Prague
15th Conference on Modern South-Asia
Bengal Studies Panel
Bengal Studies started as a separate panel at the 14th Conference on Modern South Asia in Copenhagen and has already become something of an institution. Even though some scholars on Bengal had entertained doubts about the viability of a separate panel, these doubts ought now to have been dispelled in view of the success of the present panel and the participants' explicit intention to keep it alive. It will reappear in Edinburgh in 2000.By Victor A. van Bijlert
As was said during the plenary session at the end of the conference by William Radice, the convener: which other occasion would allow a gathering of mostly European scholars on Bengal to chat with each other, in fact to engage in 'pucca adda' with each other, in Bengali? For this reason alone, the panel deserves continuation.The topics of the papers that were being presented ranged from literary analysis, to novel management ethics, from ethnography and anthropology to feminism and globalization, as befits Bengal Studies. William Radice (SOAS, London) opened the panel with a paper on indeterminacy in Rabindranath's songs (rabindra-sangit). Indeterminacy is used here to indicate a special quality of elusiveness in many of these song texts. In English aesthetic theory indeterminacy refers to a sense of awe and inability to express adequately the grandeur of e.g. God or nature. Indeterminacy is found among other authors in the English romantic poets. Rabindranath's indeterminacy does not arise from obscurity but derives from precise paradoxes. Radice argues a proper understanding of this quality of Rabindranath's songs determines the manner in which they ought to be performed. At present performances often leave much to be desired. In fact, they should emulate the established traditions of performance of e.g. Schubert songs. Radice opposes the vulgarization of Rabindranath's songs and music.
Sonita Sarker (Macalester College, St.Paul MN, USA) spoke on Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and global feminist activism. She discussed the fact that in global feminist discourse, Western women alone are often mentioned as poineers in this field. For South Asian feminist authors like Rokeya Hossain (1880-1932), it is much more difficult for their writings to gain recognition as part of the feminist canon. And yet Hossain wrote important works both in English and Bengali. Sonita Sarker exemplified this point with Hossain's 'Sultana's Dream', a vision of a feminist utopia in which the traditional gender roles are completely reversed. Indubitably this little work antedates many Western feminist utopias with similar themes. Hana Preinhaelterova (Charles University, Prague) dealt with Hindu concepts of death as exemplified in the novel 'Pratham pratishruti' (First Promise) by Ashapurna Debi. There are two types of death: ominous death and proper death. Proper death arrives after a life lived decorously in accordance with the rules of behaviour prescribed for the four stages in Hindu life. Premature death is portrayed in the novel as ominous, attributed to sin and karma. The main example of this is the female character, Shankari, a child widow, of whom the villagers thought fate had caused her to 'devour' her husband and parents. Female literary archetypes was the theme of Blanka Knotkova-Capkova (Charles University, Prague). Following the typology of Annis Pratt, Blanka Knotkova differentiates three archetypes: (a) homebody, (b) alluring type, (c) destructive type. Looking at Bengali literature in this context, Knotkova takes two representative authors: Tagore and Sunil Gangopadhyay. In Tagore's poetry, the female represents beauty, but does not raise questions of female identity. Sunil Gangopadhyay is neither outspoken about women, nor pathetic, but tries to feel the position of a woman.
Devil
Hans Harder (Martin Luther University, Halle) spoke on the Sufi cult of the Maij Bhandaris of Chittagong. Harder distinguishes two layers in this cult: (a) established Perso-Arabic Sufism expounded in the hagiographies and theological texts and (b) a popular form with Tantric traits found in the Bengali songs. An interesting trait in this cult is its inclusivism which is perhaps not the same as syncretism. Syncretism is in any case a problematic term as it implies measuring a religious phenomenon against a pure, original model which may never have existed. Syncretism of sorts also figured in France Bhattacharya's (INALCO, Paris) paper on Saiyad Sultan's 'Nabi Vamsha'. In this Bengali work written in pancali form, Saiyad Sultan (17th century) included a lengthy description of Hari (ie Krishna) as one of the 140,000 prophets who came between Ibrahim and Musa. France Bhattacharya explored the process of acculturation of the Hari figure in a presumably syncretistic writing like the 'Nabi Vamsha'. It seems that Saiyad Sultan wished to show how a prophet's message is forgotten in the course of time and how a prophet can be misled by the devil. Saiyad Sultan's writings show him to have been very learned, also in the Sanskrit tradition from which he partly derived his narrative of the prophet, Hari.
Frank Korom (fjkorom@nm-us.campus.mci.net) talked about 'personal experience narrative' as a new genre of ethnography. He collected such narratives on personal experiences of the god Dharmaraj in Goyalpara near Santiniketan. There are remarkable similarities between contemporary personal narratives and medieval textual sources about Dharmaraj. Personal experience narratives seem to reinforce the belief in Dharmaraj. Korom calls the relationship between experience and belief a chicken and egg relationship. Giving examples of such narratives, Korom emphasized that the ethnographer should exercise caution not to interpret the narratives tacitly himself. Korom was only able to collect stories from males. A female ethnographer would be required to gather narratives of experiences by women.
Victor van Bijlert (NIAS, Copenhagen) spoke on the possibilities which globalization of information offers to disseminate non-Western concepts of ethics. As an example he analysed some ethical concepts of South Asian origin, concepts which challenge Western modernity and facilitate the development of latent human potentials, away from the snares of materialism. This could be developed into a new ethics for business and administration. Bengali culture - forming an integral part of South Asian culture - offers many sources of inspiration for the creation of such new ethics.