The Sceptic’s Spectre: Henry Derozio
The Sceptic’s Spectre: Henry Derozio
The Sceptic’s Spectre: Henry Derozio
Posted on 11th September, 2024 (GMT 16:10 hrs)
(The above black-and-white portrait is a Lithographic Miniature of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio by J. Bennet before 1843.)
ABSTRACT
The narrative “The Sceptic’s Spectre: Henry Derozio” provides a detailed examination of radical humanist and cosmopolitan thinker Henry Louis Vivian Derozio’s ideas through the lens of contemporaneity. It discusses his role as an uncompromising educator and poet, focusing on his advocacy for free thought, anti-establishment rationalism, and his challenge to orthodox Hindu beliefs. Derozio’s influence on his students, known as the Young Bengal group, and his progressive ideas, which contributed to the shaping of modern Indian intellectualism, are central themes with special reference to the recent degeneration of this argumentative spirit in the context of plutocratic, theocratic Saffron Fascism. The article also reflects on his literary contributions, particularly his poetry, which embodies his revolutionary spirit that decries all authoritarian structures in favour of the eternal spirit of liberational praxis.
The following narrative in no way supports supernaturalism in any form. The appearance of the ghost or spectre in the development of the plot is wholly intentional and is solely for making the story more appealing to the reader. The same should be viewed through the lens of Hauntology of always-already presence as per the Derridean approach. The author thoroughly upholds the Derozian spirit of merciless criticism and free thinking.
It was a late monsoon evening. I was back home early from work and poured myself some hot black coffee. The power was out, so there was a pervading darkness everywhere. The drizzles outside had become lighter than before. I had lit up the white candles in various places in my home.
It was, as a whole, a “spooky” atmosphere. It has been long since I was conventionally scared by such creepy context that always fascinated the hell out of me. This time, I was interested to try something out. Not to confirm or establish the undisputed presence of supernaturality once and for all, but solely for passing the time in an engaging way—irrespective of the results. It suited my non-boast-worthy research-oriented persona.
I had previously retrieved a sample of the “Neo-Spectroscope” from the late Prof. Trilokeshwar Shanku when he was giving away some of his inventions to a few persons of his choice for further research and cumulative explorations, and to prevent their abuse or misuse. I was fortunate enough to have been one of those privileged persons.
The specifics of this machine deserve no separate discussion and can be read about from the narrative written by Satyajit Ray named “Professor Shanku O Bhoot” (Professor Shanku and the Spectre). As a whole, this tool can bring back to your room any person (condition: you possess a mental representation of that person in the form of an image, or a painting, or a more-or-less detailed schematic) from human history, of course in the “spectre” form. I had not yet used the machine for any purpose till that day.
I finally decided to use it.
Why? And to conjure whom?
To answer that “why”, I have to give a sort of “preface” – our country India has been seeing a massive upsurge of religious extremism and the cult of blind faith coupled with superstitious exchanges for the past decades or more, culminating in various forms of violence against religious minorities, women and the Dalits. I have talked on this issue with many of my colleagues and friends, but they have contributed little to my already existent mode of thinking. I wanted to converse on this topic with someone, who is best equipped to deal with the perspectives on such turbulent and concerning times when state-sponsored, state-backed religious intolerant violence has become the norm of the day.
The first name that came up into my mind was: Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809-1831). Prolific Eurasian poet and thinker, but a cosmopolitan humanist in spirit. He was the one who swept the socio-cultural fields of Bengal nearly 195 years ago from today. He even dared to criticize legendary philosophers like Immanuel Kant with his standalone philosophical vigour that leaned more towards a form of Carneadean Probabilism and Humean Academic Scepticism. With the great Raja Ram Mohan Roy preceding him, he belonged to the first generation of those iconoclasts, who confronted the ranks of the conservatives and fundamentalists of the day with a bold, unswaying spirit that remained undefeated till the very end.
