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Please read these as simply prose translations to aid your studies, not as poetry, for that sense is not well brought out. For that you have to rely on what was said in class. Those who were not in class cannot assume this is an adequate equivalent.

Bhasha

Iswarchandra Gupta

Prose summary translation with comments

Alas, the nation is filled with sorrow

For all have hatred to the languae of the nation. [A pun involved – nation – Desh, hatred – dwesh]

Language floats on immense seas of sorrow

It seems not to have any hope of life.

[there is a general discussion of the fact that the Bengali language is not cared for, and is insulted]

Pandits regret mentally

The discontinuation of shastric studies [this of course fudges over the fact that shastric studies were in Sanskrit]

Dharma and truth jointly leave the country

Dharmabhed [again a pun, meaning religious discord] the Vedas decay, and pointless the sorrow over that

Smriti is forgotten, how little its memory is left [pun again – smriti means memory and also the post Vedic literature]

Sruti [the Vedas – texts one leanrs by hearing] die from te hearing of all

The separate path of tantra, who knows that path

If tarka [formalised debate] becomes ku-tarka [vulgarisation of debates] who accepts that tarka

Various tricks are played by calling the Puranas old [puran means old, past]

The mind is not on the Geeta, what fruit will you get [ a reference to the Geeta's most famous comment, abut doing one's work without desiring results -- “ma faleshu kadachan”]

Thus are the shastras being killed [note the merging of Sanskrit and Bangla, of ancient, Hindu India with modern Bengal, ignoring the coming of Islam, and its role in medieval Bengal, including in the rise of the Bengali language, much patronised by Muslim rulers]

[Then he moves to modern times]

Seeing the twisted view of people to bhasha

How much can oe write in news papers

Harken o countrymen leaving aside hatred

Respect each other's papers

If you know the national knowledge you get much pleasure

Why be blind when you have bright eyes

Jnan [knowledge] vidya [education] happiness, all are available from that

So take care of it

He whose will has created all

let him do good for newspapers

Final comments -- the idea that newspapers can take the role today that shastras had in the past – is an indication of the limited vision for Bengali, in fact.

Compare

Michael Madhusudan Dutt

Bongbhasha

While the previous poem was written in poyar, the age old style, and with the pun as its main formal device, making serious issues appear in a light manner, here you have a perfect sonnet. Yet there is the shift. It is not a love poem, as is the Petrarchan, and follows the form of three quartrains and a couplet, as in Shakespeare.

I canot try to translate it as a sonnet.

It begins with an invocation to Bengal, saying that she has many jewels in ehr stores. But the poet, beig folish, had ignored them, ad had travelled abroad, in beggar's guise, seeking the wealth of others in his madness.

He then says:

I spent many days [meaning years] leaving all joy

In hunger, sleeplessness, giving up body and soul

In failed worshipping of that which is not to be worshipped

I toyed with moss, leaving aside the lotus ponds

When the goddess of home said in my dream

O my son, with the array of jewels in your mother's lap

Why then this beggar like dress of yours?

O thou ignorant, return, return home.

I obeyed the injunction in happiness, and found duly

The mine full of jewels, that is the mother language.

Rangalal Bandyopadhyay

Freedom Song

Again written in a modified poyar

Rhetorical questions, where the answer is of course contained within the questions

Who wishes to livef without freedom?

Who will wear the slave's chains on the feet?

To remain a slave for aeons is like living in hell

Even a day's freedom is heavenly by contrast

When these words awaken in one's mind

That khsatriya sons will become slaves of pathans

Then one's heart burs in anger

Ad one brooks no delay in putting out the fre

O listen, O listen to the trumpets

They call out, dress for war, o dress for war

Come one and all for the battle

Keep your ancestral tradition, the deeds of ksatriyas

Rajputana is our motherland

Blood flows over the entire body

His life is successful, his prowess is successful

Who gives up one's life to save the country

Our place is in the soft lap of the God of death

Come we will lie in front of his face

Who says the court of death god is a place of fear?

The Vedas say Yama is a kin of the kshatriyas

Remember the number of heroes in the Ikhsvaku clan

Who lay down their lives to aid country and otehrs

Rememer the descriptions of their deeds

Then which kshatriya son will turn away from glory

So hasten to the battlefield

Their is none to compare with he who dies in defence of one's land

Even if in killing the Yavanas we fail to get Chittor

We shall be blessed by heavenly pleasure, come brothers.

Comments – in formal terms, traditional, old and jaded. In content, shifts the enemy of the nation from te real British to the Yavanas. This does two things. Religion rather than conquerort. And silence about today's oppressor. Result – a Hindu nation, and a Hindu nationalism.

Jyotirindranath Tagore

Chal Re Chal Sabe

Come all ye children of India

The Motherland calls.

In brave steps, with te pride of masculinity

Serve the good of the country

Who but sons can

Remove the poverty of the mother?

Arise all, awaken and say – O my mother

I submit my life to thy feet

Worship by the same faith

Utter the same mantra

Education, initiation, goal, let all be one

Sing all the same song.

Seek from shores to shores to bring

Ever new knowledge

In new form, new enthusiasm

Create newer tunes.

Look not at popularity

nor popular disapproval

Give life to all

That is good, eternal and true.

Hindus and Muslims

Forget sectarian conflicts

Move together, along one path

Flying high the flag of unity.

As it can be seen, the end here has an appeal to religious unity, and does not have the purely backward look of Rangalal's poem. Its modernity, however, has the same problem as most attempts at modernity, insofar as it is a masculinist/patriarchal modernity. Sons alone can free the motherland. Daughters are evidently passive.

