Krishnabhabini Das: The emergence of woman as cultural signifier in 19^th century Bengal

What do we understand by the term contemporaneity? Very simply, the historical context. My job in this paper is to link today’s contemporaneity with yesterday’s—to trace if possible the emergence of woman today in all the significations she has as political, cultural, economic, professional subject/agent with the first manifestations of change in which people understood the sign woman. To consolidate my notions of feminine/female/feminist contemporaneity in the 19^th century, I will highlight the role of Krishnabhamini Das as international traveler in an age when seclusion for women was still considered mandatory, and crossing of the Kalapani or sea, considered strongly anti-religious. Many women of the nineteenth century had to define themselves against traditional taboos, strong patriarchal and familial pressures, and also contend with personal loss. Let me first take you through the steps that eventually led to the radical alterations of how the sign woman functioned within the cultural economy of colonial/colonized/ Bengal.

            In the beginning of the 19^th century, woman meant zenana, exclusion, illiteracy,

dependence—in other words it was a sign that was completely determined by the forces of patriarchy, which was synonymous with tradition. The forces that altered the signification of this sign were  many. One of the principal factors leading to change was the growth and development of English education, contact with the ideas of democracy and liberalism that were radically altering the political and social institutions of Europe. Rammohun Roy who knew English amongst the many other languages that he spoke and wrote was associated with Bentham and Owen, both of whom were both  votaries for a better social status for women. Besides, Rammohun also read James Mill’s History of India(1818) in which Mill indicated that the index of any culture’s greatness was the state of its women. Rammohun is known for his pamphlets against Sati which came out between the years 1818-1829. Rammohun also had friends like Dwaraknanath Thakur and Prasanna Kumar Tagore who too believed in the upliftment of women. Advocacy of the upliftment of women was not only confined to the Brahmos and Christians,  Radhakanto Dev who belonged to the conservative faction of Hindus, and expressed his conservatism in various ways, however, encouraged Gourmohan Vidyalankar to compile a book StreeSikshya Vidhayak (1822) which is considered to be one of the first books on the subject of female education and was  one that was influenced by Rammohun’s emanicpatory ideas.

As Gulam Murshed informs us in his highly interesting and densely packed, detailed account of the emergence of the “reluctant debutante” of Bengali culture, radical forces of change were also supplied by the Young Bengal movement of the late 1820’s  who influenced by Tom Paine, Richard Carlyle and WilliamThompson also advocated a better and socially uplifted life for women. Among the western thinkers just mentioned, Richard Carlyle advocated birth control for women and William Thompson’s feminist sympathies are apparent from the n ame of the book Appeal of One Half of the Human Race Women against the Pretensions of the other Half Men (1825).

Missionary institutions too  put in a lot of effort to institutionalize female education. However, in spite of the efforts of the London Missionary Society (1818), the Calcutta Baptists(1819) and the Church Missionary Society which enlisted the active help of Miss Ann Cook, it was not until 1849, that  the Victoria Girl’ School later known as the Bethune School was founded by J.E. D. Bethune. The school started with 11 students, which soon dropped to 7, and ultimately dwindled to three. Hardev Chattopadhyay(father of Sarojini Naidu) and Madanmahon Tarkalankar who allowed their daughters to go to this school were stigmatized by society for doing so.  Iswar Gupta who had been strongly supportive of the cause of Bethune school funnily  became strongly anti after the establishment of the school and wrote a poem Bibhisikha on how women within the new educational system were rapidly losing their morals.

Let me mention a few firsts in this context. Kailashbasini Devi, married to Durgacharan Das in 1849, not only did not know how to read and write when she got married, but also despised the idea of education. She eventually, taught at home by her husgband, became the first author of a book of essays entitled Hindu Mahilar Hinabastha in 1863. Other women who wrote during this period of the 1860’s acquiring the title granthakartri were Saudamini Devi, Madhumati Ganguly and Krishnkamini. We must not fortet in this context the achievement of one of the first women autobiographer s of this period—Rasundari Devi’s Aamar Jeebon (1876) and Binodini’s Amar Katha published in 1912. Rasasundari is singular because she achieved what she did without the advantage of an urban location, and Binodini who was a courtesan cum actress certainly belonged to the edges of Bengali society. Journals that focused on women’s issues at this time were Masik Patrika(1854), Bamabohini Patrika,(1869) and Abalar Bandhav. As Murshed informs us the ideal of the attractive woman was  changing fast in 1860’s and 1870’s in favor of educated women and the heroines of Dinabandhu Mitra, Jyotrindranath Tagore ad Upendranath Das, were all educated. Even Bankim who belonbed tro the conservative faction, portrayed educated heroines.

Around this time the Hindu Mahila Bidyalay was established to impart higher education to women(lot of controversy) and later merged with Bethune school as its college section(1876) started imparting secondary education under the direction of Annette Ackroyd. Center of debate on whether women would be allowed to take university examinations. It was first from this school that a woman named Kadambini Basu was officially allowed by Calcutta University to appear for a public examinations. Chandramukhi and Kdambini passed the B.A. examination in early 1883. Kadambini Ganguly became the first woman to get a medical degree, followed by medical doctor to Bidhumukhi Bose. By 1901 female education had considerably spread among upper caste  Hindus too. Literacy  among Brahmos being 55.6, Brahmins, 5.6, baidya  25.9 and  kayasthya 8.0.

