Abstract
Vernacular word assumed a subversive role in early twentieth-century Bengal. The emergence of Bengali public sphere and the agitation against the partition of Bengal created a detrimental situation in which vernacular words became dangerous, and threatening, to the stability of the British Raj. Subversive vernacular words formed a sub-text in various media that garnered public support against the Raj and in favour of the acts of opposition against the Raj. The present research article evaluates a few of the dramatic texts in print to analyse how the sub-text vernacular word was circulated and how it affected the public mind against the British Raj.
Vernacular word assumed a subversive role at the beginning of the twentieth century in Bengal. When applied critically, it often showed demonstrative prospects, too. This feature was quite potent, particularly in the backdrop of the emergent Bengali public sphere, the foment of the swadeshi and the boycott agitation of the early twentieth century. The emergence of the public sphere in Bengal resulted in public opinion attaining the status of an arbiter in political and social matters of the day. Both the colonial government and its reviewer constantly tried to win public opinion over to their side. Under such circumstances, the ideas expressed in the vernacular (mostly circulated by native critics of the colonial government) held the possibility of persuading public opinion in favour of the critics of the colonial government.
The agitation in progress against the partition of Bengal 1 created an equally critical situation in which the vernacular word appeared as intrinsically opposed to the stability of the British Raj. The threat posed by the vernacular word lay in the negative image of the British Raj it could foster in the public mind. The vernacular words with such a subversive tendency formed a sub-text in various media deployed by the critics of the colonial government to garner public support against the government. Various media, like songs, newspapers, fiction and non-fictions, deployed during this age carried some dangerous vernacular words as sub-texts. In this article, I will evaluate a few of the dramatic texts in print to analyse how the sub-text vernacular word was circulated, and how it affected the public mind against the British Raj.
The printed librettos of the plays or the playbooks formed an essential part of the reading culture of Bengal during the swadeshi and the boycott agitation. Public stage performers and associates published their work to guide amateur and vaudeville performers. But once printed, it transcended the boundary chalked by its inceptors. Subject to reading, the text could be interpreted differently by the readers. This redefined their relationship with power and with their community, 2 which was affected by few keywords frequently used in the playbooks. Keywords, as the vocabulary of a culture and of a society in each period, 3 served as the repository of political nationalist vocabulary. Though a private act, the colonial authority perceived the reading of these keywords as a potential threat to their authority as it made the explosive keywords accessible (hence the political ideology associated with them) to the public. Doubly so, because the performative faculties of the drama books could be asserted. The ability of the printed words of the drama books to be ‘transmuted into other forms’ 4 rendered it troublesome for the colonial authorities.
Old Words, New Meaning: An Enquiry into the Emergence of the Keywords
In our daily transactions, a word forces itself on our attention because ‘the problems of its meanings’ are inseparably associated with the problems it is ‘used to discuss’. 5 In present times, the word twittering has acquired a social significance. 6 The changing value or mores of the word can be closely associated with the changing nature of the problems that the word is presently employed to address, as in the case of the word twitter. The shift from the real world to the virtual world (the cyber world) has shifted the public forum of discussion and debate. The changed nature of problems addressed by the word has significantly altered the value that is affixed to it. The word has now acquired a new connotation of being the public voice/opinion. Thus, a word of old has acquired a new value form in response to the cultural context. A transformation of similar import also became visible in twentieth century Bengal under the impact of the culture of nationalism.
The people of Bengal started speaking a different language at the beginning of the century. Surprisingly, the words that were used were not new, but the value and meaning that were attached to them changed radically. A group of words like swadeshi, bideshi, feringhi, jaban and mlechcha acquired a new status within contemporary lingo. The change in meaning in these chosen words came along due to the emergence of a new tradition within the parameters of which these words were made to address problems/issues previously held beyond their scope.
