knowledge, for Bankim, was not only the knowledge of the inner worlds but also of the outer. By insisting on the primary need for acquiring the latter Bankim fulfilled a purpose of Nature which in the nineteenth century was first the liberation, of the mind of man from the cramping obsessions of medievalism and then its vigorous cultivation and free development which characterised the world-wide upsurge of that momentous century.

In India all the leaders and reformers of that period held the same view and did whatever they could to spread English education in the country mainly to energise the mind of the race into fresh activities. Bankim embodied this urge of the Time-Spirit and his writings produced a change of great significance for the future. He knew that the eternal truths of Sanatana Dharma could be properly grasped only by a free and virile mind and not by one bound by senseless beliefs and deadening superstitions. Through this attitude of the progressive idealists of the time Nature's aim was that the mind must fulfil its highest possibilities before it could attain higher knowledge. Says Sri Aurobindo : 'Mankind has first to seek this knowledge through the external life; for until its mentality is sufficiently developed, spiritual knowledge is not really possible, and in proportion as it is developed, the possibilities of spiritual knowledge become richer and fuller'.¹

Bankim's idea of culture was a ceaseless development of all the faculties of mind and body in order to attain a perfect life. There is in this concept a touch of Auguste Comte of whom Bankim along with many of his contemporaries in Bengal was a great admirer; but if the ideas of Comte fascinated him he also held that the Hindu scriptures alone and nothing else contained the supreme ideal of perfect humanity.

In Bankim, says Nolini Kanta Gupta, awakened the mental being of the country. The country's hopes, aspirations and inmost feelings found in him a full and eloquent expression in thought. He stimulated throughout the country a new curiosity, a spirit of enquiry and observation. From him streamed forth restless questioning, many-sided research, discussion and judgement and, like a flood, overflowed the country. What was in the inner being only a single idea, intense and condensed, shot up into the mind and took a hundred forms.. . .In the literature of Bankim the modern mind of Bengal started taking definite form, showing its upward trend to discover new truths, new ideals.

Writing on Bankim in 1894 Sri Aurobindo says : 'And when Posterity comes to crown with her praises the Makers of India, she will place her most splendid laurels not on the sweating temples of a place-hunting politician nor on the narrow forehead of a noisy social reformer but on the

¹ On Yoga, I. The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 584.

serene brow of that gracious Bengali who never clamoured for place or power, but did his work in silence for love of his work, even as nature does, and just because he had no aim but to give out the best that was in him, was able to create a language, a literature and a nation,'—an achievement worthy, indeed, of 'the greatest literary genius of nineteenth century India'.

Mention may now be made of two friends of Bankim belonging to his circle of literary luminaries, who made important contributions to the resurgence of modern India. Dinabandhu Mitra was an intimate friend of Bankim. It was an intimacy of two quiet souls. It is said that, when together, they would often pass hours without exchanging a single word, smoking the Indian hooka all the while. This reminds one of the famous pen-friends, Carlyle and Emerson, who smoked away their first meeting without exchanging any word at all. Dinabandhu felt, as deeply as Bankim, his country's degradation, particularly under the British rule. He was a humourist and wrote a number of comedies. The play for which he was best known was Nil Darpan. Reference has already been made to the tyrannies of the English indigo-planters in Bengal and how Bankim dealt with them. These planters used to advance money to the peasants on condition that they were to sow nothing but indigo-seeds. The peasants were treated as galley-slaves, mercilessly beaten, convicted in false cases and thrown into prisons. All these inhuman atrocities found vivid description in Nil Darpan and the movement it called forth ultimately drove the indigo-planters out of India. No other Bengali drama written up till now has served so noble a cause, the cause of the poor peasants against white planters at a time when mere criticism of Englishmen was regarded by the whites as one of the gravest crimes against them. For having translated it into English, Michael Madhusudan Dutt is said to have lost his job, and for publishing the English version a benevolent missionary, James Long, was imprisoned, the author escaping punishment as he wrote under a pseudonym. It must be noted that the cause of the peasants was supported by many landlords, middle-class people and English missionaries. Harishchandra Mukherji, Editor of The Hindu Patriot, fearlessly attacked the indigo-planters and gave publicity to their atrocities. The planters filed a case against him in the Supreme Court but Harishchandra died before the judgement was out and his wife had to pay a fine of Rs. 1000/- as cost to the complainant.

