An Ideology of Indianness: The Construction of Colonial/Communal Stereotypes in the Poems of Henry Derozio

Studies in History

Volumn 20, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 167-187

  Chaudhuri, Rosinka ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 23744468196     PISSN: 02576430     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/025764300402000201     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Derozio, ‘Enchantress of the Cave,’ Poems, Calcutta, 1827, p. 66.
2. Bhudev Mukhopadhyay, Samajik Prabandha, ed. Jahnabi Kumar Chakrabarti, Calcutta, 1981, p. 14.
3. Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, Delhi, 1990, p. 209.
4. Thomas Edwards, Henry Derozio, The Eurasian Poet, Teacher, and Journalist, Calcutta, 1884, p. 12.
5. Thomas Benson Lawrence, English Poetry in India, being biographical and critical notices of Anglo-Indian poets with copious extracts from their writings, Calcutta, 1869, pp. 102–3.
6. Madhusudan Dutt, Rizia, in Madhusudan Rachanabali, Calcutta, 1993, p. 666.
7. For a detailed discussion of these poems in the context of an emergent nationalism, see Rosinka Chaudhuri, Gentlemen Poets in Colonial Bengal: Emergent Nationalism and the Orientalist Project, Calcutta, 2002.
8. That Burns's line ‘For a’ that man to man, the world o'er,/Shall brothers be, for a' that' was a great favourite with Derozio and among the Derozians is attested to by Alexander Duff in India Missions, Edinburgh, 1839, p. 615. In the last article he ever wrote in the ‘East Indian’, on 17 December 1831, Derozio pleaded for Hindu-East Indian amity, and used the same line from Burns to make his point: ‘The East-Indians complain of suffering from proscription—is it for them to proscribe …. It is their best interest to unite and cooperate with the other native inhabitants of India … “Man to man the world o'er/Shall brothers be for a' that”.’
9. Thomas Edwards, Henry Derozio: The Eurasian Poet, Teacher, and Journalist, Calcutta, 1884, p. 68.
10. Sumit Sarkar, A Critique of Colonial India, Calcutta, 2000, p. 77.
11. Sibnath Sastri, Ramtanu Lahiri O Tatkalin Bangal Samaj, Calcutta, 1957, p. 39, 40.
12. Sarkar, A Critique, pp. 77–78, 20, 40.
13. See Nares Chandra Sengupta, ed., Selections from the Writings of Hurrish Chunder Mookerji Compiled from the Hindu Patriot, Calcutta, 2003.
14. Pandey, The Construction of Communalism, p. 15.
15. See Elleke Boehmer, Empire, The National, and the Postcolonial 1890–1920, Oxford, 2002, p. 112.
16. In 1871, forty years after Derozio's death, Owen Aratoon compiled The Poetical Works of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, after which we have the 1907 edition edited by B.B. Shah of the
17. Christian Burial Board; both are rare books. Shah's is the last complete edition of Derozio's work. Following this, F. Bradley-Birt compiled, in 1923, a selection of Derozio's poetry for Oxford University Press that was reissued in 1980 with a new introduction by R.K. Dasgupta. This selection, while being the most widely read and easily available, has done irreparable harm to Derozio's cause by presenting a limited range of short lyrics and sonnets on romantic and idealistic themes while leaving out the longer poems on historical subjects as well the notes and epigraphs appended to them: precisely those elements, in fact, which provide a cultural context and historical force to his work.
18. Derozio, Poems, p. 88, 89–90.
19. Derozio, Poems., p. 92.
20. Derozio, The Fakeer of Jungheera, Calcutta, 1828, p. 121.
21. For instance, Byron in the Giaour wrote of ‘The mountains of thy native land!’ and again— ‘Yet died he by a stranger's hand,/And stranger in his native land’, while Burns wrote in ‘A Red, Red Rose’: ‘Now a’ is done that men can do,/And a' is done in vain:/My Love and Native Land fareweel, /For I mann cross the main, my dear,/For I mann cross the main.’
22. This poem is discussed in detail in Chaudhuri, Gentlemen Poets, pp. 39–51.
23. Derozio, Poems, p. 70.
24. Thomas Campbell, ‘Pleasures of Hope,’ in J. Logie Robertson, ed., Poetical Works, London, 1907, pp. 18–19.
25. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, p. 27.
26. The Works of Sir William Jones with the Life of the Author by Lord Teignmouth, London, 1807, Vol. III, p. 32.
27. The eminent Scottish historian William Robertson's Disquisition Concerning Ancient India, London, 1791, inspired by the publication of the Asiatick Researches, Calcutta, 1788, was even more emphatic than Jones in its proclamation of the greatness of ancient Hindu civilization.
28. See, for instance, George Foster, Mythology of the Hindus, London, 1875
29. Asiatic Annual Register, Vol. I, pp. 1–32.
30. Bipan Chandra, ‘Communalism and the National Movement’, in Mushirul Hasan, ed., Communal and Pan-Islamic Trends in Colonial India, Delhi, 1981, p. 187.
31. Kasiprasad Ghosh, Shair, Calcutta, 1830, Preface (no page number).
32. Derozio, Poems, p. 43.
33. Cited in Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims 1871–1906: A Quest for Identity, Delhi, 1981, p. xi.
34. C.A. Bayly, ‘The Pre-history of “Communalism”? Religious Conflict in India, 1700–1860’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 19:2, 1985, pp. 177–78, 194.
35. Muzaffar Alam and Seema Alavi, Introduction to A European Experience of the Mughal Orient: I'Jazi-i Arsalānī (Persian Letters, 1773–1779) of Antoine-Louis Henri Polier, Delhi, 2001, pp. 65, 67.
36. J.S. Grewal, Muslim Rule in India: The Assessments of British Historians, Delhi, 1970, p. 5.
37. Charles Hamilton, An Historical Relation of the Origin, Progress, and Final Dissolution of the Government of the Rohilla Afghans in the Northern Provinces of Hindostan, London, 1787, p. xviii.
38. Thomas Maurice, Memoirs of the Author of Indian Antiquities, London, 1819–22, Vol. I, p. 102.
39. Thomas Maurice, Modern History of Hindostan, London, 1802, pp. 180, 181, 304.
40. Charles Grant, Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, Particularly with Respect to Morals; and on the Means of Improving it, London, 1813, p. 74.
41. Kasiprasad Ghosh wrote an essay, ‘Critical remarks on the first four chapters of Mr Mill's History of British India,’ that was first presented at the Hindu College prize distribution in 1828, and subsequently published in the Government Gazette of 14 February 1828, as well as in the Asiatic Journal.
42. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, J. Bury, ed., London, 1896–1900, Vol. V, p. 493.
43. Shivarama Padikkal, ‘The Emergence of the Novel in India,’ in T. Niranjana, P. Sudhir and V. Dhareshwar, eds, Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India’, Calcutta, 1993, p. 227.
44. Ranjit Hoskote, ‘E.B. Havell and A.K. Coomaraswamy,’ Art India, Vol. 6:2
45. Quarter 2, 2001, p. 26.
46. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, New Delhi, 1995, p. 94, 94, 102.
47. Derozio, the Fakeer of Jungheeraip. 138.
48. Derozio, the Fakeer of Jungheerai, p. 140.