Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Legends such as these about Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar have been a part of Bengal’s public memory since the nineteenth century. Vidyasagar represented an aspiration of an upward mobility even in the face of a colonial government; that even an Indian could command respect even from the British empire. 
 
From infancy, children in Bengali households heard countless times that Vidyasagar learnt the English numerals by following the mile-stones on his way from his native Birsingha village of Midnapore district to Calcutta when he was barely eight years old. Young adults have been told that Vidyasagar passed his law examination despite studying under a streetlight as his parents could not afford gas light at home.

Even as one steps outside of the house, Vidyasagar remains a figure that most Bengalis encounter in their everyday lives. From a street named after him, to a stadium, to a bridge over the Hooghly river, to even holding an annual fair dedicated to the great man’s efforts towards spreading education and increasing social awareness, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar occupies a seat of immense love and reverence amongst the people of the state.

Vidyasagar opened schools and colleges. At a time when scholars like Radhakanta Deb, founder of a conservative Hindu society called, Dharmo Sabha, were promoting English education among the Hindus, Vidyasagar redefined the way the Bengali language was written and taught. Ishwar Chandra Bandopadhyay was a polymath, who had joined the Sanskrit College at the age of nine and studied there for twelve long years, qualifying in Sanskrit Grammar, Literature, Dialectics, Vedanta, Smruti and Astronomy. At the age of 19, he was bestowed with the title of “Vidyasagar”, meaning ocean of learning for his brilliance. He opened schools and colleges and brought about a revolution in the Bengali education system. He advocated for female literacy. Vidyasagar associated himself with Drinkwater Bethune, the Anglo-Indian lawyer who founded an institution for women’s education in Kolkata in 1849. In 1851 the management of the college was entrusted to him.
 
The desecration of the statue by the BJP goons have compelled for a reminder of the values that the renowned philosopher and social reformer stood for.

The British ruled India in the nineteenth century. In addition to oppression under the imperialistic mission of the British from the outside, the Indian society was infested with social evils from within. To resist these forces of authority and orthodoxy, a cultural, social, intellectual and artistic movement began in Bengal in the nineteenth century and continued till the early twentieth century. Akin to the European Renaissance, this movement was called the Bengal Renaissance. Scholars, writers, religious and social reformers, journalists, patriotic orators and scientists converged together to engineer a transition towards a “modern” India.  This “modernity” demanded a reconfiguration of the boundaries between the public and private. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Ram Mohan Roy were pioneers of the Bengal Renaissance which so mightily changed the whole aspect of not only the Bengali life and thought, but also transformed the domestic landscape of the Hindu society forever.

Being a learned scholar of Sanskrit, Vidyasagar had discovered that the ancient Hindu scriptures did not enjoin perpetual widowhood, and in 1855 he startled the Hindu world by his work on the Remarriage of Hindu Widows.

To the Hindu orthodoxy, the body of the Hindu widow was the site for maintenance of caste purity through ritual austerity. Polygamy was practised and young girls were married to men thrice their age, either in the name of tradition or to avoid dowry. Girls became widows soon after marriage, often even before their marriage was consummated. They were subjected to a life of deprivation, humiliation, abuse and ostracisation inside their homes. They were denied the basic rights to bodily integrity: stripped of jewellery, forced to wear only white, and ration their food intake. Apart from these restrictions, the body of the widow also generated anxieties regarding her sexuality.

When an upper caste Hindu male like Vidyasagar called out these violent cultural practices which operated under the garb of “protection” or benevolent tradition, it caused an uproar. While an agitation against the orthodox Hindus, the priests and leaders of religious communities was something expected, Vidyasagar also had to face opposition from the concerns of the nationalists. To these nationalists, who were also learned scholars, the question of women empowerment “was not so much about the specific condition of women ..as it was about the political encounter between a colonial state and the suppressed “tradition” of a conquered people.”( Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Women”). The passing of a widow remarriage act, seemed to this group, a Western import which had no place in a traditional Indian society.

Yet Ishwar Chandra persevered amid a storm of indignation. Associating himself with the most influential men of the day like Prosonno Kumar Tagore and Ram Gopal Ghosh, he appealed to the British government to declare that the sons of remarried Hindu widows should be considered legitimate heirs. The British government responded; the act was passed in 1856, and some years later Ishwar Chandra’s own son was married to a widow. In the last years of his life, Ishwar Chandra wrote works against Hindu polygamy.

