UNIT 5 NIRAD C.

CHAUDHURI
Structure
Objectives
Introduction
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
Thy Hand, Great Anarch
Critical Opinion
Let Us Sum Up
Glossary
Questions
Suggested Reading

5.0 OBJECTIVES

I n this unit, we will read selections from Nirad C. Chaudhuri's autobiography. We

shall critically examine one long chapter from The Autobiography of an Unknown
Indion, the book which catapulted Chaudhuri to fame, and then two selections from
its sequel, Thy Hand, Great Anarch, to acquaint ourselves with Chaudhuri's
distinctive prose style and his beliefs. His opinions are controversial, and critical
opinion about his achievement is divided. You should aim at evaluating this leading
writer of non-fiction prose yourself

5.1 INTRODUCTION

Nirad C. Chnudhuri (1897-1998)

~ ~ prose -
~ Nirad h
~ C. Chaudhuri
d (1897-1998) was born on November 23 into a middle class
tamily in Kishorganj, a small town in Mymensingh District of East Bengal. He was
educated in Bengal, and took his B.A. (Hons.) degree from the University of Calcutta
in 1918. He studied for an M.A. degree in history, but was unsuccessful in the
examination. Even as a school child, he was fascinated by books and the inteilcctuai
life. The atmosphere at home was conducive to an appreciation of Western literature
and music. He was very well read, and had learnt European languages li'~eFrcnch.
German and Latin. Lack of a master's degree ruled out the chances of teaching in a
college, and he found it difficult to get suitable employment. For some time hc tried
free lance . j o u d i s m . From 1937 to 1941 he worked as a secretary to Saratchandra
Bose (Subhas Chandralsbrother). Fed up with Bengali insularity, he left Calcutta tc
settle down in Delhi, and took up a government job there He worked for All India
Radio from 1941 to 1952. But he found that Dellii, too, was fill of Phikst~nes.

He was extremely fortunate in marriage. As Anita Malik puts it (Nirod C'

Chaudhun: The F~rstHundred Years, A Celebration p.58): "Nirad Chau&nuri would
not have been what he is without the patience and unfailing support of his wlfc".
Following tradition, he did not want to see the girl chosen by his father; as he tel!s us
in the second volume of bis autobiography, he hirnseIf was not a very impressive
physical specimen, being short, thin and dark-skinned. They had three sons. and his
wife Amiya supported his eccentric ways in their six decades of married iife. Hc was
always extravagant in his love for art objects, and acquired them even if they were
beyond his means. He recounts how his wife had to settle the account 0.1 selling off
the gold coins she had received as a mamags present when he bought some
expensive Cashmere shawls on credit. Their financial situation did not improve even
after moving to Delhi, because of Chaudhuri's penchant for buying rare wines ,and
books from money which could be better spent on routine househoid expenses.

His first book, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (discussed in Section 5.2.
henceforth referred to as Unknown Indian) made him famous. He was deno~tnccdas
an Anglophile, but his mastery of English was admired. Unknown Indian is actually
not his first significant publication. "Defence of India or Nationalization of Indian
Army", a seventy-three page essay, was published in 1935 by the All India Congress
Committee, Allahabad. Naik has observed that "Two interesting features of this early
essay are the total absence from it of both his notorious anglophilia and his Hindu-
baiting. There is also not the slightest trace here of those preconceived theories and
prejudices about Hindu character and culture which gradually hardened into obstinate
dogmas as Chaudhuri grew older" (Naik, 1984, p. 106).

In 1955 he went abroad for the first time in his life. The British Council arranged for
him to visit England, where he spent five weeks at the invitation of the B.B.C. to
prepare some talks for its Overseas Service. The newspaper articles he mote absnt
his visit grew into his second book, A Passage to England, a very readable
travelogue. A Passage 60 England received good reviews la the Znglish press.
According to Yhushwant Singh, "Three editions were rapidly sold oilt and it had the
distinction of becoming the first book by an Indian author to have become a bestscller
in EnglandW(Dasgupta3 1). He has preconceived concepts of England Brawn from h ~ s
reading of English literature, and he is acutely conscious of the fkt that Ecgland is
very different from India. His happiness at seeing "a great many things that I had
long4 to see since my boyhood" makes this the most enjoyable of his books

In 1970 he moved to England, and started work on a biography of Max Miiiler. Just
as he had never gone back to Kishorganj after 1927, he never came back to India. and
settled down at the university town of Oxford. He was badly disappointed when hc
found that contemporary English society was very different from the picture he had
built up from his reading of literature. He could never accept a society which
produced hippies and glorified the Beatles, and this disenchantment is expressed in
his last book, Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse. (The three "horsemen" are
individualism, nationalism and democracy, which he holds responsible for the
 .
decadence which has overtaken civilization). The University of Oxford honoured him Nirad C. Chaudhuri
with a D.%itt.in 1990. The Queen conferred the CBE on him. He was a Fellow of the
Royal Literary Society. He died in July 1998.

