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Love in the Time of the Birth of a Celibate India: A Study of

Rabindranath Tagore’s Chirakumar Sabha (“An Association for
Lifelong Celibates”)
By Dipankar Roy

I
A man who was once asked why he did not weep at a sermon, when everybody was shedding tears, replied:
“I don’t belong to the parish!” What that man thought of tears would be still more true of laughter.
However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity,
with other laughters, real or imaginary… To understand laughter, we must put it back into its natural
environment, which is society, and above all must we determine the utility of its function, which is a social
one. (Emphasis added) (Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, first published
in 1900)

It has been a year since the young men of our locality have established a ‘Lovers’ Association’. The sole
objective of this association is to ascertain a theory of love and its only agenda is love. The president of our
association is a scientist. After completing his studies in chemistry, physics, biology, zoology, botany and
other disciplines of science he, in recent times, has begun to turn the pages of the science of love. So far he
has shown an amazing power of learning; or one may say, the goddess of Love has been very kind to him.
Some of his original theories of love will soon be published by our association. Our secretary, however, has
a different temperament. He is a philosopher. For him, love is a subjective thing and to make an attempt to
understand it objectively is not only illogical but impossible… The essence of his arguments is this: those
who are lovers are nothing but fools and those who are not are hardly any better. At present he is busy
writing an essay on ‘the true nature of love’. Once it is complete it too will be published by the association.
[Sarala Devi, ‘Premik Sabha’ (The Lovers’ Association), published in Bharati in 1891]

Strength, manhood, Kshatra-Virya + Brahma-Teja. Our beautiful hopeful boys – they brave everything,
only if they are not slaughtered by the millions at the altar of this brutality they call marriage… Ay! The
Hindu mind fears all those ideals which say that the flesh must cling unto the flesh. No, no! Woman! Thou
shalt not be coupled with anything connected with the flesh. The name has been called holy once and for
ever, for what name is there which no lust can ever approach, no carnality ever come near, than the one
word mother? That is the ideal in India! (Swami Vivekananda, Letter to Alasinga Perumal, dated 20 th
August 1893)

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In an article named ‘Maddhyobitter Jounota’ (Sexuality of the Middle-class, 2009 74-92),

Somnath Bhattacharya, a renowned octogenarian psychoanalyst and one of the leaders in the
field in eastern India, makes a very interesting observation. He writes that in his long career as a
therapist he has noticed that the syndrome called ‘semen-loss anxiety’ is quite common among
the Bengali bhadralok males and that many of them harbour the belief that the body becomes
‘impure’ after sex and that it needs to be cleaned immediately after the sexual congress. And if
one goes by the frequency and the impact-factor of the commercials, aired everyday on Bangla
satellite channels, which advertise products with great performance-enhancing effect for the
Bengali husbands one may surmise that the bhadralok male self, the quintessential romantic with
great erudition and artistic sensibility, may be very proficient in expressing love as an emotion in
various artistic media but when it comes to the art of making love he lacks genuine panache. For
him love as an affair of the heart has been an obsession for long: but he often finds the body ‘too
hot’ to handle. The question is ‘Why?’

Any enquiry into the nature of the dichotomy between the ubiquitous presence of love as a motif
in Bengali culture and the absence of truly fulfilling and satisfying relationships among Bengali
couples in modern times will require extensive research. One will have to engage with multiple
disciplines as the list of issues involved is long. Many questions need to be asked and from
various angles. For example, is the ‘problem’ observed only among the Bengali race or is it pan-
Indian in nature? What is the history of the origin and development of such a phenomenon? For
the modern Bengali culture (or any culture for that matter) sexual morality or, to place it in a
larger canvas, the subject of human relationships and sexuality will necessarily involve questions
related to discourses of the institution of marriage and the idea of heteronormativity, of love,
romance and sex (both ‘procreational’ and ‘recreational’ types), of gender and gender roles in the
society. As for genders, this may finally take us to the question of identity and the act of
fashioning a Bengali-self. The subject is, therefore, quite staggering in scope. In the context of
the eventful and multilayered history of the Bengali race, a race which came into prominence
during colonial times, it will require nothing less than a research à la History of Sexuality.

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Psychoanalysts, social scientists and cultural historians are more likely to do justice to such a
subject.

Presently I have no such high ambitions. In order to understand the nature of the politics of the
modern Bengali self I shall look closely at a play by Tagore. What I intend to do in this article is
to take up Tagore’s drama, Chirakumar Sabha (“An Association for the Lifelong Celibates”), for
studying how some important interrelated themes like gender, love, marriage, patriotism and
celibacy, prevalent in those times, get recorded in the text. The play is a comedy of manners,
originally published as a novel serially in the periodical Bharati during the turn of the last
century. Directed by Ahindra Chowdhury, the great theatre personality of Bengal in the early
20th century, the play was first performed in Star Theatre by Art Theatre, a commercial theatre
company, on 18th July 1925.1 It is a light-hearted comedy about how a group of western-educated
males form an all-male association in order to dedicate their lives for the cause of their mother
land – a country under foreign rule – by practising celibacy. The association, it is needless to say,
gets dismantled in the end as all the marriageable members of the association, in the course of
the play, fall prey to the Cupid’s arrow as they finally decide to get married.