My Country

Dwijendralal Roy

D.L. Roy is among the foremost of the Bengali patriotic song/poem writers. This song is one of his most famous songs, and its invocations outline the strengths and contradictions both.

O my Bengal! O my mother! O my nurse! Country mine!

Why o mother these dry eyes, why the rough hair thine?

Why, mother, thy seat on the dust, why this tattered dress?

When three hundred millions call out o country mine?

The land where great souled Buddha arose to free the door of liberation

He to whom half the world pays respects even now

She whose fame was spread by Ashoka from Gandhar to land's end

Thou, O mother, are their mother, thou art their land.

Once, her victorious armies conquered Lanka with ease

Once, her golden argosy travelled across the Indian ocean

She whose children set up colonies in China-Japan-Tibet

Why must she have this dusty seat, why does she have this tattered dress?

Where arose in stately tones sweet songs in Nimai's voice

Raghumani gave dictums of law, Chandidas sang his songs

Pratapaditya waged war, thou O Mother, are that blessed land

Blessed are we if these veins carry a trace of their blood.

Mother, though your divine light is covered by a Darkness

The clouds will burst, a new splendour will shine on thine brow

We shall end your poverty mother, Human are we, not sheep

O my Goddess! O my worship! O my paradise! My land.

What sorrow, what poverty, what shame, what hardship

When three hundred million throats cry out – O my land.

As it can be seen, Roy is invoking nationalism most clearly. In doing so, he is not simply talking about people and their rights. He is arguing that Bengal was historically a superior land, one that produced Great Men. It is noteworthy that class, caste, community all get intertwined. All te greats are men. And there is a switching between Bengal and India. If you insist on using modern locations, then Buddha was a Nepali and Ashoka a Bihari. Certainly not Bengalis. And the whole rhetoric is one that says, in effect, that Bengal should have been a ruling country, not a ruled one. There is no contradiction felt by the writer, when he says that Bengal is in a sorrowful state, and as to be rescued by her sons, and in the same breath sings that her sons had once colonised other lands (which is not correct. The Vijaya Simha myth is a well known myth but still a myth, while sons of Bengal having colonised China, Japan and Tibet is a figment of his imagination). All the great one's invoked are non Muslims. This is crucial. Bengali nationalism is about excluding the Bengali Muslims. Who of course constituted the majority of Bengalis. It is necessary to understand the full politics over the Bengal Partition and the anti-partition agitation. It was not merely agitation to keep Bengal united, but also to keep the Hindu bhadralok domination intact. That was why there was not just opposition to splitting the province, but also to such things as setting up a University in Dhaka, setting up a High Court in Dhaka, etc. Then and later, Hindu Bengali nationalism rejected equality for Muslims, something highlighted in Jaya Chatterjee's books – Bengal Divided, and Spoils of Partition.

Bharat Lakshmi

Atul Prosad Sen

arise, O Lakshmi of India, arise, she who was worshipped by the world in early days

Destroy all sorrow, all poverty, vanquish the shame of India

Leave, o leave your bed of sorrows, put on

Again the dress of lotus and golden rice

Mother, take us in your bosom, hold a cloth to our eyes

Three hundred million women and men are crying at your feet

O Kamala, there is not pilot in this sorrow ridden India

We travellers are frightened, at the view of the upheaving dark ocean

The ship will go in a positive direction again

In fresh ardour, at the touch of your feet.

Three hundred million women and men are crying at your feet

O Kamala, there is not pilot in this sorrow ridden India

Fill again the crematorium that is India with groves where birds sing

Smash hatred and jealousy, fill with loving humming of bumblebees

Do away with sinful forces, restore the places of worshipped

To make India clean and filled with virtue.

Three hundred million women and men are crying at your feet

O Kamala, there is not pilot in this sorrow ridden India.

This is more an invocation to the motherland. Yet, despite the quite different tone, here too the land is visualised in Hinduised manner. The difference is, we do not see a comparison with other lands and an insistence that India/Bengal must be supreme. The stress is on virtue. Virtue, it is assumed, will lead to India's regeneration. Open call for independence is not articulated.

LESSON PLAN

Semester: PG I, Second Semester, 2014

Course: CL/PG/2.2 Dramatic Mode II

Teachers: Kunal Chattopadhyay, Samantak Das, Ranita Chakraborty Dasgupta

Course Coordinator: Kunal Chattopadhyay

Texts

Theory: Aristotle, Poetics (selections), Lessing, Hamburg Dramaturgy (selections), Brecht, Messingkauf Dialogues (selections)

Tragedy: Sophocles, Oedipus the King; Shakespeare, King Lear; Schiller, Don Carlos

Comedy: Aristophanes, The Frogs; Plautus, Pseudolus; Moliere, The Would Be Gentleman

Teaching plan

1. Kunal Chattopadhyay: Poetics – 16 lectures

Oedipus the King – 8 lectures

The Frogs – 8 lectures

2. Samantak Das: Introduction to Theory – 4 lectures

Hamburg Dramaturgy – 6 lectures

Messingkauf Dialogues – 6 lectures

King Lear – 8 lectures

Don Carlos – 8 lectures

3. Ranita Chakraborty Dasgupta: Pseudolus – 8 lectures

The Would Be Gentleman – 8 lectures

3 internals

4 March 2014 -- Kunal Chattopadhyay

24--28 March 2014 – Ranita Chakraborty Dasgupta

10--16 April 2014 – Samantak Das

Precise dates will be communicated by the teacher concerned within the next seven days

Supplementary: 25 April

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