Abstract
This essay is an exploration of the contingent nature of identity formation in late colonial India. In the wake of the 1912 separation of Bihar and Orissa from Bengal, two distinct conceptions of the region of Mithila and Maithila identity gained prominence. First, the Darbhanga Maharaja viewed Mithila as a bastion of brahmanical orthodoxy, and this underpinned the claims for Mithila to be converted to a native state with its own ruling chief. Second, by the 1930s we see the consolidation of a movement which proposed the Maithili language as the marker of a Maithila people, one that did not make brahmanical orthodoxy or Hinduism a prerequisite to belonging. Both these discourses accepted the mythic conception of Mithila, and its traditional puranic geography, yet the Darbhanga Maharaja embraced all-India markers of belonging by emphasising Hinduism and presenting himself as the leader of brahmanical orthodoxy in India. The local, in this discourse, found validation by embracing national markers, even as the nation itself remained colonised. On the other hand, the Maithili language movement, which gained momentum in the twilight of colonial rule and in post-independence India, emphasised and embraced the local. This essay therefore charts the gradual shift in the conception of Maithila identity where language displaces religion and brahmanical orthodoxy, as championed by the Darbhanga Maharaja, to become the marker of local identity.
In 1921, Rameshwar Singh (1860–1929), the ruler of Darbhanga who held the hereditary titles of Maharaja and subsequently Maharajadhiraja, submitted a memorial to the Governor of Bihar and Orissa requesting to be granted the status of ruling chief of Mithila, and for the region itself to be recognised as a native state. 1 The region, situated in north Bihar and referred to as Tirhut or Mithila, was home to the Darbhanga Maharaja, one of the most prominent landholders in north India. Coming within a decade of the separation of Bihar and Orissa from Bengal in 1912, but also during a time of heightened nationalist activism in the form of the Non-Cooperation Movement, the appeal highlights that both regional territorial realignments and the national political climate motivated the Maharaja’s appeal. Almost three decades later and following India’s independence, Kameshwar Singh (r. 1929–52), upon succeeding his father as the ruler of Darbhanga, continued petitioning the Constituent Assembly for a separate province of Mithila. Earlier petitions and appeals had positioned the Maharajadhiraja of Darbhanga as the traditional ruler of Mithila, while styling him as a leader of the Hindu community and Mithila as the bastion of brahmanical orthodoxy. 2 By the late 1930s and 1940s, many of these characterisations gave way to an emphasis on the Maithili language as the most prominent marker of difference and the most crucial element in forming a Maithila people.
The shift from seeking recognition as the ruling chief of Mithila to claiming Mithila’s distinctiveness as a region on a linguistic basis indicated a transformation that had transpired over the last two decades of colonial rule wherein language was beginning to be used as a marker to define a people. The Darbhanga Maharaja cultivated an image of himself as a leader of Hindus—and brahmans in particular—who used caste, lineage and hierarchy as the basis of legitimising his claims over Mithila. Such a framing is a reflection of the period leading up to the end of colonial rule when people and polities envisioned and asserted forms of community that continued to emphasise tradition and orthodoxy, particularly because while this would bolster their own claims, it would also resonate with the colonial government which maintained Indian aristocracy as vital to its rule. 3 Doing so also allowed the Darbhanga Maharaja to position himself and frame his demand to be a ruling chief, not quintessentially in local or regional terms, but instead as a national leader of Hindus, particularly brahmans. So, while the specificities of his demands were place-based and rooted in Mithila, the elements he used to legitimise these demands capitalised on symbols of Hinduism that transcended regional specificity. This paper argues that assertions of tradition and orthodoxy as maintained by the Maharaja of Darbhanga at the beginning of the twentieth century had to give way to a recognition of the constitution of a community based on linguistic difference, where Maithili became the prerequisite to a Maithila identity in the twilight of colonial rule and into post-independence India as well. Invoking all-India symbols may have enhanced the standing of the Darbhanga Maharaja within colonial India, as is evident from his membership in the Viceroy’s Legislative Council, the Executive Council of the Government of Bihar and Orissa, and as President of the All-India Landholders’ Association as well as the President of the first All-India Brahman Conference. However, it did not quite lead to an alignment of the Darbhanga Raj with an emerging sense of Maithila community which made the Maithili language the marker of the Maithila people and together co-constituted Mithila, the region. 4
During the twentieth century, as language became an indispensable component in the conceptualisation of a province, a community and ultimately a people, the evocation of Maithili as a marker of a Maithila people grew in part as a reaction to the Darbhanga Maharaja’s appeals to the government for a native state with him as the ruling chief. 5 The conception of community in this particular instance was predicated on a puranic sense of place and the Darbhanga Maharaja’s own role as the leader of the brahman community. By styling himself as ‘Mithilesa’ (ruler of Mithila) and invoking Mithila as the land of Janaka and Sita, Rameshwar Singh drew upon the rich mythic associations of the place as characterised in the epic Ramayana. 6 As if to leave no doubt regarding his self-perception, he stressed that ‘A Hindu—a Brahman Chief—in the Hindu Province of Mithila will be, I submit, welcome to the orthodox sentiment of the entire land.’ 7 Indeed, as Diana Eck has shown, India’s sacred geography continues to serve as a powerful imagined landscape which is brought together through many mythic and sacred Hindu sites that provide people with a tangible way of belonging to the land. 8 With regard to its territorial extent, Mithila is provided with a very particular and precisely demarcated territorial space in the Puranas, with the Ganga marking out the southern, Kosi the eastern and Gandaki the western boundaries. 9 In his petitions seeking recognition as a native chief, the Darbhanga Maharaja sought to establish congruity with the puranic descriptions of the space and his own landed estate. He also emphasised the role played by his ancestors as the recognised rulers of the region ever since it had been bestowed upon the Khandavala dynasty by the Mughal emperor Akbar in the sixteenth century. 10
The Maharaja, thus, viewed the space of Mithila as inhabited by a pre-formed community, and accorded immense importance to this puranic space, with its unique mythical roots, geographical boundaries and traditions of brahmanical orthodoxy and its associated rituals. 11 The endowment of the status of a native state would be a way for the colonial government to recognise and acknowledge this ‘sacred space’ and also confirm the Maharaja of Darbhanga as its natural leader, thus according him recognition among Indian aristocracy. Such a characterisation of Mithila was in marked contrast to the growing emphasis on language as a marker of Maithila identity. This paper captures this moment of transition from a traditional and orthodox characterisation of place to a more secular marker of identity where language, not religion, came to define a people and subsequently a place—and that too, one that could be conceived without the Darbhanga Raj and its ruler at its helm. Modern communities, though bearing illusions of permanence, are a product of contemporary social, cultural and political articulations—as Sunil Khilnani puts it, ‘a contingent and fragile conjunction of interlinked, sometimes irritable cultures’. 12 The genesis of a Maithila identity took shape against the backdrop of the movement for the province of Bihar. The formation of a separate province in 1912 also instigated a distinct ‘Mithila, Maithila, Maithili’ sentiment. 13
Situating Mithila
