Abstract
In this chapter the legacy of Henry Vivian Louis Derozio (1809–1831) is re-examined through an extended interpretation of The Fakeer of Jungheera (1828), his 2,050 line poem, published when he was barely 19. What makes this poem notable, even unique, is that it is the first long poem written by any Indian in the English language. But, more remarkably, it is also an intriguing conjuncture of a complex set of relations at the very beginnings of modern India: British colonialism and local resistance, the English language and Indian vernaculars, native and European miscegenation, Christian missionaries and Hindu reformers, pre-nationalism and the imagining of India, evolving gender and patriarchal norms, Hindu–Muslim negotiations, sati and colonial power, to name a few. Though the poem is justifiably famous, it has hardly received the detailed attention that it deserves. My purpose here, however, extends beyond a reading of The Fakeer of Jungheera. I wish to argue that the conventional ways in which Derozio is understood—as a pioneer of Indian modernity and a proto-nationalist—are actually insufficient if not misleading. They throw, as it were, a blanket over not only his singular career, but on the whole phenomenon of what I call “East Indian cosmopolitanism.” I argue that the “national” as a valid social or cultural space was not yet available, that it came into being later, after Derozio’s time. Those who consider him a “national” poet are performing a kind of back-projection that is not borne out by the work. On the other hand, the kind of cosmopolitanism that his writings and life embody, was also short lived, based on the opportunities of the early colonial period, which shrunk into more restricted binaries with the establishment of British paramountcy. Yet, such “East Indian cosmopolitanism” was very important for the formation of public culture in India and presaged by many decades the argumentative English-speaking class and English-language media in India. I take “East Indians” at their own definition and evaluation as people of mixed race who wished to distinguish themselves certainly from the Indians and, per force, from the Europeans too. Derozio’s newspaper, which claimed to be the voice of this community, was itself The East Indian. The history of how Derozio has been read shows that he has been primarily seen as a representative of the Anglo-Indian (Eurasian) community, without reference to his unique and short-lived cosmopolitanism. East Indian cosmopolitanism is thus one of those “lost” modes of being which were replaced and overwritten by others. By recovering it, we add a vital component to our knowledge of how colonialism in its early days gave rise to a new society and consciousness in India.
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Notes
- 1.
There is some confusion over the degree of his racial admixture; in “Politics of Naming: Derozio in Two Formative Moments of Literary and Political Discourse, Calcutta, 1825–1831,” Rosinka Chaudhuri says: “Derozio’s claim as a native of India was all the more laudable, the subtext of this passage seems to suggest, because his father was Portuguese and his mother an English woman from Hampshire named Sophia Johnson—if there was any Indian blood in him at all, that might have been in a hidden corner on his father’s side” (879). But E.W. Madge, whom Chaudhuri quotes, clearly states that Henry’s grandfather, Michael Derozio, was listed as a “Native Protestant” in the St John’s Baptismal Register of 1789 (3). “Native” in this context is a racial term used in contradistinction to “European.” About his mother there is still greater confusion. Thomas Edwards, his first biographer, who with great effort meticulously researched and recorded the known information on Derozio’s life, says “One other relation it is needful to mention. Henry’s aunt, his mother’s sister, married a European gentleman, an Indigo Planter, at Bhaugulpore. Mr. Arthur Johnson, Derozio’s uncle, was born at Ringwood in Hampshire in the year 1782” (3). According to Edwards, Sophia was Henry’s sister. There is no mention of his mother; her name and ancestry remain unspecified. A misreading of Edwards might have lead to the repeated error of thinking that Henry’s mother was an Englishwoman from Hampshire whose maiden surname was Johnson.
- 2.
Consecrated in 1787, St. John’s was the leading Protestant house of worship of the British in West Bengal until the founding of St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1847. The grounds of the former contain many monuments including the grave of Job Charnock, the founder of Calcutta. St. John’s Church was built by Lt. James Agg of the Bengal Engineers, who modeled it on St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London.
- 3.
An earlier version of this chapter appeared as “‘East Indian Cosmopolitanism’: The Fakeer of Jungheera and the Birth of Indian Modernity” in Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. 13.4 (October–December 2011).
- 4.
All further quotations from The Fakeer of Jungheera, unless otherwise stated, are from Chaudhuri (2008).
- 5.
The editor in question was Francis Bradley-Brit who in 1923 brought out a selection of the poet’s works for Oxford University Press. Sometimes, the dash is replaced by a comma, “To India, My Native Land,” but the sonnet remains Derozio’s best known and most widely circulated composition.
- 6.
In April 2008, in an auditorium named after him in Presidency College, formerly Hindu College, Kolkata, where Derozio himself taught and was expelled, but now is enshrined in a bust.
- 7.
As I have argued at length in Indian English and Vernacular India (2010).
- 8.
See Chaudhuri’s aforementioned “The Politics of Naming” for a more detailed account of the term “East Indian.” “East Indian” was also a term adopted by Catholic subjects of the territories in the Bombay area, after they passed from Portuguese to British control.
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Paranjape, M.R. (2013). “East Indian” Cosmopolitanism: Henry Derozio’s Fakeer of Jungheera and the Birth of Indian Modernity. In: Making India: Colonialism, National Culture, and the Afterlife of Indian English Authority. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4661-9_3
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