Gentlemen Poets in Colonial Bengal: Emergent Nationalism and the Orientalist Project

Extensive historical research and a detailed examination of the English poetry written by Indians in the nineteenth century in its social, historical and political contexts, reveals the engagement of the colonized with one of the implements of colonization, the English language. This study shows how the Intertextuality that existed between this body of verse and concurrent orientalist scholarship on the ancient Indian heritage resulted, ultimately, in a complex appropriation, by the Indians, of British scholarship on India for nationalist, literary, social, and personal ends. An examination of this hitherto ‘invisible’ tradition of Indian poetry in English raises crucial issues, such as its anticipation of the formation of the modern ‘Indian’ identity. A thorough examination of the correlation between the poetry and its background uncovers certain startling differences between current perceptions of colonial relations and actual historical records. For example, the common belief that English education was imposed upon the colonized is reversed through an examination of the Indians’ own initiatives in this field long before the missionaries or macaulay’s famous minute. Similarly, the claim that all English education in India was a vehicle for the Christianizing of natives is refuted through the personal reminiscences of David Hare, the eminent educationist, who opposed it vehemently.