Bengali’s Classical Status: A Triumph for India’s Linguistic Heritage
- By : Anirban Ganguly
- Category : Articles
The conferring of classical language status to Bengali is a tribute to the legions of thinkers and scholars who have devoted their best energies and thoughts to its preservation, promotion, and dissemination.
The conferring of classical language status to Bengali during ‘Devipaksha’, when the whole of Bengal fervently celebrates Durga Puja, is indeed a historic moment. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, welcoming the announcement, wrote about how the Bengali language and its literature have inspired countless people over the years. This recognition also opens up opportunities for the comprehensive promotion of the Bengali language and literature through centres of excellence, university chairs, language study centres, and much more.
PM Modi’s government has been continuously attentive to aspirations for classical language recognition and has responded to it consistently over the last decade. His response to Tamil and its civilisational antiquity and richness was also unprecedented.
On such occasions, the mind naturally wanders to those moments and personalities—thought leaders, thinkers, and creators of literary genres—who championed the Bengali language and drew out its imagination and civilisational essence for the world and for us, infusing it with fresh life, energy, and perspective through each new creation.
In a centennial reminiscence of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, iconic linguist philosopher Suniti Kumar Chatterji, speaking of Tagore and Bengali, movingly wrote that for Tagore, “his mother tongue was for him the most effective and powerful means of expression. His greatest thoughts, his noblest sentiments and his most beautiful ideas, as well as his most musical lines, in the domain of poetry and criticism, and of fiction with its introspection and reconstruction, and integration and realization, were enshrined in his mother tongue. He was one of the greatest artists in language, and he drew out from Bengali… all its latent powers of expression. He found his mother tongue to be as brass, but he left it as gold.”
Chatterji himself, throughout a long and prolific life, contributed to a deep understanding of the Bengali language and to its dissemination. His monumental work, ‘The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language’ (1926), was unparalleled in its scope and depth, at the time when it appeared. Originally the work was his thesis, accepted at the University of London in 1921, which he later substantially revised and reworked.
Regarding this opus, Padma Bhushan recipient Sukumar Sen, a historian of the Bengali language and author of the widely acclaimed Bangla Sahityer Itihas, and himself a scholar of Pali and Prakrit, wrote, “From the day when The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language was published (1926), Suniti Kumar Chatterji was recognised as the leading Indian authority in the field of Indian linguistics.”
Describing a wide array of thinkers and shapers of the Bengali language who were either contemporaries or near contemporaries of Tagore, Suniti Kumar Chatterji argued that “the first Bengali with a scientific insight to tackle the problem of language was the poet Rabindranath Tagore.” Chatterji also recognised in Tagore the qualities of a philologist, “distinguished both by an assiduous enquiry into the facts of the language and by a scholarly appreciation of the methods and findings of modern Western philologists.” Tagore’s essays on Bengali phonetics and other dimensions of the Bengali language, Chatterji contends, “may be said to have shown the Bengali enquiring into the problems of his language the proper approach to them.”
As late as 1938, at an advanced age, Tagore continued his exploration of the Bengali language, bringing out an anthology titled Bānglā Bhāshā Parichay (Introduction to the Bengali Language). The book was inscribed to Chatterji, with Gurudev conferring upon him the honorary title of ‘Bhāshāchāryā’.
One of Tagore’s leading biographers, Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, in his classic ‘Rabindra Jiban Katha’, notes that Tagore was extremely keen on writing books on science in Bengali. Mukhopadhyay recounts how, in the summer of 1937, after Visva Bharati closed for vacation, Tagore travelled to Almora, taking with him a collection of science books. He not only read these in detail, but also reflected on them and extensively discussed their ideas and contents, before beginning to write. For years, Tagore had planned a series titled Visva Vidya Samgraha, which he intended to make accessible to lay readers at an affordable price. The science book in Bengali that he completed in Almora, Viswaparichay, was dedicated to the young scientist Professor S.N. Bose.
An epochal milestone in the history of the Bengali language was reached in 1937, when, for the first time in its eighty-year history, the convocation address at the University of Calcutta was delivered in Bengali by Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore had been invited by the University’s youthful and erudite Vice Chancellor, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the youngest in its history, who was himself an accomplished scholar of Bengali. It is said that, prior to this, no one had delivered a convocation address in the mother tongue or in any Indian language at any university in India.
Tagore movingly spoke of how, at last, in this leading university of Bengal, the voice of Bengal had finally been placed on a high pedestal. The Bard lamented that in no other country, except India, was the unnatural disconnect—a divorce—between the language of teaching and the language of the learner so apparent. The credit for making this unthinkable event happen—that of having the Poet deliver the Convocation Address in Bengali—must go solely to the then Vice Chancellor, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, as noted by Prabhat Mukhopadhyay, the Poet’s biographer.