In keeping with what constituted the ideal of the attractive woman in the 1860,70’s and 80’s I will now introduce to you the figure of Krishnabhamini Das who went to England in the 1870’s and 1880’s. In terms of genre Krishnabhamini’s Englande Bangamahila(1885) was/I syet another travel narrative of   19^th century Bengal, like Rameshchandra Dutta’s Three Years in Europe or Keshab Sen’s Diary in England. The book not only foregrounds the centrality of gender in contemporary discourses of culture, it also offers the image of the colonized woman as traveler, who not only breaks indigenous taboos regarding traveling within her own social and cultural context, but also breaks into the world of discourse, long the exclusive prerogative of men, and legitimizes  to herself at least, her right to view, observe, analyse and record. As much as the text represents England, and India by oblique extension, it also becomes an instance of self representation by a woman at a time when few Indian women broke the gendered social code of silence. Of course, Krishnabhamini’s elite positioning in Indian/Bengali society is partially responsible for this, but it also becomes an instance of a woman seeking self definition through writing

             A few facts about Krishnabhamini first. Born in 1864 in Nadia, Krishnabhamini received an early education from her father. This education became a truly refined one after marriage to Debendranath, son of Srinath Das, a lawyer who practiced in the High Court, and was a close associate of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. When her husband first departed to England in order to become a barrister (  ), Krishnabhamini did not accompany him. When he came back after several years, Krishnabhamini had already lost her eldest daughter and her husband was excommunicated by his father because of his long stay abroad. When Debendranath decided to go back to England, Krishnabhamini accompanied him, even though it meant the loss of her daughter Tilottama, who was forcibly kept back by her grandfather. Tilottama grew up resenting her parents deeply and learnt to think as an arch conservative. She was married off at the age of ten, when her mother was till abroad, and on Krishnabhamini’s return, was never really reconciled with her. A poem by Tilottama, which while not carrying any overt references to her childhood deprivation from maternal affection, but bearing traces of deep individual suffering, provides an addendum to Krishnabhamini’s text, and qualifies the overtly “political” of Krishnabhamini’s life with the intensely “personal.” Tilottama’s poem, side by side with her mother’s analytical and descriptive work, becomes a testament to the many India’s and the many sites of Indian feminine subjectivity, that coexisted simultaneously at the time of the writing of the text, and does even today. 

In a narrative shot through and through with nostalgia for India, Krishnabhamini who lived in England for eight years, packs her writing with analysis and description,  rarely weaving in the  personal detail. Written in language that would be accessible to the general reader, her book has twenty chapters in all, and a quick survey of the different chapter headings will reveal her sensitivity to the various aspects of what constitutes social life or the life of a nation. Some of these chapter headings (translations mine) are “Some Reflections” (Ch. 5), “The English Nation and Its Characteristics” (Ch. 7), “The Queen and Her Affairs” ( Ch. 8) “English Women” ( Ch.10), “ The Landowner and Farmer in English Agriculture” (Ch. 14) “English Education” (Ch. 15)  and “Parliamentary Elections” (Ch. 17).

Though,  the book is a social and historical commentary on the state of affairs and society in Victorian England, Krishnabhamini has a few definite agendas. One is the unquestionable superiority or advancement of European or English culture (36-37). One of the main dimensions of this excellence of culture and civilisation, is predicated on the fact of the political freedom of these nations. By extension, the freedom of India becomes a very vital issue with her, and correlated to it or independent of it, the issue of women’s freedom, enhancement and empowerment in India.

As she celebrates several facets of English life, which seem to have paved the way for her economic, political and cultural ascendancy in the world, she analyses what could make her own country, similarly empowered. Krishnabhamini’s firm location in the indigenous soil of India, is nowhere disguised, and becomes one of the earliest written documents of exploring the concept of the Indian nation, from the gendered point of view.

In the chapter “Some Reflections,” she points to the suffocating implications of intellectual inertia and superstition in India. The opposition of the West’s (Europe, England) adaptability to change and the Indian resistance to it  is an incontrovertible  opposition in her text. She asserts ,”Unfortunately we [Indians] are trapped within the spell of ignorance and superstition, which makes us erupt into anger anytime that we see indications of Westernisation/change in anyone.” (36-37) England’s imbibing of what is excellent in other cultures, is posited as a site of its power and our obsessive desire for a mirror that reflects an unchanging face of reality, the source of our degeneration.

In the chapter “English Education,” she clearly asserts the link between education, and empowerment. At the beginning of this chapter she asserts, that it is only when we assess how far education has penetrated into the heart of a nation, that we can assess its degree of civilization and advancement. Tied to her general approbation of the far reaching social implications of the English structure of education, is her joy in discovering women’s participation in it. In the chapter “English Women,” she celebrates the fact that girls of even middle class families are allowed to study till they are eighteen or nineteen. (75). She notes the emphasis on physical education as an integral part of this education. Regarding the question of women’s intellectual powers she says that  the competence that some British women have demonstrated in qualifying examinations that were traditionally viewed “difficult,” (74)proves the equality of women with men on the question of intelligence and capability. In contrast to this textual position, it would be apposite in this context to cite Virginia Woolf’s book written a few decades later (1929),  Room With A View about the difficulty women in England to work and to have equal education.

