Remembering Rabindranath Tagore Volume - High Commission of ...

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Remembering Rabindranath Tagore
graduated from an Indian university. In this novel, women are educated at home. Binodini’s
father engages a mem to teach her, while Mahendra takes Asha’s education upon himself.
Rajalakshmi, who belongs to an older generation, is not highly-educated, though she is wellborn.
She therefore resents Mahendra’s wish to educate Asha. Though Mahendra’s attempts
to teach Asha are treated with irony because he uses them as a ploy to spend more time with
her, the text does not reject the idea of women’s education. Abandoned by her husband,
Asha seeks self-development through self-education. Binodini’s power over people also
depends a great deal on the skills and sophistication she has acquired through education.
Like women’s education, widow remarriage was another controversial issue in Bengal at the
turn of the century. Though there is evidence that the Rigveda sanctioned some forms of
widow remarriage, from medieval times, the idea of wifely devotion decreed that the widow
must withdraw from society and live a life of austerity, self-denial and celibacy. In Bengal,
the reformist movement of the nineteenth century tried to improve the position of widows.
This led to the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856, and a liberalization of attitudes towards
widows among the more progressive sections of society. Thus, in Chokher Bali, although
Binodini is supposed to lead a life of self-denial, she is not forced into an ascetic existence.
She is allowed to join Rajalakshmi’s household as her companion, and at one point, Bihari
exhorts Mahendra to “[g]et the widow married; that would draw her poison” (CB 68). All
the same, orthodox society continued to object to widow remarriage. When Binodini rejects
Bihari, it is to save him from the social stigma of marrying a widow: “I am a widow, a woman
disgraced. I cannot permit you to be humiliated in the eyes of society” (CB 389).
Tagore is not the first writer to introduce the figure of the desiring widow to Bengali literature.
In fact, soon after Chokher Bali was published, Tagore was accused by Sureshchandra
Samajpati of plagiarizing Panchkori Bandyopadhyay’s novel Uma (1901), which is also about
a promiscuous widow named Binodini. Unlike its predecessor, though, Tagore’s novel does
not rely on sensationalism or narrow moralizing. Chokher Bali also contains references to
Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s novel Bishabriksha (1873), which is a story of adulterous love.
Yet Tagore deliberately avoids Bankimchandra’s plot-driven narratives to seek out the
element that DipeshChakravarty calls “interiority”. The difference between Chokher Bali
and is literary precursors is a measure of the novel’s modernity.
If Tagore’s modernity sets him apart from his Indian predecessors, it is also distinct from
“Western” notions of sexual freedom. Some interpretations of Chokher Bali locate the text
in relation to the Vaishnavite celebration of the romance of Radha and Krishna, a legendary
narrative of love outside marriage (Sogani 67).Binodini is represented as “timeless and
ageless, forever a Gopika, . . .With all her pangs of separation, . . . she had travelled through
so many songs, so many rhythms, to arrive at the shores of the present time” (CB 372-3).
Tagore’s modernity thus rooted in a particular culture, for it lies in his use of older Indian
traditions of romance to challenge nineteenth century ideals of fidelity and conjugal love.