So, I proceeded to call forth his “spectre” into my room. I wore the metallic helmet and connected the equipment accordingly. Gradually, I started deeply contemplating his image with fixative concentration—a handsome youth with wavy black hair and a relatively small stature wearing an overcoat, I also started to ponder upon his central ideas that formed one of the pillars of the Bengal Renaissance, all that he relentlessly worked for, his radical teaching methods negating the confines of the panopticonist classroom bounds, his days in Bhagalpur when he wrote lyrical ballad The Fakeer of Jungheera, his time in Hindu College and his expulsion from the same, his fatal cholera, the constant support from his mother and sister, his bright pupils like Krishna Mohan Bandyopadhyay, Rasik Krishna Mallick, Ramgopal Ghosh, Radhanath Sikdar, Dakshinaranjan Mukherjee, Hara Chandra Ghosh, Ramtanu Lahiri, Peary Chand Mitra, Sib Chandra Deb and so on… I thought to myself: The Young Bengals truly outlived Derozio’s lifetime, holding firmly in their hands the glaring beacon of the sovereign rule of reason…
Soon enough, amidst the green smoky outflow that the Neo-Spectroscope had released and accumulated by then, there started to appear the image that all of us somewhat recognize or relate to, only that the image I was seeing was in three dimensions and was a little blurry in character. The figure soon started to move and looked towards me with a pair of inquisitive eyes. Eyes that held the manifold within its youthful bosom.
I couldn’t talk for a minute or so, overwhelmed by the re-cognizable presence of the initiator of the Young Bengal Movement, a movement that had inspired me to take up novel researches in the Philosophy of Science and the Impossibility of Metaphysics!
(Henry’s replies and rejoinders in this dialogue were in archaic English, but I am simplifying those sentences to make it readable to our contemporary generations)
He was the first one to talk in a polite yet resolute tone: “Hello, may I know what I am here for?”
I fumbled and spoke: “S-sir…Sir…. well, c-can I call you that?”
He grinned and answered: “See, I have never believed in hierarchies, not even that between the student and the teacher. You can simply call me Henry, or even “Juvenis”, a pseudo-name I used to mention in my poems that were published in the India Gazette. Chronology, time and age are all just conventional numbers that are to be radically questioned within this endeavour of yours, as far as I can reckon.”
My admiration for him amplified instantaneously. I said without a gap or a shred of fumbling: “Your spark is still visible even in your supposed non-earth state of existence. No wonder you took the breath away of so many your contemporaries, both positively and negatively.”
Henry: I did what I could. I loved this country as my own all through my life, though I never subscribed to the notion of “nation” as such. I have always felt this sense of belongingness since I got conscious of my surroundings in this great land of ours. I loved the world equally, beyond imagined boundaries: “When man to man the world o’er, Shall brothers be and a’ that“. I showed my solidarity to the liberation struggles of the people around the world to break the shackles of mental and political slaveries. Remember when I wrote “Address to the Greeks” to voice my support for the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Turks? It resonated with my commitment to the expanse of freedom where the slave departs, and the human returns. I wrote something on this years ago:
Oh Freedom! there is something dear
E’en in thy very name,
That lights the altar of the soul
With everlasting flame.
Success attend the patriot sword,
That is unsheathed for thee!
And glory to the breast that bleeds,
Bleeds nobly to be free!
Blest be the generous hand that breaks
The chain a tyrant gave,
And, feeling for degraded man,
Gives freedom to the slave.
I must tell you, I also somewhat foresaw the exemplary anti-imperialist movement in India against the British rule. However, you see, as you may have read in John Stuart Mill’s accounts: political subjugation is visible and could be uprooted through systematic mass mobilization, but the mental subjugation that operates at the level of grassroots’ socio-cultural discourse is more difficult and complicated to be obliterated once and for all. The different layers through which such a subjection mechanism functions are in the form of superstitions, dogmas, prejudices, unfounded blind faith, the idolatrous poverty of the imagination and so on. I wanted to stop this kind of stagnancy of the mind or poverty of thinking during my time through the noble aid of the weaponry of critical independent thinking. I wanted to embody the Cartesian motto of “De Omnibus Dubitandum Est” (Doubt Everything) and strived to ingrain the same ethos in my fellow learners without falling into the Pyrrhonean extremes. That is what I learnt from my precedent academic inheritance. My teacher and hero David Drummond from the celebrated Durrumtollah Academy imbibed this disposition in me long ago. The classes that took place in my early teenage introduced me to a galaxy of scholars, thinkers, iconoclasts and revolutionaries, who became my short life’s living breaths.
