Background
Bankimchandra Chatterji was born on June 26, 1838, in the village of Kanthalpara (Naihati) near Calcutta, India. His father, Jadavchandra, an orthodox Kulin Brahmin, was a deputy collector of revenues.
(Dashing young Jagat is sent by his father, Mughal general...)
Dashing young Jagat is sent by his father, Mughal general Mansingh, to quell the Pathan uprising in Bengal. There he falls in love with Tilottama, the alluring daughter of chieftain Birendra Singh only to discover-too late-of the bitter rivalry between their two families. Stirring and colourful, Durgeshnandini (1865) created a sensation among Bengali readers with its vigorous storytelling and its bold portrayal of romantic love. It is regarded as the first novel in indian literature.
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(Rishi Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (26 June 1838 - 8 Apri...)
Rishi Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (26 June 1838 - 8 April 1894) was a Bengali writer, poet and journalist. He was the composer of India's national song Vande Mataram, originally a Bengali and Sanskrit stotra personifying India as a mother goddess and inspiring the activists during the Indian Independence Movement. Chattopadhyay wrote thirteen novels and several 'serious, serio-comic, satirical, scientific and critical treaties' in Bengali. His works were widely translated into other regional languages of India as well as in English. Born to an orthodox Brahmin family, Chattopadhyay was educated at Hooghly Mohsin College founded by Bengali philanthropist Muhammad Mohsin and Presidency College, Calcutta. He was one of the first graduates of the University of Calcutta. From 1858, until his retirement in 1891, he served as a deputy magistrate and deputy collector in the Government of British India. Chattopadhyay is widely regarded as a key figure in literary renaissance of Bengal as well as India. Some of his writings, including novels, essays and commentaries, were a breakaway from traditional verse-oriented Indian writings, and provided an inspiration for authors across India. When Bipin Chandra Pal decided to start a patriotic journal in August 1906, he named it Vande Mataram, after Chattopadhyay's song. Lala Lajpat Rai also published a journal of the same name.
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Bankimchandra Chatterji was born on June 26, 1838, in the village of Kanthalpara (Naihati) near Calcutta, India. His father, Jadavchandra, an orthodox Kulin Brahmin, was a deputy collector of revenues.
Bankimchandra received much of his early traditional Hindu education from a family priest. In 1849 he was enrolled in Hooghly College. At Hooghly College, and later at Presidency College, Calcutta, Bankimchandra's education became almost entirely Western, with an emphasis on science, history, language, law, and philosophy. In 1858 he became one of the first two students to earn a baccalaureate from newly founded Calcutta University.
Immediately after graduation he was appointed a deputy collector by the British colonial government and remained in that position without promotion for 33 years. He retired in 1891. But while he was a government official, he began to write novels in his spare time.
Bankimchandra wrote his first novel, Rajmohan's Wife (1864), in English. Thereafter he wrote 14 novels in Bengali from 1865 to 1884. He combined Sanskritized and colloquial Bengali in a manner that made it for the first time an adequate vehicle for expressing a wide range of subjects that hitherto had had to be stated in Sanskrit or English.
His first Bengali novel, Durgeshnandini (1865), is said to have created a sensation in Calcutta. Bengalis had read English novelists, like Sir Walter Scott, but Bankimchandra's novels were the first that gave them a satisfying semblance of their own world in fictional form. His first three novels were pure romance decked out in historical costume. While the history in these and in later novels with historical themes was often inaccurate, the bravery of the heroes and the beauty, endurance, and self-sacrifice of the heroines served to inspire Bengalis with notions of a glorious past.
In his social novels Bankimchandra was bold for his time in creating characters who broke with traditional codes of behavior, but he was careful to see that in the end the conventional prevailed over the unconventional. In his two best social novels, Vishavriksha (1873) and Krishnakanter Will (1878), he explores the questions of extramarital love and remarriage of widows, but by means of suicide and murder he clears the way for convention to win out. He was guilty of helping the right as he saw it to overcome the wrong by undisguised authorial intervention in the affairs of his characters.
Many of the names of his fictional characters have passed into the idiom of the language. He wrote a book on the Lord Krishna which showed a personal God with attributes more lofty than those of the Christian God. Bankimchandra defended the institution of caste, though he acknowledged some of its evils. In one of his last novels, Anandamath, he described a strongly disciplined order of sanyasis who revolted against the medieval Moslem rulers of Bengal. These sanyasis worshiped the mother-goddess Durga, who became to Bengali readers a powerful symbol of religion and patriotism. A long poem in this book, Bande Mataram (Hail to the Mother), became after Bankimchandra's death the anthem of Hindu nationalists in the early 20th century. Bankimchandra's impact on nationalist thought and action was based on his teaching of a renewed faith in Hinduism, and occasionally this was used to exacerbate communal antagonism between Hindus and Moslems. Though he proposed no specific plan for gaining independence or for governing the country after independence, his ideas blossomed in other men's minds and were a force in the Indian nationalist movement.
(Dashing young Jagat is sent by his father, Mughal general...)
(Rishi Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (26 June 1838 - 8 Apri...)
Bankimchandra became a spokesman for the orthodox point of view.
Advocate of Hinduism, Bankimchandra became an adult at a time when the educated people of Bengal were beginning seriously to reexamine their ideals. The easy acceptance of everything Western and the derogation of everything Hindu had by this time given rise to a strong Hindu reaction. Bankimchandra became a spokesman for the orthodox point of view.
He was married at the age of 11 to a girl of 5 and in the same year, 1849. He had a son with his first wife, who died in 1859. He later married Rajalakshmi Devi with whom he had three daughters.