Dialectics of impairment: historical anxieties in late-colonial Bengali fictional narratives on disability

ABSTRACT

This article examines a body of early twentieth-century Bengali fiction foregrounding persons marked as disabled (including people experiencing physical disability, learning disability and chronic illness). A number of Bengali short stories and novels offer embodied narratives, which consider the human body as a productive site of contest between the colonial social order, the attempt to impose Western modernity and indigenous consciousness. An emergent sense of cultural agency can be found to be claimed by people, whose physical and mental states deviate from codes of ‘normalcy’. These works unearth social discrimination based on the binary of ‘fit’ and ‘unfit’ under the converging rules of native feudalism and foreign colonialism. The treatment of corporeality in Bengali texts of the period from the 1930s to the 1950s cannot be fully grasped by applying the disability theories of the Global North. Rather these texts conflate multiple forms of marginalization of subject bodies to explore several socio-historical cross-sections and address the question of identity formation. This article rereads selected fiction on disability by Manik Bandyopadhyay (1908–1956) and Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay (1898–1971).

KEYWORDS:

• Bengali disability-fiction
• late-colonial rule
• dialectical reversal
• subalternity

Acknowledgements

I express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Esme Cleall, the Department of History, University of Sheffield, and the organizers and participants of the International Conference on ‘Disability Histories: local, global and colonial stories’ held at the University of Sheffield, UK, on June 7 & 8, 2018. I am indebted to the anonymous referees and Dr. Cleall, the editor of this special issue, for their insightful suggestions which have greatly helped me to rework this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 See Supriya Chaudhuri, ‘The Bengali Novel’, in Vasudha Dalmia and Rashmi Sadana (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp 101–23; Sibaji Bandyopadhyay, ‘Modernism in Bengali Literature’, in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, 2016: available at www-rem-routledge-com.stanford.idm.oclc.org/articles/modernism-in-bengali-literature; Kris Manjapra, Age of Entanglement: German and Indian Intellectuals across Empire, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: Harvard University Press, 2014; Supriya Chaudhuri, ‘Modernisms in India’, in Peter Brooker, Andrzej Gasiorek, Deborah Longworth, and Andrew Thacker (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, no pagination; Subhadeep Ray and Goutam Karmakar (eds), Modernist Transitions: Cultural Encounters between British and Bangla Modernist Fiction from 1910s to 1950s, New Delhi, London, Oxford, New York & Sidney: Bloomsbury, 2023.

2 After Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), the British educationist who exercised huge influence on setting the education policy of colonial Indian in the European model that did not consider indigenous knowledge worth learning.

3 Avijit Pathak, Indian Modernity: Contradictions, Paradoxes and Possibilities, 2nd Edition, Delhi: Aakar Books, 2015, p 62.

4 Peter Kalliney, Modernism in a Global Context, London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi and Sidney: Bloomsbury, 2016, p 61.

5 Kamlesh Mohan, Science and Technology in Colonial India, Delhi: Aakar Books, 2014, p 44.

6 Subhadeep Ray, ‘Fighting against multiple bodies! Translating ‘Nāri o Nāgini’ and ‘Tamoshā’ by Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay and ‘Bonjhi Gunjomālā’ by Jagadish Gupta’, in Someshwar Sati and G.J.V. Prasad (eds), Disability in Translation: The Indian Experience, London and New York: Routledge, 2020, pp 133–145, p 134.

7 Tapti Roy, ‘Disciplining the Printed Text: Colonial and Nationalist Surveillance of Bengali Literature’, in Partha Chatterjee (ed), Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press in conjunction with the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Perspectives in Social Sciences Series, 1995, pp 30–62, p 30, 37. ProQuest ebrary, http://site.ebrary.com/lib/inflibnet/reader.action?docID=10159448 (accessed on 2 October 2016).

8 Mangalkavya (literally, poems of well-being) a genre of Bangla narrative poems written from the 15^th to 18th century.

9 We may refer to Baul songs and the festival of Gazan.

10 See Martha Stoddard Holmes, Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian Culture, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2004.

11 David Arnold, ‘Touching the body: Perspectives on the Indian Plague, 1896-1900’, in Ranajit Guha (ed), Subaltern Studies V: Writings on South Asian History and Society, Delhi, Oxford, New York: Oxford UP, 1987, pp 55–90, p 56.

