Century Bengal Research Articles

When steam saved time in kitchen: Cooking with Icmic Cooker in twentieth century Bengal

When steam saved time in kitchen: Cooking with Icmic Cooker in twentieth century Bengal

Recoding Utopian Fellowship in 20th Century Bengal: An Interpretation from the perspective of Socio-Economic Study

The concept of Utopia, originally proposed by Thomas More in 1516, describes an ideal, perfect society. In the 20th century, this idea has been applied to Bengal's social economy, including cooperatives, mutuals, associations, foundations, social enterprises, and paritarian institutions that share common values. Despite political turmoil affecting Bengal since the late 1980s, exploring the Utopian notion can help analyze and develop specific branches of Bengal's socio-economy. This approach may provide a foundation for future progress, potentially establishing a successful social economy in Bengal that, while not perfect, aligns with Utopian principles. Can these sectors effectively embody Utopian ideals in shaping Bengal's socio-economic landscape?

Writing Rokeya: Muslim Women’s Life-Writing, Intergenerational Camaraderie and Activism in Twentieth Century Bengal

This paper showcases how the intersubjective is at the heart of women’s associations through Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s nurturance and support of younger colleagues in colonial Bengal. Arguing that individual memory can be constitutive of institutional history/identity, it focuses on Shamsunnahar Mahmud’s Rokeya Jibani (1937), the first ‘official’ biography of Rokeya, and Sufia Kamal’s memoir, Ekale Amader Kal (1988), both of which posit Rokeya as a foremother to women’s movements of the time and inscribe her within a silsila (chain) of activist women who are sources of inspiration to successive generations. It also explores how Mahmud and Kamal emulate and extend Rokeya’s paradigm of multigenerational sorority.

Art and Architecture: North India and South India

The centuries between the eighth and the thirteenth stand out rather prominently from the point of view of the making of cultural traditions in India. The most arresting feature of these traditions is regionalism, which gets reflected in every sphere, whether it be the formation of political power or the development of arts or the transformations in languages and literature or even religious manifestations. In very general terms, the emergence of regional cultural units such as Andhra, Assam, Bengal, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, etc. was the outcome of significant material changes. The pace of agrarian changes and the developments in the non-agrarian sector were setting the tone of feudal socio-economic formation. The political structure was deeply affected by these developments. It should, not, therefore, surprise us if the cultural ethos too got permeated by similar strains. The Mudrarakshasa, a play written in Sanskrit by Vishakhadatta and generally ascribed to the fifth century, speaks of different regions whose inhabitants differ in customs, clothing and language. The identity of some kind of sub-national groups is recognized by the Chinese pilgrim Hieun-Tsang who visited India in the first half of the seventh century and mentions several nationalities. The Kuvalayamala, a Jain text of the eighth century and largely concerned with western India, notes the existence of 18 major nationalities and describes the anthropological character of sixteen peoples, pointing out their psychological features and citing the examples of their language. The Brahma Vaivarta Purana, ascribed to the thirteenth century Bengal explicates deshabheda — differences based on regions/territories. This feature is reflected in art and architecture as well. We see the emergence of various regional traditions and it was during this time that different architectural languages such as Nagara, Dravida and Vesara matured. In this research article begin survey by looking at the various types of architectural styles and art traditions.

Fairs and Females: A Socio-cultural Perspective of 19th and 20th Century Bengal

Abstract: Fair or Mela has been an integral part of Bengali culture since time immemorial. A fair is generally a conglomeration of people in a festive arrangement for buying and selling goods centering on religious or other special occasions at a specific time and a place. Fair was an integral part of colonial Bengal’s socio-cultural and economic spheres as well. Numerous fairs used to be held in 19th and 20th century Bengal for various reasons which concerned seasonal harvesting, religious festivals, marketing, occasional cultural events, promoting entertainment including traditional games and sports, arts. In a broader aspect, fairs have played role in shaping colonial Bengal’s society and in several ways helped to develop our rich culture over the decades. Another major yet less valued aspect of these fairs is the involvement of women in these which speak in volumes about the socio-economic participation of different classes of women in colonial Bengal. Women of lower social classes participated in these fairs mostly as sellers or entertainers whereas women of higher social classes were found as occasional visitors. Though, due to ‘purdah’ restrictions the numbers of native elite women visitors were often low, women of British or Anglo-Indian families often visited such fairs in their proximity. A number of British women have written about their splendid experiences at Bengali fairs in their memoirs. This vivid participation of women of all strata in different categories in Bengali fairs has not gained much focus in earlier studies. Not merely in the lens of feminism, the role of the womenfolk in those Bengali fairs to contribute in accelerating their families’ economic standard, deserves historical recognition. This paper attempts to study the roles of such women, played in the fairs in both parts of Bengal in 19th and 20th centuries and its grave significance in revisiting gender roles in colonial Bengal’s society.