Conceptions of Mithila, ranging from colonial to modern characterisations, repeatedly invoked its puranic foundations which invested the region’s rivers and tanks with mythic significance, thus naturalising the region as timeless and organic. A common thread runs through the conceptions of Mithila as each articulation acknowledges and further reinforces the regional imagination. The terms Mithila and Tirhut both roughly refer to the same place. However, given the historical trajectories of these two names, Mithila is generally used to connote a distinct cultural space, while Tirhut refers to an administrative entity. Upendra Thakur points out that the origin of the word Mithila, ‘as given in ancient literature, is purely mythical’, and traces the term to a legend in the Satapatha Brahmana. 14 Tirabhukti or Tirhut is a much later toponym that was used to describe the geographical features of this place enclosed by the banks of three prominent rivers: Ganga, Gandaki and Kosi. 15 Etymologically, Tirabhukti is derived from tira (river bank) and bhukti and translates as ‘the land of the river banks’. 16 Haraprasad Sastri says that the word bhukti was used in the sense of a province during the eleventh or twelfth century. 17 Yet Tirabhukti (or modern Tirhut) never quite replaced Mithila as the dominant place-name for this region. As Laksman Jha, one of the staunchest champions for a separate province of Mithila, points out, even if ‘today…the administration records “Tirhut” as the name, the people—inhabitants as well as others—know it as Mithila’. 18 Perhaps this demonstrates the enduring resonance of ancient mythology and is particular to the geographic landscape of Mithila. Initially, Tirhut and Mithila both referred to the same geographical area, but over time Tirhut became more closely associated with an administrative entity, while purely on an administrative basis Mithila as a place ceased to exist. During the time of Akbar, this region was divided into three sircars—Champaran, Hajipur and Tirhut—but was collectively known as Tirhut, which was also the name used during the British period, when in 1908, Tirhut Division and Bhagalpur Division together co-constituted this region of north Bihar. 19
From 1912 onwards, Bihar and Orissa emerged as a separate province, which was made possible largely due to a Hindu–Muslim alliance of provincial literati demanding it, and the fact that it would also align with colonial interests in the massive territorial reorganisation undertaken to revoke the 1905 partition of Bengal. 20 In the wake of its separation from Bengal, Bihar continued with its project of patronising and promoting Hindi as the provincial language while also crafting a historical narrative of the region that braided the province’s ancient past together with an Indian national past through the establishment of a cosmopolitan research wing. 21 The articulation of ‘Bihariness’ also embraced a north-Indian Hindi-based identity while internal fissures between Magadha and Mithila began to gain prominence and provided the Darbhanga Raj an opportunity to argue for a native state status for Mithila since the Maharaja of Darbhanga viewed himself as the ‘natural leader’ of Mithila. 22 Perhaps this also suggests that Maithila identity, as represented by the Maharaja, was not only predicated on linguistic and cultural differences, but also on the self-interest of the Darbhanga Maharaja in preserving his traditional authority as the hereditary ruler of Mithila and a leader of India’s Hindu community. Hindu orthodoxy had become a core feature of what the Darbhanga Maharaja represented.
Traditional brahmanical authority and culture were deeply embedded in everyday practices of Maithila society where cultural habits were not only sanctioned by the authority of the Darbhanga Raj, but were in fact embedded in the region’s geographic location. The following hyperbolic description of Mithila’s geographic location and the legitimacy it provided in fostering a staunch orthodox brahmanical culture encapsulates the deep roots it stuck in Mithila.
The Ganga commensurate with her magnitude played as the dividing line between the two cultures of India—the Aryan, and the more ancient, the non-Aryan. Later on, in the territory now known as Bihar, it came to be the dividing line between the Brahmanic culture in Mithila to the north and the Buddhist culture in Magadha to the south. 23
Such a depiction of Mithila as a society dominated by a conservative brahmanical culture is common among scholars working on the region. Statements by colonial authorities also provided adequate fodder for highlighting this region’s brahmanical culture. Emphasising this region’s relative seclusion, C. J. Stevenson-Moore wrote:
We have seen that when eventually the first flood of Musalman invasion, coming down the Ganges, did overspread Bihar, it subsided, leaving Mithila with Hindu kings still holding courts, where poetry and learning were alone honoured. There are probably few regions on which Islam made less impression than in Mithila, even after the absorption of Bihar into the empire of Akbar.
24
Perhaps it was the influence of the Darbhanga Raj that impelled colonial authorities to reflect primarily upon the region’s brahmanical culture and was perpetuated by subsequent scholars as well. For instance, Clive Dewey points out that the ‘chief interest of Mithila for the historian’ is the ‘extraordinary continuity, till very recent times, of a caste-ridden and conservative society closely approximating brahmanical ideals’. 25 Similarly, Carolyn Henning Brown stresses the ‘continuity of culture in this region from earliest times’, which accounts for the ‘existence of a strong Hindu king within the caste of Maithil brahmans’. 26 Finally, in describing the role of the Darbhanga Raj, Stephen Henningham points out that the rulers ‘championed Maithil Brahmanism, and they and their estate comprised a central institution in Mithila’. 27 The rulers of the Darbhanga Raj certainly supported and perpetuated an orthodox culture of Maithila brahmanism and commanded a degree of social capital which reassured their position at the helm of Maithila society. As a result, the Maharajas of Darbhanga were ‘leaders of a closed elite group rather than popular princes’, and in this sense, they were more devoted to propagating ‘all-India symbols’ rather than the cultural symbols of their region. 28 In propagating all-India Hindu symbols, the Darbhanga Raj did not challenge the idea of India, but by making Mithila integral to the mythic origins of India, as depicted in the Ramayana, used the concept of an incipient nation to foster its own distinctive place within it. Such framing of regional cohesiveness characterising the place as unique, worked to complete the imagination of a national mosaic known as India with its tremendous diversity as well as its inherent contradictions and limitations. The territorial extent of Mithila extended beyond the estates of the Darbhanga Raj, with the Nepal Terai making up quite a significant portion of the Maithila cultural landscape. Also, it is equally important to remember that during the colonial period, the authority of the Darbhanga Maharaja was limited to that of a prominent landlord albeit one who was regarded as the leader of Maithila brahmans specifically, but also one who fashioned himself as the leader of Hindu brahmans across India. The close approximation between the Darbhanga Raj, Maithila brahmanism and Maithila culture has largely defined Maithila identity as the purview of an elite group comprising mostly brahmans and kayasthas during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 29
The Darbhanga Raj and Brahmanical Orthodoxy
The foundation of the Maithila Mahasabha in 1910 is perhaps the earliest instance when upper-caste Maithils, particularly the Maithila brahmans and kayasthas led by the Maharaja of Darbhanga, came together to advance the cause of Mithila. With its ten-point agenda, the Mahasabha was more akin to a Maithila reform movement, rather than one geared solely towards the propagation of a distinct Maithila identity. 30 The formation of the Maithila Mahasabha was an indication of a growing awareness of Mithila’s culture, society and language. Yet, the Mahasabha was quite an exclusive organisation. Headed by the Maharaja of Darbhanga as its ex-officio president, the membership of this organisation was limited to Maithila brahmans and kayasthas. 31 This caste-based restriction during the early decades of the Mahasabha can be interpreted as an illustration of the strong sense of conservatism prevalent within Maithila society and could perhaps also serve as an indication of the confidence expressed by the Maithila brahmans and kayasthas towards the permanence of this hierarchical social structure. Yet it was this very exclusivity that continued to haunt future assertions for a Maithila identity even though the Mahasabha’s mission was later reframed to signify a specifically place-based and linguistically exclusive identity. The failure to sufficiently overcome these hierarchical social distinctions, according to some scholars, is one of the biggest limitations of the Maithili movement. 32