12 Mikahil Mikhailovich Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist (trans) & Michael Holquist (ed), New Delhi: Pinnacle in asso. With University of Texas Press, 2014, pp 311–12.

13 Ranajit Guha, ‘On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India’, in Fred Dallmayr and G.N. Devy (eds), Between Tradition and Modernity: India’s Search for Identity, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks and London: Sage, 1998, pp 279–300, p 282.

14 Mikahil Mikhailovich Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, p 271.

15 Lennard J. Davis, ‘Constructing Normalcy: The Bell Curve, the Novel, and the Invention of the Disabled Body in the Nineteenth Century,’ in Lennard J. Davis (ed), The Disability Studies Reader, 2nd Edition, London and New York: Routledge, 2006, pp 3–16, p 11.

16 A phrase used in the title of Plummer’s essay, ‘My Multiple Sick Bodies: Symbolic Interactionism, Autoethnography and Embodiment,’ see the content page of Bryan S. Turner, Routledge Handbook of Body Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2012, and for the essay: pp 75–93.

17 Clare Barker and Stuart Murray, ‘Disabling Postcolonialism: Global Disability Cultures and Democratic Criticism’, in Barker, Clare and Stuart Murray (eds), Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, 4(3), 2010, pp 219–236, p 219. Cited 10^th September 2023. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/398270

18 This theme of segregation is explored in Manik Bandyopadhyay’s short story ‘Atmahatyar Adhikar’ (‘The Right to Suicide’) in which a poor family led by an ill father take shelter in a stormy night at the outhouse of a rich neighbour only to find that another ill relative of the host has been living in the same room.

19 The imperial preoccupation with corporeality even at the heart of the Empire, may be foregrounded by an allusion to the radical announcement of the motive behind the establishment of the University of Sheffield, as an educational institution of a hometown of the Industrial Revolution in England. It was stated in the original fund-raising poster circulated for the foundation of the university, 1904-1905, that ‘The University will be for the people.’ In this statement ‘People’ principally implies working (wo)men of surrounding industries, with their children designated to be the target students. The immediately second reason for having a university in Sheffield was to ‘study the treatment of accidents and diseases,’ to quote from the same poster (Collected from the University Website: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.389045!/file/Graduation_Monday_for_web.pdf.).

20 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Nationalism and Imagination, London, New York, Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2015, p 4.

21 Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai & Mumbai: Oxford UP, 1998, p 189.

22 Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, p 189.

23 David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and Dependence of Discourse, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2011, p 47.

24 Mikahil Mikhailovich Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, p 273.

25 Manik Bandyopadhyay, Samagra Prabandha Ebong (Complete Essays Etc.), edited by Subhomay Mandal and Sukanta Gangopadhyay, Calcutta: Deep Publishers, 2015, p 25. Translated by me from the original.

26 Ben Conisbee Baer, ‘Introduction’, in Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay The Tale of Hansuli Turn, Ben Conisbee Baer (trans), New York: Columbia UP, 2011, no pagination (Kindle edn: Loc 16).

27 Someshwar Sati and G.J.V. Prasad, ‘Introduction’, in Someshwar Sati and G.J.V. Prasad

(eds), Disability in Translation: The Indian Experience, London and New York: Routledge, 2020, pp 1–24, p 7.

28 Someshwar Sati and G.J.V. Prasad, ‘Introduction’, in Someshwar Sati and G.J.V. Prasad (eds), Disability in Translation: The Indian Experience, p 7.

29 Amma Khalid, ‘“Subordinate” negotiations: Indigenous staff, the colonial state and Public Health’, in Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison (eds), The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India, Delhi: Primus Books, 2011, pp 45–73, pp 45–46.

30 Calcutta was the second city after London in terms of importance in the British Empire.

31 Manik Bandyopadhyay, The Puppet’s Tale, Sachindralal Ghosh (trans), Arthur Isenberg (ed), New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1968, p 65.

32 Kamlesh Mohan, Science and Technology in Colonial India, p 19.

33 Quoted in Irfan Habib, The National Movement: Origins and Early Phase, to 1918, Irfan

Habib (general ed), A People’s History of India: Vol. 30, New Delhi: Tulika Books in asso. with Aligarh Historians Society, 2017, p 107.

