Today our topic of discussion is Romantic Love: Priya .
Romantic Love: Priya
A new dimension was added to the wife’s multifarious roles, other than that of mother. This was fostered by the idea of romantic love which first mani- fest itself in literature.
The theme of romantic love was first introduced to Bengali readers by two highly original translations from English into Bengali, viz: Bhudeb Mukhopadhay’s Anguriyo Binimoy (Exchange of Rings) published in 1858 and Krishnakamal Bhattacharya’s Durakankshar Britha Bhramon (Futile Journey of Desire) written in the 1840s. The theme of love found a central place in both works; the love of Shivaji and Zebunnessa in the first, and the love between an untouchable and a person of high caste in the second.
But Romantic Love received its first, full formulation at the hands of novelist Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838-1898), who was responsible for the widespread popularity of that art form in Bengal.
Mir Mosharraf Hossain, considered the first Muslim writer of modern Bengali literature, married Kulsum, his childhood playmate and daughter of a tenant farmer in his father’s estate in 1874.
At the time he was already married to Azizunnessa whom he had never grown to love. Mir’s dramatic meeting with Kulsum, now a full-grown maid, after many years at the scene of a catastrophic fire, the kindling of passion and love in his heart, and subsequent marriage, were described in semi autobiographical work, Amar Jibanir Jibani Bibi Kulsum (1910).
Mir, a romantic and adventurous soul, had been born into a family (probably located in the stratum between Rafi- uddin Ahmed’s rural ashraf and lesser gentry) which had seen better days.
Brought up in the countryside of Lahinipara (in Kushtia) – unlike many of his contemporaries – Mir could not be quite counted as a member of the English educated Muslim elite in the big cities. As his family fortunes had declined he had to work as sheresta looking after other people’s estates.
Like Faizunnessa, Mir stood at the crossroads of a medieval and modern sensibility. He was a hybrid product of country and town, liberalism and orthodoxy, faith and rationalism. His portrayal of the character of Kulsum, object of his unfailing devotion, coincided with the rise of a new concept in gender relations, romantic love.
Woman as ‘Priya’ (the beloved), now stood legitimately, if shyly, along- side Kalyani. In fact seldom if, ever was Priya allowed to threaten the guardian of the sacred hearth. If anything they were ideally one and the same.
Bibi Kulsum is significant because it was an autobiographical account of a ‘Renaissance’ writer’s congugal life. The ideal of romantic love within marriage, manifest itself in Mir’s relationship with his wife and the recor- ding of that relationship. The eulogy in the opening page of the book will remain a classic expression of the new ideal:
Kulsum, who is she to me? Why do I chant her name? What a sweet name it is etched on my heart. Why this surge of love, this romantic attraction this pouring of my soul? you ask. Reader, you will learn in due time.
Bibi Kulsum was the light of my soul. angel of my home, abode of my dreams. She was my partner in joy and sorrow, a chaste wife and holy mother; intelligent companion and learned guide, compassionate friend and adoring slave; home- maker, cook, nurse, healer, she was all these, she was my lover as I was hers she was seated on the throne of my heart.
And yet, the receptacle of all these virtues, was not what one would call beautiful. Kulsum, though a country-maid, was nontheless invested with many desir- able traits. Though not educated formally, she was literate and a constant encouragement in Mir’s literary career. Kulsum was not the evolved bha- fromohila in the special sense we have used here, but was very nearly one, standing midway between Faizunnessa and Fatema Khanam.
The sexual aspect of Mir’s relationship with Kulsum (referred to in the book) surpas sed, perhaps contravened, notions of Victorian/ Brahmo conjugal norms. Mir had frankly conceded the sexual.
But it was a sexuality legitimized by marriage and could thus he accom- modated within the nascent middle class values. The concept of romantic love and sexuality in a legitimate setup was possibly more unique to Bengal than to Britain.
The ideal portrayed in books may not have been achieved in reality most of the time. But there was a ground now for a glorious re- pudiation of the debauchery’ and ‘promiscuity of the feudal class; for a sometimes self-righteous celebration of monogamous sexuality. In the historical context, however, fiction was the first site for roman- tic love and was to remain so for a long time.