Although caste-based exclusivity is an important aspect that cannot be ignored, one must also point out that it was from the platform of the Mahasabha that the Maharaja of Darbhanga first publicly voiced the demand for the separation of Mithila from Bihar, although admittedly he did so three decades after the establishment of the Mahasabha. More importantly, this public demand was made after the efforts of the Maharaja to gain recognition as a ruling chief had failed. As a result, in 1940, during the annual meeting of the Maithila Mahasabha at Darbhanga, a resolution was formally passed demanding the formation of Mithila. 33 It is thus safe to say that by the late 1930s, the Maithila Mahasabha had come to serve as a platform for voicing regional differences while trying to cast off its image as a predominantly high-caste organisation. Such expressions of cultural difference were preceded by demands for the recognition of Mithila. This came directly from the Maharaja of Darbhanga Rameshwar Singh, but unlike the later demands for a separate province of Mithila, this one was primarily a reflection of Rameshwar Singh’s desire to be recognised as a ruling chief and concomitantly the transformation of Mithila to a native state. 34
Our encounter with the Darbhanga Maharaja is generally as one of colonial India’s ranking zamindars, but moving away from colonial categories of classifying traditional authority as princely states or prominent zamindaris provides us an opportunity to assess the view that the Darbhanga Raj had of itself. In this context, it would be helpful to briefly discuss the narrative account that Rameshwar Singh provides of the Darbhanga Raj. Although a landed estate, the rulers of the Darbhanga Raj were given the honorary title of ‘Maharajas’ (great kings) and, later, during the time of Rameshwar Singh, the title of ‘Maharajadhiraja’. 35 Both these titles were hereditary. The rulers were ranked with the middle range of Indian princes. In their role as ‘Maharajas’, they defended landed interests, participated in provincial and national politics, and commanded an important social and cultural position. 36 It is worth emphasising that the ruler of the Darbhanga Raj retained ‘considerable prestige and authority, beyond that which would have accrued to a mere landed proprietor, no matter how rich’. 37 The beginnings of the prestige and authority that the Darbhanga Rajas commanded can be traced back to the Mughal period when Mahesa Thakur was granted the whole territory with Kosi and Gandaki marking the east–west, and the Himalayan foothills and Ganga the north–south boundaries. Since there is little doubt that Mahesa Thakur occupied the same position that was previously held by Kameswara Thakkura of the Oinivar Dynasty (1350–1557), Shyam Narayan Singh suggests that the ‘grant made by Akbar to Mahesa Thakkura must have been of the same nature as the grant of Tirhut made by Firoz Shah Toghlak in the beginning of the fourteenth century to Kameswara Thakkura’. 38 The fact that both the Oinivars and their successors the Khandavalas were Maithila brahman families gave further credibility to this transition of power and also helped perpetuate a sense of continued brahmanical dominance over Mithila. Under Mughal sanction, the Maithila brahman community itself became ‘a royal caste, with king and aristocracy’ primarily due to the elevation of the Khandavalas as the royal family. While a single Hindu tradition of kingship has not been identified at any point in Indian history, the political realities did not always follow the various ideals that political theorists (nītikāras) and legal experts (dharmaśāstrajnas) laid down. A brahman political dynasty, as in the case of Darbhanga, therefore, did not conform to some of the established conventions and ideals of kingship as laid down in Sanskrit digests on nīti (political ethics) and dharmaśāstras (religiously sanctioned law). 39 The traditions of kingship and the duty to preserve order, which are technically the obligations of the kshatriyas, were in this instance claimed as the responsibility of the brahman rulers of Mithila. 40 Hence, the Khandavala dynasty claimed that they were able to perform one of the duties that almost all conventions and theories of politics articulated in Sanskrit digests wanted them to, which is upholding the ideals of varnashramadharma, which is seen as the bedrock of the social order. This continued to be the case even after the arrival of the British and the implementation of the Permanent Settlement (1793). The authority of the Darbhanga Raj diminished considerably following the institution of the Permanent Settlement. Rameshwar Singh described it as a British failure to understand the different kinds of land administration exercised by the rulers of Tirhut. The Permanent Settlement ‘made a great change, as the whole State was taken away’, because the incumbent Raja, Madho Singh, refused to accept the terms of the settlement as proposed by the Collector of Tirhut. Eventually, some 1,500 villages were retained under the Raj, but this also meant that the status of the Maharaja was reduced to that ‘of a mere zamindar’. 41
Given this trajectory, Rameshwar Singh’s memorial, which expressed the desire that the Maharaja be recognised as a ruling chief, was demanding the restoration of the traditional authority which his family had enjoyed. Therefore, most of Rameshwar Singh’s arguments drew heavily upon the rulers of Darbhanga’s position as the pre-eminent Hindu family in India and as a bastion of traditional brahmanical authority. Viewed in the light of later arguments, this memorial did not seek the recognition of a distinct cultural space in need of its own province. Instead, even when the memorial went on to emphasise that this region stood out as an entirely separate entity or rather as a ‘national unit’ because of its history, language (Maithili) and literature, it was with the intention of highlighting the claim that only Mithila had the distinction of being ‘the intact home’ of orthodox Hindu civilisation where Hindu traditions had an ‘unbroken’ continuity even during the Mughal period. 42
It is quite significant that Rameshwar Singh began the memorial primarily as a ‘personal question’ which he then went on to emphasise was ‘intimately connected with the scheme of self-government for this country of ancient histories and traditions’, thus allowing him to assert the role of Maharaja of Darbhanga as the anchor holding together traditional institutions and practices in the region. 43 Reading through the memorial, it is evident that Rameshwar Singh’s attempt to demand recognition for the Darbhanga Raj as a native state was predicated less on the internal cultural homogeneity of Mithila. Rather, he was particularly engaged in cultivating the self-image of an orthodox Hindu ruler. Claims that throughout India the Hindu population popularly knew the Maharajas of Darbhanga as ‘Mithilesa’ (Ruler of Mithila) and that they were ‘looked upon and treated in Northern Bihar with ancient courtesy and respect which no amount of new, non-political dignities can confer on any landed family’ emphasises the permanence of traditional authority which did not quite crumple when pitted against colonial rule and the subsequent relegation of their rank within the colonial institutional framework. 44 Rameshwar Singh’s fervent commitment to Hindu orthodoxy and his demands to be recognised as a ruling chief were in no way incompatible with the agenda of the colonial state. 45 As Thomas Metcalf reminds us, British ideology was caught between searching for India’s similarities with Europe, while at the same time looking for qualities of enduring ‘difference’. It was this uneasy tension between similarity and difference that was reflected not only in their intellectual endeavours but also in practical reality and decision-making. Grappling with this paradox, the British eventually preferred to perpetuate the claims of ‘difference’. 46 So while colonial authorities espoused the rhetoric of transforming India on a Western model, this ‘Macaulayesque vision’ rested very ‘awkwardly with the vision of an India presided over by princely and aristocratic elites’, since they were seen as the ‘natural’ leaders of the people. 47 In this sense, perhaps Rameshwar Singh was attempting to exploit British tendencies of promoting traditional elites as the rightful rulers of India.