AGRICULTURAL FOODS, FRUITS, ARTS ANDBUSINESS ROUTES: 14TH& 15TH CENTURY EASTERN INDIAN REGION(AN ANALYSIS)

Different varieties of fruits trading routs and agricultural foods are found in records, while shedding new lights on socio-economic and cultural activities of the people in eastern region specially Bengal and adjoining territories. Clear sketching about prosperity and flourishing trading business along with architecture and other artistic activities are drawn here with the help of travellers account and some other reference noted from contemporary historical chronicles and literatures. The centre of political gravity in 14th and 15th century Bengal, different name of towns like Gaur and Pandua rose one after another to be treated as capital town later on. Gaur became strategic town and commanded the routes that ran in different direction upward and downward the line of river Ganga leading to Chittagaon and other cities of this region. Even Pandua was also elevated and designed a well-planned and populated town, without any doubt, with all possible amenities of human life and centre of commercial activities with other parts of kingdom with rivers and land routes.

Rokeya: A Path-breaker in the 20th Century Bengal

Rokeya: A Path-breaker in the 20th Century Bengal

The Ethical Thought of the Bengal Renaissance:The Neo-Hindu Conceptions (1880–1910)

A development of ethical thought by Neo-Hindu philosophers in Nineteenth– early Twentieth century Bengal is depicted in the article based on hermeneutic readings of the texts by Bankimchandra Chattopaddhyay, Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghosh. From the one hand, Neo-Hindu philosophers continue Rammohun Roy’s line of criticism of Indian society’s moral condition, consciousness and conduct. From the other hand, they formed their own ethical conceptions to present Hindu normative ethics. The research demonstrated for the first time the becoming of Modern Indian ethics in the conceptions of Bengal Neo-Hindu thinkers who are the real founders of ethics as philosophical discipline in India. Growing up from indigenous ancient tradition of exegesis of scriptures, Neo-Hindu conceptions of ethics are the new adogmatic interpretation of the native religious ethics in broad context of Modernity. The Bengal Renaissance thinkers had made an intellectual breakthrough in Indian philosophy. The result of intellectual works are following: 1) bringing morality to the fore in dharma to differentiate ethical issue-area as meaningful in thought and practice; 2) definition of universality of Hinduism’ s moral consciousness in the core; 3) normative ethics along with its imperatives and rules had presented as established and fixed in ancient Hindu scriptures; 4) the ethical ideal was found in images of sages and epic heroes as well as in their teachings; 5) ethical norms and ideal are practically oriented for the criticism of society’s morals and future development.

The 19th-century Kobigaan Performances with Special Reference to Anthony Fhiringhee

The 19th century Bengal was promenading under the influences of various factors like the Bengal Renaissance of various literates and the Babu culture of the nouveau rich. It was also the time when the countryfolks came to Calcutta seeking jobs, imbibing elements of folk art with popular culture. Soon with the transition of time, there arrived a stage when the artisans were more engrossed with the cash economy of urban life. Thus, Calcutta became a hub for different art forms and musical cultures, amongst them was Kobigaan. A musical duel among the poets, it became an enlightening form of entertainment amongst the Bengali literates and they would frequently hold Kobilorai sessions in temples. Kobigaan rose in prominence around the period of colonial Bengal of 18th and early 19th centuries. Kobigaan was seen as a concoction of Vaishnavite poetry with religious and ritualistic themes combined with satire. It was also the time when Bengal Province was witnessing the influx of many cultural, political and sociological episodes. This research is a descriptive study of Kobilorai and Kobiyal Anthony Fhiringee from the nationalist lenses. Using qualitative and descriptive methodologies, the research performs a holistic study on the rise of the popularity of the Kobigaan performances during the nationalist hour, and analyses through the lenses of Cultural Nationalism the treatment of the 19th century kaviyals towards the Portuguese poet Hensman Anthony.