Beginning with the premise that a literary text most often functions as both a form and a forum
for contemporary discursive matrix (it is more true perhaps in the case of genres like comedy –
romantic, satirical or farcical types – if one takes the notion of Bakhtinian ‘carnival laughter’ into
account), I, in my article, will attempt to find a link between the ‘macro’ (societal) and the
‘micro’ (the world of art) levels of discourses related to some such issues. In Bergsonian terms, I
shall try to put ‘laughter’ back into its natural environment and determine the utility of its social
function. Such a study of the play, written more than a century ago, will hopefully give us some
insights into the nature of the bhadralok self of the modern Bengali society, a society in which
even today a spontaneous and mutually respectful relationship between the sexes is conspicuous
by its absence.

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In order to prove the continuing relevance of the play and its impact on the Bengali Imaginary it
is not enough merely to point out that between the years 1925 and 1940 the play was staged in
the commercial theatre no less than 64 times. As far as the Bengali commercial theatre is
concerned it is perhaps Tagore’s most successful stage-play. The cinematic version of the play,
directed by Premankur Atarthi, was released in 1932. It has not fallen out of favor with the
contemporary theatre groups either. This is borne out by the fact that as recently as on 5th May
2010 it was staged by “Chetana”, a leading theatre group in Kolkata, under the direction of Arun
Mukhopadhyay.

However, to understand the significance of the play’s legacy one must at least throw a cursory
glance at the major currents and cross-currents of the social history of Bengal during the 19th
century – a century in which the advent of colonial modernity marked an almost epistemic shift
in the Bengali mentalité.2 On the one hand, the emotive affects of the relationship between the
sexes in this part of the country were heavily influenced by the powerful presence of customs
and institutions like child marriage, extended family households and kulin polygamy which often
resulted in either inevitable widowhood or in enforced spinsterhood for women. Exposure to the
western epistemology in the form of English education system kindled a powerful reformatory
zeal among the newly-risen bilingual, urban community of Kolkata on the other. Its impact was
felt in the sphere of legislation – the Bengal Sati Regulation 1829, the Hindu Widows
Remarriage Act 1856, the Civil Marriage Act 1872, the Right to Property Act 1874 and the Age
of Consent Bill 1891 – and also in the spread of practices like female education and the concept
of companionate marriage.3 In my present venture I shall not go into the details of this well-
known story. What interests me here is what effects an almost head-on clash between tradition
and modernity had on the ideas of love, sex, and conjugality and in the fashioning of
bhadralok/mahila selves. I should mention here that though much had been accomplished during
this era the introduction of various acts by the colonial masters could not completely change the
condition of Bengali women in colonial times. The age difference between brides and grooms
remained. Western education resulted in the rise in stocks for university educated young men in
the marriage market. Polygamy was still practised. Girls were continued to be married off when
they were very young. 4
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It was also a time when the reading of the works of the romantic poets and novels of
Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the witnessing of the histrionics of female-actors on the
Bengali stage gave rise to a craving for romance. This new idea of ‘romance’ was instrumental in
making a distinction between mere bodily instincts and a fine sensibility nourished by culture. It
was the idea of romance that freed ‘love’ from the clutches of ‘lust’. But this craving for
romance could hardly be satisfied. Though free-mixing between young men and women became
possible during the second half of the 19th century in Brahmo households it remained a rarity in
most Hindu families. Another significant factor that became instrumental in shaping the sexual
morality of the bhadraloks needs to be mentioned here. With the rise of English-educated
middle-class in Kolkata the hiatus separating ‘the Great Tradition’ and ‘the Little Tradition’ in
Bengal’s folk culture gradually widened. A number of rural and urban folk forms like kabigan
and kheur became extinct and Battala publishing industry became marginalized after the
establishment of the Obscene Publications Act in 1856 and the Dramatic Performance Control
Act in 1876. The genteel bhadralok society started to see the ghost of obscenity in many
classical Sanskrit and medieval Vaishnava texts. Brahmoism became synonymous with the
Victorian prudery. The rich and very old Indian tradition of consort worship practised among
various tantric and sahajiya sects came to be repudiated and went almost underground. The body
became a rather problematic site and the joy of physical union became tinged with a sense of
guilt.

As for the body, among the bhadraloks, the class which became the prime agency in the
country’s struggle for independence, two contradictory pulls came to be observed. Leading a
conjugal life with child-brides with little education and even less erotic skills paved way for
development of the tendency of forming homo-social bonding among the males in the public
sphere – a way to satisfy intellectual thirst – and visiting nautch-girls and actresses in the ever-
burgeoning prostitution business in a colonial metropolis – a way to satisfy bodily needs. Or else,
the discourse of Hindu virility would champion a celibate life with a combination of martial and
ascetic values, epitomised by the figure of the all-renouncing sanyasi, in whose life the guiding
principle would be love – love for the motherland. Love in this discourse would be a different
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category altogether, picked by the extremists during India’s freedom-struggle in the first few
decades of the 20th century. I shall try to study Chirakumar Sabha against the backdrop of these
two competing discourses of love and their politics – the legacy of which, I believe, we still
carry.

