Pather Dabi the book...

Just finished Pather Dabi, the original written by Sarat Chandra Chaterjee in Bengali....i read the translated version....The translation was a bit shoddy, and that would be putting it mildly....the guy just translated word to word without distilling the meaning and essense of the lines or the context....i mean why cant we translate books like the people who have translated les miserables or don quixote? reading those books you would not even imagine that you were reading a book originally written in a foreign language....

In any case one could see even through the drawbacks of the translation what an immense book this is....a priceless contribution to Indian literature by any standards....a book that can be said to provide a benchmark for all pre-independence novels....The book revolves around the enigmatic revolutionary 'Sabyasachi' (one who is ambidexterous) aka Doctor, who many say is modelled on Subhash Chandra Bose (though this is debatable as the book was published in late 20s when Bose had still not changed completely into the firebrand revolutionary that he became), the organization Pather Dabi ("right of way") which is a clandestine organization for revolutionary activities and the powerful women characters- Sumitra and Bharati.

The author managed to put together beautifully the ethos of the time, the dogmatism of a rigid casteist society (shown in the conflicting personality of Apurba, the orthodox 'pious' brahmin) , the lonely struggle of the revolutionary in a land of people whose very spirit has been broken and whose abject subservience to the coloniser has resulted in their becoming an inferior race in their own homeland and the love and the emotional struggles of the protogonists, climaxing in a poignant ending.

The book contains many truths that were not allowed to be spoken in the Raj, thruths that could and did inflame public sentiments as few books have done. That was the reason why the book was banned for over a decade , the ban lifting only after the author's death. It is easy to see why...the book contains critique of the colonial government which were not forthcoming from Gandhi and his followers whose grand aims during this time was for self dominion (pah!!!) and cosmetic administrative reforms (like lowering the age for indians giving ICS exams etc), who in short were incapable of imagining complete unfettered freedom.

It was only the revolutionaries influenced by the recent changes abroad (remember the Russian revolution had only occured a decade ago) and by homegrown dissent over the years (the first war of independence of 1857 and various peasant rebellions), who were able to imagine India standing on its own against the colonial invaders and actually fighting for their freedom with blood and not with petitions and peaceful protest marches, favourite of gandhi and his ilk (which only gave illusionary freedom).

As the revolutionaries always said 'there can be no negotiations between the strong and weak', hence they wanted to strike at the very heart of the Raj, at the concept that the Indians are a docile race and incapable of fighting on equal terms, a concept debunked by the march of INA.

Hence the book was a far-sighted one and it has very modern ideas and very modern dilemnas about marriage and caste clashes, still very evident today. Also Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, who has been labelled as a person who would potray women as always self-sacrificing for their husbands, has shown that he knew women far better than most of us can imagine.

The differing, yet at the core similar characters of Sumitra and Bharati are poweful testimony to this. He effectively demolishes the concept that women can be labelled in single dimension, whereas most men can be (except for exceptions like Sabyasachi, who too admitedly had his faults).

But what he most effectively proves in the book is that in the land where most remember Gandhi as the saviour (however the specious the assumption may be...), countless men and women gave up their lives and their own domestic happiness for the freedom movement, who have today been relegated to the margins of history, something which the author perhaps foresaw even then. This book is then a tribute to them, and this book is a subversion of the accepted norm of victors writing history.