The Indian Autobiographies in English

By RCP Sinha

Self-portrayal has become an integral part of modern culture and India equally shares this universal mood. A large number of Indians have committed themselves to the writing of their autobiographies in English as well as in the regional languages. It is exciting to know that those in English have been produced by some of the finest minds of the country, such as Raja Rammohun Roy, Lal Behari Day, Surendra Nath Banerjea, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose, P.C. Roy, S. Radhakrishnan, Sachchidanand Sinha and Nirad C. Chaudhury. It is highly fascinating to read their testimony in the shaping of modern Indian history. Even more exciting are the glimpses into their private lives and the interrelation between the portrait and the man. This study is the first comprehensive attempt to critically evaluate these works and shows how in modern times Indians begin to get over the proverbial Indian inhibition in talking of private affairs hesitatingly first and then with a devastating even embarrassing frankness. This study, in passing also tries to dispel the impression that no autobiographical tradition existed in ancient and medieval India.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481784948

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© 2013 by RCP Sinha. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/27/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8493-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8494-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013903596

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Contents

Preface

CHAPTER I Introduction

CHAPTER II Growth of Autobiographical Impulse in Ancient and Medieval India

CHAPTER III A Historical Survey of Indo-Anglian Autobiography

CHAPTER IV Men of Religion

CHAPTER V Men in Politics

CHAPTER VI Poets and Litterateurs

CHAPTER VII Conclusion

APPENDIX—A The autobiographical letter of Kasiprasad Ghose

APPENDIX—B The Letter of Mr. Amiya Nath Bose

Bibliography

About the Author

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Preface

Self-portrayal has become an integral part of modern culture and India equally shares this universal mood. There has been in existence a distinct mode of autobiography-writing in India, but it has not been so prominent as to become a significant feature of the national taste. The full flowering of the genre could, however, take place only after the coming of the English to India. In this book, which forms major part of my doctoral thesis presented to the Patna University. I have made an attempt to critically evaluate those autobiographies which have been written by Indians originally in English.

The writing of this book has put me under many happy obligations. My debt to Prof. R. K. Sinha, M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon), Head of the Department of English, Patna University, is incalculable. At every stage of my work I had the privilege of receiving his help and guidance and there is scarcely a paragraph that has not been bettered by his unremitting criticism and constructive suggestions. I am very grateful to Dr. P.D. Tripathi, Reader in English, Science College, Patna, and Dr. K.M. Tiwari, Reader in Linguistics, Patna University, for going through the manuscript and giving me the benefit of their comments. Equally grateful acknowledgements are due to the following persons: Dr. K K Datta and Mr. Sachin Dutt, ex-Vice-Chancellors, Patna University; Dr. R.S. Sharma, Head of the Department of History, Delhi University; Dr. R.C. Prasad, Professor & Head of the Department of English, Bhagalpur University; Dr. D.P. Sengupta, Reader in English, B.N. College, Patna; Mrs. Manju Rani Sinha, Lecturer in English, M.M. College, Patna; Mr. S.S. Prasad and Mr. Anand Singh, both Lecturers in English, Science College, Patna; Dr. K.N. Sharma and Mr. S.P. Roy, my colleagues in the Department of English, B.N. College; Dr. Uma Shankar Sharma, Lecturer in Sanskrit, B.N. College; Dr. K.N. Mishra, Lecturer in Sanskrit, Patna College, Patna; Prof. A.L. Thakur, Director, K.P. Jaywal Research Institute, Patna; Dr. Ram Tawakya Sharma, Lecturer in Hindi, Patna College; Dr. Md. Siddique, Professor of Persian, Patna University; Mr. Qazi Abdul Wadood, Bar-at-Law, Patna; Dr. Devipada Bhattacharya, Head of the Department of Bengali, Jadavpur University; Mr. William Matthews, Department of English, California University and Prof. S.H. Askari, retired Professor of History, Patna University.

I offer thanks to Dr. Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, National Professor of India and to Dr. A.L. Basham, the renowned historian, for several valuable suggestions. I must also thank Mr. Amiya Nath Bose for giving me much needed information about the autobiography of Netaji.

I owe much to the constant assistance of the following libraries: Patna University Library; Patna College Library; B.N. College Library; Sinha Library, Patna; Khuda Bux Oriental Library, Patna; National Library, Calcutta; Asiatic Society Library, Calcutta; Calcutta University Library; Bombay University Library; British Council Libraries at Patna, Calcutta and Madras.

My thanks are also due to the Patna University which has approved my thesis for the Ph.D degree. I must thank Mr. P.N. Grover, Manager of the Patna branch of S. Chand & Co., for taking much interest in the publication of this book.

I am deeply indebted to my wife, Usha, without whose loving care I would not have been able to complete the work.

