Rishi Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay Jayanti

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Indian Prime Minister pays homage to Rishi Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay on his Jayanti on 27th June.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay

About:

• He was a celebrated writer, poet and journalist and considered to be the father of the Bengali novel.
• He is widely regarded as a key figure in literary renaissance of Bengal as well as the broader Indian subcontinent.

Image Courtesy: Statesman

Biography:

• He was born on 27th June 1838 in the village of Kanthapura in the town of North 24 Parganas, Naihati, present day West Bengal.
• In 1857, there was a strong revolt against the rule of East India Company but Bankim Chandra Chatterjee continued his studies and passed his B.A. Examination in 1859.
• The Lieutenant Governor of Calcutta appointed Bankim Chandra Chatterjee as Deputy Collector in the same year.
• He was in Government service for thirty-two years and retired in 1891.
• He died on 8th April, 1894.

Contributions:

• The most noteworthy contribution Bankim made to the nationalistic imagination was the political novel Anandamath which was based on the ‘sannyasi rebellion’ of the late 18th century.
• His earliest publications were in Ishwar Chandra Gupta’s weekly newspaper Sangbad Prabhakar. His first fiction to appear in print was Rajmohan’s Wife. It was written in English and is regarded as the first Indian novel to be written in English
• It was in Anandamath, that Bankim wrote the poem ‘Vande Mataram’. The novel madeBankim an influential figure on the Bengali renaissance who kept the people of Bengal intellectually stimulated through his literary campaign.
• He crossed over to Bengali and embarked on the project of creating the first modern corpus of Bengali. He also wrote Kapalkundala in  1866, Mrinalin in 1869, Vishbriksha in 1873, Chandrasekhar in 1877, Rajani in 1877, Rajsimha in 1881 and Devi Chaudhurani in 1884. He brought out a monthly magazine called Bangadarshan in 1872.

Source: PIB