ABSTRACT
The first appearance of Dvijendra Lii,! Ray as a dramatist synchronizes with the beginning of the Svadesi Andolan or Nationalist Movement.1 A true understanding of the work of this writer is not possible without a clear view of the place of that movement in Bengali life and thought. To a superficial observer the movement would appear to be the direct outcome of Lord Curzon's measure for the partition of Bengal in 1905. But, as a matter of fact, this was the occasion rather than the cause of the movement and all that it connoted. No doubt, the measure itself stirred Bengal to an unprecedented political and economic unrest, as it was interpreted as a challenge to Bengali manhood, and as a deliberate attempt by the British Government to break the solidarity of Bengali life and spirit; but the new national consciousness which reacted so dramatically in 1905 was the product of a large number of forces which had been in operation for many years before. As we have already pointed out in an earlier chapter, English education and the study of Western science, philosophy and literature had, during the course of the nineteenth century, brought about a literary renaissance. The renaissance had produced profound effects
not only in the domain of literature but in all departments of Bengali life and thought. Perhaps in no connection was the new influence more strikingly manifested than in the remarkable re-adjustment of political ideas which it necessitated. It was inevitable that young Bengalis, who had placed in their hands as text-books the political writings of John Stuart Mill, the speeches of Burke, the poems of Shelley, the prose and poetry of Milton and the writings of Carlyle and Ruskin, should develop an attitude to political problems, very different from the inertia which had hitherto characterized their countrymen. For a long time Bengal had been out of touch with the current of worldhistory and now suddenly awoke to a conception of its own destiny in relation to other nations of the world. And so Western education which seemed at first to threaten to sweep away everything Indian, eventually came to have precisely the opposite effect, and by bringing Bengalis face to face with the facts of world-history, compelled them to reconsider the achievements of their own past and awakened in them a yearning for the revival of the ancient glories of the Hindu race. The French Revolution with all the new ideas it inspired, as reflected in the Romantic Movement and in the writings of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and Scott, was bound to fill the atmosphere of Bengal with new and even extravagant national aspirations. The European nationalism of the nineteenth century appealed to Bengalis with all the charm of novelty, and with all the greater force because of their inexperience. The lives of the famous patriots and heroes of European history, such as Mazzini, Garibaldi, Kossuth and Cavour, naturally turned their minds to the memory of their great leaders and heroes in olden times. Though it is not easy to fix a date for the actual commencement of the new national consciousness, the time of Raja Ram Mohan Ray and the Governor-Generalship of Lord William Bentinck may be taken as the approximate starting-point.
