Convenors:
William Radice, SOAS
Hans Harder, Halle

Abstract

The panel is an opportunity for all those with an interest in the culture and society of West Bengal and Bangladesh - and the Bengali diaspora worldwide - to share their recent research. Papers on all aspects of Bengal will be considered, but the common denominator should be fieldwork amongst Bengali speakers or the use of Bengali language sources. In making their final selection of papers, the convenors will aim at a balance between West Bengal and Bangladesh, past and present, literature and other media (film, theatre, music, etc.), religion and secularity, and women and men. Some basic questions that proposed papers could address are: What makes Bengal distinct? Does the region have a unity that overrides political or religious divisions? What particular cultural and intellectual contributions has Bengal made to the subcontinent and the wider world? What makes Bengal worthy of study? The convenors plan a volume on Bengali culture as viewed today, comprising the best of the papers contributed to the panel.

 
Block 1:

Mayurika Chakravorty, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK
Genesis of a Genre: A Study of Early Novels in 19th Century Bengal

Most studies on the development of the novel in India have in general assumed that it was a genre directly borrowed from the West, a derivative of English education and the rise of the reading public in the urban centres during the 19th century. They also assume that "replicating the ‘realism' of the British Victorian fiction became the professed intentions of the early novelists"  and like in the Western canon ‘realism' becomes the primary characteristic feature associated with the novel form. One of the objectives of this paper would be to re-examine the clichéd hypothesis and to unearth the early fictional works in Bengali whose intentions were far from realistic, and also hardly conformed to the narrative mode of the canonised Victorian fiction.  The paper would also point out how it was not a mere unidirectional and simple process of translating and transposing a genre due to the cultural encounter with the West. Although Bengal was one of the earliest cultures (within India) to be comprehensively permeated by the West, it also had a strong folk narrative tradition, both Puranic and Islamic (derived from Persian sources), though the latter has rather consciously been downplayed by the dominant literary canon. Thus the growth and development of novel in 19th century Bengal was in fact a complex product of a plural heritage, a curious melange of fact and fiction, of the indigenous and the foreign which also, curiously enough, mirror the essential ethos of Bengali society and culture in general, during a period of tumultuous socio-political transformations. In particular the paper will briefly explore three early novels, Mir Musharraf Hossain's Ratnabati (1869), Sanjibchandra Chattopadhyay's Madhabilata (1884) and Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay's Kankabati (1893) and discuss their significance vis-à-vis the more well-known novels of the established canon.

Sourav Kargupta, Martin Luther University Halle, Dept of South Asian studies Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
The Romantic Economy of the Bengali Male : Dinesh chandra Sen and the WomanQuestion

It was in the second decade of the 20th century that Dinesh Chandra Sen wrote that the disparity between the desires of the (educated) Bengali male whose taste is nurtured by readings of European Romantic literature and their real predicament in a conservative society can only cause increasing ‘unhappiness' for both the sexes.

It can be argued that this preoccupation with the present and concern about the ground realities in refuting the application of European Romantic codes in the lives of the (‘Hindu', upper-class) Bengali youth make Sen apart from the long list of 19th century Bengali intellectuals who rejected the European way of coupling either on ground of a fundamental cultural difference (between the ‘East' and the ‘West') or on ground of morality (albeit influenced by the Victorian deployment of the category).

But this also means that Sen, just like the other thinkers of his time was concerned about the questions of sex, gender and coupling, questions that can be encapsulated in the single paradigm called the ‘woman question' in the case of 19th century Bengal. This whole paradigm can be loosely subdivided into two phases with a question being emblematic of each. First, whether to educate the women or not and then, how to educate them, what should they be studying? By the time Sen started his literary career the first question was almost settled in affirmative and thus his concern was almost exclusively the second one. He did not write any single treaties specifically on this subject but it can be showed that he developed his case throughout his literary endeavor.

Dines Chandra Sen (1866-1939) casts a long shadow over the genre of literary criticism of Bengali literature with his huge output of more than 30 books and numerous essays on the subject.

