Assistant Professor, Department of English, Bhairab Ganguly College, Kolkata, West Bengal
[Article History: Received: 25 Feb 2024. Revised: 28 Feb 2024. Accepted: 08 Mar 2024. Published: 13 Mar 2024]
Abstract
The main objective of the paper is to present how colonial discourses prevented a native from flourishing in his literary career as an English writer in nineteenth-century Bengal. With the introduction of English as a medium of instruction in school, after Macauley’s Minutes in 1835, many Indians went beyond the English design of becoming the mediators between the rulers and the ruled and tried to build their literary career in English falling genuinely in love with the language. One such Indian was Michael Madhusudan Dutta (1824 – 73), remembered mostly for bringing a “renaissance” in Bengali literature of the time. Deeply influenced by the Westernized curriculum of the Hindu College and his teacher David Lester Richardson, Madhusudan wrote, at the early phase of his literary career, many poems in English but failed to publish them in Blackwood’s Magazine or Bentley’s Miscellany. “The Captive Ladie”, published in 1849, was also not accepted seriously by Western readers. To become accepted into European culture, he even embraced Christianity ignoring the repeated advice of his parents and relatives. This paper intends to investigate why Madhusudhan’s works were not accepted by English readers despite having literary merits. The first part of the paper discusses the operations of colonial discourses with the help of the theories by Frantz Fanon and Edward Said. The second part engages itself with the literary contribution of Madhusudan Dutt. The paper concludes by criticizing the attitudes of metropolitan universities of the West toward the literature and cultures of the “Third World.”
Keywords: Discourse, Resistance, Bengal Renaissance, Macaulay’s Minutes, Postcolonialism