Chaudhuti's third book, The Continent of Circe :An Essay on the Peoples of
lndin(1966) provoked fierce controversy. He proposed the thesis that Hindus are
actually a race alien to India and are arrivals from Europe. Modern Hindus are
descended from the fair-haired, blue-eyed Aryans who inhabited the region between
the Volga and the Danubc. Circe was a sorceress in Greek mythology. Anyone who
dnnk from her cup was turned into a pig, and this was the fate of the companions of
Odysseus (Ulysses)in The Odyssey. India is a sorceress; due to the climatic
conditions;yeople who make it their home, in the course of time, become
dehumanized and turn into swine. The Continent of Circe reveals Chaudhuri's
detestation of India at its pathological extreme; the influence of this "Circe" has made
"insanity" and "inertia" the principal attributes of present Bay Hindus. He reveals a
perPectly "Onentalist" attitude to India (in the sense in which Said uses the term). He
glorifies ancient Vedic India, but finds nothing good in the present. His attempt to
trace a European lineage for himself (and all Hindus) has been called "an in5tance of
acute anglophilia" (Kaul, p.54). His later books of intellectual exposition, like the
Intellectual in India (1967) and To Live or Not to Live (1970) are slightly more
objective in their comments on India and Indians, though he consistently criticises
the anglicized Indian. His essays have appeared in journals like The Illustrated
Weekly of India md London Magazine. A collection, East is East and West is West,
edited by his son, was published in 1996,

His biography of Clive, Robert Clive o f I d a , is overwhelmingly favourable to this

Nabob, who enriched himself through loot. Chaudhuri attempts to justify Clive's
rapacity on the grounds that "The acceptance of gifh was not contrary to the
regulations then in force" (Clive, pp.260-61). Scholar Extraordinaary The Life of
l'rqfewor the Ht. Hon Friedrich Mrax Miiller (1974) is generally considered
Chaudhuri's best book, and won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1975.

5.2 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OFAN UNKNOWN INDIAN

In Thy Hand, Great Anarch, Chaudhuri says about his first book that, "In spite of its
title, the book was not truly an autobiography. It was a picture of the society in which
I was born and grew up." Chaudhuri is quite clear about his purpose in writing
llnknown Indian:

The story I ~vantto tell is the story of the struggle of a civilization with a
hostile environment, in which the destiny of the British Empire in India
became necessarily involved. My main intention is thus historical, and since
I have written the account with the utmost honesty and accuracy of which I
am capable, the intention in my mind has become mingled with the hope that
the book may be regarded as a contribution to contemporary history. (pix)

He states his target audience: "I have written this book with the conscious object of
reaching the English-speaking world" (pix). Perhaps this intended readership is
responsible for Chaudhuri always using similes from European art, liteiature and
history. Both the preface and the prefatory note to the first section are in the style
typical of the book: there are long, involved sentences, and a liberal sprinkling of
words from European languages. There are many situations where only the French or
Latin quotatiowuv'ould do. But Chaudhuri seems to use foreign phrases even if
English equivalents exist. The conpnon reader may not be fblly conversant with these
phrases, and pausing to find out the meaning provides a needless break in the reading
experience. Here are two sentences from the second paragraph of Unknown Indian:
Non-Fictional ease
"These recollections of mine are in no sense des memoires d'outre-tomhe. If
anyone so chooses he may call them memoires d'outre-Manche in a
figurative sense, in the sense that, retreating before the panzers of the cncmy
who has seized my past life, I have decided to put between him anu mc.
between apparent defeat and acceptance of defeat, a narrow but uncrossable
strip of salt water. (ix)

Chaudhuri declares that his autobiography is not to be treated as "desmemorres

d'outre-rombe" (an account from beyond the grave). He says that readers may call
them "memoiresd'outre-Manche",that is, an account from the other side of the sea
(the English Channel, the arm of the sea separating England and France, is called La
Manche in French). Chaudhuri's metaphors are always from the West; he refers to the
German panzers,(literally "armour", the elite armoured corps of the German army. a
truly fearsome fighting force in the Second World War). He assumes that his reader
should be as erudite as he is, and never provides a translation. There is a tendency in
Chaudhuri's prose for the main point to get lost in a haze of verbiage.

The dedication has been widely denounced, and Chaudhuri has been condemned as
unpatriotic. We should pay more attention to the aptness and the style of the
dedication, and consider how it expresses Chaudhuri's sensibility, before discussing
Chaudhuri's political stance. The dedication is natural, even inevitable, considering
Chaudhuri's warm feelings towards the British Empire. It also reveals Chaudhuri's
egoism -- he assumes that everyone has the same admiration for the Empire, for he
declares "Everyone of us threw out the challenge". It never strikes him that many
Indians did not want to be British, they preferred independence to citizenship. Thc
vast majority would not say, "Civic Britannicus Sum" (I am a British citizen). But a
careful reading shows that the first part of the dedication does not shower praise on
the British without reservations, Chaudhuri hints at British discrimination, whcn he
mentions subjecthood without citizenship, implying that W a n s were subjects to be
ruled (and perhaps exploited), but did not have the privileges and rights of a citizcn.

Unknown Indian is in four books. Book I, "Early Environment" (pp. 1-130) is

devoted to the background, describing Kishorganj, his ancestral village, and his
mother's village, and Bengali society at the end of the nineteenth century. Book TI,
"First Twelve Years", describes his birth and early life, while Book 111, "Education".
covers the years he spent at high school and college in Calcutta. He didwcll in his
B.A, examinations, with a first class, and was placed first in order of merit. But his

{
reading for his M.A. examination was encyclopaedic and over ambitious. As he
candi ly admits, he "disliked and even despised examinations when they were not an
imme iate reality" (p.367). As a result, he dropped out after sitting for three papers.
and e third book of UnknownIndian ends with his failure in the academic field. But
he e a self-taught scholar. All the people who knew him vouch for his
ency lopaedic knowledge, and his biography of Max Miiller brings out his best
quali 'es as a scholar. Though he did not get his M.A. from Calcutta University,
Oxfo d University honoured him with a D.Litt. degree.