I hope that I have been in the scope of this paper been able to give you a sense of the gendered protagonist of culture in the 19^th century, particularly its latter half. Through education, writing, nationalist politics, traveling and performance (and all this is also performance), the Bengali woman (with analogues like Ramabai in Maharashtra), inscribed herself and thereby also altered the significations of 19^th century Bengali culture.

Professor Wang Gungwu , University Professor, National University of Singapore speaks on ' cultural Transfers in History'at the Global Education Summit at Presidency University, last year..

Professor Wang Gungwu.

He started by saying that as a historian he loved historic occasions and the 200^th bicentenary  of Hindu College/ Presidency College ,at which he was  now speaking, was a historic occasion.  He said he was especially drawn to Presidency, which was linked to the name of Raja Rammohun Roy, as the first great institution of learning in modern India. This moment provided him with an opportunity to look back at his own past and recall that he had been taught by Mr Sengupta in his primary school and how he had learnt from his teacher about the University of Calcutta, which his teacher had told him, was the greatest university in Asia. Mr Sengupta would speak of the achievements of the Bengalis and about Netaji. Professor Yang Gungwu declared that he had grown up he had heard several references to India, but his sense of the country was ‘modulated’ by this ‘very early experience of being told about the University of Calcutta’.

He said that he had been requested by Professor Sugata Bose and the Vice Chancellor to speak on the ‘future of education’ as a ‘historian’. He said that one can dream and plan for the future but it is ‘uncertain. However, the past is also ‘uncertain’. Professor Gungwu went on to say that history or the past is ‘constructed’ and that historians used the past ‘selectively’. He too in this lecture was going to use the ‘past selectively’   to speak about the ‘uncertain’ future, and in the process ‘help present generations construct something that may be useful to them’.

In 1991, at the Centenary of the University of Chicago, there was a Swiss Professor who spoke on the history of universities  and posited that the idea of the university was inevitably European and that the spread of universities throughout the world was nothing but the ‘Europeanization’ of the world.  It is ‘true that behind great civilizations there are great universities’, Professor Gungwu said, but he was really shaken by this historian’s statement, because he was working in a modern university of Asia (Hong Kong university), considered it to be a big step forward, and to be told that all universities derived their structures from Europe, and this structure had been provided by the ‘culture of Greece and Rome’, invalidated the achievements of the modern Asian university.  Being ‘competent’ within this system simply meant how well we had adapted to the ‘culture of Greece and Rome’.  He also wondered if it was possible to take the lessons that the European model could teach and make it innately Asian.

He said that he was from South East Asia. He was born in Java, grew up in Malaysia, studied Eastern civilizations in China, was Vice Chancellor of Hong Kong University and was now at the National University of Singapore. He went on to say that in Southeast Asia, the ‘origins of culture’ are ‘very closely linked to that of India’.  The ‘degree and intensity’ of the cultural influence of India cannot be denied, yet there are no proper records of origins, and no definitive conclusions either, about how it actually came about.  Professor Gungwu posited that in recent times Tagore was certainly central in cementing cultural ties between South East Asia and India.

Professor Gungwu went on to say that there must have been some element in the ‘local, indigenous genius’ of South East Asia that looked towards India for ‘inspiration’, assimilated it and modulated and ‘transformed it ‘according to its own cultural imperatives.  South East Asia took ‘ideas’ ,’situations’ ‘values’, art and architecture and recreated it in temple structure and architecture like Angkor Vat and Borobodur,which is distinctively South East Asia  and not India.  In these moments of original influence or cultural transfer, the Professor said, there was no ‘violence’ or ‘war’.  It was ‘a cultural transfer that was entirely peaceful, took a long time and internalized’ by the people of Java, Cambodia and Champa.  The people of these islands felt ‘inspired by Indian values’. It was like those islands that today comprise South East Asia, saw into the ‘soul and spirit’ of India.  It was a cultural transfer ‘without any goal’ on India’s part, and based on ‘sympathetic understanding’ between two groups of people with different ethnicities and racial differences.

Another cultural and spiritual influence that was perhaps tied to this phenomenon is the travelling of Buddhism from India to China. Again, this cultural transfer which the Chinese people  assimilated and accepted, because it profoundly appealed and resonated somewhere deep in their being,  was not ‘systematic’ , nor was there any attempt to ‘convert’ . It was very ‘peaceful’ and an ‘extraordinary transfer’, whereby the Chinese people integrated the ‘wonderful treasures’ of Buddhism, and made it their own.  There ‘were no wars, no fighting, and no compulsion’. As Indian Buddhist monks had initially gone to China, to spread the message of the Buddha, Chinese monks alternatively came to Nalanda in India, took manuscripts back and ensured through such visits that they had understood the Buddha’s message correctly.  Many of these monks also passed through South East Asia on their way back and forth, and Buddhism also took root in this area. As early as the 7^th century, the Sutras were already to be found in Srivijay. The culture of Srivijay dominated South East Asia between 8^th C.E—12 C.E.