II

In today’s Hollywood parlance, Tagore’s Chirakumar Sabha may be called a prequel to

Parashuram’s (the pseudonym for Rajshekhar Bose, a leading Bengali litterateur of the early 20th
century, an intellectual and the elder brother of Girindrasekhar Bose, the founder of the Indian
Psychoanalytic Society) hugely popular farcical short-story ‘Premchakra’ (‘the Wheel of Love’).
Set in the Vedic Age, this story, collected in Hanumaner Swapno (“Hanuman’s Dream”, 1932),
is about three young ascetics who fall passionately in love with three beautiful daughters of the
sages in the forest. The young ladies too reciprocate their feelings. Harit, Jarit and Larit love
Samita, Jamita and Tamita and they too love them. But, Madan, the god of Love, plays a cruel
joke here. The problem is Harit loves Samita but Samita loves Jarit; Jarit loves Jamita but Jamita
has a crush on Larit; Larit loves Tamita whereas Tamita takes a fancy to Harit. The situation is
impossibly complicated, to say the least, and according to the author, it turns out to be a weird
case of ‘hopeless hexagon’–the ‘grandmother’ of all eternal triangles! Marriage which often
serves as the conclusion towards which comedy inevitably moves, a cultural symbol of the
harmonious symmetry and the resolution of troubles, cannot be the solution here. In this satirical
story, replete with sunny humour, ‘romantic love’ is presented in its most exaggerated manner.
‘Falling in love’ in this allegory of modern times is shown to be a popular fashion among the
youth and love as an emotion is ascribed to a foundation of unpredictability. The contingency of

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love is shown in its extreme form and the idea of love as ‘unreason’ and as a kind of psychosis
serves as an important motif in the story.

However, in Tagore’s play, written some thirty years before Parashuram’s story, Madan does not
get to play the mischief-maker. Instead, three pairs of lovers (Srish-Nripabala, Bipin-Nirabala
and Purno-Nirmala) oblige and fall in love in a mutual fashion, and in consonance with the
convention of romantic comedies, love sets marriage-bells ringing in the end. But, one must not
forget that Sarala Devi, Tagore’s niece and the editor of Bharati (the literary monthly published
from the Tagore household), on whom, in Tagore’s own opinion, Nirmala’s character is
modelled, announced via an advertisement in her journal that it would serially publish a ‘social
satire’ written by Tagore. This announcement impelled the poet to write the piece in the first
place.5 Chirakumar Sabha, as a result of the advertisement perhaps, turns out to be an
experiment in generic amalgamation in which Tagore tries to enlarge the scope of romantic
comedy by incorporating satirical as well as farcical elements into it. His attempt, in this respect,
is decidedly advancement over farces like Aleek Babu (“The Vain Gentleman”, 1877) written by
his elder brother Jyotirindranath Tagore, for whom the French comedies of Molière served as the
primary model. The coexistence of tones of celebration and good-humored critiques of ideational
categories like romance, patriotism and gender accounts for the generic complexity of this text. It
was an intimate association with Shakespeare’s comedies and Sanskrit plays of Kalidasa and
others that helped Tagore to formulate his own theories of the ‘comic’ by the time he tried his
hands in writing farces like Goray Galod (“An Error in the Beginning”, 1892) and Baikunther
Khata (“Boikuntho’s Exercise Book”, 1897). In essays like ‘Koutuk Hasya’ (‘Mirth’) and
‘Koutukhasyer Matra’ (‘Measure of Mirth’) collected in the book Panchabhut (“The Five
Elements”, 1897) Tagore discusses the aims and objectives of the comic and classifies it
according to its different levels and degrees.6 The generic combination of romantic comedy and
farce, thus, gives Tagore an opportunity to showcase a gamut of characteristics and excesses of
the late 19th century Bengali bhadralok society in Chirakumar Sabha.

In the middle of the 19th century the bhadralok class emerged as an ‘aspirational category’ in
Bengal. During this age, colonial economy and the advent of colonial modernity brought about
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large-scale changes in perception amongst this class. Capitalism and related social forces such as
the rise of the modern city, a marketplace culture and proliferating print culture–all made a
significant impact upon the institution of marriage of this class. This age also witnessed the rise
of ‘marriage market’– which is a strange combination of a means for upward mobility in social
ladder and a crucial way to keep koulinya (attributes of the highest rank among upper castes)
intact. Colonial education, acquiring of college and university degrees increased the value of
young unmarried men manifold in such a market on the one hand and the cultural politics that
valorized domestic virtues in women became instrumental in reducing their economic worth on
the other. Arranged marriage as a concept and as an institution became hugely important in
bhadralok society. Ghataks (professional matchmakers) began to wield considerable power over
society. Number of dowry-related death seemed to be always on the rise too.7

The play opens with a farcical episode involving young men belonging to kulin families, out to
make a fortune by receiving dowry, and a widow, anxious to marry off her marriageable
daughters before they become too old to catch the fancy of ‘suitable boys’. Mrityunjoy and
Darukeswar, two good-for-nothing young men, roped in by Banamali, the ghatak, as prospective
grooms enter the households of Jagattarini with plans to marry Nripabala and Nirabala. The
encounter between the ‘professional’ grooms and the hapless members of the girls’ family who
are in a tight corner underscores the fact that most marriage-negotiations turned out to be nothing
but hollow shams in late 19th century bhadralok society. To Mrityunjoy and Darukeswar the
responsibility to keep the sanctity of koulinya intact seems hardly a deterrent if a prospect of
amassing wealth by marriage comes in the way. They even agree to embrace Christianity if the
‘deal’ is good enough. They also demand that they be sent to England by the future-in-laws for
pursuing higher studies. ‘Prayaschitta’ (‘Atonement’, 1894), a short-story by Tagore, written
around the same time, records the fateful outcome of a son-in-law’s sponsored trip abroad. He
returns to the in-law’s house after completing his course in law in England. The story, however,
ends with a dramatic entry into the same house by the British lady whom the son-in-law has
married during his stay in England.