Book IV, "Into the World" is an essay on life in Bengal in the nineteen-twenties,
rather than an account of Chaudhuri's life after he left college. Like some of his later
books like the Continent of Circe, it reveals more about Chaudhuri's mindset than
about the topic discussed, because Chaudhuri chooses only the facts which support
his argument, neglecting large chunks of history. The concluding chapter, "An Essay
on the Course of Indian History" is fill of easy generalizations; he believes that
"Civilizations in the successive historical cycles in India are foreign importations"
(p.489). Each of the four books has a prefiitory note, in which Chaudhuri airs his
Chagdhuri is always very conscious of the fact that his knowledge of English and Nirad C. Chaudhuri
England is secondhand, yet he persists in describing things only in English
metaphors. Chapter I begins:

Kishorganj, my birthplace, I have called a country town, but this description,

I am afraid, will call up wholly wrong associations. The place had nothing of
the English country town about it, if 1 am to judge by the illustrations I have
seen and the descriptions I have read, these being my only source of
knowledge about England, since I have never been there, nor in hct
anywhere outside my own country. (p. 1)

This acceptance of England and things English as the norm for judging India is, no
doubt, the effect of colonization. That all writers of Chaudhuri's generation need not
accept England as the standard is shown by the opening chapter of the novel
Kmthapura (published in 1938, long before Chaudhuri's book) by Raja Rao (b.1908).
Rao begins his wondehlly evocative description of the village without any reference
to English villages:

Our village -- 1 don't thlnk you have ever heard about it -- Kanthapura is its
name, and it is in the province of Kara.
High on the ghats is it, high up in the steep mountains that face the cool
Arabian seas, up the Malabar coast is it, up Mangalore and Puttur and many a
centre of cardamom and coffee, rice and sugarcane. . (Kanthnpura).

The passage from Unknown Indian continues:

Kishorganj was only a normal specimen of its class -- one among a score of
collections of tin-and-mat huts or sheds, comprising courts, offices, schools,
shops and residential dwellings, which British administration had raised up in
the green and brown spaces of East Bengal @. 1).

One notices immediately that Chaudhuri's tone is quite detached - there is no sense
of closeness to his native village. The tone throughout tends to denigrate the village,
it is one "among a score", and he is dismissive of all the buildings, whether
"residential dwellings" or offices, schools or courts. From a height of five hundred
feet, the buildi~igswould have looked like "a patch of white and brown mushrooms."
The comparison with "mushrooms" has pejorative implications, with the suggestions
of unplanned, untidy, short-lived growth. There is no attempt to individualise the
buildings: surely, the court would not have been a hut or a shed, it would have had a
permanent brick building.

Chaudhuri's diction seems to be based on bureaucratic jargon, with endless

reservations and qualifications. There is no poetic licence whatsoever. Instead of
saying that the small town would have looked like a patch of mushrooms when seen
from a height, or when seen from an aeroplane, he writes, "Had there been aeroplanes
in our boyhood", as if he were giving evidence in a court of law. Metaphors are
always from the West; to express the importance of the river in their lifer, Chaudhun
writes, "it was our Nile" (p.2). In referring to the boats which plied on the river, he
does dot care to describe them in detail, instead he institutes comparisons which are
meaningless to the common reader, espe~iallyin India: the "country boats" have "the
outlines and general shape of the model boats found in the tombs of the Middle
Kingdom of Egypt" (p.4). The largest boats, used for passengers, "were our triremes"
(p.5).

He is at his best when he gives us concrete particulars, as in his description of the

rainy season (pp.5-8). Chaudhuri evokes this watery world through minute details --
their compound was so flooded that they "could not walk from the hut which was our
bedand living- room to the hut which was our kitchen except on a line of bricks laid
at intervals of about two feet or on a gangway made of bamboos" (p.6). The reader
 can visualise the child in the inner courtyard, fascinated by the "myriads of tiny
Nun-Fictional Prose
watery marionettes" which were created by a heavy downpour (p.7). The destnictive
aspect of the heavy monsoon rain is revealed by the "pair of pied mynas. dead and
stiff1(p.7).Chaudhuriis capable of using short, simple, balanced sentences:

Everything was wet to the marrow of the bone. Neither we nor our clothes
were ever properly dry. When we were not slushy we were damp. The bark
of the trees became so sodden that it seemed we could tear it up in handfuls
like moss. (p.6)

Chaudhuri's style is usually prolix -- he does not believe in using the minimum
number of words. He uses many connecting phrases to link different paragraphs. An
example is the beginning of the second paragraph: "I shall presently have something
to say of the moral quality of our urban existence. But, to begin with, let me give
same idea of its physical aspect" (p. 1) The tone is somewhat formal, as in a document
where a table of contents precedes the matter. C.D.Narasirnhaiah labels his writing
"inane", and declares: "Now like an Accountant's English, now like a District
Surveyor's report or a village chronicler's, now like that of an ossified academic.
seldom what one has associated with an imaginative writer" (Narasimhaiah,
1990,p.92). He gives many k;uamples from the book:

I summarize below the results . . (p.36)

It is this house which I am going to describe now" (p.20)

There was a story behind its building and it is this." (p.22)

The description of Durga Puja at ~ a r a m(the , next excerpt in your Reader), is

one of the better passages in Unknown Indian. It is rich in adjectives. The gory scenc
of the buffalo sacrificed before the goddess becomes more vivid in its horror because
,of the details he gives us : "My relatives fell on it, rubbing its neck with melted butter
so as to make the skin soft" (p.67). The changing moods are well captured. This
bloody sacrifice is followed by chanting prayers to the Goddess.