As I was saying: Political reforms and revolutions do happen from time to time, as we have read Kant say, but reforms in the modes of thinking in terms of intellectual revolutions that challenge the prevailing social tyrannies are much rare, because the unthinking masses as headless monsters are prone towards conforming to comforting certitudes instead of questioning their taken-for-granted presuppositions that have been indoctrinated for centuries immemorial through the agencies of socialization and enculturation. As our Young Bengal once told the land of Bengal through the mediation of The Enquirer: “A people can never be reformed without noise or confusion”. Chaos is necessary to give birth to a new star. However, we must stay alert with regard to the presence of “double standards” in this historical initiative, as is observed in the case of your present political parties as well as your so-called “progressive” elites. Do you not remember how I criticized the non-idolatrous Brahmo Prasanna Kumar Tagore’s household Durga Pooja? I did not even spare these hypocrisies in the fight for collective liberation as I conceived, cherished and envisaged it, for such tendencies hamper the organized growth of mass uprising in favour of a free and just social order.
Me: Exactly, Henry. That is what I think as well. Your clarity of thought has always amazed me, given that you were so young! No wonder you attracted your students like a magnet through your sheer intellectual zeal, as was recalled by many after your untimely demise. Let me tell you: I have brought you here to talk about this very issue as you mentioned so vividly. You may have noticed, your beloved native land has changed a lot since your time, and not in a particularly “good” way!
Henry: I know what you are going to say, but please don’t eulogize me. It is of no use. Well, you see– the unthwarted rise in religious bigotry is something that scares me as well these days. We tried so much during our times to stop this exact thing from happening. Perhaps we failed. I have no hesitation in admitting that out loud. Our Young Bengals did not connect well with the greater spectrum of masses. That was our shortcoming. But believe me, I individually did want our perspectives to permeate the lowest strata of society as we perceived it and thereby give rise to a gradual emergence of political education and critical consciousness. I even went through many of the literature of this land such as Vetālapañcaviṃśati and talked about the cosmic fervor of the Vedas with my students, while admitting my genuine shortcoming in this regard. Yet, there were practical obstacles that prevented us from reaching that aim of associating to-and-fro with the masses. Yet, I am happy that my pupils took my legacy forward in their own ways, since I never imposed any singular way of thinking on them. They were free to debate within and outside to ultimately choose their own unique paths. Some took to Brahmoism, some became Christians, and some even became aligned with theosophists. My sonnet dedicated to my pupils embraced this theme of openness, expansion and unlocking one’s possibilities:
“Your intellectual energies and powers
That stretch (like young birds in soft summer hours)
Their wings to try their strength
O how the winds Of circumstances and freshening April showers
Of early knowledge and unnumbered kinds
Of new perceptions shed their influence,
And how you worship truth’s omnipotence’…”
Hence, I am not entirely dissatisfied about the outcomes of the Young Bengal. Yes, I had not lived in vain. My one kind wish for my fallen country has always been that it should be a republic of reason with egalitarian rights for each and every person. As you know, I was a disciple of Locke and Tom Paine in this regard, who always defended the ‘right to think’ and the ‘right to rebel’ if governmental authorities fail to remain accountable to the rights and demands of the people. The partition of the country is something I did not ever predict. Nor did I predict these rampant pogroms, mob lynching, riots and statue-temple jingoism. All of this is so undesirable and unbecoming of a pluralistic country like India. Still, the secular democratic spirit that India maintained even in the most trying times have always received my other-worldly admiration. In the recent years, this entire tradition of argumentative intellectuality has been overturned and is being made forgotten. India now breathes through the intoxicating air of intolerance, hatred, deceit and suppression of dissent. “Justice” has become a joke. Democracy has been reduced to a crony oligarchy. History is being either erased, or appropriated to suit the propaganda machineries of the ruling group. It is the manipulative and coercive atmosphere of mutual distrust that the Young Bengals once disavowed publicly. What happened to this place? Why did many of us let it happen in silent surrender?
Why hang’st thou lonely on yon withered bough?
Unstrung for ever, must thou there remain;
Thy music once was sweet — who hears it now?
Why doth the breeze sigh over thee in vain?