Department of English, R. C. P. Sinha

B. N. College, Patna

For

Poonam and Sanjay

CHAPTER I

Introduction

My selfe am center of my circling thought,

Onely my selfe I studie, learne, and knowe

—Sir John Davies, Nosce Teipsum

At the age of fifty-eight Benvenuto Cellini, who not only as an artist but primarily as a man will continue to interest mankind to the end of the time,¹ suddenly felt the need to describe his life with his own hand. Instinctively perhaps he realized that what he had done in art would be better known, if he furnished an account of it in black and white.² His autobiography opens with an appeal.

All men of whatsoever quality they be, who have done anything of excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they are persons of truth and honesty, to describe their life with their own hand…"³

Cellini, a typical product of the Renaissance, was speaking with exceptional clairvoyance and the generations succeeding him have not disregarded his appeal. Autobiography is now one of the most popular and powerful mediums of self-expression and all sorts of persons, from a president to a pedlar, are rushing into print with their ‘lives’. It is the fashion; people are crazy about it; they feel impelled to write their ‘lives’. This craze is symptomatic of man’s inner need to unburden his heart, to share his experiences with others. On the level of practical life, too, its need is now being felt most acutely. In Communist China a detailed dossier is kept on every party cadre. On joining the Communist Party a member has to write an autobiography and a self-criticism and his supervisors add to the document over the years. This dossier, called a Chien ting shu or paper of review, governs a cadre’s life.⁴

This world-wide craze has also infected the Indians who have taken to this genre with gusto and vigour. The genre is not altogether new for them, though in modern India, in the period after the coming of the English with their new ideas and a new system of education, there has been a bursting forth of the autobiographic impulse, that had expressed itself only intermittently and spasmodically in the past. For historical reasons, some of the greatest Indians, and some not so well-known, have written their immensely interesting ‘lives’ in English, valuable both as historical and human documents.

The present work is an attempt to study those autobiographies which have been written by Indians in English. The works have usually been referred to in this study as Indo-Anglian autobiographies. An explanation is perhaps indicated. Indo-English literary relations produced two types of literature. The first may be termed Anglo-Indian by which we imply literature bearing on Indian topics or inspired by Indian motifs and spirit, and written by Englishmen or other Westerners.⁵ The second type has been denominated Indo-Anglian and used by Prof. K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar and others to signify English literature by Indian authors.⁶ According to Prof. Iyengar, the term Indo-Anglian was first used in 1883 to describe a volume printed in Calcutta containing ‘Specimen compositions from Native Students’.⁷ Chalapathi Rao, however, disputes the claim and gives James H. Cousins the credit for using it even earlier than 1883 to denote Indian writing in English.⁸

This thesis, therefore, does not include those autobiographies which have been rendered into English from the various regional languages. Exceptions of course have been made in the case of Tagore and Gandhi, whose autobiographies were originally written in Bengali and Gujarati respectively.⁹ They are outstanding contributions to the genre and a study of Indian autobiography will indeed remain incomplete without them. Moreover, they were translated into English under the full supervision of their original authors who were themselves masters of English prose. Prof. Iyengar also had reservations about including Gandhi’s autobiography in a survey of Indo-Anglian literature. However, he solved the problem by citing the instance of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia:

My difficulty here is similar to the difficulty that faces a historian of English literature in regard to Sir Thomas More. Willy nilly every historian refers to More’s Utopia—and often describes it in considerable detail—although it was originally written in Latin and rendered into English long afterwards, and that too neither by More himself nor yet with his approval. More’s specifically English writings—generally of a polemical character—are but casually mentioned, or not mentioned at all. It is all very illogical and unscientific, but a literary historian has to be guided by his common sense and he has to deal with human beings, not with abstract premises or lifeless substances. If I have erred in including an appreciation of My Experiments with Truth in my book, I am at least in very good and very honourable company.¹⁰

The literary renaissance that began with India’s contact with England made a remarkable contribution in so far as it excited and stimulated the autobiographical impulse in Indians. Not that they were discovering this impulse for the first time. An autobiographical tradition of a sort did exist, but it had been too tenuous and irregular to become a significant feature of the national culture. There were indeed some elements in the Hindu tradition that hindered its free and natural growth. The forces of the new literary renaissance, however, freed the autobiographical impulse from the trammels of such inhibitory factors. It has to be borne in mind that the period of the rise and growth of Indo-Anglian autobiography corresponds with one of the most dynamic periods in the history of India, characterized by a subtle commingling of and later a sharp conflict between the values of two great cultures—one ancient and the other modern. It saw the emergence on the Indian scene of science with its spirit of inquiry and politics with a growing concern for freedom. The growth of the practice of autobiography-writing may be viewed as one of the typical manifestations of the spirit of the new age. It is not without significance that Raja Rammohun Roy, often recalled with reverence as the Father of Modern India, wrote a short account of his life in English. When the struggle for freedom became intensified and the whole nation was charged with new energy and inspiration, the time was ripe for a rich harvest of autobiographical writings. During this period of national resurgence the foundations of a truly great tradition of Indian autobiography were laid.

