Rosinka Chaudhuri’s latest work, India’s First Radicals: Young Bengal and the British Empire, is the first book-length study of the Young Bengal movement and the contribution of its members to the history of India’s anti-colonial struggle. In this book, Chaudhuri delves deep into their activism, examines their socio-political agenda and analyses the neglect and misrepresentation to which they were subjected by writers and historians.
In her Introduction, she observes that the“Young Bengal” nomenclature is reminiscent of other revolutionary groups in 19th century Europe such as “Young Italy” (“La Giovine Italia”) and “Young Ireland”. These young intellectuals in both Europe and India were determined to establish equality in political and social spheres. Young Bengal refers both to a group of English-educated Bengali men as well as to the reform movement led by them. They were mostly students of the Hindu College (now Presidency University) in Kolkata during the1830s; prominent among them were Rasik Krishna Mallick, Krishna Mohan Banerjea, Radhanath Sikdar, Ramgopal Ghosh, Dakshinaranjan Mukherjee, Ramtanu Lahiri, Hara Chandra Ghosh and Pearychand Mitra.
Known as Derozians, or followers of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, these young men condemned superstitions, challenged conservative practices and advocated for modernism in thought and culture. The public held them to be scandalous free-thinkers given to drinking wine, eating beef and general delinquencies that were taboo in the eyes of upper caste Hindu society. Unfortunately, the iconoclastic nature of their activism was often misinterpreted and alleged to be anti-nationalist and anti-Hindu. Eminent Bengali writers such as Ishwar Gupta and Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay presented them as caricatures.
She calls them India’s “first” radicals because their activism led to the first paradigm shift in the political approach of Indian nationalists.
Countering such prejudiced representations, Chaudhuri examines their participation in anti-colonial politics. The chapter “India’s First Political Society, April 1843” throws light on the history of The Society for the Acquisition of General Knowledge (SAGK), a collective they formed in 1838. After five years, in 1843, they turned this society into India’s first political party called Bengal British India Society.
Chaudhuri points out that their social activism—their war against gender, caste, class and racial discriminations—was part of their political agenda. In 1843, they came in touch with the British abolitionist and politician George Thomson. They shared a political rapport with him and even he took keen interest in working with their Bengal British India Society. Through their alliance with Thomson, the Young Bengal members tried to convey their discontent with the East India Company to the British Parliament.
The title “India’s First Radicals” suggests historicization of radical politics in India. The Young Bengal members were first referred to as “radicals” or “Ultra-Reformers” by the editor of India Gazette during the year 1831-32. The word “radical” gained frequency in the English political register in the late 18th century. Chaudhuri quotes from the Oxford English Dictionary to explain that the radicals referred to those “who advocated thorough and far-reaching political or social reform; representing or supporting an extreme section of a party.”
She calls them India’s “first” radicals because their activism led to the first paradigm shift in the political approach of Indian nationalists—from the liberal phase (during which Indian intellectuals wrote petitions to the British authorities) to the activist phase (in which promotion of public opinion emerged indispensable for democrats in India and England). Initially, the Young Bengal members had firm faith in parliamentary form of government. Their outlook towards liberal methods of implementing parliamentary rule changed drastically when they noticed that polite strategies of requesting reform and rights by the Indian intelligentsia were ineffective in combating the shrewdness of the governors of East India Company. They realised that intended changes could be brought only through constitutional debate and mobilisation of public opinion.
Did Young Bengal really fail in their mission or was it a rumour spread by narrow-minded nationalists?
In the chapter titled “A New Category: The People of India” Chaudhuri writes:
It was Young Bengal who clearly spelt out the strategy of constitutional reform in the nineteenth century, a strategy that Dadabhai Naoroji would push further when he established the London Indian Society in 1865, and when he was elected to the British Parliament in 1895.
Their far-sightedness was also acknowledged by C. Sankaran Nair while chairing the thirteenth session of Indian National Congress in 1897.
Chaudhuri follows a multidisciplinary method to analyse the social, political and literary contributions of the Young Bengal members. She mentions two newspapers, namely Krishnamohan Banerjea’s Enquirer and Dakshinaranjan Mukherjee’s Jñānānvesan, that disseminated their political ideas and generated public opinion in their favour. She also discusses their role in the development of journalism and fiction. Masik Patrika,founded in 1851, a periodical edited by Radhanath Sikdar and Pearychand Mitra, is cited as the first Bengali magazine for women. Pearychand Mitra’s Alaler Ghare Dulal (1854) is the first novel in the Bengali language by an Indian.
Their political and literary activism also inspired writers who were not directly involved with politics. This is reflected in speculative works such as Kylas Chunder Dutt’s “A Journal of Forty-Eight Hours of the Year 1945” (1835) and Soshee Chunder Dutt’s The Republic of Orissa; A Page from the Annals of the Twentieth Century (1845). Both the texts, two earliest pieces of short fiction in English by Indian authors, underline the futility of petition writing and the importance of radical action to end colonial oppression.
Unlike the moderate gentlemen-reformers of their time, the Young Bengal group chose to follow an unconventional path for uprooting the social vices and political injustices. They were severely criticised for their westernised lifestyle. Without verifying the truth, many people stereotyped the Young Bengal members as dissolute drunkards and historians considered their movement a failure. Did Young Bengal really fail in their mission or was it a rumour spread by narrow-minded nationalists? This is one of the pertinent questions that Chaudhuri asks and explores in her book. The findings will interest a scholar as well as any perceptive reader curious about this lesser-known chapter of the 19th-century Indian Renaissance.