One interesting feature Chaudhuri mentions about Durga Puja is that it is the occasion
for married daughters to visit their parental home. He is aware of the bond between
mother and daughter, and the loneliness of the mother after the girl is given away in
marriage. To indicate the mother's emotions, he cite a parallel from French literature:
"She kept thinking of her girl with an infatuation rivalling, if not surpassing, that of
Madame de Se~ignefor her cold and shrewish daughter" (p.70). The allusion reveals
Chaudhuri's wide reading, but does very little to describe this tender bond in a culture
where it was not permissible for the mother to visit or stay with her mamed daughter
in her new home. After the festivities end, the married daughters have to go back to
their husbands' homes. Chaudhuri has little sympathy for the ritual crying that gges
on. This is how he describes it:

Not only the mother and the daughter, not only the other women and girls of
the family, but also all the visiting neighbours joined in a chorus of snuffling.
The tradition was so well established that the newly-rnarried girl, whose only
thought was to get back to her husband-lover, and the matron, who felt ever
so worried to have been away from her well-ordered household, kept up the
wiping of the eyes until they were at least five miles beyond the parcntal
village.@.70)

There is a welcome touch o i humour in Chaudhuri's auoum of the women pretcndins

to weep; the young girl who wants to go back to her husband has to pretend to weep.
because it prejudiced her reputation "if she remained dryeyed on these occasions."
The use of the word "snuffling" indicates that Chaudhuri has no sympathy for these
hypocritical women. \
"The English Scene" (the next excerpt in your reader) is a chapter from the second Nirad C. Chaudhuri
book of Unknown Indian, "First Twelve Years". He describes how he came to love
the English language and English literature so much, and has some perceptive
comments on teaching. He tells us that he read his elder brother's books, because they
were taught English poetry and good stories, while students in his batch were forced
to repeat "The fox sat on the mat" on the theory that textbooks should be Indianized
(p. 1 16). He is quite successful in conveying the enthusiasm that people in Bengal felt
for western civilization. The concluding part of the chapter is typical of Chaudhuri's
subsequent works. He criticizes Indians for suffering from a colour complex, giving
anecdotal evidence from his immediate family. His style is clear and unambiguous
when he is castigating Indians:

When not thinking of the foreign conquerors and taking up a self-pitying

attitude in consequence, a Hindu is unsurpassed in his exaltation of colour
and proneness to make a fetish of it. This comes out most blatantly in
connection with mamages. (p. 126)

The fourth book, "Into the World" is in'the same vein; it is a comment on Bengali
society. We have to turn to the second volume of his autobiography, Thy Hand, Great
Anarch! to learn about Chaudhuri's life after 1920.

5.3 THY HAND, GREAT ANARCH

"This book continues the story of my life and thoughts from the point of time at
which it was left in The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, " writes Nirad C.
Chaudhuri in the opening sentence of Thy Hand. The earlier book gave an account
of his childhood and student days till 1921. This one takes the account till 1952.
Many autobiographies bring the account up to date, but this, written in 1987, fklls
short by 35 years. There were major changes in Chaudhuri's life after that. After
retirement from government service, he made a living by his writing. He visited
England, and wrote a bestseller about his experiences, A Passage to England. In his
seventies, he left India and settled down at Oxford. Chaudhuri started writing Thy
Hand Great Anarch in 1979, when he was eighty-one years old, and took six years to
complete it. He has not provided us with a sequel to it, so there is no autobiographical
account of the last forty-seven years of his life, of which 27 were spent in England.

He says that he has made a conscious effort to "write the,book on the same lines and
in the same spirit as its predecessor." He is quite successful in this -- there is
absolutely no differ~acein style or tone between the two volumes. The same self-
satisfied stance of wisdom, the complete lack of modesty, can be found in the second
book. In IJnknown Indian he boasts about his "capacity for exieriencing the emotion
of scholarship":

My appetite for information and explanation became as varied as my mental

dentition became versatile. I could pass from physics to Sanskrit literature or
from novels to astronomy with an agility which seemed like volatility to
those who did not know me well. (Unknown Indian, p.343)

In-ThyItand, he talks about his wife, and how fortunate she is in having married such
an eminent pwson:

Even for my wife, I would say, it has been worthwhile, although I could,
without unfairness, be accused of showing no consideration for the inevitable
trials I was going to inflict on a young girl who had been brought up in
affluence. But she is now the wife of Nirad Chaudhuri, instead of being the
Non-FidionafProse nameless wife of a nameless official or professional, rotting in the low
prosperity of a suburban house near Calcutta. (Thy Hand, p.343)

Unknown Indian was very much coacerned with the British empire and its civilizing
mission in India. This book, which records the decline and end of British rule in
India, takes its title from lines by Alexander Pope which describe the reign of chaos
and disorder. The title page of the book bears the complete quotation from Alexander
Pope's poem The Dundad, Book 3:

Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor'd;

Light dies before thy untreated word;
Thy hand, great h c h ! lets the curtain Ml;
And universal Darkness buries All!

The epigraph is in keeping with the tone ofthe book. When Britain withdrew h m
India, Chaudhuri felt an almost personal sense of loss. Thy Hand! Great Anurch is
almost a thousand pages long, and covers the years fiom 1921 to 1952. It hsrs ten
chapters, with a long epilogue:

Introduction "Apologia pro Biographia sua"

Books I Livelihood and Politics 1921-1922.

Book 11Towards a Vocation 1922-1925.

