Spatial imagination in colonial Bengal

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay traces a changing geo-politics brought about by the forces of Western colonisation. It maps the intellectual pathways two Bengalis – Raja Rammohun Roy and Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar – chalked out in their negotiations with real and mythical spaces of the East and the West. The fashioning of their own self-identities then becomes a part of this process. The evolution of Roy’s analytical frame, and Vidyasagar’s literary frame for examining and romancing the West is laid out, after the historical context is explained. Roy’s reflexive engagement with the Occident was to travel and see for himself this land of fantasy (which remained an elite practice and which Roy sets in motion). Ishwarchandra’s literary frame of translation formed a deep pool of imagination within indigenous minds – an internalised geographical space which did not need a validity check – therefore representing a deeper colonial penetration of the Bengali/Indian imagination.