In case the colonial state was still doubtful regarding his traditional authority, Rameshwar Singh appended a brief account of himself to the memorial. Here, he pointed out that he had the power of excommunication for the Hindu community of Mithila and also that the highest class of Maithila brahmans could not marry without his consent. Perhaps as a way of legitimising this orthodoxy, he claimed that ‘In Mithila he has been exercising in religious matters the same power as King Janaka did in days of yore.’ 48 Going beyond Mithila, the Maharaja of Darbhanga also served as the Life-President of the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal (the All-India Hindu Association). 49 According to historian Jata Shankar Jha, Rameshwar Singh was unhappy that Hinduism did not continue to maintain a strong hold among the public and to remedy this he suggested that the Sanatan Dharma Mandal should ‘preach to the masses the sanctity and truth of the religion’ and that a branch of the Sanatan Dharma Mandal be established in every town and village in order to facilitate the public celebration of Hindu festivities. 50 Additionally, the Maharaja also wanted to see ‘twice-born Hindus performing Sandhya-Vandan and Gayatrijapa daily’. 51 Certainly, this cultivation and perpetuation of an orthodox brahmanical culture has only worked to very narrowly define the legitimate parameters of Maithila identity. From the point of view of the Maharaja of Darbhanga, one could say that this very orthodoxy was the source of his legitimacy and, hence, the cultivation of an image espousing conservative brahmanical ideals was imperative to the existence of the Raj itself. 52 Alternately, one could also say that perhaps the rulers of Darbhanga ‘felt themselves imprisoned by the same system of social control that conditioned their humblest caste fellow’. 53 This is best indicated by the fact that it was not until 1930 that a Maharaja of Darbhanga dared to defy high-caste brahmanical injunctions and travel overseas.
Echoing the Maharaja’s memorial, the members of the Indian Legislative Assembly also petitioned the Viceroy to create ‘an Indian State in Bihar proper’ since the new province did not have an ‘Indian Ruling Chief’, which according to them could be easily addressed by recognising and ‘restoring the ruling powers exercised by the Darbhanga House’.
54
Emphasising orthodoxy, the petitioners claimed that in addition to ‘belonging to the highest rank of Brahmin’ the Maharajadhiraja was the ‘accredited and revered leader of the Hindu Community’ and restoring his powers as a ruling chief would be a ‘matter of supreme satisfaction to the Hindus of India’ as well as of Bihar.
55
The 58 signatories to this petition comprised both Hindus and Muslims—both, it would seem, did not find it problematic to emphasise the Darbhanga Raj’s Hindu orthodoxy as one of the qualifying and necessary markers of a ruling chief. The petition, in addition to the memorial, initiated a series of discussions at the highest levels of the imperial government. Charles Bayley and Edward Gait, both of whom had served as Lieutenant-Governor of Bihar and Orissa, helped the colonial government frame its response and the subsequent denial of the Maharaja’s petition. Bayley was not supportive of adding to the ‘already large number of petty Indian States’ as that would require transferring ‘British subjects to Native rule’ and, therefore, deprive them of the benefits of British rule by denying them access to British courts, administration and police. He further revealed—and this is largely in contrast to his rather positive public characterisation of Bihar as evident through his support for the Bihar and Orissa Research Society—that the region lacked ‘indigenous talent’ where the petty officials of Bihar were ‘more incompetent and corrupt’ than anywhere else in India.
56
Finally, he went on to provide a clinical assessment of the emerging factions within Indian society and the tensions it generated as another reason not to look favourably upon the Maharaja’s request. As Bayley put it:
The well-born Indian gentleman of the upper class is by nature extremely sensitive. As his caste is outraged by contact with things that to him are unclean, so he regards his honour as besmirched by abuse and ridicule. He shrinks from controversy with men whom he regards as his social inferiors. Even if this were not the case, he is rarely qualified either by intellect or up-bringing to contend publicly with the clever and often unscrupulous leaders of the ‘politically minded’ who sometimes have ways, unknown in this country, of making life almost, if not quite intolerable for him.
57
Echoing Bayley’s comments, Edward Gait pointed out that the public services of the Maharaja of Darbhanga had been ‘generously rewarded’ through the bestowal of the hereditary title of Maharaja, and subsequently also Maharajadhiraja which too was hereditary. These two titles along with the grant of other honours like the KCIE (Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire) also raised his profile from third to first place in the local precedence list.
Writing in 1924, following the line of Bayley and Gait, Lord Curzon, whose advice Rameshwar Singh had sought in this quest, tried to dissuade the Maharaja from pursuing this any further, saying that he would ‘not like to see an old friend and a leader of public thought…exposed to what might be regarded as the rebuff of a refusal’ as the chances of success seem to be ‘improbable’. 58 Undeterred, the Darbhanga Maharaja continued with his quest and this time he retained the services of a London law firm with a branch office in Calcutta. In this instance, Rameshwar Singh’s ‘hereditary position as the religious head of the Brahman Community in India’ was highlighted in support of his claim. 59 In 1929, following the death of Rameshwar Singh, his son, Kameshwar Singh became the new Maharaja of Darbhanga, and he too would continue to pursue his father’s unfulfilled quest. By this time, however, the colonial government had begun to view his request for status as a ruling chief mainly as a quest for the title of ‘Highness’ and a ‘salute of 11 guns’. 60 Presenting himself as a prominent public figure in colonial India, Kameshwar Singh too, through his representations to the colonial government, highlighted that he was ‘one of the richest of the Indian rulers’ and that his role as a ruling chief would help maintain order and ‘save the whole Indian situation’ if native states were to remain loyal. 61 In 1930, when Kameshwar Singh was in London to participate in the First Round Table Conference, he requested an audience with King George and the Prince of Wales. Suspecting that Kameshwar Singh had ‘dynastic aspirations’ and wanted to press the earlier claim made by his father to ‘be raised to the position of a Ruling Chief’, his request was denied. 62 By travelling to London, Kameshwar Singh had already defied high-caste brahmanical injunctions, but following the London visit, it was perhaps clear to him that emphasising Hindu orthodoxy as the defining feature of the Darbhanga Raj had its limitations, and so instead he began to slowly embrace Maithili language as a marker of the Maithila community.