Bengali writers – from Bankim, Rabindranath, Saratchandra, to Swarnakumari, Najibar Rahman, Kazi Imdadul Huq, Anurupa, Nirupoma, Shailabala Ghoshjaya, Nurunnessa and others produced a crop of fictional works where plots centred around love, romance and betrayal. Around this time, Muslim women came forward with their own formulations of love relationships, the ideal hero, and the ideal heroine, in their fictional works.
The male protagonist would be drawn along the lines of the new man’ (product of the Bengal Renaissance): he would be liberal, western educated, idealistic, romantic, restrained, hand- some in appearance and deed, reformist and modern when it came to gross social abuses, traditional in case of timetested values a remarkable blend in fact.
In Bhadro Muslim Society, members of the opposite sex seldom, if ever. got to interact socially, circumscribed as their lives were by the stringent code of purdah. More often than not, situations conducive to romantic att- raction, were imaginary ones unlike Victorian society where courtship was a socially approved (and encouraged) avenue to matrimony and family life.
In the Brahmo, Hindu and native Christian communities some measure of sexual desegregation had been achieved. Nurunnessa made use of this in her short novels Bhagyachakra and Bidhilipi published in the early 1930s. But as late as 1928, Rokeya was writing her distribe against seclusion in Aborodhbasini.
Segregation was thus also a real problem in fiction (for it was suppo- sed to ‘mirror’ reality). Writers of the period were very fond of writing ‘garhastya’ (domestic) or ‘paribarik’ (familial) novels. Nurunnessa circum- vented the taxing problem created by segregation, in quite an unusual manner, in her first novel Swapnadrishta. It was the story of an intense romantic attraction on part of the male protagonist Anwar Ali, towards a vision of a woman he had seen only in a dream.
Anwar goes through many of the motions of a man in love without having actually beheld the object of his adoration. This was the device through which Nurunnessa circum- vented existing conventions of purdah and ventured into the world of rom- ance and love.
(In real life she was happily married to lawyer Kazi Ghulam Murshed of Serampore). But Nurunnessa changed her srtategy in her three novellas Bhagyachakra, Bidhilipi and Niyoti – where she tackled a sensitive issue purborag or the stage of romantic attraction prior to full passion described in the ancient Indian theory of Erotics. The commentator, writing the introduction to Nurunnessa’s collected works (1970), observed:
The themes of illicit, socially disapproved passion and love were not the subject matter of her novels. In the main, she has depicted love in a domestic setting. As such her novels were truly a reflection of contemporary society.
Pre-marital interactions between the sexes, however slight and ‘pure’ (Le. non-physical) such as a glance or long walks, were new phenomena in the Bengali social scene. Their acceptance in literature, if not in real life. pointed to changed attitudes in gender relations. Nurunnessa celebrated love as a noble facet in human nature. The following passage from “Niyoti’ (Destiny) was one of the most eloquent tributes to love to emerge from the literature of that period.
The writer herself addresses these words to the hero’s mother when the hero (Reza) arrives on the scene to discover his beloved Rokeya in the throes of death. Reza realizes that the machinations of his proud, high born mother, have borne bitter fruit: he was never to be united with Rokeya:
Alas, proud lady! Come see for yourself this pitiful sight! Compre- hend that litigation and the like may stand in the path of transient union; but they can never be impediments in the path of that true and divine union of hearts which we call love. The eternal love that united these two, the exchanges that transpired were pure, heav- enly, eternal, endless.
Nurunnessas depiction of love in her trilogy led a literary critic to comment: “The writer’s favourable attitude to romance [sic] is amply manifest in these three works” 41
Muhammad Ibrahim’s Zobeda (published in 1922) bore the epithet ‘dome- atic novel’ on the title page. It was a love story with intensely romantic scenes, between two couples – Asad and Zobeda, Ramzan and Feroza.
All the elements of prevailing notions of love were depicted here – purity, roman- ticism, yearning, suspicion of the heroine’s chastity, her attempted suicide, upholding of the Sati ideal and re-union of the lovers who were, of course, man and wife.