The Limits of Cultural-Economic Explanations of Ethnic Phenomenon: The Case of West Bengal

At the crossroad of seventy-five years of India’s experiment with Democracy, several expressions of ethnic identity politics have bloomed in various parts of the nation. The discontent around the notion of Development being ‘unequal’ and ‘unfair’ to some, demands of separate statehood remain visible with varied strength of organisation. West Bengal was no far from the currents of such demands of smaller states based on the rationale of deprivation on cultural and economic grounds. However, the history of West Bengal depicts that the cosmopolitan development of cultural milieu since 19th Century Bengal Renaissance has been much accommodative and on the contrary on political frontiers Bengal has always unique to stand aside the mainstream politics of nationalism in pre-independence period and in conceiving a provincial government not in political alignment to the political party in the power of the Central Government, that caused major deprivations on economic allocations between the Centre and the State. Therefore, any demand of separate state from West Bengal can be refuted on the essential rationale of cultural cosmopolitanism and economic deprivation of West Bengal by the Central Government. The present paper analyses both these rationale with elaborate reference to scholastic explanations already approached.

Famine in a Rice Economy: Natural Calamities, Grain Scarcity and the Company-State in Bengal, 1770–1803

This paper analyses the conjuncture of factors that led to famines in late eighteenth century Bengal, a province in which, due to the fluvial ecology and monsoonal climate, the cultivation of rice predominated. I demonstrate that the exclusive dependence on rice crops created conditions of agricultural insecurity, which in turn was taken advantage of by merchants and hoarders of grain in a bid to profit from artificially enhanced prices. The East India Company, acquiring political authority in Bengal in the mid eighteenth century, was unable to break through the monopolies of the grain dealers. In addition, its experiment with grain storage in large public granaries (golas), intended to overcome food shortages, also failed on account of mounting costs and the irrevocable tension between laissez-faire and state interventionism, which ultimately led to the abandonment of the granary system. I argue that a combination of rice monoculture, mercantile strategies, and lack of effective state intervention was ultimately responsible for transforming natural calamities and the ensuing food shortages into full-scale famines in Bengal in the eighteenth century.

Satyajit ray’s detective fiction and its socio-cultural impact in 19th century Bengal

Satyajit Ray invented the fictional Kolkata-based private investigator known as Bengali Sleuth Feluda, whose real name is Pradosh Chandra Mitter. He frequently has two sidekicks by his side: Lalmohan Ganguly, a clumsy crime fiction author who goes by the pen name Jatayu, and Topshe, his cousin Tapesh Ranjan Mitra. There is no readily documented legendary genesis story for Satyajit Ray's private eye Feluda, yet it is also not a case of accidental artistic whim. The prehistory of Ray's favourite detective character may be determined by carefully examining his intellectual and cultural milieu. Ray has given Feluda some characteristics that make him different from the stereotypes. In addition to taking down smugglers in Bombay, Feluda exposes a conspiracy and pursues a criminal who is trying to desecrate Indian temples across the country. The study explores the sociocultural imprint Satyajit Ray left in Bengal in the nineteenth century through his detective fiction, Robertsoner Ruby (Robertson’s Ruby) Hatyapuri (The House of the Death). It reframes writings and the repeating ideas and motifs they include within a larger social and historical framework. This essay also makes an effort to highlight Ray's singularity in terms of his background, methods of detection, and narrative tactics. By borrowing Bengal's rich cultural heritage, Ray localised the genre and used his protagonist to try to solve the unanswered mysteries.