Language as Identity
In contrast to Rameshwar Singh’s projection of the Darbhanga Raj as a bastion of brahmanical orthodoxy, by the third decade of the twentieth century, the Maithila community came to be defined by highlighting Mithila’s differences vis-à-vis Magadha or Bihar in a more general sense, rather than as a marker of orthodoxy which privileged the Maithila brahmans and the Maithila kayasthas to some extent, while continuing to embrace Mithila’s mythic roots and geographic boundaries. Additionally, language, by the 1920s and 1930s, became an essential element in giving rise to a modern conception of Maithila identity. There is no denying that the perpetuation of orthodoxy produced deep schisms within Maithila society and this had to be addressed if Mithila was to successfully articulate a distinct cultural identity. It was in this context that the Maithili language emerged as the primary medium through which a Maithila cultural identity could be articulated. In a sense the slogan ‘Mithila, Maithila, Maithili’, which was the last of the ten-point declaration made by the Maithila Mahasabha during its inaugural meeting in 1910, began to receive greater attention and importance in the 1920s and 1930s as efforts were made to present the land, its people, and their language as integral to the cultural imagination of this particular region of Bihar.
The establishment of the Maithili Sahitya Parishad in April 1930 is one such instance that drew a more explicit link between the Mahasabha’s three prominent markers of Maithila identity. This is in contrast to the manner in which Hindi had become the dominant language of Bihar and came to be extensively used for government and education, or the more cosmopolitan outlook espoused by Bihari literati in their use of English as the language for the publications of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society. Instead, the Maithili Sahitya Parishad was similar to the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, which championed Bengali as the language of Bengal. One of the stated aims of this Parishad was to publish works written in Maithili with Mithila Darshan (1931), the earliest historical account of Mithila written in Maithili serving as their inaugural publication. 63 The author Shashinath Choudhury’s gratitude towards Raja Krityananda Singh of Banaili, who was the patron of this work when it was originally composed in 1924, is an important counterpoint to the political machinations of the Darbhanga Maharaja during this period. So during the 1920s, while the Darbhanga Maharaja was cajoling the colonial government for recognition as a native prince, the Raja of Banaili was demonstrating his ‘unbridled love for Mithila, Maithila, Maithili’. 64 The fact that Krityananda Singh supported Sir Asutosh Mookerjee’s effort to establish Maithili as one of the languages offered for the MA examination in Calcutta University in 1917 is perhaps further indicative of Maithilas seeking avenues to express their love for their language while also creating institutional bases for the promotion and development of their ‘mother-tongue’. Indeed, when Mookerjee founded a department to promote the study of Indian vernaculars at Calcutta University in 1917, he also recognised Maithili as part of the department of Indian vernaculars and instituted it as one of the languages for the MA examination, thus giving Maithili some much-needed validation as one of India’s major languages. 65 While this was an important achievement for the Maithila literati, this sense of jubilation was soon overshadowed by another episode closer to home. The year 1917 was also when Patna University was established, recognising that a separate province of Bihar needed a university of its own. As a result, all the schools and colleges of Mithila were placed under its jurisdiction. But when Maithili was not given the same recognition by Patna University, it not only came as a disappointment, but it also made the Maithili movement more vigorous. It was not until 20 years later that Patna University recognised Maithili as a language of instruction and examination. 66 Towards this end, Kameshwar Singh, the Maharaja of Darbhanga, took the initiative and endowed the Mithilesh Rameshwar Singh Maithili Chair in the Patna College in January 1935 by contributing a sum of ₹1,20,000, following which the study of Maithili was also recognised by Patna University. 67
Yet, going back a couple of decades, the picture that emerges of nineteenth-century Mithila is that Maithili language and literature were not receiving exclusive attention either from the literati of Mithila or from the Darbhanga Raj. Instead, Maithili was part of a multilingual scenario in which multiple languages and their related literatures were often used for purposes that were quite removed from twentieth-century assertions of language as the primary marker of a people and a place. Jayakanta Mishra maintains that the institution of the Court of Wards in 1860 led to the marginalisation of Maithili since the ‘language and the script of the land was debarred from being used any longer in public life’. 68 It was only after Lakshmishwar Singh ascended the throne of the Darbhanga Raj in 1880 that patronage to Maithili literature resumed. 69 This, however, is quite a contrast to Radhakrishna Chaudhary’s claim that Maithili developed without any royal support, as the rulers of the Darbhanga Raj did not give Maithili the support it deserved, or ‘even in the manner their predecessors had done’. Instead, Persian, Urdu and—under the Court of Wards—English dominated as the language of the Darbhanga Raj. Also, Lakshmishwar Singh made Hindi the official language of the region. 70 This was in keeping with the institution of Hindi as the official vernacular of Bihar from 1881 onwards.
Thus, from the early decades of the twentieth century, although Maithili became the pre-eminent language and served as an essential ingredient in coalescing a Maithila identity, it received very little support or encouragement from the ‘natural’ leaders of Mithila, the Maharaja of Darbhanga. 71 Perhaps this too can be traced back in part to the role of the Darbhanga Maharajas as ‘strongly conservative champions of tradition and orthodoxy’. 72 Additionally, this could also be a reflection of the influence of the burgeoning Hindu revivalist movement that was taking place in late nineteenth-century India. At the time of his accession to the ‘guddi’ (throne) of the Darbhanga Raj following the death of his brother Lakshmishwar Singh (1858–98), Rameshwar Singh alluded to promoting the study of Sanskrit literature. The subject, the Maharaja said, ‘was one which had the deepest interest for him, and it would be a special pleasure to him, if he could in any way assist in bringing back the Mithila of the ancients, so renowned for its various schools of Sanskrit literature and philosophy, to its proud position as the leading authority in all questions of religion and Sanskrit literature’. 73 The point here is not to be overly critical of the Raj’s promotion of the study of Sanskrit, but rather to compare it with the absolute lack of any desire to promote Maithili, at least for a couple more decades.