But he was also the man who suffered a dramatic reversal of fate so far as the reception and criticism of his own works are concerned. And this happened within a space of two decades, the first two decades of the 20th century which also marks a crucial shift in the dominant nationalist strategy in India and indeed advent of a new era in the history of Bengali literature.

India was going through the Gandhian ‘experiments' and ‘pan-Indian' nationalism was dominant when Sen kept on constructing the cultural space he called ‘Brihat Banga' or ‘Great Bengal' with ideology of Bengali nationalism working behind it.

This resulted in the rejection of his discourse by the majority but indeed there was also a dialogue between the dominant and the marginal, Indian and Bengali nationalism.

When it comes to the ‘method' of literary history writing, here too Sen looked outdated with his ‘unscientific' and ‘romantic' way of conceiving history according to many recent critics (Dipesh Chakrabarty for instance).

But was it only about a man lagging behind his time or a conscious strategy on his part, I will try to argue for the latter.

But as I have explained in my introduction, my object of study in the present paper would not be Sen's unique concept of ‘Nationalism' but his treatment of the woman question. The paper would try to propose that, as mentioned earlier, although Sen never dealt with this subject separately, traces of his continuous concern and anxiety can be found in almost all his works and that a discourse can be reconstructed from those ‘fragments' and ‘marks', absences and presences. ‘Discourse' in the sense that a Discourse is a collection of statements, which can be contradictory but are always regular in appearance and repetitive in nature.

I would also like to argue that recovering traces of this discourse could be very useful and important in studying 19th century Bengali psyche. For the justification of my method I would be drawing from the works of the Subaltern Studies collective who has, among others, argued that it can be futile to search for an already, always complete historical ‘master-narrative' and thus the tusk of the researcher is to recover the heterogeneous fragments even if they deny the formation of a smooth narrative and start from there. I would be trying to propose the presence of one of those ‘fragments', which can be re-constructed and made use of in conceiving the (ever incomplete) history of the 19th century Bengal from bellow.

William Radice, SOAS, University of London, London, United Kingdom
What Sort of Sonnets did Michael Madhusudan Dutt write?

Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824-1873) is famed for introducing the sonnet into Bengali literature, as well as for his innovations in epic and drama, but no one seems to have asked what sort of sonnets he wrote.  His early experiments as a poet in English show that he was well acquainted both with Petrarchan sonnets and with sonnets of the ‘English' or Shakespearean type.  Yet his Bengali sonnets do not follow either a Petrarchan or a Shakespearean rhyme pattern, and they also lack the ‘turn' or volta (between the octave and sestet in the Petrarchan form, before the final couplet in the Shakespearean) that is a distinctive feature of most European sonnets.  His sonnets turn out to be sui generis, more rooted in the blank verse technique he developed in his epic poem, Meghnadbadh kabya than in European traditions of the sonnet.  As expressions, however, of a new kind of modern (self) consciousness, and as lyric poetry designed for silent, meditative reading, they are as representative of the Bengal Renaissance as Italian sonnets were of the European Renaissance.  They are also mostly love poems: not about a love for a woman, but about love for his country, his home village, his friends, his favourite poets, Hindu epic and mythology and other enthusiasms revealing of Madhusudan's taste and personality.

 
Sudeshna Chakravarti, University of Calcutta, Department of English
Colonial and Anti-Colonial History: Nationalist History Writing in Bengal in the Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

In the words of Sir Lewis Namier, ‘Historians imagine the past, remembering the future'. History writing by British historians, often with a colonial bias, and counter works, as it were, by nationalist historians was a notable feature of Bengal, in the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. History was considered a weapon of nationalism. The greatest writers of nineteenth century Bengal, Bankim Chandra and Rabindranth, though not historians themselves, were deply interested in the question of history.

