How Choose
Between this Africa and the fresh tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and?
(A Far Cry from Africa)
The Africans are the closest to the Indians. They have a rich culture and an ancient oral tradition, but they had no Vedas, no Upanishads, no epics. In their case the response to the crisis of identity shows a full – throated reaction, the “anti racist racism.”3 The galling memory of the foreign hawks preying upon the native chickens still haunts them.
Indian culture, unlike any other culture is receptive not reactive. It has something vital and unifying that stood it in good stead in the wake of various invasions and interactions of varying races, languages and regional traditions. Culture, like a living organism, can sustain and progress only when it shows adaptability to changing situations. This cultural solidarity and its assimilative potency have given our poets a stance different from that of other commonwealth poets.
The history of Indian poetry in English reveals a reasonable reticence over racism but it has constantly shown an accented allegiance to the indigenous culture. Most poets are homing birds, singing native tunes on an alien flute and in the process nativizing it. Toru Dutt is such an outstanding figure in the history of indo-Anglican poetry. She had to live in her earlier years as a spiritual exile in India and later as a real one abroad, due to her conversion of faith from Hinduism to Christianity.
Alienation has significantly affected the Indo-English novel. It has served, as a recurrent motif in quite a few works produced by Indian poets in English. It is also the dominant trait of several poems created by Indo-Anglican poets. The problem of alienation is intimately related to the loss of and quest for one’s identity. Donald Oken rightly, suggests that it is the loss of identity that results in alienation. The disposed personality’s search for identity is, in fact, a commonplace theme in poetical works of Indo-English writers, but for most Indo-English poets the quest has a peculiarly Indian immediacy.
The identity of the individual and that of his nation are inextricably entwined. While probing his individual identity, a poet forges his nation’s identity also the quest for identity in a country like India is, unlike that in west, more socially oriented and less personal. Here the sense of individual coalesces with that of the nation and the individual quest becomes a microcosm for the national identity crisis .The Indo- English poet, situated, as he is, finds himself in a strange position. The horns of his dilemma are due to cultural colonization, notwithstanding his political independence.
The Indian who uses the English language feels to some extent, alienated.4 His development as a poet is sporadic. It is not surprising, therefore, that writers in English are conscious of their Indian ness because, at the bottom of it all, one suspects a crisis of identity. The crisis of identity creates a feeling of isolation and alienation in the mind of a poet. The same was the case with Toru Dutt.
It is noticeable that Toru Dutt is the first interpreter of Indian culture to the west. Toru Dutt’s ballads about ancient legend of Hindustan symbolize the Indian poet’s return to her Indian identity in spite of her crucial fascination for France and England. Toru Dutt’s choice is the result of her urgent need to overcome the crisis of identity caused by her sudden exposure to the western culture, literature and religion at an impressionable age. Apparently, she is not the only poet to turn to India’s historical and legendry past. Her immediate predecessors and contemporaries like Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Ram Sharma and Romesh Chandra Dutt were also attracted by it. The young girl faced the dilemma of triple alienation in her own motherland viz.. Spiritual, social and intellectual alienation.
Her spiritual alienation was the consequence of her being a Christian convert. Before discussing her spiritual alienation and its effect let’s take a look at the causes of conversion of her family to Christianity. Toru belonged to the distinguished Dutt family of Bengal .The Dutts came originally from Ajapur, in the Burdwan district of Bengal. They were Kayastha by caste. Nilmoni Dutt, a patriarch of Dutt family and Toru’s great grandfather, was born on 3rd January 1757. An outstanding personality, he proved to be a fountainhead of inspiration to his off springs. He belonged to the educated Indians of the latter part of the 18th century shortly after the foundation of the British Raj in Bengal. Along with Raja Ram Mohan Roy and others he mixed freely with missionaries. So great was the influence of the latter on Indian life that the new intellectual movement became associated with Christianity. The connection of Toru’s family with missionaries and English enthusiasts thus began three generations before Toru was born.