During a period when linguistic movements, as in the case of Hindi–Urdu controversy, commanded extreme emotional attachments, the continued promotion of Sanskrit learning while neglecting Maithili perhaps is a further indication of the centrality of Hindu orthodoxy as the foundational ideology of the Darbhanga Raj. Patronage of Sanskrit learning had been an established custom of Mithila and one that the Darbhanga Raj too embraced quite closely. 74 For instance, as part of his promise to promote and provide patronage to Sanskrit, the Maharaja held the Dhout-Pariksha, a practice that continued until 1930. 75 This was quite a grand and elaborate affair. One such event was held in October 1899. The event itself was a five-day-long Sanskrit examination which was attended by 283 Sanskrit pandits, some of whom came from as far away as the Central Provinces. For the entire duration of the exam, these pandits were all attended to by officials of the Darbhanga Raj under the supervision of the Maharaja. Not only do the elaborate arrangements, like the grand tent set up to conduct the examinations, attest to the importance of the occasion, but the fact that the Maharaja would himself be present each day and oversee the six-hour-long examination is an indication of Rameshwar Singh’s investment in the promotion of Sanskrit learning and through it the promotion of brahmanical orthodoxy. 76
Contrary to the impression created by the proponents of Maithili during the twentieth century, the linguistic landscape of Mithila was quite different prior to this period when assertions of Maithili as the primary marker of a distinctive cultural identity began to gain momentum. Bihari Lal’s Aina-i-Tirhut, first published in 1883 and written in Urdu, provides us with a glimpse into a society where no particular language—be it Urdu, Hindi or Maithili—was considered to be a critical marker of cultural identity. Rather, like much of India, Mithila was a multilingual society where the regional vernacular occupied one among several registers of expression, be they literary, administrative, pedagogical or colloquial. In fact, Bihari Lal did not even refer to Mithila’s colloquial language as ‘Maithili’. Even during the nineteenth century, the choice and use of any one language was still considered a marker of one’s social status rather than one’s identity. According to Bihari Lal, the ashrafs of the district—a term he used for the middle-class men who lived in or were associated with the urban centres of the region, primarily Darbhanga and Muzzafarpur—spoke Urdu, albeit not very chaste. A substantial proportion of people, mainly in the rural areas, spoke ‘dahatini or ganwari Hindi’ (rustic or uncouth) while Maithila pandits and Maithila kayasthas preferred a Hindi that was heavily interlaced with Sanskrit words as well as mixed with Tirhut’s ‘unique version of Hindi’. 77 In a sense, nineteenth-century Mithila was a multilingual society, but this multilingual sphere of communication did not lead to mutual incomprehensibility among the speakers of different languages. More importantly, Bihari Lal’s difficulty in specifically naming the languages used hints at a fluid linguistic sphere where words and expressions were freely exchanged among languages. Neither patronised by the Darbhanga Raj nor used for administrative purposes, Maithili remained mainly a language of domestic conversation. Perhaps, as the language of everyday life, it remained a language without a name. This is why Bihari Lal was compelled to refer to Maithili as a variant of Hindi, rather than explicitly recognising it as a language particular to Mithila and spoken almost exclusively by the Maithila people.
Given the paucity of contemporary accounts regarding the language practices of nineteenth-century Mithila, Bihari Lal’s observations are not only unique but quite remarkable. His reference to one of the languages spoken in Tirhut as a ‘unique version of Hindi’ is also quite typical of the nineteenth-century understanding of Maithili as a type of Hindi. Bihari Lal was not alone. In his Hindi translation of Vidyapati’s Purush Pariksha, published in 1888, Chanda Jha referred to Maithili as ‘Mithila Bhasha’. 78 Ayodhya Prasad used ‘Tirhut ki Bhasha’ to refer to Mathili. 79 Yet, by the early twentieth century, perhaps recognising the growing importance of language as a marker of cultural identity and certainly influenced by an emerging Maithili print culture, we see both Ras Bihari Lal Das of Mithila Darpan, as well as Shyam Narayan Singh, devote a considerable portion of their accounts to detailing Mithila’s literary culture and heritage. 80 In fact, although referring to Maithili as a ‘dialect’ rather than as a language, Singh still conceded that it ‘is at least 600 years old’. Moreover, instead of considering it a version of Hindi, he claimed that Maithili was much older than, and must have helped the growth of Bengali. 81
Although resurrected in the late nineteenth century, and followed by subsequent insistence on the existence of a Maithili literary culture beginning from the fourteenth century, there is very little that can account for Maithili literary culture during much of the nineteenth century. And yet it was nineteenth-century colonial philology that perhaps made the greatest contribution to the subsequent development of Maithili as a modern language. This is quite different from the prevailing emphasis on Maithili as the ‘natural’ language of Mithila which tied the people and the region together within one common bond of commensurability. Rather, the language emerged in part through colonial philological interest in the region’s vernacular. This is not to say that colonial philology invented Maithili, but that it certainly facilitated the transformation of Maithili as a ‘modern’ language through the production of Maithili grammars and lexicons. As a result, and as is the case with the rise of vernaculars like Bengali and Oriya, Maithili too began to arouse expressions of emotional attachment. Champions of Maithili began looking upon Hindi, and the province of Bihar that patronised it, as impediments that encroached upon Maithili and were determined to discourage its growth. For some, the ‘cause of the literature of Maithili’ was sufficient to justify the demand for a separate province of Mithila. 82
Colonial philology and its push to champion the use of a regional vernacular for administrative and educational purposes in South Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries served as an important catalyst that facilitated the growth and development of modern Maithili language and literature. It is in this context that we can best appreciate the contributions of George Abraham Grierson to the development of modern Maithili. Grierson’s effort to collect, catalogue and present the particulars of Maithili grammar, its literary culture (largely through his collection of Vidyapati’s poems), and his insistence on referring to Maithili as a distinct language is perhaps one of the most significant influences that shaped future claims of Maithili as the language of Mithila. The 1882 edition of Grierson’s study claimed to provide a compilation of ‘nearly all the Maithili Literature’ and yet what constituted this literature was a folk song of King Salhes, a song on the famine of 1873–74 sung by Faturali Lal, a collection of songs by Vidyapati, and another collection of Harak Nath’s compositions. 83 This paltry sampling of Maithili literature dwarfs in comparison to the subsequent ‘rediscovery’ of the Maithili literary past during the twentieth century, but even so the centrality of Grierson’s Chrestomathy as the modern foundation for Maithili language and literature cannot be disregarded. In part, Grierson’s influence on the Maithili language and literary culture is perhaps one of the central reasons behind the subsequent resurgence of a Maithili literary movement. Yet, his comprehension of the linguistic variety within Bihar and Maithili’s place within it was not always entirely clear. 84
During the early decades, as Maithili was emerging as the marker of Maithila people, the Maharaja continued his efforts to project himself as Mithilesa. Certainly, the wealth, authority and influence of the Darbhanga Raj cannot be underestimated; neither can the projection of the Maharaja of Darbhanga as Mithilesa. Indeed, to some extent, Mithila and the Darbhanga Raj were interwoven as part of the same sociocultural fabric. This is also evident in the grandeur of the Raj, as testified by its ‘decaying palace-temple-tank complexes’ which had entertained Viceroys as well as nationalist politicians, while ‘peasants lined the roadside to catch a glimpse’ of the Maharajas.
85
Moving beyond the Maharaja’s palace complexes and circuits of influence, it is evident that a project of asserting a more specifically place-based identity was underway from the early decades of the twentieth century. This projection of Maithila identity was anchored on the use of the Maithili language which fostered a distinct sense of a Maithila community. By the 1940s, the power and emotive appeal of Maithili, as the language of the people of Mithila and a foundational element of their identity and sense of belonging, was becoming increasingly clear to the Darbhanga Maharaja, as is evident from his participation in the Constituent Assembly meetings in 1947. In one such speech before the Constituent Assembly, Kameshwar Singh argued for Mithila’s separate existence primarily on the basis of language and culture:
Perhaps this is not realised today when owing to the amalgamation of these regions for administrative reasons, which has now continued for a long time, Bihar is considered to be a homogenous tract with Hindi as its language. Well, Hindi is our national language and the whole of Bihar knows it; but the fact remains that it is the mother-tongue of none in Bihar. Mother-tongue has so much bearing on cultural and social aspects of life that it indicates the distinctive traits of the body of people who use it. Irrespective of caste, creed or community to which individuals belong, the common mother-tongue establishes between those who speak it, an imperceptible bond which is not easily severable. This is at the root of the demand for linguistic provinces.