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The ideal of marriage during this period in the Bengali society became an extremely contentious
issue. In blatant disregard for what the members of English-educated middle class represented by
figures like Iswarchandra Vidyasagar had to say about the women’s cause, the Hindu Revivalists
were adamant to keep the Bengali family, the sanctum sanctorum of Indian civilization,
sacrosanct and to keep the institution of marriage outside the purview of both the government
legislations and the reformatory zeal of social reformers.8 Tagore, on the other hand, in an essay
entitled “Hindu Vibaha” (the Hindu Marriage) presented at the Indian Science Association in
1887 argued that colonial education had opened the floodgate of new desires for the modern
Bengali society. People started to fancy things they had never dreamt before, played host to
feelings to which they themselves had been complete strangers just a few years back. According
to Tagore, one could not blame a modern western-educated youth if he failed to feel love and
affection for his illiterate wife he had married in her childhood. Tagore was also sure that the
ancient education system and the practice of bramhacharya could not be brought back once
more. For this newly-risen class, love, as an emotion, fed with novels of Bankim Chandra
Chattopadhyay and poems of Byron and Shelley, had a new object choice. It was bhadramahila,
‘the New Woman’:
Bipin: Let me tell you the whole story. That evening Purna and I went to Chandrababu’s house
to take notes. We reached a little early. Chandrababu had just returned from a meeting. Purna
kept browsing through the pages of a book as we waited for him. Suddenly – I don’t have
words to describe it – the lady entered into the room with a dangling braid behind her, as if
straight out of the unwritten pages of a novel of Bankim Babu!
Srish: My goodness! What are you saying, Bipin?
Bipin: Just let me finish the story. She entered the room all on a sudden with refreshments for
Chandranath Babu in a plate on one hand and a glass of water in another. On seeing us her face
turned crimson in bashfulness and she became embarrassed… She could be a Brahmo girl but,
she has not let go of modesty along with her faith in innumerable gods and goddesses of Hindu
pantheon and she has, in the process, and I swear to this, also kept her grace firmly in place!9
About the grace and charm of this new characterological type – bhadramahila – and her new
kind of femininity, Binod Bihari, an English-educated young bhadralok character in Goray
Galod, a farce of Tagore from the same period, has the following words to say; words that
clearly express the bhadralok youth’s desire for a new ‘ideal’:

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Binod Bihari: Do you know the kind of woman I want? She will have to be inscrutable! One
who will elude you if you try to get close to her – and will haunt you if you try to move
away… She will be slim, with a slight figure; her gait would be such that her feet would touch
the ground oh-so-lightly, like the delicate tendrils of a young vine. One who will seem so
vulnerable – just a tiny little creature in this vast world; but such feminine charm, such power,
such mischief packed in such a small frame that she will surprise you every other second! She
will be like lightning, a solitary ray of light – but loaded with so much of energy, so much of
laughter and such thunderous power!10
Import of ideas like ‘romantic heroine’ and ‘companionate marriage’ from the West and a
desperate urge to create a cultural Imaginary of love by men in an atmosphere of ignominious
colonial rule should not divert our attention from the fact that women of some sections of the
Bengali society were showing clear signs of fashioning a new self. The above quotations are
clear proofs of that fact.11 The liberated woman who would make choices of her own had now
arrived. The Brahmo Samaj became a new social fold where the battle for freedom for women
was vigorously launched. The achievements of some eminent western-educated ladies from the
Brahmo Samaj during this period showed that a fiercely independent woman-self would no
longer be a rarity. As for the emotional changeover, the element of romance began to be dealt
with for the first time even by women writers in the late 19th century. Swarnakumari Devi’s
novel Kahake (“To Whom”, 1898) is one such glowing example.12 In Chirakumar Sabha
Chandranath Babu’s niece Nirmala, a Brahmo lady, epitomizes the spirit of this newly-fashioned
self:
Chandrababu: Nirmal, you will not work for this association. Keeping in mind the convenience
of those who will work we have decided to ─
Nirmala: Why will I not work? Is it merely because I was born your niece and not your
nephew, that I cannot take part in the welfare projects of your society? Why then have you
given me education and taught me for so long? How can you put a road-block in my path after
you have yourself awakened my mind and my soul with your teachings?
Chandra Babu: Nirmal, a time will come when you will have to immerse yourself in family-
life once you get married. The projects of Chirakumar Sabha ─
Nirmala: I will not marry!
Chandra Babu: What will you do, then?
Nirmala: I shall assist you in your work for the country.
Chandra Babu: But, we have taken vows to lead an ascetic’s life till we die.

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Nirmala: Has no one ever seen a sanyasin (female ascetic) in India before? (144)
Even in Hindu households during this period we witness the emergence of a new ‘structure of
feeling’ with a complex set of differentiated structures of ideas pertaining to both sekal (then)
and ekal (now). I should add a few words here about this idea of ‘structure of feeling’. Raymond
Williams introduces this concept in his book Marxism and Literature. He tries to highlight the
dynamic and ever-changing nature of the elements of culture as they are being lived and as they
undergo changes of presence. William writes,
We are then defining these elements as a ‘structure’: as a set, with specific internal relations, at once
interlocking and in tension. Yet we are also defining a social experience which is still in process, often
indeed not yet recognized as social but taken to be private, idiosyncratic, and even isolating… (1977, 132,
italics mine)
In the period of the Bengali social history under discussion we notice such changes of presence
taking place in the domestic sphere – epitomised by a curious simultaneity of the ‘residual’ and
the ‘emergent’, the ‘past’ and the ‘present’ – as interstices between the zenana and the drawing-
room (the ‘private’ and the ‘public’) gradually began to appear:
Purabala: I don’t understand anything. Shaila, don’t tell me that you plan to join Chirakumar
Sabha?
Shailabala: Yes, I have to be its sabhyo (member).
Purabala: You are joking, are you not? How can a woman become a member of an
association?
Shailabala: Don’t you know that these days women are also becoming sabhyo (civilized)? That
is why I have decided to wear men’s robe instead of sari. (123)