While one part of his family had settled in Burdwan, Nilmoni’s father moved to Rambagan in Calcutta, where he soon earned for himself the name of a broad minded intellectual. His generosity and hospitality attracted many to his home, and friends flocked around him, enjoying his broad tolerant views.
Nilmoni, had three sons, Rasmoy, Harish, and Pitamber. Govin Chunder, Toru’s grandfather, was an enthusiastic pupil of English literature and an Economist. The British naturally welcomed his enthusiasm for their language and encouraged them to spread his knowledge to other Bengalis. Romesh Chunder Dutt says of Rasmoy, “He had a splendid collection of English books in his house and infused in his sons that strong partiality for English literature”,5 which was inherited by his granddaughters. Unlike his father Nilmoni, Rasmoy opposed expensive pujas, which had improvised his father. Therefore the orthodox Brahmins disliked him. He died on May 14, 1854, two years before Toru was born. He had read the Bible and had persuaded all the ladies in his house to write out the psalms in Bengali. Scott’s commentary was their guide.
The story of the conversion of the Dutt family to Christianity is interesting enough. Details are given in a letter written by Mr. S.W. Mackey, dated 29th June, 1854, when Rasmoy died and was being cremated, his eldest son Kishen was taken ill; soon he developed a fever and died. After his death, Girish, his youngest brother, sent for a missionary Ogilvy Temple to see Girish and his brothers. Girish told the missionaries that his eldest brother Kishen had seen a vision of the other world before he died and believed in Christianity and wanted to be baptized. The bringing in of the missionaries to the bedside of a dying man had been opposed and Girish himself had baptized Kishen, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Kishen had then called his family around him and bore dying testimony to Christ and he sought his family to become Christians.
Dr. Mackey says that the brothers, after the death of their father and eldest brother, discussed the pros and cons of becoming Christians. The wives were against this family conversion, but agreed to stand by their husbands. The delay of eight years before the Dutts became Christians in 1862 was possibly due to the objections of the ladies and the Hindu community.
Govin Chunder had married Kshetramoni Mitter, daughter of Babu Brindaban Mitter. It was due to her gentle influence in the home, her songs and gift of story telling that Toru imbibed a deep love for the ancient ballads of India. She was well versed in Bengali and the Hindu scriptures, myths and legends. Toru wrote to Mlle Clarisse Bader, her French friend: ‘When I hear my mother sing, in the evenings the old songs of the country, I weep almost always.’ This shows her sense of loss or alienated state of mind.
Though Kshetramoni was baptized with Govin Chunder and her children, in the Christchurch, Cornwallis Square, Calcutta, in 1862, together with the other Dutt brothers and wives, the women still retained their Hindu faith; but Kshtramoni later became a most ardent Christian, and as a family Govin chunder, his wife and children practiced the deepest faith in Christianity. But for a while, Govin seemed to have feared an estrangement from his wife and wrote a poem, in which he appeals to his wife to follow in his admiration and worship of Jesus Christ. Here is an extract from this poem which is entitled The Hindu Convert to his Wife:
Like others, wilt thou turn away,
Wilt thou too join the scoffing crowd,
The cold, the heartless, and the proud,
Who curse the hallowed worn,
When, daring idols to disown,
I knelt before the Saviour’s throne? 6
Thus Toru was born and brought up in a Hindu family, which later shifted its loyalty to Christianity and that Toru remained a faithful Christian throughout her life.
Her family’s conversion to Christianity also led to her social alienation. She felt herself estranged from other communities of Bengal because of her denial to live by conservative ideals of feminism of 19th century’s Bengal. Toru’s early years in India were years of estrangement between the family and orthodox Hindu community. The large Dutt family was itself divided and an insurmountable barrier separated the main body and the Christian division. She wishes that her grandmother had become a Christian but ‘she is so much better than many who profess to be Christians’. Anybody can understand her mental state, which has suffered such isolation.