Silence hath bound thee with her fatal chain;
Neglected, mute, and desolate art thou,
Like ruined monument on desert plain:
O! many a hand more worthy far than mine
Once thy harmonious chords to sweetness gave,
And many a wreath for them did Fame entwine
Of flowers still blooming on the minstrel’s grave:
Those hands are cold — but if thy notes divine
May be by mortal wakened once again,
Harp of my country, let me strike the strain!
Me: I often revisit your “Harp of India”. It was so brilliantly written! Henry, you have been called as one of the foremost nationalist poets who wrote in English in India. Do you really have the notion that India was a glorious “Golden Sparrow” once, and later on deteriorated due to the deeds of certain groups with vested interests? Do you have any such genealogical fantasy?
Henry: Yes, I did use to believe that, but I no longer do in that exact specific sense. I was not entirely right, I must say, since I was so young. My current opinion in this regard is that the idea of India is more-or-less a product of colonial construction of nation-hood. Before that, there were only conglomerates of kingdoms and janapadas. However, I still believe in the diversified yet harmonious transactions or diffusion of remarkable ideas that were unique to the South-East Asian subcontinent. I also subscribe to the idea that this geo-cultural region had cultivated a series of novel philosophical and literary thoughts that were unthinkable in Europe at that time. That does not mean I subscribe to any mono-religious cultural nationalism. My nationalism was at a time an internationalist commitment for the participatory rule of the people without dogma, not a revivalist project as many sought to do.
Me: I know that. Henry, do you remember why you wrote the Fakeer of Jungheera?
Henry: I am grateful that you still remember. Yes. I wrote it during my time in Bhagalpur to preach the love beyond boundaries that only humans possess. “Affections are not made for merchandize—what will ye give in barter for the heart?” Love, for me, is an elevated consciousness whereby one can perceive infinitude in one’s beloved. What will the narrow Muslim or Hindu identity do in that case? Similarly, I critiqued all forms of tyrannical, unaccountable power-structures irrespective of the religious agency that yields them. I decry the naked worship of power in any and every form or kind. I have been committed to the aim of promoting syncretism without encouraging the regressive, tyrannical forms of socio-political structures such as casteism and forms of heinous gendered oppression such as Sattee engineered by the parasitic priestcraft. I once dedicated a poem to Bentinck with this very aim of advancing with the cause of women’s rights:
Bentinck, be thine the everlasting mead!
The heart’s full homage still is virtue’s claim,
And ’tis good man’s ever honoured deed
Which gives an immortality to fame:
Transient and fierce, though dazzling is the flame
That glory lights upon the wastes of war:
Nations unborn shall venerate thy name,
A triumph than the conqueror’s mightier far,
Thy memory shall be blessed as is the morning star!
Yet, in the contemporary times when gender violence has increased by leaps and bounds, I wish to state that solely women as both the actors and agents must raise up a fight till the death against the hegemonizing patriarchal schemes and normative standards that treat them as mere inferior, secondary biological identities. I learnt this from my mother and my sister. I learnt this from their selfless support for the emancipatory cause of the Young Bengals, which criticized social evils like dowry, child marriage, and neglect of women’s education at that time itself. If one wants to embark on a full-fledged women’s movement today, one has to connect the issues of marital rape, enabling, domestic violence, slut-shaming, victim-blaming, sexual harassment in workplaces, roads and in public transports—all of which are being culturally reinforced via indoctrinating practices of the masculine gaze. We have to challenge that repressive culture itself, not merely its exemplifications.
Coming back to where I was… You see, I was a free bird myself. Some called me the “stormy petrel” after my death. I am honoured by all these titular epithets. It is true that no one could make me accept defeat in front of them. I faced whips of Captain Macnagten of the John Bull magazine after I critiqued him in my self-published newspaper The East Indian, but still I stood my ground. The Enquirer and Jnananveshan had similar aims. So did the Society for the Acquisition of General Knowledge after my death. During my time, I was ridiculed by the conservative newspapers of the day such as Samachar Chundrika or Sambaad Prabhakaar as well as by petty people like Brindaban Lahiri, but still I was not silenced. I wrote in my letter to Wilson that “I’m not a greater monster than most people!” I kept track also of the fact how the Christian conservative missionaries were trying to hijack our movement, led by people like Alexander Duff. Our students, or rather, co-learners in the pursuit for epistemic enquiries, maintained their distance from the ranks of these proselytizing groups as well, given the fact that they also promote the same kind of intellectual stagnancy and absence of debate that characterized the heterogeneous Hindu society.