Profiles of Social Transformation and the Narratives from Syncretism to Conflict in The Mid-Seventeenth Century Mughal Bengal

The mid-seventeenth-century history of Mughal Bengal has hardly been visited in terms of the social aspects and counter identities of conflict. So many authors have widely worked in the field of medieval Bengal, but there has been no detailed study conducted on the aspect of social transformation and the phenomenon of syncretism to conflict in the last decade of Mughal Bengal because the primary sources of this period have not been carefully studied in terms of appropriate relevancy. That’s why the major evolution of a changing social perception remain unnoticed until the close of Mughal rule. The objective of this paper is to analysis the transformation that occurred in the diverse social profiles of mid-seventeenth-century Bengal, simultaneously, a discourse to observe the conflict of this century against the long-established historical model known as ‘syncretism’ in Medieval Indian history. This work is using qualitative method-based on contemporary accounts of foreign travellers, Persian, and Bengali sources and a few secondary sources in which the new findings are-firstly, the emerging characteristics of the mid-seventeenth century Bengal’s society like-the co-existence of Hindus-Muslims along with the newcomer Christians, the prevalence of folk beliefs and rituals, composite profiles in Pirism, and Distinctive caste identities; secondly, the modes of discrimination and violence.

Textualizing the agrarian: plots and forms in British India

ABSTRACT This essay establishes interrelations between three apparently different kinds of texts on agrarian India produced in the nineteenth century. The first of these are government documents on agrarian governance, the second consists of analytical essays, on the conditions of peasantry and land legislation in nineteenth-century Bengal, authored by two eminent thinkers of that society, and the third is a novel on the intrigues of an agrarian society, set in Orissa. The essay argues that in their own ways, each of these types of texts played around, recast, and disrupted foundational imperial universals, like state, society, and property and the relationship between them. The essay mobilizes a conversation between different productions of universals in these texts. It concludes by reflecting upon these discursive strategies in the light of a debate on the difference between ‘literature’ and ‘history’ in late-nineteenth century Bengal. It suggests that Rabindranath Tagore’s framing, in this debate, of the ‘historical rasa’ can help us understand the transactions between ‘social theory’, ‘history’ and ‘literature’ in these texts on agrarian India.

Dr. Chunilal Bose: a forgotten scientist and a science communicator

Modern medical education began in Bengal with the establishment of Calcutta Medical College (CMC) in 1835. Soon it became an important centre for medical education and research in India. Chunilal Bose (1861–1930), an alumnus of CMC, worked in his alma mater as the Chemical Examiner of Bengal for more than three decades and conducted pioneering researches on toxins and poisons, food poisoning, food adulteration, diabetes, small pox, forensic science, effects of narcotics etc. His research publications appeared in reputed journals such as British Medical Journal, Transactions of the Chemical Society of London, The Indian Medical Gazette, and Calcutta Medical Journal etc. Bose was also instrumental in passing the Indian Poisons Act (1904) and in creating a public awareness against consumption of narcotics. Bose was an able science communicator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Bengal and extensively wrote and lectured in a simple language, both in Bengali and English, on the subjects of public health and hygiene, general science and history of science that were connected to the wellbeing of the common people, with an intention of creating science awareness and scientific temper in the society. Honours and awards showered upon him during his lifetime, but Bose’s important contributions to medical sciences and science popularization were less discussed by the historians of science, as the focus generally remained on his more illustrious contemporaries. In the course of time, Chunilal Bose became a nearly forgotten scientist and a science communicator. His 160th birth anniversary was observed in 2021.

Ayurveda, philology and print. On the first printed edition of the Carakasaṃhitā and its context

ABSTRACT The transition from manuscripts to the print production of books involved not only publishers, printers and readers, but importantly also editors of texts. This essay combines insights from the history of Ayurveda, history of philology and history of the book to examine the role of different actors in the transmission of the Ayurvedic textual tradition in nineteenth century South Asia. In particular, it focuses on the first printed edition of the Carakasa ṃ hitā (the oldest treatise of Ayurveda), its editor Gangadhar Ray Kaviraj (1798–1885), and the publisher Bhuvana Chandra Vasaka. It outlines the very beginnings of the ‘print moment’ in the history of Sanskritic Ayurveda: the Ayurvedic milieu of nineteenth century Bengal, that region’s fast-growing commercial print industry and the context of the first print publication of another foundational work of Ayurveda, the Suśrutasaṃhitā, more than thirty years earlier than the Carakasa ṃ hitā. This essay argues that the use of the printed book, as a technology-based object, was part of a process of modernization and caste-identity formation. It argues further that indigenous philological practices had a crucial role in transmitting Ayurvedic knowledge, and that their interplay with publishing activities contributed to establishing a coherent body of textual sources within the Ayurvedic community and among the students of Sanskritic culture at large.