At the turn of the century, indigenous tradition and Western tradition had worked their way into the mentality of the people as they contested with each other for favourable public opinion. Advocates of each tradition shared different motives of promotion: First, legitimise colonial administration by demonstrating that the colonised were weak and immoral; second, the colonised wanted to demonstrate the reverse. Problems became evident when the contest of the traditions, in their new format, began to be fought by the suppressors (colonisers) and the people in the opposition (colonised). Under the impulse of the perceived change, there arose a problem/necessity of identifying national from alien that needed to be addressed. Words began to be deployed to address and explain the problem so that the colonisers and the colonised could fight their case before the public and convince them. A group of words gained importance in the process of tackling the problem/necessity of the time and were converted into the keywords of the contemporary political culture of opposition and agitation.
The word swadeshi emerged as the jargon of the swadeshi political culture. It was derived from the word swadesh, which meant one’s own land or country. However, during this time, the connotative framework of the word widened. It could either take the form of an emotion related to one’s country or refer to an economic system or even a government system. The word, thus, incorporated multiple meanings within its fold. The word was deployed to address the problem of sorting national from alien, and it gradually absorbed the problem into its meaning. Henceforth, the word swadeshi became a synonym for everything that was different from the Western tradition and was a product of the indigenous tradition.
The meaning of the word swadeshi was also referential, as its connotation, to be comprehensible, had to be juxtaposed with a connotative ‘other’. Every word in a language has its own meaning. ‘They are counter-directional in that one term when intensified denotes a higher value of the relevant property, while the other term when intensified denotes a lower value’. 7 Just as swadeshi stood for the indigenous tradition, the word bideshi denoted everything associated with the Western tradition. By virtue of the connotative framework of the words, influenced by the ongoing agitation, the value and meaning of the word bideshi became Western-ness personified.
The use of the words mleccha and jaban to mean ‘other’ in the most generic sense, when deployed to address the problem of identifying the national from alien, did so with ease, the same fate befell the word feringhi. Once employed to denote a Frank and generically used to denote all foreigners while tackling the swadeshi problem/necessity of identity, it subsumed the value assigned to an alien.
Publicising and Housing Keywords: Root of Trouble
Books were of explosive potential as they could store and disseminate ideas. The matter of the printed texts gave the government a partial insight into the thinking process of Indians.
8
The government feared the texts because their reading could influence the readers to be critical of the image of the government. Books had the potential to put ideas into a reader’s mind, as the literary policemen claimed. A skilful group of librarians, and Bengali translators, were employed to keep a record of their masters. They reported every tendency in any book that had the potential to destroy the image and stability of the Raj. Based on such reports, the government concluded:
[P]ublication … contain words of the nature … [that] have a tendency to bring into hatred and contempt His Majesty or the Government established by law in British India, or the administration of justice in British India, or any class or section of His Majesty’s subjects, or to excite disaffection towards His Majesty or the said Government.
9
From the nineteenth century, attempts were made to curb the spread of sedition through printed texts by legislating acts that would enable the government to keep track of the published material, author and publishers. The Press Regulation and Registration of Books Act XXV of 1867 (amended by Act X of 1890) and later the Press Act I of 1910 empowered authorities to monitor the printed texts, books, pamphlets, sheets of music, charts, maps and so on, published in the province. Section 4, Subsection 1, of the Press Act (of 1910) was particularly dedicated to detecting and identifying seditious themes in books. Once detected and identified, printed matter of such seditious tendency was firmly dealt with under Section 12, Subsection 1, of the Act, whereby such publications were proscribed by Her Majesty’s government. The publications were, precisely, declared illegal/forbidden, and any attempt to own or read a copy of such books being decidedly declared punishable by law. Thus, by the twentieth century, the colonial government had harnessed its weapon to stamp out all disloyal expressions, in words and passages, from the printed texts that could threaten the stability of the Raj.