Najibar Rahman’s Anowara, was much more popular as a novel, and much more conservative. The heroine Anowara falls in love with Nur Eslam on hearing him recite the holy Koran from afar.
Nur falls in love (the reader was left to assume since the matter of falling in love is not openly mentioned), after a brief glimpse, caught accidentally from a window. “Acci- dentally because the writer would have you appreciate that no ‘sharif’ girl would knowingly allow herself to be ‘seen’. But even Najibar allowed his hero to proclaim after he wed Anowara the greatness of their love.
The popular literary monthlies Mohammadi and Saogat, often contained short stories (e.g. Madhurena. Romantic Biye) which depicted romantic love. ‘Modhurena’ (1932) was a playlet depicting love as a basis for marriage.
Social conditions were mirrored in references to the backwardness of Muslim girls compared to their Hindu and Brahmo counterparts whom Sajjad the ‘modern’ young hero considered more accomplished and hence more desirable. All the trappings of Victorian courtship are present a tea party [sic] in the garden of Mr.
Chaterjee the additional magistrate, a meeting between Sajjad and Rosy delibarately arranged by the elder sister in-law, a dramatic and impassioned declaration of love on Sajjad’s part (termed a young bhadrolok, interestingly), and finally the couples’ union in marriage.
‘Romantic Biye’, published in the previous issue of Mohammadi, was a good humoured satire about marriage and romantic notions among the idea- listic youth of the urbanized middle calss.
Amena, a young widow, and Samad, a young widower, pledge never to remarry. But Amena’s well mean- ing guardians arrange a marriage for her. On the wedding night she is ‘rescued’ by Samad, a true sympathizer. The comrades flee to Assam, live in the same house (platonically) but soon realize they are meant for each other and might as well get married.
They proclaim love as the true basis of marriage. Running through the good-natured expose is a belief popular among a section of westernized liberals at the time that human actions are ultimately guided by the sex-drive. Of course, India had her own age-old notions of the glory and significance of sex, but we are now speaking of the ‘western influenced’ liberals.
Romantic titles such as Moner biye (Marriage of Minds), Prem 0 Pushpa (Love and a Blossom), Piyasi (The Thirsty), Shesh Anurodh (The Last Requ- est), etc., proliferated the popular journals.
Though fictional works dealt with the theme of love and condoned it if it led to matrimony, the view was by no means a widely held one. A certain section of the conservatives were not all that eager to con- cede ‘prem mahatmyo (greatness of love). Indignation and anger at the portrayal of Muslim women’s love for Hindu males in the novels of Bhudev and Bankim date back to the 1860’s and 70s.
The objection was not just toward the perceived indignity of women falling in love with those outside the pale of Islam, it was also the manner in which the love was portrayed (i.e. besotted Muslim women, stoic and invulnerable Hindu male, etc). The whole debate which ensued, produced a hostility toward romantic love in general. Several Muslim writers took up the pen in retaliation.
Ismail Hossain Shirazi’s Raynandini (1916) was proclaimed by its author as a fitting rejoinder to Bankim’s Durgeshnandini (1865). It depicted the love of Swarnamoyee, daughter of Kedar Ray, a sixteenth century chieftain, for the Muslim warrior Isa Khan.
‘Love’, usually relegated to an obscure and shadowy background in the chronicles of kings and states, now assu- med the same importance as a deadly war. It got tangled up in politics and communal tension, the question of Muslim identity in the face of Hindu revivalism; sexual freedom, chastity and regulatory codes, etc.
And woman was made to stand once again at the vortex of this whirlpool. A critic commenting on those times writes: “Muslim writers now resorted to cons- truction of such historical situations of Hindu-Muslim conflicts where Muslims display nobility and valour, Hindu women fall irresistibly in love with them and embrace Islam”.
Social condemnation of all-encompassing ‘romantic love was expressed in an essay written as a rejoinder to Bankim’s novels, particularly Durgeshnandini and his portrayal of Ayesha therein:
No Muslim, for that matter, no true Hindu, will condone Ayesha’s inundation in a flood of tears at the dead hour of night, by the side of a strange man of another creed, not bound to her by any legitimate ties.
