Derozio’s challenge to Indian tradition with reference to The Fakeer Of Jungheera

Name : Ravi RajyaguruRoll No : 32Paper : Indian Writing in EnglishM.A : Sem 1Enrolment No : PG -15101032Year : 2015-16Email : rajyagururavi24@gmail.comSubmitted To : Smt. S.B Gardi Department of English

Maharajakrishnakumarsinhji

• Bhavnagar University

Henry Louis Vivian Derozio was a poet, thinker, radical, and one of the earliest Indian educationists to disseminate western learning and philosophy among the young men of Bengal was also crucially the first modern Indian to write of the incumbent nation extensively in English.

Introduction

Derozio’s Challenge

Caste SystemSati-Pratha

The Social Malaise of Sati:

  At the ancient time there were many rules and regulations in which one of the most famous is ‘Sati’. ‘Sati – pratha’ was the high influence on Indian mentality. In that time women situations, conditions are very pathetic. Sati is an obsolete Indian funeral custom where a widow immolated herself on her husband’s pyre. That is also describe in ‘The Fakeer of Jungheera’ very well by Henry Derozio.

    Instead of belaboring upon the misery of slavery, Derozio embarked upon a mission of resolving some of the inherent evils of Hindu society especially – ‘the practice of widow burning’.

                Sati – Pratha

Derozio approvingly quotes a writer from the ‘‘Indian Magazine’’ and endorses the latter’s opinion that sati constitutes the most barbaric and degrading aspect of Indian Society which can be overcome through education and intellectual development.

Nonetheless with all his self – assurance and animosity for con – cremation, Derozio seems somewhat confused by cases of willful self – immolation.

During the nineteenth century many upper caste Hindu women willfully committed sati mistakenly believing in the veracity of the Hindu ritual, as if mesmerized into an abominable act through a long process of socialization.

The protagonist of the poem is a robber fakeer or a mendicant, who belongs to some unidentified Muslim sect, while the heroine, the widow Nuleeni, comes from an upper caste Bengali Hindu family.

But still they love each other very much. In the intense bond of love they forgot the society. They forgot their caste discrimination. They challenged the man made norms of the society.

Fakeer, bravely snatched her from the hands of so called upper-class people. Here in this case we can say that the poem makes an important stage in the use of social themes in literary texts endorsing a syncretistic tradition quite popular in 19th century Bengal.

Caste system

Derozio breaks all the norms of writing of the contemporary poem writing. It was not easy for the contemporary writers to break the established laws and at the same challenging the upper-class of the cosecant.

He wanted to remove the social evils that slowly swallowed the society. This Hindu-Muslim love story arose great sensation. The poet was marginalized in his time.

The poet through the impossible and bold story of love affair between Hindu upper-class widow and a Muslim lower class Fakeer reflected and criticized the evils of Indian Society and challenged the Indian tradition.

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