Enacting Keyword: Route of Trouble
Colonial officials, who resolutely scanned all printed material for words of sedition, detected a strong threat from printed drama books. It was noted that ‘About 60 to 70 per cent of the new plays are published as books’. 10 What particularly troubled the government were the printed plays that were performed. A list of proscribed drama books in print was prepared by the Special Branch of the Police Department of the government in 1911 to be circulated among district offices of the government. The prime aim of these official notes was to communicate to all district magistrates, police stations and public libraries the dramatic literature that they were empowered to seize under the Press Act I of 1910. The Special Branch of the Bengal, Eastern Bengal and Assam governments prepared two types of lists. One contained the names of all the drama books that stood forfeited to Her Majesty’s government. The other listed all those plays that were proscribed under the Press Act, 1910, and the Dramatic Performance Act XIX (DPA) of 1876. A closer examination shows the list was interchangeable. The exchanged notes and circulars reveal that there were 11 plays that were categorised as the worst of the lot. The Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal, C.J. Stevenson-Moore, in his communication to all district officers and police, appended the list of 11 plays in the margin, which he held to be ‘objectionable’ and further directed the officials that ‘copies of the book containing the plays may, wherever found, be seized, and that should an attempt be made to stage the plays the orders of government should at once be obtained for their prohibition’. 11
The 11 plays that the list noted included historical playbooks such as Seraj-ud-Dowlah, 12 Mir Kasim, 13 Palasir Prayaschitta, 14 Nanda Kumar, 15 Chhatrapati, 16 Sivaji and Pratapaditya. 17 The list also referred to social plays such as Samaj, 18 Sansar 19 and Karmafal 20 as well as farces like Dada-o-Didi. 21 Apart from these 11 drama texts, other literature, such as Asha Kuhakini, Durgasur, Holo Ki, Matri Puja, Mira Uddhar, Ranajiter Jiban Jajna and Surath Uddhar Gitabhinay, was brought under surveillance from time to time. In old age, the dramas were widely printed to facilitate performances. The colonial government feared even performances of old plays could publicise a few words that, read in the contemporary context, could appeal to anti-government feelings.
Dramatic literature with ‘objectionable’ tendencies had to be policed constantly so that the circulation of words or passages remotely suggestive of sedition could not get to the public. Services of eminent Bengali scholars were obtained for literary policing. Thus, R.B. Kali Prasanna Ghosh, an eminent Bengali scholar, in the winters of 1908, was asked by the Commissioner of the Dacca division to translate and prepare a note on the popular drama book Seraj-ud-Dowlah by Girish Chandra Ghosh. While preparing the note, the scholar pointed out the exact passages and words that qualified as a source of propaganda for the swadeshi cause. The scholar remarked that the book was ‘read and re-read’ in the ‘village committees of the political agitators’, 22 a practice that could prove dangerous for the Raj. He foresaw the danger that lay not in its being a drama of ‘histrionic and literary merit’, 23 but because it freely made use of various keywords to propagandistically demonstrate the circumstances under which Seraj was defeated at Plassey, the keywords Feringhi and Swadeshi appeared repeatedly in the text. The allusions to such keywords, the scholar pointed out, undermined ‘the faith of the ordinary people in the majesty and the permanency of the English Government’, 24 by demonstrating how it was ‘brought into existence by a handful of trading Firinghis, through chicanery, forgery and various other false devices’. In contrast, the dramatic personae comprising Siraj, and his trusted followers Mir Madan and Mohan Lal, were used to exalt them as keyword swadeshi and to associate with them epithets such as ‘generous-hearted’, ‘hero of almost spotless character’ and ‘patriotic’.