Toru becomes disappointed at times while making her assessment of Calcutta and the Indian Christians. In one of her letters she wrote, “Calcutta is a sink of inequity; not only among the Hindus (among whom were many worth people) but even among the Bengali Christians, the morals were so low. The thing that made her sad was that Hindus have a very bad idea of Christianity and only think it a cloak, which some people take to commit under its cover a multitude of sins. She also complains, ‘the manners of Bengali Christian society (with very few exceptions) are such as would sadden the merriest heart and dishearten the most hopeful’.7
It seems as if she was unable to correlate herself with the then manners of society. That creates a feeling of isolation and in one of her translations she expresses herself:
Life struck me with fright-
Full of chances and pain,
So I hugged with delight
The drudge’s hard chain;
One must eat, - yet I die,
Like a bird with clipped wing,
Sing –said God in reply
Chant poor little thing. 8
Above extract is taken from ‘A Sheaf Gleaned In French Fields’ and it carries an intense personal tone. The lonely life of the poetess on this earth, her sickness and anguish is nicely pictured in it.
Only a tree that has driven deep roots into the soil could put forth-ample foliage and yield abundant fruit. After facing so much alienation and isolation in India the Dutt family left for Europe in 1869, as Govin Chunder, the head of the family determined to give his children the advantage of foreign travel and education. Toru and her elder sister Aru were the first Bengali girls to cross the ‘black waters’, as it was against the social customs of that time Bengal.
Toru and her family spent the time before they sailed for Europe in the winter of 1869 entirely in Calcutta between theirs two homes in Rambagan and Baugmaree, near Belgachia. Toru especially loved the garden house and she described it in many of her later poems. She loved above all the majestic trees:
The sunset’s beauty to disclose
The bamboo boughs that sway and swing
`Neath bulbuls as the south wind blows
The mango-tope, a close dark ring,
Home of the rooks and clamorous crows,
The champac, bok, and South- sea pine,
The nagessur with pendant flowers
Like ear-rings---and the forest vine
That clinging over all, embowers,
The sirish famed in Sanscrit song
Which rural maidens love to wear,
The peepul gaint-like and strong,
The bramble with its matted hair,
All these, and thousands, thousands more,
With helmet red, or golden crown,
Or green tiara, rose before
The youth in evening’s shadow brown.9
Only someone who had watched the beautiful trees of India for hours and loved them could have written so accurate a description of them. There are frequent descriptions of Indian scenery in her poems that make us realize how deeply she loved India and its natural phenomenon.
Toru’s idyllic childhood in the land of her birth was to mature abroad. In France and England, Aru and Toru under the fostering care of their parents were able to live an isolated, but also a free life. “The free airs of Europe, and the free life, are things, not to be had here. Toru wrote later, recalling her days in England, and added- “We cannot stir out from our garden without being stared at or having sunstroke.”10 These remarks of Toru Dutt rightly show her frustration and disappointment due to the hostility of orthodox Hindus who regarded the conversion of the Dutt’s to Christianity as an act of treachery, an unpardonable sin.11 In fact, this conversion is not to be seen as what Erik Erickson calls an identity crisis, but a healthy synthesis of two different levels of consciousness which in the end became a fine spring of poetic fervour It also symbolizes the union of the western and eastern cultural and moral values and visions. 12
Toru’s acquaintance with and fascination for, the French and English literature led to her intellectual alienation. The implementation of western educational system in the first quarter of the 19th century inaugurated the process of modernization in all spheres of Indian life. It encouraged, in particular, a new awareness about woman so far regarded to be an inferior parasitic unit as having an independent personality. Toru Dutt, the first Indian poet was the product of this new awareness. She belonged to the family that cherished the western ideal of free womanhood. She came in direct contact with the living literary tradition of the West through her stay abroad.
