“Yet Was It Human?” Bankim, Hunter and the Victorian Famine Ideology of Anandamath

Mukherjee, Upamanyu Pablo

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-57337-7_12

“Yet Was It Human?” Bankim, Hunter and the Victorian Famine Ideology of Anandamath

Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee⁴

Chapter
First Online: 08 March 2018

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture ((PNWC))

Abstract

This essay reads W. W. Hunter’s The Annals of Rural Bengal (1868) and Bankimchandra Chatterji’s Anandamath (1881–82) to consider the importance of famine in Victorian imaginings of empire. Along with disaster events such as floods and contagious diseases, endemic famine provided a spectacular instance of the historicity of nature and the naturalization of history over the lifetime of modern British imperialism. The essay investigates how crucial famine was in raising questions about the nature of imperialism—was it a force that produced or mitigated the effects of “natural” disasters? Were disaster events peculiar to tropical areas? Did famine define an essence of India? Did it reveal key elements of governance and governmentality? What demands did large disaster events make on the cultural resources of those who experienced them?

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Notes

1.
Julius J. Lipner , Introduction to Anandamath; or, the Sacred Brotherhood, by Bankimcandra Chatterji, 3–126, trans. Julius J. Lipner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 36.
2.
In addition to Julius Lipner’s excellent critical introduction to his 2005 translation of the novel, on the influence of Anandamath on Indian nationalism and cultural politics, see also Sudipta Kaviraj , The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), and Tanika Sarkar , Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism (London: Hurst, 2001).
3.
Lipner , Introduction, 28.
4.
W. W. Hunter , The Annals of Rural Bengal (London: Smith, Elder, 1868), 13–87.
5.
Hunter , The Annals of Rural Bengal , 3–5.
6.
Lipner , Introduction, 43.
7.
Eric Wolf , Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), x.
8.
Lipner , Introduction, 46–47.
9.
Lipner , Introduction, 63.
10.
Bankimcandra Chatterji, Anandamath; or, the Sacred Brotherhood, trans. Julius J. Lipner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 127–28.
11.
Sarkar , Hindu Wife, 141.
12.
Sarkar , Hindu Wife, 151.
13.
Sarkar , Hindu Wife, 159.
14.
Kaviraj , The Unhappy Consciousness, 133–57.
15.
Kaviraj , The Unhappy Consciousness, 155.
16.
Kaviraj , The Unhappy Consciousness, 155.
17.
Kaviraj , The Unhappy Consciousness, 104–05.
18.
Kaviraj , The Unhappy Consciousness, 135.
19.
Atis Dasgupta, The Fakir and Sanyasi Uprisings (Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1992), 62–63.
20.
Hunter , Annals of Rural Bengal, 5.
21.
Hunter , Annals of Rural Bengal, 6–7.
22.
Hunter , Annals of Rural Bengal, 9.
23.
Hunter , Annals of Rural Bengal, 19–20.
24.
Hunter , Annals of Rural Bengal, 26.
25.
Hunter , Annals of Rural Bengal, 34–39.
26.
Hunter , Annals of Rural Bengal, 57.
27.
Hunter , Annals of Rural Bengal, 71.
28.
Hunter , Annals of Rural Bengal, 35.
29.
Hunter , Annals of Rural Bengal, 50.
30.
Hunter , Annals of Rural Bengal, 51.
31.
United Kingdom, House of Commons, “East India (Bengal and Orissa Famine). Papers and Correspondence Relative to the Famine in Bengal and Orissa, Including the Report of the Famine Commission and the Minutes of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal and the Governor General of India,” House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 335 (1867): LI.1, 403, 641, 12 (emphasis added).
32.
United Kingdom, House of Commons, “Report of the Indian Famine Commission,” House of Commons Sessional Papers C.9178 (1898): XXXI.535, 6.
33.
Brahma Nand, ed., Famines in Colonial India : Some Unofficial Historical Narratives (New Delhi: Kanishka, 2007), 1–2; Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World (London: Verso, 2001), 7.
34.
United Kingdom, House of Commons, “East India (Bengal and Orissa Famine),” 2.
35.
Richard Baird-Smith , Report on the Famine of 1860–61, 2 parts (Calcutta: India Home Dept., 1861); Charles Blair , Indian Famines: Their Historical, Financial and Other Aspects (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1873).
36.
Blair, Indian Famines, 6.
37.
C. E. R. Girdlestone , Report on the Past Famines in the North-Western Province (Allahabad, India: North-Western Provinces’ Government Press, 1868), 5.
38.
“The Indian Famine: How Dealt with in Western India,” The Westminster Review 53, no. 1 (1878): 141.
39.
Francis R. Conder, “Indian Famines,” The Edinburgh Review 146 (1877): 87.
40.
Girdlestone , Report on the Past Famines, 61.
41.
J. H. Gartsin, “Distress at Ganjam: Reports by Mr. J. H. Gartsin, C. S. J. on Condition of Ganjam, Madras,” House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 137 (1889): LVIII.429, 12.
42.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 131–32.
43.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 188.
44.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 188.
45.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 140.
46.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 140.
47.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 140.
48.
On the cultural popularity of the interpretation of Mir Jafar as a treacherous figure in this period, see Partha Chatterjee’s chapter on Bengali theatrical performance of the Siraj-ud-Daulah story in The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practise of Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 222–64.
49.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 134.
50.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 135.
51.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 152.
52.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 139.
53.
Sarkar , Hindu Wife, 143.
54.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 138.
55.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 166.
56.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 163.
57.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 166.
58.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 178–79.
59.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 189.
60.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 214.
61.
Chatterji, Anandamath, 229.

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English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee

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Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee
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University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Grace Moore
Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Michelle J. Smith

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Mukherjee, U.P. (2018). “Yet Was It Human?” Bankim, Hunter and the Victorian Famine Ideology of Anandamath . In: Moore, G., Smith, M. (eds) Victorian Environments. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57337-7_12

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57337-7_12
Published: 08 March 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-57336-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-57337-7
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