86
Yet, he remained cautious and did not challenge the ‘political integrity’ of the province of Bihar’ but rather supported constituting Mithila as a ‘sub-province with autonomous administrative powers’ allowing the Maithila culture, language and tradition to flourish and its inhabitants to ‘secure for themselves adequate representation in the various administrative machinery of the country’. 87 While continuing to argue for Mithila, the demands had shifted significantly. No longer was the Darbhanga Maharaja appealing for the status of a ruling chief of a native state where brahmanical orthodoxy prevailed; rather it was the people and their language that became the basis for an assertion of difference. In this effort, Gangananda Sinha, President of the Mithila Mandal Central Committee, worked closely with Girindramohan Mishra, the Assistant Manager of the Darbhanga Raj, to make a case for Mithila, which resulted in the drafting of a pamphlet titled ‘The Formation of a Separate Province of Mithila’ to be presented to the Constituent Assembly of India in August 1947. 88
Sinha was quite hopeful that in an independent India, his request for the recognition of a separate province based upon linguistic difference would certainly gain approval, particularly because, as the proponents of Mithila were quick to point out, ‘Congress under the British regime did not wait for the government to redistribute provinces on scientific lines’ and had instead created a separate ‘provincial Congress Committee for Bihar from that of Bengal’ in 1908.
89
In hindsight, this move pre-empted the subsequent separation of Bihar and Bengal. Writing to the Constituent Assembly, he stated that ‘In view of the fact that the Indian Nation has gained political power and in accordance with its repeated resolutions is going to constitute provinces on linguistic basis we place our claim for a separate province on those accepted principles.’
90
Similarly, the All India Maithila Mahasabha also presented a memorandum to the States’ Reorganisation Commission in 1953, and the Maithili Sahitya Parishad demanded a separate Mithila state as well.
91
This brief period of pamphleteering for Mithila and petitioning the Indian state culminated with Janakinandan Singh’s memorandum submitted to the States’ Reorganisation Commission in 1954.
92
In these memorials, a sense of Mithila’s difference from Bihar and Magadha, its domination, neglect and subsequently the denial of its existence appear as recurring themes. The proponents of a separate province argued that Mithila risked losing its culture if it did not emerge on its own, for without ‘Mithila Province, there are no hopes for the survival of Maithila customs and traditions’.
93
In a polity where provinces are markers of distinct cultural and linguistic differences, the demand for the creation of a separate province is predicated on the denial of the ‘organic’ existence of another much larger entity of which it is a part. It would therefore be safe to argue that the demand for Mithila was based upon the denial of the pre-existence of a distinct Bihari culture. With this in mind, Gangananda Sinha argued:
There is no such cultural thing in intimate matters of life and belief known as ‘Bihari’-custom and ‘Bihari’-rite. It is Maithila and Non-Maithila custom that guide these matters. It is sheer prejudice and ignorance of facts to refuse to recognise the cultural solidarity and independence of Mithila.
94
This solidarity of Mithila could only be possible if brahmanical orthodoxy, so powerfully cultivated by the Maharaja of Darbhanga, could be cast aside. Recognising this very necessity, Sinha very explicitly stated: ‘The province of Mithila is not meant for any caste—Brahmana or non-Brahmana.’ Rather, as opposed to the restricted admission to the Maithila Mahasabha, in the Mithila envisioned in Sinha’s memorandum it was ‘not caste or creed but merit of every “Maithili-speaking” or “Mithila domiciled” citizen’ that would make them Maithilas. 95 In this quest for a separate province, the articulation of Maithila identity went from one that emphasised caste to one that was not only based on linguistic difference but also sought legitimacy based upon a sense of belonging to a very particular and precisely defined cultural-historical place called Mithila. Therefore, a significantly influential strand of the Mithila movement not only framed Mithila in opposition to Bihar but also aligned itself in opposition to the Darbhanga Raj’s traditional role as the bastion of brahmanical orthodoxy.
Criticising the Darbhanga Raj, therefore, became an important way to facilitate an imagination of a Maithila community that was distinct from the Raj. In what is perhaps one of the earliest manifestations of this criticism, Laksman Jha writes:
The Maharaj of Darbhanga has been trying for long to organise the Brahmans under his leadership. During the British rule, he made efforts to get himself recognised as the ruling chief of Mithila under British tutelage on the model of the chiefs of Rajasthan, Hyderabad, Mysore, Travancore, Kashmir, etc. His labours for the same were still in progress when British rule ended and his Zamindari even was put by the Congress on the agenda for nationalisation. The dream of hereditary rulership of Mithila is gone now, but his efforts to manoeuvre himself into dominating position in its social and political life continue.
96
The fact that Jha was writing in a post-independence India perhaps only serves to underscore the extent of the Maharaja’s influence and the support he had received under colonial rule. But more importantly, this also signals a shift in conceptualising Maithils as a community, one where brahmanical orthodoxy—albeit still an important element—was no longer the primary marker or the organising principle for it. Rather, the early years of post-independence India proved to be the high watermark of the Maithila movement, which saw a burgeoning of pamphlets, petitions and Maithili journals demanding separate statehood largely in anticipation of the formation of the States’ Reorganisation Commission.
In this regard, the Darbhanga-based Mithila Mihir published a series of articles during the early 1950s elaborating on the necessity of separate statehood.
97
Similarly, Laksman Jha, a prominent ideologue of the Mithila movement in the post-independence period, wrote a series of pamphlets, espousing the cause of Mithila and demanding its separation.
98
A dominant theme in these pamphlets was of a cultural crisis for Mithila, which according to him could only be mitigated by its existence as a separate province. Perhaps to add a sense of urgency to the movement, but also to recall the very recent experiences of a subject population under colonial rule, he pointed out:
We are ruled by men at Delhi, Patna and Kathmandu…. Our heartland of the tarai—5,000 sq. miles—is occupied by the Gorakhas of Nepal and the rest is under Delhi. The Gorakhas of Nepal and the Magadhans of Patna are protégés of the men at Delhi.
