Those Days by Sunil
Gangopadhyay leaves you astounded. Astounded that giants like Ishwar
Chandra Vidyasagar and Dwarkanath and Debendra Nath Tagore(Grandfather
and Father respectively of Rabindra Nath Tagore) with their towering
personalities actually existed and shaped their times. Astounded also
at the obscurantism that prevailed in the mid nineteenth century Bengal
– all in the name of preserving the traditions and the Shastras.
The book is a mixture of history and fiction and is woven in such a
way and you find it difficult to imagine where history ands and fiction
begins. Sunil Gangopadhay has undoubtedly spent much time and research
to recreate the history of nineteenth century Bengal in such a
fascinating way. The significance of the book lies as much in its
narrative power and the depth of its characters as the fact that many
of the events of that era, even though they occurred in Bengal impacted
the whole of India.
In the book, the immense wealth of the zamindars is
juxtaposed with their lifestyles - either given over to the pleasures
of the flesh or to intellectual pursuits as in the case of the two
principal characters, Nabinkumar - supposedly based on the character of
Kali Prasanna Singha, a Bengali aristocrat and translator of the Mahabharata into Bengali, and his elder brother Ganga.
The other extreme is exemplified by the likes of Nawab Wajid Ali
Shah, whose kingdom is annexed by the British and is exiled into
Calcutta in all pomp and splendor as the Nawab reclining in his palki is busy composing Babul Mora¸ which of course decades later would be immortalized by K.L.Saigal.
Although the book is principally the story of Nabinkumar and his
brother and their families, it is the peripheral themes and the
peripheral characters that will stay and haunt you long after the last
page in the book has been turned. The situation of the child widows of
the time, deported for life to Benares and often picked up as
mistresses by wealthy men of the time, the practices of the kulin Brahmins
of the time; who made a living out of multiple marriages even as
doddering old men, because of the custom that a unwed woman was doomed
will stay with the reader for long. As will the personality of Ishwar
Chandra Vidyasagar, a man known far less than he deserves to be known.
The lifelong battles of Vidyasagar, a conservative Brahmin in many
other ways, to create an environment in which women could be educated
and go to school and also to ensure that they could remarry if they
were widowed were not easy battles to fight. In fact, Vidyasagar's
contribution to women’s education and widow remarriage was at the same
level as Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s contribution to the abolition of Sati and
religious obscurantism then prevalent. Providing even treatment to the
British colonialists of the time, Sunil Gangopadhyay candidly admits
that both Ram Mohan Roy and Vidyasagar succeeded largely because of the
presence of a supportive group of progressive western scholars and administrators in British India like David Hare and John Bethune. Equally candidly the book describes the untold cruelty of the White Indigo planters and the atrocities they committed.
Although a work of fiction at face value, Those Days is a
landmark book for reminding us afresh that history is not about
politics, kings and queens and rulers and their reigns. That is what we
mostly learn about in our history classes in school. Rather history is
more about those apolitical giants, often little known if not totally
forgotten who shaped our society and perhaps our destiny. It is on
their giant and broad shoulders that we rest today and not on the
pygmies we so often see surrounding us today.
- Thank You! We appreciate your effort.