Book 111The Scholar Gypsy 1926-1928

Part IV The Gandhian Rebellion 1927-1932

Part V Into Married Life 1932-1937.

Part VI Experience of Politics 1937-1939.

Part W Indian Enjoys the War 1939-1941

Part VIII Migration to Delhi 1942-1945

Book I
X Victor-Victim 1945-1947
Book X Crossing the Bar 1947-1952.

Epilogue Credo ut Intelligam

Chaudhuri intersperses the narration of his personal life with a highly subjective
version of the historical events of the period. He takes free swipes at many figures of
the fkedom struggle, none of whom are alive to rebut him. According to him,
Gandhiji exuded benignity, but "his demands for money were made in the unabashed
manner of all Hindu holy men". GkauOhuri holds N e h responsible for the failure of
the Cripps mission, feels that Subhas Chandra Bose (whom d l Bengalis venerate as
Netaji, "the leader") was unmethodical, ineficient and suspicious, and considers
Sarojini Naidu "a victim of monumental egoism"'.The style, as usual, is almost
Victorian, with long involuted sentences. His wide =ding and scholarship (some
might call it pedantry) are quite evident, and his use of quotations in French, Latin
etc. seems to have increased. The first volume has a dedication in English with one
Latin phrase; Thy Hand has three epigraphs, of which only the one perta~n;n_e to thc
title is in English. As in the earlier volume, there are occasional flashes of wit. He
says that his fhther-in-law overlooked the fsct that he was not rich, and said that "he
was considering only the young man, and not his money. -That attitude has
 unfortunately disappeared, and nowadays all fathers boast about marrying their Nirad C. Chaudhuri
daughters to salaries, and not to men" (p.346).

"The Gandhian Congress" (the first excerpt in your Reader)is from Chapter 2 of
Book VI, "1937-1939", while "My Credo" forms the concluding lines of Thy Hand.
Both are representative examples of Chaudhuri's prose style, with long sentences. To
illustrate his arguments, Chaudhuri uses erudite comparisons or anecdotes. Consider
his account of the difficulties they encountered in getting vegetables of his choice for
Mahatma Gandhi. Chaudhuri compares his host Sarat Chandra Bose's nephew with
an obscure figure from French history:

He wanted to rise to the occasion, and if he had failed to procure all the
vegetables regularly, I am sure he would have killed himself like Vatel, the
major domo of the Great Conde, who threw himself on his sword because,
when M le Prince was receiving Louis XIV at Chantilly, he found that only
two carts of sea fish had arrived instead of the forty he had ordered. (p.435)

This comparison may not work well because most readers would not know this
incident in the life of the French king. Similes from common life are much more
effective. Describing the men who surrounded Gandhiji, he compares these people
who "acquire secondary, derivative power" to a vine. Chaudhuri gives us the
common, as well as the scientific Latinized name, of the plant:
They climb upwards by twining themselves round the tree of power as I have seen the
Russian Vine (polygonum baldschuanum or Mile-a-Minute) doing on the trees they
can get to. (p.439)

But in many cases the abstruseness of the comparison completely invalidates it.
Consider the image that springs to Chaudhuri's mind when he wants to convey "the
extraordinary innocence and benignity" and the "beatific unworldly look" of
Mahatma Gandhi. He writes, "On the animal plane . . . Gandhi suggested the
primitive primate tarsier to me" (p.439). How many readers would have heard of a
tarsier, leave alone being familiar with its appearance?

Thy Hand, Great Anarch combines autobiography with history, politics and social
commentary. The Epilogue, "Credu ut Intelligam" (I believe in order to understand) is
full of quotations from European authorities. In its long apd difficult words, it is
typical of Chaudhuri's philosophical essays. (His last book, The Three Horsemen of
the New Apocalypse, is in the same style, and develops further the pessimistic view
he takes of the world). The "Credo" is liberally sprinkled with French and Latin
quotations. Chaudhuri admires Pascal, the French writer and theologian. The passage
beginning "Quelle chimere est-ce . . ." expresses the same ideas as Shakespeare's
"What a piece of work is man!" Pascal exclaims, "What an ephemeral thing is this
creature called man".He is a study in contradictions; he is a judge of all things, yet
has the vision of an earth worm, he is a repository of truth cloaked in error, the glory
and the garbage of the universe.

C Chaudhuri is not happy with the way Christian morality rejected the natural urges in
man. After quoting from the New Testament, he adds the comments of Pascal, who is
1 overcome by this vision of a world dominated by lust, "Unfortunate the accursed
earth that is burnt rather than watered by these three rivers of fire." In the same
paragraph, he discusses Latin, Greek and French versions of these three "rivers of

i fire": "the concupiscence of the body, the concupiscence of the eye, the
concupiscence of the world". Chaudhuri's reading of English literature is also
obvious; he refers to Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and quotes the
lines "The world's great age begins anew . . ." from Shelley's poem Hellas.

Chaudhuri has always been inimical to the technological society, and it is not
I
surprisingly h t he condemns Americans for their technological advancement. Filled
1 with overbearing pride, they forget that the laws of nature are supreme. Chaudhuri
-Fictional Prose expresses this in a witty manner: "they are so powerless against nature that even
though they can send a rocket past Nephne by obey~ngit, they cannot prevent ~t
from wrecking their homes through hurricanes." He says that Americans are the bcst
Homo faber "manufacturing man" and the worst Homo sapiens "thinking man'' Hc
ends with lines from a French poem recognizing the duality of man's exlstcnce.
People must have faith. The last line, "Peuples de la terrc, chantez" means, "Peoples
of the earth, sing!" Chaudhuri claims that he is doing just that, having faith In a
higher dispensation and continuing with his creative work.