I see the present state of crowd-funded independent Indian journalists, who are working relentlessly without fearing the attacks of threat culture or the fear of getting arrested, and I remember my time as an independent reporter with little or no money. I can see that any form of dissent is being criminalized in the present-day India, which is not entirely unexpected. When I used to teach, I gave all the contesting viewpoints an equal standing and a direct “faceoff” without rejecting any one of them without consideration, and my students took to the same path. This is similar to the Naiyayika Vada that this country had upheld long back.
This culture of debate-dialogue-discourse was not liked by the Hindu College authorities, though I had Hare and Wilson by my side throughout the time. Even so, the authorities and their Hindu collaborationist “Babu”s accused me of “corrupting the morals of the youth”, which is also the same reason why Socrates was banished and had to drink the hemlock, facing the onslaught of the tyranny of the majority. Spinoza faced the same fate, being excommunicated for his “heretical views”. I was surprised to witness such a happening since the Hindu College itself was established to educate the youth on progressive matters of modern science with its objects and methods so as it make them think for themselves without the same-old blabbering or repeating of syllabus-centric written words to promote the exam-oriented education system. Perhaps those who expelled me were limitlessly pressurized by the powerful and regressive Hindu upper-castes.
Why was I even surprised in the first place? All those who waged war to establish the “life of mind” of the thinking being through valiant acts of defiance were either terminated or imprisoned by the disciplinary societies in this very manner all through recorded human history. I remember Giordano Bruno, and I took inspiration from him as well. I remember Tasso the poet, who was declared “insane” and was put in a cage that could not contain his uncircumscribed creative spirit. As I wrote:
“In such a cage, sweet bird, wast thou confined?
Alas! Their iron hearts no feeling knew!
Yet, while thy spirit in prison piled,
And while thy grief almost to madness grew,
Thy minstrelsy was wafted on each wind,
On every breeze thy fame triumphant flew,
And spake, through every land, of thy immortal mind
Upon a Cyprus bough thy harp was hung
Silent, neglected, mournful and unstrung!
Such a fate befitted not a harp of thine;
Yet, while th’ oppressor breathed, such was its doom.
But now by bards who worship at thy shrine
‘Tis crowned with flowers of everlasting bloom.”
You might know that I was greatly moved by the ideals of the French Revolution that toppled down the fabric of aristocratic-feudal society, and enunciated the conversation on the contra sociale of liberty, equality and fraternity through the active role of dissident elites. That fight for liberty does not merely point to an abstract or ungraspable conception, but is a living reality that is fueled with every stance to differ, with every attempt to protest, with every striving to put forth the ethos of non-conformity against the status quo establishment. You do recollect how Danton fought against the degeneration in revolutionary principles during the reign of terror? He was one of a kind. I admire him.
You have to understand that disagreements are part of the ever-unfolding game of argumentative vigour, of making constant trials-and-errors in one’s modes of reasonings and thinking-patterns. This is why I could take any stand in favour or against a given issue and deliberate time-to-time from that given perspective, so as to pave the way to a healthy and conducive conversazione. Such dialogic discourse is becoming a terrible rarity these days, as I mentioned before. Although I can see that the political opposition has recently been storming the Parliament after their increased number of legislature seats, but the same kind of dispersed dissenting and differing spirit has to reach the larger public sphere somehow through a collectively coordinated critical discourse, instead of being restricted to one specific domain alone. The protesting masses are being broken down into narrow extraneous identifiers, are being called “anti-nationals”, “urban naxals”, “tukde tukde gang” and so on. I thoroughly condemn these stamping practices within a political shaming game as they encourage a politics of parochial exclusion marked by mindless apathy, indifference, disregard and not stimulating discourse. We cannot be told what to wear, what to eat, where to pray, to whom to pray. We all have our freedom of conscience, our freedom of opinion, our freedom of religion, our freedom to express ourselves—though not uncritically.
