Rajmohan's Wife and the Future of India

This is a follow-up to my previous post on the first Indian Novel in English, written by Bankim Chandra.

Wanting to know a little bit more about this novel, Rajmohan's Wife, I was searching the web a few days ago and came across a thought-provoking essay by Prof. Makarand Paranjpe. I have in the past enjoyed several of his writings, and so naturally I clicked on the link to his essay, enticingly titled, The Allegory of Rajmohan's Wife: National Culture and Colonialism in Asia's First English Novel. 

I must say that I was quite intrigued by his 'allegorical' reading into the characters of this novel and the analysis of the whole novel as a national allegory. Paranjpe quite convincingly argues that while the pronounced nationalism of Anandamath comes later in Bankim's literary career, its beginnings may be found in Rajmohan’s Wife. This is, in fact, the sentence that made me really go on with reading rest of the essay.

Bharat Mata, Painting by Abanindranath Tagore

Source

The novel, through its "richly textured negotiation of cultural choices for a newly emergent society," according to Paranjpe,  "is really an allegory of modern India, of the kind of society that can rise out of the debris of an older, broken social order and of the new, albeit stunted, possibilities available to it under colonialism.  The novel shows both the glimmer of hope and a more realistic closure of options towards the end."

Here are some more excerpts from Paranjpe's insightful essay - 

"The importance of Rajmohan’s Wife only increases when we realise that it is probably not just the first English novel in India, but in all of Asia.  Its dramatic location at the cusp of history only adds to its fascination.  In Bankim’s slender work, not just a new India, but an emerging Asia seeks to find its voice in an alien tongue. In this effort, a spark shoots across the narrative sky in the form of a new beautiful, spirited, and romantic heroine, Matangini.  There has been nothing like her in Asian fiction before.  Created from an amalgam of classical, medieval, and European sources and a totally unprecedented imaginative leap into what might constitute a new female subjectivity, Matangini is a memorable character.  In all of Indian English fiction, there are few women who have her capacity to move the narrative.  She, moreover, embodies the hopes of an entire society struggling for selfhood and dignity.  Her courage, independence, and passion are not just personal traits, but those of a nation in the making.  This subtle superimposition of the national upon the personal is Bankim’s gift to his Indian English heirs.  The trail of an epoch making novel like Midnight’s Children (1981) can thus be traced back to Bankim’s more modest trial as far back as 1864.
             .......

Rajmohan’s Wife gains in value and interest when we see it as a part of the story of modern India itself.  This is a story that is still being written; in that sense it is a work in progress, which is exactly how I’d like to see Rajmohan’s Wife too.  As a work in progress, rather than a false start, it negotiates one path for India’s future growth and development.  In this path, the English-educated elites of the country must lead India out of bondage and exploitation.  While the Rajmohans and Mathurs must be defeated, Matangini must find her happiness with her natural mate, Madhav.  However, the latter is not possible just yet; Matangini has therefore retreat to her paternal home.  Like an idea ahead of its time, she must wait till she can gain what is her due.  But not before she enjoys a brief but hard-earned rendezvous with her paramour and smoulders across the narrativescape of the novel with her disruptive power. Indeed, the novelty in Bankim’s novel is precisely the irruption, the explosion that Rajmohan’s wife—both the character and the story—causes in the narrative of modern India.  Like a gash or a slash, the novel breaks the iterative horizons of a somnambulant subcontinent, leaving a teasing trace that later sprouts many new fictive offshoots."

I am sure after this small taste, many curious readers would want to read the whole essay. It can be accessed here. After all, national consciousness, when invoked through and inspired by thoughtful and noble literature, art and  music is always much more real and uplifting than anything uttered by the so-called political leaders and workers of the official machinery.