Nil Darpan proved a sensation in the world. Unlike any other Bengali work of the time, it was translated into several European languages. Authoritative works on Indian History mention the good work done by this drama the characters of which were taken from life. Another important fact about it is that it is one of the earliest dramas written according to Western technique and style which had been followed only

by Madhusudan before Dinabandhu. Generally, dramas in those days were written according to the technique and style of Sanskrit dramas. Yet another remarkable fact about Nil Darpan is that it was the first drama presented on the professional Bengali stage called the National Theatre, established in Calcutta in December 1872, the name having been given by 'National' Navagopal.

Another publicist of the time who took a leading part in the agitation against the indigo-planters was Shishir Kumar Ghosh, the illustrious founder-editor of the popular daily Amrita Bazar Patrika, Calcutta. He was a fearless fighter in the cause of India's uplift. He characterised the above movement as 'the first revolution in Bengal after the coming of the English'. Shishir Kumar was also a devout Vaishnava of a saintly character and was rightly called Mahatma. A distinguished scholar, he was the first to write on the life and teachings of Sri Chaitanya in English and in modern Bengali.

Bhudevchandra Mukhopadhyaya (1827-1894) was the other friend of Bankim and a member of his literary circle, who made eminently original contributions to the new national thought developing at that time in the advanced minds of the race. Bhudev was first an essayist and then a novelist. In his book of essays called Pushpanjali he gives his vision of India's history against the background of her religion. Quoting Goethe : 'Ordinary history is traditional, higher history mythical, and highest mystical', he says that he is not after writing traditional history but would rather depict its mystical aspect in its mythical form. He seeks to arouse a sense of Indianness that a pilgrimage to the scattered holy places throughout the country is intended to inspire; and along with that he gives a history of India's culture, holding up a composite picture of the history and geography of India as one organic whole, crowned with the conception of the motherland as the goddess Mother, her soil as the sacred material form of the Divine Sakti. Here is Bhudev's vision and worship of Mother India in Sanskrit verse :

sarvaprasūrjanmabhūmir janani gauḥ payaswini,

mahāśakterjaganmātuḥ pratirūpaṁ suśobhanam.

mātarnamāmi bhavatīṁ Satideharūpām,

mātarnamāni vasudhātalapuṇyatīrthām,

mātarnamāmi padayugmadhṛtāmburāśim,

mātarnamāmi himagaurakirītaśobhām.

'Motherland, all-creatress, life's giver of milk-white grace, Sweet image art thou of the Almighty Mother of Time and Space !

I bow to thee who takest Sati's¹ form and face,

To thee I bow, O wide earth's holiest heavenliest place,

To thee whose feet the great seas garland with love's flow,

I bow, my Mother of splendour, crowned with eternal snow !'²

Bankim's vision and worship of the Mother, expressed in inspired poetry, has been given before. About the book of Bhudev containing the above vision Bankim says : 'The stories of Hindu faith which European scholarship has laughed to scorn as most foolish have, through the author's proper handling, yielded results that do not compare ill with height and greatness of thought in European literature.'

Bhudev also, like Bankim, weaves all the races of India and all else into the fabric of India's oneness. And to build this oneness on solid foundations Bhudev strove for the development of a common language. He believed that in due course Hindi would play this role. It was due to his efforts that Persian had to make room for Hindi in Bihar. Bihar and North-western Province have not yet forgotten their debt to Bhudev. Both the states award the 'Bhudev Hindi Medal' to the best of successful Matriculation or School Leaving students. Pramathanath Bisi, a renowned Bengali litterateur, holds that Bhudev was one of the foremost of the great thinkers of the nineteenth century who visualised one and indivisible India and aspired after the realisation of the ideal.

In another book of essays called Samajik Prabandha—a work of deep penetrating insight on man's social development—Bhudev expounds his conviction that India's nationalism consists in her ancient wisdom —her prajnā purāṇī. He holds that those who compare Indian society with European and say that India's nationalism is far from well-developed do not seem to understand the truth of this naionalism. The significance of nationalism, according to our Vedas and Puranas, is that it is a fine sentiment of the human heart but there are finer sentiments still, it is a high but not the highest or supreme sentiment. Nationalism is a mixture of good and evil, largeness and narrowness.

It is, however, a large step in the scale of the heart's enlargement : first, love of self; second, love of family; third, love of friends and relatives; fourth, love of co-villagers; fifth, love of one's own province. It is only by

¹ The Divine Consort of Siva.