Young unmarried men from Hindu families, however, in spite of idealizing/idolizing adhunika
nari (modern woman) in many novels and poems did not get many opportunities to meet women
socially or in public places, during the second half of the 19th century. Weekly prayer-meetings
of Brahmo samaj provided such opportunities for Brahmo men on a regular basis though. But
these men constituted a microscopic minority. Streets of Kolkata were almost completely devoid
of women who belonged to the bhadralok society.13 Rasikdada in the play has to have samples of
Sanskrit literature and English Romantic Poetry only as the artillery to bring down the castles of
celibacy of Srish and Bipin during their evening-walks through the streets of Kolkata in their

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lovelorn state. Neither Nripabala nor Nirabala would have offered them even a brief glimpse of
their fair forms from the balcony.

Needless to say that such a situation which prevailed in bhadralok society in those days resulted
in a total lack of spontaneity in the social behavior among the sexes in Kolkata, the chief centre
of metropolitan modernity. The less said about the small mufassil towns is the better. The new
age brought new emotions along, but life offered little opportunity of tasting the validity of such
emotions at the ground level. Thus, among young men fantasy took the place of a true
understanding of the mentality of the opposite sex.
Srish: There are certain things in life which seem so good as ideas that one does not get the
courage to test them in reality. Can Pataldanga Street be the location where a love-tryst can
take place; a road where beads of pearls from the necklace of a charming lady get scattered?
That road exists nowhere in the world. (168)
In the opening chapter of Tagore novel Gora (1910), Binoy, an English-educated young man,
meets Sucharita, a young lady, but by some mischance he forgets to reciprocate her namaskar
(an Indian way of greeting a person during a social meeting) at the time of parting, simply
because it is so unprecedented an incident in his life that he blunders to become comme il faut.14
In colonial Bengal many western-educated young men like Binoy did not know how to greet
ladies, let alone carrying polite conversations with them in social gatherings, even though their
heads were filled with slokas of Kalidasa and speeches from Shakespearean plays all the while.
In Chirakumar Sabha, Purna, an intelligent, educated young man, becomes pathetically tongue-
tied every time he comes upon Nirmala in their association meetings. Though he is completely
besotted with her, he fails to speak his mind. Even discussing the weather with her proves much
too trying for the hapless youth. Therefore, there prevailed a situation in which young men were
either burdened with half-educated child-wives and were completely exhausted due to the
ordeals of rearing children by the time they reached their mid-twenties, or they became frustrated
individuals, all too eager to ‘fall in love’ at the drop of a hat. Relationships between bhadraloks
and bhadramahilas in Bengali society, built upon mutual trust and understanding remained, by
and large, unrealizable. The drama of the politics of the self for young men and women of
‘modern’ India was, thus, far from over.

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This was also the age in which young men in Bengal entered the discursive plane of nationalism
in a well-ordered manner for the first time. They began to hear the calls of Bharatlakshmi
(mother India). Indian National Congress was established in 1885. Interestingly, like ‘romantic
love’, ‘patriotism’ too was a western import. According to Nirad C Chowdhury, ‘love for the
beloved’ and ‘love for the country’–both these ideas were quite new to the young men of Bengal,
15
and as such, they were really hard put to resolve the conflict between the two. The only ideal
which any ‘true’ patriot tried to follow in the act of dedicating one’s life for the cause of the
nation was built upon two cardinal principles which were in fact two sides of the same coin–
shunning marriage and taking the path of celibacy. This fact is borne out in the letters written in
the early decades of the 20th century by a young Subhas Chandra Bose, the great Indian freedom
fighter, to his mother, declaring his full faith in the ideas of Swami Vivekananda, the all-
renouncing sanyasi.16 From Anandamath (1882) to Pather Dabi (“Demand for a Pathway”,
1926) the nationalist discourse was couched in spiritualism and celebrated martial values
whenever it was showcased in literature. The Gita became the Bible for the young Hindu
activists involved in the Extremist Movement. The ‘spiritual’ India was projected as the real
India–the country of a race endowed with sublime power:
Srish: There exists an immense energy called asceticism in India! Giving it a form of beauty
and attributing to it a dedication for work it is the only objective of Chirakumar Sabha –
brushing off its ash, shearing off its matted hair and picking up its cloth-bag in the process.
(138)
Srish: We shall have to form an order of monks with the help of our Chirakumar Sabha which
with its emphasis on culture, education and work will be the ideal for all people living in
families. Its members will be skilled in music and art and will have proficiency in fencing,
shooting, riding and other martial arts. (140)
In this spiritualist discourse the body is made the site of nationalism and bramhacharya is made
its chief agency of reform. The belief is that the regimen of celibacy and the retention of semen,
the vital fluid in the male body, would turn the effete colonized self of the bhadralok into a
progressive citizen who would have the power to free the nation and reform it.17 The gendered
nature of this discourse is all too obvious. A discourse on the power of semen resulted in the
development of an unambiguously male ideology.
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Notwithstanding the curious psycho-sexual nature of this discourse, built around a principle of
denial of earthly pleasures and repressive austerities, one cannot deny that during the early
euphoric years of the Swadeshi it resulted in a passionate involvement with anything Indian and
a fanatical commitment to the country’s cause. The project of the development of the ‘self’ had
self-reliance and constructive work as its mainstay. This resulted in, as Sumit Sarkar states, the
establishment of Swadeshi enterprises and stores, organizing education on autonomous and
indigenous lines and the need for concrete work at the village level. 18 Tagore established
Swadeshi Bhandar (the National Store) in 1897. The Bengal Chemicals started functioning in
1893. A number of swadeshi schemes – textile mills and improved handlooms, river transport
concerns, match and soap factories – were taken up with a great degree of enthusiasm around
this time. Chandranath Babu, whose character is modelled on Raj Narayan Bose, who was an
important member of the ‘Young Bengal’ – a group of students who received western education
in the Hindu College during its early years and who, in his later life became a prominent figure
in the circle of social reformers in late nineteenth century Bengal, says:
Chandranath Babu: Eradication of poverty is our chief responsibility towards the country and in
order to achieve that the immediate measure we can take is to get involved in some business
ventures. We, with the limited man-power of our association, cannot take up a big industrial
project right now but we can surely make a small beginning. How about if we start off our
experiment with the setting up of a match factory? (134)
Chandrakanta, a character in Goray Galod, declares that for the first twenty-five years of his life
the Bengali youth has his task cut for him – development of the country’s unity, national
commerce, social reform and beating up young members of the white community in Kolkata.
Young men were often led by senior selfless, idealists in their mission to improve the condition
of the people of the mother country. A number of associations and organizations (and secret
societies!) quite like Chirakumar Sabha were formed. 19 Chandranath Babu comments:
Chandranath Babu: Everyone will have to engage oneself with the welfare of the motherland,
according to one’s condition and ability–this is our general motto. Like mendicant monks, one
group of celibate members of our association will roam around various corners of the country;
others will settle themselves in one place and work for the country… those who will do the