The drama Matripuja by Kunja Bihari Gangopadhayay was similarly held dangerous and brought to the court of law. The drama text, based on a mythological story depicting the battle between the demons Sumbha–Nisumbha and the Gods for their kingdom, used words like Crurjan and Surendra, Tilak, Gangadhar, Bipin, Rabi and Aswini Coomar. Based on the abstract prepared by the Librarian of the Bengal Library, the colonial government referred the matter to the Legal Remembrancer. Advocate-General opined that the names Surendra, Tilak, Gangadhar, Bipin, Rabi and Aswini Coomar (p. 163 of the book), though used to refer to various leaders of the Devas or Gods, had no reference in the Chandi or Markandya Purana from which the story was supposedly adapted. Hence, according to him, it was beyond doubt that they were used in the text to refer to the Indian leaders of ‘political opinion and thought at the present time’. 25 Similarly, the expression Crurjan appearing in the drama book was considered by the Legal Remembrancer to have some surreptitious allusion. The words Crur used as an adjective in Bengali meant nishthur 26 [cruel], hinsra [violent] and khal [imposture]. The word Crurjan used as a noun meant a person who was cruel, violent and an imposter. The word that appeared on p. 176 of the book Matripuja, the Legal Advisor believed, though literally meaning a wicked person, was used to refer to Lord Curzon. The words Devas [Gods] and Asuras [demons] used in the book were also considered to be troublesome keywords. The Government Translator surmised: ‘any person who reads the book cannot come to any other conclusion than that “demons” means the English, and “Gods” the Indians’. 27
Similar seditious tendencies were detected in the play Mira Uddhar
28
and the book Asha Kuhakini. In a note prepared by the Librarian of the Bengal Library to be supplied to the government of Bengal, it was noted that the book contained speeches/words which,
though appropriate from a dramatic point of view as applied by the Afridis, to their enemies the English, must in the present state of public feeling in the country, be regarded as objectionable, and were clearly introduced by the author to pander to the taste of those who are seditiously inclined.
29
The keywords circulated by the printed drama books were not unique to them, nor were they a novelty in the native publications, particularly the vernacular publications, of the time. Then what provoked such censures and the reason for such measures of admonition was the format in which the keywords were stored and circulated by the dramatic publications. The government felt the need to ban the book so that the public could be persuaded to surrender to it all the copies of the book available in the market. The press type was also broken to prevent future printing and circulation of the book. Public libraries too were warned against such seditious literature and were directed to consult the list of books sent to the district magistrate before giving a book a place on their shelf. The government adopted every known and possible precaution against the availability of publications that contained seditious keywords in a format that could be disseminated amongst the public in ways other than reading. Every attempt was made to thwart the possession of the book by the reading public, who intended to perform any play before the masses. The seriousness of the possibility became clear to the colonial government when the weekly reports sent by the local police to the Director of Criminal Intelligence and the Fortnightly reports of the provincial governments to the Home Department, Government of India, began to refer to the performance of plays, proscribed in Calcutta, 30 in the mufassals and villages of the Bengal and Eastern Bengal and Assam provinces, 31 mostly in an unexpurgated form, including words and speeches declared seditious by the government. The drama books interdicted formally and, often, informally for the anti-government words/speeches/passages that they contained were read, re-read and performed in the mufassal, villages and wherever a hasty stage could be set up. 32 In particular, the play Seraj-ud-Dowlah by Girish Chandra Ghosh in print became a matter of great concern for the government.
Conclusion
Therefore, playbooks were proscribed and forfeited to the government under Section 12 of the Indian Press Act of 1910. Literary censorship was applied in its most stringent form to root out the source (i.e., the playbook), wherefrom the keywords could be read and visually rendered. Despite such stringency, playbooks surreptitiously circulated in the villages and mufassals of both the provinces and in Calcutta. The visual representation of the seditious keywords stored in the books that ensued in Bengal, Eastern Bengal and Assam paved the way for the development of a common lingo. Languages are sounds that gain meaning through the association of social emotions with them. Thus, every keyword used in the dramatic librettos had a specific emotion associated with it. This served as a connector, triggering common emotions among men reading, hearing and often visualising the keywords. A community was engendered in swadeshi Bengal that derived its sustenance from the representation (aural and gestural) of words that expressed emotions they feared to express in their daily life, bounded by colonial surveillance. A secret passageway was opened by the keywords. People talked and shared emotions through that passage, hidden from the prying eyes of the Raj. Hidden from reconnaissance, the passage joined the people in a bond exclusive in nature and nationalist in tendency. Layers were laid on its body, developing a unity that emerged in varied shades.