British writers such as James Mill, Macaulay, Dawson, who edited numerous volumes of the works of pre-British historians, had a very low opinion of Indians, whether in the past or present. The brilliant and popular Macaulay in particular, had an almost pathological contempt for Bengalis to be matched only by Kipling, half a century later. The Bengali middle classes at this period, were mostly loyal to the British rulers. Even so, they did not like being told that their ancestors were the scum of the earth and that they themselves were marginally better only due to foreign domination. Historians with a nationalist bent of mind, who had learnt all the skills of modern history writing, refuted what they considered slanders and calumnies of foreign rulers. Certain historical subjects were particular bones of contention: the character of Siraj the last independent ruler of Bengal, whose defeat at Palasy paved the way for British rule in India; Maharaja Nanda Kumar, who was sent to the gallows on a false charge, because of the enmity of Warren Hastings; the so-called Sepoy Mutiny and so on. Economic historians of Bengal, such as Romesh Chandra Dutt, who was also a novelist, described the negative sides of British rule, as far as the Indian economy was concerned. Extremist leaders of the nationalist movement, at a later period freely acknowledged their debts to these historians. Minority community historians, i.e., Bengali Muslims, branched off in another direction: stressing their separate identity by producing works on Islamic history. Finally what was considered biased history teaching by British Professor could lead to violent reaction on the part of the students as the case of Presidency College, Calcutta, proves.

Thus history writing in colonial Bengal was part of a wide-ranging ideological debate, whose implications were not purely academic.

Victor van Bijlert, Leiden University, Institute Kern, The Hague, The Netherlands
The Narrator of Modern Hinduism: Bankimchandra Chatterjee (1838-1894)

This paper will show how the Bengali novelist Bankimchandra Chatterjee created a political liberation myth in his ‘historical' novel Anandamath. In the early phase of Indian anticolonial nationalism this novel played a major role because of its imagery. Anandamath accomplished two things: it provided the nationalist movement with a plausible blueprint of a revolt against colonial rule, and it presented a powerful image of the Indian nation as a Goddess. The paper will analyse both the liberation-story of the novel and the development of the Goddess symbolism in Bankim's thinking. The paper will also compare the narrative of Anandamath with the ideology of Hindu modernity in Bankim's Dharmatattva.

 

BLOCK 2:

Kerstin Andersson, University of Gothenburg, Dept of Social Anthropology, Gothenburg, Sweden
The Kolkata Intellectuals and Social Change

This paper explores the role and function that the intellectual category in Kolkata has played in questions related to development work and social change. Research and discussions regarding development work commonly focus on the lower stratas in the society neglecting the role played by the indigenous intellectual elite. In western terms, intellectuals have been defined as a social stratification or as an economic or social class. Indian intellectuals are often described as a by-product of the colonial rule, a " colonial middleclass" or a subaltern group. The intellectuals are ascribed the role of leading India's masses into the modern world. The Kolkata intellectuals have played a significant role in changes and transformations of ideological, political, social and cultural discourses. The intellectual category in Kolkata consists of upper and middle class Bengali Hindus. The category emerged in the specific historical, social and cultural context of colonial hegemony in the 19th century. Tradition, context and culture influenced and shaped the category. The Kolkata intellectuals are agents of change, bearers of tradition and mediators between discourses. They have been vehicles for transmission of ideas to other sectors of the population. Radicalism and intervention in the social and political arenas is emphasised in the intellectual discourse. Often it is framed in religious connotations. For example, The Brahmo movement combined missionary and social service work with religious connotations, Neo-hindusim suggsted that God's work in the world should be undertaken through social service. In contemporary Kolkata much of the social work is channelled through the communist movement, where the intellectuals constitute the leadership and often the intellectuals engage in NGO-work. In my reading an understanding of the dynamics included in development work, improvement and social change should include the intellectual category and its relationship to the lower stratas.  Questions regarding the transmission of knowledge, values, ideas and empowerment between the intellectual category and lower levels of the society are crucial in this understanding.

 

Arild Engelsen Ruud, University of Oslo, Dept. of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, Oslo, Norway
History vs. Culture: Bengal Divided?

This paper is an investigation into the question of whether the two Bengals share more than they differ. It will argue that history matters more than culture, that the last 59 years of separate historical experience has had crucial impact on such important aspects of society as social interaction, notions of authority, sense of national pride and identity. The investigation will mainly be based on 'local' or 'everyday' material.

