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IN the sixtieth year of Independence, the nation looks forward to build on the struggles and sacrifices of freedom fighters, social reformers and entrepreneurs. It is also the time to reflect on the lives and thoughts of those revolutionaries whose names are not so readily remembered. Year 2007 marks the death centenary of Bengali firebrand reformer, educationist, theologian, journalist, teacher and revolutionary Brahmabandhab Upadhyay. The man has fallen into oblivion though once the force of his personality was felt and acknowledged by the stalwarts of Bengali renaissance such as Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, Keshabchandra Sen and Aurobindo Ghosh. Ashis Nandy—who calls Upadhyay ‘Tagore’s political double’—avers Upadhyay found his way into the protagonists of Char Adhyay and Gora, two of Tagore’s overtly political novels. Nandy adds Ghar-Baire to this list and states that these three novels can be "read (`85) as a record of Tagore’s attempt to grapple with his ambivalence toward the complex, melodramatic personality of Brahmabandhab Upadhyay." In Nandy’s analysis the development of Tagore’s thought with regard to nationalism was mirrored in Upadhyay’s life. In the preface to Char Adhyay Tagore states that ‘the first subtle hints of the beginnings of terrorism in Bengal’ can be observed in Sandhya, a journal founded and edited by Upadhyay. Many stages of development of these two contemporaries—both were born the same year—reflected the inner conflicts that followed them all their lives. Forging of a national identity or a possible revival of the same was what the two sought through their engagements—education, writing, travelling and political activities. Upadhyay was born as Bhabanicharan Bandhopadhyay on February 11, 1861 in Khanyan village. He lost his mother when he was about one-year-old. When he was three, his uncle Kalicharan Bannerjee converted to Christianity and grew to become something ‘of a pillar of Bengali Christian community.’ Along with the grandmother it was he who fascinated the child with tales of heroism from the Indian epics. In times of subjugation these were the tales that fired young Bhabhani’s imagination and even though his father was a strict disciplinarian, a police inspector, Upadhyay grew to be a rebel and became involved with the nationalist struggle early in life. By his own accounts at the age of about 14 he began to have an intoxicated fill of Surendranath Banerjea’s lectures and dreamt of driving the foreigner out of the country. But the politics of petition did not convince him. He wished to join the army of Maharaja of Gwalior to ‘learn the art of war and drive away the foreigner.’ Twice he made that effort but returned disappointed finding the Maharaja to be ‘a toothless vassal of the British India.’ The young Brahmin, who had taken a vow of celibacy and to serve the country and who had sought to follow the path of the Kshatriya by picking up arms, at the crossroads of his life moved towards teaching. He had already been an active member of Brahmo Samaj with a deep regard for Keshabchandra Sen, whom he called the greatest Indian of his time. So while his classmate Narendranath, better known as Swami Vivekananda, moved towards the mystic Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Bhabhani became a Brahmo preacher. Like many of his contemporaries the desire to establish national pride was coupled with a spiritual quest. He went to Sind as a Brahmo missionary in 1888. While he was there he heard that his father lay sick in Multan and he left Sind to be by his father’s side. On the bookshelf of his dying father Bhabhani spotted Catholic Belief by Faa di Bruno which he read through the night. In February 1891 he was baptised by an Anglican priest and in September he joined the Roman Catholic Church. He, however, remained in dress and food habits, a thorough Brahmin, saffron-clad, student of Vedanta, a veritable Hindu sannyasi. In his writing he continued to expound the wisdom of Vedas and Vedanta even as he delved into the neo-Thomist catholic theology. His ‘Indianness’ raised a few eyebrows in the Catholic church while his avowed Catholicism made him an outsider in the opinion of many Hindu reformers. In 1898 he wrote in Sophia, a journal he founded and edited, "We are Hindu so far as our physical and mental constitution is concerned, but in regard to our immortal souls we are Catholics." Was he the first to give such a potent expression to double belonging? This ambivalence, however, was his nemesis. He continued to grow vociferous and extremely vitriolic against the firangi with passing time. Owing to his anti-British writings he was charged with sedition and was tried. During this time he underwent a hernia operation but due to complications died on 27 October 1907. Lipner has called him, "an enigma of modern India... a potential embarrassment to those who invoke him." And indeed he is so. Like all trailblazers who make disconcerting and brave choices Brahmabandhab defies boundaries. But the questions, about national identity and national destiny that he raised and sought to answer have not exhausted their force and relevance.
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