“East Indian” Cosmopolitanism: Henry Derozio’s Fakeer of Jungheera and the Birth of Indian Modernity

Abstract

In this chapter the legacy of Henry Vivian Louis Derozio (1809–1831) is re-examined through an extended interpretation of The Fakeer of Jungheera (1828), his 2,050 line poem, published when he was barely 19. What makes this poem notable, even unique, is that it is the first long poem written by any Indian in the English language. But, more remarkably, it is also an intriguing conjuncture of a complex set of relations at the very beginnings of modern India: British colonialism and local resistance, the English language and Indian vernaculars, native and European miscegenation, Christian missionaries and Hindu reformers, pre-nationalism and the imagining of India, evolving gender and patriarchal norms, Hindu–Muslim negotiations, sati and colonial power, to name a few. Though the poem is justifiably famous, it has hardly received the detailed attention that it deserves. My purpose here, however, extends beyond a reading of The Fakeer of Jungheera. I wish to argue that the conventional ways in which Derozio is understood—as a pioneer of Indian modernity and a proto-nationalist—are actually insufficient if not misleading. They throw, as it were, a blanket over not only his singular career, but on the whole phenomenon of what I call “East Indian cosmopolitanism.” I argue that the “national” as a valid social or cultural space was not yet available, that it came into being later, after Derozio’s time. Those who consider him a “national” poet are performing a kind of back-projection that is not borne out by the work. On the other hand, the kind of cosmopolitanism that his writings and life embody, was also short lived, based on the opportunities of the early colonial period, which shrunk into more restricted binaries with the establishment of British paramountcy. Yet, such “East Indian cosmopolitanism” was very important for the formation of public culture in India and presaged by many decades the argumentative English-speaking class and English-language media in India. I take “East Indians” at their own definition and evaluation as people of mixed race who wished to distinguish themselves certainly from the Indians and, per force, from the Europeans too. Derozio’s newspaper, which claimed to be the voice of this community, was itself The East Indian. The history of how Derozio has been read shows that he has been primarily seen as a representative of the Anglo-Indian (Eurasian) community, without reference to his unique and short-lived cosmopolitanism. East Indian cosmopolitanism is thus one of those “lost” modes of being which were replaced and overwritten by others. By recovering it, we add a vital component to our knowledge of how colonialism in its early days gave rise to a new society and consciousness in India.