The love of Ayesha towards Jagat Singh, proclaimed and unproclaimed, is illicit, unnatural and irreligious. We are not in favour of the apparently innocuous but inherently dangerous. maxim: ‘Love knows no bounds’. Only social anarchy can result from the violation of God’s laws by giving in to the temptation of such forbidden fruit.
Many issues converged here: the regulation of female sexuality and patri- archy’s inherent fear of it (What was Ayesha doing at dead of night beside a man not legitimately bound to her?); communal prejudice (Jagat Singh was a Hindu); the religious question (unnatural and irreligious of Ayesha to go beyond the pale of her own religion). And the ultimate fear of fitna or social chaos.
Love that knew no bounds would always have to be cont- ained and regulated if anarchy was to be avoided. For love/romantic attr- action was the other side of physical attraction, however platonic the aura given to it.
Thus, romantic love would only be tolerated if it was unaudacious and abided by communal norms pertaining to chastity and honour. A woman was not free to fall in love with whom she chose, even if it were in novels, particularly more so if it were in novels it would seem; because characters in books had a much wider currency and longer life than ordinary mortals.
Society could not afford to lose this terrain because of sentimentality and passion. The ideological debate notwithstanding, Bankim was a household word also in Muslim homes. So great was the power of his prose that read- ers were willing to temporarily suspend disbelief and prejudice to step into the exciting and imaginary world of romance he created.
A booklet titled Bashore was published in 1923. It was written by a not so well-known writer who dedicated it to the poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. During those days, writers great and small looked up to the poet. The booklet was probably meant to serve as a ‘guide’ for newly weds, not in the sense of a manual but as what one could term a philosophic guideline for those about to set upon the most important of gender relations that of man and wife.
Unfortunately, there seem to be no allusions to the booklet, posi- tive or negative, by contemporary writers. It was written in the form of two imaginary dialogues (see Bashore for the first dialogue). In the closing lines of the second dialogue, the groom finally rejoiced in his union to a lofty and rational woman, thereby proclaiming the hegemony of the new domestic ideology; where the priya and grihalakshmi were one:
Today I realize you are my wife, not a doll but a partner for life. You will correct me when I err and direct me on the right path; you are my fellow traveller, solace in my despair, my shelter, hope, desire. Come in this our first union let us pledge to fill life’s journey with joy.
Turning from literature to real life, the private letters of two couples who were corresponding with each other in the decade of 1940, corroborate the contention that romantic love had become an integral part of conjugal rela- tions.
Letters written by Muhammad Hasib a government officer in Calcutta to his wife Fatema in Manikganj; and of the famous singer Abbasuddin to his wife Lutfunnessa, from Calcutta to Dhaka provide a rare insight into an aspect of husband wife relations. They also depict the family in transi- tion a situation where the wife was staying back at the in-laws before.
setting up her own home. Both sets of correspondence project the husband as mentor and teacher, specially the letters of Abbasuddin which are repl- ete with tips on how to turn the quilt, air the mattress, etc.
What strikes one however, is the expression of solicitude, longing, and even passion (veiled) on part of the separated couple. The forms of address themselves, “Priyatameshua thousand kisses”, “Priyo lakshmi amar”, “Priyatama” point to the new forms of endearment between husband and wife.
We had started this section with a memoir, Mir Mosharraf’s Bibi Kulsum, which depicted the cojugal relationship between Mir and his wife from 1874 to 1910. At the close of the period chosen for this study, another couple.
Abul Fazl and Umratul Fazl, got married in 1938. Their marriage was a long and happy one. They left behind a record of their times and their lives in separate memoirs. Abul Fazl had already been married before, and like Mir. his previous marriage was not a happy one. Umrat, who was twenty years younger than Fazi, described in her memoir how Fazl had aroused feelings of love in her:
Our married life started on the first day of that auspicious year and for fourty-four years it shone like the sun. His love was so deep that I felt I could create something as beautiful as ocean- spray… He was an incomparable lover whose love knew no bounds. A compassionate human being and an ideal mentor.”
One is reminded of Mir and Kulsum in their quiet abode in the moffusil town of Delduar. But times had changed. Abul Fazl was an urbanized scholar, critic and teacher, and Umrat was his fitting counterpart.
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