Many Threads of Hinduism- Selected Essays

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Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya is well known as the creator of Indias national song, Bande Mataram and as a novelist who pioneered the art form in India. But he was also an accomplished philosopher who wrote extensively on religion and society. Many Threads of Hinduism brings together some of Bankims important writings on religion, Hinduism in particular, and includes his thoughts on the Vedas, nationalism, the origins of religion, the conflict between one god and many gods, and the need for mass education. There are also pieces comparing the Brahmins of yore to Indias colonial masters at the time, the British, and also excerpts from his translation of and commentary on the Bhagavadgita, which remained incomplete when he died. Beautifully translated by Alo Shome and including a perceptive foreword by Jyotirmaya Sharma, this is an introduction to a different facet of a celebrated novelist and an important addition to the corpus of books on religion.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya is well-known as the creator of India's national song, 'Bande Mataram', and as a novelist who pioneered the art form in India with acclaimed classics like Ananda Math, Bishabrikha and Devi Chaudhurani. As critics have recognized, few writers in world literature have been so accomplished in both philosophy and art. So extensive was his output on religion and Hinduism, and so erudite his articulation, that Aurobindo Ghosh called him a rishi, while Nirad C. Chaudhuri believed that Bankim had 'one of the greatest Hindu minds, perhaps equalled in the past - whole of the Hindu past - only by the great Samkara'

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya has written extensively on Hinduism, especially from 1870 until his death in 1894. Appreciating his works on religion, Aurobindo Ghose called him a rishi. Nirad C. Chaudhuri believed that Bankim had 'one of the greatest Hindu minds, perhaps equalled in the past - whole of the Hindu past -only by the great Samkara.

Bankim has not given any specific definition of Hinduism. Instead, he begins by analysing what religion means to the people who call themselves Hindus. This he does, perhaps, intentionally because Hinduism, unlike the names of other religions, is a vague term. In ancient India there was no religion called Hinduism and there is no reference to the word Hindu in any Vedic scripture. The nouns India and Hindu have the same etymological past but do not mean the same thing in today's world. Both the words India and Hindu originate from the name of River Sindhu. The ancient Persians could not pronounce the letter S and so called the river and the people living on its banks Hindu. The Zend-Avesta refers to the word Hindu only as a geographical expression. The ancient Greeks called the same river the Indus and the land next to it, India.

Bankim Chandra harboured some animosity for European people - the colonizers who dominated India in his lifetime - and sometimes made angry remarks about them in his writings. However, that did not stop him from sincerely respecting the Western intellectual tradition. Like many prominent Indians of his time, he was deeply and fruitfully influenced by Western thoughts. A well-rounded English education had made him realize the tremendous value of research and analytical work in discovering the truth in any matter. And he applied his energies in a meticulously scientific manner to find out the real significance of his personal religion and culture. His findings led him to believe that Hinduism had enough to give to its followers and the world, if people were ready to respond to its messages with an open mind. At the same time, he was not blind to its faults and limitations.

Unlike many Hindus, Bankim did not have blind faith in the infallibility or agelessness of the Vedas. In this matter his assessment coincides with Dr S. Radhakrishnan who wrote, `The Vedas are neither infallible nor all-inclusive. Spiritual truth is a far greater thing than the scriptures: Bankim Chandra had jokingly commented that the hold of the Vedas upon the Hindus was much stronger than the hold of the British rulers upon them. He did not believe that mantras had any mystic powers and regretted the abundance of rituals in the Vedic religion.

From beneath the ashes of myths, legends, superstitions, exaggerations and rituals that had lost their contexts, he laboured to restore the quintessential truth of Hinduism piece by piece. His was the delicate work of an archaeologist passionately recovering valuable artefacts.

Methodology

Bankim Chandra has often used the first person plural 'we' as the speaker in his essays on religion. In reality, barring exceptional cases, they express his very own personal thoughts based on his individual research. Bankim Chandra's use of‘we' instead of ‘I’ is a way for him to represent the journals in which his essays appeared. His studied approaches to Hinduism were published regularly in the Bengali magazines Navajeevan, Prachar and Banga Darshan in the 1880s. Often, the major portions of these journals consisted of Bankim's own writings. I, the translator, have generally used the first person singular to represent Bankim.

This is a selective translation of Bankim's articles on religion. Sometimes a whole article has been translated while in other cases a portion of an essay has been done. This has occasionally demanded some adjustments to the original titles of the articles.

The translated essays of this volume have been loosely arranged in three parts: 'Roots of Hinduism, `Bankim Chandra's Unfinished Gita', 'Religion and Society'. The last few pages of the book contains my own notes.

Bankim Chandra has mentioned the names of many scholars of his time in his essays. These scholars were so well known at the time that the essayist did not deem it necessary to explain who they were. I regret to say that even though I searched diligently, I could not find any reference for a few of them.

Of the few publications of Bankim Chandra's collection of essays available in the market, I have chosen the one that is commonly found on people's personal bookshelves: Bankim Rachanabali, Dwitiya Khanda, edited by Subodh Chakravarty, published by Kamini Prakashan, Calcutta, in 1991. And as the arrangements of the essays are still the same in most, if not all, other publications, they can be tracked down easily in any volume. I have provided notes with each chapter indicating corresponding pages from Bankim Rachanabali, Dwitiya Khanda, edited by Subodh Chakravarty.

**Contents and Sample Pages**