Rising above the din |
When ‘Babu’ and ‘Da’ become national issues, the voice of a 22-year-old Aurobindo Ghosh from Baroda can still be heard above the political din in contemporary India. Writing a series of essays in 1893-94, the young Aurobindo Ghosh stated: “Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya, the creator and king of Bengali prose, was a high-caste Brahman and the son of a distinguished official in Lower Bengal. Born at Kantalpara on the 27th June 1838, dead at Calcutta on the 8th April 1894, his fifty-six years of laborious life were a parcel of the most splendid epoch in Bengali history; yet among its many noble names, his is the noblest. Very early men saw in him the three natural possessions of the cultured Bengali, a boundless intellect, a frail constitution, and a temper mild to the point of passivity.
And indeed, Bankim was not only our greatest; he was also our type and magnified pattern. He was the image of all that is most finely characteristic in the Bengali race.” Through the essays, Aurobindo Ghosh pens the portrait of Bankim Chandra with a flourish, tracing his life and times, commenting, and sharing with readers his insights. Aurobindo, fresh out of university in England, was working with Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III in Baroda. In Bankim Chandra’s early years he saw, “The first picture of his childhood is his mastering the alphabet at a single reading; and this is not only the initial picture but an image and prophecy of the rest. At Midnapur, the home of his childhood, the magnificence of his intellect came so early into view, that his name grew into a proverb. ‘You will soon be another Bankim’ ~ for a master to say that was the hyperbole of praise. He ascended school by leaps and bounds; so abnormal indeed was his swiftness that it put his masters in fear for him. They grew nervous lest they should spoil by over-instruction the delicate fibre of his originality, and with a wise caution they obstructed his entrance into the highest class.”
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In college Bankim Chandra’s brilliance intensified: “At Hugly College, he conceived a passion for Sanskrit and read with great perseverance at a Pandit’s tol. In a single year he had gone through Mugdhabodh, Raghuvansa, Bhatti and the Meghaduta. Advancing at this pace he managed under four years to get a sense of mastery in the ancient tongue and a feeling for its literary secrets which gave him immense leverage in his work of........