Bankimcandra Chatterji’s novel Anandamath, published in 1882, was of crucial significance in shaping a new Hindu identity as well as the ideology of early Hindu nationalism. It gripped the imagination not only of Bengalis agitating for freedom from British colonialist rule, but also of leading nationalist-minded Indians. Its hymn Vande Mataram eventually became India’s national song. In this stirring tale set in Bengal during the famine of 1770, a group of Hindu warrior-monks-devotees of an avenging mother Goddess-emerge from their monastery in the depths of a huge forest to try to overthrow the oppressors, as they see them, of their homeland, Woven into the narrative are a variety of themes including the political and social role of Muslims in the new India, the rise of modernity in the subcontinent (with special reference to the consequences of British rule), the place of women in Hindu society, the relationship between violence and political agitation, and the kind of historiography that governs the birth of a new nation. This volume makes this important work newly available in a complete and readable English version, skillfully translated by Julius J. Lipner. He also supplies an extensive introduction contextualizing the novel and its cultural and political history, with notes providing Bengali or Sanskrit terms for certain words, and explanatory notes for the specialized lay reader or scholar.
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