After the ‘cultural transfer’ of Buddhism, other religious communities also tried to introduce a sphere of influence in China—the Zoroastrians, the Syrian Christians and Islam. However, they hardly succeeded in having much impact. As far as the islands of South East Asia were concerned the starting of what one would call the ‘Modern Age’, and the growth of the empires of Europe, Christianity (Catholicism) came to the islands. Islam also took deep root in Indonesia. The days of Hinduism and Buddhism were over. Hinduism had survived for a 1000 years. Christianity came with the Spaniards. A Christian world started growing up in the heart of South East Asia. However, it was a process which was linked with the ‘might and power’ of the Christian/Catholic Church.  It was linked to the ‘military consolidation’ of power’. ‘Power brought the West to South East Asia’.

Referring to 1817, the year that saw the founding of Hindu College, Professor Gungwu declared that at that time, Singapore was a swamp.  He next referred to the watershed year of 1857 when the three universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were established.  He added that these universities were established within the ‘context of British wealth and power’. Even if we do not, he said, go into the question of which part of ‘British wealth and power’ appealed to the Indians, this education movement which culminated in the founding of these three universities was led by British academics and theoreticians of education. Indians certainly accepted the educational practices of what was then considered the most ‘modern’ country of the world.

Professor Gungwu then went on to say that 20—21 years later, Japan established the University of Tokyo on the Western model  (12^th April, 1877)because it felt that the West’s political and material superiority was based on the superiority of their university models. In short Japan linked the power and wealth of the West to its universities. Japan wanted to achieve what the West or Europe had achieved There was national consensus in Japan that they wanted prosperity along the Western model and to develop their nation along the lines of prosperity that the west stood for, reflected the ‘national purposefulness of the Meiji restoration’.  This ‘restoration’ was the ‘idea of gaining wealth and power for Japan after years of being second to China’.

Eventually, it was again, the promise of ‘wealth and power’ in the Japanese model of the university that prompted China to borrow the Japanese model.  At the end of the 19^th century there were 2 universities in China which were modelled on the University of Tokyo. China perceived that Japan had taken the western model and drawn true benefit out of it and made it work for the needs of Japan. China realized that they would have to take the Japanese model if they had to stand up to Japan in the future.  Professor Wang Gungwu reiterated once more that it was the desire for ‘wealth and power’ that motivated China to imbibe the Japanese model, much in the same way that Japan took the Western. Of course, the thirst for ‘knowledge’, the desire for ‘well-being’ and the belief that the ‘university was a force for progress’, also drove the formation of universities, but the paramount objective was the attainment of wealth and power and the need to make each country strong to not only protect themselves from each other but also from the West.

After speaking of how the university emerged in East Asia, Professor Wang Gungwu next spoke of  the emergence of  university education in South East Asia. He said that the entire stretch of land here, with the exception of Thailand, had been colonized. Thailand too had undergone British and French influence. The first universities that were set up in this region were at Hong Kong and Rangoon, which was of course, then part of India, and under British rule.

In the Philippines there was a  Catholic universitiy which could not be considered ‘modern’. Later on America took over this university and transformed it according to the American model. In the other British colonies there were universities set up to train people for the Services. In 1949, the British set up the University of Malaysia, on the eve of their departure from this country, and I was a freshman at this university at that time. Today this university is the National University of Singapore. In the case of all these universities however, there was no ‘cultural transfer’. There was undoubtedly ‘technological transfer’ whereby the countries of South East Asia imbibed the technological practices of the West, assimilated the know how and joined the race for ‘wealth and prosperity’. Over and over again, the Professor asserted that it was because we wanted the power that the West had that Asia emulated the Western model.

He then said that he would like to address the question that the Vice Chancellor had put to him: how does one get funding to do what one/the university wants to do? Without answered the question directly he said, that Professor Gungwu seemed to imply again, that it was the ‘wealth and prosperity’ dimension of ‘modern knowledge’ and the ‘role of the university’ in this, that had seemed of paramount importance in East Asia and South East Asia. Each country wanted to be a nation state, and this model of the university seemed the most congenial.

He also added that Singapore’s recent example of incorporating the Liberal Arts as part of national curricula in the universities was a heartening example, because it seemed to posit that not only would the universities benefit from such an alteration of syllabi, but also the nation. The fact that Humanities education was ‘national policy’ now in Singapore reinforced the value of the Humanities in aiding the productivity of Singapore as a nation, and syllabi had been prepared by looking at examples at Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, China and Japan. Thus Singapore had considered the Arts necessary in order to prepare students to face the future and in this there was some indication of what the ‘future’ of Higher Education may lie in.

Coming to the final part of his talk, the Professor then said that if asked to answer the question as to where the ‘future’ of Higher Education in India lay, he would find that a difficult question to answer, simply because India seemed like so many ‘nation states’ put together. Each state he said, referring to Mohandas Pai’s lecture earlier on in the day, had its own pace of development, its own cultural practices and idioms. He said he was not sure whether there should be one university, or universities or a variety of universities. He posited that he was trying to ‘find something in the past’ that would help him ‘imagine’ the future.

Professor Gungwu went on to say that he knew that there were many alternatives in India, Liberal Arts Colleges, purely technology oriented institutions and he said that he knew that there were efforts to integrate this vastly diversified and ‘complex’ system to ensure that educational institutions did not function in ‘isolation’. However, he said, that given the desire for ‘wealth and power’ one would have to see how much of the West to take, and how much to leave untouched. He emphasized that it was important to keep something of one’s roots and one’s spiritual and ethical values, because a purely ‘materialist’ culture was leaving many young people in states of identity crisis and anxiety and uneasiness. It was not clear at this point whether Professor Gungwu was speaking of Indian contexts or that of Asia or the world, in general. He concluded by asking the philosophical question as to whether we were getting ‘anywhere’ by emulating the Western model without reference to our own cultural values?