Of this large crop of Indian autobiographies written in English as well as in the regional languages, those in English have been produced by some of the finest minds of the country, such as Raja Rammohun Roy, Lal Behari Day, Surendranath Banerjea, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, P. C. Ray and S. Radhakrishnan. It is fascinating to read their testimony in the shaping of modern Indian history. Even more exciting are the glimpses into their private lives and the interrelation between the portrait and the man. Besides these well-known persons, others less known and even unknown—from a Harijan to a Brahmin—have written their surprisingly interesting autobiographies. Some of them are now almost forgotten. One of the aims of the present study is also to bring them to light.

It is surprising to find that no attempt has been made so far to examine these Indo-Anglian autobiographies, though E. F. Oaten’s A. Sketch of Anglo-Indian Literature, a survey of the writings in English by Indians as well as by Englishmen using India as material, was published as far back as 1906, Even Prof. Iyengar, that great champion of Indo-Anglian literature, has written very little on this subject. Only the autobiographies of Gandhi and Nehru and more recently Nirad C. Chaudhuri have been subjected to some kind of literary, or non-literary, study at some length.¹¹ Biographers and historians, however, have made the maximum use of these books, the kind of use Wilfrid Ward wants all autobiographical material to be made of: Autobiography is really only material for the biographer.¹² Another sort of attempt made by some critics has been to compile and edit anthologies of brief passages from Indian autobiographies.¹³

The plan as adopted in this study is simple and self-explanatory. The second chapter, which follows this Introduction, attempts to trace the autobiographical tradition in India before the nineteenth century. This, to my mind, is necessary as an impression continues to persist that no such practice existed before the coming of the English. The third chapter is a historical survey of the rise and growth of Indo-Anglian autobiography as a recognized form of self-expression. The fourth chapter discusses the autobiographies of men of religion. The second category, which comprises the autobiographies of politicians and statesmen, is examined in the fifth chapter; while the sixth proposes to study the third category, that of poets and litterateurs. In the concluding chapter an attempt has been made to define what is specific and unique about this autobiographical venture and to examine its future.

A few words by way of explaining the classification. It is difficult indeed to classify autobiographies by motive, as motives are always mixed. To classify them into res gestae and subjective ones on the basis of the two types of experience is to make a very broad classification which can hardly be of any help in a conclusive discussion. Moreover, a good autobiography is neither wholly objective nor wholly subjective. The only legitimate way, I think, is to classify these works according to the ‘mission’ or ‘calling’¹⁴ of individual authors. Man is best known by what he does and how he acts in society, that is, by the social function to which his biological functions are subordinated. It is true that this reduction of man to a mere function or ‘mission’ is not a very happy tendency of the modern age. Gabriel Marcel, the existentialist philosopher, notes with disparagement the tendency of the individual to appear both to himself and to others as an agglomeration of functions.’¹⁵ In our day a man is primarily an embodied function, a clerk, a doctor, a teacher, a civil servant, a trade-unionist, and so on. Copleston humorously remarks that when a man retires, he is still regarded and regards himself in terms of his function; he is a retired civil servant, a retired doctor, a retired detective’.¹⁶ Still for our present purposes classification according to ‘mission’ or function has the advantage of convenience. The nature of the experience of those having the same profession and calling is to a great extent similar and comparable; hence the division of the autobiographies into the three above-mentioned categories. It should be noted that religion, politics and literary activity constitute three major themes not only in autobiographical writings but in the national life of India as well.

A study of Indo-Anglian autobiography has to cope with numerous difficulties. First, autobiography as a distinct mode of literary expression is yet to be recognized, and whatever critical approaches have been made to it so far are yet to ripen into firm critical judgments. Secondly, there is a total dearth of critical literature on the subject of the present study. In addition, the task of differentiating and selecting from the huge mass of relevant material is extremely difficult in the sense that it is not always easy to affirm whether an individual work is to be characterized as a memoir or a travelogue or an autobiography. Yet there is pleasure in surmounting difficulties and I firmly believe that it was worth-while initiating a study of this hitherto untouched subject.

CHAPTER II

Growth of Autobiographical Impulse in Ancient and Medieval India

Atmanam rathinam viddhi: know the self as the Lord who sits in chariot called the body.