Vidyasagar stood for critical consciousness and the spirit that interrogated everything. Last year, when the BBC Bengali Service asked its listeners about “the greatest Bengalis”, Vidyasagar was part of the list. With a smashed statue of the man in a college named in his honour, in the city of his birth, what kind of legacy are we really left with?

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

The post The Vidyasagar Legacy: What he stood for and what he was against appeared first on SabrangIndia.

At the end of a hot and humid day, a storm seemed about to break. As the wind picked up, so did Mamata’s speech. The crowd wanted more. At the end, as she chanted well known shlokas from Bhagavad Gita, the mass of people heard in pin-drop silence. It was electrifying.

This evening, walking down College Street to Shyam Bazar, I saw young men wearing placards with Vidyasagar’s image on them. Today, Mamata walked the same route that Amit Shah took yesterday. Thousands of women and men walked with her, calling the BJP out. Protesting the vandalisation of Vidyasagar’s statue.

Walking the streets, I cannot help but get the feeling that today, Kolkata – a city of eccentrics, radicals, and conservatives alike – is on the edge of a precipice. As I wandered down the Gariahat lane, I heard hawkers arguing politics. Four Trinamool supporters and one CPI-M-turned-BJP supporter. I joined their conversation for a while. The red-turned-saffron hawker accused me of being a TMC supporter when I asked him why is he asking people to vote for Modi. Their banter was sharp and political; peppered with humour, yet uncompromising. Characteristic of the city.

Will the inroads made by the BJP change all this?

Today CPI-M general secretary, condemed the vandalisation of Vidyasagar’s statue, and blamed hooliganism in the TMC and BJP. Yesterday, in an informal conversation with a highly-placed TMC official, I mused out loud that the last time the Vidyasagar statue was vandalised was during the Naxal uprising. “They were not like this,” the official said – drawing the kind of distinction between the Left and the BJP that the CPI-M today is loathed to draw.

It’s hard, caught in this vortex, to not have the bleak feeling that Bengal is slipping away.

From a FB post of Monobina Gupta titled “Some Notes from a City becoming rapidly unhinged “

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Kolkata: Just three days ahead of the last phase of Lok Sabha polls, in which nine West Bengal (WB) constituencies will also be voting, Kolkata is embroiled in a tense situation. Following the desecration of the bust of the noted social reformer and key figure of Bengal renaissance Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, videos have now emerged showing BJP cadres indulged in vandalizing and desecrating the statue.

WB Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and several top Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders changed their Facebook and Twitter display picture (DP) to his photo to protest the incident. Banerjee took out a protest rally today to protest the desecration of the bust.

Trinamool Congress’s official profile on Twitter and Facebook was also changed with a picture of Vidyasagar.
 
Derek O’ Brien, MP Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, Abhishek Banerjee and several others changed their profile pictures on Twitter to condemn the incident.
 
Attacking the BJP, Trinamool spokesperson, Derek O’Brien called Amit Shah “ignorant” and asked him to “try his luck somewhere else”. He has also accused the BJP of being responsible for the desecration. He said, “We are trying to obtain and authenticate audio of slogans like ‘Vidyasagar finished, where is the Josh’ raised during the violence,” adding that the Central forces deployed in West Bengal have started a “whisper campaign” asking people to vote for the BJP.
 
Launching a scathing attack on BJP president Amit Shah on Tuesday, Banerjee had said, “What does Amit Shah think of himself? Is he above everything? Is he God that no one can protest against him?”

 
Banerjee said this after supporters of the BJP and the TMC fought pitched battles on the streets of Kolkata during a roadshow by Shah.
 
A college named after Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, was ransacked and a bust of the 19th century social reformer shattered during the clashes. The TMC and BJP are blaming each other for the vandalism.
 
Earlier, addressing a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday, Shah had accused “the TMC goons” of vandalising the bust of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar inside a college, saying it was done to gain “sympathy” as the Banerjee-led party had realised its “reverse count” had begun.

Banerjee took out a protest rally in north Kolkata on Wednesday to protest the incident.
 