² Translated for this book by K. D. Sethna.

gradually mounting these five steps that one can have national feeling or love of country. Roughly speaking, thus far was the high watermark reached by ancient Greece and Rome. Above this height is the seventh, love of other people not very unlike us. This is the peak-point reached by Auguste Comte and his school. Eighth, love of man as man is the utmost vision of Jesus and Mohammad. Ninth, compassion for every form of life is the Buddhist limit. Tenth, compassion for every bit of thing and every species of being, animate or inanimate, is the supreme Aryan standpoint. The Aryas go even farther, they aim at self-immergence in the Transcendent, in avāṅgmanasogocara, in the Divine Status beyond thought and word.

It is because India has this highest ideal at heart that nationalism, a relatively lower sentiment, has not counted in her life. Bhudev then goes on to observe that keeping the highest universal love in the background of their heart, the Indians were waking up to the necessity of becoming nation-minded so that when as a result of concentration on the needs of the nation, its economic, cultural and various other problems are solved, their inherent universal love will find scope for further flowering. Then will the light and knowledge of One God, of One Self pervading the land, will burn brighter with love for all. India will then never forget the great motto, 'jagaddhitāya Srīkṛṣṇāya, 'for the good of the world, for God.' Her nationalism will never imply hatred and persecution of other people. On the other hand, all other peoples of the world will learn from her about the great principles of universal love and knowledge. For the present, however, her stand will be: janani janmabhūmiśca swargādapi garīyasī, 'Mother and Motherland are superior even to Heaven.'

Has there ever been a more sublime definition of the ideal of Indian nationalism ? For this and for the following declaration Bhudev was called a prophet.

Bhudev felt that the great soul who would lead India to the realisation of her future greatness and glory was either already born or would soon be born. The characteristics of such a leader would be that he would unite the people, revere the past teachers and include their teachings in his larger idealism, harmonise the knowledge of the East and the West, and like the sun, by his own rays, outshine the already shining stars in the Indian sky but would not let their brilliance fade out. Along with these traits there would be in him a perfect combination of sharp intelligence, profound scholarship, eloquence, masterly skill in writing, boundless magnanimity along with the qualities of sternness and power. The manifestation of these signs in anybody should remind one of the Divine Word in the Gita : 'Know that light, beauty, energy, in whomever found, are born, of a potential portion of Me.'

Basing his belief on the Divine Assurance that whenever there is a decline in religion and an upsurge of irreligion, He manifests himself,

Bhudev says that Indians should aspire for the advent of such a great leader to lift them from their degradation to the freshness and freedom of an elevated life. If this aspiration is intensely cherished, it will automatically purify their ways of life and hasten the advent. He adds that just as the highest peaks rise from a high plateau the greatest man rises from among highly sincere and truly aspiring men.

The veteran litterateur Pramathanath Bisi is of the view that if Samajik Prabandha (Social Essays) was written in a major European language, it would acquire universal renown and would be rendered into Indian languages and form part of college and university courses. Not only that, it would be prescribed in the curriculum of sociological and political studies. He rightly draws the attention of the Sahitya Akademi and West Bengal Government to the need of its translation into the principal Indian languages. Rajnarayan Basu speaks of this book : 'Every modern Indian writer must read this. It deals with all complex problems of India. It is a powerful incentive to theism, love of country, unity and effort.' And Sir Charles Elliot: 'No single volume in India contains so much wisdom and none shows such extensive reading. It is the result of the life-long study of a Brahmin of the old class in the formation of whose mind eastern and western philosophy have an equal share.'

Bankim and Bhudev are thus the two outstanding celebrities of the time whose contribution to the growth of India's renaissance was as immense as it was original. Moreover the fact of their having shared some of their sublime visions and ideas was in itself an indication that the Sakti of India revealed herself to them so that they might reveal to the people the truth and light She is. Indeed it is significant that both of them had the same vision of India as the Divine Mother, of her historic evolution towards her future greatness and glory, of a composite Indian nationality, of the Perfect Man, the Supreme Leader of Tomorrow. These heaven-born visions, self-expressed in terms of sublime power, beauty and devotion, so congenial to India's inherent spirit and soil, very naturally served as mantric factors in the creation of a deep-rooted national feeling in her consciousness. What they perceived with their seeing mind was glimpsed by their contemporaties as if to prove the truth of the Dawn and its gleamings, the truth of their visions, and give the promise of their fulfilment. How the Dawn touched the inmost soul of the people is a wonderful story of God-vision and God-revelation, part of the nineteenth-century upsurge. With this began the resurgence of India's soul towards a spiritual movement of tremendous significance for the coming Age of the Spirit in the organic history of man's evolution.