5.4 CRITICAL OPINION

Nirad C.Chaudhuri has provoked an emotional reaction, whether it is to thc books or

the person. Controversy has surrounded him, and there is no unanimity about the
valuation of his work. Swapan Dasgupta's Nirad C. Chaudhuri: I;he First Hzin~ired
Years: A Celebration (see Reading List below) presents fascinating pictures c f
Chaudhuri's personality, as seen by eminent writers and critics like Nabaneeta Ijev
Sen, Meenakshi Mukhejee, Khushwant Singh md Keki N . Daruwalla. They
comment. on his English and Bengali writings, in addition to describing tltc mall.

Among all the critics, it is C.D.Narasimhaiah who has the poorest opinion of
Chaudhuri's autobiography. Hc finds absoluteiy nothing praiseworthy in it. He has
compared Nehru's aut~hiographywith Chaudhuri's, and believes that they
demonstrate "two kinds of Indim writing: one pulsating with human warmth. the
other abstract, ponderous and dully academic; one m m t for Indians, another for an
English-speaking world abroad (Narasimhaiah. i995, y.64). According to him,
"Chaudhuri's writing betrays an immaturity that one would not normally associate
with a person of his age" (p.65). Illustrating with quotations from Unknown Indtnn.
he condemns the "attitudinizing" and "looseness of thinking" of the book. and says
that Chaudhuri "misses no chance to magnify things that have any relation to him
whether it is the house he lived in, his mode of living, the fairs he visited, the
festivals he celebrated, the books and paintings he owned and admired and the tastes
he cultivated. Snobbery is writ large 011 every page" (p.67). Narasimhaiah challcngcs
Chaudhuri's admirers "to produce from the autobiography any well-remembered
chapter, section, or even a few pages of contlnuoils writing which can be called
distinguished prose" p.68). He points out that none of the people described are
memorable, "They are not individualized, or they have nothing of interest to other
human beings" (69). However, C.D.Narasimhaiah praises Chaudhuri's later work:
"Mr Chaudhuri has made ample amends for his poor and irresponsible writing by
contributing an excellent work of scholarship in his recent book on Max Muller.
Scholar Extraordinary" (p .TO).

Scholar Extraordinary seems to be the one book which has won the approval of
almost all the critics. Nissim Ezekiel gave it a very favourable review, sayinz:

His book is certainly a full and detailed portrait of the subject along with its
social and cultural background. I cannot imagine any criticism, hobkevcr
valid, of specific insights or even of the treatment in general undermining the
worth of this biography as a whole. Chaudhuri's admiration for Muller. which
he declares without ~~servations, leads him to defend lMiiller against all
detractors. But he defends persuasively, and always with a fair statemcnt of
their position. This means that at times one may disagree with
Chaudhuri and still not feel that he is unddy partisan. (Selected Prose. p 154)

The most common charge against Chaudhuri is that he is partisan; he has already
made up his mind which side he is on, and does not present alternative view points.
But this is not true in the case of his biography of Max Miiller. Perhaps because he
found the topic so appealing, or maybe the congenial environment of Oxford Nirad C. Chaudhuri
unrversity where he wrote it, make this the most scholarly and least polemical of his
works .

However, Scholar Extraordznaly contains a few wild generalizations, and a "number

of statements about Victonan love and sex which are very unsatisfactory, besides
contradicting one another" (Ezekiel, pp. 156-57). Ezekiel quote three of these
statements, and comments:

I suspect that it is not Chaudhuri the scholar who wrote these reckless
sentences but the other Chaudhuri, the man of tall prejudices, whose self-
pitying moralism taints so much of his intellectual output. I must add that this
other Chautlhuri is not conspicuous in the biography of Miiller. (p. 157)

Sudesh Mishra has written in detail about this interesting aspect of Chaudhuri's
writing, that there are two Chaudhuris, "Historical Witness and Pseudo-Historian".
"The former Chaudhuri operates largely as a chronicler recording incidents and
events to which he has borne personal witness" (p.8). The second Chaudhuri
"evaluates history biologically, psycho-culturally, racially, philosophically and
rdiosyncratically by postulating his personal dilemmas as representative of the Indian
people's collective predicament, and in particular of the Hindus" Up.7-8). His neutral
approach is evident in his descriptions of Kishorganj (Unknown Indian pp.27-28), or
the account of his mother's village (pp.93-95), while the pseudo-historian's approach
is evident in his comments about the debilitating effects of the Indian terrain and
climate (p.57, p.514). This thesis is developed fully in The Conhnent of Circe, which
shows his weakness as a historian. He tries to bend facts to suit his theory, and has no
qualms about leaving out any facts that do not fit his theory -- the Indus Valley
civilization and the Dravidian culture of South India are completely ignored.

C. Paul Verghese expresses the views of a majority of critics when he writes, "The
main weakness of The Contznent of C~rcestems from the fact that the pseudo-
sociologist in Chaudhuri conceived a theory about the Hindus and the aboriginals of
India and the historian in him started looking for facts and when he did not find them,
he depended on pseudo-history" (Verghese, 1973, p. 115). Verghese finds something
likeable in Chaudhuri's quality of holding convictions whole-heartedly, and feels that
in later works like To Lzve or Not to Live Chaudhuri "is sharing with us his mature
wisdom and knowledge of life." He concludes that self-contraaiction is Chaudhuri's
chief characteristic: "for Chaudhuri is an Indian who is anti-Indian, an Anglicized
Hindu who is critical of other Anglicized Hindus, an Indian writer in English who
sees no virtue in Indian novels in English, a historian who believes in objectivity, but
leans heavily on subjective dogmas, a radical nonconformist who supports the caste
system, and cow worship, . . ." (1 16).