The CPI(M) also called for protest rallies against the incident. Sitaram Yechury slammed the BJP-RSS for desecrating the statue. He tweeted, “BJP-RSS think nothing of when they vandalise the historic Vidyasagar College, break Vidyasagar statue. This is their advocacy of India’s civilizational heritage? Attacking knowledge is central to getting their poisonous project going. Bengal will reject the destruction they offer.” He also said that BJP and RSS are systematically attacking Bengal. Highlighting the Vidyasagar’s contributions to Bengal’s reform movements he said, Vidyasagar was conferred the title of ocean of knowledge.”
 
Following the violent attacks on educational institutions, students from Calcutta University, Vidyasagar College and other institutions in the city organised protests on Wednesday at 4 pm at College Square, adjacent to the main campus of the University of Calcutta.
 
A Facebook event for the protest was started by ex-student, Sudeshna Dutta Gupta from Calcutta University. Students who will take part in the protest have clearly mentioned to us that it is an apolitical gathering and that they just want to protest against, what they are calling ‘saffron terrorism.’
 
The city’s elite and intellectuals may take out a protest march from College street on Wednesday evening.
 
The Election Commission will hold a meeting with Bengal observers, after the TMC sought one over the statue’s destruction.

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Image: Wikipedia

He taught himself numbers counting the mile-stones from his native Birsingha village of Midnapore district, West Bengal to Calcutta when he was barely eight years old. Today, September 26 is 196^th Birth Anniversary. Born into a family steeped in poverty, his life story is one of commitment and compassion. His life struggle was to dignify the life of the Hindu widow, prevent Child Marriage and ensure egalitarianism and dignity for those whom the caste system viewed as “lower”, unclean or polluted. The last two decades of his life were spent with the Santhals at ‘Nandan Kanan’ in the district of Jamtara where he died in 1891.

His fierce advocacy and campaigning ensured the enactment of a law in 1856 which removed all legal obstacles to the marriage of Hindu widows. The Widow Remarriage Act XV was passed in 1856.(July 25)

It was the plight of child widows in India that influenced his passionate campaign and he worked hard to make life better for these young girls and women. He was a staunch believer in the remarriage of widows and tried to create awareness about this issue.
 
Why were there so many increasing numbers of child widows?
One of the huge contributing factors was that many wealthy men of high castes used to have numerous wives which they would leave behind as widows upon their death. Hence, as a logical extension of the campaign for modernity and reform, Vidyasagar also fought against the system of polygamy.
 
Ishwar Chandra Bandopadhyaya was born to Thakurdas Bandyopadhyay and mother Bhagavati Devi was a unique symbol of the Bengali Renaissance, a great scholar, academician and reformer of whom, on his death Rabindranath Tagore said, "One wonders how God, in the process of producing forty million Bengalis, produced such a man!"

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar campaigned for Widow Remarriage, Abolition of Child-Marriage and Polygamy. He also opened the doors of the colleges and other educational institutions to lower caste students, which were earlier reserved only for the Brahmins. For his immense generosity and kind-heartedness, people started addressing him as "Dayar Sagar" (ocean of kindness). He is credited and remembered across Bengal for revolutionizing the education system of Bengal. In his book, "Barno-Porichoy" (Introduction to the letter), Vidyasagar refined the Bengali language and made it accessible to all persons, reducing its exclusivist, Brahmanical orientation.
 
In this day and age of a dominant Hindutva men like Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar find no place or mention. Any surprises? They spoke of radical reforms and modernizing of faith practices.
In his own words, why Widow Marriage needed to be Abolished. These are Excerpts from a booklet entitled, Whether the practice of widow-marriage among Hindus should or should not prevail, published by Vidyasagar in 1885:
 
“AN ADEQUATE idea of the intolerable hardships of early widowhood, can be formed by those only whose daughters and sisters have been deprived of their husbands during their infancy. How many hundreds of widows, unable to observe the austerities of a Brahmacharya life, betake themselves to prostitution and foeticide and thus bring disgrace upon the families of their fathers, mothers and husbands. If widow-marriage be allowed, it will remove the insupportable torments of life-long widowhood, diminish the crimes of prostitution and infanticide and secure all families from disgrace and infamy. As long as this salutary practice will be deferred so long will the crimes of prostitution, adultery, incest and foeticide flow on in an ever increasing current… so long will a widow’s agony blaze on in fiercer flames….
 
And this is a description of the first widow marriage, obtained from a biographical sketch of Vidyasagar by Pandit Shivanath Shastri, a Brahmo Samaj leader.
 