Units of Length in 17th – 18th Century Bengal Temples: Context Bishnupur

Shubhankari is an almost-forgotten mathematical treatise of Bengal that was widely used in the pre-colonial era. It consists of verses, called arjyas, which deal with everyday computations like weights and measures, land measurement and so on. The arjyas list various units of length measures, like the angula (finger), muth (fist), hath (hand) and the relation among these units. The same types of units have been found in Monu Mistiri’s handbook on construction of temples, of which only a few pages survive. The author conducted in-depth research and realised that these units of length were used in India since the Harappan times and have been mentioned in ancient treatises of architecture like Arthashastra, Brihatsamhita, Mayamata, Manasara and Bhubanapradipa. These units of length also matched the units used in the ancient world viz. the cubit and the digit. To find out whether the ek-ratna temples of Bishnupur were constructed using these length measures, the author measured ten such temples and collected on-site data. These dimensions were then converted to hath-angula units and matched with the Shubhankari system of measurements. The results showed that there was a very good match, establishing that these units of length were used in the 17th–18th century temples of Bishnupur.

Autobiographical Remembering: Memory as Resitance in Bengali Dalit Women’s Narratives

This paper makes an attempt to explore how the concept of memory works as a tool of resistance in the narratives of the Bengali Dalit women writers in the Partitioned Bengal. The Bengali Dalit women have been marginalized in different ways, and the history of these women has been neglected. But the atma-katha (life-story) of the Bengali Dalit women seeks to question the accepted official historical record of Bengal. In this paper, I propose to examine the narratives of Dr. Puspa Bairagya and Kalyani Thakur Charal which were chiefly produced in the twenty-first century Bengal and were anti-caste narratives and thereby provide an insight into the counter-memories of the Bengali Dalit women. I would like to apply the autobiographical memory theory to the narratives of these writers. My prospective paper endeavors to illuminate personal agency and healing and would hope to generate a new understanding of the texts in the Indian context.

The Observant Owl: Sensory Worlds of Colonial Calcutta in Hutom’s Vignettes

The proliferation of print in mid nineteenth century Bengal witnessed several self-reflexive exercises in writing that tried to capture the incongruence between the colonial administration and indigenous everyday lives. Hutom Pyanchar Naksha (or The Observant Owl) written by Kaliprasanna Sinha (1862) is possibly the closest representation in print of such incongruities. This article focuses on the text of Hutom in relation to visual representations and reports by the colonial administration in contemporary English newspapers like The Hindoo Patriot, The Bengal Harkaru and others. In doing so, it will highlight the sensory world of colonial Calcutta that is so vividly captured in Hutom.

Role of Pandit Iswar Chandr Vidyasagar in the Development of Science Teacher Education in 19th Century Bengal: Relevance to Present Day

Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar contribution for the development of teacher education in general and science teacher education in particular were investigated. Analysis of primary and secondary data clearly evinced that Vidyasagar considered science education as the fourth” R” in the education curricula and attempted to develop rational thinking and superstition free conscience among the trainee-teachers of Sanskrit college. Vidyasagar was deeply influenced by scepticism, utilitarianism and positivism of the European radical philosophers. For development of scientific spirit among the student he proposed the study of Mills logic especially inductive logic and principles of scientific investigation as proposed by Bacom. Introduction: Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar is well known as a radical social and educational reformer of the 19th Century Bengal. His social reforms are of great historical importance and contributed significantly towards the shaping of modern Indian society. His educational reforms laid down the foundation stones for the vernacular and national educational policy of pre and post-independent India. There are several historiographical account of social and educational reforms envisioned by Vidyasagar (Sarkar, 1970; Poddar, 1970; Ghosh, 1973; Tripathi, 1974; Sen, 1977) but critical analysis of Vidyasagar’s contribution to teacher education in general, and science teacher education in particular is lacking.