As you know well, I myself had never denied God’s existence and expressed that clearly in my letter to my friend Wilson, and only took to the agnostic stand as being the sole path to continue our relentless inquiries, as Hume used to state in his studies on natural religion as opposed to the speculative “revealed religion”. “Suspension of judgment” is a viable tool in many regards or topics that far surpass the human cognitive limits, preserving the admittance of intellectual humility at all costs by avoiding the outflow of sheer arrogance. There is always the scope for private but well-examined judgments on such religious matters. I never disregarded the question of society and common sense, since I was equally influenced by Dugald Stewart, Thomas Reid and others of the “Common Sense” school. I resonated with Hume when he said: “Be a philosopher, but amidst all your philosophy, be still a (hu-)man”. I never believed in any reservations or constrictions about food-choices, given the fact that many of my pupils took to the open streets by publicly celebrating the intake of beef and liquor as well as by eating in Muslim shops as a way to dispel the mainstream superstitious shackles that incarcerated the then milieu. I did not entirely support them in these transiently infantile, impulsive or emotive acts of theirs, but the spirit underlying them was that of not accepting subservience to the dictates of any illegitimate authority. This was what guided our unfinished project of the Bengal renaissance.
Me: Henry, your words are giving me goosebumps. I don’t know what to say. You have a considerable grasp over everything that I want to inquire about. Sorry, but I cannot help but compliment you for your precision and remarkable clarity. Are you specifically aware about the Ram Mandir issue and the selective bulldozing of Muslim households?
Henry: Of course I do. I remember the time we used to give lectures in the Academic Association against idolatrous habituations by raising the slogans of “Down with Hinduism”, “Down with Orthodoxy”. The exonym “Hinduism” was and is far from being an organized religion in the Judeo-Abrahamic sense; but this Sangh Parivar is attempting to mirror the structuration of those regimented religious groups through their militant, terrorist tactics.
Bacon was a huge influence on me. He envisaged the life of the new machine of mind in freeing oneself from the imposed idols of understanding. I wrote a sonnet to Bacon in this context, which had the lines:
“Then Nature’s Priest Proclaimed— Man must remain
Shut from the light of TRUTH nor shall he see
That Sacred path (where mortal cannot err
In gaining her bright temple) till he be
Great Nature’s servant and interpreter.”
I always have opposed any kind of hero-worship that calls for authoritative obedience without questioning, the same being a byproduct of idolatrous thinking. Affectionate respect is justified, but not a respect that is simply a matter of chauvinism or hierarchy. The same applies to the respect to one’s parents or even to narcissistic, self-obsessed paper-tiger “rulers” like your current Prime Minister, who is far from the avenues of truth (celebrated by the Young Bengal) in being the “King Liar”. Anyway, in fact, these lynching or the so-called “cow-protection” drives, “love jihad” uproars stem from a perpetuating framework of aggressive androcentrism, a term I recently came to know. These bigots as anti-Romeo squads would even call my Nuleeni a love jihadi then? Ridiculous! These forces of suppression work towards an ethnographic construct that relegates the women, the so-called lower castes and the religious minorities. I have never entertained such deleterious mindsets. These harm the air of free speech. Moreover, being an open-minded humanist myself, I do not support the sacralization of any one specific species such as the cow. On the flipside, I also have no sympathies for speciesist human exceptionalism. My humanism is presently a humanism of multi-species co-existence. Since I am talking of animals, I might as well tell you that I am deeply disturbed by the condition of the natural environment around the globe today. What have you people done? I don’t think I can see the same Bhagalpur or Daltonganj today, where the lush green surroundings with mountains and the smooth water-flow once motivated me to write a love-story of a saint bandit and a soon-to-become sattee. This is a highly condemnable state of affairs. We must act as soon as possible to revert back the natural conditions.
Me: I totally comprehend your stand. We need you so much today!
Henry: (laughs) No, my dear friend. Don’t look for heroes anymore. Unhappy is the land that needs a hero. Unhappy is the land that awaits the arrival of the hero. This is part of the Biblical messianic bias that I rebutted. No. What you need today is a cultural renaissance, an intellectual ushering of free spirits, who will be willing to work at the grassroots without any hesitation or distancing. Your popular science movements failed to do that, as they got subsumed into statist vote-politics and maintained the epistemic violence of the dominant pedagogy that violently terminates indigenous, marginal forms of thinking, willing, experiencing. Have you ever tried to go down all the road to see what the farmers know and predict about the climate that even the so-called meteorological models cannot point out with accuracy, have you ever attempted to know what the indigenous islanders know about the varieties of medicinal plants? Are not all these “sciences” as well? You people have confused science with crude technologism. The scientific spirit is not one. It encourages, imbibes and upholds pluralities of thoughts, criticalities, conjectures and perspectives without opening the floodgate to intolerant systemicity marked by fallacious combatting.