—The Katha Upanishad, 1:3:3

When Gandhi agreed to write his autobiography at the instance of some of his close associates, a friend of his had his doubts. He said to Gandhi:

What has set you on this adventure? Writing an autobiography is a practice peculiar to the West. I know of nobody in the East having written one, except amongst those who have come under Western influence.¹⁷

And Roy Pascal says in a sweeping generalization that autobiography is essentially European. Where in modern times, he goes on, members of Eastern civilizations have written autobiographies, like Gandhi for instance, they have taken over a European tradition.¹⁸ While tracing the rise and growth of autobiography in ancient times and in the early middle ages Georg Misch does not mention any Indian contribution, though he speaks of Egypt’s and Assyria’s.¹⁹ Similarly, S. K. Padover includes only two autobiographical pieces from modern India in his monumental book Confessions and Self-Portraits : 4,600 years of Autobiography, overlooking the claims of some really fine pieces from ancient and medieval India.

The impression that the Indians in the past did not care to write about their own lives is partially true and is supposed to find corroboration in certain peculiarities of their habits of thought and living. They were absorbed in other-worldly problems at the expense of the demands of the mundane. A thinker of the calibre of Albert Schweitzer goes so far as to say that Indian thought is basically governed by the idea of world and life negation.²⁰ The very idea of writing about their own lives would appear to them an indulgence in vanity.

More precisely, the failure of the Indians to write their history²¹ as well as their life-story is often ascribed to their doctrine of Karma and to their view that everything is brought about by Fate, working in a manner wholly inexplicable and beyond all foresight. According to the doctrine of Karma whatever happens to us in this life we have to submit in meek resignation, for it is the result of our past doings.²² Man’s actions, therefore, are wholly incalculable, as nobody is in a position to know what deed in the past is responsible for the present happenings. To the concept of Fate was added yet another life-enervating view of the miraculous in the shape of divine intervention, magic, and witchcraft.²³ Worse still is the concept of time which, like a wheel, remains constantly moving²⁴ in a circle stifling the very idea of progress. As Keith puts it:

. . . (Indian) philosophies of every kind taught that there was no progress in our [the European] sense in the world; things had happened age after age in precisely the same way; the doctrine of the periodical creation and destruction of the world of the Brahmanical post-vedic texts is on the same plane as the theory of the Buddhists of the existence of innumerable earlier Buddhas and the long line of Jain Tirthankaras.²⁵

All this is supposed to have struck at the very root of self-consciousness and the recording of historical events or of the circumstances of an individual human life is consequently very rare indeed in ancient India. For the rise and growth of the autobiographical tradition, a certain degree of individualism is necessary. The distinguishing mark of the West is its intense individualism which had its spectacular emergence during the Renaissance.²⁶ Along with this came a disbelief in the intervention of God as the decisive factor in history.²⁷ With the advent of science the idea of natural came to be postulated as against the divine²⁸ and man began to feel more certain of his competence to shape the events of his life. For the first time he cut himself loose from his race, people, or family and became conscious of his identity as a separate, independent individual.²⁹ The emphasis on an individual’s thought and consciousness, which initiated a search for the characteristic features of man, his full, whole-nature,³⁰ the growth of both biography and autobiography during the Renaissance.³¹

The Indian mind, moreover, is said to prefer the general to the particular.³² As B. K. Mallik says: To the Hindu the individual as bare individual never appealed apart from his relationships. He understood him, if at all, as only a member or constituent of a society or group, or organization.³³ Even today the concept of the Divine Absolute has not quite disappeared nor the habit of proceeding from the general to the particular. But the deductive method is not conducive to the growth of autobiography. For the emergence of an interest in autobiography the inductive thought-habit, as Wayne Shumaker says, is the first condition.³⁴

The odds against the growth of autobiography were thus numerous in ancient India. The Indians, nevertheless, managed to find some sort of an outlet for their autobiographical impulse, a fact not yet brought into prominence. The examples of such autobiographical expressions, though fragmentary in nature and small in number, still possess an irresistible charm and their worth as autobiographical documents is undeniably great.

The earliest specimens are to be found in the so-called Danastutis or Praises of Gifts in the Rigveda. They are composed chiefly to describe the kind and amount of gifts, but the composers in passing also speak of their families and patrons. These verses occur mainly in the first and tenth books and among the Valakhilya (supplementary) hymns of the eighth. Here is a typical example:

We acknowledge the substantial wealth [of the gift] of a hundred horses, the donation made to us amongst men at the holy solemnities of the illustrious and auspicious Raja Kurunga. I, the ‘Rishi’ [Devatithi is his name], have received subsequently the complete donation; the sixty thousand herds of pure cattle merited by the devotions of the pious son of Kanwa, and by the illustrious Priyamedhas. Upon the acceptance of this donation to me, the very trees have exclaimed, [see these ‘Rishis’] have acquired excellent cows, excellent horses.³⁵

The Rishi gives his name and describes the kind and amount of gifts he has received from the generous king. The use of the first person ‘I’ is significant. It shows that there was no inhibition against using ‘I’ and the ‘Rishis’ were self-conscious enough to use it.

The most remarkable autobiographical piece