 

Sikder Monoare Murshed, University of Dhaka, Department of Linguistics, Dhaka, Bangladesh
The Language Situation of Bangladesh

The People's Republic of Bangladesh is a developing Asian country. Bangla is the state language of Bangladesh. In 1971, the Republic seceded from Pakistan during nine months war and become independent. In the Pakistani occupation Urdu was the National language and English of the second language, higher education and link language between educated people of Bangla and Urdu. Resentment of Urdu led to a prolonged and violent language movement (1948-52). After independent Bangla become the only state language of the country. About 98% of the population use Bangla and despite its dialectic variation, the Standard Bangla is intelligible to all. In1987 Bangla Implementation Act passed; Bangla became main language of education. It is the language of the higher Law courts and has a place in mass media. In 1989, English made compulsory in primary, secondary and higher secondary education. At university level there are two streams of language in education. In Government universities English is a popular and optional subject but in the private universities, English is the only medium of instruction. In the field of religious education Sanskrit, Pali and Arabic have been taught traditionally. There are more than thirty indigenous languages in Bangladesh but many of them have no writing system even. On the other hand the indigenous language influenced by the state language Bangla. The Government of Bangladesh recently founded the International Mother language Institute and efforts are being taken to improve the situation of these languages, but one important thing is we need a reasonable language planning for the development of language situation of Bangladesh. This paper made on this ground.

 

Deeptima Massey, University of Sussex, Sussex, United Kingdom
Seeking Informal Social Protection: Women in Work Migrant Households in Rural West Bengal, India

The paper is based on the initial research findings of an ethnographic work undertaken among work migrant households in rural West Bengal, India in 2005-06. With the help of in-depth life history interviews, genealogy and other ethnographic research methods, the role of informal social protection has been studied among the work migrant households.

The study area (village) lacks formal social protection in the form of policies and programs designed to reduce household level poverty and vulnerability. Therefore poor migrant households, with whom this study has been conducted, seek informal social protection. Informal social protection in this work is defined as a set of efforts and mechanisms taken mainly by women to manage daily hardships, food and cash shortages.   

This study has been conducted in a Muslim dominated village of West Bengal where cross-cousin marriage is a common practice and women often reside close to their natal home. The paper first describes the kinship structure and the role of kin groups in providing support to these work migrant households. Then it further examines the role of other social relations, such as neighbours and rich households in which the sample households may or may not be involved in seeking support.

The main analytical heart of the paper is to explain the extent to which these social relations are being maintained to reduce food, economic, health and other insecurities for the work migrant households not only when the male member has seasonally migrated away for work, but also to see how these social networks contribute to a timely help in unanticipated situations as well as during daily routine work of women throughout the year and during various phases of the life-course.

Dipika Mukherjee, West Virginia University, Ohio, USA
Activities of the Bengalis Aro Baaratey Chai: The Dialectics of Persistence and Adaptation in the Bengali Community in Malaysia

My study in the Malaysian-Bengali community continues an established tradition of studying small communities and my study combines the methodologies of ethnography and linguistics. This community in Southeast Asia is a fairly atypical immigrant community due to its regenerative contact with the mother country, India.  Brides from Bengal are actively sought by the Malaysian-Bengali men and there is also a great deal of contact with expatriate Bengali families who come to Malaysia in steady numbers in search of economic opportunities but who retain a strong tie to India as the current Malaysian immigration laws make it almost impossible for expatriates to make Malaysia their permanent residence. The close geographic proximity also ensures close contact with Bengal for a large number of Malaysian-Bengali families.

Sociolinguistic studies have focused on the question of language choice and codeswitching as an expression of anti-racism in Britain (Rampton 1994), as covert subversion of the dominant language (Gal 1993) or as resistance to a dominant social code (Miller 2004). The study of language as a political and economic entity becomes especially salient in Malaysia where the growth of Malayo-Islamic nationalism and the pragmatic demands of nation-building have made the national language, Malay, the primary language for education and government. Although a government policy on Malay-language education has changed Malaysia from being an ESL to an EFL country (Gill 1993), there have been recent attempts to revive English-medium education in order to maintain a competitive edge in global business (David 2005).