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travelling will have to study cartography, land-survey, geology, botany and zoology… Indians
will themselves write the history of this country one day. (142)

The big question, however, remains. What shall be the role of women in this grand project? This
discursive aporia provides the chief motor-force in the progression of the plot of this romantic
comedy. It is, quite predictably, Chandrababu, the eldest character of the play with a sage-like
vision, who provides a resolution to the central dramatic conflict at the end of the play:
Chandranath Babu: Pardon my insolence, but I have come to this realization after much
deliberation that celibacy is not for ordinary, common people–practising it will not give us
strength; on the contrary, it will only take it away. Man and woman are like right hands for
each other – only if they work in unison they will become completely useful in all the works of
family and society. (193)
Thus, Nirmala’s decision to join the association goes a long way to resolve the conflict between
her uncle’s nationalist projects in the public world and her duties of looking after him in the
domestic sphere. She also finds her mate in the process. In the end, she changes her mind and
agrees to a proposal of marriage, which is always the ultimate principle of containment of the
Dionysian elements in comedies. Her change of decision, therefore, falls in line with the
traditional notion that marriage in Hindu India is almost compulsory and one who does not marry
goes to hell. The play, thus, ends with not one but three marriages as Rasikdada recites a
bharatbakya (a form of prayer-sloka) which incidentally, gives the play a touch of antiquity and
its theme a social validity.20 As it is most often the case with romantic comedies, matrimony –
celebrating the union of happy couples – assumes ritualistic proportions in this text too with
Rasikdada’s sloka. The union of brides and grooms, thus, becomes a signifier of the larger
collective welfare of the society and the state as Rasikdada declares:
May you tide over every adversity,
May you always meet prosperity,
May all your wishes come true,
And let life be happy through and through! (204)

The political unconscious of the text, however, refuses to be sublimated all that easily. The
character of Shailabala, a young widow with her close-cropped hair (an unmistakable marker of
austere widowhood in those days), her acts of cross-dressing and her taking on the persona of
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Abalakanta Babu, a young educated man from a mufassil town, in order to join Chirakumar
Sabha is a clear indication of that. Her very presence exposes the fault lines of bhadralok
discourses of gender and heteronormativity. Her exploits in the play also shows us the nature of
female agency in bhadralok society in a new light. Heroines who are young widows have often
been given crucial roles in Tagore’s fiction. Binodini in Chokher Bali (“the Eyesore”, 1903) and
Damini in Chaturanga (“Four Parts”, 1916) are the most famous examples. A lot has been
written about the threatening sexuality of young widows in Bengali households. Families most
often did not know what to do with the young girls who became widows as a result of child-
marriage and kulin polygamy: often these unfortunate women turned widows even before their
marriages were consummated. They were often unlawfully deprived of their share in the
husband’s property too as they were sent away to Brindaban or Benares. Oral historians like
Kalyani Dutta attempted to document the unspeakable plights of these hapless ladies.21 In the
play, nobody talks about setting up Shailabala’s re-marriage, though she is as young, educated,
talented and sprightly as her two unmarried sisters, Nripabala and Nirabala. Her marriage is a
possibility that lies outside the discursive horizon of this romantic comedy even in the presence
of a handful of social reformers in the text: and we must not forget that the Widow Remarriage
Act was passed in 26 July 1855, many years before this play was written.22 We also notice that
Benares is presented in the play as a liminal location of the cultural Imaginary of bhadralok
society. Jagattarini, the elderly widow and the mother of Shaila, Nripa and Nira, makes a visit
there. There is no hint in the play that gives any clear indication that Shaila would not end up
there one day when she grows old.