Syama Prasad Mookerjee had a unique connection to the Bengali language. He earned a first-class degree in English honours at Presidency College. His father, the iconic educationist, reformer, mathematician, jurist, and one of the shapers of modern Bengali thought, Asutosh Mookerjee, who was then Vice Chancellor of the University, was implementing comprehensive reforms. To ensure a rightful place for Bengali in the educational framework, Asutosh Mookerjee initiated a Master’s course in Bengali language and literature. Noticing that students were hesitant to take up the course, he directed Syama Prasad to enrol for his Master’s, not in English, but in Bengali language and literature in the newly formed department. Even here, Syama Prasad excelled, setting an example and a benchmark.
Among the numerous and varied reforms and new initiatives that Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee initiated at the University of Calcutta as Vice Chancellor was the promotion of Bengali and other Indian languages. Study and examination in the mother tongue at the Matriculation level, standardised spellings in Bengali, and the preparation of Bengali terms and words for use in science education, as well as ensuring that those wishing to pursue their PhD in Bengali could do so, were some of Dr Mookerjee’s major contributions. Each of these was a transformative initiative that provided a significant boost to the promotion of education in Bengali and Bengali learning.
In addition to Bengali, Dr Mookerjee facilitated the inclusion of other Indian languages in the university system, including Assamese, Hindi, and Hindustani. Teaching and examination in the mother tongue at the Matriculation level marked a watershed moment in the history of the Bengali language in modern times.
Welcoming the unanimous support his proposal eventually received from the university board, Dr Mookerjee described it as the beginning of “a much-desired policy of introducing the vernacular as the medium of instruction and examination…” He urged, “Let us not falter but let us go forward, looking ahead to the time when our mother tongue will be the medium not only of our Matriculation Examination but also of the highest examinations at the University.”
As Vice Chancellor, Asutosh Mookerjee engaged the renowned scholar of Bengali literature and ‘loka-sāhitya,’ Dinesh Chandra Sen, to undertake the mammoth task of collecting and publishing the rich variety of Bengal’s folk literature. Asutosh Mookerjee’s sudden demise in 1924 halted that mega project until Syama Prasad revived it, himself heading the committee on ‘Bengali Ballads,’ resuming the work and ensuring stipends for those who collected the ballads. These eventually appeared in print through a series of volumes, marking a work that had never been attempted before.
Without displaying an iota of chauvinism, Dr Mookerjee always positively utilised every opportunity that arose to enhance the prestige of Bengali. Two interesting examples stand out. When the University of Allahabad’s Department of Life Science sent him a letter in Hindi requesting a message for its fiftieth year, Dr Mookerjee replied in Bengali. He followed this practice, writes his biographer Dinesh Chandra Sinha, even in the case of the University of London, which had requested a message for its centenary in 1936. Dr Mookerjee’s message was sent in Bengali, where he discussed the various dimensions of education at the University of Calcutta, especially the promotion of Indian languages.
One is also reminded on such occasions of Sri Aurobindo’s tribute to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and his contributions of epic proportions to the Bengali language and its popularisation. In his inimitable lyrical style, Sri Aurobindo writes of how Bankim’s masterpieces, such as Ananda Math, Krishnacharit, or Dharmatattwa, will rank him “among the Makers of Modern India”. These timeless writings in Bengali saw Bankim emerge as a “seer and nation-builder.” Bankim, Sri Aurobindo argues, “gave us the means by which the soul of Bengal could express itself,” and his development of a new style in Bengali was the need of the age.
A language was needed, observes Sri Aurobindo, “which should combine the strength, dignity, and soft beauty of Sanskrit with the verve and vigour of the vernacular, capable at one end of the outmost vernacular raciness and at the other of the most sonorous gravity.” Bankim gave us a “perfect and satisfying medium,” Sri Aurobindo notes. This is a succinct summation of Bankim’s gigantic literary contribution to the awakening of Bengal.
The conferring of classical language status to Bengali is thus a profoundly satisfying moment. It is made more significant by Prime Minister Modi’s insistence on almost always and unhesitatingly using an Indian language on prominent global platforms to articulate India’s aspirations and commitments to global welfare and engagement. It is only a petty and defeated mind that indulges in one-upmanship on such occasions. The conferring of classical language status to Bengali is a tribute to the legions of thinkers and scholars who have devoted their best energies and thoughts to its preservation, promotion, and dissemination. It opens up a vast vista of possibilities and scope, which calls for unalloyed rejoicing and plaudits.