In this paper, I explore the challenges faced by this community in the retention of Bengali language and culture and describe the social and cultural framework that promotes the sharing and exchange necessary to overcome the extreme race stratification in Malaysia and promote a sense of community within the larger Malaysian context.

 
Prarthana Purkayastha, Roehampton University, Kolkata, India
Going Beyond the Classical: Rabindranath Tagore and Modern Dance in Bengal

This paper will attempt to trace the genesis of modern dance performance in India, analysing the socio-political, cultural and aesthetic environment which gave rise to it by exploring, primarily, the early 20th century experimentations with various dance genres that Rabindranath Tagore introduced into the culture of performance in Bengal and the subsequent emergence of new dance methodologies that these experimentations inspired. In the first section, the paper will focus on the nationalist cultural project as it evolved in India during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; then locate Tagore within and beyond the nationalist paradigm, focusing on his contribution to the evolution of a genre of performance distinctly different from the 'classical', refashioned in India at the same time. Tagore, a contemporary of Rukmini Devi Arundale (the creator of Kalakshetra Bharatanatyam, one of India's well-known classical dance forms) gave this nationalist cultural project a new dimension by creating an alternative school of performance at Visva Bharati University in Shantiniketan, West Bengal. The dominant Indian classical dance genres, which can be best understood in the context of the nationalist reform and revival project, have forever overshadowed the ‘other' dance languages which have had roots not merely in a national but in a trans-national culture and it is this otherness that I have tried to re-visit through Tagore and his vision of the performing arts. This alternative dance movement originating from Tagore's vision removed the halo of purity and high spirituality of classical dance both from the performer and the performance. It has brought the dance and the dancer closer to its audience, into pedagogy and as a part of everyday life and has become a vehicle through which contemporary ideas and predicaments could be articulated and could reach the masses.

 

BLOCK 3:

 

Ronita Bhattacharya, University of Georgia, Comparative Literature, Athens, USA
Satyanarayan and Rama: Conflicting Identity of Vishnu for the Bengalis

This paper discusses the uniqueness of the simultaneous existence of Satyanarayan and Rama among the Bengali-Hindu pantheon. Focus of this analysis is upon the construction of identity of these two forms of Vishnu that had probably gained a regional importance in Bengal around the same time; Rama, the epitome of ideal among the Hindus and Satyanarayan, an amalgamation of Narayan and the Sufi Mystic Satya Peer. For rest of the Hindus in India, Satyanarayan is just another name of Vishnu and hence there is no apparent conflict with Rama. That is why the co-existence of the Bengali Rama and Satyanarayan deserves a case study on identity construction.

Satyanarayan even if now more of a Hindu deity than a Muslim Peer continues to retain some of the Islamic aspects within the fold of Hindu religion e.g. Satya Peer is appears in the Panchali as a Mystic Peer and shirni typical offering at a Peer's Darga ( a porridge made of flour, milk and banana) is the prasad of choice for this puja which is not a designated offering for any other Hindu gods.

This puja must have become popular in undivided Bengal by the last century of Muslim rule and this was an attempt at unifying the two divergent religions. This time period (17th/18th century) is not so distant from the time of Krittivasi Ramayana (16th century). Translation of Sanskrit epics had made scriptures accessible to the Bengalis and also made it possible for them to identify with their individual deities. This had resulted in segregation among sects ( Saktas, Vaishnavs, Saivas etc.) rather than unification. Since then Rama was and has been since then the flagship of sectarian Hindu nationalism. Hence the presence of Satyanarayan and Rama in the same pantheon makes it unique and worth analyzing.

 

Md. Montasir Rahman, NREE Society, Dhaka, Bhangladesh
'Conserving Heritage in Bangladesh: Hindus in a Muslim-Majority Society'

Within nation states, cultural heritage--both tangible and intangible heritage-is increasingly influenced by the globalization process. International organizations like UNESCO determines what should be protected within the category of the heritage of mankind. Apart from this, the nation state also plays a role to preserve its heritage within its territory. This poses the question of the role of local communities, especially in the case of ethnic or religious groups that are minorities within their nation state.  What could be their role in protecting cultural heritage that does not get sufficient attention at the national and international level?