We know that in most traditional comedies female characters are susceptible to ideological
versions of the male concept of women, largely defined in terms of their suitability for marriage.
Shailabala’s character, however, has got no connection with such generic metastability. Again,
her act of cross-dressing and taking up the disguise of a man with ‘boyish charms’ draws our
attention to the fact that in the carnival atmosphere of a comedy marriage with its promise of
heterosexual sex does not necessarily override or foreclose the sexual mutability that may have
gone before. I have already mentioned an element of homo-social bonding that could be noticed
in the friendship between educated youths in colonial Bengal. The ‘friendship’ between Binod
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Bihari and Nalinaksha as it is presented in Goray Galod is a case in point. In Chirakumar Sabha
Srish, Purna and Bipin – all unmarried, young males in the play befriend her (disguised as
Abalakanta) all too quickly. S/he also helps them to open up before her/him with a great degree
of spontaneity, something that they will never achieve with a young woman. With Shailabala’s
character Tagore, an avid reader of Shakespearean comedies in which cross-dressing is more of a
rule than an exception, takes the opportunity to tinker with the notions of sexual and gender
identities of the modern Bengali self through comic inversion. Not much is achieved in the end,
though.23 In the last movement of this romantic comedy we witness a silent erasure of
Shailabala’s character from the dramatic plane; a fact which is very significant. One can,
however, infer that the character of Shailabala in the play still remains an aporia which, in a
careful reading of the play, will draw our attention to the tenuous nature of both the sexual and
the gender identities of the bhadralok self in the Bengali society.

It is the same bhadralok self that comprises the identity of the male self in Tagore’s dance drama
Chitrangada, composed a few years before Chirakumar Sabha, in 1892. I would like to conclude
with the words of Arjuna, the hero, which he utters at the end of the text, a play in which Tagore
deals with issues like androgyny and gender politics:
Now I hear in my blood which is all-a-tremble,
The clattering sound of cymbals,
And the name of Chitrangada, the princess,
My master as well as my missus. 24

Notes
1
Chirakumar Sabha was serialized in Bharati from Boishakh 1307 to Joishtha 1308 of the Bengali calendar (1900-01). It first
came out as a novel with the title Projapatir Nirbandho (“The Decree of the God of Marriage”) in 1907. Tagore published it as a
drama with its original title in 1926. Be it as a novel or as a play, it is noteworthy that Tagore found its subject relevant and
artistically interesting for a period spanning almost three decades. For a detailed account of a rather interesting history (involving
personalities like Sarala Devi, Sishir Bhaduri, noted thespian, and Tagore) of the composition and later-day revisions done by the
Poet see Rathindranath Tagore, On the Edges of Time, Visva-Bharati, Kolkata: 2010 (rpt.), Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay,
Rabindrajibani Vol: I, Visva-Bharati, Kolkata: 1999 (rpt.) and Prasanta Kumar Pal, Rabijibani Vol: IX, Ananda, Kolkata: 2010
(rpt.)
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2For a detailed record of the after-life of Chirakumar Sabha, in theatre and in other media see Rudraprasad Chakrabarty,
Sadharon Rongaloy o Rabindranath, Visva-Bharati, Kolkata: 1999, Someswar Bhowmik, Roop’r Kalponirjhor: Cinema,
Adunikata Rabindranath, Ananda, Kolkata: 2011 and Rudraprasad Chakrabarty, Rangamancho o Rabindranath: Samokalin
Protrikriya, Ananda, Kolkata: 1995.

3The issue of the ‘Woman Question’ and its ‘resolution’ in colonial Bengal has been much debated and is now a very well-
known story. Interested reader may look up numerous works by Marxists, Feminists and subaltern historians. The list of articles
and books on this subject is too long to be given. Readers will do well to consult writings of Partha Chatterjee, Sumit Sarkar,
Himani Banerjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Tanika Sarkar and Jashodhara Bagchi.

4See Rochona Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal, OUP, New Delhi: 2009, especially the
chapter entitled, ‘Looking for Brides and Grooms’.

5For a detailed account of the events that preceded the composition of Chirakumar Sabha and the events that followed see
Rathindranath Tagore, Pitrismriti (“Memories of My Father”), Jigmasha Publications, Kolkata: 1988 (rpt.), pp-34-36.

6 “Amusement and mirth are not exactly happiness: rather, they are mild degrees of pain or sadness.” “Incongruity is the subject
of both comedy and tragedy… there are two classes of discrepancy: one is comic, the other deplorable… As the degree of
incongruity rises, surprise gradually turns to laughter and laughter to tears.” See Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Writings on
Literature and Language, Sukanta Chaudhuri (Ed.), OUP, New Delhi: 2012 (rpt.) pp- 81, 89-90. Tagore’s views on the nature of
intimate interconnectedness between the comic and the tragic are strikingly similar to Bakhtin’s theories. See Mikhail Bakhtin,
Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Caryl Emerson (ed.), (trans.), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, London: 1999,
(rpt.).

7 See chapter 2, ‘Snehalata’s Death: Questions of Dowry’ in Rochona Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, pp- 54-90.

8For a detailed account of Vidyasagar’s fight against the orthodox Hindu society and the different stages of his life as a reformer
see Benoy Ghosh’s masterly study, Vidyasagar o Bangali Samaj, Orient Blackswan, Kolkata: 2011(rpt.)

9 Rabindranath Tagore, Chirakumar Sabha, in Rabindra Natya-sangraho, Vol II, Visva-Bharati, Kolkata: 1999 (rpt.) p-131
(translation mine). All citations are from this edition unless otherwise stated.

