Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (b.26 June1838- d.8 April1894, Bangla: বঙ্কিম চন্দ্র চট্টোপাধ্যায় Bôngkim Chôndro Chôţţopaddhae) ('Chattopadhyay' in the original Bengali; 'Chatterjee' as spelt by the British) was an Indian poet, novelist, essayist and journalist, most famous as the author of Vande Mataram, that inspired the freedom fighters of India.
Life
Chatterjee was educated at the Hooghly College and later at the Presidency College and belonged to an orthodox family.
Chatterjee, following the model of Isvarchandra Gupta, began his literary career as a writer of verse. He soon realized, however, that his talents lay in other directions, and turned to fiction. His first attempt was a novel in Bengali submitted for a declared prize. He did not win the prize, and the novelette was never published. His first fiction to appear in print was Rajmohan's Wife. It was written in English and was probably a translation of the novelette submitted for the prize.[citation needed] Durgeshnandini, his first Bengali romance, was published in 1865.
Literature
Kapalkundala (1866) is Chatterjee's first major publication. The heroine of this novel, named after the mendicant woman in Bhavabhuti's Malatimadhava, is modelled partly after Kalidasa's Shakuntala and partly after Shakespeare's Miranda. He had chosen Dariapur in Contai Subdivision as the background of this famous novel.
His next romance, Mrinalini (1869), marks his first attempt to set his story against a larger historical context. This book marks the shift from Chatterjee's early career, in which he was strictly a writer of romances, to a later period in which he aimed to simulate the intellect of the Bengali speaking people and bring about a cultural revival through a campaign to improve Bengali literature. With this end in mind he began publushing the monthly literary magazine Bangadarshan in 1872, the first edition of which was filled almost entirely with his own work. The magazine carried serialized novels, stories, humorous sketches, historical and miscellaneous essays, informative articles, religious discourses, literary criticisms and reviews. Vishabriksha (The Poison Tree, 1873) the first novel of Chatterjee's to appear serially in Bangadarshan.
Chatterjee's next major novel was Chandrasekhar (1877), which contains two largely unrelated parallel plots. Although the scene is once shifted back to eighteenth century, the novel is not historical. His next novel, Rajani(1877), followed the autobiographical technique of Wilkie Collins' "A Woman in White". The title role, a blind girl, was modelled after Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Nydia in "The Last Days of Pompeii". In Krishnakanter Uil (Krishnakanta's Will, 1878) Chatterjee produced the work of his that comes closest to resembling a western novel. The plot is somewhat akin to that of Poison Tree.
The only novel of Chatterjee's that can truly be considered historical fiction is Rajsimha (1881, rewritten and enlarged 1893). Anandamath (The mission house of Felicity, 1882) is political novel which depicts a Sannyasi (Brahmin ascetic) army fighting Indian muslims. The book calls for the rise of Brahmin/Hindu nationalism and, ironically, it accepts British Empire as just and fair. The novel was also the source of the song "Vande Mataram" (I worship the Mother) which, set to music by Rabindranath Tagore, was taken up by many secular nationalists.
Chatterjee's next novel, Devi Chaudhurani, was published in 1884. His final novel, Sitaram (1886), tells the story of a Hindu chief rebelling against Muslim rule.
Chatterjee's humorous sketches are his best known works other than his novels. Kamalakanter Daptar (The Scribbling of Kamalakanta, 1875; enlarged as Kamalakanta, 1885) contains half humorous and half serious sketches, somewhat on the model of De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-eater.
Chatterjee has been recognized as a talented story teller, and his works have been translated into most of the major languages of India. Although he wrote on a narrow range of subjects, and without any pretension of great literary insight, he became popular on a scale that no other Bengali writer before or since has equalled.
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