99
For the Maithila literati, Mithila existed as a fractured regional space whose northernmost portions made up much of south-eastern Nepal. Hence, any discussion of the cultural landscape of Mithila required acknowledging that parts of southern Nepal along with portions of northern Bihar constituted the ancient landscape of Mithila—one that would remain fragmented by modern national boundaries. For Jha, being part of Bihar meant that Mithila had to be subjected to the domination of ‘Hindi and Nagari, the language and script respectively of Delhi and not through Maithili and Mithilaksara, the language and script of Mithila.’ 100 Clearly, Jha had sufficiently distanced himself from the Darbhanga Raj’s conservative definition of Maithila identity. Rather, he was part of a growing coterie who believed that only the speakers of Maithili were Maithilas, and that language rather than caste was to serve as the primary marker of the Maithila people. For instance, Kusheshwar Kumar and Bhola Lal Das expressed similar sentiments in 1929 when they claimed that Maithili was the mother-tongue not only of the Maithila brahmans and Karna kayasthas but also of those like Shakaldvipi brahmans, bhumihars, rajputs, vaisyas, shudras, the entire Hindu society and Muslims, Christians, Bengalis and Marwaris who lived in Mithila. 101
Upon earning a doctorate in history from the University of London in 1950, where he wrote a dissertation titled ‘Mithila and Magadha AD 700–1100’, Laksman Jha returned to Darbhanga and became an extremely vocal participant in the movement for the formation of Mithila. 102 The fact that Jha chose to focus on the sub-regions that together co-constituted Bihar for his dissertation is an indication of his attempt to understand and explain Magadha and Mithila as separate regional spaces. Additionally, it also underscores his belief that these two entities only came together to constitute an administrative unit, rather than a cohesive cultural entity called Bihar. Jha’s statements are perhaps amongst the clearest expressions of the emotionally charged sentiments regarding Mithila, which nonetheless only furthered the sense of cultural crisis that the region faced. For instance, when the Prime Minister of Nepal pointed to the region’s ancient past as evidence of Nepal and India’s long tradition of friendship, it came as a rude awakening for those in Mithila. ‘In 1954’, Laksman Jha recounts, ‘the Gorakha prime minister of Nepal, Matrika Prasad Koirala, a protégé of Jawaharlal Nehru the Kashmiri Prime Minister of India, shocked us in Mithila with his statement that Nepal’s friendship with India began when ‘the Nepalese king Janak’s daughter, Sita, was married to the Indian king Dasarath’s son, Ram!’ 103 The ahistoricity of such a statement is at once obvious. For the people of Mithila, however, this episode not only reminded them that national boundaries divided their cultural-historical space but that such a division could lead to the subsequent loss of history. This was of no minor consequence.
According to the epics and Puranas, the ancient capital city of Mithila ispopularly identified with contemporary Janakpur, located in the Nepal Terai, thus planting the seed of contention as Nepali national history sought to appropriate an ancient mythical past, which also served as the foundational basis for a Maithila history. 104 Beyond puranic references to Janakpur as the ancient capital of Mithila, there are some historical allusions pointing to its importance in Maithila history. For instance, the village of Banauli, which lies six miles southwest of Janakpur, was the place of refuge for Queen Lakhima Devi and the court poet Vidyapati as they fled northward to this region in the fifteenth century, after the Oinavara king Siva Simha abrogated his treaty relationship with the sultan of Delhi and was consequently defeated by the sultan’s army. 105 But like any place of mythical significance, Janakpur, also popularly known as Janakpurdham, has variations of oral tradition and legends attesting to its foundation. Claims that ascetics Chaturbhuj Giri and/or Sur Kisor founded this pilgrimage site which was eventually settled by the ruler of Makwanpur who offered land to the ascetics so that they might provide for the worship of Ram and Sita are the prominent features of the legends associated with the modern foundation of Janakpur. Performance of religious rites may have served as the ostensible reason for making these land grants, but as Richard Burghart has shown, the main purpose of the grant was perhaps the king’s attempt to secure the favour of a deity in the territorial expansion of the kingdom. In other words, ‘conquest was a sacred duty of the king and the king gave land to a deity in order to gain land or retain land for himself’. 106 Janakpur therefore, was settled as part of the political struggle between the Kingdom of Makwanpur and the Shah dynasty of Gorkha during the eighteenth century. Thus, the very political struggle that gave birth to the kingdom of Nepal also brought Janakpur, along with portions of Mithila’s cultural landscape, within its territorial limits. Perhaps because Janakpur was not discovered until the end of the seventeenth century, local traditions in Champaran claimed that the ancient capital of King Janaka’s Mithila was at Janakigraha, located about 10 miles north of Lauriya Nandangarh. 107 Although there are no visible ruins in Janakpur, the place has been widely accepted as ‘the real seat of king Janaka’. 108
Attached to Bihar, but divided by national boundaries, in Jha’s view, Mithila only had to suffer neglect. With regard to the portion of Mithila that, in Jha’s view, lay on the wrong side of the national boundary, he claimed that the Indian state did ‘not mind it remaining in the occupation of the Gorkhas as long as that arrangement helps them’. 109 Similarly, when referring to Bihar, he noted that ‘people generally and the Government surely mean the area (Magadha) south of the Ganga, Mithila falls to the background. Nobody seems to take any care about the people there’. 110 Laksman Jha’s emotionally charged expressions of love and concern for Mithila may have had limited circulation, but these were also paralleled with the concerted efforts at petitioning the Indian government for a separate province of Mithila as I have discussed above. A prominent basis for demanding a separate Mithila was anchored on claims for this region’s organic existence since ancient times, and myths along with language continued to have an enduring appeal while imagining Mithila.
Conclusion
While the formation of Bihar and Orissa in 1912 was seemingly an acknowledgement of Bihar as a distinct historical-cultural space, what followed in its wake was a sense of cultural marginalisation of the people of Mithila. One Maithila intellectual claimed that the establishment of the province of Bihar was in reality akin to the ‘carving out [of] a political and cultural arena for the enterprising Bhojpuri speakers and were [sic.] winning a new province for Hindi or Hindustani language and U.P.ian [United Provinces] or Madhyadeshiya culture under this cover of the “new” language and culture called “Bihari”.’ 111 For others, it meant that the demand for the separation of Bihar from Bengal was nothing more than providing for a ‘lucrative career for certain intelligent and educated persons from Magadha and Bhojpur’. Particularly because this meant they did not have to compete with the ‘galaxy of brilliant Bengalis’ who dominated public life in much of north-eastern India and were a ‘formidable barrier to the intelligent youngmen [sic.] of mofussil areas like Bihar who were ambitious and sought a career’. 112 In these characterisations, there is a very clear awareness of cultural differences between Magadha and Mithila, but additionally, it also alludes to the artificiality of Bihar, by attributing the formation of the province to extremely selfish and narrow self-interests. This sense was so palpable to them that they pointed out that although the ‘Magadhan rulers of Bihar remember rightly with pride the great Mauryan empire’, they had failed to ‘imbibe the virtues of the great Asoka’. 113 It was this sense of being marginalised in the new province of Bihar that instigated the movement for the propagation of a Maithili culture, where language served as the primary medium for projecting difference and constituting a people. This was a marked difference from the early articulations of Mithila as presented by the Darbhanga Maharaja in his case to be recognised as a ruling chief. Additionally, while the Darbhanga rulers’ initial appeal to brahmanical orthodoxy was an attempt to use all-India symbols of belonging to further their personal ambitions, their subsequent emphasis on Maithili language and culture was an acknowledgement that the landscape of Mithila could no longer be imagined without its people, who increasingly began to embrace language as the primary marker of their identity. While identities are in fact often contingent, in this instance we see that what began as a singular voice speaking for Mithila would in a matter of decades be subsumed by a chorus of Maithila people whose demands were primarily articulated in the Maithili language.