What are the ideas of Bankimchandra on nationalism in India?
Answers
Explanation:
most noteworthy contribution Bankim made to the nationalistic imagination was the political novel Anandamath which was based on the 'sannyasi rebellion' of the late 18th century. It was in Anandamath, that Bankim wrote the poem 'Vande Mataram'. It was the rallying cry for the 'sanatans', a fictional Hindu monastic order in the novel which tells the story of their uprising against a Muslim ruler.
Critics have read the Muslim enemy in Anandamath as a partial stand-in for the English rulers that Bankim, a civil servant, did not dare openly criticise.
The song became popular when the British tried to divide Bengal on religious lines. It was the song for a nation seeking to free itself from the shackles of imperialism. Bankim's personification of India as a goddess, however, has often been critiqued for its non-secular leanings.
His last work was Sitaram, published in 1886.
Beyond ushering a new wave of literature in Bengali, he was also a famed satirist. His Kamalakanter Daptar (From the Desk of Kamalakanta, 1875) depicts colonial India as a marketplace where sit deceitful fishmongers, oil millers of sycophancy, and a European stall that invites Indian youth to experience experimental science, only to punch them in the face - a symbol of the violence of the British. Also present is the 'market of justice' where smaller animals are killed but larger beasts run free.
He died in 1894 in Kolkata. In his last years, he named Tagore as his successor, which his protégé gladly accepted.