Bangladesh is a developing country of South Asia. The culture of this land is possibly the most complex ethnic mix spot in history. Hundreds of ancient religious structures are still remaining side by side in this delta. But over the years highly State and Foreign dependent conservations strategies have made Bangladeshi heritage fragile. Unfortunately real examples of community involvement in heritage preservation are not many. It is even fewer when it comes to a developing country like Bangladesh. Therefore it is essential now to find out alternative sources to support conservation.

This paper uses the example of a private initiative in documenting the 18th century terracotta freezes of the late medieval-style Kantajee temple in Northern Bangladesh to illustrate how different segments of the community have different resources to contribute in heritage preservation and how their joint action could foster local-level development. It will also reflect the peaceful and respectful coexistence of the Hindu minority in the Muslim majority country of Bangladesh.

Hans Harder, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Institut für Indologie, Kunst- und Altertumswissenschaften, Halle, Germany
'Bengali Islam' as a Contested, but Necessary Category

It has been a matter of debate whether Bengaliness and Islam are reconcilable and, at least implicitly, whether such a thing as 'Bengali Islam' does at all exist. Many scholars in this field have tended to apply very normative notions of what Islam is, and thereby often enhanced the tensions between these two identity categories. This has prompted Joya Chatterjee to ask polemically whether a Bengali Muslim is 'a contradiction in terms'.

Following up on this discussion, and drawing on some conclusions of my recent research on Sufism in Chittagong, I want to plead for a radically empirical use of the term 'Bengali Islam'. Rather than a non-entity, 'Bengali Islam' appers to be a useful and necessary category for focussing attention on an overwhelmingly vivid, but quite underresearched set of phenomena.

 
Makoto Kitada, Martin-Luther Uni, Halle, Institut für Südasienwissenschaften, Halle, Germany
The Body of a Musician as an Instrument According to Bengali Texts

"Amae koro tomar bina" ("Make me into your lute"). In this text, the poet, Rabindranath Tagore, fancies himself as a divine lute which is played by God. The idea that the human body is compared to a stringed instrument has a very old tradition in South Asian literature.

This idea is strongly related with a Hathayogic background. Accoding to the mystical physiology of Hathayoga, seventy-two thousand canals are radiating from the heart, i.e. the abode of the soul. These canals (naadii) of the respiratory winds (praana) are often compared to the strings of a lute. The so-called anaahata naada ("sound not struck" or "unmanifest sound") which a Yogin perceives during various stages of his meditation is explained as the sound produced by this body-lute. One of the Caryaa-padas already mentions this simile of the body-lute, but its origin can be followed back earlier. We find it not only in the Hathayogic texts, but also in musicological texts like Natya-shastra, Sangiita-ratnaakara etc. The Pali buddhistic canon, Samyutta-nikaaya, compares the meditative conditioning of the mind to the tuning of a stringed instrument.

Kabir, who inherited the tradition of Carya literature, deals with this simile, too. However, he does not restrict himself to simply copy his literal predecessors: he reinterprets this simile by tinging it with more emotinal tone, which is handed down to the Bauls of Bengals.

Another intriguing example is Rupa Gosvamin of Gaudiya Vaishnava. In his work, he tries to justificate the transvestite practice of Raaganuga-bhakti ("devotion through following emotion") by mentioning the body-lute simile: A transvestite adherent fuses with Radha, comparably to an actor who fuses with his role on the stage, or to a musician who fuses with his instrument during performance.

Thus, observing the topic of the body-lute, I try to discuss and ellucidate the aesthetical aspect of emotion in Bengali medieval literature.

 
Jeanne Openshaw, University of Edinburgh, School of Divinity, New College, Edinburgh, UK
Fluid Identities: Bengali Vaishnavas and the Culture of Love.