Professor Charles Bailyn added valuable comments. He said that when the Yale/ Singapore University collaboration was first floated of which he was an integral part for five years, many of his colleagues were opposed to the idea because they had a distaste for what Singapore stood for. However, Bailyn convinced them that wealth and prosperity should be used for the growth and development of intellectual and philosophical culture.  He said that the greatest challenge for universities was in striking the ideal balance between emphasis on intellectual culture and that on framing syllabi that would lead to material prosperity.  Professor Gungwu replied in part by saying that recent examples proved (and perhaps he was referring to Yale’s collaboration with SNU) that it was only when wealth and security was earned  that countries felt that they could think of the rest of the world.

   

Shivratri..

I realized about two years back that Shiva means poor folks. That Shiva's message was this, ' respect poor people. Never insult them or demean them. I live in them'.


In the Kathamrita there is an incident where in response to the Vaishnavite dictate of the Chaitanya Charitamrita, 'jeebe doya, Vaishnav Prem and Naam Sankirtan' ( Compassion (pity) towards all forms of life, love of other Vaishnavites and the chanting of God's Name) Sri Ramakrishna goes into a partial trance and says, 'Ke kaaare doya kore? Bolo Shiva jnane Jiva Seva' which translates into, 'Do we have the right to pity anyone? Say instead, 'worship Man as Shiva!'

Swami Vivekananda had had a passionate response  to this epiphanic statement of Sri Ramakrishna. I feel that it is this statement that he transformed into, 'bohurupe sammukhhe tobo chhadi kotha khunjiccho Ishwar?/ Jeebe Prem kore jei jon shebichhe Ishwar' or 'God manifests Himself in so many forms before you/ If you love these forms of Jiva then you are indeed worshiping God'.

This became the root mantra of the Ramakrishna Mission and all those who hold fast to the philosophy and idealism of this great institution...

Professor Mriganka Sur, MIT, on how the brain processed information and how the frontier Science of Neuro Science may help us to understand Brain Disorders which will soon become the most significant illness to claim the attention of Medical Science

Professor Mriganka Sur

In a powerful and riveting talk, Professor Mriganka Sur spoke about what neuroscientists studied-- the human brain which was not only the ‘most complex machine’ but also the ‘first complex machine’.  He said that it helped us to ‘understand complexity’ and ‘what could be more complex than that’? He began by paying his respects to his former teacher Professor Balasubramanium who was Chair of the session, and by recalling with reverence, scientists like P.C. Chandra Roy, and Jagadish Chandra Bose, Meghnad Saha and Satyen Bose who had been key figures in creating the hallowed traditions of Science at Presidency College. He mentioned that Sir J.C. Bose was one of the first neuroscientists and a polymath as well.  Whereupon he added that it was not enough to just look back to the past. One needed such traditions in the future too.  He stated that he had been ‘mandated’ to speak about the possible confluence of the Sciences and the Arts, and he would make the human brain his starting point. 

He said that he would speak on the’ leading edge of Science’ and how that may be linked to the Humanities. The complex machine of the brain creates the mind and he would take the audience through that ‘frontier Science’ that helps us to understand the brain and the mind. He would also speak on the mind’s relationship to technology and what the limits of computation would be in the next generation.  He said that he would link ‘technology transformation’ with the ‘social transformation’ that accompanied it.

Professor Sur stated that about 100 billion brain cells actively create the mind and wondered how it was possible that the philosophical school stemming from Charvakya could posit that ‘mental activity’ was the product of a ‘physical mind’? He then went on to speak about the key concept of   ’cognition’. He said that cognition was an operational system which allowed the mind to ‘understand’, ‘perceive’, ‘communicate’ and ‘move in a goal oriented’ manner. 

He said that in the first section of his talk he would focus on brain disorders which have profound social implications.  Deepening our understanding of the brain will help us understand the mind which cannot be seen, and yet its interactions and interfaces with technology have profound social implications.  The second half of his talk will thus focus on how the mind deals with the latest innovations and developments in technology and what happens when the limits of technology in the form of the limits of computation are reached. So what happens when the ‘I phone’ created by Apple, becomes replaced by another model? Technological transformation and social transformation are linked. The question therefore arises, what kind of transformation does society ‘want’?

Beginning the subject of brain disorders, Professor Sur referred to the stroke that German New Objectivist painter Anton Räderscheidt suffered in 1967. Räderscheidt’s stroke was in the right parietal cortex.  After his stroke Räderscheidt painted four self- portraits. In the portrait Räderscheidt draws his right eye and right nose. It is not as though R could not see with his left eye. There was nothing wrong with his eye, but something ‘profoundly wrong’ with his ability to ‘pay attention’ to anything to the left of his vision. This is known as ‘left spatial neglect’. Cognition is ‘object based’ in that ‘internal models determine cognition’ and in Räderscheidt’s brain there are no pictures of the left of his vision. This tells us something central about cognition.   Thus if there is no mental construct in Raderscheidt’s mind that there is a left side, he won’t be able to paint it.  Thus although we cannot see the mind, it suffers physical consequences.  Thus although we cannot see the mind, it has physical consequences.