34 Ken Plummer, ‘Symbolic interactionism in the Twentieth century’, in Bryan S. Turner (ed), The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, pp 193–222, Oxford: Blackwell, 2000, pp 215–16.

35 The then Presidency College in Calcutta (Now a University).

36 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Readings, London, New York, Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2014, p 51.

37 Jane Buckingham, Abstract of ‘Disability and Indian indentured labour in the South

Pacific’, in Esme Cleall (ed), Book of Abstracts (un-published) of the International Conference on ‘Disability Histories: local, global and colonial stories’, University of Sheffield, 2018, p 6.

38 Both these papers were presented the International Conference on ‘Histories of Disability: Local, Global and Colonial Stories’ organized by the Department of History of the University of Sheffield in June 2018. See also Stefaine Kennedy, Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2020.

39 Manik Bandyopadhyay, The Boatman of Padma, translated by Ratan K. Chattopadhyay, New Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2012, p 28.

40 Anita Ghai, ‘Introduction: Epistemological and Academic Concerns of Disability in the Global South’, in Anita Ghai (ed), Disability in South Asia: Knowledge and Experience, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks & London: Sage, 2018, no pagination (Kindle edition: Loc. 327).

41 Jennifer James and Cynthia Wu, ‘Editor’s Introduction: Race, Ethnicity, Disability, And Literature: Intersections and Interventions’, MELUS, 31(3), Race, Ethnicity, Disability, and Literature, pp 03–13, p 11. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30029649 (accessed on 11 August 2016).

42 Erving Goffman, ‘Selections from Stigma’, in Lennard J. Davis (ed), The Disability Studies Reader, 2nd Edition, London and New York: Routledge, 2006, pp 131–140, p 131.

43 Colin Barnes, ‘Understanding the social model of disability: past, present and future,’ in

Nick Watson, Alan Roulstone, and Carol Thomas (eds), Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, London and New York: Routledge, 2012, pp 12–29, p 14.

44 Manik Bandyopadhyay, ‘Prehistoric’, Nandini Datta (trans), in Malini Bhattacharya (ed), Selected Stories: Manik Bandyopadhyay, Kolkata: Thema, 2003, pp 34–49, p 34.

45 Manik Bandyopadhyay, ‘Prehistoric’, p 34.

46 Eric Hobsbawm, Bandits. London: Abacus, 2000, p 73.

47 Manik Bandyopadhyay, ‘Prehistoric’, p 42.

48 Margrit Shildrick, ‘Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity’, in Nick Watson, Alan Roulstone, and Carol Thomas (eds), Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, London and New York: Routledge, 2012, pp 30–41, p 31, 34.

49 David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis, p 48.

50 Subhadeep Ray, ‘Modernism’s Footprints: World, Text and Ideology in Joseph Conrad and Manik Bandyopadhyay’, in Wiesław Krajka (ed), Some Intertextual Chords of Joseph Conrad’s Literary Art, Wiesław Krajka (general ed), Conrad: Easternand Western Perspectives: Vol. XXVIII, Lublin: Maria Curie-Skłodowska UP & New York: Columbia UP, 1919, pp 161–202, p 184.

51 Fredric Jameson, Valences of the Dialectic, London: Verso, 2009, p 155.

52 Chitra Harshvardhan, ‘Translation as social action: the counter-discourse on the literary representations of disability’, in Someshwar Sati and G.J.V. Prasad (eds), Disability in Translation: The Indian Experience, London and New York: Routledge, 2020, pp 37–54, p 50.

53 Subhadeep Ray, ‘Modernism’s Footprints’, p 183.

54 Manik Bandyopadhyay, ‘Prehistoric’, pp 47–48.

55 Manik Bandyopadhyay, ‘Prehistoric’, p 49.

56 Manik Bandyopadhyay, ‘Prehistoric’, p 49.

57 David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, ‘Narrative Prosthesis and the Materiality of Metaphor’, in Lennard J. Davis (ed), The Disability Studies Reader, 2nd Edition, London and New York: Routledge, 2006, pp 205–16, p 212.

58 David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, ‘Narrative Prosthesis and the Materiality of Metaphor’, p 210.

59 Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, Kalindi, Kolkata: Mitra and Ghosh Pub, 2017, p 4. Translated by me from the original.