10Rabindranath Tagore, Goray Galod, in Rabindra Natya-sangraho, Vol I, Visva-Bharati, Kolkata: 1999 (rpt.) p-368 (translation
mine)

11See Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Premer Abhishek’ (‘the Coronation of Love’) in Rabindrarachanabali, Vol II, Visva-Bharati,
Kolkata: 2010 (rpt.) pp-13-139. This lyric is a wonderful record of the emotional outburst of a Bengali youth who feels extremely
fortunate (he feels likes an emperor, nothing less than that!) and his life becomes meaningful once he is bestowed with the
unconditional love of his beloved.

12When results of Calcutta University was published in December 1882 a marvellous fact came to light that Chandramukhi Basu
and Kadambini Basu were the two first lady graduates in the entire British Empire. Kadambini Basu later became the first lady
doctor of India.

13 In 1912 Tagore wrote in ‘Bombay City’, “The thing that satisfies the eyes the most is the free intermingling of men and women
in the streets of Bombay. The magnitude of the poverty of the city-life of Calcutta largely due to her missing women is
understood fully only when somebody visits Bombay. We have kept human life restricted to half of its potential; that is why we
do not get to see any truly joyous manifestation of it here.” See Rabindranath Tagore, Pather Sanchoy, (“the Savings of the
Travel”) in Rabindrarachanabali, Vol. X, p-874.

14 See Rabindranath Tagore, Gora, Sujit Mukherjee (trans.), Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi: 2001 (rpt.), p-4:

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As he stood there uncertainly, the cab began moving and the girl directed a brief namaskar to him. He was so taken
aback at this gesture that he forgot to proffer a namaskar in return. After he had come home Binoy reproached himself
repeatedly at this lapse. On reviewing the entire episode from the time he met them to the point of their departure, he
found that his conduct had been quite unmannerly.

15 See Nirad C. Chowdhury, Bangali Jibone Ramoni, (“The Role of Woman in Bengali Life”) p-145.

16 See The Essential Writings of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Sisir K. Bose and Sugata Bose (eds.) OUP, New Delhi: 2014
(rpt.)

17 “Open your eyes and set your resolve in order to regain the glory of the past through the regimen of celibacy. One who is able
to control a single drop is able to control the seven seas. There is nothing in the world – no object or condition – which a celibate
man cannot overcome.” Swami Shivananda, Bramhachary Hi Jawan Hai (Celibacy Itself is Life), pp-34-35, quoted in Joseph S.
Alter, ‘Celibacy, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Gender into Nationalism in North India’, The Journal of Asian Studies,
Vol. 53, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp-45-66

18See Sumit Sarkar, ‘The Gospel of Atmashakti – Constructive Swadeshi’ in The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903-1908,
Permanent Black, New Delhi: 2011, (rpt.) pp-39-53.

19For delightful accounts of the activities of Sanjivani Sabha, a secret society modelled on Mazzini’s society in Italy and
established by Jyotirindranath Tagore in 1876 see Rabindranath Tagore, Jivansmriti and Basanta Kumar Chattopadhyaya,
Jyotirindranather Jivan-smriti, Prasanta kumar Paul (ed.), Subarnarekha, Kolkata: 2012 (rpt.). Like Chirakumar Sabha this
society had the elderly Rajnarayan Bose as its president and like Chirakumar Sabha its meetings were held in a damp, dark room
of a house in Sankar Ghosh Lane.

20
Bharatbakya or Prashasti is a convention followed in Sanskrit dramas: it is the last among the sixty-four (64)
limbs (ango) of a play. This is a practice of uttering words of benediction by an actor at the very end of the play for
the king and the country and effectively for everybody present during the performance. See Chapter XII, slokas 103
and 104 in Bharata-Muni, The Natyashastra, Manmohan Ghosh (trans.), Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta: 1951
pp-396-397.
21A staggering amount of work has been done on the plights of Hindu widows and it is impossible to give even a list of
representative works. Interested readers might look up Kalyani Dutta, Pinjarey Bashiya (“Sitting in a Cage”), Stree, Kolkata:
2002 (rpt.), Sambuddha Chakrabarty, Andare Antare (“In the Inner Quarters, Inside the Heart”), Stree, Kolkata: 1998 (rpt.) and
Aishika Chakrabarty, Widowhood in Colonial Bengal 1850-1930, unpublished thesis carried out at the University of Calcutta.

22It should be noted here that Narayanchandra, Iswarchandra Vidyasagar’s only son married Bhabasundari, the widowed
daughter of Sambhunath Mukhopadhyay in 1870. Rathindranath Tagore married Pratima Devi on 29 January 1910. Pratima Devi
was a widow when Rathindranath married her.

23Malini Bhattacharya writes about the contradictions in Tagore’s thinking which become evident especially in his political
novels. She draws our attention to the lack of any real awakening of the ‘political’ in Ela’s character, in Char Adhyay (“Four
Chapters”, 1934), though Tagore was well aware of the achievements of activists like Kalpana Dutta and Pritilata Waddedar in
India’s freedom struggle. See Malini Bhattacharya, ‘Rabindrachintay o Srishtitey Narimuktir Bhabna’ in Rabindra
Smarokgrantha, Visva-Bharati, Kolkata: 1991, pp. 228-238.

24 See Rabindranath Tagore, Chitrangada in Rabindra Natya-sangraha Vol II, p- 729 (translation mine).

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