Betrayed By Hope - Gokhale and Lal - Book review by Ajay Singha

The two authors, Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal have written more than thirty books between them, but this one is different, it is a play-script based on the life and times of a man who deeply impacted and in fact changed forever, the course of Bengali literature, particularly poetry. Michael Madhusudan Dutt or MMD was a complex personality, to say the least, and therefore presents a formidable task to write about. Based on the epistolary exchange between himself, his friends and his well wishers, the authors have crafted a play-script bringing out the deep contradictions in MMD’s personality, his passion for romantic poetry and his encounters with, the then prevailing, orthodox Hindu society.

MMD, the central character of the play may be well described as the agent provocateur of Bengal’s nineteenth century renaissance, as also the ‘enfant terrible’ who descended onto the Bengali literary world in the midst of India’s great political power play in mid-nineteenth century. The reader cannot help but find MMD’s character a bit unnerving, somewhat pitiable, and would tend to agree with the Sutradhar, the principal narrator of the play, when she gets upset with his double standards and hypocrisy. The Sutradhar, with a cultivated Asian-English accent, admits to being confused, reflecting MMD’s own challenges with multiple cultural and linguistic legacies. Occasionally acknowledging each other’s presence on stage, even though they exist in different time frames, the Sutradhar reminds herself that MMD, “infuriating as he is”, is just her research subject.

Born into an upper class Hindu family, MMD a perennial rebel and iconoclast converted to Christianity in his nineteenth year. “Prompted not by conviction for Christian ideals but by his unapologetic worship of England and all things English” wrote the Reverend KM Banerji. Without earning his graduation degree at Bishop’s College, MMD left for Madras where he married a Scottish-Indian lady.They had four children and then all of a sudden in 1856, MMD abandoned his wife and children in Madras and returned to Calcutta. An eternal profligate and a romantic by heart, he got attached to Amelia Henrietta Sophie, a lady of French descent and they went on to have three children. During these years he wrote profusely in English, King Porus (1843), The Captive Ladie (1849), The Anglo-Saxon and the Hindu (1854), a very ornate essay full of quotations and references from European literature. None of these were truly acknowledged by the English speaking community of Calcutta and his efforts at writing in English proved futile. J.E.D. Bethune, President of the East India Company’s Council of Education at Calcutta, suggested that MMD could better “Employ his taste and talents ...... in improving the standard, and adding to the stock of the poetry of his own language” This advise was well received by MMD who commenced writing in Bangla declaring to his friend “You may take my word for it...... I shall come out like a tremendous comet and no mistake”.

His first dramatic composition Sarmista (1859) was well recieved by Bengal's literati and the following ones Padmabati (1859) and Krishna Kumari (1860) brought in the much needed recognition for the aspiring writer. He moved on, composing narrative and balladic poems, and with Meghnadbadh Kabya (the slaying of Meghnad), MMD finally arrived on Bengal’s literary scene. “The idea of Ravan elevates and kindles my imagination – what a grand fellow” he says. Emerging as a distinguished composer of a completely new style of heroic poetry, his compositions had shades of Homer and Dante but were quintessentially Indian. Introducing blank verse and the sonnet form into Bengali poetry, he was of the firm belief that blank verse would do splendidly in Bengali, and in course of time, like the Europeans, Bengalis too would surpass their classic literary insecurities. If MMD felt any guilt towards abandoning his wife and children in Madras, he turned it into dramatic art by focussing on bold and accomplished heroines in short plays and stories.

MMD was a restless soul and instead of basking in the glory of his literary success in Calcutta he shifted to London to study Law. Financial problems forced him to borrow money from all sources and while constantly in debt he somehow qualified as a barrister in 1866. Expecting financial returns from his deceased father’s estate, MMD returned to his beloved Calcutta but the lack of practical abilities required to manage worldly possessions ultimately led to his financial ruin. His literary output diminished after his return from England but in 1871 he wrote Hectorbadh, based on the Illiad and worked on a pastoral idyll, Mayakanan, The Garden of Illusion. An accomplished polyglot, MMD had mastered French, Italian, German, Latin, Greek in addition to English, Bengali and Tamil. His maverick ways disturbed prevailing views, but they helped develop a very forward-looking weltanschauung, a world view, much required in a literary tradition undergoing metamorphoses. Bengali language was undergoing a major overhaul in the nineteenth century, greatly influenced by the incoming European cultures. MMD was the forerunner of a literary tradition which would witness some of the great personalities of Bengali literature occupying centre stage in the coming decades.

In Bangabhasha, a tribute to his mother tongue, familiar to Bangla speakers the world over, his Kula-Lakshmi admonishes him “Go back you fool to where you came from” and he plunges into writing in his mother tongue. Gravely in debt, MMD died in penury in 1873, in a hospital’s general ward. With initial trepidation, the church finally gave permission to bury his remains at the Lower Circular Road cemetery. At the end of his life MMD laments “I wonder at times, Alas, what did I gain? Betrayed by Hope!" His critics saw him as a confused young man, a pretentious anglophile, and arrogant. Anyone who reads this play will love to see it on stage and discover that it is much more than a biography of a literary genius. It touches upon the eternal fault lines and social contradictions which emerge whenever the occident interacts with the orient. Michael Madhusudan Dutt MMD was truly a creature of hope and was finally betrayed by it! ajaypsingha@gmail.com