60 Manik Bandyopadhyay, ‘Chatushkon’, in Alok Ray et al. (eds), Manik Bandyopadhyayer Rachanasamagra (Complete Works of Manik Bandyopadhya), Kolkata: Paschimbanga Bangla Academi, 1999, p 9.

61 Clare Barker and Stuart Murray, ‘Introduction’, in Clare Barker and Stuart Murray (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Disability, UK: Cambridge UP, 2018, no pagination (Kindle edition: Loc. 545).

62 Swadhin Gupta, Sasostro Andoloner Dharai Birbhum Sarayontro Mamla (1934) o Samajtantrik Chintadhara (The Birbhum Conspiracy Case in the Tradition of the Armed Movement, 1934, and Socialist Ideas), Bolpur: Akasdwip, 2007, 44.

63 It was the first peasant rebellion occurred in India in 1855-56.

64 Deeba Zafir, ‘Translation as “Re-presentation”: The Disability Spectrum in Selected Urdu Short Stories’, in Someshwar Sati and G.J.V. Prasad (eds), Disability in Translation: The Indian Experience, London and New York: Routledge, 2020, pp 97–106, p 97.

65 Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras: Oxford UP, 1983, p 13.

66 R.T. Carter and A. Qureshi, ‘A Typology of Philosophical Assumptions in Multicultural Counseling and Training’, in J.G. Pronterotto, J.M. Casa, L.A. Suzuki and C.M. Alexander (eds), Handbook of Multicultural Counseling, Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995, pp 239–62, p 241.

67 The referred text is translated by me for a project on Indian disability narrative in translation, and will be included in the forthcoming second volume of Reclaiming the Disabled Subject: Representing Disability in Short Fiction, edited by Someshwar Sati, GJV Prasad and Ritwick Bhattarcharjee, published by Bloomsbury.

68 Subhadeep Ray, ‘Fighting against multiple bodies!’, p 139.

69 V. Sujatha, ‘The Patient as Knower: Principle and Practice in Siddha Medicine’, Economic and Political Weekly, 44(6), 18 April 2009, no pagination. Web. Cited on 3rd October 2023, https://www.epw.in/journal/2009/16/indigenous-systems-medicine-special-issues-specials/patient-knower-principle-and

70 Shilpaa Anand, ‘Corporeality and Cultural Difference’, in Anita Ghai (ed), Disability in South Asia: Knowledge and Experience, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks & London: Sage, 2018, no pagination (Kindle edition: Loc. 5825).

71 Margrit Shildrick, ‘Critical Disability Studies’, p 31.

72 Jagdish Chander, ‘Disability Rights Law and Origin of Disability Rights Movement in India: Contesting Views’, in Anita Ghai (ed), Disability in South Asia: Knowledge and Experience, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks & London: Sage, 2018, no pagination (Kindle edition: Loc 1044, Loc 803).

73 Anita Ghai, Introduction, Loc. 605.

74 Shridevi Rao, ‘Disability, Family Epistemologies and Resistance to Shame within the Indian Context’, in Anita Ghai (ed), Disability in South Asia: Knowledge and Experience, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks & London: Sage, 2018, no pagination (Kindle edition: Loc. 6714).

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Subhadeep Ray

Subhadeep Ray, Ph.D. in English, is presently Associate Professor of English at Bidhan Chandra College, Kazi Nazrul University, and Visiting Professor of English, Kazi Nazrul University, Asansol, West Bengal, India. Working on the modernist literature of Britain and Bengal, Ray is the editor of Modernist Transitions: Cultural Encounters between British and Bangla Modernist Fiction from 1910s to 1950s, published by Bloomsbury in 2024. Ray has been a regular contributor since 1919 to the multivolume series, Conrad: Eastern and Western Perspectives, published by Maria Curie-Sklodowska University Press, Lublin, and Columbia University Press, New York. Ray is currently editing a volume of critical essays, entitled Joseph Conrad in India, to be a part of the same series, and another volume of critical essays, entitled River Fiction of India: Intersectional Flows of Narratives, Geographies and Histories, to be published by Routledge (Taylor & Francis). He is engaged also in translating Bengali modern fiction into English, and vice versa. His articles have been published in The Explicator (Taylor and Francis) and other major journals.