“I SHALL never forget the day. When Pandit Vidyasagar came with his friend, the bridegroom, at the head of a large procession, the crowd of spectators was so great that there was not an inch of moving space, and many fell into the big drains which were to be seen by the sides of Calcutta streets those days. After the ceremony, it became the subject of discussion everywhere; in the bazaars and the shops, in the streets; in the public squares, in students’ lodging-houses, in gentlemen’s drawing-rooms, in offices and in distant village homes, where even women earnestly discussed it among themselves. The weavers of Santipore issued a peculiar kind of women’s sari which contained woven along its borders the first line of a newly composed song which went on to say “May Vidyasagar live long.”

Sati ceremony in progress. (Pictorial History of China and India,185.)
 
Campaign for Reforms
It was with the support of many including e Akshay Kumar Dutta, Vidyasagar introduced the practice of widow remarriages to mainstream Hindu society. The prevailing custom of Kulin Brahmin polygamy allowed elderly men — sometimes on their deathbeds — to marry teenage or prepubescent girls, supposedly to spare their parents the shame of having an unmarried girl attain puberty in their house. After such marriages, these girls would usually be left behind in their parental homes, where they might be subjected to orthodox rituals, especially if they were subsequently widowed. These included a semi-starvation, hard domestic labour, and close restriction on their freedom to leave the house or be seen by strangers.

Often, unable to tolerate the ill treatment, many of these girls would run away and turn to prostitution to support themselves. Ironically, the economic prosperity and lavish lifestyles of the city made it possible for many of them to have successful careers once they stepped out of the sanction of society and into the demi-monde. In 1853 it was estimated that Calcutta had a population of 12,718 prostitutes and public women. Many other widows had to shave their heads and don white saris, supposedly to discourage attention from men.
 
Background
A brilliant mind that excelled at academics, his quest for knowledge was so intense that he used to study under a street light as it was not possible for him to afford a gas lamp at home. He cleared all the examinations with excellence and in quick succession. He was rewarded with a number of scholarships for his academic performance. To support himself and the family Ishwar Chandra also took a part-time job of teaching at Jorashanko. In the year 1839, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar successfully cleared his Law examination and two years later, in 1841, at the age of twenty one years, Ishwar Chandra joined the Fort William College as a head of the Sanskrit department.

After five years, in 1946, Vidyasagar left Fort William College and join the Sanskrit College as 'Assistant Secretary'. In the first year of service, Ishwar Chandra recommended a number of changes to the existing education system. This report resulted into a serious altercation between Ishwar Chandra and College Secretary Rasomoy Dutta. Following this, Vidyasagar resigned from Sanskrit College and rejoined Fort William College but as a head clerk.

How a Nawab's Shoe Helped Ishwa Chandra’s Dream of Staring the Calcutta 
An interesting story. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and his few friends decided to collect donations to form Calcutta University. He traveled across Bengal and neighboring states asking people to donate for the foundation. While doing so, one day he reached outside the palace of an influential King, a Nawab. After hearing his plea, not entirely sympathetically, the King, pulled one of his shoes and dropped into Vidyasagar's bag as donation. Vidyasagar thanked the Nawab and left. Turning this into an opportunity, the very next day Vidyasagar organised an auction of the Nawab's shoe and earned Rs. 1000. The Nawab after hearing that his shoe has fetched so much amount of money, he himself gave a similar amount of money as donation.

The title 'Vidyasagar' (ocean of knowledge) was given to him due to his vast knowledge in almost all the subjects. Poet Michael Madhusudan Dutta while writing about Ishwar Chandra said: "The genius and wisdom of an ancient sage, the energy of an Englishman and the heart of a Bengali mother".

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar passed away at the age of 70 on 29 July, 1891. After his death, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar’s home was sold by his son to the Mallick family of Kolkata that was later purchased by the Bengali Association, Bihar on 29 March 1974. They maintained the house in its original form and also started a Girls’ school and a free homeopathic clinic.

Girls Schools a Priority for Reformers
Recognising the taboos imposed by caste, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, along with many other active reformers emphasized the importance of girls education and even participated in opening schools for girls. This was because, for him, educational reform was much important than any other reform. He believed that the status of women and all kinds of injustice and inequalities that they face could be changed only through education.
 

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