Four decades of discourse

The Modern Review is a must read for all interested in understanding great debates and expositions that shaped India’s discourse preceding Independence

Can one think of a publication for which Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, Charles Freer Andrews, Lala Lajpat Rai, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Sita Devi, Sir Jadunath Sarkar and Sister Nivedita wrote?  It was The Modern Review (1907-1965), a monthly, whose iconic editor, Ramananda Chatterjee was, in this writer's view, one of the two greatest Indian editors ever, the other being Harish Chandra Mukherjee of the Hindu Patriot (1853-84) from 1855 to 1861.

Mukherjee was a liberal on social matters, who supported women's education and widow remarriage. His main contribution, which left an indelible mark on Indian journalism, was however, his sustained exposure of the savage exploitation of — and unspeakable atrocities on — Bengal's ryots by European Indigo planters. His writings and an Anglican priest Father James Long's relentless campaign, did much to arouse strong public sympathy for the ryots and condemnation of the planters. Both of them faced bitter attacks by the Indigo planters and their allies, who filed a number of lawsuits against them. The stress of it caused Harish Chandra Mukherjee's premature death in 1961 while Long was arraigned for publishing Nil Darpan, Dinabandhu Mitra's searing play depicting the ryots' plight. He was sentenced to a fine of Rs 1,000, which Kaliprasanna Singha, the well-known Bengal Renaissance figure, paid, and sentenced to a month's imprisonment, which he underwent.

Though, like many educated Bengalis of his time, an opponent of the revolt of 1857, he felt that revolts should not be treated as ordinary crimes and wrote appreciatively of its leaders like Tantia Tope, Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi and Kunwar Singh. A supporter of British rule, he was fiercely critical of discrimination, injustices and exploitation that went with it.

Under Mukherjee, the Hindu Patriot was a crusading and critical commentator on events of its time. The Modern Review, more a journal of opinion than of strident reportage and protest, played a similar role but as a vehicle of discourse. The times, undoubtedly, were different. The Hindu Patriot came out when educated Indians — even those critical — generally preferred British rule to a return to a feudal order that preceded it. They preferred the institutions of British rule, the opportunities these provided and the galvanising impact of the Western education. There were neither any significant demand for Independence nor a fledgling movement for it.

The Modern Review started publishing when mass protests, demonstrations, boycott and burning of British goods to protest against Lord Curzon's Partition of Bengal (1905) was at its peak — eventually leading to the division's annulment.

Mahatma Gandhi turned freedom struggle into a mass movement marked by a growing participation of women. A number of questions arose as it spread and intensified. What methods should it adopt? What kind of future should India have?  What relationship would that future have with the country's present and past? What constituted the various dimensions of the present and its defining realities?

These and a number of others questions were debated deeply and spiritedly in The Modern Review. It was the journal in which Tagore articulated his critique of the non-cooperation movement and the cult of the charkha, and Jawaharlal Nehru, then president of the Indian National Congress, of himself under the pseudonym of Chanakya.  Mahatma Gandhi and Lala Lajpat Rai debated himsa and ahimsa and Sister Nivedita wrote on “India and Democracy”. It is also the publication in which anthropologists like Verrier Elwin and sociologist like Radhakamal Mukerjee expounded their path-breaking findings and views.

Unlike Harish Chandra Mukherjee, Ramananda Chatterjee stood for India's Independence though he directly could not demand it, given the British Government's draconian Press laws. Like Mukherjee, he was socially forward-looking and unrelenting in its exposure of what Indians suffered under the British rule. A good example is his essay “Towards Home Rule”, the first in the anthology of contributions to the journal appearing in Patriots, Poets and Prisoners: Selections from Ramananda Chatterjee's The Modern Review 1907-1947 edited by Anikendra Sen, Devangshu Datta and Nilanjana S Roy and brought out by Harper Collins Publishers India.

Eminent historian Ramchandra Guha's introduction, in which he compares The Modern Review's role with France's Les Temps Moderne, and Britain's Spectator and New Statesman, is engaging. First published in 2016 — I should have read it earlier — the volume is a must read for all interested in understanding the great debates and expositions that shaped discourse in India during four critical decades preceding Independence.

(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)