In France the Dutts landed at Marilles and went on to Nice where they stayed until the spring of 1870. Here Toru and Aru attended a pensionnat where they assiduously studied French, soon becoming scholars in language. Toru and Aru, now really began to dive into French literature. The revolution also fascinated Toru. The love of freedom was rampant in the literature of the day and George Sand’s novel of women’s emancipation was just what India wanted. Toru’s affection for France was such that she even wished to become a French girl. She wrote in her diary that she was an ‘indomitable and steadfast French woman.’13
Paris fascinated Govin Chunder, who resolved to stay in the capital of the world- for Paris is indeed, the greatest of all cities in point of beauty, comfort and climate and cleanliness taken all in all. But their visit could not have been for long, although Harihar Das says ‘After a prolonged stay they left for England’.
Though the Dutt’s stay in France was only for a few months, Toru’s love for the country was not limited to the mere fascination of the language or the beauty of the country. As Mlle Clarisse Bader later remarked ‘She loved our country and showed this love when France was in agony, by her sympathy during the Franco- Prussian war. Toru was but fourteen at that time, but she took an active interest in French politics and seemed averse to the then current political leader and his policy. She bemoaned France’s fate in her articles. 14
When the war commenced, Toru wrote, ‘all my heart was with France.’ She was so interested in French history that she translated Victor Hugo’s speech delivered in the French Legislative Assembly in 1851, and published the translation under the title A Scene From Contemporary History, in the Bengal magazine, in which Victor Hugo strongly condemned the proposal to bring about some constitutional changes which would more or less crown Louis Napoleon as the virtual king of France. Toru seemed to have strongly supported Victor Hugo’s views. Another article appeared in the Bengal magazine with a translation of M. Theirs speech in 1870 opposing the proposal of France declaring war against Prussian king. That a mere girl should have become so much interested in the history of a foreign country shows how much a French girl Toru had herself become.
In her Journal dated 29th and 30th January, 1871, Toru expresses her love for France which was almost identical with that of a French patriot ‘during the few days we remained in Paris, how b
eautiful it was! What streets! What a magnificent army! But now how fallen it is ….. .’Toru felt that the downfall of France was retribution by God for her irreligion. ‘Oh France, how thou art brought low! ….. Poor, poor France, how my heart bleeds for thee.’15 Toru’s love for France is further evident in the poem she wrote about the momentous year 1870, at the young age of fifteen, which reveals her maturity of mind :
Head of the human column, thus
Ever in swoon wilt thou remain?
Thought, Freedom, truth, quenched ominous,
Whence then shall Hope arise for us,
Plunged in the darkness all again? 16
It shows that Toru was deeply touched by the language, the people, and the landscape of France. She started to feel herself more French then Indian. At that time she was not much acquainted with India’s rich cultural or historical past. She was not much aware of the political or social condition of India, her motherland. From France, the Dutts went to England, where Toru and Aru attended Higher Lectures for Women with much enthusiasm.
In September 1873, the family returned to Calcutta, where they divided their time between the city house at Rambagan and the garden house Baugmaree. From here Toru wrote 53 letters to her friend Mary Martin. She was, despite her longing to return to Europe, never to leave her native town again.
The domestic life of the Dutts was quit and regulated. Mamma sang songs and Toru remembered with nostalgia the time when the three children had listened to their mother. Her poem Sita gives an idea of the happy childhood they spent in Calcutta. The poem is lent poignancy by the fact that the two children Toru’s brother Abju and sister Aru, were no longer at the time it was written.
The ballad beautifully portrays the isolation and banishment of Sita. The autobiographical touch is unmistakable in them. One can say that after conversion Toru’s family felt the same kind of isolation as had been felt by Sita and her children. No wonder Toru wept, always, on hearing the ancient lays chanted by her mother, every evening. The poem reflects the mental state of Toru Dutt at that time specially the last few lines express her longing for the reunion of her family once again.
Toru Dutt Page 10