Debates On Theology
Sumanta Banerjee
EXPLORATIONS IN MODERN BENGAL. C. 1800-1900: ESSAYS ON RELIGION, HISTORY AND CULTURE by Amiya P. Sen Primus Books, 2010, 256 pp., 750
July 2010, volume 34, No 7

The multifaceted encounter between tradition and modernity in colonial Indian society continues to intrigue today’s historians, who discover new dimensions in the recorded experiences of that period. A little over a decade ago, Tapan Raychaudhuri, in a brilliant study called Europe Reconsidered (1988), explored the changing perceptions and attitudes among the nineteenth century Bengali Hindu intelligent-sia who came in contact with the West. He chose three contemporary representatives, through whose narratives he sought to examine the processes arising out of such a contact in the Bengali social, cultural and political environs. The responses and reactions of the three—Bhudev Mukhopadhyay, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and Swami Vivekananda—bore testimony to the transformation of modern Bengali sensibilities in those environs.In order to define this change, Raychaudhuri instead of using the term ‘westernization’, which implied submission to dominant cultural values and manners of the colonial power, chose the term ‘catalyst’ in a later essay of his (‘Transformation of Indian sensibilities’, 1999),

where he expressed the view that in the socio-cultural milieu of 19th century Bengal, the contact with the West triggered off reactions resulting in new ways of thinking, feeling and action—which not necessarily approximated to the western model.

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