5.5 LET US SUM UP

Chaudhuri was intellectually active till the very end, and very proud of this fact. As
he writes in the preface to Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse, his last book:
The very first thing I have to tell those who will be reading this book is that it
is being written by a man in his ninety-ninth year. I have never read or heard
of any author, however great or productive in his heyday, doing that.

He goes on to declare:

I have never allowed my likes or dislikes, my predilections and

prepossessions to influence my presentation of subjects. I have, so to speak,
tried to keep the lens of my mind free from chromatic aberrations.
B-Rctionolhose He thinks of himself as a "medium or amanutnsis for the self-revelation of the
subjects I deal with. . . . Yet whatever my own view of my vocation, readers in Ind~a
have always attributed dogmatism, eccentricity and even arrogance to me."
It is true that Indian critics have always accused him of being dogmatic, and a
confirmed lover of the Empire. But his actual experience of Britain disappointed him.
Krishna Bose, daughter of Chaudhuri's brother, knew him quite well. (She refers to
him as "Mejo Kaka" with love and respect.) She presents a fair evaluation of her
uncle's reaction to Britain:

Mejokaka had admired an irnagimy Great Britain from afar and was
bitterly disappointed on actually experiencing life in Britain since the 1870's.
He then began to suffer from the illusion that the Britain of his dream must
have existed at some time in the past. He lives mentally in Jane Austen's age.
Hence his eccentricities, such as dressing up in period costume, which
embarrasses his relatives and is considered bizarre by the contemporary
British. He would doubtless have been happier to celebrate his hundredth
birthday in the year of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria's reign than
on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Indian independence. (The 1;irst
Hundred Years, p. 12)

Nirad C. Chaudhuri is one of the few Indian English writers who have used the
language for non-fictional purposes alone -- earlier writers like Vivekanand,
Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru have been orators, who made speeches because they
were social reformers and statesmen; later writers like Vikram Seth and Amitav
Ghosh have written fiction and poetry. Almost all of his ten books have received
critical attention and sometimes substantial praise. His biography of Mas Miiller won
the Sahitya Akademi Award, and has become the standard work. The Contrnent of
Circe won the Duff Cooper literary award. His life of Robert Clive is quite
provocative. We may not agree with his basic philosophy of preferring a dead empire
to the lively chaos of modern India, but his books cannot be ignored by any serious
student of Indian culture and literature.

5.6 GLOSSARY

Anglophilia: a craze or indiscriminate admiration for

everything English.

Insularity: Literally, the quality of belonging to an

island. Narrow- mindedness, prejudice,
wishing to cut oneself off from the wider
world.

Orientalism: According to Said, the Western image of thc

Orient has been constructed by generations
of writers and scholars who have based it on
texts, not first hand experience. They ignore
the changing reality, and present an
essentialist image of the orient which makes
it a fit subject for imperial domination The
exotic aspect is stressed, and the orient is
projected as the "Other". Scholarship
becomes a means for legitimizing colonlal
control.
 Literally "amour". The Panzers were the Nirad C. Chaudhuri
armoured corps of the German army, a great
fighting force in the Second World War.

Philistines: A person with a materialistic outlook who

does not care for culture.

Ponderous: Heavy, unwieldy, solemnly laboured and

slow moving.

Said: Edward Said (b. 1935), author of Orientalism

(1978) is considered the founder of post-
colonial literary theory. A Christian
Palestinian brought up in Egypt and U.S.A.,
Said studied history and English at Princeton
and Harvard, and completed a doctorate on
Conrad. His work reveals the influence of
the Marxist critic Antonio Gramsci (1891-
1937) and the French post-structuralist
Michel Foucalt (1926- 1984).

Trireme: An ancient galley with three rows of rowers.

A galley was a small ship, having both sails
and oars. They would usually have a large
number of criminals or slaves to man the
oars.

I
I 5.8 QUESTIONS

1. Do you agree with the view that Nirad C. Chaurlhuri is the greatest writer of
non-fictional prose in modem India?

2. How far are Chaudhuri's autobiographical works a contribution to

contemporary history?
I
3. Do you agree with the view that there are two Chaudhuris, a historical
witness and a pseudo-hidorian? Give reasons.
I
4. "TheAutobiography of an Unknown Indian is one of the most remarkable
examples of its genre in Indian English literature" (M.K.Naik). Discuss.

5. Write a note on Nimd C. Chaudhuri's credo. Does it reveal him as an

anglophile?

6. "Chaudhuri's books cannot be ignored by any serious student of Indian

I culture and literature." Comment.

7. Compare and contrast the autobiographies of Nehru and Chaudhuri.

5.7 SUGGESTED READING

I

There are two parts to this reading list; the first part lists works by Chaudhuri. You
must make a close study of the works marked with a double asterisk (**), so it is a
good idea to have a personal copy of The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, it is
!
Nm-k?&d Rose available in paperback. Read some of his other works also, especially those marked
by an asterisk (*). The second part contains secondary mterial, i.e. books and articlcs
about Chaudhuri and his works.

Part 1: Books by Nirad C. Chaudhuri

*A Passage to England. London: Macmillan, 1859.

Clive of India. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1975.