Then Professor Sur went on to say that the brain cells were known as neurons and there were a billion neurons in the brain. A neuron is the size of 10 microns which is 1/10^th the width of a hair. A neuron is like a pen drive, containing a great deal of information. Neurons keep in potassium ions and keep out sodium ions.  There are two ways in which neurons differ from other cells as in the liver or kidney. They generate action potential and they connect to each other at special junctions called synapses. The synapse is that junction where one neuron ends and another begins. Also, the electrical transmission between neurons gets transformed into chemical transmission. The brain is concerned with ‘encoding’ ‘transmitting’ and ‘decoding’ and this is the task that the neurons carry out.  

This used to be one very profound way of knowing the brain. However in the last 20 years technology has completely has completely transformed the way we can know the brain through the Magnetic Resonance Image, whereby by putting the brain within a magnetic field which processes the electrical information from the brain,  images of the brain are obtained. One can even image a single molecule in a synapse. One can image five orders of magnitude from 1/10^th to 1/1000^th the breadth of one human hair. There is an extraordinary range of technology through which these images may be obtained, like for instance, the multi-photon microscope.  

This extraordinary range of technology has unfolded that networks of brain areas underlie cognition. The picture of a car will provoke visual area, hearing the word will provoke the auditory area, and the language area has two parts: the concept area of speech and the motor area of speech. Professor Sur posited that meaning is derived through symbolic representation. Cognition is based on symbolic languages or symbolic representations. The Professor posited that he had taken the audience through a map of the brain, mind and cognition establishing that the brain had no access to the world but had only an internal model of it which was the mind and which in turn generated cognition.  

Professor Sur then went on to say that half the brain is devoted to vision. However what the brain receives are pixels which are transformed into elements of vision. Visual cognition arises from a hierarchical network of cognition. Our cognition is underlined by response of neurons to visual stimuli. Neurons often respond to edges of visual stimuli. This is called ‘orientation selectivity’ which is a key component of vision. We can image ‘orientation selectivity’. However this ‘orientation selectivity’ in neurons is not random. They are organized like ‘spokes on a wheel’ and this wheel is called a ‘pinwheel’. Nature has evolved this ‘pinwheel’ through evolution.

The nature of the world is refracted into our brain through electrical activity and this shapes the brain to process that world. The brain has no access to the outside world except through electrical activity. The electrical activity is often in the shape of spikes. One of the central questions in Neuroscience is this that the brain has no access to the external world, so how does it create this world? Electricity reverberates in the brain as spikes. Spikes contain molecular activity. Synaptic and electrical activity wire molecules in the brain. These molecules are regulated by different time frames within a synapse. Electrical activity changes synaptic expression which is also dependent on genes. Nature and nurture come together in the expression of electrical energy in synapses. Larger synapses remain stable but smaller synapses may keep changing. Professor Sur said that even while we were listening to him speak, some of our smaller synapses were changing. He said that he must have seen at least 10000 synapses in his life and no two synapses were the same.  

In most cases where human beings have congenital blindness or deafness, it is not as if the cortex is inactive. It is that the cortex has been taken over by other modalities. For instance, the visual area in the congenitally blind is activated by sound stimuli. Again for those who are deaf, visual inputs activate the auditory area of the cortex.

Recapitulating what he had already established, Professor Sur said that  brain cells were wired by molecules, molecules were made up of genes and genes and molecules were influenced by experience and input activity. The brain is receives information from the external world, but it does not simply mirror that world. As we know in Raderscheidt’s case, the eyes were bringing in information, but the brain was not using this information   because it has its own model.

Once this was understood again a new frontier in Neuroscience opened up, where scientists came to terms with ‘disturbed cognition’ in the brain.  Professor Sur had studied other patients who have right parietal syndrome and who have ‘left spatial neglect’. Therefore we conclude that the brain filters and focuses the world according to its own internal model.  This is a deep internal state which is very significant and profound for understanding both the brain and the mind. It leads us once again to the question that we have been confronting from the very beginning of this lecture-- How do we know what we do know.

Experiments performed on mice unfold cognition activities like ‘attention’; whether a mouse is paying attention or not. The mouse has cognitive powers, based on its 50 million neurons as opposed to 82—100 billion in a human being. Thus mice can be trained in a way that scientists may find out through experiment how its brain responds to stimuli, the quality of its attention to external objects, etc. For instance, if it does not get the ‘chocolate water’ which is its reward for performing a task correctly, how the brain of the mouse responds.  Then something like ‘imagination’ happens in the mouse’s brain regarding the time gap.

In the human brain there are high level neurons which carry the internal representation of Time and Space. Time may be determined by the brain ‘switching in’ and ‘switching off’ engagement with external reality. Therefore gap in attention, engagement, creates gap in knowledge. The mind’s activity can be mapped mathematically. There are states in the brain when it performs in an orderly manner and these states can be reduced to mathematical equations. All this leads to questions as to why and when the brain makes a mistake. Professor Sur said that this knowledge will definitely come to us when can image the entire brain as we will be able to as part of the U.S. Brain Drive.