Unlike contested South Asian categories such 'caste' and 'tribe', those of 'householder (grihastha)' and 'renouncer (tyagi/sannyasi)' are assumed to be relatively robust, the distinction being endorsed by actor as well as analyst.  While in theory individuals may move from householder to renouncer, the reverse is not supposed to occur.  Of course householder 'castes' with names such as Nath, Yogi, Sadhu suggest a shift the other way.  In the case of the Bengali 'open caste' (Risley), called 'Caste Vaishnavas' (Jat Vaishnavas) the shift occurs in both directions, to this day, and for individuals and groups.  In other words, insofar as this is to be counted 'caste', it is still 'open'.

Bengali Vaishnavas blur the distinction between householder and renouncer in other ways.  Apart from the practice of householder initiates adopting renunciate ideas and practices to varying degrees, there is the fascinating practice of 'joint renunciation' of a male and female pair (initiation into which is taken for a variety of reasons, including the legitimisation of intercaste, or otherwise irregular, sexual relationships).  These varying configurations may reinforce into each other.  For example, any children of such 'joint renouncers' become 'Caste Vaishnavas'.

I surmise that broad, cross-cutting categories such as 'Vaishnava' are invoked especially when the householder/renouncer boundaries are crossed other than in the standard way (i.e. an individual becoming a renouncer), or when it is useful to blur the distinction for other reasons.   My argument is that the Bengali Vaishnava valuation of 'love' (and, in general, women) conduces to this transgressive attitude towards boundaries and categories of all kinds, and that this in turn elevates the role of women, ideologically and to some extent in practice.

 

Manjita Palit, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, United Kingdom
Songs of the Body: Reading the "Bāul" Songs in the Nineteenth Century

Since Rabindranath Tagore's championing of the "Bāuls" as constituting the epicentre, as it were, of the "real" India, ripples have been generated amongst historians and critics alike in an attempt to revise the various images/identities of this much-fluid category of the "Bāul." Though existing research on this heterodox religious order has sought to comprehend and explain their practices through various analytic lenses, viz, that of Vedantic philosophy (of Kshitimohan Sen and Sashibhushan Dasgupta), of the bhadrolok sexual morality (of Akshay Kumar Dutta), of the romantic/spiritualist/scriptural paradigm (of Upendranath Bhattacharya and Anwarul Karim), or indeed of the recent ethnographic prism (of Jeanne Openshaw), the forays into the diverse images/identities of the bāuls have always suffered a lop-sidedness subject to the particular ideological bias of the historian/critic. The dominant reading has been one that chose to read this religious order as an atemporal, apolitical, asocial entity, a radically subversive community unto themselves whose only medium of communication was their esoteric songs. Such a reading has been the inevitable result of a critical obsession to peer through the textual matrix of the songs in a bid to study the psyche of the bāul, of the attempt to study the politics of the mind of the song-writer than the actual arrangement of the various images in his songs. My paper would, hence, seek to refrain from constructing such abstractions of the figure of the bāul, and instead engage in exploring the tropes and the semantics of their figurative ordering. For if meaning is social and historical, it is to be found in the narrative structures of a society rather than in the limited consciousness of any one person. Therefore, instead of trying to look 'through' the looking glass, my paper would seek to look 'at' it

Hanne-Ruth Thompson, SOAS, London, UK

Based on my recent experiences of writing a short Bengali dictionary for an American publisher and my accompanying readings, I want to draw attention to two distinct areas of cultural division.

(1) the American and Bengali lexicon
With the help of examples from my own work we will take a look at
(a) the difficulties Bengali lexicographers face in producing bilingual dictionaries,
(b) the real world gulfs between the two cultures and
(c) some of the fundamental differences between English and Bengali

(2) West Bengal and Bangladeshi linguists
A comparison of two recent books on Bengali spelling, one published in Kolkata, the other in Dhaka can serve to demonstrate a difference in approach between West Bengal and Bangladeshi linguists and the apparent lack of cooperation between them.

Can foreign linguists help to bridge the gap?
As perhaps the first foreign linguist who has gone into Bengali linguistic writing in depth, I would like to offer some comments on research methods, perspectives and ways in which our cultural differences can be used to promote an interest in Bengali language issues