Hinduism: A ~ e l i ~ i too nLive By. London: Chatto R Windus, 1979.

*ScholarExtraordinary: Tke Life of Professor the Rt. Hon. Fn'edrich Max hfiillrr.
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1974.

*%"he Autobiography of an UnknownIr!~fiun.(l951). Bombay: Jaico, 1969.

The Continent of Circe. London: Chatto & Widus, 1960.

The East is East and West is West ed. Druva N,Ckadhuri. Calcutta: Mitra and
Ghosh Publishers, 1996.

The Intellectual in India. New Delhi: Associated Publishing House. 1967

Three Horsemen ofthe New Apocalypse. DeDelhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.

**Thy Hand Great Anarch! India: 1921-1952.London: Chatto & Windus,

1987.

To L,iw or Not to Live. Delhi: Hind P~cketBooks, 1970,

Part 2: Books and Article on Chaudhuri

1

Dasgupta, Swapan. Edflirad C. Chawlhuri: 7 k First Hundred Years: A

Celebration. New Delhi: HarperC30Iiins Publishers India, 1997.

Kamani, Chdzm; Nirad C. ChcPudhuri. Boston: Twyne Publishers. 1980. 1

Kaul, R.K.Nirad C.Chaudhuxi: The Renaissa~ceMan. Jaipur: Rawat
Publications, 1998.

Nak,M.K.Ed. Perspectives on Indian Prose in English. New Delhi: Abhinav,

1982.

Naikar, Basavaraj S. Critical Articles on Nimd C C h a d u r i . Dharwad:

Shivaranjani Publications, 1985.

Philip, David Scott. Perceiving India through the Works ofNird C. Chaudhun.
R K Narayan and VedMehta. New Delhi: Sterling, 1986. '1
Sinha, Tara. Nirad C. Chaudhuri: a Sociological and Stylistic Study of His Writings
During the Period 1951-1972. Patna: Janaki Prakashan, 1981.

Verghese, C. Paul. N i d C. Chaudhuri. New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann India. 1973.

Articles:
Nirad C Cbrodburi
Ezekiel, Nissim. "Scholar Extraordinary: The Lye of Professor the Rt. Hon.
Fn'edrich Mc7xMiillerU.Selected Prose ed. Adil Jussawalla. Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1992. pp. 154-58.

Mishra, Sudesh. 'The Two Chaudhuris: Historical Witness and Pseudo-Historian"

Journal of Commonwealth Literature XXIII: 1 (1988) pp.7-15.

Kaik, M.K. ' W i d C. Chaudhuri's First Publication" J o u m l of Commonwealth

Literature XIX:1 (1984) pp.98-107.

Namsimhaiah, C.D."Autobiographies: Jawaharlal Nehru and Nirad Chdhuri",

Es~aysin Commonwealth Literature. Delhi: Pencraft, 1995. pp.46-70.
--- 'Wirad C. Chaudhuri: The Autobiography of an LJnknownIndian",I d ~ a n
Critical Scene: Contmversial Elrsays. Delhi: B.R.Publishing Corporation,
1990. pp.85-95,

Stilz, Gerhard. "Experiments in Squaring the Ellipse: A Critical Reading of the

Autobiographies of Gandhi, N e b , Chsludhuri arnd Anand", New
Perspectives in Indian Literature in English ed. C.R.Yat~~vintelimath er al.
New Delhi:Sterling, 1995. pp. 162-176.

Tripthy, Shrinibas. "Chaudhuri's Portrait of Mahatma Gandhi". Rawnshaw Journal

of English Studies 6:1 ( 1996) pp.24-30.

Venugapal, C.V. "Growing to h4anhood: The Autobiography of an Unknown Indim",

Perspecrives ovr Indian Prose in English ed. M.K.Naik. New Delhi: Abhinav,
1982. pp.213-3 1.
UNIT 6 VIKRAM SETH AND AMITAV GHOSH
Structure
Objectives
Vikrarn Seth: Introduction
From Heaven Lake
Amitav Ghosh: Introduction
Dancing in Cambodia, at Large in Burma
Let u s Sum u p
Glossary
Questions
Suggested Reading

6.0 OBJECTIVES

In this unit, we shall acquaint ourselves with the non-fictional prose written by two
members of the post-Independence generation of Indian writers, Vikfam Seth and
Amitav Ghosh, who are better know for their fiction.We shall critically examine
their travelogues: Seth's From Heaven lak and Ghosh's Dancing in Cambodin. a(
Lurge in Burma, by critically analysing excerpts from both these teas.

6.1 VIKRAM SETH : INTRODUCTION

Vikram Seth (1952-)

Vikram Seth (b. 1952) was born in Calcutta, and educated in Dehra Dun. He got
admission in St Stephen's College, Delhi, in Mathematics (Honours) course, but did
not join. He won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, and
graduated in 1975 with honours in philosophy, politics and economics. He went to
Stanford University, U.S.A. in 1977. He obtained his Master's degree in economics,
and started work on a doctoral dissertation, "Seven Chinese Villages: An Economic
and demographic Portrait." He spent two years in China doing research at Nanjing
University. From Heaven Luke is based on his experience when he travelled to India
overland, through Sinkiang, Tibet and Nepal.

His first book, Mappings, published by Writers Workshop, Calcutta, in 1982,

contained poems written in English along with a few translations of Indian poets. His
second book, From Heaven Lake (1983), which won the Thomas Cook Travel Book
Award, attracted a wider readership. His second book of poetry, The Httmhle
Administrator's Garden (1985)won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Asia in