WHO statistics prove that the greatest number of takers is by Cancer and Heart Disease. But as we control the two, Brain Disorders will become the most important and our greatest burden. One must understand that people with brain disorders are not responsible for them. It is not their fault. This understanding has social implications. Children with autism suffer and their parents suffer too. Parents start by asking questions like, ‘Why doesn’t my child want to talk to me?’

While summing up the Professor said that his talk had looked at 2 operational questions: a) how is the brain wired? B) How does brain wiring create cognition? The answer was that the brain depends on plasticity and specificity, creates circuits, which create dynamics, and which eventually lead to algorithms that structure the internal world. The question in this age of fast developing automation, may a machine be built this way and is there a ‘need’ for a machine to be built that way. Partially answering his own question Professor Sur pointed out that a computer needs 200 kilohertz of power and the human brain only 20 hertz. However we can go on cramming a machine with information that it may not be possible to do for a human brain. The question to raise here is how can Neuroscience help us here? It may be able to answer the question as to whether so much of automation is good for society. As much as society affects technology, technology also affects society. Professor Sur posited that one needed to think how greater and greater automation would impact health and also brain related diseases or disorders? He said that greater and greater automation were inevitable realities, so one needed to think deeply about the interrelationship of Science/Technology and Society.

Rabindranath Tagore Studies at Presidency College in the 20's, 30's and 40's of the preceding century...

In his essay ‘Rabindranath, Presidency College’, Nityapriya Ghosh makes use of the  Autumn Annual, (Volumes XXVII—VIII, 1998—2000), of the Presidency College Alumni Association, Kolkata), through which he gathers detailed reports of the Rabindra Parishad sessions during the years, 1927—41. Through these reports we learn that several intellectuals of the time, actively engaged in analyzing and discussing Rabindranath’s essays, during these sessions. Some of these intellectuals include Surendranath Dasgupta, Pramatha Choudhury, Kalidas Nag, Niharranjan Roy, Srikumar Bandyopadhyay, Somnath Maitra, Pearymohan Sengupta, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, Biswapati Choudhury, Subodh Chandra Sengupta, Dhurjyoti Prasad Mukhopadhyay, Shailajananda Mukhopadhyay, Jatindramohan Bagchi, Kamakhhiprasad Chattopadhyay, Tarapada Mukhopadhyay, Bimal Chandra Sinha, Siva Prasad Bhattacharya, Atulchandra Gupta, Pramatha Nath Bishi, and others.

In April of 1928 and in April, 1931, Rabindranath invited members of the Rabindra Parishad to his residence at Jorasanko, and delivered two lectures during these two separate occasions. In the first meeting, he had sung his recently composed, ‘ektuku chonwa laage’. The poet participated in sessions of the Rabindra Parishad three other times, at Presidency College. These occasions were 18^th August, 1929, 1^st March, 1933 and 3^rd February, 1934.

Even before the establishment of the Rabindra Parishad, Rabindranth came to the college four other times. The first time was on 17^th September, 1917. In this first instance he gave a lecture at the Banga Sahitya Sabha. The second time was on August 21, 1922, when he was felicitated. The lecture that he delivered on this occasion was later published in the College Magazine, as recorded in writing by Pradyot Kumar Sengupta. Later this lecture was also published in Volume 27, of the Rabindra Rachanavali, published by Viswa Bharati. On January 4, 1924, he spoke at the Memorial Service of his friend Monmohan Ghosh. Once again, just before setting out for China, he had visited the college on September 10^th.

Recollecting, what was most likely the poet’s 1929 visit to the Rabindra  Parishad, Nikhil Chakrabarty writes:

Gurudev arrived. Amita Sen sang a song of his. However, the climactic moment of that evening’s session, was the recitation of some of his poems by the actor Sisir Bhaduri. When he finished, Rabindranath smiled at him and said, ‘ I did not know that my poems sound so good when recited’. The uninhibited Sisir Bhaduri replied, ‘Oh, that was because I recited them’! (no page reference provided).

In his reminiscences of Rabindranath’s visit in the third week of  February 1934, Ashok Mitra writes that Rani Chanda had

…decorated the floor of the Physics Lecture Theatre with exquisite alpana. Apart from an opportunity that I had in 1979, at Vienna,  of seeing an assemblage of  26 great scientists who had received the Noble Prize in Science, I have never seen a gathering of such stellar personalities, ever before. Among those who were present were Pramatha Choudhury, Surendranath Dasgupta, Indira Devi Choudhurani, Shanta Sen, Nirmal Kumari Mahalanobis, Rani Chanda, Atul Chandra Gupta, Samarendranath Tagore, Upendranath Gangyopadhyay, Sourindramohan Mukhopadhyay, Anil Chanda and Apurva Chanda. The latter always liked to claim that he was the real life model for the character of Amito in Shesher Kavita. The two of them had tried to get Professor Mahalonobis out of their way, by pushing him out. It was easy to see however, that Rabindranath had a greater inclination towards Professor Mahalanobis, for discussion and advice. The poet arrived at 6 p.m. It was here that I heard Amita Sen sing two songs. I had never heard such a sweet and clear voice before. It was like Shelley’s skylark that could ascend to higher and higher levels. Perhaps if there was a glass lamp, it would have shattered under the impact of her voice. Rabindranath read out from his Galpaguchha story, ‘Patro and Patri’.

