As the nation well wished for the economist and Ex-PM Dr. ManMohan Singh on his birthday, it is important to take a trip down the history to pay homage to another personality who was born on the same day 200 years ago.
On September 26th 1820, one of the most pugnacious, socially outspoken and rambunctious genius of Bengal, Ishwar Chandra Bandopadhyay was born in Birsingha. His father, Thakurdas Bandopadhyay and mother, Bhagavati Devi had a very religious outlook towards the life. His family originally hailed from Banamalipur in present day Hooghly district of Bengal. Despite the scarcity of material resources in his home, his unyielding nature, sharp mind and insatiable hunger for knowledge led him to begin his journey of relentless quest in academics at a very young age. He learnt Sanskrit in his village school paathshala. It is important to understand that all of this was happening years before the passing of the English Education Act of 1835 which led to the Anglicization of Indian education following the recommendations of Thomas Babington Macaulay pushing aside the suggestions made by James Princep in terms of oriental education. This made Ishwar Chandra Bandopadhyay one of the last intellectual luminaries to be educated in the traditional old-school Indian style whilst getting the window to understand the benefits of the European education system and development of natural sciences and occidental philosophies.
It is said that while travelling from his village to the city of Calcutta with his father, he learnt the numeral system from the milestones lining the road. He and his father stayed in Burrabazar region of North Calcutta, where they stayed at the home of Bhagabat Charan. Raimoni was the youngest daughter of Bhagabat Charan whose affection became the main driving force behind Ishwar Chandra finding a resonance with the plight of women during those years. He had taken up a post of teaching at Jorasakho and excelled in Dialectics, Vedanta, Astronomy, Vedanga, Smruti, Sanskrit and Literature. He grew to become a full-fledged polymath, entrepreneur and educator of his time. He joined the Fort William College in the Sanskrit department at the age of 21 years as the Head scholar. His unique and brilliant mind helped him master English and Hindi without much of external help. After five years in 1846, he joined Sanskrit College in the capacity of Assistant Secretary. He had lots of altercations and confrontations with Rasomoy Dutta over the administrative changes that he suggested. This resulted him to leave the post and return to Fort William College.
Ishwar Chandra had written two books-Byakaran Koumudi and Upakramonika on the ideas and inherent complex notions of Sanskrit grammar. When he came back to Sanskrit College, he had set a pre-condition that he be allowed to restructure the entire pedagogy and syllabus of the courses. He implemented the languages of Bengali and English as medium of learning apart from Sanskrit in the college. He believed in the combination of best from both the occidental and the oriental worlds in the learning matrix for young minds and hence introduced lessons from European history, Science and Philosophy apart from Vedic studies. Interestingly, he after having mastered the knowledge of the six schools of Hindu Philosophy especially the Samkhya and Vedanta, had rejected the ideas of both the schools and had argued in favour of exposing Indians to the European thought process such as those of John Stuart Mill and David Hume. He along with John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune had spearheaded the movement for women education in Calcutta. This resulted in the establishment of Bethune College in Calcutta in 1849.
Well before the title of Vidyasagar was bestowed upon him, he had began working on widow remarriage which came as a jolt to the orthodox Hindu society already reeling under the impact of the abolition of Sati Pratha vide the Sati regulation Act of 1829 passed through the efforts of Raja Ram Mohun Roy. One common link which connected Ram Mohun Roy with Ishwar Chandra was Rani Rashmoni. Rashmoni was a free spirited woman who had married Rajachandra Das, businessman and Zamindar of Janbazar. Roy had understood the fire in the soul of Rashmoni and had foretold that she will bring betterment for a large number of people. When Ishwar Chandra Banerjee was carrying forward the movement of Widow Remarriage, Rani Rashmoni had firmly supported him in organizing debates with the orthodox elite Hindu circles.
Just few months prior to the 1857 rebellion Ishwar Chandra was facing the question of the scriptural sanction of Widow Remarriage, especially from Dalhousie who was flanked between the social reform movement and the orthodox faction led by Radhakant Deb. It is interesting to note that Radha Kant Deb led a society known as Dharma Sabha which had historically countered developments championed by the Brahmo Samaj, developed on the ideational platform given by Ram Mohun Roy. After ferreting through the Hindu scriptures, Ishwar Chandra brought the attention of the debate to the Parashar Samhita. This scripture states that if the husband is celibate, infertile, deserter or dead, then the wife can remarry. This demolished the orthodox sycophant narrative and led to the passage of the Widow Remarriage act after the 1857 rebellion.
His profound and diverse knowledge led the Sanskrit college to bestow upon him the title of Vidyasagar. He was instrumental giving a concrete, modern and simpler shape to the Bengali prose which had remained unaltered since the changes made by Panchanan Karmakar and the British Orientalist Charles Wilkins. This is the reason, he is known as the father of the Bengali prose.
He had some prominent differences with Ram Mohun Roy. Both Vidyasagar and Ram Mohun Roy had fought for Women emancipation through Widow Remarriage & prevention and criminalization of Sati respectively. Roy had targeted for social reform through a modified idea of religion, of a new variant of Hinduism (mainly based on Isha Upanishad). Vidyasagar had totally bypassed the idea and edifice of religion all together in order to bring free rational thinking in the society. He along with another social reformer, A.K. Dutta many a times stated and asserted a view that, there is a lot to be done in the visible immediate society around us which disallows the time to think about some supernatural entity.
The influence of Vidyasagar can be found throughout the thoughts, speeches and writings of other luminaries. Swami Vivekananda had once stated that there is hardly anyone in the entire India who in some or the other way has not been influenced by Vidyasagar. Madhusudan Dutt after becoming Michael Madhusudan and having a failed tryst with destiny in literature in Europe returned to India and was inspired by Vidyasagar to write in Bengali giving rise to Amritakshar chhanda(Blank verse). He went on to write Meghnad Badh Kavya, one of his timeless creations. Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore while condensing his thoughts on religion had once stated that it is unfathomable as to how the Supreme Being did conceive the unique and exceptional mind of Vidyasagar among the numerous Bengalis. Ramkrishna Paramahansa had compared Vidyasagar to ocean as compared to other people who were no more than rivers, canals, lakes and ponds in front of him.
It is worthwhile to underline clearly that Vidyasagar was an educator, a social innovator and an iconoclast of nineteenth century Bengal and India. Efforts to subsume this giant personality under a cult based on religious identity will gain no result and will ultimately fail as it will gain no social traction in his homeland-Bengal where the power brokers are trying tooth and nail to make headway into the public psyche. Bengal knows the gigantic mental and intellectual dimension of Vidyasagar which is beyond the grasp and reach of any religion based identity.