“My advice to you that you go forth into world strong in wisdom and in worth, scatter the seeds of love among (hu-)mankind, seek the peace of your fellow creatures…”
It is becoming too late. You see, rapists-religious extremists are moving around scot-free. Is that right? Collective moral upbringing is a crucial task of today, and the same cannot be done by your academiocracy, which is full of discrimination, harassment, factionalism, lobbying and patronization. We need an alternative culture, a counter-culture that can subvert the theocratic governance of unfreedom and unreason… and also….a-n-d…
…………………………..
At this moment, Henry’s 3D imagery started to dissipate, and his voice could no longer be heard. Why did this happen? I heard cries of “Jai Shri Ram”, “Bharat Mata ki Jai” “Desh ke gaddaro kon, goli maaro saalon kon” and other such spine-chilling calls coming from outside my house. I knew that my ten years of non-partisan political activism has drawn many a death threats from the Hindutvavadins. Are they approaching my residence to kill me? As Bhagat Singh said though: “By killing individuals, they cannot kill ideas.” Our Henry Derozio also said: “Complain again and again, complain till you are heard. Aye! and until you are answered!” It is the teaching of not to be silent unless our calls are heard. I will make myself heard, even if they kill me.
My concentration broke completely…the figure of Henry Derozio turned into a skeleton that slowly brought his left hand towards the left-side of its ribcage (where the heart is) and then slowly disintegrated in front of my own eyes.
I was so disturbed that I could no longer continue my conversation with Juvenis, and was furious at the fundamentalists marching towards the premises of my residence.
But…I had no more time to think. I could hear frequent gunshots and bombings near my residential garden-area. I hear stones being pelted towards my windows. My heartbeat escalated with each passing moment… yet I did not move from my seated poise. I palpated with anxiety but stayed firm in the resolve of the lineage of the stormy petrel. Our Derozio taught us the value of contemplative philosophical calm even in the height of revolutionary upsurge.
I remembered Henry’s words, and his gentle warnings as well as reminders… we all must…
As Derozio said: Let Truth Dawn Upon the Doubting Mind!
Let me end this narrative with a few lines from one of my favourite poems by Derozio called “Going into Darkness”, before I get shot like Gauri Lankesh or get arrested without trial like Umar Khalid in this seemingly unending night of gloom:
“We look around,
But vainly look for those who formed a part
Of us, as we of them, and whom we wore
Like gems in bezels, in the heart’s deep core.
Where are they now? – gone to that “narrow cell”
Whose gloom no lamp hath broken, nor shall break
Whose secrets never spirit come to tell: –
Oh that their day might dawn, for them they would awake…”
Special Courtesy: Sakti Sadhan Mukhopadhyay, Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay
Sources:
- Derozio, H. L. V. (2001). The Complete Works of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, Dr. Abirlal Mukhopadhyay, Sri Amar Dutta, Sri Adhir Kumar and Dr. Sakti Sadhan Mukhopadhyay (Eds.). Progressive Publishers (in Collaboration with Derozio Commemoration Committee).
- Derozio, H. L. V. (2022). Jungheera Paharer Fakeer: Ekti Gathakabya. Sakti Sadhan Mukhopadhyay (Trans.). Aksharbritta Prakashana.
- Ghosh, B. (1980). Bidrohi Derozio. Ayan.
- Maitra, S. C. (1958). Ashanta Kaal Jijnasu Jubak. Puthipatra.
- Mukhopadhyay, S. S. (2022). Derozio: Routine Bhanga Ek Master. Punascha.
- Roychowdhuri, S. (1993). Henry Derozio: Tnaar Jibon O Somoy. National Book Trust.
- Sengupta, P. (1979). Jharer Pakhi: Kabi Derozio. Pustak Bipani.
SEE ALSO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIVcKSx-Ld0&t=9s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw9pU-h7nv0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msOj_9ooN2U
“এমনই এক পিঞ্জরে” (Tasso: In such a cage, sweet bird!) by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio VIEW HERE ⤡
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