However,  the Rabindra Parishad did not remain confined to studying Rabindranath alone. From Ashoke Mitra’s accounts we learn that Abanindranath Tagore delivered a lecture, which he read out, at the Rabindra Parishad on March 11^th, 1935. Dinendranath Tagore was also present on the same occasion. Amita Sen had also performed. Twenty years later, after the historic meeting of modern Bengali poets at the Senate Hall of the University of Calcutta, on the occasion of the college anniversary celebrations in the last week of January in 1956, the poets Sudhindranath Dutta, Buddhadev Basu, Bishnu Dey and Subhas Mukhopadhyay, had also read out from their poems. This took place at the Physics Lecture Theatre.

to be continued...

Professor Percival, Mathematics Professor, Presidency College

This is by no means an exhaustive translation of all there is on Percival. I just chose this bit for its anecdotal richness

One hardly saw Professor Percival ever laugh in class. Sometimes, while teaching Shakespearean Comedy, a glimmer of a smile would appear. His attentive students would  right away mark that passage as  one that had elicited a hint of a smile from the Professor! 

Professor Percival once went on a two week holiday to Darjeeling. He took a supply of books with him. However, he had to come back only after spending twelve days, there. The reason for the unscheduled return was that he ran out of books. He had not calculated right how many books he might be able to read when he didn’t have his normal teaching responsibilities!

Presidency College and Rabindranath: Rabindra Parishad, Bankim Sharat Committee (62)

Even if it was for a day, Rabindranath was a student of this college. Although it hasn’t been possible to recover the exact date, it was probably a day in either 1877 or 1878. At the Calcutta University Convocation, held on the grounds of Presidency College in February 1937, the poet himself referred to the occasion:

In the early years of my life, my brief apprentice in the august halls of Learning, were spent in its bottom most rungs.  Later on in my youth, at the behest of my elders, I ventured into the First Class of Presidency College. This one day did not lead to a second one. The minute my classmates saw me, there was such an outbreak of laughter that I was fully convinced that there was a basic mismatch between them and I. 

However, although his formal link with the college was only one day, later on in his life, the poet visited the college a significant number of times, and delivered  lectures. The first time was on the 17^th of September, 1917, on the invitation of the Chaatra Sansad  (translation?). This lecture was published in the second volume of the college magazine in the fourth year of its publication.  The next time was just before his journey to Peru in 1924, on the eve of Peru’s 100 years of independence. This lecture delivered on September 10, was held at the Physics Lecture Theatre, was later published in Samhati, 1301, Bhadra, and in Atmashakti in its 1301, Ashwin number.  It was also partially included in the fourteenth volume (pages 1004—5) of the Rabindra Rachanavali (Complete Works) that was brought out during the time of his 100^th birth anniversary. [Most likely this is the Viswa Bharati edition of the Collected Works/Rachanavali, that is being referred to]

Page 63--65

About Presidency College...

Translated from:

Presidency College-r Itibrittwa. Author: Biswanath Das. Published by Thema (Kolkata), 2011.

I started translating rather arbitrarily, but pounced upon some nuggets. 

Dr. Rajendra Prasad (155)

At the opening ceremony of the centenary celebrations of  Hindoo College/Presidency College, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, President of India, spoke in Bengali. He said, ‘It is my firm belief that if one were to write the history of Bengal in the last hundred years and on the great personalities who helped to shape it, it would be nothing else, but the history of Presidency College’.  With great humility he confessed that whatever service he had been able to render the nation so far, was due to his internship in this august institution, where he had not only been exposed to its great ideals, but had studied with some of the most gifted of teachers, and had had the opportunity of mingling with some of the most outstanding of peers.

(page 135)

At one point, the Education Minister of Bengal, Ajijul Haq, was supposed to visit Presidency College.  he teachers awaited his arrival. However, Professor Prafulla Chandra Ghosh, started out for home at his usual time. When there was some consternation among his colleagues over his unwillingness to wait beyond his usual time of departure, he broke out with irritation, ‘I don’t really care to be formally introduced to someone who is after all an ex-student of this college!’

Peary Charan Sarkar (49)

This idealist and exemplary student of Hindu College could have easily obtained a high governmental posting had he wished. However, he chose to become a teacher and consequently embraced a life of constrained means. From the position of Head Master at Kolutollah Branch School (later named Hare School), he joined Presidency College as Assistant Professor (pl. check exact nomenclature) in 1864. Later in 1874, he was appointed as Assistant Professor (Lecturer?) in the Department of English. During those days, a teacher could teach anything. There was no steadfast rule that a particular teacher had to teach a particular subject, only. It all depended on whether the teacher had the required competence to teach a specific subject. Peary Charan’s general sweetness of temper, gentleness of conduct and deep commitment to students, succeeded in winning them over completely. His early demise in 1875 caused his students to be deeply grief stricken. 

Peary Charan’s First, Second, Third and Fourth Book of Reading were considered fundamental to the teaching of English at schools all over India.

It is not widely known that Peary Charan donated 70,000 rupees, which constituted his entire life earnings, to his dear friend Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, to help build a school for upper caste Hindu widows. He also set up a girls’ school at his own residence in Chorbagan